10th Anniversary: Jake chimes in from the Shores of Oregon

As he says below, Jake is a relative new-comer to the Signal Corps/ Loyal Leaguers.  If "new" is being around for two years.  I've really enjoyed Jake's participation, his enthusiasm and his occasional voice of dissenting opinion.

And, yes, the Longhorns were the better team.

I stumbled upon The Signal Watch around April 2011, so I'm a relative newcomer to this ten year enterprise. I don't remember how I found the site, but I'm sure it had something to do with Superman. And it became quickly apparent this site was more than a collection of rants written with all of the erudition of a third grader. Quite the opposite; I found the posts to be refreshingly intelligent and insightful, much more so than the major comic book oriented websites, but without the cynicism and contrived snarkiness. Before long, this became my primary source of comic-related news and commentary. In fact, when it comes to superhero comics, monsters, film noir, Planet of the Apes and yes, Superman, The Signal Watch is my Saturday Evening Post.

Of course, it helps when the founder and proprietor, Ryan, is the same age, and grew up watching and reading all the same stuff I did. He's one of those rare people who, with equal enthusiasm, can argue the social and cultural currents running through comics, or pick the winner of Mothra vs. the Giant Mantis. Then of course, there's Superman -- Ryan just gets him. There are few things I don't get, like his zeal for Jimmy Olsen comics. And I think he actually believes the Longhorns were a better team than USC in 2005.

More than anything, I appreciate Ryan's willingness to converse with his readers. As someone who is often clumsy and blunt wielding my opinion, I am grateful for his patience and forbearance.

So congratulations, Ryan. Here's to ten more years. Salud!

RHPT and 10 Years of Loyal Leaguership

I met Randy at a movie theater in Beaumont, Texas.  He had come to Beaumont to visit JimD, meet me and catch a screening of Superman: The Movie.  That's one of two times we've been able to hang out, but I've been there online to find out he was moving to Tennessee, getting married, and now, he's on his second child. 

10 years, y'all.

Here to Randolph and making friends across the internets!




I had a version of this e-mail ready to go, but then I read Steven's letter, and managed to get an advanced copy of the 10th Anniversary post, so I re-worked it. Is that cheating?

I vaguely remember receiving an email from JimD many years ago telling me that I must read this blog a college buddy of his started. As with most things JimD recommends, I ignore it the first couple of times. (I do this despite JimD's amazing track record of recommending insanely awesome things). I - again - vaguely recall clicking the link, quickly scanning the first few posts, and moving on. A few days (weeks?) later, JimD's second email was along the lines of "you need to read his blog or he'll stop writing and that would be a tragedy". And for whatever reason, I clicked the link again and started reading a post. God knows what was the subject of that first post (probably comics), but I was hooked. I probably didn't start regularly visiting the blog for a few weeks (This was pre-Google Reader), but for at least two-thirds of the past 10 years, I visited League of Melbotis more than once a day, and commenting constantly. In fact, after Google Reader came along, I didn't add The League's feed because I would visit the site more often than Reader refreshed the feed. Good times.

NathanC on The League's 10th!

I don't recall exactly when I met NathanC, but i recall seeing him play in a band called "Barnyard Commandos" at my high school's rockfest. I know I'd met him before he met up with my brother at Trinity in San Antonio when they were both Freshmen. And, not only have we been pals ever since, but Nathan knew Jamie separately from knowing me back at Trinity, as well. So, longtime pal.

No matter what happens with this blogging business, I know that Nathan will still be popping up at odd hours at my house until one or both of us goes.


Lovin’ the League

I’ve told the League (I cannot in any way refer to him as ‘Ryan’ in cyberspace) many times that he should be writing a column for the paper. Or a book.

I’ve know Mr. League for close to 20 years now, and always found him to be a bright boy. But something in his nut cracked when he moved to Arizona. The dearth of cultural activities in Chandler turned him inward, and then led him to spew his thoughts upon the interwebs with the classic-era blog “League of Melbotis.” The life and times of livin’ large in AZ were supplemented by remembrances of better (and worse) times in Texas, including some of my favorite stories about working for the Mouse at Willowbrook Mall, or the rat at Chuck-E-Cheese.

