and look what it's done so far

I've been trying to reorganize my popcult archives these past couple of weeks, in hopes of wresting a modicum of order from the chaos borne of laziness and neglect. While I have made some progress, the process has gone slower than anticipated because I keep getting distracted as I rediscover things I completely forgot I had, like a complete run of taped episodes of The Muppet Show.

I know there are fans out there whose devotion to the series rivals that of the most rabid Trekkie, but my familiarity with the characters barely extends past the principal cast, and is mostly rooted in syndicated repeats watched in hour-long blocks on Sunday mornings sometime during the first Reagan administration. The show remains as fresh and entertaining to watch now as it did then, but what has really captured my attention while reviewing the assortment of episodes has been the roster of guest stars over The Muppet Show's five seasons. The show featured a truly unparalled collection of contemporary and veteran performers that provides an excellent glimpse into the the entertainment scene of late 1970's, as well as reaffirming my argument about the cross-generational awareness engendered in the young'uns of my era towards the character actors and comedians of yesteryear.

The wide-open nature of the list of Muppet Show guest stars (from Alan Arkin to Bob Hope to Linda Lavin to James Coburn) and the fact that nearly all guests participated in at least one musical number might lead one to reasonably expect a fair number of Golden Throat-worthy moments over the course of a hundred and twenty episodes. Such was the skill of Jim Henson and company at assessing the strengths and limitations of the guest performers, however, that those moments were few and far between, with non-musical oriented stars like James Coburn or Sylvester Stallone having the vocal weight carried for them by their colorful Muppet co-stars, or buried in the mix of comedic spectacle.

So rather than rake a few celebrities over the coals on the basis of performances from three-odd decades ago, here are some interesting (and offbeat) numbers lifted direct from the show. The sound quality may be iffy in places, but that's the nature of the game in dealing with old video recordings.

Twiggy - In My Life (from Episode #1.21; November 9, 1976) - Beatles covers are a tricky business, but the real "World's First Supermodel" (Sorry, Janice!) does a creditable enough job with this bittersweet ode to times past.

Lynda Carter - The Rubberband Man (from Episode #4.19; January 29, 1980) - Wonder Woman takes on The Spinners!

Debbie Harry & Kermit the Frog - The Rainbow Connection (from Episode #5.9; August 4, 1980) - "Union City Green"? Another one of those popcult artifacts whose discovery makes me think for a moment or two that all these years spent sifting the dustbins of history have been entirely worth the effort.

como se llama

An ad for the Massachusetts State Fair (a.k.a. "the Big E") from the September 21, 2007 edition of the [Woburn] Daily Times Chronicle:


There's a thin line between whimsy and creepiness.

In other Big E news, the fair's planned performance by Ludacris was cancelled due to low ticket sales. Did the bigwigs in charge of booking musical acts mistakenly assume that his frequent mentions of "hoes" referred to the gardening tool? Or maybe they thought that folks who'd travel cross-state to gawk at giant pumpkins would be open to songs like "P(ussy)-Poppin'" and "Pimpin' All Over the World."

On a more depressing note, the fair's performances by Brooke Hogan and Taylor Hicks went on as planned.

Martin Denny - Llama Serenade (from Forbidden Island/Primitiva, 1958) - After decades of intense study (including several missteps involving Doris Day and Arthur Lyman recordings) zoologists have discovered llamas respond really well to vibraphone-heavy exotica.

Love Tractor - Llama (from This Ain't No Outer Space Ship, 1987) - One of the lesser lights of the Athens, GA scene, though I give them full props for being groovy enough to incorporate wakka-chikka effects into this track. If only R.E.M. had been that bold...

Friday Night Fights: Frozen Peas and Cues

Once again, Bahlactus has issued the call to battle, and I shall respond in the only way I know how...


...with celebrity guest star Orson Welles in period costume slashing away at comical Martians who have modeled their society after the not-as-comical Nazi Germany.

It's from Superman v1 #62 (January-February, 1950). It's unquestionably the greatest team-up story ever, and rivals Citizen Kane as Orson's finest and most personal work.

"This is Mercury Theatre...in yo' face!"
New Bomb Turks - Brother Orson Welles (from Information Highway Revisited, 1994) - I dunno, I imagine Welles would have been more of an acid jazz or trip hop enthusiast than a fan of garage rock...

(If your curious about what the title of today's post refers to, go here and all will be explained.)

stinking to high heaven

Yesterday was supposed to be a good day.

Despite issues at work, despite the frustrating commute, despite the time lost while Maura fixed the filter for the koi tank at her parents' house, despite all the other little slings and arrows of everyday petty hassles, I went though the required motions with a gleam in my eye and a spring in my step. Why? Because it was Thursday, which per our domestic tradition, meant getting Chinese takeout and sitting down for the only block of network TV shows I actually look forward to: The Office, My Name Is Earl, and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia -- two anticipated season premieres, and three full hours of all-new episodes, through and through.

Between arriving home from work and settling down couch with a heaping plate of sweet and sour chicken, there were a handful of essential tasks to see to, mostly centering around animal care and feeding. I was eager to get my share of these obligations out of the way as soon as possible, wasted no time in leashing up Adeline, our beagle-boxer mix, for her nightly walk. It was the tail end of twilight, but I figured there was still enough light in the sky to chance a walk down to the end of the backyard, which is Addy's preferred spot for doing her business. It was one of the worst fucking mistakes I've made in a lifetime of dubious decisions.

We exited the back door in our usual fashion, Addy pulling hard on the leash and me doing my damnedest to keep my arm from getting yanked from the socket. It's something I've gone through at least a thousand times, only last night there just happened to be a fairly large and rather irritable skunk on the back steps. Skunks are pretty frequent visitors to our house on the hill, but they usually come late at night to munch on any kibble left in the feral cats' bowls. They've grown used to the our presence, skedaddling to the far side of the driveway when we step out onto the patio or take out the trash. We've even given names to some of the regular visitors: Frank Skunktone, the microencephalic Peanuthead, and Limahl (named for the huge fluffy white stripe on his head and back).

Addy caught sight of the skunk and the hound side of her family tree -- bared teeth, eager yawlps, slobbering jowls and all -- manifested in full force, while I tried in vain to being her to heel. The skunk made a brief, bold stand before turning tail and making a beeline for the safety of the bushes. At first, I thought we'd made it though the worst intact, that the skunk held off on spraying due to our longstanding relationship based on mutual tolerance and wary respect. Those hopes were soon dashed as the wave of concentrated stink washed over me.

Addy got the worst of it, sprayed square in the face and mouth. I was protected by the high ground of the back steps, but the contact stink was still strong enough to cling to my clothes and person. In the space of a few seconds, my much-anticipated plans for the evening went down the crapper. The rest of the night was spent giving Addy repeated washings with de-stink solutions and sprayings down with the garden hose. The sweet and sour chicken and crab rangoons were cold by the time I got around to eating them, and my enjoyment undercut by the lingering aroma of skunk stink.

I still laughed out loud a couple times during Sunny, though.

