Halloween Countdown: October 22 - the way of all cellulose

In 1954, horror comics offered the grisly promise of a plague zombie poked by bill hooks and bisected by a rail...

(From "Forever Ambergris," Tales from the Crypt #44; October-November 1954)
In 1973, horror -- sorry, "suspense" -- comics offered a terryifying promise of a one-page nailbiter narrated in the first person by an oak tree...

The story is titled "DEATHBOX" and comes from DC's The Witching Hour #30 (April 1973), apparently by way of some high schooler's creative writing project...

Click...if you DARE!
It's scary because there's a coffin and dead people are buried inside coffins! Somebody call Count Floyd!

I'm not one of those fans who loudly proclaim that Frederic Wertham and the Comics Code Authority ruined the comics industry (mostly because the industry has shown it is more than capable of destroying itself), but the institution of the CCA did deal a blow to the horror comics genre from which it still hasn't fully recovered. Many have tried to recapture that gleefully transgressive EC horror vibe of the early 1950's, but the results have, at best, mimicked the mechanics without capturing the underlying soul.

I am my ideal

I had a drama professor back in college who was a bit of a rogue, but an outstanding instructor nonetheless. For some reason presumably tied to departmental politics, he was the person who usually got tasked with teaching the foundation courses in Traditions of Western Drama or whatever the prevailing uni-speak is for "reading a shitload of old plays and discussing why they matter."

These were the mandatory courses that every aspiring thespian or playwright had to suffer through before passing onward and upward to the sexier, hands-on parts of the curriculum, but this professor had a knack for making us care about the plays discussed in class. More importantly, instead of conducting the class as a watered-down English Lit course, he approached the material with an accent on technical aspects over critical theory. (Which is how it ought to be for a theater arts class, but in my experience often not the case.)

"Significance" meant less to him than entertainment value, and when the time came to discuss the dreary naturalism of Strindberg, Ibsen, and the like, he came right out and stated "These are historically important plays. They are important works of literature. You should all be familiar with them. That said, I would rather sit through a community theatre Starlight Express than suffer through a Broadway production of Enemy of the People with an all-star cast."

Hardly a divine revelation, but it's one of those moments that has stuck with me over the years even as other, arguably more important parts of my college education have slipped from conscious memory. The idea that a tenured professor of literature with an impressive resume could step outside the ivory tower and make case for entertainment value in and of itself made me realize that I wasn't just gaming the system and wasting my time at college, humoring the unfortunately high number of insular or clueless instructors that viewed appreciation as a gnostic process, removed from the vulgarity of the masses. (Seriously. I had one professor who was shocked, shocked, to discover that fans of romance novels were not a monolithic block of uneducated bon-bon munchers.)

Or I should have taken it as a clear warning that my lateral thinking processes and poor sense of self-discipline were fundamentally at odds with formal academia. Honestly, if I had to do it all over again, I'd have gone to trade school to be an auto mechanic and kept with the autodidactic route when it came to the the study of humanities.

In any case, the complicated relationship between entertainment and art is something I've addressed quite a few times already on Armagideon Time, usually in reference to the medium of comics or music. Despite recurring assertions to the contrary, quality is a relative concept when it comes to something a personal as "art," and while it is possible to establish a hierarchy of aesthetic value on a macro level, the boundaries tend to blur with closer examination. As always, keeping a sense of perspective is the best course of action, and that's something which is most easily achieved by observing the widest possible vista instead of limiting one's experiences to a single strata, be it lofty peaks of "high art" or the vulgar sumps of disposable entertainment.

Which brings us to AIP's series of Beach Party movies, director William (the real-life Mr. Samantha the Witch) Asher's sybaritic counterpart to Roger Corman's stygian Poe cycle of technicolor exploitation fare -- the Eros and Thanatos of early 1960's drive-in theaters.

Pal Dorian has dedicated this week to the antics of Frankie, Dee Dee and the gang, and his analysis of the series hits pretty much covers all the salient points I could possibly make about their enduring appeal.

The jokes are pure corn, the surfing scenes are almost avant-garde in their rear-projected fakery, the original musical numbers are embarrassingly dire, and the hokey bacchanalia of the privileged white "teenage" characters occurs in a world completely isolated from what was going down in America's inner cities or over in Southeast Asia at the time.

As terrible and cheapjack as the Beach Party films are, though, I can't help enjoying them nonetheless, and no summer vacation would be complete without a Sunday afternoon viewing of at least one the movies. (This year it was Muscle Beach Party and Beach Blanket Bingo.) Chalk it up to nostalgia -- nostalgia for a childhood when the films were staples of weekend afternoon UHF programming, for the lame-but-quaint tropes of vintage sitcom-style humor, and most importantly for the reassuring presence of various guest-stars drawn from the stable of character actors (Paul Lynde, Mickey Rooney, Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, et cetera) familiar to every heavy TV-viewing kid of my generation.

I wouldn't make a case that the films occupy a loftier cinematic position than, say, The Godfather, but I do know what I'd rather sit down to watch on a lazy summer weekend. Coppola's epic may masterfully dissect the nature of the American capitalism, but it does it feature lip-synched performances of either of these musical gems?

Stevie Wonder - Happy Street (from The Complete Motown Singles, Vol. 4, 2006) - A swingin' soul celebration, as featured in Muscle Beach Party (1964).

The Kingsmen - Give Her Lovin' (from The Kingsmen, Vol. 2, 1964) - Ginchy garage rock, as featured in How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965).

Vacation 2008: Day 7 - A long way from Denver

Nothing too elaborate today, just a pair of curious celebrity homages to the bespectacled golden-haired prince of the 1970's easy listening pantheon, courtesy of The Muppet Show...


Jim Nabors - Thank God I'm a Country Boy (from Episode #1.6; June 8, 1976) - Well, golleeeee! Sadly, Frank Sutton's heartfelt rendition of "Annie's Song" has been lost to the sands of time.


Cheryl Ladd - Sunshine on My Shoulders (from Episode #3.24; May 10, 1978) - The voice of an Angel (and a one-time Pussycat, too).

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.

never mind the mammary papilla

Hey, have you heard the news?

Truly a sad day for anarchists and enthusiasts of visible nipples alike.

While Farrah-mania never recovered from the Crash of '78, gossip columnist Cindy Adams's hyperbolic pronouncement of punk's demise in the June 1978 issue of Pizzazz Magazine turned out to be somewhat exaggerated.

