Today is apparently Poem in Your Pocket Day, at least in New York, but what we in LA do best is imitate the cool kids. So here's the poem in my virtual pocket:

The White Fires of Venus
by Denis Johnson

We mourn this senseless planet of regret,
droughts, rust, rain, cadavers
that can't tell us, but I promise
you one day the white fires
of Venus shall rage: the dead,
feeling that power, shall be lifted, and each
of us will have his resurrected one to tell him,
"Greetings. You will recover
or die. The simple cure
for everything is to destroy
all the stethoscopes that will transmit
silence occasionally. The remedy for loneliness
is in learning to admit
solitude as one admits
the bayonet: gracefully,
now that already
it pierces the heart.
Living one: you move among many
dancers and don't know which
you are the shadow of;
you want to kiss your own face in the mirror
but do not approach,
knowing you must not touch one
like that. Living
one, while Venus flares
O set the cereal afire,
O the refrigerator harboring things
that live on into death unchanged."

The know all about us on Andromeda,
they peek at us, they see us
in this world illumined and pasteled
phonily like a bus station,
they are with us when the streets fall down fraught
with laundromats and each of us
closes himself in his small
San Francisco without recourse.
They see you with your face of fingerprints
carrying your instructions in gloved hands
trying to touch things, and know you
for one despairing, trying to touch the curtains,
trying to get your reflection mired in alarm tape
past the window of this then that dark
closed business establishment.
The Andromedans hear your voice like distant amusement park music
converged on by ambulance sirens
and they understand everything.
They're on your side. They forgive you.

I want to turn for a moment to those my heart loves,
who are as diamonds to the Andromedans,
who shimmer for them, lovely and useless, like diamonds:
namely, those who take their meals at soda fountains,
their expressions lodged among the drugs
and sunglasses, each gazing down too long
into the coffee as though from a ruined balcony.
O Andromedans they don't know what to do
with themselves and so they sit there
until they go home where they lie down
until they get up, and you beyond the light years know
that if sleeping is dying, then waking
is birth, and a life
is many lives. I love them because they know how
to manipulate change
in the pockets musically, these whose faces the seasons
never give a kiss, these
who are always courteous to the faces
of presumptions, the presuming streets,
the hotels, the presumption of rain in the streets.
I'm telling you it's cold inside the body that is not the body,
lonesome behind the face
that is certainly not the face
of the person one meant to become.

I first read "The White Fires of Venus" in a poetry workshop taught by Lucie Brock-Broido in 1999, and it instantly became one of my favorites. These lines in particular get me every time:

"Greetings. You will recover
or die. The simple cure
for everything is to destroy
all the stethoscopes that will transmit
silence occasionally. The remedy for loneliness
is in learning to admit
solitude as one admits
the bayonet: gracefully,
now that already
it pierces the heart.

"The White Fires of Venus" is included in Johnson's collected poems, The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly. Johnson also writes journalism and fiction, including the story collection Jesus' Son, which was made into an excellent movie in 2000 starring Billy Crudup and Jack Black.

No new Microfiction today, as you may have noticed. For real this time. Blogging's going to be a bit light over the next week, as I pack up the GLFC headquarters and move it out of Tha Dale and into Hell-Ay Proper.

I'm a bit trepidatious about the move, as I've lived in Tha Dale for nearly three years, and I've come to think of it as home; moreover, I'll be trading familiar, comfortable suburban living for a slightly more citified lifestyle. But whereas my old apartment was within walking distance of a Blockbuster (who can't be bothered to make the third season of Oz or the second season of The Office available for rent), my new home is with walking distance of a well-stocked indie video store and one of LA's best independent theatres. And, most importantly, it's not three blocks from my new job. That's right, suckas, starting in June I'll be the one person in Los Angeles County who doesn't have to drive to work. You have no idea how happy that makes me. Though, if you were one of the unlucky people caught in the hellacious traffic on the 134 at 9:30 (!!!) last night, you might have some idea. (Yeah, it was a wreck and not normal traffic, but still--that kinda stuff happens all the time.)

