HOORAY FOR EVERYTHING

I’ve been meaning to write several entries this week. It’s been rather busy, and so I have both had a lot to write about and a distinct lack of time for doing so. I’ve been going out quite often (including bowling with Steve Rolston last night, if you can believe it), while also trying to juggle my deadlines and make sure Gravitation volume 6 was turned in on time this past Friday. It was, but that pretty much monopolized my computer time (with, of course, the never-ending Oni workday being an exception).

Tuesday night I went to see Eddie Izzard on his current concert tour, Sexie. I have never seen him live before, and honestly know him for his roles in films like Velvet Goldmine and The Cat’s Meow more than I do his comedy. Still, this made it a great experience, as my expectations were probably vastly different than 95% of the audience—in that I had hardly any. To my surprise, he built a large portion of his routine out of superheroes, comparing them to transvestites for their desire to change. His references weren’t always spot on (no less so than anything else, though), and there was a certain secret shame to knowing that though he was only joking about Sue Storm stepping out on Mr. Fantastic, she really had with Namor.

I think the thing that strikes me most about his technique is his ability to sound like none of this is planned. Izzard always comes off as if he is making it up off the top of his head. I imagine that this may be partially true, that he likely has the skeleton of what he wants to talk about, and he can weave in and out of whatever subject he desires within that skeleton. But, I almost wanted to go back and see him the second night just to see how true that was. For all I know, he has it planned to the most minor stutter, and it’s exactly the same every time. It’s possible, you know. Just like how The Office is actually scripted that way, and not improvised.

Oh, and Eddie has boobs now. No, not saggy manboobs or even real implants, but jellies he wears when he feels like it. He suggested them for the male with a bit of a gut, as they can help you look slimmer. He demonstrated, and they actually did take attention away from his slight portliness.

Wednesday I made an unexpected detour into Washington. Keith Wood had found himself with an extra ticket to see R.E.M. and Wilco, and he convinced me to go along. I had wanted to when tickets had gone on sale, but I think had opted for a budgetary move for Bjork instead (still the right choice in hindsight). The show was at a new amphitheatre just outside Vancouver, WA, and it was actually a pretty decent place. Nice sound system, at least. You could definitely tell that R.E.M. is a band that has been around for a while. A large portion of the audience was made up of older men trying to pretend they were still college students.

I was dreading Wilco. I don’t really know their music, but know them in that “No Depression” lump they are in, which has always been unappealing to me. There was a certain earnestness to the movement—and I find earnestness leads to bad art. Similarly, it was all a little too studied. Guy with a complete Big Star collection picks up guitar, copies sound exactly, calls himself “authentic.” If you don’t have a good pop sensibility a la the very fallible Teenage Fanclub, you aren’t likely to get that rootsy shit across to me.

That said, I was pleasantly surprised. The first two numbers were exactly what I expected, in that it was a bunch of guys on stage playing very perfect, uninspired jammy-rock. They actually looked exactly like they do on the poster to that documentary about them, I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. I feared that sort of polish was going to mar the whole set...

Those first two songs were off their first two albums, though, and I am told that those are the albums to avoid—and for the very reasons I disliked these numbers. What ended up drawing me in was a middle section of about three songs, including the aforementioned “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” (if that’s what it’s called; the song with that line in it, at least), that were built around a noise collage. Granted, said collage was fairly unspectacular. I mean, turning a radio dial and an alarm clock going off? Don’t we all own Dark Side of the Moon? Hell, even Moz did it better (check “I Know It’s Going to Happen Someday”). What made it work, though, were the songs laid on top of them—bare numbers with sparse melodies, sung very plainly, and by all accounts very sad. I could picture myself listening to something like that.

R.E.M. were exceptionally good. I had seen them on the Monster tour way back when, and they were relatively staid. Not so this time. From the get-go, it was clear this show was going to be different. Michael Stipe bounced onto the stage and shuffled up and down like a maniac in that gravity-defying way he has that is so mysterious (how does her do it?!). The band had a general passion about them that made for a rousing set. I had told Keith going in I was hoping to hear “Drive,” and they didn’t disappoint. However, that was eclipsed by the evening’s version of “Nightswimming,” which was gorgeous. Simply Stipe on vocals and Mike Mills on the piano, with Ken Stringfellow of the Posies (who should be in the lump with Wilco, even if they aren’t really) adding some minor effects. Heavenly. (The song itself was dedicated to Lance Bangs, which might impress my friend Christopher.)

The only complaints I could really have about R.E.M.’s set was that there was a certain artificiality to the structure. They seemed to go the fast-slow-fast-slow route in picking songs. They did do some digging back into their old stuff, and that was quite welcome (“Orange Crush,” the song that made me like R.E.M. in the first place, kicked a whole lot of ass), and of the new songs, “Bad Day” sounds like it will actually be a pretty good single. “Animal” was about as not-good as you can expect. No band that far into their recording career should do a song called “Animal.” That’s the sort of song you have to hit when you’re young, when chanting I’m an animallllll might actually be believable.

There was also a feeling that maybe they should retire the hits, or use them sparingly. “Losing My Religion” and “Man on the Moon” seemed perfunctory. They were, let’s face it, boring. “Oh, look, Peter Buck has the mandolin. Ho-hum.” At least with “The One I Love,” you could tell Stipe was having a little fun with it, probably enjoying the irony of the audience accepting it as a love song through and through. Same with the singalong nature of “Everybody Hurts.” Listen to that song again, and tell me, is it really the sort of song you and your friends should sing along to with your arms intertwined, swaying? Then again, maybe I really just am not the person this stuff is aimed at anymore. Judging by the woman behind us who was complaining about all the songs she didn’t know, maybe the guys do have to pander a little. (I don’t even think she was familiar with the more recent “Imitation of Life,” which is great in concert, despite being a little tepid on disc).

Similarly, despite being a great closer, Stipe’s jokey jig during “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” suggested it’s time to put that in the closet next to David Byrne’s oversized suit.

For those of you who are into such things, I was sent the set list by Keith (including album sources, which for me was damn helpful!):

main set

01. Finest Worksong (Document)

02. These Days (Life's Rich Pageant)

03. Drive (Automatic for the People)

04. Animal (New Song)

05. Daysleeper (Up)

06. Orange Crush (Green)

07. Bad Day (New Song)

08. Electrolite (New Adventures ih Hi-FI)

09. The One I Love (Document)

10. I've Been High (Reveal)

11. Feeling Gravity’s Pull (Fables of the Reconstruction)

12. Begin the Begin (Life's Rich Pageant)

13. Nightswimming (Automatic for the People)

14. Losing My Religion (Automatic for the People)

15. She Just Wants to Be (Reveal)

16. Walk Unafraid (Up)

17. Man on the Moon (Automatic for the People)

encore

1. Everybody Hurts (Automatic for the People)

2. Imitation of Life (Reveal)

3. It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine) (Document)

*

Using the word “tepid” reminded me of a recent coffee shop observation. I think there is something mentally wrong with people who order their coffee “tepid.” It just doesn’t seem right to me. It’d be like watching a movie with only partial sound, or asking for someone to give you a half-hearted kiss. “Plant one on my like you don’t really mean it, baby!” Pick a lane, dude. Iced coffee or coffee. None of this wishy-washy shit.

*

Work-wise, I am off the manga for a little bit. After a rather intense biweekly schedule of doing 4 or so books in a row, I am going on pause while the translators catch up. Not sure when the next volume of one of the books will come along. Scott Ciencin is ready to get back to the YA series, though, so that may start occupying some time.

Oh, and did I link to this interview?

Current Soundtrack: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Take Them On On Your Own; Kenickie, “Stay In The Sun” CD1

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LOVE ON THE ROCKS WITH NO ICE

This week has been hell for trying to get work done. I’ve spent four nights on Gravitation vol. 6 and I am starting this morning only on page 66. That’s pathetic. Thursday night I tried working while watching the VMAs, which I figured would make both less painful, but ended up talking with my friend Ben Holcomb on the phone for nearly two hours instead. Last night, I worked while watching a music DVD (Destiny’s Child, as referenced in yesterday’s entry). I can’t really work with a movie or TV on that has any plot, as I don’t really end up seeing much of the program or getting much writing under my belt. I envy people who can do that. So, this was an experiment—and I don’t think it worked. It’s hard to judge, since I’ve been having massive computer problems, and I crashed a lot last night—but I don’t have many pages to show for my efforts and though the Destiny's music was good, I hardly remember any of the visuals.

