spidey-goal

in

When I began comics collecting, all those years ago, MARVEL TALES 13 and 14 were my gateway drugs to both Silver Age Marvel comics and the Lee/Ditko Spidey run, passions that have been part of my comics DNA for the last three decades. One of my life goals since that first taste was to own the original issues. As of today:

Four Spider-Man comics from the 60s, two the reprints, two the originals. Spidey strikes back, swinging at the reader.

The cover to ASM 19 / MARVEL TALES 14 remains one of my favorites of all time ever.

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD (Nintendo, 2017)

in

Being among the first games I purchased when I bought a Switch Lite last summer in order to train to defeat my niece at MARIO KART and being the game that led me to a.) immediately go buy the OLED Switch so I could behold this thing on the big screen and b.) give the Lite to my wife and get her hooked on video games for the first time (ANIMAL CROSSING and LUIGI'S MANSION 3 being her particular jams), finishing – or at least finishing the story (much to my dismay, you can't go back into the game and play around after the main story's end – will remember for TOTK) – BOTW has been a long time coming and I already miss it terribly (in spite of taking six months off because the totally open nature of it wasn't a good fit for my weary brain at that point; couldn't do ELDEN RING either).

A few quick observations:

  • Goron Town is my favorite of the Hylian 'burgs.

  • I'm proud that I remained alive even though my cooking skills weren't up to snuff and yielded many inedible one-heart concoctions in an effort to make elixirs which I never figured out how to make.

  • I loathe destructible weapons and major tests of strength.

  • On that, my reflexes are nowhere near as good as they used to be in my nascent gamings and as such, I fail miserably at blocking and parrying.

  • The levels in the snow are achingly beautiful. Games are art.

  • I want a sand seal.

  • SHIELD SURFING IS GREAT (if I can remember the button combo to get to it)

  • While this is indisputably one of the greatest games ever made, my favorite Zelda game remains, after more than 30 years, A LINK TO THE PAST.

Not sure what else I can add that hasn't already been said about this triumph but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the (INSERT ELEMENT)blight Ganon fights: perhaps it's that I'm a classically trained gamer (read: NES on Christmas '85 or '86) but there's something about a Nintendo boss fight that's more thrilling than any other company's boss fight, a hardfought success that elicits a string of profanities both in that success and in the seemingly interminable heartbreaks that precede it.

And now, a break for the more contained METROID PRIME REMASTERED (and I really need to finish METROID DREAD) and perhaps something else (I do need to actually play ELDEN RING) then, depending on how long my willpower holds out, it's back to Hyrule to lose all of my powers and weapons for TEARS OF THE KINGDOM to gain them back amid a slower exploration and more complete completion. For now, though, I’ll bask in the unmitigated triumph of this work of art.

healthy distraction and the art of comics (re)bagging and boarding

in

Stated yesterday that I know that the writing's not going well when I've (re)bagged and boarded a lot of comics and I've (re)bagged and boarded a lot of comics this week and while I do stand by what I said yesterday, I’ve evolved my thinking through the recognition that it's become a largely automatic – the winnowing is more or less complete – distraction to help me think things through on The Work at hand and, whereas, normally, I’d get pissed at myself for such an attention-switching (while I like and use some of what Cal Newport has to say, I don’t believe that he has as solid a grasp of the creative impulse as he seems to think he does); Rick Rubin, in THE CREATIVE ACT, is, unsurprisingly, far more on target:

"Distraction is one of the best tools available to the artist when used skillfully. In some cases, it's the only way to get where we are going....

We might hold a problem to be solved lightly in the back of our consciousness instead of in the front of our mind. This way, we can remain present with it over time while engaging in a simple, unrelated task...

Distration is not procrastination. Procrastination consistently undermines our ability to make things. Distraction is a strategy in service of the work." 

The key is that you must have a problem in mind, as I certainly did – my problem being that I didn’t know what the problem was only that there was a problem, my old standby, "What am I not seeing" – and, while little writing-writing (the placing of words in order on a screen is, after all, only a part of the process) was actually done over the last couple of days of bagging and boarding, not only was the problem found but solved: I realized I had committed my cardinal sin of thinking of form first and attempting jamming the story into that.

Egregious error corrected and words flowing, somewhat, though fragmentary. A new focus on one thing only, a simultaneous all in AND lowering of the stakes: I’m not going to run out of chips; this is only being written so it can be finished and I can do the next thing and so on and so on until I’m no more. (Does lowering the stakes allow me more self-permission to let things come as they do? Perhaps.)

Side note the first: never underestimate the amount of video game and toy history you can gleam from 50+ years of comic books advertising.

Side note the second: whoever came up with the adhesive comic book bag is a both genius and a bastard: those static film adhesive coverings are all over the place, stuck to every part of The Paintshop and my person, the forget-me-nots of the collecting world.

(repost) :: i am my wife's ornamental hermit (and i feel fine)

in

(This was originally shared here last July, but given that summer is once again upon us and I am back to my hacking and digging and mowing and leveling ways, I felt it was an opportune time to revisit…)

There’s something about the life of the 18th century ornamental hermit — which, according to Atlas Obscura…

While some gardeners might now throw in a gnome statue among their flowers and shrubberies, back in the 18th century wealthy estate owners were hiring real people to dress as druids, grow their hair long, and not wash for years. These hired hermits would lodge in shacks, caves, and other hermitages constructed in a rustic manner in rambling gardens. It was a practice mostly found in England, although it made it up to Scotland and over to Ireland as well.

— speaks to me: I feel, as I wander our backyard in the AC, a certain kinship with the gentleman pictured above. I would totally live in one of those “hermitages constructed in a rustic manner in rambling gardens”; I pretty much already do. I have found, then, my life goal; little did I know I was already living it.

(Plus, the bit about not speaking to anyone for seven years sounds fantastic. The not bathing part, eh, not so much. Still, sacrifices must be made.)