Funny Face, Funny Books
I’m not going to work more often than I can help it, so my exposure to my traditional Audrey Hepburn calendar is considerably less than daily. I’ve purchased a number of these calendars over the years — although this is the first year I’ve noticed that the name Audrey Hepburn is followed by a ™ symbol… has the estate of the late Ms. Hepburn really trademarked her likeness in this age of mass copyright infringement? — and enjoy the mild cheesiness of the almost total absence of cheesecake in the images.
I watch for repetition of images over the years, and notice that certain promotional headshots tend to make frequent reappearances. This is a pity. With appearances in twenty-nine films, surely Audrey Hepburn™ LLC must be able to license stills from her films or photos from her magazine appearances. I mean, it’s probably not possible to reproduce stuff by, say, Philippe Halsman, but there’s only some many years that I can stare for a month at that particular black and white coquette by Bud Fraker from 1953. The recent “Remembering Audrey” by Bob Willoughby for Life magazine had a number of photos that were new to me, so we shouldn’t be hitting the end of variety just yet.
So I am particularly pleased to submit the following for consideration: Audrey reading a reprint album of Captain America with her son. Audrey and Comics: two great obsessionsinterests in my life, together in one grainy image. Now that’s something I’d like to see for a month in some future wall-hanging. May I suggest November 2009?
BRIEFLY: Age of Solitude
I wrote, some while ago, about the mild frisson of joy and surreality that came from being mistaken for a high school student whilst in grad school.
All of which leads me to ask: why is it that I’m carded one out of every five times I buy some gourmet microbrew root beer, but never, ever, not once when I buy pure vanilla extract (35% alcohol)?
SKETCH: An Explanation
I now have over a year of draft posts saved on various places around my computer. Folders of browser tabs and bookmarks, evocative images on my desktop, and anecdotes from events now well past their shelf date of relevance.
I wasn’t entirely certain what to do with this digital scrapbook, and considered a simple purge, a mass deletion. Because if I looked upon these stray thoughts and thought, “Was this really worth sharing?” then what would other people think? But I was inspired by the twin sources of Nalyn and OAA, the former who encouraged me to embrace my quikjot origins of electronic communication, without needing to expound at length or significance; and the latter of whom has seriously updated her blogging by at least 600% since she threw her lot in with the shortform communication style of Tumblr.
I don’t like the lack of comment ability on Tumblr, or else I’d just divest myself of these stray scrips and scraps there, but that’s the model I’ll be working with. So if you see a post — particularly a post that suddenly appears with an old date on it — tagged or prefixed with “Sketch”, then you know it’s part of my clearinghouse, and it may just sit there, context- and commentary-free. Tell me if you like them, and I may also find myself updating this blog more than my typical twice a month.
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