Daily Miltonian

Not yet, but very soon. The new FSD NW Offices open up next week, and from there the ball starts rolling. Look for a return from some old favorites and get ready to meet some new ones. Send us your rocketship drawings, we could always use more.

For now: you could always take the Superhero Quiz. Let us know which superhero you turn out to be.

MAN MAN are playing tonight, at Berbati’s Pan, with Yacht. That’s at 231 SW Ankeny Street. If you’re in Portland, that’s where the new FSD Team will be. If you’re in Philly, you gotta admit that’s weird. But that’s what’s cool about bands. They tour. It’s like they get paid to visit you. Neat, right? Lucky for those of us going: it’s right next door to Voodoo Doughnuts.



Oh Lucy, Godddddddbless!

All for today, gang. Everyone stay good, stay beautiful, and stay tuned to the Daily Miltonian. Wild and woolly content to come!

We totally thought this was schizophrenic outsider art until we learned that it is just one of the many brainchildren of Halifaxian artist/designer Ray Fenwick. His voice in the “Hall of Best Knowledge” is that of an approximately 10-year-old kid growing up entirely shuttered away in some kind of aristocratic community and reads too much. As such, it’s pretty funny. Read on, if you can make out the fine type. If not, you should’ve eaten more carrots as a kid, blindy.

And last but not least is my favorite one: “Topic Name Withheld.” Perhaps unknowingly, this is the single best internet/message board/blog comeback ever scripted. I can’t find a jpeg and I don’t feel like stealing Mr. Fenwick’s art and hosting it myself on my own website, so I will transcribe it. This will be used heavily, by me, in part or in full, frequently, sometimes even in this magazine.

“TOPIC NAME WITHHELD”

IT IS NOT my aim to embarrass you in this public forum, but what I say may wound your pride regardless. The topic I had planned to discuss - a carnival of ideas, to be sure - required a wealth of prerequisite knowledge that you simply do not possess. The references I was to make, representing many great minds throughout history, would have been both confounding and depressing, so I have spared you the pain.”

Topic Name Withheld

Ray Fenwick’s Website

Click here for the link. Just a bunch of weapons and equipment in a desert, some labeled with the dead giveaway: Stark Industries.

It was Art Andrews who tipped me off to the Englehart/Rogers Detective Comics run from the 70’s.  In many ways, Rogers has always been the DC artist of the 70’s in my mind: clean, thick lines and perfect storytelling.  His contribution to the history of Sequential Art is indisputable, and he will most certainly be missed.  Sail on, Rogers, and say hello to Kirby for me, somewhere out there in the Great Big Elsewhere.  Excelsior.

Rorschach.  Awesome.

Hello there readers, this is the Daily Miltonian. Normally you don’t hear from me. Normally it’s Erik, or Alex, or Fort Saint Davids, or Brady, or FSD, or Renee the Secretary, or Brady Dale, or Loren Hunt, or Sam Schwartz, or Father Gibbs, or the LEGEND OF STREET DOG, or even Julian’s Dad. But I think it’s high time I spoke up. About what? About what I am.

The only way to do that is to go Total Meta. So I’ve got with me Erik Bader, the guy who started this whole thing. Erik, you there?

ERIK BADER: I’m here.

DAILY MILTONIAN: So let’s take it from the top. What is this? This site? What am I? What are we doing here? Is this your personal blog? Because that’s what some people think it is, your personal, I mean Personal, Blog.

EB: It wasn’t intended to be that, no. Back in September when –

DM: Your girlfriend dumped you…

EB: Easy, man. Play nice. Back in September I was trying to do, uh, trying to make a zine with Alex. The zine predated the breakup, to tell the truth. Anyhow Alex and I were working on a little thing called the Fort Saint Davids Reader. Alex had some weird science stuff he had written, and I wrote two fake interviews: one with myself and one with a band called Big Dead Voodoo Raccoon, both of which wound up on this site within its first few weeks of inception. There were other things: the Your Favorite Philadelphia Street Corner section, the Your Favorite Drawing of a Rocket Ship section, and ads where you could actually buy old music I had recorded way back when. All this was going to be in the zine. The Daily Miltonian, that is, you, went up as a place where I could make frequent updates to the Truejersey.com site….a site that is down right now for a few reasons but will return soon, I hope.

DM: You hope.

