Shades

November 19th, 2006 | brainjuice

When was the last time I wrote a character wearing shades? Was it Spider? Jones has his goggles, but he doesn’t wear them much.

I was watching this video Fraction sent me. It’s a collection of the last thirty seconds of teasers from a bunch of CSI MIAMI episodes — the bit before they smash-cut to the main title sequence. Now, you know how CSI works — the teaser sets up the crime, the protagonist cranks off a smart line, smash in the titles. Right?

This video — it’s on YouTube – is surreally compelling. David Caruso – the Carusobot, as we know him — hits every one of his last-line zingers with the same cadence. “What are you going to do, Carusobot?” “We-e-e…are going to find ourselves a bear rapist.” Crash in The Who, main titles.

But in almost all of them, he does the same action. “We-e-e…” …and he puts on his shades before doing the rest of the line. (Apparently, they’re referred to on set as “the sunglasses of justice”.)

The shades are crucial to CSI MIAMI, as they are to cyberpunk fiction (and the techno-thriller, both of which CSI shares DNA with). For the Carusobot IS a deranged, implacable machine. You cannot see his eyes. He therefore shows no human emotion. It’s the Uncanny Valley equation: you can pull the face into any expression you like, but the eyes are dead. In cyberpunk, as Bruce Sterling said in MIRRORSHADES, the shades are vital both to conceal emotion and to hide the fact that you’re unslept, drugged half to death and blatantly insane.

(Also: THE BLUES BROTHERS.)

To don the shades at the beginning of a story is the equivalent of Superman changing into costume (or, in a more obscure read, James Spader putting on a black shirt at the top of SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE).

With so many stories behind me, I have to be careful about repeating visual tics. But I love the idea of putting mythic weight behind something as simple as putting on a pair of shades.

The semiotics of shades. I tell you, I am fucking losing it…

(crosspost from Bad Signal)

6 Responses to “Shades”

  1. [...] About a week ago C.B. Potts highlighted this post from Warren Ellis called Shades. This struck me as as so apt: [...]

  2. [...] Ellis beschreibt eine Sache, die sicher vielen CSI Miami Zuschauern aufgefallen ist – das erstaunlich präzise Brillenaufsetzverhalten von David Caruso, genau im Takt mit einem verdammt coolen Spruch. I was watching this video Fraction sent me. It’s a collection of the last thirty seconds of teasers from a bunch of CSI MIAMI episodes — the bit before they smash-cut to the main title sequence. Now, you know how CSI works — the teaser sets up the crime, the protagonist cranks off a smart line, smash in the titles. Right? [...]

  3. [...] not the only one who seems to have spotted this. Author Warren Ellis (caveat: his site contains a lot of strong language and materials) thinks out loud on the [...]

  4. GREAT post! GREAT-GREAT-GREAT I put your comment on my site and linked it back to you – LOL!!!

  5. The great Warren Ellis on CARUSO……

    When was the last time I wrote a character wearing shades? Was it Spider? Jones has his goggles, but he doesn’t wear them much.

  6. [...] and a mental attitude of benign tinkering. (And full spectrum autism.) Warren Ellis has also theorised about this a [...]

postfix, spamassassin, dovecot and sieve?

jwz - 30 Jul 10

Dear Lazyweb, how do I use both SpamAssassin and Sieve at the same time?

Is the way this works that Postfix writes /var/mail/jwz via procmail, and then dovecot reads from there and moves the messages to ~/mail/ via sieve? I can't even tell.

Postfix main.cf has mailbox_command = /usr/bin/procmail.

/etc/procmailrc is:

DROPPRIVS=yes
:0fw
| /usr/bin/spamc -u $LOGNAME -x -s 100000000

/var/mail/jwz gets X-Spam-Status headers written into it. So far so good.

/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf (for dovecot 2.0) has:

protocol lda { ... mail_plugins = sieve ... }

Dovecot is managing to read messages out of /var/mail/jwz and deliver them to me over IMAP, with SA headers intact. But it's not running sieve, possibly not even running its own lda, and everything I have googled so far is a twisty maze of illiterate wikis that may or may not be written for versions of the software that is 5+ years out of date.

