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S.F. Bay Area Friends! If you find yourself near the San Francisco Ferry Building this Sunday, March 15 at 2 p.m., I'd sure appreciate it if you'd drop by the Book Passage Bookstore, listen to me talk, and maybe even buy a copy of Mom's Cancer: Anniversary Edition. I can think of worse ways to spend a beautiful day in a beautiful city! Thanks.
https://www.bookpassage.com/event/brian-fies-mom%E2%80%99s-cancer-anniversary-edition-ferry-building-event
A Peek into the Intimate Intellectual Life of a Long-Married Couple, Part 28:
Me: "Can this serving spoon go into the dishwasher?"
Karen: "Yes."
Me: "I never know which can and which can't."
Karen: "Two of them are stainless steel and can go in the dishwasher. One is silver-plate and shouldn't."
Me: "I can't tell them apart."
Karen: "They're very different."
Me: "Not when you're only looking at one of them."
Karen: "The sliver-plate spoon has a daffodil pattern."
Me: "Now I have to be a BOTANIST?!"
Karen: "It's pretty obvious."
Me: "I'll just keep asking to be sure."
This has been a peek into the intimate intellectual life of a long-married couple.
Here's an insightful review from writer Susan Palmer, shared with my thanks. Nobody's opinion of Mom's Cancer means more to me than that of someone who's been through it themselves.
"I didn’t understand until I read Fies’s book the kind of deep skill it takes to bring the right words and the right images together. His mother’s journey was quite different than mine. Yet I felt myself in it. For anyone in any stage of that landscape, I imagine the book may have that effect."
Rebuilding my home taught me one nearly universal constant: no matter what trade you’re dealing with—concrete, framing, electrical, HVAC, tile, flooring, painting—the next guy you call in will tell you that the previous guy didn’t know what he was doing.
(I’m using “guy” generically, recognizing that both men and women can be skilled professional tradespeople, although my experience is limited to men.)
“Who put in this 20-amp circuit breaker?” asks the first guy. “Were they trying to burn down your house?” He puts in a 30-amp breaker.
“Who put in this 30-amp circuit breaker?” demands the next guy. “Were they trying to burn down your house?”
You seldom find such staggering levels of confident incompetence as you do when building a home. We did have a good prime contractor, and what made them good was that they recognized the work of bad subcontractors and corrected it fast. We also learned quickly ourselves.
It’s hard not to conclude that documents like the National Electrical Code or state Building Code, which to a layperson seem like detailed engineering manuals with explicit regulations for every situation and contingency, are matters of opinion and debate. More guidelines than rules, really.
I’ve mentioned my observation to a couple of tradespeople we've hired to do work for us, and every time they seem unamused and deeply insulted. And then they take a look at whatever the project is and say, “Whoever did this didn’t know what they were doing! Good thing you hired me!”
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I wanted to announce three upcoming book talks and signings for the release of the Mom's Cancer: Anniversary Edition so you can put them on your calendars. Heck, why not attend all three? (Nobody but me should do that.)
March 15 at 2 p.m. I will be at Book Passage in the San Francisco Ferry Building. That's next Sunday already! Book Passage is one of the great West Coast independent bookstores that big-time authors make sure to hit when they're in the Bay Area, and they've always been good to me.
April 9 at 7 p.m. I will be at the Copperfield's Books store in Montgomery Village, Santa Rosa, Calif. Copperfield's is another great indie chain whose support has meant a lot over the years. They're a real champion of local authors, with terrific managers and staff.
May 16 at 2 p.m. I will be at the Charles M. Schulz Museum, also in Santa Rosa, Calif. I've attended and participated in so many events at the Schulz Museum that it feels like my home away from home, and the ones they held after the 2017 wildfires are personal and professional highlights for me.
The last two events are not yet on their respective hosts' event calendars, but trust me: I'm booked.
I have other podcasts and interviews in the hopper, which I'll be sure to announce as they emerge. I have no real book tour planned. Those are a lot harder to come by these days. However, if any bookstore within the sound of my electrons is interested in hosting a talk and signing, please let me know!
I just spent four hours at a local high school's Career Fair with my pal, cartoonist Lex Fajardo, who is the creator of the Kid Beowulf comics series and editor at the Schulz Studio. Here's why I think that was a good use of my time:
1. Talking shop with Lex.
2. Offering an alternative. We were surrounded by cops, firefighters, soldiers, engineers, grocery store managers, and many other career choices that there is nothing wrong with except they aren't cartoonists. We had several students and even a couple of teachers who thanked us just for being so different.
3. Approximately 37 out of 38 students couldn't have cared less that we were there, but that one out of 38 lit up like a sun. I would move mountains for the 38th kid.
4. Related: Lex and I agreed that if two people like us has been at OUR high school career fairs, we would have rooted to the spot and absorbed all we could. When I was a kid, I met people who did things I dreamed of doing, and realized that it wasn't magic; they just worked hard and did the things. If they could, then I could. Now I get to be one of those people for someone else.
5. Free cookies.
That's a good afternoon.
Here's an extraordinary take on the new edition by a YouTuber who reviews comics under the banner "Near Mint Condition" (I know his name but am not sure he wants it public).
In more than 20 years of having my work scrutinized, I don't know if I've received a review this detailed, thoughtful, and compassionate. The reviewer read the story closely and brought his own life experience to it. That connection is what writing and reading is all about.
