On HU
Featured Archive post: me on Edie Fake’s amazing Gaylord Phoeix.
I talk about me, Bart Beaty, and the eternal circle of citation.
Brian Cremins on Tarantino, Oscar Micheaux, and black cowboys in the Western genre (with a pretty long comments thread.)
The 2012 Utilitarian Year in Review.
Jacob Canfield on Stokoe vs. Druillet.
Bert Stabler on Edie Fake’s one person show, memory and queerness.
America loves me because I’m a Jew.
Ng Suat Tong provides the list of 4th quarter nominations for the Best Online Comics Criticism awards.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At the Atlantic I talk about Moto Hagio’s Heart of Thomas, boys’ love, and cross-gender identification.
At the Atlantic I review Laina Dawes’ book about her experiences as a black woman metalhead.
At Splice I talk about Carlene Carter’s wonderful and hardly remembered album Little Love Letters.
At Splice I argue that both Republicans and Democrats are craven, albeit in somewhat different ways.
Other Links
Jason Bailey with a really nice piece on Spike Lee’s career.
Alyssa Rosenber on gender in Django Unchained and Lincoln.
This Week’s Reading
Reread Moto Hagio’s The Heart of Thomas for a review. Read Walter Benn Michaels’ Our America, which was fantastic. Started the last 50 Shades of Grey book, which may actually be worse than the other two, if such a thing is possible. Also started Alisa Valdes’ The Feminist and the Cowboy, which is pretty bad, but better than 50 Shades of Grey.
Read:
Henry IV Part 2 (Shakespeare)
The Exorcist (Blatty) – excellent
The Prague Cemetery (Eco)
Marvel Comics: The Untold Story (Howe)
The Amityville Horror – bleh
A Christmas Carol (Dickens)
Lord of Light (Zelazny)
Comics:
Nancy Eats Food (Earnie Bushmiller)
Movies:
Enjoyed The Hobbit and Point Break, didn’t really care for Superman (1978) but it’s better than ‘Returns’, Road House was hilariously bad. Also watched the first couple seasons of The Wire which I’m getting a little less addicted to now but still enjoying.
I’ve been re-reading Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle for a book club, and I finished the Wally Wood EC collection. I’m still slowly working on the second volume of The Graphic Canon; I’m not finding it as good as the first, but there’s some stuff in there that I like.
Movies: 21 Jump Street, which was mostly enjoyable, in a dumb way. Barbarella, which I’d never seen before, was a good time, full of 60s silliness. I’ve also been watching a lot of Doctor Who for some reason; I watched the episode “Blink” on a whim, since I’d heard that was a good point of entry, and liked it enough to basically start from the beginning of the current version of the series. So far I’ve watched the first season, with Christopher Eccleston as The Doctor. I might take a break before plowing ahead into the David Tennant years, but I’m sure I’ll get to them before too long.
Cat’s Cradle was the first book I read in my pre/early-teen phase “mature” literature phase. I loved that and other Vonnegut but haven’t gone back to it in almost a couple decades now, with the exception of trying to re-read Slaughterhouse Five a couple years ago. I didn’t make it all the way through. It may seem like a bizarre/minor quibble but the constant refrain “so it goes” throughout the book got to be so off-putting, I soon lost all interest. Should revisit Cat’s Cradle though, and maybe Breakfast of Champions.
Vonnegut’s sort of sci-fi Mark Twain — if sci-fi Mark Twain were really, really glib. The “so it goes” is an unfortunate example of that.
This past week or two I have been reading Josef Alber’s Interaction of Color. I’ve been doing some exercises from it in fiber arts, just for fun.
I’ve also been working up some abstract/nonfic comics, so I’ve been doing a lot of image searching more than real reading. I am also considering a fiber arts comic. (All of this has been based off the ‘is it a comic/comic genre’ discussion.)
For books, I’m deep in the biology of orchards–The Holistic Orchard, Gaia’s Garden, etc. I’m planting fruit trees soon, I hope, and I need to get my orders in soon (has anyone eaten any heirloom apples, especially Calville Blancs?) After reading about all the bugs and germs and fungus, I have been reading trashy novels to cleanse my palette.
I’m also trying to decide whether to watch Elementary. I had mixed feelings about the recent Sherlock adaptations.
Well,the British young, modern-day Sherlock Holmes series (everybody keeps assuming he and Watson are a gay couple) is quite good; The Downey movies we’re assiduously avoiding. “Sacrilege!” said the Missus upon seeing a preview of the first one, and I agree…
Mike, Yeah, I bounced hard off the Downey movie. All I saw was the preview of that one, and boy was that enough for me. Ugh. I found the BBC one OK–nice production and great acting, but I kept guessing the mysteries. I haven’t seen the second season yet, because I heard it was another cliffhanger (I’ll just wait for the next season to be out to watch it).