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American Splendor, comic book movie, and hidden rant
First off the hidden rant about job hunting... read at your own risk ;-)
Just spent three hours applying for and hunting for employment. I think I went through over 3000 jobs this morning. I have five more mass job emails to go through. These are basically Jobsniper.com emails - what they are is job search engine that searches numerous job websites and databases and boards for positions that have specific keywords. Then it emails you whatever it locates. The frustrating part is a lot of the jobs just don't fit my experience. Now if I was a computer programmer, salesperson, engineer, accountant, financial analyst, nurse, or pharmacist - I'd be employed now. But nooo...my experience is in rights management, contractual negotiation (specifically with publishers and for electronic media), and
copyrights. I'm trying to branch out into human resources and marketing - since some of experience hits those areas and there are more jobs in them, so I've decided to invest in taking business classes at NYU. Seeing a career transistion counselor to help me with all the logistics.
At any rate - a couple of hours searching, manipulating my resumes, cutting and pasting, re-working cover letters - wears me out until tension literally encompasses my body.
I used to go to posting boards after doing these tedious searches - sort of as a release or a way to amuse myself, but after last night (I spent three hours last night doing basically the same thing), I'm thinking livejournal might be a safer choice. I'm cranky and spoiling for a fist-fight with some poor unwitting little pixel. These things never end well.
After last night's experience - took me forever to sleep. I even read some fanfic to distract me. Didn't work. Just worried. By the time I did fall asleep, I dreamt about my last job. The evil workplace that I decided to leave in search of better employment last fall. Every once and a while I go through a period of regret. I regret leaving the evil work-place and beat myself up for my stupidity or inability to stay there. (In case you haven't noticed I'm an expert at beating up on myself.) So my subsconcious feels it is necessary to remind me of why I left the evil workplace and what would have happened if I'd stayed. Have to give it credit - after an evil workplace nightmare, I wake up relieved that I no longer have to go to it. Subconscious is right, unemployment is better than living in fear of evil boss with sociopathic mentality and bizarre desire to ruine me. (Stayed there much longer - I'd be nuts.) Although having no job and worrying about bills and watching savings (which I'd worked hard to acquire in order to purchase an apt someday) go down the drain is also beginning to drive me insane. People say - "oh I'm sure you'll find a job, just use this time to work on your book" - yeah, right. Have a bloody writer's block. Has something to do with being unemployed. Write a lot better when employed. "Well get a job," they say. "Go to hell," I think. Rage, it's a funny thing. Actually, have decided the worste thing about being unemployed is other people. The embarrassment. The explanations. ugh. See? Cranky and spoiling for a fight. Bet you wished you heeded my advice and skipped this bit?
Whew! Now back to our regularly scheduled program.
American Splendor - a movie about Harvey Pekar's life based upon comic books about Harvey Pekar's life. American Splendor (the comic not the movie) by Harvey Pekar and assorted artists, (notably one R. Crumb) is one in a long line of underground adult reality comics. Reality comics are very different from most mainstream comics in that they are based on the real life of the writers or people writers have observed. Nothing really fanciful happens in these comic books. There are no superheros, elves, or magicians. It's real life baby and it can be ugly. Often depressing. Sometimes sleazy. Most of these comics show us the underbelly of life, the ordinary day-to-day crap.
Comics and artists that fall within this arena include, but aren't limited to:
Harvey Pekar and American Splendor
Ghost World
Stranger Than Paradise
R.Crumb's work
Felix the Cat (somewhat crass and pornographic)
Maus - art speiglemen's work (deals with the Holocaust except with the figures looking like mice and cats)
Most people think comics are superhero kid fare and limited to X-Men, Superman, Spiderman, and Batman characters. Ah.
Sorry. Nope. If you think that? Get thee to a comic book store post haste!
American Splendor, the movie, is an interesting mix of documentary, regular film, and comic book animation. The use of the three mediums makes it possible for the viewer to enter Harvey Pekar's mindset. We see how Pekar views himself, how his artists view him, how his wife views him and how outsiders do. We get all points of view. We also get an inside look at the making of art - both comics and film and the exploitation of that art through mediums such as the David Letterman show. Letterman and MTV make fun of nerds and slackers like Harvey and his friends. Yet seem completely unable to grasp where Harvey and friends are coming from and may as a result be out of touch with a good portion of their audience. The movie shows us the mundane absurdity of Harvey's life.
