Its true. Colbert has entered the marvel universe. Questionable movie soon to follow! Here is what marvel has to say.

America, it’s an election year. As the candidates duke it out in our existence, they’re also going toe-to-toe in the Marvel Universe! Ladies and gentlemen, that means Stephen Colbert’s candidacy for President is alive and well in the Marvel Universe. Stephen Colbert in the Marvel Universe…? On the Jan. 29 edition of “The Colbert Report,” Joe Quesada, Marvel’s Editor in Chief, informed Mr. Colbert of this development to the host’s obvious delight. Meanwhile, citizens of the Marvel Universe depicted on the pages of recent and upcoming Marvel comics have been diligently wearing “Colbert ‘08″ t-shirts, seeing “Colbert ‘08″ campaign signs and more! We’ll keep you up to date with all of the “Colbert ‘08″ comic book references and post links to the exclusive Colbert campaign blog at Indecision2008.com written by the Marvel Universe’s own Ken Ellis, a staff reporter with the DB newspaper!

check out marvel for more details.

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A Little Book Of Coincidence
John Martineau

A most unusual guide to the solar system, A Little Book of Coincidence suggests that there may be fundamental relationships between space, time, and life that have not yet been fully understood. From the observations of Ptolemy and Kepler to the Harmony of the Spheres and the hidden structure of the solar system, John Martineau reveals the exquisite orbital patterns of the planets and the mathematical relationships that govern them. A table shows the relative measurements of each planet in eighteen categories, and three pages show the beautiful dance patterns of thirty six pairs of planets and moons.

We picked this up at The Museum of Jurassic Technology a couple of weeks ago and I really don’t regret buying it. This is a nice little guide through the solar system with some glam. It doesn’t tell you what to believe, it just says there might be something big to believe somewhere if we keep looking. It’s a geometrical way of looking at things. It might not be 100% accurate, but its enough to put a little magic back in the sky.

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Audible.com is doing a special promotion for the new Stephen Colbert book I Am America (And So Can You!), which is pretty awesome. First of all the book isn’t going to come until Oct 9th, but you can stream a free 4min preview here provided by Audible. And second if you dig it, you can download it tonight at midnight.

Colbert Nation, your leader has spoken. I Am America (And So Can You!), the book by Stephen Colbert oozing with truthiness on faith, family, politics, and, obviously, hygiene, is available exclusively at audible.com, four days before it will be released in print. That’s right. A book by Stephen Colbert, narrated by Stephen Colbert, with Stephen Colbert’s name on it, will soon be within your reach.

The truthiness is, if Audible keeps up with stuff like this I might just sign up again. Can you imagine what would of happened if they had the audio version of Harry Potter came out before it was release in print?!?! Even a preview would make people go crazy.

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At this years Comic-con I picked up a Bob-Dob book from the Murphy Design booth as a gift for a friends birthday. I had to hold on to it for almost 2 months without reclaiming it for my own and it was hard. The Collector’s Edition that I purchased had a limited print and it contained the first iPod Gelaskin I’ve ever seen that didn’t suck. Today, I received word that Bob Dob and Strange Co got together to release a new Vinyl Figure Series…..

LUEY, otherwise known as the “Universal Bad Habit”, is one of the most iconic characters weaved throughout Dob’s visual narratives. As minions of the devil, there are many Lueys around and they are always up to some form of no good. “Bob Dob’s paintings are filled with great, fully rendered character design,” states Jim Crawford, co-founder of STRANGEco. “We’re happy to begin showcasing his great work in vinyl form with Luey, the most recognizable irreverent design of them all.” The 5″ Luey rotocast figure is available in three versions - Raging, Smoking and Drinking (as in Milk, which Lueys find altogether intoxicating) and will be available October 2007 at finer retailers. MSRP $19.99 each.

$20.00 bucks ain’t bad and Christmas is soo close…..this goes in the wishpot!

Also if you happen to be in the LA area on OCT 5 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery come check out “Where Crows Die”, a solo art show by Bob Dob!

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$19.95 - 160 pages - Publisher: Harry N. Abrams - Last Gasp

Great for art fans and comic-history fans alike! More than a hundred years before Japanese comics swept the globe, the master engraver Hokusai was producing beautiful, surreal, and often downright wacky sketches and drawings, filled with many of the characters and themes found in modern manga. These out-of-context caricatures, which include studies of facial expressions, postures, and situations ranging from the mundane to the otherworldly, demonstrate both the artist’s style and his taste. In addition to the landscapes for which he is beloved, Hokusai’s mangas reveal his compassion for farmers, artisans, and peasants, as well as his keen eye for the absurd. Lots of illustrations, in (subtle) color.