The League writes well, and continues to do so with The Signal Watch. His online persona is honest and not without a little humorous sarcasm. He speaks for the frustrated observer of life and culture. His takedown of Johnny Clambake’s is legendary.

And he brings people together. As many have said before in this spot, the League of Melbotis was a social network when Marc Zuckerberg was only...

Oh, wait a second, Facebook started in 2004?

Well, you were a little ahead of the game.

Jamie has her say on 10 Years of Blogging

Jamie and I have been together for over 17 years, married for almost 13.  Of that, 10 years has been spent online.  She really never has to wonder what I'm up to or thinking because: there you go.  Just check the post in the morning.

She's been a sport about her supporting role in this endeavor, and her level of joy at participation waxes and wanes, depending on what's going on.  I will say, I found it pretty hilarious (and telling) that we essentially end our posts the same way.

I have been extraordinarily lucky to team up with a partner who is as patient and understanding not just about my hobbies, but about this endless blogging business of which she's been a part.  She's the light of my life, my north star, all that jazz...  Love you, pumpkin.


When Ryan sent out a request for reflections on his ten years of bloggership, I immediately thought - "what better way to toast the League than the League's own words?".  I decided I wanted to go back through League of Melbotis and The Signal Watch and select the most memorable posts from his impressive run.

Holy smokes, ten years.  Do you have any idea how much material that is? That's a LOT of blogging.  I would have regretted this decision had it not been a joy to comb through the archives in search of my favorite posts.  The hardest part was selection.  My first pass through all ten years netted no fewer than 50 entries.  Fifty seemed a little too much for a "best of" tribute, so I have narrowed it down to 10.

I am well aware that everyone has different opinions and some of my selections may seem strange, but I tried to nail down those posts which I immediately remembered or to which I had a significant emotional response.  So without further ado, in chronological order, I present to you:

10 Posts of Note: A League of Melbotis/ The Signal Watch Retrospective

When Ryan fist started League of Melbotis in April of 2003, we had lived in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler for almost a year, had yet to make any friends aside from one of the guys I worked with, and were gearing up for another soul sucking Arizona summer.  The blog was a great outlet for Ryan's frustration and talent for writing. Some of the more common earlier posts took the form of relaying our outings in and around the Chandler area:

1. The Chandler Jazz Festival

League of Melbotis: 10 Years of Blogging

March 30th, 2013 marks the 10th anniversary of my blogging habit.  Ten years, something around 5000 posts.  That's just the blogs of which I've been chief proprietor.  I also wrote briefly with other folks at Nanostalgia and at Film Fodder (a paying gig!  I made, literally, about $1.25).

So, I've written and posted a lot.  Big whoop.  Sometimes I wonder if I've a small case of hypergraphia that's gone undiagnosed, but we won't dwell on that here today.

Pushing through the haze and trying to remember why and how...  you start making up stories in your own head to make it sound better.  But it's mostly right there in print.  At the age of 27, looking down the barrel of 28, I kicked off the first blog, League of Melbotis.

this is no fantasy... no careless product of wild imagination...

Horus Kemwer shares some words on the eve of the 10th Anniversary

In the way things go with Horus, I have met him officially once.  We ate food, drank beer and then liquor.  We swapped stories.  I was given a comic series to begin to pursue (Dungeon).  I may or may not have met him previously in a bar in Beaumont, Texas.  Flash Gordon and Superman were involved.  So was RHPT and JimD.  It's hard to say what really happened.

Horus can be found at Against the Modern World.  And sometimes in Hong Kong.


On the 10th anniversary of the League:

There's only one blog which I have consistently read since I started reading blogs 7 or so years ago. There's only one blog I check on a daily basis (sorry JD, shouldn't have gone corporate). There's only one blog I started reading for one type of content (comics) and yet grew attached to the rest (the noir, the family updates, the rants, the pinups). There's only one blog I've ever contributed guest content to.

