No tinsel. Too distracting.

So I screwed up and failed at National Blog Posting Month by forgetting to post yesterday. I feel kind of "meh" about the failure. I didn't bother to "officially" sign up this year on the blogroll, so I wasn't really a true participant anyway.

I was just so exhausted from the Thanksgiving holiday that I just completely zoned out yesterday, just enjoying some silence, and forgot to post.

Oh well. Here's my Festivus Pole for the year, anyway.

This montage could have easily been an hour (at least)

Presenting: Nicholas Cage Losing His Shit.



Gah. This is just brilliant. And no apologies, I love this man and have since age fourteen. (I saw Valley Girl at a verrrry impressionable age.)

Sleep in, instead.

Time for the annual posting of:

The Only Time I Ever Got Up for a Black Friday Sale.

Enjoy!

Happy (Belch!) Thanksgiving (Poot!)

Books: MACHINE OF DEATH

INTRODUCTION

The machine had been invented a few years ago: a machine that could tell, from just a sample of your blood, how you were going to die. It didn’t give you the date and it didn’t give you specifics. It just spat out a sliver of paper upon which were printed, in careful block letters, the words DROWNED or CANCER or OLD AGE or CHOKED ON A HANDFUL OF POPCORN. It let people know how they were going to die.

The problem with the machine is that nobody really knew how it worked, which wouldn’t actually have been that much of a problem if the machine worked as well as we wished it would. But the machine was frustratingly vague in its predictions: dark, and seemingly delighting in the ambiguities of language. OLD AGE, it had already turned out, could mean either dying of natural causes, or shot by a bedridden man in a botched home invasion. The machine captured that old-world sense of irony in death — you can know how it’s going to happen, but you’ll still be surprised when it does.

The realization that we could now know how we were going to die had changed the world: people became at once less fearful and more afraid. There’s no reason not to go skydiving if you know your sliver of paper says BURIED ALIVE. The realization that these predictions seemed to revel in turnabout and surprise put a damper on things. It made the predictions more sinister –yes, if you were going to be buried alive you weren’t going to be electrocuted in the bathtub, but what if in skydiving you landed in a gravel pit? What if you were buried alive not in dirt but in something else? And would being caught in a collapsing building count as being buried alive? For every possibility the machine closed, it seemed to open several more, with varying degrees of plausibility.

By that time, of course, the machine had been reverse engineered and duplicated, its internal workings being rather simple to construct, given our example. And yes, we found out that its predictions weren’t as straightforward as they seemed upon initial discovery at about the same time as everyone else did. We tested it before announcing it to the world, but testing took time — too much, since we had to wait for people to die. After four years had gone by and three people died as the machine predicted, we shipped it out the door. There were now machines in every doctor’s office and in booths at the mall. You could pay someone or you could probably get it done for free, but the result was the same no matter what machine you went to. They were, at least, consistent.

- From Machine of Death: 

A collection of stories about people who know how they will die

_________________________

The Machine of Death: A collection of stories about people who know how they will die origin story begins in an episode of Ryan North’s Dinosaur Comics just about five years ago, December 5, 2005 to be exact, reprinted here for reference:

Somewhere between then and now, Ryan North teamed up with Matthew Bennardo and David Malki ! (of Wondermark Productions, and yes, that is an “!” in his name), kicked the idea around and tossed out this (now long expired) call for entries explaining the project and asking for stories. They received and reviewed almost 700 submissions, and quietly toiled away on the book for years. Occasionally they would tease us with a bit, such as letting the story “Flaming Marshmallow” by Camille Alexa slip onto the Escape Pod science fiction podcast. Or they would update the infrequently-updated blog with news that each story was going to be accompanied with an illustration (many done by popular webcomic artists).

Finally, the news came in early August of this year that Machine of Death was finally going to be a self-published physical reality, debuting on October 26. And, wouldn’t it be a hoot if everyone purchased a copy of Machine of Death at Amazon.com on October 26, to try to boot it into the Amazon bestseller list for that day? Make it a MOD-Day!

Not only did Machine of Death leap into the Amazon bestseller list on 10/26, it held on to the overall #1 position in all books, crawling over Keith Richards, Gl3nn B3ck, and John Grisham and holding on to #1 for more than a day, an in the top ten for the rest of the week. This angered Gl3nn B3ck so much that he ranted about Machine of Death representing the “culture of death” we all live in, or something like that. (Read a roundup of the kerfluffle here.)

This takeover of the Amazon bestseller list, no matter how brief, is a  testament to the power of grassroots advertising, spread free through blogs, podcasts, Facebook, Twitter, and e-mail. It proves that “self published” no longer means “vanity press” with all its negative connotations. In this case “self published” means a dedicated group of people wanted to get their work out in more than pixel form, investigated what was available, shopped around the manuscript, and when no one bought it, they brought it out themselves. Yes, musicians and zine publishers (and to a lesser extent filmmakers and book publishers) have been doing this long before the internet was commonplace. Now with tools like the internet and cheap digital printing, more people can publish books, release albums, even create merchandise like t-shirts and coffee mugs easier and more economically than twenty years ago.

I’m proud to say that I purchased Machine of Death on MOD-Day, after having waiting for it since I first heard that story on Escape Pod, three years ago. Last night, I finished reading it.

It was an incredibly “thought-provoking” (what a detestable term) read, one that I had to spread out over a week, as it was also quite mentally overwhelming at times.

It is important to note that not all stories in Machine of Death actually end in death - in fact, only a very small percentage do. And, the death named in each story’s title is not always that assigned to each individual story’s narrator.

