Listen to the Words

It still takes a long, long time for me to colour pages of my comic and I still look for things to listen to. Lately I haven't been keen on audiobooks for some reason but I discovered The Criterion Channel is a good source of one of my favourite things to listen to; movie commentary tracks. Does any other streaming service have these? I'm so happy Criterion does, and surprised, considering they seem to have gone well out of vogue even for special edition Blu-Ray releases.

While colouring yesterday, I listed to film critic Tony Rayns' commentary for Carl Dreyer's Vampyr (1932), film scholar Peter Cowie's commentary for Ingmar Bergman's Sawdust and Tinsel (1953), and I listened again to Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola's commentary track for the 1941 Thief of Bagdad.

I've also been listening to a lot of things on YouTube, particularly this guy:

The History Guy has uploaded so many videos on so many topics that, even though the videos are relatively short, I can just leave YouTube cycling through them while I focus on colouring. I love the diversity of topics he chooses. In one video, he talks about a narrowly avoided airline disaster in the 1980s, in another, he's talking about Ancient Rome, and in another about the cultivation of bananas or about the history of screws in Canada. It's all done with a palpable love for history and blessedly free of discernible modern political bias. Yesterday I listened to part of his compilation on wild west outlaws:

I find I never get tired of it.

My summer vacation, the month of August, is coming to an end and I go back to a life dominated by Kashihara's marvelous junior high schools on Friday. It's been a good August and I'm glad I managed to get at least one chapter of my comic done. I'm sure looking forward to autumn, though, and September 15th, formerly known as "felt hat" day, when I've decided I'll switch from wearing my straw hat to felt hats again. What am I talking about?

I don't wear a boater, though, I wear a Stetson straw fedora, which you can see in my own YouTube video about Cinderella:

That's another thing I did this summer, that video. That mustard coloured hat band was another thing. I bought that hat last year and it came with a thin, leather band held on with cheap glue. It came apart after I walked in a rainstorm, which was okay because I didn't like it anyway. This year I followed a bunch of online tutorials to make my own band from some ribbon I bought at a craft store. It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. But thank goodness people love DIY in Japan so it was easy to find ribbon and all the sewing tools I needed.

The hat itself is actually polyester, not real straw. Generally I try to avoid synthetics but I've heard genuine straw hats don't stand up to much wear. I like to have things that'll last me for years that I don't have to worry about replacing. I'm pretty happy with the hat, though I still prefer my felts. It's survived a few rainstorms now. It seems to soak up water like a sponge but it goes back to normal after I've left it drying out on the clothesline. And it's very light so I made a chinstrap for it with some twine, a bead, and a little green plastic jewel a favourite student made me in an oven. This is one of the things kids in the handmaking clubs routinely do in the junior high schools here. Students have presented me with all kinds of little plastic handmade trinkets I'm always honoured to receive.