Pop Culture Gadabout

Pop Culture Gadabout

( 7/09/2009 11:15:00 AM ) Bill S.

SMART GIRLS AND THE DEMONS WHO PURSUE 'EM Misao Harada, the blond heroine of Kanoko Sakurakoji's shojo manga Black Bird (Viz Media), is suffering the pangs of teenhood in a unique way. Gifted with the ability to see invisible creatures blocked from the rest of us ("The world is full of bizarre things," she says early in the first volume of this fantasy romance, "but the average person can't see them."), Misao finds these invisible pests increasing as she approaches her sixteenth birthday. They harass and trip her as she attempts to walk down the halls at school, interfering with her personal life and giving her a reputation as a weirdo among her classmates.

With her birthday, Misao's connection to the invisible world of sprites and demons becomes even more dangerous. Turns out she's a significant figure in the world of demons: "Once every hundred years, a human like you is born," she's told. If a demon drinks her blood, s/he is granted long life; if it eats her flesh, it's granted eternal youth; and, if the demon marries her, his clan will prosper. They "want to eat you or ravish you," her returning childhood friend Kyo tells her -- a definite dating dilemma.

Whether Misao can trust her onetime childhood companion is a whole other question. Though she has vaguely positive memories of her early years with Kyo, they may not be wholly innocent ones, since Kyo himself is a tengu, a bird demon capable of growing large black wings and flying. As children, Kyo promised our heroine that they would always be together, but was this promise made out of love or ambition? Misao can't be sure, though the tengu does prove a handy protector more than once now that other demons have started honing in on her.

Still, the fact remains that Kyo's demon nature is reflected more than once in the series' first volume. A bit of a bully, he enjoys making his boyish demon servant Taro cry and is not always the most chivalrous in his interactions with Misao. At one point, for instance, after he's reassured the girl that he doesn't intend to eat her, he grabs her breasts and adds, "But these are certainly ripe enough." Classy guy.

The maiden who's in love with a brute has been a romance fiction staple since before Catherine fell for her childhood pal Heathcliff, though after reading this and the first VizBig Edition of Hot Gimmick, I have to wonder about the prevalence of domineering men in shojo series like this. The relationship between Misao and Kyo -- at least in the first volume -- is decidedly unequal. When he comes back into her life after being away ten years, for instance, it's as a teacher in her school. Sakurakoji skirts around the question of his actual age, though when we see the two in flashback, they both appear about the same age. Perhaps demons age differently than humans?

Misao, to her credit, proves no girly doormat. Though "fated to suffer" and regularly bloodied by the increasing demon attacks, she refuses to immediately turn to Kyo for protection. She steadfastly continues to look toward her human classmates for a more normal kind of companionship, though she's regularly thwarted here since all the students who are attracted to her either turn out to be demons themselves or possessed by demons. As with the high school years of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, the manga series uses the supernatural world as a jumping off point for considering the trials of adolescent romance. While Sakurakoji shows a sense of humor about her storytelling in the side notes included within each chapter, she doesn't wink over much in her panels.

There's also an erotic underpinning to this "Older Teen" rated work that's rather surprising. Though Misao is regularly scratched, slashed and bitten in the book, her wounds can be healed by having a demon lick them. The manga lingers over these moments as the impossibly beautiful Kyo (first time she spies him as an adult, Misao thinks he's a girl) medicinally tongues her flesh. When our heroine is scratched on the thigh by an eyeless child demon, Kyo refuses to go down there. "I'm sorry," he says, "I don't have the confidence that I can restrain myself." Okay, so maybe he can occasionally be a classy guy.

While its storyline possesses a dark, almost sadistic undertone, Black Bird's art is light and airy in the familiar shojo style, filled with floral, feather and twinkling background motifs. "I apologize to those who bought this book expecting thrills and chills," the author of the Kabuki theatre set romance Backstage Prince notes, "(of course there probably aren't too many who did)." Those readers coming to the series for a lovingly rendered, lightly twisted older teen romance, however, most likely won't feel cheated.

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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( 7/08/2009 07:20:00 AM ) Bill S.

MIDWEEK MUSIC VID: Here's Kim Gordon and the rest of Sonic Youth meditating on what it's "like to be a girl in a band." (From the new SY album.)

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( 7/07/2009 08:45:00 AM ) Bill S.

KEEPIN' BUSY: Just posted a Blogcritics Newsflash pertaining to VIZ Media's just announced accelerated publication schedule for its One Piece series. Me, I have to wonder whether the company isn't pushing things with this five-books-a-month six-month binge, but, then, I currently don't have that level of disposable income, do I?

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( 7/04/2009 01:29:00 PM ) Bill S.

WEEKEND PET PIC: Here's Savannah Cat, looking a bit taken off guard in the living room.

THE USUAL NOTE: For more cool pics of companion animals, please check out Modulator's "Friday Ark."

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( 7/04/2009 07:43:00 AM ) Bill S.

'THE SEA IN TOKYO IS KINDA LIKE A BROKEN TOY." The first series to be featured on Viz Media's new IKKI online magazine, Daisuke Igarashi's Children of the Sea is a lovingly rendered, frequently contemplative look at "the path that connects the sea to space." Rated for "Older Teen" readers, the story centers on a young girl named Ruka -- and two mysterious boys who were raised in the ocean by dugongs. Both boys, Umi and Sora, have swum to Tokyo following the lights and sounds that seem to be accompanying the unexplained, large-scale disappearance of deep-sea marine life.

Monitored by workers at Enokura Aquarium -- Ruka's father Azumi and a tattooed wave rider named Jim Cusack, in particular -- the two boys spent their first years living "exclusively in the ocean." As a result, they need to periodically return to the sea for their own well-being. "If we don't keep cooling down with water," Uma, the younger of the two tells Ruka, "we get really hot, like we're burnt."

They also appear to be on a similar wavelength as our headstrong young heroine. ("Whenever things get tight, she starts playing rough," a handball coach says during an early character-establishing scene.) Ruka has been repeatedly drawn to the aquarium ever since she saw a "ghost" in the water as a child. "You smell like someone who sees and thinks the same things we do," empathetic Umi says. Ruka's "ghost" was a glowing sea creature that she witnessed vanishing from the aquarium tank as a harbinger of events to come. "Come to think of it," the adult Ruka recalls as she opens the story, "that may have been the beginning of everything."

Igarashi evocatively blends this sci-fi mystery with crisp (if occasionally familiar) characterization and a beautifully attuned sense for nature large and small. The big draw here, at least in Children of the Sea's opening volume, resides in its art, which at times recalls both manga/anime master Hayao Miyazaki and southwest underground comix artist Jack Jackson. It's particularly marvelous during the underwater scenes -- as when Umi and Sora take our heroine out snorkeling and she finds herself surrounded by schools of inexplicably glowing fish. They look like stars, and though we're not told why this is in the series' opening eight chapters, Ruka's opening statement about the pathway 'tween the ocean and sky would seem to hold the key. More than once Ruka and the boys compare the act of swimming to flying; for most of us heavy humans, after all, floating in the water is the closest that we get to weightlessness.

Viz is presently running Children of the Sea in online installments with the first print volume collecting chapters one through eight scheduled for a mid-July release on its Viz Signature line. To my eyes, the paper version is superior to the online edition -- the 6-by-8-1/2" book format makes it easier for the reader to luxuriate in Igarashi's art, while the monitor version proves especially unfriendly to two-page spreads. The online version is the place to start, but I'm thinking that a lot of manga fans will want a copy of this for their home shelves. Judging from the first volume of this atmospheric sci-fi tale, Children of the Sea will make a strong addition to anyone's well-kept manga library -- an undersea companion to Yukimura's Planetes, perhaps.

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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( 7/02/2009 10:05:00 AM ) Bill S.

THE GOLDEN CARP: Last year, as a part of its "Big Read" project, the NEA presented Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima as its recommended work. In my area, copies of the novel were given away in several scheduled book events throughout the last four months of 2008, all as a part of the Big Read's program to encourage reading in our country. The novel's selection was not without its controversy, at least within the heavily religious communities of Safford and Thatcher, AZ. At public issue were the book's occasional profanities and a scene where the book's seven-year-old narrator Antonio Márez spies on one of his brothers in a whorehouse, though I suspect that many of the loudest critics had a different agenda in condemning Anaya's novel.

