more than occasionally foolish

Bless me, St. Marlo, in my hour of need.
As reality has repeatedly ignored my demands that it conform to my myopic personal vision, I have have been left with no choice but to respond in a manner befitting a mature adult. Since the bugs have not yet been worked out of the holdmybreathuntiliturnblue HTML tags, I will have to resort to the power of HIATUS!

Yes, a honest-to-gosh suspension of effort, because there is no means of protest as powerful as choosing to do nothing at all. Do you think I'm joking? Do you think this is just a bluff masking my desperate need for attention?

I'll show you. I'll show you all. Bear witness to the power of....THE HIATUS!

Cue the theme music!

Jeff & Jane Hudson - The Girl from Ipanema (from 1982's World Trade EP)

......

......

......

......

......

......

......

......

There. I hope you've all learned a valuable lesson.

So, what did I miss while I was away?

hate myself today

I have no problems with the idea of growing older.

A certain sense of fatalism and pronounced lack of ambition have made it easy for me to accept, rather than rail against, the immutable fact that this trip through the timestream is one-way only. It is far better to negotiate the rapids on one's own terms than to be worn down and swept away in a futile fight against the current.

Besides, the concept of "youth" so many attempt to cling onto tends to be little more than a fixation on superficial trappings and cluelessness cloaked in an aura of false simplicity. The longer one attempts to hold on, the more absurd the situation becomes, and harder it becomes to let go of things that aren't really that important at all.

That said, I could do without those little reminders of mortality that my body springs on me at inopportune moments. I can live with the cosmetic stuff like gray hairs and whatnot; it's the random flare-ups of pain in my kneecaps (reminders of a 1985 scooter accident), the recurring lower back issues, and, most recently, the painful spasms in my neck and shoulders. Granted, most of these are self-inflicted wounds -- legacies of misadventures past or my flagrant disregard for all things ergonomic -- but the passing of years has only sharpened their lingering impacts.

The Modern Lovers - Dignified and Old (from The Modern Lovers, 1976) - "Dignified" is a relative term where I'm concerned.

get outta my way

Having cemented my status as a somewhat well-regarded niche blogger with a daily readership in the upper three digit range, I have decided it is time for me to further expand my media micronation by branching out into the lucrative world of webcomics.

One of the strategic advantages of working in that particular medium is that a lack of talent or an actual knack for humor poses no obstacle to success. Sure, one could take the thought and effort to create something that soars above the sea of mediocrity, but why bother when advertising revenues and a legion of zealous readers can be had by following a simple formula for success?

With that in mind, I present to you, my dear readers, an advance sneak preview of Webcomic^TM:

Gags about Jar Jar Binks, Ben Grimm's penis, and arcane Dungeons & Dragons rules never get tired, honest!

As a member of a codified and commercialized subculture, you owe it to the world to share your self-satisfied "edgy" observations with those who only dream of such glory. (Goth characters are an especially favored vector.)

Enlightened attitudes about respect and tolerance are fine and all, but fag jokes are an evergreen crowd pleaser for the prized 15-45 year old petit conservative manchild demographic. If done correctly, any criticism regarding the patent offensiveness of such "humor" can be passed off under the rubric of being politically incorrect or shouted down by a fan chorus of accusations that the critic "can't take a joke."

In real life, people who willfully engage in a pattern of dickish behavior are rightfully shunned. In the world of webcomics, characters prone to cracking jokes about tossing kittens in woodchippers or poisoning cans of baby formula become the stuff the vicarious nerd-dreams are made of, as they offer frustrated individuals with megalomanical tendencies someone to identify with even as they kowtow to their real-life bosses, parents, or significant others.

Finally, there is one all-important element that no standard template webcomic should be without...

The sassy and sexy -- yet nerd-accessible -- brunette.

Svelte of figure and sharp of tongue, she is more often than not prone to outbursts of comedic violence and acts as the delivery system for cynical wit. For those wishing to change things up a bit, the stock archetype can be expanded to include Asian (alone or in pairs), goth, or redhead variants, or perhaps any and all of the above. That such a character is a creature of fantasy on par with unicorns and jabberwocks matters less than the fact that she is a creature of a particularly marketable fantasy, the "the ideal imaginary girlfriend."

