Going Home!

I'm leaving in about an hour to get to the airport to go home for the weekend. I'm going to see my friends and my family and hug them all. I'm packed (mostly) and I'm leaving my room in a state of total disarray and I'm hoping that maybe the little tidying brownies will pay me a visit and file my notes and put books on shelves where they belong and stuff. So I'll be updating from South Jersey for the next few days. It won't feel different for you, but I'm going to be in a place with real springtime, and that's a big deal. To be fair, though, I saw three crocuses (croci?) huddled against the frame of one of the ramshackle houses that I pass on my way home from the library. That must be a good horticultural omen.
Thursday, April 5, 2001 01:53 p.m.

Groke is Not Blue Lines
It’s something else altogether. It’s wittier (not that Blue Lines lacked wit). It’s meaner. And Tom uses bad words in it. Which is fine by me, as I like a bit of cussing. So, without further stalling and yapping by me, here’s Tom’s Groke Manifesto. It’s the anti-content. And he says something hilariously mean about a very freakish sounding ex-child prodigy antique dealer, here.
Wednesday, April 4, 2001 08:47 p.m.

Post-Simpsons Media Literacy
Ok, I haven’t read this article yet, but I will. And so should you. And I’m not just saying that because my favourite professor is the editor of the journal that it appears in.
Wednesday, April 4, 2001 08:46 p.m.

John Waters' Brilliant Career
Have I linked this before? I should install a little search thingy here so I will know whether or not I’m repeating myself. John Waters' comment about Nest Magazine got me thinking that I wish I had a Fairy Godfather like him. Can you imagine the amazing kinds of birthday presents he'd bring you? And the cool people he'd take you to meet? And the places he'd take you? Lucky is the child who grows up on a John Waters movie set, says me.
Wednesday, April 4, 2001 08:42 p.m.

Chris Ware – Graphic Novelist, Geek, Hero
Is the NYT living inside my brain these days? I just finished a paper on the need for public and school libraries to develop comic book & graphic novel collections as part of their children’s and youth services departments. I’m so glad this art form is coming into its own and getting the artistic & literary recognition it deserves. How can you not love something that sounds like this description of Ware’s work: “Every square inch is filled with art, text, hand lettering and cutout home-assembly paper models of robots, peep shows and more. The back pages are often jammed with sarcastic ads for novelty items, parodying old Sears, Roebuck and Johnson Smith novelty catalogs. Even the microscopic copyright information in the front of each book is riddled with little jokes and humorous antiquated phrasing.” Wow.

While you’re there, don’t forget to read Dave Eggers’ review of a bunch of recent graphic novels, including Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan and Lynda Barry’s The! Greatest! Of! Marlys!, which I was pleased as punch to receive as a Chanukkah present from the fabulous Miss Hellsbelle.
Wednesday, April 4, 2001 08:41 p.m.

Diversions
I'm so proud of my friends. They're all so clever and chock full of good ideas that I want to appropriate for my own dark purposes. Take Hellsbelle, for example. She's got a swanky new Diaryland log for the express purpose of recording her latest finds -- books, music, movies, what have you -- and I think that's a great idea. I like it so much that I may have to steal it.
Tuesday, April 3, 2001 09:48 p.m.

Who's That Doyenne of the Stage?
Contrary to what you might think, that absolutely fabulous dame is not Rosalind Russell. She is, in fact, the Saucy Folklorist. The SF has just been accepted to not one, but two awesome graduate programs -- one in, unsurprisingly, folklore & folklife, and the other, more daringly, in performance studies at NYU. Does she not rock? Is she not the coolest and most versatile? Yes! She is all those things and more. And I'm so, so proud of her. Way to go, honey!
Tuesday, April 3, 2001 09:37 p.m.

Should I Call Magazine Subscribers Anonymous?
John Waters says that he subscribes to 92 magazines monthly and that he always reads Nest first. That's good enough for me.
Monday, April 2, 2001 09:34 p.m.

Johnny Depp
Johnny Depp & Serge Gainsbourg references keep popping up in my readings and thoughts recently. Not that I'm complaining.
Monday, April 2, 2001 09:31 p.m.

David Byrne, Wedding Designer?
It all started as a simple home-voodoo project, but soon, he “realized that instead of creating fetish objects, as I'd originally intended, we had created little people. a family in fact. the objects had become animated, as I'd intended, but in a completely different way that I had assumed rather than being contemporary votive objects they were caricatures of uncles aunts and other relatives....and when grouped together they looked like a motley group assembled for a wedding...”
Monday, April 2, 2001 09:30 p.m.