WORLD OF AWESOME

MY BAG

2012-01-22T08:55:00.000-08:00

With the coming global super-collapse, and an extra-dimensional Lovecraftian apocalypse on the horizon, I believe it's important to prepare for an every-man-for-himself post-Rapture world. Much like Mad Max, all we will have to survive is the companionship of a mangy dog, and what we can carry on our person.

Knowing that this is what we all face, I have been acclimating myself to carrying a "go bag", with all the things I might need within. I am getting vital practice in shifting my center of gravity to accommodate an extra 40 pounds on one side, and developing shoulder callouses for the long march across the Wasteland, looking for clean water among the ruins.

My bag is a standard issue Brooklyn Industries Messenger bag. It is nondescript, but functional. Waterproof, spacious, and sturdy. I would recommend this model. I have no reservations in such a statement.

POCKET ONE

This pocket contains a small pair of wool cloves, fingerless. An iphone charger. Eyeglass repair equipment. Advil and alka-seltzer (see previous article). A chapped lip therapy item. A padlock. The padlock is for my gym locker, but I keep it in my bag all the time because Dungeons & Dragons has taught me that it is always handy to have a padlock nearby. So far I have only used for my aforementioned gym locker.

POCKET TWO

The other side of the bag is where I keep my pens, a Mag Lite brand flashlight, an extendable magnet, a Victorinox brand Swiss Army Multi-tool, a notepad, eight feet of coiled rope, and a small (but comprehensive) First-Aid kit. People routinely mock the rope and First-Aid kit, but those are easily the most frequently deployed items that other people need. Then they feel like Big Jerks for mocking me. I am a hero in those instances, just because I had a Band-Aid. A HERO.

MAIN POCKET:

Art Supplies. I don't draw for fun as much as I used to, but I do try.

A net-book and charger. This will not be as useful after the fall of civilization.

A novel (in this case, I am re-reading A ROOM WITH A VIEW by E.M. Forster), a sketchbook (again, I don't draw for pleasure as much as I used to, but carrying a sketchbook everywhere is a habit I probably won't ever be able to break), and a bandana. Bandanas are super useful. I always have a clean one handy, if possible.

This bag has carried biking supplies (extra inner-tubes, pumps, chain), water-bottles, granola bars, smelly gym clothes, extra shoes, shower and hygeine kit, comic books, prophylactics, tupperware filled with meals, sewing kit, keys, and anything else that might seem prudent in my many adventures. It keeps me prepared for the thousand little obstacles that face us between bed, sidewalk, train, bridge, sidewalk, gym, work, leisure, train, and back to bed. I feel naked without it. Fully nude, with my stuff on display, like some filthy animal.

And when the Great Old Ones come back from their waking slumber in the Outer Dark, witness the final battle between the God of Thunder, and Jormungandr the Midgard Serpent (he who eats the roots of Yggsdrasdil the world tree, since the dawn of time), and destroy us all in flame and desolation, I will be prepared to face the Cursed Earth, if I am unlucky enough to survive.

The Freemasons will have won their ongoing struggle to bring about the dawn of their three-headed tribulation god, and be distracted with Revelry. They will not help you. The Republicans will retreat to their ant-farm of bomb shelters, eventually starving after they allow the one remaining billionaire to eat all of their canned food, and the Democrats will be torn asunder in the indecision of trying to please everyone. The Bavarian Illuminati watch everything from the Dark Side of the Moon, after they are rescued by the Mothmen. They will not help you. There is only yourself to count on. So pack well, my friends. You will probably want a sword.

My bag is awesome.

THE MANY BEACHES OF NEW YORK CITY

2011-08-14T08:24:00.000-07:00

I have never considered myself a "beach person", in the traditional sense. Surfing seems like an alien pursuit, I rarely wear bermuda shorts, and I do not tan. I was raised hours inland, nestled in the hilly bosom of this Great Land's Appalachian expanse. Before moving, at age 18, to the Coastal regions of Our Splendid Republic, I could count my trips to the ocean on one hand.

I am still a human person, however, and the allure of sunshine, surf, sand, salty air, and scantily clad ladies is not lost on me. I am not cold-blooded. I have a heart. I understand that these are good things. My robot brain allows me some small pleasures in this life. Not all that is good turns to dust and ashes in my mouth. I like the beach.

New York is the city where I live, and it is a city that I know things about. I have spent many desperate hours exploring this stupid place, particularly Brooklyn, home of the Cyclones, Paul Giamatti, and Uncle Louie G's. (It is also, in recent months, the home of more single speed bicycles than I ever thought possible. The ride of choice among people with oversized sunglasses, tattoos of birds, and tight pants, these inefficient things vex me at every turn. It's okay to shift gears, you guys. Your calves and thighs will thank you for breaking convention with your peers this one time. Also, enough with the expensive, artisanal versions of shit like popsicles and pickles and doughnuts. And can we cool it in general with the arts and crafts already?)

Brooklyn is not primarily known for its beaches. College kids with cocaine in their ironic mustaches, and Mos Def probably top the list, while Coney Island is maybe in the top twenty. It is a disgusting beach, but if you like your swimming to come hand in hand with funnel cake tummy aches and Russian men with a pelt of back hair, it probably will quench your thirst.

Brighton Beach has less fried dough and other junk foods, and way more Russians. There is no better way to remind oneself of the fierce strength of the USSR's military than to go to Brighton Beach and see the multitude of amputees. Between the gorgeous girls with amazing nails and the hardcore men missing limbs, this beach is less about suntanning and swimming and more about mad respect for our former Cold War adversaries.

Rockaway Beach is on the Brooklyn end of Queens, and relatively easily accessible from both Boroughs. It is notable for it's proximity to Rockaway Tacos, which has earned a well-deserved reputation as being a destination joint for the best tacos on the east coast. With a belly full of tacos, Rockaway is mostly clean and wide and good for finding space to hang out. It is also on the same peninsula as Jacob Reis beach, which is a great spot that is usually not crazy crowded, and has some cool old municipal buildings, if you are into the architecture of old military facilities and whatnot. (Who isn't?)

There are more things to say but I am bored of this topic. Summer is almost over. It is better to enjoy beaches than write about them. Nevertheless, New York has some beaches that are awesome.

SITTING AROUND LIKE A DUMB JERK

2011-07-06T03:59:00.000-07:00

Most people I know stay pretty busy. There are lots of hobbies and activities and distractions to keep everyone from staring into the void. But sometimes it feels appropriate to just stop what you're doing, take some time, and just sit around like a dumb jerk.

Just stare off into the middle distance and sigh heavily.

I get really antsy if I don't get out and do stuff pretty regularly, or at least be semi-productive around the house. If I have time to waste, I will hop on my bike, or run errands, or write dumb blog entries. Something got hard-wired into my brain as a child that gives me panic attacks if I don't keep in some sort of constant motion; it's like I can hear my mom yelling at me to go outside when all I want to do is vegetate in front of the TV and watch syndicated re-runs of THE JEFFERSONS. Well, now I don't have a TV, and if I'm inside for more than twenty minutes without a reason I start to hyperventilate. It's a pavlovian reaction to sunshine that forces me to wander around aimlessly on my bike or risk severe depression. You win, Mom.

And so it is that just sitting around like a dumb jerk is a treat that I rarely get to savor, like eating a whole pint of ice cream. Or bingeing on fried pub food. Or sleeping through an entire night without waking up in a sweaty panic. As the cold embrace of the endless black grave approaches, I have found, more and more, that I can just plop down into an armchair and zone out, like that dude in THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW who gets dosed with some weird voodoo drug and gets buried alive. (That's what happened in that movie as I gleaned it from the video cassette box.)

Much like going to a dominatrix while coked up, this kind of waking coma can be terrifying and euphoric in equal doses. There is a "lost time" effect, where the day slips out from under you and suddenly five hours have vanished while you scratched your balls and wondered how much a used 1985 BMW might cost, and if you could repair it yourself if something broke down on a cross-country trip to the Charles Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California. You wonder if it would be cost-effective to buy the used car, then abandon it on the west coast and fly back. Do you have to buy insurance if you're abandoning a car in Santa Rosa? Would the car have built in ashtrays? When did they stop building ashtrays into cars anyway? I remember people smoking in cars, but they always ashed out the window. Is that tacky? Smoking in general is kind of trashy these days, but dealing with ash and butts is particularly gross. My grandfather used to ash in the cuff of his pants. That was a pretty cool move, in a way, although I don't know that anyone under the age of 70 could pull it off. It seems really filthy. He had some sort of lung disease at the end, and required an oxygen tank, so maybe the cuffs of his trousers were not a high priority, all things considered. He sat around and stared off into space quite a bit. I don't remember him doing much else, actually, which might be why my Mom was so emphatic about me being active. It was either get outside and climb a tree or slowly descend into lung disease, alcoholism, and being kind of boring. Fair enough.

Of course she was correct, and like anything that is good in small doses, too much sitting around and doing nothing can turn you into a sack of crap. In a hypothetical situation that in no way represents actual people or events, let's say a live-in girlfriend of several years only wants to spend her free time vegetating like a sad stoner. It's a gorgeous day outside, and you want to hit the pool and maybe do ten miles on the bike, and watch a movie in the park. Hypothetical girlfriend doesn't want to leave the house, then goes on to spend the next eight hours in her pajamas illegally downloading music and talking on the phone with her mom. Days pass and she barely gets out of bed. No sunlight will touch her skin, like a vampire hiding in a tomb. Except this vampire sucks your will to live rather than your blood. SCARY STUFF.

As my friends get older, they get attached, married, with child, and gradually less and less likely to drop what they're doing at any moment and go to a random bar that allegedly has good nachos. With less people available for an impromptu hang-out on a Tuesday night, there is more time for other things. Reading lengthy fantasy novels, playing first-person shooter WWII video games, or updating blogs that nobody reads. After a while, though, all these things get boring, or repetitive, or deeply depressing. The only thing left to do is slump down into a chair, unfocus your eyeballs, and space out like a dumb jerk.

AWESOME.

CHEWBACCA

2011-06-01T04:15:00.000-07:00

Remember when we liked STAR WARS? Remember when it was still a thing that wasn't horrible?

Those were the days, my friends.

When I was a child, I always had to be Luke Skywalker when playing STAR WARS games, because of my blondeness. I don't know that I even liked Luke best. I'm pretty sure I liked Han Solo better, but after years of being forced into the Luke role, I can't even remember anymore. (I was typecast at age four!) Now that I consider it, why would anyone like Luke better than Han? Han was what made STAR WARS great. He was a charming asshole, which is basically the best type of person to be, in movies and in life. He had the best outfits, and the best spaceship. And his best friend was Chewbacca, who is the ostensible topic of this post.

Chewbacca did not wear pants. Chewbacca carried a crossbow. Chewbacca was into S&M. Chewbacca was a surprisingly good cellist. Chewbacca ran in marathons to raise money for Muscular Dystrophy. Chewbacca wrote his undergraduate thesis on GRAVITY'S RAINBOW. Chewbacca had an origina mint-on-card Boba Fett figure (with rocket-firing backpack). Chewbacca won a beatboxing contest. Chewbacca was friends with Godzilla and had a cameo in GODZILLA VERSUS THE SMOG MONSTER. Chewbacca's name means "easy lover" in wookie.

How warm is wookie hair, anyway? I only ask because when the rebels were on the ice planet of Hoth, everyone is bundled up in quilted parkas and scarves, but Chewbacca is just walking around like it ain't no thang. He subscribes to the Bugs Bunny school of dressing for cold weather, which is just putting on a scarf or earmuffs. Chewbacca should put on a jacket. He is going to get pnuemonia.

There are three things that almost ruined Chewbacca, but his charm and style overcome all obstacles.

1. He was in REVENGE OF THE SITH, which was little more than a glorified cameo, designed to make people think "oh, there is a good thing that I recognize. If Chewbacca is in this piece of shit, maybe it isn't so bad." Sorry, Chewie. You did not successfully raise that movie out of the dumper with your illustrious presence. Points for trying, I guess.

2. The early action figures were not so great at sculpting hair, so Chewie kind of looked like a poop-monster. Also, it was the same color brown, when anyone can plainly see that Chewie has beautiful fur, ranging in shades from auburn to dusky grey to black. Poor form, Kenner Toy Company. Maybe if you spent less time designing dumb lightsabers that slid out of forearms and looked awful, and more time sculpting wookie hair, I wouldn't be zinging you in this horrible blog entry right now.

3. In RETURN OF THE JEDI, when Chewbacca swings on a vine, he yodels like Tarzan. What the fuck?

These are three things I choose not to like about Chewbacca. Maybe you have more. Maybe you hate his creepy Grandpa from the STAR WARS CHRISTMAS SPECIAL. Maybe you hate the way he bullies Artoo into losing that weird chess game. Maybe it upsets you when he gives Han the wrong spanner while they attempt to fix the Falcon's hyperdrive. Or maybe you can't stand the fact that Chewie is mortified by the stupid garbage monster.

It doesn't matter. He is still great. Let the wookie into your heart. Chewbacca is awesome.

CABBAGE

2011-05-04T17:38:00.000-07:00

Cabbage is a vegetable that comes from the ground like magic. It is sometimes mistaken for lettuce, which is a terrible mistake. They look alike, in many ways. It can be very confusing.

Cabbage has been eaten by many people throughout history. It has gotten the silent stamp of approval from millions. I think it is a thing of Europe? Is that true? Do Europeans like cabbage? I seems like they would. I'm going to go on record with this. Europe loves the humble cabbage.

I was taught to cook cabbage in three ways. The first involves eating it raw, right out of the dirt, with a little salt. That is a satisfying and simple method. It is crunchy, and requires no effort, aside from maybe a little rinsing and slight chopping. The next way involves slicing it into pieces with a knife (or a small hatchet), throwing it in a pan with some oil, and cooking it down until it is hot and steamy. Maybe some salt would be good at this point. I would not presume to tell anyone how to season their veggies. I am not a presumptuous man.

The third method is passed down from the Deutschlanders from whence I am bred. It is the way of sauerkraut, and it is delicious. Many were the autumn afternoons I spent with my family, shredding cabbage with large graters, packing the stuff into mason jars, and watching the jars then be sealed with secret spices and vinegars.

(Full disclosure: I did not do this very often. It is super boring.)

The jars would then go in our "kraut cellar", which was mostly just a big hole under our porch. In the months to come we would crack open those jars, and then eat that kraut. We ate that kraut so hard.

I enjoy the nasty, soggy sauerkraut that comes on sidewalk vendor hot dogs, and also the fancy stuff that expensive bratwurst and knackwurst sit on top of at fancy Bavarian restaurants. When I was a young child, one of my neighbors was in Patton's Third Army, and marched across France in World War Two. He said that the Germans would carry sacks of sauerkraut as part of their rations, and that they smelled something terrible. I was really young and didn't quite realize what he was talking about, and took him at his word. In retrospect, he may have been fucking with me.

(Thinking about the stories I was told drove me to google "german army rations ww2". Someday, when my body is found slumped and cold due to "mysterious circumstances", that will be on my browser history, right after "Susanna Hoffs" and "cabbage head kids in the hall". I hope I am not judged too harshly by posterity.)

The World War II veteran in question was a really nice guy, and he had greenhouses that were fascinating places when I was a kid. I remember how the small pebble gravel crunched when you walked, and the air was always humid and aromatic. A system of pipes hanging from the rafters misted the plants now and then, and there was an occasional piece of interesting or comical pottery hidden here and there. The way the sunlight diffused through the ceiling and walls gave everything an ethereal quality, and coupled with these antiquated, purple, florescent lights that ran in long rows throughout, walking into the greenhouses was like being in a completely new world. I get the same feeling going to the different climate pavilions at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, and it's still a weird and quietly thrilling experience.

I once saved up my money because I decided I wanted a cactus, and when I went to buy one, he refused to let me pay for it, insisting I take it as a gift. His wife always called him by his last name, which made me laugh, and the first time I ever saw DOCTOR WHO was at their house, one night while they were babysitting me. It was a super creepy rerun of an early black and white episode, and I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen on television.

I often wish I had had the foresight and wherewithal as a teenager to take a tape recorder over to those greenhouses, and interview this gent. I wish I had his stories about World War II on record, and I wish I knew more about the plants that sat in neat rows up and down the greenhouse walls and in a huge trough down the center. Mostly the World War II stuff, though. This is a major regret in my life.

The last time I was in Tennessee, I noticed that the greenhouses were in total disrepair. My neighbor and his wife have long since passed away, and creeper vines and entropy have taken their toll on the buildings. The cactus did not last either.

Amyway, I like cabbage.

SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD

2011-04-14T21:10:00.000-07:00

Recently, I put together a list of the Top Fifty Greatest Comic Book Movies for a popular website. My list was solid and honest, but the number one slot was met with much horror and derision, as many people could not handle the truth of my words. It was hard for some folks to face reality.

SCOTT PILGRIM VERSUS THE WORLD is kind of a masterpiece.

Not only that, but it is the Number One Greatest Comic Book Movie yet made and anyone who says otherwise is incorrect in their opinion. Also, they have something wrong in their heart. Their cold, shriveled, charcoal briquette of a heart.*

Beyond the fact that SPVTW** is a fun, visually innovative, genuinely moving film, it accomplishes a number of things that yank it up by it's bootstraps to the "classic" level.

- This is a movie that perfectly captures what it means to be young, single, and stupid in an urban area in the 1990s-2000s. Living in a shitty apartment with a roommate, having a terrible band, going to bars and parties filled with other young and stupid people; SPVTW has a verisimilitude that is insane. Having spent my 20s in Manhattan, surrounded by exactly the type of kids that populate this movie, it is more real a depiction of what my life was like than any movie I've ever seen, particularly those that are making a point to capture that feeling (I'm looking at you, REALITY BITES). This film is a sliver of life specific to being right out of college, falling in love too easily, and living in a city filled with other like-minded people your age, all in ironic t-shirts and dirty jeans and fashionable sneakers.

- From a technical, craft-oriented standpoint, SPVTW is a master class in how to stretch the film medium to tell a story. It plays with aspect ratios, focal depths, editing, split screens, color theory, and all the other myriad tools of film-making in a way that seems so effortless that it truly and without exaggeration reminds me of that most name-dropped of movies, CITIZEN KANE.*** All of these tricks and treats are put to use in ways that enhance the story; none of the visual flash is there just to be showy. In fact, much of the visual playfulness is incredibly subtle; I didn't notice the fact the aspect ratios shift (dependent on plot and tone) from scene to scene, until it was pointed out to me on my fourth viewing. This is the kind of stuff that gives movie nerds boners, and I respect that.

- The soundtrack is absolutely killer, and as well-used as any movie since SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. Part of the conceit of SPVTW is a battle of the bands, so aside from the general background songs scattered throughout the film, you have several bands that all require unique sounds and audio-personalities****. When you have Beck providing the music for one of the bands, you have already scored an easy A on this exam. Then you start adding Metric, Broken Social Scene, Frank Black, and The Black Lips. Pretty soon you have one of the great soundtracks of the 2000s.

This is a new millennium, you guys. Time to shelve the PULP FICTION and SINGLES soundtracks. They kind of suck, in retrospect.

- SPVTW is second only to SAY ANYTHING when it comes to distilling the Obsessive Crush into a two hour experience. Seeing a girl at a party, followed by awkward first flirting, awkward first half-naked make-out, awkward first public outings, and awkward first argument. Everything is on display, and handled with unflinching honesty, including the strained hours before you lean in for a kiss, and the neurotic nit-picking of every signal (or not-signal). Scott's single-minded devotion to the process of making Ramona his "girlfriend" is a perfect depiction of post-adolescent Young Love, and probably the best since ROMEO AND JULIET, except without the melodrama and euro-trash. Anyone who related to Matthew Sweet's seminal album GIRLFRIEND, or spent the 1990s listening to anything by TEENAGE FANCLUB or THE LEMONHEADS is already primed like an oily shotgun to completely understand the fascination Scott has with the one cute, aloof, too-fashionable girl at a friend's house party. There is so much that is true about their relationship, and all the video game veneer and slick movie-with-a-capital-M artifice falls away when you see them look longingly at each other, despite all of their ham-fisted attempts at being cool (the ones that everyone falls victim to, ages 15- 30).

This is a genuine and sincere relationship, made even more-so by the ambiguous ending, that leaves open the fate of it all. Of course, ultimately, whether or not Scott and Ramona are soul-mates that will stay together forever is beside the point. The idea is that they've both grown a little and are ready to give their crush a shot at something meaningful. This simple point, that two immature people can become a little more mature, learn something about themselves, and give it a go together; this is about as honest as it gets when it comes to movie romances.

- It is the first film to use the visual shorthand language of comic books organically, integrating it into the editing rhythms of moving pictures and creating a thematic texture that not only works well, but becomes inherent to the storytelling. This is not the novelty "BAM! POW!" title cards of the BATMAN television show, this is taking the dynamic nature of what sound effects and motion lines in comics actually represent, and using them to enhance what is already an incredibly vibrant cinematography.

- Typical comic book adaptations, take a property, or a storyline, and hammer them flat with the blunt end of the Hollywood hammer until all subtlety and originality are lost. SPVTW not only stays true to the spirit of the comic, it condenses the last several volumes into something that actually makes more sense, and loses none of the characterization. It's a herculean feat, pulled off with the grace of a Russian trapeze artist.

- The performances were great, all-around. Some of them were exceptional. This is an amazing ensemble cast, and there are no weak links. Some people complained about the casting of Michael Cera as Scott, but at this point I can't imagine anyone else in the role. He brought to the role a perfect mix of cockiness and vulnerability, wit and stupidity, and horny confusion. For a scrawny kid, he was convincing in the physicality of the fight scenes, and he was effortlessly comfortable with a guitar or bass slung over his shoulder. Ellen Wong (as Knives Chau) was heart-breakingly real, and Jason Schwartzman, Aubrey Plaza, Anna Kendrick, Johnny Simmons... hell, the entire cast were all scene-stealers. Chris Evans and Brandon Routh absolutely kill as ridiculous villains, oozing with a charisma and humor that totally outshines their larger roles in bigger pictures.

Every character was brought to life in a memorable and funny way, and they all reminded me exactly of people I have met, either specifically or generally. This is because they were honest portrayals and completely relatable, but still tweaked just enough to fit into the film's heightened reality. This is no easy task, yet everyone in this cast pulls it off.

- Um, excuse me? Did I just see a fight with magic, flaming swords and kung-fu? Another 1,000 points awarded.

In the end, this is a movie that took a great comic, and stayed true to the visual style, the characters, the charm, the wit, the pacing, the themes and the heart. It stuck close to the source material, and then tried to make it even better, adding the depth of great acting and amazing music. It added layers to something already terrific, without losing anything (except a few plot tangents and peripheral characters, but I think we can forgive that). SPVTW is a great movie, and I have no hesitation stamping it AWESOME.

* To be fair, there were plenty of things on that list that enraged people, such as placing ANNIE in the top ten, and leaving off a few execrable (but apparently well-loved) choices like WATCHMEN and KICK-ASS. The amount of rage leveled at the list, as it is, was kind of astonishing, often for no more a reason than that I placed RED SONJA higher than PUNISHER: WAR ZONE. I learned a lot about the world making that list.

