Roger Green: a librarian's life, deconstructed.
Kathyrn Dawn Lang was born on the 2nd of November, 1961 in Consort, Alberta, Canada, which means she turns 50 this year. For reasons more complex than I need to note here, I always associate the country singer turned chanteuse with an ex of mine.
Anyway, this is a lovely song from k.d. lang’s 2000 Invincible Summer album, Summerfling, which came out well past the time I broke up with my ex.
FantaCo had asked Wendy Pini to do the X-Men Chronicles cover. Wendy and Richard Pini were known for doing the Elfquest comic book, and had done a number of in-store signings. She called back on May 21, 1981, to decline, but she gave us Paty Cockrum’s number at Marvel so that we could contact her husband Dave.
From here.
Lot 92038 Dave Cockrum The X-Men Chronicles Painted Cover Original Art (FantaCo Enterprises, Inc. 1981)….
Auction: 2011 May New York Signature Vintage Comics & Comic Art Auction #7033
Auction Ended On: May 5, 2011
Item Activity: 12 Internet/mail/phone bidders
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Dave Cockrum The X-Men Chronicles Painted Cover Original Art (FantaCo Enterprises, Inc. 1981). This Bronze Age beauty is but the third Cockrum X-Men-themed cover we’ve offered to date. Most devoted 1980s Marvel fans will remember the Chronicles, which was packed with good information on the team and its creators. The X-Men issue sold 50,000 copies, a record for a fan magazine at the time.
As a note of provenance, our consignor, the publisher of this fan-favorite publication, bought this iconic cover directly from Cockrum after the issue was published. This mixed media masterwork has an image area of 10.5″ x 15.75″, and the piece has been matted to an overall size of 23.5″ x 19″. The art is in Excellent condition.
Cockrum, Dave: Dave Cockrum was born in Pendleton, Oregon, the son of an Air Force officer. After spending six years in the U.S. Navy, he moved to New York and accepted a job at Warren Publishing, his first professional work. After Warren, Cockrum became a background inker for Murphy Anderson at DC comics. Eventually, he got his first big break, landing the dream job of penciling the Legion of Superheroes. His groundbreaking work on The Legion’s character designs and costume changes lasted for over a decade. His tenure at DC was short lived however, as a dispute led him to work at Marvel. At the House of Ideas, Cockrum co-created, along with Len Wein, The New X-Men, the franchise that went on to give Marvel enormous financial success in the following decades, introducing such characters such as Colossus, Nightcrawler, Storm, and Mystique. He later went on to create the comic book, The Futurians, which had a short run as a monthly series and then as a trade paperback. In his later years he drew covers for the Blackhawk relaunch, and worked for Valiant, Defiant, Broadway and Claypool Comics. Dave Cockrum suffered from diabetes and finally succumbed to his illness on November 26th, 2006 . Comic Art
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I’ve told the story of this cover before:
FantaCo had asked Wendy Pini to do the X-Men Chronicles cover. Wendy and Richard Pini were known for doing the Elfquest comic book, and had done a number of in-store signings. She called back on May 21, 1981, to decline, but she gave us Paty Cockrum’s number at Marvel so that we could contact her husband Dave.
As editor of the publication, I had arranged with Dave, the artist who helped revive the X-Men, to have the cover drawn and sent up to us. Unfortunately, Dave got a little behind. So I took a train from Albany to NYC, to the Marvel offices, and met Dave. He gave me the painted cover – WHICH WAS STILL WET! He was very pleasant and apologetic. I carried the cover carefully on the subway back to the train station, then back up to Albany.
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So I have an odd emotional attachment to that cover. It’s not that I wanted to buy it, certainly not for $7,767.50. But it did hit my nostalgia bone.
This grand romantic gesture about grand romantic gestures conjures up the bittersweet magic of first loves, lasting loves, lost loves and all the loves in between.” – Betsy Sharkey. DEFINITELY TRUE
The Daughter was still away, and the Wife, surprisingly, suggest we see TWO movies in one day. Was she kidding? That’d be the kind of crazy idea I’d come up with. But after the 12:10 pm showing of The Help, we went home to have supper, then went out for the 6:40 pm showing of Crazy, Stupid, Love.; crazy, stupid, punctuation. It had gotten mostly positive reviews. And this would become a mini Emma Stone film festival.
So we went to see C,S,L. and we both loved it! And now I’m trying to deconstruct why. Part of it is that it got right to the storyline without a lot of exposition. In that first scene in the car, we recognize that Cal (Steve Carrell) is very happy in his marriage but that his wife Emily (Julianne Moore) is not. He ends up at a bar and takes Don Juan lessons from Jacob (Ryan Gosling), with some unintended consequences.
So I decided to get lazy and go to Rotten Tomatoes and clip the top critics’ remarks to see how they matched up with mine.
“It’s romantic, touching, a little risqué and screwball, yet reassuringly down-to-earth.” – Colin Calvert. TRUE
“A multi-threaded and well-organized comedy full of pleasant surprises and appealing characters.” – Eric D. Synder. TRUE
“This grand romantic gesture about grand romantic gestures conjures up the bittersweet magic of first loves, lasting loves, lost loves, and all the loves in between.” – Betsy Sharkey. DEFINITELY TRUE
“I laughed all the way through, thanks to both consistently clever dialogue and deft delivery from Carell and Gosling, who clearly relished a chance to flex his comic muscles.” – Elizabeth Weitzman. Mostly TRUE. I didn’t laugh every minute, though the woman sitting across the aisle two rows up, may have.
“Adult dramas and comedies should at least have a toe in their audience’s lives.” – Ann Hornaday. I think the movie does do that, for the most part.
