the year of the kougin aman

A kougin aman--more properly a Kouign-amann--is a pastry: a little crumpled circle of flour and butter and caramelized sugar and specks of salt. It was the specialty of Alder, a wonderful little cafe that opened down the street from my house in the spring. By the beginning of this week, it was gone. (My son was inconsolable. I was, too, but maybe less demonstrative about it.) I ate many more kougin amans than I wrote posts on lacunae in 2011. That's fine; I needed a year (mostly) off. And now I can post here any time I want, but I can't have a kougin aman any time I want it. There's a parable in there somewhere. 

My friend Alissa just posted a list of her favorite pieces that she wrote in 2011; it's probably not a bad idea for me to do the same--

1) Comic-Con Strikes Again! --This is the Kindle Single that I wrote (very quickly) about the amazing week-long culture-clash of Comic-Con International. I really enjoyed putting it together, and I'm happy with how it turned out. (It's 99 cents, but if you don't feel like shelling out for it and you happen to use Amazon Prime, you can also borrow it for free.)

2) The Smiths Complete --a review for Pitchfork of the entire-Smiths-discography boxed set. For some reason I ended up writing about old albums a lot more than new albums this year, but this band was really good with words, and enough has been written about them that I tried to get a little more playful than usual here.

3) "Monsters Inc." --a.k.a. "how to write a feature about Lady Gaga if you can't interview Gaga, see her live, or hear her album within your lead time." My private title for this story was "Born This Way Has a Cold." It ended up being an excuse to focus on the thing I think is most interesting about Gaga: her unusual relationship with her fans. 

4) "Fate, Feathers and Death" --a New York Times Book Review piece on Anders Nilsen's remarkable Big Questions. 

5) "Britney in Miniature" --I've been doing a weekly column for Fuse on the relationship between new pop hits and older music; this one deliberately misreads Britney Spears' video teasers for "Hold It Against Me."

6) The Complete Case Files 05 --I've had more fun writing "Dredd Reckoning," my weekly blog on Judge Dredd books, than practically anything else I've done this year. This particular one, a dialogue with Tucker Stone on the volume where our action hero commits genocide, was a blast. 

I have a new thing out!

So I went to Comic-Con International in late July—as you might have gathered from the previous entry—and then I wrote a Kindle Single about it for Amazon. It’s called Comic-Con Strikes Again!, it’s 99 cents, and it’s all about what happens when fan culture collides with entertainment-business marketing. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out; I hope you like it too.

Notes from that Page One panel

At the “Page One” panel (with Jen Van Meter, Greg Rucka and Carla Speed McNeil) that I moderated at Comic-Con 2011, we discussed a bunch of opening pages of comics that we thought were particularly interesting or notable—that set the stage for what followed them in significant ways, or summed up the aesthetic of the whole project really well, or just offered a particularly compelling reason to keep reading. A few people have asked what the pages were that we showed and talked about, so here’s the list:

1. Bryan K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra and José Marzan Jr., Y: the Last Man #1

2. Kathryn Immonen and Stuart Immonen, Moving Pictures

3. Bryan Talbot, Heart of Empire #1

4. Jim Steranko, the Nick Fury story from Strange Tales #160

5. Charles Burns, Black Hole

6. Mario Hernandez, Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez and Dean Motter, *Mister X *#1

7. Neil Gaiman and Marc Hempel, The Sandman #57

8. Alison Bechdel, Fun Home

9. Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson, Kurt Busiek’s Astro City #1

10. Jaime Hernandez, Whoa, Nellie! #1

11. Bruce Jones and Brent Anderson, Somerset Holmes #1

12. Dennis O’Neil, Denys Cowan and Rick Magyar, The Question #1

13. Alan Moore and Ian Gibson, “The Ballad of Halo Jones” from 2000 AD #376

14. Jamie Delano and John Ridgway, Hellblazer #1

15. Alex Robinson, Box Office Poison

an entirely new procedure

Happy 2011: a number that, as somebody noted this morning, is a prime number, and the sum of a prime number of consecutive prime numbers. For what it’s worth.

