Link roundup

1. Lifehacker recommends this program if you're afraid you might lose your Android phone.

2. Steve Niles:

Can I say something I’ve wanted to say for a long time? If you like something, tell your friends. If you love it, tell the world. But if you hate something, just throw it away, don’t buy it again and move on. We spend way too much time tearing shit down. I just want to try the other direction for a while.

I try to follow that philosophy for this blog - - there's so much great stuff in the world, why waste your time dwelling on the bad? Via.

3. Speaking of, Incognito by Ed Brubaker* and Sean Phillips is the best comic I've read in recent memory. If I wanted to introduce (or reintroduce) an adult to comics, this is what I'd give them. It starts off like a crime drama, and ends up as super hero pulp. Great art, great writing. $13 at Amazon.

(*I haven't really been a very big fan of the other comics I've read by Brubaker.)

The Windup Girl

German book cover for Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl, which I just finished reading. You know, I skipped my book club's last book, The Girl With a Dragon Tattoo, because I wasn't interested in reading anything that featured sexual violence against women. Instead I read this . . . which features sexual violence against women. Other than that, the book is excellent. It's often compared to William Gibson's novels, but I didn't see much of a similarity. Really, it's very much like a futuristic version of George Martin's Fire and Ice series - - told from the viewpoints of many fairly unlikable characters as they're outmaneuvered by far more savvy operators in a political struggle. It's well deserving of the many awards it's won, and $9 at Amazon. I can't give it better praise than to say I've placed all of his other books on my wishlist.

Review roundup

(Links are to Amazon.)

1. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II (Wii): I don't remotely agree with the negative reviews for this game. It's terrific fun. Here's what you do in the game. You enter a room filled with Stormtroopers (or a few other enemies), and then you slaughter them. You can do so with double lightsaber combos, or lightning, or throwing your sabers, or throwing the troopers, or mindtricking the troopers into killing each other. And when you're done killing them, you move onto another room and kill more. All of the moves are extremely easy to pull off, and thrusting and shaking the remote and nunchuk adds a bit of visceral pleasure to the fun. The graphics are acceptable, and the story is fine, with an especially effective dark side ending. It might not be groundbreaking, but it sure is mindless fun.

2. Fantastic Four: The Masters of Doom: Fine, I guess. Not remotely as interesting as Millar and Hitch's tremendous work on The Ultimates, and not as good as their first Fantastic Four volume, either. Worth buying only if you really need something to read.

3. Super Spy: The Lost Dossiers: I loved Revolver and 3 Story: The Secret History of the Giant Man by Matt Kindt, but thought Super Spy was just fair. Well, Super Spy: The Lost Dossier feels like a (very short) collection of stuff that wasn't good enough to be included in Super Spy. Definitely not worth your time or money.

Here, I've embedded the light side and dark side endings from The Force Unleashed:




*Buy Force Unleashed toys at eBay.

Link roundup

1. I really liked Broken Angels, the second novel I've read by Richard Morgan. It's a little tough to describe, basically imagine a tale of WW2-era profiteering featuring a Humphrey Bogart like character, if Bogart's character was a genetically modified super soldier. But the cover, which you can see at Amazon is embarrassingly bad.

2. The good news: EA says expect less in-game advertising in the future. The bad news: expect more microcharges since those have proven to be highly lucrative. Via.

3. Funny comic by James Kochalka. After reading it, you'll want to know what he looks like.

DC Comics: The 75th Anniversary Poster Book

I received a review copy of DC Comics: The 75th Anniversary Poster Book (which was already on my wish list), and wow, big thumbs up. The oversized softcover book features 100 removable images of DC comic book covers. There's plenty of iconic images, like the first appearances of Superman and Wonder Woman, and the covers to Watchmen and Kingdom Come.

But much better, it's full of deliciously ridiculous covers like these:







The book actually features 300 covers, although only 100 are poster-sized. It even includes Batman's zebra costume, and Wonder Woman's 60's get-up.

Highly recommended, even if you have no intention of removing any pages to hang. 34% off Amazon.

