Krewe of Muses Floats

St. Aug Marching Band In Muses 2014

Bourbon And Books

Makers Mark on the rocks and Elmore Leonard's Bandits at Ye Olde College Inn:

Gnarly Head Merlot

"I want another bottle of wine. And another after that." - Red Reddington

Muses Comic Book

Mini Comics From Muses

Cartoonist Caesar Meadows makes 30,840 mini comic books for Muses

Caesar Meadows is a big dude, but he produces the tiniest comic books you ever saw. They are about as big as a book of matches, so small that they fit in one of those plastic capsules that come from the toy vending machines you see at grocery store exits. Meadows has been busy. For Carnival 2014, the Krewe of Muses commissioned Meadows to make 30,840 mini comic books to be tossed from their floats on Thursday (Feb. 27) night. Thirty thousand, eight hundred and forty!

Meadows figures that it took 63 hours to cut, staple, fold and encapsulate the mini comic edition. He invented a special device he calls the “Stealth Bagger 24” to funnel the throws into bags. On Thursday night, roughly one out of eight Crescent Cityites could catch a Caesar Meadows comic book, the content of which will remain a secret until then. It would have been impossible, Meadows said, without a little help from his friends.

Meadows, 45, is married to artist Jeannie Detweiler, who specializes in space alien dolls and paintings. The pair share a double shotgun in the Bayou St. John neighborhood that’s painted plutonium green on the inside – the perfect tone for comic book makers and alien painters. Meadows always wanted to be a cartoonist. As a little kid, he spotted a photo of Charles Schultz on the back cover of a book of Peanuts cartoons. He knew he wanted to do what Schultz did.

And so he has. Meadows’ cartoons feature charmingly befuddled human, animal and robot characters, rendered in a soft-edged style. His strips appear in local magazines. He’s installed comic book vending machines in a popular coffee shop and snowball stand. In bohemian art circles, he’s a star. He also has a day job to make ends meet.

Meadows’ trek toward tiny comics began in the 1990s when, he said, he and friends “crashed” the Krewe du Vieux parade. For his part in the procession, he handed out playing card-sized comic books of his own making. The little books had a meta quality, since their subject was the eternally naughty parade itself. The mini-comics were a hit.

“Folks loved it,” he said. “They actually chased me down. They loved the little comics, so it was a big success.”

His next goal was to distribute comics in Marigny and French Quarter during Mardi Gras. In order to carry enough comics, they had to be small. Really small. So Meadows began making Lilliputian books no bigger than postage stamps. He stored them in a weird gourd purse that he found at a thrift store. For years, he and his books have been part of the pageant.

So how do you entice the leadership of a mega-krewe like Muses to use your little books as throws? Well, if you’re Meadows you do what comes naturally, you make your pitch via a tiny comic book.
Page one: “Hello … My name is Caesar Meadows and I’m a New Orleans cartoonist …”
Page two: “and I have a proposal for you.
Page three: “I’d like you to consider this little comic book …”
Page four: “as a potential new throw for the Krewe of Muses.”

When the head Muses accepted his pitch, Meadows was thrilled. He said it made him immediately recall the magic of catching doubloons and other throws as a kid. During the parade, he plans to stand near the same spot where he stood watching parades as a kid.

“I get the sense of just gratefulness. Seeing these capsules coming from the floats and seeing it imprinting on someone else…. I feel so incredibly grateful to them (Muses). They made a hometown boy’s Carnival dream come true. … For me, tomorrow night, for however long I live, it was there.”
That’s the dream. Back to the recent reality. Meadows had hand-produced mini-comics by the hundreds before, but never by the tens of thousands. He had to figure out how to do everything more efficiently. Everything would still be done by hand, but the little books needed to be stacked and stapled in mass-production mode. Meadows needed to knock out 300 books per hour to make his deadline. Eventually he was able to produce 500 per hour.

There is some talk these days that the era of the imported bead is ending and the possibility of creating Carnival throws locally as an economic boon is at hand.

In his 2008 Mardi Gras micro-comic, Meadows drew two cartoon parade-goers arguing about the overabundance of plastic beads.

"Yeesh, they throw way too many beads these days," says one.

"What are you crazy?!!" shouts the other, "the more beads the better!"

"I dunno," says the first. "When I was a kid, they were stingy with the good beads. It made it a lot more fun to try to catch one. I mean, after all, it's just a bunch of tacky plastic c..p anyway."

"Aw, stop being such a Mardi Gras grump," says the second character. "A person can never have enough beads!!!!"

In the final frame, the more-beads-the-better character is rewarded by being buried in an avalanche of throws.

Warren Ellis Talk

"In the intimate surroundings of The Farmhouse Barn, writer Warren Ellis sits down for a State Of The Weird, picking over the radioactive bones of 2013 and gathering the stories for a Briefing on the science-fiction condition of 2014. That night, he will be in the middle of writing a novella about futurists and a non-fiction book about the future of cities — except that they’re both also about strange history and Weird Shit — and he’s here to talk about deep time, storytelling and the weather of tomorrow:"

The Farmhouse : Barn Talks : 1 — Warren Ellis from Shane Becker on Vimeo.

The Farmhouse : Barn Talks : 1 — Warren Ellis Q&A from Shane Becker on Vimeo.