Many of the MOD stories are cryptic (“Murder and Suicide, Respectively” by Ryan North), others are incredibly sad (“Despair” by K.M. Lawrence), some are set in the present world, others in a dystopian future (“Loss of Blood” by Jeff Stautz). There are war stories (“Starvation” by M. Bennardo), a Yazuka tale (“Improperly Prepared Blowfish” by Gord Sellar), and many love stories (“Heat Death of the Universe” by James Foreman). “Flaming Marshmallow” by Camille Alexa is funny, and “Nothing” by Pelotard is bittersweet. Two of the most interesting stories are told by the P.O.V. of an inventor of the Machine of Death (“Almond” by John Chernega) and an infomercial producer (“Cocaine and Painlikkers” by David Malki !). There are stories told by personal ads and even one that clocks in at a mere five words.

Machine of Death is an extremely strong collection that should appeal to many readers, not just science fiction readers. After all, death (and fearing it, denying it, accepting it, trying to understand it etc.) is something all humans share. Machine of Death asks a big question: do you want to know how you are going to die (perhaps ironically so, and at an unspecified time)?

This is a highly recommended anthology, worth buying and spreading the (meager) proceeds among the writers and artists. However, if you’re too broke (or likely, too damn cheap and used to getting everything for “free” on the internet) to buy a copy of Machine of Death, it’s also being distributed free of charge (and DRM-free) under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. [This means you are free to download them, share them, email them, copy them, print them out, seed them, torrent them, and generally send them about however you like, provided that the manuscript remains unbroken, that attribution is always given, and that all use remains noncommercial.]

There’s also a Machine of Death podcast series, with stories read by their authors. The feed is available here, or subscribe via iTunes or your favorite podcast catcher.

_________________________

So, if there truly existed a Machine of Death, would I take the test?

Absolutely not. I worry enough in my daily life that adding a cryptic declaration of how I was to meet my demise would incapacitate me to the point of being unable to do ANYTHING, and that is not how I would want to life the rest of my days.

No, I would be one of the “anti-faters”, those raging against the Machine, against what is really nothing more than Calvinist predestination. However, I’d likely be a quiet anti-fater, keeping my opinions to myself, not out sabotaging factories or taking baseball bats to individual Machines.

Although, I have to admit, it would be kind of funny to get FLAMING MARSHMALLOW as a destiny.

Wish it was true...

... and I had woken up in NYC this morning!*

Alas, just Philadelphia standing in for NYC, in the new Jason Statham movie Safe.

* Mainly because then I could have a decent bagel for breakfast and slice for lunch.

Of Interest (Everyone’s gone to the movies): 11.22.2010

Physical video stores are closing at a rapid pace, and not just former behemoths, like Blockbuster, Movie Gallery, and Hollywood Video. Quirky small stores are feeling the pain too, and I’ll fully admit that I haven’t rented from an indie store since leaving a college town seven years ago. San Francisco’s Lost Weekend Video re-wrote the Buggles’ 1979 song “Video Killed the Radio Star”, put the lyrics in the window, and now BoingBoing is challenging readers to record the new version.

At a library sale a few weeks ago, they were giving away all VHS tapes for free. They just wanted them out of there. It was mostly kids and educational tapes, nothing really rare or bizarre. For that, check out the Collecting VHS group on Facebook. (No Facebook account needed.)

Another Facebook group recommendation: Psychotronic Netflix, which searches the streaming selections on Netflix (ranging from very good to terrible) and posts the best finds, such as TerrorVision, Matchless, and the documentary American Grindhouse. I never knew there were so many oddities tucked away on the ‘flix, all available for instant gratification. (No Facebook account needed.)

Repair or reconsider.

 

iFixit Self Repair Manifesto

Before heading out on a massive shopping binge at the end of this week, consider what all those shiny, new and cheap gadgets are doing to the environment.

Related, a short film by Annie Leonard, “The Story of Electronics”, and the Maker’s Bill of Rights.

Maru!

Somehow, although I didn't officially commit to it, I seem to be participating National Blog Posting Month.

However, tonight I'm exhausted after a long, hellish week at The Job (and on public transit), dazed from seeing Harry Potter 7.1 this afternoon, and full of lovely, lovely mushroom soup and bread.

So, more writing tomorrow. For now, enjoy Many Too Small Boxes and Maru.

Book storage pr0n

A favorite find from recent library book sales was a oversized, black and white photo book titled Living With Books: 116 Designs for Homes and Offices by Rita Reif, published by The New York Times in 1968.

It is awesome, retro bookshelf-pr0n, featuring the book storage solutions of elites like Tennessee Williams, Mary Quant, and the Lippencott family, in large and small spaces in New York City. There are a few design diagrams included, as well as a list of (likely long outdated) suppliers, but for the most part it’s a a pure vintage book storage stroke book. Besides book shelves and cabinets, they also feature furniture and portable book storage solutions.

Here’s a few choice selections from Living With Books.

A room within a room fabricated of backless bookshelves and tatami matting was Lanier Graham’s solution to creating a work area at home. The exterior of the cube ads architectural interest to the living room and houses the joint book collection of Mr. and Mrs. Grahams. But when you turn the cube inside out Mr. Graham’s work area comes to life. It is here that the design problems he carries home from his office at the Museum of Modern Art often find solutions.

 

 

A chair so comfortable that it holds the sitter through a single reading of War and Peace must also provide more than basic needs. Amenities added by Cini Boeri, a Milanese architect-designer to his leather-covered easy chair are a reading stand and light, pocket for tucking magazines and newspapers, a hidden storage compartment under a chair arm for snacks or chocolates and a built in note bad, ashtray and, for those who want distraction, a telephone.

