Monthly Archives: April 2007

links for 2007-04-24

Books: Will Eisner’s New York

Will Eisner's New York: Life in the Big City: New York, The Building, City People Notebook, Invisible People (Will Eisner Library)

Wednesday night, Sam brought home “Will Eisner’s New York: Life in the Big City” and I’ve been flipping through it. It is a collection of 3 previous books by Eisner about NYC – mostly 1 or 2 page graphic layouts.

It’s a perfect little snapshot of the NYC that used to be. Some of the stories are still true because they are about what happens when so many people are crammed in together in one place. You develop defense mechanisms to save time and trouble. Sam and I were out with some friends last night and a woman came up to beg. While I always am overly polite and listen to the whole spiel before politely refusing, Sam cut the whole thing short.

“I can’t have this conversation right now.”

“Okay,” said the woman, and wandered off. Saved her time and us too.
Life’s full of little gray areas like this. Will Eisner’s New York is full of little gray areas like this. Stories intersect and diverge and intersect again. Eisner’s stories are all little stories of little people, following them through the pathos and heroics that surround us every day.

Best Screensaver Ever

About a year ago I bought a huge monster flat screen TV. It’s nice for watching movies on and a heck of a lot less trouble than setting up the projector. It sucks a lot of power so I try to leave it turned off most of the time, but I’ve got a great reason to leave it on. That reason is Slickr. It downloads the most interesting pictures from Flickr and gracefully fades them in and out and about on your screen.

If you are staring at it and a really good picture comes up, you can hit “d” on your keyboard to make it your wallpaper. Hit the spacebar to launch the picture behind the scenes in your browser.