Birthdays

I have a birthday in a couple of weeks. I'll be 35.
I'm old.
I know age is just a number and all that, but it does a number on my head. On the one hand, I still have this image of what an "adult" is: an adult has a career, not a job, an adult is the boss not the lackey, an adult has a house and a car and is never broke and has a family. I don't have any of those things: I'm still in school so I haven't started my career, I don't have my own car, we rent an apartment, I'm a busser in a restaurant, I'm not even a manager or a supervisor, and I'm always broke. I don't necessarily want those things. Or I don't want them if it means working 9 to 5 with a suit and a tie in a cubicle doing menial clerical type work. Ick.
Still, even if I choose the road less traveled, what about my connection to the world? What about "When I grow up, I'm going to___"? I'm grown up now. I'm totally fucking grown up! Shouldn't I stop behaving like a crazed 25 year old and have some mastery over my life? Or something?!?
And maybe the worst part is that being 35 DOESN'T mean anything. There is no expectation. It doesn't matter how old I am, or what I do. It's all just relative. And maybe that is worse.
I don't know. My wife tells I'm obsessed with my age. Well, first, I have an obsessive personality, so yeah. Second, when she's 35 I think she'll look at things quite a bit differently.
I don't want to give the impression I'm depressed or having a mid life crisis. I'm happy to be older. I get better with age. I'm wiser, smarter, more experienced. It's great! It's just the shock of it. Thirty-five, not twenty-five or twenty-six or even thirty or thirty-three, but thirty-five. I just can't get my brain around it. I mean, I don't remember being thirty-three. What happened that year? Was that so long ago? Has it been a decade since Jagged Little Pill was released? Is it possible that a high school senior doesn't even remember Nirvana, or Nine Inch Nails or Jane's Addiction? They would have 6 when all that happened.
Think about that. If you're my age (and I know both of you are) then when you were 15 it was 1985 music that was 10 years old was from 1975. How much relevance did that music have on your life? How significant did it seem to you then? What about music from 1965? That was totally foreign to your life, wasn't it? Now,for the 15 year old today, 1995 if 1975 and 19854 is 1965 and if you're my age, and you can somewhat remember 1975, for today's youth 1975 is 1955!
Hard to imagine, isn't it?
Well, that's what getting old is like. Enjoy.

Mythicons and Celeheros

I watched this great documentary on PBS last night called "Get up, Stand up: The history of pop and protest." Hosted by Chuck D.,the film traced the history of protest much and music with a political or social message. It was not only a nice study of popular culture (one of my areas of concentration) but a nice trip down memory lane. It also raised certain points that I'm constantly turning over in my mind.
For example, if there was an artist like Jim Morrison alive today (and I'm sure there is somewhere), would I even pay attention? What about David Bowie? Is there someone with his theatricality performing today (I doubt it, but maybe) that I am not aware of? And does it seem important? Would I think it's all as cool as it seemed in the past?
This is a long tale of my relationship not only with the popular culture, but the past as well. Many of the artist I discovered in my youth (by youth I mean 20's) had already had their impact on culture. Many of them were dead or long since faded into obscurity. History had already consigned to them the roles they play. There was no sense of ambivalence, and even if there was, the ambivalence itself was seen as significant.
Partially this all comes from the way I interact with culture and history. I'm not sure where it all started or why, because it predates my early college years, though I think it was just after high school, maybe. When I wanted to know something about a band or an artist, I would watch documentaries, read magazine articles or books. Perhaps, as I write these words down, it could be said that I always experienced things vicariously through other people's words and experiences. At least, at that young age. Punk and even heavy metal, indeed, rock and roll itself was quite outside of experience. My parents, being incredibly strict Christians, didn't listen to anything other than gospel, unless it was some Old School Country. There were no punks in my school, no "alternative kids" or whatever the REM and Bauhaus fans were known as. The most radical students were the metal heads and they literally scared me. Anyway, so I always had a view of people that was created by history and the media. When I listened to David Bowie, I wasn't listening to music but listening to David Bowie: Queer Icon, Glam Rock Pioneer.
So, I was talking about this summer. I was watching this old DVD of a certain 90's band that I always loved, had always, and still is, one of my favorite bands ever, and suddenly I was seeing something I hadn't noticed before. Here in the live footage was someone with all the charisma of a David Bowie, all the passion of a Pete Townsend, all the angst and anger of Bob Mould. Here was a bombastic performance of a musical virtuoso, pushing the music into this amazing shape not unlike a Mick Ronsen, a Jimmy Page, or even shades of Jimmi Hendrix. Here was one of these icons that I had always looked to, but I had been there when it happened. I had seen this band in concert twice, and I never thought, at the time, that this was my generations music, this was my generations Icon. Not even my generation, this was MY icon, my artistic hero. But it never quite felt that way.
Maybe I let the media tell me what is or isn't important. Maybe I wait until the paradigms are formed and then use them to define myself. Maybe I'm always looking for history to happen when what's happening is simply right now. Maybe it never happened the way they said it happened, maybe no one ever felt so revolutionary, so enmeshed in a cultural phenomenon. Maybe people are just people and the music was what it was for them, and this sense of narrative that we get after the fact is something we impose. Or maybe I just forgot. Maybe I hadn't let myself hold to those moments of transcendental bliss, when an artist is taking me out of myself, out of my life, and plunging me into something profound, absolute, and visceral. Maybe all that had just slipped my mind, that feeling of being that alive, that raw, that sad and that impassioned all that same time, maybe I just can't tolerate that as much as I used to so I cover it up. Maybe that's what happens when you get old.

