I Didn't Write That!
31 July 2013
The Most Amazing Band In The World: Sparks - "Exotic Creatures of the Deep" (2009)
I discovered Sparks a few months ago and have since fallen in love. Ron & Russell Mael are the greatest invisible geniuses of music over the last, Jesus, 43 years. Here's most of their 2009 album "Exotic Creatures of the Deep" to give you some example, which includes my current favorite song ever, "Lighten Up, Morrissey." Now go buy it and lots more by Sparks
. You won't be sorry.
Let the monkey drive. It's only fair.
___________________
I discovered Sparks a few months ago and have since fallen in love. Ron & Russell Mael are the greatest invisible geniuses of music over the last, Jesus, 43 years. Here's most of their 2009 album "Exotic Creatures of the Deep" to give you some example, which includes my current favorite song ever, "Lighten Up, Morrissey." Now go buy it and lots more by Sparks
. You won't be sorry.Let the monkey drive. It's only fair.
___________________
Labels: music
¶ July 31, 2013 0 Comments
24 July 2013
LULU Book 1 NOW AVAILABLE AT COMIXOLOGY! (Updated)
For all of you who prefer your comics in digital form, LULU Book 1 is now available at Comixology! Click here now to buy! This edition is expanded a bit from the print version, including color artwork (and some more sketches) that I was not able to include in that edition.
Of course, it's available as always in print at Amazon and Createspace! (and not in stores) And nothing stops you from getting both...
___________________
For all of you who prefer your comics in digital form, LULU Book 1 is now available at Comixology! Click here now to buy! This edition is expanded a bit from the print version, including color artwork (and some more sketches) that I was not able to include in that edition.Of course, it's available as always in print at Amazon and Createspace! (and not in stores) And nothing stops you from getting both...
___________________
Labels: bottomless studio, comics, frank wedekind, Germany, lulu, my art, my comics, sale, theatre, tragedy
¶ July 24, 2013 0 Comments
22 July 2013
Deconstruction Inevitably Becomes Reconstruction
Looking at some old war comics--not SGT. ROCK or BLAZING COMBAT or TWO-FISTED TALES, but the actual workaday, average war comics there were the most of back in the day--brought a few thoughts to mind. Apparently not the kind of thoughts Garth Ennis has when he reads them.
So you've read some Kubert, some Kurtzman, some Goodwin, and you're nostalgic for war comics. Delve a bit deeper. You won't be. it amazes me that people don't realize those artists were making comics reacting against, and commenting upon, what war comics mostly were--which is to say straight-up grunt propaganda, often affected by the fact that army canteens were a huge captive market for comics.
When you read a lot of war comics, especially before 1970. you're reading stories actually intended for the soldiers, who were almost kids themselves and the comics helped hold that trusting state. They were meant as morale-boosters and psychological simplifiers, as well as stimulating a desire to be a soldier in kids back home who would, at the time, be subject to a draft at 18.
Most of them were basically like this:
Not exactly "make war no more." (And British war comics are, Pat Mills' thoughtful and sad CHARLEY'S WAR aside, even more enthusiastically violent and racist)
And yet people think it's a genre that should be kept going. One thinks of the episode of M*A*S*H where Father Mulcahy, wanting to write a Korean War song, comes to the conclusion that war songs probably shouldn't be written at all.
It reminds me of a couple of things. Firstly, it's very much like the misplaced nostalgia people have for westerns, forgetting, similarly, that the westerns they like were reactions against what westerns once were and commentary on same. Films like LITTLE BIG MAN or ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST--which are films that I like a lot--were meant as the closing of a genre, not its extension.
Which leads me to another similarity: WATCHMEN. Nowadays taken as some kind of artistic justification of the superhero genre when its intent was to end the genre.
The lesson is that if you've got a problem with a genre, you kill it best by starving it, not giving it fresh blood even as metacommentary. If you don't like a genre, don't work in it, and discourage others from doing so.
Ultimately every attempt at a genre's deconstruction is condemned to become its salvation. Can we name one instance where something intended to tear down a genre actually did so? Or were they taken as, "Well, if you do the genre like THAT, I like it!" Example again: WATCHMEN. Did mainstream comics move on from superheroes? No, they just decided to soil them. Problem solved and another three decades of life infused.
Sometimes things shouldn't be revived or perpetuated. Sometimes dead is better.
*Title inspired by Emmett O'Cuana
___________________
Looking at some old war comics--not SGT. ROCK or BLAZING COMBAT or TWO-FISTED TALES, but the actual workaday, average war comics there were the most of back in the day--brought a few thoughts to mind. Apparently not the kind of thoughts Garth Ennis has when he reads them.
So you've read some Kubert, some Kurtzman, some Goodwin, and you're nostalgic for war comics. Delve a bit deeper. You won't be. it amazes me that people don't realize those artists were making comics reacting against, and commenting upon, what war comics mostly were--which is to say straight-up grunt propaganda, often affected by the fact that army canteens were a huge captive market for comics.
