Daily Batman: Please go crazy, with bonus bookfoolery

Photographed by entelpelente on the flickr.

But then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”

(Kerouac, Jack. On the Road, 1951.)

Won’t you please go crazy just once in a while.

My daughter and I went to the downtown branch of our public library today, to which I had not been in epochs. A year, at least.

We went a little crazy.

Photographed by realbelgianwaffles on the flickr.

I had to buy two more bags so we could carry the books, and my bag ripped so we were drag-assing to the car, both of us weighted down by several bags each. The trunk was stuck, and propping the ripped bag on my hip in order to try and really pull up on the lid sent half the books sliding like an avalanche over my shoulder because of the arch my body was in, where they tumbled behind me to the ground and christ-knows-why cartwheeled in to the smack middle of the drive. Why not?

Kidlet instinctively darted out to retrieve them, so I was in a panic shouting “No!”, throwing my head around to look for cars and warning her, “Get back in position!,” “position” being facing her door, with both hands on the car — yes, I know it is a seemingly fascist thing to teach a child to memorize, but it keeps her semi-secure while I try to juggle crap with my hands full in a parking lot. Today was a case in point. As soon as I’d managed to fumble the keyfob into unlock, I told her to get in the car, and as soon as her car door closed, let out a very heartfelt, “Fucking fuck!” Then I picked up the books. Twist ending!

the kitty nightlight keeps it on-theme.

If you think all of that’s chaotic, farcical, and vulgar, you should have seen us in the library. Think, “Jackie Chan meets the Three Stooges, with special guest writer Quentin Tarantino.”

A portion of my haul is above. Snagged a few more gems for the Wonder Woman research and a couple Hammett novels for funsies; also Far Arden and a new book by Elizabeth Kostova, who wrote The Historian (a yearly read). I almost picked up Embroideries but I’ve almost literally just reread Persepolis and I decided to wait until next time. Does anyone else find to your disappointment that when you read a great deal of someone else’s art and writing, it begins to accidentally spill over in to your own, or am I the only hack?

Anyway, it’s all at your Local Library!

Also, I wanted to show off this improvised bookcover for Anne Rice’s The Witching Hour. My California copy has gone saucily topless up front for around a half a decade (thus prompting the purchase of my much more gently used Oregon copy) and I could brook no more. I decided that, after eighteen years, I no longer really needed the Kirkus and New York Times, etc, reviews at the front telling me the book was worth a look, and, knowing the dedication already — to Stan Rice, her husband —, I flipped to the first page and started duct-taping the front ten-odd junk pages together. This made a stiff enough cover so that, when I lie in bed curled on my side to read, the force of my hand holding the thicker part of the book does not wear and worry and rip away at the front any longer, saving the book from further separating from the spine.

I’m pretty proud of my shitty repair job. The spine itself has always been fine, so it as not as though the book would be anonymous when shelved or sidewise-viewed, the only ways it would matter in a search, but I wrote “The Witching Hour” and “Anne Rice” on the duct-tape cover anyway because it felt right.

Daily Batman: Demi-chat, Demi-femme

Demi Moore photographed by Matthew Ralston.

Irena: Some nights there is another sound. The panther. It screams … like a woman. I hadn’t realized how dark it was getting. I like the dark — it is friendly.

(Cat People. Directed by Jacques Tourneur. Screenplay by DeWitt Bodeen. RKO Pictures, 1942.)

I rented this from the library when I was 14 and it rocked my world. Super-hot. Not in a “furry” way — in a just-before-the-censors went nuts way. Sexy dialogue, dark and mysterious clouds coming out of sewers, thick bangs, blondes and brunettes, light bdsm and love triangles. Like, wow! And it’s all at Your Local Library.

The truth about cats and dogs. Simone Simon with a statue of Anubis in a still from Cat People.

