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The shoulders of a giant: Harvey Pekar, 1939-2010

I met Harvey a few times, spoke with him on the phone a few more times, did him a couple of favors, interviewed him, and had dinner with him once. In other words I was a bit player in his life, at most. But as a writer who decided that not being able to draw comics to professional standards wasn’t going to get in my way…well, he wouldn’t spell out for you what that meant, so I won’t either. 

I’m sad that he’s gone. But there’s some hope mixed in with the sadness, since he’s one guy for whom I think the whole “rest in peace” thing will work out. He earned all the rest and peace and acclaim you can imagine, and then some. Thank you, Harvey.

Nina Paley explains the LHC

Day 161: Cultural Collision

Image by tsmall via Flickr

Nina Paley does great work, and has for years. Nina’s Adventures, Fluff, and most recently Sita Sings the Blues are all terrific. I link directly to Sita because you really want to see this movie, and learn its history. Really really. 

But science? Who knew? You do, now! Go look. 

Art on the moon?

If you’ve read any of my previous posts on space, you know that Alan Bean is the only artist who has been to another planet. But, did he unknowingly carry some art with him on his trip? Watch some PBS…

Jim Ottaviani at Kids Read Comics!, June 12-13 in Dearborn

A local show! Focused on kids! Roger Langridge! Raina Telgemeier! Dave Roman! Katie Cook! Jef Mallett! Matt Feazell! Tara Tallan! Michelangelo Cicerone! And that’s just the guests I can list off the top of my head…there are more, and they’re all great.

And your cost? Nothing at all — attending Kids Read Comics! is free.

You should come.

Are you taking requests?

Bands playing along the road during races are great. Music gets you out of your own head for a while, and if you’re like me, you don’t want to be in my head for a half-marathon’s worth of running.

But. If I hear “Eye of the Tiger” one more time at a race, I’m going to run off the course and pull all the power cords out of all the amplifiers and then where will you and your power chords be?

Yeah, I won’t do that. At about mile 10 I have enough energy to groan and run, and at mile 12 I have enough to grimace and trot and nowhere near enough for a gratuitous and impolite detour. And I know they mean well. But, there have to be other songs that bands who are willing to stand by the side of the road can play for sweaty, grimacing, and tired people. Anything by the Clash would do, and to prove I’m not entirely stuck in the past, OK Go’s “This Too Shall Pass” ought to work as well. But that one song from that one Rocky movie (I refuse to look this up, and don’t bother telling me)…I heard my quota the first time I heard it.

It was still a lovely day for a long, timed run with a few thousand like-minded folks, and I am grateful to anybody willing to stand by the side of the road and clap or play or yell, and I am grateful to have finished without major injury. Sure wish I’d remembered the Body Glide, though…

Moon Zoo

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

Image via Wikipedia

Do you need to take some time off from real work? Would you feel less guilty about procrastinating on your current graphic novel (ahem) if you were helping real lunar science get done? Can you point and click on craters, boulders, and spacecraft?

If you answered yes to any of the above, you should be helping map the lunar surface via Moon Zoo. What you’ll be doing is looking at images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO),  including features as small as 50 cm (about one and a half feet)
across, and helping to provide detailed crater counts for as
much of the Moon’s surface as possible.

Have you started not-really-wasting-time yet? You’re welcome.