Periodical/Sequential Art: The Comics Journal #299
The main feature in TCJ #299 is an epic length, meticulously researched, and expertly written article about one of the greatest comic projects never published, The Someday Funnies, collected and curated by Michel Choquette over the span of nearly a decade. Because Choquette saved almost every document related to the project (down to phone messages, carbon copies of letters, etc.), it’s a very complete history of this aborted project. (It would make an excellent addition to a journalism class syllabus). After reading this article, I’m holding out a slim glimmer of hope that a publisher (perhaps Fantagraphics, who also publish The Comics Journal), will finally release The Someday Funnies, or even selections from this truly lost anthology.
Catching up.
No, I did not spend September in a media blackout, but a bit of a blog-writing blackout, hence the lack of posts for the past five or so weeks. Hoping to get caught up soon.
MUSIC: UNDER THE COVERS, VOLS. 1 & 2 ~ MATTHEW SWEET AND SUSANNA HOFFS
Two collections of pop covers, more hits than misses. Sweet and Hoffs are the perfect combination for this project, and they really sound like they’re having a lot of fun doing it. Love their versions of “And Your Bird Can Sing”, “Everybody Knows this is Nowhere”, and “The Kids Are Alright” on Vol. 1; “Second Hand News”, “All the Young Dudes”, and “Maggie Mae” on Vol. 2. There’s also an expanded edition of Vol. 2 available of punk classics like “You Say You Don’t Love Me” and “I Want to be Sedated”.
BOOK: GEEKTASTIC ~ EDITED BY HOLLY BLACK AND CECIL CASTELLUCCI
Subtitle: Stories from the Nerd Herd
(Note: In this case, “Nerd Herd” has nothing to do with the television show Chuck.)
Fun, fantastic short story collection by a group of YA authors including MT Anderson, Garth Nix, and Scott Westerfeld. The stories are largely girl-centric tales about geeky pursuits like role playing games, science, academic bowl teams, MMORPGs, Rocky Horror, and more. Sandwiched between the stories are comics drawn by Hope Larson and Bryan Lee O’Malley (Scott Pilgrim). A great, empowering even, read. I only wish something this cool had been around for me a quarter-century ago - I might have felt less lonely.
Book: THE BIG REWIND: A MEMOIR BROUGHT TO YOU BY POP CULTURE ~ Nathan Rabin
Nathan Rabin’s memoir was constructed a bit different than what I expected, but still completely compelling. THE BIG REWIND one of my favorite reads of 2009. With so many writers (both paper and blog-based) coming from positions of privilege, with unlimited access to capital resources, it’s great to read the story of someone who came about this “writing” thing (finally landing at The A.V. Club) after many potholes along the way.
While Rabin certainly did not have an easy upbringing (parental abandonment, institutionalization, group foster homes, torturous relationships with the opposite sex), he really doesn’t seem to wallow in self-pity (maybe self-punishment, but not pity), and by the end of the book he’s made peace with himself.
You can’t always get what you want. Sometimes you get stuck with the worst possible outcome. Sometimes an opportunity you desperately desire goes to someone who represents everything you hate in the world. Sometimes a trip to the emergency room turns into a month in a mental hospital. Sometimes five or six days in a group home becomes five or six years. Sometimes a fifteen-episode renewal turns into a cancellation. Sometimes “Please don’t tell me about anyone you’re having sex with” gets misinterpreted as “Please tell me about how wonderful it was getting gang banged by five strangers.”
But that’s OK.
Movie: AMERICAN SWING
2008, Directed by Mathew Kaufman and Jon Hart
Holy fuck, dude. The 70s were strange. Like really strange.
I still have a difficult time comprehending that people (straight, gay, whatever) regularly would drop trou and just have sex with random strangers back then. For me, my adolescence hit the same time AIDS did. The idea that people regularly had sex without asking for complete previous partner histories was mind blowing to my teenage self. (And yes, I’m well aware that people are still having random, unprotected sex.)
AMERICAN SWING is a “warts and all” documentary about the NYC swinger’s club Plato’s Retreat. For a $25 membership fee, you and your opposite sex partner (no homosexuals, please) could come to the club and dance, drink, swim, and have sex with others who shared the “lifestyle”. There was also an all-you-can-eat buffet.
To repeat: an all-you-can-eat buffet in the same room as hundreds of naked people, in the same room as a disease ridden hot tub, and steps away from the “mattress room”. For some reason, the passing mention of this buffet fascinated me more than the actual sex and swinging that was going on. Really, they should have made it an advertising slogan: “Come for the sex, stay for the lasagna!”.
AMERICAN SWING is a documentary in the same style of INSIDE DEEP THROAT or WADD - a seemingly risque subject treated seriously and accurately. It’s quite fascinating, but not for the 70s-era footage shot inside the club, which is completely unsexy. What’s more fascinating is watching now 60ish-year-old couples talk about working at the club (such as sill-married managers Charlie and Annie Grippo, who marvel at the quality of the buffet food), or just being a regular customers. The documentary spans from the beginning of the club and it’s various locations, to owner Larry Levinson’s tax evasion arrest and imprisonment, to the club’s demise in the heyday of the AIDS crisis.
