Bruce Vs. the Uppity Pricks: Bruce Campbell LIVE at the NuArt, Saturday, December 20, 2008, Pt. I

Onstage at the NuArt Theatre in Los Angeles, Bruce Campbell referred to the New York Times movie critics, as a whole, as “uppity pricks.”

While I myself read the Times reviewers somewhat thoroughly each and every week, and particularly like A.O. Scott’s writing, I found it hard not to agree. Knowing full well that Campbell was referring to a recent nose-thumbing by someone on that paper towards Campbell’s latest directorial, producing and acting effort, the obsessively self-referential My Name is Bruce, I was pretty certain of the attitude that the review likely took.

Sure enough, returning home that evening and checking out the squat, barely five-paragraph long review from a few weeks back (which I somehow missed, and which therefore adds a touch of truth to my previous phrase “somewhat thoroughly”), I found an article titled “The Evil Dumb” and a statement from writer Stephen Holden which basically posits that My Name is Bruce, a low-budget meta-B-movie venture is the type of film that “only a cultist could love.”

Setting aside for a moment that I am a charter member of the Bruce Campbell cult (anyone that saw the first Evil Dead in a theatre in its initial year of release has immediate and inextinguishable membership), I toss back, softball-style so you cannot possibly miss it, this question: what’s so wrong with that?

We are now (and have been for quite some time) in an age where one trend is replaced without hesitation by the next trend, almost without society taking even the slightest breath before each new indulgence in mass hysteria. The current indulgence is for a film titled Twilight and its source material, a series of books built around a breathlessly romantic, awkwardly family-valued and ultimately phony take on vampirism (though really, aren't most takes on vampirism technically phony? At least, in the sense that we are dealing with myth and fiction for the most part, excluding those in our "real" world who have somehow become convinced that they require blood for sustenance). The media does their job, and then the rest of the world sits by while a couple million randy teenage girls obsessed with promise rings and the perfectly coiffed boyfriend finger one out to thoughts of the glistening, fangy Edward Cullen remaining oh-so-true to his little Bella. And sure, critics such as those at the New York Times pretty much trash such a film in the same manner that Holden dismisses Campbell's far less openly commercial effort, and without really attempting to understand either cult. If there is an attempt to do so, it is usually on the side of the more commercial effort so that they can wring a few extra name-dropping articles out of the film (even if they trash it) so they can sell a few extra papers. That's fine. It's the newspaper game, and I do not fault them for it. But please make some small attempt to recognize or at least understand smaller cults such as Campbell's before telling the remainder of the world to not bother because you just won't get it unless you are a fan.

If a film is made, and without a single shred of doubt, is clearly created precisely to amuse (and simultaneously administer a loving backslap at) the admittedly goofy cultists of the Bruce Campbell camp (amongst whom Jen and I will forever firmly align ourselves), and then this film satisfies the bulk of them in some arcane fashion, is that not some small form of success, however downgraded some might consider it? Certainly I found some fault and one major annoyance within the film, but given that he filmed most of it on his own property on a relative micro-budget, and also given that the film is so purposefully shaggy and self-deprecating, I honestly could see that, if such a film were viewed by those largely unknowing of Campbell's talents, they might actually come to love the big lug like the rest of us. If, do to my cultism concerning Mr. Campbell, you think that perhaps I am not the best person to be judging anything he has created, then you are probably not aware of the main thrust of this blog, which is for myself to remain frightfully honest at all times in these pieces. This includes rating films like My Name Is Bruce appropriately and truthfully, despite my prejudices either for or against the creators of said film as I enter the theatre.

If you go on to IMDB and check out the page for My Name Is Bruce, you will find (at the time I wrote this) that about 3947 people have combined forces to give the film an overall rating of 7.4, which is pretty high on the IMDB scale of things, given that films like The Godfather and Citizen Kane end up around 9.0 or thereabouts as a maximum out of 10, thanks to IMDB's weighted ratings system, which is meant to balance out such occurrences as when a rash of Bruce Campbell or Twilight fans log in and then go apeshit with the "10" ratings. Likewise with people who seethingly hate either one and dole out nothing but "1" ratings as their only way of punishing a bunch of movie people who they insist have slighted them in some way, either by time, money or general overexposure. Either form of fanaticism does no good for anyone who is seeking a balanced look at a movie which they might be tempted to see, and IMDB seeks to even things out with their weighted ratings system. However balanced, 7.5 is pretty damn high for a movie that is not necessarily even close to being as well-made as the bulk of films that end up in that vaunted 7.4 range, so perhaps the weight of the system hasn't really served its purpose to its fully extent in this case. At least, not yet. But setting aside all ideas of Campbell fanaticism, tossing out those tens on our own since surely all of those people are members of Holden's proposed (and assumedly noxious and despicable to the likes of him) Campbell cult, perhaps such a high rating is a sign that there are people are actually getting the film. Is it possible that a film that supposedly only cultists could love could actually be approachable and --gasp! -- found enjoyable by someone who is not necessarily of that ilk? Yikes!!! How could such a mistake be made when the Times has so clearly put forth the notion that to the opposite degree?

I have no specimens with which I might prove this theory, so further experimentation cannot possibly occur at this time. There were only two of us there in the theatre within our personal acquaintance, and those two were us. But I do not find it far-fetched to imagine someone being talked into tagging along to one of Bruce Campbell's theatrical tour stops promoting his newest venture - say, perhaps, the NuArt Theatre on a Saturday night in December? -- perhaps on a date or in a group of earnest pals already converted to the cult, and, with perhaps little or no knowledge of what they are about to see, still leaving out the front entrance of the theatre after two hours having enjoyed the film.

Most likely this would be largely due to Campbell, who, even when he is acting the immense prick -- or perhaps because he is, as this character is his stock-in-trade -- is one charming em-effer. There is a reason he has the cult that he does, and it has little to do with the overall quality of the films or shows in which he has plied his trade. Certainly, for some it could definitely be a factor; some people just love crappy B-movies and that's that. But I would warrant a guess that the vast majority of his fans were created through his performances in the Evil Dead films, and probably another chunk came about from his time on TV as Brisco County, Jr., Autolycus and Jack of All Trades. And, currently, with the huge success of his latest show, Burn Notice, he is undoubtably gathering a collection of new converts to his ever-growing cult.

Here's the deal, and probably the biggest reason that puts the lie to what Holden says: Campbell, in no matter which type of film he appears, big-budget or mediocre, A, B or Grade Z... Bruce Campbell, the actor, does solid work. He usually doesn't play things straight, and the vast majority of his work is without a single doubt in the tongue-in-cheek vein. But he can play it straight if called upon, and he does the smirking, winking, smarmy thing like Miles on the trumpet. Even in what would seem to be such a limited area of expertise, there is a subtle range on display. Yes, he has been in a lot of outright garbage, and most of his fans genuinely wish for him to be in bigger and better films, just as the man himself no doubt would prefer. But the bulk of his fans will eagerly sit through that outright garbage, straight-to-video crap like Moontrap and Alien Apocalypse, just waiting for Campbell to appear in more mainstream, big-budget fare like the Spider-Man trilogy and The Hudsucker Proxy (even if there is a certain form of "pal nepotism" involved in them). However he gets the parts, there is no doubt that Campbell takes full advantage of the big-screen exposure. Or even small-screen exposure. Whatever he appears in, his fans recognize that he is there for them... to entertain them. And, because he gives quality in even the goofiest trash, that them is growing larger all the time.

That Campbell takes the time to trash the Times onstage during an end-of-film Q&A session is a clear sign that this is definitely a man who takes personal umbrage at being written off completely as a B-movie hack by critics at large. And, despite holding outwardly such an air of self-deprecation within the film, he can still be hurt, as anyone would, if something they have poured their time, money and hard work into is dismissed blankly by those that theoreticaly hold a certain amount of critical sway over those who attend the movies.

Of course, then we might be talking about the types of movies that cultists don't necessarily love, and it was with a huge crowd of cultists that Jen and I found ourselves aligned and in line with a couple of Saturdays ago, when we all wrapped around the side and down the alley behind the NuArt Theatre in L.A. to meet our hero, Bruce Campbell. And when we left the film, did we, even as bona fide cultists of the Campbell variety, find ourselves loving such a movie? You know, the type of movie that only cultists could love?

(To be continued...)

