Graphic Novels You Would Like If You Weren't Too Chicken To Read Them - Asterios Polyp/Wilson/Lint (Part Two)

There are few graphic novel creators that are more beloved by purveyors of all things hip and cool than Daniel Clowes and Chris Ware who, because we are also so hip and cool, are exactly the creators we are going to cover over the next few days! On Sunday, I termed the character Asterios Polyp a pompous ass; well, the titular character of Clowes’ most recent graphic novel ‘Wilson’ could best be described as loathsome and, according to the descriptions on the back of the book, ‘a sociopath’ and ‘a delusional blowhard’. (Though he is also described as ‘a delicate flower’ and ‘a devoted father and husband’, which are apt descriptions as well.) It would spoil the humour of the book to give away too much about how he manages to offend every person he encounters, but refusing to give directions to somebody just because they are driving a large vehicle, and sending a family a box full of dog shit are fairly typical examples. So why bother reading about this guy? Because, for all his bile, Wilson is actually not too far wrong in places about the manner in which people live their lives, and the myriad ways in which he confounds norms and expectations will make you think a little even as you cringe in your chair. That said if you don’t like stories in which the characters have few redeeming qualities, this probably isn’t for you. Perhaps the best approach is to pick it up in the bookstore, read a few pages, and see if you chuckle along or want to hit someone over the head with it. Though if it’s the latter, maybe this is for you as well!

Next up, Chris Ware’s latest beautiful issue of his irregular series ‘Acme Novelty Library’: ‘Lint’!

Image copyright Drawn & Quarterly

Graphic Novels You Would Like If You Weren't Too Chicken To Read Them - Asterios Polyp/Wilson/Lint (Part One)

Perhaps coincidentally, three of the most lauded graphic novels of the past couple of years have been one-off character studies of somewhat maladjusted men: David Mazzuchelli’s ‘Asterios Polyp’, Daniel Clowes’ ‘Wilson’, and Chris Ware’s ‘Lint’. Maybe graphic novel writers and readers are best suited to dealing with these types of people… I’m not going to judge (lest I implicate myself)… but each of these authors does seem to have a pretty good understanding of what it means to be something of a misanthrope. And going down this route does appear to gain the medium more respect than capes and power fantasies have ever done, partly because it allows the personal styles of the creators to shine through, thus showing that the medium has far more to say about the human condition than many believe.



Mazzuchelli’s ‘Asterios Polyp’ is the most self-consciously literary of the three (the author notes claim that Mazzuchelli has been making comics for years, but this is his first graphic novel), and takes as its subject an architect-slash-professor-slash-author. Polyp is, to put it bluntly, a pompous ass; at one point his long-suffering wife, herself a brilliant artist, exasperatedly asks him if he thinks she is stupid because he seems to always assume that what she says is wrong. Polyp’s story is interrupted at points to allow him to pontificate on his theories of architecture and duality, much of which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but they are presented in such creative ways that you wish you knew what he was talking about. Unsurprisingly, the thrust of the story is how Polyp learns to curb his arrogance and recognise the importance of others; however, there is no lightbulb-goes-off-in-the-head moment, and Polyp’s journey takes some unconventional routes, involving dream sequences with figures from Greek mythology, radical Communism-spouting country punk bands, and a big-bosomed astrology expert who calls herself ‘a goddess’. Mazzuchelli’s visuals themselves are pretty simple and clean – where the complexity comes from is the way he alters his figures and arranges his symbols so as to develop meaning (abstract though that meaning may be). Yes it all sounds very arty, but it also pokes fun at its own arty-ness, and it’s a bit of a pleasant surprise from an artist who, rightly or wrongly, is still best known for his collaborations with Frank Miller on ‘Batman: Year One’ and ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ (both of which are excellent by the way). Most people who have taken a college or university arts course at some point in their lives would get a kick out of this.

That’s it for the moment; I’ll cover off ‘Wilson’ and ‘Lint’ another time, hopefully later this week.

Image copyright Pantheon Press.

