Sonny and Wendy on the internet

Click here to listen to my old buddy Sonny, aka "Krillin", Strait talk with Wendy Pini about how they met and Elfquest's influence on his work.

At the Request of Richard Pini

Richard Pini, co-creator and publisher of Elfquest, is asking that series' fans spread the word about the comic's availability for free online at http://www.elfquest.com. By year's end, all 200 issues created between 1978 and 2006, will be made available on the site, with updates every Friday. I cannot recommend the seres highly enough. It is centered in Native American, Japanese and Indian tropes, turning traditional fantasy on its head. And it's drawn and written by a woman, what more do you want?

E Gary Gygax: 1938-2008

Alright, I know I should be diligently grading papers right now, but while taking a break perusing the usual sites, I was halted by the announcement of Gary Gygax's passing on rpgnow.com. His work, the quintessential Dungeons & Dragons books, is responsible as any for my interest in text and literature. The first edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide was the fist book not assigned in school that I valiantly attempted to read cover to cover. It's fitting that if he had to leave us, he'd do so on GM's Day. A world of fanboys [and girls] mourns.

Illinois is ass backwards

I had a very pleasant, productive conversation with Suzy Woods, Visiting Director of Disability Services at UIS, this afternoon; during the course of which I discovered that UIS Lincoln Residence Hall is indeed ADA compliant, but here's what that means:

LRH is ADA compliant because residence halls are classified as "transient housing." In the words of Eddie Murphy, "Let's talk about that." Other spaces classified in like manner are motels. The term "transient" is most often used to refer to .... come on readers, you know this one ... the homeless! So, the government considers students residing in residence halls analogous to homeless people living in motels, or ...can somebody say "crack house!"?

My home state has laws and procedures in place that require residence halls to meet conditions above the "transient housing" mark, but Illinois still has nine institutions dedicated to housing the mentally disabled, the kind of places no doubt that were revealed as cesspools in New York state in the late 70s. Why? Because these
"institutions" are staffed by well paid union workers.

I had high hopes when I moved to Illinois, a union state. I now see it as a rheumatic old man chocking on red tape.

Language as play part 2: an intellectual discussion of Hentai?

I didn't believe it either, but at the bottom of the page linked below, you will find an audio commentary that amounts to an intellectual discussion of the sociological implications of Hentai in 21st century Japanese society within the context of tabletop role playing. If that isn't a white nerds' version of "Your Momma," I don't know what is.

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=54698

Of course, I haven't bought the pdf advertised above because I don't want to spend $13 on something that amounts to a bunch of zeros and ones [I've used "amounts to" a lot in this post. I must be thinking in terms of quantity, like money, or maybe it's lack of sleep. I apologize of the lack of finesse.]. I'll go "halvesies" with anyone interested though. Then again, I fully support paying for intellectual property. Contradictions, I know.

The positive side to being broke

Broke people are forced to be creative. Hip Hop was born that way [and I mean real Hip Hop, not the "booty-butt cheeks" crap marketed to board white kids with too much disposable income]; inter-city arts programs were cut, and kids in the South Bronx had to make due with what they could find cheap--turn tables, mics, etc.

So, to my point. Valentine's Day is tomorrow, and I have about twenty-four bucks in my bank account until payday. I can't afford to take my wife out to dinner or buy her a Reno 911 DVD, something that I would normally do. I wrote her this poem:

A Soft Place to Fall

Twilight hours—anxiety all the rage,

The warm smell of you

Bundled with mammal care,

In quilted generations—

Thread count, thousands of days;

Krishna is the taste of water,

You’re the waterfall

Because you’ve given me

A soft place to fall.

My cold skeleton meets your flesh.

You babble lucid affections—

Sleepy syllables give weight to love,

Heavy too, at the wake of sunrise.

Only we, or maybe a guinea pig,

Would have it so good—

Marriage isn’t mystical;

It’s sharing life’s deliciousness

Amid the struggle.

God is no fool,

Only plays one on TV.

Our trajectory is backward

Into transcendence, you and I.

She said it made her year [and yes, she gave me permission to post it here].

Still a few good people

I am happy to report that, even here in Springfield, there are a few good people. This morning my wife's car wouldn't start, and Triple A was taking its own sweet time responding. We called our apartment management office [Apartment Mart of Springfield, 1600 Toronto RD.] to ask if someone would jump our car. They had someone out within five minutes. I've lived in a few apartments in my day, but no management company has been this helpful.

