On My Bedside {Bloodlines Series}

I love Richelle Mead – you know, for a quick and easy and thoroughly entertaining vampire read.  After finishing her Vampire Academy series, I was excited to see she spun two of the most interesting secondary characters off into the Bloodlines series. 



Goodreads says: Sydney is an alchemist, one of a group of humans who dabble in magic and serve to bridge the worlds of human and vampires. They protect vampire secrets - and human lives. When Sydney is torn from her bed in the middle of the night, at first she thinks she's still being punished for her complicated alliance with dhampir Rose Hathaway. But what unfolds is far worse. Jill Dragomir - the sister of Moroi Queen Lissa Dragomir - is in mortal danger, and the Moroi must send her into hiding. To avoid a civil war, Sydney is called upon to act as Jill's guardian and protector, posing as her roommate in the last place anyone would think to look for vampire royalty - a human boarding school in Palm Springs, California. But instead of finding safety at Amberwood Prep, Sydney discovers the drama is only just beginning

So far, there are three books out in the series (the next two titles have been announced), and I’ve just finished up the last – The Indigo Spell.  I found myself perplexed when I was trying to hunt it down in the library… wandering up and down the M aisle, wondering where on earth they could have hidden ALL of Mead’s books.  Weeeeell, um, you probably guessed I was in regular fiction section, NOT in young adult.  So I packed on our library book bag, my overflowing purse and my little one and headed for “Teen Corner”.  Don’t say I didn’t warn ya. 

As always, let me know what’s on your bedside!!  I go through all your comments and add them to my Goodreads to-read list!!
xoxo
 

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Jack Kirby's Storyboards for 'Fantastic Four' (1978) III.

Continuing from my previous posts, here is the third part of Jack Kirby's amazing pencil storyboards for the 'Fantastic Four' Animated Series from 1978. Again, all boards are from the seventh episode 'The Olympics of Space', scripted by Roy Thomas.

First though, here's an extraordinary radio interview with Mr. Kirby himself by J. Michael Straczynski and Larry DiTillio (creators of the TV series 'Babylon 5') on April 13, 1990 on Mike Trudell's Hour 25, KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles, talk radio show. Uploaded in seven parts by Rob Steibel (from Kirby Dynamics), I have collected all of them in a playlist, so you can easily listen to the entire hour and a half conversation. For a little more background info on the animated series I welcome you to enjoy the previous two blog posts.

Just a tip: feel free to click and thus enlarge the storyboards below. Doing so while listening to the interview however, will leave you without the audio connection. In this case it's better to open the artwork by right clicking it and choosing 'open link in a new tab'.

If you still want more after that, I recommend you read Gary Groth's amazing interview with Jack from February 1990, just four years before he died, which was posted in it's entirety over at The Comics Journal. In both interviews, Jack clearly states he not only drew, but also wrote all comic stories by himself, without Stan Lee's collaboration, something which is not part of Marvel's official company history. (Below are several excerpts from Groth's interview with Jack about the creation of his comics for Marvel:)

"Stan Lee and I never collaborated on anything! I’ve never seen Stan Lee write anything. I used to write the stories just like I always did."... "If Stan Lee ever got a thing dialogued, he would get it from someone working in the office. I would write out the whole story on the back of every page. I would write the dialogue on the back or a description of what was going on. Then Stan Lee would hand them to some guy and he would write in the dialogue. In this way Stan Lee made more pay than he did as an editor. This is the way Stan Lee became the writer. Besides collecting the editor’s pay, he collected writer’s pay. I’m not saying Stan Lee had a bad business head on. I think he took advantage of whoever was working for him."

"Remember this: Stan Lee was an editor. He worked from nine to five doing business for Martin Goodman. In other words he didn’t do any writing in the office. He did Martin Goodman’s business. That was his function. There were people coming up to the office to talk all the time. They weren’t always artists, they were business people. Stan Lee was the first man they would see and Stan Lee would see if he could get them in to see Martin Goodman. That was Stan Lee’s function."

"I came in (to the Marvel offices) and they were moving out the furniture, they were taking desks out - and I needed the work! I had a family and a house and all of a sudden Marvel is coming apart. Stan Lee is sitting on a chair crying. He didn’t know what to do, he’s sitting in a chair crying - he was just still out of his adolescence. I told him to stop crying. I says. “Go in to Martin and tell him to stop moving the furniture out, and I’ll see that the books make money.” And I came up with a raft of new books and all these books began to make money. Somehow they had faith in me. I knew I could do it, but I had to come up with fresh characters that nobody had seen before. I came up with The Fantastic Four. I came up with Thor. Whatever it took to sell a book I came up with. Stan Lee has never been editorial minded. It wasn’t possible for a man like Stan Lee to come up with new things - or old things for that matter. Stan Lee wasn’t a guy that read or that told stories. Stan Lee was a guy that knew where the papers were or who was coming to visit that day. Stan Lee is essentially an office worker, OK? I’m essentially something else: I’m a storyteller. My job is to sell my stories. When I saw this happening at Marvel I stopped the whole damned bunch. I stopped them from moving the furniture! Stan Lee was sitting on some kind of a stool, and he was crying."

