Vacation II: Day 4 – Bees on Pie

Since my quest for a clean-sounding mp3 of the Zit Remedy song ended up with my being in possession of an excellent freeware audio extraction program, I’ve been sifting through my video archives for any other unreleased or otherwise unavailable music worth ripping.

High up on the list was this song from the Pod People episode of MST3K…

Joel & The Bots – Idiot Control Now

…a send up of the vapid pop song and baffling recording studio sequence featured in the movie. The film is an incredibly weird and inept European attempt to cash in on both E.T. and Alien, featuring Trumpy, a lost space traveler who resembles the bastard child of Max Rebo and Alf, and who can do “magic things” through the power of stop-motion photography. The song wasn’t included on either of the MST3K music collections, presumably because of licensing issues. (The magnificent musical medley inspired by the Fugitive Alien films’ score was omitted for similar reasons, I suspect. Such a shame, too.)

You can watch the original version here (beginning at the 1:30 mark) and Joel and the ‘Bots superior rendition here. The full episode is also available as part of the second volume of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection box sets. Highly recommended.

I’ve previously mentioned the concept of mental mashups, how the brain takes it upon itself to blend two similarly-sounding songs into a single infuriating earworm. The examples I used before were The Cure’s “Close to Me”/George Michael’s “Faith” and The Avengers’ “We Are the One”/Heaven 17’s (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang.” “Idiot Control Now” comprises one half of another mix and match do-si-do, with this obscure, interestingly-titled bit of power pop as its dancing partner:

The Automatics – When the Tanks Roll (over Poland Again) (from a 1978 single; collected on Shake Some Action, Vol. 5, 2003)

Vacation II: Day 3 – The secrets of dilettantism revealed!

One of the perks to having a Special Forces vet as a father is that one has the opportunity to pick up a set of skills atypical of the usual pieces of parental wisdom the majority of children receive. Granted, there isn’t a great likelihood I’ll ever have to put most of that knowledge to use. Knowing the most efficient method for scoring a silent kill or what weapons are best suited for guerilla warfare in tropical conditions isn’t going to help me with my everyday responsibilities on the job or at home. The old man’s MOS, however, happened to be psychological warfare and my apprenticeship (in the purest medieval sense of the term) under him has proven to be profitable in many ways.

The ground rule of PSYOPS is to gear the message to the audience. This sounds like a no-brainer – if one was selling the virtues of the Democratic Party to a group of evangelicals, for example, one ought to steer clear of the subject of abortion and focus on the social Gospel – but there are important subtleties to the process. The skilled propagandist should endeavor to work from a position of strength; “strength” measured in relative terms vis a vis the intended audience, where their ignorance is just as important as the propagandist’s knowledge. Someone possessing a superficial awareness of the topic can appear positively sage-like providing the listener or reader possesses zero familiarity of -- or known and easily manipulated biases regarding -- the same.

I got a lot of mileage out of these axioms during my undergraduate career. Providing I was able to get a measure of a given professor, it was astonishingly easy to tailor my work to fit their expectations, drawing in references from outside their areas of knowledge as a method of outflanking and/or bedazzling them with the definitively stated unfamiliar. This is not to say my work wasn’t solid; by and large, my arguments were sound, but the use of obscure references to comics, film, or other popcult material provided an effective, individually-tailored means of packaging core theses while deflecting close scrutiny. I employed the tactic conservatively, and never where I felt it really mattered, saving it for cases of last resort…like when I forgot a deadline or remembered it but felt like playing Chrono Trigger all weekend instead.

I bring this up because it’s the first thing that came into my mind while reading this, the first of a series of comics-themed blog posts Ned Beauman is threatening to write for the Guardian’s online edition. Despite all the talk about comics’ growing appeal, mainstream journalism about comics remains a hotbed of “write what they don’t know” thinking, where facile generalizations and half-assed namedropping are considered “good enough” for a mostly oblivious target readership.

Beauman kicks things off with a discussion of sexism in superhero comics, which is enough in itself to send up red flags. It’s a subject that has confounded far too many comics sites that ostensibly focus on gender roles in the genre, so an MSM take on it will most likely be problematic out of the gate, and Beauman doesn’t disappoint on this score. While it was great to see shout-outs for Ragnell and Kalinara’s When Fangirls Attack and Dave Campbell’s site, the essay itself feels like author made too many trips to Procrustes’s linen cabinet in search of suitable bedclothes.

Granted, some nuance is going to fade in the wash of writing for a wider audience. I wouldn’t necessarily expect the same treatment of the subject from the Guardian that I would expect from, say, Tom Spurgeon, but the scattershot, load-it-all-and-fire-it-out approach employed seems rather weak. The most discordant note comes when Beauman singles out three male writers – Brian K. Vaughn, Joss Whedon, and Brian Bendis – as ones who have written “believable” female characters. I’m not a fan of Gail Simone’s work, but she certainly deserved a mention, while the three writers cited all have certain incongruities in how they’ve approached female characterization (or in Whedon’s case, the feminist theory).

The issue of sexism in comics is well worth addressing, but a lazy, hot-button-pushing, link-heavy post doesn’t strike me as the vehicle by which to do so, and it comes off as an attempt to placate the 800 pound gorilla before moving onto sexier topics.

As for music portion of today's program, here's a two-stage communication breakdown from 1985. Where suavity does not succeed, noise is certainly doomed to fail:

Tuxedomoon - In a Manner of Speaking (from Holy Wars, 1985)

Jesus and Mary Chain - Never Understand (from Psychocandy, 1985)

Vacation II – Day 2 – Dream of the perfect life

“The problem of leisure,” sang Gang of Four in 1979, is “what to do for pleasure.” Putting aside postpunk dissections of alienated labor and how the theory applies to everyday life, I find myself currently in a similar predicament. I’ve never been one for formally structured vacations, where the end result means coming away even more exhausted and deeper in debt than one was going into the adventure. Better to stay at home, relax, and indulge in some low stress, low cost pursuits, or perhaps, motivation willing, get some oft delayed project around the home taken care of.

