Here's a question:

Why's it called "Shonen Jump"?

I know that "shonen" is Japanese for "young boy", and jumping is, well, jumping...so is this big, setting-the-world-on-fire manga collection actually named "jumping boy" or "young boy jump"? And why should I care anyway?

At the risk of really sounding nitpicky and unhip, this is one reason of many why I just can't seem to embrace manga- the awkward-sounding, loses-something-in-the-translation nature of the whole genre. I look and see a host of stories with subject matter such as transformer-style robots, samurai warriors, teenage soap operas, big hyperexaggerated gladiatorial arena-fight style sagas, sometimes all at once, and I wonder- is this the model to which Western comics should aspire? Leaving aside the actual cost-effectiveness argument (John Jakala's already-classic comparison can't be disputed) is it really all that much better than what we're generally being served up by America and the rest of the world? Or is it just different, and therefore somehow better by inference?

And before you begin to flame me, calling me an idiot and a Luddite or something- I'm not necessarily putting down manga, don't get me wrong, but I'm reading a hell of a lot about it lately and I'm beginning to feel like I did long ago when all the good music magazines and cool people I knew were championing punk music...and I just didn't get it. Perhaps I'm not seeing forest for trees or something like that. I feel like there's something wonderful going on and I'm not able to see it, kinda like the dude in Mallrats that kept staring at the picture, trying to see the sailboat, and everyone kept walking by and pointing it out to him. It's reminding me of when I used to get in discussions with my hair-metal loving friend, Keith, back in the late Eighties and early Nineties. I just couldn't tell them apart, musically- to me, Warrant, Winger, Skid Row, Dokken, Extreme, Tesla, Poison, Motley Crue, and so on sounded exactly alike, and that's one reason why I couldn't get into them. I just didn't give a damn because there wasn't anything going on there to engage me- nothing that made them distinctive or interesting to me. Keith swore up and down that there were differences, big ones, and he couldn't believe that I couldn't hear them. And I'm thinking that all the manga enthusiasts out there are like good old Keith, and once again I'm just not hearing or seeing it.

Or maybe I just think too much. Anyway, why "Shonen Jump"? Is that the best title they could think of?

Even though I suspect that everyone that cares already knows, Christopher Butcher has the new Previews Review up. Having just found this column, thanks to my other comics blogging homies, I find it a fun read. Hopefully you will too.

Mr. Butcher has a blog, too- go here to check it out.

"... we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."

Paul Bowles (12/30/1910 – 11/18/1999)
US writer, composer, and traveler

Interesting quote, on the anniversary of the death of its quoter. Found at Born-Today.com.

B.P.R.D.: THERES SOMETHING UNDER MY BED
CINNAMON: EL CICLO #4
HUMAN TARGET #4
LEGION SECRET FILES 3003 (maybe)
LUCIFER #44
DAREDEVIL #54
LOVE & ROCKETS VOL 2 #9

This is what I'll be getting Thursday according to the new Diamond shipping list. Gotta drive to Louisville to meet with a career search firm tomorrow, and there's no way I'm doing 160 miles north then 70 miles south round trip in one day.

Despite the fact that money's been tight, I've managed to pick up an occasional CD here and there, and here's what I've been listening to lately.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to place an order with Columbia House, because they were running a buy one get three free deal. I figured I'd try to take advantage of this by getting four two-cd sets, three for $3.49 (the usual shipping and hadling costs) and one for $27, and wonder of wonders, I was able to! I'll pay for them eventually, I promise. I go back a ways with the House, and they're pretty good about letting you take your time paying them back, in my experience anyway.

First, after watching an chapter of Ken Burns Jazz on PBS a while back, I got really interested in the work of Dave Brubeck. I had only heard one of his pieces before, the "Unsquare Dance", in a Music Appreciation class at Western. I probably had heard other things, but didn't know what they were or who they were by at the time. Brubeck was a real pioneer and legend in jazz, especially for his use of unconventional time signatures, which earned him a lot of scorn early on, it seems. Anyway, I thought that if I could find some sort of fairly comprehensive collection of his work then I'd get it someday, and Sony/Columbia solved that problem for me by issuing its Essential Dave Brubeck. It's got most of the stuff that people usually associate with Brubeck, such as "Time Out" and "Blue Rondo A La Turk", and is consistently enjoyable throughout. It seems to offer as good an introduction to the man's work as you could hope to find, and while I'm sure there's more out there that's just as good, and I hope to find out someday, this will do for now. That darn Ken Burns- first he got me interested in Miles, Coltrane, and Billie Holliday- now he's got me listening to Dave Brubeck too.

Another in the Essential series that I'd had my eye on for a long time now was the Essential Sly and the Family Stone, another two-CD set that features almost everything you could want to hear by this great, groundbreaking funk-rock outfit. I've loved the music of Sly and his Family since I first heard their Greatest Hits album at age 11, and I began to hanker after a good Sly collection back when I had no turntable to listen to my SatFS albums on, and listened to CDs in my truck and at my job. Finally, this one came out, and while I wish it had a little less from There's A Riot Goin' On and perhaps a cut or two more from later, less prestigious releases like High On You and Heard You Missed Me, Now I'm Back, it's still a great set. I even discovered a tune that I hadn't paid much attention to, "Time For Livin' ", which originally appeared on Sly's first real flop record, Small Talk, and I don't own hence my unfamiliarity with the song. It would have been nice to have had some liner notes as well. Anyway, I don't have a job or a truck with a CD deck in it anymore, but I manage to stick it on at home occasionally anyway and "dance to the music". And you gotta love "Hot Fun in the Summertime", one of the most evocative and gorgeous songs I've ever heard.

Continuing my haul from the House, I also got Rhino's reissue of Randy Newman's 1974 masterpiece Good Old Boys, which came out containing a bonus disc of demos Newman did, titled Johnny Cutler's Birthday. Those familiar with Newman only through his film songs like "You've Got a Friend in Me" might be a bit surprised by the acerbic wit he displays in this song cycle about people from the South, and the perception of same. Beautifully produced and orchestrated, and featuring the infamous "Rednecks", which is not what it seems- or is it; the lovely and pathetic "Marie", the elegant "Louisiana 1927" (which I remember seeing him perform on Saturday Night Live, hence my purchase of this record long ago); "Mr. President (Have Pity on the Working Man)", which boasts tricky time signatures in its orchestration, and a personal favorite "A Wedding in Cherokee County", which casts its hillbilly subjects in a strangely sympathetic light. Plus it's funny as all get out. Good Old Boys is a dark, and darkly humorous record but it always holds up. I've been wishing for a copy on CD for quite some time now.

The last CD in my package was the most recent of the Bob Dylan Bootleg series, Bob Dylan Live 1975: The Rolling Thunder Revue. Taken from the legendary shows Bob played in between Blood on the Tracks and Desire, and arguably his last really fertile creative period, these shows were most notable for the musicians who backed and traveled with Bob, gypsy caravan-style- the likes of former Bowie sideman (and Bacardi Show Hero) Mick Ronson, a young T-Bone Burnett, Joan Baez, a enigmatic fiddler named Scarlet Rivera (who recorded a dull solo album inn 1977 that I used to own), Byrd-man Roger McGuinn, Ramblin' Jack Elliott (notably -and regrettably- absent from the recorded and filmed proceedings), Joni Mitchell and others. The whole thing had a circus-like atmosphere (or, as the liner notes put it, an "old-timey medicine show") and was filmed for posterity, with much of it making up the 1975 movie Renaldo and Clara, which I've never seen but am told it's almost unwatchable. Anyway, having only seen one clip from the movie, that of Dylan, in ludicrous white pancake makeup, singing "Tangled Up in Blue" as well as watching an edited TV special taken from this tour called Hard Rain (and being totally unimpressed, to the point where I still, to this day, have never owned a copy of the live album of the same name which was subsequently released), I was curious about this release, wondering perhaps if there was more to that whole extravaganza than I had previously heard, especially given that Ronson was involved. And my verdict? Well, it's better than I remember, but not as good as I had hoped. Ronson provides some meaty chords and I can slightly detect his influence in the arrangements, but mostly they barrel through each and every Dylan composition like the devil was chasing them with very little nuance or subtlety- kinda like his more recent tours, come to think of it. Dylan is in terrible voice as well, bellowing the words very loudly and off-key like he couldn't hear himself on the monitors. Still, the songs are so damn good in most cases that they survive the roughhouse treatment and shine through just the same. I've even come to like a song I had no use for previously, an early version of "Romance in Durango". There's also a bonus DVD of that very same "Tangled Up in Blue" performance that I've seen a thousand times and another, alternate version of Desire standout track "Isis", with a full band which we get to see about halfway through. It's a pretty good rendition, but it's missing the first few minutes and Bob is given to ridiculous theatrical gestures throughout most of it while wearing his whiteface. Oy. One thing that came from this event, and I'm really happy it did: after the Rolling Thunder tour ended, Roger McGuinn enlisted Ronson to produce and play on his next record, 1975's Cardiff Rose, which used most of the Rolling Thunder musicians as well and is a huge favorite of mine.

Mrs. B and the youngest Bacardi Offspring went shopping the other day, and came back home with some Christmas CDs, one of which, to my surprise, was The Beach Boys: Ultimate Christmas- a recent release which marries that well-known-and-loved 1964 Christmas album with the band's subsequent efforts at holiday fare, and I being a relatively recent convert to the Church of Brian Wilson hadn't heard a lot of it. There are numerous alternate takes of Beach Boys Christmas Album tracks as well but I was really chuffed, as our British friends say, to finally hear obscurities like "Child of Winter" "Winter Symphony" and "Santa's Got an Airplane", which are not as accomplished as the famous BBCA cuts but are still tuneful and fun. The other one they got was Santa Claus Lane by the newest teen-pop sensation (Disney's own) Hillary Duff which is slick and produced to a tee, but is still very catchy and upbeat and (when I'm in the mood) listenable. Don't tell anybody, OK?

Another new blog, freshly linked to: Dave Intermittent. I happen to agree with his position re: the current manga infatuation and its effect on Western comics. I think it's a stretch to assume that the crowd, and I'm speaking in general here, that goes nuts for manga will get curious about the offerings from DC or Marvel, no matter how much the latter may try to imitate the former. Also, yes, the success of manga will most likely ensure shelf space for all stripes of comics, but if they don't sell they won't stay there long, I'm sure of that. Of course, this is only my opinion, and I've been known to be wrong before.

Another comics blogging Dave. What is, as they say, up wit dat? And this one links to all my comics blogging homies but me!

Got several things to write about, and no energy or time to write about them. I've got one draft which I hope to finish tomorrow, on music I've purchased lately. I also considered doing a "Previews Review", after reading John Jakala's observation about the perceived lack of enthusiasm among those who do that sort of thing on a regular basis, because there are a few upcoming titles that are interesting to me, like My Faith in Frankie and New Frontier, among others...but I don't buy Previews, so that would be difficult. I used to buy one every month, but the damn things pile up. Still, not having my source material or a particularly trenchant viewpoint has never stopped me before, so we'll see, I guess.

I suppose I could put my two cents worth in about the Epic fiasco at Marvel, but all I can think of is the old saw about lying down with dogs and getting up with fleas. Hardly an earthshaking insight.

I should also add my voice to the swelling chorus of hallelujahs over the release of Gilbert Hernandez' Palomar in collected format...but I won't. I've been buying Love and Rockets forever and a day now, but it's always been for Jaime's work, not Gilbert's. Don't get me wrong- I recognize that Gilbert is a superior craftsman and has amassed an impressive body of work, perhaps even more significant and important than his brother's...but his art and writing style just don't engage me like his sibling's. That said, Palomar, or to be specific Heartbreak Soup is, to me, by far the most interesting tale of 'Beto's fictional town, so if you don't share my particular prejudice, then go buy. Hell, even if you do, go buy...why should you be as myopic as I am?

I see where the next Jingle Belle GN is going to be released on New Year's Eve and not the end of November. Bummer. Why bother releasing a Jingle Belle book after Christmas? Maybe by then, though, I'll have a job and can afford the 12 bucks to buy it.

Watched the latest Justice League last night on Cartoon Network, an all-star extravaganza featuring Tegan's fictional amor Aquaman, acting kinda bitchy and thickheaded like he tends to do in these shows, along with Doctor Fate, done here as interestingly as he was in the Superman: The Animated Series episode several years ago. Solomon Grundy was on hand as well, sporting the Hulk-level strength which they've seen fit to write him with, and further developments in the ongoing filling-out of the Hawkgirl character. A while back they hinted around that she was sweet on Green Lantern, and this episode casts her as an atheist, as Thanagarians apparently are in this version. So, naturally, we get a not-so-subtle pro-faith message at the end, but it wasn't too annoying. This eppy felt a little padded, but the action was fast-paced and fun and Superman, yes, Superman got some funny lines.

Thanks to Dave Fiore for the heads-up about a great blog all about old films, called Michael's Movie Palace. This writer, whose last name I don't see, writes thoughtfully and intelligently, in extended capsule form, about films from bygone days that he's seen recently. Of course you all know what a total TCM junkie I am these days, so this sort of thing is right up my alley and I anticipate spending several hours reading his archives. If I could suggest one thing, perhaps a search function...!

One film I saw the other night that I'd bet he's reviewed was Becky Sharp, a 1935 period piece, previously filmed as Vanity Fair, that starred attractive 30's star Miriam Hopkins as the title character, a scheming little conniver of common birth in 19th-century Waterloo-era England (everyone's terrified of Napoleon there, so the film would have you believe) who is determined to be rich and affluent by whatever means necessary. It also has the distinction of being the first Technicolor film, and the print TCM showed was restored- when I first saw it I feared it had been colorized! The film itself was a bit creaky, but fun with supporting roles by Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Nigel (Dr. Watson) Bruce.

That's it for tonight...looks like I found some energy after all, dunnit? Hopefully more tomorrow.

I made a button! Ain't it purty? Hope Adam Warren or Dark Horse Comics doesn't sue me.

Time once again for Johnny B's Fearless NFL Pigskin Prognostications!

Last week: 8-6. Overall: 82-47, .635 . Kinda rushed for time today, so no comments. You'll get over it.

Tennessee over Jacksonville
St. Louis over Chicago
Buffalo over Houston
Baltimore over Miami
Carolina over Washington
Arizona over Cleveland
Philadelphia over the New York Giants
Cincinnati over Kansas City (that's right)
Atlanta over New Orleans (you heard me)
New York Jets over Indianapolis (whoo-three straight upsets!)
Denver over San Diego
Minnesota over Oakland
Tampa Bay over Green Bay (if they lose this, I'll never take the Bucs again)
Seattle over Detroit (ditto for the Seahawks)
New England over Dallas
San Francisco over Pittsburgh

For entertainment purposes only. Bet at your own risk. The Bacardi Show will accept no responsibility for any losses incurred by using these picks as a guide.

BEST OF THE WEEK

COMICS REVIEWS!
What I bought and what I thought, week of November 12!

GOTHAM CENTRAL 13
Everything that worked so well last issue is still in effect in part two. Superheroics are kept to a bare minimum (and I gotta say that Michael Lark draws a hell of a good Batman, especially in that two page spread), and the focus is right where it should be, on the various members of the GCPD. Minor complaint: sniping just doesn't seem to be the Joker's style somehow, but it's still early in the story so we'll see. A

JACK STAFF 4
Maybe it's because of the delay between issues, and maybe it's partially because Paul Grist once again indulges in his old shifting-back-and-forth-in-time-abruptly-without-warning tricks, but this big epic story he's concocted seems convoluted and meandering compared to his past work. That said, we get a few more pieces of the puzzle this time out, and it's cleverly illustrated as always. If you're going to challenge and frustrate your readers, you'd better give them something interesting to look at. A-

FABLES 19
In which we get a dream sequence, pertinent questions asked and answered, some relationship issues explored, an interesting confrontation, and a subtle anti-abortion message. Then we get a kicker ending which is doubly pleasurable for those of us who enjoyed the Last Castle one shot of a month or so ago. For once, the Buckingham/Leialoha art team is up to the challenge as well. So far, so good. A-

THE WALKING DEAD 2
Often, those who have grown jaded and cynical about the superhero comic will comment on a particularly well-done example of same by saying that it was "well done, for a superhero comic". After I had finished this second issue of this most recent webcritic's darling title, my first thought was that this was "well done, for a zombie story". As a story in and of itself, it's not exactly fresh- you can easily spot its influences from The Stand to (of course) the original Night of the Living Dead, with perhaps a smidgen of, God help us, The Postman and even DC's Y: The Last Man, which this beats all to hell. And it manages to transcend its secondhand bent by not getting all pretentious and wordy, instead letting artist Tony Moore carry the show with his lean, no-frills Steve Dillon meets John Findlay style. Also, big points for that rarest of rarities in most zombie stories, a happy ending- which I'd like to think represents a willingness to deviate from the expected on the part of heretofore-unknown-to-me writer Robert Kirkman. We'll see, I guess. In the meantime, I await issue #1 from another store, which should come in next week, and I'll go from there. A-

H-E-R-O 10
Whaddaya know. The Joker pops up here as well, in this pretty good finale to the story of likeable loser/wannabe supervillian Tony Finch and his encounter with the H Dial. Also, we get the return, apparently, of one of the dial's previous owners gone bad...a twist which I'm not sure I'm gonna like too much. I also had a small problem with the climactic event in this one- and here be spoilers- when the heck did Finch get time to attach a thermite bomb to the dial? And where did he get one on such short notice? A-

LEGION 26
Darkseid, the red herring in the previous multi-issue extravaganza, is now introduced (in somewhat diminshed form) in the new multi issue extravaganza, which also throws in Superboy for good measure along with an ersatz Justice League of some sort. If you're a Legion fan, you'll find this another gripping chapter in the ongoing tribulations of the 30th Century super-team. If not, you'll wonder what all the fuss is about but maybe, just maybe, you'll be curious about what's coming up. And for what it's worth, I liked Superboy's black t-shirt costume better than his classic duds. B+

ULTIMATE SIX 4
Lots of shouting back and forth, mostly between Nick Fury and the President of the US (if this is supposed to be Bush, he's a little bit too hyperactive and overstimulated, methinks), along with much breaking of glass and crashing and flashing electrical displays and grim, terse dialogue and closeups, and everything that can possibly be done to approximate the modern action thriller except with superheroes, a worthy enough goal I suppose. Still, this is well written, if somewhat low-key, and artists Hairsine and Miki continue to do their best Bryan Hitch. B+

1602 4
I must confess to the vague stirrings of interest in the ongoing story of Daredevil and the Black Widow- or their doppelgangers anyway- especially in how the heck DD survived the fall from the bridge. Otherwise, this is mostly Gaiman at his most dreary and pretentious, and the gimmicky art is still an annoyance. Again, nice cover. C+

JSA 54
Good thing Thanksgiving is coming, because we've just been given a big fat turkey. This would-be fun and clever "down-time" type story falls flat in just about every conceivable way, from its stilted dialogue, contrived dramatics and unfunny jokes (the one gag that works is the Formerly Known as... style appearance of the two sorcerers at the dinner table) to its stiff, clunky and poorly porportioned art, full of awkward poses and sideways grimaces. As you may know, I've been on the bubble with this book for a long time, and every time I get ready to drop it they come up with a good enough story to keep me interested. This one may have been the last straw. Turkey in the straw, get it? This ham-fisted tale gets a D, and they should be thankful it's not lower!

