Things That Have Hindered My Productivity In The Past Week

The Most Recent Batch:

1. Crappy webcomics that turn all twentysomethings into glib caricatures but remain oddly addictive
   
2. Writing out Christmas cards, because for some reason I think they must be ready by the last week of... November
   
3. The consumption of wine gums
4. The constant battle of my knife versus those onions
5. Pointless crushes on unsuitable gentlemen

Currently, the only thing in my corner aiding productivity is my chain-drinking tea habit. I remain optimistic, however.

Laura Branigan, Again and Again

Finally, my life is complete! Two of my favorite things in the world are Branigan! and covers. And I found out that not one, not two, but three covers of La Branigan's classic slice of 80s cheese, Self Control, exist. Witness:
1. From an album entirely composed of covers, Guilt By Association Vol. 2, The Bloodsugars do their take on Self Control. This one is my favorite.

2. And here's another, by some outfit called Project Jenny Project Jan.

And then I found out that, in fact, the Branigan song is a cover itself! No wonder I liked it so much. Although she - or, more likely, her producer - really, really made the right choice by ditching the tragic rap near the end.

Book Covers I Have Loved: The Unwritten, Mike Carey and Peter Gross

I was all set to write about certain Bukowski covers, when I made a trip to the comic book store. Well I thought, holding a stack, don't comic books come with covers? By God, there's even book in the name. And to make a more salient point, there's one reason why I keep on buying issues of The Unwritten: the covers!

The Unwritten 4-7. Written by Mike Carey, Illustrated by Peter Gross and with covers by Yuko Shimizu.

Sure, the story's not bad either. However, parts of it have a warmed-over Gaiman feel, and I'm a little done with meta-fiction and po-mo legends for the... mo'. But the covers by Yuko Shimizu are superb. I almost want to have them framed, but that wouldn't be too useful for the "book" part of the equation.

They are the photo negatives of our favorite childhood illustrations. The lines and shading are conventionally darker than the fill, but that's not the case here and it fits in with a story where the writing process is always on display. I just love them.

Modern Living

I'm not sure why I keep on using the self check-outs in grocery stores. I am a child of the Internet, so it's true I avoid personal interaction like the plague. There are so many potential pitfalls, especially when you're living in a city whose major language you speak in sort of a garbled Babelfish translation... at best. Bags? No bags? How to pay? All questions requiring more involved answers than the quebecois oui I've perfected the right quack for.

So this automated thing works fine... until it doesn't. Some veggies can't be found on the menu, some need a clerk for some reason and somethings won't just scan once. No, they scan over and over again. And then the soothing lady voice tells you firmly, but repeatedly to put the item in the bag. But there's no item! No delete button! NO ITEM GODDAMNIT, maybe you'll just RUN and get ANOTHER can of tomatoes so she'll SHUT UP.

Which is to say that I battled the forces of technology yet again tonight. A can of tomatoes was already in the bag when the thing beeped and scanned a second time. But then as I helplessly looked on, the second, phantom can mysteriously disappeared from my bill. Looks like the machines have learned empathy before learning how to maim, kill and overthrow their human masters. Take that, James Cameron.

Expozine 2009

Yesterday I went to Expozine with Caroline, my pure and good friend. We started out the day with an epic brunch at The Sparrow. Frodo and company had nothing on us as we bravely attacked banana and chocolate doughnuts and then a full English breakfast. From the black pudding to the homemade baked beans and crusty bread, I ate every single thing on my plate. There wasn't a crumb left, because I needed them all to mop up the tomato sauce and bacon grease. By the end, my fingers were shining with butter and my belly was deliciously full as I washed it all down with the best coffee you'll probably get in this town. The grease must have gone straight to my head, however, because I didn't realize I had just dropped all of my cash as well.

To be fair, neither did Caroline. Which is a problem with zinesters. They're not a group traditionally noted for their ability to support all major credit card companies and both swipe and chip debit cards. So we decided to just to check out the tables, make a note of what we liked, and then come back once we got cash. That lasted about one row before I turned to Caroline. "You know what," I said, "let's get money now. I'm tired of seeing things that I want and then walking by them." And since we're young, lady professionals on the way up and out on the town - or rather, postgrads just barely covering our debts and obligations - that's just what we did.