By cosmetically tinkering with the above five panels, I will be able to generate enough material to cover the first three years of a daily published strip. (Or five years, should I decide to run an extended story arc in which a supporting character suffers a horrible tragedy that will allow the lead characters to indulge in consequence free angst-by-proxy while tricking my readers into thinking I'm the next Leo Tolstoy.)

Easy Street, here I come!

The Byrds - So You Want To Be A Rock 'n' Roll Star (from Younger Than Yesterday, 1967) - It sounds like a really great time...until you choke on your own vomit in a Des Moines motel room after playing a twenty year reunion show at the state fair.

The Invaders - Best Thing I Ever Did (from a 1979 single) - And who am I to argue with these West Yorkshire power poppers?

Friday Night Fights: Caveman versus Machine

Neolithic warrior-turned-immortal monster hunter Ulysses Bloodstone has a long way to go and a short time to get there, and of the many talents he has picked up over the course of 10,000 years...

(from The Rampaging Hulk #3, June 1977; by John Warner, Sal Buscema, and Rudy Nebres)
..."patience in dealing with killer robots" is not one of them.

The Strangeways - Wasting Time (from a 1979 single) - Further proving my hypothesis that well-crafted power pop is the true music of the celestial spheres.

(Eternal and invincible.)

got your name, got your number

Like, those graphics are totally trippindicular!
It's 1983, and the home videogame industry is on the verge of a catastrophic collapse. The mad rush to cash in on the videogame craze has led to a market saturated beyond sustainability with substandard product. The bargain bins of Heartland Drug (oh, how I miss that place) are groaning under the weight of hundreds of unsold cartridges priced at a deep discount.

So how did C.B.S. Electronics choose to differentiate Solar Fox, its adequate port of an unremarkable 1981 coin-op title, from the rest of the hastily programmed contenders for the weary consumer's dollar?

By attempting to ride the coattails of an ephemeral popcult phenomenon engendered by a hit novelty song by Frank (and Moon) Zappa, of course...


Solar Fox: The TV Commercial
Solar Fox: The Comic Book Version
(clicking makes it even more bitchin', like totally)
Is the comic book ad an expanded "director's cut" of the television commercial? Or is it akin to one of those novelizations where the professional fan-ficcer author takes liberties with the source material? ("Chewie put a soft paw on Han's shoulder and gazed longingly into his roguish eyes...")

Unfortunately for C.B.S. Electronics, their tantalizing promise of "valley girl in outer space" action was sadly undercut by the utter lack of such within the actual game, and the "excitement" did end abruptly in 1984, when the company, along with most of the other cartridge mills, fell victim to the market implosion they helped bring about.

I was fairly oblivious to the great videogame crash of 1983-84 while it was unfolding, except as a beneficiary to the flood of Atari 2600 games marked down within purchasing reach of an eleven year old with a $10 weekly allowance. At $4.99 a pop, it was easy to build up a substantial library of cartridges. Even if most of the games were utter shit, one of the benefits of being a kid is that one's critical faculties tend to be rather lacking, which meant that even something like Space Jockey (hastily slapped together by the gaming wizards at Quaker Oats) could hold my attention for hours.

(Most of us grow out of such bottomfeeding habits as we get older. The ones that don't tend to be found in places like the scans_daily Livejournal community or the Newsarama forums.)

Occasionally I reget not holding on to my collection of 2600 cartridges, which was scattered to the winds in the great upheval after my mother passed away, but the feeling fades quickly after I revisit some of the more interesting titles via emulation software. Even the most dedicated retrologist is occasionally forced to admit that some things really are better left in the past.

Yeah, given the focus of today's post, I trust you're all probably expecting me to post "Valley Girl" by Frank and Moon Unit Zappa. The truth is that I'm not all that fond of the song, which I find more irritating than anything. Instead we've got the breezy new wave pop theme from 1983 Zappa-free film Valley Girl, which is my wife's default viewing choice when there's nothing else worth watching on cable...

Bonnie Hayes with the Wild Combo - Girls Like Me (from Good Clean Fun, 1982)

...and a sparkling synthpop obscurity...