When you read a lot of war comics, especially before 1970. you're reading stories actually intended for the soldiers, who were almost kids themselves and the comics helped hold that trusting state. They were meant as morale-boosters and psychological simplifiers, as well as stimulating a desire to be a soldier in kids back home who would, at the time, be subject to a draft at 18.
Most of them were basically like this:
And yet people think it's a genre that should be kept going. One thinks of the episode of M*A*S*H where Father Mulcahy, wanting to write a Korean War song, comes to the conclusion that war songs probably shouldn't be written at all.
It reminds me of a couple of things. Firstly, it's very much like the misplaced nostalgia people have for westerns, forgetting, similarly, that the westerns they like were reactions against what westerns once were and commentary on same. Films like LITTLE BIG MAN or ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST--which are films that I like a lot--were meant as the closing of a genre, not its extension.
Which leads me to another similarity: WATCHMEN. Nowadays taken as some kind of artistic justification of the superhero genre when its intent was to end the genre.
The lesson is that if you've got a problem with a genre, you kill it best by starving it, not giving it fresh blood even as metacommentary. If you don't like a genre, don't work in it, and discourage others from doing so.
Ultimately every attempt at a genre's deconstruction is condemned to become its salvation. Can we name one instance where something intended to tear down a genre actually did so? Or were they taken as, "Well, if you do the genre like THAT, I like it!" Example again: WATCHMEN. Did mainstream comics move on from superheroes? No, they just decided to soil them. Problem solved and another three decades of life infused.
Sometimes things shouldn't be revived or perpetuated. Sometimes dead is better.
*Title inspired by Emmett O'Cuana
___________________
Labels: bad ideas, comics, film, propaganda, war
¶ July 22, 2013 0 Comments
20 July 2013
The Short Films of David Lynch 1966-1996 + The Big Dream
Includes Six Figures Getting Sick (Six Times), The Alphabet, The Grandmother (my favorite of these), The Amputee, The Cowboy and the Frenchman, and Premonitions Following an Evil Deed (from LUMIERE).
Lynch also has a new and excellent album out, THE BIG DREAM. And you can buy it now here,
, and more. Here is a brief sampling.
___________________
Includes Six Figures Getting Sick (Six Times), The Alphabet, The Grandmother (my favorite of these), The Amputee, The Cowboy and the Frenchman, and Premonitions Following an Evil Deed (from LUMIERE).
Lynch also has a new and excellent album out, THE BIG DREAM. And you can buy it now here,
, and more. Here is a brief sampling.___________________
Labels: 20th century, art, David Lynch, film, music, my influences, surrealism
¶ July 20, 2013 0 Comments
19 July 2013
Your Random UK Comedy for Today #15: Mitchell & Webb - Do Not Think About The Event
"What is 'a book, a film or even a song'?" Remain indoors and DO NOT TOUCH THE WALLS.
The entire "Quiz Broadcast" series of sketches from That Mitchell & Webb Look. Also starring Sarah Hadland, Mark Evans and James Barkman of BLEAK EXPECTATIONS.
___________________
"What is 'a book, a film or even a song'?" Remain indoors and DO NOT TOUCH THE WALLS.
The entire "Quiz Broadcast" series of sketches from That Mitchell & Webb Look. Also starring Sarah Hadland, Mark Evans and James Barkman of BLEAK EXPECTATIONS.
___________________
Labels: comedy, disaster, horror, UK
¶ July 19, 2013 0 Comments
16 July 2013
Graphic Canon Vol. 3 is Out And I'm In It (Updated)
That's right, I thought I was going to be in Volume 4, but turns out I was mistaken. My interpretation of Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" in comics form, which I first announced to you last year, has been published in Graphic Canon Vol. 3, out now. And so far I'm proud to say, this volume is the most critically acclaimed so far.
It also includes some much better cartoonists than myself, such as my friends Ted Rall (doing Sherwood Anderson), Peter Kuper, David Lasky (doing Ulysses; by the way, all three of them were also in Working For The Man) and Molly Kiely doing a lovely "Black Elk Speaks."
But mainly of course, it has me so you should buy yours today at Amazon!
And while you're there, why not pick up your copy of my other new literary adaptation ($1.50 off cover price, by the way), LULU Book 1? Both qualify for super saver shipping...I'm just sayin'...
Update: Here's a UK review of the book. Money quote (well, as far as I'm concerned) : "...the Billie Holliday Jazz standard ‘Strange Fruit’ – which started life as the poem “Bitter Fruit” by Lewis Allan (AKA American Communist Abraham Meeropol) is here adapted into just as potent and heartfelt a response to Southern lynchings in John Linton Roberson’s sombre, silent strip."
Below is a quick flip-through preview of the book. I think they skipped past my pages at some point though.
