MoCCA 2008, primarily in list form

What follows are most of my MoCCA purchases and other things, in list form (please note: things may be misspelled, as I’m going off of my handwritten notes of purchase and not the actual books themselves).  I won’t bother with the drinks bought, the food eaten, the MetroCard, or the t-shirts (of which there were many–I bought more than I would have because I kept changing my t-shirt because of how incredibly hot it was on Saturday).

Real return to blogging? LIke, actual paragraphs and stuff?  I hope that comes soon, too.  As you can see, this blog repurposes the old Ledger Domain and the Low Road blogs, but now anonymously–I realize that it may not be helpful to have some of this stuff attached to the name I am now using to get teaching positions at colleges, so hence the really obvious sobriquet. 

The books, in no particular order:

• Clean Cartoonists’ Dirty Drawings: Craig Yoe
• The Dada Detective volumes 1 and 2: Stephanie Freese, Dave Milloway, and Matt Wood
• Comic Arf: Craig Yoe
• Three Shadows: Cyril Pedrost
• Pulphope: The Art of Paul Pope: Paul Pope
• The New York Four (advance galley copy): Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly
• Dororo: Osamu Tezuka
• Thoreau at Walden:  Henry David Thoreau and John Porcellino
• Wire Mothers: Harry Harlow and the Science of Love: Jim Ottaviani and Dylan Meconis
• Bluesman:  Rob Vollmar and Pablo G. Callejo
• Chiggers: Hope Larson
• Levitation: Physics and Psychology  in the Service of Deception: Jim Ottaviani and Janine Johnston
• Pictures of You: Damon Hurd and Tatiana Gill
• Burnout (advance galley copy):  Rebecca Donner and Inaki Miranda
• Janes in Love (advance galley copy):  Cecil Castelluci and Jim Rugg
• Action Philosophers volumes 1-3:  Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey (finally, bookshelf-friendly copies to replace my floppy ones!)
• Repo: Rick Spears and Rob G
• What It Is: Lynda Barry
• Drawing Words & Writing Pictures: Jessica Abel and Matt Madden
• The Annotated Wondermark: David Malki
• The Moth or the Flame: Joshua Ray Stephens
• Relish: Lucy Kinsley
• It’s Raining Cats and Dogs (and Other Pets): Mark Z-Man

The floppies and minis:

• Curse of the Wendigo: Chris Brimacombe
• Geraniums and Bacon #5: Cathy Leamy
• Broads & Monsters: Sketches: Pat Lewis (I also bought something else from Pat, but I don’t seem to be able to find it–I thought I had unpacked everything)
• Earth Minds are Weak #8 & #9: Justin J. Fox
• I Dreamed of You mr. Eybyaninich: Justin J. Fox
• Mila and the Prince of Space: Evan G. Palmer
• Happy Dog the Happy Dog: Ryan North & Allene Chomyn
• 55 Words: Rosemary Mosco
• Johnny Hero {Half Asian, All Hero}: Fred Chao
• Tear-stained Makeup: Marcos Perez
• Carl’s Large Story #2 and #3: Marcos Perez
• The Ashen Cat: Evan Palmer
• The Bear: Galway Kinnell and Caroline Kelsey
• Camp Staff Tales: Alexander Cox
• 80gun #2: Ayo
• Little Garden #4: Ayo
• Comics from Mars #1: Paul Pope

Sketches and the like (taken with digital camera rather than scanner):

Pat Lewis inaugurated my new sketchbook.  Now that I’m no longer, er, coupled, there was no reason to continue on with the shared sketchbook of dalmatians my ex and I were building.  With a blank sketchbook in hand, I was at a loss to come up with a theme I could make work (although I have another one lined up now, if I can find a small, intimate book for it–it’s a pretty awful sending-me-to-hell theme that I don’t think a lot of people would be down with), but then I decided I’m titling it Words. Language. Literature. to go along with the whole “getting my academia on, yo” thing.  Tough thing to draw, so I started everyone out easy–people reading books.  Friday night at Zombie Hut (at least, I think that’s where it was–it could have been at Rocketship, too), Pat mentioned how much he loved drawing the Thing, so:

My next sketch stop was Marcos Perez, famous for Carl is the Awesome and other such things (including music).  You can kind of see his thing peeking through behind Pat’s, er, Thing thing, but here is Carl doing what Carl does best: being awesome all the time:

This taking-pictures-of-sketches thing kind of isn’t working out, but fuck it.  That’s what Scott Pilgrim would say, I think.  Here’s Bryan Lee O’Malley’s sketch of Scott not reading:

Finally, by webcomicser Jeph Jacques (Questionable Content), a drawing of a cute girl who talks like me and every other hipster doofus–she speaks my language!

