I posted this earlier but came to my senses and deleted it. However, later I thought what the heck.

Last assignment in my last college drawing class. It's three musicians– see if you can figure out which ones. My instructor said the likenesses weren't all that great, and while I kinda agree with him in one instance, I thought it was better than he did, obviously. Chris, you can't answer...you were in that class too.

And Rhonda, you got two of them out of the six or so people you named.

I watched Keen Eddie last night for the first time; it was pretty good but I wished that the director had seen Snatch a few less times. He overused that quick zoom-with-sound effects trick way too many times for my liking.

Living just south of horse country, I could see that plot being used in a story set around here...

I started to catch another new show, Lucky, as well but got distracted doing something else and didn't want to start watching in the middle. Maybe it will air again later this week.

Here's an interesting piece on directions the comics industry could and should take in its long, slow climb towards mainstream respectability and, of course, increased attention and profits. It's from the latest blog I've linked to, All Too Flat, which is not exclusively a comics blog, but apparently writes about the topic from time to time.

The more I read things like this, the more I appreciate my comics shop, which is clean, well laid-out, and has a definite minimum of Comic Book Guys and "teenage Slipknot fans with Vampirella on their pull list". Now if they'd just bring back the holds customer discount and bag 'n' board our books, I'd be a happy boy...or at least a happier paying customer of the Great Escape store in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

New Diamond Shipping List out, and it looks like I'll make up for my light haul last week in spades.

BATGIRL YEAR ONE #7
FABLES #14
FILTH #11
GOTHAM CENTRAL #8
HERO #5
JSA #49
GRRL SCOUTS WORK SUCKS #4
POWERS #32
STRANGERS IN PARADISE VOL III #58

Plus, I'm still holding out hope that they'll be able to get me a copy of CLOCK MAKER #3, which came out almost a month ago. Looking forward to Batgirl Year One, a solid, enjoyable title and H-E-R-O 5, the beginning of a new story arc. Grrl Scouts has been pretty good so far, and so has (surprisingly) JSA. I'm not really looking forward to Strangers in Paradise, though...this pretentious, farfetched soap opera slash wannabe Skinemax late night "erotic thriller" has just about worn out my patience.

Sometimes my vast internet birthday resources fail me, and this is one of those times. I picked up the paper just now and noticed that today is also the 41st birthday of Gina Gershon of Showgirls and especially Bound fame. Couldn't not mention it.

One thing I have been doing lately is watching old movies on TCM. Part of the reason is because I've found myself waking up very early lately and unable to go back to sleep, and given a choice between infomercials or some old obscure 40s flick, I'll take the movie every time. I don't know what it is I'm finding so fascinating about these old movies; I suppose a psychiatrist could make some sense out of it...but no thanks.

Early yesterday morning I caught the 1937 film Back in Circulation, a vehicle for Joan Blondell, a lovely 30s and 40s actress who I knew only from her later-in-life TV and low-budget films appearances, such as the matronly madam in Here Come The Brides. I was very surprised, to say the least! The film was pretty good-Joan was a fast-talking, brash newspaper writer who pursues a murder case to the point where she gets an innocent woman framed for the death, realizes her mistake, and sets out to make things right. That's Joan above in a still from this film.

I also spent a great deal of last night watching a block of WW 2 all-star variety films which TCM was showcasing. The first, Stage Door Canteen, featured a mix of big band music (Count Basie! Benny Goodman! Kay Kyser!), lots of un-PC wartime humor, a little romance, and a host of cameos by the studio's stars circa 1943– some of which were legends (Katherine Hepburn, Harpo Marx, Ray Bolger) and some who are mostly forgotten today (George Jessel, Jean Hersholt). Had a little revelation– one of the musical guests was then-young master violinist Yehudi Menuin, who prefaced his first piece by saying, in a mousy voice, "I would like to play for you now..." and it hit me: that's where Andy Kaufman got his "I would like to play for you...the Elvis Presley" bit he did in his stand-up days. Wow. Another amusing bit was a scene in which a lady addressed the women in the audience and asked them "If you could be any woman that you wanted to be, who would you be?". One diminutive dolly piped up with "Hitler's Widow!". Oh those crazy kids.

Next up was Thousands Cheer, which featured more of the same but was in Technicolor and had the appealing Gene Kelly as its lead. Again, lotsa big band music, by many of the same bands featured in Stage Door Canteen like Benny Goodman and the hyper Kay Kyser. Also featured were skits featuring a number of stars like Mickey Rooney, Lucille Ball, Ralph Morgan (you remember, the Wizard of Oz) and of course Judy Garland. Appearing in one of those skits was the radiant Ann Sothern, who you may remember me writing about a while back.