** Let's just go ahead and abbreviate. Seriously, now.

*** The big difference between the two is that CITIZEN KANE is a ponderous morality tale about tragic hubris and the death of the American Dream, and SPVTW is about an immature Canadian guy, immersed in video games and indie rock, maturing just enough to keep a real girlfriend around a little bit longer. Look, I understand the difference. I'm pretentious enough to genuflect at the former and scoff at the latter. I get it.

**** Did I just make that term up? I don't know if I love it or hate it.

BACHELORHOOD

2011-04-14T18:46:00.000-07:00

Today, when I got home from work, it was a beautiful day outside. Opening the windows, I breathed in the smooth Park Slope air. It was just me and the cats, a grown man and his kitties against the world. With no woman in sight to harsh my mellow, I proceeded to make the most of my freedom.

In no particular order, the following happened:

I dumped out the ice cubes into the ice tray, then refilled all the various ice cube molds. This is a big project because my roommate and I have a variety of ice cube molds for various purposes. Mostly for cocktails. Actually, mostly just to pour whiskey over (cocktails implies more effort than we usually put into sad binge drinking). I spent some quality time i-chatting with a friend cross-country, and we traded our particular favorite tweets from an amazingly sarcastic twitterer he found. We laughed and laughed and laughed.

The sunshine was staring me in the face, and I spent a while looking at it, debating taking a long bike ride in the park. Periodically checking some current eBay auctions, I considered what else I could put up for sell that was in easy reaching distance of my computer. I couldn't find anything, and then the sun was setting. Congratulations all around to me and myself on an afternoon well spent.

After dark, I realized I was slightly weak and light-headed from not eating all day, and only drinking several pots of strong coffee. I poked my head in the side door of my regular pub, to see if there were any interesting dinner specials. There were not. In an act of rare food-desperation, I ordered from the local cheap diner and soon was chowing down on a cheese-steak sandwich with extra jalapenos. Shortly thereafter, I was lying flat on my back on the hardwood floor, groaning and clutching a bottle of Mylanta. Regrets were coming hard and fast, but they were temporary. These regrets are borne of heartburn and indigestion; they are easily fixed with a variety of over-the-counter remedies, and approximately half an hour spent laying on the floor in agony.

I sorted the recycling. I drew little recycling symbols on the side of the bin I use for said recycling. It was a brand new fat-tipped Sharpie marker, and the whole process was extremely satisfying. This particular bin was previously labeled "FABRICS: scraps and small pieces". It was created in an ill-fated attempt to help my ex organize the disaster that was her "sewing room". "Sewing room" comes in quotation marks because in actuality it looked like the Death Star's trash compactor, and was completely unusable as anything except an example of continual and relenteless disappointment. Labeling things is one of life's few joys. Unlike most other pleasures in this world, making labels does not turn to dust and ashes in my mouth, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde paraphrasing the Bhagavad Gita.

After watching a TV show (or two) on Hulu, I poured myself a whiskey. It's been several days of nothing but water and seltzer, so I figured I was due a little of the Good Stuff. And now I am writing a blog post. Finding a picture of a "bachelor" involved flipping through several vintage PLAYBOY magazines. Research, you guys. It's what makes this particular blog a cut above. This blog is a masterpiece.

Now we cut to the heart of the thing. I am able to live this perfect life because I am unattached. My free time is scheduled around playing with my cats and reading the infrequent book about men with swords. No listening to someone complain about their boss, or how their friends didn't say thank you for some minor favor. No concessions to a dinner I do not want to eat. If there are any discussions about future children or insurance policies, they are with my roommate, and those never ever happen. He is busy watching THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL on his laptop, and I am busy reading comic books on the toilet.

Sure, this existence is ultimately without meaning, but it's ultimately without meaning on my terms, and that matters.

Right?

Maybe?

For now, let's say "yes". Being a bachelor is awesome.

ABBA

2011-03-27T13:22:00.000-07:00

ABBA is the world's only supergroup.

They are the greatest pop band to ever form, then break up, then enjoy unexpected late-career success connected to a Meryl Streep film. They are Sweden's greatest export. The world was a darker place before they arrived from Heaven.

The name ABBA comes from an abbreviation of the name of the rarest and most valuable metal, Abbatanium. It is so rare that only two people in the world have jewelry made from it. Who those people are is a secret, but pay attention to Henry Kissinger's pinkie the next time you see him in a delicatessen.

There are four members of ABBA, although they each have enough cool for two people. So it would be scientifically accurate to say ABBA has eight members, on a cool-o-meter scale.

The eight members of ABBA are:

AGNETHA
Also known as “the blonde one”. She is called that because she is the blonde one.

Her hair is blonde, presumably everywhere, although I have certainly met fair-hued ladies who have more of a tawny brown tone to their action hair. People are really fascinated with the idea of action hair matching the hair on the head, and I guess it is disorienting when it really, really doesn't match. A girl with jet black hair who has a soft blonde tuft in her underpanties is wrong somehow.

Despite my advanced age, I am still too young to know the glory days of pubic hair. It seems like everyone these days is trimming or shaving, and generally practicing grooming and good hygiene. It's a real shame. Unruly pubic hair reminds me of European girls who smoke thin cigarettes while they're naked, and yell at you when you apologize after climaxing. I think of hazy, backlit, black and white photos of a girl with bangs and dark bags under her eyes. She's hungover from too much wine, but is still going to the farmer's market, because she wants fresh leeks in her eggs. She's a busy girl, and she ain't got no time to mess with shaving down there.

Those were the days, my friends. We've let soft-core porn and sorority girls with fake tans lead us down a sad, curl-free path.

BJORN

Look into the eyes of the perfect soldier. This is Bjorn.

They say that one in one-hundred humans are born without remorse, or human empathy. These people shine on battlefields; the hesitation and guilt that plague other soldiers does not exist in them. Bjorn is an example of this type of natural born hunter.

Placed in a Stockholm military school while still a child, Bjorn quickly rose to the dominate his classmates, commanding a respect normally reserved for silverback gorillas. Through sheer force of testosterone-fueled power, he became the youngest cadet to ever win the Steel Panther, the most prestigious student olympian award in Northern Europe. His skills on the pummel horse were matched only by his skills in the boxing ring, the pole vault, the cross-country skiing routes, and the firing range. Known for a combination of deadly accuracy and pure physical power, at age thirteen Bjorn was taken into secret training by the Swedish government. This program, called Operation Thor-storm, was designed to create the perfect Swedish military operative; a soldier who could kill with his bare hands, deliver a baby in a hurricane, and topple third world governments, all before Hot Cocoa hour (the traditional Swedish mid-morning naptime).

Bjorn's actions on behalf of the Swedish Secret Service are confidential, but it is known that he was present at most key battles of the conflict in Korea, and he was spotted in Cuba shortly before the Bay of Pigs. Released from service after a decade of covert operations, Bjorn began a second life; crafting the beautiful harmonies and song stylings of supergroup ABBA.

And so it was that Bjorn mastered two fields, as one of the deadliest assassins ever to live, and as part part of humanity's greatest pop quartet. A secret Nobel Prize was awarded to him in 1995; it is unknown for which field the honor was given.

BENNY
I was born in 1976, which was apparently a pretty crappy time in this country. There was a gas shortage (I think?), everyone was all sassed up about Richard Nixon going crazy or something, and there were lots of tight clothes and synthetic fibers.

I remember absolutely nothing about the seventies. Does anyone remember anything from ages Birth to Four? I know that STAR WARS came out when I was a year old, and it was a big deal. It had Mr. Spock and a magic laser gun, and it soothed the wounds of a nation still stinging from bad stuff that happened in Indochina. There was NATIONAL LAMPOON, which was way funnier than anything before or since, but by the time I was old enough to read it, it was a shadow of itself. I can't personally recall anything about the seventies. My brain was still soft, I suppose.

The most significant early memory I can muster is going to see THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK at the theater in my hometown. My oldest brother took me; he would have been sixteen or so. The STAR WARS films dominate much of my earliest memories, in a way that is almost depressing. This is the sad story of most of my male peers.

I clearly recall the early scenes of that movie, set on a stark blue and white planet of ice and snow. There was a tactile darkness to the tunnels and spaceship interiors, adding a texture to the film that made it as real as the theater around me. It was hypnotic, and I remember details from that movie vividly, much more so than unimportant stuff like kindergarten, which is just kind of a stupid blur.

Sometimes I wonder if the extended adolescence I call a life isn't rooted in being so completely enthralled with a ridiculous fantasy world at age four. It's like my brain has never allowed me to fully step back into a world of root canals and debt and girlfriends who dump you in horrible ways. I've never really put much stock in the supernatural side of the Abrahamic religions I was raised in, but when Yoda says "Luminous beings are we...", it affects me deeply. I do not like this about myself.

Anyway, Benny was a famous musician in the seventies and he seemed to be having a good time.

ANNI-FRID

Anni-Frid was also known as Frida, which is also the name of a character in PEANUTS who was obsessed with her hair. That was pretty much her entire personality.

The great thing about ABBA is the complete lack of irony. I don't know if anyone could have predicted, back when ol' St. Augustine was making stuff up, that there would be a time when everything was viewed through a cock-eyed lens of snickering and snide self-importance. A time when people know more about SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT than the Song of Solomon, and not because they actually love Burt Reynolds. Hell, I'm as guilty as anyone. I like plastic dinosaur toys, but only when they're terrible. Really beautifully crafted and scientifically accurate dinosaurs hold no interest for me. I like the garbage and the kitsch. I am not without sin.

But ABBA had sincerity in spades, and sometimes it makes me cry to listen to them. They are like an old gospel group; when they sing they mean it. They were corny, wore silly disco togs, and seemed to be genuinely loving every second of every bellowed harmony. Sincerity goes a long way, and they were up to their Swedish eyeballs in it. Abba is awesome.

TUESDAY TOP FIVE: Raconteurs

2011-03-15T22:14:00.000-07:00

Ah, the Racontuer. The Storyteller. The Narrator. The Humble Bard. A tradition that goes back to the dawn of man. It is an old thing. Some would say even dinosaurs told each other stories. I have heard people say that.

Anyway, here's the stupid Tuesday Top Five.

NUMBER FIVE: DAVID SEDARIS

The best of the new generation of racontuers, David Sedaris could be easily pointed to as "the guy who made telling funny stories on the radio cool again". I would not say he is a man with soothing, dulcet tones, but he writes in a casual and clever prose, and tells stories that are candid and embarrassing and hilarious. He seems like a pretty obvious choice, seeing as all the eggheads love him. That's okay. The eggheads can have this one. This time.

NUMBER FOUR: BILL COSBYI guess Cosby is more of a comedian, but his act tends to lean on long form stories. Which are great. He's great. The man is a living legend. Remember on THE COSBY SHOW when they all met Stevie Wonder? That was great. Admit it.

NUMBER THREE: ANDY GRIFFITHBefore starring in one of the greatest movies of all time (A FACE IN THE CROWD), and starring in and producing the greatest situation comedy ever on television (THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW), Andy Griffith had a nightclub act where he told long stories that were a mix of hayseed and beatnik affectations. They were amazing. There has never been a more charming man on television. Not even that guy who sang the song "This Charming Man". That song was about Andy Griffith you guys.

NUMBER TWO: SERGIO ARAGONES
I was at a comic convention once, and I was waiting to buy a piece of art from this guy, since he is basically our greatest living cartoonist. Anyway, he was telling stories while he drew, and signed books for people, and it was so wonderful that I almost started crying. He is such a talented guy that not only has he dominated the world of drawing, he was also on LAUGH IN. If the world was fair, he would be crowned King of Everything.

NUMBER ONE: JEAN SHEPHERDJean Shepherd is so good that he's basically the whole reason to write a list of great raconteurs. I don't know who else could even compete for Number One. Any given episode of his radio show is better than the entirety of all the episodes of THE MOTH and THIS AMERICAN LIFE combined. He stomps them like Godzilla. Anyone who hasn't read Jean Shepherd's books is missing out on great American literature. Luckily, it is there for you. There is still time. Embrace the opportunity. Grab life by the stuff.

Meanwhile I am going to cry myself to sleep, curled up in the fetal position.

HIGHLANDER (1986)

2011-03-10T05:59:00.000-08:00

The video stores of the late 1980s through the mid-1990s are now a lost species; an artifact of a time when VHS was the king of all media (apologies to H. Stern).
In those days, if VHS was the king of all media, then HIGHLANDER was the god.

The boxes on the shelves of the local video stores in my hometown were dusty and sun-faded, and they all seemed to have the same mix of B-movies and heavy-cable-rotation genre flicks. Of these, there was a small and revolving list of standards that my friends and I would routinely rent. This list included:

HELLRAISER
HELLRAISER II
KRULL
STAR WARS (This was at the low tide of interest between the heyday of 1977-1984, and the horrible over-saturation of garbage of 1997-present)
THE PUNISHER (Dolph Lundgren version. Underrated.)
BRAZIL
CONAN THE BARBARIAN
DUNE
FIRE AND ICE

… and any other number of grainy masterpieces, hidden behind cardboard sleeves featuring men with swords, women with swords, or robots with swords. They were either covered with intriguing and surreal imagery (as in the case of BRAZIL, where a man smiles beatifically as seraphim, sunshine, and a neon logo explodes from his head), or completely and laughably low-rent (as in the case of THE PUNISHER, in which the cover was little more than a publicity still of Dolph Lundgren in front of a prom-photo backdrop).

The high-water mark of this sordid selection was undoubtedly HIGHLANDER. It was simultaneously horrible and amazing, a concept that was initially hard for my mid-pubescent brain to process. I knew that Christopher Lambert, mumbling unenthusiastically through a horrible Scottish accent, was delivering one of the least interesting performances in action movie history. No small feat. I knew that the direction was ridiculous, and made for several indecipherable stretches, muddying an already silly storyline. The internal logic made no sense, the supporting cast (aside from two notable and obvious exceptions) was forgettable, and it is ponderous, with long police procedural scenes that are painful to sit through.

On the other hand, it's a movie where sweaty men decapitate each other with swords. It has one of the best soundtracks in the history of film, courtesy of QUEEN, and most importantly, Sean Connery is in it. This is a movie with a mythology that is thoroughly convoluted, yet it delivers a straightforward concept that, while it makes no sense, is primal and simple; THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE.

With a central premise that essentially boils down to “men with swords must kill each other throughout history”, all the other details are inconsequential. Barbarians have survived to our era, where they secretly murder each other after long, intense swordfights. They are driven by ancient edicts, and can only be killed by having their heads chopped off. The main character has a samurai sword. Why?

Because it looks cool. Which is all that matters.

There are several things about HIGHLANDER which will always entertain me. First and foremost is Sean Connery. He is having as much fun in this movie as I have ever seen an actor have. It's almost as if he's on the verge of cracking up every time he delivers a line. He is smiling wide and every move is a bombastic flourish, but why wouldn't it be? The man is dressed in a cape and floppy hat, like some hyper-masculine Lord Fauntleroy. Sir Sean (Scottish accent in full throes) is playing an Egyptian, living as a Spaniard, who spent decades in Japan. None of this makes sense! Not even in the bizarre cosmology of the HIGHLANDER universe is this believable. Yet none of that matters. The only important thing, is that when Connery flashes his middle-aged grin through a soft-focus camera haze, we all get nerd-boners.

Clancy brown also brings the good stuff, chewing through every scene with a relish reserved for only the most hammiest of hams. His giddy-ass performance ranks with Ian McDiarmid as Emperor Palpatine in the STAR WARS prequels, or Anthony Hopkins in NIXON. These are villains who salivate with creepy glee as they deliver ridiculous lines, and the screen lights up whenever they start cackling. Clancy Brown's Kurgan is from the same world as Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee, where saying terrible things while smiling horrifically is as natural as breathing. The Kurgan is evil because he is Russian, and that is the long and short of his backstory (this was the 1980s, after all). Over the course of the film, he rapes the hero's wife, sexually harasses nuns, kills Sean Connery, and dresses like a skinhead. Subtlety of characterization was not a concern here.

I am also perpetually entertained by the portrayal of the actual "highlanders", the group from whom the lead character comes from, and who lend their name to the title of the film. They are portrayed as plaid-smothered barbarians, covered in animal furs and generally looking like extras from LORD OF THE RINGS. The tartans worn would have required dye and weaving techniques that were not readily available until 100 years later, and the general historical accuracy on display is about on par with 300, or PLANET OF THE APES. Of course, this is beside the point. The closer the costumes are to CONAN the better, for my money. Watching a bunch of undernourished farmers (covered in buboes and wearing hastily woven wool skirts) trying to kill each other with dull weapons they could barely lift; this is not particularly enticing as a cinematic experience. A semi-fictional fantasy with overly-costumed actors swinging choreographed axe-chops is plenty fine by me.

The music, by QUEEN, is so iconic and wonderful that it barely needs be mentioned. It is so obviously brilliant that I suspect all the sequels and TV spin-offs were just extended and expensive excuses to use those songs again and again. To put gravy all over it, having QUEEN do the music led to a video where Christopher Lambert rocks out onstage with Freddy Mercury. Amazing.

All told, HIGHLANDER is ridiculous, horrible, amazing, laughable, and totally entertaining. It takes me back to the days when renting awful movies with your friends on a Saturday afternoon was as good as life got. I recognize that it is a genuinely bad film, but I love it dearly. HIGHLANDER is awesome.

(It is also free on Hulu.)

Tuesday Top Five: Aliens Among Us

2011-03-08T15:24:00.000-08:00

Throughout history, creatures from other worlds have walked among humans, pretending to be one of us. They blend in and integrate, observing us with their beady alien eyes. It is one of the most terrifying ideas ever. I just gave myself chills thinking about it.

this picture is representative of a scary thing to me

There are many questions about these invaders. Who are they? Where do they come from? Why are they here? What do they want? And who are the TOP FIVE?

5. ZIGGY STARDUST

Real Name: Davey Jones
Planet of Origin: Mars
Known Activities: Glam Rocking, Extreme Druggery, Multi-sexing
Sinister Plots: Failing in his mission to warn of Earth's imminent end after being distracted by drugs, sex, material wealth, and enormous boots.

4. FORD PREFECT

Real Name: Ix
Planet of Origin: Somewhere small, near Betelgeuse.
Known Activities: Travel writer. Hitchhiker. Towel Enthusiast.
Sinister Plots: Kidnaps hapless Englishman while allowing civil servants of an alien government to demolish Earth. Writes unflattering article.

3. UNCLE MARTIN

Real Name: Unknown
Planet of Origin: Mars
Known Activities: Turning invisble, levitating stuff. Having TV antennae in his head.
Sinister Plots: Keeping Bill Bixby from his rightful place as The Incredible Hulk for 107 episodes.

2. THE DOCTOR

Real Name: Unknown
Planet of Origin: Gallifrey
Known Activities: Time-traveling, talking to robot dogs, dying and regenerating.
Sinister Plots: Giving nerds ample fodder to fill countless message boards and awkward conversations.

1. SUPERMAN
Real Name: Kal El
Planet of Origin: Krypton
Known Activities: Saving lives, fighting evil, thwarting marriage attempts from earth women.
Sinister Plots: How dare you. He's Superman. Show some respect.

TRAVEL SERIES #1: Our First Regular

2011-03-06T06:55:00.000-08:00

WORLD OF AWESOME experiment in progress! Travelogue video embedded! Multimedia Experience!

(I shot this on my phone. Please forgive the quality.)

SHADES OF GREEN is a bar that Joe and I drank at frequently and independently of each other, for years, before we actually met. It's proximity to both New York University and the School of Visual Arts made it easy to get to, and the total lack of pretense or affectation made it easy to deal with. A goodly chunk of my life is tied up in this place; birthdays, graduation parties, and at least one bachelorette party where I attended in drag.

This is the first place where I was such a regular that I would help out by busing tables and taking orders, if it got overwhelmingly busy. Friends of mine flew to Ireland to go to the wedding of one of the waitresses. My girlfriend and I had Thanksgiving dinner there, with the staff and a few other regulars. It was a nice home-away-from-home (pardon the cliche) for a bunch on 19 year olds just-arrived in New York City. In recent years, I have been there much less, going months at a time (years?) without crossing the threshold. It's still a good spot to meet with friends for a marathon SETTLERS OF CATAN game night, and I've spent more than one holiday at the door checking IDs, when I needed a little extra cash and they were desperate for the world's worst doorman.

But ultimately, this isn't about a particular bar being awesome. I've certainly had (after fifteen years hanging out there) some dud nights at the bar in question, and it has had stretches of being entirely overrun with Greeks (the college variety, not the nationality/ethnicity). This entry isn't about one bar. It's about that First Bar, where you are part of a community of regulars. Since then I have been a regular at several bars, as has Joe. Places where you will always see someone you know, aside from the staff. Places where you will help the bartender close to go get another drink with them after hours. Not the center of your social life, but certainly heavily in the orbit. Those places are great, and the First one always stands out.

Like the first serious girlfriend or boyfriend; you never forget them and you always still have a bit of a crush. It's a hormonal thing, apparently. In your late teens and early twenties your body is pumping the mandate "DO SEX" into every cel, trying to make the most of it while you are still in your sexual peak. Evolution is giving you a need to spread your DNA while it is still potent, and chemicals are in your brain that are getting you over that hump from "growing" into "dying". Life at this time is vibrant and colorful, like Super Mario after he grabs the Star.

Everything you do during this stretch is pretty awesome. Thanks to our biology, we go through a post-puberty Rumspringa that turns even something so mundane as going to a bar too often into a memorable escapade that you will someday romanticize, going so far as making a web video and writing rambling blog entries about it.

Be that as it may, your first regular bar is always awesome.

MOTHERBOX

2011-03-05T11:28:00.000-08:00

To those among you dear readers that don't know Scott Free from Shilo Norman, stop snickering, there is nothing dirty about a motherbox. Let me get you caught up to speed.

A motherbox is a fictional device invented by one Jack Kirby, you know, the guy who co-created Captain America, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, the X-Men, Thor . . .perhaps the most influential and productive figure American superhero comics has ever seen. The guy was a genius, a visionary, a WW2 vet, and looked like this:But we can say more about him some other time. We're talking about Motherboxes here, not the King. Anyway, after he gets tired of Stan and Marvel dicking him around, Jack went to DC. This was an unbelievably huge deal at the time. Imagine if at some point John Lennon was like, "Fuck you, Paul, I'm joining the Stones." Kind of like that. Well, DC, in order to get him basically said, "Hey, nobody really reads our comics anymore and everyone reads yours. So, uh, here. Do whatever you want."

So Jack went insane (in the best ways possible). He was putting out multiple titles a month . . .writing them and drawing them, all filled with dozens of new ideas each issue. This "Fourth World Saga" was mainly centered around two planets of gods, an evil one (Apokalips) and a good one (New Genesis). Jack was working with a lot of primal myth stuff mixed in with crazy sci-fi and the dynamic action only he could bring. It was fucking crazy and great.

