Two Non-Gaming Books Great For Gaming: Modern Primitives and Industrial Culture Handbook

After talking about Ken Hite's Suppressed Transmission books with Tyler from Held Action over at Twitter, one of the things that we both mentioned liking about the book versions were the incredible bibliographies in them. We also both said that non-gaming books that inspire gaming would be a good topic for blogging. Rather than create one gigantic wall of text, I thought it would be better to periodically blog about a couple of books that I have liked, that I have used for gaming purposes (typically in generating background material for games: npcs, locations, story ideas, and etc.). Hopefully, other bloggers will talk about this too and share some of the interesting books that have inspired them. Keep in mind these aren't reviews and as both of these books are over twenty years old the statute of limitations on spoilers has expired.

Please note that you will find Amazon links with Associate IDs in them. I hope you'll support this blog if you decide to click through and purchase. If not, that's cool too. I just like to forewarn about associate links.

Today, I am going to talk about two books from a favorite independent/small press publishing house of mine: Re/Search Publications. From the Wikipedia page (which is close enough to fact for blogging):

RE/Search Publications is an American magazine and book publisher, based in San Francisco, founded and edited by Andrea Juno and V. Vale in 1980. It was the successor to Vale's earlier punk rock fanzine Search & Destroy (1977–1979), and was started with $100 from Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. RE/Search itself began as a tabloid-sized magazine.

The first issue had photographs by Ruby Ray and articles on Factrix, The Slits, conspiracies (written by Jay Kinney), Young Marble Giants, Boyd Rice's Non, Cabaret Voltaire, Sun Ra, flashcards, Japan, J. G. Ballard, Julio Cortazar, rhythm & noise, Soldier of Fortune Magazine, Throbbing Gristle, nuclear disaster, Situationism, Octavio Paz, and punk prostitutes. It was distributed by Rough Trade. Following the third issue, issues 4 and 5 were collected as a single volume, a "special book issue". Subsequent issues all retained the book format.
RE/Search has published books on various underground topics. Titles include Pranks, Incredibly Strange Films, and Modern Primitives, and the subject matter includes profiles of William S. Burroughs, J. G. Ballard, and others.

Started with a loan from Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti? How's that for underground cred. Seriously, though, if there are any terms, people or musical groups mention in the above, I whole heartedly suggest checking them out. Gamers, and in particular gamers who like a little strangeness in their games, might be interested in Situationalism. The one book I have on Situationalism in my library was actually edited and compiled by a member of the musical group The KLF. Also, Re/Search has put out what I consider to be the definitive edition of J.G. Ballard's Atrocity Exhibition, and I cannot recommend it enough to people. If you're a fan of cyberpunk or the Band Joy Division, you need to have a copy of this book. Any copy will do.

So, my two book for this post: Re/Search #6/7 the Industrial Culture Handbook and Re/Search #12 Modern Primitives. There is some stuff in these books that some people might find a little squicky, so be forewarned. Modern Primitives is considered to be one of the impetuses behind the explosion of body modification culture over the last twenty plus years. You have been warned!

You Know About The Suppressed Transmission, Of Course?

It all started with a bit of dialog from the criminally underappreciated movie Slacker by indie film auteur Richard Linklater

“You know about the suppressed transmission, of course? No? Oh, well,” a manic beatnik (Jerry Delony) raves to a student he’s buttonholed on the sidewalk. He careens through a unified field theory of paranoia that links government cover-ups of extraterrestrial contact, the space hoax (“Antigravity technology. We stole it from the Nazis after the end of World War II. It’s perfectly obvious.”), the greenhouse effect, CIA intervention in everything, the Medellín drug cartel, and missing children. Things are speeding up here at the end! (via the Criterian Collection website)

What that quote created was a body of essays from game designer Ken Hite about a variety of topics from Horror to alternate history to H.P. Lovecraft to super-heroes to werewolves to vampires to conspiracy theory to Emperor Norton to...well, I think you get it.

