Eyegiene Revisited

As I gear up this fall to begin tackling the manuscript for Eyegiene, I find more and more artists, more and more writers who are being whispered to by this philandering muse on a daily basis! Here's one from Deviant Art by "Michaelo."

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

London Lecture at the Freud Museum!

One of my globetrotting, incredible students from the London 2005 Summer Program for SDSU recently sent me a video of my lecture there that took place in a unique venue, the one and only Freud Museum. I share it here as it was one of the highpoints of my career--to be allowed to lecture on Freud in his study (shhhhhhhhhhhh: I even sat on the couch when the guard was not looking! órale!).

Craig McCracken, The Powerpuff Girls, Collect Her, and Object/Ephemera Addictions

One of my best graduate students ever, Jonny Holt, stopped by the office today to catch up and chat; since leaving academe, he's enmeshed himself in the world of publishing and bookselling. In any event, Holt reminded me of a presentation he did on comic book and comic artifact collecting. It was a lecture that folded together Holt's readings of Chris Ware and Craig McCracken and focused on the obsessional pathologies that can arise from books, toys, etc. when a passion for collecting goes awry--or, in the eyes of the collectors, when passion turns to obsession. Here's that episode of the The Powerpuff Girls, "Collect Her/Supper Villain"(1999)--a classic!

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Closeted Racism, or, In this Case, Elevatored Racism

M.W. Harper, Tex[t]-Mex Senior correspondent and all around gadfly, takes the time this morning to forward me the following "comedy" video; but as with filmed comedy of Dave Chappelle, who I've covered in the old school version of this blog (Friday | January 19, 2007), this video short hits all kinds of buttons, good, bad, and ugly:

Bill Maher on Xenophobia

The rage for immigrant-bashing (gracias!)in the United States has made my radar sensitive to all kinds of commentary that out Uncle Sam's growing provincialism, the grand Old Flag's tumescent fascism. Hence, this video:

...and, again, I want to thank the Academy....

Tex[t]-Mex is #1 in sales in the category "Hispanic" at Amazon.com as of 8:49 pm, Sunday, August 3, 2008! While the moniker "Hispanic," a monstrous catch-all coined by Nixon's minion-wonks, leaves this Tejano, Chicano, Mexicano, Latino feeling out of sorts, I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Gracias, gracias to the fates and the wonderful people punching their keyboards and emptying their wallets at Amazon.

y tu mamá también | alfonso cuarón's epic meditation on homo-hetero mexican libidinal exploration

I recently re-screened Cuarón's masterpiece when I was finishing up my visiting profe gig at UCR--this flick is well worth the price of admission; this is a cinematic gem and, perhaps, the most honest depiction of Mexican male friendship and psychology in the americas you are likely to rent!