to the vanquished, the spoils

Combining historical accuracy with cultural sensitivity!
Here is the scenario:

Your side has just been decisively defeated by the opposition. While the rout can be credited in part to the superior leadership, organization, and tactics of the enemy, the unfortunate (but entirely forseeable) consequences of your side's ideological and policy decisions were also a major factor.

Even after launching every weapon in your arsenal and mobilizing your most loyal and reliable ground forces, you had to fight (and lose) on fronts that you hadn't even anticipated from the outset.

So, faced with such a colossal rebuke of your strategy, tactics, and global vision, do you:

1. Humbly reflect on the errors in judgement that caused your loss and recalibrate your focus?

2. Brazenly attempt to dictate terms to the victorious side while refusing to acknowledge the reasons for your defeat?

If you answered "2," you could have a great future ahead of you as a right-wing op-ed columnist.

Manual Scan - American Way (from a 1982 single; collected on This Is Mod v.6: The United States of Mod, 1999) - "Never apologize. It's a sign of weakness." If there's one thing I've learned as an American, it's that sociopathy and arrogance are more socially acceptable behaviors than signs of "weakness" are.

Don't let the compliation title fool you -- this cut may be mod revival by association, but the postpunk influences (Gang of Four and Pylon, specifically) are unmistakable.

tired of being upset

It's been a while since we checked up on Senator Psycho Man. I wonder what he's been up to these past few weeks....

Meanwhile, back at the McCain campaign headquarters.....


November 5th can't come soon enough.

The Buzzcocks - Everybody's Happy Nowadays (from Singles Going Steady, 1979) - It must be true, because I saw it in a poll.

Halloween Countdown: October 23 - pale shadow of the bat

Longtime AT readers may remember last year's Halloween Countdown post on the subject of Dell's superheroic take on Frankenstein. As I mentioned back then, Frankie wasn't the only public-domain horror icon to be dusted off and repackaged by the publisher to cash in on a hot trend. Dracula, too, got a chance to strut around in spandex and fight the neverending battle for truth, justice, and the Transylvanian way...

I shall become...a bat. Kinda... Sorta...
Putting aside the whole parasitic embodiment of evil issue associated with the brand, the idea of Dracula as superhero isn't that unworkable a concept. After all, one of the most iconic and popular superheroes of all time owes more than a little to the Dracula mythos. Despite being done to undeath, the "benevolent vampire with a tortured soul" trope has proven popular (and profitable) enough to support a whole host of works dealing with the subject.

Not that this has any bearing on the Dell's Dracula comic book series, however, which is by-the-numbers drek of the most shameless variety.

The Dracula in question is not the infamous Count Dracula of novel and film, but rather a modern-day human descendant of Vlad Tepes who has fled the communist oppression in his homeland. As the blurb at the beginning of Dracula #4 (March 1967) puts it: "His family name he wishes to clear from the false legend which surrounds it is little know (sic) here."

While some might see little moral difference between an immortal bloodsucker and ruthless monarch who liked to impale his enemies on sharpened spikes, it is a matter of great import to Drac Junior...and what better way to set the ignorant masses straight about the false rumors of vampirism than to dress up in a vaguely bat-like costume and call yourself "Dracula?"

Upon arriving in the States, Drac Junior assumes the identity of "Al U. Card," a rather obvious pseudonym for someone who is obsessed about keeping a secret identity despite the clever touch of telling folks that the "U" stands for "Ulysses." Most of his time is spent working his comic book science mojo in perfecting the magic formula which allows him to turn into a bat (again, way to buck the stereotype, Al), but his off hours are spent fending off the advances and inquiries of B.B. Beebe (no shame in groaning, dear readers), a jet-setting Nellie Bly of the swingin' sixties...

There's a little bit of Dracula in all of us, my Sterno-eating friend.
After a couple close calls, Al is forced to reveal his true identity to B.B. when he saves her from a skydiving mishap. B.B. turns out to be steadfastly supportive of Al's ambitions, and even helps him set up his "Secret Cave" headquaters/squat in an abandoned military bunker that fortuitously comes pre-loaded with a room full of bat cages.

Al wastes no time getting back to his primate-to-chiroptera transformation studies, which rankles the increasingly clingy B.B., who demands that Al help her drive a minibus full of children to the beach. Al wisely begs off, not realizing that the chagrined B.B. and gaggle of snotnoses are headed right into the clutches of The Evil Piper (as opposed to The Awesome Piper), an evil genius with dastardly ambitions...

When Nickelodeon advertising executives go bad...
B.B. roughs up the Piper with some Judo moves, but is quickly overpowered by the hypnotised kids, who take great pleasure in tossing her into the minibus and rolling it off an oceanside cliff. (Kids. God love 'em.)

A guilty Dracula arrives just in time to save Ms. Beebe from her own personal Chappaquiddick before rushing off to put a stop to the Evil Piper's reign of terror...which largely consists of stealing a red convertible from a nearby gas station. ("Today, a sweet ride. Tomorrow, the world!") It all comes to a head on the cliffside, where Drac finds himself stalemated by the Piper's threat to harm the children.

With neither side able to break the deadlock, it is left to B.B. to resolve the Kobayashi Maru scenario with some out-of-the-box strategic thinking....

The sad answer to "If everyone else jumped off a cliff, would you?"
As the little bodies rain from the skies like sacks of wet sand, the Piper gets a taste of the fist (and angst) of Dracula...

A precision fighter, Drac ain't.
...and it turns out that the kids are fine, as B.B. somehow managed to set up a safety net below the cliff's edge. She explains her the reasoning behind her cunning plan thusly...

"I studied child psychology under John Wayne Gacy!"
The exercise in child endangerment leaves B.B. with an unshakable conviction that she is destined for a life of superheroics. Over Dracula's half-hearted protests, she takes a swig of the magic bat transformation potion and is reborn as "Fledermaus," or "Fleeta" for short.

