Indie Squid Kid

Sorry for the slap-dash nature of this post. I’ll fix up the formatting and add more description to each book when I have a little more time.

Anyway, because Wednesday is normally devoted to comics, let’s start our book list with a few graphic novels.

Comics/Graphic Novels

Jules Verne’s Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (2008, Flesk Publications)

adapted and Illustrated by Gary Gianni

In addition to the fully illustrated adaptation of Verne’s sci-fi classic, this beautiful folio-sized hardcover includes H.G. Wells’ short story “The Sea Raiders” (which features an encounter with a Giant Squid) and an introduction by Ray Bradbury.

List Price: $24.95 — Buy on Amazon.com

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Cthulhu Tales (2008-2009, BOOM! Studios)

written and illustrated by various authors/artists

List Price: $15.99 per volume

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

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Fiction

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (2009, Quirk Books)

by Jane Austin and Ben H. Winters

List Price: $12.99 — Buy on Amazon.com

(Covered previously on ISK)

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Mall of Cthulhu (2009, Night Shade Books)

by Seamus Cooper

List Price: $13.95 — Buy on Amazon.com

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Non-Fiction

Cephalopods: A World Guide (2000, Conch Books)

by Mark Norman

This is the oldest book in this list, and the only one that doesn’t appear to be currently in print. However, this is pretty much the definitive source book for cephalopod identification, and a must have for any serious cephalopod enthusiast.

List Price: $69.95 — Buy on DiveSeekers.com

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The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss (2007, University of Chicago Press)

by Claire Nouvian

List Price $60.00 — Buy on Amazon.com

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For Kids

The Octonauts & The Only Lonely Monster (2006, Immedium)

by Meomi

List Price: $15.95 — Buy on Amazon.com

Other titles in the series:

The Octonauts & The Sea of Shade

The Octonauts & The Frown Fish

The Octonauts & The Great Ghost Reef

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20,000Leagues Under the Sea: A Pop-Up Book (2008, Sterling)

by Sam Ita

List Price: $26.95 — Buy on Amazon.com

All month long Ape Lad (aka Adam Koford) has been remixing Twitter’s new default avatar, and today he has transformed the cute little birdie silhouette into R’yleh’s most famous resident.

See his Flickr set for more twisted Twitter avatars. You should also check out his ongoing webcomic The Laugh-Out-Loud Cats.

I’m still in an eldritch sort of mood after yesterday’s post about Lil’ Cthulhu, so for today’s T-shirt Tuesday here is another cuddly take on the sleepiest Elder God.

Teach The Controversy is a division of Amorphia Apparel (just like the previously featured Sir Critter). Riffing off of the Discovery Institute’s campaign to promote Intelligent Design, Teach The Controversy has a T-shirt for just about any crackpot theory you can think of—Atlantis, Reptoids, Time Cube, Young Earth, 2012, and much more!

Like all Amorphia shirts, “Cthulhu” is available in a variety of styles and color combinations. The basic tee is $15.99, and for a little bit more you can get it as an American Apparel shirt, as well as a hoodie or a messenger bag.

Buy it from Teach The Controversy

I’m all tuckered out from Action Figure Week (not unlike Lil’ Chtulhu after his big day!), so I’m jumping on this adorable Lovecraftian bandwagon.

(Via io9,  BoingBoing, and pretty much everywhere else on the Internet at this point.)

P.S. “The Crawling Chaos” is totally going to be Kid Indie Squid Kid’s new nickname! (Once he finally learns to crawl…which should be any day now…)

Halloween is nearly over, but I think I have time to squeeze in one last post. In case you haven’t noticed, I really like Halloween, and one of my favorite things about the holiday is that it gives me an excuse to make compilations of music about Halloween-themed topics such as horror, death, blood, black magic, and monsters. I try to make at least one a year, and there are eight of them so far. I’m constantly on the look out for new songs, and fortunately I see no signs that I will run out of material for new compilations any time soon! In this year’s mix I was pleased to include a small aquatic-themed section:

• Into the Water by Dethklok
• She-Devils of the Deep by Future Bible Heroes
• The Octopus Is Gonna Get You…Dad by Boss The Big Bit
• Creature From The Black Lagoon by The Happy, Happy Jihads

I also do a Halloween music show every year on my podcast. Today’s Halloween show is the fist episode of Random Signal I’ve recorded since June. I tell myself that this temporary hiatus is because of Kid Indie Kid Squid, but the fact that I started doing daily posts on this blog might also have something to do with it…

In theory, Random Signal is produced bi-monthly (on average) and I either host the show solo or with my wife Ryn Nasser. I usually describe the podcast as equal parts geek talk and indie rock—we talk about comics, movies, TV, books, cephalopods, etc., and each show usually features 3-5 songs by independent musicians. I actually do two Halloween-themed shows every year. One on Halloween proper, and one in April on tax day, which I have declared to be the holiday of Aprilween.