Cubicle environment for reading is a miniature version of Kenneth Isaacs room-sized multi-purpose structure. The wood-slatted cube comes equipped with a bookshelf, reading stand and light. Comfortable cushions pad seat and back, which adjusts to the sitter’s desire.

Seq. Art: Comics from VT (and NH and W. MA)

 The Trees & Hills Comics Group have published two very thoughtful anthologies this year, TIME and PLAY. (Put them next to their previous collections SEEDS and SHELTER in your collection.) I am unsure if it is because of the geographical area in which most of these artists live (VT, NH and Western MA), the influence of nature, fewer distractions, or perhaps something else entirely, but the comics in these collections just seem calmer, more contemplative, and quieter than anthologies from a larger, more hectic locales.

TIME features eighteen different contributors on all aspects of the concept: time travel, time slips, working less to have more life time, wanting just a little more time, why time slows down at summer camp, great moments in the history of time, and even the timeline of a family swingset (by Madsadara, excerpted here). Reading these comics will have you questioning, “Why am I so bound by time?”. The issue also includes a mini-calendar for 2011 with bonus comics. Learn why August is the loggest month!

The brightly colored PLAY examines something that adults aren’t really allowed to do when they “grow up”, but still need to, if only to keep sane. The anthology contains quite a few reflections from artists about how they used to play (creating imaginary lands in the back yard, on 8-bit video game systems, at summer camp, or with something as simple as a board), the drudgery of live without play (the excellent, near wordless “The Slow Machine” by Matt Young), and a few fantastical tales as well. There’s a bonus booklet of games (that require little equipment) tucked in as well. (I always wondered how the mythical “Spud” was played!)

Illustration: “Board” by Tom Pappalardo from PLAY

Also coming out of VT is SQUARE DANCE by Colin Tedford (a co-founder of Trees & Hills), a collection of some of newspaper strips and anthology work. Hooray for Super Friendly Garlic!

White River Junction, VT is also the home of the Center for Cartoon Studies, so many comic artists have passed through the town, either as students, faculty, or visiting artists. Caboose is a comic newspaper anthology by these artists about this little town, and it’s a fun read. I like the newspaper format, which is a nice change after reading so many digest-sized and smaller minicomics. The artists really had room to play. Lots of great comics from many familiar names.

TIME, PLAY, and SQUARE DANCE are available at the Trees & Hills shop, along with comics from other local artists. CABOOSE is available as a PDF download (right column), and if you attend a con like MoCCA Fest or SPX, you still may be able to score a physical copy.

Fool me three times?

Dear eMusic:

Do you remember when we started dating, just about five years ago? It was December 2005, and I was lured to your site, frustrated by not being able to find albums I wanted at the record store. I refused to use iTunes then (as I still refuse now), and Amazon.com hadn’t yet started selling MP3s. I think musicians should get paid, and want to support music I like, so I was never much for obtaining music by more... illicit means. I signed on for a month to see what you were really like.

Do you remember our first download together, eMu? It was the Boss Martians’ The Set-Up, which featured that awesome song “I Am Your Radio”, a song I couldn’t get enough of. After a few months of paying you rent, I took the plunge and upped to an annual subscription, basically signing a lease and moving in with you for a year.

Since then, I stayed close to your side, renewing annually, and telling all my friends how great you were, what fantastic labels you featured, the incredible finds I’d stumble upon when not really looking, and what a great deal you were compared to that behemoth, iTunes. You were small and scrappy, an indie rock boy in dirty jeans and a faded Built to Spill t-shirt, riding around on your fixie with the best mix tapes and coolest sensibility, all DRM-free.

We’ve shared so much great music over the past five years, eMu. Both new and old! I was so happy you had that J. Blackfoot album! And early Green on Red, and soundtracks from quickly-closed musicals like High Fidelity and Bright Lights Big City, and new loves like The Gaslight Anthem. We’ve shared 26.6GB of lovely music, eMu.

Last year, you first started treating me a little... badly. You told me that you were adding the Sony Music catalog to your collection. Since I wasn’t really interested in much mainstream music, I figured I could just ignore it and focus on your sweet indie sensibilities. But then you informed me that that you had to “slightly raise prices and reduce the number of downloads for some of the monthly plans” … which included my plan. I wrote about it back then, wondering how you could do this to me (and everyone else you had been seeing), when I’d been so loyal to you. My downloads were slashed from 75 to 35 a month, with no price reduction. I thought about maybe leaving you when it came time to sign the yearly “lease” again, but I stayed.

This past year at 35 downloads a month wasn’t as crushing as thought it would be. Sure, I had to be more selective (more individual track downloads and fewer full albums) and budget better, but you would throw me 5 or 10 free downloads for clicking here or there or becoming your Facebook friend, and sell me cheap “Booster Packs” every so often, too. When October came around this year and it was time to sign the lease again, you dropped my annual price by $20 and offered me 100 free downloads for renewing immediately. So I did. In all, it still worked out to about $0.30 per song, even less for some of the album “deals”.

And then, just TWO days after I signed my lease for another full year, you sent me an e-mail informing me that in November (1) you were adding 250,000 tracks from the Universal Music Group, and, oh yeah, (2) switching from a credit-per-track system to a currency system. But I shouldn’t worry my pretty little head about it, because eMu will still be cheaper than iTunes! And I’m going to give you an extra couple of bucks a month to play with!

You bastard.

I should have left you right then and there, cancelled my subscription and asked for a refund. But I didn’t. As before, I decided to wait it out and see how it worked out, at least for a few months.