Stepping out for a key party at the Langstroms' place...
EVILDOERS BEWARE!

(Or not, as it was the last issue of the series, not counting some early 1970's reprints of the run.)

Christine Pilzer - Dracula (from a 1966 EP; collected on Femmes de Paris, Vol. 1, 2002) - Les enfants de la nuit...quelle belle musique go-go ils font.

Halloween Countdown: October 19 - twelve more days 'til Halloween

The original Halloween film from 1978 is hailed as a horror classic, and rightly so. Along with Psycho, it is credited with providing the template for the slasher film genre, yet like Hitchcock's 1960 film, the horror is a matter of atmosphere, pacing, and soundtrack rather than the gory, high body count excess associated with substandard imitations.

The silliness and implausibility of Halloween's premise are masked by writer/director John Carpenter's skillful presentation, which manages to sustain a real sensation of dread throughout the proceedings -- hunter versus hunted, everyteen babysitter versus a monster, Jamie Lee Curtis versus a dude in coveralls and a Shatner mask -- made even more terrifying by the utter absence of scenery-chewing antics on the monster's part. It's no mean feat to pull off effectively, which is probably why the film continues to be held in high regard by folks (like Maura, for example) who consider slasher films to be low-grade exploitative garbage.

The problem with success, especially within the realm of genre material, is that there's an overwhelming temptation to return to the same well again and again until the box office revenue runs dry. "Sameness with a spin" is the operating principle, and Halloween's success meant that whatever charms the original possessed had to be recycled, laminated and built upon with copious amounts of ludicrous backstory over the course of a half-dozen slasher-by-numbers sequels, an unnecessary remake, and the head-scratcher that is 1982's Halloween III: Season of the Witch.

The third entry in the series is a sequel in name only, featuring none of the characters or plot points established in the original film. Instead it explores the timely issue of druidic fundamentalist terrorism, as it pertains to neolithic monuments, seasonal merchandise, and the use of advertising. Or, to put it simply, magical Halloween masks that make creepy crawlies burst out of people's heads when triggered by a subliminally-loaded TV commercial. There are killer robots involved in the mess somewhere, too.

The idea, according to the producers, was to expand the franchise into a anthology format, which translates into non-bullshit language as "a shameless bait-and-switch ploy that banks on name recognition." (Carpenter and co-writer Debra Hill wanted to move past the franchise, but the moneymen had other ideas. From such behind-the-scenes wrangling such cinematic atrocities are born.)

Despite the film's messy genesis and numerous other warning signs, Fangoria was still willing to beat the drum of unwarranted optimism...

...though I suspect that the full page ads the magazine was running for masks based on the ones in the film may have had something to do with it. The film did make money, though not nearly as much as hoped for and racked up enough terrible reviews that the producers retreated to the comfort of familiar territory for the fourth film. The Wikipedia entry for Halloween III: Season of the Witch claims that it "has gained somewhat of a cult following among audiences," which signifies little except that the one fan of the movie knows how to edit a wiki page.

For me, the film is significant for being one of the first instances where the popcult coprophagia of childhood gave way to a more sophisticated assessment of "Wow, this film is total crap! Why am I wasting my time watching it?" (I consider myself lucky. Many geeks never reach that level of awareness in their lifetimes.)

While I'm not above dropping a reference to the Silver Shamrock jingle from the film, for today's musical selections I'm going with two gems featured in the original 1978 movie.

John Carpenter - Halloween Theme (from the Halloween 20th Anniversary Edition OST, 1998) - Yes, there is a boogeyman, and he really digs the piano.

Blue Öyster Cult - (Don't Fear) The Reaper (from Agents of Fortune, 1976) - First person to make a "more cowbell" joke gets a size 10 jungle boot to the ass.

the bitter angels of my nature

I took a stoll over to Wheately Hall yesterday afternoon to see if the vending machines in the lobby had a better selection than the ones closer to my office had. Trapped between the double doors at the entrance to the building was a representative example of a certain breed of freshman which flocks to the campus at the start of every semester.

Dressed to the nines in the latest "hot" celebrity fashions, they look like they're headed out for a night of high-cover charge clubbing rather than a rousing 8:30 AM session of English 101. For them, the college experience isn't about pedagogy as it is about being seen, a rather sad attempt at prolonging the superficial bullshit of the high school experience. A few of these kids eventually smarten up and knuckle down, but the vast majority barely make it to midterms before quietly departing to work at the local Tello's store.

This particular example was sporting a Posh Spice-meets-Kim Kardashian-meets-South Shore mallrat ensemble, complete with oversized sunglasses, an unnaturally black dye job, and an uneven spray-on tan. I guess she tried to slip between the doors as they closed behind another student, but wasn't quick enough and got pinned between them halfway through.

For most folks with a modicum of common sense, it wouldn't be a big deal. The doors are on the heavy side and have really bizarre centers of gravity (especially if you're a southpaw, like I am), but not so much as to cause more than a slight inconvenience. This aspiring scholar, however, was having a tough time of it, due to the fact that she was holding the requisite giant cup of coffee in one hand and was fantically texting on her cell phone in the other.

She was so fixated on the latter activity that she could barely summon more than a slight wiggle, and even that was for the sake of getting a closer look at her phone's display screen. Maybe she was typing in the last string of a chemical formula that could cure cancer, solve world hunger, and provide an eco-friendly alternative for fossil fuel, and the urgency of the task was so great that she couldn't put the phone down for fifteen seconds and lever the doors open with her shoulders...but I somehow doubt it.

After watching this sorry display of obliviousness for a couple of minutes, I wondered if I should perhaps give her a hand.


Good Andrew thought: "Well, gee, sure she's an idiot, but that doesn't negate your obligation to do the right thing and help her out! Such small acts of basic kindness are what make a random and uncaring universe tolerable for its residents!"








Evil Andrew thought: "Anyone that fucking stupid deserves exactly what he or she gets."