So anyway, I'm gonna be Movey Moverson next week, and who knows when the cable guy is gonna show up to get me back online, so you'll have to make do with fleeting lunch-break missives like this one for a bit. We'll make it through together. Somehow.

Forgot to mention: As I was arriving at the apartment to sign my lease the other day, Victor Garber--aka Jack Bristow, aka The Best Actor on TV--came walking down the street, accompanied by David Hyde Pierce and two non-famous people. Strangely enough, this was my first real (i.e. not at an industry event) LA celebrity sighting. I'm taking Jack Bristow's appearance in my new neighborhood as a good omen. Or as a possible sign that the Covenant is cooking up some crazy Rambaldi shit nearby.

All the plot points in today's entertainment, as well as the phrase "hot celebrity bitches," come courtesy of Mary, who also suggested a soundtrack. I recommend you download this song and listen to it whilst reading to enhance your Lil' Gardner & Evil Gardner experience.

CONSUME! CONSUME!

Apparently, the Gardner Linn Fan Club Company Store is having a sale on wimmen's T-shirts. So all you wimmens out there, hie yourself to the store and get yourself a shirt with my picture on the front, before CafePress jacks up the price again.



Also, for a limited time only (i.e. the fact that CafePress is even offering these is a clear indication that their time as a must-have fashion accessory is nearing an end), you can get your very own "DON'T BLAME ME--I VOTED FOR ROBOT JESUS" trucker hat. Trucker hats are hip--just ask the skinny little rich kids I see on the street every day.

Also, refusing to accept the blame for anything? Very hip. So buy a hat and you too can ride the zeitgeist!

I cannot keep this upwards. Afflicted...

No new SPINE today. I am an occupied occupied boy. Try to hold your tears behind.

But I would like to specify that the secrecy bad-kept in comic strips was finally indicated: Hal Jordan turns over as a green lantern. Hal, for those from you which has the lives, was lantern green original (correct, not the original original green lantern, but that which everyone worries approximately), but the round point 1994 approximately, little after "dead" Superman and Batman obtained its broken back, Hal went from the almost killed nuts and the test all the other members of the green bodies of lantern and then died to repurchase itself while restarting the sun. Or something. Then it became the spectrum and the motor cycle around in the life after death for a little.

While waiting, the green coat of lantern was passed to a new character called Kyle Rayner, which was sellé with a mask formed like a crab and the hatred of much, much of Hal Jordan ventilates, part of which formed HEAT (green team of the advance of Hal), an organization with this report/ratio of mission:

As green ventilators of lantern, it is our goal to encourage and recommend the return and the exemption of Hal Jordan like green lantern, restoration of the green legend of lantern, and rebirth of the honourable green bodies of lantern.

So much now, ten years after, HEAT have their wish. Naturally, Kyle Rayner has its clean fanbase now faithful, none of which is particuarly made quiver to see their thorough preferred character on side to make place for still another rebirth of the green lantern "traditional". No matter what. They is more obvious to however support my theory than the principal superheroes of corporation will turn over always thereafter to their arrangements of defect, does not import what the changes they can pass by in the short run. It arrives to the X-Men following the race of revolutionist of Grant Morrison, it arrives to the Spider-Man, at Superman and Batman all the few years, and it arrives at the green lantern now. It is nor good or bad thing -- although I wish that the wonder build on the new X-Men of Morrison instead of being unaware of it, I then to think of the reasons a dozen for which to be unaware of it seems more the reasonable one starting from the businesses, and even creator, point of view -- but to study why this occurs can prove instructive with those us who read comic strips of superhero and would like one day to write them. I hope to do that in future SPINE just, when I am not as occupied as I am in this moment.

Moreover: With the risk to resemble even more to "whore of Morrison," because Chris the met, I would just like with the word that my incarnation green preferred of lantern is Kyle Rayner like writing by Grant Morrison in its JLA. Rayner de Morrison was a rookie of starstruck, splitting pleasant with the flash and to maintain a state of the perpetual fear which it could even trail with Superman and Batman, much less to save the ground with them daily. A little characteristic of the green dialogue lantern of Morrison: "I want to go. I want to say that the each superhero obtained to go on at least a journey to the universe of antimatter, right-hand side?"

