Merry Christmas!

Little Enid Coleslaw

I’ve been a big fan of Dan Clowes ever since I came across Lloyd Llewellyn (Fantagraphics) around 1985 or 1986. His next ongoing comic book, Eightball, was much more flexible and open-ended, allowing Clowes an opportunity to experiment and grow as an artist, resulting in several excellent “graphic novels,” most notably Ghost World which was serialized in Eightball nos.11-18. In 1997, it was published as a monograph and was both a critical and commercial success, leading to the development of the Ghost World movie in 2001. Director Terry Zwigoff encouraged Clowes himself to write the screenplay (which was nominated for an Academy Award), allowing the film to stay fairly true to Clowes’s original vision. It is very good and boasts a fine cast, including Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson as Enid and Rebecca, with Steve Buscemi as Seymour, the creepy record collector guy. They manage to capture the look and feel of the book although I ultimately think the book is more nuanced and richly detailed. Anyway, during all the hoopla surrounding the movie, the Japanese toy company, Presspop, commissioned Clowes to design a “Little Enid” figure depicting Enid Coleslaw as a cartoony child and it is delightfully weird — the green hair makes things especially bizarre. My lovely wife gave this to me way back then and it is one of my most cherished possessions.

Beavis and Butthead

Speaking of Marvel, they put out twenty-eight issues of the Beavis and Butthead comic book from 1993-1996, drawn by Rick Parker himself. It is really pretty well done in an underground comix kind of way and sometimes laugh-out-loud hilarious – that is, if you think Beavis and Butthead were funny to begin with. Beavis and Butthead would be well into their thirties by now. Wonder what they would be doing? Sounds like a good idea for a great bad movie. Are you listening, Disney?

Bruce Banner is The Hulk

I saw the news today that the Walt Disney Co. bought Marvel Entertainment, Inc. for FOUR BILLION DOLLARS.

Like I said, I don’t collect comic books anymore, but I do retain a fondness for the form and the characters. Marvel revolutionized comics in the 1960s by making their characters more psychologically well-defined and (sort of) three-dimensional. Take, for instance, The Hulk. Mild mannered (repressed) physicist Bruce Banner gets blasted with gamma rays, resulting in the ultimate split personality: the slightest emotional provocation causes him morph into the raging, rampaging, remorseless Hulk. Has there ever been a more blatantly Freudian comic book anti-hero? The Hulk is pure Id. Of course, there’s only so much that can be done with such a conceit, and after forty years, bad TV shows, and even worse movies, I suppose there is not a whole lot more damage Disney could inflict on the franchise. Still, there’s something just wrong about Snow White’s Disney owning The Hulk. FOUR BILLION DOLLARS is a ridiculously huge amount of money, and Disney will do whatever it takes to turn that investment into a hefty profit. Whatever happens going forward, today marks the end of an era.

Elvis

I used to think Elvis was a pathetic joke: bad movies and cheesy songs like “Do the Clam”; fat and sweaty in a ridiculous jumpsuit, dying on the toilet. Oh sure, the Sun stuff was pretty cool, but everything after was a sell-out. Yadda. Yadda. Yadda. Yep. I was such a fool.

It wasn’t until 1995, when we first went to Graceland that I learned to love Elvis. We went on a lark, while on our way back from a road trip to see my parents who had retired to Arkansas of all places. I wanted to come back through Tennessee, since I had never been there before. I wanted to see Beale Street and Graceland in Memphis, and head north to Nashville before making our way back to Boston. I wanted to visit the birthplace of rock’n’roll and country music. Lizzy thought I was crazy, but she is a great traveling companion and always game for new adventures. Memphis was just as I expected: the Mississippi River River is indeed black and muddy; there is drinking in the streets, blues in the parks and bars, and tasty gumbo and barbeque in the restaurants. Graceland was, however, not at all what I expected. I expected to snicker at the hopeless fans, smirk at the relentless kitsch, and sneer condescendingly at mainstream Middle-American culture. I did not expect it to be so expensive – we’re talking Disneyland-level pricing here! But, what the heck, we splurged for the Platinum Tour of the whole shebang, including Elvis’s two (2) airplanes. Moreover, I did not expect that it would wind up being worth every penny.

