As many of you know by now, I'm not a fan of J.J.Abrams Star Trek work. He's a fine popcorn film action director, but I really feel that he doesn't understand what made Star Trek so special to those who've discovered admired it for decades. But I'm not writing this to dump on nuTrek (it was bound to get it's own shorthand label…) but rather to point fans like-minded to myself to a great TOS Star Trek fix.



For many this may be old news, but the Vanguard series [link] of Trek novels (eight books and one e-book exclusive "debrief"), which just wrapped up last year, is the best Trek fiction I've read in a long, long time. It captures the spirit of the show and has developed characters that serve the bigger plot of enigma, exploration, conflict, and cloak-and-dagger diplomacy on the Federation frontier. Feels a lot like the D.C. Fontana approach to Trek stories. The books start about the same time Kirk takes command of the Enterprise and the vast story ends somewhere after TOS' third season.

It's important to note that this story begins and ends with the Enterprise and crew as players, but the bulk of the story follows characters (both Starfleet and civilian) on a state-of-the-art starbase. Think "Deep Space Nine" if you must, but for my money the concept is handled better here and is directed in a tighter, more interesting story arc. The Enterprise's adventures come into play vicariously at several points. This serves to lend a feel that what we're reading is all the action the Enterprise missed and the writers do an excellent job of anchoring it to Trek canon while still creating something fresh. So in that sense it feels like "the missing TOS".



Over the past few decades I haven't read too many Trek novels… mostly because the one's I'd try all seemed too mired in the "Starlequin" formula that was promoted by Marshak and Culbreth back in the late 70's. That is that any SF elements are mostly just backdrops to character drama and angst. The Vanguard series flips that equation on it's head, giving us three-dimensional characters who simply try to exist in the context of the greater story of mystery and action on the final frontier.

A word of advice for those picking up the series for the first time: if you, the best place to start is the novella "Almost Tomorrow" in the Vanguard story collection, "Star Trek Vanguard: Declassified". It's a helpful prequel to the first novel… BUT DO NOT (!!!) read any other stories in this volume until you've completed the fifth book ("Precipice") or you'll hit some serious spoilers.



So to anyone who says that TOS is spent and that the only way to do interesting Trek work in this time is to follow the JJ-Formula™, this novel series definitely proves that assumption wrong. It's good Trek and pretty decent SF… and it's written for a mature audience, so no one gets beamed into the plumbing system for laughs or stranded on a ice planet by a petulant Vulcan captain. Plus there's no "supervillains"… at least not anything remotely human

Good stuff. It'll cure what ails ya! And for added fun you can reference author David Mack's annotations [link] on the web as you go. The downside is that the print volumes can be hard to find now, but if you have an e-reader (like a Kindle) you're good to go.

Now ART! New and cool… or older and cool. But cool's the rule:

My buddy Tom (Drell-7) is always good for firing up my inner Trek geek. Recently he got to reexamine the Klingon "Bird of Prey" that debuted in the third Star Trek movie. I always liked the appearance of the design, but the further we got from STIII, the less sense it made. By the time we got to TNG, the exact same ship came in various sizes – perfectly scaled. Sure, it's obvious it was done to reuse the model and add ship variety on a budget, but it just added to the ship's woes and carried it further afield from plausibility in context of Trek's engineering rationale and real-world science.



Of course even its debut wasn't without hitches. Naming this a "Bird of Prey" (previously in Trek referring only to a specific Romulan ship or hull décor) confused things and made it appear that the show's producers didn't know or care about the integrity of Trek lore. Then, to add insult to injury, they painted red wings on the ventral surface, again evoking Romulans, not Klingons. Wassup wid dat?!??!



Anyway, after listening to Tom wax dissingly about the ship in a recent discussion, I decided to rethink the design and try to lend it a plausible rationale in the TOS era. So here's my thoughts (fellow geeks, sharpen your sabers and spin up your prop beanies!):


SIZE: There's only one size to the ship – the size we saw landed on Vulcan at the start of STIV [link] . That's about 55m, stem to stern. It's not inflatable, allowing you to blow more air in to make a bigger ship. You can NOT fit a pair of whales in here.