Ultima is set in WWII Era rural New Mexico: as such, it makes an intriguing companion piece to Richard Bradford's Red Sky at Morning, though where Bradford made his hero a transplanted southern white boy, Anaya's Antonio grows up in a bi-lingual Chicano home with a strong Catholic heritage. While both novels excel at portraying the workings of their young boys' minds and contain some very funny scenes centered on their school and friends, Antonio's story ultimately proves darker and occasionally frightening.

The Ultima of the title is an elderly herbal healer who is staying with Antonio's family. Though many in the area -- most particularly, a vicious thug named Tenorio -- believe her to be a bruja, in practice we see that she's a benevolent figure, a curandera or healer. Still, her presence in the Márez home proves a lightning rod for Tenorio, who attempts to kill Ultima and our hero in the book. During the first attempt, an owl that we're told is connected to Ultima's spirit blinds Tenoria in one eye.

The presence of the monstrous Tenorio in the town -- coupled with the fact that he's able to brazenly get away with dark deeds that seemingly go unpunished -- spurs the young Antonio into asking one of faith's big questions: if there's a God, why does he allow horrid things to happen? One of the strengths of Anaya's story rests in the way he captures both Mexican Catholic and Southwestern Indian religious traditions and depicts how these might commingle in a young boys' mind. Representing the latter is a local legend, the Golden Carp, who resides in a nearby river.

While Antonio's mother harbors dreams of him eventually becoming a priest, the boy finds himself just as attracted to the nature-driven aspects of the region's Pueblo-based religions as he does the Virgin Mary. This is captured in the book through a series of dreams where the two religious symbols, Virgin Mother and Big Fish, are given equal voice. By the end of the novel, our young narrator has begun to work toward reconciling these two religious beliefs, toward blending them into a personalized spirituality.

It's this aspect of the book, more than its occasional real-life English and Spanish obscenities, which made the book a target in my neck of Arizona, I suspect. Graham County is a largely religiously conservative area with a strong LDS population and a goodly amount of evangelically driven churches. The core theme of Bless Me, Ultima -- that affords similar weight to Christian and non-Christian religions -- is not one that sits well with the Harry Potter Is Evil bunch. Though the curandera Ultima takes great pains never to counter Antonio's very Catholic mother's take on things, her existence as a force for good in the community stands as a symbol of a different cosmology. For many hard-core religionists, even the suggestion that there might be more than One Way is reason enough to try to get this beautifully written and engaging story pulled off school library shelves.

Me, I'm glad the controversy pushed the novel into the public dialog enough to nudge me into picking up one of the Big Read's free paperbacks and ultimately digging into it. Though it doesn't always work this way, the alarmists got me reading a pretty damn good book.

Labels: cultural commentary

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( 7/01/2009 05:56:00 AM ) Bill S.

MIDWEEK MUSIC VID: Looking up the artists behind Miss Don't Touch Me on the 'net, I somehow wound up on this animated French YouTube video which tickles my fancy. (Should probably put an NSFW here.)

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( 6/30/2009 09:38:00 AM ) Bill S.

"BECAUSE GROWNUPS THINK IT'S FUNNY TO BE SCARED." There's a telling moment in the opening credits to Friday the 13th: Part VI -- Jason Lives. We've already seen Jason Voorhees improbably resurrected from his grave by two bolts of lightning, even though we were told in the previous installment that the guy had been cremated. What follows after Jason makes quick work of the disposable companion of would-be monster killer Tommy Jarvis gives a clue as to what writer/director Tim McLoughlin is up to. A visual parody of the James Bond opener with our masked anti-hero tossing a machete at the viewer instead of firing his berretta, it signals that this particular none-too-scary entry is gonna have a whole lotta winking in it.

And so it does. Despite a body count that once again surpasses the titular 13, there's an air of goofiness to the proceedings that's exemplified by the presence of Ron Palillo in the victim pool. Jason butchers a Sweathog! Movie history in the making.

Set an undisclosed number of years down the road from the earlier Fridays, the movie centers on Tommy Jarvis' (played this time by Thom Mathews, best known to horror fans as the young hero in Return of the Living Dead) doomed attempts to destroy the killer of Camp Crystal Lake. His first try involves digging up Jason's corpse, dousing it with gasoline and burning it to a crisp, but that trick never works. The very elements conspire to revive and protect the worm-eaten killer: once those lightning bolts revive him, it starts pouring to thwart Tommy's fire starting. Retrieving his hockey mask (which Tommy and friend have inexplicably brought with them), the implacable undead serial killer stomps off into the woods in search of new easy pickings.

Of course, there's a fresh batch of camp counselors available for this bloody work. The good folks of Crystal Lake have changed the name of their burg to Forrest Green, and the change has brought back the tourists, too. Among these is a newly engaged couple who come across Jason in their car ("I've seen enough horror movies to know any weirdo wearing a mask is never friendly," the girl tells her beau), a group of corporate paint ballers and a comic cemetery caretaker who happens across Jason's opened grave and says directly into the camera, "Some folks have a strange idea of entertainment."

Tommy, to his credit, attempts to warn the local constabulary that He Has Risen, but, like constant kids before him, isn't believed. Instead, the town sheriff (David Kagen) thinks that Tommy himself in doing the killings to make everybody think Jason's Alive, a fair enough assumption considering the number of times in the last movie that we were led to believe the same thing. Fortunately the sheriff's fetching daughter (Jennifer Cooke), for no good reason that we can see, sides with our hero, and the two work to trick the killer into returning to the bottom of Crystal Lake, where he presumably will rest in peace. It's not like this guy rose out of the lake before to go on a killing spree, is it?

As for the requisite counselor slashings, McLoughlin ups the stakes by, for the first time, actually showing a whole group of living breathing kids at the camp. One pair of boys gets to crack wise during Jason's final assault on the camp ("So what were you gonna be when you grew up?" one asks his buddy), while a cute little girl gets to deliver an unheeded early warning. Nobody listens to anyone younger in these movies!

Though the movie's killings are plentiful, they're treated both less explicitly and more cartoonishly than they were in earlier flicks. In one outlandish gag, for instance, a paint baller gets his face smashed into a tree, leaving behind a bloody smiley face in the trunk; in another, Jason lops off three heads with a single swath of his machete. Having established Jason's supernatural creds, the moviemakers decided to focus on "kills that were almost impossible for a person to do," as McLoughlin states in the DVD's "Making Of Friday the 13th –- Part VI" feature. The heightened unreality didn't make the ratings board go any easier on the flick, however, as a feature showing "Slashed Scenes" makes clear. Though the uncut killings were still pretty tame as these things go, the fx folk were still forced to trim their best gags.

Paramount's "Deluxe Edition" DVD contains many of the usual bells and whistles, though there's one fresh moment entitled "Meeting Mr. Voorhees" featuring a series of storyboards depicting an originally planned appearance by the hitherto unseen husband to game show regular Betsy Palmer's Mama Voorhees. The moment doesn't really tell us much, though it does hint at future plots never to be developed. Wonder who they would've gotten for the role of Daddy V., anyway? Orson Bean, perhaps?

Labels: psychotronic psinema

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( 6/28/2009 08:22:00 AM ) Bill S.

"BUT IF I DON'T SELL MY VIRTUE, WHAT MUST I DO?" The title heroine of Hubert and Kerascoet's adult French twist on Nancy Drew, Miss Don't Touch Me (NBM/ComicsLit), is a big-eyed gamine named Blanche. Working as a maid with her sister Agatha in thirties Paris, Blanche's life takes a sudden horrid turn after Agatha falls victim to a serial slayer known as the Butcher of the Dances. Canned by her scandal fearing employer, Blanche vows to find her sister's killer.

Her fumbling investigations lead her to a high-class bordello called the Pompadour. Convinced that the Butcher is somehow connected to this high-end whore house, she gets herself hired as virginal dominatrix ("a virgin of steel," her first client calls her) and becomes a favorite of its jaded upper crust clientele. Blanche's role as a "special girl" puts her in the company of black "madame monsieur" Miss Josephine (who has a passing resemblance to Josephine Baker) and the Boop-faced submissive Annette, while it also earns her the enmity of the other bordello workers. Her suspicions are primarily focused on the Pompadour's thuggish owner and a sinister Elisha Cook Jr. type named Red, but, of course, the answer to the mystery's not that simple.

