to the vanquished, the spoils

Combining historical accuracy with cultural sensitivity!
Here is the scenario:

Your side has just been decisively defeated by the opposition. While the rout can be credited in part to the superior leadership, organization, and tactics of the enemy, the unfortunate (but entirely forseeable) consequences of your side's ideological and policy decisions were also a major factor.

Even after launching every weapon in your arsenal and mobilizing your most loyal and reliable ground forces, you had to fight (and lose) on fronts that you hadn't even anticipated from the outset.

So, faced with such a colossal rebuke of your strategy, tactics, and global vision, do you:

1. Humbly reflect on the errors in judgement that caused your loss and recalibrate your focus?

2. Brazenly attempt to dictate terms to the victorious side while refusing to acknowledge the reasons for your defeat?

If you answered "2," you could have a great future ahead of you as a right-wing op-ed columnist.

Manual Scan - American Way (from a 1982 single; collected on This Is Mod v.6: The United States of Mod, 1999) - "Never apologize. It's a sign of weakness." If there's one thing I've learned as an American, it's that sociopathy and arrogance are more socially acceptable behaviors than signs of "weakness" are.

Don't let the compliation title fool you -- this cut may be mod revival by association, but the postpunk influences (Gang of Four and Pylon, specifically) are unmistakable.

choose wisely or perish

The dreaded return of Senator Psycho Man -- because there is no gag I can't milk 'till the udders squirt dust!

(with apologies this time to Fantastic Four #284, November 1985)
I came of age in the era of home videogame consoles -- first the Pong clones, then the Atari age, the Nintendo generation, and all that followed. Before one was old enough to secure a source of disposable income, the purchase of a system was left in the hands of parents or relatives, either directly or through gifts of cash. It was crucially important to choose wisely and get the "right" system, lest one be stuck with a big pile of digitized suck while one's peers waxed euphoric about the console not taken.

It hurts to feel left out of the loop, especially when you're a kid and can't put things right via a high-interest credit card purchase. Humans being the adaptable creatures that we are, though, it was a simple enough matter to encyst the nagging feelings of envy by adopting an irrationaly defensive attitude...

My system doesn't suck, yours does! If you look at the specs, the Atari 7800 is far superior to the NES, and Solaris beats that stupid Super Mario bullshit any day! I wouldn't get a Nintendo even if they were giving them out for free! Quit laughing!

Repeat it often enough, and you might even come to believe it...even if in your heart of hearts you know the real truth. This midset, I suspect, is why videogame fandom tends to outstrip all others when it comes to twisted loyalty and bizarre outburts.

Substituting brand loyalty for community isn't anything new; it's an inevitable consequence of consumer capitalist society where traditional bonds of community have long been on the wane. Unlike, say, the Marvel versus DC fan rivalry, however, the cost of switch-hitting between factions is a hundred times more expensive, making the face-saving justifications that much more strident and impassioned.

I bring this up because I'm reminded of it each time I stumble across defenses of Sarah Palin's vice-presidential credentials issued by various right-wing pundits and the GOP's official PR flacks. It's rather pathetic watching the loyal unconvinced contort themselves through the most tenuous (even by political standards) chains of logic in order to justify an unjustifiable position. Palin is a foreign policy expert because the Japanese occupied the Aluetian Islands during the Second World War? Seriously? There's wishful thinking, and there's outright delusional psychosis.

Even more entertaining is how the justifications double back upon and contradict the previously prevailing rhetoric:

Experience matters, except when it doesn't. Oh, I mean a different kind of experience. Okay, look, I'm a fucking shill who will claim the moon is made of cheese if the party bosses say it will help their chances.

It's also great that the self-appointed arbiters of "traditional Christian morality" have managed to dig some Christian forebearance and compassion out of their junk drawers when it comes to Palin's unwed teenage daughter. "These things happen." Indeed they do, but will this new-found magnamity be extended to all...or just the certain politically expedient few?

Anyway you slice it, McCain's choice of Palin was a poor one. If it was done to shore up the support from social conservatives, there were plenty of better choices from which to pick. If it was done as an appeal to women voters and disillusioned Hillary supporters, there were several far more convincing and qualified options out there. It appears that there are many in the McCain camp who feel the same way, as the speed and ferocity of its responses to criticism -- such as bring up Doris Kearns Goodwin's political affiliation after she stated the historical fact that Palin's resume is the thinnest in the past hundred years of presidential elections -- rivals the defensive rants of any ten-year old who got a TurboGrafx-16 instead of a SNES for Christmas.