Notes on Seattle, November 29, 2008, Pt. II - A Sonic Disappointment, A Visual Skullpoke

Anyone that knows me even slightly well understands how much music means to me. Those that know me pretty well are aware that I have an immense affection for Louie Louie (with comma or without) which gained massive prominence via the music scene in the Pacific Northwest in the 1960s, and that after collecting music most of my life, I now own and cherish a great many versions of the song. Those that know me extremely well know that I rave once in a while about a band from the Pacific Northwest called the Sonics, and that I would devour the souls of those that would come in between me and the music of the Sonics.

And so I find myself in the Experience Music Project, basically a shrine to Jimi Hendrix and the Seattle scene overall throughout the history of music, staring at what amounts to a "oh, yeah... there were these guys" plaque and a couple of album covers as the main testament to the fact that the Sonics even crawled out of the local area. Of course, they would say, space is limited, and most of the bands here, even the really, really famous ones are only given a small area and a handful of pictures and/or merchandising in which to tell their tale. Such a response is understandable. But it is fairly obvious to anyone even remotely familiar with developments of the Seattle sound in the late '80s through the early '90s, or even any punk scene anywhere in the freaking world, that the Sonics played a far larger influence on music than most of their counterparts, even through today, as is often attested to by many current or recent stars of the form. The Sonics were the shit, my friends, not shit itself.

And so it was thoroughly mind-boggling to me that I was staring at this relatively minute, low set section of a window dedicated to what the EMP made look like something they scraped off their shoe on the way into setting up the place, while right across the hallway lied a massive window devoted to Paul Revere and the Raiders. Costumes with frilly shirts, instruments, microphones, 45s and all manner of paraphernalia. Sure, the Raiders had a zillion hits and have toured constantly in various forms (hell, I've seen them live twice in the last 20 years). Certainly they are, in the general public's eye, far more famous than the Sonics ever have been. I grew up loving Revere and the Raiders, even if I constantly confused them with the Royal Guardsmen of Snoopy Vs. the Red Baron infamy. And they are definitely connected forever to Louie, Louie, and in fact, the Raiders' window lies in conjunction with an area devoted to the Battle of the Louies, which occurred in 1963 when the Kingsmen released their amazingly endearing, crazily sloppy version of Richard Berry's original song (who introduced his own minor hit when he toured the area in the late '50s.

The Raiders followed up with their own version (recorded in the same studio in the same month) and the battle ensued. But nearly every local band had a version of Louie Louie in their repertoire, including seminal bands like the Wailers (who also have too small an area devoted to them in the EMP, which my old acquaintance Terrific Counterguy is probably rightly pissed off about way more than I am) and the Sonics. I have always been "eh" about the Raiders' version (though it is clearly the most danceable take out of this group), and naturally I adore the Kingsmen, but predictably, once you hear the Sonics' take on the song, that's it. If you are going to rock up what used to be a lilting, piano-based, Jamaican-flavored triviality, do it right. The Sonics' version is the song done right and done stylistically far ahead of its time, and to hear it is to wonder how Gerry Roslie's vocal chords ever recovered. If it had actually broken huge, the Sonics' version may have been as ground-breaking as the Kinks' You Really Got Me, itself a glorious and highly influential misappropriating of Louie Louie's chord structure (and admittedly so by Ray Davies).

But, apart from the pocket history and those album covers, the Sonics get only a few quick mentions here in this museum devoted to the "Seattle sound." This is not to dismiss the whole of the EMP, but merely to point out in my normal long-winded way that a terrible crime is being committed right before our eyes. Outside of this, though, visually, the place is stunning and the use of space internally very well used considering the dramatic structure in which the museum has been heaped. Naturally, size matters in rock as much as in the bedroom, and this place is all about thrusting massive video screens and giant sculptures created from piles of instruments straight through the visitor's corneas. It is hard not to be impressed by the size of everything, but for me, even with an abiding passion for a good portion of the bands on display (including the Young Fresh Fellows and the Posies, again, with not enough material on hand), I found the place intriguing but essentially soulless. Not quite bringing my experience down the level of going to Knott's, I felt the EMP was the theme attraction equivalent of Jong's zipless fuck: it was there, I did it, and I moved on. Unlike the usual sense of zipless banging, I had to pay to feel nothing.

There were moments where this could have changed. The Hendrix room is a fantastic place to enter, but with so many people in there, it was nearly impossible to stop and reflect on anything, including the line of guitars and the history of blues in the Pacific Northwest. What I did like was something that I mentioned to the Eel as we hung in a corner of the room watching from mid-'60s footage of Jimi playing onstage in London. I noted that the place, with people sitting about on couches chatting or milling about casually watching the walls and video screens, that the Hendrix room almost feels like a party in someone's home, only without the actual party. I felt oddly at home in the room, but I couldn't wait to leave, since there was really no reason to stay in there. So it was for the Music Lab areas of the EMP, where I had no interest in recording my own music or mixing it or dubbing vocals or any of that bullshit. I love music, but I will never be a musician, so it held little appeal for me. Likewise the photo stage area where you could pose for pix on a rigged stage like you were members of your own band, and while this might be something fun to do with a larger group of people like the Bohemians, now was not the time. Plus, the board at work had already taken a similar photo when they were up there a couple years back, and it is ridiculous thing to behold. The Eel and I walked right past the area once we realized what is was.

What else that did hold appeal for me in the EMP should not have been in the EMP at all, but over near the Science Fiction Museum: a theatre. Inside, we found a quartet of teens watching a video on a big screen of Death Cab for Cutie preparing their next album, and we couldn't care less. While videos and films are a major part of rock culture, to think of such an effect for the rock area but not the science-fiction area smacked to me of horrible planning on their part. If I find out that there are indeed occasional sci-fi flicks shown in the EMP's theatre, and that there is some dual usage going on, I will take back my criticism. But for now, even this proved a disappointment.

The Eel and I did find something of great interest upstairs: the Hatch Show Print Collection, which held tens and possibly hundreds of examples of poster printwork done on the Hatch Brothers' letterpress for musicians, advertising companies and various theatrical acts over the past 130 years. To see the giant printing blocks was amazing, and the artwork, the vast majority of it country artists though it expands more to rock in recent years, was supplemented by a generous sampling of country-and-western costumes for people such as Hank Snow (who looks like he was about 5'2"), Patsy Cline, Minnie Pearl, Loretta Lynn and Hank Williams. Senior, that is... the real deal. The Hatch collection was a nice capper on what was overall rather an underwhelming experience. We left the EMP, and after we took a couple of photos outside, I reflected on my experience and realized that I would probably return to it again, but probably not for a few years, and only to see if they have developed the Science-Fiction Museum more fully. Well, OK... also to see if they pay the Sonics (and the Wailers in tandem) the proper obeisance.

(To be continued...)

Notes on Seattle, November 29, 2008, Pt. I - Robot Talking All Day Long

Mind wakes up at 4:30, and I can definitely tell the gin is still soaking my system. Didn't have a crazy amount of it last night, but it was more than Thanksgiving night -- Chris made my first G&T especially heavy on it, and my last drink I downed half of it in a slug instead of sipping, and it was right before bedtime. Slept better because of this, but still my unusual amount (and I say "unusual" because it contains the word "usual," meaning the amount sufficed for my own precious self, but would be "un-" for nearly everybody else in my realm of existence). I laid in bed for another hour though, trying to shut down the thought processes long enough to catch a bit of a doze, but it doesn't work, and I arise just after 5:30. Within minutes, I have popped open a giant bottle of Pellegrino to try and flood the gin out of my blood cells, and have started writing on the Maakie (that is my term of endearment for the MacBook Pro I have liberated from the office for this trip).

The bulk of the next three hours or so is spent in writing up my notes for the trip and digging through Chris and Chelz' CD collection, grabbing more than a few tunes from it along the way. Many, many tunes from it, as it were. It's strange how they seem to fill in the gaps in my record collection in much the same way that my collection would more than fill in much of theirs. I am in a very peaceful state, slugging down the Pellegrino and eventually swiping a Vitamin Water from their fridge, before Chris gets up and drink some tea. Once Chelz arises and everyone is showered, we head out to grab some breakfast at a mysterious (to my ears) place in The Junk called Bakery Nouveau.

I kick myself over this, but I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the astonishingly delicious croissant laden with egg and cheese and ham that I devour almost without blinking upon finally reaching the counter at Bakery Nouveau. It doesn't even have to have a name. All I know is that it is the best thing I have had for breakfast since that time Dad and I drove through the upper reaches of Canada and stopped at that roadside diner and, against all odds, had the tastiest omelette of my life. And now I am sitting at a small table on the street outside the bakery with Chris, waiting for Chelz to get her coffee, and I cannot think past my mouth, and the amazing combination of ingredients that are sliding down my gullet. I want another one straight off, and I swear to myself that I would crawl over every single body in Hades to get another one of these in my hands. That, or dish out another five bucks for one inside Bakery Nouveau. But I don't want cardiac arrest, and I certainly don't want to go to the hospital on this visit, not with my still having outstanding doctor bills from earlier in the year. So, I hold back, knowing that there will be more food to come later in the day. After we eat, we wander through a furniture store, checking out Xmas items on the way, before we take Chelz back to the house so Chris and I can head downtown to hit the Experience Music Project and the Science Fiction Museum.