Despite its provocative setting, the "mature readers" rated Miss Don't Touch Me proves more suggestive than explicit, though it's not without its flashes of topless femmes and groveling naked geezers. Kerascoet's (a pseudonym for two artists, Marie Pommepuy and Sébastien Cosset) stylized penwork at times reminds me of a less angularly expressionist Richard Sala, though to a certain extent the book's serial killer plot also promotes that visual comparison. It's cleanly simple with its human figures, though the artists' background renderings of period Paris are exquisitely detailed. The only time the artists' blend of the cartoonish and more illustrative didn't work was in a panel where the head of the Butcher's latest victim is discovered by a lake: the pumpkin-sized head is just a trace too stylized to convey the scene's splattery horror.

Miss Don't Touch Me was first published in two parts in its native country, and you can definitely see a shift in focus between its halves. Scripter Hubert initially keeps the story centered on innocent young Blanche (note the name) as she enters her new world, but in the second half, other characters -- most notably, the worldly Miss Josephine -- step up to push the mystery to its big revelation. Though the guilty are all uncovered, not all of 'em are punished equally. Imbedded within this classically pulpish story (Fallen Women! Dope Fiends! Dungeons and Hidden Passages!) is an undercurrent of class-based criticism that's true to the story's period. Historical murder buffs may also find a parallel to some of the royal theories surrounding the Whitechapel murders, though this is a far cry from a heavily annotated historical mystery like From Hell.

But, ultimately, it's our title heroine who engages our concern: though we watch her toughen up through the course of the story, we also know that eventually she's gonna stumble onto the Butcher of the Dances. Does she come out alive and -- just an importantly -- does she keep her virtue intact? More than the killer's identity, these are the questions that drive this engaging grown-up graphic novel.

Labels: art comics

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( 6/27/2009 09:26:00 AM ) Bill S.

WEEKEND PET PIC: Kyan Pup gets shaved for the Arizona summer: hadn't realized how pudgy he'd gotten over the winter until we got all that long hair off. Halfsies on the Kibble, Ky!

THE USUAL NOTE: For more cool pics of companion animals, please check out Modulator's "Friday Ark."

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( 6/26/2009 09:07:00 AM ) Bill S.

AT LEAST WE GOT A FREE TRIP TO THE OBSERVATORY OUT OF THE DEAL. It's definitely been a bi-polar kinda month. On the up side, wife Becky and I have had the publication of Measure By Measure, an event we've been working toward for several years now. Did an interview for Blogcritics Radio about the book this week and had a grand ol' time.

But the universe has a way of smacking down too many feelings of self-satisfaction. I continue to look for full-time work, and the day before we did our interview, we learned that the weekly newspaper which had been providing us both free-lance assignments is already closing its doors. Ten issues published, and I've writing steadily for it ever since ish #three. Even stood in for the editor two days when she was out of town for a family wedding. Now it's over.

Both Becky and I are feeling disappointed (and more than a little pissed about the way it was abruptly handled), though we probably shouldn't have been surprised. When longstanding big city papers are folding, what chance does a small community freebie like the SW Express News have in this economic climate? Still, a growing ad revenue stream seemed to coming in, and the paper itself had been receiving good feedback from area readers. It really seemed like the paper had a chance to sustain itself over the long haul.

We weren't getting a lotta money out of the deal, but we would've happily continued doing a weekly feature for as long as the paper wanted us. We enjoyed going out on these mini-adventures together. Too bad it all was cut so short.

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( 6/25/2009 06:46:00 AM ) Bill S.

"I DO NOT WISH TO BE AWAKENED BY THE LIKES OF YOU." Say what you will about Stan Lee: the man knows how to ride the tail of the zeitgeist. Manly cable teevee the thing? There's Stan with the Stripperella cartoon series. Crappy reality game shows still big? How about Who Wants to Be A Superhero? Manga holding onto its readership? Here's the Man collaborating with Shonen Jump favorite, Hiroyuki Takei. As co-creator and biggest living name attached to Marvel Comics, the guy's gotta be doing okay for himself, yet still he continues to plug away with new projects.

If some of these -- like his painful reworking of DC comics heroes in the Just Imagine series -- have proved more embarrassing than entertaining, those of us who grew up with Lee continue to hold onto a dim hope that something fresh will come from this once unstoppable comics writer/editor. And so it was that I approached the July 2009 issue of Shonen Jump, which continues the first official chapter of the serialization of Lee & Takei's "Ultimo." (An earlier trial prologue appeared in the September '08 issue, but, judging from what's on display here, it doesn't hurt to have missed it.) As with all of SJ's features, the first chapter features a hefty dose of comics -- sixty pages worth -- so even if you're not into the other ongoing features (Bleach, Naruto, Yu-Gi-Oh! et al), the $4.99 price is competitive with what current mainstream comics are going for these days.

The series concerns two living puppets, Ultimo and Vice, who have been created by a mysterious figure named Dunstan. Dunstan, who shows up in 12th century Kyoto, Japan, wearing eyeglasses that are decidedly not a part of the period, has created these two mechanical boys as fighting embodiments of Ultimate Good and Ultimate Evil. "The sole reason I made them," he tells a Robin Hoodish bandit named Yamato, "was to know which is stronger, Good or Evil." He seems blithely unconcerned about the devastation that will arise from this ultimate battle.

Dunstan, as we're reminded more than once, is drawn by Takei as a manga-sized version of Lee himself. If we wanted to get all meta about it, we could look at Ultimo as the writer's attempt at delving into the motivations behind creating and reading superhero fiction. (There's a lot of dialog about whether different secondary characters represent Good or Evil in the first chapter.) At least we could if we knew just how much involvement the comics legend actually had in the series: SJ's credits read "Original Concept by Stan Lee; Story & Art by Hiroyuki Takei," which leads this reader to believe that "Ultimo" is like one of those second class paperback series with a big-name author above the title (Tom Clancy's Ultimo Force, say) and a lesser known writer doing the actual storytelling. This is not to imply that Takei is a second-stringer -- his Shaman King remains an entertaining boy's actioner on its own merits -- but it does make one question just how much of Lee's actual involvement in the series goes beyond slipping an "Excelsior!" into the introductory note.

All that noted, the first full chapter of "Ultimo" remains an entertaining quick read. The series' living manikins -- pointy eared with the pre-requisite flyaway hair and giant metal claws for hands -- are visually enjoyable, even if their character delineation is pretty broad. ("You anger me," Vice tells the bandits just before he ices six of 'em. "For that, you die!") In battle, the two demonstrate the ability to transform into dragonish or leonine creatures, which Takei and his assistants illustrate with full-throated glee. I can see these fight scenes shoring up a suitably noisy anime adaptation.

More intriguing as characters are the amoral Dunstan and the heroic bandit, Yamato. The latter, in particular, has a decent amount of flair, but before we get to know him or any of his Merrye Men too well, the two manikins vanish mid-fight, and the story suddenly shifts to 21st Century West Tokyo. There, we meet a teenaged schoolboy named Yamato who pals with a young longhaired boy who's a dead ringer for one of the other bandits. Are they eternal champions or reincarnations of the 12th century figures? Lee & Takei aren't giving that particular plot point away in the first chapter.

I'm invested enough to want to check out the first Ultimo paperback collection when it comes out, though more for Takei's work at this point than Lee's. Still, the fanboy in me continues to hold out hope that Stan the Man will produce something surprising. Perhaps I need an intervention?

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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( 6/24/2009 09:43:00 AM ) Bill S.

MID-WEEK MUSIC VID: Was happily thinking of Alison Moyet the other day; hence this video:

Would've love to've seen her and Vince Clarke in their Yazoo reunion concerts.

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( 6/23/2009 10:53:00 AM ) Bill S.

"LIFE GETS BETTER, YEAH, WHENEVER I'M IN YOUR ARMS." Hard to believe, but today is the twenty-fifth wedding anniversary of this guy and his lovely wife-&-collaborator, Rebecca. Pretty mind-boggling.

