lost all track of time

A couple of Fridays back, the wife and I had to make a trip to scenic North Reading on feral cat business. As we were already in Burlington on another errand, I decided to bypass the forbidden zone that is the I-93/I-95 interchange and take the back way, which involved heading down Cambridge Road (not "Street") towards the Billerica line then turning onto Route 62's serpentine path to glory.

It had been a while since I'd been down that way, and I was astonished to find that so little had changed in the past twenty years. The development boom of the past decade or so has completely transformed huge swathes of greater Boston's landscape. Communities that were considered positively honky-tonk when I was a kid, places like Billerica, Wilmington, and Tewksbury, have since become upmarket suburbs, and there is no open space so rocky, swampy, or otherwise tagged with liabilities that some ambitious developer won't clear-cut and terraform it into McMansion-friendly subdivisions. The local "boonies," as much I knew them from childhood, have all but evaporated into a single homogeneous sprawl radiating out from Boston to the edges of I-495 loop.

But not along Route 62, apparently, where old houses are encircled by forests of old trees, and even the post-WW2 ranch homes have gradually assimilated into the backdrop of the green. The corridor hasn't been entirely immune to the sprawl's encroachment, but compared to my old neighborhood in North Woburn, it has remained largely intact...a place where you still need to use your high-beams to navigate in the dark hours.

TWO WARPS TO URANUS!
(Granted, that also applies to the very developed and upscale town of Winchester, but that's because those rich motherfuckers are too cheap to turn up the brightness on their streetlamps. They're also too cheap to pay for trash pickup, which means you see assholes in Porsches illegally dumping their garbage in the Middlesex Fells Reservation.)

We passed by truck and equipment yards with unpaved surfaces bounded by pine trees, anachronistic retail islands at long-bypassed intersections, a poultry farm, and the requisite series of non-chain, locally-owned eateries with inexplicable names. (We also stumbled across the location of the local Wal-Mart store, suggesting that the honky-tonk aura is not so easily dispelled.) It's an odd thing to wax nostalgic over, but it's comforting nonetheless to know that the topography of my childhood exists in some form or another less than twenty minutes from my house. Until the next frenzied round of development begins, that is.

The sharpest jab of nostalgia hit me while were crossing over the Boston-Lowell train tracks by the intersection of Routes 62 and 38 in Wilmington. There, to the left of the road and beside the tracks was this place of many childhood pilgrimages...

Our Mecca, Lourdes, and Graceland rolled into a single seedy piece of commercial real estate.
I couldn't see what occupies the space now, but back in 1984 it was the location of "Trains & Games," the only arcade within reasonable distance of my North Woburn stomping grounds. I don't know which one of the neighborhood crew discovered the place, but once we knew about it, we hopped onto our off-brand BMX bikes and made the long trip to Wilmington whenever time, weather, and availability of quarters permitted.

The selection of games at the place was an adequate enough mix of perennial favorites (Pac-Man, Robotron: 2084, Dig Dug) and a handful of newer titles like Gyruss, Punch Out, and Mr. Do's Wild Ride. The arcade attached to the go-kart further up Route 38 in Tewksbury had a bigger and better selection, but it also involved biking an additional four miles each way. What Trains & Games lacked in diversity, it more than made up for in convenience. Plus the lone staffer behind the booth was far more laid back than the uptight eagle-eyed crew at the Speedway who'd show you to the door the moment your last token was spent.

Mr. Do's Franchise Fatigue!
Weekday afternoons were the ideal time to make the run, as the place tended to be packed on the weekends. The fact that most of the gang had strict dinnertime curfews made it tricky to pull off without split-second timing and frenzied pedaling.

Hit the ground running when the 2:45 final bell at the Linscott-Rumford rang. Throw your book bag in the porch and holler to the parents that you were going out. Meet up with the rest of the crew and zip down the old train tracks to the Wilmington line. Pedal your ass off down Route 38 for a half hour. Burn through a pocket of quarters in twenty minutes. Pedal back to North Woburn while ignoring the stitch in your side. Collapse on the lawn with five minutes to spare.

...and even if you could barely choke down your mac 'n' cheese through the dry heaves and heat exhaustion, those brief minutes of pixelized joy were totally worth it.

