What "Age of Innocence?"

(with apologies to Edith Wharton)

Armagideon Time, in conjunction with Fawcett Publications, is proud to present this very special episode of Captain Marvel....

It's the combination of the doctor's cherubic face and pencil-thin moustache that adds that extra level of creepiness, don't you think?

You know that thought-provoking but contextually inaccurate line about how the Roman Empire had all the available technology to create a steam locomotive/microwave oven/"slammable" form of yogurt, but never managed to put the pieces together? This panel occupies a similar position in regards to erotic fanfic/slashfic. All that was lacking was some sort of system of electronic tubes by which some inspired fan could unleash his or her Billy Batson/Doctor Livingstone masterpiece upon an unsuspecting world.

DISCLAIMER: For the purposes of this story, the "Billy" character is a consenting adult who has been magically de-aged, because the author wishes to have his/her creepy fantasies while keeping things legal and aboveboard, ok?

(Yes, I really can't stand fanfic culture, if you haven't guessed that already.)

Of course, one doesn't have to resort to facile, lowest common denominator NAMBLA jokes. One could always choose to take a darker route:

Oh, Billy, didn't you pay attention to those movies they showed you in gym class at all? Maybe Kid Eternity should have conjured up the shade of Guy de Maupassant as a cautionary example.

The Pogues - Billy's Bones (from Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash, 1985) - An excellent way to start today's musical selections on a good note. RS&L is the definitive Pogues album for a lot of folks, running neck and neck with If I Should Fall from Grace with God, but I personally prefer the less polished sound of Red Roses for Me.

Anorak Girl - Billie's Joined the Fanclub (from a 1997 single) - It could have been worse, Bille could have become a regular commenter on the Newsarama boards or *shudder* the Yahoo forums.

Carter USM - Billy's Smart Circus (from 30 Something, 1991) - It has been my (admittedly limited) experience that a "smart circus" is one that you are lucky enough to avoid attending.

Bo Donaldson & The Heywoods - Billy, Don't Be a Hero (from AM Gold: 1974, 1996) - Paper Lace's version of this song hit the top of the UK charts at nearly the same as this version hit the top of the US charts -- a historical curiosity spawned by the draconian trade restrictions on bubblegum and sunshine pop music in place at that time. Fortunately the barriers were rolled back in time for American audiences to experience Paper Lace's magnum opus "The Night Chicago Died."

Friday Night Fights: Iconoclasm 101

With fist, crowbar, and boot, Marshal Law brings low the mighty.
(from Marshal Law #6, April 1989; by Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill)

The Stranglers - No More Heroes (from No More Heroes, 1977) - Before punk went from being an attitude to being a musical genre (and fashion statement).

(All hail Bahlactus.)

let that be your battlefield

Before I got married, bought a house, and assumed all the related financial responsibilities of an “adult,” I had modest plans to transform Super Lumina from a staid family sedan into something a little more slick-looking. Nothing too ostentatious – a low key spoiler, a new paint job (burnished gold), and maybe some interior strip lighting. A nice dream, but lack of funds aside, it would have been a bigger hassle than it was worth. The problem with having a showy car is that you spend every waking minute worrying about the inevitable pits, dings, and scratches than vehicle will acquire through the attrition of daily use. I’ve grown to care less about Super Lumina’s minor cosmetic issues, and have instead focused on keeping what’s under her hood in perfect working order.

Now that I’m within two months of paying off the car loan, though, I’ve started thinking about ways to use that freed up cash to make needed improvements. They are all based in functionality rather than appearance, and largely inspired by the stretch of Interstate 93 north between the Columbia Road ramp and the Massachusetts Turnpike, where the rules of the road have devolved into mild guidelines to be freely ignored. (“Wait until the last possible moment to cross three lanes of traffic to the exit? Sounds like a plan! No need to interrupt my text messaging to flip my turn signal on!”)

With those road conditions in mind, here is my current list of desired modifications for Super Lumina:

- twin-linked liquid-cooled hood-mounted chainguns: They don't even need to be that powerful, just able to penetrate fiberglass and sheet metal. They should also have a forced ammo feed capable of automatically clearing most jams.

- rear-mounted “smart” caltrop dispenser: The caltrops would resemble ball bearings and only spike up when driven over by a specifically designated target in order to avoid collateral damage.

- a titanium-steel bulldozer blade: This may require reinforcing Super Lumina’s underbody so that it can properly handle the stress of impact, and minimize the risk of damage to the engine.

- a sunroof cupola with pintle-mounted machinegun: Because in our house, road rage is a couple’s activity. This would give my intrepid wife/co-pilot a chance to vent her spleen. Outside of combat, it would function as a excellent vantage point from which to assess traffic conditions should we be stuck behind a two-story tall SUV.

- hubcap-mounted spikes and blades: Intended more for the intimidation factor than for actual use, they would hopefully deter those folks unwilling or unable to keep their damn vehicles within the marked lane boundaries.

- trunk-mounted adjustable reflector screen: I don’t know why everyone these days feels the need to have their highbeams on 24/7, and I don’t care to hear their reasons for it. This slick innovation is designed to give those inconsiderate jerks a taste of their own medicine by reflecting the blinding glare back into their eyes.

- cell jammer-screamer: a powerful short-range transmitter which broadcasts an earsplitting 200-decible white noise shriek across the entire cell phone frequency band. “Have I got your attention? Good! Now pay attention to the road, asswipe.”

- a custom-fitted stereo-system with mp3 CD capability and a dock for most digital music players: It can’t all be about road rage, OK?

Ministry – Jesus Built My Hotrod (from Psalm 69, 1992) – Or it was assembled at a GM plant in Ontario. I can’t really remember now.

Adam and The Ants – Cartrouble (from Dirk Wears White Sox, 1979) – My trouble is with everyone else on the road.

Jane Wiedlin – Rush Hour (from Fur, 1988) – It used to be that if we got on the highway at 9:15 AM of thereabouts, it would be clear sailing all the way to Dorchester…until the building boom came along. Now the highways are thick with New Hampshire-dwelling expatriates from the Bay State who continue to work in Massachusetts and create fifteen mile long traffic jams.

clubbed to death

"It is such a quiet thing to fall…but far more terrible is to admit it." – Kreia, Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords

A lot of what I babble about here touches upon the associative power of music, especially the connection between music and memory. Sometimes the triggers are direct and/or nostalgia-related, like how listening to Loverboy’s “Working for the Weekend,” excruciatingly trite as it may be, unleashes a torrent of non-specific memories of childhood summers in North Woburn. Other times, it’s a more subtle process, where upon hearing a song for the first time, a random half-forgotten chunk of memory gets shaken loose from my internal data store. It’s a bit like the IPCRESS process, but accidental and through pop music, rather than deliberate and through starvation and psychedelic light shows.

