Reeves Wiedeman

In other cartoon related news, I’ve never read The Watchmen, or any graphic novel for that matter. I may now, after reading Chris Ware’s brief, startling graphic short-story for The New Yorker’s cartoon issue. He did the cover, which feeds into the two-page story he tells. It’s worth a subscription alone:

Click through to experience the whole thing.

Lots of goodies from the annual New Yorker Cartoon issue. A tough choice, but here’s my favorite.

Scalpers fascinate me, and I’ve wanted to write about their lives for a while. I did, briefly, for Newyorker.com:

Stuart Shenkman, a sixty-three-year-old in a black Teamsters Local 237 jacket, was standing outside Yankee Stadium last night, asking anyone who would listen, “Do you know why the Yankees are going to win?”

I didn’t, so I bit. “Why?”

“Well, there’s a Democrat in the White House, and the Yankees haven’t lost a World Series with a Democrat since ’64.”

Mad credit to friend of the program Brendan Lowe for inspiration and serious help.

There are 6 people in space right now.

We like Bon Iver. “Blood Bank” is about meeting a girl at a blood bank:

Well I met you at the blood bank
We were looking at the bags
Wondering if any of the colors
Matched any of the names we knew on the tags
You said “see look, that’s yours!
Stacked on top with your brother’s
See how the resemble one another
Even in their plastic little covers”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-BZ0D92mtU]

The Atlantic profiles Rampage Jackson. He beats people up for a living:

When I leave, Rampage smiles at me, and then slaps me in the face with his open right hand. In the time I’ve spent with Jackson, I’ve seen him hit several casual acquaintances in the same way. He hits me exactly as hard as someone slapping aftershave on their cheeks in the Old Spice television commercials. It tingles for a moment and then the sensation is gone. Rampage claps his hand on my shoulder and shows me his teeth, then laughs. The message is that his body is a finely tuned instrument over which he has exquisite control. With the same amount of effort, he reminds me, he could have knocked me cold.

More here.

The PEN American Center hosted a night with writers – Ishmael Beah, Eve Ensler, Don DeLillo – reading correspondence from Gitmo detainees. Here’s Jonathan Ames. It’s pretty chilling to hear, and Ames’ leisurely cadence renders the letter’s most frequently used word – “Censored” – strangely normal.

(Via The Rumpus)

Did you know Ansel Adams shot in color? Well, he did, and as you might expect, the photos are stunning:

There’s more, in a new book.

Pre-fab housing can look pretty cool.

Google Maps’ Street View is useful, entertaining, fascinating, and another step toward 1984. Michael Wolf also found art on Street View in Paris:

More here (via CR Blog). Let’s see if we can crowdsource some art for NYC. Here’s two I found quickly:

56th and 8th

44th b/t 10th and 11th