Urgh. I hate it when I lie down "for just a few minutes" because I'm too tired to concentrate on work, and I wake up eight hours later, still partially clothed and with my mouth tasting like something crawled into it, died, and then laboriously crawled back out again. Guess it beats insomnia, but my mental clock still thinks it's yesterday, which is bad because I've got a lot of stuff to do today, including interviewing Dave McKean. I re-read his massive graphic novel Cages last night to prepare, and liked it better this time than the last time I read it, which I think was just after college. It made more sense this time. I'm still not a huge fan of his distorted line drawings, but I like his stories-inside-stories, particularly the one about the metaphorical bridge with two sons.

Random entertainments for a Friday morning:

Per Neil Gaiman's blog, a thoroughly entertaining photo-retouching portfolio, one of those mouse-over-the-image-and-see-what-these-people-really-look-like sites. I love these. I mean, on some level it's gratifying to know that none of the women on fashion-magazine covers are actually real, and they're all airbrushed and streamlined to hell. But mostly, the specific changes made to these photos amuse me. No matter how thin a woman is, apparently, she needs a tummy tuck. And rounder boobs. And shiny highlights on her skin, regardless of the lighting in the rest of the photo. But it's a coin-toss whether she needs more booty, or less. My favorite of these is the second from the right in the top row, where the retoucher went a little nuts with the breast-creating. Pity there aren't more retouched photos of men — the two included here don't seem to have gotten nearly as much bodywork, and I'm curious whether that's typical.

Per shihtzu, it's more hilarious Revenge Of The Sith mistranslation theater! Some of the same screencaps, plus a whole lot more. And here's a transcript of one segment of the movie, with a comparison between the actual dialogue and the distorted translation. Two squares fight the vehemence. The improbity fills the world!

A bunch of my LJ Friends are getting all squiddly over the extended Doom trailer, which leaves me all meh. I mean, the obvious nods to FPS games are cute, but where are the monsters? If I'm gonna go see a movie that's all about gunning down huge waves of monsters, I want some indication in the trailer that there are huge waves of monsters, not just brief lunging shadows. I'm not going to Doom to watch The Rock tote around a big gun, I'm going to see beholders. The fact that the trailer's so stingy with its monsters — and what you do see looks like a rubber Ghostbusters terror dog — thrills me not.

Finally, this Cat & Girl comic about how the Internet is a drunk librarian who won't shut up struck me as one of the cartoonist's more insightful recent observations. As usual, not much of a punchline, but the thoughts on our relationship with different media are interesting.

I'm a-hearin': "Prima Donna," "Phantom of the Opera" soundtrack

I wish I'd written the book _______________, because _______________.

I'm-a feelin': busy

Well heh. Least popular Friday Fill-in-the-blank ever. And here I was half-expecting 20 people to say they wished they'd written the Harry Potter books, either for the fat whacks of loot involved, or just to have control over the characters.

Anyway. Dave McKean interview got bumped back a few hours due to calculation errors about the time difference between Chicago and England — their errors, not mine, but I don't mind because I've got people waiting on various files that need to be processed anyway, and this way, everyone should get their stuff an hour or so earlier. I'm feeling unusually low-key about this interview; it took no time to come up with more questions than I'm likely to have time for, what with Mirrormask being such an unusual movie and Dave having such an unusual career. Normally, I'd be bouncing off the walls with useless energy if one of my interviews got postponed, but I'm feeling pretty zen about the whole thing instead.

In addition to everything else going on right now, I'm trying to schedule an interview with George RR Martin, for a piece for SCI FI Magazine. Apparently he's currently out of the country and unreachable, he's been gone since July and won't be back until after Labor Day, and once he gets back, I'll have approximately a two-day window to find out whether he'll do the interview, then actually do the interview, then transcribe it and write the piece. This is kind of a departure for me because it would be a 1,200-word essay about Martin instead of a straight-up Q&A. I haven't written a long-form feature article since I don't even know when. I'm a little nervous over that. Not so much over the interview, though — I've interviewed him at some length before, and while he's slightly curt and a little hard to get below the surface with, he's also a fascinating guy.

By the time that's squared away, I'll have to be thinking seriously about scheduling an Octavia Butler interview, and looking into the Daniel Handler interview because he'll be back from his vacation (damn, August went by quickly), and then there's still The Project That Dare Not Speak Its Name, which is hanging over me like Damocles' very exciting but still frightening sword. I live in interesting times.

I'm-a feelin': busy and planny

Well hey look, it's a trailer for the live-action version of Aeon Flux. I was never holding out any hope for this, because I was such a fan of the creepy-bizarre feel of the cartoons, and I not only knew they couldn't produce the visuals in a live-action version, I doubted they'd even try. The trailer does look kind of interesting, but at the same time… well, it's shiny and high-techy and different-looking and all (though it's also a bit like an Underworld sequel with sunlight and soldiers and Minority Report gloss instead of werewolves), but given the degree that it looks like it has a linear plot that actually makes sense, what does it really have to do with the source material? I bet she doesn't even die and fail horrifically at the end of the movie, then come back without explanation in the sequel.

Really, though, I don't care if the movie is good, bad, or beyond the boundaries of all previously known degrees of terrible, if it provides an impetus for someone to get all the Aeon Flux cartoons out on DVD.

I'm-a feelin': thoughtful