Tuesday, October 31, 2006
New York Round Two
here's the first part
Saturday morning I woke up on Scarnsworth’s couch around ten am, as hungover as an Irishman on March 18th. I met Chris’s roommates and one of their girlfriends and dozed off again for a little bit. At some point I got up and took a shower, which helped a bit with the booze pain. Rip was talking up the brunch at this placed called Essex, so we headed that way a bit before noon.
At Essex we encountered the absolute worst waiter I’ve ever dealt with. He was a jolly enough fellow, not surly or anything, but completely disinterested in actually doing his job. He’d take our order, or ask us if we needed anything, and then go sit down and talk at another table for twenty minutes. Apparently he was best friends with every table in the section except us, including the ur-hipster in the tattered Florida Gators shirt and his friend in the head-to-toe Patriots gear. Brunch came with free bloody marys or mimosas; I got the latter, Chris the former. Our waiter was Johnny on the spot with the mimosa refills, ‘cuz they just had a pitcher of that shit sitting in the corner, but it’d take him 15 minutes or more to get Chris another bloody mary. Because of that mimosa pitcher, I had like six glasses of orange juice and champagne in a little over an hour. I forgot that shit had alcohol in it. On top of being hungover as hell, I was freshly drunk again, and on a liquor I generally don’t enjoy getting drunk on. Eventually we got our check and headed back to Rip’s apartment. I first got an inkling of the troubles ahead when I struggled to walk down the stairs at Essex.
Okay, so I was drunk and hungover and walking the four or five blocks back to Rip’s place. We were going to grab a couple of things and then head up to his empty new apartment and then the Masters of American Comics exhibit at the Jewish Museum. My feet were already hurting from the hours of walking on Friday. I was wearing my coat ‘cuz I figured it’d be cold, but the sun was shining, it felt like it was 70 degrees, and I was sweating profusely. I was already feeling pretty shitty in a variety of ways. I dropped my coat and umbrella off at Rip’s, thinking I wouldn’t need them. We took off for the subway, which was several blocks away. Within ten minutes of leaving his place the sky turned grey and started to dump several oceans worth of rain on us. Chris thought ahead, and had an umbrella; I just had to deal with it. I was completely soaked through within a few minutes. It was sometime around here that I felt like I was about to simultaneously vomit, defecate, and pass out right there on the sidewalk. That’s an awesome experience.
Eventually we made it to the train. I was praying for an empty seat, ‘cuz at this point I thought I was about three minutes away from death, and didn’t want to fall and bruise my face and be all purple looking in the casket. Seats were unavailable, of course, so I just stood there drip-drying. Thankfully the rain had stopped by the time we got to Rip’s new place up in the 70’s.
We check out the barren new apartment, which should be great as soon as it has furniture and stuff. The color was kind of off-putting, but that’s easily taken care of. It was roughly the size of my living room, but cost just as much as our two-bedroom place in Somerville. NEW YORK! I sat on the floor resting my dogs while Chris tried to get the hang of his security blinds.
The Jewish Museum was a few blocks away, right next to Central Park. We got there about quarter to three. After making it through the most confusing security check ever we wandered into the most immediately accessible exhibit room, which housed about 800 paintings of the same woman, made by some amazingly obsessed (and most likely insane) stalker creep, I think. Assuming a stalker creep can also be a loving and artistically inclined husband. We got out of that room as quickly as possible, my wet shoes squeaking like a wailing banshee, and found our way upstairs, where the comics exhibit was located.
So this Masters of American Comics exhibit is awesome. Everyone should go. It’s free on Saturdays, which rocks. The exhibit at the Jewish Museum is only the second half, 1940 on; the pre-war comic strip portion can be found in Newark, although I think Charles Schulz’s work is there, which kinda mucks up the date break, but whatever. Anyway, an introductory statement declares that the exhibit is an attempt to create an official and universally recognized canon of comics masters, or something. They mostly picked well, although Art Spiegelman’s last-second withdrawal hurts that credibility somewhat.
It starts with a bunch of pages from Eisner’s The Spirit, both his original pencils and the final newsprint product, including a few stories displayed in their entirety. The split from the comic strip show kinda undermines one’s ability to realize how ground-breaking Eisner’s work was, unless one is already familiar with the artform in its early stages. Needless to say the man was massively important in the development of the language of sequential art, etc etc, and the pages on display provide some proof.
