Versimilitude

A footnote to my earlier ruminations on 25 years of Dave -- one of the odder moments, from January, 1984. (Remember, Spider-Man joined Belushi and Ackroyd and the other original SNL cast about five years earlier to fight the Silver Samurai in Marvel Team-Up.) The artist seems to be trying very hard not to let Dave turn into Alfred E. Neuman; for those of you who might not know, the Avenger crew with Dave are, from left to right, Hawkeye, The Wasp, Wonder Man, and the Black Panther; hanging from above is the Beast (who will be played by Kelsey Grammer in the new X-Men movie next year.)

July, 1978

I sit here on the love seat in my house, trying to succeed in thinking up something to write about. Oh, well. My subscription to Pizzazz is going okay. I got number 12 a few weeks ago. It had some great stuff in it. Ummmmm. I start school pretty soon. I'll be going (as you know) to Ickes. I'm kinda nervous about going to a new school. F.F. #200 will be out this week. Its gonna be double size. Oughtta be pretty good. Next month an all-new Science Fiction series called Battlestar Galactica. Its got a good story, great special effects, and Lorne Green! Well, I'll see ya later.

Quote 3

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.

-John Maynard Keynes

Hace muy frio y esta silencio

Tonight's Unfortunate Acronym

I'm sorry, does anybody else find this funny? I dang sure do....

A Poem from the Writer's Almanac

"The Committee"
by Susan Cataldo

There's a committee looking into the air,
my supervisor said,when someone complained
about our stuffy office.

Can't you just see them up there,
sitting around a conference table,
looking into the air.
That's all. Just looking.

There's a committee looking into the air.
I must get elected to that committee
because I care about the air too
and I would love to look into it,

all of it,
and I would love to look into it
with others also.We would be this committee,

united,
to look into the air.
People would send us complaints about the air
and we would send memos back to them

describing what we saw when we looked into the air
and if something needed to be done about it
we would fix it.
We would be the committee that looks into the air.

Found in a Volume of Jeffers

25 Years with Uncle Dave

I was talking with my 14-year-old son yesterday about David Letterman...we had been up late watching Dave the night before and chatting about various skits and jokes and such. It suddenly dawned on me that 25 years ago, in 1980, I was a thirteen-year-old kid who got up every morning during his summer vacation after completing junior high school to watch the David Letterman morning show on NBC. For those of you not old enough (or perhaps too old) to remember, NBC's first assignment for Dave was to take over the 60-90 minutes after the Today show was over to be funny, etc. They even had a daily newsbreak in the show with Edwin Newman.

There was no Paul Shaffer, no stupid pet and/or human tricks, no Will It Float. Just Dave and a cast of wackos...half of the guests were characters. It was a great show, and won Emmys and such, but only lasted 8 months. By the time I was ensconced in my first dreadful year of high school, Dave was off the air, only to return several months later as the original host of Late Night, and the rest is history. Late Night, at least originally, was essentially the morning show with Paul Shaffer, only at 12:30 AM.

But for that summer, my friend Dave Holmes and I would get up, watch the show, and then call each other to discuss the best bits. It is astounding to me that a quarter-century has passed -- even more astounding that, yes, we are still watching Dave and, whoa, I have a fourteen-year-old about to start high school. Amazing.

I am of that school of folk who grew up in the Letterman Age -- the 1980's, when Dave was turning television inside out and backwards. Dave belongs to that hallowed Hall of Fame that includes Mad Magazine, Monty Python, SCTV, and the Smothers Brothers -- those take-no-prisoners comedians who are both a bellwether of their times and master subversives; smilingly ripping all pretense and assumption down and making us laugh at the fact that everything we know is wrong. I know my own sense of humor, such as it is, owes a lot to Dave.

And Dave (Letterman) is still as great as ever -- he has become an incredibly natural, likable host, but still very funny. You can see his desire to emulate the kind of class Johnny Carson had, but in his own way, with his own style. That more people watch Jay Leno every night of the week is only a testament to NBC's lead-in ratings and Leno's ability to use Letterman's jokes only dumbed-down for stupid frat boys. Leno is so pathetic in his lowest-common-denominator humor and woeful interview skills; yet we live in a world where Fear Factor is a top rated show.

