Dorktower.com’s gone wonky again. Couldn’t FTP anything, couldn’t even post new Muskrat Ramblings, for the last couple of days. Heck, couldn’t even pull it up on my screen. All seems OK now, though…fingers crossed…
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I’m in a weird mood, these days. There’s a lot of potentially huge stuff in the air, all of which has the potential to crash and burn. I’m trying not to get any hopes up, but at the same point, I’d like to remain positive about things.
We’ll see. For heaven’s sake, it’s not like I’m not living the life I wanted. I mean, holy cow, I’m making a living drawing cartoons. How much better could it get?
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Still unsure about “Time On Earth,” the new Crowded House album. It’s growing on me, yes. Just not as quickly as much of Neil Finn’s stuff tends to do. It certainly sounds more like a Finn solo album than a Crowded House disc, to be sure. But it’s been ten years, so I’m not really sure what I was expecting. I mean, you don’t want the band to keep doing “Woodface” all over again now, do you? Still, it certainly seems less memorable than things like “One Nil” (changed, for some bizarre reason, to “One All” Stateside) and “Everyone Is Here” (with brother Tim).
Picking up “Farewell To The World,” the Crowded House live double-album, at the same time didn’t do anything to bolster “Time On Earth’s” status. Packed with hook after hook, “Farewell” is a reminder of just how good the band was.
Still, I’m looking forward to the Chicago concert. Neil Finn and Aimee Mann are perhaps the two songwriters I’ve obsessed most over, these last five years. Seeing Aimee Mann live in Madison last year was terrific. I’m hoping the likes of “Seven Worlds Collide” and “farewell to The World” aren’t building up any expectations for Crowded House that will be hard to meet.
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An Apple Store opened last week at West Towne Mall in Madison. Which is hellacool, but I’d have expected to have heard about this somehow, some way, before the event.
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Simon Rogers, he of Pelgrane Press fame, aka one of my very favorite people in the gaming business, just announced that there will be a collection of Robin D. Laws’ psychotically brilliant “The Birds” published in time for GenCon. As folks here may well know, I think The Birds is one of the best things since sliced psychoses. So it was a thrill to be asked to write a forward for it.
“Pelgrane Press is proud to announce that we will be publishing a collection of Robin D Laws excellent blog-based comic, The Birds, anthropomorphic avians with a line in cheap suits and spangly tops . Oh, and they have guns and grenades. It’s witty and acerbic, and not entirely bereft of artistic merit. John Kovalic has kindly agreed to write a foreword, and we hope to have a limited number available at GenCon Indie 2007. Robin might even sign them if you cheep nicely.“
What’s that, you say? You’ve never seen “The Birds?” For the love of all that’s fried and holy, friend, Click Here!