Pete Thomas - Funky Skunk (from Let's Boogaloo, Vol. 3, 2006) - As opposed to "Fuckin' Skunk," the subject of several freestyle acapella rants I performed yesterday evening.

Loudon Wainwright III - Dead Skunk (from Album III, 1972) - That's the problem this new-fangled modern age -- Where are this generation's Top 40 hits about roadkill?

The Panzant Brothers - Skunk Juice (from SuperFunk: Rare Funk From Deep In The Crates, 2000) - Another illustration of the unholy alliance between funk and skunks.

Y'know, even after the events of the past twenty-four hours, a warm glass of skunk juice still seems more appetizing than a cold bottle of Mountain Dew Game Fuel (brought to you by Halo 3, a Bungie Studios production presented by Microsoft).

another goddamn rant

I must confess I really don't understand all the goddamn love for the goddamn All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder comic series, God damn it. I can see the goddamn appeal it has to some goddamn folks as a goddamn dadaistic conceptual prank where goddamn fan-favorite creators, Frank Miller and Jim Lee, trump the expectations of the goddamn fanboys by giving them what they goddamn act like they want, but in a so goddamn over-the-top fashion that their goddamn heads explode.

But, God damn it, goddamn conceptual art predicated on a goddamn gimmick doesn't goddamn work that well in serialized goddamn format. The goddamn tropes and other tweaks directed at the goddamn noses of lumpenfandom, embraced and goddamn celebrated by the goddamn cognoscenti who understand the goddamn joke, become goddamn repetitive nerd-cliches in their own goddamn right over the long goddamn haul. Marcel Duchamp's goddamn found object masterpiece, "The Fountain," only draws its goddamn strength from its initial goddamn moment of inspirational conception. Once the goddamn joke is delivered, it is goddamn essential to move on lest the goddamn concept be undermined by goddamn diminishing returns, or worse, comes off as goddamn pandering to the goddamn audience.

The only thing more goddamn irritating than a goddamn joke that has overstayed its goddamn welcome is a goddamn nerd joke that has overstayed its goddamn welcome.

God damn it.


Nine Pound Hammer - Goddamn Right (from Kentucky Breakdown, 2004) - Goddamn boot-stompin' cowpunk.

The Fleshtones - God Damn It (from More Than Skin Deep, 1998) - Goddamn top-notch garage revival rock.

D.O.A. - We Don't Need No God Damn War (from War on 45, 1982) - Goddamn outstanding Canadian punk rock.

The Thermals - Goddamn the Light (from More Parts Per Million, 2003) - Goddamn lo-fi rocking bliss from the goddamn Pacific Northwest.

(Of course, if you're goddamn happy about this goddamn nonsense, you can now wear that badge with goddamn pride on your goddamn desktop.)

dictatorship of the plutotariat

I have no small amount of affection for the Captain Marvel Adventures comic series, especially the stories published between late 1945 and the title's demise in late 1953 (roughly issues #50-150). Over the course of those seven glorious years, the incomparable team of writer Otto Binder and artist C.C. Beck produced a stream of unselfconsciously whimsical and bizarre stories centering around one high concept after another.

Some of the challenges faced by Big Red Cheese included surrealism, (twice!), atomic killer robots, absent-mindedness, a corrupt dog catcher, an evil clematis plant possessed by a long-dead witch, an anti-talking tiger splinter group of the KKK, the ghost of an insane robot, and a variety of invaders from the past, present, and future...and let's not forget this little trip into nightmare land.

As an extended trip into handsomely illustrated kid-targeted comics of yore, those hundred issues of CMA make for an excellent diversion, despite the formulaic, drag-and-drop nature which underlies the off-the-wall story elements. As popcult artifacts of a bygone era, they provide a fascinating glimpse into that narrow window of time between the triumphant afterglow following the end of the World War II and the hardening of Cold War attitudes. The spirit of the era pervades many of the CMA stories from this period, reflecting contemporary hopes, as in a book-length story about the American Century, as well as its anxieties, two of which were given the bundle deal treatment in this gem from Captain Marvel Adventures #147 (August 1953):

Harvey Kurtzman's Frontline Combat, it ain't.

The story begins in the shell-pocked paradise between the Yalu River and Pusan, where a couple of weary American soldiers are taking a break while waiting for the Truman-MacArthur dick-waving contest to resolve itself. The poor dogfaces barely have the time to engage in a few lines of Hollywood-approved War Movie Dialogue^TM before the unthinkable happens:

It's true what they say; you never see the effect line with your name on it.
Back at radio station WHIZ, boy reporter Billy Batson gets word of the Reds diabolical super weapon and springs into action. With one mighty word, he transforms himself into Captain Marvel, "America's Mightiest American," and speeds of to the 38th Parallel, where the Army and Air Force are waging a losing battle against the flying saucers. Being the cowardly Bolshevik scum that they are, the saucer armada beats cheeks. Captain Marvel tries to capture one of the saucers, apparently by dry humping the vessel's tail fin...

Swamp gas? Hah! Unless you're talking about the stink rising from the fetid mire of Marxist dogma...
...but those fanatical Reds in their flying machines have protocols in place to deal with such a contingency...

Stinking commies, killing themselves just to deprive our side of the pleasure of killing them...
Seeking clues to the saucers' origin, the befuddled Marvel speeds off first to Manchuria, then Antarctica in search of their home base. Failing to turn up anything, he then hides in a cloud bank over the Korean peninsula in hopes of catching one of the saucers by surprise.

His plan succeeds in revealing the horrifying truth behind the saucer attacks -- the International Communist Conspiracy has gone interplanetary:

This panel was apparently ghostwritten by a young Norman Podhoretz.
After that saucer also self-destructs, Captain Marvel opts for a more stealthy approach, turning back into Billy Batson and stowing away inside a saucer's cargo hold. As per standard CMA story conventions, Billy is discovered, clubbed on the noggin, and bound and gagged (to prevent him from saying "Shazam," of course). He is then left to die of asphyxiation on the far edge of the Space Reds' Plutonian attack base.

Again, per standard conventions, Billy cheats death by bashing his fishbowl space helmet against a boulder, the jagged shards of glass not cutting his face into bloody ribbons, but instead conveniently severing the gag preventing him from transforming into Captain Marvel. (One of the problems in writing serial fiction for nigh-omnipotent characters is the inevitable overuse of the "one token weakness" as a means of establishing dramatic tension, leading to scenarios where even the lowliest purse snatcher or petty vandal in pre-Crisis Metropolis owned a hunk of Kryptonite.)

Having cheated death through an improbable plot device yet again, Captain Marvel drops a small mountain range on top of the enemy base, then races back to Korea, where he shows the Plutonian Reds how true-blooded Americans deal with those who would oppose them:

Oh, superior firepower and fanatical zeal, is there nothing you can't solve? Besides the War in Iraq, America's crumbling infrastructure, and a shaky domestic economy, I mean? (Also, which one of the gods and heroes who lend Captain Marvel their powers gave him the ability to fire a breech-loading heavy artillery piece as if it were a semi-automatic weapon?)

