50 in 05: SPX 2004

#10: SPX 2004: War!, edited by Greg Bennett, Charles Brownstein, and Chris Pitzer. Usually I'm right on top of the SPX collections--they're published in conjunction with the Small Press Expo every year and they showcase new and indie comics folks. But somehow this one slipped past me, so I finally picked it up as part of Top Shelf's big sale a while back. So that means it's been two years since I picked up an SPX anthology, so one of two things has happened--my tastes are evolving, or the SPX gang put together a very, very sub-par book last year. Or maybe the contributors to this volume fell victim to the idea that writing is easy--of the 27 stories, only three have a writer AND an artist, and it shows. Now, I'm not writer-snob--some folks get by just fine without a collaborator, and some are better than those who only write. art spiegleman, Frank Miller, Carla Speed McNeil--none of them, however, are in this book. I read it in a day and most of the entries were poorly thought out, amateurish morality tales.

The theme for 2004 was "War," so we got things like an Asian couple sneaking across the border into Wisconsin--"Patriot Act Free Since 2006!" and an American pilot surprised at how much he liked a Serbian man, in spite of following orders to drop bombs on the man's country. Nothing new or poetic here.

The stand outs were few--"Building It Up Just To Tear It Down" by Alex Lukas, about the construction and deconstruction of the railroads before and during the Civil War was one. My personal favorite was "The Holy Kingdom," by Bruce Mutard, concerning a Christian soldier rethinking his place in the Crusades in 1191. I got the sense that it was a piece of a larger work, and I hope it finds its way to the reading public someday soon. I'm not sure if SPX 2005 is available yet, but if it's no better than 2004, and this anthology is truly a barometer for the work being done in the alternative comics scene, indie comics might be in for a rough patch for the next few years--until the folks currently being influenced by manga start putting out work.

50 in 05: The Bell Jar

#9: The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath. What the shit? How did this one get away from me for so long? Where were you, my trusty readers, a few months back when I was looking for female coming-of-age stories? Well, in case y'all didn't know, Sylvia Plath is really funny. This was on my reading list for a class on Autobiographical Fiction, and being a class full of writer-types, you'd be surprised at how much of the conversation was stuck in "she writes very accurately about depression" mode. One fella even said that the depressed tend to see the world very objectively, since they know they can't change anything. He also has chronic stomach problems.

I'm not a big fan of poetry, you know? I like a few poets--I like listening to Saul Williams rather than reading him, and I like reading Raymond Carver's poems rather than watching a movie about his stories. I haven't read any of Sylvia's poems, but she writes a balls-out novel. It's the lack of likes that really get me--her doctor's desk is an acre, her chair is cavernous, Esther would see a tiny Alp in her eyeball after she visited Europe. It's all true and factual, the metaphors are real and not metaphors at all. I mean, they *are* metaphors, but, you know--there's a big difference between BEING and BEING LIKE, and it's of such a size you often don't see it until it's right there in front of you.

In my own work, that specific word choice signifies a certain confidence in language. I remember being in class when it first happened, when I saw the difference the absence of 'like' could make. I said, "It's making the metaphor real," and my teacher Carey said, "Yeah," and then I said, "Yeah!" and, and holy shit, man! That's magic! It carries greater weight in first-person accounts. It imbeds you deep in the perspective of who is telling the story. It's a reminder that the story is subjective, that it's a perception being reported. I like that reminder.

So, the Bell Jar: really, really good book. And if you've ever read Sylvia's journals, you know she went on a lot of blind dates. Those are really funny, too.

New Roommate

Wolf is hiding in the bathroom . . .



. . . and Lola is hiding under my bed.

*glk*

My birthday present to myself was the hiccups.

Dateline: 1995!

While I'm at it, I thought it would be neat to think of the titles, ten years later, that sparked my love for comics all over again. Not that I ever really stopped, but these were the books that sent my brain spinning into completely different directions.

Dateline: 1985!

I ripped this idea off of Dean Haspiel's blog--the idea is to find the first five comics that started you down this dark, seductive path. I found all of the covers from the wonderful comics.org, which seems to have scans of every comic book cover you could possibly want.

holy CRAP, or "Let's Get Nerdy"

I found the trailer for REVENGE OF THE SITH online, and dude:



. . . I had a total nerdgasm.

50 in 05: A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries

#8: A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, by Kaylie Jones. Kaylie Jones (I'm gritting my teeth and shaking my fist in the air as I say it)! If I was the kind of man I wish I was, I would challenge her to a duel. No pistols or anything pussy like that--well, maybe knives--but I was thinking a bare-knuckle knock-down fist fight. On the one hand, she writes a novel--and when I say novel I'm thinking "novel," because she might as well have just written a damn fine "creative memoir," and in the process justified her father's mixing of fact and fiction (that's novelist James Jones, he of the Thin Red Line and From Here to Eternity)--and in fact, add that to the list of reasons I want to fight her--but anyway, she wrote a novel that features one of the most honest and American of American families I've ever seen in fiction. Thank god she added a new chapter in "Mother's Day," as it's the only thing that redeems her mother from the last third of the book, and also serves to foreshadow the inherent forgiveness Channe feels for her mother in "Citizenship."

The awkwardness of pre-sex in "The House in the Tree" is a mate for "Human Development," in which we meet Francis, the perfect boy at the perfect time for Channe. And "Diary," though at first it feels like an awkward way to end a novel, explains a few things, biologically speaking, about the emotional capacity of the Billy formerly known as Benoit. And, for the record, I actually like the ending a lot, awkwardness and all.

Now, on the other hand: if Bill Willis, he-man tough guy writer, shed one more single, solitary tear--staring straight ahead, his face otherwise emotionless--I would have grown a beard and moved into the mountains, never to read another word again. My companions would have been the wolves, who have no word for "melodrama" in their language.

I ask you to consider: the same pen that wrote, "I sat at the edge of the his bed in darkness as I had so many nights as a child. I tried to start out calmly but no words would comoe, just tears, hot ones smelling like vodka," also wrote, as Bill Willis discusses a broken Roman amorhpa, "'Those worms are so old the sea turned them into part of the clay.' He said this without emotion, although a tear, which he ignored, dropped out of his eye." I ask myself why Kaylie Jones, who is surely my arch-foe, and who displays such wonderful instincts elsewhere in the novel, makes this choice. Another scene like this, where Bill sheds a solitary tear over the memory of a Japanese soldier he murdered, turns what is a fascinating and real portrayal of a lost father inot a caricature of a tough guy with a tender guy inside.

Another affront: bubbling below the surface of this novel is the idea of a girl and her adopted brother, a girl who readily admits to being flirtatious and sexually curious--yet this taboo of incest is skirted around, ignored as easily as a giant, man-eating bear in the living room. Channe and her brother "had never even kissed," Kaylie tells us. Janet No. One, a schoolmate of Channe's, spreads rumors that Channe and Billy slept together. Channe encounters a surrogate boy Billy's age in a treehouse to experiment with, explore, and eventually despise. Billy might as well be asexual for the lack of development he displays as the novel charts Channe's progress from childhood to her late-20's. But what is most interesting is this--Billy's biological mother, according to her diary, is impregnated by her cousin (by marriage), even though they never had sex. They laid down together and she felt a hot spurt on her thigh. Channe and Billy shared a bed many times but never, as my memory serves, is there a mention of them touching, in any way. It's a decidedly absent detail. The whole matter is this gian LUMP under the carpet, talked around and occasionally glanced at uncomfortably.

If Kaylie Jones was my friend, I would ask her: How? Why? How can you dance what could be a beautiful, uncomfortable, dramatic moment when this subject is broached? And if she couldn't answer, if she didn't answer, that is when Kaylie Jones would become my enemy.

Supergod of Longevity, parts one and two

Dorothy was a waitress at the Promenade, working the night shift in an all-night joint that played jazz and played host to lonely souls, or souls ready to make a change. She had hair that was blonde, black at the roots, and her customers liked it that way. She was tall and she had a smirk her customers liked, too. She made a good living on tips. Nelson sat at her tables a few times a week; he was a man with slicked back hair and a thin mustache, but he made it work. His suit was rumpled and not dark enough to get anyone’s attention


“Gimme a fruit cocktail, I ain’t too hungry,” he said.

Dorothy smiled. “Sounds like a real man to me.”

She shimmied away and Nelson watched her hips (dear god, he loved her hips) and he couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. She came back with a fruit cocktail, placed it in front of him on a violet napkin, and winked.

“You come here a lot,” she said.

“I come here sometimes,” said Nelson. “You work here a lot.” Nelson tried to grin, but he was afraid it looked fake and he let it drop.

“Well. Grin if you need anything,” Dorothy said.

Nelson grinned and couldn’t help it, and Dorothy grinned right back. Nelson watched her while she worked, listening to the band. He smiled from time to time, not a full-fledged grin, but his smile dropped when he heard her three tables over, saying, “Grin you need anything.”

Nelson ordered a shot and left before she brought it.

Two nights later (maybe three), Nelson met Trick. Nelson had entered and sat in a table across the bar, away from Dorothy’s section, and he noticed Trick at Nelson’s own usual table. Trick was dressed in gold. It sounds like a joke, but it’s true—gold shoes, sparkly trousers, a jacket and bow-tie that glittered. He had angel dust on his face that sparkled, even in the half-light of the Promenade, and he winked at Nelson when he caught him staring.

Nelson frowned and puckered his face, at Trick and the liquor he’d ordered. “Give me something nasty,” he’d told the waitress, the one with brown hair and eyes Nelson didn’t bother appraising. “What?” she’d said, looking him square in the rumpled suit, and he’d only waved her away disapprovingly. She brought something brown and thick and when Nelson drank it he swallowed fast to keep from gagging.