"You know what this game needs? A boss with a rape conviction and a penchant for ear biting!"
In the autumn of 1984, my family moved out of North Woburn to the center of the city. The additional four miles of biking required and the discovery that the local pool hall and bowling alley had game rooms (and were in walking distance) put a stop to my trips to Trains & Games, though I occasionally tagged along with a friend whose mom used to drop him off there. The last time I visited the place, sometime during my sophomore year in college, the arcade had gone under and had been replaced by one of the many lousy comic book stores that attempted to make hay during the 1990's speculation boom. It, too, went tits up a short while later.

Seeing the place after all these years brought back a flood of vivid memories -- nothing especially dramatic or important, just very distinct impressions of a time long past. I can see the shortcut to East Dexter Avenue in bright light of a spring afternoon. I can smell the muddy tang of the shallow stream that ran alongside the path. I can hear Steve Perry's "Oh, Sherrie" and Phil Collins's "Against All Odds" -- and I wish to Christ it would just stop.

I place a lion's share of the blame on Hot Hit Videos, an attempt by the local CBS affiliate to cash in on the music video craze of the time. The show's 4:30 PM time slot made it ideal cooldown time viewing after getting back from the arcade, but the programmers' fondness for AOR cheese has left me scarred for life.

If I have to remember the spring of 1984 through pop music, at least let it be pop music I actually enjoyed at the time...like these two tracks...

The Go-Go's - Head Over Heels (from Talk Show, 1984) - Goodbye, bubbly new wave....

Ratt - Round and Round (from Out of the Cellar, 1984) - ...and hello, ugly pop metal.

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.

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.

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.

I don't know why

Having grown up in a blue collar suburban neighborhood in the early-to-mid 1980's, my pre-adolescence was strongly touched by the cheesetacular power of pop metal in its pre-glam (or, as I've come to call it, "ugly metal") incarnation. I perfected my air guitar skills. I scribbled poor reproductions of band logos in ballpoint on my book covers. I flipped through second-hand copies of Circus and Hit Parader, marveling at the full-page photos, lame efforts at mythmaking, and especially all the cool rocker gear being hawked in the backpage ads.

That was my life, that was my song. I paid no heed to the warnings that metal health will drive one mad, because -- day in, day out, all week long -- things just went better with rock.

Looking back on those times, I feel neither the rosy glow of nostalgia nor the rosy cheeks of embarrassment. It was what it was, a childhood phase shared with many other lads (and lasses) in my socio-economic demographic which I later dumped in favor of 60's soul music. Maybe it would have been cooler if I had discovered punk rock five years earlier instead, but you can't fault an eleven year old for grasping the low-hanging subcultural fruit, especially when it perfectly captured the stuff quasi-pubescent boys' dreams are made of.

All the above is just my long-winded way of explaining why I felt a touch of sadness upon discovering that Quiet Riot frontman Kevin DuBrow passed away at his Las Vegas home last Sunday.

Quiet Riot - Cum on Feel the Noize (from Metal Health, 1983) - I just wish they kept the opening "Baby, baby, BAY-BEH!" from Slade's original version...

Halloween Countdown: October 29 – bodies with no surprises

The latest addition to my wife's collection of spooky ephemera, purchased yesterday at the local Target store for a buck and a quarter:


When a button on the side of the skull's jaw is pressed, its eyes light up and it emits a tinny OOOO-EEEEE-OOOO noise that freaks the shit out of our house's resident pet population. Mildly creepy, I suppose, but the back of the skull's packaging is where the real terror resides:


I'm well aware of the long-standing relationship between skulls and heavy metal, but never have I seen it manifested quite so literally...

The "recycle or manage as hazardous waste" line makes me wonder if there's an abandoned salt mine beneath the Nevada desert packed to the gills with concrete-entombed dry storage casks full of spent Skulls With Sound & Light from Halloweens past.

The Misfits - Skulls (from Walk Among Us, 1982) - I'm not one for compiling lists of "desert island discs," but if I were to dabble in such maddening pursuits, Walk Among Us would be right up in my top five choices. The album serves up some often imitated, but never duplicated, first-rate melodic punk rock dripping with retro-macabre goodness that crams more high points into twenty-five minutes than most bands manage in their entire careers.

