Notes from Stately Beat Manor and the Brooklyn Book Festival

Just some housekeeping.

§ We may actually get getting the new server and stable WordPress installation this week. Fingers crossed. Any day now. We’ll have to refrain from posting anything that might draw traffic until then, because anytime more than 11 people click on a post at once….bad things happen, as we’re sure you’ve noticed. There’s nothing wrong with the server—it’s just a database that crashes all the time because it was never cleaned up from the bad version of four or five years ago, and accumulated dirt and wear and tear, Also, Woo Themes are really database heavy. The new site will not use a Woo Theme! I’ll have a lot to say when the move is finally accomplished, but suffice to say…websites need maintenance and there’s no way around that.

§ We may also be getting kittens here at Stately Beat Manor very soon. We haven’t had a new cat in 20 years, so while we wait for the new server we’ll be thinking of names for cats. In the past, we just rotated between a few: a black cat was Keke. An orange cat was Poofie. Anything else was Snoofy or Cayce or Tiddles or Mister Biscuits. This is a pretty serious matter; the one dog we owned never got past being named Pup-pup, or Puppy for short, so you’ve got to be prepared.

§ The Brooklyn Book Festival was held yesterday in…Brooklyn, beneath a perfect early autumn sky. There was a fantastic comics presence, with Adrian Tomine, Carla Speed McNeil, the Hernandez Brothers and many many more. We moderated the “Sex in Comics” panel with Bob Fingerman, Gilbert Hernandez, Molly Crabapple and Leela Corman and it was very funny and frank. Short version: sex is a part of life, so it has to be a part of stories about life. We have an audio of the panel will will try to get it uploaded at some point, with pictures. The D&Q booth was swarmed with people for the Rookie Yearbook One, which is a non-comic departure for them. Publisher Chris Oliveros noted that the book was doing very well, however, and is getting them into some outlets they weren’t previously available in.

News tidbit: Bob Fingerman told us there will be a new MAXIMUM MINIMUM WAGE coming out which collects the complete series about a bunch of 90s slackers and bohemians, albeit with a few edits to the graphic sex to make it more of a PG-13 book. But not to worry, “There will still be two penises in it,” he said.

Another news tidbit: While she’s still promoting her graphic novel Unterzakhn, Leela Corman noted that she hoped it would be less than 8 years before her next book came out. Among the topics she’s considering? “I really like the Mongolian hordes!” Sold!

We also ran into Colleen Doran who told us that in addition to the deer and foxes that have been in her backyard, she has had an even more amazing animal visitor, but we’ll leave it to her blog to reveal the nature of this beast. Hint: he could be named Rupert or Yogi.

Colleen also mentioned that she and Carla had been hanging out over the weekend, which immediately made us think that a TV show called “Carla and Colleen in Conversation” would be an instant winner. At the very least a convention panel needs to happen!!! If you’ve ever heard either of these two talented ladies speak, you know they are both loquacious polymaths of history, anthropology, comics, crafts and just about every other subject. Or as Colleen put it, “We’re both from the South.” Add this to our wish list for the day.