So, anyway, what's a motherbox? Well, in the stories, motherboxes were these living computers that the New Gods had. It was alive and had emotions, it cared for its "owner." It said "ping ping ping" and somehow people got what it was talking about. What did it do? Well, um, anything? For Mr. Miracle, escape artist extraordinaire, he kept his in his costume sleeve and it helped him get out of impossible traps.

For Orion, the son of the evil Darkseid raised by the king of the good gods, it soothed his savage temper. And for the Forever People, who were basically space hippies with a giant dune buggy (it's way cooler than it sounds) it somehow combined them all into this amazingly powerful guy called the Infinity Man.

They all bore the distinctive, unique design Kirby did so well, while each looking different. And as to what they did, well, they basically did whatever the story needed them to do. Whether calming an angry hunter, helping a clever man escape from danger, giving power to the young and idealistic, or just transporting people to better places, a motherbox basically was a stand-in for creativity and wonder. It's the sort of thing only Kirby could have thought of; other artists would be tempted to give long, boring explanations, motivations, origins . . .but, really, no one cares where a motherbox comes from.

They just know that it's awesome.

MY FUNERAL WILL BE AWESOME

2011-02-27T16:32:00.000-08:00

My funeral, if these instructions are followed, will be awesome. Please pay attention.

1. All living things die, so I suspect I will as well. (This is reasonable to assume, right? I'm pretty sure it's incredibly rare for something to keep going forever. I can't think of any documented cases off the top of my head. So let's just stick with the assumption that everything dies. For the sake of argument.) In the case that I do die, which is probable, I want my body roped off for at least twelve hours. If I drop dead on the sidewalk, for example, I would like a team to rush to the scene, and set up a series of ropes around my corpse, at lease six feet away on all sides. Those velvety ropes on brass stands would be perfect for this. The kind that are used to make lines at movie theaters and horrible bars.

With my body crumpled in a heap on the ground, separated from other humans, it will be a nice time to reflect on personal space, and how nice it is when people aren't all up in your business. Passersby will think "at least in death, he finally had a few hours when he wasn't being bumped against or squeezed past or forced to hug someone."

2. In the top left drawer of the wide dresser in my apartment, there is a kilt. Find that, and stow it somewhere safe. It will come into play later. Do not dress me in any of the fine clothes or fashionable garments in my home. Whatever I am wearing at the time of departure-from-this-mortal-coil will be acceptable. I should be lain out across a stone slab of some sort, fully clothed. (Hopefully my glasses will still be intact. I would like to keep wearing them throughout the process. Not that I will need them, but I become an unrecognizable mole person when they are removed, and I would like for the bereaved and grieving to recognize me through their tears.) All those who have ever met me will be in attendance at this point, as I am well-loved and much admired.

After I am on this stone slab, someone should solemnly approach, hold a gong in the air, and ring it once, shouting "THE FUNERAL HAS BEGUN!" This person should be wearing a robe of some kind. Not a cloak. A ROBE. Perhaps a mask. It can be a hired actor. Actually, that's preferable, as long as auditions don't go on for too long. The mask should be something unsettling. I want people to be on their toes.

At the masked actor's announcement, the funeral will begin.

3. Not knowing what will eventually "do me in" means that I will have to trust you, dear reader, to exercise some improvisation. For example, if this stone slab is indoors, the bonfire will have to be further away from my corpse, so as not to interfere with fire codes. If it is outside, the fireworks may begin much earlier. Improvisation is fine as long as the spirit of the thing is observed. I trust you. Don't let me down.

4. At this point, the bagpipes begin. Four men will play DON'T STOP ME NOW by QUEEN. They should be Real Men, with hairy knuckles and smelling like corned beef and football turf. If one of them has too much to drink, this is acceptable. The man beside him will have to help prop up this fellow from time to time, and the bourbon on his breath will be pungent. This is all perfectly acceptable. While they are playing, everyone in attendance will line up, and pay their respects, one by one. The men will leave small tokens around me, such as pocketknives, or vintage presidential campaign buttons. The women will weep, and their tears will be collected in a silver chalice, carried by a registered nurse. No one should spend too much time admiring my corpse. Courtesy shall be enforced. In the case of a fatal headwound, I will allow a bandana to be lain across the gore, as long as part of my face is still visible. (This is the last chance people will have to admire me; we musn't deny them that.) As the line comes to a close, my "pall bearers" will gather the items left by men, the chalice of tears, and the aforementioned kilt, and be escorted to the nearest exotic dance club by the bagpipers. Several women of strong arm and backs will carry me on their shoulders to the same strip club, following the men at least six paces behind, as is custom among civilized peoples.

5. At the strip club, a LORD OF THE FLIES scenario will begin, where my "pall bearers" will struggle for dominance among the other male patrons and staff (except the DJ, who may remain safe in his booth). Weapons are allowed. When an Alpha Male is determined, and this could go on for days, all other men must leave. I suspect at this point he will be in a near-feral state, wearing war paint and possibly a makeshift headband. In total silence, and under the strange and likely nauseating neon lights of the gentleman's establishment, the Alpha Male will arrange my corpse in whatever manner he sees fit. The gifts and tokens will be arranged as well, and the kilt will be lain across everything; a tartan shroud that smells vaguely of old closets. The strippers will have watched this since the very beginning. His testosterone at this point will be so overwhelming, it will no doubt provoke ovulation among these women. In years to come, the babies born of this Alpha Male's seed (as he will certainly take all the strippers as wives) will be known as "Cox Funeral People". They will be a genetic strain unto themselves, eventually settling on a volcanic island and shunning the modern world.

6. With my body prepared, the Alpha Male will nod to the DJ, who will begin playing SEXXX LAWS by Beck. My corpse will be soaked in Jameson Whiskey, and lit aflame. A torch if available, but anything will do. The kilt is old and the wool is going to make excellent kindling. As my body burns, the strippers will wail and rend their garments (assuming they have any on). It will be strictly Old Testament. Gnashing of teeth and everything. This burning will take many days, until I am nothing left but char. The doors will have to be barred, and I imagine an altercation with a SWAT team might occur before the process is complete.

7. My ashes should be ground into a paste, mixed with the tears of the female mourners, and used by the Alpha Male to paint and decorate the bodies of his new stripper wives. When this is complete, he will collapse, exhausted from days of fighting and impregnating and tending to my remains, fueled only by booze and primal urges. The attendees at the earlier procession will have a vague idea who this was, but will never speak of it. The Alpha Male will fade into obscurity, along with the actor who began the ceremony. (After a few failed auditions, he realized that he wasn't going anywhere, and the best he could hope for would be infrequent local commercials.) Those who attended my funeral will be given polaroids of the strippers painted in my ashes, taken by the DJ, to remember me by. It is all over, except for one last thing...

8. Everyone goes to Hawaii!

My funeral will be awesome.

ALKA-SELTZER (in three parts)

2011-02-27T14:52:00.001-08:00

1. I have discovered a thing. No one before me has known it. I have found it all by myself, and I am the first person to bring it down from the mountain. The world started the day I was born and ends at the edge of my vision. I discovered this thing all on my own. I deserve a medal or a ribbon. Someone get me my medal. Or ribbon.

2. Dear Planet Earth. I am angry that you waited until I was 34 before you let me know the benefits of the product Alka-Seltzer. I am so mad at you over this. I blame you. Even though this product has been popular for decades, and has one of the catchiest and most famous jingles of the television era, it has never occurred to me that this is something I should buy and use with regularity. There are too many people on this planet for there to be an excuse. Every time I woke up with a headache and a tummyache, someone should have told me there was an answer. Someone should have told me. This should be common knowledge. There is a fundamental flaw in the universe that this miracle cure for all-that-ails-you was not given to me sooner. So many wasted years...

3. When you are the type of person that drinks too much and eats too much, chances are that you feel like shit at least a few hours daily. Rich food and strong drink are the enemies of delicate human machines. Being a model of sobriety and healthy living, I only know of this second-hand, but it seems many people, after a night of libation, have salved themselves with an early morning cocktail of mylanta, pepto bismol, advil, aspirin, coffee, and several pints of water. This is breakfast, when you live a horrible lifestyle. Or so I have heard. I wouldn't know first-hand. I have healthiness.

Apparently, Alka-Seltzer has been around for decades, but no one bothered to tell me about it until the last six months (see number 2). So it seems that there have been entire decades of drunks and reprobates who have soothed the wounds of a long night's revelry with a familiar plop-plop and fizz-fizz. I was surprised and delighted to also find that this product can also help people with clean, sin-free lives. It just makes you feel good, no matter how deep in the devil drink you may wallow.

Without doing any research at all, I have determined that Alka-Seltzer is aspirin or something, with a magic potion that makes it fizzy. It turns water into something that smells like a YMCA, and tastes like hospital. I encourage everyone to keep a few tablets stowed on the old utility belt. Whether you are in the murky, pukey haze of a hangover, or maybe just after eating a jalapeno and sauerkraut sandwich, Alka-Seltzer has been getting pudgy middle-aged dudes through the working day since the 1700s*.

Alka-Seltzer is awesome.

*right?

Poker

2011-02-26T09:24:00.000-08:00

I once talked about how nerds ruin everything. This is scientific fact, and self-evident. One of the things they've been trying really hard to ruin has been poker. See, when I think "poker" I picture this:

Or this:
Or even this:

But thanks to weird-ass poker nerds half the world pictures douches like this:

Just look at them! I don't like the idea of sharing a continent with them, let alone a poker table and some beers! And there are freaks that look up to Stringy, the IT Cowboy and Chubbs McStupidglasses up there!

But here's the thing: we're not going to let those turds win. No! Strip away the jargon and the costumes and all the bullshit stuff the nerds have slathered on poker like McStupidglasses up there slathers butter on his Big Macs, and you've got poker, a game that people have played for centuries for a reason.

If I get down to it, when I think of poker the first thing that really comes to mind is seeing my Dad and his buddies play in our basement. (Side note: when your Dad is a principal and so are all of his friends, you see them in a very different way than other students . . .one much more linked to chewing tobacco, cigarettes, and booze.) Four to six or seven good buddies shooting the shit, talking shit, and getting shit-hammered. That's the Awesome Shit Trifecta (AST) right there.

And that's the heart of the whole thing there. It's never high stakes . . .I put down twenty bucks at the start of the evening thinking of it as a "fun tax," something I pay just to sit and have something fun to do with my friends. Costs a hell of a lot less than a video game, and it never sticks you on a stupid board where the slightest mishap can send you back forty minutes of excruciating gameplay (Fuck you, Force Unleashed II, I should have known). If you come out ahead, yay, unexpected fun! If not, who cares, you'd have spent that much on booze or transportation or hiring fake friends anyway.

Poker isn't a living, it isn't even a sport. It's a group of people getting together to indulge in chemicals of their choice and each other. Poker is awesome.

Awesome Links

2011-02-26T08:56:00.000-08:00

Actual content from me to come soonish. BUT, enjoy this stuff, all of which is awesome.

Chewy Rocks On, the heartwarming story of a Wookie in America.

Myths Retold, a truly awesome site featuring classical myths and legends retold by a totally awesome sounding dude.

but actually his problems are not solved at all
because nine months later
he gets this bonerkilling headache
that kills all his boners with such ferocity
that he actually has hephpaestus split open his head with a shovel
and BOOM
HERE COMES ATHENA
SPRINGING FULLY FORMED OUT OF ZEUS'S BRAINWOMB
and zeus is like aw fuck now i gotta pay child support

so the moral of the story is
always wear a condom
because otherwise
you are going to have to resort to an impromptu skull c-section
with a shovel

Project NES, in which some rather smart PHd kind of person writes essays about old 8 bit games as lenses on culture and life. I thought that sounded awful, too, but it's damned engaging.

And finally, in honor of Presidents' Day, here is the biography of one of our most awesome presidents.

CUTE GIRLS IN AIRPORTS

2011-02-11T00:27:00.001-08:00

I am a single man.

Despite the fact that I am devilishly handsome, I remain gloriously unattached. It is a mystery as to why no female-of-the-species has snatched me up for my superior genetic material. Aside from a nice attached stretch through college and one regrettable multi-year mistake, I have been in a perpetual state of "dating" through most of my adult life. As such, I tend to notice single women, often with laser focus, depending on where I land in any given refractory period.

What the Kid (that's me) has learned in his advanced years, is that Spock is always right. In STAR TREK episode 30, "Amok Time", Spock has experienced the Vulcan mating ritual of the Pon Farr, and lost his arranged mate to another suitor. He congratulates his former bride's new mate with indifferent logic (naturally), and tells him, "You may find that having, is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true."

More honest words have rarely been said.

Thus it is that the Kid views relationships. The fun is not in arriving, but in looking at the map.* If being in a meaningful relationship is the endgame, why is the long-term so much worse than the beginning (when you are figuring out how far you can get with fingers and orifices and dangly bits and soft parts and variations thereof)? It is only at the beginning when singing "Total Eclipse of the Heart" at karaoke can make you alternately horny and heartbroken. Emotions run high.

The relationship parts that come later are a chump's game. Pretending to like awful cooking, listening to litanies of complaints you have no empathy for, washing someone else's dishes because otherwise you have no spoons; this is tedium made literal and you have to eat it every day like gruel in a Dickens novel. No sir, I don't like it. The Kid is a "confirmed bachelor". In ye olde days, this would mean I was ye olde homosexual, but in modern parlance I am simply living out a prolonged and exaggerated adolescence. I am not proud, but this is the world I know. I accept it.

So the best part about dating is the actual dating. OR IS IT? Let us trim that hedge and see the courting ritual for the farce it is. It is a shell game, with two people constantly moving the cups. Pretending alternately to like someone's company more than you do, and then pretending to like them less. Honesty becomes the worst policy, as there is a binary of "too eager" and "not interested", either of which will brickwall intercourse if applied at the wrong moment. It is a combination balance beam and pummel horse, and the only people there to give you chalky powder and a quick boost are friends who have fallen off more than you. Every tentative step is across a white carpet when you have poop on your shoes. You want to have manners when you go out to eat, but not look like a priss. You want to have a sense of humor, but uh oh that joke about Jews running Hollywood was probably a step too far.

You want to have similar interests, but they don't like ABBA (dealbreaker). How many pairings have come to a close when, over dinner, the female looks quizzically at the male and he realizes that she doesn't know what "blitzkrieg" means. Your Humble Narrator has been there at least two dozen times! In that very scenario!

And so it is that the beginning ain't so hot either. Which takes us back to the initial attraction. Which is, again, essentially a scam. You see someone at a party, or a bar, or in a German night class at some community college. You make a hilarious crack, or wait for them to ask where you bought your parka. Maybe you are with a friend who knows them. "Who's that?" you might ask. "Are they into really good-looking guys (like myself)? Would they be interested in a handsome man-child that owns cats?" Two people size each other up, wondering "can i do better at this moment?" If both parties are interested/bored/desperate enough, the flirtation begins. From there it is a precarious two-step that leads, if you are lucky, to dating. Which is basically a nightmare.

Removing that initial meeting, what we have left is seeing someone attractive from across a room. This is the most romantic thing that ever there was. You see someone lovely, and the part of your brain that isn't reptilian rolls out butterflies and starshine and cookies. Is she alone? Is she single? A lifetime of possibilities runs through your head, as you watch this dream girl meet your family and give birth to your potential and fictional kids. She is a perfect creature, wearing a terrific outfit and reading that book that isn't awful. The way they sit is totally charming, and you assume that whatever is traveling into their earbuds via iPod is something amazing. Probably ABBA.

Maybe someone will say "hi", and maybe a light conversation will take place for five to ten minutes. Probably not. You have to take a call, and her flight is boarding. Ships pass, as they say. Beyond this point there are no embarrassing trips to buy her tampons, or being yelled at for farting. You will never be irritated by her mother and she will never be upset because of your pants. Maybe you will nod and smile at each other as you walk by one another, rolling small suitcases behind you and clutching boarding passes. This particular trip is over before it began. You may never arrive anywhere, but looking at the map was a nice distraction.

Seeing a cute girl sitting alone in an airport is awesome.

* This may be the only time when the old saw is true, about the journey being better than the destination. "It's not where you go, but how you get there", or a million other variations on that theme. They're all horseshit; traveling sucks, and the only good thing about it is that you get from point A to point B, with point B presumably being the pudding under the crust. I'm on an airplane right now, and it's cramped, sweaty, and loud. The guy next to me is a baseball fan from Texas, loudly chewing smelly gum, and prone to coughing fits. That is, when he's not sprawled out in his seat, fast asleep, and snoring like a THREE STOOGES gag. It's barely 2 in the afternoon and he is fast asleep. I suspect blood sugar problems.

FLEUR-DE-LIS

2011-02-05T18:32:00.000-08:00

The fleur-de-lis first came into your Humble Narrator's brain as a young lad, as it was (and remains) the worldwide emblem of the Scout movement. It was on patches and banners, and in the 1980s edition of the BOY SCOUT HANDBOOK, there was a full-page spread of all the many variations of the Scout emblem used by different countries of the world. Each one was different, and several were amazing, like the one from Thailand which featured a screaming tiger face prominently in the center.

This was my introduction into the world of symbology. Being raised Cumberland Presbyterian (a church rooted in eschewing higher education for clergy, and dropping old-world formalities as it crept into Appalachia), I was not familiar with the iconography of Catholicism, and my father was not a Freemason nor an Oddfellow, so that particular strain of Arcana was not readily available to me. Without Chi Rhos or Squares and Compasses in my life, I was delighted and surprised to find that occasionally, abstract forms mean something beyond the immediate and obvious. (Rosicrucians and Catharine Wheels loomed on the horizon, ready to break my eager brain.)

The fleur-de-lis, in the instance of Scouting, represented the north point on the mariner's compass. It directed us towards something meaningful to follow, always pointing to a higher ideal. The trefoil of leaves represented the three points of the scout oath, and the shape was that of a flower, representing nature, but also an arrowhead, which hearkened back to the Native Americans and Zulu Tribesmen, from whom Scouting took much of its lore and inspiration. When the icons of the U.S. were laid across the top (making it a symbol for the Boy Scouts of America, complete with eagles and stars and scrolls and knots), the layers became thicker and more convoluted. It was amazing. It was a set of secret things to memorize and study, and even though the Scouting movement only started in the 1900s, it seemed ancient, like finding the wisdom of Babylonia written on a scroll.

Of course, the fleur-de-lis is, in actuality, quite ancient, and as I grew older, it began to appear more and more in my various hobbies and obsessions. In learning about religious traditions, it shows up in ancient Catholicism (that strange, polytheistic cult where Symbols-with-a-capital-S are so well beloved). The three foils of the fleur-de-lis represent the Holy Trinity, and the resemblance to a flower has attached it to Mary, and her famous virginity. An interest in medieval weapons led to antiquated armor, and then on to heraldry, where the fleur-de-lis pops up frequently, complete with the bad-assery inherent in being painted on a tower shield. It appears as the symbol of many European countries and Great Houses, but particularly France, where it reminds us of that stretch in history where the French were a full-throttle world power, regularly putting England across their plate-mailed knee and spanking Her little bottom. Through France the fleur-de-lis traveled to Louisiana, becoming the totem of that state, and while I hold no special love in my heart for New Orleans, I do root for the Saints, and much enjoy the spastic (yet Championship winning) stylings of quarterback Drew Brees.

Aside from the historical and religious connotations, the fleur-de-lis is simply a great piece of design. It is symmetrical without being dull, and florid without being busy. Very few symbols make good patterns, while also standing alone as a single icon, but the fleur-de-lis has been used as both, and serves both well. It can incredibly ornate, or simplified down to the stark essentials, and is possibly only rivaled by the Crucifix for sheer amount of variations on the core concept. In architecture, it has been used as finials or frieze motifs, and in street art it makes an excellent stencil. It is a near-perfect design element in terms of flexibility of use, and the infinite ways it can be distorted and replicated, while still being recognizable. Ultimately, no matter how it is used, or how it is modified, it always remains rife with the semiotic richness it has acquired over the past several thousand years.

The fleur-de-lis is awesome.

Awesome Links

2011-01-29T16:14:00.001-08:00

* Great compilation of the Japanese Spider-man doing that thing he does.

* A discussion of GYMKATA, a classic of American Cinema.

* This link is ancient, but it is one of my favorite things I've ever read on the world wide internerd, and I'm not sure why.

* No link, but if you have a Kindle, there are a bunch of free P.G. Wodehouse novels to download. Why no one told me this sooner, I do not know. It makes me so mad.

DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS

2011-01-27T20:06:00.001-08:00

The great thing about Dungeons and Dragons is that it's not just a game, it's a lifestyle. To really commit, you gather a shelf of source books and bags of dice that look like gems and/or candy. You have trays of tiny monsters and painted miniatures, and maps that spread out across a kitchen table, which then get saved in tattered stacks into perpetuity. You speak a new language with other gamers. Phrases like "critical hit", "marching order" and "save versus death magic" all become coded references you share with a select few. Names like "Mordencainan", "Vecna", and "Bigby" bring to mind important historical figures, looming larger than many past presidents (and let's be honest, Garl Glittergold is much more interesting than Millard Fillmore).

The books that guide you into this other world are evocative and exciting; the Fiend Folio, the Tome of Magic, The Manual of the Planes. Creatures with strange names (like Beholders, and Drow) have entirely new biologies and cultures to discover. Arcane rules and complicated charts guide you. You know that this is a Special Game because it has it's own dice. Unlike Monopoly* or Sorry**, you can't just use plain old six-sided dice (or "chance cubes", as George Lucas calls them). You need a new variety of polyhedrons that have to be tracked down in specialty stores, often hidden under sales-counters like pornography. The term "D12" has meaning now. You only use that dice for one thing***, but still you will need it.

Dungeons and Dragons is a Fantasy Role-Playing game, which means that you will want to be a fantasy fiction fan to truly appreciate it. That is a world unto itself, that should be explored even before the first character sheet is scribbled on with the requisite number 2 pencil. Where and when the standard, modern fantasy tropes began is hard to pin down. Folklore, Nothern European mythology, and fairy tales all played a part, and the idea of supernatural, humanoid creatures like dwarves and elves likely threads back to our earliest stories as a race with a shared narrative. Dragons and heroic quests and magic are concepts that exist in every culture, but the current and typified genre we call "fantasy", and corral into a ghetto on the bookstore shelves, probably begins in earnest with an amateur boxer named Robert Howard, and was codified by Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. He is, as they say, the line of division.

There was certainly fantasy fiction before these fellows, but the common signifiers we know today all came together in the pages of CONAN and THE LORD OF THE RINGS. The ideas of a medieval world where magic lives alongside armored cavaliers on horseback, and hooded rangers fight goblins in dark forests, are not new. These existed in folklore, but the wholesale packaging of them in literature, with maps of fictional worlds and histories that could be memorized and studied, came to us in the last century. Wagner updated the Ring Cycles of the Vikings, but he was just retelling existing myths. Howard and Tolkien were creating their own mythology, and this is the key difference.

