thanks, jog

I'm old enough to have grown up with a set of hardback encyclopedias, and I'm pretty sure the reverence I had for those gilded volumes through my childhood isn't a feeling that has an analog in the world today. My parents kept them in a lit glass cabinet, if you can even imagine. We weren't a lit glass cabinet-type family, but owning a set of encyclopedias was a whole aspirational lifestyle back then. That dumb cabinet, those fake leather covers--it all seemed to me the height of class and intellectualism through my formative years in rural Tennessee.

As an adult, one of my first freelance jobs was writing an encyclopedia article about bearbaiting, a task for which I was ill-equipped in almost every way. Hundreds of years later, I'm still not sure if the word requires a hyphen. I was plainly a fraud, but more alarming than that was the fact that no one seemed to care. There was no council of learned elders debating the finer points of bearbaiting (or botulism or baccarat) in a castle(?) somewhere out there, as I had vaguely imagined. With sudden clarity I grasped something that truly changed the way I understood the world: A lot of people have no idea what the fuck they're talking about, maybe least of all when they're paid to explain something.

But then there's Joe McCulloch. I'm willing to concede that he knows everything. I bristle when men explain things to me (through their writing, or to me, specifically), comics especially. I rarely care, I'm naturally skeptical, and anyway that's not a mode I particularly respect. But there's a sort of zen to a Joe McCulloch explanation that transcends human ego. His words just float before my eyes, uncanny. Correct. With not infrequent turns of phrase that make me jealous. The din of a million other nimble distractions. I mean, man, sometimes that column made me blue. But it never made me bristle, to my recollection.

Comics has plenty of guys who aspire to be walking encyclopedias, people who haven't quite figured out that there's more to the world than whatever it is they think they know about it. Joe outshines that set easily, in part because the questions he asks of comics can't be answered on a messageboard. His clear-eyed writing--sometimes survey, sometimes history, and sometimes closer to pure criticism--particularly on works I would never think to give the time of day, is always good storytelling and sometimes real art. He offers something without stooping to prove.

Anyway, today's the last day of Joe's long-running column at the Comics Journal. I hope he turns up somewhere else soon. There's a lot of stuff I still don't understand.

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systems check

Yep, I can still feel happiness.

tig notaro on louis ck

Tig Notaro’s putting some heat on Louis CK for all those sexual misconduct rumors. Damn, good on her. I can’t really comment on Notaro's comedy as comedy--haven’t watched her standup or her show--but I saw the better part of that movie about her cancer stuff a while back and I was pretty impressed by her as a person. I talked about this idea of “transgressive” comedy some last year when Patton Oswalt (who I’m not so crazy about) was doing material on grief…I find that very compelling and admirable and, like, risky as art, if not particularly funny. Sometimes I’m not sure what comedy should do. I mean, obviously it should do whatever the fuck it wants, but I wonder if there’s room in my own way of seeing things to call something comedy if it isn’t really funny ha-ha. Check out this headline from US Weekly yesterday.

A few years back I wrote a thing for Noah about why Louis CK will never get Cosby’d. Reread it today and feel it really holds up. Those two situations are different in any number of ways, and Tig Notaro’s comments are substantively, tonally, and contextually different than Hannibal Burress was on Cosby. But the most important area of overlap (or lack thereof) I see is that Cosby, when he finally fell, no longer had much cultural currency. He was working and making money, yeah, but by that point to most people he was more of a memory than a working actor or comic. It’s about relevance more than output. Like, Woody Allen still has relevance as a working artist, and that reckoning isn’t going to come until he finally eats it or gets too old to do real work. By the time someone’s dead or irrelevant it’s just safer to contemplate whatever dissonance there is to deal with because there are no longer any real stakes. It becomes an intellectual exercise. 

