Armagideon Time

Vacation 2008: Day 6 - Where were you in '92?

2008-07-24T22:15:00.001-04:00

(The good old days; l-r: Bev, Leech, some idiot, Maura)
Some friends and I were recently discussing movies from the 1990's (hey, it happens), and someone brought up Singles, Cameron Crowe's 1992 Gen X update of the 1980's teen flick formula. "Singles is okay as a film, but as a socio-historical document it is magnificent," was my assessment, which led to the usual talk about the film's popularizing of Seattle's grunge scene.

That's true, I suppose, though I don't think it's as cut-and-dried as some Monday morning popcult quarterbacks would have you think. It's one of those "chicken or the egg" scenarios, capitalizing on emerging hot trend even as it -- or, more accurately, the film's soundtrack -- heightened the masses' interest in the same. (The film spent some time in release date limbo before the studio execs realized that there was some marketing synergy to be had with the buzz coming from the PacNorWest.) However, it wasn't Singles' relationship to the flannelmania scene that I was referring to when I gave it props as a historical document, but rather the how the movie managed to perfectly capture the spirit of the moment.

I was twenty in 1992, drifting listlessly through my sophomore year in college...or maybe my "second" freshman year....the traditional definitions don't really work with the whole seven year plan thing. Every generation feels that they occupy a place of singual importance on history's stage, but at the time it really felt as if we were on the edge of something huge and important, a fundamental break with our Boomer parents' vision of society. The fourth floor of Wheatley Hall, home to UMass Boston's student clubs and organizations, was abuzz with such sentiments, but even outside that rarfied atmosphere, the world at large seemed poised for a tectonic shift.

ACT UP, Queer Nation, PETA, Irish Northern Aid, third wave feminism, Sister Soulja, Body Count, the L.A. riots, the end of the Cold War, next-gen environmentalism, the lingering effects of the late 1980's recession, the 1992 presidental election -- a multitude of forces were in motion and the beach was just a few small paving stones away. Out with twelve years of Reaganism and Reaganism Lite and in with the new...or at least the different.

Then the DotCom boom hit, and my generational peers swapped out nose rings and Doc Martens for Gap clothes and 401k plans and fiscal conservatism and condo associations. The Soundgarden albums kept their places on the CD rack, but Dave Matthews and the Goo Goo Dolls got the heavy rotation. I don't fault them (okay, I do, but I'm trying to be charitable) but how did "I won't be like my parents" turn into "I will be exactly like my parents, only with an affected sense of irony and a thin veneer of hipness"?

Then, to add insult to injury, the Republican Revolution swept in to mock the corpse of ideals abandoned.

Watching Singles isn't just an exercise in undergrad nostalgia for me, it's a painful, poignant reminder of a world that was and could have been, had it not been tripped up by its own shallowness and solipsistic apathy. This is why I can't help but discern a familiar tune whenever I come across Gen Y or Gen Z or Gen Whatever-the-fuck-is-the-sexy-letter-demographic-now diatribes about being the "voice of change" and the fulcrum on which a new world will slide into place.

Youthful sincerity is by definition an ephemeral phenomenon, and the counter-revolution is just a glib joke and revenue-sharing plan away.

The musical annotations for this post probably should have run toward the grunge end of the spectrum, but my dislike of the genre has only grown with the passing of years. I instead offer this representative pair of tracks from my circa 1992 playlist...because some things -- such as superlative Welsh punk rock and radical Marxist postpunk -- never go out of style.

The Partisans - The Money Rolls In (from The Time Was Right, 1984)

Gang of Four - At Home He's a Tourist (from Entertainment! 1980)

Vacation 2008: Day 5 - Objectivist hygiene

2008-07-23T20:45:00.000-04:00

I've been slowly working my way through Blake Bell's Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko, a very well-written examination of the legendary comics creator's life and body of work. Bell does an outstanding job of addressing not only Ditko's unique sense of aesthetics, but also the man's fiercely Objectivist philosophy and personal eccentricities, and their effect on his artistic style and professional career.

Nowhere is Ditko's evangelism for the Ayn Rand school of ~~petty selfishness~~ "enlightened self-interest" so fervent and unrestrained as in 1973's The Avenging World. Not so much a work of sequential art as a bizarre illustrated primer espousing Rand's political theories in the most lurid, brute-force method imaginable, The Avenging World reads like a Chick tract adaptation of Atlas Shrugged set in the Dread Dormammu's Dark Dimension -- entertainingly bat-shit in the way only an embarrassingly sincere and personal project by a talented eccentric can be.

That doesn't mean that reading The Avenging World is anything other than a tough slog through repetitive dissertations -- in comic strip, illustrated text, and infographic format -- on the primacy of "rational self-interest" over collective obligation. I trend toward the left-libertarian/anarcho-communist side of things myself, but I temper my views with liberal doses of cynical pragmatism. The uncompromising rightist Objectivism in The Avenging World refuses to partition the "is" from the "ought," which is why the ideology tends to be in practice more justification than aspiration. "A = A" is an abstraction, and as such, is a hollow mantra in a world where the messy and inconclusive are commonplace.

Swap out the abstract for the concrete, and the philosophical scenarios presented in The Avenging World would go something like this...