The specific instance which spawned this post was a case of the latter, more subtle, process. After coming across a track on Retro Music Snob (which if you aren’t a frequent visitor to, you ought to be – and I’m not saying that because RMS frequently links to me) by The Holograms, an all-female bubblegum punk pop band from Los Angeles, I headed on over to eMusic and picked up a copy of their album. Their music is an entertaining, and somewhat raunchy, crazy quilt of influences ranging from the Shangri-La’s to The Pandoras to the Lunachicks to the Go-Go’s early stuff, and I recommend it highly.

About thirty seconds into “Scene Whore,” I suffered a major flashback to an incident from about five years back. After I started driving again in the fall of 2001, Maura and I quickly settled into certain day-specific routines. Fridays became pizza and animal supplies days. We’d drive to the Pet Supplies Plus in Wellington Circle, stock up on all the necessities for the critters, then head off to pick up our food order at Antonio’s over by the Fellsway. The place was a traffic nightmare, so I used to park in the Johnny’s Foodmaster lot and just walk over to the pizza parlor. It was also handy because my bank had an ATM booth at the far end of the lot, and I could get some weekend cash there without having to make another stop.

On this particular occasion, I stepped inside the booth and the person ahead of me in line was a woman around my age (though it was a tough call) dressed to the nines in one of those over-the-top short, frilly dresses that were de rigueur for Route 1 dance clubs or the Class of 1986’s senior prom. Her bottle-copper hair was piled high and permed within an inch of its life, and her dark eye shadow ran in teary rivulets down her cheeks. In one shaky hand she held a cigarette and in the other a stack of credit cards, which she fed one at a time into the machine. Each rejected bid for a cash advance was met with a muffled sob and another deep drag.

As thick as the air was with tobacco smoke, the stink of wild desperation was thicker still. Witnessing the scene gave me repeated synaesthetic flashes of a gallows lever being pulled, the platform dropping, and the terminal snap of the vertebrae. To have dug a hole for one’s self that deep, where 9/10ths of the surface area of one’s personal Wheel of Potential Futures is filled with results like “overdose” or “murdered body found in an East Boston dumpster”…it boggles and depresses me immensely. Maybe I should stop by Keno Mart to cheer myself up.

Here’s the song that inspired today’s post, along with a similarly-themed slice of NYC “mutant disco” to round things out:

The Holograms – Scene Whore (from Night of 1000 Ex-Boyfriends, 2005)

Cristina – What’s a Girl to Do? (from Sleep It Off, 1984)

maybe next year, maybe no go

As I mentioned a few posts back, I worked at a college library for a time in the mid-1990’s. I mostly worked evenings and weekends. Because it was located at a commuter school, things were usually dead during my shifts, especially during the summer intersession, and I spent much of my time reading up on a wide variety of subjects. (My record was four 200-page history texts in the space of eight hours.)

One of my job responsibilities was conducting periodic floor sweeps -- picking up stray books for reshelving and announcing the closing time to the sparse and scattered assortment of patrons. It was an…enlightening…task, providing a rare glimpse into a world hidden from most mortals. Every Saturday, without fail, I would find a stack of books -- typically The Story of O, Tropic of Cancer, Justine, collections of Jean Genet plays -- resting in a rank puddle of piss on the floor of the men’s room at the end of the stacks, and the shelves where the human sexuality titles were kept would be in massive disarray.

It puzzled me, and as I sat at the desk by the library’s only entrance and exit, I’d watch the various patrons come and go and wonder who the culprits were. The beefy frat boy? The skinny pockmarked techie? The fundamentalist loony who’d sneak in and try to bomb the restrooms with anti-abortion stickers and post cards? The slick-looking business professor? The possibilities were many, yet the potential pool was small, and I still wonder to this day.

(During one of my closing time sweeps, I did almost quite literally stumble across a typical backwards baseball cap “dude” who was masturbating to a 1970’s sexuality textbook in a darkened corner. The poor sap looked like a rabbit caught in a semi-truck’s headlights. I just kind of looked at the floor and said, “Library closes in fifteen minutes,” then moved on.)

Oddly enough, my above experiences in the lovely world of library science came rushing back to me this morning when I made the mistake of reading the comments section of this Yahoo Tech article on why it might be wise not to be an iPhone early adopter (read: beta tester who pays through the fucking nose for the privilege of bragging rights). It wasn’t the perv factor, but my “who the hell are these people and why are they roaming unsupervised?” reaction to these commentators that triggered the flashback.

I know:
1. It’s the internet.
2. It’s a Yahoo forum.
3. It’s the internet.

…but in a tech-oriented venue, I’d expect a wee bit more than “who gives a dam I want 1” or “The iPhone needs to be bukkaked.” (Maybe I was too quick in dismissing the perv factor.)

The spelling, grammar, and overall tenor of the responses suggests that these folks would be better suited toward Yahoo’s Basic Rudiments of Civilization forums, with such important topics as Eliminating the Randomness of Fire and Wheels Should Not Have Corners:

dypsht666: lol weelz r teh suxxor11111 and teh gay

SledmasterHavok: wheels r ineffcent and prone to errors anyone with a brian wud go with sleds and runners

As much as I try to visualize these people as living breathing human beings, I find myself thinking of them as feral and amorphous fragments of a mad god’s id, cycling through a succession of forms – the Comic Shop Guy from The Simpsons, an Insane Clown Posse fan, a howling mass of protoplasm with an Alienware rig and a thousand pseudopods – instead of functioning independent entities capable of buying a gallon of milk and some hot dog buns at Stop and Shop.

The comment thread is also heavily populated with the AAA-League Batman set, relentless crusaders against the machinations of a faceless corporation which has wronged (read: inconvenienced) them in some way or encroached on their sense on self-worth as established by identifying with a rival corporation and/or product. No corner of the internet is safe from their brand of justice, honed to mediocre standards by countless hours spent in flame war zones.

I can visualize those folks, though. They’re the ones ahead of you in line at Stop and Shop, and when asked by the cashier if they have a saver card, smugly answer “yes,” but don’t produce it because they weren’t specifically asked to. They tend to act hurt and surprised when the folks in line behind them aren’t impressed with their little semantic triumph, and instead threaten them with physical violence.

Mr. T Experience – Is There Something I Should Know? (from The Duran Duran Tribute Album, 1997) - Featuring the ever-so-quotable line, "You're about as easy as a nuclear war." That's a tad ambivalent, isn't it? Launching is easy, surviving is hard.

