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Aim Low, Sweet Chariot
General | Posted a year agoLet me state for the record: I've never read THE CATCHER IN THE RYE (1951). I haven't gone out of my way to avoid it, I've simply never felt like picking it up. So while I won't write about books I haven't read, I'll gladly share what critic Jonathan Yardley has to say about it in his delightful essay collection SECOND READING: NOTABLE AND NEGLECTED BOOKS REVISITED (2011):
"THE CATCHER IN THE RYE is now, just about anywhere you ask, an 'American classic,' right up there with the book that was published the following year, Ernest Hemingway's THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA. They are two of the most durable and beloved books in American literature and, by any reasonable critical standard, two of the worst...The combination of Salinger's execrable prose and Caulfield's jejune narcissism produced effects comparable to mainlining castor oil.
"[T]he novel raises more questions than it answers. Why is a book about a spoiled rich kid kicked out of a fancy prep school so widely read by ordinary Americans, the overwhelming majority of whom have limited means and attend, or attended, public schools? Why is Holden Caulfield nearly universally seen as 'a symbol of purity and sensitivity' (as The Oxford Companion to American Literature puts it) when he's merely self-regarding and callow? Why do English teachers, whose responsibility is to teach good writing, repeatedly and reflexively require students to read a book as badly written as this one?
"It is required reading as therapy, a way to encourage young people to bathe in the warm, soothing waters of resentment...and self-pity without having to think a lucid thought. [It] touches adolescents' emotional buttons without putting their minds to work.
"From first page to last, THE CATCHER IN THE RYE is an exercise in button-pushing, and the biggest button it pushes is the adolescent's uncertainty and insecurity as he or she perches precariously between childhood...and adulthood, which is the great phony unknown. Indeed a case can be made that THE CATCHER IN THE RYE created adolescence as we now know it, a condition that barely existed until Salinger defined it. He established whining rebellion as essential to adolescence and it has remained such ever since."
Wow. I'll only mention that one of the best and darkest jokes in Tom Carson's GILLIGAN'S WAKE (2003) imagines Holden Caulfield growing up to become John Lennon's assassin.
(Any attempt at political finger pointing in replies to this journal will be taken as proof that you have utterly failed to recognize yourself.)
"THE CATCHER IN THE RYE is now, just about anywhere you ask, an 'American classic,' right up there with the book that was published the following year, Ernest Hemingway's THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA. They are two of the most durable and beloved books in American literature and, by any reasonable critical standard, two of the worst...The combination of Salinger's execrable prose and Caulfield's jejune narcissism produced effects comparable to mainlining castor oil.
"[T]he novel raises more questions than it answers. Why is a book about a spoiled rich kid kicked out of a fancy prep school so widely read by ordinary Americans, the overwhelming majority of whom have limited means and attend, or attended, public schools? Why is Holden Caulfield nearly universally seen as 'a symbol of purity and sensitivity' (as The Oxford Companion to American Literature puts it) when he's merely self-regarding and callow? Why do English teachers, whose responsibility is to teach good writing, repeatedly and reflexively require students to read a book as badly written as this one?
"It is required reading as therapy, a way to encourage young people to bathe in the warm, soothing waters of resentment...and self-pity without having to think a lucid thought. [It] touches adolescents' emotional buttons without putting their minds to work.
"From first page to last, THE CATCHER IN THE RYE is an exercise in button-pushing, and the biggest button it pushes is the adolescent's uncertainty and insecurity as he or she perches precariously between childhood...and adulthood, which is the great phony unknown. Indeed a case can be made that THE CATCHER IN THE RYE created adolescence as we now know it, a condition that barely existed until Salinger defined it. He established whining rebellion as essential to adolescence and it has remained such ever since."
Wow. I'll only mention that one of the best and darkest jokes in Tom Carson's GILLIGAN'S WAKE (2003) imagines Holden Caulfield growing up to become John Lennon's assassin.
(Any attempt at political finger pointing in replies to this journal will be taken as proof that you have utterly failed to recognize yourself.)
I need more chick flicks in my life
General | Posted a year agoIt's a shame how few of these movies I've seen. My tastes run more to The Transporter (2002), the first of three fun, gloriously stupid movies about a professional driver/martial arts master who, in a cool as fuck black suit and tie, MacGyvers weapons out of found objects and wipes the floor with dozens of opponents. Obviously it's a movie aimed squarely at teenaged boys, and the one woman in the picture is a prize to be won or lost (it wouldn't matter much to our hero either way).
But say I'm in the mood for something different -- say, one of the many, many movies about women in dysfunctional romances, or women squabbling with their sisters, or women shocked to learn they're turning into their mothers, or women learning the hard way to own their own talent and to stop being someone else's doormat. Where do I start?
Here's where I remembered that copy of Cinematherapy: The Girls' Guide to Movies for Every Mood that's been gathering dust next to my shelves for years; I finally started to read it a few days ago. Authors Nancy Peske and Beverly West briefly criticize 300 or so movies with an irresistible combination of insight and snark, arguing with tongue only slightly in cheek that "movies are more than entertainment: they're self-medication."
"[W}e women have a tangle of spiritual resonance, emotional history, and psychological nuance to unravel while browsing...the shelves at our local video store," the authors assert in their introduction, a gender essentialist postcard from the '90s. "Men, of course, don't have this problem because they have only two moods: on and off." Sure, sure. Fewer and fewer people believe that gender and sexuality are fixed categories: now they're a spectrum that folks can travel across, as they always were. But this was 1999. Besides, I'm learning things about movies I've never seen.
"Feeling ugly, dorky, crazy, totally inept at relationships? Here's one that'll inspire you: Based on the true story of award-winning New Zealand writer Janet Frame, An Angel at My Table (1990) is the story of a late bloomer, an artist whose severe lack of social skills and confidence nearly cripples her, but who nevertheless achieves great critical success."
"Let's see: unselfish, fiscally responsible, respectful of her rules and tastes regarding decor, good to the kid, effective bouncer at the door. Death, apparently, does wonders for a man's character." (The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, 1947)
Or Aliens (1986): "Not a good film to watch before your overbearing mother picks up the kids for the weekend."
The possibilities are endless, but I won't be getting (back) to these movies anytime soon -- I still have to finish binge-watching Naruto, y'know.
But say I'm in the mood for something different -- say, one of the many, many movies about women in dysfunctional romances, or women squabbling with their sisters, or women shocked to learn they're turning into their mothers, or women learning the hard way to own their own talent and to stop being someone else's doormat. Where do I start?
Here's where I remembered that copy of Cinematherapy: The Girls' Guide to Movies for Every Mood that's been gathering dust next to my shelves for years; I finally started to read it a few days ago. Authors Nancy Peske and Beverly West briefly criticize 300 or so movies with an irresistible combination of insight and snark, arguing with tongue only slightly in cheek that "movies are more than entertainment: they're self-medication."
"[W}e women have a tangle of spiritual resonance, emotional history, and psychological nuance to unravel while browsing...the shelves at our local video store," the authors assert in their introduction, a gender essentialist postcard from the '90s. "Men, of course, don't have this problem because they have only two moods: on and off." Sure, sure. Fewer and fewer people believe that gender and sexuality are fixed categories: now they're a spectrum that folks can travel across, as they always were. But this was 1999. Besides, I'm learning things about movies I've never seen.
"Feeling ugly, dorky, crazy, totally inept at relationships? Here's one that'll inspire you: Based on the true story of award-winning New Zealand writer Janet Frame, An Angel at My Table (1990) is the story of a late bloomer, an artist whose severe lack of social skills and confidence nearly cripples her, but who nevertheless achieves great critical success."
"Let's see: unselfish, fiscally responsible, respectful of her rules and tastes regarding decor, good to the kid, effective bouncer at the door. Death, apparently, does wonders for a man's character." (The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, 1947)
Or Aliens (1986): "Not a good film to watch before your overbearing mother picks up the kids for the weekend."
The possibilities are endless, but I won't be getting (back) to these movies anytime soon -- I still have to finish binge-watching Naruto, y'know.
Pillbilly Elegy
General | Posted a year agoA lifetime of bad choices catches up with the protagonist of Julian in Purgatory (Iron Circus Comics, 2021, 978-1-945820-74-8). Cartoonist Jon Allen, reviving a minor character from his previous graphic novels Ohio is for Sale (2016) and The Lonesome Era (2019), opens the story on the day unemployed opioid addict Julian gets kicked out by his girlfriend. Broke, homeless, and with no useful skills, Julian doesn't want an answer to the question of how THIS has become his life.