Guess which side won the moral debate?

Pete Townshend - Let My Love Open the Door (from Empty Glass, 1980) - Or let my profound disgust make me circle around to the back entrance of the building and leave the idiots to wallow in their idiocy.

Note: I almost forgot to mention that there's a new pronounced WOO-BIN post on the subject of parenting, Woobin-style.

roll for critical fumble

When I was stuck at my grandma's house a couple weeks back, I unearthed my well-worn copy of the 4th edition of the Trouser Press Record Guide. It was published in 1991, just before the alternative rock scene went mainstream. In those days before information on obscure indie and punk bands was a mere Google search away, the Guide was an invaluable resource when it came to deciding which albums and artists to keep an eye out for at the local record shops.

There was a time (back when I rode the Christian Herter scholarship gravy train) when my mornings were spent copying out promising leads from the Guide onto index cards and my afternoons were spent wandering from one used vinyl store to another in search of the objects of ephemeral desire. As a result, my copy of the guide is, how you say, "beat to shit," missing its cover, its spine bent into a c-shape, and the pages stuffed with clippings and photos of interest to me at the time.

Eventually I migrated to The Guinness Who's Who of Indie and New Wave Music and a number of microgenre directories as my sourcebooks of choice, as they better matched my specific musical interests and covered artists not included in Trouser Press. The fact that the writing in those other directories was a little more even-handed was also played an important factor, because as handy as Trouser Press was for determining release dates and album titles, the commentary and capsule reviews in the book frequently reached toxic levels of "jaded hipster" and "rockist" attitude.

Certain bands were especially singled out for critical maulings in which informational content took a back seat to self-satisfied rants permeated with the phony idolatry of rockist mythology, where the mythic (and false) aura of authenticity is all that matters. I noticed it back in 1993, but it was even more obnoxious to revisit fifteen years later, as my tastes have shifted and broadened and I've gained a bit more knowledge about the artists, the ideologies, and the music involved.

It's all very silly and pointless. What you may claim to be the pinnacle of pop genius, I might find to be kind of pedestrian, and vice-versa. Our individual tastes are our own, and that's nothing to be ashamed about...unless you are a Katy Perry fan, in which case I hope the Fates are kinder to you in your next incarnation. Savaging INXS for not being Elvis Costello might make for some unintentional laughs, but it's also quite pathetic. (Besides. I'd rather listen to Kick than Armed Forces any day of the week.)

Here are some excerpts from some of the more egregious rockist rants from my copy of the Trouser Press Guide, deliberately chosen with certain readers of this blog in mind.

Orange Juice:

Glasgow's insufferably coy Orange Juice, de facto leaders of the Scottish neo-pop revolution, typified a UK trend towards clean, innocent looks that unfortunately spilled over into the music.

Orange Juice - Falling and Laughing (from You Can't Hide Your Love Forever, 1982) - It's true. MTV and Smash Hits ruined everything. God forbid that someone who knows how to tune a guitar and doesn't look like a refugee from a Bowery methadone clinic becomes a chart success.

Oingo Boingo:

This eight-piece LA outfit (with three-man horn section) started out trying to be a West Coast answer to XTC and Devo, but suffered from studied wackiness/quirkiness and managed to hide solid cleverness behind overproduction and hamminess.

Oingo Boingo - Wild Sex (in the Working Class) (from Nothing to Fear, 1982) - Wow. That's reading an awful lot into what I always thought of as pretty entertaining party music.

Conflict:

In the real/rock world, only the young and the gullible expect their favorite bands to abide by lofty personal standards.

Conflict - The Guilt & The Glory (from It's Time to See Who's Who, 1983) - I don't entirely disagree with the above statement (in an otherwise positive write-up) about the stalwart anarchopunk outfit, except that the "real/rock" part makes me want to punch somebody and for the fact that Minor Threat, the most generic-sounding hardcore band ever, was praised for wearing their hearts on their sleeves in their Guide entry.

Pet Shop Boys:

The in-joke references and self-amused esoterica strewn thoughout songs like "West End Girls" and "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)" should have precluded their general popularity, but evidently the laxative-smooth synth backing has utilitarian value for clubgoers. Ghastly, depressing and offensive.

Pet Shop Boys - Suburbia (from Please, 1986) - Pop sensibility and synthesizers are anathema to rockists....until some cherished rock idol appropriates them for his own use, at which point there's only a 50% chance the purists will howl for his blood.

--------------------

In other news, there's a new post up at pronounced WOO-BIN on the subject of local geography.

choose wisely or perish

The dreaded return of Senator Psycho Man -- because there is no gag I can't milk 'till the udders squirt dust!

(with apologies this time to Fantastic Four #284, November 1985)
I came of age in the era of home videogame consoles -- first the Pong clones, then the Atari age, the Nintendo generation, and all that followed. Before one was old enough to secure a source of disposable income, the purchase of a system was left in the hands of parents or relatives, either directly or through gifts of cash. It was crucially important to choose wisely and get the "right" system, lest one be stuck with a big pile of digitized suck while one's peers waxed euphoric about the console not taken.

It hurts to feel left out of the loop, especially when you're a kid and can't put things right via a high-interest credit card purchase. Humans being the adaptable creatures that we are, though, it was a simple enough matter to encyst the nagging feelings of envy by adopting an irrationaly defensive attitude...

My system doesn't suck, yours does! If you look at the specs, the Atari 7800 is far superior to the NES, and Solaris beats that stupid Super Mario bullshit any day! I wouldn't get a Nintendo even if they were giving them out for free! Quit laughing!

Repeat it often enough, and you might even come to believe it...even if in your heart of hearts you know the real truth. This midset, I suspect, is why videogame fandom tends to outstrip all others when it comes to twisted loyalty and bizarre outburts.

