...and then there was the time when Josie McCoy was captured by a mad scientist who wanted to hack open the Pussycat's skull and make a powerful narcotic out of her gray matter...
Ladies and gentlemen, bats and ghouls, I give you...
...can invite the attentions of the Dark Powers.
Fortunately for Josie, she is blessed with friends both pure of heart (Melody) and hep to the sinister snares of the occult (Valerie). Val determines (by making a check against her Lore skill) that Josie's necklace is actually the Falcon's Claw, a totem associated with the Falcon's Nest, one of the many places of unholy evil which surround the Greendale-Midvale-Riverdale metropolitan area.
Before the ectoplasmic shenanigans get too out of hand, however, Josie finally cops wise to the connection between the yard sale trinket and the ghostly manifestations (and they call Melody the "dumb one" of the group), and violently casts the pendant away.
In the process, she also casts the candle she was holding in the direction of the drapery, causing a catastrophic blaze which quickly consumes (or in terms that would please Cotton Mather, "purifies") the Falcon's Next in a matter of minutes.
...followed by an pointed warning about the dangers of buying things from yard sales, because "sometimes you get more than you bargain for." Sure, that second-hand salad shooter seems like a steal at three bucks, but is the convenience worth the cost to your immortal soul? The road to utter damnation is paved with incomplete skittle ball sets.Can you hear it, brothers and sisters?
The Revolution has begun!
Sorry, false alarm.
At least Alexandra has the support of her friends and family...
The irrefutable shame-based ontology of Josie McCoy, as applied to the question of burps and invisible dogs:
Here's a little extra sand and surf greatness, as the reigning Queen of the Beach, Valerie Brown, schools some fools on the finer points of etiquette...
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).
From the pages of Josie & The Pussycats #69 (June 1973) comes this choice Melody Valentine moment:
While other comic book publishers were trending toward the lurid end of the spectrum back in the early 1970's, the upstanding folks at Archie Comics took pride in keeping things clean and wholesome....
Minnie & The Kneebones - Me & My Mini-Skirt (from a 1966 single) - Mini-skirts are fine and all, but I don't have the gams to carry off the look. What I really want is a ensemble like the one Alex is wearing in the above panels.
Josie & The Pussycats - I Wanna Make You Happy (from Stop, Look, and Listen: The Capitol Recordings, 2001) - Mission accomplished.
From the "Dear Josie" advice column in Josie & The Pussycats #73 (December 1973), a poignant look at the problems facing yesterday's youth:
Wow. Josie takes the "tough love" approach to a whole new level. The quotation marks around "groovy" and "bells" give the proceedings a certain Jack Webb je ne sais quoi:
"Flares," "bells," "Bolivian boot-cuts" -- cute "with it" names for something as insidious as communist ideology. You kids need to realize that crimes against fashion are no laughing matter.
While Josie's rather harsh response to poor L.J. overlooked the possibility that kids can be capriciously cruel to their peers, I do concur that wearing bell bottoms is never the solution.
Sparks - Angst in My Pants (from Angst in My Pants, 1982) - This fine slice of quirky new wave pop was inspired by Kierkegaard's Edifying Discourses on the Dread Associated with One's Trousers Tenting Up at Inopportune Moments (itself a response to Hegel's Wissenschaft der Kameltoe).
Orbital - Pants (from The Blue Album, 2004) - This is one of two trouserly tracks featured on Orbital's final album. (The other track, "Acid Pants," was done in collaboration with -- surprise, surprise -- Sparks. Such is the power of pants-love.)
First Choice - Smarty Pants (from Armed and Extremely Dangerous, 1973) - The first days of disco.
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I've tried on more than a couple occasions to make sense of the theology under which the Archie-verse operates, but have yet to reconcile the many troubling doctrinal contradictions at work in Greater Riverdale during the early 1970's. While Christian fundamentalist overtones were unmistakably (and vehemently) present, there were also strong occultist (if not outright diabolic) undercurrents in the mix, such as classroom discipline through Satanically-directed face melting (apparently face-melting was "in" that year) and the presence of an actual coven of witches within the city limits. While I would qualify that last example by stating that Sabrina did repudiate, more or less, the dark side of her sorcerous heritage, she did still dabble in forbidden arcanery very frequently.
(Come to think of it, Sabrina has a lot in common with Orion, the son of Darkseid, in that both have attempted to turn their backs on their unpleasant family legacies yet make use of their gifts of heritage when circumstances require it. I smell a fab slashfic idea!)
Over in Josie and The Pussycats, the writers tried to split the Manichean difference with stories engineered to cash in on the popcult explosion of interest in all things occult (engendered by the runaway success of The Exorcist, among other things) while retaining a state of proper Christian grace. The whole teen rock band concept was pushed aside for a time in favor of numerous supernatural-themed stories involving haunted houses, ancient curses, and other manifestations of spiritual evil.
"Vengeance from the Crypt" from Josie and The Pussycats #72 (October 1973), finds the 'Cats setting aside their ongoing feud with the scheming Alexandra as they accompany their frequent foil to the Cabot family crypt. While Alexandra pays her respects to her recently departed grandfather, Josie wanders down to the crypt's lower level, where she accidentally huffs a lungful of uncut Stygian black smoke:
The hit of damnation dust causes Josie to behave in strange and terrible ways.
First she tries to set the Cabots' drapes on fire...
...and then she begins trashing the furniture.
And while those actions in and of themselves might not suggest demonic possession over the more mundane explanation that Josie is simply discovering her inner Keith Moon, her vicious attack on the vision of loveliness that is Melody...
...pushes her beyond the limits of acceptable behavior, rock star or not.