Allen, a masterful storyteller, weaves a suspenseful, engrossing tale out of the strands of one man's self-destructive refusal to face reality; that he's doing it with cute cartoon animals and minimal dialogue makes the author's achievement that much more remarkable. Dark as the subject matter is, Julian in Purgatory (the title is a tip-off) is neither nihilistic nor moralistic. Allen, a perceptive observer of human failings, tells his story with a deadpan, tough-minded, almost Zen-like compassion for his characters. How many of us were just a few bad choices away from becoming someone like Julian?
The drawing, as always in Allen's work, is breathtaking: deceptively simple, virtuoso depictions of mood, emotion, and lived-in physical reality.
https://www.amazon.com/Julian-Purga...../dp/1945820748
Allen, a masterful storyteller, weaves a suspenseful, engrossing tale out of the strands of one man's self-destructive refusal to face reality; that he's doing it with cute cartoon animals and minimal dialogue makes the author's achievement that much more remarkable. Dark as the subject matter is, Julian in Purgatory (the title is a tip-off) is neither nihilistic nor moralistic. Allen, a perceptive observer of human failings, tells his story with a deadpan, tough-minded, almost Zen-like compassion for his characters. How many of us were just a few bad choices away from becoming someone like Julian?
The drawing, as always in Allen's work, is breathtaking: deceptively simple, virtuoso depictions of mood, emotion, and lived-in physical reality.
https://www.amazon.com/Julian-Purga...../dp/1945820748
Fox Bunny Funny
General | Posted a year agoThis is another of my late-to-the-party reviews. I've only just discovered graphic designer Andy Hartzell's 2007 graphic novel, Fox Bunny Funny (Top Shelf Productions, 978-1891-83097-6) -- an optimistic three-act tragedy about what happens when your friends and family relentlessly pressure you into becoming something you're not. In this story told entirely in wordless pictures, foxes are predators and bunnies are prey -- that's how it is, that's how it's always been. A young fox boy doesn't get it. He's squeamish about hurting bunnies; in fact, he likes to dress up as one in private. In just 102 pages, we follow him from childhood to adulthood, to a piquant ending in which things change irrevocably.
Hartzell's drawings blend slapstick humor and gut-punch body horror with, in the third and final act, more than a touch of perverse eroticism. It's not a story for kids, but it's a story for everyone, whether you've had identity issues or not.
Jon Allen's 2016 graphic novel Ohio is for Sale (Alternative Comics, 978-1934-46082-5) is a pitch black cartoon animal comedy in which three friends -- young, bored, broke, and unemployed -- share a house together in one of those decaying Rust Belt towns that Allen draws so convincingly well. There's no plot: we simply watch Patrick, Leonard, and Travis going to the 7-11; looking for a job; driving around aimlessly; dying, going to hell, and getting hit on by the Devil; then getting back in time to throw an apocalyptic house party. Nothing matters, and everything carries weight.
I wish I'd had more comics like this when I was growing up.
https://www.amazon.com/Fox-Bunny-Fu...../dp/189183097X
https://www.amazon.com/Ohio-Sale-Jo...../dp/1934460826
Hartzell's drawings blend slapstick humor and gut-punch body horror with, in the third and final act, more than a touch of perverse eroticism. It's not a story for kids, but it's a story for everyone, whether you've had identity issues or not.
Jon Allen's 2016 graphic novel Ohio is for Sale (Alternative Comics, 978-1934-46082-5) is a pitch black cartoon animal comedy in which three friends -- young, bored, broke, and unemployed -- share a house together in one of those decaying Rust Belt towns that Allen draws so convincingly well. There's no plot: we simply watch Patrick, Leonard, and Travis going to the 7-11; looking for a job; driving around aimlessly; dying, going to hell, and getting hit on by the Devil; then getting back in time to throw an apocalyptic house party. Nothing matters, and everything carries weight.
I wish I'd had more comics like this when I was growing up.
https://www.amazon.com/Fox-Bunny-Fu...../dp/189183097X
https://www.amazon.com/Ohio-Sale-Jo...../dp/1934460826
"He's not my boyfriend"
General | Posted 2 years agoOnce again, an artist I've never heard of comes along and blows me away with a first-rate graphic novel. Using cute cartoon animals to tell a bittersweet coming-of-age story, Jon Allen's The Lonesome Era (Iron Circus Comics, 2019, 978-1-945820-38-0) looks at unrequited gay love in a dead end Rust Belt town.
Camden, a closeted high school kid, is hopelessly in love with his straight best friend, Jeremiah -- a troublemaker and a fuck-up who drags Camden into one brainless, increasingly dangerous scheme after another. The dialogue is minimal, the pacing brisk; Allen's deceptively simple drawings, in which I see the influence of such older masters as Gilbert Hernandez, Seth, and Charles Burns, give a very lived-in look to the decaying Midwestern town where everyone's chief occupation seems to be going about the business of wasting their lives. At 3 or 4 large panels per page, the book's 424 pages go by swiftly: I read the whole thing in an hour and a half.
Nuance is key. Allen plumbs his characters' emotional and psychological depths with only the simplest visual and verbal means, and even his minor characters are incisively rendered individuals, with voices, flaws, and obsessions of their own.
This novel floored me. That I only learned of it by sheer chance makes me wonder what else I've been missing.
https://www.amazon.com/Lonesome-Era.....sr_1_1?s=books
Camden, a closeted high school kid, is hopelessly in love with his straight best friend, Jeremiah -- a troublemaker and a fuck-up who drags Camden into one brainless, increasingly dangerous scheme after another. The dialogue is minimal, the pacing brisk; Allen's deceptively simple drawings, in which I see the influence of such older masters as Gilbert Hernandez, Seth, and Charles Burns, give a very lived-in look to the decaying Midwestern town where everyone's chief occupation seems to be going about the business of wasting their lives. At 3 or 4 large panels per page, the book's 424 pages go by swiftly: I read the whole thing in an hour and a half.
Nuance is key. Allen plumbs his characters' emotional and psychological depths with only the simplest visual and verbal means, and even his minor characters are incisively rendered individuals, with voices, flaws, and obsessions of their own.
This novel floored me. That I only learned of it by sheer chance makes me wonder what else I've been missing.
https://www.amazon.com/Lonesome-Era.....sr_1_1?s=books
The Best Books Ever Published!!!
General | Posted 2 years agoThese titles actually exist:
The New Radiation Recipe Book by Anonymous (c. 1930)
Miss Smallwood's Goodies: Easy Sweetmeat Making at Home by M. Smallwood (c. 1890)
Afghanistan: a Nation in Love with Freedom by Abdul Hakim Tabibi (1985)
Life and Laughter 'midst the Cannibals by Clifford Whiteley Collinson (1926)
Gay Bulgaria by Stowers Johnson (1964)
How to Draw a Straight Line by Sir Alfred Bray Kempe (1877)
How to Test Your Urine at Home by B.C. Meyrowitz (c. 1935)
Cancer: Is the Dog the Cause? by Samuel Walter Cort (1933)
The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum by Wallace Irwin (1901)
Was Jesus Insane? by G.W. Foote (1891)
Sex After Death by B.J. Ferrell & Douglas Edward Frey (1983)
Drummer Dick's Discharge by Beatrix M. De Burgh (1902)
Cock Tugs: a Short History of the Liverpool Screw Towing Company by W.B. Hallam (1963)
Men Who Have Risen: a Book for Boys edited by J. Hogg (1859)
Christie's Old Organ by Mrs. O.F. Walton (1882)
Enjoy Your Skunks by Helen Perley (1967)
What is a Cow? and Other Questions that Might Occur to You when Walking the Thames Path by David Sadtler (2000)
Play with Your Own Marbles by J.J. Wright (c. 1865)
The New Radiation Recipe Book by Anonymous (c. 1930)
Miss Smallwood's Goodies: Easy Sweetmeat Making at Home by M. Smallwood (c. 1890)
Afghanistan: a Nation in Love with Freedom by Abdul Hakim Tabibi (1985)
Life and Laughter 'midst the Cannibals by Clifford Whiteley Collinson (1926)
Gay Bulgaria by Stowers Johnson (1964)
How to Draw a Straight Line by Sir Alfred Bray Kempe (1877)
How to Test Your Urine at Home by B.C. Meyrowitz (c. 1935)
Cancer: Is the Dog the Cause? by Samuel Walter Cort (1933)
The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum by Wallace Irwin (1901)
Was Jesus Insane? by G.W. Foote (1891)
Sex After Death by B.J. Ferrell & Douglas Edward Frey (1983)
Drummer Dick's Discharge by Beatrix M. De Burgh (1902)
Cock Tugs: a Short History of the Liverpool Screw Towing Company by W.B. Hallam (1963)
Men Who Have Risen: a Book for Boys edited by J. Hogg (1859)
Christie's Old Organ by Mrs. O.F. Walton (1882)
Enjoy Your Skunks by Helen Perley (1967)
What is a Cow? and Other Questions that Might Occur to You when Walking the Thames Path by David Sadtler (2000)
Play with Your Own Marbles by J.J. Wright (c. 1865)
Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar
General | Posted 2 years agoSo Steamboat Willie is now in the public domain -- the film itself, not the Mickey Mouse trademark, of course. But come to think of it, who is Mickey, besides the iconic face of the Disney empire?
