pretty spider for a white guy

Super Lumina failed state inspection last Friday because of a safety issue (for a busted indicator and quite possibly the retractable titanium steel ramming spike I mounted on the bumper). Normally this would be the type of thing I'd have fixed on the spot, but because I waited until the last minute, the mechanic didn't have the parts or time to take care of it. I had to settle for a rejection sticker and an appointment to bring it in for repairs and a retest this morning.

I originally picked this particular garage (back in 2001) because it located a couple blocks from where I was living at the time, which meant I could drop my car off, walk home, and goof off around the house until it was time to pick up and pay. They also happened to be honest, affordable, and extremely good at their work -- an extremely rare combination -- and I continued to go there even after I moved to the Woburn Highlands on the far southern edge of the city.

The previous drill of "drop off and walk home" was slightly adjusted to "walk to my grandma's house (my former residence), and beg a ride home and back." This time around, though, no ride was offered, and I was too self-conscious about my present Worst Grandson Ever^TM status (passively earned, just so no one gets the wrong idea about my particular flavor of crapulence) to ask for one. So I ended up spending most of the day in my grandma's living room and attic, digging out and reading comics from the dozen or so longboxes I've yet to bring up the House on the Hillside and drinking Dixie cup after Dixie cup of watery fruit punch.

Most of the stuff was from the 1990's and early 2000's, and I was amazed at how many comics I bought and continued buy even after any sane rationale for reading a title slipped away -- Peter David's coyly smug Captain Marvel relaunch, Erik Larsen's Defenders relaunch, Mark Millar's Authority run, Devin Grayson's Titans. Chalk it up to collector's inertia, a noxious habit I'm glad to have since kicked to the curb.

There were also some relatively entertaining things I purchased and subsequently forgot about due to the high volume of incoming crap, and these were how I passed the long hours of my captivity in the Land of Bleach and Doilies -- Garth Ennis's War Story comics and his Enemy Ace: War in Heaven miniseries, Planetary/Batman: Night on Earth, Avengers/JLA (a.k.a. JLA/Avengers) , and John Byrne's run(s) on Sensational She-Hulk.

It was the latter that provided the most enjoyment, not for the playful (if a bit heavy on the meta gags) romp through the Marvel Universe's z-list which made me miss the old, good John Byrne, but for this editorial page illustration from issue #41 (July 1992):


There is a transcendental cosmic truth to be found within its majesty, providing that one has the strength of will to embrace it without descending into existential madness.

Flesh For Lulu - Restless (from Flesh For Lulu, 1984) - "Gothic rock" is a rather subjective term.
Polysics - Making Sense (from Neu, 2003) - I think we're well past any chance of that happening. Better to just ride the Japanese noise rock whirwind and see where it leads us.

oh, brother

Today is my little brother Greg's 32nd birthday, and while I was hoping to do something more substantial to commemorate the event, I woke up this morning feeling -- to borrow a line from Withnail -- "like a pig shat in my head."

Sorry, kid. The 2000-word tribute to D-Man will have to wait until your next birthday. This time around, you'll just have to content yourself with the cutting edge comedy of Flexographic* Captain America. Take it away, Cap!

Poor bastard. He'll never know how much his routine stinks.

On to today's birthday musical selection, featuring a oft-played track from the Weiss siblings' younger days:

Anthrax - I'm the Man (from the I'm the Man EP, 1987) - It was much funnier when I was sixteen, but the same can be said for a lot of things. I still have a great deal of respect for Anthrax, as they were one of the few bands that broke away from the dour self-important posturing and stock musical template of the thrash metal scene back in the day.

*For those readers not up on comics history, Marvel and DC toyed with the flexographic printing process as a potential cost-cutting measure during the mid-1980s, but readers were less than enthusiastic with the extremely garish-looking and error-prone results.

listen to me, listen to me

When I was eight years old, my paternal grandmother and my father's youngest sister moved in with us. The reasons for it were kind of complicated, but can summed up by saying that my grandfather wasn't nearly as good a scam artist as he thought he was, and when the bill for his various hustles came due he fled the state rather than face the music. It was left to my parents to pick up the pieces, which included cramming two more bodies -- an addle-minded stroke victim with delusions of misremembered grandeur and a teenage girl -- into our already cramped North Woburn apartment.

