Small Life Form, Thriller, Quatermass, Comics

Posted on May 27, 2012 by Brian John Mitchell

So I finally wrote what I think is an acceptable first draft for the mermaid story for the bottle comics.  I’ll need to get it typed up & sent to Kim Traub for approval & then lay it out still, but it’s well under way now that the first draft is done.  Which means soonish I’ll be launching a Kickstarter about it.

In other comic news, I’ve been doing my best to replenish the display to have stock ready for the upcoming appearance I have at Maker Faire NC.  Basically I need to print up about 500 more books to have a full display, which means I’m about a third done with re-filling the thing after the big sales from the Kickstarter.

The Small Life Form Satsop recordings are finally out on Blondena.  It is the music I recorded in the nuclear cooling towers a couple of years ago.  Free to listen or pay to purchase.

On Finally Checking It Out I reviewed Michael Jackson’s Thriller & the Quatermass TV Series from the 1970s (includes embedded video of the whole thing).

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Brilliant Spam, Remora, mwvm

Posted on May 25, 2012 by Brian John Mitchell

I got this pretty brilliant spam today.  The spam was a false order to Amazon & then all the links to Amazon in the email rather than going to some fake harvesting site were Amazon affiliate links.  So if you click one then end up buying something the guy gets a quarter.  Negative points for scary spam, but brilliance points for working the affiliate network.

Another new ambient piece from mwvm:

& in response I did a Remora piece trying to figure out what’s wrong with my pedal board:

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Twitter, Bottle Comics, QRD, Puzzle Boxes, Triangle Rhysing

Posted on May 23, 2012 by Brian John Mitchell

So I haven’t really talked about the Twitter News Robot things I’m running lately (here’s the music & comics page with them & here’s the actual news page with them).  Anyway, I looked at my stats for last week & they autogenerated 7,000 posts for 14,000 clicks.  So I feel like it’s doing some good to some of the sites I like as far as generating traffic even if they haven’t really seemed to have any impact with generating interest in Silber proper.

I posted some open calls about doing interviews for the new issues of QRD on some Facebook groups & got no response.  It makes me feel like Facebook has 100% jumped the shark, which makes it feel like the whole internet may have as well.  In which case, how do I get in touch with people in a cost effective way?

For the bottle comics project I’d originally intended 4 books.  But one of the artists I was hoping to work with won’t be able to do it on my schedule unfortunately.  So I guess I need to decide if that means I go with just 3 books (especially since I only have 3 stories that came to mind!) or go for the fourth.  I guess I’ll worry about it after I finish writing the third one.

In other comic news, I’ve spent most of the past couple of days trying to assemble comics in preparation for the upcoming Maker Faire convention thing.

I got asked to be a guitarist for this 20 guitarist performance thing coming up locally next month.  I couldn’t do it last year because of schedule conflicts, so I look forward to taking part this year.  It’s called Triangle Rhysing (Rhys Chatham reference).

I had bought some spray wood finish stuff for trying to upgrade some of my wooden puzzle boxes.  The reason why I’ve been thinking about that is because I’ve been thinking about doing a Kickstarter campaign to try to sell them & it means I should get more options for selling them than just one thing.

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Kafka, Comics, Jobs, Supervision, Dreams

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Brian John Mitchell

So I posted up a review on Finally Checking It Out of the 1991 movie Kafka.  It includes an embed of the movie in the post.

I got two first drafts done for two of my self-proposed four comic series called “bottle comics.”  I still need to type them in & send them to the artists & lay them out & all that, but I’m happy to get some work done.

I got a call from a music supervisor I work with for placements.  It was a call that was both good & bad.  They said there were some paperwork problems, but they ran into the paperwork problems in the final process of a placement, which makes it seem like some of the music will end up being used.  I’m pretty excited about it, but trying to remain calm & pleasantly surprised if things come to fruition.