Dungeons and Dragons started as a supplement to a tabletop strategy game, created on the fly by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. The initial game was historical in nature, but when they decided to add a fantasy element, the lure of Middle-earth stared at them like Sauron's eye. Dungeons and Dragons owes almost everything to Tolkien, and even in the earliest days of its creation this influence was worn right on the sleeve. "Halflings" are a non-copyrighted version of Hobbits, and the versions of Elves, dwarves, and orcs the game presents us with are straight out of Numenor. But where Dungeons and Dragons becomes genius is the next step. It adds more. It adds Lovecraft. It adds Howard and his world of Barbarians and thieves. It adds Fritz Leiber, throws in some Lord Dunsany, and peppers it all with liberal doses of Arthur myths, history, Jack Vance, and Robin Hood. Thorin Oakenshield joins Kull the Conqueror to destroy Shoggoths alongside a yeoman fighting the French at Agincourt. Then it gets even crazier, as Gary Gygax starts to make shit up.

Many of the early monsters in D&D were simply weird things Gygax created because he had small toys that looked funky, and needed names. There is no "rust monster" in the Prose Edda. It came from a vending machine full of cheap Japanese toys. A whole universe of monsters, gods, spells, and races came to exist on the whims of Gary Gygax trying to come up with new ways to kill the characters of his players. And now they are memorized by the devoted few who worship at the altar of Greyhawk.

Everyone who has ever played Dungeons and Dragons has a character with a history as rich and as amazing as any from fiction. Usually more than one. Every time they sit down to roll dice, there is an epic about to take place. I have a character that has been around since I was fifteen. I have known him longer than most of my friends. He his older than my niece. I know his history, his dreams, his wants, and his tragedies. When he goes on an adventure, his life gets richer, and I am there for it. On paper, he's just an elf archer with a silly name****, but in a larger sense, he is a connection to that first gaming table I sat at, one I got to by bumming a ride with my buddy Tommy because I was too young to drive. I created him while drawing next to Tony, and trading sketches. (Both of those guys also work in comics, proving something, although I'm not sure what.) This elf was there while I was bonding with people I am still friends with today, shooting monsters with a magic bow while we laughed and ate junk food and quoted BEASTMASTER.

Dungeons and Dragons, for all the stereotypes and jokes about nerds in basements, is a social activity. It encourages creativity and puts you eyeball deep in a mix of clever problem-solving and the luck of the dice. It brings people together, and requires genuine interaction and shared experience. The variety of people that play runs the gamut from truly awful geeks to perfectly cool and normal people. All ages and backgrounds can sit down and be equals. Everyone is the same at the wrong end of an ogre's axe.

This ridiculous game has given me escape, entertainment, chances to create, and friends I would not have known otherwise. It has introduced me to fiction I would not have found, and taught me the difference between a "geas" and a "guisarme". Most importantly, it let me roll the dice while Tarkas Polo and his magic bastard sword Gutcleaver killed a Red Dragon in the mountains of Taltosia. That is awesome.

* a game for jerks
** a game for stupids
*** Barbarian hit points. Respect.
**** Ruprecht Redwine. Don't judge.

Extra Credit: Patton Oswalt's amazing new book ZOMBIE SPACESHIP WASTELAND has an essay on D&D. Here is an excerpt.

Awesome Links

2011-01-23T09:59:00.000-08:00

* I compiled a list of the 50 GREATEST COMIC BOOK MOVIES for Complex Magazine. I think it's pretty solid.

* These international GODZILLA posters are amazing.

* I could watch this Ted Leo video on a loop for years.

* Compilations of art from Moebius, one of the greatest living cartoonists.

Thus endeth the lesson.

SUN DROP

2011-01-20T06:52:00.000-08:00

I assume that most people's childhoods were fueled with chocolate milk, or Tang, or those little plastic barrels with the foil tops filled with grody sugar water. Not mine; I have no nostalgia for these things.

The flavor that takes me back to the days of yore is a regional poison that looks like Mountain Dew and tastes like heaven. Anyone from middle Tennessee, north Alabama, and parts of western North Carolina will know the nectar of which I speak. In these areas, it flows like salt water in the mighty Pacific. It is called Sun Drop, and it tastes like lemon pie baked in a lime cake covered with cane sugar pudding.*

There were many legends and rumors about the soft drink known as Sun Drop. We heard that it had more caffeine than eight cups of coffee,** and it was said that Sun Drop was illegal in most states because of the obscene and criminal amounts of that same devil-stimulant. Sun Drop had been around since my parents were young, and it was unique at one point for having bits of pulp floating in it, like real fruit juice. Those were long gone by the time I was in High School, and knowing that they got rid of them makes me wonder what they were, and also afraid to find out.

Our addiction was such that a good deal of our social time was spent simply getting a fix, or on a "Sun Drop run". Back and forth to gas station convenience stores for translucent green 20 ounce bottles. We needed that stuff. It was common for the floorboards of our cars to be ankle deep in empty Sun Drop bottles. This was a thing that we were accustomed to, despite the low breeding of having a filthy automobile. We forgave Sun Drop bottles. It fueled marathon Dungeons and Dragons games and was mixed with vodka (or moonshine) in more insane party binges. It was in our blood. Probably literally.

They say that antifreeze is dangerous because it is terribly poisonous but also terribly delicious. A domesticated animal will lap up that horrible stuff because it tastes so wonderful. This is the curse of Sun Drop; it tastes as good as anything ever bottled by the white devil's machines, but as far as sodas go, it is as close to arsenic as you can get. In retrospect, it's a miracle I'm not chubbier than I am. In fact, its a miracle I'm not downright obese, moving slowly down the sidewalk in a rascal scooter and wearing jeans with elastic at the waist. The amount of sugar I ingested from Sun Drop alone, from birth to age 18, was probably something along the lines of several wheelbarrows-full. If the world was fair, and metabolisms were even-stevens, everyone in "Sun Drop country" would be living with adult-onset diabetes by age fifteen, as opposed to the forty percent or so that it strikes currently.

Yet for all the cane sugar and caffeine and artificial food coloring and other assorted toxins and lab-rat killing chemicals, there is nothing I crave like a Sun Drop when I get off the plane in god's country, middle Tennessee. It is displayed in coolers in solid rows, glowing green in a neon ziggurat like the front doors of Emerald City. You see that display, and all the folly of youth races back into the reptile part of your brain. The craving begins. That sweet, syrupy, fake citrus calls to you like a carbonated siren song. You walk slowly under the fluorescent lights, past the corn-nuts and pork rinds, ignoring the beer coozies and NASCAR ball caps. Despite watching your diet and spending hours at the gym, that nasty stuff has triggered something in you, like the Manchurian Candidate. You are powerless.

Everyone I know that has emigrated out of that particular stretch of the southern United States harbors a deep-seated longing for Sun Drop. Cases shipped from home are treated like fine wine, broken out only on special occasions. It seems people still in the south take Sun Drop for granted. They laugh at the desperation with which we expats chug our first bottle, after being away for months at a time. But when you ask, "I'm getting a sun drop... Do you want one?", they will always, always, always respond with a thirsty "yessss".

Because Sun Drop is awesome.

* does such a thing exist? It should.
** why eight? That's kind of an arbitrary figure for a weird rumor...

COLLECTING THINGS

2011-01-12T07:44:00.000-08:00

My friend Garry, as a teenager, had a bedroom decorated with gas masks. I'm not sure how that particular assortment began, but for whatever reason, by the time he graduated High School, he had gas masks from every major conflict since WWI, from several nations and armies.

My brother had a bunch of vintage bottles he had dug out of the dirt in various woods, and my dad had a cedar chest full of pocketknives. Other folks had beer steins or records, antique books, mandolins, geodes, or photos signed by all the actors who played James Bond's villains. These were all amazing assortments that reveal a passing interests and fiery obsessions. Personally, over the years, I've collected star wars figures, comic books, Peanuts merchandise, vintage Boy Scout gear, Green Lantern stuff, rocks, coins, arrowheads, first aid kits, original comic art, presidential campaign buttons, D&D miniatures, and old maps. Some I still have, some I've gotten rid of, some are long forgotten. (I have found, in my elderly years, that the keeping is not as satisfying as the finding.)

In this golden age of the World Wide Internerd, collecting things is as easy as checking eBay over coffee every morning, which is equal parts miracle and bummer. As an example, for years and years, all I wanted in the world was this guy:

The 1984 Kenner DC Comics SUPER POWERS Collection GREEN LANTERN Action Figure. This was my Holy Grail. As a kid, Green Lantern was my favorite super-hero (Aside from Spider-Man, which is a story for another day). Aliens, magic ring, test pilot, blah blah blah. He was great. The Super Powers figures were a terrific line of toys that debuted when I was eight years old, so I was exactly the target audience.

The ads were in every comic book and they could not have been more directly designed for me, specifically, at age eight. The designers of these ads had clearly watched and studied me. They knew what I needed. They were taunting me.

I would religiously inspect every toy aisle, in every store, everywhere we went, looking for this toy. I wanted the Green Lantern so badly that I flipped right by the Supermans and the Batmans and all the A list guys without a second thought. I was on a mission, focused like the most intense of lasers.

The end of this story is as predictable as it is pathetic. I never found a Green Lantern figure as a child, and it plagued me into adulthood. I was still digging through junk stores and comic book conventions in my twenties,whenever the chance arose, looking for that one missing piece of my misspent youth.

Then one day I found him. A little beat up, overpriced, and missing his lantern accessory, but there he was. On a table at a small New York Comic Con, wrapped in plastic like Laura Palmer. He was mine now. My heart stopped and tears welled in my eyes. This was my Road to Damascus. I proudly turned, and showed him to showed him off to my friend Pat, who said, "Oh sure, I've got one of those. You want it?"

My jaw dropped. Suddenly, I had two. Before long, I was compulsively buying this same figure every time I found one. Identical toys, lined up on a shelf. It was beyond idiotic. My quest was now upgraded to finding one "Mint in Box", as they say. I was mentally ill.

Then came eBay, and the world was our oyster forever. Suddenly, these figures I had scoured the earth for were readily available, and the open market had decreased demand and dropped the price. I could have as many 1984 Kenner DC Comics SUPER POWERS Collection GREEN LANTERN Action Figures as I wanted, and suddenly they weren't nearly as exciting. I sold all of mine (but one) on eBay.

(Who didn't see that coming?)

EBay has changed the nature of collecting, making it simultaneously less exciting and more fun. Things that I never knew existed are now available, and prices are no longer dictated by the whims of weirdos at flea markets. It has made the hunt less difficult, but there is much more game on the savannah. I still dig through antique stores whenever possible; there's nothing like that particular tactile experience, and online shopping can never replicate it. A few years ago I was collecting vintage Super 8 cameras, and while they are all over eBay, actually being able to open one up and inspect it for yourself is unbeatable. And of course, the thrill of finding something like that, unexpectedly sitting on a shelf in a store, is always better than winning a bidding war with darth_snake_eyes1988.

The thrill of finding (whether it be online or hidden behind a Hummel Figurine on a dusty table) is always a little intoxicating. Adding one more piece to a well-loved menagerie is always a small victory in life, and small victories can be rare. Collecting things is awesome.

Duck Bacon

2011-01-06T14:43:00.000-08:00

Nerds do their constant best to ruin everything. Everything. And since the Internet became The Thing That All Nerds Do All The Time, the speed at which things get ruined has increased exponentially. It took them 21 or so years to ruin Star Trek.

They went from Captain Awesome to this tool.

But these days something can be really great for just a day or two and nerds just run it into the ground. I sometimes feel this way about bacon. You can't go a day on the internet without reading about some kind of bacon bullshit. Bacon pajamas, bacon band aids, bacon stuffed animals and, lo, do the bleeting nerdsheep sing the praises. And that's a sad thing because bacon is fucking delicious.

A few weeks ago I was at a local grocery store, just a goddam C-Towntowntowntowntown in fact, looking for ingredients to make my part of a Thanksgiving dinner. I saw they had some nice stuff, including bacons from D'Artagnan, a delicious small company. When I looked closer, I saw they even had wild boar bacon and . . .duck bacon.

Well I grabbed the nearest girl I could find and had her take me to her apartment. Luckily, I knew her. We got a skillet and opened up these wondrous packages for immediate taste-testing. Let me tell you, wild boar bacon is really good. A subtler but still rich flavor and great texture.

But duck bacon?

Holy shit. That's pure Awesome. Unbelievably rich, which is not surprising considering how fatty duck can be, but not overpoweringly heavy. Let's face it, the drawback of bacon tends to be the way you feel after you're done tasting it. Duck bacon? No such problem.

Since then I've sworn by the stuff. I rendered the fat from some to cook a green bean dish. I peppered it into a chili I made (8 meats, aw shit). And I think about it pretty much constantly. Duck's a fine thing. My next step is finding a good place to get more duck products. I'm not going to be satisfied until Operation Duckburger is finally accomplished.

DOC BRONNER'S MAGIC SOAP

2011-01-04T12:11:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid, and just starting to get serious about camping and backpacking, most of the supplies and equipment used by my friends and I came from the CAMPMOR catalog; a small, newsprint affair with smudgy text and poor images of tents and boots and socks made of wool.

In these current, more sophisticated days, everyone has had a subscription to the CAMPMOR catalog, and they fill the recycling baskets of Our Fair Union alongside so many stacks of THE NEW YORKER and THE PARIS REVIEW. But when you live in Bumble-fuuuuudge County Tennessee, a catalog that sells the things you need to traverse glaciers is a magical thing. We would scour every page, wondering which anorak would be the most durable, and debating the merits of different waterproofing techniques. Between BACKPACKER magazine and the CAMPMOR catalog, we were in constant preparation to trade blankets and beads with the Hurons before setting off into untamed wilderness.

Most importantly, inside the pages of the CAMPMOR catalog, you could find a strange elixir that existed no where else in the world (that we knew of). This was DR. BRONNER'S MAGIC ALL-IN-ONE PEPPERMINT SOAP. It came in small, simple bottles, with amazing labels covered in unreadable text. It was apparently the greatest liquid ever made by the hands of man.

DR. BRONNER'S MAGIC ALL-IN-ONE PEPPERMINT SOAP was allegedly useful for:

* washing
* shampooing
* brushing your teeth
* cleaning dishes
* cleaning clothes
* condition your skin
* lubricate gears
* soften leather
* scrub wounds
* deoderize your smelly armpits
* Freshen your breath
* Invigorate the senses

... and dozens of other applications, all the while smelling (and possibly TASTING) like peppermint. It was soap, detergent, and toothpaste all rolled into one bottle. It was organic (although that was a vague term; it sounded great but had we were unsure what exactly it meant), biodegradable, and best of all, it was made by A CRAZY PERSON.

My friends and I were obsessive weirdos, constantly digging for the strange and esoteric. At age 13, there was very little cooler in the world than THE ILLUMINATI! trilogy, the stretch in CEREBUS where the title character becomes the Pope of a fictional church, or finding French science-fiction comics buried in the backs of dusty used bookstores. We memorized entries from old copies of the FIEND FOLIO and DUNE, debated Sindarin versus Noldor in the Second Age, and dog-eared pages H.P. Lovecraft's texts at mentions of the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred and his Necronomicon. (Of course, thanks to a rise in Geek Culture and the World Wide Internerd, all of this stuff is readily available and used as a punchline on sitcoms. You better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone...)

The rantings and writings of Doctor Bronner became shorthand crazytalk among my Scout Troop for years. Shouts of "DILUTE! DILUTE!" were a battle-cry, and with wild eyes and dirty fingers we were always ready to "help teach the whole Human race the Moral ABC of All-One-God-Faith!". The labels of every bottle of Magic Peppermint Soap were coated, every quarter-inch, with bizarre text that was the perfect combination of biblical ranting, awesome product design, and obsessive, full-throttle CRAZY. It was the perfect prop for our blossoming geekery. We had no idea who Dr. Bronner was, nor did we care. It didn't matter. (In fact, reading an article about him at age 17 kid of ruined the whole thing. It became sad and I felt like a jerk for making fun of what were the sincere beliefs of someone struggling with mental illness.)

I don't think I've ever been without a bottle of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap in twenty years. Luckily, it's available now in most every supermarket, drugstore, and deli. I've used for dozens of purposes, and I've tried all the new flavors. At this point, it's beyond just buying a useful product. Now, when I get hit with a whiff of that strong Peppermint (or almond) odor, it takes me back to happy times. Early mornings in empty shower-houses at Camp Stahlman, washing my face in a Blue Ridge Mountain creek after a long day on the trail, and taking bubble-baths with my first real girlfriend in a tiny East Village apartment. A mural of amazing memories the size of Canada's buttocks, without a negative moment among them.

All that, and it smells good.

DR. BRONNER'S MAGIC ALL-IN-ONE PEPPERMINT SOAP is awesome.

KING KONG

2011-01-02T22:40:00.000-08:00

This is what we know about Kong:

1. He is worshiped and feared by a tribe of natives who regularly sacrifice women to him.
2. He lives in a mountain that looks like a skull.
3. He fights and kills dinosaurs. The mighty Tyrannosaur is nothing to Kong. Kong will fight him and kill him. Kong takes no shit from Tyrannosaur.
4. Kong is the Eighth Wonder... of the Woooorld!
5. When Kong strips a woman naked, he pauses to sniff her clothes before discarding them.
6. The top of the Empire State Building is just a place to hang out. Kong takes no shit from acrophobia.
7. Kong is neither man nor beast.
8. When Kong goes on a rampage, he bites peoples' heads off. And stomps them into the mud. Kong takes no shit from pacifism.
9. He wins in a one-on-one tango versus a military biplane.
10. More than one military biplane, however, and he is in trouble.

This is what we don't know about Kong:

1. Everything else.

There have been many iterations of Kong, but none beat the original. Willis O'Brien created a stop-motion puppet in 1932 that is arguably the best special effect in motion picture history. Every Kong since has either been a guy in a monkey suit or a computer generated gorilla that makes you sad with his emotions.

I don't need emotions with my giant monsters. All I need is carnage, and terror, and dead dinosaurs. That's what you get with the King Kong of 1933. He takes no shit from emotions.

King Kong is awesome.

BEING HANDSOME

2010-12-31T15:54:00.000-08:00

Everyone thinks that good-looking people have it made.

This is mostly true, but there are exceptions.

If you observe my life, you will see that being exceptionally handsome has not made me any money. Being admired by women has not salved my financial woes. Not yet.

Also, it is often the case that women are reluctant to talk to me and almost never approach me unprompted, as they are intimidated by my looks. They assume I am out of their league. While this is usually true, I am not a shallow man. I will have a light conversation with a 7 or an 8. (They should not expect any more than that, however.)

I am almost never charged less for things in delis or bodegas. It's not like the guy behind the counter says "No... you are too handsome. You only pay three dollars for the five dollar box of fat-free fig newtons." This has only happened five or six times, at most.

It is also a burden to live up to the standards the world places on beautiful people. I can't just walk around with messy hair. It has to be messy in a fashionable way. It has to be mussed, but not unkempt. Or unkempt in an intentional way, and not mussy in a sloppy way. This is not as easy as it seems. In fact, it is a paradox that makes no sense at all. It can give you a migraine trying to figure it out. Don't even bother. It's like algebra. No one understands it.

Yes, there are problems, but in general, being extremely handsome has been a blessing. I look really great all the time, which is it's own reward, some might say. I don't know what that means, So I will decline comment. The public is basically polite to the attractive, for the most part. Most people avoid eye contact with me, and that makes me warm inside. Sometimes old women do not give me the stinkeye when I don't give up my seat on the subway.

Because I am EXTREMELY handsome.

Which is awesome.

Smoking a Pipe (privately)

2010-01-23T14:19:00.001-08:00

Years ago, I was friends with a fellow named Chase. He was a soft-spoken sort, who drove a vintage taxi and enjoyed firearms. When we were in our early twenties, his particular passion was tobacco. He gradually became something of an expert, and between the smooth taste of Camel cigarettes, he often enjoyed a pipe.

Now, I realize that a man under the age of fifty (give or take) puffing on a pipe comes across as a ridiculous affectation. Just the other day, I saw a lad in front of the Battery Park Borders, firing up a bent stem bulldog bowl with a disposable Bic. Bad form. Not only was he ruining his pipe with that itty bitty butane powered bastard, but he also had a stringy ponytail. He looked like a Renn Faire jackoff of the highest order.

Chase, on the other hand, pulled off pipe smoking with aplomb. He only partook in his home, or while driving, or while alone with a hobby. His friends were aware, but he wasn't standing on the sidewalk in Manhattan, proudly looking like an idiot. He had awareness.

Being a generous chap, Chase gave me a well-loved briar pipe. He showed me the intricacies of packing, lighting, cleaning, maintaning, and puffing. I was introduced to the different varieties of tobacco, the various tools and polishes, and the ettiquette of pipe smoking. It was a whole world to learn about, and I was a fascinated pupil. Chase went on to work in a fancy tobacconist shop (shoppe?), and wrote several articles published somewhere in the tall grasses of that particular subculture.

Ten years later, I have unearthed a box of pipes that Chase gave me lo those many years ago. With one cheap packet of Captain Black, a flood of memories swamped the Mississipi delta of my mind. Stomping through the woods of Boxwell Reservation, Shooting fireworks off the back of moving vehicles, talking about Shai Hulud while swinging golf clubs in a back pasture; the sticky summer heat of Tennessee was almost palpable, despite the freezing cold of a Brooklyn winter lurking outside.

Smoking a pipe has a soothing, calming effect. It's not so much the tobacco itself, but the ritual of properly packing the bowl, striking a wooden match, scraping out ash with a pipe tool. Like a Japanese tea ceremony, the process is the thing that matters. The journey settles your nerves more than the destination.

And so it is that I have recently remembered the awesomeness of enjoying a pipe. Unlike cigarettes, the smell that fills the room is charming, and robust. The smoke itself is thick, and white, and curls up in front of you like a gentle phantasmogoria. It soothes, after a day of sensory overload. It's gentle on the eyes and nose.

As long as it is enjoyed privately, away from the judgements of one's peers, a pipe is one of the finer things in life. Aside from being closer to death's black oblivion, I can't wait for my elder years, when I can enjoy a pipe in public view.

Pipes are awesome.

merry merry merry merry merry

2008-12-22T05:59:00.000-08:00

The Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense

2008-12-03T07:00:00.000-08:00

Guy Davis is awesome.

Alan Moore on Steve Ditko

2008-12-02T04:59:00.000-08:00

One awesome individual on another.

The World IS Awesome After All

2008-11-08T19:29:00.000-08:00

'nuff said.

Man oh Man!

2008-10-22T06:50:00.000-07:00

I haven't updated in FOREVER! The sad thing is, I have like, twelve half-finished posts ready to go. Well, here's some pictures to pretend that I have content.

This is my new Proton Pack, made from Garbage:

I still have to do some detail work, but it's basically ready to go.

The costume it goes with:

MELLOW GOLD

2008-06-24T05:27:00.001-07:00

I just realized that this album is almost fifteen years old. It holds up incredibly well for something the same age as a petulant driver's ed student with acne.

