Flat as a ...

In Rio de Janiero and New Orleans, they have giant street fiestas for Fat Tuesday. In Episcopal churches hereabouts, they eat pancakes for supper.

No, I'm not kidding.

I switched to a one-man ice cream party years ago, after I found out the hard way about the pecking order of pancakes on Maple Syrup Tuesday. I kept wondering why I'd show up on time but get one dried-out burned-up left-over pancake with a near-empty bottle of syrup -- "sorry, we're all out!" -- till finally one night I left and snuck back in through a side door and peeked through another door left slightly ajar. As the piles of fresh flapjacks and bottles of syrup passed by, I thought, "OK ... " and left quietly the way I came.

When I returned to my solitary apartment later that night, I decided to transmute my frustration to creative dissatisfaction. So I walked in the bedroom door, took off my coat, booted my PC and the following monolog emerged -- by what means I leave up to you.

I think it's supposed to be in the dialect of a Piedmont or Midlands Carolina (which one depends on whether said Carolinian is North or South) street character who has somehow ended up in the pulpit for Ash Wednesday.

(Judge for yourself ...)

“It's all about dust, y' know? It's what we get stuck in our noses and makes us sneeze. It's what we try to get rid of, if we're good at keepin' house. It's what lays around and makes everythin' look like a mess, if we're not. It's what we pull off dryer filters and what gets kicked up in a fight. It's what we come from and what we're to become one day, probably before we're ready.

“But back there in the rear pews, where we normally sit -- y'all r'member, don'tcha? 'We' is me, myself and I -- we have us a theory. It goes somethin' like this: dust is good. The universe is made of it -- it's full of it, in fact. Suns, planets, moons and pretty much everythin' else started out as dust. What didn't get made into balls of fire or mud is still out there. We call it 'interstellar dust'. It attracts and repels magnetic forces, begins to create heat and give off radiation, starts t' gravitate, and then gets hotter and hotter and hotter until - WHAM!

“This is not why we figure that dust is good, though. 'Cause it's still just dust. What we think is this: dust is good, because dust is God. Now that sounds pretty heretical, if not downright tactless. 'Cause God is supposed to be light, love and all that, not somethin' you want to wipe off, suck up or sweep out. Well, we don't disagree with that feelin', really. But the idea kinda clings, if you think about it some more.

“You see, dust is real. There's no denyin' that dust is dust. There's no escapin' it, either. There's no ignorin' it, without consequences, and there's no makin' light of it. It's dust, and it's common -- but that's because it's everywhere! Dust is the stuff of the universe, because that's what God became to make the universe be.

"Without dust, there would be no light. Without dust, there would be no darkness. Without dust, there would be no form. Without dust, there would be no formlessness. In fact, without dust, there would be no bein' at all. God needed to become dust, because dust has no qualities other than dustiness. It's tiny, but it can form galaxies. It seems to come from nowhere in no time (just try to keep some furniture dusted, if you don't believe me), but it's there in time and space just the same.

“Dust is God revealed in space and time. Dust is Truth revealin' itself. Dust is Love becomin' reality by makin' reality real. Dust is the Other emanated into the continuum, yet dust is us. Dust links the Creator and the created, and by comin' from it and returnin' to it, we rejoin the Creator.

“There's no life without dust. There's no love without dust. There is nothing at all, without dust. Though without dust, there would still be God. That statement is impossible to imagine, based on what we've just told you, which is why, in this case, it's true.

“Jus' somethin' for ya'll to think about while you're standin' in line, waitin' to get some dust rubbed on your foreheads.”

LJ orig.: Feb. 25, 2009

The Sacred Dead Can Help in More Ways Than One (Always)

You just have to let them.

(Read more ...) 

I hope nobody I care about bought the baloney* I've been putting in here lately. I'm not "chosen" (that I know of), I haven't been communing with the dead (that I'm aware of) and books haven't been talking to me (though I thought I explained that one).

It's been a few tough weeks for me, for a number of reasons. Part of the need I've had to blow off steam has been used in writing baloney in this particular post.

Some of what I've written may have been true, some of it possibly exaggerated, and some of it was certainly nonsense.

I wasn't having fun pulling anyone's leg, though. It was more my unconscious mind having fun pulling mine -- and if you feel it was done at your expense, please accept my apologies.