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( 6/23/2009 06:25:00 AM ) Bill S.

SCOPES: Spent last Friday with my photog/other half on a tour of the Mount Graham International Observatory. We'd been wanting to see these huge telescopes (including the world's biggest Large Binocular Telescope) ever since we'd moved to the area, so when my editor at Southwest Express News asked us to think of some possible features for the paper, one of the first that came to mind was a piece on the twice weekly observatory tour. Put on by Eastern Arizona College's Discovery Museum, the excursion is one of the few ways lay folk like us are even allowed on the grounds. Costs forty bucks per to go on the tour, so we were more than happy to be able to do it as a story.

Takes 1-1/2 hours to get from Discovery Park Museum to the observatory on a good day. Friday took longer since the little restaurant that was supplying our lunches thought we were coming up on Saturday. Our group was comprised of ten visitors – retiree geezers, mostly, though we also had two pre-teens who were visiting with their grandmother -- a guide and a van driver. Among the group, talk quickly turned to politics, but I worked to keep out of it. Didn't want to compromise myself as a "reporter."

The road up the 10,000-plus foot mountain can be pretty scary to the uninitiated: full of switchbacks, rail-free turns and threatening scenic looks downward. But it was clear that Claude, our driver, knew what he was doing, for which we were thankful. Along the way, we passed a turn named Cadillac Point: so named for a couple who got confused by a road sign and drove their Caddy off the mountain. Yeeps!

The drive was slow, but I wasn't complaining. At one point we passed a charred area left by a fire the day before: someone's camper overheated on its way up to Coronado State Park campgrounds and its engine burst into flames. Our driver reassured us that the van we were in received regular maintenance check-ups, but he also couldn't help noting that the brakes were a little harder than he liked.

The last six miles to the observatory were on unpaved road: chained off as private property with regular signage indicating that "This Camp Is A Weapons Free Zone." In addition to the expensive international monitoring equipment, the upper of the mountain is home to a subspecies of red squirrel that's on the endangered list. Apparently, when astronomers first worked to get the large binocular telescope building erected, they ran into opposition from environmental activists concerned about the creatures. Court fights kept the observatory from being completed for years, and as a result of this battle, there's a separate group of scientists on the mountain monitoring the little rascals. We tried to spy some of the squirrels while we were in the van, but the only four-footed wildlife we saw were mule deer.

MGIO has three telescopes, each housed in their own building: the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (which used to be housed outside Rome until light pollution spoiled the site), a Submillimeter Radio Telescope, and the Large Binocular Telescope. It's the LBT that's the big crowd pleaser: the largest of its kind, it utilizes two 332-inch mirrors to get the job done, giving it an acuity that's ten times that of the Hubble Space Telescope. The whole upper half of the building can rotate to aim the LBT; try as she might Becky was unable to get the whole instrument in her camera. The damn thing's sixteen stories high and, as such, was featured on Discovery Channel's Really Big Things show.

Also worth noting in the Really Big Things Dept.: the really big bug zappers that are planted throughout the buildings. Mt. Graham has a lot of moths that are attracted to the buildings. Wouldn't want some stargazer thinking that they were catching Mothra in their sites.

We started with the LBT first, though, typically that's the telescope saved for last. The restrooms at the ranger station where we stopped to picnic were locked up, so tour guide Carol wanted to take to get us to the building with the biggest restrooms. Most of the staff who work with the telescopes were asleep during the tour, of course; the buildings also contain small dorms with signs advising visitors not to slam any doors. All three 'scopes were built through international consortiums, and, as such, time using 'em is very carefully parceled between each member of the group. Get your two-week shift and you really hope that the weather's gonna cooperate, coz otherwise it's Wait 'til Next Year. This June has had a lot of uncharacteristically overcast days, we were told: bad news for the folks who were sleeping while we toured.

We rode down the mountain at four, and, once again, the discussion turned to politics. (Basic message: our president is ruining our future by trying to fix our disastrous present.) Again, I stayed out of it and not just to keep from compromising my role as a fly-on-the-wall reporter. I'd much rather think about the stars. . .

Labels: local color

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( 6/18/2009 07:50:00 AM ) Bill S.

"LOOKS LIKE WE GOT US A MANIAC ON THE LOOSE, HUH, SHERIFF?" That the producers of Friday the 13th -- Part V had the audacity to subtitle this entry A New Beginning says a lot about the perceived gullibility of the slasher film audience. For instead of being a "new beginning" in the way that John Carpenter's Halloween: Season of the Witch attempted something different with his title franchise, director Danny Steinman's Friday basically returned to the central plot of the very first 'un. In both flicks, the mad killer proves to be the parent of a kid who's died due to their guardians' negligence. In the first Friday, young Jason "drowned" in Crystal Lake when a pair of horny summer camp counselors weren't paying attention to the boy; in Part Five, it's the death of a fat mental health patient at the hands of a rageaholic fellow camper that sparks the body pileup.

Both victim and killer are summering at Crystal Lake courtesy of the Unger Institute of Mental Health, though why the two teens got transferred from a locked institution to a camp that only appears to have two working counselors with a decidedly lax attitude toward letting their clients handle axes isn't explained. All we know for sure is that the camp is sparsely populated by a group of unstable teens who no one will particularly miss after they've been cut down.

Our entry to Camp Pinehurst and its population of ever ready slasher victims is via Tommy Jarvis, who we last saw in The Final Chapter as a bespectacled Corey Feldman, though he's sprouted over the space of a year into a muscular teen played by John Shepherd. Tommy, we'll remember, "killed" Jason at the end of the previous film -- and has since spent his days institutionalized as a reward for this "brutal" act of self-defense. To establish that this rapidly aged figure is indeed Tommy, Shepherd wears a pair of wire-rim glasses at the outset, though he quickly discards 'em without so much as a blink.

Tommy, subject to his own fits of rage and PTSD flashbacks, has come to Camp Pinehurst because -- well, we're not really told why either, though we learn that he's been fed tons of psychotropics during his institutional vacay. First thing he does when he unpacks at camp is pull a pocket knife out of his pants, and we know he'll get to use that blade later in the movie because no one thinks to inventory what the new kid brought with him. Later, we see him gazing at a photo of his sister, who also survived the previous Friday, though the movie doesn't bother to tell what's happened to her.

Our traumatized hero keeps seeing flashes of a menacing Jason even though we're told that the big galoot is decidedly demised -- and cremated to boot. So the movie's big non-mystery once the actual killings commence becomes, "Is Tommy crazy or is somebody impersonating the legendary killer?" The answer to both questions proves to be yes, of course.

Director Steinman, who also co-wrote the flick, increases the movie's body count for the first time beyond the titular thirteen, though he retreats from the previous outing's Savini-esque explicitness by keeping the actual moments of impact off-camera. The director makes up for this by upping the actress nudity screen time considerably, most noticeably in a scene where one busty victim lolls around nekkid in the woods, waiting for her doomed boyfriend to return. The girl gets it in the eyes with a pair of lopping sheers, a tweak at all the teenaged voyeurs in the audience, perhaps.

While the bulk of the flick's victims are Tommy's fellow campers, our killer also finds time to take out a white trash Mama and her motorcycle moose of son -- characters so broadly drawn as to make Randy Quaid in Independence Day look subdued -- plus a jheri-curled black dude who gets it in a rickety tin outhouse. The latter is the older bro of Reggie the Reckless (Shavar Ross), a talkative black kid staying at the camp with his cook grandpa. Reggie is one of the few to make it to the movie's showdown, though unlike that wimp Tommy we don't get the sense at the end that he's been damaged forever by the experience.

As with all the previous Fridays, the movie winds on an extended dream sequence, this time making it a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-possible-dream. The faux Jason's been disposed of, so the movie concludes by hinting that Tommy will be taking over the slash work next time. That doesn't happen, of course, since the Big J returns from the cremated ashes in VI, so the image of Tommy donning that hockey mask at the movie's end proves to be just one more cheat. Par for the course with these flicks, of course.

