The Listening: Young Jeezy

commentary and criticism, music


I was waiting for this video to drop to hype one of the albums that’s been in heavy rotation here for the last couple months — Young Jeezy’s The Recession. Releasing the album earlier this year, Jeezy smartly picked up on the coming recession as the underlying theme for the everyman-as-a-drug-dealer thematics that he has been mining since his beginnings, and defined on his major label debut, Thug Motivation 101. This not only seems particularly auspicious right now as the financial markest are in a tailspin, but also works surprisingly well as hip hop music — he ends one of his songs, the street business anthem “Don’t You Know”, which repeatedly stresses alienation between buyer and seller, by saying “America is me.”

Komiks.dk 2010 — Interview med Mads Bluhm

comics and cartooning, interviews

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Den danske tegneseriefestival Komiks.dk blev som bekendt afholdt for tredje gang i sommers. Arrangementet var en succes på snart sagt alle planer og det virkede derfor på mange som om festivalen var kommet for at blive. Det håber vi alle fortsat, men arrangørerne har meddelt, at de har behov for flere hænder hvis det skal lade sig gøre igen at holde festival i 2010 som det er planen. Derfor har de indkaldt til generalforsamling søndag d. 23 november kl. 14.00. Her kan alle interesserede komme og give deres besyv med, og forhåbentlig også melde sig til en eller flere af de arbejdsgrupper festivalarbejdet er organiseret omkring. Mere information kan fås her, og på festivalens Facebook-profil.

I anledning af dette tog jeg mig en kort snak med festivalens formand Mads Bluhm om situationen som den ser ud nu, de umiddelbare planer for den næste festival og den desværre stadig overhængende risiko for, at der ikke bliver en festival.

Reads: Chris Ware

comics and cartooning, commentary and criticism

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The latest ACME Novelty Library (#19), which is the latest instalment in the greater story of Rusty Brown, is a somewhat frustrating experience. It combines two stories that reflect on one another. An science fiction piece detailing the colonisation of Mars by four people and two dogs, and a flashback to the youth of what turns out to be its author, Rusty Brown’s father, who once had ambitions of becoming a ‘serious’ SF writer. The first part — the Mars story — is fantastic, but the second is a real disappointment.

Picks of the Week

comics and cartooning, current affairs, hype & linkage, music

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“Chocolate City is no dream, it’s my part of the rock, and I dig ya CC.”

— George Clinton, “Chocolate City”

The picks of the week from around the web.

  • Parliament: “Chocolate City”. Emphatically the track of the week. Listen to it here, and go here for the classic album.
  • Gore Vidal on BBC’s election night. An unexpectedly surreal appearance by the (in)famous writer. This guy’s a legend.
  • Bob James’ “Nautilus.” One of the most sampled tunes gets its due in this survey of its progeny. It’s been done to death, and it still yields an awesome break.
  • ActuaBD: Moebius interview. This is not exactly news, but still worth checking for — a lengthy, interesting interview with Moebius who’s experiencing something of a comeback to comics at the moment. Parts 1, 2, 3.

    • Superman’s Choice

    comics and cartooning, commentary and criticism, philosophy and theory, pictorial arts

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    “The ‘Oratorio’ is nothing less than the Shazam!, the Kimota! for Western Culture and we would do well to remember it in our currently trying times.”

    — Grant Morrison, on Pico della Mirandola’s Oratory on the Dignity of Man

    In the marathon Newsarama interview with Grant Morrison on his and Frank Quitely’s newly-finished All-Star Superman series the writer mentions the Renaissance philosopher Pico della Mirandola’s famous Oratio de hominis dignitate, or Oratory on the Dignity of Man (1486) as central to his take on Krypton’s famous son (go read the interview: parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10). He also mentions Leonardo’s even more famous ‘Vitruvian Man’ (c. 1487, detail above) as important to his interpretation of the Superman myth, and as the direct inspiration for this interpretation by Quitely of the character, keeping us all alive by labouring in the heart of the Sun:

    Love Multiplied

    commentary and criticism, pictorial arts

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    Currently on display at the art dealer Pietro Scarpa in Venice, there’s a reclining nude by the Venetian painter Giacomo ‘Palma’ Vecchio (c. 1480-1528), which is worth a second look for anyone interested in the practice of replication in the Italian Renaissance workshop. It repeats with slight variations the figure of Venus in a canvas in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Both pictures are datable to the 1520s, with the latter falling late, left as it was unfinished in the master’s studio at his death.

    Heavy on the Castanets

    comics and cartooning, commentary and criticism, letters

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    Michael Chabon frustrates me. He’s obviously talented, smart and knows how to tell a good story in the old school way. Even if he suffers from the classic problem of providing his stories with endings as memorable as what went before. (I remember a lot of cool things about Kavalier and Clay, but how did it end, again?). What I have a problem with, however, are certain mannerisms in his fluid, elegant language that have always been there, but which one hoped would dissipate, rather than consolidate themselves, with experience.