During the anemic days just prior to punk's commercialized resurrection in the mid-1990's, my friends and I used to joke that "punk is dead...and we're maggots feeding on its rotting corpse." Punk music and fashion may have become codified and commodified, but the underlying philosophy -- the demystification of process and rejection of authority -- remains valid despite decades of exploitation and misappropriation.

Crass - Punk Is Dead (from The Feeding of the 5000, 1978) - Representing the disgusted anarchopunk perspective.

The Exploited - Punk's Not Dead (from Punks Not Dead, 1981) - Representing the tribalist street punk perspective.

The Vandals - The Day Farrah Fawcett Died (from Fear of a Punk Planet, 1990) - I'm more of a Cheryl Ladd guy, myself.

Friday Night Fights: Gamma Beach Party

SHARK BITES TEEN HULK
TEEN HULK PUNCHES SHARK
TEEN HULK AND SHARK TEAM UP TO WIN THE TITLE OF 'BIG KAHUNA'
That's the Hulk movie they should have made -- Dwayne Hickman as Ned Talbot, Annette Funicello as Betsy Ross, Jody McCrea as Rick Jones, Vincent Price as The Leader, and, of course, Paul Lynde as General "Thunderbolt" Ross.

I swear, sometimes it's like those studio people are allergic to making money...

Jack Nitzsche - The Lonely Surfer (from The Lonely Surfer, 1963) - MOONDOGGY SMASH!

Joe Harnell - Main Title (from The Incredible Hulk TV OST, 1978) - Strings, horns, and polyester pathos as only a 1970's theme song can deliver. Accept no substitutes.

(The biggest Kahuna of them all.)

here forever in the beauty

Because I had nothing else planned for today and because my brother recently brought the story to my attention, we're going to take a brief guided tour through the acid-eaten pages of Captain America & The Falcon #164 (August 1973). Written by Steve Englehart and illustrated by Alan Weiss (no relation), "Queen of the Werewolves" finds the heroic duo investigating suspected hijinx at a remote prison which, as typical for the genre, resembles a set from a 1930's Universal horror film. Under the management of the slinky (and somewhat underdressed) Nightshade, the facility has embarked on a "rehabilitation though lycanthropy" program for the inmates.

The Star-Spangled Avenger is less than pleased with the results (which the maternally-minded Nightshade calls her "babies") and proceeds to kick some man-beast tail. After witnessing the werewolves' inability to subdue the good Captain, the project's secret backer -- revealed to be the evil mastermind and lemon-hued racist caricature known as the Yellow Claw -- decides to cut Nightshade's funding. Unable to secure alternative financing for her work, Nightshade throws herself off the prison roof in despair.

Based on that brief synopsis, "Queen of the Werewolves" sounds replete with the full complement of drag-and-drop plot elements common to many Marvel superhero stories from that wild and crazy era. It's a reasonable assumption to make, yet an incomplete one, as it fails to consider a few things that push the story out of the pedestrian territory and into the realm of the inexplicably bizarre.

Things like...

HAPPY CAP IS HAPPY!
Cap-life regression captions!
Werewolf BDSM!
Scream, Were-Falcon, Scream!
Nightshade's sexadelic emotiveness!
I'm quite fond of Alan Weiss's art, but I don't think his particular style is a good fit with superhero genre material. It's especially true in this story, where Nightshade's provocative poses are consistently at odds with what's being expressed in the dialogue and captions -- as in the above panel, for example, or when she's sprawled across a computer console like an auto-show model while agonizing over the Claw's lack of support.

Her use of "babies," rather than the standard "pets" or "pretties," in regard to her were-minions is also disturbingly off-putting in a vaguely Freudian manner (though that might just be me). Cap's remark upon meeting her (as she suggestively waves one of Falcon's stray feathers about her person) that "She's a little girl -- posing, playing grown-up" doesn't help matters, either.

As grotty as that aspect of the story is, it still comes nowhere close to the truly inexplicable appearance of...

NICK FURRY, MOUNTAIN MAN OF S.H.I.E.L.D.!
Words fail me.

The Frantics - Werewolf (from The Complete Frantics, 2004) - No, not the folks behind the agressively unfunny "Boot to the Head" comedy sketch, but a Puget Sound rock 'n' roll outfit active during the late 50's and early 60's (and who backed Bobby Darrin on "Dream Lover"). Excellent stuff indeed.

Thom Pace - Maybe (Theme to Grizzly Adams) (from Television's Greatest Hits, Vol. 5: In Living Color, 1996) - This is the short version used in the eco-positive 70's TV series (which I learned was produced by Sunn Classics, of In Search of Noah's Ark and Hangar 18 fame). This song never fails to make the wife a little misty-eyed when she hears it.

everybody blamed his old man

"Looking in the mirror just now, I realized something. I look kind of like a young Jerry Reed minus the curls."

"Yes," replied the wife, "You do."

Her quick agreement caught me off guard. Maura usually responds to my self-deprecating observations with something along the lines of "Oh, no. You look fine." (Not that my intent is to fish for compliments, mind you, though the pond is well-stocked.) Even more telling was that she followed up her response with an offer to trim my sideburns, despite her long held and deep-seated reluctance about such matters. She has balked on several occasions when I've asked her help in trimming a few wayward hairs missed by my barber; for her to offer her services unsolicited means that my personal style has crossed a line.

Not that I did so intentionally. Semi-intentionally, perhaps. My preference is to keep my hair buzzed short, but the past dozen weeks or so have been rather busy. The weekdays off that I would normally use to visit the barber's have been consistently booked up with other, more pressing affairs like vet appointments for the animals or shoveling out the driveway and walk after an overnight snowstorm.

So my hair has grown unchecked for three months, which isn't that rare an occurance. What made this time different, though, was my decision to not keep my sideburns in check during my weekly shaves. The decision was made to avoid the hassle of trying to keep both sides even while having to clean the clots of hair out the blades with each and every pass of the razor. So I let them grow, and grow they did -- down past my earlobes and out onto my cheeks, and eventually forming little projecting curls.

I was okay with their unchecked development. After all, they were going to be buzzed clean off come the next visit to the barbershop. I didn't realize that it had become a household issue until I was standing by Maura's desk at work, and she reached up and tugged one of the curls while I was talking to her. She said then that they were "kinda funny," though I began to notice a gradual escalation of negative descriptive rhetoric -- nothing directly confrontational, but clear in intent (like "seventies man hair," for example).