Ideological purity is no substitute for a can of Ajax and some elbow grease.

New Order - Age of Consent (from Power, Corruption, & Lies, 1983) - A musical selection whose sublime and fragile beauty I trust we can all agree upon.

Vacation 2008: Interlude - Don't need a weatherman

2008-07-22T16:25:00.002-04:00

Don't mind me, I'm just taking a few minutes to calibrate this nifty piece of equipment (copped from Chris Sims) towards the prevailing local conditions:

Pylon - Cool (from Gyrate, 1980) - A bracing blast of postpunk relief. How is it that so many current bands have been slapped with the "postpunk" tag (or have self-applied the same), yet none of them even remotely capture those certain qualities that made old school postpunk so fascinating?

Vacation 2008: Day 4 - The orders are in

2008-07-22T12:15:00.001-04:00

(from Howard Chaykin's American Flagg! v1 #2, collected in this handy forthcoming omnibus)
The life of a retrologist may be spiritually rewarding, but it doesn't really pay well...or pay at all, actually. To meet my many and varied financial obligations, as well as to support my useless crap habit, I also work as a flagman for data streams at a public university.

It's a perfect job in many ways. It's unionized, pays well, and is generally low stress -- barring the occasional meltdown on the IT end of things. The only catch is that while the flow of work may slacken at off peak times, it never stops and will start to clog things up for the rest of the office without my semi-expert guidance.

This is why I'm getting ready to make the hectic commute into Dorchester to pull a half-shift during the middle of my vacation. I'm hoping by going in late and leaving early I can avoid the usual traffic hassles on I-93....which is a lot like hoping that I'll find a strongbox full of Confederate gold buried underneath the azalea bushes next to my patio.

Black Flag - Clocked In (from The First Four Years, 1984) - It's always time for classic L.A. hardcore.

Wall of Voodoo - Back in Flesh (from Dark Continent, 1981) - The anthem for Generation Avoidance, to be sullenly muttered under one's breath during the long walk from parking lot to cubicle.

Vacation 2008: Day 3 - Give me fyah

2008-07-21T18:35:00.005-04:00

Look what I got in the mail last Saturday!

The 25th anniversary edition of Barbecue, the G.I. Joe team's resident firefighter! Or more accurately, the G.I. Joe team's rezahdint fy-ah-fy-tah and token Bostonian.

Lady Jaye's file card states she was born in the Vineyard, but it's safe to assume that she was a high holiday baby with a permanent address in Manhattan's Upper West Side. Gabriel "Bahbahcue" Kelly, on the other hand, was the real fictional deal, a seventh generation Beantown jake presumably well versed in the local culture of fradulent disability reports and lack of independent oversight.

"I'd love tah help ya fight Cobra Cammandah, Duke, but my back's been actin' up. Union rules. Maybe when I get back from rock climbin' I can do somethin'."

While the general wisdom regarding special forces operatives stresses cross-training (so that the units can function effectively despite loss of individual members), the Joes were hyper-specialized to a fault, with full-time team members dedicated solely to covering even the most narrow of disciplines. In practice, this meant that many of the less well-rounded members of the team either spent most of their time warming the benches back at the Joes' HQ or got dragged along on missions outside their areas of expertise, leading to absurd scenarios like Snow Job, an arctic warfare expert, fighting in full cold weather gear in the tropics. Call it the "licensed merchandise theory of warfare."

For poor Barbecue -- armed with a hi-tech supersoaker and a fire axe -- the time not spent inspecting the base's smoke detectors and spinkler systems went something like this...

An important function, to be sure, but it doesn't dull the gnawing feelings of inadequacy when the other guys and gals on the team are doing some post-op boasting about how many Rattlers they shot down or how they kicked Destro in the 'nads while leaping from an exploding A.W.E. Striker.

In the overfondly remembered G.I. Joe cartoon series, Barbecue's great shining moment came in "The Viper Is Coming," a episode revolving around the title's ominous warning and culminating, as these things usually do, with an Eastern European gentleman arriving to "vipe the vindows."

Yes, for real. So fuck your rose-tinted childhood nostalgia, fanboys. All the perfumes in Araby can't mask the pungent stink of 80's toy cartoons.

The episode did treat the public, however, to another interesting popcult attempt to duplicate the Bay State's distinctive regional accent. It goes about as well as you'd expect, as demonstrated by this fan-edited trip into the poorly-synched mouth of madness...

Now while there are certain Snagglepussean overtones in the Charlestown variant of the Boston accent (which I suspect is the real reason behind the Townies' famous "Code of Silence"), I can state with a reasonable degree of authority that we do not speak like the "confirmed bachelor" character actor lovechild of Phil Silvers and Jack Haley. (Haley, along with Ray Bolger, did happen to hail from Beantown, but even so...)

(Also, I don't want to read too much into things, but the personality profile on Barbecue's file card states, and I quote, "He can...wrap his lips completely around the bottom of a quart Coke bottle." Fancy that.)

Dude, I know you're tired of "pahk the cah" jokes, but the white boy ebonics thing is not the answer.
For the musical portion of today's post, I decided to keep things nice and local...

The Cars - It's All I Can Do (from Candy-O, 1979) - As long as it's done well, I won't complain.