November 1st came, and no switchover to currency, still credits as usual. Every time I logged in to browse you, eMu, I expected to see those download credits converted into dollars and cents, and then I knew it would be over. But nothing. Yet.

Then, last night, I received another e-mail from you. This one was really crushing, more so than the ones cutting my downloads or changing to a currency system. No, this one really cut deep. Apparently, with your acquisitions of the major label catalogs, you’ve managed to hurt the labels who were there with you from the very beginning. In part, it said:

As we prepare for the largest catalog addition ever to eMusic - 250,000 new tracks! - we want to be up front with our loyal indie fans and provide advance notice that music from Domino, Merge and the Beggars Group family of labels will no longer be available on eMusic as of Nov. 18, 2010 pending further discussions. (But be sure to load up in the next two days! Need to buy a Booster Pack?)

No more Merge. No more Matador. No more 4AD. No more Rough Trade. No more Spoon, Arcade Fire, Mountain Goats, Dead Can Dance, Superchunk, National, and other bands I love.

I wanted to hear the other side of the story, so I asked around. Here’s what Merge had to say. And then Matador chimed in. And the entire Beggars group. And the Village Voice, too.

eMu, since you got courted by the majors, have you been treating the indies mean? Who else is going to pack up their catalogs and leave?

I fear the next e-mail from you, eMu? Are you going to start utilizing DRM?

eMu, it’s been wonderful, but you’ve changed and I’m wondering if we’re in the same place anymore. Losing those labels was a major loss for both of us. I’m going to give you until the end of 2010, and if it just isn’t working anymore, I’m going to have to let you go and depend on Amazon.com and individual label stores (Merge sells MP3s and FLACs, for example) for downloads. (But never iTunes, I can still promise you that.)

And this time, I really mean it, no matter how many customer service reps I have to fight through. If you keep getting corporate, I’m breaking my lease at the end of the year.

XO,
Synd-e

Of Interest (Consumer-y): 11.16.2010

I’m rather anti-consumerist, although these PANTONE Visa cards are actually kinda cool, they only come in five colors. 

10 Buildings Shaped Like What they Sell. I especially like the parking garage of the Kansas City (MO) Public Library, painted to look like a shelf of books. (Here’s what is on the “shelf”.)

Our Valued Customers are one-panel comics of things overheard by a comic shop clerk. (And I am also confused by the idea of “good sweatpants”.)

Finally, the 10 Best Fictional Beauty Products. (And a reader generated list of fictional products people want in real life, over at the Consumerist.) Me, I wanna try some Slurm.

Seq. Art: Inbound 5: The Food Issue

The Boston Comics Roundtable is a group of artists who meet weekly to draw, collaborate, swap ideas, and publish anthologies of their work in the series Inbound. I discovered the Boston Comics Roundtable in 2008, when I bought Inbound #2 at SPX and was impressed by the high quality of the work. Since then, I’ve read all of their Inbound collections, as well as the offshoot science fiction title Outbound. The first themed Inbound collection was Inbound 4: A Comic History of Boston, in 2009. Their second themed collection, Inbound 5: The Food Issue, was just published and is well worth your money and time.

Inbound 5 features 26 different comics about food, categorized as either “Food Fact” or “Food Fiction”.

“Food Fact” has amazing true stories about each of the artists’ experiences with food, from discovering lunch beyond bread and peanut butter in Rebecca & Jason Viola’s “Bento: Beyond Sandwiches”, to the nearly wordless “Turnover” by Andy Wong (pictures) and Jackie Lee (script) which explores how food is used for emotional healing.

Of the non-fiction comics, “The Sardine’s Tale” by Line O, a Norwegian cartoonist living in Boston, is a beautiful autobiographical tale of growing up as a little girl on a freighter ship with her mother (“Sparks”, the radio operator), father (chef), and cat (named Knytingen) as they sailed the seas. Line O was nicknamed “The Sardine” by the crew, who also rigged her up a swing, tried to keep her out of trouble and away from girlie magazines, and helped her make “rat-poison soup” (really just all the scraps from the kitchen). The art is extremely detailed, with lots of cross-hatching, shading and textures, and really captures the personalities who worked on the ship.


College is generally the time when people become a little bit more adventurous with food, and there are many stories in the “Food Fact” section about these years.


In the comedic and loose “A Midwestern Adventure with Indian Food”, Eric Boeker learns the importance of reading can labels when his Indian (by way of Indiana) college roommate Riaz cooks up “authentic” chicken tikka masala with a side of botulism. In other college food adventures, Aya Rothwell finally tries a durian, a noxious but tasty fruit from southeast Asia, and stinks up the entire floor. (Apparently durian smells so foul that it’s banned from buses and trains in Singapore.) Beth Hetland’s college indulgence wasn’t anything strange or international, but canned Spaghetti Os, which she had been forbidden from eating as a child because her mother thought they caused seizures as told in “Spaghetti Os Secret”.

Completing "Food Facts" is a comic by Cathy Leamy about the historic - but now cancelled due to popularity and security concerns - Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake in England.

Many of the contributions in “Food Fiction” of Inbound 5 are folktale-like, stories incorporating food as origin or cautionary tales. Some are adapted from old stories, such as “Yam Gruel”, which was adapted by Roho and Dan Mazur from a 1916 story by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. Adam Szym’s “What’s Eating Prometheus” is a conversation between the doomed fire-bringer and the eagles who snack on his liver every day, for eternity. Jerel Dye’s exquisite “People of Corn” is an illustrated version of the Mayan myth of human creation, were Grandmother Xmucane takes corn delivered by the animals, grinds it into meal and presents it to a serpent to shape it into people.