Toyah Wilcox – It’s a Mystery (from Anthem, 1981) - On par with Adam Ant in the "their good stuff is great, but their bad stuff will indelibly stain the very fabric of one's soul" category of performers.

just pretend it doesn't hurt

A tragedy:


An utter fucking farce:


Guess which one got the most press coverage? If religion is the opium of the masses, then celebrity tabloid culture is crack cocaine.

The Mekons - Hello Cruel World (from The Edge of the World, 1986)

visual synergy: let's get hitched

Wedding season is in full swing, so here's a music video tribute to nuptial bliss...


Nick Lowe - Cruel to Be Kind - Featuring Lowe's then-wife (country singer and Johnny Cash's step-daughter, Carlene Carter) and his Rockpile bandmates.


Billy Idol - White Wedding - Featuring Idol's then-partner Perri Lister, an exploding toaster, and asses shrinkwrapped in black latex.


The Greg Kihn Band - Jeopardy - She seemed like such a catch -- from old Innsmouth stock, dual master's degrees in marine biology and comparative religion, an Olympic level swimmer -- and then she took you to meet her family...


Pet Shop Boys - Heart - So Gandalf is not only the mutant master of magnetism, he's also a vampire? The fanfic/slashfic potential is staggering.

Pet Shop Boys - Heart (from Actually, 1987) - Whenever I listen to or post something by Pet Shop Boys, I feel the disembodied head of Kevin Church peering down over my left shoulder. One out of three times, it's just my overactive imagination at work.

why can’t you be more like me, said the rich man

Hey, look! It’s the original draft of Bush’s Iraq War strategy. (The UN part was cut from the final version due to that organization’s inability to grasp its proper role in respect to the World’s Sole Superpower.) Go in, smash some shit, and cow the recalcitrant elements into accepting the glories of a participatory democracy subservient to American geopolitical interests – simplicity at its finest, right?

I saw Tony Blair trying to defend his support for the Iraq debacle by claiming that democracy is an ideal with universal appeal, and that no right thinking person would not choose such a form of government if given the choice. I’m all for democratic principles, but Blair and his American counterparts who present the notion of democracy as some new improved brand of Trotskyism, are amazingly ignorant of historical context. Using America or Britain or any of the other “liberal western democracies” as a model is a dubious proposition that fails to take any number of factors into account.

The American concept of participatory government is a historical anomaly that arose from the unique nature of the American colonial experience. The settlers who came to England’s North American colonies prior to the Seven Years’ War were an independent-minded lot, more interested in exploiting opportunities unavailable to them in the motherland than in setting up the mercantilist enterprises of Victorian colonial ventures. (Even in the cases where these methods were tried – at Jamestown and in Georgia, for examples – they failed spectacularly.) The native tribes were not viewed as an exploitable resource (that role would be tragically filled by African slaves), but as an obstacle to be removed…or exterminated. Decades of benign neglect by the home country, partially due to its vast physical distance from the colonies, gave rise to de facto self-government with nominal supervision from the Crown. The American Revolution was less about asserting self-rule than about forcing Britain to acknowledge that it already existed, like it or not.

The drafting of the Constitution was done by people who were generally on the same page, contentious regional cultures and interests aside, and was thankfully done at a time when adherence to the Enlightenment ideas regarding reason and justice were at a high point, and religious sectarian dogma a non-issue. (I shudder to think of what a constitution drafted thirty years later might have looked like.) It was a collective consensual undertaking based on established local traditions. The British tradition, while more gradual in its unfolding from the Magna Carta to the Civil War to the Reform Movement, was no less organic in nature, and in both cases rested on the stability of existing societal structures.

The process has not been free of bumps or crises even where traditions run deep, so it is ludicrous to assume that one can simply hold free elections in a post-colonial landscape and produce a stable, functioning democracy. Deep internal divisions (aggravated in many cases by colonial divide-and-conquer policies, carried over into the present day by outside realpolitik manipulation) and artificially established boundaries derail any grounds for a consensus. Old grudges die hard, new ones come to the fore, and even the most ideologically correct idealists can forget their principles where wealth and power are at stake. (“Fuck them, where were they when I was being tortured by the secret police? I fought the good fight for decades, I deserve a slice of the spoils.”) The masses in these situations very well could long for democratic rule, but momentary interests and the unequal distribution of power (very rarely is the playing field level in terms of guns and organization when the ballots are cast), that immediate needs (security, stability, food to eat) trump all else.

The standard flip response to these concerns has been to play the racism card – “So you’re saying that these people aren’t capable of democracy?” – while ignoring that in most cases the situation is a direct result of decades of ugly and pragmatic foreign policy decisions that propped up authoritarian and militaristic strongmen at the expense of the populace at large. It’s easier to deal with a single, corruptible Big Kahuna over oil drilling rights than to deal with an elected government willing to put its own citizens before foreign investors, then feign shock when you crowbar the lid off the pressure cooker and find that the moderate and classically liberal elements of that society have been decimated, leaving only extremists and opportunists on the field. The reason “radical Islam” is a force to be contended with is because it provided a shielded outlet from which to protest governmental malfeasance, which it was able to co-opt and hone into a weapon to further its own reactionary ends.

(Then there’s Iran, where a robust liberal and secularist movement that seemed poised move the country in a new direction – and as the long-standing model state for Islamic revolution, set a strong example to the rest of the region – has been sidelined because of belligerent posturing in Washington and Tehran that benefits both the neo-conservatives and the reactionary elements in the Iranian government at the expense of real, democratic change from within…)

It’s odd that America and Britain, two countries that tend to hold exceptionalist beliefs about their ways of life (though America is by far the greater offender), have been so fervent in presenting their brands of representational government as being universally applicable, and fiercely defensive when events prove otherwise.

Then again, maybe the Iraq War went wrong because they didn’t smash enough chairs…

The Damned – Democracy? (from Grave Disorder, 2001) – A very nice return to form from Dave Vanian and the Captain. Maura got a chance to see them during this tour, and even hung out with the band for a while in one of those completely starstruck moments.

Sugar Simone – King without a Throne (from Work Your Soul: Jamaican 60s & Northern Soul 1966-74) – I *heart* Northern Soul, as should you all.

flush the fashion (and the carburetor)

Armagideon Time favorite Mister Atom in 1947's Captain Marvel Adventures #78:


Armagideon Time favorite Mister Atom in 1978's Shazam! #33:
Further proof that whether one was a child, adult, or killer atomic robot, 1970's fashions were merciful to no one.

Jackie Brenston & His Delta Cats - Rocket 88 (from The Sun Records Story box set, 1994) - What some consider to be the first rock and roll song ever recorded was actually the work of Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm, released in 1951 under saxophonist and vocalist Brenston's name for some arcane financial reason.

Girls at Our Best! - It's Fashion (from Pleasure, 1981) - Odd choral postpunk that could almost be mistaken for an outtake from the Penis Envy recording sessions.

