and I tell you, baby, that something’s wrong

Ah, the break-up song, the musical accompaniment for punching parking meters and showing up at an ex’s workplace to beg for “just one more chance, baby.” Or one could go the other route, as I once did, and crawl into a dark, dank broom closet of adolescent rage and nurse a grudge with the aid of generous helpings of Black Flag and Ministry.

Magnanimity and equanimity in the face of romantic defeat is hard to come by, and most of us lack the savior faire about such matters that a certain good friend of mine (who suggested today’s topic) possesses.

Oingo Boingo – Goodbye, Goodbye (from the Fast Times at Ridgemont High OST, 1982) – Danny Elfman is a very, very pink and orange man, but I did know a man who was even pinker and more orange. He was the sort of fellow who could contract melanoma by looking at a bottle of Sun Light dishwashing liquid.

Scandal – Goodbye to You (from the Scandal EP, 1982) – Before she shot at the walls of heartache (bang-bang), Patty Smyth and her band recorded this stellar piece of new wave pop. Love that synth organ riff on the bridge. There’s a gimmick just begging to be brought back.

Squeeze – Another Nail in My Heart (from Argybargy, 1980) – For more information, please refer to my forthcoming dissertation, Temptation and Black Coffee: An Examination of the Collapse of Romantic Relationships in the Working Class as Depicted in Blue Eyed Soul Songs of the Late 1970’s and Early 1980’s.

Buzzcocks – What Do I Get (from Singles Going Steady, 1979) – “It’s like fucking bookends,” I told a friend when he asked about a failed relationship. “It started off with ‘Love You More’ and ended with ‘What Do I Get.’ How perfect is that?” Ten years later, I hear the song being used in an SUV commercial, further cementing my hatred of those gas-guzzling, earth-wrecking status symbols for obnoxious assholes.

The Eyeliners – Think of Me (from No Apologies, 2005) – That closet of angst and vengefulness? It’s open to both genders, although women haven’t quite caught up with the guys on the punching parking meters thing yet.

there’s no point in asking, you’ll get no reply

I was flipping through some old DC romance comics when I stumbled across this page from Young Love #114 (February-March, 1975):

The title, “There Is No Answer”, suggests a fragment of a Zen kōan as posited by Jean-Paul Sartre. Come to think of it, that’s a pretty accurate summation of a 13 year old girl’s take on love. “Like, omigod, there’s know way of knowing if Tyler likes me, and, like merely asking the question fills me with existential dread and stuff! I think I’ll lash out at my mom, then lock myself in my room and do that ‘cutting’ thing I saw on Degrassi!”

(What the fuck’s up with that cutting shit, anyhow? All the self-important drama of the half-hearted teen suicide attempt with none of the, y’know, actual risk of dying. Ah, the mysteries of being a white, suburban, middle-class teenage girl. Granted, self-mutilation for attention is a far cry from school shootings, the disaffected white, suburban, middle-class teenage male’s destructive pastime of choice. )

The title opens a wealth of potentially interesting scenarios--

“Why does he insist I lick his armpits during sex?"
“Why does he cry out Rip Taylor’s name when he orgasms?"
“Why do I occasionally wake up in the middle of the night and find him standing over me, a straight razor in one hand and his penis in the other?”

--but the poem (well, flat prose trying to pass for free verse as successfully as G.W. Bush would pass as a member of Mensa) is your typical “I’d love you even if your shit did stink” nonsense that attempts to put a positive spin on the uncomfortable fact that love can turn otherwise intelligent people into judgment-impaired idiots. “The police were by earlier looking for you, honey, but I told them you moved to Canada. You want my debit card and PIN? Sure, here you go! Smootches!”

This part in particular is just the sort of notion you would want to impress upon a young woman:

I will not say I love you because you are kind,
Even though you are,
For if you weren’t,
Does that mean I would not love you?
(I would love you even if you were mean and miserable.)

That’s not love, kiddo, that’s Stockholm syndrome. Oh, and when someone asks you “Why do you love me?” it most likely means he or she is angling for compliments with a 200 pound insecure-and-needy-asshole nylon line. Bite the lure, and you’ll end up having to stock Lake Reassurance for as long as the relationship lasts.

Let’s see, I’ve mocked the title, the text, and young girls with mental problems. What have I missed? Right, The art, which adeptly straddles the line between work-for-hire mediocrity and “I’m going to see this in my nightmares for months.” I’m not kidding about that last part. Take a good look at the woman’s face down by the lower right-hand corner. One eye is bugging out its socket, the other's screwed tightly shut, and the rose is gripped between her teeth in a manner suggesting a feral beast looming over a fresh kill.

I think the artist was going for “cute and sexy”, but this is how my brain registers the image:

Proof positive that a childhood spent around 1970’s pinball machines and carnival rides can cause lasting damage to one’s psyche.

Dig the ankh on Johnny Push-Ups. (What would push ups have to do with romance? Oh….I get it now.) If that appeared in a girls’ romance comic today – if there still were girls’ romance comics being published by the Big Two today – I bet DC would have gotten angry letters bitching about how they were promoting deviant (i.e. non-fundamentalist Christian) lifestyles in their comics.

No matter what Young Love tells us, the answers can always be found in pop music. You just need to ask the right questions first.

The Animatronics – Room of Questions (from 2000 – Year of the Future, 2000) – Yet another band working the Devo wannabe mojo, although the Animatronics do a pretty credible (and listenable) job of it. It helps that they at least tried to develop their own sound, which retains the synth lines of their inspirations but with a punkier edge.

The Balloon Farm – A Question of Temperature (from Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968) – Pure, honest-to-gosh 60’s garage rock. Toss those Strokes and Jet albums in the trash and graduate to the real deal. You’ll be glad you did.

Advanced Art – No Answers, No Solutions (from a 1988 single) – A pretty good Finnish synth act that reminds me of early Depeche Mode. As they say in Helsinki, “It’s a lot like elämä.”

Bran Van 3000 – The Answer (Latch Brothers Mix) (from the Jet Set Radio Future Unreleased OST, 2002) – In a truly just world, both Jet Set Radio games would have become mega-platinum bestsellers of the Madden and Grand Theft Auto variety.