Link roundup

1. In case you missed it, this is the best photograph of an astronaut in recent memory. Via these sites.

2. I absolutely loved Matt Kindt's Revolver. You're better off knowing as little as possible about the story. Basically, imagine an event tv miniseries that had a coherent plot and a satisfying ending. $17 at Amazon. (It's also not as relentlessly depressing as his (very good) 3 Story: The Secret History of the Giant Man.)

3. By comparison, I thought Matt's Super Spy was just ok. The World War II-era spy stories were enjoyable, but the comic suffered the same problem as most non-super hero comics with large casts - - it's impossible to tell the characters apart.

*Previously: The Escapist by Matt Kindt.

Link roundup

1. Little kid dressed like Edward Scissorhands.

2. Funny video of a tremendous screamer walking through Universal Studio's haunted house.

3. I greatly enjoyed the first half of David Grann's The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, which details the turn of the century adventures of Percy Fawcett as he explored the unforgiving jungles of the Amazon. Grann does a superb job describing a jungle that perversely is both full of life of all sizes that could quickly and painfully kill a man, while at the same time almost bereft of easily obtainable food. But the second half of the book, about Fawcett's last, disastrous adventure, and the miserable and penniless wife he left behind, was drudgery to complete. And the ending of the book, devoted to lamenting the loss of jungle to modern progress, is laughable in light of all the time Grann spent explaining that the Amazon is hell on Earth.

*Buy Edward Scissorhands toys at eBay.

Link roundup

1. Lincoln Logs were invented in 1916 by John L. Wright, son of Frank Lloyd Wright. They were named for Frank (his middle name was actually Lincoln), and based on the basement of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, which Frank designed. Via these sites.

2. Cool, simple surface tension experiment.

3. Drop a Raymond Chandler plot in William Gibson's Neuromancer world, and you get Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon. I enjoyed it enough to add the next two novels in the series to my wishlist. 526 pages of hard-boiled, vatgrown ninjas for $8 Amazon.

*Buy home science kits at Amazon.

Space Cadet Topo: The Day the Sun Turned Off

DGPH's Space Cadet Topo: The Day the Sun Turned Off has cute art and a pleasant story about a dashing mole, his robot companions, and their adventures in space. In tone and look, it reminded me a lot of The Octonauts, another book by Immedium Press. Indeed, like all of Immedium's books, Space Cadet Topo is an excellent option for parents tired of the repackaged cartoon episode books that fill most bookstores and Scholastic order forms. It passed the key test: My son begged me to read it again after we finished.

You can download desktop wallpapers and pages to color at the official site, and the book is $12 at Amazon.

The character (topo means "mole") is already part of a minifranchise. There's the Topo figure by adfunture available at eBay:



And Topo Joe, available at Amazon:

David Derrick's Sid the Squid

Dreamworks story artist David Derrick has a new kid's book called Sid the Squid: and the Search for the Perfect Job. For parents looking for a storybook, it's a solid choice with charming art and wholesome story. My son, who initially was not in the mood to read, became intrigued and eager to see which job the squid would try (and fail at) next.





You can download some pages to color at David's site, and the book is 30% off at Amazon.

How Michael Lewis uses the language of comic books in The Big Short

I recently finished Michael Lewis's "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine" and was struck by how he takes mundane locales, unlikable geeks, and opaque transactions and transforms them into an epic clash of larger then life figures in exotic locales.

Essentially, "The Big Short" explains how a few almost entirely unlikable figures predicted that people would default on their mortgages at almost unimaginable rates. Those few traders then made a lot of money by gambling more than they could afford to lose and hoping that the world economy's would collapse. They're hardly the type of heroes you'd usually want to identify with in a book. But look at how Lewis describes the key players in the book. Are these people traders or X-Men?

Steve Eisman, whose formative moment came when a night nurse accidentally smothered his infant son:

"Nothing bad ever happened to Steven. He was protected and he was safe. After Max, the angel on his shoulder was done. Anything can happen to anyone at any time." From that moment, [his wife] noticed many changes in her husband, large and small.

Mike Burry, who had a glass eye since he was a very young child:

In his glass eye, he found the explanation for other traits peculiar to himself. His obsession with fairness, for example.

