Little Orphan Annie

Thanks to the kindness of Jeet Heer, I have the first two volumes of the new Little Orphan Annie collection to dive into (along with three volumes of Walt and Skeezix and all four volumes of Krazy Kat.  It's been Christmas around here when the mail comes, folks).  Which of course makes me think of this:  

It's more interesting to me than listening to Jay rap about the 

color of his Maybach. And the framing of the kids, particularly

the little girl in the white dress around 3:12, as simultaneously

adorable and tough, is wonderful.

Good for Rihanna

If only the song was better. Kanye's got Rihanna's Chris Brown-diss track featuring Lady Gaga. It's kind meh. Lyrically, saying you'll get flowers for the grave of the ex who battered you is perhaps not terrific messaging in these circumstances, no? I suppose "you had a good girl / that's a keeper / you had a good girl / but didn't know how to treat her" is a nice circle back to the title of "Good Girl Gone Bad," her massive album. But the repetition of "good girl" sounds less interesting than Lady Gaga's repetitions of "poker face" on the track of the same name. In the latter case, there's a play on meaning involved. In the former, Rihanna is just reasserting her own goodness again and again, and while I sympathize, it doesn't make for a great song. Musically, the song has the same kludgy, heavy sound that's bothering me about Eminem's "Relapse" right now. I'll try to find a better way to articulate that, but it sounds like the lyrics are trying to rise up through a really syrupy sound, and I don't like it.

I Don't Know, Em...

Isn't beefing with tetchy parents a little late 1990's?  Even if you're pulling the Punisher into it?

Golems are SO Back

The New York Times has a sensitive, perceptive, and extremely funny piece out today about the resurgence of interest in the Golem in Prague. (This story is one of the reasons foreign affairs bureaus are extremely important: they give us a sense of day-to-day life in other countries.  And provide an excuse for reporters to chase things like Golems.)  But as anyone who's read Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay knows, the Golem was smuggled out of Prague long ago in service of a plot device in a novel about comic books.