I don't take orders from Colonel Sanders

Plettschner: You want to be a hero? Or would you rather be a chicken man?

Otto: What?

Plettschner: A chicken man. Did you ever see a farmer's wife?

-Repo Man (1984)

Yma Sumac - Chicken Talk (from Mambo!, 1954) - I got into Sumac's blend of Latin and exotica styles after hearing her mentioned as a spiritual precursor to Lene Lovich, and quickly grew to appreciate her unique style in its own right. She also never recorded a lame cover of the already lame Rod Stewart hit "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy," which gives her a decisive advantage over the San Diego Chicken (who covered the song in 1979). Fads can lead us into some dark places.

Link Wray - Run, Chicken, Run (from a 1963 single, collected on Rumble! The Best of Link Wray, 1993) - "This whole bat persona just isn't working out. Everyone is terrified of me, even Ace the Bat-Hound! I need a change of image before I become a brutal thug as awful as the villains I fight. I know, I'll become Happy Sunshine Chicken Man Who Carries a Huge-Ass Gun!" It's a shame that scene didn't make into the final draft of the 52 maxi-series. (via)

MDC - Chicken Squawk (from Millions of Dead Cops, 1982) - Recording a punked up square dance track on behalf of poor oppressed poultry? Admirable. Dressing up in a chicken-themed S&M costume and calling one's self "Gamecock"? Not so much. Dig the tail feathers; you don't see that commitment to detail in the current generation of supervillains, and that's a clucking shame.

Dr. Alimantado - Best Dressed Chicken in Town (from Best Dressed Chicken in Town, 1978) - What the hell is up with that picture? It's either a failed early experiment in cosplay technology or else Dr. Moreau has a lot to answer for. Dr. Alimantado, on the other hand, has nothing to apologize for.

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Hope you enjoyed the post. With any luck, it ought to net me a Pullet Surprise.

the original sinners are religiously praying

I can’t remember the exact circumstances why, but a while back I made a list of the most depressing places I’ve ever had the misfortune of visiting. It’s all relative, of course. I’ve never set foot inside a hospice for terminally ill children, for example, so my definition of “depressing” could very well differ from yours. I just wanted to get that out up front, lest someone think I’m a callous son of a bitch.

Some of the places on the list are self-explanatory, like the psych ward of the Bedford VA hospital or the nursing home for head trauma patients where my grandfather spent the last couple years of his life. Others require some clarification, like the reception area for my previous dentist (before I lucked onto a job with a dental plan), a man who built his practice around ruthless efficiency and affordable rates. As a result, his patients tended to be a wide cross-section of folks who had been kicked in the teeth, literally and figuratively, by the American Dream -- purple haired punk rockers (take a guess who that was), haggard looking middle aged women wearing too much makeup, non-English speaking immigrants, and impoverished senior citizens.

And then there is Keno Mart.

“Keno Mart” is the nickname the wife and I use for the convenience store a couple blocks over from our house. I don’t even know what the place’s real name is, though it gets regular mention in the police blotter of the local paper. It’s a pretty standard suburban convenience store in most respects, selling discounted cigarettes, microwaveable junk food, and overpriced household essentials to folks with neither the time nor inclination to travel to the supermarket a mile down the road. That in itself wouldn’t qualify it for my list, but as the nickname suggests, Keno Mart also happens to function as the local Commonwealth-sanctioned betting parlor.

As it’s just a stone’s throw from my house, I visit the place often enough to pick up the paper or a bottle of tonic. The parking lot is always full of cars, from immaculate black Cadillacs, to dinged up minivans, to older model European luxury jobbers whose status symbol luster has since rubbed off through a lengthy succession of owners. It’s not a gallon of milk or a pack of Camels their owners have all come for, though. They’ve come for the chance against all reason that this will be the day that their dreams come true.

I’ve spent enough time around aspiring creative-types to be familiar with the stink of desperation, but nothing could prepare me for the pure, uncut variety that permeates the atmosphere inside the store like an ionized mist. The crowd is diverse; soccer moms and chubby retirees rub shoulders with long-haired biker dudes and skinny guys wearing unlaced sneakers and sweat-stained work clothes emblazoned with the logo of a company that went under five years ago. (Yesterday, I was in line behind a gentleman in his sixties with a massive facial tumor who peeled several twenties off a decent sized roll to pay for a bundle of Daily Numbers quick picks.) They all radiate the same aura of hunger, and possess the same willingness to drop a hundred bucks on scratch tickets (the very essence of a “loser’s game”) while still managing to keep one eye on the big screen that projects the Keno results.

It’s an insatiable hunger, too. The rare winner never cashes out and leaves happy, but always chooses to let it ride, plowing their meager winnings back into the grand game. As someone with a staunch aversion to gambling (the only bit of Protestantism that has stuck with me over the years, unless you count my judgmental and elitist tendencies), I find the environment fascinating even as I feel my soul start to erode within its confines.

Keno Mart, where the American Dream, reduced to a means without end, goes to die (taking as many desperate souls as it can with it when it finally croaks). If you weren’t too lazy to drive the extra mile to the grocery store, you’d never even encounter the rotting smell.

For today’s musical bill, here are some other tales of quiet desperation:

Nick Lowe – Marie Provost (from Jesus of Cool, 1978) – Based on the sad story of this actress, this song perfectly balances pathos with black humor with sparkling pop music.

Anti-Nowhere League – Streets of London (from The Complete Singles Collection, 1999) – They look like they could be Vyvyan Basterd’s favorite band ever, but the tough exterior masks a sensitive side, honest.

Carter USM – A Prince in a Pauper’s Grave (from 30 Something, 1991) – They should have been the biggest pop band in the world, and at one point, it seemed like the could have been, yet something went wrong somewhere. (Also see this.)

I am the (Second) Law (of Thermodynamics)

Thirty-five years of bitter experience have led me to suspect that my body somehow generates an entropic field, from which no device more sophisticated than a simple pulley is safe from its effects. Take the sturdiest, most idiot-proof piece of machinery, put it in my custody for the briefest period of time, and I guarantee that some unforeseen fault will manifest itself in the most spectacular manner imaginable. Automobiles, home electronics, power tools, sharpened sticks – it doesn’t matter; all have (and will) malfunction if left in my presence. It’s the main reason I don’t like to borrow things from people.

It’s not that I’m especially clumsy or that I’m baffled by the material legacy of higher primate-dom. I’m not a particularly “hard” user who treats his possessions like they’re all disposable commodities. I read the manuals. I keep up with the recommended preventative maintenance routines. I’m savvy to the inner workings of the machine spirits – hell, I have to be, otherwise I’d be dropping wads of cash every other week on repair and/or replacement costs.

I was doing some housecleaning today, when I decided that the easiest way to get at some spilled bird seed behind one of the shelves would be to use the wand attachment of my wife’s vacuum cleaner. I was a little hesitant about doing that, though, because I broke the previous vacuum cleaner while using it Ghostbusters-style to get rid of some flies on the living room ceiling fan. (The entopic field wasn’t to blame in that case, just a very misguided flash of inspiration.) I replaced the broken machine, with the understanding that I would leave vacuuming-related maters to my wife in the future.

Sucking up some spilled sunflower seeds isn’t the same as playing amateur Orkin Man, though. I mean, that’s what the machine was designed to do, right? Millions of people use their vacuums for similar tasks every day. So what could go wrong?

