you are the big one

While it may have been perfectly fine in 1950 to create a gag strip featuring an aspiring hammy actor named "Whitey Way" (as in "The Great White Way"), the name carries a whole truckload of non-Broadway connotations for present-day readers...

The Heart Throbs - Kiss Me When I'm Starving (from Cleopatra Grip, 1990) - The pillars of the speculation-based economy may be crumbling around us, but my love for melancholic indie pop remains forever solvent...especially when the piece in question sounds like a jam session between The Banshees and The Primitives.

easier done than said

Spend enough time on the comics internet and you're bound to run across one: a burst of message board bile or an angsty long form blogpost about how some recent event in the comics scene has raped the author's childhood, kicked her dog, or fractured some part of their anatomy, and so now they must holler a pointed "Adieu to comics" from their soapbox. Then, after a hiatus of minutes or even hours, they return to piss and moan about how Jean Grey is depicted in the latest issue of X-Cessive Franchise X-Pansion. Net-based bluster and net-based drama are cheap.

The sad truth is that the habits of ingrained fandom are harder to excise than pancreatic cancer. The attachment to the characters and titles and the serialized nature of the medium make it too easy to stick around for a while and hope things will sort themselves out, especially when a large percentage of the fanbase is caught up in the obsessive collector's mindset and will keep throwing money down a hole for the sake of completeness.

Which is why I was a bit startled to realize that my own sense of fandom has apparently scabbed up and fallen off after three decades. It's not a political statement or an empty gesture of protest...or a gesture of protest of any kind. Nor is it a blanket repudiation of my affection for the medium. I have no plans to unload my collection or quit buying reprint editions or back issues that interest me. I have simply quit caring about the current crop of offerings in the superhero genre and the marketing psychodrama that goes with them.

It was a small epiphany at the end of long, drawn out process, and it happened while I was reading the latest issue of DC's current big event title, Final Crisis. The series and comic itself weren't half bad. It's competently written and illustrated, contains the expected lashings of bombast and melodrama, and is more intelligently constructed than one would expect from an editorially-mandated tentpole title.

As well-crafted as Final Crisis is, it still comes off as an exercise in creative decadence, mired in the poorly focused sense of deja vu that typifies the present-day Marvel and DC Universes. The superhero genre has always been predicated upon finding new routes for the trip to the same old well, but these days it feels different somehow, with familiarity stressed as much as cosmetic differences used to be.

There are exceptions, but for the most part it feels that no one even tries to achieve escape velocity anymore. Instead they settle for a predicable (yet decaying) orbit around childhood nostalgia and creative hero worship that mimics superficial forms but not the underlying substance. The results are essentially licensed fan-fiction, a downward spiral clogged with hobby-horses and trivial obsessions passing for actual storytelling, and kept moving with clumsy grafts taken from the popcult zeitgeist. Why settle for adequate (at best) knock-offs that shamelessly ape the source material when you can just read the original stories?

I fully concede the point that "it's new to you, maybe, but not to a lot of fans," though that same logic, when applied to Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho over the original film or Oasis's discography over that of The Beatles, comes off as pretty laughable. I've been collecting superhero comics for over three decades now. There have been creative high points and plenty of low ones, and through it all I've managed to stay engaged with the material, with some sense of eager anticipation. Now, at age thirty-six, I feel like I've outgrown the scene.

It's not fan entitlement that moves me, just plain vanilla apathy for current offerings, for the online mind-games between producers and vociferous aggrieved consumers (which is just sort of pathetic), and for the utter foolishness of it all.

Me, curse the darkness? Nah. Better, I think, to curl up on the couch with a tall glass of ice tea and the OMAC omnibus edition and quit pretending I care about Skrulls, demonic annulments, display cases, or other nonsense.

Belle & Sebastian - I'm Waking Up To Us (from a 2001 single, collected on Push Barman to Open Old Wounds, 2005) - It's not you, baby, it's me and you...but mostly you, though.

the stars are brighter

A certain degree of flexibility is required to negotiate life's twists and turns. A stone obvious statement, yes, but one whose message isn't heeded nearly as often as it ought to be.

In my younger years, I knew a surprising number of people between the ages of 16 and 21 who were convinced that they had sorted out the rules of the game. I'm not talking about the standard adolescent delusions of grandeur ("I'm going walk into Paramount's offices and show them my alterna-soundtracked off-brand Catcher in the Rye and become an Oscar-winning screenwriter!") or the methodically plotted ambitions of the Type A set ("AP Biology, then an undergrad degree from Tufts, then med school, then a vacation home in Tahoe."). Nor am I talking about those enviable individuals (such as my college buddy Southie Dave or Kevin Church) with a knack for navigating life's various currents so as to best reach their stated objectives, large or small.

The folks I'm referring to are the ones who have codified their (inherently myopic) worldviews right down to most minute details. More often than not, they've given their creed a cute nickname ("Jessie's Theory" or "Jack's Manifesto") and make frequent use of jargonistic terms like "axiomatic" when expounding their philosophies to their peers. And expound they do, evangelizing with a zeal born of absolute certitude and casting a jaundiced eye upon those who aren't convinced by their obvious wisdom.

The details of the platform vary from person to person, but it tends to be a mix of received pop philosophy and pat assumptions made in the safety of a sheltered environment and lacking in real world empiricism. Favorite subjects include relationships and career aspirations, which provide opportunities to stress off-the-rack individualist views in opposition to the unenlightened lumpenmundane herd. Marriage and cubicle life can be problematic? The devil, you say!

Back then, the utter confidence of these people gave me pause, especially in light of my own adolescent lack of clarity, which was roundly criticized...

