Good morning, 'rons and 'ettes, and welcome to the full-color, yet darkly brooding Sunday Morning Book Thread.

Another Awesome Content Provider

That would be Stan Lee. I think he's in the Guiness Book of World Records for being one of the most prolific writers ever.

In collaboration with several artists, most notably Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, he co-created Spider-Man, the Hulk, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Thor, and many other fictional characters, introducing complex, naturalistic characters and a thoroughly shared universe into superhero comic books

Those Marvel comics you read as a kid? Lee pretty much wrote 'em all:

Throughout the 1960s, Lee scripted, art-directed and edited most of Marvel's series, moderated the letters pages, wrote a monthly column called "Stan's Soapbox," and wrote endless promotional copy, often signing off with his trademark phrase "Excelsior!"

How did he do it? How did he crank out so much copy, week after week?

To maintain his taxing workload, yet still meet deadlines, he used a system that was used previously by various comic-book studios, but due to Lee's success with it, became known as the "Marvel Method" or "Marvel style" of comic-book creation. Typically, Lee would brainstorm a story with the artist and then prepare a brief synopsis rather than a full script. Based on the synopsis, the artist would fill the allotted number of pages by determining and drawing the panel-to-panel storytelling. After the artist turned in penciled pages, Lee would write the word balloons and captions, and then oversee the lettering and coloring. In effect, the artists were co-plotters, whose collaborative first drafts Lee built upon.

I must confess that I was never much of a fan of this genre. Can't recall ever actually buying a Marvel or DC comic book. And when I read one of my friend's copies, the story had always started in an earlier edition and would not finish until a later one, so I never could really get started.

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:32 AM | Comments (144)
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The NFC East kinda sucks don't they?

Random observation.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 08:40 AM | Comments (173)
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Costas

The big gun news last week surrounded Bob Costas' idiotic remarks on Sunday Night Football. Here are links to the HQ's related posts:

• A Must-Read Rejoinder To Costas & Whitlock


• Bob Costas, Bien Pensant


• Costas Stupidly Stands By Gun Control Remarks


• Bob Costas Attempts Walkback, Displays Ignorance


• Bob Costas: Gee, Maybe My Twenty Second Easy-Bake Gun Control Screed Wasn't Appropriate


• Bob Costas: I Wasn't Talking About Gun Control. People Just Inferred That. Do I Support Gun Control? Why, Um, Yes I Do.

As far as I know, he hasn't opened his pie hole any more on this, but if he does, we'll be all over it.

Cooper's Commentaries

Thanks to moron 'kpayne' for this link to an archive of Cooper's Commentaries. Jeff Cooper was a huge figure in the "gun culture" that limousine liberal Bob Costas abhors. He was a retired Marine Lt. Col., inventor of the modern handgun combat technique, an NRA board member and editor-at-large for Guns & Ammo, where summaries of his commentaries appeared in a column called Cooper's Corner.

A taste, from November 2000:

I find it wearisome to hear people describe the attack on the USS Cole as one of "terrorism." We are free to use whatever words we wish to describe whatever we wish, but the attack on the Cole was not a piece of terrorism, it was an act of war. Terrorism may be described as homicidal coercion - an attempt to change national or political behavior by threat of force. The men who attacked the Cole were not attempting to coerce the United States, they were attempting simply to kill Americans - for theological, rather than political, reasons. It may be true that no recognized nation has declared war upon the United States, but Islam has officially described us as The Great Satan, and thus made us military adversaries in a Jihad or Holy War.

It is childish to discuss any attempt to discover who is responsible for this act of war. If there were such a man it would be the Sultan of Islam. Osama bin Laden does not hold that title at present, but clearly he would like to.

Common sense that we continue to ignore at our peril. If you haven't read Cooper's Commentaries, they're worth adding to your list. The historical references might be a little dated, but the themes are timeless.

Gun of the Week

Identify this rifle (answer appears at the end of the thread):

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Posted by: andy at 06:50 AM | Comments (161)
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So a freshman won the Heisman? Looks like the Mayans were right.

Posted by: andy at 03:21 AM | Comments (271)
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Afternoon Morons and Ettes! Man do I have some Content for you today. The rest of the post has nothing to do with the title, but I like lists. So whats your 2012 GOTY?

