Sunday, April 27, 2008
COMICS FOR THE PEOPLE


Yellow overalls? Am I back in college? No I'm at the Portland "Stumptown" Comics Fest!

I wish they wouldn't call Portland "Stumptown". It's not very dignified.

Anyway, they had this huge comic book thing here this week. Apparently Portland is full of comics people.

So I went and walked around and had my usual crisis of: oh I have to write graphic novels now, books are so two centuries ago. But of course I don't. And most of the graphic novels look better than they are. It's just like book publishing. And books actually sell better anyway. So I am okay.

So then I just walk around and enjoy watching this new medium flower. And all the cute kids. With their yellow overalls.




Here is my friend Laural who also had a table at the Comics Fest. Thank god for Laural, she keeps me updated on what is going on in the comics/zine/graphic novel world. And not only that she keeps me clued in on the Library world which is of course a YA writer's best friend.

And thank god for the Libraries in Portland! They are excellent and full of nice people. I could not survive here without them. This really is a reading town. (It's the weather I suspect, and the kind of people who are attracted to it.)




Here's some "tabling" in progress. It was comics week here in Portland The mayor even declared it so, with an official proclamation. I really enjoyed poking around in it all. All the cute kids. All the cute comics. And some of it not cute at all, but very dark and weird and interesting.

I went and saw Mike Richardson, the guy who started Dark Horse Comics speak. What an interesting guy he was! I love entrepeneurs. (or however you spell it). He said his friends had an intervention when he decided to open a comic book store. They literally took him out, (minus wives) and told him not to destroy his bright future by doing something insane like opening a comic book store. BUT HE LOVED COMICS. So he did it anyway.

The rest of his story was equally fun and interesting. He went from retail to publishing comics. His first big author was Frank Miller. The way he got him was he basically tossed the total budget for his company across the table and said: "Frank, you tell us how much you should get."

He had all sorts of interesting ideas about how to run an artistic business. "Liquid goal setting," he called his basic strategy. Where you flow around the obstacles and don't try to conquer them.

I bet Mike Richardson gets paid big bucks to talk to corporations and other groups about this stuff. He is an honest to god American success story. But here he was talking to a room full of scraggly cartoonists for free at the Comics Fest.

The last question he got asked was how did he keep his company fresh and innovative over the years and he said: "I just keep reinventing my childhood."


Monday, April 14, 2008
MONTALDO


My book PARANOID PARK won an Italian Literary Film prize, the Grizane Award. So I got to go there for a couple days and eat a lot of awesome food.

This is Giuliano Montaldo, who also won a Grinzane Prize. He is a legendary Italian director not as well known in America but very beloved in Italy. He told awesome jokes, and sensing my slight awkwardness was always kidding around with me and doing nice things to keep me at ease.

Which reminds me, when I was in Chicago working with the high school kids, I was asked in almost every class I talked to: HOW MUCH MONEY DO YOU MAKE?

I would say, "Not that much but I have an interesting life and that's what I care about." But they'd keep after me and I'd get a little defensive. And I'd tell them that I get to wake up whenever I want and I don't have to drive to work. I'd tell them that I've met a lot of interesting people, and a couple times--I hate to admit--I even resorted to a little name-dropping.

I'm not sure I convinced any of them, especially this one funny freshman kid, whose name escapes me now. He really hounded me, he was like, "You got a jet?"

No, funny freshman kid, I don't have a jet. But I hang out with Montaldo. What have you got?




This was my favorite of the shockingly beautiful actresses. I didn't talk to any of them really. They didn't speak English too well and they were . . . well, famous and shockingly beautiful.

I did talk to this woman though. I asked her about this sixties-ish military coat she was wearing and said something about the Strokes. She said something back, and that was where the interpreter kicked in. My interpreter sort of took over and did just like she did in the interviews, making me sound better than I was, explaining what I meant, etc. I found it very helpful and later thought about writing a book like that: A foreign exchange student who can only talk to girls using an interpreter.

I know, not my best idea.



GRINZANE FILM FESTIVAL


There were all these shockingly beautiful actresses wandering around the Film Festival, and you'd kind of get used to them after awhile. And you'd gradually get used to the incredible clothes and how good looking every one was and how funny and animated the older people were and then you got used to how good the food was and the coffee and the conversation and basically, you were ruined forever.



Stresa, ITALIA


Oh yeah, and Italy is like, duh, the most beautiful place on the face of the earth.



Simona, Interpreter


So then I went to Italy to accept this prize for my book PARANOID PARK. "Best book made into a movie", basically.

This was my awesome interpreter Simona. I didn't know I was going to have my own interpreter and when I first saw her I thought, "oh crap, she's too cute, I will be too shy to talk to her." But we had to work together every second of every day so I soon got over that. And then we became close on an interesting professional level (she kicked ass Interpreting, several of the journalists remarked on it). So that was fun and something new for me who never has to work directly with other people on a day to day basis.

The one sad part was after being together so much, when I had to go to the airport at the end by myself I felt terribly alone. And I couldn't talk to anyone!



Ridgewood High


Here I am at Ridgewood High school. This photo taken by Jennette Gonzalez or Penny Blubaugh. They were the nice librarians who brought me in. It was a very interesting experience to deal with so many high school kids. I hope I said stuff they found interesting. We seemed to have very lively conversations. The funnest part for me though, was just seeing them, being around them, chatting with people in the lounges between classes. One girl gave me the lowdown on the interpersonal politics of BAND. this is an area I want to explore in a book someday. Like write a real potboiler full of steamy intrigue and set it all in the band. I didn't know if this was even in the realm of possibility but a girl named Kelly told me that that wasn't so far from the truth.



MISSING THE WTC


Damen Stop in Wicker Park. All these 20-something kids would be standing there at 7am, waiting in the freezing cold for the train. It reminded me of having day jobs when I was younger and living in some terrible neighborhood (Like South Williamsburg in 1988) and waiting for the train and being able to see the big city in the distance and thinking: "well some day I'll live there and not be standing here freezing my ass off!"

Also I love how the neighborhoods outside Chicago are all Something Park. Sounds cool. Especially Wicker Park.

And what is up with the subway stops outside? It's freakin' FREEZING in chicago. They are tough there.

Oh and one last thing, all the time I was riding the Chicago subway (The CTA) I was thinking of the Wilco song "Far Far Away" where he sings:

I long to hold you
In my arms and sway
Kissing, riding
On the CTA

Or something like that. Wilco fans know which one I mean.