I had been inside the EMP several years before, but only in the gift shop, and well before I even had an iota there was to be a museum devoted to the history of science fiction attached (of which I am sure Mr. Ellison would dispute much of the content inside). But let's look past what constitutes a legitimate attempt at defining the term "science fiction" (such as those who would claim that Star Wars does not truly belong in such a place) and look blankly at the museum itself. My initial sense is one of disappointment: the Frank Gehry design of the building is, in my mind, so wrapped up with the EMP and not the museum to such an extent that, while its design is so wackily futuristic seeming (personally, I see a mutated whale) so as to connect with the passer-by as being just the sort of place, were one lost, where there just had to be a museum devoted to science-fiction inside, because I only knew it as the EMP previously, the museum seems like a misbegotten transplant to me. This might be entirely appropriate if one is wishing to develop a sense of a Frankensteinian architect running amok in Seattle, slapping on public appendages to buildings willy-nilly, but the outer entrance to the museum doesn't convey such an operation, appearing as bland as nearly any entrance to a public library.

Inside the ticketing area, only a slightly undersized replica of Gort and a couple of movie posters gives one the sense of anything special at hand. The ticket attendant, who is wearing the sort of jumpsuit that one is supposedly to, through its repetitive use in movie after movie, imply some form of space attendant or cadet of lower rank, is polite and helpful, but the ticket taker at the interior gallery entrance is bored and rather gruff,. While I am a man of relative peace, that goes away the instant we are confronted by the ticket taker, and I immediately want to kick his smarmy, Alfred E. Neuman-style, gap-toothed face in. We are told more than once that there is to be no photography inside the galleries, as we are by Mr. Neuman, and while I understand the need for copyright protection and whatnot, it galls me to no end that I cannot at least take some decent overall images of the interior. After all, what I wanted to do was merely to promote and record my visit to this fascinating landmark... why couldn't I take a couple of commemorative photos.

Alas, it was not to be, though there were any number of teenage fiends flitting about brazenly capturing everything on their camera phones. I chose to follow the laws of the establishment for just this once, though even if I got a wild hair up my ass about it, I doubt anything would have come of it once I stepped inside the galleries themselves.

To say that I was immediately in awe of the collection is an understatement. Costumes, original copies of books, set design models, animation models of monsters and spaceships, posters, lobby cards, manuscripts, set-used weaponry... if I weren't already some giant form of space geek going into this place, I surely would have come out transformed! I even found samples from shows and movies I couldn't give a crap about (Independence Day; Stargate) fascinating, and lingered lovingly in front of every section. The nice part is that they didn't choose to go for the timeline approach, which is often the case in such museums, and it is definitely the easy way out. Nor did they group by individual film. Here, they chose to gather items together by categories, at first devoting a rather large gallery to each of the common tropes of sci-fi, or even emerging trends in the genre (nano-technology, etc.) At the end of the gallery lies a wall devoted to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame members, updated to include crystal images of the 2008 inductees. Surrounding this area were more window displays and artwork, and all the while, the visitor is well aware of the video imagery in the galleries, numerous television displays featuring movie clips, interviews and historical discussions of the section being viewed. Especially interesting was a section devoted to science fiction fandom, featuring Mssrs. Ackerman and Bradbury in their youth.

The next gallery, on a separate floor, was devoted mainly to costumes and weapons, before displaying an awesome video screen on which flitted about nearly two dozen famous spaceships throughout science fiction history. At first, Chris and I thought that clicking on the ship's image on one of the three computer screens available to guests would bring it flying into view. But after a couple of minutes, it became clear that the video of the ships, which is remarkably cool to watch as they flit back and forth, around and even through one another, is on a continuously loop, and that the visitor had zero effect on its movements or selection at all. Another giant screen showed future cities, but not nearly enough samples for my liking (where was Logan's Run or the city of the Planet of the Apes?) Mainly The Matrix, Blade Runner and The Jetsons. Nearby, I had to organize a vocal defense of David Brin's The Postman after a very nice couple started to mock the film version openly (and rightly so).

Chris and I listened to a few minutes of Welles' radio version of War of the Worlds on headphones (even though I own the broadcast and have heard it many, many times) and then we checked out the special exhibit devoted to robot toys. Our attention was focused mainly on finding Godzilla, Shogun Warrior and Micronaut toys, which there were in abundance, though I was more than a little peeved when the accompanying toy chart did not say Mechagodzilla on it (even though they used bookended giant photos of the character to promote the exhibit on the walls), instead referring to it as "Giant Robot Godzilla." We also notice that Ghidorah is in the exhibit, even though he is not actually a robot, merely a windup toy. But still, with a couple hundred of toys on display, it is pretty remarkable, though I can't help but think that the tin toy exhibit I saw at Epcot two months previously (at which I could take photos), was just a tad bit more impressive.

And that was it. We were done. A couple of hours, but the Science Fiction Museum was history for us. I knew I would be coming back again... (wait for it)... IN THE FUTURE!! But I also knew that there was so much more that could be done with it, such as a theatre that actually featured examples of these films, so that audiences to the place who may not normally get to do so could see the original versions of The Thing or The Day the Earth Stood Still, or at least clips from them. After we hit the gift store, which is also a tad disappointing (though I did buy a Pez Spaceman fridge magnet) -- I would have liked some form of program to the place -- we hit the bathrooms and meandered over to the Experience Music Project.

(To be continued...)

Notes on Seattle, November 28, 2008, Pt. III - My Enemies Now Have the Proof That They Need

Chris and Chelz tell me of a Lenin statue in Fremont, and I immediately hear them say "Lennon." In a town so filled with rock history, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if someone erected a statue to John Lennon, even if he had, as far as I know, nothing to do with Seattle, except perhaps in the overall influence he has laid upon the whole planet.

"No, not Lennon," Chris says. "Lenin. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin."

"Oh," I reply, rather bemused. "Fantastic. Everyone calls me a commie at work anyway. By all means... let's go!"

Fremont seems a rather cool place, with a barbershop that we pass holding a copy of Giant Robot in its magazine holder. And sure enough, while more weirdly unbalancing than cool, there is a monstrous 16-foot high Lenin statue standing oddly in front of a Mexican restaurant. Apparently saved from a mudhole in Czechoslovakia by a local carpenter who mortgaged his house to acquire it, Vladimir Lenin is a strange sight to encounter. We really didn't see the guns in the sculpture that the plaque to the side assures us shows the man as a violent revolutionary -- mainly we just thought they were rocks surrounding him -- but the statue's biggest weapon is exactly how oft-putting it is to see it. There is a sense of displacement upon walking up to it, and it is really hard for me to truly put words on how I felt about seeing it. Since I am not actually a Commie Pinko -- my considered to be extremely liberal politics and rampant atheism get me branded as such though, hopefully jokingly for the most part -- and since I know full well the history of his time on Earth, both the horrible and the good he did initially, it is hard to feel anything beyond "Wow, amazing..." Perhaps the sense of displacement is the true mood that the piece requires us to feel, though it was certainly not intended by the artist; perhaps causing us to reflect upon such a past is the ultimate good such an article can achieve.

We leave Vlad and drive through the University District as the daylight goes away, and soon we come to one of the places they had told me about before I even arrived in Seatlle: Half-Price Books on Capitol Hill. Sounds grand to me. I love old bookstores, but I am sure to catch hell if I return home to an apartment already crowded with old books to bring back a stack of even more old books. And I can literally spend hours in such a store, but I really have to use the bathroom. Luckily, there is a bathroom; sadly, I cannot use it. That requires going to a back counter and asking for a key, which Chelz does easily, but I have some weird shy thing that pops up in areas relating to the use of public restrooms. It's not pee shyness, a very famous syndrome, but rather "key shyness." I simply cannot ask the owners of a store for a key to go use their restroom, preferring instead places that have open access to their toilet areas. Don't ask me to explain it... it's just a problem I have always had, and probably has something to do with my need to not have confrontations of any variety. I am already nervous enough in public places; don't ask me to commit further by having to explain to a stranger that I am about to whiz my pants.

