Like pretty much everyone else in the world, I enjoyed his music. I’ll admit I never found the need to purchase any of his albums. He seemed so ubiquitous in the 80s it didn’t seem necessary to pester my parents for his music. Oddly, I did long for the over $100 “Beat It” jacket but settled for a much less expensive, nylon/polyester one that only evoked a feeling of being inspired by the original. By the time the 90s came and I had my own buying power, I had moved on. In our iTunes collection of over 5900 items (we have several hundred CDs as a starting point), there are just 3 songs with Michael Jackson singing: “Thriller,” “Billie Jean” and The Jacksons’ “Can You Feel It.”

Why those songs? I can’t speak of “Billie Jean” since that came as part of my wife’s music collection, but I can trace “Thriller” and “Can You Feel It” back to a birthday party in elementary school. I was fairly introverted as a kid, even more so than now. It was a trait that often got pegged as being aloof, though I’ll admit I did look down on fellow grade schoolers who fooled around during class rather than do their work. Out of the blue one of my classmates, DeForest, I think, invited me to his birthday party. This was unprecedented. Me, invited to an evening birthday party? Of course I’d go.

I can tell you this party was on Friday, December 3rd, 1983 because it was scheduled to coincide with the premiere of the Thriller video on MTV. The party itself was fun, filled with snacks and video game playing, much like parties today. The centerpiece was the premiere. We all gathered in the living room to watch first “Can You Feel It” and then “Thriller.” “Can You Feel It” surprised me as it had this crazy science fiction / fantasy vibe with the Jacksons as super powered beings coming to Earth to spread hope, love and rainbows to the people of the world. Check out the video:

The main feature, “Thriller”, was both more and less cool than “Can You Feel It”. It wasn’t all space/new-age inspired but it was a full story with a beginning (with a twist), a middle (with a different twist) and an ending (with a final twist). It had Vincent Price doing narration, who at that time I knew mostly from the Dr. Phibes films. Who doesn’t know Price’s ending laugh? The werecat and zombie make-up was bad ass, as good or better than anything I’d seen in movies (pretty much limited to VHS rentals at the time due to my age). To top it off, the main dance number was insane! A quarter century later, anyone can raise their arms, sway them back and forth just so and you know what they’re doing. It was just 30 minutes or less for the two videos, commercials, etc. but I remember it so clearly. In fact, most of the rest of the night is pretty foggy in my mind, but being there for that video is cut in stone in my memory. It was a great evening.

So, that’s my Michael Jackson story, on this sad day of his passing. Maybe it’s time to browse iTunes or Amazon for a few more of his songs to add to the collection.

This isn’t the network I used to watch for a solid three hours every night. This isn’t even the network that I would tune into every now and then and be presently surprised to find something new on. I’m wondering if I’ve changed as I’ve grown older or has the staff of [Adult Swim] transformed over the years? They’ve been on what I view as a juvenile, downward spiral of low budget animation and cheap live action shows for a few years now. I know that money doesn’t make a show necessarily better but can we consistently have animation that doesn’t look like it was drawn by a three year old? Can we not attempt a parodies of old Krofft shows filmed in a garage with a green screen, annoying characters and inane plots? Half of the new shows over the last few years make me wonder if I need to be on something to fully enjoy them. Why? I expect better than internet quality programming on the TV, not worse.

Anime seems to be making up a decreasing percentage of the programming. Recently there’s been lots of old Fox programming like Family Guy and King of the Hill (which I enjoy, thank you) as filler. The days between new Venture Bros., Metalocalypse and Robot Chicken are filled with Xavier: Renegade Angel, Saul of the Mole Men, Fat Guy Stuck in Internet and Squidbillies. Did I forget to mention that flip book animation called 12 Oz. Mouse? Then there’s a whole set of “edgy” and inconsistent shows like Tim & Eric and Superjail that always have to go so over the top. Looking at the overall programming lineup on adultswim.com I guess there’s more good than bad but the bad is just so awful and feels out of place.

I’ve enjoyed a few live action shows like Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place and Look Around You but even then I think they might be better served on other networks. I’m just waiting for them to premier an actual reality show. The fake reality show Delocated feels like a first step to their unstoppable degeneration. If [Adult Swim] wants to continue to diversify themselves into live action programming, shows that are trying to be more cleaver than the writers are capable of being and targeting the apparently easily amused, that’s fine, but at what point do they just devolve into being another MTV?