ENGINEERING: As we can see the ship does not feature any bussard collectors or intakes, but this does not preclude it from having warp capability. It just limits the range as it can not refuel from the interstellar medium, pointing to a mission which is dramatically different from most "starships". Thus it fits better as a "warp-capable system defense craft". It has limited warp capability - not enough for sustained travel - but enough to engage a warp driven opponent in a localized combat. It can do up to warp 4, though only for limited periods. The plus size is that it can accelerate to speed faster than nearly any other vessel in the Federation fleet.

The shields on the ship are limited and mostly just cover the forward and lower surfaces. This provides protection during attacks (retreat? what's a retreat? we don't need no steekin' aft shields!) as well as a projected aeroshell during operations within an atmosphere.

The habitable space on this ship is VERY limited, but given the scope of its duties (in-system defense), that's not a real problem. There is cramped bunk space, a small mess, head, torp room, bridge, and transporters. But the rest of the ship is mostly engineering as it needs to contain a lot in a small hull size. I figure a crew of eight.

The ship has powerful weapons for such a small craft, but then that's its function: to get into faction fast and give a bloody nose. If the ship needs to travel between star systems, it must do so in the presence of a tanker for refueling. I picture tankers designed to supply 4-6 of these at a time, so in that sense the ship can almost be thought of as a Klingon fighter.

COLOR: OK, just paint over that red underwing design. The panels themselves are Klingon looking enough… and this erases and visual erroneous connection between this ship and a Romulan design.



So that's my take on the (ship formerly known as) the BoP: clipped wings, but sharp beak. OK… call me a Trek revisionist if you must, but the Trek canon after TMP just got increasingly hard to swallow (read: compromised by too many cooks and production necessities) for my tastes. But with such nice looking raw materials, it'd be a shame to just throw the baby out with the bath water. Better to dump the water and start fresh

OK, with that geekgasm done, let's look at pretty pictures from other talented DA "art forces". Click the thumbnails to be taken to a magical place...

A quick lil' bloggy update since the old one' getting might stale and is starting to attract flies…  I'm not one who keeps their finger to the pulse of my DA stats, but I just checked in out of curiosity and I'm up to over 2300 watchers! WOW! I'm tickled and honored… but talk about performance pressure??!?!  Seriously, these are even higher audience numbers than when I worked with publishing back with Digest Group Publications. It really is pretty neat that DA has enabled me to create such an audience. Thank you all for your support and (as always) your great conversations through feedback!

I just found out that my friend and writer, Allen Steele, has dedicated his next book to me. I've been published enough that the thrill's worn off, but I don't think I ever had a book dedicated to me before! I guess it pays to visit your pals when they're in the hospital with pancreatitis… Allen's next book is an expansion of his short story, "Goddard's People", which details an alternate WW2 history in which the battle is taken to the edge of space. It should be published next year, about this time.

On the Yamato 2199 front (for fellow fans), the next batch of four episodes should be rolling out relatively soon. As always keep your eye peeled to the OurStarblazers site [link] for great news and updates. I also heard the rumor that the series has been optioned for US DVD release as "Starblazers 2199". I hope that's good news…. though I remain uncertain until I read official details.

In the past few weeks I've been working with my partner-in-crime, Tom Peters (aka Drell-7) on another cooperative modeling project. [link] It's been a blast and we're both pretty psyched with the results to date, so… if you don't have Drell-7 watched already, you'd be advised to do so!



I always said I'd make a great art agent for him…

That's pretty much it for now. Thanks again for your attention (I wonder if I could double my watcher count by wearing a squirrel costume?) and here's some cool art from other wonderful DA artists to check out… if you haven't already. Click the thumbnails to enpixelify the images!

Regardless of whether you're thrilled by the idea or think of it as a creative co-op. "Reimagining" and/or relaunching the cherished shows of SF programs of our youth has become standard operating procedure in Hollywood. Not unexpectedly, it's had mixed results. It's easier to count the real successes, like "Battlestar Galactica". Most of the rest are a mixed bag.

These show updates usually seem to try an hit one of two markets: either to update the show for the existing audience, or to make it more accessible for a new, younger one. Again, Galactica showed rare genius in hitting both, while JJ Abrams Trek seemed more open to sacrificing much of the existing fan base in order to make a Trek for the post-MTV generations.



