Michael Davis World

Happy Birthday à Nous! – Sunset Observer #5…by Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture | @MDWorld

Jun.17, 2013 in Un Pop Culture 9 Comments

My birthday is June 17th.

The standard family instructions to communicate my heart’s desire and to contemplate the past and future come together in the celebration moment.

Last year, I was getting ready to go spend time with the Gypsies for the first time in France. This day, I am preparing to leave again for a second trip in August and I’ll hopefully carry wisdom that didn’t exist in me last year. If I am still just as dumb now as I was then, that would be disappointing.

The original founders of the Roma/Gypsy people left North Western India over 1500 years ago and were pushed into the Byzantine Empire. Their two waves traveled through Europe as far north as Sweden and via the south through Egypt (where the name ‘Gypsy’ is derived) and northern Africa. Both streams converged in France. And I’ll converge again there, too. And I will hold dear faces in my hands and look into sapphire eyes.

I don’t understand why everyone doesn’t love Gypsies. Especially now that the beloved heir to the British throne, Prince William Duke of Wales, has been identified as having Gypsy blood…

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Bigger and Dumber Than Ever, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #330 | @MDWorld

Jun.17, 2013 in Brainiac On Banjo 16 Comments

Last week, daughter Adriane and I found ourselves driving up the BQE alongside New York City’s East River. It was about 1:00 AM and we had a clear, unobstructed and beautiful view of the Statue of Liberty, the new Freedom Tower (a first for me), and the Manhattan skyline. It was truly inspiring.

And so is this.

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Inside The Devil’s Workshop, by Christopher Derrick – Sympathy for the Devil #36 | @MDWorld

Jun.16, 2013 in Sympathy for the Devil Leave a Comment

The devil isn’t in the details, he’s hiding out in the process.

There’s always a certain high degree of fascination with how artists work…

what’s their process?

What’s their inspiration?

Where do their ideas come from?

What concepts are they mulling over and the distilling down into the work that they decide to show to the public?

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Green Arrow #21, by Marc Alan Fishman – Snarky Synopsis | @MDWorld

Jun.16, 2013 in Snarky Synopses 2 Comments

Written by Jeff Lemire, Art by Andrea Sorrentino

Erik Larsen said something profound the other day on Facebook: “Every issue of every comic book series is a good jumping on point. Yes, there’ll be a few unanswered questions. Man the fuck up. What relationship have you ever had where you knew everything about a person immediately? You still don’t know about shit your parents did and you lived with them for years.” With that mentality in mind, I snagged Green Arrow #21; a book I’ve not touched in years, but had a love of the character (as I once knew him). Issue #21 ends one arc to begin another. With no backstory under my belt, and only the basic knowledge that Oliver Queen was once stranded on an island, became fancy with a bow, and returned home to become a vigilante… I manned up. Well Erik, I don’t know all the shit my parents have done. If it’s as good as Green Arrow #21? Then I’ve never been more relieved.

The plot in a (coco)nutshell: Green Arrow, aka Oliver Queen heads off into the desert to have a pow-wow with his spirit guide, Magus. Cue the drug-sequence! Cue the revelations about Oliver’s dad! Cue the trippy visuals and overly dramatic dialogue! Jeff Lemire generally has been a solid writer in my ever-diminishing DC subscription pile. If I were to give anyone in the New 52 a free shot with which to draw me into a book I’d not read? Lemire is second only to Scott Snyder. Well, perhaps I’ve been a bit too nice. Green Arrow #21 is monumentally frustrating—because parts of it are oddly compelling, and everything else winds up thrown away to the ‘trope-o-tron’ I’m continuously fighting in current comics.

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I’ll Be Seeing You, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

Jun.15, 2013 in Brilliant Disguise 15 Comments

There is so much back-and-forth about the NSA spying scandal that I can’t figure out which positions are supposed to be “left” and which positions are supposed to be “right.” Is the government reading my e-mails? Do they track my phone calls?

Should they?

Let me say up front that, probably, no, they shouldn’t. But also, I don’t care that much.

I think this is one of those issues, like guns, in which one’s living situation makes a big difference in how one thinks. There is an urban and rural divide.

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Post Lag Time

Jun.14, 2013 in Uncategorized 2 Comments

I’m VERY sorry about the lag in the time it takes to see your posts. Unfortunately it’s unavoidable for a little while longer. There is someone who keeps bombing the site and we are working with the powers that be to not only stop them but make sure they can never do it again. In the meantime we have to moderate each post. BUT-that process is becoming MUCH quicker-as you will see.

Thanks for understanding,

Michael Davis

The Point Radio: DROP DEAD DIVA Among The Living | @MDWorld

Jun.14, 2013 in The Point Leave a Comment

It’s a TV series about a woman who dies and is brought back into a totally new life, so how ironic that DROP DEAD DIVA was cancelled after four seasons, then revived for a fifth on Lifetime. We talk to the shell shocked cast and creator about where they are going from here., Plus GHOST RIDER back in court, Roger Corman decides to share and SONS OF ANARCHY gets a comic.

A Shot In The Mouth, by Michael Davis – Straight No Chaser #315 | @MDWorld

Jun.14, 2013 in Straight No Chaser 4 Comments

I’m most likely at odds with most of my liberal friends, as I see Edward Snowden as a little bitch traitor. I’ve known more than a few real people get hurt, and even murdered, as a result of someone opening their big mouth. I knew two people that died in the World Trade Center.

If I was at my Manhattan residence on September 11th, there is a very small but also very real chance I could have died, as my subway stop was Chambers St/ World Trade Center, and most every day I was in New York I’d catch the A train around between 8-9 in the morning.