The enemy armada reduced to flaming wreckage, the Big Red Cheese sends a final warning back to the Plutonian War Commissariat, one which reflects the innocence and wholesomeness long associated with the Golden Age Captain Marvel stories...

Next issue: Hoppy the Marvel Bunny smashes the government of Guatemala and its leftist moleman allies on behalf of the CIA and the United Fruit Company!
Gang Green - Kill a Commie (from This Is Boston, Not LA, 1982)

Eddie Cletro & The Roundup Boys - Flying Saucer Boogie (from a 1952 single; collected on Flying Saucer Boogie, 2006)

The Fixx - Red Skies (from Shuttered Room, 1982)

Station WHIZ must be a FOX affiliate...

wouldn't that be strange

Well, look at that -- it's the Schadenfreude school of marketing theory put into practice:


Actually, the same Honda ad appeared on all the Yahoo News headline stories, but it was still mildly amusing to come across it in the context of General Motors' labor-related woes. It reminded me of Goodyear's ad blitz in the wake of concerns about the safety of rival Firestone's products, with ads that stopped just short of saying "Goodyear: Tires that won't explode and cause you to die in a horrible wreck."

From the same article:

Investors will likely look at the situation as a one-time nonrecurring item, as they have in similar occurrences in the past, said Sklar. Some, he added, may see the strike as a sign that GM is hanging tough in its negotiations and is determined to secure the concessions necessary to make the company competitive.

"So, in kind of an unintuitive way, a strike is positive for the stocks because it means that the industry is being resistant to the demands of labor."

Fuck fair wages and benefits, squeezing concessions from the folks who actually build the damn cars and trucks makes the speculators happy, and that's what really matters. Forget the fact that the reason why GM is in such a fix is that the corporate inertia of its executive leadership got complacent and put all their eggs in a basket towed by gas guzzling trucks and SUV's despite compelling economic trends.

So it makes sense that the line workers bear the burden for that blind complacency...

Crass - General Bacardi (from The Feeding of the 5000, 1978) - "The generals sip Bacardi/while the privates feel the pain." Too fucking right.

Fischer-Z - The Worker (from Word Salad, 1979) - The "Z" is pronounced "zed." Get it?

who was right and who was wrong

If you've ever done any shopping at the internet retail juggernaut that is Amazon.com, odds are you've noticed the site's penchant for proffering suggestions as to what you might like to spend your hard-earned shekels on. The mechanics of the system are based upon the browsing and purchasing habits of Amazon's gigantic customer base, evaluated and compared to each user's individually displayed tastes (though I'm convinced that certain "hot" items are given extra weight in the process). It's a clever idea in theory, but in practice the results tend to look a lot like this:

(I just know that Kevin Church is somehow responsible for that.)

In the interest of science, I decided to incorporate my own set of Facile Behavioral Generalization Algorithms^TM, derived from years of empirical research, into the user recommendation scripts to see if I could make them more effective. After a lengthy period (two hours or so) of beta testing, I came away feeling confident in the results obtained:

(I know you will be very unhappy with that last one, Jen, but you can't argue with science.)

Penetration - On Reflection (from Coming Up for Air, 1979) - Another album and band I don't listen to as often as I should. Pauline Murray comes off at times as a poppier, generic off-brand Poly Styrene, but it's still pretty charming and very listenable stuff. Both Coming Up for Air and the band's debut LP, Moving Targets, were pretty common (and cheap) finds in the used record stores I used to frequent back in the day, while X-Ray Spex's Germfree Adolescents was only seen, if at all, behind glass and sporting a hundred buck-plus price tag.

Joy Division - Autosuggestion (from Substance: 1977-1980, 1988) - Strangely enough, Joy Division (as "Warsaw") played their first gig in support of Penetration (and the Buzzcocks) in May 1977.

During my freshman year of college, I listened to Substance every morning while waiting for the quarter-to-seven MBTA bus to Alewife to arrive. To this day, hearing the tracks the compliation evokes the chill of a November breeze, the weight of a rucksack on my shoulder, and the acidic, earthy scent of wet fallen leaves decomposing in a gutter.

The Edseys - I've Decided (from This Is Mod, Vol. 6: The United States of Mod, 1999) - Someone's asking $98.44 for this compilation? Asking and having are entirely different things, but still... I guess that makes it another entry on my list of CDs/records I could make a profit unloading, but could never bear to part with.

I know nothing about The Edseys except that they were an American mod revival outfit and they were responsible for this gem of a track. The influence of The Jam is pretty easily discernable, but it has been cut with a more laid back (I'd almost say "Californian") power pop/jangle pop vibe.

put on your boots and walk with me

Oscar the chihuahua-pug supports the cause.

Do you?

Then sign the petition!

Beat Happening - What's Important (from Beat Happening, 1985) - Have you ever wondered how Iggy Pop's "The Passenger" would sound if it was written and recorded (with female vocals) in a basement apartment off of US Route 5? I imagine it would pretty closely resemble this track.

open your mind and you will see

Move over, Nero Wolfe! Take a hike, Sam Spade! There's a new gumshoe in town, and Debbie Preston is taking on the cases no one else dares to touch..


It makes me wonder if it's time the character was dusted off and relaunched with a "now" sensibility, sort of James Ellroy-meets-Carolyn Keene in tone:

As she stepped into the penthouse bathroom, Debbie cursed herself for letting things get this far. She remembered the stern talking to she got from her father after the SWAT team had to rescue her from the mess of the Britney/K-Fed custody battle case.

She found her ex-client kneeling on the floor, her face suspended over the toilet bowl, the sound of her dry heaves echoing in the basin. By her right knee was a butcher knife, the handle and blade glued to the porcelain tiles by a coagulated pool of blood. There were also clotted streaks where her ex-client's hands gripped the rim of the bowl.

It was even worse than Debbi had feared, and she decided to forgo any niceties. She snatched a fistful of her ex-client's long, manky blonde hair and yanked her head out of the toilet. Red-rimmed eyes stared up at her, but Debbie could see nothing past the vacant stare.

"Where is she? Where is your twin sister? Tell me!"

Her ex-client let out a choked sob, and a string of vomit-flecked spittle passed through her lips and ran down her chin. Her voice was faint and hoarse, "I have no sister."

Debbie was fighting back the urge to shake the truth out of her when she noticed something bobbing around in the toilet bowl amidst the vomit, spittle, and bile.

Something small. Something pink. Something that looked exactly like a severed human finger, the gnaw marks still visible despite its round trip journey.

"Tell...Uncle Joey...I'm so sorry..."

Debbie knew that she wasn't going to home by curfew on this night.

Tune in next time, as Debbie tries to unravel a rash of mysterious murders targeting those who have come into possession of a Hollywood superstar's stolen PDA! How does it tie back to a male prostitution ring in the San Fernando Valley and a secretive religious group founded by a failed sci-fi writer? Will Debbie solve the mystery before the co-host of a network news morning show becomes the next victim? And who will be Debbie's date to the Winter Semiformal -- Chad or Tommy?

