A cockroach, a cat and Tom O'Bedlam

Don Marquis was a journalist in New York, apparently minding his own business, when a cockroach and cat invaded his column in the Evening Sun. The pair had been friends in their former lives - archy the cockroach had been a free verse poet and continued to write in his reincarnated state by jumping on a typewriter, which accounts for the lack of capitals and punctuation. Bohemian alley cat mehitabel reflected on her many misadventures, remaining "always a lady in spite of h dash double l." Marquis featured the characters in a hugely popular series of comics and writings beginning in 1916, eventually illustrated by Krazy Kat creator George Herriman. They continued on through the 20s and 30s, staking out a strange territory between comic verse, serious poetry, commentary and cartoon.

I was looking around for archy and mehitabel on the internet the other day and I found SpokenVerse, a YouTube channel dating back a few years ago. All of the 400+ videos feature a man's voice reading poetry under the name Tom O'Bedlam. The poems are well chosen, the voice extraordinary. But no one has any idea who did it, or why he did it, or why he stopped.

Tom O'Bedlam liked Don Marquis though. He recorded three of his poems: mehitabel dances with boreas, the lesson of the moth and archy's autobiography (below). If you're a writer who just had to pay their tax bill, you'll probably relate.

Mad Lab, Good Grief! and the SF Panorama

I was in the Manchester Digital Laboratory, better known as Mad Lab, for the first time the other day and I urge alert readers to add it to your map of good places in Manchester. It's on Edge Street across from Common. What is it? Well...

It’s a space you can get together with like-minded individuals and work on your urban gardening, crochet, hacking, programming, media arts, filmmaking, animating project without worrying that you’re in a library, coffee shop, pub or other unsuitable venue. We know hackers and craftspeople need work space and may need to get down and dirty – we also know sometimes you need a quiet area to present and show works to your peers. We support both activities. And we hope there will be a rich mix of individuals who’ll get out of the usual zones, the knitter talking to the software architect, the cupcake maker scheming with the laser etching builder. We know some good will come of this.

I think some good things are definitely going to come out of the Mad Lab. Also, a lot of robots. It's available for meetings, meet-ups, and dastardly plotting of all kinds, so keep it in mind.

I was in the Mad Lab to talk about the Manchester aggregator project I posted about recently. Many folks let me know they were interested in hearing more, contributing or being involved. This is an open, blogger-led project that is still evolving and if you want to see what we're talking about, join the conversation or just lurk in a shadowy manner visit the Manchester Aggregator group on the Social Media Manchester Ning page. You can also look out for twitter posts tagged #managg


In other unconventional newspaper news, McSweeney's only went and published their latest edition of the literary mag as a broadsheet, The San Francisco Panorama, that people could buy from Bay Area newstands (which sold out in about ten minutes flat. You can order it from McSweeney's in the states, but I can't seem to find anywhere selling McSweeney's no. 33 in the UK. You listening, Santa?) In addition to championing a beleagured format the paper features 16 colour pages of comics from the likes of Chris Ware, Dan Clowes and Art Spiegelman. If we could get the broadsheets in this country to publish 16 colour pages of comics regularly the UK would be a better place. Or even four pages. But a few months back The Guardian axed the wonderful comic they were publishing on Saturdays. Boo.

To read more about the Panorama head over to Flavorpill's Flavorwire where there's an interview with Oscar Villalon, McSweeney’s publisher, originally sent out in their excellent weekly book email, Boldtype. Pictures via Tonx, who has a good post about it too.

I might head over here and see if they have it:

Yes, new shop Good Grief! brings a bulging sack full of art book, zine and comic goodness to a hut on the third floor of Affleck's Palace. Also music, and posters, and music posters. I am very excited about this. We could really use more places in town to buy this kind of stuff. At the moment there seems to be an amazing bounty of illustrators and comics in Manchester doing weird and wonderful work that it can be absurdly tricky to get ahold of. Keep up with the Good Grief! gang on their amusing blog here. Thanks for the tip Kate Taylor.

Random cool stuff

Sorry, I realize I've been all business lately at The Manchizzle. With the festival almost upon us, and the blogstory project going strong (chapter 4 is up now) there are so many important things I have to blog about.

So here are some things I don't have to blog about. They don't have anything to do with Manchester, but whatever.

This is weasel and ferret week at the Manchizzle. Why? They seem to keep popping up in conversation for some reason. And any discussion of ferrets always reminds me of Rudy Giuliani's insane ferret rant on the radio, during his time as NYC mayor. Anyone who thinks he might make a good president should listen to this.
Actually, everyone should listen to it.

As nutty as Rudy clearly is, I have to admit there is something distasteful about ferrets. I'm sure the pro-ferret brigade would set me straight. Sure, maybe ferrets get a bad rap, and bad press. But they also get lots of good press. In fact, there's a magazine called Ferrets, and they publish centerfolds every month that look like this:


I just thought you might enjoy that one.

I've gotten really into this web comic called Achewood. It describes itself as a cartoon of modern life as lived by a retarded otter, an alcoholic tiger, and two bears. But it's so much more than that, really. The characters also have their own blogs. You can read what Ray Smuckles, the thong-wearing, potty-mouthed cat has to say here.


I've also gotten really into this band called Vampire Weekend. They're from New York, and in addition to having a great name, they make amazingly catchy and smart afrobeat-inflected indie music. Kind of like if Jonathan Richman was in The Shins and they got knocked up by Orchestra Baobab. Yeah, I know that's a horrible description, that's why I'm not a music reviewer. Just go listen to them. If there's any justice in the world, they're going to be HUGE. And when I was putting the link to their site in, I just now saw that their first ever Eurotour stops at Manchester Academy Nov 8. With... wow. The Shins? Am I psychic or what.