"Robotech is back now"

For the true anime enthusiast, I wrote the following essay in one sitting as an example for an assignment prompt in English 102. If I had to score it, I'd give it a solid B:

Robotech: Timeless American Sci-Fi

February 27 2008 will mark the re-release of the Robotech tabletop role-playing game by Palladium books. The original game was my first foray into role-playing at the age of twelve. A friend had pointed out an ad for the game in the first issue of Marvel Comics’ Visionaries featuring penciled images of the animated series from Japan’s quintessential image: giant gun-toting robots that diehard fan boys like myself knew signified a sci-fi epic matched perhaps only by those two franchises beginning with “Star” [“anime” would not enter American pop-culture vocabulary for another five years]. Over the past twenty-one years, I’ve delved into both hardier and sleeker game systems: three and a half versions of D&D, FUDGE, Runequest, etc, but, for all of the admittedly clunky mechanics of Palladium’s house system under the hood of the Robotech game then and now, the prospect of encountering it again amounts to intellectual comfort food—the bubbly, crusty pan of mac ’n cheese fresh from the oven that any of us over thirty know we’d be feeling in the morning. But the memories of friendships forged in countless hours of narrative creativity are worth the retread.

Now, most would hesitate to call role-playing games “intellectual,” but these books were the collective catalyst for transforming a twelve year-old, who wasn’t a recreational reader, into an English instructor—they facilitated the discovery of the juxtaposition of imagination and language. This all started with the Robotech franchise: the result of producer Carl Macek’s efforts to produce a plot line that would weave three distinct Japanese animated series licensed to Harmony Gold USA into a cohesive eighty-five, twenty-two minute, episode run for an audience of Ragan-era adolescents that has sense spawned three DVD collector’s editions, more than twenty novels, plus a plethora of other media and merchandise over twenty-two years, including an upcoming feature film with Toby Maguire attached to produce.

Prior to Macek’s handy work similarities between the series were accidental: all depict giant, transformable robots, or mecha, piloted by humans fending off an alien threat. Macek’s revision coalesced with the term “Robotech” to signify the oft unexplainable alien-derived technology seen on screen. Each series became a “generation,” or act, of the unfolding plot. Earth’s clash with an armada of fifty-foot giants leads to a near-totalitarian Earth government’s post-apocalyptic confrontation with the remnant of the erudite civilization responsible for those giants twelve years later. Decades afterwards, Earth is enslaved by the entirely alien enemy of both previous invaders. These aliens acquiesce not from force, but prompted by love to self-discovery. Hopefully the uninitiated reader has gleaned a skeleton of the plot’s intricacy from that brief synopsis. Mecek notably conceives this generational approach two years before Gene Rodenberry’s re-launch of Star Trek under the TNG mantle. Robotech’s enduring success is remarkable if only because the whole thing was designed as a means to turn a quick buck, an American purgative.

By personal taste alone, I would rank Robotech among the top five timeless American produced sci-fi franchises, but the question remains if its place may be objectively assessed as such. If I’m going to say “Robotech” in the same breath as Star Wars, I may as well invoke the criteria Roger Ebert establishes to assert that films place in cinematic history: those of “technical watershed” and “deceptively simple storytelling”(Ebert). I would add that Robotech fans also approach it with equal ferocity as Star Wars and Star Trek fans relish those franchises.

By today’s CGI standards, even the “Remastered” versions of the draftsperson’s precision hand drawn cells appear grainy and primitive, but few had seen their like in 1985. The famed original Transformers series had aired the year before, but its detailed depictions of now classic giant robots paled in comparison to those in Robotech. Battle scenes sported multiple mechs form different vantage points. Of course, this meticulous work is the product of an ideology informing the animation, the point of contact for the Americanized plot: animation audiences can be sophisticated enough to appreciate artistry. This transplanted innovation would not be seen in entirely homespun animation arguably until Warner Bros. Batman: The Animated Series in the early 90s.

Robotech differs from previous Japanese animated properties re-packaged for the US market because, while plot elements were changed, with the exception of a few now laughable stock shower scenes in the second “generation,” the footage of the original Japanese parent series, though sometimes spiced with stock footage for the sake of continuity, remained intact when aired. That meant relatively graphic violence, unapologetic deaths of principal characters in war, psychological instability and drug addiction, long term effects of grief, the now-stale anime trope—the naïve alien in drag, etc. Robotech was pulled from some affiliates in the South because of the series’ inclusion of an inter-racial romantic relationship and a transsexual heroic character.

