The hamlet of Ice Haven is home to the typical small town dramas–lovelorn teenagers, neighborhood rivalries, children taking their boredom out on one another, etc–when a young boy goes missing.

Ladies and Gentlemen, David Goldberg, life of the party

You’d think this sort of thing would stop the city cold, but, as in real life, most people remain chiefly concerned with their own artistic, emotional or sexual frustrations whilst the Goldberg case played out on the periphery of their lives.

For such a short work, Clowes has given us a vibrant cast of believable characters. There’s the pseudo-narrator, Random Wilder, who fancies himself to be a poet and to be in a feud with Ice Haven’s poet laureate Ida Wentz. Ida’s granddaughter, Vida, is a budding writer visiting from out-of-town and becomes interested in Mr Wilder’s poetry. She publishes a journal no one reads.

There’s Charles, Carmichael, and Paula, who go to school with the kidnapped boy, Mr Life of the Party up there. Charles is a hopeless romantic in love with his step-sister and he only talks to his younger friend George. Carmichael is an unpleasant little boy with a mean streak who gives Charles a book about Leopold and Loeb (there’s an excellent strip about that murder in the book). This leads Charles to think perhaps Carmichael has killed David.

Leopold and Loeb were real people. Real, scary people.

Violet is Charles’ step-sister, they’ve just moved to Ice Haven and she’s miserable. She’s in love with an older boy named Penrod who lives elsewhere.

And Mr and Mrs Ames, the detective’s sent to work the case of the missing boy. Their marriage is not in the best state.

Then there’s Harry Naybors, a comic book critic who is a little meta for my taste, but we live in meta times, my friends.

The entire book is 88 pages of stylistically different comic strips, which combine to make a somewhat linear novel (with a couple detours through the mind of an anthropomorphic stuffed toy and the first human in Ice Haven in 100,000 b.c.)

I have never thought this in my life. Ever.

It’s full of honest moments with very human characters, but the truest section was ‘Seersucker’, which perfectly capture the thoughts of many writers (and probably most humans), with such classic quotes as:

‘Today I must begin a schedule of focused and lucid daily writing. I must clear my mind of all distractions… I’ll never be able to concentrate fully until I finish cleaning the birdbath….After this, I’ll eat a quick dinner, and then straight to work!’

‘My life is fading away. The days speed by in a blur. How can I have wasted so much time? How much could I have accomplished if I had put my time to better use?…I have to fill every remaining second with intensive study and work… Today I will begin with Wells’s Outline of History and Sarton’s Six-Volume History of Science . From there I’ll branch out into various subcategories, like botany and ancient China… As soon as I finish this [household chore] I’ll go straight to the library…’

The ending was both surprising but fitting and gave everyone their moment. Ice Haven is definitely going on the re-readable shelf, I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys off-beat stories that make you think.

I spent my three-day weekend cleaning. [Labour Day weekend, which is sort of the unofficial end of summer and one of the few bank holidays in the States.] But now that my house is practically immaculate I can really get some reading and commonplacing done. Currently reading The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by Dalhquist, which is a steampunky sort of Victorian tome. I’m not very far in, but I’m enjoying the various points of view–I do like it when novels are told by different characters. The novel is sprawling and intriguing and all those good things, but it could do with a little editing.

Also still reading and loving Great Expectations and My Wars Are Laid Away in Books , which is a biography of Emily Dickinson. I read Tom Bedlam by George Hagen last week and enjoyed it very much–it was quite Dickensian. It’s rather Victorian around my house these days–it’s interesting how you occasionally get into reading … not ‘rut’ really, just when you wind up unintentionally reading quite a few books in a similar vein. Or perhaps that only happens to me.

[This is a post from a previous blog. Original post date: 4 September 2007]

The Blogging Goth is an incredibly well-written site about Goths in the media, be it entertainment or the news. It’s mostly based around the UK scene, but speaks to Goths everywhere. And it’s definitely the best long-form Goth blog I’ve seen.

Tim Sinister, the man behind The Blogging Goth, kindly agreed to answer some questions.

