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It’s not just the thunderous crack of his snare, or the nimble kick beats that put a smile on my face and makes me shake my head at his prowess. Bonzo had restraint. This was made all the more plain when he really cut loose, as on Moby Dick, say. But most of the time, he worked his kit like a fine machine, coaxing it, making it sing, underpinning Plant’s wild keening and Page’s maelstrom of guitar, matching Jones’s punch to get the guts of a song as solid as bedrock. And, shining over everything, a periodic cymbal crash like the burst of a geyser, misting down for long seconds as the song moved relentlessly ahead.

Misty Mountain Hop has my favorite drum fill of all time, just after the final chorus before the outro. Nothing fancy, just a roll and eighth note hits. But its simplicity is its power, and it makes me grin as, inevitably, I find myself nodding to the beat.

I tried putting an acronym up there, but it got unwieldy. I have no good term to substitute for media, even though it’s easily confused with news media. No, wait, let me just have a quick look at a thesaurus . . .

Nah, nothing jumps out at me. “Creativity Roundup” is just pretentious and silly, “Art” means visual art to most people. I’ll leave it and hope I think of something else if I do this again.

MUSIC

Okay, I haven’t mentioned it yet, but this year I’m trying to avoid buying any music that falls under the RIAA’s umbrella. I’m getting a subscription to eMusic, and checking RIAA Radar for everything I want, barring those I know are self-published, like Brad Sucks and Jonathan Coulton. That said, I received Spymob’s terrific Sitting Around Keeping Score for my birthday, so it doesn’t count. Another great album was originally RIAA-shackled, but Steadman has offered up Revive for free downloading, so go get a helping of ear candy.

BOOKS

Small Gods, by the irritatingly great Terry Pratchett is my bedside reading. Dave Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is read at work on breaks. There are others barely started that are too numerous to enumerate.

TV

All hail Netflix, because that’s how I’m watching most of my television these days. Battlestar Galactica, and Carnivale top the list. DVR’ed are Lost, Good Eats, Daily Show, Colbert Report, The Soup, Venture Bros., Dresden Files . . . Hm, that’s rather a lot. I suppose I’m still watching most of it from the box, albeit 90% time-shifted.

FILM

Liked Little Miss Sunshine, bored to tears by Capote, underwhelmed by Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (but loved Johnny Depp), and liked Idiocracy, although, and yes I know it’s a cliche, it’s no Office Space.

PODCASTS

I lament the end of The Show with Ze Frank, as well as the Penn Jillette show. The Sound of Young America finally got me to subscribe. Keith and the Girl are still funny, though I can’t keep up with an hour plus nearly every day. And I like Channel Frederator, Cory Doctorow, and Idolator.

That ought to do it for now.

Mom sent a link to an article on a couple of new fiber art exhibitions in New York. The piece’s accompanying photo is an interpretation of the Mona Lisa in spools of thread, done by Devorah Sperber in 2005. What would Leonardo make of it?
At least it’s something he could acknowledge as possible in his time. It’s a work he would have a reference for, technology he’d be familiar with. He wouldn’t have time to check out the new methods of creating art, even photography. He’d be overwhelmed by the web, television, cell phones, computers, cars, planes, iPods, film, and junk food. So much so that he might not have the presence of mind to ponder all the thousands (millions?) of tributes to his own work.

We are overwhelmed by information. Imagine how a man plucked from time, even a genius of Leonardo’s caliber, would cope with it all. Would he go crazy consumer, gorging on Big Macs and downloading more porn than he could possibly watch? Or would he shut down, get curmudgeonly, and rent a Kaczynski-like shack in the Italian countryside and rail against the evils of the technoverse? A good SF story lies in the latter concept, an awful Will Ferrell movie in the former.

Guess who’s been watching Channel Frederator? Another sketch here, for a logo. We’ll see if he gets his own series in the future.

In the beginning, it was just entertainment. It was always available, always ready. All I had to do was pick up the remote, and hit the power button. The endless glow massaged my senses into oblivion, and if I didn’t need to sleep or eat, I’d have stayed there forever. When networks lost their luster, there was digital cable. As soon as I had a handle on whatever was new, it brought me fresh novelty. When the number of channels overwhelmed me, DVRs were available. Faulty guide software kept recording repeated airings of new shows, which I ran anyway, nostalgic for last week. I deleted more than I watched.

New has nothing to do with quality, of course. Was any of it any good? Sure. But with so much in constant supply, it was easier to put Harry Potter on for the twelfth time as background noise while I read novels’ worth of Boing Boing on the web.

Satan did not appear and offer me the bargain of my dark fantasies.

I did not grow fat on Cheetos and peanut m&ms.

But the infinite feed still waits in the corner of the living room, even now urging me to re-mortgage my house, and buy a newer, safer Jetta, not to mention extolling the virtues of video bliss to be, coming in February, coming this summer, coming soon.

What am I not doing in order that I might experience that which is always, and forever, coming soon?

Here’s the second image. Company name changed, of course. More stuf in the new year, so I’ll try to get regular, as I try each year.

Here’s the first of the cards I illustrated for the mortgage company.

See? The snowman is actually a percent sign. Percentage –> mortgage? Not everybody got that, so maybe I should have done something to make the connection obvious.

Ever have one of those days when your doodles take on a secret alter ego of their own? Um, me too.

(Trademark that title, Marvel & DC, I dares ya.)

I don’t think I ever put this up. It’s for a mortgage company, who stuck with me for this year’s cards, too, so I’ll put those up soon.

And, yes, that is Harrington. Don’t judge too harshly.

I nearly forgot - October marks the 13th anniversary of the debut of Greymatter.

View the O’Shea part of the comic series in the archive.