Every few minutes he looked up to see Trick, whose name he did not yet know, and from time to time Trick looked back and winked. Whenever Dorothy approached Trick’s table, which was often, Trick had a hand on her hip and looked up at her, smiling and laughing. Dorothy did the same, smiling and laughing, touching Trick on the golden shoulder with her fingertips. Dorothy wore rings, four on her right hand, three on her left, the space for a wedding ring left absent. Nelson checked that every time he went to the Promenade, his eyes tracing the white of her cuticles past her knuckles to the space for a ring. He checked it whenever he could, that space. That’s what he focused on when he see her with Trick, when she delivered Trick’s wine and his shots and returned his glasses. Dorothy walked away from Trick, and Trick winked again at Nelson. He’d never seen this man before, but here he was, bathed in gold, Dorothy’s fingernails painting him with love.

Nelson raised his hand and snapped. The shadow of a waitress fell over him and Nelson didn’t bother looking up.

“Sumthin’ nassier,” Nelson said.

“I don’t know what that means,” the shadow of a waitress said.

Nelson turned to look at her. “Some-thing, nast-ee-ur,” he said, his eyes on the bags under her own.

She might have laughed, but Nelson wasn’t sure. He closed his eyes to keep the room from spinning.

“Nastier than what?” she said.

“That stanky ass cootch you got unner your--”

She slapped him and Nelson fell out of his chair. By the time his eyes opened he was in an alley, vomit on his chest, and he almost hoped it was his own.

* * * * *

I make no apologies baby, and you might as well print that on my gravestone. Not that I’m ever dyin’, because bitch, I’ll be too busy flyin’. My name is Trick, honey, and once I enter the room you won’t remember how drab your life was before I got there.

Now, I was eyeing this boy Nelson, the one with the nappy hair just dyin’ to be set free from whatever potion was keeping it in place, because I could tell he wasn’t quite at the bottom of his barrel. That’s when I like ‘em, right before they hit it. Cuz once they hit it, they gots nowhere to go but up—that’s when they start getting’ their shit together, and they take one look at Trick and know they gots to go the other way. So Trick (and that’s me baby, don’t be confused by the syntax) knows to grab ‘em when they think they hit the rocks, but in fact they still fallin’.

Well, Nelly, he was fallin’, and fast. I was eyein’ him with the intent to move in, and soon, and poor bitch-ass fool got hisself thrown outta the goddamn bar. Now, how the shit you get thrown outta Promenade? Well, in this case, it’s tellin’ Marmalade Maggie she got a smelly ol’ cooter, I guess, but fine. It makes my job different than I expected, but no harder. Like I says, Nelly was fallin’ fast. He was over there eyeballin’ me and thinkin’ I was mackin’ on his favorite waitress (and I was, but only because I don’t know no other way to talk to no ho), when in fact I was getting’ the digs on his own self. Askin’ that girl what was up with this boy, why he lookin’ so horse faced, whether or not she got the butter for his muffin.

“He’s attractive,” she done told me, “but I’m not attracted to him. He’s too sad.”

“Ooh, girl, everyone’s sad once in a while. Maybe you’s the one to perk him up.”

“Maybe you’re the one to perk him up,” she told me, but she done blushed when she did it. “Why are so interested in Nelson, anyway?”

(And that’s how I figured his name, see it? Tricks is Tricky, baby girl.)

“I’m a cupid swathed in gold,” I told her, and I held my arms out like Jesus done did when they hammered ‘em. But I fluttered my eyelids, and if there’d be any Romans in the Promenade, I’da converted ‘em over and over again.

But I digress. Girl, don’t even let me get on like that. I paid up my bill and I even paid down his, and Dorothy, she look at me funny for that one, but I just touched her on the arm and tell her I got a soft spot for alley cats. She laughed and told me I was a softie. I almost told her, “Not since I was ‘leven, baby,” but figgered I’d just put that one in my pocket and save it for later. I gots work to do.

I left out front, then swung around the side, through the alleyway. Contrary to popular belief, now, Mama Trick don’t mind gettin’ his feet muddied up when his baby birds is squawkin’. I stomped through the mud and piss and shits of that alley, knowin’ all the while that as soon as I got back home them pants was goin’ in the furnace. I stood over that unconscious, puke-stained man, and I knew there wasn’t much ol’ Trick could do to wake him up from wheresever he was. Not much, but a thing or two.

So, speakin’ of thangs, I unzipped my drawers and pulled mine out. Uncoiled it, unrolled it, stood on my tippies to keep it from brushin’ the stank as ground. I didn’t aim it at the poor bitch’s face, naw, just to the side, is all. I let him hear the spatter right in his ear, let the spatter go spatter on his face a time or two. A drop on his eyelid, a drop on that rotten-ass ‘stache of his, and shit baby, I don’t even feel bad about that one. That thing needed to go anyway. His eyeballs flittered and fluttered and his lips quivered and quavered and he blinked open just in time to see god, that is, my thang, being roped back up and put into stable. There was a twinkle in his eye, just a flutter of seein’ somethin’ greater than he be, before his throat done gurgled and his stomach done rebelled and he done puked all over hisself one more time. First time that happened to ol’ Trick, I can tell you that, some brother sickin’ on hisself at the sight of my glory, but that’s no harm. I don’t take it personal.

“Wake up, Mary,” I said. “I’m ‘bout to make you a happy man.”

Nelly said somethin’ there, but I know none what it was. I can talk drunk-speak all right, but his was drunk-speak on toppa self-pity, and pity ain’t no thing Trick knows much about. I pulled him up by his pride and put him in a cab, then sent it on to my crib. I got my own cab and followed, cuz there ain’t no way I was ridin’ in the same machine as that stanky ol’ bitch. Not Trick baby, no sir.

It's that time of year

Happy Birthday, you Newtonsville-bred son of a bitch.

I wrote this myself

(the accompanied musical beat, played on one's chest/legs/arms goes boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom, boom; repeat.)

Hey Em'ly
Is it your birthday?
I think it is
I hear your fifteen.

So Em'ly
Hope you have a good day
I think you will
So happy birthday

Comics Nerd-Talk

For as long as I've been aware of comics media and comics criticism, comics have been on the verge of collapse. Every moment, every issue is the one before the last. Prices are rising, talent is dwindling, the market is shrinking--for at least 15 years, comics news has been doom and gloom, doom and gloom. Even when the bookstore presence of comics is higher than ever, when teh mass of talent creating comic books is the most impressive it's ever, ever been: go to a comic book message board or read an article or column by someone who concerns themselves with knowing comics, and the question most often posed remains: "What can we do to save the industry?"

The industry.

It just occurred to me now, writing this in my journal, that this is a question that isn't concerned with the artform, the medium, or its practioners. It's about comic book stores and the people who shop there. Convention season is the summertime--outside of that, the big time in a comic nerd's life is when a comic book movie comes out. If Spider-Man 2 does well, comics are bound to look up at any moment. All we have to do is sit back and wait for the throng of the mainstream to exit the theaters and flock to the comic shops.

They never do. After Batman in 1989, Spider-Man in 2002, Constantine in 2005--the movies make millions of dollars, the comics don't even feel a bump. The reason is simple and seemingly impossible to grasp by the folks who complain--Warren Ellis sums it up by calling them Dad Comics. Spider-Man, Batman, whatever--they are essentially the same stories told as 40-plus years ago. The cadence has changed, the comics-vocabulary used to tell the stories, but at the end of every issue or every six-part story-arc, all of the characters are in the same place--they just had to bore through a few pages of angst and kick-splode to get there.

This is mostly transcribed from my journal, so there's no real closure here--except to say that the folks who write diatribes like the above, trying to fix comics, seem to be concerned with making superhero comics popular again. The folks who shut up and Do Good Work are putting out the comics that have the most depth, are the Next New Thing, and still get me excited about writing more comics.

Hunter S. Thompson, 1937-2005

He was a good fucker, you know? I'm glad he did things, and lied about things, and wrote about both.

For god's sake, what's the movie?

It's kind of embarrassing.

A few weeks ago I opened my mailbox and found one of these inside:



I laughed and figured it was put in my box by mistake. But I checked the label, and there was my name, there was my address. I thought it was a sample issue or something (I do have an Entertainment Weekly subscription after all, and I'm sure it's all part of the same big conglomerate), I took it upstairs, I flipped through it looking for boobies, and was kind of grossed out when the only ones inside belonged to Tara Reid. I threw it away and didn't think of it again.

Not a few days later, another one showed up. I took it from the mailbox, turned it over so no one would see it if I ran into a neighbor on the way upstairs, and went to my apartment. I checked the address label again--my name, my address. I laughed again, but it was more nervous this time. I flipped through it, looking for boobies, but once again they were of they were of the gross Hollywood variety. The girls either not famous enough for Playboy, or not famous enough for Playboy anymore.

Today, I checked the mail. Another one. I was carrying my bag from school and had a handful of letters to juggle at the same time, and the magazine was packed with a free AOL disk, so it was hard to bend in half--I couldn't hide the cover and I was praying I wouldn't pass any cute neighbors on the stairs, or anyone at all, anyone who might think I was the sort of dude who had a subscription to Stuff Magazine. Only, I do have a subscription to Stuff Magazine. I've never received a bill from Stuff Magazine, nor have I ever even looked through a Stuff Magazine before the unfortunate Tara Reid incident. Nonetheless, my disinterest does not stop Stuff Magazine from coming directly to my home anyway.

50 in 05: Lord of the Flies

#7: Lord of the Flies, by William Golding. This one has been sitting on my bookshelf for a long time, unread. I finally picked it up after stumbling upon the 80's-ish film adaptation on TV a few days ago. I remember watching the movie when I was a kid, when my folks rented it, and Piggy's fate still gives me chills. The aftertaste of that movie, and of the novel, is similar to that of Watchmen--after Watchmen, I didn't want any superheroes in my life for awhile. After Lord of the Flies, I don't think I want boys adventures stories in my life for a few weeks.