EB: I hope. Well, we wanted a kind of stopgap for Truejersey.com, a place where we could make frequent updates to keep our readers occupied while we worked on the much more involved updates to said site, so we invented you. And then we just dumped the content of the first issue of the zine into you. And then, well, you became you.

DM: I became your personal blog where you posted pictures of what you were up to with captions.

EB: Not at first! In the beginning it was much different. I had created the persona of Fort Saint Davids — FSD — to be a kind of More Cheerful, More Positive alter ego in which I could find ways to avoid the Actual, Very Awful circumstances that my life had found itself in — heartbroken, dealing with the shitty Philadelphia singles scene again, trying to meet new friends, dating girls I didn’t like, dealing with the fact that the ex found a new boyfriend just a few weeks after we broke up, dealing with a car accident, dealing with hand surgery, dealing with only having one working hand (I typed all those posts with just one hand, you know), dealing with the fact that the ex and said new boyfriend were moving into an apartment in my friends building just a few blocks from where I lived.

DM: Dealing with some Really Heavy Shit.

EB: Exactly. That’s what FSD was for — a more lighthearted version of myself who would never–

DM: Except Alex is FSD as well.

EB: We both were. Anyone who wrote for the site — note how I really try not to say blog — was FSD. And still is. Even you.

DM: I’m the Daily Miltonian.

EB: Yeah but I write it, so you’ll say what I want you to say.

DM: I’m FSD.

EB: See?

DM: Woah, that was weird.

EB: Don’t I know it. Anyhow, the site eventually evolved into something that I really liked, something closer to the zine model. It became something more like a magazine. I had contributers. Gibbs did the Wharf Watch. Martha serialized a short story. Loren did the horoscopes. Sam Schwartz gave really complicated advice. Brady wrote about comics. Crooks gave negative-romantic advice. Mixtape Memories. Your Date on the Cheap. Song of the Day. And Alex did the science and technology stuff.

DM: And you wrote about TV and World of Warcraft.

EB: And bowling and Fran’s Deli and arcade games and my neighbors.

DM: The Gaul-Stars.

EB: Man, do I miss the Gaul-Stars. Hey Ben! Hey Sarah!

DM: Check the comments below this to read Sarah’s inevitable response.

EB: And that’s how it went, for a few months. I liked it that way. We even took over Philebrity for a few days! Man, that was fun.

DM: Everyone loved it. You would go out on the town and people you didn’t know would come up to you and tell you how much they liked what you were doing there.

EB: How did you know that?

DM: Because you told me.

EB: Oh right. Well then I decided to move and that’s when I started with the old pictures.

DM: Your history, in Philadelphia, as told in pictures and captions.

EB: Right. We scanned piles of them, me and Alex. And people loved it. I never even finished putting them all up, because I moved to Portland and…

DM: Let’s see some of the extras!

EB: Okay.

DM: That’s Joe Vee! Where are you guys?

EB: I wanna say Medport Diner, ‘98 or ‘99. With Joe Terry, who was still living in New Jersey at the time. Not sure what we were doing out there. Just getting out of the city for an evening, I guess. Mixing it up.

DM: Is that the Wall?

EB: That’s the Wall.

DM: ‘Nuff said.

EB: Indeed. So yeah, I started doing this history in photos thing and then once I headed out on the road I just started posting photos of the actual trip with captions. And now that I’m here in Portland people just want more! more! more!

DM: So what’s up? Aren’t you going to do it?

EB: Well for one the camera I have is fucked up and I hate taking pix with it. And for two: I NEVER WANTED THIS TO BE A PERSONAL, i.e. THE ERIK BADER BLOG.

DM: You didn’t?

EB: Not really. I wanted it to be a fun place with lots of contributers and varied content and…and…

DM: And you’re afraid that the sad fact is your daily life is just not interesting enough to document on a daily basis.

EB: I mean it is and it isn’t. It most definitely is to all of our readers back East. After all, I now live in a place that they don’t. But I have Portland readers now — not many, yet, but hopefully more soon. And do they want to see pictures of the stuff they see every day? Like this image:

DM: That’s from the Burnside Bridge. And it’s a terrible photo.

EB: I know, right? I told you the camera is busted, I can’t even see what I’m taking. If anyone wants better pictures on me, they should just send me cash for a new camera.

DM: Maybe they will. What else you got?

EB: Here’s a few. They’re OK but I’m not crazy about them.