Sparkle Moore - Skull and Crossbones (from a 1956 single; collected on Good Girls Gone Bad: Wild Weird & Wanted, 2004) - WARNING: This track is classic female-fronted rockabilly, a genre known to Armagideon Time to knock the unwary listener onto his or her ass with its sheer awesomeness.

visual synergy: heavy concepts

I remember riding my bike down Forest Park Road in the spring of 1985, and finding a massive bundle of issues of Circus and Hit Parader put out with someone’s trash. It seemed like a fantastic score, until I had lugged the stack home and began to actually read the magazines. The band profiles, reviews, and whatnot seemed so utterly calculated, even to my thirteen year old self, to exploit the frustrations and yearnings of blue collar teenage boys. Dee’s dad wanted him to attend the voc-tech to earn a plumbing apprenticeship – but Dee wanted TO ROCK!

Confronted with the Tiger Beat-dressed-in-studded-wristband reality, my rockitude went into dormancy for almost half a decade, until it was briefly resuscitated by thrash metal’s promise of being the real, dangerous deal. Alas, it was a promise better fulfilled by punk rock, which, despite its own set of intrinsic paradoxes, placed a greater emphasis on outrage and sentiment than on the hollow artistic wizardry of the power ballad or the eight minute guitar solo. Metal’s confusion between technical proficiency and musical greatness is not far removed from the pop music notion that a great singer is someone who can hold a note through an entire Minnesota winter. The American Idol concept of greatness holds no place for Tom Waits.

My rocky relationship with the genre aside, I have a certain fascination with heavy metal culture, in so far as it clearly articulates a particular and common enough strain of adolescent maleness. The key word here is “adolescent.” In recent years, there has been a trend among critics, comedians, and other evangelists of the popcult zeitgeist towards redeeming and ennobling the concept of RAWK and metal, either as a facile camp touchstone or in a celebratory, unironic sense.

The former are easily enough understood, as there is no retro artifact so unassuming that it cannot be dusted off, polished, and sold at a premium to the self-consciously hip. The latter, however, apart from a handful of old fans who didn’t stop believing (Whoa-oh-oh!), seem to be of the arrested development school of contemporary masculinity where “manhood” is a chimera formed from equal parts teenager, frat boy, and film/game/music geek. Is that hypocritical, coming from a man creeping towards age forty who dwells in a state of retrological limbo? Maybe, but as I’ve said whenever friends bring up the notion of “wanting to go back,” if the passing of years has done nothing else for me, it has given me a sense of perspective and cleared any illusions that personal tastes equal inherent quality. There is a world of difference between deciding what to hold on to, and refusing to let go.

Wow, that was a long introduction to a lazy music video post, but sometimes one must follow where one’s muse leads them. Continuing the last week’s Apocalypse Rock theme, here are some pinnacles of the music video art form, heavy metal concept video subcategory, post-apocalypse silliness subset:


Krokus - Screaming in the Night - "Krokus," because Iris, Delphinium, and Portulaca were already taken.


Queensryche - Queen of the Reich - I think this sums up my assertions about the genre and its target demographic pretty well. Listen close you can hear the rolling of polyhedral dice and the crack of the Rifts manual's spine in the background.


Grim Reaper - Fear No Evil - While the song lacks the magnificent bombast and oh-so-quotable title line of the band's earlier "See You in Hell," the video more than makes up for it.

Honestly, though, if I want to watch art-directed, fyoo-cha-riss-tik music video excess, I'd go with this simultaneously ahead of its time and hoplessly dated gem:


Sigue Sigue Sputnik - Love Missile F1-11 - A testament to the power of one good gimmick, mesh fabric, and super-hold hairspray.

Sigue Sigue Sputnik - Love Missile F1-11 (from Flaunt It!, 1986) - Maura hates it. I love it. What more do you need to know?

hateful freeform jazz

I had to attend a work-related training session today, which is five hours of my life I will never get back. It was instructive in the sense where I occasionally get these impulses to apply myself more fully to the career I’ve inadvertently fallen into, and sitting in an uncomfortable chair listening to not-quite-jokes, not-quite-anecdotes about SQL and filtered data analysis for what seems like an eternity cures me of those pesky twitches of proactivity right quick.