Of course I watched B5 in the day and generally enjoyed the supernatural slant added to Spider-Man while JMS was writing ASM, so I’m confident that he will do FP right. Still not clear when the new FP will be out but hopefully this will help move things along.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see that JMS is also working on a Lensman project. Nifty!

I’ve been looking at ways to improve my photo workflow. Though I’ve been actively taking digital photos for eight years now, I’m still just a part-time hobbyist and don’t really take time to tweak my photos. My current workflow is Adobe Bridge and PhotoShop CS2. It’s real basic usage: exposure tweaking, leveling, cropping and downsampling / sharpening for posting on the web. Occasionally I’ll need to do something more like try to correct the picture’s temperature or white balancing (typically if the home lights are too strong). I could probably get away with just GraphicConverter but I’ve been using PhotoShop since version 3 in college and it feels more natural. Since the majority of my photoshopping is so photo oriented, I’ve gotten trial versions of LightRoom 2 and Aperture 2 to play with.

The TGS 2008 photos were organized, tweaked and posted using my LightRoom 2. I used Jeffrey Friedl’s LightRoom plug-in for the SmugMug posting. LightRoom 2 runs on my 1.5GHz PowerBook G4 with 1GB of memory but it’s a bit pokey. Since I’m not printing and not generating a standalone site, my experience was just with the Library and Develop modules. Loading images feels slow and I’m guessing a good chunk of the time is spent on histogram calculation and other analysis work being done. I haven’t taken the time to see if I could optimize the experience.

Basic editing is easy. In the Library view, there is a histogram and some “quick develop” tools like exposure adjustment. Move to Develop mode allows for cropping, red-eye and other common tools as well as greater control over image’s appearance. A history of the changes to an image is kept and it’s easy to undo changes to get to the original image. This is probably the biggest advantage over something like Bridge / PS CS2 where I typically would copy an image for editing (maybe in PSD format), make my crops and edits there. I would then bulk scale down and usually sharpen up original and edited images for posting, leaving multiple instances of the photos around. With LR2, it’s abstracted out and the originals are left intact while adjustments are applied and updated previews created. Having an integrated workflow with history capability has freed me to try more things. I’m certainly cropping and making minor exposure adjustments more than I have in the past. That’s a good thing.

With my initial experiment with LR2 out of the way, I’m debating the approach for working with my next “roll” of vacation photos. Either A) continue with LR2, making better use of saved settings and trying out more adjustments or B) move to Aperture 2 to be able to more accurately judge the beginner’s learning curve. In any case, it’ll be a few days before I can devote time to grinding through another hundred or two pics.

I decided recently that I needed to recapture some of those memories by adding a Duo to household. You can read more about my PowerBook Duo 2300c auction win on my blog at RetroMacCast.

Content-wise, it was a really good year. After blowing most of Saturday last year, I decided to join in on a block of panels this year (with my mom in her first SDCC attendance!) including Futurama, The Simpsons, Dean Koontz, Dollhouse and BSG. Not knowing much about Dean Koontz’s novels, I found him to be the most surprising entertaining. I guess a good storyteller can both write stories as well as talk about them to an audience. Overall, Futurama was my favorite of the set of panels with the voice talents of John DiMaggio, Maurice Lamarche, Billy West and Katey Sagal on hand to liven things up.

In the exhibit hall, Paramount returned with their free t-shirts but added a collection of Star Trek items including posters, construction crew badges by email and drawings for goodies. Warner Bros. beefed up their bag selection, held the usual group autograph sessions and had a lifesize Watchmen Owlship on display. Fox had what was probably the most useful schwag: a poster tube with strap. Everyone was giving away bags but I think Fox had the lock on the popular poster tube. Now if only someone will start giving out art portfolios next year.

More convention notes after the jump…

I was plesently surprised to see Todd Nauck in the artist alley. He wasn’t listed in the program and I guess was a late addition. As much as I read and collect comics, I’ll admit I’m pretty ignorant about the creators. For whatever reason, his art in Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man last year stuck in my head and I was happy to collect a Betty Brant sketch and original art from an issue. My wife and I made the usual rounds to pick up ash cans, art and other goodies from the likes of Adam Hughes, Frank Cho and Dan Brereton.

Speaking of Dan Brereton, his wife (whose name escapes me right now) makes Cuddle Monster Toys, a series of cute, hand made dolls, baby / kids clothing and accessories. Each one is unique with variations in cloth color and positioning of the elements. I picked up a shirt last year with a monster on the front and we added a little teddy bear (with a sort of worried look) to our collection. The teddy has a hard time competing for affection with a two foot tall Snoopy we also picked up at the Con but I think it’s adorable.