Oh my God.

Thanks to Mark Evanier via ¡Journalista!, I have found something that I've looked for with a million Google searches: A Jerry Grandenetti website!

When I was at that impressionable stage of my childhood, when I first discovered that I could string together pencil lines in something that approximated the human figure mostly from copying Kirby and Ditko pages, there was another whose work I saw in Creepy and Eerie magazines, doing some really hallucinogenic-looking, highly expressionistic stuff, unlike anything I'd ever seen before. I wanted to try to draw like that, but I couldn't copy that stuff, no way. This artist's work came from somewhere else uniquely inside him. The artist's name was Jerry Grandenetti, a former Eisner assistant (I later learned) and I really loved his work not only on the Warren titles, but later as an illustrator for DC comics, especially on The Spectre. Of course, as time went by, his work grew less and less idiosyncratic and more lackluster, which reflects (I'm sure) DC's apathy towards his work as well as his own apathy at plugging away on such fare as The Green Team and Prez. Like Evanier says, he went into advertising and then into obscurity, a lot of it self-imposed. Our loss.

I've been hoping to see the man get his due for a long, long time now, and this website (which I haven't had the chance to explore as of yet) is a great first step. If you're reading, Mark, thanks for the informative spotlight on JG, and thanks for linking to that site!

Update Well, having looked the site over, I'm not disappointed, but I wish that there had been some examples of the work that kicked my ass so hard back in the day. Instead, all the art reproduced is stuff Grandenetti's been doing recently- some of it is outstanding and some of it is eh. But there are a couple of nice text pieces, including an informative biography, plus you can commission art from him! If I could only afford it I'd send the email right now. Maybe get him to do a Green Team, or even Uncle Creepy or Cousin Eerie.

Perhaps this should go on the Free Beer! page, but it's been forever and a day since I posted anything that the Bacardi Show Political Correspondent has sent me...

Well, nobody has ever wrecked the Bill of Rights as he has. Other presidents have dodged around it, but no president before this one has so put the Bill of Rights at risk. No one has proposed preemptive war before. And two countries in a row that have done no harm to us have been bombed.

From an LA Weekly interview with Gore Vidal about the Bush administration.

Also, a page which features information on those who have died in the Iraqi conflict. Quite sobering.

This is the cover of Time magazine the week I was born. How appropriate. If my Mother had read this before I was conceived...

Anyway, you can go here to find yours. Thanks to Tegan for pointing it out to me!

BSBdG's go out today to Neil Young, 58.

Favorite album, out of many candidates: 1974's moody masterpiece On The Beach. Underrated: 1986's techno-rock Landing on Water.

... there are too many mediocre fucking comic books and you really need to stop buying them.

This is the quote that's making the rounds, by one Christopher Butcher, who writes a column highlighting (and holding forth on, as well) upcoming comics and trades for Previews. Of course, my first reaction was "well, why don't you let me be the judge of that", then I recalled the old saying about opinions and what they're like, and how everybody has one. But then I decided to actually read the column in which that statement appeared, and found that I enjoyed it very much- and not only that, I agreed with him on several of his observations as well. Kinda disagreed with him on Gotham Central, where the juxtaposition of real life and superheroics don't give me as much of a mental hernia as it does some, but he's right on the money about Batgirl: Year One, which I think was one of the best things to come from the mainstream this year, and I think I'll have to check out Sei: Death and Legend. And while I'm thinking so much, I think I'll have to start reading his column every month or week or whenever it comes out. I'm also feeling more conflicted than ever about continuing to purchase JSA on a regular basis...

Credit where credit is due dept.: I think this quote was first noted by that notorious rabble rouser Alan David Doane.


Also, for some reason I have that Zappa/Beefheart thing from Bongo Fury in my brain: "Sam with the showing scalp flat top/Particular about the point-it-made."

Quick note to David Fiore and those who commented on the Alex Ross thing:

Dave, my intention was more to criticize the "superheroes should not be portrayed in such a iconic fashion" notion than it was to brand you as some sort of Nazi sympathizer! So if that's the impression I gave, I apologize. The Riefenstahl comparison is a valid one, no doubt about it, but I just don't think that's what Ross is all about. As I recall, Orson Welles used that trick a few times as well.

I also didn't know (although I'm not surprised) that this had been a hot topic on the Comics Journal Messboard, on which I'm registered but never visit. I'll have to check out the argument sometime.

I'm back, and I have good news. Gregg Easterbrook's Tuesday Morning Quarterback column has returned, on a football blog-type site called FootballOutsiders.com.

Go here to read it. For some reason, the formatting of the page causes the text to extend beyond the boundaries of my browser window, which is a pain in the ass. I'm sure all the rest of you, who don't use IE5 on a Mac, will have no trouble. Grumble grumble. Credit where credit is due dept: I was pointed to the new TMQ by Jim Henley. Domo arigato, Henley-san.

I'm considering running for President of these United States, and to do so I will establish a third party ("a WILD party", like the lyrics to the old Alice Cooper song "Elected" said). I shall call it the Free Beer party, and will promise free beer to everyone if I'm elected. Who's gonna vote against free beer? I'll probably have a Paypal button in the links box at right for campaign donations, and might even start another blog, since all the legitimate candidates have one. So whaddaya think? Who should be my running mate? I wonder if Renee Zellweger's up for it...?

Maybe if I get elected President I won't have to job search anymore. I recently blew, I mean spent $68 on one of those resume distribution services, and so far have reaped an underwhelming return on my investment. I've also been Google searching for Graphic Arts/Printing recruiters that I can solicit on my own, and have actually had some nibbles today. I went to a local temp agency today as well, thinking they could get me on at some factory nearby, to tide me over until something more substantial comes along. I worked on a factory floor for approximately 7 months in the Spring and Summer of 1979 as a press takeaway at Donnelley, and hated every minute of it. Not that I'm too good for this kind of work, but after 25 years I've gotten set in my ways and don't look forward to doing this sort of thing. And this concludes my job search news for this week. You know what I'd like to get into? Coloring comics. To do so you need a more than passing familiarity with Photoshop, which I have in spades...I'd just need someone to show me the ropes and techniques. Anybody out there have an in with any of these Liquid! type concerns?

I've seen three films over the last few days: The Score, which stars Robert DiNiro, excellent as always in his shuffling, aw-shucks kinda way; Edward Norton, as another hotshot youngblood who doesn't know as much as he thinks he does; and Marlon Brando, who is grotesquely obese and doesn't speak his lines as much as he does wheeze them. DiNiro is a safecracker par excellence who gets talked into doing one last big score for his buddy Brando, and gets an unwanted partner in Norton. The heist itself is a slick, entertaining sequence which employs dubious physics but still works, and there's a neat twist ending. Plus, DiNiro runs a jazz club, and that looked so cool that now I want to open a jazz club. Beats working on an assembly line... The Score also boasts cameos by Mose Allison and Cassandra Wilson.

I also saw Ghost Ship, an amalgam of 13 Ghosts, House on Haunted Hill, and Titanic about a group of salvagers that encounters a- that's right, you guessed it- haunted ship, which starts out promisingly but devolves into a fairly standard special FX-fest, leaving no cliche unturned right down to (beware, spoiler here) the Demon Menace at the End, an old pet peeve of mine when used in comics. And of course, we get another Spooky Little Girl, the bugboo of choice for unimaginative filmmakers these days. I suppose this is a passble time waster if you can't find anything else to watch, but don't think too hard when you do.

Finally, I caught the cable premiere of the second Harry Potter film, ...and the Chamber of Secrets. I've never read a single Potter novel, and I kinda doubt that I would even if I was the target age...I would think that 12 year old me would have found them somewhat juvenile. Still, I found the first film clever and often charming, if a bit overlong, with imaginative situations and effects- and the sequel retains the imagination and fine effects but falls somewhat short of its predecessor in the clever and charming area. The script is boring, often illogically dot-to-dot and annoyingly contrived- for example, there's a showdown between Harry and his rival in Slitherin House, which started as a self-defense lesson but somehow devolves into a grudge match between not only Harry and the slimy blond kid but the two professors involved as well. I mean geez- someone could have been hurt! What were the profs thinking? Doesn't matter, because the scene is only an excuse for throwing in some special effects, and revealing that Harry somehow knows how to speak to snakes. There's a reprise of the first film's entertaining Quidditch match, but this time it only serves to show that someone's trying to harm Harry for some unknown reason. The performances are all fine, for the most part (even though poor Richard Harris is almost too frail to make it through his scenes), but the stitches in the patchwork script show a bit too obviously, and that kept me from having as much fun as I did with the first film. And if they ever have a special Jar Jar Binks Oscar® for Most Annoying Character in a Major Motion Picture, then 2002's winner would have been the self-abusive elf, Nobby, who does look like Washington Redskins coach Steve Spurrier, just like Easterbrook says!

Oh, by the way- there's a new Christgau Consumer Guide up at the Village Voice website. In case you're interested.

No Navy NCIS tonight, gosh darn it! No Pauley for me. Hey- maybe she'd be my running mate!

I'm about halfway through that Essential Tomb of Dracula collection, and so far my early impressions are first how overblown, corny and melodramatic nearly all the dialogue is! Even the great Archie Goodwin succumbed to this in his two-issue stint. Everyone goes around stating the obvious, in the most florid fashion, and making dire pronouncements- and Dracula comes across as an arrogant, egotistical blowhard. Actually, he came across that way for the majority of the run, even with Marv Wolfman. Early on, it seems no one could decide what direction the book should go in- Hammer-style period horror, or modern-day vampire stories with SF leanings. When Wolfman took over with issue 7, he eventually tightened up the dialogue and went firmly in the latter direction, to his credit. I'm also struck by how fast-paced these issues are- Dracula, Frank Drake, Rachel Van Helsing and her group hurtle from one dire situation to the other in breakneck fashion, with little or no pauses between storylines. Say what you will about ToD, it was never boring!

Speaking of boring, I'm just about rambled out so I'll finish for now. Hopefully, back tomorrow with more...stuff.

Vote for Free Beer!

Music today: Lindsey Buckingham-Out of the Cradle; Marshall Crenshaw-Mary Jean and Nine Others, XTC-English Settlement, Little Feat, The Bootleg Series Vol.5-Bob Dylan Live 1975: The Rolling Thunder Revue and The Posies-Frosting on the Beater.

Gonna ramble now, about different stuff.

Good news for those of us who are fans of Bill Willingham's Fables, straight from the man himself, courtesy of Graeme McMillian. Thanks for pointing it out; I rarely visit Willingham's page even though I've linked to it.

In fact, this is a big reason why I couldn't have the same kind of blog that Graeme, Dirk Deppey and others have- I just don't visit all the myriad news sites all that often. In fact, I just viewed a site this morning that informed me that Bad Girls, a title that I (and about a half dozen other people nationwide, apparently) buy had been cut back from a six-issue miniseries to five issues due to poor sales. Shame- that's one less Darwyn Cooke cover. Also I saw a review of a title that looked pretty interesting, called Three Strikes from Oni Press that I wasn't even aware of. I don't know if it's come out yet, or anything. According to the Oni website, this first issue was set to come out back in April! This is why I'm always missing out on first issues of interesting titles and having to go to great lengths and expense to find them after getting interested after issue 3 or somesuch. Oh well. Maybe there will be a trade I can't afford.

Alex Ross recieved such unanimous praise for his hyper-realistic, iconic portrayal of superheroes a few years ago, and is still so highly regarded, that it should come as no surprise that there's a strong backlash-type sentiment among many. One example that I'm a little dubious about is Dave Fiore's inferred comparison of Ross to Leni Riefenstahl, whose filmmaking cast the Third Reich in a heroic light, on the occasion of the publication of the hardcover collection Mythology: The DC Comics Art of Alex Ross. The thinking behind this seems to be that it's somehow wrong or misguided to portray super hero characters in such a reverential light, that perhaps Ross is explicitly trying to inspire literal hero worship or even (I'm assuming) an even more sinister agenda. I don't really think Ross has such a specious intent; I think he's simply able to convey that sense of wonder that all of us (I assume) felt when we first encountered the super hero comic, especially as realized by those most iconic of comic book artists, Jack Kirby and arguably Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson. A case in point is my favorite panel from Kurt Busiek and Ross's Marvels, which depicts Giant-Man (a favorite character of mine when I was a child) in a ground-up perspective shot striding between buildings, and people looking up in amazement. This appeals to me on several levels- as the child who grooved on ol' High-Pockets, as the wannabe artist who admires how this perspective shot accurately depicts the awe and wonder of seeing a 15 foot tall man, and if I'm being manipulated into regarding this spandex-clad funnybook character (contemptable in itself by some standards, I suppose) as somehow heroic and admirable, and "cool" in that 12-year-old sense, and for some reason that's "wrong", then I suppose I'm guilty as charged.

I've always seen Ross's meticulous painting style as a logical extension of work by people like Gray Morrow, Wally Wood or Alex Toth, who depicted these costumed people in a more realistic (in Toth's case, anyway, highly stylized) fashion. One of the best things about Morrow's art, in particular, was how he bothered to draw boots and gloves like real boots and gloves, for example. I think many readers, after seeing these sort of depictions always had an urge to see this realism taken to the next level, and Ross came along and served that wish quite well.

Myself, I like Ross' work very much, and I like to think I'm a rational adult- but I never have included him on my list of favorites, and if I did it would be in the lower reaches of the list. His art is amazing on a lot of levels, but there's a dry studiedness about it that keeps me from totally embracing it. So this is not coming from your typical Ross fanatic. But geez, Dave- if you don't like Ross' art that's perfectly fine...this is America and all that. But to ascribe implied fascism to his work is a bit extreme and I honestly don't think that's what he's all about. And Dave, lest you think I'm calling you out or something, I totally agreed with the rest of your post about Claremont's X-Men.

I guess I gotta cut this ramble short. I still want to write about more stuff, like good ol' Chuck Barris always used to say on the Gong Show, but it will have to wait till later.

Sayonara for now!

More BSBdG's to send out today. It's odd how sometimes the most interesting people share a birthday...

First up alphabetically, Marshall Crenshaw, 50 today. 50? Anyway, I've loved Crenshaw's music since he hit the scene with his landmark self-titled debut back in 1982. That album is as close to a perfect example of what whiteboy pop should be as we'll ever get in our lifetime. Subsequent releases, though, disappointed both aesthetically and sales-wise so Marshall never really had the career many envisioned for him. Still, he's still around, recording and touring, and you never know... Favorite MC album: of course, 1982's Marshall Crenshaw. Underrated: 1987's Good Evening.


Blowing out candles with Crenshaw is XTC's principal singer and songwriter Andy Partridge, also 50 today! Ever since picking up Skylarking in 1986, I've loved the engaging Beach Boys-meets-Robert Burns sound of the Swindon's finest. Not that Colin Moulding hasn't contributed several great songs, but Partridge's particular ethos kinda dominates. Many like the earlier, New Wave-ish XTC, and there are some great tunes there as well, but I'm more of a fan of the stuff from English Settlement on. Favorite XTC album: the aforementioned 1986 Todd Rundgren-produced Skylarking. Underrated: 1992's Nonsvch.

Click on the images to go to pertinent websites.

Well, I'm not as smart as Alan David Doane, it seems. I took the Super IQ test at Emode, and here's my score:

David, your Super IQ score is 120

The way you think about things makes you a Practical Wordsmith. This means you are practical, detail-oriented, and know a good thing when you see it. Your thinking is clear and your reality is accurate. You are also highly organized. Your secret weapon is your verbal acuity. You use words to eloquently convey your ideas to others and are very good at expressing yourself in both personal and professional situations.

How did we determine that your thinking style is that of a Practical Wordsmith? When we examined your test results further, we analyzed how you scored on 8 dimensions of intelligence: spatial, organizational, abstract reasoning, logical, mechanical, verbal, visual and numerical. The 3 dimensions you scored highest on combine to make you a Practical Wordsmith. Only 6 out of 1,000 people have this rare combination of abilities.

Ooh. Aah.

I spy with my widdle eye the following books I'll have in my holds Wednesday, according to the new Diamond shipping list:

FABLES #19
GOTHAM CENTRAL #13
HERO #10
JSA #54
LEGION #26
JACK STAFF #4
1602 #4
ULTIMATE SIX #4

Hooray- new Jack Staff! Of course, what I really wanna see is the Dancing Elephant B/W Jack#12...but it's OK. Hopefully Paul Grist will resolve a few things this time out.

How 'bout those Falcons! It must have been sweet for Dan Reeves to win his 200th against the team where he coached previously and constantly squabbled with the owner and general manager.

Now my team won't have to suffer the indignity of a 1-15 season. However, a 2-14 season is another thing...

BSBdG roundup, including a couple of noteworthies I missed over the weekend.

First and foremost, the great Roy Wood, who turned 57 on Saturday. I can't believe I overlooked this one. I've written about my admiration for Wood's work before, but my devotion is mostly inspired by his brilliant 60s and 70s albums, either on his own- playing every instrument, doing all the vocal tracks, writing all the songs, producing and even painting the album cover art like he did for his 1973 release Boulders, always listed on that personal top 25 albums list I keep threatening- or with groups like the Move (see link in the link box at right), Electric Light Orchestra, and Wizzard. His work since 1977 just hasn't seen much release over here in the colonies (although that's been getting better in the last few years...but now I just can't afford), so I don't have a lot of it, and much of what I've heard is fine but doesn't quite match his earlier standards, as is so often the case with so many great musicians. Anyway, happy belated BSBdG's to ya, Mr. Wood. And tour America sometime before I die, will ya? Credit where credit is due dept.- the droll concert photo above was pinched from the website of one Jon Hinchcliffe, whose name rings a bell.



