At this point of Epiphany I’ve only gotten through the letter “C” in my quest to catch up on eight months’ worth of DC Comics comp box reading. Goodness knows how or when I’m going to finish the rest of the DCU titles I’ve filed alphabetically, much less the Vertigo and Wildstorm books. Mind you, this is all voluntary, I want to read the stuff. (It’s also in preparation for reading and judging all the Glyph Awards submissions.) I just don’t seem to be able to conjure up the enthusiasm. Same for blog posting. Maybe it’s the winter doldrums. I just want to sleep a lot, y’know? Anyway, let’s see if I can’t get some of these open bookmarks taken care of:
• With the new year comes many changes, so we bid farewell to Andrea Rubenstein, Chris “Lefty” Brown, and Wayne "PSotD" Kessler. All three bloggers get moved to my “Dead Zone” Bloglines folder in the hopes their blogs may someday be resurrected. Elsewhere, Elaine decides to take a mini-hiatus; Devra has moved to Mokshya; Melissa Silverstein has shifted Women & Hollywood to its own domain; Augie has started a photoblog called AugieShoots; and all the wonderful writers who used to be at Blog@Newsarama are back, under the auspices of Comic Book Resources, with the group blog Robot 6. My sidebar has been adjusted accordingly, I hope!
• Left over from the holiday season are Ken Jennings' attempt at an internal chronology for It's A Wonderful Life, Mike Gold's good fight against the X in Christmas, and Thers' plea for no more Rankin/Bass. And Steve Benen echoes many people's can't-stand-it-any-more anticipation about getting that bike of state up and going. And speaking of anticipation, the General has a doozy.
• Hoorah, Bint has made it to another birthday! Over three years of beating the odds; you go, Bint! And JK Parkin brings a welcome update on Carla and Lance Hoffman.
• It’s the time of year when everyone votes on awards. Except for the above-mentioned Glyphs, where all the submissions come to me, I’m disinclined to participate in this yearly ritual, as I have the retention of a fruit fly when it comes to reading for pleasure. I couldn’t even tell you my own favorite blog posts, for instance, much less anyone else’s, so I declined Jon Swift’s gracious request to participate in his annual ritual. But if you like to see what lots of other bloggers consider their key posts of 2008, Jon’s got the summary up now.
• I understand the Weblog Awards are also in full swing. I’m only following them peripherally –- as indicated above, what with my job search and then actual work to concentrate on, 2008 was not my best or most memorable year in terms of blogging –- but I was pleased to hear that the comic XKCD is in the running. Check out this very funny bit about metric conversion tables. Robin still thinks in metric so I had to pass this on to him.
• Your daily dose of Macca-demia: Toby Barlow at HuffPo sings the praises of an incredible simulation (we have the song in question in iTunes now, and it’s okay, but I wouldn’t call Joey Curatolo is a “McCartney soundalike,” his voice just doesn’t have the same power). Also, Cory updates the situation with the “legal” Beatles MP3 archives; and I’m looking forward to diving into Cara’s feminist analysis of Yoko Ono (here’s part 3, which also includes links to previous installments) as soon as I have some, um, leisure time...
• Speaking of unsung women, Heidi follows up with another post about female comic creators, always worth reading. Another woman in comics, Dark Horse editor Rachel Edidin, bemoans the repeated “there are no women in comics” male-led insistence (why aren’t these people immediately directed to Friends of Lulu’s Women Doing Comics list? This ongoing nonsense is exactly why I created it!). Melissa S. brings us a Meryl Streep interview wherein the actress points out once again how women-oriented entertainment (in this case, Mamma Mia!) gets marginalized or ignored by male-led Hollywood even when it rakes in the cash. Echidne wonders why Nathan’s more Famous than his wife, and Melissa McEwan looks at celeb gossip that “disappears” a grieving mother because presumably the famous actress in question isn’t as famous as the grieving father. Truly, if you’re female you can be as accomplished and successful as the men in your field and you still can’t win for losing. Especially when you still have uphill battles against things like boring sexist comedy, as Kate illustrates.
• As if you couldn’t tell by the last paragraph, Amanda confirms that much celeb gossip is political, and why. I too find the “good girl/bad girl” cooked-up dichotomy with Aniston and Jolie to be distasteful, although when the tabloids and public are harsh on a woman because she’s acting like a money-grubbing flake (*cough* Heather Mills *cough*) I’m inclined to believe it’s less a matter of sexism than of flakiness and money grubbing. Your mileage may vary; after all, I will also admit to not seeing much gossipy put-downs of flaky, money-grubbing men, at least since Kato Kaelin...
• Al Franken’s not a flake, but he’s played a few on TV. Autumn at Pam’s place transcribes his memorable “me, Al Franken, Decade” bit on SNL’s Weekend Update so I finally have it in a handy place! I’ve been quoting this incessantly for weeks.