If things have reached the stage where she thinks I'd qualify for a quest appearance on the Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour or the second season of Alice, it's clearly time for me to take swift action in the interest of keeping the domestic peace. Until then, however, I plan on singing my nasally off-key renditions of "Eastbound and Down" and "U.S. Male" in Maura's presence at every opportunity.

Jerry Reed - Amos Moses (from RCA Country Legends, 2001) - Bitterandrew was a Squarehead, and lived with his wife on a hill/He had a powerful pair of sideburns, but they made his poor sweetie ill...

Friday Night Fights: Murder Diva

Sheila Sorrell is a dive bar chanteuse with looks to die for but a voice like murder...


Though the line of Shelia's would-be suitors stretches to Poughkeepsie and back, the hard-hearted siren is interested in one thing and one thing only -- the role of head diva in the local opera company.

It's an aspiration beyond her rather limited vocal range, but after a heartsick mad scientist attempts some untested chemical revenge upon Sorrell, she find herself in possession of a couple new bargaining chips...

...a granite body and homicidal tendencies.

Knock 'em dead, sister! (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

Sheila's plutonic rampage draws the attention of Plastic Man, whose prodigious powers of pliability are sorely tested by the stony songbird's stupendous strength....

...but Plas has a knack for thinking on his flexible feet, and manages to slip Shelia an antidote which reverts her back into her normal pneumatic form.

As for the whole killing spree thing? Have no fear...

All's well that ends well...apart from the painful cranial injuries and high likelihood of permanent brain damage, that is...

(from "The Granite Lady" by Jack Cole, from Police Comics #51, February 1946)

Electric Light Orchestra - Turn to Stone (from Out of the Blue, 1977) - Art-slash-prog rock acting as the mythological Medusa. Mirrored headphones recommended.

Suzi Quatro - Heart of Stone (from Main Attraction, 1982) - The softer side of Leather Tuscadero. Closer to talc than diamond on the hardness scale, but that's how the boulder rolls.

(Stone cold.)

gotta get away

This is (hopefully) the last entry in my toothache series of posts, and I had anticipated a more upbeat conclusion to things. I even had the perfect song picked out to accompany today's entry:

The Brady Bunch - It's a Sunshine Day (from The Kids from the Brady Bunch, 1972) - I know my affection for gooey, sugary things got me into this situation in the first place, but still...

But that decision was made yesterday afternoon, while my face was numbed into quietude by a local and I was giddy with how well things had gone. And go well they did; after a morning of trying to keep the increasingly excruciating pain at arm's length, my wife and I made the trip to the endodontist's office in Quincy Center. My wife was spot on about their quality of care. Every aspect of the treatment was handled with a maximum eye toward allieviating any pain or discomfort I might have been feeling. Because of my wretched state, they cut straight to the procedure from the consulation, and it was performed skillfully, quickly -- and most importantly -- painlessly. Seriously, I've had shallow fillings done that were worse ordeals.

The source of the pain was an infection at the root, so the endodonist wrote me up prescriptions for antibiotics (to clear out the remaining infection) and Vicodin (to handle any remaining pain in the immediate aftermath). I wasn't so keen on taking the painkillers, as my experiences have shown me that there's always an unpleasant debt to be paid for the sake of prescription pain relief.

AFTER the local began to wear off and the inflamed nerves resumed their final doomed offensive, I quickly changed my mind. I forced down a small bowl of soup (so as not to drop powerful narcotics into an empty gut), took a Vicodin, and laid back on my bed, awaiting the bliss of pharmaceutically-induced sleep.

And it truly was blissful, until the last of the local wore off, at which point the neighbor of the treated tooth went supernova, a sharp, searing pain that cut through the narcotic haze like a gamma ray laser. At first I thought the Vicodin wasn't working, but as the initial dose faded the pain got even worse. My mind began coming up with horrible scenarios like "what if they got the wrong tooth?" and "the jarring of the drill must have it cracked open."

As there was nothing that could be done until the morning, I prepared myself for another sleepless night, retreating to the couch (so as to not disturb the wife) and settling in until 9:00 AM with a bowl of ice cubes and some Katamari Damacy. To keep the pain at an almost manageable state, I started upping the dose. One Vicodin every four hours became one and a half every three hours, damn the consequences. Sometime after three in the morning, I did finally nod off for a stretch, but it was a sleep haunted by nightmares which can only be described as "Tina Yothers hosting a gameshow about the apocalypse, presented Phoenix Wright-style."

I woke at seven this morning with a severe narcotic hangover, but no pain. My original assessment of the problem -- a worse than usual case of post-op jarred bone trauma -- was apparently correct. Thank Providence for that, at least. I've spent the rest of the day so far alternating between staggering nauseously around the house and passing out cold on the bed, feeling like nothing so much as a dessicated husk of my previous self. (The lack of sleep and decent nourishment these past couple days hasn't helped.)

The lack of pain in my teeth and jaw is nice, though. Hopefully I'll be a state to fully appreciate that soon.

The Crystal Method - Trip Like I Do (from Vegas, 1997) - Over the ottoman, over the edge of the rug, over Oscar the Pughuahua, over my own two feet...

12 Days of Christmas - Day 5: polar opposites

BALI, Indonesia - The initial high hopes of those committed to resolving the global warming issue experienced an embarrassing setback at the U.N. climate change conference last week, as sibling rivalries led to an intractable deadlock between two delegates whose cooperation has been deemed vital to establishing an effective policy.

(An artist's rendering of the confrontation.)
The sibling delegates in question are the Miser brothers. Mr. Snow Miser has long been a staunch supporter of the Kyoto Protocols, as the accelerated shrinking of the polar ice caps directly affects his traditional standard of living. However, previous statements by the self-proclaimed "Mr. Icicle" that he "never wants to know a day that's over 40 degrees [Fahrenheit]" has caused some concern even among other Kyoto supporters, and provided his estranged brother, Mr. Heat Miser, an opportunity to dismiss the treaty as the work of environmental extremists. "I'd rather have it 80, 90, 100 degrees!" he shouted across the conference hall floor. "Oh, some like it hot," he continued, flanked by a small phalanx of supporters and the delegate from the United States, "but I like it really hot!" He then melted a pen in his clutch and added, "Besides, the science behind global warming theory is still unproven."


An attempt by the conference's organizers to negotiate a compromise between the Misers failed miserably, despite the intervention of Mother Nature. On previous occasions Ms. Nature had been able to rein in her squabbling sons, but at last week's conference it was clear her formerly commanding presence has been gravely diminished by her declining health, which took a pronounced turn for the worse after January 2001. It was all Ms. Nature could do just to keep the Misers from engaging in physical violence during the fruitless negotiations to reestablish a previous quid pro quo arrangement between the two elemental beings.