In A Mouse Divided (2018), author Jeff Ryan poses a couple of telling questions: "Not counting The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Steamboat Willie, can you name any other Mickey Mouse cartoon? Have you seen any? Mickey is the biggest paradox in popular culture: a globally beloved character no one seems to know anything about." I'm imagining a moment in early 1928: Walt Disney, livid at having had his star character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, along with much of his animation staff, poached by Universal Studios, has just a few weeks to come up with a new cartoon star, before his fledgling company goes under. Walt, who started out as an animator, has spent more time making business deals than drawing, so he and his chief animator, Ub Iwerks, start brainstorming. The new character can't be a cat -- there were already too many Felix the Cat knockoffs -- and Walt was damned if it'd be another rabbit. He sketches an awkward-looking mouse in a bow tie and highwater pants; Ub, the practical, shortcut-seeking animator, reduces the character to a few, rounded lines, and the end result is a prototype: Mickey Mouse 1.0.
Plane Crazy (1928), a silent cartoon short, is the debut of Mickey (in thrall to aviation hero Charles Lindbergh) and his girlfriend Minnie; it fails with a test audience, and Walt, impressed with the 1927 feature film The Jazz Singer, throws himself into making the first animated cartoon with synchronized sound. The gamble pays off: Steamboat Willie is a hit, turning Mickey Mouse into a star. Then something weird happens: the more popular Mickey's films become, the blander the character gets, 'til he barely registers as a presence in his own cartoons.
Cartoonist Floyd Gottfredson has the freedom to give Mickey a good-hearted, do-or-die tough guy personality in the long-running Mickey Mouse comic strip, but onscreen -- forget it. Mickey's more valuable to Disney as an icon -- a mascot, a graven image -- than a character. Hell, that's what Goofy and Donald Duck are for. If his cartoons are bland, so what? They're not the point.
Anyway, this is where my imagination takes me. And if you need ephemera like the new horror movie Mickey's Mouse Trap -- yeah, you've got that, too.
In A Mouse Divided (2018), author Jeff Ryan poses a couple of telling questions: "Not counting The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Steamboat Willie, can you name any other Mickey Mouse cartoon? Have you seen any? Mickey is the biggest paradox in popular culture: a globally beloved character no one seems to know anything about." I'm imagining a moment in early 1928: Walt Disney, livid at having had his star character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, along with much of his animation staff, poached by Universal Studios, has just a few weeks to come up with a new cartoon star, before his fledgling company goes under. Walt, who started out as an animator, has spent more time making business deals than drawing, so he and his chief animator, Ub Iwerks, start brainstorming. The new character can't be a cat -- there were already too many Felix the Cat knockoffs -- and Walt was damned if it'd be another rabbit. He sketches an awkward-looking mouse in a bow tie and highwater pants; Ub, the practical, shortcut-seeking animator, reduces the character to a few, rounded lines, and the end result is a prototype: Mickey Mouse 1.0.
Plane Crazy (1928), a silent cartoon short, is the debut of Mickey (in thrall to aviation hero Charles Lindbergh) and his girlfriend Minnie; it fails with a test audience, and Walt, impressed with the 1927 feature film The Jazz Singer, throws himself into making the first animated cartoon with synchronized sound. The gamble pays off: Steamboat Willie is a hit, turning Mickey Mouse into a star. Then something weird happens: the more popular Mickey's films become, the blander the character gets, 'til he barely registers as a presence in his own cartoons.
Cartoonist Floyd Gottfredson has the freedom to give Mickey a good-hearted, do-or-die tough guy personality in the long-running Mickey Mouse comic strip, but onscreen -- forget it. Mickey's more valuable to Disney as an icon -- a mascot, a graven image -- than a character. Hell, that's what Goofy and Donald Duck are for. If his cartoons are bland, so what? They're not the point.
Anyway, this is where my imagination takes me. And if you need ephemera like the new horror movie Mickey's Mouse Trap -- yeah, you've got that, too.
The Other Side of Ratatouille
General | Posted 2 years agoMy buddy 
rolandguiscard sent this link my way, and it's too good not to share:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oecnmxd9gFI
Now that's entertainment.
rolandguiscard sent this link my way, and it's too good not to share:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oecnmxd9gFI
Now that's entertainment.
Another Nightmare Before Christmas
General | Posted 2 years agoBatman Returns (1992), a movie about the dark heart of Christmas, is a gift-wrapped box of poisoned chocolates. There's no peace on Earth, or good will towards anyone. Rather, it's a movie about violent, child-like adults and what they want -- demand -- for Christmas.
The Penguin (Danny DeVito) wants the attention, respect, and power he's done nothing to deserve. Corrupt businessman Max Shreck (Christopher Walken) wants a financial stranglehold on Gotham. Catwoman/Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer) wants revenge on her former boss, Shreck, who tossed her out a window to her seeming death. Batman/Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton), Gotham's self-appointed protector, wants to save lives and property, but doesn't mind strapping a bomb to one of Penguin's goons before dropping the poor schmuck down a sewer; vigilantism in action. Bruce and Selina want each other, only to realize that each of them is far too damaged for the other.
Christmas in Gotham is the season of terrorist attacks on the public, political manipulation of the electorate, lies and deception at every level of society -- and the public's willing embrace of an authoritarian Daddy who'll step in and make everything right again (and if it's someone as grotesque and demonstrably violent as the Penguin, so what?). It's the sentimental hogwash that makes this such a terrific Christmas movie: funny, disturbing, and ultimately pretty damn bleak. It's why I stopped reading Batman comics years ago.
The Penguin (Danny DeVito) wants the attention, respect, and power he's done nothing to deserve. Corrupt businessman Max Shreck (Christopher Walken) wants a financial stranglehold on Gotham. Catwoman/Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer) wants revenge on her former boss, Shreck, who tossed her out a window to her seeming death. Batman/Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton), Gotham's self-appointed protector, wants to save lives and property, but doesn't mind strapping a bomb to one of Penguin's goons before dropping the poor schmuck down a sewer; vigilantism in action. Bruce and Selina want each other, only to realize that each of them is far too damaged for the other.
Christmas in Gotham is the season of terrorist attacks on the public, political manipulation of the electorate, lies and deception at every level of society -- and the public's willing embrace of an authoritarian Daddy who'll step in and make everything right again (and if it's someone as grotesque and demonstrably violent as the Penguin, so what?). It's the sentimental hogwash that makes this such a terrific Christmas movie: funny, disturbing, and ultimately pretty damn bleak. It's why I stopped reading Batman comics years ago.
The Postman Always Wings Twice
General | Posted 2 years agoSome folks just can't resist messing with a good movie. Take the noble pulp fiction tradition of horny, none-too-bright guys who can't help falling for other men's scheming wives, and you get something like The Postman Always Wings Twice, in which a drifter (Daffy Duck) gets a job at kindly Elmer Fudd's middle-of-nowhere gas station/café. Five minutes later, Elmer's young, attractive, and very bored wife (Bugs Bunny, who plays the whole picture in drag), slinks into the kitchen, strikes a provocative, scantily-clad pose in the doorway, and sizes up the new hire in the time it takes Daffy to pick up his jaw from the floor.
Elmer, blessed with the attention span of a gnat, is oblivious to the sexual tension between his wife and the hired man. "Why don't you two dwive down to that secwuded beach?", he suggests one sultry evening. "I'm gonna sit here and wisten to my Guy Wombardo wecords, hahahahahaha!" Thirty sweaty minutes later, Bugs suggests to Daffy, who's lying on top of her half asleep, "Ehh, wouldn't it be a shame if somethin' happened to him and we had to spend all that insurance money together, Doc?"
(Did I mention that the District, I say, the District Attorney (Foghorn Leghorn) lives just up the road?)
The lure of sex and money soon convinces Daffy to help Bugs bump off her inconvenient husband, not that Elmer is easy to kill:
"You wouldn't happen to have an axe around here, would you, my good man?"
"Why certainwy. Here, this is my favowite axe, hahahahahaha!"