It happened

I woke up this morning and it was cold! Not just cool, but cold. Fall is here!! It seemed to happen so suddenly. Oh, it had been cooling off, but it just didn't seem to be cooling off that much that quickly. I was worried that the weather wouldn't change in time for Halloween. And, as the poem goes, "just like that, just like a snap, or even less, it all changes".
And I still don't have my costume together! The sooner I can get the store the sooner I can relax!

The King

Lately I've been thinking about Jack Kirby. I have come to the following conclusion: He was good.
I used to hear more about Kirby when I was a young Marvelphile, waaaaaaay back in the 1980's. I didn't get it. I found his figures to be boxy and squat and his designs too jumbled, his line too thick. I understood his historical significance, but as an artist, I didn't care for him. It wasn't until very recently that I began to appreciate the dynamic qualities of his style, the way figures leaped off pages and fist flew with unabashed fury.
Lately, I've begun to appreciate the stylization of his designs, all those squiggly, jumbled objects and the fat and fuzzy lines. Call it maturity, or a better trained eye, or perhaps a greater sense of what I like, but I love the way his pages all come together.
And I don't know who actually created what, I wasn't there and I haven't seen the evidence, so whoever actually created the look and feel of the fantastic four really did something. Just take an image of the FF zipping along in a boxy, squiggly flying car, something like Speed Racer meets Depero, with a flaming guy circling about, leaving a jagged line of flame behind him, as they trawl through the Negative Zone or the 5th Dimension or where ever, the background another brilliant amalgam of Futurism, Deco, and Pop Art.
I think from a sort of pure art sense, Kirby's work is visionary, daring, and well, fantastic.