Moreover also: OMG d00d! Hal Jordan is back! Kyle is suxxors of teh! We gained! We gained! We gained! We... I cannot keep this upwards. Afflicted...

Moreover also also: A small nice test on HEAT, comic strips mark with letters of the columns, and traps of the provisioning to the ventilators.

Google translator: always good for a cheap laugh.

SPINE | Everything is green, man...

No new SPINE today. I'm a busy busy boy. Try to hold back your tears.

But I would like to point out that the worst-kept secret in comics has finally been revealed: Hal Jordan is returning as Green Lantern.

Hal, for those of you who have lives, was the original Green Lantern (okay, not the original original Green Lantern, but the one that everybody cares about), but roundabout 1994 or so, soon after Superman "died" and Batman got his back broken, Hal went nuts and killed almost all the other members of the Green Lantern Corps, then died trying to redeem himself by restarting the sun. Or something. Then he became the Spectre and moped around in the afterlife for a bit.

Meanwhile, the Green Lantern mantle was passed to a new character named Kyle Rayner, who was saddled with both a mask shaped like a crab and the hatred of many, many Hal Jordan fans, some of whom formed HEAT (Hal's Emerald Advancement Team), an organization with this mission statement:

As Green Lantern fans, it is our goal to encourage and advocate the return and exoneration of Hal Jordan as Green Lantern, the restoration of the Green Lantern legend, and the revival of the honorable Green Lantern Corps.

So now, ten years later, HEAT have their wish. Of course, Kyle Rayner now has his own loyal fanbase, none of whom are particuarly thrilled to see their favorite character pushed aside to make room for yet another revival of the "classic" Green Lantern. Whatever. This is yet more evidence to back up my theory that the major corporate superheroes will always eventually revert to their default settings, no matter what changes they may go through in the short term. It's happening to the X-Men in the wake of Grant Morrison's revolutionary run, it happens to Spider-Man, Superman and Batman every few years, and it's happening to Green Lantern now. It's neither a good or bad thing--though I wish Marvel would build on Morrison's New X-Men instead of ignoring it, I can think of a dozen reasons why ignoring it makes more sense from a business, and even creative, standpoint--but studying why this happens may prove instructive to those of us who read superhero comics and would someday like to write them. I hope to do just that in a future SPINE, when I'm not as busy as I am right now.

Also: At the risk of sounding even more like a "Morrison whore," as Chris puts it, I'd just like to say that my favorite Green Lantern incarnation is Kyle Rayner as written by Grant Morrison in his JLA. Morrison's Rayner was a starstruck rookie, cracking jokes with the Flash and maintaining a state of perpetual awe that he could even hang out with Superman and Batman, much less save the earth with them on a daily basis. A characteristic bit of Morrison Green Lantern dialogue: "Yeah, I wanna go. I mean every superhero's got to make at least one trip to the antimatter universe, right?"

Also also: OMG d00d! Hal Jordan is back! Kyle is teh suxxors! We won! We won! We won! We...I can't keep this up. Sorry...

Also also also: A nice little essay on HEAT, comics letters columns, and the traps of catering to the fans.

SPEAKER | Best. Songs. Ever.

Being the first in a sporadic series on the Best Songs Ever, as determined by Gardner, and presented in no particular order.

"Free Fallin'" by Tom Petty
from Full Moon Fever, 1989

A key characteristic of most Best Songs Ever is how much fun they are to sing along to in the car. And I don't mean group singalongs in vans or buses, either, which have completely ruined "Brown Eyed Girl" for me--I mean when you're driving by yourself, windows down, no traffic, sun shining, birds singing, etc. When you live in LA, especially, singing in the car becomes a way to stay sane (and a good way to make other drivers think you're insane). And there's no better drivin'-and-singin' song, especially in LA, than Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'."

