I’ll be heading into Manhattan tomorrow to visit the Bernarducci Meisel Gallery and, I hope, reach some sort of closure as far as those Sharon Moody paintings are concerned. But while in town for the day, a guy’s got to eat, right? And if this guy’s got to eat in Manhattan, it’s going to be at Shopsins as often as possible.

I’ve told you before how much I love the place—because of rather than spite of all those one-star Yelp reviews that say things such as: “Incredibly rude. Incredibly ignorant. Incredibly sexist. Incredibly disgusting. Being called a c***sucker multiple times and told to ‘go f*** myself’ while I’m photographing on assignment for a very well regarded city food magazine at the cheese shop next door by a foul-mouthed old man and his idiot son is not my idea of a hip Lower East Side foodie experience.”

Hey, they’ve never given me any trouble.

Anyway … I was checking out the insane menu in preparation for tomorrow’s brunch, and saw the following image on their eclectic homepage:

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With the news today that Kodak is preparing to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, it seems like the right time to share a Kodak photo wallet you would have received had your film been developed in the UK during the ’30s.

The copy declares—”What fun we had!”

And yes, Kodak, we did. We did.

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So who and what did I dream about during the month of December? Harvested from my Twitter stream are George R. R. Martin, Harrison Ford, Bill Gaines, porcupines hurled through the air by trebuchets, Agent Nelson Van Alden, an imploding apartment building, and more.

And who knows … maybe you’re in there somewhere, too!

DECEMBER 2010

I’ve lost a dream, since I no longer know what this scrawled night note means: “librarian complain me not donating ALL letters.” Any ideas? 31 Dec

I dreamt I was chef Janette Desautel from HBO’s Treme, whipping up a storm in the kitchen and then breaking to taste what others had done. 30 Dec

I dreamt I had a conversation with a relative filled with so many malapropisms and spoonerisms that I had no idea what he was talking about. 30 Dec

I dreamt I went to an experimental Scandinavian art installation and spent half an hour staring at a screen before I was told it was broken. 30 Dec

I dreamt I got a job as a political strategist at the White House, and my entire first day was spent in figuring where my office should be. 30 Dec

As usual, a night in a hotel destroyed my dream memories. Only snippets remain — so I have no idea what Don Draper was trying to sell me. 29 Dec

I dreamt we were on the top floor of an apartment building about to implode, and as we started to pancake, I shouted for Irene to go limp. 27 Dec

I dreamt my mother had a boyfriend — the rapper Young Jeezy — and we chatted, trying to get comfortable with the new, strange situation. 27 Dec

I dreamt I ran around a castle trying to catch a chicken in a royal game, and once I did, lay down with it on my chest to protest the king. 27 Dec

I dreamt I was a low level flunky for a mob boss, and it was my job to slip a tracer into the shoes of a yakuza when he wasn’t wearing them. 26 Dec (more…)

2011 is over and done with, so I thought I’d look back and see which of my posts were read the most last year.

One thing that’s clear is you’re all as interested in the issues raised by those Sharon Moody paintings of comics books as I am—my initial commentary on the matter was my most-clicked post of the year (almost virally so), and 3 of the top 10 posts were directly related to the case. (Which means you’ll want to check back in a week after I see the paintings in person Saturday.)

Here are the stories you read the most:

1. A few words in defense of Jack Kirby, Sal Buscema, Irv Novick, and other anonymized artists

2. Optometrist says blonde drivers “much more dangerous” than brunettes

3. Win $200 by making my zombie play into a mini-movie

4. Brian Bolland’s brilliantly blistering rebuttal

5. A few further thoughts on the artwork of Sharon Moody

6. It’s not too late to attend last weekend’s Nebula Awards

7. Can you identify this romance comic?

8. My favorite photo from San Diego Comic-Con: Pat and Dick Lupoff

9. Can you recognize this face?

10. Wall Street architect literally occupies Wall Street in 1931

Several readers who’ve been following my posts on the paintings of Sharon Moody have pointed me toward a recent New York Times article titled “Apropos Appropriation” by Randy Kennedy. Kennedy, reporting on a lawsuit that arose over appropriation by artist Richard Prince, wrote:

In March a federal district court judge in Manhattan ruled that Mr. Prince—whose career was built on appropriating imagery created by others—broke the law by taking photographs from a book about Rastafarians and using them without permission to create the collages and a series of paintings based on them, which quickly sold for serious money even by today’s gilded art-world standards: almost $2.5 million for one of the works. …

The decision, by Judge Deborah A. Batts, set off alarm bells throughout Chelsea and in museums across America that show contemporary art. At the heart of the case, which Mr. Prince is now appealing, is the principle called fair use, a kind of door in the bulwark of copyright protections. It gives artists (or anyone for that matter) the ability to use someone else’s material for certain purposes, especially if the result transforms the thing used—or as Judge Pierre N. Leval described it in an influential 1990 law review article, if the new thing “adds value to the original” so that society as a whole is culturally enriched by it. …

Over the last couple of decades part of the equation for deciding whether fair use is indeed fair is how much the thing copied has been transformed. In other words, even if we are long past making anything completely new under the sun, as Ecclesiastes declared a couple of millenniums ago, copying should be allowed only to the degree to which it adds to or builds on what came before.

What those who sent me the article from which I plucked the excerpt above want to know (and please do go read the whole thing) is whether I believed Moody’s actions bore any similarities to what Prince had done. And my initial thought on reading the article was that—even though I found it a fascinating piece—I didn’t really care. (more…)

Back in 1990, I was one of the first people interviewed by Fast Forward. (I was interviewed again in 2010, which you can watch by checking out the archives here, but since that’s only last year, stepping into the time machine won’t be quite as interesting as what’s below.)