I really do feel the collective unconscious (a term "owned" by a Swiss psychiarist [or psychoanalyst, if you prefer] but conceptually known and written about for centuries prior to his time) holds resonance from many things -- people we've known and who will have known us when we're gone, events that have happened and that have not (yet, anyway) as well as the possibilities of people, places and things that will never find their way into The Real World (not the reality show, but the show of reality).

I guess my belief officially means I'm crazy. OK, if that's the case, I'll say "amen." But there are lots of crazy things I don't buy into -- reincarnation/past lives, Ouiji boards, palmistry, and all sorts of other stuff I think is nothing.

Lots of things get tossed into that vague category called "spirituality" that are pure bunk. Mainly, "spirituality" itself often is a term theologians use to describe religious experience they can't define (or even have in some cases, apparently).

But, on the other hand, the bunkum of "spirituality" doesn't mean that theology is the only valid religious science.

There's more to what people who are genuinely religious (without being sanctimonious -- no truly religious person I know is like that) genuinely feel than is commonly known, and which theology just doesn't describe.

I guess if there's been a point to all these "... (Always)" posts, that's been it.

And I still feel The Sacred Dead Can Help In More Ways Than One -- because they just did.

Whew! That took awhile!

___

*The first post I wrote in this position on the old LJ blog dealt (tongue in cheek) with some of my emotional experiences (that I thought of as "spiritual" when I had them), and the second, tongue still there, dealt with some of the books I read that gave them to me (they really "spoke" to me -- get it?). I overwrote the first with the second and then the second with this one.

LJ orig.: Feb. 25, 2009

The Sacred Dead Are Here To Help The Living (Always)

When we feel we are alone, we are not. We are with those who left us too soon, whatever time that was.

Actually, they are with us. And they will be with us forever. When we who are dead to the earthly living awaken to the life we have always known somewhere and somewhen, we will be solid as marble with those we have always loved, and will love forever.

We do not see here and now what we need to see to accomplish this miracle. It is not yet time and place to do that, and it cannot be done by us.

We must wait. And while we wait, we must watch. And while we watch, we must fight. And while we fight, we must pray. No one said this would be easy. If it was, it would not raise in us what must be raised, challenge in us what must be challenged, birth in us what must be born.

And what must be born is who we really are. Who we are meant to be.

From always.

Everywhere

At once

LJ orig.: Jan. 29, 2009

He was number one, for real.

Here's a note in memory of a man I posted on some time ago (that I left up -- yes, I checked! "We're Number One! We're Number One!"). Patrick McGoohan died this week in LA, apparently just a few miles from where a remake of The Prisoner had been screened in preview. I caught the scoop at Wired.com  ... so I'll refrain, except to note that McGoohan's participation apparently was solicited for the remake, but he was just too ill.

My old post may have inferred (from faulty memory) that his old TV series, Danger Man (aired here as Secret Agent -- with Johnny Rivers or whoever adding "man" to fit the theme song, I guess) was a standard "bullets and bedrooms" spy series. However, it seems McGoohan's show responsibly resisted the stereotypical formula.

I stand corrected.

BTW, I'm glad that McGoohan is getting some overdue recognition for his visionary work on "The Prisoner." I hope he was able to hear some of that appreciative feedback before he passed from our midst.

LJ orig.: Jan 16, 2009

"He got caught in the spot ... light!"

This band had almost the reverse fortunes of the band I (re)posted on a week ago*. Yet, they remain just as unforgettable.

(Read more ...)

They were just known as The Band. I bought their LP called, yes, "The Band" right after reading about them in Time magazine. This band made the cover of the periodical, as I recall, and I just went back to the newsstand/record store in our little town and used my Christmas money to buy it.

I never used to do that. I'd always listen for a song or two on the radio first, then wait for the hallway buzz on the album at school. The kids with older brothers and sisters might have gotten a copy just to hear what it was like, while I could not afford to be that reckless. I had to add to my collection with care, both for my "rep" and my wallet.

But this was different. You never heard of a hippie rock band getting this kind of article in a national magazine, unless it was the Beatles or the Stones or someone like that.

What was different? I found out when I dropped the needle on this disc. My jaw fell open. I could not believe it!

Here was Our Music -- the South's own music, the real thing, in a musical amalgam never heard before -- and I'd been listening! I was not familiar then with The Band's first LP, Music From Big Pink. I recall now thinking of the earlier record as what we would today call an "indie" release, although I don't recall the label it was on. "The Band" was The Band's first major-label recording (as I thought of it then), and there was just nothing like it.