The Pixies - Dig for Fire (from Bossanova, 1990) - This is Boston, not Centralia. I still haven't warmed up to The Pixies, as the psychic scars inflicted by the various fans of the band are still tender after almost twenty years, though I can appreciate the music...in small doses...in the rare proper context.

Vacation 2008: Day 2 - The world shines for me today

2008-07-20T23:45:00.002-04:00

While the skies above Boston's northwestern suburbs indulged in a pageant worthy of Wagner, the wife and I chanced the torrential rains and thunderbolts in order to indulge in some nerdspicuous consumption at the comic/used book shop two towns over.

I was specifically searching for copies of Twilight Zone Magazine from the early 1980's and the frustratingly elusive issues of Date With Debbi and Debbi's Dates I need to fill out my collection. Though I came up empty-handed on those fronts, I still scored a respectable trove of items of retrological importance -- the Burning Sensations' mini-LP, The Brains' eponymous 1980 album, a vinyl copy of the Xanadu OST in its gatefold cover glory, and a small stack of Dynamite and Pizzazz magazines from the 1970's.

Total price: Just a shade over twenty bucks.

When we got home from our shopping trip, BBC America was playing a block of episodes from the second season of Spaced.

This is what vacations are supposed to be like.

Mint Royale - Space Farm (from On the Ropes, 1999)

Electric Light Orchestra - I'm Alive (from the Xanadu OST, 1980)

Vacation 2008: Day 1 - Ain't gonna gamble

2008-07-19T20:45:00.000-04:00

Witch Baby stops the world and melts with you.
The weather has entered devil's armpit territory, so I've decided to postpone my usual roster of Saturday chores and sequester myself in the air-conditioned bedroom along with a choice selection of books, music, and DVDs.

Yes, it's a tragic situation, but I'll just have to learn to live with this meteorologically enforced leisure time.

Sly & The Family Stone - Hot Fun in the Summertime (from Greatest Hits, 1970) - Eternally cool.

Giorgio Moroder - Too Hot to Handle (from From Here to Eternity, 1977) - What the Human League dared to emulate and the basis of Daft Punk's famous discovery.

The Minds - Hot (from Plastic Girls, 2003) - In which we discover the boiling point of raucous, hooky synthpunk.

Vacation 2008: Prologue - No real reason

2008-07-18T21:45:00.002-04:00

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.

dispatches from the front

2008-07-17T17:35:00.003-04:00

Yahoo may currently be a corporation under siege, but that hasn't prevented its ever-sagacious staff from addressing the burning questions of the now...

Remember: It's not a bailout. The current administration doesn't believe in bailouts. It's a gentlemen's agreement that uses taxpayer money and a minimum of accountability in regards to the mismanagement that caused the failure in the first place, okay?

Should you lack access to the circles of crony capitalism's largess, or if you or someone else in the financial services supply chain chose to forgo the FDIC's safety net because the program smacked of dirty Bolshevism, here are some other potential courses of action to take after your assets have evaporated:

- Take a drive up to the mountains with a loaded shotgun and a bottle of whiskey in order to "meditate" upon the situation.

- Check the various blood banks to get the best quotes per pint on sales of plasma.

- Learn to appreciate the taste of uncooked ramen noodles washed down with store-brand mouthwash.

- Cash out the tattered remnants of your 401k and invest in ten-dollar scratch tickets.

- Read up on the insulative properties of newspaper and which large appliance boxes are most resistant to rain damage.

- Explain to your children that college is for effete snobs, and that "true blue Americans" sign up for unbenefitted minimum wage service jobs as soon as they drop out of high school.

Rubella Ballet - It'll Never Happen to Me (from At the End of the Rainbow, 1990) - The playful, day-glo side of anarchopunk, bouncing out with some very danceable beats and a song title that effectively serves as the mantra of the American theory of disaster capitalism.

...and when all else fails, perhaps a change of career is in order:

While the world lurches toward economic, social, and environmental collapse, it's gratifying to know that science is doing its damnedest to answer the hard questions...like whether or not it would be feasible for man to dress up as a flying rodent and throw explosive boomerangs at petty criminals.

Fuck clean drinking water or ecologically sustainable fuel sources, this is the shit that really matters -- taking discussions usually reserved for the dank stinky basement of fandom (i.e. the CBR and Newsarama forums) and elevating them to the level of infotainment in service to the current overhyped blockbuster movie of the moment.

The Selecter - Three Minute Hero (from Too Much Pressure, 1980) - Though often overlooked (in favor of The Specials or The Beat) when I'm looking for a quick fix of second-wave ska, The Selecter's Too Much Pressure and Celebrate the Bullet never fail to impress me when I do make the effort to give them a spin. That's the problem with having an extensive music collection and not a lot of free time -- I tend to gravitate to that handful of perennial favorites within arm's reach instead of keeping a representatively diverse playlist.

a short hike

2008-07-16T17:45:00.000-04:00

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.

all for a good cause

2008-07-15T15:15:00.000-04:00

Doesn't it just warm your heart?

Bing Crosby - Dear Hearts and Gentle People (from The Definitive Collection, 2006) - A song that just screams out for ironic appropriation (see also the recently unveiled Fallout 3 trailer), especially in light of some of the allegations made about Der Bingle's domestic life.