Updating an old favorite well can be a real tightrope walk and that's why I've been blown away by the current (in-progress) Japanese update of the 70's anime, "Space Cruiser Yamato" (or "Starblazers" as many English speaking countries came to know it). The new production, "Yamato 2199" is being released in Japanese theaters in four episode chunks and they're currently about halfway through the first season.

2199 doesn't try to tell a new story, just to tell the same story a little better, with more adult and contemporary sensibility. The characters have more depth – and variety! The crew is fleshed out more as an ensemble cast, and more importantly they expand the core characters with several new, key female roles. A testament to how well this is done is that you feel like they were always there… you just somehow forgot them.



Oh sure, the core trope of refitting the hulk of the sunken battleship Yamato into a starship that can save the planet is an idea of some silliness and mired a ideal of Japanese patriotic pride. But that theme aside, the show was always decent SF and hits that target even more effectively now. Their use of zero-g, accurate attitude jet maneuvering, an updated to all the solar system science, and functional mechanical design all make the show a pure SF geekfest.

Unfortunately I've not heard of any release dates for the official US DVDs, but a number of sites have been carrying streaming video of the episodes (that is until Bandai chases them down and spanks 'em). You can try these sites to see the episodes to date.

Animeflavor: [link]
GoGoAnime: [link]

To paraphrase the old saying, sometimes doing the job right makes people you didn't think you did anything at all. Yamato 2199 is like that, but when you really compare and contrast to the original production, the update is a thing of remarkable beauty and progress. It's not only renewed my love of this old show, but given me hope that minds are still out there that know how to make good, compelling SF.  Here's another review if you need further convincing: [link]

Tim Eldred has started a site which is covering news of the show as it evolves and is released. It has some great content, including some nice interviews with mecha designers. It's well worth cruising through for great news and background.

OurStarBlazers: [link]

Now, your just desserts! Click to explore anything that snags your eyeballs:

OK, it's beginning to look like freaky super storms are the new normal. We all gotta live with it… and it ain't a lick o' fun. But maybe we can change that… at least a little? It's humiliating to have your yard trashed by "Hugo" or your house buried in snow by "Candy". So my proposal is this: when cyclonic storms reach category one, they are official renamed after supervillains! That makes ya feel a TINY little better about having all your worldly belongings destroyed by wind and water… at least that's my theory.

So imagine the forecasts and headlines?! "Darth Vader is expected to roar into South Carolina in the morning and all coastal residents are urged to evacuate." "Galactus slams New York, leaving billions in damage in his wake." "Goldfinger is making a b-line up the coast and should be delivering a withering attack on New England in the next six hours."

And then the cool conversations at parties? "So did ya take much hurtin' from Lex Luther?" "FEH! For all the headlines, the Wicked Witch of the West was a total wimp…"

Humans. We're adaptable. If we gotta live with this freaky climate, we may as well try to get a (dark) chuckle out of it. Write your Congressman and urge them to act on the Arcas Storm Name Bill immediately!

And now – art for art's sake. Click the thumbnails to embark on a wondrous journey of exploration… or just to kill time 'til the chicken comes out of the oven (you omnivorous lot, you….)

This is a plug for my old buddy, Mike Vilardi, who's selling off old originals of his game art. Those in the Traveller community may remember Mike for his peerless work on the Aslan (see DGP's "Solomani & Aslan" product [link] ), among other great imagery. And the Star Wars fans out there may recalll his stint on West End's "Star Wars RPG", where he left a deep mark on the game with some outstanding imagery.



We were both working on the line as Timothy Zahn was releasing his post-episode-VI trilogy. Mike was one of the very first artist to define the visual look of Mara Jade... and more! If you're interested, check out his blog [link] and gallery [link] . For original classic works, his asking price is quite good! Mike was definitely one of the most skilled illustrators I worked with, back in the RPG days. Operators are standing by and supplies are limited. Pocket Fisherman sold separately.

H'okay. I'm WAY overdue to try an point you to some cool stuff by many-and-varied Deviants  that you may have overlooked, so here ya. Click thumbnails for further enlightenment!

After much delay and winter illness, here's the coverage of my top three picks in the samurai cinema genre. It makes sense to group them as their relative rankings to one another can vary on my mood, the phase of the moon, and… well, you get it. So, drumroll if you please…


KILL!