There are modern folktales here as well, like the cautionary, thick-lined “The Boy Who Ate Too Many Tougues” by Jesse Lonergan, and the playfully drawn “The Girl Who Turned Into a Noodle” told by Rod Kleber and drawn by Allie Kleber.

More abstract Fictions include Adrian Rodriguez’s “Dinner Time” and the gluttonous “Party Sub” by Andrew Greenstone. Realistic contributions come from Dave Ortega in “The Caterers”, and the rhyming “Whatever’s in that Can” by Katherine Waddell and Ryan Wheeler, where a hungry cat tries to get dinner.

Inbound 5 is a professional publication, as all previous issues from BCR are. It’s printed on very nice paper stock with full color linen texture covers, and high quality reproduction. The editors - Dave Kender, Dan Mazur, and Shelli Paroline - have done an excellent job selecting comics for the anthology, including a wide range of comic styles and story tropes and arranging them for maximum flow and readability. The time, determination, and effort put into the Inbound series is evident in the final products.

While I also enjoyed the previous Inbound 4: A Comic Book History of Boston, I found Inbound 5: The Food Issue easier to relate to, since food and eating is something everyone has in common, unlike living in or growing up in a specific geographical area. Inbound 5 would make a quirky holiday gift for any food-types in your circle of friends (sorry, refuse to use “foodies”), even if they are not regular comic readers. Introduce them to indie comics through food!

[Inbound 5: The Food Issue (digest sized, perfect bound, 176 pp., $12) available from the BCR Store. Previous issues also available.]

Lucy Knisley assures you: It Gets Better

(Animation based on her original comic.)

Also, the It Gets Better Project.

Library Sale Finds - Fall 2010

The library book sales in my area have ended for the season, and this fall I really controlled my purchasing.

A few months ago I seriously started weeding my book collection, after coming to a decision that there were many books in it that I was never going to read again, or was never going to read at all. To date, I’ve recirculated about 250 books via work, donations to library book sales, Bookmooch, Amazon Trade In, and half.com. I hope all those books found readers. There are still about 70 books pending that I would like to get some money for, but the bottom has completely fallen out of the used book market, and resale prices are terribly low. Only two books were actually put in the recycling bin, a very outdated copy of the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, and a 2003 World Almanac.

I debated even dropping by three main library sales this past month because I didn’t want to undo all of the careful work I had put into weeding, rearranging or boxing, and cataloging. However, the lure was too strong, and I gave in, but with strict instructions to myself to keep it under control. It’s not the amount of money I spend at these sales, it’s the amount of books I walk out with that can be a problem, especially on “bag day” (fill up a paper grocery sack for $5).

Over the course of a month and three sales, I dropped about $25, all of which goes to the libraries. I found a few books for my parents and friends, and a “well-curated” (sarcastic pretension intended) stack for myself. Some of these I’ll keep, some I’ll read and pass on eventually.

Here’s my haul list. Commentary in brackets.

• Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007 edited by Dave Eggers
• Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
• Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski
• Adverbs: A Novel by Daniel Handler [Yes, I picked this up because of the awesome Daniel Clowes cover. I had no idea that Daniel Handler is also the “Lemony Snicket” author.]
• High Fidelity by Nick Hornby [After reading library and borrowed copies over the years, I really needed my own copy.]
• The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
• Granta 58: Ambition  
• Sense of Wonder: A Life in Comic Fandom by Bill Schelly 
• The Onion Complete News Archives, Books 13, 14, 15, 17 [For $1 each, I was not going to pass these up. They make great browsing anytime!] 
• Cats in the Sun by Hans Silvester [Yes, I bought a book of cat photographs. Shut up.] 
• Living with books: 116 designs for Homes and Offices by Rita Reif (The New York Times) [This is an awesome photobook from 1968 of New York residents and their book storage solutions. It’s one of my favorite finds of all the sales. Expect a longer post about it later.] 
• Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson 
• Gender Advertisements by Erving Goffman [This is a fairly famous academic book.] 
• Confessions of a Cineplex Heckler by Joe Queenan  
• Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain [To replace the original copy I had, lent out, and never saw again.] 
• Ghost World by Daniel Clowes [Again, I thought I had a copy of this at one time, but hey for $1, why not replace it?] 
• Lettering for Reproduction by David Gates [Another incredibly cool find from 1969 about hand lettering and typography.] 
• The Conquest of Cool by Thomas Frank 
• The World Without Us by Alan Weisman 
• Ask Again Later by Jill A. Davis 
• Downer’s Grove by Michael Hornburg 
• Dr. Katz: Hey, I’ve Got My Own Problems by Bill Braudis [That was a great, underrated cartoon. This is a collection of comics strips based on the show.] 
• Best Friends by Martha Moody  
• The Man of my Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld 
• City of Ember by Jeanne DaPrau  
• More Information than You Require by John Hodgeman [The “PC” in the ads.] 
• The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap by Stephanie Coontz [Hope I can get my parents to read this after I do.] 
• Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin [I used to have a copy of this, too.]  
• Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane [Probably horribly depressing, but want to read it before seeing the movie.] 

Seq. Art Review Cat is Tired Cat

More commentary and reviews to come... after a nap.

Seq. Art: FOUR SQUARES and MORE SQUARES

FOUR SQUARES and MORE SQUARES are collaborative projects by four very talented comic artists who just all happen to reside in the Somerville MA area. The Squares are G.I. Joe historian Tim Finn, mini- and autobiographical comic powerhouse Liz Prince, aquarium educator and illustrator Maris Wicks, and Marvel Comics’ artist Joe Quinones.