The Breeders - Happiness is a Warm Gun (from Pod, 1990) - Only a Boston-based alt-rock side project could be this precise.

and off they go

2008-07-14T17:45:00.005-04:00

I was born in 1972, and my formative years were split between the self-asorbed malaise of the Me Decade and the superficial glitter of the Greed Decade. It was fun time to be a kid, as long as you discount the nuclear war anxiety, plaid chinos, Foreigner songs....

...and toy cartoons. Those fruits of the FCC's (at Reagan's behest) removal of restrictions on maximum advertising time allowed toy manufacturers to target their sales pitch to the tykes though program-length commercials posing as poorly-animated syndicated cartoon shows. Even as a kid, I thought they were pretty stupid and far tamer than what happened in actual backyard play sessions, though I did collect and play with some of the featured plastic gee-gaws.

G.I. Joe was a special favorite. Its superheroic presentation (with code names and colorful costumes) of ostensibly "real" military professions and hardware was an easy sell to a kid who was obsessed with comic books and dreamed of following in the footsteps of his war hero father. My brother and I didn't follow the script as laid out in the cartoon and licensed Marvel comic book series, but instead crafted our own (very derivative) characterizations and scenarios, which prefigured the role playing games that would supplant action figures as our hobby of choice.

All of my old figures, along with a lot of other popcult artifacts I'd sacrifice an eye to regain, were lost in the crazy period after my mother's death. My brother did hang on to, or rediscover, a handful of mostly-broken figures which rest in the hulk of a Cobra Terrordrome we pulled out of a neighbor's trash and which is now collecting dust in a corner of my grandma's attic.

I've purchased the occasional vintage or reissued figure or vehicle for reasons of nostalgia or lingering sentimental value, though I've generally avoided the totemic fetishization of childhood diversions that affects too many of my peers. I understand the allure of employing the disposable income of one's adult self to try to recapture (or to hold on to) the stuff of one's youth, but it's a path fraught with the risk of crossing over into dogma and obsession, long nights spent scanning eBay listings and arguing over minutae in discussion section of Optimus Prime's Wikpedia page.

Or worse, using facile references to Thundercats or The Inhumanoids as shorthand for real humor.

There is a certain sense of victory in scoring a coveted prize toy twenty-five years after the fact, but it's a hollow victory....unless you're talking about a set of these beauties.

Sick Of It All - G.I. Joe Headstomp (from Blood, Sweat, and No Tears, 1989) - "Headstomp?" Wasn't he the Joes' civil affairs and community relations specialist?

The Clash - Ivan Meets G.I. Joe (from Sandinista! 1980) - Revisionist rock historians be damned, there is only one word that effectively describes Sandinista!

That word is hubris.

Finally, no musical tribute to G.I. Joe would be complete without some Cold Slither...

I heard that Buzzer tried to get the original lineup together to play at this year's Crüe Fest. Zartan held out for too much money, however, so they decided to replace him with Ronnie James Dio for the tour.

Zartan & The Dreadnoks - Cold Slither - Obtained from here, which also has an alternate version and lyrics for the karaoke-minded.

we are the hollow men

2008-07-13T21:45:00.000-04:00

There's a PSA that has been running on VH-1 Classic on behalf of autism awareness which features rawk icons like Roger Daltrey, Rob Halford, and Vince Neill speaking out on behalf of the cause. All of the participants came dressed down -- wrinkles, receding hairlines, and all -- for the taping; all except the dudes from Kiss, that is, who appeared in their full facepainted and overaccessorized glory.

Telling? Yes, but not suprising in the least. Kiss and any vestiges of dignity parted ways long, long ago. (See also.)

The Moog Cookbook - Rock & Roll All Night (from Ye Olde Space Band: Plays Classic Rock Hits, 1997) - See, this is a gimmick I can fully appreciate.

role perversal

2008-07-12T22:45:00.009-04:00

The blurb on the cover of Marvel's Savage Tales #1 (May 1971) reads:

...and the editorial explanation reads as follows:

"The result is, perhaps, something just a wee bit new under the sun. Not quite sword and sorcery -- certainly not science-fiction -- and not exactly a political polemic. Robin Morgan clobbers Buck Rogers in the 25th century! Kate Millett zaps both Flash Gordon and Ming the Merciless -- then takes Mongo over for good measure."

Or, y'know, it's a hamfisted-yet-titillating look at the women's liberation movement -- by way of John Norman's Gor novels and Planet of the Apes -- crapped out by a past-his-prime Stan Lee and adequately illustrated by John Romita.

"The Fury of the Femizons" takes place in a future world run by the U.S.A. -- the United Sisterhood Alliance, that is -- a gynocracy established after the women of the world had enough of males' oppression, belligerence, and inability to put the toilet seat down after use. The women of the Sisterhood spend their days engaged in gladiatorial combat or culling the herds of feral males and spend their nights being, ahem, "entertained" by domesticated sex slaves -- all in accordance with the established principles of radical feminist theory. ("Objective #1: Overthrow the partiarchy. Objective #2: Get fitted for metal corsets that expose maximum cleavage.")

"...and Sex in the City marathons!"
Lyra, an esteemed warrior of the Sisterhood and the in vitro sister of Queen Vega, pays lip service to the realm's guiding principles, yet feels unsatisfied with her way of life. This is not lost upon Syrani, the queen's advisor, an ambitious woman who combines the looks of Lieutenant Ilia with the political ethics of Karl Rove.

The steamy side of Machiavellian politics.
Lyra's dissatisfaction is partially due to to the fact that she has read, or rather "viewed," the forbidden headband-powered "mind tapes" which document how life had been before the feminist revolution. It is Lyra's hidden stash of those recordings that leads Mogon of the Hills, a male sleeper agent posing as a sex slave, to confront Lyra in hopes of recruiting her to his cause.

Mogon hails from a tribe of "noble" men, which unlike the feral wildmen, have learned from their gender's previous mistakes and want to establish equality between the sexes. (I can only imagine how it was done: "Mogon, come forth! For your trial into manhood, Kelpor will tell you what he did today and you must stay attentive through the entire tale!")

Lyra hesitates about helping Mogon carry out his plan to destroy the sperm banks the Sisterhood uses for replenishing its population, but comes around once she realises the other reason for her recurring sense of dissatisfaction...

This man, this monkey lovin'! Excelsior!
...the need for a lover with both a slow hand and an easy touch. After the pair are done mutually exploring the Forbidden Zone, they ride out to a secret camp in the ruins to meet up with Mogon's compatriots to plot the raid on the baby-making factory. (No, not China, you silly infertile yuppies!)

What they discover upon arriving, however, is a trap laid by Syrani's secret police force, which are dispached in an orgy of violent innuendo...

"I shall slide this unyeilding blade in and out until you beg for mercy."
Having killed a dozen agents of the state's security apparatus, Lyra and Mogon return to the royal palace and pretend that nothing ever happened. This incredibly cunning plan fails to work, and Lyra is brought before Queen Vega to answer to charges of treason. To spare Lyra from execution, Mogon decides to take the fall, and provokes the warrior princess into killing him in front of the royal court.

Though the exonerated Lyra puts on a brave face, even going so far as to demand some sex slaves for a threesome in order to ~~give horny fanboys some wank material~~ maintain appearances...

Breaking up is hard to do.
...she still longs for a man like the one she publicly eviscerated.

"A truly egalitarian world is a dream worth fighting for! Oops! I better get changed, this trois ain't gonna menage itself!"
After reading this story, the whole Striperella thing makes a whole lot more sense to me now...as does the theory that Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby deserve a lion's share of the credit for the genius of Marvel's Silver Age output. As terrible as "The Fury of the Femizons" was, I still found it to be far superior to Y: The Last Man on the subject of gender politics.)

Screamin' Sirens - Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad (from Hell Comes to Your House, Vol, 2, 1983) - YEEE-HAW! It's cowpunk time!

Jan Panter - Put Yourself in My Place (from That's How It Goes: The Pye Anthology, 2003) - Maura's been rediscovering her love of 60's girls groups (and 50's & 60's pop in general) after discovering the oldies music channel on digital cable. Here's a favorite of mine from the UK scene, released in the musically golden year of 1966.

Friday Night Fights: The Devil Was a Lady

2008-07-11T20:15:00.001-04:00

(from Vampire Tales #3, February 1974; by Gerry Conway & Esteban Maroto)
Unlike her dear old dad, Satana (a.k.a. "The Devil's Daughter") doesn't have a problem indulging in the occasional vulgar display of power.

Elvis Presley - (You're the) Devil in Disguise (from a 1963 single) - In the Name of our King Elvis Aaron Presley! It is he who commands you! It is he who carried you from the depths of Hell to the gates of Heaven with his powerful voice and some killer tempo changes!

(Beyond good and evil.)

can't you settle for the center of attention

2008-07-11T19:15:00.003-04:00

In his collection of Unpopular Essays, the philosopher Bertrand Russell discussed the phenomenon he called "the superior virtue of the oppressed," by which the marginalization of certain groups is justified by the attribution of certain intrinsic moral characteristics to those being oppressed. The inherent "compassion" of women, for instance, which allegedly made them ill-suited for pursuits where a degree of ruthlessness is needed, or the enduring patronization of the "noble savage" myth.

What happens, though, when those "virtues" and the concept of "oppression" are self-applied, rather dubiously, via conscious decision?

While I think that writer Chris Claremont's run of X-Men stories are, at least until 1986 or so, pretty entertaining reads, the concept behind the team -- mutant outcasts fighting for a world that hates them -- never really appealed to me. Despite the tendency in some circles to elevate the stories into some grand parable about civil rights, I suspect that the real meat and bones behind the franchise's evergreen appeal is that it speaks so clearly to the anxieties of the adolescent nerd, with protagonists who operate on the fringes of an unsympathetic society and marked for great things though genetic happenstance.

What specifically put me off of the X-Men is the characters sense of insularity. For all the lofty talk of tolerance and equality, the team seemed to revel in their outsider status: "We're X-Men. You're human, you wouldn't understand." Unlike, say, the Avengers, whose membership was open to androids, mutants, rednecks, and even Wonder Man, the X-Men were an echo chamber of melodrama less concerned with asserting their place in society than in endless navel-gazing about their special status....a status predicated on genetic superiority and exclusiveness.