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I figure since Mr. Forever occassionally drops the “Christmas Present” bomb, I will as well.

I have not been allowed to read House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. I’ve heard wonderful things about the book, and my roommate actually owns it. The problem is, he refuses to allow me to read it until he reads it. He rarely reads. I don’t want to spend money to buy the book, because I’ev spent too much money as it is over the last few years at the local B&N. This leaves me in a precarious situation, because now he’s released yet another book called Only Revolutions: A Novel. No I resort to the accepted “Please buy me stuff.”

The Publishers Weekly review starts:

A pastiche of Joyce and Beckett, with heapings of Derrida’s Glas and Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 thrown in for good measure, Danielewski’s follow-up to House of Leaves is a similarly dizzying tour of the modernist and postmodernist heights—and a similarly impressive tour de force. It comprises two monologues, one by Sam and one by Hailey, both “Allmighty sixteen and freeeeee,” each narrating the same road trip, or set of neo-globo-revolutionary events—or a revolution’s end: “Everyone loves the Dream but I kill it.” Figuring out what’s happening is a big part of reading the book. The verse-riffs narrations, endlessly alliterative and punning (like Joyce) and playfully, bleakly existential (like Beckett), begin at opposite ends of the book, upside down from one another, with each page divided and share

As a fan of disjointed prose and “post modern” (shudder), this seems right up my alley.

Add one to the Christmas/Birthday list.

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In the interest of full disclosure (I’ve always wanted to say that) let me begin this post with this. Yes that’s me wearing my seven-year-old’s Harry Potter glasses, and the monkey on his back bears a striking resemblence to the same protagonist. I took him to the midnight release party at Barnes and Noble for Harry Potter and was SHOCKED at the frenzied scene (notice the crowd outside as well). I know in Harry Potter terms this post is very late in coming, it’s been 3 weeks since the release. But it wasn’t until I finally read the latest Harper’s weekly review that I felt compelled to reflect on what the Harry Potter spectacle means. This week’s review has nothing about HP in it, but the weekly review from July 24 does. Nestled in between news of Japan’s rearmarment and a six-year-old hanging himself is a reckless spoiler for the book. It states that Hedwig dies. Hedwig (for those who don’t know) is Harry’s pet owl. What the next week’s review does have is a lot of pissed off letters in response to the spoiler:

TO: Harper’s Weekly FROM: Cynthia Patricia I am writing because I am extremely upset by Paul Ford’s Harper’s Weekly, in which he blatantly gives away a spoiler in the final Harry Potter book. I’m not sure how dorky I sound here, but it’s the kind of thing that you just don’t do. It had no relevance to the sentence whatsoever, and I find it in poor taste to send it out to all the subscribers who generally enjoy reading the review but who haven’t gotten around to getting a copy of the book yet, even if it’s been over 48 hours and 8.3 million people know what happened already. Let’s hope Harper’s wont make it a habit to follow the poor judgement and standard of the Times.

FROM JOSH RICHARDS: Shame on you for giving away even a small detail of the new Harry Potter book, buried mid-paragraph, with no warning. Shame.

FROM KEN KOONTZ: It’s the totally gratuitous nature of the Harry Potter spoiler that bugs me. How lame.

FROM KATIE BOMBICO: Thanks for ruining the book for me.

FROM D.H. PRESCOTT: I found your action to be indicative of a flippant and condescending attitude.

FROM REBECCA EWING: How mean-spirited of you.

FROM PAUL LARSON: Bad form.

FROM JOE WINTER: That’s just rude.

FROM PATRICK DEVITT: I would think that a magazine published since June of 1850, as you advertise, WOULD UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF A “SPOILER”!!!

FROM BARBARA CORNETT: Paul Ford is an asshole for telling that Hedwig dies in the Harry Potter book. Nobody does that sort of thing. Who does he think he is. What makes him above everyone else so that he does not have to abide by the rules and at least warn people if he is going to spoil a book or movie by telling things about it that the writers intended for readers and movie goers to experience and not some asshole like Ford to spoil for them. I hope a wizard puts a hex on him and his dick falls off.

FROM LEVI FULLER: Fuck you very much, assholes.

