For your listening pleasure, here’s the first single by Morning Claws, a new indie band from Northern Ireland. The slow-burning “Slack Magic” mixes electronic bleeps with intricate vocal harmonies and earnest lyrics. The effect is quite hypnotizing, demanding repeat listens. Fans of Postal Service take notice!
New bands always have trouble with the first photo.
The band is looking for a U.S. label and hasn’t announced plans for a full release. But if they’ve got a few more tracks in them like this, I think they’ll do just fine. For more info, go to http://morningclaws.com/
The idea of taking classic characters and sticking them 50 years in the future never appealed to me. So when I heard they were doing it to my favorite DC Comics hero Batman, I was less than eager to see the results. The show introduced a “younger, hipper” Batman who wasn’t even in the comics, and it was easy to see that the creators meant this to replace their classic Batman: The Animated Series.
Batman Beyond
It seemed like a pure marketing move. It was 1999, a year before the millennium, and everything on TV seemed to be going space age. Even the creators of The Simpsons were making Futurama.
So I never really got into Batman Beyond. I watched a handful of episodes, and that was the end of it. But now, more than a decade later, I decided it was time to give it a second chance.
Let me tell you, I was wrong to abandon this show back in the day. The first thing that struck me about Batman Beyond was how dark it is. This was a Saturday morning cartoon, but season one’s topics include chemical warfare and drug overdosing. The next thing I noticed was how well it honored the Batman character’s past despite taking place so far in the future. While most of the villains are brand new, there are references and sometimes entire episodes about classic villains. Particularly clever is an episode discussing what happened to Bane (the villain of the next Batman movie) after pumping himself with the steroid-like “venom” his entire life.
Did I mention that Will Friedle (Eric from Boy Meets World) provided the voice of the new Batman? That’s almost as awesome as Mr. Feeny doing the voice of KITT on Knight Rider!
Batman's secret identity?
You can get all 52 episodes on DVD for about $50 if you shop around online. If you’re any kind of comics fan, you owe it to yourself to check this show out. The writing is terrific, not to mention the shway pre-digital animation.
If you like it, I also recommend the feature-length film Return of the Joker. It’s even darker than the show (so much so that they released censored and unrated versions) and includes flashbacks of present-day Batman.
My novel WE, THE WATCHED is featured on the Bargain eBooks blog. The blog showcases eBooks that cost less than $5.00. Definitely a great place to get recommendations for good reading as the eBook revolution gets under way.
I entered WE, THE WATCHED for Amazon.com’s annual Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) for unpublished and self-published novels. The grand prize is a publishing contract with Penguin, including a $15,000 advance. So, yeah, wish me luck.
If telecommunications law is more your thing, you may be interested to know I recently moderated a panel about the new Congress and a potential rewrite of the Telecom Act. The panel included executives from USTelecom, NTCA, CompTel and Qwest. While I’m not sure I like seeing myself on tape, I’ve included the video of the full event below. Enjoy…or at least learn.
Praise for my novel continues to come in! Recently, I got this message from an English teacher who lives in Bolivia. To her, my portrayal of the government in WE, THE WATCHED hit almost too close to home.
I loved it. The Cold War, secrets kept by the government from the people who elect the government officials from the bottom up, and the ability to access people’s files, calls and computers makes the story believable. Here, in Bolivia, where I’ve lived for the last 30 years, it’s now illegal to use the word “indio” or to say anything against the president of the republic. It’s punishable by arrest and jail. Members of the Press who write in his contra, and politicians who stand up against his injustices, are also jailed.
–M.R.M., English teacher at a bilingual private school in South America
You can buy WE, THE WATCHED for your Kindle, Nook or other eReader from Smashwords.