The Suppressed Transmission was an ongoing column/essays written by Hite and published in the online version of SJ Games' Pyramid magazine (now reborn again as a PDF magazine) on a semi-regular basis. These essays were jam packed with so many ideas that SJ Games published two volumes collecting some of these columns: The First Broadcast and The Second Broadcast. I proudly own both of these books because they have more ideas per square inch for GMs of horror, modern, conspiracy, alt.history or pretty much any RPG campaign. I even have The First Broadcast autographed by Hite. (Little bit of a geek squee there!)

You'll notice this really isn't a review. The reason that I'm mentioning The Suppressed Transmission to my readers is because Phil Reed at SJ Games has expressed an interest in a larger collected edition of The Suppressed Transmission essays (mostly for selfish reasons of having one for himself), but the only way this is going to happen is if the sales of the book show enough interest. Unfortunately, those sales have never been all that great, probably for a number of reasons. So, the point of this post is to nudge you in the general direction of the two Suppressed Transmission links above and encourage you to buy one or both of the PDFs. This way, if enough people see about them and buy copies we can get a big fancy collected edition (that I also want purely for selfish reasons as well).

So, if you have some discretionary gaming money to spend and are looking for something that'll give you a lot of bang for your gaming buck, check out the Suppressed Transmission collections about. Now you know about the Suppressed Transmission.

What are others saying about The Suppressed Transmission?

• Held Action: "I drew on Suppressed Transmission for my Mage: The Ascension going so far as to name the game after it."   

If you like this post, check out my post on non-gaming books that can inspire your gaming as well.

For Your Consideration: Simple Skills Option for Castles & Crusades

The rules in this post are cribbed from StarSIEGE, and as such are not considered Open Content. I'm sure Troll Lord Games would probably prefer I not do this, and if they would rather I will take this post down.

For me, a major flaw with Castles & Crusades is the lack of a skill system. Ironically, this wasn't an issue for me with D&D or AD&D back in the day, at least until I got the old D&D Rules Cyclopedia and they included Weapon Proficiencies and skills. I don't know if I necessarily want that level of detail, but I know I want more than just the SIEGE Engine to handle skills. The abstraction is a bit too much for what I'm looking for currently. Yes, I've been told by fans that it is bad of me to want this, after mentioning it at places like RPGnet. I rarely let something being bad for me stop me.

Let's Talk About The Black Seal #3

Back when I was studying Journalism in high school and college I did a lot of what was called Opinion writing, and of that writing much of it was taken up with writing reviews. While I still have no shortage of opinions, I don't do much reviewing anymore.

Well, that's something I want to change.

In the spirit of disclosure, I received my copy of the PDF of Black Seal #3 as a complimentary PDF from the publisher. You can get your own copy of the PDF from RPGNow.com here (yes, I have an affiliate code on that so I'll make something if you buy it with my code. It keeps me in games).

Let's start with the easy stuff. In this 100 page PDF you get about 98~ pages of Call of Chthulhu support material. The art and graphics are ok, about what you would expect from RPG publishing  of this level, and the layout is clean if a little cramped.

There is a good deal of British-centric material in this issue (which makes sense since the publishers are British) and I think it would be of good use to someone using Cubicle 7's Laundry RPG. Obviously the tone of this material is more serious than the base tone of the Laundry RPG, but since both use the underlying Call of Cthulhu mechanics, fitting one into the other wouldn't take a lot of effort on the part of a Keeper/Game Master.

Random Musings on Cyberpunk 2020 #2: A Little Traveling Music...

Ok, so this is going to be a little bit of "filler" almost. I'm going to share some more contemporary music that sets a tone (for me) for Cyberpunk gaming. I'm going to try to keep away from the expected. These are all songs and artists that come from my personal music collection. Are they "cyberpunk" enough? Do I care?

