Friday, June 14, 2019

June 22: Meet the Authors: Liz & Lucy Lareau

Meet the Authors: Liz & Lucy Lareau

  • Saturday, June 22, 2019
  • 2:00 PM 3:00 PM
  • Hooray for Books

  • Mon-Sat 10am - 8pm
    Sun 10am - 6pm

    1555 King St.
    Alexandria, VA 22314
    Phone: (703) 548-4092
    Email: info@hooray4books.com

lizlucy.jpgCelebrate the beginning of summer break with Liz & Lucy Lareau! This mother and daughter duo bring their latest Geeky F@b 5 graphic novel to the bookstore, Mystery of the Missing Monarchs. Their STEM-rich stories with a diverse cast of characters will inspire and entertain tweens.

Recommended for readers ages 7 and up.

June 28: Animezing!: AKIRA



Enjoy a FREE Japanese ANIME film at the JICC!
Enjoy a FREE Japanese ANIME film at the JICC!
JICC Logo
Animezing!:
AKIRA
"A fever-dream masterpiece." - Village Voice
"A towering achievement of imagination." - Time Out
"A phenomenal work of animation." - New York Times
"[A] bold landmark film that just refuses to become dated." - The Guardian
The countdown to the 2020 Olympics is on
but Neo-Tokyo is about to explode!
Clandestine army activities threaten the war torn city of Neo-Tokyo when a mysterious being with powerful psychic abilities escapes his prison and inadvertently draws a violent motorcycle gang into a heinous web of experimentation. As a result, a biker with a twisted mind embarks on a path of war, seeking revenge against a society what once called him weak.
In Japanese with English subtitles | Rated R | 1988 | 124 min | Directed by Katsuhiro Otomo
Registration required
Image: © 1988 MASHROOM/ AKIRA COMMITTEE

Please note this film contains scenes of graphic violence. It is not suitable for children.

You are invited to
Friday, June 28th, 2019
from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM (EDT)
Japan Information & Culture Center, Embassy of Japan
1150 18th Street Northwest
Suite 100
Washington DC 20036 US
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER
This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.
In the event of a cancellation, please contact us at jicc@ws.mofa.go.jp.

Program begins at 6:30PM.
Doors open 30 minutes before the program. No admittance after 7:00PM or once seating is full.

Registered guests will be seated on a first come, first served basis. Please note that seating is limited and registration does not guarantee a seat.

The JICC reserves the right to use any photograph/video taken at any event sponsored by JICC without the expressed written permission of those included within the photograph/video.
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1150 18th Street NW, Suite 100 | Washington, D.C. 20036-3838
TEL: 202-238-6900 | FAX: 202-822-6524 |
jicc@ws.mofa.go.jp
© 1981-2019 Japan Information & Culture Center, Embassy of Japan








Washington's Jake Tapper on NY Times lack of cartoons

CNN's Jake Tapper: New York Times Decision to Scrap Cartoons 'One More Nail in Coffin of Struggling Art Form'

Tapper tells The Daily Beast that the Times should be a leader for editorial cartooning, while James Bennet, editorial page editor, says the decision is 'right for our readers.'

July 12-14: Blerdcon in Crystal City

Here's your basic placeholder announcement -

Jul 12-14, 2019 at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City in Virginia

Thursday, June 13, 2019

June 22: Rob Rogers at the Newseum

'Enemy of the People: A Cartoonist's Journey'

When:
June 22, 2019 @ 2:30 pm
Where:
Knight TV Studio
555 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W.
Washington DC 20001
Cost:
Included with Newseum admission.
'Enemy of the People: A Cartoonist's Journey' @ Knight TV Studio

Editorial cartoonist Rob Rogers talks about his new book, "Enemy of the People: A Cartoonist's Journey," which chronicles his firing from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette after the paper's editorial director refused to publish several of his cartoons critical of President Trump.

Rogers had been editorial cartoonist for the newspaper for more than 25 years and was fired in June 2018 after he had 18 cartoons or cartoon ideas spiked earlier in the year by Post-Gazette management.