A spokesperson for the United Nations expressed disappointment, but not surprise, at the outcome. "We had hoped that Australia's decision to sign on to the Kyoto agreement marked a push toward a new consensus, but unfortunately politics and personal grievances got in the way," she stated. When specifically asked about the behavior of the Miser brothers during the conference, she simply responded "They're too much."

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

Another Christmas countdown, another post featuring these climatically oppositional classics from 1974's The Year Without a Santa Claus (along with a quite excellent medley version by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy). I've found that they make perfect bookends for my annual holiday mix CD's.

As I stated last year, nothing says “Merry Christmas” quite like high camp lyrics and music lifted from a Gypsy Rose Lee performance.

George S. Irving - Heat Miser (from Nick At Nite: A Classic Cartoon Christmas, Too, 1997)

Dick Shawn - Snow Miser (from Nick At Nite: A Classic Cartoon Christmas, Too, 1997)

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy - Mr. Heatmiser (from Everything You Want for Christmas, 2004)

moola moola moola

Today is Jim Backus Day here at Armagideon Time.

Why? Why not? The man was a legend, up there with Paul Lynde and Vincent Price in the class of actors whose voices and trademark mannerisms are immediately recognizable to folks in my age bracket. I wouldn't pigeonhole Backus as a character actor, per se, as he did excellent work (Rebel Without a Cause, Deadline U.S.A) outside the parameters usually associated with that label. It was his knack, however, for portraying old money patrician types that would bring him the most fame, specifically his role as the jovial yet shifty uber-capitalist, Thurston Howell III, in the syndicated juggernaut that is Gilligan's Island.

Backus's talents shone bright in that loathed and adored legendary sitcom, where he provided a rare source of wit amidst the stock gags and gimmicky slapstick (not that I'm opposed to that sort of humor, but it does get tiring after a while) that dominated the series' three-season run. "A Howell never runs in the face of danger...he walks very fast." Yeah, it's nothing that Oscar Wilde would have lost sleep over, but Backus's skill in delivery made even such comedic coal sparkle like diamonds. Plus, there are few things that can bring a smile to my face like Thurston Howell's faux native warchant -- "Moola moola moola!"

Backus's other claim to popcult immortality, as the man who provided the voice for the optically challenged Mr. Magoo, has largely faded from the public consciousness, partially (and justifiably) due to the cartoon's insensitive treatment of ethnic minorities and the visually impaired. (The irredeemably awful live-action movie starring Leslie Nielsen based on the property didn't help, either.) That said, I consider Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, which almost completely dispenses with the near-sightedness gags, to be the finest adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic ever made, and the best animated holiday special, too. (Angry fans of the Peanuts Christmas special, please form a line on the right. Angry Rankin-Bass cultists please from a line on the left. All complaints will be resolved via my steel-toed left boot.)

Toward the end of his career, Backus dwelled in the standard character actor ghetto of kiddie fare, voiceover work, and lesser roles in even lesser projects. He set the precedent for harassing (as a prospector in the Grand Canyon) vacationing Brady brats which Vincent Price would later follow (as an archeologist in Hawaii). He played a comically inept white separatist militia leader in Greydon Clark's T&A cash-in feature (and future MST3K fodder) Angels' Revenge. And most importantly, he served as the villainous foil to a robotic crimefighting dog in C.H.O.M.P.S., which I bring up because it was a frequently-played favorite of mine in those bizarre early days of basic cable. (I saw it again recently on one of the Encore channels, and wept openly over my younger self's poor sense of judgement. Great theme song, though.)

He was also in Crazy Mama and Friday Foster, so it wasn't all bad...

A talented man across many venues -- stage, screen (large and small), radio -- Backus also recorded a couple well-received novelty singles in the the late 1950's.

Delicious! (from Golden Age of American Rock'n'Roll: Special Novelty Edition, 2003) - A Dr. Demento favorite, this dipsomanical delight is credited to "Jim Backus and Friend." There's been much speculation over who the friend in question actually was, with Hermione Gingold's and Phyllis Diller's names being put forth (and rebutted) as possible candidates, and it's more than likely the real truth has been lost to the ages.

As wonderful as "Delicious!" is, it doesn't hold a candle to Backus's follow-up effort..

Cave Man (from a 1959 single) - This has made the music blog and bootleg compilation rounds already, but if you haven't heard it already, here's your chance. Backus grunts, quips, and puns (and I strongly suspect is mostly ad-libbing) his way through prehistory backed by some good ol' fashioned 50's pop music. Bizarre and highly entertaining in the way a good novelty record ought to be.

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

I'd also like to mention that Progressive Ruin, "the swampiest comics blog since 1969," is celebrating its fourth anniversary today. "PR" or "ProgRu" or "that one blog by the guy who runs a comic shop, no, not THAT guy, the other one" is a consistently entertaining example of comics blogging done right, and Mikester is the closest thing the scene has to a Johnny Carson.

To extend that analogy:
Dorian Wright = Dick Cavett
Kevin Church = Steve Allen
Dave Campbell = David Letterman
Bully = Jack Paar
Chris Sims = Arsenio Hall
bitterandrew = Thinks he's Conan O'Brien, but is actually Chevy Chase

Anyhow, a big congrats to Mikester for hanging in there and keepin' on keepin' on when so many others have fallen by the wayside.

The Super Stocks - Ventura (from Surf Route 101, 1964) - Inspired by the So-Cal paradise where Mikester maintains his hidden lair.

baby, if you've ever wondered

Out of the dozens of DVD box sets that fill the shelves in our living room, exactly three are solely and completely mine: Pink Lady and Jeff, Bottom, and Bubblegum Crisis. The rest were purchased by (or given to) my wife, and while some of them are of shows that we both enjoy, I still think of them as "hers" since she's the person who actually watches them.

Strangely enough (and despite my strong retrological tendencies) I've chosen to keep to the sidelines during the DVD boxset revolution. While it's wonderful to see so much nostalgia fodder made available to the public, I find myself liking the idea that the entire run of B.J. and The Bear can be obtained at a reasonable price more than the notion of sitting down and actually trying to choke down an episode of the series. It's similar how I feel about the fire department -- I'm glad to know they're out there, but I hope to hell that I'll never have to require their services. Plus, I'm not that much of a TV watcher, and on those occasions when I do plunk myself down in front of the small screen, I'd rather pop in a taped copy of Bad Ronald than watch a Facts of Life marathon on TV Land.

