February 28, 2004
Join Me!
I haven't read this Join Me!, but I've ordered it. It's a true story about a 27-year British TV producer who placed an ad in a newspaper (just for fun, I guess) that said "Join Me" along with a mailing address. Amazingly, 6,000 people wrote him, and he became a cult leader of sorts. Here's an interview with Danny Wallace, the accidental cult leader.
The Da Vinci Code and Dan Brown's other novels
Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is a novel about a secret society that harbors dangerous evidence that could shatter the Catholic Church if revealed. It's probably the best conspiracy story I've read. I never did make it through Focault's Pendulum or any of Pynchon's books. They bored the pants off me. And The Illuminatus Trilogy seemed a lot more profound (and coherent) when I was in college than it did during a recent re-reading. Brown got the right mix of suspense, history, and conspiracy with The Da Vinci Code.
After reading The Da Vinci Code, I bought all of Brown's other novels: Angels & Demons, Deception Point, and Digital Fortress. I enjoyed them all, but none are as good as The Da Vinci Code. Angels & Demons come very close. The story's set-up is similar to The Da Vinci Code's. In fact, they share the same protagonist, an American professor of religious studies. Both stories involve the professor getting involved in a whirlwind adventure in a large European city (Paris in Da Vinci, and Rome in Angles & Demons) and both feature daughters of important secret society leaders who are murdered by a gruesome misfit henchmen of a competing secret society. The similarities didn't bother me though, because Angels & Demons is such a fun ride.
Brown's other two novels, Deception Point, and Digital Fortress, were written before Da Vinci and Angels & Demons, and while they're both perfectly readable adventures, they lack the historical and conspiracy angles that fuel his later work. Digital Fortress, the weakest of all, takes place in the bowels of the National Security Agency. The female hero of the story must crack a supposedly uncrackable code, and she doesn't know which of her coworkers she can trust. Almost every scene takes place in the basement of the NSA, and I felt claustrophobic while reading it. Brown wisely began moving his chartacters all around the world in Deception Point, which a fun science and political thriller about the discovery of an unusual meteorite in the arctic circle. Here's how I'd grade these books on a scale of 1 to 10:
The Da Vinci Code - 10
Angels & Demons - 9
Deception Point - 6
Digital Fortress - 5
February 27, 2004
Bonnie's Household Organizer
Now that we have two kids, our house gets messy very quickly. Extra dishes, school papers, projects, and toys have a way of piling up. It doesn't help that our house is pretty small. I've learned a lot about cleaning and organizing from Bonnie's Household Organizer, the best clutter-cutting book I've found to date. Every page is full of useful information on how to make the most of my limited time and space. The most valuable part is her "minimum maintenance" cleaning routine that keeps our place presentable for unexpected guests.
February 26, 2004
Cure for the common cold
I used to dread the feeling of a cold coming on, because it meant a week of snot-nosed misery. But a few years ago I discovered Zicam, and now I almost don't care. Now my cold lasts 24 hours, and the symptoms are very mild. The trick is to take it at the first sign of a cold. I carry it with me at all times.
This stuff, which is comes in the form of a gel that you either squirt into your nose or rub into your nostrils with a Q-Tip, contains a form of zinc that attaches to cold viruses in your nose, and makes it very hard for them to bind with the cells in your nostril. And if a virus can't bind with a cell, it can't replicate. According to independent research, cold sufferers who took a placebo reported cold symtoms for 10 days, but patients who took Zicam reported symptoms for a day-and-a-half. I consider it a cure for the common cold.
Here's a recent news article about a possible link between Zicam use and losing your sense of smell permanently. (Thanks, John!)
February 25, 2004
The Complete Crumb Comics, Vol 1-16
There are three truly great comic book artists in the world. Two are dead: Carl Barks (who invented Uncle Scrooge, and did a bunch of duck comics for Disney), Jack Kirby (Captain America, Fantastic Four, Thor, Hulk, etc). The third, Robert Crumb, has been drawing comics since he was a little kid, and is still going strong. A lot of creative people get worse as they age (e.g., Charles Schulz, Elvis, Lucille Ball), but Crumb's current work is relevant, insightful, funny, and provocative. (I'm not going to defend or lambaste Robert Crumb for his depictions of women in his comics. Lots of other people already have.)
One of Crumb's strong points is his refusal to compromise. He doesn't do commercial art for anyone. (Toyota once offered him $100,000 to draw an advertisement. He said no. Toyota told him he could draw anything he wanted, anything. Crumb said, OK, I'll draw a picture of a murderer stuffing the headless corpse of a woman into the trunk of a Toyota.) His other strengths are an eye for detail, insight into human behavior, and a love of early 20th century American history, particularly musicians and craftsmen of all kinds. Crumb loves old music, old architecture, and old kitchen appliances almost as much as he hates modern American culture. (In 1995, Crumb moved with his family to a village in France.)
The Complete Crumb Comics, which is now in its 16th volume, is a chronological anthology of everything ever published by Crumb, including comics that he drew as a kid with his brother, and cards he drew for American Greetings before he created Zap (arguably the world's first underground comic). Each volume has new cover art as well as lots of interesting biographical material, occasionally pennned by Crumb himself. Even if you've seen Terry Zwigoff's Oscar winning documentary, Crumb, there's a lot more to learn about the artist in this anthology. But the best thing about The Complete Crumb Comics, of course, is the comics themselves. Crumb is a master storyteller. There are times when I've been disturbed by his work, I've never been bored, and I always come away from his work feeling like I understand a something new about human nature.
February 23, 2004
The Complete Peanuts 1950-1952, by Charles Schulz
A couple of years ago I went to an Art Spiegelman (creator of Maus) talk at UCLA. He made a comment about Peanuts that struck me. He said all the kids in Peanuts are actually adults, and that Snoopy is the only real kid in the strip. It really is true.
But it wasn't quite as true in 1950, when Schulz started Peanuts. I'd never seen his early Peanuts comics, because most of them hadn't been reprinted until this month, when Fantagraphics published The Complete Peanuts: 1950-1952.
The reason these early comics hadn't been reprinted is because the characters hardly look like the Peanuts everyone knows. Schroeder and Linus are infants who can't talk, and Snoopy is a puppy who acts like a puppy. All the characters are much more childlike. It would have been too confusing for readers used to the fully-developed characters.
But in this book we get to see that the Peanuts looked like when they were still evolving, and what a treat it is! The artwork is delicate and cheery, and the kids run around doing kidlike things – pretending to be spacemen, or cowboys and Indians. The stories are funny without resorting to gags (which has always been a strength of Schulz's).
I really think this book shows Schulz at his best. The book itself is lovingly designed by Seth (creator of the comic Palookaville), and Fantagraphics promises that it is the first of a seried of 25 Peanuts books, reprinting every strip from 1950 to 2000. I'm not sure what year Snoopy changed from a quadruped to a biped but that's when I'll stop buying the books.
February 22, 2004
Cool Tools
My friend Kevin Kelly, a founding editor of Wired and the former editor of Whole Earth Review, has self-published my favorite book for 2003: a 140-page color book with reviews of his favorite "gadgets, how-to books, amazing documentaries, great pieces of software, uncommon mail order catalogs, websites, pieces of machinery, and things you can grab with your hand." If you've seen the old Whole Earth Catalogs, then you already have a good idea of what Cool Tools is like. No matter how much you already know, you'll find dozens of things in here to blow your mind. Buy from Amazon
February 21, 2004
Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion
This user's manual for survival in a hard-sell, high-pressure society is on my top-ten list of non-fiction books. How do door-to-door salespeople, marketers, car dealers, strangers, con artists, and cult leaders convince people to hand over their money or time seemingly against their will? The author studied this phenomenon and came up with six methods that other people use to influence you to do things that aren't necessarily in your best interest: reciprocity, scarcity, liking, authority, social proof, and commitment/consistency. Filled with wonderfully lucid examples and anecdotes, Influence is not only profoundly insightful, it's a lot of fun to read.
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth
Jimmy Corrigan was the lead story in Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Library comic book series, published by Fantagraphics. Rendered in Ware's painstakingly detailed and clean-lined hand, Jimmy Corrigan is a non-linear fictional biography about a guy who lives a miserable life because his parents treated him horribly. We learn that his parents, too, were treated horribly. It's pretty depressing, but the art is truly mind-blowing, and the creative ways in which Ware unfolds the story are pure genius. I highly recommend this book, especially since you can buy a used hardcover copy on Amazon for just $10. A great deal for a 380-page, all color book. Buy from Amazon.
February 19, 2004
The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby: The First Graphic Novel
Super Diaper Baby is a spin-off of the enormously popular Captain Underpants kids' book series. While the Captain Underpants books are heavily illustrated chapter books, Super Diaper Baby is a comic book disguised as a paperback. The art is appealingly crude, and reminds me of the comics I drew in school. In fact, the premise is that The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby was written and drawn by the two kids who star in the Captain Underpants books.
Weirdly enough, The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby stars a giant piece of human excrement as the villain. In the 1960s, headshop owners were getting busted for selling underground comic books, because they had sex, violence, drugs, and scatology in them. Now, kids books (published by Scholastic, no less) have turd drawings in them and the books are sold in regular bookstores without any parental warning on them.
My six year-old-daughter enjoyed this book as much as I did.
Frontier House
This is PBS's version of reality TV: Take four American families who are accustomed to the modern conveniences of the 21st century and plop them down in the middle of the Montana wilderness with nothing but 19th century technology, clothing, and transportation. The volunteer families even had to build their own log cabins, and use old fashioned medicine when they got sick. I was fascinated by the way the families adapted to their frontier lives (and sometimes cheated to get by) and how they started hating the other families. It was also interesting to see that the men loved the experience of making houses, farming, setting up fences, and corralling animals, while the woman couldn't wait to get back to pedicures, microwaves, and SUVs.
Buy from Amazon
February 18, 2004
No Thanks: 70s Punk Rebellion
I discovered punk in 1978, during my senior year in high school. Before that, I didn't really like music very much, except for the Beatles and bands like Paul Revere and the Raiders. Punk woke me up to the power of music. This 4-CD set has 100 songs from the the '70s and '80s so listening to it caused powerful flashbacks.
A friend told me he thought the selection in No Thanks! was "too predictable" but I think it's a perfect introduction to the era. The things that stands out to me, after listening to all the songs, is how strong the first punk bands were -- Richard Hell, The Ramones, The New York Dolls, Iggy Pop & The Stooges, Blondie. They were all from the USA, and started out before The Clash and The Sex Pistols (which aren't represented in this collection, thanks to Johnny Rotten's refusal to participate. Rhino probably didn't offer him enough money). The 100-page book that comes with the collection has some nice color pictures and commentary, but if you want to read the best history of punk, get a copy of Please Kill Me, the Uncensored Oral History of Punk. You can read it while listening to No Thanks!
February 17, 2004
Will Elder: The Mad Playboy of Art
Harvey Kurtzman may have invented Mad, but for 99% of Mad's readers, it's the work of Will Elder that comes to mind when they think of the magazine.
Elder remained on good terms with Kurtzman -- a childhood friend -- after Kurtzman left Mad, and they continued to work together on various projects, such as Playboy's Little Annie Fanny and Goodman Beaver. But despite his immense talents as an artist and humorist, Elder always worked in the shadow of the charismatic Kurtzman. Will Elder: The Mad Playboy of Art, published in 2003 by Fantagraphics, finally gives Elder the recognition he deserves.
Every page of this monster-sized book is filled with examples of Elder's obsessive attention to detail, which separates his work from Kurtzman's (who was a broad brush kind of guy, albeit a great one). Elder's technical chops are supreme, and the longer you look at his work, the more you are rewarded. I love his talent for imitating other cartoonists' styles (which he used to parody Archie, Li'L Abner, Alley Oop, etc.), and I love the tiny little gags he inserts into nearly every panel. Unfortunately, the worst piece of art in this book is on the cover. 
Too bad Fantagraphics didn't use something like this Norman Rockwell parody instead.
Included is a lot of Elder's stuff from Mad, as well as sketches, paintings, and gag cartoons done for other magazines. Dan Clowes (Of Eightball and Ghostworld) wrote the intoduction, and there's commentary by Hugh Hefner, Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Davis, Al Jaffee (another of Elder's childhood friends), Terry Gilliam, William Stout, and Jerry Garcia.
400 pages, 9"x12" full-color softcover.
February 16, 2004
Charles Schulz's pre-Peanuts comic anthology
This looks like it'll be great. According to Fantagraphics, in late February the Charles M. Schulz Museum "is releasing LI'L BEGINNINGS, a complete collection of Charles Schulz's LI'L FOLKS and panel gags, amply annotated and referenced. This superb 300-page softcover, which collects many panels that have not been seen for over 50 years, will not be readily available for general sale in bookstores so far as we can tell. It costs $30.00 plus $6.00 shipping and is available for pre-order right now."