"Enemy of the People" also features highlights of Rogers' political cartoons over the last three years, his coverage of past presidents, a tutorial on creating editorial cartoons and two long-form comics. The book also includes brief essays contributed by notable cartoonists and journalists championing the First Amendment and lauding the craft of editorial cartooning.

A book signing will follow the program.

If you are a Newseum member and would like to RSVP for this program, please email membership@newseum.org. Become a Newseum member and receive free admission and priority seating at this program and others.

Priority seating is subject to availability.

Monday, June 10, 2019

Flugennock's Latest'n'Greatest: "A Snake in the Grass"

Another marijuana cartoon from DC's anarchist cartoonist Mike Flugennock:

"Snake In The Grass"
http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=2741

Liberty Cap writes on Twitter on 06.09.19:
"Home grow cannabis is the most important economic factor put upon any 
Government regulating cannabis and the industry to keep em honest and 
on their toes. Competition promotes excellence and reduces prices, 
that the American way. Limited access to market is capitalism gone 
wrong."

https://twitter.com/LibertyCap420/status/1137716881618378753

DCMJ.org weighs in on DC Mayor Bowser's "Safe Cannabis Act" regarding 
locally-grown cannabis:
"...DCMJ wants expert growers to be able to sell their excess cannabis 
at farmer's markets in the District of Columbia. By providing an 
outlet for locally grown cannabis, the DC government can ensure more 
dollars are circulated locally and collect sales tax. Moreover, many 
growers do not have the capital to invest in a large-scale growing 
facility, but can provide the marketplace with unique varieties of 
cannabis. Some strains of cannabis are not profitable for large-scale 
cultivation, but small home growers can fill the niche if they are 
given the opportunity to sell their extra cannabis. There is a fine 
line between legal sales and illegal sales and we believe it primarily 
involves volume of sales. No one cares if a gardener in DC sells their 
extra tomatoes to their next-door neighbor, and we believe the same 
case should be made for cannabis. However, if an adult wants to sell 
in an established marketplace, we believe they should obtain a 
"micro-cultivators license" to ensure they follow the rules. With this 
license, the grower would be permitted to transport more cannabis than 
regular citizens would be permitted to possess outside of their 
homes..."



The current initial draft of the Safe Cannabis Act contains 
constraints on the sharing of cannabis and has no provisions for the 
legal sale of home-grown cannabis; much of this is due to the 
influence of large-scale operations who want to corner the market for 
adult-use and medical cannabis.

Most of the gray-market "pop-ups" which became popular in the wake of 
Initiative 71 – many of which were busted at some point – aren't 
selling DC-grown bud, but product often smuggled in from California 
and Oregon, with no way of telling how it was grown, what types of 
fertilizers were used, whether or not chemical pesticides were used, 
etc. Giving DC local home growers a "Fair Shot" would go a long way 
toward eliminating this issue, and keep all that money in DC.

Keep in mind that passage of the Safe Cannabis Act depends on the 
passage of the DC budget bill without the notorious Harris Rider, 
which prevented DC from taxing and regulating the legal sale of 
cannabis. The Rider was written out of the bill thanks to the efforts 
of DC Congressional Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton; the bill passed out of 
the House Oversight Committee, but still needs to get through the 
Senate and be signed by Mr. T.

Local home-grown cannabis is essential to countering the threat of big 
money and "Big Weed". The Plant belongs to the People.


Friday, June 07, 2019

Meet a Local Cartoonist: A Chat with Sarah Boxer

Boxer and Powder Wash
by Mike Rhode

Earlier this year, Sarah Boxer interviewed Jaime Hernandez at Politics and Prose bookstore. Until that evening, I had no idea that she lived in Washington (as she's a regular writer for New York-based publications), let alone that she was a cartoonist. We chatted briefly, and she's answered our usual questions -- extremely well as you'd expect from a professional essayist.

What type of comic work or cartooning do you do?