Despite such ill-founded controversy, Robotech’s plot, like Star Wars’, is “deceptively simple.” In episode one, nineteen year-old Rick Hunter, flying circus ace, finds himself amid an interstellar conflict neither side understands. The bulk of the first thirty-six episodes, with or without the giant mechs in the scene, catalog Rick’s maturation over a decade. Episode thirty-seven introduces the half-alien Dana Sterling, who must confront her feelings of disenfranchisement as the only one of her kind. Similar themes are addressed with multiple characters throughout the series. There is no force here, or Vulcan mind-meld, but the theme that humanity as a quality, not a species, will prevail runs throughout Robotech. And perhaps because it is animated, Robotech depicts the human cost of war more responsibly than others in the sci-fi genre. Characters not only wounded, but bleed and react to injury realistically—no stun setting or instant cauterization.

Robotech’s sophistication does not exempt it from some of the prevalent shortcomings of sci-fi. It has the same dialog issues as Star Wars; just listen to the song lyrics—bad by anyone’s standard, even for the 80s. It doesn’t have guys in red shirts dropping dead every episode, but the overuse of spliced footage might infuriate even the most dedicated fan. Some of Mecek’s continuity elements are down-right silly. The prime example is “protoculture.” In the original 1982 Japanese plot of Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, the term signified culture predicated on procreation through natural means; in Robotech it refers to a distilled substance used to facilitate the link between pilot and machine. Fans debate that one heatedly on the internet.

The combination of the plot and painstaking animation attracted a broad fan-base, which is,though smaller than that of other enduring franchises, intensely loyal. Blogger Peter Rojas has this to say: “You seriously don't want to know how much of my spare time I devoted to tracking down even the most mundane details about[Robotech]”(Rojas). The Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles DVD (2006), a new animated feature, has brought the project full circle after a twenty year hiatus: original animation is now being produced to fit the Robotech storyline. Such a feat would not have been possible without fan demand. If for no other reason, Robotech will be remembered as the gateway to Dragon Ball, Cowboy BeBop, Death Note, etc. for American audiences.

A Deeper Knowledge of Ourselves

This weekend, one of our martial arts instructor's thirteen year-old son left this world. He had lived with Downs Syndrome, and his body expired from pneumonia. In Islam it is understood that individuals with profound mental-emotional challenges are Abraham's righteous whose presence among us stays the wrath of God because they are incapable of sin--if one accepts that true, or mortal, sin requires awareness of the consequences involved. Death is always inconvenient, but when one of these people leaves, innocence is somehow less accessible, wrapped in human form. The danger of this line of discourse is, of course, the tendency to metaphorize the individual--the mentally challenged are not the chorus of a perpetual Disney musical; rather their smiles amid tantrums, excrement and the stuff of life we try so diligently to avoid, call use to a deeper knowledge of ourselves. For those like my friend, whose spiritual journey necessitated the care of her son, these righteous are an invaluable mirror of love of God, perhaps more so than the most eloquent homily or treatise--arguing with unconditional love is exceedingly difficult. Please make Paula and her family the focus of some of your prayers or transcendental well-wishes.

Language as Play: What is Evil?

Monday evening, a former student interviewed me for her "Writing in the Disciplines" paper; she asked what separates writing in English from writing in other disciplines. My answer was the notion of language as play. Here's an example:

In Wendi Pini's Elfquest, Savah, the Mother of Memory, tells the youth Suntop to view evil as the absence of love. If we accept that definition for the sake of argument, the next question would logically be: what is love [club track from the 90s plays in my head]. The stock answer is of course: God is love; well then who, or what, is God? According to St Anselm, "God is one then who no great being exists" [I borrowed that from Dr. Howard J Resnick]. So God is the "supreme being, or person; so what qualifies personhood? ... and so on.

Why I Like Barack Obama

For those of you who don't know, I do hope Senator Barack Obama is the next President of the United States but for perhaps less than obvious reasons, having little to do with his political affiliation:

1. A few weeks ago, Senator Obama was quoted as saying, "it's always a good time for Stevie Wonder;" I firmly agree with this statement. A regiment of "Songs to the Key of Life" and "Music of My Mind" buoyed my spirits form catastrophic depression in the mid 90s.

