Hermenautic Circle blog

Happy New Year, everybody – thanks for helping make 2008 an awesome year for BLDGBLOG, from visitor traffic to public lectures to publications. 2009 promises to be much bigger, and more exciting, as I've got some really cool plans to announce for the site soon.
So thanks! I love all the comments, good and bad, and all the links and emails (even when it takes me way too long to respond to them), and all the readers I've met at various events over the past few years.
Keep in touch – and happy 2009!

softskull: @shortyawards I nominate @BadEvan in #personal because he's such a passionate dude.

I started a tradition last year that I thought might keep me a little more honest in terms of my career and what I want to happen in my life. I put down on paper (or screen, I guess) all the stuff that I achieved over the past year, and what I hope to achieve next year. Nothing like a little public failure to really move your ass into gear.

Without further ado, here is last year’s post.

Let’s take my goals one at a time:

• “- Get hitched to the greatest girl on the planet.”

GRADE: A+. I did indeed get married to the Greatest Girl on the Planet. The shebang was a total blast

• “- Get a publisher for Robots And Monsters: The Book.”

GRADE: B+. I do have several interested major publishers, and I also in the process got an amazing literary agent, Gretchen Stetler. So it’s sort of there. No contract yet, no check in hand, no book tour. The framework has been set. Which is totes sweet.

• “- Assemble the pieces for a solo art show.”

GRADE: C. I did start a few studies, and I know much more what the finished thing will look like, but I screwed up my show dates in Seattle, and had to drop out, and I haven’t done much in terms of actual piece production. Get it together, Alterio.

• “- Get some comics in a few newspapers.”

GRADE: F. Didn’t even try. I did get a comic in Mark Kingwell’s 2009 book, though, which is rad, so that’s a more than amazing consolation prize.

• “- Finally do something constructive with The Basic Virus.”

GRADE: D. There’s some talk about others wanting to serialize it, but that has been all talk up to this point.

• “- Fix my motorcycle.”

GRADE: A. I fixed my motorcycle, and then I sold it, which I’m actually very happy about. Owning a motorcycle in the city with a garage or parking space is a real drag. I’m strictly walking now, and it rules.

So, all in all a really awesome year personally, but just a so-so year in terms of accomplishing the goals I set out to do, which is always a little disappointing. However, when I take a stock of everything, I can be pretty proud of myself. I am getting more illustration work than ever, I’m still way busy, even in these lean economic times, and our start up, Squonk Studios, is on the verge of getting a big client, and Robots and Monsters is more popular than ever, with over 4 Grand raised for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

My grandma died this year, which was tough. But then again, Barack Obama was elected, which rules, and I also won my Fantasy Football Superbowl. So all in all, I’m pretty damn happy about 2008, on balance.

In 2009 I will:

+ REALLY nail down a publisher for R and M. Seriously.

+ REALLY do something with the Basic Virus. Seriously.

+ REALLY get going on a solo show. Seriously.

+ Go on my honeymoon to Hawaii, Land of Intriguing Tropical Drinks

+ Do my best to get my name out there more, be it throguh print, web, or word of mouth.

Here’s to your best health, a happy family, and a great 2009. Thanks for reading this humble blog.

softskull: @largeheartedboy Another Year in Cartoons angle: http://tinyurl.com/8dw5mg

softskull: Another reader outreach/book group angle: using goodreads.com discussion feature. All About Lulu author hosting one Jan 2 http://is.gd/ejuX

Richard Foreman reads from his plays and prose.

WFMU's The Acousmatic Theater Hour with Jason G and Karinne from 12/14/2008

Patricia Cornwell appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #257.

Patricia Cornwell is most recently the author of Scarpetta. This interview serves as a companion piece to Sarah Weinman’s Los Angeles Times profile.

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Checked in for narcissistic personality disorder.