"Fine. Enroll at UMass Boston [I did], stay at your grandmother's house [again, yes], and live in Woburn for the rest of your life [my current plan] -- I'm going to join an artists' commune in Prague and reject the bourgeoisie lifestyle."

It might have stung at the time, but I eventually ran into this individual at the Burlington Mall a few years later. She was the assistant manager at a shoe store. There were no lofty speeches about French poetry or free love, only a litany of workplace gossip delivered to the tune of the Overpriced Shoe Company's employee handbook. "None of my co-workers appreciate the seriousness of our vocation," she told me, sans irony, at one point of the painful conversation.

I've seen the same scenario repeat itself over and over again in the time since. Last I heard, Little Miss Career and Relationship Advice was single and busing tables at an Olive Garden in Burbank. Our brief reunion via email ended abruptly when she asked if I was still dating Maura and I responded that we were married and had bought a house...in Woburn. The gay aspiring psychic ended up repudiating himself and joining the Catholic priesthood. The Queen of the Soapbox, who had made many public pronouncements against 9-to-5 work and marriage, engaged in all sorts of semantic contortions in order to explain her engagement and taking a white collar office job. A veritable feast of schadenfreude, if I was a more petty-minded soul.

No plan survives contact with the enemy. The problem with rigid systems, political or personal, is that they assume that vagaries of life can be definitively quantified when even the slightest empirical experience shows that chaos is an endemic aspect of day-to-day living. Water pumps fail, cavities rot through to the nerve, pink slips are handed out -- shit happens, in other words, and half-assed philosophies forged in the callowness of youth are a poor substitute for being able to think on one's feet and come to grips with the inevitable crises life is going to blindside you with.

This line of reasoning often gets lumped in with the "you'll understand when you're older" argument, but there are clear differences. It's not about defensive post-facto excuses or justifications (or begrudging the younger generation its idealism). It is possible to maintain one's core principles over a span of years, but creating, then attempting to adhere to a comprehensive worldview based on shallow assumptions with no basis in reality simply establishes the groundwork for an inevitable crisis of faith, in which hotswapping one self-serving ideology for another becomes a tempting solution.

The Auteurs - How Could I Be Wrong (from New Wave, 1993) - What you could have been listening to back in '93, but were too busy trying fool yourself into thinking that Stone Temple Pilots were a decent band. Do you feel ashamed now? You ought to.

wanna go my way

Comics blogging wunderkind and master of facekick-fu Chris Sims has, in a fit of apparent delirium, decreed that this week shall be known as Bring It On week, a seven day celebration of 2000's cheer-tastic cinematic epic and its diminished returns, direct-to-video sequels.

Normally, I'd be the one trying to talk the victim of such a mania down from the ledge of unhealthy obsession, or at the very least keep well clear of the vortex of madness, but the prospect of becoming a bona fide "cheerfiliate" was too tempting an opportunity to pass up.

Besides, I actually kind of like the film.

Okay, maybe "like" is too strong a word. "Genially tolerate" would be more accurate. If the wife, who does sincerely like the film, is watching it on the big TV downstairs, there's a better than even chance I won't leave the room. I do think Chris was a bit off-base when he labeled it the "greatest film franchise in the history of cheersploitation." Semantic arguments about the definition of "franchise" aside, it should be apparent to anyone versed in that micro-genre that the greatest cheersploitation flim ever is, hands down, 1984's Gimme an 'F', with The Pom Pom Girls pulling a close second, followed by Bring It On in third place.

(I am willing to cut Chris some slack in regards to his hyperbolic claims, as he is but a youngster still, and lacks the scars this writer earned in the USA Up All Night and 80's cable TV trenches. It's true what they say, you never see the Rhonda Shearer segment with your name on it.)

What Bring It On lacks in T&A-itude and crass sub-Animal House humor, however, it makes up for in, for lack of a better word, "heart." Chris provides a detailed recap of the film here, but suffice to say that very rarely has a film managed to so successfully address the issues of racial and social inequality in modern America through the vector of perky teens with mini-skirts and bare midriffs shouting school spirit chants and throwing each other in the air...and it manages to do so in a ABC Family-friendly way, too. (There's also a remarkably insightful -- for a teen flick -- examination of the patronizing economics of white liberal guilt in there, too. Go figure.)

Then there's the film's soundtrack. Though consisting by and large of cheer-friendly techno cuts interspersed with then-contemporary R&B and sugary teen-pop tracks (with a requisite cover of Toni Basil's new wave cheer anthem, "Mickey"), there were a couple of pleasant surprises which didn't make it onto the culled-for-the-intended-teen-girl-demographic official soundtrack release.

No worries, though. Andrew's got you covered:

The Leaving Trains - Kids Wanna Know (from Loser Illusion, Pt. 0, 1991; collected on Amplified Pillows, 2005) - An unexpected choice of music to establish a Punky McDreamy romantic interest's socially acceptable non-conformity, but considering the 90's pop-psuedopunk drek the filmmakers could have gone with instead, I'm delighted by the presence of something with some honestly abrasive power.

Of course, if had been me, I'd have gone with either "Violent Sex" or "Temporal Slut" from the band's 1987 Fuck LP.

Bis - Detour (from Social Dancing, 1999) - This collaborative effort between the Glaswegian popsters and Lois Maffeo was used in the flashback sequence where Torrance (Kirsten Dunst) causes the holy "spirit stick" totem to touch the ground on a dare, thus causing her to believe that her reign as spirit squad leader is cursed.

