Suffering from Summer Consumption.

Posting this month on the blog was a bit light, unfortunately. That's because I did quite a bit of lengthy annotation over on the companion blog SYNDICATE CONSUMPTION, a catalog of what I'm reading, watching, and listening to. Lots of great stuff this August...

Of Interest: 08.20.2009

+ Gallery of 12 Vintage Walkman players. At one time there existed a solar powered Walkman!

+ Up for debate: 61 essential postmodern reads: an annotated list. (And no, I didn't join the Infinite Summer project at the beginning of the season. I'm contemplating an Infinite Fall instead. Or maybe an Infinite Winter.)

+ Do you (Heart) the Apocalypse? Sure you do! Quiet Earth is a film blog "Dedicated to genre film and all things post apocalyptic". Lots of material here, films from around the world, small budget, big budget, no budget. Trailers, stills, reviews, production reports, and more.

+ "Beat 'em or burn 'em. They go up pretty easy." Zombie hunting goes academic. Seriously. Read the recently published paper When Zombies Attack: Mathematical Modeling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection. Eradication, rather than containment or assimilation, is the only feasible solution.

+ Even if you're not a scientist or an academic who will ever display a poster at a society meeting, this Advice on Designing Scientific Posters is still useful for many displays of information. Plus, the author advises against poster titles with colons, noting "Coloned titles are sometimes devised in order to inject humor into an otherwise mind-numbing poster topic (e.g., "Mind-numbingly boring: brain MRIs of bored versus anesthetized adolescents," "Attack of the Crohn's: contribution of chromosome 16 allelic variants to inflammatory bowel disease progression," or "Colonectomies: making your titles less pretentious")." Plus, he also gives advice about presenting your poster, including a tip that applies everywhere: "Do not wear Axe Body Spray. In fact, that's sound advice even outside of the context of a poster session. It's a godawful smell that simply advertises any number of inadequacies, if not all of them."

Call for Entries: COMING CLEAN

DEADLINE EXTENDED (AGAIN!) TO NOVEMBER 30, 2009!

Call for Entries:
COMING CLEAN

After zines about the laundry (Laundry Basket), grocery shopping (12 Items or Less), and cooking (Potluck), this was inevitable. The next issue of SYNDICATE PRODUCT is all about cleaning... house cleaning, washing the car, even picking up the yard debris. (However, it's NOT about laundry, as that's already been done. It's also not about packratting, as that's also been done.)

A few possible ideas:

• apartment or house move in/out cleaning stories
• making your own eco-friendly cleaning products
• I hate to BLANK (dust, vacuum, clean the gutters)
• biggest cleaning disaster
• living with a hoarder or a neatnik
• the most disgusting abandoned item found in the back of the fridge or shoved in a cabinet
• what I learned about cleaning from my family/friends/ex
• my biggest cleaning challenge is BLANK

Specifications:

Writers: I'm not going to get too hung up on length for this issue, but I would say between 400-800 words is a good size. If you need to go longer, please do. If the writing is good enough, people will want to read it to the end. I'll let you know if a piece is simply too huge.

Comic artists: The zine will be Digest Sized. Final art size should reduce to 4.5 x 7.5 inches. You can have two pages, but this can be negotiated if needed. B&W only, the zine will be photocopied. Send art as 300dpi TIF files. Also, once entries are in, I may be looking for small illustrations to accompany some of the stories.

Contributors will receive a copy of the final project.

Due date and where to submit: OCTOBER 11, 2009*. Submit your entries to syndprod [at] gmail [dot] com, either by simply pasting the text into an e-mail, or as an OpenOffice, MS Word, or plain text document. If you want to mail them, send them to: A.j. Michel, PO Box 877, Lansdowne, PA 19050.

* Due date subject to extension if needed, as it usually is.

My (and a lot of other people's) Back Pages

SHELF DISCOVERY
by LIZZIE SKURNICK
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)

Lizzie Skurnick's SHELF DISCOVERY began as the weekly column "Fine Lines" on Jezebel, quickly becoming one of the blog's most popular features, with hundreds of comments on each post about a favorite young adult or kids novel. The recently published SHELF DISCOVERY collection is a successful blog-to-book transition, one that builds on the original blog-based idea, and is not just reprints of posts.

