sara ryan

the one who writes books and comics, as opposed to any of the other sara ryans. there are a lot of them.
new-aesthetic: “The group responsible for these “Happy Birthday, [Your Name Here]” songs, Birthday Song Crew, apparently didn’t want to shell out licensing fees for the familiar “Happy Birthday” song, nor risk legal action for using it without permission. Instead they simply wrote some new tunes with deceptive titles “Happy Birthday (Reggae)”, “Happy Birthday (Jazzy),” and “Happy Birthday (Hillbilly),” each of which is a depressingly bad genre pastiche. They are not the “Happy Birthday” you’re looking for, and on top of that, they’re musically awful. You may also notice in the screenshot above that some names appear twice. That, as far as I can tell, is because the “Happy Birthday, Jerome!” at the very beginning of the song has a slightly different intonation on some tracks, and the duplicated names are the ones where both intonations are available.” The Echo Nest Blog: How We Cope with Spammers, Fakers, and Cloners Totally fascinating post about music spammers & the detection thereof.

new-aesthetic:

“The group responsible for these “Happy Birthday, [Your Name Here]” songs, Birthday Song Crew, apparently didn’t want to shell out licensing fees for the familiar “Happy Birthday” song, nor risk legal action for using it without permission. Instead they simply wrote some new tunes with deceptive titles “Happy Birthday (Reggae)”, “Happy Birthday (Jazzy),” and “Happy Birthday (Hillbilly),” each of which is a depressingly bad genre pastiche. They are not the “Happy Birthday” you’re looking for, and on top of that, they’re musically awful. You may also notice in the screenshot above that some names appear twice. That, as far as I can tell, is because the “Happy Birthday, Jerome!” at the very beginning of the song has a slightly different intonation on some tracks, and the duplicated names are the ones where both intonations are available.”

The Echo Nest Blog: How We Cope with Spammers, Fakers, and Cloners

Totally fascinating post about music spammers & the detection thereof.

Read trade magazines for trades you don’t actually practice, or repair manuals, or guides to human anatomy…read things that are very ancient, Assyrian prayers, ancient sagas…there is information all over the place that can expand our sense of what language can do.

—M.T. Anderson, in answer to a question at his recent reading at Powell’s.

Steve Lieber's notes on writing for an artist

periscopestudio:

Artist Steve Lieber talks about how writers can better deal with their artist collaborators, including debunking the old myth: “Comics have an unlimited budget.”

“Have you heard this aphorism: “Comics have an unlimited budget?” Remember it, because it’s wrong and you’ll want to humiliate and belittle anyone who brings it up. Your artist has to draw the stuff you are writing about, and his or her available time is your budget. Comics are drawn on deadline, and there are only so many hours in the days between when you send off your script and when the artist has to complete the story. If she spends all those hours drawing the 30 separate bicyclists you describe on page 1, she’s not going to have much time left for the alien armada on page 22.”

More at the link.

I’ve written about this too, with input from several artists.

badhousescomic: NO OUTLET/SLOW DOWN. I wish I’d seen this before I finished the script; it would’ve made it into the book.

badhousescomic:

NO OUTLET/SLOW DOWN.

I wish I’d seen this before I finished the script; it would’ve made it into the book.

Interview with Sara Zarr

The Lucy Variations is about Lucy Beck-Moreau. As the book opens, Lucy is a sixteen-year-old former world-class pianist, and current…well, that’s the question. 

I interviewed Sara Zarr over at sararyan.com. Topics discussed include but are not limited to music, guilt, mentors, and passionate yet misguided strategies for impressing one’s mentors.

exhibition-ism:

Bristol based artist Alexander Korzer-Robinson creates incredible works of art by carving discarded encyclopedias and literally exposing their inner beauty. 

(via somuchflotsam)

badhousescomic: Some tools have a very specific purpose. The Benz itself was not in evidence.

badhousescomic:

Some tools have a very specific purpose.

The Benz itself was not in evidence.

badhousescomic:

All these things are, or have recently been, for sale. 

Reblogging because I am currently reblogging everything from badhousescomic, so as to make more people aware of its existence.

badhousescomic:

“Objects arrive webbed in connections, and hoard their most intimate gestures and relations in unreachable treasure-houses. A collected object is a kind of vessel, freighted with an irredeemable record of acts and things, inaccessible worlds of sense and event, a tissue of phenomenal dark matter caught up in time’s obliterative machinery.” 

— Specimens, Matthew Battles