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1. GoGo Monster: And here’s Taiyo Matsumoto and the best comic of 2009, a tale of two schoolboys in their third year of classes, one of whom spends most of his time fading in and out of a world of invisible spirits facing an even more obscure threat; it was published in Japan in 2000, right before No. 5 began serialization. I’ve had a review half-written for a little while now — the book came out pretty recently — so in lieu of that I’ll provide a sub-list of Reasons Why This is Great to compliment my Top Ten Funnies and Best of Show Disclaimers rundown:
John rated it really liked it
Taiyo Matsumoto is an amazing illustrator and writer but he seems to do the same story in all the works that I’ve read: two teenage male characters have a coming of age experience with some fantasy or magical realism elements. Typically, one of the characters is exceptional in some regard (an amazing fighter, a great Ping-Pong player, an excellent student) and seems to have some connection to an invisible world, sometimes in the form of a doppleganger. In GoGo Monster, as in Ping-Pong, the magical realism elements appear to be mostly in the mind of the Peko/Yuki character. Whether or not Super Star and the others are real, Yuki, Ganz and IQ all believe that they effect the world outside of Yuki’s head. The art in this book is not quite as polished as in Sunny or Tekkonkinkreet (both of which I believe were published later?), but it’s still engaging. If you’re looking for a typical manga with this book, you’ll probably be disappointed and/or bored as it’s very long, very slow and very strange, despite the fairly mundane setting of a middle school.
“Picture a Batman and Robin story put through a Peter Pan filter by Takeshi Kitano and you’d only be halfway to conceiving the unique, terrible beauty that is Tekkon Kinkreet, previously published under the name Black & White.”
“Matsumoto’s stark, black-and-white imagery won’t be to every reader’s taste; I’d be the first admit that many of the kids in Blue Spring look older and wearier than Keith Richards, with their sunken eyes and rotten teeth. But the studied ugliness of the character designs and urban settings suits the material perfectly, hinting at the anger and emptiness of the characters’ lives. Matsumoto offers no easy answers for his characters’ behavior, nor any false hope that they will escape the lives of violence and despair that seem to be their destiny. Rather, he offers a frank, funny and often disturbing look at the years in which most of us were unformed lumps of clay — or, in Matsumoto’s memorable formulation, a time when most of us were blue: “No matter how passionate you were, no matter how much your blood boiled, I believe youth is a blue time. Blue — that indistinct blue that paints the town before the sun rises.””
Taiyo Matsumoto is tough for me to write about in any kind of formal fashion. Not sure why. I think maybe some of it may be that he’s such an old influence for me—like I came into his work before Nihei or Daisuke Igarashi—maybe even before Inio Asano-though Asano hasn’t really influenced me artistically—but I think how I got there was I was reading Stray Toasters because when I was first sort of starting to figure out how to draw, I practiced by redrawing Frazetta and BWS, but I was looking at like Sienkiewicz and Ashley Wood—anyways so I was reading Stray Toasters, and my wife of the time saw one of the panels in it, and was like “oh wow, that’s Klimt”—so I went and looked up Klimt and was like “whoa” which led me to Schiele which was a life changing moment. As soon as I saw Schiele I knew there was something in there that I just FELT, and I wanted to explore that feeling through my own work and find my own expression through it.
So in trying to figure out how to take Schiele into comics I ran into Taiyo Matsumoto’s work. I think Tekkinkinkreet was the first work of his I read, then No. 5, then Gogo Monster, then Ping Pong, then Takemitsu Zamurai, and now Sunny. Ping Pong and Takemitsu Zamurai are prolly my fave works by him, with Gogo Monster a close third. But these works were huge to me, and I mean eventually I found Daisuke Igarashi—and I think Daisuke is even closer to my like platonic ideal of comics than even Taiyo is—but Taiyo was key. Maybe THE key. At least after Schiele. So there’s a lot of emotional investment with Taiyo.