The language of the book was hard to get into at first, but I was quickly taken in by the subtly shifting POV Golding uses. Even when focusing on a specific character, we get fleeting glimpses of the larger world. Early in the story, as Roger tosses rocks at another boy, tosses to miss, "Roger's arm was conditioned by a civilization that knew nothing of him and was in ruins." A war has gone on out there in the grownup world, a world that left these boy stranded on an island, but we only hear about it in pieces like this. The boys are aware of the Reds, of atomic bombs, of battles being fought, but mostly they're caught up in the reality of their environment.

I don't this book would have felt so repressive if I hadn't read it over the course of the last few days . . . the dangers faced by Ralph and Piggy and Simon are real and easily avoidable, one would think, but when reading this book, when you're in the thick of it with this new tribe, it's impossible to see quite how. The inevitability of their descent from civilization is morbid and scary and hard to look away from. The end is more chilling in the film than in the movie, I think--more abrupt. I like the chase better in the film, but--and I don't think I'm ruining anything here, as everyone but me seems to have read this book in high school--the appearance of the soldier is more of a gut-punch in the movie. I do enjoy the subtle clues to something else approaching the island, in the novel that is. Overall, I'm glad both of them are around to be compared and to tell a full story.

But the thing is, what I'm most curious about is what happens when Ralph and Jack go back to civilization. What happens when Ralph, ten years later, goes to the grocery store? Maybe I'll go write that story.

You know, it's true.

Superman is a dick!

366 Days Later . . .

24HrsInAYear is officially one year old. I decided to keep it going for another year or two . . . it was enlightening to range over the last year's worth of pictures and see where I was at a given time on a given day. I wrote more about it a while back, so I won't get into the whole thing again. All in all, I'm really glad I did it, and thank you to my friends who didn't roll their eyes or groan too loudly when I pulled out my phone to take pictures at inopportune tiimes; and to Alfie and the folks at Moblog who are hosting the whole thing. Everyone should go there and browse around a bit--and if you have your own futurephone, set up an account for yourself.

50 in 05: Superman: Birthright

#6: Superman: Birthright, by Mark Waid, Leinil Francis Yu and Gerry Alanguilan. Despite recent reading patterns, I am not a Superman fan. The Grant Morrison interview really got me thinking about him, so I've been doing a little reading to back up that interest. This book is a collection of a DC Comics mini-series that updates Superman's origin for, as Waid puts it, a 21st Century audience. If you're going to do superheroes, or any serialized characters, really) over a period of time that stretches over decades, you have to update their coming-out story every few years. That's why there will always be a new Tarzan movie/TV show as long as there is a Tarzan, and that's why John Byrne's redefining of Superman from the "Man of Steel" series of the mid-80's is being pushed aside in favor of Birthright.

Essentially, Birthright ties the comic book Superman into the version seen on "Smallville." Clark's parents resemble their television counterparts and Lex Luthor is Clark's childhood buddy again. Some of the details are tweaked, but the TV show is the thing that cements the early pages of this book. And that's fine--I don't have a problem with that part of how Birthright is told. What bothered me the most about the storytelling was a moment towards the end that was taken right out of both Spider-Man movies, when the crowd that had only recently been against Superman, come to his aid in spite of overwhelming odds. But more than that, now that I think about it, was that this was a 12-part series that really should have been told in six--it's the Marvel/Ellis "decompressed" method where you have a Superman comic where Superman doesn't show up until the third or fourth issue.

In Waid's notes at the end he alludes to wanting to modernize Superman, make him relevant to an audience that sees Superman on a level with Marmaduke, and not as a hero to be looked up to. But the only way to enjoy this comic is to already be familiar with Superman comics. The situations and circumstances in Birthright are simply reinterpretations of what has already been seen in other comics, on Smallville, and in the Richard Donner "Superman" motion picture. The only people who would enjoy Birthright are the folks who already like Superman, and want to see how their favorite bits are going to play out in this new interpretation.

As for the artwork, the lack of backgrounds was a distraction and the moment-to-moment action was hard to follow at times. Yu also employs a common trick these days in which certain panels (or specific figures in those panels) are copied-and-pasted for the sake of various effects. There are so many repeated figures or plain brown space on these pages that it's distracting.

I think my Superman fix has been met for the time being--I'll check back with the character once Morrison and Quitely's All-Star series is up and running.

Short Bits

-A really neat short film called Muppets Overtime.

-There's a crazy rumor going around about Al Gore running in '08--he supposedly thinks his populist message that was ignored in 2000 and beaten in 2004 (the one DEAN ran with) will find an audience thanks to a DEAN-led DNC. Color me excited.



-Also, Lord of the Flies is a really good movie.

50 in 05: Forever

#5: Forever, by Judy Blume. I read a few Judy Blume books as a kid, but mostly of the "Superfudge" and "Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing" variety, not the "Are You There God, It's My Margaret?" titles. But a few weeks ago when I was looking for girl coming of age stories, "Forever" came up over and over again. I'm interested in fiction for kids, especially for teenagers, so reading this was fun. It moves really fast and mostly takes place through dialogue--even scenes where action is taking place, it is sometimes conveyed to the reader through the back-and-forth conversation of the characters. I don't know if it's ever been staged--probably not this book, due to the juices transferred--but some of Judy Blume's other work, perhaps.

My biggest beef with this book was the lack of physical detail. Most of the characters weren't described at all--Eric is short, Sybil is fat, Michael has hair the color of Erica's dog and a mole on his cheek--but I took that to be a choice Judy Blume made, perhaps to better allow a younger reader to fill in the faces with those already familiar to her. Scott McCloud talks about this method as it relates to comics, and I imagine it works the same way here. That's fine, but other things bothered me. Details about the physical world the characters live in are kept very vague, but the details that are given often puzzle me. In almost every home the kids enter, the style of furniture is described, but little else. In Katherine's home, we learn early on that it is adorned with tapestries designed by Katherine's little sister Jamie, but it's hardly mentioned again and is therefore pretty forgettable. We learn that Katherine hangs up photos of her boyfriend Michael when she goes away to summer camp, but I don't remember hearing anything about how she decorates her bedroom at home, even though she spends plenty of time there--at one point, laying in bed sick for four days. Some of the details are funny, though. The first time Katherine talks to her mother after Katherine has sex for the first time we are told, apropos of nothing else, that her mother is eating a hot dog.

The dialogue is a little aggravating at first--there's little self-consciousness apparent in anyone except Katherine. The characters are very willing to discuss their feelings openly and honestly, such as when Michael tells Katherine that he has come back to the scene of a New Year's Eve party expressly to see her, or when Erica and Artie deal with Artie's ambiguous sexuality. There's probably an entire essay in Artie's experience--he explores the question of his sexuality with an open and honest partner, finds no answers, attempts suicide, and is henceforth abandonded by most of his friends.

That said, the book can't be everything for everyone, and doesn't try to be. It has a very specific story that it's trying to tell, and it sticks to it. The talk about sex and the sex scenes themselves are open and honest and well done, accurately conveying the way it feels to discover someone else's body when you've never done so before. I was a little scandalized to learn this book was being passed around by some of my female friends when they were in third grade, at a time when I was still caught up in G.I. Joes and comic books and had no conception of wanting to lay down on a rug with a girl in her parent's den. So in theory, when I asked Patty Mayfield to go with me in the third grade, she had a whole other level of understanding of what that could mean some day. I just thought she was funny and liked her she-mullet.

At first I thought the language was a little condescending, but 30 years after the book was published it still lingers in the memory of girls who read the book 15-20 years ago. It's a shame that when I visited a handful of bookstores in Chicago, no one carried it--I think it's the perfect book for girls to read before they really know what it is they're reading about, if that makes sense to anyone. Maybe I'll smuggle a copy home the next time I visit and leave it laying around for prying eyes to discover.

50 in 05: Superman in the Fifties

#4: Superman in the Fifties, by various writers and artists. I picked this up after reading the Grant Morrison interview a few entries below. It contains 17 Superman stories from the 1950's, though none as delightfully strange as the one Grant mentions. When Superman first appeared in 1938 he was a social crusader who taunted and threatened crooks, killed them sometimes, and broke the rules; more than a decade later he had settled into his role as a super-policeman, with creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster working on other projects. Superman was one of the few superheroes still appearing in a comics medium dominated by Westerns, romance books, science-fiction and crime stories, and George Reeves was playing the Man of Steel and battling mobsters and crooks on television.

There are a few inspiring moments in the book. A two-parter featuring Bizarro features a number of twists--including the appearance of a "Handsome Bizarro," and a battle over a "graveyard of the sea"-- that I didn't see coming. But sometimes the twists were more convoluted than clever, such as when Mr. Mxyztplk arrives with a plan to humiliate Superman that involves plastic proxies of Metropolitan personalities, which Lex Luthor installs with robot engines to mechanize them.

It's hard to get a sense of an entire decade based on 17 stories, but many of these tales dealt with meteor showers and crashing rocket ships that also contained fellow Kryptonians--three space villains, Superman's supposed big brother, Superman's pet dog Krypto, and Superman's long-lost cousin Supergirl. But then you'll turn the page and find the story that introduces Brainiac, who has a scheme to repopulate his homeworld by shrinking and bottling the very best Earth cities and then transporting them across the cosmos. That's the story that introduces the bottled Kryptonian city of Kandor, by the way.

What I see most in this volume is potential--I'd love to see a collection of Superman tales that ranged over many decades, edited by Grant Morrison. I can only imagine the weird fever-dream stories that came from the 50's and 60's, and it's a shame there isn't a reasonably priced collection that showcases them. You get only a taste of that wonderful strangeness in this volume.

