Miscellany – Page 347

ON THE BRAIN: COMICS, UFOs, & MFA PROGRAMS

Saturday, April 8, 2006

A trio of Peter Orner stories available to read online: “On a Bridge Over the Homochito“, “Off the C-34: Stories from Goas Farm“, and “Meyer and Silla.”
Vonnegut on Bookworm.
The latest project from FOUND’s editor Jason Bitner is a collection of 18,000 studio portraits taken of people living in a small town over four decades called LaPorte, Indiana.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, reasons why UT Austin is right at the top of our list for grad schools. (Other than the cool name.)
Too weird: the VU matched with Lawrence Welk footage.
For fun yesterday at work I sat and stared at the poster for National Poetry Month. I think it would make a good format for a comic…
My sketchbook’s new favorite site: Artnatomy.
Say it ain’t so, Martin!

Thursday, April 6, 2006

I took this in my dad’s barn…

George Saunders, on becoming a prude.
The Dispatch reports on the Demise of Western.
A BBC interview with the cartoonists involved in MOME. I finally ordered #3.
Interesting article about the creative friendship between R Kikuo Johnson and Paolo Rivera.
USA Today always has fun articles on LOST.

Wednesday, April 5, 2006

I was free-drawing, and this guy came to me out of nowhere, but now he really fascinates me. What is he supposed to say? I have no idea….

Until I saw the movie, I had no clue Richard Thompson wrote the Grizzly Man Soundtrack, and Jim O’Rourke played on the session. [MP3]
Jeremy was live and acoustic last night on the BBC.
A few works by Yoshihiro Tatsumi are featured in the new Paris Review. Another lit journal warms to comics…good news.
Check out the First Second Books site, where both Eddie Cambell (From Hell) and Joann Sfar (The Rabbi’s Cat) guest blog.
NPR: Soldiers reading Shakespeare. I’m reading King Lear again, and it’s blowing my mind…

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Recipe for a kick-ass drive to work: Black Sabbath’s PARANOID. (First heard, coincidentally, in Sean’s Golf.) I can usually get through “War Pigs” and “Paranoid” by the time I get to the library. Most people only credit Ozzy’s vox and Tommy Iommi’s guitar work for Sabbath’s greatness, but the rhythm section was unbelievably heavy and tight. Just listen to the way the bass moves under the power chords in “Paranoid.” Awesome, dude.
Unrot your brain with video games? (Thanks, Don.)
The Fez has been with everyone. (Don, again.)
Lynda Barry is coming to Oberlin.
And speaking of Lynda Barry, how the crap did I never see Matt Groening’s LIFE IN HELL comics? (Barry and Groening are friends.) A lot of his chart-like comics in one of the books remind me of Kenneth Koch… Check out this cool map charting the similarities between Springfield and Groening’s hometown of Portland.
Don’t forget the reading tonight at Mac’s Backs.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

a Circleville ‘scape…

A column on the possibilities for storytelling in video games. “You’re not going to get anything on the level of [Citizen Kane] in video games until someone somewhere pays an honest-to-God writer to sit in a room and create a story themselves that they are passionate about telling through game play and visual narrative.” Once again, anybody heard of LucasArts adventure games?
Somebody explain this hilarity to Sean. It’s like Chappelle’s Show without Chappelle.
Looking for graphic novels without words?
George Saunders on Peanuts.
Lynd Ward novels you can browse through Google Books: God’s Man and The Silver Pony. Strange coincidence of influences: George Saunders credits Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes as being the book that made him want to be a writer when he was young. Lynd Ward did the original illustrations for the classic.
The Nabokov Library. Where you can find lots of his pieces for free, in .doc files.