reading in Denver tonight
June 5th, 2007 | Uncategorized
I was home from NYC long enough to do my laundry and ink my next strip. Now I’m at the airport on my way to Denver. Come hear me read at the Lodo Tattered Cover tonight at 7:30pm.
Here’s a thing on AfterEllen.com about the Lammy Awards ceremony if you’re interested.
18 Responses to “reading in Denver tonight”
The article has the wrong title for your book. It says “Fun House” instead of “Fun Home”.
Congratulations on the Lambda Award, Alison — but I’m a bit confused by your metaphor of the bends. The AfterEllen.com blog says that you “compared the fame [you’ve] recently received for Fun House [sic] to a scuba diver getting the bends when rising too quickly out of the water. This award, [you] said (to continue the metaphor), is like fresh air.”
A diver gets the bends from ascending too quickly from a high-pressure environment to a low-pressure one. If I understand decompression sickness correctly, fresh air doesn’t help; what’s needed is a temporary return to higher pressure (although pure oxygen can help). So how does the recognition of the Lambda Literary Foundation work in this metaphor? Am I looking at this the wrong way?
I’m almost certainly being too literal, but it bothers me when I can’t figure this sort of thing out.
Speaking of awards, Fun Home is up for two Harveys: Best raphic Album and Best Single Issue. The fact that it’s on both lists reflects a bit of confusion as to the difference. At least Alison wasn’t nominated for Best New Talent.
Hey Josiah,
You are right about diving, high and low pressure, and the bends. I’d enjoy this as an underwater mixed metaphor and, as you suggest, not take it too literally. If the web page can’t get the name of Alison’s book right, who knows if they even quoted her correctly.
Here’s is a fun fact. Colorado, where Alison is winging to at this very moment, has the highest number of certified divers of any land-locked U.S. state. I’m one of them.
See some of you at the Tattered Cover in LoDo (Lower Downtown) tonight?
1628 16th Street between Wynkoop and Wazee.
Ellen
A “Fun House” is not a “Fun Home”.
AfterEllen.com got the name of her book wrong, but at least Alison’s name was spelled correctly — and, presumably, pronounced correctly at the ceremony!
(Bechdel, rhymes with “rectal.” always makes me laugh!)
I bet “Fun House” is going to show up on the shelves of Bunns and Noodle. 😉
Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! I missed you. I was just in Denver! ARGH!
There’s an interview with Alison up at Newsarama, which is probably the premier online source for mainstream comics news. To the best of my knowledge, they never once mentioned her before her Eisner nomination.
http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=115416
It will be interesting to see how the fanboys react in the comments section. They tend to be conservative, childish and opinionated.
Yay! We’re getting a crew together to come tonight. Denver is very excited to see you.
Yeah, I know the decompression metaphor is a little confused. But pure oxygen is what they give divers who get the bends, to help with the symptoms.
Also, if a diver gets blue lips, it’s an indication she’s got rotten air in her tank. Fun sport, huh?
Dr. Emp, you were right about those fanboys .. one seems to think “Fun Home” is less worthy of attention than “The Plain Janes”, another gripes that FH’s success isn’t important because it’s not good for the superhero genre. Still, reading their comments makes for cheap laughs.
To further confuse matters, Denver is at high altitude, which means less oxygen. Poor Alison. 🙁
Thanks for the metaphor assistance, everyone. I was obviously trying too hard.
Dr. E, “conservative, childish and opinionated” is too right about the fanboy nation. I’ve got a foot in that world, and I just made the mistake of trying to engage the kid who was complaining that Fun Home was boring and that the critics only liked it because it didn’t have any superheroes in it. (Insert rolling-eyes smiley here.)
Maybe the metaphor has something to do with getting all that smothering attention from the mainstream press, as though AB were their find of the century. Never mind that she’s been working just as hard and turning out great drawings and cutting cultural commentary for 20 years for a mainly lgbt (don’t worry, straight dtwof fans, I know you’re out there and on this blog) audience. So the Lammy could be kind of a move back into the kind of audulation that doesn’t come from Time or Newseek, nice average American publications that haven’t a clue about her entire oeuvre?
Sorry, AB – I wouldn’t presume to speak for you; I’m just indulging in some theory-spinning.
Yay divers! (got certified in May!)
Well, nice try, Josiah. There’s always one guy with a gripe against the world on those boards, and their opinions are wedged in their brains. Other people writing in seem to get it though.
That was an excellent demonstration of why I don’t participate in comics fandom online. Too bad that one idiot dominated the conversation. I was hoping for a more diverse selection of idiots.