Before the Silly Site, even! Because it's been way too long and I don't want a bunch of saved links clogging up my vacation.
• Colleen passes along a Guardian article that laments the rise of unedited, amateurish blogs. By which they usually mean "most blogs," which I consider patently unfair. As with comics, the badly-done fanzine-level stuff will not stand out and be noticed, as it's a dime a dozen; the cream will rise to the top. And to tag all blogs with the same dismissive stereotypes is as bad as tagging all, say, independent and non-money-making comics the same way. Some are masterworks, and some are badly in need of editors -- or at least friends to tell the writers and artists to seek creative outlets more suited to their talents. And as for critics, I can understand Colleen's frustration, but I get equally as frustrated by elitist professional critics and reviewers who speak some sort of ivory-tower language all their own. I think if you're going to review something, self-education rather than formal training is fine by me. That's what I did when I reviewed comics; I learned as much as I could about how to "read" art properly, so I wouldn't just be talking about the writing, which is after all only half the book. And I completely discarded the notion that the characters had more autonomy than the real people who brought them to life -- something with which many fandom-stuck critics have trouble. I mean, reviewing a comic by only talking about the characters rather than the creators is like reviewing a movie without mentioning the actors. Probably worse, because at least in a movie the characters have physical movement and life.
• And now I feel kinda bad that I said all that, because Heidi Meeley has established this past week as Blog Positivity Week -- er, Day. That is, she urges participants to take one day out of this past week and say something positive about comics: "a post that reflects on an event in the past year that is comic book related and has made you smile. Maybe it was one issue of a comic book you were happily surprised about. It could be a shared moment at a show meeting a creator or a fellow fan. It can be anything positive that can give your fellow fans something to think about on a positive tip. It is up to you." Well, if I didn't have a positive attitude towards comics, I wouldn't read and enjoy about 90% of our DC comp box, I wouldn't be with the ComicMix team, and I certainly wouldn't be married to a comic book artist! I still think comics have wonderful unreached potential, particularly as regards tales told from POVs other than straight white men, and I look forward to actually writing a full-length story (Megillat Vashti) someday when I have a different day job. As for this past week, my big of comics blogosphere positivity was Charlie Jane Anders letting us know that her Mother Jones article finally has a dedicated URL, so everyone go read Supergirls Gone Wild: Gender Bias in Comics Shortchanges Superwomen.
• World O' Crap's Scott has another boffo bad movie review, this time braving the wilds of Hercules in New York starring two Arnolds, Schwarzenegger and Stang. Yeah, blows my mind as well.
• Another good thoughtful post from Cheryl about how white folks shouldn't keep analogizing our various oppressions by noting things like "Imagine if you said that about black people." Sayeth she, "Seriously, y'all need to stop making us your debate crutches. If our issues aren't part of the conversation, why bring us up?" I never even considered before how frustrating it might be to have Black as the New Catch-All Analogy. This is why I read Cheryl. This is why I want to read more comics from POVs other than straight white men. Oh, Ragnell has a pretty good companion post along these same lines.
• My ex-husband Steve remembers concerts we attended. I don't recall any of them. One of the observations I make in my upcoming ComicMix column is about my lack of retention. But you know, it means I can theoretically (given those 40-hour days) reread stuff and have it all feel like it's the first time!
• Via Elise at After School Snack, the Harry Potter parenting guide. And on a more serious note, both Keith at Invisible Library and Sara at Ornicus spell out (pun intended) exactly why religious fundamentalists have a problem with the Potter books. (Update: Lance has a pretty nifty post on this as well.) Sara's observations on fundamentalists carry a lot of weight with me, considering that was once her social circle.
• Speaking of weighty matters, one of Laura's many links that caught my eye was this study done on how getting nutrition in liquid rather than solid form often leads to eating more afterwards. It appears to be a fine balancing act between portion control and staying hydrated, which is why I don't put all that much stock in any of these studies other than finding them interesting. When I come right down to it, the best real-life application seems to be "Moderation in all things" (including exercise), and zero apologies for finding food tasty. But of course advising moderation isn't "sexy" and doesn't grab headlines, does it? Part of the moderation strategy is, as Kate Harding puts it in her excellent fear-of-deprivation post, "eating what you want when you're hungry and stopping when you're full," and knowing your body well enough to recognize each. Again, self-education in recognizing your "internal hunger cues" plays a key role here, particularly with so much anti-fat hysteria in the world. You should also read this entry from Kate, about how putting stuff (sauces, dressings, etc.) on food to make it taste even more to your personal liking doesn't automatically negate the food's natural healthy properties. (Joy Nash has a similar bit about rice cakes and french fries.) Lastly, Kate's piece about how Macy's ruined Marshall Field's really made me smile, and I'm not even from Chicago.
