Words Seem Out Of Place

If you grew up in the 1980s, then chances are you know Jose Garcia-Lopez's work, even if you didn't read comics or don't know his name. His art was not only featured in the pages of DC Comics, but also on almost every bit of company merchandise imaginable, from t-shirts to toy packaging and everything in between. If you took a Wonder Woman lunch box to school in, say, 1985, then it's likely you carried around some stellar Garcia-Lopez art and were the envy of all your friends. Much of this merchandising art was pulled directly from Garcia-Lopez's highly influential and legendary DC Style Guide . For decades, this was the company bible, to which all artists referred when drawing the deep stable of DC characters, and it was Garcia-Lopez's art that they were referencing. His sequential art is not to be ignored, either. Look at the page below from a Superman comic. Note how each panel is brimming with life—from the wonderful variety of facial expressions o...

Revisiting and celebrating the work of Michelle Pfeiffer,  the best actress of my lifetime. Personal Effects  (2008) is a flawed film, certainly, but Michelle Pfeiffer still manages to turn in a delicate, beautiful, and underappreciated performance. In a film that often feels like it's trying too hard to say important things about grief and loss, at times mistaking solemnity for profundity, Pfeiffer, in an extraordinary performance, simply shows us the reality of grief and loss. As Linda, she paints a moving portrait of a women grieving the loss of her murdered husband while trying to raise a traumatized teenage son who is acting out in response to his father's death. Linda meets the much-younger Walter, played by Ashton Kutcher, whose sister was brutally murdered. Together they form a connection, offering tentative support to each other as they work through shared tragedies. They become intimate, and instead of this age disparity romance seeming unnatural or for...

Scenes from the life of a high-functioning introvert. Can we talk about small talk? Specifically, how useless it is, and how most introverts find it anxiety-producing and will do anything to avoid it? Can we just admit that small talk is horrible? As you may have noticed, cyberspace is filled with a plethora of pithy introvert memes—my personal favorite features Elvira and you can see it above. While some of them exaggerate the truth—we only hate people who suck , geez—the core message is usually on point: introverts have no tolerance for your bullshit. Small talk just feels fake to us. Inane pleasantries about the weather or car troubles feel like a total waste of our time. Sure, we do it too, sometimes, but that's mostly because society expects it out everyone, and sometimes we're just too tired to fight it. In my experience as an introvert over the years, I know, usually within an instant, if I've connected with someone or not. I've experienced that nea...

This series looks back at the 1990s and its influence on the generation of people who came of age during the decade. 1995 was a pivotal year. So much happened in just one year. In January I felt lost, but by December I was closer to found than I could have imagined at the start of that year. With " Second Chances " I told part of that story, my '95 story, in all its chaotic glory. This started as a writing exercise based on accessing my memories to make some sort of sense of who I was that year, and how it effected who I go on to become. It helped unearth some very real and specific emotions, which I tried to express through words, as honestly as I could. As always, no names were used, to protect the innocent and the guilty. Full disclosure: I'm the only guilty party in these stories. For further reading, I've written about '95 before, in snippets, and those posts can be found  here ,  here , and  here . Some experiences or emotions alluded to briefl...

In which our narrator tries to read his way through the endless stacks of books that are slowly overtaking both his bookshelves and his life. Between the winter blues, the kids keeping me busy, and work just kicking my arse lately, I've had very little time—or attention span—to read as much as I'd like. Still, somehow, I've managed to read several books in the last few months, but I've spent more of my (rare) downtime watching movies. My book nerdery is only equaled by my film nerdery—and both are nearly equaled by my art and music nerdery. In other words, I have more than enough nerdery to spare, at all times. Anyway, I recently rewatched one of my favorite comfort food films, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang . When I'm tired, or down, or just in need of some cinema therapy, this film never fails to deliver. It also happens to be one of my very favorite Christmas films . Robert Downey Jr., and Val Kilmer, and Michelle Monaghan are simply magnificent together in Shan...