I wanted to watch the third, Thank Your Lucky Stars, but I fell asleep in my chair before it was 15 minutes old. Oh well...I wanted to see Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis and Errol Flynn sing and dance but life goes on, I suppose.

Well, that's all for now...I see where Brother Rat and a Baby, featuring my 40s inamorata Priscilla Lane, is coming on tomorrow morning at 9:15. God help me.

Here's perhaps the most obscure Bacardi Show Birthday Greeting I've done yet, and with some of the people I've saluted so far that's saying something...BSBdG's to former Move and Wizzard member Rick Price, who turns 59 today. Words cannot adequately describe my love for the music of the Move (pictured above with Price in the headband at far right) and Roy Wood, and Price was a big part of it, especially as a member of Roy's weird mid 70's, post-ELO band Wizzard. He also sang the lead on one of my favorite Move tunes, Looking On's Lightning Never Strikes Twice. Click on the picture to go to a piece written by Rick exclusively for the excellent Move-related links site Cherry Blossom Clinic. For another great Move site, go here. This one's probably gonna make the links section at right.

It's a veritable plethora of BSBdG's, El Guapo...


Happy happy to Anna Kournikova, the worlds most famous underacheiver, who has parlayed a pretty face and sexy bod into millions and who cares if she's never won a major tennis title;


The late, great Dean Martin, whose accomplishments in the realm of stage, screen, and records are too numerous for me to list but will always go down as one of the coolest human beings to ever inhabit this fair planet;


Another Caliph of Cool, Mr. Tom Jones, who impressed the hell out of me several years ago when, on Letterman or Conan or one of those types of shows he broke down and did the Funky Chicken during the "think I'm gonna dance now" part of his cover of Prince's Kiss. I thought "If anybody could look cool while doing the Funky Chicken, it's Tom Jones.". Plus, he's done some great, classic songs like It's Not Unusual, She's A Lady, and Delilah (even though the Sensational Alex Harvey Band stole that one from him);


And the writer of that aforementioned "Kiss" song, plus many, many other innovative, groundbreaking, funky (and other adjectives) projects, the Artist Currently Known as Prince. For a period of time in the 80s and early-to-mid 90s, no one was making more interesting, nor more eagerly anticipated music than Mr. Rogers Nelson. Sadly, he lost the plot sometime in the late 90s and I haven't even bothered to buy his last three or four releases (I'm surprised he was able to sustain that level of creativity as long as he did), but that doesn't mean I don't go back and play Sign 'O' The Times or Dirty Mind once in a while.

Hey, Rhonda, I took your quiz...



Fun and spunky, you link, there for you are! This
is all fun and games, and you do what you
damned well please!


What kind of blogger am I?
brought to you by Quizilla

Speaking of ghosts, I've never been what you could call a believer in the supernatural; more often as not I wear the skeptic hat when it comes to that sort of thing. I love a good horror movie or ghost story as much as the next person, and will freely admit that there are things that not even a lifetime spent in Horse Cave, KY can account for (that's a paraphrase of a quote from Charles Finney's Circus of Dr. Lao, in case you were wondering), but I've never personally encountered any sort of ghostly manifestation that I'm aware of, so until I do I must remain skeptical. Any nutcases out there reading this, don't take this as a challenge. Please.

Anyway, as I was saying: I may not believe in ghosts necessarily, but I have always loved one ghost story in particular, that of Tennessee's Bell Witch and Andrew Jackson. The eBay thing reminded me of the tale, which I read for the first time in a book that belonged to a friends' grandmother, a small, white squareback publication, purple illustration on the front, which was a history of the phenomenon by one M.V. Ingram. I did a Yahoo search for Jackson and the Witch, and got several sites which stated that Jackson, paying a visit to witness the manifestation firsthand, was frightened off by the Witch– but Ingram's account said nothing of the sort. According to Ingram, Jackson and the Witch had a good laugh at the expense of a "ghost layer" which had traveled with the company. This is the version I prefer, because it's funnier and makes Jackson out to be more of a badass. I'm really surprised no one's made a film about the Witch, especially in the wake of the similarly-named Blair Witch film.

Anywho, here's the text of this story, straight from Ingram's book– but it's in PDF format, which requires Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to open it up. If you don't have Acrobat Reader, go here. It's free.