While they are presently plenty of things that need doing, however, I’m having a difficult time coming up with things which I’d like or want to do during this break from work. My fear is that based on today’s experience, where I spent the bulk of my free time filling monster hunt quotas in Rogue Galaxy, that this vacation might devolve into an extended long weekend, with all the soul deadening emptiness such a thing entails.

Gang of Four – Natural’s Not in It (from Entertainment!, 1979)

Vacation II: Day 1 – Lazy Saturday Afternoon

My second scheduled vacation for 2007 has begun with the roar of a cantankerous lawn mower and the rumbling of thunderstorms headed this way. As the morning’s yardwork has left me feeling completely thrashed and the potential for nasty motherboard-frying surges is limiting the time spent on the computer today, I figured I’d use this opportunity to give my answers to the “Name five to ten songs that have impacted your life” meme AC tagged me with.

This was harder to compile than expected, as “significant” is a much different creature than “favorite.” Most of my favorite songs have had little impact on my life outside the enjoyment they have brought to me, whereas the songs that I can recall making an impact aren’t what one would necessarily expect, given the impression of my tastes inferred from my various posts.

First up in this roughly chronological list is a tie:

Dexy’s Midnight Runners – Come on Eileen (from Too-Rye-Ay, 1982)

…and…

Styx – Mr. Roboto (from Kilroy Was Here, 1983)

The awakening of my individual tastes in pop music came occurred somewhere between my tenth and eleventh birthdays. It’s not that I was unaware of pop music or didn’t have favorite artists prior to that, but my preferences were shaped by received wisdom, handed down by or picked up from my parents, my teenage aunt, or the older kids in the neighborhood.

Then, in 1982-1983, I made the evolutionary leap to an independent consumer of pop, aided by the plethora of local music video programs put together to cash in on MTV’s success as well as the debut of WHTT, “Boston Hit Radio,” which played the “hottest Top 40 songs” every hour on the hour. The goofy concept rock of “Mr. Roboto” and the faux Celtic soul of “Come on Eileen” struck a chord with young Andrew, and I would camp out next to the boombox waiting for both songs to crop up on ‘HTT’s extremely tight rotation cycle.

(Thank Providence I came of age when I did, while new wave pop was still in full swing. If I was born a few years later, I might have been scarred for life.)

Jumping ahead a couple of years:

Sam & Dave – Soothe Me (from The Best of Sam & Dave, 1969) – The better part of my junior high and high school years were spent as a soul boy, with a look and musical tastes akin to an independently invented version of mod revivalism. It was this track, discovered through The Blues Brothers (where it plays on the Bluesmobile’s 8-track during the fateful traffic stop), that ignited my burning passion for sweet Memphis soul and opened my eyes to a musical world outside the classic rock and heavy metal ghetto of my immediate circle of friends.

Circle Jerks – When the Shit Hits the Fan (from Golden Shower of Hits, 1983) – The first punk album I purchased was the Repo Man soundtrack, and so impressed was I by the Circle Jerks’ tracks on that LP, the second punk album I purchased was Golden Shower of Hits. My affection for California-brand hardcore (and hardcore in general) has waned over the years, but upon listening to this track again I found myself flashing back to junior year, staring into the bathroom mirror, preparing to make a personal paradigm shift by spiking my hair up with glob of petroleum jelly.

Crass – Sheep Farming in the Falklands (from a 1983 single, collected on Best Before...1984, 1986) – I came to the anarchopunk party late in my punk career. (Indeed, the music and message played a big part in my ditching the rigid fashion-punk template and making the Great Leap Forward.) More than anything else the band ever recorded, this blistering howl of righteous indignation and anger (for a war that had been over for nearly a decade at the time I first listened to the song) struck a chord with me, and echoes of the profanity-laced rant that closes out the piece can be observed in many of my political posts at Armagideon Time.

…and finally:

Rubber City Rebels – Brainwave (from a 1979 single) – In the spring of 2006, I was reading the copy of Simon Reynolds’s Rip It Up and Start Again that Maura had given me for my birthday. I got to the bit about Cleveland/Akron scenes of the late 1970’s, which provided a list of some of the lesser known participants. Most of the acts were known to me, if only through individual tracks on obscure punk and new wave compilations, but one act, the Rubber City Rebels, I’d never heard of before.

My curiosity led to a Google search, which in turn led me to this post at Something I Learned Today featuring a representative selection of the band’s material. Prior to my stumbling across the site, I was almost completely ignorant of the concept of mp3 blogs apart from Fluxblog and a couple others dedicated to more recent material (which really didn’t interest me that much). I spent the better part of a weekend exploring all Something I Learned Today had to offer, then embarking on a whirlwind linkjumping tour of similar sites.

At the time, I had been mulling over the idea of starting a blog, but my initial choice of focus -- comic books -- was already overserved with clever folks doing what I was thinking of doing, and better than I ever could. The discovery of the mp3 blog scene was a major revelation to me, and I discovered what my true calling was. Thus was Armagideon Time born.

I'm not big on tagging folks, so anyone who wants to take up the meme-baton and run with should feel free to do so.

Friday Night Fights: A little more bite, a little less bark

(from Avengers Annual #10, 1981; by Claremont, Golden, and Gil)
From the days when Iron Man wasn't a fascist, Rogue was a vicious psychopath, and writers were unafraid to pass off paragraph after long paragraph of exposition as actual dialogue...

I'm rather curious about what Iron Man means by "graphic detail." It's a curious choice of words that conjures up all sorts of interesting scenarios.

Max Bygraves - Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be (from a 1960 single; collected on The Best of Max Bygraves, 2000) - Like a comfy pair of blue jeans, generation gap humor is something that will never go out of style.

Elvis Presley - A Little Less Conversation (from the Live a Little, Love a Little OST, 1968) - A funky and delightful exception to the shamelessly awful compositions Elvis P. was saddled with during the last two-thirds of his movie career. My initial love for the 2002 Junkie XL remix of the song turned to nauseated revulsion after a week of listening to repeat plays of the CD single in what was probably my worst carpool experience ever.

(Viva Bahlactus!)

but I thought it was just for fun

(The Mikester made me do it.)
The San Diego Comic-Con is upon us, offering the fan-faithful an opportunity to get the advance scoop on this year’s iteration of Snakes on a Plane or receive the official word about the creative team involved in comics’ NEXT BIG THING from the mouth of a weary publishing rep (as opposed to from the comics internet, where the info has been common knowledge for a few months now).