Circuit 7 - Video Boys (from a 1984 single)

Albums That Meant Something - Part 4 - Dying to Be Written

(from Skeleton Key, Volume 3: Telling Tales, by Andi Watson)
While I never self-identified as a goth back in the embarrassing old days, I did listen to and purchase quite a bit of "goth" music. By the time my twenty-first birthday rolled around, I had already started to evolve past my punk rock persona phase, as the stock set of subcultural trappings felt less like sincere act of rebellion and more like a cul-de-sac of clichés. Musically, too, my tastes had begun to shift from the aggro to the atmospheric -- postpunk, synthpop & wave, anarchopunk stuff mostly.

It was a period when I revisited a lot of previously acquired material that had been filed at the back of my collection when it failed to pass my punk puritan criteria -- a sequence of small epiphanies which collectively added up to a paradigm shift in my listening habits. Even albums I'd liked well enough before, such as Unknown Pleasures and Entertainment, fairly well blindsided me with sublime charm that until then I'd been oblivious to.

So it was with UK Decay. My love of "For My Country," the Luton band's epic and artsy contribution to the Punk and Disorderly compilation, led me to pick up a copy of the "Unexpected Guest" single, whose spookshow subject matter, operatic vocals, and dub-influenced basslines was utterly lost on my ignorant Cock Sparrer-listening self. I passed the single onto a friend, only to ask for it back a couple years later after I'd smartened up...and this time around it sounded like the greatest thing I'd ever heard.

A short while later, Maura and I were flipping through the bins at the Tower Records store in Harvard Square. While the store's prices ran on the high side compared to other shops (which I suspect is the real reason -- not p2p applications -- that the chain eventually went belly up), it did have an section dedicated to indie and import releases. The usual ritual for the import CD stock involved being marked up to extortionate prices for a few months before inevitably being dumped unsold in a discount bin at the end of the aisle...which is where I found the subject of today's post.

It's the original 1992 release of the companion compilation disc to Mick Mercer's Gothic Rock encyclopedia. It was purchased for a fiver on the basis of having an otherwise unobtainable (for me, at least) UK Decay track culled from the band's amazing Rising From the Dread EP, but it also introduced me to (or washed away the taint of negative personal associations from) a half-dozen or so other acts that would loom large in my listening and purchasing habits into the present day; bands like Alien Sex Fiend, Southern Death Cult, Sex Gang Children, and Danse Society that, unlike the guitar rock sound that the gothic rock genre eventually coalesced into, took their cues from punk/postpunk and and ran in a host of strange, dark and quite often playful directions.

Much like Mercer's book (purchased after it got an American release), the Gothic Rock compilation does an excellent job at fostering an appreciation for the scene, music, and participants that doesn't attempt to gloss over the silly and/or pretentious aspects therein. The compilation was eventually given an American release, padded with extra tracks and eventually expanded into a multi-volume set, but I've never felt the need to upgrade from the original. That's partially due to sentimental reasons, but also because I've gotten past the place where I need such roadmaps.

UK Decay - Testament - By all rights, it should topple over the precipice into pretentious self-parody, yet it somehow manages to retain a precarious balance that gives gives me goosebumps every time I listen to it.

Sex Gang Children - Dieche - Fuck you, AFI, and the My Chemical Romance you rode in on, too.

your chariot of the gods awaits

The Chihuahua Men of Sirius-7 walk among us! (At least the caption writer had the integrity to make appropriate use of quotation marks.)

It's one of the oldest tricks in the Handbook of Lazy Journalism: Take a current hot trend or media property, find a way to tie it back to some tangentially-related wire story, and from there stitch together a Frankenstein's monster consisting of equal parts press release and "news of the weird" item:

Joe Q. Jackson's skin has a pronounced greenish hue -- not because of gamma radiation, but because he has a rare skin disease. Few sufferers of the excruciatingly painful disease live past the age of thirty, but analysts are expecting Universal's The Incredible Hulk to break box office records when it premieres this Friday!

I know. I missed my true calling in life, but I take comfort in the fact that when I go to sleep each night, I do so free of the shame of trying to use war orphans and progeria victims to promote Sex in the City or the latest biblioturd squeezed out by Dan Brown.