 

 

Why am I going through music, you might ask? Well, I'm looking at how to rework the Rocker Role from Cyberpunk 2020 to give it a more contemporary fit. I don't think the term "Rocker" fits for what I think the Role should be, as it wouldn't give justice to any of the above artists (except for Florence, maybe) and it isn't encompassing enough to cover someone like, for example, Brad Pitt, an actor who uses his fame to get things done (like his housing work in Post-Katrina New Orleans) that others wouldn't end up with the same impact. And what about DJs/Producers like Diplo who end up being a technology icon through their direct interaction with fans through Twitter?

Hell, how would Twitter work in a Cyberpunk world? As you can see, I'm asking a lot of questions.

In case you came to this post directly, here a link to Random Musings on Cyberpunk 2020 #1 for you.

Random Musing on Cyberpunk 2020 #1: The Celebrity

As I warned on Twitter, I'm going to be going through my Cyberpunk 2020 rulebook and posting some of my musing about it here. With any luck there will be a reason for all of this, if not at least people will have some cool stuff for their future games.

A few ground rules to this, however. I'm going to be talking about the rules as written and published. If something that I go over was addressed in some online fan supplement somewhere, there is probably a good chance that I saw it already...but fan work isn't what I am talking about in these posts (except obviously my own), so if it isn't in an official rulebook it doesn't count for the purposes of these posts. At first I will be confining myself to the core Cyberpunk 2020 rules, but as time passes (and if there's ongoing interest in these posts) I will include more of the supplements into my musings.

Paris Hilton

Many of these musings will be about how the real world has passed that of the Cyberpunk game and the Night City setting, and how we can remedy that in our games.

For this first musing, an idea came to me last night: The Celebrity. One thing that has become much more prevalent in this day and age are those who are famous mostly for being pretty, already famous, rich or some combination of them. Whether it is someone who got their fame for appearing on "reality TV" (something else needed to be addressed in these musings), or just by being the offspring of the rich and already famous, these glittering kids prance and dance about the clubs and TV screens of the world. Sadly, the old Eurosource and Eurosource Plus supplements would have been a perfect place to explore this the first time but outside of some talk of Goldenkids, there's not much practical for use in play. Interestingly, Call of Cthulhu's Dilettante occupation does a better job of covering this niche than Cyberpunk 2020 has.

Corporates are almost there, but they are still beholden to their bosses and employers. You could do a "Corporate Celebrity" off of the Corporate role, someone who is a celebrity spokesperson/model or reality star, and their Resources Special Ability would be useful for getting things the celebrity needs. You could also loosely model the rich family as the corporation for this sort of character (and Paris Hilton, above, could fit into this sort of Role).

Right now I am going to propose this new Role:

Celebrity
In the world of the future, there are still those who are famous for being famous -- whether that fame came from luck, being in the right place at the right time (and being televised while there), being rich, or inheriting the fame of your family doesn't matter. What matters is that you continue to be in the right places to be seen, and that you look fabulous at the same time.

The Special Ability of the Celebrity is Access. Doors open for you that are closed for others because you can bring exposure and popularity. Add the rank of your Access to Persuade & Fast Talk or Seduction rolls when trying to get people to help you or let you into some place you probably shouldn't be. This shouldn't get you into places that require a security clearance, but you never can tell.

Celebrity
Access
Personal Grooming
Wardrobe & Style
Seduction
Social
Perform
Persuasion & Fast Talk
Human Perception
Streetwise
Dance

Up next time will be reworking of one of the existing Roles, either Rocker or Media. Both still have places in Cyberpunk 2020 but their "roles" have changed a bit in this post-Cyberpunk world. Medias need to a little less Edison Carter and a little more Spider Jerusalem meets blogging. Rocker, mostly, needs a name change to cover a variety of differing performers from white hot club DJs to evangelizing actors with a cause. Whichever I get to next will be the one that gets talked about first.

