A kougin aman--more properly a Kouign-amann--is a pastry: a little crumpled circle of flour and butter and caramelized sugar and specks of salt. It was the specialty of Alder, a wonderful little cafe that opened down the street from my house in the spring. By the beginning of this week, it was gone. (My son was inconsolable. I was, too, but maybe less demonstrative about it.) I ate many more kougin amans than I wrote posts on lacunae in 2011. That's fine; I needed a year (mostly) off. And now I can post here any time I want, but I can't have a kougin aman any time I want it. There's a parable in there somewhere.
My friend Alissa just posted a list of her favorite pieces that she wrote in 2011; it's probably not a bad idea for me to do the same--
1) Comic-Con Strikes Again! --This is the Kindle Single that I wrote (very quickly) about the amazing week-long culture-clash of Comic-Con International. I really enjoyed putting it together, and I'm happy with how it turned out. (It's 99 cents, but if you don't feel like shelling out for it and you happen to use Amazon Prime, you can also borrow it for free.)
2) The Smiths Complete --a review for Pitchfork of the entire-Smiths-discography boxed set. For some reason I ended up writing about old albums a lot more than new albums this year, but this band was really good with words, and enough has been written about them that I tried to get a little more playful than usual here.
3) "Monsters Inc." --a.k.a. "how to write a feature about Lady Gaga if you can't interview Gaga, see her live, or hear her album within your lead time." My private title for this story was "Born This Way Has a Cold." It ended up being an excuse to focus on the thing I think is most interesting about Gaga: her unusual relationship with her fans.
4) "Fate, Feathers and Death" --a New York Times Book Review piece on Anders Nilsen's remarkable Big Questions.
5) "Britney in Miniature" --I've been doing a weekly column for Fuse on the relationship between new pop hits and older music; this one deliberately misreads Britney Spears' video teasers for "Hold It Against Me."
6) The Complete Case Files 05 --I've had more fun writing "Dredd Reckoning," my weekly blog on Judge Dredd books, than practically anything else I've done this year. This particular one, a dialogue with Tucker Stone on the volume where our action hero commits genocide, was a blast.
So this is springtime, and what have I done? April consisted of a lot of running around, mostly: Seattle, where I gave a talk and appeared on a panel at the Experience Music Project's Pop Conference (respectively on the future of the technology of listening to music and on indie music in the '00s); White River Junction, where I got to meet with students at the Center for Cartoon Studies; New York, where I appeared on a panel at the MoCCA festival; and Seattle again for a DJ gig, and remembering that I don't get to DJ nearly often enough. Mostly, I've been in Portland, where... I hung out with my family and sang a bit of karaoke.
Otherwise, the last couple of months have involved a lot of writing, of course: always writing. The 25th anniversary issue of SPIN had a piece I wrote about the relationship between '80s music zine culture and contemporary music blog culture (it's not online, as far as I can tell). Over at Salon, I wrote about the new gay character in Archie comics; at Time, I interviewed David Byrne about Here Lies Love; at eMusic, I wrote about the lost soul hits of the '60s and '70s; at Hilobrow, I wrote a brief appreciation of Agnetha Faltskög. For 48HR Magazine, or whatever the youngsters are calling it these days, I wrote about James Brown's uncomfortable intersections with the Hustle. I also wrote a ton of stuff at Techland, including an interview with Grant Morrison about his current Batman-related work. And I scratched my head about the very enjoyable "Exit Through the Gift Shop" at the NAJP's ARTicles blog.
April's Emanata columns at Techland included a guide to where to start with Love & Rockets, an appreciation of Brendan McCarthy's recent Marvel comics, a look at flash-forwards, a piece about sense-of-place in S.H.I.E.L.D. and Market Day, and an expression of irritation at the end of Blackest Night. May's were an essay on the relationship between the future of digital comics and the past of digital music, an assessment of Brian Michael Bendis's wrap-up of the last few years' Avengers titles, a guide for prospective Final Crisis readers, and--I was particularly happy about this one--eight questions for comics creators.
Next month, of course, I'm hoping to get some actual work
done. I'm giving a lecture
at the Portland Art Museum on the 13th; I've also got a massive assignment on
an undisclosed subject that's due right around then, so I may be going into a
hibernation-like state. I have no idea whether this means another extended
absence from this blog or a frantic burst of activity. I'm hoping the latter.