My Favorite TV Show: The Andy Griffith Show

As tough as it was for me to pick a favorite movie, I would've thought it would be just as difficult to pick a favorite TV show. I watch a lot of TV and it would be tough to pick a single, current show that I like better than the others. How do you pick between Castle, Modern Family, Cougar Town, Grey's Anatomy, and Doctor Who? Except for the two sitcoms, none of them are remotely like each other to even begin comparisons.

What makes it a lot easier though is adding in the nostalgia factor and awarding extra points for longevity. If a show that I grew up watching can still get the same response out of me all these years later, I have no problem proclaiming it the winner. And that's The Andy Griffith Show all the way. It still charms me and makes me laugh.

After the break: mollycoddling and nipping it in the bud.

Graphic Novel Conference

Just got back from the first ever Graphic Novel and Comic Writing and Illustrating Conference sponsored by The Loft Literary Center and the Hennepin County Library.

It began with an entertaining keynote by Gene Luen Yang (American Born Chinese, Prime Baby, Animal Crackers). He mostly talked about his own experience breaking into comics and his experimentation with self-publishing and mini-comics before pitching to a small publisher and finally landing the kind of big-publisher deal that involves an agent and an advance. I'd already heard some of that story in a short comic he did for the Animal Crackers collection, but it was much funnier the way he told it today. And very inspirational too in his accounts of how he kept looking for new ways to make and publish comics throughout his life.

He also reinforced what I've learned from Cownt Tales: that you can't make money self-publishing your own single-issue stuff. It's cheaper today with POD, but when Yang was doing it, he was spending $3000 to publish a single issue and only made about $400 back on the first one. By the third issue, he was barely clearing $200. Again, it's inspirational that he had that kind of passion to save that much money to put towards his dream, but from a business standpoint, it never paid off. He didn't even make money once a small publisher picked him up. All of that was for love and experience.

What else I learned, after the break.

Quote of the Week: Booo, Smiling!

You can get as dark and as biting as you want, and nobody will say, "That was a little too dark and biting." But one too many smiles, and you can start counting down to the first time you'll hear the word "saccharine." Booo, smiling!
--Linda Holmes, on growing tired of pop culture's infatuation with the "dark, cavernous emptiness that is the heart of mankind."

The Awesome List: Confronting Fears

Awesome Bookstores



One of you guys asked me about the picture of the bookstore that accompanied this post. That's another shot above. It's the Lello bookstore in Porto, Portugal and Mirage Bookmark has more pictures of it and other awesome bookstores around the world.

TV Win



I don't watch "reality" TV, but as soon as I can figure out what show this was, I plan to start. [Via Failblog, of course.]

Elsewhere...

Here's what else I've been up to online lately:

What Are You Reading?



Mini-reviews of Mystery Society, Perhapanauts Special: Molly's Story, and Agents of Atlas, Volume 3.

Prince of Persia
 


This week's Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs was about the Prince of Persia graphic novel. I was initially disappointed that it lacks the swashbuckling quality of the movie, but I learned to like it anyway.

Old Sinner



Scrooge's nephew comes for a visit in the 1971 animated special.

My New Favorite Movie: Finding Neverland

The title of this post sort of implies that I've only recently seen Finding Neverland for the first time. What's actually the case is that I just watched it again (my wife's a big Kate Winslet fan and we're working our way chronologically through her filmography) and was reminded of how much I like it. More than Casablanca even, for reasons I'll mention in a minute.

But Casablanca has been My Favorite Movie for a very long time and I'm not a ship whose course is easy to change once it's set. I still love the movie for all the reasons I mentioned before, but Finding Neverland hits me on a much deeper, more personal level and that's why it gets the top spot. I can more clearly illustrate why that is by re-posting my review of the film (lost in the unsearchable world of LiveJournal) from right after I'd seen it for the first time.

Which I'll do right after the break:

Twin Cities Adventure

I know this doesn't apply to or interest a great number of you, so I'll be sparing with this feature, but I occasionally run across cool, adventuresome things going on in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area and figured it would be nice to stick them all together.

Caribbean restaurants



Twin Cities food critic Dara Moskowitz-Grumdahl recently spent some time talking to the Current (more on them in a second) about great places to get Caribbean food. You can hear the whole conversation below, but the short version is that she talked about Caribe, Smalley's Caribbean BBQ, and Harry Singh's. At the Current's blog, there a couple of more recommendations too: Victors 1959, and West Indies Soul. I've been longing for a list like this ever since Puerta Azul closed and knowing that there's a Puerto Rican restaurant in town again (Caribe) brings me great joy.

Dara doesn't mention Kokomo's in the Mall of America, but if you can handle the touristy atmosphere, I've enjoyed the food there too.

Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Jersey Lily



Showing now at the Park Square Theatre until July 3. The website describes the play like this:

During a small matter of blackmail and missing jewels, Watson pines for Lillie Langtry, Holmes chases the infernal Moriarty, and Oscar Wilde gets some of his best lines. The wit and wisdom of Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle and even William Shakespeare combine to offer up a delightful escapade that includes seduction and secrets, lies and lilies, mistresses and mayhem.

The Current is Nerd-Certified



Wil Wheaton gave the Twin Cities' (and probably everywhere else's) best radio station a very nice shout out. If you like modern rock-and-roll mixed with a healthy serving of the best of the older stuff, you should really give The Current a stream.

Welcome to Atlas

I couldn't be prouder. Thanks, Jeff!

Quote of the Week: Skeezy-Eyed

A surprising number of people have asked INTERN ["Soooooo, where can I get a copy of your book?" while meaningfully eyeing the stack of review copies on her desk] since her book was published, and they always act surprised when she tells them they can find it in, you know, bookstores. Why is this surprising? If INTERN were a barber, would people look at her all skeezy-eyed and ask, "Soooooo, where can I get my beard trimmed?"
--The Intern, on the delicate subject of asking an author-acquaintance for a free copy of her book.

Virginia City (1940)

Still in the mood for Westerns (I'll give them a break for a while after this though), I decided to check out this one starring Errol Flynn. I’m a big fan of Flynn’s swashbucklers, but had never seen him in anything else. I had a hard time imagining him as a cowboy with his polished demeanor and English accent, but Virginia City gets around that very nicely. He’s not a cowboy, but a Union spy who was born in Ireland (that’s not an Irish accent, but oh well, none of the Southerners have Southern accents either). The movie opens as Flynn’s character, Captain Kerry Bradford, is trying to escape a Confederate prison with a couple of other Union soldiers (affably played by ubiquitous Flynn co-star Alan Hale and Guinn “Big Boy” Williams, who fires a gun like he's flicking a fly-swatter). Unfortunately, their plan is found out by the prison’s commander, Captain Vance Irby (Randolph Scott) who foils it in a rather mean-spirited way.

Bradford and his pals don’t give up though and pull off a second escape attempt. When they return to the Union army, Bradford reports that he’s suspicious about goings on in Virginia City, Nevada. Though a Union town, some of the wealthiest gold miners in Virginia City are Southerners and Bradford is concerned about what a huge influx of their gold will do for the Confederate war effort. Fearing an extension to the violent war that the Confederates are about to lose, Bradford’s commanders approve his plan to go to Virginia City and prevent any gold from making it’s way back South.

After the break: spies, romance, and Humphrey Bogart plays a Mexican.

The Awesome List: That's What Marnie Said

Tonner's Lord of the Rings dolls



These ain't no action figures.

After the break: Robin Hood, giant robot chess, Alfred Hitchcock meets Michael Scott, and more.