やった! (yatta!)

A few weeks ago I posted a link to an article about the Animal Legal Defense Fund's lawsuit to free Tony the Tiger, a Siberian-Bengal tiger, being held in a cage at a Louisiana truck stop. Today, victory for Tony was announced when a East Baton Rouge District Court judge granted ALDF's request for a permanent injunction against the Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries. The Department is enjoined from renewing the annual permit required to allow Grosse Tete Tiger Truck Stop to exhibit the big cat under Louisiana law.

True Blood's Kristin Bauer recorded a video urging support for ALDF's campaign to free Tony. The star power behind the campaign went supernova when Leonardo DiCaprio encouraged his facebook and twitter followers to help end the inhumane conditions of Tony's captivity. Thanks to these celebrities and others (hopefully a few of this blog's readers), ALDF went into court with 31,000 signatures petitioning the state of Louisiana to deny the permit to Michael Sandlin, owner of the truck stop.

I have a personal connection to this story through one of my closest friends, Matthew Liebman, who is a staff attorney for ALDF and was in court today in Louisiana advocating on behalf of the law (former Louisiana Representative Warren Triche, a co-plaintiff in the case, had authored the bill banning the private ownership if big cats), animal welfare, and general decency. Every time I doubt my reasons for going to law school, Matt always pulls off something amazing like this to remind me that lawyers can make a difference. Thank you Matt, the ALDF, Warren Triche, and the law offices of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell, & Berkowitz, P.C., who provided pro bono assistance on this case.

The ruling only enjoins the Department from renewing the permit which means that Tony will remain on exhibit at the truck stop until the current permit expires in December of this year (2011). ALDF is working with the Department to help find Tony an appropriate sanctuary. Stephen Wells, Executive Director of ALDF, had this to say.

Today, the law was upheld in the state of Louisiana, which has explicit regulations designed to protect tigers like Tony... It is an incredible victory for ALDF, the tens of thousands around the world who have supported this campaign, and most of all, for Tony. We eagerly look forward to the day that he leaves behind the noise and fumes of the Tiger Truck Stop for a new life of freedom that he has never known.

You can read the press release or find out about other campaigns and ways to get involved with animal welfare at the www.aldf.org.

UPDATE: Yay! Matthew's in the New York Times.

some mixed media to mediate your monday melancholy

Frank Ocean, the lead singer of L.A. based R&B group Odd Future has just put out a new mixtape called "Nostalgia, Ultra" for your digital consumption. It's available HERE.

And here's a video that True Blood's Kristin Bauer recorded for the Animal Legal Defense Fund to help free Tony the tiger. Keep your Frosted Flakes in the bowl. Tony is a Siberian-Bengal tiger who has been kept in a cage at a truck stop in Gross Tete, Louisiana for the past decade as a "tourist attraction."



The ALDF is currently litigating in the state to set Tony free. For more information and to sign a petition letting Louisiana know you think it's wrong to keep Tony locked up at a gas station, please visit www.aldf.org/tony.

And finally, to leave you on an up beat, here's some comments Orson Scott Card recently made in praise of Cowboy Bebop and Firely, two of my favorite cowboys in space sci-fi properties and tv series in general. He was writing in the 6 April 2011 issue of the Greensboro Rhino Times.

What can I say, except that to my vast surprise, I found this series brilliant. It's often funny, sexy in a mostly chaste kind of way – these are drawings, after all – and the action is gripping.

But what held me was a combination of strong relationship-based storytelling, a moody visual style that never got old and really smart dialogue.

I'd compare this to the great TV series Firefly, except that since Firefly came out in 2002, and resembles Cowboy Bebop in many ways (including quality), I can't guess whether Firefly creator Joss Whedon was influenced by Cowboy Bebop, was deliberately doing an hommage, or created such a similar series by sheer coincidence.

You can read the full text here.

Hmmmm... maybe I should do a review of Cowboy Bebop one day. It would be an excuse to watch the series all the way through. Again. I've literally seen it through at least a dozen times and the first 5 episodes probably 30 or 40 times. It's a property I always recommend to friends with good taste.

