Monday, September 18, 2023

Waydown #23.09.18

This one might have taken as long to edit as the last one but it wasn't as much of a pain to do. Maybe it's just smoother because I have the process down (or I'm not bothering myself with how much work it is).
Usually I list my reviews in the order I write them, which is also the order I read them. (Books first, comics after. Consider it giving the comics prominent placement for when anyone really starts to dig into reading this.) This time my instinct told me another order. I can't explain why but you won't tell a difference anyway. (I even forgot what it was.)

REVIEWS

White Noise by Dan DeLillo. I used to think Delilo was a crime writer, since Underworld came out when I was old enough to know about crime-fiction books but too ignorant to think that a book with that title might not be crime-fiction, but I assumed his work would get over to me if it needed to. And then of course the connection to the Airborne Toxic Event (great band!) but that still didn’t draw me to him. Then found this one in a pile of Sweetie’s book from school (in the ‘90s) and I put it on the bookshelf, which is also an entry onto the list to listen to as an audiobook (which can take a while, but every once in a while comes up a lot faster than I’d planned, and certainly sooner than I’d have read it in print). It took the movie coming out -- less than a couple months from finding out about it -- and a Baumbach movie we'd want to see eventually anyway, so I had to get the jump on what it, and apparently that’s what it takes for me to finally get to it. So it became one of my weekend audiobooks (competing with City of Quartz and Clandestine -- I hadn’t had as much weekend overtime at the job to get through some of these), and it only took a few shifts (around Thanksgiving weekend, when I got doped into working last-minute). It was taught in school (and UCLA, no less) so it has to be a classic, and existing entirely in our lifetimes, so let’s call it modern too. 
It’s quirky, maybe before books could be so quirky and taken as legitimate, but the voice is solid. The part with the airborne toxic event actually isn’t the main thrust of the story (though it looks good in a movie trailer) but only the middle third, and actually fairly separable from the others. The first third is a lot of set-up without a lot of motion, but it charges along so consistently that it’s easy to get through a lot of it and realize not a lot has happened. Then the last third is resolution of the events from the cloud, but divided existentially as its own event instead of just carrying on from what happened in the middle. It’s a weird balancing act, but it’s a weird book. The main element going through the whole thing is the amount of noise -- there’s a reason it’s in the title. This was an early comment on the amount of material and crap floating through our lives, and how even the core of the important things that have made and currently make us just mix with all that, until it’s hard to decipher what’s real and what’s junk, and even challenge if it can or should be separated. This was revolutionary in the ‘80s, and it’s been copied plenty in the time since, in many forms (though not as a theme in the movie, but making it a visual thing there would be repetitive and exhausting). To call out the overabundance of modern life and the American overflow of stuff in our lives must have seemed like a call to arms, if its quirkiness doesn’t minimize its message. It's got a lot in it, probably too much, but that's the point. To study it would be to risk limiting how much to get out of it, digging in to what is guided, rather than admitting to the overwhelming flood of ideas. For it to be contained in just a book is to be gracious, since we already have enough noise to deal with IRL.
Retroactively it even becomes a comment about race, which might not have been one of its original intentions. But that’s also “white” in the title too. It’s a raft of white-people problems -- which were just problems back in the’ ‘80s -- and this book has existed for quite a while on the assumption that its issues and themes are universal (surely assumed by white, male critics). It’s hard to get around how white the book is, unless that’s just the default of perspective, but race becomes an issue when it declines to make it an issue in the first place. The movie tries to retrofit this before it becomes a bigger issue, but it too easily becomes the modern norm of a diverse cast as a matter of fact, without making a point of making it all white, if that’s considered an express issue (or non-issue) from the book. It certainly transplants it from the period when race wasn’t the same issue into a time that’s running a red queen’s race to be all-inclusive to everyone, but maybe for marketing, kowtowing to rules instead of the art. It’s nothing that’s fundamentally lost from the book in the adaptation, since the book has themes to burn, but it seems in disregarding an issue it’s making an issue from an adamant non-issue. Though if it can be overlooked, the movie also gets Don Cheadle (in the role of the only person that could possibly be considered remotely non-white, a Jewish fellow) but then loses the balance by having Andre 3000 and doing nothing with him (but teasing us with cookies).
If we can look beyond those issues and just take the characters as typical Americans we can also say it’s not much of a character work, since they get lost among all the crap anyway, and any possible arcs are quashed by just existing in the daily grind when we’re simply existing in the same place without a huge progression to anything else that we might have in dreams (which the book is also sparse on, to drill in the misery of living). The only connection to humanity is the life-preserver of familial relationships and chance friendships, to dig through the junk and find that anyone else is wandering through existence in exactly the same way. Everyone is on the same level, no better or worse, all just languishing to such a degree that even a major event can’t cause more action than just running away from it, then running back to the prison of regular life (a bit reflective of the pandemic and post-pandemic life, making this even accidentally commentary on modern life, for as far as it goes with it). There’s some action at the end but it’s a jagged edge of a resolution, in its own world divided from the movement of the second act, and aspiring to a charge of sleaziness after the cleanliness of family, and missing its mark. It also finally takes aim at religion as a tacked-on chapter, like a latter idea that got threw in, and it’s too much too late and loses any grounding among the noise. The movie manages to make it clearer (from something too easily forgotten in the book) but it can’t do anything with it and seems dutiful to the source material, in the same place as the book as being extra junk thrown in that just drags it out. Though the movie has the thrill of popping visuals where the book only gets monochrome words (and a comparable cover, which is appropriate), the movie doesn't go as far as the book does, just an adaptation of an “unfilmable” work (which barely exists anymore, and now is just a challenge for someone to call something "art" by proving it wrong (or make an admirable failure by trying)).
(My post about the movie is on my Facebook feed, posted February 14, 2023. To be fair, and because it’s relevant in experiencing them both as I did, it references the book as much as this reference the movie.)

Lord of the Flies by William Goldman (audiobook). The Kid had to read this for school so I got to it too. ( I decided to skip Hamlet, her next one, since I didn’t want to get into the deep study of Shakespeare that I’ve done elsewhere. And she had trouble with it and I’m not sure I could be the guide through it she needed.) I recall the 1990 movie being a big deal when it was out -- and when I was in a good high school English class -- and I still missed it. But out of everything I’ve read for school (mine or someone else’s), this feels the most missable. Maybe I was burnt-out on abandoned-island stories with Robinson Crusoe or high school-level books after Animal Farm, but it didn’t grab me. And while I was in it I happened upon an article where Stephen King said it’s one of his favorite books. It’s got a bunch of great themes to explore, but it seems like a lot of them have been done as well elsewhere, especially with books that have aped it. That any story about anyone younger than an adult becomes coming-of-age is so worn it's a cliche, and this might be the granddaddy of them all. (Why is it a character arc for a kid becomes a coming-of-age, but one for an adult just means they keep being an adult (and probably a crappy one)?) Ideally the kids learn something from it, especially when those lessons become fatal, but the ending is a cop-out when the deus ex machina saves them all equally and presumably they're all reset (except fort the dead ones). There might be conflicts between the two sides of boy son the island but morality leads to taking the good one, which also becomes the weaker one (possibly another theme). The themes are so heavy and thick that it’s hard to see around them to see some actually solid characters. There’s some intrigue to it, but mostly it’s about how crappy people can be to each other, especially adolescent boys. And the ending is a cop-out. It seems like a trick to be a boys’ adventure tale to grab high school kids, then couch a lesson in there and show how that fantasy wouldn’t or couldn’t work. Would any kid act any different if the story were actually happening to them? And how much does an adult get out of it when they can see through immature actions and boy-age groupthink? King still gets something out of it, and that’s probably saying something, but it’s hard to see how much of it applies to older people or the world outside the limits of an island. Unless adults really would revert to being asshole kids if abandoned to their own devices. It makes for a good story, and it’s solidly written, but it seems like a chore to decode all the metaphors and allegories just to get through (which make it perfect for school but not much fun to read on its own). Also, it gets plenty dark (darker than you’d think would be allowed to kids. But it’s a classic).
I got the audiobook version read by Goldman, though there are surely plenty others, maybe some read by real voice actors, but I figured the purest version would be the one read by the author himself. He doesn’t have the talent of a voice actor, but it’s not offensive, and he knows the story well enough to give it any kind of nuance. (Maybe also credit being helped along by  the audiobook’s director, a position that surely only very rarely gets any recognition.) He also brings his reading close to the material itself in not being much fun, but it’s a commendable job, especially for someone unqualified. He also reads a short essay as an introduction that includes some of his story choices that's worth getting explanation of obvious issues it's always had. This gives an unneeded context, and one possibly not included in a print version (which would be a bonus to have it but also gives it a different perspective from the forced exposure to it), but it’s an added dimension to get an explanation why adding girls to those on the island wouldn’t be the same story (or even work as any story) (though surely it’s been long enough and this story is known to the extent that someone has done a version of it with an all-girl island).