Well, the machine could shit the bed, for starters, which it did halfway through the job. The motor gave up the ghost, leaving behind the all-too-familiar acrid tang of ozone and burnt plastic in the air. The smell of machine death. The smell of “Oh, fuck. I’m really in for it now.” Because, honestly, how does one explain to one’s spouse how they’ve managed to destroy a second vacuum cleaner in the space of six months, especially when the previous incident suggested an inability to grasp the basic principles of appliance use?

With some heavy duty self-abasement, of course, along with a visit to the vacuum cleaner section of the Target website. And a solemn vow to never ever use, touch, or even glance in the general direction of the household vacuum cleaner as long as I ever live.

Entropy may be inevitable, but why not pass the time until the heat death of the universe with some contemporary synthpop and classic punk rock?

Soviet – Breakdown (from We Are Eyes, We Are Builders, 2002)

The Buzzcocks – Breakdown (from the Spiral Scratch EP, 1977)

things have been dark for too long

I spent way too much time trying to write a post about the first issue of Amazons Attack, DC’s current big dumb event book, before I realized that:

1. It was a rehash of this post, with “child murder” in place of “ephebophilia”
2. I don’t really care enough about it to write an elaborate critique
3. I lose half my readership every time I do a post about some current comics-related topic

So I just said “to heck with it” despite the fact that it made clever use of Iraq War atrocity photos and contained this wonderful bit of descriptive prose:

The post-Crisis relaunch of Wonder Woman came closest, but hit way too many sour notes, to the extent that reading it felt like eating a really great sandwich that has been spiked with random strips of tinfoil and stray human hairs.

Thank goodness I didn’t decide to write about the World War III miniseries. I might have put you folks off eating for a week.

Here are today’s music selections, completely free of their contextual burdens. It’s for the best. The stink of fan entitlement (today’s aborted theme) is harder to neutralize than the smell of cat piss, and far more unpleasant.

Booker T & The MG’s – Outrage (from Soul Dressing, 1965) – This is a very fitting choice for the fan entitlement/internet rage official soundtrack; its deceptively fierce title masks a whimsically goofy soul instrumental befitting a carnival midway. Who needs a display case when I’ve got Booker T?

INXS – Don’t Change (from Shabooh Shoobah, 1982) – A sweet sentiment, but it is realistic? The cozy haze of infatuation can only last so long before one starts noticing things like how one’s partner leaves empty Pepsi cans on the coffee table or fails to replace the toilet paper roll. No one ought to be pressured into transforming their core persona for the sake of love, but every healthy relationship should involve some degree of compromise, lest small resentments sprout into irreconcilable differences.

New World Symphony – Wonder Woman (from Tube Tunes, Volume 2, 1995) – Feminist empowerment, disco beats, and some really bizarre lyrics. Poor Diana. It’s sad when the high point of a superheroic icon’s career is the time she fought an evil version of The Carpenters (played by Sarah “Real People” Purcell and Judge Reinhold) while unraveling a murder mystery involving backwards masking.

I’m in love with only you

The new issue of Spin arrived in the mail yesterday. It’s nothing I’d ever pay money for, but my wife got a cheapo subscription deal for the magazine, and it’s a handy way to keep my finger on the pulse (or is that "dissect the corpse?") of the current pop music scene. There were a couple of things that caught my eye amidst the nonsense of the ridiculous scene guide (complete with an assortment of photos presumably yanked from either random MySpace pages or Girls Gone Wild vids) and a fashion feature chock full of skuzzy looking hipster models dressed in earth tone corduroy (Rock and roll!).

The eyewitness history of the ’82 and ’83 Us Festivals was interesting, but full of weird transitions between segments. Was following up Andy Gill’s recollection of the Gang of Four’s set with Marky Ramone’s assertion that The Ramones were the only “hardcore punk” band at the ’82 festival an intentional decision? (It’s funny how The Ramones used to distance themselves from the “punk” label until punk became “cool,” meaning “commercial,” in the 1990’s. It strikes me as a case where you stop spinning your wheels and change your address to the rut you’ve dug.) The Clash got mentioned a few times – the 1983 festival was the last time Mick Jones played with the band – but dismissively, due to their unhappiness over the bloated “rawk” atmosphere. Yes, The Clash were a mass of contradictions in thought and deed, but I didn’t need Steve Wozniak or David Lee Roth to tell me that.

After that informative and depressing musical history lesson, I flipped ahead to the only part of the reviews section I bother to read, the roundup of recent noteworthy reissues. Most of them I’m already aware of, but there’s always a chance that something noteworthy has slipped passed my radar. Second on this month’s list was the Stax Records 50th Anniversary Celebration, which would have been a must buy if didn’t already own the Stax/Volt singles and Atlantic R&B box sets. The Spin folks liked it, as well they should (though I take nothing for granted where modern music criticism is concerned), but the last sentence made something hard and bitter catch in my throat:

It’s what Amy Winehouse eats for breakfast.

Hey, I’m all for getting “the kidz” into what I consider to be some of the finest popular music ever recorded, but that…that’s just plain wrong. It’s an “Amazon.com recommends” level of wrong. (If you like Clive Barker’s Books of Blood, you’ll love Maeve Binchy’s Tara Road!) Jon from Underneathica has already discussed the vortex of contradictory comparisons that surround Ms. Winehouse and her music, which I partially attribute to critics unfamiliar with jazz and/or soul making facile connections that most of their readers will never pick up on in any case. How do you reduce decades of output from a diverse stable of artists to a simple single "sound"? And why does music that has stood the test of time have to be presented in terms of the industry’s current darling of the moment?

It’s a common enough practice, but still irksome. When Interpol and The Killers were being lauded as the next big things, one couldn’t swing a dead optical mouse without landing on a reference to Joy Division specifically or postpunk in general, despite the fact that neither band really had a sound that fit the tags. Strong bass lines, mopey lyrics, and black dress shirts do not automatically equal “postpunk,” not to mention the fact that postpunk wasn’t so much a genre as an aesthetic notion of pushing punk’s “anything goes” ethos to the limits. To quote Jon’s excellent piece, “…is [it] the equal of the classic recordings that it tries to evoke? If not, why listen to it when the originals are readily available?”

I freely admit that my love of soul music came from a secondary source, in this case the Blues Brothers, but the Blues Brothers did not musically aspire to be anything more than two white comedians paying homage to a style of music they loved. (Well, that Ackroyd loved. Belushi was apparently a huge fan of Fear.) Plus, they were backed by a roster of veteran soul musicians who had been part of the original scene. The critics were decidedly unimpressed by the results, but they were an unparalleled gateway band by which to develop an appreciation for the sound before graduating to the real deal.

Otis Redding – I Can’t Turn You Loose (from The Very Best of Otis Redding, 1992)

Wilson Pickett – Everybody Needs Somebody to Love (from Wilson Pickett’s Greatest Hits, 1987)

My wife still says she prefers the Blues Brothers’ version of the two songs. She also prefers the glossy Motown sound to the pressure cooker beats, yelps, and moans of Memphis soul, so her opinion doesn’t count.

I went with “best of” compilations for the purchase links to keep things simple (and affordable) for the budding enthusiast. If you have the cash and inclination to dive in head first, the complete Stax/Volt singles collection and the Atlantic Rhythm & Blues box set both make for some exceptional listening.

meow meow birthday

Our kittens had their first birthday today. I suppose that makes them technically "cats" now, but they'll always be "the kittens" to me. I can't believe how quickly the time has flown. It feels like just yesterday that I could fit the little fuzzballs in the palm of one hand.