Voice of the Beehive - I Think I Love You (from Honey Lingers, 1991) - Aren't we due for yet another revival of interest in the Partridge Family? Or has VH-1 permanently exhausted the soil on that front with its slash and burn nostalgricultural methods?

China Crisis - Tragedy and Mystery (from Working with Fire and Steel, 1983) - SYNTHESIZED BRASS AND BRIT ACCENTS 4EVA!!!

if power's all they really understand

There was a time when I made an active effort to keep up on the various comings and goings on in my areas of interest across the world wide web, but as my free time has dwindled over the past couple years, I’ve gotten to rely more and more on a handful of trusted linkblogs to pre-separate the wheat from the chaff for me. This is especially true for comics-related blogs and websites. There are simply too many to keep track of, and even Google Reader isn’t much help in organizing and prioritizing the endless flow of posts.

One of the most useful comics-related linkblogs is When Fangirls Attack, a well-curated and regularly updated clearinghouse of links to blog posts and articles dealing with feminist and gender-issues in the comics scene. Ragnell and Kalinara do a great job in presenting an inclusive collection of views, kept free of their own personal biases (which is how topic-themed linkblogs should ideally be. I’m an avid reader of Antiwar.com, despite the paleo-conservative/libertarian ideology of its maintainers because they make the effort to include a wide range of articles and commentary on the subject from across the political spectrum).

So when Dorian, the man behind the always-entertaining Postmodernbarney, started up Comic Gays, a linkblog along the lines of WFA, but with a focus on LGBT issues and subjects in the comics scene and related areas of fandom, it was welcome news, indeed. Even if the actual reach of the comics blogosphere is far smaller than what many of its members assume, it’s great to see new avenues of discussion open up, especially in areas where they intersect with egalitarian principles. There’s a strong current of knee-jerk conservatism in fandom which needs to be roiled from its ingrained opinions. Besides, a flippancy-free discussion of homosexual subtext in Silver Age romance comics makes for far more interesting reading than yet another shrill “DC is raping my childhood (by not publishing stories mirroring my fanfic)” rant.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before the linkbaiters crawled out of the woodwork. For those not up on hip ‘net lingo, linkbaiters are the Japanese beetles of the blogosphere’s rose garden -- folks who write deliberately provocative posts in hopes of getting their site/post referenced by the relevant linkblog. If one were to create a widely-read linkblog dedicated to ham sandwiches, five will get you ten that there will suddenly be a marked increase in blogposts concerning that particular comestible. It’s a quick and dirty means of generating attention (and hits) closely related to that “NOTICE ME” fan pathology I discussed yesterday. It wouldn’t be so bad if these attention-starved voices had something to add to the discussion, but all too often their remarks tread into the realm of outright trollery, being either contrary for the sake of getting attention or just skitching behind the issue du jour. The sincerity of writer (and in too many cases, sadly, the views expressed are sincere) matters less than the ready-made opportunity for virtual face time.

The Rondelles – Pay Attention to Me (from The Fox, 1999) - Sure, as long as you're communicating though femvox indie pop, and not through incoherent rants about why "femisitim" or "guy marrige" is harmful to society.

I’ve had a few of my posts linked to on When Fangirls Attack, but never did I sit down and begin writing with that being the express purpose of the piece, although I can usually predict what will get picked up by the site. (The exception being the Satin Satan post.) I write a lot of comics-themed posts and I’m a strong exponent of egalitarian principles; it’s a given that the streams will cross every so often. That said, I’ve been trying out to figure a way to get a post linked to by Comic Gays. I don’t watch Torchwood (though the ads are intriguing), I tend to steer clear of out-of-context “OMG Batman is SOOO gay for Superman” vintage comic panel humor (because only a rare few can do it right), and the posts I have made about gay rights issues are straightforward political polemics. The trollery route is right out, as I really don’t have it in me to convincingly play the part. (I can’t even bring myself to take the Dark Side path in the Knights of the Old Republic games.)

What’s a poor aspiring link-baiter to do except discuss Carol Channing’s performance in the 1968 flop Skidoo and its lingering effect on my psyche? Skidoo was Otto Preminger’s attempt at the most failure-prone of genres, the counter-culture comedy. Many ambitious directors tried their hand at pulling off such a feat, but even the best of the lot (Head, a bizarre and confusing self-skewering of The Monkees) fall into the category of “interesting failures,” and Skidoo doesn’t even reach those modest heights with its mix of familiar character and comedic actors (Jackie Gleason, Groucho Marx, Carol Channing, Mickey Rooney, among others) and very 60’s drug culture humor.

A critical and financial bomb upon its release, Skidoo became a legend among aficionados of cinematic trash, with the lack of a VHS or DVD release boosting its allure. I managed to acquire a copy a few years back, and finally got a chance to compare the legend to the real deal. It wasn’t the worst film of its type -- an honor that goes hands-down to The Phynx, an attempt to combine The Monkees with an endless parade of celebrity cameos. Skidoo didn’t so much pain me with its incompetence as cripple me with a sense of embarrassment for everyone involved. The feeling I got watching Jackie Gleason trip out on LSD and Groucho Marx smoking reefer was the same one I felt when my mom got tipsy on port wine and sang an out of key rendition of “Smooth Operator.” (Or watching Street Fighter: The Movie and realizing that this was Raul Julia’s last film role. Or seeing Robert Vaughn in TV ads for ambulance-chasers.) It’s a painful, but not an insurmountable experience for the hardened schlock enthusiast familiar with the mortifying sensation of witnessing People Who Should Know Better doing terrible things on screen.

If that were all the film had to dish out, it would be just another seen it/survived it/bragged about it bad cinema experience, but just when you think you’ve survived the worst, it pulls out a particularly nasty shiv from the waistband of its BVD’s and proceeds to twist it repeatedly in your gut.

I don’t have an opinion of Carol Channing one way or another, except as one of the familiar popcult presences of a 1970’s childhood, but her performance of the Harry Nilsson-penned “Skidoo,” at the film’s finale is the raw stuff of which nightmares are made. Something about the way her trademark raspy voice wraps itself around the chorus unlocks a deep-seated sense of primal terror within me, especially in conjunction with the manic choreography, relentless grin, and pirate costume with which she accompanies the song. It all leads to the bedroom, where it is implied that her character and Jackie Gleason’s will bump ugiles.

Sweet Blessed Providence, I’m going to have to sleep with the lights on tonight, and I just know that won’t hold off the night terrors.

Carol Channing & Harry Nilsson – Skidoo/Goodnight Mr. Banks (from the Skidoo OST, 2003)

push it to the floor till the engine screams

I work at one of Greater Boston’s many universities, and one of the great perks of my job is the unbridled opportunities for people-watching it provides. Every trip to the restroom, vending machines, or ATM yields insightful (and often painful) glimpses into the lives of that strange breed of creature known as the “college student.”