Is A Borders Near You Closing? [Updated]

Update: Borders has opened a website that's a clearing house for information on the bankruptcy and reorganization. You can find it here, at the Borders Group, Inc. website. Among the points they make on that site are:

• Borders stores are open for business. We will continue to provide our customers with a vast assortment of books in a warm and relaxing environment - and we intend to build on this. Our stores will continue to be places where families can gather to enjoy enriching events including author readings and signings, book clubs as well as kids storytime and parties.
• Borders.com is operating as usual. We are fulfilling online orders as customers choose from among more than two million books, music, movies as well as other entertainment items.
• Our Borders Rewards programs, including Borders Rewards Plus, remain in effect. Customers can continue to earn and redeem their Rewards in stores and on Borders.com and they'll also continue receiving coupons. As always, we are honoring gift cards, which can be redeemed in stores and online at Borders.com.
• Borders will continue to maintain its strong national presence. Our nationwide network of stores is a key foundation of the Borders brand. Borders, however, will be closing underperforming stores within our network over the next several weeks. Should your local store be affected, please visit Borders.com to find another Borders store near you, or to purchase our vast selection of books and other merchandise on-line.

I know that Borders has to make the claims that business will be going on as usual, but I find it hard to believe that, for example, author signings will progress when Borders isn't getting new books and is having difficulty with paying publishers. I guess we'll see. Locally for me, the few remaining independent booksellers have more book signings than the local Borders anyway.

A pdf is from the Borders bankruptcy filing lists all of the locations that will be closing. While many Florida locations will be closing, strangely it looks like the closest to me (St. Petersburg, FL) is not on the closing list.Click here for a copy of the list of store closings that I uploaded to Google Docs.

Update: A second (and cleaner) list organized by state is here (from the reorganization site above). I will upload a copy to Google Docs or some other external site, in case the Borders site takes down their copies.

Music Mix Challenge: 80 in 90

I like music. I like finding new music. It's always interesting to hear what others are listening to, even if I don't like it. When I was a kid, I loved making mixtapes for people. So, let's make a little bit of a challenge, shall we?

I want everyone within the sound of my virtual voice to put together a virtual CD of some of their favorite tunes right now. The stuff that is burning up in your iPods and MP3 players and computers and you want to share with other people. It can be the brand new latest hot track, or it can be something older that you still can't stop listening to. Regardless of age, it has to be music you love...not the stuff that blogs and magazine and critics are talking about. And it has to be something you want to share, regardless of how goofy it might sound. Musical genre or style doesn't matter for this, just that you love the music.

Now, here's the challenge part: You have 90 minutes to put together 80 minutes worth of music. It doesn't matter when you start doing the assembly of track, you just can only take 90 minutes to do it once you start assembling. Once you have that, put it into a format you can share with the world. It can be the tracks you've picked in a .zip file and shared on Mediafire (send me a message if you would like the tracks hosted for you instead), or it can be a continuous mix put up on a site like Soundcloud. Just make it so that it can fit onto a CD, and that it's in a format that's burnable. I'd prefer people stick to an MP3 format obviously, but if you want to do it in some other format just make sure that it can be easily read and burned by most home computers.

Tweet and Facebook about this, share with your friends online and off. Let's get a crapload of music together so that people can be introduced (or reintroduced) to some new stuff. If you tweet about this please use the #80in90 hashtag so that we can find each other and share the wealth. If you have questions, hit me up on Twitter or in the comments on this post.

Let's share some music.

Serpent King Games is new home for the Dragon Warriors RPG

Press Release

Serpent King Games is new home for the Dragon Warriors RPG

1st February 2011, United Kingdom

Dragon Warriors, the classic 1980s dark-fantasy RPG recently re-released by Magnum Opus Press, is moving to new British publishing company Serpent King Games.

From 1st April the game will no longer be available from Magnum Opus, which had published Dragon Warriors through Mongoose Publishing’s Flaming Cobra imprint.

Serpent King Games will keep the existing Dragon Warriors books available, and will publish new supplements for the game. The first new release will be the Dragon Warriors Players Book, in July 2011, with another two releases planned for the first year.