Special Bonus: If the Sears Wish Book Racing Car Bed re-deco of Mr. Atom wasn't goofy enough, Shazam! #33 also features this bit of "is this for real or am I hallucinating?" sound effects insanity:

I don't know whether to laugh or cry...

if you're gonna do something, do it right

Because it's not a real family fun night unless someone gets taken to the emergency room for an eye injury...

The folks at Crosman must have been a little worried about the switch from an outdoor to a rumpus room-based leisure economy, hence this attempt at preventing a loss in market share to manufacturers of foosball and air hockey tables. (The "Safe Shooter" game targets suggest that they also had one concerned eye pointed Atari's way as well.) Sadly, their efforts to promote the casual discharging of firearms in a domestic environment only caught on with Elvis Presley and right-wing separatists with grudges against the Freemasons.

Then again, this ad was published at a time ("the seventies") when lawn darts and click-clacks were considered appropriate for children. Childhood back then was a lesson in painful real-world empiricism leavened with copious amounts of Mercurochrome, unlike today's world of bubblewrapped and hermetically-sealed children. How is America going to compete globally if the the current generation of kids doesn't learn important lessons like "if you toss beer bottles at the boulder by the train tracks, odds are you will end up with a deep pitted scar on your right elbow?"

Swindled - Who Wants Guns? (from a 1982 single) - In my personal experience, usually the last person on earth who has any business owning one.

Echobelly - Give Her a Gun (from Everybody's Got One, 1994) - This is a bit like the SCUM Manifesto as rewritten by Frantz Fanon and Karl Marx and set to a Britpop beat.

Friday Night Fights: Tore Up My Tickets to See ELO

(from Date With Debbi #16, July-August 1971)

Tempermental teen queen Debbi Anderson busts a groove and scores a smash hit record...on some fool's head.

The Weirdos - Destroy All Music (from a 1977 single; collected on We Got the Neutron Bomb: Weird World, Vol. 2, 2003) - But fellas, music has proven itself more than capable of destroying itself... Speaking of which, I read an article today in a local weekly that tried to present Mandy Moore's new album as minor "indie" masterpiece.

Mojo Nixon - Don Henley Must Die (from Otis, 1990) - That's the Jacobin position. I ascribe to the Girondist position -- that letting him live to serve as a cautionary figure is the more effective course of action.

(Bahlactus has issued the clarion call to brawl.)

hateful freeform jazz

I had to attend a work-related training session today, which is five hours of my life I will never get back. It was instructive in the sense where I occasionally get these impulses to apply myself more fully to the career I’ve inadvertently fallen into, and sitting in an uncomfortable chair listening to not-quite-jokes, not-quite-anecdotes about SQL and filtered data analysis for what seems like an eternity cures me of those pesky twitches of proactivity right quick.

I like my job, but it’s just not marriage material.

The training was held in the computer labs in the lower level of the library I used to work at in the mid-nineties. It’s been ages since I’ve set foot in the place, and I was shocked to find that the inter-library loan kiosk had been torn out and replaced with something called “The Jazzman Café.” Oh my fucking head.

I’m aware of libraries’ attempts to reposition themselves vis-à-vis the public in this brave new Information Age world. My librarian sister-in-law has mentioned the current trendy push toward a Borders-style coffee house/lounge model, which I personally think is absurd though I can see the appeal. For a university library, it seems rather undignified. The college library was the place I’d go to cloister myself away from the rest of campus life, and frantically bash away at an overdue script or term paper in glorious silence, free of the sickly-sweet stink of vanilla mochachino hazelnut blend that permeated every other nook and cranny of the college. Hey, why not clear out the reference room and install a skate park if we’re talking this level of focus group pandering?

Actually, the café itself didn’t irk me a much as the name, which opens a Pandora’s box of all sorts of unpleasant associations. I’m not anti-jazz; I am quite fond of Django Reinhardt, big band and swing, Dixieland, and even the übercheese of Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass material. It is entirely possible to like jazz and not be a total dick, and yet jazz-holes abound, spraying noxious clouds of condescending pretentiousness from the glands hidden beneath the elbow patches of their wool blazers.

They’re almost universally white, middle-aged intelligentsia, ostensibly liberal in outlook but with a streak of Harold Bloomian cultural conservatism running just under the surface, but directed at the “dumbing down” of society than at issues of class or identity. (They tend to be very sympathetic to these from the bastions of their tony urban condos and upscale suburban mini-manses.) Jazz-holes make it a point to mention how they don’t watch TV, even when the conversation has nothing to do with television, and are quick to reference NPR. (They are easy to confuse with world music aficionados, though fans of that genre tend to be more Unitarian in outlook and jazz-holes more Pentecostal in theirs, if you catch my meaning.) They have more in common with the classical music enthusiast-type snob, though with an affected aura of hipness.

In truth, they are simply a more refined and mature iteration of those teenage white gangsta wannabees, only they prefer to haunt coffeehouses and poetry bookstores instead of the parking lot of the local Store 24 or the food court at the mall. “Yo dawg! Anglocrest Greens Eastside! This shit is dope!” or “Bop’s sense of chordal improvisation and willful abandonment of melody is nothing less than James Joyce embodied in music.” Similar beast, same shit. One could also draw parallels between jazz-holes’ puritanical attitudes towards music with those of the metalhead set, although metalheads generally don’t co-opt the “entertainment and refreshments” aspects of academic receptions, then spend the entire time hitting on cute 21 year old graduate students.

Seriously? I’d rather attend a bonfire kegger with Slicer and the Murphman. I swiped a fresh set of D-cells for the boom box and J.C. dubbed me a copy of South of Heaven. It’s on until dawn, dudes and dudettes!

Billie Holiday – Gloomy Sunday (from Lady Day: The Best of Billie Holiday, 2001)

Anthrax – A.I.R. (from Spreading the Disease, 1985)

we regret to inform you

A few minutes ago I brushed the back of my hand up against a stinging nettle plant by the patio, and my fingers are starting to swell up like balloons. I feel as if I dipped my left hand in molten lead.

As soon as I can fit my hands into my pair of work gloves again, that treacherous little excuse for a plant is going to die. Painfully and slowly.

The Alleycats - Give Me a Little Pain (from a 1978 single; collected on Dangerhouse Singles: Volume 2, 1992) - Oh, I've got plenty at the moment, but I like to share. This was on the flipside to the "Nothing Means Nothing Anymore" single, but I think it's a far superior track that should have been the rightful a-side. A very nice bit of early L.A. punk rawk.

visual synergy: for the benefit of mister ego

Is "doing stuff for Africa" still the celebrity cause du jour? I ask because I had to close my eyes for a second, and in that space of time the beautiful people might have moved on to another subject of fashionable activism...like stopping cat juggling. Speaking out about starving kids, ethnic strife, and the other trappings of colonialism's putrid legacy is fine and all, but it's important to stay current in one's shallow efforts at advocacy. Darfur may be the new Tibet, but when even lampreys on the underbelly of celebrity culture like K-Fed mention an interest in the cause, it's time to seeks something a little more now. The slum clearances in Mumbai look rather promising in this regard, I'm told.