Invisibles (DC/Vertigo); Anarchy For The Masses: The Disinformation Guide to the Invisibles (Disinformation Books). It’s not a big surprise that Morrison ever had enough pull to get their own creator-owned series to be published by DC (under Vertigo), but that it had happened so long ago, before All-Star Superman and New X-Men and the TV stuff and novels. They were a big star then (relative to comics), though still couldn’t compete with Moore, who was active at the time (though not at DC). Invisibles could have been Morrison’s magnum opus if they planned to do nothing else after it, and it’s clear they had free reign to do exactly what they wanted with it and take it where they wanted to go (even if and when it wasn't a great idea). Being guided by whims and over-research isn’t even its weakness, since at the time it was being published it must have been a thrill unlike anything in comics if not all of pop culture to see where it was going and where it would end up. There wasn’t anything else that had been like it anywhere and it was exciting. The problem with the series is looking at it now from a perspective over 30 years on and how it’s aged. The more of-its-time it was, the worse it was going to look later on, much like fashion. It was built on the white-hot conspiracy-theory craze of the '90s, which funneled into a greater fear about the millennium bug at the turn of the century, and when that wasn't fulfilled it instantly fizzled out and with relief and the Internet to dispel those fears (sometimes even with legitimate research) we moved on and found new distractions that didn't even always involve paranoia (for a while at least). Invisibles and its closest cousin, The X-Files, used as many of those conspiracy theories as they could fit in, and did it with some dexterity and action to feed the anxiety of the time, and emptied their loads right at the end of the movement. Morrison’s greatest prescience with the series was predicting that it was all going to culminate at 2000 and peter out immediately after, so they crafted the thing to go to that and be done. But that’s also the only positive thing that can be said about the ending.
It started out with great promise, with Morrison showing they could set up a foundation to present all these crazy ideas with some good characters that he crafted with care, going into their origins after a splash of an introduction (sharing a P.O.V. with someone also brand-new to this fantastical secret world that was supposed to mirror our own, and angsty about it, reflecting our own relation to it and the general pissiness of the early ‘90s), then a forgettable first adventure, before disregarding most of those histories before pivoting to more action and a stronger through-line in the second volume. The characters (hesitating to call them heroes since that would imply some kind of moral stance and not devices to advance the crazy ideas) are some of Morrison’s best (even as tools) and most original, even when they were more known for using the corporation’s toys rather than their own. In predictable fashion, Morrison even inserts themself into the story, as the leader and aspiringly-sexiest of them all, a vacillation between slick spy and rough hooligan, that would have been an ill-advised idea (Morrison’s previous attempt to ingratiate himself into his own story -- as The Writer -- was unceremoniously knocked off in a Suicide Squad special), but they were able to do what they wanted with their own series (and they paid for it later, if you believe their spiel about the grave health misfortune that mirrored what they did to that character in the book). The other characters work well until they pick out only a few to carry on, then leave mostly just one (the replication of theirself, of course) to take it to the dregs that are the finale.
The second volume (since these have to be separated to provide for a new #1, a cheap ploy to reclaim interest that disappears with the very next higher number) picks up as an action-adventure romp in the usual tradition, with the characters solidly set up to run among the ideas (enough that a sexual coupling can be an amusing surprise), mostly just as ciphers to expose some nutty research based on the more relatable America and give Phil Jiminez some action to draw. (The original plan was to have a different artist for each arc, which would be as frustrating to have to get used to a new basis for the visuals as it would be compelling to see such a range of art every few issues, but that fell apart when -- surprise -- it was a headache for the editors to schedule. If they were going to go with just one artist then it should have been Jiminez, who could have handled any of it even if his stuff was slightly too sober, if he could have kept up with interpreting Morrison’s kooky ideas and abhorrent schedule, and losing him was probably the greatest failure of the project, and something it never recovered from (but still got to drag it on for plenty more issues, most of them not great, and more than it needed, just to reach 2000).) It whips through as many nutso ideas as it can, predictably getting to plenty of time travel (though by the time it gets there I was so exhausted by the flood of out-there theories that I couldn’t even care to hate time-travel stories like I usually do). It gets to be far too much, and looking at it now it’s too much that got disproven or was silly even then. It might have worked back when with so many ideas floating in the swamp but now it’s just a lot of research that can’t connect to the narrative and some roads that go exactly nowhere. The second volume could have done well with a stack of great action/adventure mixed in with wild ideas and a whole lot of time-travel, but it always feels like it’s too restless to get somewhere and it’s on a schedule to get somewhere exactly on time. So the third volume stretches out so it can land the ending right at 2000 -- maybe the reason Morrison went off-schedule so often, since they (and possibly only they) had the time-table in mind and knew there was room before getting to the end just right. I shudder at the thought of the scheduling nightmares for the editor(s) (or with anything Morrison does, which might be why Vertigo -- and pretty much anywhere else -- is so spotty with their stuff). The third volume seems held together only by the wild ideas, going a distance from what came before but not going anywhere with the mileage it had accrued, and could have used a dumping of all the unused ideas just to have some substance. Instead it takes one character (guess which one) and reinvents him (or is it them?) so they can be around for the finale. Some artists got juggled around to make something of what there was, which was a waste of Philip Bond at a time he could have had some wider cache, and the last big project from the Pander Brothers, which only could have been more.
It’s almost unfair to call out an flop of an ending, but it has to end somewhere, and for what it was it deserved better than an unceremonious canceling leaving off what could have been, though that could have built a legend to the project that it didn’t have even a day after the last issue. The year 2000 and Vertigo and even Morrison were already well beyond the series, and there were plenty of other ideas out there. Morrison laid it all out but the most explosive thing they might have done for comics was to show how limiting the form can be, especially in those early years of the really sexy technology taking over our lives. Morrison might very well have been ahead of their time with this, but it didn’t do much of anyone any good, and now it might miss its window of ‘90s nostalgia. The culture and the technology might have even caught up to it enough to do something with it in another media, except for The Matrix constantly jumping in front of it getting any attention, and its karmic punishment burying them both. There could be a good remix of the material, if anyone wanted to put that much effort into it, and it could work today better than it did then (even the culture catching up to it and forming around it makes it pedestrian), but Morrison has gone on to all the other ideas (none as crazy but a lot more digestible), leaving this thick volume of imagination left to rot like anything else that isn't actively toyed with.
No series should need its own study guide, but someone actually went to the effort to put one together (something I found almost by accident in the small press area at the San Diego Con). It’s basically a book of footnotes for every panel from the entire series, and possibly more research digging up Morrison’s sources than Morrison did for it (which could be possible). That much research is probably unprecedented in comics (though it’s great seeing someone make the effort to do it), though it doesn’t go far since most of the audience is men weened on the most mainstream superhero comics available. This might have had a better market, and maybe even Vertigo could have taken it there, but not in the pre-Internet days (which, even by 2000, the world still was). There could have been people for this series and these ideas, but by the time there was technology to reach them they had moved on (particularly to do their own research with the infinite tools of the world-wide web). Any book these days is a relic, but this one is a printed database of the surface details of Invisibles. It can’t be responsible for the ideas the series tried to penetrate, but each issue studied features some commentary that stays thankfully brief (but gives the writers -- it takes two -- some voice of their own in the project) and snippets of interviews from editors and artists which are specific to chapter’s situation but too brief to draw an artistic context or any personal view from the interviewee. Alas, there is very little exclusive art, maybe just the cover (though it’s by a pre-fame Frank Quitely) and the spot illustrations inside probably appeared elsewhere first (though it’s nice of Chris Weston to allow so much of his own extra-issue stuff). The meat of any aspiration for such a work is for Morrison themself, a good chunk of an interview. It’s as exhaustive as anything, and the reason to get the book (if it’s not online, which it probably is). It might as well be the last word on the series and maybe it gave Morrison the opportunity to empty their head of the project and get some closure from it, for as much as they put into it and as much as it took out of them. Though for all that iffy magick and personal drama, it's now just a minor footnote in Morrison’s life, as they got to another level of artistry and popularity before long. It could be argued if the better stuff they did after was just the progression of an irregular but ever-upward trajectory of a rich imagination and presence among the zeitgeist, but they didn’t seem to approach such wild ideas later on, from getting older or towing to the machine or taming impulses to go farther with less, or instead being to cautious of being tamed by them again.

Get Jiro! (DC/Vertigo). Sometimes I’m interested in creators outside of comics doing comics. Most of the time, writers who didn’t learn to write from only comics can bring something new to the form, though there’s always the chance that they’re doing a vanity project trading off their name and it won’t go far because their bigger gig is elsewhere and even writing comics can be work, no matter how much they loved them when they were a kid. (I’ll still hold that Gerard Way was better for being a rock star than a comic writer, and that the first volume of The Umbrella Academy was deserving of acclaim but a fluke.) Anthony Bourdain seems like an odd choice to do a comic, from a field that’s not even tangential to comics, but he was also the big name. Get Jiro! is certainly a vanity project -- though better than tossing off the Batman story he’s been dying to do his whole life -- but it's a book just like any could be. Stretching his talents beyond memoir is risky, but with something as marginal as comics it can only go up, and he got a reason to go to Comic-Con (for work). Creators outside of comics can also bring their own background to it, though cooking is a challenging genre to bring into a graphic medium. Of course it doesn’t work but the ambition is exhilarating. No matter how story-worthy the culinary arts have become over the last generation, even becoming something of a spectator sport in however they’ve been able to do that, there’s still no way it could work in a comic. Though it’s confounding that cooking shows have ever been a thing, since the most prominent aspect of a dish is a taste, which doesn't translate through a screen, so what is left is the far-distant element of presentation, and at least television is an animated medium, whereas comics have the added filter of the pictures being interpreted by an artist. There’s really very little point to it in the first place, except to do it. And Bourdain had the pull to throw in the experiment just to see how it could fly. But as much as drawn pictures of real-world food don’t work, they’re at least an attempt at making it work, and tons better than the stale fighting scenes and a leftover action plot. There’s even something resembling a cyberpunk setting, but for as much as it is present it means nothing; this story would have lost nothing by being set in the present day, and would have been more accessible, for as much as the unwieldy writing makes the environment essential in the first place. The art doesn’t save it but it’s enough to look at, more from the Geof Darrow school of hyper-detail and clean, thick outlines that has always been one artist less than needed to make it a really tired style. They did a second volume with this character (so buried that I didn’t even know it existed until I was checking in with Goodreads, which might show how much value this whole project had), so at least the one book wasn’t just an itch to scratch and getting someone else to pay for establishing the IP, but I might not try so hard to dig it up. (As it is, this book was a gift to the wife since she was a Bourdain fan, and she never read, or needed to read, it.) Bourdain did some other books, so maybe he had some commitment to doing some comics, but, sadly, not a commitment to life. Maybe he could have eventually made something of bringing the culinary world to comics, or he could have overcome needing to put that background with cooking into something he was writing (challenging editors who think they know what will give a book enough credibility to sell, in addition to the celebrity name). The world can miss the man and probably not this particular work, but it was great that he could do it, and even risk ambition to actually do something new for once.