Will Bugs and Daffy get away with it, or will the clock run out on their doomed love? Flashforward to the tragic final scene, a closeup of Bugs's lifeless body in Daffy's arms -- and then Bugs opens his eyes and speaks directly to the camera:
"Well, wha'dja expect in a film noir, a happy ending?"
--with apologies to James M. Cain, Lana Turner, John Garfield, Tay Garnett and Bob Rafelson
Elmer, blessed with the attention span of a gnat, is oblivious to the sexual tension between his wife and the hired man. "Why don't you two dwive down to that secwuded beach?", he suggests one sultry evening. "I'm gonna sit here and wisten to my Guy Wombardo wecords, hahahahahaha!" Thirty sweaty minutes later, Bugs suggests to Daffy, who's lying on top of her half asleep, "Ehh, wouldn't it be a shame if somethin' happened to him and we had to spend all that insurance money together, Doc?"
(Did I mention that the District, I say, the District Attorney (Foghorn Leghorn) lives just up the road?)
The lure of sex and money soon convinces Daffy to help Bugs bump off her inconvenient husband, not that Elmer is easy to kill:
"You wouldn't happen to have an axe around here, would you, my good man?"
"Why certainwy. Here, this is my favowite axe, hahahahahaha!"
Will Bugs and Daffy get away with it, or will the clock run out on their doomed love? Flashforward to the tragic final scene, a closeup of Bugs's lifeless body in Daffy's arms -- and then Bugs opens his eyes and speaks directly to the camera:
"Well, wha'dja expect in a film noir, a happy ending?"
--with apologies to James M. Cain, Lana Turner, John Garfield, Tay Garnett and Bob Rafelson
A Farewell to Charms
General | Posted 2 years agoWhen one of my favorite artists publicly considers leaving FA, I'm at a loss for words. Different individuals have different reasons for seeking the nearest exit, but it seems to always come down to one thing: they're just not having as much fun here as they used to.
Sure, FA isn't what it was a decade ago -- nothing is! (The site is now older than many of its current members.) Whatever your idea of "fun" is, is it the same thing it was ten years ago? Things change. We change. Is your life now better or worse than it was a decade ago, and why is that?
Ten years is an eternity in internet time. In my own case, I was barely online at all from 2016 to 2020, and even now I'm not logged on all that often. Maybe the more time you spend online, the more...frustrating everything looks? I dunno. We all have our reasons. Our interests or our life situations change, or maybe we've found a group of people to blame for all of our problems. Maybe we'd rather just spend our time drinking, or immersed in our work or our non-furry hobbies.
For my part, I like FA. I like my friends, and the community, and the (admittedly old school) art I follow. I'm not on the cutting edge of anything. Does that make me irrelevant?
Sure, FA isn't what it was a decade ago -- nothing is! (The site is now older than many of its current members.) Whatever your idea of "fun" is, is it the same thing it was ten years ago? Things change. We change. Is your life now better or worse than it was a decade ago, and why is that?
Ten years is an eternity in internet time. In my own case, I was barely online at all from 2016 to 2020, and even now I'm not logged on all that often. Maybe the more time you spend online, the more...frustrating everything looks? I dunno. We all have our reasons. Our interests or our life situations change, or maybe we've found a group of people to blame for all of our problems. Maybe we'd rather just spend our time drinking, or immersed in our work or our non-furry hobbies.
For my part, I like FA. I like my friends, and the community, and the (admittedly old school) art I follow. I'm not on the cutting edge of anything. Does that make me irrelevant?
Gettin' 'em to think, not tellin' 'em how
General | Posted 2 years agoHave you noticed that good art can make us really uncomfortable? Take a supposedly light piece of entertainment like NORTHRANGER (Harper Alley, 2023, 978-006-300-7383), a queer YA gothic romance graphic novel that transplants Jane Austen's NORTHANGER ABBEY (1817) to present-day rural Texas. The plot is pure hokum -- a wealthy, secretive family, a gloomy ranch house, rumors of mysterious deaths and disapperances -- but the emotions are raw, and all too real. Racism, homophobia, self-loathing, and lying to yourself about your own feelings: all that gets woven into the slow burn romance of star-crossed lovers Cade Muñoz and Henry Tyler, teens who have to figure out how to live their own lives, not the lives their families expect of them.
Unlike our young leads, I wasn't raised in a rural, religious community where queer people weren't supposed to exist, but even my relatively advantageous upbringing was no walk in the park for a gay kid. Rey Terciero and Bre Indigo -- a queer Latinx writer and a queer black artist -- depict that painful teenage emotional territory realistically, but without self-pity; the reader isn't forced to wallow in it. As in real life, things get better.
I liked the simple, sepia-toned coloring; it lends an "old movie" vibe to the expressive artwork (Austen's gothic novel-obsessed heroine is now a shy Latinx boy obsessed with classic horror movies). The story takes its time to get where it's going, but never drags; we get to know these characters well, and to know Cade and Henry is to love them, for all their flaws.
https://www.amazon.com/Northranger-.....210&sr=1-1
Unlike our young leads, I wasn't raised in a rural, religious community where queer people weren't supposed to exist, but even my relatively advantageous upbringing was no walk in the park for a gay kid. Rey Terciero and Bre Indigo -- a queer Latinx writer and a queer black artist -- depict that painful teenage emotional territory realistically, but without self-pity; the reader isn't forced to wallow in it. As in real life, things get better.
I liked the simple, sepia-toned coloring; it lends an "old movie" vibe to the expressive artwork (Austen's gothic novel-obsessed heroine is now a shy Latinx boy obsessed with classic horror movies). The story takes its time to get where it's going, but never drags; we get to know these characters well, and to know Cade and Henry is to love them, for all their flaws.
https://www.amazon.com/Northranger-.....210&sr=1-1
Banned Books Week, Oct. 1 - Oct. 7
General | Posted 2 years agoJust a reminder that our ongoing national orgy of book banning is nothing new. Consider Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography -- routinely censored since its first publication in 1791 -- or the Bible, various editions of which have been vigorously (and violently) suppressed since John Wycliff's pioneering English translation of the Latin Vulgate in the late 14th century.
The Qur'an's first publication in Europe, in 1530, was immediately ordered to be burned by the pope. Philosopher Immanuel Kant, otherwise a model citizen in the Prussian police state, got into trouble when his Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone offended Frederick William the Second in 1794. Novelist Salman Rushdie is STILL paying an awful price for having published The Satanic Verses in 1988.
D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov -- their struggles with censorship are too well known to rehash here. One could say the same about Huckleberry Finn, The Bell Jar, Naked Lunch...all this shit happened long before And Tango Makes Three (2005), let alone Gender Queer (2019). "Both read the Bible day and night,/But thou read'st black where I read white," wrote William Blake, which is not to say that all readings are equal. There's the issue of nuance, and nuance is in damned short supply nowadays.
The Qur'an's first publication in Europe, in 1530, was immediately ordered to be burned by the pope. Philosopher Immanuel Kant, otherwise a model citizen in the Prussian police state, got into trouble when his Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone offended Frederick William the Second in 1794. Novelist Salman Rushdie is STILL paying an awful price for having published The Satanic Verses in 1988.
D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov -- their struggles with censorship are too well known to rehash here. One could say the same about Huckleberry Finn, The Bell Jar, Naked Lunch...all this shit happened long before And Tango Makes Three (2005), let alone Gender Queer (2019). "Both read the Bible day and night,/But thou read'st black where I read white," wrote William Blake, which is not to say that all readings are equal. There's the issue of nuance, and nuance is in damned short supply nowadays.
Brief Candle
General | Posted 2 years agoBad news from our dear friend 
dinoSnake
His mate of 20 years,
ChocolateMuscle passed away on the evening of September 3rd. https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10692222
Our hearts go out to him.
dinoSnakeHis mate of 20 years,
ChocolateMuscle passed away on the evening of September 3rd. https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10692222Our hearts go out to him.
Puny Express
General | Posted 2 years ago"Ha-ha-ha-HA-ha! I have a self-inflicted concussion!"
The "Woody Woodpecker and Friends" block of cartoons on ME-TV's Saturday morning lineup is only two weeks old, and watching these...things is a reminder that Walter Lantz Productions couldn't make a funny cartoon to save their lives. Woody's evolution from a grotesque, grinning lunatic into a smaller, cuter public nuisance -- an irresponsible man-child -- only underscores his fundamental blandness, his acts of random idiocy, his brainlessness -- and the sense that if you were to pit him against Daffy Duck or Tweety, Woody Woodpecker wouldn't stand a chance.