In any event -- thanks Dave, for 25 years. Hopefully we'll both still be around in another 25 and I'll watch the Late Show with my grandkids.....

Goodbye, Jimmy Doohan

"...why do you stand there looking at the sky?"

--Acts 1:11

Island: B-

Got a chance to catch a preview of the new movie "The Island" last night thanks to some free tix at our local comic shop. While this is by no means a great movie it is far better than I expected going in. Basic idea: clones being made to harvest for body parts begin to realize same. It's an action movie, with some truly over the top sequences that actually come off pretty well. I would put this in the league of last year's "I, Robot" -- a "B" movie with lots of money and big stars. And what's wrong with that? Absolutely... nothing (say it again).

Actually, Ewan MacGregor and Scarlett Johansson make a pretty good team on screen; their characters are supposed to have only been "matured" to about the mentality of a fifteen year old and there is a real innocence and sweetness to them. MacGregor also plays the man he is a clone of, with rather interesting results. Sean Bean makes a good evil scientist, and Steve Buscemi plays, well, Steve Buscemi, which is always worthwhile. Michael Clarke Duncan inexplicably took a brief, almost throwaway role that makes you think there was more to it before the editors got ahold of it.

What is it with Ewan? This movie has clones, futuristic speeder-bike battles, a futuristic Los Angeles that looks like an early model for Coruscant, and even a kind of "I am your father" conclusion....maybe those Star Wars movies had more of an effect on him than I thought...

In conclusion: if you see it in the theater, dont pay full price; you could wait for DVD except everything in the movie is really BIG so you might lose some detail if you like that sort of thing.

Today's Hyperbole Corner

From a new ad for a rapper named "Chillious" in the new Rolling Stone (their emphases):

"The pinnacle of rap, the man with more felonies than friends, he's got the flow, with a summertime vibe, engaging in urban warfare, that's got the entire world westcoastin'."

What does that even mean??

My goal is to have more friends than parking tickets.

When Johnny Strikes Up The Band....

As I mentioned recently on another post, the very cool website www.archive.org has a huge selection of bootleg live music -- all from artists who apparently dont mind when their fans record live shows, as long as they pay for the stuff they are supposed to pay for. Many of the bands listed I have never heard of, but there are those that are relatively well known, including Camper Van Beethoven, Billy Corrigan's Zwan, Warren Zevon, and a little outfit named the Grateful Dead (more than 2800 files for the Dead, actually).

I plan to plumb the depths of this incredible resource as time goes on, but started with Mr. Z, happy to discover that I can actually procure live versions of many many Warren classics that I do not currently have overpopulating my Ipod. I have already taken many tracks from a live show done for WMMR at the Main Point just up the road here in Bryn Mawr back in 1976. Warren is funny, loose, at top form, and obviously having fun. He's pushing his eponymous album, so many of the songs are from that. If you never got a chance to see Warren live -- and I thankfully did, see the above ticket -- this is a great opportunity. So far the sound quality is excellent. More as I download more.

Coming soon: the fine members of The Bronze Episode sent me a free four-song sampler in the mail and I will review as soon as possible. Thanks guys!

Morning and Night

Beyond our town the bottomlands flood each year.
Someone's son goes walking, never comes back.
Weeks pass. Town square talk reclaims the days.

Tonight I hear the rains remember roots
and think of elders gone the long way back to dust.
What we know by heart we doubt the most.

I have a wish to be at someone's door,
unannounced but welcomed anyway, ushered in
to dine and sing and sleep the sleep of kings.

But this is a world of slaughtered saints.
Random shots are fired, while morning and night
our mothers turn their faces toward the sleeping hills.

So quickly has the century come and gone.
For a while let's ask each other simple questions
and make up answers that can keep us home tonight.

--Jeff Hardin

Adventures Make One Late To Dinner

"I am in fact a hobbit in all but size. I like gardens, trees, and unmechanized farmlands. I smoke a pipe, like good, plain food, detest French cooking ... I am fond of mushrooms, have a very simple sense of humor ... go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much."

--John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

The Fellowship of the Ring was published today in 1954.
(Thanks, Writers' Almanac!)

Those Wacky Scandinavians!