SDCC’s shift in focus from a gathering of fans and creators to multimedia trade show has been the subject of much discussion. Is it validation of the medium’s (by extension, its affiliated subculture’s) significance outside its traditionally small realm? Or proof that the scene has been co-opted by deep-pocketed marketing flacks from outside the comics’ biz for their own purposes? To me, it means too many people (with a significant proportion possessing dubious personal hygiene habits) crammed in with too much stuff in too confined (relatively speaking) a space.

To tell the truth, I’ve never been a big fan of conventions, even when I used to attend them with some regularity. Attending cons was a necessary evil, a means to an end – that end being the acquisition of fan ephemera unavailable from my usual suppliers. My typical con sojourn involved getting in, getting what I came for, and getting my ass out of there as briskly and efficiently as possible. The panels, symposiums, and creator appearances held zero appeal for me.

I’m apathetic about whole hobnobbing with celebrities (and I use that term in the broadest possible way) deal. While it’s nice to be able put a face behind a work I happen to enjoy (or despise, for that matter) or to pick up some contextual insights through an interview or article with a creator, I have a hard time imagining a scenario where I could offer more than a terse “I liked/hated -----” at a face-to-face meeting in a noisy venue. This is why I always disappoint when asked one of those “which five people living or dead would you like to meet” questions. My natural introvertedness and my aversion to hero worship have effectively killed my interest in meet-and-greet affairs. I did once shake hands with Larry Storch, and I quite literally bumped into Brett Anderson prior to an in-store appearance by Suede in the mid-1990’s.

I also really, really hate crowd scenes (which has also restricted my concert and club going to only the top tier of “must see” acts), and even the most sparsely attended cons make me feel claustrophobic. After a few minutes spent flipping through a longbox of poorly sorted teen humor comics, with several hundred pounds of Dorito-fed fanboy pressing in on either side of you, a two week stay in the Black Hole of Calcutta seems like a welcome alternative.

I’ve been trying to think of any amusing stories from my con-attending days, but so far I’m drawing a blank. Maura, on the other hand, has several. That crazy gal loves the con scene and makes the effort to travel to at least one of the bigger events every year, usually of the anime variety, though she’d like to eventually make it to the Small Press Expo or SDCC in the near future. My favorite story of hers has to do with an Anime Weekend in Atlanta even she attended a while back where the non-convention guests staged a minor revolt at the check-in counter over the all-pervasive aroma emanating from the otaku herd. Way to counter the stereotype, guys.

So, yeah, no nerd Hajj for me. It’s just as well, as I lost my faith some time ago and I’m fully content with being a comics agnostic.

Translator - Everywhere That I’m Not (from Heartbeats and Triggers, 1982) – “You’re in San Diego, but I’m not! You’re paying five bucks for a bottle of water, but I’m not! You’re stuck in line listening to a cosplayer dressed like Speedball loudly summarize his Generation X slashfic, but I’m not!” Actually, this song is a catchy bit of guitar pop honoring John Lennon, from a SF new wave outfit that, like too many bands of that era, never got the attention they justly deserved.

The Go-Go’s - Vacation (from Vacation, 1982) - Former Go-Go Jane Wiedlin is going to present the Eisner Awards at this year’s SDCC. For those unfamiliar with things comics-related, the Eisners are like the Oscars, but don’t really mean anything to folks outside the insular little scene.

Okay, so they’re more like the Tony Awards, then.

I know I posted this track last year (in a post about waiting for Maura to return from a con, oddly enough), but it fits perfectly with the Wiedlin-SDCC connection and the fact that my second vacation of this summer began a couple of hours ago. Synchronicity trumps all.

do you hear some outside air

A couple of Fridays back, Maura and I were coming out of the pet store when she noticed that Super Lumina’s passenger side rear tire was looking a bit sickly. I’m inclined as a general habit to pooh-pooh such observations, as Super Lumina has a heavy frame and a heavy engine, and there’s a noticeable give where the rubber hits the road even on a new set of properly inflated tires. This time was the real deal, though, and explained why the car’s stability while cornering had been getting progressively wonkier over the previous month or so.

I gave the tire in question a thorough going over to see if I could find any visible punctures or damage, but came up empty. Suspecting the awful truth, but hoping for the best, I stopped at the Citgo station down the block and got the tire back to its proper PSI level. The next two weeks were a waiting game; nothing seemed to happen at first, and I was ready to chalk it up to “one of those things” that come with car ownership. Then, last Sunday, I did a spot check and the tire was looking as bad, if not worse, than it did two weeks previous.

Again hoping against reality, I went back to the Citgo air pump. The leak appeared to be a slow one, and I figured that I could play for time until my next scheduled vacation. It was not to be. I just took a quick look out the living room window and the tire is about as flat as it can get while still being drivable on.

Damn it. I knew I was due for a new set of tires, and I’m always up for a day off work, but I hate having the issue decided for me, with a massive last minute shuffling of priorities (not to mention the not-insignificant cash outlay involved).

Johnny London – Flat Tire (from The Complete Sun Singles, Vol. 1, 1994) – I think we can make it to the juke joint on the bare rim if we all lean to one side.

Albert King – Flat Tire (from I Wanna Get Funky, 1974) – In which a veteran bluesman feels my pain, and knows how to make it dissipate.

The Adverts – On Wheels (from Crossing the Red Sea with The Adverts, 1978) – “On Borrowed Wheels” in my case, as my grandma has lent me her rather boxy Olds Cutlass until I can get my car out of the shop. It’s not a bad car, but it’s two weight classes below Super Lumina, and despite sporting only a four-cylinder engine, its mass-to-power ratio makes it feel like it’s going to leap out from under me every time I feather the gas pedal.

setting things right

I have to confess that Myron's comment on this post made me feel a little guilty about the (unintentional) bait-and-switch nature of post's title. See, the title was a reference to the multi-dynastic Canadian teen drama Degrassi (Jr. High, High, The Next Generation), or more specifically, to the name of a song played by Zit Remedy, the show's token "lets form a band" subplot device, back in 1989.