I also missed the birthday of Rickie Lee Jones, who turned 49 on Saturday as well. She's another artist whose work I liked a lot at the beginning of her career but have lost track of due to a couple of mediocre releases in the early 90s- but she always remains worthy of a listen because she seems determined to follow her muse no matter what. Favorite album: 1981's Pirates. Underrated: 1993's Traffic From Paradise. She's another artist I'd love to see live someday.



Finally, BSBdG's go out today to Greg Lake, 55. I've enjoyed enough of his work with King Crimson, Emerson, Lake and Palmer and Peter Sinfield that I thought I should give him a shout out. I've always had a perverse admiration for his side of ELP's Works Vol. 1. Let's just keep that between friends, OK?

Your classic good news/bad news scenario in today's Lying in the Gutters. First, the mention of the upcoming trade of Paul Pope's 100%, one of the best comics I've read in many years, among other news about a "Solo" line in which individual creators, Pope included, have an entire issue to tell personal stories, either involving DC characters or totally new concepts, quote unquote. Others mentioned include Darwyn Cooke and Howard Chaykin, and it sounds very interesting.

But later on he mentions something about a "relaunch of Gotham Central". That doesn't sound good at all.

I watched Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets tonight on HBO, and I intend to comment on it later. But after it was over, I flipped over to Cartoon Network to watch the last 30 minutes of the Justice League show, and was dismayed to see that they had black diamonds, the chief weapon of one particular longtime DC character, which possessed people (explain to me how Superman's skin was pierced) and turned them evil- but no Eclipso! Instead, we get generic alien snake men! What the f-!

The eppy wasn't too bad, in and of itself...but as a bit of a fan of the Eclipso character, it's a mystery to me why this episode, which I'd bet started as a vehicle to introduce 'Clipsy into the Justice League series, turned out this way. What a copout, a shame and a letdown, because Eclipso would make a great recurring villian for the animated League. Guess it's easier to keep approving scripts with Lex Luthor.

Update Well, thanks to reader Adam Kepler I'm told that there was a General of some sort in the first half hour who had been possessed by the black diamond, and did indeed dress like Eclipso, so I gotta give the JL people the benefit of the doubt until I've seen the full episode. Still, he didn't appear in the last 30 minutes, so again- what the f-?

Update Update Gotta tip the ol' hat to CN for airing this episode on the same night as a total lunar eclipse!

Saturday once again, and time for Johnny B's Fearles NFL Pigskin Prognostications!

Last week: 7-7. Overall: 74-41, .643 .

Seattle over Washington- I can't see the Skinnies beating the Seahawks with thier stagnant offense, even at home.

New York Giants over Atlanta- The Falcons' lost season continues. A loss to the Giants will ensure that the franchise-history-long no-consecutive-winning-seasons streak will continue.

Tampa Bay over Carolina- Carolina beat them in Tampa, but the Bucs seem to be hinging their season on this game, and I think that makes them dangerous. Stephen Davis is banged up, too.

Pittsburgh over Arizona- The Steelers are giving up an uncharacteristic amount of points at home. But, the Cardinals give up even more on the road.

Cincinnati over Houston- The Bengals blew a big one last weekend, but I think they'll rebound against the up-and-down Texans.

Tennessee over Miami- This will be a close one, but I think the Titans will prevail at home, especially if Ricky Williams isn't a factor.

Kansas City over Cleveland- It doesn't matter who the Brownies start at QB this time.

Indianapolis over Jacksonville- The Colts have enough to beat the Jag-wires on the road.

Detroit over Chicago- The Bears have been better lately, but these teams are so evenly matched that I think the Lions can pull this out at home. Say, didn't these two teams just play a week or so ago?

Minnesota over San Diego- This won't be pretty, Flutie or no Flutie.

Dallas over Buffalo- Hardest game to pick this week. I gotta give it to the 'Boys at home over an inconsistent Buffalo team.

New York Jets over Oakland- The only team having a more nightmarish season than the Raiders are my Falcons.

St. Louis over Baltimore- The Ravens have done pretty well despite weaknesses on both sides of the ball...but I don't think they'll prevail over a pissed-off Rams team eager to put last weekend's debacle behind them.

Green Bay over Philadelphia- The Pack isn't invincible at home anymore by any means, but jeez- Philly only scored 23 on Atlanta last weekend. That's not good.

Remember- for entertainment purposes only. Bet at your own risk. You've been warned!

Bacardi Show Birthday Greetings go out today to Bonnie Raitt, 54. Favorite album: 1975's Home Plate, a set of outstanding songs produced by Paul Rothschild (Janis, the Doors) and better than the AMG review would have you believe. Underrated: perhaps her 1998 effort Fundamental, which opens up with a clutch of tunes recorded with Mitchell Froom and various members of Los Lobos. It peters out about halfway through, but those opening songs are strong.



Also, 28-year-old actress and Hollywood wild child Tara Reid, of Josie and the Pussycats fame, just because.

One more thing before I tear myself away from the butterfly curtains- John Allison, whose droll and delightful Charles Addams-meets-Friends webcomic Scary-Go-Round has been a link fixture here at the Show for the longest time, has launched another semi-regular webcomic Scare-O-Delia, which uses the same cast of characters as S-G-R, the difference being they're hand drawn, rather than computer illustrated. Compare 'em both to see what I mean.

BEST OF THE WEEK

COMICS REVIEWS!
What I bought and what I thought, week of November 5!

POWERS 35
I must say that I didn't expect Bendis to lay so many cards out on the table at once, in this issue that actually explains a lot of the questions I've had since day one. As always, Bendis' usual fascinating Watchmen-style character interaction and excellent, expressionistic art by Mike Avon Oeming add up to another high-quality episode. But guys- if these are supposed to be 80s superheroes, where are the big shoulder pads, leg-band utility belts, and oversize guns? A

FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE JUSTICE LEAGUE 5
Well, it seems to me that the EPA would be the most logical people to treat, or at least handle, Cap Atom until someone else could...but logic's kinda beside the point in this series anyway. Lotsa laffs, interesting back-and-forth between Oracle and the Blue Beetle (don't read Birds of Prey, so I assume that this is something that's been going on for a while), and a clever scene at the end with Batman and J'onn J'onzz add up to another entertaining chapter of a miniseries that feels a little padded and might have been better served as a one-shot. Also, we get the return of Manga Khan, a character that apparently DeMatteis and Giffen have a lot more affection for than I do. A-

TOM STRONG 23
Alan Moore is gone, and now we get Peter Hogan who gives us a so-so story about a mysterious race of bat-people living on the moon which has a couple of twists that mean more to those of us who have followed this book from the onset than they would to anyone else. The main attraction of this particular issue, for me anyway, is that it's 24 uninterrupted pages of Chris Sprouse pencils, and that's always a good thing. B+

BAD GIRLS 4
Boy, do I love those swellio Darwyn Cooke covers. Boy, am I relieved that new inker Daniel Krall is able to work in the Jason Bone style, thus ensuring that all important visual continuity. Boy, am I impressed with penciller Christine Norrie, who has done a great job so far. Boy, am I underwhelmed by the next-to-nothing story that Steve Vance has crafted for them to illustrate. Boy, is this ever a B- comic.

On the subject of The Dark Knight Strikes Back, after seeing a couple of items here and there praising it:

I hated it. Thought it was a spiteful, offputting big fat "fuck you" right in the face of the very people who want to admire Miller's work the most: comic book fans. Garish, ugly, often dumb and crude, with absoultely none of the style and wit he brought to its predecessor. Miller was simply taking the money and saying to his readers "You want super-heroes from me instead of Elmore Leonard or Greek warriors? OK, fine. Here you go. Enjoy!" And if indeed that was his intention, then he succeeded admirably.

I don't expect reverence for the form from Miller, God knows, and would have been equally as disappointed if he had turned in something like JLA/Avengers, but I don't think it was too much to expect a little subtlety and class. I can appreciate what Dirk and others said about it, because of the (often justified) negative feelings some people have about the state of comics and comics fandom. But as someone who still sees a few pearls in the old swine pen occasionally, I just didn't care for Frank's wet fart in the face of the fanboy.

And it also pissed me off that I spent around twenty bucks for those three issues combined. It always comes down to money, doesn't it!

BSBdG's go out to Joni Mitchell, 60 today. I wish I could cite you a bunch of my favorite Joni albums, but I've only recently begun to listen hard to her so I don't really have one. I've found her Hits and Misses CDs to be quite helpful, though. Click on the image above to visit her official web site.

"The trouble with unemployment is that the minute you wake up in the morning you're on the job."

-My current favorite quote, courtesy of comedian Slappy White, who died on this day in 1995.

********** According to the SelectSmart.com 2004 AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE SELECTOR, Howard Dean best matches my political views. Who gets your vote? ********** SelectSmart.com/president

Holy crap. Dean got a 71% score from me when I took this quiz. Might be beside the point, though, because he really screwed the pooch with his rebel-flag set sympathy. Can't see how this stance will help him anywhere but south of the Mason Dixon line.

Here's the regular version.
Here's a "Mac friendly" version.

Found at Metafilter via Free Pie. One of the names I had considered for this blog was "Free Beer"...

Random stuff from hither and yon:

All right, people...I've had a Derek Kirk Kim link on my page since day one, and I got absolutely no credit whatsoever. Every comics blog I've looked at today is thanking someone for pointing The Ten Commandments of Simon out to them, but did anyone realize that it's been there all along just for the clicking, right here at the Show? I even added a nifty little button recently! Where's the love? Sigh.

Got a kick out of last night's episode of Angel, which featured luchadore and Aztec mythology in an absolutely nutso adventure which was tons of fun. They even worked in references to Mexican wrestling films like The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy. While the Angel season has been up and down so far, mostly up to be fair, this episode is a keeper and maybe one of the best in the series so far.

Well, it's official: hell has frozen over. The reason? People actually agree with me that Chuck Jones is somewhat overrated, especially in comparison with Bob Clampett. Found at Franklin's Findings.

Just wondering: am I gonna have to write about same-sex marriage, something which I have no opinion about whatsoever being a live-and-let-live kinda guy, to get EveTushnet to link to me?

Good news courtesy of that mercenary blogger Alan David Doane: Tim Burton's Ed Wood will soon be released on DVD, with a ton of bells and whistles. Despite the fact that Burton's movie played fast and loose with many of the facts about Eddie's life, it's still a very entertaining film with lotsa great performances. It's amazing that film got made at all, if you ask me...

Forager23 aka J.W. Hastings has chimed in with another of his Miller vs. Moore comparison pieces, and unfortunately I have no opinion of what he states, because I never finished From Hell and haven't read 300. C'est la vie. I'm afraid that with very few exceptions, I'd go with Alan Moore every time, simply because most of his work isn't as cynical as Miller's. Which is not to say I haven't enjoyed his Dark Knight Returns, Sin City or Daredevil (I agree that Man Without Fear was very underwhelming), but there's a scope, imagination and scholarliness in Moore's writing that Miller can't touch.

Many thanks to Theresa for not giving me a hard time about her Eagles beating my Falcons.

All right, I'm done. Oyasumi nasai, y'all.

Music today: The Essential Dave Brubeck, Bob Dylan-Blonde on Blonde, The Ultimate Beach Boys Christmas Album, and Hilary Duff-Santa Claus Lane (!) (My wife and daughter went shopping today, cant'cha tell?)

The old saying "one man's trash is another man's treasure" certainly applies to the work of Quentin Tarantino, and his latest, Kill Bill Vol. 1 in particular. Yep, I finally managed to catch it yesterday, and everything you've heard about it is true. It's excessively violent, and is a lot of fun to boot- especially so if you're a fan of pop culture in general.

Tarantino's done this sort of thing before, even as far back as Reservoir Dogs and its naming of the heist gang (Mr. Pink, Mr. Orange, etc.) as a tribute to The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, but he pulls out all the stops with a smorgasbord of references and homages to a dizzying array of movies, songs, books, and general stuff half of which I'm sure that I didn't catch.

Uma Thurman gives her best performance since Pulp Fiction, and even then she didn't show half the range and panache she does here. I had totally written her off, but apparently QT brings out her best. Everyone gets a nifty little showcase, like Daryl Hannah in disguise as a murderous nurse (complete with white eyepatch sporting a red cross, a goofy touch which cracked me up) and Lucy Liu as Uma's former associate and would-be murderer, now set up as a Yakuza Boss. You also get a glimpse or two of David Carradine as the title character and Michael Madsen, a longtime fave character actor of mine, as another member of the assassin group that betrayed Uma. A young Asian actress named Chiaki Kuriyama (picture above) makes a strong impression as Liu's crazed bodyguard, Go-go Yubari, who dresses in a school uniform for all those schoolgirl fetishists out there and gets to swing a mean buzzsaw mace in the big climactic fight scene. Good old Sonny Chiba gets a great cameo as well. As someone who really liked the Green Hornet TV show in the 60s, I got a kick out of all the references and homages to Bruce Lee: Liu's gang, the Crazy 88's, all wore masks like Kato, the Hornet's sidekick as portayed by Lee, and her entourage drives to the restuarant to the strains of the Hornet's TV theme song, Al Hirt's rendition of "Flight of the Bumblebee".

And yes, the film is violent and bloody. Maybe I'm just acclimated to that sort of thing, because the majority of the violence struck me as cartoony and over the top. People's heads get cut off, and literal fountains of blood spray out, and that sort of thing. To get upset about the excessive violence in this film is disingeneous to say the least...it's like going swimming and getting upset because you got wet. The viewer should know going in what a Tarantino film is like, if they've ever seen anything of his at all. And that's not even taking into account that, for the most part, the most bloody scenes were either in the clever, extended anime segment (which enabled QT to get away with some stuff that would have gotten this an NC-17 rating in a heartbeat), or presented in black and white like a generous part of the big fight scene in the restuarant and the opening scene.

Couple of things bugged me, though. And here be spoilers, so beware. The Bride (Uma) wakes from her coma, kills two men, hides in one of the men's truck, then spends 13 hours regaining the use of her feet and legs. I find it a wee hard to accept that no one would heard the commotion, called the police, and at least one of the policemen wouldn't have thought to check the dead man's vehicle to see if it had been stolen, especially when they surely would have noticed his keys were missing, at some point in the 13 hours. A lot can happen in 13 hours, even in the big city. This is nit-picky, I know, when so much else in this film is larger than life and comic bookish, but still. I should also note that I thought for someone who spent four years in a coma, the Bride sure got back in fighting shape mighty fast. Anyway, none of this really matters with this movie. Forest for the trees territory.

I read somewhere recently where the author posits that Tarantino is like a hip-hop artist, sampling from all sorts of sources to assemble his complete work and that's very true. I like the way Tarantino's not afraid to go to extremes, and if he oversteps the bounds of good taste at least he does so with style...and that's as good a justification as any, in my book. Kill Bill Vol.1 is damn near better than Pulp Fiction, and that's high praise. In fact, I thought it was a work of bloody genius. I very much look forward to Vol. 2.

OK, now to muse for a while on John Jakala's disenchantment post of the other day.

I got bit by the comics bug at an early age, age 4 to be exact. And before you ask, yes, I could read them. Somehow, and don't ask me how, I have been able to read (and comprehend) almost as long as I've been alive on this world. Honestly, I think comics helped me with this, enabling me to associate words with actions...but that doesn't explain my immediate grasp of phonics. Maybe it was divine providence, who knows. My teachers all thought that I was some kind of prodigy, and that I should be moved up a couple of grades, but it didn't take me long (with my non-English related subject performance) to disprove that notion. God only knows what they would have done with me if I'd been born in 1990 instead of 1960. Anyway, I digress. What I'm trying to get across is that I have a deep-rooted love of the comics medium, and have had for a hell of a long time. I've experienced the best and the worst of nearly every major company for 39 years, and my enthusiasm in this period has waxed and waned for sure but has never really gone away.

So I look at my comics buying habits right now and for the most part, I'm satisfied. I don't buy a lot of titles that disappoint me on a regular basis, and if they do I drop them, simple as that. I can generally justify why I continue to purchase everything on my holds list, even books I bitch about constantly like JSA and Strangers in Paradise. My biggest concern right now, given my unemployed status, is being able to afford to buy as many as I do now, and as often. The last time I was in between jobs I cut my list down to ten titles, and only picked them up once a month, which thankfully didn't last long. This is also a reason why I resist going to a "trades only" mode; even though 15 bucks or thereabouts isn't an outrageous sum for a collection of 4 or 5 books, still it's a good sized chunk of change to come up with at once, especially if there are other floppies in my stack. And don't get me started about hardcovers. My biggest concerns with changing over to trades-only is that there's no assurance that everything I want to buy will come out in that format. Many do, but I won't hold my breath waiting for a Superman: Red Son or Cinnamon: El Ciclo trade anytime soon. Also, buying floppies (God, you people have got me using that term) vs. trades is a bit like watching a weekly TV show, one sitting a week, vs. a whole month's worth of taped episodes of that same show. One hour (or one floppy), I'm good. Four hours, (or one collection of four comics) I get a little restless and wind up taking a day or two to view or read. Case in point: I'm up to issue 8 in that Essential Tomb of Dracula collection, and I bought it last Saturday. So while I wouldn't slash my wrists if the Powers That Be went to all-trade formats, I will hold out till the end.

I don't really have a big problem with the system or pre-ordering via Previews, either. My comics shop puts out the new issues of Previews, sells them at cost (and I used to buy them, but Jesus God those things pile up), and then issues a holds update form with all the upcoming releases for the prospective buyer to select. The biggest problems for me have arisen from the vagaries of Diamond's distribution system, which often shorts one store on a particular title to favor another. This is one reason why I don't have the third issue of Superman: Red Son, and missed both issues 5 and 8 of Jack Staff. Of course, no system is perfect, and this happens very infrequently, so I can't really complain.

Compared to the shop John shows pictures of (and I've seen much worse), my shop, which also carries used and new vinyl and CDs, toys, gaming stuff, VHS and DVDs as well as new and back issue comics, is pretty spacious (having just moved to a newer, bigger location) and well-organized, for the most part. It's not a hassle to shop there at all. It's a bit inconvienient for me to drive down there, especially since I don't work in Bowling Green anymore, but it's only once a week so I've managed so far. Besides, it's the only place to buy beer in the area, so I'd need to go once a week anyway!