“A Midsummer Night’s PG-13 sex comedy.” – Carrie Rickey. Not only is this TRUE, I had already concluded that the big scene near the end when A is after B and B is after C, etc. was Shakespearean comedy, but then thought that was too pretentious; maybe it wasn’t.
“The movie suffers perhaps from too many characters and subplots but all the actors appear to have fun with their characters.” – Kirk Honeycutt. I balk at the first part. I’ve watched movies with too many subplots – “I can’t remember – who is THAT?” – and this was not one of them, at least for me. But the second part is TRUE.
“‘Crazy, Stupid, Love’ is a sweet romantic comedy about good-hearted people. Imagine that.” – Roger Ebert. OH YEAH, TRUE.
So I liked it, perhaps more than I expected, A- or, at worst, B+ territory.
I’m afraid she already knew Hello Goodbye from one of those Glee soundtracks her mother owns.
You might think that, since I have so many Beatles albums, that when my daughter expressed interest in the band, I might have given her some of mine; you would be mistaken. Instead, I ordered for her the most popular album in the first decade of the 21st Century, Beatles 1. I figured she ought to have something of her own, and if she lost it, it wouldn’t bug me as much. In fact, she has misplaced the CD case, but not the disc.
I never owned #1 myself; I have all the albums. Some purists think it’s a terrible intro to the band, merely picking the songs that made it to #1 on the US and/or UK charts. But it includes many songs she was previously familiar with.
Love Me Do she knew vaguely before. It is a simple song and she now knows all the words.
A Hard Day’s Night she knows so well, she now intentionally muffs the lyrics, switching ‘dog’ and ‘log’ in the first two lines as she’s singing along.
Help is probably her favorite song, as she knows all the lyrics and asks me to sing with her, even when the recording isn’t playing.
Unbidden, she will sing Eight Days A Week, Penny Lane, and more interestingly, parts of Come Together.
She is particularly fond of the “Life is very short” bridge of We Can Work It Out.
Yesterday she knows well. At some level, I think she gravitates mostly to the more melancholy songs.
Yellow Submarine allows her to imitate the nautical noises. She loves the ‘sea of GREEN’, as well she should.
Eleanor Rigby she calls ‘Lonely People’; I attempt to correct her, and she replies, “Whatever.” She knows most of the lyrics to this song.
She is specifically fascinated by the reprise of She Loves You within All You Need Is Love.
I’m afraid she already knew Hello Goodbye from one of those Glee soundtracks her mother owns.
When she hears Hey Jude, she’ll substitute, “Hey, Jules” ever since I explained that the song was written by Paul McCartney to John Lennon’s elder son Julian, after John’s breakup with John’s wife and Julian’s mom, Cynthia.
The only songs not on the album that she had previously expressed interest in are Tell Me Why and, again to my surprise, I Am the Walrus.
So yes, I’m indoctrinating my daughter with music from my favorite band.
No, the Help does not solve the issues of race in America; it was not designed to do so.
The Wife and I went to see the movie The Help a couple of Saturdays ago in a very crowded room at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany. We had been looking forward to seeing it since we caught the trailer. Our anticipation was further enhanced by happening to catch Bryce Dallas Howard, who plays the primary “villain”, for lack of a better term, on CTV while we were in Toronto a couple of weeks back, describing her role as “delicious.”
And I was going to write my impressions right away, but I got distracted by issues in the press surrounding the movie and the book upon which it was based. They are that essentially it’s a white woman who wrote about the black experience, with the film being the latest example of Hollywood’s historically lunkheaded, white-guilt appeasement genre.
Well, I’ve not read the book. As for the issues of the movie, I don’t think they were making a documentary, so if the moviemakers didn’t get it 100% correctly, that’s OK; most Hollywood films don’t. Beyond that, though, there were some well-meaning white people in America in 1962, even in the South, even in Jackson, Mississippi, so making the one of the white leads as heroic (in vast contrast to most whites in the film) doesn’t make it some sort of sellout. No, it does not solve the issues of race in America; it was not designed to do so.
Anyway, let me tell you how I immediately felt after seeing the film: the first 1/5 was interesting but not particularly engaging. The last 80%, though, I either laughed or gasped or cried. I enjoyed it on that level; actually, I liked it quite a bit. The acting was universally fine, but especially Viola Davis, who just might get an Oscar nod.
From Rotten Tomatoes: The Help stars Emma Stone as Skeeter, Viola Davis as Aibileen, and Octavia Spencer as Minny-three very different, extraordinary women in Mississippi during the 1960s, who build an unlikely friendship around a secret writing project that breaks societal rules and puts them all at risk. From their improbable alliance, a remarkable sisterhood emerges, instilling all of them with the courage to transcend the lines that define them, and the realization that sometimes those lines are made to be crossed-even if it means bringing everyone in town face-to-face with the changing times. — (C) DreamWorks
This was a film about people who were invisible, black maids who often raised white children, eventually finding a voice through a crazy notion of college-grad-returns-home Skeeter, who is faced additionally with the mystery of why her family’s maid (played by the terrific Cicely Tyson) had suddenly left. At 145 minutes, it IS too long, but I didn’t find it histrionic as some did. Perhaps this is true, though: “It is a formulaic Hollywood feel-bad and then feel-good work, one in which beautifully bathed-in-sunlight characters say Very Important Things while the music swells.” As I said, I liked it anyway, especially with smaller roles by Alison Janney, Jessica Chastain, and others.
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Yet another movie controversy: Is gaining 15 pounds really “torture”? Actresses pack it on and lose it again for “The Help” — what’s the big deal?