Scarlet Witch (2016). Of course a cash-in to connect to the character being in the movies but she’s so rich -- in powers and connection(s) to the Avengers and the Marvel Universe then the X-Men, as well responsible for more recent tragedy (not for the in-world events of “House Of M” but just that it had to exist) -- that it’s a surprise or a shame that she hasn’t had her own series (at least that she didn’t have to share). They even put a good writer on it then the resources to have an unconventional art scheme. Though Robinson might have been going cheap, as the stuff he wrote for hire could be pedestrian enough to betray the much greater stuff he did when he had the freedom to guide it (making him a bad fit for recent Marvel or DC (except that they pay)), and this becomes another example of a series that just couldn’t catch fire. It’s a study of Wanda Maximoff, but divorced from the MU connections she’s had through mucking with her history 
unnecessarily -- since a Marvel character can’t be proven until their histories have been so thoroughly revised that they’re unrecognizable beyond what is arbitrarily allowed to stand or redone in the movies -- until she’s left as an Avenger trying to prove her own value, even though that would only be needed, and even then tenuously, to make up for wiping out the mutants, which they’ve already undone anyway. So it’s some kind of meandering adventure tale where she goes in search of herself through her relations to the world, yadda yadda yadda. It strides through its 15 issues like it wants to go somewhere but doesn’t go far. Maybe a few guest-stars beyond the most obvious appearances of Quicksilver and Agatha Harkness -- so stale that it seems like those stories have already happened -- might have grounded it, but as it is it’s some dour chapter and by the end she decides she can finally call herself an Avenger but it sounds like something that didn't need to be said. Even worse is that they can’t get the powers right: Her actual powers, and the ones she had from the beginning, were in manipulating reality, which can be a lot of fun, and often done well with her early on even if they (including Stan himself) couldn’t always get them just right, but done so rarely (except for the Mage RPG) that they're too abstract to really sync with her, and eventually when they couldn’t understand powers being so weird (even though they’re not), her abilities just melt into her being a standard-issue witch, which is a dull miss that doesn’t even try, but it’s also what they aimed low for in the movies so it might as well be canon everywhere. Such a great power set, and something that could have really made her come to life in the MCU (or at least give her a pulse) but instead she’s left as this, as if her own series has to be an explanation or an apology. The concept for art teams is ambitious: a different artist for each issue (and generally one without an inker). It’s a sharp idea, for the diversity and range of work that could enliven each story, even if it’s probably an active torture for the editors who have to coordinate all that, and it could have been a minor landmark if they had pulled it off. Unfortunately, the artists, while often having surreal styles, don’t ever gel issue-to-issue, and aren’t always great enough to conquer the inconsistency. Kudos to them for avoiding the easy and accessible artists that are used to fill in for an issue with a similar style to the regular artist or are unchallenging enough to fit in easily, but many of their picks are too distant from mainstream comics that even when they work just barely for an issue, since the individual stories aren’t strong enough to stand on their own, there isn’t any carry-over to the next issue. It’s the kind of thing they tried to do for Invisibles, and they couldn’t even do that between story-arcs (though that was more for Morrison’s defiance of the schedule). It would be too bad if they didn’t try it again somewhere else, no matter the anguish to put it together, but hopefully they can find a more deserving and compelling story to carry the visual changes, and a main character that wasn’t already obligated elsewhere and mangled beyond recognition. At least the covers are good (by David Aja), and all the better for being consistent (if the tri-color scheme looks a lot like swiping the White Stripes).

Squadron Supreme: Death of a Universe (Marvel). A collection of the few Squadron Supreme stories that came out after the classic mini-series, the story which would have established them as the grand heroes they could be, but since it didn’t it probably means that it was never meant to be, yet they still had their fans (which may have only been me and Mark Gruenwald) It includes the graphic novel (after which they named this collection, since that was as good as anything). It was always unclear what Marvel’s mission statement was with the graphic novel line (which was even numbered, even though they weren’t sold on the newsstand), whether they were special stories firmly in continuity (the death of Captain Marvel) or creator-owned properties that didn’t have a longer Epic deal. Instead, it seemed like they were available to any artist who wanted to work in the comic-box-hating landscape format, which could be befitting a more prestige story (but not the prestige format), but confounding being reprinted in the traditional form. The reformatting in this book -- with half a page of gutter at the top and bottom -- is second only to the transfer of the colors to modern techniques and paper stock, not to mention Paul Ryan’s art that looked staid and stale even then. The story is basically a Crisis on Infinite Earths retread shrunk to the smallest scale and stakes, even though its point is to kill off the Squadron’s universe and leave them stranded in the Marvel Universe so they can find a better reason to exist. The fact that it was given the vaunted graphic novel treatment is the only expression that it’s important at all, as if it was part of Gruenwald’s contract negotiation to get to write a graphic novel (though it would have been worth it just to let him keep writing Captain America). The consequences are negligible, save as explanation why they aren’t actually the Justice League analog they’re supposed to be. Gruenwald adamantly refused to take them down that path, even if they suffered for it, since without that distinction they were just another bunch of superheroes without much reason to exist. Their purpose was to be the big DC heroes in the Marvel Universe, which might have gotten old (or sued) quick, but they didn’t give it much in the way of legs from the beginning, and efforts to go back to it (random appearances, Supreme Power) still couldn't do much. It could have been fun, but instead the characters wound up as a broken bunch of superheroes that seemed victim to bad dice rolls to arrive at where and who they were. The GN is basically a sequel to the '80s mini-series, and this book is basically a companion volume, and could offer something only for the big fans (who aren't there for the the DC heroes, so it's hard to know what they're loving (which includes myself)). A ‘70s Thor fill-in issue here shows them in even worse condition, as a crowd of dimension-hoppers showing up at random moments, but it also speaks to the dearth of ideas for superhero books at the time. There’s also a latter-day Avengers Annual from the mid-’90s when Marvel were really doing anything to make anything stick, and it’s completely forgettable (and not even written by Gruenwald).  Seeing how many times they’ve tried to revive the Squadron -- including the recent mega-event where they replace the Avengers (which couldn't even earn my interest) -- but failed shows how broken the concept is. But if they’re really desperate to do something with them, they could do worse than that Justice League-duplicates idea. Or we can wait to see how they do it in a show and what kind of balls it will have to go all-in on doing something with what are basically DC’s properties.

Young Avengers: The Children’s Crusade (#1s 1-3 collection) (Marvel). One of my obligatory buys for perusing the comics shop, assuming this was just a collection of three issues, as self-contained as Marvel can get in its continuity. How many issues would a search for Scarlet Witch need to go? I assumed it was just that mini-series but I didn’t know and got it anyway. No, this went nine issues -- six more after this -- so it’s only the first act. That might as well be an event, or a whole series for as long as Marvel cuts off some of their books (and maybe they did for this). So of course it’s the appetizer, not the main meal, and even though it ends on the precipice of some action, it’s not really a cliffhanger or a surprise reveal on the last page. Not enough to rush to get the trade that has the rest of the issues (despite what Goodreads thinks I have) but I’m a completist so I might as well. Marvel only puts out a taster to entice for the rest of it, so I guess I fell for it. In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess.

Convergence: Blue Beetle (DC). DC had some kind of crossover a while ago where a bunch of their characters from all worlds and times fought each other in gladiatorial combat. Or at least that’s what I got out of it, and it wouldn’t be surprising that they conducted an event so one-dimensional and inconsequential. This apparently gave them leave to put out two-issue stories continuing long-canceled series, which might have been a good idea if it was a new one, but they’ve already done it at least once, more than enough to block just tacking on the next issue again, making it confusing how these float without being connected to the original series (and not featuring the characters in their own stories as much as the series) and for that to lead to showing how barren for ideas DC is to add anything special to a concept so flat that anything would work. But they got me to buy new issues of Blue Beetle. There might have been some nostalgia for the issues that my brother would get (just because I was getting comics, and somehow he found something in Blue Beetle), but whatever happened, I fell for it, and was justly punished by two comics as lame as the concept. It can’t even get by with appearances by Captain Atom and the Question (and I would have bought it for the Question in the first place), and fighting a newer-than-classic-but-better-than-anything-they’ve-done-since-yet-buried-now version of the Legion of Superheroes, somehow missing them on the cover, giving more prominence to Blue effing Beetle. Whatever.
Update: After also getting the Batman & the Outsiders, Justice League International, and The Question add-on books (from numerous series I liked back in the day), it's clear how mechanical and devoid of inspiration the whole concept was, if only from how they're all structured the same: the first issue is a refresh on the characters from the height of their popularities, then they're told they have to battle some other familiar characters, and in the second issue they fight. They are all the same, and equally lifeless for it. At two issues it's not enough to really get into any character, especially any deeper than we already know them, or to get a compelling story going when most of it is just a fight scene (so long a cliche in comics that now it's been able to come back, far too easily). There's hardly reason to revisit those characters, especially when they've probably already been brought back if they needed to, and newer versions can have fresher stories (at least potentially), and when it goes to a fight scene that  leaves off on the last page to lead back to the main Convergence mini-series (which has even less reason to find, even despite Tom King having something to do with it) then is going to get wiped out of continuity anyway (which seemed the point of a faux-Crisis plot (as if DC would do anything else)), it's all pretty pointless. At least the extra issues from the "Darkest Night" event connected back to the original series (at least in numbering). I'm a sucker for self-contained stories and wouldn't even be wounded when they're not always great, but it stings to be taken by such a lazy gimmick.

Fleetwood Mac: 40 Years Later: John, Christine, Stevie, Mick and Lindsey - Together Again (LIFE). A grocery-checkout-aisle impulse buy (a very rare instance, especially for reading material) from some years ago (since the timing on this is important, in view of what happened after this was published) that got shuffled into my pile(s) of magazines and eventually became a bathroom read. It’s a breezy scan of the history of the band, from the very beginning, giving as much weight to the pre-Lindsey & Stevie years as if those are a necessary base to build the rest on and Lindsey & Stevie aren't the main thing that anyone would read this for. It might lean toward unauthorized since there are no interviews with the band members or anyone close to them, and much of it could have been collected from other sources over the decades, but it's also a collection of pictures and a scattershot narrative of the high points of the band, not horrible for a casual fan who wants to know just a little more about them (or wants their grocery trip to have been more substantial than picking up the usual provisions). I count myself as a big Fleetwood Mac fan (as much as anyone could be when they were three years old when Rumours came out), but even I find it hard to care much about those early years, which accounts for almost half of the entire read, even though that’s mostly just to trace the constant rotation of the band members (even more than the later years). It says that the early formation of the band had some hits in Europe -- enough to bring them to America (and their fateful meeting with their future members) -- but it's easy to assume that none of that stuff would go beyond obscurity if not for what they would do later with those new members and how much further they would get to go. I still have never found a reason to discover any of that stuff (as I can’t necessarily be drawn by only the reputation of a rhythm section without the more important components). The read is selective about its amount of detail since it’s only a magazine but it slows down at a few select points, like a track-by-track dissection of Rumours, which is surely only collected here after being scattered trivia anywhere else. It also tends to take Stevie’s side and makes her to be one of the chief creative motivators of the band, possibly more than she deserves when compared to Buckingham, who gets a shrift as short as hers is long, as if the read feels it has to take the side of one of them. (And I would ask why anyone would ever have to do such a thing and why can’t we all just love them as a band equally, but you know I take Buckingham’s side every time, even to equal Stevie.) Its reverence to Rumours is clear (though playing to the market-goer who would impulsively pick this up without needing much familiarity with them anywhere else but the hits), then casually dismisses anything else, including dissing my beloved Tango in the Night (savaging a few deep cuts and not mentioning its solid details or importance in the band’s history) or the criminally-underrated (and Buckingham-driven) modern classic Say You Will but also doesn’t get to the non-Buckingham stuff (which, predictably, I will not side with) or the scabs in the band during that era (after giving as much attention as it can to the players from the early days). And the story it fashions probably wouldn’t even be altered if it hadn’t been published before Buckingham’s firing (in 2018) since it would take the other side, but for what it is it can revel in the high points of a monumental band during one of their modern bright spots and appreciate that they would come back together at all (now completely rubbish forever more (as C. McVie’s death occurred in the time just before I wrote this)). There are surely better and more complete time-capsules of the band and their history -- as if the music wasn’t enough (not just as a document but for all the interpersonal details they boldly included as part of their songs) (though the article in the October ‘97 Rolling Stone issue was more focused and complete) -- but this is fine for the casual reader who hasn’t ventured too far with the music but might also be old enough to regard (or know) the stuff before the stuff.


