Why I (still) love the Con

I stopped in at New York Comic-Con tonight on my way home from drinks at the Old Town. Granted, I didn't start attending Comic-Con when it was a few folding tables with old comic books in downtown San Diego. But I have been going for a while. I almost skipped this year, but here's why I still love the Con. Eleven reasons, because prime numbers are cool (at the Con).

1. The Popular Kids can't make it to the Con.
2. People read at the Con.
3. Folks are humble at the Con.
4. They give you the benefit of the doubt at the Con.
5. Good ideas come from the Con.
6. Nobody tries to stop you at the Con.
7. There's a lack of irony at the Con.
8. All body types are celebrated at the Con.
9. The graphics are great at the Con.
10. People share at the Con.
11. There's a lot of hope at the Con.

See you in San Diego.

To do list for this past Columbus Day

Write till noon
Dye eyelashes
Bike downtown
Come up with good book idea
Occupy Wall Street
Kayak in Hudson
Catch Martin Scorsese's Hugo as a work-in-progress


All done!

New Frontiers: THE WESTERN MYSTERIES

Sometimes I go to the Hungarian Pastry Shop to write. It’s where I’m writing now. I’ve been coming here since I first arrived in New York and lived at the Deanery on the grounds of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (long story) right across the street.

Yesterday I was here working on a picture book text, which I had owed to my gifted and clear-eyed editor, Lee Wade, for some time. I am proud to say I finished a first draft. Now Lee will tear it apart, at least I hope she will.

I was a little distracted – but not too much – by a fortyish, shaven-headed man at the next table who was pitching a business idea to a younger friend? intern? B-schoolmate? It was only when the pitcher described the business as “a reservoir of stories that you can go to any time” that of course my ears pricked up. Like the pitchee, I didn’t really cotton to what this business was. People wrote stories, posted them, and then other people could buy them as a plot for their own work? At least that’s what I think it was. Who would do such a thing I can’t imagine. (It would put Hollywood out of business.) But he was convinced, if not convincing.

It made me think of the Gold Rush and the last last frontier we had: the Wild West. I’ve been thinking about the Wild West because I’m the lucky co-agent of Caroline Lawrence’s Western Mysteries, the first book of which, The Case of the Deadly Desperados, is coming out in Spring of next year. If you think of the series as Deadwood meets Mark Twain by way of Richard Peck, you’ll have the right idea. It’s funny, original, unsparing, and it has the most original hero you’re going to meet anywhere in books next year. I love it.

For a while we thought that space was the next (and final) frontier. But virtual space is our own Gold Rush, and its power and allure are as palpable as they were in 1849, even if the coffee and beans have been changed to espressos and ischlers.

Poetry in unlikely places

I know magazines are folding and newspapers will soon cease to exist, but what will ever replace the little gems of meteorological narrative non-fiction that appear in the upper right-hand corner of the New York Times each day? Here's what the Late Edition told us this morning, and so far it's all come true:

Today, mostly sunny, not as warm
nor as humid, high 76. Tonight,
mostly clear, comfortable, low 58.
Tomorrow, mostly sunny, nice.

The world is gushing chaos, but somehow gentleness survives.

(The photo was taken on my way home from work today. Tango by the River at sunset.)

Poetry Friday: Ben

Who else remembers this paean to a rat as tenderly as I do? I wish I could post the video but I am defeated by technology. It's worth cutting and pasting the link below, though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAJV4p0aet4

I never saw Willard (too young at the time and I have always hated horror movies) but I did love this love song to a rodent. Could be why I settled in New York.


Ben, the two of us need look no more
We both found what we were looking for
With a friend to call my own
I'll never be alone
And you, my friend, will see
You've got a friend in me (you've got a friend in me)
Ben, you're always running here and there
You feel you're not wanted anywhere
If you ever look behind
And don't like what you find
There's one thing you should know
You've got a place to go (you've got a place to go)

I used to say "I" and "me"
Now it's "us", now it's "we"
I used to say "I" and "me"
Now it's "us", now it's "we"
Ben, most people would turn you away
I don't listen to a word they say
They don't see you as I do I wish they would try to
I'm sure they'd think again
If they had a friend like Ben (a friend)
Like Ben (like Ben)
Like Ben

-- "Ben," by Don Black & Walter Scharf, 1972

Why I like MoCCA

So it was a little disorganized. And hot. But because they opened the doors an hour late, I got to stand in line with a great mom who was bouncing with enthusiasm and restrained pride for her son (booth #608). And I met a man who had long ties in the children's book world. And behind me was a young comic book artist who was carting in 100 copies of her latest work, heavy as it was, so she could barter with others just like her.

