Mad Professor

American Born Chinese -- excellent graphic novel

2008-01-24T20:42:51Z

Last night I finally got around to reading American Born Chinese, a 240-page color graphic novel by Gene Luen Yang. This 2006 National Book Award Finalist is about a kid, born of Chinese parents, who must learn how to deal with being one of the few Asian students in a school attended mostly by caucasians who are either bullies or blithely rude and ignorant towards him.

What takes this interesting loss-of-innocence story and kicks it to a higher level is the way Yang intertwines two other stories into it. One is a mythical story of the Monkey King who aspires to be a god, and the other is a nightmarish sitcom about a extreme stereotype of a Chinese kid who torments his caucasian cousin with yearly disruptive visits. In the end, all three stories merge satisfyingly.

I'm a sucker for a clean line, and Yang's drawing style fits my predilection to a T. It's bold, economical, yet warm and very expressive. Link

Overladen pickup on the 101, Los Angeles

2007-08-16T17:18:22Z

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Spotted this pickup driving down the 101 near Van Nuys, California. There's an entire house packed on it.

Tim Biskup's Jackson 500 Volume 3

2007-08-15T22:42:36Z

This is the fifth of Tim Biskup's books of his tiny paintings. Jackson 500 Volume Three has 100 business-card sized paintings in it, reproduced at full size.

It's my favorite so far, because he is moving in new and interesting directions. Away from flatness and towards form. Away from simple emotions towards more complex ones. In his introduction, Biskup writes that "things fell apart" in his life recently and that he's "let a lot of anger and sadness into my work in the last year, but there is aslso a certain kind of joy to it that is new as well." $10.17 on Amazon

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Hi-Fructose Vol.5

2007-08-15T02:19:17Z

Whenever a new issue of Hi-Fructose shows up in my mailbox, I climb on my roof and genuflect in the direction of Arcturus to pay homage to master Zogg for allowing such beauty to exist in this lowly mortal plane.

Volume 5 of the best art magazine in the Universe has articles about Travis Louie, Parskid, Lori Early, Amy Sol, Mark Jenkins, Aaron Noble, Mars-1, Friends With You's Rainbow Valley, Brendan Danielson, Josh Keyes, and other artists. There's a lifetime of material to study in these pages. Now that I have this, I may stop buying books and magazines altogether. Link

Short video of cliff diving at Topanga State Park

2007-08-14T21:12:04Z

(Click on thumbnails for enlargement) I went with my wife and kids to Topanga State Park a couple of weeks ago. It offers wonderful hiking, rock climbing, and pond swimming. The best part of the day was watching the brave souls jump from the 40 or 50 foot cliffs into a swimming hole. I shot a video of the divers, which you can see here: Link

Casper the Friendly Ghost comic book anthology

2007-08-14T03:22:01Z

Graphic designer and cartoon historian Leslie Cabarga, went to great pains to clean up the excellent artwork in this 480-page homage to Casper the Friendly Ghost.

I've always been a fan of a clean line in cartooning, and the Harvey artists who drew Casper were masters of this appealing style. I loved Casper comics as a child, and seeing them again with adult eyes, I can understand why. The presentation draws you in immediately. I prefer to the scratchy hyper-dynamic, border-busting work that's so prevalent in contemporary comics. Today's cartoonists could learn much from the Harvey style.

Casper the Friendly Ghost has a knowledgeable introduction by Cartoon Brew's terrific animation historian Jerry Beck.

Dark Horse, the publisher, also has been publishing a terrific multi-volume anthology of Little Lulu comic books, which I highly recommend.

$13.57 on Amazon

Beetles devouring my figs

2007-08-11T22:18:43Z

(Click on thumbnail for enlargement) Yesterday I was harvesting figs from my tree before the fig thieves who regularly drive through the neighborhood to poach fruit could get to them, and I spotted these three large shiny green beetles gorging on a fig. The topmost beetle had his entire head buried in the obscenely red meat of these delicious figs.

Unlike the human fig thieves who eat my fruit, these iridescent scarabs are always welcome guests at my home.

Appropriately enough, they are called figeater beetles. Link to Flickr set

Cheap prescription glasses

2007-08-08T20:59:23Z

Last year, I stumbled upon Ira Mitchell's blog, Glassyeyes.com, which is all about buying inexpensive eyeglasses from online retailers. Here's a recent Minneapolis Star Tribune article about Mr. Mitchell and his blog. Here's an excerpt:

Ira Mitchell of Eagan has nothing against eye doctors. It's the markups on frames and lenses that make him rant about the high cost of eyeglasses on his blog, which he began last November. "Eyeglass stores are for suckers," he wrote.
Indeed, the markup on glasses can easily exceed 500 percent, according to EyeglassDirect.com. In his photo at Glassyeyes.com, Mitchell has the look of someone who is not going to pay a 500 percent markup anymore. So when he broke his frames and found that a pair of frames and lenses at LensCrafters would run $400, he did what few people had done before -- he shopped for eyeglasses on the Internet. Judging from the 250,000 sets of eyeballs that have viewed his site, he's not alone.