I think fundamentally the strength of Taiyo’s work for his whole career is that he doesn’t just tell you here is a boy doing this thing—he gives you something more about the boy at that particular time just in the way his line jitters, or the way the shadow will cloud a face—and maybe the shadow will be these impressionistic brush strokes—or maybe it will be more traditional cross hatching techniques? But the choice always was about communicating something beyond simply what is physically there in the scene.
– Sarah Horrocks
5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece.
By Luca Vitale on September 22, 2007
Format: Paperback
This might be the best graphic novel ever written, and I don`t say that lightly. It`s a shame that it doesn`t have a wide circulation in Europe and US. It`s pretty much impossible to compare to anything else, Tekkon Kinkreet it`s the most lyrical and at at the same time the most anti-conformist comic you`ll ever read. Think Miyazaki, Tank Girl and Takeshi Kitano all wrapped up in one story that is so good it hurts. Just get it, if you like indie comics chances are this is your new favorite one.
1.0 out of 5 stars very bad
ByEvzenie Reitmayerovaon January 28, 2010
i dunno about the story.
the pictures are so bad it is hard to follow what is actually going on.
it looks like it was drawn by a 2 years old kid with no talent.
i started to read this book a couple of times but couldnt finish it.
it proves even manga can be drawn very bad.
what a dissapointment.
Joey Comeau rated it it was amazing
Shelves: recommendations
This is one of my favourite comic books. It’s surreal and sort of mystical in a way that isn’t lame, but is instead psychological and unexpectedly violent. I was very surprised by this book.
UPDATED REVIEW:
Two years after first reading this book, I have come back to it again and again, each time finding more to love. This has gone from being a really nice surprise and “one of my favourite comic books” to being my favourite BOOK, period.
(A) It’s the most furiously cartooned book I’ve read all year, a no-assistants one man show of total vision penmanship that leaves its ‘realistic’ scenery vibrating; buildings literally wave and curve in the background while characters adopt scribbly or sharp appearances based on minute shifts in mood. It’s like Matsumoto seized on the propensity of manga characters in stories where boys see spirits to shift to superdeformed mode when something funny happens and exploded it into three-dimensional sphere of hypersensitive bodily flux.
“Although, I’m still not sure why the book is called Gogo Monster.”
4.0 out of 5 starsFantastic Book
ByChristopher Luceroon January 27, 2013
Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase
All-in-all the book is just an amazing read and a must for everyone. My only problem is that when it came in the mail, the very top part of the slip cover was wrinkled because the shipping. Its kinda annoying but still, the book is something to own rather than just read online.
(B) Gone is any trace of the punkish action comics posture of Tekkonkinkreet. Why is that a virtue? Because GoGo Monster functions as a stealthy follow-up project; there’s no doubt in my mind as to why Viz selected it to follow that long-brewing success, since it’s functionally a loose remake, at one point even replicating a plot twist. The trick is, the work formerly known as Black and White concluded with its heroes extricating themselves from the heroic narrative as a means of growing up. Thus, GoGo Monster rips the explicit fantasy out and presents another two boys in a similar story that’s nonetheless entirely different, more delicate, daydreamier. Better.
Mabomanji rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: bd-comics, friend-s-recommendation
J’adore le style de Taiyo Matsumoto, il dessine avec beaucoup de détails mais surtout avec beaucoup de dynamisme en choisissant des points de vue inhabituels. Il y a une qualité cinématographique à son dessin et à son travail de découpage des planches et d’enchaînement de l’histoire, un vrai travail de montage. Je me suis retrouvée embarquée dans cette folle poursuite à travers le monde entier et j’en ai oublié où j’étais. Le monde futuriste brossé est fascinant et on apprend à chaque chapitre un peu plus sur ce qui s’y passe. Politiquement c’est intéressant avec cette organisation pour le maintien pour la paix qui voit ses jours comptés car elle arrive au bout de sa mission. Reste de le mystère de cette femme libérée par Number 5, elle semble être innocente et pourtant elle a un pouvoir magnétique et semble attirer toute la nature à elle. Un tome passionnant dont j’espère la suite au même niveau.