The people at MoCCA understand something about books. Books are permanent. Books mean work is final. Books are to be passed along, read, re-read. Of course all these artists and writers are web-savvy -- even that term is way too naive for them. It's like saying artists 50 years ago were pencil-savvy. But savvy as they are, they love print. They love its limitations, they love the tooth of paper, they like to sew up seams and fold paper and figure out how to use color on color. They like to see how they can make things look old even when they are shockingly new.

If something deserves to be printed, I heard them saying with their gorgeous tiny hand-printed volumes, then it deserves to be a beautiful object. Even if it's a few pieces of stapled Xerox paper, there is thought in every panel. The effort it takes to make books -- after work, late at night, whenever the muse strikes and when it doesn't, and all with very little money -- that effort is worth nothing unless the book itself is a work of art. And you are so right, MoCCA folk. Why print unless you can't do anything else?

Maybe I'm romanticizing a little. So what. I love the raw unstoppable passion of these artists. I am filled with deep admiration at their willingness to help one another. Honestly, with country's biggest publishers heading further and further down the virtual road, I'm glad there is a vanguard of new artists who believe in printed books. Because, dudes, I believe in you.

Vegetarians: Stop reading now

This was the slightly surreal scene at Madison Square Park, just a couple of blocks from MoCCA this past weekend. Imagine my surprise when I got out of a cab to find a suckling pig laid out on a park bench. The piggie was about to be carved without sentiment of any kind by a short woman with a long knife. A really long knife.

Just the perfect entry into the world of cartoonists and comicbook writers.

More about them soon, truly.

Separated at birth?

Jack Nicholson.

Mo Willems.

Can you believe I had never actually seen Easy Rider before this Friday night? A disgrace, I know. And when I at last did view this trippy movie, all I could think of was Mo Willems. NOT because it was trippy, no no. But every time I looked at Jack, I thought...Mo. Whoa.

Which is a nice segue into tomorrow's blog post about the Musem of Comics and Cartoon Art festival in NYC this weekend. (Mo Willems is on the MoCCA Advisory Board.) For tonight let's just say there is a future to publishing, and it was in exhilarating evidence at the Lexington Avenue Armory this weekend. More anon.

Poetry Friday: Alternate Side of the Street Parking

This week, here in Gotham, I had a horrible run-in with a fellow New Yorker. The reason for the altercation was alternate side of the street parking. I won't go into it, except to say that it made me realize how lucky we are in this town not to have to rely on a car. And in honor of my 1999 Subaru Outback Wagon, and of the four winters I spent at college in Maine, here is a poem for a cold Friday:


Starting the Subaru at Five Below

Ater 6 Maine winters and 100,000 miles,
when I take it to be inspected

I search for gas stations where they
just say beep the horn and don't ask me to

put it on the lift, exposing its soft
rusted underbelly. Inside is the record

of commuting: apple cores, a bag from
McDonald's, crushed Dunkin Donuts cups,

a flashlight that doesn't work and one
that does, gas receipts blurred beyond

recognition. Finger tips numb, nose
hair frozen, I pump the accelerator

and turn the key. The battery cranks,
the engine gives 2 or 3 low groans and

starts. My God it starts. And unlike
my family in the house, the job I'm

headed towards, the poems in my briefcase,
the dreams I had last night, there is

no question about what makes sense.
White exhaust billowing from the tail pipe,

heater blowing, this car is going to
move me, it's going to take me places.

-- Stuart Kestenbaum
from Pilgrimage, (c) 1990, Coyote Love Press

I Went to a Marvelous Party

It's Poetry Friday, and the end of the party-going season, alas! But our livers and waistlines will thank us as we put our noses to the grindstone once again next week. In the meantime, I'll whisper in your ear that I went to a marvelous party last night, full of New York creatures, at the impeccable apartment of a fabulous creative director whose work is well known to you all. His view, more or less, is what you see in the photo above. His name is my secret. But it put me in mind of Noel Coward's deathless ditty, "I Went to a Marvelous Party," a snippet of whose lyrics appear frivolously below.

I went to a marvellous party.
We played the most wonderful game,
Maureen disappeared
And came back in a beard
And we all had to guess at her name!
We talked about growing old gracefully
And Elsie who's seventy-four
Said, "A, it's a question of being sincere,
And B, if you're supple you've noting to fear."
Then she swung upside down from a glass chandelier,
I couldn't have liked it more.