Though my parents' clashing insanities were the ultimate cause of my familiy's implosion, I've long held it was that fucked up domestic paradigm shift that sent things teetering down the path to disaster.

But the the point of explaining that chapter of my life was not to induge in a round of Dysfunctional Family Follies: The Weiss Edition, but to bring up an incidental aspect of the period. As I said, the new arrangement brought an instant older "sister" into my life in the form of my aunt, five years my senior. Prior to her arrival in the house, my musical tastes reflected those of my parents and childhood peers, which meant the Beatles, too much 70's singer-songwriter and soft rock, and AC/DC. Oh, and the Grease soundtrack, which was nigh-unavoidable in schoolyard circles back then.

My aunt was not a punk rocker or new waver by any stretch of the imagination, but she was a teenybopper who listened to a lot of rock radio at a period when bands in those genres could be heard fairly often on either the local mainstream rock stations or the fledgling local "alternative" station, WFNX. Because I was young, impressionable, and sharing the same confined space with my aunt, the songs and bands I heard then imprinted themselves indelibly on my subconscious mind. Not in a radical life- or taste-changing way -- I was too busy obsessing over X-Men comics and Dig Dug, and my punk fandom wouldn't begin until my late teens -- but in a true IPCRESS fashion, unexploded mnemonic ordnance lying dormant in anticipation of the correct trigger sequences.

It's why, when I bought a copy of The Clash's debut album in the late 1980's, I discovered that I already knew the lyrics and chord progressions by heart. It's also why, when listening to my custom new wave playlist on Christmas Eve, I felt like someone tossed me under the suppressed memory train after hearing these two tracks back to back:

The Swingers - Counting the Beat (from Counting the Beat, 1981) - Oh, what glorious cocktail of backbeats and understated elegance. Formed from the Phil (ex-Split Enz) Judd faction of New Zealand's Suburban Reptiles, The Swingers also appeared and performed in Gillian Armstrong's 1982 new wave musical Starstruck (which will be spotlighted in a upcoming post now that I have my USB turntable).

Fischer-Z - So Long (from Going Deaf for a Living, 1980) - One thing that's great about pop music is that a skilled performer can take a perfectly obnoxious concept like self-pity and turn it into a thing of genuine pathos and beauty...

...which a less musically talented person feeling similiar emotions can listen to while sobbing into his pillow, punching parking meters or writing incoherent, wounded screeds on his MySpace page.

and in the middle of the celebration

Today marks the nineteenth anniversary of my mother's death. She was 37 -- two years older than I am now -- when she took a fatal tumble down the attic stairs.

Ordinarily this would be my official day for gloomy introspection, but I've got the infuriating drone of workplace chatter and office Christmas party planning to keep me distracted (and extremely irritable). There's a reason why I usually stay home on November 30th...

(It's just as well, I suppose. I don't think I could articulate my feelings about my mom and her passing better than I did last Mother's Day.)

The Beatles - Golden Slumbers\Carry That Weight (from Abbey Road, 1969) - I still have my mom's copy of Abbey Road in my record collection, making it one of the rare few artifacts that survived the chaos which followed her passing. It's not my favorite Fab Four LP -- I'm more of a Rubber Soul man -- but its sentimental value is such that I find myself giving it a bleary-eyed spin or two as this time of year approaches.

My mother was also a big fan of Prince. Thankfully, those records did not survive the Great Upheaval.

but that's the way that it goes

Another minimal content post today, as my brother drove down from the Granite State and our day was spent checking out the local comic shop's half-off sale for interesting finds (and there were plenty, some of which will make their way into upcoming posts), getting batter-fried mushrooms and sandwiches from the roast beef place around the corner, playing Marvel: Ultimate Alliance in co-op mode, and, as always with these sibling get-togethers, talking crap about comics.

For the final act of the day's events, I busted out my copy of Karaoke Revolution, strapped on the PS2 headset microphone, and barnstormed my way through this synthpop classic...

