it´s the latest thing to be nowhere

Depending on which side of Armagideon Time’s comics/music demographic divide you fall upon, you might have heard about Nymphet, a manga series about a prepubescent girl who attempts to seduce her teacher. (Oh, Japan, there are some things I’ll never understand about you, and it’s for the best. Really.) There had been plans for an American release of the series, but the publisher, who had picked up the rights for the series based on early Japanese installments (as is typical in the highly competitive world of manga localization), decided after a more in-depth review of the material to pull the plug on the project.

Dorian, who has retail experience in selecting and ordering manga titles, sums up the salient issues involved here, but comics fandom being the abattoir of reason that it is, it was inevitable that the shrill cries of “Boo! Censorship!” and “What about free speech, you fascist?” should arise, especially with the moldering corpses of similar straw men still fresh on the playing field from the Mary Jane statue and “Heroes for Hentai” controversies.

Here’s the thing – this has fuck all to do with “free speech.” I’m not sure when it happened, or how it happened (though I remember something similar erupting when EA axed the release of Thrill Kill in the late 1990’s) but there is a large vocal contingent of people working under the assumption that “free speech” means “speech free of consequences,” and are willfully ignorant that civil liberties and commercial considerations are two very different creatures. I would well be within my rights to compose a two hundred page litany of profanity, but that does not place any obligation upon any publishing house to see that work gets released to the public, nor does it exempt me from criticism – justified or not – regarding its contents.

Ideologically, I’m with John Milton on this score; I’m all for seeing a diverse multitude of literary vessels set loose upon the waves, and let the passage of time and intrinsic worth determine what shall sink and what shall float. Practically speaking, though, why should a small publisher, most of which operate on narrow financial margins, feel obligated to release a title that could, in this environment, cause serious legal repercussions, if not for themselves, then for the retailers who might carry the title? Plus there’s a risk that the potential media firestorm could poison the well for the rest of their line of goods. Even if the right on is on their side, the financial and temporal costs of litigation could, in all likelihood, make any victory a Pyrrhic one.

And for what, in this specific case? A comic that embodies the creepiest type of pandering to the vilest instincts of the fanboy crowd. “But that’s exactly where one must make a stand,” some may say. Fine. Let the benighted crusaders pool their funds together to buy the American release rights and publish the book themselves. It’s very easy to seize the moral high ground when one doesn’t have a personal stake in the outcome.

This may seem a bit Torquemadic of me, but the stridency of those arguing in favor of the release is disturbing in the extreme. Why such lengths for such an obviously inappropriate bit of fan service wank material? The past couple of weeks have dropped my already low estimation of lumpenfandom a dozen or so notches. The attempts to compare the artistic value of Lost Girls -- which was intended by Alan Moore as deliberate act of provocation -- and Nabokov’s Lolita -- which I suspect very few fans have actually read, though perhaps they Netflixed the 1997 film version and skipped straight to the salacious bits -- are fairly absurd. (The Lolita comparison especially amused me, seeing as how the novel is really about a self-deluded fool’s obsession with an unobtainable ideal – a pretty accurate summation of the pathetic side of comics fandom.)

Back to the idea of “speech free of consequences,” I find this tendency to associate criticism or disapproval with repression odious in the extreme. As it has been stated many times in the past couple of weeks, no one has the right to determine what someone else finds offensive. Some criticisms are more valid than others, to be sure, but that’s something to be hashed out via discussion and debate, not dismissed with a wave of the offending party’s hand and the customary weak bromide, “Get over it,” or through the use of loaded terms like “misconstrued” which attempt to deflect the issue back at the those doing the criticizing. The current of free expression is not a one way street, and getting called out on one’s crapulence – real, perceived, or somewhere in between – comes with the territory of expressing one’s self in the public arena.

Dubstar – Disgraceful (from Disgraceful, 1995)

Nikki and The Corvettes - You Make Me Crazy (from Nikki and The Corvettes, 1980)

or could it all just be me

Last night, Maura was feeding the outdoor cat colony when she noticed that one of the cats, Sioux, had an ugly, suppurating puncture wound on his back. I cleaned it out as best I could with peroxide and a topical antibiotic, but because it was so deep and nasty looking we called the vet’s office to have it looked at. The appointment was at 9:30 this morning, so we figured that we’d take Sioux in, have the cut cleaned out and sutured, then drop the poor guy off at our house before heading into work. If only it turned out to be that simple.

The wound turned out to be a fight injury, which means that we’ll have to crate Sioux up for a minimum of forty-five days. (If we hadn’t gotten him vaccinated for rabies already, we’d have to quarantine him for six months. Being proactive and conscientious pays.) As the pus pocket and scar tissue formation were on the severe side, Sioux also required minor surgery to drain and clean the wound. Maura didn’t anticipate that it would come to that, so didn’t think twice about feeding Sioux this morning, which meant that the surgery had to be delayed until the early afternoon (and we weren’t sure until a half hour ago if we’d even be able to bring him home tonight).

Taking into account the commuting times to and from our jobs and the possibility we’d have to drop everything to pick up Sioux, our plans to at least clock half a day’s work were scrapped and we decided to get some things done around the house instead. In my case, it meant mowing the lawn, a task I happen to love immensely. It’s especially enjoyable when the mower blades come unscrewed while the motor’s running full-bore. Getting to the underside to bolt them back on involves flipping the infernal machine over and flooding the carburetor, thus killing the machine until it dries out. I employed the wait time wisely, watching The Guru on USA -- or more precisely, watching five minute segments of the film (which wasn’t that terrible, to my surprise) intercut with ten minute blocks of commercials.

I did finally get to complete the job, though not without loudly announcing “This will end in either victory or the utter destruction of both the machine and myself….Hopefully not myself,” within earshot of my neighbor who I didn’t realize was out in his own yard. (Eh, if my wife’s singing to the feral cats hadn’t already clued the neighborhood in to what kind of people we are, I’d be more embarrassed…) Because it was still early, and I had nothing else on my plate apart from waiting for the vet’s office to call, I even broke out the weedwhacker and pruning shears and added some finishing touches to the yard. It’s very impressive looking at the moment, although my pride in a job done well is tempered by the knowledge that we’ll back to Crabgrass City by the weekend.

Afterwards, I crashed out for a while and watched Trevor Nunn’s 1996 version of Twelfth Night, featuring Grant Morrison Barry Andrews Patrick Stewart Ben Kingsley turn in a decent performance as the fool, Feste. I’m not so keen on the whole anachronistic setting/costuming trend when it comes to things Shakespearean, but my love for the play (my favorite of all the Bard’s work) kept me from getting too distracted by the faux Victoriana vibe. The idea that anyone could mistake Imogen Stubbs in drag for Steven Macintosh did stretch my suspension of disbelief to the limits, though.

I came away from Twelfth Night with hankering for more dramatic art of the highest caliber, which I was able to find in the form of Mark L. Lester’s 1979 classic attempt to address the problems of post-industrial capitalism, love across class lines, and which leotard looks best with red-sequined roller skates. Shakespeare may not have written Roller Boogie, but he damn sure wishes he had:

Alas, poor Bobby James! I knew him, Jammer: a fellow
of perfectly feathered hair, of most excellent satin hot pants: he hath
done the eight-wheeled cha cha with me a thousand times; and now,
what a major bummer it is! my buzz harshes at it.

