patchdrury/dot/net

Let’s do this! (Taken with Instagram at Kentucky Theatre)

Wed, 23 May 2012 19:22:18 -0400

Let’s do this! (Taken with Instagram at Kentucky Theatre)

zdarsky: And that’s that.

Sun, 20 May 2012 16:47:00 -0400

zdarsky:

And that’s that.

Fork in The Road food cart is outside of Country Boy Brewery...

Fri, 18 May 2012 16:45:21 -0400

Fork in The Road food cart is outside of Country Boy Brewery tonight. I just had a religious experience with a Korean pork belly slider. Best thing I’ve eaten so far this year. (Taken with instagram)

Photo

Wed, 09 May 2012 20:48:42 -0400

Don Draper doesn’t care for your Beatles and barely...

Wed, 09 May 2012 12:25:32 -0400

Don Draper doesn’t care for your Beatles and barely tolerates your LMFAO.

10 Kentucky Bands You Should Listen to Now :: Blogs :: List of the Day :: Paste

Wed, 09 May 2012 11:25:58 -0400

10 Kentucky Bands You Should Listen to Now :: Blogs :: List of the Day :: Paste:

Kentucky gets the love from Paste Magazine!

My friend Leo always tells me about a thing on MTV back in the 90’s where Lexington was named as the “next Seattle.” The music scene in this town has always been kind of feast or famine. Nice to see some Lexingtonians on this list!

Why my friends are awesome

Wed, 09 May 2012 10:21:11 -0400

Last week, in this post, I talked about some Avengers comics that I had when I was a kid - comics that have burned themselves into my memory, but that I haven’t owned in a very long time.

Well, after reading that post, my friend Dave Erdmann got on eBay and tracked the first Avengers comic I ever owned and bought it for me.

Seriously.

I flipped through the book immediately and it was like going through a time machine - all the panels I remembered from being a kid were right there, just the way they looked in my my mind’s eye.

What an incredibly sweet gift! I’m at a loss for how to properly express how grateful I am to Dave and how much this has touched me.

I know a lot of wonderful people and Dave is obviously right there at the top.

Ten Stories Streaming on Spotify | mewithoutYou

Tue, 08 May 2012 16:42:28 -0400

Ten Stories Streaming on Spotify | mewithoutYou:

Really excited about the new Mewithoutyou album out next week. Wanna check it out? You can stream it on Spotify!

Video

Mon, 07 May 2012 09:39:15 -0400

What I loved about The Avengers movie

Sat, 05 May 2012 20:04:00 -0400

Ever since the post-credit scene in Iron Man when Samuel Jackson, playing super-spy Nick Fury, stepped out of the shadows and uttered the words, “Avengers Initiative” I’ve been vacillating between bouts of euphoric anticipation and inescapable dread. The idea of seeing the Avengers on the big screen had the potential to be a childhood dream come true or a disappointment of cataclysmic proportions. Super hero movies are easy to do poorly - and an ensemble piece featuring a diverse group of characters - If it failed, it would fail big time.

Despite some less than favorable reviews from a few professional critics, let me assure you, The Avengers did not fail. It was, indeed a childhood dream come true.

Director Joss Whedon and crew did so many things right. First up, they went big. You can’t do an Avengers movie, with all of these heavy-hitting characters and do it small. Among my favorite big moments - The Hulk riding a jet, the SHIELD helecarier almost crashing, and an alien invastion… Super hero movies are all about appropriate scope. If you’re doing Batman you can do organized crime and thugs with knives, but if you’re going to do The Avengers, you gotta go big.

One of the other thing that Whedon did right is honoring old school comic book tropes. Whedon knows that before a group of super heroes can team up, there has to be a misunderstanding and a fight. Seeing Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man battling each other was awesome. And even more awesome, seeing Thor vs the Hulk. It was like a nerdy comic book store debate come to life.