This may be the most fun film in my whole countdown. Kill!, directed by Kihachi Okamoto and starring genre staple Tatsuya Nakadai, is a dark comedy set in the Edo period. It's sourced from the same story that served as the foundation for Kurosawa's "Sanjuro", but the two films only have a vague resemblance.



Kill!'s main characters are a samurai who is trying to be walk away from his position and live a normal life and a peasant who desperately wants to become a samurai. Though their lives are taking them in different directions they find a common cause when they get caught up in a clan's deadly vendetta… and hilarity ensues, though in a dry, understated way.

This is the film that finally made me understand Nakadai's status as a genre legend. He plays a very different character from most of his other roles, which are often brooding and arrogant. Here he's wonderfully likeable and easy going – almost to a fault. In the long run I think this may be the piece of Samurai cinema that I revisit the most.

YOJIMBO

I'm now in that territory of films that need little to no introduction. Another dark comedy, "Yojimbo" (Japanese for "bodyguard") is a Kurosawa masterpiece that introduces Toshiro Mifune's nameless samurai. This films plot and setting was pretty much swiped wholesale by Sergio Leone as "A Fistful of Dollars", launching that director's "man with no name" saga. But it's not too surprising as the film is a sort of homage by Kurosawa to the Western film genre.



Mifune's character from this film is just as iconic as Eastwood's in Leone's epic. The character went on to have three more film adventures, though only one more would be done by Kurosawa: "Sanjuro" (Japanese for thirty-something male).

And now…

THE SEVEN SAMURAI

Aw, c'mon, you knew it was coming. This is not only this the king of the genre, but it's one of my top five films of all time in all genres. Like "Yojimbo", the story drew the attention of Western film makers who adapted the story to make the successful "The Magnificent Seven",  but I feel this original is vastly superior to the American work on nearly every level.



It's a simple story: a bandit-plagued peasant village wants to hire some samurai to protect their town. The group is assembled, the town is fortified, all leading to the big climactic battle scene. But the texture of the story – the characters, the fine personal details, the cinematography and more…. it's just got everything! It's a perfectly rounded cinematic meal.

Words really fail me in capturing what makes the film so special, so I hope you'll just dive in and give it a view, if you haven't already. The fact that such a simple plot can clock in at 207 minutes and be engaging the whole way should tell you something.

Thanks for following… or tolerating my countdown. Next blog will return to my usual random outburst of subject matter and observations.

Yrrrrrrghh… Yeah, I know. I'm overdue for my samurai cinema top three reviews. But I haven't really been in the right frame of mind… somedays barely in any frame of mind at all. I'm wrestling with round two of Ye Oulde Wintre Headcolde. It hasn't left my brain much analytical maneuvering room so this interim babble will have to suffice until I can get two or three neurons back in a room to have a discussion about medieval Japanese cinematic nuggets.

And of course, there's plenty among you who probably aren't missing it

It's been a strange year. Since late June I've been slogging through my biggest creative desert of… of… THE CENTURY! OK, that sounds a bit hyperbolic, but I don't recall being this creatively stuffed up for the last 13 years. Same thing – less melodrama.

I've tried pushing against the block. I've tried pulling. I've tried just ignoring the block and going all Zen. Either way, no joy. I suspect the muses will not settle for less than a nubile virgin sacrifice, so it seems I have a new Winter project!?! At least I'll try to get to that after I stop coughing up a lung (what happens if I've already coughed up two???).

Well happy holidays to y'all and I certainly hope you managed to avoid the viral bullet that winged me. Here's some visual stocking stuffers for ya – maybe a few DA things you've missed. Click to surf the Vannevar Bush ™ brand hyperlinkadoodle back to the original's page.




G'won! Click 'em! You know you want to!

Tempted as I am to throw "Star Wars" into this mix, I'll walk the straight and narrow line. However it's worth noting that the Jidai-Geki Knights [link] does suggest it as an honorary member of the genre. The more samurai films you see, the more you'll find yourself chuckling at the genre tropes that Lucas threw in.

But that's all a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. We just want to jump back one or two centuries and cross an ocean… bringing us to number four in samurai cinema countdown, "Sanjuro" by Akira Kurosawa. The legendary Toshiro Mifune didn't play many repeat character roles… in part because this was before the world's media was captured by sequelmania. But his nameless, thirty-something samurai is perhaps his most often repeated role (four times), with the two Kurosawa-directed entries being the stand out winners.



