Tagged: Washington

Win The Americans Prize Pack!

  • News
  • February 7, 2014

theamericans_s1_bd_spine-e13904013427651-8288136We didn’t know what we were in for when FX debuted The Americans last February. The Cold War story of Russian spies embedded in suburban Washington D.C. was fresh and fun with winning performances from Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys, and Margo Martindale. With the second season ready to arrive in a few weeks, our friends at 20th Century Home Entertainment are offering ComicMix readers an opportunity.

ushanka-e13904014252271-1335831The Americans, Season 1 blasts its way onto Blu-ray and DVD February 11th. There’s no better way to celebrate than by entering to win a Blu-ray copy of Season 1 to add to your collection, as well as a Russian styled Ushanka hat. Be careful where you wear the hat though, your neighbors may begin to think you’re an undercover Russian KGB spy!

To enter for your chance to win, simply answer the below question.

the-americans-season-1-dvd-and-bluray-americans_s1_352x264_2_rgb-e13904014684781-9895039What year was the U.S.S.R officially dissolved?

A) 1972
B) 1991
C) 2003
D) 1983

Give us your answer by 11:59 p.m., February 11. Open to United States and Canadian readers only. The judgment of ComicMix will be final.

Synopsis

Secrets can be deadly in this suspenseful thriller about undercover Russian spies in 1980s Washington. Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell) seem to be a typical suburban couple, but they’re actually lethal KGB agents plotting to bring down America. As the Cold War escalates, Philip and Elizabeth must take extreme measures to continue their mission and keep their true identities hidden. But when an FBI agent moves in across the street, they become ensnared in a pulse-pounding game of cat and mouse.

Blu-ray & DVD Features

  • “The Colonel” Commentary featuring Joseph Weisberg, Joel Fields and Noah Emmerich
  • Executive Order 2579: Exposing the Americans
  • Perfecting the Art of Espionage
  • Ingenuity Over Technology
  • Gag Reel
  • Deleted Scenes
  • Trailers

Cast Your Vote in Round 3 of the Mix March Madness 2013 Webcomics Tournament!

  • News
  • March 14, 2013

comicmixmarchmadnesssquare20133-9162355UPDATE: Round 3 of the Mix March Madness 2013 Webcomics Tournament has ended! Vote in the Round 4 Sweet 16 now!

We started with over 300 webcomics, and we’re down to 32, while we’ve exposed thousands of people to new webcomics and raised over $750 for the Hero Initiative. Voting for this round lasts until 9PM EDT on Saturday, March 16, so get your votes in.

And now you can log in using Twitter to vote!

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Happy 100th Birthday, Chuck Jones!

1978 photograph of Chuck Jones in his office.

One hundred years ago today in Spokane, Washington, Charles Martin “Chuck” Jones was born. It is quite possible there has not been a more widely influential artist in the twentieth century.

We could easily list his over three hundred cartoons that he directed; we could talk about all of the influential cartoons that he didn’t do for Warner Brothers– Pogo, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, The Dot and the Line, and revitalizing Tom & Jerry; we could mention his creation and co-creations Private Snafu, Charlie Dog, Hubie and Bertie, The Three Bears, Claude Cat, Marc Antony and Pussyfoot, Charlie Dog, Michigan J. Frog, Marvin the Martian, Pepe LePew, the Road Runner, and Wile E. Coyote; we could discuss his educational work with The Electric Company and Curiosity Shop and his works with Dr. Seuss, not to mention the multiple generations of animators he taught and trained– but we’ll simply note that three of his shorts (Duck Amuck, One Froggy Evening and What’s Opera, Doc?) have been inducted into the National Film Registry.

Here, let Chuck show you how to draw Bugs Bunny:

And since this is in the public domain, we can show The Dover Boys at Pimento University in its entirety:

And here’s a Chuck Jones cartoon you probably haven’t seen, Hell-Bent for Election:

I was honored to have shaken Mr. Jones’s hand in 1993, and I owe him a tremendous debt. We honor him today. Chuck Jones… soooooooper-genius.

Chicago’s new mayor isn’t the fake one we actually wanted.