It makes me long for a simpler time of superficial dabbling in fashionable causes, when all it took to stroke one's ego save the world was a really shitty pop song and spot-the-famous-person music video. The Brits kicked off the trend with the not-terrible Band Aid track "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in 1984, the brainchild of Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, produced by the then-ubiquitous Trevor Horn:



Not to be done by their cousins across the pond, a veritable pantheon of American rock and pop stars came together in 1985 to do it right, and by "right" I mean excruciatingly self-indulgent and unbearably cheesy. As Greil Marcus pointed out, it's rather...odd...how the line "It's a choice we're making" in USA For Africa's "We Are the World" echoes Pepsi's "Choice of a New Generation" ad slogan, considering the song's composers, Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson, just happened to be pitchmen for the beverage at the time. "We're saving our own lives" has to set a record for obliviously narcissistic toxicity levels in a pop song.



Canada then responded with its own homegrown effort, which to this day I'm still half convinced is really a hoax perpetrated by the SCTV crowd. (Martin Short as Mike Reno, John Candy as Randy Bachman, Eugene Levy as Joni Mitchell...) When the reality is Northern Lights' "Tears Are Not Enough," satire becomes redundant:



That's all well and good, but where is the type of music that would speak to Andrew circa 1985? Where is the call to compassionate action targeted towards "the kidz." specifically the ones rocking their air guitars to Out of the Cellar and making laminated pentagrams in shop class? Have no fear, Hear n' Aid has got you covered with "We're Stars." (Hey! Who invited that dude from Journey?):



Every good popcult trend needs a corresponding parody, and The Ramones ably stepped up to the plate with the video for "Something to Believe In" (Maura's favorite Ramones track), featuring a quite awesome list of "celebrity" guest appearances:



The high point of this popcult ripple? Hands down, I'd say that honor goes to Artists United Against Apartheid's "Sun City," which featured a diverse roster of musicians (including Joey Ramone and a slew of old school rappers) and senses of conviction and geopolitical awareness sorely lacking in the other efforts. Keep an eye out for "possessed by the Devil" Bono (Maura's description, not mine):



Artists United Against Apartheid - Sun City (from Sun City, 1985) - How times have changed since then. Nelson Mandela has been freed, apartheid is no more, and a stay at the Sun City resort was the grand prize on the last season of Celebrity Fit Club.

mere alcohol doesn’t fill him at all

So a forty-foot tall being of cosmic power shows up on your doorstep, eyeing your planet’s biosphere hungrily and smacking his lips, what do you do?

You could steal an Ultimate Nullifer and use it as leverage in hard-nosed negotiations, or perhaps offer one’s services to the being in exchange for sparing your homeworld. Depending on one’s connections in the superhero scene, you might even be able to use a brute force method combining some mystic arts mojo with straightforward physical violence. Another approach would be to mope around planetside and let the Silver Surfer do all the heavy lifting.

..or you could refer to fourth issue of Marvel’s 1982 Hercules mini-series, and slip the big guy a mickey and hope he gets too shitfaced to operate his planet-munching Kirbytech. Sounds like a plan? Hercules, Marvel’s lovable lout of a demigod thinks so…


…but Hercules doesn’t exactly pose a threat to Athena in the “Deity Most Associated with Wisdom” department.



It’s not easy to drink an entity who quaffs entire oceans as an aperitif under the table. Fortunately for Herc (and the planet he was protecting), Galactus factors effort and creativity into the final grade. (He’s a Hampshire College alumni, though he tells all his cosmic peers he graduated from Amherst, out of fear of being mocked, especially by the Living Tribunal, who was valedictorian of his class at Yale and makes sure everyone within earshot knows it.)

I drafted a proposal for a What If story based on this comic, but Marvel has yet to get back to me about it. It’s a shame, because I think that “What If Galactus Couldn’t Hold His Liquor?” has a lot of potential…


Ethel Merman – I Get a Kick Out of You (from The Ethel Merman Collection, 1997) – The original Anything Goes version, complete with a reference to cocaine. Cole Porter was the Grandmaster Flash of his times.

The Ramones – Somebody Put Something in My Drink (from Animal Boy, 1986) – I’m ambivalent about the Ramones mid-80’s material. While it’s nice that they made the effort to break from the 1-2-3-4 mold, too much of it sounds like generic rock with no discernable trace of the band’s personality. (This is another instance where Maura’s opinions and mine diverge. She actually prefers this to their older, signature sound.)

dia de los padres

Jeez, he looks so damn young in these pictures. Then again, so do I.

Fire - Father's Name Was Dad (from a 1968 single; collected on Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts from the British Empire and Beyond, 2001)

The Astors - Daddy Didn't Tell Me (from The Astors Meet The Newcomers: Sweet Soul From Memphis, 1996)

test pattern

I'm feeling a bit wiped today, so instead of a real post, here are a few music videos from Lush, a perennial Armagideon Time favorite.

De-Luxe


Nothing Natural



Sweetness and Light

As a special bonus, here's Lush's cover of the (in-)famous bubblegum standard, "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep" from the 1990 Alvin Lives in Leeds compilation.

the gauntlet has been thrown down

Gee, I don’t know if I’m “man enough” for MegaForce. Can I have a few minutes to think about it? I never really envisioned a scenario where an ad for a Hal Needham movie (“a lousy Hal Needham movie” would be redundant) might force me to define my gender role in specific terms, so I’m a bit unprepared.

What definition of “man” are we talking about, anyway? Because certain popular assumptions about what the term entails preclude wearing a spandex unitard and having perfectly trimmed and moussed facial hair. I eschew tight fitting clothing for reasons of comfort and practicality. I do sport chin stubble more often than not, but that is less a conscious affectation of manliness than the fact that my hypersensitive skin rules out shaving more frequently than once a week.

I can confidently state that I do not ascribe to the notion of manhood as defined by Spike TV, Maxim, or other proponents of the “man as drunken, hairless ape, and that’s cool” school of thought. Nor do I have much fondness for the sensitive male/emo crowd and its passive-aggressive brand of machismo, either. (Especially, since in many cases it’s a false front to market one’s self romantically, rather than as an actual enlightened attitude.)

Yet the question remains: Where does my masculinity stand vis-à-vis Ace Hunter and his jet-powered supercycle?

