HILOBROW’s 4Q2016

By: HILOBROW
December 31, 2016

Here’s what HILOBROW published in October, November, and December 2016!

We’re very grateful to new HILOBROW contributors Brandi Brown, John Overholt, James Hannaham, and Roxane Gay; as well as to all of our regular contributors.

BEST OF HILOBROW: 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 1Q2020 | 2Q2020 | 3Q2020 SNEAK PEEK.

GROK MY ENTHUSIASM

During the last three months of the year, we wrapped up GROK MY ENTHUSIASM, a year-long weekly series of enthusiastic posts contributed by HILOBROW friends and regulars.

Here are GROK’s 4Q2016 installments.

OCTOBER: John Overholt on DECKLE EDGES | James Hannaham on HABIT PATTERNS | Jessamyn West on THE PUBLIC LIBRARY SYSTEM | Adam McGovern on THE SPACE GIANTS

NOVEMBER: Brian Berger on MEDIUM COOL | Chris Spurgeon on THE DUNNING-KRUGER EFFECT | Joe Alterio on TABLETOP WARGAMING | Mimi Lipson on TRASH PICKING | Jason Grote on CZECH CINEMA

DECEMBER: Roxane Gay on AUTOMATED CAR WASH | Dan Fox on JULIA DAVIS | Amy Thielen on BINGO | Steph Burt on FEIJOA

Josh Glenn edited the GROK MY ENTHUSIASM series. In 2017, stay tuned for a new weekly enthusiasm series: #SQUADGOALS!

MORE ENTHUSIASM SERIES at HILOBROW

THIS:

Throughout 2016, Adam McGovern’s semi-memoiristic, semi-culture-critical, always insightful column, THIS:, appeared weekly. Here’s the 4Q2016 lineup.

OCTOBER: THE WEST WINGNUT | THE FATHERGOD, PART II | SUPERHUMANISM | TRAILER TRASHTALK! | BOWIEOLOGY 9 OF 7.

NOVEMBER: ARTSPLOITATION | MASTER OF NONE | OWN YOUR OREOS | THE JONI THAT MATTERS.

DECEMBER: JETPACK SCIENCE | CITY & WESTERN | PLAYING OURSELVES | ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE BRIEF.

MORE POSTS by ADAM McGOVERN: OFF-TOPIC (2019–2024 monthly) | textshow (2018 quarterly) | PANEL ZERO (comics-related Q&As, 2018 monthly) | THIS: (2016–2017 weekly) | PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HELL, a 5-part series about characters in McGovern’s and Paolo Leandri’s comic Nightworld | Two IDORU JONES comics by McGovern and Paolo Leandri | BOWIEOLOGY: Celebrating 50 years of Bowie | ODD ABSURDUM: How Felix invented the 21st century self | CROM YOUR ENTHUSIASM: C.L. Moore’s JIREL OF JOIRY stories | KERN YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Data 70 | HERC YOUR ENTHUSIASM: “Freedom” | KIRK YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Captain Camelot | KIRB YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Full Fathom Five | A 5-part series on Jack Kirby’s Fourth World mythos | Reviews of Annie Nocenti’s comics Katana, Catwoman, Klarion, and Green Arrow | The curated series FANCHILD | To see all of Adam’s posts, including HiLo Hero items on Lilli Carré, Judy Garland, Wally Wood, and others: CLICK HERE

PLANET OF PERIL

Each month, during 4Q2016, HILOBROW friend and contributor Lynn Peril published a new installment in the series PLANET OF PERIL, which is devoted to Lynn’s favorite obscure historical fads and figures.

Here are PLANET OF PERIL’s three 4Q2016 installments.

SPALINGRAD: Health Resorts of the USSR.
UNESCORTED WOMEN: A brief history of women drinking in public.
OFFICE PARTY: “Drinking, stripping, and indulging in hanky-panky.”

MORE LYNN PERIL at HILOBROW: PLANET OF PERIL series | #SQUADGOALS: The Daly Sisters | KLUTE YOUR ENTHUSIASM: BLOW-UP | MUSEUM OF FEMORIBILIA series | HERMENAUTIC TAROT: The Waiting Man | KIRB YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Young Romance | CROM YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife | HILO HERO ITEMS on: Tura Satana, Paul Simonon, Vivienne Westwood, Lucy Stone, Lydia Lunch, Gloria Steinem, Gene Vincent, among many others.