He is a talented and intelligent writer working as a file clerk in a hospital. He has a small two bedroom house stockpiled with his collections which range from records to comic books. Most of his life consists of collecting, slubbing around Cleveland, Ohio which seems to always be the same shade of dull gray. The humor in his comics comes from the absurd situations of ordinary life. Examples: the old lady in the super-market line who insists on arguing with the cashiere about the price on every item no matter how cheap or expensive it is. The friend who feels the need to drive 120 miles just to see The Revenge of The Nerds - b/c he is a nerd and wants validation. OR his new wife - whom he meets when she writes him to ask for the latest issue of American Splendor. He loves her writing style. They start a correspondence. Meet. And two hours later after throwing up in his bathroom, she says they should get married.
One of the people I saw this film with - said it skeezed her, just like Ghost World did. She's an upbeat person and found a film on such...a slacker's life to be depressing.
I disagreed. I found it oddly up-lifting. Harvey unlike the characters in Ghost World isn't lost or even a loser. * SPOILER WARNING* He makes a success of his life on his terms. When he gets Cancer - his wife convinces him to write a comic about it.
As a result of writing the comic, he and his wife become acquainted with the daughter of the artist drawing the comic (Harvey can't draw anything beyond a stick figure), whom they later adopt. He survives his painful bout with Cancer and the movie ends with two things: the filming of American Splendor and HArvey's retirement party where he is surrounded by friends and his immediate family. He may not have looks, money, or any of those other things our media tells us equals success. But he has love. He has friends. He is able to publish his art and express himself through it. This in of itself is really all the success you need.
Harvey's curmudgonly appearance and attitude misleads us at first, but as the film peels back the layers of Harvey's personality - we begin to see how truly warm and cool Harvey is. The curmudgon is only the cover. It's a nice change from those films where the cover is bright and glistening, with beautiful stars, sappy romance - but when you open it? 0 substance. American Splendor? All substance.
Ugh!! I changed to MSN8 recently and it keeps disconnecting me after an hour. Highly annoying. Hopefully this will post!
Just spent three hours applying for and hunting for employment. I think I went through over 3000 jobs this morning. I have five more mass job emails to go through. These are basically Jobsniper.com emails - what they are is job search engine that searches numerous job websites and databases and boards for positions that have specific keywords. Then it emails you whatever it locates. The frustrating part is a lot of the jobs just don't fit my experience. Now if I was a computer programmer, salesperson, engineer, accountant, financial analyst, nurse, or pharmacist - I'd be employed now. But nooo...my experience is in rights management, contractual negotiation (specifically with publishers and for electronic media), and
copyrights. I'm trying to branch out into human resources and marketing - since some of experience hits those areas and there are more jobs in them, so I've decided to invest in taking business classes at NYU. Seeing a career transistion counselor to help me with all the logistics.
At any rate - a couple of hours searching, manipulating my resumes, cutting and pasting, re-working cover letters - wears me out until tension literally encompasses my body.
I used to go to posting boards after doing these tedious searches - sort of as a release or a way to amuse myself, but after last night (I spent three hours last night doing basically the same thing), I'm thinking livejournal might be a safer choice. I'm cranky and spoiling for a fist-fight with some poor unwitting little pixel. These things never end well.
After last night's experience - took me forever to sleep. I even read some fanfic to distract me. Didn't work. Just worried. By the time I did fall asleep, I dreamt about my last job. The evil workplace that I decided to leave in search of better employment last fall. Every once and a while I go through a period of regret. I regret leaving the evil work-place and beat myself up for my stupidity or inability to stay there. (In case you haven't noticed I'm an expert at beating up on myself.) So my subsconcious feels it is necessary to remind me of why I left the evil workplace and what would have happened if I'd stayed. Have to give it credit - after an evil workplace nightmare, I wake up relieved that I no longer have to go to it. Subconscious is right, unemployment is better than living in fear of evil boss with sociopathic mentality and bizarre desire to ruine me. (Stayed there much longer - I'd be nuts.) Although having no job and worrying about bills and watching savings (which I'd worked hard to acquire in order to purchase an apt someday) go down the drain is also beginning to drive me insane. People say - "oh I'm sure you'll find a job, just use this time to work on your book" - yeah, right. Have a bloody writer's block. Has something to do with being unemployed. Write a lot better when employed. "Well get a job," they say. "Go to hell," I think. Rage, it's a funny thing. Actually, have decided the worste thing about being unemployed is other people. The embarrassment. The explanations. ugh. See? Cranky and spoiling for a fight. Bet you wished you heeded my advice and skipped this bit?
Whew! Now back to our regularly scheduled program.