Substituting brand loyalty for community isn't anything new; it's an inevitable consequence of consumer capitalist society where traditional bonds of community have long been on the wane. Unlike, say, the Marvel versus DC fan rivalry, however, the cost of switch-hitting between factions is a hundred times more expensive, making the face-saving justifications that much more strident and impassioned.

I bring this up because I'm reminded of it each time I stumble across defenses of Sarah Palin's vice-presidential credentials issued by various right-wing pundits and the GOP's official PR flacks. It's rather pathetic watching the loyal unconvinced contort themselves through the most tenuous (even by political standards) chains of logic in order to justify an unjustifiable position. Palin is a foreign policy expert because the Japanese occupied the Aluetian Islands during the Second World War? Seriously? There's wishful thinking, and there's outright delusional psychosis.

Even more entertaining is how the justifications double back upon and contradict the previously prevailing rhetoric:

Experience matters, except when it doesn't. Oh, I mean a different kind of experience. Okay, look, I'm a fucking shill who will claim the moon is made of cheese if the party bosses say it will help their chances.

It's also great that the self-appointed arbiters of "traditional Christian morality" have managed to dig some Christian forebearance and compassion out of their junk drawers when it comes to Palin's unwed teenage daughter. "These things happen." Indeed they do, but will this new-found magnamity be extended to all...or just the certain politically expedient few?

Anyway you slice it, McCain's choice of Palin was a poor one. If it was done to shore up the support from social conservatives, there were plenty of better choices from which to pick. If it was done as an appeal to women voters and disillusioned Hillary supporters, there were several far more convincing and qualified options out there. It appears that there are many in the McCain camp who feel the same way, as the speed and ferocity of its responses to criticism -- such as bring up Doris Kearns Goodwin's political affiliation after she stated the historical fact that Palin's resume is the thinnest in the past hundred years of presidential elections -- rivals the defensive rants of any ten-year old who got a TurboGrafx-16 instead of a SNES for Christmas.

(I suspect that McCain's real motivation for going with Palin was because his ego would not allow for a second power base within the presidency -- see Dick "Richelieu" Cheney -- and that factored first above any other considerations.)

Any Trouble - Second Choice (from Where Are All the Nice Girls? 1980) - The Wikipedia entry for Any Trouble states that the band suffered from "unfair" comparisons to Elvis Costello. Unfair, perhaps, because it failed to mentioned the similarities to Squeeze as well.

Deadbeats - Choose You (from a 1980 single) - Not the L.A. punk rockers of "Kill the Hippies" fame, these Deadbeats were a British mod revival outfit. It's all good to me.

fashions by Darwin

Today we're going to take a look at the prevailing biological fashions, circa 430 million years ago. The Ordovician-Silurian extinction event cleared the way for all sorts of wild and crazy adaptive styles which make excellent mockery material from our lofty present-day perspective with its pre-distressed skinny jeans, low-rise sweatpants, and ironic t-shirts.

It's great being a superior lifeform, isn't it?

Hey, look! It's a giant sea scorpion! Talk about overcompensation! This dude will rock you like a hurricane! (Trite popcult references make the blogosphere go 'round!)

Trilobites were hot stuff for a time, but so were pogs. Seriously. The three-lobed look with a segmented thorax? What intelligent designer came up with that idea?

Nice look, dude. Is it anime cosplay season already? This pioneer of piscine fashion is rather proud of his status as a vertebrae early-adopter. Too bad he can't tell if he wants to be a fish or a horseshoe crab. Sheesh, didn't they have Urban Outfitters stores in the Paleozoic Era?

This dashing pair of cephalaspis are sporting the "bone-plated jawless" look popular with the Silurian-Devonian fishy crowd. So what if it was a reflection of environment and evolutionary trends? The important thing is that it looks really goofy by current bio-aesthetic standards and is perfectly suited for facile snarkery.

These Silurian fashions make it really hard to tell the males and females of the various species apart, which makes me wonder what other kinds of "boning" was going on behind the secluded coral reefs. HAW HAW! (Remember, kids: It's not a real half-assed retro fashion post if it doesn't contain at least one casual or thinly-veiled homophobic joke.)

If I have seen further than others, it is because I am standing on my tippity-toes, peeking over the shoulders of clueless giants.

We've got another original version/cover version pairing today -- a double shot of new (and newer) wave pop from the City of Angels, where star-fucking is always in vogue. (Not that I'm making a statement by choosing this particular tune or anything, honest....)

Felony - The Fanatic (from The Fanatic, 1983)

The Checkers - The Fanatic (from Make a Move, 2003)

Because we must

I'm going to break from my usual light-hearted fare featuring talking tigers and war atrocities to post something important by John DiBello, a good friend of mine and the Little Stuffed Bull's human sidekick, about something that bugs the shit out of me and needs to be brought to the attention of the widest audience possible. Those of you into the comics and comics convention scene have quite possibly witnessed or experienced similar bullshit in some form or another. Those of you who aren't into the comics thing can feel free to shake your heads.

Overheard at San Diego Comic-Con while I was having lunch on the balcony of the Convention Center on Sunday July 27: a bunch of guys looking at the digital photos on the camera of another, while he narrated: "These were the Ghostbusters girls. That one, I grabbed her ass, 'cause I wanted to see what her reaction was." This was only one example of several instance of harassment, stalking or
assault that I saw at San Diego this time.

1. One of my friends was working at a con booth selling books. She was stalked by a man who came to her booth several times, pestering her to get together for a date that night. One of her co-workers chased him off the final time.

2. On Friday, just before the show closed, this same woman was closing up her tables when a group of four men came to her booth, started taking photographs of her, telling her she was the "prettiest girl at the con." They they entered the booth, started hugging and kissing her and taking photographs of themselves doing so. She was confused and scared, but they left quickly after doing that.

3. Another friend of mine, a woman running her own booth: on Friday a man came to her booth and openly criticized her drawing ability and sense of design. Reports from others in the same section of the floor confirmed he'd targeted several women with the same sort of abuse and criticism.