I’m tired and not explaining this so well, but more and more I just find myself thinking about ethical consumption and distance and diffusion of responsibility. This is from that HU piece I mentioned: 

I just wonder about how me paying 40 dollars to see Louis CK ten years ago ties, however loosely, to bad things that actually happened to people in the world. I didn't know that stuff then--I don't even know if it had started back then--but I understood something about his attitude towards women. You know? Like the sort of knowingness with which you'd regard a transcript of Bill Burr's Thanksgiving table conversation if it emerged tomorrow. At what point do thoughts become action, and how much of that has to do with being famous for those thoughts? For being celebrated for them? 

Louis CK built his career on masturbation jokes and all that stuff about how his wife never wanted to fuck.

On an entirely separate anxious wavelength: the Louis CK and Cosby conversations both started at Gawker. (Before Hannibal Burress, there was Tom Scocca.) Who has the muscle and the guts to start those conversations now?

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read this: ghosts driving corpses by tom mchenry

Checks out.

in case you missed it

I had a long talk about comics criticism with Nick Hanover over at Loser City. Click on over.

an extremely funny chris ware video

I have three words for you: horny Chris Ware.

Political correctness sucks, man. Just imagine a reality in which Ware had been allowed to draw a woman comfortable in her body, who didn’t stand around palpably hating herself before having soft albino misery sex with Chip.

Question: do Chris Ware’s women strike you as characters who have escaped the male gaze?

I find myself thinking about guys like Chester Brown and Robert Crumb, whose female characters are repositories for their desires instead of people in the world. Lust isn’t Ware’s thing, but his women are repositories too—for his anxieties, his milky politics, and his complaints about modernity. I don’t know if there’s a meaningful distinction between these two modes. Not to overstate the case—I don’t think Chris Ware is some huge misogynist—but does he truly imagine these images are, like, respectful representations of women? 

   

Does it count as “colonizing them with your eyes” if you just sort of squint until you see your giant Dilbert head imposed on their bodies?

In all seriousness I think that artists who worry that reading their critics will somehow compromise their vision or their integrity should make a close study of the sad spectacle that is Ware imagining himself to be brave for Doing Diversity. Here’s the thing: Ware’s fundamentally incapable of imagining a convincing character or even another actual human who isn’t, on some level, Chris Ware. That isn’t because he’s white, or because he’s a man, but because he mistakes all human experience as interchangeable in a way that would only ever occur to white men. In his hands, exploring difference is the project of locating other people’s inner Chris Ware.

The clip is everything. This is Christopher Guest-level mockumentary, but 100% his real life. Just masterfully edited. That first shot, with the helmet. Ware fretting as he eats a perfectly composed salad. Ware riding his tandem bicycle alone through the streets of Oak Park—that one's almost too perfect as a symbol for the central flaw of his often excellent work. How is an artist supposed to grow when he refuses to engage with the world beyond his own idyllic tree-lined streets? Is it appropriate to draw political cartoons when your preferred mode of communication is the postcard?

OTOH: I definitely have an inner Ware. Chris Ware is the only person in the state of Illinois who's more nervous than I am, so I really shouldn't be so mean about his Dilbert head. I honestly wouldn't make fun of it if I didn't know that his fear of the computer means he will never find this site. I bet I grimace at my neighbors all the time. Serving slices from the middle of the pizza, though? His wife is clearly a fucking lunatic. Thanks for serving dinner anyway, Mrs. W. Here at the shallow brigade we have nothing but the greatest respect for your domestic labor. 

in cont'd appreciation of the chester brown/dave sim whore feud

This post is part of an ongoing series in heartfelt appreciation of two of comics' most unhinged deviants as they debate the morality of "whoredom." With any luck it will continue for the rest of my life.

Previously, on Whore Feud: Dave Sim's comic Cerebus may or may not have inspired Chester Brown to take his half-mullet off the market and dedicate his entire life to the most poorly articulated defense of prostitution in human history. Chet explained why "misogynists don't necessarily hate women" in "a series of faxed letters" to Dave Sim that I would "literally give my eye teeth to read." In the tragic absence of said faxes, and with the Comics Journal boys continuing to link to this argument as though it were Lincoln-Douglas level debate, it has fallen to me alone to piece together Whore Feud from the crumbs that some lunatic posts to his Dave Sim fandom blog.