2. Rapper-activist-poet Mos Def prophesied on Bil Maher's "Real Time" that Obama is too sexy not to win. This bears out over the last several presidential elections: Bill Clinton is clearly sexier than Bush one and Dole; Gore, who won the popular vote in 2000, is sexier than Bush two, who even the most liberal of us must admit has the edge on Kerry. Name one candidate for president ever prettier than Barack Obama.

So what about Senator Clinton? Hilary Clinton is a Republican in Kennedy-democrat's clothing: she was on the board of directors of Wal-Mart for six years for God's sake, and her health care plan may as well have been co-written by Newt Gingrich. Granted, as a lawyer, Senator Clinton did groundbreaking work for child advocacy, but as a politician, she's no woman from Hope. John Stewart is right on when he said that if Hilary weren't running, Bill Clinton would be Senator Obama's number one supporter.

It may be construed as cliche, or even racist to say this, but I mean the following statement with only the most profound eloquence: Obama simply has more "soul."

Global Warming

With the temperature fluctuations this week in the Mid West, anyone who says global warming is a myth deserves a jab-cross-hook combination to the face. I fear that Mother Earth is having a terrific bout of diarrhea and the human species is the pathogen she is trying to expel.

Seven Years to Old Age

Well today, around 9:45 PM I think, marks my 33rd birthday, also referred to as "crucifixion age" [and do to the astrological return of Saturn to it's natal position due to occur in the imminent present--whatever that means--there may be some metaphorical weight to that signifier.] But rather than snub my Christian readers out of hand, I'll instead focus on Srila Prabupada's assertion that preliminary old age begins at 40. That leaves me with seven years of youth, according to Vedic wisdom, which I guess is better than the Unitarian Universalist Association's ever-enlightened claim that youth ends at 35. I'm 33, still broke, and my only "claim to fame" is that I know the guy who played Kerillin on Dragon Ball Z, but I have an amazing marriage and a catalog of people who have afforded me the chance to enrich their lives, and in turn, have made me a more imaginative, empathic person. I am reminded of the Tantra, not the Alister Crowley pop-sex magick, the ancient meditative process [have I written about this before on this blog, oh well]. Tantra contends that when we engage anyone else, we conceive a spiritual child with that person; as relationships grow, the "child" matures--so you get the metaphor [that's what a lot of mystical stuff is--metaphor, those who have eyes, let them see, etc. etc.] : if one neglects relationship, the child starves. So I reflect on the marvelous souls who have shared reflections of themselves with me, through academic discourse, a friendly nod, a vital embrace, the acute pause punctuating laughter, to the strictest confidence. Thank you.

Me on the Radio with Wendi and Richard Pini

This morning Elfquest creators Wendi and Richard Pini talked with me about Vedic influences on Elfquest on the internet radio show Mr. Media. An mp3 of the broadcast is available here: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/mrmedia

Wendi and Richard also discuss their latest project, The Masque of the Red Death; their marriage and working relationship; their split with DC and Wendi as Red Sonia.

Lamentation of a Slave to Academia

Last night I received an email from a former student saying that my class was responsible for shifting her view of writing to "semi-enjoyable;" she said that I am the first teacher to challenge her and her thought processes. That is the second such email I've gotten from a student within the last three years that I can document from two vastly different universities. Pretty good track record, right, so why the lamentation?

This morning I checked my bank balance hoping to find my usual meager net pay of $756 deposited; I found half that. I was explained to me that I'd have the rest by Friday, but that's not my point. The average burnout point for teachers--those who don't teach primarily upper division and graduate courses--is three years. I've been doing it for nearly ten. I discovered this weekend that the GAs' in my wife's office net pay is my gross, and I think they get benefits, I don't.

The private sector is dumbfounded as to why otherwise qualified people are graduating universities unable to write affectively. Maybe, if we were paid what we're worth, commiserate with experience, education and the value of the skills, practical and meta-cognitive, that we facilitate, that would begin to change. I currently teach two sections with a total of 44 students registered. How much money do you suppose the university is making from my efforts? You do the math.

Don't get me wrong, I love what I do and those for whom I do it. And I know that my current supervisor is doing all he can to remedy the situation, but little is changing. I'm livid.