By the way, in volume 6, Shuichi gets a new haircut and it kind of makes him look like Chynna Clugston-Major. Which is funny, because I always fantasize about her being a teenaged boy…

Which is which?

Trying out a new band on the headphones right now. The Darkness. Know nothing about them, except that their lead singer seems to enjoy a frock or two. The album is Permission to Land, and I am really not sure what the hell is going on. You ever see Jim Breuer do Gunner Olsen, the heavy metal dude on the news on Saturday Night Live when Colin Quinn was the anchor? Well, you’d almost swear that guy got a band together. The dude can fuckin’ sing, that's for sure. I can practically feel my own balls suck up into my body cavity every time he hits a soaring high note and holds it for a whole line—but Jesus, what next? Are Rainbow going to reform? (I say that knowing full well they may be on tour right now—with Ronnie James Dio even—though the trend seems to be has-been bands touring without their egomaniac lead singer.) I mean, the second track on this Darkness album is called “Get Your Hands Off My Woman,” and not to sound like a redneck or anything, but unless the dude was talking about himself, it wasn’t very convincing.

No dress, but what is with those pants?

Then again, I bet a lot of Portland hipsters would love them. They can sit in old man bars drinking PBR and talk about the Campaign for Real Rock. *shudder*

Best lines of today’s work: “And my dream is to be a novelist? How gloomy can you get? You’ll never get girls that way.” (Eiri Yuki)

Current Soundtrack: Aflie, Alfie radio, Edwyn Collins Doctor Syntax

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OVER UNDER SIDEWAYS DOWN

Wednesday night I went and saw the film version of American Splendor, the creative adaptation of Harvey Pekar’s seminal autobiographical comic.

I enjoyed it quite a lot. I wouldn’t have much to complain about, really. Just the standard complaint I have with the biopic genre. You often feel a little shortchanged when someone tries to encapsulate a life in somewhere between 90 and 120 minutes. In this case, by the time we get to the early ‘90s, and the time chronicled in the Our Cancer Year graphic novel (which I just read last week), the film has been going on for some time, and though a very important and dramatic time in Pekar’s life, it rockets right by on the screen.

Where the film triumphs is with style. The filmmakers approached the American Splendor source material with a relatively reverential eye and put a lot of thought into how to transfer this unique book to the cinema. Pekar doesn’t offer conventional narratives in American Splendor. He isn’t a plot-driven writer. His focus is on the mundane, on the minutiae of his life. In the pivotal scene in the film, where Pekar is realizing that the comic books he likes so much can actually be a viable mode of expression for him, he is in a typically American Splendor situation—in a supermarket trying to decide which checkout line will be the fastest. In a stroke of genius, the moments freeze, and Harvey (played by Paul Giamatti) has his thoughts materialize in thought balloons. In the very next scene, he sits down and begins to script his first comic—and it’s about choosing a line in a supermarket. It’s a visual representation in the shift in his life, and is probably the most important scene in the film. Not only does it set the course of the rest of Pekar’s life, but firmly establishes that this film isn’t so much about a man who writes a comic, but about a man who decides that his life is a story, and in the end, about story itself and the layers of narrative that naturally form in this kind of situation.

Really, American Splendor is a logical extension of Adaptation. It’s what Charlie Kaufman was striving for—taking something that reflects real life and making it into a viable film without destroying the things that make it work in the first place. The credits sequence establishes it all. Shifting from your standard movie frame, the screen becomes a page of a comic book. There are live action panels (featuring Giamatti and shots of Cleveland, as well as substituting captions with the participant’s names) alternating with drawn panels (featuring Pekar explaining who he is, entirely in word balloons, and often, as he explains, by different artists). Thus we are introduced to two of three of our narrative threads: the film version of Pekar and the comic version of Pekar. As the real Harvey takes over the narration for the drawn Harvey, speaking in voice over, we are ushered into the third thread—quickly revealed as the man himself working on a movie set. We literally cut to him sitting in front of a microphone, reading from a script.

Throughout the film, the three threads will develop on their own, but intertwine endlessly until they begin to blur. Movie Pekar is creating the life of Comic Book Pekar, but Real Life Pekar is actually creating Movie Pekar. Comic Book Pekar intrudes on Movie Pekar, such as in the grocery store scene, or the ever present captions that establish new settings. Real Life Pekar also intrudes on Movie Pekar. Beyond getting his own scenes, when comic book captions aren’t narrating Movie Pekar’s life, the Real Life Pekar is. He also shows up as his real self when Movie Pekar goes on David Letterman’s show. We don’t see recreated footage, we see the real footage from the ‘80s.

Though, actually, we do get one recreation, when Harvey has his last appearance on the show and thrusts his own agenda onto it, tossing the program into chaos. I imagine one of the reasons for this choice was so that the camera could go behind the participants and see the bewildered audience. But one also has to wonder if they were barred from using this footage, and I wish that they would have addressed it, had Real Life Pekar actually comment on what’s going down. (Similarly, one can’t help but wonder how Frank Stack, artist for Our Cancer Year, became a guy named Fred.)

Perhaps the most effective head-on collision of two of the threads comes when, following a scene between Movie Pekar and his friend Movie Toby, the action stops and the two actors step off the set where the Real Life Pekar and Real Life Toby are waiting. Both actors sit in the background while the two people they are playing have a seemingly unscripted conversation in the foreground.

Toby is a fairly unbelievable character (in a pure character sense). This “genuine nerd,” who I remember as a TV celebrity from when I was a teenager, is one of those people that proves truth is stranger than fiction. A lot of the people Pekar gravitates to are. If they had tried to just portray Toby and not show us the real person, we as an audience may have rejected him as an exaggeration. He would seem over-the-top as a work of fiction, so the documentary element adds an air of credibility to the film. It also proves important for when one of the film’s themes emerges. Ultimately, the riddle of the film is what is the truth, which story dominates. Movie Harvey is confronted by a fan who knows him from Letterman, who only sees him as a performing monkey on TV. Similarly, when Harvey is courting his future wife on the phone, she asks which artist’s rendition of him is most truly him. And in an added Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead-level layer, Harvey and his wife, Joyce, relive their first date by watching a stage version of it. (Too bad the film didn’t get Dan Castellaneta in to reprise his role as Pekar, but then they seem to be belittling the play, and that might have turned him off.) Things come to a head in a scene straight out of Our Cancer Year, when Pekar enters a delusional state while undergoing chemotherapy, and asks aloud if he is a man who writes a comic book about his life, or merely a character in that comic book—the added irony being that Paul Giamatti is neither.

The penultimate section of the film is a monologue delivered by Movie Harvey, on a completely abstracted set, discussing how there have been other Harvey Pekar’s in the Cleveland phone book, and asking, “Who are these Harvey Pekars?” It’s from here that we go into the closing of the film—Harvey’s life post-Cancer, with an adopted daughter (whom he encourages to writer about her own life) and his wife (who already is writing about her own life, as well as journalistic comics (comics about other people’s lives)), ready to keep chipping away at existence. The last bits are with Real Life Harvey. He is the answer to his own question. He is a man chronicling his being while being hopelessly entangled in story.

For me, though, there is even another layer. I was an assistant editor on several American Splendor projects when I worked at Dark Horse. I spoke to Pekar on the phone quite often and had dinner with him once. In a late scene where the real Harvey and Joyce are signing their book, many of the comics I worked on are on display behind them, their covers staring out at me (they’re terrible covers…ugh, hate those). The story is much wider for me, encompassing the things I know. I can’t help but view things with my own impressions, extrapolate, add to the narrative. Again, if we take it back to Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, I remember in the movie of that there being a scene where the characters sit behind an actor watching puppets perform a play starring them all. There are four levels of performance, three of them audience, one of them us, sitting in the theatre.

Current Soundtrack: Destiny’s Child, World Tour DVD

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I WANT A BOY FOR MY BIRTHDAY

I finished up volume 2 of the unnamed manga last night and sent it off. I actually completed the rewrite on Tuesday, but only got back to the proofreading last night—and had to finish it after seeing Steve Birch’s band Audio Learning Center. Munching on chips at 2:30 in the morning, trying to figure out new ways to say “breasts.” Should have just popped in Coupling, the episode where Jeff rattles off a ton of euphemisms to the Israeli woman. (I went with “casabas,” hearkening back to a melon reference early in the book.) (In actuality, this line of writing is a lie, since last night while proofreading, that didn’t come up at all, since the word "casbas" was there from the first rewrite. The reality of it is very boring, and I am very bleary eyed right now—so I fib for the sake of being remotely interesting.) (Hmmm...me bleary eyed. There is a TV show somewhere in there. Me, without enough sleep, wandering into someone's house and telling them they're shit. Bleary Eye for the Shit Guy. Ooooh.) (I'm sure the internet is rampant with similar jokes. ____ Eye for the ____ Guy. I know.)

