utter randomonium

To celebrate the release of Lane Smith’s new book, It’s a Book, Macmillan Publishers are celebrating the first annual Unplug Day tomorrow. The tag line is, “unplug. unwind. recharge. read a book!”

I prefer to read print books and do not own an ebook reader, but I still won’t be participating in this. It’s on a Tuesday. I can’t go computer-free on a workday. (But I may spend the evening reading. That could be nice…)

Click for larger version

Hat tip to Book Patrol.

Tomorrow is the very first Read Comics in Public Day. It’s simple: read a comic in public, have somebody take your picture, and then email the photo to them.

I will definitely be participating, if only because I’ll be at Baltimore Comic Con. (Incidentally, I’ll be at table A191 in the Artists Alley with BS/OD.) What about you? Will you be reading comics in public?

Hat tip to Comics Alliance.

If you’re headed to Baltimore Comic Con next weekend (August 28-29), stop by the Binary Souls / Other Dimensions table in the artist alley. I’ll be there all weekend. If you ask nicely, I’ll even draw something for you.

To my postcard-loving readers:

From time to time I will be doing more art experiments, and many of them will be on postcard-sized paper because I seem to enjoy the smaller canvas. I have absolutely nothing to do with most of these cards beyond stuffing them in an accordion file and forgetting about them. So I figure I might as well mail them. Yesterday’s experiment has already been mailed out, but if you could like to receive any of my future experiments, please let me know. I can’t promise it’ll be beautiful but it will be original. And if my mailing list is short enough, you’ll receive cards multiple times. (Though if you’re outside the USA, it’ll depend heavily on the current status of my wallet.)

And it won’t just be the experiments. Sometimes I just get a wild hair and decide to start making postcards. Mailart calls and swaps are all well and good but sometimes I feel like being more random than that.

Before you ask, yes, I am already a member of sendsomething and PostCrossing. I do use them from time to time, but I figured maybe somebody out there might be interested in receiving random mail from yours truly and felt safer about giving their address to me than posting it online.

I guess I should mention the obvious: I won’t share/sell/forward your information to anybody. And you don’t have to send anything in return. Just one request: if you throw it in the trash, please don’t tell me about it. :)

You may have noticed that I’m a member of BookCrossing. (How you would have missed it I’m not sure.) BookCrossing has an International Anniversary Convention every year on the weekend nearest its birthday (April 17) and in 2011 it’s going to be here in Washington, DC.

It’s going to be awesome.

First off, you really have to check out the BC in DC website because it’s gorgeous. Kate’s done such an amazing job.

Second, we’re holding an auction to help raise funds for the convention in order to keep registration fees down.

There are eight themed boxes in all, with bidding open for two weeks each. I’m sure some of my friends would be interested in the Harry Potter box, the Books to Movies box, or the Cooking box. There are a few I’m thinking of bidding on as gifts for other people. You don’t have to be a BookCrosser to win. And if you’re local or I’ll be seeing you in person, you don’t even have to pay shipping – I’ll bring it to you.

In related news, we are collecting Choose Your Own Adventure-type books. They don’t have to be that specific brand and they don’t even have to be children’s books – just the CYOA style. If you come across any at thrift stores or yard sales, please send them our way:

(Or you can send them to me if you’d prefer. Either way is fine.)

I am so excited about this convention, I can’t even tell you. Even if you can’t attend or donate or bid in the auction, I’d really appreciate it if you helped spread the word. Link, Digg, Stumble, Tweet, or whatever – just please tell your friends. It’s going to be so much fun.

I’m off to Amsterdam to attend the 2010 BookCrossing Convention. I’ll probably have at least intermittent email access, but I won’t be doing any blogging while I’m there.

And before you ask: no, I’m not concerned about robbers seeing this because (1) you don’t know where I live, (2) my dear husband will be home the whole time, and (3) I don’t own anything worth stealing. Well, unless you count all the tons of books I give away for free. :P

I’m off to Japan for vacation. I’ll probably have at least intermittent email access, but I won’t be doing any blogging while I’m there.