From Eisner they move on to Jack Kirby, the greatest superhero artist of all time, and the man who basically defined that genre for anybody born after 1950 or so. They don’t have much from his pre-Marvel days, but the pages from Fantastic Four and The Mighty Thor are beautiful and amazing. Best of all, though, is this almost spell-binding double-page splash from Devil Dinosaur that’s kinda unbelievable in its detail. There’s a really swank splash from an issue of Komandi, too, but little else from after he left Marvel in the early ‘70’s. Rip, not a big comics fan, made the observation that Kirby’s work is like the textbook example of what a comic looks like; the fact that a non-comics reader can immediately pick that up attests to how foundational Kirby was in laying down that very physical, dynamic, non-cartoonish superhero style.
Harvey Kurtzmann was up next. There are a few pages and covers from various ‘40’s and ‘50’s war comics on display that are quite nice, but mostly, of course, they focus on his work from the early days of MAD Magazine. His style is more cartoonish than Kirby’s or Eisner’s, all soft and curvy. It was good stuff, mostly new to me, and thus perhaps not as immediately interesting as Eisner and Kirby. Still, definitely some good work. I should definitely put some effort into reading his stuff.
After Kurtzmann they move into the alternative / underground / indie comics phase, obviously looking first at R. Crumb. I’m not always a fan of his art, and I’m rarely a fan of his writing, but you can’t dispute the man had some skills. Very little about his content appeals to me at all. Fritz the Cat is an amazingly cute drawing, for sure, but I have no interest in reading four pages of him talking various other animals into an orgy. It was important for somebody like Crumb to come along and break down many of the barriers that existed within the form, I guess, but his work was often more juvenile than the blatantly kid-centric stuff that it opposed. The best piece on display is his biography of Charley Patton, which is not almost gorgeously drawn but also educational.
Gary Panter was up next. His design work is fascinating, but often to the detriment of his story-telling abilities. Still, an amazing artist, and some of the pages on display were incredible. Not much to say about him, really.
The final guy included in this exhibit is Chris Ware, who in many ways is dramatically far beyond anything that’s come before him. His design skills are amazing, and his storytelling is perhaps just as good. He harkens back to the early days of comic strips while creating something unmistakably contemporary. He can wring real emotion out of his audience (or at least me) without being overly manipulative. His are the most beautiful and heart-breaking comics I think I’ve ever read. More than anybody else in this part of the exhibit Chris Ware is the total package.
After Ware they have an ancillary exhibit called Superheroes, that focuses on Jewish immigrants’ involvement in the development of that genre. It’s nice and fairly informative but the artwork on display mostly isn’t up to the caliber of the Masters exhibit. They also waste some space by devoting an entire wall to nothing but one giant painting and a series of biographies on various creators. The painting was unnecessary, the biographies could’ve been moved alongside the artwork on display, and the extra room could’ve been allocated to the Masters exhibit, which hopefully could’ve convinced Spiegelman to participate. The lack of anything by the man who is this generation’s most acclaimed comics artist is really glaring, and partially undermines the exhibit’s entire concept.
Anyway, yes, awesome times at the Jewish museum. I almost rode a Sabbath elevator, too.
Afterward I was completely refreshed and feeling great. Beforehand I was considering grabbing a bus home Saturday night, I felt so bad, but after drying off and walking away the hangover and getting past the champagne I felt good. Except for my feet, which ached, but whatever. We left the museum and walked across to the Central Park. We stood by that massive pond for a while, admiring the cold breeze and beautiful view. For the first time all weekend I felt like I would love living in New York. What a fucking cliché.
We got some coffee and a soda and headed back down to Rip’s apartment. His roommates were getting ready for Halloween, with some dance mix blasting and the heat all the way up to 78. It was pretty uncomfortable, so after resting for a bit we went back out to get something to drink and eat. We had a couple of cheap pints at a place whose name I can’t remember, and then got a burrito from Benny’s. We went back to Rip’s apartment around nine, or so, and spent the next couple of hours talking and finding out what was happening that night. Eventually I decided to just stay in, and try to get some sleep. I felt kinda bad about that, like I was letting Chris down, but my feet and head couldn’t stand another night of walking around and/or drinking. Around midnight Rip left to go meet Noella at some bar; I called Allyn, talked for a while, then fell asleep around one am. All in all, another great day.
I had a one pm ticket home on Sunday, but woke up at nine and decided to get on an earlier bus. I talked to Rip for a bit, he told me about his night, which sounded fun, and then I said goodbye and took off. I wound up walking down to Chinatown, despite my fucked-up feet and their many blisters, and was able to swap my ticket for one on the eleven am bus. Four and a half hours later I was home. I spent the rest of Sunday either lying down or with my feet in a bucketful of hot water. All in all, an awesome weekend, with a handful of trying and/or uncomfortable moments. Still, I hope to do it again soon.
here's the first part
Saturday morning I woke up on Scarnsworth’s couch around ten am, as hungover as an Irishman on March 18th. I met Chris’s roommates and one of their girlfriends and dozed off again for a little bit. At some point I got up and took a shower, which helped a bit with the booze pain. Rip was talking up the brunch at this placed called Essex, so we headed that way a bit before noon.
