I Might Have Actually Taped This

Joan Rivers does get props for pronouncing Hüsker Dü correctly, even though she gets the name of the song slightly wrong.



Joan Rivers, Hüsker Dü, and Ian McKellen?

Most gay!fab talk show evah!

Loony Tunes!

The lovely and talented Megan Lynch, whom I have corresponded with over the years on various music forums, has released an album of Warner Bros. standards entitled Songs The Brothers Warner Taught Me. Download here. Wonderful woman, fabulous voice. (and she can really yodel, too!)

The Post War Dream

Audio Junk is another Stoopid Kar Production live every Tuesday on randomradioonline.net and roundtableradio.net @ 8:45 pm EST. The World's Worst Mixing DJ -DJ JOE INC plays a variety of music -- no format -- just samples variety and more -- music from Basehead, DJ Shadow, Sonic Youth , Willie Hutch and more -- clips from Menace II Society, Salo and more.

The End Of Medicine

Four of my heroes: Sergio Aragones, Aline Kominsky Crumb, Gilbert Hernandez, and Robert Crumb in Anglouleme, France. 1990 or '91.

First 20 tracks on my iTunes sitting here fuming that my boss is trying to make me work Monsterfest weekend when I clearly asked for it off weeks in advance (grrr)...

1. "Fun With Bad Boys" - Screamin' Rachael

2. "Cheree" - Suicide

3. "Drum Rock" - Lee "Scratch" Perry

4. "Sunshine Reggae" - Laid Back

5. "What's The Use" - Jamie Lidell

6. "Happy" - Surface

7. "Back On The Chain Gang" - The Pretenders

8. "Music For Evenings" - Young Marble Giants

9. "Monk's Point (Take 1)" - Thelonious Monk

10. "Click Clack" - Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band

11. "Yesterdays" - Coleman Hawkins

12. "Little Birds Have Fast Hearts (pt 2)" - Peter Brötzmann

13. "Someday" - Moby Grape

14. "I Saw Here Standing There" - The Smithereens

15. "Tribute (Right On)" - The Pasadenas

16. "Kooks" - David Bowie

17. "You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To" - Helen Mirell

18. "Malaguena Salerosa" - Chingon

19. "Mr. Wendal" - Arrested Development

20. "Stewardess" - Self

Schedule

Thur 1: 4:45-cl
Sat 3: 12-6
Sun 4: 3:45-cl
Mon 5: 4:45-cl
Wed 7: 4:45-cl (dentist 8:15am)
Thur 8: 4:45-cl

Monster Mash-Ups

Over the last year or so I have become somewhat obsessed with finding three things that I used to collect, with even greater obsession, when I was a kid. Two I have finally found, and one I have found no evidence of its existence. A little help here, por favor?

First, the other two:

Sometime in the mid 1970's or so, 7-Eleven came out with a series of Slurpee cups with monsters, both mythical and crytozoological, rendered in fantastic color illustrations on one side and a description of the beastie's lore on the other. Monster Cups (like the three samples on this guy's Flickr) were the all-consuming preoccupation of my best friend Sheryl and myself, racing down to the 7-Eleven in Great Bridge on the corner of Battlefield Boulevard and Old Drive (still there!) every week to get a new Slurpee with hopefully a new monster cup to wet our collective Underoos over. If we weren't busy playing Happy Days in her bedroom (she was always Pinky Tuscadero and I was always Leather Tuscadero) she was making me draw each and every monster on our cups, coloring them all the way down to the tiniest detail, so that she could have them to hang on her wall. I guess you could say that the Monster Cups are what taught me better hone my nascent skills as an artist, although I was already pretty darn sucked into monsters at an even earlier age. But few memories of my early childhood are as vivid as Sheryl in her pink jacket (Pinky) standing over me watching raptly as I in my black jacket (Leather) lay across her floor trying to sketch The Monster Of The Moors.

A nice collection of the cups. If I remember correctly, that Swamp Creature cup was an urban legend from the Great Dismal Swamp, according to what I read on the back of the cup. Wow like, almost literally Big Lizard In My Backyard!

Another great collection of the Monster Cups, including Monster Of The Moors and my favorite, The Hydra. And close ups to really appreciate the wonderful detail that went into the art. Also one photo to show how the description reads on the back.

Okay, now on to Item #2...

Back in the 1960's, comic artist Basil Wolverton along with painter Norman Saunders collaborated on a series of stickers commonly remembered as Ugly Stickers. Hideous monstrosities with common everyday English names, like Mike and Jim and Sally and Carol (I think I saw that movie. Nevermind).

Well, in 1979 Topps trading card company re-released the Ugly Stickers as "puffy" stickers, sold in strips of three with a stick of bland, cardboard-like pink gum, and renamed them Monstickers. And 1979 will be remembered as The Year Melissa Went Apeshit For Monstickers, snapping them up at the very same 7-Eleven -- or if I was lucky, my dad would come home after work with piles of Monsticker packages for me -- and I had every available blank space on my 6th grade binder book covered with every single one I could track down. All the kids who rode my bus to school would pass my binder around to look at the stickers, running their hands over the puffy textured cover, inside and out. And I'm still not certain but I'm convinced that Ricky Roberson stole one of the stickers of the book, because when I got it back from him after the bus ride I noticed an empty space where one once was. And I don't even think it was a "Ricky" sticker, either. I want to think that there was a "Melissa" sticker but I don't remember. I do remember looking for one. I couldn't wait to see what Basil thought somebody with my name might look like. Needless to say I've been a fan of Wolverton ever since.

Alright, now here is where I need help. And no, this time there are no monsters involved....