STUFFED

In October, Tom Nealon’s first book, Food Fights and Culture Wars: A Secret History of Taste, was published (in the UK) by the British Library! In March, the US edition will hit bookshelves.

Food Fights and Culture Wars grew out of Tom’s HILOBROW food-history series, STUFFED. Hooray!

Here are 4Q2016’s three STUFFED installments.

REVUE DES MENUS (DEUX): Transatlantic liner menus — from the 1940s and 1950s.
WORCESTERSHIRE SAUCE: Its secret origins.
THE THICKENING: How (and why) did liquid foodstuffs get so viscous?

THE KALEVALA

During 4Q2016, we wrapped up a year-long cycle of poems, by HILOBROW friend and contributor James Parker. Obscene, violent, hilarious, Parker’s THE KALEVALA respectfully bastardized portions of a Finnish sequence of folkloric songs, runes, and charms. We hope to publish James’s bastardizations in pamphlet form. We also hope that, some day in the not too distant future, he will tackle the entire sequence!

Here are 4Q2016’s three KALEVALA installments.

“The Cowherd”: “Damn these clanging udders!/Damn these muscular shudders!”
“Joukahainen’s Mother Counsels Him Against Shooting the Wizard Vainamoinen”: “I see you with your crossbow cocked,/and your intellect murderously locked.”
“The Cows Come Home”: “Her head fills with words/which curdle into curds/which turdle into turds.”

KALEVALA SERIES: RUNE 3 (1–278): “Wizard Battle” | RUNE 4 (1–56): “A Failed Seduction” | RUNE 4 (300–416): “Aino Ends It All” | RUNE 5 (45–139): “An Afternoon Upon the Water” | RUNE 5 (150–241): “The Blue Elk” | RUNE 6 (1–114): “Therapy Session” | RUNE 6 (115–130): “Joukahainen’s Mother Counsels Him Against Shooting the Wizard Vainamoinen” | RUNE 11 (1–138): “Introducing Kyllikki” | RUNE 23 (485–580): “The Bride’s Lament” | RUNE 30 (1–276): “Icebound” | RUNE 30 (120–188): “The Voyage of the Sea-Hare” (Part One) | RUNE 30 (185–188): “Losing It” | RUNE 31 (215–225): “The Babysitter” | RUNE 31 (223–300): “The Screaming Axe” | RUNE 33 (1–136): “The Cowherd” | RUNE 33 (73): “Song of the Blade: Kullervo” | RUNE 33 (118–284): “The Cows Come Home” | RUNE 34 (1–82): “The Pipes of Kullervo”.

SÉRIE NOIRE

During 4Q2016, HILOBROW friend and contributor Alix Lambert published two final installments in her 8-part series SÉRIE NOIRE, which revisits the crime movies that most influenced her when she was a child and young adult.

Here are 4Q2016’s two installments.

The Bad Seed (1956), directed by Mervyn LeRoy. Do we inherit traits genetically or are we products of our environment?
Joe (1970), directed by John G. Avildsen. White male hatred and anger, still very much on display.

THE BOURNE VARIATIONS

During 4Q2016, we wrapped up a year-long cycle of poems, by HILOBROW friend and contributor James Parker, inspired by scenes from the Jason Bourne movie franchise. Thrilling, witty, mythomaniacal, THE BOURNE VARIATIONS are a triumph of film criticism and fanfic.

Here are 4Q2016’s three BOURNE VARIATIONS installments.

“The Graduates”. “Economical huffings,/elbow-strikes and de-handcuffings.”
“The Murder of Agent Daniel Zorn, in Berlin, by CIA Section Chief Ward Abbott”. “You said the wrong/right thing and his face went stony.”
“Full Priority Situation”: “Who’s onscreen? Pull him up. It’s Jason Bourne.”

BOURNE VARIATIONS SERIES: “The Goddess of Memory Speaks to Jason Bourne” | THE BOURNE IDENTITY: “The Duellists”. THE BOURNE SUPREMACY: “Congratulations, You Have Just Met Jason Bourne” | “The Graduates” | “The Murder of Agent Daniel Zorn, in Berlin, by CIA Section Chief Ward Abbott”. THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM: “Big Daddy” | “The Assassination of the Journalist Simon Ross” | “Full Priority Situation”. THE BOURNE LEGACY: “Alaska, Alone” | “Aaron Cross to the Wolf” | “Fairy Story”. JASON BOURNE: “Watching the Jason Bourne Trailer” | “The Bourne Travesty”.