It’s not that I put a whole lot of thought what having a Y chromosome means on a daily basis, though I’m not saying that in the sense of those color/gender-blind statements that are the province of the privileged, and used haughtily to duck the issues of bias or kick historical and cultural context to the curb: “I don’t see why having a cover depicting a black man getting burned alive should be any more offensive than one featuring a white man in the same situation.” I won’t pretend that gender doesn’t play a factor in what Andrew is, but in how I view myself, it doesn’t mean as much to me as it seems to with a lot of other guys. It’s simply a whim of genetic coding, and nothing I feel the need to “prove,” “assert,” or “defend.”

I’m sorry, Ace, I just don’t think it would work out between your organization of hi-tech mercenaries and me. Staking my sense of self-worth and perception of masculinity on my ability to foil Henry Silva’s terrorist army with a futuristic dune buggy doesn’t sit well with me. I wouldn’t say no to one of those bike decals, though, if you’ve any to spare…

For the musical portion of today’s program, here are two variants on the themes of masculinity and self – one from a 60’s psychedelic perspective, the other from an 80’s pop one.

Chopper – I Think I’m a Man (from Le Beat Bespoké, 2004)

Men Without Hats – Hey Men (from The Adventures of Women & Men Without Hate in the 21st Century, 1989)

and you know you’ve got the right of way

The forces of reactionary bigotry in our lovely Commonwealth were dealt a blow today. The motion to place an amendment banning gay marriage on the ballot failed to meet the required number of votes in the Massachusetts legislature, thus derailing the process for a another couple of years, and given the public’s growing acceptance of same sex marriage in the state, possibly laid the matter to rest for good.

Of course, the losers are vowing to fight on, citing the 170,000 supporters of a gay marriage ban, whose signatures allowed the whole constitutional amendment process to get off the ground in the first place. 170,000 seems like a large figure, until one compares it to the total number of registered voters in Massachusetts, currently around the 4 million mark. Even though the supporters of the amendment got their legislative chance (previous attempts by the lawmakers to avoid the issue via procedural tricks were met with howls of rage) and lost fair and square, there’s still chattering from the likes of self-appointed expert on Catholicism and former Boston mayor Ray Flynn stating that the people “had their vote stolen from them.” I guess the insistence on proper procedure only counts if things go in one’s favor.

I’ve said it before, but civil rights should not be subject to public referendum. These attempts to cast the push for a ballot question banning gay marriage as a matter of “letting the people decide” is an utterly disgusting means of deflecting attention to the inherent bigotry of the cause. John and Joe or Julie and Jane having the legal right to get hitched has fuck all to do with the sanctity or security of my own marriage, and I can’t imagine any scenario where it could be otherwise. C’mon people, if you’re going to be narrow minded assholes, be forthright about it at least.

I know that today’s victory is a relatively modest one, limited to a single state with a reputation for being out of step with the rest of country. (Something I happen to be proud about.) Our former governor and aspiring Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, commented that today’s defeat highlights the need for a nationwide ban of gay marriage, which illustrates that even bigger battles lie ahead for those who believe in egalitarian principles.

For today, though, I’m going to bask in the glory of a well-won victory.

Perry Como – It’s a Good Day (from the Blast from the Past OST, 1999) – Every Thanksgiving, after Maura and I have made the familial and feasting rounds, we settle in and watch Blast from the Past on DVD. While I certainly appreciate the works of the talented Mr. Como, I consider myself more of a Ray Conniff man. Maura considers that “really depressing to think about.”

Boytronic – (I Want to Live) In Harmony (from The Working Model, 1983) – Fulfilling my quarterly Deutscher synthpop quota.

David Bowie – Modern Love (from Let’s Dance, 1983) – Free association memory time: 6th grade, Huffy BMX bike, the abandoned train tracks behind the lead burning plant, Mello Yello, Starfox joining the Avengers, a family trip to Washington DC, listening to WHTT – "Boston’s Hit Radio" – on a clunky Panasonic boombox…

fickle fist of fate

(from More Fun Comics #65, March 1941; reprinted in Wanted: The World's Most Dangerous Villains #3, November 1972)Where are your Great Old Ones now, fish face?
All the cult intrigue, astrological omens, and prophetic ravings of a "Mad Arab" amount to a hill of beans when stacked up against a strong left hook from a Lord of Order. Doctor Fate is in residence, and no thinly veiled homage to the Cthulhu mythos (the fish men of the ancient submerged city of Nyarl-Amen are just simplified analogues of the Deep Ones and R'lyeh) is going withstand his personal style of treatment.

I picked up the issue of Wanted in which this story appeared out of a quarter bin back in the early 80's, and the style and tone of the story made such a lasting impression on me that I committed myself to purchasing the pricey (even with Amazon's discount) hardcover archive edition collecting the complete run of the golden age Dr. Fate stories. (Amazon gives a June 6 release date, but as of this writing it remains listed in pre-order limbo.)

Howard Sherman's art is a wonder to behold; a unique style that evokes ancient Grecian and Egyptian styles and old-timey religious woodcut prints -- filtered through the flat, yet lurid style of golden age superhero strips. The deliberately idiosyncratic and faux archaic style of lettering used in the story also adds to the otherworldly atmosphere.

Today's selected tracks are in keeping with the fish 'n' fate theme. Both are from Boston area acts -- some much ballyhooed punk rock and some terminally obscure new wave.

Mission of Burma - That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate (from Vs., 1982)

The Elevators - Tropical Fish (from Frontline, 1980)

Guntherfest '07

Special bonus content, no commentary given or needed:

visual synergy: getting medieval on your videos

Men Without Hats - The Safety Dance - Having gotten their synthpop groove on, the merry residents of Summerisle then proceeded to the shoreline to sacrifice Sergeant Howie to their heathen gods.

Adam & The Ants - Ant Rap - "It was incredibly stupid, yet we danced to it." - Maura, Queen of Animals and lapsed Antperson

Real Life - Send Me an Angel - When Chewbacca met that one gal who works at Hot Topic and insists her name is "Countess Natasha" even though her name tag says "Bernice." Also: Check out Little Lord Fauntelroy on keyboards.

Real Life - Send Me an Angel (from Heartland, 1983; also available on New Wave Hits of the 80's, Volume 11, 1995) - I mock, but I do happen to like this bit of Aussie new wave. I could have done without that odd rock riff near the end, though.

According to Wikipedia (which I admit carries the same weight as "according to that street person who rants about Perry Como and black helicopters"), there have been no fewer than seventeen versions of this song released by the band in the past quarter-century. My personal favorite is the 12" kazoo and helium extended dance mix given away as an incentive for prospective Betamax machine buyers. It edged out the Macarena Fiesta dub mix by the slimmest of margins.

is it safe?