Two prints, one book and four zines later, I'm down a decent chunk of my paycheque and pretty goddamn happy about it. Here's the zine part of the damage:
From left to right, we've got a huge tribute to Roger Corman, old horror comics with re-written captions, a film zine's love letter to cheap horror movies and a wordless comic about a cat's day out.

Trashy movies, trashy comics and cats. I'm not about to surprise you.

One of the best parts of Expozine was running into one of my favorite professors. She's still kicking ass and taking names and it turns out she reads my blog sometimes. So, if she happens to be reading it right now, a big electronic wave to her. Woo!

From Australia To New York To You: Mary And Max

If you're wondering what kind of movie an animated film about alcoholism, adultery and Asperger's - and I'm just hitting the A's here, people - can be, just look at this trailer for Mary And Max.

Mary's a lonely kid in Australia, Max is an even lonelier adult in New York City. Mary's world is brown and Max's is grey. But in both of their lives, there are flashes of color. A bright barette, a red scarf, a homemade pompom and more keep what we're seeing on screen from becoming too dull.

That's what the movie ends up doing with their lives too. Sure, there's the odd note of quirky whimsy. It's narrated by Barry Humphries - you should probably expect that. But it's not scared to show the horror that some people have to suffer through. At different points in the movie, Max ends up in a mental hospital and Mary wants to kill herself, but the movie somehow manages a graceful and happy ending. Mary and Max don't overcome their problems, they just accept them. Anything from a chocolate bar, to a package, to a child has given them just enough happiness to get by.

This storyline is more convincing than something like Adam, where any problems are sewn up so tightly the characters have to smile smugly over the final montage. Real life, where a lot of us end up spending most of our lives in greyscale, isn't like that. But most of us are lucky enough to find enough little things, even if they're not mismatched penpals from overseas, to make it worthwhile. Mary and Max was one of the best movies I've ever seen to capture this. Once you see it, you'll agree.

If you're in Montreal, check out Mary and Max at the AMC-22. It started this weekend and will hopefully stick around for a few weeks.

Moral Uplift, Dad-Style

Conversation I Just Had With My Dad:

Dad: I sent you a really cute picture of a really cute dog that had to be put to sleep.
Me: BuuUUH?!? But why?
Dad: Because he just looked so cute in the picture.
Me:BUT NOW HE IS DEAD.
Dad: Any your mother cried so much while reading it.
Me: WHY?!?!?
Dad: He looked a bit like a female lion...

This kind of reminds me of the time he picked me up from a movie theatre because I was sick, and spent the ride home telling me about a pet store that burned to the ground, roasting all the lovable beasties inside with it. Then he proceeded to list exactly which kinds became charcoal.

Setting The Paper Of Record Straight

This Sunday morning was spent like many others. I woke up, shoved the nearest edible item in my mouth and turned on my computer to read the New York Times. Not to follow the passage of the health care bill or learn about Iran's nuclear program. Instead, I clicked on the Styles tab and got right to the fluff, namely Modern Love. I don't know whether I like the column better when it's something touching and original (this article about being a lonely Mormon missionary) or an emotional train wreck I'm reading about at a safe distance (almost everything else.)

So imagine my joy to find out from Pop Culture Junk Mail that Slate has been running a series of Modern Love rebuttals, where the subjects of the essays finally get their revenge and get to see their side in print. It's funny to imagine the possibilities of a feedback loop here. Someone writes an article about how they had to ditch their emotionally stunted boyfriend, that boyfriend writes about what it felt like to see his life in print, then the original author can write about what it felt like to read the reaction, and then... and so on and so on until somebody makes a movie or at least gets a book deal.

But the reality is actually more interesting. I particularly liked the first one, which reminded me of the intro to this recent episode of This American life, which pointed out that - unlike pretty much every other section of the paper - the weddings and celebrations page doesn't have to present a fair and balanced take on the facts. Or even try. The first husband is not called for comment when his wife marries the man she left him for, he becomes an anecdote. The drug-addicted daughter doesn't get to give her reasons, no when she's just the mechanism for personal growth.