Paramount's "deluxe" reissue contains many of the same types of features that have graced previous entries, though, unike the Final Chapter DVD, there isn't any found footage of the initially more graphic killings for our edification. For all its considerable flaws as movie, Part Five looks pretty spiffy: the woods surrounding Crystal Lake have never appeared more inviting. I remember seeing a Siskel and Ebert show from around this time where the killjoy critics complained about the fact that strides in moviemaking technology made even the lowliest exploitation fodder look good onscreen. I'm not unsympathetic to this idea since I continue to hold that the much less slickly mounted first film remains the peak of this overextended horror series. But if you're tired of the faux handheld video look favored by too many horror pics these days, the old-fashioned approach is almost a visual relief.

Labels: psychotronic psinema

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( 6/17/2009 04:37:00 AM ) Bill S.

BIRTHDAY VID: Yours truly is 59 today (yeep!), so to commemorate the event, here are the Ramones doing Tom Waits (with some visual help from Dan Clowes):

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( 6/13/2009 09:49:00 AM ) Bill S.

"HE CAN'T BE ALIVE!" Paramount's spiffed-up repackaging of its long and lucrative Friday the 13th series proceeds apace with entries four through six of the slasher saga. First of the threesome to receive the deluxe DVD treatment: the fraudulently named Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.

Directed by the efficient action exploitation filmmaker Joseph Zito (who lensed Chuck Norris in two of his most profitable low-budgeters, including the bombastic Invasion U.S.A.), Final Chapter is best known among horror aficionados for the return of makeup fx maestro Tom Savini, who did the hacks and slashes for the first flick but was working on other projects during the next two sequels. This proved a lucky break for Savini, since the short-term outcry against this type of movie material had producers tamping down the kinds of gore effects that were his métier.

By the time the fourth outing was released, the furor had died down sufficiently for Savini to be able to ply his trade without too much post-production tampering. You get to see lots of his trademark blade-tips-protruding-from-a-victim's torso shots, the first being a fat hitchhiker who gets it in the neck while eating a banana. Apparently, acting like a horny teenager is no longer the only way to get marked for death in this series: being a lover of fresh fruit will do it, too.

As with the previous installment, the flick picks up right where the last 'un ended. We're at the site of the earlier 3-D slashings, and Jason's seemingly dead body ("This the guy who's been leaving the wet stuff?" a compassionate paramedic asks when they come to pick up Voorhees' apparent corpse) is taken to the local hospital morgue. There, with no explanation whatsoever, the hockey-masked murderer returns to life, dispatching a dorky morgue attendant and a nurse before trudging back to Crystal Lake. Though his body's vanished and the two hospital employees are dead, nobody in a position of authority apparently thinks that maybe, just maybe, they should return to the original Scene of the Crimes.

Back at the said scene, yet another carload of randy kids arrives to provide Jason with stab-worthy material. Among these is eighties moviedom's favorite discomfort-making geek, Crispin Glover, who bemoans his bad luck with women and is nicknamed a "dead fuck" by his obnoxious friend Ted. Glover's Jimmy ultimately gets to score with one of two hot twins, but he isn't given a lot of time to enjoy his new studly status since killjoy Jason quickly does him in after first impaling the guy's hand with a corkscrew.

Still, Jimmy has one more memorable moment in the flick: the "dead fuck dance," which he spazzily performs to a generic hard rock track in a misbegotten attempt at impressing one of the twins. Glover's moves are so splendidly awful that the deluxe set includes outtakes of his frenetic footwork. They don't mention the full name of the dance on the outer DVD package, though; don't wanna freak out the customers at WalMart.

The big subplot, one that will have repercussions through the next three movies, isn't focused as much on bunk-hopping teens but on the family next door: a separated cougar mom with her teenage daughter Trish (Kimberly Beck) and younger son Tommy (Corey Feldman), who is into horror movie makeup in a big way. It's little Tommy Jarvis who winds up "killing" Jason, but not before confusing the big lug by using his mad makeup skillz (which essentially involves shaving off most of his hair) to impersonate the hulking killer as a young "special boy." This hearkens back to Part 2's big showdown where that flick's heroine faked out Jason by pretending to be his decapitated mother, though how it's supposed to work this time is a pretty big stretch. ("I can't kill that kid -- he's me!") For a serial slasher with the uncanny ability to be anticipate every potential victim's whereabouts, the guy's pretty damn gullible.

Unless I miscounted, this is the first 13th to actually live up to its advertized body count. Cougar mom's death is never really shown, doubtless to make way for a Diabolique-influenced ending not included in the final product, but I'm adding it, anyway. Can't really include Jason's own crowd-pleasing demise -- falling face first and slowwlly sliding down a machete -- since we all know that one ultimately doesn't take.

As an offering in the series, Final Chapter is arguably a cut above either of the two sequels preceding it, in large part due to the considerable enthusiasm that its cast bring to the whole shebang. Glover's a treat, of course, though Feldman also gets to distinguish himself in terms of physical overacting when he displays his joy over the sight of an undressing vacationer. That he makes it to the end of the film intact after this small bit of voyeurism seems like a violation of the "rules" of slasherdom, but if we learn anything from flicks like these, it's that Life Ain't Fair.

Paramount's "deluxe edition" contains the usual bonus material: two commentary tracks, yet another tedious low-rent "Lost Tales from Camp Blood" short, fannish features that include a "Slashed Scenes" segment revealing how some of Savini's bloody fx were done. Prime meat for the Fangoria crowd, which director Zito acknowledges in more than joking voiceover ref to the gorehounds watching this feature. We're also told that Glover "loved doing his death scene; he couldn't wait to do this," as we're shown him hamming it up with a cleaver in his face. Not a surprising bit of behind-the-scenes info, methinks.

Labels: psychotronic psinema

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( 6/11/2009 04:10:00 PM ) Bill S.

ADVENTURES IN JOURNALISM: Yesterday, as preparation for a story on the Mt. Graham International Observatory Tours, Becky and I visited Eastern Arizona College's Discovery Park campus and considerably smaller Gov Aker Observatory that's located in the middle of the desert wildlife habitat. At one point during the interview, Harry Swanson, the Park Campus' Dean, offered to take me up to see the telescope, and, naturally, I wanted to do so.

As we got to the steps, he told me he needed to go first. "There's a vent near the bottom of the steps, and rattlesnakes get in," he explained. Sometimes, he continued, you can get surprised by one on the steps. "If I fall back, I want you to catch me," he joked, though, happily, we weren't given the opportunity to test my capacity as a back-up since we made it all the way to the top without incident. Last summer, he said, they had something like 33 rattlers show up at the observatory over the course of the summer.

After hearing that, seeing the telescope itself was rather anticlimactic.

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( 6/10/2009 06:32:00 AM ) Bill S.

MIDWEEK MUSIC VID: Talk about minimalism: here's what I assume to be one of the Pernice Brothers struggling with a stationary bike as the divine pop-rock track "Somerville" plays.

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( 6/09/2009 09:02:00 PM ) Bill S.

PEARLSONG CONVERSATIONS Tomorrow at noon Eastern time, yours truly and his wifely collaborator will be participating in a teleconference call with our publisher, Peggy Elam, of Pearlsong Press. This Pearlsong Conversation will be about the newly published Measure by Measure, natch, and will subsequently be archived on the site. If you wish to get involved in some give-&-take, check out the Pearlsong page for details on how you can be a part of the teleconference. And if you want to listen to or download the conversation later, it will be archived and available on the site, though at this writing I don't know when it will available. So watch this space, okay?

UPDATE (6/11): A fifty-minute MP3 of our chat with Pearlsong publisher Peggy Elam is now available for download or just plain listening.

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( 6/09/2009 07:03:00 AM ) Bill S.

"IT'S GOT THE SLIME CARPET LAID OUT FOR US!" Co-produced by and starring rapper DMX, Carnivorous is a big-snake low-budgeter that pits the title lead (check out how the opening credits make it read as if the movie's title is DMX Carnivorous instead of just Carnivorous) and a group of disposable irritating teens against an inconsistently-sized CGI creature named "Lockjaw."

Said part snake/part alligator was first conjured up in the wilds by a southern boy named Alan Cade to dispose of his abusive drunk of a father. After stealing a demonic pencil from a local juju man named Crazy Kirabo, young Alan takes out his drawing pad and sketches an image of his redneck pappy getting his head chomped by Lockjaw. This naturally brings the voodoo loa to life and sends Daddy to a worthy unseen demise.

Cut to twenty years later, and that imaginative little kid is now a balding married shlub living with his wife on the same family farm. Alan (Louis Herthum) pulls out the writing implement, called a Kulev Stick by the voodoo priest's now-grown grandson (DMX), after a group of vacationing teens heedlessly run his wife over with their pick-'em-up truck. These kids are so clueless that they don't even know they've hit the poor woman (later we're told that the truck has truly "awesome" shocks), while Alan is so sharp-eyed that he's able to pick out all five kids sitting in the truck for his summoning drawing. Whenever one of these privileged little snots gets chomped on by the big bad, their piece of the drawing turns all red. "You drew us to death; that sucks!" the least offensive of the quintet accuses the now guilt-stricken Alan.

Name-above-the-title DMX doesn't do a whole lot in the movie until its unconvincingly mounted finale. At one point we see him pointlessly hacking his way through a field with his machete and then later buying a bazooka from two unexplained arms dealers. Gets to fire the bazooka at the beastie, of course, but since this is a magical creature, we already know That Trick Never Works. It's never really explained why he decides to help the teens in the first place -- or why his grandpappy didn't retrieve the Kulev Stick from little boy Alan after he'd used it the first time. All that matters is he's there to look Street in the middle of the rural South.

Most of the movie's main focus remains on the doomed teen "pork loins," of course, who drink and carouse and make the obligatory arrogant anti-Southern slurs. ("Don't forget to brush your teeth -- where we're going, there aren't too many of 'em, y'all!") For you Friday the 13th buffs, there's even a death-while-coupling scene, though for it to work, the snake has to shrink down a bit. (Magical monster, right?) Another character gets beheaded by what I think is supposed to be the beast's tail, though the effect isn't all easy to suss out.

"Don't forget," our hero tells the surviving teens just before the movie's unconvincing showdown, "at the end of the day, it's just a snake -- a really messed-up snake!" If I was given the cover art in a movie this fangless, I'd be messed-up, too.

Labels: psychotronic psinema

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( 6/06/2009 03:52:00 PM ) Bill S.

"THE NEW PHONE BOOK IS HERE! THE NEW PHONE BOOK IS HERE!" This afternoon, we received a box stamped "Media Mail" from our publisher, Pearlsong Press. Inside were ten copies of the Rebecca Fox & William Sherman romantic novel, Measure By Measure. First thought I had after scissoring open the box (careful, don't wanna cut into the book cover!), was "Funny, I thought the cover was gonna be a darker blue!" Second was, "Holy shit! I'm actually holding our novel in my hand!"

I remember Neal Gaiman once writing about receiving author's copies of a new book: first page he opened to, he'd immediately light on a typo. I tried the same thing, but my bedazzled eyes were incapable of being so acute. The whole package looks pretty damn good to me. Excuse me while I continue to bask in the good feelings. . .

(Oh yeah, and the Amazon link is over on the right column!)

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( 6/06/2009 06:53:00 AM ) Bill S.

WEEKEND PET PIC: Ziggy Stardust continues to keep two cautious eyes on the in-house herd.

THE USUAL NOTE: For more cool pics of companion animals, please check out Modulator's "Friday Ark."

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( 6/05/2009 07:28:00 AM ) Bill S.

CARRADINE: Like most movie lovers with an affinity for psychotronic cinema, I have an ongoing affection for David Carradine: the guy was in so many low-budget obscurities -- some great, many more dubious -- that you can't help but marvel at the man's career-long productivity. Wasn't personally much of a fan of Kung Fu, though I can understand how a younger generation than mine might've hooked into that teleseries. For me, the work I remember best (as from Kill Bill, of course) was from the drive-in: Death Race 2000, Deathsport and Q in the early eighties, though it's long amused me that Carradine also made The Serpent's Egg with Ingmar Bergman. Ain't a lot of actors who can claim both Bergman and Larry Cohen on their resume, but Carradine could.

R.I.P., David.

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( 6/03/2009 08:38:00 AM ) Bill S.

"SOONER OR LATER, WELL, ALL THE LIGHTS GET DARK." Though I hadn't known a thing about Tom Laverack before I unexpectedly received a copy of his newest CD, Cave Drawings (Sojourn Records), two facts about him immediately caught my fancy. First was his involvement in the soundtracks of two independent horror flicks, Wendigo and The Last Winter, the first of which I'd actually seen on Sundance Channel one late nite; second was the biographical detail that the man has made his living as a social worker in New York. Harder to gauge which is the more difficult avocation: laboring as a singer/songwriter or working in social services.

Laverack's newest reportedly took over four years to complete and includes three tracks that appeared in the apocalyptic Winter. None too surprisingly, these three cuts ("Precious Little," "Running Out of Road," "No Shame") all share a fatalistic tone -- as do many of the other tracks, which tend toward rootsy mid-tempo rock or more mournful balladry with an occasional country soul lick tossed in for good measure. Listening to the mid-tempo opener, "Coney Island Heart," I found myself flashing on both Springsteen and Lou Reed, though Laverack's country-folkish delivery may get you thinking more of Steve Earle.

To these ears, the more energetic tracks are the album's highpoints, though the insertion of soul sax by moviemaker Larry Fessenden on a track like "Running Out of Road" is a particularly neat touch. Most striking of the slow 'uns turns out to be "Dead Dog," wherein the singer comes upon a boy mourning over a dead pet hit by a truck. "I'd give it all up if I ever made it," Laverack sings, "just to save this dead dog," even if he knows he just singing into the wind.

Laverack's lyrics can be merciless when considering the state of nation ("Blinded by our entitlement, our dollar signs read 'In God We Trust,'" he notes on the lopingly soulful "Precious Little"), but he can also be sharp on a self-castigating track like "Foolish Enough to Think," where he laments his inability to change his own self-destructive habits. This willingness to shift from the blisteringly social (check out his nursing home rant, "No Shame") to the equally self-critical proves one of Laverack's strengths as a lyricist.

Laverack's back-up is provided by group of steady sidemen: Marc Shulman, who has worked with Suzanne Vega, and Joel Hoekstra on guitars; bassist Jeff Langston and label co-president Mark Ambrosino, who provides a suitably strong Max Weinberg-y beat to it all. Hoekstra's stinging work on "Foolish Enough to Think" is a particular stand-out, though his thoughtfully hooky licks on "Coney Island Heart" are also worth noting.

"You don't know if you'll leave behind anything after you're gone," Laverack sings on the disc's title song, adding that he's content to leave little memories of "how this world did feel" for those who are willing to listen. After regular plays of this evocatively grown-up set of rootsy vignettes, count me among the willing.

Labels: folk-pop

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( 6/03/2009 06:05:00 AM ) Bill S.

"LAST NIGHT EVERYTHING BROKE." Reading that Exene Cervenka has been diagnosed with MS got me pulling out the old classic X albums this week. Here's a classic live performance from The Decline of Western Civilization, "We're Desperate," a song that could definitely be part of the soundtrack for today.

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( 5/31/2009 10:41:00 AM ) Bill S.

"LADY RUN! HE'LL END UP PUSHING YOUR FACE INTO A BELT SANDER!" Though I remain an avid admirer of Mystery Science Theater 3000, I've pretty much stayed away from the RiffTrax website starring three of the show's alumni. The concept is clever enough: veteran movie riffers Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett (a.k.a. Mike, Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot from MST3K) serve up MP3 commentaries of past and present movies that you can download and play alongside your DVDs of the same flicks. A pretty sharp idea, provided you don't have a computer with the memory capacity of Dory the regal tang.

Though the website has been off and running for three years, those of us with antique computers have had to wait until now to embrace the riffy goodness. This June, ten RiffTrax DVDs are being released by Legend Films. Unlike the website -- where the boys spend as much time vivisecting recent blockbusters as they do low-budget oldies -- most of the films offered here are the kinds of public domain standards you can usually buy for a buck at your local Dollar Tree. Six of the ten selections will be familiar to s-f/horror fans (Plan 9 from Outer Space's the most notorious); apart from two collections of educational shorts, perhaps the least well-known entry is the 1946 Monogram musical Swing Parade.