New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle (from Brotherhood, 1986)

...while brother and my wife bore witness to my glorious (if heavily accented and nasally) alto vocal stylings and spasmodic dance moves.

Friday Night Fights: Just Say No

Tonight's contribution to Bahlactus's weekly free-for-all is dedicated to my little brother, Greg. He knows why (apart from it being his birthday, that is).

(from Keebler Presents: The New Teen Titans Drug Awareness Special #2, 1983; by Wolfman, Perez, Giordano, Nancy Reagan, and E.L. Fudge)
A lesson to aspiring drug dealers: You better watch where you push your shit, 'cuz the Protector is gonna push back -- right in your kisser.

Some are born mediocre, some achieve mediocrity, and some have mediocrity thrust upon them. The hapless Protector falls into all three categories, having been created as a stand-in for Robin, who was cashing rival cookie maker Nabisco's checks at the time. It was a lucky break for the Boy Wonder, as he was able to dodge this absurd bullet of licensed Drug War propaganda. Having completed his task of totally abolishing the scourge of drugs from this great nation of ours, Protector quietly bid his adieu to the world of superheroics (though you occasionally run into him on the lower-tier convention circuit selling autographed photos of himself in costume for $15 a pop).

I have to say that the hyperbolic sloganeering of the War on Drugs crowd dovetails nicely with the hyperbolic writing style of the superhero genre at the time: "Why aren't they the ones who suffer? Why do the children have to suffer?" "I'll never understand your planet -- Why do people make drugs which only hurt other people?"

Oh, baby, I love it when you speak talking points to me...

If a nonsensical plot involving eleven-year-old PCP addicts and international drug cartels deliberately killing their consumer base (quickly, that is) with product laced with poison isn't enough to make one walk the straight and narrow path, maybe a lecture from a beloved advertising mascot who lives in a magical aboreal baked goods factory will do the trick...

"...and so we dip the hard shortbread of partiotic platitudes into the waxy quasi-chocolate of shopworn self-help jargon. This is all tax-deductable, right? Because that's what the guys in accounting told me..."

David Bowie - Boys Keep Swinging (from Lodger, 1979) - The Thin White Duke dabbles in some gender-bending (the "swinging" isn't necessarily referring to punches) postpunkery with Brian Eno on piano and Adrian Belew on guitar. (My brother is a big fan of Bowie, so it ties back to the whole birthday thing as well.)

Meanwhile, back in the Golden Age of Comics:

"Don't let anyone tell you that you can't be a hero. You can -- and you're about to learn how." - Nancy Reagan, from the inside cover of the Teen Titans Drug Awareness Special

Vacation: Day 5 - Fish don't fry in the kitchen

Well, we're movin' on up...

To the east side...

To a dee-luxe apartment in the sky...
The kids are loving their new digs. (Skillfully assembled by yours truly, I might add.) Their moms might have been homeless beggar cats, but now the whole extended family is living the domesticated high life.

Only in America, I tell you...

Squeeze - Cool for Cats (from Singles - 45's and Under, 1982) - Sadly, Catside Estates does not offer central air in its condominiums. The motion was taken up at the last tenants' association meeting, but the members got distracted by a stray moth flying by and nothing was ever resolved.

Ja'net Du Bois - Movin' on Up (Theme from The Jeffersons) (from Television's Greatest Hits, Vol. 3: 70's & 80's, 1990) - Sing it, Willona!

she doesn’t wanna know me now

Because nothing on my "potential projects" plate is leaping out at me today, here’s some lazy content in the form of the “Eight Things People Don’t Know About Me” meme that’s been making the rounds as of late. This was a more difficult process than I anticipated, given the autobiographical/confessional nature of Armagideon Time.

1. Irises are my favorite type of flower. I like they way the look. I like they way the smell (sweet and vaguely lemony). There used to be random wild patches of them growing in the North Woburn woods when I was a kid.

2. I once shook hands with Larry Storch. I met him outside a theater where he was appearing in a play. My wife and her friend were huge fans of F-Troop, and were pen pals with the man otherwise known as Corporal Randolph Agarn. He seemed like a really nice guy.