Does anybody remember back around, oh 1983, when either Coke or Pepsi ran a contest where you collected metal bottle caps with NFL and AFL football helmets inside? Something like if you collected all from one league, or all of them together, you won something or other, I don't remember. Actually I don't even remember really caring what I won after awhile -- I just grew obsessed with collecting bottle caps with football helmets inside. At first I thought "Well I'll toss them in a drawer as a get them and maybe I'll win some big dumb sumthin'-sumthin'." but over time I began to take them out of my desk drawer and line them up across my desk, studying each helmet, polishing each cap, making sure that they weren't bent too out of shape from the bottle opener. And it got to where, like the Monster Cups, I drew each helmet on construction paper, colored them vividly, and taped them to the wall around my bedroom door frame. I don't think the pictures of the helmet were in color, and me not knowing a thing about football my father helped me color in the helmets as they were supposed to look.

Anyway, I've searched the web and have found nothing about this promotion. I'm pretty sure it was 1983 because I do remember being 14 years old at the time, due to other events that were occurring in my life around the same time. And I'm pretty sure that it was a soda promotion, because my father never really drank much beer and I never drank fruit juices from bottles back then. Joe doesn't remember this promotion either, and he's the big football fanatic.

Anything you come across to prove that I'm not nuts and didn't dream the whole thing would be greatly appreciated.

And no, the collector's virus has never worked its way out of my system.

EDIT: A friend of mine posted my question on the forums at salutetosoda.com and got an answer --

"I think you are talking about the Pepsi NFL Sweepstakes caps from Pepsi. The objective was to collect all 14 AFC helmets, or all 14 NFC helmets, and win $1000. The year sounds about right."

If anybody can find more info, or better yet pictures of said caps, please let me know!

Sand and Water Under The Bridge

Excerpts from a letter from an old friend who used to live upstairs from Me, Joe, Steve, and Lou at the Colonial Avenue apartments in Ghent over 15 years ago. Recalling old parties, bands that slept over, loud pets, and strange refugee roommates while I enjoy her photos from today's Neptune Festival sandcastle contest (great pics, babe!):

Her letter to me:

Ive seen a lot of bands in my day, ironically I don't think I could remember 25 of them.. but Joe can cos he probley booked them.. and Some of them might of stayed at the house or your or they bolted upstairs downstairs.. I saw you listed pansy division... First off how many people even remember them.. and I will never forget them cos Of the video! and Doug and aaron (remember they shared a room ) were both asleep and those guys came up from your house and said "can we go in their room" and I was drinking on the couch and I said "sure " Thinking it would be a good laugh... well no one ever came out... weird!!!Actually I have a chest that I started putting stickers on when ever bands handed them out.. and I sometimes look at the chest (cos its in my daughters room as her toy box) and then I remember do you remember seeing Abbie(the bulldog not the pig) covered in fuckyou plaid retina stickers .???oh and you didin't even mention artless... You used to play the tape... the interview with the girl that likes to have sex with dogs... I should write Mykle board right now and make him remember or ask him for an updated tape..

On that note I have noticed that no 20 year olds in this day and age have any fun.. they think all my stories of my past are made up.. Like do you remember when we had "the guy" living with us???his name was craig and needless to say for years Doug , kathy, Aaron and I all chalked it up to "we must never be that drunk for so many days in a row " again. and to learn to ask questions!!!But i figure if writers are writing about it, It must of happened to other people and Doug, Aaron , Kathy and I are no longer to blame...

Craig AKA the guysort of moved in for a month... he just showed up one day and we all sort of saw him and let him stay... he would buy coffee and clean the kitchen.. he hung up posters and he would sleep in kathys bed since she was always staying with Eric in Hampton and living at the nsect club.. so when it was rent time ... and I was collecting I said "well Aaron and Doug I think your friend Craig should pay some of this since he has been living here for a month" kathy and I had already had our speech planned out together and they both looked at us in shock and said "we thought he was your friend!!" so instead of going out that night we stayed home to wait for craig to come home and ask him "who are you?" do you remember that? it was so funny.. when we got his story he had gone awal from the military and thought our place was a good place to hide out at... poor Craig . He had to meet all of us loonies,,, Steve coming up and making breakfast , a pig!! Vic..

hahaa, Oh my god! I just had a memory flash back.. one time vic was knocking at the door and I didn't feel like hanging out with him so i ran down the fire escape to hide and I came back 10 minutes later thinking he was gone and I saw that he had kidnapped you and you were stuck with him... hahhaaa he threw the stereo out the window.. and you asked the next morning "what went by my window last night crashing in the alley?" and I told you it was skylab... You should write me your memories then I can print out your letter and show it to my crew"see I am not some crazy old lady!!" they keep freaking out cos I have a myspace.. they say "thats like knowing my mom has a account" yeah but has your mom done lines of cocaine with Gibby haynes? "who?" never mind...

My letter to her:

I remember that guy who lived with you that nobody knew! That was hilarious. Wow, I didn't know that you guys were able to deter the landlord by letting him borrow CDs! Shucks. I keep thinking about the sheer volume of rent we would have saved had he just laid our disks all over the apartment. Then again I think that's how most of them got stolen anyway.

I remember the rest of the house was busy one night trying to wake Doug up by banging pots and pans. Remember that hole the landlord cut in your floor that lead through my ceiling into my apartment? You guys were always dropping weird shit down into my hallway. And then that night Doug got drunk and tried to squeeze his way into my apartment through the hole -- All I saw was these legs and hips dangling from my ceiling and Doug going "UUUUUUUGGGGHHHH!" and I was pulling from the legs and Monrovia was pulling from the arms... damn that was some funny shit.