Quality-wise, I honestly think that there are as many good, and I mean really good comics out there right now as there have ever been. More publishers, putting out a pretty wide range of subject matter, and more awareness of what fans want and don't want. Of course that doesn't mean that this awareness is always acted upon...DC and Marvel (along with others) seem to be steadfast and resolutely devoted to bringing us spandex first and foremost. But even the Big Two seem to be willing to experiment and bring us some unconventional titles (DC moreso, I believe) by unconventional creators. In every "age" of any company, there's always a fair amount of dross. It's just being selective and finding the good stuff that is the crux of the biscuit, if you'll excuse the Zappa reference. As far as the question goes of expanding the audience, I honestly don't know what the solution is...there's just a certain amount of people, and it's a very large amount of people, that regard any sort of fantasy fiction as frivolous and trivial, fun to watch once in a while but not to become a habit. And they raise their kids that way, as well, not encouraging them to read anything. I'm not entirely convinced that significantly more people would read comics, even if they were packaged manga-style and all dealing with Blankets-style subjects rather than super-heroes. Sure, there are a lot of kids that read Shonen Jump and collect Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon, and that's a potential market, but I don't know if they would even be buying Jump if not for the fact that (as far as I can tell, from my cursory glances at the odd issue of Jump) to them, it looks like Yu-Gi-Oh and scans like Yu-Gi-Oh, so it must be the same thing. I'd also like to know if those same kids collect this manga from issue to issue like most mainstream comic collectors do, or whether they just pick up the odd issue out of curiosity. The extent to which I don't know these things is staggering.

So to wind this up, I, too, have begun to question if I want to, and especially can afford to, keep buying comics. Right now, I'm still being stimulated visually and mentally by the handful of titles I buy right now, so I'm gonna keep buying until I just can't anymore.

And that, as they say, is that.

My friend Dave Puckett (who's also a very interesting cartoonist- maybe I'll get some samples of his stuff to post one of these days) is attempting to catalog every appearance of the Beatles in comics, a strenuous but worthy task in my estimation. He'd like your help! For a MS Word file which includes what he has so far, and to make him aware of any appearances you might think he's missed, email him at dpuck@scrtc.com .

BSBdG's today go out to X-Men, X-Men II and Femme Fatale star Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, 31 today.

Why the hell not?

As I prepare to drive approximately 35 miles to buy about four new comics (and perhaps see a matinee of Kill Bill- I haven't given up), I was pointed to (via ¡Journalista!) John Jakala's post about growing disenchantment with playing the comics buying game. It made the rusty, creaky gears in my thought mechanisms lurch into motion, and hopefully something will issue forth in response at some later time.

To address another topic that's been making the rounds lately (and it's a tempest in a teapot if I ever saw one), I think perhaps Tony Isabella should develop a bit thicker skin. Whether he likes it or not, DC is not obligated to run any changes in the Black Lightning character he created by him, because it was done under the work-made-for-hire situation that has caused so much grief over the years. I sympathize with him, but he's not- I'm sure- the first creator to see a beloved creation get put through paces that he abhors and I'm sure he won't be the last. I'm feelin ya, Tony dog, but ya gots ta put some distance between, knowhutamsayin? And I still think that what Kevin Smith did with Stanley and his Monster was far worse...but did you hear Arnold Drake crying? Huh? Didja?

On the TV watching front, I have an confession to make: I am really enjoying Navy NCIS, and not just because of Pauley Perette. Last night's eppy, about mysterious, apparently Meth-related deaths among members of a Navy aircraft carrier's deck crew, even though they don't seem to do drugs and their urine tests all report clean, kept me guessing all the way through till the end and the look "behind the scenes" on the carrier was very interesting. I find myself wondering if my friend the Stupid Llama (Mike Cary), who served in the Navy, has ever watched this show and what he thinks about it. Gray-haired Mark Harmon, of all people, gives a nice, nuanced performance as the head guy of the investigative team, sometimes crusty, sometimes dryly witty. Didn't think he had it in him.

I also caught the most recent episode of Carnivale, have been watching all season in fact, and I gotta say I'm very pleased with they way things have played out so far. We've been treated to a number of interesting characters, weird events, and arresting imagery- one in particular was the strange, sad fate of cooch dancer Dora Lee in the ghost town of Babylon, and the "carnival justice" which was invoked as a result. I don't know how many more episodes there are (and last night's previews of next week's show promises many revelations), but I can't wait to see how this all plays out.

About the only full length feature film I've seen lately is the Jason Statham vehicle (and I do mean vehicle) The Transporter, which is probably the dumbest, most cliche-filled, and worst-acted (except by the low-key Statham) movie I've seen in a good long while. If you like routine explosions and car chases and people shooting at each other and little else, then I suppose this film succeeds on that level. But if, like me, you like a bit more wit and style with your action thriller and like Statham because of his great turn as Turkish in Snatch, then you should just pass this Transporter. Statham obviously needs a new agent, one with better script choosing ability anyway, because almost everything he's done since his last Guy Ritchie film has flat out sucked. Ghosts of Mars, anyone?

Hopefully more later.

BSBdG's go out today to a couple of Sixties pioneers in their respective fields.

First, the late Gram Parsons, maker of "Cosmic American Music", first country artist to act like and hang out with rock and roll stars, collaborator with the Byrds, Emmylou Harris and the Rolling Stones, founding member of the seminal country-rock outfit The Flying Burrito Brothers, and drug casualty at age 26. He would have been 57 today.



Also, today is the 65th birthday of the great Jim Steranko. Steranko blew everyone's minds with his innovative multimedia and graphic design techniques while illustrating Marvel's Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., among others (see my horror comics post below) in the swingin 60s, then moved on to do many more great magazine and paperback covers, found his own magazine publishing company, write two histories of comics, and many other things. Everything but draw a regular monthly comics series, it seems... Steranko is also an accomplished magician and escape artist, and served as the inspiration for not only Jack Kirby's Mister Miracle character, but served as part of the inspiration for Michael Chabon's Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Despite his relatively low profile, Steranko's done some incredible stuff. Go here for a great cover gallery, and click on Steranko's picture above for a recently updated fan site. And yes, I stole the picture from the Dragon*Con bio page that can be accessed by clicking the link in Steranko's name. It was the only decent picture I could find on the Web of the man!

Boy oh boy, I love that Shadow cover. Death has "four kings"...but the Shadow has the Ace of Spades, plus his automatic! Damn!

Sean Collins finished up his 13 Days of Halloween list a few days ago, and he definitely lists some good'uns, not only listing them but breaking them down in a very well written, in-depth fashion. Me, I'm not prepared to go into such depth, but I can't help but wanna comment anyway (on the ones I haven't already put my two cents' worth in on) so here goes...

#6 on his list was Silence of the Lambs, an engrossing psycological thriller which was indeed often very horrifying and tense- and also gave the world a thousand "chianti and fava beans" jokes. It featured the usual great turns by Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster, plus an effectively creepy perf by Ted Levine, who I thought would go on to bigger and better things after I watched this for the first time. 'Twas not so, it seems. One standout scene which stayed with me was the pathetic kidnap victim in the hole begging just to find out why she was there and why. Silence is an excellent film, and I have no quibble with its inclusion.

#5 is Gore Verbinski's The Ring, which I commented on after viewing it on DVD a while back. Go here to read it. Again, I don't really have a problem with it being on the list (it is his list after all!), but it didn't exactly grab me as hard as it did Sean.

#4 was a film that I had to watch twice to get the full effect. The first time I saw The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I was 15 and in a car full of guys my age and a bit older, drinking and smoking and just partying in general, and to say that nobody was taking the film all that seriously would be an understatement. I remember another carfull behind us, as we were leaving the drive-in, and one guy hanging out the window making chainsaw noises. I do remember thinking it was intense stuff, and made it a point when VCR technology came along (which coincided with my infatuation with gore films then) to view it again without my buds. Like Sean, I think it's the unrelenting cruelty and arbitrariness of what happens to the teenagers that helps make this so memorable. That and the girl who gets impaled on a hook. Ouch. It was made on the cheap and it shows, but sometimes those kinds of films have a grittiness about them that makes them more convincing, and helps the big dinner scene at the end which could have been ludicrous in less inspired hands. I've always had a soft spot for the follow up, Texas Chainsaw Massacre II, which features Dennis Hopper as a state trooper sporting two small chainsaws, pistol-style, in a holster, and one big chainsaw which he holds in a phallic position (filmed as a long-shot in one of the funniest scenes) and uses on Leatherface's lair, singing "Bringing Down the Sheaves" as he saws away on the timbers. Cracked me up, it did.

#3 is most definitely a classic: The Exorcist. I remember not getting to see this until it was re-released to theatres several years later, and I don't recall why I missed it the first time. Must have been because I was 13 and knew my folks wouldn't let me go see it. It played the drive-in, I'm sure, but I suppose the gang I saw the Texas Chainsaw Massacre with must have had better things to do. Anyway, I do remember all the hoo-hah that surrounded this movie when it was released, and everything I heard about it definitely gave me the creeps. It was the random possibility of being posessed by a demon that sounded just awful to me...I mean, you could go to bed one night, and wake up with something else in your head! Of course, after a while I realized how silly that was, so it troubled me no longer...but when I did get to see the film, I was caught up hard in it. It works on a number of different levels, both as horror movie and psychological thriller, and is still strong today, despite a legion of parodies and lackluster sequels and knockoffs. The most recent viewing of this film was, for me, in a class on supernatural folklore that I took at Western Kentucky a few years ago.

#2 is The Shining, which I've already gone on record as regarding as one of Stanley Kubrick's weakest, and I won't back down except to say that I simply thought it wasn't a very successful adaptation of the novel, by either King's or Kubrick's standards. Being a Kubrick film, of course it was full of arresting, often haunting imagery and Jack Nicholson gives an intense, if somewhat one-note performance (you just know he's destined to go bugfuck sooner rather than later from the opening scenes of the film) as the lead. I guess I fall in with those who cite Nicholson's character's portrayal as a major fault. As I watched the film, it just seemed to meander for a very long stretch until the big bravura finale which lets Nicholson cut loose (in more ways than one). The maze in the snow at the end, and the way it's filmed, was moodily effective. I'm in the minority here, I know- this film has a lot of admirers, and Sean makes some very good points about the psychological sybolism of it all...but after about three full viewings, I remain unmoved. Maybe I'll do four one of these days, who knows. And I do know this- flaws and all, this version kicked the ass of the King-sanctioned TV movie remake a few years ago.

And finally, #1-The Blair Witch Project. Again, my first exposure to this one suffered somewhat because of the venue in which I watched it- this time in a classroom, as one of the films shown in my supernatural folklore class. Even though everyone was caught up in it, the bootleg print had a disclaimer across the bottom and was missing the last scene, so its impact was somewhat diluted. As soon as it became commercially available, I rented it (around Halloween) and got more of its full effect. Part of me was a bit annoyed at the lack of background info (and yes, I'm aware there is a lot of this available from various sources) we're given, but the film's power is undeniable, especially due to the brilliant (budget-necessitated) decison to film on videotape, documentary-style, and you can't help but get caught up in the travails of the filmers and shocked at the utter hopelessness of their position. I resolved that if I ever went hiking like that, I would carry a whole bunch of flares and a flare gun. I don't know whether I would call this the best horror film of all time, but it's a definite contendah.

Great reading, Mr. Collins. Do some more soon, OK?

Update: I'm finding myself wondering what Sean (and everyone else, for that matter) thinks of Last House on the Left and The Devil's Backbone. Sean?

Had my worst weekend, football prediction-wise, at 7-7. I'd bet I wasn't alone, since there were some upsets and a few games that could have gone either way. Anyhoo, I'm now 74-41, a .643 clip. I'd like to be at .750, but I'll have to do a lot better in the next few weeks.

Keeping with the football theme, I've been playing around creating link buttons again, and I've made an Atlanta Falcons button, which, when clicked, enables you to "Share the Misery '03" on my woeful team's website. You can find it, of course, in the links section at right.

Casting a jaundiced eye towards the new Diamond shipping list, I see that I'll be getting the following:

BAD GIRLS #4
FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE JUSTICE LEAGUE #5
TOM STRONG #23
POWERS #35

And that's it! Another light week, which will tempt me to buy other stuff. I'll try to fight that urge.

Good morning.

As I await noon and my NFL fix, I just felt like typing a few lines. And they go something like this.

For some reason I have the song "Temporary Secretary" by Paul McCartney in my head. Lobotomies are expensive, I hear, but I'm thinking about it. Maybe a DIY lobotomy using a dull kitchen knife. Aw, I kid- actually I kinda like that song, a somewhat droll Devo-ish ditty from his 1981 McCartney II album.

I have a new truck! It's a 1998 Chevy Blazer, 4WD, and it's in beautiful condition, with only 78,000 miles. We got a great deal on it, I mean a real steal (or so I think anyway) plus I was able to sell my Rodeo of 230 K plus miles in the same day, so I got some help from my sainted Mother and made the purchase.

Still no job yet, and no real legitimate offers. Contrary to what I posted earlier, the Cabela's job, as it turns out, is still a possibility but they've run into snags before they hire anybody, so I wait. And wait. I recently interviewed at my previous employer, yeah, that's right, for a job that was similar but different from my old position, which doesn't exist anymore. It also paid $13 K less than I was making before, but I said I'd take it if it was offered. I don't think it's going to be, especially when I found out later that they had already hired one person from within for one of the two positions available. I've only been away 6 months from there, but it seems like 6 years. I'm considering using one of those resume distribution services which charge (to me, anyway) an outrageous sum to send your CV to recruiters all over. Gettin' pretty desperate around Casa Bacardi. I even had a dream last night, and I don't dream often...in it I was interviewing at my first employer, R.R. Donnelley, and I was asked to perform one of those color tests. If you've ever taken one, you know what I'm talking about- it's where you place small discs with a gradual color tint in order. My test in my dream was different- I had to take tiny paint-spattered torn pieces of brown paper, like grocery sacks, and put them in order. And I couldn't make out what some of the colors were, for some reason! Of course, as usual when I dream, everything was in black and white except for the paint spatters, and my brain was telling me were some sort of color but I didn't know which they were! As usual, I woke up before this dream was resolved.

OK, personal stuff aside. I've added some new comics bloggers to the ol' links list at right, by Kevin Melrose, Rick Geerling, and Ron Phillips. Boy, comics blogging seems to be catching on a bit, doesn't it? Of course, it's got a way to go before it gets up there with political blogging, percentage-wise, but there seem to be more and more every week. Which brings up something I've been wondering about: most of the time, I list my links (especially to the pop-culture blogs I've linked to) by the author's name, unless I can't find it or it's a group blog. Just seems like a more "serious" thing to do. But is there anybody out there who would prefer to go by the blog name or alias? For example-Tegan, do you prefer to be linked to as "Bloggity-Blog-Blog-Blog" or as Laura "Tegan" Gjovaag? Bill, "Pop Culture Gadabout" or Bill Sherman? You others? Some of you (heck, most of you) have clever names for your blogs, and it seems a shame to not use them but it also seems more personalized somehow to use the blog author's name in the link. Myself, I kinda prefer to go by Johnny Bacardi but some have linked to me using my alter ego David Jones. Either way is cool to me, as long as I'm linked to. Some bloggers, like John Jakala and Bill, avoid this problem by listing the author, then the blog name...but I don't know if I want to go back and type in all those names on my bloglist. I must ponder this, and of course feel free to leave all the comments you like.

On the subject of comics blogging, Matt Brady has received a bit of attention here and there for this post on a Delphi forum:

I think I was tempted to do something of a blog once, but, when starting to compose my thoughts about the world, emotions, puppies, kittens, and who's blogs I rilly, rilly like, like a voice from heaven, the phrase, "Who gives a shit what you think?" came into my mind, and the urge passed.

That should be a question in the EULA agreement on EVERY blog host:

"Do you really, honestly - and we mean honestly, not that 'honestly' you use when you ask yourself whether or not you look good in that pair of jeans - think anyone gives a shit about what you think?"

If they did that, and people were 100% honest, there would be no "blog culture."

Of course, if there was some secret code in all comics that you had to enter as proof you bought it before you could post a comment on it, messageboards would be dead, so who am I to complain about one group of people spouting off when I am a dancing monkey for another?

He does make a good point, and I have asked myself that very question many times. I have also answered it, at least to myself, by simply adopting the position of "I'm posting this stuff for my own personal gratification, and if others like it and want to read, then that's even better." I don't pretend that what I'm doing here is significant or important; I decided when I began this blog that I was just gonna write about stuff I dig just to get it out of my head and see if anybody else was interested. I've been blessed with much more attention than I anticipated, and have made the acquaintance of some wonderful people in the process (and you know who you are). If I don't get another hit or write another thing for the rest of my life, then this blog has been a success that has far outdistanced my expectations. So I guess my answer to Matt's query is that I don't give a shit if people give a shit, but I love it when they do. Kinda validates the old existence in a small sort of way.

OK, that's all for now. I'll try to get around to commenting on the rest of Sean Collins' horror film list later, as well as some thoughts on a couple of movies I've seen lately. Right now, I'm ready for some football.

Note to Mark Evanier: after Bill Sherman, I'm number 20. I love candy corn, and that's no lie. Eat it fairly often, and not just around Halloween, which is one reason of many why I have such a svelte physique. I especially like the chocolate candy corn that Brach's makes in the Autumn. Don't have much use for those pumpkins, though...that's just too much. Gotta draw a line somewhere! Gotta be Brach's, too...no one else is even close to making edible candy corn. Accept no substitutes!

And I know Mark reads this blog, 'cause he told me so himself! So there. Thanks again for the code advice!

BEST OF THE WEEK

COMICS REVIEWS!
What I bought and what I thought, week of October 29

LEGION 25
I suppose that if we must have Classic Superboy in the Legion, then this is a clever enough way to do it. Multiple storylines this time out, some flashbacks and some new stuff, illustrated by multiple artists, each turning in a fine job- even good old Dave Cockrum, the second old-time Legion illustrator to appear within these pages in the last two issues. He's the weakest of the bunch, but he's still not bad. Best turns are by regular cover artists Tony Harris and Tom Feister, and regular penciller Chris Batista, with a trio of inkers. Two surprising cliffhangers at the end, and a very cost effective (though not compared with manga, I know, John) 48 pages for $3.95 put this at the top of an underwhelming stack. A-

JLA 89
Well, the script hit all the right notes, and the art is fantastic, but this grand finale to the best JLA story arc in recent memory turns out to be inexplicably anticlimactic. Guess I just let my expectations get raised all out of proportion. Even so, if you've been waiting to get this when it's collected by all means go ahead- it's been a real great ride, even if the destination was a letdown. And I want a Joe Kelly Plastic Man ongoing series now. A-

CATWOMAN 24
Another ho-hum finale to an ongoing arc, and the last Cameron Stewart issue, doubly disappointing. Selina and Holly end up in St. Roch, a sort of alternate New Orleans, to seek out the Hawks for advice on the Thuggee-ish bad guys that have been following them around the country. Then Selina and Kendra (Hawkgirl) go clubbing, and Holly gets a big surprise. And that's all, folks! Next issue, Paul Gulacy, whose art style just doesn't seem to jibe with what's been established, stylistically. We'll see, I guess. B+

STRANGERS IN PARADISE SOURCE BOOK
I didn't sign up for this, but the guy who pulled my holds at the comics shop thought I'd want it since I buy the Strangers ongoing. Well, I guess. Anyway, if one was hankering for a guide to the world Terry Moore has created, then they need look no more, 'cause it's all here- all the characters, well-known and obscure, and lots of trivial info about everybody. And no poetry, thank God, so I'll give it a B+.