A song from the LP was already on the radio, but I disliked it so much at first I just never sought out the name of the group who recorded it. "Up on Cripple Creek" is a cold classic -- I can't find words to describe it, exactly. You just have to hear it for yourself.

In the context of the LP, "Cripple Creek" made sense, and I learned to love it. Getting a song like that on the charts at all was a landmark accomplishment, even then. But The Band failed to repeat the enormous success of its first major LP.

Oddly, I read an article regarding the 30th anniversary of the LP in one of those home-recording magazines that claimed the members of The Band pretty much recorded The Band on their own. They, as I recall reading, did not like the treatment the got at the studio at which they recorded "Big Pink," and just did the next one on their own.

The follow up to The Band was a record called Stage Fright. Full of catchy tunes (part of the title song is playing in my head now, as referenced by this post's title, and I gave away the LP ages ago!), none of the songs caught on publicly, and I was the only kid in school who even knew about it. In retrospect, it sounded like a major-label record. So probably did the third record in the major-label series. I don't even recall the title. All I remember is recommending The Band (the band) to a friend. He bought that third LP with the name I've since forgotten, and he basically never spoke to me again. Apparently that LP was really bad. Maybe not. No one else I ever spoke with about music ever mentioned that third major-label LP. I do recall reading that the label spent some money on it, though.

As I mentioned re: U2, that band's third major-label LP was the mega-hit cultural bombshell War. It has the same iconic status as the LP The Band, but the people who laid it to tape it pretty much inverted U2's recording history, at least as I recall it now.

What's really odd is that The Band as a group created a sound that really no one I can think of has ever successfully imitated, while I can think of many bands that have borrowed ideas from U2. Not being a musician, my view on it is probably off-base. But I just have never heard anything like The Band since.

Why am I mentioning this now, after Monday's rather intense post? There's a song that (to me) offers healing on The Band that I can recommend. It's called "Whispering Pines."

Yes, it's an iTunes Plus offering. I checked. ;)

P.S.: I'm posting this post script he day after I posted the above. I had an opportunity to re-hear The Band album since, and it occurred to me that some kinder, gentler among you readers might be offended by some of the songs (Joan Baez covered "The Night They Drove ... " so feminists of her era were not offended, apparently). The context I referred to was lyrical: The Band crafted most of the songs with words from their (and my) grandparents' or even great-grandparents' generations. I think that's partly what made The Band seem so funny, and so touching, when I first heard it.

___

*I began the re-posting project while still on LJ, intermittently. A few days later I posted this: "Yes, I -do- realize a legendary record producer also worked on The Band's The Band. That's not all. The song that delivered the real impact for me as a teen was "Unfaithful Servant." It, like the song I have referred to on Pet Sounds that hit me hard, did so while I was -- it seems in retrospect -- unbelievably young. I bought the album in the winter of 1970, when I would have just turned 15. BTW, if you listen to the "crying" vocal chorus on "Unfaithful Servant" you may hear familiar harmonies from that other iconic recording.
I am probably speaking out of turn here, but it occurred to me many years ago that some of Robbie Robertson's songs from that era have well-defined characters, even with names: Fanny from "The Weight" (on Music from Big Pink) Molly from "Across the Great Divide" and Bessie from "Up on Cripple Creek." I've often wondered if these songs may form part of a story or stories. Hmmm ... .

LJ orig.: Jan. 7, 2009

I also liked the one with Reverse Flash ... .

My cousin always had the best comics.

His dad (and grandad) owned the little gas station-cum-corner market in the tiny hamlet that (in its day) came as close to a South-of-Mason-Dixon Norman Rockwell magazine illustration (if you can think of such a thing -- Rockwell stayed close to home) as anyone could want.

And their market had a spinner rack, as most little-gas-station-corner-markets did back then.

(Read more ...)

And on that spinner rack were DC comics. No Marvels. Just DC and Harvey.

Which was OK. I was only around ten or so when I got to look at ol' Cuz's comics, anyway. FF and Spidey wouldn't have interested me then.

Cuz loved Joe Kubert's Sgt. Rock. He had those Doom Patrol comics I posted on a good 16 months ago. And he had a few Batman and a good many Superman (early Brainiac and Bizarro and Mr. Mfsxvplk -- or whatever -- stories).