If one were to take the tried and true formula outlined above and apply it to the slow-pitch softball arena of tweener mags at a time when the collective popcult consciousness was hyper-saturated with all things paranormal, the results would most likely resemble "Space: The Final Frontier" from the April 1978 of Pizzazz Magazine.

The article is a undercooked shepherd's pie of science fact, pseudo-scientific braggadocio, and a host of facile sci-fi references designed to kickstart the atrophy of the younger crowd's critical faculties, thus preparing them for the coming Reagan years and beyond...

(I've been referred to as "the Lysenko of retrologists.")

Dr. Hynek, whose twin careers of astronomer and "ufologist" can best be described as a long quest to have one's cake and eat it too, is absolutely right. It is far easier for me to imagine having my mind blown by some childlike alien Moog-and-laser-show enthusiasts than it is for me to imagine living under a militant imperial regime built on the ashes of a great republic.

In the year 2000, you will commute to work in your own personal Death Star! (Until the Alderaan branch office gets draconically downsized, that is.)

The musical portion of today's program is the stuff that myths are made of...

"There came a time when the Old Rock Gods died! The prog set died with the boogie rockers! The coked-out corporate behemoths perished, locked in battle with the flowers of anarchy unleashed! It was the last days for them! An ancient era was passing to the polyphonic waves of synthesized sound! Thus the New Wave of Gods were born!"

Nina Hagen - Gods of Aquarius (from ...in Ekstase, 1985)

Tubeway Army - Praying to the Aliens (from Replicas, 1979)

lovelockean combat

Years before the Odinson mixed it up with Ego the Living Planet or the Autobots struggled against Unicron's Orsonwellesian might, the Big Red Cheese found himself going mano-a-planeto with a sentient planetary body which may be familiar to most of you...


"Captain Marvel Battles the World" (from Captain Marvel Adventures #148, September 1953; by Otto Binder & C.C. Beck) is narrated by Earth itself. (For some reason I imagine Earth sounding just like Sterling Holloway.) After a quick introduction guaranteed to outrage the creationist crowd...

Teach the controversy!
...the third planet from the sun outlines its grievances with the rapacious parasites that infest its crust:

YEAH!
In retaliation against those who have ravaged and plundered and ripped it and bit it, stuck it with knives, et cetera, et cetera, the Earth plays some meteorological hardball...

President McCain's environmental policy in action.
Forget carbon emissions and CFCs, the real "inconvenient truth" is that the Earth hates the human race...which is why it is our solemn duty to beat the planet into submission for the sake of corporate profits humanity.

Earth's global warming gambit is foiled by Captain Marvel, who evaporates an ice meteor in the upper atmosphere in order to restore Earth's cloud cover (while worsening the greenhouse effect, providing a catalyst for massive tropical storms, and causing massive coastal flooding. Eh, it happens).

Not the type of heavenly body to be put off by a minor setback, Earth attempts to shatter the cities and works of man by slamming a couple of glaciers together with tremedous force, sending destructive shockwaves across the face of the globe. This plan also fails due to Marvel's intervention, which takes the form of a giant felt suppository crammed up the Earth's south pole.

Captain Marvel: Glacial Proctologist
This indignity only serves to further fan the flames of Earth's anger, and in its rage unleash a cataclysm on a continental scale of improbability...

The elation upon finishing the Panama Canal was short-lived.
...which might have worked, except for the fact that wild implausibility is the coin of Marvel's realm and the basis for all transactions conducted therein. Unprecedented devastation unleashed by a rogue continent set adrift? Big deal. It's nothing that can't be fixed with some glue and a little elbow grease...

"It's a shame about the Falklands being obliterated, but no one but the Brits, Argentines, and some puffins gave a rat's ass about them, anyhow."
Realizing that half-measures will not do when faced with the World's Mightiest Mortal, Earth decides to pull out all the stops and simultaneously unleash the entire gamut of global catastrophe in order to put an end to its human infestation problem. Before the fireworks can commence, however, a renegade comet crashes the festivities and threatens to pulverize the poor Earth.