What We Blog About When We Blog About Blogs

There are so many things I want to link to in today's Bookslut blog, I'll just point you toward the whole thing. Go read about librarians in prison in Cuba, Jessica Abel, comics for kids, and copies of "Bless Me, Ultima" being destroyed by a high school principal.

Please, Go Vote.

Scott McCloud Vs. A Bear. So far, Scott is winning--but just barely.

50 in 05: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

#3: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers. I have, apparently, joined Oprah's Book Club. Thanks a lot, Amy.

I started this one from my search of a coming-of-age stories about girls. There's an aspect of that to this story, but I probably wouldn't have thought of it that way on my own. The one thing I wanted more of from this book was Mick--she's entering high school and leaving the inside room for the outside room with a depressing inevitability the further along you read. Carson McCullers is on the cover of my copy, sitting in the woods and thinking about the fact that she wrote such a beautiful, melancholy, hopeful book (and isn't that the best kind of hope?) at twenty-three. She puts language together in a way that carries a depth I don't think you can catch on a single read-through--but at the same time, re-reading this book any time soon is daunting and a little depressing. This is one I want to revisit, but maybe a few years down the road. Maybe a lot of years down the road. She seems to paint pictures that make sense in a dreamy sort of way, and I'm glad she trusted herself enough to do that. On page 198: "The winter afternoons glowed with a hazy lemon light and the shadows were a delicate blue." And page 273: "Harry held his stuffed egg and mashed the yellow with his thumb. What did that make her remember? She heard herself breathe." And almost at the end, on page 350: "He would not leave the South. That was one clear thing. There was hope in him, and soon perhaps the outline of his journey would take form."

The POV shifts between five characters and I was often anxious for it to return to my favorites. But all the same, the whole story couldn't have been told without the insight into each character's mind . . . the sheer aloneness of each character and the search they didn't know the others were on wouldn't have been clear, and the sadness inherent to the story wouldn't ache quite so much as it does. It's a hard, heavy ache, but a good one all the same. Carson, as a storyteller, dips into and out of memory in a way that is impressive and assumes the reader will be able to catch it. I'm glad she trusted herself enough to do that, too. Especially on page 273 up above.

I talked with my friend Melissa about this a few days ago. She's re-reading it after seeing it for the first time in high school. She said her high school teacher thought Mick was hiding a sexual awareness, but I have to disagree. I think Mick's reaction to her first time with Harry carry the weight of a full awareness of sex that Mick would have had if she had experienced sex beforehand. All the same, Biff is a pretty creepy character at times--and at other times very lovely and endearing. And that's an impressive trick for a storyteller.

The book is a real Georgia kind of story . . . maybe it's a real Southern kind of story, and I just don't know it. But it's slow and rich and subtle and deep, so that you won't know how much it means to you until long after you've read it. I feel like this is one of the ones that will be sitting in my brain for a long, long time.

(Twenty-three . . . good lord.)

DEAN make pancakes for imaginary children.

In case no one is paying attention, I think a certain Howard DEAN is on the way to becoming the next chairman of the Democratic National Convention. I think the only way for a viable opposition party to exist and stand a chance in the 2006 and 2008 elections are for the Democrats to enact drastic change on a local county and state level--and DEAN is a fella willing to do the legwork. He rubs a lot of established Democrats the wrong way, but in a manner that I like a lot. The standard Dems are the ones who lose elections and support, and I think that's obvious to everyone except them. After the November election I wasn't sure if the Democratic Party could do anything to get my faith back, but under DEAN I think they have a chance to do some of the right things. It means I'll have to pack away my DEAN 2008 signs, but if it means a stronger (or actual) opposition to Bush and the Republicans, I'll take it.

The 12 Labors of Superman

It might be a few weeks old by now, but there's an excellent interview with Grant Morrison up at Newsarama about his upcoming All-Star Superman project with Frank Quitely. I like Grant's interviews almost as much as his comics--he's always interesting and entertaining and storytelling. I've never thought about Superman very much, being a Marvel kid growing up and all, and he's always seemed to be a pretty boring character. When I was 18 or 19 I came up with a very involved Golden Age to the modern-era storyline that involved a cast of superheroes that mirrored the Marvel and DC lines, but played out in what I thought of as the Watchmen mold--I took fantastic ideas and then tried to play it straight. The only thing that made sense for the Superman-style character (I named him "Mr. Victory"--he showed up in 1939, keep in mind) was to have him fly off into space for a few decades, traveling the cosmos, before returning with the intention of re-molding human civilization to his liking. Something Grant touches on in this interview is that in our world, the real world, we tend to view people who are different and/or successful with mistrust and hate. But the thing about comics is that you can write about a world that *isn't* ours. Hell, that's the thing about all fiction, and it's something I think a lot of people forget about.

"That would never happen," is probably the most common complaint, ever, lobbed at any piece of fiction. Whether it's teenagers going into a dark room, a couple staying together when it seems like they should part, a rocket ship from another world crash-landing in Kansas and being discovered by a loving, but childless, couple--"it would never happen like that." But the thing is, it doesn't have to--hell, it's not supposed to. It's a made-up story. Everything you read on the page or see on the screen is a choice the writer makes, and makes for a reason. So in comics, and specifically in DC Comics, most folks love Superman, super-powered stranger from another world or not.

As far as writing about Superman, one comment from Grant really got my brain working. He was at the San Diego Comic-Con a few years ago, out front talking with then-JLA editor Dan Raspler. Someone in a Superman outfit comes walking by--and if you've been to a comic show you know the sort of dude I mean--and Grant and Dan started asking him questions, which he answered in-character. Things like what he thought of Batman, stuff like that, and the dude in the suit was all about it. But what struck me was when Grant said this:

"The thing that really hit me though, wasn't so much what he was saying as how he was sitting. The guy was perched on a bollard with one knee drawn up, chin resting on his arms. He looked totally relaxed...and I suddenly realized this was how Superman would sit. He wouldn't puff out his chest or posture heroically, he would be totally chilled. If nothing can hurt you, you can afford to be cool. A man like Superman would never have to tense against the cold; never have to flinch in the face of a blow. He would be completely laid back, un-tense. With this image of Superman relaxing on a cloud looking out for us all in my head, I rushed back to my hotel room and filled dozens of pages of my notebook with notes and drawings."

And somehow, that's how I've never thought of Superman. As a guy sitting on a bench, a guy I could write about. That image, plus Grant's overarching idea for his All-Star story--"The 12 Labors of Superman"--that gets me excited to see what Grant and Frank are going to do with this character and in this comic book. Well, that, and this statement:

"I just read - yesterday in fact - the story 'Superman's New Power' which appeared in Superman #125 from November 1958. And guess what Superman's new power was in the 'conservative' ‘50s. That's right - it's a teeny-tiny little Superman who shoots out from the palm of the big Superman's hand and does everything better than Superman himself, leaving the full-size Superman feeling redundant and worthless. Holy analysis, Batman! It's mindbending, brilliant and eerie work. This is what it would be like if Charlie Kaufmann wrote and directed the Superman movie and it's far from goofy or childish, it's genuinely affecting and slightly disturbing to read Superman saying stuff like 'Everyone's impressed except ME! Don't they understand how I feel -- playing second fiddle to a miniature duplicate of myself...a sort of SUPER-IMP?'

"And people think I'M weird ? I %$%$^ wish I was weird like this! I wish pop comics today had the balls to be as poetic and poignant and truly 'all-ages' again, and a little less self-conscious. I feel a little ashamed for not even daring to think of a magnificent tiny Superman who makes the real Superman feel inadequate every time he springs from his hand. Those kinds of stories were like weird fever dreams and they sold millions and millions of copies every month."

And THAT'S what I've been thinking about lately, even before I read this interview. That's the thing I started to tap into when I wrote "She's the Speckle," which a few of you have read--I didn't think about the kinds of stories I write or where I wanted that particular story to go, I just let it go where it would. I let weird ideas come into my mind and I put them on the page, not bothering to think about short story structure, or what the flow of the piece as a whole would be. And the story I wrote is strange and has a weird rhythm to it, but it's a rhythm all the same. And it feels like I'm on to something with it. It's missing in some of the things I've written since, when I've fallen back into old habits of storytelling, when I've held back from something--not when I've thought of something and not written it down, but when I've thought something and not pushed myself to think of something stranger, or something bigger or slightly beyond what I was willing to settle for.

In 1958 someone wrote a Superman story--and it couldn't have been more than 20 pages--where a tiny Superman shot out of the palm of the normal Superman, and made the normal Superman feel inferior. I know a whole lot of really good writers these days, but none of them have done anything lately as weird and as wonderful as that. But they should be--I should be--and like Grant, we should all be a little ashamed that we haven't dared to think of anything like that yet.

Sweet, Sweet Justice

50 in 05: We3

#2: We3 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. A serialized graphic novel not yet available in a collection, We3 is all the same the best comic book I’ve read in a long time, and the most technically proficient. We3 is part of a movement that doesn’t have a name yet, but I bet it will before the year ends. It takes an animal adventure story (think Homeward Bound) and mixes it up with a cyborg adventure story (think Universal Soldier) and plays it straight. It’s some sort of popular post-modern fiction blend, and Grant’s doing it well before the trend even hits.

I’ve loved Frank Quitely’s work since he teamed with Grant on Flex Mentallo, another brilliant comic that will probably never be available in a collection. There’s a page in the third issue of We3 that literally made my mouth drop open—two of the animals that have escaped from the government’s military program that created them are fighting another that has been sent after them. The resulting combat breaks through a brick wall—and through a panel at the bottom of the page—and the result is an almost 3D effect that leaves the characters about to rocket off of the bottom of the page. Another page is made up of at least 20 panels, some big and some small and some overlapping and yet it reads like a dream. I’ve been reading comics for more than 20 years now, so it’s hard for me to think of how this book might look to someone that didn’t grow learning the language of sequential art (and if you don’t know that there is a language of sequential art, pick up Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics—and really, you know you should have done that a long time ago), but to me it’s a welcome evolution in how the interiors of comics should look.