Although nothing will ever top the time I quite literally ran into two wild turkeys out for a late afternoon stroll behind one of the lecture halls, yesterday’s sojourn in search of some decent vend-o-fare did include some interesting material for the empirical anthropologist. At the entrance to one of the college buildings, I crossed paths with a rather hirsute and odiferous individual who bore all the distinct markings of the stereotypical male sci-fi/comics/RPG fan, right down to the patchy beard and air of disdainful superiority.

Considering my well documented set of hobby-horses and other assorted interests, it may seem hypocritical for me to tag others of the tribe with labels. Fandom is not monolithic, however, and as an Algonquin from the Northeast would have been certainly puzzled by certain customs and practices of a member of the plains-dwelling Sioux -- and vice versa -- there are aspects of fan culture which remain baffling to me. I have spent too much time dwelling in the houses of the non-fan, perhaps.

That’s all beside the point, though, because there was something about this particular fanboy that set him apart from his peers: He was carrying a large, old-school boom box with him, with the Star Wars: Episode IV soundtrack blasting from its tinny speakers. In these days of listening technology, where smaller and more personal is better, projecting a full-on sonic assault in a ten-yard radius around one’s self can only be seen as a deliberate act of attention-mongering only slightly more subdued than having John Williams and the London Philharmonic follow one around and play the music live. It struck me as the ultimate realization of fanboy megalomania, the overwhelming compulsion to relentlessly inflict one’s interests upon passers-by, while the passers-by merely roll their eyes and do their best to escape.

One thing that struck me after the fact was “Why the Star Wars theme?” The franchise does have its share of obsessively hardcore adherents, but it has also become part of the mass popcult consciousness. Everyone knows the theme to the first film, even folks with minimal interest in the movies, books, and related ephemera. The fanboy’s choice of music flew in the face of conventional fan-behavior where there’s premium put on exclusivity, which in turn provides opportunities for condescending pedantry: “Oh, you would think that. Obviously you’ve never seen the Japanese laserdisc version.” It’s a form of (arguably) secular Calvinism that puts an emphasis on proselytizing, but only for the sake of reminding those outside the elect that they are stupid, while the proselytizer is a genius. I’d have been less surprised if he’d played the theme to some as-yet-unlicensed-for-American-release anime series, a filk remix of the Man from Atlantis theme, or Rush’s 2112.

It got me to thinking about what tracks I’d select for my own intrusively blasted theme song (though I pray that I’ll never have to face that particular demon). After careful consideration, I narrowed the field down to two worthy candidates. The final choice would depend on my mood at the time:

Mike Post & Pete Carpenter – Drive (Theme to Hardcastle & McCormick) (from Television’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 6, 1996) – The original and superior version of the show’s theme song (with vocals by David Morgan). Truly the brightest, most glorious moment in the mismatched crimefighting duo with a bitchin’ high-end car genre of TV shows. Sure it was formulaic pap, but it was formulaic pap that spoke to the hearts and souls of a generation of kids too stupid to know better.

Quincy Jones – The Streetbeater (Theme to Sanford & Son) (from Television’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 3, 1990) – I associate this track with pain, blinding white pain of the nausea-inducing variety. It’s not because I think it’s a bad piece, quite the contrary. Way back in the day when Maura and I first started dating, I was channel surfing and stopped on TV Land just as the theme began to play. I was thrilled; Maura wasn’t and she demanded I change the channel before the tune got stuck in her head. I tried playing “keep away” with the remote, at which point the woman I would eventually marry “accidentally” elbowed me square on the nose, causing me to black out for a few minutes.

My other strange encounter of that was considerably less irritating than the boom box nerd, but far more intriguing. In the courtyard outside the science building stood the most adorable pair of hipster undergrads, a gal and a guy, sharing a single pair of iPod earbuds as they made goo-goo eyes at each other. Ah, young love in bloom, free of all the complications, pregnancy scares, and drunken 2:00 AM phone calls…

As I dragged myself back to my dismal little cubicle, I found myself wondering what song exactly the little lovebirds happened to be listening to. My first guess was Sisqó’s “Thong Song,” the pinnacle of romantic sentiment in Western cultural history. Not even The Bard’s sublime Sonnet 18 (Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?/Thou art more lovely and more temperate) can approach the passionate resonance of “She had dumps like a truck truck truck/Thighs like what what what/Baby move your butt butt butt.” (Ed. note: I’d sooner vote Republican than post that track here.)

After a little more reflection, I began to wonder if perhaps “Thong Song” was a little too much freak to handle in that gooey stage of their relationship. Maybe they were listening to more intellectually stimulating romantic material, like “Anthrax” from Gang of Four's 1979 LP Entertainment! It’s a heartwarming analysis of love as lensed though the Marxist concept of alienated labor and as compared to a deadly spore-borne illness. It’s one of the all time great make-out songs, too.

Then it hit me, and it was so painfully obvious that I cursed myself for not realizing it sooner. There is only one song that truly, madly, deeply captures the that sort of bliss in musical form, and that song is:

Commander Cody – Two Triple Cheese, Side Order of Fries (from Lose It Tonight, 1980) – In the days when I used to buy used vinyl by the pound, the “C – Misc.” bins in every secondhand records shop in the metro Boston area were packed to the partitions with Commander Cody (with and without The Lost Planet Airmen) LPs. I never purchased any, but it made me contemplate why these stores just didn’t create dedicated slots for Mr. Frayne and company. Was it a case of hipper-than-thou audiophile bias against blue collar “boogie woogie” rock? Or simple laziness?

(The illustration for today's post was courteously provided by the incomparable Chris Sims.)

prepare to be bored-ded

Hexachlorophene! Because there's nothing kids like better than potential carcinogens in their bubble bath. (The substance was removed from OTC products in 1969, and remains prescription-only to this day despite studies disproving its links to cancer.)

Isn't today supposed to be Run an Initially Disarming Gag into the Ground Talk Like a Pirate Day? I vaguely remember doing a post on the subject on this day last year, which a check of the archives does verify. As I said back then, the buccaneer thing really isn't my bag, but as this day only comes once a year, I figured I'd give it my best shot. Here goes:

So an industry insider passed a couple of gems onto a friend of a friend of mine: an advance copy of the Adam Sandler/Jessica Alba remake of Casablanca (with Ludacris in the role of Sam) and Michael Bay's live-action adaptation of the Rubik the Amazing Cube cartoon (with Sir Ben Kinglsey in the title role). Clean internal copies, too -- not like those shit camcorder caps being circulated by those n00bz in the PsyKKotik release group. Those asses think they're l33t as fuck, but they're lamerz who pass their shit direct to torrent sites.

I was already busy putting my liquid-cooled Alienware processor to use coming up with a workaround crack for use with Gear God of Grand Guitar Halo 5: Special Edition, but there was enough of the machine's 10 GB of RAM free to run the discs through a custom ripper, nuke any DRM or watermarks, then DVDShrink them to under 700 MBs a pop. Some folks go the VOB/SUB route, but that's not what the scene is supposed to be about, d00dz. After that it was just a matter of chunking them into 14.5 MB multi-part rars, writing up this nfo file and making them available via private newsgroups. PROPS to all the HOMIEZ keepin it REAL in the SCENE."*

Wait, that's not the type of pirate-speak they're talking about? I'm completely lost now.