5.0 out of 5 starsDevoted Comics Fans Should Not Pass This One By
ByGraphicNovelReporter.comon December 8, 2009
Format: Hardcover
Yuki Tachibana is an outcast at Asahi Elementary School. He sits alone, drawing on his desk and occasionally shouting out weird exclamations. If he talks to the other children, it is only to warn them about the “others,” beings kept in check only by the power of Super Star, the boss of the other side. Yuki’s only friend is the school’s caretaker, Ganz, though he sometimes talks to IQ, an older student who is academically gifted but interacts with people only through the box he wears over his head. When Makoto Suzuki’s school is shut down for mysterious reasons, he is sent to Asahi Elementary and placed in the desk next to Yuki. Despite the other students’ warnings about Yuki’s strange behavior, Makoto befriends the boy and soon finds himself wondering how much of Yuki’s tales are true.
Matsumoto, manga-ka of Tekkonkinkreet, offers a tale that is part fantasy, part horror, and part mind-trip. On the one hand, it can be read as an exploration into the thought process of a child with autism or a similar disorder, a child who does not see or react to the world the way the rest of humanity does. But on the other hand, Yuki Tachibana might be right and Super Star may be the only thing keeping the beings of the other side from riling the children of Asahi Elementary School to rebel against their teachers, do poorly in class, and be mean to one another. However, it may be that GoGo Monster is neither of those things, or both at the same time.
Matsumoto doesn’t offer an easy read. His plot twists and turns. The dialogue is spare and often consists just of overheard comments that are not necessarily relevant. The characters are mostly inscrutable. And frankly, that is much of the fun of reading GoGo Monster. It is a story to dive into, allowing it to wash over you, and then, later, after it has swirled around in your brain for a time, to dive into again.
The art is as off-kilter as the plot, keeping you searching the panels for hidden details and meanings that may or may not be there, not allowing you to turn the page immediately. Matsumoto’s style is rough, purposefully sloppy. Some characters are realistically portrayed, while others have a messy, cartoonish quality. The drawings within the panels do not always correspond with the dialogue going on at the same time, forcing readers to look deeper for the connection and the meaning. As Yuki is drawn further into the world he sees, the images are terrifyingly subtle. The monsters are never obvious, which heightens the sense of a young boy caught by unimaginable and unseen forces. There is also a lot of beauty in the United States edition of GoGo Monster because of VIZ’s high-quality printing job. The book is hardcover, with the story starting right on the endpages of the front cover. Bright, colorful monsters cover the outside of the book, even overlapping onto the edges of the pages, which are tipped in red and burgundy. A slipcase completes the package.
Readers looking for an artistic read, one that requires that the brain be fully engaged, will find much to appreciate here, as long as they don’t mind taking their time. Other than the typical comments on poop and sex that fourth-grade boys make, there is little to keep this out of the hands of readers old enough to appreciate the strange story. It’s not for every reader, but devoted comics fans should not pass this one by.
— Snow Wildsmith
“Did you know that Matsumoto made this manga entirely on his own (no assistants) and did it in one shot. So it never ran in a magazine, he just sat down for a long while and cranked out 448 pages of genius. Seriously who does that?!”
“Tekkonkinkreet melted my mind.”
Charlie rated it did not like it
Shelves: graphic-novels, young-adult, japanese
I read this because it was by the same person who made Sunny, and because I couldn’t find Sunny: Volume 2 online. This one wasn’t very good. Mostly it’s just left me feeling gross. I don’t even really know why.
“Creating manga is kind of like you’re a child who’s stolen some money, and when asked about it you lie and say you found it on the ground, but then the grown-ups keep asking more and more questions, and you have to keep making up more and more lies and make it more real. Like, I’ve already gone and said that I’d make this series, so now I have to follow through on that original lie to the end and make it look like something real. People who are good at making manga are really good liars, I think.”
Taiyo Matsumoto, in a 1997 interview.