I do long-form comics (books). Since I don't like drawing human beings, all my comics have animals rather than humans in them. And most of them play as much with language and ideas as with line. In fact some of my comics, particularly my psycho-comics, Mother May I? and In the Floyd Archives, both have footnotes. And I've recently finished Hamlet: Prince of Pigs, a comic-books version of Hamlet; it's full of visual puns, beginning with the fact that Ham-let is a little ham, a pig!

Tomorrow, June 8, is the publication date for Mother May I?: A Post-Floydian Folly and the date for the republication of In the Floyd Archives: A Psycho-Bestiary. I'll be at Politics and Prose on July 13 at 1 pm.

How do you do it? Traditional pen and ink, computer or a combination?

I've worked mostly in pen or pencil in smallish (8x5) Strathmore notebooks. But recently the difficulty and expense of transferring paper to a publishable digital form makes me think I need to give up pen and paper. This upsets my son, who is also a cartoonist and insists that paper and pencil are best. But I find drawing on a tablet relaxing. It's easy to erase and fix small details and work on nuances of facial expression. The only snag was once losing all of my saved drawings on a Samsung Tablet. I have since switched tablets.

When (within a decade is fine) and where were you born?

I was raised in the 1960s and 1970s in Colorado and published my first comic (a single panel of an elf in a snowstorm) at age 11 in my local newspaper.

Why are you in Washington now?  What neighborhood or area do you live in?

I moved from New York to Washington eleven years ago with my husband and son, because my husband, Harry Cooper, got a job as the curator of Modern Art at the National Gallery. We now live in Cleveland Park, not far from the zoo, so I have lots of live models.

What is your training and/or education in cartooning?

I was raised on Peanuts and went to college in Krazy Kat. Seriously, though, I don't have a lot of formal training in cartooning. I remember taking only one cartooning class, at Parsons. (R.O. Blechman came to speak to us.) But I've done a lot of life drawing (at the Art Students League, Parsons, the New York Academy of Art).  By far, the most absorbing drawing instruction I ever had was the Drawing Marathon at the Studio School. (I wrote up my experience in The New York Times.) I remember that one of the huge drawings I made over a week's time had a little cartoonish figure up on a ladder and Graham Nickson, the teacher who led the crits, asked, pointedly, "What happened here?"

Mother May I? page
Who are your influences?

I wouldn't call them influences, but the cartoonists I admired most as a kid were Charles Schulz, William Steig, Saul Steinberg, R.O. Blechman, JJ Sempé, and George Herriman. Ach, I see they're all men! I wish I could change history, but I can't.

If you could, what in your career would you do-over or change?

I guess I'd be born a boy. 

What work are you best-known for?

If anyone knows me for my comics, it's got to be for my first psycho-comic, In the Floyd Archives: A Psycho-Bestiary, based on Freud's case histories, which Pantheon published in 2001. (It's now being republished.) But it's likelier that people know me for my writing. I was at The New York Times for 16 years. There I was a photography critic, book review editor, and arts reporter. And since all my editors at the Times knew I especially loved comics, I got to write the obituaries for Saul Steinberg and Charles Schulz. I also got to interview Art Spiegelman when the second volume of Maus came out. And I got to sit in William Steig's orgone box

As a freelance writer, I still often write about comics. Last year I wrote an essay for The Atlantic about why it's so hard for cartoonists to lampoon Trump, and this October my Atlantic essay "The Exemplary Narcissism of Snoopy" will appear in the book The Peanuts Papers. I have also written quite a lot about comics for The New York Review of Books. My first essay there was on Krazy Kat and my most recent piece there was a review of Jason Lutes's epic, Berlin.

What work are you most proud of?

I'm most proud of my new psycho-comic Mother May I? I like that it's loose and rigorous at the same time. And I am tickled beyond belief that both Alison Bechdel and Jonathan Lethem are fans of it! I'm also proud that some selections from my first tragic-comic Hamlet: Prince of Pigs were published by the NYR Daily.

What would you like to do or work on in the future?