I like my job, but it’s just not marriage material.

The training was held in the computer labs in the lower level of the library I used to work at in the mid-nineties. It’s been ages since I’ve set foot in the place, and I was shocked to find that the inter-library loan kiosk had been torn out and replaced with something called “The Jazzman Café.” Oh my fucking head.

I’m aware of libraries’ attempts to reposition themselves vis-à-vis the public in this brave new Information Age world. My librarian sister-in-law has mentioned the current trendy push toward a Borders-style coffee house/lounge model, which I personally think is absurd though I can see the appeal. For a university library, it seems rather undignified. The college library was the place I’d go to cloister myself away from the rest of campus life, and frantically bash away at an overdue script or term paper in glorious silence, free of the sickly-sweet stink of vanilla mochachino hazelnut blend that permeated every other nook and cranny of the college. Hey, why not clear out the reference room and install a skate park if we’re talking this level of focus group pandering?

Actually, the café itself didn’t irk me a much as the name, which opens a Pandora’s box of all sorts of unpleasant associations. I’m not anti-jazz; I am quite fond of Django Reinhardt, big band and swing, Dixieland, and even the übercheese of Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass material. It is entirely possible to like jazz and not be a total dick, and yet jazz-holes abound, spraying noxious clouds of condescending pretentiousness from the glands hidden beneath the elbow patches of their wool blazers.

They’re almost universally white, middle-aged intelligentsia, ostensibly liberal in outlook but with a streak of Harold Bloomian cultural conservatism running just under the surface, but directed at the “dumbing down” of society than at issues of class or identity. (They tend to be very sympathetic to these from the bastions of their tony urban condos and upscale suburban mini-manses.) Jazz-holes make it a point to mention how they don’t watch TV, even when the conversation has nothing to do with television, and are quick to reference NPR. (They are easy to confuse with world music aficionados, though fans of that genre tend to be more Unitarian in outlook and jazz-holes more Pentecostal in theirs, if you catch my meaning.) They have more in common with the classical music enthusiast-type snob, though with an affected aura of hipness.

In truth, they are simply a more refined and mature iteration of those teenage white gangsta wannabees, only they prefer to haunt coffeehouses and poetry bookstores instead of the parking lot of the local Store 24 or the food court at the mall. “Yo dawg! Anglocrest Greens Eastside! This shit is dope!” or “Bop’s sense of chordal improvisation and willful abandonment of melody is nothing less than James Joyce embodied in music.” Similar beast, same shit. One could also draw parallels between jazz-holes’ puritanical attitudes towards music with those of the metalhead set, although metalheads generally don’t co-opt the “entertainment and refreshments” aspects of academic receptions, then spend the entire time hitting on cute 21 year old graduate students.

Seriously? I’d rather attend a bonfire kegger with Slicer and the Murphman. I swiped a fresh set of D-cells for the boom box and J.C. dubbed me a copy of South of Heaven. It’s on until dawn, dudes and dudettes!

Billie Holiday – Gloomy Sunday (from Lady Day: The Best of Billie Holiday, 2001)

Anthrax – A.I.R. (from Spreading the Disease, 1985)

sometimes I’m taken by madness divine

The growth of Japanese comics (aka manga) in Western markets the past few years has been nothing short of phenomenal. So much so, in fact, that based on sales figures, manga books have supplanted superheroic fare as the “new mainstream” (or a parallel mainstream, depending how holistic – or myopic -- one’s view of these things is), built largely on a reader base outside the traditional comics reader demographic. These days one can enter a bookstore or decent comics shop (accent on decent) and find hundreds of manga titles covering a broad range of genres (horror, teen romance, martial arts, competitive cookery), but two decades ago, when the translated manga trend was in its infancy, one could count the number of titles being released on the fingers of one hand.

Back then, the two publishers with their hands in the game were Dark Horse, with their squarebound Lone Wolf and Cub reprints, and the late (and sort of lamented) Eclipse, which published a small number of biweekly titles in the traditional pamphlet format through an arrangement with Viz (before Viz began publishing their own titles a short while later). Eclipse’s initial roster of manga offerings included the Marxist ninja story Kamui, the gory teen hijinxs of Mai the Psychic Girl, the fighter pilot soap opera Area 88, and the subject of today’s post, Xenon: Heavy Metal Warrior. (I guess “Noble Gas Warrior,” though scientifically correct, didn’t sound as cool.)