Ugly Men Make Beautiful Music
The classical music megabox set -- a 13-pound doorstop packed with CDs, usually in drastically improved sound -- is marketed squarely at the aging boomers who used to own the original vinyl LPs. I broke down and bought the sets devoted to conductors George Szell, Bruno Walter, Eugene Ormandy, and -- a real discovery for me -- Dmitri Mitropolous, who led the New York Philharmonic prior to Leonard Bernstein, and who was, weirdly, largely forgotten in the decade after his death in 1960. Mitropolous favored brisk tempi; his version of Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony scarcely pauses for breath, letting those glorious melodies shine without wallowing in them. His electrifying performance of Schumann's Second Symphony won't give you time to notice the antiquated sound -- which is still pretty good for 1940 -- and the slow movement will melt your heart.
No matter how long you've been listening to this music, there's always something new to hear.
The "Woody Woodpecker and Friends" block of cartoons on ME-TV's Saturday morning lineup is only two weeks old, and watching these...things is a reminder that Walter Lantz Productions couldn't make a funny cartoon to save their lives. Woody's evolution from a grotesque, grinning lunatic into a smaller, cuter public nuisance -- an irresponsible man-child -- only underscores his fundamental blandness, his acts of random idiocy, his brainlessness -- and the sense that if you were to pit him against Daffy Duck or Tweety, Woody Woodpecker wouldn't stand a chance.
Ugly Men Make Beautiful Music
The classical music megabox set -- a 13-pound doorstop packed with CDs, usually in drastically improved sound -- is marketed squarely at the aging boomers who used to own the original vinyl LPs. I broke down and bought the sets devoted to conductors George Szell, Bruno Walter, Eugene Ormandy, and -- a real discovery for me -- Dmitri Mitropolous, who led the New York Philharmonic prior to Leonard Bernstein, and who was, weirdly, largely forgotten in the decade after his death in 1960. Mitropolous favored brisk tempi; his version of Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony scarcely pauses for breath, letting those glorious melodies shine without wallowing in them. His electrifying performance of Schumann's Second Symphony won't give you time to notice the antiquated sound -- which is still pretty good for 1940 -- and the slow movement will melt your heart.
No matter how long you've been listening to this music, there's always something new to hear.
I Was a Grade School Pervert!
General | Posted 2 years agoIn his book Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction, author Benjamin Percy points out that we see the world through the lens of our work -- that what we do shapes how we think. So, turning a bookseller's eye on the horror stories of librarians working, or formerly working, in Livingstone Parish, Louisiana, and entirely too many other places in (small town) America, I'd like to make the following public service announcement:
If you're one of those halfwits busy trolling librarians and teachers online, when you're not sending them actual DEATH THREATS -- people that you baselessly and maliciously accuse of being pedophiles and pornographers -- God, I hope your kids, assuming you even have any, are smarter than you, despite your best efforts to make sure that they're not. Yes, books are scary, they're full of things you don't already know, which is why you're afraid of them in the first place, why you really don't want anyone to read anything -- it's all "indoctrination" (except, of course, when you approve of the doctrine). Your "thought" processes defy comprehension.
Don't remember how young I was, but I was still in grade school when a nice neighbor lady gave me a comic book she clearly hadn't bothered to read: Zap Comix. Whichever issue it was, it had all the extremely perverse, sexually explicit nightmare comedy shit by R. Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, etc., that a kid could hardly imagine -- quite a change from Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk, that's for sure. You won't find this stuff in the school libraries where you're obsessively looking for it, because the library staff are already doing their jobs -- it takes well-meaning idiots from the general public to put pornography into the hands of kids.
I held onto that comic for years, of course.
If you're one of those halfwits busy trolling librarians and teachers online, when you're not sending them actual DEATH THREATS -- people that you baselessly and maliciously accuse of being pedophiles and pornographers -- God, I hope your kids, assuming you even have any, are smarter than you, despite your best efforts to make sure that they're not. Yes, books are scary, they're full of things you don't already know, which is why you're afraid of them in the first place, why you really don't want anyone to read anything -- it's all "indoctrination" (except, of course, when you approve of the doctrine). Your "thought" processes defy comprehension.
Don't remember how young I was, but I was still in grade school when a nice neighbor lady gave me a comic book she clearly hadn't bothered to read: Zap Comix. Whichever issue it was, it had all the extremely perverse, sexually explicit nightmare comedy shit by R. Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, etc., that a kid could hardly imagine -- quite a change from Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk, that's for sure. You won't find this stuff in the school libraries where you're obsessively looking for it, because the library staff are already doing their jobs -- it takes well-meaning idiots from the general public to put pornography into the hands of kids.
I held onto that comic for years, of course.
Yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi 3
General | Posted 2 years agoI'm pretty sure that Otakon 2023's (July 28 - 30) attendance numbers managed to top last year's 40,000, but we won't know 'til they release the actual figures some weeks from now. I'm happy to report that the bag/prop check process has been streamlined, so no more lines of people around the block, standing in the hot sun while inching along, waiting to get in. The record number of shirtless (male) cosplayers makes sense, given the 100° temperatures over the weekend; there were a lot of Inosuke Hashibiras (and kudos if you have the physique to pull that off), but this was the year of Trafalgar Law, whose players came close to outnumbering the Luffys. (There was, as always, one Batman.)
The Dealers' Room had all your manga, cosplay, figurine, and wall hanging needs -- mine, not so much. The Gaming Room and Artists' Alley were huge, the panels were hit or miss, but Iron Editor, with two competitors given two hours to create an AMV (anime music video) from scratch, was, as always, a con highlight. The battle seemed a little mismatched this year, coming down to a competition between a music video and something kinda resembling a music video, but it was still a fun program. Among other things, we got to see the furry music videos from Anime Weekend Atlanta, built on clips from Aggretsuko, Beastars, BNA -- Brand New Animal, The Boy and the Beast, Odd Taxi, and...Bluey?
We attended a screening of episodes from Skull-Face Bookseller Honda-san, a workplace comedy about the bizarre world of Japanese manga retailers, who are relatively sane only when compared with their customers, and with publishing industry representatives. (I'd already read the manga; I ordered the Blu-ray as soon as we got home, 'cause it wasn't available at the con.)
It was a good weekend for dining in DC -- stellar breakfast sandwiches, tasty sushi, a spicy mushroom-and-black-bean veggie burger that didn't try to taste like meat and didn't need to. The best booze was, as usual, on our shelves at home.
The Dealers' Room had all your manga, cosplay, figurine, and wall hanging needs -- mine, not so much. The Gaming Room and Artists' Alley were huge, the panels were hit or miss, but Iron Editor, with two competitors given two hours to create an AMV (anime music video) from scratch, was, as always, a con highlight. The battle seemed a little mismatched this year, coming down to a competition between a music video and something kinda resembling a music video, but it was still a fun program. Among other things, we got to see the furry music videos from Anime Weekend Atlanta, built on clips from Aggretsuko, Beastars, BNA -- Brand New Animal, The Boy and the Beast, Odd Taxi, and...Bluey?
We attended a screening of episodes from Skull-Face Bookseller Honda-san, a workplace comedy about the bizarre world of Japanese manga retailers, who are relatively sane only when compared with their customers, and with publishing industry representatives. (I'd already read the manga; I ordered the Blu-ray as soon as we got home, 'cause it wasn't available at the con.)
It was a good weekend for dining in DC -- stellar breakfast sandwiches, tasty sushi, a spicy mushroom-and-black-bean veggie burger that didn't try to taste like meat and didn't need to. The best booze was, as usual, on our shelves at home.
Say You Want a Geek Feminist Revolution
General | Posted 2 years agoI've never really been that interested in the voice of the people -- after all, "the people" rarely know what they're talking about. I'll take expertise, and Kameron Hurley is very experienced at analyzing our gendered pop culture tropes and explaining why we can't take them at face value.
I like reading cultural criticism, despite its origins in the arch-snobbery of Adorno and the Frankfurt School. Hurley's essay collection The Geek Feminist Revolution (Tor, 2016) holds out the possibility of answering at least one of my questions, "Just what is a feminist, anyway?" (If you think it's someone who's busy "oppressing" self-pitying guys like yourself, you don't have any useful answers.) Perhaps we should start by looking at this book's real subjects: the business of writing, and creative freedom.