Despite how big the movie was, it also had a lot of smaller character moments - and surprisingly, a lot of genuinely funny beats. Whedon is known to be a funny guy, and managed to not only bring out the humor in The Avengers, but he did it while still taking the subject matter seriously. You never got the feeling he was winking at the camera or going camp.

My absolute favorite thing about the movie, though, is looking at it from the context of my childhood. When I think about it through the eyes of nine year old me, it’s really hard to believe I sat in a movie theater and watched the Hulk chase Black Widow through a SHIELD helecarrier. Sure, lots of people have heard of the Hulk, but the rest of that sentence is pretty inside baseball. I had a lot of those moments throughout the movie; moments where obscure characters and situations from my youth were being recreated on the big screen with a multi-million dollar budget; moments where everyone was being let into the clubhouse. It was awesome.

My only disappointment, and it was a small one, was that there weren’t more easter eggs - little hidden details, Marvel Universe minutia for long time fans to catch. Nothing that would alienate non-fans or make them feel lost - just small little bits to serve as a fun secret handshake. That being said, the mid-credits scene was pretty awesome and a nice moment for those “in the know.”

Like I said, that’s a small complaint - ultimately, I’m much happier that the film was so accessible and entertaining to non-comic fans. I saw the film with four other people - only one was a fellow comic reader - the other three were non-comic reading ladies and they loved it. That’s quite a trick if you ask me.

So to sum up: The Avengers was awesome. Go see it. If you’ve seen it, go see it again. I will.

My favorite Avengers comic

Fri, 04 May 2012 09:09:46 -0400

Later today Sara and some friends and I are going to go see a matinee of The Avengers. I almost never go see a movie on opening day, but I will make an exception for this. To say I’m excited is an understatement. It’s my day off, but I couldn’t sleep. Silly? Maybe, but who cares.

When I was very young, and just discovering comic books, Superman was my favorite. But as I got a little older, like around seven or eight, I really fell in love with the Avengers.

In those days, before the prominence of the direct market and it’s comic book specialty stores, you would usually get your comics one or two places - flea markets or grocery stores. Flea markets are where you found old stuff - other peoples collections, full of moldy smelling treasures. I bought The Avenges #159 at a flea market.

I no longer own it, but I can still picture various pages in my mind as clearly as if I was looking at them. Stuff like Iron Man, Thor, Vision, and Wonder Man catching an entire island that’s been compressed into a ball by the villain, Graviton. Or the Avengers’ butler Jarvis, toasting a bunch of tiny statues of the team because he thinks they’re dead. I loved that book and wish I still owned it.

Grocery stores were for new books. They’d always be at the bottom of the magazine rack. Because of that, I spent a lot of time squatting in grocery stores in my youth - I can still remember the feeling of being crouched down for so long, looking at books that my calves started burning. The first Avengers comic I bought at a grocery story was Avengers 211.

This one features the team in need of new members - and a bunch of unlikely candidates showing up to try and get on the team; there’s a lot more to the story than that, but I won’t get into it here. What I will say, though, is that this was the start of me going to the grocery store every month specifically to buy Avengers comics.

Neither of these books is my favorite Avengers comic, though. My favorite, of all time, is Avengers Annual 10.

Written by Chris Claremont of X-Men fame and drawn by the incredible Michael Golden, this book is the only issue in my entire collection that I keep in a mylar bag. Despite the bag, it is worn and dog eared - because it’s been read a million times (and continues to be read).

This particular issue has a lot going on in it. Ms. Marvel, a long time Avenger has her powers stolen by a villian/future X-man (Rogue, Anna Paquin in the movies, for you non-comic-readers). The teams three heavy hitters, Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor, are incapacitated so the second tier of team members have to stop a group of villainous mutants from escaping from prison. The X-Men show up (in bathing suits, Oh Claremont…). And finally, in a bit that was kind of lost on me as a kid, Ms. Marvel confronts the Avengers about the events of a past issue where she’s basically kidnapped and turned into a mind-controlled love slave with their blessing. Weird stuff.