Maybe I should have saved this for October...

BEST OF THE WEEK

COMICS REVIEWS!
What I bought and what I thought, week of June 4!

Light week for me. My wallet wasn't disappointed...

1. 100 BULLETS 45
I've watched a few episodes of HBO's Oz, which supposedly depicts prison life (albeit an unusual prison) in a harsh and realistic manner- and for my money Oz has nothing on Brian Azzurrello and Eduardo Risso. This is two prison tales Azz has done (the first being a recent Richard Corben-illo'd Hellblazer arc), and while I've never done time and don't know for sure if it's like this or not I'm totally convinced and impressed by Azz's use of prison slang. I dont really want to know how or where he did his research. Likewise for his artist, whose cinematic approach doesn't suffer one iota for the claustrophobic settings he's asked to depict. A

2. ARKHAM ASYLUM: LIVING HELL 2
This makes two very impressive scripts by previously-unknown-to-me Dan Slott, who skillfully takes all the Arkham puzzle pieces left by dozens of previous writers over dozens of years, and like the Humphrey Dumpler character spotlighted this time out, puts them all together very nicely. Right now, if they gave him a regular Bat-book (well, besides his previous Batman Adventures stint) I'd be sorely tempted to buy it. Slott receives a lot of invaluable aid from the outstanding illustration of Ryan Sook. A

3. STARTLING STORIES: THE THING-NIGHT FALLS ON YANCY STREET 1
I picked this up because I couldn't resist the teaming of Evan Dorkin and Dean Haspiel, and while I wasn't disappointed I wasn't blown away either. I think it's just me...the Fantastic Four ceased to be fresh for me about the time Jack Kirby left about a million years ago, and while there have been many worthy attempts to do Marvel's flagship title right over the decades, many of which I'm sure are entertaining to and revered by many who weren't there back in the day, I've greeted most of them with a yawn with only a few exceptions. That being said, this is a good, solid read with Dorkin (known for his funny stuff) being stone serious for once. And while the "Thing feels all alienated" plot is just one of so many that have been repeated over and over and over since 1963, at least it's sharply written and Haspiel adds a lot with his loose, easy-on-the-eyes style. So I'm interested, and I will finish the mini, but I dont expect to look back fondly on it years or even months from now. A-

Comics reviews later. I'm gonna watch the Godfather part 2. Sat up really late watching part 1 last night, so I can't help myself. It's an offer I can't refuse, if you will.

Hello. I'm still here, just never found the time or the impetus to sit and write. Just like I never find the time or impetus to draw, for that matter. I've now been officially unemployed for 1 month and 20 days. Still a ways to go before I beat my personal best of 7 months, but it's not looking like anything's going to happen anytime soon to derail the bankruptcy train...

There are several things to write about, I suppose...the current ongoing Sammy Sosa scandal, which has been the subject of nonstop speculation on both ESPN Radio and TV today. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, and I am more favorably disposed towards his "mistake" claim since they tested his other bats... but how the hell do you grab one of the bats you use in BP and use it in a game? Pretty stupid, Sammy.

Staying on the sports tip, I am having the night from hell, fantasy-wise. I got off to a decent start, and was in fact solidly in third place just last weekend...but my three best starters have given up 19 earmed runs in something like 16 innings (Mike Mussina, Cory Lidle, Tim Hudson) and my hitters continue their frigid hittling of late. I'm now in 4th, with another guy breathing down my neck, and it will be a miracle if I'm not in 5th or 6th tomorrow. It's still a bit early, but I don't like the way things are going at all. I wish someone could explain to me why my players always crash and burn when I watch them. Mussina was coasting until I sat down and started watching the Reds-Yankees game on ESPN. Then bang! He had given up four home runs and set the tone for my night. Would you like some cheese with all this whine?

I've been seeing some noteworthy news from the comics world on other worthier sites; there's going to be a documentary about the current comics industry on the History Channel (Go to Comicon.com's Pulse, link at right, for the skinny. No, I'm not going to provide a link in this sentence.) which at first triggered my cynic alarm, but everyone assures me it's first-rate despite the lack of representation of women cartoonists and other companies besides DC and Marvel. I think it's supposed to air on June 23. Went down to BG for my usual comics run today, only returned with three books but they were good'uns (see below). No Planetary Reader, though. Yes, I'll review them, despite the total lack of feedback I get for my comics reviews. I'm a stubborn sort and can't take a hint.

