Larry Kart

Huge amounts of Bob and Ray can be found here: http://www.bobandray.com/

Interesting, though would we say the same about Krazy Kat (that it doesn't go anywhere)? There are occasional short narrative arcs, but ultimately everything comes back to a kat, a mouse, a brick, a dog and a jail. It is almost a meditation on the endless repetitiveness of life, as well as the perversity of love and desire or the many faces of crime and punishment. But it is also awfully repetitive. I really do like Ben Katchor's older work (hard to find his new work now) but it is all very much of one tone -- a lament on the passing of Brooklyn of the 1950s. The characters sort of walk through this half-remembered, half-invented city having adventures nearly as momentous as Leopold Bloom's, but do they "go anywhere?" I had some other examples in mind, but I have forgotten them. That said, I tend to find reading Chris Ware's panels fairly exhausting and the reward for going through everything isn't usually worth it, since the punchline is that you grow old and die alone. The ones I do like are the ones in the apartment building with the young woman with the artificial leg. They hold my interest a bit better. But "Krazy Kat" is funny! The way "ultimately everything comes back to a kat, a mouse, a brick, a dog and a jail" is the essence of its wit. The "circling back" resolutions are the shape of the jokes, and the jokes (if you're so inclined) work. Now I can imagine any number of reasonable people finding "Krazy Kat" to be both unamusing and repetitive, but I have no doubt that George Herriman himself almost always found it both absorbing and amusing and hoped/assumed that others would too. By contrast, the "payoff" in Chris Ware's panels seems to be that he and we are still standing in s--t, and that he kind of enjoys being there. E-e-e-s-h. Nice drawing, though.

Bear in mind that Moore was writing for DC comics, a company that primarily publishes superhero comics. You are right, of course. Comics don't HAVE to be about superheroes. As with any medium, comics can accomidate any and all subject matters and genres. Some of the best comics are NOT about superheroes (Spiegelman's "Maus"; Satrapi's "Persepolis"; Clowes' "Ghost World"; Ware's "ACME Novelty Library" and "Jimmy Corrigan"; Bagge's "Hate"). I love "Hate." Me, too, as well as "Ghost World," but Chris Ware puts me to sleep, and I despise "Maus." How can one despise "Maus"? Do you dislike the art? Or is it that it has become an untouchable "classic," taught in high schools and universities? Ware is an amazing draughtsman. I don't think any living cartoonist draws buildings as well (he's probably the greatest since Windsor McCay). I also love the fact that his stories hit so close to home that it's unsettling. Every one of his books and strips makes me feel depressed and creepy. He's brilliant! I found the basic ploy in "Maus" (use of humanoid animals to retell events of the Holocaust) to be cheap, trivializing, smug, morally offensive, you name it. YMMV, but I felt that in my gut at first glance and do every time I take another look at "Maus." Don't like anything else I've seen from Spiegelman either; he's a pretentious little twit IMO, whose eye was always on the main chance. Ware is a superb draughtsman, but how often, and with such an agonizing lack of incident, do I need to visit the land of self-indulgent depression and creepiness. Push the damn thing somewhere, Chris! Daniel Clowes does, and I wouldn't say that he's any less melancholic than Ware. Underlying all this, perhaps, is the way I see the whole "new comics" medium -- not that it's monolithic, but either I'm way off in my thinking here, or you'll catch my drift. Both historically and inherently, the medium is one of pictorial storytelling (I know -- "duh"), and while under the stress of various (for want of better term) post-modern impulses (self-conscious and otherwise) a whole lot of sometimes very effective dicking around with that narrative storytelling basis has been done, too much dicking around, and/or tone-deaf dicking around (vide "Maus" IMO), or dicking around taken to the point of navel-gazing near abstraction, etc., and there's nothing left but broken parts on the ground. Actually, I think that was, from the other side of things, a big part of Bill Griffith's profound dislike of "Watchmen" -- that Alan Moore was too attached to the medium's pictorial storytelling impulses and some its familiar trappings, that he wasn't hip and "liberated" enough. Well, I'm all for hipness and liberation when it works in terms of the medium, but when it doesn't, I get bored or annoyed. All the above opinions are subjective, of course, but my sense of the underlying structural issues might be useful, even to "Maus" lovers.