I thought maybe the answer was to add
| /usr/libexec/dovecot/deliver -d $LOGNAME
to the end of procmailrc, but that let me to discover that:

% cat testmsg | /usr/libexec/dovecot/deliver -d jwz
Exit 75
lda: Error: dlopen(/usr/lib64/dovecot/lda/lib90_sieve_plugin.so) failed: /usr/lib64/dovecot/lda/lib90_sieve_plugin.so: undefined symbol: tried_default_save
lda: Fatal: Couldn't load required plugins


So I guess I have the wrong version of the sieve plugin? I have: dovecot-2.0-0.18_114_rc3.el5 and dovecot-sieve-0.1.17-5.el5 on CentOS release 5.4 (Final)

Untitled Post

blissblog - 30 Jul 10

Grasshopper Podcast Appearance

Jean Snow - 30 Jul 10

Grasshopper Podcast Appearance

I mentioned last week that I’d be a guest this week on game developer Grasshopper Manufacture’s podcast (Flower, Sun, & Podcast), and the episode (5) is now up and you can download it here (it should be on iTunes too). Check it out if you want to hear me ramble (and ramble) about mostly game-related topics.

Pictured, the Grasshopper conference room — complete with ping-pong table — where we recorded the episode. Big thanks to Grasshopper producer Esteban Salazar for inviting me on the show.

Thor 612 & Spider-man Vs Thor 2 Out

Kieron Gillen - 30 Jul 10

Catching up a little with stuff that happened when I’m away. I’ll talk Generation Hope later, but here’s the two comics I’ve got out this week.

My Thor In Hell and Hel arc continues. Here’s the five-page-preview. Enormous metal seriousness. My dual influences remain I, Claudius and the cover of 1980s Metal albums. Assorted random reviews: IGN. A Comic Book Blog. Weekly Comic Book Review.

The concluding party of my two part character-study/fight-comic. Preview here. And no reviews which I can find, but pleased to see that at least some people thought it was funny. Few things make me worry more than writing comedy.

Oh - here’s Seb’s review of the first one, which will give you a taste for it.

Vintage Jantzen: The Pin-Up Powerhouse

Coilhouse - 30 Jul 10

So… any Mad Men fans in the ‘haus? No spoilers in the comments, please, because I’m not sure if Mer and Zo have had a chance to catch last Sunday’s Season 4 premiere. But without giving away any plot points, I just want to ask: what was up with Don Draper pulling a Dov Charney with his horrible Jantzen pitch? Our colleague Copyranter eats this kind of American Apparel shit for breakfast. The Portland-based swimwear company was portrayed as a stodgy, conservative business to whom Draper declares angrily, “you’re too scared of the skin your two-piece was designed to show off.” I guess he (and/or the show’s writers) never saw Jantzen’s Vargas-inspired campaign, which ran in LIFE in 1947 (below). Dear readers, I proudly tag this post “Stroke Material” and present you with my stash of vintage Jantzen advertisements from the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s. Sun-kissed beauties with Bettie Page smiles and space-age swimsuits – as well as a few clever parodies – after the jump.


Read the rest of Vintage Jantzen: The Pin-Up Powerhouse


Post tags: Advertising, Fashion, Stroke Material, Ye Olde

You're Welcome ...

Kung Fu Monkey - 29 Jul 10



Cinnamon is waiting at PortlandDogXperts.com for someone to rescue her, after her star turn on the Leverage Season 3 finale. The madman Okie is still under contract to the TV show.

Deep Rivers Run Quiet: Ryan Francesconi?s ?Parables?

Coilhouse - 29 Jul 10


Photo by Ben Corrigan.

Ryan Francesconi‘s wonderful music has been lilting around the edges of my life since 1995 when I briefly worked together with him and Dan Cantrell in the Toids, an experimental folk group that riffed off various Eastern European idioms in tandem with Francesconi and Cantrell’s eclectic compositional styles. Back then, Francesconi was one seriously intimidating guitar/tambura/bouzouki shredder! He reveled in playing faster, smarter, better than anybody. He’s a shredder still, and no one can approximate his style… but over the years, wisdom seems to have smoothed over some of the sharper, more Malmsteinish edges of his virtuosity. Lately, the music he makes has deepened into an expression of something far more present, and pure.

