Category: Culture

JA.O Literary Club Meeting #1

Okay, I’d like to call this first meeting of the JimmyAkin.Org Literary Club to order.

(Bangs gavel several times. Waves it threateningly at one member of the crowd, who quickly settles down.)

Our story today is "Through and Through" by Catholic fantasy author Tim Powers.

If you didn’t do your homework and read the story (or if your time zone prevented you from doing so–drat these global forums!) then kindly read it now. It’s the post just under this one.

To prevent spoilerage, I’m putting my own remarks on the story in the below-the-fold part of this post. Please feel free to add your own remarks on the story and the issues it raises in the combox, and I hope you’ll enjoy this first-ever meeting of the JA.O Literary Club!

(NOTE TO OTHER BLOGGERS: If you like the story and the discussion of it, you might invite your own readers to join in!)

Continue reading “JA.O Literary Club Meeting #1”

The Time Tunnel

TimetunnelWOO-HOO!!!

Back in 1966 there was a TV show that lasted only a season (30 episodes, back then) called The Time Tunnel.

It was about two guys who worked for a secret government time travel project who get lost in time and spend each week jumping from one time period to another.

I was too young to see (or at least to remember) the series when it was first on, but it replayed irregularly on Saturday afternoons on local channels in the 1970s, and I got to see a number of episodes.

I LOVED IT!

But I could never count on seeing it from week to week because of the irregularly with which it played (around ball games or something, I suppose).

BUT NOW I CAN SEE THE WHOLE THING!

Yes, it’s coming out on DVD. In fact, the first half of the series is already out, and the second half will come out next month.

Unfortunately, some of the episodes I remember the best are in the second half (like the one where they went a million years in the future and mankind had evolved into a kind of bee-like society. . .  .Creepy!), but it’s less than a month to wait.

YEE-HAW!

A boyhood ambition (seeing the whole series) is about to be fulfilled!

MORE ON THE TIME TUNNEL.

Special Meeting Of The JA.O Literary Club Tomorrow

Just an announcement that we will be having a special meeting of the JimmyAkin.Org Literary Club tomorrow.

This will be our first meeting, and I’m pleased to say that I have secured the Internet reprint rights to a short story by the renowned Catholic fantasy author Tim Powers.

The story is titled "Through and Through," and it is heavily Catholic-themed. (You’ll be surprised at how much!)

I read the story and thought it would make an excellent text for the JA.OLC, and Mr. Powers was kind enough to allow me to reprint it so we can all read it.

Here’s how it’ll work: Tomorrow at a bit after midnight (Pacific Time), I’ll put up the story, but it’ll have the combox turned off so that folks can just read the story. Then, at about nine a.m. (again Pacific), I’ll put up my review of the story with the combox turned on so that folks can add their own reviews, thoughts, discussions.

Hope y’all enjoy the story, and I hope to see you at the first-ever meeting of the JA.O Literary Club!

Caprica!

Caprica_1YEE-HAW!!!

A big, TEXAS-SIZED CHT to the readers who e-mailed the following story:

SCI FI Channel announced the development of Caprica, a spinoff prequel of its hit Battlestar Galactica, in presentations to advertisers in New York on April 26. Caprica would come from Galactica executive producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick, writer Remi Aubuchon (24) and NBC Universal Television Studio.

Caprica would take place more than half a century before the events that play out in Battlestar Galactica. The people of the Twelve Colonies are at peace and living in a society not unlike our own, but where high technology has changed the lives of virtually everyone for the better.

But a startling breakthrough in robotics is about to occur, one that will bring to life the age-old dream of marrying artificial intelligence with a mechanical body to create the first living robot: a Cylon. Following the lives of two families, the Graystones and the Adamas (the family of William Adama, who will one day become the commander of the Battlestar Galactica), Caprica will weave together corporate intrigue, techno-action and sexual politics into television’s first science fiction family saga, the channel announced [SOURCE].

SWEET!