In SHELF DISCOVERY, Skurnick mainly covers novels published between 1960 and 1982, a truly amazing time for YA literature. Novels were brave, daring, and covered all sorts of unpleasant subjects. I was lucky enough to be a voracious reader who experienced some of the best young adult fiction while it was being published (or only a few years after it was published). YA lit declined rapidly around 1984 or so with the introduction of the Sweet Valley High series, bland books which soon numbered in the hundreds. The SVH plague was a blight on YA fiction for many, many years and it's hopefully dead by now. There's been an upswing in really great YA fiction again over the past ten years, especially in the science and speculative fiction genres, as well as graphic novels.

SHELF DISCOVERY isn't about new titles, it's about the old favorites, the titles many of us read over and over, and still read today. I'm still upset at my mom for donating most of my YA books to Goodwill, including works by Norma Klein, Ellen Conford, and many others. (Grrr.) Through library sales, thrift stores, and book swaps I've been rebuilding the collection.

When I started SHELF DISCOVERY, I immediately remembered so many small details about some of the books, silly little inconsequential details that have no effect on the plot, story, or characters, but nonetheless remained wedged in my brain (in some cases 25+ years later). Is it shameful that I can't recall the major characters and plots of most of my "required" high school and college reading, but can remember that in Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself, she had been humming the song "Beautiful Dreamer" to herself while floating in an inner tube when she was stung by a man-o-war? Or that in The Cat Ate My Jumpsuit, Marcy is worried that her new purple pantsuit will make her look like an enormous grape at her friend Nancy's party?

After reading only a few pages of SHELF DISCOVERY, all those details flooded back. I put the book aside and wrote down other small details I remembered from the novels discussed in the collection. For people who aren't familiar with these books, it's just going to look like a list of random gibberish. If you were a fan of any of these novels, you'll probably remember some of these details as well. Not surprisingly, this list is heavy on the Judy Blume.

Blubber: Jill eating a covert PB&J in a bathroom stall during a Bar Mitzvah. Jill & Tracy having to rake up a neighbor's leaves because they egged his mailbox; they get terrible blisters on their hands. Jill's family living on a private road with lots of trees. Jill being told she was underweight by the school nurse and advised to drink a malted every day.

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret: Margaret turns in a letter to her teacher instead of a year-long project about how she tried to figure out religion by going to temple, mass, and reading a few books, but still being totally confused about it. (Note: This letter really affected me for some reason. Maybe I had agnostic/atheist leanings at age 11?) During their first "club meeting", Gretchen takes four Oreos from the plate, but when Nancy asks her how much weight she gained that summer she puts three back.

The Cat Ate My Gymsuit: The ugly rhinestone heart pin Joel buys for his estranged mother - he knows it's ugly but she'll have to pretend to like it. Marcy's father removing a part of the car engine so that Marcy & mom couldn't drive to school board meeting, but they got a ride from Nancy's mom. (Note: I remember even more small details from the sequel, There's a Bat in Bunk Five, which I liked even more.)

Harriet the Spy: Harriet writing really small in her notebook "I won't cry". The complete freedom with which Harriet moves around her part of Manhattan. The illustration of Harriet covered with splotches, sitting in a bathtub after her classmates spray her with ink.

Go Ask Alice: "Alice" constantly noting her weight. "Alice"'s mom buying her a scarf from I. Madigan. Halfway through the book a note from the "editor" saying that from that point on the entries had been written on scraps of paper and brown paper bags.

The Westing Game: The secretary with the painted crutches took shorthand notes during the reading of the will that turned out to be in Polish.

Deenie: Deenie and her friends sneaking into an R-rated move that turned out to be some sort of "gross medical drama". The old hunchback newslady. Blouses ripping on Deenie's brace and her mom getting a refund for them.

The Great Brain: I read this series so many times that the details from all seven original books run together, so these may not be from the first book only. JD giving mumps to Tom and Seth and then eating the heel of a fresh loaf of bread - toasted and smeared with sugar & butter - in front of them. Tom figuring out that the man who ran the store where he was buying stock for his "Academy Candy Store" was Lutheran and therefore wouldn't rat him out to the Jesuit priest. Tom reading Black Beauty to the tomboy Dottie Britches in an effort to interest her in reading.

Farmer Boy: The cobbler visiting for a few weeks to make them all shoes. The kids eating almost all of the sugar when their parents are away for a week.