(Not many people are aware of this, but Xanadu was based on an early Folio draft of Coriolanus. The Japanese-only laserdisc featuring the original ending where Gene Kelly eviscerates Michael Beck during an elaborate tap dance sequence goes for big bucks on eBay.)

In the time since I began putting together this post, poor Sioux has come home from the vet’s. He’s a bit groggy and depressed, but doing well otherwise:

So there you have it, my day so far – an epic tale of mundanity, otherwise known simply as life.

Here are two relevant tracks by two bands whose fairly impressive bodies of work were overshadowed by the public awareness singularities called the “signature hit.”

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Simple Minds – Life in a Day (from Life in a Day, 1979)

Modern English – Life in the Gladhouse (from After the Snow, 1982)

visual synergy: accidents will happen

Hamm: All is…all is…all is what? (Violently.) All is what?

Clov: What all is? In a word? Is that what you want to know? Just a moment. (He turns the telescope on the without, looks, lowers the telescope, turns towards Hamm.) Corpsed. (Pause.) Well, content?

- Samuel Beckett, Endgame

Here's to a childhood spent in the clutches of apocalyptic dread and 80's pop music...


Nena - 99 Luftballons (English Version) - Andrew's Dating Do's and Dont's:

Do: find an activity that both you and your date enjoy
Don't: accidentally cause a nuclear war


Fishbone - Party at Ground Zero - Bunker parties are always chancy affairs. No matter how ausipicous a note they begin upon, the festivities will inevitably brought down by cyanide, self-inflicted gunshot wounds, or the spectre of radioactive death showing up unannounced.


Men at Work - It's a Mistake - What is this term "mistake?" Some sort of archaic nonsense word like "responsibility," "accountability," or "contrition?"


Ultravox - Dancing with Tears in My Eyes - Nuclear power doesn't kill people. Lethal doses of ionizing radiation let loose by mechanical or human error kill people. So have a bit of faith, people. Why shouldn't the same utility industries who can't resolve a simple billing inquiry be allowed to tamper with the fundamental forces of nature?

Supernova (well, one of the many acts using that name) recorded a techno/dance cover of this song a few years ago. I considered using it as the token music track for today's installment of "visual synergy," but why settle for a saccharine imitation?

Ultravox - Dancing with Tears in My Eyes (from The Collection, 1984)

Jose Chung has left the building

Not too long ago, Maura and I were discussing the sense of popcult awareness that is the blessing and curse of our generation, and where it originated from, hipster affectations of camp notwithstanding.

It’s hard to remember now, but there was a time before narrowcasting -- fueled by the rise of cable TV subscriptions and VCR’s in every home -- when one’s viewing options were limited to whatever PBS, the three networks, and the handful of local market UHF stations felt like playing. This was also before the Reagan era deregulatory policies allowing infomercials and toy cartoons came into play, and station programming execs would fill dead time slots with anything they thought would bring in advertising revenue, even if it was only a pittance.

Daytime and weekend television in the 1970’s was a colorful spectrum of the trends, personalities, and tried-and-true standards of the previous twenty-odd years of visual entertainment. Blocks of old cartoons (Warner Brothers, Popeye, Terrytoons) led into a mid-morning and early afternoon cocktail of syndicated game shows and dated sitcoms before switching back to kids’ fare in the after-school time slots. On the weekends, the Saturday morning blocks of network cartoon offerings (and the Sunday morning dumping ground of religious or cheaply produced education programming) bled into an assortment of Three Stooges shorts, Creature Double Feature cheapjack horror films, and afternoon matinee showings of anything from Five Million Years to Earth to Please Don’t Eat the Daisies.

Kids of our generation were exposed to a broader range of material than the current generation, with its easy access to dedicated children’s programming run 24/7, and as a result we gained a familiarity with, if not an appreciation for, performers and shows that existed outside the bubble of the immediate now. In the case of the Stooges and some of the old Warner’s cartoons, the jokes and references dated back to the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, which is astonishing to consider in light of the breakneck pace of modern popcult trends. How many kids of the present generation are exposed to bad puns about the Bay of Pigs Invasion on a regular basis?

The fact that many of the actors and actresses in question had moved onto cartoon voice acting or game show appearances at the same time we were watching their old material in syndication reinforced this sense of familiarity (this having been a time when “celebrity” panelists usually had some actual performance face time outside the world of reality television). Maura is quick to mention how the two most easily recognizable voices for people of our generation are those of Paul Lynde and Vincent Price, precisely for that very reason. Larry Storch, Jim Backus, Alice Ghostley, Ruth Buzzi, any of the celebrities who appeared on the Gong Show, the $10,000 Pyramid, and the original Hollywood Squares… A veritable pantheon of comedic and character actors whose presence was ingrained into the hearts and minds of a generation of impressionable children, partially because their corny appeal resonated so perfectly with seven year olds and partially because there was nothing else on during a given time slot.

Charles Nelson Reilly is dead. Long live Charles Nelson Reilly.

Gene Rayburn (Thanks, Nazz!) hands the Match Game hosting reins over to Reilly in a fit of exasperation.


The opening to Lidsville, featuring Eddie Munster and Reilly (in top flamboyant form).


The opening to the "Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense" episode of Millennium. May I interest you in the mysteries of Selfosophy?

Dead Milkmen – Serrated Edge (from Big Lizard in My Backyard, 1985) – In the name of Jose Chung, Claymore Gregg, and Horatio J. Hoodoo.

Brak – I Like Hubcaps (from Brak Presents The Brak Album Starring Brak, 2000) – Brak knows the score.

I’ve got 5-4-3-2-1

As a dilettante retrologist, I’m fascinated by how the media has interpreted and presented various social and cultural movements to mainstream America over the years. From the “punk rock” episode of CHiPs to the treatment of the sixties counterculture by “old guard” sci-fi writers (“Permissive child-rearing practices have created a dystopian society of cannibalistic drug-crazed hippies!”) to 1950’s educational films featuring squeaky clean, pencil-stealing juvenile delinquents, it’s pretty much a given that what is presented to the listening/reading/viewing public bears as close a resemblance to the reality as Pringles do to actual potato chips.

There are numerous reasons for these popcult translation errors: laziness, cluelessness, personal axe-grinding, sensationalism by way of capitalizing on common misconceptions or preconceptions, or all or any of the above. Barring the most egregiously ugly or hate-filled examples, they can be highly entertaining and historically informative glimpses into the tectonic cultural shifts that shape our society. (Even the nastier stuff can possess a degree of educational value, but the entertainment factor tends to get lost amidst the overall tenor of the work.)

So when I was flipping though a copy of Young Love #112 (November 1974), and came across this page…

…I thought I was in for a rare treat. Brilliant, isn’t it? It’s so over the top, with the aspirations and ideologies of a heterogeneous movement reduced to some buzzwords and a “OMG, the wimminfolk are wearing pants and waging a jihad against the old order” message. I could totally envision a photocopy of it adorning the front cover of some feminist fanzine, circa 1990, as a bit of ironic (or perhaps not, depending on the ‘zine) appropriation. Based on the title and caption, I was expecting a hard-hitting and thoroughly bizarre exploration of the romantic lives of these new fangled “feminists.”