Even though he was ferociously competitive, well built, physically brave, and a good athlete, he didn't care for team sports.

His obsession with personal honesty was a cousin to his obsession with fairness.

Mortgage Trader Greg Lippman:

"He scared the shit out of us," said [a trader]. "He comes in and describes this brilliant trade. It makes total sense. To us, the risk was, we do it, it works, then what? How do we get out? He controls the market; he may be the only one we can sell to. And he says, 'You have no way out of this swimming pool but through me, and when you ask for the towel I'm going to rip your eyeballs out.' He actually said that, that he was going to rip our eyeballs out. The guy was totally transparent.

Lippman's assistant Eugene Xu:

[H]e was generally spoken of as "Lippman's Chinese quant." Xu was an analyst employed by Deutsche Bank, but Lippman gave everyone the idea he kept him tied up to his Bloomberg terminal like a pet. A real Chinese guy - - not even Chinese American - - who apparently spoke no English, just numbers. China had this national math competition, Lippman told people, in which Eugene had finished second. In all of China. Eugene Xu was responsible for every piece of hard data in Lippman's presentation. Once Eugene was introduced into the equation, no one bothered Lippman about his math or his data. As Lippman put it, "How can a guy who can't speak English lie?"

Partners Jamie Ma and Charlie Ledley:

Jamie Ma was tall and strikingly handsome and so, almost by definition, had the air or a man in charge - - until he opened his mouth and betrayed his lack of confidence in everything from tomorrow's sunrise to the future of the human race. Jamie had the habit of stopping himself midsentence and stammering - - "uh, uh, uh" - - as if he was somehow unsettled by his own thought. Charlie Ledley was even worse: He had the pallor of a mortician and the manner of a man bent on putting off, for as long as possible, definite action. Asked a simple question, he'd stare mutely into space, nodding and blinking like an actor who has forgotten his lines, so that when he finally opened his mouth the sound that emerged caused you to jolt in your chair.

Jamie and Charley about their broker Ace Greenberg:

"We were like, 'So how is it that Ace Greenberg is our broker?'" said Charlie. "I mean, we were nobody. And we'd never actually met Ace Greenberg." The mystery grew with their every attempt to speak with Greenberg. They had what they assumed was his phone number, but when they called it someone other than Greenberg answered.

At length they talked their way into a face-to-face encounter with the Wall Street legend. The encounter was so brief, however, that they could not honestly say whether they had met Ace Greenberg, or an actor playing Ace Greenberg.

Naturally, the heroes visit exotic locales. Jamie and Charley's office is described as "charmingly unfinancial - - a dark room in the back with red brick walls that opened onto a small, junglelike garden in which it was easier to imagine a seduction scene than the purchase of a credit default swap."

And one chapter, titled "Spider-Man at The Venetian" takes place in what sounds like a sorcerer's tower:

Like all of Las Vegas, The Venetian was a jangle of seemingly random effects designed to heighten and exploit irrationality: the days that felt like nights and the nights that felt like days; the penny slots and the cash machines that spat out hundred-dollar bills; the grand hotel rooms that cost so little and made you feel so big. The point of it all was to alter your perception of your chances and your money.

There are even magic weapons - - Jamie's and Charley's business was so small, that they had difficulty doing business with the larger Wall Street Firms. "There was this impenetrable fortress you had either to scale or dig underneath." To deal with those firms, they needed an ISDA, or International Swaps and Derivatives Association." Jamie and Charley called it "The hunting license."

All in all, the book is an impressive example of how a skilled writer can turn almost anyone and anything into a tale of high adventure. "The Big Short" is $15 at Amazon.

A day at Sea World

My family spent Saturday at Sea World. On the plus side, there's a whole heck of a lot to do. My kids' favorites were Sea Lions Live, Shark Encounter, and the rides and climbing equipment in Sesame Street land. The Sea Lions Live show was particularly good, enjoyable for young and old. The redheaded star on 6/12 deserves a raise.

On the other hand, the efforts of the park designers to extort money are so, so tacky. Food costs a fortune, which I can accept, but fountain drinks don't come with lids or straws, so you can either risk spilling a jumbo coke on yourself, or buy a new drink at each destination. The meat at the smokehouse restaurant was great big globs of fat.

