Music critic Jim Svejda, writing in 1999:

Although he was speaking about weddings, Goethe said something that clearly applies here: "One should only celebrate a happy ending; celebrations at the outset exhaust the joy and energy needed to urge us forward and sustain us in the long struggle." And if he was correct in adding, "And of all celebrations a wedding is the worst; no day should be kept more quietly and humbly," then what is one to make of celebrating the fact that the world's most vibrant city was returned to the tender care of the people who brought us the Tiananmen Square Massacre? As far as it goes, Tan Dun's Symphony 1997 is colorful and cleverly made and is further enhanced by memorable appearances by Yo-Yo Ma and twenty-four-hundred-year-old ceremonial bells. As one who loves Hong Kong passionately, I'm afraid I can't listen to this admittedly skillful hackwork without an involuntary shudder, wondering what might actually be celebrated a few years from now.

--The Insider's Guide to Classical Recordings, sixth edition, 1999

So, I'm in one of my months-long classical music phases again. Can't help wondering what I might be missing (as a listener, not a player), so I thought I'd reach out to the classical fans here for any recommendations you'd like to share.

Now, my music education is ass backwards: I started out as a lover of serialism and non-tonal music and slowly worked my way backwards to pre-Baroque vocal music. I'm less likely to go for the obvious stuff than for outstanding but underplayed works by the masters (Schumann's dark, dramatic Second Violin Sonata and Stravinsky's capricious Symphonies of Wind Instruments ain't exactly warhorses). Which pieces of classical-type art music are you into these days?

Starting in April 2022, Japan's Tokyo Metropolitan Government will effectively recognize same-sex marriages as legal: quite a departure for a country that prefers the idealized characters of BL and yuri manga to queer people in real life. There as here, the law moves at the speed of the law, inexorably but never fast enough.

Well, that's good news for same-sex couples, but we're all learning that gender and sexuality are very fluid categories. Case in point: a transgender woman and her boyfriend want to get married, but the law says no. That's the situation that writer/artist Chii finds herself in, in The Bride Was a Boy (Seven Seas, 2018), a charming, didactic, autobiographical manga about the author's transition from a confused, closeted young man to a happy, confident woman. The didactic aspect is necessary: most of us, certainly this cis-male reviewer, have no idea what it's like to feel trapped in the wrong gender.

I know there are people who feel trapped in the wrong body -- the body of a human as opposed to, say, the body of an intersex feline, but that isn't real, and nothing is ever going to make it real. Transitioning from male to female or vice versa, though -- that's within our grasp.

When Chii was a schoolboy, the idea of being uncomfortable with your birth-assigned gender was still seen as a mental disorder, and that in itself was just a reflection of an all-pervasive sexism that doesn't quite see women as "people" in the first place. (We still have issues with that, don't we?) The manga is both a love story and a painless introduction to gender studies. I doubt there's anything here that people who've lived their own TG experience don't already know; I'm not even sure that some readers wouldn't finish this book with a feeling of envy. Chii is an extraordinarily lucky individual -- supportive family, smooth medical and legal transition, marriage proposal... Not everyone gets to win the transgender lottery.

https://www.amazon.com/Bride-was-Boy-Chii-ebook/dp/B07BGG2BMC/ref=sr_1_1?crid=34LLMVAAFEF10&keywords=bride+was+a+boy&qid=1642605626&s=books&sprefix=bride+was+a+boy%2Cstripbooks%2C439&sr=1-1

So as I said to my husband the other day, violent, scary crime dramas make me appreciate the holidays more. Still, there are limits. I realized this today while watching TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME (1992), the prequel to the TV series, and grasping, finally, that David Lynch and revered Japanese melodrama director Kenji Mizoguchi (1898 - 1956) have something in common: they're both obsessed with depicting female characters being abused, in every sense, by men.

Is it any wonder that I read romance comics (among other things) when I desperately need to restore my faith in humankind? (I realize that I'm the only person on FA who reads BL manga. Deal with it.) There's something different about RESTART AFTER COMING BACK HOME, story and art by Cocomi (Seven Seas, 2021): it's about the blossoming romance between two guys in their mid twenties, in the rural community they both grew up in. A sensitive gay love story in the Japanese equivalent of Trump country? That's something outside my experience, and the story's open-ended conclusion leaves me wondering, along with its characters, "just how warm and kind this town really is." The understated virtuosity of Cocomi's pen work doesn't hurt: less, in this case, really is more.

BOY MEETS MARIA, story and art by the late manga-ka Peyo (Kousei Eguchi, 1997 - 2020) (Seven Seas, 2021), has something in common with the Cocomi manga: they eschew the standard-issue homosexual panic of much BL manga in favor of characters who accept their same-sex attraction to other characters without freaking out about it. How novel! The fifteen-year-old drama students in this manga have a lot to learn about each other, but that's the point of the story. Warning: a graphic depiction of a sexual assault on a minor is an important plot point, so this particular comic isn't for everyone. It's still easier to take than the Lynch movie I mentioned earlier, even if the movie had an ending that was...not despairing.

https://www.amazon.com/Restart-After-Coming-Back-Home-ebook/dp/B09K9WVKHD/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1638543987&sr=1-1
https://www.amazon.com/Boy-Meets-Maria-Peyo-ebook/dp/B09HX6VJB4/ref=pd_sim_4/147-3421416-2144051?pd_rd_w=evO8D&pf_rd_p=6caf1c3a-a843-4189-8efc-81b67e85dc96&pf_rd_r=1YWS01CE76SQNGXRRCH0&pd_rd_r=06e1bcb9-6b1b-4346-8e92-082883a0fea0&pd_rd_wg=7uLNh&pd_rd_i=B09HX6VJB4&psc=1

https://www.pastemagazine.com/movie.....s-of-all-time/

Paste magazine argues that film noir (a term as difficult to define as pornography) speaks to us in the here and now, in stories frighteningly relevant to our 21st century lives. "Its characters were dirty, displaced, disillusioned, distrustful, just plain dumb. Everyone was running some kind of scam, even the cops -- especially the cops."