Quite simply, this behavior has got to stop at Comic-Con. It should never be a sort of place where anyone, man or woman, feels unsafe or attacked either verbally or physically in any shape or form. There are those, sadly, who get off on this sort of behavior and assault, whether it's to professional booth models, cosplayers or costumed women, or women who are just there to work. This is not acceptable behavior under any circumstance, no matter what you look like or how you're dressed, whether you are in a Princess Leia slave girl outfit or business casual for running your booth.

On Saturday, the day after the second event I described above, I pulled out my convention book to investigate what you can do and who you can speak to after such an occurrence. On page two of the book there is a large grey box outlining "Convention Policies," which contain rules against smoking, live animals, wheeled handcarts, recording at video presentations, drawing or aiming your replica weapon, and giving your badge to others. There is nothing about attendee-to-attendee personal behavior.

Page three of the book contains a "Where Is It?" guide to specific Comic-Con events and services. There's no general information room or desk listed, nor is there a contact location for security, so I go to the Guest Relations Desk. I speak to a volunteer manning the desk; she's sympathetic to the situation but who doesn't have a clear answer to my question: "What's Comic-Con's policy and method of dealing with complaints about harassment?" She directs me to the nearest security guard, who is also sympathetic listening to my reports, but short of the women wanting to report the incidents with the names of their harassers, there's little that can be done.

"I understand that," I tell them both, "but what I'm asking is more hypothetical and informational: if there is a set Comic-Con policy on harassment and physical and verbal abuse on Con attendees and exhibitors, and if so, what's the specific procedure by which someone should report it, and specifically where should they go?" But this wasn't a question either could answer.

So, according to published con policy, there is no tolerance for smoking, drawn weapons, personal pages or selling bootleg videos on the floor, and these rules are written down in black and white in the con booklet. There is not a word in the written rules about harassment or the like. I would like to see something like "Comic-Con has zero tolerance for harassment or violence against any of our attendees or exhibitors. Please report instances to a security guard or the Con Office in room XXX."

The first step to preventing such harassment is giving its victims the knowledge that they can safely and swiftly report such instances to someone in authority. Having no published guideline, and indeed being unable to give a clear answer to questions about it, gives harassment and violence one more red-tape loophole to hide behind.

I enjoyed Comic-Con. I'm looking forward to coming back next year. So, in fact, are the two women whose experiences I've retold above. Aside from those instances, they had a good time at the show. But those instances of harassment shouldn't have happened at all, and that they did under no clear-cut instructions about what to do sadly invites the continuation of such behavior, or even worse.

I don't understand why there's no such written policy about what is not tolerated and what to do when this happens. Is there anyone at Comic-Con able to explain this? Does a similar written policy exist in the booklets for other conventions (SF, comics or otherwise) that could be used as a model? Can it be adapted or adapted, and enforced, for Comic-Con? As the leading event of the comics and pop culture world, Comic-Con should work to make everyone who attends feel comfortable and safe.

(Editor's note: Maura, a frequent con-attendee, was astonished to discover that SDCC had nothing in the literature regarding anti-harrassment policies, as such rules of conduct are clearly laid out in black and white at many other, smaller conventions.)

all gonna feel the pain

Though I can strongly relate to both Nick Carraway and Paul Pennyfeather, the fictional character I identify the most with is Major Clipton from The Bridge on the River Kwai, gazing down at the panorama of broken bodies and twisted wreckage and despairing at the stupidity and waste of it all: "Madness! Madness!"

An American-educated (tossed around by the media like it's a mark of distinction, though there is no shortage of dumbasses the descriptor applies to) leader of Georgia, a Western-friendly former Soviet republic, tries to mobilize domestic support by appealing to nationalism. He decides to retake a breakaway province with a carefully timed surprise attack that less carefully fails to consider the presence of a couple thousand Russian separatist-friendly "peacekeepers" in said province.

The usual stable of neocon loudmouths, feeling rosy with the glow of Cold War nostalgia, offer their expert predictions about how a massive global military power will be humiliated on the battlefield by 18,000 American-trained troops. Russia is happy to put those theories to the test, as the offensive gives them a plum opportunity to soothe its amputee's itch with a liberal dosage of military force, as well as deliver a message to the West and it's former Soviet proxies about fucking around in Russia's traditional spheres of influence.

The Russians defy the experts' proclamations, put the Georgians to flight, and systematically degrade their military infrastructure over the course of a few days. With his country being hammered by an implacable foe, the Georgian leader makes it his solemn responsibility to act like a true leader to his people in their hour of need....by appearing on American television and making hyperbolic pronouncements and chastising the Western powers for not backing him up and/or shielding him from the consequences of his massive lapse in judgement.

His words are echoed by the usual suspects in the media, who dust off the pre-1989 propaganda lexicons (but not, interestingly enough, their history books) and jettison any pretense of objective journalism to engage in some pre-end-of-history style jingoism, weaving the present state of idiocy into a psuedo-historic tapestry which includes the Russian Civil War, World War II, and the 1968 uprising in Prague. It's astonishingly easy to call for military intervention when you're not the one who will be doing the fighting and dying.

And what of the West? A lot of tough talk masking the fact that there's really fuck all they can do without starting World War III, or worse -- without pissing off a major natural gas supplier. The opportunity the conflict provides to bitch out Putin and Company is welcome, but behind the strong words and messages of moral support for the Georgian government is the uncomfortable and unspoken acknowledgement that no one wants to risk a broken nose because his or her reckless buddy picked a fight with the biggest bully in the bar...especially when you've been telling everyone for years that that the bully is no great shakes.

Russia, on the other hand, has shown a great deal of enthusiasm for twisting the knife as long as it's diplomatically feasible, relishing the opportunity to make its rival global powers twist impotently in the wind.