Funny, though, to be this far along and the book isn’t even announced (though I am told hints were made at some licensing show or other). The lag time between the work and the finished project can feel insanely long, even for comics. I have done five volumes of Gravitation, and am about to start the sixth, and my editor has only just written me to laugh at a joke from volume 2.

I’m actually anxious for some kind of reaction to the first Gravitation. I know it’s in bookstores, but I am not sure it has hit comics shops. I am curious if fans of the original manga want me dead for all the Western musical references I have made. But then I’d also love to see a whole separate cult audience that is into mopey ‘80s bands. I dropped a line to the lead Morrissey website to see if they’d do a news item on it (they had a blurb on the fact that Moz was mentioned in Uptown Girls, for goodness sake).

Finally, for anyone not on the Oni board, J. Torres and Comic Book Resources have started their Comic Book Idol competition, of which I am a judge. Lovely Torres has created another opportunity for comic book fans to tell professionals how to do their jobs. Thanks, J. But if you want to watch the amusing dramas unfold, check out their message board. First round of judging is done, and the next round is coming up, and the peanut gallery is gab gab gabbing.

Current Soundtrack: Martina Topley-Bird, Quixotic

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REACH OUT AND TOUCH FAITH (NOMADIC REVERY 2)

The previous night’s excellent gyro was followed by an equally excellent Saturday morning eggs benedict. Food is good for the old and chubby.

In a fortuitous happenstance, our trip coincided with an exhibit on Indian and Pakistani art at the Seattle Art Museum. Rebecca studies Asian art, so this was perfect for her, and since she works at the Portland Art Museum, we were able to get in as part of the two institution’s reciprocal program. Some of the paintings dated back to the 16th century and they all came from the collection of one man, which is pretty amazing to think about. Many of them were done on small pieces of paper, put together as parts of albums, and often depicted famous stories from Indian culture—meaning lots of Krishna and Shiva and other important figures. They ranged from the romantic to the grotesque, and were full of vivid colors. There was also a much more obvious thread through time than in most Western cultures. It was easy to see how each generation informed the next, and they even had a side exhibit with two artists who were keeping tradition alive.

The opening act, Kenna, was awful—proving you can be produced by half the Neptunes and still sound like shit. I had heard his album over a year ago and declared him a poor Depeche Mode wannabe then—and said record has only just come out. The main problem is he has no variety to his presentation, vocally or musically. There are no peaks or valleys. He sings everything straight across. And his sincerity is overblown, leading him into bad poetry—as evidenced by his heartfelt story regarding the girl who had told him his song “Love Hate Situation” had inspired her to quit heroin. Rebecca wondered if she started heroin, if that would negate that good he had supposedly done. I said it would.

Coming out on his first solo tour for his first solo album, Paper Monsters, Gahan seemed ready to indulge in all of his rock star fantasies that years of being on stage with synthesizers and giant tape machines haven’t allowed. Not that he hasn’t been the peacock of Depeche Mode all along—it’s just now he got to do a “real” rock show, with a “real” rock band, and there would be no screaming for Martin Gore or anyone else. Just him. So, he followed the four piece in his signature suit pants and vest (which lasted maybe one song), opening with the awesome “Hidden Houses,” a song I never really paid much attention to on Paper Monsters, but that really came to life in this setting—while ironically, my favorite of his solo work, “Hold On,” seemed to lose some of its gentleness in the #2 slot. Right from the get-go, too, it was clear Gahan was going to let every impulse for audience participation be fulfilled. He’s always been known for the singalong (think the fantastic “Everything Counts” from Depeche Mode 101) and the “let me see your hands” arena rock gesture—and he wasted no time getting into that here. In fact, it came off as arrogant at first, expecting that everyone would be able to join in on the solo stuff—except they all could. Shows what I know. Still, was it really too much to ask for him to sing the title line from “Dirty Sticky Floors” at least once? It was his lead single, after all.

The bulk of the main set was from Paper Monsters. In fact, I think he played the whole album (though “Black & Blue Again” could have been skipped, as he weighted it down with harmonica and a little too much jamming). The fourth song was the first of seven from Depeche Mode, and it was instantly clear that Paper Monsters doesn’t cut the mustard when shoved up against his original band’s compositions. “A Question of Time” completely rocked, and it wasn’t just Dave onstage—shirtless and sweating, spinning around and doing his high kicks—it was the audience, too. As much as they hung on his every word, no matter the number, the surge of energy that came with a DM tune was immediately palpable.

The show really kicked into high gear, though, when Gahan laid into his second Depeche Mode number, “Walking in My Shoes.” He kept the energy on high after that, following with “I Need You” and “Bottle Living” from his own album, and capped by “Personal Jesus,” always the biggest audience participation number—with the majority of the crowd raising their hands in a symbolic reaching out to touch faith. Interesting that the set ended on a darker song, then—but “Goodbye” was one of the best things off of Paper Monsters when it came to the live setting. In fact, the slower numbers all took on more girth with the live band, especially “A Little Piece.”

Encore #1 was a stormer. “I Feel You” was a no-brainer when it came to guessing what Gahan would pull from the DM catalogue. The heavy rock riffs were tailor-made for Gahan Mk. II, the rock ‘n’ roll animal that nearly destroyed himself and the band in the mid-‘90s. He followed with “Never Let Me Down Again,” still one of the best DM singles. The keyboard player gave the main piano hook a more bluesy, deep sound.

On any given night, that encore would have been enough, but the band returned to perform another quick medley in a stripped down set. Playing a tiny organ, a halved drum kit, acoustic guitar, and stand-up bass, they crowded to the center stage while Gahan strutted through “Policy of Truth” and a fabulous “Enjoy the Silence” that segued into the first verse and chorus of “Just Can’t Get Enough” at the bridge. As a long-time fan, this was a real treat. It’s rare to hear the songs reinterpreted in such drastic ways (they recalled “Love In Itself 4” more than, say, the acoustic “Personal Jesus” or harmonium “Enjoy the Silence”).

Say what you want about Depeche Mode, or a lead singer having the hubris to go solo, but Gahan still knows how to command an audience. Part of it is not forgetting they are there. He had no problem plunging his hands into the crowd to shake a few. He even brought one girl on stage to dance with him during the start of the second encore. Perhaps the biggest testament to his stage presence was that Rebecca, who doesn’t know her DM from her OMD or even her ODB, was suitably impressed. Before the show she had asked if it was okay if she went and read in the bar if she didn’t like it; she stayed through the whole thing.

As an added bonus (if you want to call it that), we got a second show throughout Gahan’s set—the rather attractive and leggy blonde in the row in front of us who was rubbing herself and her feather boa all over her date through the entire show. She was clearly turned on by the performance, and she was going to take it all out on her companion. Eventually, he sat down for a while, and we debated whether he was just tired out from blue balls, or if he had accidentally gotten a little too happy in his pants and had to recharge. At that point, the girl—being a terrible tease—did turn around and stick her tongue out at him, and it seemed like it pissed him off a little. He looked like a guy out of a porno—a big dude with a flat, brick-wall nose (think Darwyn Cooke’s version of Slam Bradley), ears pierced with big gold hoops, and bleached blonde hair gelled down. I am glad I couldn’t here his pornstar grunting.

All in all, it was a packed weekend, with very little to disappoint. It was relaxing and got me away from work and other pressures—and it was two shows I wouldn’t have wanted to miss. I have no clever ending to tie it all up—except maybe to point out I had a bad processed chicken sandwich on the train, since the guy in front of me who looked like Wilford Brimley got the last pre-cooked hamburger. Could it have been downhill the whole way home?

Current Soundtrack: Kelis w/ P. Diddy & Richard X; Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, The Good Son; The Primitives, Lovely

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NOMADIC REVERY (ALL AROUND)

Friday afternoon, Rebecca and I boarded a train for Seattle. We had been looking forward to this weekend all summer. Bjork was playing on the pier in Seattle that night, and we were going to see Dave Gahan at the Paramount on Saturday. We’d also visit my friend Christopher, who lives up there.

The train is a really pleasant way to travel. It’s pretty smooth and effortless. They’ve even taken to showing movies onboard, and while Holes certainly isn’t a masterpiece, it was light enough to be a nice travel companion, and quirky enough to also stimulate the brain a little. I liked the structure of the past playing against the present, and while the seams were a little too cleanly sewn, there were some pretty clever ideas overall.

