Japanese androids Astro Boy and All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku will find a home in the stacks, along with Totoro, Pikachu, and many other famous graphic novel characters, upon completion of the proposed Tokyo International Manga Library at Meiji University. Slated to open in 2015, the huge library and archive is expected to house two million graphic novels, animation cels, illustrations, video games, and cartoon artifacts. Library spokesman Susumi Shibao sees the collection as the first "solid archive for serious study"of the Japanese art forms of anime and manga. Shibao hopes to help scholars worldwide publish academic research...
I Sing the Blue Jeans Electric: Walt Whitman for Levi’s
"Hi, Walt Whitman for Levi's. A fustian cloth, rough-hewn, enduring, yeoman, riveted,the fabric of America. These are my pants.Boot-cut. Perfect fit. Get into them, O shapeless, unformed youth!"American poet, Walt Whitman, has been drafted by advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy of Portland to lead the battle cry, i.e. shill, for the American economy in general and Levi’s jeans in particular in an effort to get the demographic of the young into the venerable working-man’s pants that Whitman likely wore.“America’s poet was an optimist at a time when it as easier to be a pessimist. He lived through the civil war, one of...
They Laughed When I Sat Down To Read Piano 300
On March 8, 2000, the National Museum of American History opened Piano 300 in the Smithsonian Institution's International Gallery in Washington D.C.Celebrating the tricentennial of the piano’s introduction in Florence by Bartolomeo Cristofori, this outstanding exhibition was seen by more than 330,000 visitors from around the world during its twenty-month run.I’m a sucker for great exhibition catalogs, and that which accompanied Piano 300 is one of the most interesting and visually rewarding that I’ve seen in quite awhile. It is, arguably, be the best, most concise volume about the instrument there is with chapters that include: Early Stages; The Rise...
Publisher’s Clearing House Presents: No Garden-Variety Library
Next time you impatiently yank an over-sized envelope emblazoned with the words: "You May Have Already Won 10 Million Dollars!!!" out of your junk-filled mailbox, take a moment to say: "Thanks." Without Publisher's Clearing House, the New York Botanical Garden might not havea library.The Botanical Garden's LuEsther T. Mertz Library is named for its largest benefactor, the genius behind the concept of the mass market mailing of multiple magazine subscription offers. Founded in 1953 by former librarian Mertz, her husband, and their daughter, Publisher's Clearing House became the largest and most profitable magazine circulation agency in the world. (And this...
Resubscribe or Else!
click to enlargeThis little gem was laid into an issue of George Hitchcock's seminal kayak literary magazine. From 1964-1984 the magazine, along with kayak press, was one of the premier literary magazines in the country. Though the focus leaned toward surrealist, imagist, and political poetry Hitchcock published early books by Raymond Carver, Charles Simic, Philip Levine, W.S. Merwin and James Tate.Hitchcock was also well known for his rejection slips which would often include an old woodcut or image he found along with the bad news.Above is one of his subscription renewal notices. It reads:Your subscription expires with this issue:to avoid...