(no subject)

[dr_tectonic]

I just got sucked into staying up late reading Alison Bechdel's Fun House, which is an amazingly good piece of literature. I recommend it highly.

Mom brought a box of old photos by yesterday and we spent a few hours looking through them. It was really nice.

Family reunion today (my stepfather's family). I always feel bad because lots of people recognize me and call me by name right away, and I'm reasonably good at recognizing faces, but awful with names. I think this is because my brain is trying to track about 10 unrelated tribes of people and that's really too many, so I try to assuage my guilt by assuming that I know a lot more people than most of my relatives do, though perhaps I'm just lame. Said hello to lots of indeterminately distant relatives, ate too much too quick after skipping breakfast, and tossed around a big frisbee-thing with an 8-year old. It was good.

I made corn-and-bean salad for the reunion. For Movie Night tonight, I made mango salsa and quesadillas. (Made them both last night, and I think they were improved by marinating overnight in the fridge.) I have discovered two Rules of Mangos: don't bother with them out of season, and don't bother with the ones at the regular grocery store -- go to the ethnic grocery store, because they get them seasonally and they get different varieties of them.

We watched The Women (1939), and I found it reasonably entertaining. The big picture isn't fantastic, but there are lots of good moments. It was also very interesting to see a movie where there are no men on-screen ever, and how they worked with that constraint.

Comments

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

Oh, Fun Home is amazing. And it's also amazing how successful it's been--recently I saw two copies, a first edition with quotes from tiny little LGBT newspapers and stuff, and a brand new edition with quotes from the New York Times and places like that. (Many of them saying what amounted to "For a comic book this is really good!")

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I kinda wish that people would get over the whole "Hey Kids, Comics!" thing and accept them as just another literary form, as capable of being dreck or significant as anything else. But I'm sure books like Fun Home will help.

Hey, when you're tired of your current course, you should teach a literary comics course, eh? I would totally audit that in my free time. You'll have to teach it online. (Right, sez Jessie, that's exactly what I want in my classes: non-trad distance-learning students with no background in literature who can tell embarrassing stories about me.)

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I mean, Proust jokes! Who can sneer at a literary form that makes Proust jokes!

But I'm not even remotely qualified to teach a comics course, I don't have the background or the vocabulary. Someone with some visual chops should do it, and probably does. You could sign up, though, if you're taking it in your "free time" it would be like doing stuff over IAP and you'd never get there!

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

If either of you find one of these, I'd love to hear about it.

The closest I've come is reading Scott McCloud, slowly, and thinking over what he's said as compared with what I learned in mah olde Communications classes.

Here's one thought along those lines: an online discussion club for literary comics. Bechdel, McCloud, Satrepi , maybe Seth though I don't know his work very well...

I certainly don't have enough time or qualifications to lead it, but I'd be quite interested in participating. I can think of at least two other locals (elbie_in_waterloo & thingo ... maybe others) who would enjoy it.

[drdeleto.livejournal.com]

Hey, Scott McCloud's at Time Warp comics in Boulder tonight from 5 (i.e., now) until 7pm. Probably too late, but I just now heard about it.

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

The NYT review was actually quite solid: "Throughout the memoir, but most especially here, the magic of the graphic format emerges. Ms. Bechdel's qualms, trepidation and excitement emerge from the words and images working together. Somehow adding the two ingredients together conveys more than either one could do alone."

It really is a marvelous memoir. I think both da_lj and I teared up while we read it.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Yes. A few times, I think.

[chaosqueen42.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to have missed The Women, and the quesadillas. We opted to stay in, plus we weren't sure whether the movie would be Mommy Dearest, which I wasn't up for. Could you tell which character I played when we did the play in high school? Hint: I mispronounced the name of a famous composer until the director corrected me, and told me who he was.

Alison Bechdel and I share the same alma mater.

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

Hmm... the Countess?

[chaosqueen42.livejournal.com]

Oop, I guess I don't remember all the character names. Edith, maybe? The one with eight children, who carelessly drops cigarette ash on a newly-born infant while nursing.

"I hate this dress. My husband always says I look as if I'm about to sing Wagner in it."

Looked like "wag-ner" to me.

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

Ah! That was my other guess. =)