February 2007 Archives
Meow meow--Pierre Menard meow meow.
Meow meow--Brian Chippendale meow meow.
(Well, not really, in the latter case, but as Brian Turner points out, the resemblance is kind of awesome.)
(Also, and unrelatedly: new favicon, fresh-baked from Kolin Kelly's to match my tattoo!)
Preferred spelling and usage in my forthcoming book Reading Comics, courtesy of my excellent copyeditor:
acknowledgment
ad hoc
African-American
aka
Al-Qaeda
annus mirabilis
apocryphal
art cartoonist
art comics (n.), art-comics (adj.)
Art Nouveau
assembly-line (adj.)
auteur
avant-garde
backstory
badass
best-selling
biblical
black and white (n.), black-and-white (adj.)
books-of-comics
bookstore [vs. "comic book store"]
cartoony
cocreate
codirect
coedit
comic book (n., adj.)
comic book store
Comics Code
Comics Code Authority
comics-like
comics-news (adj.)
comics readers
company men
cop-out
counterargument
counterculturalist
counterculture
cover-dated
coworker
crisscrossing
cross section
culture vulture
death trap
Decadent (ref. to art movement)
de facto
diehard
Drawn & Quarterly
editor in chief
email
endnotes
eye candy
façade
fait accompli
fanboy
fan service
far-fetched
farmgirl
femme fatale
film noir
fin de siècle
fine-art (adj.)
flip side
folktale
freestanding
front and center
funnybook
gangbanger
god-awful
hard-ass
hard-core (adj.), hardcore (n.)
Hays Code
Heaven
Hell
high school (n., adj.)
hometown
hyper-controlled
ideologue
imagination-bombs
indie (adj., n.)
indiedom
in medias res
insectoid
Internet
jet-black
judgment
Kabbala, Kabbalistic
knockdown (adj.)
L&R (short for Love & Rockets)
L&RX (short for Love & Rockets X)
left-hand (adj.)
lifeline
like-minded
linework
MacGuffin
magical realist (adj.)
manga
markup (n.)
metacomics
metafictional
metalhead
meta-narratives
meta-pleasure
metatextual
mind-set
minicomic(s)
miniseries
monkey wrench
motormouthed
muscle-bound
name-drop (v.)
near miss (n.)
noir
noncombatants
non-comics (adj.)
non-comics reader
nonfiction
non-genre (adj.)
nonmainstream
nonnarrative
nonrealistic
nonreturnable
nonsequential
non sequitur
nonverbal
nonvisual
nostalgie de la boue
other-dimensional
out-there (adj.)
page-count
penny-ante (adj.)
postapocalyptic
postcybernetic
post-reading
postwar
preempt
preestablished
preexisting
preform
pretechnological
preverbal
prewar
prima facie
punchline
"Purgatory" (section of Divine Comedy)
quasi-monthly
real-world (adj.)
redraw
reformat
relaunch
reroute
right-hand (adj.)
Rollerblades
roman à clef
rule of thumb
samizdat
science fiction (n., adj.)
scriptural
semi-realism, semi-realistic
sephirot
Seth
side by side (adv.)
single-handedly
single-minded
Situationist
sleight of hand
soup-to-nuts
spandex
Spider-Man
spin-off (n.)
squarebound
stoplight
story line
straightedge
sugarcoat, sugarcoating
sui generis
superhero
superheroine
Superman
superreader
super-villains
Tarot
tool-kit
touchpoint
tour de force
train wreck
ultraminimal
underrealized
United States (n.), U.S. (adj.)
wasp waist (n.)
water tower
Web site
word for word (adv.)
work for hire (n.)
worldview
I suspect this gives a frighteningly good preview of what the book itself is going to be like.
Hi to all the Hour readers visiting this site for the first time; note that the "Green Light" project was not exactly the way it's described in the article, but I'm very flattered that they mentioned (and linked to) it anyway!
I am currently sitting in LAX, dealing with email while my computer recharges. Have I mentioned that I hate driving in big cities? Especially this one? I really do. I think I steamed up the windshield with my quiet freaking out a couple of times. But I love the excellent dinners I've had the last couple of nights, and I love my friends I've dined with doubly.
First in what I hope will be an occasional series. Following the suggestion of this well-circulated and thought-provoking article to "try to add new species, not just new foods, to your diet... biodiversity in the diet means less monoculture in the fields," I'm making it a deliberate project to try every nonpoisonous species of plant I can find that I haven't eaten before (at least those offered for sale as food; I'm not going the "Wildman" Steve Brill route just yet. Maybe later).
Experiment #1, found at Limbo yesterday: purple carrots. (Are they actually a different species?) I'd been told they were crisper and sweeter than orange carrots; crisper, yes, but when I tried a couple raw, they actually seemed slightly bitterer, and I was slightly disappointed that the purple color was only on their skins; on the inside, they were orange. So I cut up a few and threw them in with some leeks I was braising for dinner, along with a couple of orange carrots; cooked, their texture and flavor were all but identical.
Deerhoof at the Crystal Ballroom last night: excellent, and adjusting well to their trio lineup. (A couple of links that have been hanging around for a while: here's a nine-song live-stuff-and-covers collection--as one long MP3, but the track listing is here, and includes covers of the Beatles, My Bloody Valentine, Canned Heat and Herman's Hermits--and here's "+81" from the new album, which neatly encapsulates what they're like for people who haven't heard them before.) But one moment I really enjoyed was actually before they went on: their intro music was Niney's awesome "Blood and Fire," which I don't think I'd encountered at club-speaker volume before--hearing Jamaican music from that era at suitably high volumes always makes me imagine what the "sound system" scene would really have been like.
It was just about exactly 15 years ago today that Azalia Snail talked me into starting Dark Beloved Cloud. Thank you again, Azalia, and thank you to everybody who's supported the label over the last 15 years.
In related news: Uncle Wiggly's video for "Rat's Rabbits" (from their Teenbeat album Jump Back, Baby) is now up on YouTube. And Fly Ashtray have a video for "Mindpants" from their new and awesome CD-R Pantswind Folder.