Tourists arrive across the street from the mansion itself where there are acres of parking next to the cavernous ticketing area which is attached to the many, many gift shops. A shuttle ferries ticketholders across Elvis Presley Boulevard to the front door of Graceland, where a friendly but no-nonsense tourguide escorts you through the residence. From the outside, the house seemed surprisingly small and downright tasteful, certainly not the imposing edifice I expected. As we made our way through the entryway and modestly-sized dining room, I was struck by how normal it all seemed – normal circa. 1976, that is. As we entered the kitchen, I noticed a set of “Apple Pottery” dishes proudly displayed in a cherrywood cabinet – just like the dishes of my own, 1970s suburban childhood. I was touched somehow, finding this humble dishware displayed like fine china in Elvis Presley’s house. I could feel my unfair caricature of Elvis quickly dissolving. Yes, the basement playroom with its bar and three TV sets conjured up visions of the “Memphis Mafia” and drugged-out gunplay and the “Jungle Room” was every bit as tacky as I expected. But these were the tastes of an ordinary man, from a dirt poor background, who happened to be Elvis Presley. Instead of seeming larger than life, he seemed simpler, guileless, more like a real human being. But what was truly impressive was an outbuilding containing a long corridor packed with hundreds of gold and platinum records, exiting into another room with a three-story wall of yet more gold and platinum records belatedly awarded after his death. It was… stunning. There is simply no arguing with the fact that Elvis sold (and continues to sell) A LOT of records. From there we were led out to the small courtyard where Elvis is buried. The gravesite was festooned with fan-made homages, oddly, deeply moving in their innocent earnestness. I could feel myself getting teary. What was going on with me? I was becoming a fan…

In Nashville, we visited the Country Music Hall of Fame and saw Elvis’s gold-plated Cadillac, complete with fold-down backseat turntable. We also toured RCA’s Studio B over on Music Row, which is still preserved, complete with Elvis’s footprint in a wall where he kicked in it anger at a frustrating recording session. By now we were utterly smitten…After returning to Boston, we started collecting Elvis CDs and we love it all, from the fifties through the seventies – yes, we even love the movies and fat Elvis in a jumpsuit (bless his heart). The guy could sing!

A couple of years later, we picked up and moved from Boston to Nashville on nothing but a wing and a prayer. We had no jobs waiting for us, only a fondness for the city, some meager savings, and a hope for a better life. When things seemed the most precarious, only Elvis could raise our spirits and he was a permanent fixture of our personal soundtrack in those first couple years. We made it through, in part thanks to the eternal optimism of Elvis’s music. It is impossible to feel sad when Elvis is on the stereo. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that we would not be here in Tennessee if it weren’t for our first sojourn to Graceland in 1995.

Batman & Robin

You might be wondering, “What’s with the superheroes?” Well, at one time, I was very into comic books. Of course, I loved comics when I was a child, but I didn’t really collect them. It wasn't until the late-eighties and early-nineties that I got turned on to the work of Frank Miller, Allen Moore, Neil Gaiman, and many others who have now become legendary figures in the transformation of “comic books” into what are now known as “graphic novels.” It was a heady time and there were some really cool comic book stores in Boston which made the whole experience loads of fun. Later on, however, things got out of hand. Cover prices kept increasing and publishers were milking fans for all they were worth with “special,” limited-edition, multi-variation “collector’s editions” and shoddy workmanship. The whole enterprise nearly collapsed under its own weight and around that time, I pretty much stopped buying them. Five bucks for a twenty-four page comic book is almost as ridiculous as the twenty-dollar CD – neither comes close to justifying its exorbitant cost except to unhealthily obsessed fans. It’s a shame because, like records, comic books have been priced out of the very market that most enjoys them, juveniles.

