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Sunday, February 12th, 2012
posted evening of February 12th, 2012: Respond
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Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011
A lot of writing, and a fair amount of interesting writing, has been done at The Hooded Utilitarian over the past few weeks on the topic of racist images in R. Crumb's work. At the beginning of the month Domingos Isabelinho's strongly negative reference to Angelfood McSpade provoked an enormous, vituperative comments thread. (A large portion of the posts coming from one embarrassingly devoted Crumb fan who will not hear any evil spoken of his object of adoration -- but with plenty of worthwhile thinking as well.) Today, Robert Stanley Martin devotes a lengthy post to the issue, with reference to McSpade, the Cheap Thrills album cover, and Al Jolson(!) And in comments, Noah Berlatsky promises a post of his own about the Cheap Thrills cover.* Well, I'm not sure quite what to make of this... I think of Crumb as a great cartoonist and of the racist and misogynistic imagery as a key, integral part of his work. Certainly worth reading and writing about.
 * Update: Noah's post is here.
Update II: and Sean Michael Robinson's contribution to the conversation.
posted evening of June 22nd, 2011: Respond
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Tuesday, August 31st, 2010
 At Cat and Girl, Dorothy offers some Metaphors, Cheap! Plus, for only slightly more money than the metaphors, you can purchase Volume III of Cat and Girl's (and Grrl's, and Boy's, and Bad Decision Dinosaur's) insights. Order now and get your copy personalized.
 (And on the webcomix tip, today's Scenes from a Multiverse is hilarious and a bit Borgesian, if you read it the right way.)
posted morning of August 31st, 2010: Respond
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Wednesday, July 14th, 2010
 Harvey Pekar passed away on Monday at the age of 70. I'm sorry he is gone; loved to read his comix. I was never a fan, exactly -- I think I only own one collection of American Splendor, plus The Quitter -- it was always something I read at somebody else's recommendation. Still, worth noting his passing, and pointing out some particularly good memorial writing I've seen around the blogosphere this week:
 Another artist who died on Monday (at the age of 86), who did not get as much attention in the subset of blogs that I read but whom I am in mourning for as well, is Tuli Kupferberg of the Fugs. Albert Amateau has written his obituary at The Villager; more write-ups and more links at The Allen Ginsberg Project. (And a fine remembrance of Tuli from Mary Lyn Maiscott at Vanity Fair.) A memorial service for Tuli will be held at St. Mark's church on Saturday, from 12-3 pm, with a reception to follow. There will be no religious element to the service, and Coby, Steve and Ed of the Fugs will be the main speakers. Afterwards, anyone who wants to can talk, sing, recite poetry, or whatever they like.
posted evening of July 14th, 2010: Respond
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Wednesday, June 16th, 2010
 A few years old, but new for me: in September 2004, R. Crumb and Jerry Zolten produced a one-hour show on Penn State's wpsu-fm, spinning and chattering and nit-picking Crumb's collection of old blues and gospel records. Lots of great music and talk.
I haven't been able to find the mp3 of the show online anywhere but prx.org -- I'm not sure what the nature of that site is, they make you sign up for a free account if you want to listen, it seems benign enough though... Track listing below the fold.
 Track listing:
- Cecil Scott and his Bright Boys, "Lawd Lawd" -- played over the title announcement
- "Texas & Pacific Blues" by Frenchy's String Band. The melody I know from "Richland Woman Blues".
- Macon Ed and Tampa Joe (a fiddler who might be Peg Leg Howell -- happy coincidence that yesterday's shuffle has Howell on it), "Warm Wipe Stomp"
- Eddie Head and his family, "Down on Me"
- Rev. J.C. Burnett & congregation, "I’ll Stand & Wring My Hands & Cry"
- The Need More Band (Bobby Leecan and Robert Cooksey), "Washboard Cut Out"
- "Humming Blues" -- ukulele blues by Red-Onion Joe (Joe Linthecome)
- Lottie Kimbrough, "Rolling Log Blues" (with one or both of the Pruitt Twins on guitar)
- Louie Lasky, "How Do You Want Your Rolling Done?"
- Cheikha Tetma -- did not catch the song title
- Cannon's Jug Stompers, "Walk Right In"
- Geeshie Wiley, "Last Kind Word Blues"
- Mississippi Jook Band, "Skippy Whippy" -- played over closing announcements
↻...done
posted evening of June 16th, 2010: 2 responses
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Wednesday, April 21st, 2010
Patrick Farley has a new plan for reloading Electric Sheep and making it into an working proposition. If you love great webcomix, help him out with a dollar or two -- he is one of the best authors out there, it would be great to see new content from him.
posted evening of April 21st, 2010: Respond
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Monday, October 12th, 2009
 It was Harvey Pekar's 70th birthday last week -- I missed it -- Happy Birthday, Harvey! At MetaFilter, I find a link to his latest project, biweekly web comix at Smith Magazine's Pekar Project, working with four illustrators. Great stuff, go take a look. To celebrate his birthday, the site inaugurated a gallery of Harvey Heads drawn by different artists; also you can watch video of Pekar's February NYC appearance on the Josh McCutchen Show.
posted evening of October 12th, 2009: Respond
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Saturday, August first, 2009
Well this is a weird coincidence, or something... The same day I think about, and link to, Patrick Farley's Apocamon, Mr. Farley posts a notice to his LiveJournal -- he is rebooting Electric Sheep Comix! Nothing on the site yet; but this is great news. Thanks to Randolph for calling it to my attention. Randolph also linked to Farley's guest strip at DiceBox, Don't Look Back. What an excellent thing it is; you ought to go read it. And it looks like I have days of fun ahead of me getting acquainted with DiceBox...
And aargh, speaking of weird coincidences, as I'm writing this post about Farley's reboot, I see my own host has gone down for reboot. I'll post this when it comes back...
posted morning of August first, 2009: Respond
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Friday, July 31st, 2009
I do not follow Fred Clarke's Left Behind analyses religiously; but when I do read one, I am never disappointed. In today's post, he looks at the unusual meaning of "literal" when that term is used by a fundamentalist Christian explicator of the Bible. We've already seen how, for Bruce as for Tim LaHaye, this word "literally" is not meant literally. For them it means something more like "my way." It's opposite would be "mere symbolism," which means for them, roughly, "any meaning other than the meaning imposed on a passage by reading it my way." Clarke reads LaHaye's explanation of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and my mind is  drawn irresistably to Patrick Farley's Apocamon -- I can see the First through Fourth Living Creatures calling out, "Come and See!" and once again I feel sad. So sad, because Apocamon is no longer available ever since a spammer stole Farley's Electric Sheep domain name... Well, one thing led to another, and I looked at Google, and Apocamon is back on the web. Not only that, but Farley has written two new episodes of it since the last time I saw it! Go and See! It is seriously one of the finest comics I've ever read. I wonder if the rest of the Electric Sheep strips are online again -- they don't seem to be at Serializer but some searching is in order.
posted evening of July 31st, 2009: 5 responses
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Thursday, April second, 2009
 MacMillan has just published Harvey Pekar's history of the Beat generation. Illustrated by a number of different comix artists, and there are a few other authors besides Pekar as well. (Including Tuli Kupferberg!)
Gerald Nicosia's review in SFGate starts out a bit hostile about factual mistakes and about Pekar's insufficiently respectful treatment of Kerouac, but ends up quite taken with Pekar's portrayal of the lesser-known Beats and with the other contributors.
posted evening of April second, 2009: 2 responses
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