I think I've made it clear in previous posts that I consider Social Dancing to be one of the finest pop albums I've had the pleasure of listening to. I'm not the type to lightly apply the "favorite" tag onto things, but this album certainly qualifies for the honor. It's gotten a bum rap from places such as AMG (which likened it, absurdly, to Haysi Fantayzee's work) because of the deliberate shift in style from the band's brattier early sound. Be that as it may, I found Bis's first album to be charming but grating in large doses, but I found Social Dancing's mix of new wave, indie pop, and trip hop styles -- with some postpunk tossed into the mix by producer Andy (Gang of Four) Gill -- to be nothing short of exceptional from beginning to end.

everything marked, everything 'membered

My brother paid a visit to Armagideon Time HQ last Saturday and asked if he could borrow some CD's from our extensive archives. Some of the albums he was looking for fell into the as-yet-undigitized category, which meant a taking a trip to the attic to mine for musical gold amongst the piles of haphazardly stacked retrological detritus. (The above picture is extremely out of date. Multiply the stuff depicted by a factor of three for a more accurate idea of the present state of affairs.)

I tend to forget it until a third party points it out to me, but the wife and I really do have a surfeit of really weird and geeky stuff. I suppose we could make some respectable money hawking some of it on eBay and the collector's market, but neither of us are the type who part with things easily. You will take my promotional Lunar: Eternal Blue punching Ghaleon puppet when you pry it from my cold dead hand.

As I spent part of my Saturday afternoon enaged in a high-stakes solo game of packing crate Jenga (where defeat meant being crushed beneath a stack of vinyl LP's), I was astonished by the number of albums I had either completely forgotten about or didn't realize we owned in the first place. Most of the latter category were purchased by my wife during the dark days of the mid-1990's, when she cast her nets wide in hopes of finding something, anything worth listening to amidst the seas of soundalike alternapap.

Here are a few choice selections pulled from some albums my brother passed on borrowing (in favor, I might add, of Bananarama's Greatest Hits):

Servotron - I AM NOT A (Voice Activated Child Identicon) (from No Room For Humans, 1996) - Working in a similar vein as Devo, only with the devolution aspect jettisoned in favor of robotic rebellion, Servotron was one of a small cluster of acts (along with the Pulsars and Satisfact) which attempted (without much success) to keep the new wave/postpunk flame alive during the Clinton Era.

Unfortunately the unwashed masses were too busy listening to The Wallflowers and the Goo Goo Dolls to notice. In a just world, a band whose repertoire includes songs about Magnus, Robot Fighter and (in the track featured above) Vicki from Small Wonder (as a murderdroid) should have rocketed to the top of the charts.

Slowdive - Catch the Breeze (from Just for a Day, 1991) - Though I'm our household's designated shoegaze aficionado, it was my wife (a woman apparently immune to Lush's hypnotic allure) who bought this album. The purchase was based on having heard some of the band's later work used in the Doom Generation, a movie the wife didn't particularly care for but whose soundtrack caught her attention. Little did she know that she'd develop a crush on James Duval a few years down the line.

Tuscadero - Latex Dominatrix (from The Pink Album, 1996) - Femvox indie rock with power pop leanings out of Washington, D.C. Another "deserved better than they got" band, my wife bought this album after catching a live in-store performance of theirs at the Newbury Comics in Harvard Square, and she used to listen to it quite a bit. Maybe this post will rekindle her interest. (Or, in all likelihood, she'll just listen to The Gits' first album for the umpteenth time.)

I know just where I stand

It's a new year, children, and so let us start 2008 on a properly groovy note.

To facilitate the cosmic process, I, bitterandrew guru-andrew, have assembled a modest playlist of mod-tastic treasures for your aural enjoyment. Drink deep and let the music set you free.

Alan Moorehouse - Beatcoma (from Let's Boogaloo!, Vol. 3, 2007) - This happening bit of vintage library music is the current frontrunner in the "music I would use for my personal theme when I become dictator of the world" stakes. If you want a picture of that future, imagine a pair of go-go boots doing the frug on a human face — forever.

The Beat Chics - Now I Know (from The Beat Scene, 1998) - An all-female outfit that were contemporaries of (and toured with) a slightly better-known Liverpool quartet with a similar name.

Ennio Morricone - Valmont's GoGo Pad (from the Danger: Diabolik OST, 1968) - I *heart* Danger: Diabolik, and Ennio Morricone's soundtrack for the film is a major factor behind that sentiment.

Camera Obscura - Happy New Year (from Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi, 2001) - This indie pop gem is the only contemporary track in today's featured selections, but it does have a decidedly retro tilt to it while being contextually appropriate, as well.

bard boy in the space age

Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?
O, know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.
-- William Shakespeare, "Sonnet 76"; with a side helping of Metal Men v1 #1 (by Kanigher, Andru, and Esposito)

Sing-Sing - Far Away from Love (from The Joy of Sing-Sing, 2001) - Some indie-pop wistfulness from Emma Anderson's post-Lush outfit.

Inspiral Carpets - This Is How It Feels (from Life, 1990) - It's good, but Carter USM's cover (from the 1993 "Lean on Me, I Won't Fall Over" single) is outstanding.

seasonal holiday digression

Today is Thanksgiving. For our readers not blessed with the good fortune of residing in the World's Only Superpower^TM, the holiday commemorates how my Calvinist ancestors managed to survive an entire year in this forsaken part of the globe (through the aid of the native inhabitants of the Massachusetts Bay area), thus cementing their toehold in the New World (so that they could begin the important work of exterminating those who had helped them in their time of need).

Thanksgiving also serves an important role as a dress rehearsal for the tragicomic improv revue that is Christmas, allowing all the principle players to hone their characterizations and determine which grudges, resentments, or other issues they wish to bring to the main event. The venom of familial discord, like fine liquor (which also plays an important role in the process), grows more potent with the passing of time, and a month of ruminations over "what exactly did he mean by that?" can make all the difference between an awkward moment and a full-on, no holds barred scene occurring over the communal dining table.