While I'm on the subject of Degrassi, what the hell has happened to the current incarnation of the show? I accept that I am not the intended target audience, but the transition over the past couple seasons from a thoughful examination of all things teen to a grainy Canuck photostat of The OC has been downright depressing. The ongoing process of Sassy-fication has led Maura to give up on the show -- and this is a woman who watched Melrose Place, The X-Files, and Charmed to the bitter end.

Back to the matter at hand, to make good on Myron's or any other readers' dashed expectations, here's a shiny, new, straight-from-the-series capture of the song in question. There are other versions circulating out on the 'net, but the quality of the rips is universally dismal and lack that special bitterandrew touch.

Zit Remedy - Everybody Wants Something

...and while I'm here, I might as well throw this completely unrelated celebration of youthful hijinx at you:

Fast Cars - The Kids Just Wanna Dance (from a 1979 single; collected on Coming...Ready or Not!, 2001) - Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to see a proper CD release of this band's material. Not that I'm complaining; the band's occasional appearances on various bootleg punk and power pop compilations usually justified the purchase in and of themselves. The otherwise reliable Manda and the Marbles recorded a disappointing cover of this track on 2005's Angels with Dirty Faces which made the grevious sin of reducing the song to a repeated chorus.

visual synergy: heavy concepts

I remember riding my bike down Forest Park Road in the spring of 1985, and finding a massive bundle of issues of Circus and Hit Parader put out with someone’s trash. It seemed like a fantastic score, until I had lugged the stack home and began to actually read the magazines. The band profiles, reviews, and whatnot seemed so utterly calculated, even to my thirteen year old self, to exploit the frustrations and yearnings of blue collar teenage boys. Dee’s dad wanted him to attend the voc-tech to earn a plumbing apprenticeship – but Dee wanted TO ROCK!

Confronted with the Tiger Beat-dressed-in-studded-wristband reality, my rockitude went into dormancy for almost half a decade, until it was briefly resuscitated by thrash metal’s promise of being the real, dangerous deal. Alas, it was a promise better fulfilled by punk rock, which, despite its own set of intrinsic paradoxes, placed a greater emphasis on outrage and sentiment than on the hollow artistic wizardry of the power ballad or the eight minute guitar solo. Metal’s confusion between technical proficiency and musical greatness is not far removed from the pop music notion that a great singer is someone who can hold a note through an entire Minnesota winter. The American Idol concept of greatness holds no place for Tom Waits.

My rocky relationship with the genre aside, I have a certain fascination with heavy metal culture, in so far as it clearly articulates a particular and common enough strain of adolescent maleness. The key word here is “adolescent.” In recent years, there has been a trend among critics, comedians, and other evangelists of the popcult zeitgeist towards redeeming and ennobling the concept of RAWK and metal, either as a facile camp touchstone or in a celebratory, unironic sense.

The former are easily enough understood, as there is no retro artifact so unassuming that it cannot be dusted off, polished, and sold at a premium to the self-consciously hip. The latter, however, apart from a handful of old fans who didn’t stop believing (Whoa-oh-oh!), seem to be of the arrested development school of contemporary masculinity where “manhood” is a chimera formed from equal parts teenager, frat boy, and film/game/music geek. Is that hypocritical, coming from a man creeping towards age forty who dwells in a state of retrological limbo? Maybe, but as I’ve said whenever friends bring up the notion of “wanting to go back,” if the passing of years has done nothing else for me, it has given me a sense of perspective and cleared any illusions that personal tastes equal inherent quality. There is a world of difference between deciding what to hold on to, and refusing to let go.

Wow, that was a long introduction to a lazy music video post, but sometimes one must follow where one’s muse leads them. Continuing the last week’s Apocalypse Rock theme, here are some pinnacles of the music video art form, heavy metal concept video subcategory, post-apocalypse silliness subset:


Krokus - Screaming in the Night - "Krokus," because Iris, Delphinium, and Portulaca were already taken.


Queensryche - Queen of the Reich - I think this sums up my assertions about the genre and its target demographic pretty well. Listen close you can hear the rolling of polyhedral dice and the crack of the Rifts manual's spine in the background.


Grim Reaper - Fear No Evil - While the song lacks the magnificent bombast and oh-so-quotable title line of the band's earlier "See You in Hell," the video more than makes up for it.

Honestly, though, if I want to watch art-directed, fyoo-cha-riss-tik music video excess, I'd go with this simultaneously ahead of its time and hoplessly dated gem:


Sigue Sigue Sputnik - Love Missile F1-11 - A testament to the power of one good gimmick, mesh fabric, and super-hold hairspray.

Sigue Sigue Sputnik - Love Missile F1-11 (from Flaunt It!, 1986) - Maura hates it. I love it. What more do you need to know?

and if you say goodbye

Chaironymus C. Chairington
(1999-2007)
You will be missed, I guess.
My computer chair gave up the ghost last night. It was not an unexpected passing; the past few months were laden with portents of chairdeath.

First, a couple of non-essential (as far as I could tell) bolts popped loose and were borne away by the cats. Then the threads on the adjustment knob for the backrest got stripped, forcing an improvised fix which involved a pair of locking pliers and a spare nut from a muffler installation kit. Finally and fatally, the ring which secured the base pole to the seat popped loose, and no amount of pounding, bending, or twisting could set the problem right. I even tried wadding an old sock (visible in the photo) into the docking hole to stabilize the seat platform, but to no avail.

What had previously been a functional place to park one's ass has become a personal Tilt-A-Whirl with a slightly diminished risk of accidental dismemberment posed by the large scale version. While I wish that the terminal phase of the chair's life had come on prior to my weekly trip to Target, thus eliminating the need to make an additional trip this evening, I'm astonished that it held up as long as it did.

I bought the chair eight years ago, at the equally deceased Ames store in the Redstone shopping plaza, and it set me all of twenty dollars. I was scrambling to set up a space for my new PC, and in my haste opted for cash and carry efficiency, rather than ancillary concerns like comfort or ergonomic design, in picking out a computer desk and chair. Later on, after the move into the new house, I had an opportunity to rethink the setup, but given the space limitations I was working with, I decided to keep what I had for the time being.