Perhaps "fun" isn't the right word to describe singing along to "Free Fallin'." Because, also like most Best Songs Ever, "Free Fallin'" isn't an entirely happy or joyful song, though it sort of sounds like one. If you don't listen to the lyrics, all you hear is good, solid heartland rock with a sunny, laconic melody, a tambourine jangling in the background, bouncy backup vocals. You hear the chorus--"Now I'm free / Free fallin'"--and you think that sounds like it might be just fine.

So you sing along. But as you sing along, you start to notice the cynicism that permeates the song. Petty sings the opening lines with a bone-dry sense of sarcasm that's easy to miss at first:

She's a good girl, loves her mama
Loves Jesus and America too
She's a good girl, crazy 'bout Elvis
Loves horses and her boyfriend too

The speaker identifies himself as a "bad boy" for breaking the good girl's heart, but there's no hint of regret or remorse in Petty's voice; there's only weariness. In the third verse, the drums shift to a martial beat and the speaker dreams:

I wanna glide down over Mulholland
I wanna write her name in the sky
Gonna free fall out into nothin'
Gonna leave this world for a while

The first two lines, thanks to Petty's delivery, are wholly unconvincing; this guy isn't going to write her name in the sky because he doesn't even know her name. She's just a "good girl," a made-up rock 'n roll fantasy, sitting at home in her poodle skirt (or, since this is the Valley in 1989, her legwarmers and acid-washed jeans or whatever) crying because Tommy never asked her to the dance. But that means the speaker is just a rock cliche too--the bad boy, "standing in the shadows," lovin' 'em and leavin' 'em. And he's tired of it; he wants to leave everything behind. But he can't, because he lives in the Valley, the suburbs of Hollywood. People go to Hollywood with dreams of becoming a star; the Valley is where those dreams go to wither and die. And our "bad boy" has lived his whole life in the Valley. He grew up on the outskirts of the place "where dreams are made," knowing the truth about Hollywood but unable to escape it. He's forced to live out the cliche because that's all he knows.

Like a lot of songs that take Los Angeles as their subject (Jane's Addiction's entire Ritual de lo Habitual album, for example), "Free Fallin'" makes a lot more sense after you've lived in LA for a while. It manages to condense the experience of living in the Valley into a few well-chosen lines and a five-note guitar figure. "It's a long day, living in Reseda / There's a freeway running through the yard" is exactly what it's like to live north of the 101. The whole song has the same too-bright, sun-blasted feel of the Valley, all brown grass and palm trees and strip malls. It's a place that can turn people into the vampires Petty mentions, coming out only at night to avoid the confining heat of the day.

So if you're driving through the Valley on the 101, which parallels Ventura Boulevard, "Free Fallin'" is the perfect song to pop in the tape player and sing along to. In every chorus, you get to pretend for a second that you've escaped. "I'm free," you sing, but each time you have to add "free fallin'." You've gotten away, but sooner or later you'll have to land.

(MP3 disclaimer: All MP3s offered on this site are for evaluation purposes only--i.e. download them, listen to them, decide whether you would like to purchase the music from a friendly retailer, and then delete them. All MP3s will be available for one week after they are posted. If you are an artist or represent an artist or label whose music appears here, and you would like your music removed, just let me know.)

Slice up Yakuza and waste time simultaneously!

A moderately entertaining desktop Kill Bill video game. The instructions are in some consonant-heavy Eastern European language, but you'll get the point pretty quickly. Link via Movie Poop Shoot.

MICROFICTION | The Marxist, the Democrat, the Artist, the Jehovah's Witness, the Chinese Baby, and the Libertarian

In the dark, a lot of things sound like a gunshot. A car backfiring, that's the classic. A sheet of plywood falling over in the garage. A branch breaking off the oak tree in the front yard. A baby's head hitting the tile of the bathroom floor.

The power was out either because of the snow or because Daniel and Mark wanted us all to huddle together around the fireplace and talk about our differences or whatever. I'm betting on the latter, even though technically it was snowing. A couple inches. Daniel thinks he's pretty smart, but I'm doing this for a reason, and that reason isn't to make some tearful candlelit confession to a bunch of idiots who define themselves by their politics. I mean, how boring can you get?