I remember listening to this in high school, back when having a cd player in your car was kind of an awesome novelty. I remember that the Beastie Boys were early adopters, and rightfully predicted that Beck would be huge. I remember that as catchy and excellent as the LOSER single was, there were plenty of other damn good songs that we would routinely rock. I had never quite heard anything like SOUL-SUCKING JERK, BEERCAN is still one of my favorite dance songs, and the folk-rock styles of PAY NO MIND and NIGHTMARE HIPPY GIRL were both comfortably familiar and also weirdly new.

I immediately bought anything else I could find by Beck; at the time there was the totally folky ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE, the noisy and bizarre STEREOPATHETIC SOUL MANURE, and if you were lucky, maybe you could track down a thrice dubbed cassette of MTV MAKES ME WANT TO SMOKE CRACK. All good stuff. I know it's not the case, but it really seemed like Beck sprung fully formed as a musician from Zeus' head. It was exciting to find someone so wholly awesome right out of the gate.

Soon thereafter came ODELAY, an album which was just so great that I have a perfectly clear memory of the first time I heard it, like it happened yesterday. Since then, I have tracked down whatever Beck I can find (b-sides, Japanese imports, remixes, you name it) and I have yet to be disappointed. But in all that time, I never really revisited MELLOW GOLD.

Well, fifteen years later, I popped the old headphones on and listened to it straight through. It still rules.

KAMANDI!!!!

2008-04-11T09:16:00.000-07:00

What is it about KAMANDI?

If there was ever an example of a comic that works in spite of itself, this is it. On first glance, it's a ridiculous concept, with a half-naked blonde guy of indeterminate age as the central character. Of course, the artwork is dynamite, and every page jumps at you with signature Kirby explosiveness, but past the immediate appeal of the illsutration, it looks a little childish and exceedingly violent. Not to mention the fact that he covers had the most bizarre taglines ever to grace a comic after 1960.

Usually, a Great Comic has a clear hook, or a great plot, or rich characters; concepts that you can wrap your head around and say, "This is what makes this comic exceptional". KAMANDI, I am bewildered to say, has none of that, beyond simply being gorgeous to behold, art-wise. Aside from coming from the Pen of Kirby, it doesn't seem to have much going for it.
Yet it's still something of a masterpiece, and quite possibly the best comic of the Seventies. Against all odds, KAMANDI worked in a way that few comics do. It holds up, conceptually, even today. Despite major flaws, it remains infectious and joyous and a total kick in the ass.

What are these "major flaws"? Well, they're pretty fundamental, and all in one basket together, they would sink any other book, by any other creator...

1. "KAMANDI" IS A RIP-OFF

KAMANDI was borne out of the popularity of PLANET OF THE APES. This is a given; the first issue even features the image of a decrepit Lady Liberty, an image made famous by Charlton Heston on his knees in the sand, screaming at the sky. The plot of KAMANDI (such as it is) revolves around the last remaining bare-chested human, making his way in a savage world where evolved animals rule, and humans are mute beasts, used as slaves. His best friend is a benevolent animal scientist, and he frequently travels with a beautiful, topless human female, hoping she will speak some day. This is all very familiar.
Of course, this is filtered through the awesome brain of JACK KIRBY, so the additions to the familiar tropes are many many and grand. While PLANET OF THE APES (for all its goodness) was kind of bland, design-wise, KAMANDI is a technicolor world filled insane machines, crumbling cities, giant monsters, and brightly garbed animals of all types. Rather than Gorillas with single-shot rifles, we are given giant bats, snakes with robot arms, leopard pirates, and tigers that wear some of the coolest clothes ever drawn in comics.

KAMANDI is PLANET OF THE APES with intensity replacing the brooding, insane landscapes replacing a bland desert, and dynamic mutant rebels with cyclotronic hearts replacing the psychic guys who worship that missile underground.

So while it is true that KAMANDI started as a rip-off, it immediately evolved into something far more vast and tremendously more exciting than Roddy McDowell in a funky rubber mask.

2. KAMANDI IS A BORING CHARACTER

Kamandi himself is little more than a cipher with feathered hair and a pistol. His personality consists of getting angry a lot, traveling endlessly and pointlessly, and enjoying kicking animal ass. He's a pretty blank slate. Even visually, there's not much going on there; he wears cutoffs and boots, and his only accessories are a gun and a holster. Even with "simplicity of design" in mind, he's still pretty weak. While the primary yellows and blues of his hair and clothes are striking, the boldness is purely graphic. Kamandi would make a pretty lame costume or action figure. He's no Indiana Jones.
But what Kamandi lacks in personality and visual interest, he more than makes up for in bare-knuckle, two-fisted, balls to the wall Excitement. This is a kid who jumps feet-first into every fight, has an incredibly short fuse, and lives in a world where THAT'S ALL THAT MATTERS! Anger, fearlessness, and a high protein diet are what it takes to survive! He doesn't need subtleties or depth, he needs a gun.... so that he can kill some frikkin' gorillas!

What do we learn about about Kamandi over the course of the series? We learn that he hates it when animals disrespect him. And we learn that he will kick their asses for disrespecting him. As far as I'm concerned, that's about as much character development as you need, when the next scene you might read involves Kamandi taming a giant cricket so that he can ride it like a horse.

3. "KAMANDI" MAKES NO SENSE

The world of KAMANDI is EARTH AD... AFTER DISASTER! What was the "Great Disaster"? No one knows. It apparently involved radiation. How did the new society evolve? How did humanity devolve? Why are some animals (horses, buffalo, insects) still the same, while some animals (tigers, dogs, killer whales) have evolved into intelligent human hybrids? And what's the deal with the wide variety of mutants and monsters?

The answer is, "Don't worry about it. Just accept that weird things will happen,"

One of the fundamental rules of writing fiction, and particularly speculative fiction, is that the world you place your characters in must have some sort of logic unto itself, and internal consistency. As loopy and ridiculous as STAR WARS is, if Chewbacca could turn into The Thing by putting on a magic ring, that would likely be a step too far outside the established rules of that fictional world. (Although it would be awesome.) KAMANDI is an exception to this rule, and wears this exception like a badge of honor. Think you've got things remotely figured out? Just wait for the next issue, because something so bizarre will come out of left field it will make your head spin.

The only established rule in the KAMANDI universe is that there are no rules. It makes no sense. As much as people accuse Grant Morrison of being "weird for weird's sake", Kirby was turning Arbitrary Weirdness into a cottage industry long before Grant ever communed with extra-dimensional aliens. Every issue of KAMANDI was chock full of bizarre concepts that added to the enormous Earth AD tapestry of Things-That-Shouldn't-Work-Together-But-Somehow-Do.

4. "KAMANDI" HAS NO POINT

Superman is on Earth to fight injustice. Batman wants to avenge his parents by bringing justice to criminals. Spider-man is eaten up with guilt, Sam Beckett is trying to find his way home, and Frodo has to destroy the Ring.
There is General Thrust to most fiction; you know where the characters are going, and mostly you know why. Sometimes it's as vague as "Philip Marlowe solves mysteries because he can. And he gets paid to do so." You, the reader, understand the point of the story, even in the most general terms.

With KAMANDI, there is such a cannonball momentum to the pace, you never have a chance to stop and think "Why is this happening?" Kamandi spends so much time reacting to the insanity around him, there is never a moment where you feel like he has a priority in life. He spends so much time either simply surviving, angrily fighting back against tormentors, or just exploring for excitement's sake, the narrative thrust never expands beyond "Holy Crap Look What's Happening RIGHT NOW!!!"

This is where we really see Kirby's genius as a writer at work. The man never lets up, not for an instant. The point of the story never forms around a "Character A has to accomplish X, despite Y" storyline, nor does it need to. It is a rollercoaster of a plot where every page is a new twist, and the fact that many of them come out of the blue is part of the thrill. The plot of KAMANDI has no point, because that would take time to establish, and between lions on motorcycles, submerged cities, and rats in hot air balloons, there was no time to spare!

And so it was that KAMANDI was the best seller of all of Kirby's DC books. It lasted the longest, and despite the recent surge of interest in the FOURTH WORLD saga, KAMANDI was the first to get the Archive treatment. Thirty years later, it's impossible to read any random issue and not get excited, or enjoy yourself. It was an unstoppable thrill-ride that worked despite not working at all. It broke every rule of what makes good fiction, and yet these comics are still something you can hardly put down. In the end, what makes KAMANDI so awesome is very primal. It seems ridiculous to try and define it. I just chalk it up to the genius of Jack Kirby, and the eternal appeal of watching tough guys beat up animals.

NOT BEING SICK.

2008-03-11T07:25:00.000-07:00

There's something awfully liberating about a blog that no one reads. It's like a diary in an abandoned house in the woods.... oh, sure, the ghosts might TRY to read it, but they have incorporeal fingers and can't turn the pages. Take that, suckers! (On the other hand a poltergeist could turn the pages, but would more likely just throw it across the room. Also, raccoons or other vermin could open it and look in it, but they can't read, and if they could, it wouldn't be english. They would read the Language of the Forest or some such Redwall nonsense. Conclusion: Abandoned houses in the woods are safe places for diaries!)

So this blog kind of feels like talking into an empty room, only you don't wonder if you're suffering from a slow crawl of dementia when you're done.

(Have you ever tried talking into an empty room? You can give campaign speeches for public office on imaginary planets, to huge convention centers full of imaginary alien delegates. "My fellow citizens! If I am elected, there will be no more oppression of the Grxrztzy Peoples! We will remove the laws that target those of us with many jointed ass-arms! And I will commit ten thousand more robotic Death-troops to the war with the evil reptilio-insects of Qjqggt VII!"

Applause applause cheers. I win the election.)

With that in mind, I intend to do a bit more posting here, not so much to communicate the Awesome things of the world to a vast horde of nonexistent readers, but to work out for my own brain what is Awesome in this life, and why. For example, NOT BEING SICK.

I have been sick, off and on, since Thanksgiving. A deep, hacking cough that leaves and returns with no rhyme or reason, sneezing, itchy eyes, aching, fatigue.... is it allergies? Is it the wacky NY weather that changes on a dime? Is it the flu? Who knows? I feel better and think it's all over one day, and then I look like Felix Unger the next.

What have I learned? That feeling 100% is AWESOME. And I appreciate it far more after spending a week wiping my nose and slugging Airborne and Tylenol Cold non-stop.

Obligatory Meaningless Update!

2008-03-09T08:01:00.000-07:00

Some awesome things for 2008....

* Sherman tanks

* Jambalaya

* Lewis Trondheim

* Hanes socks

* Fighting dragons (in a Gary Gygax memorial)

TUESDAY TOP FIVE: SPACESHIPS

2007-10-11T06:50:00.001-07:00

(I know it's thursday. I'm flaunting convention.)

5. THE PLANET EXPRESS SHIP
Fry: This is awesome! Are we gonna fly through space fighting monsters and teaching alien women to love?
Professor Farnsworth: If by that you mean transporting cargo, then yes!

Captain: Turanga Leela
This flourescent green beauty comes equipped with an unbreakable diamond tether, upgradeable personalities for the on-board computer, and a laundry room.
Caveat: Never put metal in the microwave while observing a supernova. This can lead to becoming your own grandfather.

4. THE TARDIS
The First Doctor: That is the dematerializing control. And that, over yonder, is the horizontal hold. Up there is the scanner, those are the doors, that is a chair with a panda on it. Sheer poetry, dear boy! Now please stop bothering me.

Captain: The Doctor
A Gallifreyan design, complete with guest bedrooms and a tachyon engine for easy time-travel. With a properly functioning camouflage program, this tesseract vessel can be disguised as anything from a bush to a Roman column.
Caveat: Makes an awful lot of noise when teleporting.

3. COLONIAL VIPER
Dwight Schrute: Do you ever watch Battlestar Galactica?
Guest: No.
Dwight Schrute: 'No.' Then you are an idiot.

Captain: Any trained Colonial Officer who has completed flight school.
The Viper is the last line of defense against total annihilation by the Cylons. Maneuverable, fast, and able to deliver a nuclear payload, these ships are capable in a planet's atmosphere, or in the cold vacuum of deep space.
Caveat: Prone to getting hung in launch tubes.

2. THE MILLENIUM FALCON
Han: Fast ship? You've never heard of the Millenium Falcon?
Ben: Should I have?
Han: It's the ship that made the kessel run in less than twelve parsecs. I've outrun Imperial starships, not the local bulk-cruisers, mind you. I'm talking about the big Corellian ships now. She's fast enough for you, old man.

Captain: Han Solo
A "piece of junk" that has been modified by the variety of smugglers and scoundrels that have owned it through the years, this freighter is not only very likely the fastest ship in the galaxy, but also creates the perfect romantic atmosphere for seducing rebellious princesses.
Caveat: Finnicky hyperdrive.

1. THE ENTERPRISE

Captain Kirk: I've already got a female to worry about. Her name is the Enterprise.

Captain: James T. Kirk
One of Starfleet's most famous and decorated ships. Comes complete with transporters, shuttles, a full sickbay, and an enormous brass satellite dish. Easily the coolest starship to ever orbit a gangster planet.
Caveat: God-like energy beings will want to play with it.

And now, dear reader, tell us about your favorite spaceships...

FIREWORKS

2007-09-14T06:10:00.000-07:00

Camp Stahlman Fireworks Crew, 2002

Every so often, something will happen that makes your heart beat so hard and fast that you feel it up in your throat and it makes you shiver. It's not nervousness or fear, but the sheer thrill of pure anticipation, knowing that the most awesome thing in the world is just around the corner. Off the top of my head, I can think of three; when you clearly have the drop on someone while playing paintball, and you are moments away from unloading on them in a ping-ping-ping symphony of personal victory, when a girl you're making out with for the first time asks you to get a condom, with exposed breasts and exciting new pheremones heavy in the air, and when you first see those huge, roadside tents underneath a hand-painted sign reading "FIREWORKS" in big, bold letters.

Growing up in the rural South meant that fireworks season was a long, beloved stretch of weeks, filled with multiple trips to the Tents, bottle-rocket fights, smoke-bombs, M-80s taped together in lethal clumps, and of course, the Fourth of July. (This is, as we all know, the High Holy Day when one celebrates emancipation from the yoke of British Monarchy by blowing shit up. Nothing says "freedom" more than aiming a Roman Candle like a sniper rifle, and shooting bursts of colorful flames at your friends.)

Hot summer days were filled with that distinct, acrid gunpowder odor and an ever-present white fog, sprinkled with paper ash and adrenaline. Seeing fireworks actually explode was almost secondary to the hedonistic ritual of perusing the folding tables full of cardboard tubes, and wondering what kind of horrific mushroom cloud lived at the bottom of each one.

We always heard rumors of states that had banned fireworks, and refused to believe that such places existed. Madness! Not only were fireworks readily available all over the Tennessee Valley (and parts beyond), but they could be sold to anyone, of any age! If you had a bike and a handful of cash, access to deadly and brightly-colored implements of destruction was easy. If, between watching massive, booming displays and shooting each other with scorching flame, we had stopped to think about our peers in other states (whose elected officials were keeping them from firework glory), we would have felt terrible for them.

One of the great triumphs of firework season was working on Scout Camp Staff, and being in charge of the Fourth of July display. My friend Andy and I would go to the Camp Director, who would then hand us a wad of bills, and say "No more than four-hundred bucks worth." We would then drive to the nearest roadside stand, and tell the guy "Hey, we're with the Boy Scout Camp down the road... maybe you can cut us a deal? You know, for the kids." He would then proceed to load us up with box after box of massive, military grade explosives. Close to a thousand dollars worth of sparkling death packed into the trunk of a compact car. We could barely conceal our desperate glee.

On the Big Night, as the sun was setting, we would soak handkerchiefs in water, so as not to asphyxiate on the smoke-clouds to come. We would find goggles, and fire up cigars to use as wick lighters. The fireworks were laid out in a specific progression on the back of a soaked-wet wooden trailer. The music cues were readied in the outdoor amphitheater. And then, when the Scouts arrived and were seated, fiery chaos would be brought down upon us like the coming of Yog Sothoth. Mere yards above us, screaming detonations dazzled and terrified delighted troops of awe-struck kids, while we scampered like maniacs, lighting fuses and laughing madly.

When all was said and done, and the smoke had settled and the dust had cleared, we were covered in perspiration and ash and mostly deaf, but it was worth it. Bits of colored paper would drift in the breeze, our eyes would sting, and our hands were covered with bruises and black steaks. We stank of sweat and gunpowder, but most of all, we reeked of exasperated satisfaction. Emerging from the white sheet of concentrated smoke around the charred husks of blown stacks, we could only smile.

Nights like that are few and far between. Fireworks are Awesome.

Recant Wednesday: HELMETS

2007-09-05T14:47:00.000-07:00

The three of you that read this site might recall the entry on HELMETS, where I said:

"I am told that I should get a bike helmet, as I ride my bike a lot, but seriously, bike helmets are for pussies. I'd rather have a fatal head wound than wear one of those styrofoam-and-plastic baby-hats. You look like an eight-year-old girl learning to roller skate in one of those things. I guess if you're in the Tour De France, and going a billion miles an hour lapping Phillipe Le Frogg, it's cool, but otherwise, the only time you need a helmet for safety is when a Visigoth is waving a mace at your head, or when German Soldiers are pitching potato mashers at you."

Well, guess what? You win, world. Every person I know constantly harassing me about not wearing a helmet has finally beaten me down. So in an effort to shut everyone up about it, I raised the white flag and bought a helmet. I feel like an enormous safety-nerd, but if it keeps people from giving me speeches about emergency rooms and statistics about traffic-related deaths, then it's worth it.

To soften the shame of wearing this thing, I have blazened it with the heraldry of my people, as is befitting a piece of armor:

A Cock, trussed and passant, as modeled by my girlfriend.

So whatever. I take back the old comments, now that I've been forced to wear a bike helmet. All helmets are awesome, except football helmets on high schoolers. Kiss my ass, Coach!

SELF-LOATHING

2007-09-02T18:29:00.000-07:00

The best thing that happened to me last week was when I found pudding cups on sale at the local grocery store.

This was the highlight of my week. I actually called my girlfriend to tell her.

Many people will tell you that self-loathing is a bad thing, a destructive thing, a negative state of mind that is dangerous and unhealthy. But I'm here to say that self-loathing is a natural human condition, and when applied properly to an examined life, it is an anchor that keeps your perspective in check. Otherwise you would be so happy with yourself that you might explode in a cloud of rainbows and puppy glitter. Or your ego will get so out of control you'll end up like one of these people. (That's a worst case scenario)

I met a very friendly person at my job the other day, and they were talking about how great it must be to read comics all day. I'm young, they said, and I own a great store, and it must be awesome, and they were all smiles and high-fives the whole time. Then I bummed them out by shrugging my shoulders and looking despondent. I suppose my reaction wasn't as ecstatic as it should have been, but the truth is that the stress and anxiety of running a new, small business is so overwhelming that the good bits barely balance the bad. Of course, it's all better than the alternative, which would be unemployment, working at a job I really truly hate, or myriad other options too gruesome to contemplate.

You see, my natural self-loathing kept my perspective balanced, or else I might have pooped myself with joy when someone mentioned how great my life must be. I did not explode with happiness, but rather kept my cool and remained level-headed about my state of affairs, and then I was awarded One Hundred Dollars for not flipping out with joy and soiling myself. That's a true story.

Life is a series of re-evaluated expectations. Does anyone end up doing what they hoped they'd be doing when they were twelve? With everything working out for them along the way? And if so, are they insufferable pricks about it? (Answers: Usually not, Sometimes, and most of the time.) The fact is, when you're twelve, sometimes your goals are really stupid, and there's a world of difference between "I want to be a journalist" and "I want to make seven figures a year and have ripped abs until I'm fifty five". Some jerk who wants an UES apartment, wife with fake boobs, and a VP position at a hedge fund is going to be really, really smug about it when they get their way. Having to settle for a disappointments could do wonders for these guys, who most likely shit all over everyone to get what they wanted.

As we grow and change and turn from idealistic young punks into broken, disappointed adults, self-loathing is the the only honest reaction. It's nigh impossible to have any legitimate respect for yourself when your days are filled with frustrated compromises, irritated bowels, inane e-mails, litter boxes, overwhelming debt, and all the other elements of a well-fulfilled life. Yet, without all that shit, you're Candide, or Pollyanna, walking with a charmed gait through other people's misery! Who wants to be that asshole? Self-loathing means that you have achieved something, some sort of meaning, no matter how far removed from what you might have hoped, and even if it all makes you want to cry like a girl-baby, it's still something, and you have the ulcer to show for it.

This is it people. This is as good as it gets. I encourage you to look at your life, with all the miserable priorities and the misplaced aspirations. The lost loves, and the dreams that got eroded like teeth in a glass of Coke. Come to terms with Self-Loathing, and shake hands with that grim spectre of reality dawning in the mirror. Self-Loathing will keep you centered, lest you become one of those people with the blank stare, the fake tan, and the plastic cup of beer. You learn to appreciate the stupid crap that you would have scoffed at in the height of adolescence.

And suddenly, that sale on pudding cups is actually worth getting excited about.

SUMMER SUITS

2007-08-24T05:42:00.000-07:00

Alex wrote earlier about his love for Summer. I don't always share it. I sweat. A lot. And that's not fun. Also I'm a ridiculous fashion whore for being such a nerdy straight guy, and I prefer cooler weather when I can wear layers. Dressing up is hard in the summer, especially on humid-thick days where the atmosphere feels more like Jello than air with moisture in it.

Well, thank God for linen and seersucker. With these magical fabrics one can wear a suit in the summer time and not risk total dehydration from perspiration. Some lemonade on hand, maybe some good bourbon, and you are good to go, mister man.

Somehow (and I'm trying to find a way to blame the goddam boomers), we became a society afraid to dress up. Wearing a nice tie is considered restrictive and lame by many of my generation. Fuck that! Looking good takes a little effort. Now, I love me some t-shirts and shorts, too, but man cannot live by comfort alone. Every now and then it's good to class it up. Now, I'm not saying we all have to immediately turn into Cary Grant but there's no reason not to make some steps forward. To that end, every man over the age of six should own at least one summer suit. If that means you have to miss out on a few Nintendo games to save up, well then, I guess you're growing up after all, you big baby. You'll appreciate it once you wear it. Everyone else will, too. You're not about to tell Misters Clemens and Sanders that they were wrong, are you? Because they weren't.

Amen.

KNIGHTS

2007-08-09T11:42:00.000-07:00

The best thing about feudal Europe was that within the tiny ruling class, you were basically rewarded for being a sociopath. If you were good at torturing people or killing them in grisly ways for no good reason, your serfs were most likely working their asses off, and you were beloved by your King for your loyalty.

Knights are remembered today as noble men sitting on white horses in shining armor, pining away for the woman that they love, but can never have. Reality is much more interesting, and I relish the image of a scarred, hardcore soldier shielding his vitals with plates of hot metal, carrying a bloody spiked mace he just used to bash in the skull of someone who insulted him... good times.