"Sanjuro" is the second film with the character, but easily stands alone as a film. Mifune's character is tough ronin, outwardly lazy (a master of slack-fu!), rough around the edges, but with tendency to do the right thing for people in need… and make a bit of money while he's at it… not to mention downing his share of sake. If it sounds a bit like Eastwood's character from the Leone spaghetti westerns, that's because this is where Leone grabbed the idea. Facing off against Mifune is Tatsuya Nakadai as the baddie master swordsman.

In "Sanjuro" Mifune's character runs into a group of naïve, young, idealistic samurai who find themselves marked men after stumbling into a collision course with a corrupt clan chamberlain. Mifune appears to not care much about their actions, but steps in every time  they're about to execute their latest inevitably flawed "cunning plan".

The film has a solid undercurrent of dark humor to it, from the captured vassal in the closet who finds himself uncontrollably drawn to be a co-conspirator to the sword play climax's geyser of blood that makes Python's Black Knight look like he just has a flesh wound. The film celebrates the genre while mocking much of it's core concepts. It's an approach I greatly enjoy.

Have a taste of the Sanjuro trailer, here:
[link]

Japanese samurai cinema (jidaigeki) seems to have followed a somewhat similar arc in popularity as Westerns did in the U.S. This is not too surprising since two genres tended to play off each other's themes and sometimes plots. Like Westerns, the output of the genre seemed to wane from the early eighties until the late 90's. But recently there's been a slew of new jidaigeki. Some of it is revisiting old stories while others are breaking new ground in the genre with plots and characters that better connect with modern sensibilities. "The Hidden Blade" falls in that latter category.

"The Hidden Blade", directed by Yoji Yamada and released in 2004, follows a very similar story architecture to Yamada's previous film, "The Twilight Samurai". In fact they're so similar fans of the film usually choose to champion one over the other. While "The Twilight Samurai" may capture a bit of the accurate period social mores, to me it seems like a trial run for making it's richer and more humane younger cinematic sibling. "The Hidden Blade's" plot is also more varied/textured.



If you like jidaigeki for the outrageous characters and wild swordplay, you want to give this one a miss. But if you're looking for a solid, engrossing period drama with characters who really draw you into their lives, this is one of the best. It follows the life of a low caste samurai, his struggle to figure out how make a love affair between castes work, and the challenge of having his clan call on him to kill his best friend, now a rogue criminal. It also has a few really great, memorable light moments.

Here's the link to the trailer for the film: [link]

I guess this entry in my "seven summaries" is the last of the rich, humanitarian films on my list. The next few fall into perhaps my favorite category: the period adventure comedy!

Number six on my samurai cinema countdown is another work by the anti-establishment director, Masaki Kobayashi: "Hara-Kiri". Again Kobayashi brings into question the notion of putting honor and clan loyalty above individual rights and happiness.

Again, this film uses the peaceful Edo period as its backdrop. With so little conflict in Japan, many ronin (masterless samurai) are falling on hard times and are desperate to find gainful employment. One scam that works its way through the community is for a ronin to approach a clan and ask if they would do him the favor of allowing him to perform ritual suicide on their grounds. Their secret hope is that the clan would take pity on them and instead offer them a position in their ranks or perhaps money to tide them through.



The Iyi clan hears of this trick and decides not to be taken in by it. Their plan is, instead, to force any such samurai to follow through with their request… whether they like it or not. A middle-aged samurai, Hanshiro Tsugumo (played by Tatsuya Nakadai in one of his finest performances) shows up with the seppuku request. They grant it, though he later adds a caveat: they must listen to his story.

From this point on the film flips from flashback to the storytelling present and we slowly learn the story of this mysterious samurai and his real motives. Suffice to say all is not as it might seem. The story structure of "Hara-Kiri" is quite non-linear and the truth tantalizingly reveals itself as in heads towards the blade flashing climax. Kobayashi's work may be the most touchingly human of the genre's golden age. The film was remade in a modern, color version this year by the same director as "13 Assasins". I have not seen the remake yet.