(l-r, Witch Baby, Carmen, Jem, Auntie-Mom Setzer, Petit CooCoo)

Happy birthday, kit-sters!

Fluke - Kitten Moon (from Risotto, 1997) - Yeah, it's kind of a lazy post today, but this track kind of makes up for it.

my spells cannot be broke

The final gate stood before them, its adamantite bars shining in the flickering torchlight. Beyond lay the inner sanctum of the Gheshezimar the Witch King. The muscular half orc snorted dismissively. The stink of foul magic was heavy in the air. The end of his journey was near at hand, a quest for vengeance that had bought him across half of Xyrolia. Gheshezimar’s thrice-damned soul would join those of his spider-limbed minions in the Abyss.

The barbarian gripped the bars in his massive hands and attempted to lift the gate. The sinews in his shoulder blades knotted and popped with the strain, but the barrier would not lift. “By the fire caves of Zamphr!” he bellowed, “I shall not be denied!”

His slender companion stepped up to the gate. “Allow me,” he hissed, and made a quick gesture with his ebon fingers. Sparkling tendrils snaked from his hands and wrapped around the bars. Slowly the gate began to lift. The barbarian did not approve of such arcane trickery, but he had come to grudgingly respect Nightshade D’rozz’s talents during the many kizmals they had journeyed together. The dark elf mage had proven his worth once again.

No sooner had the gate opened than a shadowy form lunged from the dark passage beyond, screaming profane curses in the long dead language of the Lala-Bar. “A wraithling!” Nightshade screamed, and scrambled to prepare another spell. The half orc barbarian was quicker, and swung his massive axe at the attacker. The blade went wide of the target, shattering on the stone wall of the dungeon. The wightling closed in for the kill….

“What the hell? How could I have missed it? I’m swinging a dire axe that’s as wide as the passage and I have triple weapon specialization!”

“Well, if you account for the speed factor and the encumbrance penalty on initiative…”

“But the axe was forged by the Dwarfsmiths of Hron! It’s supposed to be unbreakable!”

“Um, yeah, well, I think there’s a table that covers that in the Big Dudes With Axes Survival Guide. Just give me a minute; I’m going to look it up. Wait, did I bring that book with me?”

“Aw, screw this. I’m going to see what’s on TV.”

Ah, the raw stuff of nerdy adolescent maleness, roughly shaped by popcult touchstones and polyhedral dice, and set to the dulcet peals of heavy metal thunder… It’s truly a wonder to behold.

I’ve played in hyper-sophisticated, tightly run role-playing campaigns where every in-game location has been mapped down to individual trees and bushes and the game master stressed the importance of “playing in character.” They were admirable, often enjoyable, efforts, but lacked the unrefined entertainment value derived from a cabal of socially awkward misfits cracking the seal on the Dungeons and Dragons Basic (“Red Box”) Set for the first time.

Give an experienced gamer a rule book, some dice, and a character sheet, and you’ll end up with “Eldremere Lightspear, Son of Ulthren, Protector of the Silver Forest and Bloodthrall of the Lady’s Kithband,” complete with a family tree, detailed backstory, and minute personal details.

Give the same to a fourteen year old boy in a Scorpions t-shirt circa 1985 and you’d get this:

Sophisticated characterization and internal logic are fine and all, but when you’re a geeky pubescent manchild trying to grapple with personal power fantasies, there’s nothing like kicking some ass in a dungeon haphazardly populated by a random assortment of the “coolest” monsters listed in the Fiend Folio (“’Cause that was, like, on sale for four bucks at Kay-Bee, and the Monster Manual was, like fifteen.”). It’s a realm where the rules, when properly understood (i.e. not often), are reduced to mere guidelines. The average strength score is 18/00 (the whole 18-slash-percentage strength rating for AD&D always struck me as rather stupid, and opened too many opportunities for meta-gaming), and every character is either a Half-Orc barbarian or multiclassed Dark Elf fighter/magic user/thief. Oh, and did I mention the harem girls?

It’s stupid, nonsensical, and immature (plus frequently sexist), but I have a certain weakness for that form of fantastical yearning. Unpretentious to a fault, it wore its patchwork of influences proudly on its sleeve. The Sword and the Sorcerer, Conan comics, metal and hard rock songs, pinball machine artwork – all thrown together in a steaming cauldron of testosterone, with the end result resembling an independently invented version of John Norman’s Gor as manifested in an eighth grader’s 3rd period English notebook. (Big thanks to the talented Dave Campbell for providing the excellent artwork that leads off today’s post. He nailed the concept perfectly.)

It might seem odd for me to wax nostalgic over such things, given my track record of bitching about the excesses of nerd behavior, especially those associated with the male side of the fan divide. It’s a matter of context, really. There are worse ways for an adolescent boy to work through his issues than projecting his self worth onto a larger than life fictional avatar named Doomhammer for a few months. As a step toward maturity, it’s no big deal, and kind of interesting to look back upon. As a developmental terminus, it’s creepy as fuck.

Even if I still gamed, I wouldn’t want to participate in such a campaign, even if it was possible to overcome my accumulated wisdom and approach it as fresh and free of irony as I did twenty-odd years ago. There are some aspects of youth that cannot be recaptured, no matter how hard one tries. I’ll just have to content myself by watching Deathstalker and The Warriors From Hell for the umpteenth time.

Improbably named and costumed characters? Check. Happens in a universe that is not so much a physical location as an abstract series of events linked together with the thinnest of plot threads? Check. The hero is an obnoxious asshole? Check. Acts of derring-don’t-make-much-sense? Check. Despite the absence of a heavy metal soundtrack, Deathstalker and The Warriors From Hell is the purest realization of a beginner’s D&D run ever caught on film. Potatoes are what we eat.

On to today’s xvart-stomping, blade-swinging, well-oiled and waxed collection of songs:

It’s kind of funny to consider that heavy metal’s fixation with fantasy themes grew out of the 60’s hippie counterculture, by way of Led Zeppelin’s shared fascination with Tolkien and Black Sabbath’s incorporation of 70’s occultist elements, with some Wagnerian (Richard, not Jack) bombast thrown in for good measure. It’s not that long a road from the peace sign to the mark of the beast, if you think about it.

Dio – Holy Diver (from Holy Diver, 1983) – I probably could have skipped all the overblown writing today and just posted this track and its video, which sum things up more effectively than my tortured prose ever could. (Did you know there was a NES game based on this song? Friend CJ has the scoop.)

Savatage – Hall of the Mountain King (from Hall of the Mountain King, 1987) – I saw Savatage open for Testament back in the late 80’s. I can’t remember if was at the Orpheum or the Channel, which reveals two embarrassing facts about me:

1. I can be very forgetful.
2. I paid to see Testament twice.

Don't forget to catch the video. It's priceless.

Deep Purple – Stormbringer (from The Very Best of Deep Purple, 2000) – Blood and souls for my Lord Blackmore! Thank you, Tanelorn! The Last Emperor of Melniboné says “Goodnight!”

many have tried and failed to shake my apple tree

I had another post planned for today, but in between some frustrating network problems at work and an unshakeable feeling of histamine-induced sleepiness, I couldn't give the subject the attention it deserved. Barring another unforseen crisis, it should go up tomorrow.

In the meantime, I'm just going to take the quick and easy route and let slip the hounds of nostalgia...



