April 2006 Archives
In Dan Clowes' comic book, Eightball #7 (1991, Fantagraphics), there'a a four-page story called "Art School Confidential." In it, Clowes described his experiences in art school as the "biggest scam of the century," where the art teachers were useless, the students a bunch of no-talent posers, and craftsmanship was looked down on with snide disgust.
Fifteen years later, Art School Confidential is a movie (I haven't seen it yet) and Clowes wrote the screenplay (He also co-wrote the excellent screenplay to a much longer story that appeared in several issues of Eightball called Ghost World).
Clowes' screenplay for Art School Confidential takes the ideas touched upon in the four-page story, and expands on them, wrapping them around a lively and very funny coming-of-age story, with a murder mystery thrown in for good measure. If you enjoy Clowes' unique brand of misanthropic humor found in his comics (and I love it), you'll enjoy Art School Confidential.
The four-page comic book story is reprinted in this book, in case you missed it the first time around.
As much as I love Clowe's comics, his screenplay has me hoping he'll write a novel one day. $9.72 on Amazon (More Clowes on Mad Professor here)
I once read a good piece of advice in an old issue of The Whole Earth review: To learn about an unfamiliar subject, read a children's book about it.
I'll take that advice one step further: To learn about an unfamiliar subject, read an old children's book about it. By that, I mean read a kids' book from the 1950s. Even though some of the information might not be up to date, chances are, the writing will be better and the design will be delightful.
Case in point -- The Walt Disney Story of Our Friend the Atom. Lavishly illustrated by the Walt Disney studio, this fantastic book traces the history of atomic science, from antiquity, through Roentgen's discovery of X-rays and Henri Becquerel's work with uranium in the late 1890s, Marie Curie's work with radioactivity, and up to atomic energy and nuclear weapons. It's a wonderful introduction to the subject, and for most of us, it contains as much information as you'll ever want to know about it. $2.49 and up on Amazon
A kind, anonymous soul sent this book to me today. Whoever it is, I thank you! I cut my own hair, and have been the subject of ridicule (mostly good natured) for as long as I can remember. I don't care what people say about my hair. I feel a kinship with the people in this book, so I feel no guilt in laughing at the hairstyles here. Fried and dyed brittle sculptures, shiny textured football helmets, lustrous mullets, androgynous dandelions, Jesus Christ supermanes -- I love them all and applaud them for it. $9.95 on Amazon
The premise of The Left Bank Gang sounds wacky, but Jason pulls it off with wonderful believability. The story takes place in 1920s Paris, and the main characters -- Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Pound, Joyce, Sartre -- are all cartoonists and in this world, comic books, not regular books, are the major form of fiction. In addition, the characters are all anthropomorphic animals.
Jason, the artist and writer of The Left Bank Gang, appears destined to join my pantheon of comic book artist gods, which include Jack Kirby, Carl Barks, Robert Crumb, Dan Clowes, Chris Ware, Seth, Joe Matt, and Jim Woodring. Pre-order on Amazon for $9.97
General Motors has been taking a beating in the press for being too generous to its employees. The automaker simply can’t compete against other car companies who treat assembly line workers as extensions of the robots that put the cars together. What a shame that GM can’t play a role in making its labor force happier!
It wasn’t always this way. When I was at a thrift store recently, I came across a collection of over 100 GM booklets from the 1950s that had been, as stated on their back covers, “Prepared especially for the GM Men and Women by the General Motors Information Rack Service.” The booklets, on an astoundingly wide variety of topics, had titles such as Is Your Memory Lame? Push Button Utopia: A Few Thoughts on the Future, Adventures of the Inquiring Mind, The Fabulous Future and How to Live 365 Days a Year.
What a treat it must have been to punch the clock at the end of a long day bolting on dashboards to walk over to the employee lounge (furnished, no doubt with Eames tables and chair) and peruse the Information Rack.
How to Live 365 Days a Year is one of the most practical self-help, lift-yourself-by-your-own-bootstraps, eastern religion-inspired booklets I'e ever read. Its nine "Important points to watch in living" are a blueprint to happiness:
- Avoid watching for a knock in your motor.
- Learn to like work.
- Like people.
- Say the cheerful, pleasant thing.
- Meet adversity by turning defeat into victory.
- Meet your problems with decision.
- Make the present moment an emotional success.
- Always be planning something.
- Keep life simple.