Seattle itself was sunny, but not nearly as hot as Portland has been the past couple of weeks. We walked from the station to the center of downtown to meet Christopher. He chose a Starbucks as our place to hook up, but of course, there were two Starbucks on the same block, so we had to cross our fingers we chose the right one (we did). We also grabbed a Seattle Weekly to see who was opening for Bjork, and to our surprise, it was Bonnie “Prince” Billy. This couldn’t have been more perfect. Will Oldham, the man who goes under the BPB name, is Rebecca’s favorite songwriter. His dark country is a bit of an acquired taste at times, but even I enjoy him under this moniker (particularly the I See A Darkness and Master & Everyone records). We had tried to see him a couple of days after Rebecca got back from China, when he was doing an in-store in Portland, only to be barred from the performance because it was too overcrowded. Actually, we weren’t barred—we decided we didn’t want to be crammed in there with a bunch of hipsters. We’re snotty that way.

Now, when I say the show was on the pier, I mean literally it was on the pier. Right next to the Aquarium, right on the edge of the water. So it was a gorgeous night, full of clouds and waves off in the distance, and the occasional mast of a boat passing by in the background. You would have hoped a tranquil environment like that would have put the mob in an equally tranquil mood, but the usual crowding in and lack of respect for personal space prevailed. I mean, really, what is the point? It’s not like everyone was pushed against the walls and crammed into every corner. Would it hurt us all to take a step away from one another?

Will Oldham wandered onstage around 7:30. It was just him and an autoharp and a wide-open microphone. He’s a thin man, barely there. The most substantial part of his person is the wide, blonde beard and wild hair. I am sure most of the people in the audience thought he was some homeless person that wandered in off the street. He opened with the lead track from Master & Everyone, “The Way.” While there is a gorgeous, gentle arrangement on the recorded version, this live rendition was sparse, yet still beautiful. Oldham’s voice has a tremble to it, and it brings a vulnerability to the melancholy love song. He followed with various tunes from throughout the various incarnations of his career, including the title track from Master & Everyone and rarity “Little Boy Blue.” He closed with the amazing “I See A Darkness,” one of my faves (and known by many as a Johnny Cash song, since the man in black covered it on American III.

Bjork came on about half an hour later. She had an eight-piece orchestra, a multi-instrumentalist (harp, harpsichord, accordion, chimes), and the Matmos duo on the electronic squelches and squirts. The sun was almost completely set, the wind was blowing in off the water—it couldn’t have been more idyllic. Bjork emerged in a fluffy pink dress. She looked like some kind of pastry--one with too much frosting--including a tall eruption of black taffeta on her left shoulder that kept her from turning her head much until she ripped it off three songs into the set. Her hair was a little off, though. It looked as if she had time to get one side of it cut, but not the whole thing. It kept bugging me. (See image.)

The evening’s set pulled primarily from Homogenic and Vespertine, as well as a lot of songs I didn’t recognize (and so I presume are new). Many of the songs, like “Hunter” and recent single “It’s In Our Hands,” were remix versions, too, and barely recognizable. The oldest song she did was “The Modern Things” off Post.

My favorite number had to be “Joga,” though. Bjork didn’t do anything with the arrangement, she left it just the way it is—but her voice was so clear and powerful, amazing with the strings backing it up, it was a transcendent moment. Visual highlight of the night had to come later in the night, during a new song, when the backdrop featured what looked like fish in a fishtank, but that turned out to be swimming forearms, with the hands acting as tails. (According to a review in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, it was called "Desired Constellation.")

The show was amazing, but did end on a slightly sour note. Bjork left the stage, and after several minutes of the lights being out and the audience clapping and cheering—and the roadies seemingly rechecking all the equipment—the venue put the house lights up and cued the taped exit music. It appeared that an encore was planned, but scrapped at the last minute for some unknown reason. (Again, the Seattle paper reports the songs were to have been "Human Behavior," "You've Been Flirting Again," and "Isobel.") Any bruised feelings were slightly soothed, though, by an excellent, spicy lamb gyro at a place near the bus stop.

Saturday's report, including the Seattle Art Museum, later.

Current Soundtrack: Rachel’s & Matmos, Full on Night; Morrissey, Maladjusted

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WILL THE NIGHT

La Notte, a 1961 film by Michelangelo Antonioni, starring Jeanne Moreau (who I have now seen act in three different languages) and Marcelo Mastroianni. Translated as The Night, the film takes place (obviously enough) largely over the course of one night, though we get a build-up of the preceding days to lay some groundwork. Essentially, we have an intellectual writer who feels lost in a desert devoid of inspiration, and his wife, who is living an inner life by his side and is finding she has her own needs to explore. This night is the night it all breaks down. Yet, it's not a breakdown of grand action or histrionics, but in Antonioni style, a slow disintegration. What kept me riveted to this quiet character piece was an understated surreality. The couple does a lot of wandering--together and apart--and everywhere they go they encounter something to see--from the deranged nymphomaniac in the hospital to the bombed out shell of a building (complete with crying child and broken clock), the backlot fist fight to the sensual acrobatics of a nightclub dancer, and finally to a party full of well-to-do, aimless people. At one point early on, when Moreau reacts to Mastroianni's encounter with the aforementioned nympho, she makes a comment that this could be his next book, a story about the living and the dead. This, in many ways, seems to be a key line that applies throughout the film, and depending on who you choose to interpret as being the living beings and the deceased (all metaphorical, of course--The Sixth Sense this is not), it colors your perception of the action. In the first instance, is Mastroianni dead for his inability to influence the action, and the nympho alive in her madness? Or is she dead, confined to her hospital hell, trying to grab onto a living being to get out? (Throughout the film, people seem drawn to our main characters. Like when Moreau breaks up the fist fight, and the winning pugilist follows her lasciviously.) Is the journey overall one through a voyeuristic purgatory, of two spirits trying to decide where they belong? Would Moreau be at home in the decaying slum? Is the opulent estate where the party is being held really another circle in Dante's construction? When Mastroianni is offered a job at the rich benefactor's firm, so he can finally be free and not live off his wife's money, is he really being released from life to join the unfeeling masses, or is he being released from his dead marriage to find himself as a man? Is Moreau finding the strength to live in dissolving the union? Can she even get out? At one point, she runs away with a potential lover, but returns to the party, unable to go through with it. In the end, I would likely argue that she is the one trying to live, when her husband throws himself on her, refusing to let her go--but can we really say, in this world of ambiguity, on which side freedom lies? Perhaps she is a ghost finally accepting the spirit world and attempting to leave for her place in it, and Mastroianni is the loved one that can't let her go. I suppose I could make a decision, but the heart of the piece seems to be in having the freedom to endlessly question, to watch these two amazing actors and let them cast a different spell every time. (I believe I am falling for Moreau. It's impossible to take your eyes off her in La Notte. There is a sadness to her face, a depth to her eyes, that makes it all the more heartwarming when she has the occasional outburst of laughter. As the more inquisitive explorer of the pair, too, she ends up being the stand-in for the viewer.)

l to r: Jeanne Moreau, Monica Vitti, unidentified, Marcello Mastroianni, Michelangelo Antonioni

Current Soundtrack: Mya, Moodring

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GET BACK, OR I WILL ATTACK

The man across from me has a NY Times and the front page has a huge picture of Bush and his cabinet in casual wear, on their vacation retreat where they will plot more ways to rob us. It occurs to me seeing this that there should be some kind of fashion requirement to be President. A guy who likes a lot of denim and big belt buckles like Shrub would never have made it into office, even with a brother who is governor in Florida, if there was a swimsuit competition. Perhaps California has it right and their current gubernatorial freak show is pointing the way to the future. We all need to be a little more shallow in how we pick our leaders.

Early morning with Simon & Garfunkle (Bridge Over Troubled Water) at Starbucks. Listening to them a lot lately, via a box set of their albums gifted to me by the Bendises last year…and as Joe Nozemack once said (I paraphrase), when I am in the mood for Simon & Garfunkle, I want a lot of Simon & Garfunkle. Of course, the spring in my step on the way here was Relaxed Muscle’s “Billy Jack,” which is just a corker. God bless Jarvis Cocker.