Despite my increasing money paranoia, I did my part towards helping the Fantagraphics cause. I ordered the TPB of Tecopa Jane by Molly Kiely, $10.95 plus s & h, a drop in the ocean I'm sure but I wanted to do something. I understand that they're almost at their goal of $70,000, apparently the news about their troubles spread like wildfire on the Net and they've had an overwhelming response. Good on them and everyone who ordered.

After going to the trouble of bothering Lucifer writer Mike Carey with the request that he look over and provide feedback for my story idea for the Pandora Arcana character two weeks ago, which he graciously accepted, I've only written about a paragraph and a half and have done no sketches. Sigh. I've got to get that done...not because I think Carey's anxiously awaiting it– far from it, I'll bet he's already forgotten– but just so I can get it off my mind. But as the Political Correspondent will attest, I've had that frigging concept on my mind for several years now and have just not been able to motivate myself to do a damn thing with it...so why should this be any different?

Movies viewed recently include two post-9/11 thrillers, The Sum of All Fears with Ben Affleck and Morgan Freeman–featuring the memorable nuking-of-Baltimore scene which pretty much made the rest of the film somewhat anticlimactic; Collateral Damage with Ah-nold–one of the dumbest and most manipulative action films I've ever seen; Slackers, a really stupid movie which got abominable reviews but guess what- I thought it was kinda funny. I have no explanation. Also one film which is pure Gouda, baby: Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter, which was on AMC really early this morning when I found myself unable to go back to sleep. If you've never seen this movie, you owe it to yourself to do so someday, it's mind-bendingly awful, but in a good way. If you appreciate this sort of thing then you know exactly what I mean. I already own JJ Meets FD on a two-fer VHS tape with Billy The Kid Vs. Dracula, a double-feature from Sinister Cinema– but hey, I was awake, it was on, whaddaya want from me? I haven't exactly been expanding my cinematic horizons lately, have I?

Gee, all I was gonna do was write a paragraph to let people know I was still alive, and I ended up rambling at length! Well, I'm finished for tonight, I guess. Thanks for making it this far. I fully intend to do comics reviews tomorrow or Friday, and I certainly intend to do a Mondo Vinyl-O as well. From all of me to all of you, oyasumi nasai.

One ray of sunshine in an otherwise dreary, no-job-prospect imminent Tuesday is that Gregg Easterbrook has contributed a new Tuesday Morning Quarterback column. One of the best things in this edition is his summing-up of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in which he notes a lot of stuff that just plain old didn't make sense about that series, including one or two that had actually occurred to me, believe it or not. Here's an excerpt:

One TMQ complaint about the "Buffy" sendoff involves the Hollywood convention of the protagonist being severely injured and then inexplicably fine again. A standard instance: In the first "Beverly Hills Cop" movie, during the climatic battle, Eddie Murphy is shot point-blank and collapses to the ground; viewers are supposed to think they are seeing his death scene. Then, a moment later, Murphy jumps back up, fine. In the movie's denouement that follows the gunfight, he's clowning around. What happened to just being shot at point-blank range?


In Buffy's climatic battle, she is run through with a sword, which enters her back and comes out her stomach. She drops to the ground and viewers are supposed to think they are seeing her death scene. After the commercial, Buffy leaps up and resumes fighting, not even bleeding, to say nothing of hemorrhaging. No explanation whatsoever.

For the rest go here...you'll need to scroll about 3/4 of the way down for the BtVS piece.

Bacardi Show Birthday Greetings, the Glam Rock edition



First, to Suzi Quatro, the diminutive expatriate Yank bass player and who was huge in Britain but just couldn't get arrested over here in the US. She opened up the first proper rock concert I ever attended, for Alice Cooper in 1975. She turns 53 today. And yes, I know she guested on Happy Days (as "Leather Tuscadero, sister of the Fonz' girlfriend Pinky) and actually had a top 40 US hit with someone named "Stormin' Norman" in the late 70s ("Stumblin' In", methinks). It's not the same thing. Really.



Also, happy happy to the great Ian Hunter, of Mott the Hoople fame. Mott were one of those bands that made a deep, deep impression on me (and many others– just ask the surviving members of the Clash) as I was growing up, and Hunter continued to do so as he pursued a solo career with Mick Ronson and many others. See the post on Ronno below. While Mott and Ian were around before Glam hit, they got caught up in the wave and remain one of the foremost bands associated with that movement, even though they didn't really look all that...comfortable...in their glitter clothing. I'm listening to Hunter's 1976 LP "All American Alien Boy", a very underrated album if you ask me, as I type.