Get on over to Music for Robots right now and download the Finntroll mp3 -- a death metal band that has mixed their sound with traditional Finnish polka music known as Humppa (not kidding) in order to sing (we presume - lyrics are in Swedish) about trolls and such -- and also the video from Norwegian band Hurra Torpedo where they do the most original cover of Total Eclipse of the Heart you will ever see (note I did not say "best cover you will ever hear"). The links are there now, but MFR only leaves posts like that up for a week or so, so hustle. I guarantee, you will not be disappointed, only baffled trying to decide which is odder. Peace.

Superzapper Recharge

If there is such a thing as Teenage Hell, it is likely to be much like a place called "Five Below" that the Mole has visited a time or two here in Wilmington. I imagine Five Below to be some sort of chain. It is full of tshirts, candy, stickers, trendy cheap crap that teenagers like -- and of course, all of it is five dollars or below. Loud teenybopper music plays. I can imagine thirteen year old girls treat it as kind of mecca, rising early to bow toward their local franchise before applying press-on nails and using lip gloss. Do teenage girls still use lip gloss? Anyway, you get the picture.

The Mole is, of course, drawn to the strange and cheap (and free), and therefore has entered the mostly friendly confines of Five Below: it is further known that the Mole is the male parent of a teenage boy, who does not, to my knowledge, wear lip gloss or press on nails. However, he has the typical teen need for cool geegaws and knickknacks of varying stripes, and so I went in once or twice to find accoutrements he might enjoy.

Little did I know that I would come away with something I personally wanted, albeit at the high end level of five bucks. But there, piled high on the computer games table, was the Atari Anniversary edition, which I procured forthwith and brought home to load on my computer.

Asteroids. Battlezone -- fricking Battlezone! Centipede. MISSILE COMMAND. You can play them all you want, and for free, on your home computer, where nobody can see you. Even Pong, for God's sake. It was 1982 all over again. I mean, in the old days, five bucks would give you a mere 20 games at the arcade (Electric Palace in my old Milwaukie stomping grounds) - and being poor and sporting a comic book habit, I never played much. But I enjoyed the games...it was the economics I couldn't bear. For a quarter I could get the new Spiderman and keep it forever -- rather than a lousy five minutes of gaming that I would lose miserably anyway. With this disc I can play endlessly.

The look is the same, the sounds are the same, it is as if the games descended from video heaven (through teenage hell) to give those of us who couldnt bring ourselves to spend the money to get there honestly, the chance to be high score in our own Electric Palace....just once. Ahh, second childhood.

The Mole: 3

Link Notes

A quick follow up on one of the links I listed below -- I've been poking around on www.archive.org, which is all free and public domain material, and there is an extensive library of what might be considered live bootleg material for download. Most of the bands listed I am not familiar with, but there is a large amount from people like Camper Van Beethoven, the Grateful Dead, and the like, who say go ahead and use it, just dont sell it. I am even as I type downloading bits and pieces of a Warren Zevon show from the Main Point in Bryn Mawr, PA, from 1976, just as Warren's eponymous album (and one of the best albums ever, in my opinion) was hitting. There's a lot of other material there, going back decades -- you may just wish to check it out.

Another link down there is for the Book Thing of Baltimore. If there is a heaven on earth, to me the Book Thing may well be it. There's more detail on the website, but essentially the BT is a place where they give away books for free. They have a huge building full of donated books in dozens of categories and all you have to do is come take what you want. I have repopulated my library over the past two years with many many books I had sold off years ago and now have them again. I am literally astounded by what I have found there -- my greatest experience is finding both volumes of William Manchester's bio of Churchill, The Last Lion, in hard cover with their dust jackets -- in the store this would run you $100. I got them free. It's one of the great non-profit stories of all time and you would do well to check out the site -- and check out their new digs in Charm City if you're ever out here in the Mid-Atlantic.

Peace. More soon.

Polly wants NO crackers, dammit!

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/node/8395

Thanks Ratty - the Mole.

Bela Lugosi as Jesus!

http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/display.cgi?id=20701

Courtesy of Harry Knowles and Aint It Cool News....

El Motherbox Esta Muy Bueno!