Psudeonomicon

I'm a big proponent of names. I think it's important what you call something. I'm notorious for my hair splitting. So, I've been following tea Manga/OEL(manga) discussion at Warren Ellis' The Engine for a week now.
See, I think that people read manga because it's not a comic, even though it is, and they won't read comics because they are not manga, even though they are both comics.
I understand that manga are, on the whole, really good comics. I think the American comic industry, from the smallest indie publisher to (especially) the Big Two can learn from the Japanese. However, I think that what we can learn is how to improve comics and make them better. Not how to make manga. It doesn't matter if we ink like the manga or lay out our pages like we might see in a manga or draw our figures like one would expect from a manga. What matters is that we learn to tell stories that are complex in plot, rich in characterization and dialogue, with a wide range of visual storytelling techniques to communicate the story content rather than flash the reader's eye, and that stories are driven by inspiration and vision, not sales and brand names, thus they need to end when they are over and need to be the work of the creators vision, even if they are working via proxy. That's what I think manga has to over. Sure, some of those visual storytelling techniques might necessarily look like what we would expect from a manga in terms of framing and composition, that doesn't mean the line work and character design is going to resemble what we would expect from a manga.
I can't blame anyone for trying to hook manga readers by looking as much like a manga as they can. And I'm sure there are creators who love the visual style they see in manga and choose to draw that way. Goddess knows my work is going to remind people of someone else. The two things that really get me is that there's a huge number of readers who don't read comics because they are comics, but read manga because they are not comics (somehow) and that there are creators who think that making manga is better than making comics or that the only good comic is a Japanese comic so we'd better copy them as much as possible.
Sure, I'm not being fair, nor is any of this based on anything other than my own conjecture. (only about two people will read this anyway, so I'm fairly safe from reprisal anyway).
I think the word "comic" is outdated and needs to go away. That which we call comics are no longer funny. I have said we need a word like manga to call these books, be they monthly floppies or fattie novels. However, manga means "Japanese comic". So, we can't call them that. We need something else.
And it REALLY honks me that people read manga but not comics!! This should be a separate blog, but I'm on a roll. I think the exoticism of the manga being Japanese cancels out the stigma of American comics and makes it okay to read them. (again, pure conjecture) Mind you, even if they read all the really good American comics, how long would that take? A month or so? And compare that to how many good manga there are.
The other thing is that manga are often associated with anime and video games. Many of them are adaptations or retelling of the anime and games, or vice versa. In that sense, manga are an extension of a subculture. They are another manifestation of these hyperkinetic, super iconic, larger than life pop creations. And taking that and running with it (like I do), that's something that manga do pretty well, from what I've seen so far.
Like I said, one thing we can learn from manga is using a wider range of storytelling techniques. It was pointed out to me on The Engine that manga on the whole use fast, jarring, sweeping cinematic techniques. They pull in close, then go wide, they expand moments of emotional intensity across panels or pages. The thing I like is the minimized use of a grid or box panel for page compositions, often near collage techniques with characters laying across panels that falling with pointed boarders like raining shards of broken glass. In short, what I'm trying to say in my own verbose way, manga (on the whole) are uniquely well suited for the mtv generation (and post mtv generation. In that sense, one can and sometimes must suspend the notion of what a comic is, suspend notions of pacing and layout and form. These are expressions of a hyperkinetic, fragmented, post modern (post postmodern?) world.
Comics have this same quality, I think. There are few things more pop than comics and cartooning, but I'll admit (after a long struggle against) that manga (on the whole) capture "pop" with a cool sophistication, depth of intensity, and lushness of style.
So, deep down, I don't blame "the kids" for reading manga. In a way I'm envious. What would my reading habits have been like had I the option of reading manga at a young age? I do call them "young whippersnappers" or "snot nosed brats" if they won't even try to read an American Comic!
Really, I wish could come up with a new name for these new books that are being made in a new world where divisions of East v. West, Us V. Them, Manga v. Comics have disappeared and everyone benefits.
But that's just me.

Visions of...

Last night at work visions of pumpkins kept leaping into my head. Just images of them, plump and orange, sitting in a garden with wild green vines coiling about them. Just a flash every so often. This makes me very happy. It means that the season has started and that the mood is coming upon me.
See, every year, and it gets stronger the older I get, about this time I begin to worry that I would be in the right mood for Halloween. That it would feel like Halloween. Or I worry that there would be enough time to get into the proper mood, there's no way the weather will change or the leaves change quick enough for us to have a proper Halloween month.
I love Halloween.
The weather is starting to change, the air is cool, the temperature hovering in the mid 70's. I know the leaves are starting to change. I can feel it in my bones. Something is happening, something wild and fantastic.
Still, I worry. Is it too soon to break out the Halloween music? What if I wait too long and miss the window? What if I start to early and get burned out? What if I'm too busy with school to really enjoy myself? What if the weather doesn't change quick enough? It's been a very hot, dry summer. The seasons could have shifted.
Deep down, I know it will all work out. It always does. Right now it's hard to imagine the leaves are going to burst into vibrant color and cover the ground. Right now it's hard to imagine it every being cold again.
But it will.

Sam Hain is back again!