When/why did you start your site?

I launched The Blogging Goth as a Tumblr blog in August 2011. It’s now running on its own domain at www.theblogginggoth.com.

I’m about to graduate as a Journalist, and as I said back in my first ever update, the plain is “to combine clear-eyed Journalism with the intricacies of one of the world’s oldest musical and social counter-culture movements. The Blogging Goth will report the news being generated within the Goth scene, as well as providing a contact for media enquiries into the Gothic culture.”

Rather than a ‘zine, or a personal blog, TBG is based on professional news values and objective writing wherever possible. It mainly started up as a counter to the mainstream press’ frequent misunderstanding of the Goth subculture, and the somewhat skewed opinion they got from interviewing Goth ‘representatives’ who had no idea about good public relations!

Not to criticize them of course, but the intention is to offer other journalists and conventional news organizations a sensible and informed source for commentary on a vibrant, long-established but ill-understood subculture.

What sort of subject matter do you cover?

The Blogging Goth is aimed at writing contemporary news reports of Goth-relevant issues – we’ve discussed academic studies into the culture, reported on alternative-orientated ad campaigns, promoted charity events and increasingly covered the rising issue of violence directed towards alternative culture.

We’ve excelled in this field so much that we’ve been asked to contribute to other news sites – I wrote a guest article for politics.co.uk on the recent introduction of Hate Crime Monitoring for unprovoked assaults on alternative fans in Manchester.

How frequently do you update?

As The Blogging Goth is known to provide multimedia updates, and the area of news isn’t too broad, we’ve elected to go for a monthly update at least. Occasionally we’ll respond to breaking news with succinct updates, and we do maintain an active twitter account – @TheBloggingGoth

What would you like to achieve with it?

We’re already doing what I want! People are really excited by our updates, and to see our stories shared and commented on is achievement enough!

Being asked to contribute to mainstream news websites is a great accolade, and we want this to increase more than anything – the Goth subculture needs good representation in these days of alternative hate crimes, and we certainly hope we’re doing a good job of that.

Do you create all of your own content, if not where do you find content?

We’re in a unique situation where the content we create is usually to cover someone else’s work! We’ve been invited to video-blog (v-blog) the Whitby Gothic Weekend and we’re currently processing our latest update – which includes interviews with both headline acts! We’ll mention really exciting new music releases, and discuss some of the more amusing or worrying reporting on Goths in the mainstream media.

We go out and find stories, then create our coverage of them.

Is there anything else you’d like people to know?

We are always looking for contributors! The Blogging Goth isn’t just a one-man show – certainly I don’t want it to be. If you’re willing to get behind our standards on reporting, and you’ve got an idea for content, then we definitely want to hear from you!

Tim, I love your site and thank you for taking the time to answer my questions!

And thank you, readers, for reading this interview. If you know of any blogs that would appeal to goths, please leave a comment!

Title and author: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman with illustrations by Dave McKean.

Genre: Fantasy fiction suitable for teens but equally enjoyable for adults.

What led you to pick up the book? It had ‘Neil Gaiman’ written on the cover.

Summarize the plot without revealing the ending . One night a man named Jack breaks into a house and kills an entire family…nearly. A toddler escapes and winds up in the cemetery at the end of the road, where he is taken in and raised by the resident Dead.

This is a Graveyard Book mousepad from Neverwhere.net. It’s designed by Kendra Stout and it’s neat.

What did you like most?  Learning what ‘life’ is like for the Dead and what abilities they have. His relationship with Silas, his father figure, was touching. I also liked that the reader was left to work out the… race? of one characters–Gaiman knows his readers are intelligent.

What did you dislike?  That there wasn’t enough of it.

Graveyard Book illustration by Dave McKean

Thoughts on the main character : Each chapter has Bod (short for Nobody Owens) a few years older so we get to see his progression towards adulthood, which felt true.

Share a favourite scene.  The scene beyond the ghoul gate (Ghulheim) was particularly inventive–it put me in mind of Neverwhere. The bizarre physics and characters were pure Gaiman. The danse macabray chapter was great fun, as well. There was a suspense as to where the on Earth the chapter was going and why.

