Cultural Miseducation

For ages, most of what I knew about the golden age of Hollywood came from figuring out the jokes on old sketches from The Carol Burnett Show, which I watched in reruns pretty regularly as a kid. Until about three or four years ago, this was all I really knew about the story of Gone with the Wind:


(From Nerve and IFC‘s “50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time“, which is filed with genius.)

Very Barbara Pym

It is these asides, I think, that make Excellent Women so beguiling. The plot itself is not without interest, but it is the narrator’s comments on her world and on the scraps of pleasure it allows her that are so utterly engaging; as where Mildred says, right at the beginning: ” ‘I have to share a bathroom,’ I had so often murmured, almost with shame, as if I personally had been found unworthy of a bathroom of my own.” To be found unworthy of having one’s own bathroom is such an unexpected notion, but it is amusing because it is a cri de coeur of frustrated ambition, of a desire to be something that fate will clearly never allow one to be.

Stuff You Should See

For a while there I wasn’t getting out of town and doing too much, just hanging around Reading and my room trying to watch my budget and get some work done. (I may have also been a bit gloomy for the last few months, but that’s another issue altogether.) I’ve been trying to take advantage of some free time in London lately, though, culminating in a huge culture bender yesterday.

In the morning I went to the Design Museum to catch the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year (I know, but it’s better than the name makes it sound) exhibition and a retrospective of architect/designer/engineer Jean Prouvé.

The Design Awards show had lots of nice things, but it wasn’t especially stirring since I’d seen so many of them reproduced before. The fashion bits were a really great surprise, though, and some of the interactive stuff seemed interesting but I was prevented from getting a closer look by a pack of French school kids swarming around anything shiny in the gallery. It was also nice that they included Titus Nemeth‘s sketchbook as well as some of the proofs from his development of his Naseem typeface, which was perhaps the only part of the whole exhibition that shed any light on how some of the winning work came about.

The Prouvé show was excellent, and luckily the ticket for the museum lets you experience the brilliance of his stuff for a bit more, since it also gives you admission to his protoype Maison Tropicales, which has been reassembled over at the Tate Modern. (Hopefully I’ll get a chance to check that out before the end of the weekend, at which time I may indulge in the big Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia exhibition they’re running.)

China Design Now

The highlight of the day was an impromptu visit to the Design China Now show at the V&A. It’s really Uh.May.Zing., especially since so much of the design work (except for the architecture) doesn’t seem to have been shown around much in the West before, not even in the current explosion of design blogs. It’s packed with gorgeous work, and for those of you with real jobs and stuff the related products they’re selling in the shop might be just as tempting as the show itself. Seriously, just go.

Up, Up, and Away

Superman, v1.0It’s a tricky thing, this whole appreciation of superheroes and comic books and such. Part of what seems so nerdy and embarrassing about it is how often people — even others who love the capes and the four-color reality — seem to get it wrong, how often they fail to grasp that we each love different things about the genre. No, not just this particular fictional genre — the whole idea of superheroes and comics.

I can’t blame people for not getting it, because a love of comics is just so personal. They’ve been part of our culture for so long now, pushed and pulled and reinvented in so many ways that they can be something different to everyone. Every fan of comics loves them for a personal reason, and is convinced that a naysayer just has to read the right comic that will resonate and change his attitude forever. But not even all lovers of comics appreciate them the same way. Venture if you dare into any discussion forum about comics and you’ll see what I mean. Some folks love the escapism, some folks love the intersection with or reflection of reality. Some folks are obsessed with details and continuity, and some with the core of any legend. Different strokes, y’ know?

And it’s hard to begrudge anyone who doesn’t get into comics, because even though he — or shockingly enough, she — might just need to read the right one, the fact is that there’s so much crap out there it’s easy to say they’re not worth any attention. And when the world of comics strays into other media — novels, TV shows, movies — the magic and myth usually just fall apart.

Usually, I say. Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is one of the most breathtaking looks at superheroes and comics I’ve ever read. It takes the whole world of comics and wraps up the mythology and the excitement and the context in a delicious little package. When I read it, I was stunned that he cut through all the bullshit and the cliches and the cultural baggage around superheroics and put his finger on the wonder of it all, and the way drams of men and women in tights can speak to kids and adults alike. Sometimes in different ways, sometimes in the same ways.