Game Review - Donkey Kong Country Returns

The two-player co-operative mode on ‘Donkey Kong Country Returns’ is a microcosm of any co-dependent relationship: you need to co-ordinate your efforts, use each other’s strengths to progress, know when to let the other monkey forge ahead and when not to leave the other monkey behind, and be careful not to free-ride too much on the larger monkey’s back. My wife and I have made our way across the beach, through the cave, along the forest, and on to the cliff, each of us alternating between Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong (aka the Didmeister), and it has done more to strengthen our video gaming co-existence than any game this side of ‘Rock Band’. Perhaps more so, given that DKCR also has a greater variety of situations than any game this side of ‘Super Mario Galaxy’; we’ve learned that I seem to have an advantage in swinging from vines, while my wife has an advantage in jumping around in mine carts and finding secret stashes of bananas. Alas, the dodgy controls that plagued DK ‘Jungle Beat’ are also evident here at times: you don’t always jump when you think you’ve jumped (or not as high), or duck when you think you’ve ducked. There is also a tendency for “spontaneous primate disappearance”, where you can’t work out where your chosen monkey is amongst the jungle backdrop and the little shits that are out to kill you. Never mind, it’s still fun enough for you to get past these frustrations and save the poor possessed beasts. Although perhaps it’s best not to tell people how much monkey business is going on in your household.

Image copyright Nintendo

Gig Review – Public Enemy – Corner Hotel, Richmond – Dec 29

The ticket claimed that Public Enemy would be performing their famous album, ‘Fear of a Black Planet’. However, after just six tracks in PE announced they would be interspersing their set with tracks from their other famous album, ‘It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back’… except two or three more tracks in that plan was jettisoned as well. Instead PE went on for almost an hour past their scheduled finishing time with a marathon mix of greatest hits, new cuts, blues covers, guest MCs, two-man banter… and the band suggested that, if it wasn’t for a council curfew, they would have gone on for even longer than that. It was somewhat of a contrast from their heyday, when Chuck D’s tight, booming lyrical flow made the group seem like a major musical and political force to be reckoned with. Indeed, it seemed like Chuck’s position as the leader of the group has been usurped by his ‘sidekick’, Flava Flav, who has kept himself in remarkable shape, both physically and vocally. And the show itself seemed to reflect Flav’s on-stage persona: loose, rambling, a little nonsensical, politically conscious but not quite on the same cerebral level as what the PE of old brought to hip-hop. Tellingly it was Flav who delivered the final message of the night about how regardless of colour we are all part of the human race, which was certainly consistent with PE’s past messages of racial tolerance, but lacking a little in terms of the anger and eloquence about racial tensions in America that fuelled PE’s best work. Of course, the social landscape in the US has changed considerably over the past couple of decades – even before Obama’s ascent – and it may not necessarily be a bad thing that the group can nowadays kick back a little and have some fun. But you kind of wish that they had a new cause to put their fists behind – whatever, it was still cool to see one of the most important acts in hip-hop history. Fight the powers that be, then…

Rating Cricketers: Thoughts On A Simple Model

One way to rate cricketers is to measure them on their contribution to winning, or not losing, a match. A team’s chance of winning a match can be modelled as a function of the following factors:

- how many runs the team scores
- how many runs the other team scores
- how many wickets the team loses
- how many wickets the other team loses

And because of the time constraint on a cricket match, whether it is a Test or first-class match to be completed in a given number of days or a match with limited overs, these factors matter as well:

- how quickly the team scores runs
- how quickly the other team scores runs

According to this view, a cricketer’s contribution to the result of the match will depend on their contribution to each of these factors. In terms of bowling, a cricketer’s contribution will depend upon:

- how many wickets the cricketer takes
- how quickly the cricketer takes wickets (i.e. the cricketer’s bowling strike rate)
- how many runs the cricketer concedes from their bowling
- how quickly runs are scored from the cricketer’s bowling (i.e. the cricketer’s economy rate)

What would need to be done to measure the cricketer’s contribution in terms of bowling is to determine how each of these factors affects the team’s chance of winning. For example, each wicket a team takes could increase its chance of winning by, say, 0.5 per cent. A bowler who took 10 wickets in a match would therefore have increased their team’s chance of winning by 5 per cent. As another example, each run a team concedes may decrease its chance of winning by, say, 0.05 per cent. A bowler who concedes 100 runs in a match then would therefore have decreased their team’s chance of winning by 5 per cent.

In terms of batting, a cricketer’s contribution to the result of the match will depend upon:

- how many runs the cricketer scores
- how quickly the cricketer scores runs (i.e. the cricketer’s batting strike rate)
- whether the cricketer loses their wicket
- how long the cricketer can stay in before losing their wicket

And similarly to bowling, what would need to be done to measure the cricketer’s contribution in terms of batting is to determine how each of these factors affects the team’s chance of winning. For example, each run a team makes could increase its chance of winning by, say, 0.05 per cent. A batsman who makes 100 runs in a match would therefore have increased their team’s chance of winning by 5 per cent.