The piece goes on to say, "And so noir cast its misfits...into a seductive, violent postwar labyrinth, in which the terror was internal and external. Fear of the next world conflict, fear of each other, fear of never getting back to a pure time, the fear in realizing there never really was one."

You'll have to follow the link to read Paste's witty summaries of these movies, which explain why they're on this list in the first place. And like all such lists, this is a good starting point, not a canon.

100. Angel Heart (Alan Parker, 1987)
99. Hard Eight (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1996)
98. A Simple Plan (Sam Raimi, 1998)
97. Croupier (Mike Hodges, 1998)
96. After Dark, My Sweet (James Foley, 1990)
95. Angel Face (Otto Preminger, 1953)
94. The Grifters (Stephen Frears, 1990)
93. The Naked City (Jules Dassin, 1948)
92. State of Grace (Phil Joanou, 1990)
91. Devil in a Blue Dress (Carl Franklin, 1995)
90. Kiss of Death (Henry Hathaway, 1947)
89. The Usual Suspects (Bryan Singer, 1995)
88. Black Widow (Bob Rafelson, 1987)
87. Dark City (Alex Proyas, 1998)
86. Gaslight (George Cukor, 1944)
85. Obsession (Edward Dmytryk, 1949)
84. Se7en (David Fincher, 1995)
83. Tension (John Berry, 1949)
82. King of New York (Abel Ferrara, 1990)
81. Oldboy (Park Chan-wook, 2003)
80. Bound (Lilly & Lana Wachowski, 1996)
79. The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston, 1950)
78. Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011)
77. The Prowler (Joseph Losey, 1951)
76. Lady in the Lake (Robert Montgomery, 1947)
75. Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000)
74. D.O.A. (Rudolf Maté, 1950)
73. Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945)
72. Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007)
71. Key Largo (John Huston, 1948)
70. The Sound of Fury (aka Try and Get Me!) (Cy Enfield, 1950)
69. Brick (Rian Johnson, 2005)
68. Force of Evil (Abraham Polonsky, 1948)
67. Angels with Dirty Faces (Michael Curtiz, 1938)
66. T-Men (Anthony Mann, 1947)
65. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Shane Black, 2005)
64. Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957)
63. Fargo (Joel & Ethan Coen, 1996)
62. The Limey (Steven Soderbergh, 1999)
61. Red Rock West (John Dahl, 1993)
60. The Verdict (Don Siegel, 1946)
59. Shoot the Piano Player (François Truffaut, 1960)
58. Gun Crazy (Joseph H. Lewis, 1950)
57. Sexy Beast (Jonathan Glazer, 2000)
56. Clash by Night (Fritz Lang, 1952)
55. The Last Seduction (John Dahl, 1994)
54. Miller's Crossing (Joel & Ethan Coen, 1990)
53. Le Doulos (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1962)
52. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)
51. The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973)
50. Le Samouraï (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)
49. One False Move (Carl Franklin, 1992)
48. Journey Into Fear (Orson Welles & Norman Foster, 1943)
47. Sorry, Wrong Number (Anatole Litvak, 1948)
46. The Blue Dahlia (George Marshall, 1946)
45. The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (Lewis Milestone, 1946)
44. Body Heat (Lawrence Kasdan, 1981)
43. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
42. The Hitch-Hiker (Ida Lupino, 1953)
41. White Heat (Raoul Walsh, 1949)
40. Pickup on South Street (Samuel Fuller, 1953)
39. Odd Man Out (Carol Reed, 1947)
38. L.A. Confidential (Curtis Hanson, 1997)
37. Blood Simple (Joel & Ethan Coen, 1984)
36. Nightmare Alley (Edmund Goulding, 1947)
35. Murder, My Sweet (Edward Dmytryk, 1944)
34. Night Moves (Arthur Penn, 1975)
33. Crime Wave (André de Toth, 1954)
32. Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak, 1949)
31. Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986)
30. The Set-Up (Robert Wise, 1949)
29. Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)
28. Night and the City (Jules Dassin, 1950)
27. Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945)
26. The Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett, 1946)
25. The Wrong Man (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956)
24. The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953)
23. The Killing (Stanley Kubrick, 1956)
22. In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950)
21. Drunken Angel (Akira Kurosawa, 1948)
20. The Lady From Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947)
19. The Killers (Robert Siodmak, 1946)
18. Thieves' Highway (Jules Dassin, 1949)
17. Raw Deal (Anthony Mann, 1948)
16. They Live by Night (Nicholas Ray, 1948)
15. Ace in the Hole (Billy Wilder, 1951)
14. Elevator to the Gallows (Louis Malle, 1958)
13. Gilda (Charles Vidor, 1946)
12. The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)
11. The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941)
10. Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950)
9. Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944)
8. Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955)
7. Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947)
6. The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949)
5. Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958)
4. Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
3. Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944)
2. The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946)
1. The Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang, 1944)

I don't have much use for caricatures of religious people, despite my lack of religious faith. Caricatures are too predictable and dismissive of a very complex aspect of human behavior. Take, for example, the Cistercian monks, who cut back on the praying and spent more time working the land (hard work is good for the soul) -- work that they did more efficiently, thanks to the water-powered technology of mass production that they rescued from the general chaos of the Dark Ages. If not for the Cistercians (who became wealthy producing enough meat and wool to sell to the rest of Europe), that technology would've been lost in the confusion following the collapse of the Roman empire.

(And why did the Roman empire fall? Because its citizens were being taxed beyond endurance to pay for the wars their armies kept losing. Better the barbarian invaders than the Roman tax collectors.)

So yeah, I don't wanna bad mouth religious folks. That being said...

Why are headlines still being grabbed by Jesus freak parents who think middle school libraries are full of gay pornography?