Things I would have bought at MoCCA, had they been there:

• Comic Book Comics #2: Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey (not out until July)
• Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko: Blake Bell (shipping or printing snafu–the book’s arrival got pushed back to Monday)
• Your moms.*

Favoritest Memories that may or may not involve comics:

• Karaoke with the nerdcrew, including Joe Rice and Alex Cox’s brilliant “Like A Prayer,” F-dot’s FUCKING AWESOME rendition of Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration” (I have never seen karaoke done like that)
• Dropping $30 or so at the used bookstore in my hometown on the way to NYC–got some Chester  Himes stuff cheap, two fun books on language, dialect, and etymology, and other assorted things that smell like a mixture of old book, stale cigarettes, and air ionized by repeated NPR programming
• Spending a lot of time with Justin J. Fox, including hearing the real story behind Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and inadvertantly cock-blocking him in the nerdiest of all possible ways.
• Buying books that I wanted at last year’s show, but ran out of money before I could get to them.
• Drinks, food and conversation with some of my favorite people, including James Smith, Neilalien, Metrokitty, Das, F-dot, Pat Lewis, Joe Rice, Justin J. Fox and Marcos Perez, Alex Cox, Michael Pullmann, and Gina Gagliano; seeing others like Kevin Church and Benjamin Birdie briefly; convincing my best friend on the planet to make it in for Chinatown karaoke; an awesome hotel breakfast with a wonderful guy and his wife from Buffalo, NY who were in town to help their son move to Brooklyn–we killed a little over two hours shooting the shit; and getting some quality time with two of the other people in the grad program who tagged along to do the whole NYC sight-seeing thing.
• Running into my friend Kristin’s sister, Kat, whom I only have seen in family photographs but still recognized, which lead to an awkward stalker-esque interchange but made for a great reason to call Kristin in Chicago that afternoon
• The free advance galley copies of upcoming Minx books
• Being somewhere where at least twenty people saw my arm and said “Hey! Nice Great Gatsby tattoo!” as opposed to “y’know what would make that shit sweet? You should put some skulls in it.  Or some big-tittied bitches.  Or a demon with, like, blood drippin’ out its mouth an’ shit.  Or some big-tittied bitches.  Or an alien smoking weed” or “you’re going to Hell, young man–and that’s where demons will rape the tattoos off of you. Amen. Hallelujah.”
• Having others confirm that, yes, those Centaurans on Doctor Who really do look like people with Downs Syndrome who abuse steroids and is that supposed to be a commentary on something related to eugenics or not?
• The whole Rocketship party, but especially seeing Jason’s original art in person–it’s given me an idea I’m going to run with if all goes according to plan (perhaps for actual ink-and-paper publication, even).

Things that kind of sucked, in retrospect:

• Disappointing horse racing results
• Having said best friend accosted by a crazy Mongolian guy at the bar who was talking about “Obama,” “McCain,” God bless America,” “prison,” and “need food”–those are pretty much the only words we made out.
• The Bob Dylan laserdisc being broken, so Brian Cronin couldn’t sing anything at karaoke.
• The Minx table refusing to sell me books that are already published and sitting on their table
• Not getting time with certain people–barely saw Tim Leong this year, didn’t get to meet Bully at all, seeing Chris Mautner and Jog only briefly, Kevin Church being a big whiny vagina with a cold and shit and not coming to karaoke (Marcos came to the first party and he had a migraine! A migraine!), not only barely seeing Chris Pitzer but forgetting to buy the collected Skyscrapers of the Midwest (luckily, my shop will likely have it, as they like AdHouse as much as I do), and people I didn’t know were at the show until after I had left.
• Being sick and miserable and hopped up on Tylenol Severe Cold and Flu (but I still made it to karaoke, Kevin–FYI)
• The goddamn fucking heat.  I went back to the hotel in Brooklyn mid-day on Saturday, and nearly passed out before I got into the sweet, sweet air-conditioned walls of the Comfort Inn-Brooklyn Bridge (also–really cute desk clerk girl who, while she was probably only being nice to me because I was a patron, totally didn’t seem phony about it so maybe you will see her in a soap opera some day or something) where I pooped and showered and changed my shirt for what would be the second of four wardrobe changes inspired by the fact that I sweat like a kid that’s even fatter than I already am.
• The really shitty Dave Matthew’s Band-esque band that played before the Indie Spinner Rack party 

Things I have already made with the reading on (presented in order of how I got my read on, and with two word midget reviews):

• Geraniums and Bacon #5: fucking awesome.
• Clean Cartoonists’ Dirty Drawings: pretty interesting.