I could visit Cuz -- who was several years older and had no time for me -- and just let him allow me time to curl up in a corner with a stack of his old comics for the whole afternoon.

There was one I kept coming back to, a story whose cover I did not see until years later (you think Cuz would let his 10 year old Neph read new ones with covers still on?).

What attracted me was the color (wouldn't it be, at that age?) of the hero in his red-and-yellow suit, with another hero in his red-and-blue suit with a little silver helmet.

The story was called "Flash of Two Worlds" and it was about time travel. Flash could run at speeds approaching light, so he could traverse spacetime. And so, he met his Golden Age (1940's era) incarnation.

Read Buffy S8 lately? How about Fear Agent? I guess it's true -- there are no new stories. But I like to think the comics creators nowadays love to do homage to the greats like Kubert and Gardner Fox, as much as I like to recall those old stories.

Kubert is a legend, of course. Fox wrote a good 1,500 stories for DC. He is one of the all-time greats in the genre, as well. Overshadowed perhaps in his day by the creative geniuses at Marvel Comics, he nonetheless left an indelible legacy.

Kubert illustrated his own scripts (AFAIK), but Fox relied on the able pen and brush of Carmine Infantino*. It was said Infantino would somtimes draw a cover and let Fox write a story to it! I think they probably challenged each other.

Clearly, modern day writers and fans are in the debt of these Silver Age creators.

The memory of their creations, to this eternal 10-year-old, remains ever fresh.

___

*Infantino has since given an interview with a well-known US journal about comics and their creators. The article provides much more insight into the DC "method" than anything else I've seen.

LJ orig.: Nov. 17, 2008

"A poor soul on Pompeii ... "

There was that time when I made a complete fool of myself, winning glory.

(Read more ...)

It began with me, gone in (apparent) disgrace from a well-regarded position in broadcasting to a station so bad I spent more time with a WetVac mopping up flooded floors than with a tape recorder.

Many of my old rivals would drive to this tiny town just to walk by and sneer at me through the display window of the little Main Street broadcast studio. Talk about a bell jar.

Then there was this terrible accident at the local lake. An awful multiple drowning. Again.

And they came: the national news media. Again.

This particular town (and lake) had been the scene of an earlier drowning, this one not accidental, that was followed by a sensational double-murder trial.

The victims of the second drowning were members of two families viewing a lakeside memorial to the first set of victims, when their van lost its brakes and they all rolled in to the water.

Except for two, one a mother and a little girl (not the woman's daughter) who watched lakeside as members of both their families perished under the water.

This story is difficult to write about, even now.

But that was not the end of the story, at least not for me.

What happened is this story went national, and a major cable news organization (then just starting out) called the station where I worked and asked for the news guy. Which happened to be me. The young lady on the other end of the phone was a producer, and wanted me to drop everything (I did all the news for the station solo) and drive 40 miles to a network affiliate's TV station to do a one-on-one (argot for "interview") with the host of the new show on the new network.

I suggested instead that I drive to the funeral home where the relatives of those who perished were gathering at that hour. The cable network was owned by a big mega TV network and the big mega TV network had a crew with a "live" truck out there already. Couldn't I just do it there, with them sending the signal to the cable network? I had suggested what the young lady apparently had wanted all along -- a chance to get the "big network" guys to work with her cable deal, too.

So, off I went. Once there, all my local broadcast rivals who'd been gloating at my failures were there, watching me get hooked up to go nationwide. They were green with jealousy. As for me, my chest was out and my head was high. The camera turned toward me, the sound tech gave me the cue, and the audio of the cable network host started -- oh no, it was barely audible over the roar of the diesel generator (which is what a TV "live truck" carries -- that and a satellite dish)!

I somehow made out a question or two the host asked me and I stammered some kind of replies. The live crew's world-famous on-camera big-network reporter appeared behind the camera to indicate to me that I needed to pull my finger out of my ear. Even though I was just trying to hear better, it looked on camera that I was picking the gunk out of my ear on national television. I looked absurd. The cable TV folks switched to someone else somewhere else about something else within a minute or so.

I had made a total ass of myself on national cable television. Yet, the local TV (and other media) journalists didn't seem to notice. They stayed "green" the rest of the time I was out at the scene, and they never sauntered by my station's window to gloat, ever again.

But when I got back to "normal" a few days later, that event (among other things -- this had been building for some time) made me realize what a ghoul I had become.