  • News
  • February 27, 2011

twit_emanuel-9226256Listen up, you mutha-cluckers… Chicago has a new boss in town. Why does this matter to you? Because I said so. Why did I say so? Because the Second City is known for a few big things: The Chicago Style Hot Dog, Deep Dish Pizza, Da ’85 Bears, and maybe just an eensy-bit of good old fashioned corruption. But now it can be known for one more big thing. Our new mayor? Former White House chief-of-staff Rahm “The R-Bomb” Emanuel. When our current boss mayor, Richard Daley announced he’d retire this year from his post… Emanuel left his job in Washington to take his home city by the horns. But it’s been a long journey to get there. He took 54% of the vote, despite having his Chicago residency being challenged. He beat out the former city chief of staff, the former city clerk, and a former U.S. Senator for the title. But if you ask me? He didn’t beat one important candidate, his psuedo-self. In a paradoxical sub-dimension high atop City Hall, in a secret greenhouse known only to our beloved Mayor Daley… and @MayorEmanuel, the dimensional doppelganger of Chicago.

What’s that you say? You’ve not heard? @MayorEmanuel is the twitterverse’s Rahm Emanuel clone. The account started shortly after the “real” Rahm declared his intention to run. And boy did things escalate from there. @MayorEmanuel’s story unfolded over the months, and became an epic yarn with a full cast of characters. It began as a string of foul-mouthery perhaps poking a jovial jab towards the obvious; Rahm is known for his temper, his drive, and his competitive nature. He raised 11 million dollars to take his campaign to the streets of Chicago. He shook hands and kissed babies. We can only assume he attended secret cabal meetings, and struck backroom deals that we kindly city-folk won’t find out until they hit the nightly news a few years after his mayoral run ends… if it ends. His twitter counterpart followed the whole ride, as only a comedic four-letter-word-dropping twitter clone could do. And as the race for mayor drew closer to the vote, so did the drama.

Twitter to many is just that little corner of the interwebs where we drop a snarky one liner, or tell people where we are at. It might be a place for celebrities to tell us how normal they are, shopping for soup and whatnot, or how not-normal they are, like other Chicago Celebutaunt Kanye West. @MayorEmanuel used twitter to create a piece of short fiction (OR IS IT!?) that was truly original. A few bloggers followed the best of the posts and relayed just how awe-inspiring they were. And important people took notice. The “real” Rahm made and attempt to bribe his twitter-sibling with a donation to charity, to “out” himself. Smartly the anonymous fingers behind the 140 character-at-a-time hasn’t shown his face. Perhaps he escaped down the aforementioned time well in his tweets.

Give a gander at the saga, and kick yourself for not living here (that is, if you don’t…) and living through this live alt-meta-super fiction happening. In the mean time, the real Rahm is prepping his mayoral suit, and perhaps, setting aside a bit of our future city tax dollars towards a special “find @MayorEmanuel and break his hands” task force. I think I’ve said too much. All Hail Rahm! All Hail Rahm!

ComicMix QuickPicks – January 5, 2009

Today’s installment of comic-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest…

* Missed this one in the holiday wackiness: A federal appeals panel said that child pornography is illegal even if the pictures are drawn, affirming the nation’s first conviction under a 2003 federal law against such cartoons. Even though there are no actual children involved. So Dwight Whorley of Richmond is serving 20 years in prison on an anime charge, even though he could just be in jail on the photographs. Time to donate to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund…

* Washington, D.C., library officials have proposed a ban on sleeping at public libraries. Our solution? More graphic novels! No one will sleep through those thrill-packed extravagnz– oops. Too much Stan Lee there.

* Recession? How can there be a recession when you can pre-order Captain Kirk’s chair for $2200 retail?

* That’s Sir Terry Pratchett to you, buddy.

Anything else? Consider this an open thread.

Other Than Myself, by John Ostrander

  • News
  • April 17, 2008

I remember the morning after the primary election where Harold Washington won the Democratic nomination for Mayor of Chicago, becoming the first African-American man to do so. It was February 22, 1983 – 25 years ago. The white voters were split between then incumbent mayor Jane Byrne and Richard M. Daley, son of long-time mayor Richard J. Daley and who is currently mayor of Chicago.

Whoever wins the Democratic mayoral primary is de facto mayor of Chicago. That’s a given. The last Republican mayor, William Hale Thompson, left that office in 1931.

There is no two-party system in Chicago. At best, it’s a party and a half. As a result, Washington was going to be the new mayor of Chicago and, oh, how the white establishment cried! One white Democratic politician actually considered switching parties to oppose Washington in the mayoral election rather than have Chicago face the terrible possibility of a Negro mayor. The fact that he didn’t simply means that he realized that the habit of voting Democratic was too ingrained.