Total hours of sleep had between Friday morning and Sunday night:

• Six (approximately four Friday night, and about two Saturday night)

Amount of money spent on books, apparrel, food, alcohol, lodging, gas, and other assorted expenses:

• [REDACTED: I don't want to see the number when I post because I will likely kill myself]

The crystal ball:

• recharged love of comics leads to more bloggery
• recharged love of comics nerds leads to an SPX visit

* If she wasn’t giving it away for free, I mean.

The past few months…

…have been a bitch and a half. This semester isn’t going as well as I had hoped. The sheer amount of work (reading, writing–fortunately, no arithmetic), coupled with things going on at work and at home, have made blogging fall way down on the list of priorities.

So, updates:

• I will try to blog more (for reals this time!). I even have a 75% compeleted post that has nothing to do with comics.

• I adopted another dog. He had been thrown off the back of a truck in rural Virginia, and they were scheduled to put him down because he had mange and a secondary skin infection. So, I drove home with this:

And now have this:

• Classic movie fans: A relatively hard-to-come-by film is airing on Turner Classic Movies Thursday, November 15th at 10PM on the East Coast: Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious. Just a friendly FYI.

• Comics! I haven’t been reading much–hell, most of my MoCCA pile is still untouched, and I stopped by the comics shop and picked up four issues of The Comics Journal that I had missed. I don’t expect to be talking about them much in the next few weeks, because…

• I signed up for National Novel Writing Month. I know, I know–I don’t have time to blog, so why would I have time to do this? The answer is–I don’t. And that’s kind of why I am doing it–it’s going to free me up from my “internal editor,” knowing that I have to get through 50,000 words in 30 days on top of everything else going on in my life. It officially kicked off today, and I started what I’m currently calling “The Critical Approach” on my lunchbreak. I didn’t meet my target wordcount for the day yet, but about 500 words in a half-hour (hey, I had to eat first) isn’t a bad start, I suppose.

If anyone’s curious, here’s what I tossed out:

Vijay Patel’s bodega hummed with the vibrations of coolers filled with soda, milk, and energy drinks. The tiny television behind the counter buzzed in a slightly higher tone–the poorly remanufactured off-brand set’s inner workings were audible even over the Sale of the Century remake WWOR was airing in the afternoons. The few other post-lunch customers weren’t talking either–not to themselves, and not to the other customers, either. And no one was speaking to the crazy brother with the gun; if they did that, he might stop pointing the gun at the back of my head and start pointing it at one of them.

Vijay loved shitty syndicated daytime game shows, which is why I swung by at 1PM instead of 2PM–I knew I’d get the regular discount if I didn’t interrupt Family Feud. Something about how it reminded him of the gambles he played, he told me once–moving to America, starting his first store, opening his new store outside of the Indian storefronts of what gets referred to in Jersey City as “Patel Street.” At least, that’s what I think he was saying–even though we’d shoot the shit as I drank his coffee and buy my Camel Lights, I usually only picked up about two-thirds of what he was saying. If his accent didn’t trip me up, whatever bit of candy he was gnawing at did. Still, I got the gist of it–any new venture, planned or not, is a gamble.

Vijay learned from his gambles, though. A few robberies left him shaken, and scared him enough to install one of those silent alarm systems that runs through the phone line and alerts the authorities. “Next time,” he told me, “none of those fucks are going to be getting off with any of my money again.” At least, that’s what I thought he had said–something like that, at least. The point was, he had a new system and he was dying to use it at the right time.

Vijay had been on the business end of a gun a few times, but not enough times, and definitely not enough times to know that this wasn’t the right time. This was the wrong time–the worst time. The brother was twitchy. Twitchy, big, and young—drugs, probably. And if he was big twitchy, and not scrawny little shit twitchy, it meant he wasn’t used to working on hype or dust or whatever the fuck he took before he walked in and pulled his piece out. It meant that he had narcotic-fueled anxiety on top of all the other anxieties that come when a stick up kid pulls a job.

It meant Vijay should not have given me that look, that cocky look someone gets when he pulls a straight flush on the river or the chance to land “quixotic” in Scrabble on the triple-word score. That “Don’t worry, Harris, my secret will save us all” look.

It meant Vijay should not have pushed that fucking button.

**************************************

Hopefully, this will give me reason to blog some more, despite not having time for comics, movies, or anything else, really.