After working on an art show together, the four artists decided to each draw a daily diary comic strip for a month, and then publish them in one book. FOUR SQUARES covers July 2008, and MORE SQUARES covers February 2010. Since the four artists all live near each other and are close friends (side note: Maris and Joe are a couple), sometimes they turn up in each other’s strips, which is a lot of fun. Each of them has an individual style: Maris’ drawings almost jump out of the panels; Joe is more likely to use lots of crosshatching, textures, and tiny details; Liz’s work at first looks simply done, but there’s lots of hidden detail, and she’s also great at expressing emotions like joy, frustration, and disgust; Tim’s is very diary-like, describing that day’s work.

In all, two awesome collaborative collections, and hopefully the Squares will continue publishing issues from time to time.

Order FOUR SQUARES and MORE SQUARES from Liz Prince’s shop.

Below, a representative panel from each of the Squares.

Clockwise from top left: Maris Wicks, Joe Quinones, Liz Prince, and Tim Finn.

Seq. Art: WIZZYWIG Vol. 3: FUGITIVE(& related hacker links)

The talented Ed Piskor continues the saga of composite hacker “Kevin Phenicle” in FUGITIVE, the latest bound collection of WIZZYWIG. This volume largely focuses on how “Kevin” avoided the law and eluded capture for months and months using a series of false identities, technical hacks, research, and social engineering. I enjoyed the first two books in the series, PHREAK and HACKER, and the entire series should be read by anyone with an interest in the middle ages of computer hacking.

Although these are all available in bound book format, Piskor has launched an ambitious project to re-edit, selectively re-write, and occasionally re-draw WIZZYWIG and post installments twice a week as a web comic. You now have no excuse NOT to start reading from the very beginning!

 

Related to the subject matter of WIZZYWIG:

In Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy (i.e., The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest), Lizbeth Salander (aka “The Wasp”) is one incredible hacker, capable of infiltrating any computer, manipulating bank deposits, and covering her tracks. Are her feats of digital mastery actually possible? Vanity Fair interviewed Kevin Poulsen - one of the components of fictional WIZZYWIG hacker Kevin Phenicle - asking Does the Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest Know What She’s Doing? (The tl;dr version: the results of her actions are possible, but the methods to reach said results are implausible.)

Interested in the history of hacker culture from the earliest blue box hackers? Gabriella Coleman, a professor at NYU teaches an undergraduate class in "Hacker Culture and Politics". Since most people will never actually be able to take this class in real life, Coleman discusses the class, syllabus, and readings at length for The Atlantic in The Anthropology of Hackers. Coleman is on sabbatical for the 2010-2011 academic year, but her NYU bio page is active, along with the most recent syllabus for Hacker Culture and Politics (opens as a PDF), which is a really good bibliography on the subject. She also has a blog, Interprete.

2011: The REVENGE OF PRINT!

(Fade in on a car pulling up to a nondescript United States Post Office. Seen through the windows are a stamp machine, recycling bins, and a wall of post office boxes with small metal doors.

The ZINE PUBLISHER puts the car in park, fishes out a small golden key on a Snapple promo keychain from the ashtray, and turns to ZINE PUBLISHER’S FRIEND.)

ZINE PUBLISHER
I’ll leave it running.

(ZINE PUBLISHER’S FRIEND nods. ZINE PUBLISHER hops out of the car and walks inside the Post Office. We see the ZINE PUBLISHER’s back as they open up their box and pull out a few pieces of mail: two envelopes and what looks to be a catalog. The ZINE PUBLISHER closes the box door, spins around, drops the catalog and one envelope in the recycling pin before exiting. The ZINE PUBLISHER returns to the car where ZINE PUBLISHER’S FRIEND is waiting.)

ZINE PUBLISHER

No good mail again. Why do I even keep that box? Oh man, I remember the glory days of mail, ten, fifteen years ago... a couple times a week the box would be stuffed full with all sizes of envelopes, handmade envelopes and envelope recycled from other ones. Half-letter, quarter-sized, even full-sized sometimes. And if there was too much to fit in the box, there’d be a yellow card telling you to go to the counter to pick up whatever it was... something that couldn’t be bent, or a box, or a large padded envelope. Even better was when the post office finally installed those lockers for oversized mail, and you’d find a key in the box to open it up.

(ZINE PUBLISHER pauses, puts the car in drive, and carefully pulls out.)

ZINE PUBLISHER

I miss getting all those zines in the mail! Good zines! Weird zines! A really disturbing zine from time to time! Not just cute little 8-page perzines about vegan cupcakes and how great bikes are! Damn it, I don’t even feel like I belong in the so-called “zine community” at all. I refuse to call myself a “zinester”! I’m a “zine publisher”! An old zine publisher! And I miss all the zines I used to read and trade for! I want a full mailbox again!

ZINE PUBLISHER’S FRIEND

Uh, red light coming up. Red light. RED light! RED LIGHT!

(ZINE PUBLISHER hits the brakes.)

ZINE PUBLISHER
Uh, thanks. Sorry about that.

(Light changes and the car pulls away. The VOICEOVER begins as the camera stays focused on the car until it disappears down the street.)

VOICEOVER

Do you miss the heyday of full mailboxes, lovingly handcrafted zines and comics, and other fine print publications? Do you miss the days of mailing out piles of envelopes and packages to subscribers, loyal traders, and friends? Are you a lapsed zine publisher looking to get back into the “game”, but have heard that “print is dead” and “no one reads zines anymore” and “Zines? Those are just printed blogs”?

Well, wait no more friend, 2011 and THE REVENGE OF PRINT are upon us!

