Little Toy Robot

Jesse Barrett calls Michael Chabon’s Escapist a sell-out. Little Toy Robot pretty much agrees.

[…] it’s high-concept pomo gamesmanship whose rewards are still unclear. After the first two issues, the safest conclusion is that the execution hasn’t equaled the concept.

The problem is that the stories are boring. By which I mean they operate at a very low level of excitement and didn’t keep my interest.

However, the reviewer and I and other people agree that the whole thing is not a washout. At the very least, the art is good, there are a few stand-outs, and there is still some potential for the quarterly anthology. [via Booklut]

Meatwad make the money see,
Meatwad get the honeys G

Some guy that I don’t know is putting parts of his fanzine Visions of Paradise online using Blogger, and it looks good.

I know there are a lot of print zines still floating around, and I can understand why, but I also think the Web is perfect for this kind of material. Older fans look back to the days of amateur press associations and mimeographed booklets, but we’ve moved into a different era where it makes perfect sense to blur the lines between zine and blog.

Anyway, check out the first entry of Visions of Paradise. It’s a pretty good review of Cities, an anthology of four novellas edited by Peter Crowther that is definitely on my list of things to buy.

Great post from one of my new favorite blogs on the Kings of Redonda, the humorous literary regency that ties together M. P. Shiel, John Gawsworth, and Javier Mari.

So I decided to be a good little boy and start running again. I’m so out of shape; I haven’t run for years (believe me, it wasn’t easy in NYC). So I woke up on Saturday morning, took off, and twisted my knee.

I spent the whole weekend in excruciating pain. The only thing that made me happy was that I had a full fridge and a billion books, comics, DVDs, and magazines to keep me company.

First, I finished The Years of Rice and Salt. It’s an excellent book, but it’s slow going.

On the comics front, I enjoyed the first issue of Ex Machina and am blissfully lost in the continuity of the X-Men Universe with the first two issues of both Astonishing X-Men (which Joss Whedon is writing) and Excalibur. Both The Goon and Seaguy continue to get even better and better.

For DVDs, I am watching the second season of Buffy over again because that’s how much I loved Firefly.

And finally, for magazines, the latest issue of Wired is not going to fill your belly if you think you are getting a good feature on robots. Instead, Cory Doctorow’s piece is a disjointed, short ramble that both takes Asimov to task for things he never intended on doing and acts as a limp promotion for the upcoming excremental I, Robot adaptation by Satan’s latest reincarnation, Alex Proyas.

Incidentally, I woke up this morning and, after 48 hours of sharp pain, the poor knee feels alright. Just in time for work!

Update: The knee is OK. I think I have a brain tumor, though.

In a continuing effort to position LittleToyRobot.com as the premier information source for robotic events in Atlanta, I am pleased to pass on news of the opening of Scandal! It’s an improv soap opera set on a Moon Base/Casino featuring the Internet’s own Clunky Robot as a robot named The Altair 9000, who is in charge of higher base functions, and randomizing the casino numbers.

Scandal! runs every Friday night at Dad’s Garage. I’ll be there this Friday if you’d like to plan an assassination attempt, but for once I will not be the one dressed in an upside down garbage can!

The Believer Compilation CD: This comes along with the June music issue of The Believer. For a compilation the quality is surprisingly very consistent. Highlights include “The Rat” by The Walkmen, “You’re Only King Once” by Beulah, and “Ne’er-Do-Well” by Young People.

The Young People song simply amazes me. I’ve never heard anything that packed so many hooks and surprises into just a minute and a half. It starts out with the disjointed rumble of an electric guitar and drums, and a syncopated, seemingly out of tune woman’s voice, and it all quickly congeals into a quirky pop song that is even more delicious because it is so brief.

Kellogg’s Raisin Bran Crunch: One of the age-old battles in the universe is between the evil yet persistent stale raisins of Kellogg’s Raisin Bran and the juicy goodness of the raisins in Post Raisin Bran. This is why I was surprised by how tasty Kellogg’s Raisin Bran Crunch is. The joy of the oats and honey granola clusters far outweighs the pellet-like quality of the raisins. Perhaps the raisins are supposed to put some of the crunch in “Crunch.” Who knows? All that matters is that we can learn a lot about how to make the universe a better place by studying this cereal. (Allergen warning: This product contains wheat ingredients.)

December 7

Hey, the cover story of the upcoming issue of Wired is about Asimov’s robot stories.

But, it’s written by Cory Doctorow.

I can see the affinity; both are known for being Idea writers with no strong talent for literary style or character development. Not that I could do better, but I do have my opinions as a reader!

I am not going to see I, Robot at the movies. I am going to borrow it from Netflix when it’s out on DVD (which will probably be three days later) and pretend that Alex Proyas was not involved in the project.

The robots are rebelling. We knew it would happen.

But we didn’t know it would happen this way.

First initial, last name.

Thanks, Lady C!

Woke up. Took Dad to brunch for Father’s Day. Then at his request we went to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center (he loves that stuff). There’s a shed off to the side of the Center’s main building on which some folks with a good sense of humor painted a hokey sign that reads “Area 51 — Keep Out!” I think it’s just the gardener’s toolshed, but you never know.

I am now back in Atlanta.

On the morning of this second day of my exciting trip to Alabama, I went with my parents to Huntsville International Airport to pick up my brother and his wife, who were arriving from Jacksonville. I went less because I love my brother and more out of curiosity to see how many people would fly from Jacksonville to Huntsville (about forty).

For dinner we went to the Main Street Cafe, located in the tiny, picturesque downtown of Madison, a suburb of Huntsville. The restaurant is the old city hall, and there are two special dining areas which used to be holding cells. We ate in one of them, and at one point a freight train rolled by lazily outside, and it could have been 1930 except for the surreal fact that we were eating a nice meal in a jail cell and talking about electronic data piracy. My sister-in-law, a Southerner herself, guided us through an excellent regional meal bracketed by an appetizer of fried green tomatoes and a dessert of strawberry pretzel salad.

Night Shade Books is having a sale.

The short version: Until midnight Tuesday, PST, we are running a massive sale on everything in stock and all forthcoming titles. Using the HSN coupon, you can get 50% off of your order. There is a three-book minimum to get the discount. If you want to know why, read on. Otherwise, go to our website and buy a lot of books!

Just type HSN in the coupon field of your order. Here’s what I’m getting:

The Collected Jorkens - Volume One by Lord Dunsany (adventure stories)
The House on the Borderland and Other Mysterious Places by William Hope Hodgson (collects fiction I have in other formats, but what’s a sale for???)
The Third Cry to Legba and Other Invocations by Manly Wade Wellman (more classic occult detective reprints)

If you have money burning a hole in your pocket, I’d recommend everything written and edited by Jeff VanderMeer, Steve Tomasula’s In & Oz, and (of course) A New Universal History of Infamy by Rhys Hughes.

As everyone knows, there is no direct route from Atlanta to Huntsville. The obvious route is a detour through Birmingham. But the Robot family will find a shortcut for every occasion. In this case, the shortcut involves taking I-75 up to Chattanooga and then taking a back road into Alabama. It sounds straightforward, but there is no shortage of twisting and turning. This way does not involve simply travelling from Tennessee to Alabama, but by my count I somehow left and re-entered Alabama twice. Being that this is also a time-zone change, I have calculated that because of this drive I am now my own grandson.