Movies in 2014

1. The Hot Rock
2. The Valley Of Gwangi
3. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
4. To Have And Have Not
5. The Third Man
6. Below
7. It Happened One Night
8. State And Main
9. Furious 6
10. Vengeance
11. Running Scared (1986)
12. G.I. Joe: Retaliation
13. The Thing From Another World
14. Matilda
15. The Shaolin Temple
16. The Avengers
17. The Raid
18. In The Heat Of The Night
19. Dillinger
20. The Mission (Johnnie To Film)
21. Odds Against Tomorrow
22. Outrage
23. My Name Is Nobody
24. The Wolverine
25. Fulltime Killer
26. Muppets From Space
27. The Man With The Iron Fists
28. Mad Detective
29. Batman Returns
30. Riddick
31. The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
32. Captain Phillips
33. The Lego Movie
34. Now You See Me
35. Bull Durham

Walter Murch: From The Godfather To The God Particle

Eric Kress Lighting Workshop Pt 1

Found through NoFilmSchool:

Paul Pope Talks Escapo

Movies in 2014

1. The Hot Rock
2. The Valley Of Gwangi
3. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
4. To Have And Have Not
5. The Third Man
6. Below
7. It Happened One Night
8. State And Main
9. Furious 6
10. Vengeance
11. Running Scared (1986)
12. G.I. Joe: Retaliation
13. The Thing From Another World
14. Matilda
15. The Shaolin Temple
16. The Avengers
17. The Raid
18. In The Heat Of The Night
19. Dillinger
20. The Mission (Johnnie To Film)
21. Odds Against Tomorrow
22. Outrage
23. My Name Is Nobody
24. The Wolverine
25. Fulltime Killer
26. Muppets From Space
27. The Man With The Iron Fists
28. Mad Detective
29. Batman Returns
30. Riddick
31. The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
32. Captain Phillips

Once Upon A Time In The West

One of my favorite films of all time.

This post is inspired by the recent post on Cinephilia & Beyond which you should go read since there is a lot more there:

Deconstructing the opening scene of Once Upon a Time in the West from The Film League on Vimeo.













Once Upon a Time in the West - Jill Arrives at Flagstone from The Film League on Vimeo.

Once Upon a Time in the West: Our August 2011 Film from The Film League on Vimeo.

Books in 2014

1. A Dance At The Slaughterhouse
2. A Walk Among The Tombstones
3. The Devil Knows You're Dead

Movies in 2014

1. The Hot Rock
2. The Valley Of Gwangi
3. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
4. To Have And Have Not
5. The Third Man
6. Below
7. It Happened One Night
8. State And Main
9. Furious 6
10. Vengeance
11. Running Scared (1986)
12. G.I. Joe: Retaliation
13. The Thing From Another World
14. Matilda
15. The Shaolin Temple
16. The Avengers
17. The Raid
18. In The Heat Of The Night
19. Dillinger
20. The Mission (Johnnie To Film)
21. Odds Against Tomorrow
22. Outrage
23. My Name Is Nobody
24. The Wolverine
25. Fulltime Killer
26. Muppets From Space
27. The Man With The Iron Fists
28. Mad Detective
29. Batman Returns

King Cake From Ye Olde Bake Shoppe

Tasted a lot like old Gambino's King Cake:

State Seal On A Drain

Elaborate state seal on a drain on Earhart Blvd:

From The Devil Knows You're Dead

Warren Ellis On Murder

My Boys

Sperry Weather

Warm weather finally. Means I get to wear my Sperry's again. When I was a kid we called them boat mocs:

Movies in 2014

1. The Hot Rock
2. The Valley Of Gwangi
3. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
4. To Have And Have Not
5. The Third Man
6. Below
7. It Happened One Night
8. State And Main
9. Furious 6
10. Vengeance
11. Running Scared (1986)
12. G.I. Joe: Retaliation
13. The Thing From Another World
14. Matilda
15. The Shaolin Temple
16. The Avengers
17. The Raid
18. In The Heat Of The Night
19. Dillinger
20. The Mission (Johnnie To Film)
21. Odds Against Tomorrow
22. Outrage
23. My Name Is Nobody
24. The Wolverine
25. Fulltime Killer
26. Muppets From Space
27. The Man With The Iron Fists

Sean Connery on James Bond in 1964

John Barry On The James Bond Score

You Only Live Twice Behind The Scenes Footage

More Michael Mann On Filmmaking

WEBELOS Handbook

Our current one:

Special Council Patch From Friends of Scouting

The Martin Scorsese Film School

Via Mentorless:

Video Essay: "The Martin Scorsese Film School" from Flavorwire on Vimeo.

The History of Cutting from FilmmakerIQ

 From FilmmakerIQ:

The History of Cutting - The Birth of Cinema and Continuity Editing from FilmmakerIQ.com on Vimeo.

The History of Cutting - The Soviet Theory of Montage from FilmmakerIQ.com on Vimeo.

Remodeled Lakefront Airport

Old Pelican Stadium Location

Corner of Carrollton and Tulan Avenues in Mid-City:

First Baseball Cards of 2014

Ravenswood Cancelled

Bummer news to hear late on a Friday night. It was a fun show to work on:

Luling Mansion

Ravenswood At Destrehan Plantation

Ravenswood Jail

Random Ravenswood Pics

Piazza D'Italia - The Big Easy Location

Piazza D'Italia. Where the first crime scene of the movie The Big Easy is:

The Expendables' Clubhouse

Girod Street in the Warehouse District: