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This is the fifth of Tim Biskup's books of his tiny paintings. Jackson 500 Volume Three has 100 business-card sized paintings in it, reproduced at full size.
It's my favorite so far, because he is moving in new and interesting directions. Away from flatness and towards form. Away from simple emotions towards more complex ones. In his introduction, Biskup writes that "things fell apart" in his life recently and that he's "let a lot of anger and sadness into my work in the last year, but there is aslso a certain kind of joy to it that is new as well."
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Graphic designer and cartoon historian Leslie Cabarga, went to great pains to clean up the excellent artwork in this 480-page homage to Casper the Friendly Ghost.
I've always been a fan of a clean line in cartooning, and the Harvey artists who drew Casper were masters of this appealing style. I loved Casper comics as a child, and seeing them again with adult eyes, I can understand why. The presentation draws you in immediately. I prefer to the scratchy hyper-dynamic, border-busting work that's so prevalent in contemporary comics. Today's cartoonists could learn much from the Harvey style.
Casper the Friendly Ghost has a knowledgeable introduction by Cartoon Brew's terrific animation historian Jerry Beck.
Dark Horse, the publisher, also has been publishing a terrific multi-volume anthology of Little Lulu comic books, which I highly recommend.
Automata maker extraordinaire Dug North says:
I went into an antique shop that was going out of business and picked up a large-format magazine/book entitled How to Make It. The book is made up of selected excerpts from Science and Invention Magazine published in 1926. You would not believe the stuff in there -- some of it really cool and really dangerous.
- An motor-powered ice sled that uses a sawmill-sized circular blade as the front wheel.
- A brazing torch powered by gasoline
- An airplane using a motorcycle engine
- A xylophone/thumb-piano made of razor blades
- A motor driven mono-wheel that you ride inside of
- And so on...
It made me think of you and your magazine.
The lurid images and garish colors found on the covers of Mexican exploitation pulps are a source of inspiration to me. Mexican Pulp Art is a 140-page celebration of Mexican pulp novel and comic book covers from the 1960s and 1907s. Published by Feral House, the color reproduction of these images is superb.
The artists who painted these images -- space aliens, three headed reptilian beasts, sexy but dangerous spacegirls in tight catsuits, fire breathing disembodied ghoul heads, demonic children, drug addled hoodlums, animated corpses, and tentacled giant flying eyeballs, etc. -- were clearly having a grand time.
Don't be fooled by the seemingly primitive subject matter -- the backgrounds and overall composition of the paintings are masterful and worthy of careful study. $13.22 on Amazon
I first learned about Vallance from Re/Search's Pranks book, where he recounted his now-famous 1978 art stunt of taking a thawed frozen supermarket chicken to a pet cemetery in Los Angeles and straight-facedly requesting it be given a proper burial. (The tombstone read, "Blinky, The Friendly Hen).
His current exhibit contains bits and pieces of his past, each of which carries some kind of personal significance. The items are house in beautiful displays.
LinkThe fragmentary Orange Crush bottle, for example, bears witness to a childhood trauma. “One night during the summer of 1966,” reads the accompanying text, “our family went to the Canoga Park Drive-in Theater to watch Fantastic Voyage. My stepfather brought along bottles of Orange Crush soda. He did not explain why, but instead of a bottle opener he had brought along a pair of pliers to open the bottles. At a certain point during the movie, he said that he would open everyone’s bottles with the pliers. But for some reason, I didn’t want my drink just yet.
“Later, when I got thirsty, my stepfather refused to open the Orange Crush for me. Instead he handed me the bottle and the pliers. I tried in vain to open the bottle — after about 15 minutes I managed only to shake it up, real good. At last, in one violent cataclysm, the bottleneck exploded, sending sharp shards of glass and sticky orange soda pop all over the seats, the ceiling, the windows and the rest of the family. Boy, was I in trouble now! And still thirsty.”
(Click on thumbnails for enlargement) This beautiful hardbound book from Fantagraphics (and what book by Fantagraphics isn't beautifully-produced, I ask you?) reprints the first 3 issues of Ivan Brunetti's misanthropic, black-humored, comic book, Schizo.
By all rights I should be depressed from reading Brunetti's comic strips, gag cartoons, parodies, and multi-page autobiographical stories, but his absurd sense of humor cuts through the bummer factor for me.
Not for kids! $16.47 on Amazon
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This delightful picture book traces the history of outrageous street fashions developed by girls in Japan. From the mean street "bad girls" of he 1960s up to the blackface-makeup wearing manba of today, this book provides a fascinating look at a rich and weird subculture.
The photos and illustrations by Kazumi Nonaka are terrific. $11.53 on Amazon.com
This is an excellent, tragic tale of an impoverished documentary filmmaker who gets involved with a bad-news buddy in horse race fixing scheme, which turns out badly. Worse, the bookies he owes money to seem to love hurting deadbeats more than they love money.
The tile or Keith Dixon's tight, modern-noir tale is a good indicator of the protagonist's M.O. -- I think he is ready to check out, but he wants to end his life in a risky, thrilling way, and still have a chance of making it out alive on the other side.
Released last year, The Art of Losing deserves more attention than it received. $16.47 on Amazon
First published in 1963, this tall board book for little kids has some of the cutest illustrations I've ever seen. My 9-year-old and 4-year-old daughter both love looking at the book, and I enjoy reading it to them.
Gyo Fujikawa's drawings of babies and toddlers is full of sly humor, and is dead-on accurate in depicting moods, actions, and behaviors of youngsters. It's an excellent reference for artists, too. I keep it in my studio. $5.99 at Amazon.com
I enjoy novels that take place in circuses, carnivals, sideshows, etc. The characters are usually flawed and desperate, the jargon is colorful and evocative, the plots are urgent and compelling. The books are great escapes from my life as a desk jockey.
Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants is no exception. The story takes place during the Great Depression. The main character is a young veterinary student who is about to graduate from Cornell when disaster strikes, leaving him penniless and homeless. He jumps a train, which ends up belonging to a circus run by a sociopathic ringmaster. He gets a job in the circus, working under the supervision of the circus' sadistic and paranoid schizophrenic equestrian director. Naturally, our hero falls for his boss' wife, which leads to all kinds of trouble.
The chapters alternate between the protagonist's miserable and humdrum existence in a nursing home at the age of 90 (or 93; he can't remember), and his exciting life in the circus as a young man. To be honest, I could have done without the nonagenarian chapters, which I found really depressing. The rest of the book makes up for it, though. $8.37 on Amazon
This 200 page book contains 200 stunts presented in the form of one page comics. Sam Bartlett's prankish sense of whimsy is reminiscent of the best kind of street theater and performance art -- it's thought provoking, funny, and at times mildly annoying.
There's much useful information to be gleaned here: how to make it look as if you have a "rubber knee," how to draw on both sides of a piece of paper at the same time with one pen, how to flip a three-fingered bird (when a two-fingered bird just won't do), how to pop your knuckles for maximum effect; how to slice a banana before peeling it, how to open a beer bottle with your eye socket, and how to make scary looking teeth out of an orange peel.
If you have kids, they'll love you even more when you try out these stunts on them. Kids like to be teased much more than grownups. $20 at Elderly Instruments
Also of interest:
• Pranks
• Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic
• Be the Coolest Dad on the Block
This is the best book on painting instruction I've come across. The author, John Howard Sanden, paints like one of my favorite painters, John Singer Sargent, and he produces portraits using the alla prima method -- in his words, "I attempt to execute a finished painting from the very first stroke, without traditional intermediate steps as toning, underpainting, glazing, or scumbling. And I try to complete the entire painting in one sitting, if possible."
His approach can be summarized as "observation and selection," and every chapter offers his information-rich advice on how to do that. I have way too many instructional art books that show complex diagrams for anatomical proportions, color theories, and weird compositional schemes. These mean nothing to me, and I suspect the artists who include these in their books don't use their own teaching methods. Not so with Sanden. He's a no-bullshit teacher. He admits that his "direct attack" style results in many failures, but that just means you rub off the paint and start over. Because when you eventually get it right, this method produces awe inspiring work.
It's a mystery to me why this book is out of print! Fortunately, used copies are available, and the price is reasonable. From $42.29 on Amazon
A few weeks ago I went to see movie version of The Hoax and enjoyed it. It's the true story of a writer named Clifford Irving who, in 1971, wrote an "as told to" autobiography of reclusive weirdo billionaire Howard Hughes. Irving never met or communicated with Hughes, but he was able to fool the publisher and the rest of the world for an entire year. When he finally got caught, he was sent to prison for two years.
I had a feeling Irving's book, The Hoax, would be even better than the movie, and it was. It's a nail-biter. Irving and his partner Richard Susskind's audacity, resourcefulness, and extraordinary dumb luck were almost, but not quite, enough to allow them to pull off the literary fraud of the century.
The most surprising thing to me was how Irving was able to keep his elaborate lie a secret. Only he, his wife, his mistress, and Susskind knew the truth. In the half-dozen or so times that it looked like all was lost and that he was about to be exposed and shamed, he miraculously managed not only to squirm out of it, but to actually bolster the charade that he really was meeting Hughes on a regular basis. When he finally does get inescapably ensnared in his lies, it's for a reason he never had considered.
I love real life thrillers like this. If you know of any other true stories that have the same kind of exciting tension, please let me know. Buy for $11.66 on Amazon
Houses in Japan are typically very small and not very private. Opportunities for couples to be intimate with one another are rare. As a result, Japan is full of "love hotels" containing rooms you can rent by the hour.
Often, love hotels have playful themes, and this book featuring beautiful photos by Misty Keasler documents the humorous and bizarre styles you'll find in love hotels -- igloos, doctor offices, Hello Kitty S&M chambers, rooms that look like subway cars, alien abduction rooms that look like they are part of a spaceship, jungles, churches, libraries, and pirates quarters. Disney's Imagineers could not have done a better job designing these inviting, exciting, playful areas for couples to be romantic. I wish they had these kinds of love hotels in the US. Parents with young kids would come in droves. $26.40 at Amazon
$14.16 on AmazonThe seventh volume in this distinguished series focuses entirely on one of comics’ most esteemed and influential creators: artist, writer and, editor Harvey Kurtzman, whose complete Comics Journal interviews are collected in this oversized, lavishly illustrated full-color edition. Every stage of Kurtzman’s landmark career is represented, beginning with his entry into comics via superhero stories for Ace from 1943-46 (Mr. Risk, Lash Lightning), World War II-era Army cartoons, early humor work for Timely and Toby Press (Rusty, Pig Tales, Genius, and Hey Look!), his first collaborations with John Severin and Will Elder at Prize Comics Western, and, of course, his groundbreaking period at EC as editor of Two-Fisted Tales, Frontline Combat and Mad. Kurtzman’s undeservedly lesser known post-Mad career at Trump, Humbug, and Help! is also given its due and examined in depth. What makes this volume particularly noteworthy is the obscurities unearthed from Kurtzman’s solo freelance career – from Children’s Digest, Pageant, U.S. Crime, Varsity and Why – most of which haven’t been seen since their original publication. All of which illustrate the most informative and compelling interviews with Kurtzman ever published.
Written for kids 11 and older, Tales of the Cryptids is a joyful, non-scary introduction to cryptozoology. It is realistic, non-sensational, and hopeful. My 9-year-old daughter and I marveled at the heavily-illustrated pages about Bigfoot, sasquatches, yetis, and the Loch Ness Monster, as well as animals I've never heard of, such as ngume-monene, komgamato, and mapinguari. What a fun way to inspire a sense of wonder in your kids and yourself. $13.45 on Amazon.com
Published in the form of a leather-bound hymnal or sacred text, The Book of Secrets is filled with short, little-known facts an anecdotes on science, sex, politics, history, and other subjects. The first entry in the book shares 10 secrets for "attracting beautiful women," followed by the "secret German link between Elvis, Frank Sinatra, and The Beatles."
I enjoyed the "secret tricks of the trade" section. Here's a trick for an actor: "A wise old actor once told Michael Caine, 'don't act like a drunk man. Act like a drunk man trying to be sober.'"
Some of the entries can hardly be considered secrets, but they're entertaining nonetheless.
Anyone who is a fan of Tony Millionaire's gruesomely funny comic strip Maakies will love this anthology of his early work. Millionaire's take on the hard facts of life and the absurdity of humanity is simultaneously uplifting and depressing -- it's the heroin and cocaine speedball of the comic book world. It also has the greatest width-to-height ratio of any book I've ever come across. $16.47 on Amazon
I love redneck sayings, because they're funny and (often, painfully) true. This book, Redneck Words of Wisdom: Real-life Expressions, Advice, Commentary, and Observations from Some of the Smartest People Around... Rednecks, is a compilation of hundreds of colorful, politically incorrect, and downright filthy expressions that sum up just about every imaginable plausible scenario of the human condition.
Here are a few:
- I was as mad as a three-legged dog trying to bury a turd on an icy pond.
- It's harder than trying to stick a wet noodle in a wildcat's ass.
- It's kinda like puttin' gas in a car you've already wrecked.
- It's tougher than a two-dollar steak.
- Noisier than two skeletons screwing on a tin roof.
- That guy's harder to catch than my wife's boyfriend.
- Busier than a set of jumper cables at a Mexican funeral.
My wife Carla recently read Hilary Carlip's Queen of the Oddballs: And Other True Stories from a Life Unaccording to Plan. We met Hilary about ten years ago in Los Angeles and run in to her from time to time. She's a very pleasant, funny person, but we had no idea that her life was and is so interesting!
Carla says: "Queen of the Oddballs is a fun, fast read and that Hillary's life is like a baby boomer version of Lucy Ricardo's. Hillary is always involved in some kind of scheme to get on stage, or under the spotlight. Her schemes can be pretty outrageous (like stalking Carole King all summer with a detective-like methodology until she finally ended up in her home - and became friends with her.) $11.16 on Amazon
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Drew Friedman is a supremely talented caricaturist whose work is reminiscent of Mad's Will Elder. His black and white portaits of celebrities -- most often B-listers well past their prime -- are always funny and dead-on. Like all great caricaturists, Friedman's portraits look more like the people he's drawing than the people themselves do.
Old Jewish Comedians, published by Fantagraphics under Monte Beauchamps Blab! imprint, is a large hardbound book with portraits of a couple of dozen -- what else? -- old Jewish comedians, such as Milton Berle, Groucho Marx, Jerry Lewis, and Larry Fine. I only know about half of the comedians depicted in the book, but I even enjoyed (perhaps moreso) the ones I'd never heard of (like Menasha Skulnik), because Friedman's portraits of liver-spotted old guys performing schtick mugs they've been perfecting in the Catskills for 50 years are stories in themselves. $10.17 on Amazon
This is a book I've dreamed about writing for years. Fortunately, I procrastinated long enough that someone came along who is much more knowledgeable than I am about mid twentieth century animation. That someone is Amid Amidi, an animation history veteran and the publisher and editor of the great Animation Blast magazine. When he told me, a few years ago, that he had a proposal for a book about fifties animation, I immediately hooked him up with my editor and friend at Chronicle Books, Alan Rapp, and told him he had to pounce on this. Alan didn't need any arm twisting — he recognized Amidi's talent as a writer and animation connoisseur.
Cartoon Modern traces the history of this era of highly stylized animation, which drew heavily on jazz music, surrealism, and a sense of "rebellion against the fluid realism of Disney animation" (although a number of Disney animators pioneered the look of 50s animation).
If you've ever marveled at the flat, bold, and sophisticated art in Gerald McBoingBoing, you'll love finding out more about this wonderful era in animation, an era that today's animators like Craig McCracken (Powerpuff Girls) mine for inspiration. $26.40 on Amazon
The first time I saw Basil Wolverton's grotesque and absurd drawings in a reprint of Mad magazine it gave me hope, because I realized that you can be an adult and still have a sense of playfulness.
Wolverton was billed as a "producer of preposterous pictures of peculiar people." His characters have giant, throbbing warts, unchecked tumorous growths, dilated pores oozing with viscous sebum, tongues with luxuriant coats of hair, organs growing on the outside, and ears inhabited by creatures that are even uglier than their host. But instead of being repellent, they're funny and lovable.
I stand in awe of this genius, an artist whose work can stand proudly next to Dali or any other surrealist. $37.71 and up on Amazon
For the first several years of Wired's existence, the front four pages of every issue consisted of two-double page spreads filled with stunning art and a profound quote from one of the stories in that issue. Creative director John Plunkett oversaw the design and editor Louis Rossetto selected the quote. It was one of my favorite parts of the magazine, and I was sorry to see it go.
In 1996, Wired's short lived book division, Hardwired, published an anthology of these intro pages, calling it Mind Grenades: Manifestoes from the Future. Ten years (!) later, the quotes and art still have impact.
Best of all, the book is dirt cheap on Amazon. Used copies go for as little as 50 cents.
Science project books usually fall in one of two categories: ones filled with easy projects that aren't very exciting, and ones with nearly impossible projects requiring lots of time and or money. Cy Tymony's two books, Sneaky Uses for Everyday Things and Sneakier Uses for Everyday Things fall into a rare third category: moderately easy experiments that can be completed in an hour or two, don't require exotic materials, and are exciting.