Wally Wood ('Mad' and 'Daredevil') had this to say from his experiences: 'Did I say Stanley had no smarts? Well, he DID come up with two sure fire ideas… the first one was “Why not let the artists WRITE the stories as well as draw them?”… And the second was … ALWAYS SIGN YOUR NAME ON TOP …BIG”. And the rest is history … Stanley, of course became rich and famous … over the bodies of people like Bill (Everett) and Jack (Kirby)'. More about that on the web here.

Nutty

This year's first wide-release animated film opens on Friday, the derivative-looking The Nut Job. It's a lower budget Canadian/Korean production directed by Pete Lepeniotis, an animator who worked on films like Toy Story 2 and Fantasia 2000. It looks like a run-of-the-mill kids film, but…

Dirty little secret, it could've been something different...

Both trailers for the film didn't do a thing for me, as it looked like a showcase of everything wrong with poorly-written animated family or kids' films these days. Toilet humor is everywhere, along with pop culture references and… PSY? Yeah, I have a feeling that this will be a turkey. Reviews are coming in too, and they're saying it's not so good.

So how could it have been different? If not possibly… Awesome?

This film is based on the director's 2005 short film called Surly Squirrel. It's the polar opposite of this romp, and it is definitely for adults. It takes place near a bank robbery and there's swearing, among other things. The lead character is not a cute, good guy squirrel, he's a selfish bastard. It definitely ain't kiddie.

Give it a watch, it's actually pretty decent…


With such a small budget and an opportunity to take a real risk, how come the studios behind The Nut Job couldn't make the film be like the original short? Seems like Lepeniotis and crew were probably controlled by execs looking to make moolah, assuming PSY cameos and fart jokes were going to bring in the crowds. Surly Squirrel isn't a children's short film, The Nut Job should've been just like it.

They could've made a risky, adult-oriented animated film with the same characters from the short film (yes, the squirrel and raccoon share the same name in the film, but they aren't the same characters), use the same tone and sense of humor. It would've beat something like Sausage Party to the punch and it could've possibly helped create a market for adult-oriented feature animation.

Ah, what could've been…

Monday Morning Pretty

Our new sofa arrived last Wednesday!!!  *squeal*  And I thought y’all might enjoy starting your Monday by gazing at this pretty.  I know I did…

 

 

Just for kicks, here is what it looked like before…  (you might also notice that I’ve moved the chairs to flank the fireplace and y’all already know that I’ve fiddled with the coffee table and moved those silhouette pillows to the PCP’s room)

 

It’s the two cushion Monterey sofa from Ethan Allen with a waterfall skirt, and I just adore its graceful lines.

 

It has the exact same seating (down to an inch!) as our old sofa, but the simple arms make it fit much better in the space.

 

The fabric is a little lighter than I thought, but it’s an indoor/outdoor Sunbrella fabric and was billed as durable and easy to clean.  And, although we don’t eat or drink outside of the kitchen, I still added the 5 year protection plan.  Something tells me I will be very glad about that one day :-)  It’s very subtle, but there is a tone on tone stripe, alternating solid and herringbone.

I’m smitten with the new look and am itching to get some pillows done.  But that’s another project for another day…

 

 

I don’t know about y’all but we have a three day weekend coming up, and that somehow makes starting a new week seem like so much more fun.  Yee haw!!

xoxo

 

See the rest of the room!

Tour the whole kit and caboodle here!

Braided Hairstyles ! OMG - Inspiring Ideas

Braids are extremely sizzling nowadays ! The types of braids looks endless because there are many modern looks available on the streets,fashion runways ,Pinterest ,Facebook etc.
Below you’ll discover examples of the most interesting braids we found and also we’ll possibly assist you to braiding hair easily with Instructions.

Don't miss the latest trendy and inspiring braided hairstyle ideas for 2014

Click Here  Braided Hairstyles      

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Braided Buns

 Cage Braids

 Crown Braids

Dutch Braids

 

 Faux Braids

Feather Braids  

 Fishtail Braids

  

French Braids  

 Knotted Braids

Lace Braids

Ladder Braids

Loony Braids

Mermaid Braids

Messy Braids

Pancake Braids

Puffy Braids

Rope Braids

Side Braids

Simple Braids

Braided Updo

Waterfall Braids

Braid Headbands