It had previously never occurred to me that my presence outside the funeral home there contributed (in however small a way) to the pain those victims' loved ones were going through. In the crush of events over the preceding years, so-called "public service" journalism was gone. Out the window. Never seemed to occur to anyone -- especially me.

And that weekend, as I rested up from one very frenetic week of news gathering, etc., I declared a silent war on journalism. Just me. Against all them. I would undo all the rest with silent opposition, come hell or high water.

No high water. (Except for the WetVac when it rained.) Hell? That I got.

And it went on for ten years, job after job. Now, it's over. No more covert, one-man war on journalism for me anymore.

Victory? No. I didn't win.

Defeat? No. I didn't lose, either.

Truce? No. No quarter asked or given on either side.

No. I just quit.

My personal war, that is.

More later ... .

Afternote: More came. I came to realize that my problems with journalism really were my problems with me. I had somehow taken sole responsibility for everyone else in the Great Deadline Game, and then turned around and took responsibility for making covert war on the entire enterprise. A poor soul on his personal Pompeii. I realized many other things, which I may address someday -- probably in another format. But what turned this one? Some drawings of Hellboy's BPRD allies conducting their pointless War on Frogs*. I saw myself doing the same, and I woke up.

___

*You can review the covers of the BPRD comic published by Dark Horse at that time to see for yourself what I had in mind. In the story, however, (SPOILER ALERT NOTICE) the fiery passion of one agent destroyed those pesky frogs (and their "eggs").

LJ orig.: Oct. 8, 2008

If Only She and Brian Wilson ...

A few months ago, I posted on my memories about Doctor Who and his first appearance in the US.

What stuck with me most, as I said then, was the show's theme, one of the first (and finest) examples of electronic music exclusively for television. Following what I'd read elsewhere at the time, I casually mentioned that the "recipe" for the original music was lost somewhere in the archives of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Maybe not.

It seems that legendary workshop had an even more legendary member, whose identity has remained, well, maybe not exactly a secret, but definitely in the shadowy background ("Do not look behind the screen! There's nothing in there!").

Now, we can see inside.

(There's always more … )

Her name was Delia Derbyshire. A private legend among aficionados of electronic music, she was the genius arranger who put composer Ron Grainger's orginial score to tape, using techniques that are only now coming to light.

The theme she helped create did not earn her credit at the time, because it apparently violated BBC policy to credit arrangers. However, it is said that when Grainger first heard her arrangement of his theme played for him, he exclaimed, "Did I write that?" "Most of it," was Derbyshire's reply, according to the tale.

You can start digging on Wikipedia for the rest of her history, including the b&w photo that all the sources use of a stylish young Delia in period hairstyle and hairband and miniskirt expertly synching up a tape loop in the Beeb's sound lab.

This is just amazing stuff.

BTW, her legend appears to be growing, now that her work has made the Proms. Somewhere, someone's evanescence must be smiling.

LJ orig.: Sept. 24, 2008

"It's dark down here ... ."

In darkness are dreams, in dreams are light behind the darkness. If, in the way of our entry into light, we fear the darkness, then we fear the light. And thus we are exposed.

Light is evermore, darkness is in the moment. The moment makes the evermore real, and the real makes the moment happen. In purity, there is light and darkness -- there is no other than other there, except for itself. The exception makes us real, when we experience either darkness within or the light without.

We are each other, and each other are we. The darkness is not the enemy of light. The darkness was first.

Originally posted to LiveJournal on Sept. 4, 2008

Never Can Say Goodbye

Some things you can't forget. Some things you can.

There was that summer I bought two LPs that remain in the former category. What one of them looked like was in the latter.

(Thank you, Wikipedia ... .)

It was a sound I can't forget ... It was an album cover I could. Isaac Hayes recorded The Isaac Hayes Movement with, as was his custom then, only four songs on it, two a side. It was inconceivable then to pay full LP prices for only four songs. But they were renditions of familiar tunes re-arranged as only the masterful Hayes could.
I wasn't familiar with "I Stand Accused," but I soon became that way. I played it (on an old stereo in the back) for the very straight-laced and gracious black man who minded me as I helped him clean the store my father managed back then. He was a gospel musician, but Hayes's version of that song completely tripped him out. Yes, he asked to borrow it. Yes, he kept it a week. And yes, I was glad to be getting it back. But I had to loan it back to him again, and I got it back again, and ... .
The rap (or, really, just a monologue) that starts out the track was a stone mindblower. I felt as though I was violating some cultural taboo (theirs, not ours) by just listening to it. But I did. And it was great -- a slow jam to beat them all.

