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Happy Blogiversary to Bean!

Happy Blogiversary to Bean! published on No Comments on Happy Blogiversary to Bean!

Way back in August of 2010, I used WordPress for the first time.  I had migrated my website to a WordPress installation.  Up until 2010 I had been blogging on an Angelfire account.  For the most part, migrating to WordPress also changed how I blog.  My early years of blogging were similar to some of the blogs I follow- combing the internet for cool things and then putting all those things into one place for my imaginary readers.  For me, really. Purely consumptive. And lost to y’all, I’m afraid. I backed as much of them up as I could, but I never migrated any pre-2010 content.

Since that 2010 post I have written over 1,200 posts on the Bean. Now I tend towards more ‘original’ content, when I manage a post at all.  I’ve combined my blog with art and comic posts, and then separated my comics from the blog once again. There are still some consumption based posts, but nothing like the stream of links to other people and places that I began with. 

Well that post back in August 2010 was about I Write Like.  I fed it a blog entry from the old site and was told that I wrote like Ursula K. Le Guin. I had not read Le Quin’s work at that time and I am sorry to say, I have not read it still. Obviously this is a missed opportunity that I will have to address. Guess what! I Write Like is still around! And now it includes a full markdown editor and AI manuscript editing assistant.

I fed it some more of my writing to see how I may have changed. I haven’t been doing much fiction or blogging recently, but I write all the time for work: proposals, guidelines, articles, etc. According to I Write Like, a book chapter draft that I wrote within my research assignment at work is written like Isaac Asimov. A blog post from my Every Month Is History Month series is like Kurt Vonnegut, and my kid’s story, Penelope Sea is like J.K. Rowling. I think I Write Like is just trying to butter me up.

Doomed Moviethon Incidental Music V2

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I did some line-art for the cover of Doomed Moviethon’s recent album release. It is eerie and ambient.

Cat profiles

Cat profiles published on No Comments on Cat profiles

This is just some gratuitous cat love. I thought it would be a hoot to illustrate cat personalities by the commands we use for them every week. And then I thought the post was missing a heap of cat photos, so I added them. You are welcome.

CAT
SPASMO
GORGON
CHEESE
FOOD
  • Meows to beg
  • Hates chicken and chicken byproducts
  • Accepts treats
  • Stands on hind legs to beg
  • Must have medicated food
  • Accepts treats
  • Meows and stands against counter to beg
  • Accepts most foods
  • Does not understand treats
COMMANDS
  • Spasmo, get down
  • Spasmo, no claws
  • Spasmo, that’s not for you
  • Gorgon, that’s not for you
  • Gorgon, no claws
  • Look up
  • Cheese, get down!
  • Cheese, no claws!
  • Cheese, no teeth!
  • Cheese, don’t eat that!
  • Cheese, that’s not for you
  • Cheese, leave your sister alone
  • Cheese, that doesn’t sound consensual
  • Cheese, enough!
  • Cheese, let her go to the bathroom
  • Cheese, let her finish eating

Holidays in the Movies: calendar summary

Holidays in the Movies: calendar summary published on No Comments on Holidays in the Movies: calendar summary

Over the past few years we have been cultivating holiday themed watching to get us in the right frame of mind for every holiday. We have now amassed a list complete enough to get it into a chronologically arranged table of contents post for all the holidays in the movies posts.

January 1stHolidays in the Movies: New Year
Second new moon after December solsticeHolidays in the Movies: Lunar New Year
February 14thHolidays in the Movies: Valentines
Third Monday of FebruaryHolidays in the Movies: President’s Day
Forty seven days prior to EasterHolidays in the Movies: Mardi Gras
Mid-March and/or tied to EasterHolidays in the Movies: Spring Break
March 17thHolidays in the Movies: St. Patrick’s Day
April 1stHolidays in the Movies: April fools
First Sunday after a full moon falling on or after March 21stHolidays in Movies: Easter
April 8thHolidays in the Movies: Rex Manning Day
April 21stHolidays in the Movies: Antonio Bay Anniversary
14th day of Nissan at the time of the full moonHolidays in the Movies: Passover
April 22ndHolidays in the Movies: Earth Day
Last Friday in April (FL Arbor Day: third Friday in January)Holidays in the Movies: Arbor Day
May 1stHolidays in the Movies: May Day
Beginning to mid-MayHolidays in the Movies: Schools Out
Second Sunday in MayHolidays in the Movies: Mother’s Day
Last Monday of MayHolidays in the Movies: Memorial Day
Third Sunday of JuneHolidays in the Movies: Father’s Day
June 20 or 21stHolidays in the Movies: Summer Solstice
July 4thHolidays in Movies: 4th of July
July 25thHolidays in the Movies: Christmas in July
Late AugustHolidays in the Movies: Back to School
First Monday of SeptemberHolidays in Movies: Labor Day
October 31st (starting with the fall equinox) The Holiday Schmidt: Halloween zine (coming soon)
Forth Thursday of NovemberHolidays in Movies: Thanksgiving
25th day of KislevHolidays in the Movies: Hanukkah
December 25th (starting on Black Friday)The Holiday Schmidt: Christmas zine (coming soon)
December 25thMy favorite Christmas Carol