Trailer:
[link]

Full Intro (sorry, no English subs on this link):
[link]

Number seven on my "best of samurai cinema" countdown list is "Samurai Rebellion", made in 1967 by Masaki Kobayashi. Set in the middle of the peaceful Edo period (between civil war and modern reform) it centers around a middle aged clan vassal, Isaburo Sasahara (Toshiro Mifune), who's tried to make the best of his loveless, arranged marriage. The clan leader asks Isaburo to allow his eldest son, Yogoro, to marry one of his concubines, Ichi, who has fallen out of favor in the court after she bore the leader a "back-up hier".

Having lived through years of an arranged marriage, Isaburo does all he call to gracefully decline the offer, not wishing his son to follow in his hen-pecked footsteps. But the clan pressure is too great and they take in Ichi, expecting the worse. To their astonishment they find she's a sweet and loyal woman leading to a relationship between Ichi and Yogoro built on real love and respect. They later have a daughter together, Tomi.

Shortly after Tomi is born, the lord's primary hier dies, leaving the child he had with Ichi to be the new clan hier. Tradition holds that the mother of a clan's hier can not be the wife of a vassal, so he demands Yogoro divorce Ichi and send her back to the castle, leaving her infant daughter and loving family behind. The father, Isaburo, seeing his son enjoy a love-based marriage that he was denied, staunchly refuses to allow Ichi to return to the lord, setting the family on a collision course with the powers of the clan and standing tradition.



It may sound a bit soap operatic…. but it's damn good soap opera! That's its power and why it rates #7 on my list. The film's notion of questioning authority is a decidedly western approach in tales of honor-driven ancient Japan. Director Kobayashi was a conscientious objector serving in WW2 Japan – not an easy path to follow in that culture. Many of his films challenge Japan's feudalistic traditions and the idea of humans as nothing more that soulless capital for the elite. His few samurai films are some of the most emotionally powerful, but at the same time they are "anti-samurai" films, the same way that "Bridge On The River Kwai" is both a great war film and anti-war film.

Trailer:
[link]

As some of you may have noticed, I've recently been obsessed with expanding my experience with classic samurai cinema – mostly the works of the 50's and 60's. The Golden Age. I've been a long time Kurosawa fan, but I haven't looked too far beyond that boundary until now. He's still the undisputed master of jidaigeki cinema, but there are some other outstanding works in the field. Like American Westerns or War films, the genre is often just a setting or premise for a story with another social message.

I figured I'd share the results of my self-inflicted film fest by doing mini-reviews of my resulting top seven – one review each day for the next seven days. Not into samurai cinema? You sure?? You know that Star Wars has its roots in the genre, yes? And back when I was creating work for Traveller's "Rebellion Period", I looked to the Japanese 15th century's age of war (the Sengoku Period) for story telling templates. It's a rich genre with humans set in a somewhat alien (for Western viewers) culture, but with familiar currents of basic humanity flowing beneath.

One of the best summary reference sites I've found for the genre is Lard Biscuit's "Jidai-Geki Knights" site: [link]  It's worth looking through if you're looking for either a novice's primer guide or if you're already familiar with the genre but looking to expand your scope.

So stay tuned tomorrow for the beginning of "The Seven Summaries"…..

I guess I've never been a big fan of "holiday traditions". Traditions are often activities that someone found fun, decades or generations ago, that you should find fun today as well…. or else! I'm happier finding my own ways to celebrate and enjoy the company of family and friends. This year the Thanksgiving meal plan fell on my shoulders, so out with the turkey and in with a good BBQ beef brisket!

I've been perfecting this recipe for a couple of years and I think I've finally got it all nailed down. If you care to try it out (for Thanksgiving, or later) let me know how well my instructions work. The key is to make sure the cooking goes "low and slow" for maximum tenderness.



ARCAS-BRAND ™ SLOW COOKED BBQ BEEF BRISKET

Brisket:
3 lbs. beef brisket
2 tablespoons Liquid Smoke
2 teaspoons onion powder
2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 teaspoon celery seed
½ teaspoon fresh ground pepper
1 teaspoon coarse sea salt
1/3 cup beef broth (more if needed)

Sauce:
1.5 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon real maple syrup (optional)
1 cup ketchup
3 tablespoons butter
¼ cup water or quality bourbon
½ teaspoon celery seed
1 tablespoon Liquid Smoke
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1.5 teaspoons mustard powder
¼ teaspoon of fresh ground pepper
¼ teaspoon ground cloves

Pour Liquid Smoke over brisket. Rub w/ onion powder, garlic powder, pepper, and celery seed. Sprinkle w/ salt and wrap tightly in plastic. Marinate under refrigeration for 6-12 hours (or overnight).