(Except for that sexual politics thing. Let’s hope that gets minimized quickly, the way it did in BSG.)

Incidentally, this may explain why the third season of BSG is being delayed by a few months–so they can get the new series up and running.

Opie – Laughing all the way to the bank?

RonhowTim J here.

You know… this is just a hair-brained possibility (or is it hare-brained?), and something that I guess is one of the inevitable cultural mutations of the DaVinci Code phenomenon, but it strikes me as plausible, and so though I have no evidence for it, I wanted to run it past y’all.

Heck, Dan Brown works without evidence all the time.

I watched one of the longer DVC trailers on TV this past weekend, and it struck me as oddly… innocuous. I mean, it depicted all these supposedly mind-wrenching, earth-shattering events, but it came off as rather… frothy – like one of those old Hollywood action serials, where you were supposed to get all worked up about the hero’s predicament, but all the time you knew it was really no big deal.

I haven’t seen the DVC film (and plan to go see Over The Hedge instead, on May 19th), but what I saw of the trailer left me with the impression that the acting is so over-the-top, and the direction so florrid that the film may come off about as plausible as The League of Extrordinary Gentlemen, and about as serious as Young Frankenstein.

I admit, it could be because I already think of the film’s raw material as ridiculous, and so I’m predisposed to laugh.

Except I wasn’t really expecting to laugh. I was expecting that a full-length DVC trailer would leave me irritated, concerned and maybe a little demoralized. It didn’t.

So, is it possible that little Opie Cunningham has directed the DaVinci Code as a farce? Might he have given the subject the cinematic treatment it truly warrants? Is he that good?

Part of me would like to think so, given that he grew up on the set of the Andy Griffith Show, singing hymns during breaks in shooting with Andy, Don Knotts and everybody. Wouldn’t it be great if he snapped up the DVC movie gig so he could give it the subtle lampooning it deserves?

Like I said, I have no evidence except for my own reaction to the trailer… I’m just sayin’, that’s all.

Grist for the continually grinding mill.

The Da Vinci Files: An Unexpected Ally

Christians may have just gotten an unexpected ally against Ron Howard’s latest monsterpiece, The Da Vinci Code.

Oh, sure. Lots of Christian groups have been picking at the book’s and film’s inaccuracies–but they’re focused on matters of fact rather than style.

They may have just gotten an ally who would love to see the film fail at the boxoffice and who couldn’t care less about the fact and will go after the film on grounds of style–even at the pettiest level.

So who is the mysterious ally willing to take on Hollywood?

Hollywood itself.

GET THE STORY.

MEMO TO HOLLYWOOD:

A house divided itself cannot stand.

P.S. Burn, baby, burn!

Hell In A Nutshell

Screwtape

If Uncle Screwtape had thumbs, he’d be giving The DaVinci Code two thumbs up.

"Now, Wormwood, before you object to my calling this book ‘non-fiction’ — since it is technically classified as ‘fiction’ — let me say that it is essentially non-fiction, at least as far as our purposes are concerned. That’s because it’s principle delight for our side is that in the tacky plastic shell of some below-average ‘fiction’ the book parades as ‘fact’ a veritable phalanx of practical propaganda and disinformation that would make our dear Herr Goebbels (Circle Eight, third spiderhole on the right) jade green with envy! Souls by the boatload are blithely believing almost all of the deliciously corrosive non-facts that are congealed everywhere in it, like flies in bad aspic, and it is that precisely which most recommends this glorious effort as worthy of our dedicated and especial study.

"But where to begin in describing to you its myriad delights? First, a brief synopsis of the plot: a museum curator is murdered by a fanatical albino Christian bigot (nice opening, no?); the curator’s granddaughter and an American ‘symbologist’ (don’t ask me, I haven’t the time) try to find the real killer and are launched on a wildly implausible and fantastically cryptical search for the proverbial Holy Grail, all the while chased by angry gendarmes and the aforementioned unhinged albino. In the process they (and the lucky reader) discover that: the Church is murderous and evil; the Bible is a hoax; Jesus is not divine, but merely a married mortal and an earnest proto-feminist (!); there is no such thing as Truth; and oh, yes… is the truest kind of prayer. Can you stand it? A virtuoso performance, no? It’s as if the author’s somehow squeezed all of hell into a walnut shell. And oh, yes, one more historical ‘fact’: Leonardo DaVinci’s homosexuality was ‘flamboyant’! Do tell."

