Tag Archives: New Jersey
Joe Satriani
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Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Magazine Rack, Nostalgic Obsessions, Thousand Listen Club
Before It Was Choked On
From BIUL III.
Look, choking sucks. I don’t have to point that out, do I? And truthfully, most toys have small parts these days, and there’s a warning about them on the package. But those clickers are long gone. They blocked a toddler’s airway better than a spoonful of shellac.
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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Eatable Things, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Saturday Movie Matinee
Unfairly Maligned: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
For your benefit, I will begin this article with a warning: 18 seconds of this movie consist of Shia LeBeouf swinging from vines with CGI monkeys. I know 18 seconds doesn’t seem like a long time, but apparently it’s an eternity for some people. It all depends on your perspective, or lack thereof.
The sequence is so brief, it was hard to screencap.
In 2008, Harrison Ford returned to the screen as globe-trotting archaeologist Henry “Indiana” Jones, Junior after a 19-year absence. I myself have been (to be kind) fanatical about Indy since Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981, so before I saw Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I knew several things.
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Filed under Bad Influences, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Unfairly Maligned
Metallica
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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Late To The Party, Thousand Listen Club
The Necco Betrayal
Everyone loves a gingerbread house. Even South Park’s hate campaign against the “ginger” couldn’t dull the sugary luster of the beloved cookie-built domicile. You probably remember the first time you saw one, right? Or the first time you smelled one?
How to make me put a ring on it*, chapter one. (*the robot.)
Sometime in the late 1970s, at my local church, I spied and smelled a real, elaborate gingerbread house for the first time. It was during an Advent festival, with apple-cheeked residents of my snowy hometown selling pinecone ornaments and weaving fragrant holiday wreaths budded with hollyberry. Someone had knocked themselves out on the centerpiece, a resplendent dwelling of gingerbread with all the confectionery trimmings, the kind that lured the likes of Hansel and Gretel to their near-doom.
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Filed under Don't Know Don't Care, Eatable Things, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions, Worst Of All
No News Is Good News
Let me tell you one of the ways my beloved mother drove me up the wall when I was growing up.
She watched the 5 O’Clock News every day.
Bum bum BUM bum BUM!
I grew up in Jersey, part of the Tri-State Area, which includes New York, where I was born. In 1972. Otherwise known as The Year Everything Went Straight To Hell. Continue reading
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Filed under Bad Influences, Don't Know Don't Care, Eatable Things, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions, Worst Of All
The Kook Who Sat By The Door
If I could go back in time 20 years, and tell my 24-year-old self that I’d be signing my own comics at Criminal Records in Atlanta’s Little 5 Points, I wouldn’t believe it. Mostly because at 24 I was incredulous about the feasibility of time travel.
Three years ago, in jail, more than one dude told me I looked like Bruno Mars. I don’t see it.
I’ve guested at comic conventions before, but this was Criminal Records. They’ve had an almost mythical status since the 1990s, and their old location (it’s now Stratosphere Skateboards, another local business I highly recommend), which I visited often even before I lived here. It had cartoons drawn on the walls by Skip Williamson, Evan Dorkin and Bob Burden, just to name a few. I want to say Patty Leidy was up there too, but I’m going on memory here. Continue reading
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Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Eatable Things, Girls of BIUL, Idiot's Delight, Magazine Rack, Uncategorized
(Every Day Is) Halloween
Let’s say you’ve decided to become a “Goth”. These are some things you can expect:
- No friends, aside from other Goths.
- No attention, aside from that of other Goths.
- No respect from anyone, aside from other Goths.
Goths have made a full-time commitment to a bad mood. It’s like a lifestyle built entirely around PMS. If a Goth is older than 25, you’re looking at severely damaged goods. Elvira is literally the only person who can pull the look off successfully.
Damaged goods she is not.
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Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Nostalgic Obsessions, Thousand Listen Club
Charles Addams
In the 1960s, there were two unusual homesteads on television. One was monstrous, the other creepy and spooky. Both had excellent opening titles music.
Lovely type treatments and title cards, too.
The Munsters was easy to comprehend, for the most part; it was a show about a family of classic movie monsters (hence the pun). Father Herman was the great Fred Gwynne dolled up as a friendly Frankenstein’s monster; wife Lily and Grandpa were vampires. Son Eddie (Butch Patrick) was the wolf-boy, with a prominent widow’s-peak that ensured I would be humiliatingly likened to him, and daughter Marilyn was the freak, with no monstrous qualities whatsoever. They all lived in a spooky mansion on 1313 Mockingbird Lane. Who knew or cared about the genetics involved in such a lineage? Continue reading
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Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Magazine Rack, Nostalgic Obsessions
Thrills: A Retrospective
The life of a hardcore junkie.
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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Thousand Listen Club
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