Instead I got this…

Nothing about why Nancy, the pants-wearing “tomboy,” felt the call to direct action or the root causes of her dissatisfaction, just the story of poor jilted Alex trying to come to grips with a love lost to that “crazy movement” called...feminism.

“Consider yourself lucky, Alex…at least you found out before you took the big step! Now if you’ll pardon me, I’m going to head back to my furnished bachelor apartment for a Hungry Man Salisbury steak dinner and unsatisfying masturbation to late night Cinemax!”

Does Alex engage in some serious introspection about why Nancy left him, and the implications of his behavior in light of modern egalitarian principles? Hell, no! He follows the advice of his creepy friend and hits the ground running in search of a “chick still willing to be female” (thus providing insight into reasons behind the radicalization of Nancy). First up, some bowling lessons with Sally, followed by a tempestuous fling with “gorgeous…intelligent…sophisticated” Franny, an artist who paints in the cutting edge style of mail order black light posters. Neither woman is able to scratch Alex’s itch, so he then turns to “outgoing” Louise, “bouncy” Sandy, and “old-fashioned” Maggi. Still, none of these lovely ladies with their suggestively euphemistic descriptions fit Alex’s exacting, yet unclear standard of perfection.

Just when it seems that shall be no balm in Gilead for our poor, promiscuous protagonist, who should show up unannounced at his door but Nancy, wearing a skirt and having come away from her foray into the world of gender politics with a new sense of her role in the world:

Enslavement by choice. It’s a kooky new world, people, can you dig it? (For a minute there I was worried for the fate of the patriarchy…)

The preceding two panels have been brought to you by Patronizing Obnoxiousness, just one of the fine products of the Condescending Asshole group of Traditional Values companies.

Linda Evans – He’s My New Love (from Beach Blanket Bingo, 1965) – From Check the Cool Wax’s much appreciated direct from the film rip of the soundtrack. It’s a nice bit of pop fluff, but I wouldn’t consider it the high point of Ms. Evans’ career. That honor would have to go to either this or this – I haven’t made up my mind on which. (Edit: The wise sage that is Retro Music Snob pointed out that the vocals were actually provided by Jackie Ward, session singer extraordinaire.)

Crass – Bata Motel (from Penis Envy, 1981) – Based on the events of the past few weeks, I suspect that a large segment of the superhero comics industry and fans of the genre would fail to see the irony in play here.

go for the eyes, Boo, go for the eyes

Marvin Gaye - Too Busy Thinking About My Baby (from M.P.G., 1969) - Preach it, Brother Marvin! The object of affection in my case is a decade-old role playing game for the PC, but the message still applies.

This rendition of a 1966 Temptations' track netted Gaye his second biggest hit of the 1960's, and deservedly so, in my opinion.

two small horns and a wooly jaw

Happy 2nd Blogoversary, Bully!

Keep up the good work. This one is dedicated to you, my little stuffed friend.

-

Bad Manners - Wooly Bully (from Ska 'N' B, 1980) - I have no clue why this album is out of print, but then much of what record companies do mystifies me.

Friday Night Fights: Special Anniversary Edition

Luke uses some one-handed lightsaber action to bring down Lumiya, Dark Lady of the Sith.
(from Star Wars #96, June 1985; art by Cynthia Martin & Bob Wiacek)

The tail end of Marvel’s Star Wars comic series was fascinatingly odd in its attempts to swim against the current of fading interest in the franchise after the release of Return of the Jedi, and it featured one of the most horrifying adversaries ever to appear in the “Expanded Universe”: the Nagai, a race of elven Robert Smith clones (which I believe hail from the darkest quadrant of the Slashfic Galaxy).

Cynthia Martin’s art was rather nice in a Paul Smith-meets-Steve Leialoha (who inked Martin’s pencils in issue #105) kind of way. Her art was uneven in places, but showed a lot of potential. I wonder what happened to her.

Today marks thirtieth anniversary of the release of the first Star Wars film. I’ve lost my taste for the franchise, having surfeited to the point where my appetite sickened, and so died. I think the exact moment the mental gag reflex kicked in was when we left the theater after watching Attack of the Clones and Maura and I both turned to each other and simultaneously said, “That was fucking horrible.”

Not that I was ever much of a huge fan of the series, at least to the extent that some of my peers were. I loved the toys as a child, but the first time I saw the film (at the long since subdivided and McMansioned Billerica drive-in) I fell asleep during the last half hour. I didn’t really grow to appreciate the films until I was in college, and starting hanging around with a Star Wars obsessed friend, whose enthusiasm rubbed off on me for a short while. Reflected passion and childhood nostalgia can only carry one so far, though, and the well of interest eventually went dry, apart from periodic replays of the Knights of the Old Republic games and the occasional viewing of Episode IV: A New Hope fueled more by my admiration for Peter Cushing than for the franchise itself.

Still, the anniversary of the series is worth acknowledging, as Star Wars did play an integral part in my formative years, right up there with sugar bowl haircuts, plaid chinos, and the Dukes of Hazzard.

Lionsclub – The Throne Room (Star Wars) (from TV and Movie Themes, Ska and Rocksteady Style, 2003)

Fader Gladiator – Battle of the Planets (from Beats by Dope Demand 4, 1997)

…and it wouldn’t be an official celebration without this little gem:

No, you don’t have to thank me. Honest.

---

(If you strike Bahlactus down, he will only grow more powerful.)

look to your soul and open your mind

It’s been a pretty gross day today. Between the heat, the humidity, the high pollen count, and the hellish commute home, I’m fairly well wrecked.

Instead of trying and failing to come up with a coherent post for today, I’m just going to pop open a can of Dr. Pepper and join Marmy Marmelstein, the twenty-pound feral cat who hangs out around our house, on the patio and watch the sun set through the trees down back.

Feel free to join me in spirit, unless you feel like trying to find the house in the maze of streets that crisscross the hillside. It also doesn’t help that there’s an almost identically named street running two blocks parallel to ours. It makes getting pizza deliveries a blast. (By “blast,” I mean “an extended exercise in frustration and ice cold congealed fat and cheese.”)

Tommy James and the Shondells – Crystal Blue Persuasion (from a 1969 single, collected on The Very Best Of Tommy James & The Shondells, 1993) – It doesn’t hold a candle to “Crimson and Clover” (which I consider to be the pinnacle of 60’s pop perfection), but makes for some great warm weather lounging music.

sometimes I’m taken by madness divine

The growth of Japanese comics (aka manga) in Western markets the past few years has been nothing short of phenomenal. So much so, in fact, that based on sales figures, manga books have supplanted superheroic fare as the “new mainstream” (or a parallel mainstream, depending how holistic – or myopic -- one’s view of these things is), built largely on a reader base outside the traditional comics reader demographic. These days one can enter a bookstore or decent comics shop (accent on decent) and find hundreds of manga titles covering a broad range of genres (horror, teen romance, martial arts, competitive cookery), but two decades ago, when the translated manga trend was in its infancy, one could count the number of titles being released on the fingers of one hand.

