a steaming bowl of ramen

Ocassionally, I'll come across a piece of sequential graphic art that manages to pierce though my crusty shell of jadedness and remind me why I fell in love with comics in the first place. It doesn't occur that often (and I'm willing to split the blame for that equally between myself and the current state of the comics industry), but it did happen last Thursday, when the fifth volume of Kiyohiko Azuma's Yotsuba&! I ordered arrived in the mail.

I'm a pretty reserved guy, and it's a rare occasion where I find myself laughing out loud over something I'm reading, but this...

(It's manga, so read right to left.)
...had me in stitches. Granted, I have a weakness for scatalogically-themed humor, but it was more than that; few works in any media have been able to capture the spirit of childhood as well as Yotsuba&! does, and that sequence in particular nailed that special mix of immaturity and whimsy (and adult exasperation) perfectly.

PINE*am - Get a Choco (from Pull the Rabbit Ears, 2005) - Imagine Ladytron run through a slight J-Pop filter, and you'd have something close to this track. Highly recommended.

face worker, a serpentine miner

My twenty-five year love affair with Dig Dug began, as many love affairs do, in the dark alcove of a Howard Johnson’s off Interstate 90.

Every summer, my maternal grandparents would take my brother and I with them on vacation, although perhaps “vacation” isn’t the correct word to describe these trips. My grandfather was a very kind, generous man, but he was also something of an odd duck. His idea of a vacation was to gather up everyone into his gigantic sedan and drive to a set point, be it a motel parking lot in Asheville, North Carolina or a plot of swampland he owned in north central Maine, then immediately drive back home (except in the case of the Maine trips, where he’d stop in to visit family and putter amongst the blackflies and mudholes for a couple hours).

Whenever we had to make a rest stop or the occasional visit to a roadside tourist trap or strip mall, my grandfather would park in the furthest corner of the lot and send my grandmother, brother and me in to do our business while he sat in the car. This being the early 1980’s, there were arcade machines everywhere, and I could always count on scoring a couple of quarters from my grandmother in order to keep me busy while she tried to keep my grandfather’s deliberately complicated food order straight, lest he fly into paroxyms of rage over finding too much relish on his overpriced hamburger. (She never succeeded, nor did my grandfather ever want her to, I suspect.)

It was during one of these stops that I played my first game of Dig Dug, and it was a case of love at first sight. The graphics were amazingly colorful and detailed in comparison to the minimalist black backgrounds in vogue at the time, and the dig-your-own maze aspect (“free roaming gameplay” circa 1982) felt like a quantum leap over the preset environments of other entries in the maze game genre. The ability to actively manipulate the environment of the playfield, along with the directly-controllable ability to stun or kill persuing Pookas (tomatoes with ski goggles) or Frygars (fire-breathing green dragons) with your in-game avatar’s air-pump weapon, encouraged a level of creative gameplay that contrasted sharply to the rote pattern recognition skills required to master a game like Pac-Man.

I spent the years following that fateful encounter practicing my tunneling and monster squashing/bursting skills whenever the opportunity arose. If I wasn't biking to the nearest arcade (five miles away, by the train depot in Wilmington), I was sneaking away from my Cub Scout pack at Canobie Lake and making a bee line for the secondary arcade (next to the fake rocketship that would play clips from Journey to the Prehistoric Planet while the operator banged the hull with a stick to add drama) where the amusement park kept the older, less popular arcade machines in search of a Dig Dug fix.

While I've cast off many (but not all, not hardly) childish things over the years, my affection for Dig Dug has remained constant. It's simple yet elegant gameplay and visuals have not lost their capacity to entertain me, and it makes a great de-stresser and mental palate cleanser whenever the need for either arises.

Plus, there’s a certain visceral thrill to be had in luring a conga line of enemies to a squishy doom via falling boulder. Some things never go out of style.

Here’s a medley of the incidental music and sounds from Dig Dug.

Chaos UK – Pump It Up (from Heard It, Seen It, Done It, 1997) – Thank you, Chaos UK, for sparing me the indignity of having to post the Elvis Costello original version.

The Jam – Going Underground (from a 1980 single, collected on Snap! 1983) – I have the same reaction to The Jam that I do to Strawberry Pop Tarts. I love them occasionally in small doses, but there is a clearly defined limit to my tolerance, past which the love quickly transmogrifies into nausea.

Lush – Outdoor Miner (from the For Love EP, 1992) – I debated going with Wire’s original version of this song, but ultimately decided in favor of something a little more obscure. Besides, we all could benefit from a little more Lush in our lives.

I saw it in books and read it on TV

It’s a snowy Valentine’s Day here at Armagideon Time’s HQ northwest of Boston, and despite the all the sweeping, shoveling, and sanding, it’s rather nice. The wife planned for the blizzard in advance, so we’re just going to ride out the storm all snug and cozy-like. Later we’ll have a home-cooked pasta dinner and watch one of our favorite films on DVD. It might not seem that exciting, but it I think it’s damn near perfect.

In honor of the day, here’s a double dose of new wave lovin’ for your listening pleasure.

Thompson Twins – If You Were Here (from Quick Step & Side Kick, 1983) – The only Thompson Twins song I can bear to listen to is also the song that plays during the conclusion of Sixteen Candles. It’s a case of romantic-by-association, because the song’s lyrics are actually pretty glum.

A Flock of Seagulls – Space Age Love Song (from A Flock of Seagulls, 1982) – There is no futurism like 1980’s futurism. (Or 1970’s futurism, for that matter, but that topic is best avoided unless one has a fetish for the color orange or an unhealthy interest in seeing Dick Van Patten attend a Roman robot orgy.)

For those unfortunate souls that are spending this day recovering from being gutshot and left to die by Cupid, this track might be more your speed:

The Pagans – What’s This Shit Called Love? (from a 1978 single, collected on The Pink Album...Plus, 2001) - Raw, ugly, yet surprisingly melodic garage punk out of Cleveland.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

jive turkey

No real update for today, just a linkback to an appropriate song from my 100th post anniversary and the bitchin' example of my mad MS Paint skills featured above.

Sam and Dave - I Thank You - I'd like to dedicate this one to my wife. Not a day passes that I'm not thankful she's part of my life.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!