Since discovering Glassyeyes, I've ordered prescription eyeglasses from two different online retailers, and I couldn't be more pleased with the results. You need to have a current prescription handy, which means you need to get an eye exam. The optometrist probably won't want to give you the prescription, because he/she will want you to buy glasses from him/her instead of going to a cheaper place. Insist on getting a copy -- say your insurer or employer requires it.

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When I ordered a pair of glasses from Optical4less.com on July 23rd, I didn't know the company was based in Hong Kong. It wouldn't have made any difference. I paid a total of $70, including shipping for two pairs of prescription glasses (regular and sunglasses) in my favorite Clark Kent style. The box arrived, loving wrapped in brown paper with beautiful bird stamps on it.

The return address is A. Poon, Shop 137, Chung Fu Shopping Center, Tin Shui Wai, N.T., Hong Kong. Thank you, Mr. Poon!

I like these sunglasses even more than the $200+ pairs I have been buying for years. Note the nifty day-glo cases they are stored in.

A perfect fit! I couldn't be more delighted with my purchase.

Optical4Less's plastic frames page is a good place to start looking. They charge $29 for single vision eyeglasses using these cool, chunky framed glasses. Link

Note from summer camp

2007-08-02T22:38:12Z

My 9-year-old daughter is at summer camp for a week. She sent this letter to us:

Dear Mom and Dad,
Last night was so awful. Lilli had a migrain all night. A girl needed medication at 10:00. Are bedtime is 9:30. When the conslers were getting the medication a girl started to puke! A different girl was moaning. A huge spider was on the floor. The consler came in to help. We got to sleep at 12:00! Everything is fine. I'm having a great time.
Love,
Sarina

How to Make It 1926

2007-08-02T17:10:48Z

Automata maker extraordinaire Dug North says:

I went into an antique shop that was going out of business and picked up a large-format magazine/book entitled How to Make It. The book is made up of selected excerpts from Science and Invention Magazine published in 1926. You would not believe the stuff in there -- some of it really cool and really dangerous.
An motor-powered ice sled that uses a sawmill-sized circular blade as the front wheel.
A brazing torch powered by gasoline
An airplane using a motorcycle engine
A xylophone/thumb-piano made of razor blades
A motor driven mono-wheel that you ride inside of
And so on...

It made me think of you and your magazine.

Frank and Cindy

2007-07-25T20:12:03Z

G.J. Echterncamp is a young video director and documentary filmmaker. His latest subject is an utterly absorbing movie about his parents, Frank and Cindy.

In the 80s, Frank was a rising new wave pop star in a band called OXO. He was in his early 20s when he married Cindy, a vivacious blond woman almost 20 years his senior. Shortly after they married, OXO broke up. Cindy supported Frank for many years as he worked the club circuit in Florida, to no avail. They both began drinking and drugging. They also had a child, G.J., who grew up under their non-care for most of his life.

G.J. stays behind the camera most of the time as he films his extremely loquacious, alcohol- and drug-addled parents. I'm surprised he survived, as they are both revealed here to be incompetent, narcissistic, and childish. In spite of their odiousness, there is also something endearing about them, which is why this documentary is so good. You want them to do well, to get cleaned up, to get jobs, to stop hating each other. It's hard not to be disappointed when you discover that they'll never change.

I laughed out loud as many times as I shook my head while watching this. Link

Passive aggressive sign spotted in office kitchen

2007-07-25T19:21:50Z

(Click on thumbnail for enlargement) *Please*, do your fucking dishes! Thanks!

Previously on Mad Professor:
• Passive aggressive taxi cab sign

Super market design renderings

2007-07-24T03:24:42Z

Shawn Wolfe says: I love looking at (ie. studying, meditating on, losing myself in) this collection of old architectural renderings of supermarket prototypes, found by their owner in a photo album purchased at a garage sale. They appear to be from the early 1960s.

Store names are delightfully awkward word-play experiments and made-up sounding. I assume these renderings were used to simply show prospective clients what is possible in the way of modern "Food Mart" architectural stylings.

Granted, they are images of hideous chain stores, harbingers of terrible things to come. But in retrospect and as portrayed here these places seem so quaint and enchanted, wet, moonlit, not overly big-boxed yet, visited by a small handful of sophisticated men in trench coats and their nicely-groomed wives. Link

Update:

Here's a musical slideshow with the renderings.

Cell phone photos from Tijuana

2007-07-23T21:32:29Z

I am enjoying Glyph Jockey's cell phone photos of interesting sites in Tijuana. Link

Jane's masks

2007-07-20T01:16:47Z

IMG_0806.JPG
Originally uploaded by Frauenfelder

My four-year-old daughter made these masks at summer camp today. They remind me a bit of the characters in Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends.