I should be jumpin' shoutin' that I made it all this way

Guess which reclusive music and pop culture blogger turned 35 today?

Funny, I don’t feel older. A few of my peers have a pathological fear of aging and fight tooth and nail with the process, leading to a series of increasingly ludicrous gestures calculated to fend off the encroachment of the long, gray twilight minute by precious minute. It seems kind of futile to me, this massive expenditure of energy in order to delay the inevitable. My mother spent her thirties engaged in such a struggle, and it killed her in the end. She was 37 when she passed away, two years older than I am now.

It’s a cliché, but true nonetheless: You are only as old as you feel. (High cheekbones do help, though.) Andrew at 35 isn’t much different than Andrew at 25, or even Andrew at 19. I’m a bit wiser…I think. My responsibilities have increased, but they are less a burden than a price willingly paid for achieving certain aspirations. I don’t begrudge the growing cluster of gray hairs in my buzzcut’s little forelock; I’m too busy enjoying what I have while I have it.

The Clash – Gates of the West (from a 1979 single, collected on Super Black Market Clash, 1994) – Equivocation in the face of success, something I’m well acquainted with. “But just like them we walk on and we can't escape our fate.” Perfect.

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Today also happens to be Mike “Mikester” Sterling’s birthday as well. Progressive Ruin has long been one of my favorite comics blogs, an always interesting glimpse into the world of funnybooks from the perspective of a fan and retailer blessed a great sense of humor and ample common sense. Poor Mike has been buffeted about lately by the comics internet peanut gallery over his assertions that basing orders on intangibles like Marvel’s capricious marketing methods and unforeseeable media factors is very a risky business. Seeing as Mike has some affection for Swamp Thing, and Chris Sims has seen fit to resurrect this old meme, I put together this little birthday .jpg for the poor guy:

The Chameleons UK – Swamp Thing (from Strange Times, 1986) – Is it just me, or does that guitar lick at the opening sound like it was cribbed from Jerry Reed’s “Amos Moses’? Next up, Hoyt Axton’s “Jealous Man” and its influence on Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”

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I saw that comics legend Arnold Drake has passed away at age 83. He was most famous for his work on the original Doom Patrol, the ending of which became the source code for subsequent superheroic Götterdämmerungs. It’s a shame that the gravitas of tragic heroism Drake bought to the team’s demise seems to have eluded the current generation of imitators, who focus more on shock value than substance. (Grant Morrison being the exception, as Seven Soldiers #0 has shown.)

Drake was also the writer behind one of my all-time favorite series, Stanley and His Monster, a deceptively sophisticated “kiddie” humor strip published by DC in the mid-to-late 60’s, begun as a back-up feature in The Fox & The Crow before taking over the title with issue #109. The series is in dire need of the Showcase black and white “phonebook” reprint treatment.

Here’s Drake’s “ought-to biography” from the letters page of Stanley and His Monster #109, in which reveals he was a man after my own heart, and here’s one of my favorite comics panels of all time, showing that good food and friendship can overcome the differences between a boy, a giant purple monster, and Napoleon’s ghost (not a giant spectral penis, as a certain woman I live with seems to think he resembles) :

Life should be like that panel, don’t you think?

Queen – You’re My Best Friend (from A Night at the Opera, 1975)