And so I hold it, and hop from shelf to shelf for the next hour, constantly moving in a bid to make the discomfort of my bladder go away without actually removing the contents of said bladder. Regardless of this discomfort, I am able to maintain myself long enough to make several key purchases, not least of which is finding a copy of Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women by the great Ricky Jay, whom many of you may know mostly from David Mamet and P.T. Anderson films. Jay is probably the world's greatest card manipulator, and even wrote a book a number of years ago called Cards As Weapons. Learned Pigs is a marvelous history of the circus sideshow, and Jay is one of its foremost historians in addition to being a master illusionist. I lost my copy several years back in unmentionable circumstances, so it was good to find not just one, but three copies on the shelf at Half Price Books, giving me a chance to pick the one in the most pristine shape, and still pick it up for only about five bucks.

Also in my book pile is The Ernie Kovacs Phile, which I have never seen before but was more than happy to add to the collection. Having only one volume on one of my favorite comedians at hand, this volume is made up of large script portions from various shows, and the writer seems to think he is doing something unique with the way he is presenting Kovacs' story -- only reading it will tell, but I look forward to catching up with ol' Percy Dovetonsils. Equally important, and likely more time consuming, is The Moose That Roared: The Story of Jay Ward, Bill Scott, a Flying Squirrel, and a Talking Moose, written by Keith Scott, no relation to "voice of Bullwinkle Moose" Bill Scott, but similar in that he did the voice in the most recent film version with the characters. Should be interesting. One more item: a thin little paperback called Sea Monsters, likely written for the scholastic set, but at 62.5 cents, a fun thing to lay next to the much larger, more comprehensive and scientifically sound book of similar intent by Richard Ellis which I have admired for numerous years. Oh, yes... also grabbed a cheapo DVD copy of The Manster, just because I could. (History on this item on another post at another date.) All told, a hardback, two trades (one of them that replaces a lost item), one mass market and a DVD, all for less than 20 bucks combined, and all of them items I would not consider extraneous to the collection. All told, a decent night out for me, though I could have bought the place out if given the chance... and if I really, really didn't have to release a certain large amount of a certain liquid.

Blackness, incredible traffic left over from the tree-lighting and parade jamming up the downtown area as we head back through, and general weariness mean that it is time to go spend the remainder of the evening back at Chris and Chelz' abode. G&Ts for me, beer for Chris and wine for Chelz, and we settle into going through Chris' old drawing books. The Eel is tossing drawing after drawing to me from a stack of endless pages, and I am astonished at just how awesome he became at getting the thoughts from his head to the paper, in a way that I could never do art-wise. There is then an incident which I will relate in greater detail at another time, in which I am confronted with my past as an aspiring young artist, and in a separate incident, as a disaffected youth doing some automatic writing on command from my little brother. I am staggered by these revelations of past... er.. attempts (they are not really glories), but I find it amusing that Chris gives the art back to me after all these years, but keeps the story to himself. We spend the rest of the evening writing, drawing and listening to music. And at this point, Mr. Django Bongo Puppy Boy has all but ingratiated himself to me. Once I get up in the morning, he is my best pal in the world.

Notes on Seattle, November 28, 2008, Part II - The Path Includes Mole Sauce and Zombie Finger Puppets

While the intent straight upon leaving Fantagraphics was to get some food, after Chris and I wander around Georgetown before finding out Chelsea is already back in the car, we each declared that a restroom was to be called for immediately. We drive to the International District and stop at the Uwajimaya Market, not just for some easy bladder relief, but so that the Eel and I can look at the section of Japanese toys, hoping for some swell kaiju-related items. About a year back or so, I was taken on my first visit to a 99 Ranch Market store, a rather large Asian-based superstore which has several locations in our area. (Raw Meat and I stocked up on tasty and often smelly snacks, which we snuck into a showing of Satoshi Kon's Paprika.) Uwajimaya reminded me of a larger, more hopping version of 99 Ranch, and indeed, "larger" includes its own parking garage, a bank, numerous other services, a food court with about nine different specialty counters and an entire apartment complex. The place is huge, bright and busy as hell. Walking past the butcher area, I can't help but start singing "Oh, I wish I were Uwajimaya wiener!" to myself (and then I do so again when I walk past an especially cute counter girl... it's childish but true. I am a man of brutal honesty, especially about myself).

The Eel and I dig through several shelves of toy boxes, but it almost seems that all of the ones we want to get are the ones no longer for sale, but still teasingly displayed in a locked case next to the toy section. Japanese toy-wise these days, all I care for are giant monsters, so the bulk of Pokemon / Digimon / Whatever-mon / Bleach crap is lost on me. Luckily, we find two separate runs of Ultraman toys, and so I grab a box of each, while Eel just buys the smaller box. I also grab an iced green tea drink, which I will turn out to like not at all, but I am of this opinion on most iced tea drinks of any color. (Apparently, I prefer my tea hot or at least lukewarm.) Regardless, I choke it down out of extreme thirst. Extreme hunger, too, wears on our minds, but we choose to skip the food court in favor of heading to the Ballard district, as Chelsea has expressed a desire to introduce me to La Carta de Oaxaca.

She tells me the mole at La Carta de Oaxaca is to die for, and within about fifteen minutes of ordering (after about thirty minutes of waiting in the not well attended, tiny bar area of this particularly crammed but engaging restaurant), I am digging into their chicken mole with considerable earnestness. The place is loud enough from the rattle of the customers that my din vertigo starts to set off -- with the crew at the next table being particularly annoying -- and I beg Chris and Chelz to start talking so I can focus on something. Luckily, the food arrives quickly, and once that mole hits my taste buds (at just about the time the neighboring table clears out), there is only one thing I could possibly focus on anyway. I also order the empanadas with mushrooms instead of chicken, to give a little variety to my side of the table, and also to maintain my need to discover places for my little vegetarian Jen to eat when I next drag her up to this neck of the woods. The times on this trip that I miss Jen the most, it turns out, are when I go to restaurants. The comic shops, the toy shops, the book shops -- these I can do on my own, and they are not her bent anyway. But part of our relationship revolves around the struggle to find decent places for her to find sustenance of the non-slaughter order. And thus I will spend part of each restaurant visit scanning the menus thoroughly for veggie options, if not ordering them outright, which I do in the case of Oaxaca.

When we leave, it is suggested to me that Archie McPhee is nearby, and I need no further prodding. I have wanted to go to Archie McPhee for numerous years, but had never quite made it through the doors. Now that I have, I don't ever need to again (unless I lived down the street or something). Nothing against the place, but its reputation as a swell spot for novelties and toys far outweighs its actual usefulness as such a store, unless you have a great and fervent need to purchase squirrel underpants -- and by that, I mean underpants that will fit a squirrel. I do have such a need, but that is beside the point. Novelty stores make their living almost purely off of the impulse buy -- the sort of stuff that you grab for the birthday party of someone you either don't know very well or that someone that you know far too well -- and I will certainly spend around five bucks myself at Archie's grabbing a bag of rubbery zombie and monster finger puppets. But I spend most of my time searching, searching, searching for anything that would fall into the category of "Something that I simply cannot live without." The giant medical urinal jar almost falls into that category, and there is certainly a lot in stock there that I would love to add to my own junkpile at home, if my own junkpile at home weren't already of such a size that I could open my own Archie McPhee outlet already. All told, while digging through all of the junk holds a certain joy in itself, purchase-wise, Archie McPhee is a washout, and the second half of their store across the parking lot (who knew?) reveals even less that I wish to get (except the giant, 4-foot, hard plastic iguana). But I have now made the trip, though I will spend the remainder of my Seattle visit finding the same toys in nearly every other shop I visit.

(To be continued...)

Notes on Seattle, November 28, 2008, Part I - The Eel & Chelz' Path to Enlightenment

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday: the relations did ply me with drink, as they did the same to themselves, though each to his/her own particular taste, and so I went to bed groggy Thanksgiving night from something else besides mere fatigue and the mythic (and silly) mega-dose of tryptophan. My brother Chris, who often goes by the self-given appellation "Eel," knows well of my predilection for the ol' gin and tonic, and when I arrived, I found that having such items on reserve coincided neatly with the fact that we would not be leaving the environs in any way for the evening. Such fortuity was not to be believed, but so it happened to be, and thus I did make way with a couple of rounds of my favorite spiritual mix.