The Shamu show features a movie about a kid and his precious (ugly) carved necklace and some sort of vague message about believing in . . . something. As you exit, vendors pressure you into buying the necklace.

The Sea Lions Live show (which again, was otherwise excellent), features an extended scene about people (and an otter) buying a Pepsi:



If you want a decent seat at the shows, you have to get there at least 20 minutes early. During that time, there's no entertainment at most of the shows, including the Blue Horizons show that's so popular you have to get a wristband when you enter the park. So, for at least 20 minutes, you have to sit there entertaining your kids - - all so vendors can hawk shockingly priced merchandise:



All in all, it was a satisfying day, but I definitely rank it far below Disneyland and Lego Land as Southern California destinations.

If Karl Marx wrote Ender's Game (review roundup)

Cory Doctorow was kind enough to send me a copy of his latest novel, For The Win. I've enjoyed all of his books, and this is no exception. If you're like me, and you prefer reading with as little knowledge as possible, then simply imagine if Karl Marx wrote a mashup of Ender's Game and Wall Street (with just a dash of Cryptonomicon and Spook Country).

But if you'd like to know a little more, For The Win is a tale of gold farmers in the near future, fighting for the right to unionize and earn a fair wage. Their battle takes place as much in the real world as in cyberspace (Cory imagines several MMOs, including Super Mario and Alice in Wonderland-themed worlds).

It seems like every mention of unions nowadays is accompanied by the conventional wisdom that unions are relics of a bygone age, full of the greedy autoworkers and teachers and state employees responsible for destroying the country's economy. For The Win is a bit of fresh air, reminding that unions actually serve a crucial purpose in securing a fair wage for the weak, and that a much harder look should be given at the CEOs riding around in corporate jets while their businesses burned.

Of course, For The Win is also a fast-paced near-future science fiction tale taking place in exotic lands. Cory's praised William Gibson for pointing out that the best science fiction is really about the present,* and Gibson's influence is strongly seen here. You can download a copy of For The Win for free, and the hardcover's only $12 at Amazon.

Here's a few more reviews:

1. Wolverine Origins Volume 5 Deadpool: The first five issues are fun - - like an episode of Itchy and Scratchy starring Wolverine and Deapool, drawn by Steve Dillon. But the last two issues were drawn by Steven Segovia and tell the origin tale of Wolverine's son Daaken. I didn't much care for the art, and had zero interest in finding out what happens in volume 6. $13 at Amazon.

2. Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings: I actually bought this to teach my son a lesson about licensed properties, and how video games based on movie characters are almost always terrible. Based on reviews, I was expecting a disaster, and in many ways, that's what the game is - - gamefreezing bugs that required me to turn off the system, lackluster graphics, frustrating camera, unresponsive controls, and lots of instant deaths. However, once I accepted the game for what it was, I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. Although the ad campaign for the game trumpeted its "Havok engine" and indicated it would be a great platformer, the game's really nothing of the sort. It's a modern day version of Dragon's Lair, starring Indiana Jones. For $20, I recommend you buy it at Amazon.

3. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. I read this for my book club. Here's some fan art. You should not buy the book.

4. The Scar: China Mieville is the only author to win the UK's most prestigious science fiction prize three times, yet he hardly gets any blog love, and I think I've seen fan art once. It's a terrible shame. His books are thrilling and challenging and full of imaginative characters and locales. I recently reread The Scar and loved every moment of it. Buy it for $8 at Amazon.

*I mean, just this week, stories on my Google Reader feed included Amateur Astronomers Spot Super Secret X-37B Space Shuttle Replacement, Russians encouraging the US to use a nuclear bomb to stop the oil leak in the gulf, how to use a laser pointer to make an egg glow in the dark, UK School Wants To Fingerprint Kids Who Take Out Library Books, scientist created artificial life, Japan wants to build a robotic moon base.