Fortunately for the hapless planet, Marvel isn't the type of guy to hold a grudge, and applies a little Atomic Age know-how (long on infatuation, short on realizing the consequences) to save the day...

Anti-nuke activists are just a bunch of killer comet-loving hippies.
The comet is destroyed (with only a 10,000% increase in global cancer rates following Earth's passage through the plutonium-laced debris cloud; Marvel is a strict utilitarian), and a chastened Earth is treated to a sanctimonious lecture by the Moon, who, it should be pointed out, lobbied hard for restricted community status after the Apollo 11 landing. "I do think humans are cute; I just think they should be cute somewhere else."

"Besides, what do they have -- another century or two left before the species offs itself? I can wait it out."
1919 - Earth Song (from a 1984 EP; collected on The Complete Collection, 2001) - Crunchy goth fare reminiscent of Killing Joke's punkier stuff. Comrade Highlander posted a rip of the entire EP a few months back, and while the hard copy of the collection is currently out of stock, the mp3 version can be downloaded from either Amazon or eMusic.

Blue Cheer - Ecological Blues (from Oh! Pleasant Hope, 1971) - Blue Cheer's heavy-duty blues-rock sound (and their cover of "Summertime Blues" on 1968's Vincebus Eruptum LP in particular) are frequently cited as one of the seminal influences on the heavy metal genre. While it's a valid observation, it does overstate things (as most proto-genre assertions tend to do) and overlooks the bizarro-psych side of the band as represented by this head-scratcher of a musical timepiece.

The Gun Club - Eskimo Blue Day (from Pastoral Hide and Seek, 1990) - ...and occupying the genre shadowlands between today's offerings from 1919 and Blue Cheer comes this swamp-punk-blues cover of one of Jefferson Airplane's better efforts (as opposed to the two tracks by the band that get heavily played on classic rock and oldies format radio).

whisper sweet surprise

On the outside, this unassuming metal box may look like yet another means for Andrew to earn a row of stitches and a tetanus shot, but inside...

...is a veritable treasure trove of 7" wonders from the Me Decade, providing an interesting cross section of funk, rock, and disco flavors of the moment.

It's another one of Maura's estate sale discoveries, purchased a decade ago, then pushed to a corner of attic due to my lack of a functioning turntable. The organization and selection of the singles in the box makes me wonder if it wasn't part of an actual or aspiring DJ's collection, as it contains all the up-to-the-moment tracks one would expect to hear at any given booze-and-artificial-fabric-fueled wedding reception thrown during the wild years of the Ford Administration.

The only turd in the punch bowl regarding this astonishing acquisition was that the previous owner took rather poor care of the collection, and removed the individual singles from their sleeves and let them rattle loose between cardboard inserts. While some miraculously managed to remain pristine despite the abuse, most have skips, scratches and pops.

I usually take such eccentricites of wear and tear in stride, as they are part and parcel of what gives vinyl its unique charm. I was not thrilled, however, when I discovered that the two b-side tracks by the Buckeye funkateers (a.k.a. the Ohio Players) I had planned on posting today turned out to be sonically mutilated beyond recognition.

Oh, well. There's always Option B, which is sweet indeed...

Sweet - Burn on the Flame (the b-side to the 1974 "Fox on the Run" single) - Nothing like a little classic bubbleglam to kick the summer off on the right rockin' note. I think of it as the Platonic ideal behind the 1980's glam metal scene's host of imperfect shadows.

comedic pyrite

HAHAHAHAHA!
HAHAHAHAHA!
HAHAHAHAHA!
Uh, I don't get it.
Killing Joke - We Have Joy (from Revelations, 1982) - Or a synthetic substitution thereof. At least the music is the authentic stuff of which postpunk nightmares are made.

(The above pun-related tragedies were plucked from the "Dr. Doom Cracks Up" feature in the January 1978 issue of Pizzazz Magazine. Terrible as they may be, they're still funnier than any given Cracked article.)

Friday Night Fights: Into the boards

It's a free-for-all on the ice in this week's installment of Friday Night Fights, as Tamsin Mary Cates, Canadian teenager and interdimensional traveller, schools a member of Chinese vampire hockey team about how the game is really played...