Knights used to pass the time between horrifying wars by charging at each other on horseback and trying to kill their opponent with an enormous spear. This was "sport" to them, and the best case scenario for the loser was getting violently knocked to the ground after your shield splintered into pieces. If the winner was feeling generous, he would likely not dismount his own horse and cut your head off with a sword. Although, depending on how much of a sociopath he was, he might anyway, just for fun. And chances are, if he was good at winning jousts, he had some violent and unhealthy tendencies. So why joust, you ask, if losing was so lethal?

For the opportunity to knock someone off a charging horse, and then cut their head off with a sword. That was winning the Lottery and the SuperBowl, if you were a knight.

From time to time, knights would go on "Crusades", which was the glorious excuse to travel south, get some sun, and slay heretics. They would pull on their chainmail, throw on a white tabard with a big blood-red cross, and proceed to kill anyone not dressed the same. These were the salad days for men who liked to carry swords.

The knight of fiction is kind of an effete character, with brightly colored plumes on his helm and a maiden's silken kerchief tucked in his guantlet, garlands of flowers around the neck of his steed, and a heart filled with courtly love and sonnets. The knight of history would fuck this guy up.

Knights were bred to smash other heavily armored people and cut them open, training from childhood to crush their enemies with no mercy. They served tyrant kings whose priorities were collecting taxes, taking their neighbors' land, and torturing traitors. Preferably a mix of all three at once. The favorite knights were the ones who could kill a few peasants that held back their taxes, kill some knights from the next kingdom over, and drag some enemy nobility into the dungeon. If they could do all this, train their squire to do the same thing, and feel a twang of regional pride in their hearts all at the same time, they would be rewarded with land and titles.

When I think of knights, I think of men wearing chainmail and dirty cloaks, sitting on top of an angry horse, covered in blood, and holding a severed head in one hand, and an axe in the other. He's waiting for his king to tell him how to defile the bodies of the men he's just slain. This knight is much loved by his king, and in many, many generations, his descendants will be wearing designer leather chaps, snorting heroin, and paying lots of duetschmarks to see two dudes poop on each other in the back of some club in Berlin.

The modern world sucks.

But knights were AWESOME!

FIRST LOVE

2007-07-27T17:28:00.000-07:00

I spent my formative pubescent years in a private school that was almost too picturesque to be believed; lots of old stone buildings interspersed between quadrangles of ancient trees and broken stone paths. It was the kind of place where our teachers would wear academic gowns and you would frequently hear bagpipes in the distance. Of course, the plaid ties and blazers of prep school vintage were replaced with dirty second generation hippies and kids in the latest J.Crew fineries, but the overall vibe still felt like one of those mid-century novels filled with angst and teen suicide and bully lacrosse players.

The school was on top of a small mountain at the tail end of the Appalachia, and for some strange reasons, mired in geology and the Jet Stream, every autumn that mountaintop turned into the underside of a dark cloud. Fog would roll in so thick that you couldn't see twenty feet ahead of you. I fully expected to round a corner some days, and see a turn-of-the-century London bobby racing past, hot on the trail of some murderer in a waistcoat and tails. It was just that evocative to my lurid imagination. Also, a dreadful bitch to drive in.

Those foggy days, surrounded by the towering trees once tended by monks, and dark buildings that stood impassively in the grey soup, it was hard not to feel a bit on the Byronic side. There was slightly drizzling rain, and cold, stark air, and you lost the gorgeous Fall sunsets to a Gradual Darkening. Is anything more eerily romantic than a Gradual Darkening?

It was in this atmosphere, choked with chilly fog and the trappings of some weird, fictional, prep school melodrama, that I first fell in love. She was foolish enough to show me attention and mild kindness, and I rewarded that with slavish devotion and emotional demands the likes of which have never been seen by man or the angel Moroni. Now, the question is, was it simply that I was needy and overly dramatic, or can I blame the Pre-Raphaelite setting, colliding with the thunderstorm of teenage chemicals in my brain? Looking back, it's all very embarrassing and horrible, but along with the shame there is a hint of nostalgia, and the sad, sad realization that I will never again experience that particular mix of hormones, desperation, and foggy evenings ever again.

Puberty is rife with hot emotions and hyperbole, all stomping in your brain like the eternal Marching Band of Sex and Desire. Every trip to the movies is the first leap on the path to marriage or multiple orgasms. Every touch of the hand is loaded, and crushes you with the weight of a thousand erections. Every heartbreak is a vast abyss that drags you to the ground in an exaggerated fit of sorrow and despair. Had I known that actual love and commitment would be the sexy equivalent of handshakes and compromise, I would have more fully savored that Grand Guignol of gut-wrenched adolescence, and enjoyed the effects of hormones and unrealistic expectations while they were still fresh on the vine.

First Love was so very real and important that it reverberated in the rest of one's young life like atomic aftershocks. Food either tasted like sweet ambrosia, or turned to ash in one's mouth, depending on the state of romantic affairs. Music took on a whole new meaning, and songs that seem silly and forgettable now were once the most vital pieces of poetry ever composed and sung by the angels above. (Be honest; how many among us cried salty tears whenever the mix tape rolled around to "Romeo and Juliet", as warbled by Mark Knopfler and/or the Indigo Girls?)

Morning to night, filled with High Drama and Opera Bel Canto! Ahhhh, young love! Is anything ever so cataclysmic? All fourteen year olds are living through Shakespeare, every day, and we adults move on, forgetting that there was a time when every furtive glance between crushes was a matter of life and death.

Vornado Fans

2007-07-13T06:20:00.001-07:00

They call them "circulators" on the website.

It seems like every summer, at some point, I make a trip to the local hard-wares emporium to by a fan. By mid-July, the air has stopped circulating of it's own volition, and tends to just hang there, thick and sticky, like the greasy steam over a deli griddle.

In these trips, I always notice that certain fans outprice the others by a significant margin. Matte black and stamped front-and-center with an Orwellian red "V" for "Victory", the Vornado fans glance at you as if to ask, "What's the problem? Don't you have 100 dollars to drop on a fan? See the inferior model beside us? The one that costs twenty-five bucks and is the exact same size? Go ahead and get that one, plebe. You're not ready to join the Vornado Ruling Class."

For many years those talking fans were right. I wasn't ready. I would walk out of my local hardware store with a white plastic pinwheel under my arm, beginning the unspoken but inevitable countdown to the day it went to sidewalk, useless and unloved.

Why did I buy that cheap piece of garbage? What Depression-era habits had been hammered into my brain by well-intentioned parents? "Get the least expensive thing you can! Don't pay for a brand-name label! You can fix it if breaks... It's just as good as the other one, only better, because it costs less!" So many fans, gone to the expansive wastes of Staten Island landfills, just because shelling out an extra forty bucks made my hands shake as frugal homilies echoed in my brain.

The hottest I've even been was when I worked at a Boy Scout Summer Camp in Middle Tennessee. Summers in that neck of the South are already miserable and mythologically humid, but add some military grade canvas tents, vast fields of pounding sunlight, and kneesocks, and you've got a kind of heat that's so overwhelming, it feels like a constant celestial waffle iron is being pressed down over everything you know. By the time Independence Day rolled around, the humidity was palpable, and sometimes kids would just punch the empty air aimlessly, taking out their weary and futile frustrations on the atmosphere itself. It felt like living in soup, and paper products would curl like witches feet in Munchkinland, mere seconds after being exposed.

Life on Camp Staff quickly became an easy mix of Altman's "MASH" and "LORD OF THE FLIES". We were trying to make a comfortable existence for eight to nine weeks, while still wearing the world's least comfortable uniforms, and cohabitating with a savage crew aged 13 to 18. Trashed armchairs and rat-infested couches became coveted commodities, and trapsing to a gloriously empty showerhouse in flip-flops (that never fully dried) could be the best part of the week.

I remember laying under the thick, pea-green canvas tents, on an old army cot, doing nothing but sweating and wiping my eyes. Every once in a while a slight breeze would pass by, offering the most meager relief, and we would all gasp for the cool air listlessly, before it was gone as quickly as came. Without fail, someone would figure out a way to run an extension cord through the treetops, connecting our staff campsite with the nearest powered building. They would then produce the world's cheapest Wal-Mart box-fan, hanging it in the top of the tent using a short length of rope and desperate Scout ingenuity. With a turn of the big plastic dial, we were showered in a fake wind of hot air and disappointment.

I remembered the scorn we all held for those stupid box fans, and how little use they ultimately were. So I finally bit the proverbial bullet last week, and purchased the smallest possible Vornado brand fan. For a mere fifty dollars, something the size of a tupperware bowl puts me in a chilly wind-tunnel whenever I flip the switch to "on".

How do they do it? How do they churn out that tenacious stream of refreshing spring air, turning stale and humid heat into a soothing breeze? How do they take you from the angry, relentless July heat to a snowy, Alpine peak in February? Not a trace of freon in sight, just that utilitarian design and take-no-prisoners "VORNADO" logo staring at you.

Apparently "science" is involved, and there are patented whatsits and whatevers and blah blah blah. It's kind of boring. All I care to know is that it works like beautiful, evil magic, and worth every excessive penny.

Rated A for AWESOME.

Crustaceans and Shellfish (and mollusks, too)

2007-07-11T07:51:00.000-07:00

I have a lot to thank Jesus, the Good Lord Christ of Nazareth for. Forgiveness of my horrible, sinful life is a big one. But almost as big is the relaxation of the dietary restrictions of the Jews. I know the Chosen People have been through a lot, but when I think that they can never ever have a shrimp cocktail or a king crab leg, that's when I weep for them.

I ask you, is there a better, lighter, fresher appetizer than the shrimp cocktail (pictured here as cooked and plated by the author for his wife's birthday)? And is there a richer, creamier appetizer than the mussels in a white wine and cream sauce (likewise prepared and pictured)? With the shrimp the pleasure of the sweet shellfish meat mixes with the tart sauce to invigorate the tongue and prepare it for awesomeness to come. While the mussels dish is more of a soothing, enveloping taste . . .a blanket of deliciousness meant to please and comfort.

But those two are the younger siblings, the fun little sisters you briefly date before realizing that the older sisters have a lot more to offer. And of course I mean crab and lobster. Not just any crab or lobster, but King Crab from Alaska and Maine Lobster. As a young child, my parents would always go to Myrtle Beach as a vacation, as did every other suburban white asshole. I hated it. I hated tanning, I hated the heat, I hated being away from friends. But I loved the Gullyfield. The Gullyfield, now sadly out of commission, was a plantation-style seafood joint wherein I first learned the pleasures of king crab legs. So sweet and meaty that you can eat them on their own . . .but with a little melted butter makes the tastegasm even more intense. I recently discovered that if you buy too many to make for you and your wife, you can mix the meat up with some mayo and toast some buns and have amazing crab rolls, sometimes even more pleasurable than the original serving.

As I mentioned before, my wife and I took a vacation up to "downeast" Maine on a lobster roll tour. For those that don't know, a lobster roll is a bunch of lobster meat mixed up with either mayo or butter (depending on region) and set in a toasted, buttered hot dog bun, or something like it. It's also the king of foods, or at least prince regent. But this prince regent's fancy sash isn't just a fancy sash . . .it's a black belt for awesomeness. If you've never had a lobster roll, a really good one, it's kind of like Audrey Tautou giving you a bj while Angelina Jolie licks your butthole, Bacchus himself pours great whiskey into your mouth and brain, and George W. Bush cleans your bathroom all at the same time. It's that good. It pretty much justifies the existence of New England inspite of all the weird yankee rednecks and puritans.

SPACE TRAVEL

2007-07-07T08:43:00.000-07:00

We don't get so far anymore, but we live in a world where people travel in space. They have big ceramic-plated airplanes that get shot out of our blue skies attached to enormous explosives. Then they do a bunch of science stuff and poop in zero gravity and come home.

It's pretty cool, but I'm afraid the golden age of Space Travel might be behind us. The Mercury missions were all kinds of awesome, and awfully hard to top, in terms of sheer HOLY SHIT bravery and raw bad-assitude. Military pilots who could withstand the most brutal physical exertions were strapped into tiny metal pods and fired into orbit like mortar shells. Ex-Nazis with slide-rules computed trajectories while these guys went, quite literally, where no human has gone before.

(THE RIGHT STUFF is a great book and full of jaw-droppingly rad information. If you haven't read it yet, maybe it's time you did.)

Fictional space travel is rather excellent as well, although frequently ridiculous. "Hyper-drives" and "warp speeds" kinda pale in comparison to strapping men to the top of a freaking missile.

Kiss my ass, Skywalker! You big pussy!

TUESDAY TOP FIVE: Americana

2007-07-03T13:26:00.000-07:00

In honor of Independence Day, I give you the Top Five things associated with the American Way of Life. Do you love freedom? Do you REALLY love freedom? Would you make love to freedom? From behind, with tears in your eyes? If so, you may keep reading.

FIVE: Apple Pie
The cliche is "baseball, mom, and applie pie", right? Well, baseball sucks and some people's moms are commies. So that leaves apple pie. Delicious, delicious applie pie. It's made with apples! Straight from Johnny Appleseed's dirty hippie pocket to your mouth! I wish I had some right now. Even a Hostess Fruit Pie would do. Those are pretty good as well. God bless America.

Joe adds: Apple pie is one of those things that when I see it, I'm underwhelmed by it, but when I taste it, I remember the glory that it truly is. That's like some kind of weird superpower, making me forget how good it is all the time. Or I'm retarded.

FOUR: Old Timey Country
People will tell you that jazz or the blues is the great American music. Have you ever tried to listen to that crap? It's for french people and 1950's Greenwich Village nerds. The best thing about Jazz are those tapes of Buddy Rich yelling at his band. For American music that will make you cry tears of sorrowful joy, you need look no further than the high lonesome sounds of Appalachia. Banjos, folks. Banjos.

Joe: Hank senior (pictured above) is an American hero because he played amazing music, inspired everyone else that ever came after him, and drank himself to an early death. No retirement woes or fighting over mortgages for Hank! Just the sweet oblivion found in the bottle. That's the America I dream of.

THREE: The Colonel
Fast food is disgusting and evil and whatever, but every once in a while there's just nothing better than slamming back a bucket full of the Colonel. It kind of sucks that our beautiful country is dotted with identical shitty restaurants like an Irishmen is dotted with freckles, but it's also kind of rad to be able to pop into a burger joint and eat until you want to die for under 12 dollars. I'm not a particular fan of KFC, but I thought it was a nice representative choice of crappy fast food that you sometimes crave.

Joe: You know what's shockingly tasty? White Castle. I avoided that stuff all my life, even when I actually ate fast food. But there's one right next to my local bar, and the inevitable eventually happened as I stumbled through the haze of steamed onion smell. You can't have very many, even if they are small, but damn they are tasty.

TWO: Slacking
Is there any greater American past-time than sitting on your ass? Add some beer, and some junk food, and maybe a nap, and you have the Sport of Democracy. It's getting to the point in this Brave New World of ours where it's almost expected that people will slack away for a full decade, sometime between high school and the first baby-makin'. The best slacking comes from a serious lack of the will to live, which modern American culture can beat into you with savage ferocity. Yeseterday, for example, I worked for a few hours, then took a pointless bike ride, swam in a pool, took a nap, then played D&D all night while eating take-out and drinking beer. Could I have achieved such glorious slackitude if i had any self-repect at all? Thanks a lot, American-way-of-life!

Joe: You played D&D without me? Oh, that's right. I had to get ready for my vacation in Maine (AWESOME ENTRY TO COME!!!). Vacations are only fun when it's just a new venue of slack. Now if my goddam wife could learn how to drive I'd be in business.

ONE: Comic Books
The greatest art form yet achieved by mankind.

(On a slightly related note Superman is the greatest living American, even if he can't be president (immigrant).)

Joe: (Sorry, Charlie Brown, you're a distant second.)

Lone Wolf and Cub

2007-07-02T14:08:00.000-07:00

Lone Wolf and Cub was and is one of the greatest comics to be published in any language. If your idea of manga consists of weird soap operas for teenage girls and/or the sort of fucked-up porn a long-lived patriarchal, repressed society makes after being A-bombed, well, you're partially right. But there's also some brilliant stuff, just like in any medium. And Lone Wolf and Cub is not only brilliant, it's awesome.

It's the story of an exiled executioner for the shogun, Ogami Itto, and his son as they travel through Edo-era Japan making money as assassins. The father took the son with him after giving the baby a choice between sword and ball. Daigoro, the baby, chooses the sword and off they go on their path of Meifumado (repeatedly translated as the "way of hell and demons"). The plot is dense and unfolds over 28 volumes. At first it seems to be just random stories of vengeance, but author Kazuo Koike brilliantly ties it all together as the series went on.

Ogami himself isn't built like a superhero, and he's not finely-dressed, but he is 100% pure badass. There is rarely any doubt, until the end, that he will prevail over whatever opponent is in his way, but he does it with such style that I feel like "drawing my katana" as well, if you catch my meaning (it is about masturbating if you don't). And I can't imagine something that's generally lamer than a story about a baby, but when Daigoro gets the occaisional spotlight, it's frickin awesome as well. I can never reproduce for a myriad of reasons, but one is that my son would never measure up to Daigoro and my daughter could never marry him.

Goseki Kojima, the artist, can make even conversation pages look amazing and tense:

So if you're sick of books about people that cry a lot while leading lives better than 90% of the planet, check this out and feel the awesome.

SUMMER

2007-06-28T17:16:00.000-07:00

Summer Glau, who was very good in SERENITY, but ultimately unrelated to the season of the same name, and also, this article.

Here in the Northern Hemisphere (also known as "the Better Half"), our lives are rolling around into that daily assault of heat and haze we call Summer. Many people hate the heat, and will spend their time going from air-conditioned home to air-conditioned car to air-conditioned office. They will complain about how hot it is and wear flip-flops, bumming everyone out with negativity and exposed toes.

Friends, I welcome the heat. It can suck, yes. Hot days are tiresome and sometimes make you vomit. Yet in the humidity and oppressive warmth, you have an endless excuse to be lazy, and drink cold beer at inappropriate times. It's okay to stink a little, because everyone else is just as sweaty. It's a wonderful mix of letting yourself go, but also losing weight every time you walk three blocks. You get a little color, you throw on a pair of shades, and wear shorts to dinner. Have a beer- it's hot out!

Summer is the season of skimpy clothes, and if you are a male of the species with a functioning wiener, you may now pray to your pagan gods and thank them verily for tank tops, cleavage, short shorts, open backs, sun dresses, bikinis, and all the other hot-weather wardrobe choices of lovely and winsome lasses. Think of the sweaty hair and tan lines, the fashionable sunglasses and the strapless tops, and then thank that horrible ball of atomic destruction around which we orbit. Thank The Sun for allowing us to get a little closer to him in our journey, so that he may heat up our air and encourage girls to go poolside with oily brown bottles of Hawaiian Tropic. Can you smell that weird coconut aroma yet?

Trips to the beach, lazy afternoons in the park, and cooking out on a grill are universally beloved by all humans. Chugging ice-water and going swimming after a long and exhausting bike ride... what's not to like? Sure, there's some heatstroke here and there, and the infrequent blackout because everyone has their AC on full-throttle. But I promise you, despite the miserable weather conditions, if you go to Coney Island on a hot afternoon and have a cup of foamy beer, ride the Cyclone, then go home and fire up the grill, have a bratwurst before you go for a swim, and finish the night off with a bout of sweaty coitus, you too will see why Summer is rated A for Awesome.

TUESDAY TOP FIVE: Sexy Spies

2007-06-26T14:16:00.000-07:00

Ever since the days of Mata Hari (the WWI stripper/courtesan/spy), the idea of a sexy gal carrying a firearm hidden on her person has been the stuff of awesomeness. Most Sexy Spies (not to be confused with Femme Fatales, although sometimes the twain do meet) are intelligent, poised, and masters of some brand of martial arts. Also, usually dressed in something sassy.

FIVE: AGENT XXX

Played by Barbara Bach in THE SPY WHO LOVED ME, Agent Triple X spent a lot of time in wet and/or revealing outfits.When I was a younger man, I was not so much into Agent XXX, preferring the Bond girls of the sixties. But time marches on, and I can finally see something sexy about the ladies of the seventies. Most of them still look like ridiculous disco trash, but if Agent XXX is good enough for Ringo, who am I to judge?

FOUR: THE BLACK WIDOW

I love the fact that when the guys at Marvel Comics needed a Russian spy, they named her "Natasha Romanov". Could that be any more generic? "Hmmm... we need a spy.... howzabout 'Ivan Muscovite'!" Sadly, in the seventies, they would actually name another Russian character "Rasputin". Come on, guys, crack open some Tolstoy or something.
Anyway, she's sexy and has slept with just about every superhero in the Marvel Universe. The best thing about the Black Widow, is that for years she wore a plain black bodysuit, with no accessories but for the ENORMOUS WEAPONS AROUND HER WRISTS. You'd think all that KGB training would teach her to be a little inconspicuous.

THREE: THE CONTESSA

She slept with Nick Fury back when you had to use subtlety to suggest a little sexual activity in superhero comics. That went right out the window pretty quick.

TWO: EMMA PEEL

The masturbation fantasy of sci-fi nerds for decades. Everybody loves the catsuit, everybody loves the belly-dancer episode, and everybody loves the Hellfire Club dominatrix outfit. I just like it when she judos a punk.

ONE: MATA BOND

The 1967 CASINO ROYALE is very possibly the worst movie ever made, but it's worth watching just to see Mata Bond slink around in her flimsy, ridiculous outfits. Played by Joanna Pettet, Mata Bond was the daughter of Mata Hari and James Bond (dur). For optimum viewing pleasure, rent this movie, and only watch her scenes, and anything with Peter Sellers and Ursula Andress. Turn the sound off. Play the new Feist album or something. It's really good.

COFFEE

2007-06-22T07:07:00.000-07:00

Coffee helps me wake up in the morning. Coffee helps me poop. For those things alone, it wins a gold medal and the Noble Prize for best Movie Ever.

I used to not drink coffee at all, but then I helped my dad refurbish an old house for six months, and coffee became like unto a needle drug. He would wake me up at five-thirty or six, and we would go get biscuits with country ham somewhere cheap, and wash them down with disgusting, bitter, black coffee.

Then he would make a pot of coffee, and we would go to work with cups of coffee sitting close at hand. Then we would have another pot of coffee with lunch. Then I would get the shakes mid-afternoon and want to die. This was a daily ritual.

I drank my coffee black because that's how my dad did it. It wasn't something I was drinking because I liked the taste; I was drinking it so I didn't pass out from exhaustion. I'm one of those people that needs like, ten or eleven hours of sleep each night. Waking up early does not suit me. So coffee was like a foul, liquid energy source and nothing else. Creamer was meaningless!

Presently I like a little cream in my coffee, and I only have a few cups in the morning. I'm glad it's not a staple of my day anymore. I used to wake up, and the first thing i would think about was getting coffee. It was my immediate priority when my eyes opened. That's a pretty sad state of affairs considering I didn't even like the taste. I could maybe handle wanting ice cream first thing every morning, it's delicious. But the coffee I was drinking back then was an inky gas station drip that tasted like salty motor oil. That's not an addiction to be proud of.