3. In my senior year of high school, I won first place in the annual public speaking contest. I recited Colonel Kurtz’s “pile of little arms” speech from Apocalypse Now in a pseudo-Shatnerian manner. The prize for first place was forty dollars.

My grandmother refused to attend because I wouldn’t remove my earrings before going onstage. She insisted that “They’re all going to laugh at you.” Fortunately the night was free of pig’s blood and telekinetic mayhem.

4. I can play the “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on both the flute and the piano. It is the only piece of music I know how to play, which suggests that there may be a genetic propensity toward enjoying Die Hard hardcoded into my being. Or that my grade school music teacher was a tyrant.

5. I have bits of gravel embedded in both kneecaps. The last day of my freshman year, I had a bad crackup on my brother’s scooter, and shredded my knees something fierce. I spent most of the following week alternating between long soaks in the tub and peroxide rinses. While most of the grit got cleaned out, some deeper fragments remained beneath my skin, and the dark splotches are still visible on my knees to this day.

6. If my family’s genealogical legends are to be believed, John and Priscilla Alden (of the Mayflower and the Plymouth Colony) and General Oliver Otis Howard (one of the founders of Howard University, Commissioner of the Freedman’s Bureau, and the man who fucked over Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce) are among my distant ancestors.

7. I nearly drowned when I was two years old. I got too close to the waves at Plum Island and was sucked in by the undertow. A fisherman heard my cries, and pulled me out of the ocean. As a consequence, I can’t abide submerging my face in water.

8. The first record I owned was a copy of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band I pulled out of a trash pile. The first record I ever purchased was AC/DC’s Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.

The Who – The Real Me (from Quadrophenia, 1973) - Really rockin'.

Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions – See the Real Me (from People Get Ready, 1965) - Really soulful.

dia de los padres

Jeez, he looks so damn young in these pictures. Then again, so do I.

Fire - Father's Name Was Dad (from a 1968 single; collected on Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts from the British Empire and Beyond, 2001)

The Astors - Daddy Didn't Tell Me (from The Astors Meet The Newcomers: Sweet Soul From Memphis, 1996)

hurting runs off my shoulder

My mother passed away in November 1988, when I was sixteen years old. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about it, but those thoughts tend to be more about the social and familiar upheavals that came in the wake of her death, rather than of my mother as a person.

I’ve spent decades coming to grips with my relationship with my father and the way in which he loomed large as both a positive and negative role model during my formative years. With my mother, though, it’s different. I can joke about being my father’s son (which can be the blackest of black humor, indeed), but the question of what it means to be the son of Ruthann Weiss has never been decisively resolved.

This is partially due to the passing of time, and the richness and vibrancy of my memories of the woman gradually fading over the years. I can remember specific events and incidents, but the overall picture of who my mother was as a person has gotten hazy. There was a degree of deliberate intent in that; right after my mother passed away, I made a conscious decision to pardon her shortcomings and problematic aspects of her personality. Which brings me to the other reason why I can’t get a decent handle on the role my mother played in shaping my life: her last eight years on earth were a downward spiral of obsessive behavior that crossed the line into outright insanity near the end.

As much as I tried to bury the memories related to her slide into increasing erratic and dysfunctional behavior, they still remain the strongest impressions I have, and color the rest of my memories, good and bad, of her. It confounds my attempts to piece together an accurate picture of who she was and what she meant to me, except…

…I remember something that happened a few weeks before her death. I was in my room drifting in and out of sleep. The house was cold, which may or may not have been because we stiffed the oil people one too many times (again). My mother came into my room. She was a little unsteady on her feet -- but not completely blitzed on port wine -- and said “You must be cold.” She took my army surplus jacket off the doorknob and spread it over me like a blanket, kissed me on the forehead, then trundled off upstairs.

Sometimes a single recollection can be more than enough.

Roger McGuinn – It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) (from the Easy Rider OST, 1969) – I posted this track before, on the anniversary of my mother’s death, but what the hell. My mom gave/lent me this record, and a turntable to play it with (which I still own, but is in dire need of a new stylus) when I was fourteen.

Me First and The Gimme Gimmes – Sweet Caroline (from Have a Ball, 1997) – My mom loved Neil Diamond (and Rod McKuen – I think there’s a correlation there), which led to some really miserable times when I discovered that his genius was not universally appreciated by my Kiss-loving peers in primary school.

just to be alive, just a’one more day

Today’s post is about immortality, of a sort.

When my mother was a teenager she dug up a clump of the little blue wildflowers that grew on nearby Bucky’s Hill and transplanted them at the edge on my grandparents’ yard.

My mother is gone, a victim of an untied shoelace and the balance-inhibiting affects of port wine. Bucky’s Hill is gone, a victim of real estate developers who bulldozed the land flat and filled in the neighboring peat bog in order to drop down a rather prison-like condo complex on the site.

The little blue flowers in my grandmother’s yard have thrived and spread over the past four decades. From mid to late April, the side of the yard by the driveway becomes a cerulean carpet of tiny blossoms, a memorial far more suitable for my mother than any inscription on a slab of cold granite could ever be.

When my wife and I moved into the new house in 2004, I brought some of the plants with me, as a sentimental gesture in honor of my mom. I tried planting them in several locations around the yard, but with no success. I assumed that the soil up here on the hill just wasn’t suitable for that type of plant, and gave up trying after the fourth or fifth round of failures.

Yesterday, my wife and I were out on the patio surveying the storm damage and how our perennials were faring in the cold, wet weather, and my wife called for me to check out something in the bed where the lilies and bleeding hearts are planted. It was a solitary little blue flower, peeping up through the mud and the husks of last year’s annuals. I certainly didn’t plant it there, yet there it was – a random wonder in a random universe.

electric eels – Cards and Fleurs (from God Says Fuck You, 1992) – A swell bit of Cleveland proto-punk that begins like a fever dream and ends like a punch in the nose.

Los Abandoned – Como la Flor (from the Los Abandoned EP, 2004) – My wife has a cluster of friends in LA who keep her abreast of the local pop and punk scenes, and occasionally send her CD’s of bands she might enjoy, which is where I first came across Los Abandoned’s excellent brand of bilingual punk pop.

Here’s the video for their equally outstanding “Van Nuys Es Very Nice”:



100 Flowers – 100 Flowers (from 100 Years of Pulchritude, 1990) – Originally LA punk pranksters The Urinals, following a Maoist-inspired name change and a switch to an art punk sound reminiscent of Wire, The Fall, and/or The Minutemen.

'twas better to die 'neath an Irish sky

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

Never mind the media circus. There’s more to being Irish than shamrocks and boozing; there’s a proud legacy of revolutionary thought, too.

James Connolly: Socialist, labor leader, egalitarian thinker, Martyr of 1916. I wonder how the nation would have developed had he not been executed by the forces of the Crown. His idea for an ecumenical Irish state free of religious interference and equal rights for all, including women, was forward-thinking for its time, although the victory of the Free State forces after his death, meant that -- to paraphrase one disillusioned Republican -- all that blood was shed for the sake of handing over the keys to the kingdom to the priests and the shopkeepers, the very same bourgeoisie elements Connolly considered as much as an impediment to Irish freedom as the British were.

Both my wife’s grandfathers fought in the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War (on the Republican side, against Michael Collins’s Free State sellouts). My maternal grandmother’s people were Orangemen from Donegal and Carrickfergus, but radical politics have trumped upbringing in my case. (I’ve been told my mother used to wear orange on St. Patrick’s Day when she was in high school. It’s an ugly bit of spite that I have a hard time reconciling with my memories of her being a kind, good-hearted woman.) My wife thinks it’s kind of funny that out of all the kids in her very Irish, right-off-the-boat family, she’s the only one who married someone of Irish descent, and he turned out to be Anglo-Irish.

Although I oppose actions against civilian targets on general principle, I can at least respect that the Nationalists stand for something other than the Loyalists’ reactionary desire to maintain the institutionalized prejudices of the colonial status quo. It’s amazing how Sinn Féin gets raked over the coals for every misstep or bit of wrongdoing by the I.R.A., but the DUP is pretty much given a pass despite the fact they their armed wings have engaged in nearly an equal amount of violence since in the Good Friday agreement of 1998.