Back then, the two publishers with their hands in the game were Dark Horse, with their squarebound Lone Wolf and Cub reprints, and the late (and sort of lamented) Eclipse, which published a small number of biweekly titles in the traditional pamphlet format through an arrangement with Viz (before Viz began publishing their own titles a short while later). Eclipse’s initial roster of manga offerings included the Marxist ninja story Kamui, the gory teen hijinxs of Mai the Psychic Girl, the fighter pilot soap opera Area 88, and the subject of today’s post, Xenon: Heavy Metal Warrior. (I guess “Noble Gas Warrior,” though scientifically correct, didn’t sound as cool.)

Xenon tells the story of a high school “bad boy” (with the obligatory tender side), Asuka Kano, who finds himself with a cybernetic body and a bad case of amnesia following a horrific plane crash. It’s all part of a grand new product rollout by The Bloody Sea, an international arms cartel seeking to perfect the next generation of cyborg super-soldiers. Askua’s efforts to come to grips with his new abilities are consistently interrupted by Bloody Sea retrieval teams, real go-getter types who aren’t above using rocket launchers or industry-standard killer cyborg biker monkeys to achieve their goals.

The twenty-three issues of the series fall into a predictable series of arcs, where Asuka, along with the crusty scientist who originally developed the project, a high school rival-turned-friend, and a female track star (and Bloody Sea prototype effort) with cybernetic legs attempt to thwart the organization’s plans thusly:

- “I can’t win against this cyborg/super-mercenary/killer monster!”
- “You must win against this cyborg/super-mercenary/killer monster!”
- “With this new secret data/add-on/weapon I can now defeat this cyborg/super-mercenary/killer monster!”
- Rinse, repeat

It’s not the most sophisticated plotline, but the hyper-frenetic pacing pushes things along nicely and keeps the reader from noticing some of the more problematic parts of the narrative. (It helps to read the entire series in a single setting, something that will take the average reader, oh, an hour and a half, tops.) The early issues of Xenon featured articles about manga and mecha culture in lieu of letter pages, and one of these refers to the series as being part of a “new wave” of manga. I’m still unclear of what that appellation is supposed to mean, except that the narrative is sparser and anticipated the Hollywood blockbuster formula (lots of flashy “wow”, lean on substance) by ten years, but the same qualities can been seen in plenty of older manga and anime series. Xenon, to me, reads like the marriage of the classic Marvel superhero template (a conflicted hero thrown into a world he didn’t want to be a part of) to the highly-stylized aesthetics of manga. Kano’s cyborg form is a slick blend of sentai, giant robo, and American superhero designs.

There’s also plenty of dramatic shouting and big dollops of ultraviolence to keep things from getting boring. Fred Burke commented on his experiences translating the series as “the book in which I had to decide what it would sound like to shove a woman's heart out of her rib cage, and then recreate the comic-booky dialogue she will spurt with her blood.” There were ample amounts of fan service, as well; featuring both Yoko (the woman with the cyber legs) and Sonoko, a high school girl with a crush on Asuka. (Burke also mentions that the comic received a considerable number of fan letters from female readers – more evidence that pat judgments linking gender to genre tastes are nonsensical and reductive.) The depiction of women in the book can be a little off-putting, and in one case downright icky. (I could have done without the scene where Sonoko is taken hostage. It’s not hentai, but in some ways, it’s even more disturbing.)

Even with the occasionally skeevy moment (and the nonsensical conclusion of the series), Xenon is a wildly entertaining read, and was perfectly suited for my tastes as a fifteen year old fanboy beginning to feel jaded by American superhero fare. (Secret Wars II and Millennium damn near did in my interest in the Big Two’s offerings a while.) It’s a shame my efforts to adopt its style of dialogue into everyday life went so poorly. Maybe I should have picked another time and place besides at church on Easter Sunday to inaugurate the change.

AHHH! DAMN IT! HERE IS THE MUSIC! FOR TODAY!!!! (Feel free to add in your own speed lines and fist-through-the-rib-cage sound effects.)

Nitzer Ebb – Kick It (from Big Hit, 1995) – Also sold under the “I Can’t Believe It’s Not NIN” brand name.

Judas Priest – Turbo Lover (from Turbo, 1986) – Turbo Lover = a 1982 Camaro Z28, Part-Time Lover = a 1983 Chrysler Cordoba, Easy Lover = a 1976 Chevy Vega with a leaking head gasket

Sigue Sigue Sputnik – Teenage Thunder (from Flaunt It, 1986) – SSS were a one-trick-pony, but what a delightful trick and colorfully clad pony…

visual synergy: table for eight, please

I'm feeling a bit peckish. Anyone else fancy a bite to eat? There's plenty of room at the table...


Peter Gabriel - Games Without Frontiers - Exposing the machinations of the global Parcheesi conspiracy. Peter Gabriel's pioneering work in posing dramatically while holding a giant flashlight would have a massive influence on Frankie Goes to Hollywood a couple years down the line.


Ratt - Round and Round - You bring the D-Con; I'll bring the glue traps.


INXS - The One Thing - It's like that one scene from Fielding's Tom Jones, but run through an early 80's low budget music video filter.

Don't listen to the naysayers; cat fur makes everything taste better.


Tenpole Tudor - Swords of a Thousand Men - I'm happy to say that I've never eaten at one of those medieval-themed restaurants, nor ever had the desire to eat at one. I also make it a point to steer clear of Renaissance "faires" on general principle. If I have to see a bunch of people in period costumes acting foolish, I want some oddball punk rock thrown into the mix, which is where these guys come in. Frontman Edward Tudor-Pole has also had a long and interesting acting career, having starred in such films as The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (where he sang "Who Killed Bambi"), several Alex Cox productions, and the utterly abysmal adaptation of Colin MacInnes's Absolute Beginners.

Tenpole Tudor - Swords of a Thousand Men (from Eddie, Old Bob, Dick and Gary, 1981)

justice for all includes talking tigers

(This a revised and musically annotated version of something I posted in my journal a while ago.)

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I've mentioned before that I have an insane fondness for the old Otto Binder/C.C. Beck Captain Marvel Adventures stories, especially the ones from the 1945-1953 period. Even though Superman got there first with the whole godlike superbeing gimmick, Captain Marvel is purest distillation of the notion of the superhero as a childhood power fantasy. The old CMA stories have an air of innocence and whimsy about them that still feel fresh to me half a century after they were first published. After Fawcett quit publishing the series, Binder tried to work his mojo on Superman, but unlike a lot of my comics blogging pals, I find those stories kind of, well, boring and stupid, weighed down by a fixation on Kyrptonian trivia and what has become known as "superdickery".

I was checking out CMA #90 (November 1948) the other day. The big draw for me was a story featuring Mr. Atom, the homicidal robotic zeitgeist of the Atomic Age, but the issue also contains another unexpected delight -- Captain Marvel versus the Klan. (That's my name for the story. The actual title is "Mr. Tawny's New Home".)

Marvel's talking tiger buddy (What? You mean you don't have one?), Mr. Tawny, is looking for a new place to live and not having much luck in his search. Marvel tries to set him up with a club of big game hunters and adventurers, but things go sour when the club members start breaking out their rifles and taking shots at poor Mr. Tawny. "Wisdom of Solomon", my pink Swedish behind. At least it went better than the time Captain Marvel tried to pair up a lesbian separatist with a member of the Promisekeepers.

