From a 1921 advertisement for the Willys-Overland Sedan, a self-proclaimed "Woman's Car": ...at which point Helen was forcibly dragged from her car by a couple of Alexander Mitchell Palmer's agents, tortured, and sentenced without hearing under the Anarchist Exclusion Act of 1918. Despite being born in Cedar Rapids, Helen was then deported to the Soviet Union, where she died of starvation during Comrade Stalin's "Glorious People's Economic Plan to Kill a Whole Bunch of People" a year later. Chumbawamba - The Good Ship Lifestyle (from [...]
What's this you say? You're running low on nightmare fuel? No problem, I've got something that should carry you until the next service station of unquiet dreams... Don't worry about returning the favor, friend. It's the least I could do. Naz Nomad & The Nightmares - I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night) (from Give Daddy the Knife, Cindy , 1984) - In which The Damned's garage-rockin' alter egos barnstorm through the Electric Prunes' psychedelic classic from 1966. [...]
Mr. Tawny never told me he had a sister.... (from Tiger Girl #1, September 1968) The Tigermen - Tiger Girl (from a 1965 single) - One 1960s obscurity deserves another, so I'm following up my tribute to a forgotten Gold Key superheroine with a garage rock rarity out of upstate New York. ( Fear his mighty roar!)
I took a stoll over to Wheately Hall yesterday afternoon to see if the vending machines in the lobby had a better selection than the ones closer to my office had. Trapped between the double doors at the entrance to the building was a representative example of a certain breed of freshman which flocks to the campus at the start of every semester. Dressed to the nines in the latest "hot" celebrity fashions, they look like they're headed out for a night of high-cover charge clubbing rather than a rousing 8:30 AM session of English 101. For them, [...]
One of my strongest childhood memories is of my mother relating a bit of family folklore to me. It concerned some great-great-relation of her father's side of the family, a stoically creepy bunch of Old Yankees from Maine's Androscoggin County. This particular relative worked in a lumber mill, and during the course of his duties got his arm stuck in the machinery. As his friends tried in vain to find the best way to extricate the ruined limb from the works, my laterally-thinking ancestor came up with an easy solution -- power up the machinery and let it take the [...]
When I was stuck at my grandma's house a couple weeks back, I unearthed my well-worn copy of the 4th edition of the Trouser Press Record Guide . It was published in 1991, just before the alternative rock scene went mainstream. In those days before information on obscure indie and punk bands was a mere Google search away, the Guide was an invaluable resource when it came to deciding which albums and artists to keep an eye out for at the local record shops. There was a time (back when I rode the Christian Herter [...]
While it may have been perfectly fine in 1950 to create a gag strip featuring an aspiring hammy actor named "Whitey Way" (as in "The Great White Way"), the name carries a whole truckload of non-Broadway connotations for present-day readers... The Heart Throbs - Kiss Me When I'm Starving (from Cleopatra Grip , 1990) - The pillars of the speculation-based economy may be crumbling around us, but my love for melancholic indie pop remains forever solvent...especially when the piece in question sounds like a jam session between The Banshees and [...]
Pay attention, cats and kittens, because I'm only going to go through this once. This is how Miss Melody Lane... ENUNCIATES PARKS HER ASS EXERCISES FREESTYLES LANDS A COVETED ROLE [...]
My media micronation expanded today with the launch of pronounced WOO-BIN , a blog created to bring the majesty of the Boston accent to the starving masses. So if your morbidly curious or just want to put a voice behind my words, check it out. Or don't. I'm not pushy. In any case, I'm commemorating the event with this track, in which Boston's neurotic new wave legends do their take on a 1966 Detroit soul classic by The Capitols... Human Sexual Response - Cool Jerk [...]
With all the hoopla regarding the circus of pain and stupidity known as the 2008 presidential election, it's easy to forget that there are other electoral contests being held this November 4. With that in mind, the two candidates for the state representative seat in my little corner of Boston's northwestern suburban sprawl have been packing my mailbox to the brim with reminders of what's really at stake. The answer is "not that much." It's a symptom of the problems of living in a de facto one-party state. Not that I'd ever vote Republican, [...]