There's only one person I've ever met first on the internet, then met later in person.

That person is the League and that blog is his - the best all round blog I know.

~ horus kemwer

Steven Harms on the 10th Anniversary of my Blogging Endeavors

I didn't meet Steven until the fall of 2006.  By that time I had already followed his own blog that he kept at the time, and knew roughly the cut of his jib.  He'd met and fallen madly in love with Lauren.  They'd decided to leave the cool climes of the San Francisco area for the sweltering heat of Texas.  They beat us to Austin by a few months.

Somehow, our paths took some small amount of time before we did cross (I recall getting a note on our door from when Steven and Lauren attempted a surprise visit), and finally we met up for the most Austin of traditions: breakfast out.

Prior to Steven, the only other person I think I'd met who knew me only from my online presence was RHPT, so it was a bit odd.  I didn't know exactly if I'd live up to their idea of who the man behind the pixels might be, and, I assume that - yeah, I have a lot of rough edges.  They didn't run away screaming, so, that seemed decent of them.

At any rate, I was immediately fond of both Steven and Lauren, and until they decided to return to San Francisco, we spend quite a bit of time with them both, and, frankly, I miss having them around.  They're good company.  You should look them up.

Steven doesn't comment often these days, but he was kind enough to send in the following:


On the occasion of your site's anniversary

Most web site fashions are temporary, coming and going with a season or
an era: Huffington Post faded for me after the Bush administration,
memepool.com stopped updating, Reddit.com was overtaken by Digg.com
refugees, and in its turn I'm sure Facebook will one day be called old
hat. But The League's enterprises: The League of Melbotis and the
Signal have not wavered in terms of my visitation in, I'm surprised to
admit, nearly 10 years. In fact, as I just found out while typing this,
my fingers still have the muscle memory of the original URL
http://melbotis.blogspot.com.

What could make this small, personal blog so entertaining for such a
long time? As mentioned above, bigger, better-funded players have been
killed or committed seppuku in that same time span. What makes The
League's endeavors different? I think it comes down to this: his
site(s) have always been a nice, friendly porches with hot dogs and
spiked Dr. B in red solo cups. They've always been friendly, they've
always been positive and humorous in a vaguely James Thurber fashion,
and the content has always been coming (that is, there was something
new).

10th Anniversary - You Humans Weigh In

Hi, y'all!  As the 10th Anniversary of this blog approaches, I asked for folks to send in comments about the site.  

On March 30th, 2003, I posted the first missive to The League of Melbotis blog.  I think that post was seen by upwards of three people, including me.  But soon, that number grew!  We now have maybe eight to ten readers!

Over the years we've had a wide range of folks at the site.  Many of have stuck around, most have not.  It's the way of the world.  

What I did not expect, and something I don't think bloggers with audiences in the thousands can appreciate, is that this whole blogging thing can be personal.  It's great to get web-lebrity status, but I've found a lot of joy over the years in having a small audience that I feel like I've gotten to know in comments, over social media, and, occasionally, in person.  I genuinely consider you friends, even if I don't know what you look like or what you like to eat.  

I think Jamie is still working on her post, so we may not be done.  If you other humans want to weigh in, please feel free to send something my way via email or carrier pigeon.

Stuart Ward of Kansas chimed in with:

I can’t remember when I first started reading your blog. I would guess some time in 2010. I read the first few articles because I thought the ‘Signal Watch’ title was clever, and also because I like Krypto (and all he represents, ie the slightly goofier/more colorful/more fun/Silver Agey side of Superman).

Jamie's B-Day. I made a cake.

This is the Duncan Hines cake I made for Jamie for her birthday.  It was basic yellow cake with frosting out of a can.  I'm not a baker and I don't play one on TV.  This was what I could do with the know-how I've got.  Also, I didn't destroy the kitchen, which I think Jamie appreciated, as I'm also bad at cleaning up the kitchen.

