033106_09241.jpg
Originally uploaded by Joshua Hale Fialkov.
Fying a Full Year
|W|P|114382608143429369|W|P|033106_09241.jpg|W|P|joshfialkov@gmail.com"Punks is the kind of thing you find when you wake up passed out on a friends couch with a splitting hangover. It's crumpled under your head, and as you come to consciousness, you read Punks and say : 'Dude. What the FUCK is this?? Where are the rest?' .... And then you spend the rest of the day calling your buddy 'Noisy McNoise-Noisenstein', and quoting lines from the book."So, go read, get excited. Or else.|W|P|114378298148720802|W|P|Fossen's seen Punks...|W|P|joshfialkov@gmail.com
or, How I Over-Analyze Punks, a comic about four guys setting each other on fire and punching each other in the nuts.
I had a long intellectual conversation with my manager about Punks today. He has a great knack for finding a greater depth to what I do then I ever really touch on. He’s also a real ball breaker in negotiations, but that’s beside the point.
So, one of the things he gave me to chew over was the idea of Ego, Super Ego, and Id. This pretty successfully covers three of the four main characters of the book, (and for that matter, just about every sitcom character structure there’s ever been.) But, we have one piece that doesn’t fit.
Ego, is that rational middle ground, trying to balance pleasure with survival, rationality with living a satisfied life. In Punks, that’s Abe. He’s the emotional center of the book, his whole thing is chewing over the right and wrong, the real and unreal, and while not necessarily always deciding properly, his decisions come from a place that is at the very least balanced. For those unfamiliar, using Seinfeld, he's the Jerry.
Super Ego is Dog, the self-doubting, self-hating, angry young man. He serves as that voice in the back of your head saying “You’re not good enough, and everybody’s on to you.” Again, to Seinfeld, he's the George.
Id is Skull. Skull is pure sensation. The pleasure in violence, the lack of interest in anyone other himself, and a temper that’s only matched by his need to feel in a very guttural sense. He is what he appears, and does what you’d expect (although, the uses he finds for duct tape are pretty remarkable, if I do say so myself.) So, now, and maybe this is a stretch, in Seinfeldian, he's the Elaine.
So, that’s all your Freudian labels applied, and yet we’re left with Fist (or, our Kramer). He’s the guy in the Mentos ads. He’s not particularly interested in where he’s going or what’s happening around him, and because of that, he tends to always come out, if not on top, at least better off than the rest. So, for the sake of this conversation, I’m looking at him as the Counter Ego. He goes against both Super Ego and Id, neither filled with rage nor self-doubt, and, further, has virtually no interest in figuring out which option is best. He simply is. And that’s why he succeeds.
Punks, as a book, is about a world that shits on you. We live in a time where we’re constantly attacked by world events, from the crush of gas prices to a whole generation sent off to a war with a purpose, at the very least, that’s unclear. In the comic, this comes across as a positively surreal wash of constant insanity that never quite manages to get the boys out of their self-obsessed funk. So, in theory, all the comedy comes from how these four parts of the mind deal with it.
And lots of groin punching.|W|P|114362194347166146|W|P|Ego, Super Ego, Id, and Counter Ego|W|P|joshfialkov@gmail.com
saulcolt|W|P|you made my head hurt Fialkov|W|P|That's what I'm here for sucka.
A pretty decent little archive of Cold War Era Russian Kid's Books. I'm crazy about the design work on some of these like the above one simply titled "Oil." Link found on Metafilter.|W|P|114347872623339424|W|P|Those Crazy Russians...|W|P|joshfialkov@gmail.com
Pictures of my booty from the LA Paperback Show.|W|P|114344176465215325|W|P|Los Angeles Paperback Show 2006|W|P|joshfialkov@gmail.com
032506_10051.jpg
Originally uploaded by Joshua Hale Fialkov.
|W|P|114331013433309963|W|P|032506_10051.jpg|W|P|joshfialkov@gmail.com
032406_19391.jpg
Originally uploaded by Joshua Hale Fialkov.
