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Showing posts from 2013

Black Blizzard

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Yoshihiro Tatsumi 's 1956 thriller Black Blizzard provides us a look into his past, when he was still a raw and inexperienced writer and mangaka . Tatsumi, in several interviews, never hides the fact that he has 'conflicting' feelings about Black Blizzard to which he described it as "nostalgic for the past, for the days of my youth" but it's also "like exposing something shameful and private" that he would rather bury and have "hidden from sight." But the work in itself is not bad for a twenty- one year old aspiring and struggling writer- cum- cartoonist. On the contrary it probably revolutionized the alternative comic scene in Japan in those days that eventually made him a gekiga pioneer. Tatsumi's unorthodox visual narrative is like a study in contradiction; it was simple but is actually ahead of his time. The focus and angles are like those that can be seen from the eyes of a master filmmaker; the drawings speak f

#449

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I bought this book for a sonnet--err song ($3) during one of my forays at a local flea market. Not bad for an 1878 illustrated edition of The Complete Works of the Bard, eh?  William Shakespeare would have been 449 today.

Never Surrender

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Last Song Syndrome: Corey Hart's Sunglasses at Night, a song I never heard for more than 2 decades. Damn Detroit FM radio; now I got these lines stuck in my head- "Don't switch the blade on the guy in shades, oh no! Don't masquerade with the guy in shades, oh no! Although I hate the said song, I used to like his other power ballad and hit, Never Surrender, which won him the 1985 Juno Award for "Single of the Year" in Canada. Cheesy and all, I still love the 80s!

This Old Guitar

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my old acoustic guitar,  the sole witness  during those rare  times where i can  wear  my heart on  my sleeve.

In Solitude...

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I found a long-sought soft self-comforting freedom a heart-rousing understanding governed not by the common reason but by untamed emotions.

Dead Shot

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Behind the steady finger that pulls the trigger and the sharp eye that peeks through the crosshairs are men like Gunnery Sergeant Kyle Swanson and the enigmatic Juba, two snipers on different sides of the spectrum but with one common mission- to exterminate anybody on their path with 'one shot, one kill." Add Baghdad, Black Ops, Al Qaeda, Chemical weapons and the Iranian connection make Dead Shot a good read; a novel that is just all right but still manages to intrigue.

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...early Sunday morning, driving on a deserted Southfield Freeway. the sun's rays are trying to break through the grey clouds' spell. Michigan in winter; beautiful and lonely.