Her letter to me:

Vic was hell bent on getting some harvey danger (was it harvey danger??/) song played on the radio.. Now back in those days the radio would not play just any old song... jerry springer came on at 2am for christ sake!!so Vic kept calling them and singing to who ever was picking up at 96X or what ever it was back then"hey play that song that goes harley david son of a bitch, I like girls that have big tits..." something like that its almost all a blur... and when they didn't play his song he chucked the radio out the window??? I was passed out by then... The pots and pans was a different night cos that was an all nighter... we all dosed ourselves with acid... and Paul had a cap gun that he kept shooting off... and in the morning we started hitting on pots and pans yelling "time for church" the windows were a bit high how could randy open a window hold the stero and up and out? that is still a mystery... so is sammys hair... Its 2007 and sams hair is still a mystery

I remember when we looked in the hole in the floor and called you and you came over and looked up at us and we squirted baby powder on your head..

and I remember joe coming up and looking at the pig and always calling him bacon..

and watching a drunk doug make midnight slop for the pig putting the plate of food on the fire escape and the pig would eat it and nudge the plate to the edge of the fire escape and it would fall down to yours and shatter..

screaming pig in the stairway, and lou forgetting where his aprtment was and creeping into my bed, then kathys then right on topp of christin on the couch... creepy so doug retaliated and spray painted FUCK YOU LOU right over the colley ave overpass...

and what happened the night when Doug and steve went to the top of farm fresh and threw the old peoples picnic table off the roof??? steve took pictures...

man those were fun crazy days,,,

ironically we burried Witt sounds so weird to type that.. and when we were young we would be walking home drunk and we would stop at the funeral home there on colonial by cogans and we would knock on the door and look in the windows trying to get in and be yelling "apartments for dead people" and wouldn't you know it his veiwing was right there at the apartment for dead people... crazy!!! really makes you think..

May Bumble Live Nine-Hundred Years!

I had completely and utterly forgotten about this Sesame Street animated skit until I was reminded of it just now while reading a biography on Maurice Sendak.



Sendak was on the National Board of Advisors at the Childrens Television Workshop during Sesame Street's early development days, and he had his book Bumble Ardy animated into a sketch with Jim Henson doing the voice of Bumble Ardy himself. It's surreal seeing it again, and how I can still recite the verse verbatim based on this cartoon alone.

Schedule

Sun 27: 3:45-cl
Mon 28: 4:45-cl
Thur 1: 4:45-cl
Sat 3: 12-6

Ah, the change seems to be happening already (wishful thinking?)

Shadows And Fog

Two days of cramps and lying around in bed, drifting in and out of a Tylenol PM coma. Beginning to see a break in the clouds. Well, not outside the window, to be sure. Lots of rain these days. But that's good. Keeps things nice and cool. And rain and sleeping go so perfectly together.

We are getting a new general manager for my store in the next few weeks. Actually not a new manager so much as an old one that used to be general manager shortly before I began working there six years ago. A few of the long-time staff have worked with him during those years, and he sounds like a real taskmaster. Which I say good. Finally, somebody who knows how to take the reins and return a sense of control to that chaos. I'm a bit torn, because I hear so many mixed reviews about this guy. One loves him, one hates him, etc. But what I am hoping for most of all is perhaps a boss who might recognize my value. There has been so much "cronyism" in the last few months with my hours being systematically divided up amongst brand new hires -- friends of the guy who makes our schedules. Those five-hour-a-day-three-day-a-week schedules you see on my blog are a result of that. But one girl told me "Just hold on, because when the new boss gets here, things are going to change. He will want somebody like you, and not these new worthless kids wandering around cluttering up the payroll. He will work you to death. But he will at least give you the hours to do so." Well, I don't mind being worked to death. So long as I'm getting those precious hours to kill myself.

I've known about this for awhile, which is why I've been holding out until the new change. But ultimately, something has to be done. I need full time work, and my COBRA runs out next spring. Scared. Worried. Crampy.

Somebody please rub my sore belly?

More One-Sided Admiration

I've met my share of rock stars. Heck, even Green Day slept on my living room floor. But few things have left me ridiculously starstuck in the last twenty years than having underground comix legend Roberta Gregory comment sweetly on several of my Facebook updates. I'm a giggling teenybopper right now, and I wanna, I dunno, go hang a poster of her on my wall and kiss it every night or somethin'.

It was probably around the early or mid 90's when my friend S. first handed me a copy of Naughty Bits that she had received in the mail as part of a "freebie" gift bag from Fantagraphics, gushing over how funny it was. "I love how pointy her breasts get when she's angry!" S. explained as a selling-point, pitching the rough, cartoony artwork to me. But she didn't need to tell me twice. I could already relate to the comic's protagonist Midge McCracken's large and heavy sagging breast dilemma and the way that they interfered with her life, getting tied up in phone cords or winding up in her armpits when she sleeps. But as much as I hoped that the similarities ended there -- that at age forty I have not become the bitter, angry, PMS-riddled harridan that Midge portrays -- I do think that, probably like all of us, Midge voices her real feelings about dating, sex, politics, parents, co-workers, and life in general in a slightly more self-absorbed and unfair yet clearer insight on the way things really are in her own head a majority of the time. Midge's inner dialogue is most of the dialogue we see in the stories, her thought balloons getting more prickly and ragged the more she works herself up in a lather. She speaks with one corner of her smiling mouth while thinks from the snarling, fanged corner of the other side. Sound like anybody we know?