Bear in mind that Moore was writing for DC comics, a company that primarily publishes superhero comics. You are right, of course. Comics don't HAVE to be about superheroes. As with any medium, comics can accomidate any and all subject matters and genres. Some of the best comics are NOT about superheroes (Spiegelman's "Maus"; Satrapi's "Persepolis"; Clowes' "Ghost World"; Ware's "ACME Novelty Library" and "Jimmy Corrigan"; Bagge's "Hate"). I love "Hate." Me, too, as well as "Ghost World," but Chris Ware puts me to sleep, and I despise "Maus."

What a beautiful guy he was -- brought something new and beautiful into the world of humor. As you probably know, Cox and Marlon Brando were close friends from age 10 or so, growing up in Evanston, Il., and eventually were roommates in NYC, along with a talented artist, Richard Loving (also from Evanston or thereabouts I believe, and apparently still with us and teaching at the Art Institute of Chicago). I met Loving and his wife in the early '60s because they were friends of the parents of a then-girlfriend -- her parents (a generation older than Loving, Cox, and Brando) were friends (or at least good acquaintances) of Brando's parents. I hesitate about "friends of" because Brando's father, Marlon Sr., seemed to be regarded as something of a monster.

Blue Train, Another Workout ... Cookin' with the Miles Davis Quintet. Those, too, plus the rest of the series "Cookin'" is from. Again, the "feel" of each of those dates seems fairly specific -- a sign I would think (if true) of how alert and in the moment Chambers and Jones tended to be, PJJ especially. I only saw him play once, but I was essentially looking over his left shoulder from a table half a step up from the bandstand. I can close my eyes and see him. It was like watching Fred Astaire.

Off the top of my head, "Cool Struttin'" and "Kelly Great." P.S. And Miles' "Milestones." Interesting how each of those dates has its own feel.

In part "Watchmen" plays off of and plays with the longtime pre-existing fascination with costumed superheros, this fascination having been a good-sized social fact at least since the advent of Superman and thus no less a part of "our real world" than a good many other things that might seem at first to exist only in the collective imagination but in fact also slop over the edges (in part because the initial fantasies that fueled these realizations in comic book/comic strip form involved the slopping over into the popular entertainment medium of already substantial real-world fears and dreams). Alan Moore's sense of all this is very sure IMO, though of course he takes several big (or not so big?) steps by having his superheros function overtly in the real world of "Watchmen." For example, it could be argued -- and it has been by some historians -- that the collective ideological underpinnings of, say, our adventure in Vietnam cast the American military in the role of an agonized superhero that of course could not be outfought on any battlefield but instead was finally betrayed and/or abandoned by spineless (or worse) elements on the home front. That framework, it would seem, still remains in place. Finally, there are many graphic novels without costumed superheros; that particular stew of fears and wishes is not the be-all of the form. But it is part of its DNA, and it didn't come from nowhere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Cameron I caught him live once with Slide Hampton in Chicago in the early '60s. Nice band, interesting, intelligent guy IIRC, had something of a Manhattan cool bohemian vibe. Met him because I was with a girl who either knew or presumed to know most of the band (could have been either); among them was the enigmatic Hobart Dotson.

Saw it today. Sadly, I agree with everything Alexander said. All I would add is that in terms of pace there is a peculiarly anti-cinematic, plodding step-by-step feel to it-- the pace, as Alexander suggests, of someone moving from panel to panel in a too literal minded, up-tight manner. Also, as Alexander says, Ozymandias needs to be glowing and charismatic. This actor has all the appeal of a used mop.

Listened to the Bennett album. He can play the instrument, but he's very bland, especially rhythmically -- "dorky" might be the right word. In a way it's an interesting reminder of how much rhythmic edge (plus a meaningfully varied sense of attack on most every note, no matter what the tempo) there usually was to BG's playing. Took me a fairly long time before I began to get BG the player, but I'm glad I finally did. I think it was that RCA set of the small groups with Wilson, Hampton, and Krupa that really turned the light on.

Probably. Or rather, "If not, then like what?" By many accounts the man's appetites in many areas were immense -- beyond the bounds of any real-world frameworks known to him or to us. So one either alters those needs, drives, what have you -- an immense, probably undoable task in itself and one that heroin use may have "managed" to some extent, plus who can separate the immensity of those appetites from the nature of his art? -- or one somehow creates a world where a man of Bird's' appetites is seldom if ever blocked or frustrated. Good luck with that.

I'll be giving it a listen in a day or so. Will probably report.

