DeKalb #35, 1/29/07

Well, that took a little longer than I thought. But, I can't always be as productive as I was last week. But get this: I not only read/watched the two things I got last time, but I already read the two books (comics) that I got this time! Wooo!

As for that other stuff...Howard Zinn's memoir was good, a fast read and gave another perspective on both the civil rights and anti-war movements. I think a lot of people try to play up the stereotype of anti-war demonstrators as dumb stoned hippies. And that is wrong! You don't have to be stoned to be against pointless killing. Probably helps though.

Salesman was great, depressing but also funny and entertaining. I would feel no sympathy for any door-to-door salesmen I encountered in real life, and in the movie they often seemed reprehensible, but you could see their point of view too. They were always away from home, sharing tiny hotel rooms; it was just a sad existence. It was somewhat amusing to me that what they were selling was extremely ornate bibles, playing on poor people's desire to be good Catholics. These things cost $50 in 1967, which is almost $300 today. I can't even imagine trying to get people who are already barely making ends meet to shell out for that.

For yesterday's trip I wanted to check out another comic by Kim Deitch, who wrote Shadowland, and Lucky by Gabrielle Bell, which Dave told me about, saying it was about 20 somethings in Brooklyn without jobs or something. Not sure why I'd care about such a foreign topic but it seemed interesting enough. And the DeKalb Branch had them both...

Branch: DeKalb
Location: 790 Bushwick Ave. at DeKalb Ave.
Transport: F train to Delancey St., J train to Kosciusko St.
Books: The Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Kim Deitch; Lucky by Gabrielle Bell
Date: Monday, January 29, 2007

I was pretty out of it yesterday and the cold was bitter, so I'll just say that the library is very similar to those others that were built around 1900. It's a very nice building, spacious on the inside, with a decent but not great selection. It also had a lot of loud kids running around with an elderly police officer sort of shaking his head at them, which I found hilarious. Oh, and a couple of old men, one of whom had a stack of books labeled for high school assignments, speaking animatedly in French at the table I was sitting it. So yeah, old people and libraries. Who knew.

As for the books...Lucky was good, according to my friend Claire it had huge word of mouth when it came out which I can understand based on the subject matter and style, but I'm not sure it quite lives up to it. Certain parts of it are interesting, but the project started out as a diary in comic form, and in parts it just feels like, yeah, this would be interesting if I knew you, but I don't, so it isn't. I'm glad I read it but doubt if I'd read it again.

The Boulevard of Broken Dreams was very good, and I will probably read it again at some point, but I think I enjoyed Shadowland more. The demon/cartoon cat Waldo is an excellent character, but overall I just felt that Shadowland had more going for it, the story was richer somehow. I also feel that the story of the unappreciated/crazy animator/comic artist has been done many times. This was probably the best one I read so far, but it was still an idea I'd seen. Then again, so is all the crazy carnival stuff...maybe I just liked Shadowland more because it had much bigger pages.

So, two minor disappointments but still good reads. Also, yesterday was just kind of meh until the evening anyway so that may well be coloring my judgment. Well, no use crying over it, on to the pictures!



Yeah, the sun's behind it, whatever. I'm not a photographer.



The door! Reflecting stuff!



I like the tree. On the left.

In other news, I'm going away on Thursday for about 10 days so I can't really do the updating thing. It's a four city tour, comprising Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, and a little bit o' Saint Paul. Good times! I might update one more time before I go, so hold your collective breath. Otherwise, I'll see y'all in a couple weeks!