Wiki says you can get The Issac Hayes Movement now on SACD. You won't regret it.

The other was one my best friend's family (four brothers) played for me, maybe the year or so before. I waited and bought it the same summer The Isaac Hayes Movement came out.

Simply called Led Zeppelin, the stark black-and-white photo was just that -- stark. Yes, I'd heard "Dazed and Confused" "Your Time is Gonna Come" and "Communication Breakdown" on the radio and at my friend's house.

But I wasn't prepared for the rest of it. I still remember gasping at the end of "Black Mountain Side." While it was playing, I guess I had forgotten to breathe. I'm sure the SACD is out there.

Neither album got a lot of spins on the family stereo after that. I'm not sure why. Nor years later, as I lugged my LP collection from dorm to dorm, apartment to apartment, until I got rid of it all by necessity in 1998. Led Zeppelin I went to the guy that paid me for the whole thing.

The Isaac Hayes Movement wasn't in it, though. Yeah, I left it on permanent loan, intentionally.

But I never forgot that sound.

How could I?



Originally posted to LiveJournal on Aug. 12, 2008

"First there is a mountain, then no mountain, then there is ..."

Some time ago (I forget when), I talked about how to use a gold watch to hypnotize someone. You know, the typical scene in old-timey Westerns, when the snake-oil salesman pulls out a gold pocketwatch (the ancestor of wristwatches) and waves it back and forth in front of the farmer, saying "count to ten backwards, then sleep ... sleeep ... sleeeeep."

The farmer's head bobs back and forth as he stares at what he really, really, really wants -- the gold pocketwatch. A little clock he can carry with him into the field, would fit just right in that little pocket there on his overalls, and it's ... gold.

The swaying and the counting backwards do not hypnotize anyone -- they relax a person, instead. What fascinates, then hypnotizes, is the timepiece itself -- that not-so-obscure object of desire. Be it an SLK or an ultraportable, a silk dress or custom shoes, it's what we want that holds our interest. Or so I said, at the time.

I think television's "reality" shows* are today's gold pocketwatches, though.* They fascinate us because we tend to identify with one of the contestants (or more -- you need a backup, right?), there is a desireable prize at the end of the rainb-- er, contest ("a million dollars!), and there are the "twists and turns" getting there that are familiar to us all.

Who gets eliminated? Why, oh, why did they have to vote him or her off? Who will win instead -- oh, who? (twists hands anxiously)

They're harmless fun, at the end -- and that's OK with me. After all, isn't it better to learn from others' mistakes, instead of by making them yourself?

But if the stakes were really real -- if the loser of the week didn't just get "voted off the island" or get their publicity photo burned in effigy, what then? And the game were not played in an arena for entertainment, but on the street -- in earnest?

An "indie" movie a few years back explored that idea with a pregnant woman characterized as the ideal assassin, targeting her fellow contestants. I forget the name, never saw it, but it just occurs to me how far ahead of "reality" it was.

But another wrinkle -- what if it looks like reality, but isn't, but is... ? And someone figures that out -- ahead of the green door.

Originally posted to LiveJournal on July 9, 2008

___
*A commenter at the time objected to some of this post's generalizations and asked me to explain them. Here is what I wrote in reply (peppered with more of those idiotic "emoticons"):

The first reality show I watched from start to finish (and over again) was CBS’s “Survivor” (S1). Every contestant that I was rooting for was “outfoxed” by the evil Richard (I think that was his name). (*gnashes teeth*)
CBS made the decision to air the entire thing in repeat mode (in other words, an expanded “cut” of each episode), starting only a few weeks after the show finished that first season.
It was clear to me (watching the second time in hindsight) that Richard seemed to know what was going to happen before it did. :^ He just had that look on his face. Either Richard was “psychic,” or a really good observer, or … . Yeah, there’s that other possibility, isn’t there? ;)
Since then, I have taken “reality” television with a grain of salt. Actually, more like a shaker full of salt. ;D
BTW, a look at the title of the icon (as Romana I gets the better of The Doctor) may provide a clue to the “deeper level.” (*chortles evilly*)
And I _agree_ with you: the “losing” contestants really _do_ look hurt by their experience. If so, the shows are _not_ so harmless! But these shows appear to be so for the viewing audience, who can watch it all from a comfortable distance.