I accepted a job running promotions for a winery.  It’s on a provisionary basis & we’ll see what happens with it.  It’s going to be interesting trying to build a database & such for something I know little about, even if I know a lot about building such a database for music & comics.

I actually read a couple comics I bought at a shop for a buck a piece on the recent road trip.  Void Indigo #1 (on Marvel’s Epic line in 1984) was a bit of a confusing mess – a page was printed out of order & plenty of typos & the first issue I guess took place after a graphic novel or something that I hadn’t read, but enjoyable in its own way.  Grendel/Batman Devils Dance #2 was a book I’d kinda been looking for a little while (I think so far it is the final appearance of Grendel Prime) & I was a little let down by it as it was more Batman oriented than Grendel oriented, but it was fine for a crossover between an indie comic & a major superhero book.

Last Night’s Dream:
I’m a butler in a mansion.  My tuxedo is made of silk & consequently too light to hold it’s shape & looks & feels like odd pajamas.  The master of the house has died & me & the maid are trying to figure out if we should report the death or just stay on & live in the house.

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Stranger Than Fiction, Comics, Dreams

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Brian John Mitchell

I got the layout done for the new issue of Worms (#7 for those of you keeping count) & Pow Wow #1.  Printed out the first batch to assemble & such.  Also printed up some other comics to fill a couple orders.

While assembling comics I watched this Will Ferrell movie about being a character in a novel & struggling to effect the plot called Stranger Than Fiction.  It’s free on Crackle right now.

Here are a couple of photos of some of my mini-comics that I’ve been meaning to share.  Some Marvel Comics that make my minis look huge & one of my comics in a bottle.

Last Night’s Dreams:
I wake up laying in bed next to a clone of myself.  I know that one of us needs to die.  I’m sitting up watching him sleep trying to figure out if it would be easier to kill him or myself.  What’s the difference anyway?

There are five year old vampires.  Either because of the sexual innuendos or the simple lack of height, rather than biting people on the neck, they bite into the blood vessels on the back of the knee resulting in victims that are crippled rather than simply exhausted.

I’m on tour & I’m told the city we’re in is Philadephia, but I know it’s not because of the way the hills are.  I would guess we’re in Wisconsin.  It’s the end of the night after the show & it’s been snowing.  The van is parked on the street.  & while I’m getting my coat on before going outside I feel the van starting to move.  It’s sliding down the hill on the ice.  I’m surprised by how fast it’s gaining speed.  The club was put on the steering wheel, but I’m not convinced turning the wheel would have much effect anyway.  I see the trees getting closer & closer as the van continues to pick up speed & jumps the curb.  Staring out the window death seems a bit less climatic than I’d anticipated.

Posted in comics, dreams, movies & television | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

4 Responses to Stranger Than Fiction, Comics, Dreams

  1. GoddakkAttack says:
    May 21, 2012 at 7:46 am

    i’ve been trying to remember the name of that movie all last week. I guess i could’ve googled but i would’ve hated to see what Will Ferrell brought about in a google search.

  2. GoddakkAttack says:
    May 21, 2012 at 7:50 am

    You know you should see if you can waterproof seal the comic…..put it in a bottle and fill it up with your homemade beer and new product!!! I’m sure your comics are much more enjoyable after a beer anyways right? right.

Bikers, Low, Cerebus TV, Dreams

Posted on May 19, 2012 by Brian John Mitchell

Yesterday I went to a biker rally because a money blues band that has Brian McKenzie (Electric Bird Noise) & Drew Jacobs (SAVAS) was playing.  It was interesting.  Very few bikers under 30 (it was a Harley based event) & surprisingly no kiosks selling knives or brass knuckles.  Instead I did find a pretty cool bootleg Misfits shirt for $5.

So some of you might know about the Cerebus TV thing I occasionally post about on here.  Anyway, Dave Sim announced that the current episode is the final episode.  Not sure if he’ll ever resurrect it or if he views it as a totally failed experiment.  I do know he is in the midst of doing a lot of work with making digital versions of his content available & there’s talk of making the episode of CTV available for digital purchase at $1 a piece.