Ah, what a lovely thing geopolitics is, and if the people -- Georgian and South Ossetian -- whose nationalism was exploited to make this happen are the ones who are suffering most, they can take solace in the knowledge that it has all been done for the highest of ideals.

Icon AD - Fight for Peace (from the Don't Feed Us Shit EP, 1982; collected on Lest We Forget, 2006) - A paradox I can get behind.

dispatches from the front

Yahoo may currently be a corporation under siege, but that hasn't prevented its ever-sagacious staff from addressing the burning questions of the now...

Remember: It's not a bailout. The current administration doesn't believe in bailouts. It's a gentlemen's agreement that uses taxpayer money and a minimum of accountability in regards to the mismanagement that caused the failure in the first place, okay?

Should you lack access to the circles of crony capitalism's largess, or if you or someone else in the financial services supply chain chose to forgo the FDIC's safety net because the program smacked of dirty Bolshevism, here are some other potential courses of action to take after your assets have evaporated:

- Take a drive up to the mountains with a loaded shotgun and a bottle of whiskey in order to "meditate" upon the situation.

- Check the various blood banks to get the best quotes per pint on sales of plasma.

- Learn to appreciate the taste of uncooked ramen noodles washed down with store-brand mouthwash.

- Cash out the tattered remnants of your 401k and invest in ten-dollar scratch tickets.

- Read up on the insulative properties of newspaper and which large appliance boxes are most resistant to rain damage.

- Explain to your children that college is for effete snobs, and that "true blue Americans" sign up for unbenefitted minimum wage service jobs as soon as they drop out of high school.

Rubella Ballet - It'll Never Happen to Me (from At the End of the Rainbow, 1990) - The playful, day-glo side of anarchopunk, bouncing out with some very danceable beats and a song title that effectively serves as the mantra of the American theory of disaster capitalism.

...and when all else fails, perhaps a change of career is in order:

While the world lurches toward economic, social, and environmental collapse, it's gratifying to know that science is doing its damnedest to answer the hard questions...like whether or not it would be feasible for man to dress up as a flying rodent and throw explosive boomerangs at petty criminals.

Fuck clean drinking water or ecologically sustainable fuel sources, this is the shit that really matters -- taking discussions usually reserved for the dank stinky basement of fandom (i.e. the CBR and Newsarama forums) and elevating them to the level of infotainment in service to the current overhyped blockbuster movie of the moment.

The Selecter - Three Minute Hero (from Too Much Pressure, 1980) - Though often overlooked (in favor of The Specials or The Beat) when I'm looking for a quick fix of second-wave ska, The Selecter's Too Much Pressure and Celebrate the Bullet never fail to impress me when I do make the effort to give them a spin. That's the problem with having an extensive music collection and not a lot of free time -- I tend to gravitate to that handful of perennial favorites within arm's reach instead of keeping a representatively diverse playlist.

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.

role perversal

The blurb on the cover of Marvel's Savage Tales #1 (May 1971) reads:


...and the editorial explanation reads as follows:

"The result is, perhaps, something just a wee bit new under the sun. Not quite sword and sorcery -- certainly not science-fiction -- and not exactly a political polemic. Robin Morgan clobbers Buck Rogers in the 25th century! Kate Millett zaps both Flash Gordon and Ming the Merciless -- then takes Mongo over for good measure."

Or, y'know, it's a hamfisted-yet-titillating look at the women's liberation movement -- by way of John Norman's Gor novels and Planet of the Apes -- crapped out by a past-his-prime Stan Lee and adequately illustrated by John Romita.

"The Fury of the Femizons" takes place in a future world run by the U.S.A. -- the United Sisterhood Alliance, that is -- a gynocracy established after the women of the world had enough of males' oppression, belligerence, and inability to put the toilet seat down after use. The women of the Sisterhood spend their days engaged in gladiatorial combat or culling the herds of feral males and spend their nights being, ahem, "entertained" by domesticated sex slaves -- all in accordance with the established principles of radical feminist theory. ("Objective #1: Overthrow the partiarchy. Objective #2: Get fitted for metal corsets that expose maximum cleavage.")

"...and Sex in the City marathons!"
Lyra, an esteemed warrior of the Sisterhood and the in vitro sister of Queen Vega, pays lip service to the realm's guiding principles, yet feels unsatisfied with her way of life. This is not lost upon Syrani, the queen's advisor, an ambitious woman who combines the looks of Lieutenant Ilia with the political ethics of Karl Rove.

The steamy side of Machiavellian politics.
Lyra's dissatisfaction is partially due to to the fact that she has read, or rather "viewed," the forbidden headband-powered "mind tapes" which document how life had been before the feminist revolution. It is Lyra's hidden stash of those recordings that leads Mogon of the Hills, a male sleeper agent posing as a sex slave, to confront Lyra in hopes of recruiting her to his cause.

Mogon hails from a tribe of "noble" men, which unlike the feral wildmen, have learned from their gender's previous mistakes and want to establish equality between the sexes. (I can only imagine how it was done: "Mogon, come forth! For your trial into manhood, Kelpor will tell you what he did today and you must stay attentive through the entire tale!")

Lyra hesitates about helping Mogon carry out his plan to destroy the sperm banks the Sisterhood uses for replenishing its population, but comes around once she realises the other reason for her recurring sense of dissatisfaction...

This man, this monkey lovin'! Excelsior!
...the need for a lover with both a slow hand and an easy touch. After the pair are done mutually exploring the Forbidden Zone, they ride out to a secret camp in the ruins to meet up with Mogon's compatriots to plot the raid on the baby-making factory. (No, not China, you silly infertile yuppies!)

What they discover upon arriving, however, is a trap laid by Syrani's secret police force, which are dispached in an orgy of violent innuendo...

"I shall slide this unyeilding blade in and out until you beg for mercy."
Having killed a dozen agents of the state's security apparatus, Lyra and Mogon return to the royal palace and pretend that nothing ever happened. This incredibly cunning plan fails to work, and Lyra is brought before Queen Vega to answer to charges of treason. To spare Lyra from execution, Mogon decides to take the fall, and provokes the warrior princess into killing him in front of the royal court.