So when you read Modern Love, you begin to feel as if the authors are piggybacking off the objective reputation the rest of the paper has earned. Their hope that if they're published, their version of the break-up or the parenting crisis will become definitive, almost sweats off the page. It's nice to see that torn down in messy essays that don't have the Times polish and which remind us that someone's got to pay for our emotional epiphanies.

Obscure File Categories, 3

From the Files of "Perfect Songs To Play Over A Shitty Car Radio On An Empty Country Road":

Jolene, Dolly Parton. I think it's the creepy mix of erotic fascination and jealousy. And the waver in the divine and bust Dolly's voice. It kind of makes the goosebumps come out, even when she's wearing a hell of a lot of purple polyester.

Book Covers I Have Loved: Clea By Lawrence Durrell

The last post about the Graham Greene cover got me thinking about vintage covers. From the Night Watch cover I mentioned there, to the hardcover edition of Philip Roth's Indignation, printing a pastiche seems to be the way to go for period books.

And I understand the appeal. Sure, I could bullshit some reason about how mid-century literature represented a peculiar confluence of critical taste and popular appeal that has polarized since, where being middlebrow wasn't a bad thing and Norman Mailer was writing in Playboy, and we're all a little nostalgic for a time when the bestsellers weren't just Twilight and whatever Glenn Beck barfed up on paper. Actually, I'm not so sure that reason is total bullshit, but I'll admit that my personal reason boils down to "They look classy."

No designer credit, circa 1960

Which brings me to this cover for Lawrence Durrell's Clea. My Dad gave me the 75% of the Alexandrine Quartet he owns and I've been trying to make my way through them ever since. The problem is, Durrell knows he can write but he doesn't know where to stop. Still, if I'm not in love with the contents, I'm very fond of the covers. All of the titles share the same font and image of a hand, but come in different colours. I took a picture of Clea only because it happens to be the one I'm reading now and it's in the best shape. The others have all been living pretty rough lives in my backpack.

The fonts used on the cover almost look the same, but they aren't. The slight differences actually end up making the cover look more unified, because using the exact same one would have been noticeable in its banality. It's interesting how the imprint on the side doesn't throw the book out of balance, but keeps it from becoming too open and plain. With too many new books, that just becomes another distraction in an already busy design.

You can't see it in the photo, but the handprint is pretty detailed. You can even see bits of the whorl of skin, a nice human touch. This cover is spare, elegant and perfectly edited. It's what I wish the book inside could be.

Max And The Mopers

There's a way of effectively killing childlike whimsy in about three lines of dialogue, and Spike Jonze has found it. Basically, you get your furry and imaginative critters, faithfully rendered from the delightful Maurice Sendak illustrations, and then you give them more neuroses than the patient list of a New York psychiatrist. It's kind of like seeing a dinner theatre troupe act out a Woody Allen movie; weird, sad and too chatty.

But Where The Wild Things Are isn't always like that. At the beginning of the movie, we get a fleshed-out Max. Instead of the simple and happily destructive character of the book, he's a kid with divorced parents, a sister who's ditched him to be a teenager and seemingly no other friends. But still, his joy at making a snow fort, and then his sadness when it's destroyed, are intense and imaginative in a way that's not present when Max meets the Wild Things, for all the expert production design.

It's sad, because most of the film is beautifully shot. Sometimes the images aren't quite in focus and feel like hazy dream. But before you can get too dreamy, it's back to the monsters processing, telling Max they're "downers" and asking if he "can keep the hurt away." Which left me with one question: Why bother filming a children's book if you're just going to turn it into an adult's therapy project?

365 Days of Something

I know this whole x- in a year thing has been building up on blogs for a while. Whether it's living biblically, living sustainably or just cooking your way through a lot of butter, it seems like we can only be productive people - or at least earn a book deal - if we're doing it in a calendar year. I noticed it, but didn't really care until I read a little article about a NPR staffer who baked a cake a week for a year and, yes, ended up with a book deal. Something inside me broke, and it wasn't just because I was hungry.