Being an unapologetic social terrapin myself, I plan to do what I usually do every holiday that involves family gatherings -- drop the wife off so that she can celebrate with her boisterous Hibernian clan, then return home and spend the day in blessed solitude. I most likely will go over the Woburn Highlands and through the city center to my grandmother's house, though, for a short visit. Doing the Right Thing must needs trump my asocial tendencies, after all. I just have to remember to time the trip correctly so as to avoid the traffic nightmare generated by the annual class war by pigskin proxy otherwise known as the Woburn-Winchester game. (As a side note, the Woburn High athletic teams are called the Tanners, a historical nod to the leather industry whose environmental effects are still, despite head-in-the-sand boosterism, still being dealt with to this day.)

After those obligations are taken care of, it's a simple matter of squandering the empty minutes until Maura returns home with a plate of leftovers for me to pick over. (Maybe I'll finally commit to my plan of watching Armored Trooper VOTOMS in its entirety, or perhaps I'll queue up some choice episodes of MST3K in honor of Turkey Days past -- I tend to be more excited about the concept of unobligated time than the use I put it towards.) Then, as our customary coda for the holiday, the wife and I will pop Blast from the Past into the DVD player (a tradition started by Maura; I've long given up trying to make sense of these things), and let the soothing power of swing revival-themed romantic comedy lull us to sleep.

Not a bad way to spend the holiday, actually, and infinitely preferable to this...

Oh my. This isn't going to end well at all. (As if one needed yet another reason to fear legumes...)

The Neighborhoods - No Place Like Home (from a 1980 single; collected on D.I.Y. - Mass Ave - The Boston Scene: 1975-83, 1993) - Fulfilling all your provinicial power pop needs on this New Anglocentric holiday.

Camera Obscura - I Don't Do Crowds (from Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi, 2001) - Not if I can avoid it, and I'm as skilled in avoidance as these Glaswegian indie poppers are at crafting lovely twee-ish pop songs.

the shadows still remain

Today is All Saints' Day (and before anyone asks, NO FUCKING WAY) which is as good a time as any to rediscover religion. I went looking for mine this morning, and it turned out to be up in the attic, packed in with a collection of failed hard drives and obsolete video cards in a box marked "unneeded junk."

Back when I used to work weekends at the college library, the portion of my shift that didn't involve playing "roust-a-pervert" or explaining to patrons that "no, this is not Boston University" was spent reading books and journal articles on whatever subject had captured my fancy at the moment. It's amazing how much one can learn from books when one knows there isn't a term paper or final exam at the end of the tunnel, and in terms of my educational development, I certainly came away from the experience with far more than I ended up getting from my actual college curriculum.

As I said, my choice of reading material was entirely whim-based, which led to some places that I would never have gotten to on my own. For example, I spent a couple shifts delving into St. Augustine's City of God, which despite my aggressive atheism turned out to be quite an engrossing read. It was written in the wake of the Visigoths' sack of Rome and is laden with spiritual-versus-earthly dualism (reflecting Augstine's own personal demons more than it does Christ's teachings). I was drawn to City of God by its apocalypticism, but in the end I found myself to be more fascinated by the implications of Augustine's detailed demolition of Roman pantheism, implications which the author himself could not bring himself to acknowledge.

A good-sized portion of the treatise is given over to an extended, almost god by god, refutation of the pagan and animist religious traditions practiced in the Empire at the time. Augustine strikes an almost mocking tone in these passages as he highlights the absurdities of having, for instance, separate deities for doors, frames, and lintels. It's as thorough an argument against irrational superstition as one can find, even if it doesn't entirely jibe with Augustine's intent, which was to posit the superiority of Judeo-Christian monotheism. The problem is that core elements of his arguments against pantheism -- the silliness, the contradictions, the twisted logic underpinning the system of belief -- can just as easily be applied to Augustine's own religious convictions, whose superiority in his mind is that God is more benevolent (which is a matter of practice, in truth), "real," and offers cool perks to His followers in the afterlife.

It's a common enough phenomenon whenever analytical philosophy collides with religious convictions. The same thing occurs in Descartes's Discourse on the Method, where, even when all other criteria for determining "self" are called into question, the existence of God is taken as an unassailable truth. It is as if having walked down to the shoreline of existentialism, Augustine, Descartes, and their philosophical and theological descendents cannot bring themselves to dip their toes in the water.

The Skids - The Saints Are Coming (from Scared to Dance, 1979) - It's a rare accomplishment for a song to survive being transformed into benefit porn by the likes of U2 and Green Day. Fortunately this bit of Scottish punk (co-written by the late Stuart Adamson, a member of The Skids before he went on to form Big Country) has bucked the odds and retained its ability to inspire awe in the listener despite having been used as a post-Katrina anthem and in an embarassingly preachy video.

What amuses me the most about that turn of events is that back in the old days, I used to describe The Skids to people by saying "they're kind of like U2...if U2 didn't suck."

The Saints - This Perfect Day (from Eternally Yours, 1978) - Long-haired Aussies who crashed the 70's British punk party with a ferocious Pop-inspired (Iggy Pop, that is) sound.

Big Sleep - Saints & Scholars (from a 1985 flexi) - DIY indie rock out of scenic paradise that was 80's Belfast. (Correction: The band actually hailed from Newtownards, ten miles east of Belfast.) It's a bit like a John McGahern story boiled down into a two-minute pop song: "This land of saints and scholars/is a land of fools and clowns."