What I'm Listening To When I'm:
...Sitting at the main computer (at home, working or otherwise): The main iPod (we'll call it #1), which has a playlist of albums rotating from a long-running list (for all: always a single playlist, for ease of removing tracks and not repeating anything I've already heard; an iPod restarting is a huge pain since I have to then hook it up to the computer to make a new playlist with the played songs removed so I don't repeat anything I've already heard); set on shuffle for songs.
...Driving to on-site work: The new-stuff iPod (#2), which has all the newest albums I've gotten, on album shuffle (though in order that I found them if I'm listening to them for the first time).
...At on-site work or working from home, waiting to get into the day, up to the first potty break: iPod #1.
...Working, doing roto (a fairly automatic task): Articles saved to Pocket, listening with @Voice text-to-speech (generally in tags I've made ahead of time).
...Working, doing anything but roto (requiring more attention and brainpower): iPod #1.
...Lunch, on-site or at home (while editing/posting, some lite writing): Groove Salad on Soma.fm.
...Lunch at home on Fridays, while sorting and reading articles in Hotmail: iPod #2.
...Driving home from work: iPod #3, hand-picked albums skipping ahead on the list; set to shuffle for songs. (iPods are usually connected to computer once a week* to remove what I've listened to then add the next stuff from the list (though music on #2 stays, but removed from the current playlist (to be added back a month later), until replaced by incoming new albums. (* That could become the day before beginning an on-site job then the day after it finishes.)
...Driving around town while not working: iPod #2, sometimes loud.
...Driving back after dropping off kid (1 1/2 hour drive): iPod #2.
...Getting eBay packages ready to send (after 2pm on weekdays, when necessary (the last day or close to the last day required)): iPod #1.
...Making dinner: iPod #1 (though sometimes it's putting on Flood FM early (see below)).
...Eating dinner: Flood FM on TuneIn; using Alexa, volume 3. Alexa, stop.
...Doing dishes/cleaning kitchen, then into the evening: Flood FM is still on but can't hear it as well in the kitchen (since Alexa is in the living room. Alexa, stop). Might become Alexa, volume 4 then 3. Alexa, stop.
...Doing tasks on the computer after dinner, if we've already heard the weekly Flood FM guest DJ set: KCRW 24, using Alexa. Alexa, stop.
...Doing tasks (mostly making dinner) on Friday evening: It used to be KEXP, using Alexa, volume 5 (to hear it in the kitchen), (Alexa, stop), but they changed their programming in the time I was writing this and now I'll go with something else, probably a song station on Soma, or, if I'm feeling energetic, maybe Pandora (see below).
...Working on the weekend (including doing roto): Audiobook, either from OverDrive (now Libby, which might be a pain to transfer) or Audible (using wife's account); classic literature, a Burke novel by Andrew Vachhss, whatever the kid has to read for school, or something I ripped from audio CDs (particularly Chuck Palahniuk books) on an iPod Shuffle (one of the long ones, different from the one I used for running (see below), but I haven't used that one in a long while so I'm not sure if I would (it also doesn't have a screen, which isn't such an issue if I can navigate a book without it).
...Giving platelets at the blood bank: Ditto.
...Doing miscellaneous tasks on the weekend if wife is present, especially while going through Hotmail and playing Forge of Empires (but mostly waiting to leave): Soma.fm, usually Secret Agent, Lush, Left Coast 70s, PopTron, Fluid, Bossanova, or even something more adventurous just to try it out.
...Doing physical tasks on weekend if wife is gone (but especially kid is here): Metal Detector on Soma.fm.
...Doing physical tasks on Sunday morning: Boot Liquor on Soma.fm.
...Cleaning the house (especially the bathroom): iPod #2, either on iPod dock mini-boom-box (see below) or headphones.
...Taking a phone call: Low in the background, Soma.fm station where the songs don't have as many words. Might let who I'm talking to pick the station (from a photo I took of the station choices).
...Sitting in the living room with the TV off: A Soma.fm station, randomly picked with the Spin The Wheel app.
...After wife has gone to bed, writing: iPod #2, on boom-box (see below) or headphones.
...Reading (comics, usually single issues), before bed: iPod #4 (an iPod Touch, as it might have been known, or a proto-mini-iPad, which I've only ever used for music), which has songs downloaded from an e-mail circle with music-knowledgeable friends (since defunct); songs of the day from KCRW, KEXP & The Current (from Minnesota, a station that doesn't seem to work on TuneIn). (iPod #4 has a bad headphone channel so it has to be plugged into a small and aged iPod boom-box with a cord issue where it has to be fiddled with to position just right, so it doesn't go far.) 
...Having guests over: Let them pick the Soma.fm station (though it will default to Underground 80s or Left Coast 70s if they don't).
...At the gym: I'm focused on taking a class, which has its own music (often pop music I mostly don't recognize). I don't know why I'd be there not taking a class (though if I am it's in the pool, and that doesn't work for having headphones on), but when I used to have my own routine or be on the elliptical I'd have an alternate playlist on iPod #1 (and one of the reasons I still have iPods, so I can put my phone somewhere else and not need to rely on a wi-fi signal for something to listen to). Back when I used to run I had an iPod Shuffle, one of the tiny ones, which had its own playlist of songs to get me pumped. I haven't seen that one around in a while and I'm not even sure I have the cord to plug it in.
...Going for a run: I don't run anymore.
...In bed after waking up, doing stuff on phone getting prepared for the day: Nothing. It's kinda nice to have some silence for a bit.
(And somehow my Pandora station filled with my favorite bands gets lost in the mix. We used to listen to it during dinner. Now it's the one that got pushed out.)


My Top Rolling Stones Songs of All Time:
20. "Dance, Pt. 1"
19. "Rip This Joint"
18. "She's So Cold"
17. "Under My Thumb"
16. "Street Fighting Man"
15. "Shine A Light"
14. "Flip the Switch"
13. "Mixed Emotions"
12. "Get Off My Cloud"
11. "Miss You"
10. "Hangfire"
9. "Tumbling Dice"
8. "Wild Horses"
7. "Beast of Burden"
6. "Paint It, Black"
5. "Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)"
4. "Sympathy for the Devil"
3. "Gimme Shelter"
2. "Monkeyman"
1. "Shattered"


RAVES

Taylor Swift. TSwift could have been a huge pop star and left it at that. She could have existed in her world and didn't need to cross over into mine and I could have lived my whole life never knowing that any song I heard was hers. But then I had a daughter who's right in the cross-hairs of the perfect age to be an obsessive fan (though that range is about birth to death, and not even necessarily female), and I've also existed in the world. We got tickets for the family for the concert for The Kid's (16th) birthday, and we thought we could leave it at that. We've been to big shows before, both in size and cultural relevance (the first Lollapalooza, the first dozen or so Coachellas, Michael Jackson back in the day), so we didn't think it would be much more than any of that. Then we got caught up in the frenzy that seemed to take over the world for Swift's "Eras" tour and we actually didn't mind being a part of it. Bracelets, our outfits/costumes for the show, memorizing the songs as well as we could.
It went beyond just a show: Five (then six) nights at a stadium in L.A., all of them sold out so hard that the second-hand tickets -- even the worst seats -- were something like 40x face value (we got ours when they were only 6x or so). The majesty of selling that number seems lost in simply adjusting for the enormity of it, and just relaxing into the knowledge that obviously she's that big. Her marketing actually isn't aggressive, as it too often is for most pop strumpets. She puts out songs and they just happen to be good and they're just there and her fans find them and go wild. They're not even all pop songs in the traditional sense, especially not in the way that most popular music is about being paved over by production more than being an actual song these days, and her catalog swallows the few poppy songs specifically designed to be shallow pop songs (and even those aren't that bad). Her public persona is a humble, young lady who happens to enjoy doing all this but doesn't make too too much of it, which is perfectly believable, but it doesn't matter much anyway. The fans are compelled to keep it going, and she seems welcome to serve. Such modesty, when done honestly or well, can endearing enough to sometimes turn more lucrative than desperation to make it all hit. Then even push her to be even bigger. But there's a place for her in the world, if not a need. A modest, smart girl seems an aberration these days, especially one who didn't need a sex tape to get or maintain being famous. Instead of being used by any man, she even got to use her past boyfriends as grist for her creative process. I've never had a problem with her but now she's become an amazing role model, and maybe one who can guide the girls/kids through this world of crappy culture that's in our faces every minute. For that alone Swift could be commended, but she also has some songs that are pretty good too.
For the record: Before the our week and the show I'd have said Evermore (but not Folkmore as much when I discovered I was less enamored with it than I thought when I'd usually just put the two together); 1989 has the best songs; but there's a lot of digging still to do on Midnights (but one of the richest albums in years).

My "BU" doc. I have a lot of different Google docs for different functions, but sometimes I need one just to jot down some notes, or to be a way-point between copy-n'-pasting, or write a review quickly when I have a spare few minutes, and, to maximize efficiency, I want to access it quickly. So I created a doc -- named just two letters so it's instantly recognizable and doesn't take up much room among tabs (originally an abbreviation for "Back Up" but it became much more than that) -- and keep it in my browser bookmarks so I can bring it up with a couple clicks (though I would vote for a hot-key). I slug in whatever I need then move on. Since it's a Google doc, I don't have to worry about space so I just put whatever in there and forget about it (though I'll usually go back and italicize used text, which has become my habit to do as a note that I've done something with it elsewhere (but I'll leave it as a back-up)); Google automatically saves docs so I don't have to concern myself with keeping it or not or that I didn't save when I clicked out of or away from the window; since it's all raw text going somewhere else I don't bother with formatting; also becomes a blank writing space, like a page in a notebook, especially if another window is being slow or if I haven't decided where to put it yet. It's become an essential part of my process, and piece of mind for my writing and creative endeavors, that I wonder why it's taken me so long to realize it's all I need.

Carrot sticks. Eating fresh vegetables at least once a day isn't impossible, but the intention can fall through the cracks. On days when I'm not having a meal that would normally have a helping of vegetables (I don't always count salad as a vegetable), and it's usually a sandwich, I throw in a pile of baby carrots (that will balance the pile of potato chips, right?). And if it's not that then some carrots as a snack, maybe with some hummus.