(from Skeleton Key, Vol. 2: The Celestial Calendar by Andi Watson)
Skeleton Key also has the distinction of being Maura's favorite comic series ever, and while nothing will ever surpass my affections for Date With Debbi, I have to concur that Andi Watson's gorgeously illustrated mix of whimsical fantasy and often painful reality is a stellar example of comics at their very best.

The Rude Kids - The Hockey Game (from The Worst of The Rude Kids: A Pardonless Collection, 1998) - Here's a thematically appropriate slice of classic Swedish punk to round things out.

the assassin bug

No nostalgic or philosophical musings today, just a tip of the hat to one of the Great Moments in Comic Book History^TM: Captain America engaged in a life and death struggle with the VW Beetle that crashed though the window of his third-story Brooklyn apartment:

(from Captain America #222, June 1978; by Steve Gerber, Sal Buscema, John Tartag, and Mike Esposito)
Was it meant to symbolize the American auto worker's sense of anomie as the industry attempted to cope with the flood of cheap, fuel-efficient imports?

Or was it another example of a writer jettisoning all pretense of plausibility in order to shoehorn an ill-considered "clever" idea into a story?

(Since it is the late Steve Gerber we're talking about, it could go either way.)

Tin Machine - Working Class Hero (from Tin Machine, 1989) - I've noticed that revisionist music historians have tried to make the claim that Bowie's Tin Machine phase was anything other than a embarrassing failure of colossal proportions. These revisionist music historians are out of their flipping gourds, as this mutilation of a beloved John Lennon track clearly illustrates.

Jimmy Edwards - Love Bug Crawl (from Rockin' Bones: 1950s Punk and Rockabilly, 2006) - After his agent stopped taking his calls, Herbie was forced to paint himself purple and hire out as a contract killer in the late 1970's in order to fund his illegal fuel additive habit. A high-pitched "BEEP-BEEP" and the tinny hum of a four-cylinder engine revving up was the last thing many a snitch or mob rival heard before being cut down by a sub-compact angel of death.

feels so right it can't be wrong

Here's a look into the happier days of the Marvel Universe, as drawn by the late, great Dave Cockrum for a 1978 issue of Pizzazz Magazine...

Unfortunately for Ol' Jade Jaws, it doesn't matter how many gamma rays one has been belted with, there's no competing with Burt Reynolds's dark forest of chest hair and roguish grin.

It's hard to explaining to the post-Fonz generation just how huge a phenomenon Happy Days was with kids back in the day. Seen today, outside of the historical context, the show comes off as a typical hackneyed 70's sitcom (complete with canned catchphrases and a requisite "cool" character able to warp plot logic though the power of pandering to the audience's affections).

In the late 70's, though, it was a religion, practiced in playgrounds and lunch rooms across the nation by Garanimalistic or OshKosh B'Goshed child acolytes who recounted, discussed, and acted out scenes from the most recent installment of the faux-retro scripture. The Mallachi brothers (featuring former Sidehacker Michael Pataki) ...the fire at Arnold's... the Fonz on waterskis episode that spawned the term "jump the shark"...fucking Chachi for chrissakes... were all the subject of much nail-biting speculation and wonder.

It seems so quaint (and embarrassing) in retrospect, but it was the type of viewer-targeted submission hold that studio execs and television producers would sacrifice their first born children to replicate.

Dinah Shore - It Had to Be You (from Holding Hands at Midnight, 1955) - Because no one else but Stroker Ace would do.

Nuclear Assault - Happy Days (from the Good Times Bad Times NA EP, 1988; collected on Assault & Battery, 1997) - Because I need something soothing to act as a counterwight to the fist-pumping aggression I feel whenever I listen to Dinah Shore's music.

do you remember rock and roll video

The object of the I "Heart" is Robert Smith. Maura wanted to keep her old headboard, so she has to keep the shame as well.
V-66, "The Beat of Boston," was the short-lived, but sorely missed local music video station that was the only thing that made 8th grade tolerable for this poorly socialized example of nerdy adolesecent angst...

