{"id":1597,"date":"2009-09-03T21:58:12","date_gmt":"2009-09-04T05:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/?p=1597"},"modified":"2009-09-03T21:59:46","modified_gmt":"2009-09-04T05:59:46","slug":"cigars_by_the_pier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/archives\/2009\/09\/03\/cigars_by_the_pier.html","title":{"rendered":"Cigars by the pier"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Day<\/a>

In my quest to find a different place to eat lunch each day that meets my requirements of shade and breeze, I headed to the spot where the pier begins, amidst the crush of equal parts tourist and homeless folks out on a slightly muggy day.<\/p>\n

Cigars of the Pharaoh<\/I>, which includes Tintin’s first brush with nemeses Rastapopoulos and Allan, as well as friends Thomson and Thompson, was next up on the list. <\/p>\n

One of the most memorable bits of the book is the vivid, hallucinogenic nightmare Tintin has when he’s drugged in the tomb, seeing giant Egyptian tomb drawings come to life, one with Snowy’s head, carrying Tintin as a baby in a crib.<\/p>\n

The book has a great sense of scale, zooming out for wider and wider shots in successive frames, as well as a nice feeling of cinematic cross-cutting and even a flashback, keeping the tension high. The book features frames of different sizes on the same page, which makes for a visually interesting experience. When Tintin is brought into the sheik’s cave as a prisoner, but then is recognized when he announces his name, it never made sense to have them pull out a copy of Destination Moon<\/I> (added in a later edit) to show that they’d read his adventures; besides the fact that it’s a weird bit of reality-twisting, why choose an adventure that hadn’t happened yet?<\/p>\n

The storyline has a lot of subtlety, with single frames, clues, and little phrases that have meaning, but that I likely passed over when I used to read it as a kid.<\/p>\n

And though I forgot my copy of Infinite Jest<\/I>, the day wasn’t a loss, as we got out early and I was able to pop into work to check on things before Labor Day weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my quest to find a different place to eat lunch each day that meets my requirements of shade and breeze, I headed to the spot where the pier begins, amidst the crush of equal parts tourist and homeless folks out on a slightly muggy day. Cigars of the Pharaoh, which includes Tintin’s first brush […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-los_angeles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1597"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1599,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597\/revisions\/1599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}