Elfquest

This afternoon, my wife took the most important exam of her professional career, the EPP, the licensing test for psychology. It's been a real lesson in powerlessness for me--I've baked cookies and banana bread for her while she studied; we've chanted together, but there was little more I could do to help, so I spent yesterday at Barnes & Noble reading the first of the Elfquest manga format graphic novels. By the end of it, I felt invigorated. The series is an American original that draws more from Native American and Vedic narrative and imagery than European. The story focuses on the relationships between characters as much as the action. It's sort of my latest obsession--I am diagnosed with OCD after all. If you're looking for an imaginative escape that's not a Peter Jacksonesque dumbed-down Tolkien, I recommend Elfquest. I found this nice video compiled by series co-creator Wendi Pini featuring art from the series:

http://www.veoh.com/videos/v1124493EEnKGKw3?searchId=4939942381780231482&rank=4

The Hare Krishna movement in 55 minutes

So if some of you have been following this blog and have picked up on the references to Hare Krishna but have no idea what it's about aside from a few foggy late-night memories of SNL reruns, I invite you to watch the following film, produced in 1983 detailing the biography of His Divine Grace AC Bhativedanta Srila Prabhupada:

http://www.krishna.com/node/1213

The events and sentiments described to my knowledge are represented accurately with the exception of the qualifications of the teachers at the ISKON primary school pre-1985, which is sheer propaganda, as students of the school during that era have told me personally.

So you're curious about non-conventional religious sects?

Over the past few days, I've been contemplating the subject matter of a presentation given by a couple of my now former students focusing, in part, upon the relationship between cults and conventional faith systems; theorizing that all traditions begin as cults, or "a system of religious worship directed towards a particular figure or object" (OED). Sound familiar? As the synoptic Gospels would have it, Jesus had twelve disciples [Bishops] with whom he indoctrinated his mysteries and a few hundred hangers on at best. Fast forward 2000 plus years, and we have as many sects of Christianity as there are indictments against Illinois public officials. The same is true of other enduring faith traditions, but how does one separate the "wheat from the chaff," so to speak? Here's some entirely unsolicited advice:

Look for children and the elderly:

A religious tradition that does not count children or the elderly among its members could be suspect, or a least radical, which isn't in and of itself, bad but can be indicative of deeper problems.

How much time or money does the community demand?

The key word here is "demand." Some may be inspired to give up worldly possessions or former associations, but if that is explicitly required, beware. When I was in college, a sect of the Church of Christ called "The Church of Christ Jesus" began soliciting membership from the campus community with a "back to the Bible" pitch. They would invite someone to a function and then systematically exclude him or her from friends and family with nightly group dates. Once someone decided to join the church, the congregation would surround the subject and vehemently accuse him or her of a number of sins. Once the person broke, they would build him or her back up by saying that only Jesus through their church can save him or her. Incidentally, this tactic is commonly used during hazing in fraternities and sororities.

Compelling theology or personality cult?

Founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness [a transplant of Bhrama Goudia Vaishna tradition of Bengal to the west], His Divine Grace A.C. Bhativedanta Swami Prabhupada, throughout his writing delineated the virtues and qualities of Krishna [God] and of the techniques of Bhakta yoga, but would not tolerate any suggestion that he was God. From his passing in 1977 until approximately 1990, his movement degraded itself into a series of competing personality cults, where Prabhupada's successors in some cases insinuated that they were God [those people are since long gone].

Where are the descenting voices?

A couple of years ago, I began attending a Bahia study group out of curiosity. Many of their ideas, particularly about marriage, I found compelling, but as I researched further into the canonical writings of the faith, I discovered an unflinching disdain for gay people; what's more, I the only support for gay faithful I could find was a website created by a non-Bahia for his lover. Now, my own faith tradition, the above mentioned Hare Krishna, isn't the most historically gay friendly sect out there, but gay-Vaishnavas have the second most active virtual Hare Krishna presence on the web, their own publication, and theological treatises written by prominent authorities in their support. The same may be said of gay Catholics, Baptists, etc. Descenting voices should be loud and clear.

Frankly, as HH Hridayananda das Goswami, a.k.a Dr. Howard J. Resnick, describes, why wouldn't God, the supreme parent, respond to the cries of his /her children regardless of the name used? Could you say "mom" as a two-day old?

108

I suppose it's customary to make some kind of New Year's statement on venue's such as this, so here goes:

It occurred to me a couple of minutes ago that today's date may be expressed as 108, the most sacred number to Vaishnavas and other Sanatana Dharma traditions originating on the Indian subcontinent, as the number of beads in a japa mala , etc.

I remember and thank those who help me recognize the sacred in my life, and my hope for everyone in 2008 is renewed vigor for that which is essentially meaningful and loving.

Hare Krishna; Hallelujah

Curt.