Ghulheim — (poss. by Simon Dalton)

Opinion on the ending. It worked and didn’t bring a tear to my eye at all. Nope.

Overall rating: 10/10. If you’re a Gaiman fan and haven’t read it because it’s ‘for kids’ or something, read it anyway.

I took a little unscheduled break due to a few things.

First: my dog had an episode of vestibular syndrome , which is vertigo. It’s scary to watch and it can look like a stroke but it’s highly treatable and goes away and probably won’t return. Sometimes people put down their dogs because they think it’s a stroke when it’s something that would resolve in a few days or a week. Please tell any dog owners you know about vestibular syndrome. Dogs are great. This one is mine:

75% Chow, 25% Shar-Pei; All AWESOME

Next, very happily, I started writing again. There will be an entire post about that next Wednesday. Short version: when you have loads of ideas for stories, you have to write down all of those ideas at that time because if you ignore them, they get stroppy and they will go away.

Like so

Unfortunately, there’s only so much time in a day and writing other things doesn’t leave an enormous amount of time to write blog stuff, because I don’t want to just poop out blog posts. I do actually care about what I post here, believe it or not.

Then: My migraines decided to have a passel of their friends (headaches) over for parties every day, all day. Several days a week of nauseated headaches and migraines makes for a fun existence, let me tell you. It’s like having a reptile trying to hatch its way out of your skull, but it doesn’t have a beak, so it can’t just crack your skull open and be done with it (at a certain point, you’d be fine with that) so it just pushes and pushes and turns you into an Existentialist. I mean, really, does life have a point? We really are just put here to fritter away and die, right?

This went on for many weeks, as I hate going to the doctor (I always feel like I’m wasting their time and whatever it is will resolve itself on its own). But a person can only take so much Sumatriptin and being unproductive due to waking up with a headache and deciding to simply not get out of bed that day, if THAT’S what it was going to be like.

Went to the doctor, got Topamax. Or, as people who take it call it, Dopamax, because wow.

I’M NOT FALLING ASLEEP! I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN!

That seems to have lessened, thankfully. I mean, I’m sitting upright and typing without having my husband holding my eyes open. One of the other side effects is appetite suppression, so hopefully that will work out.

In there I took a couple of days to do jury duty for the first time which was an interesting experience. I wasn’t chosen, which was a bummer, but maybe next time.

And finally, I’ve upgraded my Ubuntu machine to 13.04 and now my wireless doesn’t work and I just…don’t feel like dealing with it. So I’m on my Windows machine for the time being. The good bit is I’m surrounded by my macabre geeky office stuff, the bad news is this Windows computer is effing slow and this chair does bad things to my back. Whinge, whine, moan, complain, first world problems, first world problems.

But I’m back!

‘The Triumph of the Guillotine in Hell’ Nicolas-Antoine Taunay

For fans of Bosch and Dante, I present Nicolas-Antoine Taunay’s ‘The Triumph of the Guillotine in Hell’. It’s a large image so go ahead and click on it and take in the full view of the… yeah. It’s… special.

I enjoy the two-headed snake and the winged guy in the middle and the skeletonised bird thing in the right upper quadrant. And there’s some really interesting things happening over on the left upper quadrant, as well. The demon that’s catching a lift on the back of the …other demon’s…demon… isn’t very horizontal so they must not be going very fast so I wonder how they’re staying in the air. Physics must work differently there.

Just below them there are a couple wings guys, one of which has a big horn and he looks so bummed out. Perhaps he’s going to play a concert for the big guy himself and he’s always so  judgmental  and it’s such a drag . Or maybe the horn is really heavy. Or maybe he just has bad posture.

In in the middle upper part, I’m curious about the dude allowed to bring his paints and easel with him, as you’d think a note pad and pen would be much quicker when tasked to capture the everlasting torments of eternity. (Either that or someone allowed him to grab his tools when he was being dragged to Hell, which was nice of the dragger.) And this was painted in the 1800s but I swear that’s a member of Devo with the painter guy.

