Authors Electric

  Walt Whitman never had a chance. Older artists seldom do when slathered with praise by ambitious wannabes eager to trade sex for favors.  Oscar Wilde sailed from London on 12/14/1881 and arrived in New York on 01/02/1882 at a high point in his career, not only famous but moneyed. In the next ten months he would cross and recross the U.S. to deliver 150 lectures heard by tens of thousands of Americans. All of this was according to plan. But so far one big piece hadn't fallen into place: he had to meet the old poet whose uncensored Leaves of Grass was known only in England to those who'd scored bootlegged copies. (The British 'comely edition' deleted half the contents of the American 1867 edition.) Upon receipt of an invitation to meet, Wilde raced from a Philadelphia lecture to his hero's place in Camden, New Jersey on 01/18/1882.                                           ...

Twenty years ago the tragic death of a baby in the USA by what was thought to be ‘shaken baby syndrome’ made headlines all over the world.   On trial for the little boy’s murder, the British nanny unwittingly sealed her fate by describing how she’d ‘popped the baby on the bed to change his nappy.’   What Louise Woodward didn’t realise was that an expression used in the UK to describe an action taken with lightness and dexterity doesn’t translate at all that way in the USA; there, ‘pop’ can only mean something explosive.   No amount of explanation could erase the image in the jury’s mind that she had hurled the 8 month-old on to the bed with all the force of a rocket launcher. *Quip by Oscar Wilde... probably Misunderstandings between our ‘two nations divided by a common language’* aren’t usually so dangerous.   Nor should any English people loftily assume our words are the ‘original’ ones; in many cases it’s the other way round.   ‘Garbage’, ‘trash’ an...

I was never forgiven by one former friend for a quip that I put in one book: You learn who your friends are at Christmas. They leave the price tags on their gifts. Oh, of course, he objected to other quips of mine...like these: There are no atheists in hot pants. Half the women wearing them are praying to God we don't notice their legs. The other half are praying we don't look further up. Imitation is the most flattering form of insincerity. Petty acts are emotional food stamps for the spiritually unemployed. I must say you look fetching. Here, have a nice bone while I find you a stick. But the Christmas quip, as it turned out, was the final straw in the martini of his hate. Though the line was spoken by a epigram-loving young woman who yearns to be Oscara Wilde--and she does try to be more Sincere at the end--no matter to my holy friend. I must have believed the words in some corner of my soul or I could not have written them. And this branded me as a hypocrit...

Last month , I decided it was time I did another countdown, but this time I'm counting down the five best metafictional comics: those that deal either overtly or covertly with how stories work, that are to a greater or lesser degree "aware" of themselves as comics. I got the list right here, so let's begin. 5. Cerebus - Dave Sim (writing and art) and Gerhard (art) Cerebus is perhaps one of the biggest success stories in independent publishing. In December 1977, Canadian cartoonist Dave Sim, created what was supposed to be a satire of sword and sorcery comics. This 6,000 page saga tells the story of an aardvark named Cerebus "the Earth Pig Born" and barbarian-for-hire. He wants only to earn enough gold fighting in order to pay his bar tab until the day he meets Jaka, a dancer with whom Cerebus falls in love. He spends much of the rest of his days trying and failing to obtain her, and along the way, he becomes prime minister, pope, pariah, and pro...

Let's start off with hair, since we all love our hair though we're often driven nuts by it. From (t)hair we can move on to killing our mates when they hate the books we love or don't share our craving for pasta. Luck allowing, we'll have time to share a few thoughts about ebooks. Okay! You have four basic choices for cutting your hair: 1) You can cut it yourself. 2) You can go to the cheapest spot in town. 3) You can go to an old school-style barber who's mastered all the basic cuts and charges only a few dollars more. 4) You can go to a salon and pay designer prices for a more individual and expressive look. You can shave have your pate or mow your hair down to a passable buzz cut. For anything else, though, you really should pay....top dollar to get what is best for your hair. Good, we're making progress here. And, because you're all clever, I know you'll have guessed that the same four options apply to the killing of spouses. ...