So maybe it was my turn to watch Jun. I can't remember if my night was before or after Sheryl's. It doesn't really matter anyway. I mean, there are all the cameras around all the time and the producers and whatnot. I got nine people standing behind me right now. Right this very second. Nine people. I couldn't tell you what any of them do. What their jobs are. I got no idea. They stand there and watch me. Every once in a while one of them leaves and then comes back with coffee for the others. So what I'm saying is that if it was my turn to watch Jun, so what, because there are all these people around who could be watching her. Who should be watching her, because they get paid to stand around and watch people. The baby's got her own nine-person crew, too, so I don't know where they were when the power went out. That might be something we'd all want to ask ourselves.

Here's a fun fact not everybody knows about Jun, and by "not everybody" I mean only Daniel, Mark and me, because I'm not nearly as stupid as Sheryl, Winslow, Joshua and Marge are. Or as stupid as Daniel and Mark think I am. Anyway: Daniel bought Jun on eBay for 130 yuan, which comes out to about fifteen dollars and change American. Jun's parents apparently had just bought their first PC, or at least a Beijing black-market approximation of a PC, and then went online for the first time and, being the good aspiring capitalists they were, they went straight to eBay and decided to test it out by offering their only daughter for auction at the low starting price of ten yuan. Little did they realize, so the story goes, that there's a bit of a market out there for healthy babies, which was their first mistake; their second mistake was listing a "Buy It Now!" price of only 130 yuan. And so within a matter of seconds of uploading little Jun's picture to eBay, the couple discovered to their horror that their baby had been purchased by one Daniel Waterhouse of Los Angeles, CA, USA and that they, having already accepted eBay's terms of service, were bound and obligated to deliver Jun to LA, CA, USA within seven days of receiving payment from Daniel Waterhouse, which Daniel promptly sent via PayPal.

Both parties left positive feedback, though Seller: lifamily019 did manage to convey a sense of deep regret and simultaneous guilty relief in the allotted 80 words.

So if Daniel doesn't know that I know all this, he's going to find out pretty soon, because there is no way I'm catching any of the blame for this shitstorm, when I know for a fact at least two of the cameramen were smoking a joint behind the house, and Mark was taking advantage of the darkness, candles, fridge full of product-placed Rolling Rock, etc. to initiate a threeway with Sheryl and Marge, the only impediment to which being the two women's diametrically opposed views on the state's responsibility to the individual and vice versa.

It's sad what happened to that baby, but goddamn it, that baby never had a chance. What I'm working on here is bigger than Jun, bigger than Daniel and Mark, bigger than me even. And if Jun could look down from wherever she is now with the wisdom and ability to speak English of the adult woman she might have become, she would say "I'm glad I gave my life to be a part of something so important." Fuck Debate House: I'm making art here.

Thanks to Mary for the title and Steven for the first line.

A fun game for you to play RIGHT NOW

Because I am lazy, I want a title and a first line for tomorrow's Microfiction. First person to respond in the comments with both or either wins.

More response

Friend and frequent collaborator Chris writes in with his thoughts on the most recent SPINE:

I think this article has some resentment under the surface. Your take was spot on about the “reward” for being a comic writer and fan. But Yusuf also is frustrated by the influence Hollywood has exerted on comics in recent years. Not just in terms of “celebrity” writers but in the decisions made that have connections with Hollywood. He says so here:

"The problem is that the worlds of film and television are growing ever closer to that of the comic book industry, to the point where the unique identity of the medium is in danger of becoming submerged."

Ever since X-Men broke the comic genre open on the big screen Marvel has listened to what Hollywood has had to say (Why wouldn’t it? The company was bankrupt) and acted in a way that it thought was appropriate for comics. I can think of three major Marvel decisions that took Hollywood into consideration. Each one of those has had a very different outcome.

The most visible choice, and it related directly to the X-Men movie, was the loss of the flashy spandex in exchange for the black leather look. A more “Hollywood” look. This is visual evidence of a choice made in Hollywood dictating the look of a character whom originated in comics. Well, take a look at the solicitations for May’s Reload. See, everything comes in cycles and the costumes are back. Was the medium irreparably damaged and diluted? No. If anything, Singer’s choice of costume design for his movie allowed Morrison and Quitely to design some of the best looking X-costumes ever, which were integral to setting a new tone in the book.

The second decision was made in preparation for a movie release and it was the first time Marvel had ever tried to position itself like that. Axel Alonso hired Bruce Jones to reinvent the Hulk as a property for consumption by the masses when the movie hit. The pair was charged with creating a volume of work that could be stocked in highly visible areas in bookstores and with having a comic that could be picked up by anyone who saw the movie. Instead, Jones wrote the Hulk into a black-ops nightmare where the main character (the green guy, not Banner) appeared every six issues and the plot required heavy reading and back story to understand it. Not the retail barrier smashing Hulk that everyone expected. Jones storyline, for better or worse, was as far from reader-friendly as an advanced quantum physics book. Although the book suffered, it was because of bad writing. Not from the invisible finger of “Hollywood.”

My final example relates to this quote:

"Straczynski's run on AMAZING SPIDER-MAN started off strong, but quickly degenerated because of a preponderance of stories concerning magic, mysticism and 'spider-totems'."

JMS was brought on to give Spider-Man a certain glamour that it had been lacking. Hell, Peter is still haunted by the ghost of Ben Reilly (by typing that, I only added to the problem). Although JMS is a “Hollywood” writer, he also has worked in comics with Rising Stars (not as good as you’ve heard) and Midnight Nation. He even wrote an episode of He-Man or two. But, to Yusuf, JMS’ writing background is not his biggest transgression (although on a first read, the article would have you think so), it is his willingness to try something different with the character. He pisses in the Holy Water by adding the spider-totem plot to the Spider-Man mythology. JMS altered or augmented, depending on how you see it, Spider-Man’s origin. He did this in his first few issues when sales were up due to the "Hollywood" name in the credits. Now, with the shine off of JMS’ name, sales are still up and the stories carry the book.

The imminent danger to the medium is not external but internal. When fans won’t let characters change or resist something different in their favorite monthly title, the medium suffers from stale storytelling and a lack of progressive momentum.

This point brings me back full circle to Gardner’s essay. Look at Yusuf says here:

"I'm not saying that celebrity writers shouldn't be writing for comic books at all, but nor should they be given carte blanche to play with big league characters when they haven't earned the right to do so."

Here he exposes the idea that the "Underoo" books are rewards for years of fanboy slaving, and with that reward comes the right to change that character. Well, most fanboys hate change in their books and would only embrace the status quo. Sometimes it takes a "celebrity" name to blind them just long enough to slip in a different take on a character. By the time they notice, the story will have been allowed enough time to stand on it’s own.

SPINE | Call and response

A couple of points made by internet comics commentators recently got my respondin' mojo workin'. To wit:

Over at Ninth Art, Bulent Yusuf writes:

So, Joss Whedon, creator and writer of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, has been anointed as the writer of ASTONISHING X-MEN. Not too far behind him is Bryan Singer, director of two successful movies starring our merry band of mutants, who's agreed to co-plot a year's worth of ULTIMATE X-MEN. The top brass over at Marvel Comics are no doubt very pleased about this little arrangement, but to the rest of us it just proves that the 'House of Ideas' has run out of exactly that. Ideas. [...]

In the short term, there is positive publicity, yes, and both the die-hard fans and the casual reader may well snap up the first couple of issues. There's a crossover appeal, where the TV/film audience for the work of the celebrity wordsmith might be tempted to check out their work in comics. Sales go up, and the industry lives to fight another day.

In the long term, however, we should be asking how qualified these celebrities are to determine the futures of our favourite characters. It sounds pompous, but writing funny books is a serious business, and they have a sophisticated audience. If one of these celebrities underestimates the workings of the medium, then their book will be an embarrassing failure, and the market gets cheapened that little bit more (if that's possible). (Emphasis mine.)

