Comedy Is Not Pretty

…but it is undeniably subjective; how, for instance, can so many people find Kathy Griffin so hilarious when her latest DVD is, for me, as (almost) promised in the title, a death of a thousand cuts? This conundrum, and a fond remembrance of New York politician Mario Procaccino, in this week’s column.

The Thin End Of The Wedge

The below having been said: When I first read Watchmen, I remember wishing desperately that the comic-within-a-comic, Tales of the Black Freighter, were a real thing, and that an anthology title by diverse writers and artists—a one-shot omnibus or a miniseries—might be a worthwhile project. Some of the stories might expand on the sluglines that Moore provides in the metafictional material within Watchmen itself, while others would be originals in the same vein.

And, you know, done right, it’d be something like Dark Horse’s Escapist comics, which riff on Michael Chabon’s novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay—respectful, paying tribute not only to the original creators but to the works that inspired them. And you know, maybe if DC were to put together such a project today, if I were by some fluke offered the opportunity to participate, well, I suppose I could think about it…

AND WITH A RUSH AND A PUSH DAN DiDIO HAS COME TO CLAIM MY SOUL

"Nothing Ends, Adrian. Nothing Ever Ends."

Oh you have GOT to be fucking SHITTING me

Blind But Now I See

Sometimes we get religion; sometimes religion gets us. And sometimes it happens to the most unlikely people. Another weird tale from the casefiles of How Bad Can It Be?

Never Tell Anybody Anything

And now the Magazine Man will never get the chance to use that phone number.

Peace Sells (But Who's Buying?)

How Bad Can It Be? returns, brand new for 2010, with a critical takedown of a most unusual radio play. Sing it, girls!

The column was on hiatus through December and part of November, while I banked my fires, tended to some offline business, and played a lot of Rock Band. Some pieces you may have missed wot had my name on ‘em, since last we spoke:

• The kids get in on the act, as Sam helps me create a column


• In which I expose Michael Bublé as an evil death robot from the future


• Fatties fall down for your guilty viewing pleasure


• A consideration of the Great Swing Scare of the 90s


• The movie of the anime of the book of the manga of the trading-card game


• and an epic two-part shot at Dan Brown and his pernicious New Age woo-woo physics

(Man, there’s nothing that goes stale faster than piping-hot cultural criticism, is there? From this remove, it’s hard to believe that anybody ever gave two shits about Dan Brown and his book. Ah, those were more innocent times, those heady days of, oh, three months ago.)

Also a freestanding piece on the terrifying music of Mr. John Cale for Hallowe’en, and contributions to the Popdose Army’s decade-end roundups of film, albums, and songs.

Had a couple pieces in the new, improved Saturday Evening Post, too, including a personal reminiscence that I hope marks the last time I’ll have to tell the tale, and a cover story that’s garnered me some hate mail from the wingnut right, so I know I must be doing a good job.

So hey. How you doin’?

Dese Dem ‘Dose

This week reviewing One Eskimo, who are either the poor man’s Dido or the gaspingly-impoverished man Gorillaz, depending on your perspective. Follow link to see how that makes sense

Last week I had a whack at Delgo, which … man. Not every box-office flop is actually a bad movie; not every bad movie is actually poorly made; not every poorly-made movie is actually ugly; and not every underperforming, terrible, poorly-made, ugly movie is actually morally-offensive. But Delgo, man, Delgo … that name looks like a line of command code, doesn’t it? DEL + GO. If I could GO back in time and DEL this movie from existence, I would.

Also last week: You may have noticed that some li’l band called the Beatles were getting a lot of ink and pixels last Wednesday. In case you missed it, seven or eight of us at Popdose did a tag-team review of all fourteen remasters, our takes on individual records all stitched together into one massive meta-feature. I was and remain ridiculously pleased with how the final article came out; we didn’t consult with each other on our individual pieces, but the handoffs and flow are wonderfully smooth and the piece seems to speak with a unified voice, albeit one that encompasses many viewpoints. I had a great time being part of it. As I told the ‘dose crew in an e-mail, this is the best band I’ve ever been in, and this was a particularly hot night. Check it if you can.

Marking Years On The Severance Clock, Lovers Piled In The Shadows Like Soiled Socks

(Cf.)

…if, of course, by “mid-July” we mean “early September,” and by “normal service” we mean, well, this.