Zero hour is rapidly approaching. Tomorrow at noon I have a long-postponed meeting with my dentist, and it’s even money whether a root canal or a very deep filling along the base of the bottom rightmost molar is an order – a real win-win situation.

The prospect of either has cast a dark pall over what should have been a pretty groovy long weekend, and I couldn’t even maintain my enthusiasm for a viewing of the modern cinematic masterpiece known as Convoy, Sam Peckinpah’s most personal and heartfelt directorial effort, on one of the Encore niche channels. The prospect of seeing an oily, shirtless Kris Kristofferson use C.B. lingo to taunt Ernest Borgnine while romancing a pan-fried and equally oily Ali MacGraw did nothing to dispel the dark clouds of dread hanging over me, which just shows how bleak my frame of mind is at the moment.

The sad thing is that all this could have been prevented if I hadn’t cancelled my previous appointment sixteen months ago. The tooth would have been filled before it reached the critical stage, and right now I’d be singing along with the dulcet tones of C.W. McCall without a care in the world.

There were relatively valid reasons at the time for my procrastination. I was sick of the hassle involved in getting to the dentist’s office due to the MBTA’s the poorly implemented switch from tokens to an electronic method payment. (The station where I got on the subway used the former and the one for the dentist used the latter, and none of the T personnel on either end had a clue about how to deal with cross-generational fare transactions.) There was also the fact that having had two to three fillings done per month during the year previous, my body had started to develop a resistance to Novocaine. (Edit: Fuck you, MS Word spellchecker.) It would take four shots of the stuff, minimum, to numb my mouth into a state where the drilling was only slightly bearable. (Hopefully that’s no longer the case.)

Hindsight can be so cruel. Whither be the oil of cloves that can soothe the taunts of mocking memory?

Specimen – Sharp Teeth, Pretty Teeth (from a 1985 single; collected on Wet Warm Cling-Film Red Velvet Crush, 1997) – ASF, Danse Society, March Violets, and now Specimen…I seem to have subconsciously fallen into goth mode these past weeks. I used to have a Specimen sticker on the back of my punk jacket until it cracked and peeled off and I replaced it with a Sex Pistols one.

C.W. McCall – Convoy (from a 1975 single; collected on Spy Magazine Presents: White Men Can’t Wrap, 1994) – Populism via Peterbuilt – only in the 1970’s.

like flies ‘round the honeypot

You might have noticed the “aversion to garlic” line in my profile information. Lest folks get the impression that I’m one of those folks with delusions of vampirism, a bit of explanation is in order.

During my junior and most of my senior years of high school, I worked in the kitchen of the local hospital washing pans and other random cleaning tasks. Before I started working there, I was a foodie in embryo who relished the prospect of a well prepared meal. Fourteen months spent scraping pans, cleaning out the catch basin of the industrial dishwasher, and hosing down the disposal trench irrevocably altered my stance toward food. The petit gourmand within me withered and died, replaced by a joyless pod-person who views the process of eating in the starkest, most functionalist terms.

Of all the on-the-job traumas I experienced at the hospital kitchen, none match the Garlic Paste Incident as far as deep psychological scarring goes. The all-too-frequent prospecting expeditions for lost dentures in cubic tons of food waste, as stomach-churning as they were, don’t even come close.

Even though it was outside my usual set of assigned tasks, one Sunday evening during the post-dinner breakdown process, I somehow got stuck with the job of mopping out the walk-in fridges and freezers. They were “walk-in” in only the most rudimentary sense, and were little more than refrigerated broom closets with very little room to maneuver while mopping the floor. On this particular night, I happened to put a bit too much elbow grease into the job while eradicating a tenacious jelly stain off the tiles, and the broom handle struck a gallon jar of garlic paste off the shelf and knocked it onto the floor.

The story would have ended there, except whoever used the paste last forgot to screw the cap on properly, and the entire contents of the nearly full jar ended up splattered all over the inside of the cold room, as well as on my pants and boots. Industrial-grade garlic paste looks like partially-congealed pus and is the olfactory equivalent of white phosphorus in terms of staying power. Cat piss and uncut natural deer musk are easier scents to eradicate than the aroma of InstitutoConglomCo Foods mixture of lard and crushed garlic is, and I sucked down lungfuls of the noxious vapor as I went into a panicked damage control mode, scraping furiously at the mess with a spatula and spray bottle of disinfectant, then bagging up all the evidence – mop heads, spatulas, rags and all – and dropping it into a medical waste bin by the incinerator. I then put the empty container back on the shelf, punched out while the supervisors were out of the office, went home, and called in sick for the following three or four shifts.

No one at the job ever copped on to my role in the “Mystery of the Lingering Stink,” though I was punished in a karmic fashion; to this day I can not abide the smell of garlic and even feel queasy when in the presence of someone who has eaten garlic recently. (I can smell it though their pores, I swear.) So, you see, it is not vampirism that is the cause of my aversion, but rather lingering trauma from working in the food service industry.

Alien Sex Fiend – Smells Like… (from It: The Album, 1986; collected on All Our Yesterdays, 1988) – I may not be a child of the night, but I can appreciate a nice bit of gothic rock, especially when the Fiends are behind it.

Massive Attack – Fake the Aroma (from the Help compilation album, 1995) – There’s no faking one’s way around the smell of garlic. Attempts to do so inevitably take on a “It smells like someone shit under a pine tree” character.

they feed your pride with boredom

I was doing some research (translation: flipping through justifiably forgotten comic books from the 1980’s) for an upcoming post when I came across this advertisement:

It was in one of those dense three-column ad pages that have since gone the way of the passenger pigeon. Even if you’re not a comic book fan or collector, I’m sure you have an idea of what I’m talking about, those eyestrain-inducing crazy quilts of pitches for correspondence schools, foreign stamps/coins, karate lessons, and other dubious propositions buried in the middle third of nearly every comic published up until the mid-1990’s. I never really paid attention to them when I was a kid, and pay even less attention to them when I come across them nowadays while reading a musty refugee from the quarter bin, but this one happened to catch my eye with its ultra crude lettering (that’s the “Jr. High Notebook Sans” font in the title caption, I believe) and accompanying illustration. Then I read the ad copy and knew that I had a real winner on my hands.

This is the AMERICAN WAY not oriental. Apparently the wave of Japanophobia that washed across American culture in the 70’s and 80’s managed to extend as far as martial arts techniques (in a really low budget manner). In the automotive and electronics fields, the bitter taste of the early fruits of globalization was tied into greater economic issues – a slumping economy, rising unemployment, factory closures, the retrenchment of the labor movement. “Buy American” was a clever bit of smoke and mirrors propaganda that played of off xenophobia and more tangible economic anxieties. Corporate leaders used diminishing market shares as an excuse to break the post World War II social contract, while refusing to adapt their products for a changing environment. Continuing to put out acre-long behemoths that got 16 mpg highway at a time when gas prices had gone from thirty-five cents a gallon to a buck and change a gallon would seem to be a more logical reason for failure than employee benefits or a conspiracy helmed by shifty zaibatsu. Americans have always had a difficult time looking at the big picture and thinking long term.