Magazine-sized & over-sized bags. When I started posting sets of comics on eBay (almost through all my mainstream DCs, thanks for asking), I needed bigger comics bags than the ones I had for individual comics. Years ago I took my single issues and put many of them in one bag, usually four or five issues in an arc or limited series, for tidiness and fewer bags to keep, but those bags don't fit trades, which I had plenty of. Magazine-sized bags fit great, and you can fit even more individual comics in them, maybe a dozen or more, often for an entire run (especially for how long most series go these days). Then wrap that with a few layers of packing tape and they're water-proof for shipping (and looks extra- professional when the buyer has trouble getting into them, which means anyone else would, and which could mean they're in better condition (good for feedback)). I can even use them with non-comics books, including hardcovers, so they've become vital for my eBaying (about six out of 21 boxes sold so far), and a bag of 100 isn't too much on Amazon. There's even a larger size, which can fit a few dozen issues in one, though I don't have any books that would be big enough to need that (and nothing is big enough for the Wednesday Comics hardcover).


Next issue I'll have something about the Beastie Boys book and Moore's Swamp Thing run. Yeah, probably better material than this one had, but if I'm going to go in some kind of order then some it just comes up when it does. Then that might be it for a while. Through making and posting these blog-zines with some regularity I might actually be mostly caught up with what I've read and the stuff I've been into (which often has another outlet elsewhere). I won't do this if I'm putting in filler just to do it. I'd like to keep it going, and I have no reason not to, so if I don't have a new crop of comics and books to look over I may be open to what else I could put in here. Maybe make it less regular. For as long as I've been doing this like this I never gave much thought to what would happen if I actually caught up with what I've had. I'm sure something will come to me.

Wednesday, May 24, 2023

Waydown #23.05.24

This one was written quickly but the editing took months, mostly just to schedule time to get it done (then wrestle with HTML (see below)). But done, and now I'll move on to other projects for a while (like this one).

Not long ago I was thinking about new music and my relation to it. I’ve said multiple times what I heard years ago, that the music you listen to when you’re 25 is what you’ll listen to the rest of your life. I always denied that for myself, that I would keep up with new stuff, though I certainly stuck with my music from that era. It had been years since I had followed recommendations from magazines, friends followed even less, and radio was more concerned with commercials and the only good stuff was what you’ve already heard. I realized that most of the new music I got was stuff by bands I already knew, which was usually far less than what they made their names on. The change from CDs to digital made little difference, and being able to download music might have even helped with access (though I still didn't use it much for that, and I didn't have a routine to check music blogs except for news). But eventually it wasn’t even about downloading and instead just connecting to anything to hear, from anywhere, at any time. Sure, the Internet now presented a world of entry to any artist, but I don’t do well with so many choices. So I generally went back to stuff I knew… which is mostly what I listened to when I was 25. I haven't had anyone to impress so I didn’t have to care much about what I listened to beyond if I enjoyed it, but I knew I had fallen to a cliché I thought I would beat. But then it occurred to me: in my own way, I do catch  new music, sometimes a lot, just often in ways different to how I used to.
* Most libraries have CD collections, and most of the ones I’ve gone to keep up with new stuff. It’s usually the most popular albums, but it’s how I’ve discovered Lady Gaga, Lana Del Rey, and Beyonce (among others, though not everyone fares well. Sorry, Miley). Burbank had three libraries that all had great sets which I would visit on a monthly, rotational basis, and they could get relatively obscure (including the newest Pixies album, and Ty Segall, among others), so it wasn’t all donations (though sometimes it should have been, for all the great stuff that people threw away when the CD died), but there was clearly someone with some taste that acquired some good, new stuff. Now I’m in Orange County, and the Yorba Linda Library (about 20 minutes away) has a much smaller collection (and even got rid of a lot of it in the time since I’ve been perusing it) but they get a few new albums every month and that usually keeps me up with the newest, biggest stuff. They also have a lot of chart-hit comps, usually by year, from Billboard and Entertainment Weekly, and even the Sounds of the ‘70s CDs that someone got from mail order. I’ve been wading into the NOW That’s What I Call Music series, since that’s ultra-hip with the very newest pop hits, but not all of that needs to be consumed. (The first one I got didn’t hold even one track that held my attention. (Except maybe the one by Dove Cameron, but that might not be for the music.)) Needless to say, these CDs I check out (limiting to 10 a month, though not every month, just to pace myself), get ripped then returned, and maybe some other time we can discuss how that is or isn’t piracy (esp. vis-à-vis the process of borrowing them from the library).
* Shortly after Sweetie and I met she introduced me to an e-mail circle of friends -- casual to close, some professionals, some legit musicians -- who shared tracks once a week (leading to the Song Of The Week moniker). It was a lively group, exchanged a few tracks a week (less robust than it was at its height, she told me, but it was still plenty for me), and I even made a few of those friends on my own. And got some great stuff off the track of much of anything commercial. A lot of percussion and World music; I discovered Deafheaven from there. Eventually it went to just sending links (to YouTube videos more than actual tracks) then a few months ago probably the last person e-mailed in to it. (Of course I kept going with it but eventually I stopped when no one was reciprocating.)
* Song-of-the-day downloads from KCRW (college radio from Santa Monica, which I've supported for years) and KEXP (Seattle is blessed to have such great local radio, and we get it over TuneIn/Alexa), and one I found in an online search from The Current, a station in Minnesota or somewhere which I’ve never listened to but they offer some great tracks that fill some spaces between the other ones. All the new stuff downloaded goes on my iPod Touch which I use when I’m reading at night. (The headphone channel doesn’t work so it’s limited to the speakers (also ancient) I can plug into the charging port, so it stays at home.) Sometimes tracks by bands I already know (new stuff already approved!) that go into a monthly playlist that goes on the iPod (a new used one I got recently to replace the other one I bought used 15 years ago) with the new albums I get from the library.
* I listen to a lot of radio, preferably college stations and non-commercial stuff. In particular KCRW (from Santa Monica College; includes Henry Rollins's show on the weekend, always a stimulating reason, with more range than you’d expect) and KCSN (from Cal State Northridge (where I might have finished college if we hadn’t moved); a lot of adult-oriented rock, so Joshua Tree is frequent but not unwelcome), and I usually start with both of those stations in my car (when I have guests with me; iPods when I’m alone). Those two are listener-supported, with sparse commercials (mostly just station identifiers and short ads for their other shows), so I thankfully don’t often have to venture away from a source of new stuff (and the best of the classic stuff). When they have too much talking (during the day for KCRW) or I lose the signal, I have other stations pre-set: Jack FM (as much a range of popular/classic-rock as you could ask for (most of it at least familiar), K-Earth (KRTH) (not bad for oldies (up to early-’90s, so, “oldies”), until you listen to another oldies station and realize how few songs they actually play. And they keep playing the No Doubt version of “It’s My Life” (from 2003) and never the Talk Talk original (an error I called them on -- literally, talking to the DJ, and he just said that’s what the one they play), KLOS (L.A.’s biggest and most consistent rock station is a stalwart, but mostly it’s become classic rock, as much as it might not want to, but new stuff doesn’t stick. Also, Guns N’ Roses every five songs (which you wouldn’t think I would mind, and it’s only “Sweet Child O’ Mine” 50% of the time, but I already know that stuff, man)), KROQ (the classic, and used to be my life, but doesn’t sustain long periods of listening for as much as they repeat, the crap new stuff they have to play, and obnoxious DJs if you listen at the wrong time). Then KEXP from Seattle (a huge range of genres, not just alt, with plenty of rap and even current R&B, with DJs that usually keep it short, and some stimulating shows), which we get at home from TuneIn on Alexa.
* Streaming is a sister to radio at home (sometimes the same college stations we would listen to in the car, but more latitude by going through Alexa (Alexa, stop) and TuneIn). I rotate stations, though often stick to KEXP (Friday nights) and Flood FM (for dinner), which have almost exclusively new (to us) music, and sometimes I can be quick enough to Shazam what they're playing. I don't venture much into Spotify (since I only listen to it when I'm alone, which means that Sweetie isn't here, which means that she's probably in her car, which means she's probably listening to Spotify, and it's her account), but when I have computer tasks on the weekend I listen to a new album (again, usually by a group I already know; I have a running list of stuff to get to that I probably won't find on a library CD). If I started on Spotify I probably would only listen to new albums all day, which would exclude my familiar stuff on iPods. As with anything, it's about balance.
* We watch Saturday Night Live anyway but usually skip over the pop or rap acts when we don't know them, though that's when you can discover something new. That's actually where I got Avril for the first time back when, and more recently we were wowed by Dua Lipa and Lizzo. Even when those artists are on there for a crowning performance rather than initial exposure, sometimes it works for a new audience.
* Magazines used to be the quickest route to the mainline of what's new, cool, and often pretty good, but those have gone by the wayside: Spin long ago went out of print and Rolling Stone kept minimizing their review section and recently dropped the star ratings, with just a scant couple of short reviews in each issue (as well as not giving much coverage to much music anywhere else in the issue, or little relating to rock (though reflecting the straits that genre has been in). I still read it so maybe there's a nugget of something good in there, but mostly it's just out of habit anymore. (And right now I'm at mid-2014, so maybe there's still something to find in the time since.)
* My kid, now 16, is discovering the power of music, and I can’t argue her tastes (even if I could). She’s gone for a lot of pop, especially a lot of weepy girl stuff that's too literal and a current obsession with Taylor Swift, but she comes up with some surprises. The ‘90s are the trend right now so she’s been coming up with a lot of that, especially when she goes with Spotify recommendations. Of course that era of music is fine with me (better early ‘90s than later) but I’d rather her find stuff on her own (especially when she can recommend stuff for me to discover stuff). Driving her to her other house is 90 minutes to fill with her playlists, so I'm bound to catch something decent, or at least another round of Taylor Swift tracks she's re-discovered again.
So I do get new music, it’s just in different channels than I had in the first half of my life. But still good, still valid. Rock on.