“When people turn into grown-ups, their insides melt into a mushy glop and their brains get hard and stiff,” he tells Makoto. “They get infested with maggots and a purple stink.”
(C) But you don’t need to know that part. GoGo Monster is also a lovely self-contained unit, an original hardcover graphic novel, even in Japan, where such things are pretty rare. Every bit of the format is exploited, with a cardboard slipcase giving way to a wraparound cover that doubles as the work’s first page, although the ‘first’ page is actually page “-8,” which leads into page -7 on the inside-front cover, then -6 through -1 on tinted pages, followed by several pages of black to indicate a narrative break of two years, and then full-color titles on page 0, thereafter counting to over 450 in crisp b&w.; You bet your ass the solid black inside-back cover is significant – it’s another break in time, one we can’t see past.
“Unnormal gut.”
Yanakano_san rated it it was ok
Dirty hopelessness, absolute inanition, students with their clapping game of bloody happiness – young people who were too old and apathetic since the very, very first moment of life.
Matsumoto may call them “the heroes of my youth” – I call them “the lost generation”.
Because something (strangely sounds like “oh shit!”) happens, always did and always will, and let it happen – who cares anyway? Who? Is there any point? Has there ever been?
They know the right answer (which is “no, never”).
They are able to kill for nothing, to die for a far, ghostly goal and to live without feeling alive in the mess of blood, flesh and madness of Japan; their spring is blue, and their summer will come only to make them all finally fade.
(D) The main action of the book takes place over five chapters: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring. This is a cycle, though, not a schematic. If anything, GoGo Monster is reminiscent in tone (not style) of John Porcellino at his sensation-of-moments airiest, with seemingly half the pages in the book devoted specifically to evocation: word balloons floating idle chatter in the air, familiar characters’ faces gazing out, words repeating, images repeating, airplanes, rabbits, scribbles on a desk, not so far from the scribbles that are the children.
5.0 out of 5 stars A uniquely brilliant manga.
By hi on 11 May 2010
Format: Paperback
Taiyo Matsumoto is not your average manga artist. Blue Spring, one of his earlier works, is a collection of short stories about adolescents in the transition between youth and manhood. They refuse to conform to what they see as a bleak present and an even bleaker future, as if confused and angered by it all, with Matsumoto showing their detachment through their daily escapades with the yakuza, society and themselves. It is unflinching in depicting the harshness of their realities with the stories ranging from a deadly rooftop game to a group of young baseball players reminiscing over a game of mahjong with ‘Revolver’ being my favourite and most complete of the stories.
It struck a chord with me because the anxieties they felt were very human while their brash actions and sometimes extreme violence depicted how we would act if we rebelled against our inhibitions. The characters all had recognisable qualities in them but at times felt quite disturbing, especially in ‘What do you want do be when you grow up, Yukio?’ The content is quite explicit throughout underpinning the nihilistic lives that these youths lead with the raw art style reflecting this.
I didn’t expect to like Blue Spring as much as I did but definitely feel lucky to have found it. It doesn’t try to act as a social commentary, it simply acts as a depiction, with the author himself putting it best when describing youth as a blue time:
“Blue – that indistinct blue that paints the town moments before the sun rises. Winter is coming.”
(E) Dotting this mental-temporal landscape are startling scenes and images, ranging from a multi-page depiction of a boy swimming in front of an adult — every page-topping wide panel set outside the pool exactly the same while below are jagged, tense variations of working through water with a cramp — to one of the indelible character designs of 2009(/2000) in the form of the story’s semi-antagonist I.Q., an older boy wearing a silly assortment of boxes over his head, always with a single hole cut out to reveal a spectacularly eerie photorealistic cross-hatched eye, always the most detailed bit of anatomy on any given page. Cross-hatching serves as the looming presence of adulthood throughout the book, finally erupting in a classic I-am-a-master-cartoonist-and-I-can-do-ANYTHING-I-WANT visual blowout climax in which all panels become filled with infinitesimally minute cross-hatches and stippling so that the reader is forced to stare deeply into every panel, slowly navigating as if literally in a dark room, just barely making out faces or legs or terrible animal shapes, and it’s actually scary.