The Big Red Cheese isn't one to admit defeat easily, though, and he eventually finds a nice little subdivision willing to rent a cute little bungalow to a pants-wearing, talking beast of the jungle.

Unfortunately for Tawny, his new next door neighbor just happens to be the chairman of the previously mentioned hunting club, and begins a petition drive to chase Tawny out of the neighborhood using the tried and true "think of the children" fear tactic. Tawny considers packing up and leaving, but Captain Marvel, old school liberal that he is, won't stand for such defeatism:

(Very noble of you, Captain, but how do you explain this?)

With Tawny refusing to budge, the hunter and his cronies take the tried and true blue American method of dealing with unwanted elements in society. They form a vigilante hate group, complete with bonfires, blunt weapons, and robes with pointy hoods (which happen to be an interesting shade of violet):

("Tarnation, Cletus, the principle of separating whites and coloreds also applies to laundry!")

The good Captain makes short work of the intolerant dumbasses...

...but not before they show their credentials by setting fire not just to Tawny's house, but the a large number of other residences as well. While the Captain sees to extinguishing the fires, Tawny puts his feline speed and agility to good use by rescuing a child from a burning house, proving to the easily swayed townsfolk that he is indeed worthy to live among them.

(Ever notice that in a lot of "message" movies about equality and tolerance, the burden of proof falls on the back of those being discriminated against? "I was wrong about you ------s. You make damn good fighters, and even better Americans!" Yeah, it's great that these people had to risk life and limb to "earn" your approval of their constitutional rights, you ignorant fuck. A similarly twisted logic is at play today in the gay marriage debate, and the absurd notion that civil rights should be subject to referendum.)

Tawney's heroism (coupled with, I assume, a dose of "human guilt" on the part of townsfolk) earns him the title of honorary mayor:

Captain Marvel and Tawny seem pleased with that, although I can't shake the nagging feeling that when Tawny stops by the local diner for a cup of coffee and the morning paper, the rest of the patrons will suddenly turn quiet and awkwardly gaze down at their half eaten plates of bacon and eggs until he leaves.

(Once a cynic, always a cynic.)

--

The Klan versus the Tiger Man? Smart money's on the latter, especially if he brings Bear Cat with him to the dust up.

--

Steel Pulse - Ku Klux Klan (from Handsworth Revolution, 1978)

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Rufus Thomas Jr. - Tiger Man (King of the Jungle) (from The Sun Records Collection, 1994)

this is the game that moves as you play

Before I started driving into work every day, a good driving music mix CD could last up to three weeks or more. In these days of stop-n-go traffic on the asphalt nightmare that is Route 93, I'm lucky if I can get a week's worth of listening out of one before wanting to toss the disc out the window.

Putting a mix CD together should be easy, in theory. I have a large and varied music library, and I can think of dozens of songs that would put me in a "rocking in my family sedan" vibe. In reality, however, I have to take into account the tastes of my intrepid co-pilot, a.k.a. my wife. There are more similarities than differences between our tastes, to be sure, but there is no way in hell I'd expect her to tolerate the classic rock and crap metal that loomed so large in my white-trash childhood and early adolescence.

So the trick is to balance tastes without sinking to a lowest common denominator. Sometimes it works. Other times it doesn't, and I get to find out exactly what my better half really feels about certain favorite songs or artists, like with the “Shampoo Incident” of Fall 2006, where the wife took the unprecedented step of anticipating the a contested track (“Trouble” by Shampoo) and hitting the skip button before the music could even begin.

Here’s the track list for the driving music disc I burned this morning:


Many of the songs are ones I’ve posted here in the past few weeks. That’s a pretty common occurrence; in the process of pulling out material for various themes, I end up rediscovering forgotten favorites or encountering new ones. As per an unspoken agreement, I also include certain number of tracks from “Maura’s bands” (most of which I happen to like, but I’ll always associate with her listening tastes). This time around, they include X, The Epoxies, The Soviettes, The Gits, and The Dents. No INXS or Ladytron this time out, though they also fall under that category.

Another factor that has to be considered is the ambient sounds associated with highway driving. Many much-loved songs, especially in the goth and post-punk genres, fail to make the cut simply because they can’t be heard over the background noise of the road and/or the hum of Super Lumina’s engine.

Generation X – Dancing With Myself (from Kiss Me Deadly, 1981) – Punk rock has died more times than the heating coil of my old 1990 Cutlass. I’d venture that the video for this song was Death #73 or #74. Billy Idol’s relationship to punk rock strikes me as analogous as Poison-Mötley Crüe-et cetera’s to heavy metal: a having one’s cake and eating it too scenario that tries to juggle commercial aspirations and subculture mystique with an eye toward the teenybopper demographic.

X – The Have Nots (from Under the Big Black Sun, 1982) – Love changes people in subtle ways. Before we began dating, Maura’s love of X began at Under the Big Black Sun and ended with See How We Are. My love of X, on the other hand, began with Los Angeles and ended with Wild Gift. As we grew closer as a couple, so did our record collections. Today she is likely to be caught humming “Sex and Dying in High Society” while I quietly sing “The Hungry Wolf” to myself while I’m doing yardwork. Ain’t love grand?

life could be so easy

Speaking from experience, longing for the simple domestic charms of married life does not tritely equal "wanting to be a housewife" for a passionate warrior woman. There are many similarities between the Mister Miracle/Big Barda relationship and the Andrew/Maura one.

(I didn't have a megalomanical New God for a foster father, but my real dad combines the creativity of Colonel Kurtz with the people skills of Machiavelli. Maura wasn't raised in a brutal orphanage on a hell world, but she did attend Medford public schools...which is a harsher fate in many ways. Instead of a grouchy pint-sized assistant named Oberon, I have a grouchy pint-sized chihuahua-pug named Oscar.)

All I know is that anything remotely approaching this in our home life would involve my either being strangled with or getting force fed that cape. Oh, and my wife would be wearing jeans and a t-shirt, not a bikini. (Way to reduce a strong female character to an appendage of her husband, DC!)

The Bodysnatchers - Easy Life (from a 1980 single, collected on The 2 Tone Collection: A Checkered Past, 1993) - This all-female second wave ska outfit later mutated into the Belle Stars. Singer Rhoda Dakar collaborated with one of the later lineups of The Specials, the fruits of which included the utterly harrowing "The Boiler," which I posted as part of last year's Halloween countdown.

Friday Night Fights: The Chair Has Spoken!

Plexus Ranger Reuben Flagg has a need to know…
(from American Flagg! #3, December 1983)

The first twelve issues of American Flagg! are high up there on my list of favorite comics ever. It’s a shame the series went downhill quickly after that initial sequence of interlinked three-issue arcs. It’s Howard Chaykin’s finest work, both as a writer and an illustrator, and he employs his stylistic bag of tricks (zip-a-tone and other offbeat texturing/shading techniques, art-integrated sound effects, a roguish protagonist, and women in garter belts) to full effect in this quasi-cyberpunk story of an ailing future America and the one man who still has faith in the Dream…even if it leads him to use a chair to beat the shit out of a man in order to keep control of a pirate television station that broadcasts old porn films and illegal basketball games.