This one's a keeper. THAT BLUE SKY FEELING is a BL manga that isn't about romance, but about the agonies of adolescent confusion, wrapping up its story in just three volumes, and all the more powerful for it. Kou's a closeted gay kid, Dai's a boy who thinks of himself as straight, but perhaps "asexual" would be a more accurate descriptor. No wonder they don't want to put a label on what they have together.

Okura's sensitive script and Coma Hashii's drawings (elegant in their simplicity) work together creating characters so likeable I wish their story would continue, for all the perfection of the ending (and yes, for the sake of the story I'm willing to accept the age difference between Kou and his adult ex-boyfriend).

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07XVRC896?notRedirectToSDP=1&ref_=dbs_mng_calw_2&storeType=ebooks
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07NXYB89K?notRedirectToSDP=1&ref_=dbs_mng_calw_1&storeType=ebooks
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07G2RTJRZ?notRedirectToSDP=1&ref_=dbs_mng_calw_0&storeType=ebooks

Ever fallen -- I mean really fallen -- for someone totally out of your league? If so, you'll understand the achingly funny appeal of GO FOR IT, NAKAMURA!, a one-off manga written and drawn by Syundei (Seven Seas, 2018). Maybe you were never like Nakamura -- a closeted, socially inept gay teenager who finds it easier to talk to his pet octopus than to other people -- but it's easy to sympathize with him, seeing him obsessed with a cute boy in his class. Hirose is outgoing, athletic, popular, and barely aware that Nakamura exists, and for all the confident smooth talk in the timid Nakamura's imagination, his pathetic RL attempts to get close to Hirose invariably end in public humiliation.

Maybe this is one of those comics best appreciated by those who've been there, but who hasn't been there? The author never even bothers to inform us what Hirose's sexual orientation is, not that it matters. This manga isn't about romance, it's about the fact that even a loser like Nakamura doesn't have to be alone. Love and friendship are wherever you make room for them to grow. Don't let me downplay Syundei's drawings: they are hilarious.

When I say that Natsuki Kizu's GIVEN, VOL. 1 (SuBLime, 2020) is pure soap opera, I'm not putting it down -- giving readers what they've seen several dozen times over is the lifesblood of comics, after all. Here, it's the drama that arises when a student rock trio is disrupted by the arrival of an otherworldly vocalist who captures the heart of the group's hotheaded guitarist, but it's the style of the storytelling that's everything, from Kizu's masterly pen work to her artfully naturalistic dialogue to the double page spreads where some amazing music is being played and sung in the reader's imagination. It's as if this manga was conceived and executed as the script and storyboards for an anime series, right down to the fanservice shots of guitarist Uenoyama's clothing-averse older sister. In fact, GIVEN has already been adapted into an anime, which I look forward to seeing (and hearing) someday. But again, a good series doesn't have to be original; it can follow its well-worn serial path to the point of predictability if it's done with stylishness, and stylishness is what GIVEN has in spades.

Nagisa Furuya's MY SUMMER OF YOU, VOL. 1 (Kodansha Comics, 2021) is the slow-burning story of two boys who are so into movies that they agree to go on a pilgrimage to three (fictional) film sites. Wataru is surprised, but not distressed, to learn that Saeki, the hottest guy in class, is (inexplicably) into him as well, but as long as it's agreed they're just friends, there's no problem, right?

Yeah, right. This story takes its time to get to where we know it's going, but that's okay with me. A crucial scene on page 80 has our two leads in the briefest of exchanges:

"This is plenty for me, anyway."
"Yeah."

They're talking about a meal in a restaurant, and about so much more than that. It's like poetry. It's moments like this that make an overcalculated soap opera like GIVEN feel like it's trying too hard. I like the artwork, too: Furuya's panels are attractive, efficient, and carefully detailed when necessary. It's easy to linger over them.

https://www.amazon.com/Go-Nakamura-Syundei/dp/1626928878/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1NKHY2C71HXF5&dchild=1&keywords=go+for+it+nakamura&qid=1635369937&qsid=147-3421416-2144051&s=books&sprefix=go+for+%2Cstripbooks%2C104&sr=1-1&sres=1626928878%2CB092H92QY4%2C164275756X%2C1975324358%2C1642750603%2C1632367041%2C1974715876%2C1642753289%2C1944937307%2C1645051986%2C1947215469%2C197471182X%2C1421523213%2C1645058581%2CB09H362ZRR%2C1626928886&srpt=ABIS_BOOK

https://www.amazon.com/Given-Vol-1-Yaoi-Manga-ebook/dp/B0849K81JH/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1635369992&sr=1-1

https://www.amazon.com/Summer-You-My-Vol/dp/1646512049/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1QT7DYFRJW0P8&dchild=1&keywords=my+summer+of+you&qid=1635370049&qsid=147-3421416-2144051&s=books&sprefix=my+summer%2Cstripbooks%2C100&sr=1-1&sres=1646512049%2C1646512448%2CB09F8T6VQT%2C1645059588%2CB09K1TWQHD%2C0517885565%2C1732596379%2CB09K1TTXDB%2C1982129476%2CB09K281X4Y%2CB09JVM2YL3%2C0241470714%2C9388369882%2CB094FHXTRD%2CB00L1PXKU0%2CB08FKLS6X7&srpt=ABIS_BOOK