Author: Patricia Cornwell

Subjects Discussed: The genesis of Kay Scarpetta after three unpublished novels, Sara Ann Freed’s input into Cornwell’s early career, on being rejected by the Mysterious Press, Susanne Kirk, the unexpected success of Postmortem, how Charles Champlin’s Los Angeles Times review changed the publisher’s perception, writing a Scarpetta book before the last one was published, switching from first-person to third-person midway through the series, tinkering around in the movie business, being unable to write anymore in the first-person perspective, on later books lacking the warm element of character interaction, trying to get better through experimentation, listening to fans and readers, bringing back Benton Wesley from the dead, the differences between Cornwell and Scarpetta, writing sex scenes, privacy and reluctant fame, reporters who have the temerity to follow Cornwell into the bathroom, cops and submachine guns, Ab Fab, Judd Apatow’s films, Cornwell’s continued involvement with forensic science, taking out full-page ads to correct being misquoted by a journalist, pursuing the Jack the Ripper case, making various investments, surviving in the dour economy, and Cornwell’s political involvement.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: What’s interesting too is that your career essentially started at the behest of very legendary people in the mystery world.

Cornwell: Right. That’s right.

Correspondent: And then Susanne Kirk found it at Scribner and picked it up from there.

Cornwell: And she was quite a champion for it. Because the publishing house, from my understanding back then, was very dubious about it. This was so different. Nobody wrote books like this back then really. First of all, you had a serial killer who was a stranger to the victims and a stranger to everybody. And the tradition of “mysteries” is that it was someone in your midst. And there were so many traditions that were shattered. Because real crime shatters those traditions. And I was writing about what I saw, and really taking a journalistic point of view. Although I was weaving it into fiction. And some of the rejection letters were “Nobody wants to read about morgues or laboratories.” And certainly not a woman who works in an environment like this and sees what she does. It seems silly now. But back then, that just wasn’t done.

Susanne though had the futuristic vision to think, “This is new and different. And this is pretty cool. And I want to publish this book.” But she had to have yet another opinion. She had to have another person read it. And they deliberated. And they just barely decided. In fact, the telephone call I got — the famous telephone call that changes your life — it was iffy. It was “We think we’re going to publish Postmortem, but we want to get one more person to read it.”

Correspondent: So it had to go to the editorial board in other words.

Cornwell: It was actually an outside consultant they had. Someone they considered an expert. A man, whose name I don’t remember. And they needed one more person to look at it to see if they really were going to do this. And that was my great turning point. My telephone call was a maybe. And then they did decide to take it on. But it was a very small printing. 6,000 copies. $6,000 is what I got paid. No advertising. No marketing. No nothing. And by the time people discovered it, it was out of print in hardcover.

BSS #257: Patricia Cornwell (Download MP3)

So, it’s taken me FOREVER to decide just whose present was the WORST (or best, although “OMG, WTF, what the hell were they thinking” outweighed “OMG! You didn’t!” by about 493 to 1).

A lot of the presents were what I call “bowling ball presents” — stuff people get you because they want it for themselves (qv: pepperdove getting a VCR … at age 15 … when there was only one TV in the house … after the family VCR broke. Elizabeth getting an air conditioner — then being told they couldn’t afford to install it!). And then some were “I love you, you’re perfect, now change” presents. (qv: Riva getting offered laser hair removal! Mickey being given a can of Slim-Fast!)

Then there were a lot of “I don’t know what the word “present” means, so I’m going to give you this random item” (like Ann’s boyfriend giving her a RED LACE TEDDY FROM A PREVIOUS GIRLFRIEND — seriously, wtf? — and Colleen getting a PLASTIC TRAVEL URINAL, Beth B getting PAPERCLIPS, Denise getting USED MAKEUP).

Some presents seem to have been thinly-veiled assassination attempts: MsManners got two bottles of Fen-Phen (from an ex, natch) and Angel getting a basket of hair clips and dollar-store scented soap from her sister-in-law when she A) had no hair after undergoing chemo and B) was highly allergic to everything, which the chemo exacerbated. (I would have pressed charges on that one!)

“I think you must have meant this for someone else” seems to have been another theme — Neighbourhood.Gal got (at age 11) a Teddy Ruxpin (remember those?) and a remote controlled monster truck and a skateboard (and she lived on a street with no sidewalks). Cookie got what sounded like the Worst Coat in the History of Coats: “VIOLENTLY acid-washed denim, knee-length, lumberjack style jacket with BRIGHT white, puffy fleece lining.” Mere got a BOX of DICKIES. In 1987.

I was heartened by all the folks who got ironing boards, dress forms, sewing machines, and sergers … except for poor RavenzTarot, whose daughter got a new sewing machine (after trashing RavenzTarot’s old machine). That machine REALLY should have been Ravenz!