At Essex we encountered the absolute worst waiter I’ve ever dealt with. He was a jolly enough fellow, not surly or anything, but completely disinterested in actually doing his job. He’d take our order, or ask us if we needed anything, and then go sit down and talk at another table for twenty minutes. Apparently he was best friends with every table in the section except us, including the ur-hipster in the tattered Florida Gators shirt and his friend in the head-to-toe Patriots gear. Brunch came with free bloody marys or mimosas; I got the latter, Chris the former. Our waiter was Johnny on the spot with the mimosa refills, ‘cuz they just had a pitcher of that shit sitting in the corner, but it’d take him 15 minutes or more to get Chris another bloody mary. Because of that mimosa pitcher, I had like six glasses of orange juice and champagne in a little over an hour. I forgot that shit had alcohol in it. On top of being hungover as hell, I was freshly drunk again, and on a liquor I generally don’t enjoy getting drunk on. Eventually we got our check and headed back to Rip’s apartment. I first got an inkling of the troubles ahead when I struggled to walk down the stairs at Essex.
Okay, so I was drunk and hungover and walking the four or five blocks back to Rip’s place. We were going to grab a couple of things and then head up to his empty new apartment and then the Masters of American Comics exhibit at the Jewish Museum. My feet were already hurting from the hours of walking on Friday. I was wearing my coat ‘cuz I figured it’d be cold, but the sun was shining, it felt like it was 70 degrees, and I was sweating profusely. I was already feeling pretty shitty in a variety of ways. I dropped my coat and umbrella off at Rip’s, thinking I wouldn’t need them. We took off for the subway, which was several blocks away. Within ten minutes of leaving his place the sky turned grey and started to dump several oceans worth of rain on us. Chris thought ahead, and had an umbrella; I just had to deal with it. I was completely soaked through within a few minutes. It was sometime around here that I felt like I was about to simultaneously vomit, defecate, and pass out right there on the sidewalk. That’s an awesome experience.
Eventually we made it to the train. I was praying for an empty seat, ‘cuz at this point I thought I was about three minutes away from death, and didn’t want to fall and bruise my face and be all purple looking in the casket. Seats were unavailable, of course, so I just stood there drip-drying. Thankfully the rain had stopped by the time we got to Rip’s new place up in the 70’s.
We check out the barren new apartment, which should be great as soon as it has furniture and stuff. The color was kind of off-putting, but that’s easily taken care of. It was roughly the size of my living room, but cost just as much as our two-bedroom place in Somerville. NEW YORK! I sat on the floor resting my dogs while Chris tried to get the hang of his security blinds.
The Jewish Museum was a few blocks away, right next to Central Park. We got there about quarter to three. After making it through the most confusing security check ever we wandered into the most immediately accessible exhibit room, which housed about 800 paintings of the same woman, made by some amazingly obsessed (and most likely insane) stalker creep, I think. Assuming a stalker creep can also be a loving and artistically inclined husband. We got out of that room as quickly as possible, my wet shoes squeaking like a wailing banshee, and found our way upstairs, where the comics exhibit was located.
So this Masters of American Comics exhibit is awesome. Everyone should go. It’s free on Saturdays, which rocks. The exhibit at the Jewish Museum is only the second half, 1940 on; the pre-war comic strip portion can be found in Newark, although I think Charles Schulz’s work is there, which kinda mucks up the date break, but whatever. Anyway, an introductory statement declares that the exhibit is an attempt to create an official and universally recognized canon of comics masters, or something. They mostly picked well, although Art Spiegelman’s last-second withdrawal hurts that credibility somewhat.
It starts with a bunch of pages from Eisner’s The Spirit, both his original pencils and the final newsprint product, including a few stories displayed in their entirety. The split from the comic strip show kinda undermines one’s ability to realize how ground-breaking Eisner’s work was, unless one is already familiar with the artform in its early stages. Needless to say the man was massively important in the development of the language of sequential art, etc etc, and the pages on display provide some proof.