This is also my last zine with reflections on what I read for school, and for what was actually my penultimate semester, since my last semester was my capstone class, when I wrote a cumulative essay on my entire college experience, including when I was attending in '92-'95, and working on the literary magazine, which was one of the last online classes offered but I would have taken it anyway given the opportunity. The former was a few sessions of pounding out my last paper and I had fun with it (assuming they could tell that I'm competent from it) and it turned out to be one of my favorite things I've written in a while (and available upon request, as is the Waiting for Godot/Othello mash-up I did for another project). I never heard back on a grade I got on that, but they let me graduate, and that's the ideal outcome, so the details of it weren't important. Then the latter, on the magazine, was some busy-work, taking the second part of the class, after the submissions were chosen and edited (if I had known about it I would have taken it the semester before, for my 1-unit class), so we were putting together the final graphics for the issue (which I did only so far as I'd say what I thought looked good) and planning the release party (also not much I could do, since I was staying at home). That party led to my second time stepping foot on the campus for my entire time at Cal State L.A. (the first being a week before to pick up my graduation materials & gown (since they wouldn't send them to me)), and the week after, the only other time, when I graduated, and as of this writing I haven't been back (and have only driven by maybe thrice). So my two top reviews are from my last literature class, Empire and the Postcolony (again one of the last online classes, and with the professor I'd taken for my World Literature class, so I knew there would be some great books and some independence in my studies, though there ended up being regular class meetings on Zoom). In particular it was about the British Empire and their influence, with which I had very little background (to the degree that in the first class meeting I asked why the era of Robinson Crusoe had no interaction with the Commonwealth -- since it was about 200 years before it had been assembled. It would have been an embarrassing moment if anyone else in the class had been paying the least bit attention), so I got what I needed and it turned out to be a great class. More than a little niche, especially for an American, but the books are classics and I'm grateful I got to interact with them in my college experience.


REVIEWS

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe; Friday by Michel Tournier; Foe by J. M. Coetzee. The class I took was Postcolonialism & Empire, mostly because it was one of the last online classes offered in Fall ‘22, but it was also to be taught by the same professor who from my World Literature class (and maybe I would have taken the class anyway, even if my only other option was a poetry thing (though that was taught by an instructor who mentored me in my post-degree English class and on my senior project and it’s a shame I didn’t get a proper class with him)). So this was literature through a postcolonial lens -- the world after it had been conquered by the British Empire and how that was expressed through popular books (including some that have been taught for reasons other than postcolonialism). I had read none of the four books assigned (though probably should have) so my approach was through the theme of the class, but they all had more going on than just that (why they had been taught for hundreds of years). We officially started with some dense tomes on the basis of postcolonialism, which could have been interesting if not diving in on the complexities of the ideas straight off without easing in, and making it a lot more complex than it might have needed to be (Beginning Postcolonialism by John McLeod & Colonialism/Postcolonialism (The New Critical Idiom) by Ania Loomba, which don’t need more space than what I’ve given them here (even when we were only assigned a scant few chapters to get the idea)). I had thought Robinson Crusoe was an adventure tale (when I wasn’t getting it mixed up with Rip Van Winkle or Treasure Island, for potentially common ideas and themes), and to a degree it is, but more a survivalist story, and fantastic in plenty of parts (I’ll never be sold on how he was able to produce bread even after that many years on the island), and enough populist pandering to make this the pop book of the day, far before more interesting forms of entertainment (though from a world where most people actually read). Our concentration was on the metaphor of Cruesoe representing the British Empire and conquering and taking the island for himself (and possibly, by extension, for England), but particularly the relationship between him (colonizer) and Friday (colonized), his companion/slave/saving grace for a story that wears thin with only one character who has no flashbacks and a very limited imagination. This analogue actually does not cover a lot of the story, but enough that we could be introduced to the concept of that metaphor and work with it in more elaborate ways.

Friday digs into the relationship between them -- Crusoe to his friend/servant, the British Empire to its subjects -- but the story is a reconceptualization rather than a different perspective keeping the source intact. It’s also limited in its views on postcolonialism, allowing a look at the influence of the colonizing power in only a few passages, and even Friday himself takes half the book to show up (again conceding the power, at least of the narrative, to Crusoe even in someone else’s book). From there it’s a rewriting of Robinson Crusoe, down to making the end a significant departure, but the relationship between the two men is still intact and as effective as it should be as the center of the standing metaphor. The events of the original book provide a spine to a fleshed-out version, but it’s the same path of the white man lording over the simple native, and the recreation of that weaker power molded to the whims of the superior power. It doesn’t go much further than that, but it looks bad enough in this day when such overt shows of power, especially by a white male, are toxic. So it becomes a powerful piece in its exploration of colonialism (if it didn’t lose the class from the first books explaining the base concept), as well as a brisk read (especially since I had to do it the old-fashioned way when there wasn’t an audiobook for it).

Foe wasn’t assigned but it was noted by the professor. It was also a book by Coetzee (whom I discovered then relished in the World Lit class), and it sounded more interesting than Friday. It’s a retelling of Robinson Crusoe, but, taking that book as it could have been fact, the story of the woman who had also been on the island with Crusoe and Friday, and her quest to get the recognition she deserved after being written out like she didn’t exist. It’s all very meta (especially since it was written some 267 years after Robinson Crusoe’s publication), which made it an exciting concept, but it’s also deadly dull. It’s tersely written like Disgrace, but where that book pushed forward with situations in the modern day and carried an undercurrent of danger and loathing, Foe is turgid and pissy, when it shows much feeling at all. Being written mostly in letters wasn’t the worst idea, but they could have used a writer more invested in the value of their own life. As it was, for such a great idea for a story and resurrection of a book from hundreds of years before, it’s also disconnected from the concept of postcolonialism, showing why the professor didn’t officially assign it, though it probably would connect by any other theme that could be attributed between the two books. Yes, it could be inferred that Foe shows the gender politics from the view of the inferior power -- a woman colonized not to be made property (at least not completely) but to have the fact of their existence controlled by a white man -- in the same way that Friday was racial politics from the view of an “other” made as property as the basis of their existence when they and their agency are discovered then claimed by the white male. But that might be taking it a step farther than it needs to go, and it’s more clearly expressed in Friday, and the two points of view between them express the theme of postcolonialism more distinctly, and there was enough to dig into with the 16 or so weeks we had for the class (though there were class meetings on Zoom so there was some discussion, but still a lot of writing & responding on discussion boards (and at least one good paper I wrote from it)).

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë; Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. I might not have minded not getting to Jane Eyre in my entire scholastic career since I would have thought it was the intersection between high, enduring literature and weepy romantic drama -- a place that did not interest me -- but when it popped up on the syllabus for the Postcolonialism class, I knew I’d at least get some high, enduring literature, and one of the classics that, again, I was supposed to read years ago. For the class we generally eschewed the romantic and dramatic aspects of the book (yet still had to read the whole thing, for some very wide context) and focused on the elements of Oriental (as in, having to do with the Middle-East and Eastern Asia) fashions and approaches to relationships with women and the existence of Bertha, the mad woman in the attic -- more as a bridge to the next book we would study that defined that theme more definitively. This was an interesting approach, but it’s only a minor element in one, sole scene of a book that is deep in various themes, history, and characters which can lend themselves to a study in any English class, and this might have been the least of all their uses. The study of Orientalism was a rehash of what we did in the World Lit class, but that was a very wide study that would have brought out at most one section from the book, as surface details that would have breezed by in a traditional reading. This class gave some new depth to that environment, but it was making a lot out of a little just to tie it into the theme of the class. The rest of the book is wonderful, though, and not necessarily all weepy or romantic or dramatic (though, to be sure, there are plenty of those elements if you want them, with a lot of life and character). Jane has a lot of story, and some of it drags only because of the happening of some dull events, particularly the introduction of the creepy St. John, which also ties into the ending, which could also be a circle back to the theme of colonialism, except that it’s merely musing without any particular action, and seems to be cut off by the end before it finally arrives at its point. Brontë also has a flair with words, letting the writing of this flow better than most of the heavy literature we might have to dredge through, to let her characters shine more brightly without distraction. It could be an adventure book for girls, and inspiring since it doesn’t end with an outright tragedy, but it also feeds into the chauvinism of gender roles from the day, if that can’t be separated as simple context (and a more engrossing class). Distilling the theme we had to assume for the class to just a theme, it was interesting to take just one element of a classic work and dig in to it, though only one of many, and see how it enriches the greater context. Most survey classes can’t give that much bandwidth, but as a study in how to focus and examine just one part of a greater whole, it might have been the better theme of the class. The book is also credited with being revolutionary -- hard to decipher when you’ve also looked at hundreds of years of stories before and after -- but on a personal level I can credit this reading with helping me differentiate Jane Eyre from Jane Austen, and now even from Virginia Woolf.

Our tangent book was Wide Sargasso Sea, which I’d never heard of, but deeply connected to Jane Eyre. It’s not a botched rewriting like Friday was to Robinson Crusoe, but extrapolating one minor character from Jane Eyre and vastly fleshing out her story (at least to the minimal degree that the original book noted her, nearly only in passing). Brontë might not have realized she was shuffling away Bertha, her most electric character, but Rhys picks her up and has her way. Her story doesn’t contradict anything in the main text but plays within the space outside of that canon, taking it far enough away that she’s written far and wide and deep and alive with her own life (so far that you might have to dig for the connection to Jane’s world). It doesn’t have the same range of its parent story, but for its brevity it goes as far as it needs to, and maybe a bit more, dealing with focus on domestic violence and racial themes, which Brontë may not have touched even if it could have been acceptable to do so. It also stands as something like an update, having premiered in 1966, 116 years after Jane Eyre, but this is the largest incongruity between the two of them. While Rhys takes free reign with the story, including exploring much more the point of colonialism, which Brontë may have arrived at incidentally, WSS makes it no accident, and, if it is on purpose and not just a tangential element to the context, even makes it a main theme (which makes it essential for the class, and even retroactively makes the case for Jane Eyre’s inclusion even stronger, as we’re studying them backwards, or at least getting into the real meat of it with WSS). The latter book also becomes its own adventure tale, though not softened as if for a girl, but with extra drama, and plenty of brutality. Conjoining them in a common study can enhance both, but WSS exists with the added bonus of being its own separate story, one that doesn’t have to be connected to its progenitor, and isn’t unless you think to look, but that also expresses its own lack of dependence and how it stands on its own, though would not have reason to exist to study without its legendary mother tale. Reading both, it could be seen as an incomplete task to consume one without the other, with one as a worthy companion piece, and maybe a shame that more of Jane Eyre’s characters didn’t get more depth with the same treatment to have their stories told (except for St. John. No one needed him).

Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck. I’d like to think my list of books I should’ve read in high school is getting shorter. But then there are some classics I get to read and appreciate at my current age (considerably older (by two or three times) than when students usually have to experience this, implying that they’re expected to advance a good deal or I’m way behind)). Or The Kid gets to muddle through and immediately forget. This is another book to offer the kids who have to read it a vicarious experience, but it’s hard to understand why anyone would want to go back to California as a desert before the glamour, though there’s violence graphic and surprising enough to be stimulating if the kids can get that far. The theme for this one is making the hard decision when it is -- or isn’t -- the right thing to do, though this doesn't deal with the consequences of such an action, which would be where the real story is. It’s also thin enough that most of the students would get it just from a description, though there could be a lively classroom discussion over whether anyone would or should have done the same thing. There’s also a section in the middle about a peripheral, Black character, as if any book in high school requires dealing with race. That actually doesn’t connect to the larger themes of the novel so much and plays as an adjunct lesson (that students could skip like they’re whaling chapters and still get it) or filler for a book that comes up as thinner than its legend would infer. In a few ways, the kids can get off easy with this one, or at least easier than some of the heavier stuff they have to read.