Today, my sad journey continues.

CHICAGO, IL: Your girl had another late night recently. Too tired to catch up on Twin Peaks but too keyed up to go to bed, I drew a nice warm bath and settled in with real anticipation to catch up on the latest episode of the Feud. Only it turns out that I've actually missed several episodes recently, so I had to keep on catching up for several days after that. <insert montage of me reading infinite Chester Brown posts on the Dave Sim fandom blog at Five Guys...on the train to a bbq... and one night in bed before I drifted off to sleep, a smile upon my face...> Well, I'm finally caught up. This has been a very compelling season, let me tell you.

As ever, the players are walking abstinence poster Chester Brown; his glorious Himalayan cat hair weave, which he has spent the last 20 years rubbing vigorously with a balloon, for texture; Brown's opponent Dave Sim, one of the greatest minds in comics world's saddest assholes; and me, a spectator who definitely thinks that sex work should be decriminalized, but enjoys watching these ridiculous men argue about it to a perverse degree.

The most exciting development in the Feud is that Chester Brown's Patreon output now includes regular "essays" in which he spends thousands of words responding to commenters on the Dave Sim fandom blog. Perfect. V good use of a Patreon. I didn't see it coming cause frankly this is next-level even for old Chet, but from my perspective it's absolutely ideal since even I will not stoop to read the comments on these posts. Apparently that's where I draw the line.

S1E3: “Dave Sim Again”

On a previous episode of the Feud, Dave Sim proved once and for all that he’s not prejudiced towards prostitutes by sharing a fun fact from his totally normal adolescence: that, from the age of 11, he and his old man shared issues of Playboy magazine. The first step in a life filled with perfectly normal attitudes towards women, I’m sure. We can only imagine Father’s pride when Davey circulated that petition and demanded that his colleagues certify the fact that he’s 100% respectful towards women all the time. Nothing to see here, folks - just a 60-year-old man who routinely refers to sex as “fornication.” The very picture of sexual health.

  

Well, for some reason, Chester Brown is skeptical. Not that he’s saying that Dave Sim is whorephobic—obviously that’s a bridge too far. No, Chester only wishes to argue that Sim has been affected by society’s whorephobia as it is expressed in books, through music, and on television. “All of that was in the back of [Sim’s] mind and influenced his perception when he looked into the eyes of strippers and imagined that they looked dead.” No idea what he's referring to here?? Nevertheless: Powerful words. Sex workers everywhere must thank the lord above every day for all the brave work that Chester Brown is doing as their ally at davesimwankblog.com.

In Chester’s ongoing probe into the issue of whether or not he and Dave Sim used to be friends, he cites page 163 of The Little Man (2nd ed., 2006). Irrefutable, imo. Man, this storyline is gutting. Gets me every time.

Moving on to the issue of mental health, while Chet isn’t sure how many sex workers have “mental problems,” he “strongly suspects” that most of them are “completely sane.” He finally closes with an unsettling reflection on his willingness to “perform oral” and his gift with massage. Reader, I’m shook.

S1E4: “Body Cameras and Dave Sim”

Dave Sim has recommended that “hookers” wear body cams to settle disputes over abuse and rape, not that rape exists. Indeed, he thinks that all fornicators should wear cams to make it easier for men to prove that women are crazy. Seems reasonable.

Evidently this idea is so ludicrous that even Chester isn’t going to bother to argue against it, lol.

S1E5: “Sex-Work Pride & Related Matters”

Dave Sim has been having “computer problems” and has, for the time being, dropped out of the Feud. Meanwhile Chester can’t help but notice that even the cretins in the Sim wank blog comments section have failed endorsed the body cam idea. He rests his case. Anyway forget Sim; today Chester has bigger fish to fry. He has has discovered a HYPOCRITE in the ranks of the Sim wank blog commenters. Duplicity, thy name is Erick, and this Patreon "essay" is for you.