Cosplayers get better and better each year with continually impressive displays of imagination and craftsmanship. There was a very detailed Bumblebee making the rounds near the masquerade photo area on Saturday. I made it to a couple of cosplay meetups including the Marvel one which had a great selection of Avengers, X-Men and Runaways. The masquerade itself was good but started even later than usual. The combination of missing out on a chair in the photo area and too many elective late nights / mandatory early mornings meant that I retired early this year and missed the best acts. I think I made up for it in my other pics during the week. See the previously listed photo link at the top for the photos.

I didn’t do too much shopping this year, economizing on space since there’s so much family gear involved in the trip. My main pickups were the Toynami Robot Santa and Santa Bender combo pack and various bits of art including the Todd Nauck page and a couple of cels from Golden Boy. A big shout-out to Nichibei Anime Club where I’ve been buying cels from for eight or nine years now. Interestingly, I didn’t pay for one comic this year. Considering the severe damage I did to my wallet at past conventions, that’s probably a good thing. I also didn’t use my incomplete web comic DB application that’s been in limbo for months. I have new motivation to make progress by the end of September so hopefully I’ll have an update in a few weeks.

That’s my brief wrap-up on San Diego Comic-Con 2008. If I have time, I’ll try to expand on some of the topics over the next week. And if I don’t make the time, just enjoy the photos!

If you’ve not yet seen the Battlestar Galactica mid-season cliffhanger “Revelations”, you’re missing out. While not the most emotionally moving episode nor the most action packed, it does reveal a lot to the show’s characters as the clandestine final four of five cylons are brought out to the open. The results range from shocking to devastating to the Galactica crew. More importantly, its final minutes hit hard with an unexpected final revelation.

Spoilers after the jump…

Not only does the Galactica fleet learn the location of Earth due to the final four of five and not only does the fleet make it to Earth but we actually get a glimpse of the homeworld in the concluding minutes. To be honest, there was only a couple of ways this could’ve played out: Galactica is taking place in pre-historic times or it’s taking place at some point in the future. Anything else just wouldn’t work. Right now it looks like a “Planet of the Apes” twist has been added as the Galactica and Cylon main characters head down to check out Earth only to be greeted by bombed out rubble and radiation. Zing!

The characters were pretty depressed and quiet in reaction to all this but I wouldn’t have minded someone pounding their fist into the ground crying, “You maniacs! You blew it up!”

Thinking of Planet of the Apes reminds me of Power Records from my childhood. Power Records were great… the 1970s was not the best time for animated superheroes… Super Friends, BatMan and maybe the Fantastic Four with HERBIE. Power Records filled the gap until the 1980s revitalized the genre. Power Records came in both 33RPM records generally standalone and 45RPM records bundled with an original or adapted comic. I had a decent collection of records with representatives of the classics: Six Million Dollar Man, Space: 1999, Star Trek, G.I. Joe, some superheroes and Beneath the Planet of the Apes. I knew the story of Beneath the Planet of the Apes long before I saw the movie. I was a bit disappointed that the movie ended with a fade to white and not with the Earth pulling and Alderaan. The back cover of the Apes series had an ape pointing at the reader like Uncle Sam with the text “Power Books & Records wants you to… Go Ape!” Cute.

I also had The Incredible Hulk at Bay which was okay but actually a little light on the Hulk action. The only thing the Hulk punches is a wall and the main villains end up knocking each other out! A little weak but I guess it needed to send some kind of positive message to kids. The Hulk at Bay story featured The Abomination as one of the villains. Unlike the movie version, the classic comic Abomination was distinctly reptilian, though from the previews it seems like the movie version has its own disturbing features.

Unlike Iron Man, I have mixed feelings from the previews of The Incredible Hulk movie. On one hand, I’m glad that it recalls themes from the TV series and features adversaries from the comic book. On the other hand, the Hulk if fundamentally challenging in the need to balance the tormented Banner with the enraged Hulk. It’s also difficult to make a realistic Hulk: even if the CGI were a real model of what a Hulk would look like, I think the human mind would still reject it at some level from not quite being able to relate such a creature to the real world. In any case there’s little chance I’ll make it to a theater so I’ll have to wait for it to arrive on disc from Netflix.