Pitching an all-American method of self-defense though? That’s just bizarre. Most of the folks I know who are into that sort of thing revel in the ex oriente lux overtones. They’re the mystical and exotic icing on the cake, inseparable from the whole martial arts experience. What would the AMERICAN WAY of self defense consist of, anyhow? Guns, alcohol, and axe handles? Two shitfaced guys in a parking lot pushing each other’s chests until both of them fall, then rolling around on the ground grabbing shirts and rabbit punching each other? Or maybe something like this exhibition of the sweet science. (Warning: Pretty gruesome, contains much profanity.)

I wonder what happened to AMERICO? In my mind’s eye, I imagine it located in one of those brick and glass monstrosities visible from the highway, with immaculately landscaped grounds and a classy lobby area decorated with stills from The Quiet Man and Straw Dogs. It would have been a pretty nice place to work, providing that one understood that parking a Subaru in the lot or bringing a bento box in for lunch was grounds for termination. The weekly staff meetings would start off with a pep talk by the CEO…

…followed by a slide show from the R&D folks demonstrating how the “Twenty Ways to Inflict Grevious Bodily Harm with an Ordinary Plastic Ice Scraper” rollout will allow the firm to seize a greater market share from rival Karatedyne in Q4.

Or the entire business could have been one individual hand-stapling eightieth generation photocopied pamphlets together in a seedy furnished apartment by the train tracks.

Soft Boys – I Wanna Destroy You (from Underwater Moonlight, 1980) – Psychedelic sounds and punk sensibilities collide, with wondrous results.

Modern Warfare – Street Fightin’ Man (from Hell Comes to Your House, Volume 1, 1981) – In which the Stones are ground into sharp pieces of gravel.

(Thanks to Kevin for providing the exterior shot of AMERICO corporate offices.)

I lay my head on the railroad track

Maintaining Armagideon Time has been an extended spin on the Wheel of Dread and Pleasure for me. (That’s another Warhammer reference, for those of you keeping score.) There are times when I’m able to put together a week’s worth of posts in a single afternoon, and feel confident in whatever it is I’m doing here. At other times, I feel a crippling sense of insecurity about my writing, the quality of the material, and the validity of the entire project. The past couple of weeks have been more of the latter for me, for whatever reason -- fatigue, perhaps – like I’ve peaked and it’s all a slow tumble down from the little plateau I’ve built for myself from here.

Then I came across this….

…and all was well with the world again. It’s the cover to the February 1978 issue of Pizzazz, Marvel’s attempt at grabbing a bit of the tweener mag market share from periodicals such as Dynamite, and it became my own Lady of Fatima or Angels of Mons, reaffirming my faith and rescuing me from the clutches of despair with its symbolic power. I shall not waver again. (For a while, at least.)

I make the effort to pick up issues of Pizzazz and Dynamite if and when I come across them. My efforts have been hampered by the fact Dynamite has become something of a hot property among the hipster set, thus driving up the prices of individual issues past what I’m willing to pay for them. Pizzazz, though lesser known by the camp affectation crowd, featured serialized Star Wars comic stories in an attempt by Marvel to boost sales by capitalizing on an already held license. Because of that, I find myself playing Jonathan Winters to the Acolytes’ of Lucas Phil Silvers in the quest for the Big W (in this case, a longbox at my local comic shop marked Magazines – P – Misc).

I could care less about the poorly drawn further (and apocryphal) adventures of Luke, Leia and the usual gang of idiots. The draw for me is the articles and features, popcult moments flash frozen in time and in their contextual environments, rather that the cherry-picked camp chosen for ironic effect that passes for retrology these days.

As a document of a specific moment, there’s something off about the issue of above issue of Pizzazz. There’s a tangible feeling of incongruity between the implied target demographic and the contents of the magazine; presenting Linda Ronstadt as a “rock superwoman” is only part of it. The featured movie review is for Goodbye Girl (the kids, they love the Marsha Mason) and the album review is for the second volume of Elton John’s Greatest Hits (that opens with a Leon Russell reference, of all things), both of which bear the unmistakable thumbprints of out-of-touch adults trying to reach “the kids” without having a clue about what the target demographic is actually interested in. In other words, it reeks of high school guidance counselor.

Other highlights include the best Star Trek trivia quiz ever, “Are You a Trekki (sic)?”:

Sample question:

2. Bones is the nickname for:
(A) Orson Welles
(B) Leonard McCoy
(C) Farrah Fawcett-Majors
(D) Jimmy Walker

Oh, how I wish the answer was (D). “Your inhuman logic’s got you way too uptight/Relax those pointy ears, you’ll feel DYN-O-MITE!”

There’s also an interview with a former DJ from Atlanta (I don’t get it, but Maura, a couple years my senior, says that DJ’s were a bigger deal back then. I’ll take her word for it as I was too busy playing with my Hot Wheels to notice such things) which unequivocally demonstrates the sheer and utter nightmare that was 1970’s male fashion. Think about it. That is how one dressed and styled one’s hair in order to get laid back then. It’s a mystery to me that the birthrate didn’t drop to zero from 1974 to 1979. (Some sources credit Hai Karate and Jovan Sex Appeal for preventing such a decline.)

OK, on to the music:

Linda Ronstadt – Poor Poor Pitiful Me (from Simple Dreams, 1977) – Written and originally recorded by the late Warren Zevon in 1976, Ronstadt’s cover version (with slightly altered lyrics) became a minor hit in 1978.

It’s not that I think badly of Ronstadt; I rarely think of her at all except as one of the many soft rock/pop acts played on the ultra-mellow radio stations my parents listened to during car trips. At the time the Pizzazz article ran, she was at the peak of her mainstream pop success, but she seems like an odd choice to spotlight in a publication aimed at tweeners, whose axes of musical interest ran along the lines of Kiss, Shaun Cassidy/Bay City Rollers/Leif Garrett, and the disco scene. Even a write up about the Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac would have made more sense. (Maura's answer to my musings was simply, "Marvel has always been out of touch with reality.")

The Screamers – Magazine Love (from Demos: 1977-1978) – Techno-punk, synthpunk, art punk… The subgenre label doesn’t matter, only the beautiful noise these fellows made. It’s a shame that they never recorded a proper studio album, and left only demos and live performances as a testament to their (highly influential) legacy.