American Splendor - a movie about Harvey Pekar's life based upon comic books about Harvey Pekar's life. American Splendor (the comic not the movie) by Harvey Pekar and assorted artists, (notably one R. Crumb) is one in a long line of underground adult reality comics. Reality comics are very different from most mainstream comics in that they are based on the real life of the writers or people writers have observed. Nothing really fanciful happens in these comic books. There are no superheros, elves, or magicians. It's real life baby and it can be ugly. Often depressing. Sometimes sleazy. Most of these comics show us the underbelly of life, the ordinary day-to-day crap.
Comics and artists that fall within this arena include, but aren't limited to:
Harvey Pekar and American Splendor
Ghost World
Stranger Than Paradise
R.Crumb's work
Felix the Cat (somewhat crass and pornographic)
Maus - art speiglemen's work (deals with the Holocaust except with the figures looking like mice and cats)
Most people think comics are superhero kid fare and limited to X-Men, Superman, Spiderman, and Batman characters. Ah.
Sorry. Nope. If you think that? Get thee to a comic book store post haste!
American Splendor, the movie, is an interesting mix of documentary, regular film, and comic book animation. The use of the three mediums makes it possible for the viewer to enter Harvey Pekar's mindset. We see how Pekar views himself, how his artists view him, how his wife views him and how outsiders do. We get all points of view. We also get an inside look at the making of art - both comics and film and the exploitation of that art through mediums such as the David Letterman show. Letterman and MTV make fun of nerds and slackers like Harvey and his friends. Yet seem completely unable to grasp where Harvey and friends are coming from and may as a result be out of touch with a good portion of their audience. The movie shows us the mundane absurdity of Harvey's life.
He is a talented and intelligent writer working as a file clerk in a hospital. He has a small two bedroom house stockpiled with his collections which range from records to comic books. Most of his life consists of collecting, slubbing around Cleveland, Ohio which seems to always be the same shade of dull gray. The humor in his comics comes from the absurd situations of ordinary life. Examples: the old lady in the super-market line who insists on arguing with the cashiere about the price on every item no matter how cheap or expensive it is. The friend who feels the need to drive 120 miles just to see The Revenge of The Nerds - b/c he is a nerd and wants validation. OR his new wife - whom he meets when she writes him to ask for the latest issue of American Splendor. He loves her writing style. They start a correspondence. Meet. And two hours later after throwing up in his bathroom, she says they should get married.
One of the people I saw this film with - said it skeezed her, just like Ghost World did. She's an upbeat person and found a film on such...a slacker's life to be depressing.
I disagreed. I found it oddly up-lifting. Harvey unlike the characters in Ghost World isn't lost or even a loser. * SPOILER WARNING* He makes a success of his life on his terms. When he gets Cancer - his wife convinces him to write a comic about it.
As a result of writing the comic, he and his wife become acquainted with the daughter of the artist drawing the comic (Harvey can't draw anything beyond a stick figure), whom they later adopt. He survives his painful bout with Cancer and the movie ends with two things: the filming of American Splendor and HArvey's retirement party where he is surrounded by friends and his immediate family. He may not have looks, money, or any of those other things our media tells us equals success. But he has love. He has friends. He is able to publish his art and express himself through it. This in of itself is really all the success you need.
Harvey's curmudgonly appearance and attitude misleads us at first, but as the film peels back the layers of Harvey's personality - we begin to see how truly warm and cool Harvey is. The curmudgon is only the cover. It's a nice change from those films where the cover is bright and glistening, with beautiful stars, sappy romance - but when you open it? 0 substance. American Splendor? All substance.
Ugh!! I changed to MSN8 recently and it keeps disconnecting me after an hour. Highly annoying. Hopefully this will post!
no subject
And ugh, job searching is horrid =(. I was freaking out about cover letters and resumes and everything, plus worrying that I was completely incompetent to boot. Hope it works out for you!
no subject
Now is the time to be nice to yourself, the world is throwing enough punches your way for you to be beating yourself up. All I can say, and I'm sure you've heard it all before, is that when you find a job everything will change almost immediately. The trouble is in not knowing when.
Thanks ponygirl and oyceter
I've read all about the new TV and movie seasons.
Which I can look forward to. Theater not so much.
On TV? Wonderfalls, Joan of Arcadia, Poland New Hampshire, Lyons Den, all look promising. Also James Spader (one of my favorite actors) joins the Practice (a show I didn't watch before).
Movies look even more promising...with such wonders as Return of The King, The Human Stain,
(The memory one with Jim Carey), Paycheck, Gothika, Underworld, The Order....I love movies.
Escaping for a while helps I think. Thanks for the support and the commiseration!