I now want to switch gears entirely and talk about cephalopod-themed jack-o-lanterns. I don’t know exactly why, but there seems to be a strong correlation between cephalopod appreciation and artistic talent (although I seem to buck that particular trend). Case-in-point, the following awesome jack-o-lanterns:

And in case you were wondering, our jack-o-lantern this year was sort of a goblin-bat kind of thing…not a cephalopod at all. I’m not completely single-minded!

As promised, here is a photo of this year’s Halloween costume!

I realize this might require a little bit of an explanation, particularly if you are not familiar with works of John Hodgman. A modern classic, The Areas of My Expertise is a tome of fake trivia and made-up facts, and one of the many topics covered is that of hoboes—namely their near rise to power, and eventual planetary exodus, during the early decades of the 20th century. Included therein is the list of 700 hobo names, and name #108 on that list is “Cthulhu Carl.” Over the years, artistic interpretations of all 800 of the 700 hobo names (the paperback edition comes with an additional 100 hobo names, you see) have been produced, and you can see them all at E-hobo.com.

Incidentally, this is not my first Hodgman-inspired hobo costume. In the past I have also been Hobo Zero (#13), Fabulon Darkness (#275), and Doc Aquatic (#118).

So, about the costume…

I started at the “hobo baseline”—beard, knit-cap, plaid shirt, and old corduroy pants. (I would have also gone with fingerless gloves, but they were unnecessary for obvious reasons.) Next, I cut a head hole in some decorative netting and wore it like a sarape. Entangled within the net are an octopus, a squid, a crab, and a puffer fish. Funny story: the net came packaged with a real sea star, and as a result it had a strange odor…not quite “fishy,” but maybe “echinodermy??” It added an unexpected layer of olfactory authenticity!

Under my hat, I inserted three fronds from a plastic aquarium plant (the one that seemed to most resemble seaweed) to which I had hot-glued a plastic sea star and squid (you can’t really make them out in this photo, which is too bad). This had an added effect of making it look like I had really nasty dreadlocks.

And finally, the best part, the tentacle arm…

I made it out of one half of a pair of girl’s tights (I was hoping for green, but purple was an acceptable alternative), and a strip of suction cups cut from a bathtub mat. I simply cut a little hole for each suction cup and pulled it through. I’m actually kind of shocked that it worked as well as it did! And it was functional! See how the suction cups firmly grip my pint glass!

Happy Halloween!!!

In contrast to last night’s post about store-bought costumes (which were, admittedly, a little disappointing), here is an assortment of hand-crafted cephalopod costumes from the Flickr community.

Photo by atomicglassworks

Photo by stacy d

Photo by kiethbcg

Photo by baking with medusa

Photo by timsueocs

Photo by Jessemy

Photo by luminea

I’ve been working on my costume for our office Halloween party tomorrow, and, surprisingly, it came together fairly quickly. I’m keeping it a secret for now, but all we be revealed on Saturday!

In the meantime, here is a selection of store-bought cephalopod Halloween costumes:

Pirates of the Caribbean Davy Jones latex mask (by Party America, I think) from my local Halloween Express. The price tag is about $60, but you can get it for about half that on Amazon.

From the same Halloween Express, the full Davy Jones costume (this time by Disguise). In the store, it costs $99.99, but you can get it for $70 at BuyCostumes.com.

Cthulhu mask from Halloween-Mask.com. Currently out of stock.

This awesome tentacle arm was made by The Gaiastore, but tragically it no longer seems to be available. It retailed for a mere $15, so I’m not surprised it sold out!

Child’s octopus costume from Pottery Barn Kids. Retails for $59, but the current online price is $34.99.

Infant costume from CostumeExpress.com. Currently out of stock.

Discontinued “Stuck On You” octopus costume from BabyStyle.com.

Lastly we have “Lil’ Squirt,” which was made for Target by the Charles S. Anderson Design Co. Of all the children’s octopus costumes I’ve seen, this is the one I’d most like to get for Kid Indie Squid Kid. Unfortunately, it was only available for one season several years ago.

The H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival promotes the works of H.P. Lovecraft, literary horror, and weird tales through the cinematic adaptations by professional and amateur filmmakers. The festival was founded in 1995 by Andrew Migliore in the hope that H.P. Lovecraft would be rightly recognized as a master of gothic horror and his work more faithfully adapted to film and television.

If you live anywhere near Portland, OR (Natalie, I’m looking in your direction) and are a fan of things that go Bloop in the night, this is the event for you!

www.HPLFilmFestival.com

Cthulhu action figure by SOTA Toys.

Carcassonne board game by Rio Grande Games.