(See also.)

Édith Piaf - Le Chant du Pirate (from 75 Chansons, 2001) - What is it about the French language where even saying "My bowel is impacted from eating too many baguettes and pastries" sounds profoundly classy?

Nena - Let Me Be Your Pirate (from 99 Luftballoons, 1984) - From the other side of the Maginot Line, here's some jazz-damaged Teutonic pop. Feel free to make your own "rum, sodomy, and the lash" joke here. I'm feeling lazy today.

Burning Spear - Pirate's Dub (from the Living Dub, Vol. 2 reissue, 1993) - This is the dub version of "Columbus" from the reggae outfit's Hail H.I.M. LP. The reissues of the first two Living Dub albums feature remixed versions and freshly recorded material in the same vein, which might be infuriating for purist collectors, but it's a nice treat for less-obsessed fans.

*Just to make things clear: I do not engage in such activities, okay?

visual synergy: all's fun at the fair

"It's guaranteed to make you puke." Not a statement usually used to pitch a product or experience, but twelve-year old boys are a different species entirely. The engine of induced regurgitation being referenced was the Tilt-A-Whirl, one of many lurid and potentially dangerous attractions at the annual Boys' Club carnival. (The club only sponsored the event, the administration of which was handled by those semi-nomadic purveyors of fried dough, chancy rides, and rigged games of chance colloquially known as "carny folk.")

The arrival of the carnival at the vacant lot abutting the Northeast Trade Center in North Woburn was always a time of wonder and delight, though never so much so as in the spring of 1984. Previous trips had been made under the watchful eyes and tight purse strings of parents or other adult chaperones, but having turned twelve, and thus standing at the crossroads of childhood hijinx and adolescent angst, this marked the first time my friends and I were able to attend the carnival alone and unsupervised, free of admonishments about our sugar and trans fat intakes, the no-win nature of the midway games, and our suitability for trying out the coolest and most dangerous-looking of the rides.

Even better, the fairgrounds were less than a mile from the neighborhood where we lived, well within easy biking distance. The only thing that prevented us from attending the carnival every single night it was in local residence was the lack of parental largess once we had burned up our initial stores of ready cash.

While our money lasted, though, we wandered the stalls and attractions in hopes of winning a amateurish reproduction of a Led Zeppelin or Blue Oyster Cult LP cover painted onto a sharp-edged sheet of glass (which one of the older kid's told me were for sniffing cocaine of off, making it the peaked-in-high-school set's equivalent of a gold-plated spoon) from the goldfish game, or to check out the assortment of hard-used and dated arcade machines (Joust! Berzerk!) set up in an army surplus tent on the edge of the lot overlooking the Zayre's parking lot. The carnival had a open city vibe to it, where groups of kids from different parts of the city would meet up and form temporary alliances.

It was one of the kids from the subdivided hinterlands near the Burlington line, a classmate of mine (due to Woburn's unintuitive boundaries for elementary school districts) who made the above case for the Tilt-A-Whirl's superiority vis-a-vis the Flying Bobs, the Round-Up, or the giant ferris wheel with enclosed spinnable cars. "It's guaranteed to make you puke," he said, and the unspoken challenge contained in his endorsement could not be denied. So the members of our group paired up and gave it a shot.

Rumors about that "kid from two towns over" who lost an arm in the ride aside (and those rumors were as ubiquitous to the carnival's atmosphere as the smells of frying medium and whiskey breath^*), a ride on the Tilt-A-Whirl doesn't really instill roller coaster levels of adrenalin-spiked terror. Functionally, the ride is only a step or two up from the kiddie merry-go-rounds featuring bright plastic race cars in place of horses, with a stiff dose of centrifugal force to add some kick.

And it's that force, acting upon a belly packed to the esophagus with junk food and soda, that produces the effect my classmate vouched for. At the ride's conclusion, my friends and I staggered off the exit gantry, and one by one proceeded to lean over and spew forth steaming primitivist murals of half-digested candy apples and popcorn onto the blank canvas of dust and trampled grass before us, all to the oohs, ahhs, and ewwws of the other kids watching. There was even a pointed critiquing session of our efforts, in which I fared rather poorly.

Lack of texture and poor spread radius. It's the story of my life, really.

Wow, that ran longer than planned. Are you ready for a music video thrill ride of thrills. excitement, and cheaply made teddy bears filled with styrofoam pellets? The management asks that you keep your arms and other appendages inside the car at all times.


Dire Straits - Tunnel of Love - The Warsaw Pact's superiority in bumper car technology was completely offset by NATO's fleet of state-of-the-art canal barges.


Depeche Mode - Get the Balance Right - Now watch as we go from moody...


Madness - House of Fun - ...to joyously goofy...


Lush - Hypocrite - ...to gloomy introspection in the course of this non-stop merry-go-round called "life."

Madness - House of Fun (from Madness, 1983)

Lush - Hypocrite (from Split, 1994)

^* Maura, who did grow up two towns over from Woburn, says that there was a bona fide carnival-related mutilation back in the day, which could very well be the ur-text from which the stories sprung.

stay just as far from me as me from you

I usually make it a point to avoid getting caught up in the entertainment industry’s orgies of self-congratulation otherwise known as award shows, but Maura, who has an inexplicable fondness for celebrity gossip, decided to watch last night’s Emmy Awards pre-show and ceremonies on the TV in our bedroom, where I was working on some projects at the computer desk. It’s been a while since I have had to bear witness to the proceedings, but I don’t remember the Emmys being as off-putting and just plain awful as they were in the largish chunk of the show I was subjected to last night.

Maura’s answer to that observation was to simply say, “Well, FOX is broadcasting them this year” and that they “must have gotten the urge to tart them up a bit.” That does make sense, I suppose, but still doesn’t explain the decision to go with a theater-in-the-round format for the presenter’s platform. Shakespearean history aside, theater-in-the-round, where the action happens on a center stage surrounded by the audience on all sides, is extremely awkward in practice (in terms of costume/set changes and blocking) and I suspect largely predicated on maximizing seating at the expense of any audience members stuck facing the wrong direction. The center stage did have a very sci-fi portal built into the floor for entrances and exits, but there was a sense of confusion among the presenters and award winners about exactly who or where they should be looking at while speaking. (The presenters, at least, had the teleprompter to focus their attention upon.) Only Lewis Black, delivering a welcome rant about small screen infoclutter, seemed to have a grasp of the logistics of a 360 degree delivery.