Halloween Countdown: October 20 – it keeps on haunting me

Faced with the looming spectre of cancellation, the producers of Jennifer Slept Here tried to spice things up a bit to boost the failing sitcom's ratings.*


Love triangles are complicated enough business without throwing possession by unclean spirits into the mix, though I confess that the notion of ectoplasmic catfights does have a certain sleazy appeal for me.

The Fall - There's a Ghost in My House (from The Frenz Experiment, 1988) - This is a nifty cover of a 1967 R. Dean Taylor hit (in Britain, at least). R. Dean Taylor is also the man responsible for my all time favorite karaoke selection, 1970's poignantly absurd "Indiana Wants Me."

* No, not really.

put on your boots and walk with me

Oscar the chihuahua-pug supports the cause.

Do you?

Then sign the petition!

Beat Happening - What's Important (from Beat Happening, 1985) - Have you ever wondered how Iggy Pop's "The Passenger" would sound if it was written and recorded (with female vocals) in a basement apartment off of US Route 5? I imagine it would pretty closely resemble this track.

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!!!

if power's all they really understand

There was a time when I made an active effort to keep up on the various comings and goings on in my areas of interest across the world wide web, but as my free time has dwindled over the past couple years, I’ve gotten to rely more and more on a handful of trusted linkblogs to pre-separate the wheat from the chaff for me. This is especially true for comics-related blogs and websites. There are simply too many to keep track of, and even Google Reader isn’t much help in organizing and prioritizing the endless flow of posts.

One of the most useful comics-related linkblogs is When Fangirls Attack, a well-curated and regularly updated clearinghouse of links to blog posts and articles dealing with feminist and gender-issues in the comics scene. Ragnell and Kalinara do a great job in presenting an inclusive collection of views, kept free of their own personal biases (which is how topic-themed linkblogs should ideally be. I’m an avid reader of Antiwar.com, despite the paleo-conservative/libertarian ideology of its maintainers because they make the effort to include a wide range of articles and commentary on the subject from across the political spectrum).

So when Dorian, the man behind the always-entertaining Postmodernbarney, started up Comic Gays, a linkblog along the lines of WFA, but with a focus on LGBT issues and subjects in the comics scene and related areas of fandom, it was welcome news, indeed. Even if the actual reach of the comics blogosphere is far smaller than what many of its members assume, it’s great to see new avenues of discussion open up, especially in areas where they intersect with egalitarian principles. There’s a strong current of knee-jerk conservatism in fandom which needs to be roiled from its ingrained opinions. Besides, a flippancy-free discussion of homosexual subtext in Silver Age romance comics makes for far more interesting reading than yet another shrill “DC is raping my childhood (by not publishing stories mirroring my fanfic)” rant.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before the linkbaiters crawled out of the woodwork. For those not up on hip ‘net lingo, linkbaiters are the Japanese beetles of the blogosphere’s rose garden -- folks who write deliberately provocative posts in hopes of getting their site/post referenced by the relevant linkblog. If one were to create a widely-read linkblog dedicated to ham sandwiches, five will get you ten that there will suddenly be a marked increase in blogposts concerning that particular comestible. It’s a quick and dirty means of generating attention (and hits) closely related to that “NOTICE ME” fan pathology I discussed yesterday. It wouldn’t be so bad if these attention-starved voices had something to add to the discussion, but all too often their remarks tread into the realm of outright trollery, being either contrary for the sake of getting attention or just skitching behind the issue du jour. The sincerity of writer (and in too many cases, sadly, the views expressed are sincere) matters less than the ready-made opportunity for virtual face time.

The Rondelles – Pay Attention to Me (from The Fox, 1999) - Sure, as long as you're communicating though femvox indie pop, and not through incoherent rants about why "femisitim" or "guy marrige" is harmful to society.

I’ve had a few of my posts linked to on When Fangirls Attack, but never did I sit down and begin writing with that being the express purpose of the piece, although I can usually predict what will get picked up by the site. (The exception being the Satin Satan post.) I write a lot of comics-themed posts and I’m a strong exponent of egalitarian principles; it’s a given that the streams will cross every so often. That said, I’ve been trying out to figure a way to get a post linked to by Comic Gays. I don’t watch Torchwood (though the ads are intriguing), I tend to steer clear of out-of-context “OMG Batman is SOOO gay for Superman” vintage comic panel humor (because only a rare few can do it right), and the posts I have made about gay rights issues are straightforward political polemics. The trollery route is right out, as I really don’t have it in me to convincingly play the part. (I can’t even bring myself to take the Dark Side path in the Knights of the Old Republic games.)

What’s a poor aspiring link-baiter to do except discuss Carol Channing’s performance in the 1968 flop Skidoo and its lingering effect on my psyche? Skidoo was Otto Preminger’s attempt at the most failure-prone of genres, the counter-culture comedy. Many ambitious directors tried their hand at pulling off such a feat, but even the best of the lot (Head, a bizarre and confusing self-skewering of The Monkees) fall into the category of “interesting failures,” and Skidoo doesn’t even reach those modest heights with its mix of familiar character and comedic actors (Jackie Gleason, Groucho Marx, Carol Channing, Mickey Rooney, among others) and very 60’s drug culture humor.

A critical and financial bomb upon its release, Skidoo became a legend among aficionados of cinematic trash, with the lack of a VHS or DVD release boosting its allure. I managed to acquire a copy a few years back, and finally got a chance to compare the legend to the real deal. It wasn’t the worst film of its type -- an honor that goes hands-down to The Phynx, an attempt to combine The Monkees with an endless parade of celebrity cameos. Skidoo didn’t so much pain me with its incompetence as cripple me with a sense of embarrassment for everyone involved. The feeling I got watching Jackie Gleason trip out on LSD and Groucho Marx smoking reefer was the same one I felt when my mom got tipsy on port wine and sang an out of key rendition of “Smooth Operator.” (Or watching Street Fighter: The Movie and realizing that this was Raul Julia’s last film role. Or seeing Robert Vaughn in TV ads for ambulance-chasers.) It’s a painful, but not an insurmountable experience for the hardened schlock enthusiast familiar with the mortifying sensation of witnessing People Who Should Know Better doing terrible things on screen.