A time machine and a dope slap, that's all I'm asking for.
It lasted for little more than a year before selling out to the Home Shopping Network in late 1986, but it was a blast while it lasted. Its playlist was ecumenical, if a bit too skewed at times to the AOR end of the spectrum (though the magic of music video could make the most commercial drek palatable by adding a visual narrative or sci-fi art direction), yet it remained fiercely parochial (sometimes embarassingly so), spotlighting music by a host of local acts of the day.

Some, like the Del Fuegos and Til Tuesday, mananged to register on the national scene. Others, like Ball and Pivot, November Group, and the Dogmatics, never broke free of the Boston-Providence axis. V-66 had a tremendous impact on the youth of this region. Mere mention of it can inspire near-fatal bouts of nostalgia in those who were enraptured by its low-budget UHF spell, yet much (but not all) of the recorded evidence has been lost to the ages. (The same goes for the "I'm Robillard and I'm from Mars" PSA that used to run early weekend mornings on WCVB.)

The music can still be found with a bit of digging (and it would be nice if CDBaby would get around to reissuing the Lizzie Borden & The Axes compilation), and this promises to be a fucking hoot:



Ordinarily, I'd be the last person on earth to defend the use of that particular Starship song, but a Bostonized version of the track did figure heavily into the station's promotional efforts. Hey, it was the mid-1980's, what can I say?

Speaking of awkward memories, there is one track and video that represents the V-66 era above all others. It's the one that inevitably gets mentioned whenever the subject of V-66 is brought up. While I cannot produce the video, which was shot on Newbury Street (and featured a feminist-positive image of woman as the devil), I did recently manage to locate a copy of the LP featuring the song, a dangerously infectious bit of Latin-inflected new wave pop that has been indelibly burned into the brains of a generation of Bay Staters.

New Man - Bad Boys (from New Man, 1986) - Like getting sacpunched by the zeitgeist of twenty-two years ago....

(This post is dedicated to thirdmate and Jack. They know damn well why.)

reach out and touch faith

My wife bought the above painting at a yard sale last Saturday. My first reaction upon seeing it was "Jesus was a human resources director?"

After some consideration, though, I realized that it made a lot of sense...

Good afternoon, please have a...no, no, you don't need to kneel or indulge in glossolalia, honest...please, have a seat.

Now you may be wondering why I wanted to meet with you. It's about your conduct as a member of this organization. I've reviewed your performance records and it seems to me that your actions frequently contradict our core precepts.

What? You say you've only been following what's in the employee handbook? Ah, I see. The thing is that when we were a small start up in the Levant, we never imagined the eventual scope or longevity of our operations, and so there's a lot of things in the manual that weren't meant to be taken outside very specific cultural and historical contexts. Because I was otherwise occupied at the time, the actual task of writing fell upon subcontractors, and their individual biases are reflected in the finished product.

And don't even get me started about the translation errors, my friend.

Confusing minutae aside, however, the handbook is very clear about the essence of our mission statement -- pacifism, forgiveness, forbearance, and compassion -- none of which seem to be reflected in your behavior as member of this organization.

Militarism? "Prosperity Gospel?" A rush to pass harsh judgement upon others? Turning spirituality into a pyramid scheme?

Really? This is really what you think we're supposed to be about, you id---

...

I'm sorry, forgive me. Occasionally my temper gets the best of me. (Just ask the moneylenders.) Be that as it may, it seems that your self-righteous fixation on details and has led you to overlook our actual mission statement, the "spirit," if you will, of what we actually stand for. In doing so, you have -- either intentionally or not -- propagated a creed that is fundamentally opposed to ours.

Even worse, you've presumed to do so in both my name and the name of this organization.

Though it pains me to do so, I must hand you this official reprimand. Think upon your mistakes and learn from them.

Go in peace.

Yeah, Jesus is quite the softie, unlike his father, who'd bring down plagues and lightning bolts on anyone caught accessing MySpace on company time.

King Missile - Jesus Was Way Cool (from Mystical Shit, 1990) - The Gospel According To That One Stoner That Shows Up At Every College Party.

Depeche Mode - Personal Jesus (from Violator, 1990) - The Song Guaranteed To Be Played At Every College Party That One Stoner Shows Up At (Also, "Love Shack" and "She Sells Sanctuary". I'm not dating myself at all.)

never mind the mammary papilla

Hey, have you heard the news?