As a writer I’d love to know more about Grant and Frank’s working relationship—the same day I picked up the last issue of We3 I picked up JLA CLASSIFIED #3, also written by Grant Morrison, but illustrated by Ed McGuinness. It’s a straight superhero story, but it’s sub-par for Morrison. It’s vague and unclear (and not in a good way) and moves too fast—the flow of the art doesn’t help the story, and in fact makes it more confusion. In the 90’s Grant Morrison was one of the innovators of “decompressed storytelling,” which pushed characters aside in favor of big plots and big action. Grant was really good at it and this JLA story was a return to that kind of storytelling—but next to We3 (and in the face of the upcoming Seven Soldiers of Victory project), it proves that Grant is better off when he’s trying his hand at something new instead of returning to something old.

Real Quick-Like

RQL is back on the fast track, and this is what you need to know:

* * * * *

Real Quick-Like

Topic: Last to see them alive.

Ready and go! Procrastination is not your friend, dear writer. From the gut, stories, essays, fiction and non. You write ‘em, we want ‘em. Let the topic inspire you, and then send it on.

No time for writer’s block. We are looking for original, unpublished work from writers of all shapes and sizes, deadline February 14, 2005. Adhere to the date, stick to the topic, keep it under 3,000 words and all other rules be damned.

No, you will not be paid. Not just yet. But you will see your work in print alongside other talented writers and distributed to every web ring, zine shop and department store bathroom from Jersey to Sausalito.

Please send submissions and questions electronically to rql@realquicklike.com with your name and contact information. Published work for first publication rights only. Accepted work will be compiled into a real pretty-like journal, with funds determining whether pretty means tri-color glossy or stapled together on neon green copy paper. Winners will receive one complimentary copy.

No excuses! Submission is free, with no limit to the number of pieces you can submit. Now go make your mama proud.

24 Hours . . .

Some of you might know and some of you might not, but for nearly a year I've been working on a http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifphoto project at 24HrsInAYear. The plan was to take one picture a day at a set time, and moving that time forward by an hour every two weeks or so, so that on the first day I was taking the picture between 12 and 1 in the morning, and by the end I would be taking it between 11 and 12 at night, giving me 366 views of my life that ranged an entire day. I've been taking the pictures and posting them and not going through to check my progress as I worked. But the project is set to end on February 8th, and I don't have the pictures saved anywhere except the website, so this past week I went through and saved them all to my computer, arranging them in folders, and labeling them.

I wasn't sure, when I started, how the whole thing would turn out. It's strange to look back over them and see where I was and who I was with at a given time almost a year ago. Looking over the pictures, June comes back the clearest--looking at those pictures, those 5-6AM shots, I can really feel June and early summer. There are pictures of open windows and bookshelves--mine, and other people's--that make me think of the breeze. In Jill's bedroom, at night, it sounded like the ocean, and I told her so. Today, in late January, and with a different girl on my mind, I'd forgotten a lot of what June felt like. I'd reorganized it in my brain, maybe. Even though Jill isn't in many of those pictures, physically I mean, I see a lot of her all the same. Those pictures bring back the abstract feeling of summer.

There are a lot of abstract feelings in those pictures, and a lot of nights that I can remember clearly only because of the pictures. When I go on vacations, I'm the sort of guy who never brings a camera, but is glad when my friends do. I think the experience of a new place is best taken in when you're focusing on being there NOW, instead of taking a picture to savor later. That's why I liked this project--most of the pictures are pretty mundane. Most of the pictures are from my apartment, of empty dishes or bathroom towels drying. I'm shaving in one of them. A few are from classrooms and a few are in cars. Some are of other people, strangers and friends, and sometimes I told them what I was doing and sometimes I didn't. Once, I was yelled at over what was in a picture, or what was perceived to be there.

As of today, being Monday, January 24th, I'm in the 11-12 slot that will wrap the project up. I still haven't decided if I'll keep going or not--most of the people who enjoy seeing the pictures and have told me so have been strangers, and that makes me want to continue. I also think it would be interesting to have another year to compare this one to, to see if I get out of the house more, or to see who sticks around and who leaves, or to see what abstract feelings I can capture over the next 365 days. In any event, if anyone has ever checked in on these pictures from time to time, I think this is an interesting point to look at them again. I'd love to hear what patterns other people see, if there are any to be seen.

Here are a few pictures I really liked when I was going through them again:





moblog.co.uk/blog/24HrsInAYear

The Stars Are Right

I'm posting some of the pictures I took during my moblog hiatus--I just put up some Halloween pictures, including video of the Great Cthulhu.

The Question of Our Time . . .

Tackling a new letter, I'd first hit the find and replace key and change every "cum" to "come" (an average of 19 changes per letter). As per my style sheet, I'd make sure every "doggie-style" was hyphenated, every "bunghole" was not, every "blowjob" was one word, every "daisy chain" was two. Picture, if you will, all of this being dispatched with a 10-month-old baby draped over my lap. In our cozy, kinky domesticity I enlisted my wife to proofread, which she'd do during commercials of "20/20." "Honey," I'd call out from my study, "is 'dream cock' hyphenated?"

All of this and more musings from a porn magazine copy-editor in the link. Found via Bookslut.

Everyone is Barefoot Except Him

The strangest thing, to Ricky, was the garbage can. Out in the woods, in a clearing in the woods, all pine trees and up the hill from a stream, and there, just inside the trees again, a metal garbage can like you'd see in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles video game, all lines up the side and dented lid.

"That garbage can is so weird," he said.

"Why?" Mary asked, digging in her backpack for a toothbrush.

"It's the woods," Ricky said. "Nature!"

"It's a campground," Mary said, finding her toothbrush and standing up. "It cost seventy-five bucks just to stay here tonight."

Splashing and laughing drifted up the hill from where Ben and Samantha were flirting. Ricky wondered if this was a set-up. Ben and Sam had been sort-of-dating for years and when Ben invited Ricky on an overnight camping trip (Ben had a knack for putting together last-minute adventures) he knew Sam would be here, but Mary was a surprise. She was a friend of Sam's and pretty, but had not been talkative on the three-hour drive. Ricky thought maybe it was a set-up, and maybe she was disappointed. He had a goatee and a paunch and wore a brown button-up shirt in the woods.

As she walked away from him he held up his cell phone, looked at her ass on the viewscreen, and took a picture. He looked at the frozen image, denim from the waist down and trees beyond, and he pressed the phone against his nose and smelled it. It was new. He liked to take pictures with it, but he was embarrassed for people to see him take pictures with it. When they did he mumbled something like, "Just gonna take a picture here," and then he did, not taking time to aim it, hoping it came across like he meant not to aim it, like he didn't like aiming it.

He sat alone, giving Mary enough time to get down to the stream, before standing up and following her. He'd wanted to go down before, but he didn't want to be the one to interrupt Ben and Sam; then he didn't want to seem to be following Mary too closely. He held his phone in his hands and walked down the hill. Ben and Sam had their pantlegs rolled up and were jumping from rock to rock in the shallow stream, kicking water at each other and laughing, holding their arms out for balance. Mary sat at the edge, barefoot and watching them and smiling. Ricky smiled too, leaned against a tree and took a picture of them. No one notices, so he took a picture of Mary watching them. She was smiling and holding her knees and Ricky liked it. He decided that if he liked her later and if she wasn't mean to him, he'd show her the picture.

He pushed buttons on his phone and followed the menu to the option marked "Games." He opened one called "Fortune Teller" that was marked with the pixellated picture of a blue turban with a red ruby in the center.

Mary looked up and him. "You're out here in the beautiful world and you're playing with your phone?"

"It's telling me my future," Ricky said.

"What's it say?" she asked.

Ricky read it and smiled. "You will be eaten by a bear," he said.

Score One for Science!

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- A federal judge in Atlanta, Georgia, has ruled that a suburban county school district's textbook stickers referring to evolution as "a theory not a fact" are unconstitutional.

In ruling that the stickers violate the constitutionally mandated separation between church and state, U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper ruled that labeling evolution a "theory" played on the popular definition of the word as a "hunch" and could confuse students.

The stickers read, "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."

The disclaimers were put in the books by school officials in 2002.

"Due to the manner in which the sticker refers to evolution as a theory, the sticker also has the effect of undermining evolution education to the benefit of those Cobb County citizens who would prefer that students maintain their religious beliefs regarding the origin of life," Cooper wrote in his ruling.

(. . . more in link . . .)

Futurephone is Go!

I was having trouble emailing pictures with my futurephone for the longest time, but I finally sorted it all out last night. So everything other than my 24 Hrs. project are going back up right here. Viva technology!

HB to MMS

Ben Folds and I would like to congratulate Meredith . . .



. . . on seeing another birthday. For a brief moment in time, she's way older than I can ever imagine being myself. Congrats, Mer!

Stetson

I walked to the grocery store because I don't have a car. I feel pretty good about not having a car, but I seem to be the only one who feels that way. It was snowy and slushy and icy, all the more reason, thought I, to be glad that I don't have a car. The only slipping and sliding I have to worry about is from my own two feets.

There was an old man trudging through the parking lot behind me. He breathed like an old man. He was 60something, 70something. He had a wrinkly old weathered face and he wore a thin brown jacket. He wore brown pants too, really tight ones that showed off his surpringly plump butt. There were cowboy-style curley-somethings on his back pockets. He wore cowboy boots and a white cowboy hat, a tall one, that was not the least bit dirty. Someone in an SUV came driving our way, the wrong way down the parking lot lane.

