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1bpm.bsky.social
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@1bpm.bsky.social
110 followers 280 following 290 posts
I wished that I'd grow up and make my living as a writer. Thanks, monkey's paw.

Heavy lurking, light posting, righteous blocking. Oakland.
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1bpm.bsky.social
I carved this pumpkin with nothin’ but kitchen steak knives. It is a cat with little ears, sticking up and whiskers carved into its cheek. Happy Halloween.
November 1, 2025 at 2:51 AM
1bpm.bsky.social
I’ve been doing the same with pics of my cats. I (they) have a range of moods.
Screenshot of a text message I received that says “I’m still on the clock” with a reaction iPhone sticker that’s a picture of one of my cats making a lips gnarl of disgust. Another screenshot from a conversation in which someone tells me, with evidence, sarcasm “joy! And it’s only 11… You can do it“ and the reaction picture of the cat looks like she’s in the middle of throwing up.
October 30, 2025 at 12:59 AM
1bpm.bsky.social
Wait, today is the 50th anniversary of Born to Run *and* Walt Kelly’s 112 birthday? Well, that maps out the rest of my day quite nicely.
Just a photo of my battered vinyl copy of Springsteen’s brilliant Born to Run album and several of the Eclipse reprints (circa 1990) of the masterful Pogo strips. Two great tastes that … probably go greater sequentially than literally together. Time will tell. Anyway, I’ve got a lot of day left to burn.
August 25, 2025 at 9:05 PM
1bpm.bsky.social
I got to this part, still in the intro, and said “oh for fuck’s sake!” and had to walk away from the screen for five minutes.
Screenshot of a frustrating excerpt from the above-linked NYMag article about the recent “new atheist” anthology “The War on Science.” The screenshot reads: Krauss and his collaborators have identified an "emerging threat" to science and inquiry, as he writes in an introduction to the book. What threat? Wokeness, of course.
August 10, 2025 at 7:21 PM
1bpm.bsky.social
The Superman movie has a great heart, a moral center, despite being overstuffed with world building and a kitchen sink approach to unrestrained CGI chaos, but the real blessing of that film is that a week later, I come home from my LCS with two (2!) comics starring Krypto.
July 17, 2025 at 3:23 AM
1bpm.bsky.social
Here are a few random seconds of Chris Isaak last night at The Guild, a beautiful, intimate venue in Menlo Park. Great voice, great band, a fun and funny entertainer.
July 17, 2025 at 2:03 AM
1bpm.bsky.social
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, San Francisco. Great fucking show.
Photo taken from the left side second level of the Bill Graham Civic auditorium on May 14. In the foreground, very tiny at the front of the stage, Nick Cave stands with his arms spread wide. On the screen behind the stage, we see a close-up of his face, raised to the heavens as if in prayer.
May 15, 2025 at 7:20 AM
1bpm.bsky.social
Very sad. Excellent artist with a great style. I met him long ago, as a kid at a con, and he was such a nice guy. Did this excellent sketch for me.
Very tight pencil sketch of Marionette, from Guice’s breakthrough run on Micronauts. She stands with knees locked, both hands on the hilt of her sword, in front of her waist. The tip of the blade touched the ground. The paper is yellowed except for a rectangle in the top right corner. I had it framed on my wall for years, w/his Marvel business card tucked in the corner. It is signed, Best Wishes, Butch Guice, 1984.
May 1, 2025 at 11:30 PM
1bpm.bsky.social
Finished @lailalalami.com’s The Dream Hotel today. Beautifully written, disturbingly relevant. A future of relentless surveillance where people are arrested for no crime, and the algorithm can’t be appealed.

And it ends with a message that seems tailored for this exact moment, like a gift.
The Dream Hotel on my shelf with several other Lalami book: Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, Secret Son and The Moor’s Account. I recommend them all.
March 23, 2025 at 10:12 PM
1bpm.bsky.social
Thanks very much for the gift link. If I might add: the Guardian used a similar photo, but somehow their image choice makes the point more clearly …
Guardian headline and image about musk addressing the German far right AfD. His face is on a Big Brother scale screen with a flag-waving crowd silhouetted in the bottom foreground. One of the flags is creating a little black mustache just under musk’s nose. Reminiscent of a past far-right German … leader, I guess … What’s the German word for leader, again …? This rascally choice by a Guardian photo/video editor (it’s the cover shot for a video) says it all.
January 28, 2025 at 10:33 PM
1bpm.bsky.social
Section 31 felt like basic TV crap. Quirky buddy team that's full of forced quips, edgy hostility and one-trait characters. Flat-out embarrassing. And trying to fit a season's worth of TV into 90 min. created an incomprehensible action spectacle that's not even trying to be Star Trek.
Michelle Yeoh in front of her ragtag team of quirky characters cum deep, deep Trek references. They're all in black, looking grim. One guy is part cyborg, with a robot eye strapped over his right eye like a pirate's eyepatch, lookin' like someone stole the character design from early '90s X-Men comics. Very Rob Liefeld vibes. Pretty sure we never see his feet.
January 26, 2025 at 7:30 PM
1bpm.bsky.social
People talk about how the matrix may be a rip off of Dark City. But the matrix came out only a year later, and it takes a lot longer to make a movie like this.

