This is the music they’d play there:
Every now and then though, just to give you false hope, they would play this:
video
New Watchmen? What’s the point?
If DC is so determined to get new Watchmen material out, why not this?
I’m with Andrew Weiss on this; putting out prequels to Watchmen is only slighty less obnoxious than imagining a need for a prequel to Maus, but so much other cultural landmarks, both high and low, have been remade in the past few decades that it was only time before Watchmen got its turn. It’s what happens when “intellectual properties” (ugh) are owned by companies only interested in the next sure thing, the next bestseller, who know full well that whatever internet outrage there is today, many of the same people will end up buying these things anyway, curious as they are to see what a Darwyn Cooke (retro kitsch with little originality) or a J. Michael Straczynski (let’s hope it’s not a long miniseries) will make of it. Few comics fans can tell shit from shinola anyway, not when presented in a $99 Absolute Edition Hardcover.
In the end, what remains impressive is how long it took DC ultimately to throw all their scruples to the wind and do what they’ve been wanting to do ever since Watchmen turned out to be a hit, to do what’s in the company’s DNA, what they always do when they have a hit: exploit the hell out of it and get more like it out there on the stands. It’s what comics publishers have always done, chase the trends, sling shit to the wall and if it sticks, sling more. At the time they barely and only halfhearted recognised that not doing this would be more profitable this time, though not before driving away Moore himself. What DC finally realised was that Watchmen, along with The Dark Knight Returns and Swamp Thing, as well as a handful of lesser titles gave them prestige, a reputation as a the more creator friendly and innovative of the Big Two. They got themselves a boatload of British writers, people like Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison and Pete Milligan et all to repeat the magic that Moore got going with Watchmen, got it with Sandman and ultimately got Vertigo, a whole line of slightly off kilter not quite superhero titles for those who had outgrown the DC universe, the one really smart bit of business DC has gotten together in the past four decades. The rest of the company may have been just as dumb and exploitative as Marvel (who never got as much credit for Epic as DC did for Vertigo) or Image at their worst, but Vertigo made it acceptable.
But the American comics industry still crashed and burned and nobody but Steve Bissette still cares about creators right and self publishing and boycotting Marvel for its treatment of Jack Kirby and its heirs. And Watchmen, which had remained in print and a steady seller for the company all those years turned hot again, what with the movie and everything and the old itch to exploit it better, to get people to not just buy new and more deluxe versions of it popped up again. More than a quarter of a century after its original publication it’s finally safe to give into it, even if it’s pointless. The suits will have their way, the second rate talent making the comics will think they’re making art or doing a homage and that DC will still respect them in the morning, the fans will lap it up anyway.
Insomnia
(The following post is courtesy of Sore Eyes.)
If you stay awake late enough, eventually you remember everything. All your usual defenses dissolve. Your mind is weary, and there is nothing in your white, silent room to distract it. Your exhausted brain can no longer apply the pressure needed to repress your memories, and they all come back, all of them, every one, and especially the ones that prove you are the worst version of yourself: the lies, the evasions, the unreturned emails, the shoplifted packs of gum. And, of course, every single ungenerous thing you have ever thought, no matter how fleetingly or how long ago, about the people you love most. Anxiety cascades: just when you’ve drained one disaster from your mind, another breaks the dam. The panic and shame that overcome you when you find a really old to-do list and realize you haven’t done a single item on it? Multiply that feeling by the number of minutes left until sunrise. You can tell yourself to be reasonable, to count your blessings, to get it together, but such reassurances will ring hollow. As Fitzgerald put it, at three o’clock in the morning a forgotten package feels as tragic as a death sentence.
Insomnia is an old friend, a disease that has been with us since the first homonid managed to walk upright, but it’s particularly suited to our current post-modern, post-industrial, networked but atomised lives. You’re never as alone as when your partner is asleep next to you and you’re trying desperately to claw back some few hours of futile rest while the clock ticks endlessly forward and you know the moment that the alarm will go off creeps closer and close, but for now the endless, sleepless night stretches in front of you and all your inner defences have crumpled and you’re there alone, with just the darkest, most despondent parts of your soul to keep you company.
As a child in the eighties it was nightmares of nuclear holocaust, no; the anticipation of nightmares about nuclear holocaust that would keep me awake at night, turning on the brighest light in my room and looking for anything to take my mind of what was waiting in the dark, reading the simplest, most upbeat little kids books I could swipe from my little brothers, hoping that would calm my brains enough to go to sleep, perchance not to dream — sometimes it even worked.
As a teenager, it was Sunday nights and having to go back to school the next morning that would keep me awake, aware of how much I did not want to go and how little homework I had done. That existential anxiety still rules my Sunday nights, even though the best part of being an adult is that you can leave your job behind at four o’clock and not have to think about. The nightmares have become more mundane, anxiety dreams about being in bookstores with huge selections of everything I ever wanted to read but the books slipping through my hands, or costing more than I could pay, endless dreams of trying to catch a train and get ready to go to the station, always against the background of the monstrously swollen geography of my hometown, always dissolving into frustration, five, ten, fifteen times a night.
But worse than that is stumbling into bed late on a weekday and not falling immediately asleep, but lying there tossing and turning, alone or with somebody next to you fast asleep, either having to get up early or knowning you can sleep late the next morning, it doesn’t matter, it’s all awful. A few years back, in 2004, when I had been made redundant in a reorganisation of the company I worked for (long since swallowed up by a larger company and that in turn by a yet larger one), there were weeks and months when I didn’t need to get up in the morning and so could go to bed late, but there was always a point when I was lying in the darkness and Radio 4 would end with Sailing By and the Shipping Forecast and I’d be scolding myself for not going to bed at a reasonable hour. And now sometimes I do go to bed reasonably early, at eleven or twelve to get up the next morning at six and there I’m lying and suddenly I hear that tune again at a quarter to two and I know I won’t have slept enough again and will pay for it…
How the internet works
How do things like this get made?
MetaFilter regular Ad hominem explains:
Nyan cat is like most things on the Internet. It is a confluence of various parts, gathered and assembled that somehow make up an magical whole.
First there was the song Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya that features vocaloid Htsune Miku.
Then there was a remix of the song using a voice synthesizer with the Momone Momo voice that added the nyan lyrics.
A gif of a cat with a pop tart body somehow popped up because a guy was taking drawing requests online and people kept asking for drawings of cats and pop tarts so he just drew one drawing that contained both. He called it Pop Tart Cat.
How it all got added together is the magical part. The gif got mashed up with the song and uploaded to YouTube titled “nyan cat” and we are left with the pinnacle of 21st century culture, Nyan Cat. A “crowdsourced” work of art with no definite purpose or meaning combining disparate elements harvested from the Internet.
Explains so much about the twentyfirst century so far, doesn’t it? It’s silly, it’s dumb, but an endless source of creativity nonetheless and certainly more fun and harmless than what socalled responsible people were up to in the real world…
Who knows where the time goes
Memo to self: do not listen to maudlin Sandy Denny songs when already feeling a bit blue. This and Meet on the Ledge can always get me.
I never really rated Fairport Convention, or Richard Thompson or any of the other English folk rock acts until recently. Too quiet, too earnest, too embarassing to like if you’re not an aging baby boomer. All prejudices I had to rid myself off before I could get to appreciate these sort of artists. I’m glad I did, even if it hurts sometimes listening to these songs.