    Caduceus – Acceleration Due to Gravity

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    I was honored to due some artwork for the new album by Caduceus: Acceleration Due to Gravity. You can find it on Bandcamp.

    Holidays in the Movies: Father’s Day

    Holidays in the Movies: Father’s Day published on No Comments on Holidays in the Movies: Father’s Day

    This one was hard. We’ve tried some thematic watching for other holidays that don’t have a lot of movie representation, but figuring out what to do for Father’s day stymied us for years. We have a line up for this year that I like to call: It’s So Hard For a Girl to Make Her Daddy Proud.

    • Footloose (1984): Ariel has been pushing against the constraints of her father, the Reverend Moore long before Ren arrives in town and starts testing his own boundaries in the town.
    • Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985): Janie breaks from her military routine to take a chance on her dreams and audition for Dance TV. Her father doesn’t accept that it will mean her running loose in a new city on her own.
    • Dirty Dancing (1987): Baby finds her own summer adventure helping staff at the summer resort, and for the first time falls out of her father’s favor.

    And for a little horror diversion: Hellraiser (1987) is a great father and daughter relationship movie as well.

    Nightmare weekend

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    New sticker art for Hello! This is the Doomed Show: sandwich girl from Nightmare Weekend!

    Holidays in the Movies: April 21st

    Holidays in the Movies: April 21st published on No Comments on Holidays in the Movies: April 21st
    Wikipedia.

    Sometimes movies aren’t just a way of celebrating a holiday, they are a reason to have one: a movie holiday of sorts.

    John Carpenter’s 1980 The Fog takes place very plainly on April 21st, so April 21st is the day we watch The Fog to celebrate the anniversary of Antonio Bay.

    Holidays in the Movies: Rex Manning Day!

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    April 8th is Rex Manning Day! Because sometimes movies create holidays of their own. This year, Rex Manning Day just happens to coincide with a solar eclipse. So why not pair a rewatch of Empire Records (1995) with The Awakening (1980).

    The timeline of the Tom Dooley cha cha

    The timeline of the Tom Dooley cha cha published on No Comments on The timeline of the Tom Dooley cha cha

    There is something that haunts me every time I hear Sam Cooke’s Everybody Loves to Cha Cha Cha. In the song, the narrator is waiting for a dance that his partner can do. She cannot cha cha. But every song they play is the cha cha cha. Including Tom Dooley cha cha. Being extremely familiar with the folk ballad Tom Dooley, I am immediately set to ruminating what a Tom Dooley cha cha would sound like. The rhythms, the melody, everything seems as though it would not fit. And I wonder aloud that someone needs to make a Tom Dooley cha cha.

    Well, someone did make a Tom Dooley cha cha! Apparently the Kingston Trio hit, Tom Dooley, inspired a number of response songs from various artists in various styles. The 1959 Thomas Dooley cha cha by the George Garabedian Troubadours was just one novelty song among many novelty and non-novelty songs. But then I had to know, was the Thomas Dooley cha cha playing at the party that inspired Sam Cooke to write his song? Or was George Garabedian, like me, inspired by the song to comment: what would a Tom Dooley cha cha be like? Before answering his own question.

    Well, I couldn’t find a firm date for the George Garabedian 1959 release, but Sam Cooke’s “Everybody Loves to Cha Cha” was released in January 1959 after being recorded on January 7, 1959. So, it seems a fair bet that George’s cha cha came after. Mystery solved!

    The original song that the Kingston Trio remade, and made famous, was written not long after Tom Dula was tried for a murder committed in 1866. Ages ago I went looking into the background on the song Tom Dooley. I found the story very well documented on Wikipedia and “A bit of justice for Anne” Wilkes Journal Patriot, so I ended up inspired to write some short fiction instead.

