Renee French: The Ticking

Putting The Ticking by gifted illustrator Renée French in my wordless graphic novel series is sort of disingenuous, mostly because there are words. But not a great many of them, and they appear occasionally as captions, rather than in speech balloons as in traditional comics. Like Shaun Tan's The Arrival, The Ticking is mostly what I refer to as a grown-up picture book.

It was originally released in 2006, was out of print for a while, and now is happily back on shelves. It's not a book I see mentioned particularly often, which I think is a shame. Because it's lovely.

It tells the melancholy and funny story of Edison Steelhead, a deformed child (he has no ears and his eyes are on the sides of his head) whose mother dies in childbirth and whose father, who suffers from the same so-called affliction, takes him to live in a remote lighthouse. There he grows up with an interest in etymology and drawing. He makes masks for himself (and his stuffed animal) and wears them. He discovers his father's childhood was much like his, but he won't talk about it with Edison. His father takes him to a plastic surgeon, but Edison doesn't want the surgery, so it doesn't go forward. It's all so odd and heartbreaking. At one point Edison is introduced to his new "sister", Patrice, a baby chimp. Their relationship turns out to be remarkably sibling-like as Edison begrudgingly takes her out on bug gathering expeditions and then gets annoyed in typical big brother fashion when she eats his specimens.

It's a strange little book full of loneliness and silences. French draws simple little square panels with graphite on paper and they are lovely little pieces of art. So seemingly simple they almost feel like they belong in the realm of the folk. For some reason, I have a dream that The Ticking will one day be an animated film. Maybe Wes Anderson could tell this story as he seems to specialize in fathers and sons. And its odd melancholy whimsical tone would suit him, I think.

In the mean time, follow French's blog and read her other comics. She posts lots of drawings and photographs and works in progress.

The Monkeys You Ordered

Is it because I have so many goats?

It's pretty typical that anything on the internet I fall in love with will be ruined by lawyers (see blackmask.com. Oh, wait, you can't. Lawyers shut it down).

I was distressed to hear the news that the newish Tumblr, The Monkeys You Ordered has been served with a cease and desist notice by Condé Nast. Not that I'm surprised or anything. They take New Yorker Cartoons and add their own, completely literal captions. For some reason I find them hilarious, and like with The Far Side, they're cumulatively funny, as: the more you read, the funnier they get. So, take a look before they vanish forever!

Clowns and More Clowns

I hope I never get so jaded I start taking for granted the city I love, the city in which I live, the city of my birth, the city of my dreams. By which I mean, of course, Gotham. New York City. It's all finite space and building up and over. Forward looking, with an endlessly fascinating history that hardly anyone seems to know much about. Like the other great cities of the world: London, Paris, Tokyo - you can never come to the end of it. There's always more, always something you didn't know about, something old or new that you've never seen or done. It never stops being thrilling. It's like the internet, but in real life!

So, pretty much everyone knows there are clubs in our fair and violent city where jazz musicians experiment and play for mostly other jazz musicians, workshops where theater people show work that's still in process to other theater people. Rooms and coffee shops and bars where poets read their new poems for others of their bearded and bespectacled ilk, and open mikes where comedians mostly make each other laugh (or attempt to). But what of the clowns? Where do the red of nose and floppy of feet go to juggle and fall down and work out their complex physical business before presenting their artistry in Tops, both big and small? They go to The New York Downtown Clown Revue, that's where - as did I last night, escorted by silky downtown impresario, Trav S.D.

Founded, hosted and curated by Christopher Lueck (old friend and onetime collaborator - he played the White Bear in the FringeNYC version of Antarctica), he had seemingly retired the Revue last year, but it has happily re-emerged at Dixon Place, a venue close to my heart as they were the very first people to pay me actual money for being a playwright. The snazzy new seats were close to filled with off duty clowns who had come to see what their brethren were up to. Like any night of variety, it was a mixed bag. Clowns are curious folk, and at certain points during the program it felt a bit like being locked in the Monkey House after hours, when one is not a Monkey oneself. Chris is a delightful and enthusiastic host who has divided the program between Presented Acts and Commissioned Acts. Matt Mitler, one of the commissioned performers (his brief was to come up with a short, shamanistic clown piece with musical meditation themes) achieved something completely and distinctively strange, which he performed with absolute commitment and was really not much like anything I've seen (and, as I've said many times before, I've seen a great deal).

But the highlight of the performances was easily the masterful Joel Jeske (who also performs an act, The Hey-Ya Brothers, with Mr. Lueck), joined by surprise guest, Grandma (AKA Barry Lubin), of Big Apple Circus fame. They were simply hilarious. I fear sometimes, that with all the European training some clowns acquire, and all the theory, modern clowns sometimes forget to be funny. Mr. Jeske, in pitch perfect straight man mode, attempts to sing Christmas songs and play his ukulele. Grandma, the most disruptive audience member imaginable, prevents this from happening. Hilarious. Then Grandma brought an audience member onstage and they squirted water at each other. Hilarious. Comedy is unexplainable. It's all precision and practice and practice and more practice. Like being a ballet dancer. But funnier. And they fall down more.