Life is too short, and fuzzy flashbacks to childhood aside, I've come to realize that most programs are best viewed once, if at all, then relegated to memory's distorting mercies.

There are some series whose appeal to me is durable enough to justify the purchase of a box set. Apart from the three I've already mentioned owning, the first (pre-outer space) season of Josie and The Pussycats and the three seasons of The Addams Family occupy low-priority slots on my Amazon wish list...and there's the problem of WKRP in Cincinnati.

Despite a strong and acknowledged demand, the DVD release of the classic sitcom about a struggling Midwestern rock radio station was held up for years over licensing issues. It's a problem which has kept several other favorites of mine -- It Came From Hollywood, Urgh! A Music War, the Region 1 release of Spaced, and the 60's Batman TV series -- from reaching store shelves. The problem stemmed from a change in how music was licensed for television, which given the heavy use of licensed music in the series, put a prohibitive price tag on a home release. Later syndication edits of the show worked around the issue by swapping in generic library music cuts in place of the original songs, and overdubbing dialogue where context required, but the fix was extremely unpopular with the fans.

As a result, the DVD release of WKRP remained in limbo for years, with half-baked rumors of a pending announcement making the rounds of internet fandom. When the official announcement was made last year regarding the first season's upcoming release on DVD there was speculation on the subject of the licensing issues, and whether or not the original or the later syndicated versions of the episodes would be used. The news that the show's creators were going to select replacement tracks as needed was taken as a tentatively positive sign that there would be an effort made to keep as much of the content intact as possible, and perhaps preserve the most contextually important songs through some corporate legal magic.

Instead, the end results turned out to be indistinguishable from the syndication edits, with scenes and dialogue heavily edited (or cut outright) to dodge any licensing issues.

The range of responses to the final products make for some fascinating, if maddening, reading. There are hardcore fans who see it as treason most foul and snotty reviewers who claim that "it's good as we're going to get" while dismissing the fan rants by downplaying the importance of the original music. It is comforting (and by "comforting," I mean "soul-wrenchingly depressing") to know that the eternal circular battle between disproportionate fan-ger and snotty condescension passing as "reasonableness" isn't just limited to comics fandom.

I love WKRP. It was the first "adult" television program I ever followed on a regular basis (though early syndicated repeats -- with the original music -- run weekday evenings on a local UHF station). It's one of the best ensemble cast sitcoms ever made, and unlike a lot of the cynical meanness that passes for TV comedy these days, it had, for lack of a better term, "heart." The reactionary, agriculture-obsessed newsman Les Nessman and the sartorially challenged lounge lizard ad man Herb Tarlek were given a sense of humanity and depth rather than played as simple Midwestern caricatures. Similarly, the "cool" characters in the cast were frequently shown to be all too human.

So, as a strong fan of the show, do I think that having the original music is that important?

I do, but I'm not going to foam at the mouth or declare a flamewar over it. I agree that the writing and acting is able to carry the show even with the cuts and substitutions, but the absence of the licensed tracks does diminish the experience. Given that the show was about a radio station, music played an important part, woven into the overall tapestry in things as subtle as an in-joke (CCR's "It Came out of the Sky" queued up after the disastrous turkey drop) or as accompaniment to a big dramatic or comedic moment (Foreigner's "Hot Blooded" playing in the background as Les sexes himself up with a toupee). Moreover, WKRP's creators thought the use of licensed music was important enough to justify shooting the series on video, instead of on film like the other MTM productions, because it meant lower fees for the music rights.

There's also the matter of historicity in regards to the music used in the show. The period in which WKRP originally ran, 1978-1982, was an incredibly important and interesting time in the history of pop music, encompassing the "death" of disco, the rise of the "new wave," and that mythical era when non-hyphenated "rock" was a powerful ongoing concern. One of the things I love most about WKRP is how it incidentally and unselfconsciously documented these trends, and others, as they happened -- things such as the ever-changing promotional posters (featuring, at certain times, The Selecter, The Clash, and Joe Jackson) in the broadcast booth or, most importantly, the station's playlist which included everything from the Flying Lizards to the Rolling Stones to the cool jazz of Donald Byrd to Frankie Lymon. It's a fascinating, if fictionalized, glimpse into the pre-media consolidation/standardized national format era (and those emerging trends were addressed in a couple episodes of the show) of music broadcasting, and it's a shame that aspect of WKRP has been completely (apart from the posters) redacted from the home video release.

It would have been nice to replace my grainy early syndication taped copies of the show with cleaner DVD versions, but the price for doing so is just too high, in too many ways.


A while back I made a project out of assembling a complete soundtrack for WKRP based on a marathon viewing of the show and various scraps of info found on the internet. It's still a bit shy of being finished, but it does make for some great listening. Here are a few selections pulled from it:

The Sports - Who Listens to the Radio? (from Don't Throw Stones, 1979; collected on The Definitive Collection, 2004) - Australian new wave of the Costello/Parker/Edmunds/Lowe school. With all the various genres and subgenres that have been "revived" in recent years, why hasn't pub rock-inflected power pop been given a new coat of paint and set loose upon the world?

Oh, that's right, it takes actual effort to come up with clever lyrics and killer hooks.

Ted Nugent - Queen of the Forest (from Ted Nugent, 1975) - Normally I wouldn't be caught dead posting something by the Dark Prince of Reactionary Rustbelt Rock, but this track happens to be the song that Dr. Johnny Fever played to kick off WKRP's format change from easy listening to rock in the series pilot, so I'm making a one time exception to my "No Nuge" policy. I'm also dedicating it to Dave Campbell, the Rainy City Madman. He knows why.

Oops, I almost forgot: BOOOOOGER!

Detective - Betcha Won't Dance (from It Takes One to Know One, 1978) - Does this sound punk to you? No? That's because it's "Hoodlum Rock," an absurd made-for-TV offshoot of punk performed by "Scum of the Earth" in a first-season episode of WKRP. One of the members of Scum of the Earth (not to be confused with The Dregs of Humanity) was played by the prolific and multi-talented Michael Des Barres. Detective, Des Barres then-current band, provided SOTE's music. (Des Barres also went on to play a DJ on the short-lived The New WKRP direct-to-syndication sitcom, which was slightly better than The New Monkees but not as good as The New Munsters.)