On the other hand, the 1999 Buffy episode “Hush“ maybe got its floating creepy bad guys here.
The four creepy, skeletal “gentlemen” bad guys from the 1999 Buffy episode “Hush.” They are bald pale white guys with a reanimated corpse, aesthetic and rictus grins. Dress in black suits. The dream like quality of the episode and the way these guys float is somewhat reminiscent of the bad guys from Dark City, released to insufficient a claim the previous year.
January 26, 2025 at 12:42 AM
1bpm.bsky.social
A friend & I watched Dark City, which The Matrix unfairly (?) swept under a rug. Fun, not great. Story is like a strong first draft. Stylized acting fits a stylized world whose aesthetic admirably uses every dollar in a limited budget. But it's no Blade Runner. The visuals linger, but not the story.
Four .. no, five creepy bald old white guys in dark robes with a bit of a fetish gear aesthetic. Lit from below, high key light, gloomy background. You just know they’re the bad guys. (DARK CITY, 1998)
January 26, 2025 at 12:37 AM
1bpm.bsky.social
Self-medicating w/movies (& wine). Hardest thing to write in film is a rom-com's Act 2 climax: Perfect couple breaks up hard (later to reunite). Most movies fuck up w/something dumb, petty, implausible.

RYE LANE is funny, charming & original straight through, AND it nails that turn. 5/5, no notes.
Movie poster for Rye Lane, a romantic comedy on Hulu. In front of the film title, on a blank orange background, sit the two leads, David Jonsson and Vivian Oparah. Young, casually dressed (Johnson has headphones around his neck), black, attractive but I'd say in a real, not cinema-polished, way. Oparah, on the right, levels a cool stare at the camera, while Jonsson is facing camera, but eyes looking at Oparah. He has just a slight smile. It really is a fun movie.
January 21, 2025 at 6:45 PM
1bpm.bsky.social
The End We Start From is a quietly apocalyptic (not post-) movie that is an uncomfortable watch. The rule that anything with Jodie Comer will be excellent holds true, and director Mahalia Belo delivers a film whose feel and flow is unlike anything I’ve seen. Highly recommended.
Poster for The End We Start From. At left, Jodie Comer holds a baby close, looking off to the left, looking stressed. At right, she and the baby are small figures against an uninviting British coastal landscape.
January 19, 2025 at 10:04 PM
1bpm.bsky.social
A little winter sun makes a cat’s Saturday.
This is Sammi. She is a 16-month-old gray tabby with a lovely amber undercoat, enjoying a bit of bright winter sun on the deck. She is so goddamn pretty.
January 18, 2025 at 8:50 PM
1bpm.bsky.social
Finally, and for obvious reasons, reading Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. Published in ‘93, set in ‘24-27 (I think; still reading), in an LA devastated by social breakdown, crime, climate change and fire.

And she just keeps nailing human nature and the current moment.
First page of Chapter 10 of Octavia Butler’s Paeable of the Sower, from the holy writing of the book’s fictional, but appealing, new religion. Formatted like blank verse, it reads: When apparent stability disintegrates, As it must— God is Change— People tend to give in To fear and depression, To need and greed. When no influence is strong enough To unify people They divide. They struggle, One against one, Group against group, For survival, position, power. They remember old hates and generate new ones, They create chaos and nurture it. They kill and kill and kill, Until they are exhausted and destroyed, Until they are conquered by outside forces, Or until one of them becomes A leader Most will follow, Or a tyrant Most fear. EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
January 15, 2025 at 4:38 AM
1bpm.bsky.social
For the record, Christmas occurred at exactly 2pm PST ON Dec. 24.
A copy of the newly published DC comics style guide, with art by the amazing José Luis García-López, looking like all of Christmas between two hardcovers.
December 24, 2024 at 10:22 PM
1bpm.bsky.social
quote post which star trek episode is going to be banned by the new administration