TOM ADAMS UNCOVERED: THE ART OF AGATHA CHRISTIE AND BEYOND (Harper Collins, 2016)
https://www.amazon.com/Tom-Adams-Uncovered-Agatha-Christie/dp/0008165351/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3C0GUGQ3D6HYC&dchild=1&keywords=tom+adams&qid=1634833004&qsid=147-3421416-2144051&s=books&sr=1-1&sres=0008165351%2C1779512031%2CB09JJHRWPC%2C1984878107%2C0983437009%2C1530856973%2C1599559374%2CB09J44X66W%2C1848774559%2C1534485155%2CB08HJNQC26%2C0470481226%2C0520292111%2C0981834426%2C1939714176%2C1483606945&srpt=ABIS_BOOK
AGATHA CHRISTIE: THE ART OF HER CRIMES (Everest House, 1981)
https://www.amazon.com/Agatha-Christie-Art-Her-Crimes/dp/0896961443/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=agatha+christie+the+art+of+her+crimes&qid=1634833170&qsid=147-3421416-2144051&s=books&sr=1-3&sres=0896961443%2C1605989096%2C0008296618%2C0062073559%2C125030170X%2C0062073486%2C006207413X%2C0008158614%2CB000FC146M%2C1250304458%2C006207380X%2C0062073850%2C1681776537%2CB007OV600W%2C0141392738%2C1542020190

The '60s and '70s were the golden age of the mass market paperback, the last era in which illustrators working in traditional media could paint book covers for a mass, as opposed to a specialty, audience. Long before Poirot and Jane Marple became television stars, Tom Adams (1926 - 2019), the definitive Agatha Christie illustrator, interpreted Christie's world of pre-WW2 English villages, where members of the upper crust bumped each other off with antique daggers and such, to evoke the seething, violent impulses and moral decay beneath the genteel surface. His images combined trompe l'oeil realism, out and out surrealism, and macabre wit with frequent depictions of characters so self-isolated, so unable to connect that they can barely look at one another: Magritte and John Peto meet Bergman and Antonioni. (The covers were usually more riveting than anything in Christie's books, but you could say the same about Frazetta and Edgar Rice Burroughs, or James Bama and Doc Savage.)

TOM ADAMS UNCOVERED (2016), the indispensable companion volume to AGATHA CHRISTIE: THE ART OF HER CRIMES (1981), gives us a wider-ranging view of Adams's life's work: his non-Christie paperback covers (including five -- only five? -- of his marvelous Raymond Chandler covers), portraits and abstract paintings, book illustrations, album covers, advertising art, and a selection of pop art posters (with hilariously dated hippie-era poetry) for the Fulham Gallery. The Christie covers, of course, get the lion's share of the later book, and it's worth comparing the overlap between volumes -- some images are less cropped, but the colors are darker (or lighter) than in the earlier book. Some paintings (AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, CAT AMONG THE PIGEONS, THE CLOCKS, MURDER IN MESOPOTAMIA, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, WHY DIDN'T THEY ASK EVANS?) appear in only one volume or the other. And some Christie covers aren't in either volume, because they were painted by Ian Robertson, a colleague who was paid to mimic Adams's style.

The mass market paperback was a trade-off: cheap and available in every five-and-dime store, adorned with lurid cover paintings, but with that small print so hard on aging eyes...Today's trade paperbacks make for larger, easier reading, but with ho-hum Photoshopped covers, or worse, gimmicks (Remember that early 2000s fad for die-cut paperback covers, an idea so dumb only a design school graduate could've thought of it?). Looking at Tom Adams's cover gallery makes me feel something dangerously close to nostalgia. Gotta watch that.

It won't do to criticize genre fiction for being formulaic -- even symphonies, not to mention Shakespeare comedies, can be formulaic -- better to ask, what's so different about this version of a story we've seen before?

New BL manga (which I wish had been available to me when I was growing up queer) keep crossing my desk, including the stunning SEASIDE STRANGER, Vol. 1 (Seven Seas, 2021), story and art by Kii Kanna. Rich kid Shun, disowned by his parents after coming out to them on his wedding day, is exiled to a rural island where he lives with his aunt, and where he meets gloomy high school kid Mio. There's a spark between them, but Mio abruptly leaves the island, returning three years later as an adult. Can the boys pick up where they left off?

It's the usual slow dance of misunderstandings, our couple hesitant to believe they're really worthy of one another, but with dialogue as richly nuanced as Kii's drawings: so seemingly simple, yet gorgeously detailed in her depiction of clothing, architecture, landscape, and native flora. Kii is an artist with an eye on which nothing is lost: she can make even a character's sandaled feet convey emotion by devoting a panel to them. If the story veers into melodrama with the arrival of Shun's ex-fiancée, so what? It's nuanced melodrama, and I appreciate that.

Now, back to Earth. Kyohei Azumi's KATAKOI LAMP (Tokyo Pop, 2021) is by-the-numbers BL: café manager Kazuto is smitten with cute college student Jun, but just when he thinks he has a chance with the boy, Jun confides that he's interested in someone else. How awkward! The plot turns into a roundelay of four frustrated lovers, each pining after someone they can't have, but isn't resolved organically: it feels rushed to half a conclusion, providing the obligatory happy ending, but to only one couple. Kind of a dick move on the author's part. The art is functional, conveying information without unnecessary detail (and with minimal visual interest).

Both KATAKOI LAMP and SEASIDE STRANGER include brief but explicit sex scenes (the one in SEASIDE STRANGER has all the charming awkwardness of RL sex). No such concern with THAT BLUE SKY FEELING, Vol. 1 (Viz Media, 2018), which takes us back to high school, where popular jock Noshiro can't stop thinking about his standoffish gay classmate Sanada. His attempts to make friends with the guy aren't going anywhere, 'til they take Noshiro to an emotional space in which he never expected to find himself. The manga's a reboot of a 2009 - 2012 webcomic by Okura, redrawn (with an elegance in its simplicity) by Coma Hashii. The story's not about erotic love, but about the agonies of adolescent confusion, and how kids deal with the reality that you don't get to choose who you're attracted to. Whether they like you back is another matter.

https://www.amazon.com/Seaside-Stranger-Vol-Umibe-Etranger/dp/1648275842/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2PZGZGJBSCSOM&dchild=1&keywords=seaside+stranger+manga&qid=1634363206&s=books&sr=1-3

https://www.amazon.com/Katakoi-Lamp-Kyohei-Azumi/dp/1427867542/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3EMX7PC2V6EBU&dchild=1&keywords=katakoi+lamp+manga&qid=1634363253&s=books&sr=1-1

https://www.amazon.com/That-Blue-Sky-Feeling-Vol/dp/1974701603/ref=sr_1_2?crid=C5OGJTPGU9S4&dchild=1&keywords=that+blue+sky+feeling&qid=1634363287&s=books&sr=1-2

"Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story," the novella, at 40 to 100 or so pages, is literature's red-headed stepchild. Of course, some of us find the length just right. (That's what he said.) You can read one in just an hour or two.