Buy from Fantagraphics (go to bottom of page)
Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution 1963–1975
Dr. Fredric Wertham nearly succeeded in killing comic books in 1954. That was the year his book Seduction of the Innocent sparked a nationwide anti-comics crusade. The psychiatrist's frenzied diatribe, illustrated with comic panels depicting gruesome and sadomasochistic scenes, painted a horrific picture of children losing their minds and morals to the lurid four-color pulps. Wertham's factually inaccurate, hysterically toned polemic was a big hit. Its wide coverage in the press led to hearings by the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency to deal with the comic-book menace. Almost overnight, dozens of comic-book publishers went out of business. The survivors established a self-censoring organization called the Comics Code Authority, which issued a set of explicit guidelines on what was forbidden and what was mandatory in comic-book stories (e.g., "Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities" and "In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds"). With the exception of Mad, comics became bland and safe for kids once again.
In retrospect, Wertham probably should have gone after Mad, too. In the early chapters of Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution 1963-1975, by Patrick Rosenkranz, Mad's sneering contempt for the establishment is frequently cited as a source of inspiration by the pioneers of the underground-comics movement. (In fact, it was Mad creator Harvey Kurtzman who hired Robert Crumb to draw pictures of street life in unfamiliar places like Bulgaria and Harlem for his short-lived humor magazine Help! in 1964.)
Rosenkranz began working on Rebel Visions nearly 30 years ago, interviewing every major cartoonist and publisher in the underground-comics movement, resulting in the first book that definitively chronicles one of the biggest countercultural artistic and literary movements in America. It's not only authoritative, it's also great fun to read. Illustrated with art and photographs (many previously unpublished) spanning a fascinating and riotous 12 years of artistic reawakening, Rebel Visions is largely an oral history told by the surviving originators of the movement. The quotes Rosenkranz selects vividly recount the birth, explosion and decline of underground comics.
Laid out chronologically in chapters that cover two years apiece, Rebel Visions begins in 1963, four years before the publication of Crumb's seminal Zap #1. At that time, artists who didn't want to follow the rules of the Comics Code Authority worked their way into science-fiction fanzines, college humor newspapers and hot-rod magazines. In the early days, artists like Rick Griffin, a surfer from Southern California, and Gilbert Shelton, a college student in Austin, drew in isolation from the nascent hippie counterculture. The early underground cartoonists were less interested in overthrowing the status quo than they were in poking fun at it. As long as Griffin could sneak a few marijuana references into his surf-mag funnies, and Crumb could lampoon the staid office protocols in his comic strip for American Greetings' employee newsletter, that was enough.
But by 1965, it was clear that a social revolution was taking place, and cartoonists who didn't want to draw pictures of men in tight-fitting colored underwear gravitated to San Francisco and the East Village, where they instantly became absorbed into the subculture dedicated to dope, free love and rebellion for the hell of it. LSD was legal, the Vietnam War was a sham, and rock music was an antidote to the assorted poisons spewed out by the establishment. The underground artists fit right in, becoming celebrities on the level of rock stars, Eastern religion proselytizers and psychedelic gurus. New inexpensive printing processes were helping to spawn underground newspapers like the East Village Other and the San Francisco Oracle. And rock music posters, most of them being drawn by the same artists who did comic strips for the underground press, became popular as wall art, resulting in the establishment of a national distribution system. According to Rosenkranz, "It was the production and distribution of ballroom posters that created the infrastructure for San Francisco to become the center of the underground comix industry."
ARTISTICALLY, THE MOST IMPORTANT event in the genesis of underground comics can be attributed to a "fuzzy" acid trip that Crumb took in November of 1965. In the months that followed, Crumb's perception of the world around him was altered, and his sketches reflected the new twists and turns his brain was making. "He started drawing strange characters and stories set in a soft, squishy, cartoon world," Rosenkranz writes. "Big-footed, pin-headed goofballs crowded the pages of his sketchbooks . . . There were plump nudes, working stiffs, cool cats, eggheads, holy fools, and men whose heads silently exploded -- lots of those." Crumb's trip lasted nearly five months, and he credits it with the birth of his most famous characters, including Mr. Natural. "It was during that fuzzy period that I recorded in my sketchbook all the main characters I would be using in my comics for the next 10 years," said Crumb.