Hurley, who writes the kind of violent, postapocalyptic SF I don't read anymore, has a lot to say about writing for a living, and the most surprising thing may be how little talent's got to do with it. Having talent is good, but having perseverance is better. Perseverance isn't the road to success, it's the name of the road you stay on 'til you stop writing. Hurley has so many quotable lines, I'm gonna stop with that one, but perhaps my favorite quote is one she gleaned from a magazine interview with literary fiction author Claire Messud (Kant's Little Prussian Head & Other Reasons Why I Write), who, asked why she doesn't seem concerned that her grim female protagonist "isn't someone the reader wants to be friends with," explodes:
"For heaven's sake, what kind of question is that? Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert? Would you want to be friends with Mickey Sabbath? Saleem Sinai? Hamlet? Krapp? Oedipus? Oscar Wao? Antigone? Raskolnikov? Any of the characters in The Corrections? Any of the characters in Infinite Jest? Any of the characters in anything Pynchon has ever written? Or Martin Amis? Or Orhan Pamuk? Or Alice Munro, for that matter? If you're reading to find friends, you're in deep trouble."
Advertising, at which Hurley once made a pretty good living, is above all the art of manipulating people into buying things they're already convinced they need. We who work in the erotic entertainment business commodify bodies, real or imaginary, as our stock in trade; what we're selling is the illusion of ownership, the fantasy that this sexy character exists just for you, and unlike the actual people in your life, if any, won't let you down or annoy you by insisting on their own autonomy. It's our normative view of life, the default position -- that people are commodities (hey, how much is your data worth?) -- only slightly exaggerated. And feminism seems to be a way of noticing how fucked up this all-pervasive commodity fetishism is, and then saying: We don't have to live this way. Isn't that something?
https://www.amazon.com/Geek-Feminis.....247&sr=1-9
I like reading cultural criticism, despite its origins in the arch-snobbery of Adorno and the Frankfurt School. Hurley's essay collection The Geek Feminist Revolution (Tor, 2016) holds out the possibility of answering at least one of my questions, "Just what is a feminist, anyway?" (If you think it's someone who's busy "oppressing" self-pitying guys like yourself, you don't have any useful answers.) Perhaps we should start by looking at this book's real subjects: the business of writing, and creative freedom.
Hurley, who writes the kind of violent, postapocalyptic SF I don't read anymore, has a lot to say about writing for a living, and the most surprising thing may be how little talent's got to do with it. Having talent is good, but having perseverance is better. Perseverance isn't the road to success, it's the name of the road you stay on 'til you stop writing. Hurley has so many quotable lines, I'm gonna stop with that one, but perhaps my favorite quote is one she gleaned from a magazine interview with literary fiction author Claire Messud (Kant's Little Prussian Head & Other Reasons Why I Write), who, asked why she doesn't seem concerned that her grim female protagonist "isn't someone the reader wants to be friends with," explodes:
"For heaven's sake, what kind of question is that? Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert? Would you want to be friends with Mickey Sabbath? Saleem Sinai? Hamlet? Krapp? Oedipus? Oscar Wao? Antigone? Raskolnikov? Any of the characters in The Corrections? Any of the characters in Infinite Jest? Any of the characters in anything Pynchon has ever written? Or Martin Amis? Or Orhan Pamuk? Or Alice Munro, for that matter? If you're reading to find friends, you're in deep trouble."
Advertising, at which Hurley once made a pretty good living, is above all the art of manipulating people into buying things they're already convinced they need. We who work in the erotic entertainment business commodify bodies, real or imaginary, as our stock in trade; what we're selling is the illusion of ownership, the fantasy that this sexy character exists just for you, and unlike the actual people in your life, if any, won't let you down or annoy you by insisting on their own autonomy. It's our normative view of life, the default position -- that people are commodities (hey, how much is your data worth?) -- only slightly exaggerated. And feminism seems to be a way of noticing how fucked up this all-pervasive commodity fetishism is, and then saying: We don't have to live this way. Isn't that something?
https://www.amazon.com/Geek-Feminis.....247&sr=1-9
Re-reading CAPTAIN JACK
General | Posted 2 years agoThis one's for 
mkaz
I was pleasantly surprised to find an incomplete run of Mike Kazaleh's Adventures of Captain Jack while housecleaning (lost all my comics in a cross-country move years ago). This was my gateway drug into furrydom and an amazing piece of comic book storytelling. Let me tell you why.
Introduced in 1985, the series starred "Happy" Jack, captain and owner of the spaceship Glass Onion; strapping android hunk Adam Fink; diminutive schlemiel Herman Feldman and his alter ego Beezlebub ("Bub"), an invisible imp. The book is a showcase for Kazaleh's incredible sense of design, his virtuoso brush inking, and his love of the pop culture of the 1950s and '60s -- the music, movies, cars, and comics that underlie the book's zany, stream-of-consciousness gags.
The characters have their roles: Jack, inveterate gambler and con man, tries and consistently fails to make an honest dollar as a freelance space trucker; horndog Adam is the fall guy for Bub's pranks; Herman stays on everyone's good side while Bub loves to fuck shit up. Then, after four issues of cosmic pinball machines and interdimensional laundromats, things get...real.
Issues 5 and 6 are set on an isolated rural planet, where six characters play out a chamber drama about loneliness and denial. Farmer's daughter Janet Ringtail falls in love with Herman, culminating in a sex scene that earns the comic a "mature" rating on all subsequent covers. There's a remarkable, wordless ten-page dream sequence, and Jack, for the first and only time, takes a genuinely noble action. You now get the sense that the characters, not the author, are dictating where the story goes.
I'm missing issue 7, where Janet meets Bub; issue 9, featuring Jack's cross-dressing showdown with pool hustler Saturated Fats; and issue 10, where the crew makes it back to Earth and we bid farewell to the Glass Onion. By now, the book had a passionate, hardcore fan base -- but not a large enough fan base. The final issues, set in the post-apocalyptic wasteland of (late 1980s) Detroit, are a reckoning. Jack betrays his only friends, and is effectively written out of his own comic. Nice guy Herman finally blows his top and accepts the truth about himself. A mostly wordless, fifteen-page ending has just a few, painful goodbyes for dialogue.
There's a lovely coda to the series: Critters #42 (1989) features "The Clichés of Fiction," an eighteen-page story in which Janet and Herman, dead broke, look for work and refuse to give up hope. A forty-page one shot, A*K*Q*J, followed in 1991; it gets the band back together in a quasi-medieval fantasy full of romance and corny jokes.
mkazI was pleasantly surprised to find an incomplete run of Mike Kazaleh's Adventures of Captain Jack while housecleaning (lost all my comics in a cross-country move years ago). This was my gateway drug into furrydom and an amazing piece of comic book storytelling. Let me tell you why.
Introduced in 1985, the series starred "Happy" Jack, captain and owner of the spaceship Glass Onion; strapping android hunk Adam Fink; diminutive schlemiel Herman Feldman and his alter ego Beezlebub ("Bub"), an invisible imp. The book is a showcase for Kazaleh's incredible sense of design, his virtuoso brush inking, and his love of the pop culture of the 1950s and '60s -- the music, movies, cars, and comics that underlie the book's zany, stream-of-consciousness gags.
The characters have their roles: Jack, inveterate gambler and con man, tries and consistently fails to make an honest dollar as a freelance space trucker; horndog Adam is the fall guy for Bub's pranks; Herman stays on everyone's good side while Bub loves to fuck shit up. Then, after four issues of cosmic pinball machines and interdimensional laundromats, things get...real.
Issues 5 and 6 are set on an isolated rural planet, where six characters play out a chamber drama about loneliness and denial. Farmer's daughter Janet Ringtail falls in love with Herman, culminating in a sex scene that earns the comic a "mature" rating on all subsequent covers. There's a remarkable, wordless ten-page dream sequence, and Jack, for the first and only time, takes a genuinely noble action. You now get the sense that the characters, not the author, are dictating where the story goes.
I'm missing issue 7, where Janet meets Bub; issue 9, featuring Jack's cross-dressing showdown with pool hustler Saturated Fats; and issue 10, where the crew makes it back to Earth and we bid farewell to the Glass Onion. By now, the book had a passionate, hardcore fan base -- but not a large enough fan base. The final issues, set in the post-apocalyptic wasteland of (late 1980s) Detroit, are a reckoning. Jack betrays his only friends, and is effectively written out of his own comic. Nice guy Herman finally blows his top and accepts the truth about himself. A mostly wordless, fifteen-page ending has just a few, painful goodbyes for dialogue.
There's a lovely coda to the series: Critters #42 (1989) features "The Clichés of Fiction," an eighteen-page story in which Janet and Herman, dead broke, look for work and refuse to give up hope. A forty-page one shot, A*K*Q*J, followed in 1991; it gets the band back together in a quasi-medieval fantasy full of romance and corny jokes.
Joshua Quagmire, 1952 - 2023
General | Posted 2 years agoAn enigma, this guy. Born Richard Lester, he passed away on or around May 28th from unspecified health issues. He's survived by a sister.
