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Womanthology
I’m sure many of you reading this blog have heard about the Womanthology project: it’s the brainchild of artist Renae De Liz, and is an all-woman anthology comic book that will be published by IDW Publishing this December, with all proceeds going to the charity, Global Giving Foundation. You can read a long interview at Bleeding Cool with Renae about the project and its evolution. With the aim of raising $25,000 Renae set up a Kickstarter campaign for the project, and by the end of the first day that goal had been achieved. Now, with just five days to go until the campaign ends, the amount of money pledged stands…
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Y: The Last Man review
I should have mentioned this last week, but I was insanely busy and didn’t even have time to blog. I recently reviewed the first deluxe edition of the post-apocalyptic comic book series Y: The Last Man, for the UK Feminist web site The F-Word. It’s the inaugural graphic novel review for the web site, and I hope they will feature many more in the future. I cross-post this blog to LiveJournal, and for the past five days that platform was the target of a considerable DoS attack, which meant I couldn’t get any posts on the site. That appears to be resolved now, thank goodness. I’ve been hanging out for…
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electric hugs and spinning
Last weekend I went to a Silent Disco in the Big Top – a venue that’s erected for the Galway Arts Festival every year. The premise is that everyone is given a pair of wireless headphones, and there are two channels where different DJs compete for the crowd’s affections. At first I thought it would be quite weird, but it turned out to be great fun. It’s a strange combination of feeling liberated by wearing headphones and yet being part of a crowd experience. It’s interesting to watch the dynamics of the responses in the crowd as one DJ falls out of favour and another one catches on. There was…
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Mythomania
A YouTube web series that’s well written, acted and shot? They are rare, but here’s a fine, new example called Mythomania, which is written and directed by comic book artist Derek Kirk Kim. The story revolves around a group of aspiring cartoonists living in L.A. It’s essentially a modern boy-meets-girl story. Andy (Jeremy Arambulo) dreams of winning an Eisner, but his work has been turned down again by a comic book publisher. On the plus side he’s just met a cute comic book artist Ashley (Simone Lamar Carter), who he introduces to his cartooning pals. It’s got all the usual geek culture awkwardness including the typical macho ragging that goes…
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seed pearls
This picture of water beads on a dandelion seed head was taken today on my walk in the woods with Minnie the dog. It was only misting rain, but because the undergrowth is summer-dense and sopping wet, I returned with my jeans soaked almost to my hip-bone. Minnie looked like a seal just out of ocean. So this was a nice shot to come out of a overcast, drizzly day.
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arts festival parade 2011
The annual Macnas parade during the Galway Arts Festival is always an event. Macnas is a street theatre company which has garnared an international reputation for its colourful and inventive parades. This year it did not disappoint with an extravaganza called This Fierce Beauty. One of the things I like about the parade is the typical relaxed Galway attitude, which means there are no barriers or cordons. People line the streets and are encouraged to keep back to a respectable distance by the stewards and the police, but without too much hassle. It started off with an intense red flare and smoke, and was followed by fabulous creatures propelled by…
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escape artist
the shadow of the bars can cast a longer shade than the sentence served behind them. when their cold memory dents recoiling skin recall the first free breath inhaled outside. the gaol of the past is the vital prison for the escape artist to crack.
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wear some flowers in your hair
This striking window display is from Brown Thomas in Dublin yesterday. I stopped to snap it as I swayed down Grafton Street after an enjoyable evening with a visiting friend. We’d just attended the Dublin Literary Pub Crawl, which combined culture, history and theatrical renactments with stops in landmark pubs. Clear and temperate weather made the excursion even more pleasant. During the 2-hour tour a lot of information was imparted about figures such as Joyce, Beckett, Jim Larkin, Oscar Wilde and Brendan Behan. My favourite quote of the evening was attributed to the rambunctious Behan. who described himself as a ‘drinker with a writing problem.’ We raised our glasses several…
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rolling pinned
A cool wall installation at The Bakehouse on Batchelor’s Walk in Dublin City, as photographed today. They take baking seriously…
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troll hunter
On Friday I went to the showing of the Norwegian monster movie TrollHunter (Trolljegeren, 2010), as part of the Galway Film Fleadh. It’s written by André Øvredal and Håvard S. Johansen, and directed by Øvredal. This film follows a well-worn path of supposedly being the raw footage from a documentary that three college students were shooting – all of this is explained up front in stark lettering before the film starts. I must confess to releasing a sigh upon reading this, as this is a particular trope of horror films that can grate upon my nerves. However, TrollHunter is a fine of example of how you can pull off this…