As befits an American classic, there are probably a few audiobook versions, but I lucked into the one read by Gary Sinise. Of course he has a gruff voice, every-man enough to relate to, and he’s smart enough to know his stuff. He doesn’t get into acting out the characters too much, thankfully, and Lenny doesn’t sound any dumber than the text makes him, but enough to contrast George, who of course becomes Gary Sinise so much that it’s hard to not have faith in anything he says. When Lieutenant Dan says you need to die for killing the pretty lady, you’re going to die for killing the pretty lady.

Hiding Scars by Richard Zaric. I’m not going to review a book by a friend, but since we’re all friends here we’re supposed to help each other out, so here’s a link to Zarko’s book if you haven’t bought one yet: https://www.amazon.com/Hiding-Scars-Richard-Zaric-ebook/dp/B07NSLXVJR. And I’ll say it’s the first print book I’ve actually read (not for school) in quite a while (since asking him for it in text so I can listen to it could imply that I was less than serious about experiencing it. And it was just good to read a book for once).


The Astounding Wolf-Man: Volume 2 (Image). Sometimes you can do with some straight superheroes stories, and if Kirkman can’t be the master of high art (even with the human/zombie drama of The Walking Dead, an interesting cross-section of genres in projects), he can be the high master of low art. This is as straight-forward a superhero story as you can get, without a reliance on convoluted continuity that has marked even the best superhero stories since they started crossing over. Though the crossover with Invincible is manageable and even predictable for the modest (relatively) universe that Kirkman created among his superhero books, the fact that it completely becomes an Invincible story for those issues uneasily exposes this as an extended but tangential Invincible story instead of its own thing. Throw in a mystery and a few twists (imagining that Kirkman came up with them as he was writing) and it’s a reasonable break from heavier stuff. The art borders on cartoonish (in a good way) but it tells the story and leans away from the house styles that the majors established. Not the freshest air but it’s a little sweeter to breathe.

Sandman: The Dream Hunters (DC/Vertigo). Looking back over the decades of The Sandman, there hasn’t been much of a lack of special projects. Gaiman locked down a promise from DC that they wouldn’t touch that world’s flagship character, Morpheus, and surprisingly they haven’t violated that, but he’s also repaid them by coming back to do more with the character (if anyone gets to). Gaiman has had enough wild success outside of comics that there’s no reason for him to return, yet he does, and we are fortunate to be blessed by his deep love of the medium. Maybe it’s being so starved for more Sandman stories after getting to live through having new ones delivered monthly or just how amazing it is that Gaiman would not only do more but still have stories as wonderful and enriching and magical as any as have already been printed. Every new Sandman story by Gamain (since only stories by him will have legitimacy enough to sell (probably, but DC isn’t willing to bet on it)) is an event, though we get them more often than Mage. As such Dream Hunters was the first one, a special out of line with anything else, and even one that could be read independently of anything prior. It’s truly a special book, one that could have come out during the original run or left in a time capsule for later generations, being a collaboration between Gaiman and Yoshitaka Amano. Sandman was only as tangential to superhero stories as it needed to be, to ground itself in some kind of fictional reality or just to sell it to the fans that buy comics, but this one goes the rest of the way. There are no superheroes, no action-based theatrics, not even the structure of the standard comic book; the illustration is fine art, the kind not seen in comics, but in galleries in countries far from our grasps and visits. The fact that it’s reproduced into print is the biggest hit against the book: this is art that should be experienced in person, since examining it any closer on the page reveals just how crude and lifeless reproduction is (though suitable if that’s the expectation). Gamain’s story is typically rich and moving and works on a number of levels, but also deceptive and, by measures, sinister. What could have been a bedtime fairy tale eventually becomes anything but. Its only other criticism is that it’s so predictably great, if not the best of either creator, a triumph in their sum. Now just another story worthy of its brethren on the shelf, and one not even necessary in the grander, ongoing story of the dream king Morpheus, but certainly a special deserving of the description.

Super Sons/Dynomutt Special (DC). There are actually worse gimmicks than dropping off Saturday morning cartoon characters in harder, less childish stories just for the shock of putting them together but it’s good to get some of these beloved characters in stories that take them a little seriously, which was never the intention for them but better than just being cartoons in too many senses of the word. And have we ever had a Blue Falcon & Dynomutt comic story? The Story Quest series could have been too much to wade through, to figure out how they were building that world with those resuscitated characters and where to jump on, but these one-offs could be enough just to get a quick taste of some nostalgia but not drown in it. When the Elmer Fudd/Batman issue could be said to be the best Batman story of that year, and Tom King’s first big splash on the character, maybe these specials could be trusted to be something approaching good, and legitimately so. But then, they’re all with creative teams as varied as the characters and team-ups featured so it’s all a mixed bag, so get in where you want, or with what characters captured your imagination the most back in the day. (Misplaced nostalgia is just as good. Those characters were great (and I never even saw most of those cartoons).) Dynomutt was at best an unnecessary superhero Scooby Doo rip, but Blue Falcon always had a great design, something even enough to compete with Batman on his best day, and maybe entrancing because it was in such short supply (as opposed to the Dark Knight, who has always been as ubiquitous as anyone could want). We don’t get a comic with B.F. properly teaming up with Batman but the Super Sons are a close proximity, one that could work as well (or maybe better since that would make it an entirely different thing on its own). At least with the Super Sons it could be fun. Maybe it’s a generational thing but I don’t have anything to do with the sons of Superman and Batman, but getting Tomasi, mainly the pair’s babysitter when they team up, was probably a coup, so this issue turned out probably as well as it could be. And it’s no great revelation of Blue Falcon, and I could still do without Dynomutt, but it’s a nice sampling of characters in a book that we don’t have to have more of. But if they could put together those characters in a cohesive thing that extends a bit more all in an easy volume, that could be something to say should have existed 47 years ago.

Grindhouse: Doors Open At Midnight: Bride of Blood/Flesh Feast of the Devil Doll (Dark Horse). A one-off purchase, maybe just for the art. I hadn’t been familiar with the work of Alex di Campi, but her name had been all over the place so there was no reason to not see how she got so much work. The book is two stories, each as different from the other as possible, except for some thematic similarities and that each angle on being stories that could be old-style grindhouse movies, but can stick to comics as well as any other horror story. The one about the bride is the superior one, making a gruesome tale that moves along, with enough meat to be satisfying. The other story might have been the one I bought it for, with Gary Erskine art, but his own pencils and finished art these days is as bland as could be, with only the fact that he can still tell a story giving it any value at all, unlike years ago when his stuff had weight and punch (enough to make me fan enough to keep up with his work). Hopefully he can still ink if he gets the project for it, but he’ll probably keep popping up anyway. That story too is disjointed and can barely make the length, being a slasher thing, with female heroes that aren’t just victims, but what’s killing them barely makes an impression to carry. These stories were originally a few issues of a Dark Horse series, and getting this serialized, and waiting between each episode, and even trying to remember to get the next issue to keep up, shows that it’s better presented in a collected edition. Also works because they’re self-contained stories, beginning and ending in the same book, and two separate stories in the same offering. Even if they’re not for the price of one, it’s a reasonable combination, and works as well as a drive-in double-feature movie (even if the stories would work better in that format, but infinitely cheaper and more possible as comics). There are other stories in the series, but just like the grindhouse movies, you can be good with just one double-header (the other side of done-in-one stories).

The Red Star, Vol. 2: Nokgorka (Archangel Studios). By far the best thing about these books is the production values, namely because a proper graphic novel (more than a comic because it’s over-sized) actually has production values. The way they put together the visuals should have been a revolution in comics but just like a book that doesn’t fit in the regular comic box, fans couldn’t get their heads around something as nuanced and structured when it wasn’t the same flat images they’re used to and not crowded with whatever superheroes were trending (or in movies) at the time. The rest of the industry didn’t catch up to this as much as the team kept doing things as usual, generally just expanding digital coloring, so this is now left as a novelty that still looks nice today, even if it held a world that was too narratively convoluted (in the best parts, dull and unfocused in the lesser) and out of touch with real stories of war than it needed if it wanted to age better, but a lot of potential. (And though I met the guys through mutual friends in San Diego, they did this book probably within a mile of where I used to live. I would have liked to have done a story with them if they’d kept going.)


Y The Last Man, Vols 1-5 (DC/Vertigo). I started this series some years ago (since I met Sweetie, since I bought the books for her, after she admitted to liking the Buffy books) and I stopped for some reason, but I started them up again to at least finish the five we have. Even reading the first three again (deeper than I intended to just to catch up), it’s a thrill. The writing is solid and it jumps in and moves along, maybe too quickly but better than spending too long to set up everything. Its focus shifts but the characters stay consistent. And it gets even better in the fourth book, the one where I left off, with so much that had been just around the corner. It’s not Saga (at least not at this point), but it will be a thrill to finish this eventually. (And no big deal to finish it so swiftly -- there’s plenty more Vaughan stuff out there (and plenty more Saga that I have already)).


