I Just Read About That…

 SOUNDTRACK: DIANE CLUCK-Tiny Desk Concert #343 (March 17, 2014).

I know of Diane Cluck only from one song that was played on an NPR show.  I really liked it (it’s called “Sara” and she plays it third here). Cluck has an unusual yet very compelling voice and a guitar style that is simple yet also unusual.

“Trophies” has a kind of Joni Mitchell feel to it–the whole thing feels kind of sixties, although not in the way she sings or plays, there’s just something about it that skews sixties–perhaps its the unusual vocal melodies in the verses?

For “Grandma Say,” Cluck switches to the piano and plays a bouncey but dark song with a fantastic vocal delivery and rather funny (but meaningful) lines.  For “Sara,” Diane puts some bells on her boots.  And when asked where she got them she sheepishly admits the truth.  “Sara” sounds as good live as it did on record–Cluck’s voice is just as compelling in this setting.

I really enjoyed this brief set.  And I was really struck by Cluck’s appearance.  She is quiet tall and extremely thin, and she seems even more stretched out by her tall hair and long neck.  And yet she seems to be putting no effort into anything that she’s doing.  She makes for as mysterious a figure as you might expect from these songs.   I was as captivated by watching her as I was listening to her.

[READ: June 26, 2014] Emiko Superstar

As part of this recent influx of graphic novels, I also scored Emiko Superstar.  This title looked familiar from the Minx sampler that I have, so I was excited to read it.

The story is by Mariko Tamaki and is about a young Japanese-American girl named Emily.  We meet her family right away–her father is a big burly American guy and her mom is a demure Japanese woman.  She is named for her grandmother Emiko, who was a vivacious and fun dancer (although Emily’s mother now frowns on dancing and public fun).  As might be expected, Emily is a quiet, nerdy girl, hanging around with the nerdiest kids in school.

She doesn’t really mind being a nerd until before one summer break, when all the other nerds plan to go to a convention that will help them land great jobs.  Emily doesn’t know when nerd meant being a corporate sellout, and she refuses to go.  Rather, she decides to stay around town and get a crummy job at a coffee shop.  But after one regrettable (or not) incident, she realizes she may be unemployed for the rest of the summer.

Her mother will have none of that, and finds her a job babysitting most days during the summer.   The family she babysits for seem pretty perfect.  The husband is an athletic happy, loud guy who is proud of his life, his wife, his kid and his house.  The wife is much quieter and seems a bit embarrassed by her husband, but otherwise seems reasonably content with her son and her life.  And there’s the baby, who is drooly but pretty easy to deal with.

One day at the mall, Emily sees a wild-looking girl dancing around, making a racket and advertizing a place called The Factory, where the freaks all go.  Before being dragged away by security, she throws flyers out into the crowd and Emily grabs one.  And Emily feels an electric shock in her body at the thought of going to this place.

So she does.  She tells her parents she’s going to the movies, but goes to The Factory instead.  The people there are so over the top, that she can’t even bring herself to enter the building.  But the next week, she dares herself and this time enters The Factory.  The people are all crazy there–dressed crazily, doing crazy things, being loud–and that’s before the show even starts.

The show is a bunch of freaks doing weird things like Toilet Boy, Velveteen the Puppet Girl and the star of the show Poppy (that’s the girl Emily saw in the mall, and she can’t take her eyes off of her).  When the show is over, the only other square-looking person in the place comes to talk to her. His name is Henry and he knows a lot about the factory, even though no one there seems to like him.  He encourages Emily to try out for the Factory show on Wednesday night.

And Emily starts to imagine what she could do that would impress these freaks.  It turns out that there is a scandalous thing happening right under her nose in her babysitting job, and these two world might just have enough overlap to make Emily a superstar. If only for a night.

There’s a surprising amount of plot in this brief story (with subplots that I haven’t even mentioned), but mostly you should read it for the introspective dialogue (I love the way that words are crossed out as Emily changes her details about how she feels) and some interesting insight into the quiet girl in school.

The art is drawn by Steve Rolston who I know from such stories as Pounded and Queen and Country.  I love his style, which is open and expressive and very clean.

EPILOGUE:

Just as I was thinking to myself how much I like the titles in the Minx line up, I looked them up and discovered that not only were they part of a big corporate imprint (DC/Vertigo) but it was shut down after only a  year.  Oh well, I guess that means I can read all of their books pretty easily.

With this book I have now read three of the 12 books.