Recently watched RiffTrax's take on this Poverty Row musical showcase. To get in the proper MSTie frame of mind, I sat down and viewed it on a Saturday morning, much as I used to when the series aired on Comedy Central and Sci-Fi Channel. Unlike the original show, the RiffTrax commentaries are presented sans story context -- just three smart-ass disembodied voices (plus the occasional guest) cracking wise at the expense of a riff-worthy flick -- so there are no silhouettes, puppetry or interstitial sequences on the DVD. Fans of the original MST3K are divided on the merits of these aspects of the original show: for some, the sequences featuring Mike and robots on the Satellite of Love were often the weakest parts of the show. Me, I rather enjoyed 'em, though once Nelson, Murphy and Corbett started verbally bouncing off Swing Parade's opening credits on the DVD, I quickly stopped obsessing about the lack of a back-story. These are still very funny guys.

The movie itself proves ripe for commentary. An indifferently plotted show biz musical, Swing Parade is billed as a Three Stooges feature on the DVD cover, though the boys strictly play a secondary role to a tepid back stage romance between singer Gale Storm and the good-look-for-radio lead Phil Regan. ("How does this guy not have a mono-brow?" the RiffTraxers ask.) Parade was one of the last films made by Curly Howard and was filmed after the Stooge had suffered a series of small strokes. As a result, there isn't a lot of physical comedy in their sequences, though the movie's riffers regularly play on the possibility of somebody getting their nostrils assaulted with a crowbar -- which in some ways proves even funnier.

In addition to the Stooges sequences, we're also treated to musical numbers by Louis Jordan and Connee Boswell (formerly of the Boswell Sisters). The Jordan numbers are a treat by themselves, but the commentary over "Don't Worry 'Bout That Mule" (a Number One hit for Jordan in '45) is priceless, as all three riffers imagine fates-worse-than-death for the title creature. ("My mule's gonna go blind, I just know it!") Ingenue Storm also performs two numbers, though neither proves as fertile as Jordan's durable jump band nonsense. There's also a markedly unfunny sequence featuring the Michael Winslow of his day, Windy Cook, auditioning his sound fx shtick before durable character actor Edward Brophy. The performance, Mike notes, is as "if Mickey Rooney had gone off his anti-psychotic meds." The guys also manage to use Cook for a crack at the expense of Comedy Central, the net that once stupidly cancelled MST3K -- and good for them!

Legend's DVD also features an enjoyable ditty on the disc's menu: a smooth love song about the Stooge in the Middle with a chorus that sez, "I don't know about you, but I think Larry's fine." It's the kind of clever musical bit that they used to regularly fit into MST3K's host features (particularly during Mike's tenure), and I'm glad they found a way to slip it onto this DVD package. Makes me wonder what else these jokesters have stuck as extras on the other Legend DVDs.

Labels: obscuro comedies

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( 5/30/2009 07:27:00 AM ) Bill S.

WEEKEND PET PIC: Cats in the tree: Savannah on the top tier plus Willow on the lower tier:

THE USUAL NOTE: For more cool pics of companion animals, please check out Modulator's "Friday Ark."

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( 5/29/2009 11:02:00 AM ) Bill S.

"I HAVE SEEN THEM IN THE TWILIGHT." Considering the material adapted in the newest (Volume 17) edition of Tom Pomplun's Graphic Classics series, Science Fiction Classics, I started idly wondering whether a better title might be "Scientifiction Classics."

That ungainly term, first floated in 1926 with the publication of Hugo Gernsback's Amazing Stories, arguably comes closer to the early sci-fi exercises presented in comics form here -- especially a more technocratic work like Jules Verne's "In the Year 2889" -- in part because it implies a stronger emphasis on the science component over storytelling. You can see this imbalance in Verne's tale, as well as a one-page Hunt Emerson illustrated comic of Hans Christian Anderson predictions "In A Thousand Years." Neither piece has much in the way of character or story conflict. To a slightly lesser extent, the emphasis on ideas also extends to pieces like Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Disintegration Machine" and E.M. Forster's classic cautionary "The Machine Stops."

Still, even in the book's potentially driest offering, editor Pomplun has the smarts to couple it with a sprightly cartoonist like Angry Youth Comix creator Johnny Ryan. And where the didactic "Machine Stops" might have been deadly in less visually inventive hands, Ellen Lindner's expressive cartooning and coloring keeps things interesting. This is the first Graphic Classics volume to feature color in all of its stories, and in Lindner and Ryan's pieces, it is smartly deployed. In the latter case, the bright flat colors enhance the Hanna-Barbera cartoonishness of Ryan's art; in the former, the more subdued coloration suits the washed out decadence of Forster's doomed dystopia.

The cover story, a 48-page version of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, is the book's first draw, of course. Wells' classic has been adapted into comics before -- the Classics Illustrated version from 1955 was my first introduction to the story -- while its status as a public domain work has inspired more than one comic company's attempt at picking up where the story ends. The Graphic Classics version, scripted by Rich Rainey and illustrated by Micah Farritor, proves closer to Wells' original intentions than the Eisenhower Era adaptation: a once bowdlerized scene featuring a hysterical curate has been reinstated in the story, while the narrator protagonist's less-than-noble moments are also unapologetically depicted. The reinsertions strengthen this retelling of Wells' familiar s-f story significantly.

Less familiar, though no less influential as an early s-f story, is Stanley G. Weinbaum's 1934 "A Martian Odyssey," generally acknowledged to be the first of its kind to depict an alien character whose thought processes are distinctly different from that of humans. Adapted by Ben Avery and effectively illustrated in a whimsical zap gun style by George Sella, it entertainingly captures Weinbaum's voice and distinct sense of wonder: "scientification" at its greatest.

Two other tales don't fare as well, in large part due to the original sources' slightness. Tod Lott and Roger Langridge's version of Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger story, "The Disintegration Machine," is well presented, though Doyle's original story -- which basically involves the egotistical Challenger's besting a grotesque mad scientist in the simplest fashion -- is fairly weak. Antonello Caputo and Brad Teare's retelling of Lord Dunsay's "The Bureau d'Exchange de Maux" has an appealingly dark woodcut look, though it's debatable whether the actual story fits under the science-fiction rubric. In it, Dunsany's narrator enters a shop where customers exchange a personal "evil or misfortune" for that of another's. Our hero does this, of course, exchanging a long-held phobia for a fresh one, though Dunsany doesn't take this basic conceit much further.

As a full collection of early s-f, Pomplun's volume is the most consistently accessible of Graphic Classics' genre collections that I've seen to date. (In contrast, consider the overly wordy adaptation of "Northanger Abby" in Gothic Classics.) Next up, a book devoted to adaptations of Louisa May Alcott. I wonder if it'll include any of her scandalous A.M. Barnard thrillers? It's been ages since I've read 'em, but I seem to remember they were considerably zippier than Jane Austen.

Labels: classics illustrated

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( 5/27/2009 07:55:00 AM ) Bill S.

MID-WEEK MUSIC VID: Slo-mo food fight! It's Puffy Amiyumi doing a reggae-fied version of Jellyfish's "Joining A Fan Club."

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( 5/26/2009 01:16:00 PM ) Bill S.

"HE'S A TRUE DEMON!" Soichi Negishi, the nice guy hero of Kimihori Wakasugi's energetically rude death metal comedy, Detroit Metal City (Viz Media), is a man of dual identities. As Negishi, the sweet face 23-year-old with a bowl cut and a predilection for Swedish pop bands, he's a sensitive man/boy. But when he dons a wig, whiteface and a futuristic KISS-style costume, he becomes Johannes Krauser II, mother-rapin' front man for the indy "evil-core" band Detroit Metal City (any echo of KISS' "Detroit Rock City" is strictly intentional).

Loved by his rabid fans for his shrieking lyrics about sexual assault and murder (the band's signature song, "Satsugai" translates into "Kill 'em all") and hardcore monstrous persona, Krauser is an embarrassment to Soichi, who would rather be a singer in the mold of whispery-voiced Kari Kahimi than the raspy creature he portrays in DMC. Unfortunately for our sensitive new age guy, he can't get arrested singing sweet pop confections like "Raspberry Kiss" while his celebrations of rape and domination are finding a growing cult of fans. The foul-mouthed president of the band's label puts it bluntly: Krauser's violent lyrics get her wet, while just a few stanzas of "Raspberry Kiss" are a dehydrating turn-off.