Here's a teaser, the actual pitch that was used to sell the show.

Once upon a time, in New York City in 1941... at this club open to all comers to play, night after night, at a club named "Minston's Play House" in Harlem, they play jazz sessions competing with each other. Young jazz men with a new sense are gathering. At last they created a new genre itself. They are sick and tired of the conventional fixed style jazz. They're eager to play jazz more freely as they wish then... in 2071 in the universe...

The bounty hunters, who are gathering in the spaceship "BEBOP," will play freely without fear of risky things, they must create new dreams and films by breaking traditional styles. The work, which becomes a new genre itself, will be called... "COWBOY BEBOP."

See you space cowboy...

tiger & bunny wasn't what i expected

Some time ago I think I promised you I would revisit the topic of Wonder Woman and more generally the female figure in (American) comics. Well here's a bassackwards way to get there. I have a couple of incomplete anime series reviews lying around. So instead of tackling women in American comics, I'm going to take a detour through some of the female tropes in anime via those reviews to get the ball rolling.

The series to be reviewed in future installments are: Aquarion, Claymore, and Shigurui. Rest assured I will talk about quite a few more series in the course of this explication.

But before we go there, I'd like to return to a topic just recently addressed in this here very blog, namely gamification. I just watched the first episode of Tiger & Bunny and, well, here, see for yourself...



The basic premise, at least so far, is that super heroes in this world are employed by major corporations as billboards slash publicity stunts. This answers that age logistics question of who pays for damage caused by heroes in the course of saving the city - the corporate sponsor does.

In addition, the city's heroes compete on a TV show called Hero TV to be crowned the King of Heroes of the season. Here's where the gameification element comes in. Each hero is awarded points for various activities they perform while responding to the crime featured on that episode. First on the scene, second on the scene, made an arrest, and saved a civilian have showed up so far. For the TV audience at home, as the hero earn these points, a little message pops up on the screen naming the reward and the points earned for unlocking it. The season winner is determined, as one might reasonably suspect, by who has the most points at the end of the season.

Let me make a guess as to one of the main villains after just one episode. The series is produced by a woman who says at the awards ceremony wrap party that she expects next season to be much more intense. My suspicion is that she will somehow be involved with villains to help ramp up the danger for the heroes. But this bit of foreshadowing may just be a red herring.

The tiger and bunny of the title seems to refer to the first super hero team up. Wild Tiger, the veteran of the so called NEXT, or people with superpower mutations, isn't doing so well in the rankings. Similar to Hour Man, he can gain huge increases to his speed, strength, agility and such but for only 1/12th the time of the DC Comics hero. During the final episode of the season, he is rescued by a newcomer in new power armor who is later introduced as the newest hero of the city.

Wild Tiger is quite unpopular with the audience. He isn't the reigning champion like Sky High or scantily clad vixen Blue Rose, much to his chagrin. But he seems very much dedicated to doing the right thing for its own sake rather that to become King of Heroes or gain popularity. Still, he wouldn't mind a little recognition.

His corporate sponsor is bought out or goes out of business or something and so he is transferred to a new company. His new boss explains he and Barnaby Brooks, Jr., the man who rescued him before, have the same mutant power but that Barnaby will be more successful because of his youth. Then Wild Tiger is put into a suit of power armor and sent out to do the heroic thing.

Even though the episode closes with the arrival of a bull-themed hero Rock Bison we've seen before, the clear implication is that Wild Tiger and Brooks will team up to be the tiger and bunny of the series title. This veteran / reckless rookie buddy cop dynamic harkens back to popular American movies such as 48 Hours and Lethal Weapon. Like Murtaugh of Lethal Weapon, Wild Tiger has a family, his mother and young daughter, to care for, giving his pause from engaging in cavalier stunts such as revealing his secret identity on TV.

The pilot presented an interesting premise of a world in which people with superpowers have been wedded to corporations and entertainment, participating in a game of stopping crime. I'll definitely keep an eye out for subsequent episodes.