Serpent King Games is industry veterans Gareth Hanrahan (former Mongoose Publishing writer and lead designer on the new edition of Traveller and the Laundry RPG), Jon Hodgson (art director at Cubicle 7 and cover artist for Dragon Warriors), and Ian Sturrock (ex-Mongoose writer responsible for the Conan and Slaine RPGs, but who also worked on most of the recent Dragon Warriors books).

"I’ve worked with everybody at Serpent King over the last ten years, and they are fiercely talented," said James Wallis, director of Magnum Opus Press. "Dragon Warriors and the Lands of Legend are in the hands of amazing people who are going to take it in some very exciting
directions."

Dragon Warriors is SKG's first project, but more great games are in the works. Check out www.serpentking.com for regular updates.

All rights in Dragon Warriors are the property of Fabled Lands LLP, and are used with permission by Serpent King Games Ltd.

For more information, contact info@serpentking.com

Internet Piracy Boosts Anime Sales, Study Concludes

I'm sure someone will look at the source of this link and discount it automatically, but I think that would be a mistake.

A prestigious economics think-tank of the Japanese Government has published a study which concludes that online piracy of anime shows actually increases sales of DVDs. The conclusion stands in sharp contrast with the entertainment industry’s claims that ‘illicit’ downloading is leading to billions of dollars in losses worldwide. It also puts the increased anti-piracy efforts of the anime industry in doubt.

One interesting point made:

One point of critique based on the main conclusions of the study, is that the observed relation only appears to be correlational. This may mean that the results could in part be influenced by significant third variables such as promotion and overall popularity. Since the report is only available in Japanese we were unable to confirm whether this was taken into account.

Obviously, any sort of study like this has to be taken with with a grain of salt. We don't know the hows and whys of the study, so there could be any number of factors that throw out the results. It is interesting that more and more place are coming out with data to suggest that the correlation between piracy and lost sales isn't as strong as anti-piracy advocates would like to present.

Foundsound Orchestra: 52 Weeks Project

Happy New Year!

Ok, my challenge for 2011 is to make a new Found Sound Orchestra track every week and post it here. No doubt quality control will take a hit at various times during the 12 months but hopefully by the end of the year those that have stuck with it will have enough decent songs to make a nice 10 or 12 track album. Please feel free to download, play and delete to your hearts content.

So, here we go – the first track is ‘Thankyou 3 times’. Spot the samples…….

Mister X: The Little Comic That Could

I was rummaging through my trade paperback shelves the other day and came across my copy of the first volume of iBooks Mister X trade. Shamefully, this well-designed and thought out book has never found a large enough of an audience (despite the book being optioned for film back in the 80s with Patrick Stewart rumored to play the lead at the time). Besides this trade I have a couple of Vortex issues that I came across at the time, and a couple of issues of the attempted Caliber relaunch in the 90s (Caliber does still, to this day stand as one of my favorite small press comic publishers of that decade).

Part of the problem, I think, is just the hit or miss distribution of small press comics back then. Back in the 80s, and through part of the 90s, distribution for most media (comics and music chief among them) were still fairly regional to the point of what may have been popular in one part of the country never got seen in others.

What was Mister X you might ask? The very short Wikipedia article can be found here. Dean Motter, the creator of Mister X has a bit more information about him:

In the late 1970s, Dean Motter edited and art directed Andromeda, a Canadian comic book series which adapted the works of major science–fiction authors such as Arthur C. Clarke and A.E. van Vogt. During that time Motter and collaborator Ken Steacy created The Sacred & The Profane (Star Reach), which Archie Goodwin referred to as "the first true graphic novel" in the contemporary comics medium.

Motter achieved recognition for his album cover design during his tenure as art director for CBS Records Canada, and later with his own studio, Modern Imageworks. His record jackets and promotional graphics (for acts such as The Nylons, Triumph, Loverboy, The Diodes, Liona Boyd and Jane Siberry) have won several awards. Motter has been nominated for a Juno Award six times, and won twice. He won a Juno Award in 1983 for "Best Album Graphics" for his work on the Anvil album Metal on Metal. The following year, he again won the "Best Album Graphics" award for his work on the Seamless album by The Nylons, along with Jeff Jackson and Deborah Samuel.