(I suspect that McCain's real motivation for going with Palin was because his ego would not allow for a second power base within the presidency -- see Dick "Richelieu" Cheney -- and that factored first above any other considerations.)

Any Trouble - Second Choice (from Where Are All the Nice Girls? 1980) - The Wikipedia entry for Any Trouble states that the band suffered from "unfair" comparisons to Elvis Costello. Unfair, perhaps, because it failed to mentioned the similarities to Squeeze as well.

Deadbeats - Choose You (from a 1980 single) - Not the L.A. punk rockers of "Kill the Hippies" fame, these Deadbeats were a British mod revival outfit. It's all good to me.

Vacation 2008: Prologue - No real reason

My vacation has officially begun, so why am I not feeling the joy?

There has been a rushed and unreal quality about the summer of 2008 so far, and isn't due to any concrete concerns or preoccupations -- just a vague but unshakeable sensation of ennui.

The Circles - Summer Nights (from a 1979 single) - The Mod Ideal.

Sex Pistols - Holidays in the Sun (from Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, 1977) - The Punk Reality.

Friday Night Fights: Don't Fear the Leaper

Because this installment of Bahlactus's weekly four-color free-for-all happens to fall on February 29, I though it proper to celebrate the intercalary squaring of the temporal books known as a "leap year" with some bona fide leaping.

Monsieur Batroc, would care to do the honors?

(from Captain America #303, March 1985; by Mike Carlin, Paul Neary, and Dennis Janke)
Le temps est un grand maître, dit-on, le malheur est qu'il tue ses élèves. - Hector Berlioz

The Lambrettas - Leap Before You Look (from Beat Boys in the Jet Age, 1980) - Questionable advice (especially when Star-Spangled Avengers are involved) from these mod revivalists, but a quite nifty song nonetheless.

(Edit: Great minds think alike, as do comics-addled ones.)

that just won't go away

A couple of mornings ago, the local cable news station ran a segment about the announcement of the WaMu layoffs and their implications for the mortgage business and the general economic climate. Part of the piece was given over to a Q and A session between a reporter and one of those self-proclaimed "experts" in which mainstream journalism invests too much of their faith these days. The expert discussed the immediate pain of the layoffs and the cosmic contraction of available credit. He then qualified his statements by saying that the subprime mortgage business "should never have existed," as it created an untenable situation where people who were not in a position to afford home ownership made the mistake of leveraging their bubble-enriched home equity to forestall the inevitable until the whole shaky facade came crashing down.

It's a reasonable enough argument. I've never understood the logic of treating one's house like an ATM, as equity isn't really an investment that pays dividends but a measure of ownership to be borrowed against, which is fine when one wants to pay a child's college tuition or for an addition to the house, but not so much when one wants a new plasma television or trip to Cancun. The thing is, though, that I clearly remembered this same "expert" (or one of his clone brothers hatched from the vats beneath Harvard Business School) on the same news program three years ago assuring that there was no housing bubble, home prices would continue to rise, and that the freewheeling equity-fueled spendathon was a slightly risky, but ultimately beneficial means of keeping the consumer economy humming until the other financial players got back on their feet again.

I'm not one for pinning scarlet letters on folks or strappado-induced confessions of error, but it seems to me that if one played cheerleader for the problem, he or she ought to at least acknowledge that role when dispensing solutions. Or, you know, the reporter could have confronted the expert on his past error and asked why his current remarks should be taken seriously in that light.

The truth is that we've long since passed into a world where rewritable reality is the order of the day. There are few fuck-ups so serious that they can't be ignored, spun in a more positive manner, or deflected with some of sleight of hand.

This: "What about those WMD's Iraq was supposed to have which you used as justification for war?"

Begets this: "LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU! IT'S AN IRANIAN!" or "Illegal immigrants and gays are conspiring to destroy America!" or "I have no idea what you are referring to."