So what have I been up to? Oh, the usual. I’ve been reading a few books, making some mixtapes, listening to records new and old, watching a couple of movies, most of them terrible. I lost a toenail, and a tooth. I travelled, and I came back. I wrote for profit, and I wrote for fun, and sometimes it was the same thing. I got my thumb smashed by a baseball, but it got better. I tore the muffler off my car with my bare hands, and nearly left it by the side of the road on the way to the State Fair. I talked to constitutional scholars, to preachers, to truck drivers. I told my troubles to strangers, and listened to the complaints of people I do not know, and sometimes money changed hands. I worked nights, and slept too late in the mornings, and wandered around groggy and useless during the days; when I was writing for money, there were stretches when I hardly slept at all. I got sozzled on cheap beer at a minor league ballpark, and ate fried Oreos on the fairgrounds. I watched in awe as fireworks bloomed endlessly over the city skyline like it was the liberation of Paris. I got some bad news, and made some bad decisions—and quite a few good ones. A few times I lost my temper, and several times I thought I was going to lose my lunch. But I rediscovered optimism, and remembered love, and got through with little permanent damage but the wounds of Time, which kill us all in the end and so are hardly worth worrying over.

I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Going Blank Again

Blog, already updated only with laughable infrequency of late, will fall silent for the next ten days or so. The occasional piece will still run at Popdose in the interim, though, so keep an eye on the front page.

And if you’re traveling this Summer, I’ve got a gift for you—the modestly-titled Ultimate Roadtrip Mixtape, four hours of musical goodness curated by yours truly; the zipfile includes printable artwork for those who like CDs.

The irony, of course, is that we ourselves will be taking our big Summer trip by airplane, and will thus miss out on the experience of listening to this mix loudly as the prairie states roll by the station wagon window. We’re counting on you to enjoy it on out behalfs. Don’t let us down.

(And if you do like it, talk it up, would you? Link it, blog it, tweet it, digg it. Find it del.icio.us. Whatever. I busted my hump on this little DJ project; I’m pretty pleased with the result, and I think that more folks than just me and my 25 bestest buds might groove on it. It’ll be up for a couple of weeks at least, so spread the word.)

Normal service, as they say, will resume in mid-July. God bless you and keep you; try not to die while I’m gone.

You Just Want To Be Starting Somethin’

Late column this week, pushed back to 6:00 PM EST ny Popdose’s rolling coverage of l’affaire Jackson. It’s a connoisseur’s choice this time around—a selection of fightstarters: the empty provocations with which I’ve been stinkin’ up the Internet for nigh on these ten years, now.

Last week’s column was apparently a bit of a fightstarter itself, prompting as it did a heated e-mail from Atoosa’s husband to my editor, conveying in no uncertain terms how upset and angry she and he were over my tone and tactics. The only logical follow-up, of course, is to ask them for an interview.

I have my thoughts and opinions on the passing of Michael Jackson, of course; but I do not need to share them with you just now. You’re probably better off for that, to be honest.

Sick So Sick

No column this week, and not much productivity period, and in fact I’ve been not much fun and quite probably a misery to live with, on account of horrendous lingering somethingorother diagnosed only yesterday, nineteen days into the ordeal, as probably bronchitis. Constant wet cough, exhaustion, lingering fever, listlessness, disorientation; seriously, it’s been a shitty couple of weeks and I’ve been getting nothing done at a time when I desperately, so desperately need to be at the top of all of my various games.

So yeah, I’m sick, and I kinda suck. But I’m taking big ol’ horse-pills twice a day—the kind with an on-bottle pictogram that apparently advises you to only take each pill if it is accompanied by a delicious submarine sammich—and that should cure one condition, at least. In any case, I only hope I don’t require a second course of antibiotics. The price of the pills is largely subsidized by our health plan, but those five-dollar footlongs really add up OH TELL ME YOU DIDN’T SEE THAT ONE COMING.

When Transhumanism Is Your Gig, Just Having Human Feelings Is A Sell-Out

Marilyn Manson sits in his home studio with a glass of absinthe by his side, strumming an acoustic guitar and singing about a girl he once hurt. Now, Marilyn’s from Transylvania, where you are required by law to eat puppies for breakfast, so usually his confession of casual cruelty would be an occasion for pride, a signifier of his bad-ass beyond-good-and-evil übermensch status. But today, as he sings the painful lines, he feels something wet sliding down his face—and to his horror, it’s not blood.

From across the room, his nineteen-year-old fuckpuppet looks up from her Japanese torture porn to gaze at him, questioningly. “New contact lenses,” he mutters, and indeed, the pair he’s wearing today give him the appearance of hosting parasitic fetal aliens in his vitreous humours. “Totally gonna freak the mundanes when they get a load of these,” he drawls, and dabs his eyes. She nods, and returns to her reading. Marilyn Manson goes back to work, thinking he’s kept his secret for another day.

And across the room, the girl wonders: wonders what happened to the leather-tongued cockgoblin she fell in love with; wonders just who is this sensitive artist sitting in his place; wonders how on earth she’s going to tell him. Because it’s time, now. It’s time to tell him.