Zero Per Zero railway maps (review roundup)

Railway maps by Zero Per Zero: Seoul, Manhattan, Tokyo and Hokkaido. You can find them on sale as maps, posters, mousepads, and more at Japanistic and ShopEssentials, which was kind enough to send me Tokyo. The map came packaged in a box, secured in a shipping tube, and as you can see, the maps are gorgeous.

And two more reviews:

1. Batman and Robin, Vol. 1: Batman Reborn: I love everything Frank Quitely draws. Unfortunately, he only drew half of the volume. Grant Morrison is tremendously overrated. 34% off at Amazon.

2. Hasbro's Iron Man 2 Movie Series action figures are horrendously made. I got two for my boys, and noticed at the time that they were surprisingly cheap. There's a good reason. The Iron Man Mark III is so loose in the torso that you can spin his upper body like a top. And his hands fall right out of the wrists and had to be glued in place.

*You can read more of my reviews here.

*Buy vintage globes at eBay.

BPRD's success, summarized by John Arcudi

In the afterword to BPRD Volume 8: Killing Ground, John Arcudi nicely summarizes why BPRD is so good, and why the offerings from DC and Marvel so, so stale:

See, [Mike Mignola] didn't bring me on to help him create trademarks that were to be exploited and safeguarded in perpetuity. He didn't want a status quo for the team. He didn't want stagnation. His goal, our goal, was for us to develop characters that would be complex and interesting enough to generate their own stories. And, if we were lucky, the stories would be interesting enough to attract readers.

BPRD Volume 8 is tremendous, and 32% off at Amazon.

Fargo/Bullit mashup (link roundup)

Fargo/Bullit mashup by Mike Puncekar. See also: Redesigned Street Fighter characters.

And a few more links:

1. Angus MacLane posted more Lego CubeDudes: Dreadnocks from G.I. Joe, The Atom, Namor, and Plastic Man.

2. Star Wars toy patents. Via.

3. I was pretty disappointed with Dreamworks' How to Train Your Dragon. The dragon designs are lackluster, and the story is cliched and manipulative (as basic as having a mean person kick a puppy to make you feel sad). I have no desire to see any moment of it again. My 3 and 5 year olds barely tolerated it. Cartoonists, it's time for a story that's not about the hottest girl throwing herself at the super geek. You could do young boys a service by suggesting realistic techniques for winning a girl's heart. You know - - something other than using a dragon to abduct them.

*Previously: Japanese poster for Bullitt.

*Buy Plastic Man toys at eBay.

Thumbs up for You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried (review roundup)

I recently finished a review copy of Susannah Gora's You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried: The Brat Pack, John Hughes, and Their Impact on a Generation. It's excellent, and I don't even like John Hughes movies, which I always found to be really sad. Here's two of my favorite anecdotes:

A scene in Some Kind of Wonderful called for Eric Stoltz's character to paint a picture of Lea Thompson's character. Director Howie Deutch rejected painting after painting (from seven different painters) as inadequate, before eventually settling on a painting as suitably depicting Thompson's beauty. Deutch and Thompson later married.

Hughes hired David Anderle of A&M Music to create the soundtrack for Ferris Beuller's Day Off. Anderle hired Robert Smith of The Cure to write a song to play during the museum scene. Meanwhile, Hughes asked Anderle, who had been the music supervisor on two of Hughes' previous movies, to arrange for A&M to work exclusively for him. When Anderle declined, explaining that A&M was a major record company, Hughes ended their working relationship and friendship. And so, the Robert Smith song was not used in the movie.

Highly recommended, and 34% off at Amazon.

And a few more reviews:

1. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: I finally watched this to see if it was too scary for my kids (yes). It failed even my very low expectations. Here's a few reasons: (1) It's a bad imitation of The Mummy, not an Indiana Jones movie; (2) Indy's behavior toward Ray Winston's Mac character made no sense, and indeed the character was entirely superfluous; (3) I'm immune to Shia LaBeouf's charms. The Star Wars prequels get a raw deal, and are superior to 4-6 in many ways. But this movie was entirely meritless.

2. Doctor 13: Architecture & Mortality by Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang: Probably the worst-written comic I've ever tried to read. Cliff Chiang draws beautiful women, though.