My preferred poison lately is the Chock Full o' Nuts Hazelnut. I am no coffee snob, and I like this blend because of the packaging and the ad jingle. There are some great coffee shops in Park Slope (a favorite is MULE), and I will often sample their wares. Good coffee is quite tasty, and whenever I drink a really great cup of it, I think, "I should get this every morning! It's terrific!". But I'm lazy, and I end up going to the nearest deli instead. Whatever!

TUESDAY TOP FIVE: World Conquerers

2007-06-19T19:40:00.000-07:00

A quick list from me this week... No time for love, Doctor Jones.

FIVE: LRRR OF OMICRON PERSEI VIII

Lrrr sometimes uses "human horn" aphrodisiac to mate with his queen, and is a fan of the television show "Single Female Lawyer". He also ate a hippie once.

Joe sez: Why this got cancelled and the Simpsons labors on in almost Family Guy levels of awfulness is beyond me.

FOUR: ERNST STAVRO BLOFELD

Never actually conquered the world, but came awfully close. His initial reveal in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE is truly classic; it's the cinematic equivalent of seeing a girl from behind with a really sweet ass, only to have her turn around and reveal spectacular breasts as well.

Joe: One might think the Dr. Evil parody would kind of permanently ruin the genius of Blofeld. But that one would be completely wrong, and rather turdly. Blofeld transcends parody, all the while extinguishing the lives of less competent henchmen and stroking a cute putty tat.

THREE: DARKSEID

The ruler of Apocolypse, whose mission in life is finding the "anti-life equation". That, and enslaving the known universe. Created by The King, Jack Kirby, in his prime.

Joe: Fuck you, Thanos, you goddam prune-looking asshole! This is the real deal here. He doesn't shoot lasers out of his eyes. No, for Darkseid you've got to have a power name more regal and unique. Darkseid is better than lasers. Darkseid has the OMEGA EFFECT!!!!

TWO: KHAN

A genetic superman who ruled the earth in 1992. After being defeated by James Kirk, he quotes Milton at him. Awwwww yeah.

Joe: If Khan and Roy Batty from Blade Runner ever hung out, that would be the coolest, classiest couple of bad-guys-that-would-probably-make-the-world-better-if-they-ruled-it EVER. They would say stuff that the rest of us didn't really understand and laugh in a gentle way that doesn't make us feel ashamed. Why won't they take over now? (Unfortunately in writing this I have unwittingly given some awful nerd fan fiction writer an idea that will culminate with stilted descriptions of what he/she imagines gay sex to be like.)

ONE: MING THE MERCILESS

The original Alien Overlord, Ming ruled Mongo with an iron fist. It's almost as if you could say he had no mercy. Max Von Sydow played him in the crappy FLASH GORDON movie... Take that, Bergman!

Joe: Did I read somewhere that someone was making a new Flash Gordon show? As long as they keep Ming awesome, they will be A-OK.

GALACTUS

2007-06-19T06:49:00.000-07:00

Against my better judgement, I saw that horrible new Fantastic Four movie last week. I shouldn't have to say much more about it, beyond the expected; abortion, excrement, unwatchable, etc...

If any good came out of that 90 minutes wasted, it was a kick-in-the-nuts reminder of how spectacular Jack Kirby was, and what a mind-blowing designer he could be. Early in the original run of THE FANTASTIC FOUR, he showed off his design chops with visual treats like Doctor Doom (still one of the coolest villains ever), The Inhumans, The Sub-mariner's Atlantean Army, and endless piles of weirdo machinery. Pretty quickly, Kirby established himself as a distinct voice in comics, standing out like a thunderstorm in a field dominated by the generic Eisenhower-era Sci-fi of DC Comics.

While The Legion of Super-Heroes hung out in a Buck Rogers Rocketship, and the Justice League met in an empty cave (okay, they had a table), the Fantastic Four lived in The Baxter Building, a hi-tech skyscraper with a nuclear reactor and a rocket silo. And while everyone else was still coming to grips with jet-planes, Kirby was designing space-ships that looked like this:

Which brings us to GALACTUS, The Destroyer of Worlds. Not only does he travel through the universe in the Moebius strip shown above, but he requires a Herald. The only other arch-villain I can think of that requires a Herald was Sauron, whoi is no slouch in the villainy department. Having a minion that announces your arrival to the doomed who await your coming?

Pure class.

The rumor/urban legend is that Galactus was created when Kirby got a plot from writer Stan Lee that was simply "The Fantastic Four fight God." So the FF faced imminent apocalypse in the form of a giant alien who EATS PLANETS. Kirby took what is essentially one of the most basic super-hero plots (alien invasion/save the world), and turned it into a teeth-grinding epic that had scope and imagination almost entirely unseen in comics. Kirby raised the bar so high for Bad Guys, that Galactus still hasn't been topped. He is the King Grandaddy Most Holy Chairman of the Board of comic book villains. If you can't stop Galactus, everybody dies. And stopping Galactus is almost impossible. This is the kind of high-stakes tension that makes Lex Luthor seem like a minor annoyance. Luthor's a joke!

Visually, Galactus is not only singularly distinct, but when set against the buildings of 1960's Manhattan, he becomes imposing, bizarre, otherworldly, powerful, and downright chilling. Despite (or maybe because of) a costume some would call silly (fools, they are!), Galactus immediately reads as a Major Threat. He's huge; twenty stories tall at his smallest. He casually floats in the air, ignoring the civilization beneath him. Nothing harms him, and he's older than the universe itself. Galactus is accurately nicknamed "the Destroyer". Aliens pray to him. He wields the POWER COSMIC, and created the enormously powerful Silver Surfer as easily as you or I might hand out Smarties on Halloween.

I don't care what anyone says. If you think that a giant, swirling dust cloud is as visually exciting as this guy, you have no soul.

TUESDAY TOP FIVE: TIME MACHINES

2007-06-11T16:55:00.000-07:00

A new feature, here at the WORLD OF AWESOME... The TUESDAY TOP FIVE.
We'll pick something awesome, and then count down the Top Five Examples of said awesome item.

This week we start with TIME MACHINES. Time Machines are hard to beat; they take you back (or forward) in time, typically with a lot of flashing lights and flipping of switches. If I could go back in time, I wonder if my mom would try to seduce me, ala Marty McFly. I actually don't wonder that at all. My mom was a sexy little vixen, and she would totally ignore me.

But I can live with that.

NUMBER FIVE: The Time Machine

H.G. Wells wrote about a Time Traveler who went into the future and fought morlocks and banged one of the morlocks' sexy livestock. His machine was a marvel of proto-Steampunk luxury, with a a big velvety chair surrounded by filament tubes and spinning dials. It stays in the same spot while the world whizzes by in fast-forward or reverse. You can just sit back and relax, and dream about all that delicious Eloi lovin' you'll get, just by being the only male that isn't afraid of fire.

AWOL sez:Proto steampunk? I thought Wells was kind of the definition of steampunk.
Anyway, I had this heavily abridged kids version of The Time Machine when I was a kid, and for some reason it scared the bejeezus out of me.
The only other thing I remember about it? The Eloi were fascinated by pockets. Pockets? How retarded are they that they couldn't think of pockets?

Joe sez:I used to sit on my Sit and Spin and pretend it was the time machine. H.G. Welles never mentioned the debilitating vertigo and nausea I experienced, but he was probably just censored.

NUMBER FOUR: Doctor Doom's Time Platform

This is how incredible Doctor Doom is. He built a time machine, but rather than use it to conquer us all, he just uses it to annoy the Fantastic Four. He doesn't need a time machine to rule the world. Time machines are but a trifle to DOOM!

AWOL: There was a totally awesome one-shot comic where Iron Man and Dr. Doom get transported back to the days of King Arthur's court, where they have to team up to kick Morgana leFay's ass. Time travel and sexy femme fatale sorceresses? Awesome squared.
Also to get back, they have to wire their respective armors together. How sweet is that? The only thing better than a time machine is an ad hoc time machine.

Joe:I also love that it's basically a flat square with some buttons on it. Doom does not care for baroque design.

NUMBER THREE: The Guardian of Forever

Remember when Bones goes all crazy and paranoid and jumps into the portal and it shows them cowboys and Hitler and then Spock has to hide his ears and then Joan Collins dies and Kirk cries like a big baby? I love that shit.

AWOL: Trek+Nazis = Awesome
Plus, didn't Harlan Ellison write this?
Update: Yep.

Joe: The Ellison thing is actually a count against it . . .but anything that remains awesome after Harlan touches it truly deserves this ranking.

NUMBER TWO: The Tardis

Time And Relative Dimensions In Space.
With all the talk of "relative dimensions", you'd think the Tardis would do a bit more than dangle from a string in front of a black backdrop when it's flying. Chintzy special effects aside, the Time Lords of Gallifrey designed themselves some pretty nifty little tesseracts to take a spin in.

AWOL: I always thought that the best thing about the Tardis was that despite all the time traveling/relative dimensions/regeneration crap, the doctor could never fix the shapechanging thingamjig. I mean, come on, how hard could it be?

NUMBER ONE: The Delorean

This one isn't much of a contest. As Dr. Emmett Brown says, "...if you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?". Between the rad eighties vibe, the nuclear engine, and the Flux Capacitor, how can anything else compete?

We've had the Delorean listed in our "Always Awesome" sidebar since Day One, and the recent pop-culture cross-referencing in KNOCKED UP serves to remind us all; if you want to go back in time, you need 1.21 jigowatts, and you have to hit 88 miles per hour.
The Delorean flies, has a Mr. Fusion appliance, and personalized tags. Doc Brown cheated Libyans out of their plutonium to get things started. He promised he'd make them a bomb... Ha! Yes my friends, where we're going, we don't need roads.

AWOL: Why is the Delorean so cool? Not because is can go fast, it has to go fast. Just because.
Also, I use the term "flux capacitor" at work in the same way that John Pertwee used the term "reverse the polarity".

Joe: Also for a while it worked on rails, and things on rails are automatically awesomer. And who hasn't sometimes pretended that his car could turn the wheels in and fly? I'll tell you who hasn't: some sick, evil jerk.

Honorable mentions:
*The Legion of Superheroes Time Bubble
*Bill and Ted's Phone Booth
*This thing: AWOL: and this thing:

Detail of text at top:

Joe: And
*Getting hit on the head really hard

BROOKLYN

2007-06-10T05:27:00.000-07:00

Let's face it- Brooklyn rules.

It's pretty much the best place in the world. When you situate yourself in a Brooklyn neighborhood, people get all chill and friendly. Before long the guys at the deli know exactly what brand of seltzer you want, the UPS guys all wave when they drive by, and you can pet strange dogs. (People just stop and let you pet their dogs. That's crazy!) Kids still play stickball, and old women hang out of their windows, asking random pedestrians about the Mets game. It's like a cozy womb filled with Italians and dirty bodegas.

If you don't care about that kind of thing (and who does?), consider the other fine elements of The Borough of Kings. There's Prospect Park, which is one of the most perfect municipal parks ever designed. Not only is it huge, and filled with great open spaces as well as hidden wooded paths, but it also has lakes and horses and a Zoo.

Also, you can grill there. Take that, every other park in the world!
Nearby is the awesome archway at Grand Army Plaza, the Brooklyn Museum, the Botanical Gardens, and easy access to TWO (count 'em TWO) CHIP SHOP locations. The Chip Shop is some of the best food you can put in your mouth. Or rub all over your body.
Either way is fine.

Brooklyn at Christmastime is covered in garland and lights and dirty snow. There are the nomads that appear to sell Christmas trees on the sidewalks, so the smell of sappy evergreen trees is in the air. Brownstones pop up with lights here and there, enough to get you excited, but not so much that you're sick of sparkly lights by the time Christmas actually rolls around. In the summer, kids play in fire hydrants, public pools open up, and there's a street fair almost every weekend, somewhere. Street fairs suck everywhere else, but in Brooklyn, it's one of the only times you can walk around outside with beer, and eat disgusting fried food without your girlfriend giving you a lecture about your "health". (Whatever! My left arm hurts from workin' out!)

Brooklyn is a beautiful place, filled with amazing little spots that never get boring. I love walking over the disgusting Gowanus Canal; it's filthy and decrepit and lovely in a horrible way. I'm never happier than when riding my bike between the brownstones and tree lined streets, checking out all the incredible old buildings, and listening to people yell obscenities at each other.

Parts of Brooklyn still have remnants of a maritime past, when whaling ships set off from the naval yards, and stevedores in striped shirts loaded huge cargo crates all day. So if you yearn for the days of pea-coats and waxed canvas, you can just smell the salty air and see the tugboats and imagine you're about to set off on a tramp steamer for parts unknown. You can walk (or ride a bike) across the Brooklyn Bridge, over old wooden planks and through the haze of commuter pollution. Nothing makes you feel quite so alive as riding a bike across the bridge, angrily shouting at tourists who are standing in the "bike only" lane taking pictures.

The best part of it all is the wealth and diversity of culture here. My girlfriend is always up my butt about going on a trip somewhere, but where are we going to go that's better than Brooklyn? Why go to Egypt when the Brooklyn Museum has one of the largest collections of Egyptian artifacts in the world? Why go to Japan when Prospect Park hosts a bitchin' Cherry Blossom Festival? Why go to Puerto Rico when you can sit on our stoop? Of course, she always says that "it's not the same thing", and I think, no, It's Better! Why spend all that money to go to Germany, and be surrounded by Germans, when you can just go to Cafe Steinhof during Oktoberfest? Traveling is for suckers.

Yea verily, Brooklyn rules. The bars are friendly and inexpensive, the people are cool, and the restaurants are wonderful hidden treasures, beloved by neighborhood locals who have long since stopped trying to eat out in Manhattan. Living anywhere else is crazy! Is it a little more expensive to live here? Maybe. But that's the price you pay for being in the most Awesome Place Ever.

A typical row of homes in Brooklyn, where people are happy and living fulfilled lives.

Bars

2007-06-05T13:58:00.000-07:00

I spent a while going through my photos and online archives but the truth is a bar is almost a state of mind. Everyone's got their own idea of what a perfect bar is and I don't want to turn anyone away just because my photo isn't quite what they're thinking. Mind you, there are SOME folks I need to turn away. So I'm going to talk about some qualities an actual good bar needs.

First off, it's probably mostly wood. Brick is acceptable but not metal, drywall, plastic, or any other bullshit material. The wood should be dark and either well polished or well worn, depending on mood of bar.

In a good bar you are never surprised to see old dudes. I may not be the world's greatest fan of the elderly, but they tend to know a good bar when they see one. It's that wisdom of the ancients. You know who doesn't know a good bar when they see one? Girls with too much make-up and skimpy clothing. If you see them in a bar, leave the bar. It is a bad bar. The drinks cost too much and have multiple ingredients. If you want to look at girls that are less attractive in real light, go to a strip club and let your shame be honest. But if a good bar is your aim, look for old dudes. They might be muttering in the corner or sipping great scotch or just watching a game. But they're there and they're regulars.

It's good to be a regular at a good bar, by the way. At first you get a little embarrassed by the staff knowing your name and drink of choice. "Jesus, I drink a lot," you think. But, well, yeah, you do. And these folks don't mind. They let you know when a good beer is now on tap. You know their names and have probably had drinks outside with them. In this postmodern bullshit culture, families and friendships are created where they can be. Better by nice wood bars and tasty drinks than keyboards and monitors.

Good bars have good music. This is where it gets really subjective, but if you hear a pounding bass and nothing else, it's probably that bar with the supposedly hot girl mentioned above. (Substitute supposedly hot guy for gay bars--gay bars can be awesome, too, and the judgement thereof falls in the same rubric . . .at least for me.) A nice, old-school country bar is perfect for some occasions. Merle, Willie, Hank senior, David Allen Coe, and George Jones will soothe your aches and pains. A good juke can make a good bar out of an average one, but these days a good bartender with an Ipod can be just as nice. It's possible to have a good bar without good music, but it's really goddam hard.

A good bar has no bartender that, when you ask "what bourbons do you have?" ever, ever EVER says any or all of the following: "Jack Daniels, Southern Comfort, and Jameson." Fuck off, bars and you know I'm talking to you!!!

Oh! And another sign of a good bar is a good buy-back policy. For every three drinks you buy, a good bar(tender) will get you one. Less is acceptable but odd. More is unbelievable and almost suspicious . . .or you're ridiculously hot.

Anyway, that's how you know a good bar. But almost any bar can be a good use of a bit of time. If you're a "student of human nature" or some crap just sit and watch the regulars and occasionals interact. You can think, you can talk to strangers or make them friends. You can listen to music, you can decompress, and you can feel that unique wavelength each bar has. I love bars. I like eating in bars. I like drinking in bars. I like talking in bars or being quiet in bars. I like meeting new folks in bars I like meeting old friends in bars. Long friendships or one-night acquaintances, they all feel so right with the right atmosphere and the right drink. They are also easy places to get laid, especially if you do not want to get laid.

Ah, bars. I wish I was in one right now.

PLAIN CHUCK TAYLORS

2007-05-31T14:31:00.001-07:00

Chuck Taylors get a lot of hate, and I'm not entirely sure why. I guess because they're the shoe of choice for annoying Indie Rock kids, but I've come to the conclusion that they are too classically awesome to be ruined. Even Will Smith waxing masturbatory over them in that shitty robot movie can't ruin them. Even Jessica Simpson's little sister and Avril Lavigne can't ruin them.

Yes, many horrible people wear Chucks. But do you know who else wears them? That's right... mother-fucking DOCTOR WHO! One Doctor Who is cool enough to counter-balance fifty Avrils. (Joey Ramone also wore them, but I won't provide a picture, thus saving you from having to look at Joey Ramone, RIP. You can thank me later.)
Lame people are attracted to Chucks like moths to flame, hoping some awesomeness will rub off on them from their footwear. No such luck, but still they try. Such is the might of the Chuck Taylor.

(I think the other reason people hate on Chucks is the absurd amount of ugly, over-the-top designs. I too am flabbergasted and horrified by the double-highs, the camouflage, the black and red, the leathers, the neon colors, the hideous patterns, and the other aberrations from a plain old 1950's basketball shoe. If my dad didn't wear them on the varsity team in 1953, they aren't real Chucks. Sorry, Hot Topic.)

I have owned a pair of Converse All-Stars, in some form or another, since middle school. At the time, Air Jordans were all the rage, and morons would make fun of you if you weren't wearing heaping piles of colorful leather strapped all over your ankles.

But now, almost twenty years later, I'm rocking the same style kicks, and all those assholes have moved on to lame-ass sports sandals (or whatever else yuppies are wearing), and wouldn't be caught dead in Air Jordans. Classics last forever! Score one for the middle-school nerd!

A nicely broken-in pair of canvas sneakers (they don't need to be Chucks, honestly) is as easy a footwear as there is. They go with any outfit (except tuxedos! never tuxedos!), and are comfy as hell. You can pull off any number of classic looks with the Chucks; east coast punk, New England preppie, coastal boater, young Howard Hughes. These are all casual ensembles that go well with either a tall boy of beer in a paper bag, or a tumbler of scotch. This adaptability is always a sign of quality footwear.

(Also, how hot is as a cute girl in a pair of old Chucks? Let us not forget the cute girl factor.)

I submit, dear reader, that the Chuck Taylor should be made the official Awesome Shoe of Summer. Can we get a notarized seal on this declaration? I think it's important to make this official. Too many lives have already been wasted in the Footwear wars.

THE SHEARER'S BURGER

2007-05-22T19:07:00.001-07:00

I like a burger. I really like a burger with stuff on it. The Shearer's burger takes that concept ("stuff" on a "burger") and blows it out the poophole with a V-2.

Between two halves of a crispy bun you have beef, tomato, cheese, grilled onions, a slice of beet, a slice of pineapple, and a fried egg. When you smoosh it all up together and put it in your mouth, you are surprised; rather than tasting like a bunch of shit from your grandma's fridge, it tastes like the best burger ever. So you are not only happily surprised, but happily chowing down on a tasty meal. And then the two sources of happiness get jealous of each other, and start to fight, and it's a joyous cage match in your heart.

Finally! Australia has produced something worthwhile! (Aside form AC/DC... they're Australian, right?)

You can get these marvelous items at Sheep Station in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Probably other places too, but I can't vouch for them. It's probably best just to go to Brooklyn. It's worth the air fare from most of the western hemisphere.

JOHN CARTER OF MARS

2007-05-11T08:35:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has ever read Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars novels is already aware that John Carter (a Civil War captain who becomes a warlord on the Red Planet) kicks ass. Tarzan may have gotten all the glory, but John Carter was Burroughs' true masterstroke.

One of the greatest of the pulp characters, John Carter's adventures are so brilliantly insane it makes you wish magazines like WEIRD TALES were still ruling the news-stands. This is a character who, when suddenly stranded on a strange new world, goes about the business of CONQUERING THE PLANET, just because he's bored. Due to the gravity of Mars (Barsoom, to the natives), John Carter's rugged Earthling manliness makes him essentially superhuman. After proving that he is an unstoppable warrior, and killing anyone that stands in his way, he goes on to seduce the most beautiful woman on the entire world. That's the kind of fiction that puts hair on your oiled, bronzed pectorals.

As the Frank Frazetta painting above clearly illustrates, John enjoys killing giant martians with a sword, riding around on lizards, and having his way with Dejah Thoris (the titular "Princess of Mars" from the first novel).
Over the course of the series, he leads armies into battle, fights monsters bare-handed, unravels the superstitious Martian religions, and does it all naked.

Yes, naked.

His only adornments are belts that hold his many weapons, and a pair of boots. Otherwise, (despite his Southern Gentility) he is naked as a jaybird. His best friend is a four-armed, green martian giant, that is also naked. And his sexy wife? Naked. These books are so filled with violence and animal lust that people actually walk around nude, but for their swords and guns.

I like that kind of honesty in a novel.

The Andy Griffith Show

2007-05-10T15:21:00.000-07:00

The Andy Griffith show might be my favorite TV show of all time. I mean, sure, I love the Office, Freaks and Geeks, Arrested Development, and some others, but there's never a time I don't feel like a nice little episode of The Andy Griffith Show. (As long as it is in black and white and before Don Knotts left. I do not recognize post-Knotts shows as legit.)

It sometimes has a reputation as an old person's show, and, yeah, every old person I grew up with loved it. But the writing is so damn good. It's character-based comedy that laughs with each character, and never at them. No one is presented as perfect; even Andy screws up from time to time. And it's not the squeaky-clean show many think it is. Andy basically solves every problem through lies and trickery. If I were some kind of perpetual grad school asshead, I'd talk about his archetype or whatever, but then I'd also want to punch myself in the weiner.

And, of course, there's Barney Fife. Barney is one of the best comedic characters of all time, played by one of the best comic actors of all time. There's rarely a moment when Barney isn't hilarious . . .and when he isn't, it's on purpose. Knotts also could play him with deep sympathy . . .he was such a round character, capable of total doofassery and total sympathy. His "We the People" speech almost brings tears to my eyes with laughter.

Special mention should be made for the recurring characters the "Darling Family." Played mostly by the excellent bluegrass band, the Dillards, the Darling Family was as good at playing music as they were at comedy.