I did my best to concentrate on my PC monitor’s screen while my wife shouted out comments about the winners, losers, and the abundance of horrible fashion choices, but a few things did manage draw my gaze into the Emmy abyss:

- Tony Bennett – The first time the pop legend won an award for some special I didn’t remember at all, I felt a bit sad that the rest of the production staff ate up so much of the allotted “thank you” time, leaving Mr. Bennett only enough to give a brief call-out to his wife. Then the special won a second award, and I was forced to rethink my previous position, as the venerable crooner delivered an extremely awkward and gushy love letter for Target Stores (who sponsored the special) using terms best reserved for hagiographies. Hey, I appreciate the deals the superstore gives me on Dr. Pepper and toilet paper, but I wouldn’t go as far as nominating the chain for sainthood.

- The Jersey Boys’ tribute to The Sopranos – The big WTF moment of the night, and the most disturbing, as cast members of the Broadway show badly lip-synched to overproduced renditions of “Walk Like a Man” and “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” while clips from The Sopranos played on the arena’s monitors. The desperate stink of contrived irony was thick in the air as the pretty boys mimed along to a sappy pop ballad while the footage from the series showed Drea de Matteo’s character being executed by mobsters. Classy, indeed.

The whole fascination with mobster/Mafia mythos leaves my cold, quite frankly. The Aislin Silva case and having seen (from a window of a southbound subway train) forensic investigators unearth corpses of the Winter Hill Gang’s victims from the shores of the Neponset River tell me all I need to know about the type of people who make a living though organized crime.

- TEK-NAU-LOW-GEE – “What did the last Neanderthal say to the first Cro-Magnon?” The various academies that award the Emmy’s decided to acknowledge the march of technological progress in a most goofy manner by having Masi Oka from Heroes teleconference with the MySpace dude in order to present an award for “Interactivity in Television” or other buzzword-laden nonsense. The award was given to Joel Hyatt and a very puffy-looking Al Gore for their Current TV venture, which is like being the only person in the world who makes robotic hamsters being given an award for excellence in making robot hamsters. Shit, I’d have given the award to the creator(s) of Comcast ON DEMAND. There’s some interactivity with a purpose.

Also on the “token nods to tech” front, who came up with the idea of showing clips of the nominees on iPods, high-end cell phones, and other “hot” media playing devices via over the shoulder POV shots? The video may have been indecipherable, but the brands and makes of the devices were clearly discernable.

- Your Best Interests at Heart – I’d be hard-pressed to come up with a more effective ipecac than last night’s speech by the outgoing president of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which (with accompanying montage of Bob Hope entertaining the troops and Live Aid footage) praises all the Good Work^TM done by folks in the industry, in particularly American Idol's use of poor African children as a self-serving empathy sink and the voyeurism-posing-as-a-cause of yet another made-for-cable documentary about junkies.

Good deeds are good deeds, regardless of ulterior motives, but I’m not inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to the same industry that gave us Kid Nation, According to Jim, and Past-His-Prime Rocker Ogles Attention-Hungry Women Rock of Love. Feel free to assuage whatever vestiges of a conscience you’ve got left, folks. Just don’t expect me to feel all warm and fuzzy over your onanistic back-patting sessions. I’ve seen your real face, TV industry, and it looks like a meth addict’s after a week of withdrawal pains. Who do these people think they are? Target?

Judging from today’s post-mortems of the Emmys, the FOX-i-fied version of the award show landed with a sickly wet thump ratings-wise, which I’m sure the firms who bought advertising time must be really thrilled to hear. Given the state of the ads shown, I’d say it’s a case of poetic justice, with extra scorn heaped on Macy’s, whose marketing message was “We sell loads of overpriced celebrity-licensed crap.” (Usher has a fragrance for sale? Seriously? WTF, buying public.) McDonald’s also rolled out the big guns of adorability with an ad featuring a poppin’ and lockin’ moppet munching on the new healthy not as unhealthy Happy Meal. However, its effectiveness was completely undermined by its length, which came in a just a hair over the total runtime of the uncut version of von Stroheim’s Greed. (First Law of Marketing: A little breakdancing kid goes a long way.)

FOX took the opportunity to aggressively pimp its properties, both current and forthcoming (and based on what was shown they must have received a federal grant to provide work to unemployed alums of Everybody Loves Raymond), but the net effect was just another annual session of the “which one of these dozen shows will survive past mid-season” game. (Inside tip: Bet on the one with the most appeal to the lowest common denominator. That might be tricky, given that it’s FOX, but it should narrow the field a little.)

Mission of Burma - Academy Fight Song (from a 1980 single; collected on the Signals, Calls, and Marches CD reissue, 1996) - Not the Academy of Television Arts and Science's fight song, which is still being hashed out as the composers try to think of more words that rhyme with "pander." It's just as well, since few tracks can touch this lovely bit of locally grown post-punk.

Brenda Lee - Nobody Wins (from The Definitive Collection, 2006) - Certainly not the viewing public in the case of last night's Emmys, but Miss Brenda Lee is here to ease your pain.

Orbital - Pay Per View (from The Altogether, 2001) - Sometimes it's the wisest viewing (or listening) choice.

I'm not a glamour boy

At the first-time homebuyers class we attended three years ago, we were warned about several things to keep an eye out for when choosing a house -- radon, killer mold (a.k.a. the "new" radon), barrels of nuclear waste, proximity to traffic chokepoints -- but not the most insidous local hazard of them all, annual block parties.

Now I don't want to seem too mean-spirited about things. On a certain level, I see these yearly bouts of merriment as a sign that we made the right choice in moving here, what with the local pride and neighborly cordiality. It's just that I'm not really party-going material, and the onus of participation weighs heavily on my brooding loner's soul. (Okay, maybe the "brooding" part is inaccurate. Nom-de-plume aside, I am more Eyeore than Edward Rochester.) I accept that the fault is entirely my own; perhaps I lack the gene that makes it possible to shoot the shit with quasi-strangers over a heaping plate of German potato salad and barbecued pork ribs, and not reply to inquiries such as "So, Andrew, what line of work are you into?" with a stammered and potentially offensive non-sequitur.

So it has been since my teenage years. Andrew and large social situations just don't mix. Actually this weekend has tested my skills of social jujitsu (by which I mean "having my wife make excuses for my absence") to the utmost, with no fewer than three festive gatherings to be avoided in the space of forty-eight hours. I managed to make it to the other side without embarrassing myself or alienating my peers and/or relatives. Quite an accomplishment, indeed. Maybe I ought to throw a party in celebration of my achievement....

Joe "King" Carrasco & The Crowns - Party Weekend (from Anthology, 1995) - Texas Devo? Lone Star Boingo? Alamo Wall of Voodoo? You get the gist, I'm sure. Quirky new wave (or "weirdpunk," coined for an internet-release anthology of similar acts and which I think is a much better term for this style of music) from deep in the heart of Texas.

The Rousers - Party Boy (from a 1981 single) - Here some kids from NYC retrofit a Buddy Knox chassis with a supercharged power pop engine. As deep as a kiddie pool, but that's not atypical of the genre, especially when the party record motif is being pushed to the max. (The dead giveaway? The use of harmonica in the song.) The song was produced by Wayne Kramer, for any MC5 enthusiasts out there.

