Author Archive
May 20th, 2007
Today I drove down to White River Junction to see the Center for Cartoon Studies’ first ever graduation ceremony. Here’s everyone hanging out on the street in front of the school. There was a very impressive thesis exhibition by the eighteen graduating students. This school is really amazing. Here’s an excellent article about it that ran recently in the Christian Science Monitor. At least I thought it was excellent until I got to the sentence, “And the professionals who pass through as guest lecturers – as many as 15 a semester – are luminaries of the comics world. Mr. Spiegelman. Chris Ware. Alison Bechdel.”
You would think a person would find that flattering, but it’s actually rather mortifying. It’s like saying, Tolstoy. Nabokov. Borat. Or maybe Garbo. Dietrich. Aniston. Don’t worry, I’m not fishing for reassurance. Just a little perspective.
May 18th, 2007
Another installment of Mutual of West Bolton’s Wild Kingdom with Marlon Perkins Alison Bechdel: the fierce rose-breasted grosbeak.
And you can buy raffle tickets here to win some framed art from Fun Home and support the Lambda Literary Organization.
May 17th, 2007
My local TV station, WCAX, has been doing a series this week called “Drawn Here,” about cartoonists who live in Vermont. It’s in honor of the first graduation ceremony at the Center for Cartoon Studies this weekend. Tonight the segment about me aired. Many Vermonters refer lovingly to WCAX as WGOP-TV, so I was a little skeptical about how they’d tailor a bunch of dykes and my closeted dad for the six o’clock news. But the reporter Jack Thurston did a dang good job, I think. Times have really changed.
They also did segments on James Kochalka, and New Yorker artists Harry Bliss and Ed Koren. I managed to record the segment with Ed too. You know Ed’s stuff, those gentle, furry monster people. They look just like him.
I just figured out how to transfer stuff from the VCR to my DV recorder, and thence to YouTube. So I’ll post these quick before someone tells me I’m breaking the law.
May 15th, 2007
Here’s the latest. This temporary slowdown to one strip every four weeks is working out pretty good for me. I’m starting to make a dent in all the other stuff I have to do. Read the rest of this entry »
May 15th, 2007
Look, this came in the mail yesterday. The official publication date is June 5. In a couple weeks I start flitting hither and yon again, and not a moment too soon–I’m almost out of tiny hotel bottles of shampoo. (Uh…I have a dim recollection of having made that feeble shampoo joke before. Sorry if I’m repeating myself. It must be a side-effect of too much travel.) Anyway, come see me read at one of these places:
New York:
May 30: Barnes & Noble, UWS, 2289 Broadway @ 82nd, 7 pm
June 2: Book Expo, BEA, Signing & Panel Events Read the rest of this entry »
May 11th, 2007
Here’s a real movie for you. The trailer for The Hollywood Librarian, an amazing film being made by Ann Seidl, a sometime poster to this very blog.
It’ll be premiering at the American Library Association’s Annual Conference in D.C. at the end of June. Here’s the Hollywood Librarian site.
May 9th, 2007
I’m glad I read the comments to the last post through to the end–that was a bracing exchange on the French election, modern European history, and amnesia.
I also loved the range of responses to the first archive episode–the deeply nostalgic ones, and the ones from people who weren’t even born yet.
This evening I made a movie about the progress of the flora in my woods since my last report on April 27. My woods…I know, I know, that’s obnoxious. The woods. Is that better? I don’t know why I keep subjecting you to these slapdash video projects. It helps me decompress or something. From my fast-paced, stressful life in the woods.
Hey, Fun Home won a prize on Monday. The Publishing Triangle-Judy Grahn Nonfiction Award. It’s a pretty cool thing. You can read about the other winners here. Right now I’m reading one of the other nonfiction finalists, Different Daughters, A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement. It’s fascinating. How did those women have the nerve to do what they did? In the fifties? I don’t know. But I’m glad they did.
May 2nd, 2007
Okay, today my new plan goes into effect. Recently I explained that out of necessity I’m cutting back to one new strip a month for a while. And in between I’ll post re-runs. I’m beginning at the beginning, twenty years ago. Read the rest of this entry »
May 1st, 2007
My flight from Pittsburgh to New York this morning was, as seems much more likely than not these days, late. It arrived at La Guardia minutes before my connection to Burlington was scheduled to leave. I sprinted the half mile or so from the arrival gate to the departure gate only to find that my Burlington flight was indeed “closed.” They booked me on another flight that will—theoretically—leave in two hours. I started walking aimlessly around the terminal, adjusting to this new plan and Read the rest of this entry »
April 30th, 2007
I’m at the airport again, delayed again, on my way to Pittsburgh. As I while away the time, I thought I’d show you this sticker on the wall next to me, in fortuitous juxtaposition with a sign fragment.
I spent a long, long time yesterday pondering the question “what is the purpose of this blog.” My answer is turning into a treatise, and it’s still not finished. But it occurs to me now that one purpose of the blog, for me anyway, is that it’s a place to put things like this photograph. Things which are kind of interesting in the moment, but beyond that, have absolutely no lasting value. It could be argued that I should not waste my time or yours on such matters. But I’m delayed at the airport. What’s your excuse? And more importantly, speaking of time, can you identify the source of that quotation?