Fun fact (besides the buffet): there was actually a hit single - reaching #6 on the Billboard charts in 1978 - by Joe Thomas called “Plato’s Retreat”. Listen to it here. (Completely safe for work, it’s just a picture of the album cover with the song.) What other time than the 70s could have this happened?
Sequential Art: Oishinbo: A la Carte
(Volumes include Japanese Cuisine; Sake; Ramen and Goyza; Fish, Sushi, and Sashimi; and the forthcoming Vegetables; Pub Food; and Rice)
Reading manga in the U.S. can be an expensive habit for multi- (and multi-multi-multi-) book series. For example, I started reading NANA but gave up around book 6; it’s now up to book 20. At $10/book, it’s not a cheap read. So, except for the occasional self-contained novel (such as SOLANIN), I don’t read much manga. I also have trouble finding “slice of life” manga stories as opposed to “magical girl” or “boarding school” or action titles. Luckily, I discovered OISHINBO (part of the Viz Signature line), a manga that is both “slice of life” and fairly self-contained. While it is a multiple-book series (most likely less than 10 books), each OISHINBO volume can stand alone.
The overarching story of the manga is the creation by the Tozai News of the “Ultimate Menu” of Japanese food for the paper’s 100th anniversary. The project is led by slacker gourmand Yamaoka Shiro, and hindered at every turn by his estranged father Kaibara Yuzan, artist and also a gourmand. The books are full of interesting and surprising facts about the proper preparation of all types of Japanese cuisine, with a book dedicated to a broad category of food. I never knew that there were so many types and styles of sake - it’s almost like the varieties of beer available in the U.S. Or that sashimi from the same breed of fish can taste extremely different depending on where in the river they were caught. The translations are a little clunky at times, but overall the OISHINBO series is an interesting read, and a good value since each of the books are around 270 pages each, and printed in a larger format that most U.S. manga.
Book: CARTWHEELS IN A SARI: A MEMOIR OF GROWING UP CULT ~ Jayanti Tamm
A good summary of this memoir can be found in Tamm’s recent Washington Post essay “In Cults, a Darker Side of 60s Rebellion”. This was an amazing read (and unlike many people today, I do not use the word “amazing” lightly), an account of twenty-five years of worshiping Guru Sri Chinmoy until one day Tamm just Wakes Up (after a few failed attempts). When you are born into a cult (Sri Chinmoy believed that Tamm was the “chosen one”, and was closely involved in every aspect of her upbringing), it’s difficult to break free. It’s especially difficult to leave when every aspect of your life is twisted up with the cult - parents, friends, jobs, routines. I recommend reading Tamm’s blog as well, for more details about life in the cult, and reconnecting with former members since the book’s publication.
BOOKS: RIPPED: HOW THE WIRED GENERATION REVOLUTIONIZED MUSIC ~ Greg Kot / ROCK ON: AN OFFICE POWER BALLAD ~ Dan Kennedy
While Greg Kot is one of my favorite current rock critics, his new book RIPPED: HOW THE WIRED GENERATION REVOLUTIONIZED MUSIC is mildly disappointing. Instead of examining in-depth about the mp3/file sharing/future of digital music distribution, it provides a weak overview of selected events over the past ten years. There’s discussion of the original Napster and other file sharing services, the RIAA file sharing lawsuits, and how major labels bungled the handling of digital distribution. Kot spends most of the book with “case studies” on how selected musicians, small labels, and journalists took advantage of digital distribution of their music. There are chapters about Conor Oberst and Saddle Creek Records; the rise of Death Cab for Cutie thanks to many mentions on The O.C.; Prince breaking free from the major labels and becoming his own label; and the requisite chapter on Wilco (Kot has also written a book on Wilco). The Pitchfork Media effect is mentioned in a chapter about MP3 blogs. Somewhat awkwardly jammed into the book is a discussion of sampling, mashups, and remixes (the Girl Talk project, “George Bush Doesn’t Care About White People” by the Legendary K.O., Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album etc.). In the end, RIPPED is more of a sampler CD of topics in digital music/distribution rather than a deep study of one issue. For any music listener who has been paying attention to events such as the RIAA lawsuits, failed major label attempts to control file sharing, and the more groundbreaking distribution methods of individual artists and smaller labels, RIPPED offers nothing new.
There are also glaring errors and oversights in RIPPED. Some of these were probably unavoidable given how fast things change in a digital society. For example, Fluxblog now carries advertising, and U2 no longer shills for Apple but for Blackberry (RIM). However, the one error that should have never passed editorial review is the opening line of chapter three. It will make anyone with even a passing knowledge of Internet history cringe:
“The Internet was conceived as a utopial ideal, designed by nonprofit researchers in 1990 as an undiscriminating conduit for information.”
No, Mr. Kot. You might has well have said “Al Gore created the Internet” - it would have been just about as accurate.