ON BEYOND ZARATHUSTRA

During October, we wrapped up our 15-part serialization of a section of Nietzsche’s lost graphic novel, On Beyond Zarathustra. According to John Holbo, who discovered this amazing treasure, Nietzche’s text prompts us to ask, about the later prose-poem Thus Spake Zarathustra: Do the townspeople ignore Zarathustra because his proposed transvaluation of values is too radical? Or is it because, like Dr. Seuss’s Gerald McGrew or Morris McGurk, he tends to rattle on and spiral off? HiLobrow was the first to publish these never-before-seen extracts!

We also published an explanatory essay by John Holbo, “On Beyond Zarathustra: A Double-Parody For All And None.” Excerpt: “Just as Seuss books are children’s books for adults, so Zarathustra — and other philosophy I might mention — is seeming YA fiction, secretly written as non-fiction for older adults. Who are, in a sense, true children at heart.” Another HILOBROW exclusive!

HOLBO AT HILOBROW: On Beyond Zarathustra — a double parody | Sugarplum Squeampunk — Christmas cards by deranged Victorian “cthuligrapher” Albert Wedge-Wheskit | Not Trash, Pop — a celebration of forgotten midcentury gag panel artist Susi Steinitz Ettinger | CROM YOUR ENTHUSIASM: The Conan Mythos | HERMENAUTIC TAROT: The Heaviest Heads.

ONGOING ORIGINAL SERIES

During 4Q2016, we published new installments in the following original series.

BEST ADVENTURES — a series chronicling Josh Glenn’s attempt to read and identify the 10 best adventure novels of each year, from 1904 through 1983. During 4Q2016, we published: 10 Best Adventures of 1906, 10 Best Adventures of 1911, 10 Best Adventures of 1917 (partial), 10 Best Adventures of 1967, 10 Best Adventures of 1976, and 10 Best Adventures of 1981.
GOLDEN AGE SCI-FI 75 — a series chronicling Josh Glenn’s attempt to read and identify the best sci-fi novels published during the genre’s so-called Golden Age (1934–63). THANKS! to Boing Boing, for directing lots of sci-fi fans to the completed list. During 4Q2016, we wrapped up this series with installments that included, among others: William Burrough’s Naked Lunch (1959), Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan (1959), Walter M. Millers’s A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960), Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s The Fantastic Four (Nov. 1961–on), Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris (1961), Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (1962), and Thomas Pynchon’s V. (1963), among others. The complete Golden Age Sci-Fi 75 list is here.
JOSHENILIA — a series exhuming the juvenilia and significant objects, no matter how trite or embarrassing, of HILOBROW’s editor.

CURATED SERIES

We curated the following reprint series, during 4Q2016. We are very grateful to the authors, all of whom are HILOBROW friends and contributors, for permitting us to gather and republish their work.

ALL MY STARS. As we have done since the beginning of the year, each week, we reprinted Joanne McNeil’s ALL MY STARS newsletter — which tracks and reacts to her latest media and exhibition input.

AMERICA OBSCURA. The legendary Andrew Hultkrans allowed us unparalleled access to his archives. We republished several pieces of his brilliant journalism — extracted from the archives of print and online publications.

MONSTOBER. HILOBROW friend and contributor Rick Pinchera’s 2016 InkTober series — a drawing a day, during the month of October — was dedicated to those monsters that scared and amused him most when he was growing up in the ’80s.

HEATHCLIFF, FOR WHY? The Andy Kaufman-like anti-comedy antics of Heathcliff have nonplussed newspaper funny pages readers since 1973. Brandi Brown investigated.

12 MORE DAYS OF SIGNIFICANCE: A holiday-season series of posts reprinting stories written — by 12 HILOBROW contributors — for the 2009–2010 Significant Objects project, which was co-edited by Josh Glenn. Contributors: Annalee Newitz, Cintra Wilson, Jen Collins, Joanne McNeil, Jonathan Lethem, Sarah Weinman, Shelley Jackson, Barbara Bogaev, Dan Reines, Jenny Offill, Katie Hennessey, James Hannaham.

On to 1Q2017!

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BEST OF HILOBROW: 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 1Q2020 | 2Q2020 | 3Q2020 SNEAK PEEK.

HILOBROW’s 4Q2016

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