Vacation 2008: Day 5 - Objectivist hygiene

I've been slowly working my way through Blake Bell's Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko, a very well-written examination of the legendary comics creator's life and body of work. Bell does an outstanding job of addressing not only Ditko's unique sense of aesthetics, but also the man's fiercely Objectivist philosophy and personal eccentricities, and their effect on his artistic style and professional career.

Nowhere is Ditko's evangelism for the Ayn Rand school of petty selfishness "enlightened self-interest" so fervent and unrestrained as in 1973's The Avenging World. Not so much a work of sequential art as a bizarre illustrated primer espousing Rand's political theories in the most lurid, brute-force method imaginable, The Avenging World reads like a Chick tract adaptation of Atlas Shrugged set in the Dread Dormammu's Dark Dimension -- entertainingly bat-shit in the way only an embarrassingly sincere and personal project by a talented eccentric can be.

That doesn't mean that reading The Avenging World is anything other than a tough slog through repetitive dissertations -- in comic strip, illustrated text, and infographic format -- on the primacy of "rational self-interest" over collective obligation. I trend toward the left-libertarian/anarcho-communist side of things myself, but I temper my views with liberal doses of cynical pragmatism. The uncompromising rightist Objectivism in The Avenging World refuses to partition the "is" from the "ought," which is why the ideology tends to be in practice more justification than aspiration. "A = A" is an abstraction, and as such, is a hollow mantra in a world where the messy and inconclusive are commonplace.

Swap out the abstract for the concrete, and the philosophical scenarios presented in The Avenging World would go something like this...

Ideological purity is no substitute for a can of Ajax and some elbow grease.

New Order - Age of Consent (from Power, Corruption, & Lies, 1983) - A musical selection whose sublime and fragile beauty I trust we can all agree upon.

The Adventures of H and O: New Markets

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Yep, it’s true. John Oates co-wrote Icehouse’s 1987 hit “Electric Blue” with that band’s frontman, Iva Davies. Although the song did get some college radio airplay, “Electric Blue” (I keep wanting to type “Electric Youth,” bur that’s a horse of a different color, pun sort of intended.) was a big crossover success far removed from the creepiness of their earlier material. Icehouse’s countrymen in the band INXS had undergone a similar evolution away from their new wave roots, but moved toward a more arena rock sound. It’s a long way from “The One Thing” to “Bitter Tears.”

Icehouse – Electric Blue (from Man of Colours, 1987)

I wonder what a Daryl Hall/Ministry collaboration would have sounded like. Probably not too far removed from the material on With Sympathy, the 1983 black sheep in the band’s discography, which consists of gloomy synthpop with a heavy British influence. (Al Jourgensen’s faux English accent on “Revenge” is a hoot and a half.) The late 80’s industrial incarnation of Ministry was responsible for stripping away any last vestiges of heavy metal madness that may have lingered into my punk rock days. Tracks like “Burning Inside” and “Stigmata” delivered a blistering sonic assault that made even the heaviest death metal acts of the time sound anemic by comparison, and were refreshingly free of metal’s obligatory clichés and excesses.

Twenty years of genre bleed have seen Jourgensen’s musical innovations become another generation of heavy metal clichés. These days I’m more likely than not to get my Ministry fix from the more sedate sounds of With Sympathy, but I still give The Land of Rape and Honey or The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste the occasional spin whenever I feel the need to blow the carbon out of my aural engine.

Ministry – Burning Inside (from The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste, 1989)

The Adventures of H and O: The Plan

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Like many ills that plague this world, this is Brandon Bragg's fault. While brainstorming the Civil War post, I remembered a scene from the late 1980's "Armor Wars" arc where Captain America was the voice of civic responsibility and a jheri-curled Iron Man was the lawbreaking renegade. When I showed the panels to Brandon, he suggested I should "mine the shit out that issue and turn it into a monthly Hall and Oates strip."

So here you go. Further installments to follow as the whim strikes me, until I run out of lame gags or get hit with a cease and desist order. Don't expect any musical accompaniment. I'm no stranger to self-loathing, but I draw the line at posting Hall and Oates tracks...

jingle bells make money, everybody sing

Halloween got a full month of posts. Christmas is getting a week and change, mainly because I’m sick to death of seasonal overkill. The entertainment and retail combines don’t even wait for the candy corn and cobwebs to get cold before rolling out the balsam-scented, red and green juggernaut, whipping the public into a state of consumer debt-fueled hysteria.

Peace on earth? Good will toward men? Fuck that shit, there’s an open parking space right by Target’s entrance, and if I have to run down a family of four with my Escalade to get it, then so be it. No one stands in between me and a sale-priced portable DVD player.

(In all seriousness, I nearly got hit three times today while crossing the Target parking lot. In each case, the vehicle in question was a minivan driven by a suburban soccer mom, eyes blazing and face contorted with the terminal stages of Yuletide consumer madness. All I wanted was a bag of potato chips and some toilet paper.)

Bad News – Cashing in on Christmas (from Bad News, 1987) – A z-grade heavy metal act whose members’ ambitions far outstrip their talents, Bad News were the subject of two mockumentaries aired on The Comic Strip Presents… British TV series in 1983 and 1988. Their lineup consisted of Vim Feugo (Adrian Edmondson), Den Dennis (Nigel Planer), Colin Grigson (Rik Mayall), and ‘Spider’ Webb (Peter Richardson). Yep, that's three cast members of The Young Ones in the band, so you pretty much know what to expect.

Queen fans take note: The above track (and album it appeared on) was produced by Brian May.