Nowhere is this more apparent than on a quietly stunning record Francesconi released earlier this year, called Parables. A series of songs for solo acoustic guitar, it reflects his interest in American bluegrass, Bulgarian folk, jazz improvisation and Baroque lute music. Recorded live (no overdubs!), the music is graceful and green with nods of kinship to everyone from Nick Drake to Herman Hesse to the forests of the Pacific Northwest– which is where Francesconi lives when he’s not trotting the globe.

Speaking of– if you’re a fan of Joanna Newsom, the name Ryan Francesconi is probably already familiar to you, since he’s been one of her key players for several years, leading her live touring performers in the Ys Street Band and arranging/playing on just about every song on her new triple album, Have One On Me. They’re kicking off their summer West Coast tour of the States tonight in San Diego, California. Newsom had this to say about Parables:

“Ryan Francesconi is one of the most awe-inspiring musicians I’ve known. On “Parables,” he distills his many realms of artistry [...] into a beautifully minimalist, poetic, intricate, emotionally realized study of themes, variations, organic counterpoint, and such devastating forays into fractal-metric out-lands that it is nearly impossible to believe he’s picking those strings with just one hand. This is solo music that sounds like an ensemble, an ecstatic and measured reconciliation of West African / Balkan / Baroque / bluegrass influences, which ultimately resembles nothing I know.”

Pick up Parables on vinyl over at Drag City (they’re currently sold out of the CD), or in Mp3 format from CD Baby or iTunes.


Post tags: Events, Faboo, Music, Personal Style

Nick Cave Rewrites The Crow, Cillian Murphy to Star?

Coilhouse - 29 Jul 10

Nick Cave’s participation in the remake of the new Crow has been confirmed, and I’m finally starting to get excited. The Crow, a film based on James O’Barr’s eponymous comic book series, was a sort of holy grail to me and my darque little crew back in the early nineties. Unapologetically dramatic, The Crow had everything an angsty kid could want: love, destruction, hot bloke in makeup, great villains, pretty girls. There was one year when I watched the film at least five times.

Now, I haven’t actually seen it in over ten years, for fear that it won’t hold up. I’m told it doesn’t. Still, the concept of a shiny new remake of my childhood/adolescence favorite is an uncomfortable one. Nostalgia and Brandon Lee’s death on the set veil The Crow in shimmery, inviolate mystery, and, had it been anyone other than Nick The Stripper doing the re-write, I would have probably shunned it. As things stand though, I think there’s reason to get at least a little fired up, especially with new rumors of Cillian Murphy possibly signing on to play Eric – almost as weird as casting Brandon Lee! If only Stephen Norrington could be replaced… Yes, then I can almost picture it. Until we know more, let us remember The Crow that once was. I leave you with a question: who would you cast as the ideal Eric?

The Crow is available on YouTube in its entirety.


Post tags: Comics, Fairy Tales, Film, Stroke Material, Surreal, Uber

Igor Oleynikov

Coilhouse - 29 Jul 10

A patchwork biography of Igor Oleynikov: Growing up in Lubertsy, Russia ? a small town outside of Moscow ? his entrance into the art world was at the Russian animation studio Soyuzmultfilm in 1979. Since 1986 he has been illustrating children’s books and has done 25 to date.

Children’s book illustration is a lot like veterinary school ? the common misconception being that medical school has a much higher barrier of entry, and yet the opposite is true. Children’s book illustration is a notoriously difficult nut to crack.

Oleynikov’s work is testament to the talent involved in the field. His paintings are lush and yet his tones are muted just enough to give everything a dream-like quality. In addition, they possess that air of danger and foreboding so often found in literature for young readers. Really, I could look at these all day. See more after the jump and even more here, here, and here.


Read the rest of Igor Oleynikov


Post tags: Animation, Art, Russia

Cthulhu Cthursday: Arkham ? shit, I?m still only in Arkham

Ectoplasmosis - 29 Jul 10

When I found this last weekend, I watched it obsessively a number of times. It just seems right. Not exactly a vision of prophecy, but for a myth of collapse it will do?

Apocalypse -Cthulhu- Now by Cthulinos [Youtube]
Apocalypse Now intro – In case you’ve forgotten the visual pun [Youtube]


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