• What Becky said about "lactivists." This is about as popular a stand in some circles as Val D'Orazio's stance against illustrated child porn (see here and here for follow-up posts). While I theoretically support the CBLDF's fight in general, when most of what I see from them amounts to the freedom to exploit the female body, I would imagine it makes it harder for a lot of women to consider themselves fellow travelers.
• What Digby said, about the cult of personality as it pertained to Mr. Andrea Mitchell, and about how the current opposition party is actually the obstructionist one (and was the obstructionist party even when they were in power), and about how eager these same people are to never be called to account for their crimes.
• Is third-hand smoke harmful? Susie is sure of the hazards; Cathie isn’t convinced at all.
• Counting their influences are Val on Bill Mantlo and Lance Mannion on the Three Stooges (I'd never heard of Bonus Marchers before, so this was a nice little gap filled in my history knowledge).
• I can definitely get behind Kevin Drum's blogosphere whines for 2009, particularly the ones about partial feeds since I read almost all blogs via their feeds and can't always click onto the blogs themselves because of various blockages. And yes, I giggled at the end of the list.
• Wow, cool, Hulu has the entire Milk documentary online! Thanks, Davidson/Corrente! And Sheila Lennon reports that all of Andrew Lang's Fairy books are now available online; neat! I think I have 'em all on my bedroom bookcase, but still. Oh, and thanks to Natalie, I spent some time at the Chauvet Cave website; also very cool!
• So why did the folks who made off with Madoff's statue bring it back? Susie has the scoop.
• At last, someone's trying to put together a compendium of all the alternate nicknames Maru Soze has made up for our 43rd President! This silliness is one of the most endearing things about WTF Is It Now?!? for me.
• Until I read Bryan's remembrance, I hadn't realized both Eartha Kitt and Harold Pinter were activists.
• I wish I still had time to write my old ComicMix column at Michael Davis' place, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my favorite new writer over there - Q. Reyes. All four Artistic Warfare columns he's done so far have been outstanding. I also wanted to mention that Tom Gedwillo's Chromium Switch site now features not only every single issue of my old Four-Alarm FIRESIGNals in PDF format (except the earliest one-pagers I did in INSIDE JOKE, which Tom has inspired me to scan this year) but the entire Firezine archives; do register and check it out if you can! In Firesign publication chronology, my FAlaFals were sandwiched in (tasty!) more or less right in between Tom's in-print Chromium Switches and Freditor's Firezines.
A couple photos to end the blogaround. In today's mail was the last of the holiday cards folks have sent us. I'm one of those weird people who prefers the paper things, because I like to decorate our card holder wreath. Here's this year's wreath from two different angles:
Just in time to take 'em all down tomorrow!
• With the new year comes many changes, so we bid farewell to Andrea Rubenstein, Chris “Lefty” Brown, and Wayne "PSotD" Kessler. All three bloggers get moved to my “Dead Zone” Bloglines folder in the hopes their blogs may someday be resurrected. Elsewhere, Elaine decides to take a mini-hiatus; Devra has moved to Mokshya; Melissa Silverstein has shifted Women & Hollywood to its own domain; Augie has started a photoblog called AugieShoots; and all the wonderful writers who used to be at Blog@Newsarama are back, under the auspices of Comic Book Resources, with the group blog Robot 6. My sidebar has been adjusted accordingly, I hope!
• Left over from the holiday season are Ken Jennings' attempt at an internal chronology for It's A Wonderful Life, Mike Gold's good fight against the X in Christmas, and Thers' plea for no more Rankin/Bass. And Steve Benen echoes many people's can't-stand-it-any-more anticipation about getting that bike of state up and going. And speaking of anticipation, the General has a doozy.
• Hoorah, Bint has made it to another birthday! Over three years of beating the odds; you go, Bint! And JK Parkin brings a welcome update on Carla and Lance Hoffman.
• It’s the time of year when everyone votes on awards. Except for the above-mentioned Glyphs, where all the submissions come to me, I’m disinclined to participate in this yearly ritual, as I have the retention of a fruit fly when it comes to reading for pleasure. I couldn’t even tell you my own favorite blog posts, for instance, much less anyone else’s, so I declined Jon Swift’s gracious request to participate in his annual ritual. But if you like to see what lots of other bloggers consider their key posts of 2008, Jon’s got the summary up now.
• I understand the Weblog Awards are also in full swing. I’m only following them peripherally –- as indicated above, what with my job search and then actual work to concentrate on, 2008 was not my best or most memorable year in terms of blogging –- but I was pleased to hear that the comic XKCD is in the running. Check out this very funny bit about metric conversion tables. Robin still thinks in metric so I had to pass this on to him.