Since there has already been tons of blog posts and newspaper articles deconstructing and analyzing this trend, I won't do that.

Instead, I'm going to try and figure out how to get my ass on this gravy train before it pulls out of the station.

1. Live like it's 1805 FOR A YEAR.
Pros: Everyone likes Austen. Ever since her pop culture revival in the 1990s, people can't seem to get enough of those high-waisted gowns and deep, deeply repressed emotions. Plus, I already have the dress.
Cons: Waiting at home because nobody careed about the "Lady Q. Protagitron will be receiving at home from 10-11" cards that I had made up might get old fast. Also, I might not be able to make rent if I quit me job because "it is beneath the dignity of the daughter of a gentleman to labour."

2. Read a Russian classic a day FOR A YEAR
Pros: If this lady can "read" a book a day for a year, I can do her one better. I'll read nothing but Russian, in the original Russian for a whole year. All the books must way 10 pounds each and end with the protagonist's soul being crushed under the wheels of their society. Book deal about books here I come (book?)
Cons: I know Russian. Except for the Russian word for refigerator, and I figure the number of books focused entirely around Firgidaires and originally written in Russian is a small, small number.

3. Eat a different animal a day FOR A YEAR
Pros: Getting back to nature is big and food writing is even bigger. I will take my reader on a adventure through my stomach and around the world as I soak up culinary knowledge and expand my horizons by butchering a different, and probably adorable, animal each day.
Cons: While January would be a breeze what with beef on the 1st and chicken on the 2nd, I feel like my commitment to the project would waver sometime around day #321 when I realize I need to cleave a steak from the back of a platypus.

4. Sleep with a different guy a day FOR A YEAR
Pros: I really need to get out more, and maybe I would meet a nice fellow. Make some babies. Get another book out of motherhood.
Cons: Herpes.

5. Watch an episode of the Simpsons a day FOR A YEAR
Pros: The Simpsons, although perhaps now but a shadow of its former self, might be one of the most influential and quotable shows to ever hit the airwaves. What will be revealed about our society me through as we I regard life through it's prism?
Cons: This is already my life. As well as everybody 20-30 years old with the tv on and nothing better to do.

Alright, so I can't come up with anything. It looks like all the good ones, or at least all of the tasty ones, have been taken. Or maybe I'm just starting to think that this year thing is a comforting way of keeping change clean. Of packaging our growth into convenient time periods we can plan for it to start and to end. I don't know. Give me a year to think about it.

Miss Protagi-Anne Elliot

I didn't mean to take a nine-day break from my blog. I meant to do a write-up on 10 zombies I would chill with (Bub the Zombie's overexposed ass is not on there) and an ode to Ginger Snaps before Halloween.

Instead, I studied for a standardized test, baked a cake while drunk and sewed a Regency-era gown in two days, but that was while sober. And that last bit was the hardest. I am not an accomplished seamstress and period gear isn't the easiest crap to sew. At one point, I made two of the same sleeves and had to re-sew one, because that took less time than figuring out how to amputate and then put one of my arms on backwards. But barely.

Just when I thought I would have the dress finished on time- minus the sash and the hair, but DONE- I got to last part and ended up in a pickle. The dress is held together by two drawstrings, one that goes around the neckline and the other that ties just under the bust. The first neckline threaded like butter, so I was feeling rather cocky as I grabbed my needle and went in for the bust.

And that's when things FUBARed. No matter how hard I pushed and pulled, swore and cried, jabbed a knitting needle in and, the needle wouldn't make it past the first seam allowance. Two hours and one hysterical phone call to my parents later, this had gone past making a fun costume for a fun Halloween. This dress was the litmus of my life. Fail it, and the rest of my life would be nothing but a series of well-intentioned defeats. Succeed, and there would be a 10 percent chance that maybe it would be something else.

That's when I did something I could, and should, have done hours before. I am a knitter. I live in a house of string. I threaded some thinner yarn through and got my ass to that party.