There’s a certain sense of wonderment and wish-fulfilment at the heart of my love of superheroes. It has endured, even as my world has expanded to other passions as I’ve grown up, and even as my taste in comics has slowly spread out to non-superhero comics. Again, Chabon shows that he gets it at the most basic level in Secret Skin, a lyrical, insightful essay for the New Yorker about the whole problem of men in tights. He gets down to the core of it all, the basic idea and how it defies practical reality because it’s not about reality. It’s about something other than reality, and perhaps closer to it than anything else:

We say “secret identity,” and adopt a series of cloaking strategies to preserve it, but what we are actually trying to conceal is a narrative: not who we are but the story of how we got that way — and, by implication, of all that we lacked, and all that we were not, before the spider bit us. Yet our costume conceals nothing, reveals everything: it is our secret skin, exposed and exposing us for all the world to see. Superheroism is a kind of transvestism; our superdrag serves at once to obscure the exterior self that no longer defines us while betraying, with half-unconscious panache, the truth of the story we carry in our hearts, the story of our transformation, of our story’s recommencement, of our rebirth into the world of adventure, of story itself.

Oh, hell yes.

Into the Woods

My desktop

In general, I’m partial to wood. I prefer real wood for floors and furniture, and I’m particularly fond of slightly weathered old wood that looks like it’s lived a little. That being said, I have a real thing for totally fake wood-grain patterns — not fake woods or veneers — but stuff that is so fake it’s kitschy. Hey, I never said I was high-brow.

Much to my delight (and further proving my theory that there’s a blogger out there to cover any special interest one could imagine), I just stumbled across It’s (K)not Wood, a blog devoted to all kinds of fake wood things. It’s startlingly comprehensive!

I don’t go for all the stuff that’s made of other things but molded to look like branches and twigs and such, but I’m giddy to find so many faux bois (as they say) delights, such as this way-fun furniture I’ve been coveting for a while now.

Golden Lights

I adore the Midas Project, a not-quite-graffiti project in Barcelona where mundane objects around town are spray-painted gold. It looks amazing! It reminds me of Commutable, a great project from 1996 where the decrepit steps on the Manhattan side of the pre-renovation Williamsburg Bridge were covered in gold leaf. It looked strange and lovely, and was also a good visual cue to slow down on your bike before you went shooting over the end of your bike path to your doom.

(Thanks, FormFiftyFive!)

Eustace Tilley Subway

When I was glancing through all the submissions for the New Yorker‘s Eustace Tilley contest, I somehow neglected to realize that one of my favorite submissions — a brilliant riff on the classic Vignelli map of the NYC subway system — was done by one Alberto Forero, a fellow Regis alum (and fellow ephemera fanatic) who took over my old post as the school newspaper’s graphics editor back in the day. I also love that the print article about the contest winners shows Alberto’s illustration along with my other two favorites.

I never knew him that well, but like many of the remarkable, talented, trail-blazing guys I know from my Regis years, Alberto is — at the very least — a triple threat: he’s a designer, illustrator, and musician. Go check him out, and maybe send some work his way.

(Speaking of the school newspaper, someday I need to write about how it was working on the school newspaper that turned me from a compulsive doodler into a future typographer, due in large part to my fascination with using a VariTyper machine to set headlines using all the cool Avant Garde alternate glyphs.)

Roar!

Just got back from a late showing of Cloverfield, which was lots of smash-em-up fun, if perhaps a little vivid for anyone who’s actually experienced a New York crisis or two. It’ll be interesting to see what tonight’s Sustiva dreams bring on.

Reading’s Glorious Past

Random pop-culture trivia about Reading that I learned today (with audio references):

  • Mod band Secret Affair played their first show at the University here in February 1979, opening for The Jam. (I would have loved to see either band.) Ten years later, I had a crush on a cute boy who introduced me to the first single, Time for Action

  • In 1981, The Human League‘s producer made them come to Genetic Sound in Reading to get away from the “unhealthy atmosphere” of the studio in Sheffield where they usually worked alongside their former band members who left to form Heaven 17. They recorded The Sound of the Crowd here.