The Pogues and The Dubliners – The Irish Rover (from a 1987 single, collected on The Ultimate Collection, 2005) – Forget the nasally warbling of Celtic Woman or the grandma music of the Irish Tenors, this is real music of the people.

Flogging Molly – Rebels of the Sacred Heart (from Drunken Lullabies, 2002) – It just dawned on me that all of today’s tracks were played at our wedding reception…in between various punk and new wave favorites. Those four mix CD’s are a lovely glimpse into the nature of our relationship.

Wolfe Tones – Rifles of the I.R.A. (from Rifles of the I.R.A. 1991) – Anytime a large enough number of the wife’s relatives gather together for a holiday or whatnot, it’s a given that this song will be given a spin, accompanied by much whooping, stomping, and dancing.

never worry ‘bout the things we were missing

Brad Delp, the lead singer of the band Boston has passed away at age 55.

It may seem at odds with the musical tastes I’ve exhibited here previously, but I have an insane fondness for Boston’s 1976 debut. It’s one of those rare albums that I can listen to from beginning to end without ever feeling the urge to skip a track, alongside The Clash’s London Calling, UK Decay’s For Madmen Only, and The Cure’s Seventeen Seconds.

My love for the band came, like my interest in Captain America, from my younger brother who developed a taste for seventies rock while he was attending college out at UMass-Amherst. He’d make occasional trips back to Woburn on weekends and breaks, and we’d spend the time playing Perfect Dark and discussing (and arguing) comics trivia. We also made a lot of trips to area comics stores in search of back issues, and it was on one of those trips that my enduring love for Boston was sealed.

It was a weekday afternoon in the spring of 2000, and my brother decided out of the blue that we should pay a visit to a store we frequented in Waltham (two towns over, but still a hike). After calling and checking that the place would be still open when we got there, we hopped into his car and made our way down Route 128. He had Boston’s debut album in the car’s CD player, and made a remark that he had recently gotten into the band. It was nostalgia candy to my ears, but I’d be hard pressed to pick out a better soundtrack for a late afternoon drive with the windows rolled down and zero personal obligations for the immediate future.

We cleared the rise overlooking the cluster of hills around the Route 20 exit just as “More Than a Feeling” kicked into full rocking mode. The staid outcrops of New England granite in the distance stood silhouetted against the bruised violet and apricot tapestry of the sunset, and it felt so perfect, that synergy of classic rock, brotherhood, and the glories of a warm spring afternoon.

So thanks, Brad, for the part you played in making it happen.

Boston – Rock and Roll Band (from Boston, 1976)

when it was over, where did you go

Poor Captain America, if only he was more familiar with MySpace, all this could have been avoided.

Unless you’ve been locked in a Faraday cage stuffed under a large boulder, you’ve probably heard the news that Captain America has been killed off in a grand PR gesture by Marvel. Mike Sterling has an excellent tongue-in-cheek summation of the meta/media circus over at Progressive Ruin. My favorite part:

Remember the 'Death of Superman' all those years ago? And all the hype around it? To this day, I encounter people who see the Superman comics on the rack and ask me, 'Superman comics are still around? I thought he was dead.' I just don't see the advantage to convincing a public that's barely aware of comics in the first place that your most recognizable, marketable characters are no longer being published, all for the sake of a storyline that'll be resolved in, at most, a few months!

I understand Marvel’s pragmatism in how they announced Cap’s death to the media (on the day the issue shipped, before most comic readers had even picked up the title), but it’s pretty telling about where superhero comics actually stand in relation to other, more popular and ubiquitous forms of media. You don’t see ABC promoting upcoming episodes of Lost or studio PR flacks hyping M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film by giving away plot twists in the headers of their press releases. It may have been a wise move on Marvel’s part, but it screams, “Yes, we still publish those things” to a public unaware (or apathetic) about superhero comics. It’s only a spoiler when someone cares.