"Yer goin' the wrong way, dummy!" the old cowboy yelled. The driver honked.

I laughed and I thought, yeah, you are going the wrong way, dummy.

50 in 05

#1: Chronicles Volume One, by Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan has been floating around the periphery of my musical tastes since high school, when I found the Beatles and figured out that musicians my parents' age might have known what they were doing after all; but all the same, I never found the right way in until this past summer when a friend made a few mix cds for me filled with nothing but Dylan. Even then I didn't get it at first, but I listened a few a times and let the songs roll around in my head. I kept going back to a few in particular, "Positvely 4th Street" and "Love Sick" and "Tangled Up in Blue." I got out the three-disc set I'd bought back in high school, listened to once and never gone back to, three of the early pre-electric albums. "I Shall Be Free no. 10" tickled something that it hadn't tickled before and I went back to those mix cds again. I downloaded "Like a Rollin' Stone" and the album "Desire," listened to "Wigwam" from the Royal Tenenbaums soundtrack. I started to wonder about Bob Dylan as an artist and his book kept popping up on "Best of 2004" lists, so I walked to my friendly neighborhood bookstore and took one home with me.

It's not straight autobiography, and thank goodness for that. It jumps around in time and he allows himself the freedom to let his language roam, to write about what he wants to write about when he wants to write about it. It's all interesting and he talks a lot about process and about living with the fame, or trying to avoid it, about opening up to friends and living around and through the songs he writes. My favorite parts where the beginning and the end, the two chapters that dealt with his early years in New York and how he first found folk music and Woody Guthrie. It was when he seemed most open to the world. The other chapters dealt with the recording of certain albums, of trying to evade fame, and he seemed cut off from something, struggling to find the way in to whatever it was he'd hit so effortlessly before. Maybe he went wrong somewhere and became the sort of man he hadn't anticipated . . . he makes few references to the motorcycle accident that seemed to have changed his life, but in one telling reference to it he says it was the day Robert Zimmerman died. There's a lot still unsaid there, but that's okay. You don't need to say it all.

All told, I'm glad I read it. I could see going back to that first chapter again, and to the last one, but probably not to the rest. I can't even say I'll go back to the other two volumes that are supposed to be coming, but there is a lot more in his music to sift through and discover. I'm glad I have these mixes as a touchstone, a place to start. As to one of the best books of 2004, hell, I don't know. Who thinks like that about books?

Kyle Gets Into Trouble

I finished my meal (and that pie was good!) and Carol approached, scribbling on her pad again. I was learning that I was a common man after all, and that what I needed most was a common meal cooked by a common wife. I asked her, “Carol, are you married?”

She cocked an eye and looked at me. “No, I ain’t married.”

“And how did you manage to escape some gentleman’s eye for all this time?”

“For all this time? Well gee, I just don’t know. A lady learns some tricks in her old age, I reckon.”

The construction workers laughed, and I knew at last they had accepted me. But I longed to become more, to transcend the plateau where they had crested.

“Gonna be anything else, hon?” Carol, sweet Carol asked me, wiping the countertop with a rag in one had, looking up at me lazily with her eyes.

I looked down at the crumbs of my pumpkin pie and felt the bubbles of romance in my tummy. I looked back up at her saggy eyes and said, “Carol, I think love you.”

“Aw, honey.” She shook her head and wiped her nose with the same rag she had used on the counter. “No honey, you sure don’t.”

“I do!” I said. “I’ve thought on this hard and long, eating my meatloaf and my buttered roll, and my pumpkin pie most of all. Carol, I want to make babies with you. I want to take you to my office Christmas party. I want to have daughters, I want to have six daughters, and I want to fold down the business section of the newspaper to see you teaching them how to apply eye shadow.”

Carol avoided my gaze, no doubt, I thought at the time, to hide from me her tears of joy. The construction workers were silent behind us.

Carol collected my empty plates. I was beaming my love into her brain. “Aw, shit,” she said, and I loved her for her simple, profane ways. “Shit honey, stone-cold disturbed.”

The construction workers laughed, but it was restrained. Even they could sense the change that was coming.

I clenched my jaw, I clenched my fist, I leaned forward on the counter. “Carol, I want to make sweet love to you. On this very countertop.”

“Okay honey, I think you got to go.” She turned to step away, plates in hand, and I couldn’t bear to let her go until she understood. I grabbed her wrist and she dropped a plate. It broke.

(The plate, that is. Not her lovely, bony wrist.)

“Hey!” she said, and struggled, but I held fast. She yelled, “Phil!”

But before Phil could materialize from the back, the gaggle of construction workers arose from their booths. There had to be a dozen—no, a baker’s dozen—of them, and each rose to sweet Carol’s defense. They meant well, I knew, and I was certain we would all laugh over this in the end, but there was not time to make them understand. I swept up the ketchup bottle with my free hand, and the bottle was red and squeeze-ready. I held tight to my love with other. I pointed the bottle at my foes.

“Stay back!” I said. “This doesn’t concern you!”

The construction workers tightened into a single mass of opposition and neared me. I thrust the bottle at them. They retreated. Others came from behind and I spun, and pointed the ketchup anew. “This will stain!” I said, and they knew it was true.

I heard a squeak from the direction of the kitchen as the door swung open and Phil emerged from its depths. He was an Asian man, a small one and fat, and he hurled an orange, and his aim was true. I struck my temple and darkness took me.

Will Eisner, 1917-2005

I will miss Will Eisner. He died today, a few days after undergoing quadruple bypass surgery. http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

WillEisner.com is his official website and had a lengthly biography and such. Will wrote and drews the Spirit and a Contract with God and Comics and Sequential Art. He knew a lot about comics and he thought a lot about comics and he elevated the art form just by being in it.

More from the Horseshoe Cafe

“Hey there, hon. Ya lost?”

“Oh, no, ma’am. No indeed. I am here for a piece of pie.”

“We got pie. That all you want?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“Meatloaf is on special.”

Meatloaf is on special! I hadn’t had meatloaf in years! Not since I lived at home, not since before I left for college.

“Meatloaf,” I said. “Meatloaf sounds marvelous!”

“Whatever you say, hon. Comes with mashed potatoes and gravy and a drink.”

“Please, yes. The meatloaf special, and pumpkin pie for dessert.” I rapped the countertop with my bare knuckles.

“You got it,” she said, and she scribbled on her pad, and she pinned it to a silver rotating wheel sitting in the window to the kitchen. “Meatloaf, Phil!” she called.

Phil, who I presumed to be the cook, grunted unseen and made up my meatloaf and mashed potatoes and gravy.

Egads! Never had a loaf of meat entranced me so. It made the colors of the café dance in my eyes and it made the speckles on the countertop move in my heart. And Carol, she was the speckle of them all. She was the dancey, curvy thing against the flat surface of my heart. She was older than I, to be sure, by a good twenty years, but she bore her experience like a beauty mark. She wore glasses that were tinted peach and a barrette in her hair that kept it from falling in her face as he wiped down tables and countertops. The construction workers smiled at her and gave her sass, and she sassed them right back. An example:

“Hey there, honey. You got some pie for me?”

“All the pie you’re gonna get is in that spinnin’ case right over there.”

“How ‘bout you spin that case over here to me?”

“You better watch the door don’t close on your fingers, you go reachin’ for it.”

“Aw, come on now, Carol. I just want a little piece.”

“Yeah? Well I want me a big piece, so I guess I gotta keep lookin’.”

And all the other construction workers laughed, and I laughed too, loudly and with a mouth full of meat. They looked at me warily as I did so, not quite sure what to make of me yet. They’d figure me out in time, I was sure, but I already knew in my heart that I was one of them.

Help:

It seems like I've been reading Young Men Coming of Age stories for my entire life, and particularly recently. Does anyone know of any good Young Women Coming of Age stories? Books, comics, short stories, etc.

Entering the Horseshoe Cafe

I slowed my pace and frowned and considered. I love the air in autumn, even still, and especially at Monument Circle on my lunch break. It just smells . . . orange, if that makes sense to you. Like fall. And fall (and orange) tastes like pumpkin pie. Why, why pumpkin pie! I wanted a piece of pumpkin pie, I wanted it right then, and more than anything else in the whole wide world! I looked around the Circle for where I might buy a piece of pie, like a pie stand, or, or wherever they sold pie from. My god, where did they sell pie from? I don’t know that I’d ever bought pie somewhere before. I was never much of a dessert man, truth be told, and when I was I almost always, without fail, opted for the tiramisu. My eyes spied a sign, one with flashing red and yellow bulbs, right across the Circle, almost 180 degrees from Bagel Hut, and the sign read Horseshoe-flash-Café-flash-Horseshoe-flash-Café-flash. Horseshoe Café! It had big windows and booths, and even a counter, if my eyes didn’t lie. Even from across the Circle I could tell that this, this was a real diner, the kind you might see on the television, the kind that might, in the fall, serve pumpkin pie.

I pushed the door opened and a bell jingled, a bell tied to the corner of the door with a shoestring. It was a new shoestring, white and fresh and straight from the package. The floor of the diner was linoleum and the tables were too, and the seats in the booths were padded and puffy. The stools at the counter were padded and puffy and everything, the stools and the counter and the tables and the seats and the floor and the walls, they were speckled gray over their own colors of white or green or red. A metallic silver something surrounded everything, and the whole place glowed with the residue of a powerful cleanser. There were a few men occupying the booths, burly and unshaven and of the construction worker variety. They wore mesh caps that said things like “Boone Construction Co.” and “Harvey’s Heavy Lifting,” and then had a picture of a crane. It was quaint and folksy and somewhere, meat was sizzling.

I sidled up to the counter and had a seat, a smile on my face. The most radiant vision of beauty approached from behind the counter. Her nametag read Carol.

Merchandising!