THE NOSE (1836) -- Nikolai Gogol's satirical fantasy about a pompous minor official whose nose detaches itself from his face, and goes on to attain a higher government post than its owner is as grimly hilarious now as it was almost 200 years ago. There's no hero: Gogol's universe of fools, drunks, the selfish, the corrupt, and the smugly indifferent has room for everyone -- and as for the fantastic elements, why try to explain the inexplicable? Generations of writers to follow, including Kafka, were paying attention.

THE HORLA (final version, 1887) -- Guy de Maupassant's tale of a respectable gentleman whose paranoia drives him to an act of criminal insanity was published just a few years before its author was committed to a mental hospital. How do you fight an invisible, malevolent entity that's out to get you? The story, a terrifying portrait of mental illness that makes Poe look laughable, has lost none of its impact.

THE LIFTED VEIL (1859) -- The relentlessly high-minded George Eliot writes an out-and-out weird tale featuring telepathy, clairvoyance, and a (briefly) reanimated, talking corpse, and even the author's usual turgid, airless style can't keep us from turning the pages. The narrator, of course, can't do anything but sit on his ass feeling elaborately sorry for himself, but what would you do if you foresaw the exact hour and manner of your own death?

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING (1888) -- Some things never change. Rudyard Kipling gives us two hand-to-mouth Cockney adventurers who, through guile and force, make themselves rulers in Afghanistan, only to lose it all when one of them overplays his hand. There's no denying the story's imperialist assumptions and casual racism, just as there's no denying Kipling's live wire prose style, deadpan wit, and acute understanding of human nature, either.

https://www.amazon.com/Nose-Art-Novella-Nikolai-Gogol-ebook/dp/B00IHMBNQ8/ref=sr_1_12?dchild=1&keywords=nose+gogol&qid=1631806072&s=books&sr=1-12

https://www.amazon.com/Horla-Art-Novella-Guy-Maupassant-ebook/dp/B009BVHZIO/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=melville+house+maupassant&qid=1631806249&s=books&sr=1-1

https://www.amazon.com/Lifted-Veil-Art-Novella/dp/0976658305/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=lifted+veil+eliot+melville+house&qid=1631806344&s=books&sr=1-3

https://www.amazon.com/Man-Would-King-Novella-Book-ebook/dp/B004ZZLP00/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=man+who+would+be+king+melville+house&qid=1631806487&s=books&sr=1-4

Every so often, when it becomes all too easy to feel smug about what I think I know -- when I start to imagine, say, Larry the Cable Guy as the monster in some Stephen King story, his backwoods cabin/torture chamber/abattoir full of the remains of his latest victims -- then I know it's been way too long since I last read a good novel. So I've finally pulled Tom Carson's GILLIGAN'S WAKE (Picador, 2003, 0-312-31114-1) from one of the stacks on the floor, and spent a rather enjoyable week reading it.

As you suspected from the title, it's a very American riff on FINNEGANS WAKE: seven sly, punning monologues by a familiar cast of characters, recounting the parts they played in the unfolding of the American Century. Here, the Skipper commanded a PT boat in the South Pacific, where he met a young naval officer named Jack Kennedy; the Millionaire, born to a life of privileged cluelessness, helped Communist sympathizer Alger Hiss to become a Washington insider; his wife, the Heiress, hung out with Daisy Buchanan, discovering narcotics and lesbianism in the roaring '20s.

The Actress -- arguably the smartest of the group -- posed for fetish photos with Bettie Page, and went on to a B-movie "career" before winding up on an insipid TV sitcom; the Professor was quietly instrumental in creating the CIA and the NSA before going to work for political fixer Roy Cohn; an exchange student named Mary-Ann Kilroy comes back from a memorable summer in Paris to learn that she's anything but a typical girl from small-town Kansas. And a San Francisco beatnik poet named Maynard G. Krebs wakes up in the Mayo Clinic with a new name and a small hat, stumbling through all the other characters' stories in various, unfailingly awkward, guises. (Another recurring character is Richard Nixon, who clearly occupies the lowest circle in Tom Carson's Hell.)

Giving us a kaleidoscopic tour of 20th century American history, politics, art, literature, and pop culture, the novel has a grand old time lobbing its endless in-jokes at the reader, just for the fun of keeping us on our toes. The sub-Joycean wordplay, at its most freewheeling in the Krebs/Gilligan chapter, indulges our fancy on how Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot might've shared an issue of TV Guide:

"The elevator at the end of the hall was the size of a phone booth, but must have been capacious for all that: "Max. 99" read the sign on its wall. Stepping out, I interrogated a couple of loafers: Who is the third son who walks always beside you? I was still hoping to find Suze, but Vic Morrow and vic morrow and vicmorrow kept me in this petty place from day to day. Rats were patrolling Room 222, gunsmoke made the sea be yesterday, oh Dr. Kildare F. Troop I'm on to you: I know what the Mayo Clinic is..."