• Your daily dose of Macca-demia: Toby Barlow at HuffPo sings the praises of an incredible simulation (we have the song in question in iTunes now, and it’s okay, but I wouldn’t call Joey Curatolo is a “McCartney soundalike,” his voice just doesn’t have the same power). Also, Cory updates the situation with the “legal” Beatles MP3 archives; and I’m looking forward to diving into Cara’s feminist analysis of Yoko Ono (here’s part 3, which also includes links to previous installments) as soon as I have some, um, leisure time...
• Speaking of unsung women, Heidi follows up with another post about female comic creators, always worth reading. Another woman in comics, Dark Horse editor Rachel Edidin, bemoans the repeated “there are no women in comics” male-led insistence (why aren’t these people immediately directed to Friends of Lulu’s Women Doing Comics list? This ongoing nonsense is exactly why I created it!). Melissa S. brings us a Meryl Streep interview wherein the actress points out once again how women-oriented entertainment (in this case, Mamma Mia!) gets marginalized or ignored by male-led Hollywood even when it rakes in the cash. Echidne wonders why Nathan’s more Famous than his wife, and Melissa McEwan looks at celeb gossip that “disappears” a grieving mother because presumably the famous actress in question isn’t as famous as the grieving father. Truly, if you’re female you can be as accomplished and successful as the men in your field and you still can’t win for losing. Especially when you still have uphill battles against things like boring sexist comedy, as Kate illustrates.
• As if you couldn’t tell by the last paragraph, Amanda confirms that much celeb gossip is political, and why. I too find the “good girl/bad girl” cooked-up dichotomy with Aniston and Jolie to be distasteful, although when the tabloids and public are harsh on a woman because she’s acting like a money-grubbing flake (*cough* Heather Mills *cough*) I’m inclined to believe it’s less a matter of sexism than of flakiness and money grubbing. Your mileage may vary; after all, I will also admit to not seeing much gossipy put-downs of flaky, money-grubbing men, at least since Kato Kaelin...
• Al Franken’s not a flake, but he’s played a few on TV. Autumn at Pam’s place transcribes his memorable “me, Al Franken, Decade” bit on SNL’s Weekend Update so I finally have it in a handy place! I’ve been quoting this incessantly for weeks.
• What Becky said about "lactivists." This is about as popular a stand in some circles as Val D'Orazio's stance against illustrated child porn (see here and here for follow-up posts). While I theoretically support the CBLDF's fight in general, when most of what I see from them amounts to the freedom to exploit the female body, I would imagine it makes it harder for a lot of women to consider themselves fellow travelers.
• What Digby said, about the cult of personality as it pertained to Mr. Andrea Mitchell, and about how the current opposition party is actually the obstructionist one (and was the obstructionist party even when they were in power), and about how eager these same people are to never be called to account for their crimes.
• Is third-hand smoke harmful? Susie is sure of the hazards; Cathie isn’t convinced at all.
• Counting their influences are Val on Bill Mantlo and Lance Mannion on the Three Stooges (I'd never heard of Bonus Marchers before, so this was a nice little gap filled in my history knowledge).
• I can definitely get behind Kevin Drum's blogosphere whines for 2009, particularly the ones about partial feeds since I read almost all blogs via their feeds and can't always click onto the blogs themselves because of various blockages. And yes, I giggled at the end of the list.
• Wow, cool, Hulu has the entire Milk documentary online! Thanks, Davidson/Corrente! And Sheila Lennon reports that all of Andrew Lang's Fairy books are now available online; neat! I think I have 'em all on my bedroom bookcase, but still. Oh, and thanks to Natalie, I spent some time at the Chauvet Cave website; also very cool!
• So why did the folks who made off with Madoff's statue bring it back? Susie has the scoop.
• At last, someone's trying to put together a compendium of all the alternate nicknames Maru Soze has made up for our 43rd President! This silliness is one of the most endearing things about WTF Is It Now?!? for me.
• Until I read Bryan's remembrance, I hadn't realized both Eartha Kitt and Harold Pinter were activists.
• I wish I still had time to write my old ComicMix column at Michael Davis' place, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my favorite new writer over there - Q. Reyes. All four Artistic Warfare columns he's done so far have been outstanding. I also wanted to mention that Tom Gedwillo's Chromium Switch site now features not only every single issue of my old Four-Alarm FIRESIGNals in PDF format (except the earliest one-pagers I did in INSIDE JOKE, which Tom has inspired me to scan this year) but the entire Firezine archives; do register and check it out if you can! In Firesign publication chronology, my FAlaFals were sandwiched in (tasty!) more or less right in between Tom's in-print Chromium Switches and Freditor's Firezines.
A couple photos to end the blogaround. In today's mail was the last of the holiday cards folks have sent us. I'm one of those weird people who prefers the paper things, because I like to decorate our card holder wreath. Here's this year's wreath from two different angles:
Just in time to take 'em all down tomorrow!
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