By L. Martin on August 3, 2015
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
This is a very strange manga. It is BEAUTIFULLY set up (pretty covers and slipcase, unusually high quality paper) which suggests to me that someone thought it was somthing extraordinarily fine. And yes it a fine manga—of a particular type. It is a story of an boy who is an outcast at school and lives in his imagination instead. This is a deeply meaningful subject for me because I was such a boy, and the first half or more of the book does a great job of showing how that feels, and what a great thing it is for a boy like that when he makes a friend. However, not much beyond that ever happens! No matter how symapthetic one is to the MC, I think any reader would like some events, developments, changes etc., and particularly a nice ending. I was waiting for some of any of those things, perhaps building interestingly upon the boy’s being able to further develop his new friendship with a second boy in the school, this one also being a semi-outcast like him, but instead all I got was an incomprehensible ending. I was disappointed.
The first half or two thirds of this manga tells such a moving story of the child outcast life that I can recommend it for that. Be prepared to deal with a mysterious ending, and perhaps you’ll love it as others here have.
(F) All of this seems absolutely effortless, from the most worked-over panels to the (far more plentiful) pages of perfect, energetic doodling. I have no problem believing that Matsumoto may not have known what would be two pages ahead of him at any given time, though I doubt that’s true, it’s too complete a work. The book is best read in one sitting; it’s a breeze of a comic, sincerely refreshing. So great is its artist’s expressive power that even the book’s chilly, ill-fitting English typeface seems outright alien, as if drawing attention to the futility of translation. Aesthetes may still object, and they wouldn’t be wrong.
__________________
Writing
https://letsfallasleep.wordpress.com/2008/10/29/taiyo-matsumoto-and-michael-arias-influences/
http://marvelous-coma.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/no5-vol2.html
http://www.cartoonstudies.org/schulz/blog/matsumoto-taiyo-a-comic-essay/
http://sites.gsu.edu/awalsh6/portfolio/critical-reflective-statement/
Podcast with great links below
http://www.factualopinion.com/the_factual_opinion/2013/06/taiyo-matsumoto-and-his-comics.html
All numbered and lettered points pertaining to Gogo Monster are written by Joe McCulloch and can be found in their original form by scrolling down at this link –
http://joglikescomics.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/most-equivocal.html
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p.s. Hey. ** Steeqhen, Hi. Desserts are always a good idea, no? Oh, that spot was in the library. I thought maybe you lived in some manor or something. I think it’s interesting, or maybe I mean uninteresting, to think about why people are offended by other people’s joy. Unless, okay, if it’s a reckless general mood disruptor. A friend of mine was the show runner on the first few seasons of the American ‘Big Brother’, and she let me sneak around in the set’s secret one-way mirrored tunnels and spy on them. That was interesting, but they weren’t particularly. Anyway, you are clearly fully primed to make reality TV make meta-sense. And there’s probably even a healthy market for such a study. I can’t say where the film premiere is yet, but there’ll be screenings and stuff in Europe for sure. I hope the essay welcomed you back promiscuously. ** _Black_Acrylic, ‘Eating Raoul’ is fun. ‘Death Race 2000’ too, if you want a second taste. Okay, that’s good enough for me. ‘Messiah of Evil’, here I come. Thanks, buddy. ** jay, Oh, good, about your LA friend. And if I happen to be visiting there while you’re visiting, I can add my tour guide skills. Poquito Mas fucking rules! But it’s careful outfit. Only three of them, all in the LA confines. Maybe I’ll start a Kickstarter to get the ball rolling. My go-to Xmas gift for special people or people I wanted to like me was to make a gift for each of the person’s senses. So, individual gifts targeting their taste, smell, touch, hearing, and a fifth sense, I can’t remember what would be. And I’d individually wrap them imaginatively and then wrap all five in a big wrapped package. People loved it. I had a friend in high school who was obsessed with ‘The Magus’. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone talk about that novel in a billion decades. How strange. I’ve never understood why people have problems with age gaps in relationships. I assume it’s somehow part of the general ugly tendency amongst the formerly young to view the young with immediate suspicion. What’s that about? So weird. Anyway, maybe don’t bring up necrophilia or speak of it in a scholarly fashion if you must? ** Dominik, Hi!!! It’ll be a few months until ‘RT”s birth, but we still have some last fiddling to do, and we have to make a trailer and stuff, so that’s fine. Any clue why Facebook has decided you’re a candidate for earplugs? My feed at the current time thinks I’m addicted to pet rescue videos, which I am, that I’m hungry for every possible bit of trivia about The Beatles, Deep Purple, Emerson Lake & Palmer, and some guitarist named Tommy Bolin, which I am not, that I follow or care about the World Wrestling Federation, which I don’t, and, like I said, that I’m the world’s biggest AC/DC fan. My feed doesn’t understand me at all. Me too, about Xmas trees. Especially the young ones, of course. Love realising that he’s never taken a bubble bath, G. ** Joseph, Hi. Thank you mentioning me in the same breath with Mr Bartel. And yes, fuck ’em! Thanks about the ‘RT’ related success. We’re not entirely in the clear re: its problems, but we’re on its fringes. Congrats on being a finalist! Votive candles are lit. Um, yeah, my novel ‘My Loose Thread’. Very long short as short as possible: It was the only novel I ever ‘sold’ on a proposal, which I will never do again. A publisher bought it and paid the biggest advance I ever got but then folded about two weeks later. That publisher’s books, including mine, were inherited by Harper Collins, and my future book ended up at the Ecco imprint. So I wrote the novel and turned it in, and the editor hated it and thought it was shit, and they wouldn’t publish it and demanded my advance back, which was ridiculous since they didn’t even pay for the advance, and I’d already spent it and was broke. My agent tried to reason with them, but no. He tried to get other publishers to take the book, but they wouldn’t because of the debt they’d have to pay to Harper Collins. Finally my agent found a small UK-based publisher who said that they would take the novel, and he worked out a deal with them where they wouldn’t pay directly for the book but would direct all money the book earned to Harper Collins. Harper Collins finally said, ok, and released the novel from its prison. Then the UK publisher basically dumped the novel with no publicity, and so the book got lost, and I’ll never earn a penny from it. So, that’s closest I’ve been to your situation. I won’t eat Vindaloo even with a healthy tooth, at least not today, if you promise not to fly to Japan and visit the newly opened Kong Country section of Nintendo Land in Osaka without taking me along. ** James, Very happy that the blog is doing its part in filling you in. Amiable, thank you, I like that. Amiability is an honorable goal. Congrats on your swell of pride and on the sweets and on your generosity with them. Hopefully if your brother does dig he’ll only dig up ‘God Jr.’ because then he’ll think you’re a swell, normal person. Yes, I grew up in LA. What was that like? That’s a vast question, I don’t know. It was great, it did the trick, it made me a weird, nice guy, and I thank it for that. LA isn’t like a normal city. It’s just a huge sprawl of small towns kind of glued together. Festivities galore to you, bud. ** T, Hey, hey! Where did you go in Japan? Wait, let’s talk about it in person. Unsurprising, yes, but wonderful that you found it amazing. I’m dying to get back there. I’m seeing ‘Crowd’ tomorrow. I haven’t seen it in a long time, and there’s a bunch of new cast members. There’s no text in ‘Crowd’. My contribution was creating each of the characters — the dancers are all specific characters with complicated back stories and relationships to each other, but all of that is kind of hidden away and you have to look for it. Basinski in April, yes! There’s also some kind of electronic music festival/event at Centquatre coming up, but I can’t remember when or who’s playing. Maybe that, if it’s not while you’re abroad? ** Lucas, Hey. ‘The Passion According to G.H.’ is a really good Lispector, if my memory’s