Crumb used the characters to populate the pages of Zap, a famously successful comic book that he sold from a baby stroller on the streets of the Haight-Ashbury district. In subsequent issues, Crumb invited his favorite artists, such as Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso, Robert Williams, Gilbert Shelton, Manuel "Spain" Rodriguez and S. Clay Wilson to contribute -- and share equally in the ownership -- of Zap. In short order, hundreds and hundreds of underground-comic titles were weighing down the racks of head shops and comic-book stores.
Rosenkranz pegs 1971 as the year underground comics peaked. Titles were typically selling over 40,000 copies. The cartoonists felt that they were part of something big and wonderful. Maus creator Art Spiegelman told Rosenkranz, "It did feel like this must have been what the Cubists were going through. All the magic of being in Paris for the Post-Impressionist movement did feel somehow like being in San Francisco in the early '70s."
Of course, the magic had to end sometime -- but no one expected it to vanish so soon. By 1973, underground-comics sales had nosedived. Rosenkranz cites several factors: a nationwide crackdown on head shops, the Supreme Court's ruling on community standards for obscenity, and an increasingly politicized underground press that censored what it interpreted as sexism or racism from stories. Mainstream culture had changed, too. In a 1998 interview, cartoonist Jay Kinney told Rosenkranz that underground-comic artists, once regarded as "taboo breakers and iconoclasts," lost their mojo after mass media began dishing out their own brand of extreme sex, drugs and gore. How could underground comics "out-gross slasher films, video porn, Hustler magazine and Cheech and Chong?" asks Rosenkranz rhetorically. Twenty-five years after the death of the movement, his Rebel Visions brilliantly recalls the astounding influence, giddy thrills and sense of freedom that underground comics provided during a pivotal point in American culture.
February 15, 2004
Looney Tunes Golden Collection
A lot of the 56 classic Looney Tunes cartoons in this collection have been shown on television over and over again, but the versions here are uncut, offering their full complement of cartoon violence. In addition, there are a bunch of cartoons in this 4-disc set I've never seen.
But the thing that makes this package worth the price is the supplemental material. There are tons of commentaries, documentaries, interviews, featurettes, excerpts from live-action shows, art galleries, and best of all, several cartoons with "music-only" tracks, so you can appreciate conductor Carl Stalling's genius. It's no surprise Entertainment Weekly said Looney Tunes Golden Collection was the best DVD of 2003. My six-year-old daughter and I like to watch at least two cartoons from this collection every night.
I hope Warner Bros. eventually gives the same treatment to the other 1000 cartoons in their vaults, especially the work of director Tex Avery, who is conspicuously absent from this collection. Nevertheless, this is my favorite DVD purchase in years.
February 14, 2004
The Unexpected, by The Secret 7
There's a new Raymond Scott album! If you don't know Scott, here's a quick bio: he was a bandleader in the 40s, well-known for quirky, whimsical songs (many were used in Looney Tunes). In the 1950s he became interested in electronic music, and composed amazing pre-Moog marvels, including two albums designed to soothe babies. The Secret 7 is a group of jazz players headed by Scott and the 1959 album they recorded is called "The Unexpected." You can hear a Real Audio sample on the site. Be sure to look at the rest of Basta Music's offerings. They're a wonderful label out of Holland. Link
February 13, 2004
Marvel Masterworks: The Fantastic Four Vol 5
The 1960s were a wonderful time for Marvel comics. By this time, Jack Kirby had already created some of the most famous characters in pop culture, and was hitting his stride with fantastic stories and villains. (Stan Lee took the credit for the stories and characters, but it really was Kirby who wrote as well as illustrated everything. He told me so when I met him when I was 15, and I believe him.)
The lavishly produced hardcover edition of Marvel Masterworks: The Fantastic Four Vol 5, collects Fantastic Four #41-50 and the Fantastic Four Annual #3. These ten issues are arguably the zenith of Silver Age comics. The story arc introduces Galactus, one of the most awesome villains ever, and the Silver Surfer, who just exudes cool. I get shivers thinking about these comics. If you have never read Fantastic Four, I recommend you start with this book, then go back and buy Volumes 1-4, which are good, but not as good as the issues in Volume 5.
ABOUT MAD PROFESSOR
Mark Frauenfelder's Mad Professor Bizarre Science Experiments Book.
RECENT ENTRIES
Join Me!
The Da Vinci Code and Dan Brown's other novels
Bonnie's Household Organizer
Cure for the common cold
The Complete Crumb Comics, Vol 1-16
The Complete Peanuts 1950-1952, by Charles Schulz
Cool Tools
Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth
The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby: The First Graphic Novel