Tiger Eyes: What a devastating book. The school nurse in NJ repeatedly asking Davey if she was pregnant when she hyperventilated and passed out. Davey Xmas shopping and finding an unusual candle her father would have liked - she has to return one of the rolls of wrapping paper she bought to get the candle. Davey's drunk friend in NM smashing a bottle of perfume in the school hallway.

Than Again, Maybe I Won't: Tony's grandma taking to her room when they hire a housekeeper at their new house. Tony buys her a silver toothbrush for Xmas from the "For the Woman Who Has Everything" section of Macy's (or was it Bloomingdale's?). Tony running up to her room and just crying and crying in her lap when he's just so confused over everything. The family's new maid giving Tony a photo album while he's in the hospital - he wonders if she thought it was for his x-rays.

There's many more books in SHELF DISCOVERY I've re-read recently like Forever, A Wrinkle in Time, and the incredibly dirty Domestic Arrangements. While Skurnick chose a wide range of books, even including classics like A Little Princess, there are many missing. How about the teenage alcoholic story The Late Great Me by Sandra Scoppettone? Or the psychic girl story And This is Laura by Ellen Conford? Where are Betsy Byars' books featuring lower income families like The TV Kid, Summer of the Swans, and The Night Swimmers? And where, where, where is The Outsiders?

Everyone who grew up reading these books is bound to discover some of their favorites are missing from SHELF DISCOVERY. However, they'll also find many other books they missed the first time around. It's a loving (re)collection, and a great guide to a fascinating era of YA literature.

And after reading it, you just might remember Claudia buying mac-and-cheese and coffee from the Automat in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, too.

Of Interest (Collections): 8.11.2009

+ The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies features photos and descriptions of little-used-anymore art and drafting supplies. Not sure all of these are really "forgotten" - I still use rubber cement from time to time, and correction tape daily at work. Plus, my Dad still has some of these supplies stashed away - the drafting related tools - from his civil engineering career. Nonetheless, lots of cool little gadgets to check out. (And I would love to find a stash of Letraset on eBay someday!)

+ Google has just added the entirely (digitized and searchable) run of the Village Voice dating back to 1955 online at their News Archive Search. It's scanned images of each page, so you get to see all the advertising as well! Can't wait to look at some of the "For Rent" listings in 1958.

+ I was initially extremely excited about Duke University's new Ad Views: A Digital Archive of Vintage Television Commercials online collection, but then discovered that it requires iTunes software to work. I want to explore this collection, but I refuse to download additional software (not just a browser plug-in like Flash that has little or no effect on your actual computer) to do so. View at your own discretion.

+ GOOD Magazine is a periodical that will hopefully hang around for a while longer than many indie magazines. GOOD does entertaining, amazingly detailed, and comprehensive infographics, which they call "Transparencies". The Transparencies Archive is available on Flickr. [Plus, GOOD just had a blog post entitled "Why Do We Hate the Word 'Moist'?", which makes them a must-read.]

Pope Is Missing!

Human Head Kept Alive Six Days! (11/26/85)
Salt Lake Shocker: 3-Legged Skater Banned! (2/12/02)
My Steamy Nights With Hillary In UFO Love Nest! (8/5/03)
World's Fattest Cat Has World's Fattest Kittens! (10/28/03)
Sneezing Increases Your Bust Size! (3/8/88)

When stuck in supermarket checkout lines, I miss the WEEKLY WORLD NEWS, which ceased printing in 2007. Sure they keep an updated website, but it's just not the same as ruffling through those black and white pages, passing time as the woman in front of you hands the checker a stack of coupons and then pays in small change. The constant end-of-the-world stories, the First Lady lesbian love affairs with aliens, the bizarre medical conditions... it was always a great browse, even if it did leave me with inky fingers.

A new Weekly World News application has just been released for the iPhone, but you don't need one of those fancy devices to browse old issues and find your favorite headlines again. Twenty years of the Weekly World News are available through Google Books, which makes me insanely happy. Not only can I read all the "World's Fattest Cat" stories again, I can finally get a copy of my favorite WWN cover ever (well, with the help of the PrtScrn key and some some simple photo editing - you can't print out or save the WWN images from Google Books). No longer do I have to mentally kick myself for not picking this issue up six years ago.