The conflict between these two aspects of Soichi provide most of the comedy in this "mature" readers manga -- which has also inspired a live action movie and a direct-to-video anime -- the first volume of which is reaching American shores in an understandably shrink-wrapped edition. "This album contains nothing but the most profane of profanities," the back cover of DMC's debut disc warns. "Listen at the risk of your immortal soul." Viz could just as easily put a variation of this sticker warning on the back cover of the book since much of its dialog (especially that delivered by Death Records' leather-wearing president) can be gleefully obscene.

Poor Soichi is a victim of his underground success. When he's falsely accused of groping a cute young thing on the subway, a notepad of prospective DMC song lyrics ("Spread 'em wide, you sows!") makes him look even guiltier to both girl and subway cop. To make matters worse, his ability to lose himself in the Krauser interferes with his attempts at wooing a pop-loving girl named Aikawa. Prodded into doing air guitar to one of DMC's songs in a music store, Soichi so gets into character that he begins shouting abusive invective at Aikawa. Singing one of his death metal compositions in a karaoke bar, he becomes so wrapped up in the song's nasty lyrics that he gobs on his would-be girlfriend.

The big joke is that, though he'd hate to admit it, the appalling faux demon Krauser is as much a part of Soichi as his regular girly/man day self. Soichi's unwillingness to be open about his show biz creation makes Krauser an even more formidable figure in his life. Visiting his kid brother Toshihiko back on the family farm, for isntance, he learns the boy's fannish adulation of the creature has led to his turning into a young delinquent. ("My music," Soichi thinks, "has wrought chaos on this family!") Instead of just telling the boy that Krauser isn't real, he dons the character's costume and makeup and convinces Toshihiko that doing family chores and studying will make him a better Agent of Evil.

Wakasugi's art has a loose alt comics look that's well suited to this broad material. He's especially fun capturing the awkward Soichi in poses that emphasize his geekiness and contrasting this with the strutting, self-assured Krauser. In DSMC, the pop geeks blush becomingly and stand stiffly and modestly, while the death metal types thrust themselves with aggressive abandon. Though the manga writer/artist states that he's musically more attuned to the sweet stuff than the hard core, the latter is obviously more fun for him to draw.

Volume One contains twelve stories, plus a bonus throwaway gag centered on Death Records' president. A few of the earliest pieces can get repetitious, our whiny hero bemoaning his role as Krauser one too many times, but once Soichi begins his comically erratic relationship with Aikawa, the book picks up steam and gets you rooting for its hapless Romeo. As a humorous dissection of the evergreen fight between day-to-day existence and art, between commerce and creative expression, Detroit Metal City nails its subjects with cheerful offensiveness. I'm thinking if the anime adaptation ever shows up on "Adult Swim," they're gonna have to do a hell of a lot of bleeping.

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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( 5/24/2009 09:12:00 AM ) Bill S.

THE CUB REPORTER: For those wondering where I am on the job-hunting front: the quest continues. Though I'd like to stay where we've landed, a realistic examination of the social services scene in my part of Arizona dictates that I also look further out. Been spending a decent amount of time on all the usual suspect job sites, have had several interviews, but at this point, I'm still looking. One of the effects of our current Recession: a lot of agencies, faced with an uncertain fiscal year in the near future, are taking their own sweet time refilling vacant positions. I can understand why they're doing this, but, as one of the nervous jobseekers out there, the waiting is definitely the hardest part.

I have started doing some part-time writing for a new local paper, the Southwest Express News, a new weekly paper that pays by the story. If we remain in Safford, I wouldn't mind doing this as a regular source of supplemental income: I'm spending part of the Memorial Day Weekend covering two ceremonies and am definitely enjoying doing this. Been years since I wore a reporter's hat, and I forgot what a kick it could be. Nothing too heavy to report -- just ribbon cutting ceremonies and the like -- but it's keeping me out of trouble.

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( 5/23/2009 09:45:00 PM ) Bill S.

WEEKEND PET PIC: Another pic of Kyan Pup in the backyard. Next week, Dusty, I promise to feature you in a halfway decent photo.

THE USUAL NOTE: For more cool pics of companion animals, please check out Modulator's "Friday Ark."

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( 5/21/2009 12:24:00 PM ) Bill S.

"IT'S A SERIOUSLY HARDBOILED JOB." The title characters in Shirow Miwa's "mature" readers manga Dogs: Prelude (Viz Media) may hang around the Buon Viaggio cafe instead of a reservoir, but you know that Quentin Tarantino would recognize 'em anyway. An interlocking quartet of stories set in the criminal world, Dogs focuses on a foursome who all live on the fringes of that ultra-violent setting.

First in line is Mihai, a grizzled former hitman returning to the city where he plied his trade after an extensive period of exile. He appears at the cafe where his slain lover once turned tricks, wanting to know the reason behind her murder. Next is Badou, a chain-smoking information broker who gets caught spying on a masochistic gang boss in the midst of a visit to the dominatrix. On the run, our scruffy anti-hero is also in the throes of a serious nic fit -- which ultimately proves his salvation.

Third is the "blade maiden" Maoto, whose parents were slain when she was still a child. The girl was subsequently reared into young adulthood by the man she thinks responsible for her parents' demise (and the large "x" scar centered between her breasts) and trained in the use of swordplay. When she comes upon her teacher killed by another former student, she's driven to avenge his death even though she's unsure why she's doing it.

In two of these tales, our protagonists struggle to make sense of their violent pasts; in the third, the hard-scrabbling Badou is just striving to stay alive with an army of gangsters after him. Much gun and sword play ensue. If these first three stories and their leads prove fairly straightforward pulp creations, Dogs' fourth piece, "Stray Dogs Howling in the Dark," takes things in a more s-f direction. Though the book hadn't given much indication of this in the earlier adventures, the whole shmear turns out to be set in an urban dystopia.

In "Stray Dogs," mystery man Heine Rammsteiner comes to the aid of a mute girl "fetish mutant" who is being abused by her pimp. The young waif has a pair of wings on her back, "a relic from the past when genetic manipulation was still unrestricted," Heine notes, which makes her valuable property to her abusive handler. Heine is drawn to the girl since he himself has been subjected to the whims of unscrupulous scientists. Though the full nature of this tampering is not fully revealed in this "Prelude," it's somehow connected with a metal collar and something called the Spine of Kerberus, which gives him the ability to spit out bullets.

This slip into the more brazenly fantastical reminded me of Kentaro Yabuki's more outlandish Black Cat (note the appearance of a stray cat in Badou's earlier story), though the book's language, flashes of nudity and occasional bloodiness probably put it beyond the age-range of your average Shonen Jump reader. Let's call it manga for the SJ fan who's grown into "maturity."

Miwa's art can be sparer in places in than it needs to be -- especially when it comes to backgrounds -- but his action sequences are convincingly kinetic. He also provides some engaging visual character moments, most frequently when "Weepy Old Killer" Mihai and Kiri, the owner of the centerpiece cafe, are in panel. Mihai shows up in three of the book's tales, while info man Badou has a prominent role in the book's final story. The only story to not feature any of Dogs' other creations is "Blade Maiden," though I suspect that our scarred heroine will connect with the other regulars at Buon Viaggio in Miwa's more extensive follow-up series, Dogs: Bullets & Carnage.

As a storyteller, Miwa may be a trace too beholden to the kind of absurdist random plot making that once placed Bruce Willis into the hands of a crazed and sadistic pawnbroker. Still, his ability to blend hard-knock action with an occasional flash of believable melancholy and broad humor is appealing. I know I found his four characters intriguing enough to make me want to see where he takes them all in a more extended fully rounded storyline, though comics readers looking for a more rigidly templated manga series may differ.

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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Pop cultural criticism - plus the occasional egocentric socio/political commentary by Bill Sherman (popculturegadabout AT yahoo.com) - filled with scrubbing bubbles!

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