The LJ icon I was referring to has Mary Tamm grabbing Tom Baker from behind by his scarf. I do not recall the title I gave to it.

One Who Made It (His Own Way)

Just starting a book now, The Ten-Cent Plague, that delves into the Frederic Wertham comic-book scare back in the '50's. The McCarthy-esque flame-up involved televised congressional hearings and everything else. It resulted in the death of EC Comics and the birth of the Comics Code Authority -- an industry self-policing censor.

Some comics creators had their careers go up in smoke (along with their comics). But others forged ahead.
What's new in the book (so far, for me) is the elegant detail in the background narrative -- how the social forces that created the scare also created Crime SuspenStories and other comics EC brought out. The big deal here is not so much that an overweening comics publisher crossed the line and got what it deserved, but that a highly creative company used the means it did to talk about the times surrounding it -- and got burned in the process. Rod Serling (I believe) and many other TV and movie pioneers have cited EC Comics as big inspirations for "The Twilight Zone" and others. That's why people interested in the creative process for popular consumption (like me) are still interested in EC. You can get high-quality reprints now -- not like when I was a comics buyer in the 60's. EC was absolutelyverboten then.

My first comic was the Spiderman Annual #2 (I think), in which the Avengers seek Spiderman's help in tracking down one of its original members -- the Hulk. They offer the Web-slinger membership in the Avengers (with much reservation -- Spidey was an outsider, like the Green Guy, back then), something he declines after finding the Hulk in some alley and seeing him change into Bruce Banner and then back again.

My father was horrified that I'd just wasted 25 cents on a comic book! However, I showed him. Specifically, I showed him a word in a dialogue balloon: "neophyte." That's what Thor called Spiderman when the Avengers first approached him. I promised Dad I would look it up as soon as I got home. I did. It means "newcomer." Stan Lee's script saved the day.

Ten-Cent Plague also lists hundreds of artists and writers who never worked in comics after the Wertham scare. One who isn't on the list was an EC standout: Alex Toth.

Toth (which I believe is pronounced like "oath") was a singularly creative artist, who, with absolute minimal pen-strokes, created vivid scenarios and dramatic characterizations. His architectural approach to telling a story (you have to see one of his pages to grasp what I mean) was unlike anyone else. He claimed as his inspiration Noel Sickles, a comic-strip artist (briefly) whose work is soon to be released in a retrospective volume. But I have a feeling that Toth was largely his own man.

His best work (that I've seen) was in romance comics of the 50's, a section of the Ten-Cent book I haven't gotten to yet. Toth's pages move like a three-camera TV set -- but with the style and grace of a pen-and-ink master. Beginning comics artists would do well to absorb his every lesson (as their predecessors have done) on every page he drew. And he kept at it, long after EC was a memory.

His most famous creation? Space Ghost*. (I loved that Saturday morning TV cartoon -- even in high school!)

___
*Toth is credited with the "design" of Space Ghost on wikipedia.org. 


Originally posted to LiveJournal on June 25, 2008

"I'm Looking Through You, You're Not ... "

The title? Personal thing.

The comic book and jazz are the two purely American art forms. By "American" I also include South and Central.  But, like everything else Vespuccian (sorry), there is no pure distinction. Both art forms are hybrids.

Cartoons are as old as art. The English apparently invented the modern conception of a "cartoon," largely through Punch. (That's my Eurocentric version, anyway). I'm not clear on comic strips: though that form may have been the invention of the creator of "The Yellow Kid," I have a feeling there are Things Similar that came before it.

Anyway, it seems the comic book is ours. And it has emerged from being a way to make money off children into a highly personal art form.

Here's the list (in the order as best I can re-create) of the graphic novels (or whatever) I've checked out from the public library this year that I truly enjoyed:

The Sandman: Endless Nights*
The Originals
V for Vendetta
The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S.
Perla La Loca
Sloth*
The Best American Comics 2007
100 Bullets: First Shot, Last Call
David Boring
The Shooting War
Trailers
Fun Home*
Fortune and Glory
Postcards
Caricature
The Rabbi's Cat
Life in a Jugular Vein
The Rabbi's Cat II*
The Education of Hopey Glass
We Are On Our Own*
Ice Haven
Alias The Cat*
La Perdida*
Super Spy*

All are excellent. I've put an asterisk (*) beside the ones I found beyond excellent. You can see I've been on a roll lately, hence this post. (Again, forget the title. It's personal.)

