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i think this thing has officially gone viral

April 8th, 2011

The Bechdel Test gets a mention in this week’s New Yorker, in an article by Tad Friend about the actress Anna Faris. I’ve had the magazine sitting here all week, but hadn’t made it past “I Was Gandhi’s Boyfriend” by Paul Rudnick. I only found out about it when someone from the blog She Said, She Said emailed me a link to their recent post about the test.

rule

April 3rd, 2011

Hi. Sorry I’ve been so inactive here recently. I went into a deep trough of work on my long-overdue book, which is a good thing.

I hardly remember how to make a blog post…but I will try.

I thought I would mention the curious spate of references lately to what seems to now be officially called The Bechdel Test. I’ve made at least a couple of posts about this phenomenon…here’s one. And then Neda Ullaby did this NPR piece. It’s all about a cartoon I did a hundred and twenty six years ago about two lesbians going to the movies, and how one of them won’t see a movie unless it meets three criteria. I totally ripped this idea off from a karate buddy one day when I couldn’t come up with an idea for my strip, but I’ve been unsuccessful at disconnecting my name from it.

Anyhow, I feel vaguely sheepish about the whole thing but it just seems to have a life of its own.

The Guardian’s (UK) Sunday Magazine had this recent column by Eve Wiseman that cites the Bechdel Test.

There’s another article called The Simplicity of the Bechdel Test on the website examiner.com by Caroline Hippler.

And this webcomic The Dumbing of Age referenced it in a recent episode.

It’s like the culture is finally catching up to the radical lesbian-feminist notion from a quarter century ago that women can be subjects. Thanks to the various people who tipped me off to these links!

tsunami propagation animation

March 11th, 2011

I haven’t been able to wrap my mind around scope of the earthquake/tsunami that hit Japan 16 hours ago. But this NOAA model helps.

snow

March 10th, 2011

The snow is up to the windowsills of my office. I had to give up on shoveling out my mailbox. Here I am feeding the birds.

Study Cartoons!

March 9th, 2011

Hey, this week Vermont’s Cartoonist Laureate, James Kochalka is being sworn in at the Vermont state house. 9:30am! I’m gonna get up early so I can be there for his inauguration or coronation or whatever. Update: It’s at 1pm, thank the lord.

There’s a great article my pal Lauren Ober wrote about James in last week’s Seven Days, our local alt weekly.

The whole Cartoonist Laureate scheme was thought up the by the Center for Cartoon Studies, the amazing MFA program in cartooning just down the pike in White River Junction, VT.

CCS is always looking for motivated and talented new students–and it’s not too late to apply for the fall semester! If you think this might be up your alley, or you know anyone up whose alley it might be…check out the admissions page on their site! This place is a remarkable hotbed of cartoonaceousness.

freaking Donald out

March 3rd, 2011

I was working at the computer this evening, past the cat’s feeding time. She was sitting right in front of my screen and following my cursor around, occasionally reaching up to bat at it. It occurred to me that she might enjoy watching something more exciting, so I went to YouTube and searched for “videos for cats.” I didn’t know there was such a thing, but of course there is. This example popped up, and I started playing it. She knows the squirrels aren’t real, but she’s not quite sure what to do with them. She does a little investigating toward the end.

appropriation

February 26th, 2011

My colleague Matt Madden teaches an experimental comics class at the School of Visual Arts called The Obstacle Course. He just gave the class an assignment to do an “appropriation” comic, where they took one or more existing works and transformed them into something new. (Like Garfield Minus Garfield.) One of his students, Maggie Siegel-Berele, turned in this hilarious appropriation of an old Dykes To Watch Out For episode combined with art from an old Flash comic.

Here’s Mo in the 1987 strip, Angst in Right Field:

Maggie had been hoping to use a Flash scene with two women talking to each other in it, so she could do a take on the Bechdel rule…but no surprise, she couldn’t find any images of two women in conversation. So she went with this soliloquy of Mo’s. Maggie says, “It was a lot of fun swiping ‘Barry is late – I’m never calling him again!’ with Mo’s political rant.”

Here’s Maggie’s whole scene. And the original DTWOF episode.

Matt’s teaching a special Obstacle Course workshop at the Museum of Cartoon and Comic Art in NYC this week. He’s a smart and awesome teacher, with a special interest in constrained writing/drawing techniques. You should go take it!

a laureate and some evidence

February 9th, 2011

My esteemed colleague James Kochalka has been named Vermont’s first Cartoonist Laureate!

He draws the wonderful diary comic American Elf, among innumerable other things—go to his site for links to his music, kids’ books, t-shirts, and god knows what else. Here’s a short article about him on the Center for Cartoon Studies’ website—CCS thought the whole laureate thing up, I guess, and got the governor behind it. Apparently Alaska also has a cartoonist laureate, but Vermont is the second state to appoint one. God, I love Vermont. And I love James’s work. His diary comics are little perfect visual/verbal haikus carved from the dross of everyday life. He will be a most stellar ambassador of comics.

On another note…

Here’s my office floor in front of my desk in November 0f 2006. The wheels of my desk chair had worn and splintered the plywood so badly that I put duct tape down to minimize the ongoing damage.

Then in July of 2008 I repainted my office before I settled down to work on my new book in earnest.

I took up the duct tape and patched the deeply scarred plywood with a can or two of Plastic Wood before painting it green. It didn’t look too terrible.

See how pretty the freshly painted floor was?

Anyhow, after I got the joint repainted, I rearranged my desk so that my chair was in a different spot, where the plywood was intact and glossy with pea green paint.

Here is that spot today, two and a half years later:

I was supposed to turn my “new book” in to the publisher over a year ago, but I’m still working on it. My progress has been elusive and for the most part invisible. So I find this clear visual evidence of my effort somewhat comforting.

here’s to you, jack

January 25th, 2011

I just heard that Jack LaLanne died. He was my fitness idol as a young child. If I was home sick from school, this wild muscle man was on tv, showing housewives how to tone & trim. He had the most amazing arms, the most amazing polyester jumpsuit, and the most amazing white dog. I was spellbound.

I wanted to be strong like him.

He was 96.

The L Life

January 23rd, 2011

This very handsome volume just came out from Abrams, the fancy art book publisher. Erin McHugh wrote short profiles/interviews with various lesbians and Jennifer May took amazing photos. Kate Clinton, Urvashi Vaid, Susan Love, Phyllis Lyon, Christine Vachon, Linda Villarosa, Sharon Kleinbaum, some yahoo named Alison Bechdel, and many more. All kinds of women doing all kinds of things. Here’s the trailer. If your coffee table is feeling naked and neglected, this could be just the thing for it.