In my travels through the harsh badlands of nerdity, I saw a lot of "outcast as elitist" mentality amongst my peers. It wasn't enough to find a community of like-minded souls or simply accept that one's tastes were skewed differently from the masses' baseline, there had to be a cosmic reason for it, rooted in a "us versus them" mentality. There are many valid reasons why some marginalized and persecuted groups and individuals might turn a bit insular. Growing up closeted in a ultra-homophobic environment, for example, would understandably lead to a certain sense of guardedness. The head cheerleader making fun of your Boba Fett t-shirt? Not so much. It would be one thing if it manifested as a egalitarian pan-geek celebration, but in practice the insularity has taken the form of a hierarchy of fan-tustans, judged from inside the barricades of each individual microcosm; videogame geeks look down on comic book geeks who look down on roleplayers who look down on videogamers.

When you factor in the pervasiveness of power fantasies within the scene's holy scriptures, it's shouldn't come as a surprise -- though it does for many people -- that there's a disturbing undercurrent of crypto-fascism amongst (mostly male) nerds that manifests itself in many troubling ways:

- The unironic appreciation of the anti-hero/bad ass/monster in heroic clothing. ("...and then he tortured the bad guy by slicing the dude's balls off! That's how the cops should do things in real life!")

- Celebration of violent masculinity (usually coupled with mockery of feminism or homosexuality). ("It makes no scientific sense for a female character in a fantasy game where orcs and dragons exist to have the same maximum strength score as a male!")

- An infatuation with a mythologized reactionary past, with apologias regarding totalitarian or militarist regimes and leaders. ("Hitler's mistake is that he should have dropped his hatred of the Jews and concentrated on the Soviets...")

All the above behaviors (and more) were witnessed during my stint as president of the campus sci-fi club. I took the job specifically to keep it out of the hands of those who wanted those quite pathetic vestments of authority too much, and my approach to leadership was hands-off in the extreme. Even still, I had a hard time shaking off the efforts of the rank and file who wanted to build a cult of personality around me. (Yeah, I know. It shocked the hell out of me, too. I had to sneak out of the club room when I went record shopping, lest an uninvited retinue follow me to Central Square.)

Things went south after I started dating Maura and neglected the vicarious needs of my flock, who then gravitated to a master of braggadocio (GTA IV players: Imagine a real-life Brucie). Within a matter of weeks they were reciting his bullshit sex-and-violence stories with awestruck reverence, declaring war upon his "enemies," and mimicking his leather-jacket-and-combat-boots mode of dress. I quit showing up after that, but I'm certain the party armbands were printed up not long afterwards.

Nick Lowe - Little Hitler (from Jesus of Cool, 1978) - Um, actually, this pop rock gem falls outside the established Third Reich canon. You'd know that if you read my Naziwiki page.

(The above ruminations were unabashedly inspired by the talented Dave Lartigue's far superior post featured here.)

the root of all evil

2008-07-10T18:35:00.004-04:00

The above lesson on the nuances of mythological avarice is the reader's introduction into "Captain Marvel Fights the Menace of Greed" from Captain Marvel Adventures #111 (August 1950). The story is a quaint piece of agitprop crafted to evangelize on behalf of the post-WW2 "enlightened" variety of capitalism while dispelling any lingering spectres of Depression Era socialist agitation.

While popular mythology might lead one to think that the national consensus of the World War II period continued unbroken though the mid-1960's, the truth is that the immediate post-war years were a time of rampant labor unrest. There were a significant number of Americans who remembered the hardship of the Great Depression and who had given of themselves, overseas and on the homefront, during the war years who were determined not to be cut out of loop when it came to sharing the economic spoils of victory. The government's response to such agitation took the form of such draconian measures as President Truman's threat to draft striking transport workers in 1946 and the Taft-Hartley Act, which drastically curbed the power of organized labor.

The mythical and much cited prosperity of the 1950's was an artificial construct built on a foundation of Keynesian economic policies, government subsidized defense spending, a labor shortage, and the efficient application of planned obsolescence to the field of consumer goods -- a short-term balancing act which turned out to be unsustainable in the long run. To get to that point of hothoused (and unequal) prosperity, some socio-economic panel-beating had to be done, most notably through the cynically directed hysteria of the Red Scare and Cold War brinksmanship, but on a less shrill note in the pages of this comic story, as well.

When Mr. Morris, the very FDR-like owner of radio station WHIZ, embarks on a tour of Europe, he leaves the management of his business in the hands of Jason Cox, a individual whose hook nose and pencil-thin mustache came straight from central casting's "shifty character" drawer. Armed with the power of attorney, Cox implements a whole raft of workplace changes. Wages are rolled back, infrastructure and maintenance budgets are slashed, and payrolls moved to a biweekly schedule.

While the business press lauds Cox's "visionary leadership," boy reporter Bill Batson suspects something fishy behind his behavior. Hoping to get to the bottom of things, Billy transforms himself into Captain Marvel, the World's Mightiest Shop Steward, and confronts Cox...

"It's simple capitalism, Captain. You don't have anything against capitalism do you? Your costume does have a lot of red in it..."
Fear of being labeled a godless pinko who hates America and Baby Jesus forces Marvel to stay his hand, so he zips off to Pyramid Investment Corporation's various holdings to see if there really are resources to exploit, virgin wilderness to despoil, and rightfully elected governments to overthrow.

