strange encounter

In a world where Super-Dads can't understand their Super-Sons....

"Don't blame me, son. Blame Trojan."
...and Super-Sons can't understand their Super-Dads...

Tennessee Williams presents Bat on a Hot Tin Roof!
...there is a place committed to bridging the Super-Generation Gap; a place called...

ENOYREVE
Pronounce it however you like; Enoyreve is a judgement-free zone. (But please spell the name correctly on the check for the non-refundable admission fee. Our accountant is a real hard-ass.)

You will be placed under the singular guidance of resident guru Dr. Timothy Zamm...

Fashions by Desaad, hairstyle by Oliver Queen
...a disciple of Master Bob Haney who has earned non-degree certificates from some of finest community colleges and correspondence schools in the Tri-State area.

Zamm's unique approach to family therapy includes such visionary techniques such as meditative beard-stroking, full immersion bikini sessions of "light as a feather, stiff as a board," as well as the Connery method of backhand faceslapping...

...and later, "White Night" drills and free Kool-Aid for everybody!
...all designed to challenge one's preconceptions in the most uncomfortable manner imaginable.

Subtext, what...ah, you know the drill...
If the Funky Robot group dance sessions or the Joe Besser-inspired pinching encounters...

Therapy or fetish? Only Dr. Zamm knows, and he's keeping it under his dashiki.
...fail to achieve the necessary breakthrough, our radical "killer-android-armed-with-nerve-gas" therapy...

"I respect that it's your thing, brother, but your toxic death cloud is decidedly unmellow."
...is available to those who wish to take things to a higher level. Nothing inspires a little father-son bonding like some rogue WMDs. (They don't even have to be real ones, either. Just ask the Bushes.)

ENOYREVE -- committed to bringing Super-Families together since 1974. Don't take out word for it; listen to the testimonial by these satisfied seekers of Super-Enlightenment...

...and then the acid kicked in.
Sponsored by World's Finest Comics #224 (July-August 1974), purchased by a young Andrew for 35 cents at a local flea market. Some childhood traumas will never heal, no matter how much masculine dance or pinch therapy one undergoes.

The Wipers - No Generation Gap (from Over the Edge, 1983) - In a fair world, The Wipers would be more than a source of esoteric namedropping by music geeks or a reliable source of cover song material. It's not that the Portland indie rockers are particularly unappreciated as they're underappreciated, mentioned with reverence but never reaching the same levels of fan devotion as many other less-worthy objects of college radio worship.

The Ramones - Psycho Therapy (from Subterranean Jungle, 1983) - I got a chance to see The Ramones when they played at (the now long-gone) Citi in the December of 1990. I spent most of the evening in the company of the most annoying twerp ever to crack open a Dungeon Master's Guide. The club was packed with jocks from Boston University who wanted to check out "that mosh pit shit" and my spectacles were smashed during the course of the festivities.

Afterwards, I had to walk a mile in the snow from Mishuam Station to my home. A shitty experience all around, but I did get to see The Ramones play live and up close, which made the plague of hassles entirely worthwhile.

Friday Night Fights: Rush 'N' Attack

It's friday night, cats and kittens, which means it's time for a little realpolitik action with Black Canary, Master of International Diplomacy!

(from Justice League #3, July 1987; by Giffen, DeMatteis, Maguire & Gordon)
Now that's what I call détente....

The Dents - Not Through with You (from Time for Biting, 2006) - Up for some kickass parochial punk rawk? Maura caught them performing at a Boston Derby Dames a couple years back and their album has been on heavy houshold rotation ever since.

study in scarlet

Happy birthday, Mr. Sims! I tried to get the Baroness, but she was already booked to appear at a John McCain fundraiser.

808 State - In Yer Face (from Ex:El, 1991) - Techno grooves that hit like unto a thing of iron...or a thrown car battery.

Lalo Schifrin - Main Titles (from the Enter the Dragon OST, 1973) - Facekicking it up old school.

and off they go

I was born in 1972, and my formative years were split between the self-asorbed malaise of the Me Decade and the superficial glitter of the Greed Decade. It was fun time to be a kid, as long as you discount the nuclear war anxiety, plaid chinos, Foreigner songs....

...and toy cartoons. Those fruits of the FCC's (at Reagan's behest) removal of restrictions on maximum advertising time allowed toy manufacturers to target their sales pitch to the tykes though program-length commercials posing as poorly-animated syndicated cartoon shows. Even as a kid, I thought they were pretty stupid and far tamer than what happened in actual backyard play sessions, though I did collect and play with some of the featured plastic gee-gaws.

G.I. Joe was a special favorite. Its superheroic presentation (with code names and colorful costumes) of ostensibly "real" military professions and hardware was an easy sell to a kid who was obsessed with comic books and dreamed of following in the footsteps of his war hero father. My brother and I didn't follow the script as laid out in the cartoon and licensed Marvel comic book series, but instead crafted our own (very derivative) characterizations and scenarios, which prefigured the role playing games that would supplant action figures as our hobby of choice.

All of my old figures, along with a lot of other popcult artifacts I'd sacrifice an eye to regain, were lost in the crazy period after my mother's death. My brother did hang on to, or rediscover, a handful of mostly-broken figures which rest in the hulk of a Cobra Terrordrome we pulled out of a neighbor's trash and which is now collecting dust in a corner of my grandma's attic.

I've purchased the occasional vintage or reissued figure or vehicle for reasons of nostalgia or lingering sentimental value, though I've generally avoided the totemic fetishization of childhood diversions that affects too many of my peers. I understand the allure of employing the disposable income of one's adult self to try to recapture (or to hold on to) the stuff of one's youth, but it's a path fraught with the risk of crossing over into dogma and obsession, long nights spent scanning eBay listings and arguing over minutae in discussion section of Optimus Prime's Wikpedia page.

Or worse, using facile references to Thundercats or The Inhumanoids as shorthand for real humor.

There is a certain sense of victory in scoring a coveted prize toy twenty-five years after the fact, but it's a hollow victory....unless you're talking about a set of these beauties.

Sick Of It All - G.I. Joe Headstomp (from Blood, Sweat, and No Tears, 1989) - "Headstomp?" Wasn't he the Joes' civil affairs and community relations specialist?

The Clash - Ivan Meets G.I. Joe (from Sandinista! 1980) - Revisionist rock historians be damned, there is only one word that effectively describes Sandinista!

That word is hubris.

Finally, no musical tribute to G.I. Joe would be complete without some Cold Slither...

I heard that Buzzer tried to get the original lineup together to play at this year's Crüe Fest. Zartan held out for too much money, however, so they decided to replace him with Ronnie James Dio for the tour.

Zartan & The Dreadnoks - Cold Slither - Obtained from here, which also has an alternate version and lyrics for the karaoke-minded.

a hell of world

There will be no installment of B-Side Sundays this week, as the temperature in the attic is currently fluctuating between "blast furnace" and "stellar core" temperature levels. While there are circumstances where I would certainly risk spontaneous combustion for the sake of my beloved readers, said circumstances do not include "searching through the bins for that one Shakespears Sister twelve-incher I bought back in 1992."

So I'm just going to throw out this Simsean philosophical question...


...and this utterly-disposable-yet-endearing techno-rock musical annotation, instead:

Republica - Kung Fu Movies (from Speed Ballads, 1998)

I'll have one of those

I recently picked up the G.I. Joe 25th Anniversary two-pack featuring Tomax and Xamot, Cobra's resident Corsican twins and leaders of the elite Crimson Guard. Though my days of nerdy impulse purchases are largely behind me, I splurged on this particular pair of action figures in the spirit of brotherly bonding. My brother will get the Tomax figure and I'll hold on to the Xamot one (as we share the distinction of being the sibling with the facial scars).

Hey, it's cheaper and more sanitary than getting matching tattoos, all right?

While I was struggling to free the toys from their hermetically-sealed plastic sarcophagus, something on the back of the package caught me eye. It was an advertisement for a mail-in offer. The offer in itself wasn't remarkable, but rather its interestingly phrased title...

Unfortunate? Yes, but almost certainly unintentional, even given the country's ongoing slide into the reactionary grip of rampant militarism and social conservatism.

It got me to thinking, however, what role an "Operation: Rescue Doc" would play on the modern battlefield. Probably something similar to this...

(Your are free to choose whether to click or not.)
Were you aware that Snake Eyes was a dues-paying member of NARAL? Well, now you know, and as they say, knowing is half the battle.

Jello Biafra & Mojo Nixon - Will the Fetus Be Aborted? (from Prairie Home Invasion, 1994) - YEE-EFFING-HAH!

The Mekons - Born to Choose (from Born to Choose, 1993) - "Protect the unborn, beat on a whore" -- a succinct and accurate summation of the inherent paradox that underlies anti-choice ideology. A bit on the reductive side, you say? Probably, but guess what? I don't give a flying fuck when it comes to those bigoted, hypocritical zealots. They can wallow in the stink of their own twisted dogma till even the flies drop dead from disgust, but they have no business dictating matters of public health or making individual personal decisions for the rest of us.

beat the clock

In case you've forgotten the drill, I'll explain it so even Chris Sims could understand it...

SPRING FORWARD!
FALL BACK!
The first couple days following the legislatively-mandated tinkering with the natural temporal order are always the worst. The extra hour of daylight is nice enough, I suppose, but it's certainly not worth having to get up an hour earlier.

The KLF - What Time Is Love? (LP Mix) (from The White Room, 1991) - The simplest way to shake off the daylight savings blues is to crank up The JAMs, melonfarmers! Trust in the Timelords, for they possess wisdom far beyond what the minds of mere mortals could comprehend.

Friday (K)night Fights: The Hero You're Dreaming Of

(from Batman #111, October 1957; by Edmond Hamilton, Sheldon Moldoff, and Stan Kaye)
Why is Batman wearing medieval plate armor (complete with bat-insignia) and punching lions in the face? To conceal the radiation-proof suit he's wearing underneath from the crooks he's pursuing.

It makes perfect sense to me. In fact, the sense of causality is positively lucid compared to other comic stories from that era.

Link Wray - Batman Theme (from Rumble! The Best of Link Wray, 1993) - It's those few, brief spoken word parts that really make this version outshine all others. (Well, that and Link Wray's exceptional guitar work.)

(Viva Bahlactus!)

visual synergy: come and get your cheer on

Such is the cheertopian power of Bring It On Week that I've decided to make a second contribution to Chris Sims's celebration of all things cheertastic with a post spotlighting some music videos with a pronounced pro-pom-pom slant.

Toni Basil - Mickey - Though I featured this video in a previous visual synergy post, there was no way I could omit posting it given its historical importance in the development of cheer-crossover entertainment.


J. Geils Band - Centerfold - No, that's not former MTV VJ Martha Quinn. For a more in-depth discussion of the song's impact on a pre-pubescent Andrew, read this.


Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit - I liked this song better when it was titled "More Than a Feeling" and performed by Boston.


Nada Surf - Popular - THIS JUST IN: High school is a clique-dominated sharktank. Shocking, isn't it? Also, isn't there supposed to be something about how Sasha plays with Britt in there somewhere? And that we need to always wear sunscreen?


Narcotic Thrust - I Like It - Those stories about what goes on at Montessori schools? All true, I'm afraid.

The Moog Cookbook - Smells Like Teen Spirit (from The Moog Cookbook, 1995) - Come as you are to the Korova Milk Bar, my be-flanneled and bowler-hatted droogies. The first round of drencrom is on me.

Racey - Kitty (from The Best of Racey, 2004) - True fact: Toni Basil's "Mickey" is actually a cover song. It was originally penned, with the title "Kitty," by the Chinn and Chapman songwriting team for the bubbleglam act Racey. When adapting the song to fit a female vocalist, Basil opted to go with "Mickey" -- a reference to Monkee Mickey Dolenz, who the dancer/choreographer had worked with in the 1968 movie Head.

wanna go my way

Comics blogging wunderkind and master of facekick-fu Chris Sims has, in a fit of apparent delirium, decreed that this week shall be known as Bring It On week, a seven day celebration of 2000's cheer-tastic cinematic epic and its diminished returns, direct-to-video sequels.

Normally, I'd be the one trying to talk the victim of such a mania down from the ledge of unhealthy obsession, or at the very least keep well clear of the vortex of madness, but the prospect of becoming a bona fide "cheerfiliate" was too tempting an opportunity to pass up.

Besides, I actually kind of like the film.

Okay, maybe "like" is too strong a word. "Genially tolerate" would be more accurate. If the wife, who does sincerely like the film, is watching it on the big TV downstairs, there's a better than even chance I won't leave the room. I do think Chris was a bit off-base when he labeled it the "greatest film franchise in the history of cheersploitation." Semantic arguments about the definition of "franchise" aside, it should be apparent to anyone versed in that micro-genre that the greatest cheersploitation flim ever is, hands down, 1984's Gimme an 'F', with The Pom Pom Girls pulling a close second, followed by Bring It On in third place.

(I am willing to cut Chris some slack in regards to his hyperbolic claims, as he is but a youngster still, and lacks the scars this writer earned in the USA Up All Night and 80's cable TV trenches. It's true what they say, you never see the Rhonda Shearer segment with your name on it.)

What Bring It On lacks in T&A-itude and crass sub-Animal House humor, however, it makes up for in, for lack of a better word, "heart." Chris provides a detailed recap of the film here, but suffice to say that very rarely has a film managed to so successfully address the issues of racial and social inequality in modern America through the vector of perky teens with mini-skirts and bare midriffs shouting school spirit chants and throwing each other in the air...and it manages to do so in a ABC Family-friendly way, too. (There's also a remarkably insightful -- for a teen flick -- examination of the patronizing economics of white liberal guilt in there, too. Go figure.)

Then there's the film's soundtrack. Though consisting by and large of cheer-friendly techno cuts interspersed with then-contemporary R&B and sugary teen-pop tracks (with a requisite cover of Toni Basil's new wave cheer anthem, "Mickey"), there were a couple of pleasant surprises which didn't make it onto the culled-for-the-intended-teen-girl-demographic official soundtrack release.

No worries, though. Andrew's got you covered:

The Leaving Trains - Kids Wanna Know (from Loser Illusion, Pt. 0, 1991; collected on Amplified Pillows, 2005) - An unexpected choice of music to establish a Punky McDreamy romantic interest's socially acceptable non-conformity, but considering the 90's pop-psuedopunk drek the filmmakers could have gone with instead, I'm delighted by the presence of something with some honestly abrasive power.

Of course, if had been me, I'd have gone with either "Violent Sex" or "Temporal Slut" from the band's 1987 Fuck LP.

Bis - Detour (from Social Dancing, 1999) - This collaborative effort between the Glaswegian popsters and Lois Maffeo was used in the flashback sequence where Torrance (Kirsten Dunst) causes the holy "spirit stick" totem to touch the ground on a dare, thus causing her to believe that her reign as spirit squad leader is cursed.

I think I've made it clear in previous posts that I consider Social Dancing to be one of the finest pop albums I've had the pleasure of listening to. I'm not the type to lightly apply the "favorite" tag onto things, but this album certainly qualifies for the honor. It's gotten a bum rap from places such as AMG (which likened it, absurdly, to Haysi Fantayzee's work) because of the deliberate shift in style from the band's brattier early sound. Be that as it may, I found Bis's first album to be charming but grating in large doses, but I found Social Dancing's mix of new wave, indie pop, and trip hop styles -- with some postpunk tossed into the mix by producer Andy (Gang of Four) Gill -- to be nothing short of exceptional from beginning to end.

knew this was a big mistake

Today, we're going to take a musically annotated trip through some of the more interesting ads found within the pages of 1985's Legion of Substitute Heroes Special #1. The comic is a farcical romp starring the 30th Century's most famous also-rans. Most of the humor is more "funny huh" than "funny ha-ha," and presumes that the reader is familiar with LSH minutae, but it does feature some fine art by Keith Giffen (working his unmatched José Muñoz-cribbing mojo).

It's not the type of thing I'd suggest as recommended reading, as those of you who are interested in that sort of thing most likely already read it and those of you who aren't couldn't give two shits about an in-joke-heavy superhero humor comic published twenty-three years ago. Besides, it's not the actual content that we're going to take a look at today, but some lovely enticements for iffy goods and services.

First up is the 1985 Triple Crown winner of the Consumer Fraud, Violation of Animal Protection Statutes, and Personal Liability Lawsuit stakes...

Nothing brings the funny like placing a irritable venomous reptile on your algebra teacher's chair. It's all in good fun, right?

"Freightening," indeed.

Duran Duran - Union of the Snake (from Seven and the Ragged Tiger, 1983) - The end of the line as far as my interest in the band goes, with heavily qualified exception made for "View to a Kill" solely due to its unremitting cheesiness.

I bought my copy of SATRT at a used record store in the winter of 1992. The previous owner had pressed some maple leaves between the inner and outer sleeves. A sweet gesture, but by the time I had come into possession of the LP, the leaves had been pulverized into a fine dust that managed to insinuate itself into every nook and cranny of my bedroom when I went to play the record.

Hvng trbl wth yr nglsh? Mb ths dmn vwls r t blm. Lt ths flks hlp u.

I cn hz a fwnks lssn? N thy sy cmix rdrs r ltrt....

The Noble Knights - Sing a Simple Song (from the What It Is! Funky Soul And Rare Grooves:1967-1977 box set, 2006) - Sly Stone wrote it, King Curtis produced it, you need to listen to it.

You may have hear of needle exchanges, the controversial but forward-thinking programs designed to minimize health risks associated with intravenous drug use. That's all well and good if you're a heroin addict, but what about the poor souls who have been stuck with a backlog of terrible puns, knock-knock jokes, and stale one liners? What options do they have?

"I'll trade you a drag-and-drop ethnic joke for two gags about mothers-in-law." "Throw in a coarse scatalogical pun and we have a deal."

I've found that it's easier to get my jokes from the uncut, pink, sugary source.

The Beau Brummels - Laugh, Laugh (from Introducing the Beau Brummels, 1965) - From the San Francisco folk-rock act's pre-giant-waterfowl period.

Our final featured ad asks a very important question:


I guess my answer would be:

"An interesting footnote in Japanese history that has been romaticized and mythologized by westerner boy-men with leanings toward ex oriente lux attitudes and fetishes for martial arts weapons. Due to media hyper-saturation, whatever aura of coolness ninjas possessed has long-since evaporated, leaving behind just another irritating hipster/fanboy cliché."

The London Funk Allstars - How to Be a Ninja in One Easy Lesson (from Flesh Eating Disco Zombies Vs the Bionic Hookers from Mars, 1996) - Finally, a trip hop album made specifically with Chris Sims in mind.

So concludes today's journey though the comic ads of yesteryear. So, Noseless Pulsar Stargrave, having seen what goods and services were being pitched to comics readers in the mid-eighties, how do you feel about comics fans now?


That's a little harsh, though I can totally see where you're coming from.

Friday Night Fights: I've Kissed Mermaids

As I was putting together yesterday's musical tribute to fallen minor comic characters, two thoughts occurred to me:

1. I'd have bought a monthly Aquagirl comic drawn by George Perez without hesitation.

2. For a character that was essentially a sidekick of a sidekick (and a halfhearted attempt to expand one of DC's less successful superhero franchises) who only appeared (mostly in minor roles) in a couple dozen stories during the eighteen years between her introduction and her death, Aquagirl (a.k.a. Tula) had the best-developed personality of all the Aquaman Family of characters. Granted, the most introverted sea slug would have seemed positively gregarious in comparison to Aquaman's befuddled surliness and Aqualad's agressive blandness, but even outside that shallow grading curve, Tula was pretty remarkable.

She was a "gawky pig-tailed kid" who matured into a strong-willed young woman who was unafraid to cut loose and enjoy herself...


...regardless of what the more staid men in her life thought about such behavior.


It wasn't just a case of being a flighty party girl, either, but was rooted in a sense of self-confidence...

...expressed (not frequently enough, sadly) by a willingness to dive in fist-first...

...and do whatever it took to get the job done.


Not that those qualities helped Tula much when she was caught in a spray of Chemo's toxic puke, but that's comics for you. One minute you're doing the sea-frug in Dr. Dorsal's Deep Sea Discoteque or throttling evil henchmen, and the next you're sucking up a lungful of caustic liquids sprayed into the Upper New York Bay of a parallel earth.

For the musical portion of our program, I need a song that incorporates oceanic imagery as well as the theme of tragic death. Something melancholy, yet oddly playful...

I've got it:

Pixies - Wave of Mutilation (from Doolittle, 1989) - There are only two songs by the Pixies I can bring myself to listen to. This is one. Feel free to try and guess what the other one is.

(Senseless? I think not.)

friends, Romans, kung fu men

From BitterAndrew's Comprehensive Guide to Films That Don't Exist, But Should:

Chop-socky goes classical when a busboy at Rome's Gardenius Szechuanium restauant gets entangled in a plot to assassinate Julius Caesar. The chemistry between the two leads is remarkable, and their different styles of acting complement each other perfectly. Lee's martial arts expertise is on fine display, but even more surprising is the septugenarian Gielgud's ability to deliver a succession of roundhouse kicks without so much as rumpling his toga. It made me wish that he had taken a similar approach with the character of King Louis VII in Becket.

A recut version of the film ran in foreign markets under the title of Appian Way of the Open Palm. Keep your eyes open for a cameo appearance by Jim Kelly (playing the gladiator Blackus Beltus Jononicus). Three stars.

Jack Parnell & His Orchestra - Enter the Dragon (from The Sound Gallery Vol. 2, 1996) - I posted the Lalo Schifrin original version of the classic theme song last spring. Today we have Jack Parnell's no-holds-barred interpretation for those of you who don't mind mixing a little modness into their martial arts enjoyment.

Berto Pisano and Jacques Chaurmont - Kill Them All! (from Beat at Cinecitta Vol. 3, 1999) - This wonderfully-titled track originally appeared on the soundtrack to the exclamatory 1971 Euro-thriller, Kill! and it has that certain Mod Squad/"Gamesters of Triskelion" vibe suitable for all your retro fight and chase sequence needs.

12 Days of Christmas - Day 6: I dreamt unhappy things

In 1966, The Sonics, one of the finest garage bands to come out of the Pacific Northwest, asked "Santa Claus, where have you been?"

The belated answer to their query is:

He took a nasty fall from a third-story window.
He was coldcocked with a telephone by some mobsters after overhearing their nefarious plans.
He was busy helping Sandman (no, not that one, nor that other one, either) fight off an army of invading seal men.
So you see, fellas, Santa has got a lot on his plate at the moment. Don't take it personally if he happened to forget your requests for a brand new car, a twangy guitar, a cute little honey, and lots o' money, okay?

The Sonics - Santa Claus (from the 1999 reissue of 1965's Here Are The Sonics LP)

(Panels courtesy of Christmas with the Superheroes: The Best of DC Digest #22, March 1982 -- a cornucopia of reprinted holiday joy that I loved immensely as a lad, even though the Jack Kirby Sandman story confused the heck out of me.)

12 Days of Christmas - Day 4: goofs of the magi

There are a few reasons why Halloween gets an entire month's worth of posts on Armagideon Time and Christmas gets a measly week (and change). The primary explanation is that Halloween's spooky vibe appeals to me more than the retail industry-driven insanity that Christmas has become. There's also the fact that the Yuletide holiday season has long-since bled through the Black Friday (and, oh, how I hate that descriptor for the day after Thanksgiving) boundary, so that candy corn and toxic light-up skulls immediately segue into artificial evergreen trees, NASCAR^TM ornaments, and Christmas music played 24/7 on the local "oldies" (if by the term you mean Billy Joel's body of work and "Muskrat Love") station.

Too much of a good thing is bad enough. Too much of something that is already ambiguous in nature (not so much Christmas, but the foul dust that preys in its wake) is nigh unbearable. I'm hardly a standard bearer for traditions, but there was a natural, comfortable cadence to the flow of fourth-quarter holiday celebrations -- Halloween's ghoulish revels, Thanksgiving's harvest-tide feast, Christmas's whatever, topped off with New Year's clean break. I'm aware of the cui which bono from the present extended yet accelerated arrangement, but the net effect has been to utterly leech whatever charm the season once possessed.

Yes, I know there are movements to reclaim the "true meaning of Christmas," whatever the hell that's supposed to mean, but the omnipresent crush of marketed holiday cheer is capable of insinuating its way through all petty boundaries. Even the tinkle of my piss off the porcelain plays out the tune of Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmas Time," such is the season's insidious, unrelenting ubiquity.

The final reason why I keep the Christmas holiday festivities here limited to a shorter period of time compared to Halloween's is because of the dearth of material, or rather a dearth of material that hasn't already been posted recently elsewhere. Finding unique Halloween-related material was easy, even with a couple dozen other folks out there working in a similar vein. There's a greater latitude for selecting "spooky" -- which encompasses entire genres -- than for Christmas music, especially after I add the "I like enough to post" qualifier and my desire not to poach on others' turf. So no "Christmas Bop" by T. Rex or Oscar the Grouch's sublime "I Hate Christmas" this time round, even though both tracks made the final cut. I won't even bother with The Pogues' "Fairytale of New York," because it's almost a given that the song will occupy at least half the slots on the Hype Machine's Top 50 as the 25th of December draws closer.

I was horrified to discover that The Damned's "There Ain't No Sanity Clause" had already been posted last Monday over at the always excellent Planet Mondo, which I would have known if I hadn't fallen behind in keeping up with my favorite blogs. Sorry about that, PM. Your write up was far superior to mine, if it's any consolation. John over at Punks on Postcards has also put up a rather nifty Christmas Oi! compliation, which I had debated picking up at a used vinyl store back in the day, but the extortionate price and the presence of tracks by Splodge and The Gonads caused my to stay my hand. AM, Then FM, Mostly Ghostly and Wonderful Wonderblog are all presently offering excellent selections of music from Christmases past, and are well worth checking out, as well, because the odds of seeing OOP Perry Como holiday material here are pretty much nil...

Guys in luchador masks working elements of The Chantays' "Pipeline" and Del Shannon's "Runaway" into a surf instrumental version of a holiday standard? That's more my speed, by far.

Los Straitjackets - God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (from 'Tis The Season For Los Straitjackets, 2002)

Friday Night Fights: Bird Is the Word

(from Wonder Woman v1 #182, May-June 1969; by O'Neil, Sekowsky, and Giordano)
Here we have the Heroine Formerly Known As Wonder Woman using her kung fu to bring down Doctor Cyber's legion of attack birds. It's from the "mod judo" phase of Diana Prince's career, when she traded in her bracelets, golden lasso, and invisible jet for garish 60's fashion wear and a blind mentor from the inscrutable Orient (and I cannot type those two words without hearing them spoken as a Don Adams impersonation of Charlie Chan), the absurdly-named named "I-Ching."

So, to the nattering nabobs of the comics internet who fail to grasp both the history of Wonder Woman and the intrinsic nature of serialized adventure stories, I would like to point out that the conclusion of Amazons Attack, while pretty poorly done, does not constitute the irrevocable destruction of the character any more than the twenty-five odd issues she spent as lame Emma Peel clone (with a sidekick/guru who managed to blend half-assed ex oriente lux clichés with a patronizing racial stereotype) did. (More in-depth discourse on the present controversy can be found here and here.)

Of course, I happen to think mod-judo Diana stories are pretty ginchy -- what with the bird-punching and lesbian hippie B&D villains and all -- in a trash culture sort of way. That's the problem with being a committed retrologist: The abyss gazes also.

The Trashmen - Surfin' Bird (from The Tube City! The Best of The Trashmen, 1992) - Here's some more disposable pop joy from the 60's: a Dionysian mash-up (long before the term was ever coined) of The Rivingtons' "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow" and "The Bird's the Word" from a Minnesota surf rock outfit. (Those crests on Lake Minnetonka, dudes... Totally bitchin'.)

The Puppini Sisters - I Will Survive (from Betcha Bottom Dollar, 2006) - Keeping the retro-novelty pop tradition alive, and I bless 'em for it.

Earle Hagen - Theme to The Mod Squad (from Television's Greatest Hits Vol 1, 1990) - If this tune doesn't instill an irrational desire to chase a cheap hood down a dirty alleyway (that oddly resembles a studio backlot) full of empty cardboard boxes then there's something seriously wrong with you.

(Linc Hayes ain't got nothin' on Bahlactus.)

and sick in the soul

When I was a moderately wee lad, there was an established hierarchy of humor magazines available to the budding ten year old misanthrope. At the top of the pyramid was MAD Magazine, the gold standard for gross-out jokes and popcult parodies. If the newstand didn't have the current issue of MAD, one could lower one's standards a little and settle for Cracked, which was like MAD, but with the desperate air of a stand up comedian dying onstage. In the unlikely event that all copies of both MAD and Cracked had sold out, one might pick up a copy of Crazy, Marvel Comics' blurry mimeograph of a photostat of MAD, and see if there was an issue of CARtoons Magazine hidden behind it.

There was something really wrong about Crazy, and not in a good sense. A lot of it stemmed from the tone, which aped MAD's tried and true template, but aspired to a darker, edgier feel that, quite frankly, was beyond the grasp of the writers, many of whom came out of the Marvel Bullpen and were working against type. If I'm looking for bombastic superhero action and loving attention to Golden Age comics trivia, then Roy Thomas is the guy to go to. For edgy racial/social satire, though? Not so much, as this unnecessary and unfunny sendup of MAD contributor Dave Berg's "The Lighter Side of..." strips, titled "The Lighter Side of Racial Violence," from Crazy #1 (October 1973) demonstrates:

(click on an image to enlarge)
Okay, so it's not so much a joke as an illustrated version of a common reductive argument used by the reactionary set.
Meta-jokes are a nice way to have one's cake of offensiveness and eat it, too. Who is the artist being referred to? Is it Dave Berg or the person attempting a not-quite-passable take on Berg? If it's the former, I don't get it. Berg never tried to be Jack Kirby in his strip, nor did he need to be as it consisted of gags about contemporary American life. I don't see why that would need involve scenes of smashing chairs over ninjas' heads or jumping out of a plane without a parachute. (Unless you happen to be Chris Sims, that is.)
Here we have a guest appearance by Roger Kaputnik, Berg's befuddled, pipe-smoking in-comic avatar. Again, it's not so much a joke as a reactionary cliché given life on the page. "A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. Blah, blah, blah." As a parody of Berg's social commentary, it doesn't really work, as all it presents is a cruder, more ham-fisted version of the the conflict between liberal guilt and middle class conformity that ran though much of his best work, but rather than being insightful (or legitimately poking fun at the cornier aspects of Berg's material), it comes off as nuanced as a fourteen year old boy making armpit farts in study hall.
The whole affair seems forced and disingenous, an attempt to score points off the competition by weak cheese mimicry masked with a claim of satiric intent and quasi-racist undertones. The rest of the issue isn't much better, with (otherwise fine artist) Herb Trimpe attempting his best Jack Davis impersonation for a lame Posiedon Adventure parody, an illustrated rendition of a Jean Shepherd story where the "goofy" art blunts the comedic impact of the text, and an overlong glimpse at the "World of the Future," via fake newspaper articles, that spends eight full pages beating the reader over the head with repeated unfunny jokes about Cleveland, using Jello as a WMD, and animal-human interbreeding. (They tried to tart the feature up with an intro written by Harlan Ellison and drawn by Basil Wolverton, but it's nothing that's going to appear in career retrospectives of either creator.) Oh, and then there's a fumetti strip starring Dick Giordano (as a realtor) scaring Neal Adams (as an average schmoe) about his daughter possibly being raped by a black man:

Very classy, indeed.

The Smiths - That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore (from Meat Is Murder, 1985) - If it ever was in the first place, which I doubt.

Flesh for Lulu - I Go Crazy (from Long Live the New Flesh, 1987) - ...but it's a more acceptable form of insanity than what I dealt with above.

muay thai birthday

Darn, I almost forgot what day it is. Chris Sims, karate bear-kick Zen master and the man behind the always entertaining ISB, celebrated his birthday today.

In commemoration of this blessed day, I called in a few favors and scheduled a celebrity command face-kicking performance. Mr. Sagat, will you do the honors?



When he's not kicking Japanese schoolgirls in the face or plotting vengeance on his hated enemy Ryu, Sagat has been known to cut the occasional novelty rap single.

Sagat - Funk Dat (from a 1994 single) - I think it's the same guy. It's not like there are dozens of dudes running around with the name "Sagat", right? Though I always imagined him having a deeper voice for some reason.