3. BPRD: The Black Flame: Another great entry in the Hellboy/BPRD family. 32 % off at Amazon.

4. Lego Indiana Jones and Lego Batman for the Wii: Not quite as good as Lego Star Wars. The puzzles in Lego Batman are too similar, and the hub world is way too big. Controls in general, and especially during fighting, seem off in Indiana Jones. Still, my oldest is pretty happy playing them. Available for less than $20 at Amazon.

5. Wii Sports Resort: Filled with a huge variety of very fun games. My favorites are ping pong, archery, and sword fighting. But the controls on some of the games, especially the jetski don't work well. $3 off at Amazon.

*See more of my reviews here.

Legoland: The most competitive place on Earth

Spent the day at Legoland with my family (well, half the day at Legoland, and the other half driving*). It was my first time there. It's an interesting theme park because almost every ride we went on has a competitive element to it - - in the cars, kids can pass or bump into each other; you can also pass or ram each other in the boats; on the "power towers," you can see how many times you can hoist your seat up within the allotted time; on the sky cruiser, you can peddle fast enough to catch the dragon in front of you; and at the fire academy, you compete to drive your fire engine and put out a burning building. There's also an excellent play structure filled with rope bridges, slides, and platforms.

My family loved it. The competitive element turns fairly mundane rides into exciting opportunities to exercise and work as a team against other people on the ride. And it wasn't just us, everywhere we looked we saw kids and adults with huge grins on their faces as they rammed each other or strained to pump their fire engine motors. (The ride workers encourage the competition, emphasizing who has won.)

Disneyland has better brands for its rides, but in almost every other way, Legoland is superior. I already mentioned the excitement of competition and the fact that it turns rides into a fun form of exercise. The park is also noticeably cleaner and fresher, particularly where food is served. And Legoland doesn't try to steal money from you at every opportunity. There are places for kids to play with Lego, for free, throughout the park. There's also an arcade where you can play various Lego videogames for free.

If it wasn't so far away, we probably would have bought season passes on the spot.

*To pass the time, while everyone else slept, I listened to podcasts of the NPR game show "Wait, wait, don't tell me."

Sanjay Patel's Ramayana: Divine Loophole (review roundup)

Clearly, this is the year of the Ramayana. First, Nina Paley brought it to life in the tremendous Sita Sings the Blues. And now I have high praise for the review copy I received of Sanjay Patel's interpretation of the tale, called Ramayana: Divine Loophole. Patels' version of the Ramayana features over 100 illustrations of demons, gods, and avatars, all drawn in the same style as the illustrations you see above. I loved it, my four-year-old loved it, and my three-year-old loved it. It's currently 34% off at Amazon,and any book that makes reading to my kids this much fun is worth its weight in gold. Now all we need is a set of vinyl figures based on the designs.

Relatedly, at Sanjay's website you'll find art from The Little Book of Hindu Deities, as well as desktop wallpapers:



And finally, here's an interview Sanjay gave in 2001 describing his education.

Here's a few more reviews:

1. Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga: Once upon a time I would have been excited about Bioshock 2 or Mass Effect 2 or Dante's Inferno. But now that I have two young kids, I look at video games very differently. Lego Star Wars is perfect. It's fun and safe for young kids to play, packed with replayability, and even better - - it's filled with puzzle solving, economics, and simple math to painlessly teach. Two people can play cooperatively and either can jump out or back in to play at any time. At only $18 at Amazon,I can't say enough nice things about it. In fact, I just ordered Lego Indiana Jones, also $18 at Amazon.

2. Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars: Well, this was really a can't miss. What makes it so much fun? Well, for example, Frank West (Dead Rising) can summon zombies and put on Mega Man's armor. Joe the Condor (Gatchaman) has a gun and can call in his plane for a bombing run. You can play as screen-filling giant robots, too. Plus, depending on the control set up and difficulty setting you use, it's so easy a button masher that three year olds can win fights. 8% off at Amazon.

3. American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood (review copy): Disappointing. A book about a guy who had this many affairs with starlets shouldn't be as boring to read as a Wikipedia entry. 34% off at Amazon.

*See more of my reviews here.