Is it any wonder it was hard to decide? I chose two bads and a good. The good-present-winner is anthrokeight, whose parents had her kindergarten art project of an angel professionally framed … (altogether now: AWWWWW). The bad-present winners are La BellaDonna, who got a necklace and earrings SUPPOSEDLY from her husband, but since he conveniently didn’t have any cash on him when it was time to pay for them, ended up being bought on her own dime … … and Sewducky … well, I can’t give you details of what Sewducky got that was so awful, but let’s just say this: If you are going to give someone WWII memorabilia as a Christmas present, you might want to pick some FROM THE WINNING SIDE. Just a tip, there. [So, guys, email me your mailing addresses and I'll forward them to Rita so she can send you a copy of that pattern!]

It was SO hard to decide, though, that I am going to give out more prizes. If you left a comment about a bad (or good!) present, email me and I’ll send you a free Dress A Day measuring tape! (Let me know what comment was yours, and don’t forget to include your mailing address!)

Here’s what they look like, iffen you don’t remember:

Happy New Year!

Allison Amend most recently appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #256.

Allison Amend is the author of Things That Pass for Love.

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Pondering the troubling things that pass for love.

Author: Allison Amend

Subjects Discussed: Dealings with the Atlantic Monthly, what constitutes a proper golf story, miniature golf, how Jewishness and faith relates to sustaining a narrative, speaking multiple languages, Pig Latin, the connotations of “molested,” small animals in short stories, whether an author should be concerned about manipulating the reader, grabbing the interviewer by the beard, discovering stories through subconscious intent, stories that “need more gerbil,” writing stories that run counter to an innate perspective, verisimilitude, magical realism, whether multifarious themes and motifs disguise the primary premise of a story, the narrative complexities of romantic intimacy, avoiding the “chick lit” label, Curtis Sittenfeld, the Glimmer Train essay, Amend’s two unpublished novels, dealing with potential editors who issue demands to include a love story, how much one should compromise for art, authenticity vs. marketability, frequent appearances of Zima within Amend’s stories, authors who include brand names in fiction, experimenting with lists and found documents, planning the endings of stories, selecting stories for the collection, and thematic unity.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: Golf figures prominently into a number of these stories. In “How Much Greater the Miracle,” you write, “The soul and golf are interrelated. I try not to wax too philosophical, but the soul is like a golf ball.” Now is this particular statement one of the reasons you frequently return to golf in your writing? Do you feel that golf gets a bad rap? Is this your way of essentially taking it, or absconding it, from the upper-class country club associations? Are you trying to counter the John Updike/Richard Ford/Kevin Costner kind of approach to golf? I think this is a very important question!

Amend: Sure, sure. I think that your answer is much better than the one I’m going to give you.

Correspondent: No, I’m sure your answer is going to be fantastic.

Amend: Which is that back when I was in grad school, Michael Curtis, who edits the fiction for the Atlantic Monthly, requested some golf stories. He was editing the fiction section of Golf Digest.

Correspondent: Oh wow.

Amend: And he needed some golf stories. So I was like, “I can write a golf story.” And he said, “Oh, it’s very good. I don’t want it. But it’s a good story.” And I said, “Thank you. I’ll write another one.” So I wrote another golf story.

Correspondent: Aha!

Amend: He said, “I don’t want this either. But I like your writing.” So I wrote one more just to see. But actually I do really like golf as a literary theme. Because, first of all, it’s something for your characters to do without really having to have them do a lot of business. So everyone knows how you play. I mean, everyone sort of knows the theory of golf. You hit a ball towards a hole. And so your characters can talk a lot and can think about things without — it’s not like it’s basketball, where you have to describe the reaction all the time. So I really like golf that way. But also it’s this really absurd game. I played a lot when I was younger and don’t play so much now. But if you told me that you can’t see there’s a hole about the size of your palm and you can’t see it from here. But if you hit the ball three times, you will hit it in the hole. I would never have believed it.

Correspondent: Now you say that you had had golf experience before when you had been asked to do these stories. Or did you have to go into golf again and do a refresher course so to speak? Or a refresher run?

Amend: Well, I was at Iowa. We had a lot of free time.