Flush with gift certificates and xmas cash, I took a trip to my local video distributor and comic book shop, respectively, this week. Just in case you were wondering what to read, watch, and why:

THE OFFICE SPECIAL: 90 minutes and a few extras, wrapping up most of the loose-ends from Series Two. It's one of those things I'm sorry to see end, but all the same, it has the best ending I could have hoped for. It's TV done right, folks.

JLA CLASSIFIED 1&2 by Grant Morrison and Ed McGuinness: Nearly 10 years ago (egads!) Grant Morrison helped start a trend in superhero comics that is only now quieting down, and in the first two parts of this three-part story he's returning to the JLA for a spell. I liked issue one a lot, introducing menacing villains and lots of supporting characters that I don't know but get the gist of all the same; issue two felt a little flat, however, as if it was simply taking 20-odd pages to make sure I understood all that happened in the last issue. I'll definitely pick up the next issue to see how it all turns out, but I'm grateful that this is only a brief return for Grant. I'd rather see him do new things, like We3 and the upcoming Seven Soldiers project for DC.

CONCRETE: THE HUMAN DILEMMA 1 by Paul Chadwick. I was surprised to see this one out. I haven't kept up on Previews in a long time, and it seems like it's been a good five years since the last CONCRETE series. I picked it up, but I wasn't sure what to expect after all that time--if the series would still hold up, or if I'd still be interested in it. There were a few neat tricks--the x-ray shot into Larry's brain on page 7 was neat--but mostly it feels like Paul and the character are revisiting themes that have already been covered. THINK LIKE A MOUNTAIN seemed to move the character in a new direction and STRANGE ARMOR was a way to re-examine the character's beginnings through that new lens, but one issue in to this six-part series, THE HUMAN DILEMMA feels like a step backwards. But I'm interested enough to see how it pans out. I thought it was interesting that the cover is signed "Paul Chadwick '01."

THE SHAOLIN COWBOY 1 by Geoff Darrow. Also a surprise--I had no idea Darrow had a new project coming out, and I don't even remember his last one. I've also never heard of "Burlyman Entertainment," but the inside cover says it's a Wachowski Brothers venture. The plot feeds off of cliched characters I feel like I've seen a thousand times, but Darrow's art is intricate and itriguing. I especially like the ten-page panel in the middle of the book, and the lizard's movement across panels in the beginning. If it survies to issue 2, I'll pick it up again.

QUIT CITY by Warren Ellis and Laurenn McCubbin. This is the only title from Ellis's Apparat project that I picked up--though I love Carla Speed McNeil, the artist on FRANK IRONWINE, it looked like the sort of character and story I've seen from Ellis before. QUIT CITY did too, but I don't have as much work from McCubbin as I do from McNeil on my bookshelf. McCubbin's faces are strange, beautiful and familiar--almost distractingly so, but I was alright with that, considering the plot was nothing new from Ellis. I wonder if he's more interested in packaging than story these days, and if he'd just be happier as an editor/publisher than a writer. That way he could wonder and experiment with form and format all day, and let other folks craft the stories that utilized them. He's been dipping his toes in a lot of different pools since TRANSMET ended, and with the exception of the soon-to-conclude PLANETARY (which, admittedly, is a holdover from the project he started while TRANSMET was still alive), none of them have really flipped my skirt. That said, it's well worth the price for McCubbin's work. That said:

OCEAN 1&2 by Warren Ellis and Chris Sprouse. Much of the above applies here; it looks wonderful, blue and big, but Ellis isn't doing anything he hasn't done before. His main character here has appeared other places, in other forms, many times before. I don't mind reading Morrison tread on old ground in JLA CLASSIFIED because he's doing We3 at the same time; with Ellis, I don't see that same kind of newness and boundary-pushing.

BELLY BUTTON COMIX #2 by Sophie. I haven't read all of this one yet--I flipped through it and got caught up in two pages of a longer story about a guy and gal meeting on a train (or bus, perhaps), looking at each others' sketch books, and going home to sleep together. I wanted to see how it ended, so I picked it up. Artistically, it has a polished-Jeffrey Brown kind of feel to it, from the two pages I saw, at least.

DIRTY FOUND #1. I love FOUND magazine, and this is a special issue with "the KINKIEST, RAUNCHIEST submissions to've been passed to your friends at FOUND." Dirty emails, dirty photographs, dirty drawings, dirty love notes, and best of all, stories of where and how they were discovered. If you like peeking into other people's sock drawers, and by god I know that you do, go find you some Dirty Found.

If I May:

My Grandma died on Xmas Eve. The family was over for dinner and gift exchanging. The clearest memory I have of Grandma isn't about her directly, but the painting of Jesus she had hanging in her old blue house. It's hanging in her new white house too, I imagine, but it's in the blue one where I remember it. That white house was never a Grandma sort of place, to me, even though I'm sure she liked it a lot better than the blue one.

That painting was the first exposure I had to Jesus, as a man or a force or whatever he might be to you. I asked my mom (because I was a shy kid, and had a hard time asking things of grown-ups who weren't my parents) if that person in the painting was Grandpa as a young man. She said he wasn't. I asked if he was a relative. She said he wasn't. So, I asked, why did Grandma have a painting of some dude in her living room?

I don't remember how the conversation went. I don't have kids, so I don't know how that conversation works at all, but I imagine it's a weird one. Grown-ups are busy most of the time informing kids as to how things work--logical outcomes and methods of reasoning. If it's raining outside, and you go outside, you get wet. If the stove is hot, and you touch the stove, you get burned. And then they have to explain abstract concepts like faith and supernatural ones like men with beards raising from the dead. When things like that happen in the movies and it freaks us, as kids, out, our folks tell us it's just a movie. But that guy in the painting, he did it for real. But, er, no one else can do it. Ever. Well, my own prejudice is leaking through here, and this is supposed to be about something else.

I have fluctuating opinions about death. Logically, on days when I'm feeling logical, I suppose that nothing happens at all. Hopefully, on days when I'm feeling hopeful, I suppose that there are things in the universe I'm not quite capable of understanding, in which case something might happen after all.

On this trip to Ohio I read a book called American Skin by Don De Grazia. In the book, Alex Verdi explains about babies. I'll paraphrase.

You know babies? You know how we're told, that when babies are babies, and their mother or father or anyone else leaves the room, the baby is incapable of reasoning that they'll come back. The baby figures they can't see them, so they don't exist anymore. Alex Verdi, in the book, explains death as being like that. It's like (and this is me, further opining) when adults leave the kids alone to go do adult-things. The kids don't yet have the capacity to understand what they adults are doing. Grandma is like that now, maybe. She's gone, but only in the sense that the rest of us left don't quite understand what she's up to. But eventually we'll figure it out, and we'll trust that those left will figure it out in time, too. It's no use explaining to the kids left in the nursery, because they just have the tools to understand it yet.

I wonder what will happen to that picture of Jesus. I hope it doesn't end up sad and lonely in some yard sale. I know, in my head, that it doesn't matter what happens to that picture of Jesus, that it's not Grandma's concern anymore, and that letting it go back into the stream of people will allow it to alter more lives the way it altered mine, by bringing Jesus up in the first place. But all the same, I hope that Jesus finds a good home.

Double Are Dee

After a spirited discussion at the Loft at Kensington:





We got our serious Double Are Dee Bowl on.



And then Betsy found True Love.



Happy Xmas, you two!

Outlaw Chess

Mr Fischer has been on the run from the US authorities for more than a decade, after being accused of breaking international sanctions by visiting Yugoslavia to take part in a chess match in 1992.

A brilliant but mercurial player, Mr Fischer became a grandmaster at 15 and shot to fame in 1972 when he beat Boris Spassky of the then Soviet Union.

He held the title of world chess champion until 1975, and resurfaced in Yugoslavia for the dramatic 1992 rematch against Mr Spassky.

He won the game, but disappeared when the US authorities announced they wanted to prosecute him over the $3m he earned for playing, which Washington said violated US and United Nations bans on doing business in the country.

Give the people what they want

Pentagon Memos and Mo'

From the Pentagon's Defense Science Board:

Opinion surveys conducted by Zogby International, the Pew Research Center, Gallup (CNN/USA Today), and the Department of State (INR) reveal widespread animosity toward the United States and its policies. A year and a half after going to war in Iraq, Arab/Muslim anger has intensified. Data from Zogby International in July 2004, for example, show that the U.S. is viewed unfavorably by overwhelming majorities in Egypt (98 percent), Saudi Arabia (94 percent), Morocco (88 percent), and Jordan (78 percent). The war has increased mistrust of America in Europe, weakened support for the war on terrorism, and undermined U.S. credibility worldwide. Media commentary is consistent with polling data. In a State Department (INR) survey of editorials and op-eds in 72 countries, 82.5% of commentaries were negative, 17.5% positive.

. . .

We call it a war on terrorism, but Muslims in contrast see a history-shaking movement of Islamic restoration. This is not simply a religious revival, however, but also a renewal of the Muslim World itself. And it has taken form through many variant movements, both moderate and militant, with many millions of adherents, of which radical fighters are only a small part. Moreover, these movements for restoration also represent, in their variant visions, the reality of multiple identities within Islam.

If there is one overarching goal they share, it is the overthrow of what Islamists call the "apostate" regimes: the tyrannies of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Jordan, and the Gulf states. They are the main target of the broader Islamist movement, as well as the actual fighter groups. The United States finds itself in the strategically awkward -- and potentially dangerous -- situation of being the longstanding prop and alliance partner of these authoritarian regimes. Without the U.S. these regimes could not survive. Thus the U.S. has strongly taken sides in a desperate struggle that is both broadly cast for all Muslims and country-specific.

This is the larger strategic context, and it is acutely uncomfortable: U.S. policies and actions are increasingly seen by the overwhelming majority of Muslims as a threat to the survival of Islam itself.