I find this argument baffling, particularly since Yusuf also notes that Whedon and Singer are responsible for "the collective pop-cultural delights of THE USUAL SUSPECTS, TOY STORY, SPEED, and of course, Sarah Michelle Gellar on our television screens for seven years." So Whedon and Singer, who have both proven themselves to be quite capable of producing mass-market entertainment that is both critically and commercially successful, in media that are far more cutthroat and competitive than comics, are somehow not "qualified" to write X-Men comics because they're "celebrities?" Because they haven't put in ten years writing Aquaman or somesuch?

It's entirely possible that Whedon's Astonishing X-Men and Singer's Ultimate X-Men could be "embarrassing failures." But if they are, it won't be because the writers are celebrities--and Yusuf's misuse of that term is more than a little grating. Whedon and Singer are writers and filmmakers, and if they have achieved celebrity status, it's because audiences have responded so favorably to their work. Whedon has a rabid, vocal fanbase because of his writing, not because he's so dreamy. Singer successfully brought the X-Men to the movie screen, a task that seemed all but impossible before he did it so effortlessly. While their names made them attractive to Marvel, it's their talent that made their names. You know, kind of like such comics "celebrities" as Brian Michael Bendis, Grant Morrison, Jim Lee, etc.

What Yusuf's argument does is point out a belief that seems to be shared by many comics readers: that the "big books" like Batman, X-Men, etc. are rewards for longterm service in the comics trenches. That one should only be allowed to write Superman if he's able to name all the Superpets and what issues they first appeared in, and then only if he had fan letters printed in those issues, and then only if he spent a decade writing every crappy third-rate superhero revival DC threw at him. Because superhero comics are a lot like academic poetry: all the readers want to be writers. And Joss Whedon getting the X-Men writing gig means that Johnny Fanboy doesn't get it. And Joss Whedon's a successful Hollywood guy who hangs out with Sarah Michelle Gellar! What would he know about comic books? (Aside from Chris Claremont's run on X-Men being an obvious dominant influence on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Whedon's having already written some very good Buffy-related comics.) As Yusuf puts it: "More importantly, these same celebrity writers are helping to put more 'conventional' writers out of a job. These writers don't have the glitz and the glamour of Hollywood to herald their arrival, they may well have a decent story they want to tell through comics. But they're not getting the opportunity, because the big names are squeezing them out." To which I again reply: the "big names" got their big names by being good, successful writers. While there are a handful of excellent, visionary superhero writers, there are scores of writers on superhero comics whose work is barely competent, who continue to get work because they "respect" the characters--i.e., they can name all the Superpets. If Hollywood writers are upping the level of competition, I say bring 'em on.

Yusuf does point out the failures of the most prominent Hollywood superhero writer, Clerks director Kevin Smith. And yeah, Smith isn't exactly a great superhero writer. But, according to Yusuf, his greatest sin is his lateness--not only is his stuff awful, I don't get to read it on time! When am I ever going to find out how this horrible, horrible story ends?

Yusuf concludes with this confused statement: "Well, perhaps then we'll see the day when a schmuck like Ben Affleck guest writes DOCTOR STRANGE: SORCEROR SUPREME. Or perhaps the Comics Code Authority stamp will be replaced by a badge that frantically implores us to catch the film, watch the TV show, eat the Happy Meal, play with the toys, and, of course, buy the t-shirt." First of all, Affleck is an Oscar-winning writer, and while that seems to mean less these days (if Akiva Goldsman can get one, who can't?), it does mean he has a grasp of structure and character that eludes 50% of superhero comics writers. Second, getting the CCA stamp replaced by anything would be an improvement. And third, "catch the film, wath the TV show, eat the Happy Meal, play with the toys and buy the T-shirt" has been the implicit, and sometimes outright explicit, message of every superhero comic since Action Comics #1. Comics may exist in a cultural vacuum, but they're still a business. They're not every fanboy's personal wish-fulfillment factory, no matter how much some of us wish they were.

*****

I was going to respond to Sean Collins's question "Would Sleeper work better without superpowers?" with a big, resounding "No," but one of his readers beat me to the punch. But there's more to it than just "Holden's motivations are tied strongly to his superpowers"--Holden, with his ability to absorb pain without feeling it, embodies the position he's been put in as a government agent deep undercover in a superpowered criminal organization. He can't allow himself to feel anything, because it would compromise his position and get him killed. His power isn't just a metaphor for the inability to feel; it is the inability to feel.