GET THE STORY. (Warning: Put down the coffee mug and clear the throat first. JimmyAkin.org takes no responsibility for the state of your keyboard, monitor, or respiratory system if you read this while drinking or eating.)

(Nod to Mark Shea for the link.)

I’ve read a number of Screwtapian musings by writers attempting to channel C. S. Lewis, but this is the first one I’ve read of which I think even Lewis himself would approve. Eric Metaxas nails Screwtape. Read the whole thing.

Galactica Season Three

GalacticaWell, we’re now well and truly into the gap between Galatica season 2 and season 3, so pretty much everybody who wants to see the season 2 finale has done so.

(If you haven’t, you can download it from iTunes and watch it in iTunes, even if you don’t have a video iPod.)

This gives me a chance to speculate on what we’re going to see in season 3.

One of my favorite things to do when watching or reading a story is to predict where it’s going and then seeing if I’m right or not.

So let’s see how I do with my predictions for BSG season 3. . . .

Continue reading “Galactica Season Three”

About a Boy

Russianboy2_1
Hey, Tim Jones, here.

I just wanted to share with you all a neat experience I had lately in my work. The recently finished painting at left will always hold a special place for me, for a few reasons.

For one thing, it is the first portrait commission that I received through MY WEBSITE. It’s pretty cool that we live in a time when artists can find customers anywhere in the world. The entire thing was done through e-mail. The client sent me a photo as an attachment, and I sent a preliminary sketch (as well as the final painting for their approval) in the same way. The fees were handled through PayPal. The client even commented in one e-mail how odd it was that we had this transaction without ever speaking to one another. And they were right!

Another thing that made this a good experience was the fact that the customer was a very kind Catholic family, and the boy in the painting is their recently adopted son. I’m thrilled that my work allowed me to be involved with this family in such a personal way. I know the painting is very meaningful for them. Our families have actually been praying for one another since pretty early in the process, and that is a perk for which I am really grateful.

Finally, the whole thing went so smoothly. I am always a bit nervous to begin a commission because things can go off the rails. I recently had to pass on a nice commission because the customer’s needs and my artistic goals just didn’t fit well in the end. I didn’t want to take on a project that I wouldn’t be proud to put my name on. Alot of things can happen; what if the customer doesn’t like the sketch? What if they like the sketch, but don’t like the final painting? What if they want changes that you feel make the artwork worse, rather than better?

I have been blessed, in that I have not yet had a commission go south on me like that, but it does happen. It would be especially uncomfortable if the project fell apart when it was half finished and half paid for! I’ve heard horror stories.

So, as I said, I was a bit nervous while I waited to see what kind of portrait it was that the client had in mind. I usually work from life, or at least from my own photos. Working from someone else’s photography is a crapshoot. The goal is to end up with a painting of a person, not something that looks like a painting of a photo of a person.

I was delighted to see that the photo was not a cheesy commercial portrait or a badly composed snapshot, but was worthy of framing on its own. Portraits of young children always run the risk of being overly sentimental, but this photo had depth and subtlety. I was intrigued by the boy’s gaze, and found the soft lighting a worthy challenge. I also found his Russian features very striking. Overall, I could not have asked for better source material from a client.

The painting does lose something in reproduction, but it did turn out well, and I am glad to have a copy of a high resolution digital scan of it tucked away in my files.

Jobs come and go, but this is one that I will always remember fondly, and for which I will always be grateful.

I just reorganized my website, and have added a few new paintings. Y’all drop by, ya hear?