Correspondent: Okay. They have golf in Iowa.

Amend: They do have golf in Iowa. And it’s actually pretty accessible. There’s a great municipal golf course. A nine hole golf course. And so I actually played a decent round of golf. But mostly I just asked my parents. They are very into golf. And so when I needed some golf details to make the story seem more authentic, I just asked them. I said, “What do you do if the ball’s on the side of a hill?” And my dad’s like, “Well, you hit down on it obviously.” I’m like, “Oh, of course.” And I’m taking notes as I’m talking to them. So that was my golf experience.

Correspondent: But this is an interesting notion of what a golf story is.

Amend: Right.

Correspondent: Because if one plays golf, it’s automatically a golf story? Or golf happens to be a motif? I mean, how golf-intensive does a golf story have to be?

Amend: You know, I don’t know. I don’t think that the golf story is going to be the next hot genre. Although there is the golf novel that does pretty well — apparently every year. But for me, it’s just a story where I have to ask my parents a lot of questions about golf to write it. So to me, that’s a golf story.

Correspondent: I’m just wondering if there’s any golf criteria for a golf story. I’ve never been asked to write a golf story. And I’ve never actually considered, until we just talked about this subject, about what a golf story entails. And so I’m wondering. Maybe it’s like a Christmas story.

Amend: It just has to be some Christmas.

Correspondent: Yeah, I don’t know.

Amend: Yeah, I think so. I’m not sure that I’m the best person to ask, since none of my stories were accepted for Golf Digest.

Correspondent: But they’re in here! There’s like three golf stories in here.

Amend: But they’re in there. In which case, golf is sort of a theme.

Correspondent: Yeah! So you are a golf story person.

Amend: Apparently, I’m a golf story person.

Correspondent: Among many other things. Well, okay.

Amend: Well, I could be. I’ve been called worse.

BSS #256: Allison Amend (Download MP3)

When the eminent chemist, political radical, and theological dissident Joseph Priestley arrived in New York in 1794 -- hounded from his native England by conservatives -- Americas founders tussled over where he should settle. Vice President John Adams put in a plug for Boston, while New York and Philadelphia trotted out their scientific luminaries to impress the great man. Priestley finally settled on #133; Northumberland, Pennsylvania, roughly as great an intellectual capital then as now. There he made just one of the many discoveries that marked his career: the idea of American rural isolation can more enjoyable than the experience of it. Priestley serves as the center of Steven Johnsons new book The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America, and he lives up to Johnsons description of him as a Zelig of the revolutionary period ...

Here it is, the one you’ve been waiting for: BEST JOKES OF THE YEAR!!!

1. “Hey, it’s really cold! I guess someone forgot to tell GLOBAL WARMING about that!”

2. “Hey, did you notice Hillary’s pants? I guess they really SUIT her!”

3. “Why do chickens make better lovers? Because they NUGGET!” (pronounce “nugget” like “snuggle”)

4. “Hey, the Olympics were in China! Does that mean everyone ate chinese food? Because does that mean they used chopsticks? Because gymnasts need to STICK their landings, so I bet that was great!”

5. “Why did the economy go to the psychologist? Because it was having DEPRESSION.”

6. “I guess President Bush is really excited to leave office and go home; after all he’s a real MOMMA’S BOY.”

7. “What did Rev. Jeremiah Wright say when his car broke down? GODDAMN CAR!”

8. “Hey, did you hear about Dick Cheney’s blog? It’s really crazy!”

9. “What’s the difference between MTV and VH1? Who knows, all I see is a bunch of weirdos jumping up and down!”

10. “I saw a really scary movie last night; it was called THE ECONOMY.”

Nagisa Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses is one of the most famous pornographic films in the world.  Striking a blow against censorship, Oshima also crafts out of this true story a cautionary tale of lust, art, and emotional obsession, and the dangers when out-of-control desire, desires to control.

