Sunday, November 9, 2008

Saturday 10.08 at Wordstock 08


The Wordstock event in Portland Oregon is far more than the behemoth book expos which are featured on CSPAN2 on the weekends. It is a largish event, to be sure, but its board and mission hold greater value to bringing readers and authors together under a big tent (well, actually a couple of exhibit halls in the Oregon Convention Center) in celebratory fashion where one can explore the booths of small publishers and book community resources as well as have exposure to plenty to writers and others involved with books.

For your five dollars you can have access to the equivalent of about two months worth of author readings at Powell's and Annie Bloom's. And, somehow, although the event is held in large cavernous halls, it can feel kind of accessible and intimate. But you may still need to take your time to get into the groove of Wordstock. I started out by cruising by a Rock 'n Roll smackdown talk between Guns and Roses biographer Jason Porath and Curt Cobain biographer Charles Cross. ("You can't possibly mean it when you say that Guns and Roses is the most influential band of its time") and watched a bit of Ann Packer's Q and A, which seemed kind of awkward and self-conscious to me. Basically, I was just killing time to connect with Pam to see Spain and John Hodgemam.

Spain Rodriguez is one of the artists along with Robert Crumb, Vaughn Bode, Bill Griffith, Gilbert Sheldon, Art Spiegelman and many others who created the breakthrough undeground comic book scene of the sixties and seventies. He turned out to be an interesting fellow to spend an hour with. The story of his formative years was much like the one that Spiegelman shared at his appearance in Portland last month. He was drawn to the medium quite early, Plasticman being a personal favorites. He watched the Werthem purge and the McCarthy-esqe hysteria that surrounded it that somehow Mad magazine was able to weather. He hated the comics code as a kid and was able to act against it as the artist as a young man during the sixties as a number of like minded others did in the movement we call underground comics, at the same time that rock and roll became a social change agent in the sixties.

Spain very much keeps those sixties sensibilities in his art. He still creates promotional materials for the San Francisco Mime Troop. He showed some radical materials he had created for the political support activities Jim Mitchell of the Mitchell Brothers portraying Arnold Schwarzenegger as a exotic dancer for a police and correction workers union party. And his latest graphic novel (he winced slightly when he used that term--"We still think of ourselves as comic book artists") is a comics presentation of the life of Che Gruevara.

Spain's draftsmanship is impressive. His style reminds me more of Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon escapades or Hal Foster's Prince Valiant than Crumb and Sheldon's Furry Freak Brothers. He approaches his work differently from a production stand point these days. He drafts in pen and inks using the computer and PhotoShop. He told the story of a reunion panel where folks were carrying on how things hadn't changed much since the good ol' days until the subject of color separations came up and the group got silent.

He is not a natural public speaker but he became more relaxed and engaged as his presentation continued. In his display of pages from Che he talked about the challenges of portraying complex economic and political ideas in comics form. And he became most excited when he talked about the opportunities to draw the stuff guys like to draw planes and trains. A sequence in Che called for an armored train. He could not find an example of a train on the Internet like the raided by Che's revolutionaries so drew his own. Later he found a picture of the train, but he said quite proudly, "I think mine was cooler."

John Hodgman the resident expert of the Daily Show proved to be exceptionally entertaining. He appeared with his friend musician Jonathan Coulton who he described as a strange bearded man. Coulton started out the presentation by singing a theme song about Hodgeman. The first verse was about his Daily Show activities primarily. A second verse was about Hodgman as a guy who sells computers. To the latter, Hodgman corrected him as being not exactly correct despite the highly successful PC vs Apple commercials that have brought him a high degree of recognition.

Hodgman's journey from literary agent and author of a humor book where his resident expert persona was in full effect to widely recognized mid-level television personality was the primary content of the afternoon's presentation. He accomplished this mostly through a reading, well more like a performance of an essay in his latest book More Information Than You Require where he claims to explore his expertise of the world's knowledge and "when I have not bothered to learn it, I made it up."

The set of circumstances that have flung him into the public spotlight may have been somewhat serendipitous and accidental, but his success and talent are no accident. His comic timing and quickness in responding to questions and circumstances were a wonder to behold. And when he was asked about Jon Stewart, his gratitude and admiration of the Daily Show host was quite genuine.

The afternoon session ended with The Zombie Song by Jonathan Coulton, which was the request of Riley, a primary grader in the audience. Lots of others in the crowd seemed to know it as well. Somehow a crowd of folks singing together about being zombies coming to eat your brains seemed a weirdly logical way to conclude a session with a talented "expert" who has the ability to poke at both our brains and its connections to what make us laugh.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:17 AM
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