Here’s a special little documentary on Low from BYU-TV.  It’s about thirty minutes long.  A lot of review for some of us super fans, but worth watching while eating your cereal.

Last Night’s Dreams:
I’m in the woods & I see a girl who looks like a teenage Drew Barrymore.  I chase after her & I see her climb up a vine & into the bay of an AT-AT.  I follow her.  The bay looks literally like a bird’s nest, half of the doorway blocked by collected sticks.  I realize looking around that it is not a real AT-AT, but just a decoy with no machinery to make it move.  She’s wearing rags as tattered as my own, but hers are mainly green while mine are mainly brown.  I say to her, “So you live in the big dead dog?”

I’m walking on an abandoned pier & I see the skeleton of a shark picked clean by birds & insects.  I didn’t think sharks had bones besides teeth.

I’m in charge of a small fascistic country.  My job is to make the citizens feel safe & stable through any means necessary.

I go to a church service & feel even more lost & scared & useless than when I went in.  I drive around town looking for another service to attend, but I think this emptiness is the future.

I’m waiting at the embassy.  After I finally get in the building & am third from seeing the ambassador, someone comes up to me & gives me a package of pre-sliced mushrooms & two bell peppers.  I leave the line looking for some tofu to make a meal.  Why is tofu so hard to find lately?

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Clang Quartet, mwvm, QRD, Remora, etc

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Brian John Mitchell

So I haven’t been blogging a lot lately I guess.  I’ve been trying to write some comics & then abandoning them.  I’ve been laying out comics to print, but I’m not at home & have no printer to test them on.  Today I walked on the beach for a few miles & got a sunburn, then I worked for seven hours helping finish a hardwood floor.  Things could be a lot worse.

I got the release date for the new Remora record on Fluttery.  It’ll be out June 14.  I’ll let you know more when I do.

I’ve been working up the next several QRD.  It’s been more than six months since the last issue.  Getting interviews in for the next collections of musician dads, guitarists, label owners, & indie comic creators.  I have some more stuff planed for QRD that I’ll need to work on.  Every once in a while I like to give QRD a push to see if anyone will care.  I’m thinking about adding something at the top where it advertises other QRD articles on each page because I saw a kinda cool java code on Radical Matters website.

Here’s a recent live video from Clang Quartet:

& here’s a new guitar piece from mwvm:

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Working, Touring, Blogging

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Brian John Mitchell

Okay, I typed up some stuff I’m working on for the review blogs.  So far the only one that’s up is one about the movie Trancers.

I’m on the road with The Independents.  This morning during some down time in Tupelo, Mississippi we went to Elvis Presley’s birth place.  Here’s a photo:

I’m trying to work up some comic scripts here on the road.  We’ll see what happens as far as getting them done.

Posted in daily news, movies & television | Tagged , | 1 Comment

One Response to Working, Touring, Blogging

  1. GoddakkAttack says:
    May 14, 2012 at 8:05 am

    Little Elvis looks excited to see you.

Story Telling, Plumerai, QRD, Klout

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Brian John Mitchell

I just read this pretty interesting article by John Ostrander (he wrote the comic I dig called Grim Jack in the 1980s) on how to be a good story teller.

Here’s an interview with Eliza & Mickey of Plumerai about their Kickstarter campaign & more on The Seekrit Projekt.

I came up with some new ad rates for more traditional ad placements on QRD as well as lowering some of the old ones if any of you might be interested.  In addition I am getting ready to seek out some new interview subjects for the guitarist interview series, musician dad series, & the label owner series if you have any suggestions where you have the person’s contact information.

I go out with The Independents for a few days in a few hours.  We’ll see if I get much work done in the van.  Taking my laptop along in hopes of getting some things typed up for Finally Checking It Out & Nostalgia Equals Distortion.