Highly recommended, though not for everyone. (Certain aspects of the comic veer close to what could be interpreted as sexist or, to a lesser extent, homophobic, though it’s a tough call, rooted as they are in the overall stylistic tone of the story. It’s not a huge problem – for me, at least – but I felt obligated to toss it out there.) While there has been talk of releasing the series in collected format, nothing has materialized so far. The original issues aren’t that difficult or expensive to pick up, though, and have the added bonus of including the original letters pages. The series was at the vanguard of the push toward more adult-oriented comics material made possible by the rise of the direct market in the early 80’s (i.e. comic book shops versus distribution via the newsstand), and it’s interesting to read the readers’ responses to the book’s social/political commentary and its inclusion of (extremely tame/tasteful by contemporary standards) sexual themes. They serve as a nice reminder that comics fans have always been a bit…peculiar; it just that now they have the world wide web as a soapbox by which to broadcast their eccentricities from.

So, how does one follow up a bit of furniture-and-fist brutality? With some hot love action, of course. It’s the Plexus Ranger way…

Shit, I can’t even get a peck on the cheek from Maura if I’ve eaten a tuna salad sandwich in the last forty-eight hours, much less with a blood and vomit cocktail fresh on my lips…

Our Daughter’s Wedding – Lawnchairs (from 1981’s Digital Cowboy EP, collected on Nightlife: The Collection, 2006) – Vintage New York synthpop that reminds me of early Men Without Hats (Keith Silva’s vocals, especially). Lawnchairs are everywhere! Keep watching the patio!

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(Bahlactus is keeping score.)

here is the day to remember

“Herr Michael York, please rest your leonine face against my ample bosoms while I stare uncomfortably into space, ja? Oopsie, it seems the shoulder strap of my dress has slipped down past my creamy white shoulder!”

However will our intrepid hero stop the Kaiser’s latest superweapon, a ponderous behemoth filled with explosive hydrogen gas, powered by volatile aviation fuel, and whose surface is covered with highly combustible reflective paint?

Front Line Assembly – Hydrogen (from Explosion, 2003) – One of my more cherished memories from high school was the time when my 11th grade chemistry teacher miscalculated the blast radius of a hydrogen-filled balloon and singed off the eyebrows of a star member of the football team.

Do Make Say Think – Goodbye Enemy Airship (from Goodbye Enemy Airship the Landlord Is Dead, 2000) – I’m not sure exactly what the hell “post-rock” is supposed to be, apart from an ineffectual stab at marketing-driven branding. Why not just drop the useless jargon and call it “jazzy electronica with prog tendencies”? The idea with genre labels is to entice or intrigue listeners, not confuse them.

T. Rex – Life’s a Gas (from Electric Warrior, 1971) – The one thing I took away from the first-time homebuyer’s class the bank made my wife and I attend as a precondition for getting a mortgage: Killer mold is the new radon gas. Seriously, the other attendees pissed away nearly ninety minutes asking the instructor the most insane questions about killer mold. “Will it take over my body and make me eat nothing but chocolate-covered mini-donuts?”

I even drew a little picture on one of the class handouts featuring a knife-wielding mass of fungus hovering over a sleeping couple. Now that I think of it, the fungus bore a close resemblance to Marc Bolan’s (or Brian May’s) hairdo – a mass of black curlicues designed to strike fear and awe into the hearts and minds of the unwary.

Thank you, Detroit! We are the Justice League!

One advantage to getting older, apart from senior citizen discounts, is gaining better a sense of perspective about the whys and wherefores of things. Hindsight often gets dismissed as the fiefdom of Monday morning quarterbacks, but as long as one doesn’t get caught up in trying to rail against the immutable, it can provide quite valuable insights that may have eluded our younger selves.

The crushing disappointment at not getting a much coveted Star Wars AT-AT toy for Christmas back in 1982 is tempered by the realization that, at the time, one’s father had just been laid off of work and one’s mother was working double shifts at a factory that made low-end stereo components. (Not that it matters now, as I was able to score the new and improved version of the toy for a song at a local Kay-Bee after the bloom had come off of the late 1990’s Special Edition rose. I brought it out of storage a while back to see how my dogs would react to it. They promptly went to smell its plastic “ass”.)

“Justice League Detroit,” is the popular name for the Justice League of America line up that was introduced in 1984's Justice League Annual #2, and ran from issue 233 until the series’ demise with issue 261. It’s become a minor legend in the years since, frequently referenced as the shining example of a reboot gone horribly wrong or as a basis for many (mostly lame) jokes. I was twelve years old when the new team debuted and I hated the change with the passion only an adolescent fanboy can (justifiably, at least) muster. When I was twenty-four, I went back and completed my run of those issues (as part of my archivist’s fascination with early 1980’s DC comics), and read the entire lot in a single sitting. It was indeed as lousy as I remembered it being, but I was able to grasp the reasons behind the change, which were perfectly sensible but horribly executed.

Justice League of America was never that wonderful a book, despite the reverence expressed toward the concept of the team, a concept largely formed by rose-tinted nostalgia surrounding half-remembered stories and the Super Friends cartoon. (Deliver us from Super Friends fetishists, please. I don’t care how hard Alex Ross tries to redeem its insipid legacy, the show was godawful, and not just because of the Wonder Twins.) As hard as I may try, I can’t recollect anything that could be seen as “golden era” for the original JLA, although there were occasional stories that did rise above the sea of mediocrity.

In 1984, faced with sagging sales and reader interest in the title, longtime JLA writer Gerry Conway decided to shake up the status quo with a radical revamp of the team along the lines of Marvel’s uber-successful X-Men and DC’s own upstart hit team book, The New Teen Titans. One of the more problematic aspects of the “classic” JLA line up was that it was very hard to build any sort of dramatic tension or serial melodramatic hooks with a team comprised of the most popular and powerful characters in DC’s stable, most of whom were “on loan” so to speak from their own titles and therefore could not stray too far from the company canon. It takes a highly imaginative writer to come up with plausible obstacles capable of challenging the combined powers of Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern on a monthly basis, and even then a inflationary sense fatigue will eventually set in. (The Planet Stealers beget the Galaxy Stealers beget the Universe Stealers beget yawns all round.)

Marvel had met with success with its own spin on the team book formula, where the focus was less centered on the threat of the month, but rather on the interpersonal dynamics between the various members. X-Men writer Chris Claremont worked this theme to great success (to the point where the selling power of the franchise led to dilution of the concept via scores of spinoff titles), and on re-reading the Justice League Detroit stuff, I can see where Conway was trying to emulate Claremont’s tropes – reworking the JLA into a polyglot team of characters not beholden to corporate mandates or other creative teams, and thus free for “bold” characterizations with a heavy accent on melodrama. The problem with that idea was that the JLA, in the minds on fans, centers around the concept of the team as an association of DC’s flagship heroes, and that notion has been too ingrained by decades of comics reading and watching Super Friends easily shake off, regardless of how weak the idea was in practice.