The diamonds, uranium, and oil are present at the sites though the portfoilo had the locations mixed up. A chastened Marvel returns to apologize to Cox for his lack of faith, only to be met by a hail of bullets from two of Cox's business associates. As it turns out, Cox had been moonlighting as the manager of Pyramid even as he diverted funds to the firm as financial manager of WHIZ. (Thank you, financial industry deregulation!)

Not realizing that the mineral investments were actually on the level, Cox's plan was to fleece the station for all it was worth before fleeing with his suitcase full of ill-gotten (but entirely legal, according to revised SEC rules) gains. Marvel wastes no time in giving Fortune Magazine's "Outstanding Executive of 1950" a good thrashing and a stern, yet confusing, lecture...

"'Mixed message?' Whatever do you mean?"
With Cox sent up the river (to a minimum security country club) and Mr. Morris back from Europe, WHIZ returns to its harmonious state as an ideal example of "social contract" capitalism in action...

...until the firm's stocks are downgraded due to Morris's largesse, causing the investors to depose Morris as CEO and sell the station to a national media conglomerate, who promptly lay off most of the workforce and switch the format from local programming to nationally syndicated fare. Michael Savage's show now runs in Billy's old time slot.

Heartbreaking, I know, but you have to stay competitive in today's global economy. Plutus demands it.

The O'Jays - For the Love of Money (from Ship Ahoy, 1973) - Money and I have an open relationship. It comes and goes as it pleases and I enjoy it while it's around.

Lord Sitar - If I Were a Rich Man (from Lord Sitar, 1968) - Hey! There's a sitarist on the roof! (He'd better climb down before the wife sees him. She despises sitar music.)

The Flying Lizards - Money (That's What I Want) (from The Flying Lizards, 1980) - It's a means, not an end unto itself.

a grave condition

2008-07-09T19:15:00.000-04:00

Dr. West's Magical Revivification Formula^TM! Another fine product from the Romero Corporation, a Skeletal Family Company!

(Side effects may include a shambling gait, a slight rotting aroma, and an irrational craving for the flesh of the living. Should your skin split and slough off of your wet, gleaming skull, discontinue use immediately.)

Given the known limitations of the four-color printing process on cheap newsprint, perhaps photographic testimonals weren't the wisest method of marketing a skin care product, especially when the rictus-grinning models looked like they just stepped in from a community theater production of Carnival of Souls.

Zombina and The Skeletones - Nobody Likes You (When You're Dead) (from Taste the Blood of Zombina and The Skeletones, 2002) - Well, nobody that you would necessarily want to like you, that is.

Thirteen at Midnight - Skin Deep (from a 1983 single) - The Not-Quite-Human League.

Ode to a State of Granite

2008-07-08T16:35:00.004-04:00

Let us move to New Hampshire
And get back to nature
In a pre-fab McMansion
built on a clear-cut postage stamp.

Let us move to New Hampshire
Where vanity plates are cheap.
HOTMILF bolted to the bumper of your Ford Galaxy
and RONPAUL1 on my Escalade EXT.

Let us move to New Hampshire,
We will claim to be "independent,"
Make fun of Democrats,
and vote Republican.

Let us move to New Hampshire
Where the finer things can be found
Like fireworks, gun shops,
And cheap crystal meth.

Let us move to New Hampshire.
I will buy a Harley, go to Laconia
and play outlaw biker
instead of graying middle manager.

Let us move to New Hampshire
and be done with Taxachusetts
except for the two hour commute
to our jobs in Boston.

Let us move to New Hampshire.
If the gas prices should beggar us
If the I-95 gridlock devours our daylight hours
We can take comfort in not paying a sales tax.

The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu - It's Grim Up North (Radio Edit) (from a 1991 single) - A different Manchester and an entirely different breed of grimness await those brave enough to tread across the Bay State's northeastern border.

The radio edit lacks the full radiant and terrifying glory of the the full "Part 1" version of the techno/industrial masterpiece, but it still gets the job done rather nicely. The transition into Hubert Parry's hymn "Jerusalem" (based on William Blake's preface to Milton: A Poem) never fails to knock me on my ass with its sheer power. It's one of those instances of brilliance that elevates a good piece into something trancendentally awe-inspiring.

It also doesn't hurt that Blake, loony mystic that he was, has long been a favorite poet of mine....

I shall not cease from casual spite,
Nor shall my ire sleep in my hand,
Till we have built a saner world,
In New England's mean and bitter land.

it's just a passing phase

2008-07-07T18:15:00.000-04:00

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.

nothing I would change

2008-07-06T19:45:00.002-04:00

During the Spring 1993 semester, I composed a series of "morning poems" which took the form of doggerel glosses scribbled in the margins of my class notes. Only fourteen of the original set of nineteen poems have survived the passing of time; the other five have been lost to various purges, though it is possible that a revised complete set still dwells in the documents folder of my wife's old Packard Bell 386. (Not that I'm in a hurry to find out, as I think the incompleteness adds a certain air of mystery, a la lost silent films and classical texts.)

Of all the things I've written, the morning poems are the things I am proudest of, or rather "least embarrassed by" -- not because they're even remotely good, but because they lack the usual self-consciousness that marks my other written work.