Anatoly Kuznetsov's Babi Yar is a autobiographical novel recounting the author's experiences as a child in wartime Kiev and the massacre of the city's Jewish population by the Nazi occupation force. Originally published in the Soviet Union, Kuznetsov released a complete uncensored version after defecting to the West in the wake of the Czech uprising. In the complete version of the novel, the sections originally removed by the Soviet censors and the author's post-defection additions to the text were highlighted with boldface and italics, respectively. It is an excellent, if utterly depressing, story, but also serves an incomparable example of post situ revisionism put into in practice. The passage where the author recounts how his class was directed to tear out textbook pages featuring purged "Heroes of the Revolution" I found especially fascinating in light of the current subjective cast reality has taken.

There's no need for that kind of heavy-handed revisionism in present day "open" societies. The breakneck flow of the information stream, consolidation of profit-hungry media outlets, and the accent of style over substance are far more subtle and effective than Orwell's memory hole could ever be. A non-stop barrage of white noise directed at an atrophied attention span makes it easy to pull off all sorts of shenanigans without drawing the attention of the intended marks.

...and the next thing you know, everyone's wearing flared (or super-tight distressed) pants, listening to neo-prog rock on an expensive yet soon-to-be-obsolete mp3 player, and thinking that Mitt Romney (or Ron Paul or Hillary Clinton) has some really good ideas about the direction this country needs to take.

Curve - Faît Accompli (from Doppelgänger, 1992) - Not quite shoegaze, not quite electronic, not quite goth, but quite nice all the same.

The Untouchables - Free Yourself (from Wild Child, 1985) - Just like mod revival band, bringing a horn section to punk venue.

who was right and who was wrong

If you've ever done any shopping at the internet retail juggernaut that is Amazon.com, odds are you've noticed the site's penchant for proffering suggestions as to what you might like to spend your hard-earned shekels on. The mechanics of the system are based upon the browsing and purchasing habits of Amazon's gigantic customer base, evaluated and compared to each user's individually displayed tastes (though I'm convinced that certain "hot" items are given extra weight in the process). It's a clever idea in theory, but in practice the results tend to look a lot like this:

(I just know that Kevin Church is somehow responsible for that.)

In the interest of science, I decided to incorporate my own set of Facile Behavioral Generalization Algorithms^TM, derived from years of empirical research, into the user recommendation scripts to see if I could make them more effective. After a lengthy period (two hours or so) of beta testing, I came away feeling confident in the results obtained:

(I know you will be very unhappy with that last one, Jen, but you can't argue with science.)

Penetration - On Reflection (from Coming Up for Air, 1979) - Another album and band I don't listen to as often as I should. Pauline Murray comes off at times as a poppier, generic off-brand Poly Styrene, but it's still pretty charming and very listenable stuff. Both Coming Up for Air and the band's debut LP, Moving Targets, were pretty common (and cheap) finds in the used record stores I used to frequent back in the day, while X-Ray Spex's Germfree Adolescents was only seen, if at all, behind glass and sporting a hundred buck-plus price tag.

Joy Division - Autosuggestion (from Substance: 1977-1980, 1988) - Strangely enough, Joy Division (as "Warsaw") played their first gig in support of Penetration (and the Buzzcocks) in May 1977.

During my freshman year of college, I listened to Substance every morning while waiting for the quarter-to-seven MBTA bus to Alewife to arrive. To this day, hearing the tracks the compliation evokes the chill of a November breeze, the weight of a rucksack on my shoulder, and the acidic, earthy scent of wet fallen leaves decomposing in a gutter.

The Edseys - I've Decided (from This Is Mod, Vol. 6: The United States of Mod, 1999) - Someone's asking $98.44 for this compilation? Asking and having are entirely different things, but still... I guess that makes it another entry on my list of CDs/records I could make a profit unloading, but could never bear to part with.

I know nothing about The Edseys except that they were an American mod revival outfit and they were responsible for this gem of a track. The influence of The Jam is pretty easily discernable, but it has been cut with a more laid back (I'd almost say "Californian") power pop/jangle pop vibe.

and the dream of what love could be

Today was Gardening Day, a holiday specific to our little house up on the hillside.