Are these seven stranded castaways up to carrying the weight of American ambition, pride, arrogance, and disillusionment? Of course not, but it's still a fun and stimulating read.


https://www.amazon.com/Gilligans-Wake-Novel-Tom-Carson/dp/0312311141/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3GKDJDELF9ZIV&dchild=1&keywords=gilligans+wake&qid=1631594013&s=books&sr=1-1

With all great screen couples -- Powell and Loy, Astaire and Rogers, Bogie and Bacall, Felix and Oscar -- the romantic chemistry is real. "[S]crewball comedy was a wider category than the term itself suggests," writes critic/historian James Harvey. "It names a style less associated with scattiness or derangement than with a paradoxical kind of liberation, with romantic exaltation of a very down-to-earth kind." And that's why I'd like to add one of the great (imaginary) screen couples: Pepé Le Pew and Sylvester J. Pussycat. I see their story as one of a romantic passion that erupts from out of nowhere and can't be contained; it really is about liberation, and that's what movies are for, to take us someplace outside of ourselves. To free us from what we already know. And after The Looney Tunes Show (2011 - 2014), the Bible of Baffy, anything's fair game.

But why Sylvester, invariably part of "Tweety and" (despite appearing in his own solo films until 1947)? Tweety debuted in 1942, but by the mid-'fifties the grinning, grotesque, homicidal pixie of the Robert Clampett years was gone, replaced by a terminally cute, gender-ambiguous wiseguy. There was a clear division of labor: Tweety got the wisecracks, Sylvester got the pratfalls. It worked.

Look at Virgil Ross's model sheet for Sylvester, introduced in 1945 (a proto-Sylvester from 1939 looks nothing like him): he's 50% housecat, 50% circus clown, and one can't dominate the other. He looks and talks like a buffoon, but moves with feline grace, and it's a catlike leap from there to Sylvester's most obvious influence, Charlie Chaplin. (Sylvester's legs are shorter than the rest of his body, a nod to the Little Tramp's baggy-pants appearance.)

Then there's his emotional range: think of THE SCARLET PUMPERNICKLE, a swashbuckling Errol Flynn takeoff with Sylvester playing a Basil Rathbone villain; THE LAST HUNGRY CAT, with a guilt-ridden Sylvester on the verge of suicide, and his tormented "birdaholic" in BIRDS ANONYMOUS. That's one versatile pussycat!

You remember that in Pepé's 1945 debut, he had amorous designs on a male cat? Well, this would bring him full circle. I love the idea of a romantic comedy in which he and Sylvester realize they're meant for each other, not to mention that this would be the simplest and most effective way of "uncanceling" Pepé -- reinvent him as a gay icon. The cartoon poster boy for #MeToo loses his heart to a rude, slovenly (but emotionally vulnerable) male cat trapped in a sadomasochistic relationship with a canary (and isn't Scooby-Doo Mystery Inc's Professor Pericles really Tweety gone over to the dark side?). It's how we wished life worked, and that's reason enough to celebrate Pevester.

I was seized with an urge to draw Rule 34 stuff featuring Buster Bunny. He's easy to draw: I had his facial expressions down in no time, but then my troubles began. I couldn't draw him on model with what I had in mind; I'd have to make him look legal, and if that's the case, why bother? I'm better off drawing my own characters.

So, by restricting my ability to publicly display my pervier impulses, FA has forced me to be a little more original, a little more creative (for a pornographer). It's like philosopher Jon Elster's "constraint theory" in that FA's imposed constraints on my freedom to post whatever I want turns out to be a benefit to me. Rather than putting my time and effort into fantasies about a corporate-owned trademark in the form of a fictional adolescent boy (one more reason why I'm not qualified to watch your kids), I can put the same time and effort into my own creations. Which is, honestly, more satisfying.

Done a bunch of sketches lately, some of 'em already being worked up into real drawings. I hope our old scanner still works. (Yeah, I still draw on paper. I know, I know.)

Meanwhile, over at DC Comics, Robin is dating another guy.

It's about time. Well, okay, maybe a decade or two or three too late for me, but still. It's good to have pop culture icons acknowledge the reality of their fans' lives now and then. But I'm getting ahead of myself. It's Tim Drake, the third and most introspective of the Robins, who's dating another dude (in the pages of Batman: Urban Legends). If, unlike me, you're not a hopeless superhero geek, you'll need the following cheat sheet:

Robin #1 (Dick Grayson), created in 1940, the original superhero sidekick (and butt of decades of snide jokes); may have peaked while leading the (Teen) Titans as Nightwing (1980 - 1985). Succeeded by...

Robin #2 (Jason Todd), created in 1983, probably guilty of murdering a suspect before being murdered himself in 1988. Brought back to life as a Punisher-type vigilante.

Robin #3 (Tim Drake), created in 1989, probably the sanest and most resourceful of the Robins. Star of the Robin solo comics (1991 - 2009), of which I was a fan.

Robin #4 (Stephanie Brown), daughter of a C-list supervillain, lasted on the job about a month before being murdered. This didn't stop her from being brought back to life as Batgirl (temporarily). Succeeded by...

Robin #5 (Damian Wayne), created in 2006. Bruce Wayne's son, Ra's al-Ghul's grandson, raised by the League of Assassins. What could go wrong?

I'm not the comic book fan I used to be, but hey, I'll take whatever good news I can get.

Finally dug out a stack of unfinished drawings from months ago, and I can see why I left some of 'em unfinished: the poses are boring. (Those ones I erased.)

But how to get to an interesting pose? First of all, forget the photo references: they're good for drawing backgrounds, useless for character poses. What gets you hot? Draw that. And you know your artistic anatomy well enough to know what bodies look like moving in three-dimensional space, right? Cool. (Remember, your significant other is your very own live model, and you can always ask your friends to pose for you.)

Now, what's this pose telling us about the character? What emotion is the pose trying to convey? The first thing the viewer will notice is body language; the facial expression will be a very important gloss on that, but first things first.

Oh right, porn. We wanna draw two (or more) characters fucking like animals in heat, so we're using perspective to solve a problem in projective geometry -- this thing going in there looks like this from that angle -- and we're exaggerating things, because ALL porn is an exaggeration of RL sex. But it's the emotional content that sells the drawn image, so you're drawing (recognizably human but nonhuman) people, not just plumbing diagrams. Briefly, you're drawing "imaginary gardens with real toads in them." Emotion!