In those eight years, that cheapjack chair has supported the mass of bone and gristle that is my posterior though countless hours of gaming, writing, music listening, and internet browsing. In its off hours, it served ably as a bed for napping cats, a clothes rack, and nightstand. Truly, a career to be envied by its home furnishing peers, especially when one considers its humble origins.

You served well, Mr. Chairington. May a flight of ottomans escort you to the great outlet store in the sky.

Booker T & The MG's - You Can't Sit Down (from Green Onions, 1962) - Not comfortably, at least, although that can be ameliorated a little by some sweet instrumental soul.

Hagar the Womb - Armchair Observer (from Funnery in a Nunnery, 1984) - Showing a more playful side of anarchopunk.

The Merseybeats - I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Cry (from I Think of You: The Complete Recordings, 2002) - Better than The King's version. Better than the Fab Four's version.

Memorial services will be held around 8:00 AM on Wednesday, by the front garden wall between the bin of recyclables and the bags of household trash.

everybody wants something

...but what do people really want?

Billy Idol wants some honesty:

Generation X - Gimmie Some Truth (from a 1978 b-side, collected on the 2002 reissue of the 1979 Valley of the Dolls LP)

Mr. Pop desires a little excitement in his life:

Iggy & The Stooges - Gimme Danger (from Raw Power, 1973)

Steve Winwood longs for some tender affection:

The Spencer Davis Group - Gimme Some Lovin' (from The Best of The Spencer Davis Group, 1989)

Andrew Eldritch needs a place to crash:

The Sisters of Mercy - Gimme Shelter (from Some Girls Wander by Mistake, 1992)

...and Henry Rollins has urgent, yet nonspecific needs:

Black Flag - Gimme Gimme Gimme (from Damaged, 1981)

Hey, fellas, didn't your moms teach you about the magic word?

I can't remember, so it can't be important

Hey, there are quite a few things missing from that timeline! Here’s a non-comprehensive addendum:

1899-1902 – The Philippine-American War

1910 – Jim Jeffries’ loss to Jack Johnson causes race riots

1916 – The Everett Massacre

1919 – The Omaha Race Riot

1919-1921 – The First Red Scare and the Palmer Raids

1920’s – Invasions of various Central American countries on behalf of American corporations

1929 – The Crash of '29 begins the Great Depression with a bang

1932 – Forced eviction of the Bonus Marchers

1931-1937 – The Scottsboro Boys' Trials

1937 – The Battle of the Overpass

1942 – Executive Order 9066 leads to internment of Japanese and Japanese-Americans

1947 – Congress overrides President Truman’s veto of the Taft-Hartley Act

1948 – Supreme Court upholds prayer in schools

I have no problem in taken pride in a job well done, but a little introspection helps keep one from getting smug and self-satisfied, especially when some of the accomplishments are dubious at best...

Sham 69 - Tell Us the Truth (from Tell Us the Truth, 1978)

Chumbawamba - Amnesia (from Tubthumper, 1997)

Friday Night Fights - A Guy can't catch a break

Guy Gardner, the "one true Green Lantern," makes the mistake of coming between an Element Man and his cub, and earns himself a 24-carat electroplated beatdown.
(from Justice League Europe #11, February 1990; by Giffen, Loebs, and Sears)
I have mixed feelings about the story arc in which this sequence appeared, as I do about most attempts to integrate Metamorpho and his supporting cast into the DC Universe proper. The original 60's stories bordered on outright parodies of the superhero genre, and few writers apart from creator Bob Haney have been able to capture the necessarily zany tone in regard to the character. The JLE two-parter, while enjoyable on a certain level, was positively grim, and featured creepy relationship issues, a tragically mutated child, and arms melting off.

It does prove that:

1. The Giffen Era Justice League was not a period of unbroken levity, as some fans misremember it as being.

2. The "dark" streak in DC's superheroic fare is not a new phenomenon that sprung fully formed from the collective mind of its current roster of creators.

There's a Year One miniseries slated for Metamorpho in the near future, but neither the creators involved nor the advance solicit ad copy for the series (which screams "unnecessary revision with nods to contemporary trends") fill me with confidence as to its potential quality.

(Bahlactus knows all, sees all.)

let's travel, just we two

MOON
ZERO

TWO!Ohh-oh, take me soon!
MOON ZERO TWO!

Don Ellis & Julie Driscoll - Moon Zero Two (from The Hammer Film Music Collection, Vol. 1, 2000) - Wow, just wow. Composer Ellis and singer Driscoll hit the listener with a full-on sonic body tackle, the effects of which will linger in one's sense memory long after the song's conclusion.

The movie is no great shakes, and I say that as someone who has an irrational fondness for Hammer Films' non-horror material. As the above poster blatantly states, the film tries to transplant the genre conventions of the western into the barren soil of the lunar surface, with rather soporific results. Even the MST3K crew were hard-pressed to push its reading on the entertainment value scale into the "mildly diverting" range.

face to face with a ragged truth

In a decision that didn't surprise me in the least, Senate Republicans killed the Iraq troop withdrawal proposal with some procedural voodoo. I won't bemoan the injustice inherent in such tactics to outflank the will of the majority because I applauded their use when shoe was on the other foot. I'll choose instead to lay the blame where it deserves to be -- on the Republican senators who still cling to the dubious reeds of party unity rather than face a reality that can no longer be denied.

This line from the above linked article really bothered me:

It was a sound defeat for Democrats who say the U.S. military campaign, in its fifth year and requiring 158,000 troops, cannot tame the sectarian violence in Iraq.

I suppose, yes, technically, it is a "defeat" for the Democratic Party, although I'd consider it a defeat for America, full-stop, with graver implications than the political box score that the AP reporter presents it as. Besides, it's not so much a victory for the Republicans as a short-sighted deferral of a future day of reckoning.