Even though I’m well aware that this is “Comicstown, Jake,” Cap’s death – as impermanent as it will likely turn out to be – has still left me feeling a little wistful, because his title was technically the first comics series I ever followed. I say “technically” because it was a matter of fandom by proxy. My little brother was a fan of the character from a very young age, and while my nine year old self was pulling random bits of Bronze Age DC and Marvel silliness from the three-for-a-buck bins at a local flea market, my tow-headed five year old sibling sought out old issues of Captain America with a laser-like intensity.

Later, back in the room we shared, when I finished reading my short stack of Metal Men, Brave and the Bold, and From Beyond The Unknown, I’d turn my attention to my brother’s new finds, and read those as well. As I got older and more independently mobile, I’d pick up the current issue of Cap for him when it hit the racks at the local direct market shop (three miles away, on the other side of the Aberjona River valley, whose topography resembles an inverse parabola and made for one hell of a bike ride). I’d also, when finances permitted, also seek out some of the back issues that tied into whatever story was currently running in the title.

So even though I wasn’t a big fan of Captain America, I ended up having a better grasp on the character and his history than I did on many titles I was actually enthusiastic about.

My brother’s collection eventually ballooned over the years, and included complete collections of Cap’s own title and its precursor run in Tales of Suspense, nearly every crossover and guest appearance of the character in other series, and a huge collection of Captain America merchandise from lead painted drinking glasses to toy cars to (his personal favorite) a disturbing-looking Kewpie Doll wearing Cap’s costume. He even made the effort to track down the actor who played Captain America in the 70’s made-for-TV movies to get him to sign a publicity still taken from the first film.

It was the Marvel Knights relaunch of the series, a sprawling mess of nonsensical plots spun by a rapidly cycling series of creative teams, which finally led my brother to quit keeping up with Captain America, and new comics in general. (That says a lot considering he stuck with the title even through previous story arcs involving Cap becoming a werewolf or doing the chicken dance while under the influence of crystal meth.) He sold or auctioned off most of the Cap collectibles, along with large chunks of his post-Silver Age inventory of comics, and began concentrating on acquiring complete runs of Marvel’s 1961-1973 comics output. His reasoning was that if he was going to buy crappy comics, he might as well buy ones that are interesting and of some value rather that waste his money on a five minute read that would end up in a trade paperback or quarter bin in a few months’ time.

Ah, to be a sane Marvel fan during this particular era. It’s like being Roy Batty at the end of Blade Runner, sticking rusty nails through one’s hand in hopes of feeling something, anything. My advice is not to fight it; the apathy is a defense mechanism.

Vixen – Fallen Hero (from Rev It Up, 1990) – I suppose I should be ashamed, but I’m actually thrilled about posting this track.

The Business – Blind Justice (from Suburban Rebels, 1981) – I used to get shit from some folks over my largish collection of Oi records. In the late 80’s and early 90’s, Oi compilations were the easiest way to get one’s hands on a lot of out of print UK82 punk material (mislabeled and used as filler on many of the comps).

Ashley MacIsaac – Captain America (from Ashley MacIsaac, 2003) – Dorian pointed this track out to me. “Sarcastic gay Canadian fiddler” (Wikipedia adds "controversial" to the mix): one of the most effective descriptions of a musician I’ve ever read, a string of words guaranteed to grab my attention and demand a listen. It’s a dig at American arrogance, so it would probably be more appropriate in reference to Ultimate Captain America.

“Surrender? You think this A on my forehead stands for France?”

“No, but given the sorry state of America’s public education system, I can understand why you might be confused about it.”

face worker, a serpentine miner

My twenty-five year love affair with Dig Dug began, as many love affairs do, in the dark alcove of a Howard Johnson’s off Interstate 90.

Every summer, my maternal grandparents would take my brother and I with them on vacation, although perhaps “vacation” isn’t the correct word to describe these trips. My grandfather was a very kind, generous man, but he was also something of an odd duck. His idea of a vacation was to gather up everyone into his gigantic sedan and drive to a set point, be it a motel parking lot in Asheville, North Carolina or a plot of swampland he owned in north central Maine, then immediately drive back home (except in the case of the Maine trips, where he’d stop in to visit family and putter amongst the blackflies and mudholes for a couple hours).

