Nina Paley

Courage

“Don’t be embarrassed. Especially if you write humor….We all have our kinks (I’ve got all their albums!), our weirdness, our neurosis and our strange ideas–God knows you could fill a city with mine–but most people are afraid to admit to them for fear of being laughed at. Well, you’re writing humor, so that’s the point?….My whole life I’ve hated conformity and everybody trying to act like everybody else. You know what? Act and write like who you are. Don’t be ashamed of yourself. Your wierdness is what makes you special. Share it. Embrace it. If someone doesn’t like it or is offended by it, then fuck them. Why would you want to be friends with a flat out asshole like that anyway?”

—Marty Wombacher

I didn’t even have to buy him lunch!

Fellow animator Lee Rubenstein came by last week with a little video camera, and now here I am on Youtube. The piece above is almost 8 minutes long (that’s close to infinity in animator time) so Lee also made a short (01:40) version for today’s on-the-go interweb entertainment audience:

Thanks, Lee!

Links for Lunch

A new feature in which I recommend the work and websites of people who buy me lunch. Today’s entry: Gordon Fitch!

Gordon Fitch is a friend to artists. He’s a friend to me, a friend to my friend Signe, and a friend to all the other artsists whose work he put on the interwebs long before everyone and their cow had their own web site. Veterans of Usenet may know Gordon from his devastatingly witty and well-thought rants and arguments. I’m still waiting for him to collect a “best-of” anthology of his Usenet essays so I can read them all. Also he writes short stories, but I can’t find a public link to them on his website so maybe he wants to keep them secret. Yesterday Gordon bought me lunch twice: first, french fries and onion rings at Coney Island, then watercress dumplings, rice flour rolls with mock ham and coriander, and snow pea leaves dumplings at Vegetarian Dim Sum House in Chinatown. Thanks, Gordon!

Would YOU like to be featured in Links for Lunch? Then buy me lunch. My email address is at the bottom of the middle column, the one with the pictures linking to my movies and cartoons and stuff.

Coney Island Memoirs

My pal Gordon suggested checking out Coney Island before it’s eaten by condo developers. Since I hate crowds, we chose today – a Tuesday – to pay our respects to this historic neighborhood. Click here to see the 144 photos I took.

Links for Lunch

A new feature in which I recommend the work and websites of people who buy me lunch. Today’s entry: Marty Wombacher!

You may know Marty Wombacher as the publisher of Fishwrap, a 1990’s ‘zine about magazines, or as the author of 99 Bottles of Beer Off The Wall, an answer to Zagat guides. Lately Marty’s been on fire with essays and anecdotes which you can read on his myspace blog. Now I happen to hate myspace – it’s ugly, clunky, unweildly and occasionally even confusing design-wise, and the very word “myspace” is an embarrassment. I’m not registered with myspace, I avoid it…but I’ve been reading Marty’s blog almost daily, due to the quality of the writing. If you still can’t bear to visit any myspace page – and I can’t blame you – you can buy Marty’s upcoming, ink-on-paper book, The Boy Who Would Be A Fire Truck. Actually you can buy the book regardless.

Would YOU like to be featured in Links for Lunch? Then buy me lunch. My email address is at the bottom of the middle column, the one with the pictures linking to my movies and cartoons and stuff.

Enemies of the Muse

At a Platform Festival panel on intellectual property, I heard Rick Prelinger – filmmaker, founder of the Prelinger Archive and archive.org – warn animators against “internalizing the permission culture.” I’d never heard it phrased that way, but I can dig it. This morning I’ve been ruminating on this and other “enemies of creativity.” They are:
Continue reading “Enemies of the Muse”