The Iraq War assessment report issued last week has laid bare the fact that the ill-advised and reckless enterprise has failed on every level. Even the benchmarks that have supposedly been met were couched in so many caveats and qualifers as to have no actual subtance to mitigate the gaping failures cited elsewhere -- failures that are beyond the ability and resources of America to rectify. While more and more members of the public have copped on to truth, and desire a way out of the mess, the Republican establishment has decided to tie its wagon to a boat anchor and hope that the principles of mass and specific gravity might miraculously change prior to next year's elections (or that the Democrats will screw things up for themselves, as is their usual modus operandi).

Long live party unity, long live the status quo, long live the utter disavowal of empirical evidence and rational thought. If this self-deluded postponement of the inevitable comes at a great expense of blood and wealth, those borrowing those dwindling minutes can take comfort in the fact they themselves aren't picking up the tab.

The Alarm - Where Were You Hiding When the Storm Broke? (from Standards, 1990)

it's the worst excuse in the world

It's sad, but it's true; the above individual, despite being roguishly handsome and oh-so clever, has certain recurring personality flaws that have landed him upon a certain person's...

L7 - Shitlist (from Bricks Are Heavy, 1992)

...and while said individual believes there were marginally valid reasons behind his actions, he also realizes...

Dr. Raju - It Doesn't Make It Alright (from Spare Shells: A Tribute to The Specials, 2000)

...and he really, truly is...

Hüsker Dü - Sorry Somehow (from Candy Apple Grey, 1986)

...even if any assurances he makes about avoiding such actions in the future ring hollow. Regardless how effective this public act of contrition is, he would like the offended party to know that...

The Cars - You're All I've Got Tonight (from The Cars, 1978)

visual synergy: the biggest thing since World War III

We're not about to let a trivial thing like nuclear Armageddon keep us from rocking, are we?


Deep Purple - Knocking at Your Back Door - I want to be an archaeologist.


Rick Springfield - Human Touch - Along with with rats and roaches, we'll have to add "embarrassing dance routines" to the list of things capable of surviving an atomic holocaust.

I have used that "feigning to stumble" trick on several occasions to get into a hot chick's cyro-pod. It works every time.


Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - You Got Lucky - I've never been much of a Tom Petty fan. I remember my metalhead coworkers at the hospital going ga-ga for Full Moon Fever while I was discovering the joys of Entertainment! (which they classily deemed as "tuneless art-fag crap"). Negative personal associations and my apathy for his music aside, Petty did put out some pretty interesting music videos back in the day.


INXS - Listen Like Thieves - Well, if one band was going to survive the Bomb, one could do worse than INXS. Tragically, singer Michael Hutchence didn't even manage to outlast the 1990's, much less the obliteration of civilization as we know it.

INXS - Listen Like Thieves (from Listen Like Thieves, 1985) - I was aware of INXS and their string of Top 40 hits, but never really listened to the band until I started dating Maura and bought their entire back catalogue (at the time, which was 1992) from a used record shop at the reasonable price of 99 cents per LP. I won't pretend that their material is high art, but I've grown to appreciate their infectiously listenable pop/arena rock sound.

...and because it fits the theme, and you probably would never come across it otherwise:

The Reactors - World War Four (from World War Four, 1980) - One of (at least) three punk bands who went under that moniker in the late 70's/early 80's, these Reactors were a female-fronted act who hailed from San Bernadino. Their LP, like a lot of punk rock obscurities from the era, has become something of a collector's item, commanding prices vastly out of proportion to its aesthetic value. Don't get me wrong; I think it's swell, but not worth missing a mortgage payment over.

somehow I stay thin

For most of the past week, I could hear a nagging little voice in the back of my head. It told me that I really ought to check in with the office, so as not to be buried under an avalanche of work upon my return from vacation. Unfortunately, that little voice was easily drowned out by the calamitous licensed din that is the Knights of the Old Republic games.

As a result of my placing a higher priority on foiling the machinations of virtual Sith Lords than on occupational responsibilities, I've spent the last few hours attempting to resolve a week's worth of job tasks in the space of a single 7.5 hour shift. It hasn't been a pleasant experience, but it's considerably less onerous than, say, mowing the lawn is. The only real worry I have is that this frenetic pace and the hyper-density of the data in need of stroking, smoothing, and crunching might trigger the dreaded Tetris Effect where all sensory input gets contextualized in terms of the process.

It hasn't happened so far, thankfully, so I think it's safe to say that--

Error: Process cannot be completed; there is an existing record for that entry. Quit.

Save data in mail merge format? Y

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Error: Field code DSRV invalid. Please quit program and try again. Current project data will not be saved.

Damn, damn, and damn...

Queen and David Bowie - Under Pressure (from Hot Space, 1982) - I know nothing of this "Ice Ice Baby" of which you speak, stranger.

LiLiPUT - Blue Is in a Rush (from Kleenex/LiLiPUT, 2001) - Classic femvox postpunk from the land of watches, cuckoo clocks, and untraceable bank accounts.

Big Audio Dynamite II - Rush (from Planet BAD: Greatest Hits, 1995) - This is the shorter, three-minutes-and-change version of the song, which I prefer to the slightly self-indulgent original.

Vacation: Day 9 – It’s over, it’s over

On this, the last day of my vacation, I’d like to take a moment and reflect on the lessons learned over the past week or so.

1. Toilets may be cleaned, but the stain on one’s soul lingers.

2. Target brand junk food can make me just as ill as the name brand variety, and at half the price.

3. There is a little bit of Xanadu in all of us.

4. Cosmic Cubes do not ask for a gratuity, nor do they rub smelly fixatives into one’s scalp.

5. It’s important to place a “fee payments shall not be made in rodent and/or bird carcasses” clause into a cat condo association charter.

6a. When dating a guy like Buddy, it’s important to have the burn trauma unit on speed dial.

6b. There’s a reason so many superheroes are millionaires or friends of millionaires.

7. I could always nap at work.

8. Are we having fun yet? No? I guess it’s time to break out the thumbscrews and vial of hydrochloric acid then.

The Insane – Last Day (from Punk and Disorderly, 1982) - UK82 punk and nuclear dread -- like Rogers and Astaire.

The Byrds - It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (from the 1996 reissue of 1965's Turn! Turn! Turn! LP) - Some may find this heretical, but I enjoy The Byrds' covers of Bob Dylan's songs more than I enjoy the originals.

Vacation: Day 8 – Ain’t it cute?