I'm looking forward to diving into drawing my next Shakespearean tragic-comic Anchovius Caesar: The Decomposition of a Romaine Salad, in which Julius Caesar is an anchovy and all the action takes place underwater.

What do you do when you're in a rut or have writer's block?

I write when I have drawer's block; and I draw when I have writer's block.

What do you think will be the future of your field? 
Mother May I? page

I think the future of comics is online. The experience of trying to get a nice clean copy of Mother May I? set for publication made me realize that I need a very good tablet with a pen, so I don't ever have to go through the copy process again. That's how I composed Hamlet: Prince of Pigs. I find using a tablet very liberating. It's easier to change little expressions on the faces of my characters. It's nice not to have a lap full of eraser dust. And in the end, it's much easier to get my comic to a publisher or printer!

What local cons do you attend? The Small Press Expo, or others? Any comments about attending them?

I go every year to the Small Press Expo with my (now 15-year-old) son, Julius Boxer-Cooper, who's also a cartoonist, and this year I am sharing an exhibitor's table (or rather a half-table) with him. In school he hands out zines -- or, as he calls them, cackets (short for comics-packets) to his classmates. Here are his words of wisdom for would-be cartoonists:  "If you're going to be a 'zine cartoonist, then you're going to have to get used to seeing your comics torn, crumpled, thrown on the ground, thrown in the recycling, or thrown in the trash with strawberry or raspberry Gogurt that's a few weeks old dumped over them." I admire his toughness! And his comics! 

For our debut at SPX, Julius and I are working on our first collaboration -- a comic called Corgi Morgue, which is about a corgi (that's a dog) and his wife (also a dog) who run a morgue for animals and also serve Indian food, particularly coorgi murgh, to their grieving clients.

Boxer & Jaime Herandez
What's your favorite thing about DC?

I love that the museums, the zoos, and many of the musical performances are free. I'm proud of the protests against our horrible president. I also love the racial openness and relative harmony of DC. They are rarities in this country.

Least favorite?

I despise our very orange very nasty President in the very very white White House.

What monument or museum do you like to take visitors to?

I love taking people to the East Wing of the National Gallery, especially the rooms devoted to Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko.

How about a favorite local restaurant?

I'd rather eat in New York. 

Do you have a website or blog?

I wrote a book about blogging and how I'd never do it, Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wild Web. So now I feel I have an obligation never to blog. But I do have a website. It's sarahboxer.weebly.com . 

(updated 6/8/19 with Mr. Cooper's name and correcting the SPX quote)

The Post reviews Secret Life of Pets 2

'The Secret Life of Pets 2': Not a good dog, but an okay one [in print as This animated sequel isn't a dog, but it does have some fleas]

Washington Post June 7 2019, p. Weekend 23

Washington reviews of the last X-Men movie

Dark Phoenix is the Disappointing End of an X-Men Era [in print as Ashes to Ashes].

The franchise tries the Dark Phoenix Saga once again.
Washington City Paper June 7, 2019 p. 19

With 'Dark Phoenix,' the X-Men saga goes out with a whimper, not a bang [in print as X-Men's probable swan song is a dirge]

Washington Post June 7 2019, p. Weekend 21.
online at https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/movies/with-dark-phoenix-the-x-men-saga-goes-out-with-a-whimper-not-a-bang/2019/06/04/2fa7ad44-848b-11e9-933d-7501070ee669_story.html 

'Dark Phoenix' Channels The Cosmic Power Of The Comics, Avoids Going Down In Flames 

 

NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour

 

'Dark Phoenix' Review: X-Women Power? Nah

The new installment in the long-running franchise has blowouts and Jessica Chastain channeling Tilda Swinton (so it could be worse).
A version of this article appears in print on June 7, 2019, on Page C6 of the New York edition with the headline: Superhero Tale With Feminist Spin, Till Momentum Fails

Watch Sophie Turner and Michael Fassbender Battle in 'Dark Phoenix'

The writer Simon Kinberg narrates a sequence from his directing debut in the X-Men franchise.
  • June 7, 2019