It would be interesting to estimate how important each of these factors is to the result of a cricket match, and how we might reassess the contribution of cricketers in light of them. One concern with this simple model is how to capture the contribution of fieldsmen. All thoughts and comments welcome.

The Whitest Band In The World

A few years ago Christian Lander, the creator of the blog 'Stuff White People Like', when asked who was the whitest band, replied 'Vampire Weekend... they're pushing it to levels unseen'. As it turned out that assessment may have been a bit premature, as several other contenders have emerged in the meantime. Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver made city-dwelling white people all over fantasise about leaving their problems behind and going to sing and play guitar in a cabin in a mountain forest. The Arcade Fire continue to reach new levels of whiteness, releasing an album that is an extensive love/hate tribute to growing up in the suburbs. And Yeasayer, from Brooklyn via Baltimore, with their world music-influenced pop, and band members named Anand Wilder and Ira Wolf Tuton are perhaps even stronger contenders for the title than Ezra Koenig's crew.

 

Image: Stereogum

But none of them can compare to the xx. Name a prerequisite for whiteness and this band can tick it off. First, they are all as pale as the moon. The guy singer (Oliver Sim) has the smooth, deep, understated voice to make all white girls swoon and want to buy him a Shiraz Cabernet. The girl singer (Romy Madley Croft) is not overly physically attractive, so white girls don't feel threatened by her and white guys can like her and make believe they are sensitive. They hail from South London, placing them closer to the Tate Modern than Old Trafford. Their name centers around the white person's favourite letter (despite 'The X-Factor', the word 'ex' retains a special place in white people's vocabularies), and their album cover was a masterstroke of white person design - all black, with a white 'x' in the middle of it. Their music is dark, brooding, and romantic; a more mature version of teenager outsider poetry, with lines about bridges being on fire, and becoming crystallised, and watching things on VCRs. The xx are the ubiquitous white person group - they could fit into any white person club in any white person city and be wholeheartedly embraced. Because secretly every white person wants to form a band that is just like them.

P.S. I quite like the xx.

How To Choose A Beer

People who know me would know that I like variety in my beer choices - someone once remarked that they had never seen me drink the same beer twice. Hence, I was excited when a store opened up near my place (Purvis Cellars) which had over 700 different types of beer - enough for me to try a new beer a day for almost two years. So far I have tried about a dozen new beers from there (note the introduction of the 'What I've Been Drinking' box on this blog), and have found that, really, beers are not all that different. The Whistler Lager from British Columbia I had today was fairly similar to the dozens of Crown Lagers I have had, and even the more exotic Rogue XS and Boont Amber Ale were not that different to other red and amber ales I have had.

And yet I'm still excited by going back to try more beers! Why? (OK, maybe being an alcoholic is part of it.) There are many wines I haven't tried, and yet I'm not as excited in seeking them out. A big part of it I think is the distinctive packaging and naming of beers. Have a new wine and you're likely to forget what it was in five minutes, whereas if you have a new beer, particularly a bottled beer, you're much more likely to remember it and can converse about it at a later date. This applies between beers as well; so far I've been more interested in trying the US and Canadian beers with cool names like Dead Guy Ale rather than the blandly packaged German beers whose names I have little chance of remembering. Frankly, if more wines had names like Dead Guy Merlot I would be more excited about tracking them down as well.

Well, that and beers taste better...

Cheers! - The Man With the Wooden Finger

Reflections on the AFL Grand Final Replay

Each year the AFL Premiership is surrounded by its own mythology about why the premier won and why in some sense it was inevitable. You would think that this year's replay would dispel some of those notions, given how different it was from the first match. But no, stories abound how Collingwood had the class to win a premiership and St. Kilda didn't - never mind that, if Lenny Hayes' kick had bounced the right way into Stephen Milne's hands, St. Kilda would most likely have won the premiership last week.

This is not to deny that Collingwood was generally the best performed team this year - its winning percentage this year indicates that it was - but to dispute how much weight is given to one match. Teams can play seven-game final series and still the better team can lose (even in this case, I thought Collingwood were the better team), so one should be cautious about passing judgment on a player or team based on the events of last Saturday. Collingwood played well enough over the season that they gave themselves a chance to play off for the premiership, but so did Geelong and so did St. Kilda, and we shouldn't overstate the gap between those sides. Last week there was nothing separating the Magpies and the Saints, and if the Saints had scored one more point, some of those 'expert judges' who are singing the Magpies' virtues would be calling them supreme choke artists. And that would be the wrong conclusion to draw as well.