The Rock Flowers - It Takes a Real Man (to Bring out the Woman in Me) (from a 1971 promotional pack-in single) - One of these days, I'm going to find an intact Rock Flowers doll with accessories and record at a reasonable price on eBay and surprise my wife with an unexpected gift. This track came courtesy of Mondo Daddykin's much missed blog, which was a phemomenal source of cartoon/bubblegum/retro rare vinyl rips until he got tired of the petty bullshit from the peanut gallery and closed up shop. The song was ripped from a 35 year old plastic record, so the crackles and hisses are excusable ...considering that the song is so damn fine.

I would make a snide comment about how a disposable effort recorded to promote an early 70's doll sounds far better than the serious efforts of present-day Top 40 acts, but I think I'll just listen to this track again and let my surge of bile abate.



Mr. T - The One and Only Mr. T (from Mr. T's Commandments, 1984) - "You can pretend that Mr. T is real tough and mean." Wow, dissed by his own toy commercial. Or was it one of those truth in advertising deals where Galoob wanted to avoid any lawsuits about the doll's actual level of bad attitude and resilience?

I never meant to become an afficionado of all things Mr. T, it just sort of happened (long before all the other piteous fools hopped on the bandwagon). It's one of the dangers of retrology; ironic gestures, if repeated often enough, can develop into sincere appreciation despite one's best efforts to maintain an aura of detachment. It's a nostalgia-related varian of Stockholm Syndrome. I still can't sit through an entire episode of the A-Team though. It's way too much foreplay to go through for a generally unsatisfyling climax.

I can’t believe the news today

Sometimes the topics just fall into my lap. According to this news item, Marvel has announced a forthcoming Broadway musical about Spider-Man, with music courtesy by Bono and The Edge.

Wow. I’m trying to assess the show’s prospects and I’m drawing a complete blank. Experience and conventional showbiz logic don’t apply where blockbuster musicals are concerned. Musicals are syncretic entertainments, and a weakness on one front can be offset by strengths in others. The core essence of the Spider-Man mythos is rock solid (unmatched by anything in the entire superheroic genre, I’d argue), but then I remember the dance-fight scenes from Scandal’s “The Warrior” video, and imagine something similar played out on stage in full theme park fashion.

The song lyrics should make for an interesting read, though. I’m anticipating a lot of this:

I have a spider’s strength,
I have a spider’s agility,
But my uncle’s death has taught me that
With these powers comes great responsibility!

…unless Bono decides to have Spidey guilt the Green Goblin into surrendering with asides about third world debt relief. “And this is for…Uganda!” “Ok, you win, Spider-Man! Mail me some literature or give me a website address where I can find out more about this very worthy cause!” Personally, I’d rather see something like this:

(Anytime someone brings up how relevant or “important” U2 is, I simply respond with “Zooropa.” Then I laugh at the sputtering and tears my riposte generates.)

It was inevitable that something like this would come to pass, given Marvel’s efforts to position of itself as a licensing firm that just happens to make comics and the current state of big budget musicals, where no hot property is safe from the grasp of ambitious producers. (“Coming this fall, Saw: The Musical! From the producers of The Last House on the Left Follies!”)

Moxy Früvous – Spiderman (from Bargainville, 1993) – Canada’s answer to They Might Be Giants – a succinct description that should be more than enough to determine whether this song will inspire gasps of enjoyment or groans of agony in the listener. My college buddy Mike liked them a lot. PEDANTS BEWARE: The song title is spelled as it appears on the case. No bitching about the lack of a hyphen, please. Or else.
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Veruca Salt – Spiderman ’79 (from American Thighs, 1994) – I post songs like this from time to time to remind myself of the pain. American Thighs adheres to the all too common “catchy single plus forty minutes of bland filler” school of album making. (The catchy single in this case being the psuedo-Bellyish “Seether.”)

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Marvel Comics & Lifesong Records – No One’s Got a Crush on Peter (from Spider-Man: Rock Reflections of a Superhero, 1975) – Spider-Man: The Musical, 1970’s style. It’s actually not that bad, as far as rock opera concept albums based on comic books go.

the pause that kills gut flora

Yesterday’s reference to Tahitian Treat, which just sort of popped into my head while I was writing in a odd moment of submerged memory recall, got me thinking about my life as a tonic drinker. The use of “tonic” in reference to carbonated sugar water is a willful bit of provincialism on my part, expressly intended to baffle non-New Englanders and possibly lead them to add “drinking Vitalis” to the list of eccentricities attributed to this cold, bitter corner of the country. (We also refer to rubber bands as “elastics” and use “pigpile” instead of “dogpile.”)

After I posted yesterday’s musings, I ran a search for Tahitian Treat on Wikipedia and discovered that the drink is still being sold, but on a very limited basis in the American South. The article also states that the drink isn’t much more than a red Hawaiian Punch/ginger ale cocktail, which jibes with my twenty-five year old recollections of its taste. I suppose I could do a Google search for online tonic retailers or hit up one of my friends who live below the Mason-Dixon line to mail me a six-pack, but I’m not sure if that would worth the cost and effort. I try my best to say on the sane side of the nostalgia border. “Gazing into the abyss,” and all that jazz.

I don’t drink that much tonic these days, anyhow. There was a time, not too long ago, when it was all I did drink, and I have the dental records to prove it. The year or two before I got married, I’d stay up until the wee hours of the night playing videogames or working on the computer. When I needed a break, sometime around two in the morning, I’d run down to the 7-11 and pick up a bottle of Mountain Dew Code Red and a Caramello. I must have drunk tens of gallons of the unnaturally crimson elixir during that period.

Waking up on a hot August morning, having a bad case of dry mouth, and swigging a mouthful of warm flat Code Red… After the fortieth or fiftieth such experience, one tends to lose one’s taste for the beverage. Also, the massive scolding from my supposedly scold-free dentist (“Andrew, are you actively aiming for dentures before your thirty-fifth birthday?”) and a full on revolt by my already fussy digestive tract figured into my decision to put the fizzy sugar water aside in favor of iced tea or just plain water.

I still indulge in a twelve pack of Dr. Pepper every so often, and I confess a certain weakness for Boylan’s Black Cherry soda (the extortionate prices the local Whole Foods charges for a four pack act as an effective brake on excessive consumption). I noticed that there’s a watermelon-flavored Mello Yello variant available in some markets, which I wouldn’t mind trying given the chance, though I kind of already know how it’s going to taste – like a Jolly Rancher stick dissolved in citric acid.

My wife is a conservative tonic drinker – Caffeine-Free Pepsi and Sunkist Orange only, please – who is fairly disgusted by my more…adventurous…tastes. Me? I’d give my right arm for a still-drinkable (as much as it was ever truly drinkable) case of this inspired concoction. The (now-defunct) videogame rental place in North Woburn center used to sell the stuff. How did it taste? Like sitting in front of a 12” TV and playing Ikari Warriors co-op for six straight hours…with a friend prone to John McEnroe-esque tantrums about the “cheating” AI and how you are “fucking up” his “strategy.”

So not that terrible, actually.

Lost Kids – Cola Freaks (from a 1979 EP, collected on Bloodstains Over Europe) – Nice midtempo Danish punk, with decent female vocals and cool, if ideologically suspect, guitar riffs.

Negativland – Nesbitt’s Lime Soda Song (from Escape From Noise, 1987) – Confounding expectations for almost thirty years now. Floating a melodic pop song alongside bizarre audio collages like “Christianity is Stupid”? Why not?