Every spring, right around tax refund time, Maura starts flipping though gardening magazines and catalogs, plotting out what each of the backyard flowerbeds will hold, and reciting lists of things she’d “really love to plant this year” to no one in particular. Once we’ve sorted how much of the tax refund check can be reasonably used as mad money, we take a day off of work, and I have the privilege of escorting her to a local nursery where she picks out what will be the “showplace” flowers of this year’s garden.

Gardening is more of my wife’s hobby than mine. I can thing of many other things I’d rather be doing than rooting around in the dirt (and uncovering the veritable cornucopia of bizarre things the previous owners of the house buried in random locations: whole bananas, oil filters, silverware, coffee tins full of washers), but the end results are always spectacular to behold. I even make suggestions about what plants to buy on occasion, mostly based on childhood memories of what used to grow in my mom’s garden.

We bought a lot of herbs this time out, based on the success we had with growing lemon basil and dill in containers last year. I picked out some peppermint, because it smells nice and makes a good perennial ground cover, and some catnip, since the feral cats who shelter in our garage go mad for the stuff. Marmalade, a twenty pound orange behemoth, particularly loves to get a heavy buzz on then climb into a patio chair to bask in the sun for most of the day. I made the mistake of offering a couple of leaves to Jem, because I wondered how it would affect his usual zany demeanor, and it turned him into the feline equivalent of a strung out meth addict with a rusty shiv. He was so desperate for another fix that he followed me around crying and grabbing at my hands for most of the afternoon. My fingers haven’t hurt this badly since my aborted stint as a professional cactus juggler. I swear I caught the little bastard eyeing the home theater system and thinking of a way he could pawn it to feed his habit.

In other “giving stuff I probably shouldn’t to the animals” news, I let Oscar the Chihuahua-Pug have a Swedish Fish jelly candy from the big bag of them I bought while we were out today. I thought his relentless determination to finish the damn thing despite having to spit it out every couple of seconds was funny as hell, but Maura did not concur. It was even funnier watching him play keep-away with the wife as she tried to prevent him from swallowing it, which he finally did. Hey, he begged me to give him one, and it’s not like I gave him chocolate or onions.

There’s no theme, per se, for today’s musical selections. As part of our Gardening Day celebration, the wife and I went on one of our “pizza and comics” dates in between stops on our itinerary. It’s exactly what it sounds like, we go out for pizza (or pasta) at the local Papa Gino’s and read comics as we eat. (Well, the wife tried to make sense of Jodi Picoult’s Wonder Woman run and I reread the second part of Garth Nix’s Abhorsen trilogy of novels.) During the course of our meal, Freda Payne’s “Band of Gold” came up on restaurant’s piped-in music feed (along with Heart’s “Never,” but I’d rather forget that entirely), and it reminded me of this cover version of the song:

The Merton Parkas - Band of Gold (from The Complete Mod Collection, 1997) – Parkas’ member Mick Talbot would later go on to join former Jam frontman Paul Weller in the Style Council, a band that proved that the whole can be less than the sum of its parts.

...and that, in turn, got me thinking about the whole “Mod Revival” scene, which like the black plague or herpes, seems prone to periodic eruptions. Ok, that’s a bit harsh, I concede. The late 70’s mod revival musical scene did produce a number of gems…and a far greater number of The-Who-by-way-of-The-Jam wannabees, dire attempts toward a Cockney Motown sound, and mediocre power pop tracks. Still there’s a certain allure to hip (and retro) fashion, Vespa scooters, and cheap amphetamines that will always prove irresistible to a certain segment of the youth population. What was it, like three or four years ago when it seemed like every hip indie comic referenced the mod subculture and/or scooters?

Thank goodness that trend is over with, although I did enjoy Dave Gibbons’s The Originals (it helped that he was a veteran of the original 60’s mod scene) and Chynna Clugston’s Scooter Girl well enough.

Since I’ve already dug out the mod revival portion of my music archives, here are a couple other tracks I rather enjoy:

The Purple Hearts – Scooby Doo (from This Is Mod, Vol. 2, 1996) – The Scooby Gang is supposedly based on the cast of characters from The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, which would make Daphne the animated incarnation of Tuesday (“Thalia Menninger”) Weld. Sigh.

The Name – Fuck Art, Let’s Dance (from 100% British Mod, 1998) – Art Hindle? Art Linkletter? Art Garfunkle? Art Carney? Art Clokey?