Happy Birthday to Jamie

Monday (the 25th) is Jamie's birthday.

To celebrate, Saturday we went out to Lucy's Friend Chicken on South Congress and then to Midnight Cowboy Modeling, a former 6th street, uh... modeling location, now a speakeasy bar.

Y'all, I ate so much chicken...  It comes in aluminum buckets.  It's not even fair.

oh, the carnage

A lovely evening out, and kudos to Nicole for driving and organizing.

Jamie isn't getting a present to open on her b-day as we've got tickets to a show later this spring and she's flying out to see Rebecca in a few weeks for some fun in TN.

So, here's some things she likes, all here in a blog post:

My Brother Turns 40

Today is my brother's 40th birthday.

This is a bit of a milestone for the family, I think.  The elder son hits that magical four-oh number.  Odd when I think on his birthday and can recall the elementary school birthdays with some clarity.  I even remember him getting a Beach Boys album when he was 6 or 7.  I guess as long as you keep showing up, they keep giving you birthdays, and that means cake, and who can argue with that incentive?

Still, 40 gives me a moment of pause as I also recall my mother turning 40 and what a to-do that was around the house.  I don't think we think of 40 in the same terms today - 40 is the new 30 or whatever - and it's all what you make of it.  And I think he's done okay for himself.  Especially since he got his hair cut in 1995.

Here's to my brother, who has blazed the birthday trail for the Steans Bros.  No matter how hard I try to catch up, he's always a couple years ahead of me, and watching him degenerate let's me know what's coming.

You can't ask for a better brother.  Well, short of getting, like, an awesome robot who shoots lasers out of his face, but I'll take this one.

He's a hell of a guy, and, as it turns out, is not afraid to take the same picture with Amy in multiple locations.

Really, if they don't make this a thing, I'll be disappointed.

And here's a more recent photo of the man rocking the house back in January with his bandmates of the past 14 years, The Mono Ensemble.

oh, Carousel Lounge, don't ever change...

And , of course, here's a pic from the pages of the Statesman as my bro works with a client of the Veteran's Court from our own Travis County.

You can really see the magnificence of the beard.

Happy birthday, man.  You're doing good.

Well, I'm Back from Spring

I drove to Spring, TX yesterday and am back.

This was the aforementioned Drama Club Reunion, sort-of.  Folks who did plays and musicals between 1993 and almost 2000 showed.

It was great to see everyone, and we'll need to do it again.

You guys don't really know these people, so I'll keep it short.

Here's Jared, my director, V (I will never call her "Margaret"), a woman I never identified, and a guy we used to call "Trucker".  It's a long story.

Nathan and Weston.

Meredith, Jared and Julie.

People are doing really well.  Or they're at least smart enough to lie about doing really well.

But the traffic in Spring at 5:00 on a Friday is crazy insane.

Everyone relax. I'm back. Til Tomorrow.

I'm back from Baltimore.

You know, for a town that I think of as being pretty sketchy, I walked around last night in the touristy area after 10:00 PM, and it was actually really nice.  Found an area with a strip of local bars and went in with some A-level beer snobs to try some locals.  Discovered there's something called "sour beer".  As I asked them:  How is it I've lived on this Earth for 37 years and nobody ever mentioned sour beer to me before?

I didn't love it, it was fine, but... seriously, I feel let down by humanity.

The meeting was interesting, but I wouldn't describe it as "fun".  Dinner and then the bar was all right, but maybe less the governance talks regarding a semi-formal open source organization.  Still, I felt like I learned a lot, and that's always a good thing.

Tomorrow I pack it up and head to Spring, TX for roughly 24 hours of seeing former high school classmates at the conspicuously-named-but-no-turns-out-there's-no innuendo-there-after-all, "Bareback Bar".

Ah, Spring, Texas.  You never stop giving who you are, and I wouldn't want it otherwise.

Happy Birthday, KareBear

Today is my mother's birthday.