In all fairness to Chet, Erick the Hypocrite, who believes that sex workers are “paid receptacles for strangers to hump on and ejaculate over,” “satisfy themselves on,” and treat “like a pair of old shoes,” is almost certainly a literal murderer. But I feel like Brown pointing out that ejaculating on a prostitute costs extra, and therefore doesn’t happen very often, was perhaps not the strongest argument that could have been made...? For Erick’s information, Chester “wouldn’t have any problem with a relative of [his] allowing himself-or-herself to be ejaculated on during sexual play, whether for pay or not.” I don’t know, I think the murderer may have actually won this round. Hard to say. That whole exchange almost made me put my computer in the freezer. Thank god I didn’t, because the next thing I knew Chester Brown was straight-up comparing himself to MLK:

I’m screaming. I’m dying. I’M DEAD.

In my wildest dreams I couldn’t have come up with fan fiction this good. Holy shit.

S1E6: “I’m Not Martin Luther King, Jr!”

Chet Brown makes one little tiny modest comparison between himself and two civil rights icons, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Harvey Milk, and for some strange reason people found that objectionable? I can’t imagine why. I'd like to see anyone try to argue that there's a meaningful difference between Chester Brown’s willingness to pay your grandma extra when he ejaculates on her bosom and two heroes who fought and fucking died for their unshakable belief in equality and human rights. *sigh* No one said this fight would be easy, Chester. Hang in there.

Oh my god, this headline. I honestly can’t remember the last time something made me laugh this hard. Then again, by the end of the post I just sort of felt upset? (I guess it wouldn't be the Feud if it didn't leave me feeling a little upset.) I think there are two types of people in this world: those who see Chester Brown as an advocate for sex workers, and those who suspect that his advocacy is rooted in his desire for a world in which he can clip some coupons for the next time he wants to have sex with a minor. 

With Dave Sim still on hiatus, Brown turns his attention to a commenter who foolishly imagined that Brown would object to the idea of a future filled with “store-front brothels” and “lunch-time customers served in 15 minutes or less.” Brown’s like, ‘yeah, no, that’s exactly what I want,’ only he doesn’t think the McDonald’s equivalent of a brothel would really work out, you know, for business reasons. As a cartoonist who draws approximately one sexual comic book every seven years, Chet knows a lot about business. “Who’s going to do the work if it doesn’t pay well?” he asks. And that, I think, is about as close as he will ever come to acknowledging the possibility that some folks who end up doing sex work may not exactly be living their dreams. 

Chester has a question for the commenters for next week! Bit of a cliffhanger, if you will, because I can't wait to hear what the commenters have to say about it. “I would ask the anti-prostitutionists on A-M-O-C to explain why one particular sex-for-pay relationship is morally wrong: the one I have with Denise,” he wrote. (NB: The "anti-prostitutionists on A-M-O-C" is how Brown refers to the Sim wank blog commenters, haha. Denise is the sex worker who Brown has been seeing for 14 years. ) As ever, the only thing that Chester Brown craves more than the opportunity to get 20% off anal is: your approval.

“Deal with my relationship with Denise,” he demands. “What is the morally bad thing that this beautiful, generous, thoughtful woman is doing in having sex with me and accepting my money? … Don’t refer to the experiences of other people—stick to my relationship with Denise.”

I mean...Jesus.

S1E7: “Daniel Read”

Eh, boring episode. Brown persists in his analogy between sex work stuff and people who are gay or black. It’s called logic, and who are we to argue with it?