And before you ask: no, I’m not concerned about robbers seeing this because (1) you don’t know where I live, (2) I’ve duped my friends into house-sitting, and (3) I don’t own anything worth stealing. Well, unless you count all the tons of books I give away for free. :P

In honor of my trip, here are some terribly trippy (and somewhat nauseating) animated stereograms of old Japan. Enjoy.

A quick post to let you know that you should support Shaggy in the Webcomic Planet’s War 2010. He’s the artist behind Binary Souls / Other Dimensions, one of my favorite webcomics. Read all about it here. Thanks!

Sweeney Todd
Signature Theatre
4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington, VA
February 9 – April 4, 2010
Buy Tickets

My husband and I saw this show on Thursday night, the 11th, and thoroughly enjoyed it. We’d decided to go because we’d enjoyed the movie and knew the play would be longer, fuller, and better. And indeed, it was. Staged in a black box-style setting with sparse but deliciously detailed sets, we were absorbed in the ambiance of the show even before the lights went out: smoke machines, blood dripping into buckets, randomly dimming light fixtures, and assorted noises set the mood. The play started all at once, and instantly we were pulled into the action of this crazy musical horror-comedy.

The cast, over all, was just great. The ensemble was very tight, though sometimes they were singing so quickly I couldn’t understand them. Sweeney Todd himself (Edward Gero) had some of the best facial expressions, adding humor and depth to character. This was when I was especially glad for the intimate setting, because I was able to actually see his face more often than not. Mrs. Lovett (Sherri L. Edelen) was simply a delight. I was introduced to this character via Helena Bonham Carter, whose singing voice in that role, er, leaves a bit to be desired. Edelen was able to balance the ridiculous accent, the droll inflection, and the crude mannerisms with a striking voice that was both funny and pleasant to hear.

Now, while I feel Tobias Ragg (Sam Ludwig) did a marvelous job and has a beautiful voice, he was simply too old to play the character. Toby is supposed to be, at the very most, a teenager, but the fellow playing him was clearly well into his 20s. This is no fault of the actor’s, to be sure, but it did distract from the realism a little bit. The other youngish male lead, Anthony (Gregory Maheu), looked distractingly like Jude Law. This says nothing about his performance, which was fine, but it’s all I really have to say about him.

The villains were fun: I actually preferred Chris Van Cleave’s Judge Turpin over Alan Rickman’s (and I love me some Rickman, so that’s saying something), and Beadle (Chris Sizemore) repeatedly cracked me up with his falsetto shenanigans. Saving the best for last, Johanna (Erin Driscoll) was absolutely lovely. Many of the notes she had to sing were incredibly high, but she nailed every one solidly and beautifully.

All in all, a wonderful show. Go see it if you can!

I totally slacked on this and forgot to post this in time for people to actually sign up, and for that I apologize, but I suppose I might as well let y’all know what I’m up to this month: Thing-a-Day. Based on an idea by the incomparable Ze Frank (whose videoblog The Show was simply excellent and I miss it), the challenge is to create something new every day for the entire month of February and post it publicly on the community blog. It doesn’t have to be a big thing – I plan on doing a small drawing each day in a new sketch book I got for free – but it does have to be something and it has to be completed. (At least, I assume it does. You can’t really claim to have created something until it’s finished, right?)

Anyway, I’m participating. This year’s blog format is on posterous, so everything’s going there. I’m uploading them to my gallery as well, because I am just that kind of exhibitionist. The scans aren’t very good but that’s not really the point. The only really irritating part of all this is that I appear to be in a much later (earlier?) timezone than posterous, meaning that my 3am post on February 1st was timestamped the 31st. What do folks in Europe do? Oh well.

If I remember, I might post a month-end wrap-up about the experience, but if this post’s slackitude is any indication, you can expect that it to actually happen sometime around mid-April.