What makes the book my favorite? A lot of stuff - Golden’s art for one. He was simply the best guy working in mainstream super hero comics at the time. Nobody could touch him:

Then there were just these little scenes that blew my mind - Mystique, a shape-shifting mutant, disguised as Nick Fury, blasting Iron Man with an M-16. The junior varsity Avengers flying out of a Quinjet shouting “Avengers Assemble.” The prominence of Wonder Man, my favorite Avenger as a kid. The X-Men in their bathing suits (I know, sorry Claremont). The list goes on.

I’m really looking forward to the movie - a ton of my non-comic reading friends apparently went to a midnight showing last night and are posting up a storm on Facebook about how great it was. Who knows, maybe it’ll inspire them to check out some Avengers comics (too bad they’re not as prominent in grocery stores as they used to be). For me, no matter how great the movie is, it’ll never replace the books - the books are just too hardwired into who I am. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Dan Harmon: Writer of Community, Friend of children

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 16:53:00 -0400

Dan Harmon: Writer of Community, Friend of children:

Okay, so I’ve spent most of the afternoon obsessing about Dan Harmon and his writing process. While reading the Wired article directly below this post, I saw Harmon mentioned as the writer of Monster House - which caused me to remember a blog post I had seen from Kelly Oxford some time ago. Apparently Monster House gave Oxford’s daughter nightmares so Harmon wrote her a letter to make her feel better.

The letter is on the other side of this link. Read it. It’s a neat story about being nice to a little girl and what makes a good story.

How Dan Harmon Drives Himself Crazy Making Community | Wired Magazine | Wired.com

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 16:26:00 -0400

How Dan Harmon Drives Himself Crazy Making Community | Wired Magazine | Wired.com:

Big thanks to Teamtired who pointed out this article on Dan Harmon’s creative process when writing Community. It actually addresses the circle on the dry erase board from this post.

I love this kind of thing.

Video

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 14:13:05 -0400

Megan Gantz, one of the writers of Community, posted this...

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 13:57:07 -0400

Megan Gantz, one of the writers of Community, posted this picture on Twitter and I’m obsessed with it. It’s a dry erase board and notecards used to chart out the story for last week’s episode of Community. I want to learn from this.

Sunday Valley is dead, long live Sunday Valley

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:29:00 -0400

In 2003, shortly after my first wife decided she’d rather live in California than Kentucky, my buddy Leo decided I needed to get out of the house and stop feeling sorry for myself. We went to dinner, went to a hockey game, and then ran by a little bar named High On Rose to see his friend’s band, Sunday Valley. I had no idea, that night, I would be seeing one of my favorite bands ever for the first time.

Sunday Valley, at the time, was four guys - Stu, Gerald, Eddie, and Billy. They wore overalls, cowboys hats, and played this strange form of rock/country/punk music that I didn’t have words for. For a while, in those early days, whenever someone would write about the band, they would always throw out these high concept descriptions of the music. Eventually it felt like everybody quit trying to pin it down and just enjoyed it for what it was - really great music.

Soon after that first show, I went on a mission to introduce everybody I knew to this band. I can’t remember ever taking anybody to one of their shows that didn’t immediately become a fan. I don’t know how many times Sunday Valley played The Dame before it was torn down - but I feel like I have a million distinct memories of seeing them there, with my best friends around me, singing, dancing, and laughing. Some of my favorite adult memories happened at their concerts.

I also don’t know how many times over their career the band actually broke up. In my foggy, highly unreliable memory, it seems like it was more than once. How ever many times it happened, I always took it hard. And I was always excited every time they got back together or put on a reunion show. In the lean times, between shows, I survived on every recording I could get my hands on - be it their early studio recording, their Red Barn Radio show, or some sketchy bootleg my buddy Paul got a hold of.

A little while ago Sara arranged for the band to do a private birthday show for my friend Erin and me. It was an incredible night. For the first time I got to interact with the band on a personal level - and get to know them as a group of genuinely nice guys.