ANYWAY…I still have my comic book collection and, as you can see, various action figures and toys from that era. Lately, I had been considering boxing it all up and perhaps even getting rid of them altogether, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. But since getting the new camera, I noticed on the weekends that we get this really lovely mid-morning sunlight through the windows, which moves slowly across the west wall of the living room. Looking for subjects, I resorted to the toy box and started messing around with the camera settings and snapping pictures. While I have still not quite figured out the optimum exposure, the photos I’ve posted this week consist of the best shots of the bunch and I think, with some tweaking in Photoshop, they look pretty darn nifty. So, that’s why all the superheroes!

Peter Parker is Spiderman

Tony Stark is Iron Man

Reed Richards is Mr. Fantastic

Bart & Lisa Simpson

Playlist 8-22-09

* Carl Smith: Tudor Organ Music (Naxos CD)
* Uccellini: Sonatas (Romanesca) (Harmonia Mundi CD)
* Schmelzer: Unaram Fidium (Holloway/Assenbaum/Mortensen) (ECM CD)
* Biber/Muffat: Der Türken Anmarsch (Holloway/Assenbaum/Mortensen) (ECM CD)
* Holloway/ter Linden/Mortensen: Garrison Church, Copenhagen 4-8-08 (FM 2CDR)
* Pachelbel: Canon & Gigue: Chamber Works (London Baroque) (Harmonia Mundi CD)
* J.S. Bach: Motets (La Chapelle Royale/Collegium Vocale/Herreweghe) (Harmonia Mundi CD)
* Boulez: Repons (Ensemble InterContemporain/Boulez) (DG CD)
* Feldman: Piano and Orchestra (RSS/Zender/Woodward) (CPO CD)
* AMM: BBC Studios 4-23-79 (FM CDR)
* AMM: Ravensberger Spinnerei, Bielefeld, Germany 5-16-94 (FM 2CDR)
* AMM: International House, Chicago, IL 4-15-01 (AUD CDR)
* Evan Parker Transatlantic Art Ensemble: Boustrophedon (in Six Furrows) (ECM CD)
* Bill Evans: Everybody Digs Bill Evans (Riverside/JVC XRCD)
* Cecil Taylor: Silent Tongues (1201 Music CD)
* Anthony Braxton Quartet: (Birmingham) 1985 (Leo 2CD)
* Sun Ra: The Night of the Purple Moon (Atavistic CD)
* The AACM Great Black Music Ensemble: Umbria Jazz Festival 7-14-09 (FM 2CDR)
* Matthew Shipp: Equilibrium (Thirsty Ear CD)
* Antipop Consortium: Antipop vs. Matthew Shipp (Thirsty Ear CD)
* Fela Anikũlapo-Kuti: Original Sufferhead (Capitol LP)
* Bob Dylan: A Tree with Roots (Complete Basement Tapes) Vol.2 (fan/boot 2CDR)
* The Band: Music from Big Pink (MFSL SACD)
* Grateful Dead: Road Trips Vol.2, No.3: Wall of Sound (June 1974) (GD 3CD)
* Pavement: Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: L.A.’s Desert Origins (Matador 2CD)
* Sonic Youth: The Eternal (Matador CD)
* Wilco: Wilco (the album) (Nonesuch CD)
* Guided By Voices: Alien Lanes (Matador LP)
* Robert Pollard: Elephant Jokes (GBV, Inc. LP)

Commentary:

I only recently heard the baroque violinist John Holloway thanks to the lovely Garrison Church 4-8-08 broadcast (which lives permanently on my iPod). I subsequently obtained his ECM recordings and they are ravishingly beautiful. The organ/harpsichord continuo may or may not be historically accurate, but it’s a luscious texture nonetheless. At the other extreme, AMM is capable for producing some bone-chillingly terrifying music, so I’m often scared to listen to them. How silly! These particular live performances were very enjoyable – especially the Bielefeld concert which features compositions by Cardew, Wolff, Cage, and Skempton as well as a thirty-minute, typically non-idiomatic improvisation. More AMMusic is on my to-do list.

Wagner Conducts

(Thanks, Stan!)

Jim Woodring's Crazy Newts

(Thanks, Keith!)

Ben Grimm is The Thing