But my absolute favourite people are the ones by the skeletonised bird thing because they’re just humans, but they are not being tormented in any way. They’re just hanging around. Just being casual. The guy and his woman with their backs to us look like they’re laughing. ‘Oh ho, another jolly day in Hell! What fun it is to be young and French and dead and… haha!’ They’re clothes aren’t even mussed. Do they have tailors down there?

And then there’s Hell’s version of Statler and Waldorf up there in the very far upper right. You just know they’re cracking the filthiest jokes in all of Christendom.

I don’t think Taunay was a fan of the ol’ close shave, overall, though.

My Google-fu is lacking at the best of times and it’s really failing me now, (which is why I’m being a smart-arse rather than telling you anything useful) as I can’t find anything to help me out with this painting. I’d love to know more about it so if you know something or know somewhere I can look, please leave a comment. And thank you.

[And because we live now, you can get this piece of social commentary as a heart-shaped Christmas ornament from Zazzle because of course or an iPhone case . I mean, why not, right? It would be like putting a heart-shaped ornament on your tree commemorating lethal injection or something... What would that look like? The bed they strap the condemned to, perhaps attached to your tree by the three IV lines they insert in their veins? Merry freakin Christmas. I'm macabre but there's a line, people.]

Bette Midler has taught a very important thing.

I never want to be famous.

I wanted to be a STAR!! from the time I was 12. I felt this was the best way to meet celebrities and they were the people I wanted to be with/like. They were always perfect, looked great, were worshiped by millions and had loads of money. Then I talked my mother into paying for VIP tickets to a party Madame Midler was attending so I could meet her. We were not wealthy and those tickets were expensive. I’ve only very recently realized what my mother sacrificed to buy those tickets so I could meet my hero of many years.

Anyway, we went to the party and there she was. She treated me like garbage. I was nineteen, I had adored her for many years and she looked at me like I was muck on her shoe. This was at a function she was being paid to be at to meet her fans. I was within touching distance of her at Disneyworld a few years prior and didn’t say a world to her because she was on vacation and I didn’t want to bother her, but I felt I was justified this time. This time two thousand dollar tickets to be at the party were involved.

She came into the room thronged by paparazzi (and this was when her career was in a slump). Once she was finally by herself I tried to tell her what a fan I was–that I had come from North Carolina to New York just to see her, but she treated me like scum. I was stunned. It was inconceivable to me that a person I so admired could be such a jerk.

Once my mother and I were back at our crummy hotel I fell apart, crying and so on. I told my mother I couldn’t wait to be famous so I could treat people like crap, too. My mothers’ response: “Most people didn’t even get to touch her coat.” Yes, I got to touch her coat. That was supposed to be worth the two thousand dollars my mother paid.

Once I’d recovered I realized that I didn’t ever want that to be my life. I never wanted to have a life that wouldn’t allow me to go anywhere without being surrounded by the flashing of cameras. I have much more sympathy for celebrities (and am completely baffled by the people who’d court that insanity) and I’m grateful to have seen what being famous entailed before I sacrificed my life in the name of infamy.

I do hope she got what she wanted and I’m grateful for what she taught me.

And I haven’t bought an album or seen a film of hers since that evening–I simply can’t support a person who has so lost touch with her sense of humanity.

This is the first time I’ve written/spoken about that event, which was ten years ago, because it’s still so painful to me. I usually don’t think I’m worth a whole lot, but being treated as garbage by one’s idol is difficult to admit/look at, even a decade on.

Still, I’m grateful for it. I could have spent my life straining to be like her, only to either fail or get what I wanted and be a total bitch. And I can be a bitch without killing myself, thankyouverymuch.

[This is a post from a previous blog. Original post date: 8 October, 2007]

This week, reviews of comic adaptations of a Neil Gaiman novel and two of his short stories.

The comic adaptation of Neverwhere written by Mike Carey (who also did the incredible Lucifer) and illustratied by Glenn Fabry was overseen by Gaiman and was excellent.