(REVENGE OF PRINT logo appears on screen.)

THE REVENGE OF PRINT is a challenge organized by the fine folks at Baltimore’s Atomic Books and Chicago’s Quimby’s as well as the publishers of Xerography Debt, Zine World, and Razorcake to goad and encourage zine and comic publishers to do (at least) ONE MORE PRINT ISSUE during 2011.

Lots of folks have already pledged to publish ONE MORE PRINT ISSUE in 2011! Check out the discussion on the Facebook group 2011: THE REVENGE OF PRINT to see which publishers will be digging out the long-arm stapler and trying to scam copies once again in 2011! The list is growing daily! (And yes, snarkypants, we realize the “irony” of using the internet to spread the word about a print revolution.)

Print is not dead!

Take the pledge today and publish in 2011!

Seq. Art: Alec Longstreth

Yet another comic artist whose work I was familiar with, but never read widely is the bearded Alec Longstreth. A few years ago I picked up Dvorak Zine, a zine about the alternative keyboard layout, drawn by Alec and narrated by a few friends. I also recently read Drop Target, a pinball zine by Alec and Jon Chad, which I really enjoyed.

It wasn’t until the most recent Small Press Expo a few months ago that I purchased Alec’s Phase 7 comics, and now I wonder why I waited so long. I picked up Phase 7 #014, and the book Transition, which collects Issue #010 and #011. Both are excellent, autobiographical, verbose reads with very clean, realistic artwork.

Transition is the history of Alec’s life with comics, from his first comic book (a Walt Disney comic) through discovering Bone, starting to draw his own comics, trying to read as many comics as possible, college, many moves and jobs, meeting lifelong comic friends, and much, much more. The most important panel may be the one that documents July 13, 2002, when Alec vowed: “I will draw comics every day for the rest of my life”.

However, my favorite page in Transition is from Issue #010, when Alec first reads Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, and finally, even after having read and drawn comics for a few years, gets it. It’s completely devoid of text, but conveys so much in those six wordless panels. (It also inspired me to dig out my copy of Understanding Comics for a re-read.)

(I love scenes like this in comics, movies, books, and real life: that moment of discovery that changes someone’s entire life. It’s that look that says “this is by far the greatest thing I have ever seen/heard/experienced, and I HAVE to be part of it”. It’s a moment of awakening, of clarity, of sentience. Few people ever truly experience this moment of discovery, when they realize they want to make movies, play music, write stories, take photographs, build furniture, raise children, teach, whatever from that second on.)

Issue #014 is Alec’s travelogue from his trip to France (and Belgium) in 2009 for the Anglouleme International Comics Festival, or Festival International de al Bande Dessinee d’Angouleme, the largest European comics festival, running since 1974. He drew it during the trip in a specially handmade sketchbook, so the art is slightly less polished than usual, but the stories and adventures are still compelling reads. (Some of it was even drawn intoxicated on Belgian beer!) The concluding “Additional Observations” include “Things Europeans Do Better than U.S.”, “My Favorite Things about Paris”, and “Drinking with Belgians (Every Single Night)”.

Alec Longstreth’s comics, much like the work of Lucy Knisley, Corinne Mucha, Julia Wertz, and other autobiographical artists, really makes me happy (most of the time). Sure, I read plenty of “serious” comics, but sometimes I just want to immerse myself in work by people who are just so completely enthralled with what they are creating that it comes through in every panel.

Alec has many of his comics available for reading on his website, including full issues of his 24 Hour Comics, out of print Phase 7 issues, and other projects like lecture notes in comic for presentations given at the Center for Cartoon Studies, where he is currently teaching.

"I went to the woods to live deliberately..."

 

Illustration from Thoreau at Walden by John Porcellino from the writings of Henry David Thoreau. A project from The Center for Cartoon Studies, and published by Hyperion.

Seq. Art: Invincible Summer #19/Clutch #22 (and other goodies from Tugboat Press)

Another year, another annual split comic from Nicole Georges and Clutch McB. 2010 brings Invincible Summer #19 (by Nicole)/Clutch #22 (by Clutch), daily diary comics spanning from May 1 to May 14. During these two weeks, Nicole completed a spoken word tour with Sister Spit, taught 5th graders and high schoolers, got food poisoning, and got her computer fixed. Clutch went to TCAF, ravaged his lip, fasted, and ate a questionable burrito.

(Click to enlarge)

Also: no talk of Clutch McB is complete without mentioning the latest releases from Tugboat Press, his publishing concern. Papercutter #14 is the latest issue of this high-quality anthology series, featuring work by Dave Roche (On Subbing zine) and Nate Beaty (BFF), Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca (Afrodisiac and Street Angel), and Farel Dalrymple (Pop Gun War). The lead story, “Wilson” is about attracting unwanted company on long train rides, something I have unfortunate experience with.


Tugboat Press also just published its first kids’ picture book, Yes, Let’s by Maris Wicks (art) and Galen Longstreth (words). It’s a bright, colorful tale of a family’s day trip to the lake and back, told in short rhyming sentences. Although I am not any sort of authority on kids’ books (not having any kids), parents will appreciate that there is absolutely no product placement, no licensed characters, and no tie-in toys with Yes, Let’s. The members of the “family” remain generic, are never identified by name or gender pronoun, so it could be any kind of family, which is kind of a nice touch.

Tugboat Press publications are available from Atomic Books, buyOlympia, Microcosm, and Quimbys.