"Looking less geisha-like and more demonic as her obsession consumes her, Sada pushes through to its inevitable violent denouement, as Kichi, exhausted past resistance, seemingly gives his permission for the final act.  Wanting to get higher and higher, she requires more and more and is less and less satisfied, Kichi being the heroin to her heroine.  Which leads us to the final troubling issue: since her arrest, the fascination with Sada has gone beyond that of a sensationalistic crime.  Sada’s story has been claimed by both the left and the right, as a stand against patriarchal tyranny and as an argument for stronger family values.  Oshima uses it to fight censorship.  But he also includes a larger social critique.  Sada’s story is a cautionary tale against the dangers of interiority.  With obsessive inward focus, personal values become distorted, while equally destructive social trends go unrecognized, like soldiers on parade.  In terms of social critique, Oshima is not afraid to go all the way."

It's the new year and we have a brand new shiny url to replace DailyBedpost.com: it's EMandLO.com. Be sure to follow us over there for more sex- & relationship-related advice, horoscopes, product reviews, how to's and general enthusiastic encouragement for your love lives every day. (This site will no longer be updated so it's gonna get lonely round here real quick. The good Dr. Kate will be over at Gynotalk.) Please drop by for a house warming visit! -- Em & Lo

Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) follows in the tradition of Jean Renoir's The Grand Illusion (1937), and David Lean's Bridge Over the River Kwai (1957), in introducing a sympathetic enemy, yet casting a cold eye on the risks of sympathy in wartime.

"The casting here is no coincidence.  Bowie and Sakamoto, both pop music icons, were huge at the time.  Their real-world celebrity was crucial to their onscreen characters: celebrity generates fascination, but must preserve distance to do so.  The fan is drawn to the icon and projects the fulfillment of all sorts of inchoate desires upon him or her; but the distance between the fan and the icon allows these fantasies "to be," as Yonoi significantly quotes from Hamlet.  Similarly to how the lens in a film projector is required to be a certain distance from the screen for the movie to be seen, so the icon is required to be a certain distance from the fan for the fantasy to be imagined.  But distance prevents a personal relationship.  Any attempt to bridge the distance will collapse the fantasy, and the icon will cease "to be," as such.

Oshima uses the distance between celebrity and fan to inform the taboo of homosexuality in the military.  When Bowie-as-Celliers strides across the parade grounds in a time-is-suspended-type long shot, he collapses this distance, culturally, erotically, and conceptually.  His gesture can be interpreted as a Western type of seppuku, performed to save another officer.  By collapsing the bubble of celebrity, he destroys Yonoi's fantasy relationship with him, and in consequence destroys himself.  The icon is brought down to earth in a particularly gruesome way, as illustrated by Celliers' subsequent punishment."

softskull: @shortyawards I nominate @jafurtado 4 a shorty award in #news because he is the single most comprehensive news source in books

softskull: RT @jafurtado: eBook authoring software for small publishers? A TeleRead challenge to the open source community http://is.gd/egGz

Well, yikes.

Susan drives me mad with her long explanations of things one only needs
the eyes and the sensitivity of someone like Irene to see. She
discoursed on Bosch at the Prado and was just now explaining that women
are the main support of the Church. She launches into these textbook
dissertations, like footnotes, which I find unbearable.

Never once while reading Susan Sontag’s diaries (column) did it occur to me that “H” might still be alive.

Thanks to Caleb Crain for pointing out this fascinating, but mostly appalling, item.

softskull: @shortyawards I nominate @FLWBooks for a Shorty Award in #entertainment for filling a small but crucial gap in crowdsourcing booklists

Memes are ideas that everyone on the internet talks about at the same time. 2008 was a great year for memes — you would need ten New York Times Sunday Magazines to really do them justice!

Here’s my list of the TOP TEN MEMES OF 2008:

1. “Make it yourself” (”MIY”)
2. “Blogs are like diaries”
3. “Go for the gold” (because of the Olympics)
4. “Bailout”
5. “Eat healthy, act healthy, BE healthy!”
6. “You only live once in 2008″
7. “SPICY MEATBALLS!!!”
8. “Privatize the profit, publicize the rest”
9. “Party like a rockstar”
10. “Computers, computers, computers … look at all the computers.”

Brad Pitt's marital choices will continue to inspire debate, but the man has good taste in architecture. A year ago his Make it Right Foundation unveiled 13 designs by leading architects for new low-income housing in New Orleans. The first half-dozen single-family houses have been finished, Architectural Record reports, and they're adding much-needed splashes of inspiration and verve to some downbeat neighborhoods. Designed by the architectural firm Graft, financed by Pitt ...