Other omissions and missteps in RIPPED include no mention of eMusic, the digital music service that pre-dated the iTunes Music Store by three years, always offered 100% DRM-free files, and included hundreds of small labels. (To be fair, there’s little deep examination of the iPod effect, either.) The Sony BMG “rootkit” debacle, which installed spyware and other nasty buggers on computers under the guise of “copy protection”, is given exactly one sentence in the book.
The ideal audience for RIPPED just might be older music executives who still don’t understand why their sales have tanked over the past ten years, or less tech-savvy parents who don’t understand where their kids are getting all the music to fill up their iPods. Kot also doesn’t offer any insights where digital music distribution is heading next, such as streaming, personalized radio stations like Pandora, nor does he offer suggestions to labels left ten years behind.
The ideal reader of RIPPED just might be the major label executives Dan Kennedy, author of ROCK ON: AN OFFICE POWER BALLAD, worked with if there was a viable time machine available. Kennedy was a marketing grunt for Warner Brothers in the early part of the decade, in the years before the company was absorbed by Seagrams to form the massive Universal Music Group and laid off thousands (including him). ROCK ON is a sharp compendium of everything that is wrong with the major labels, from insane management salaries, shitty music, and out-of-touch executives. For example, their “groundbreaking” idea of how to take advantage of the digital marketplace is to charge users a monthly fee so they can stream the company’s catalog on their computers, and only their computers and no digital devices. Note that this idea was presented in approximately 2004, when online radio stations were streaming for free. Is it any surprise that major label music sales are in the crapper? ROCK ON is a quick read, one that will hopefully encourage you to start a record label in your basement, spare bedroom, or even hall closet as opposed to dreaming about working for the majors.
Movie: DISTRICT 9
2009, Directed by Neil Blomkamp
The most intelligent political science fiction I’ve seen since the cancellation of TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES. This movie was smart, complex, and completely human under the exoskeletons. (How can you not feel awful watching alien (“prawn”) “Christopher Johnson” explain to his son that they wouldn’t be going back home, but instead on to District 10, another tent city sure to become a slum.) The structure of the film, a mix of documentary interviews, cinema verite footage, and straight up action, worked well. Of course, the aliens and effects were spectacular, thanks to Weta Workshop and other VFX houses, and the “District 9” camp had a completely claustrophobic, run-down, desperate quality about it. This movie couldn’t be set anywhere else but South Africa.
Yes, DISTRICT 9 is incredibly loud and SF splatter-y, but even with the sound and the fury, I didn’t feel exhausted and tenderized as I had after watching both TERMINATOR: SALVATION and X-MEN: ORIGINS earlier this year. It is so much more than a “summer movie”. Props to Peter Jackson for taking a chance on an unknown director and his original six-minute short film, Alive in Joburg.
Movie: CAPRICA
2009, Directed by Jeffrey Reiner
As Bender Bending Rodriguez would say, “Hey baby, wanna kill all humans?”
If the introductory film is any indication, CAPRICA will hopefully address many unanswered questions from BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, such as “How and when did the Cylons become sentient?” and “Where did the Cylons’ idea of “one god” come from?” Hopefully it will continue to study quandaries of ethnicity and class, as well. The casting and performances are excellent, especially Esai Morales as Joseph Adama (father of the future Commander William Adama), and Alessandra Torresani as the whip-smart Zoe Greystone. Very much looking forward to the January 2010 launch of the series on the Syphilis Network, um, SyFy.
Book: Penguin By Design: A Cover Story 1935-2005 ~ Phil Baines
The design history of Penguin paperbacks (and Pelican plus additional imprints) from the beginning, in full color with hundreds of covers spanning all eras and lines. Incredibly inspiring, even if it only includes a small percentage of everything the company has published. It’s going to be where I turn when I’m stuck for zine cover designs. (Fair warning: expect a 30s-era Penguin cover homage for an upcoming zine issue.)
There are many collections of Penguin covers online as well.
BOOK: SHELF DISCOVERY ~ LIZZIE SKURNICK
Subtitle: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading: A Reading Memoir
(Also features contributions from Meg Cabot (The Princess Diaries), Laura Lippman (Tess Monaghan series), Cecily von Ziegesar (Gossip Girl), and Jennifer Weiner)
Read my appreciation at SPCHQ: My (and a lot of other people’s) Back Pages
BOOK: WHY IS MY MOTHER GETTING A TATTOO? ~ Jancee Dunn
Subtitle: And Other Questions I Wish I Never Had To Ask
Harmless collection of personal essays from a child of a surprisingly functional family, despite how she tries to portray them. Kind of “meh” overall, proving Tolstoy’s famous opening line about fucked up families being infinitely more interesting to read about.
TV: IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA
Yet another show I managed to miss in “real time”, but catching up on via DVD. This show is so incredibly wrong in so many ways, yet I find myself laughing at all the incorrectness. I haven’t seen such a self-absorbed group of characters on television since Seinfeld, although Dennis, Charlie, Mac, and Sweet Dee are infinitely more depraved. Plus, as a local it’s fun to try to identify exterior shots.