HULK: GRAY 2
Doesn't say much for this latest would-be Loeb/Sale classic that I couldn't remember reading this five minutes after I was done. Absolutely nothing of consequence happens in this installment, and what does happen is simply those old Lee/Kirby sagas of yore reshuffled and recycled, a sleight-of-hand which doesn't wash if you've read the originals. A real rip-off at $3.50, nice cover notwithstanding, and this relationship between General Ross and his daughter that Loeb's trying to establish is just plain creepy. Ross was a blockhead back in the day, but he wasn't creepy. C-

I also picked up the Essential Tomb of Dracula collection, but I haven't had the chance to sit down and read it yet. Having read many of the issues reprinted, though, I can say that I'm really looking forward to reacquainting myself with them. And so far my pages are still intact...

Wake the neighbors and phone the kids, it's time for Johnny B's Fearless NFL Pigskin Prognostications!

Last week: 9-5. Record so far: 67-34, .663 .

Chicago over San Diego. No way am I picking the Chargers again until they show me something more than I saw last Monday night.
New York Giants over New York Jets. Perhaps last weekend's victory over the tough Vikings was a wake-up call.
Tampa Bay over New Orleans. The Saints are struggling on both sides of the ball, and Tampa is no place to figure things out.
Baltimore over Jacksonville. The Jags aren't as bad as their record, but Baltimore's ground game will help the Ravens control the clock.
Miami over Indianapolis. Pick 'em to get upset last week, then pick 'em to beat your Super Bowl pick the next. Way to go, J.B.! I like Griese at the helm of the Fins, and I think they'll pound the ball a lot with Ricky Williams. This will be a close one, though.
Oakland over Detroit. The hardest thing here is determining which team stinks the least. I think Oakland smells slightly better, but not much.
Carolina over Houston. A lot of people think the Texans will pull an upset, but I'm going with the Panthers until they show me I shouldn't.
Cincinnati over Arizona. Both teams pulled off surprising victories last weekend, but the Bengals looked a lot better doing it so I go with them on the road. Plus, they have something to play for since they're actually in the division race for once.
Seattle over Pittsburgh. The Steelers are really scuffling right now, and the 'Hawks are looking to bounce back from the loss at Cincinnati.
Philadelphia over Atlanta. Right now the Falcons couldn't beat a good division 1-A college team, revamped secondary or no. Theresa, I would make a bet with you on this one, but that would be foolish...for me. The Dan Reeves coaching deathwatch has begun.
St. Louis over San Franscisco. The Niners are up-and-down, and the Rams are hot so I gotta go with St. L on the road.
Dallas over Washington. Bounce back time for the 'Boys.
Minnesota over Green Bay. Ditto for the Vikes. Green Bay always looks bad in the Metrodome.
New England over Denver. It will be very tough for the Pats to win at Mile High, or Invesco, or wwhatever it's called...but without a legit starting QB the Broncos have big problems to overcome.

As always, bet these at your own risk.

First, the usual disclaimers. This is a list of horror-and-supernatural themed comics that have made a big impression on me in my longer-than-I-like-to-think-about comics reading experience. I do not intend for this to be a "all-time best" list, nor do I even claim that these are shining examples of works of sequential fiction. Also, I'm sure much of what I'll be writing is already familiar territory for many, so apologies in advance if it gets tedious. I just want to share with the rest of the class some titles over the years that I've grooved on, man. So here goes nothing.

Of course, the first (and in most cases, the best) real horror comics of note, but not necessarily the first ones I was exposed to, were the EC titles such as Tales From the Crypt, Vault of Horror, and others, which saw print in the 50s. Before I was born, believe it or not. I didn't read any of these classic books until I was in my late teens/early 20s and had a friend who had a few of the reprint editions, and they were as good as I had been led to believe. I have never owned one, either in original or reprint format, so I don't really include them on my list, but they're damned good. I especially tended to like those illustrated by Ghastly Graham Ingels, Bernie Krigstein, and the SF stories that Wally Wood drew. That stout-hearted stalwart, the Pop Culture Gadabout, has saved me the trouble of writing more since he has recently posted a nice overview of the line with emphasis on a story illoed by another good one, Johnny Craig. Go here, read, then come back. I won't wait long for you.



The first horror comics I remember being exposed to were the line of B&W magazines published by Warren- Creepy, Eerie, and later the original incarnation of Vampirella, which kinda came late to the party. After all the dust settled from the Wertham trials, and after EC had folded all its horror titles with the advent of the Comics Code, the only place these sort of stories could appear were in the pages of magazines like these, which weren't displayed in the same locale as comic books, nor were they aimed at the same audiences. Actually, the first horror comics I remember reading were probably the seven-or-eight page illustrated adaptations of movies like The Mummy's Hand that appeared in Famous Monsters of Filmland and Monster World, and although I didn't know it then those were Warren's way of testing the waters for a whole magazine of nothing but illustrated horror stories. And oh, boy- what talent they assembled between their covers, especially in the first year of both titles: Archie Goodwin was the editor (and main scriptwriter) in the early days, Frank Frazetta did most of the covers, and the likes of Reed Crandall, EC's Wally Wood, Joe Orlando and Jack Davis, Neal Adams, Steve Ditko, Tom Sutton, Dan Adkins, Gene Colan, Gray Morrow, and my personal favorite Jerry Grandenetti, whose hallucinogenic, expressionistic style just blew me away. Much later the likes of Berni Wrightson and Richard Corben, then all those Filipinos, came along and revitalized the line. The Warren titles were, to me, artist showcases first and foremost- the scripts were all tight and well written, but most were riffs on the EC template. Either way, those Warren magazines really got their hooks in me early on and I spent many an allowance coin on them whenever they came out on the magazine rack at the Houchens Market.

Also coming out at about the same time were the supernatural titles of Gold Key, formerly Dell. Dell had changed over to the Gold Key imprint at roughly about the same time I was aware that there were even such things as comic books, so I don't really remember Dell all that much, but I remember the GK imprint very well. Gold Key comics were also unusual (on Planet Dave) in that they weren't sold on the same racks as DCs or Marvels or even Harveys, but were always found at the local Ben Franklin five and dime store, and nowhere else. Well, OK, also at the Stevenson's five and dime down the street, but they weren't there long. I think Ben Franklin sold Gold Keys exclusively until the early 70s, when they shared spinner rack space with DCs. But I digress. Gold Key didn't have the superstar artist firepower that Warren did, but they had some solid illustrators like Russ Manning, Jack Sparling and Doug Wildey and Gold Key books were often pretty darned entertaining. They published several horror-themed titles, all with lush painted covers and featuring code-approved but no less remarkable tales of terror aimed at kids and teenagers. One story I remember in particular illustrated the legend of Spring-heel Jack, in Ripley's Believe it or Not, I think...really creeped me out, as I recall. I always had at least one GK horror title like Boris Karloff's Tales of Mystery or The Twilight Zone around when I was in grade school. If I had the patience and the money I'd track some of these down but have little of either, so I'll just have to get by with my memories.



To be honest, I'm not sure which of the Big Two (who both published horror comics pre-Code, but pretty much ceased after it was introduced) actually got around to doing supernatural comics in the 70s, when the Code relaxed its anti-vampire, zombies, and werewolves restrictions a bit, but I seem to recall Marvel testing the waters with its Morbius, The Living Vampire character in an issue of Spider-Man before DC revamped its House of Mystery/Secrets titles, so I'll go with the House of Ideas first. When the Morbius story went over well, Marvel rush-released its own takes on a Werewolf (By Night, actually not bad when Mike Ploog drew it), Frankenstein's monster (ditto), and the big kahuna of sanguinary doings himself, Dracula. After a shaky beginning, the Tomb of Dracula, as it came to be called, got in a real groove, with writer Marv Wolfman (not the first scripter, but he came aboard very early on) creating and developing a solid supporting cast to interact with Drac, as well as giving the lead a well-developed, if belligerent personality, and stalwart Gene Colan did some of the best work of his career, illustrating (I believe) all 70 issues, plus a story or two in other books at the time. Colan has always drawn his figures and backgrounds as if they were on the verge of dissipating into mist, something which came in very handy when he was given a character that could actually do this. ToD, despite its subject matter, was still a Marvel comic and sometimes listed into melodramatics and compromise (one specific instance, I recall, had Drac encountering an angel, late in the series' run- an angel dressed in a spandex costume, of course), but it was still one of the best things Marvel did in the 70s and is well worth one's time if one cares to invest it. They've finally released that long-awaited Essential edition of the first 25 issues, plus three other Drac appearances, and it's well worth the 15 bucks. Not long after the Morbius issue of Spider-Man, we got two horror anthologies, Tower of Shadows and Chamber of Darkness. Don't remember much, if anything, about CoD, but I'll always remember the lead story in Tower by Jim Steranko which is one of the best pieces of sequential storytelling I've ever seen. Above is the more sedate-by-comparison cover that appeared on the newsstands, then the rejected design (complete with groovy logo) by Steranko colored for the Steranko-Graphic Prince of Darkness one shot which came out a few years ago, then an interior page example. The original title for the tale of greedy heirs and a weird old house was: "Let Them Eat Cake", which was so cool that it came as no surprise to read that Stan didn't like it and somewhere down the line it got re-titled "At the Stroke of Midnight". Zzzz. But the story itself- whoa mama. Steranko was at his graphic storytelling peak then, and this tale was a tour-de-force. You can see a B&W example of one of the pages above.



One other Marvel supernatural book of note was Man-Thing. Another swamp-dwelling creature who was semi-intelligent and whose touch burned those who feared him, as the copywriters kept telling us again and again. At first, he appeared as the all-new lead in a reprint title, Adventures Into Fear, most notable for the first appearance of Howard The Duck. Eventually, they put MT into his own title, and assigned the team of Steve Gerber and, after issue #5, Mike Ploog to do the script and art chores. Gerber's stories tended to be of the "Man-Thing and company encounter weird strangers and menaces in the swamp" variety, but written in his typically quirky style with human interest shadings and Ploog's quirky, Eisner-inspired art brought just the right tone to the proceedings. My favorite of these was the one depicted above, "Night of the Laughing Dead", (a two-parter in #'s 5 and 6) in which MT and his friends encountered a suicidal clown who had come out to the swamp to do the deed, and wind up fighting for his soul with demons from hell. Gerber crafted a touching script out of a very odd premise, and this was the most memorable of their run together, which lasted until issue 11, and included the infamous-for-its-title-and-the-legion-of bad-jokes-it's-inspired Giant-Size Man-Thing #1.

Moving on to DC now, it seems that about the same time Marvel stuck its toe into the horror comics pool, DC followed suit in the late 60s by revamping (no pun intended) its former flagship supernatural titles, House of Mystery and House of Secrets, which had been featuring superhero takes like Eclipso, Dial H for Hero, Prince Ra-Man, and others. Also at about this time they launched a title whose lead had actually been created in the 50s, and had a very short-lived book of his own then, the Phantom Stranger. Early issues consisted of the Stranger, that enigmatic character whose origins were clouded in mystery but could usually be counted on to show up, introduce the story, dispense warnings and advice and bicker with Doctor Terry Thirteen, a skeptical James Randi-type paranormal debunker/investigator who was determined to prove the Stranger was a charlatan. This went on for several issues, until a young writer named Len Wein showed up and, combined with artist Jim Aparo (who did the best art of his career, in my opinion, on this title), ushered in the most creatively fertile period that the character has ever known. Wein gave the Stranger a girlfriend of sorts, a blind psychic named Cassandra Craft, and set him to battle a murderous cult called the Dark Circle, led by a sexy high priestess named Tala with aid from a cynical, morally ambiguous magician named Tannarak, who had appeared several issues back in the run. This was truly PS's golden age, because after Wein and Aparo left, it was back to becoming a glorified horror host (the Rod Serling of comics, some called the character at the time) before the inevitable cancellation. That Wein/Aparo run, though, was some great stuff, and it was issues 14-26, in case you were wondering. Also appearing in the last few W/A books was an interesting back feature, The Spawn of Frankenstein, by Wein and Mike Kaluta, in which Dr. Thirteen gets mixed up with Frankenstein's monster. The episodes that Kaluta drew were really great, and issue #26 was a fun crossover between the Stranger and the SoF, with Aparo interiors and a Kaluta cover.

One reason Wein left the Stranger was so he could focus on DC's latest horror star, the Swamp Thing, who had just earned his own brand new title in the late summer of 1972. This particular run tends to be overshadowed by Alan Moore's brilliant re-imagining of the character some 13 years later, but I've always had a soft spot for its original incarnation, which featured the best artwork of Berni Wrightson's career and some clever reworkings of classic horror-film icons; a Frankenstein monster, here called the Patchwork Man; a werewolf, witches, and so on. In #7 Swampy met Batman in Gotham City, which treated us to Wrightson's lithe version of the Dark Knight, complete with fifty-foot long cape, touched on Lovecraftian territory in #8 when he encountered M'Nagalah, a malignant "old god" in a mine shaft, and so on. After issue #10, Wrightson tired of incessant deadlines and left, along with Wein, who went over to Marvel and began his quick slide to obscurity, and new creators came aboard: David Michelinie (fresh off an underrated run on the Unknown Soldier comic) and Nestor Redondo, who was easily one of the best of the then-new Filipino artists that were prevalent in comics in the mid-70s. They had a tough act to follow, but they often excelled and Swamp Thing was consistently good for a long time, but eventually sales dwindled and the book got cancelled, and then a few years later Alan Moore, Steve Bissette and John Totleben happened. But that's another story.

A sort of wild-card entry into DC's 70s horror stable was the Mike Fleisher/Jim Aparo take on the Golden Age character, The Spectre. After DC had revived the Discarnate Detective in the early 60s, first in one of those JLA/JSA team-ups of yore, then in his own short-lived series in which he was treated as sort of DC's answer to Dr. Strange, the decision was made to give the character a spotlight in one of DC's anthology-type books, Adventure Comics, which had been floundering in sales. Fleisher took the earliest appearances of the Spectre as his inspiration, specifically the instances where the Spectre would kill a man dead in his tracks by giving him a death stare, or pick up a car full of fleeing gangsters and fling it into space, watching it catch on fire as it left the atmosphere. This grim, avenging angel aspect of the character had been pretty much ignored previously, and Fleisher decided to take it and blow it up to imaginative, outlandish, Grand Guignol (or as much so as one could do in a Code-approved comic) levels. Killers disguised as hairdressers? Spec would gesture at a pair of scissors out of one of their pockets, enlarge it to giant size, and cut one of them in two! Trapped kidnapper in a sawmill? Transformed into wood and cut into sections! Fake swami, with crystal ball, ripping people off? Transformed into glass and shattered! This was a gruesome hoot for a while, and this relaunch of the Spectre was quite popular at first...but eventually it became formulaic and stale, and sales dwindled as well, and was eventually replaced in Adventure about a year after it had begun. But these issues were PG rated, gory good fun and Jim Aparo turned in some outstanding art on these as well. They're well worth checking out if you find them, and I'll always remember them fondly.



I think there was a pretty long dry spell for interesting horror-themed books in the late 70s and 80s; other than Moore's (and later, Rick Veitch's not-bad) Swamp Thing, and Gaiman's Sandman of course. Seems like all the independents like Eclipse and Pacific tried their hands at horror anthology books, and most were forgettable. But one character, created by Moore as sort of a gadfly during his Swamp Thing run, soon became a star and eventually got his own title in the late 80s, which helped launch the entire Vertigo line: John Constantine: Hellblazer, still going strong to this day. Ol' JC has had a number of different writers and artists in those one hundred eighty-plus issues, but has always remained a fascinating and charismatic character. Perhaps the best run of this title was Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's long run in the 90s which introduced a lot of great characters, developed the lead in new and interesting ways, and set the tone for their subsequent Preacher series. Another long run by Paul Jenkins and Sean Phillips was outstanding as well. Actually, JC:HB is as good right now as it's been in a long time, with Mike (Lucifer) Carey at the helm. Speaking of Sandman, I gotta mention Carey's excellent Lucifer ongoing series, which is as good as it gets in mainstream comics right now, in my own humble opinion.

Dark Horse Comics' major contribution to the horror comics genre is, of course, Mike Mignola's Hellboy, the always entertaining adventure/horror series featuring a seven-foot demon who gets called "The World's Greatest Paranormal Investigator" and has become, thanks to Mignola' innovative style, a stylistic benchmark for any sort of subsequent supernatural-themed illustrated endeavor. Big Sunny D recently posted a great commentary on this series, and I'll just point you here so you can read it. One of the best things about the Hellboy series, in my opinion, is the organization he works for, the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, aka the BPRD, which is staffed with a fascinating cast of characters and provides a lot of depth for the entire series. I want a BPRD cap, damn it.

Another series I like a lot originally appeared as a backing feature in Hellboy before getting its own one shot a couple of years ago, The MonsterMen by Gary Gianni. Gianni's meticulously retro artwork recaptures the feel of old pulp magazine illustrators more convincingly than anyone since Mike Kaluta, and the concept (which still hasn't been fully explained yet, due to the sporadic nature of MonsterMen appearances), is just downright wiggy. Most of the tales so far revolve around one Saint George, a fellow who dresses in a smoking jacket and wears a medieval armored helmet to help people do battle with the malignant forces of evil. Lotsa fun, and well worth checking out when possible. This series has had a lotta names as well: it was originally called "Gary Gianni's MysteryMen", then was changed for obvious reasons to "Corpus Monstrum", and is now known as "Gary Gianni's MonsterMen". Whatever they call it, I like it.

X-Men saturated Marvel really didn't have much of note coming out in the 90s, unless you count its Ghost Rider book...they attempted several times, especially in the wake of the success of DC's Vertigo imprint, to revive their supernatural stable to no avail. However, in my opinion they did publish one standout title in that period: Warren Ellis and Leo Manco's Hellstorm series, which I included in my 12 comics series everyone should read list. Go here to read what I wrote then.