But what makes Midge more than just the "Bitchy Bitch" that Roberta nicknamed her that Roberta has also given Midge a life, of some sort, even if it's working a thunderously dull 9 to 5 desk job and a weekend of watching bad TV or going on the occasional disastrous date. But the repetition of this pattern enhances the rut that she lives -- the tedious job amongst an all-female work team with a twisted shrew of a boss counting every minute that Midge is late for work, a flakey New-Ager team leader always giving loopy feel-good advice, and a chipper fundamentalist Christian slipping Bible verses into Midge's desk when she's not looking. Who wouldn't be constantly filled with rage and aggravation after awhile? We are also privy to Midge's stressful childhood with her smothering mother and rageaholic father (now we know where she get it from)and her adolescence, coming of age in the turbulent 1960's where our Hippie Bitch takes drugs and loses her virginity to a stranger at a party, becoming pregnant in the process. The subsequent story about Midge's abortion in the pre-Roe vs. Wade 60's is to this day one of the most harrowing and amazing stories I have ever read, in comics as well as any piece of literature in my entire life.

Roberta Gregory has also had a long history with the comix medium and it practically runs through her blood. Her father Robert Gregory used to write for Donald Duck and many other Disney comics when Roberta was a child. In the early 70's Roberta became heavily involved in the feminist/gay/lesbian movements, getting her first series "Dynamite Damsels" in Wimmen's Comix and in the 80's published several other series called "Winging It", "Sheila And The Unicorn", and "Artistic Licentiousness" on into the 90's. But other than Naughty Bits, I have also adored Roberta's Butchy Butch series, shorter-lived but just as funny and even grippingly powerful as the best moments in Naughty Bits. "Butchy" is sort of the dyke version of Bitchy Bitch Midge, furious at the world for making her feel so out of place in it. Proudly "old school" in her man-hating dyke ways, even the younger generation of lesbians roll their eyes over her diatribes about The Way Things Used To Be, and how the kinderdykes of today Have It So Easy compared to her. But flashbacks to Butchy's teenage years coming to terms with her sexuality in the 1960's when homosexuality was still listed as a "disease" in medical books, you gotta admit she has a point. And you have to admire her bravery for walking down the street every day with her crewcut and combat boots and being exactly who she is without fear or shame. She's gone through a lot to get to where she is today, and I gotta say, as a straight woman to a fictional character, my filthy breeder heart goes out to her.

Roberta Gregory, thank you for coming into my life. Your nice little comments on a message board mean more to me than you'll ever know.

The Last Visible Jawa

This week's Audio Junk: Casual Combat features samples from Combat Shock, The Wire, Weeds, and Carnival Of Crime, with music by Basehead, Terence Trent D'Arby, and more Audio Junk is live every Tuesday night at 8:45pm on randomradioonline.net. Thank you for tolerating Audio Junk!

Klingons On The War Path

I've been looking everywhere for this music video, which I remember from years ago on MTV back during the the initial early 80's video game arcade craze. But youtube didn't seem to have it, and various other spots I've checked. But since my brother just got back from visiting the Funspot video arcade museum in Laconia, NH (the place featured in the documentary film The King Of Kong) I was prompted by nostalgia to search again. And success! For whatever it's worth.

Joe Walsh - Space-Age Whiz Kids



God, I so want to play Venture again.

Bonechatter In The Moors

First 20 tracks on my iTunes this evening thinking about never ordering straight from Fantagraphics Books website ever again.

1. "Tonight" - Lene Lovich
2. "Daughter Of The Jungle" - Flat Duo Jets
3. "Gimme Some MOney" - Spinal Tap
4. "Bobby & Whitney" - Kraak & Smaak
5. "Singing' The Blues" - Frankie Trumbauer & His Orchestra Ft. Bix Beiderbecke
6. "You Got That (ft. Freeda)" - Style Of Eye
7. "Thank God For Women" - Albert Alyer
8. "Get Down Massive" - Freestyles
9. "Goliath" - The Mars Volta
10. "Raise Your Fist Evangelist" - Powerwolf
11. "Parallel Lines" - Junior Boys
12. "The Affiliated" - The Dukes Of Stratosphear
13. "With My Eyes Closed" - The Raveonettes
14. "Lover's Prayer" - Myrtle K. Hilo
15. "Wacky Tobacky" - NRBQ
16. "Dem Knock-Out Blues" - Mamie Smith
17. "Strangers In The Night" - Frank Sinatra
18. "Po-Jama People" - Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention
19. "Cleva (Captain Planet Remix)" - Erykah Badu
20. "Kicked, Pushed" - K'naan

Elvis Presley Hampton Coliseum April 9 1972

What Is Essential Is Invisible

Norman Borlaug

1914-2009

Human Contact

Acclaimed comic book series The Walking Dead is being made into a weekly television series on AMC.

What a coincidence, seeing as how Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead has been my current obsession, snapping up books 1-6 within the span of one week and already fiending for the 7th and on. An old friend of mine recently told me that if I wasn't reading The Walking Dead right now, then I had to stop everything that I was doing and start immediately. And so I didn't hesitate. Because she who hesitates inevitably falls behind once the TV series begins.

Originally illustrated by Tony Moore, but replaced by Charles Adlard from issue #7 and onward (Moore still draws the covers), The Walking Dead is a black and white comic that began in 2003 and has been compiled in several series books for convenient up-catching -- because when I was told that I had to be reading this series, I thought, "Really? Another something-something about zombies?" Because what hasn't already been done to death with the genre, especially with a premise we've all heard before: In an apparently post-apocalyptic world where zombies roam the earth, a small group of the living band together to survive the plague as well as each other. At this point I could probably write my own scenario and make a small fortune, if the real world weren't already being overrun with teenage Mormon vampires. (and the women who love them!)