DM: Well they look Strange and Different to the folks back home, at least. I mean what the hell kind of trees are those? Never seen trees like that in my whole life.
EB: Yeah, I guess so. But again, it’s not what I want this site to be. It’s not what I want you to be.

DM: You prefer me without any format or ego.

EB: Exactly. So that’s why we’ve got some good stuff lined up for you, the readers.

DM: I’m not the readers, I’m–

EB: Well for the readers, who are reading this right now.

DM: Let’s hear it.

EB: Brady and I will be covering — together — the Big Two’s two big summer events: Marvel’s World War Hulk and DC’s Countdown. I’m going to try go for a more listings style thing, for Portland events — there really isn’t a Philebrity-type blog here. I’m going to get Ben (of Gaul-Star fame) to finally send me those little pieces on stuff like Dungeon Majesty and the like that he always promised he’d send. I’m going to get Ask Crooks back as a semi-regular feature. More horoscopes from Loren. A piece about the Urban Growth Boundary by Gibbs. Maybe more Wowl photos from Gibbs as well.

DM: You should get reports from Atlantic City from Sam Schwartz. From what I understand he’s like living there right now or something.

EB: Dude that would be amazing. So yeah, that kind of stuff. Varied content. Plus the usual design/science/pop/tech stuff that Alex always delivers in spades.

DM: Sounds like you’ve got quite an agenda now.

EB: I always did. Like I’ve said, it’s just difficult because I’m not settled in yet, here in PDX. I still don’t know if I’m getting that apartment or not. My credit isn’t the greatest.

DM: Your what?

EB: Exactly.

DM: Well, Erik, that’s all the time I’ve got for today. It’s been cool talking to you. I’m glad we cleared some stuff up.

EB: Me too, Miltonian.

DM: You know where to find me.

EB: Right here! At www.dailymiltonian.wordpress.com!

[Update, 3-24-07. The story so far: your humble narrator is still spending his evenings sleeping on a floor and his days hustling to score full-time employment and an apartment of his own -- so far he's got a part-time gig and an apartment pending...not too shabby for having just moved a week and a half ago to a town with a 20% unemployment rate and a housing crisis. Meanwhile Julian is trying his best to get beyond fifteen hours of sleep a night (and day) and living exclusively -- by choice -- off of pizza. A few days ago, Alexander -- the East Coast half of Fort Saint Davids -- wrote the below post, about a font that he is working on. Interesting comments follow. Go check them out, right below the post. Make your own comments too. After all, this blog is all of ours to share, right? Right. As for lack of photos, two reasons: one, back in Iowa City someone busted the screen to the camera. So you can take photos but it's all guesswork, and there's no viewfinder. It's possible, just not fun. Also the fact is I'm usually out on my bike, and it rains a lot here. No bag for the camera, yet. Is that a good enough excuse? It might be.

There's a lot to be said about this city. It's a knockout. There really isn't anything else like it in America. You ride your bike over one of the bridges -- and their are many -- and you look all around you at hills and trees and buildings and boats and a river and a mountain and you say to yourself: I have no words for this. There's cherry-blossoms exploding all along the glowing green of the Esplanade like tufts of cotton candy and you just don't know what to do with it all, with all of this beauty. You pedal faster and hope your heart doesn't explode from happiness.

Anyway, in case you missed it, here's Alex's posts. For now, we'll see you in the Comments section.]

Hi,

Earlier tonight, around 9, we started working on this new typeface.

We have a few things in mind for practical uses, but before we proceed with upper cases and numerals, we’d like some feedback on the initial sketches. So…what do you think? Is that “s” ok or is it wonky? Is that “a” cute enough? Do the “y” and “r” read well?

(Digression: “Mind your p’s and q’s” is a saying that comes from early typesetting days back when we worked strictly with metal type. Letters were set upside-down and even seasoned printers got confused sometimes. We thought of that earlier when we made the decision to not have the “p” and “q” simply mirror each other as they do in most sans serifs)

We’ll keep you posted on the final product. Stay tuned.

Sorry for the lack of content lately. Still in the very slow process of setting up the Fort Saint Davids Northwestern Division Office Branch, and yeah, it’s a little hectic.

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1970 pysch-filmic masterpiece El Topo is still playing at the unbelievably beautiful Clinton St. Theater, 2522 SE Clinton St., here in Portland. Highest recommendation.