4th Majeure

It's been a good weekend, though I don't actually have plans for the 4th itself. Lots of time with the kids, and we went to a progressive party in the old neighborhood that consisted of College Days (jungle juice, beer, frozen pizza, chips 'n dip); Pearl Harbor (kamikazes, egg rolls); Tequila Poppers (self-explanatory); Jamaica (some pineapple and rum drink called a Big Bamboo, along with some pretty bad banana fritter cookie things); and the piece de resistance, Spain. That wasn't the last house, in fact, but it was the most elaborate drinks and food, as I helped my friends the Rogers make seafood and chicken paella along with Sangria. Had to improvise a little on both, but for the most part we had everything short of a mortar and pestle to grind the saffron, and it turned out pretty good. I tried not to go wild, and didn't, but with all those drinks, it did catch up to me a bit, though I was never sick or anything. Kicked back yesterday, hanging out at the pool, finishing Paul Auster's THE BOOK OF ILLUSIONS (a very good novel about a thought-dead silent film comedian who was secretly making movies for decades never to be shown; loss and regret are the major themes, and as usual Auster ties together layers of reality and meaning and potent symbols very well); and watching some Seinfeld Season Four. I also wrote three pages, and wrote two just now, so I have seven left. I can probably get at least one more done tonight, but will also begin on the next BREAKDOWNS.

Speaking of which, if you haven't, please do check out last week's column at Comic Book Galaxy, as I spend the entirety of it reviewing Daniel Clowes' fascinating graphic novel ICE HAVEN. I took quite a different approach to the review than anything I've done before, and I think it came out pretty well. My first instinct is to mix the column up with reviews of different kinds of books, but this review ran 2,000 words already, and would no doubt overshadow anything else I covered, so look for the next Breakdowns to have a number of reviews, probably of less significant books, quite frankly. Marc Sobel and Logan Polk also reviewed ICE HAVEN, and I'm happy to say we all attacked it well from different angles, though no planning went into it. I don't think any of us knew we were all reviewing it, as we don't generally plot things out that much at NCBG, but it was to be expected that such a major release would get plenty of coverage in either June or July. Logan also has some nice things to say about the column, and other things, on his blog, and I do have to applaud Marc for asking the kinds of questions in his column that every critic should ask themselves, and keep asking themselves. And while I don't have time to single out every contributor over the past week, I was telling ADD that I've never enjoyed reading the site as much as I am now.