But I'm pleasantly surprised but what I've been reading. Like the movie 28 Days Later, the protagonist Rick, a small town cop from Georgia, awakens in the hospital from a coma to discover himself alone in a world lousy with flesh-eating zombies. Like Night Of The Living Dead, he comes across a rag-tag cluster of living humans of various ages, races, and personalities, all trying to get along while trying to stay alive until they can be rescued by whatever left out there to possibly save them. But unlike the movies where resolutions are expected to be brought about by the end of the picture, The Walking Dead takes the familiar premise and explores its every potential. What if the zombie situation isn't being resolved any time soon? What if a year has already gone by and the U.S. government hasn't come to your rescue? What if there is no more government? What if the living have to start governing themselves? Rick, as a police officer, is instantly look to amongst the group as the leader. But how does a man handle that kind of daily pressure under what appears to be a permanent situation? And when conversation is limited to survival and little else, how well do you really know the person you are sleeping next to in a cramped living arrangement? Plus, sexual tensions rise when desperate people feel compelled to start pairing off. Racial tensions increase when people from all walks to life are forced to work with one another. People you thought would be troublemakers from the get-go prove themselves as heroes, and the person you were rooting for from the beginning is starting to show signs of dangerous personality disorders, either carried over from before, or acquired during their extended living conditions. You never quite know who's going to change, who's going to die next, and scarily of all -- who to place your faith in.

Yes, if you're not reading The Walking Dead right this minute, then... well, it's no big hurry. I won't tell you to drop everything, because that would be irresponsible. But check it out when you can. Unless you wanna wait for the TV series to hit the air.

See! I like to keep things in perspective. :)

Great Covers From Today's Comic Shop Haul

The Twisted Hand Of Fate

The Friday Five:

1. If there was one thing about your body you could change, what would it be?
One thing? Well, these days it would obviously be my weight. I went through a tremendously depressive phase over the last few years and gained back almost everything that I had lost the three years previous. I've been having flutters in my chest that concern me, especially with my high blood pressure. I'm trying to get back on track again. Dear God, I really am.

2. Would you rather lose 10lbs or 10 points off your IQ?
What, really? Unless you were anorexic, why would anyone choose to be dumber than healthier? And not that anorexic is healthy, either -- but really, who would choose to be less smart? Now if they asked me if I would rather gain 10 pounds or lose 10 IQ points, I think I'd prefer to keep my wits about me (which isn't much).

3. When you look in the mirror, are you happy with what you see?
Eh, I'm alright, I guess. Don't think I'm ugly, but no great beauty, either. But that never concerned me. Even the weight doesn't bother me aesthetically so much as it does physically. I'd much prefer to move and breath the way I used when I was a kid on up through my twenties.

4. Have you ever dyed your hair?
Nope, but I probably should. Or at least invest in a rinse that would hide most of this gray.

5. How often do you weigh yourself?
Not as much as I should. Maybe I'd stick to my diet if I did.

The Sonics... The Sonics...

The older I get, the more I hang out with younger people in the music scene, the more the song seems to define my existence.

(And Joe, since you're currently learning Spanish, it's subtitled!)

Something For The Ladies

God bless Turner Classic Movies!

Saturday morning Russ Meyer double feature! 2:00 am is Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! featuring the busty phenomenon known as Tura Satana Judo-chopping her way through the desert and anybody who stands in her way...



And at 4:00 am, Mudhoney featuring the bosomy sensation that is Lorna Maitland and every backwoods hillbilly stereotype that makes these softcore hayseed porn-flicks worth staying up past our bedtimes...



Gentlemen, synchronize our TiVo's! (or for Joe the Bachelor Party fanatic, "Gentlemen, start your boners"... Hee!)

The One-Sided Admiration Society Part 2

The time for female comix characters to tread the boards is apparently at hand! A week after posting about the play in the works for Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, another one is drumming up support for producing the autobiography The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures by acclaimed illustrator Phoebe Gloeckner. Born in Philadelphia and raised in San Francisco, Gloeckner studied medical illustration at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and currently teaches at the University of Michigan in the School of Art and Design. And as far as I'm concerned, one of the most talented cartoonists I've come across in all my years.

At a very young age, Gloeckner was drawing comics, and through her mother met some of the most noted underground comic artists in the San Francisco area, like Robert Crumb, Bill Griffith, Aline Kominsky, and Diane Noomin, who published her early works -- most of which were semi-autobiographical -- in the pages of of Weirdo and Twisted Sisters, just to name a few. These comics were later compiled in the collection A Child's Life And Other Stories, which I finally bought about two years ago after seeing bits in other zines and being wildly intrigued. Although "intrigued" is probably not the word the mayor of Stockton, California would have used when he had it banned from the city's public libraries, citing it as "a how-to manual for pedophiles".

An undeserved reputation, I believe. Gloeckner's adolescence was fraught with drama. In her mid-teens she seduced her mother's thirty-five year old boyfriend, having a secret sexual relationship with him. Having received very little attention from her own emotionally distant, alcoholic mother, little Phoebe longed for love and acceptance, yet was torn with jealousy every night knowing that the man she slept with during the day was sleeping with her mother every night. Distraught, Phoebe prowled the San Francisco streets at night, seeking drugs, alcohol, anonymous sex, and anything that she could get her hands on to dull the pain of her existence. And although Gloeckner claims that the events in A Child's Life were works of fiction, her main character "Minnie", who sleeps with her mother's boyfriend by day and haunts the pavements of 1970's Polk Street at night with her junkie pals, could easily be mistaken as a proxy for the author herself.