Simone Simon, and the picture itself, have developed something of a cult following over the years — this is a coy understatement; there are like just under sixteen hundred blogs I’m sure dedicated to how to most precisely masturbate to the technical prowess of Tourneur’s Cat People — and the popularity of her portrayal as Irena in the film has not left the character of Catwoman untinged. In the 1966 Batman movie, “the Catwoman” (not series regular Jul-Newms, who was washing her hair, but rather your Miss America 1955 Lee Meriwether) poses as a sexy woman from the USSR named Miss Kitka Karenska, employing vaguely the same hairstyle and Romany-rich Eastern European accent used by Simone Simon in Cat People.

I can has intense sexual cult following?

More importantly, after DC’s Infinite Crisis, which-kind-of-but-not-really restored a lot of the retconned into obsolescence storylines that were wiped out in Crisis on Infinite Earths, in One Year Later, Selina Kyle uses the name Irene Dubrovna when she must hide out in the underworld, having temporarily sort-of-retired from her Catwoman vigilante duties due to her pregnancy with Helena, her daughter. (This Helena is not the Helena Wayne of Earth-Two, nor the Helena Kyle of Earth-2, but a Helena in general, of whom what will become — eventually taking up the Huntress mask? tracking down her father for suresies? something else? — it remains to be seen.)

Daily Batman: Nolite te bastardes carborundum repeat by way of bookfoolery

Originally posted on October 13, 2009 at 12:33 pm.

Attaboy. Roll just as fly as you please and fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.

by Eliza Gauger.

Sorry for the re-tread on a Sunday and not on a Flashback Friday or Take-two Tuesday, but I’m nearly through my major June series which I have done every summer for nine years because of that there ol’ deathiversary due to my crushing unbearable survivor’s guilt and repressed rage, then snap! it’s almost time for my much-more-voluntary-and-less-moody yearly re-read of The Handmaid’s Tale, and then over Fourth Of July I do The Tommyknockers. I must reach the part where Ruthie McCausland blows up the clock tower on Independence Day on the Fourth of July in my own time for true Summer synchonicity to occur, and the times I haven’t done I’ve felt all kinds of crawly about it, so why invite trouble? Then I will wind things down with the Doomsday Book, which, entering my life in 2004, is a comparatively recent addition to my duties.

Librarian-type girls are hot. I’m saying that I’m hot.

Also somewhere in there I’m to become at least glancingly conversant with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s work on grief because my aunt said it’s time we try facing up to how we feel Ways About Things and try to let go. I’m all like, “Okay! if you think that’s best,” but really I mean, “WE’LL SEE,” or even, “NO.”

When I’ve attended to all my obligations, which should be done in about a month, THEN I am hoping to get started on this awesome book the Gentleman is loaning me about Abraham Lincoln hunting vampires, which is appropriate because as we all well know vampires suck and werewolves are going to the dogs.

See? Hot! The Bookworm knows. (Another retread; you may remember this picture from the “Enter the Bookworm” post a bit back.)

Christo brought the vampire hunter book down for me the night I went to the house to watch the finale of Lost with Gorgeous George, but I declined, telling him to loan it to someone else because I knew I’d be tied up for a while. But soon! I’ll let you know how it is!

Unlikely G: Joe Sciabica Farmers’ Market Edition

Sciabica Olive Oil Co.’s Joseph Sciabica, a wonderful and dynamic gentleman who is a regular fixture of the market and Modesto’s foodie scene in general, was sitting in his walker this most recent, rainy Saturday when the band began to play “Que Sera, Sera.” He got up from his walker and danced to the final chorus, as everyone sang and cheered. It was one of those really rare, beautiful moments in life that approaches true perfection.

To say this was one of the highlights of the day is to wildly undersell it. (I’m ashamed and sorry that my singing is so loud, but, in all fairness, I was the one holding the camera and so I was closest to its microphone. I almost didn’t share this but I decided to swallow my pride; it’s too wonderful not to widely distribute.)

I hope you find this spontaneous outpouring of g’ness as awesome, life-affirming, and inspiring as I did. If you would like to read more about the Sciabica family history and olive oil pressing in the Central Valley area, here is a piece by Joe himself.

I’m sorry if this reads like a Reading Rainbow book report—but you don’t have to take my word for it!—but it reduced me to a very childlike wonder, so maybe that is a fair explanation.