Though the exonerated Lyra puts on a brave face, even going so far as to demand some sex slaves for a threesome in order to give horny fanboys some wank material maintain appearances...

Breaking up is hard to do.
...she still longs for a man like the one she publicly eviscerated.

"A truly egalitarian world is a dream worth fighting for! Oops! I better get changed, this trois ain't gonna menage itself!"
After reading this story, the whole Striperella thing makes a whole lot more sense to me now...as does the theory that Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby deserve a lion's share of the credit for the genius of Marvel's Silver Age output. As terrible as "The Fury of the Femizons" was, I still found it to be far superior to Y: The Last Man on the subject of gender politics.)

Screamin' Sirens - Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad (from Hell Comes to Your House, Vol, 2, 1983) - YEEE-HAW! It's cowpunk time!

Jan Panter - Put Yourself in My Place (from That's How It Goes: The Pye Anthology, 2003) - Maura's been rediscovering her love of 60's girls groups (and 50's & 60's pop in general) after discovering the oldies music channel on digital cable. Here's a favorite of mine from the UK scene, released in the musically golden year of 1966.

more than occasionally foolish

Bless me, St. Marlo, in my hour of need.
As reality has repeatedly ignored my demands that it conform to my myopic personal vision, I have have been left with no choice but to respond in a manner befitting a mature adult. Since the bugs have not yet been worked out of the holdmybreathuntiliturnblue HTML tags, I will have to resort to the power of HIATUS!

Yes, a honest-to-gosh suspension of effort, because there is no means of protest as powerful as choosing to do nothing at all. Do you think I'm joking? Do you think this is just a bluff masking my desperate need for attention?

I'll show you. I'll show you all. Bear witness to the power of....THE HIATUS!

Cue the theme music!

Jeff & Jane Hudson - The Girl from Ipanema (from 1982's World Trade EP)

......

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There. I hope you've all learned a valuable lesson.

So, what did I miss while I was away?

comedic pyrite

HAHAHAHAHA!
HAHAHAHAHA!
HAHAHAHAHA!
Uh, I don't get it.
Killing Joke - We Have Joy (from Revelations, 1982) - Or a synthetic substitution thereof. At least the music is the authentic stuff of which postpunk nightmares are made.

(The above pun-related tragedies were plucked from the "Dr. Doom Cracks Up" feature in the January 1978 issue of Pizzazz Magazine. Terrible as they may be, they're still funnier than any given Cracked article.)

the assassin bug

No nostalgic or philosophical musings today, just a tip of the hat to one of the Great Moments in Comic Book History^TM: Captain America engaged in a life and death struggle with the VW Beetle that crashed though the window of his third-story Brooklyn apartment:

(from Captain America #222, June 1978; by Steve Gerber, Sal Buscema, John Tartag, and Mike Esposito)
Was it meant to symbolize the American auto worker's sense of anomie as the industry attempted to cope with the flood of cheap, fuel-efficient imports?

Or was it another example of a writer jettisoning all pretense of plausibility in order to shoehorn an ill-considered "clever" idea into a story?

(Since it is the late Steve Gerber we're talking about, it could go either way.)

Tin Machine - Working Class Hero (from Tin Machine, 1989) - I've noticed that revisionist music historians have tried to make the claim that Bowie's Tin Machine phase was anything other than a embarrassing failure of colossal proportions. These revisionist music historians are out of their flipping gourds, as this mutilation of a beloved John Lennon track clearly illustrates.

Jimmy Edwards - Love Bug Crawl (from Rockin' Bones: 1950s Punk and Rockabilly, 2006) - After his agent stopped taking his calls, Herbie was forced to paint himself purple and hire out as a contract killer in the late 1970's in order to fund his illegal fuel additive habit. A high-pitched "BEEP-BEEP" and the tinny hum of a four-cylinder engine revving up was the last thing many a snitch or mob rival heard before being cut down by a sub-compact angel of death.

doesn't mean it's understood

Do you hate traffic jams? Sure, we all do!

But did you know that congested highways are just one symptom of a larger problem?

Now while some would blame overdevelopment and poor civic planning, the willingness of health care providers to boost profits at the expense of patients, and the widespread reluctance to invest in public transportation and infrastructure, others see a different cause...

Yep, overpopulation is the problem, but lest one misconstrue this as advocacy of a pro-choice, pro-contraception platform, some clarification is in order...

It's not a question of too many people, but of too many of the wrong type of people. While it would be gauche to state outright the definition of such, there's a reason the Pew Hispanic Research Center is cited in the body of the text, and not relegated to an asterisked footnote like the other data cited was.

These veiled words of caution came courtesy of the following coalition....

...consisting of various interrelated "astroturf" organizations and a publishing house (whose biggest claim to fame is releasing an English-language edition of this charming piece of psuedo-literary agitprop), most of which are linked to this bunch of fun lovin' folks.

Interestly enough, this attempt to put a more socially and environmentally palatable face on nativism and xenophobia ran in the June 23, 2008 edition of The Nation, the venerable progressive periodical which claims to be "a wholly owned subsidiary of [its] own conscience." I guess the question is "at what point does the need for advertising revenue override moral integrity?" Especially when one considers that this isn't the first time the publication has cut such a deal.

The Specials - Doesn't Make It Alright (from The Specials, 1979) - At least I can depend on these purveyors of fine two-tone not to disappoint.

no one more red white and blue

Given the scope and nature of the crimes committed by the Third Reich and those who aided and abetted that foul regime, it was only natural that the evocation of Nazism would become a commonly used rhetorical tactic (to the point of being given a semi-formal designation). It is brute force PSYOPS in its most elegant and simple form. The power of such analogies has diminished due to (frequently hyperbolic) overuse, leading to reflexive dismissal of those who play that particular trump card in an argument.