But my first real introduction to Phoebe Gloeckner was her remarkably vibrant and detailed medical illustrations for RE/Search Publications' release of the late sci-fi novelist J.G. Ballard's collection The Atrocity Exhibition. Gloeckner's training in physical anatomy drawing literally and figuratively fleshed out the text of Ballard's work, with everything to diagrams of bodily traumas to the anatomy of a woman's mouth giving a man oral sex. To be honest, as much as I love Ballard and for all the years that I have owned this book, I still couldn't recall a single line from the prose because I was so enraptured by Gloeckner's illustrations. Of course that could just be the illustrator in me, to be certain.

Anyway, for more information, check out the website for "Diary Of A Teenage Girl: The Play" currently in the funding process, or so it seems. Recently on Phoebe's Facebook page she posted a photo of her at a recent benefit for the play with Saturday Night Live cast member Andy Samberg, who seems to be a supporter (although Gloeckner's response to him seemed to be along the lines of "Oh, you're that guy who wrote that song about being on a boat that my daughter runs around the house singing to herself!"). And by all means, check out A Child's Life when you can. Gloeckner's work is few and far between. But when she produces, it's always a distinct and original pleasure.

Belated Props

PATRICK SWAYZE

1952-2009

First The Outsiders. Then Red Dawn. Followed by North & South and Dirty Dancing. But for me, it will always be Road House. Oh Dalton, I hope your soul's in a better place were "pain don't hurt".

HENRY GIBSON

1935-1009

First it was Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, followed by The Incredible Shrinking Woman, and a variety of television parts and films. But you will always be my favorite Nazi in The Blues Brothers, as well as the perfect next door neighbor in the under-appreciated The 'Burbs.

Love you both!

Gratuitous Butt Shot Of The Week

Bruise on my hip since Friday after falling down at the Naro going to see In The Loop.

New Audio Junk's are back! This week featuring film clips from Menace II Society and In A Lonely Place, and music by Sonic Youth, The Twilight Sad, Black Cobra, NPG, Vanilla Fudge, and a whole lot more. Audio Junk is live every Tuesday night at 8:45pm on randomradioonline.net

Difficult Difficult Lemon Difficult

Sunday brunch at the Route 58 Delicatessen (L to R) Me, Nina, Mike. Joey, Big Kev, Joyce, Ben, and Rachel.

First 20 tracks on my iTunes having just got a text from Hunter telling me that she is on a plane with legendary punk guitarist Sylvain Sylvain. She just told him about the time she and I almost ran him over outside the Norva on our way to the New York Dolls show several months ago.

1. "Just Play Music" - Big Audio Dynamite
2. "Rains On Me" - Heavenly Bodies
3. "Sugar On My Tongue" - Talking Heads
4. "Who'll Buy The Wine" - Merle Haggard
5. "D.O.A." - Bloodrock
6. "The Spirit of Radio" - Rush
7. "There Is Power In A Union" - Billy Bragg
8. "Fire" - Robert Gordon
9. "Gary Floyd" - Butthole Surfers
10. "Enjoy Yourself" - Dick Hymen
11. "Someone's Gonna Die" - Blitz
12. "Make Me Yours" - Bettye Swann
13. "Pussy Lover" - DJ Balloon
14. "Butterfly Wings" - Machines Of Loving Grace
15. "Contort Yourself" - James Chance
16. "Brand Of Sin" - Folk Implosion
17. "The Prayer" - Fred Anderson
18. "The Devil's Triangle" - King Crimson
19. "Everything's Under Control" - Meat Beat Manifesto
20. "Burning Inside" - Ministry

Schedule

Wed 16: 4:45-cl
Fri 18: 4:45-cl
Sun 20: 3:45-cl
Mon 21: 4:45-cl
Thur 24: 4:45-cl

Let Yourself Get Down

I remember awhile back, sometime in the 90's which are all a big blur to me now, a female friend let my other friend (another fellow female) borrow her Hothead Paisan, Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist comics, written and illustrated by the New Haven, CT underground artist Diane DiMassa (above) for a few weeks. Both of us enjoyed what little we could find on Hothead Paisan in little punk stores in Washington DC so it was nice to have a big chunk to catch up with over the years. What neither of us really expected, strangely enough, was not only negative reaction from our male friends for reading this material, but from her own boyfriend as well.

Hothead Paisan is, as the title explains, every inch a homicidal lesbian terrorist, in that she will take an axe to a homophobic man's head, put a bullet through his beer-bloated gut, and a stick of dynamite up his urethra every chance she'll get, and without a hint of guilt or shame. Wound up on coffee and too much TV, she charges right out of the gates so overstimulated and filled with rage at her inability to adapt to society's expectations of straight feminine stereotypes she makes room for herself in the world by eliminating the "enemy" every time it crosses her path. In one issue in particular that got the boys riled up, Hothead methodically tortures a small group of rich, affluent white men who managed to easily sway the male judge's decision in their favor during a trial where they had previously gang-raped and tortured a young woman. "Violence against men is never funny." Our male friends roared to us, "I don't care what the circumstances, this is nothing but anti-male propaganda. And if this comic was about men torturing and killing women you girls would shrieking in hysteria over the sexist content".

So I wonder, are they right? I mean, comics have been eternally sexist, almost intrinsically so, for as far back as they've been around it seems. Not all of course. But although the act of "fridging" isn't limited to the medium of comic books alone, I can't recall myself getting quite so heated up when Batgirl became paralyzed, or Rachel Summers got lobotomized, or Wonder Woman lost her powers, nearly all of which were the impetus for their male superheroes counterparts to rip their shirts in anguish, scream "NOOOOOOOOOOO" and then go do something heroic and save the day. Maybe a little tired of seeing it, and wishing that there were far more creative writers in the industry who didn't feel compelled to fall back into such exhaustively played-out cliches. But it's just comic books. It's fantasy. And if I am willing to accept some man's fantasy of a woman's head stuffed in the fridge just to give her husband an opportunity for great heroism, do I not have room for acceptance of Ms. DiMassa's fantasy of a gay woman who slaughters those men who want her dead that stand in her way to realize her own superhero potential? Can I not accept this as fantasy as well?