At the 7-11 Where I Was Taught

Ah, what a great thing it was to be a kid in the suburbs in the 1970's. As much as I love Rush and their whole "Subdivisions" thing, I have a pretty nostalgic view of growing up in the wilds of the just-being-developed land of Milwaukie, Oregon.

F'rinstance: what better way to spend a sunny summer day than to walk through the safe confines of your subdivision down to the 7-11 at the corner of Linwood and Harmony road (a bit of a busy street, but not so bad Mom had to go along) to see what the inconsistently-stocked comics rack had to offer. All you needed was thirty cents -- thirty cents!!! -- and it was likely you would find something to fill your afternoon with fun and excitement. Considering comics now generally cost about ten times that and arent anywhere near as interesting for the most part, I mean, what a bargain!

One such find for me was The Eternals #15. While I was well aware of who Jack Kirby was from my copies of Origins of Marvel Comics and its sequels, and from the odd issue of Kamandi and Omac that passed my way in those days (generally dismissed because they were from -- sniff -- DC) I did not yet know the power of his more cosmic works. The whole Fourth World had come and gone before I ever bought my first superhero comic book, so his attempt at cosmic grandeur that came from Marvel got me totally under the radar.

In one issue - and believe me Eternals #15: "Disaster Area" is far from the best work Kirby ever did -- I knew I had something different, something really special, unlike any other comics I had seen. Who were these strange, godlike beings, the Eternals -- eye-blasting Ikaris, speedster Makarri, molecular manipulator Sersi -- who somehow found themselves fighting an accidentally cosmically-powered Hulk robot (it works when you see it)? There was so much energy, so much movement, so much action in every panel. I was hooked. I started buying every issue, only to have the series cancelled with number 19. Undaunted, I began seeking the first 14 issues, where I discovered the epic opera of giant alien gods coming to earth to judge mankind, and of the secret races of genetically unstable Deviants and immortal Eternals vying for supremacy. Eternals led me to 2001, to Captain America, to New Gods, to Mister Miracle....I would say Eternals #15 is the book that made me a collector.


Interestingly enough, the whole robot Hulk thing was a sore spot with fans of the book, who questioned whether the Eternals fit within the Marvel Universe of on-going stories, or were their own seperate world. Finally, the Hulk arrives, seeming to point to the stories being within the MU, but Ol' Greenskin turns out to be just a robot cooked up by two overzealous grad students. Later, in The Mighty Thor, Roy Thomas would bring the Eternals into Marvel with a long arc that involved the retelling of the Ring of the Nieblung, but it wasn't Kirby's story and therefore not the same, as is usually the case. Largely, the Eternals have been either ignored or handled badly since, though a 12-issue mini-series in the '90's did a pretty good job.

But that original 19-issue run (plus one annual) still holds up to this day as great cosmic storytelling and the best of Jack Kirby.

Quote 2: Hail Caesar!

"Beware the leader who bangs the drum of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor. For patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind."

--Julius Caesar (from the Writer's Almanac, on his birthday)

Kirby Sez "Just Blog It!"

Have just added a link for a heretofore unknown and rather extensive Jack Kirby-based blog. I intend as I go forward to include Kirby-related material but this guy is way beyond anything I would be able to do. The link is over to the side there....I will surfing it alongside you, effendi!

Today's Hyperbole Corner

From the website of "Hate Eternal", a band currently advertising on MTV2 (my highlights):

Hate Eternal have completed the next benchmark in the history of extreme music. With dizzying musicality and creativity, Hate Eternal's third album, "I, Monarch", propels metal into the next dimension. The fearsomely talented and broad-minded musical trinity of guitarist/vocalist Erik Rutan, drummer Derek Roddy, and bassist Randy Piro unites in new and transcendent ways on "I, Monarch". Torrential blastbeats (perhaps truly the fastest yet recorded) meld with inhuman polyrhythms whilst lyrical firestorms rain down with unmatched rage - yet the groove underlying the chaos is of collossal proportions. Amidst shredding guitar leads and warp-speed drums, strange and unexpected sounds lie lurking - Tibetan drums, tabla, didjeridoo.

"Broad-minded?"

The Mole: 2

4:B

Well, no, not really, but that looks good up there....

