Sunday, June 22, 2008

My 5-Second Review of Get Smart



Steve Carell: so hot he's out of CONTROL.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Gods & Monsters



STAN WINSTON RETROSPECTIVE

My cubicle walls are decorated with drawings I've done and images I've loved for a long time. Sketches of zombies at prom and vampire co-eds face Van Gogh's Starry Night, some screengrabs of Tim Burton movies, various posters boasting comic book characters I love in rich black and cream or bold color. At first they were just the sum of their parts: pretty distractions from the workaday world I've gotten myself into. But yesterday, something clicked: they all shared color schemes. The lines had some kinship to them. It looked like they could be photos from the glossy pages of a brochure for my brain: a travelogue of my inner landscape.

I love moments of clarity like that. When you realize you have been shaped by people you've never met and never will: that someone's imagination spread and spurred your own. It makes me proud to be a human, and thrilled to be myself, and happy to be joining in the cycle and experience-however stumblingly slow.

I don't have any Stan Winston stuff on my office walls. But the man features prominently in my travelogue. Looking back at these images, I realize he had a heavy hand in writing the book.