Tag: los angeles

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Don’t you want to be like him?

Today started so fresh and clean in the weather department. And it’s turning greyer by the minute. I’m relieved to have some time around the house. Almost every sheet I own has been been washed. Still a bunch of other clothes to work my way through and I should also do some weeding of my various outfits. Last night I had an online exchange with a friend that unexpectedly turned revealing and tender. What a gift. He talked about me becoming more myself. Is that the trajectory I’ve been on for the past few years? It’s all muddled from where I sit.

I’m trying to work up the enthusiasm for Watchmen, but it’s not forthcoming. I only found out about the books about ten years ago when people were insisting on their importance. My memory of them is that they were intriguing but not epoch-making. So I’m not a first generation fan, and I’m not sure I want to sit through three hours of something big and shiny that doesn’t really matter to me. As a result of the past year’s hoopla about the movie I’ve been trying to locate my copy of the trade paperback for the past ten weeks or so. (That should tell you something about the state of my apartment if a book could hide out in it for more than three months) I’ve been thinking about comics a lot lately though, partly through listening to the “Comic Book Queers” podcast and checking out the comic reviews on the Onion. I’m making my way through Scott McCloud’s Zot at the moment, thanks to the latter, but it isn’t doing much for me, neither on the drawing level nor that of the writing.

If there there was a 1980’s comic adaptation that I would geek out over, with all the attendant anxiety about casting and whether they could “get it right”, it would be Jaime Hernandez’ Hoppers stories from Love and Rockets. I’ve just read two recent collections of the newer books and my admiration continues unabated, as well as my massive crush on Margarita Luisa Chascarrillo. Reading those stories back to back with being in Los Angeles again puts me in a nostalgic mood.

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It’s funny the resistance I have to writing my posts beforehand. Even though the interface isn’t all that friendly, and I don’t have a client loaded on this laptop, I’d rather write on the lj post page than use my word processor. Well this is a little attempt to overcome that resistance.

Yesterday was another sunny day out here. I got into see my friend Kim Anno’s panel on shifting abstraction in the morning. After it ended, I ran into Prof Ray K. who is, I gotta say – so very cute ( sorry about the objectification, Ray) and who made the astute remark that on the whole, the attendees of CAA are not the most prepossessing bunch. It’s sadly true, I’ve seen many more downtown bums on this trip who have turned my head than conference goers. That being said, it has been wonderful to connect with so many pals at CAA. It feels like a part of my life that has fallen by the wayside a bit.

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In the afternoon I ditched to meet up with the Dave White, who braved the pain of his surgical recovery to take me first to a great Mexican place in Silverlake for lunch and then a couple of doors down to a little thrift store that reminded me of how terribly picked over all the places in New York are. I managed to get out the door with only a couple of purchases, luckily. And then I gave him a mission: trusting to his impeccable taste I told him to take me to Amoeba and “metal me up” unfortunately, I didn’t get to meet Extreem Aaron, nor Alonzo who had work related stress disorder, but I did get to have the great experience of sitting in the store while Dave said, yeah you should have this , yeah this too. I was ready to splurge on a Plasmatics T-shirt but the cashier couldn’t figure out how to get one and it was getting late. Now when I get home I get to experience the blissful brutality as I ponder the futility of all things not metal.

There’s another weird thing: I’m traveling around without any sort of disc playback device. CDs have become just the thing I carry the music home on, before I rip them to my hard drive: a software delivery system.

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Free wifi is scarce on the ground here so I can’t really spend time looking through LJ. It’ll be hit and run posts for the most part, written while i sit in the hotel lobby with the chatty barista. I’ll post a picture of what the inside of the academic art world looks like, but for now I’ll say that I am once again confounded by the distances of LA. Practically everything sprawls out of control. It’s a four block walk from on e end of the convention center to another, which is pretty damn funny to think about but not to experience.