Preheat oven to 250F degrees. Place brisket in roasting pan with beef broth and cover tightly with foil. Cook four hours at 225-250F. Check at 2 hour mark to see if broth has boiled off. If it has, add more to maintain moist meat through the remaining cooking.

Blend all sauce ingredients in sauce pan over medium heat. Cook until boiling.

Remove brisket from oven. For lower fat version, remove most of the liquid drippings from the pan. Cut brisket into slices and then pour sauce over brisket. Seal pan with foil and return to oven for another 45 minutes at 250F degrees.

Serves about 4-6

And now, some eye candy for dessert. Some of these are new to DA, others are just new to me. But there's always great imagery to be discovered in the DA bit-heap! Happy holidays to those celebrating!

One comment I've heard over and over again on many of my Trek images goes something like "This how Trek SHOULD be…" or "This how Trek USED TO be…". It's gotten me thinking about the family of big screen Trek movies and how they've changed in flavor through the years. It seems the acknowledged top dog - that is the most universally praised Trek film - is "the Wrath of Khan". But in looking back through the subsequent movies, Khan's success seems to have distorted and limited the "flavor" of the franchise's stories.

When you look back at all the Trek movies between now and Khan, you can see an increasing tern to have the core of the move revolve around someone's vengeance. Such plots were hardly the seed of most of the original series. Sure, it can be OK to use once in a while…. like with "Wrath of Khan"! It was actually a clever use at that point. But honestly, scifi offers far more storytelling options than a revenge-driven human/humanoid antagonist. We used to wonder what the plot of the next Trek movie would be, but now that question is often reduced to "who's the next villain"? Sadly all we've seen about the next J.J. Abrams Trek looks to be more of the same.

Maybe this trend is driven by timid Hollywood marketeers who can only see success in what has succeeded before? Or maybe it's in writers who consciously or subconsciously gravitate to the villain/revenge model? Whatever the case, I find it dreadfully dull and its left me with no interest of what the franchises next cinematic outing holds. From the comments I see on my work, it's heartening to know that I'm not alone in being underwhelmed and disappointed.

So… on that note I hope to leave you with some imagery that's more fresh and inspiring than stuck in a rut. These are not necessarily new entries, but a quick take on my DA best-of. Feast! Click! Enjoy!

Nov. 6. My civic duty is complete after having placed my vote under a crisp, blue Autumn morning sky. But what was even better than putting my vote behind me was the smell that met my nose on exiting the polls… which are next to a microbrewery. They were in the process of purging a brewing mash and there are few smells I relish more than the scent of stewed malt. Ahhhhhh. And with the cooler weather I even got a visual accompaniment as a column of aromatic steam rose off the pile of discarded mash.

A great way to start the day.



But hey – the REAL reason I wanted to do a blog update is that I have two new "products" that hit the public this week. First is a podcast session [link] – my second with 3D Art Direct. In this podcast me and my good friend Tom Peters (aka "Drell-7" [link] ) dive into the subject of SF spacecraft design and explore our ideas of what separates good designs from bad ones, looking primarily at media examples. We also touch a bit on details behind our Leonov Project [link] .



Second, this week sees the release of Allen Steele's newest SF novel and his first foray into young adult fiction: "Apollo's Outcasts" [link] . The tale is set on a giant moonbase seeking its independence from Earth. Allen once again asked me to produce the map/tech illo. that appears in the front of the book. You can also see it in my gallery, here.



And now – dessert! Tasty visual treats from DA that you may have missed, but I can recommend:

Hey all. I'm sure you've been deluged with news of superstorm Sandy and its impact on East Coast. Up here in Massachusetts we prepared for the worse, but the landward turn of the storm left us relatively unscathed. Better to be over-prepared than under!

As you may have noted my art output is still at low levels (for me). Since late June I've been struggling to regain my artistic inspiration. Where my brain is usually prone to and prolific about forming images and stories in my head, my recent efforts have been like watching a screen of static.