Not surprisingly, given the way things tend to work for me, I woke up at my normal time Friday morning, or slightly before that "normal" time, really. And my head was fine. A little too much so it seemed, as I immediately began my usual course of determination for the morning -- getting up, writing, reading, gaining knowledge and spewing it back out as nonsense for no reasonable person to divine. I spent the better part of an hour trying to teach myself Adobe Illustrator, and made some decent headway on a banner for the new Cinema for Space Lovers website, though I knew right away that what I was really doing was building a temporary model from which I would try and convince Sal to work his magic on it back home.

Once the brother and the sis-in-law (whom I shall only refer henceforth either by her name or as my sister) arose for the morning, after the normal round of personal ablutions, he hit the road. It had already been decided that we would hit the EMP and Science Fiction Museum on Saturday, so what I told them I wished was for them to choose some swell places to go to give me a taste of their Seattle experience. After a quick run to the bank, we began the trek...

FANTAGRAPHICS

Chris mentioned to me that we were going to first hit a section of the city called Georgetown. When I asked why, he replied, "Because we are going to the Fantagraphics bookstore." He had said the day before that there was such a place, and I knew that we would likely hit it at some point, but I was not fully prepared for it so early in the morning. I have numerous Fantagraphics volumes at home, and they are all easily attainable online or at other stores, but to imagine going into a place fully stocked with just about any tome dedicated to the history of the comic arts was just to much for me. Splitting its space with a pretty nifty LP store (I like that vinyl is still hanging around just enough to warrant a New Arrivals section, though some of them are merely recent antiquated acquisitions of the shop), the Fantagraphics store felt like a paradise from the moment I stepped through.

How I wish there were its like in my vicinity! Shelves and shelves of Peanuts, Popeye, Crumb, McCay... I just could not handle it! I actually had to step back and remind myself to not delve too deeply into the contents of the store, for fear of driving myself mad. Instead, I found a retreat in a small room at the back of the store which held 50%-off discount books, all of them damaged, out-of-print or sadly unloved, which may not be the actual reason, but where else would you put books no one wants to buy? Surprisingly, though there were extreme exceptions, many of the books don't seem too bad, and I could have easily made off with four or five slightly worn blocks of the hardback Peanuts run. But sense took over (I had very little room to transport items back, which I sort of did on purpose), and so I finally decided to grab a pair of quite thin releases in the Pogo series (#s 9 & 11), which, along with Krazy Kat, is one of my top priorities strip-wise.

It is a dull enough morning that the girl with the expected look and countenance working the counter drifts back and forth sharing conversation with what I presume was the owner of the record portion. (I am unaware of the true nature of the owners/employees of the respective stores. All I know is that business was slow enough to very nearly demand such interaction as a means to simply stay awake.) Besides our trio, a handful of others zip in and out of the place while we are there, and after about half an hour, I finally made my Pogo decision (not that I really had a choice, and besides, the books are actually in perfect shape, so they may have fallen into either the out-of-print or my proposed sadly-unloved category after all). The counter girl is a delight, and she is more than happy to tell Chris and myself about several upcoming events at the store, including an appearance by Peter Bagge's band, which the record guy said could actually prove to make people leave the store instead. "But who knows?" he adds. Chris and I grab several free items to round out our purchase and then we leave to go find Chelz, who had already slipped away to check out another place, and presumably get some food.

But, wait! There is something else that Chris and I get at Fantagraphics, and it could well prove to be the most important part of the trip. The store keeps a series of differently sized dummy books on hand, all fairly cheap in price but quite well-made. I find a 7" x 7" hardcover beauty with an all-white dust cover, 144 pages thick, while Chris opts for a slightly taller one. Mine only costs $6.95, and while I have no idea how I am going to fill the book, my intent is to try and jump-start my drawing abilities once more. Of course, it is entirely possible that I will find some other use for the volume, but over the course of the next couple days in Seattle, Chris will have already leapt into filling his with some amazing ink work, and will likely have his largely complete by the time I next see him in December.

Br'er Rik? He lay low, still thinking about what he wants to do with it, and for the next two nights, he falls asleep wondering what that will be, still reluctant to actually put pencil to paper. While I have burst through a long and bitter writer's block victorious, likely for life, I am still mired in an artistic quicksand as regards my ability to draw again. I had hoped that this, along with the remainder of the weekend, staying in close proximity with Chris, who is never at a loss to do so when around me, will help trigger this. Not yet, though. I am far too shy to draw around others, and it seems that I might be far too recessed into my own doubts to ever get out.

(To be continued...)

Notes on Thanksgiving in Seattle, November 27, 2008 Pt. II

Chris met me at the airport in a new disguise to my eyes: a full beard jutted out from his face, and it came equipped with a mustache almost dandily curled upward. I told him he looked a bit like Doug Martsch from Built to Spill (not really the mustache though, just the beard combined with my brother's overall features), and Chris says that Martsch hasn't had a beard for a while. Such trivial blather works as a comfort saying between us, not as any form of code but just the way we converse. Unlike with many families or siblings separated by distance, there is no awkward "getting to know you again" stuff between Mark and Chris and I when we get back together again. I cannot speak for the other two, but I know that I am my most at ease around either of them, even more so than with Jen, and especially more so than with any of my quartet of parents (but "no disrespect though," as Jon Stewart would say in a mock Bronxian tone).

Within minutes, we are in Chris' car to head home to see Chelsea and possibly eat Turkey Day dinner, depending on how the turkey is doing. I have a surprise waiting in the car for me: Django Bongo, Chris and Chelz' newest addition to the household, a rather large, supposed husky-golden retriever mix, though I see nothing but German shepherd in his features and especially his eyes. He is a lovely pup, but he is almost deathly afraid of strangers, and sometimes never gets over his shyness. He is twirling around in the backside trying in vain to cram his too-large body into the too-small area on the floor behind the driver's seat, which leaves his left back leg straddling the seat while he seeks to jam his nose underneath the backseat. I say his name gently to try and reassure, but all this gets is quick looks of fear and then a return to his twirling, leg-catching and nose-jamming routine. Luckily for the sweet boy, it doesn't take us long to get home, and he then gets to open his shyness act on a larger stage.

It is grand to see Chelsea again, and I greet her as my sister, not as my brother's wife. I have always thought the world of her, and never as someone that I had to tolerate to hang around my brother. We have all been saddled with significant others who are more of an appendage than they are a missing and necessary piece of the complicated puzzle of loneliness. This is not the case here, and I find her as vital to my relationship to my brother Chris as I do Marcie to my relationship with my brother Mark. I hope that they see how Jen works the same way for me.

It is going to be a couple more hours until dinner, but the two of them had brined the turkey the day before and did a lot of prep work, so it all goes relatively smoothly on the way to an awesome dinner. Just being there was going to make any dinner awesome, whether we had turkey or ordered Chinese takeout, but it is nice when the food is actually great. While we talk and catch up while the food is being finished, I take every opportunity to try and win over Django, having already found a great fan in their older dog, the beautiful Sihva, on previous visits. By dinner time, I will have only been able to pet his nose and head a handful of times, and he will absolutely not get his body and closer to me than that.

Chelsea has a running battle with his mom on the phone over how long to cook a turkey. Lenore insists that four hours is necessary; Chelz believes she can do it in a shorter time. (At least, this is what I was perceiving on my end of things.) As it turns out, the temperature is more than adequate to remove the turkey at Chelz' projected time, though several other dishes need to be either cooked or reheated before we can proceed with the dining portion of the program. We get to eat around 6:30, and everything is great, stocked with the usual suspects of Thanksgiving fare, but given a twist in this particular kitchen. Chelz asks us if the turkey is too dry, but Chris and I couldn't disagree more... the turkey is exceedingly juicy and delicious, probably more so than at any other dinner I have had except when Leif deep-fried one a few years back. And Chelsea has definitely won the time-temp battle too, as Lenore calls to say that she overcooked hers at four hours, and it came out far too dry. It is a small but delicious victory in Seattle.

Django started to lose a tad bit of shyness when I decided to allow the kids to assist me in finishing off my second plate. Just a few scraps of turkey each, but it clearly helps in de-icing the frosty relations between visiting uncle and new family pup. By evening's end, I am able to skritch behind his ears for a few seconds and he has started to come up to me when I call his name. But no more. That will have to wait until tomorrow. But I will win him over. Oh, yes... I will win him over... Django Bongo Johnson will be my buddy.