“What’s right? If you want something, you have the right to take it. If you want to do something, you have the right to do it.” – Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero

It’s 1985, and I’ve acquired an unwanted friend. He’s a fellow student in my freshman art open studio class who has glommed on to me because of my collection of EC horror comic reprints. Over the course of the school year, he will regale me with tales about Alice Cooper, current slasher movie offerings (recounted in pornographic detail), and his plans to make a Freddy Krueger glove in metal shop.

It’s 1989, and I’ve just written an essay for Student Government Day which draws heavily on the lyrics to “Bodies” by the Sex Pistols. Although I am pro-choice, I thought it would be amusing to provoke my ultra-liberal English teacher with phrases like “converting children into clouds of greasy black smoke drifting from an incinerator’s vent.”

It’s 1994, and I’m walking with a friend along Memorial Drive, and trying (and failing) to not listen to his euphoric praise for Natural Born Killers. “It opens all sorts of new directions!” he exclaims. “Yeah, but they all lead to the abyss,” is my response.

It’s 1999, and I spend the entire long bus ride from Woburn center to Wellington Station listening to a group of teenage boys rave loudly about some new videogame for the Playstation. “Dude, you can, like, set folks on fire and they scream and shit! It’s fucking awesome! And when you shoot someone, chunks of skin fly off!”

It’s 2007, and the torture-porn flick Captivity has lowered the bar for sadism masquerading as mass market entertainment, and I wonder to myself, what the fuck is wrong with this country?

Oh, yes. It has abnegated its sense of empathy and respect for others in favor of empty nihilism. Call it Bread and Circuses 2.0. (Only there’s no bread, because fuck you if you can’t afford food.)

As someone who has worn the punk rock mantle, I am acutely aware of the appeal of nihilist transgression. I never thought I’d see it taken out of the context of playful subversion and played totally straight for the masses, though.

Fear – I Don’t Care About You (from The Record, 1982) – The official song of the Libertarian Party...or it would be, but the idea of getting together to pick a song seemed like something Big Government would do, so the members went home to work on their Ludwig Von Mises/Ayn Rand slashfic instead.

The Misfits – Last Caress (from Static Age, 1978) – The melodic side of pure evil.

Friday Night Fights: Nutritional Fisticuffs

Dispensing beatdowns and dietary advice -- you don't see a lot of that kind of full-service superheroics these days.
(from World's Finest Comics #5, Spring 1942; reprinted in 100-Page Super Spectacular DC-18, July 1973)
Mud - Dyna-mite (from Greatest Hits, 1996) - The Brits went ga-ga for early 1970's bubbleglam. The Americans? Not so much, as they were too busy listening to coked-out, overly earnest Malibu millionaries whine about their personal problems via song.

(More powerful than a dozen atomic bombs.)

Vacation: Day 7 - Too tired to rock

The whole point of this stay-at-home vacation was to relax and recharge, so why do I feel more tired today than I did a week ago?

M'n'M's - I'm Tired (from a 1980 single) - I could have sworn I've posted this track already, yet a quick search of the archives turned up no evidence that I had. It's a rather nice, if slight, bit of new wave girl pop that all the cool kids seem to be into.

Eddie Cochran - Twenty Flight Rock (from Somethin' Else: The Fine Lookin' Hits of Eddie Cochran, 1998) - As featured in the 1956 sex comedy, The Girl Can't Help It. Jayne Mansfield and a roster of early rock and rollers? That's cinematic perfection in my book.

(Although the film snob in me would argue that Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is the apex of Frank Tashlin's work in the genre, it's hard to top a movie that, while a retread of Born Yesterday, captures Little Richard, Fats Domino, Gene Vincent, and Eddie Cochran in top form and in glorious Cinemascope.)

Vacation: Day 6 - Queuing Barbie

Buddy's nascent pyromaniac tendencies were later put to use by the army, where he spent much of 1969 with the Americal Division, torching villages suspected of harboring communist insurgents.

Hank Williams - Hey, Good Lookin' (from 24 Greatest Hits, 1970) - I'll always associate this song with the late Gus Saunders's Yankee Kitchen radio show, which used a trippy Tijuana Brass-style instrumental version of the song as the show's theme.

Dance Hall Crashers - Skinhead BBQ (from The Old Record: 1989-1992, 1996) - What's so funny about peace, love, and marinated steak tips?

Vacation: Interlude - Art Imitates Life

In the latest installment of the trainwreck that is the Justice Society of America relaunch, writer Geoff "Off the Rails" Johns gives us a rare insight into what it means to be a superhero in these kooky modern times....

Super-strength and x-ray vision are fine and all, but nothing can top the power of some judiciously applied hush money. I'd like to point out that the incident referred to in the above panel occured in a pediatric ward. Because when you're dealing with a disoriented individual (the crotch-pondering Citizen Steel) with post-traumatic stress and uncontrollable strength, it makes perfect sense to bring him within arm's reach of sick children...

(Then again, this is the team that includes a whimsically wacky mential patient with the cosmic ability to manipulate mass on its roster... The comic's depiction of mental health institutions is, how you say, "completely fucked up.")

With great power comes great responsibility...unless you're rich, then all bets are off.

Rubella Ballet - Money Talks (from At the End of the Rainbow, 1990)

Vacation: Day 5 - Fish don't fry in the kitchen

Well, we're movin' on up...

To the east side...

To a dee-luxe apartment in the sky...
The kids are loving their new digs. (Skillfully assembled by yours truly, I might add.) Their moms might have been homeless beggar cats, but now the whole extended family is living the domesticated high life.

Only in America, I tell you...

Squeeze - Cool for Cats (from Singles - 45's and Under, 1982) - Sadly, Catside Estates does not offer central air in its condominiums. The motion was taken up at the last tenants' association meeting, but the members got distracted by a stray moth flying by and nothing was ever resolved.

Ja'net Du Bois - Movin' on Up (Theme from The Jeffersons) (from Television's Greatest Hits, Vol. 3: 70's & 80's, 1990) - Sing it, Willona!

Vacation: Day 4 - With Great Power...

