city of fitful dreams

Decades before Carol Danvers and Billy Batson graced the City on the Hill with their sequentially artsy presences, the cast of Winsor McCay's pioneering comic strip, Little Nemo in Slumberland, made a brief stopover in the magical land of Bahstin.

Here's the highlight reel from that 1911 visit:

First up, an aerial flyby to assess the terrain, complete with the requisite comments about the confusing layout of the roads. Certainly a wise course of action, though perhaps best done without addition of a racist caricature.

(Unlike certain other lesser cities, Boston's street plan is the result of organic growth over the space of nearly four hundred years of continuous habitation. This might lack the centrally planned clarity of a regular grid of prefab developments laid over the bulldozed remains of an orange grove, but it's the price one pays for an authentic sense of regional history.)

The oddly-shaped spit of land above the gentleman on the right's chapeau is old Columbia Point, back in the days when it housed a sewage plant and a city dump, and before the peninsula was jacketed into a seawall and became the location of my scrappy (and only slightly dumpy) alma mater.

The next stop on the itinerary is the Old South Meeting House on Washington Street, which is neither the Old South Church nor the location where the "one if by land, two if by sea" lanterns associated with Revere's ride were hung. (That happened at the Old North Church. I have no idea why you outsiders get so confused when you ask for directions.)

The Massachusetts State House, curiously denuded of all surrounding landmarks, marks the final leg of the tour. Contrary to what McCay would have the reader believe, the crowd below have not gathered to watch the arrival of the intrepid explorers, but to witness the latest scandal in which the Speaker of the House has been embroiled -- an occurrence so reliable and predictable, in fact, that it has replaced the atomic clock as the standard for timekeeping in the Commonwealth.

Charlie Flaherty, then Tom Finneran, now Sal DiMasi -- what is it about the job that causes the suspension of professional ethics and integrity? The entrenched remnants of the local political machine culture emboldened by the fact that Massachusetts is essentially a one-party state? Or that the Speaker's gavel is some eldritch Lovecraftean artifact that channels corrupting impulses into those who wield it? (I suspect it involves a bit of both theories.)

Having moored their Art Nouveau airship to Boston Common's famous Pee Tree (so named, as a crazy street person once informed me, because "some dude just peed on it"), the crew sets out to gather provisions for their journey to Montreal (which has better strip clubs and a lower drinking age than Beantown does, as well as Lay's Smoky Bacon potato chips).

There are few things as lovely as a toasted slice of Boston brown bread (a.k.a. "the bread that comes in a can") smothered in butter, but Flip demonstrates a painful lack of awareness in the the gastro-intestinal symbiosis between brown bread and baked beans. The high fiber content of the beans is required to offset the sweet sludginess of the brown bread. Five thousand loaves eaten on their own will only lead to a colon impacted with neutron star densities of molasses-heavy waste material.

At least it will make for an interesting voyage to Quebec. I just hope the airship has more than one lavatory onboard.

The Byrds - Boston (from The Preflyte Sessions, 2001) - Recorded before the band hit their folk rock stride, this track demonstrates a strong early Beatles influence -- and by "early Beatles," I mean "Chuck Berry."

Friend and Lover - Boston Is a Lovely Town (from Reach Out of the Darkness, 1968) - Non-specific praise is groovy!

and the winners stand confused

Today I'm going to take a look at a rare treasure that manages to combine two of Armagideon Time's recurring obsessions -- Bay State parochialism and the immortal gloriousness that is Captain Marvel Adventures. For a couple of years in the early-to-mid 1940's the series ran monthly stories spotlighting various American cities. The tales took the form of rather anemic edutainment travelogues featuring bits and bobs of local color and call outs to various real-life local politicos or personalities under the guise of fostering a wartime spirit of national solidarity (by having a giant tree devour Akron's shopping district or corncob smugglers bedevil the inhabitants of Sioux Falls).

After stumbling across a few of these stories, I got to wondering if my own stomping grounds were ever shown any CMA lovin' and, sure enough, issue #40 (October 1944) of the series spotlighted my beloved Beantown in a story titled, "Captain Marvel and the Mayor for a Day." I'd like to apolgize in advance for the quality of the images. They were pulled from microfiche and my Paint Shop Pro (because I'm too lazy cool to learn Photoshop) wizardry could only do so much with the raw material I was stuck with.

The story begins with Billy Batson, boy radio reporter and Captain Marvel's alter ego, disembarking at North Station to attend a ceremony where the brightest high school student in the city will be awarded the honorary title of "Mayor for a Day." As Marvel's wisdom of Solomon would be useless in figuring out to to get to the Green Line concourse from Causeway Street, a local philanthropist has a car waiting to take Billy to the pre-brutalist nightmare version of Boston City Hall. (The gorgeous French Empire city hall building on School Street has been repurposed for commercial use.)