Notes on Thanksgiving in Seattle, November 27, 2008 Pt. I

Left on a jet plane (please cue my favorite song by PP&M -- written by Mr. Denver -- from when I was five) at noon to see Chris and Chelsea for Thanksgiving dinner later in the afternoon. They told me previously they were extremely excited to cook their first attempt at a Turkey day soiree -- at least they seemed excited on the phone. I don't really care what the result is... seeing them again is the important thing. I have decided that beginning next year, I am going to try to make two trips a year to see both Mark and Chris. Mark is easier because he is so much closer, but Seattle is close enough to not make it a difficult undertaking. The trick in taking multiple trips is getting Dad and Joann to understand how important it is to me to see my brothers, both emotionally and artistically. I do want to get up and see the parentals once a year as well, but all of this needs to come with the understanding that the other parties need to make the attempt to come down and see us in return. I do not want things to turn into a situation where any of us start putting off seeing members of our immediate family for a number of years. Maybe once a year to go see each one is more doable, especially if there is some assurance that they will reciprocate.

But, for now, Seattle, which I have considered for a number of years to be my favorite city. My last few zips there have literally been "zips" -- airport layovers for anywhere from two hours to fourteen hours, which afforded me little in the way of time to catch up with whomever I wished to catch up there. For me, this is now my brother, my friends Tim and Kathryn (and boys), and my old school pal Jim. I have an uncle there in Olympia and Joann's brother Neil, and I wouldn't mind seeing them as well, but I am probably going to call such plans on account of selfishness.

Explanation: the last time I was through, when I stayed at C+C's new home for one night (going to an awesome restaurant in the process) before catching an early morning flight up to Anchorage, Chris and Chelz said that it was too bad I wasn't staying longer, because there were all of these places they had discovered since they settled there. What they wanted to do, they explained, is show me THEIR Seattle. I have my Seattle, which pretty much consists of walking the waterfront, going to the Aquarium and Woodland Park Zoo, shopping and hanging around downtown and at Pike's Place Market, and going to Mariners games. That's Seattle to me. But these were usually the things I discovered, or did again and again, because I was often hanging with the same people on these trips or didn't know better. Yes, I have done brunch atop the Space Needle and I have ridden the Monorail. I have taken the ferry over to Bainbridge Island (and stayed there numerous times) and seen porpoises racing along its wake. I have been to the Pacific Science Center and saw my first IMAX movie there, and I have hit a number of museums and galleries. I have haunted the bakeries and bars downtown and stayed in a pretty great hotel down there, allowing me to soak in the nightlife on a few occasions.

But I want to discover more...

I spent the first half hour of my flight to Seattle contemplating a new scenario for air travel, in which families with children five and under, and especially those sporting bawlers of the infant variety, are made to ride in an airborne form of steerage (as opposed to riding in coach, which is essentially steerage at the current moment. No more crying, whining, spitting up, diaper shitting and temper tantrums in the cabin. The brats will be confined to an area just in front of the luggage, but I will allow said area to be heated and even laden with seats, as long as it is also soundproofed for the considerate people in the normal seating area above.

Thoughts such as this filled my head after my initial reverie of having no one else seated in my half of the row was melted away like the current hopes and dreams of millions by a pair of kicking, shrieking under-six demons behind my seat and a wailing toddler of recent vintage directly in front of me. A headache began to set in, and no amount of furtive glances at the couple with the baby and the grandmother ignoring the other pair who I believe, from the quick stabs of my eyes through the seats to stare seethingly back at them every few minutes, are adorned with tiny little horns jutting out from their foreheads just below their hairline. Never mind that they come equipped with talking Mickey and Minnie dolls, which I am easily able to ignore since the hellspawn wielding them are even louder and more obnoxious. The grandmother ignores them through every jolt of passenger turbulence, and even manages to sleep through most of the trip. About halfway through the ride, there will commence a constant pounding and thumping to the back of my plane seat, but as I am a polite person in public, I try my best to turn up the Yatsura and ignore the wail of souls from the Pit of Despair that had opened up right behind me. None of this is helped by the fact that the boy keeps saying one phrase over and over -- I shit you not, he said it about four times, almost like a mantra -- "I'm all about Satan." Surely I was mishearing this, but then I thought, "What if he has a dad who watches Tenacious D, or is perhaps, himself, a Satan worshipper? What if this is acceptable in their family? I believe in that mythical creation as little as any other (except Bert Convy, whom I definitely keep the faith over, because I used to see him on TattleTales). Who am I to judge?" The third time Damien, Jr. said it, the grandmother calmly responded, "You are? Well... OK." I thought it best not to stir up the wrath of a clearly disturbed family, even if they were returning from a trip to Disneyland.

In front of me though, I met my sharpest foe, a drooling, wailing little 24-lb. bundle of pure evil. At least for that first half hour, that is what I considered her. I am sure the G-forces and the bumping of the plane are stressful for any toddler, going up or coming down. Hell, they are for most people. So I was willing to give this one a reprieve until we were stable and aloft, but the toddler crankiness continued for a while, just long enough for me to start conceiving my totalitarian restructuring of air travel seating arrangements. But then, in a moment of blessed silence, I got sucked into a trap. Said baby, draped over her porky mother's shoulder, saw me and smiled. A giant, Gerber's-laden grin spread across the face of her apple-cheeked disproportionate noggin and stole my heart. Evil baby! Horrid baby! Damn you, baby! Why have you brought me such joy when I am clearly hellbent on despising you? Quick staring at me with those beguiling big brown eyes and start crying again so I can have you whisked away to the belly of the plane posthaste! Stop being adorable, damn it!

Even with the adorable baby, who continued to giggle and smile at me for the last two hours of the flight (but I will not own up to playing peek-a-boo at all in that time, so don't push me on it -- I hate babies, and that is that)... yes, even with the adorable baby breaking into another fit of wailing on the landing, I was won over for good, and somehow I left the plane in a grand mood. Mostly this was from my excitement about meeting my brother again, but first I had to relieve myself in a desperate way. I bolted past the people who had deplaned just ahead of me, but by the time I reached the bathroom, there was already a long line of Larry Craig wannabes stretching out the door. I figured that instead of waiting, the best plan would be to zoom across the airport to another bathroom, a trip which took me just past the baggage exit where my brother stood waiting for me. As I thought, it was nearly empty. Having a couple of carry-on bags weighing me down, I figured the best thing to do would be to hit a stall and urinate in there. Boy, did I lose on Let's Make A Deal. Door #1 held a terrible splatter of what Robyn Hitchcock might describe as "tomatoes, hummus, chickpeas and some strips of skin," or at least that's what the fetid mess dripping rather freshly off the toilet seat seemed to resemble. I had to hold back my disgust before I added to that Boschian runoff of disgorged stomach remnants. (Little did I know that I would hear two more tales of ruptured meals in the days to come, with my story shared amongst our trio, and that the subject of barfing would almost become a leitmotif of the trip.)

(To be continued...)

Why I Am Heading Out of Town for Thanksgiving Day...

I thought Big G was done eating Steve on Halloween, but apparently it is a tradition in his family, and Steve's it seems, that extends across all holidays.

Just not safe at work sometimes, and I live pretty close to the office as well. Best to get out of town. Seattle, here I come!

The Bohemian Artifact Wing #2: Boog & Bear's Friday the 13th Marathon, Part 1

It started as what seemed like a joke to me: “Hey, we should watch all of the Friday the 13th films in a row, back to back, all the way through!”

A long-running joke, that is... The statement above would bounce back and forth between myself (who, in this particular section of the Pylon, will usually referred to by my Bohemian alias “Boogieman” or, most often, “Boog” – nobody in Alaska calls me “Rik” or “Rik Tod”, not even in formal settings… alas…) and my pal of long standing, Robear (again, known as Robert to the general populace, but every Bohemian goes mainly by nicknames, sometimes piles of them). I thought for a while that it was mainly one of those time-filling “we should do this” sort of statements that friends toss about while lounging about on a dull afternoon, but of which none of the parties are ever truly concerned of committing and following through. I had always considered the Friday the 13th statement to be along those lines. But Robear was actually deadly serious about it, and one day, looking for any conceivable option for avoiding the missus, finally decided to match his gravitas concerning a dozen or so hours of hockey-masked homicide and said, “Sure! Let’s do it!”

The trick to engaging in something like this is purposefully elevating your level of devotion to the cause. I can watch crappy horror films ‘til the cows come home to get slaughtered, but I have never been a huge fan of the Jason series. Seen them, yes – but only in the way that I have seen so, so many crappy horror films: in a search for actually decent horror films. Regardless, because I was for many long years absolutely unable NOT to tape any horror or sci-fi film that crossed my path, I did have six of the nine Jason films created to that point copied off of cable, including the most recent, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, which I had just snagged off of Pay-Per-View. (I had also seen seven of the films – I missed Parts 4 and 5 – in the theatre, and mostly on opening nights, because I was young and hanging out with various pals of low ambition for the evening. Two of the films (2 & 3) I saw in rather an inebriated state, which only helped matters.) Robear is not really known as a "horror" guy -- he's more of a comedy fiend, actually -- but I've never known him to shy away from any spook film. Hell, I saw Children of the Corn III with the guy. Clearly, our individual interests in completing such a task greatly varied, but once we decided to really, truly commit to the Jason Fest, we went through with it.