working. Very beautiful collage! Hm, I think I prefer the one at the top, if I had to choose, I think. Both versions great. Everyone, a new collage by the mighty Lucas, or, rather, two variations on a single collage. Go do yourself a favor and check it/them out. Paris has been pretty lowkey, but, yes, chilly. But things pick up starting tomorrow: dance event, buche eating, friends, see art, eat restaurant food, etc. Be Wednesday’s superstar. ** Steve, News about the Aphex Twin. Very cool. The boss of the current level of the game I’m on hasn’t revealed itself yet, but it’s a frozen world, so my guess is that it will either be a giant evil ice cube or a giant evil ice sculpture. I’ll confirm once I go face to face with it. I suppose you don’t know what makes fetish urine fetish-y rather than just urine any more than I do? ** Matthew Doyle, Well, hey there, Matt! Great to see you, pal! Bartel-wise, I would start with ‘Death Race 2000’ or ‘Eating Raoul’. Yeah, so strange, those LA photos, no? They made me feel something acutely, but I’m not sure what that is. Thanks about the premiere news. Yeah, Zac and I are happy. And awesome that you’ve become pals with Yar. Yar’s the best. Cool photo of you in the motion capture suit. Excited for that project’s fruition. I’ve only just glanced at the pix of Yuehao’s paintings and haven’t read your intro yet, but I like them a lot. The Super Mario 64 vibe is very present. Nice! Congrats to her (and you)! Enjoy Xmas-y Boston. I’m readying to celebrate French Xmas with a Buche de Noel with Zac, Ange, a.o. in tow. ** Jimmy, Hi. Good to know about my chastity vibes’ power. I’ll be looking for other occasions where they might come in handy. Cool, I can now picture you reading tarot reasonably well. Uh, I’ve had friends do my tarot cards over the years, and I don’t remember either being blown away or suspicious, and I don’t know what that means. Find something to feast on over there, no? xo ** HaRpEr, Fucking Cloudflare, grr. Where’s ‘God’ when you need ‘Him/Her/Them’. That ‘each to his own’ French thing is very true and very present. I really, really like it. It’s very relaxing. Paris is A-okay in May. Good time to test it out if you end up being able to do that. Yeah, one should never take any venue’s rejection of one’s work as anything but a highly subjective decision. It means nothing, even if the venue seems high and mighty. Sure hope they get the funding for the chapbook/zine. Surely they will. How much can it cost? They can do a benefit something or other. I’m friends with Mary Woronov. Well, I haven’t seen her in ages, but I’m sure we’re still friends. She’s really fun and neurotic and hilarious. ** Bill, Hi, B! Ah, shit, Cloudflare got you even in Taipei? Thanks for the Luv-a-fair back story. I’m going to read up. I went to Medusa’s too. I think maybe even I did a reading there? I’m not sure. Everything still going well there? What have you been up to? ** Huckleberry Shelf, Hi, Huckleberry! Awesome to see you! How was LA? Did its charms filter in? Did you see David and/or Amy? Paris is chilly, but I can still go outside and walk at a reasonably leisurely pace without needing to duck into heated stores every block or so. It doesn’t really get scary cold here anymore. But famous last words. Fantastic news about you and The Baffler! That’s a really good site, obviously. I’m excited to read it. I don’t think I’ve read prose by you yet. Great! I’ll click over there as soon as Friday dawns, or at least after I’ve had a couple of cups of coffee. Thank you about here, and it’s always a finer place when you’re in attendance. You doing anything you’re looking forward to at Xmas? Best, me. ** Right. Today I restore a wild and wooly guest-post about the comix artist and sometimes anime-maker Taiyo Matsumoto made by a long-time if recently rather scarce distinguished local named Jamie. Have all the fun it allows and that you can. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
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Hey Dennis! I can’t say I’ve ever heard of this author or artist, but it looks very interesting. Huh, that sounds awesome, like a cluster bomb of gifts. I think my weirder gifts tend to be intimate “coupon-ish” things, like a card that can be exchanged for me helping someone clean their room, or fix a door or something. Thank you so much about that LA offer – it’s way, way off for me, but I might follow up, thanks!