Upon arriving, Billy is introduced to a couple of members of the local broadcasting fraternity:

WEEI is still on the air as sports talk radio format station. Sister station WNAC eventually changed its call letters to WRKO, where it presently hosts a veritable smörgåsbord of ignoramus-friendly fare from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Howie Carr, Michael Savage, and Coast to Coast AM.

Inside City Hall, the ceremony commences, overseen by Mayor (and eventually Governor and U.S. Secretary of Labor) Maurice Tobin, for whom the Mystic River bridge and popular destination for the suicidal is named. (Mayor Tobin courteously took time out of his busy schedule of avoiding an indictment over his complicity in the Cocoanut Grove tragedy to attend the event.) The honor of Mayor for a Day is to go to the perky and WASPy Bob Wright, Boston's best student (by virtue of his parents' sending him to private schools though his K-8 years then suing the district in order to get him into the prestigious Boston Latin High School, as per the normal protocols).

Before privileged Bob can be sworn in, however, the festivities are interrupted by a member of the "De Boston Better Citizens League" (branches in Charlestown, Winter Hill, and South Boston), advocating for his own candidate for the honorary title, the not-at-all ethnically stereotyped wannabe Dead End Kid, Terry Mahoney:

When a call to the school confirms Terry's valedictorian status, Captain Marvel smells a big Hibernian rat and sets out to discover the truth. He also engages in a little sightseeing...

...swinging past the Bunker Hill Monument, commemorating both the Battle of Breed's Hill and Charlestown's need to overcompensate, and Fanueil Hall, where he drops a few hundred bucks on overpriced tourist junk.

Marvel's investigation reveals a low Chandlerian conspiracy involving stolen cigarette cases, destroyed records, and dastardly frame-ups. In an attempt to get to the bottom of the mystery, Billy dons a Scalley cap and an unexplicable faux Brooklyn accent (technical term: pidgin white ethnic-ese) to infiltrate the De Boston Better Citizens League, in a scene that reads like a Classics Illustrated version of The Departed:

Billy's ruse is detected (after he asks for a bottle of "pop" rather than "tonic") and the gangsters decide to get rid of him by tossing him inside a cement mixer, violating the local tradition of a point blank shot to the head or a severed aorta, followed by burial in a shallow unmarked grave in a brownfield by Tenean Beach. Billy escapes the slowly-rotating death trap by transforming into Captain Marvel, who makes short work of the thugs.

Marvel is able to see past the red herrings and false leads, and flies off to the Roxbury-Jamaica Plain frontier (free from attacks by escaped gorillas since 2003)...

...to confront the mastermind behind the fiendish goings-on in his cement factory lair and bring him to justice (after some hot superheroic action involving construction equipment, of course).

So what was the reason for trying to rig the Mayor for a Day results?

To nab a sweetheart no-bid contract for the mastermind's cement firm by taking advantage of a little known law which apparently grants the mayor unlimited powers. (The same law has been a cornerstone of current Boston mayor Tom Menino's nigh-eternal reign.) My own excessively elaborate plan to exploit for my own gain the archaic Boston statute forbidding bathing more than once a week also failed miserably.

Also, graft and corruption in the Bay State's public works arena? The Devil, you say!

Billy Butler - Boston Monkey (from The Right Tracks, 2007) - Jerry "Ice Man" Butler's younger brother was an exceptional Northern Soul artist in his own right, despite never getting the attention or chart success he deserved. It also didn't help that his material had been out of print or unavailable for decades. Here's a choice sample for your edification and enjoyment.

Also, how can you tell a Boston monkey from the more mudane variety? It's unable to figure out how turn signals work, it drops the r's from its grunts, and it wears a "YANKEES SUCK" t-shirt. (Just because it's facile doesn't mean it isn't true.)

Dream Syndicate - Boston (from Out of the Grey, 1986) - From the South Side of the Windy City to the West Coast haunts of the Paisley Underground, the bards sing their songs in celebration of the dubious virtues of this hard-bitten city of Bean and Cod. "The whole thing ain't gone down according to the plan..." Truer words about this place have never been sung.

ride the mild surf

I generally don't do reposts, but due to the sheer number of Google search hits and emailed requests, I've decided to make an exception. The fact that the song in question is a longstanding favorite of mine, and ranks right up with the Modern Lovers' "Roadrunner" in terms of my intimate familiarity with the cited geographic features also played a major factor in my decision.

So here it is:

The Gremies - No Surfing in Dorchester Bay (from a 1980 single) - The Gremies were a local supergroup of early Boston punk acts, featuring members from DMZ/The Lyres, Unnatural Axe, and the Real Kids. (The b-side of the 7" consists of a dub version of the track.)

I first became aware of this single after stumbling across an entry (with a photo of the picture sleeve) in the college library's copy of Who's New Wave in Music, and I made locating a copy of it the highest of acquistional priorities -- mainly because I have spent nearly every weekday since the autumn of 1990 toiling away on the shore of that frequently pungent body of water. The view from my cubicle window looks right out onto it, actually, and I can indeed confirm the bay's lack of surfability.

never worry ‘bout the things we were missing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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