Hothead Paisan allegedly sprung from the pages of DiMassa's journal as she was going through rehab for her own addictions earlier in life, wish-fulfillment fantasy indeed! However HP herself is more than just a man-hating dyke cypher. HP is a product of her environment. She allows herself to get fired up over the images that she sees on television -- of women cooking dinner for their lout husbands and spending all their free hours shopping at the mall, of male politicians passing laws keeping gays from marrying -- image after image telling her that there is no place for somebody like her in the world. Yet Hothead doesn't always get away with her reckless behavior. Her best friend Roz lectures her on how violence does nothing but beget more violence, her cat Chicken tries to take her coffee and TV away from her when she feels she's losing perspective, and the lamp that lives inside HP's head (named "Donna Summer"), her "inner light", helps sort through Hothead's motivations and work through her issues of self-loathing, fear, and yes -- even sometimes guilt. Yet it's all done with heaps of humor, with some of the funniest moments in comic books that I have ever witnessed. Would I still laugh quite as hard if the sex roles had been reversed? A gay man butchering straight women, maybe? Well, somebody write one and let me know. Then we'll see.

But maybe I'm strange that way. In a current pop culture atmosphere of torture-porn movies and increasingly more torture in porn itself, I'm surprised that anybody would blink an eye at Hothead Paisan these days. But as a product of the 1990's, maybe she was slightly more ahead of her time to be appreciated. Check out the Complete Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist sometime and let me know what you think. Tell me I'm nuts. Or if anything, tell me that I've turned yet another person -- straight or gay, male or female -- onto the (to me) wonderful, insightful, and outright hysterical satirical humor of Diane DiMassa. And show your boyfriends, too. I want to hear their opinions as well. ;)

Jim Carroll, 1950-2009

I'm not going to be stating the obvious, as I will leave that to the rest of the professional music critics' obituaries. But I will let the lyrics speak for themselves.

RIP Mr. Carroll

Schedule

Mon 14: 4:45-cl
Wed 16: 4:45-cl
Fri 18: 4:45-cl

The Meat In The Room

It's been awhile since our store has been visited by the gentleman presumably named Mike, or "The Clappy-Hands Guy", as one of the young girls I used to work with called him, and stuck for many a year. I used to talk about him in my old blog all the time, how when he's on his meds he's perfectly fine. But otherwise he used to wander around the store, clapping his hands really loud and shouting bizarre phrases like "SAY HALLELUJAH TO THE WORMS IN MY ASS!' and "Do you know where your face belongs? ON THE FLOOR FOREVER!!!" We used to keep a calendar in the store's front office with each day having a quote of the day, and pretty much the best of everything this guy would say that particular day got voted as the day's internal reflection for the rest of the staff. Though after a time he was kicked out of the Barnes & Noble next door (for walking up behind female patrons, touching them lightly on the shoulder and quietly saying "whore") and subsequently spent all his afternoons in our store, licking the metal detectors and genuflecting at any piece of electronic machinery. When he started screaming out the "N" word and frightened a small child with Down Syndrome we finally kicked him out, and it took several calls to the police to to carry him out, only to have him turn right back around and re-enter the store as if nothing happened. Finally, I suppose he got the hint, or a new prescription, because he has not been back in nearly 3 or 4 years.

Now he's back. And he has this... thing.

One of the guys at work jokingly refers to it as the amulet, but I guess it's more of a staff really, or some kind of homemade weapon that he keeps strapped to his backpack when he comes into the store. He's very quiet now, doesn't yell or clap or lick things, and leaves everybody alone. But his new obsession, it seems, is to sit down at these burning stations (computers where you can enter a song or band and download it onto a blank CD or MP3 player), takes the "staff" and runs the blades under the red laser beams that read barcodes off the CDs, and then spends the next eight hours typing in random numbers and letters into the search function, and then pretends -- or at least thinks he does -- to "download" this secret information into his menacing looking thingamaboob. And yes, that is indeed a TV remote control taped to one blade, and an AC/DC bumper sticker on the other. And lets not forget the word "LITHIUM" boys and girls. Lots and lots of yummy, nutritious lithium.

I had to sneak this photo over his shoulder (you can see his hairy knee under the table) without him noticing, not knowing what hocus pocus he might unleash upon me with that thing. But don't you find it oddly.... amazing? Beautiful, even? I'm frankly spellbound by this thing. Has anybody ever seen its equal? If I make my own, can I secretly download all the data he's bulking up into that thing for myself? Can we do battle, like with axes? Will I finally be allowed into the SCA? Okay, now that is crazy, Melissa.

Home By The Sea

The Friday Five:

1. Will or did you go on vacation this summer?
Nope. Made plans, but they fell through.

2. Where will/did you go?
This weekend was supposed to be our annual Nags Head trip with my brunch group, but Al (the guy whose cottage we use) wasn't able to get off work after all. He had people come down about two weekends ago but Joe and I couldn't make it for it being so last minute. But it was all good.

3. What do you like about the place?
I've been going to Outer Banks all my life. From Corolla to Ocracoke, I've seen and done it all. But the cottage in Nags Head (okay, technically Kill Devil Hills, but most of us locals always refer to that whole area of Outer Banks as "Nags Head") is nice just for having all the terrific company, like Joe and Al and Mike and Hunter, etc. And Barco lives down there and works at The Pit Bar & Grill so it's nice to see him when we can too.