Yeah, people are weird about age gaps. My bf is a lawyer (not in a Bateman-ish way, he’s very ethical about it), so I think it’s possible people worry about me being after his money, or him (by being older than me) somehow “taking” something indefinable but very important from me.
Yeah, “Magus” is so weird, it was bizarrely hard to find a copy of. When I mentioned it to my mom (who’s about your age), she said exactly the same thing, almost verbatim. I read it because I loved Myst/The Witness, which are games that are spins on the “puzzle island” concept, and it’s always stuck with me. I think my ideal gift novel is always “I Wished”, I’ve never had anything but huge admiration for your writing back. But perhaps not a good one for a first impression, lol. Hahaha, good advice about necrophilia discussion at the dinner table. Anyway, have an amazing day, fingers crossed you wake up to a Poquito Mas smushed into your ex-Ikea like a downed UFO.
Hi!!
Oh, I remember this post! I adored it then, and I adore it now. Thank you for reviving it!
That sounds ideal, doesn’t it? You’ll have ample time to finish everything you need to before “Room Temperature” premieres, and now you finally have a concrete date to look forward to.
To be completely honest, at first, I thought those earplugs were small sex toys, and I spent some time inspecting the ad. Maybe that was my mistake. Maybe the algorithm picked up on those few seconds and translated them as boundless interest. The World Wrestling Federation, haha?! Maybe that’s as close as Facebook gets to homoerotically charged content.
I think the last time I took a bubble bath was when I was in… elementary school? I’m just too impatient to sit around in a tub of hot water with nothing to do. And I’d never take a book with me because I drop whatever’s in my hands way too often for that.
Love allowing you to go back in time and tell your teenage self one thing about his future, Od.
Hey Dennis
Haha I certainly don’t live in a manor, though if I did I would want a room like that as my work space.
Know that feeling where you spend your entire brain power writing something, only to look at it and feel like you just wasted your entire day? That’s me with this essay. I’ve basically almost started it again, using the original as a template for this new one. Maybe that’s a normal way to work — making drafts and stuff — I tend to be the type that tries to make it work in just one go, slowly perfecting it as I go along, so this is just frustrating me. Ended up sleeping in today from the mental (and physical, was leg day at the gym) exhaustion from yesterday. Still in my pajamas at home working on this essay.
Hoping I can have at least 75% of it done in the next 3 hours so I can somewhat enjoy myself at this Christmas thing. Anyway, talk to you tomorrow when I’ve hopefully finished the essay!
Hey Dennis,
I thought L.A. was pretty wonderful. It’s definitely a lot of other things too, especially when you get into the kind of tourist grime of Hollywood, but it’s so big and beautiful and weird. I’d like to go back soon. I didn’t get the chance to contact Amy but I had a lovely lunch with David, who is such a great guy.
In terms of Christmas, me and a few of my fellow Jewish friends (and one or two people who just want excuses not to see their families) have a longstanding yearly Christmas vacation. Headed to New York this year, which should be wonderful, I have a lot of good friends there and a lot of great art etc I want to see. And my Grandpa has a big apartment in the middle of Brooklyn that will be empty. How about you? Any plans?
Thank you re: the story! Yeah, there isn’t much prose for you to have read, this is the first story I really feel confident in. Which makes it very exciting it got immediately accepted by a decently large magazine, it gives me some confidence at least in my ability to judge myself.
Best,
Huckleberry
Happy to receive this supercool print set in the post from the mighty New Juche. Also features his new chapbook Water Margin, plus I got a bunch of Xmas cards so things are currently very festive around here.
I now have a tree installed on my kitchen worktop. Mum brought it round this week and it’s all done out in rainbow colours. Looks as though the thing’s here for the Pride celebrations but then Xmas decorations are all about being camp, I think.