Watched a documentary on PBS tonight, "Tintin & I", a biography of Tintin's creator Herge. I was hooked, m ostly because I grew up on Tintin. As a kid visiting France, I started collecting Tintin and Asterisk comics (one of the regrets of my still-young and short existence is my foolishly selling off my collection of Asterisk + Tintin comics a couple of years ago), and they were how I amused myself when the rain outside made walking about and seeing the cities an unattractive option (and frankly, despite what the American media shows you, it is rarely sunny and clear in gay Paree, it usually downpours like a burst dam). Seeing the movie brought up a lot of memories about those books, and I've just ordered a couple off Amazon, hopefully I'll be able to restore my French comic collection to its former glories. Talk about formative inspirations: as much as I'll bullshit with people and say that the reason I want to write is because of people like Philip K Dick and Borges and Lovecraft and Ray Chandler and Will Gibson, the real reason I want to write, what inspired me to give up my dreams of being a fossil hunter, was those old French comics. I loved the exotic settings of Tintin comics, the reoccuring characters, the occasional supernatural flourishes (like in Seven Crystal Balls + The Shooting Star), the clever and unforgettable images, Captain Haddock's nonsensical alliterative curses ("Sasquatch! Sycophant! Salamanders!")... granted, there was also some VERY un-PC elements that cropped up in Tintin (Tintin In The Congo is as bad, if not worse, as Song Of The South). It was also a bit unnerving discovering that at one point in his life, Herge was a fan of Fascism (in particular Mussolini). Still doesn't lower my opinion of his books (even though I find it interesting that most of my favorite books, the ones leaning more on adventuring and treasure hunting than shadowy political conspiracies, were written while he was a newspaper cartoonist in Nazi-occupied Belgium). They also showed a portrait of Herge painted by Warhol, which I totally want a print of it. That shit is more awesome than a chocolate-covered limo filled with cash.
Other news:
-Bought a new bookcase from IKEA at prices a pirate would appreciate ($60 for a $150 case), and now all my books are nice and presentable in the living room of my apartment. The old case, which looked more like a lost masterwork of Cubist-inspired furniture than a place to store books, has found a new home in the complex's dumpster (perhaps fate will be kind to and it will be discovered by a dumpster-diving Surrealist art dealer, and it will one day take its rightful place as the centerpiece of a Surreal Armoire exhibition in Copenhagen).
-Finished Chuck Palanuik's "Survivor", which was better than "Choke" but not quite up to par with "Lullaby" (I still think its the best thing he's written; hell, I liked Fight Club, but I still prefer the movie to the book, especially with the film's ending). On my off-day today, inbetween writing and getting my ass-kicked trying to play God mode on God Of War, I picked up and finished my first Elmore Leonard book, "Pagan Babies". The verdict: solid. As crime novels go, it doesn't compare to anything that James Ellroy writes (still in my opinion the modern master of all things noir), but Leonard does have a supernatural talent for writing great dialogue. I'll read some of his other books that I picked up at work later on, after I finish Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend" (which I've put off reading for long enough).
-New music downloads! Right now, I'm digging on Serena Maneesh, This Heat, The Boy Least Likely To, Blood Brothers, Sex Gang Children, Asobi Seksu, and I've been playing The Knife's "Heartbeats" over and over again the last couple of days. Much like The Pharcyde's "Soul Flower (Remix)", its a song that has wormed its brain like a piece of shrapnel, and I just can't get enough of it.
-Got work early tomorrow, so now I'm going to crash.