Of course, click on the pictures to go to websites.

Guess I must not have been blogging on December 30th, or must not have been watching the celebrity birthday lists like I do now because I totally missed the interesting fact that Monkees Mike Nesmith and the short English fellow with the unusual name both share birthdays on that date. And me a big Monkee fan and all. Well, if I'm still doing this in December and I haven't been hauled off to prison for non-payment of bills due to unemployment (they can't really do that, can they?) then you can bet your ass I'll do a proper BSBdG then. However, as a small atonement I'll pass on to all of you this nifty Monkees on TV site, chock full of interesting trivia and ancedotes and episode guides and whatnot that I've spent the last hour or so clicking around on. If you love the Prefab Four then you should too.

All because I caught the tailend of a 1963 film called the Wheeler Dealers this afternoon on Turner Classic Movies, saw an actor that looked very familiar to me, checked it out on IMDb and found out that I didn't recognize anything he had done, which wasn't really all that much to begin with. He was in a couple of Monkees TV show episodes, hence the connection. Oh well.

According to the new Diamond Shipping List, it doth appear that I'll have a bumper crop of comics waiting for me. And they are...

100 BULLETS #45
ARKHAM ASYLUM: LIVING HELL #2

That's, as the pig says, all, folks! Barely worth the drive down, eh? That being said, I might have these–

STARTLING STORIES: THING– NIGHT FALLS ON YANCY ST #1 and PLANETARY READER

waiting for me as well; I honestly don't remember whether I pre-ordered them or not. I'd say most likely I'll get the Planetary Reader...I'm a big fan of Warren Ellis' long-awol series. Also, there's that missing issue of THE CLOCK MAKER (#3) that I still haven't gotten yet. So stay tuned!

I had completely forgotten about Radiskull and Devil Doll until I was surfing around on Saturday and remembered that it had been forever since I had viewed the animated Shockwave.com episodes. Then it occurred to me that I had never mentioned it in my blog, either, so now I am.

Radiskull and Devil Doll is a series of eight Flash-animated cartoons on Shockwave; they were created by a fellow named Joe Sparks. While they look kinda simple and crude, they're very imaginative and outrageously funny on occasion. Basically, it's the story of the little cute Devil Doll and his big buddy Radiskull, who is (as you can see above) a huge floating flaming skull. Radiskull loves to kill and maim and guzzle coffee, which his bud DD gives him ("boiling hot!") after which they "kick it", rapping and jamming to rock tunes also created by Sparks. With the third episode, Sparks actually begins to craft a tale: A cute little angel named Candy spies Devil Doll in the process of kicking it with Radiskull one day and is immediately smitten. Devil Doll sees her and feels the same, but romance between angels and devils is strictly forbidden and the next five chapters deal with Candy's attempt to see DD, with interference from Radiskull (who HATES angels) and a demon floozie named Wicked Nikki who wants Devil Doll for her own.

I'm tellin' ya, it's the three C's: clever, cute and charming. It's also one F: frustrating because not long after episode 8 was done Sparks was canned at Shockwave, but they wouldn't let him take R & DD with him or finish it so the resolution of the doomed love story is up in the air...has been for quite some time now. Sparks has his own website, and has been hyping a new series for several months now called Dicky and Jackie; it looks promising but alas, he's taking his sweet time finishing it as well. There have been a couple of R & DD comics (not by Sparks and nowhere near as interesting) in the meantime, and the series seems to have a cult following, so it's hard to give up completely on the Demonic Duo. Guess we'll see. Anyway, if you've never seen the Radiskull & Devil Doll cartoons, then by all means click on the picture above, which will take you to Sparks' old webpage with Shockwave/Atom Films and has links to each episode in order. KICK IT!

Mister Christgau has a new Consumer Guide online now, with reviews of Lucinda Williams, Johnny Cash and the White Stripes (he severely undderates it). That is all.

From the Bacardi Show Political Desk:

WMD just a convenient excuse for war, admits Wolfowitz

The Bush administration focused on alleged weapons of mass destruction as the primary justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force because it was politically convenient, a top-level official at the Pentagon has acknowledged.

For the rest go here. Accompanying the link was this companion article.

One would hope that this would cause an enormous outcry and actually change some minds, but I'm afraid it isn't. Too many people think the actions were justified, especially given the outcome. Like my man Dave Cousins once wrote, it's a "Grave New World."