Dillinger Four – Smells Like OK Soda (from This Shit Is Genius, 1999) – I’m not a big fan of 1990’s punk rock, but this track, from a collection of the band’s early singles and EPs, sold me on the strength of the title alone. I really, really hated the post-Nevermind alterna-splosion. It was responsible for my Crass-like epiphany to drop the punk fashion style and concentrate on what really mattered.

I remember visiting my trendinista friend’s apartment back in the early 1990’s and his fridge was entirely filled with cans of OK Soda and packages of hot dogs. I’m hardly one to talk about such things, but I’m amazed the bastard is still among the living.

it was a little bit frightening

Hey, kids, learn the secrets of the Way of the Open Palm from the comfort of your rumpus room! Never mind all that spiritual or philosophical “mumbo-jumbo.” You don’t want to waste time meditating like some boring bald dude on a Himalayan mountain peak -- you want to learn to kick some ass right out of the mailing envelope!

Hopefully the “simplified” instructions include responses for neutralizing the savage Parental-Fu techniques of “Why the FUCK is there a foot-shaped hole in the paneling?!?” and “Why is your mother’s favorite lamp lying in a dozen pieces on the carpet?” The road to self-taught martial art mastery is fraught with many such obstacles, grasshopper.

The childhood fascination with martial arts springs eternal, although it reached its fever peak in the early-to-mid 1970’s, when even a sleepy nondescript suburb like Woburn had a McDojo done up like a faux pagoda in the city center. (Even after the martial arts school went belly up, the ornamentation remained on the building for over a decade before finally falling victim to the city leaders’ quixotic desire to make the area look like a Currier and Ives print.) One couldn’t hit a library book sale or church fair in the early 1980’s without stumbling over a box full of creased paperbacks promising to explain the deadly secrets of “the Mysterious Orient” to the aspiring Shaolin master. (The previous masters having moved out of their parents’ houses and left behind their collections of sacred writings, Ted Nugent albums, and other mystical ephemera.)

My friends and I caught the kung fu bug during its mid-80’s mini-resurgence, which was largely fueled by Chuck Norris's piggybacking on Rambo’s coat tails and one of Michael Winslow’s Police Academy shticks. A major part of our training regimen consisted of flipping through various martial arts magazines, partially to glean some “Ninja Techniques for Beginners” but mostly to check out the ample assortments of ads offering “authentic” katanas, throwing stars, and other essential, kid-friendly gear for the Wanna-Bruce Lee.

The industrial park that bordered on my old neighborhood actually had a bona fide martial arts supply store within its confines. We used to ride past it on our Huffy BMX bikes and recite lists to each other of all the cool stuff we’d buy there as soon as we “saved enough money.” We also discussed rumors, passed on by older kids “in the know,” that the Chinese variety store by the projects sold a variety of sharp Asiatic implements to those fortunate to know the secret password.

In the end, we just made do with our own home-made gear. Nunchaku were fashioned from broom-handles linked with chain (nicked from parents’ garages or industrial sites). The thriving cottage industry in home shuriken making eventually led the junior high metal shop teacher to line everyone up at the end of each class in order to account for stray bits of sheet metal that may have “accidentally” fallen into students’ backpacks. (It may also have led said teacher to quit his job mid-semester for the greener pastures of a defense industry job.)

Armed with our improvised gear and wired to the gills on Fun Dip and Tahitian Treat (Do they make that anymore?), we’d duke it out Five Fingers of Death-style. Very little martial arts skills were exhibited, but we made up for it with a lot of shouting and jumping and accidental injuries of the sort that make me grateful I grew up in an era where our parents could afford comprehensive health insurance. (Important lesson: a carpet tack hammered in with a flat rock is not the proper method of securing a wooden flail head.)

Fun times, those. Raging dragons live forever, though, but so not little boys...

The more serious members of our sand pit tong eventually gravitated toward the real deal. For the rest of us, the numerous drills and practices just seemed like gym class dressed up in a gi, thus something to be avoided at all costs.

Bus Stop – Kung Fu Fighting (from a 1998 single) – A cover/remix of Carl Douglas’s 1974 funk novelty hit. The song has also appeared in Konami’s DDR series of rhythm games.

…and here’s a killer double bill of crazy 70’s kung fu-wakka-chikka insanity:

Lalo Schifrin – Enter the Dragon Main Title Theme (Alternate Version) (from the Enter the Dragon OST, 1998)

Dennis Coffey – Theme from Black Belt Jones (from a 1974 single)

she knows what boys like

(click image to enlarge)

From 1969’s Debbi’s Dates #3, a poetic fashion revue focusing on culottes.

Let me restate that last bit. A sequence. Told in verse. About skorts. Illustrated by the bastard child of Peter Max and Alphonse Mucha.

That’s like nine slices of heaven for a retrologist such as me. Forget All Star Superman, it’s things like the above page that remind me why I love comic books so darn much.

For no other reason than the original version of the song popped into my head when I first came across this four-color fashion revue, here are two rather misguided new wave takes on The Doors’ classic “Hello, I Love You.”

Missing Persons – Hello, I Love You (from Spring Session M, 1982) – There are several excellent tracks on this album, but this isn’t one of them. I like the underlying concept – recasting the raw emotive sexuality of the original version as cold, robotic new wave pop – but the execution left a lot to be desired, and it ends up simply feeling perfunctory and rushed. I respect Dale Bozzio for not losing her Medford accent when she sings, although it’s much more pronounced in “Words.” (“Can you he-yah me? Do you cay-yah?” Go Mustangs!)

Adam Ant – Hello, I Love You (from Friend or Foe, 1982) – Why, Adam, why? (This question also applies to any part of Adam's post-Ants career.)

The Cure also recorded a couple versions of the song, which appear on the Join the Dots collection of rarities and whatnot, but I’m not sadistic (or masochistic) enough to inflict them on you at this time.

just to be alive, just a’one more day

Today’s post is about immortality, of a sort.

When my mother was a teenager she dug up a clump of the little blue wildflowers that grew on nearby Bucky’s Hill and transplanted them at the edge on my grandparents’ yard.

My mother is gone, a victim of an untied shoelace and the balance-inhibiting affects of port wine. Bucky’s Hill is gone, a victim of real estate developers who bulldozed the land flat and filled in the neighboring peat bog in order to drop down a rather prison-like condo complex on the site.

The little blue flowers in my grandmother’s yard have thrived and spread over the past four decades. From mid to late April, the side of the yard by the driveway becomes a cerulean carpet of tiny blossoms, a memorial far more suitable for my mother than any inscription on a slab of cold granite could ever be.

When my wife and I moved into the new house in 2004, I brought some of the plants with me, as a sentimental gesture in honor of my mom. I tried planting them in several locations around the yard, but with no success. I assumed that the soil up here on the hill just wasn’t suitable for that type of plant, and gave up trying after the fourth or fifth round of failures.

Yesterday, my wife and I were out on the patio surveying the storm damage and how our perennials were faring in the cold, wet weather, and my wife called for me to check out something in the bed where the lilies and bleeding hearts are planted. It was a solitary little blue flower, peeping up through the mud and the husks of last year’s annuals. I certainly didn’t plant it there, yet there it was – a random wonder in a random universe.

electric eels – Cards and Fleurs (from God Says Fuck You, 1992) – A swell bit of Cleveland proto-punk that begins like a fever dream and ends like a punch in the nose.

Los Abandoned – Como la Flor (from the Los Abandoned EP, 2004) – My wife has a cluster of friends in LA who keep her abreast of the local pop and punk scenes, and occasionally send her CD’s of bands she might enjoy, which is where I first came across Los Abandoned’s excellent brand of bilingual punk pop.