I’ve just watched “Dinner for One,” the English-language (after its introduction) sketch that’s apparently a lot of non-English-speakers’ idea of what English-language comedy is all about. I can see why it’d be fun to watch once a year on a night associated with a lot of drinking.

As for what’s going on here: I spent the morning cooking—vegetarian Hoppin’ John (the same recipe a quick Google tells me I made eight years ago!), roasted Brussels sprouts, some steamed greens—and the afternoon hosting a little gathering of friends from around here, other states, and other countries. My friends are wonderful.

A couple of people asked for the veggie Hoppin’ John recipe, which I got from Crescent Dragonwagon. In brief:

Soak three cups of dried black-eyed peas, then drain, rinse, and simmer them until they’re soft in enough water to cover (you will need a big pot), along with a couple of canned chipotle chiles, a few bay leaves, an unpeeled onion with half a dozen cloves stuck in it, and couple of unpeeled heads of garlic. When they’re softened, add salt to taste; remove and discard the chipotles, the bay leaves and the onion, and remove but don’t discard the garlic.

While you’re cooking the black-eyed peas, sauté the following chopped-up things in another pan: a big onion, a few red and green peppers, some carrots, a few stalks of celery. Just enough to soften them a bit, really; then turn off the heat.

Back to the beans. Add three cups of water, bring it to a boil, add 1 1/2 cups of long-grain rice, reduce to a simmer, cover and cook for 10 minutes. Take the lid off, but don’t stir it; squeeze the garlic from the heads you boiled earlier onto the top, then put the sautéed vegetables on top, cover again, and simmer for another ten minutes. Turn off the heat and leave it alone for ten minutes. Then stir it up together and you’re done. It may need more salt; it can definitely use pepper; a dash of Tabasco is good if you’re into Tabasco. This serves a big party. We probably had 12 or 15 people eating it over here, and we still had a bit left over.

what I did in Los Angeles

I spent two memorable weeks in Los Angeles earlier this month, thanks to the USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Program. Here’s some of what I got to do:

Met Larry Bell. Had his image on the cover of “Sgt. Pepper’s” pointed out to me

Met Ed Moses. Saw the observation chair/throne he’s set up to view, from above, the room that displays his recent works—he makes a painting every day. Great quote from him: “I’m not an artist. What I do has no meaning. I’m not trying to express myself. What’s the other word I hate? ‘Creative.’” Was sternly informed by him that life is precious

Met art historian Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, and found out that she’s married to Dave Philp, the singer/guitarist of the Automatics, of “When the Tanks Roll Over Poland Again” ‘78 punk fame

Saw former Village Voice food columnist Jeff Weinstein, the deputy director of the program and the guy who was kind enough to host many late-night drink-ups in his suite, read a piece about Musso & Frank’s flannel cakes; he later took the whole group there for martinis and rice pudding

Met Edgar Arcenaux, the director of the Watts House Project, a group of artists who are decorating the houses across the street from Watts Towers, one of whose residents cooked lunch for our group

Sampled many, many kinds of gelato and ice cream with one of the other fellows, the marvelous gelato blogger Alissa Walker; the best one probably came from a Mexico-themed shopping mall a mile from Watts Towers

Heard some stories from L.A. Library Foundation president Ken Brecher, then took the Angels Flight shuttle down the big ol’ flight of stairs in downtown L.A. for what turned out to be the first of two times

Went up to Griffith Park Observatory on what I was told had to have been the prettiest night of the year and got my very first “ice pick headache”

Had a tour of Inner-City Arts and the New Carver Apartments (a recently built housing project for the formerly homeless, right by the freeway) and met their architect, Michael Maltzan

Got shown around The Grove by its developer Rick Caruso, a man who has ambitions

Got shown around the new L.A. Museum of the Holocaust by its architect, Hagy Belzberg, and was very impressed

Attempted to eat at the Nickel Diner with my 9-months-pregnant friend Maya, only to find that it was closed for a movie shoot, but the guy who shooed us away called us back and said “hey, the trailer for the extras is just across the street—go over there and look like an extra, they’ll give you a good breakfast,” which they did; Maya looked over my itinerary for the two weeks and said “wow, you guys are really hitting all the high points of the WEST SIDE POWER ELITE, aren’t you?”