Here are some of the projects in his books:
Learn how to:
- Turn a Calculator into a Metal Detector
- Carry a Survival Kit in a Shoestring
- Make a Gas Mask with a Balloon
- Turn Dishwashng Liquid into a Copy Machine
- Convert a Styrofoam Cup into a Speaker,
- Make a James Bond Spy Jacket
- Turn a Penny into a Radio
- Make a Flood Alarm with an Aspirin
- Change Milk into Plastic
- Extract Water and Electricity from Thin Air
- Turn on a TV with Your Ring
Detzer's story is sad and fascinating. The parts where he tries to make a connection between his addiction and that of his distant-relative, Vlad The Impaler (the real-life, blood-drinking-from-human-skull-cups basis for Dracula) are a little weak, but fortunately he focuses on his desperate search for more poppies as his life unravels around him.
Poppies was written in 1988. I don't believe Detzer has written anything else, which is a shame. He's an excellent writer.
From the back cover:
$10 on Amazon.comEric Detzer was the other kind of junkie. His clothes were clean, his arms clear of needle marks. He held a responsible, interesting job. His wife and two children could depend on him for love and support. And for eighteen years Eric Detzer's mind and body could not function without regular doses of opiates, the same opiates in the heroin mainlined by street junkies.
From his early days, sharing needles with hookers in San Francisco tenements, to his midnight forays stealing poppy plants from old ladies' gardens in rural Washington, Detzer's picture of drug addiction conveys both the absurd and the frightening facets of the disease.
The ravages of withdrawal during the poppy's off-season, the euphoria induced by Detzer's special narcotic tea, the impossible Jekyll and Hyde act of an addict's daily life are discribed without sel-pity or sermons.
Poppies is not for the squeamish. You will be immersed in the nightmare of Detzer's addiction and exhausted by his battle to regain sanity and self-respect. Above all, you will discover an exciting narrative voice that entertains with outrageous humor while telling an extraordinary story.
Eric Detzer is a psychiatric social worker who has publshed numerous articles in his field. He lives and works in Washington.
Excerpt:
Very potent, low cost opium is available in virtually very town in the country. It is entirely possible that it is carried by your local grocer. It's even possible that you could walk into a grocery store and come out with all the ingredients you need to make your own morphine and perhaps even heroin if you're clever.Here's an excerpt from an Amazon review:
Following Mr. Hogshire's advice I took my self down to West 28th street and bought a bunch of dried ornamental poppies. I ground them, sifted them, made tea out of them, drank it and got as high as I have ever been. As a point of reference, I have had morphine for a broken leg; this tea was both stronger and longer lasting.$13.95 on AmazonLike all narcotics occasional use led to daily use which led to addiction and to a nightmare of recovery that took over a year out of my productive life. I very nearly ruined my marriage, my career and everything else that mattered to me. Finally in abject humiliation and with the deepest gratitude I found people who could and did end my nightmare. My life is improving as is my health, but I have a long way to go to make up for the lies I told everyone including myself.
$9.97 at AmazonWhen you're stuck for an ending, go back to your beginning.
When stymied for a way to end your piece, g back to the first line, the first paragraph, the first page, the first chapter, and reread it several times. Since opposites tend to meet in some mysterious way, you will often discover that the ending is somehow logically implied in the beginning and that your very first ideas somehow also contain a logical conclusion.
The man-made world is complex, and the way things work is usually a big mystery. But after reading David Macauley's ingeniously-illustrated The New Way Things Work, you'll see that many of the complicated machines and systems around you are based on fairly-easy-to-understand principles.
David Macauly, an architect and former junior high school teacher uses whimsical but light-bulb-over-the-head inducing illustrations to explain the principles behind toilet tanks, automatic transmissions, ball point pens, bookbinding, musical instruments, nuclear energy, digital computers, holography, batteries, can openers, and dozens of other everyday things that make modern life so pleasant.
There's a lifetime worth of education between the covers of this 400-page book. Every time I open it, I feel a deep respect for the unknown geniuses of the world who have made things so wonderful for us fat and lazy consumers. $23.10 on Amazon
Who would have imagined that a book about children being choked, strangled, smothered, drowned, poisoned, stabbed, immolated, and frozen could be funny? when Edward Gorey does it, as he did in The Gashltcrumb Tinies, it's downroght hilarious. This little hardbound book is an A-Z of unfortunate child deaths, told as a running poem. I read it to my 8-year-old, but not my 3-year-old. I don't think my 3-year-old will be ready for it when she's 8, either. She is the more sensitive of my two girls. $9.00 on Amazon