Xenon tells the story of a high school “bad boy” (with the obligatory tender side), Asuka Kano, who finds himself with a cybernetic body and a bad case of amnesia following a horrific plane crash. It’s all part of a grand new product rollout by The Bloody Sea, an international arms cartel seeking to perfect the next generation of cyborg super-soldiers. Askua’s efforts to come to grips with his new abilities are consistently interrupted by Bloody Sea retrieval teams, real go-getter types who aren’t above using rocket launchers or industry-standard killer cyborg biker monkeys to achieve their goals.

The twenty-three issues of the series fall into a predictable series of arcs, where Asuka, along with the crusty scientist who originally developed the project, a high school rival-turned-friend, and a female track star (and Bloody Sea prototype effort) with cybernetic legs attempt to thwart the organization’s plans thusly:

- “I can’t win against this cyborg/super-mercenary/killer monster!”
- “You must win against this cyborg/super-mercenary/killer monster!”
- “With this new secret data/add-on/weapon I can now defeat this cyborg/super-mercenary/killer monster!”
- Rinse, repeat

It’s not the most sophisticated plotline, but the hyper-frenetic pacing pushes things along nicely and keeps the reader from noticing some of the more problematic parts of the narrative. (It helps to read the entire series in a single setting, something that will take the average reader, oh, an hour and a half, tops.) The early issues of Xenon featured articles about manga and mecha culture in lieu of letter pages, and one of these refers to the series as being part of a “new wave” of manga. I’m still unclear of what that appellation is supposed to mean, except that the narrative is sparser and anticipated the Hollywood blockbuster formula (lots of flashy “wow”, lean on substance) by ten years, but the same qualities can been seen in plenty of older manga and anime series. Xenon, to me, reads like the marriage of the classic Marvel superhero template (a conflicted hero thrown into a world he didn’t want to be a part of) to the highly-stylized aesthetics of manga. Kano’s cyborg form is a slick blend of sentai, giant robo, and American superhero designs.

There’s also plenty of dramatic shouting and big dollops of ultraviolence to keep things from getting boring. Fred Burke commented on his experiences translating the series as “the book in which I had to decide what it would sound like to shove a woman's heart out of her rib cage, and then recreate the comic-booky dialogue she will spurt with her blood.” There were ample amounts of fan service, as well; featuring both Yoko (the woman with the cyber legs) and Sonoko, a high school girl with a crush on Asuka. (Burke also mentions that the comic received a considerable number of fan letters from female readers – more evidence that pat judgments linking gender to genre tastes are nonsensical and reductive.) The depiction of women in the book can be a little off-putting, and in one case downright icky. (I could have done without the scene where Sonoko is taken hostage. It’s not hentai, but in some ways, it’s even more disturbing.)

Even with the occasionally skeevy moment (and the nonsensical conclusion of the series), Xenon is a wildly entertaining read, and was perfectly suited for my tastes as a fifteen year old fanboy beginning to feel jaded by American superhero fare. (Secret Wars II and Millennium damn near did in my interest in the Big Two’s offerings a while.) It’s a shame my efforts to adopt its style of dialogue into everyday life went so poorly. Maybe I should have picked another time and place besides at church on Easter Sunday to inaugurate the change.

AHHH! DAMN IT! HERE IS THE MUSIC! FOR TODAY!!!! (Feel free to add in your own speed lines and fist-through-the-rib-cage sound effects.)

Nitzer Ebb – Kick It (from Big Hit, 1995) – Also sold under the “I Can’t Believe It’s Not NIN” brand name.

Judas Priest – Turbo Lover (from Turbo, 1986) – Turbo Lover = a 1982 Camaro Z28, Part-Time Lover = a 1983 Chrysler Cordoba, Easy Lover = a 1976 Chevy Vega with a leaking head gasket

Sigue Sigue Sputnik – Teenage Thunder (from Flaunt It, 1986) – SSS were a one-trick-pony, but what a delightful trick and colorfully clad pony…

visual synergy: table for eight, please

I'm feeling a bit peckish. Anyone else fancy a bite to eat? There's plenty of room at the table...