Finally, I want to mention a couple of Fantagraphics' forays into supernatural comics, especially my personal favorite: Richard Sala's Evil Eye. Sala's made a career out of writing and illustrating oddball murder mysteries and ghost stories, and I really like his quirky, Charles Addams-meets-Nancy Drew style. Eye is his ongoing series, which features a mystery serial Reflections in a Glass Scorpion and the stand-alone exploits of his somewhat enigmatic and waifish Peculia. This book, and all of Sala's work like this, is an acquired taste, I suppose, but I acquired it a long time ago so I'm in for the long haul. Besides, Sala draws, in my twisted opinion, some of the sexiest women I've ever seen. Also from Fantagraphics, and speaking of acquired tastes, is Meat Cake, by performance artist Dame Darcy. Darcy's primitive art style and whimsical, sometimes surreal, Neo-Victorian gothic stories don't appeal to everyone, for sure, but I find them charming. I also get a strong antebellum Southern-style ambiance from them as well. Darcy has been known to do the occasional ghost story as well, in her turn-of-the-previous-century style, and these are always excellent. Plus, if you send her 20 bucks and a copy of your palm, she'll tell your fortune! Where else are you gonna find that in a comic book? The Bros. Hernandez, in both incarnations of their Love and Rockets series, also sometimes dip into the supernatural well, most notably the Mexican legend of La Llorona. Fantagraphics also publishes Charles Burns' Black Hole, a title to which I was initially attracted, but I found it kinda dry and uninvolving after a couple of issues so I moved on. I really like Burns' style, though (especially on those great El Borbah stories), so I might try to buy a collection of this down the road sometime.

I know there are probably a lot of great books I've overlooked, or didn't mention because they just didn't fit somehow (like Dr. Strange, Neilalien) but these are ones that have left the strongest impression on me in the past, so there ya go. Sorry it's taken me so long to finish this; I've had all kinds of stuff going on non-stop around here and it's seriously cut into my time in front of the butterfly curtains...so...thanks for your patience and Happy Halloween!

Hie thee to John Jakala's joint for a nice response post to someone else's critique of Watchmen. He especially hits the nail on the head when it comes to justifying the otherwise tedious pirate story that took up a part of that twelve issue series.

Quick note while watching Navy NCIS...isn't it odd how much David McCallum resembles Robert Vaughn now?

One of the nice things about my new template is that the problem I was having with space in the template code area is now (knock wood, of course) a thing of the past. I can link like a muthafucka without fear of losing precious code at the bottom of the area.

Just added the amusingly named group blog, the Comics Burrito. Go forth and viddy, oh my droogs.

Update: guess I spoke too soon, about the template that is. For some reason, now everything in the body is center justified. Maybe it was because I dropped an MF bomb. I don't know how or why this happening; I have a "center" command but I also did a /center as well, and it should be affecting only the links box and not the body of the page. Sigh. Anybody? Help?

Guess this will be all from me tonight- I have started writing the horror comics post, but it won't get done tonight because Carnivale, The Black Cat, Navy NCIS (see below) and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown are all coming on this evening. Tomorrow, it's off to Bowling Green to get my weekly comics fix and I might even, if the stars all align properly, go see a matinee of Kill Bill. Then, I have a doctor appointment Thursday morning, and hopefully I'll get home in time to see Scars of Dracula which comes on AMC at 11 AM. Later on, that evening we're supposed to see the Horse Cave Theatre production of Frankenstein, featuring my son as a gravedigger, so I don't know how much I'll get done then either! That gosh darn real life- always interfering with by blogging!

But as God is my witness, as God is my witness...they're not going to lick me! I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again! No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill! As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again!

Oh. Sorry. had a little Scarlett O'Hara moment there. What I meant to say is that as God is my witness I intend to finish both that post and more comments on Sean's most recent 13 Days of Halloween entries- before Halloween's over, that is. I've also been over to my Mom's to pull Marvels out of my collection for reappraisal and an eventual piece...key word eventual.

I keep messing around, putting the (center) command in different places. My most recent try wound up left justifying everything. You PC users- is the body still center justified? For a while it was showing up just fine on my Mac, but when I opened this up on a PC everything was wrong.

Oh well. Time to eat supper and vegetate in front of the TV. Oyasumi Nasai, y'all.

BSBdG's go out today to the Bride herself, the late Elsa Lanchester, who would have been 101 today.

Of course, most people remember her for her role as the Bride of Frankenstein, (and even better, as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley in a speaking role in that film) but actually she had a long and diverse career on both stage and screen. Just recently, I've seen her in films ranging from 1958's Bell Book and Candle to the 1964 teen romp Pajama Party, as well as a witty supporting role to husband Charles Laughton in 1957's Witness For the Prosecution.

For me personally, there's always been something about the young Elsa that I find very attractive- her doe eyes, her unusual pointed, cleft chin and equally pointed nose, swollen, bee-stung lips and veddy English demeanah just grabbed my fancy. She was no classic beauty by any means, but she definitely had that certain je'nais se quoi... I think that's how you spell it, anyway...

Anywho, click on the picture above to go to her official website, which does have some interesting pics, just not enough of em!

One thing before I give it up for the night- those of you who are able to get American Movie Classics and find themselves awake at 5 AM CST should go there and check out one of my all time favorite 50's low budget giant monster movies, The Giant Gila Monster! If you've never seen this flick, then I highly recommend it. It's got a giant lizard, creepy credits music, hot rods, girls, rock n' roll, nitro glycerin- everything you need in a movie! Apparently I have a kindred spirit out there on the web, because here's a site devoted to this classic of drive-in cinema!

Apparently "Monstervision" has begun in full vigour on AMC.. I would get up early, but I've already got this movie on VHS. They're showin' a lot of cool movies over the next few days- with commercials, unfortunately, but that's the price we pay, I suppose. Oh, by the way- they're also showing the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers at 3 AM.

I love this song. The rest of the album, less so, although most consider it (probably correctly but I just don't hear it that way) a classic. But this song blows me away every time I hear it, with those ass-kicking mellow soul horns doing the wango tango with that wah-wah guitar.

Sly was the Man before anybody knew what the Man was.

I'm on the verge of ordering this new Sly collection from Columbia House, because they're running one of those buy one, get three free sales which really means you still wind up paying five bucks shipping for your "free" selections...but when you total the cost of four new CDs from your favorite mall store and compare it to what you pay for your order, you make out like a bandit. Plus, CH has this sweet-looking Dave Brubeck collection, and I really really really want a CD with Billie Holliday singing "Autumn in New York"...if they have one... I'm also mulling over getting Macy Gray's second CD as part of this order, and I'd love to get the new OutKast as well but CH won't allow it to be part of any special deals. Feh. I could probably get it for cheaper at the CD Warehouse, used.

OK, I guess I'm done. I'm just rambling, waiting for the Monday night game to come on.

Update: I placed my order. In addition to the Essential Sly and the Family Stone set, I also ordered the Essential Dave Brubeck, the remastered and expanded Good Old Boys by Randy Newman, a longtime favorite album o'mine, and the Bob Dylan Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975-The Rolling Thunder Revue. Four double cd sets for $38! Don't ask me how I intend to pay for them, though. I decided to get the Macy Gray CD later, and they didn't have a Billie Holliday set with "Autumn" on it. Looks like I'll have to keep an eye out for Lady in Autumn: The Best of the Verve Years which not only has "Autumn" but her versions of "Strange Fruit", "Stormy Monday" and a song I heard Maria Muldaur cover nicely, "Lover Man".

And boy, does that Dolphins/Chargers game suck or what? Last time I ever pick a game on a hunch.

Greetings, my friends. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember, my friends, future events such as these will affect you... in the future!

Like good ol' Ed Wood said via the Uncanny Criswell, here are the comics that will be appearing in my holds folder...in the future! (Well, Wednesday, all right?) According to that most enigmatic of oracles, ye auld Diamond shipping list:

CATWOMAN #24
JLA #89
LEGION #25
HULK: GRAY #2

That's it! Looking forward to the new JLA, and what promises to be a bang-up finale to the best story arc yet by the current regular team. The new Legion promises the return of a character that I had absolutely no desire to see again, but I believe I was in the minority amongst Legion fans: Superboy. And not the modern Superboy, no- the original, Kal-El version. Yawn. Something else scheduled to come out is

ESSENTIAL TOMB OF DRACULA VOL 1

which I would dearly love to get, especially since it's going to be one of the titles I intend to cite in my upcoming horror comics I have known and loved post. It's 15 bucks and black and white, and 15 bucks isn't terrible but it's still a lot for me to drop at once, especially these days. Hm. I wonder if I could sell my JLA/Avengers back to them...!

And now...without warning...that long awaited and oft-threatened Special Solo Beatles edition of Johnny B's Mondo Vinyl-O! in which I take twelve long-playing vinyl recorded albums and write a paragraph or so about them. This was precipitated by my acquisition of a new turntable several months ago after about two years without a functioning one, and the subsequent vinyl playing orgy that ensued. I figured I might as well write about it, and I did. This time out, I've decided to hold forth about solo Beatles records, of which I have several and of which several find their way onto the rotating platter quite often. So roll up, roll up...

Paul McCartney

RAM (1971)
This was the first proper solo Fabs record I ever owned, and at this point I should send out a shout out to my then-neighbors Grant and Greg Elliott, in whose basement I heard this for the first time. Paulie, a bit taken aback by what he perceived as harsh critical treatment of his first (and probably, after all is said and done, best) solo effort, 1970's homemade McCartney and the slight 45-only follow-up "Another Day", (even though I have personally never seen a review that was less than kind, and I believe that any critical backlash was out of anguish over the dissolution of the Beatles and Macca's role in same) decided to pull out all the stops and really deliver something that would wow the music press and restore his somewhat tarnished rep. Well, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, as they say, and what Paulie delivered out of his newfound convictions was one odd, patchwork record, both slapdash and overproduced at the same time. Ram is made up partially of song fragments, some stitched together Frankenstein-like with the seams still showing, such as "Long Haired Lady", with nice BVs by Mrs. McCartney and the oddball mega hit single "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey", surely one of the most unlikely hits ever-which rest beside Big Production Songs like his bloated, overlong, but nicely scored Beach Boys homage "The Back Seat of My Car", the rocking opener "Too Many People", with a great, nasty guitar sound; and the Buddy Holly love letter "Eat at Home". I like the slight but pleasant acoustic ditty "Heart of the Country", the bluesy rockers "Three Legs" and doo-wopish "Smile Away" (with its vulgar lyric)- among the few times Macca really rocked convincingly on his own. "Monkberry Moon Delight" is catchy despite the utter lyrical inanity. "Dear Boy" is a lovely, forlorn and brief song that alternately pokes fun at and expresses regret to his former songwriting partner in the Fabs. Lennon didn't appreciate all the namechecking, both explicit and imagined on his part, that he received- upon noticing that Paul had attached a picture of two beetles fucking on Ram's collage sleeve, he responded by having a photo made with him standing in a pigpen, holding some unsuspecting swine by its ears which made its way, in postcard format, into the first printings of his subsequent Imagine album, and you probably are aware of his vicious swipe at McC via Imagine's "How Do You Sleep". Nasty letters column exchanges ensued between both parties, and the Lennon-McCartney feud dragged on for over a year before both parties wised up and reconciled. History lesson aside, Ram remains a puzzling, schizo listen. I like its offhand, sloppy feel, and many of the songs are beautiful...but as a whole it becomes too much sometimes because it's produced to distraction and the songs don't always hold up. Still, and maybe because I get a pleasant nostalgia rush when I hear the unintelligible opening lyric and guitar lick of "People", I pull this one out quite often.

VENUS AND MARS (ARE ALL RIGHT TONIGHT) (1975)
Here's another waay overproduced album, but unlike Ram, the songs are constructed in letter-perfect fashion. Every note and lyric in its proper place and right, veddy good, carry on, soldier. This was the follow-up to 1973's Band on the Run, the record which proved to many critics that Macca still had a little left in the tank. It was also the album debut of Wings mark III, probably to this day the most fondly-remembered version of that group, with Jimmy McCulloch on guitar and Joe English on drums. McCullouch, in particular, had set Beatlefans abuzz with his stinging guitar solo in 1974's single "Junior's Farm" and his nice work on the album Paul did with his brother, McGear. Compared to Band, it's almost as tuneful, but not as engaging. It starts out just fine with the demure acoustic title track (reprised on side two), which segues into the big crashing rocksong opener "Rock Show" (a minor hit), which namedrops Jimmy Page and has some eyebrow-raising lyrics about "scoring an ounce" from pothead Paulie. When all the cymbals stop crashing and the pianos stop glissandoing, next up is another pleasant but unremarkable love song called, well, "Love in Song", which illustrated as well as anything what the problem is with this record- there are some high highs, but there's also a lot of derivative tedium as well. "You Gave Me The Answer", for example, finds Paul dipping once more in the same retro well from whence came "Your Mother Should Know", "Honey Pie", and "Gotta Sing Gotta Dance", with about the same unimpressive result. "Magneto and Titanium Man" is catchy, but features some truly dumb lyrics which namedrop Marvel Comics characters and makes me wonder whether Paulie really ever read any of those funnybooks. "Letting Go", for some reason, never fails to remind me of Band's "Let Me Roll It", although the two songs are very different and only share track positioning. Both are said to be written as conciliatory gestures to John. "Letting Go" is definitely the second best song on side one, though. And we get more dullness on side two, including the tedious McCullough composition "Medicine Jar", whose own advice Jimmy, who died of drug and alcohol abuse about three years later, should have heeded; an attempt to redo "Oh Darling", this time titled "Call Me Back Again". It's passable but pointless. "Spirits of Ancient Egypt" is catchy and fast paced, and even rocks a bit, but the overall effect is unremarkable. The highlight of side two has to be the Big Hit Single "Listen to What the Man Said", which features Allen Touissaint somewhere in the mix playing sax (this album was mostly recorded in New Orleans) and is one of my favorite Macca solo songs period. It's somewhat wistful and very likeable. All this music was wrapped in a cleverly realized Hipgnosis studio (you know, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin) sleeve which featured posters galore and illustrations by the great George Hardie NTA, who I would link to in a heartbeat if he had a web site. If I had a scan of everything he's done, I'd create one, I love his illustrations that much.

PRESS TO PLAY (1986)
By 1986, Paul was again hearing about how wretched his recent output had been, such as the soundtrack to the excruciatingly pointless 1984 vanity flick Give My Regards to Broad Street and his good in places but mostly unsatisfying 1982 opus Pipes of Peace, so he, by all appearances, seemed to really make an effort to wow his critics with this record. He enlisted an outside (non-Beatle extended family, cf. George Martin) producer, Chris Thomas, and sacked longtime songwriting partner Denny Laine in favor of 10cc's own "cute one" Eric Stewart, and appeared to take special care with the arrangements and lyrics for each song, even trying to write imaginative nonsensical words a la Lennon in "However Absurd". And for my money, he really succeeded. In fact, I think Press To Play is a very underrated album, and one of the best of any of the solo Beatles' efforts. Well, OK, if that was a 25-album list, perhaps. Songs like the rockish opener "Stranglehold", "Talk More Talk" (another patchwork song, but this time the seams don't show); the title cut (somewhat reggae-ish), "Angry", a hard-edged and punky (well, as "punky" as Macca can be, anyway) workout; "Move Over Busker", which sports funny lyrics and a great melody; and the gorgeous side one closer "Only Love Remains", a nicely produced strings-and-piano thing which could have been bombastic and unbearable in some hands (and indeed, if it had been on Ram or Red Rose Speedway it would have been unlistenable, I'll bet) but gets just the right touch here and should be a more fondly-remembered track than it is. I think that by 1986, people had simply had enough of Paul McCartney and his erstwhile surviving bandmates, and Play's reception was proof of that. Pity, because I think this is a really strong album and well worth rediscovering.

John Lennon

SOME TIME IN NEW YORK CITY (1972)
Known in some circles as "How To Kill Your Career and Get Kicked Out of the Country". By '72 John had traveled over to the US of A and had taken up residence here, ostensibly so Yoko could search for her missing daughter Kyoko, but also because he was tired of living in and being taxed to death by his native country. As soon as he got here, because of his aggressive peace propaganda campaigning, he became a magnet for every radical, Yippie, free-thinking, anarchistic headcase with an agenda to push and a cause to endorse, and John, as open-minded and eager to please as always, fell right in- endorsing many controversial causes and backing many less-than-desirable fringe dwellers slash pseudo celebrities who were more than happy to have a Beatle in their corner. Some of the causes he espoused were worthy, some less so. Anyway, at some point in the interval after the release of his Imagine album he realized that he was going to have to deliver something to the record company eventually...and hit upon a then-novel idea: he would quickly write and record songs in tandem with Yoko and NYC band Elephant's Memory which addressed the relevant topics of the day, and issue them quickly, newspaper-style, on his presumably receptive mass Beatle audience and anyone else who was enlightened enough to listen. Not the worst of ideas, but he got off on the wrong foot when the initial single, "Woman is the Nigger of the World" dropped the N-word on aghast 1972 radio programmers (even though the word was used in its literal sense, and not as a racial epithet) and barely got played- thus dooming this album, complete with faux-newspaper cover, to die a quick and decisive chart death and ensuring that no one but the hardcore faithful would get the message. This is far from a total disaster, though- Lennon correctly assumed that the crude, bluesy Elephant's Memory Band would add a little roughage to his recipe, Phil Spector is on board to make sure the mix doesn't get too muddy, and while many of the songs have dated badly ("Attica State", "Angela", about Angela Davis) and suffer from näive lyrical sentiment (Yoko's songs in particular have this problem) and heavy-handedness, there are some gems, such as the folky, dobro-driven "John Sinclair", Yoko's berserko "We're All Water", and the album's only masterpiece, John's valentine to his adopted home, the Chuck Berry-ish "New York City". Not long after this came out and bombed, faced with deportation by the hostile Nixon administration, John distanced himself from his radical politics, told the sycophants to get lost, and promptly seperated with Yoko. He then recorded the professional, tuneful, but reserved and lackluster Mind Games, then promptly embarked upon the legendary "Lost Weekend". Also part of the package was a live record that documented an evening which featured John and Yoko and Elephant's Memory playing with Frank Zappa and what was left of the Flo & Eddie verion of the Mothers of Invention, for only a buck more than the standard list price. This particular record is pretty hit and miss, mostly miss, and at least half of it, in this version, features Yoko's trademark avant-garde free-form yowling and screeching, which must have amused Zappa to no end. Roll eyes here. Zappa bitched a lot about this particular record release, in fact...for years after he claimed that J & Y butchered the master tapes, remixing and arranging them to feature the pair at FZ's expense, extending even to the innersleeve in which it came- which was the reproduced cover to the Mothers' 1971 Fillmore East live album on which J & Y scrawled their own graffiti and drew pictures, and so on. If I'm not mistaken, the Zappa people eventually released restored tapes of these sessions on one of the multitudes of posthumous live releases that came out in the 90s. For a buck, the record wasn't bad, but it didn't add much to this album as a complete package.