See? Drawing furry porn is easy.

"There are many objects or gadgets that promise to deliver excessive pleasure but that effectively reproduce only its absence. The latest fashion is the Stamina Training Unit, a counterpart to the vibrator: a masturbatory device that resembles a battery-powered light (so we're not embarrassed when carrying it around). You put your erect penis into the opening at the top, push the button, and the object vibrates until satisfaction. The product is available in different colors, sizes, and forms (hairy or hairless, etc.) that imitate all three main openings for sexual penetration (mouth, vagina, anus). What one buys here is the partial object (erogenous zone) alone, deprived of the embarrassing additional burden of the entire person. How are we to cope with this brave new world that undermines the basic premises of our intimate life? The ultimate solution would be, of course, to push a vibrator into the Stamina Training Unit, turn them both on and leave all the fun to this ideal couple, with us, the two real human partners, sitting at a nearby table, drinking tea and calmly enjoying the fact that, without great effort, we have fulfilled our duty to enjoy. So maybe, if our hands meet while pouring tea, we may end up in bed as part of a real romance, enjoying it outside any superego pressure to enjoy."

-- Slavoj Žižek

As if drawing the WITCH BOY and STRONG FEMALE PROTAGONIST graphic novels didn't make Molly Ostertag cool enough, she's just published a respectful, patient, well-researched, and very lucid essay explaining why we've been shipping Sam and Frodo all this time: it's because Tolkien did it first, right there in the pages of LOTR.

In a relatively brief essay, Ostertag argues not only that Frodo and Sam are exemplars of chivalric romance -- "the height of romantic love" -- but that Tolkien was well aware of what he was doing, having not only literary scholarship on his side, but his own observations of intense male-male bonding on the front lines of World War I (in which some of his close friends died). Time and again, Ostertag quotes passages from LOTR itself to support her argument, and I'd be convinced even if Sean Astin hadn't gone public with his opinion (Dec. 2020) that Sam and Frodo should've shared a kiss in the movie.

Read the essay for yourself. The bonus is that you get to see the totally swoon-worthy illustrations Ostertag drew for it.

https://www.polygon.com/lord-of-the.....tolkien-quotes

We've all done it -- compiled mental lists of cartoon characters we *knew* were queer, but couldn't prove it: Peppermint Patty, Buster Baxter, the Swat Kats...(Bugs Bunny's films speak for themselves.) Well, Insider, a research website, has done the hard work of compiling a database of 259 LGBTQ characters in kids' animated series. What's different about this list is that the characters have been identified as implicitly or explicitly queer in a two-step process. The first step was "informed by interviews with experts in child development, gender, and sexuality who helped detail what kids about 12 and under might recognize about LGBTQ culture and identities."

In the second step, "Characters’ sexual orientation, gender identity, race, and ability were confirmed via the show, or the studio, or the creative team’s social-media posts, or directly with creators in interviews.

"In cases where Insider was unable to get creator or studio confirmation — or for characters whose creators didn’t share certain details — entries were labeled unknown. If a show’s creative team had not clarified an aspect of a character’s identity during the show’s production, that character was labeled undetermined."

The oldest show to make the cut is from 1983: one of the characters was outed 31 years after the fact. Queer representation in kids' TV shows has grown dramatically in the last decade -- Insider finds a 222% increase in the number of queer characters in shows from 2017 to 2019.

What depresses me is that I don't know most of these recent shows! I've hardly watched television at all (broadcast, cable, or streaming) for the last 20 years -- I've been wasting my time with books, movies, art, and music, so I've missed some stuff I would've found really interesting.

The database throws a lot of information at you, so approach it with that in mind. Here's a link to the lists of shows and characters -- you'll recognize a lot more of them than I did. Any surprises?

https://www.insider.com/lgbtq-carto.....plore-database

In the Peanut Gallery with Mystery Science Theater 3000: Essays on Film, Fandom, Technology and the Culture of Riffing edited by Robert G. Weiner & Shelley E. Barba (McFarland, 2011, 978-0786445325)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0786445327?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_dt_b_product_details

The fish-nor-fowl nature of MST3K makes life difficult for critics, some of whom can't decide if it's really a TV series at all. One book celebrating the best of American television opines that the show's an umbrella title for an anthology that "consists of maybe 90% annotated film-watching and 10% character-based comedy," a neat way of saying "It's brilliant, but on the binary choice of sitcom/sketch comedy, we don't know what it is."

The essays in this collection are attempts to tell us exactly what it is, in terms that even a cultural studies researcher can understand. So, imagine Adorno's worst nightmare: a pop culture product that turns its audience into passive, mute, smug, lazy, gullible consumers -- say, a mad scientist's weapon of choice in their plan for world domination. Never mind that the plan is consistently foiled by a quick-witted janitor and his robot friends: Adorno and his ilk didn't give pop culture audiences any credit for thinking critically about anything.

The essays get a lot of mileage from Susan Sontag's 1964 "Notes on Camp," itself indebted to lines from the novelist Christopher Isherwood: "You can't camp about something you don't take seriously. You're not making fun of it, you're making fun out of it." Thus MST3K invents a new kind of television comedy, one that lampoons the banality of poorly executed pop culture products with jokes that reference everything from Sophocles to SANFORD & SON, from PETTICOAT JUNCTION to Paul's letter to the Philippians; jokes loaded with the full force of (Western) cultural memory. It's a show, many of these essays argue, whose fans become active participants -- co-creators -- in repurposing the cinematic detritus of the past into texts that speak to the frustrations (the "contradictions and self-parody") of the present. The term "hegemonic culture," referring to a past that tries to control the future, gets used a lot, but why shouldn't it? Just think of the licensing issues that continue to keep eleven episodes of the original series in legal limbo.

