Wednesday, NYC
June 22nd, 2006
It’s a good thing I’ve been blogging this tour because otherwise I’m not sure I’d remember it. Today I had a podcast, two signings, and a long, intense newspaper interview with a woman who did her doctoral dissertation on autobiographical comics. One signing was just a quick drop-by at the Oscar Wilde Memorial Book Shop, the pole star by which I orient myself in New York City. Where they had this cool countertop display for my book which I hadn’t seen before. It’s a little die-cut house. Then I hung out at Bluestockings, a radical bookstore on the lower east side that sells books on everything from feminism and gender stuff to black liberation and democracy studies. I hung out in front of the “alternative menstrual products” and talked to people and signed books.
- Permalink: Wednesday, NYC
Tuesday night
June 22nd, 2006
God, I’m starting to get pretty fried. It’s Wednesday night and I’m just getting around to blogging Tuesday night. So here I am speaking at The Center in NYC to a very attentive bunch of people. It felt to me like there was a particular resonance to the evening, perhaps because this is the city where I first started cartooning nine thousand years ago.
After the event, I went out with a bunch of cartoonists for dinner.
That’s me, Mikhaela Reid, Joan Hilty and her girlfriend Nancy Goldstein, and Jen Camper.
- Permalink: Tuesday night
Tuesday afternoon
June 21st, 2006
This is a view out the window from the Sirius Satellite Radio studio in midtown, where I went for an interview on the Michelangelo Signorile show. It’s weird doing radio interviews. A sort of out-of-body experience. I have no idea what I said. Their offices were terribly fancy. See my name on the screen?
Then for something completely different, we drove way over practically into the Hudson to the cable access station.
I was on Ann Northrop’s and Andy Humm’s delightful news show Gay USA. I love those guys! I get their show at home in the hinterlands on satellite tv, and it makes me feel like I actually know what’s going on. We had a really nice conversation about Fun Home. I’m not sure when it airs, but I’ll try and figure it out.
- Permalink: Tuesday afternoon
Tuesday morning
June 21st, 2006
Yesterday was so complicated I’m going to have to make multiple posts. In the morning, I went to Christopher Street to meet a guy from Newsday for an interview. A photographer came too, and took pictures of me in Sheridan Square, which figures into a scene in Fun Home. As does the legendary Stonewall Inn. This used to be a bagel place when I lived here in the eighties. Now it appears to be a bar again. Here’s what it looked like in 1969.
- Permalink: Tuesday morning
on the radio
June 20th, 2006
If you’re not doing anything this afternoon, come hear me talk about Fun Home on the Mike Signorile Show on Sirius satellite radio. You can sign up for a free pass to listen. I think I’m gonna come on at 3:30.
- Permalink: on the radio
Barnes & Noble, Chelsea
June 20th, 2006
A large but ruly crowd came to my reading at Bunns & Noodle in New York last night. See that goth-ish young woman in the black t-shirt? That’s the logo for Ministry, the band my brother’s playing with. She heard them last week when they were in town and was psyched to find out that he was my brother and I was his sister. She works for DC Comics.
- Permalink: Barnes & Noble, Chelsea
another doppelganger
June 20th, 2006
The reason I was out walking yesterday was to meet my old pal June Thomas for lunch. She worked at off our backs eons ago. Now she works at Slate and wears a seersucker suit. When I first met her, she was convinced that I had based my character Mo on her. Here she is making a Mo face.
- Permalink: another doppelganger
walking
June 20th, 2006
Yesterday I took a long city hike. God, I love walking in New York!
My favorite thing is how at the crosswalks, there are two walls of people who flow effortlessly through one another.
No one ever collides. Well, hardly ever. Imagine all the infinitesimal directional calibrations that entails.
It’s very different from walking in London, where every three feet you seem to get caught up in that little left-right dance with someone.
- Permalink: walking
Cross-country bar hop
June 19th, 2006
Saturday night I was at the Wild Rose in Seattle, and Sunday night I was at Cattyshack in Park Slope. Two lesbian bars in one weekend. I haven’t done that in, um… about forty years. Here I am with Aja and Brooke, the manager and owner of Cattyshack.
It’s a really nice place with an outside deck. I sat at a table and talked to people and signed books. This great new comics/graphic novel store Rocketship sold my books at the bar. Here I am with Mary and Alex, who own the store.
And here I am with one of my many doppelgangers, though Reina is a particularly good one. Don’t you think? Especially if I were wearing my other glasses, which look just like hers.
- Permalink: Cross-country bar hop
Seattle
June 18th, 2006
Friday night I read at the University Bookstore here. Another delightful audience who asked questions that ranged from the intimately emotional to the delightfully technical. (What does your family think? What kind of pen do you draw with?) But that’s the cool thing about graphic storytelling. You can’t avoid talking about the physical product as well as the content.
And last night Bailey-Coy, the LGBT bookstore here, set me up to read at the Wild Rose Bar. God, it was nice to be in a lesbian bar. And it’s so nice that this one is still here. I did a Dykes to Watch Out For slide show here in 1988!
Here’s Maggie, who had the most remarkable comics tattoos.
Driving back to the hotel at dusk, I got a heart-stopping glimpse of Mt. Rainier. Or rather a tiny slice of Mt. Rainier, between the clouds. God! It was all pink and ghostly and floating impossibly high up in the sky. You can’t possibly see it in this terrible photo I took from the car, but I’m posting it anyway.
- Permalink: Seattle