And a couple of favorite versions of the song here.
___________________
, out now. And so far I'm proud to say, this volume is the most critically acclaimed so far.It also includes some much better cartoonists than myself, such as my friends Ted Rall (doing Sherwood Anderson), Peter Kuper, David Lasky (doing Ulysses; by the way, all three of them were also in Working For The Man) and Molly Kiely
doing a lovely "Black Elk Speaks."But mainly of course, it has me so you should buy yours today at Amazon!
And while you're there, why not pick up your copy of my other new literary adaptation ($1.50 off cover price, by the way), LULU Book 1? Both qualify for super saver shipping...I'm just sayin'...
Update: Here's a UK review of the book. Money quote (well, as far as I'm concerned) : "...the Billie Holliday Jazz standard ‘Strange Fruit’ – which started life as the poem “Bitter Fruit” by Lewis Allan (AKA American Communist Abraham Meeropol) is here adapted into just as potent and heartfelt a response to Southern lynchings in John Linton Roberson’s sombre, silent strip."
Below is a quick flip-through preview of the book. I think they skipped past my pages at some point though.
And a couple of favorite versions of the song here.
___________________
Labels: it's all about ME, literature, my comics, sale
¶ July 16, 2013 0 Comments
15 July 2013
La Jetée (1962, Chris Marker)
The short SF classic, with English subtitles.
___________________
The short SF classic, with English subtitles.
___________________
Labels: 1960s, Europe, film, science fiction
¶ July 15, 2013 0 Comments
07 July 2013
Decasia (2002, Bill Morrison) : The Beauty of Decaying Nitrate Film
DECASIA: THE STATE OF DECAY is a film made of found ruined, decaying nitrate film footage. The films are mostly unknown, and suffer from extreme wear damage, from mold and the decay of the bond between the emulsion and the film base. He strings a bunch of clips of these fragments together, to depict something very much like ghosts of the past.
And the image of ruined film is quite beautiful. Here are a whole bunch of stills to demonstrate.
Absolutely nothing was done to alter the look. These are all natural, untouched images of rotted films.
And here is an excerpt from the film itself.
And here is some explanation of the film.
I strongly recommend it.
___________________
And the image of ruined film is quite beautiful. Here are a whole bunch of stills to demonstrate.
Absolutely nothing was done to alter the look. These are all natural, untouched images of rotted films.
And here is an excerpt from the film itself.
And here is some explanation of the film.
I strongly recommend it.
___________________
Labels: 20th century, film, history
¶ July 07, 2013 0 Comments
06 July 2013
John Cage: 4'33" + Peter Greenaway Documentary (and a bit more)
First up, John Cage's most famous piece ever. To really get the proper effect, you should turn off the sound, because the idea is to anticipate organized sound, but to only hear what is actually around you. Whereas what you hear here is the sound recorded at this performance. Technically, 4'33" is always a live piece; a recording even of the ambient sound is not the proper effect.(the piece is NOT meant as a joke, despite what some may think)
And then Peter Greenaway's 4 AMERICAN COMPOSERS documentary on Cage.
Bonus: another from that series, about the great Meredith Monk.
And Greenaway's "M Is For Man, Music & Mozart."
___________________
First up, John Cage's most famous piece ever. To really get the proper effect, you should turn off the sound, because the idea is to anticipate organized sound, but to only hear what is actually around you. Whereas what you hear here is the sound recorded at this performance. Technically, 4'33" is always a live piece; a recording even of the ambient sound is not the proper effect.(the piece is NOT meant as a joke, despite what some may think)
And then Peter Greenaway's 4 AMERICAN COMPOSERS documentary on Cage.
Bonus: another from that series, about the great Meredith Monk.
And Greenaway's "M Is For Man, Music & Mozart."
___________________
Labels: 20th century, experimental, greenaway, music
¶ July 06, 2013 0 Comments
New Music: Nine Inch Nails (w/David Lynch) & Killing Joke
What looks like pretty good stuff from two great bands coming up, apparently. First, here's David Lynch's video for Nine Inch Nails
' "Came Back Haunted." (warning: do not watch if you have epilepsy. Seriously, the video has an actual warning to that effect.)
Next, "Corporate Elect," new from Killing Joke
.
An extra: the really nice Soft Moon remix of "Ice Age" from Trent Reznor's other band, How To Destroy Angels
, which I liked very much.
___________________
What looks like pretty good stuff from two great bands coming up, apparently. First, here's David Lynch's video for Nine Inch Nails
' "Came Back Haunted." (warning: do not watch if you have epilepsy. Seriously, the video has an actual warning to that effect.)Next, "Corporate Elect," new from Killing Joke
.An extra: the really nice Soft Moon remix of "Ice Age" from Trent Reznor's other band, How To Destroy Angels
, which I liked very much.___________________
Labels: electronica, music
¶ July 06, 2013 0 Comments