I learned exactly what it meant on my way to work that day. I used the “L” at that time – Chicago’s rail transit line. My neighborhood was “iffy” – right on the borderline between an okay area and a slum and was gradually slipping downwards. That meant you walked around with your ‘spider-sense” definitely on. That was especially true of the L station.

I paid my fare and walk up the stairs to wait for the train. There was only one other person up there – a “Negro.” (more…)

The Writes Of Spring, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • April 1, 2008

As I sit down to write this, I’m less than five hours from midnight on March 23rd and so it might be appropriate to wish you a Happy Easter, or Happy Pasha if you’re an Oriental Christian, or Happy Purim. Or maybe I should give a shout-out to Aphrodite, Ashtoreth, Astarté, Demeter, Hathor, Ishtar, Kali, Ostara – all deities who were celebrated around the spring equinox and, as far as my extremely limited and unreliable knowledge goes, all of whom were connected to fertility, which figures: Spring equinox = end of winter = new life = let’s have a party.

Or…let’s let one stand for all and just celebrate the goddess whose name gives the holiday it’s name: No less an authority than The Venerable Bede, an early Christian scholar, wrote that Easter was named after the Saxon goddess Eostre, and if you can’t trust the Venerable Bede, well…

I like Easter, and tomorrow I may do something celebratory, even if it’s only to walk in the park down the road. (Yeah, us old guys really know how to tear it loose.) It’s a real holiday, as evidenced by all the ways it’s been celebrated over the millennia – see the goddess list above – and I think that means that it acknowledges and celebrates something deep in our collective culture, our life on this planet, probably our genomes. The catalogue of such holidays is short: there’s the various festivals of light that occur around the winter solstice – Merry Christmas, all – and around the fall equinox that generally involve harvests and eating, and Easter, et. al. All happen at seasonal changes and all involve the Basics: birth, death, light, dark, and survival.

You don’t have to believe in the literal truth of a mythology to accept the realities that underlie it.

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On This Day: The National Gallery of Art

  • News
  • March 17, 2008

The National Gallery of Art opened in Washington, D.C. on March 17, 1941.

Financier and art collector Andrew W. Mellon established the A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust just before his death in 1937, and it was this trust that worked with Congress to establish the art museum. John Russell Pope, who later designed the Jefferson Memorial, designed the original building, and I.M. PEI designed an East Wing addition that was completed in 1978.

The gallery was centered around twenty-one masterpieces originally owned by Catherine II of Russia—Mellon purchased the collection in the early 1930s.

 

On This Day: The 20th Amendment

  • News
  • February 6, 2008

Yeah, so we’ve all been completely inundated with political coverage on this Super Tuesday week. But if we’re gonna do this right, it should be noted that today in 1933, the 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution went into effect.

The Amendment reduced the time between Presidential and Congressional elections and the beginning of the elected officials’ terms. Originally, there were four months between the final election tally and the beginning of a newly elected official’s term, due to the time required to get your business in order and travel to Washington, D.C.

On a related note, this is also the week after James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes, the original Captain America’s sidekick, grabbed a gun and a new costume and became the new Captain America! How does that relate to the 20th Amendment, you ask? Well, the connection should be clear – and if it isn’t, the terrorists have already won.

 

The Michael Davis Network

  • News
  • January 18, 2008

 

It’s no secret I hate most reality television. I think shows like The Real World and The Real Housewives Of Orange County are real stupid. 
 
No, that’s not right, I like reality TV I just don’t like the “I’m better than you” attitude that some of these shows reflect. Take The Real Housewives Of Orange County for instance. This show is about these elitist bunch of middle age women who think that money and status are all there is in life. One woman on the show has a son who has serious problems so her solution is to kick him out of the house. OK, that’s tough love, I get that. 
 
However…
 
The mom is then upset that her son (who she kicked out) moved into the home of her husbands ex-wife. She is very hurt that her son would do that to her. 
 
What? 
 
This “mother” throws her son out of the house and then she is hurt because her son moves into her husband ex-wife’s house. Forget the fact the kid had nowhere to go, she could not get over the fact that he would hurt her that way. 
 
What kind of parent is this? 
 
Does having money make you a heartless self-centered bitch? 
 

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