This week's comic reviewWith six issues posted it's time to recommend this "book form" comic; I've been following it since its early days. It's a cute "anime style" by a talented high-school (now college) artist who loves to render herself and her friends, and write a melodramatic fantasy universe to put them in. One of the most exciting things about the comic is being able to learn a little bit about the author. She's got so much self confidence that it's really inspiring ("Multiracial, baby! Yeah!"), and it's impossible not to love such a bold expression. The art just keeps getting better and better, and has a good mastery of manga principles of both form and content, so I hope this comic doesn't quit soon. How to Listen to WRNRQuickly. For those of you who missed it, WRNR is at 103.1 FM in the Annapolis/Baltimore/Washington area, although it's signal only covers the eastern side of the D.C. Beltway thanks to interference from some station up in Fredrick. For the past couple of years, it's been beaming out the coolest signal on the air, but thanks to the irresistable power of money there may not be long before it sells out, so try to catch it while you can. Started by Jake Einstein as a new "HFS", it's format has been generally "free form", which is great since it means you'll hear music you wouldn't believe you can get on the radio anymore. As my previous rant on WMUC indicated, the reason I listen to the radio is to get the opposite of the "tape" experience. I want to hear music I haven't heard a lot, which is what makes repitition powerhouses like HFS so unbearable. But until recently, you could be assured that if you heard a song on WRNR, chances are *you would never hear it again*. Rather than play the "hit" off an album, they'd play the obscure track. The variety was (and still is) miraculous. It's the nearly extinct concept of radio for the purposes of entertainment rather than promotion. RNR has been getting a playlist more and more as time goes by (it saves stations money), and there are about five songs that if I could go to their studio and destroy I'd do it, but it's still only about 25% of their programming. Damien (the station manager, the Washington area's local hero from the "old" HFS) is working on trying to find a concept for the station, but fortunately it's still such a DJ and audience driven mish-mash of what "Rock N Roll" means that it may resist labelling and marketing for a couple more years. Thanks to the abovementioned station manager, they play a lot of "Blues" in various flavors (including delta, techno, old and new jazz, and old and new swing), there's a lot of local music, the best of today's quixotic folk, the widest damn spectrum of rock thanks to the free hand of their master DJ's, and they're even getting into some of that WMUC cool lounge and techno sound. They're losing points recently for sliding into "classic rock" territory (or maybe "classic modern rock"), but I've found that a lot of this is coming from certain DJ's. Since their signal is so hard to get around here outside of your car, it was great that they were one of the first stations to webcast 7/24. Sadly, they've been forced off the web by the latest legal hassle over broadcasting advertising (Hel-lo? Your advertisements are getting free web time? What's the problem?). Hopefully the industry will figure this out before the DT's kill off the audience, and my inclusion of the station in my menu bar as a "web radio" station will make a little more sense! Those of you in this area, tune your car radios to WRNR and you won't regret it. About my pagesMy goal in adding this page to the WTS is to entertain my fellow toasters, and maybe even a small segment of the rest of the Web. I'll endeavor to add something new every week, so keep checking in, or look for any announcements about my pages in The Wunderland Weekly News. My offerings fall into two categories: First, original works; artwork, music, photos, or writing that I'm collecting here for self-publication on a scale unimaginable a few years ago. Hopefully, the world's collective yawn won't totally blow me over, but I think you'll enjoy it if you've gotten this far. Second, Stuff I Found On The Web, brought back and held up to the light for your enjoyment. There's a whole underground world of music publication on the Web through "MIDI", and I'm also wild about Webcomics. Go directly to the corners of my electronic world by using the navigation bar appearing at the top of this page, or jump down below that to find out what I've added this week. I'll also someday be experimenting with time, allowing you to scroll through previous weeks' versions of my pages where appropriate. Future Links:
The Lisa Joy Adulation Page
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