Saw Fantastic 4 yesterday -- pay no attention to those reviewers who say it stinks, which is apparently most of them -- this movie was a lot of fun, even with the (largely cosmetic) changes to the original origin story: just a straightahead, funny, popcorn summer movie. Not as good as Batman Begins, Spiderman or X2, perhaps, but right up there with Hellboy and Daredevil, which I actually liked quite a bit. Only weak spots were a couple of FX shots (mostly Reed stretching), and Jessica Alba's acting ability (but who cares, right?).

I liked the fact that everybody yelled at each other, even in public, like a real family. It had the feel of the comic books, which I've been reading since I was about twelve. The 14-year-old with me loved it. Chiklis is born to play the thing (he looks great in it, by the way) and the guy who plays Johnny Storm steals the show. Great fun.

I think reviewers are getting tired of superhero movies, or their background in comic books is lacking. I'm not sure anymore what they expect when they go and sit down to watch one. Of course, a movie fan should be able to sit down and watch a superhero movie with no knowledge of the source material and enjoy it, but I am beginning to think a lot of reviewers go in to the film expecting to hate it....maybe they do that with all movies. I'll admit I went in with low expectations, but I try to do that with every movie -- however I always hope or expect to like what I am going to see on some level....maybe that's just semantics.

I give it a B, Chi-chi. Congratulations to all the players... and bring on the sequel (Galactus?)

The Mole: 1

...absorbed in the new life he was entering upon, intoxicated with the sparkle, the ripple, the scents and the sounds of the sunlight, he trailed a paw in the water and dreamed long waking dreams...This day was only the first of many similar ones for the emancipated Mole, each of the longer and as full of interest as the ripening summer moved onward. He learnt to swim and to row, and entered into the joy of running water; and with his ear to the reed-stems he caught, at intervals, something of what the wind went whispering so constantly among them...

--kenneth grahame

www.archive.org

Just discovered this and am starting to explore -- the link's over on the side -- somebody's attempt to create an online library of free and public domain materials for general use. There's whole libraries of free music created for internet download, and a large section of old '78's converted into mp3 files (if you're into that sort of thing). As I said, I am just starting to poke around but it seems pretty cool: found some entire ambient/experimental albums free for download, which I will attempt the next time I have two or three hours of downloading time to kill.

Dontcha just love free stuff? The mole sure does.

Current Links: Music for Robots

Music for Robots is a recent discovery of mine, thanks to the New York Times being dumped into my email every morning. The creation of some independent music fiends, this blog is one of the more prominent mp3 sites out there, though there are many (which MFR has links to on its homepage). The whole purpose is to promote music under the radar, that might otherwise get missed. Usually they have a link to a sample song, which you can download and put in your Ipod, with the intention of getting you to purchase the music of said band and thereby encourage (and perhaps help feed) the 95% of musicians who never get played on US radio.

I have downloaded several songs recently and have heard some pretty cool stuff, including a band called Vermillion and another called Huge. They usually have new material up daily, and recently put out their first CD, Music for Robots Vol. 1 (natch) -- though they seem to have fallen a bit on the more aurally experimental musicians for this collection. Still, there are some great songs on the CD, as well, including one called "A Day With Andrew" by Stiffed which not only is a song with my son's name in the title but is done in the style of music (punky, fast, loud) he likes.

Keep an eye out, if you're interested -- there are all sorts of different kinds of music on there, with reviews. The link is to your right. Peace.

Quien es el Motherbox?

Quote 1

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in one pretty and well-preserved piece, but rather a skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, wow, what a ride!"

--Bill McKenna

Welcome Back My Friends To The Show That Never Ends

Greetings to Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea. I have now once again leapt upon the latest in trendy self-promotion and fired up this blog. I got to thinking that I keep emailing little odds and ends to folks all the time and it might just be simpler and maybe even more fun to have this as a repository of stuff I find, as well as keeping das volk (und you know who you are, ja?) up to date on the latest minor occurances in my own humdrum life. I hope to add stuff daily as I have a backlog of marginalia, effluvia, and detritus that I wish to foist upon you. Or not, since this will make it that much easier for you to ignore me. Ah, well.

In any event, the obligatory opening salvo is complete. More as events warrant. We're in touch, so you keep in touch. Love, The Mole.