Seq. Art: L.A. Diary and Diary

Over the past five or six years since immersing myself in indie, mini, self-published, whatever-you-want-to-call them comics, I somehow missed reading the work of Gabrielle Bell. She’s an artist whose name I had heard often, but somehow never read her books. This year at SPX I picked up L.A. Diary and Diary, and both were excellent journalistic reads, with many personal, autobiographical details. Her drawing style is detailed but never crowded or fussy. How does she do it? From L.A. Diary, I really liked her observations about hugging and personal space.

L.A. Diary is available from Uncivilized Books. Bell’s collections Lucky and Cecil and Jordan in New York are available from Drawn & Quarterly. You might be able to track down her first collection of mini-comics When I’m Old and Other Stories here. She also posts comics on her Lucky blog, and recently completed a well-received, nine part epic “comicumentary” about San Diego Comic Con 2010.

Seq. Art: Diary Comics No. 1 + Jan-Jun 2010

Illustrator Dustin Harbin began drawing daily diary comics at the beginning of 2010, and collected the first six months as an impressive half-legal sized collection with die-cut cover, full color endpapers, and a striking introductory print entitled “Don’t Let You Get You”. Over the course of the six months, Harbin’s dailies evolve and become much more detailed and clean. I always enjoy peeking into the lives of the self-employed (i.e., freelancers), people who don’t have to be chained up in a cubicle 40 hours a week. I got to watch Dustin carry on his daily life, from lettering jobs (e.g., he did the lettering for the Cassanova series by Matt Fraction and Gabriel Ba), organizing Heroes Con, kung fu lessons, teaching, and romancing the ladies (see below). A nice bonus is that Dustin lives in Charlotte NC, so I get to see a different city than Portland, OR (which has the highest concentration of comic artists on the west coast) in the backgrounds.

Diary Comics No. 1 + Jan-Jun 2010 is available directly from the DHarbin! Store. Dustin also posts comics in three flavors: Diary Comics, Memoir Comics, and Other Comics. Collect ‘em all (on your RSS reader).

Seq. Art: Julia Wertz

Last year, I finally discovered Julia Wertz’s comics and was immediately enamored of her writing style: funny, short, sometimes crude, but always honest. While she herself even admits to being an asshole at times, you can’t help but just like the kid no matter how much she screws up, gosh darn it. Maybe it’s the fact that she’s tiny (5’2”), eats like child, often drinks like a lush, and draws herself in the same clothes in almost ever comic (jeans and black hooded sweatshirt or t-shirt).

After publishing two Fart Party collections and editing I Saw You, Julia’s first linear graphic memoir came out this fall, Drinking at the Movies. This bildungsroman spans from the spring of 2007 to the end of 2008 in Juila’s life, during which she moved from San Francisco to Brooklyn, ran though a series of crappy jobs and crappy apartments (although finally finding the perfect place), survived family crises, drew a lot of comics, drank herself into and out of oblivion and then to semi-sobriety, had a development meeting with Lizzy Caplan, and finally decided to accept and enjoy NYC for what it is: “... a giant playground for grown-ups where the soft-serve ice cream tastes like tears and perpetual adolescence and someone whizzed in the tire swing”.

This fall, the Atomic Book Company (of Atomic Books) reprinted Fart Party Vol. 1, copies of which had been fetching upwards of $60 on the resale market. It’s great to be able to read all of the earliest Fart Party strips, and see how Julia’s work has developed over the past five years. Plus, how can you resist how cutely she draws herself as a little girl saying her first dirty word while playing at the pool one afternoon?

Find Julia Wertz online at Fart Party, her blog Museum of Mistakes, and group studio site Pizza Island.

Seq. Art: Jesse Reklaw & Carrie McNinch

Ten Thousand Things To Do #6
Jesse Reklaw has completed his year-long diary comics project with Issue #6 of Ten Thousand Things To Do. The final issue includes a week of 24-hour-comics (compressed into 24 little squares on one page) and guest strips by other notable cartoonists Sarah Oleksyk and David Youngblood. The entire series is also available as a bricklike book, if you haven’t been collecting individual issues. While Jesse doesn’t lead the most regimented life, keeping very odd hours, he is constantly busy with freelance jobs, teaching, his regular comic strip Slow Wave, hanging out with fellow Portland cartoonists and artmakers, and working on his own creative projects (comics and music). These diary comics are also done in a rougher style than Slow Wave, but feature more drinking and cats! (Available from Global Hobo Comics.)

You Don’t Get There From Here #16
If you haven’t started reading Carrie McNinch’s daily diary comics, despite my constant praise and plugging, why the hell not? Issue #16 is a good as place as ever to begin - you’ll get to experience road construction in Los Angeles, encountering mountain lions during runs, and family anxiety along with Carrie. But there’s good stuff too: burritos, library books, good music, and the hidden pleasure of Los Angeles.

Available for $2 from Carrie McNinch, PO Box 49403, Los Angeles CA 90049, or through Microcosm Publishing or Sparkplug Comic Books.

Of Interest: 11.01.2010

So You Need to Find a Typeface: An infographic by Julian Hansen. It’s actually more amusing to chose a font and then trace the path backwards as opposed to starting in the middle with the first question. (Also available as a print; this is just a piece of the larger infographic.)

______________________________

Just got another reason to consider a smartphone: The 40 Best Little Radio Stations in the U.S. (“Little” defined as under 5000 watts.) Most of them are streaming, but computers are so locked down at The Job, we can barely get necessary software updates, much less streaming audio.

______________________________

These Are Their Stories was a recent art project in Los Angeles, where artists created an interpretation of a Law & Order based on the very short description from the DirecTV program guide. Lots of interesting works here, including Kate Beaton’s A Missing Boy is Found, and Christopher Hasting’s Death Links to Ultimate Fighting.