Peter Gabriel - Games Without Frontiers - Exposing the machinations of the global Parcheesi conspiracy. Peter Gabriel's pioneering work in posing dramatically while holding a giant flashlight would have a massive influence on Frankie Goes to Hollywood a couple years down the line.


Ratt - Round and Round - You bring the D-Con; I'll bring the glue traps.


INXS - The One Thing - It's like that one scene from Fielding's Tom Jones, but run through an early 80's low budget music video filter.

Don't listen to the naysayers; cat fur makes everything taste better.


Tenpole Tudor - Swords of a Thousand Men - I'm happy to say that I've never eaten at one of those medieval-themed restaurants, nor ever had the desire to eat at one. I also make it a point to steer clear of Renaissance "faires" on general principle. If I have to see a bunch of people in period costumes acting foolish, I want some oddball punk rock thrown into the mix, which is where these guys come in. Frontman Edward Tudor-Pole has also had a long and interesting acting career, having starred in such films as The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (where he sang "Who Killed Bambi"), several Alex Cox productions, and the utterly abysmal adaptation of Colin MacInnes's Absolute Beginners.

Tenpole Tudor - Swords of a Thousand Men (from Eddie, Old Bob, Dick and Gary, 1981)

Friday Night Fights: The Winning Hand Is a Clenched Fist

Face facts, Jade Jaws! You’ve just been JACKED!
From The Incredible Hulk #213 (Aug. 1977)

I picked up this comic in a quarter bin at a convention back in the mid-nineties, and it was the best two bits I’ve ever spent. It’s a big dumb superhero slugfest, done in the mighty Marvel 1970’s manner. I have a soft spot for Jack of Hearts, despite his rather busy (Maura says “foolish”) costume and convoluted origin. Marvel made a decent effort to sell the character as the next big thing for a while, but the readers didn’t buy the hype and poor Jack soon drifted into the murky depths of d-lister limbo before getting bumped off just prior to and during (don’t ask) the Avengers Dissassembled fiasco.

Such are the vagaries of the genre. Rather than curse the darkness, I prefer to celebrate that there was a time where someone dressed like a refugee from a Bicycle poker deck got a chance to go toe to toe with one of the most beloved (and powerful) characters in the Marvel Universe and acquit himself pretty darn well, despite having a nasty case of egomaniacal expository syndrome (the superheroic equivalent to mono)…

Sinergy – Rock You like a Hurricane (from A Tribute to the Scorpions, 2001) – It’s impossible to top the original version, but these Finnish rockers give it their best shot. The first band shirt I ever owned was a Scorpions baseball-style t-shirt with red three-quarter length sleeves. Too bad I didn’t hold on to it; I could have sold it to a Japanese collector and paid off the balance of my car loan.

John Lee Hooker – Behind the Plow (from The Country Blues of John Lee Hooker, 1960) – PLOW! I wonder if the person in charge of the sound effects in the top panel grew up in an Amish community. I hope Jack remembered to cultivate in evenly spaced rows at a uniform three-inch depth, and to leave a third of the Hulk’s surface area fallow for the season. Comic book onomatopoeia is a very strange beast.

(The wise gambler bets on Bahlactus.)

Harajuku Antichrist

The things we do for love. The other day I got a opportunity to get my hands on some import anime soundtracks. There wasn’t anything in the assortment that interested my personally, but there was a nice selection of music from the anime series and live action movie adapted from Ai Yazawa’s Nana, which Maura happens to be a fan of. Shojo (manga aimed at younger females) tends to leave me cold, although I do find the occasional flip through the wife’s copies of Shojo Beat an enlightening experience, not for the comics content but for the fashion and lifestyle features, which read like something out of Seventeen after a crash infusion of facile ex oriente lux exoticism. (The habit western anime fans have of appropriating decontextualized and poorly understood chunks of Japanese culture deserves a book in itself.)

Based on my above stated biases, I’d normally just have kicked the soundtracks over to Maura and left it at that, but seeing as Nana has a punk rawk connection, with one of the two identically named women who give the manga its title being an aspiring punk musician, I was a little curious whether the music would have a bit more kick than the customary j-pop/idol singer material one usually finds on these sorts of albums.