    Holidays in the Movies: Spring Break

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    We embrace the academic calendar milestones as defining moments in our year, so why haven’t we celebrated spring break with Holidays in the Movies? During our most recent celebration of the start of the school year we noticed that two movies on that list were set during spring; spring breakish even. So we have grabbed them from schools-in and will be doing a spring break watching:

    • PCU (1994) – “We’re not gonna protest!” But maybe we should protest this being a school starts movie. This is spring time, near end of term.
    • Girl Happy (1965) – seriously, how have we not included an Elvis movie in our watching yet. I may not have talked about our Elvis collection too much here, but it is fully featured in Doomed Moviethon.
    • Crocodile (2000) – Tobe Hooper’s direct to video spring break adventure.
    • Nightmare beach (1989) – what’s scarier and surer to ruin spring break than a crocodile? A motorcyclist, obviously.
    • Where the Boys Are (1960) – despite the tonal shift, which was actually buffered by the sequence of events so as to not be too jarring, this is a lovely film. It is both a girl’s fantasy of spring break and a depressing warning that the danger of spring break is that girls get assaulted. Sex is the only thing boys want.
    • Palm Springs Weekend (1963) – with the same initial feeling as Girl Happy and Where the Boys Are, this also echoes the warnings to girls that sex is the only thing boys want.
    • Spring Break (1983) – on to a boy’s dream of spring break, 80’s style, where girls are over-sexed objects on giggle juice and don’t even become near to characters until the end, but fun none the less.

    We’ve gone on the hunt for more to fill the week, at least until St. Patrick’s Day. If we are lucky, we might get our hands on a few more:

    • The Beach Girls (1982)
    • Spring Breakdown (2009)
    • Malibu Bikini Shop (1986)

    Hecate

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    Holidays in the Movies: President’s Day

    Holidays in the Movies: President’s Day published on No Comments on Holidays in the Movies: President’s Day
    Theatrical release poster for Coraline.

    For Holidays in the Movies, no holiday is too little acknowledged for us to celebrate with a movie. The only real challenge is finding the movies that definitely place themselves on a holiday of some kind, especially those that don’t have large cultural celebrations attached. Well, lucky for you I noticed when Coraline’s mother, in the 2009 movie Coraline, said that it was President’s day. So, for President’s day, until I find more, I will watch Coraline.

    Of course there are plenty of thematic lists to rely on as well if you want to go that route as we have for Earth Day and the like. If you are feeling the theme you will not be spoiled for choices of movies about presidents.

    Holiday’s in the movies: Lunar New Year

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    Way of the Dragon Poster. Wikipedia.

    Lunar New Year, based on the lunisolar calendar, is fabulously visible in the multi-cultural city we live in. To mark its passing, the way we do with every holiday, we have identified a couple of movies to help us celebrate:

    • Way of the Dragon (1972): Bruce Lee’s only complete directorial film, and Chuck Norris’ debut role will surely put us in the right spirit.
    • Fight Back to School III (1993): As Richard says, no excuse is needed to re-watch any Fight Back to School movie.

    Time as a shadow

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    I recently grabbed a deal on a vintage zodiac clock (that in the end isn’t functioning) and I realized something I hadn’t paid clear attention to before. The zodiac on the clock, on a vintage pellon print, on a vintage chalkware wall hanging owned by my best friend, and on the examples that initially inspired me to create my own zodiac clock are all arranged counter clockwise.

    Where on the clock face the zodiac begins seems to vary in these vintage clocks. When making my zodiac clock, I arranged the signs clockwise and attempted a sort of alignment of the hour and sign. This made sense to me at the time, but noticing the difference I started wondering why what made sense to me was at odds with all the examples I had found.

    Though it wasn’t my immediate common knowledge, I am sure it is common knowledge for some that the sun’s position in front of certain constellations – the path of the zodiac – is counter clockwise. And that the earth’s revolution around the sun is counter clockwise. Indeed the earth and moon move counter clockwise (in the Northern hemisphere). Ancient time keeping methods utilized the movement of the sun and the stars to tell time. Sites like Stonehenge tracked time using the sun. So, it’s the modern clock that moves in the opposite direction of all the objects that underpin our concept of time keeping.

    One explanation for this is the impact of early time pieces like sundials that tracked time by the shadow the sun cast on the face of the time piece. Newer time keeping devices copied this layout so that all of our timekeeping implements, from wall clocks to wristwatches, track time clockwise even though clockwise is essentially the shadow of time passing counter clockwise.

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