I just got back from BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, (http://www.michaelmoore.com) Michael Moore's new movie about the gun culture of the United States. And by gun culture, I mean culture of the United States. More than anything, it showed how intricately gun culture is linked with the day-to-day down south, and the adverse effect it has on the collective American Psyche. There are large portions of the film that compare and contrast with Canada, which is nice. I'm a sucker for films mentioning Canada. And honestly? Aside from portreying us as slightly goofy (which we can be), it was incredibly complimentary and I actually felt sort of proud.
Of course, it also helped to point out quite terrifyingly just how the American "Culture Of Fear" was encroaching up here, led by the Right Wing, the police, and the national media conglomerate (Canwest Global). Example:
The right wing political parties use fear-mongering techniques to roll-back social services and create division. Expensive expose's on WELFARE FRAUD and MEDICARE fraud are example of how the poor should be fingerprinted, or alternately, they should remove the services altogether and lower taxes for the rich so that they can afford them.
The Toronto Police Department, led by head-scare-monger Julian Fantino have requested budget increases near constantly for as long as I can remember. This is in spite of a vastly decreasing and decreased crime rate. Oh, and they want black helicopters patrolling the skies too, again unecessarily, partly to act as a 'visual deterrant'. Note: Visual Deterrant means 'instill fear'.
Canwest Global are easily the most Americanized news-source in the country. It's not even about left-wing or right-wing, it's about building and selling fear. They lead the newscasts with tradgedies, they're the most polished and fake, they delight in reporting things that make you want to stay indoors, and did I mention they've got helicopters too?
Anyway.
Anyone with even a slight interest in politics is going to be aware of these issues, and laugh at me for only now recognizing them. Well, I've been aware for quite a while now, but I just thought it might be worth sharing for a little bit. Get out there and see this movie, at the very least you'll have something to talk about.
Like how the US dropped bombs on a PRE-SCHOOL and a HOSPITAL (hundreds dead, approx. half of which were children) completely obliterating them, in Kosovo the day of the Columbine shootings, and only one tradgedy (12 children/1 adult dead) got the headline.
Fuck the war in Iraq. "Not in my name," as the placcards say.
I am blogging. I'm doing it from Opera on Mal's computer, so if it doesn't actually work, that's why...
Good things: THE HIDDEN CAMERAS: Visit their website at www.musicismyboyfriend.com. While the mp3's there are alright, it was one guy and a four-tracker. If you go to the PRESS section there's a link to some full-band sessions they did at the CBC. Honestly? THey're fucking awesome. Nothing has affected me like this since... Oh, Belle And Sebastian. And sure, that sounds fucking twee to all the hipsters in the know, but remember when people made music because it was fun? THE HIDDEN CAMERAS do. There's joy in their music, and if you're able to hear it, you won't be able to keep from sort of dancing in your seat. If not, hey, modern-rock-radio seems to be playing a lot of them Queens of the Stoneage...
MORE GOOD THINGS: Apperantly, ramen noodles are even better if you put shit in them. Today, i added bits of this pork panchetta lunch meat thing we got at the store, and broccoli, and soy sauce. It was like a meal on it's own. Very good. I've been eating poorly lately and sleeping worse, so the green vegetables were a very good idea. :)
NOT GOOD: Mal is gone for a fucking week. I hope I don't lose my mind. I got really used to having him around. Fucker. Hope you're having a good time if you're reading this.
MORE BAD: I'm concerned that this just became a livejournal, and I became a livejournal-person while I wasn't working. Not that the livejournal people aren't nice, perfectly normal folks. But... It's not who I wanna be. Probably. I'll just rationalize the whole thing by saying that COMICS DON'T EXIST IN A VACUUM, AND ALL OF THIS RANDOM BULLSHIT IS REALLY RELEVANT IN THE LARGER SCHEME OF THINGS. Or something. You'll believe that, won't you?
COMICS: Do you realize just how little I manage to care about fucking comics news these days? I mean, if you bitch for even a moment, still, about Bill Fucking Jemas, then you've already lost, alright? Ignore him. Ignore him, or be fucking BETTER than him, or both. But don't just bitch. Try harder.