If that were all the film had to dish out, it would be just another seen it/survived it/bragged about it bad cinema experience, but just when you think you’ve survived the worst, it pulls out a particularly nasty shiv from the waistband of its BVD’s and proceeds to twist it repeatedly in your gut.

I don’t have an opinion of Carol Channing one way or another, except as one of the familiar popcult presences of a 1970’s childhood, but her performance of the Harry Nilsson-penned “Skidoo,” at the film’s finale is the raw stuff of which nightmares are made. Something about the way her trademark raspy voice wraps itself around the chorus unlocks a deep-seated sense of primal terror within me, especially in conjunction with the manic choreography, relentless grin, and pirate costume with which she accompanies the song. It all leads to the bedroom, where it is implied that her character and Jackie Gleason’s will bump ugiles.

Sweet Blessed Providence, I’m going to have to sleep with the lights on tonight, and I just know that won’t hold off the night terrors.

Carol Channing & Harry Nilsson – Skidoo/Goodnight Mr. Banks (from the Skidoo OST, 2003)

if you're gonna do something, do it right

Because it's not a real family fun night unless someone gets taken to the emergency room for an eye injury...

The folks at Crosman must have been a little worried about the switch from an outdoor to a rumpus room-based leisure economy, hence this attempt at preventing a loss in market share to manufacturers of foosball and air hockey tables. (The "Safe Shooter" game targets suggest that they also had one concerned eye pointed Atari's way as well.) Sadly, their efforts to promote the casual discharging of firearms in a domestic environment only caught on with Elvis Presley and right-wing separatists with grudges against the Freemasons.

Then again, this ad was published at a time ("the seventies") when lawn darts and click-clacks were considered appropriate for children. Childhood back then was a lesson in painful real-world empiricism leavened with copious amounts of Mercurochrome, unlike today's world of bubblewrapped and hermetically-sealed children. How is America going to compete globally if the the current generation of kids doesn't learn important lessons like "if you toss beer bottles at the boulder by the train tracks, odds are you will end up with a deep pitted scar on your right elbow?"

Swindled - Who Wants Guns? (from a 1982 single) - In my personal experience, usually the last person on earth who has any business owning one.

Echobelly - Give Her a Gun (from Everybody's Got One, 1994) - This is a bit like the SCUM Manifesto as rewritten by Frantz Fanon and Karl Marx and set to a Britpop beat.

who’s that girl?

It’s the mysterious floral avenger, Black Orchid! First introduced in Adventure Comics #428 (July-August, 1973), the Black Orchid combined a standard set of superpowers (flight, super-strength, imperviousness to bullets) with a heavy aura of mystery. No secret identity or origin for the character was given in her three issue Adventure run or in her brief stint as a back-up feature in Phantom Stranger, and nearly all of the stories made use that mysteriousness to set up plot points revolving around wrong assumptions about her true identity. “Wait, if you’re not the Black Orchid, then --- Hey, why are my beautiful assistant’s/henchwoman’s/arm candy’s clothes doing lying on the ground?” (Insert Lou Costello-esque comic sputtering here.)

The stories themselves are rather pedestrian fare revolving around genre-requisite action sequences and confusing bait-and-switch reveals masquerading as legitimate mystery stories. They remind me quite a bit of old Golden Age masked adventurer stories, trading clarity and logic for the sake of brevity-mandated breakneck pacing, and elements repeated from tale to tale with hardly any nods to the accumulated sense of mythos known as “continuity.” (The last few installments of the Phantom Stranger back-up stories did try to aim for a more typical for the era superhero genre feel with multi-part stories and subplots, but nothing that could be confused with the fruits of Englehart’s or Thomas’s pens.)

The art for Black Orchid was handled by the likes of Tony DeZuniga and Nestor Redondo, pencillers not typically associated with superhero fare. As a result, the spandex action sequences are somewhat awkward and subdued, to the extent where it’s next to impossible to find a clean, straightforward fight panel featuring the main character. (The murky color printing process of the era and the ravages of time on newsprint didn’t help, either.) The lion’s share of the page space is taken up with soap operatic ruminations of the villains and victims over Black Orchid’s identity and intentions, which often makes the reader feel if he or she is reading an abortive superhero-inspired arc from a Gold Key comic book adaptation of Dark Shadows (which I mean in the best possible way, honest).

After the end of the Phantom Stranger run, Black Orchid dropped entirely off the radar, except as an example of fanboy Gnosticism where knowledge of the obscure equals power over the less enlightened. She popped up in the 1985 Blue Devil “Summer Fun” annual, where absurd speculations about her origin served as a running (or perhaps, “stumbling”) gag, and artist Paris Cullins rendered her cowl in a most peculiar and suggestive way. With the renewed interest in fallow DC properties following Crisis on Infinite Earths, it was only a matter of time before someone pulled Black Orchid out of limbo and back into the public spotlight, and she did a brief stint in John Ostrander’s Suicide Squad before Neil Gaiman reworked the concept into a weak derivative of Swamp Thing, killing off and replacing the original character in the process.

It may have landed Black Orchid her own Vertigo series for a couple years, but effectively killed my interest in the character. As an ultra-obscure lower tier character swaddled in mystery, I found Black Orchid to be an fascinating curiosity; resolving the mystery in favor of a ho-hum pastiche of pretentious edginess effectively killed what made the character unique in the first place.