I guess this is the unfocused 8:19 a.m. update (the document I type these in when away, to be uploaded later, is “Remote Confessions,” for those who might find that interesting). I wasn’t planning to work today, but I spent an unfocused night where I couldn’t find a path and just watched a lot of Simpsons on DVD (the last disc of season 2 is exceptional) and woke up not wanting to get in the same groove. I started the still unnamed manga’s second volume two nights ago, and figured I’d at least leave the house and cover another chapter of that. Strangely, was recognized by a new barista here who knew me from about nine years ago when we went to the same (now defunct) comic book shop. I was like, “Oh, yeah, you had funky hair back then…and of course, so did I.” Now she must be of college age, maybe just out…dunno. She was a teenager then, and a friend of the owner (who I knew), and I give props to her memory for seeing through my old man disguise. I think you do more growing up physically heading into your thirties then you do heading into your twenties. All of you young’uns looking to leave adolescence and see your bodies stop changing…guess what?! It ain’t over yet. I think you’ll particularly enjoy your body’s new and surprising places to give you hair.

Troubled dreams lately. Friday morning I escaped someone from my past giving me a message. Nothing like waking up just before, and that “oh no” feeling quickly morphing to, “I bet I didn’t want to hear it anyway.” And this morning being sucked into someone else’s life on the lam, and then having to figure out how to bluff my way through her being pinched for shoplifting something that I couldn't figure out what it was. You haven’t dreamed until you’ve heard yourself say to an Asian convenience store owner, “What’s it going to take to make this go away?”

I just deleted a “just” from two paragraphs above, and then nullified it by having “just” be the second word of this sentence. Cocksucker!

9:26 and still no thread.

The small snippet in the last entry turned into 2,644 words of The Everlasting, for those keeping track. And I despite my rambling here, I did get 40 script pages (two chapters) done by 10:11 today. It was a bit weird, because secret manga can be a bit racy…and with the book propped up on the table, you never know what people might think I am doing with a comic with boobies and laptop!

They call me Jamie Driver. I wonder how your engines feel?

Current Soundtrack: Massive Attack, “Butterfly Caught” single; Super Furry Animals, Phantom Power; & The Housemartins, London 0 Hull 4

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BUS, BUS...MAGIC BUS

Did some scribbling this morning. The beginning of an Everlasting chapter, perhaps on the way to the end of things with Ashley. No more than a quick draft right now, presented with typos and all:

Lance could smell the man long after he passed. Perhaps it was the contact, it had left his scent behind—a stale odor, with a dash of cigarettes and what was most likely beer. He had seen the man get on the bus. He was tall and skinny, black, with an Oakland As jersey on. He held his bus transfer impossibly high, making it a grand gesture to show that he was on the vehicle legally.

The man stumbled towards the back of the bus, using the railings along the way, pitching and shifting from one side, one rail, to the other. As he passed Lance—who was sitting by himself in a two-seat aisle, listening to Bookends on headphones—he was between rails. His hand darted from one pole to another, the knuckles on his impossibly long fingers slapping Lance in his right cheek as they passed. The man staggered along, not even aware he had made contact with another person. By the time that Lance could decide whether it would be worth his while or not to protest, it was too late. Mr. Oakland As had settled in the seat all the way to the back.

But his smell stayed. Lance could also still feel the impression of the fingers on his cheek. The presence lingered. Was it the physical contact that connected the stink to him, or did the whole bus smell like this now?

Current Soundtrack: Various Artists, Hope

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I THINK I'D DIE, I THINK I'D LAUGH AT YOU

“Just” is a word I need out of my writing vocabulary. I was proofing some copy for Last Exit Before Toll today and was a bit horrified. For instance: “Charles is left stranded in the middle of nowhere, and it just may be the best thing that ever happened to him. … Newcomer Christopher Mitten’s delicate pencils bring Shaffer’s script to life, giving it just enough of a real world flavor to ground the material, and just enough of an edge to bring the emotional underpinnings of the story to the foreground. It’s all rounded out by Dawn Pietrusko’s digital gray tones.”

It just seems lazy. (Oh, dear, there it is!) And I am always trying to challenge myself to use different words anyway. Nothing bugs me more than a writer who uses the same word to describe the same thing every time. If I could, I’d give an example. But, of course, they all escape me now.

I have actually been working on Gravitation volume 5 for the last three nights. I am a little behind, as it was due today, but Jill at Tokyopop gave me an extension until Monday. I think it’s the first one I have had to ask for, and I asked far enough ahead so that if she said no I could still get it done—and it won’t effect my deadline for 6 that’s in two weeks. So, it’s all clear. Trying to get back on track post con was a bitch. Plus, I hit a lull with volume 4 that made me kind of worry about the series. Odd stuff goes down, and the sexual politics are…well, again, odd. But it gets back on track for 5, and actually gets even better. The storytelling opens up quite a bit, and I think I am firing more efficiently than on any of the previous volumes. I even managed to work obscure Morrissey and Duran Duran lines into the dialogue.

*

I am also a tad amused by the Blankets review that ended up running in the Mercury. I know there is a little of sour grape flavor here, since I wanted to do it, but I don’t care. I will admit, too, that I think since the reviewer comes off as someone who doesn’t really know comics, it does make for an interesting viewpoint, to see how Blankets wooed him. (If he does know comics, then, well…never mind.) But, the thing that really got me was this opening line: “It's apparent from meeting Craig Thompson that he's a good artist; his characterization of himself in his new autobiographical graphic novel Blankets is spot-on.” Say what? “Obviously, Monkey McFuckface is a great writer, because in conversation, he can really string some words together.” “It’s clear from meeting Bob Stitchalot that he’s an excellent tailor, because he’s got pretty swell shirts.” “Chynna Clugston-Major must brew really good beer, because it smells great on her breath.”

Current Soundtrack: Duran Duran, Singles 81-85

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EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY

A new review up at Amazon. My editor at The Portland Mercury never deemed to write me back about Blankets, part of why I gave up dealing with them (cranky me). But I still wanted to write something, and though Amazon isn't the best venue, it's kind of fun because I end up writing on the fly and being a little loose with it. In this one, I think I was being a bit reactionary to the internet niggles I had been hearing, too. You can click here to buy the book, but you can read the review below:

the graphic novel that's not afraid to be a novel, five stars - July 27, 2003

Reviewer: Jamie S. Rich (see more about me) from Portland, OR USA

Much has been made in recent years of how the graphic novel-and as a result, the comic book-has matured and come into its own. This is indeed, true, as subject matter and approach in the comics industry has become much more fluid. Yet, most stories were still serialized before they were printed in book form, and the ones that struck out on their own and did it in one-go (including some by my own company, Oni Press), were significant, but not yet reaching the full breadth that the word "novel" implied.

Enter Craig Thompson. Nearly five years ago, he released his first major work, GOODBYE CHUNKY RICE. It was an excellent piece of sequential fiction, but much like, say, the first album by Nirvana or Andi Watson's SKELETON KEY (or even THE COMPLETE GEISHA) or Todd Haynes' POISON, it was only a glimmer of what was to come. Since that time, Thompson has locked himself away and honed his first masterpiece-an ambitious narrative clocking in at nearly 600 pages. Sure, you can write it off as a coming of age story (a coming of age story in an art form that still is coming up with its standards for most literary genres, and thus still coming of age itself), but that would be to say THE BELL JAR is merely the story of a depressed poet or GOODFELLAS about a guy who gets an interesting job. BLANKETS is the story of an artist in a state of becoming, a boy walking down a road where people in the houses on either side are attempting to get him to stop and play in their yard. It's the tale of said boy figuring out how to stick to the middle, and stay true to himself.

Semi-autobiographical, BLANKETS outstrips the standard coming-of-age novel by giving it a perspective that only the comic book would allow him. Not even in movies could the story of an artist have that artist's vision so expertly rendered (think of how, in CRUMB, Zwigoff had to look over Crumb's shoulder to see what the illustrator saw). While the narrative thread of BLANKETS is straightforward, Thompson uses his pen to bend the world he portrays. Thus, you can step into an abstract world in the short span of a panel, see it as Thompson sees it himself. And there you get what makes the difference. The story of a boy discovering who he will be is also a book where an artist discovers a new form of expression.

And there we are, back to the beginning. This is a comic book that understands what a novel is, and a novel that has figured out how to be a comic book. There is going to be a lot of hype about this one, and the sorts of people who read and talk about "comix," needing the crooked letter to make them feel cooler, will likely come down on BLANKETS for not being cool enough, but ignore all that and trust yourself and trust the book. It's emotional and expressive and engrossing, and possibly the best thing you'll read this year-in any medium.