COMICS 2: I read GLOBAL FREQUENCY #1 and thought it was a pretty decent first issue, nothing wrong with it. Although I imagine that the creative team was shooting a little higher than "decent"... There are specific problems with it that I'm not going to go into here, and I invite you to make up your own mind about it this wednesday at comic stores everywhere.
COMICS PLUG: Actually, it's a plug for me. PREVIEWS REVIEW continues to be updated on schedule, 5 weeks in a row. Congratulate me, that's approaching my near-longest tenure for one of these things (set 9 weeks between June 2000 and August 2000 at PopImage). Anyway, everyone has nice things to say (save possibly Ellis in Bad Signal, but he's fairly cranky so I cut him some leeway). Anyway, if you're one of the 20 or 30 people a day reading this, check it out alright? www.previewreview.com. I'm, dare I say, proud of this site. It's not _wrong_ yet, and it's only getting better. I like that. :)
I think that's it. If James still hasn't messaged me by the time I get back, I'm done typing this, I'll come back and write something nasty about him. I'm fair that way. :)
Did I ever mention how much I love reading? I know, it doesn't seem like something that would be necessary to say, what with the comic books and all, but say it I will, I really love to read. When I was younger, I'd read.... Geezus, all the time. I mean, I still had a disturbing ammount of time to put into the Internet and computers, but in my 13th or 14th year, I read something like a bag of 25 books. And lots more since.
Slowed down considerably after I got out of school. I'd stil do about 6 books per year, but I was digging the shorter condensed thoughts and divergent impressions that magazine articles left on me. There's something that's just a little bit sharper about magazine articles, in general. They don't tend to leave the lasting impression, but they can shape (or warp) ideas in 1/20th of the space and time. I like writing magazine-style articles as well, the punch of them... I became a junky, until recently when finances didn't afford me the luxury of my comic book habit AND my expensive glossy magazine habit. Ah, Wallpaper*, how I miss you.
I've started reading books again, though I was sort of afraid to. Books are... If I start reading a book, despite the length, I usually can't stop reading it until it's done. I hate pausing in the middle. Hate it. So whenever I read a book, I usually destroy my sleep and work schedule quite thoroughly.
I've Read Coraline and American Gods by Neil Gaiman in the past 2 days. Usually I start reading around 1am, and then read until I collapse from exhaustion... It's not terribly healthy, I know. I've gone to work two days in a row now on 5 hours sleep... But both books were Excellent. :)
Have I ever mentioned how much I love Penny Arcade? I don't think I have. Suffice to say, I do.
I didn't blog at all this week. Fuck. I was trying to be so good about it too. Anyway, the big thing that kept me busy was the convention and The Beguiling. Sorry about that (if anyone is still reading).
I read a lot of great books this week too. I will copy and paste short reviews of them I wrote a little bit later, when I am not so lazy.
Friday saw not much of anything happen. I hung out with my friends, that was nice.
Saturday was a little bit weird. I worked my first official shift at the Beguiling (yay!) and then went out for a few drinks. Drunk, I came home and realized it was the last night before the Warren Ellis Forum (WEF) closed, and I was something like 15 posts short of 3000 posts in 4 years. So, I had to post 15 times in a matter of hours... Well, "had to" is relative, I suppose... Anyway. I did, but I'm pretty sure I pissed a few people off. I feel though, that, over time, they will re-discover the ha-ha in my messages. Maybe on some sort of archeological dig through...
Sunday I woke up and it was closed. Sort of weird, it was a constant in my life for four years and now... boop! Gone. Well, not gone really. You can't post to it, but it's still there... Which is sort of nice. Hopefully I'll not find myself getting nostalgic for it. That'd be a little too creepy.
Sunday also marked my second Official Beguiling Shift. I did the order for Cold Cut Distribution, a comic book distributor that does alternative and indy books... Lots of them. We did a fairly substantial Cold Cut order... By that I mean that the order solely for books from ColdCut was larger than an entire month's Diamond bill at the last store I used to work at. It's really interesting working at the store, because I think I bring a much-different point of view to the proceedings than the other employees. This is down to "The New Alternative".