His character Cutey Bunny, an African-American rabbit superhero, first appeared in his self-published Army Surplus Komikz, one of the outstanding titles of the independent comix boom of the early 1980s. (Wikipedia says ASK's five issues ran from 1982 to 1985; Jeff Rovin's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Cartoon Animals (1991) dates the first issue to 1984.)
Cutey Bunny, a riff on Go Nagai's 1970s anime character Cutie Honey, is always clad in revealing outfits -- as furry good girl art, it's hard to beat. Quagmire made cameo appearances in his own comic, portraying himself as an irascible crank; that seems to have been very true to life. Furries who knew him recall that he was a difficult individual, perhaps more than a little paranoid. He wanted nothing to do with the emerging furry fandom, and the fandom obliged by erasing him from its collective memory. Quagmire continued to publish new art on his own website, to which I'm not providing a link -- it's not secure.
His character Cutey Bunny, an African-American rabbit superhero, first appeared in his self-published Army Surplus Komikz, one of the outstanding titles of the independent comix boom of the early 1980s. (Wikipedia says ASK's five issues ran from 1982 to 1985; Jeff Rovin's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Cartoon Animals (1991) dates the first issue to 1984.)
Cutey Bunny, a riff on Go Nagai's 1970s anime character Cutie Honey, is always clad in revealing outfits -- as furry good girl art, it's hard to beat. Quagmire made cameo appearances in his own comic, portraying himself as an irascible crank; that seems to have been very true to life. Furries who knew him recall that he was a difficult individual, perhaps more than a little paranoid. He wanted nothing to do with the emerging furry fandom, and the fandom obliged by erasing him from its collective memory. Quagmire continued to publish new art on his own website, to which I'm not providing a link -- it's not secure.
Victories
General | Posted 2 years agoI thought it would be fun to write about Utah's Davis School District banning the King James Bible from elementary and middle school libraries for "violence and vulgarity," but...nah, our long national orgy of anti-intellectualism is gettin' me down, man. (Intellectuals read everything; non-readers are obsessed with the power of books to "corrupt" weaker, more impressionable minds than their own. Yipes.)
"Question authority" doesn't mean "reject every idea or argument you don't understand." (And just because the people in your media bubble agree with you is no guarantee that you've understood anything.) Of course it's hard to take advice like this seriously -- who wants to admit that they just don't get it? No, complex questions surely have simple answers, right? (Not to mention that setting up a false choice between merit and morality means that whichever side you pick, you lose.)
Honestly, it'd be more fun to just go on writing literary criticism -- to reflect on how, say, Philip Larkin's 1949 sonnet, "Neurotics" is so shockingly out of step with our times, and how much more strongly an impression it makes because of it:
The mind, it's said, is free:
But not your minds. They, rusted stiff, admit
Only what will accuse or horrify,
Like slot-machines only bent pennies fit.
What could be more gratingly arrogant than a healthy person upbraiding his sick neighbors?
"Question authority" doesn't mean "reject every idea or argument you don't understand." (And just because the people in your media bubble agree with you is no guarantee that you've understood anything.) Of course it's hard to take advice like this seriously -- who wants to admit that they just don't get it? No, complex questions surely have simple answers, right? (Not to mention that setting up a false choice between merit and morality means that whichever side you pick, you lose.)
Honestly, it'd be more fun to just go on writing literary criticism -- to reflect on how, say, Philip Larkin's 1949 sonnet, "Neurotics" is so shockingly out of step with our times, and how much more strongly an impression it makes because of it:
The mind, it's said, is free:
But not your minds. They, rusted stiff, admit
Only what will accuse or horrify,
Like slot-machines only bent pennies fit.
What could be more gratingly arrogant than a healthy person upbraiding his sick neighbors?
Pink Moon
General | Posted 2 years agoA seemingly straightforward question posed by a friend in my previous journal -- how the word "novel" came into common usage to denote a literary form -- turns out to be pretty damn difficult to answer. Throughout the seventeenth century, authors and publishers used the words "novel," "history," and "romance" interchangeably, as a way of denoting the imaginative prose narratives that were being avidly consumed by the English-speaking world's growing middle class. It wasn't until the mid-18th century that "novel" came to be the commonly accepted term for a lengthy work of prose fiction, but that appears to have been a process slowly consolidated by convenience and marketing, much like the term "rock 'n roll."
Now I happen to like "imaginative prose narratives." Authors are free to do their best at whatever it is they've set out to accomplish, that usually being to sell more copies of their own books. All that matters is whether a given work of fiction succeeds or fails on its own terms, whatever those may be. (Cf. Aphra Behn's Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister (3 volumes, 1684 - 87) -- some things never change.)
Time is not kind to most authors: Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist John P. Marquand is no longer read, Nobel Prize winner Rudyard Kipling is no longer respected, and is anyone today even aware that Arnold Bennett existed? You can't write for the future: you can only put whatever you already have into whatever it is you're doing now.
Now I happen to like "imaginative prose narratives." Authors are free to do their best at whatever it is they've set out to accomplish, that usually being to sell more copies of their own books. All that matters is whether a given work of fiction succeeds or fails on its own terms, whatever those may be. (Cf. Aphra Behn's Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister (3 volumes, 1684 - 87) -- some things never change.)
Time is not kind to most authors: Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist John P. Marquand is no longer read, Nobel Prize winner Rudyard Kipling is no longer respected, and is anyone today even aware that Arnold Bennett existed? You can't write for the future: you can only put whatever you already have into whatever it is you're doing now.
What You Don't Already Know
General | Posted 2 years agoI'm not a book lover. "Book lover" sounds kind of sad to me, like someone more concerned with how impressive their first editions and leatherbound crossword puzzle dictionaries look on their shelves rather than, you know, reading the damn things. My weakness is that I'll read pretty much anything, as long as it doesn't bore me -- and I'm easily bored.
John Sutherland's Lives of the Novelists (2011), an 800+ page doorstop of a reference book, is a tome I love dipping into at random. It's full of rollicking mini-biographies of the great, the good, and the just plain lousy among fiction writers, but since Sutherland limits himself to English-language authors, there's nothing on the vast corpus of (translated) literatures from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. (Africa's literary tradition begins, and hardly ends, with St. Augustine -- but I'm still looking at a very short list of notable names.)
Well, I may not have the global literature reference book I want, but I do have the NYRB Classics imprint. Under the auspices of the New York Review of Books, which I was geeky enough to read in the public library as a teenager, it's an ongoing series of inexpensive paperback reissues of "buried" books -- long overlooked fiction and nonfiction classics, many of them in lively new English translations. I was delighted to find some old favorites of mine among the series' 500-and-counting titles: Sanford Friedman's groundbreaking, gay coming-of-age novel, Totempole (1965); J. R. Ackerley's bittersweet romance We Think the World of You (1960), about an awkward love triangle between two men and a dog; David Jones's In Parenthesis (1937), a harrowing, book-length prose poem about a Welsh Everyman, a young soldier whose long journey from the end of basic training to the horrific attack on Mametz Wood in the battle of the Somme (July 1916) takes in the whole of Welsh history and mythology.
NYRB Classics offers an exciting range of lesser-known lit, from brief works like Adelbert Stifter's Christmas folktale, Rock Crystal (1845), philosopher Simone Weil's polemic On the Abolition of All Political Parties (1943, published 1950), and painter Leonora Carrington's memoir of madness, Down Below (1944) to such epic-length novels as Bolesław Prus's The Doll (1890), Heimito von Doderer's The Strudlhof Steps (1951), and William Gaddis's The Recognitions (1955).
What a relief it is to have easy access to a world of writing beyond what I already know! The point is to get outside of my own head -- not usually a nice place to be -- and to bring back something new, something to illuminate a point of view I hadn't understood previously. Literature is a series of doors, or maybe landmines. Okay, both.
John Sutherland's Lives of the Novelists (2011), an 800+ page doorstop of a reference book, is a tome I love dipping into at random. It's full of rollicking mini-biographies of the great, the good, and the just plain lousy among fiction writers, but since Sutherland limits himself to English-language authors, there's nothing on the vast corpus of (translated) literatures from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. (Africa's literary tradition begins, and hardly ends, with St. Augustine -- but I'm still looking at a very short list of notable names.)
Well, I may not have the global literature reference book I want, but I do have the NYRB Classics imprint. Under the auspices of the New York Review of Books, which I was geeky enough to read in the public library as a teenager, it's an ongoing series of inexpensive paperback reissues of "buried" books -- long overlooked fiction and nonfiction classics, many of them in lively new English translations. I was delighted to find some old favorites of mine among the series' 500-and-counting titles: Sanford Friedman's groundbreaking, gay coming-of-age novel, Totempole (1965); J. R. Ackerley's bittersweet romance We Think the World of You (1960), about an awkward love triangle between two men and a dog; David Jones's In Parenthesis (1937), a harrowing, book-length prose poem about a Welsh Everyman, a young soldier whose long journey from the end of basic training to the horrific attack on Mametz Wood in the battle of the Somme (July 1916) takes in the whole of Welsh history and mythology.