Whenever we had to make a rest stop or the occasional visit to a roadside tourist trap or strip mall, my grandfather would park in the furthest corner of the lot and send my grandmother, brother and me in to do our business while he sat in the car. This being the early 1980’s, there were arcade machines everywhere, and I could always count on scoring a couple of quarters from my grandmother in order to keep me busy while she tried to keep my grandfather’s deliberately complicated food order straight, lest he fly into paroxyms of rage over finding too much relish on his overpriced hamburger. (She never succeeded, nor did my grandfather ever want her to, I suspect.)

It was during one of these stops that I played my first game of Dig Dug, and it was a case of love at first sight. The graphics were amazingly colorful and detailed in comparison to the minimalist black backgrounds in vogue at the time, and the dig-your-own maze aspect (“free roaming gameplay” circa 1982) felt like a quantum leap over the preset environments of other entries in the maze game genre. The ability to actively manipulate the environment of the playfield, along with the directly-controllable ability to stun or kill persuing Pookas (tomatoes with ski goggles) or Frygars (fire-breathing green dragons) with your in-game avatar’s air-pump weapon, encouraged a level of creative gameplay that contrasted sharply to the rote pattern recognition skills required to master a game like Pac-Man.

I spent the years following that fateful encounter practicing my tunneling and monster squashing/bursting skills whenever the opportunity arose. If I wasn't biking to the nearest arcade (five miles away, by the train depot in Wilmington), I was sneaking away from my Cub Scout pack at Canobie Lake and making a bee line for the secondary arcade (next to the fake rocketship that would play clips from Journey to the Prehistoric Planet while the operator banged the hull with a stick to add drama) where the amusement park kept the older, less popular arcade machines in search of a Dig Dug fix.

While I've cast off many (but not all, not hardly) childish things over the years, my affection for Dig Dug has remained constant. It's simple yet elegant gameplay and visuals have not lost their capacity to entertain me, and it makes a great de-stresser and mental palate cleanser whenever the need for either arises.

Plus, there’s a certain visceral thrill to be had in luring a conga line of enemies to a squishy doom via falling boulder. Some things never go out of style.

Here’s a medley of the incidental music and sounds from Dig Dug.

Chaos UK – Pump It Up (from Heard It, Seen It, Done It, 1997) – Thank you, Chaos UK, for sparing me the indignity of having to post the Elvis Costello original version.

The Jam – Going Underground (from a 1980 single, collected on Snap! 1983) – I have the same reaction to The Jam that I do to Strawberry Pop Tarts. I love them occasionally in small doses, but there is a clearly defined limit to my tolerance, past which the love quickly transmogrifies into nausea.

Lush – Outdoor Miner (from the For Love EP, 1992) – I debated going with Wire’s original version of this song, but ultimately decided in favor of something a little more obscure. Besides, we all could benefit from a little more Lush in our lives.

it's alright, Ma, I can make it

(I wrote the following piece last year on this date. The number of years has been updated to reflect the passage of time, but the rest of the sentiments still stand.)

Today is the eighteenth anniversary of my mother's death. I knew I was going to make note of that here, but until a few moments ago I wasn't sure how.

I debated typing out the full events of that day, since even the smallest details been permanently etched into my gray matter, but that seemed pointless. Yet replaying those small details in my head (I wore a Yankees t-shirt. I ate a sandwich made from homemade bread for lunch. My art teacher gave me a lame lecture about joining the Army.) made me realize one important thing:

That day, probably the worst day I've ever lived through, began like any other day, but by midnight, my entire life had been upended and permanently changed.

It's probably the most miserable object lesson ever, but it's one that has stuck with me through the years. Live in the now. Appreciate what you have while you can, because a shitstorm can strike at any moment and take it all away. My mother just wanted to go back to bed and sleep off a port wine binge, and ended up lying on the attic landing with her head cracked open.

Belly – Stay (from Star, 1993)

The Monkees – The Porpoise Song (from a 1968 single, collected on Greatest Hits, 1995)

Roger McGuinn – It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) (from the Easy Rider OST, 1969)