Previous to ten years ago (or so), books tended to be classified as "Mainstream" or "Alternative". You were either doing Superheroes, or you weren't. And even then, you were doing Superheroes for Marvel or DC, or you weren't. The first real chink in the armour came, as far as I'm concerned, with Image's "NON LINE" of books. Here were books that had 'mainstream' potential, and by that I mean the general mainstream, not superheroes, and they were being published by one of the Superhero People. Sort of like EPIC or VERTIGO, except not sprung from heroes. The line crashed spectacularly (unfortunately), but the idea that there could be varying levels of mainstream and alternative was an infectious one... The divisions got clearer with things like BONE and the Trilogy tour. BONE sold spectacularly well, by "Mainstream" standards, and then Bone went to Image and then back to Cartoon books, and then BONE's creator Jeff Smith started doing everything in his power to put other "Alternative" Creators' work in from of his fans. CASTLE WAITING, SCARY GODMOTHER, Charles Vess' work, the incredibly long-lived USAGI YOJIMBO... All of these got 'lumped' in with folks like Terry (Strangers In Paradise) Moore and David (STRAY BULLETS) Lapham as a new sort of "Mainstream Alternative"... Folks doing good work that didn't sell all that terribly, that had had a mainstream sensibility but wasn't superhero fare. It was an interesting time.
And then the WEF came.
The WEF, in it's four years, did more to push the 'mainstream alternative' than literally anyone or anything else. I mean, at best the mainstream publishers see these books as creator-fodder for their superhero line, and the 'indy' guys who came up on the Underground Comix and Gary Groth rants look at them and snigger, so to have a big, powerful entity pushing and propping and promoting was very, very welcome. A lot of that comes down to Warren Ellis' self-interest (and why shouldn't it?) as he wants a viable alternative to doing superhero work for the Big Two. The fact that he was able to help manufacture that alternative in a fairly major way is outstanding, and if anything I hope that's the legacy the forum leaves behind.
Going through the Cold Cut order, the books I was ordering, stuff like ONI and SLAVE LABOR; people like Eddie Campbell (who's work has come very much into vogue thanks to timely re-issues of his ALEC material... not to mention that movie...); HUMANOIDS; and even folks like TOP SHELF who're doing some pretty interesting stuff these days; all of them have benefited directly from the WEF, and all of them produce books that I've become very interested in. More importantly, that interest has become a knowledge base which none of the people at the store were really that familiar with (beyond the cursory knowledge and understanding that comes with being an employee at a good store). I utilize this knowledge to, well, order books.
So that's it. I spent an extra couple of hours after closing putting the finishing touches on the order, and they're sending it off today. I think I made ColdCut, and a lot of deserving publishers very happy too, which is always nice.
Anyway, that's it for now. Talk to you more later.
"The site isn't just just about reading comics in public literally; it's about noting where comics surface in public: in book reviews, in coverage of the movie and television industries, in the world of "fine art," and anywhere else these references might pop up that contributes to the health of the medium -- preferably online, to allow for links."
That's the link for his first entry. Just read it, pretty interesting. Gonna continue to read the archives. In the interim, go read.
"But let's face it, why shouldn't some comics be written with diehard comics readers in mind? Of course, it would be nice if the people for whom they're written had the integrity to return the favor -- you know, read them in the light of day."
This is the blog of a gentlemen named Marc Weidenbaum. Marc reads some pretty good comics. Marc's goal of this blog is to encourage you to read your comics in public. I'm only a couple of entries in, so I'm not sure why, specifically, he thinks you should do this. If it's something of earth-shattering importance, I'll let you know. Otherwise, this is pretty cool.
I should probably wait and post this when the new review goes up, but I just wanted to point people to the site. In addition to the monthly recommendation, we do this weekly pro/con of shit that's coming out. If you're going to the store and looking for something decent to buy that you might never have picked up otherwise, we're the site for you. Check it out.