But just watching the films was not enough for me to get involved. I needed a project, a reason for doing the whole thing. And so, once the location and time of the marathon was locked in, Robear and I then decided we were going to keep track of how many people got killed in the films overall. Not just how many murder Jason or his pair of stand-ins commit, but any deaths at all in the films. I figured this would be a good enough anchor to keep our interesting going. But then we noticed patterns that occur merely from the set-in of the standard horror clichés, and we also noticed the lack of patterns that occur from random hands being engaged in the production of the films and the relative lack of foresight and an overall guiding plan thereof. We also decided to mark down some other random items (which I will detail in another portion of the archive), and some of it occurred to us or one of us as we made our way through the films, so sometimes our notes would be a tad incomplete. In all, by committing to the taking of notes, we were actually able to get through the first seven films in one sitting, before the early morning hours made it far too easy to succumb to slumber laying in front of the pulsing glow of the living room television. (A four hour nap left us refreshed enough to knock out the last two late on Saturday morning.)

Once more, my pack-rat ways have enabled me to relive this experience, which really is only important to Robear and myself, but enough of the remainder of Bohemia have heard about it over the years to warrant the placement of our quickly scribbled notes in the recently founded Bohemian Artifact archives. So, here are the first two pages of our official Friday the 13th Death Count, and while they were not created initially for purposes of internet usage (I barely understood the word at that time), since they have survived the years, I suppose it was inevitable that it would happen that I would place them upon the Pylon. The prevalent hand on these notes is my own, all left-handed and awkward when scrawling straight up and down, and whilst scrolling left to right. On the notes for Part 3 (page 2), you will glimpse the only sighting of Robear’s largely neater and more compact hand (though his hands, on the physical level, are far meatier) on the entry for Victim #12. As the body counts grew noticeably larger, Robear picked up more of the notes almost exactly halfway through Part V: A New Beginning. We had agreed to split the duties anyway, though with numerous other items of which to keep track, it’s not as if I could just nap through the remaining films whilst Robear scribbled away.

For those seeking a legend of some sort: “M” stands for Machete, “K” for Knife… there are other shortcuts taken on these pages which I am still attempting to decipher. At the bottom of page one, I cut it off purposefully as there was a phone number referenced by the phrase “Tony at R’s Dad’s,” which I think refers to Robear’s own pater, but I can’t recall. “R” could be any number of people, and uncertainty about whether it was still a working number made me cut if off. At the top left hand corner of the first page, there is an attempt to make sure that the year count is correct in the first film between Jason’s accidental death and that of the “modern” events. On the left hand side of the first page, it appears that we were coming up with reasons why each murder occurred, with examples being “bad acting,” “obscene wriggling,” “furthering Native stereotypes,” and on the second page, “drinking on the shitter.” Sadly, it appears we gave this game up after that last example.

(To be continued…)

Dylan Goes Select-Rik: Shuffle Mode, Friday Morning 11.21.08

Isn’t the whole point of shuffle mode that you get a decently mixed selection of the music on your iPod, regardless of how many songs you actually have on your iPod? I understand if you have an iPod Shuffle with only enough room for a few dozen tunes and you end up the same artists (assuming you have multiple songs from the same artist on your Shuffle) over and over again. But I have 16,000-plus tunes, and possibly about a thousand full albums, jammed onto Ymir (the name of my particular iPod). So you'd think that my little metal monster would have no problem throwing down clear lines of division between similar artists. 

But… well... apparently not.

As you can see on the list below, in the space of seven songs, I end up with two each from the Davies brothers and the Johns – F. and L., respectively – and the iPod goes on like it had done its job properly and all that. Wait a minute, Ymir… didn’t I hit shuffle mode? And please don’t use the excuse that it's because I have so many full albums by these groups on the machine that it becomes hard to avoid them. I have a full twelve Kinks albums in the mix (along with a few stray singles) along with thirteen TMBG albums… yes, that’s true. But with the exception of Richman, Beefheart and the Muppets, every other group in this short list has more than five albums in the mix as well. Costello also has a dozen (I own about twenty of his, so don’t think that I am not being particular in the overall selection) and Floyd has nine.

It is the cramming together so closely of the Kinks’ tunes that has me worried. Dammit! For once (two days in a row, really), I chose “shuffle.” I purposefully tried to mix things up, and this is what I get. 

It’s like Ymir is so used to my just careening straight through a whole album, he gets confused and doesn’t know what to do. Or maybe he is scared to mix things up, thinking that he has mistakenly fallen into the wrong mode, and that I will wing him across the road if he doesn’t keep me pointed down the normal listening pattern. He’s almost like a tiny little TiVo, only more aesthetically pleasing. Whatever it is, I will chalk it up to loyalty on Ymir’s part…

• Important in Your Life – Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers
• Too Much Monkey Business – The Kinks
• The Army’s Tired Now – They Might Be Giants
• Set Me Free – The Kinks
• Valium Waltz – Old 97s
• Country Darkness – Elvis Costello & the Imposters
• San Tropez – Pink Floyd
• Something Grabbed Ahold of My Hand – They Might Be Giants
• Interview: The Tooth Fairy – The Sifl & Olly Show
• Ole! Tarantula – Robyn Hitchcock & the Venus 3
• Frownland – Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
• Get That Girl – Joe Jackson
• Seymour Stein – Belle and Sebastian
• Mahna Mahna – Jim Henson’s Muppets (The Muppet Show Soundtrack)

Dylan Goes Select-Rik: Shuffle Mode, Thursday Morning 11.20.08

Normally, the aural pathway on which I tread is paved solely with albums, and generally those of a single artist, but every once in a while, contrary to my nature, I need a little variety on the headphones. So it goes occasionally on my morning walks to work, on those rare days when I just can’t decide which album to give a listen. So I hit the ol’ Shuffle Mode, and roll with whatever hits the ears. Sure, sometimes I get a little shocked by what I hear: “Do I really have that on my iPod, let alone my collection?” or “What the hell is this???” When you have crammed over 16,000 songs onto an iPod (and it will get worse when I jump up to 160 gigs from a mere 80), you can often get lost in the mass of artists and albums. Especially when you drop on compilations or soundtracks, which you probably purchased for three or four songs at most, and you have never really become all that acquainted with the rest. Sometimes these surprises are grand, and sometimes they are a sign that you have a little more housecleaning to do.

Not this time. All of the songs yesterday morning were meant to be on there, compilation selections or not. It’s certainly a good first glimpse at what I have going through my head at any given time. You are going to notice a great profusion of Sifl and Olly and South Park bits interspersed with the actual music on these lists, and that’s simply because I threw them on the iPod to serve almost like crazed little DJs from time to time. Enjoy…

Talk! Robot is Better Than Olly – The Sifl and Olly Show
Manny’s Bones – Los Lobos
Hard Time Killing Floor Blues – Chris Thomas King
Broke In Two – They Might Be Giants
You Are the Sunshine of My Life – Stevie Wonder
Testify (Parts 1 & 2) – The Isley Brothers (live)
The Sun Goes Down and the World Goes Dancing – The Magnetic Fields
The Healer/Hip Hop – Erykah Badu
Soul Craft – Bad Brains
I Feel Good – Shirley & Lee
Good Times Rock ‘n’ Roll – The Young Fresh Fellows
Don’t Believe the Hype – Public Enemy
The Once Over Twice – X
Fools in Love/For Your Life – Joe Jackson (live)
TV – Maria Bamford (live comedy)
Lonnie’s Skiffle Party Part 2 – Lonnie Donegan

Kir, Keeper of the Histories, presents - The Bohemian Artifact Wing #1: The Scribblings of the Nuncle

Know, O Polliwogs, that there once existed a time, long before you wasted away your own lives in misplaced worry and fruitless excess, from whence there sprang a race of beings known (somewhat ironically, in some cases) as the Bohemians. Clad in armor forged from the freezing winds of the remote Alaskan frontier, these Bohemians thrived in a time which, coincidentally, ran concurrently in the same general area as a certain recent vice-presidential loser. Whether their paths crossed hers at any given time is lost to the mists of time, and perhaps because of this, it was a time of youthful frivolity, though the blitheness of their manner was balanced overall with a passionate love and extraordinarily strong work ethic regarding the theatre. It was a time of staging fights in malls, skipping school in costume, and swiping towering piles of Pennysavers for no decent reason except to just do it. It was a time of hiding from people nicknamed Larry. It was a time of waving pots and pans at passing cars. Above all, it was a time of lounging on trampolines and rooftops drinking mass quantities of Dr. Pepper and Squirt.