Context and proportion, as always, is key. Citing Nazi Germany as a historical precedent for a government using paranoia and scapegoating as a means of expanding executive power and curtailing civil rights is valid. Comparing a Wal-Mart worker to a Gestapo thug for asking to see one's receipt? Not so much.

The malfeasance of the Nazis is of such a singular magnitude in both scale and infamy -- Stalin's U.S.S.R. and the Cambodian Year Zero come nowhere close to it in terms of popular awareness -- its evocation makes issues of moral relativism a snap. Not only can petty personal grievances be linked to the actions of a genocidal totalitarian regime, but one's own dubious and reprehensible behavior can be whitewashed in comparison to the same:

We do detain people without regard for habeas corpus, but we don't send them to gas chambers! Waterboarding is a mild discomfort compared to medical experimentation!

In a sane world, this facsimile of logic where "falling short of ultimate evil" somehow equals "good" would be greeted with universal shock, horror, and/or rage, but in this world, it is seen as a valid argument by a large segment of the populace.

Because people are fucking stupid, and as Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos #56 (July 1968; by Gary Friedrich, Dick Ayers, and John Severin) shows, it's a form of stupid that has been with us a while. "Gabriel, Blow Your Horn!" is not so much a story as it is a straw man formed from privileged white liberalism and patriotic platitudes and held together by Godwin's Law.

For those of you unfamiliar with Marvel's Howling Commandos, imagine the Rat Pack as a crack group of World War Two fighin' men, with Nick Fury as the Chairman of the Board, Dino Manelli as Dean Martin, Pinky Pinkerton as Peter Lawford, and "Dum Dum" Dugan as Shirley MacLaine. (The Joey Bishop role was held on a rotating basis by the other requisite polyglot archetypes that filled out the unit.)

The story begins with Gabriel "Gabe" Jones, the team's answer to Sammy Davis Jr. (only without the glass eye, Nehru jacket, and mustache) and nod toward the Great Society's sense of inclusiveness, making his escape from the German soldiers that captured him in the previous issue. He eventually hooks up with a contact in the French resistance movement, who asks for his assistance in rescuing Carla Swain, an American jazz singer held prisoner by the Nazis in occupied Paris.

Jones, a jazz trumpeter in civilian life (because diversity is fine and all, but breaking free from stock characterizations is hard), manages to land himself a gig at the club where Carla performs nightly to a packed house of German officers. (Interestingly enough, even though the officers are such hardcore Nazis that they find ways to drop lines from Mein Kampf into casual conversation, they don't seem to share the official party line regarding the "racial degeneracy" of jazz music. An insight into Nazi hypocrisy? Or the writer's ignorance of period history? You decide.)

After the performance, Jones punches and sneaks his way past the guards to gain access to Carla's room, only to find out that she has no desire to be rescued...


Despite her anachronistic Motown re-deco, it seems that Carla was intended to be an analogue to Josephine Baker, the expatriate jazz performer who relocated to France during the 1920's in part to escape the endemic racism she encountered in America. A massive sensation among both the French and the American ex-pats of the "Lost Generation," her pointed but spot-on comments about racial inequality and injustice in her native land got her labeled as a communist.

During the war, her popularity shielded her from Nazi persecution, and she assisted the French resistance as well as entertained Free French troops in North Africa, and she later participated in the American civil rights movement of the 1960's.

That was all a bit too nuanced for a shitty war comic, apparently, which instead recast the scenario as "Angry Negro^TM duped by the Nazis and her own prejudices." Sure, there's lynchings and race riots and legalized discrimination in America...but we're still better than Nazis! (See how well that works? Try using it on your significant other some time: "Hon, I may have blown our life savings on magic beans, but at least I'm not a Nazi!")

"Howler Ramrod"? Oh, my.

Porn name jokes aside, let's see what we've got going on here:

1. Projecting blame and fault back onto the oppressed party
2. A white writer using a black character as a mouthpiece to add credibility to his argument
3. The disingenuous and untrue dismissal of America's racial issues as the work of a "handful of white people." In any case numbers mean less than the institutionalized and (officially and unofficially) sanctioned nature of racism in both 1942 and 1968.
4. The evocation of post-racial patriotic platitudes that fail to address the existing problem

Jones rushes in to save his REAL AMERICAN teammates from the goosesteppers. In the process, Carla manages to be taken hostage by Colonel Prussian Von Grimace, but is saved when "Reb" Ralston, the token ass-backward cracker member of the Howlers, kicks Von Grimace in the head. Carla thus comes around to the white right way of thinking...

Sometimes it takes a man who chooses to identify via nickname with a failed regime of slave-owners to teach us who the real bigots are.

If there one thing I've learned my life, it's that the only thing more aggravating than a white liberal who gets hyper-defensive over black rage (or even discontentment) is a white liberal who co-opts the same. I say "liberal" because conservatives don't fucking care. They just shrug it off and dream of new tax loopholes.

Now, Carla, just because you've chosen to think of yourself as a non-hyphenated American does not mean that the rest of your countrymen and women are obligated to do the same, but as long as you don't make waves there won't be a problem. And who knows? Maybe sometime in the early 21st Century, the country will nominate a black candidate for president after a long and rancorous nomination process where another supposedly "liberal" candidate will engage in race baiting! And maybe a slight majority of Americans will find both this and this to be reprehensible in the extreme!

If all else fails, though, just seek comfort in the knowledge that you're not living in the Third Reich.

Yet.

Josephine Baker - Vous Faites Partie de Moi (I've Got You Under My Skin) (from Bonsoir My Love, 1998) - That sound you're hearing is the haunting echoes of modernity.

Jello Biafra & Mojo Nixon - Love Me, I'm a Liberal (from Prairie Home Invasion, 1994) - Updating Phil Ochs for the Information Age. Necessary? Perhaps not, but I'm thrilled with the results.