Chester’s real mad at a commenter called A Fake Name for calling him scummy: 

Something about all that “he or she” business cracks me up. He’s a he, Chet. Trust me. Or is the real greatness of the graf the way he notes the timestamp on those comments like he's writing a police report? I just don't know. Anyway Brown writes that “if someone wrote that black people are pathetic, scummy, and damaged, almost everyone would recognize that person as a racist.” Huh, well, I reckon he might be surprised. This is comics, son. No one is racist! 

(Everyone is racist.)

S1E8: “Reasons for Thinking that Sex-Work Is Wrong”

Brown gives a taxonomy of men who hire sex workers, breaking them down into four broad types. Type I is married or taken men. Type II are guys who are in between relationships. Type III are guys like Chet who could get free sex, but prefer to pay for it. Type IV are guys who have tried to get free sex, but cannot. Perhaps you will not be surprised to learn that most of Chester’s friends are IVs. Indeed he knows two IVs who were “led on” by sex workers who “exploit the vulnerability of some clients.” Mmm. Interesting. He also writes that the desire to have a monogamous relationship is “emotionally insecure” and comes down to “society’s immature sexual values.” He bemoans the fact that so many sex workers must "choose to focus on their careers at the expense of their love-lives" as if this were one of those terrible articles about fraught womanhood that the Atlantic runs every 18 months.

Here’s a quote from a sex worker that Chester uses to support his claim that “sex-work can benefit the mental health of prostitutes”:

Sex work was messy, dirty, weird, confusing, and scary. It took me to places I wasn’t sure I wanted to visit again. But it also scooped me out of abject poverty and enabled me to start living life with joy.

I’m just not sure how you read that quote, as a client or whatever, and think “this is something I feel good about participating in,” much less "here's a powerful testament to how sex work can benefit your mental health." I guess that’s my whole problem with Chester Brown, in that I find him to be a total nightmare creep who also happens to be comically dumb. Like...I’m not at all convinced that assessment has anything to do with the stigma surrounding sex work. I believe in decriminalization and I’m definitely willing to buy that some sex workers are totally satisfied and cool with their work. But, like... the idea of Denise, this Canadian lady who works full time and still has to have relations with Chester Brown in her off hours to make ends meet…and him constantly trotting that out as some unassailably beautiful and egalitarian relationship just strikes me as a bit much. It’s a bit fucking much! In this same post he compares prostitution to scrubbing toilets. Does anything about that strike you?

Ever since his Paying for It days, Brown has conflated condemning sex workers’ choices with condemning his choices and those just aren't the same thing. I'm not here to condemn sex workers' choices for any number of good reasons that literally anyone could except Dave Sim and his cesspool of a fan site could articulate better than Chester Brown, but I feel perfectly comfortable deciding whether or not to condemn a john's choices on a case-by-case basis, thanks a lot.

Anyway, the post after that Chester says he's probably about done arguing about this for the time being. Good, I think we all could use a break. Meanwhile, Dave Sim finally got his computer up and running for one last post, and it's a doozy...

S1 Finale: "On Prostitution and Chester Brown"
I'm speechless. Where to start. Um....man. Okay, well, the word "fornication" appears in this short post ten times. Ten. Times.

Here's what we've got:

• "the only valid viewpoint on fornication is God's"
• "If you want to have a female counterpart in your life and have sex with her, and you don't want to experience severe consequences, then it has to be on what [Sim] infer[s] are God's terms"
• Sim is "intrinsically, soul-deep NOT a husband"
• which he attributes "at least partly to being the child of a child of fornication" 
• [some sort of numerological consideration of his birthday, his grandparents, his fornication, and Cerebus] (???)
• Dave Sim: "I haven't fornicated since 1998"
• In May 2019 he will finally "have atoned for [his] previous 21 years of fornication and adultery"
• Dave Sim wishes "everyone, including Chester, the best of luck with their fornication rationales...on Judgment Day"

Well....these people are very sick and today I'm particularly thankful that I don't believe in god, as I would surely end up in hell for making fun of them. Thank you for joining me for another incredible recap of the Chester Brown/Dave Sim Whore Feud.

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