Going over the track listings, I came across this lovely gem of a cover on the Nana Best album and decided to give it a spin. I’m not sure what I expected, but in my wildest dreams did not anticipate what came over my headphones. Here’s a pictorial reenactment of my reaction (French Foreign Legion hat optional):

I think it was in an old issue of the “adult” manga anthology Pulp that I read an interview with Chynna Clugston where she mentions encountering some Japanese youths in Quadrophrenia-perfect mod gear. When she asked them what bands they liked, they responded with “Poison.” (What, you didn’t know that “Unskinny Bop” is a masterpiece of Northern Soul?) The dissonance between fashion and music styles in Japanese pop culture is nothing new, as I have learned though many viewings of 80’s sci-fi anime series where nearly all roads lead to terrible jazz rock or Pink Lady clonage.

I didn’t for a minute think that a series targeting young Japanese women would feature a soundtrack composed of the terrifyingly atonal and extreme sounds I associate with the radical wing of the Japanese punk rock scene, but something a little less Avril and little more Polysics would have been nice. I warned everyone about allowing Hot Topic to spread unchecked, but did they listen to me? Now look what’s happened…

Need something to blot out the pain? How about a speed metal version of the Uchuu Senkan Yamato (aka Space Battleship Yamato, aka Star Blazers) theme?

Animetal - Uchuu Senkan Yamato (from Marathon, 1997) – I’ve been watching the uncut Japanese version of the first Yamato series recently. One difference between the original and the edited for the American market Star Blazers? R2D2-analog IQ-9 didn’t try to peek under Nova’s skirt in Star Blazers. I guess western audiences weren’t into sexual harassment scenes featuring squat comic relief robots in the late 70’s.

my spells cannot be broke

The final gate stood before them, its adamantite bars shining in the flickering torchlight. Beyond lay the inner sanctum of the Gheshezimar the Witch King. The muscular half orc snorted dismissively. The stink of foul magic was heavy in the air. The end of his journey was near at hand, a quest for vengeance that had bought him across half of Xyrolia. Gheshezimar’s thrice-damned soul would join those of his spider-limbed minions in the Abyss.

The barbarian gripped the bars in his massive hands and attempted to lift the gate. The sinews in his shoulder blades knotted and popped with the strain, but the barrier would not lift. “By the fire caves of Zamphr!” he bellowed, “I shall not be denied!”

His slender companion stepped up to the gate. “Allow me,” he hissed, and made a quick gesture with his ebon fingers. Sparkling tendrils snaked from his hands and wrapped around the bars. Slowly the gate began to lift. The barbarian did not approve of such arcane trickery, but he had come to grudgingly respect Nightshade D’rozz’s talents during the many kizmals they had journeyed together. The dark elf mage had proven his worth once again.

No sooner had the gate opened than a shadowy form lunged from the dark passage beyond, screaming profane curses in the long dead language of the Lala-Bar. “A wraithling!” Nightshade screamed, and scrambled to prepare another spell. The half orc barbarian was quicker, and swung his massive axe at the attacker. The blade went wide of the target, shattering on the stone wall of the dungeon. The wightling closed in for the kill….

“What the hell? How could I have missed it? I’m swinging a dire axe that’s as wide as the passage and I have triple weapon specialization!”

“Well, if you account for the speed factor and the encumbrance penalty on initiative…”

“But the axe was forged by the Dwarfsmiths of Hron! It’s supposed to be unbreakable!”

“Um, yeah, well, I think there’s a table that covers that in the Big Dudes With Axes Survival Guide. Just give me a minute; I’m going to look it up. Wait, did I bring that book with me?”

“Aw, screw this. I’m going to see what’s on TV.”

Ah, the raw stuff of nerdy adolescent maleness, roughly shaped by popcult touchstones and polyhedral dice, and set to the dulcet peals of heavy metal thunder… It’s truly a wonder to behold.

I’ve played in hyper-sophisticated, tightly run role-playing campaigns where every in-game location has been mapped down to individual trees and bushes and the game master stressed the importance of “playing in character.” They were admirable, often enjoyable, efforts, but lacked the unrefined entertainment value derived from a cabal of socially awkward misfits cracking the seal on the Dungeons and Dragons Basic (“Red Box”) Set for the first time.

