The Blog of the LCSNA
Northern California artist Susan Sanford has created a 2010 calendar with some very clever images: “Alice’s adventures in Wonderland reimagined as if Tenniel’s illustrations had leaped out of the book and were adventuring in the rose gardens and antique stores in the real world.”
Also, don’t miss her homage to Alice and Edward Gorey. (Hmm, and why *didn’t* that combination ever happen? He illustrated Dracula after all…)
The program for the Fall 2009 LCSNA meeting is now available!
The meeting will be held in Fort Lee Historical Park Museum in Fort Lee, New Jersey (just across the George Washington Bridge from Manhattan), on October 17, 2009. The first Alice movie with sound was shot in Fort Lee, which is a famous site in film history. Two Alice films will be shown, and we will hear talks by Alice film experts and collectors.
We hope you can join us for what promises to be a wonderful program, followed by an excellent dinner at a nearby restaurant. Details for registering are on page 2 of the program announcement.
“Made in Bombay, born and raised in the UK, and currently based in San Francisco. Micropixie is a self- proclaimed Alien with extraORDINARY Abilities. She is also the extra-terrestrial alter ego of writer, film-maker, and full-time human being, Single Beige Female. Her debut release, Alice in Stevie Wonderland, is a concept album telling the true story of One Little Alien’s mission on planet Earth to experience life as a human being.”
Micropixie will be playing Thursday, October 8, 6:00-8:00 pm, at CSU Fresno’s University Business Center, Peters Business Building, Alice Peters Auditorium, Room PB191. Free admission. CDs will be available for purchase and signing.
I’m going to try not to blog about each and every thing Disney thinks up to market the new Alice movie, but this one is kind of clever. To announce the first of a purported many designers creating Alice-related couture, an acrobatic Mad Tea Party event with jewelry by Tom Binns took place at the Magic Marketplace fashion trade show on September 2. View the video at Disney’s YouTube channel.
(Though, again, hello Disney, you have my email, you have my age, you know I’m your target market – why didn’t you send me an email about this?!)
It appears that somehow I’ve failed to mention the very cool Gorey Details online shop here on this blog. Well, no time like the present, for in addition to their large selection of Alice-related jewelry, rubber stamps, books, cards, artwork, etc. (and this great clock!), they’ve just added t-shirts, buttons, and stationary with new Dark Wonderland designs by Crab Scrambly.
Online gift store The Afternoon carries the intriguing “Haunted Tea Party” tableware line: an appetizer/dessert plate that feature the Hatter, March Hare, and Alice in a witch’s hat at a midnight tea table set with pumpkin teapots; plates that say “Eat Me” and mugs that say “Drink Me” (of course); a punch bowl shaped like a giant tea cup (check out the ladle!); matching napkins; and a rather bizarre caterpillar bowl holder.
Even after much Googling, I can’t figure out what company has created this line, but no matter. What I did find is that another online retailer, Flag and Banner.com, has a matching banner! (Scroll about three-quarters of the way down the page.)
To put a further Carrollian spin on tweeting Alice, the tweet stream at The Best Butter posts random, grammatically complete chunks of the text from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland once a day.
The creator of the feed says, “The Twitter feed came about because I have a pet project creating software that does generic splitting of text and I have been using Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as my first test text, it being one of my favorite books. It is usually only specific well known sections of the text that are quoted but since almost every sentence seems to have a quality that draws me into the story I thought it would be a fun idea to feed them all out where other people can become hooked.”
I regret to inform you that Mr. Lewis Carroll will be unable to attend this year’s National Book Festival, which takes place on the National Mall in Washington D.C. on Saturday, September 26. However, the delightful poster for the event, illustrated by artist Charles Santore, most cleverly features Alice, the Hatter, the March Hare, the Dormouse, the Caterpillar, and the White Rabbit, front and center as they should be. (Click the image to enlarge.)
Fans of comics from the 1950s might appreciate the Betty and Veronica Digest, No. 195 (June 2009), which leads with “Betty in Wonderland” (pp. 1-21). Betty is babysitting for the Anderson kids, who beg her to read Alice in Wonderland every night. This time she changes the story a little. Betty (Alice) chases Archie down a big hole to Wonderland, where she meets the Cheshire Dog and other characters. Milkshakes and burgers make her shrink and grow, respectively. Veronica appears as the Red Queen who wants to take Archie from Betty, sticking her with Dee and Dum. Instead of croquet, Alice/Betty and Veronica/Red Queen have a bowling contest with Archie as prize. Betty loses, but fortunately Veronica’s parents appear and help Betty escape from Wonderland.
Thanks for the heads up, Clare!