4. What don't you like about the place?
During the summer season it can get insanely crowded. Outer Banks is a hair-thin peninsula off the coast of North Carolina, so narrow that it basically has one highway down the center that leads you in or out, so when there is traffic, then you are basically stuck in it for all eternity. Which is why I like going after Labor Day. It's practically a ghost town by then.

5. Where do you want to go next summer?
Not quite sure. Either Boston, Chicago, or San Francisco -- three cities I have never visited. But if the Circus Theatricals have a play going on starring Jack, then I'm a-going back to L.A. for the third time, fo shizzle.

There She Goes Again...

The Friday Thursday Five:

(last week's Friday Five was posted several days late)


1. What story did you love reading, as a child?
Marigold And The Dragon by Fred Crump. I never owned it but I used to check it out of the children's section of the Great Bridge Library almost every month, to where my name was the only one written in that card on the back cover for almost a year. I would love to find a copy again, with the original artwork. Or what the artwork was for that edition. They had it re-illustrated in the 80's to make Marigold an African-American girl, but I think even that version is out of print as well.

2. What remains to be your all-time favorite book?
Probably a tie between Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale, which I read at age sixteen and loved so much I vowed never to read it again for fear that I might not experience the magic of it the same way twice -- and A Confederacy of Dunces, which I read in my early twenties and can still pull off the shelf and laugh like a drain every single time.

3. What book do you usually recommend to people?
I went through a phase where I would buy used paperbacks of Winter's Tale at thrift stores and leave them in public places hoping someone would take it home with them, but I haven't done that in over fifteen years. Other than that it always depends on what that person may be into. I recently recommended the Sweet Valley High series to a young teen girl because I got the feeling she might really dig them.

4. If you were a character in a book, who would you be?
Used to be Zaphod Beeblebrox ages ago. These days I couldn't tell ya.

5. If you could write a book, what would it be about?
I have written a book! And illustrated it. At age eight. Phil The Fawn. Alas, I never could get a publisher. But I think the original is still in my parents' attic.

Black Coffee In Bed

Going on two hours sleep last night, and still not bed-ready yet. I seriously need to go put myself down for the night.

Looks like a potentially swell "double feature" at the Naro this Friday with In The Loop and Thirst. Anybody seen either one of these yet? Is it worth the drive to Norfolk?

Nocturnal Tramsmissions

The Muppet Show's 10 Weirdest Moments

Thanks to Greg for the link! I remember each and every one of these clips verbatim:


10.) Leo Sayer sings "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" to a messed-up lookin' giant bird.

9.) Alice Cooper tries to get Kermit to sell his soul to the devil, only to get an over-enthusiastic Gonzo instead.

8.) Tony Randall dabbles in the "Black Arts" and sings through a megaphone.

7.) Miss Piggy tries to rape Rudolf Nureyev (he defected for this?)

6.) One of my all-time favorite Muppet Show moments, Alan Arkin goes on a bunny-murderin' rampage to the tune of "Zip-a-Dee Doo Dah" (the best part is when Waldorf and Statler toss one last bunny hiding in their box into the fray).

5.) Vincent Price sings James Taylor's "You've Got A Friend" to a passel of creepy things.

4.) Roger Moore sings "If I Could Talk To The Animals" while kicking muppets in the face.

3.) Sylvester Stallone sings "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off " in a gladiator costume.

2.) Peter Sellers recites Shakespeare in a Viking helmet while playing two chickens.

1.) "The Intergalactic Brotherhood of Man" sketch with Spike Milligan (actually that entire episode was pretty WTF all the way through).


And you know what else was WTF all the way through? That ENTIRE Alice Cooper episode, although I suppose it was to be expected, being Alice Cooper and all. But even the scenes not involving Cooper were some of the strangest things I had ever seen on television as a kid -- particularly the "toothache" sketch, which none of my friends had ever seen but laugh their asses off every time I used to quote it, usually whenever I had a toothache of my own.

Skip to 8:20. It lasts until 9:37.



And I never noticed this before, but someone over at youtube pointed out that at 8:53 if you listen very carefully, you can hear someone whisper "Shhhhhh shut the fuck up." Oh mah word!

The One-Sided Admiration Society Part 1

They're making a Broadway musical out of Alison Bechdel's Fun Home (2006 Time Magazine's Book of the Year). Or at least it was in discussion about two years ago, although I haven't really heard any news since. Then again I just learned about it yesterday, and only because I had been re-reading the book for the umpteenth time this week, savoring every nuance in the art and dialogue that I didn't pick up the first nth time (how could I have missed all those Sunbeam Bread references throughout the story?). Has anybody heard any new word about this? I tried googling but haven't gotten much substantial back.

And a... a musical? How does one make a musical about their closeted homosexual father's suicide and make folks want to come out in droves (literally and figuratively)?



But anything to get the phenomenal cartoonist Alison Bechdel's name out in the public, which has already happened without a smidge of my help, thank you. This remarkable storyteller and illustrator is best known for her series Dykes To Watch Out For but it was her autobiographical Fun Home and its choice for Time's Book Of The Year that put the wheels in motion it seems, for her to make this funny, intelligent, and talented woman's living as a full-time comix creator, which she richly deserves.

Fun Home is so unabashedly personal, so vivid in detail, that I myself could have lived it, despite how different it was from my own life and upbringing, And that's what makes Bechdel the important American storyteller that she is. The video above is a nice little introduction to Bechdel the person as well as the artist, directed by Eva Sollberger. It's about seven minutes long, but it's very well done. And I just loved seeing all the copies of Fun Home in all those different languages.