45 Grave - Party Time (12" version) (from a 1984 single; collected on the reissue of Sleep in Safety, 1983) - A more polished (and metal) version of the death rock classic made famous by Return of the Living Dead. A horribly mutilated version with revised lyrics reflecting the plot of the movie appears on the soundtrack album, but this is all you really need.

I bought my copy of the single (still in the shrinkwrap) at In Your Ear on Comm Ave in Allston back in the early 1990's. I remember there was much mockery from my friends about my musical tastes. At least I'm able with to sleep with a conscience clean of having ever claimed the Smashing Pumpkins were the greatest band ever.

gave stars up above

Are you ready for the sensational character find of 1965? No? Well, that's all right, because what I have for you is Ultra, The Multi-Alien. He made his debut in Mystery in Space #103 (November 1965), where he took over Adam Strange's slot after the market for fin-headed Burroughsean homages began to wane. The character was more super-hero than space-adventurer, reflecting the shift in genre interests occuring in the wake of DC's upstart rival, Marvel, putting a successful new spin on the formula. One one side, you had Stan Lee and Jack Kirby continuously raising the bar for innovative concepts and storytelling in Fantastic Four; on the other, there was Ultra The Multi-Alien and the Canine Space Patrol Agents. (I enjoy a lot of DC's goofy 60's material, and not just in a gawk-and-mock sense. Taken as a whole though, it seems indicative of a corporate culture similar to that of General Motors when cheap imports began entering the market -- facing the competition with a "do what we've been doing, only more so" attitude while taking ill-conceived and clueless stabs in a different direction.)

Ace Arn, a standard-issue big-chinned starship captain, finds his vessel dragged along in the wake of a comet, and crash-lands on a strange planet in another star system. Arn is not alone on this strange new world; a group of galactic miscreants are using the planet as a base camp as they try to figure out a use for the Highly Inefficient Super Weapons^TM provided to them by their de facto leader, the shaggy green reject from a Big Daddy Roth character concept sketch in the upper left insert on the cover above.

The weapons allow the wielder to transform anything they hit into obedient duplicates of themselves, which is clever, I admit, but lacks the to-the-point planet-splitting power of a gamma ray laser or disintegration beam. Such are the vagaries of comic book science, where utility is measured in units of PDE (plot device effectiveness). There's a catch, though. The devices cannot work on matter from the aliens' own stellar region, which begs the question of why they chose such a target poor area as a base, but hey, I'm not a megalomaniacal invader from beyond, so what do I know? Fortunately for the bad guys, Ace Arn -- who just happens to be from outside the stellar region -- stumbles right into the middle of their camp.

Anxious to try out their duplication guns, the four aliens blaze away without any sense of hierarchical or organizational deference. The four beams strike him simultaneously, transforming him into a composite being reflecting the appearances and powers -- super-strength, flight, and control over electricity and magnetism -- of all four aliens.

Because of the restrictive end-user license on the mind-control aspect of the ray guns, Arn retains his own identity (though augmented with the advanced knowledge of the aliens) and uses his new abilities to crush the alien cabal's poorly-considered scheme in embryo while explaining events to the less astute readers with a rather curious choice of words:

It's no Betty and Me #16, but we must take our cues for sophomoric humor as they come.

After taking the opportunity to review the design specs of the duplication guns, Arn discovers that the process is irreversible, which leads him to an single panel (two sentences) of soul searching before deciding to embark on an exciting career in superheroics. As my great-gran used to say "When life gives you a scaly bird leg, use it to claw the shit out of ne'er do wells." (It sounded more profound in the original Swedish.) The only thing that remains is to pick out an appropriate code name, but the causal serendipity that is the glue of the superheroic genre has that covered:
That was actually Arn's fourth try, after R-A-T-L-U, T-R-U-A-L, and L-T-R-A-U. Arn placed dead last in the Space Academy's Space Boggle competition four years running.

Ultra, The Multi-Alien's run in Mystery in Space lasted until the title's cancellation with issue #110. He's popped up here and there since then, especially after the enactment of the "No Intellectual Property Left Behind, No Matter How Obscure" Act in the mid-1980's. His most effective post-60's use was in Grant Morrison's Animal Man, where he was shown to be a resident of Comic Book Limbo, an imagined manifestation of DC's voluminous junk drawer of fallow properties. Attempts to bring the character into the DC Universe proper have been less successful, as there really isn't any compelling reason to do so outside the thin gruel of appealing to fan gnosticsm through the character's obscurity and garish design.

My five year old nephew stopped by for a visit a while back. He's a huge fan of the animated DC television shows and their related merchandise, but hasn't shown much interest in the comics themselves. When I went to get a toy he was asking about off one of my bookshelves, he picked up the copy of Ultra, The Multi-Alien's first appearance I had lying on the coffee table (a gift from my brother, not yet filed away in one of the attic longboxes) and was completely fascinated by it. He placed the comic down on the couch and pointed in turn at each alien and their corresponding anatomical contribution to Ultra. It just goes to prove that no matter how odd and out-of-touch those 60's DC books seem to be, the folks in charge knew exactly who their target audience was and how to appeal to them, even across four-plus decades.

Betty James - I'm a Little Mixed Up (from a 1961 single; collected on The Chess Story: 1947-1975 box set, 2000) - Sure, Ace seems okay with his existence as a xeno-chimera, but I suspect he does have a touch of the low-down, "my man-junk is half-feathers, half-lightning bolt" Multi-Alien blues.

KMFDM - Ultra (from Nihil, 1995) - Every hero needs a theme song.

Japan - Alien (from Quiet Life, 1979) - Doing it before Duran Duran did, and in many ways, better.

Friday watch the hands wind down

My wife got a package in the mail today from her super-cool friend Klah. Inside the box were a whole lotta Otter Pops, of the frozen confectionary and power pop varieties, as shown in the photo above. (The bag of garlic cloves near the top did not come in the package, but are instead our way of gearing up for the coming vampire season, despite the aversion for Allium sativum that I share with the children of the night.)

I didn't realize they even made Otter Pops anymore, and had wrongfully assumed they had gone the way of Goofy Grape, Lefty Lemon, and the rest of the Funny Face fruit drink clan, assumed into childhood nostalgia heaven. Even though I know deep down that there really isn't any chemical difference between the more staid Fla-Vor-Ice family of products and Otter Pops, a frozen stick of water, high fructose corn syrup, and artificial colors and flavors tastes decidedly better when presented by goofy cartoon mustelids named Louie Bloo Raspberry or Sir Issac Lime.

The musical Otterpops -- not to be confused with Freezepop or The Horrorpops -- are pretty sweet, too. 2001's Earth Science Club EP, the now-defunct outfit's sole release, features four tracks of slower tempo femvox powerpop that gave me ultra-lucid flashbacks to my college-radio listening days in the late 80's and early 90's.

The Otterpops - Trotsky - In hindsight, the Fourth International could have used more accordion playing and fewer icepicks in the ear. (The same could be said about the past three family reunions I attended.)