Truly a sad day for anarchists and enthusiasts of visible nipples alike.

While Farrah-mania never recovered from the Crash of '78, gossip columnist Cindy Adams's hyperbolic pronouncement of punk's demise in the June 1978 issue of Pizzazz Magazine turned out to be somewhat exaggerated.

During the anemic days just prior to punk's commercialized resurrection in the mid-1990's, my friends and I used to joke that "punk is dead...and we're maggots feeding on its rotting corpse." Punk music and fashion may have become codified and commodified, but the underlying philosophy -- the demystification of process and rejection of authority -- remains valid despite decades of exploitation and misappropriation.

Crass - Punk Is Dead (from The Feeding of the 5000, 1978) - Representing the disgusted anarchopunk perspective.

The Exploited - Punk's Not Dead (from Punks Not Dead, 1981) - Representing the tribalist street punk perspective.

The Vandals - The Day Farrah Fawcett Died (from Fear of a Punk Planet, 1990) - I'm more of a Cheryl Ladd guy, myself.

und wenn ich heute

B-Side Sunday is back, and featuring 100% more Falcotropic goodness than ever!

Falco - Maschine Brennt (12" Remix) (the b-side of 1983's "On the Run" 12-inch single)

Don't look for an explanation, because there is none -- just some plastic new wave disco from the finest rapper ever to emerge from Austria.

There was a German woman in my extended circle of college acquaintances, and I once asked her if she'd was familiar with the late Johann "Falco" Hölzel's body of work.

"He's Austrian," she answered in voice thick with Teutonic disdain. "I'm German." Before I could apologize for the affront to her heritage, she quietly followed up with "It was the worst concert I ever attended."

doesn't mean it's understood

Do you hate traffic jams? Sure, we all do!

But did you know that congested highways are just one symptom of a larger problem?

Now while some would blame overdevelopment and poor civic planning, the willingness of health care providers to boost profits at the expense of patients, and the widespread reluctance to invest in public transportation and infrastructure, others see a different cause...

Yep, overpopulation is the problem, but lest one misconstrue this as advocacy of a pro-choice, pro-contraception platform, some clarification is in order...

It's not a question of too many people, but of too many of the wrong type of people. While it would be gauche to state outright the definition of such, there's a reason the Pew Hispanic Research Center is cited in the body of the text, and not relegated to an asterisked footnote like the other data cited was.

These veiled words of caution came courtesy of the following coalition....

...consisting of various interrelated "astroturf" organizations and a publishing house (whose biggest claim to fame is releasing an English-language edition of this charming piece of psuedo-literary agitprop), most of which are linked to this bunch of fun lovin' folks.

Interestly enough, this attempt to put a more socially and environmentally palatable face on nativism and xenophobia ran in the June 23, 2008 edition of The Nation, the venerable progressive periodical which claims to be "a wholly owned subsidiary of [its] own conscience." I guess the question is "at what point does the need for advertising revenue override moral integrity?" Especially when one considers that this isn't the first time the publication has cut such a deal.

The Specials - Doesn't Make It Alright (from The Specials, 1979) - At least I can depend on these purveyors of fine two-tone not to disappoint.

Friday Night Fights: Gamma Beach Party

SHARK BITES TEEN HULK
TEEN HULK PUNCHES SHARK
TEEN HULK AND SHARK TEAM UP TO WIN THE TITLE OF 'BIG KAHUNA'
That's the Hulk movie they should have made -- Dwayne Hickman as Ned Talbot, Annette Funicello as Betsy Ross, Jody McCrea as Rick Jones, Vincent Price as The Leader, and, of course, Paul Lynde as General "Thunderbolt" Ross.

I swear, sometimes it's like those studio people are allergic to making money...

Jack Nitzsche - The Lonely Surfer (from The Lonely Surfer, 1963) - MOONDOGGY SMASH!

Joe Harnell - Main Title (from The Incredible Hulk TV OST, 1978) - Strings, horns, and polyester pathos as only a 1970's theme song can deliver. Accept no substitutes.

(The biggest Kahuna of them all.)