Cortex Plus Hackers Guide (Margaret Weis Productions, LTD). This was a gift, connected to my interest in the Marvel Heroic Role-Playing Game, which uses the Cortex rules as a base, with a few tweaks to make it for superheroes. Cortex lauds itself as flexible enough for any genre, from superheroes to fantasy... and that’s as far as it sells itself, but that could also be as much as you need with RPGs. The book makes a few weak attempts to open it to other genres, particularly a corporate drama piece, which is probably a better idea than in execution, but it keeps in mind who it’s selling to. There’s a lot in it to set up for fantasy, to try to siphon D&D players (as any game wants to do), and not a lot for superheroes, but I was also coming to it from the full-on Marvel version so that’s my perception. And even though it’s plenty of fantasy, and there aren’t a lot of rules to learn for MHR in the first place, I still wanted to give the book a spin to see if there was anything I could pick up for my own game. I jumped in to reading it like any other book, but I couldn’t swallow much even with a lengthy car trip as a passenger. It’s dense information, especially packed on to a printed page to make for an efficient book, and I think I only got through half of the chapter on superhero genres (and that might even have taken some pre-bedtime reading too). That was near the end of the book, and there was still plenty to consume for the rest of it, so it went on a shelf (though my own game didn’t seem to suffer for it, since I’d already read most of the MHR base book (up to the info dump of power & skills descriptions)). I was taken back to the days in high school when we were deeply into RPGs -- and plenty of them -- and we would read those rule books like they were novels. Which is the wrong way, and something I still hadn’t learned with this. You have to go in with a selective eye and absorb the important parts and compartmentalize the rest, to emphasize what you need and not get distracted with consuming too much of the whole thing, most of which is unnecessary. There are different ways to read fiction and non-fiction, but even non-fiction can be taken as a narrative, but that’s all different for an RPG book, which is much closer to an encyclopedia, no matter how much they try to give it any kind of flow as reading material. Yet it might be difficult to know what and how much you’ll need from the material, especially as the GM, and not something you want to be caught flat-footed not knowing when you’re in the middle of a session with a half-dozen other people waiting on your knowledge of the game you’re playing, so just to be inclusive you’ll still be inclined to read it like a book. But that’s also where text-to-speech came in for me, acquiring a text version of the book and grinding it through the app to listen to when I went on lockdown walks. That wasn’t a situation where I could jot notes as it went along or hone in on a few particular points, so maybe best to get an overall idea of the system, for which I was already solid having had my MHR campaign going for a few years already. It was just a lot of information to process, barely being able to control the speed of ingestion from the steady feed of having it read, and often finding myself in the middle of a monster profile/stat-dump that degenerates into a bunch of numbers being rattled off without modulation. It was a heavy listen with a lot of noise, but probably better than reading the thing (except for being able to more easily skip all those stats), and I’d probably still be on it, with a minuscule pay-off, just like with how much time we gave to those books back in the day. Not that we would regret playing those games, just that there were better ways to go about them: start with a player (preferably the GM) who knows the game, play a game to feel it out without relying on looking up endless details (even in hopes of finding some advantage), research what you need between sessions, learn the game gradually (or make it easier to abandon since we’d probably be on to a different game by the next session). Better than trying to ingest all that information and assume we’ll process enough to put it into use, which rarely ever worked. (Maybe the reason only one of us became a doctor.) And to make a fantasy game, it’s not hard to adapt such a pliable system to another genre, which one of my players did, adapting a campaign from an old D&D module. He really just carried over the rules, even though some of the functions are different for a fantasy version, according to the book (which the GM might even have not read). And it worked just as well, and with fewer niggling details to hold things up. I can work better for superheroes because the broader stats can represent the range of powers and abilities, though there have been those who have balked at the lack of detail and nuance in the Cortex rules. It’s a simple system, which is enticing to new players and those who are more interested in the narrative aspect and less on the mechanics, and it works well on the message boards I’ve set my game up on, since there doesn't have to be a lot of back-and-forth functions and excessive dice-rolling, and simplistic enough that it can conduct the flow of a story well. I don’t know how far the system went after this book or if it was only a flash in the pan some years ago to leave nothing for today (though the Cortex channel on Discord was plenty lively when I was on it a while ago), but it leaves some good pieces that can be smuggled into other games (even the same one), which is probably the best benefit of playing a range of games (to pay for all the time put in to reading those damned tomes).(And the one significant thing I found Cortex that I used in MHR was Scene Complications, which are so useful that it seems like there’s a specific purpose why they were left out of the official MHR rules (and I’d like to know why (especially before I start using them even more)).)



My Top Albums of 2022:
10. Crash- Charli XCX.
9. Doggerel- Pixies.
8. Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers- Kendrick Lamar.
7. How Do You Burn?- the Afghan Whigs.
6. Skinty Fia- Fontaines D.C. 
5. A Light for Attracting Attention- the Smile.
4. SpecialLizzo.
3. MidnightsTaylor Swift.
2. Wet Leg- Wet Leg.
1. Harry's House- Harry Styles.

My Top Oasis Songs of All Time:
20. "She's Electric"
19. "It's Better People"
18. "Lyla"
17. "Rockin' Chair"
16. "Half The World Away"
15. "Little By Little"
14. "The Hindu Times"
13. "Rockin’ Chair"
12. "Alive"
11. "Some Might Say"
10. "Whatever"
9. "D' You Know What I Mean?"
8. "Stop Crying Your Heart Out"
7. "Don’t Go Away"
6. "My Big Mouth"
5. "Hello"
4. "Wonderwall"
3. “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory”"
2. “Supersonic”
1. “Slide Away”


RAVES

Going to the gym. Pre-pandemic and before we moved, and when I wasn't working, I was at the gym most days (the 24-Hour Fitness in North Hollywood, about an 8-minute walk from our place), doing weight-lifting and cardio classes, swimming on Fridays, and a great yoga class. It was a great routine. Then everything changed, and the pandemic hit and we couldn't go out even when we wanted to. Gyms were quick to close (appropriately) and I got barely any exercise for more than a year. We had a daily walk (a few miles, a small incline, not strenuous enough to work up a sweat) and I lost a lot of weight*. For a while I honestly thought I might never go back to the gym or even exercise with any intensity anymore. Before things in the world even started getting under control, the gym started charging me a fee again, and it took me a few months to notice, so I had to decide if I was going to fight it and quit or start using it again. I had to take a 1-unit class for school and I chose one on kinesiology, which was basically listening to a short lecture about nutrition then body-weight cardio for 40 minutes, once a week. It was a challenge for the shape I was in but it got me moving again and made me realize I could use the activity, for my mind as well as my body. I offered Sweetie to go to my gym for cycle classes we could take together -- we each thought we were obliging the other -- and from there I started taking the weight class again, then a cardio class, and even the cycle classes on my own. The classes are mostly for building lean muscle, as I have no interest in bulking up, and are usually full of house-wives and middle-aged women (as opposed to actors with flexible schedules and an image to keep as cheaply as possible, like in NoHo). Taking a class also sticks me to a routine and helps me focus, as opposed to work-outs I'm guessing at that get pushed late in the day so I have less time then easily distracted when I'm doing them. Yoga used to be my most valuable class but now it's only on occasion when I can fit it in (especially since I can't get it on Friday anymore). That totals to five times a week (including getting up at the regular time on a weekend day, which also makes me ready to run errands after), though I shuffle it out if we have something going on (but never letting myself skip it just because I don't feel like it) or I have overtime for work, so it's my priority, when we're free (which is most of the time anyway). 

It would be good to lose some weight but I've gotten used to how difficult it is to change form at this age. Not that that's an excuse to give up on it, I just don't have a particular plan for it. I'm more interested in my general health, getting into some kind of shape (or at least not being horrible out of shape), and getting exercise I know anyone needs. Weight loss and muscle are just extra. I also go directly after I'm done with work so it's great for having a solid end-time for the day (otherwise I'd just keep working, for free) then decompressing and transitioning to the rest of my day & evening when I get my own work done. I've even met some people, which has been great after being in Orange County for over three years and not knowing anyone.
(* I mean, I gained weight.)

Emojis. If you've known me for the last 27 years (and you probably have since a lot of the audience of my zines comes from e-mail circles we’ve had from then) you know my distaste if not vehemence for emojis. They’re infantile replacements for actual words and meaning that might lead to a connection through text, and usually they’re just stupid anyway. I can get my cartoons elsewhere. The sideways smiley-face stopped being clever when it was used by a second person; I’ve spelled out “sideways smiley-face” far more than I’ve ever typed out the symbols to make it.  And yet, I started to appreciate their use when I realized that a thumbs-up was less work and more to the point than deciding a better phrase than “Sounds good!” yet again, then typing it out on top of that (though you know I can type it very, very fast). It also became my sole accepted to reply to "Thank you" other than "You're welcome" (when in a casual correspondence). That stretched into a heart symbol if I wanted to express a sense of fondness toward a person and/or their idea but could be vague about it. Besides, an emoji can have a visual punch that conveys its intentions far faster than words (if such a usage is for a minor thing and not a way to be lazy). I get it. Though I stopped at those two. (Until I find more uses for the hammer. The eggplant can be funny (when appropriate).) (And if you've ever gotten the smiley-face from me then I’ve been mocking you.)

The Hail Mary Pass. The saying goes “You’ll never know unless you try,” and while I never try anything (I just do it), it’s amazing what might happen when you just give it a shot instead of assuming it’s not going to happen and giving up. When you've exhausted other options (but before going nuclear by posting on Yelp) and all you have to lose is the time to send an e-mail or just ask, there’s no sense in not doing it, if for no other reason just to see what happens, and more often than not there can be a surprise. Lately I’ve gotten a refund on part of my monthly gym membership, a free order of French fries, filters for my CPAP, an appointment to give blood, Olive Garden mints, and a $40 Door Dash credit, all for times I didn’t think I’d even get a response from customer service much less what I actually wanted (even from something that was my fault), but I asked just to do it, and I won. It also helps to be clear about what you want from who you're asking. (That bit of advice might grow to be more articulated later, since it's important.) You can’t win if you don’t try (that one I could stand by).


I was having issues with HTML -- just like in the early days of doing this, and something that never seems far. The last issue looked wonky but I wanted it done, and I don't edit after I post so I wanted to make this one was as solid as it could get. Those issues were back and breaking into the code only made it worse. I was about to let it go then I found I could change "Paragraph" (somehow its default) to "Normal" (suggesting that anything else is abnormal?) within the pull-down menu formatting for highlighted sections. It worked better than stripping out the formatting (which also should have worked anyway). So it's looking better to me (though that murky green background color will forever rankle me).

I've got enough content for another issue but I might be slowing down after that. Once I catch up with my reviews, there might not be much to include (unless I come up with something new, but that would be the biggest change I've had for this in the 28 years I've been doing it). I purposely slowed myself down by embarking on the Alan Moore Saga of the Swamp Thing opus; that's been since November and I'm only on the third book (of six) (and the first book was much of the time since, and I've been where I am now for weeks). I haven't been reading much, though lately I was squeezing in a little space for it (though still consuming magazines in the bathroom, plenty of articles by listening to them, and the occasional audiobook on the weekend). Once I've caught up on this I might reconfigure, but right now I'm going at the same speed. For this zine I've planned to keep it at the same pace as when we were in print, every two months (did we really do that? Even if we fell behind a few weeks, did we even aspire to do six issues a year? Did we ever even get close to that (or even have two months between any issues)?), but I might change that from my deadline (which slides considerably with no one to keep me to it, but that's still been my goal) to when I start working on it (or rather, editing and putting it together, since I write most of the content in line with my other writing tasks, usually well in advance). There's no sense in catching up too much, especially if I can't refill enough to keep up the pace. It's doubtful that will be too close to a couple months, seasonal might even be asking too much, but hopefully more before too long.