Know, too, that there came to pass a day whereupon the Duke and Boogieman spent an afternoon doodling comics in the ill-fated tincan known to the Ancient Ones as Gibra Tar. It was during this period of complete absorption in the comic art of the primitive that their path was crossed by the third denizen of Gibra Tar, Nuncle, who was then goaded to seat his posterior 'pon the scuffed carpet and draw his little own 'seff. "But I can't draw!" he protested in vain, as he well knew he was almost entirely unable to defend himself against the peer pressure of his erstwhile pals unless engaged in some form of violent and physical Pupae War. "Sure you can!" they pressed him, "anyone can draw!"

And it came to pass from this goading that Nuncle quoth, "I can draw a werewolf." And from his pen burst a very fine werewolf indeed. "It looks sort of like an Eskimo, though." And following the drawing of his very fine Eskimo Werewolf, Nuncle did spew forth from his pwoffel, in succession, a seemingly angry bunny (complete with seemingly angry carrot), a panting hound dog of indeterminate heritage, and some form of demonic walrus with horns atop his head that serve as electrodes that seem to grant the walrus the very powers of Zeus. But Nuncle was not yet done for the afternoon. Then drawing a Tyrannosaurus Rex on his own drawing pad, the Boogieman then pressed Nuncle to try his hand at the art of the dinosaur. Flipping over his 4" x 6" piece of scratch paper, Nuncle knocked out an endearing version of a Rex himself, which pleased Boog greatly.

And though the Eskimo Werewolf would go on to a grand career as the growling and roaring herald of Bohemian birthdays for many years hence, it seemed that this important piece of Bohemian history would have been lost forever were it not so that a certain member of that trio was an unabashed pack-rat. Recent excavation into several layers of compacted notepaper has resurrected this important relic so it may be seen by generations of Bohemians henceforth.

And thus, it is with great pride that I, Kir, the Keeper of the Histories, offer up the Scribblings of the Nuncle as the inaugural piece of the Bohemian Artifact Wing on The Cinema 4 Pylon. It is for the sake of us all that we Learn, Review and Understand.

"Their world crumbled. The cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear. Men began to feed upon men..."

UPDATED TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2008 (See note at bottom of post*)

We should all wake up to a blue sky. Or at least the prospect of a blue sky dawning, should the sky happen to be dark with clouds on that day.

I thought the sky was just dark with clouds on Saturday.

I had looked out of our living room window on sporadic occasions throughout Saturday morning, and had just thought it was going to rain at some point. I noticed the wind was whipping up to enormous gusts here and there, and figured we were in for a crazy storm. Into the afternoon, with Jen arising for the day, we configured a plan to take the recycling out and then head to the Cinema City Theatres for a hopefully comedic double feature of Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make A Porno (you'll see no pussyfooting around that title here, pun intended) and Paul Rudd's Role Models. And then some light shopping for household necessities.

And then I stepped outside. There was an acrid taste to the air, and I noticed that the sidewalk at the bottom of the stairs, where my view of the street is encumbered by the retaining walls between apartment sections, was suffused with an orange glow. Walking through the courtyard, still unable to see the horizon, while I still thought that what I saw in the sky above was simply a mass of clouds, my nose told me that somewhere, possibly close by, was a fire. And then I turned the corner to the carport and saw the sun. A dim orange bulb poked through the dark mass passing in front of it, bringing light so weak that it could well have been portrayed by an uncarved pumpkin instead. The smokescreen swirling past which I had mistaken for clouds all morning seemed like a curtain only barely pulled upwards to reveal a teasing glimpse of the blue on the horizon which normally would have encased the rest of the sky on a normal happy day. I started to cough from the taste of the air and ran back inside.

Jen and I still endeavored to carry out our plan for the day, and this meant skipping a pass through the local television channels to find out what was going on, and hitting the road. We did, however, have the presence of mind to turn on a news station on the radio, and we find out the whole story: we were surrounded by vast firestorms. The strange post-apocalyptic mood that my initial peek at the day had built for me was now confirmed to not be so much "post" as it were current and dangerous. Freeways had been closed, including the 91, which rolls right past our home on the other side of a massive wall. It is likely, had we not taken care to listen to the radio, that we would have perceived such a fact from the lack of cars that we saw on the normally buzzing thoroughfare.

The mood got even stranger at the recycling center. By then, we had found out that one fire had jumped the 91 freeway about six to seven miles away from us – to our side of the freeway, and about the apartment complex that it was nearly completely decimating at the time, a thought that hit close to home for us in numerous ways. We heard about the fire in the Yorba Linda-Brea area, and my thoughts turned to my friend Lisa, who lives in Brea (and as it turns out, did have to be evacuated from her hillside community over the weekend). We heard about the huge Sylmar fire that destroyed over 500 mobile homes, and was still raging unchecked in the area. By the time we got to turning our bottles and cans in for $18.36, we were sick to death. The wind jostled our recyclables about as we sought to get out of the nauseating smell of smoke in the air as quick as possible. Hearing about the 91 freeway jump, and knowing that the theatre we were planning to attend lied a couple of miles in the direction of the main focus of that fire (in fact, our veterinarian’s office is down there), we decided that spending five hours in a theatre while a firestorm rages outside is probably not the best plan in the world. We decided instead to hit a grocery store really quick and fulfill that portion of our afternoon agenda, grab some In-and-Out and then head home to check the news.

Normally, I don’t watch the news. Not locally, that is. Too many stories about drive-bys and home invasions makes Rik an even edgier, very fearful boy. The fact that the local news seems to intersperse these tales from the dark side with celebrity trivia about Lindsay and Paris makes me hate the local news even more. It’s already irresponsible to fill our lives with an unfocused blanket of fear – why do you have to make it worse with outright idiocy? But now it seemed absolutely vital that I follow the news. Funny how we change so quickly when lives are on the line. I honestly didn’t know what I really should feel in this case. I make a lot of statements about ultimately not caring about society, and not giving two shits about whether the human race will prosper, preferring instead to believe that we are a doomed race due to our own inability to rise above prejudice and corporate greed and outmoded religions and that we will never find a way to right the ship because of this.

And then the Earth really does start to fight back against us, and I suddenly find myself worrying about society. I start to see the cracks in civilization in situations like this, and looking past the news reports of spot looting incidents, instead of using the worst behavior to solidify my standing, I start to concentrate instead on what is good and noble in mankind. I see the bravery and selflessness of the fire crews, and I realize that all is not lost. Even as my mind brings to life wild scenarios of Mad Max-ian behavior as the freeways close and evacuations increase and everyone grows more desperate and fearful, I am comforted by the fact that there are people who fight for the common good and safety.

This did little to convince me that all was well as I retired to bed at midnight with the fires still raging on my television, even more impressively so due to the darkness that surrounded them, wondering if we would be woken up at four in the morning for our own neighborhood evacuation. But it was enough to allow me to actually fall asleep after a time. Rising in the morning, I noticed far more blue sky than the day before, and the sun returned to its normal, unforgiving stare. There was still a massive cloud of smoke filling about a third of the sky to the east, but its darkness has dulled considerably, and the air was slightly clearer in our area as a result. As of right now, this afternoon, most of the news is about the Chino Hills fire, but the situation overall had died down enough that most of the local channels were carrying on with their normal football and religious coverage.

Only the ABC affiliate (Ch. 7) continued on as the day before, covering the tiniest minutiae, though by 11:00 am, my doomsday sensors had died down, and I returned to my normally scheduled program of psychotronic film fare. You know, where the apocalypses are the result of crafty filmmaking, not dried out scrub brush, low humidity and possibly even asshole arsonists. For all I mire myself in these fantasy worlds, never mistake me for one who cancels out reality. I know the difference. If civilization is going to crumble and mankind is to perish, no matter what I might blurt out in a persnickety moment or two, rest assured that I would rather it happen on a movie screen, and not just down the freeway from me. Or especially right at my front door. Or at the homes of my friends.

[*My good friend and co-worker Lisa, who was evacuated from her home for 48 hours this past weekend, was good enough to allow me to post these photos taken near her neighborhood during the firestorm. They were taken by her daughter Stephanie, who is awesome about doing things like this. Thanks, Steph and Lisa!]