Halloween Countdown: October 17 – you just painted me green

Found while perusing a copy of Swing With Scooter #31 (November 1970):
Dig the ad copy, which was apparently written by an acolyte of E.H. Bronner:

MORE! MORE! Owwwwww!
I admit that convincing the youth demographic about the virtues of owning a scale replica of Jonathan Frid would be something of an uphill battle, no matter how cold, clammy, or flexible said replicas may be. Still, the ad functions not so much an enticement to buy the product as a desperate warning to the unwary.

Either that, or a transcript of most disturbing in situ coital talk ever spoken.

The Damned - Grimly Fiendish (from Phantasmagoria, 1985) - Maybe when this countdown is over, I'll get around to discussing the memory hole and capricious revisionism as it pertains to music and popcult criticism. For now, I'm just going to state that my affection for Phantasmagoria has remained constant against the shifting tides of critical assessment.

Halloween Countdown: October 3 – a little bit typhus, a little bit bubonic

In 1954, faced with the unstoppable tag-team of child psychologist Frederick Wertham and Tennessee senator C. Estes "Yes, I know what my middle name rhymes with" Kefauver, the comic book industry established the Comics Code Authority. Intended to preempt any possible outside action against the industry, the CCA acted as an inside, though (arguably) independent arbiter of "acceptable" comics content.

Under the CCA's new rules, the burgeoning crime and horror genres were especially singled out for their graphic and lurid content, which effectively killed the the former genre and reduced the latter to a pale shell of what it had evolved into in the hands of EC Comics' stable of creators. Even after the restrictions on horror-themed comics were eased in the early 1970's, the stories appearing in anthology "suspense" titles remained stuck in a derivative rut, heavily relying on subpar twist endings copped from the Twilight Zone.

In the mid-1970's, ABC president Fred "Yes, I greenlit Supertrain" Silverman okayed the creation of a variety show starring the squeaky-clean popstar siblings, Donny and Marie Osmond. The Sid and Marty Krofft-produced effort (though the Osmonds would seize control of the venture the following year) debuted in the January of 1976, and set new high water marks in trippy excess, hosed-on glitter, and excruciatingly bland covers of current hits and classic pop standards.

From these two seemingly unconnected events comes the focus of today's Halloween offering, "The Curse of Ozzie and Mary" from issue #194 of DC's The Unexpected (cover date December 1979).

Donnie and Ma... I mean "Ozzie and Mary" are America's sweethearts, thrilling millions of viewers each week with their playful comedic banter and syrupy pop confections...

Is that the extended mix of "I'm My Own Grandpa"?
...but there's a much different story happening behind the scenes, as the overheated narration explains at great length...
The "Mormon Noir" genre never really caught on..
The feud between the siblings reaches a new level when Ozzie contracts the services of an EVIL special effects artist in order to score some onscreen payback against Mary...
"I came to you because the foley artist's asking price was too high, and the key grip's methods lack...subtlety..."
Cut to the next day of taping, and Ozzie is thrilled with anticipation, though, again, not as much as the tale's narrator seems to be. (The dude ought to switch to decaf.)

What, no Ruth Buzzi?
Under the glare of the klieg lights, a startling transformation begins...

"CUT! CUT! CUT! The musical tribute to the bubonic plague was planned for next week's show!"
But don't hire the strippers for the victory celebration just yet, Ozzie, because...
"Dammit, I knew there was a reason the craft services food started to seem appetizing to me!"
And if that wasn't enough ersatz irony for you...

That's one advantage to hiring EVIL special effects people. They really believe in the concept of "value added".
So, what is the moral of the story here? If you're a member of a dueling duo of wholesome sibling popstars, do not contract the services of a mysterious makeup artist as a means of punishing your rival, lest you be turned into a rat-human hybrid?

Message received and understood, then.

Rasputina - Rats (from Cabin Fever, 2002) - Rasputina is something of a small scale phenomenon among the local goth-and-related-subculture crowd around these parts, but honestly, they're not really my kind of thing (and the same applies for nearly all "gothic" music recorded after 1988 or so). Maura has attended a couple of their shows and thinks the band is "all right," though she's closer to the target audience than I'll ever be.

Xmal Deutschland - Boomerang (from Fetisch, 1983) - Now this is more like it -- skitteringly bleak Teutonic postpunk with female vocals.

and look what it's done so far

I've been trying to reorganize my popcult archives these past couple of weeks, in hopes of wresting a modicum of order from the chaos borne of laziness and neglect. While I have made some progress, the process has gone slower than anticipated because I keep getting distracted as I rediscover things I completely forgot I had, like a complete run of taped episodes of The Muppet Show.

I know there are fans out there whose devotion to the series rivals that of the most rabid Trekkie, but my familiarity with the characters barely extends past the principal cast, and is mostly rooted in syndicated repeats watched in hour-long blocks on Sunday mornings sometime during the first Reagan administration. The show remains as fresh and entertaining to watch now as it did then, but what has really captured my attention while reviewing the assortment of episodes has been the roster of guest stars over The Muppet Show's five seasons. The show featured a truly unparalled collection of contemporary and veteran performers that provides an excellent glimpse into the the entertainment scene of late 1970's, as well as reaffirming my argument about the cross-generational awareness engendered in the young'uns of my era towards the character actors and comedians of yesteryear.

The wide-open nature of the list of Muppet Show guest stars (from Alan Arkin to Bob Hope to Linda Lavin to James Coburn) and the fact that nearly all guests participated in at least one musical number might lead one to reasonably expect a fair number of Golden Throat-worthy moments over the course of a hundred and twenty episodes. Such was the skill of Jim Henson and company at assessing the strengths and limitations of the guest performers, however, that those moments were few and far between, with non-musical oriented stars like James Coburn or Sylvester Stallone having the vocal weight carried for them by their colorful Muppet co-stars, or buried in the mix of comedic spectacle.

So rather than rake a few celebrities over the coals on the basis of performances from three-odd decades ago, here are some interesting (and offbeat) numbers lifted direct from the show. The sound quality may be iffy in places, but that's the nature of the game in dealing with old video recordings.

Twiggy - In My Life (from Episode #1.21; November 9, 1976) - Beatles covers are a tricky business, but the real "World's First Supermodel" (Sorry, Janice!) does a creditable enough job with this bittersweet ode to times past.

Lynda Carter - The Rubberband Man (from Episode #4.19; January 29, 1980) - Wonder Woman takes on The Spinners!