The section describing rule #7, "Make the present moment an emotional success, " has a piece of advice worth keeping in mind: "The only time we ever live is the present moment. It is the only time we ever have to be happy." That's about as profound as it gets, at least around here in the Mad Professor laboratories.
I hope to scan the entire booklet and put it online later this week. Keep your eye out for it!
Long before Dan Brown began writing about secret societies, there was the Illuminatus! trilogy, by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.
Wilson was the first writer to get me to question the ways things are and seem to be, rather than robotically accept them. In Illuminatus! the authors delight in erecting a wall of reality that seems perfectly acceptable, only to tear it down and build a new, even more believable thought system. Full of humor, outlandish conspiracy theories, alternate history, infamous counterculture characters, and skepticism for everything. $12.89 on Amazon
About five years ago, I payed $800 for a portable DVD player so my kids could watch cartoons when we took long trips. After many drops on the floor, the player is in bad shape and barely works.
Today I use my PowerBook (and Video iPod) to watch videos, but I am reluctant to let my astonishingly destructive three-year-old daughter use either, especially unsupervised. So I looked around online and found this 3.5 inch kid-friendly portable DVD from Coby for about $100. It's a big hit. She loves to grip its sides and kick back with a Dora the Explorer DVD.
It comes with a nice case, kid sized headphones, an AC adapter to recharge the batteries, and a cigarette lighter adapter. $107.31 on Amazon
When I interviewed Love and Rockets co-creator Jaime Hernandez, he told me that he loved Hank Ketcham's work. He blurbed this insanely fat book of Dennis the Menace single panel gag strips (every one from 1953 and 1954, a prime period) by saying, "I've learned more from a single panel of Dennis the Menace than a six month art course."
The art is a joy to behold, but the comics are also laugh-out-loud funny. Ketcham was really good at summoning his inner fiver-year-old. $16.47 on Amazon
I love the 99-Cent Only Store. (Here's a piece I wrote about it several years ago for bOING bOING). I love to take my kids there, because they go nuts for the battery powered fans, tubs of knockoff Play-Doh, stuffed animals, and other toys.
On our last trip, I picked up a few kid music CDs. I like them much more than contemporary kid music, which all seems to have that same abysmal Disney Beauty and the Beast / Lion King style, with over-the-top Broadway musical vocals. The people always sound like the are crying over a lost dream in those songs. I hate that.
The CDs I picked up from the 99-Cent Only Store are more in the vein of Dumbo / Peter Pan style music -- chipper, melodic, inventive. That's because the songs were obviously recorded in the 1950s. My 3-year-old immediately pricked up her ears and started dancing to the music.
I suspect these songs are in the public domain. Maybe I'll rip them to MP3 to share with the readers of Mad Professor.
I'm not a big fan of stage magic with elaborate, gimmicky effects with lots of colored smoke, false-bottomed cabinets, showers of sparks, and girl assistants in sequined bikinis.
OK, that last part isn't so bad, but I'm much more interested in close-up magic, were it's just one guy with some undoctored coins and a deck of cards making the impossible happen right under my nose. It impresses the hell out of me and makes the pleasure center in my brain light up like a moth in a bug zapper.
David Pescovitz gave me Bill Tarr's book a few years ago, and I pulled it off the shelf recently, because my daughter is interested in magic. The line drawings are much better than photos ever could be in explaining how to pull the sleights described here.
As Tarr explains in his introduction, magic is a great hobby because you don't need to spend any money to do it and it is very creative. It's all about learning the skills and applying them in new ways. So much better than collecting junk that clutters up the house. $12.97 on Amazon.com
Startech's MP3 AirLink Wireless Audio Transmitter and Receiver uses the same frequency spectrum as a Wi-Fi network to transit your music from an iPod or computer to a stereo. The system comes with two palm-sized rectangular cubes — a transmitter and a receiver. The transmitter has a button to let you scroll through eight channels, helping you get a clear signal.
Startech advertises the range to be 100ft in the clear, and 30ft through walls, and that seems about right to me. When I connected the transmitter to my desktop computer in one room and the stereo in another, I experienced some dropouts, until I moved the transmitter and receiver around.
The AirLink has become my preferred way to play songs from my computer to my home stereo, because I can control the songs from iTunes.
Advantages: You can control the songs from your iPod or computer; sound quality is good.
Disadvantages: Each device is powered with an AC adapter, but if you don’t need portability, this isn’t a problem; getting good reception can be tricky, range is limited to 30ft through walls. $64.38 on Amazon