The last couple of years have been full of a lot of big moments for Sunday Valley - a tour, a new album, a move to Nashville, old members leaving, new member joining. I’ve watched the whole thing from a distance and wished nothing but good things for the guys.

So, of course I was really sad this morning to see the following announcement posted on the band’s official Facebook page:

Welp kids,…Lord knows it’s been a long road with a great many tears of joy and sadness and some very hard lessons learned but I know I speak for all four original members of Sunday Valley when I say we gave it everything we had and then some. Out of respect and honor for Billy, Gerald, & Eddie and the sacrifices we all have made for this thing over the years, I could never under any circumstances feel good about continuing my musical journey under the Sunday Valley name. There are no words I can think of that would possibly express our love and appreciation for you all and your support over the last 8 years…it means more than you could ever know. New band, new sound, new album coming very soon…as they say, the next chapter is always better, that’s why we turn the page.
“To the wind and on to heaven…”

For me, this really is the end of an era. That’s not to say I’m not excited to see what comes next for each of the guys. They’re all talented musicians and have an automatic fan in me - but Sunday Valley was big for me. They are inextricably tied to the year I really crawled out from under a broken heart. They were the first band to help me see there was more to country music than the crap you hear on the radio. They were a connection to the music I grew up around. They made me proud of this city and it’s music scene.

So, pull your hat down over your eyes to hide the tears, and raise your glass in the air. Thank God for great local music and thank God for Sunday Valley. Let’s see what’s next.

"For me, Superman has the same problems we do, but on a Paul Bunyan scale. If Superman walks the dog,..."

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:30:17 -0400

“For me, Superman has the same problems we do, but on a Paul Bunyan scale. If Superman walks the dog, he walks it around the asteroid belt because it can fly in space. When Superman’s relatives visit, they come from the 31st century and bring some hellish monster conqueror from the future. But it’s still a story about your relatives visiting.”

- Grant Morrison

Wink (Taken with instagram)

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:14:26 -0400

Wink (Taken with instagram)

“And this thing you once did might have dazzled the kids,...

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:00:30 -0400

“And this thing you once did might have dazzled the kids,
but the kids once grown up are gonna walk away.”

Local: Lexington

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:45:45 -0400

I was looking at this picture hanging in my office today and realized, I’d never really posted anything about it, other than an Instagram picture or something a couple years ago.

Let me tell you about it.

Local was a comic book mini-series written by Brian Wood and drawn by Ryan Kelly. Each issue was a stand alone story about a girl named Megan, set in a different city. Wood and Kelly would set the stories around real landmarks and neighborhoods - sometimes they were personally familiar with the towns and sometimes friends and readers would provide photos and information to help them flesh out the setting.

It was a great series. I read it in single issues and purchased the really nice hardcover collection.

A couple years ago, Ryan Kelly announced on Twitter that he would be doing a small number of Local themed commission, first come, first serve. Send him a picture of a landmark in your town, or just a spot that meant something to you personally, and he would work it and Megan into a drawing.

I apparently got my request in early enough.

I sent Ryan a picture of The Dame.

The Dame was a music venue here in Lexington, Kentucky. It, and the historic building that housed it, were demolished a few years ago to make way for a still unseen super-mega-awesome-high-rise-hotel-courtesy-of-the-Webb-Brothers. I thought it was a shame then and I think it’s a shame now.

The Dame was a great old place. It was a dive. I saw a lot of great bands there. Chris Whitley, Frank Black, The Avett Brothers. Old Crow Medicine Show, Over the Rhine, The Begonias, and Sunday Valley (about a thousand times).

Sara and I sat in the Dame one night and confessed to each other that we secretly really liked each other more than we had been pretending to.

So, yeah, it was a great place. And it’s gone. But it lives on, for now at least, in this picture from a great artist, along with a character from some great stories.

I’ll take it.