Went to the Getty and got a tour of their panel-painting restoration studio, special-collections division, and the Conservation Institute Lab, where they showed us the shattered plastic chunks of the original version of Craig Kauffman’s “Untitled Wall Relief, 1967.” Also toured the paintings division. Most impressive famous painting: James Ensor’s “Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889.” My favorite that I’d never heard of: Bouguereau’s “A Young Girl Defending Herself Against Eros”

Ate dinner at the incredible Oaxacan restaurant Guelaguetza with food critic Jonathan Gold and Slake editor Laurie Ochoa

Wandered around LACMA, met with some of the higher-ups there, and particularly enjoyed looking at the George Grosz drawings and Moholy-Nagy’s “Diary of a Fly”

Went to the Machine Project, where Emily Lacy sang a song about the organization’s history and Mark Allen taught us to solder

Had a half-day writing workshop with Irene Borger, which gave me some interesting ideas for what I might want to try doing next

Visited Steve Roden at his house, the last surviving American “bubble house” built by Wallace Neff. Then got a tour of Roden’s show at the Armory, which is really fantastic, esp. a piece called “fallen/spoken,” a “translation” of a book of poetry by Pår Lagerkvist which he’s attempted to do without benefit of actually knowing any Swedish

Wandered through the “China Modern” exhibition at the Pacific Asia Museum; boggled at the Cultural Revolution-era propaganda art

Bought way too many CDs at Amoeba, not that anyone would have predicted otherwise

Went to a lovely party at a former editor’s place, and saw a bunch of people I knew from the ’90s NYC pop-culture-crit scene

Had an hour-long conversation about the visual aesthetics of superhero comic books with Henry Jenkins (in front of an audience!); that was followed by a wonderful dinner at The Gorbals, a bizarre little pan-cultural restaurant in a SRO hotel where the menu includes “round of beers for the kitchen staff: $10” and where, after the rest of the customers went home, Sasha Anawalt (the wonderful director of our program, and a former dance critic, who appears to be able to befriend anyone in 45 seconds flat) convinced one of the waitresses to crank up the ambient-volume drum ‘n’ bass in the restaurant and demonstrate her impressive street dance technique

Dipped a finger into the Los Angeles River; heard from at least eight people I mentioned this to that I really ought to watch “Chinatown” sometime

Spent a day at Disneyland, including a backstage tour of the Indiana Jones ride; saw “Captain Eo,” which was awful but fascinating; was most impressed by the Enchanted Tiki Room, which is astrophysics-grade kitsch and should by all rights be awful but is actually fantastic, largely because it holds nothing back in the name of potential “good taste”

Heard Ed Ruscha’s name mentioned more times each day than I’ve heard it mentioned in the previous 40 years. Saw a lot of Ruscha’s paintings. A lot

Had lunch with Barbara Kruger, a walking tour of downtown with David Ulin, and dinner with Luis Alfaro, who is adorable and took pictures of all of us wearing a pair of sunglasses he carries everywhere to take pictures of people wearing—all the same day

Toured Case Study House #22, a.k.a. Stahl House, the beautiful house where this picture was taken; Mrs. Stahl still lives there, and she and her son were both very sweet to us as we consecutively tried to restage that photo

Saw a fascinating lecture by Josh Kun about the Mexican regional music scene in L.A., which is gigantic

Visited the Sheats-Goldstein Residence, a.k.a. the villain’s house from “The Big Lebowski”; all the furniture, and I mean ALL, is triangular slabs of concrete with gray-leather-covered triangular mattresses; the property also includes a gorgeous James Turrell “Skyspace,” which the owner has taken it upon himself to trick out with ca. 1997 Ibiza techno