Debbie Harry & Kermit the Frog - The Rainbow Connection (from Episode #5.9; August 4, 1980) - "Union City Green"? Another one of those popcult artifacts whose discovery makes me think for a moment or two that all these years spent sifting the dustbins of history have been entirely worth the effort.

open your mind and you will see

Move over, Nero Wolfe! Take a hike, Sam Spade! There's a new gumshoe in town, and Debbie Preston is taking on the cases no one else dares to touch..


It makes me wonder if it's time the character was dusted off and relaunched with a "now" sensibility, sort of James Ellroy-meets-Carolyn Keene in tone:

As she stepped into the penthouse bathroom, Debbie cursed herself for letting things get this far. She remembered the stern talking to she got from her father after the SWAT team had to rescue her from the mess of the Britney/K-Fed custody battle case.

She found her ex-client kneeling on the floor, her face suspended over the toilet bowl, the sound of her dry heaves echoing in the basin. By her right knee was a butcher knife, the handle and blade glued to the porcelain tiles by a coagulated pool of blood. There were also clotted streaks where her ex-client's hands gripped the rim of the bowl.

It was even worse than Debbi had feared, and she decided to forgo any niceties. She snatched a fistful of her ex-client's long, manky blonde hair and yanked her head out of the toilet. Red-rimmed eyes stared up at her, but Debbie could see nothing past the vacant stare.

"Where is she? Where is your twin sister? Tell me!"

Her ex-client let out a choked sob, and a string of vomit-flecked spittle passed through her lips and ran down her chin. Her voice was faint and hoarse, "I have no sister."

Debbie was fighting back the urge to shake the truth out of her when she noticed something bobbing around in the toilet bowl amidst the vomit, spittle, and bile.

Something small. Something pink. Something that looked exactly like a severed human finger, the gnaw marks still visible despite its round trip journey.

"Tell...Uncle Joey...I'm so sorry..."

Debbie knew that she wasn't going to home by curfew on this night.

Tune in next time, as Debbie tries to unravel a rash of mysterious murders targeting those who have come into possession of a Hollywood superstar's stolen PDA! How does it tie back to a male prostitution ring in the San Fernando Valley and a secretive religious group founded by a failed sci-fi writer? Will Debbie solve the mystery before the co-host of a network news morning show becomes the next victim? And who will be Debbie's date to the Winter Semiformal -- Chad or Tommy?

Voice of the Beehive - I Think I Love You (from Honey Lingers, 1991) - Aren't we due for yet another revival of interest in the Partridge Family? Or has VH-1 permanently exhausted the soil on that front with its slash and burn nostalgricultural methods?

China Crisis - Tragedy and Mystery (from Working with Fire and Steel, 1983) - SYNTHESIZED BRASS AND BRIT ACCENTS 4EVA!!!

push it to the floor till the engine screams

I work at one of Greater Boston’s many universities, and one of the great perks of my job is the unbridled opportunities for people-watching it provides. Every trip to the restroom, vending machines, or ATM yields insightful (and often painful) glimpses into the lives of that strange breed of creature known as the “college student.”

Although nothing will ever top the time I quite literally ran into two wild turkeys out for a late afternoon stroll behind one of the lecture halls, yesterday’s sojourn in search of some decent vend-o-fare did include some interesting material for the empirical anthropologist. At the entrance to one of the college buildings, I crossed paths with a rather hirsute and odiferous individual who bore all the distinct markings of the stereotypical male sci-fi/comics/RPG fan, right down to the patchy beard and air of disdainful superiority.

Considering my well documented set of hobby-horses and other assorted interests, it may seem hypocritical for me to tag others of the tribe with labels. Fandom is not monolithic, however, and as an Algonquin from the Northeast would have been certainly puzzled by certain customs and practices of a member of the plains-dwelling Sioux -- and vice versa -- there are aspects of fan culture which remain baffling to me. I have spent too much time dwelling in the houses of the non-fan, perhaps.

That’s all beside the point, though, because there was something about this particular fanboy that set him apart from his peers: He was carrying a large, old-school boom box with him, with the Star Wars: Episode IV soundtrack blasting from its tinny speakers. In these days of listening technology, where smaller and more personal is better, projecting a full-on sonic assault in a ten-yard radius around one’s self can only be seen as a deliberate act of attention-mongering only slightly more subdued than having John Williams and the London Philharmonic follow one around and play the music live. It struck me as the ultimate realization of fanboy megalomania, the overwhelming compulsion to relentlessly inflict one’s interests upon passers-by, while the passers-by merely roll their eyes and do their best to escape.

One thing that struck me after the fact was “Why the Star Wars theme?” The franchise does have its share of obsessively hardcore adherents, but it has also become part of the mass popcult consciousness. Everyone knows the theme to the first film, even folks with minimal interest in the movies, books, and related ephemera. The fanboy’s choice of music flew in the face of conventional fan-behavior where there’s premium put on exclusivity, which in turn provides opportunities for condescending pedantry: “Oh, you would think that. Obviously you’ve never seen the Japanese laserdisc version.” It’s a form of (arguably) secular Calvinism that puts an emphasis on proselytizing, but only for the sake of reminding those outside the elect that they are stupid, while the proselytizer is a genius. I’d have been less surprised if he’d played the theme to some as-yet-unlicensed-for-American-release anime series, a filk remix of the Man from Atlantis theme, or Rush’s 2112.

It got me to thinking about what tracks I’d select for my own intrusively blasted theme song (though I pray that I’ll never have to face that particular demon). After careful consideration, I narrowed the field down to two worthy candidates. The final choice would depend on my mood at the time:

Mike Post & Pete Carpenter – Drive (Theme to Hardcastle & McCormick) (from Television’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 6, 1996) – The original and superior version of the show’s theme song (with vocals by David Morgan). Truly the brightest, most glorious moment in the mismatched crimefighting duo with a bitchin’ high-end car genre of TV shows. Sure it was formulaic pap, but it was formulaic pap that spoke to the hearts and souls of a generation of kids too stupid to know better.

Quincy Jones – The Streetbeater (Theme to Sanford & Son) (from Television’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 3, 1990) – I associate this track with pain, blinding white pain of the nausea-inducing variety. It’s not because I think it’s a bad piece, quite the contrary. Way back in the day when Maura and I first started dating, I was channel surfing and stopped on TV Land just as the theme began to play. I was thrilled; Maura wasn’t and she demanded I change the channel before the tune got stuck in her head. I tried playing “keep away” with the remote, at which point the woman I would eventually marry “accidentally” elbowed me square on the nose, causing me to black out for a few minutes.