In 1988, he co-wrote and illustrated Shattered Visage for DC Comics based on Patrick McGoohan's 1960s British television series The Prisoner. The following year he created the logo and basic cover design for DC's Piranha Press imprint.

Mister X, at best, was a mystery. Who was Mister X? What was he doing? How did he find all those tunnels? For some, this strength was a great weakness. Many of the stories only had vague resolutions, as the enigma of the main character was central to the theme of the book and the stories.

The question remains: Why should we care? Well, I think the important reason why we should care about Mister X/Dean Motter is that he was a trailblazer. Books like Mister X, while obscure then and now, are important for the fact that they prepare audiences for what comes later, like the works of groundbreaking creators like Grant Morrison. Thematically I know that I can see similarities between the works of Motter and Morrison, even though I doubt that they were intentional. Both of these creators made books that were "essays" on their internal landscapes, using comic books as a media for bringing out these musing, and while Motter never did super-hero books, his Mister X or his Prisoner comics presage much that later comic creators would do, and at the same time he showed that the linear narrative of the comic book could be successfully usurped by the more non-traditional narrative styles of speculative fiction. For helping bring these sorts of depths of storytelling to comics alone, Motter is an important figure.

I suggest checking out the first trade of Mister X, if only for the incredible work of Los Bros Hernadez on the art of the first four issues. They really set the tone for the issues to follow. Amazon has some used copies listed here.

History of the Mash-Up: International Bastard Pop Weekender 3

Back when mashups were only being made in the UK and called Bootlegs, a lovely chap by the name of Deep Disco Force (Nick) organised a series of gigs/weekenders/piss-ups in his home town of Trier, Germany and invited GYBOers to go along and do their thing at his International Bastard Pop Weekenders.

I went to number 3 in March 2004 and took a video camera. I made a film about it. Well, that was SEVEN. YEARS. AGO!!!

I thought the time was right to put it on Youtube for all y'all to see. So, here it is: the trailer, main movie (in two parts due to YT's 15min rule), plus some DVD extras too. Not in HD cuz there was no such thing back then, of course in those days, I used to wear an onion on my belt - it was the fashion at the time... Dribble, bleurgh, etc.

Huge, huge thanks to all the lovely guys I met who've become firm friends and who so generously gave their time to talk to me on-camera whilst everyone else was getting drunk and having fun.

 

 

 

This post is via ThriftshopXL on the GYBO boards from this thread. These videos have some great stuff to see.

Former WotC Employee Charged

Not sure how I missed this one:

A former Wizards of the Coast employee has been charged with felony theft for allegedly stealing $45,000 worth of Magic: The Gathering promotional cards, according to SeattlePI. The theft came to light when large numbers of promo cards were spotted being offered by a Burien, Washington retailer at a Portland convention. The retailer ended up turning over 1700 cards worth nearly $45,000 at market prices to WotC.

The cards were allegedly stolen from a Wizards of the Coast storage locker to which former employee Donald Henry had access. Henry has been charged but not jailed in the case.

I guess I was a bit boggled by the fact that Magic cards could be worth $45k, and here I gave a box of them away when I quit playing. Anyone out there know what position this Donald Henry had with Wizards? (via ICV2)

NYE in Second Life: The Almost Everywhere New Year's Eve Prom Party

We're going to have a party. It's New Year's Eve and it's Second Life. A selection of the mighty, mighty DJs from Radio Riel will be bringing you wide ranging selection of music from different genres and eras as we attempt to ring in the New Year in as many time zones as possible for all of you. The party starts at 2:30pm (Second Life Time) and goes until 12:30am (also Second Life Time). Here's our line-up:

Carter Denja - 2:30pm - 5:30pm SLT
Gabrielle Riel - 5:30pm - 8:30pm SLT
Walton Vieria - 8:30pm - 10:30pm SLT
Edward Pearse - 10:30pm - 12:30am SLT

 Here's the SLUrl for the Edison Ballroom: http://slurl.com/secondlife/New%20Toulouse%20Bourbon/165/135/27 Everyone on the Grid is welcome to join us for what is going to be a night of fun. Dress in your prom favorites from retro styles of the 50s and 60s to your favorite Pretty in Pink character to a zombie prom queen.