A cautionary tale, this week, from the case files of How Bad Can It Be?

I had to hold myself back from going on a tangent about divorce albums, in this piece. I would argue that Shoot Out the Lights still counts, even though it was completed while the marriage was still operational, if not actually functional. Phil Collins’s first disc, Face Value, is another one, and not coincidentally it’s the best of his solo work. What are some other classics of the genre?

He Was Not, However, Wearing A Little Hat

Just saw, through my window, a blackbird jam his head into the ground and withdraw it, reeling a worm out of the earth with his beak, the worm stretching before giving way and popping from his hole with a nigh-audible twang. I’ve always known that such things happen, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen it, except in cartoons.

Has Time Rewritten Every Line?

Keen-eyed readers will note a couple of typographical errors in this week’s column, along with a few instances of questionable punctuation, a dodgy standard of grammar, and occurrence of the phrase “Anthony Newley with a vagina,” which probably could have used a re-think. (There was also a minor HTML screw-up, which—though invisible to the general reader—surely gave my editors at Popdose cause for disappointment.)

Now, it’s true that I wrote most of this one while running a 101° temp. That doesn’t excuse the damage, though it may account, in part, for the tone. But despite the loopy, semi-detached fever vibe, I’ll be honest with you—this one was a slog, and it hurt me some.

Idylls Of The King

A notorious commercial flop upon release, alternately adored and reviled by fans; an object lesson in the perils of excessive reverence; an everyday tale of a bright-red T. Rex and his fuzzy monkeyboy sidekick. Plus meditations on the problem of influence and the necessity of managing expectations (and a spiffy new banner), all wrapped around a critical reappraisal of Jack Kirby’s mind-croggling 70s opus, Devil Dinosaur. Hey, how bad can it be?

So what’s your favorite Kirby? Self-conscious artist Kirby, or get-‘em-out-by-Friday, give-the-people-what-they-want Kirby?

Just A Fiend For That Bean Of Caffeine

Man, I shouldn’t have drunk those six cups of coffee. It seemed like a good idea at the time, though. In fact, it seemed like the only idea at the time.

Dancing On A Pinhead

Hello, precious Internet friends. How’ve you been?

It’s been a curious and action-packed couple of weeks for us, and I’ll happily provide details—with photos and everything!—once I’ve written my way out of this hole in which I seem to find myself.

In the meantime, have a column. In fact, have two. In the first—in case you missed it last week, circumstances rendering me unable to flog it as usual—we confront the existential horror that is Hannah Montana; in the latest, we thank Satan for the utter lack of self-awareness and humor that make Heavy Metal the most mockable of genres. Honestly, if Ronnie James Dio gave any sign of knowing just how ridiculous he looks, I’d be looking elsewhere for column-fodder.

This column also gave me an excuse for a link and a shout-out to the always-worthwhile Andrew Weiss, whose Armagideon Time blog is truly a gift that keeps on giving, day in, day out. That’s the best part of any writing gig—the opportunity to hype people who deserve it.

Hots On For Nowhere

Once again the cool kids at Popdose have turned over to me the reins of the Friday Mixtape, a collection of MP3s for your weekend amusement. (Told you it was busy week for me there.)

The perceptive listener may note that this playlist is based around a theme that is never stated explicitly—a seeming absence, an invisible center that yet exerts pressure in all directions, defining the shape of the material surrounding it. Rather like the gas a balloon. Or in, y’know, a dirigible.

Play it loud, baby.

Alas, No Sheryl Crow Joke

This week How Bad Can It Be? looks at the intriguing (if horribly-betitled) Fox TV series Lie To Me, in a column with everything: Hollywood plagiarism, weird behavioral science, comics theory, remedial anatomy & physiology, terrible titles, HAWTT LIVE THESPIANS, and Johnny. Fucking. Cash.

Seriously, Lie To Me is the worst title on TV. Can you think of a better one? Of course you can. Come on over to the comments and let’s hear it.)

It Wouldn’t Take A Genius To Work Out What The Scene Is

It’s a busy week at Popdose, is what it is—kicking off today with an appreciation of Kirsty MacColl’s 1989 album Kite.

I’ll tell you, after the regular snarkfest of How Bad Can It Be?, it’s a relief, a palate cleanser to write the occasional Popdose Flashback piece—to be achingly, even embarrassingly sincere for a change, to write at length about something I love, something that’s meant a lot to me, something about which I’ve had twenty years to form a considered opinion. Of course, given that it’s Kirsty MacColl we’re talking about, unvarnished truth straight from the heart is no less than she deserves.