In her honor, here is Neil Diamond singing "America".  I welcome you to clap along slightly off beat with the song, knowing that, wherever she is, The KareBear will be doing the same.



and, because, it's her b-day, let us all enjoy the 1973 Hawaii performance of "Suspicious Minds" by King Elvis.



Dang, yo. There is nobody else like The King, is there?

Happy birthday, Ma!  We love you.

Your Questions Answered: What's Up With All the Blogging?

Anonymous asks:

Why do you keep blogging after all these years? What keeps you going? Do you like the attention?


Wow, tough questions from the crowd.

At the end of this month, I will mark my ten year anniversary of my first blog post.  In internet time, that's an eon.

What started me then is not why I'm doing it now, if I can even recall why I did it then.  Truthfully, the original League of Melbotis blog was more or less about having a one-to-many communication tool for myself when I'd moved to a place where I was far from people I knew, and had nobody to talk to (aside from Jamie), and pestering people with email had gone about as far as it could go.

Back then, blogging hadn't really taken the shape it has now of routine columns on single topics.  It was closer to journaling, in my opinion, but the public forum-ness of blogging meant a push and pull of having an audience that just writing for and to yourself won't ever have.

But why am I still doing it?

There are a lot of reasons.

I do believe writing continually has improved my ability to think critically.

I think.

Maybe.

Blogging routinely does mean I apply some thought to media and how that media is produced when I act as a consumer.  If reading that pondering is useful for others (ie: you), well...  I'm happy for you guys!  But I did figure out years and years ago that this works best if I do this for myself first, and if its of benefit to other people, that's a very nice thing, but it can't be my primary concern.

I write with myself as my primary audience, assuming there are other The League's out there.

And, it turns out, there are other people out there who have found a reason to return, even if their own voices are very different.  I do feel some responsibility to the great folks I've met or not met, who show up online and stick with me.  That's an honor.

In Aggieland

I'm in College Station, Texas until Friday night.  Before this gig, I had only been to College Station once before.  A family friend was a jeweler here, and this is where we got our wedding rings.  I'd driven through a lot during college while headed elsewhere, but with my UT sticker in the window of my car, I didn't want to linger too long in the gravity well of Texas A&M.

College Station is a Texas version of places like Happy Valley that exist mostly because there is a University there.  Otherwise they'd be small towns with a red light or two and maybe one cranky dog watching traffic go by like all the rest of the small towns you pass en route to College Station.

I'm here for a small, regional conference, and it seems like it should be fun.  This group doesn't do much socializing after hours, so it'll be back to hotel and work tomorrow night.  I'm always a fan of the post conference bar meet up, but I don't think that's in the cards if the last conference is any indication.

This hotel should be a nice place, an extended stay hotel with a small kitchen, about 50 square feet bigger than my efficiency in college, but without the charm I'd added to the place.  But, it's been noisy, and I can hear the upstairs folks walking around.  Not something I'm used to in a hotel, and it reminds me why I gave up on apartment living.

Anyway, I'm pretty busy, straight through the weekend, so I don't know what blogging I'll be up to.

I've been posting a lot, so, you know, go back and enjoy the previous posts you might have missed.

An Open Letter to The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences: An Idea for 2014

I tuned into the Oscars Sunday night for a few minutes to catch Adele sing Skyfall (a song I quite like in its own right), and ,later, accidentally at one point to hear Seth MacFarlane bomb on a joke about Rex Reed that really just beat around the bush taking a poke at Adele for being on the curvier side.  At this point, I turned off the Oscars.  And, no, I have no plans to watch next year.

Literally billions of people watch the telecast, clearly not caring that it's just absolutely miserable television, and I don't think I remember anyone being satisfied with a host since Billy Crystal was in his hey-day.  I have to assume Seth MacFarlane's sense of humor was a weird fit, just as whatever happened that year when James Franco and, I think, Anne Hathaway (is that right?) hosted.

I have no idea.  The last Oscars telecast I watched I believe was hosted by David Letterman.