NYRB Classics offers an exciting range of lesser-known lit, from brief works like Adelbert Stifter's Christmas folktale, Rock Crystal (1845), philosopher Simone Weil's polemic On the Abolition of All Political Parties (1943, published 1950), and painter Leonora Carrington's memoir of madness, Down Below (1944) to such epic-length novels as Bolesław Prus's The Doll (1890), Heimito von Doderer's The Strudlhof Steps (1951), and William Gaddis's The Recognitions (1955).
What a relief it is to have easy access to a world of writing beyond what I already know! The point is to get outside of my own head -- not usually a nice place to be -- and to bring back something new, something to illuminate a point of view I hadn't understood previously. Literature is a series of doors, or maybe landmines. Okay, both.
TMI
General | Posted 2 years agoOn the curious idea that reading books about "people like myself" would entice me to read more books: when I read Beckett and Dostoevsky as a student, I did see myself, and that was quite enough of that, thank you.
***
Never quite sure what to do with a copy of perennial bestseller The Art of Seduction (AKA "How to Be an Online Creep") when it comes into the shop: throw it in the trash, mark it down for a quick sale, or put a premium price on it because someone will gladly pay it?
***
I used to work at a tourist-destination bookshop that would attract an unusually high number of creepy young men AND creepy old men who'd come there to hang around, hitting on women. The staff went out of their way to make these guys feel unwelcome, and they never seemed to understand why. Is there anything sadder than a grown man who doesn't realize that he's turned into Pepé Le Pew?
***
I recently thought about the man who seduced me when I was just coming out, and I suddenly remembered that there wasn't a single book in his tastefully decorated San Francisco apartment. Not that I noticed at the time.
***
Separate the art from the artist -- easier said than done. Fascist mouthpiece and wartime traitor Ezra Pound still wrote excellent poetry in a U.S. Army prison; British fascist Henry Williamson still gave us the indelible nature novel Tarka the Otter. Yet I can't bring myself to re-read any of Woody Allen's prose or re-watch any of his movies. That's just asking too much, too soon.
***
Never quite sure what to do with a copy of perennial bestseller The Art of Seduction (AKA "How to Be an Online Creep") when it comes into the shop: throw it in the trash, mark it down for a quick sale, or put a premium price on it because someone will gladly pay it?
***
I used to work at a tourist-destination bookshop that would attract an unusually high number of creepy young men AND creepy old men who'd come there to hang around, hitting on women. The staff went out of their way to make these guys feel unwelcome, and they never seemed to understand why. Is there anything sadder than a grown man who doesn't realize that he's turned into Pepé Le Pew?
***
I recently thought about the man who seduced me when I was just coming out, and I suddenly remembered that there wasn't a single book in his tastefully decorated San Francisco apartment. Not that I noticed at the time.
***
Separate the art from the artist -- easier said than done. Fascist mouthpiece and wartime traitor Ezra Pound still wrote excellent poetry in a U.S. Army prison; British fascist Henry Williamson still gave us the indelible nature novel Tarka the Otter. Yet I can't bring myself to re-read any of Woody Allen's prose or re-watch any of his movies. That's just asking too much, too soon.
The Cold Open
General | Posted 2 years ago"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."
Wow. The famous opening line of L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between is a reminder that not all novelists get to craft an epigraph for the ages on page one. Many openings are just scene setting (important, but not necessarily exciting), or literary throat-clearing, or sometimes the palaver of an author desperately in search of a direction to go in. What pulls a reader into the story? How do you grab their attention from the start and keep them engaged?
"In the middle of the 16th century there lived on the banks of the Havel a horse-dealer by the name of Michael Kohlhaas, son of a schoolmaster, at once one of the most righteous and appalling individuals of his time. Until his thirtieth year, this unusual man would have been accounted the very model of a good citizen. In the village that still bears his name, he owned a farm that provided him with a comfortable living; the children his wife gave him he brought up in the fear of God, to be hard-working and loyal; there was not one among his neighbors who hadn't benefited from his charity and his fair dealing; in sum, the world would have blessed his memory, if he hadn't followed one of his virtues to excess. His sense of justice led him to robbery and murder."
Now there's an author that knows exactly where they're going, and invites us along on what's clearly going to be a bumpy ride. A thrilling ride to a tragic ending.
"One of the most appalling spectacles that exists is undoubtedly the general appearance of the Parisian population, a people horrible to see, gaunt, sallow, weather-beaten. Isn't Paris a vast field constantly whirled around by a hurricane of vested interests beneath which a monsoon of humans swirls about, whom death reaps more frequently than it does elsewhere? And aren't these humans always reborn just as tense as before, their faces contorted and twisted, divulging from every pore the thoughts, desires, and poisons their brains are obsessed with?"
Only a Parisian could hate Paris that much. There's something incantatory about that litany of the grotesque, a voice at once hysterical, mesmerizing, and strangely intimate.
"The manager said to me: 'I keep you only out of respect for your esteemed father, otherwise I'd have sent you flying long ago.' I answered him: 'You flatter me too much, Your Excellency, in supposing I can fly.' And then I heard him say: 'Take the gentleman away, he's bad for my nerves.'
"Two days later I was dismissed. And so, in all the time I've been considered an adult, to the great chagrin of my father, the town architect, I have changed jobs nine times. I worked in various departments, but all these nine jobs were as alike as drops of water; I had to sit, write, listen to stupid or rude remarks, and wait until they dismissed me."
In bookstores, there's nothing more depressing than the humor section because not many writers can manage a comic tone of voice like this -- never trying to force a laugh, but respecting the reader enough to let the laughs arise from the narrator's deadpan, matter-of-fact descriptions of events. An author trusting that their eye for detail will find the comical in everyday events -- the sign of a master at work.
Wow. The famous opening line of L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between is a reminder that not all novelists get to craft an epigraph for the ages on page one. Many openings are just scene setting (important, but not necessarily exciting), or literary throat-clearing, or sometimes the palaver of an author desperately in search of a direction to go in. What pulls a reader into the story? How do you grab their attention from the start and keep them engaged?
"In the middle of the 16th century there lived on the banks of the Havel a horse-dealer by the name of Michael Kohlhaas, son of a schoolmaster, at once one of the most righteous and appalling individuals of his time. Until his thirtieth year, this unusual man would have been accounted the very model of a good citizen. In the village that still bears his name, he owned a farm that provided him with a comfortable living; the children his wife gave him he brought up in the fear of God, to be hard-working and loyal; there was not one among his neighbors who hadn't benefited from his charity and his fair dealing; in sum, the world would have blessed his memory, if he hadn't followed one of his virtues to excess. His sense of justice led him to robbery and murder."
Now there's an author that knows exactly where they're going, and invites us along on what's clearly going to be a bumpy ride. A thrilling ride to a tragic ending.
"One of the most appalling spectacles that exists is undoubtedly the general appearance of the Parisian population, a people horrible to see, gaunt, sallow, weather-beaten. Isn't Paris a vast field constantly whirled around by a hurricane of vested interests beneath which a monsoon of humans swirls about, whom death reaps more frequently than it does elsewhere? And aren't these humans always reborn just as tense as before, their faces contorted and twisted, divulging from every pore the thoughts, desires, and poisons their brains are obsessed with?"
Only a Parisian could hate Paris that much. There's something incantatory about that litany of the grotesque, a voice at once hysterical, mesmerizing, and strangely intimate.
"The manager said to me: 'I keep you only out of respect for your esteemed father, otherwise I'd have sent you flying long ago.' I answered him: 'You flatter me too much, Your Excellency, in supposing I can fly.' And then I heard him say: 'Take the gentleman away, he's bad for my nerves.'
"Two days later I was dismissed. And so, in all the time I've been considered an adult, to the great chagrin of my father, the town architect, I have changed jobs nine times. I worked in various departments, but all these nine jobs were as alike as drops of water; I had to sit, write, listen to stupid or rude remarks, and wait until they dismissed me."
In bookstores, there's nothing more depressing than the humor section because not many writers can manage a comic tone of voice like this -- never trying to force a laugh, but respecting the reader enough to let the laughs arise from the narrator's deadpan, matter-of-fact descriptions of events. An author trusting that their eye for detail will find the comical in everyday events -- the sign of a master at work.
