News, Other Stuff

Tweet

Wannabe is a blog series by Chicago area artist Chris Prunckle, author of our serial graphic story Asylum Doors, documenting his trials and tribulations as a wannabe artist. Check back next week for a new posting.

See the previous installment of Asylum Doors here.  Stay tuned for the next installment coming soon, but now on a monthly basis with fuller stories.

Chris Prunckle is a graphic designer, illustrator and comic book artist banished to the suburbs of Chicago. Though an advertising industry minion by day, he slaves his nights away creating a mad little world.  He’s previously worked on the comics Fisted, Bonesetter, and The Scarab.  Follow him at @midjipress.

MAD WORLD INTRO

How many times have you heard some asshole spit out some version of “when I was a kid cartoons were way better than the crap on TV now.” Right, like Rainbrow Bright or Brainy Smurf were in any way superior to the Power Puff Girls or Stewie Griffin. I get it, I really do. Childhood nostalgia can be a bitch. Well, sorry folks, roller skating and stone washed jeans both sucked and He-Man and Care Bears were shitty cartoons. You forget that being a kid meant feeling awkward, uncomfortable, and uncertain in a world constructed by and for morally depleted adults. It was in every way counter to our childish instincts and innocence. We struggled to process it and understand our potential future roles. But cartoons helped whether we knew it or not. Watching Optimus Prime and Scooby Doo seek justice and make sense of the world every Saturday morning did something positive for us internally. Filled a void perhaps. Served as stand-ins for the incapable and ill-equipped real life adult role models we sought but couldn't find. But whatever was going on, suck it up bitches. Get over it. You're fine now. Ok. Well, you 're kinda maybe starting to get your shit together. But no matter. With the exception of Peanuts and Looney Tunes (which every animated series airing today owes a debt to), your cartoons fucking sucked. All of them. Big time. So fast forward to the Twenty-First Century. Describing the mess we find ourselves in is too far outside the scope of this little list. As would be mentioning all the things we've gotten right, all the improvements, all the ways we are leaving the world better than we found it. Naysayers shut your goddam mouths, something magical is happening, right now, all over the world. Including right here in America, every single day on our television screens. We are living in the golden age of animated sitcoms. Some of the more enlightened among us already know it. But for those who don't, like Joseph Smith and Mohammed before him, I'm gonna lead you to the promised land. This qualified top ten list is only the framework, a solid foundation for you to begin your own independent exploration. Please do so and thank me later.

2 QUICK RULES

1. No movies. Only television series.

2.

Publishers Weekly wrote this great little article on us, and our new imprint Dark House Press.  They also called us 'cutting-edge' which is sweet.  Starting in spring of 2014, DHP will publish books of neo-noir and speculative fiction, plus more.  Read tje article here.  Visit DHP here to learn all about it from the words of editor-in-chief Richard Thomas.  Oh, and you can like it's Facebook page here.  More soon.

Tweet

Photo (c) Barbara Neveu

Curbside Splendor is pleased to host one last stop on Kevin Haworth's Virtual Blog Tour, which is a play-list to accompany the essays in his wonderful collection Famous Drownings in Literary History which is out now from CCLaP. Sit back, relax, and click on the hyperlinks while you enjoy a brief peek into the mind of a writer and the music that obsesses him.

Tweet

 

"Musical Playlist with Commentary" by Kevin Haworth

What music better complements a mixed-genre collection of essays spanning from Southeast Ohio to Jerusalem than the Klezmer Mountain Boys? Led by the genius clarinetist Margot Leverett, their music embraces klezmer and bluegrass and moves from one style to the other in the space of few bars. I like to think that the essays found in Famous Drownings in Literary History do much the same.

This clip features a guest appearance by our Southeast Ohio friend and neighbor, guitar legend Jorma Kaukonen. Pair with a Firefly Amber Ale from Jackie O’s, Appalachian Ohio’s best brewpub, and a reading of the essay “Plagues.”

Ace of Bass was the unofficial soundtrack of every kibbutz bomb shelter/disco in the 1990s, back when I put in long hours in the avocado fields and couldn’t wait for Friday night to drink and dance with the soldiers back from duty. Rockets coming from Lebanon? Dance harder. That’s what the Israelis are doing.

The Comedian Harmonists were wildly popular in Germany in the early 1930s; a few years later they were forced to disband, a minor footnote in the cultural war against the Jews that preceded the Holocaust.

Tweet

Wannabe is a blog series by Chicago area artist Chris Prunckle, author of our serial graphic story Asylum Doors, documenting his trials and tribulations as a wannabe artist. Check back next week for a new posting.

See the previous installment of Asylum Doors here.  Stay tuned for the next installment coming soon, but now on a monthly basis with fuller stories.

Chris Prunckle is a graphic designer, illustrator and comic book artist banished to the suburbs of Chicago. Though an advertising industry minion by day, he slaves his nights away creating a mad little world.  He’s previously worked on the comics Fisted, Bonesetter, and The Scarab.  Follow him at @midjipress.