Current Soundtrack: Rod Stewart, Reason to Believe disc 2 (get over it, chump)

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MORE HATE MAIL THROUGH THE DOOR, DIDN’T KNOW THAT SUNDAYS COULD BE USEFUL AFTER ALL

Some weekends I hate that this free time is wasted on me. I tend to never find any focus, and instead any possible thought I might conjure rattles around in my skull like a pull-tab at the bottom of a Coke can. You ever try to get that tab out after dropping it in? It can be maddening how it just won’t fall out of the hole the same way it got in, and the noise it makes can be annoying. (Add to that that I am still recovering from San Diego…I’m just glad that in reading Laurenn McCubbin’s journal, I discovered it’s not just me that seems to need a full week to get back to normal.)

Even the simple act of picking a film to watch can be impossible (often the bane of having a healthy collection is being faced with too many choices). Though, I have managed to pop a few in. One of which, Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, I actually have spent a couple of days with, exploring the extras. There is nearly an hour of compiled material focusing on what was originally Wilder’s plan for a three-hour, four-act symphony. The gist of the film is that 50 years after his death, papers of Dr. Watson are released that reveal several stories he couldn’t publish in his lifetime as they were too personal or scandalous. Wilder was going to deconstruct the Holmes character a bit, getting behind the fiction Watson created to look at the "real" man, who lives his life tortured by his own mind, escaping his failure to ever be able to settle down mentally (or with a woman) through these complicated cases—and sometimes cocaine.

The two-hour film that exists is quite good, though a bit flippant and not really up to my expectations of Wilder. I had no idea going in that this other plan existed, and only discovered it after I was done. What MGM has compiled for the bonus section of this release are pages from Wilder’s script, still photos from the scenes (the full film was shot), and existing audio and video (interestingly, when they have the audio, they don’t have video; when they have video, no audio—something unexplained on the disc). What is revealed is a much deeper picture that shows Wilder’s usual mastery at balancing his comedy and drama in quite effective ways. Several key scenes would have lent more emotional weight to the actual film, such as Holmes’ account of when he first lost his faith in womanhood (and, to an extent, humanity—something he only ever really regained with Watson). More importantly, a scene where Watson attempts to get Holmes to kick his drug habit, where ultimately Holmes pretends to do so in order to keep his friend from leaving. Even if it was a ruse, it was an important one, meaning something to both men. The final scene of the theatrical release has Holmes breaking this pact, and it falls a little flat without the knowledge that he had given up cocaine to save his relationship. His returning to it not only shows how devastating the circumstances were, but Watson’s full understanding of his pain—things that aren’t really there with the official cut.

I am often a bit apathetic towards director’s cuts. I think sometimes they can be a bit pointless, particularly on a film where a certain version has existed for a long time and is pretty well-known. At that point, it starts to exist as a solid object in popular culture, and to alter that seems a bit wrong. Touch of Evil is a good example of a film where, for me, it’s a little hard to adjust to the restored cut, though it is closer to Orson Welles’ intention. Even as a big Welles fan, I am stuck on the previously accepted version of it simply because I have seen it so many times that way. It’s a case where I wish the DVD contained both, so we could compare and contrast. However, in an instance like Evil, and in the case of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, where the creator’s vision was so crassly altered, I can see the need to go back and reevaluate. Film is a strange art form. I can’t think of another where the piece passes through so many hands before reaching its final stage. In the case of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, the journey seems like eons, the amount of distance it put between Wilder’s original idea and what we ended up with. (The editor is interviewed on the disc, and he talks about how the studio was baffled when Wilder delivered his original cut (which was nearly four hours). It made him wonder if anyone had read the script, which apparently was a brick of paper. Of course, the same editor wanted Wilder to end the film on a joke—one that was more than a little reminiscent of the end of Some Like It Hot--because he was worried about ending the movie on a “down note.” Shows what he knew.)

Not to turn our blogs into a back-and-forth exercise, since he linked to me the other day, I do want to point folks to my friend Christopher McQuain’s Trappings, where he often writes about his travels through pop culture. He and I have known each other for years, and climbed up through local papers together, starting at the long-dead Anodyne. He still writes for Just Out, while I, as noted above, don’t do much of anything.

Anyway, his bit on The Smiths’ “Some Girls Are Bigger than Others” sent the memory unraveling. It’s funny that he would have initially been pretty focused on the band’s serious side almost exclusively, as for me part of the initial (and lasting) appeal of the band was their sense of humor in the face of all the suffering. Morrissey’s wit plays against his angst-filled poetry in much the same way as Marr’s music does, and it’s always been frustrating seeing how people miss that side of the band, completely writing them off as miserable. Given that my own introduction to the band was through videos for “Girlfriend in a Coma” and “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before,” I guess their camp cheekiness was always evident to me. Even if I did hate them at first. (The story is that “Coma” was the MTV Hip Clip of the Week and so got regular rotation, and despite protests in my own mind that this song was shit, I couldn’t stop watching it every time it was on, and was a fan by the end of the week, when something hipper came along.) That said, I actually am still of the mind that “Some Girls,” as endlessly catchy as it is and despite being a perfect capper to The Queen is Dead, is one of their lesser songs. But then, Christopher and I are often known for our spirited disagreements. I once suggested we tape our arguments after films and make them a column, since we can so often be on completely different sides that I thought it might be fascinating as commentary.

But I am also put in mind of another story I recalled recently, when Scott Ciencin and I were talking about how niche groups can really resent other people—norms, for the lack of a better word—assimilating part of their culture. You know, like a goth kid seeing a frat boy in a Cure T-shirt. I remembered in 10th grade this kid I hated named Jason—last name long forgotten since I’ve known too many Jasons, and only the wrong last names come to mind—saying to someone, “I love The Smiths. They crack me up.” I sat several seats behind him in the class, and I glared at him, thinking, “Shut up. I hate you. You don’t get it. You don’t understand The Smiths.” Ironic, I guess, and perhaps why I am karmically doomed to defend Morrissey for being the hilarious bastard that he is. (I still think he should cover Green Day’s “Basket Case,” as it would make a grand joke.)

Current Soundtrack: The Auteurs, Back With the Killer & Kids Issue Eps; The White Stripes, The White Stripes

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SO WE PUT IT ON A HORSE CALLED “IT’S GRIM UP NORTH”

Having just acquired Das Capital by Luke Haines, a reappraisal of his career as the leader of The Auteurs, rerecording a clutch of their songs with an orchestra behind him (and tossing out a few new ones), I have listened to it three times straight through (running on with this sentence). On my second go-around, I was walking the streets and riding the bus. The world blocked out as it so rightly is when one travels with music and headphones, I began to envision a grand musical, the sort of recasting of an artistic oeuvre that is so popular these days. It would feature European terrorists (a hate socialist collective), serial killers, and cruel and obsessive lovers—as well as a romantic streak.

The initial inspiration came from the secret introduction track—an overture, really, a combination of nine Haines songs, smashed together in one explosion of strings in under five minutes. Were this a musical, these would be the themes that would reoccur over the next 90 minutes, the conductor training his audience on what to listen for. As it is, these songs do not appear on Das Capital--but they should, and in our scenario there will be spaces for them. Just you wait.

After the overture, we meet our Hero, as he strolls onto the stage singing “How Could I Be Wrong?” He is at his lowest ebb. Nothing has worked for him, he is alone, he can’t imagine that he has misjudged life so completely. The city swirls around him, a timeless London or somewhere else vaguely European. There are lovers and other denizens of the night to tease him with their happiness. He happens into a club where he stops to watch the stage show. There he sees the Showgirl, and the song of the same name (“Showgirl”) becomes her theme. Time stops, the scenario of the lyrics plays out as he imagines what their future life will be like today. Perhaps she sings a bit of it, too, answering him.

When time returns, our Hero decides to meet the Showgirl, only to discover that she is the girlfriend of Rodolfo, a ringleader of a local offshoot of a notorious terrorist group, Baader Meinhof (a real group, which Haines wrote about on his side project of the same name, the best funk soundtrack to a '70s espionage film never made). They block our hero from his new love, singing their self-titled anthem. He answers with “Lenny Valentino,” adopting the name of a well-known tough guy who all believed dead. It’s a dangerous move, but the collective buys it for now. Hero will have to prove himself as Lenny. Showgirl knows he is lying, of course, and she is touched by his reckless bravery. “Starstruck” becomes her story, of how she grew up destined for the stage, and the chorus holds two meanings—how she is starstruck by Hero’s love for her (“starstruck over you, I’m struck dumb by you”), as well as the shambles her career has become (“I struck out my luck, I was always starstruck”). This will become their lovers' theme, and the lyrics will intertwine as they sing to each other throughout.

We break from the main scene to discover the truth about Rodolfo. As he sings “Satan Wants Me,” we learn that this is a being of true evil. He is more than a terrorist, he is not a political activist—as he stalks a child, we learn he is a killer. Before he can take another life, though, the locals take to the streets. One of them, distraught, sings “Unsolved Child Murder,” letting us in on the horror that has struck the city. Kids are disappearing, "presumed dead." It’s ruined everyone’s life. Perhaps Rodolfo can even join in on this, singing “sod this town and people’s pity, let’s get on with the nitty gritty,” where the song peaks, nearly exposing himself as the killer.

Back to Hero, adopting his role as Lenny. He performs “Junk Shop Clothes,” worried that his basic disguise will not be enough to protect him, that they will figure him out. (The lines “Lenny Bruce never walked/ In a dead man’s shoes/ Even for one night” really takes on some great meaning here.) There isn’t long to ponder, though, as his musings are overtaken by the narrative detailing the society our political terrorists are about to terrorize, “The Mitford Sisters,” begins to unfold.

Here the actual narrative of the Das Capital CD begins to unravel. I am not sure how “Bugger Bognor” would really fit in, and that is the only song before the finale—and thus not enough time to show the terrorist attack, expose Rodolfo, or resolve the romance. I imagine some of the sugary sweet elements of “The Rubettes” could be used for the love story (and perhaps how far Hero has gone from innocence), as well as “Housebreaker” and even “The Upper Classes” for part of the attack (though the latter may be too much coupled with “The Mitford Sisters”), and I envision a whole thing where Rodolfo goes in a murderous frenzy for “Back With the Killer Again” only to be taken down by the children themselves during “Kids Issue.” That takes up over half of the overture tunes, and does lead us to the big finish—“Future Generation.” With Rodolfo gone and Baader Meinhof crushed, Hero points the way to a brighter day.

Das Capital: The Musical. Just a weird idea. Certainly not too perverse for Haines, is it?

Quick note on a previous post: I misspelled Tarkovsky when discussing The Sacrifice, but only because it is misspelled on the DVD cover. Actually, it is and it isn’t. At the top of the cover, it’s right, but it’s wrong at the bottom. I checked the bottom when writing. Sorry. (Of course, no one noticed, or at least no one said anything.)

Current Soundtrack: Luke Haines & The Auteurs, Das Capital for the fourth time

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EVERYONE KNOWS THIS IS NOWHERE

While I am at Comic Con International in San Diego, I am making an effort to update the Oni site daily with reports from the show. Two are up, read them in our Buzz Section, part of my "Big Talk From the Smallest Face" column.

WE GO OUT, WE COME IN

The time leading up to the San Diego con is always a pretty horrendous one, and this year was no different. Lots of rushing about, and my brain went pretty sideways over the weekend, culminating in me having to force myself not to turn my computer on this past Sunday, lest there be something there in my e-mail that might send my breakdown into overdrive. I contented myself to lots of movies instead, enjoying my returned freedom, of it just being me and the cat in the house.

Actually, my most interesting commentary on any of the things I saw was for a Saturday movie, Smiles on a Summer Night, directed by Ingmar Bergman (who just celebrated a birthday). It’s one of his mid-‘50s comedies, and it has a sort of light early-Hollywood feel, while at the same time being a tad more salacious. I think most people are unaware that Bergman made comedies, and even I was ignorant until I read up on his history on one of the features on the Criterion edition of The Seventh Seal. What’s most interesting, though, is just how looking at the two aspects of his artistic psyche reveals what a thin line there is between comedy and tragedy. The intro on TCM for this film informed the viewer that Bergman originally had the idea for the story as a drama, and with its cheating spouses, spurned lovers, and Oedipal scenarios, this could have easily been an intensely emotional film about the consequences of lust and its effects on familial bonds. But because everyone was scheming with a twinkle in their eye, it was all okay.

Other films I watched ended up having an odd, unplanned connection. The Bride Wore Black starred Jeanne Moreau and was directed by Francois Truffaut. Orson Welles’ Chimes At Midnight had Jeanne Moreau in a supporting role, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind had Truffaut in one, as well. All were watched because they were recent purchases, primarily used ones. There was no planning. All three were amazing, though.

I actually had some DVD luck Saturday when I went to pick up some used DVDs I had seen at a local shop. One of them was Tarkosvky’s The Sacrifice, which the clerk started talking to me about. I don’t know if it was her appreciation of my taste or that I looked especially cute that day or something (I did have a new haircut), but I didn’t realize until after I left that she had given me half-off on two of the three discs. Nice! If it was that I was cute, I guess that disproves Chynna and Jenny’s theory that I look horrible in yellow, since I was wearing the Gorillaz shirt that so offends them!

Work related: I got Gravitation volume 4 in last night. What a fucked up book. I won’t spend too much time getting into why, as all the reasons would spoil plot and volume 1 isn’t even out yet—but there is some strange sexual psychology going on here.

Tomorrow: the con.

Current Soundtrack: The Coral, Skeleton Key EP

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S-H-O-PP-I-N-G -- WE'RE SHOPPING!

The Oni Press webstore is now back open and has some copies of Cut My Hair in stock. For those who still need it. But then I'm not sure what you're doing hanging around here anyway, then.

Current Soundtrack: Kelis, Kaleidoscope

COZ IT’S NO GOOD

I worked pretty late into last night. I started Gravitation vol. 4, which is really amping up the soap opera. Listening to Depeche Mode and Ride and a lot of Luke Haines projects in my room while Rebecca and the cat watched Al Pacino in the other room. Trading e-mails and images with Scott to show looks and styles we are going for. I shook up my routine. A sleepless Sunday night kept me from the gym Monday morning, so I went in the evening, meaning I could stay up late and sleep in and skip Tuesday morning, too.

I e-mailed my editor from the Mercury to see if she’d let me review Blankets for them. Craig is local, and they like the local slant. We’ll see.

My Oni days are filled with press releases, trying to write out all the announces for San Diego. It can be pretty mindless drone work, and very formulaic, so I have to find ways to challenge myself, to mess with structure and make it more interesting. It doesn’t always work.

Current Soundtrack: the hum of the copy machine

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THIS IS MY TRUTH, TELL ME YOURS

I took the week off from manga after last weekend’s cram session, even though Gravitation vol. 4 is due on the 7/15. I may try to start that today. Haven’t been entirely lazy, though, as Scott Ciencin and I have been trading notes fast and furious.

I’ve been ruminating a lot on point-of-view lately. It’s one of my “things,” and along with metafiction, was one of the fascinations I walked away from college with. I am not sure if it’s the real catalyst, but part of it was probably a debate over one of my stories, “Lizard Lips,” in one of my writing classes—and one line in particular. The narration was third person limited—which was my strength at the time (before Cut My Hair seemed to break my brain), a technique where the story is told by the author, but he only has access to the main characters internal thoughts, not anyone else. In the story, I have the main character jump through a window to attack someone, and the line was something like, “He leapt through the window, howling like a wounded dinosaur.” The argument was over whether or not I had broken the narrative voice in that instance. The suggestion was that the character would not hear himself like that, only the author would. And though the story was being written in an authorial voice, it was viewing everything with the character’s brain, and was it okay to ever break that for effect.

The debate ended in disagreement. Some felt (as I do, to a degree) that no matter how heavily the author resides in a character’s head, if the voice is third person (as in “he did this,” opposed to second person’s “you did this” and first person’s “I did this”), then the author is always in existence, and never fully divorced from the narrative. In essence, all the experience being related is actually filtered through the main character’s eyes and then regurgitated by the author in a form of literary “broken telephone.” The other side said that this is bunk, and point of view is point of view (herein out shorthanded as POV).

I’ve become more of a purist when it comes to POV. I like having my focus character and sticking to it. In movie terms, it’s when your lead is in every scene. Nothing happens in the context of your story that the main character is not there to witness. Film language often sidesteps any one focus character or POV, and instead adopts a third person omniscient perspective, elevating the camera eye to a god-like position where it can drop in on any action at any time. The Godfather series is a good example of this. The stories are sweeping, and Coppola drops in on whoever he wants at any time. Thus you can see any of the members in the Corleone family plotting out their particular moves, while also cutting across town to see how their enemies are planning to strike. (Though, now thinking about it, I think the Vito Corleone sequences in Part II are told entirely from Don Vito’s POV. If I recall, every scene that made it to screen features the character, even though the deleted scenes on the bonus DVD reveal this was not always the case.)

Recently, I have been reading Brad Meltzer’s The Millionaires. For the first 75 pages, we are in a first person narrative, as everything is told by Oliver himself. Then on page 76, chapter 9 takes a turn. We get a two-page sequence where the unknown puppet masters are semi-revealed. We don’t know who they are, but now we know they are there, watching, planning. This new section is third person, and it’s jarring. At that point in the book, it almost feels like a cheat, a device invented to drop in exposition that can’t be given through Oliver, because Oliver can’t be aware of it.

This hangs over my head as I keep reading. Oliver picks up the prose again on page 78, and we move forward. Then on page 124, chapter 14, we’re introduced to a new character, the private investigator Joey. The writing shifts back to third person, and what appears to be third person limited—Joey is a new focus character. I even thought we were getting a little clever subversion of POV, as at the end of the chapter, Joey leaves the room, but the action in the room keeps unfolding. In a strict POV, this would not be possible, since she’d have to be in the room to witness what was happening—except then it’s revealed that she is eavesdropping, as the men in the room discover she has planted a listening device. In other words, a way for her to be privy to info she wouldn’t otherwise have.

Chapter 15 takes us back to Oliver, but then with chapter 16, we a thrown another curve. The men in the room Joey left are now taking over the third person section. But, as opposed to this being a third voice, and a second third person limited, it is in actuality—as we’ll discover as we continue to read—the institution of a third person omniscient voice, and has been since chapter 9. And while normally I’d have preferred that this device be revealed earlier than nearly a fifth of the way into the story, it’s easy to see what Brad is doing. Chapter 9 was a tease, and chapters 14 and 16 are the full reveal. His secrets in 9 were to protect the identity of the possible puppet masters, and the full on institution of this POV only comes when the possible suspects are being called into suspicion. (Brad even breaks up the various focus points cleanly. Oliver always gets his own chapters, and even when Joey and the other men (who I haven’t named to keep from revealing key plot points) are sharing a chapter, they each get distinct sections.) He is using the deft hand of an author writing a thriller and manipulating the information in order to keep his readers on the edge of their seats.

[Interesting digression: Consider pop music as an exercise in POV. Rialto’s “Monday Morning 5:19” is an excellent example of a first person narrative, particularly with its speculation on what another person is doing; Suede’s “Another No-One” is a lovely indulgence in third person, exercising one of Brett Anderson’s favorite lyrical devices, beginning as many lines as possible with the word “she.”]

One thing that has frustrated me about comics overall is that there seems to be very little concern for POV. One could argue that the medium borrows more from film than it does from literature, and employs the same shifting scale as Meltzer and Coppola, but I actually think that this would just be apologizing after the fact. I honestly don’t feel most writers in comics even consider the idea of POV narratives, that it’s not something that has yet been built into the language of the art form (just as we don’t have a firm distinction of what makes a graphic novel vs. novella vs. the neither form many of the mainstream collections seem to be). I have pushed for it in my own editing life when I see stories that have unnecessary side-trips, where what is really the main character can be stayed with, but have more often than not been vetoed. Which is fine, that is the creator’s will—but I’d still love to make a case for it.

For instance, on my way back from NYC, I picked up Michel Rabagliati’s Paul Has a Summer Job. I have not read any of Rabagliati’s work previously, but had heard good things about this one, so I opted for it over Iron Wok Jan when puzzling over the graphic novel section in the San Francisco airport bookshop.

Paul Has a Summer Job is a charming book, focusing on a young Canadian in search of his purpose who ends up working at a burgeoning camp for poor youth in 1979. He narrates the story, and for the most part, the camera stays on him. Unfortunately, on page 18, we get the first of several shifts away from Paul’s POV for expository information featuring other characters. In that first instance, it’s four panels of Paul’s parents discussing him after he has just left the room. I experienced some of the same jarring that I felt in The Millionaires, but this is one that can’t be leavened by technique. In fact, my main problem with the shifts to third person in Paul Has a Summer Job is how unnecessary it is. Those four panels on page 18 reveal nothing outside of his mother being concerned and his father saying “I was like that at his age,” and don’t really give us any further insight into the parents. We have already seen in their interaction with Paul that they do, in fact, care for him and he just misunderstands, so why break the fabric of the narrative? Was that even thought about when the book was being put together? (Clearly, I can’t speak for any of the authors’ intentions in this discussion—I am looking completely from an outside vantage. From my own third person POV, as it were. I intentionally avoided listing any books I worked on that I have had these discussions about, because I am not sure if it’s fair to my colleagues to actually reveal their process/thinking.)

Overall, this is my main problem with the third person digressions through the whole of Paul Has a Summer Job. There are some arguments to be made for the fact that this is a visual media, and you could be a stickler for, say, Rabagliati showing both sides of the phone conversation on pages 21 and 22—but since Paul is actually hearing the other side of the conversation, he actually would have a mental image that can be related. No, I object to the scenes where Paul is relating information that he has no clear connection to, now real way to know what is happening in a place he wasn’t at, and thus breaks me from the narrative thread. For example, on page 99, when Annie leaves Paul to yell at Francois for not informing them that they would have a blind girl in the current crop of campers, does it really give us any information that we, as the reader, need to know? That she is mad and that Francois didn’t consider it an issue because Marie is so self-sufficient? We already have seen the anger, and we will see (show, don’t tell) Marie’s abilities? But even if Rabagliati wanted to show that scene, would it be so hard to have a caption from Paul that says, “I would later find out that Annie really let Francois have it,” thus giving us a viable reason as to how Paul, our storyteller, would know the details of their conversation?

None of these concerns keeps Paul Has a Summer Job from being a good book. On the contrary, I quite enjoyed it. It’s just from a strictly critical standpoint, I think the author could have made some choices that were a little more in line with literature and exercise more control over his narrative. I have similar issues with Craig Thompson’s new book, Blankets, which I consider to be a nearly perfect comic book and possibly one of the most important works the field has ever had—the sort of bridge between the comics audience and the mainstream audience that we’ve tried to dress up other, less-accessible graphic novels as being. Yet, Blankets falls into the same traps.

Blankets is the semi-autobiographical tale of Craig Thompson’s own youth. It is told from his POV, and he essentially plays himself. It’s a massive book, clocking in at 582 pages—was there ever a graphic novel published that was this long and not serialized first? It’s pretty tight overall, without much breaking away from Craig and seeing other characters outside his field of vision. In fact, it doesn’t really occur until Craig goes and visits Raina, his first love. When that happens, we occasionally get snippets of what is going on with Raina’s disintegrating family. In some cases, it’s information Craig could receive later, like on page 216 when Raina’s mom makes her write a note to her father on the mother’s behalf, detailing her schedule for the next day. This is something Raina could have, and likely would have, told Craig—but wouldn’t it have been a better scene for us witnessing the telling, getting it from Raina’s mouth rather than flat story?

Later, though, we get scenes revolving around Raina’s dad that don’t really bring anything to Craig’s story, and don’t even really give us any better insight to the father than his own conversation with Craig on page 241. Even worse is the incident between the father and the Down’s Syndrome brother, Ben, beginning on 348. It’s a wonderfully handled scene, and shows us that Ben is becoming completely displaced from his family—but it’s not really important to the main story, or even to Ben’s place in it. Only his estrangement from Raina, which is a direct result of Craig’s presence, is essential to the story—so why break out of it for a scene our narrator would have no knowledge of?

Really, Blankets is the best argument I can think of in favor of a focused POV in comics. Craig Thompson’s story is the story of an artist, and since everything is related through an artist’s eyes, he is not bound by the constraints of reality. Craig can bend and warp and abstract the landscape to fit the mood of the moment, thus turning a group of jocks into laughing, demonic creatures or Raina’s bedroom into a swirling mass of texture and color reflective of the quilt she made him. It’s an extension of the childhood imagination we see at work in the tales of Craig and his little brother imagining their bed is a ship at sea—and it’s a technique I think unique to comics. Prose couldn’t sufficiently handle the surreal aspect of the imagery, and in film, the effects would likely overshadow the story. So why not keep that POV pure?

Current Soundtrack: an archived John Peel show on the BBC; Ride, Carnival of Light

LINKS: I am posting links separately for the books discussed, since something about the new free blogger service is limiting in what we can actually post at one time:

The Godfather DVD trilogy directed by Franics Ford Coppola (Paramount Pictures)

The Millionaires by Brad Meltzer (Warner Books)

Paul Has A Summer Job by Michel Rabagliati (Drawn & Quarterly)

Iron Wok Jan vol 1 by Shinji Saijyo (ComicsOne)

Blankets by Craig Thompson (Top Shelp Productions)

Ride, Carnival of Light

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