I just stumbled across this little video explaining how to actually use Klout.  Mystery solved!

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Plumerai, Dumpsters, Songs, & Dreams

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Brian John Mitchell

So I was going over my web stats for April & I have to say the oddest thing was that there were a lot of referrers for the Plumerai Marco Polo EP from people looking for Polo shirts.  Kinda funny.  Maybe the next Remora record should be called Colgate or something.

Today when I was going for a walk at the dumpsters behind an office building there were a dozen coin-op candy machines (the kind that kick out some kind of energy boost B12 filled starburst).  I spent about twenty minutes staring at them trying to figure out if I had anything I could use as a product to vend in them.  In the end I realized I’d need to make a special product to be able to sell in them & so I left them there as trash rather than bringing them home to never actually be used.

I mastered a record for a friend this afternoon.  It feels good to help someone.

I went through a bunch of live recordings & tossed out the stuff that is clearly totally valueless to anyone.  I had a 4 gig card for my recorder that cut off in the middle of a recording a few weeks ago because it was 100% full – which means around 8 hours of recordings from the past year or so that I had never listened to.  To be honest I don’t know what to do with the stuff.  I mean, if no one cares about listening to the albums, who wants the live shows?  Anyway I think I found a track I can use for a compilation appearance that I’ve been meaning to record (I’ve been having trouble getting motivated to clean my work space enough to really be ready to record), so it’s good to have something ready that I don’t need to work on.

Recent Dreams:
One of my friends who works two jobs found out his wife was having an affair.  In fact she has a second home & is married to both of them.  Her other husband is moving for a job & so she told my buddy that he can move with them if he wants.  He can’t decide what to do about the whole situation.

I’m going to my high school reunion for some reason & I’m scared of running into people who I don’t want to talk to, so I end up just going in a dark corner & sitting by myself just like in high school.

My car is stolen & I get a call saying it’s been found at an apartment complex only a couple miles from my house.  I go to where it is & it’s not close to a condition where you would really call it a car anymore.  I don’t want to deal with this….

I’m going for a walk with some friends during lunch.  There’s a bridge that’s knocked out on a creek, but I can see that there’s a dollar bill stuck on it in a pile of leaves.  My friends act like I’m a total crazy person because I take a running leap to land on the broken bridge.  I grab the dollar & stuck to the back of it are three one hundred dollar bills & a thousand dollar bill (which I have never even seen before).  Trying to get back off the bridge I realize there’s some alligators in the water, but I get up on one of the rails so I’m as high as I can be & I jump to the shore.  I tell my friends, “Let’s go out to lunch!” & we’re trying to figure out a restaurant we would all like.
I’m late getting to class in university & when I sit down at a free desk a waitress comes up & ask if I want eggs & I tell her that I’m fine & I’m trying to pay attention to the lecture.  During the middle of the lecture I notice a vending machine starting to tip over on a sleeping student & I brace it so they can get out of the way before it falls on him.  He wakes up for a second & falls back asleep with me holding up the vending machine.

Posted in daily news, dreams, music | Tagged , | 2 Comments

2 Responses to Plumerai, Dumpsters, Songs, & Dreams

  1. GoddakkAttack says:
    May 9, 2012 at 8:49 am

    are you say ing your minicomics couldn’t be dispensed if you shoved them into a little plastic ball?

    it may be fattening but you should buy a bunch of kinder eggs and toss out the prize and stuff them with your comics. then stuff them in tailpipes around town….

    maybe not the last part.

  2. Brian John Mitchell says:
    May 9, 2012 at 9:41 am

    These candy machines aren’t the kind that use the balls. The mechanism in them is designed to only spit out one inch squares that are a fourth of an inch thick. So I’d need to make comics in that format & wrap them in foil or whatever so they don’t get damaged.

    I actually have something I came up with yesterday related to the easter egg idea. But I don’t want to talk about it too much because I want to be the first one to do it.