Regifting Robin (a.k.a. Magician Revenge)
You ever been to a dork-party, you know, the kind where everyone gets drunk on Pepsi while re-enacting gory hentai scenes dressed as cuddly animals? If not, then you haven’t lived, sister.
Anyway, if you have(1), then you know there’s always one really annoying guy who does magic at the most inappropriate times. Like when you’re having sex with some semi-conscious girl in the bathroom and an old lady walks in and shouts “Michelle!” and the girl says “Mom!” and you go “damn. . . I’m glad I’m wearing this chicken suit.”(2) And, at that moment, Annoying Guy will bust in with a pack of cards and start doing a trick — no, not one of those cool tricks that involve fire and helicopters, but one of those kill-me-now-before-I-rip-my-testicles-off-to-ease-the-pain tricks that involve lots of counting and mathematics.
Well, as proof the internet contains everything, now all you have to do is pass your laptop over to Annoying Guy (since Mom is probably going through with that threat of calling the police, you should probably shut off the webcam anyway) and show him this: Regifting Robin. I think it’ll buy you enough time to escape.
Notes:
1. TO ALL JOB RECRUITERS AND ADMISSIONS COMMITTEES: I have never been to a party before, ever.
2. TO MY FRIEND ANGELINA: Remember when I told you that chicken suit was just for your wedding? I lied. Sorry.
(From KS at the MA board. Thanks.)
Storytelling
Everyone has a story. Your life, I believe, tells that story through the wake it creates: real estate developers leave buildings, scientists leave papers, writers leave books. Sad is the life that leaves no story.
I was happy to see, then, that the NY Times featured a piece about Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s new autobiography, A Drifting Life. (An 855-page monster!) I never quite understood why people, in general, can’t see the empty narcissism involved when non-writers attempt to write an autobiography. A painter can tell his story, for instance, with a body of work, perhaps even a self-portrait. But why attempt to write about your life if writing is not your strongest skill? It’s as if to say “I will settle for an inferior representation of myself” — the antithesis to a meaningful life’s work. I think Tatsumi understands that: his life’s work was manga; hence, he tells his best through his manga.
A book like “A Drifting Life” is fairly easy to pick apart on a drawing-by-drawing or line-by-line basis. Don’t make that mistake. Its pleasures are cumulative; the book has a rolling, rumbling grandeur. It’s as if someone had taken a Haruki Marakumi novel and drawn, beautifully and comprehensively, in its margins.