A bit of Halloween sketchiness
And then some other stuff
It’s a curse and a blessing, this newsletter. A curse because committing to two posts a week burns through time and energy for other, longer-term projects - though if I wasn’t doing this there’s a good chance I’d just be lying in bed reading comics instead. And so it’s also a blessing, because there are things I would never have done if I didn’t pledge to do so for you, the reader.
For instance, I told myself that, as part of this month’s run of Halloween posts, I’d share some Halloween sketchbook pages today. The catch was that I didn’t have any Halloween sketchbook pages to share. So that’s what I’ve been doing in the evenings this week - working in my sketchbook for the first time in months. Here’s some of that, then.
Okay, enough of that. As for diary stuff, I did a couple of interesting things last weekend.
On Saturday, I went to Poster House with my good friend Jason. It is, yes, a museum entirely dedicated to posters. Grand enough to encompass some large-scale works but small enough that you can easily take in all the exhibits in a single visit, it provides me with great joy. The main current exhibit is “Art Deco: Commercializing the Avant-Garde,” and here are a few good bits:
On Sunday, Hope and I went to the WFMU Record Fair for the first time in our lives - which is egregious, because we’ve been fans of WFMU for nearly 25 years. If you’re not familiar with it, WFMU is a completely free-form radio station based in Jersey City - DJs have free rein to do whatever they want, so you never know what you’ll get when you tune in. It can be experimental ska music, radio plays, afropunk, droning industrial noise - it all depends. The great thing is that these days they stream online and maintain a vast archive of previous shows, so you can listen from anywhere!
The record fair is one of their signature fundraising events, but we never went before because we didn’t have a turntable. That all changed during the pandemic, and now we have a low-key vinyl obsession. This was the first fair held since 2019, and it was being held in Queens for the first time, so we decided to walk - about an hour from our house. Then we ended up walking back afterwards, because the day was so nice (and the buses weren’t running). Here’s a glimpse at our haul:
Speaking of media, here’s this week’s roundup:
BOOKS FINISHED
Monica, by Daniel Clowes: The long-awaited new graphic novel by one of the greatest Gen X cartoonists is among my favorite books of the year. I believe I’ll write about it at greater length next month, because it definitely lives up to the hype - every page was rich to overflowing with visual and narrative information, and I was completely drawn in to the title character’s struggle to understand her heritage, as depicted through nine short stories of often staggering weirdness. You can probably tell that I’m a fast reader, but this one I lingered over, drawing out over many nights what I could have swallowed in an evening. Even more peculiar, I’m already moved to reread it, something I rarely do.
The Human Target, Vol. 2, by Tom King and Greg Smallwood: This is the conclusion of a new noir-style DC comics story featuring characters from my favorite run of the Justice League from the late ’80s (when I started to get serious about comics). The story is fine (the first volume was more exciting), but Smallwood’s artwork is utterly gobsmacking - a riff on classic ‘60s-style Robert McGinnis guns-and-dames paperback covers, with a candy-colored fun-in-the-sun palette. Worth reading just to flip through the pages and sigh.
BOOKS STARTED
How to Be Both, by Ali Smith
MOVIES WATCHED
Dark City (1998, dir. Alex Proyas): I had wanted to see this in theaters, but missed it when it came out. It was hard to find on DVD and then streaming, so when I saw the Criterion Channel had it - and was dropping it at the end of the month - we decided to finally give it a go. This sci-fi neo-noir has a reputation for being gorgeous to look at, which is true! The story itself is an analogue Matrix set in a heightened 1940s world where the sun never rises - it wears its influences on its sleeve, and doesn’t make a lick of sense if you start thinking about it, but it contains just enough of its own brand of weirdness to make it compelling through the end. If you didn’t like Kiefer Sutherland before, you’ll hate him after this!
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948, dir. Charles Barton): This is a cheat, because I actually fell asleep during this. I’d seen it years before and barely remembered any of it, and I remember even less now. Dash liked it, and that was the point of watching it, but it was no Sh! The Octopus’.
Later, dudes!