Roger O Green

The return of Smilin’ Ed Smiley

FantaCon 2015 will be held on Saturday August 29 and Sunday August 30, 2015 at the spectacular Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Convention Center in Albany, NY.

Those of you who frequented FantaCo in in the late 1970s and early 1980s will remember Smilin’ Ed. The rat was initially designed as the logo for the comic book store/convention/mail-order house based in Albany, NY. Eventually, there were four comic book issues, plus a story in the X-Men Chronicles. Well, there’s going to be a collection of these, plus items published in The Comics Buyers Guide, the weekly Metroland, and unpublished material.

You can expect narrative pieces, by Raoul’s sister Maria, FantaCo owner/publisher Tom Skulan, and me. Or so goes the plan; this will be a Kickstarter thing. Look for details at SmilinEd.com soon.

I had this whole narrative about the origin of the Smilin’ Ed name in mind for this post, which marks the 36th anniversary of the incorporation of FantaCo, but the piece wouldn’t write itself, so I let it go.
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And FantaCon fans should get ready, get set, MARK YOUR CALENDARS!!

FantaCon 2015 will be held on Saturday, August 29 and Sunday, August 30, 2015, at the spectacular Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Convention Center in Albany, NY. This is the billion-dollar facility where FantaCon was born 35 years ago.

Check for information on this Facebook page.
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Finally, FantaCo’s birth coincidentally coincides with the birthday of the late, great Jack Kirby, who co-created (some would say created) the early Marvel Comics characters such as the Fantastic Four, the original X-Men, and most of the individual Avengers. If you don’t know his significance in current American popular culture – those Marvel characters didn’t design themselves – check here.

I’ve not seen any of the Marvel movies, from The Avengers forward, and this article about Kirby and Marvel explains why.

Art by Raoul Vezina. Smilin’ Ed created by Raoul Vezina and Tom Skulan
Smilin’ Ed™ is a Trademark of and Copyright © 2014 Maria Vezina and Tom Skulan. All rights reserved.

White people need to talk about white privilege

Black people talking about systemic injustice towards them is far stronger when yoked with white voices joining in.

I’ve studiously avoided writing about the shooting death in Ferguson, MO of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was black and apparently unarmed, by a white policeman, mostly out of a desire not just to repeat, or refute, what others have said. What’s indisputable, however, is that Americans are divided racially on the shooting.

Some (seriously) blame President Obama because he hasn’t brought that “post-racial” country they were expecting, which they believe he promised. In fact, almost every time he’s attempted to talk about racial issues, it has not gone well with a good chunk of the American public.

So I don’t want to discuss the particulars of Brown’s shooting (six times, including twice to the head), because this merely instigates the scapegoating phenomenon; Michael Brown was not the perfect victim, so we’ll attack Michael Brown, or Trayvon Martin, or whatever dead black kid is currently in the news. (Want to find an innocent, dead, black kid? See, e.g., John Crawford III, who on August 5, 2014, “was gunned down in an Ohio Walmart after customers saw him walking around with a ‘weapon’, which turned out to be an air rifle he picked up in the store.”)

I might want to mention the way police procedures have changed in the past couple of decades. For instance: New Report Exposes Growing Militarization of American Policing; also, 4 Reasons the Police Are Suddenly Terrifying and Rise of the Warrior Cop Plus It’s Perfectly Legal To Film The Cops. As usual, John Oliver has a solution to the problem.

And even white kids can get killed by cops in America: 20 Year Old Executed by Police, Allegedly for Wearing Headphones, Unable to Hear Orders. Whereas Iceland grieved after the police killed a man for the first time in its history last year.

What finally crystallized things for me was a comment a friend of mine made recently. She has three friends, all white women, married to men of color. They are finding themselves in that position of having to participate in “having the talk” with their mixed-raced children. And they are, to a woman, feeling ill-equipped to discuss it, because the narrative is not based on their own experience.

Listen to How Do You Have ‘The Talk’ with Your Black Child If You’re not Black Yourself? It’s about seven and a half minutes long.

To the broader issue, read Different Rules Apply and I Finally “Get” White Privilege and I’m Sorry. Because sometimes it takes a white dude to talk about racism. Or a white woman to do so.

Assuming, of course, they can. The Atlantic suggests that self-segregation – white people mostly talking to white people – makes it so hard for them to understand Ferguson and other issues on the racial divide.