From Eisner they move on to Jack Kirby, the greatest superhero artist of all time, and the man who basically defined that genre for anybody born after 1950 or so. They don’t have much from his pre-Marvel days, but the pages from Fantastic Four and The Mighty Thor are beautiful and amazing. Best of all, though, is this almost spell-binding double-page splash from Devil Dinosaur that’s kinda unbelievable in its detail. There’s a really swank splash from an issue of Komandi, too, but little else from after he left Marvel in the early ‘70’s. Rip, not a big comics fan, made the observation that Kirby’s work is like the textbook example of what a comic looks like; the fact that a non-comics reader can immediately pick that up attests to how foundational Kirby was in laying down that very physical, dynamic, non-cartoonish superhero style.
Harvey Kurtzmann was up next. There are a few pages and covers from various ‘40’s and ‘50’s war comics on display that are quite nice, but mostly, of course, they focus on his work from the early days of MAD Magazine. His style is more cartoonish than Kirby’s or Eisner’s, all soft and curvy. It was good stuff, mostly new to me, and thus perhaps not as immediately interesting as Eisner and Kirby. Still, definitely some good work. I should definitely put some effort into reading his stuff.
After Kurtzmann they move into the alternative / underground / indie comics phase, obviously looking first at R. Crumb. I’m not always a fan of his art, and I’m rarely a fan of his writing, but you can’t dispute the man had some skills. Very little about his content appeals to me at all. Fritz the Cat is an amazingly cute drawing, for sure, but I have no interest in reading four pages of him talking various other animals into an orgy. It was important for somebody like Crumb to come along and break down many of the barriers that existed within the form, I guess, but his work was often more juvenile than the blatantly kid-centric stuff that it opposed. The best piece on display is his biography of Charley Patton, which is not almost gorgeously drawn but also educational.
Gary Panter was up next. His design work is fascinating, but often to the detriment of his story-telling abilities. Still, an amazing artist, and some of the pages on display were incredible. Not much to say about him, really.
The final guy included in this exhibit is Chris Ware, who in many ways is dramatically far beyond anything that’s come before him. His design skills are amazing, and his storytelling is perhaps just as good. He harkens back to the early days of comic strips while creating something unmistakably contemporary. He can wring real emotion out of his audience (or at least me) without being overly manipulative. His are the most beautiful and heart-breaking comics I think I’ve ever read. More than anybody else in this part of the exhibit Chris Ware is the total package.
After Ware they have an ancillary exhibit called Superheroes, that focuses on Jewish immigrants’ involvement in the development of that genre. It’s nice and fairly informative but the artwork on display mostly isn’t up to the caliber of the Masters exhibit. They also waste some space by devoting an entire wall to nothing but one giant painting and a series of biographies on various creators. The painting was unnecessary, the biographies could’ve been moved alongside the artwork on display, and the extra room could’ve been allocated to the Masters exhibit, which hopefully could’ve convinced Spiegelman to participate. The lack of anything by the man who is this generation’s most acclaimed comics artist is really glaring, and partially undermines the exhibit’s entire concept.
Anyway, yes, awesome times at the Jewish museum. I almost rode a Sabbath elevator, too.
Afterward I was completely refreshed and feeling great. Beforehand I was considering grabbing a bus home Saturday night, I felt so bad, but after drying off and walking away the hangover and getting past the champagne I felt good. Except for my feet, which ached, but whatever. We left the museum and walked across to the Central Park. We stood by that massive pond for a while, admiring the cold breeze and beautiful view. For the first time all weekend I felt like I would love living in New York. What a fucking cliché.
We got some coffee and a soda and headed back down to Rip’s apartment. His roommates were getting ready for Halloween, with some dance mix blasting and the heat all the way up to 78. It was pretty uncomfortable, so after resting for a bit we went back out to get something to drink and eat. We had a couple of cheap pints at a place whose name I can’t remember, and then got a burrito from Benny’s. We went back to Rip’s apartment around nine, or so, and spent the next couple of hours talking and finding out what was happening that night. Eventually I decided to just stay in, and try to get some sleep. I felt kinda bad about that, like I was letting Chris down, but my feet and head couldn’t stand another night of walking around and/or drinking. Around midnight Rip left to go meet Noella at some bar; I called Allyn, talked for a while, then fell asleep around one am. All in all, another great day.
I had a one pm ticket home on Sunday, but woke up at nine and decided to get on an earlier bus. I talked to Rip for a bit, he told me about his night, which sounded fun, and then I said goodbye and took off. I wound up walking down to Chinatown, despite my fucked-up feet and their many blisters, and was able to swap my ticket for one on the eleven am bus. Four and a half hours later I was home. I spent the rest of Sunday either lying down or with my feet in a bucketful of hot water. All in all, an awesome weekend, with a handful of trying and/or uncomfortable moments. Still, I hope to do it again soon.