The one where Kirk turns into a woman.
Scene from the original Star Trek series ep “Turnabout Intruder,” in which a woman of ill intent switches consciousness from her body to Captain Kirk’s, and vice versa. Here, “Kirk” is leading the woman away at Phaser-point aboard the Enterprise, as Scotty and McCoy look on. But at this point, iirc, Jim Kirk is actually imprisoned in the woman’s body.
December 18, 2024 at 3:31 AM
1bpm.bsky.social
What even IS this? Other than a potential 1.8k blocklist of followback grifters?
Screenshot of an account called Following 1 million. It is following 127,6 thousand accounts, and is inexplicably followed by 1 .8 thousand even though it has made zero posts, zero replies, nothing. This screenshot captures the block account option one second before being selected.
December 18, 2024 at 1:29 AM
1bpm.bsky.social
Fine haul from my comic shop today, and 3 books — FML, 1949 and Backflash — I only knew of from Bluesky posts by @stevelieberart.bsky.social, @kellysue.bsky.social and
@dustinweaver.bsky.social. And @kierongillen.bsky.social’s posts put We Called Them Giants front-of-mind.

Great weekend ahead.
Picture of the comics named in the post, plus this week’s Action Comics, the Superwoman Special, and a very interesting anthology about jazz called Deep Cuts that leapt off the shelf at me while I was looking for 1949.
December 12, 2024 at 12:26 AM
1bpm.bsky.social
Up next: John Craigie’s live performance of Sgt Pepper, in full, alone on guitar. With funny commentary between songs. A real gem.
The album cover of John Craigie‘s “Sergeant peppers, lonely“ is a recreation of the Beatles album cover the flowers spell out Craigie‘s name instead of the Beatles, and all the cardboard figures are gone, so he is just alone behind a bass drum that has only the first three words of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band logo. I only know this to be available on vinyl, but his version of Abbey Road Lonely is on Apple Music and it’s pretty good, too.
December 7, 2024 at 4:02 AM
1bpm.bsky.social
Friday night and my wife is away. Wild plans: A dozen shirts to iron, good winter ale and the Nick Cave bonus disc from the Sept. Mojo that I am FINALLY shoving into the cd player.
In a mirror, one can see the front of the cd sleeve, a black and white shot of the band performing onstage. In the foreground: Back cover of the Mojo cd sleeve lists the album tracks: 1. We Call Upon the Author (from Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!) 2. Animal X (from B-Sides & Rarities: Part II) 3. Wild God (from Wild God) 4. The Good Son (from The Good Son) 5. Jubilee Street (from Distant Sky: Live in Copenhagen) 6. Distant Sky (from Distant Sky: Live in Copenhagen) 7. From Her to Eternity (from From Her to Eternity) 8. Tupelo (from The Firstborn Is Dead) 9. Leviathan (from Ghosteen) 10. Into My Arms (from Live From KCRW) 11. God Is In the House (Westside Session) (B-side of Love Letter) 12. Helpless (from B-sides & Rarities) 13. Stranger Than Kindness (from Live From KCRW) 14. The Mercy Seat (Live version, B-side of I Had a Dream, Joe) Of them all, I'm looking forward to the live Into My Arms, because that song is such a staggering piece of writing, a transcendent version of the most tired genre of pop, the love song.
December 7, 2024 at 2:54 AM
1bpm.bsky.social
Currently enjoying: Nick Lowe (and Los Straightjackets), Indoor Safari. Lowe's pop craftsmanship + the band's classic surf-rock stylings. I'm seeing them at a small club in San Francisco in February and really looking forward to it.
The cover of Nick Lowe's newest album, Indoor Safari. Against a painted backdrop of forest or jungle, and between two large houseplants, a woman raises a glass of champagne in a toast to the viewer. She's older, with black bangs and a pageboy haircut, I think, down just past her chin. Wearing a leopard-print, sleeveless pantsuit and a bunch of bangles on one wrist. Both the image and the bar of cover copy along the top ("Stereophonic fidelty" and the label's catalog number) are a throwback to a certain kitschy style of album cover from the 50s and 60s, a "swingin' sounds for modern hipsters" vibe). By the way, I keep expecting to find out that the woman is actually Lowe in a wig or something, but I'm sure if that were true the internet would've told me. It's definitely a wig, I'll tell you that much.
December 5, 2024 at 12:29 AM
1bpm.bsky.social
Lucked into a no-plans Thanksgiving with key family away. We made bell peppers and beef, a variable recipe derived from Cowboy Bebop:

—Always noodles
—Bell peppers (usually, and whatever else is to hand)
—Never beef
A pan containing a cooked melange of udon noodles, bell pepper, carrot, sweet potato, scallions, kale and seitan. Because that’s what was in the fridge.
November 29, 2024 at 3:36 AM