BRAIN DRAIN

Every New Year’s Eve, family dinner and mass are par for the course, possibly fireworks, too. Over at my neck of the woods, the “festivities” get a little more colorful as the seconds tick away into the New Year:

As far as I’m concerned, I will remember 2006 as the year I got back into comics (for the nth time), for better or worse. Taking stock of the year’s haul:

Honestly, there’s a good chunk that’s forgettable (and how!), but by and large I enjoyed most of the stuff on the list (I’d better - they cost a pretty penny!). I would like to think that I’ve already gotten this out of my system, though 2007 is looking to be an interesting year for comics as I type this…

By way of accounting for the books I’ve read this past year, to the best of my recollection:

The tally: twenty-one books, mostly light reading. Not bad, but short of my usual target of twenty-six for the year. Hopefully, next year I’ll do better in terms of number, content and type.

…and I’m severely jet-lagged. I’ve spent the past two days drifting in and out of consciousness whenever I’d find myself on a (relatively) horizontal surface.

Mercifully, this hasn’t taken anything away from the holiday festivities. The food, as only mom can make, has been excellent, and the presents have still been something to await with eager anticipation - both the giving and receiving, of course.

Personally, I’ve seen my share of the loot dwindle over the years, as godparents and aunts and uncles inevitably realize I’m not as cute as I looked as a child, and friends invariably fall out of touch with the passing of time. This year’s stash included a couple of video games (from my brother who, bless him, has decided to give me as many reasons not to graduate as possible), a new wallet (bestest gift ever!), and the chance to spend another Christmas where it matters the most.

In the grand scheme of the universe, I feel like the luckiest person alive.

The great thing about home: someone’s always happy to see you.

Well, it looks like I was able to get that picture of the Rockefeller Christmas Tree before flying home, just as I’d hoped.

Signing off from New York. Will be posting next from home, sweet home.

Thus, another semester and 12 credits are officially over.

Frankly, I’m burned out. Well, to be more precise, I’ve been burned out for the better part of the past two and a half weeks, at least. A little too much X! T! X! Inverse! necessitated spending most of the semester jumping from one requirement to the next with the minimum of studying in between. So this is going to be a much needed break.

(And if you understood the econometric reference right there, maybe you need a break, too.)

Just counting the hours until I get to fly home for the next three-odd weeks. I swear, it can’t happen soon enough.

Comics are many things, but they are ultimately a means of telling stories, limited only by the imaginations of the artists that work behind the scenes. In this regard, Flight is an interesting compendium that showcases the strengths of comics as a storytelling medium.

The simplest way of describing Flight is to say it is an off-the-beaten-track title by talented artists simlarly under the mainstream radar. Beyond that, it is difficult to pin down exactly what Flight is about for the simple reason that it is an anthology about anything, everything or nothing in particular. When the first installment came out, it seemed the featured stories derived their theme from the banner title, as many of them did in some way involve flight or flying. But this may have been unintended, merely coincidental at best. Indeed, it might be more appropriate to think of Flight as a collection of “flights of fancy” allowing its contributors to tell stories that might otherwise not have seen the light of day had they not been collected in this fashion.

The casual reader may find Flight vexing. Each of the three books released to date contain collections of largely unrelated short stories - about twenty or so of them anywhere between four and twelve pages long - that cannot be more different from one another. This is true in both substance and form. Some stories are lighthearted while others are dark; there are stories that border on science fiction and fantasy, and others that focus on the real and perhaps otherwise mundane. Each of these is presented in a very distinctive visual style, and in many cases there are pages and panels on end that do not even contain a single word of text. Hence, readers accustomed to graphic novels that flesh out an overarching story and prefer their comics presented in a consistent art style may find themselves out of their comfort zone with Flight.

Yet those looking for something different will find that Flight has plenty to offer in spades. In this respect, the title’s diversity is precisely its strength. Like any anthology, some stories and artists will curry readers’ favor more than others. But the best stories are those that are either framed as modern day fairy tales (such as Jake Parker’s The Robot and the Sparrow or Joanna Carneiro’s La Sonadora) or are presented such that they can only be described as animation in print, usually by those who have worked as either animators or storyboard artists for animated productions (Michel Gagne and Justin Ridge come to mind). At the very least, Flight will expose readers to a slew of talented artists to watch out for in the future, such as Kazu Kibuishi, who does not get enough credit as Flight’s editor and art director, on top of his own wonderful contributions to the anthology.

Indeed, those who pigeonhole comics as “superhero-saves-the-world” entertainment will find little of that in Flight, despite its fair share of the unusual and the fantastic. But they will find a host of other things besides that are equally entertaining. Those interested in checking out what Flight is all about would do well to drop by the series’s official blog, or maybe pick up a copy of the second volume (the one with the cover in black, as pictured above), which arguably has the best to offer of the three installments available today. It will be well worth it, if only to see these creators’ imaginations take flight.

Part the First: Failure to Communicate
SERVER: Can I help the next customer?

BRIAN:Yeah. Can I have a Number 7?

SERVER: Do you want the meal or just the sandwich?

BRIAN: I want just the meal.

SERVER & BRIAN: …

And after a split second, during which we stared at each other - the server ostensibly wondering what the hell I said, and I giving the image I have of myself in my mind’s eye a smack on the head - it finally sunk in and I got my meal.

Proving once again that, in my unguarded moments, I am capable of saying some pretty stupid things.

Part the Second: Asking the Stupid Question
After a month-long renovation, the latest addition to my neighborhood McDonald’s was a selve-serve beverage station.

This is the reason why the following server’s question baffled me after I ordered a meal: “What drink would you like with that?”

It took every ounce of effort I had not to bite back with some witty retort. I mean, when all was said and done, I’d still have to be the one to get my own drink.

The place may have gotten an upgrade, but apparently the people still work according to the old operating system.

Over at Wired, Chris Kohler has put together a very good read on the burgeoning hacks that have been attempted on the Wii, specifically on the Wiimote. As expected, these mostly involve finding other uses for the Wiimote, in the sense of making it work with other gadgets, and in other cases of finding alternative ways to operate the controller (those who haven’t heard about how candles can replace the Wii’s sensor bar, you’ll learn about it here).

By itself, it’s quite an interesting read, and the links and embedded video peppered throughout the article just make it that much more entertaining. I highly recommend checking it out.