I know most folks who are anti-Andy Griffith aren't going to be persuaded with a mere blog post. But if you're neutral, check it out. Watch a few classic episodes. Try to find a flaw in the character work. Try not to laugh. You can't do it . . .unless you're a goddam filthy robot/Irish.

Master of the Flying Guillotine

2007-05-07T14:03:00.000-07:00

The real title to this movie, as far as I can tell, is something like The One-Armed Boxer II: The One-Armed Boxer vs. The Master of the Flying Guillotine. And this title in and of itself is pretty damn awesome. And, yes, it is a sequel, but you certainly don't need to see the original movie to understand this one. The first few minutes politely summarizes that the One Armed Boxer killed an evil martial artist in the last movie, and we now discover that this evil martial artist had a powerful master, and this guy is pissed about his protege being killed. Wouldn't you be?

Now, this master is one of the greatest bad guys of all time. Darth Vader? In the end, a whiney teenager. Lex Luthor? Never really a threat. The Irish? Can't even stop fighting each other. But the Master of the Flying Guillotine? First off, his theme music is amazing. Unlike most kung fu movies of the period (or ever, really), the MoFG (as I shall now call him) walks around to an industrial German art-rock band, Neu, as they play a song called "Super 16." (Tarantino used a split second of the song in his rip-tribute, Kill Bill.) It's terrifying, weird, and badass. Second, the guy walks around in a robe with a swastika on it. Yeah, I know, it means something else to Buddhists. IT IS STILL EVIL AND SCARY! He is blind, but super-deadly, especially with his trademark weapon, which is a crazy contraption that has blades outside and in and rips people's heads off with a single jerk.

So MoFG hears some one-armed boxer killed his boy, so he logically decides to start killing every one-armed man and he will thus eventually get his revenge. Meanwhile, Ol' 1-Arm is at a martial arts tournament filled with Chinese actors in various forms of brownface as they are meant to be Indian yogis with stretching arms or dirty Thai kickboxers. The racism in this movie is so awesome that video games are still ripping it off.

So basically this movie is just a bunch of people kicking ass in various locations, like a good martial arts movie should be. And it's so crazy and out-there that it surpasses its bretheren with ease. It's got a guy called "Wins Without a Knife" who keeps using a knife! It's great! Go check this movie out if you haven't seen it already. You will feel your powers returning.

DOOLITTLE

2007-05-04T09:39:00.000-07:00

This is one of those "no duh" entries. DOOLITTLE routinely shows up on every "Best Album Ever Made" list and it would be hard, nay, impossible to argue that it's not a pretty much perfect record.
This is not news. (In fact, a quick wiki search reminds me that "A 2003 poll of NME writers ranked Doolittle as the second greatest album of all time.")

But why is it so awesome? Is it because almost twenty years later, it hasn't aged a day? Is it because it's lyrical themes resonate in dark, unconscious, Jungian places? Is it because it's fun to sing along to?

It's hard to describe the effect that this album had on me the first time I heard it. It was rock music in the purest possible sense; loud, silly, invigorating, and something that spoke to me in a way no other music had. The lyrics were bizarre and evocative in a way that reached right into my adolescent nerd heart.

If you travel backwards now, in the machine that takes us to 1992, you would find me at sixteen, driving a wee hatchback and cranking MINOR THREAT and the like in his cassette deck. What you see here is a kid who is finding some solace in the angry punk rock sounds of bands that broke up some ten years prior, but not really finding any deep-seated, soulful satisfaction. These bands are speaking to his frustration with the world, but not to anything else. This is a kid who is reading Robert Anton Wilson and discovering the myriad worlds of Ray Harryhausen and Moebius. This is a kid who doesn't mind a little silliness in his music.

(This is also a kid who wears khaki pants, tee shirts, and sneakers, and looking for a band that isn't worried much about their outfits, either.)

Then we pop in a new tape. This is a band we've heard before, in the background at parties and at friend's houses, and we liked what we heard, but we never really payed that much attention. So we pop in the tape, and all by ourselves, sealed up in that little car, driving down the highway, we hear the first loud, shrill, wild-hair chords of DEBASER. Someone is screaming at us in spanish. There is talk of mutilation. More songs and more grisly, biblical death, with some nonsense here and there to keep it light . Guitars are howling and drums are thumping hard in the distance like headhunters at midnight. Haunting harmonies sing about death and God and elusive folk named Crackity Jones. Weirdness is in the air, and this music was made entirely for you.

The Pixies took the angry center of punk, laid on the melodies and the pop-love of the Beatles, and then wrapped it up in a surrealist tortilla. This was the rock music I had been looking for since the first hint of puberty.

Some will argue that the Pixies were better before or after. (Mostly before.) Yes, SURFER ROSA is a great album, and indeed, the later albums were plenty excellent. But the deep, resonating thud you hear again and again in DOOLITTLE is more than drums. It's the wood-to-leather crack of a perfect pitch being knocked out of the proverbial park.

GIANT APES

2007-04-28T11:49:00.000-07:00

They can fight Godzilla or a T-Rex. They live in hidden jungle cities filled with ancient treasure. They are worshipped as gods by native heathens. They shoot Kryptonite beams from their eyes.

Truly, art and literature would be lesser in every way but for the Giant Ape.

The best of the Giant Apes are frightening and destructive forces of nature, but also, they're a little sad on the inside. They tear shit apart with total abandon, bite people's heads off and trample native villages, but they maybe feel conflicted about it. On the one hand, it's delicious and invigorating to slay and destroy all that you survey. On the other hand, the horrified screams of the children sting a little. Giant apes usually are forced into lives of mindless rampage by the Hubris Of Man. The lesson is that we should not meddle with nature, or tamper with things beyond or reach. It takes a Giant Ape to remind us thus.

There is a primal something-or-other going on with regards to the appeal of the Giant Ape. Maybe our fascination stems from an ancient racial memory of hiding from them in the jungles. A memory that lives in the same part of the brain that makes us horny when we see just a little bit of girly ass-crack slipping out of a pair of jeans, and drives women to want kids so bad that's all they talk about all the time. Seriously, what's with that? Take a girl that's all independent and cool and doesn't care about having kids, crank the clock up to thirty, and suddenly it's all "baby" this and "baby" that and "I forgot to take my pill". The next thing you know, you're ebaying all your old comics to buy one of those enormous all-terrain strollers.

Anyway, anyone who says that the original KING KONG isn't the greatest movie ever made is a filthy liar.

Goldeneye (the game)

2007-04-22T12:25:00.000-07:00

There are few men in North America of my age bracket who have never played Goldeneye. It was a video game adaptation of the James Bond film of the same name. And even if you sucked at it as badly as I did, it was completely awesome. I guess the single player might have been good . . .I couldn't really tell you, as no one I know really bothered with it. The real fun was when you got a group of friends together with some tasty intoxicants and played the player vs. player vs. player vs. player deathmatch.

You could pick all kinds of different characters, from Bond to Oddjob (a favorite due to his smaller size) to Baron Zamedi, the crazy witch doctor from Live and Let Die. And you'd run around (aimlessly if you were like me or methodically if you played for keeps) killing your friends. There may have been shooting games like this before, and there have been improvements since, but no game has quite the same awesomeness by sheer weight of semi-nostalgia.

Having two sets of friends in my hometown and at college, both who loved the game, I noticed each group had their own set of verbal shorthand, inside jokes, and taboo practices. In one group, using body armor was verboten. Another group hated the "basement" level. My personal favorite was the "License to Kill" game, where one shot would eliminate an opponent, combined with the "pistol" weapon selection. This was the only way I could ever win. Usually once a night, my friends would suggest this combination just so I didn't start crying in my beer and bourbon (different glasses).

Once, a friend "let us into" an office where he volunteered, where we hooked Goldeneye up to a giant projection screen. Each of the four quarters in our battle was the size of a large TV. This very well may have been the greatest day in the lives of anyone present, and the greatest use of said charitable building. It could only have been improved by Audrey Tautou and Angelina Jolie giving me a prostate massage while I played.

I bet I'd've won at least once if that happened.

Toast.

2007-04-21T15:09:00.000-07:00

Crisp, lightly browned outside, while still slightly moist on the interior.

A good piece of toast is Awesome in its own right, standing alone as a Platonic ideal of crispiness.
You can, however sculpt this ever-so adaptable edible into the foundation of every gustatory category conceivable: it can be made sweet, with the addition of fruit preserves (slightly bitter marmalade is one of my personal favorites); savory, by constructing a tuna fish sandwich, the crispness of the toast contrasting delightfully with the soft texture of the tuna; or even, if you are of a down-under persuasion, salty, with the addition of that oh-so "It's an acquired taste" substance, Vegemite.

Some people get all uppity fancy-pants with their toast, but Awesome Toast is always made from Wonder Bread. Always. None of your gourmet/Whole Foods/multi-grain nonsense, just good-old, hasn't changed since 1950, white as snow, Wonder Bread.

Part of the awesomeness of toast is the wonderful smell it fills the whole apartment with--a warm, comforting, delightful scent.

Nothing bad can happen in a house that smells like toast.

CAT BURGLARS

2007-04-21T10:14:00.000-07:00

Once I met this French dude with a pencil mustache, who called himself Le Gold Fox. He was wearing a tuxedo and smoking a silk cut cigarillo, and had black gloves on with a white dinner jacket.

He told me he had just arrived in New York from the Riviera, and he snorted a quick laugh when he saw the newspaper headline "OPERA DIVA'S DIAMONDS STOLEN!"

Then he looked at me and said, "I must tell someone my story, so zee world may never forget Le Gold Fox! It is true that I have stolen zees diamonds.... and many more in my life! Born in Algiers, and orphaned to zee streets, my career in crime started early; picking pockets, confeedence games, learning to crack safes. In a few years I was zee greatest lock-peeker in zee world! All of France slept with ones eye open, never knowing when I would climb in zayr windows at night, and make away with zayr jewels and francs!

But I am not a common and petty thief. Zis money, I use it to support an orphanage in Calcutta, where zee poor urchins of zat filthy hell-hole will never have to resort to a life of sin and deespair. Zee idle rich and zayr family fortunes; it is they who I prey upon! With my grapples and silken ropes, I avoid zayr alarms, moving silently in the night, cutting glass with diamonds and vanishing like a weesper."

Then, I heard an explosion, and looked away. When I turned around again, he was gone.

He was pretty cool, but really, between Catwoman and David Niven in THE PINK PANTHER, Cat Burglars have been ranking on the upper end of the awesome chart since the sixties.

I want to marry a cat burglar. She can teach our children
useful things, like how to escape manacles, and how to hold their breath for eight minutes, and how to hang from a wire without making any noise.

She will vanish for weeks at a time, but then return with big piles of cash we will roll around on naked. We make sweet, sweet love on the big pile of cash, and I notice a scar on her side, but she presses a finger to my lips before I can say a word... I must never ask about her work.

The only problem is finding form-fitting black jump-suits for the kids.

Soup dumplings

2007-04-18T09:40:00.000-07:00

OK, take a wonderful, tender Chinese Shanghai-style dumpling. Inside it shred some carrots, some fatty pork, and crab meat (and some other things). Steam it. Allow the meats to sweat their juice into the dumpling where it will not be absorbed but stay like a soup. What you've got now is a soup dumpling.

They come out hot but wonderful. Gently pick them up with your chopsticks but hold a soup ladel under them. Nibble off the top and lightly suck on this teet of deliciousness. When it's cooled down enough, eat the rest in one big gulp.

These things are the most delicious Chinese things ever. Crab and pork, it's a winning combination to begin with. They're at their best at Shanghai Gourmet on Mott St. right above Canal. Other places have OK ones, but never as perfect. When you're eating these, especially during the Teet of Aweomeness phase, you feel a perfect happiness that life usually crushes. Enjoy it while you can.

Light Cycles

2007-04-16T06:22:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, I didn't realize Tron was a crappy movie. All I knew was that it looked cool, had neat weapons I could pretend to use myself, and a smart-aleck main character, and, best of all, it had LIGHT CYCLES.

Light cycles went REALLY fast and made cool noises and made perfect 90 degree turns. The point of the competition was to run the bad guys into your light walls. Light cycles were also the coolest part of the Tron video game by far, and the only reason anyone ever played Qix.

I also really liked the part where they kind of just appeared out of nowhere . . .handlebars appeared and then, as the guys crouched down, the bike appeared around them.

I imitated this A LOT when I was a kid. You didn't even need expensive toys . . .just some kind of stick to hold (if you even needed that) and your imagination did the rest.

There was recently some car ad that did a play on light cycles. It almost made me not hate advertising for a second. But then I was like "PSYCHE! STILL HATE YOU!" But I could never hate light cycles. They are AWESOME.

CHIPWICH

2007-04-15T12:44:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of ice cream sandwiches out there. The world is full of them, so if you want soggy chocolate bread mushed up with bland soft-serve vanilla, you're in luck! There's probably a thousand brands to choose from, even if they all look like the same crappy thing, with those lame paper wrappers that never open right.

For a truly fulfilling ice cream and sandwich marriage, you need look no further than the Chipwich.

In concept, it is so simple. It seems like the most natural thing in the world! Two cookies with ice cream in the middle! But it took a team of Nobel Prize winning scientists to concoct the perfect formula. The Mayor of Snacktown awarded them a chest full of gold doubloons, and a parade was held in Santa's North Pole Village for them. And when they died, Allah gave them all one-hundred and fourteen virgins. That's how excellent the Chipwich is.

A few key elements make the Chipwich the perfect ice cream sandwich. First of all, take apart the Chipwich, and you have cookies and ice cream that would be just fine all by themselves. Most ice cream sandwiches cheat; the ice cream would suck without those flaky chocolate wafers, and vice versa. But not King Chipwich. He is made from only the finest ingredients, and knows it. Do I detect a bit of pride behind his frosty smile?

(Probably so... that smug bastard...)

The other key to Chipwich's domination lies in it's excess. Not only do you have two big chocolate chip cookies, and not only do you have rich, sugary ice cream, but the sides are rolled in even MORE chocolate chips! That's like having an orgasm while you poop on a water-slide!

My old roommate used to eat a Chipwich every single night. He was also seven feet tall and had the metabolism of a mutant cheetah. I can only have one Chipwich every three years, or else I will be struck with Adult Onset Diabetes and none of my pants will fit anymore. I'm already such a fat pig that I completely disgust myself. I have to curb my bad habits here and there or they will totally take over.

If I could, every meal I ate would include a white russian, spaghetti, country fried steak, chocolate cake, apple pie, and a Chipwich. I would also never leave the couch, and drink chocolate milk all day while I watched cartoons in my pajamas. But I can't allow that to happen, as spectacular as it would be. I'd go blind and lose circulation and totally hate myself.

Around age 25, I became a disgusting lard-ass, and haven't ever really recovered. I have to ride my bike almost every day, and never eat anything I want, just to keep from breaking the 35 waist barrier. I broke it once, and almost never came back. After that, it's a slippery slope to size 40, and then it's No Man's Land. Next stop is one of those scooters at Wal-MART for people who are so obese they need a go-cart to buy socks.

It's probably been five years or more since I enjoyed an ice-cold Chipwich, but I still salivate like a fucking Pavlovian dog when I see one. A true testament to Awesomeness.

HATE!

2007-04-14T16:04:00.000-07:00

And by "Hate" I don't mean the feeling you get when you see bunch of dudes all dressed the same in a bar doing shots. I mean the seminal alt comic by Peter Bagge, featuring everyone's favorite everyman, Buddy Bradley!

Some of you will recall that the 1990's were a shitty time to be into comics. Things were dire, man. After the creative high of the 1980's (wherein we got WATCHMEN, RAW, WEIRDO, Simonson on THOR, Miller on DAREDEVIL, all that rad Batman shit, etc etc), the nineties were just pooped out I guess. (You can't expect anything to be great forever- television has by and large sucked ass since the eighties as well, although THE OFFICE alone has made television watchable again, along with a few other choice programs. But I digress...)

The 1990's were really licking balls, as far as comics were concerned. Quick example? Batman in the eighties, by groundbreaking artist David Mazzuchelli....

... and Batman in the nineties, in a costume designed by someone tripping on bad jimsonweed.
(There are many, many more examples. It was rough. Just trust me on this one. It sucked.)
It was a "dry spell" for me, when it came to reading comics, which is a shame, because traditionally, comics were one of the few things that kept me from choking back a bottle of Drano. I was hardly reading any comics at all, save a few lonely gems here and there (Madman, Hellboy, Sin City, and some others).

Now I realize that the problem wasn't that there were no good comics, it's that I was living in Shitville, USA, and the local comic shop (where I has previously been exposed to CEREBUS, which is a good sign) had changed management (the new guys loved Valiant, which was a very, very bad sign). There were plenty of good books being published, I was just not getting exposed to them. Which pisses me off in retrospect, but whatever. You can't stay mad forever.

Hidden from my sight were comics like EIGHTBALL, ED THE HAPPY CLOWN, DIRTY PLOTTE, and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember. I had to find them all later, stuffed in a wire rack in the back-end of one of New York's filthiest comic shops. A whole world of comics I had missed out on during the 90's drought, including HATE.

HATE was cartoonist Peter Bagge's continuing saga of the Bradley family (especially oldest son Buddy), first seen in NEAT STUFF. It featured some of the dirtiest, most unappealing art I had ever seen.
It was downright grody. It was printed on this gritty newsprint, and all the cross-hatching was smudged and inky in a way that made you feel dirty. The characters were ugly and fucked up, and not very pleasant at all.
The stories typically involved a lot of people yelling at each other, gruesome accidents, and animalistic sex with nauseating sound effects. But man oh man, it was MESMERIZING. I read every issue I could find, and tore through that cheap-ass newsprint laughing my ass off.

Verily, I say unto thee, HATE was awesome.

This guy Peter Bagge, he had restored my faith in comics as something worthwhile. (With a little help from Dan Clowes, Bob Fingerman, Gary Panter, and Los Bros Hernandez, but that's a whole other story.) These unattractive tales of horrible people really ponged my tetherball, and I was hooked on funnybooks again. Then, I became President of the United States of America.

Okay, not really. But close enough, you judgmental asshole.

The HATE comics that filled my heart with so much joy have been collected recently, into two books called BUDDY DOES SEATTLE and BUDDY DOES JERSEY. I highly recommend them to anyone, except my mom. I don't think she would appreciate them. Not enough paisley and potpourri and flower arrangements. Fuck, my mom has shitty taste.

So if you feel like reading about dirty losers living in Seattle and drinking a lot and getting in fights and bitching about everything, this is the book for you. (Wow... that totally sounds like one of those READING RAINBOW book reviews by some kid with a gap in their teeth talking about "Goodnight Moon"... "So if you feel like reading about bedtime, this is the book for you!")

Speaking of my helmet

2007-04-14T14:07:00.000-07:00

Just try and deal with this! It was a present from my then-girlfriend-now-wife. When I opened it up it had no decorations and was just a black helmet. I didn't see the earphones. I said "Wow, thank y0u, honey!"

"Do you know what it is?" she asked.

"Yeah! A tard helmet!" Not a shining moment in my gift-recognition or sensitivity abilities. But now during the cold months I can plug this bad boy into my Ipod and most people do not try to talk to me. It's awesome.

While I was in college, there was a period of senior year where I wore a vintage WW2 army helmet outside. I was drinking heavily at the time, as you might imagine. I also played a harmonica while I walked. The crazies of NYC took me in as their own and talked to me wherever I went. When the first of my friends to have a baby had a shower, I passed on the helmet. Here's to you, Jack Wyatt.

HELMETS

2007-04-14T11:46:00.000-07:00

All men love helmets.

"Real men", that is. I guess there are some hippies that don't want to glorify war or whatever, but deep down, boys love helmets. When you're ten, the best present in the world is a cheap piece of plastic that looks like Gil Gerard's helmet from Buck Rogers. Or Luke Skywalker's X-wing pilot helmet. Heck, even some lame Roman Gladiator thing from K-mart was pretty rad. A helmet means that you are Ready For Action!

While sports helmets are pretty cool, the military has always trumped them. Who wouldn't want to look like General Patton (a man secretly adored by all boys)?
Or this guy:

Check him out! A marine storming Iwo Jima! Or whatever.

Other cool helmets include viking helmets, especially with horns (This is ironic, as actual vikings didn't wear horned helmets, so it should be less cool, but trust me, if you want to wear a viking helmet, it needs horns.), pith helmets (but only if you are sweaty with malaria), samurai helmets with the scary mask faces, sci-fi space helmets from the forties and fifties, and classic leather football helmets. These are cool because they were worn by jocks before all jocks were assholes. (Back in the olden days, jocks were busted up milk-drinkers who rolled around in the mud for no money, and were built like Robert Mitchum. They wore sweaters and iron cleats, and had bloody knuckles. They didn't hang out in bars in midtown Manhattan with a lot of neon fixtures and girly martinis, wearing starched Banana Republic shirts and too much gel in their hair. Jocks were better in the olden days.)

Contributor Joe has a helmet with earphones in it, so he can listen to music while keeping his skull safe from shrapnel. The only helmet I own is this dandy number:
You can't really wear this in public. It has to sit on a shelf, until the Huns invade. I am told that I should get a bike helmet, as I ride my bike a lot, but seriously, bike helmets are for pussies. I'd rather have a fatal head wound than wear one of those styrofoam-and-plastic baby-hats. You look like an eight-year-old girl learning to roller skate in one of those things. I guess if you're in the Tour De France, and going a billion miles an hour lapping Phillipe Le Frogg, it's cool, but otherwise, the only time you need a helmet for safety is when a Visigoth is waving a mace at your head, or when German Soldiers are pitching potato mashers at you. Otherwise, helmets are for being stylin', or feeling like a bad-ass. And who is more bad-ass than Sgt. Rock?

The answer is "Very few people are more bad-ass than Sgt. Rock".

A Pair of Siamese Cats

2007-04-14T07:10:00.000-07:00

I know that there are people who "hate cats". They complain about them and say that dogs are superior. They think that cats are cold and cruel, and know not how to love.

I say to you these people have no soul.

Anyone that can look at a fwuffy widdle puffy blue-eyed kitty and not love it is a pod person. That's right... an alien has abducted them, sucked out their soul, and replaced them with a carbon duplicate.

They lived a normal life, going about their business, day to day, until the night of the meteor shower. It was a dark, quiet night, and the meteors struck the horizon silently- no one paid much attention at all. But after a while, people seemed... different. They were vacant and cold. Where once vitality shone in their eyes, now it was a sickly void. That's because aliens had replaced them with mindless pod-grown automatons!

(The meteor shower was an unrelated coincidence.)

Do you want to to be a pod person? More vegetable than human? Of course not. So quit denying the appeal of the feline!

The two cats pictured above are brothers, and like to lick each other's faces. They sleep curled up together with happy kitty smiles. It's really sweet, in a totally gay way. They also like to kick each other's asses, which is not sweet at all. It's like WILD KINGDOM, and it's scary, and it happens on our couch.

Chill out, assholes! You're scratching up the furniture!