My other strange encounter of that was considerably less irritating than the boom box nerd, but far more intriguing. In the courtyard outside the science building stood the most adorable pair of hipster undergrads, a gal and a guy, sharing a single pair of iPod earbuds as they made goo-goo eyes at each other. Ah, young love in bloom, free of all the complications, pregnancy scares, and drunken 2:00 AM phone calls…

As I dragged myself back to my dismal little cubicle, I found myself wondering what song exactly the little lovebirds happened to be listening to. My first guess was Sisqó’s “Thong Song,” the pinnacle of romantic sentiment in Western cultural history. Not even The Bard’s sublime Sonnet 18 (Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?/Thou art more lovely and more temperate) can approach the passionate resonance of “She had dumps like a truck truck truck/Thighs like what what what/Baby move your butt butt butt.” (Ed. note: I’d sooner vote Republican than post that track here.)

After a little more reflection, I began to wonder if perhaps “Thong Song” was a little too much freak to handle in that gooey stage of their relationship. Maybe they were listening to more intellectually stimulating romantic material, like “Anthrax” from Gang of Four's 1979 LP Entertainment! It’s a heartwarming analysis of love as lensed though the Marxist concept of alienated labor and as compared to a deadly spore-borne illness. It’s one of the all time great make-out songs, too.

Then it hit me, and it was so painfully obvious that I cursed myself for not realizing it sooner. There is only one song that truly, madly, deeply captures the that sort of bliss in musical form, and that song is:

Commander Cody – Two Triple Cheese, Side Order of Fries (from Lose It Tonight, 1980) – In the days when I used to buy used vinyl by the pound, the “C – Misc.” bins in every secondhand records shop in the metro Boston area were packed to the partitions with Commander Cody (with and without The Lost Planet Airmen) LPs. I never purchased any, but it made me contemplate why these stores just didn’t create dedicated slots for Mr. Frayne and company. Was it a case of hipper-than-thou audiophile bias against blue collar “boogie woogie” rock? Or simple laziness?

(The illustration for today's post was courteously provided by the incomparable Chris Sims.)

la-la la la-la-lah

So Elton Billy Preston-John, Freddie Mercury, Disco Cowboy, and the World's Ugliest Ace Frehley fan are all punk rockers? Huh. It must be true, because it appeared in Dazzler #3 (May 1981).

(Although I am absolutely certain there's some would-be rock critic out there wasting megabytes of hard drive space expounding how "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting," "Bohemian Rhapsody," and "Nothing from Nothing" are seminal punk classics. In the space of twenty years, we've gone from a situation where the mainstream media wouldn't touch the genre with a ten foot pole to one where folks are falling all over themselves in a rush to tag anything and everything with the punk label.)

When I first came across this panel (via Essential Dazzler Vol. 1), I had a brief moment of punk rock indignation over its absurd inaccuracy. Then I remembered this, the "punk rawk" CHiPs episode (which has been tragically yanked from YouTube), and the various American Sex Pistols fans shown in Lech Kowalski's 1980 documentary D.O.A. and realized that the fellows in the comic knew exactly what they were doing.

Television Personalities - Part Time Punks (from the Where's Bill Grundy Now? EP, 1978; collected on Yes, Darling, But Is It Art? 1995) - How did my not-quite-friend Tim once put it? "A poseur is a punk that isn't you or anyone in your circle of friends." All of us may be sinners, but some are more damned than others.

SNFU - Real Men Don't Watch Quincy (from a 1990 bootleg 7" of 1982 compilation tracks/demos) - I'm amazed at the extremely low ratio of crap to quality among late 70's/early 80's Canadian punk material, especially since our neighbors to the north seem so, well, polite (compared to their surly cousins in the States, at least).

this is who I am

In response to my refrigerator post, an anonymous commenter remarked:

I didn't picture you looking like that. Your hair is too short and you're too skinny. And you don't look bitter.

It baffled me a little, mostly because I am the me that I am, and I can't really envision another me, much less one that apparently resembles Glenn Danzig. (I do have recurring dreams where I have swapped bodies with Tommy Tune, but the less said about that, the better.)

Don't get me wrong; I wasn't offended by the assertion that I did not resemble this person's mental picture of what a "bitterandrew" ought to resemble, but just so we're all on the same page I would like to clarify a few salient points.

1. I am skinny. I always have been, and will probably always be, if my fifty-something father's wiry physique is any indication. I'm 6'3" and currently weigh just shy of 150 pounds. That's actually a twenty pound increase from my pre-marriage weight of 130 pounds. This means that I can no longer suck in my chest and place (and hold) a tangerine under my ribs.

Belle and Sebastian - String Bean Jean (from the Dog on Wheels EP, 1997; collected on Push Barman to Open Old Wounds, 2005)

2. I keep my hair short. Apart from the sugarbowl haircuts that were my birthright as a child of the 1970's, I have only had long hair during two periods of my life. When I started junior high, I let my hair grow long as part of an unplanned experiment to see how many times could I possibly be called "hippie" or "faggot" by my classmates. (I quit counting when the totals neared an actual infinity.)

I had it cut off in the beginning of my sophomore year, and wore my hair short (and progressively punkier) until the mid-1990's when I kept the back short, and grew the bangs down over my chin. (You can see it in transition here.) I kept it that way until I was thrown out of/quit graduate school in the fall of 1997, and have kept it buzzed close ever since.

It's partially a vestigal affectation of my punk rock days, but the buzzcuts are also due to the fact that my hair has no body whatsoever, and no matter how I try to style or shape it, I always end up looking like either George Peppard in Banacek or Hawk from Buck Rogers.

The Who - Cut My Hair (from Quadrophenia, 1973)

3. I am bitter, but I am also a happy-go-lucky guy. What the hell does a bitter person look like, anyhow? Like they're perpetually constipated? (I would have said "or like a Rob Liefeld character" but that would have been redundant.)

My cynicism has been tempered with a certain degree of fatalism so as to not mire myself in the bog of despair. It's fine to be pissed off, and there are no shortage of things to be pissed off about, but I refuse to let it stain my soul. That's just letting the bastards win. My bitterness and cynicism are the manifestations of a bruised idealism tempered by experience and empiricism but refuses to give up the last sparks of hope.

The English Beat - Tears of a Clown (from I Just Can't Stop It, 1980)

To sum up:

bitterandrew = a bloodied, but unbowed stick figure of a man with a crewcut and questionable tastes in music