Here’s the video for their equally outstanding “Van Nuys Es Very Nice”:



100 Flowers – 100 Flowers (from 100 Years of Pulchritude, 1990) – Originally LA punk pranksters The Urinals, following a Maoist-inspired name change and a switch to an art punk sound reminiscent of Wire, The Fall, and/or The Minutemen.

the die was cast, the rebel flag unfurled

It’s Patriots’ Day today, commemorating the 1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord. It’s a state holiday in Massachusetts and Maine, which has led to a number of jibes directed this way from friends in other parts of the country, who tend to view it as another “hack holiday” along the lines of Bunker Hill Day or St. Patrick’s Day -- excuse me, “Evacuation Day.”

Yeah, I’m thrilled at getting an extra three paid holidays a year, but I’m also glad I live in a state (or technically, “a commonwealth”) willing to take pride in spearheading American independence. Other colonies hemmed and hawed about British rule; the residents of Massachusetts took the initiative and removed all doubt as to the course of action, and in doing so delivered stinging blows to British military that shattered its confidence (for a while, at least).

It has become fashionable in some quarters to dismiss Massachusetts as being “out of step” with the rest of America. I prefer to think of us as ahead of the curve, and the state’s legalization of gay marriage is another example of that proud, forward-thinking legacy.

Bob Dorough – The Shot Heard ‘Round the World (from Schoolhouse Rock: America Rock, 1997) – Pure nostalgia candy for a certain generation (i.e. mine). The “America Rock” songs are odd to hear after all these years spent studying and reading American history. They present a more sensitive, 1970’s version of the American national mythology: heavy on civics and progress, not so much on the victims of said progress. “Elbow Room” is especially creepy, being a children’s primer on manifest destiny that fails to mention the extermination of native cultures while incorporating a kid-friendly version of the Nazi principle of lebensraum.

The Alarm – Spirit of ’76 (from Strength, 1985) – A band that burned too brightly, too quickly. Their first EP and the Declaration LP are fantastic, containing an assortment of fist-pumping anthems which blended cowpunk and arena rock. It was all downhill from there, though, as the band quickly morphed into a weak U2 clone. “Spirit of ‘76” captures the band in mid-transformation, with flashes of their initial brilliance shining through the morass of excessively earnest “relevant rawk” nonsense.

Paul Revere and The Raiders – Kicks (from a 1966 single) – Straight edge, 1960’s style. Back then it apparently involved dressing up like an Revolutionary War soldier, rather than writing an “X” on the back on one’s hand with a Sharpie. Now that’s a trend I wouldn’t have minded seeing persist into the 1980’s hardcore scene.

tiny bubbles float toward the grand horizon

Another ubiquitous figure from my television-saturated childhood passed away on Saturday. Don Ho was more than a musician. He was the de facto cultural ambassador to the Hawaiian islands to generations of Americans in the continental US (a role later assumed with considerably less aplomb by Jack Lord’s hair and Tom Selleck’s mustache) whose window to the paradise islands was a cathode ray tube.

When my mother flew out to meet my father in Honolulu during a leave from his service in Vietnam, Don Ho was a passenger on the flight. It didn’t surprise me in the least when she told me. Whether you were a member of the Brady family, Fred Sanford, or an eighteen year old war bride, visiting Hawaii in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s meant a special guest appearance by Don Ho.

Aloha, Don.

Don Ho – Shock the Monkey (from When Pigs Fly, 2002) – When Pigs Fly is a very odd compilation of covers, and not in the way the label presumably intended. Legitimately strange song renditions, such as this track or Lesley Gore’s version of “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” share the disc with less idiosyncratic selections (Roy Clark’s “What a Wonderful World,” or The Oak Ridge Boys’ take on Kansas’ “Carry on Wayward Son”).

My wife likes this version better than the Peter Gabriel original, and I’m inclined to agree with her.

let her fly through the fury of the race

It’s roller derby night! The Boston Massacre goes up against Baltimore’s Mobtown Maulers at the Shriner's Auditorium in Wilmington at 6:00 PM tonight. I won’t be there, given my general dislike of crowd scenes, but the wife will shouting her support for the local team from the stands.

I don’t really get roller derby, no matter how many times the principles have been explained to me. My better half, though, has become a diehard fan of the newfangled, punk rock iteration of the sport. She attends all the local matches, follows the national scene via the internet, and had undertaken a rigorous personal training program to get in shape for the Boston Derby Dames tryouts coming up in June. I support her ambitions, partly because any outlet for her natural aggressiveness that does not involve me as a target can only be a good thing. (I kid. Sort of.)

As for the possibility that I will become a roller derby widower, I don’t mind. They also serve who only sit and make themed music posts…

Jim Croce – Roller Derby Queen (from Life and Times, 1973) – From a conversation my father and I had about roller derby a while back:

Dad: “That singer I like who died in a plane crash did a song about roller derby.”

Me: “Ricky Nelson?”

Dad: “No, that one guy I liked, you know?”

Me: “John Denver? Buddy Holly? Otis Redding? Glenn Miller? The guys from Lynyrd Skynyrd?”

(I knew who he meant, but dickishness runs in my family, and it’s rare I get a chance to turn the tables on the master practitioner. It could have been worse. He could have said “that one guy who overdosed.”)

Phil Ochs – Kansas City Bomber (from The War Is Over, 1988) – I like Raquel Welch as much as the next guy, but in the 70’s roller derby exploitation film sweepstakes, I have to award the crown to Unholy Rollers, by virtue of my long-standing crush on the late Claudia Jennings.

The Soviettes – Roller Girls (from LP III, 2005) – Along with the Au Pairs, The Soviettes are a case where I know my evangelism on the band’s behalf on this site has paid off in terms of convincing people to go out and buy their stuff. It’s a damn shame that the band is currently on hiatus, given how strong the material on their last album was.

it’s a normative thing, you wouldn’t understand

I wet my virtual finger this morning to determine which way the blogosphere zeitgeist was blowing today, and noticed a high level of Vonnegutitude in the atmosphere. There’s a lot that could be said about the man, his works, and his cultural legacy, but I’ll leave that to folks better versed in those areas than I am. I’ll remember Kurt Vonnegut for two things in particular.

- his remark, referenced in Mike Nelson’s Movie Megacheese, about the funniest thing he had ever seen in his life was a man falling backward out a bus door.

- his 1961 short story “Harrison Bergeron,” featured in every short fiction anthology I had to read during my travails as an undergraduate English major.

It’s a simple story about a dystopian society where citizenry is forced to conform to the lowest common denominator, and those gifted with better than average looks, intelligence, or athletic ability are burdened with government-imposed handicaps to bring them into accordance with the baseline. It’s a depressing, yet farcical, piece of fiction, and likely one of the inspirations behind Mike Judge’s film Idiocracy, but it is clearly a product of its era. The story’s stifling conformist future is as much a reaction to the 1950’s cultural landscape as Blade Runner’s vision of a future Los Angeles reflects the urbanist nightmares of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Both those visions of potential futures have been overtaken by reality and rendered as quaint as the art-deco metropolises and finned skullcaps envisioned in 1930’s sci-fi.

It’s interesting, sifting through the popcult artifacts from the 1950’s (which like all decade tags for cultural trends has a great deal of “bleed” at the upper and lower boundaries) and noticing the emphasis placed on being “average,” a vague baseline best defined as “just like me.” -- the “me” in question taken to mean white, Christian (preferably Protestant), and respectably middle class (referring to standard of living, not vocation). Politically, it meant subscribing to the grand consensus, not too far removed from the political center (or at least, not too far on the left from the same).