Find out more about Radio Riel.

MTVGeek: Top 10 RPG Products Of 2010

A list from the MTVGeek website (which I never knew existed before now). At least it doesn't have Kanye West's new CD on it. :) Actually, joking aside, it is a list with some depth to it even if a fact or two aren't completely right.

2010 has been a banner year for role-playing games and accessories -- here's 10 of the best!

DJ Earworm's United States of Pop 2010 (Don't Stop The Pop)

You can the MP3 (and comment on it) here.

Tabletop RPG Gamers, Communication and the Fun of "Social Contracts"

*sighs and takes a deep breath*

Twice now in the last week people have tried to make a discussion over at RPGNet about "social contracts" and using better channels of communication to make gaming groups last longer and play better. Twice now in the last week those discussions have been shouted down, mostly by the same people, who say anyone who needs these sorts of things are obviously either socially dysfunctional themselves or obviously play in groups that are full of dysfunction. "Normal" people don't need these sorts of things, they say, because people who can function socially don't need to talk about what's right and proper because non-dysfunctional people know what's right and how to interact with others. All you need is to not "be a dick," they say. "Don't be a dick" is the extent of their help and insight into these issues. I know which side of the "don't be a dick" fence it puts these people on for me.

Another Redheaded Ending

They got tired, that’s all, or mostly all. Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich and her drawing partner June Brigman decided in early December to stop producing Brenda Starr, and Tribune Media Services, which owns the strip, seized the opportunity to end its syndication. Last June, TMS took out of its comics line-up the other redhead, Annie, a remnant of Harold Gray’s plucky waif strip, Little Orphan Annie. The final Brenda Starr will run on Jan. 2, a Saturday, finishing the week and ending the nearly 70-year run of one of the medium’s most venerable (and venerated) efforts, undoubtedly the longest-lived newspaper adventure strip with an eponymous heroine and the most famous strip created and produced by a woman cartoonist, Dale Messick, who was fiercely feminine if not so much fashionably feminist.

Eisner Family pledges $250k to OSU cartoon library

The Will and Ann Eisner Family Foundation has pledged $250,000 over five years to support the new Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum facility, part of the Sullivant Hall renovation at The Ohio State University. In recognition of this gift, the library’s seminar room will be named in honor of Will Eisner. The Eisner Family Foundation gift will be matched dollar for dollar by Jean Schulz, widow of Peanuts’ creator Charles M. Schulz, giving it a $500,000 impact on the project. Ms. Schulz has promised to match donations to the new facility up to $2.5 million.

Creator of The Spirit, Will Eisner (1917-2005) is noted as the father of the graphic novel for his ground-breaking book, A Contract with God. He was also an early and influential analyst of sequential graphic narrative with his book Comics and Sequential Art. In addition to his eight decade career as a cartoonist, Eisner taught for many years at the School of Visual Arts.

The Conet Project - Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations

I know a couple of mash-up artists who've utilized samples from numbers stations, but there is just something so hypnotic and weirdly otherworldly about these recordings that I would love to see more done with some of these recordings that are out and about. It's a shame these are only 64kbps.

For more than 30 years the Shortwave radio spectrum has been used by the worlds intelligence agencies to transmit secret messages. These messages are transmitted by hundreds of Numbers Stations.

Shortwave Numbers Stations are a perfect method of anonymous, one way communication. Spies located anywhere in the world can be communicated to by their masters via small, locally available, and unmodified Shortwave receivers. The encryption system used by Numbers Stations, known as a one time pad is unbreakable. Combine this with the fact that it is almost impossible to track down the message recipients once they are inserted into the enemy country, it becomes clear just how powerful the Numbers Station system is.