Thanks to my friend Chris Sparks for bringing it to my attention. If you have 13 minutes and are interested, I think it's worth a look!
Thanks to Amaris and Autobiographix! It's a nice way to mark the occasion of putting a new (or at least updated) book into the world.
Countless stories explore the idea of paths not taken, and how different some other direction might have been. Life can turn on a single choice, particularly when it eliminates other choices. You can’t help but wonder.
Existence only seems like an inevitable chain of events leading to Now in retrospect. At the time, it’s chaos. I can recall many seemingly trivial moments that changed the course of my life in ways I didn’t understand until much later.
Once, when I was a newspaper reporter, my editor bellowed across the newsroom asking if anyone wanted to take a weekend junket to cover an electric utility launching a high-tech energy storage project. Nobody else spoke up so I volunteered, and wrote a full-page feature on it. No big deal. Many years later, I applied for work as a science writer, and that article was the only thing I’d published that was relevant to the job. That began a new career for me, which led to freelance writing, which led to full-time cartooning.
If I hadn’t been in the newsroom just then, or if someone else had spoken first, or if I’d made other plans for that weekend, I might have had an entirely different life.
It’s natural to speculate on where that untraveled path would have led. I wish I’d handled some choices differently. But the way I see it, I can’t regret anything before my daughters were born, because every decision led to them and any different path would not have.
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Friends, very rarely do I post for naked promotional purposes, but my new/old book--the 20th Anniversary Edition of Mom's Cancer--is being released in exactly one week, on March 3. If you have any interest in owning this update of my first graphic novel, now with 32 more pages of content including 22 pages of new art, this would be an excellent time to order it.
As always, I encourage everyone to support their local heroic independent bookseller. Failing that, it's also available from the usual multinational corporations, and I won't think less of you. Make sure you get the new one with the pink spine.
By way of encouragement, I'll repeat my offer of mailing a free signed bookplate to anyone who asks. Just send me your postal address (brianfiesATgmailDOTcom should do it), tell me how/if you want it inscribed, and I'll pop it in the mail. Honestly, I haven't yet received the bookplates from my printer, but I will soon and they'll look like this. Meanwhile, I've started a list.
I have some book signings and podcast appearances coming up, and will be sure to mention them as they get closer.
Many thanks!
“Squaring the circle” is a geometry problem so infamous that it became a metaphor for an unachievable task. The challenge: construct a square with the same area as a given circle using only a compass and straight edge. It’s impossible because the area of a circle is a multiple of Ï€ (3.14159265…), a number with an endless stream of digits that can’t be translated into a square with those tools.
Nevertheless, centuries of crackpots have tried to square the circle. Including me.
A similar problem is trisecting an angle: it has been proven impossible to divide an arbitrary angle into three equal parts using a compass and straight edge.
I can’t tell you how much time and paper I wasted trying to trisect an angle until I satisfied myself that it was at least impossible for me.
Perpetual motion is the ultimate futile challenge. No device, no matter how you arrange its weights, pulleys, magnets or gears, can run forever without putting energy into it. Friction and other thermodynamic waste grind every machine down until it stops. No system is 100 percent efficient.
I know that. I believe that.
And yet the number of times I’ve thought, “But what if . . .”
For as long as I can remember, whenever someone told me something was impossible, I set out to prove them wrong, or at least prove to myself they were right. At worst, it provides light mental exercise. At best, there’s a Nobel Prize in it for me.
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I've seen many fine and touching testimonials to the late actor Robert Duvall, with mentions of his great performances in "The Godfather," "Apocalypse Now," "The Great Santini," and more. But very few have mentioned this, my favorite scene of his ever, from the movie "Secondhand Lions."
If you haven't seen it, it's a good movie with a great cast, and even a bit of artwork by "Bloom County" cartoonist Berke Breathed. Recommended.
When I began my "Last Mechanical Monster" webcomic back in, oh, 2012 or 2013, I thought of two actors whom I'd love to portray my old mad scientist, Sparky, if anyone ever wanted to make a live-action movie of it. First was Christopher Plummer. Second was Robert Duvall. Both are gone now, and since nobody's clamoring to make that movie I guess I lost my chance.
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| Sparky in action. See if you can imagine Duvall in the role. |
One of the milestones of maturity is realizing that not everything is made or meant for you.
Other people can love music, literature, entertainment, food, or sports that you find inexplicable, confusing, repulsive, inane. It’s fine! Believing that is a big step in accepting you’re not the center of the universe.
Too many argue the opposite: “I hate it, it’s bad, and anyone who likes it is stupid.” How small-minded.
Take Taylor Swift.*
Early in her career, I was dismissive. Lightweight pop. But as her career grew, so did my appreciation for her work and work ethic.
Swift’s songs weren’t made for middle-aged men like me, and I wasn’t living the lives of kids to whom her lyrics spoke. She was an artist for them, not me, and while I’ve come to like some of her songs, I could never love her like they do.
She also seems like a decent person, a refutation of the axiom that there are no ethical billionaires. Millions pay money to hear her sing. I see no crime.
I try not to judge any art as “good” or “bad.” De gustibus non est disputandum. I prefer Roger Ebert’s standard: Does the work achieve its intended purpose? If so, it’s a success. The strongest criticism I’ll level publicly is, “It’s not for me.”
Of course, the corollary of “Not all art is meant for you” is “Your art isn’t meant for everybody.” Accept some audience indifference and trust that the right people will find you.
*Or Bad Bunny.
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