|W|P|114325819270944174|W|P|Dina.|W|P|joshfialkov@gmail.com
|W|P|114316270235120066|W|P|Fucking Hell|W|P|joshfialkov@gmail.com
032206_17211.jpg
Originally uploaded by Joshua Hale Fialkov.
|W|P|114307707961873806|W|P|Got a new cellphone...|W|P|joshfialkov@gmail.com
Jason|W|P|I'm glad I didn't go this year, SD is going to be my only West Coast show from now on and only as an exhibitor if there're enough books to promote. Unknown|W|P|You and I both know very well how easy it is to take the metro purple--or is it orange...or fuschia..or goldenrod--I don't fucking know--line to the convention center. And if I ate meat, those vendors would be the shit.
Have you been reading the World's End blog? There's a bunch of new stuff up from last week, including the above.
Check it out.|W|P|114226786032075910|W|P|Oooh, Mutants on Hoverbikes!|W|P|joshfialkov@gmail.com
How fucking cool is this?
In case you guys don't know, I'm positively obsessed with pulp crime novels. I'm reading about one or two a week (and for dirt ass cheap thank to the Hard Case Crime Book Club.)
So, anyways, I know where I'll be the weekend of the 26th.
Oh, and if you're looking for kickass old paperbacks, I'd also highly recommend: The Bookhouse, I literally crapped my pants when I went in.
My pants. Not the store. The stores INCREDIBLE.
It was messy.|W|P|114223167299279439|W|P|The Los Angeles Vintage Paperback Collector's Show|W|P|joshfialkov@gmail.com
In that issue there, there's a beautiful Elk's Run Review that says things like the following:
"Easiest described as Stephen King's The Body (aka Stand by Me) crossed with M. Night Shyamlan's The Village, but comic's best kept secret is actually a great deal more."and
"A far from happy ending is exactly the reason we're reading why we're reading this excellent book in the first place."So, go support the best horror mag on the stands, cause they've supported the best indie comic on the stands. It all works out karmically.|W|P|114204818459409626|W|P|Rue Morgue's Got Elk's Run Review Fever|W|P|joshfialkov@gmail.com
Fialkov|W|P|Hey Dan,There's a bunch going on, nothing set in stone yet, but worry not, y'all be the first to know.
j.
So, after the disappointment of Ultraviolet, we went into Night Watch.
The movie's a bit of a head scratcher. I'm steeped in Russian tradition (in part thanks to immigrant parents, a born-in-Russia-but -not-a-mail-order-bride girlfriend, and an obsession with Chekov, Solzhenitsyn, and Tolstoy) so a lot of the weird incoherent stuff was reminiscent enough of things I've heard here and there that I let them slide. Gary, who I saw it with, thought it was all just incoherent bullshit. I'm actually kind of sorry I didn't take Dina, because I get the feeling it would've made at least slightly more sense to her than it did to either of us.
So, bizarre mythos aside, the movie's pretty fun (if over long), has a bit of an uneven tone (which I'm just attributing to it's ethnic origins, I mean... what other nationality has produced books with titles like Cancer Ward, about the camarederie of forgotten about cancer patients telling racist jokes and croaking one by one?), and visually stunning (although some of the more simple stuff is lacking, the effects are positively remarkable.)
So, sort of a hesitant recommendation. My money still sits on 16 Blocks as the best movie thus far of 2006. Hollywood, it's time to prove me wrong.|W|P|114155149103273723|W|P|Night Watch|W|P|joshfialkov@gmail.com
I LOVE me some bad sci-fi movies, but holy fuckballs is this the worst thing I've ever seen. We actually walked out 20 minutes in. Obviously you expect the acting and the plot to be heinous, but the effects... it looks like a PC game from 1992.
It's just... wow.
I never walk out of movies, but Ultraviolet has joined that exclusive club.|W|P|114155115258792695|W|P|Ultraviolet|W|P|joshfialkov@gmail.com
Probably the most fun I've had watching a modern action movie in... shit I don't know how long. Richard Donner directs the film into a frenzy of 70's era stunts and plot twists, which give the movie a feeling closer to 3 Days of The Condor than Die Hard. Bruce Willis is pretty great as an over-the-hill can barely stand up beer gutted shit bag of a hero, and Mos Def teeters on being annoying, but manages to stay endearing.