These stations use very rigid schedules, and transmit in many different languages, employing male and female voices repeating strings of numbers or phonetic letters day and night, all year round.

Here's a few more links that might be of use or interest to people reading this post:

The Conet Project on Soundcloud. You can also find the MP3s here.


A website dedicated to Numbers Stations.

Comfort Stand Recordings — Auld Lang Syne

Looking for a version of Auld Lang Syne for your New Year's party that's different from the same old? Check out this release from netlabel Comfortstand from 2006 for some different and interesting interpretations of the song.

Another New Year's Eve is upon us, a time to reflect on all that has happened in the previous year and to wonder about events yet to come

Tron 1.5 Soundtrack

For those wanting the direct link, go here (or click the post title).

In late 1998, I was commissioned to compile and produce the soundtrack for a sequel to the film 'Tron'. A draft of the story had already been written and early filming had begun (as reported by ZDNet on July 27, 1999). As I understand it, the film was kept in great confidence with the producers as Pixar was still in negotiations with Disney about the responsibilities of the production teams.

'Rise Of The Virals' was a fantastic, but much darker storyline from the original -- different from the 'Into The Machine' pitch made to Disney by another party. It involved updating the ENCOM universe to a networked system (thanks to the Internet), but also created a darker world -- full of programs abandoned as buggy systems (or 'mutants') and abused by corrupt users as viral systems. Furthermore, the story included the death of Flynn and presented questions about the digital life of programs lasting beyond the mortality of their creators -- the users.

My task was to compile great underground artists to create a new soundtrack for this darker world of Tron. After the completion of the initial tracklist and first production draft of the soundtrack, it seemed as if negotiations between Pixar and Disney had broken down. Funding for the project was eventually pulled.

I have been most excited to see the announcement of the third film, the new 'TR2N' (Tron: Legacy), especially with the involvement of those who will be creating the new soundtrack. It is obvious to me that 'Tron: Legacy' takes place after 'The Rise Of The Virals' without abandoning its first concept. Perhaps that is why we've seen sites like Flynn Lives creep up in anticipation of the new film.

I've decided to release the preliminary version of the soundtrack which includes a special remix of Journey's 'Any Way You Want It' produced specifically for 'Rise Of The Virals'. Journey provided two songs to the original "Tron", and their song 'Separate Ways' will reportedly be on the 'Legacy' soundtrack as well. In any case, since the story of 'Rise Of The Virals' takes place between the first 'Tron' film and the upcoming 'Tron 2: Legacy', I can't think of a better title for this material other than 'Tron 1.5'. I hope you enjoy the music these artists have put such great work into.

-- Flynn 1.5

Culture Bully's Top Mashups of 2010

Let the debate and controversy begin. There are some good mashups here, but I have to say that in the opinion of this fan of the mashup method The Kleptones' Uptime/Downtime was a game changer in the community. They raised the bar so high on multi-part mashups that I don't know if even they will be able to hit it again. To have a track no higher that #6 is disheartening to this fan.

That said, there is a lot of great music here. Go and grab it. :)

This is Culture Bully’s sixth annual list of the year’s top mashups, and this time around I thought it’d be nice to switch things up a bit. Instead of simply compiling a list of my own personal picks, I invited a slew of mashup producers to vote for their favorites from 2010. Quickly, here’s how voting worked: I asked everyone to send in a list of their favorite two or three mashups from the past year (I deleted picks which selected mashups that were released in past years). If they sent in more than three I still listed them below on their individual ballots, but only three picks counted toward the final totals. Whether the track received a first or third place vote, it only counted for one point toward the final total. I also tallied total votes for individual producers; again, only counting individuals’ first three votes. Lastly, no one was allowed to vote for themselves.

Merry Christmas From Batman

The panel is from "The Silent Night of the Batman" in Batman #219 (February 1970, reprinted in Christmas with the Superheroes #1, 1988), written by Mike Friedrich, art by Neal Adams and Dick Giordano, coloring by Jerry Serpe. Via Comics Oughta Be Fun.