I won't pretend that this is an easy book to read if you're not comfortable with academic writing, but it's worth thinking critically about this show, 'cause MST3K is the FINNEGANS WAKE of television comedy: dense, allusive, playful, profoundly weird, and very funny.


EDIT: The actual lines from episode #313, EARTH VS. THE SPIDER are:

Sheriff: Wanna go for it in the truck, Simpson?
Joel, Crow, Servo: Kinky!

So, my new Glencairn glasses arrived this morning, and I thought I'd break 'em in with something a little special. I popped into my second-choice liquor store (the one with the ten to twenty dollar markups over what I usually pay) and whaddaya know, hiding in the back of one shelf was a dusty, beatup box containing a bottle of 21 year old, blended Japanese whisky.

Now, Japanese malt whisky is basically Scotch, and Scotch is a very complex drink -- the color, body, aroma, taste, and aftertaste of your dram are the elements by which you judge a good Scotch from a great one, and Japanese whisky not only meets Scotch on its own terms, it brings its own strengths, namely the flavors imparted by aging the spirit in native mizunara oak, lending it a fruitiness and spiciness quite different from that imparted by western oak.

Anyway, this bottle I found was a whisky I'd heard of, but never seen before. Japanese whisky is pricey, but hell, I was ready to splurge a little; my hubby and I would both enjoy it. I brought it up to the counter for a price check, smiling.

It was over $1,200.

For one bottle.

"Oh god," I said. "It was a nice thought." I had to wonder, did these guys keep that bottle on hand just to fuck with customers and see how they'd react? Who knows?

I schlepped over to my first-choice liquor store and bought a bottle of Yoichi single malt. Smoky, funky, not a whisky to be taken lightly, but tasty as hell. And considerably less than twelve hundred dollars a bottle. Not bad for a consolation prize.

It broke in my Glencairn glasses just fine.

No, I haven't lost mine. I just started thinking about the (mercifully few) people I've had to fire over the years for being hopeless fuck-ups and asked myself, how do you justify your behavior after being told, in the bluntest of terms, that you didn't belong here in the first place?

Did the people I've had to let go consider themselves the victims, and lay the blame on everyone else? Did they believe they were being singled out for being... (insert racial, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, age-related, or religious identification here)? Did they think they had a legitimate excuse, or endless list of completely legitimate excuses, for blowing off their duties and pissing off their co-workers?

Does simply existing entitle you to a living?

It's what you do, how competent you are, and how you treat other people that I'm wondering about -- in other words, how you live. And I don't have any easy answers.

It suddenly occurs to me that I do regret never having been in a spitroast. Oh well.

So what are the biggest, heaviest things I own besides furniture? That's right, it's books. And I have too many of them.

I've been selling/trading them in one load at a time for the last few weeks, and that's helping with the decluttering, but I have to face the hard fact that I can't read everything, no matter how interesting. So how much of the fiction and art history am I really gonna keep? How many graphic novels and books on cinema do I really need? Am I ever gonna get to those tomes on Chinese history? (There's nothing like having to physically move stacks and boxes of books to focus one's priorities.)

The poetry stays, as does the philosophy. And, yeah, so do the cookbooks, at least the ones that aren't too esoteric. But everything else will have to be on a case by case basis.

On the idea that there's no such thing as bad publicity, I see that Warners has gotten us all talking about the sequel to a certain sports movie -- another 90 minute infomercial for the NBA, just like the first one. I've been into other distractions lately. Take the following stories:

"It's like some kinda coming-of-age movie for old people," says the deeply flawed hero of DISAPPEARANCE DIARY (2005). The late Hideo Azuma's autobiographical, darkly hilarious comic about a successful manga artist who blows off his job, falls into full-time alcoholism, and winds up homeless, is a fictionalized account of a real-life nightmare. Azuma's deadpan, matter-of-fact storytelling and his zany, cartoon depictions of his characters are at odds with the reader's horror of walking in the shoes of a once-privileged artist who's now eating out of garbage bags and sleeping in vicious wind, rain, and cold. The distancing is deliberate: irony is what spares both author and reader from wallowing in misery. Azuma makes his intentions clear from page one: "This manga has a positive outlook on life, and so it has been made with as much realism removed as possible." (We barely see the wife he drunkenly abandons; we don't see his children at all.)

Azuma is eventually picked up by the cops and returned to his former life, only to ditch his job and repeat the cycle all over again a couple of years later. It reminds me of Charles Jackson's great novel THE LOST WEEKEND (1944): both books feature a quizzical, self-lacerating (but not self-pitying!) protagonist who endures constant hardship and humiliation, but who lives to give us a richly detailed, laconic travelogue of hell. (Of course Azuma is the master of bleak comedy that Jackson never tried to be.) The cartooning is superb: expressive, bigfoot characters and minimalist backgrounds, sometimes opening up into breathtakingly well-drawn vistas, like the snowy landscape in which Azuma draws himself waking up one day. (Coincidentally, both protagonists wake up in an alcoholic ward well into their stories.)

Azuma cleaned up his act and lived another fourteen years after the publication of DISAPPEARANCE DIARY, dying of cancer at the age of 69. He left behind at least one remarkable work of cartoon art.

Fumi Yoshinaga's ANTIQUE BAKERY (1999 - 2002) is like no other slice-of-life comedy I've ever read, and that's even before we get to the story arc about the abducted and murdered children. Like RATATOUILLE (2007), it's about cooking as a form of artistic expression, but with a reach that takes in--

Oh darn, I've run out of time and space.

https://www.amazon.com/Disappearance-Diary-Hideo-Azuma/dp/8496427420/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=disappearance+diary&qid=1615732956&s=books&sr=1-1

https://www.amazon.com/Antique-Bakery-Vol-Fumi-Yoshinaga/dp/1569709467/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=antique+bakery&qid=1615732991&s=books&sr=1-2