Here's the first entry in the sequence:

Morning Poem #1

Again, my friend?
What could you possibly be thinking
In bringing such a crime against pastry
To the desk next to mine?

A danish, you say?
Nay, it is a coiled turd of dough
Scraped off the sidewalk
And glazed in sugar.

I was present
When the carcass pits were peeled open
And the skies over North Woburn turned ochre
With death's heady perfume.

That charnel house tang
Is balsam and lavender
To the smell of your so-called "danish."
Does your nose not function?

You laugh loudly
In response to a joke by your overpainted doll.
A constellation of soggy crumbs
Sprays from your lips.

My head is hurting.
Your gut must be hurting.
Do us both a favor next time.
Buy a donut instead.

I can't remember the context behind most of scribblings (though I know that the "FROM WHAT I HEARD SHE SHOWED UP LATE AND WAS SHITFACED" scrawled on one of my notebook pages refers to an ex-girlfriend), but still vividly recall my inspiration for the above poem.

It's about a fellow that used to sit next to me in my Intro to Symbolic Logic class. He looked like Huey Lewis with a shag haircut, and was fond of chewing foul-smelling danishes with his mouth open and whispering loudly to his girlfriend, who looked like she fell off the back of some meth dealer's Harley. I have no idea why I chose to vent my spleen though bad verse, but it started a trend of poesy that lasted right up until the end of finals.

Johnny Tillotson - Poetry in Motion (from All His Early Hits - And More, 1990) - "I was hoping for Elizabeth Bishop, but what I got was Sylvia Plath..."

a champion of fools

2008-07-05T21:15:00.001-04:00

A letter to the editor from the July 1983 issue of Blip ("The Video Games Magazine"):

A news item from the August 1983 issue of Blip:

Moebius - Video Soldier (from Video Soldier in a Radio War, 1982) - Martial chants for a digital age, an era when the battle lines were rendered in monochrome vectors set against featurless black voids and winning meant staving off inevitable oblivion for one more level.

(More on Moebius here.)

till that day love led them astray

2008-07-04T20:35:00.000-04:00

"If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." - Alexis de Tocqueville

Eh, it's nothing a little exceptionalism and a massive military arsenal can't fix, right?

Fred Hughes - Don't Let This Happen to Us (from a 1971 single, collected on Let's Boogaloo, Vol. 3, 2006) - The pinnacle of soul perfection.

The Avengers - The American in Me (from a 1979 12"; collected on The Avengers, 1983) - I'm angry because I still care.

never once gave it away

2008-07-03T20:45:00.001-04:00

From a bulk flyer that arrived in yesterday's mail:

I know the economy is going through a rough patch at the moment, but if it has started turning tricks for tenners then things are far worse than I previously thought. I suppose it had to find some way to pay for its nasty and destructive addiction to neoliberal policies.

"Hey, mister, are you looking for some free market action?"

"For real? How low are your interest rates, really?"

"As low as you want them to be."

"Uh, I'll pass. You look like you're about to collapse."

"Wait, mister! Don't go! I'll throw in some offshoring and privatization for free! Please! The World Bank will cut me if I don't bring him back some cash!"

Lou Reed - Walk on the Wild Side (from Transformer, 1972) - "Then I guess the subprime market had to crash/effective regulation would have helped that dash...."

energy can be directed

2008-07-02T15:45:00.000-04:00

Such as whether or not Mr. T really did eat your balls.
"Good enough" really is good enough for me most of the time. I am a man of simple tastes and few ambitions. Any penalties that my lack of competitive drive have incurred have been more than ameliorated by my sense of laid-back equanimity. It's when events disrupt my comfortable state of deliberate equilibrium that I get, well, whiny.

I was fine with the speed and performance of my current DSL service. It's easy to install and maintain, and hotswitching the router between PC and the Xbox can be done in a couple of minutes. Despite marketing propaganda's push to shame me as a narrow bandwith luddite, I've never been one to measure the size of my manhood in Mbps. The "bigger, badder, faster" mindset leads to things like Hummers, McMansions, and eventually total environmental and economic collapse.

For years I've been resisting the dinner-and-showertime robocalls from my ISP urging, nay browbeating, my wife and I to upgrade to FIOS. I didn't trust the pricing of the service, regardless of the front end deals offered. I had no desire to let some stanger into my house to screw around with the wiring. Most importantly, I definitely didn't want said stranger to fuck around with my carefully maintained computer and/or uploading company junkware onto it as part of some "special package."

Yet that's exactly what's going to happen tomorrow morning. Yeah, I know -- "Poor, poor Andrew having to suffer through the horror of having super high-speed internet service installed." It's still a pain in the ass, though, as I have to spend most of my day clearing space and cleaning the monumental clutter that has accumulated around my workstation over the past few years in order to give a person or persons unknown free access to my secret lair.

The Kings - Switchin' to Glide (from The Kings Are Here, 1980) - Does not include new wave installation surcharge, hooky parts and labor, or any applicable local taxes on synth usage.

Clarence Reid - If It Was Good Enough for Daddy (from Running Water, 1973) - Bring on the punch cards, rotary phones, and heavy-ass funk!

(If there's no post tomorrow, just assume something went catastrophically wrong.)