Generally speaking, Harper’s intended audience is one likely to actually read long, very involved articles on complex subject matter. The magazine has very little advertising and the pictures either pertain directly to the article, or feature fine art. The back page of classifieds have ads for things like mail order berets, tea imports and dating service networking exclusively for the alma mater of the Ivy League. So when someone writes in that they hope a wizard hex causes Paul Ford’s dick to fall off, it carries a weight more excessive than if someone had written into US Weekly with the same comment. This isn’t to say that all of Harper’s readers are of the highest intellectual order, but is to say that the majority tend to actually value their ability to think, rather than run from it. So, it interests me to know that there are a number of readers (myself included) who also read the Harry Potter series. Not only read it, but (unlike me) feel impassioned enough about a spoiler (btw, Hedwig’s death occurred within the first 50 pages, it wasn’t as if it gave away the ending) to write angry letters.
Did they miss this part: a newborn was found in a trashcan at a Denny’s in Anaheim, California; a 17-year-old girl with blood dripping down her legs was discovered nearby, having just shared a meal with her family?
Or this: A French geologist stated that a newly discovered underground lake in Darfur, which was expected to help bring peace to the water-starved region, likely dried up at least 5,000 years ago. Topics that revolt and disappoint in equal measure– realities that should cause serious concern and invoke thought, or at least give pause. And while they may have, what people wrote in about was Harry freakin Potter. Or, at least, those are the letters that Harper’s chose to print. And they are funny. Harper’s letters are usually just as wordy as the articles themselves… so the Harry Potter letters add a sincere amount of humor– but it is a dark joke. A tongue-in-cheek reflection on the investment people have in their favorite fantasies. The entitlement felt that they have the right to individually discover the fate of the protagonist and his cohorts on their own time. The importance of individual freedom within leisure time–and the impassioned protection of it.

This is all understandable–after all, they’ve (presumably) read six other books that all lead up to this point. They’ve waited two years for the conclusion to be revealed, projected what might happen, passed the time with a new HP movie. I know leading up to the release of the new book my excitement for the series was renewed, my anticipation and speculation reinvigorated. But I wonder if we haven’t all missed the point. In the Harry Potter series Voldemort is the embodiment of dark hearted power. In Hitler-esq ways he hopes to cleanse the wizarding world of all those that aren’t ‘pure blood’, he hopes to take this strong culture he creates and spread its ideals throughout the greater muggle world. To subjugate them for their own good. After all, the muggles (humans) are unable to do soo much, they are without the abilities the wizards have, their culture is unimpressive, their accomplishments laughable to Voldemort and his ilk. And while this evil seeps into the muggle world from the wizarding one, people are unaware of it. They don’t understand that the pervasive sense of hopelessness and despair are really bad guy scary dementors sucking the joy from their very spirits. They are asleep. Most of those within the wizarding world follow the lead of their (presumbably democratically elected) leaders and deny that the evil take over that is occurring. They accept the twisted facts, read it as reality and go on with their lives. And then, of course, there is our hero and his fellow lofty do-gooders. Harry Potter–the innocent, accidental leader. The effort of JK Rowling in the HP series attempts to analogize the different levels of our awareness. Inside the themes of good v. evil are the cloudy in between states people drift towards when that war is waged.

It’s sometimes easy to become numb to the death toll in Iraq, to the lost children in America, to the dashed hopes for Middle East reconciliation. As a country as well as individually we are constantly in turmoil, often with no choice of involvement or voice with which to assert any power. Because of this, our focus can shift instead on the aspects of our lives–our experiences–that are controllable. The lack of a spoiler alert denied the impassioned readers that power. Their relationship to the story became fractured, leaving them feeling cheated. It’s just too bad we can’t all invest in the story that is unfolding right now–the soon-to-be history of the Bush administration, the impossible war on terror, the everyday process of contributing to our tangible lives– rather than retreating so fully into fantasy worlds. Even fantasy worlds that attempt to reflect the greater truth of our own.

Then again, I had already finished the book when I read the Harper’s spoiler… so what did I care?

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So Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo is shopping around his memoirs. David Vigliano, his agent, has apparently been trying to pawn the manuscripts at various outlets…great quote from the link through - …”if they’re anything like the rest of his creative output, started out world-changingly awesome and then became so lame they make Pete Wentz seem profound.”

Granted…it’s been a gradual…”shifting” over the last decade and a half of what is commonly known a “Weezer”…but credit where credit is due, they helped shape the face of modern alt-rock…

Hopefully this book ,if released, will give a little bit of insight into…well…why we’ve never seen another Pinkerton.

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