ROCK AND ROLL (1975)
It was during that Lost Weekend, when he was living in LA, shacked up with Yoko's personal secretary May Pang (at Yoko's insistence- whatta gal) and scarfing down a million and a half gallons of alcohol with Harry Nilsson, Ringo, Keith Moon and anyone else who happened to show up, that John decided to record an oldies album. This was prompted by at least two things- first, a lawsuit by the publishers of Chuck Berry's "You Can't Catch Me", who sued John because someone thought "Come Together" plagiarized it...as part of a settlement, John agreed to record that song and two others from that publisher. Also, a record was due to the company, and John had hardly been busy writing new songs. Plus, at the time it seemed like everyone and their grandmother was recording albums of songs from the 50s and early 60s, like David Bowie, Bryan Ferry, the Band, and others. "Happy Days" fever had just gripped the country, and 50s nostalgia was the thing. So John went in (at the height of his mania) with Phil Spector at the height of his, and between fighting, bickering, drawn pistols, drunkeness, drug abuse and God only knows what else managed to cut maybe a half dozen songs before Spector took off with the tapes and the whole crew was politely asked to vacate the studio premises. Lennon eventually sobered up long enough to record another album, Walls and Bridges, co-produce Harry Nilsson's Pussy Cats and not long after, John and Yoko reconciled. Happy about this, and happy abut having survived the Lost Weekend but not especially keen to write an elpee's worth of toons (househusbandry was beckoning, you know), he decided to track down the tapes Spector ripped off and see if there was anything to salvage. There wasn't much. Some of the tracks from those ill-starred sessions did survive and were included though, and it's easy to tell which ones they are because they're easily the dullest on the album! John took these, and recorded newer covers, and released the whole thing in 1975...and this was his last non-greatest hits type record until his big 1980 comeback Double Fantasy. This album is often brilliant, and often pretty humdrum, too. He leads off with a fine cover of Gene Vincent's "Be-Bop a Lula", follows that with his magnificent version of "Stand By Me" (he really sings the hell out of that one), then goes right into a Little Richard/Elvis medley of "Rip It Up/Ready Teddy". He stumbles next on one of the survivors from the Spector sessions, the song which got the ball rolling in the first place, "You Can't Catch Me" which gets a too-long and plodding rearrangement, but quickly redeems himself with a sly and low-key funky horn-driven cover of Fats Domino's "Ain't That a Shame". Those are the highlights of side one, for me. Side two starts out strong with "Slippin' and Slidin'", which I remember seeing him perform on some awards show...it was set to be the next single after "Stand", but got pulled at the last minute. The rest of side two is fair-to-dull, and one would think that John would have done better by the likes of Buddy Holly ("Peggy Sue") and Larry Williams, who he used to cover excellently in the early Beatles days. I just don't think John's heart was really in this, and the Spector sessions cuts should have probably stayed in the can- but this is really a fine, listenable record, often brilliant. One just wishes it could have had a less troubled birth and had been recorded with a bit more commitment.

MILK AND HONEY (1982)
John Lennon's murder in 1980 made this record more poignant than it was ever intended to be, but it's also a more enjoyable record than its predecessor in my ears, anyway. John wasn't able to help produce it to distraction like he did Double Fantasy, and that keeps the songs honest and even a bit rough around the edges, very unusual for an 80s-produced record. Like Fantasy and Some Time in New York City, it's half Yoko and half John, but by 1980 Yoko had grown as an accessible songwriter and many listeners had grown more acclimated to her quirks. Her stuff is well-crafted and often catchy in its singsongy way (I myself prefer the 70s stuff), but it's John's contributions, as usual, that make or break the record, and it's got some wonderful tunes like "Nobody Told Me", "I'm Stepping Out", and a version of an old Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem, intended as a valentine to Yoko and presented here in little better than a demo version titled "Grow Old With Me" which sounds fragile and so emotionally unguarded that the listener can't help but be moved. There's another demo of this track on the Lennon Anthology set which is even rougher, and I prefer it. It's a heartbreaker. I remember being quite disappointed by Fantasy, then of course shocked and devastated at his murder, then the whole rotten shame of it all was driven home by this collection, which gave us a glimpse of what John had left to offer.

George Harrison

LIVING IN THE MATERIAL WORLD (1973)
After his resounding opening solo career salvo All Things Must Pass, George got sidetracked by the Bangladesh concert and other things before finally releasing this, the follow-up, three years later. Living suffers in comparison with its predecessor, simply because it's not as big and ornate and hyperproduced. The songs are all low-key mid-tempo exercises, even the nominal rockers "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long" and the title track, and there's nothing which really sticks in the ear. But...each and every song boasts strong melodies and excellent playing, and after repeated listens becomes very enjoyable. Ya just gotta make the commitment first. If you've heard nothing else from LitMW, you've heard its only hit single "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth", a pleasant enough Dylanish ditty with some nice slide work. Other faves of mine include the droning, "Long Long Long"-ish "Be Here Now", which is quite lovely if a little like listening to a meditation lesson; the aforementioned title track, which romps along at about five minutes, has some clever lyrics, and features a couple of sitar passages- which he didn't get around to using again until 1987's Cloud Nine. "That Is All" is a sweet, understated ballady thing with a great melody- and was covered by Harry Nilsson a couple of years later; "Try Some Buy Some", a lecture on the evils of greed and covetousness, was originally written for and recorded by Ronnie Spector, but George decided to recycle it and created a very distinctive swirling calliope-mixed-with-Spector (Phil)-is wall-of-sound ambience. This track, as well as any other, demonstrated the biggest problem with LitMW: every song is immaculately crafted and always listenable, but almost every cut has a dour, scolding, didactic tone- especially on out-and-out sermons such as "The Lord Loves the One (That Loves the Lord)" (kinda know right off the bat what you're getting there, dont'cha) with its ridiculous lyric about "The leaders of nations/They act like big girls", The Light That Has Lighted the World", and "The Day the World Gets Round". How much tolerance you have for this sort of thing will directly impact how much you enjoy this album. Me, I suppose I got used to that sort of thing a long time ago- I mean, this sort of thing has been running through Harrison's music as far back as "Don't Bother Me" and "Think For Yourself", so I just concentrate on the melodies and the general sentiment and let all the rest go out the other ear. Kinda like when I used to go to church, heh... Anyway, this record did pretty well, sales-wise, most likely on the good will engendered by Pass...but many regard this as the first in a series of disappointing efforts by the Quiet One.

EXTRA TEXTURE (Read All About It) (1975)
This album, which has the distinction of being the last one released on the Apple records label (and appropriately enough, the Apple is now depicted as an eaten-away core), was recorded during a low point, both creatively and personally for George and it's pretty obvious- the Dark Horse album and tour debacle, plus a bout with laryngitis and hepatitis, had taken a lot out of him. The perkiest cut and would-be hit single, "You", was originally intended for Ronnie Spector; when that failed to materialize, George re-recorded the vocals (in a much higher key than one which befits his voice, so it has a very noticable speeded-up effect) and released it himself. It's catchy, but slight. This whole album has a diffuse, murky, shabby quality to it, and although cuts like "Can't Stop Thinking About You" (which, to be fair, could have fit very well on All Things Must Pass) and "The Answer's At The End" have strong melodies, they get bogged down in the malaise that permiates everything here. "His Name Is Legs" (Larry Smith, of Bonzo Dog Doo Dah fame) is kinda clever in a cutesy way, and "Tired Of Midnight Blue" boogies along agreeably if not energetically, but the overall effect of a complete listen to this album is quite enervating, preachy sometimes and depressing. He would go on to do much better eventually, but Extra Texture was a record that probably should have remained in the can. One would be better off looking for the original vinyl issue...it featured a cool die-cut cover which was practically the highlight of this lackluster effort. I cannot tell a lie- I took my Amazon.com review of this album and rewrote it a bit to save a little time. So sue me.

GEORGE HARRISON (1979)
After the career low points of Dark Horse (even though I really like that record) and Extra Texture, George rebounded somewhat with 1976's more upbeat 33 and 1/3, then took three years to deliver this, the enjoyable, if somewhat slight, follow-up. There's a good-vibes feeling throughout the record, probably the result of kindler, gentler George having decided to stop playing the rock star game and concentrate on his home and family. He still can't resist telling us how he feels we should live our lives, but now just shrugs off our skepticism where before it seemed to get under his skin. Everything on this album is a celebration of simple pleasures of his life- his wife, Olivia ("Love Comes to Everyone", "Dark Sweet Lady", "Your Love is Forever"), son Dhani ("Soft Touch"), new hobby auto racing ("Faster"), the Moon on a tropical beach ("Here Comes the Moon", not exactly a sequel to the more well-known Abbey Road song, and probably the most elaborate and lovely track on the record- really overlooked, in my opinion), even the joys of fungal sensory enhancement ("Soft Hearted Hana", a clever 'shroomy soft-shoe). George also reworks the rejected White Album track "Not Guilty", toning down its crashing rock into more of a gentle shuffle more in line with the feel of the rest of the album. There was only one hit single, the cheerful and sprightly "Blow Away", the video of which showed George in all his curly permed glory. Honestly, this will never be an album which goes down in the annals of Beatle history as a landmark or anything- but it is a surprisingly fun listen.

Ringo Starr

BEAUCOUPS OF BLUES (1971)
After doing an album of standards "for his Mum", which I've still never heard, Ringo followed it up with an album of country/western music, featuring some of the cream of Nashville sessionmen at the time like Elvis' drummer D.J. Fontana and the Jordanaires, Charlie Daniels, Jerry Reed, Neil Young stalwart Ben Keith, and others and indulged himself in the same spirit which led to Beatle tracks like "What Goes On" and "Act Naturally". This is not a bad record by any stretch, but it just doesn't leave much of an impression because there's just not a lot of spark in any of the tracks. They're all competently played and sung (Ringo is in pretty good voice, for Ringo) but for some reason the tracks are lifeless. Hard to say exactly why. But still, there is a lot of listenable stuff here including the title track, the more uptempo "$15 Draw", a great honky-tonk workout titled "I'd Be Talking All The Time", and a downbeat anti-Vietnam War song called "Silent Homecoming".

GOODNIGHT VIENNA (1974)
In 1973 producer Richard Perry and all of Ringo's musician friends, including his ex-bandmates, got together and pitched in on a record with Ritchie which wound up being a monster smash hit with critics and the buying public alike, and thirty years later Ringo remains a solid, clever album which hasn't dated badly at all. When it came time to follow it up, Ringo once again turned to Perry and most of the same cast that enlivened Ringo...but sadly, the law of diminishing returns was in full effect and the resulting Goodnight Vienna falls way short of the standard of its predecessor. Plain and simple, the songs aren't quite as good. Which is not to say that this is a bad album, far from it- there's still a definite bonhomie in effect and the fun spirit comes across in nearly every track. John Lennon again contributes a winner, with the rocking title track; Hoyt Axton's "No No Song" is funny and clever, and has great BVs by Harry Nilsson; Ringo covers not only Harry on the string drenched "Easier For Me", but also does very well by Roger Miller on "Husbands and Wives", an example of (in my opinion, anyway) good country-rock as strong as any Gram Parsons or Mike Nesmith song at the time. "Occa Pella" is a horn-driven duet with Dr. John. A pleasant reworking of the old chestnut "Only You (and You Alone)", with more smooth Nilssonian BVs, was the biggest hit, and really the only clunkers were a muddy-sounding collaboration with the then-hot Bernie Taupin-Elton John team, "Snookeroo", and the plodding "Call Me", which pointed to the direction of the next three Ringo releases, which pretty much killed his solo career momentum.

STOP AND SMELL THE ROSES (1981)
Nobody cared anymore when this came out, even Ringo really (a lyric sample: "I'm going crazy with this record business/I want to stop it/You want me to stop it/Everybody wants it to stop"). Crafted from a host of songs that were given to him by his former bandmates, along with Harry Nilsson (his last new songs to see release in his lifetime) Ron Wood, and Steve Stills. Originally titled Can't Fight Lightning, it came out on the fledgling Boardwalk Records (the major labels having long ago passed on any further Starr product), which went belly up soon after this came out, ensuring a quick chart death. But- all things considered, this is a surprisingly good album, featuring great contributions from Paul in particular ("Attention", "Private Property") and Nilsson, who pretty much defines the sound and feel of the record with his reggae-and-steel-drum flavored "Drumming is my Madness" and the charming, if a bit negative title track, along with a reworked "Back Off Boogaloo" done in the style of Harry's long-ago cover of "You Can't Do That", with lots of lines from Beatle songs floating in and out and around the melody. George's "Wrack My Brain" was a minor hit single, which troubled the top 100 if I recall correctly and spawned a video I remember seeing. There's a cover of a Carl Perkins song which Paul produces, probably one that was suggested by Macca's earlier duet with Perkins on his Tug of War album. I don't think this is in print anymore, but if you see it in a used vinyl bin somewhere I strongly suggest you take a flyer on it- it's a very entertaining record and deserved a wider audience than it got. Ringo didn't do another album until he seized upon the All-Starr Band conceit towards the end of the decade.

Whew! That's gonna do it for now. I love to write about the Fabs and all aspects of their careers, and have gotten a lot of pleasure from their solo records, which often get short shrift from critics and writers, so any chance I get to hold forth about them, I take.

But I am done, and so I will Back Off, Boogaloo until a later time. Coming soon- horror comics I have known and loved.

I was restlessly flipping through the channels one day last week, when I was actually moved to stop and check out a scene from one of those multitudes of military-themed crime investigation shows by the sight of one young lady, all made up in Hollywood standard Gothgirl style and attitude (except for the white lab coat), who was this particular organization's forensics expert/computer whiz. Just the type, I'm sure, that's encouraged in the Naval Armed Forces. Anyway, I was, well...impressed (for lack of a nicer word) by her as she wisecracked with Mark Harmon and clicked away, doing remarkable things on her computer using only the keyboards. Have you ever noticed that in the movies and on TV, you can do anything by keyboard shortcuts and nobody ever uses a mouse? Anyway, her name is Pauley Perette, the show's called Navy NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigation Service, on CBS, her character's name is Abby Sciuto, I may watch again...who knows, and this concludes my little lovestruck observation post.

10/28/03 Note to Sean Collins: she apparently plays Beth, assistant (and girlfriend) to the male lead's character, in The Ring. Small world, huh.

No, more right now!

Big Sunny D, that ras-cule, loves Mike Mignola's Hellboy, as does your humble scribe...the difference being that he's gone and written a great appreciation of the series and I haven't. I think you should go read it right this very minute.

Or as soon as you can...

And you know what? I, too, am a little apprehensive about the upcoming film version, despite Guillermo Del Toro's involvement.

Oh, and I'd like to say one more thing, for the record- the new season of Cartoon Network's Justice League, scripts and (especially) animation, has been pretty darn good so far and 110% better than its inaugural season.

That is all.

More tomorrow.

I've been following Sean Collins' scholarly and interesting 13 Days of Halloween list of (mostly) horror films he likes, and I had once written some of my reactions in a post but decided I didn't like it, and deleted it. Having heard a couple of dissenting opinions on my decision, I have decided to have another go at it, which is now going to take longer because he's written about four more films since my original post! And please bear in mind that these are just my opinions, and I have been known to be wrong before. Anyway, here goes nothing:

First up, as sort of an honorable mention he wrote about the pre-LotR Peter Jackson film Heavenly Creatures, which I've only seen once, a couple of years ago, at the insistence of the Bacardi Show Political Correspondent, who raved about it constantly to me and eventually loaned me a VHS copy. I wish that I could say that I was as blown away by it as the BSPC, but I just had a hard time caring about the unlikeable characters we were given throughout. I did think the fantasy sequences were imaginatively staged, and it was well acted, but the lack of sympathetic characters really did it in for me.

Next, the list proper began, and it was a flick that I had left off my list, causing me no little amount of dismay when I realized that I had forgotten it. Oh- it was Hitchcock's The Birds. At the risk of refuting the statements I made in my own horror movie list a week or so ago, I will admit that if there's ever a movie that made me uneasy, it was this one. It's given me the willies since I saw it long ago as a kid- don't know what my parents were thinking letting me watch this film in my impressionable youth. Probably that I'd seen everything else, why not this too. Anyway, there are many scenes that have made an indelible mark on my memory- especially Tippi Hedren trapped in that phone booth, the bird attack in the attic which was apparently as harrowing in real life as it was onscreen, and (especially) the playground scene, which creates tension so thick you could, as they say, cut it with one of Mrs. Bates' butcher knives. A big part of the feel is, I think, the way Hitchcock directs it with cool precision and a minimum of bravura moves, but not so much that he smothers the paranoia and fear inherent in the script. This one was, as Sean T. says, personal- and it shows.

The Wicker Man was next, and it's one I read about in magazines like The Monster Times for many years before I actually got a chance to see it in some sort of uncut version. That's been over twenty years ago, I think, and perhaps I should try to view it again (with older eyes) because I really wasn't all that impressed with it. As I recall, I was a bit bored by it because it was so determinedly stolid and slow moving, and I suppose that was to create a sense of impending dread or some such but it just didn't grab me where I felt it. The ending, as I recall, livened things up a bit but Edward Woodward's character came across as such an obstinate prig for the most part that I didn't feel too sorry for him when he met his fate. Again, I'm probably being a bit unfair to this movie, and I really should try to see it once more, but I gots ta call 'em like I sees (or saws) 'em.

Number eleven on the Attentiondeficitdisorderly horror hit parade is Night of the Living Dead, the original of course, and I'm in complete agreement with Mr. Collins on this one. It's every bit as effective now as it was thirty plus years ago.

At ten is a film that I would have never thought to put on a horror film list, the Coen Brothers' Barton Fink. I dearly love the works of the Bros., but Fink is perhaps my least favorite of their oeuvre, and I wish I had a really good reason why. It's full of typically odd Coen-ish characters and dialogue, and the direction, photography, and performances are all first-rate...but it just didn't connect with me for some reason. I suppose that I just didn't really sympathise with the protagonist, or maybe the flaming finale struck me as a little too over-the-top, I don't know. This is another one I think I need to watch again, having done so only once, and lots of people with much more informed opinions than I love this film, placing me squarely in the minority, it seems. Sean makes a great case for its inclusion on his list, and highlights several things I didn't see in the same (fire) light.