Give an experienced gamer a rule book, some dice, and a character sheet, and you’ll end up with “Eldremere Lightspear, Son of Ulthren, Protector of the Silver Forest and Bloodthrall of the Lady’s Kithband,” complete with a family tree, detailed backstory, and minute personal details.

Give the same to a fourteen year old boy in a Scorpions t-shirt circa 1985 and you’d get this:

Sophisticated characterization and internal logic are fine and all, but when you’re a geeky pubescent manchild trying to grapple with personal power fantasies, there’s nothing like kicking some ass in a dungeon haphazardly populated by a random assortment of the “coolest” monsters listed in the Fiend Folio (“’Cause that was, like, on sale for four bucks at Kay-Bee, and the Monster Manual was, like fifteen.”). It’s a realm where the rules, when properly understood (i.e. not often), are reduced to mere guidelines. The average strength score is 18/00 (the whole 18-slash-percentage strength rating for AD&D always struck me as rather stupid, and opened too many opportunities for meta-gaming), and every character is either a Half-Orc barbarian or multiclassed Dark Elf fighter/magic user/thief. Oh, and did I mention the harem girls?

It’s stupid, nonsensical, and immature (plus frequently sexist), but I have a certain weakness for that form of fantastical yearning. Unpretentious to a fault, it wore its patchwork of influences proudly on its sleeve. The Sword and the Sorcerer, Conan comics, metal and hard rock songs, pinball machine artwork – all thrown together in a steaming cauldron of testosterone, with the end result resembling an independently invented version of John Norman’s Gor as manifested in an eighth grader’s 3rd period English notebook. (Big thanks to the talented Dave Campbell for providing the excellent artwork that leads off today’s post. He nailed the concept perfectly.)

It might seem odd for me to wax nostalgic over such things, given my track record of bitching about the excesses of nerd behavior, especially those associated with the male side of the fan divide. It’s a matter of context, really. There are worse ways for an adolescent boy to work through his issues than projecting his self worth onto a larger than life fictional avatar named Doomhammer for a few months. As a step toward maturity, it’s no big deal, and kind of interesting to look back upon. As a developmental terminus, it’s creepy as fuck.

Even if I still gamed, I wouldn’t want to participate in such a campaign, even if it was possible to overcome my accumulated wisdom and approach it as fresh and free of irony as I did twenty-odd years ago. There are some aspects of youth that cannot be recaptured, no matter how hard one tries. I’ll just have to content myself by watching Deathstalker and The Warriors From Hell for the umpteenth time.

Improbably named and costumed characters? Check. Happens in a universe that is not so much a physical location as an abstract series of events linked together with the thinnest of plot threads? Check. The hero is an obnoxious asshole? Check. Acts of derring-don’t-make-much-sense? Check. Despite the absence of a heavy metal soundtrack, Deathstalker and The Warriors From Hell is the purest realization of a beginner’s D&D run ever caught on film. Potatoes are what we eat.

On to today’s xvart-stomping, blade-swinging, well-oiled and waxed collection of songs:

It’s kind of funny to consider that heavy metal’s fixation with fantasy themes grew out of the 60’s hippie counterculture, by way of Led Zeppelin’s shared fascination with Tolkien and Black Sabbath’s incorporation of 70’s occultist elements, with some Wagnerian (Richard, not Jack) bombast thrown in for good measure. It’s not that long a road from the peace sign to the mark of the beast, if you think about it.

Dio – Holy Diver (from Holy Diver, 1983) – I probably could have skipped all the overblown writing today and just posted this track and its video, which sum things up more effectively than my tortured prose ever could. (Did you know there was a NES game based on this song? Friend CJ has the scoop.)

Savatage – Hall of the Mountain King (from Hall of the Mountain King, 1987) – I saw Savatage open for Testament back in the late 80’s. I can’t remember if was at the Orpheum or the Channel, which reveals two embarrassing facts about me:

1. I can be very forgetful.
2. I paid to see Testament twice.

Don't forget to catch the video. It's priceless.

Deep Purple – Stormbringer (from The Very Best of Deep Purple, 2000) – Blood and souls for my Lord Blackmore! Thank you, Tanelorn! The Last Emperor of Melniboné says “Goodnight!”