Man,that's corny...
The weather is already starting to change. I air is cool in the mornings and at night. It grows dark at 8:30. We've crossed the lip of September and are now moving toward the coming of night. In two weeks it will be Autumn and in 54 days it will be Halloween.
This is my favorite time of year. The very air is ripe with change. Transformation and metamorphosis are everywhere. The trees changing color, the night lengthening, the air growing cold, the smell of decay. We celebrate and express this change with Halloween, the one night you can be anyone or anything you like. The rest of the year we may have to be one thing or another, but this night, all bets are off! It's all about magic. Magic is change. Change is transformation and transformation is about loss and death. This is the time of decent, when the sun descends into darkness, when the leaves descend to the ground, when Persephone returns to the Underworld, and Demeter goes into mourning. In the Celtic tradition, I have come to understand it, the God of light, Lugh, is slain at the equinox and descends to the Underworld, leaving his rival, the God of Darkness, to rule the world. In the Underworld, Lugh takes the throne and is crowned on Samhain, which we call Halloween, and the creatures of the night rejoice on his coronation day.
We symbolically enact this cycle by descending into our own underworld, our own version of hell, to confront the demons there. We must acknowledge the demons in order to rule them, lest they revolt and destroy everything. We honor them and celebrate them and bless them for this one short span of time, so that we may better rule the light.
That's what I think anyway. That's why I never dress up like a fairy or an angel or anything cute, silly, or funny. I don't sit in judgment of that, it's just not what Halloween is about for me. I love the sinister, the macabre, the weirdness, the shock of it. Occasionally I laugh at it, and there's a camp element to it, for me. Something B Grade. If we don't laugh at our demons, then we are in big trouble, I think.
I fear with my busy schedule and the demands of both work and school that I won't have time for Halloween this year. Can you believe that? It's only the 8th of September and I'm already worried about my holiday plans. My brother pointed out to me last year that I am the only person he knows who worries as much about Halloween as most people do about Christmas.
He's right.
It will all be fine. It always is.
The real trick is how to properly celebrate Halloween. I think rituals have more meaning when shared by those close to me, by friends and family. Yet, a small gathering of friends hardly has the cathartic quality of a raucous nightclub or bar. However, going out to a nightclub can be so shallow and ultimately hollow. Not to mention that all the work of getting dressed up feels somewhat wasted if only four people see my costume.
*sigh* It's always a dilemma, every year. The obvious solution is to take my friends out the club with me, but that never seems to work out. I have some nice ideas for out of the ordinary activities this year. One involves a rather large bonfire. I'm sure I know someone outside the city limits where I can do that.
That'd probably be easy than getting everyone to participate in a black mass....

Either do or not do, there is no maybe do

I'm finally getting used to my school schedule. Not that it isn't still kicking my ass most days, I just don't feel so overwhelmed. That's a tricky spot for me, to not feel like I'm drowning in my own life. Still haven't found the space to work on anything much, just some more notes on Xrox. James has got me inspired with that. As much as I hate when we takes on another project, his thoughts on the Land of Hof is giving me a serious wood. Hopefully, Saturday I can get at least the next two pages of Xrox 2 layouts to him. They've been thumbnailed. It shouldn't take much.
Once I get that done I might just start some sketches for my slashdotpop line.
I'm suppossed to meet with John on Monday to layout his book. Guess I'd better decide now if that's going to happen and make it happen.

Cel-e-brate good times! Come on!

September 23 is Celebrate Bisexuality Day. I did not know this. Guess I missed that memo. I feel so outside the loop. But..what is this Loop? I refuse to join forums. I spend most of my time answering emails as it is. Either way, I know now. It's nice to have your own holiday. I'm not crazy about this move in the late 90's/early 2000's toward seperatism. Everyone has their own flag now, everyone has their own days and their own events. Kids, back in the old days of '92 and '93, we had unity! One flag with all the colors of the rainbow on it to represent all the different people. When you said queer of GLBT, you meant everybody! Cause we were all in it together! These days the bears have their own flag, the leathers have their own flag, the bi's have their own flag, the left hand Buddhist non-heterosexual monogamists have their own flag. Can't we all just get along?
Still, after laboring under bi invisibility for so long, both from the general culture and the queer culture, and struggling with my own internalized bi invisibility, it's nice to be acknowledged. I've recently had some revelations along those lines. It's time I stopped mumbling under my breath from the side lines and stood loud and proud as an out bisexual man. Oh, I know what your thinking, those that know me, anyway, they're thinking "You're pretty out now, C. We wouldn't want you to be any more out!" I finally realized that I'm talking about being out to myself. To stop struggling and just relax with who I am. To stop apologizing and feeling embarrassed.
So say it with me, "I'm Bi! I'm Fly! I'm on site! Get used to!"

Yeah, I know, needs some work...

I never thought it'd happen to me

I think I'm losing hair. There's too much scalp showing at the front of my skull. My brother has already lost hair. I thought I got the gut, he got the hair, and that was the deal. I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I'm not going to comb over or try to hide it, sure. I said years ago I wasn't going to be that vain. I just don't think the Larry Fine look is going to work for me. I guess I could shave my head. I think bald men are incredibly sexy.
I don't know. Maybe it's just a bad hair day.