Errata is a web journal written by Robert Davis who has neither spent a night in a ghost town nor pulled a turnip from the earth. He doesn't even know if turnips grow in the ground. Perhaps on trees, like candy corn. Therefore, Errata is a non-commercial project.

Observation #1: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious."

Observation #2: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious" at the top of your lungs. Bring your eyebrows together before you say it. Effective!

Observation #3: Same for books. Even at libraries.

There is a prize for people who correctly guess the thing about Metropolis, Nevada.

Except where the text specifically states otherwise, Errata's vagaries are indicated vaguely and its authors are indistinct in the traditional way of the Internet, except where the authors lay claim to their work. In some cases Robert Davis lays claim to work that is not his own but has been abandoned like so many ghost towns. Except where held presently, fistfuls of dirt are suspended via dispersal, or dispersed via suspension (in the air), and thus their dissolution is their transcendence, or their transcendence is their dissolution. And yet our eyes tear, and our vision is impaired, demonstrating for the umpteenth time that one entity's gain is another's fit of sneezes. Except where indicated, storms shall outlive the clay upon which they rain, unless storms are improperly delimited by their clouds, which dissolve, rather than by their inevitable return. Thus the clay loses, unless the clay is said to own the storm, to use it to make itself heavy, to make itself cling to white garments, refuse dispersal, cake upon the facades of abandoned buildings, and sit like Man [sic] upon the earth where it is pelted by a storm that it owns. In which case the clay still loses, if you ask us.

Some of the above is legally binding and should be considered a mental contract between Errata and those upon whom it acts. The bit about the prize should be considered an overstatement insofar as prizes differ from dirt and prize dispersal differs from dirt dispersal. Please recall that ownership is a weight and, therefore, hope that you do not win the prize.

One day Errata or its representatives will call upon you for a favor. It is expected that you will hop-to without delay.

You may contact Robert Davis by email unless it's about the rock that was thrown in anger. The rock is more properly called a clod. Why do you continue to raise the topic?

25 August 2003

American Splendor

2003, United States

directors: Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini

American Splendor is the condensed film version of the American Splendor comic books which are the condensed comic version of the life of Harvey Pekar, a Cleveland-based file clerk. Pekar writes comics about the mundane details of his life and was introduced to many people (or to me, at least) through his volatile appearances on Late Night with David Letterman in the 80s. The movie blends episodes from Pekar's life — in which actors Paul Giamatti and Hope Davis play Pekar and his wife Joyce Brabner — with interview footage of the real Pekar, footage of his appearances on Late Night, a recreation of his last appearance on Late Night, selections from his comic books, and a recreation of a stage play based on American Splendor. The fictionalized parts with Giamatti and Davis make up the bulk of the movie, but rather than feeling like reenactments they sit nicely alongside the other incarnations of Harvey Pekar, just another reflection of the grumpy, neurotic anti-celebrity himself. The movie becomes a sort of meditation on projecting your image into the world, and while Pekar does it a bit differently than most of us, the appearance near the end of an adopted daughter, who takes on the traits of her parents while attempting to make them her own, shows that even people who don't write about their lives still replicate themselves by affecting the world. I don't think the movie captures much about how people read comics, and it grafts an improbable character arc onto Pekar and Brabner, but it hedges the sentiment by having Harvey say that he and Joyce still fight all the time.

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