. . .

There's even more at DailyKos, including continued coverage of DEAN'S growing bid for DNC Chair.

PrePorkChop

When you order a hog in my neighborhood, this is how they bring it to you:

Parody Comics Seized by Customs

Grabbed this from the Beat:

U.S. Government Seizes Parody Comics At Customs

On October 27, U.S. Customs sent a letter to Top Shelf Productions notifying them that copies of the anthology Stripburger had been seized, charging that the stories "Richie Bush" by Peter Kuper and "Moj Stub" (translated, "My Pole") by Bojan Redzic constituted "clearly piratical copies" of registered and recorded copyrights. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has retained counsel to challenge these seizures.

"Richie Bush," appearing in Stripburger (Vol. 12) #37, is a four-page parody of Richie Rich that also satirizes the Bush Administration by superimposing the personalities of the President's cabinet on the characters from the comic. "My Pole," appearing in Stripburger (Vol. 3) # 4-5, which was published in 1994, is an eight-page ecology parable in Slovenian that makes visual homage to Snoopy, Charlie Brown, and Woodstock in three panels. Customs seized five copies of the issue with the Peanuts reference and fourteen copies of the issue containing "Richie Bush." The stories were both published in the middle of their respective issues and no graphics from either story appeared on the covers.

Top Shelf is the American agent for Stripburger, an Eastern European comics publisher that releases anthologies of comics from cartoonists around the globe. The comics that were seized were sent along as an extra in a shipment of The Miniburger Dirty Dozen, a boxed set of mini comics that Top Shelf imported to offer in the Direct Market and at conventions. Top Shelf did not order the seized issues of the anthology.

Upon investigating the shipment, Customs released the copies of Miniburger, but held the issues of Stripburger, giving Top Shelf thirty days to either forfeit the shipment, request administrative relief, or initiate court action.

At the urging of Stripburger, Top Shelf and CBLDF President Chris Staros brought the case to the attention of the Fund as a potential news story. CBLDF Executive Director Charles Brownstein felt the matter warranted serious legal attention, so it was sent to Burton Joseph, the Fund's legal counsel, whose opinion was that Customs was unlawfully holding First Amendment protected speech. The option of pursuing court action on First Amendment grounds was then taken to the CBLDF Board of Directors, which unanimously voted 8-0 to take up the case; Chris Staros recused himself from the vote.

On November 24, the Fund retained counsel in Charleston, SC who hand-delivered a letter to Customs stating that the comics are protected under existing First Amendment case law and should be either immediately released or that court action should be initiated.
"In this case, it looks like Customs is overreaching its authority," Staros says. "The comics in question are clearly within the acceptable bounds of parody, and there is absolutely no likelihood that consumers would confuse these works with the subjects that they are parodying."

Brownstein stated, "The stories that were seized are short segments within larger anthologies that in no way represented the content as anything other than what it is. The charge that these are piratical copies of existing copyrights is not only wrong-headed, but the seizure amounts to an unlawful prior restraint of protected speech. It is our hope that Customs will recognize that they have acted in error in seizing these stories and release them immediately. If not, we are prepared to go to court to protect the First Amendment rights that are endangered by this misguided action."

First Amend-what?

This story has been making the blog-rounds the past few days, but in case it's been missed:

MONTGOMERY - An Alabama lawmaker who sought to ban gay marriages now wants to ban novels with gay characters from public libraries, including university libraries.

A bill by Rep. Gerald Allen, R-Cottondale, would prohibit the use of public funds for "the purchase of textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle." Allen said he filed the bill to protect children from the "homosexual agenda."

Allen said that if his bill passes, novels with gay protagonists and college textbooks that suggest homosexuality is natural would have to be removed from library shelves and destroyed.

"I guess we dig a big hole and dump them in and bury them," he said.

. . .

The fella also proposed legislation banning gay marriage in Alabama, but it wasn't approved. I don't imagine this will be either, but all the same, it's best not to let this sort of thing be ignored. Michael Schaub at Bookslut is goodly enough to offer Rep. Allen's phone number, so do give him a call at (205) 556-5310 to express your thoughts on this.

Speaking of help . . .

Does anyone know of any good politically-minded blogs? I used to be on the Atrios bandwagon, but in the months directly prior to the election, he kind of lost me. Now he seems to spend a lot of time blogging about his cats. I kind of like DailyKos, because at least he's covering the DEAN/Democratic Party stuff. If anyone has any ideas, holla.

Word Searches?

My pal AnnieD is getting a cyborg leg in a few weeks. She sends out the following appeal:

"My people:

I am getting ready to hunker down for three weeks or so and learn how to walk again. Yes, that's right--AnnieD is finally getting her funny leg fixed on December 17, and I'm going to be bored to tears for about 65% of the time. Oh, there's grad school applications to complete, methamphetamine to manufacture, and that whole zine thing that still needs to get done--but then what? Huh? All I can tell you is that the last time I was incapacitated I became terribly addicted to an online, type-fast-as-you-can word-search game where I befriended the nation's unemployed and developed carpal tunnel syndrome. And I played--no lie--9,991 games. (They're *only* 30-seconds long...so um.)

Not this time.

This time I am armed with a Netflix account and a library within close proximity. I will limp past the beguiling ways of the Internet and fulfill my destiny to become a couch potato. You can help. Please email me and tell me what great movies/great books you've watched/read lately, so I can add them to my to-do list. If nothing comes to mind, then tell me your favorites. Or both! If you can provide neither, please send me some money.

Thank you, and goodbye."

If you have any recommendations, do post them in the comments.

Potatoes of the Sun

There was a pounding in my ears, my heart or his feet and I couldn’t tell which. Both, maybe, or something else entirely. I ran down the hill, and I don’t know why, because I didn’t know where else to go to, I guess. I ran down the hill, taking smaller steps than I had going up it, trying to keep my legs ahead of the rest of my body. I heard a pounding in my ears, my heart or his feet.

It was dark out, closer to the next morning than last night. The grass was slick and I slipped in my shoes and fell back, both feet in the air, one foot up higher than the other, one arm up above me, the other behind to catch my fall. I landed on my butt, and then on my right hand, and I felt a sharp pain in my wrist. I got up immediately, not looking behind me and not even hearing. I got up immediately and I ran again and I slipped again and I fell again, this time forward, both hands held out before me. I landed on both hands, a sharp in my right wrist again, and then my palms slipped out from under me and I landed on my stomach. I bent my knees and raised up my legs, ready to kick myself forward and further down the hill, thinking now that I could hide in the ditch maybe, in the dry creek bed. Before I could kick off and further away, a hand grabbed my foot and pulled me back down to Earth. I twisted my head around and saw that devil, that mask, that man from the woods. I couldn’t see his eyeballs in the mask; in their place there were two black buckets of night surrounded by red devil. The face was rubber and expressionless and I panicked. His hand was gripped tightly on my calf and he was laying stomach-down on the hill, just like me, and I don’t know if he threw himself at me or if he had been crawling after me like a worm, like a snake, like a thousand-legger with feelers instead of eyes. I kicked at his devil-face with my free foot, but he clamped it down with his free hand (or claw, I don’t know) and he crawled forward, pinning my legs beneath his chest. He reached his hands forward, pulling himself up and over my body. His body was hot and heavy on top of me. I wriggled, tried to get out from under him, and his hands found my arms and were bigger than my arms and pinned them down. I kept wriggling and got an arm loose, reached forward and dug my fingers into the dirt, pulled myself forward before he crushed my arm under his hand again, but that let me wriggle my other hand free and I pulled forward some more, but he just kept pulling himself along with me like we were one multi-limbed, gibbering, wriggling thing.

I called out. I yelled, out loud, and I don’t know what I said. It felt like my voice, and it might have just been this wordless noise, it felt like my voice was trapped and sucked in by the gravity of his body, he was a black hole that nothing could escape. I could hear sounds through his mask, sounds like grunting, and I felt something against the back of my leg, something like I don’t want to say, something he pushed against me again and again and I screamed again and maybe I screamed for help.

He pinned my hands down with his hands and my legs down with his legs and only my head and face were off the ground, but I could feel something sharp against the top of my head, his chin pushing me down, but I resisted it and held my head up as best I could. I yelled but I couldn’t hear it, I could only hear him, could only hear him grunting and laughing and feel that thing against the back of my leg. The rest of me went still because I didn’t like it when I wriggled against him, I didn’t like it when he pressed harder against me the more I moved.

He suddenly yelled in surprise and jerked his body upward. He was still and he seemed to be looking and listening, he was not making sounds. I jerked again, and then a third time, and before the fourth time I could hear the air parting and space splitting apart, I heard the smack of something into his side and he lurched himself off of me. I laid flat on the grass and the man stood up and was struck again, I heard him being hit by something again and again, thump-thump-thwak, and I turned my head to see him and saw the small dark shapes striking him and bouncing off of him and hitting the ground at his feet. I saw Jesus somewhere behind me, winding up with his hands held tightly to his chest, one knee in the air, standing on one foot, dressed in a white robe and a baseball cap, a red one for the Cincinnati Reds. I saw an “01” stitched onto the back of his robe and I saw Jesus let loose a knuckleball that caught fire as it left his mitt, blazed through the sky, and struck this man from the woods square in the chest. The man ran, disappearing down the hill and into the woods, behind a bustle and thustle of sticks on the ground and red and orange leaves.

I raised myself up and saw potatoes on the ground around me, potatoes on the ground where the man had been. I sat up and looked up the hill and saw my friends, saw Shaun and Jerry and Face, potatoes of salvation in their hands even still, and I swear to god, but the sun was rising, red and orange and streaming behind them. It rose behind my friends and behind the hill and behind the trailer where Shaun’s parents still slept. Potatoes of the sun, driving the devil back into the dark.