Even odder, to me, is the inclusion of film #9, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut- which I certainly regarded as a horror, but not in the same way Sean intends it. I will say that again, Sean makes a great case for this movie, but I've sat through it twice, finding it plodding and uninvolving, full of unpleasant characters doing unpleasant things to each other, and really don't want to do it again. Kubrick was a great filmmaker, no doubt about it, but even the great ones stumble occasionally, and I've always regarded this and his muddled adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining as his career worsts.

And finally, #8 today, Clive Barker's Hellraiser, a movie I remember seeing as soon as it came out because I was such a huge Barker fan (and stoked at getting the chance to see The Hellbound Heart visualized) at the time. I'm not so much of a Barker fan anymore, but this remains the best film version of any of his works, and still holds up as a truly imaginative gore/horror film. Again, Sean makes some trenchant observations.

And that's all he's got so far! I'll try to comment on the other seven, whenever he gets them posted. So far, fascinating reading.

Congrats to the Florida Marlins and all that...but boy I'd like to bitch-slap whoever the genius was at Fox that decided to use the Coldplay song "The Scientist" during the post-game highlight clip. That beautiful song has no business playing over scenes of grown men jumping around on each other. Then I'd bitch-slap them again, just for Firefly and Futurama. General principles, you know.

And now, just because I can, here are my Fearless NFL Pigskin Prognostications!

St. Louis over Pittsburgh- I know, the Steelers are at home, but the Rams have been pretty darn hot lately, bringing back memories of the "Greatest Show on Turf". Pittsburgh has kinda been in disarray lately as well. I think this will be close, but the Rams have more firepower.

Seattle over Cincinnati- I was tempted to make this my upset special of the week, and some have, but I think Corey Dillon's latest pop-off will cause some morale damage, and with the Bungles, morale is very important.

Tampa Bay over Dallas- this is another one that will be close, but I just can't see banged-up Tampa Bay losing to the Cowboys at home.

New England over Cleveland- the Pats seem to be in a groove right now, and Cleveland has looked good in fits and starts but can't get any consistency on either side of the ball. I like overacheiving New England.

Tennessee over Jacksonville- the Jags have been pretty bad all year so far, and the Titans have been very strong. I thinks Jacksonville will play them tough at home, but the Flaming Thumbtacks have just got too much.

Carolina over New Orleans- The Saints fooled some people with their lopsided victory over Atlanta last weekend, but right now the Falcons couldn't shut down a good division 1-A college team. The Panthers will be a tougher nut to crack.

Baltimore over Denver- the Habitual Liars won't be able to worm their way out of having absolutely no one at quarterback. Nominal starter Kanell, even if he gets over the flu, was cut by the Falcons, for chrissakes. Unless Shanahan is lying about the health of his signal callers yet again, this could be a long day for the visitors.

Chicago over Detroit- boy, will this be a fun game to watch. Not. I'm going with the home team, simply because they're the home team, and that's more than the Lions have going for them.

Minnesota over the New York Giants- I see no reason why the on-a-roll Vikes can't prevail over the disappointing G-men, especially at home.

San Fransisco over Arizona- the Cards, Lions, Falcons, Bears and on some days others are disproving that "parity" nonsense that so many stuffed-shirt traditionalists like to whine about so much. Most of the SST's, I think, were 49ers and Cowboys fans. Anyway, the Cards are bad. Real bad. And the 49ers still have enough left to walk all over them, even though against most teams they'd be down from the big victory over Tampa.

New York Jets over Philadelphia- here's a hunch game. The Jets seem to have worked some things out, and the Iggles are still working their problems out, so I'm goin' with the Jets in a game which should be played on St. Patrick's Day cause there will be so much green everywhere...

Indianapolis over Houston- you never know about the Texans, but I think the Colts will be too much for them.

Kansas City over Buffalo- I like the Chiefs defense better than I like Buffalo's defense. I can't believe I'm typing these words.

San Diego over Miami- once in a while, you just have to step up and pick an upset, and here's mine for this week. Miami is up-and-down, and the 'Bolts seem to be getting better, plus they're on the road. Take SD and the points.

That's it! Please don't bet on these picks, or if you do, don't come cryin' to me when you lose your rent money...

BEST OF THE WEEK

COMICS REVIEWS!
What I bought and what I thought, week of October 22

HELLBLAZER 189
Mike Carey's formula for this, the first chapter of the latest continuation of the storyline he's been setting up for months now, is to put five magicians (some familiar, some not so) in a run-down house at the summons of John Constantine (he wants to warn them about the evil to come), and sit back and watch the fireworks. Carey, in just a few months, has already created more interesting characters than the last three JC:HB writers combined, and fortunately for the reader of this issue in particular, they're all well defined and interesting, with sharp, often amusing dialogue. This old Swamp Thing fan appreciated the inclusion of a relative of Anton Arcane, who's the black sheep of the family because he's not insane. Marcelo Frusin is back on art chores and is typically excellent despite the Loughridge Murk. A

PLANETARY 17
In which we get Edgar Rice Burroughs' most famous creation reworked, with a dollop of Marvel's late 60s-early 70s Ka-Zar for good measure ostensibly in service of giving Elijah Snow a love story- but come to find out, at the end, that what we're actually reading is a main character's origin tale. Warren Ellis is positively verbose this time out for some reason, and John Cassaday is typically stellar. Nice pulp magazine swipe/tribute on the cover...and this issue actually came out on time! Will wonders never cease... A

SLEEPER 10
No real appreciable drop-off in quality here; Brubaker and Phillips give us surprising revelations (with requisite complications) in the Miss Misery (does anybody else think of that Nazareth song when they scan her name?)-Holden Carver romance, passive/malevolent string puller Tao has an amusing/fascinating exchange with the ruler of modern-day Egypt, and Carver suffers a grisly injury that we have to wait until the end to find out what happened. Big problem for me: the apparent predictibilty of one thing- you can bet your ass that if someone tells their origin story to Carver, they'll be dead before the last page. It's happened at least once already, and it happens again here, and while it (and who it happens to) is pretty surprising, it adds a dimension of predictability that I don't particularly want to see again in this otherwise excellent book. A-

CINNAMON: EL CICLO 3
Well, I do like the idea of reimagining the DC Implosion casualty character Cinnamon as Sharon Stone in The Quick and the Dead, and it's a passable plotline that's been set up by neophyte (to me, anyway) writer Jen Van Meter, in which the revenge seeker is confronted with someone that seeks revenge on her. It's a bit too self-consciously 100 Bullets-like, but I blame that on the amateur hour Risso-ish stylings of artists Fransisco Paronzini and Rob Campanella, who never seem to rise above their fanzine-level abilities. Maybe in a couple of years, they'll be something to watch, but right now they're not adding a thing to a comic that needs more of a spark than they can provide. B

AVENGERS/JLA 2
The occasional funny quip and clever situation just doesn't compensate for the tedium engendered by this old school Spandex throwdown slash video game-ish quest tale. Script-wise, this is so disappointingly by-the-numbers that you pretty much know what's going to happen before it actually happens. The dialogue is overblown and melodramatic, unless it's Plastic Man. I gotta admit, though, that I liked the way the Batman/Captain America team was portayed, especially when they realized that they were being manipulated and immediately tried to find out the cause, which is still small beer in my book. Busiek must have been in a bad mood when he wrote this, because every character seems to be pissed off at everybody else, and some of the characters' attitudes (Superman, Cap, Thor) are so out of, well, character that it becomes a major annoyance. Also, again, artist George Perez equates quantity with quality and gives us page after claustrophobic page crammed full of tiny panels and Kirby dots and contorted figures clad in skin-tight uniforms, and wide open, gaping mouths and flying rubble and...well, you get the picture. It makes an already enervating script even more tiresome. And there are two more issues to go, oh happy day. I know, I know, I don't have to buy them, but geez- I've already bought the first two and the faint, tiny voice of the 12 year old fanboy in me wants to know what happens next! C+

DC ARCHIVE SAMPLER: WORLD'S BEST COMICS
I didn't pick this up when it came out a week or so ago, but my curiosity was aroused by all the internet grousing I read as well as the 99¢ price tag. I don't know what the braintrust at DC was thinking when it chose these particular stories- none of them, even the Jack Cole Plastic Man tale, is indicative of what made those old stories so appealing and fun. The Superman tale is fast-paced enough, but talky and is saddled with an uninteresting plot, and Wayne Boring (who did better stuff, in his stiff style, in the 50s) was certainly no Joe Shuster back then. The Batman tale has a high pedigree, with a Bill Finger script and Jerry Robinson inks, but is even more talky than the Superman story and that becomes a huge distraction. Even so, it's the best of show here. I've never been all that crazy about the Moulston/Peter Wonder Woman stuff, and this one didn't change that. Again, there's just too damn much expository dialogue and long-winded captions- but there's just so much screwiness and soft-core B&D within it that it's fun in spite of itself. Finally, I always loved reading Jack Cole Plastic Man reprints whenever I ran across them (DC was really good about running them in their 25¢ 70s Super-Spectaculars), but good lord- this has such a convoluted, far-fetched (yes, even with a man who can stretch like a rubber band) plot that it really tried my patience. Even Cole's art wasn't up to snuff, looking rushed and cluttered. Myself, I'm a bit more acclimated to these Golden Age tales, having read many of them in reprint format back in the 60s and 70s. One can only guess what newer comics readers would think about it. DC should really consider doing this again, but using more care in the selection process- it seems that once again, we get what we pay for. C+

Here's something for Shawn Fumo...

Gimme a "T"! Gimme a "J"! Gimme a "B"! Gimme an "S"! What'cha got? The first anniversary of the Johnny Bacardi Show, that's what! So happy blogiversary to me! Yaaay!

Image courtesy of Tack-O-Rama.

Sendin' out a quickie BSBdG to Dale "Buffin" Griffin, diminutive drummer for one of the best bands ever to walk the face of the Earth, Mott The Hoople. He's 55 today.

Link restoration shall begin soon. I did want to take the opportunity, though, to send out BSBdG's to good ol' Weird Al Yankovic, 44 today.

Also, appropriately enough, today would have been the 110th birthday of the non-performing Marx brother, Gummo, real name Milton.



Finally, another posthumous BSBdG for 50s, 60s and 70s British pinup queen/singer/actress Diana Dors, who would have been 72 today. She starred in many films, but the one I'm most familiar with is 1973's Theatre of Blood, the clever Vincent Price Shakespeare revenge movie.

It's been one of those days.

I received word from the recruiter that Cabela's has decided to go with someone else to fill their opening. My Great Nebraska Adventure seems to be over, in disappointing fashion. Downright disheartening, it is- I thought I would have been a great fit, and could have adjusted quite well to living in the Plains. They felt differently.

John Jakala's linked to DC's January solictiations at ToonZone, and has reproduced the cover of the new Midnight, Mass miniseries. Nice to see that cover artist Tomer Hanuka has curbed his tendency to render all his figures as emaciated zombies. But seriously, folks, I thought the first MM series was a hoot, albeit a drably illustrated hoot, and I'm looking forward to this one.

Another interesting-looking title is My Faith in Frankie, from Mike (Lucifer) Carey. Marc Hempel does the covers and interior inks.

I'm also eagerly anticipating New Frontier, another DC revisionist history series involving the DC stable as they were in the early 60s, when Fox and Broome and Infantino and Sekowsky walked the earth. Should be interesting, and for the love of God I hope it's fun at $6.95. By January I may be chopping up furniture for use as firewood...

Dave Fiore has written a nice overview/commentary on one of the Grant Morrison issues of Animal Man. Animal Man is a title that I've never read in any significant measure, despite my admiration for Morrison's scripting, because the artist that they got to illustrate the majority of it was one Chas Truog, whose work is, in my own unworthy opinion, some of the worst to ever grace any works of sequential fiction. Flat, unimaginatively laid out, awkwardly posed, poor perspective shots, you name it. Maybe I just got off on the wrong foot with the guy because he was the artist they chose to follow Steve Leialoha in Epic's long-ago Coyote ongoing, and he stunk on ice...and I've never seen anything from him since that has changed my opinion. I'm sure he's a nice fella, and is loved by his friends and family, tithes often, and is a pillar of his community...but Jesus Mary and Joseph I hated his artwork. And it inspired such distaste in me that I only picked up one issue of AM in the entire run, the one in which Dolphin (a fave obscure character of mine before Peter David had his way with her in Aquaman) appeared. I've never heard anything but good stuff about the AM book, though, apparently from people who just don't get too worked up about the pictures that illustrate all those words...so you never know, I might get a trade one of these days and try to slog through it.

There's been a whole bunch of comics related stuff I've been wanting to write, like my opinion of the Gone and Forgotten-slagged Marvels, my favorite horror comics, and more. I just haven't had the wherewithal lately to get them out of my brain and through my fingers as of yet. Hang on, though, there's always hope...or so they keep telling me...

BSBdG's go out today to the Mouseketeer that launched a million wet dreams, Annette Funicello, 61 today.

Sorry to read about the death of Elliott Smith. I wasn't so much of a fan that I had all his records or anything like that, but I had XO and I liked it very much.

Update: Apparently Smith's death has been ruled a suicide. Boy oh boy. Sad news.

Hello.

I was at a state car and truck auction all today- bought a Dodge Ram 1500 pickup for my son, who is kinda hard on vehicles (he's had three, and he's only 21)...we'll see how "ram tough" they are now! He's gonna be paying for it, in case you were wondering how I was gonna pull that bit off. Plus I haven't been feeling well the last few days, and haven't felt like concentrating long enough to write anything legible...so that's my lame attempt at justifying my lack of content over the last couple of days. I'll try to do more better tomorrow.

Finished 8-6 in football predictions over the weekend, making my record 66-35, .653.

Comics on my pull list tomorrow, according to the new Diamond shipping list:

AVENGERS JLA #2 Yeah, yeah, I know...it's got to get better, right?
CINNAMON: EL CICLO #3
HELLBLAZER #189
PLANETARY #17
SLEEPER #10

Mostly good stuff, and a well-deserved break for my dwindling bank account.

Thinking pretty hard about going to see Eels on Saturday night in Nashville, at a venue to which I've never been...if I have any money and feel like it after yet another (property) auction with which I've agreed to help Saturday morning. Rhonda, they're gonna be in Louisville this Friday night. In other musical newsicals, against my better judgement I bid on a Posies CD, the one critics generally agree is their best, Frosting on the Beater on eBay and paid a staggering $3.25 for it- shipping and everything! If it hadn't been so cheap I wouldn't have done it. Of course, I'm a firm believer that you get what you pay for, so stay tuned...

Just got finished watching Boris Karloff play another evil Oriental type in the 1930s flick West of Shanghai...not especially PC, but still a fun adventure yarn with Boris hamming it up and helping a very logic-defying script. He was much better, and the film was a lot livelier (albeit even less PC- offensive, even) in The Mask of Fu Manchu, which I watched a few nights ago. Man, what a totally nutball adventure yarn, so over the top- especially for the Thirties! I think that Doug Moench, Jim Starlin and Paul Gulacy must have viewed this before they did Master of Kung Fu for Marvel in the 70s. I'm really enjoying all the old Karloff films they've been airing on TCM lately, many of which I haven't seen before like The Walking Dead, a Twilight Zone-ish tale of a wronged man who is executed but is brought back to life and extracts revenge on the gangsters who framed him. Directed by Michael (Casablanca) Curtiz, no less!

Whenever I see those 30s films, dealing with adventure and danger and high-concept thrills in remote (usually Oriental) spots, it makes me wish someone had the wherewithal to make a Doc Savage film in this vein, full of adventure and fun, located in Tibet or Mongolia and in heated battle with John Sunlight or some other suitably megamanaical villain, but not played with smirky condescension and lowbrow camp hijinks like the horrible 1975 Doc movie was. Hell, film it in black and white, and get Roy Wood to write the score. I know, I know...what? When I first started reading the paperback reprints of the old Doc Savage pulp novels, I was also listening to the first two Electric Light Orchestra LPs and Roy's own solo Boulders a lot. I still think of Doc whenever I hear No Answer's Woody instrumental "First Movement (Jumpin' Biz)".

Speaking of movies, don't miss a day of Sean (Barnabas) Collins' 13 days of Halloween, in which he writes about some of his favorite horror films, and does a darn fine job of it too. I had written some of my impressions on his first three choices, but I wasn't happy with what I wrote so I deleted it. Maybe I was hasty- I've already had someone ask me what happened to it! I didn't think anybody had time to see it... Perhaps I'll rewrite later.

OK, that's all the damage I'm gonna do for now. Got a lot to keep me busy tomorrow as well, so I don't know how much I'll be able to post but you never know.

Oyasumi Nasai, ya'll.

People helping people...a million billion thanks to Laura for providing me with the code that enabled me to have that lovely lovely streamlined Google search function in my links column at right. She has my undying gratitude.

BSBdG's go out today to Be'la Ferenc Dezso Blasko, better known to most as Bela Lugosi, who would have been 121 today.

Other noteworthy birthdays today: Tom Petty, 53, and the late Mickey Mantle, 72.

As Chuck Brown would say, "good grief".

I just read over at A Small Victory that Gregg Easterbrook, he of the wonderful Tuesday Morning Quarterback column and the wrongheaded anti-Tarantino (and unintentionally anti-Semitic) commentary has been fired by ESPN!

ESPN is totally overreacting, and you just know that the Rush Limbaugh debacle is at the root of it. Easterbrook made a mistake, but he has apologized and should at least be given another chance. ESPN didn't get rid of Bob Ryan, who still appears regularly on The Sports Reporters, did so just this morning as a matter of fact, and said something equally as mistaken and wrong about Jason Kidd and his wife. He got some probation time from both his paper, the Boston Globe, and ESPN, which was sufficient. To just fire Easterbrook like that is stupid and wrongheaded, and I intend to email them about it, for all the good that'll do. The email link is in Michelle's post above.

I'm sure gonna miss reading TMQ...

Ran up on an interesting Salon article about R.E.M. this morning.

The article mostly deals with the perception that perhaps R.E.M. has run out of things to say and interesting ways to say them, and the fear within the band that they will become stale and irrelevant like a Chicago or the Beach Boys, for example. And after repeated listens to their most recent album Reveal I'd say those fears were certainly justified. Here's hoping that the Athens group can find a way out of their creative rut, but it's apparently not gonna happen anytime soon- their upcoming CD release is a best-of package.

BSBdG's go out today to ol' Emilio Lizardo himself, John Lithgow, who's 58 today. John's been in some great films, and some not-so-great ones, and I have never warmed to his most recent project, the silly TV series Third Rock From the Sun...but he'll always have a special place in my movie pantheon for his performance as the mad dictator from Planet Ten, Lord John Whorfin, in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai.

That's OK for you, monkey boy!