Hung out in my very rare off-hours with a bunch of comics people, a novelist and a cupcake expert

Saw Esa-Pekka Salonen conduct Lindberg and Bartok pieces with the L.A. Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall, preceded by a meeting with the LA Phil’s CEO

Attended a screening, curated & hosted by Manohla Dargis (who I didn’t know is the daughter of the guy who founded St. Mark’s Bookshop!), of short films about L.A., some of which were very impressive—I really really liked the 10-minute excerpt we got of Charles Burnett’s “Killer of Sheep,” and also enjoyed John Milius’ 1967 short “Marcello, I’m So Bored” (sound editing by George Lucas!) and Thom Andersen’s newish “Get Out of the Car,” the latter of which seemed fairly closely aligned in some ways with Lisa’s aesthetic

Had dinner with a cast of champions, including Barbara Isenberg and Pat Flanagan, at the wonderful scene-doyenne Lyn Kienholz’s place. Drank a glass of wine. Might have gotten a little effusive about toasting my co-fellows

Then came home to Portland, my head spinning.

normal service to resume

…as soon as we figure out what normal service is around here.

As of very shortly, I’m gonna be away from my computer for a week and a half or so (so if you send me an email I’m not going to be able to respond until I’m back, but don’t let that stop you).

The time-consuming project I was working on and hinting vaguely about was Rolling Stone’s “The Beatles: 100 Greatest Songs” special issue, which is out now. Since I always need to have something to hint vaguely about, I’ll say that I have an unrelated small but nifty piece of news, which I’d thought I’d be able to announce by now but actually won’t be public for a few more days yet. Tell you when I get back.

firecracker firecracker

Boom boom boom, as Half Japanese said. Hi. The fireworks are going off, there’s a singer/guitarist on the other side of the lake with a loud amplifier and a middling command of the Beatles catalogue, there’s the lingering scent of corn-on-the-cob in the air: it’s summer.

This coming Tuesday is a bit of an event for me: the release of Smooth Sounds: Various Artists Play the Future Hits of WCKR SPGT, one of the four times I can think of that a recording I performed on has been released by somebody else. WCKR SPGT wrote a whole bunch of songs specifically for their admirers to perform; I got one called “Kurt Cobain Will Have His Revenge on the City of Los Angeles,” which I arranged in a style I like to think of as “Ned’s Atomic Dustbin outtake.”

A few things I’ve written lately: on Jesse Reklaw’s Ten Thousand Things to Do, comics that should run forever, Alan Moore and Alan Davis’s D.R. and Quinch, what digital comics are worth, and supervillain comics, all over at Techland; on Konono No. 1, the Television Personalities, and Tender Trap, over at Pitchfork; on a bunch of recent graphic novels, for the New York Times Book Review.

And that’s not counting the project that occupied a lot of the last month, which should be surfacing sometime later this summer. Details when they’re public.

k.t. cruet

So this is springtime, and what have I done? April consisted of a lot of running around, mostly: Seattle, where I gave a talk and appeared on a panel at the Experience Music Project's Pop Conference (respectively on the future of the technology of listening to music and on indie music in the '00s); White River Junction, where I got to meet with students at the Center for Cartoon Studies; New York, where I appeared on a panel at the MoCCA festival; and Seattle again for a DJ gig, and remembering that I don't get to DJ nearly often enough. Mostly, I've been in Portland, where... I hung out with my family and sang a bit of karaoke.

