Mostly Comics and also Carole Lombard

by Will

  • I have forgone coffee for tea, as a favor to my increasingly sensitive stomach. No more cylinder of Starbucks — now it’s a ceramic mug of Earl Grey. I’m sure I’ll go back to coffee — tea just tastes too THIN, somehow. But it’s welcome and easy detox to temporarily step into. Plus grabbing a mug of tea makes you feel like foppish member of the House of Lords each morning, even if your hair is sticking up and you’re wearing five year old blue jeans that have a baggy ass. It’s a fun contrast.
  • I’m hardly on MySpace because Friendster took up too much of my time. It also tended to hurt more feelings than it helped. If I didn’t send a testimonial to everyone whose name I knew, I felt like an asshole. Anyway, avoiding MySpace saves me probably hours of time but it also means I miss some good stuff, like my friend Mitch’s page for his Channel 102 show Sexual Intercourse American Style. (http://www.myspace.com/sexualstyle). It’s really funny, and I’m not just saying that because I get to be in the show.
  • I’ve been reading this amazingly thorough (maybe TOO thorough as I tend to skim) blog of the comics industry: Journalista!. Lots of great stuff, including comics-related events across the country — very many in NYC.Yesterday’s entry had a lot about comics created by women for women, inspired by DC Comic’s announcement of their Minx line. Talking about “men vs. women” in any creative field is a drag, but comics’ male-to-female ratio makes Fortune 500 CEOs seem practically co-ed, so I think it’s worth talking about. Heidi McDonald has a good essay about it, and she separately posts a hilarious pair of Wonder Woman drawings — one by a man, one by a woman.
  • A cool look at the artwork of Jaime Hernandez. This one, too.
  • Here’s your updated PKD reading list: The short stories “The Variable Man” and “Paycheck.” That goes along with your already-assigned novels Ubik, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and the pleasantly bat-shit crazy Now Wait For Last Year.
  • Saw Nothing’s Sacred and My Man Godfrey starring Carole Lombard. You do have to switch your brain into “old movie” mode, but they’re very funny. Carole Lombard reminded me of Amy Poehler crossed with… SOMEONE, and I can’t figure out who it might be. I think a lot of not-good movies whose plan seems to be “have an attractive female fall down a lot” might just be trying to do a Carole Lombard movie. Carole Lombard is also very pretty, so am I just being a dude? My instinct is she’s hilarious. I’m waiting for Eliza’s vote.
  • Went to the UCBT yesterday to see the awesomely surreal Krompf sketch show, but I got there early enough to accidentally see Jonathan Katz interviewed by super-deadpan Carl Arnheiter. It’s a good day when you just stumble into a live Jonathan Katz interview. What I was struck by most of all was how funny Katz is while having such enormous pauses in his dialogue. He is so funny, but I swear he’s silent 80% of the time. That might have been inadvertently accentuated by Carl, who also takes huge pauses. By the end, it felt like they were each daring each other to take longer to finish their respective sentences. That sounds like I’m making fun of it, but I actually think seeing Carl interview someone is a relief when compared to the annoyingly frantic pace of… well, 95% of all entertainment.
  • One more comics thing: a Rorschach Hostess ad.