Look. It's not Shakespeare, or shit, even Scorsese but it's a breath of fresh air and worth the money.|W|P|114149559496633487|W|P|16 Blocks|W|P|joshfialkov@gmail.com"VROOM’S 'WTF?' AWARD FOR MOST INSANE PLOT POINTS PER ISSUE ELK'S RUN from Speakeasy Press. "Thanks Vroom & Co!|W|P|114140307279668313|W|P|And one more Best o' 2005 List...|W|P|joshfialkov@gmail.com
For a while now I've been obsessed with sci-fi that's not sci-fi. It probably started in earnest with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but there's also bits of what Chuck Palahniuk does, and even some of the grittier pulp noir writers that teeters cleverly on the edge. So, when someone brought up the concept of The Time Traveller's Wife to me, I was intrigued.
Course, I can't afford rent, so buying a trade paperback by some author I'd never heard of was out of the question. There's a reason I read nothing but old pulp books... I can find them used for around $2 a pop. Anyways, I stumbled upon the book at a used shop out in Northridge the other day, and just finished reading it.
Here's the dust jacket text to save me some time talking about it.
Often lighthearted, thoroughly original, and ultimately profoundly moving, Audrey Niffenegger's first novel tells the story of two people destined to be together: Clare, a perfectly normal woman, and Henry, a time-traveler.That's actually not from the publisher, but from Barnes & Noble's site. The execution is a bit less... gaudy as the overview makes it sound. Here's the thing. I love Chuck Palahniuk. He's a genius. His word choices are flawless, his conceptual and character work is brilliant, but, in terms of it being an involving, emotional read, that's just not there. His books are about shitheads and ego-maniacs (although Diary is a notable, and excellent exception to that) and although I find myself almost always blown away, there's rarely a true emotional connection to the characters. So, why am I talking about Chuck? Audrey Niffenegger has crafted something remarkably similar to a Palahniuk novel, with two notable differences. One: Her word choices aren't quite as strong, and Two: I haven't been so moved by a book in a long time. There's this interesting conundrum that the book explores, and something that's oft forgotten in time travel stuff. The end game is a forgone conclusion. It's the why's and wherefore's that make the thing work. Niffenegger seamlessly layers in plot points in a remarkable non-linear fashion that while some of the tension goes away, it tends to give all of the build up scenes much more weight. You know a character will die, and, in some cases, when, but, it gives this wonderful sense of dread and resentment. Plus, I got to sob like a schoolgirl while reading it, which despite loosing my already limited "Manly Points" with Dina, makes the book considerably more cathartic and satisfying than just about everything else I've read in a long while. Click Here To Buy the Book on B&N, Cause Amazon didn't have a linkable version of the cover...|W|P|114129028303209304|W|P|The Time Traveller's Wife|W|P|joshfialkov@gmail.comAccording to the unique rules that Niffenegger creates, Henry travels unexpectedly and mostly to his own past, often when he is "all stressed out and [has] lost his grip on now." As Henry explains when he first meets Clare: "…the person you know doesn't exist yet. Stick with me, and sooner or later he's bound to appear. That's the best I can do." And while it's true that Henry travels to different moments in time, he also travels from them as well. He frequently gets lost in time and doesn't know "when" he is.
But the real story of the book is the lifelong love Clare and Henry share as they try to make the most of the times they have together -- the times when Henry is not traveling.
Subtle but powerful, The Time Traveler's Wife is a book whose importance becomes more evident with each turn of the page, provoking readers to ask themselves if they've made the most of the moments of their lives --moments so fleeting, they could be time travelers themselves. (Fall 2003 Selection)
Picture022.jpg
Originally uploaded by Joshua Hale Fialkov.
|W|P|114125833309634360|W|P|Picture022.jpg|W|P|joshfialkov@gmail.com