There a right way and a wrong way to woo Jonni Thunder. That would be the wrong way. Ever wonder how Moonlighting would have turned out if Maddie had a pet rabbit and power to electrocute people with her touch? Well look no further than Jonni Thunder, a.k.a. Thunderbolt #4 (August 1985; by Roy & Dann Thomas and Dick Giordano). Stilted references to Raymond Chandler's works, the cutting edge of [...]
Forget the O'Neill/Adams run. Forget the Englehart/Rogers stories. Forget the issue when the Caped Crusader tossed a car battery at a thug . Here is the greatest Batman story ever told -- a public service announcement from late 1949: "Holy Spygate, Batman!" "Quick, old chum, dispense the Bat-Race Riot Supression Spray!" "I speak for the majority , twerp! [...]
"When you get older, you'll understand." So speaks the purported voice of "realism" when cautioning on the pitfalls of youthful idealism. The underlying message is that once one has "bought in" or "sold out" or however one wants wants to spin it, logic dictates that hungry radicalism must give way to a defensive stance. Lock the doors, man the barricades, and beware the ravenous hordes that covet your treasures. The rousing, yet polite debate in the comments of the Crass post from the other day got me to thinking about politics, specifically where I stand on [...]
He came to us on a brisk October afternoon in 1951. His arrival was heralded by the hum of servo motors and the intoxicating scents of ozone and machine oil. His name was Timmy Tinkle, he was a robot, and he needed a job. He was created in the laboratory of Professor Derook, but wanted to leave his surrogate father's shadow and blaze his own path. Mr. Morris found Timmy a position in the WHIZ-TV warehouse, and he soon proved himself to [...]
This poster, hung over the foot of my bed, is what I woke up to every morning for the better part of a decade. It's the backside of the poster-sized cover to The Feeding of the 5000 , Crass's 1978 debut. As I've mentioned in previous installments of this series, I came into punk rock at a time when the scene was at a low ebb, reduced to isolated individuals and small knots of like-minded enthusiasts. Historical documentation and available material was thin on the ground. Occasionally one might come across some second-hand books or [...]
A couple of Fridays back, the wife and I had to make a trip to scenic North Reading on feral cat business. As we were already in Burlington on another errand, I decided to bypass the forbidden zone that is the I-93/I-95 interchange and take the back way, which involved heading down Cambridge Road (not "Street") towards the Billerica line then turning onto Route 62's serpentine path to glory. It had been a while since I'd been down that way, and I was astonished to find that so little had changed in the past twenty years. The development [...]
Setting the mood, the Mekton II way... ...and if they don't, then they really need to. Or if that's too unorthodox a concept to countenance, perhaps you could stretch the boundaries laterally, and gird your loins for dice-and-tables mecha combat with the stirring sounds of "Danny's Song" or the theme to Footloose . Michael McDonald's discography also makes excellent music to swing double photon sabers to. Me First & The Gimme Gimmes - Danny's Song (from [...]
The irrefutable shame-based ontology of Josie McCoy, as applied to the question of burps and invisible dogs: Fig. 1: Burps are invisible. Fig. 2: Burps exist. Fig. 3: Visual evidence is not the sole criteria for determining the existence of a given phenomena. Fig. 4: Therefore, invisible dogs [...]
My wife and her friend were browsing the stacks at the local chain bookstore when they came across this fine work of high literature... I realize that there is a detailed science behind romance novel cover design. In a genre based on disposability and formula, marketing is everything and the ideal state exists between the comfortable familiarity and enticing difference. Call it the "impulse purchase zone." The intent behind the cover to Midnight Treats is fairly obvious -- the promise of softcore titillation. The couple posed [...]
If the recent events in the Twin Cities have had a certain mephitic familiarity to them, well.... They aren't without precedent. Oh, I'm sorry. Was that offsides? Too fucking bad. Yes, the G.O.P. hasn't advocated the liquidation of undesirables...openly, but that doesn't mean that there aren't other parallels. Claiming a monopoly on patriotism and love of country? Check. Demonizing the opposition as traitors? Check. Claiming alliance with the clean-leaving regular folks against the decadent elites? Check. Stressing ignorance [...]
Armagideon Time
Bison - Quill
Neutral Milk Hotel- Aeroplane Over the Sea
Mr Fogg - Eleven
Crocodiles - Endless Flowers