Here's a fragrant bouquet of tracks in honor of Black Orchid. It's a hand-picked selection featuring some cool vintage exotica, melodic indie pop, and intriguing postpunk.

Martin Denny – Black Orchid (from A Taste of Honey, 1962)

The Orchids – Defy the Law (from the Underneath The Window, Underneath The Sink single, 1988)

Blue Orchids – Low Profile (from The Greatest Hit, 1982)

it´s the latest thing to be nowhere

Depending on which side of Armagideon Time’s comics/music demographic divide you fall upon, you might have heard about Nymphet, a manga series about a prepubescent girl who attempts to seduce her teacher. (Oh, Japan, there are some things I’ll never understand about you, and it’s for the best. Really.) There had been plans for an American release of the series, but the publisher, who had picked up the rights for the series based on early Japanese installments (as is typical in the highly competitive world of manga localization), decided after a more in-depth review of the material to pull the plug on the project.

Dorian, who has retail experience in selecting and ordering manga titles, sums up the salient issues involved here, but comics fandom being the abattoir of reason that it is, it was inevitable that the shrill cries of “Boo! Censorship!” and “What about free speech, you fascist?” should arise, especially with the moldering corpses of similar straw men still fresh on the playing field from the Mary Jane statue and “Heroes for Hentai” controversies.

Here’s the thing – this has fuck all to do with “free speech.” I’m not sure when it happened, or how it happened (though I remember something similar erupting when EA axed the release of Thrill Kill in the late 1990’s) but there is a large vocal contingent of people working under the assumption that “free speech” means “speech free of consequences,” and are willfully ignorant that civil liberties and commercial considerations are two very different creatures. I would well be within my rights to compose a two hundred page litany of profanity, but that does not place any obligation upon any publishing house to see that work gets released to the public, nor does it exempt me from criticism – justified or not – regarding its contents.

Ideologically, I’m with John Milton on this score; I’m all for seeing a diverse multitude of literary vessels set loose upon the waves, and let the passage of time and intrinsic worth determine what shall sink and what shall float. Practically speaking, though, why should a small publisher, most of which operate on narrow financial margins, feel obligated to release a title that could, in this environment, cause serious legal repercussions, if not for themselves, then for the retailers who might carry the title? Plus there’s a risk that the potential media firestorm could poison the well for the rest of their line of goods. Even if the right on is on their side, the financial and temporal costs of litigation could, in all likelihood, make any victory a Pyrrhic one.

And for what, in this specific case? A comic that embodies the creepiest type of pandering to the vilest instincts of the fanboy crowd. “But that’s exactly where one must make a stand,” some may say. Fine. Let the benighted crusaders pool their funds together to buy the American release rights and publish the book themselves. It’s very easy to seize the moral high ground when one doesn’t have a personal stake in the outcome.

This may seem a bit Torquemadic of me, but the stridency of those arguing in favor of the release is disturbing in the extreme. Why such lengths for such an obviously inappropriate bit of fan service wank material? The past couple of weeks have dropped my already low estimation of lumpenfandom a dozen or so notches. The attempts to compare the artistic value of Lost Girls -- which was intended by Alan Moore as deliberate act of provocation -- and Nabokov’s Lolita -- which I suspect very few fans have actually read, though perhaps they Netflixed the 1997 film version and skipped straight to the salacious bits -- are fairly absurd. (The Lolita comparison especially amused me, seeing as how the novel is really about a self-deluded fool’s obsession with an unobtainable ideal – a pretty accurate summation of the pathetic side of comics fandom.)

Back to the idea of “speech free of consequences,” I find this tendency to associate criticism or disapproval with repression odious in the extreme. As it has been stated many times in the past couple of weeks, no one has the right to determine what someone else finds offensive. Some criticisms are more valid than others, to be sure, but that’s something to be hashed out via discussion and debate, not dismissed with a wave of the offending party’s hand and the customary weak bromide, “Get over it,” or through the use of loaded terms like “misconstrued” which attempt to deflect the issue back at the those doing the criticizing. The current of free expression is not a one way street, and getting called out on one’s crapulence – real, perceived, or somewhere in between – comes with the territory of expressing one’s self in the public arena.

Dubstar – Disgraceful (from Disgraceful, 1995)

Nikki and The Corvettes - You Make Me Crazy (from Nikki and The Corvettes, 1980)

love me, love my action figure collection

“It never would have worked out. I caught her trying to file her Fried Green Tomatoes DVD after my copy of John Carpenter’s The Fog.”

Is this really an issue? And if it is, shouldn’t the couples involved be forced to separate, if not for their own sakes, then for the sake of the gene pool?

Every successful relationship comes down to series of compromises -- some large, some small -- concerning personal quirks and preferences that weave themselves into the fabric of the partnership, so that over time the actual boundaries fade into the background of consensual habit. Granted, some behaviors are more bothersome than others, but if you’ve chosen to partner up with someone who is habitually late for events, you weigh the irritation factor versus your affection for said partner and either learn to deal with it or decide to call it a day and move on. There’s always the chance of flare ups within the contested zones, but if the relationship is solid, these function as tension release valves or minor corrective efforts, and not fault lines from which bad break ups arise.