Instead of continuing to beat my head against the wall to get something to come out, I decided to lose myself in the project of expanding my understanding of samurai cinema beyond the boundaries of just Kurosawa (gotta finish watching "Red Lion", tonight…). I fully understand if it's not something for everyone, but those samurai cinema buffs among you (there's gotta be one or two) can relate Sometimes when you can't win a battle head-on, you just need to figure out way to flank it! So… the battle continues, though with more katanas than lasers at the moment.

My webcam choices aside, I haven't been saying much about the current political season. That's not an easy silence to maintain!! But let me just say, regardless of your political inclination, get out there and vote! This election is more than just a choice between two men. Things like the balance of the Supreme Court hang in the balance, losing or maintaining the hard-won health care rights of all Americans (working and retired-to-be), as well as the direction of our energy and environmental strategies for the next four years hang in the balance. The two paths are quite divergent so this is not a trivial election. Get informed and don't sit it out.

OK, now onto dessert: cool DA art finds! It's been a while since my last blog, so I've stumbled on many new (for me) things since then. Click the thumbnails to visit the deviations' pages and see them in all then embiggened glory!



And finally, a shout out to old friends/freelance art commrades now rediscovered on DA: Bryan Gibson [link] and Mike Vilardi [link]!

Summer's effectively over, but I'm still finding my creativity stuffed up. I've been managing to squirt out a few images, but it feels like I'm creating with one cranial lobe tied behind my head.  In the past I've come out of slumps with a creative real fire beneath me, sometimes pointing my art in a new direction. I'm hoping that lies ahead, but right now I just feel "weak and dried up"…. so I'm brushing up on String Theory to at least feed the rest of my brain.

It's times like this that I've built my formidable favorites folder to address. So I think I'll do that…. page through all those great works and see if anything tickles my ganglia. Here's some picks from my latest favorites additions. With luck you'll find something new and tasty in the batch.

Transhumanism: is an international intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.

Cyberpunk: is a genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life featuring advanced science, such as information technology and cybernetics, coupled with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order.

Recently watching the new Bryan Singer produced webseries, "H+", got me wondering about whatever happened to the Cyberpunk genre… and most notably, if it still has any validity? The genres of Transhumanism and Cyberpunk certainly have overlapping themes. Cybernetic jack implants and technologically enhanced body parts were certainly a cyberpunk staple. And today's "punk" look is relatively similar to what it was in the early eighties… with perhaps fewer safety pin piercings, today.

It seem to me that the primary difference between the two, as far as scifi concepts, is that cyberpunk brought people into the computers, where transhumanism seems to be more about bringing computers into people. Cyberpunk shows its age when it comes to the concept of remote access. In that sense transhumanism is a kind of update of many of the cyberpunk concepts, formulated from a more informed perspective that's already immersed in a digital lifestyle. There are things that 80's and 90's cyberpunk authors simply could not predict as far as the advances and integration of digital tech in our day to day lives. Transhumaism seems to take that role for granted and look at the trends of how we seem to want to use and interact with digital tech.

So, in conclusion... is (traditional) cyberpunk dead? I'd say yes...and no. Cyberpunk as we know it now seems hopelessly anachronistic in many aspects, but it really does feel that slowly flowed into Transhumanism, being a parent concept of sorts.

In any case, I urge you to watch the "H+" webseries [link] if you're looking for some real 21st century SF! And if you're looking for new art to check out, the variety below awaits your beclickenment:

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Well here we are – mid-Summer in ye olde northern hemisphere.  I always tend to hit an art slump at this time of year. I guess the weather forces by brain to have one foot out the door, beckoning me to enjoy the sun.

I've toyed with various blog subject ideas, but I've found them "too topical" (read: I have "issue fatigue"). My blogs have been too real-world heavy lately… and frankly I usually come to DA to escape the weight of the world and bask in the inspirational work of my fellow artists/craftsman/pixel wranglers/finger painters/what have you. So I'll put the weighty stuff on hold…and will hopefully be back in the not too distant future with some "weighty but FUN" subjects to talk about and ponder.

Until then I'd like to share more of that wonderful DA-peer inspiration with you. Click any thumbnail to go to the image page for details and biggerosity. Enjoy – and I hope you find something here to tickle your eyes and brain: