strike up the bus

In lieu of an autoresponder: Hi. I’m on vacation until Sep. 3, and won’t have access to email or phone messages until then, so if you’re trying to reach me… well, I’ll look forward to talking to you in September.

(And if you happen to be on the playa, I’ll be DJing at BMIR Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 11:30 AM to 1 PM!)

attention New York pals

This Wednesday night, Getatchew Mekuria and the Ex are playing a free show at the Lincoln Center/Damrosch Park Bandshell. GO SEE IT. I AM NOT KIDDING.

The Ex are a Dutch punk band who are one of the three or four best live bands I’ve ever seen; Mekuria is an Ethiopian saxophonist from the golden age of Ethio-jazz. And here’s what they sound like together (from a show they played at the Black Cat in Washington, DC last week):

Convinced?

"Strange and Stranger" review

I’ve got a review of Blake Bell’s Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko in this weekend’s New York Times Book Review!

iconography

I linked to this over on Circle the Globe too, but this is worth a double-link: Jan Chipchase’s photo of a karaoke bus’s icons for its rules—no smoking, no durian, no drinking, no pets, no sex. Wow.

I'm not avoiding you, I'm just lazy

Honest. Plus I've been traveling: New York City (where my Internet access is reached either via sugary beverages or via holding the computer JUST SO and hoping I can find an open wireless network) and upstate New York (where I get distracted by miniature golf very easily).

A few people have asked me for my Burning Man packing list, so I figure making it available to the public might be helpful. It appears behind the cut, so as to not take up the entirety of this page.

with my little ukulele in my hand

I’ve written up a two-part thing for eMusic’s blog 17 Dots on my ukulele experiences: here and here. And I realized I neglected to link my interview with Gerard Way about The Umbrella Academy, here.

Currently racing around New York City, taking care of, you know, things.

A HEAVY TROPHY IS MINE!!!

Reading Comics won the 2008 Will Eisner Award for Best Comics-Related Book!

And the best part is that it was presented to me by:

1) Jane Wiedlin, who: 2) kissed me on the cheek, while: 3) surrounded by Stormtroopers.

If anyone has a photo of this, I would be very grateful.

Further reports will follow when I am not so tired that my brain is attempting to shut down my entire central nervous system.

project omniherbivore: romano beans

Picked up some Romano beans at the farmer’s market today. I don’t think I’d ever eaten them before—they’re really big, long, wide, flat string-bean-type beans. Anyway, I steamed them for six minutes or so, tossed them with a little bit of butter and salt and pepper and left it at that, and they were wonderful—even Sterling devoured a bunch of them. They’ve got a little more bite than regular beans, in both texture and flavor (although they’re a little too tough to eat raw); I’d make ‘em again in a second.

I also bought Romanesco broccoli, and it occurred to me after dinner that I should really have cooked them both and served them with Romesco sauce. L’esprit de l’escalier.

pride of engineering

Another piece up at Salon: “A Thousand and One Knights,” about the relationship between the Batman of The Dark Knight and the Batman of the comic books.

I realized a little while ago why I like being at Burning Man as much as I do: because every single person there has gotten it together enough to actually make it to Burning Man.

the stone and bevel scans

It’s been one of those media weeks for me. I appeared on KUOW’s “Weekday” show this morning (hi, KUOW listeners), wrote a piece in Salon about Y: The Last Man, and have been spending innumerable hours prepping for the COMICS EXPLOSION that’s happening next week. (I should have another couple of relevant pieces to announce shortly, too.) And keeping an eye on the continuing adventures of Dame Jetsam and her various followers.

People seem to keep asking me, both in public and in private, if I’m excited about the Watchmen movie. I think I’m slightly more excited about the Black Freighter movie—but not as excited as I am about this “Black Freighter” movie:

Speaking of said explosion, here’s my schedule for Comic-Con International in San Diego, if anybody’s going to be around there:

July 24: 1-2: The Future of the Comics Pamphlet, Room 32AB (with Joe Keatinge, Carr D’Angelo, Eric Shanower, and other luminaries to be announced) 6-7: The Comics Blogosphere, Room 32AB (with David Brothers, Jeff Lester, Laura Hudson and Tim Robins)

July 25: 5-6—Teaching Comics—Room 4 (with Phil Jimenez, Matt Silady, James Sturm and Steve Lieber)

July 26: 11:30-12:30: Image Comics/Tori Amos—Room 6B (with Tori herself and a cast of thousands) 2:00-3:00: Lettering Roundtable—Room 8 (with Todd Klein, John Roshell, Tom Orzechowski and Jared K. Fletcher) 4:30-5:30: The Story of an Image—Room 4 (with Kim Deitch, Jim Woodring, Jim Ottaviani and Kyle Baker)

And, on Friday the 25th at 11:30, I’ll be giving a talk called “Against a Canon of Comics” as part of the Comic Arts Conference in Room 30AB, and probably signing Reading Comics somewhere after it.