Due to being a decent human being, an English everyman schlub is pulled into a parallel dimension that exists below London. The story is of him trying to help a young woman learn who killed her family and to get back to his life in London Above. It’s a bit Wizard of Oz in that way, except it takes a great deal more than clicking his heels together to return home. The story (and illustrations) are incredibly imaginative and entertaining.

It’s difficult to speak to how much was left out, because it’s been a decade since I read the novel and watched the TV miniseries, but all the big points were there and the illustrations more closely captured what was in my head than television could do. It’s nine issues and I highly recommend it.

Only the End of the World Again  was a short story written for Oni Press that was eventually collected in Smoke and Mirrors . Written by Gaiman, it was adapted to comic by P. Craig Russell and illustrated by Troy Nixey and coloured by Matthew Hollingsworth for the collection. It’s a new take on the Elder Gods of Lovecraft and casts a very unlikely hero–in the form of a werewolf–to try to avert world-ending disaster…again. Some of the art was nightmare fuel , which was appropriate for the story. Still … shudder.

 ’Murder Mysteries’ began as a short story written for horror anthology  Midnight Graffiti and was collected in Gaiman’s  Smoke and Mirrors  in the late 80s. In 2002, Gaiman and P. Craig Russell adapted it into a graphic novel. Set before the creation of the universe, it’s about the first murder and explains why Lucifer the angel chose such a drastic career change. The illustrations are incredible and definitely helped, in terms of picturing how angels created everything and what the universe would look like prior to that.

I was originally attracted to The Bleeding House by its poster. There wasn’t a half-naked, sweaty girl looking terrified on it, nor did it have rusty implements of torture on. It didn’t seem to be standard fare, and it wasn’t.

First, there were no big names in the cast. This is excellent because it’s easier to believe a story if you don’t immediately recognise people (it occurred to me later that the lead male had been fantastic in Galaxy Quest, but at the time he was just a creepy guy in a very neat suit.)

Second, I had no idea where the plot was going. When you watch a lot of films it’s difficult to be too surprised, but this one kept me guessing more than most.

Those two things can give a thriller a head-start, as it were, because you’re not instantly thinking about the other things you’ve seen the big actors in that weren’t so formulaic and hoping they bought something nice with all the formulaic money so they can get back to making films that aren’t crap.

But back to The Bleeding House.

‘Hello Clarice.’ … wait, wrong film.

The plot revolves around a family, the Smiths, that has been ostracized (or possibly is under self-imposed exile) from the nearby town. The reasons become clearer throughout the film, but there’s clearly something off about at least one of the family members. [If you like that sort of setup, I highly recommend We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson.]

A genteel Southern stranger has car trouble and asks for their help. Never let genteel Southern strangers in your house. (Or the non-genteel sort, either, as those always end up being inbred cannibals.) And then the fun begins!

I don’t want to say more about the plot; just watch it. And if you’ve seen it, please leave a comment below.

I’m hitting up my fav bookshop Saturday week and then I’m stopping by the used bookshop a couple blocks over. It has 35,000 books. I’m making a preparatory list. This is war, people. Because when I go into a bookshop I turn into a stereotypical man–I refuse to ask for directions. I can find my own goddamn books, thank you. My two X chromosomes give me the ability to find a book in a bookshop no matter the size. (I kid you not–I have never been in a book store where, after much searching and finally asking for assistance, has the desired book been located. If I can’t find it, it’s not there.) I will walk into that bookshop with my Miquelrius note-book and find something to bring home. Where I’ll put them is anyone’s guess. See next paragraph

Part of my massive cleaning effort this weekend involved getting rid of several books I’ll never read and rearranging some shelves, which means my bookcases are now tidier than they’ve been in ages. It also means my books fit their shelves perfectly and there’s no room for more. So I must obtain new books to make everything uneven again, of course. It’s as if I have some kind of constitutional aversion total order. I need just a little disorder.

mmmm disorder

[This is a post from a previous blog. Original post date: 9 September 2007]

1866

Originally posted on Le Marche Morte .