Al bare kah moo

"Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day."

Camus became a vital part of my life during those angsty & suicidal teenage years.  "The Myth of Sisyphus" made me feel that not killing myself was an act of defiance.  "There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn."  Way to go on the reverse psychology, Al.  And I read The Stranger for school, but I read The Plague and The Fall and The Myth of Sisyphus on my own.  

Yesterday I was thinking about The Beatles (and listening to the MAH-valous 1+) and remembered that Alice Cooper had done a cover of "Eleanor Rigby" for a McCartney Music Appreciation album, so I looked that up on the internets, and that was a bit disappointing, so it led to other things, one of which was looking for a video of The Tubes's "Boy Crazy," and on one of the videos for that I saw the Camus quote ensconced above.

Sooner or later it leads to Camus.

Somewhere in this house of fallen books I have a copy of a Camus book--I think it's Resistance, Rebellion, and Death--which belonged to my mom.  I'm going to find it and read it.  It's possible I've read it before and forgotten it.  It's possible I gave her that copy of that book.  It meant something to her, and I want to evoke her spirit.

I miss my mom on a pretty regular basis.  I miss dad and Kate, too, but especially my mom.  We used to talk about everything.  Except sex, thank God.  But everything else.  She had a very uncommon mind.  Only an 8th grade education, but she read Camus.  Born in the Benny Goodman era, but she loved David Bowie and Iggy Pop and she thought the New York Dolls were cute.

You know, Camus only lived 46 years.  And he's been dead for 55 years.  Most of my life Albert Camus has been dead.

Uh-oh.  I think that's the opening line for a novel.

A New Work by My Favorite Artist

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By the way . . . the thing that St. Lucy is holding that looks like a baby? Its a cup with St. Lucy's eyes in it. Check out your Catholic iconography.

Saga Volume 5

A few of my favorite things:

"Being a parent pretty much ensures that you'll never spend another minute alone."

Chapter 26

Whoa.  Your idea of who Marko is totally changes here in Volume 5.  No details. Just sayin'.

" . . . maybe the universe is better off with some people just not in it anymore."

Chapter 28

"Every relationship is an education. Each new personae welcome into our hearts is a Chan e to evolve into something radically different than we used to be.  But what happens when those people disappear from our lives?"

Chapter 30--or maybe 29.  I forgot to write it down.

And with that . . . I'm all caught up with Saga.  Two and a half years's worth of comic book in a few days.  And now I either have to wait six months for another trade paperback . . . or wait a week for a tiny little splort of story.  

Damn it.

But what a great read.  Do it, brahs and tahs.  You shan't regret the time (and money, if that's involved) spent.

Saga Volume 4. Oh, and 1.

The LFPL still hasn't come through with Volume 1 of Saga.  No hating,  just relating.  So I just kept on, going from Volume 2 to Volume 3 to Volume 4.  Found some great stuff in Volume 4.  These are the ones I slowed down long enough to catch and pin and mont:

"Most jobs are impossible to do without drugs."
Volume 4, Chapter 21

" . . . never worry what other people think of you, because no one ever thinks of you."
Volume 4, Chapter 22

But then I was out for a bit, and I happened to be in Barnes and Noble, and I happened to go to the comic book section where I happened to see Saga: Volume 1, so I started reading.  And man, I do not even understand how I did not keep up with this book.  Volume 1 hits the ground running.  It is marvelous and wonderful.  And really fucking funny.  I read the whole thing sitting in B and N.  Here are the ones that didn't get away:

"If there's an opposite of a honeymoon, it's the week after a couple's first child is born."
Volume 1, Chapter 2

"Despite what you may have heard, good help isn't all that hard to find . . . it's just hard to find cheap."
Volume 1, Chapter 3

And there were a HO lot more, but sometimes I just didn't feel like stopping to catch them, and sometimes it was stuff that was just too story context contingent to pry off the page for the collection.  So there.

But I have to say, Saga is a must read.  

Going back to Volume 4 now.  And I am 7 of 7 on the hold list for Volume 5.  But you know what?  I happened to notice that they had several copies of Volume 5 at Barnes and Noble . . . . 

P.S.  Finished Volume 4 last night.  One more quote for the road:

"If you want people to pay attention to you, you have to talk about sex."

Chapter 23

Also just realized (slow on the uptake) that the chapters are numbered straight through, across the volumes, so no need to identify the volume.  D'oh.

Saga of My Saga With Brian K. Vaughan's SAGA Saga

I remember being pretty excited when Brian K. Vaughan's Saga first came out.  Not only was Brian quite a handsome devil, he'd also brought me great joy via Y:  The Last Man (starting in September 2002), Ex Machina (starting in August 2004), and he'd written seven episodes of Lost (2007 to 2009) 1 .  How could Saga possibly go wrong?  But when it made its debut on March 14, 2012, I wasn't there.  I don't know why.  As in I can't remember.  It's possible that The Great Escape sold out of the first issue by the time I got to the store, as I rarely make the effort to get there on New Comics Wednesday.  But clearly I was interested, as when I checked my Comixology purchases I found issues 1, 2 and 3 ensconced in the My Comics file.  And the rest was silence.  I do have a vague memory of being turned off by some tv-headed character fucking someone or getting a blow job from someone or something of that ilk.  Not sure why that would have turned me off, actually, but maybe there was more to it than that faint shit stain of memory on the underpants of my mind.  At any rate, I just didn't go back to Saga.  Until recently, when I found that the good old LFPL had all five of the  paperback collections which have been published to date . . . which actually brings us to the current issue, since #31 doesn't come out for another eleven days as of this writing (Saga #31 is to be published November 25, 2015, according to the Image website).  So I decided to dive in and see what, if anything, I'd been missing.

I had to start with the second collection, since somebody else had the first, but (1) I had read the first three issues way back when, so that was half of the first tpb, and (2) I actually had some memory of  the events from those issues.  And I enjoyed Saga, Volume 2 quite a bit, actually.  Enough to go through it in pretty much one sitting and to head directly into Saga, Volume 3 this morning.  Ah, Volume 3.  That's where I really got into it.  And it was the D. Oswald Heist bits that really put it over the top for me.  (Though I also liked Lying Cat quite a bit.)  But . . . oh, man, that wily old fuck really cracks me up.  One of my favorite two lines from Saga (at the moment, anyway) comes into the scene with D. Oswald:  " . . . no one makes worse first impressions than writers."

(Chapter 13)  That's just good shit. 2

So I'm on my way.  I'll finish Volume 3 in a minute (have to, it's due back at the library; some other motherfucker apparently wants to piss in my corner) and pick up Volume 4, which is waiting for me.  And by then Volume 1 should have shaken loose.  And then I'm on the list for Volume 5.  Ta-da.  Funny, ennit?  You can read 3 1/2 years's worth of comic book in a day or two.  Has much more of a punch that way, too.

Thanks, LFPL.  Thanks, Brian K. Vaughan.



1 In case you give a shit, here are the titles of the episodes BKV wrote:  (1) "Dead Is Dead" (2009), (2) "Namaste" (2009), (3) "The Little Prince" (2009), (4) "The Shape of Things to Come" (2008), (5) "Meet Kevin Johnson" (2008), (6) "Confirmed Dead" (2008), and (7) "Catch-22" (2007).

2 In case you give another shit, my other favorite line (so far, etc.) is, "Life is mostly just learning how to lose." (Chapter 15)