Relationship issues over merging media collections, though? That’s just plain stupid. I know there are some folks who are outright anal about keeping a cross-referenced and spreadsheet-tabulated archive of their books, CDs, and DVDs, but isn’t that the sort of thing a romantic partner would figure out early on in a relationship and accommodate for accordingly? There will always be adherents of the “I can change him or her” school who will play along until the pact is formally sealed (although I’d argue that such antics encode their own seeds of self-destruction), but when you fall in love with a person who, for example, is absolutely devoted to her pet rabbits, it’s unrealistic to think “Hey, I’ll try and convince her that rabbits are terrible pets, and that any home we make together will be lagomorph-free!” Again, it’s all about the willingness to accommodate or compromise, if you think a certain person is destined to be “the one.”

Maybe the columnists were being squeezed by a deadline, and needed some quick fluff to fill space, but the technicalities of merging possessions seem like something that any two people in a working relationship should have been able to figure out prior to living together. Kind of like how I instinctively know what songs to avoid when assembling a mix CD for the wife’s and my work commute, or why I never even raised the question of whether or not we were going to hang the gatefold poster cover of Crass’s Feeding the 5000 (a photo of a desiccated hand tangled in barbed wire, with the caption “Your country needs you” in big block letters) on the living room wall. Besides, unless you lead an extremely Spartan lifestyle or plan on moving into an eighteen room mansion, it’s highly unlikely that there will be enough room both your and your partner’s accumulated masses of stuff.

In our case, it was an organic affair, where we tossed all our stuff into massive piles in the attic, and gradually pulled things from the mess as needed and/or wanted. Anime artbooks share space with graphic novels, history and science texts with sci-fi and horror paperbacks, DVD box sets with Xbox and PS2 games. At the moment, our endtable is groaning under a stack of issues of Shojo Beat, a coffee table book on videogames, and my old Traditions of Western Drama anthology from college, with no Congress of Vienna-style negotiations required. The contents of our communal CD racks have developed along similar lines; various personal favorites cohabitate side by side with no fear of musical cootie contagion.

Vive le difference, and all that. Keeping in the spirit of things, here are two tracks pulled from two neighboring discs, one from one of Maura’s favorites and one from mine, with neither of us seeing the appeal of the other’s selection…

Nina Hagen – Russian Reggae (from …In Ekstasy, 1985) – I just don’t get it, but the wife loves Frau Hagen’s colorfully far-out punk/pop/sci-fi stylings. She even wants to name our first daughter “Nina Marlene Roxy” after Hagen, and her two other musical heroes: Lene Lovich and Roxy Epoxy. It’s a much better choice than “Kayleigh” or “Madison,” I concede.

Throwing Muses – The River (from House Tornado, 1988) – The Muses are an “eh” from Maura, who associates them with the more irritating and pretentious fans she used to know back in the late 80’s (not as much as she does with The Pixies, who are beyond the pale, as far as she’s concerned; a feeling I happen to share with her). I enjoy the band’s quirky, opaque brand of indie rock, though I prefer to ride the sonic currents of their songs and not seek deeper truths in their lyrics.

I'll be a pharaoh soon, rule from some golden tomb

My four day long (or one month long, if you count the warm up exercises) bout with the flu has ended, leaving me feeling completely exhausted and with an unpleasant aftertaste redolent of a corn starch smoothie in my mouth.

Literary and popcult precedent would have me believe that the extended nightmare of this experience was supposed to serve a greater purpose – a virally-triggered vision quest with the objective of getting me to rethink my ways, burning away the petty flaws and unnecessary fixations to reveal a newfound purity within myself.

It’s not going to happen. The new me is the same as the old me, just a little wearier and slightly more introspective about whether a can of Hormel chili would make a wise recuperation meal. Small changes to be sure, but at least I have no plans to install my favorite horse to a seat on the Imperial Senate, like Caligula did after his bout with a nasty life-altering illness.

Today’s featured track, “If Looks Could Kill,” comes from Scottish indie poppers Camera Obscura. My wife picked up the album a few weeks back and has had it on repeat ever since. It’s sweet, breezy pop reminiscent of the 60’s girl group sound, with some Wilsonian (Brian, that is) flourishes, and a nice antidote to an influenza-induced funk.

Camera Obscura – If Looks Could Kill (from Let’s Get Out of This Country, 2006)

Come to think of it, maybe I have picked up some post-fever megalomaniacal tendencies, judging from the other song that has been lodged in my head during this morning’s convalescence… I wonder how Oscar the Chihuahua-pug would feel about being made a vice consul.

Dead Boys – Sonic Reducer (from Young, Loud, and Snotty, 1977)

The G.R.O.D.D. Initiative: Day 7 – maybe you’re not the same as me

With this post we’ve reached the end of the G.R.O.D.D. Initiative theme week, and I can’t think of a more appropriate way to close it out than with a track from Sheffield’s Monkey Swallows the Universe. Friend Zartan, the ginchiest librarian in Texas, recommended the band to me, and informed me that their name is a reference to this TV show.

In some ways, the band reminds me a lot of the ultra-minimalist postpunk act, Young Marble Giants. Both acts feature sweet female vocals and sparse musical arrangements, but while the Giants’ material is cold in its flensed-to-the-bone minimalism (their Colossal Youth LP would make a perfect soundtrack for the heat death of the universe), Monkey Swallows the Universe’s acoustic sound is warmer and more intimate.

It’s a cold February night. You’re in a small club, watching the last set before closing time. Most of the patrons have left, but you’ve decided to put off the long slog home over slush-covered sidewalks a while longer. Since the crowds are no longer an issue, you walk up right to the edge of the stage to watch the band play. The music is warm and soothing, the melodies are perfect, and you feel they are performing this set for you and you alone. No matter how much the mercury has dipped or how fiercely the winds outside have begun to gust, you realize that on this night, at least, you will not feel the chill.

That’s pretty much how this track made me feel.

Monkey Swallows the Universe – Martin (from The Bright Carvings, 2006)