• Marvin Kitman is becoming one of my favorite HuffPo contributors. Of course, I'm biased, I've followed Kitman's career for a few decades now and have a few of his books in hardcover (a big deal for me, as I generally Don't Do Hardcovers), at least one of which is autographed. Anyway, my latest Marvin Must-Reads are his thoughts on the CNN YouTube debate and his reminiscences of Tom Snyder. Also on HuffPo, Maia Szalavitz responds to the latest flawed propaganda-laden study concluding "omigod pot can be as bad for your lungs as cigarettes" the same way I would, by appropriately calling bullshit.
• I hope Monday's a good day for Jan to see me in NYC, because I'd really like to attend the Lulu party at MoCCA, being on vacation and all. Of course, everything is weather- and energy-permitting...
• Over at AmericaBlog, AJ "outs" himself and in the process proves once again that real-life credibility is usually much preferable to pseudonymity, and John pens a wonderfully snarky comparison based on yet another stupid remark from a Republican Congresscritter.
• A. Whitney Brown goes out on a limb and supports our troops:
His comic timing and delivery has improved loads from his SNL days, but then I always felt those audiences never quite got him. He was too Daily Show-ish for that lot.
• Barbara continues her Wisdom of Doubt series (at this point it's so long I'm wondering if she has an eye toward turning it into a book) and has several adjunct posts, among them the highly recommended Taking Faith on Faith.
Lastly, a bit of a maintenance note: The Liberal Coalition's Trish Wilson has moved The Countess to here, concentrating more on her fiction writing than political activism. That got me thinking that a couple other women on my blogroll have been doing more cultural than strictly political stuff for awhile now (although yeah, the political is personal and all that), so I've shifted them to the Kultcha section of my sidebar.
• Colleen passes along a Guardian article that laments the rise of unedited, amateurish blogs. By which they usually mean "most blogs," which I consider patently unfair. As with comics, the badly-done fanzine-level stuff will not stand out and be noticed, as it's a dime a dozen; the cream will rise to the top. And to tag all blogs with the same dismissive stereotypes is as bad as tagging all, say, independent and non-money-making comics the same way. Some are masterworks, and some are badly in need of editors -- or at least friends to tell the writers and artists to seek creative outlets more suited to their talents. And as for critics, I can understand Colleen's frustration, but I get equally as frustrated by elitist professional critics and reviewers who speak some sort of ivory-tower language all their own. I think if you're going to review something, self-education rather than formal training is fine by me. That's what I did when I reviewed comics; I learned as much as I could about how to "read" art properly, so I wouldn't just be talking about the writing, which is after all only half the book. And I completely discarded the notion that the characters had more autonomy than the real people who brought them to life -- something with which many fandom-stuck critics have trouble. I mean, reviewing a comic by only talking about the characters rather than the creators is like reviewing a movie without mentioning the actors. Probably worse, because at least in a movie the characters have physical movement and life.
• And now I feel kinda bad that I said all that, because Heidi Meeley has established this past week as Blog Positivity Week -- er, Day. That is, she urges participants to take one day out of this past week and say something positive about comics: "a post that reflects on an event in the past year that is comic book related and has made you smile. Maybe it was one issue of a comic book you were happily surprised about. It could be a shared moment at a show meeting a creator or a fellow fan. It can be anything positive that can give your fellow fans something to think about on a positive tip. It is up to you." Well, if I didn't have a positive attitude towards comics, I wouldn't read and enjoy about 90% of our DC comp box, I wouldn't be with the ComicMix team, and I certainly wouldn't be married to a comic book artist! I still think comics have wonderful unreached potential, particularly as regards tales told from POVs other than straight white men, and I look forward to actually writing a full-length story (Megillat Vashti) someday when I have a different day job. As for this past week, my big of comics blogosphere positivity was Charlie Jane Anders letting us know that her Mother Jones article finally has a dedicated URL, so everyone go read Supergirls Gone Wild: Gender Bias in Comics Shortchanges Superwomen.