Alex, Alexandra's twin brother and the Pussycats' manager, attempts to subdue Josie, who has moved on to the profanity-shrieking stage of possession:
During the struggle, Josie reaches for something suitable to bash Alex's head in with, but accidentally grabs a conveniently-placed Bible instead. With "a scream from the very bowels of Hell," an agonized Josie throws the Good Book away from her person. This gives the rest of the crew an idea, which results in one of the greatest panels in comics history...
...though the implied place of its exit is better left unsaid, methinks. "Bowels of Hell," indeed. (I have exorcised many diabolic fast food meals from my body in a similar manner.)
I'd just like to point out that Alexandra herself is a practitioner of the dark arts who has used her witchity powers to vex the Pussycats on several previous occasions.
...only to discover that the Big G has beaten them to the punch. I suppose incinerating a old casket is easier than, I don't know, solving world hunger or some other work with wider beneficial consequences, but I'd have thought an omnipotent and omniscient Being would set the bar higher for Himself or Herself.
Every community has its secrets. In the case of Riverdale, these include a hidden coven of witches, a young man with a horrific eating disorder and a penchant for odd headgear, and some highly unconventional teenage mating rituals.
…and then there’s the secret life of Alexander Cabot. Folks familiar with the character from The Josie and The Pussycats cartoon know him as a cowardly and ineffectual bumbler with a penchant for moddish fashions. His on-screen life was forever stuck in the shadow of his tyrannical sister, Alexandra, whose own dabblings in the dark arts were redacted from the animated record. The real story is a bit more…complicated…
Here Alex expounds his political philosophy; a hard-right mélange of ideas borrowed from Rand, Nietzsche, and Hitler. Notice how women are specifically singled out as being “weak,” and by extention, inferior, and how Alex is willing to use actual physical violence to prove his point. The large dollar sign that adorns the back of his jacket could be interpreted as a symbol of his Mammonesque greed, his commitment to unrestrained captialism, or (most likely) of his lousy taste in clothes.
First off, I’d like to thank everyone who took the time to comment on my last post. I felt a little dizzy from all the praise, but the consensus was that whatever I’m doing here is working for you folks. That’s nice to know, as I’m too complacent and old to change my ways at this point.
No real theme for today’s posts, just a collection of random thoughts with musical accompaniment.
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Concerning last night’s Grammy Awards:
I’m not a fan of The Police, as I consider them the kind of “new wave” music that my parents would listen to (also see The Eurythmics). However, for all the hullabaloo surrounding their reunion appearance, I was expecting something other than “Roxanne,” a song so overplayed and over-referenced that it has become more of a punchline (Scrantonicity! Woo!) than an actual song.
It would have been nice if, instead of pandering to public expectations, the band came out swinging with something a bit more unexpected and challenging, like this track:
The Police – Synchronicity II (from Synchronicity, 1983) – My love for this song has nothing to do with musical aesthetics, and everything to do with its ability to act as a mnemonic macro capable of calling up all the wonders and terrors of an early 80’s childhood. I don’t know why my brain chose to place a nostalgia trigger in this song, and not a better-loved track from that era, unless it’s somehow linked to the way I associate certain 70’s TV actors with the smells of various deli meats and cheeses.
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Speaking of 70’s TV, some kind soul has uploaded a condensed version of the notorious “punk rock” episode of ChiP's to YouTube. It’s a panic-mongering mainstream take on youth subculture (as pioneered by Jack Webb and countless “educational” films with titles like “Hippies: Smelly Red Dupes”) that would have had me seeing red back in my full on punk days, but now I think it’s hilarious as fuck, and as a bonus features a woman dressed like a streetwalking Raggedy Ann doll. Here’s the first part:
The rest can be found here and here. KEEP ON PUNKING!
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This might be old news to some of you, but Irdial-Discs has made The Conet Project, a four CD set of shortwave number station recordings, available for free (with a .pdf of the accompanying booklet) at their website. I first found out about these mysterious transmissions and other shortwave anomalies through William Poundstone’s Big Secrets, but lacked the means to listen to the actual thing until I stumbled across these recordings. The written descriptions don’t do the genuine articles justice. There is something fascinating and unsettling about these multilingual alphanumeric recitations and electronic blip tones, leaving one with the feeling that they are eavesdropping on the static-distorted conversations of upper band phantoms.
Here are two sample recordings from the set:
The Swedish Rhapsody
High Pitch Polytone
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While I’m digging into my bag of odds and ends, I’d like to put a plug in for The Dents, a local punk band that my wife has been raving about since she caught them during the intermission of last Saturday’s Boston/Philly roller derby bout. The Dents play tight melodic punk rock with some killer harmonies; just the sort of music my wife goes ga-ga for. You find out more about band (and score some sample mp3s) at their website.
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…and finally, because I feel like it, here’s some nifty bubblegum pop and rock courtesy of the Saturday morning cartoon universe.
The Banana Splits – I’m Gonna Find a Cave (from We’re the Banana Splits, 1968) – How is it that four guys in psychedelic animal costumes, fronting for some session musicians (including Al Kooper, Gene Pitney, and Barry White), managed to create music that exceeds the entertainment quotient of current Top 40 artists by a factor of ten?
Josie & The Pussycats – Stop Look and Listen (from Josie & The Pussycats, 1970) – The slightly scatterbrained Pussycat drummer, Melody, was my first childhood crush, along with the girl who played Becky Thatcher on The New Adventures of Huck Finn. “Blondes, always blondes,” says my very dark-haired wife. Hey, it’s not the girl you bring to the dance; it’s the girl you leave with that matters.
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