It also didn’t help that the new characters brought in to replace the old favorites were at best lackluster and at worst just plain lousy. Even as a twelve year old fanboy, it struck me as rather strange that the plot rationale for the reboot was Aquaman’s anger that the JLA’s big guns couldn’t get their shit together during a Martian invasion, and his decision to dissolve the team in favor of members willing to make a full-time commitment. Out go the members who can move planets out of orbit and restructure matter at will, in comes:

Gypsy – “She’s so unusual!” Or is that “Love is a battlefield?” A mysterious teenage runaway who possesses the power of invisibility (and some other vague psychic abilities to be used when deus ex machine demands it) and is built around the customarily lazy stereotype of Romani culture. While you may have your doubts about whether she has what it takes to go up against Starro the Conqueror or the Doctor Destiny, I should point out that she walks around inner city Detroit while barefoot. The lady is hardcore, indeed.
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All About Eve – Gypsy Dance (from All About Eve, 1988)

Vixen – Fashion model by day, female Wolverine clone by night. Actually, Vixen isn’t that terrible as a character. She had been slated for her own title in the 70’s, but the DC Implosion killed the book before it went to print. She went on to a plush gig with the Suicide Squad, and numerous guest appearances in other titles, before rejoining the present incarnation of the Justice League. She’s a real survivor, that Vixen.

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The Fall – Vixen (from This Nation’s Saving Grace, 1985)

Steel – A phony “legacy” character spun out of the Conway’s short-lived Steel, The Indestructable Man series from the late 70’s. This Steel is the grandson of the original Steel, who took it upon himself to “toughen up” the boy with multiple painful surgeries designed to turn him into a super-strong, super-tough cyborg. (I thought those dads who force their showtunes-loving sons to join the football team were bad… Sheesh.)

The younger Steel is the loose-cannon-with-a-wounded-soul of the team, and indulges in toxic levels of self-pity when he’s not spazzing out and dropping five-ton hunks of asphalt on bush league supervillains. He’s also the reason the team relocates to Detroit, after his grandfather lends them the use of his bitchin’ survivalist bunker built under the city. I guess that makes him the superhero equivalent to the kid in the neighborhood no one really liked, but whose parents had a swimming pool.
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Tubeway Army – Steel and You (from Tubeway Army, 1978)

Vibe – Oh Lord, where do I even begin? Vibe stands smack dab in the middle of the intersection where poorly conceived and executed efforts toward diversity (he’s a hot-headed and vain Latino gangbanger with a Frito Bandito accent) and nods to contemporary popcult trends (he’s also a breakdancer) meet. I do like the belt buckle, though.

The ethnic caricature aspect of the character was quickly toned down (and the accent explained away as being a conscious affectation in order to maintain street cred), but the trendhopping conception (and yellow parachute pants) were harder to shed. Generally speaking, it’s never a good idea to base a character around a contemporary fad, as doing so essentially stamps an expiration date onto the character’s staying power right out of the gate, and even if said character manages to hang on after the wave subsides, leads to the scenarios like Marvel’s Dazzler sporting roller disco paraphernalia into the middle of the Reagan Era (which she eventually ditched for a headband and leotard ensemble. I haven’t paid attention to her recent comings and goings, but I assume that she’s now wearing baby doll dresses and combat boots). I know it must be tempting to be “down” with what “the kidz” are into, but, honestly, the kidz are too busy reading manga to care about these blatant efforts at demographic pandering.

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Living Color - Funny Vibe (from Vivid, 1988)

Yes, Aquaman, I can totally see the logic behind your decision. Who needs Superman or Wonder Woman when you’ve got a master of poppin’ and lockin’ and a chameleonic piece of jailbait to bring up against the indestructible Shaggy Man or the world-shattering power of the Tornado Tyrant? They were able to deal with the power-mimicking android Amazo, but given what the poor guy had to work with, it’s hardly anything to boast about.

It was destined to end in multiple fatalities (in a rather good final arc written by J.M. DeMatteis, to clear the decks for the “Bwah-Ha-Ha” Justice League relaunch he would collaborate on with Keith Giffen), but I’m surprised that it took two years to reach that point.

“I dunno Z. I hear Hawkman does a mean applejack, and Superman busted loose with the Kandor Slide at the last JLA/JSA reunion party.”

“Was that when Bruce got all jealous, and started in with the Batusi?”

“You know, we did our best to ignore him whenever he pulled that shit, but it just made him try harder.”

visual synergy: Private Hudson goes MTV

Because nobody else had the stones to do it, this week’s lazy music video post features the glory that is Bill Paxton.

“Why Bill Paxton?” you may ask, to which I must respond “Why not?” He’s a man whose acting career has featured such high points as getting killed by an Alien, a Terminator, and a Predator. His role in Near Dark inspired my younger self to attach spurs to my punk boots, thus leading to all sorts of escalator-related hi-jinx. He managed to channel the dignified demeanor of Norville Rogers while fending off hordes of chitinous nightmares (though none so nightmarish as his Big Love co-star Chloë Sevigny) on the surface of LV-426.

Any man willing to take second billing to a flying CGI cow is all right in my book. Plus, he had a small part in Streets of Fire, which automatically puts him beyond reproach as far as I’m concerned. (Don’t look at me that way.)



Paxton directed and appeared in this video for Barnes and Barnes’ classic novelty song “Fish Heads.” Barnes and Barnes was a collaborative project between Robert Hamier and former child star Billy Mumy, and their musical output is the most damning indictment yet of a childhood spent in the company of a slinky-armed robot and ne’er-do-well scientist with a penchant for alliterative insults.



Jumping ahead a couple years to the golden age of big budget, high concept music videos, here’s the video for Pat Benatar’s “Shadows of the Night,” featuring Paxton as a Nazi officer. According to the IMDB, Paxton learned to speak German in preparation for his role. How does one say “Game over, man!” auf Deutsch? (And, yes, that’s Judge Reinhold in there as part of Benatar’s crew. He'll pop again before this post is over. Trust me.)



Besides appearing in other people’s music videos, Paxton starred in couple of his own as the frontman for Martini Ranch, an oddball pop band reminiscent of Wall of Voodoo, Oingo Boingo, and Devo. The above video for 1986’s “How Can the Labouring Man Find Time for Self-Culture?” was directed by James Cameron, and features cameos by fellow Cameron regulars Michael Biehn and Jenette Goldstein, as well as appearances by Anthony Michael Hall and Judge Reinhold. (See, I told you.)

Historical (and celebrity) curiosity value aside, the song is a fun bit of 80’s pop, and features the Devolutionary talents of Mark Mothersbaugh. (Musically, it reminds me a lot of China Crisis’ “Working With Fire and Steel.”) It’s hardly a “classic” by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s still far better than the overreaching and frequently painful efforts of current-gen actors/actresses-turned-pop musicians.

Martini Ranch - How Can the Labouring Man Find Time for Self-Culture? (from a 1986 12” single)

he came on a summer’s day

It’s going to be a good night tonight; I just know it.

How do I know it? Because when I arrived home from work, this song was playing on the boombox in the kitchen:

Looking Glass – Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl) (from a 1972 single, collected on Golden Classics, 1996)

…and there are few omens more auspicious than the mellow sounds of classic Jersey Shore soul-slash-pop.