Also ~Open Thread~

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Posted by: Gang of Gaming Morons! at 09:40 AM | Comments (110)
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The Navy has cheerleaders? I had no idea!

Wait, wait, the Army too?

Those kids right there, when they receive their commissions will be 2nd Lieutenants in the United States Army, 2nd Lieutenants in the Marine Corps, or Ensigns in the United States Navy.

God bless em. Also go Army beat Navy.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 11:16 AM | Comments (271)
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The Fiscal Cliff And The Alinsky President.

When one strictly adheres to the principles of Saul Alinsky, you don't negotiate, you intimidate. You don't take a stand, but make the other guy take a stand and then you demonize it. You create so much static with class warfare rhetoric that it drowns out reason and fact. A good case in point is the President's insistence that the wealthy do not pay their fair share. He has been saying this for so long, it is almost an accepted fact by some. The real truth is that the top one percent of wage earners have gone from paying 20% of the total tax burden in the 1980s to 40% today. The percentage of the total income they earn is around 25%. If one extrapolates out the tax burden to include the top 10% of wage earners, the total share of the tax burden paid by that group is 70%. Their total percentage of the income earned is around 38%. These facts come straight from current IRS data.
No fair-minded person could conclude from the empirical evidence laid out in the previous paragraph, that the wealthy in this country are not paying their fair share. And yet, the President spews out this categorically false narrative and a certain percentage of the population laps it up like kittens lapping milk from a bowl. This is also what followers of Saul Alinsky practice, repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth in the minds of the masses.

Posted by: CDR M at 05:51 PM | Comments (690)
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Season 4 starts January 8th.

Open thread in the comments. more...

Posted by: andy at 02:35 PM | Comments (270)
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International Film and Television Star Nick Searcy from Justified now has his own WebZone, including "Acting School," in which he explains how you too could become an International Film and Television Star, or at least behave like one.

Part 1: The Importance of You, Your Relaxation, Your Nutrition, Your Needs, and Your Career.

Part 2: How to Avoid Your Family.

Incidentally: Showtime is currently (or was recently, at least) running a documentary called That Guy... Who Was In That Thing, consisting of interviews with character actors. Guys you totally, totally recognize from six thousand things (but you often can't say specifically what).

I thought it was extremely interesting and fun. Some things I didn't know: Nick Searcy talks about working 30-40 days per year in his Acting School clip. This is not much of an exaggeration. The average working actor actually does work about that much. He only works more when he lands a series or has a very productive spell as a guest star in tv shows and movies. They often work less.

One of the guys in this documentary, I think the guy who played "Bellick" in Prison Break, talked about how he tried to at least work just enough to qualify for unemployment insurance for the rest of the year. What's very surprising is that working actors, not the Major Motion Picture Stars but the rest of working actors, are actually... middle class, or even lower middle class. Most do not have expensive homes and often have cars 10 or 12 years old. They can't really spend a lot of money because their salaries are so extremely variable. They might make $15,000 for a five day shoot, but then might not work again for six or nine months. They really have absolutely no idea.

While the Major Motion Picture Stars often go on TV to talk about the "richest 1% profiting while the rest of the country loses ground," in fact that's exactly what they, the Major Motion Picture Stars, have done. The fee for the absolute top stars has gone up astronomically, but the fees for the other actors have plunged.

Whereas before, in say the 70s or 80s, you could get somewhat wealthy(ish) if you were a busy guest star actor, now they've cut the fees of everyone (except those at the tippy-top) so that even busy guest-star type actors you know are making about as much as, say, a teacher with 15 years on the job.

At least that's the sense I got -- unless these guys were bullshitting and pretending they had less money than they really did. But I don't think they were bullshitting. They had too many details. Paul Guilfoyle (the head detective on CSI) talked about how he would get the utility guys to skip reading his meter by telling them the meter was in the crawlspace under the house, and how there were "a lot of vermin down there." He noted that that word -- "vermin" -- was the most effective for deterring the utility guy.

It's just an interesting documentary.

Posted by: Ace at 05:49 AM | Comments (444)
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We've reached that point of the year where the college football schedule is mighty thin. And by thin, I mean the Army/Navy game at 3pm Eastern is the entirety of today's Division I-A schedule.

I may have to break down and actually be productive today.

Posted by: andy at 03:31 AM | Comments (236)
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