I’d say there was less than a 1% chance that I would have been in the towers when they fell, and as I was going into the subway below the towers it’s safe to say I would have had a hell of a story, but I’d be OK. But I don’t give a shit HOW small the chances are, 1% or 99%, it’s all the same to me. I don’t want, nor do I want anyone I care about, to take any chances.

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Apex Predators – Sunset Observer #4…by Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture | @MDWorld

Jun.11, 2013 in Un Pop Culture 10 Comments

Yesterday, Santa Monica College became a war zone when a gunman killed a bunch of people because he could and to make himself feel better. When first arriving on the campus after a carjacking, he shot a homeless bag lady in the face.

Two days earlier as our weekly family tea party began, news sources were announcing that a 1300 lb. female Mako shark had been brought into the marina a mile down the street. She had been killed by sport fisherman out of Texas, and she was suspected of being the largest of her kind ever documented.

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The Point Radio: Who Knew Their SUPERMAN & Who Will Be WHO? | @MDWorld

Jun.10, 2013 in The Point Leave a Comment

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There is a lot ridding on MAN OF STEEL – ranging from making Superman a successful movie franchise to starting the path to a line of DC superhero films. So with so much at stake, you might be shocked to hear who decided to follow the path of there character from TV & comics, and who did not. We’ve got the confessions from Henry Cavill to Russell Crowe to Amy Adams. Plus more on SyFy’s second season of CONTINIUUM and who really will be the new DOCTIOR WHO?

Taking Up The Tax, by Mike Gold Brainiac On Banjo #329 | @MDWorld

Jun.10, 2013 in Brainiac On Banjo 8 Comments

O.K. Let’s take a poll. First, everybody who likes paying taxes, raise your hand.

Hmmm. I never felt the air so still.

O.K. Now, raise your hand if you are in favor of any four of the following: 1) having a local fire department, 2) having a local police department, 3) having an adequate defense, 4) having roads, 5) having sewage systems, 6) not having airplanes fly into one another, and 7) not having the butcher’s knuckles pop out from your knockwurst sandwich.

Let us set aside Ronald Reagan’s great lie, damning it for the cheap stunt that it was. Our government is no more inefficient and is far less corrupt than Big Business. Reagan maliciously slandered hundreds of thousands of good, honest, hard-working Americans, and he did so for his own personal gain. No, let us instead talk about taxes.

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Cheap Thrills, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

Jun.08, 2013 in Brilliant Disguise 9 Comments

As a New Yorker of a certain socio-economic class, I am lucky enough to live in a way that allows me to avoid Wal-Mart. While a lot of this is because I’m an elitist snob, it’s also because I have plenty of other choices.

And this week, I feel like a Tea Party patriot as well. See, there’s a new study out, from the Democratic staff of the U. S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce. They conclude that Wal-Mart is a terrible welfare cheat, taking advantage of patriotic taxpayers against their will, without even a vote.

How can this happen? It’s easy. Wal-Mart pays its employees so little, and provides so few benefits, that even workers who manage to get full-time schedules have to go on food stamps and other forms of government assistance. Using data provided by Wisconsin’s Medicaid program, they concluded that a single Wal-Mart Superstore costs taxpayers anywhere from $900,000 a year to nearly $1,750,000 a year.

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The Point Radio: Just How Different Is MAN OF STEEL? | @MDWorld

Jun.07, 2013 in The Point Leave a Comment

It’s finally for MAN OF STEEL to hit theaters and make it’s mark among super-hero films. We start our in depth look talking to Henry Cavill, Zack Snider and Amy Adams about just what the changes are to the Superman mythos. Plus SyFy’s CONTINUUM hits a new season and we’ve got an exclusive preview with star Rachel Nichols, but is SyFy also dumping WAREHOUSE 13? We’ve got the answer.

Best Friends, Tequila, And Home, by Michael Davis – Straight No Chaser #314 | @MDWorld

Jun.07, 2013 in Straight No Chaser 7 Comments

My best friends in the whole wide world are Denys Cowan, Mike Stradford, and Jason Clark. I’d take a bullet for any one of those guys. There is no joke coming, like “in the leg” or some shit like that — when I say I’d take a bullet, that means I’d die for Denys, Mike or Jason.

I’m drunk.

Yeah, I’m writing this and I’m LIT on tequila. LIT means DRUNK.

How drunk am I? So drunk that if I even thought about driving I’d be arrested on a DWI, DUI and DWB. That’s driving while intoxicated, driving under the influence and driving while black.

That drunk.

I’m not so drunk that I would be stupid enough to admit I was REALLY drunk without saying: I’m just fucking with y’all. So lets say I may or may not be drunk, and for the sake of this story let’s SAY I am drunk but for the sake of any business interests that thinks being drunk is a reason not to be in business with me I’m just saying I’m drunk because it makes for a good story. Got that? Good.

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DNA All The Way, by Arthur Tebbel – Pop Art #222 | @MDWorld

Jun.06, 2013 in Pop Art 1 Comment

Dear Art,

This week the Supreme Court ruled that taking a DNA swab from suspects arrested for “serious crimes” was constitutional. The case revolved around a man who was convicted of a crime unrelated to his arrest when his DNA was collected and run against a database of cold cases. The dissent was focused on the fourth amendment implications of taking the information from someone simply arrested while the majority decided it was no more invasive or troublesome than taking fingerprints. As a young person with vaguely anarchist tendencies what do you think of this decision? Is there even a remote chance you have a legal argument to back you up?

-Christine Luchok Fallon, Reporter of Decisions of the Supreme Court

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