Otherwise, the last couple of months have involved a lot of writing, of course: always writing. The 25th anniversary issue of SPIN had a piece I wrote about the relationship between '80s music zine culture and contemporary music blog culture (it's not online, as far as I can tell). Over at Salon, I wrote about the new gay character in Archie comics; at Time, I interviewed David Byrne about Here Lies Love; at eMusic, I wrote about the lost soul hits of the '60s and '70s; at Hilobrow, I wrote a brief appreciation of Agnetha Faltskög. For 48HR Magazine, or whatever the youngsters are calling it these days, I wrote about James Brown's uncomfortable intersections with the Hustle. I also wrote a ton of stuff at Techland, including an interview with Grant Morrison about his current Batman-related work. And I scratched my head about the very enjoyable "Exit Through the Gift Shop" at the NAJP's ARTicles blog.

April's Emanata columns at Techland included a guide to where to start with Love & Rockets, an appreciation of Brendan McCarthy's recent Marvel comics, a look at flash-forwards, a piece about sense-of-place in S.H.I.E.L.D. and Market Day, and an expression of irritation at the end of Blackest Night. May's were an essay on the relationship between the future of digital comics and the past of digital music, an assessment of Brian Michael Bendis's wrap-up of the last few years' Avengers titles, a guide for prospective Final Crisis readers, and--I was particularly happy about this one--eight questions for comics creators.

Next month, of course, I'm hoping to get some actual work done. I'm giving a lecture at the Portland Art Museum on the 13th; I've also got a massive assignment on an undisclosed subject that's due right around then, so I may be going into a hibernation-like state. I have no idea whether this means another extended absence from this blog or a frantic burst of activity. I'm hoping the latter. 

march, forth

Updates here continue to be infrequent and not-really-news-filled. That will change, for the better, sooner or later. But here’s my monthly what-I’ve-been-up-to check-in:

A New York Times Book Review piece on a handful of vintage-comic-strip reprint books

A bunch of columns and features at Techland, including pieces on Jason Shiga’s Meanwhile, on Punisher Max and Cry for Justice, on Siege and Krazy Kat, and on music in comics

A couple of features on eMusic: on the Chills’ Submarine Bells and on a bunch of Sub Pop albums

A few reviews at Pitchfork: the Nigeria Afrobeat Special compilation and the Kleenex/LiLiPUT live album

A quick review of Jules Feiffer’s memoir Backing Into Forward over at the Barnes & Noble Review

A pair of brief appreciations for Hilobrow: Lady Gaga and Rick Rubin’s Queen remixes

My first post at the NAJP’s blog ARTicles, on Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez’s outstanding Perfumes: The A-Z Guide

So: a reasonably productive month word-count-wise. Not as productive in other ways, maybe, but that’s what April will be for, right?

shaking like a willow or a daffodil

Things I’ve done in the past month:

*Reviewed the Canadian hardcore band Fucked Up’s Couple Tracks over at Pitchfork

*Wrote a couple of pieces over at Thought Catalog, on The Magnetic Fields’ Realism and Spider-Man’s search for a father substitute (and also covered a Magnetic Fields show for Vulture)

*Visited New York City and had a whole lot of meetings with people and saw Saffire, not the “uppity blues women” Saffire but the “awesome very young women who blew the roof off the Willie Mae Rock Camp benefit” Saffire

*Wrote a bunch of pieces for Techland, including an ongoing weekly column on comics that’s going by the name “Emanata”: on The Question #37, on DMZ, on DC’s new top dogs (plus an interview with them), on Kick-Ass, on the sources of Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, and on Batman and Robin. And I wrote my first-ever piece in Time proper: a very, very short blurb on the excellent new Joanna Newsom album.

*Interviewed the great Kevin O’Neill at length over at The Comics Journal

*Saw Richard Thompson play a two-set show here in Portland that was being recorded for a live album: one set of unreleased new material, one of old faves—his songwriting’s in steep decline (I was kind of boggled that he wrote a song about Burning Man, and wondered if he’d actually been there), but his guitar playing is actually still getting even better; if there are 24-year-old guitarists who are even vaguely in his neighborhood I’d love to know about them

*Discovered that chatroulette is much, much more fun if you do it with a) friends and b) multiple singing puppets

I’ll keep up more if you keep up more, how’s about that?