My brother swung by the house on Sunday and dropped off a couple of boxes full of things he thought I might want: My copy of Bully for the PS2 and the Comics Journal Library: The Writers book I lent him, a Deathlok sticker card from 1976, two bags of Science Diet cat food (his cat has diabetes and is on a special diet now), and a bona fide Cosmic Cube he managed to acquire through his work.

While I was well and truly flattered that my younger sibling chose to entrust me with a device capable of reshaping reality at whim, I found myself at a loss regarding what what I exactly wanted to use it for. I pride myself on being something of an underachiever with few ambitions to complicate my easygoing way of life. Plus, I have read enough low-grade sci fi stories, seen enough episodes of The Twilight Zone, and am familiar enough with radical political movements to be wary about the Faustian pitfalls of limitless power.

The last thing I wanted to do was to wish for "world peace" and have a previously undetected asteroid trigger an extinction event, which is usually how this type of thing goes down.

So, with the Cube resting securely on my computer desk, I gazed upon its psychedelic swirl of Kirby crackles and composed a list of things I could possibly wish for. Here's what I came up with:

- a complete run of Captain Marvel Adventures in deluxe hardcover format
- a pristine set of SSP Smash Up Derby cars with all the parts and T-sticks
- a midnight blue 1970 Plymouth Barracuda that was immune to the New England elements
- an addition onto the house (two more bedrooms, a sun room, another full bath, and a computer room)
- that the Democrats would get their shit together and be an effective political force

Armed with this to-do list, I set out to make my (modest) dreams come through. Unfortunately, my brother failed to include a manual, or even a quick start guide for the device, and I was unable to accomplish anything except crash the Cube's OS and force a reboot. (Something about that last item on my list was to blame. Everytime I tried to make it happen, the Cube would lock up for a minute, then display the following message: Intractable Paradox Flaw has been detected in Planar Sector 000x3D3. Would you like to report this error? Irritating, but not surprising in the least...)

Figuring that I should scale back my ambitions until I had a better grasp of the learning curve, I attempted a more modest use of the Cube's abilities:

KRAK-A-BOOM!

"Not bad," indeed, especially considering how hard it has been lately to set up an appointment with my usual hair stylist. The sudden transition from night to day and the transfomation of my Revolutionary Ireland t-shirt into a Polysics one were a little jarring, but minor side effects are to be expected when one dabbles in warping the very fabric of reality. (Maura has grown quite fond of the tribe of telepathic pygmy brontosaurians I accidentally summoned while attempting to will a can of Dr. Pepper from the fridge to the living room endtable...)

Snap! - The Power (from World Power, 1990) - OK, so it's just a polished cube of plexiglass that my brother thought I'd get a kick out of having. The only power it possesses is the ability to inspire today's exceptionally nerdy and goofy post.

The Horrorpops - Kool Flattop (from Hell Yeah!, 2004) - My preference for buzzcut and flattop hairstyles is rooted in both a residual sense of punk rockitude and my traumatic memories of a childhood spent sporting a John Denver 'do.

(Thanks to Dave Lartigue, for providing the Barber of Worlds image, and to Chris Sims, who made with the Kirby crackles and inspiration.)

Vacation: Day 3 - A place where nobody dared to go

Some couples spend their vacations sipping cocktails and dancing until dawn in exotic tropical locales. Others retreat to the comfort of the air conditioned bedroom of their modest suburban house and watch the 1980 musical bomb Xanadu via Comcast On Demand. I know which option Maura and I prefer...

Considering how unrelentingly harsh I was on the Sgt. Pepper's musical, it might seem odd that I think Xanadu, universally panned in its day, is the bee's knees. What can I say? It's a wonderful and rare experience, being able to witness a gory head-on collision between the 70's and 80's and to gawk at the art-directed carnage of excess.

Maura loves it for the cheesy colorfulness, its peek into old school roller culture, and Olivia Newton John's voice. I love it for its clueless enthusiasm, dated-yet-fascinating special effects work, and the Electric Light Orchestra's and The Tubes' contributions to the soundtrack.

(The Tubes' participation was a nod to cutting edge punk and new wave sounds that "the kidz" were into at the time. I've long considered The Tubes to be the 70's punk scene's John the Baptist figure, but based on the film's "new wave" costume designs and hair styles, it's clear the filmmakers didn't have clue one about the scene. Yet another reason to love the film, as far as I'm concerned.)

Actor Michael Beck blamed Xanadu for dissipating his post-Warriors career momentum. (For all the talk about what a dud the film was at the box office, Maura remembers going to the neighborhood theater to see the film when it premiered and finding that the show had sold out.) As a consequence, Beck fell irrevocably behind in the actors who might be Mark Metcalf but aren't stakes, thus allowing Craig Wasson to claim a decisive lead. (Beck went on to appear in Hal Needham's 1982 classic waste of celluloid, Megaforce, which should have wiped clean any karmic debts in a just universe.)

(from the Xanadu OST, 1980)

Olivia Newton John & Electric Light Orchestra - Xanadu

Electric Light Orchestra - The Fall

Who knew Polyhymnia had such a wild side?

Vacation: Day 2 - S-H-O-P-P-I-N-G

First up, Lowe's Garden Center for some "bandanna rose" lantana plants, then a whirlwind tour of Tar-zhay in pursuit of junk food, pet snacks, and other household sundries. Truly, we live a life of unparalled adventure and excitement...

Here's a musical double bill of lesser-known new wave tracks by artists doomed to be forever remembered as one hit wonders:

Toni Basil - Shoppin' from A to Z (from World of Mouth, 1982; collected on The Best of Toni Basil, 1994) - From the T.A.M.I. Show to Village of the Giants to Easy Rider to SNL's early seasons to "Mickey" to the video for the Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime," the exploits of the talented (and apparently immortal) Ms. Basil comprise a secret history of the past five decades of pop culture.

M - That's the Way the Money Goes (from New York-London-Paris-Munich, 1979) - Before there was such a thing as Emm Tee Vee, HBO used to play music videos during the gaps between feature presentations. This was how a young Andrew was exposed to Nick Lowe's "Cruel to Be Kind," The Vapors' "Turning Japanese," The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star," and this attempt by Robin "M" Scott to follow up upon the success of "Pop Musik."