Still, black people talking about systemic injustice towards them is far stronger when yoked with white voices joining in. It has always been thus, at least in America. Just, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned, men supporting women’s equality, and straight people promoting gay rights frankly provide the sense that it’s not just “their” issue”, “their” problem”, it’s OURS.

The Lydster, Part 125: The homework tradeoff

The assignment is actually a good exercise for the future learning, but it was introduced, essentially, as a punishment for cheating

This is what I think about The Daughter’s homework:
1) It’s often too much, in terms of time
2) It’s too often taught to these bizarre Common Core standards so that she might know the answers to the questions but doesn’t know how to show it the way THEY want her to

Yet:
3) I found it odd that she could earn a homework pass, for one subject, if she brought in ten returnable bottles and/or cans.

Generally speaking, she has three areas of homework: spelling (alphabetize words, put in sentences, take a word and make it an acrostic); math (doing geometry and algebra stuff I didn’t do until much later); and reading. She LIKES reading, a lot actually, has at least since the above picture was taken five or six years ago. We’ve literally had to take a flashlight away from her so she wouldn’t read under the covers.

But she HATES writing the reading responses because they are not “fair.” Her class used to just keep a reading log, but apparently, some other kids were writing down titles of books they actually didn’t read. So now everyone has to write a narrative about what they read. The assignment is actually a good exercise for future learning, but it was introduced, essentially, as a punishment for cheating, and she wasn’t cheating.

Thus, the bottles collected are always in lieu of the reading assignment. They are painfully easy to come by. After her soccer game one June afternoon, we collected from the top of the trash 17 returnables, almost all of them water bottles. Why people don’t take them home for the nickel apiece is beyond me.

Still, the collecting has been its own lesson, about people’s wasteful, polluting nature.

David Brickman’s return to blogging about art

David Brickman has brought back his Get Visual blog, perhaps in a very small part due to some mild ~~nagging~~encouragement on my part.

My old friend David Brickman “has been an exhibiting artist, art critic, and curator for over 30 years.” I knew him best as a very talented photographer. He used to review art and related topics at a local newspaper. Then he blogged on his own at Get Visual on a wider array of topics, including film reviews, from January 2009 until early 2012, when, much to my sadness, he gave up the writing.

Now that he’s settled in as an auditor for the Office of the New York State Comptroller, he has brought back Get Visual, perhaps in a very small part due to some mild ~~nagging~~encouragement on my part. I’m sorry he’s no longer exhibiting his personal artwork, but I’m glad he’s writing.

I promised him that would spread the word. Consider the word spread, David.

G is for Zina Garrison

Zina Garrison claimed her third Grand Slam mixed doubles title at Wimbledon in 1990, partnering with Rick Leach.

From the Wikipedia:

Zina Lynna Garrison (born November 16, 1963, in Houston, Texas) is a former professional tennis player from the United States. During her career, she was a women’s singles runner-up at Wimbledon in 1990, a three-time Grand Slam mixed doubles champion, and a women’s doubles gold medalist at the 1988 Olympic Games.

She finished 1989 ranked a career-high World No. 4 in singles.

ZINA was a ZESTFUL person, who, when she was in the ZONE, could be a formidable player.

She lost to Martina Navratilova 21 straight times before beating her in the 1988 US Open, advancing to the semifinals where she lost to Gabriella Sabatini. You can see a clip of her talking about the victory HERE.

The highlight of Garrison’s career came in 1990 at Wimbledon. She defeated French Open champion Monica Seles in the quarterfinals 3–6, 6–3, 9–7 and the defending Wimbledon champion and World No. 1 Steffi Graf in the semifinals 6–3, 3–6, 6–4 to reach her first (and only) Grand Slam singles final, becoming the first African-American woman to do so since Althea Gibson. There, she lost to Navrátilová 6–4, 6–1 who won her record ninth women’s singles title at Wimbledon. However, Garrison claimed her third Grand Slam mixed doubles title at Wimbledon that year (partnering with Rick Leach).

The reason I thought about her is a news piece about how Zina is now coaching 18-year-old Taylor Townsend. They may be well-suited to work together because both dealt with eating issues. Zina suffered from bulimia after her mother died. Before Zina trained her, Taylor was asked by the tennis authorities “to sit out of the 2012 U.S. Open Junior tournament due to her [excessive] weight.”

ABC Wednesday, Round 15