Sunday, November 25, 2007

It's nighttime in the big city; Bob and Jaime get together.

One of my favorite things about XM Radio is Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio, wherein Mr. Dylan picks a theme and plays a variety of songs -- often obscure but always entertaining -- relevant to that theme. He is also hands-down my favorite disc jockey. Until you've heard Bob do his version of snappy patter you have not realized radio's full potential as an artistic medium. I also like the intros, done by a throaty voiced woman, who always starts off "It's nighttime in the big city" and then proceeds to give us a couple of snapshots from that urban nightscape -- "A cat knocks over a lamp" "A woman walks barefoot, her high heels in her handbag" "A drunken security guard drops his flashlight" et cetera.

One of my favorite comic book artists is Jaime Hernandez, he of the brilliant "Love and Rockets" All I can tell you about the genius of Jaime is that every time I go to meet a creator or get an autograph at a comic book convention, I inevitably end up behind some dork who's prattling on and on about how much he loves the artist's work and is getting a stack of comics a yard or two high signed. I hate this guy, but when I met Jaime at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland I turned into that guy for the first and only time -- gushing on and on about the brilliance of Love and Rockets and forcing Jaime to sign everything he'd ever doodled and pissing off the people in line behind me.

So you know I love this: Jaime Hernandez has done a poster for Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour and it is a thing of beauty. He's even incorporated all of the opening "It's nighttime in the big city" bits. Check it out here.

And if you like that, you should definitely check out this -- somebody turned that poster into a movie.

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