In popcult works, it was an easy means of user identification (“This person could be YOU!”). In everyday life, it was a means of self-identification centered on each individual’s perspective, much like how “middle class” has come to mean “people who describe themselves as middle class, regardless of standard of living.” “Harrison Bergeron” arose from this cultural environment, but times have changed since then.

We have gone from a society where the accent was placed on conformity an artificial median to one where there is a widespread belief that each one of us is entitled to a special destiny, entitled being the key word. The particular destiny can take any number of forms – religious, political, nationalist, creative, or romantic. There are many teats on the belly of delusion, but the underlying sense of entitlement is the same whether one is talking about an aspiring American Idol contestant or a person convinced that God has placed his/her/its sole trust on his or her shoulders.

I put the emphasis on entitlement because I’m not trying to position myself as a nay-saying dream-wrecker. There is a world of difference between seeing greatness as a goal to work towards and seeing it as a birthright which is automatically bestowed -- to hell with the qualifications. If I’m hiring, say, an accountant, I do not want someone who whined their way out of meeting the math proficiency requirement of the CPA exam, but if they were to bust their ass and overcome their fear of numbers, then I’ll be cheering them at the finish line. If you want something, you should be willing to work for it. At the same time, one has to be prepared to face the cold truth that they just don’t have the vocal range/eyesight/whatever it takes. I know your mom and friends say you’re great. They have to say it. They are your mom and friends. (My TV production professor once gave a lecture about the temptation to cast “funny” or “talented” friends or relatives in one’s work. His message in brief was “Don’t.”)

This is the point where some of you may be saying “What about affirmative action, Mr. Liberal? Hmm?” Affirmative action is a direct response to certain endemic inequalities in the system. It has its flaws, being a stopgap patch passing for the broader, costlier reforms required to properly resolve the root causes. Until society comes around to acknowledging that responsibility, affirmative action serves an important purpose. Oh, and a big “fuck you” to all those rich white folks who could give a rat’s ass about Boston’s public schools until their privately educated hellspawn fail to get into one of the elite Boston high schools, at which point the “reverse discrimination” lawsuits begin.

I say all this as someone who admits to possessing a small degree of talent, kept well-hidden under a very large bushel, and who has zero aspirations about what to use said talent for, apart from my own personal amusement.

Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet – Having an Average Weekend (from Savvy Show Stoppers, 1988) – I miss the days when Comedy Central dedicated a third of their programming day to showing Kids in the Hall episodes, rather than All Unfunny Stand Up, All the Time Hosted by Dane Cook.

Cahiers du Sabrina

J'avais récemment lu un choix de Sabrina, les livres comiques de sorcière d'adolescent des années 70. Les bandes dessinées sont comédie jeunesse-orienté en général sain faites lever avec les éléments du diabolism unapologetic, une concession par l'éditeur habituellement moralement droit vers la manie d'occultist des années 70. La série est également une galerie inégalée des panneaux bizarres attendant juste un fervent désireux pour les enlever de leur contexte légitime et pour les jouer pour des rires bon marché et/ou l'éraflure principale vigoureuse.

À cet effet, j'ai eu l'idée de prendre certains de mes panneaux préférés et de les présenter en tant que certaine sorte de récit d'avant-garde, dans l'hommage aux techniques du Situationalists. C'aurait été assez, je suppose, mais je me suis inquiété qu'il soit semblent trop obligatoire être efficace. Alors il a né sur moi -- si j'allais imiter les techniques du de ce mouvement, pourquoi ne pas imiter leur langue, aussi bien ? Ne pas pouvoir parler ou écrire en français n'est pas un obstacle particulièrement grand considérant la disponibilité facile des services de traduction en ligne. Si les résultats soutiennent autant ressemblance au vrai Français pendant que Velveeta soutient au vrai fromage, tellement le meilleur.

Brillant pur!

Je me présente maintenant vous, mes chers lecteurs, l'Enchanteresse ne nage pas le jeudi, un opéra de multimédia dans cinq actes :

The Revillos – Motorbike Beat (from Rev Up, 1980) – J'aimerais avoir deux groupies frais qui me suivraient autour et éloge tout ce j'ai fait. Pas si je devais devenir hippie de I d'abord, cependant.

Little Richard – Long Tall Sally (from The Essential Little Richard, 1985) – Il y a d'un chaos plus terrifiant au jeu dans cette chanson que dans le morceau le plus non restreint de voie inconditionnelle en métal de punk ou de vitesse.

Heavenly – Sperm Meets Egg, So What? (from The Decline and Fall of Heavenly, 1994) - L'esprit de Talulah ça alors monté dans le grand au-delà, et les résultats étaient, bien, divinement.

The Chemical Brothers – Star Guitar (from Singles 93-03, 2003) – Notification comment j'ai renversé le panneau à l'envers ? Il a été fait pour représenter l'artificialité de la société de consommation et de la musique de bruit modernes, et comment tous les deux peuvent être facilement manoeuvrés pour servir les besoins de régner classe.

The Modern Lovers – I’m Straight (from The Modern Lovers, 1976) - Un reniement de proto-punk du counterculture des années 60, fourni dans le sérieux de pince-sans-rire de marque déposée Jonathan Richman.

FIN

where we’re going, baby, ain’t such word as no

Ah, Chernobyl in the springtime… The sunsets are to die for, until you realize that you're facing eastward, and the faint glow on the horizon is due to fission, not fusion.

Recently, I’ve been burning up a lot of free time playing STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl for the PC. The game, which had been in development so long that some were starting to write it off as vaporware, is an open-ended RPG/FPS hybrid best described as a cross between Fallout and the Elder Scrolls games. The premise of STALKER was loosely inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 film Stalker, about a quest through a radioactive dead zone where even the laws of physics have begun to break down, but set within the real-world environment of Chernobyl’s “zone of exclusion.”

In the game’s alternate universe, the Chernobyl reactor experienced a second, more violent, meltdown, and the quarantined area has become a haven for looters, scavengers, and other predators, both human and inhuman. The player’s in-game avatar has been plunked down on the periphery of the “Zone” with no memory of his former life, only the crudest survival gear and a PDA containing an order to hunt down and kill someone or something called “The Strelok.”

While there is a sequence of missions to the further the overarching plot of the game, I’ve been content so far simply exploring the rather large and extremely haunting game world, with its not-quite-unpopulated assortment of ruined villages, farmsteads, and industrial areas, searching for caches of weapons and supplies, and picking (or avoiding) fights with some of the more unfriendly inhabitants.

The “Garbage” level, with its abandoned truck yards, trash piles, and heaps of abandoned building materials, reminds me a lot of the old North Woburn dump, before they capped off the landfill and built a Target store and Raytheon plant next to it. The verisimilitude extends to the stands of cat’o’nine tails poking up through scattered scummy microponds. Granted, the environmental hazards of that locale involved accidental chromium (or some other toxic byproduct of Woburn’s old tanneries) poisoning, rather than radioactive fallout or hidden gravitational anomalies.

It’s been a very entertaining, if frustrating experience. The free roaming aspect of the game, combined with excellent enemy AI scripting (human opponents will aggressively seek out cover and advantageous positions, the aggressiveness of certain creatures depends on the size of their pack) and draconian inventory management rules based on item weight, makes for a steep difficulty curve where quicksaving is an absolute necessity.