Am I jeopardizing my cache of punk rock points by admitting my total love for this song? Perhaps, but I could care less. I don’t feel the need to display my hepcat credentials on my sleeve, accusing other folks’ of having bad taste in music or liking “overrated” bands while offering their own equally trite and predictable lists of “edgy” songs and performers.

Fuck being contrary for the sake of hipness. I follow my heart when it comes to music, and for tonight, at least, my life, my lover, my lady is the sea.

Do-do-de-do-do.

(Edit: I thought it would be wise to point out that the above rant does not apply to any of my wonderful music blogging peers, but was a reaction to something I read elsewhere on the internet.)

hurting runs off my shoulder

My mother passed away in November 1988, when I was sixteen years old. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about it, but those thoughts tend to be more about the social and familiar upheavals that came in the wake of her death, rather than of my mother as a person.

I’ve spent decades coming to grips with my relationship with my father and the way in which he loomed large as both a positive and negative role model during my formative years. With my mother, though, it’s different. I can joke about being my father’s son (which can be the blackest of black humor, indeed), but the question of what it means to be the son of Ruthann Weiss has never been decisively resolved.

This is partially due to the passing of time, and the richness and vibrancy of my memories of the woman gradually fading over the years. I can remember specific events and incidents, but the overall picture of who my mother was as a person has gotten hazy. There was a degree of deliberate intent in that; right after my mother passed away, I made a conscious decision to pardon her shortcomings and problematic aspects of her personality. Which brings me to the other reason why I can’t get a decent handle on the role my mother played in shaping my life: her last eight years on earth were a downward spiral of obsessive behavior that crossed the line into outright insanity near the end.

As much as I tried to bury the memories related to her slide into increasing erratic and dysfunctional behavior, they still remain the strongest impressions I have, and color the rest of my memories, good and bad, of her. It confounds my attempts to piece together an accurate picture of who she was and what she meant to me, except…

…I remember something that happened a few weeks before her death. I was in my room drifting in and out of sleep. The house was cold, which may or may not have been because we stiffed the oil people one too many times (again). My mother came into my room. She was a little unsteady on her feet -- but not completely blitzed on port wine -- and said “You must be cold.” She took my army surplus jacket off the doorknob and spread it over me like a blanket, kissed me on the forehead, then trundled off upstairs.

Sometimes a single recollection can be more than enough.

Roger McGuinn – It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) (from the Easy Rider OST, 1969) – I posted this track before, on the anniversary of my mother’s death, but what the hell. My mom gave/lent me this record, and a turntable to play it with (which I still own, but is in dire need of a new stylus) when I was fourteen.

Me First and The Gimme Gimmes – Sweet Caroline (from Have a Ball, 1997) – My mom loved Neil Diamond (and Rod McKuen – I think there’s a correlation there), which led to some really miserable times when I discovered that his genius was not universally appreciated by my Kiss-loving peers in primary school.

Can you dig it, baby?

I really hate mowing the lawn, but what could I do? The crabgrass out back was as high as my shin (and I’m 6’3”) and it was wiser to tackle the project on a relatively mild day than to get stuck having to do it under less auspicious temperatures and levels of relative humidity. It’s still a major hassle to get done even in the best of circumstances, though.

Suburban Lawns – Anything (from Suburban Lawns, 1981) – Our house is located on the slope of a largish hill, and our backyard topography includes multiple steep inclines that make controlling the lawnmower a backbreaking endeavor. If I’m not trying to keep the damn thing from rolling backwards over my toes, I’m straining against gravity’s mischievous efforts to send the mower rolling off down the hillside without me.

Trouser Press was lukewarm about the material on the Suburban Lawns LP, calling it “highly ordinary” and “tiresome.” I think the album is as fresh sounding today as it was twenty-five years ago, and an excellent example of “new wave” as open-ended push against musical boundaries (as opposed to “new wave” as “punk/postpunk with commercial aspirations”).

Dead Kennedys – A Child and His Lawnmower (from Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death, 1987) – Jello Biafra has a point about the trigger-happy nature of American society here, but I, too, have thought about inflicting violence upon my lawn mower on several occasions. It’s not that machine is a useless piece of shit. Quite the contrary, it’s a pricey Toro model my father-in-law gave us as a housewarming present. I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but it’s not really suited for me personally as user.

My father-in-law has retained his prodigious upper body strength into his mid-seventies, and I’m sure the machine felt light as a feather when he tried it out at the store. I, on the other hand, am built like a stick figure with an eating disorder, and I break into a sweat simply wheeling the thing out of the garage, much less playing suburban Sisyphus with it.

(I’m not too proud to admit I leave most of the household heavy lifting to Maura. I acknowledge my limitations, and accept that I rolled two 2’s and a 1 for my Strength score. I wasn’t planning on playing a Fighter anyhow.)

Friends of Distinction – Grazing in the Grass (from The Best of the Friends of Distinction, 1996) – It’s a gas, baby! Can you dig it? Just be sure to avoid tossing your picnic blanket down by Dog Shit Alley (the strip of land between the raspberry brambles and the swing set), because I’ve been a little lax with the raking lately. Oh, and watch out for the clusters of nettle plants we’ve been fighting a war of attrition with for the past three years. Also, Maura will kill you if you trample on (or run the mower over) the place where she’s been trying to grow lavender since 2005.

Friday Night Fights: The Winning Hand Is a Clenched Fist

Face facts, Jade Jaws! You’ve just been JACKED!
From The Incredible Hulk #213 (Aug. 1977)

I picked up this comic in a quarter bin at a convention back in the mid-nineties, and it was the best two bits I’ve ever spent. It’s a big dumb superhero slugfest, done in the mighty Marvel 1970’s manner. I have a soft spot for Jack of Hearts, despite his rather busy (Maura says “foolish”) costume and convoluted origin. Marvel made a decent effort to sell the character as the next big thing for a while, but the readers didn’t buy the hype and poor Jack soon drifted into the murky depths of d-lister limbo before getting bumped off just prior to and during (don’t ask) the Avengers Dissassembled fiasco.

Such are the vagaries of the genre. Rather than curse the darkness, I prefer to celebrate that there was a time where someone dressed like a refugee from a Bicycle poker deck got a chance to go toe to toe with one of the most beloved (and powerful) characters in the Marvel Universe and acquit himself pretty darn well, despite having a nasty case of egomaniacal expository syndrome (the superheroic equivalent to mono)…

Sinergy – Rock You like a Hurricane (from A Tribute to the Scorpions, 2001) – It’s impossible to top the original version, but these Finnish rockers give it their best shot. The first band shirt I ever owned was a Scorpions baseball-style t-shirt with red three-quarter length sleeves. Too bad I didn’t hold on to it; I could have sold it to a Japanese collector and paid off the balance of my car loan.

John Lee Hooker – Behind the Plow (from The Country Blues of John Lee Hooker, 1960) – PLOW! I wonder if the person in charge of the sound effects in the top panel grew up in an Amish community. I hope Jack remembered to cultivate in evenly spaced rows at a uniform three-inch depth, and to leave a third of the Hulk’s surface area fallow for the season. Comic book onomatopoeia is a very strange beast.

(The wise gambler bets on Bahlactus.)