The New York Downtown Clown Revue is the third Monday of every month. For more information, go here. For my darling inamorato's review of the revue, look here.

Prada Says: Ook Ook Ook

I don't do much in the way of fashion coverage for the same reason I don't write much about food: so many other people do it much better than I ever could.

That said, I fully consider monkeys and cephalopods to be firmly on my beat - which brings me to the Prada 2011 s/s collection that debuted the other day in Milan. Now, as fashion is far from my usual subject around these parts, I understand that many of my readers will likely need maybe a tiny bit of background. The Prada family has owned a leather goods company in Italy since early in the 20th century. In 1978, current owner and family scion, Miuccia Prada inherited the family business. In one of those happy accidents, Ms. Prada turned out to be something of a visionary, turning her small, family run luggage business, into a fashion empire. Much like Coco Chanel in the 1920s, Christian Dior in the post-war years, and Yves Saint Laurent in the 60s and 70s, she managed to essentially change how women looked and dressed. Her clothing is relentlessly creative and interesting, ludicrously expensive and she is one of the very, very few designers currently working who pretty consistently comes up with stuff that can be called "new". Like anyone who is willing to take risks, she occasionally comes up with designs that seem, well, inexplicable. See the current 2011 spring/summer collection in which she references Baroque art and Josephine Baker. Sometimes printed on what look like hospital scrubs. See below:





And then my favorite - a sundress with a stylized illustration of Josephine Baker printed on it, but instead of bananas around her waist, there is an octopus.



Miuccia Prada has always been interesting to me because her designs seem to take the male gaze into pretty much zero consideration. Her clothes are often referred to as "intellectual", by which people mean "not sexy". And by and large, they aren't. It is often said about her designs that women love them and men don't get them, which is a vast over-simplification, but not entirely off base. Her house is very new, debuting its first ready-to-wear line in 1989. And she had a slide installed in her office which she uses to access to floor below.

Monkeys! More Monkeys!

I discovered this morning via facebook that there are new baby baboons in Brooklyn. In honor of this happy event, a picture I took of adorable baby baboons fighting, in Kruger Park, South Africa:



Which, on top of yesterday's exciting news story that a monkey in Bali had adopted a kitten makes this a thrilling week for monkey aficionados everywhere.

I think this man is particularly excited:

Monkey! Monkey! Monkey!

Who doesn't like monkeys? Bad people, that's who.

Here's another completely, utterly enthusiastic and totally biased theatrical endorsement: Piper McKenzie's Craven Monkey and the Mountain of Fury must be seen for many, many reasons. I have constructed a comprehensive list, so that there can be no excuses of any sort for missing one of the last few performances (ever, as far as I am aware) of one of the greatest pieces of monkey oriented theater I have seen.

1. As stated above: Only bad people don't like monkeys.
2. It is subtitled, "A Darwinian Martial-Arts Fairy Tale In Which Monkeys and Monsters Beat the Crap Out of Each Other." If this doesn't sound appealing to you, you are likely reading the wrong blog.
3. Hope Cartelli. Some of you reading this haven't had the pleasure of making her acquaintance, which is unfortunate, as Hope is awesome. She co-conceived the piece with her husband, Mr. Cartelli (also known as Jeff Lewonczyk, also known as the director of this show). She also plays the Monkey's antagonist, the Vital Spirit.
4. I've read more fairy tales than anyone you know. Trust me. I tend to get really irate at poorly done, know nothing interpretations of fairy tales based on vague ideas sparked by Disney and reading Bettelheim in some psych class in undergrad. I thought the fairy tale elements were great and true and completely satisfying.
5. There is lots of monkey sex. If there are any creepy, uptight puritans reading this: do not fear! One could also interpret the action as coming down firmly on the side of a Darwinian argument for monogamy. The advancement in monkey-kind is made when the indiscriminate monkey orgy stops being so appealing to our Craven Monkey, as he has face to face sex for the first time with his Lady Monkey. The monkey sex is also completely hilarious.
6. There is a squid. Again, if this alone does not make you want to see this show, you are likely reading the wrong blog.
7. Qui Nguyen (of Vampire Cowboy fame) and Adam Swiderski's fight choreography is fabulous.
8. Jessi Gotta is in it. She plays Lady Monkey.
9. The costumes. To die.
10. Jeff Lewonczyk's narration. It's dry, factual, British, and just like watching Wild Kingdom if you had taken a large amount of peyote.
11. Monkeys! It's all about monkeys!
12. Just go. I hear the final performances are selling out quick.