It’s finally April! We’ve gotten past the torture of April Fool’s Day online and the second great lonely March, so it’s time to take a time out and a richly deserved Afternoon Snack.
We’ve got wind of a new Kickstarter for you to throw your money at!! The Greatest Hits: A Comics Mixtape all about music is being crowdfunded by Level Ground Comics, “a grassroots publisher based in Savannah, GA looking to give experience to up-and-coming artists and editors!” The lineup looks amazing, and they’ve gotten about halfway to their funding goal, so go give it some of your attention and your money if you got some to spare!
Science explains the somewhat newly-discovered phenomena of “space hurricanes,” which, in our socially-starved pandemic brains, makes us wonder how to throw a space hurricane party.
If you like good essays about oddball movies, you’re gonna love “Somewhere Only We Know,” a gentle meditation by Steve Macfarlane on 2006’s Sandy-Keanu vehicle The Lake House, and the last wave of big-money indie-ish films before MCU-esque IP machine gobbled them all up.
Speaking of comics movies, you may have heard that San Diego Comic Con is trying to host an in-person convention on Thanksgiving weekend. Predictably and very understandably, literally everyone is mad about it. Maybe “the hotels are really empty this time of year” is not like, the best reason to schedule a convention?
Elsewhere in “haha wtf y’all,” early last month, the University of Texas published an extensive, book-length report on the origins of the “Eyes of Texas,” the university’s school song, which came to the conclusion that the song is sufficiently not-racist to continue being regarded as the school’s official song. However, UT history professor Alberto A. Martinez found significant evidence to dispute the report: Dr. Martinez’s findings constitute a 48-minute read according to Medium, where he published them. Dr. Martinez argues convincingly that “Eyes of Texas” should not be officially sanctioned by UT, for the following reasons:
The line ‘The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You’ was inspired by a statement about General Lee in the Civil War.
The Eyes of Texas song copied not only the melody but the form, and some of the words, phrases, and rhymes, of the racist Levee Song.
The Eyes of Texas song was written specifically to be performed at an event in which White UT students would mock Black persons.
The song was written on the day of that blackface minstrel show, on May 12, 1903.
The song began not when racist minstrel shows were fading at UT, but on the day that they began.
After reading the full essay, we gotta say that the evidence is very compelling, and its omission from UT’s official report is pretty sketchy. (If you choose to read it, know that racist words are redacted but racist imagery and detailed descriptions of minstrel shows are included as evidence.) Let’s hope that the University of Texas, where a fair number of POMEs have received education, acknowledges the evidence found by own of its own faculty, and does the right thing.
Even if you’re not a close follower of the labor movement, we highly recommend this straightforward and inspiring interview from Strikewave with David Muto of the New Yorker Union, discussing why and how they’ve gotten to the point where not one, but 3 bargaining units under Condé Nast have authorized a strike, and what they hope they can accomplish with it.
And because it wouldn’t be a true Afternoon Snack without a) something witchy b) something sassy and c) cats: beware the cat ghost portal!!! (You gotta click through for the setup to the punch line, but it’s worth it!!)