The game has some minor -- or major, depending on the OS and video card – bugs and stability issues (the current patch did fix many of the worst ones), and it can take a while to get it running smoothly at a decent framerate, even on a machine whose specs definitively exceed the ones recommended on the box. That’s par for the course in current PC gaming, however (and it will only get worse as Vista’s hidden eccentricities come to the fore over the next twelve months or so).

Tech hassles aside, STALKER is an extremely engrossing game set in an incredibly detailed game world, and it’s easy to burn away ninety minutes merely conducting house to house searches in an ruined Ukrainian farming village in hopes of turning up a unique piece of loot. Just be sure to scout out the positions of your enemies before starting a firefight. It’s always the fellow hiding in the bushes with a sawed-off shotgun who will do you in.

On to the music portion of our program:

It would take a massive environmental catastrophe to get me to post a track by The Smiths. Actually, this particular Smiths’ track was indirectly inspired by the Chernobyl disaster, or rather how the event was presented by Radio One. DJ Steve Wright followed a news announcement of the 1986 disaster by playing “I’m Your Man” by Wham! “Panic” was Morrissey and Marr’s response to that bit of callous frivolity.

Horrible, isn’t it? It should be obvious to everyone that when an atomic death cloud is looming on the horizon, the proper Wham! Song to cue up would be “Young Guns (Go For It)”:

Hey sucker, what the hell’s got into you?

Cesium-137, Iodine-131, and Strontium-90. Thanks for asking! Got any bone marrow I can borrow?

Wham! – I’m Your Man (from a 1985 single, collected on If You Were There, 1997) – If I was pressed to name the precise moment new wave music died, I’d hem and haw and offer several weasel-y qualifying statements before answering “The release of Wham!’s ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’ single.” That first utterance of “Jitterbug” was the final nail in the coffin of the dark futurist and new romantic visions of the early 1980’s, and heralded the rise of a saccharine, day-glo dance-poptopia.

The Smiths – Panic (from a 1986 single, collected on Louder Than Bombs, 1987) – Carter USM covered this song on the b-side to “The Only Living Boy in New Cross” single and, as blasphemous a statement as this may be to Smiths’ enthusiasts, I prefer it to the original. Carter’s version added a level of invective bite that was sorely lacking in The Smiths’ original rendition.

come on, tell me what I’m after

Between birthday gifts and the vagaries of my biweekly pay schedule, my bank account has been atypically flush these past few weeks, and I used this rare opportunity to purchase a bunch of books that had been languishing in Amazon wish list limbo. Here’s a rundown of some of my recent acquisitions:

The Flight of the Eisenstein by James Swallow – I have an embarrassing confession to make: Your humble narrator, for all his ineffectual attempts at establishing a level of coolness, is a lapsed Warhammer/W40k nerd. I don’t play the games much these days, because of the commitment of time and money involved (to say nothing about how hard it is to find sane opponents who respect the spirit of the rules, as opposed to fanatical “loophole lawyers”), but I do try and keep up with the various revisions and the occasional novelization.

This book is the fourth installment of the Horus Heresy series, covering the events of the civil war that rocked the Imperium of Man in the 31st Century. The short summary included in the original Realms of Chaos was my favorite part of that overly complicated (to the extent of being useless) rules supplement, and it has been entertaining to see the story fleshed out in greater detail. I just hope it doesn’t get dragged out too long for the sake of selling more novels, because there’s a fine line between disposable entertainment and tedium.

Showcase Presents The Legion of Super-Heroes, Vol. 1 – I think that my previous posts about the subject have made my jadedness – either apathetic or nostalgic – about comics books fairly clear. It’s hard for me to work up even a sliver of enthusiasm about new and pending releases, even when all signs point to a given work being a cut above the rest of the slop. This reasonably priced (and quite massive) reprint collection of the Legion’s early adventures, however, set my nerd-senses all a’tingling. Even if I didn’t have my current surplus of cash, I still would have picked it up on its release last Wednesday instead of delegating it to a slot on my ever growing wish list.

There’s something irresistible about a group of somewhat callous, somewhat stupid teenage superheroes flitting around an extremely dated-looking 30th Century. Plus, I’ve been a Legion fan for almost thirty years now, though I dropped the book at the start of its present incarnation. (It was one reboot too many for me.) I was never going to spend the cash on the hardcover color reprints or on the individual back issues I needed, so this black and white “phonebook” collection was perfectly suited for my needs.

YOTSUBA&! Vol. 1 by Azuma Kiyohiko – I read very little manga, partially because there’s isn’t a whole lot that interests me and partially because I’m not fond of the “authentic” read from right-to-left conceit. I know there are aesthetic concerns involved in flipping the artwork into the Western format, but the puritanical insistence on maintaining the original “backwards” layout feels more like an fannish affectation of “exotic” Orientalism than an artistic decision….kind of like that one whitebread student in Japanese class who insists on referring to everyone as “–san” or “-sensei.” (My wife’s Japanese instructor shut down one such individual out of the gate with a raised palm and a brusque “No. Stop it.”)

I’ve heard a lot of good things about YOTSUBA&!, though. The title character, an adorable (yet astonishingly clueless) adopted green haired sprite reminds me a lot of my adorable (yet astonishingly clueless) adopted beagle-boxer-chow Adeline, and the quickest way to my heart is through similarities with my pets.

Science Fiction in the Real World by Norman Spinrad – This is the first work of literary criticism (unless you count that Comics Journal collection of interviews with 1970’s comic book writers) I’ve purchased in, well, I can’t really remember. The late 90’s, maybe? Some of the essays in this collection are very dated, but there’s still a great deal of interest here for anyone interested in science fiction or genre issues in general. Many of Spinrad’s insights into what makes science fiction succeed or fail could be easily applied to the realm of comics. (There is an essay on graphic novels in the book, but there’s nothing in it that hasn’t been said more effectively elsewhere countless times already.) His examination of the pitfalls involved in pursuing a sincere literary vision while facing the pressures endemic to working in a commercial genre is by itself worth the price of purchase.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne – Considering what an influence Sterne’s extended exercise in creative digression has been on my style of writing, it’s shocking that I waited so damn long to replace the copy of the novel that I lent out to someone in college and never got back. It worked out for the best in the end, as I was able to get a hold of a good as new, fully annotated copy of the definitive “Florida” edition from a seller for the princely sum of 97 cents, plus shipping.

How much has this novel tinted my work at Armagideon Time? Here’s a sample passage to illustrate it for you:

…the slight acquaintance which is now beginning betwtixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that, unless one of us is at fault, will terminate in friendship. –O diem praeclarum!—then nothing which has touched me will be thought trifling in nature, or tedious in its telling.

I’m sure if Sterne could have put mp3 links into the original text, he would have done it in a heartbeat. “This being a fair example of chamber music, much in vogue on the Continent; in a manner somewhat imprecise to me it captures the essence of Uncle Toby, or rather, his peculiar hobby-horse…”

The Minutemen – One Chapter in the Book (from What Makes a Man Start Fires? 1983) – It’s a short chapter, though. It only takes sixty seconds to get through…

Lazy Cowgirls – Read That Book (from Lazy Cowgirls, 1984) – Hooky, melodic garage punk that brushes very close to my Platonic ideal of what a song ought to sound like.

Echo & The Bunnymen – Read It in Books (from Crocodiles, 1980) – Haunting the chthonic borderlands between postpunk and psychedelia.