Take the bellbottoms off and buy it. Fine Getz. Fine Rene Thomas and Eddie Louiss there too. Very intense.

Ominous but logical development -- a new Arbors CD, "Dave Bennett Celebrates 100 Years of Benny," notes that clarinetist Dave Bennett "looks like the young Benny Goodman," and indeed he does -- frighteningly so in the album cover photo because he's so clearly straining to play up the resemblance (striking a pose from a familiar photo of BG). One hopes that Bennett isn't taking classes in how to emit "The Ray." What next -- young Miles-ian trumpeters paying to have their vocal cords destroyed? ("Repeat after me -- 'Is that what you wanted, Al-fred?'")

Let me get this straight - this closeted gay person cruised the watering holes of Chicago journalist types? Is that how they found out? And how does it become "well-known"? Because the journalist types spread the story far and wide? What constitutes proof? Multiple reports from different people, all of whom say that Harvey picked up someone they knew? To say it was "well-known" mostly establishes that the people spreading the story wanted to believe it. But unless you tell me that this man indiscriminately picked up anyone with a Y chromosome and didn't care who knew it, I'm going to chalk up this story to the likelihood that your average Chicago journalist hated Harvey's politics and happily spread the story, making it "well-known". No, not " the watering holes of Chicago journalist types," at least not per se. In Chicago, as in all cities of any size, there were watering holes that catered to gays and where cruising for one type of partner or another was the thing. Obviously under wraps by design, especially in the "closeted" pre-Gay Lib days (though for a figure like Harvey the closet door would have had to remain closed no matter what the era), these places were potentially porous because they were subject to regular police (vice squad) attention/harrassment, and some vice cops and associated law enforcement personnel like to gossip, especially about famous people they round up or run across, especially if those famous people happen to behave officiously toward them. And to whom do vice cops and such like to gossip about such things? Police reporters. Further, as one might expect, some habitues of gay bars (and/or members of the gay community at large) like to gossip about the presence in such places of famous person X -- especially if that person has a public persona that is quite different from their private one. Can't offer proof of the sort you'd accept, Dan, but while there obviously was some "gotcha" factor at work here, you'll have to take my word (or don't) that what I heard about Harvey in this respect over the years did not strike me as terribly tendentious in tone; it was more bemused and casual.

Also, as far as Harvey's public/moralistic homophobic stance goes, in his personal life he was gay. Yes, I know he had a wife and a son, but it was well-known in Chicago journalistic circles that Harvey was a heavy-duty cruiser, if that's the right term. Usual "Seinfeld" line applies, but then don't be a public/moralistic ... you know the drill.

Did that book become the basis for the Joseph Losey-directed film of the same name? Also, the first violinist to me doesn't look like he's using a bow per se. It looks like it he lets go of the string after each pull, moves his hand up, gathers string higher up (closer to the strings), and pulls down again. This would seem feasible if there were something like a spool of string above the strings somewhere. It also sound metallic to me, but wire would make it harder to do what I just described. Yes, the Losey film is based on the novel. Your account of what the first violinist is doing makes sense to me.

That's it. Also, looking at the clip again, I see that my account above of what the second violinist is doing makes no sense. Finally, what the heck is going on with Jimmy Lytell's hips during "A Blues Serenade"?

The second violin soloist seems to have things set up so that the hairs of his bow meet the strings of the violin from beneath the strings rather than from above -- this probably was accomplished by undoing the bow hairs beforehand, running them under the strings, and then reattaching them to the bow. The first violin soloist is playing with "one hair," however that's done.

That was the first sentence of "The Go-Between" by English novelist L. P. Hartley: "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=...5120&ref=nf As someone once said, the past is a foreign country.

Several years ago I ordered a classical CD from a reputable British-based site -- don't recall the name now -- and two weird charges for several hundred dollars each popped up on my credit card statement. They were made from Eastern Europe and were used to open up websites, porn operations perhaps. Charges were cancelled, and a new card seemed to fix things. I also opted to add a regular watchdog service through my credit card outfit for a fee. Unnecessary perhaps, but I sleep a little better.

I could have seen her as early as 1976 or '77, at the Mill Run Theater (with a revolving stage) in a shopping center in suburban Niles. I remember feeling sad when I heard of her death. From the way she sang you would never have know she was ill.

Forrest's voice is like a sensuous laser beam. Glad to know that she was such a nice person, too.