I vividly remember when I saw the August 12, 2003 issue of the Weekly World News. It was in a Walgreens drugstore in Chicago, near Union Station. I had just gotten off a 45-hour train trip from Portland with the Mediageek and LN. It had been an arduous journey, not nearly as pleasant as the trip out to PDX. There were scary passengers, blocked toilets that required the services of a pumper truck (which had painted on its side - no lie - "The Turd Hauler") in the middle of the night at the Minot ND stop, screaming kids, and terrible coffee. I was in a bit of a daze as we wandered around Chicago during the short layover (there was still a train ride down to Champaign IL that night), and we stopped in Walgreens for snacks. I saw the cover of this Weekly World News and just lost it, laughing hysterically at the cover story. The subtitle, "He seems to have just wandered off" tipped it over the edge for me.

To this day, I regret not buying that issue. But now at least I can read it forever online.

MoCCA Fest 7.0: Syncopated!

Syncopated is the sort of project I would fund as a monthly magazine if I won the lottery. Subtitled "An Anthology of Nonfiction Picto-Essays", these books demonstrate the true (as in non-fiction) storytelling potential of the comics format. I bought all three available books at MoCCA Fest, and they just may be my favorite purchases of the fest.

Syncopated Volume 1 was self-published around 2005, and in 2009 reprinted by Villard Books, which is the edition I picked up. Volume 2 followed in 2005, and Volume 3 in 2007. All are excellent reads, edited by Brendan Burford, now an editor at King Features Syndicate. It's not often I really "learn" any new facts from reading comics, but there's so much interesting material in all three volumes of Syncopated, I've assembled a list. Hopefully this brief sampler will encourage you to track these books down.*

Interesting things learned from Syncopated!

+ The amazing works of art painted in the abandoned tunnels under the West Side Highway in NY, some painted by famous graffiti artist Chris Pape ("West Side Improvements" by Alex Holden, Vol.1)

+ Developmental psychologist pioneer Erik Erikson had a twisted childhood, and inflicted a twisted childhood on his own kids. ("Erik Erikson" by Paul Karasik, Vol. 1)

+ A jazz fan named Boris Rose was one of the most prolific archivists of live jazz performances, recording live performances from the radio starting in the 40s first on vinyl discs, and then on magnetic tape. He would release these performances as bootlegs under record labels with fake names so they couldn't be traced back to him. ("Boris Rose: Prisoner of Jazz" by Brendan Burford and Jim Campbell, Vol.1)


+ The life and work of avant-garde filmmaker Sidney Peterson, who lived in the same building as the cartoonist's grandmother. ("Sidney Peterson or Peter, for Short" by Dave Kiersh, Vol. 3)

+ The long history and benefits of the Dvorak typewriter keyboard layout - less carpal tunnel stress, improved efficiency, and more! ("Dvorak" by Alec Longstreth, Vol. 1, see also Dvorak.org)

+ Pleasures of eavesdropping: "It smells like New Jersey in here!" or "Listen, you can tell by lookin' at her. She walks guilty" and "They are experts. They know what's in the core of the earth". ("Overheard Conversations" by Rina Piccolo, Vol. 3)

+ The problems associated with somewhat illegal artistic housing. ("206 Classon Avenue, Beginning to End" by Susie Cagle, Vol. 3)

+ The sad, strange, but often oddly fulfilling job of an obituary writer. ("Obits" by Sara Rosenbaum, Vol. 2)

+ The story of the the store E. Rossi & Company, and their secret (now lost forever) stash of incredibly rare jazz 78s, hoarded in the basement by the elder Rossi, who used to run Nightingale Records. ("E. Rossi & Company" by Brendan Burford, Vol. 2)


+ There was an incredible "postal card" - or postcard - craze at the beginning of the 20th century, following an Congressional act in 1898 that allowed any private company to publish and sell postcards, not just the U.S. Postal Service. ("Penny Sentiments" by Rina Piccolo, Vol. 1)



*Since Burford is quite busy as a King Features Syndicate editor, and also had some health problems, there is a lack of info about Syncopated available online. Here's a few places to look: a current interview with Burford on the Mr. Media BlogTalk Radio show; a 2007 interview with Burford when he took over as editor at King Features; a review of the 2009 reissue of Vol. 1.

(See the mocca09 tag for all reviews.)