• World O' Crap's Scott has another boffo bad movie review, this time braving the wilds of Hercules in New York starring two Arnolds, Schwarzenegger and Stang. Yeah, blows my mind as well.
• Another good thoughtful post from Cheryl about how white folks shouldn't keep analogizing our various oppressions by noting things like "Imagine if you said that about black people." Sayeth she, "Seriously, y'all need to stop making us your debate crutches. If our issues aren't part of the conversation, why bring us up?" I never even considered before how frustrating it might be to have Black as the New Catch-All Analogy. This is why I read Cheryl. This is why I want to read more comics from POVs other than straight white men. Oh, Ragnell has a pretty good companion post along these same lines.
• My ex-husband Steve remembers concerts we attended. I don't recall any of them. One of the observations I make in my upcoming ComicMix column is about my lack of retention. But you know, it means I can theoretically (given those 40-hour days) reread stuff and have it all feel like it's the first time!
• Via Elise at After School Snack, the Harry Potter parenting guide. And on a more serious note, both Keith at Invisible Library and Sara at Ornicus spell out (pun intended) exactly why religious fundamentalists have a problem with the Potter books. (Update: Lance has a pretty nifty post on this as well.) Sara's observations on fundamentalists carry a lot of weight with me, considering that was once her social circle.
• Speaking of weighty matters, one of Laura's many links that caught my eye was this study done on how getting nutrition in liquid rather than solid form often leads to eating more afterwards. It appears to be a fine balancing act between portion control and staying hydrated, which is why I don't put all that much stock in any of these studies other than finding them interesting. When I come right down to it, the best real-life application seems to be "Moderation in all things" (including exercise), and zero apologies for finding food tasty. But of course advising moderation isn't "sexy" and doesn't grab headlines, does it? Part of the moderation strategy is, as Kate Harding puts it in her excellent fear-of-deprivation post, "eating what you want when you're hungry and stopping when you're full," and knowing your body well enough to recognize each. Again, self-education in recognizing your "internal hunger cues" plays a key role here, particularly with so much anti-fat hysteria in the world. You should also read this entry from Kate, about how putting stuff (sauces, dressings, etc.) on food to make it taste even more to your personal liking doesn't automatically negate the food's natural healthy properties. (Joy Nash has a similar bit about rice cakes and french fries.) Lastly, Kate's piece about how Macy's ruined Marshall Field's really made me smile, and I'm not even from Chicago.
• Marvin Kitman is becoming one of my favorite HuffPo contributors. Of course, I'm biased, I've followed Kitman's career for a few decades now and have a few of his books in hardcover (a big deal for me, as I generally Don't Do Hardcovers), at least one of which is autographed. Anyway, my latest Marvin Must-Reads are his thoughts on the CNN YouTube debate and his reminiscences of Tom Snyder. Also on HuffPo, Maia Szalavitz responds to the latest flawed propaganda-laden study concluding "omigod pot can be as bad for your lungs as cigarettes" the same way I would, by appropriately calling bullshit.
• I hope Monday's a good day for Jan to see me in NYC, because I'd really like to attend the Lulu party at MoCCA, being on vacation and all. Of course, everything is weather- and energy-permitting...
• Over at AmericaBlog, AJ "outs" himself and in the process proves once again that real-life credibility is usually much preferable to pseudonymity, and John pens a wonderfully snarky comparison based on yet another stupid remark from a Republican Congresscritter.
• A. Whitney Brown goes out on a limb and supports our troops:
His comic timing and delivery has improved loads from his SNL days, but then I always felt those audiences never quite got him. He was too Daily Show-ish for that lot.
• Barbara continues her Wisdom of Doubt series (at this point it's so long I'm wondering if she has an eye toward turning it into a book) and has several adjunct posts, among them the highly recommended Taking Faith on Faith.
Lastly, a bit of a maintenance note: The Liberal Coalition's Trish Wilson has moved The Countess to here, concentrating more on her fiction writing than political activism. That got me thinking that a couple other women on my blogroll have been doing more cultural than strictly political stuff for awhile now (although yeah, the political is personal and all that), so I've shifted them to the Kultcha section of my sidebar.
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