The show is currently run by Mike Zipser and Kathi Overton (who recently dug out the video you’re about to see). John Pomeranz conducted the 21-year-old interview. How has time changed us? Well, here’s what John and I looked like together 17 years later at the 2007 Worldcon in Japan.

What did I learn when looking back at the episode (during which I share the stage with writer Judith Eckerson)?

First, that I sure said the phrase “and so forth” a heck of a lot! Sure glad I broke myself of that habit. (more…)

Some who’ve read my recent posts “A few words in defense of Jack Kirby, Sal Buscema, Irv Novick, and other anonymized artists“, “A few further thoughts on the artwork of Sharon Moody,” “Brian Bolland’s brilliantly blistering rebuttal,” and “Why a comic book isn’t a Hershey’s bar” seem to have gotten the erroneous impression that I’ve have a thing against mashups, smashups, allusions, sampling, remixing, tributes, homages, or whatever word you’d prefer to use for the act of performing alchemy on existing works to make something new.

Hey, I’ve got no problem with any of those acts—I’ve committed many of them myself. But I do believe one should always act honestly, openly, and with full disclosure, especially when one is borrowing from another artist who could be considered il miglior fabbro.

I actually love that kind of comics-related art when done appropriately. Here are some examples that intrigue or entertain me rather than offend.

You should make a habit of visiting the Covered blog, where contemporary artists reinterpret classic (and some not so classic) comics covers.

Check out Brodie H. Brockie’s take on Flash #175.

One thing to note is that beneath these images, in addition to crediting Brockie, Covered also stated, “Original cover by Carmine Infantino and Mike Esposito; DC 1967.” The correct and classy thing to do. (more…)

There’s been a ton of great commentary about that Sharon Moody artwork over on the Bleeding Cool bulletin boards, though if you want to follow all the threads of what the site’s commenters have said so far, you’ll have to check out its republication of my original article, its posting of my wife’s essay on the event, plus Dean Butters’ defense of the appropriation.

One of the posts I was happiest to see was this one from Joe B. Pangrazio, which quoted one of the co-owners of the Bernarducci Meisel Gallery as follows:

Anyone who attends the exhibition of her work will read that she has already acknowledged the artists who illustrated the comics on which her art is based. I would like to extend to you my personal invitation to see the exhibition as well. Perhaps we can discuss the subject further face to face. You might be interested to know that there is a recently published book entitled, “The Art Prophets.” One of the chapters is devoted to Stan Lee and the early history of DC and Action Comics, a subject you certainly know much about. You might also be pleased to know that he and Jack Kirby and others are treated on a par with other fine art world figures, including my business partner who has his own chapter as well. We have this book on hand for people to purchase for their own libraries should they be interested in the subject. It is good to know that the comic book artists and creators are finally getting the attention they deserve.

I was pleased to read those words, because it was the first response I’d heard that credit was being given where credit was due. I have no idea whether the acknowledgements always existed or were only posted publicly after the brouhaha began, since if full credit was already in place, I’d have assumed we’d have heard that earlier, with a simple, “Hey, man, you’ve got us all wrong, we’re not trying to ignore the original artists, we’ve always been giving them credit,” which would have gone far to assuage much of the concern. I look forward to learning the answer to that, and also to seeing the nature of the acknowledgements themselves, which I plan to do in the beginning of January when I visit the exhibition.

There’s one other thing I’d like to address before then, though.

Over the past week, as I’ve read your comments here and those over at Bleeding Cool, I’ve realized that some were correct to call me out on one aspect of this. I was accused of being more concerned with the lack of acknowledgement of the comics creators than the anonymity of the creators of some of the other commercial objects that had been mentioned. After mulling it over it, I realized that, yes, I was. I am.

Well … why? Why, for example, didn’t I demand recognition of whomever brought the Hershey’s bar wrapper into being, since Moody drew on that for one of her paintings as well?

And after thinking it over, here are several reasons I feel that way. (more…)

Back in January, on New Year’s Day, I cooked my first goose, and as another holiday season approached, I wanted to whip up some other sort of feast that was just as special, but also one that took me into new culinary territory. I chose suckling pig … the purchasing of which proved to be far more difficult than I’d at first imagined.

I figured I’d be able to buy one easily—don’t lots of folks serve them around Christmas?—but not a single butcher in my area carried them. And they couldn’t even recommend a local farmer who’d sell me one either. So I ran over to A & H Gourmet and Seafood Market in Bethesda—where I couldn’t resist buying those quail I told you about last week. I was looking for a 9-12 pound pig, but when I arrived, all they had was one that weighed 17.5 pounds. No big deal, I thought. I figured we’d have no problem eating that much pork.

But there was a secondary issue I hadn’t considered until after I got the beast home …

The frozen suckling pig was 24″ long, as you can see via the yardstick above, and we could easily store it in my basement freezer until I was ready. But I realized that not only is my refrigerator just 18″ wide, my oven is only slightly larger, at 22″ wide! (more…)

I received a package from Paul Di Filippo today containing a CD of ukulele music. I guess he could hear my caterwauling all the way up in Providence and wants me to stop making noises as if someone or something was being tortured. Sure do appreciate it, Paul.

But that’s not the thing Paul’s trying to tell me that’s sending a message I don’t want to hear.

You see, Paul decorated the envelope with clippings from old magazines and newspapers, the way he always does before popping anything in the mail. The front was a humorous collage, but as for the back, well, that was made up of a single large ad (a version of which seems to have been published in the 1947 Johnson Smith & Co. catalogue) which strongly implied there was something lacking about me.

The ad began:

In your business and social affairs—meeting and dealing with other people—have you the cold, “icicle” type of personality that constantly repels others and keeps them at a distance?

And it only went downhill from there …

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