These seem ideal for public libraries, because I personally doubt I'd buy any off the bat except "Endless Nights" from a bookstore (assuming I had any money, that is), or that I'd even pull them off the shelf for a look. But they are perfect for checkout. And all so very nuanced and personal, I doubt they even belong in a comics shop.

I've posted before about some commercial comics I really like, but I've ignored mentioning the (true) independents -- largely because they often start in serial form (fancy term for comic strip) in 'zines, or other small-press publications. I know no outlet for 'zines available to me, nor have I ever considered them for purchase when I did have one (or two) available.

I checked out some other "graphic novels" from the library during this period, but they are not worth mentioning. In this form of comic, the stories and art either work brilliantly, or they don't work at all. A few of the "unmentionables" are earlier works of creators in the above list, even the asterisked ones. (That's why I don't even consider buying 'zines -- my loss, maybe, but ... .)

If you're open to being played (once and a while, anyway), it just means you're still alive. It's the players who are dead (to themselves -- otherwise, why would they play anybody?). What you have to remember is the old line, "fool me once, ... ."

Another one is an exit line from that great modern philosopher, Horatio Caine: "That's the problem with manipulating people: they can turn on you."

Yeah, that was the personal part.


Originally posted to LiveJournal on June 17, 2008

Ozzy Came Later ...

You got two (halves) for the price of one ...

(Read more ...)


And it was called Tales of Suspense. As I've mentioned before, Marvel Comics had to limit its titles (thanks to a distribution deal with DC), and ended up publishing several "twofer" comics in the early 60's.

The Wertham scare the '50s and the Comics Code Authority that followed it left Marvel publishing a lot of "monster" comics, as they were known. Mainly sci-fi morality tales, they foreshadowed the kinds of stories we view weekly on TV now (especially the old X-files -- in movie houses near you soon, I hear). They also may have influenced early TV, like The Twilight Zone, but I'm not sure about that.

Marvel decided to re-enter the super-hero market in the early 60s. That's why the Fantastic Four origin story had its roots in the kind of sci-fi Marvel was publishing already. Spider-Man's origin also had a sci-fi angle, as did the Hulk. You may recall that it's The Amazing Spiderman, taken from the Amazing Fantasy title Spidey first appeared in, and then replaced with his second appearance.

What made Marvel so different was that all its super-heroes had their own Achilles' heels to deal with. What made Marvel so doubly different was that sometimes an Achilles' heel was psychological, rather than physical. In fact, that was the rule, rather than the exception.

There was one exception to that exceptional rule: Iron Man.

My offhand research (ain't tabbed browsing wonderful!) tells me that Iron Man took over Tales of Suspense in the early 60s, but was joined by Captain America (a Marvel property held over from the 1940s) in 1964. The two were in a story together, then they appeared in their own story lines after that. Half the comic was Iron Man, the other Cap. (Also true of Nick Fury/Doc Strange and Hulk/Sub-Mariner.)

It was pretty much my favorite comic when I was that age, (as posted before) by default. Gene Colan's colorful Iron Man was nonetheless dark and dramatic, and nothing could match the way Jack Kirby illustrated the adventures of Captain America. Sometimes, these heroes actually lost battles, as did other Marvel heroes, but Iron Man and Cap somehow overcame heavier obstacles than their heroic counterparts to win the day.

While Cap's Achilles heel was time-based (a resurrected super-soldier from WW 2), Iron Man's was physical. His real-life persona, Tony Stark, had a bad heart -- so bad that he couldn't live long without donning the Iron Man suit at least once a day. Though Stark was a multi-millionaire, his mortality was ever before him. While being Iron Man hurt his social life, always knowing he was a heartbeat away from Forever destroyed it. And he felt conflicted over that -- so Stan Lee and Co. got the psychological Achilles' heel in there, anyway.

I really looked forward to seeing Tales of Suspense every month back then, when summer vacation had meaning. I still remember the walks back home, comic in a slim paper bag, from the only bookstore in town those days, and I recall them with immense nostalgia (just about the only nostalgia I have for my adolescence).

I set comics aside as I grew older (again, as posted earlier), but when I heard the opening lines to Black Sabbath's first great hit song, the high I felt was immediate.



LJ orig.: April 29, 2008