But, Academy, I think I have your solution.  I know how to set this right.

In 2014, hire The Admiral as your host and show producer.  He's retired and he needs a project.

This man is TV gold

Conan's, Orange Julius, Sheep

The evening was looking pretty dull, I don't mind telling you. We had no plans. The hour grew late, and finally, somehow we settled on the faded glory of an Austin now receding into the distant past.

You can have your Paul Qui fancy-schmancy fusion bistros. Food is what reminds you of home, and I grew up in this town when we still had armadillo races as a form of local fun. And back then, we ate our pizza like we had nothing to live for. Conan's Pizza has only a few locations left after the expansion in the late 80's and contraction of the late 90's. They haven't redecorated since putting any of the Conan's in place, and they had a particular look back then that lingers to this day.

The Ms. Pac-Man machine is not there ironically

If you're wondering, why yes, they LOVE Conan the Barbarian.  You can't tell from the pic above, but most of the art is either Frazetta prints or Frazetta knock-offs.  Not too many other places would it seem like part of the tradition to eat under a Molly Hatchet album cover, but at Conan's, it's part of the ambiance.

The pizza you want to get there is called "The Savage".  Get it deep dish with a wheat crust or you're kind of just wasting everyone's time.  The Savage is literally every topping they've got.  You will absolutely feel sick after eating it.  But, let me stop you now and say, if you don't eat The Savage, neither I nor the staff nor other patrons of Conan's have any real reason to respect you.

On behalf of all tall people, if you don't like standing behind us at concerts: tough luck

I saw this comic strip thing today, and it's actually very good.  It's about the annoying things people do at concerts (ie: why I quit paying money to go to shows in my late 30's).

I'd point to number 5, "The Sun Blocking Giant" and I thought I'd clear something up.

The world was built for smaller people.  Most of you are those smaller people, and I appreciate that most of you attend shows and expect to basically be within a certain height range.  I know you think that there's some great advantage to being a bit taller, but in a world that mostly relies on your ability to be a jerk in a board room or your ability to manage java code to get ahead, being bred for being the lynchpin in a goon squad of some barbarian hoard doesn't really pay off so much.

I was 6'3" by the ninth grade, and somehow put on two more inches by the end of my freshman year of college.  I didn't measure myself in between.  Tall people don't really know nor really care about how tall they are.

Since I was a kid, I also like(d) live music and attending shows.  I live in Austin.  It's sort of a thing here.

The average bar in Austin that would host a show (let's say, Liberty Lunch or La Zona Rosa) had three zones:

1.  The area right by the stage with the cow-eyed fans pressing up against the stage because that made them bigger fans and let them sing the lyrics right back at the singer's face.

2.  The mid-range where most everyone else stood with elbow room enough to hold a beer and still lift it to their face without putting out someone else's eye.

3.  The place in the back where, for reasons that baffled me, people would huddle and shout over the music, like it was a huge inconvenience that there were all these speakers blaring music when they'd come out to this music venue for a quiet night of conversation.  Also, they're usually trashed.

The cartoon bemoans:

Worlds Collide: The Online Comic Book Course

For a long, long time, what I did for a living was "distance learning" which came to be called "eLearning".  Or, likely, now, "learning".

In 1997 I took a job as a camera operator and switch-room operator for a distance learning outfit in the College of Engineering at the University of Texas getting paid what seemed a king's ransom of something like $5.75 an hour.  At the time I was a Radio-Television-Film student looking for work that related to my dreams of working in movie or TV production,* and handling a camera - no matter how out of date - and working with audio and switching equipment - no matter how lo-fi - was a welcome change of pace from the hours behind the counter at Camelot Records selling copies of Blink 182 to perfectly nice people.

Somehow, upon graduation, I became the guy running the studio (they offered me insurance).  Mostly, back then, we were making duplicates of tapes of classes and mailing them (I KNOW), or hooking up with remote location via ISDN lines, satellite, or using some really, really early days video streaming that its best not to talk about.