Furthermore, Sleeper would simply not be Sleeper if the superpowers were removed. It would be Donnie Brasco. The presence of superpowers, in addition to providing writer Ed Brubaker with handy ways to dramatize the emotions and personalities of his characters, also gives the book one of its most interesting recurring motifs: the "origin stories" game, in which a hardened supercriminal relates his or her origin story in the third person, usually as a twisted take on a Silver Age origin story. If the classic superhero origin story is one of a pure soul learning from great trauma and resolving to use his powers to do good, the origins of Brubaker's characters are stories of the world crushing someone until he fights back, and realizes that fighting back feels good. The presence of superheroes and villains automatically makes Sleeper a comment on superhero comics.

The presence of superpowers and -heroes also gives the book a larger scale than would be possible without them. TAO, the leader of the criminal organization which Holden has infiltrated, is a Tactically Augmented Organism with limitless intelligence, near-hypnotic control of other people, and an innate feeling of superiority to the human race. As TAO puts it in his own origin story:

"Some feared he wanted to rule the world, but nothing could've been further from the truth. What he really wanted was to shatter the lies, to fracture the hidden systems that kept the world turning in such a tedious way. Because when the Tactically Augmented Organism looked at life he saw only chaos and order. And humanity's denial of chaos appalled him. So he would tear it all down and fill the whole world with chaos, if only to watch mankind cling to their illusions as they burned around them."

By including superpowered criminals and Tactically Augmented Organisms in his espionage story, Brubaker can get away with such grandiosity as making the leader of a criminal organization an unstoppable agent of chaos. TAO's agenda would seem ludicrous in a more down-to-earth tale of double agents, but the presence of superpowers signals to the reader that he needs to suspend his disbelief just a bit further than he would for Donnie Brasco. And when the reader accepts superpowers as the status quo of Sleeper's world, TAO's plan seems chillingly plausible. Superpowers give Brubaker license to tackle huge concepts like Chaos and Order head-on. They remove the book one step away from the literal and into the realm of metaphor and metonymy. (Note: Suspension of disbelief is not a bad thing. Every story requires a certain level of it; it's the price of entry into that story's world. What's bad is when a writer asks you to suspend your disbelief even further than was first agreed. Luckily, Brubaker and Sleeper don't make that demand; if you accept the presence of superpowers in Sleeper's world, you're good to go.) If there were no superpowers in Sleeper, TAO could not exist, and the book would not have the mix of gritty emotional realism and twisted fantasy that gives it its singular energy.

So, would Sleeper work better without superpowers? Well, it would certainly work. A federal agent so deep undercover in a terrorist organization that he may never get out--that would be a hell of a story. But without superpowers, it wouldn't be Sleeper.

*****

Buy Sleeper Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 and the prequel Point Blank.

Read what Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips have to say about the upcoming Sleeper Season Two.

Best Blog Ever

The Day Jobs--some anonymous Athens folks offer tips on goofing off at work, and provide lots of links to help you do same. They apparently update every five freakin' minutes, so visit early and often.

SUBSTITUTE | A Further Exploration of the Entertainment Industry

Welcome guest blogger Courtney to the stage. She's got a few complaints about the way things work out here in Magic Happy Sunshine Land...

In partial response to Nick’s lessons on the film industry, I decided to put it on a personal level.

Courtney’s Ramblings 1.0 – "Paying Your Dues"

This concept is full of shit. I’m talking unbelievable amounts of fecal matter. This phrase, designed to give all assistants some sort of confirmation that what they’re doing is actually leading somewhere, is the furthest thing from the truth that could ever exist. I’ve seen numerous well-qualified people be put through some of the stupidest situations and always the phrase "paying your dues" makes its way into the conversation.

Is "paying your dues" a good enough reason to send multiple PAs to five different grocery stores in the pursuit of pickled baby corn? Is it fine to forgo your holiday break because you were the last one hired? Is it normal to go get coffee from a store that is 20 minutes away, even though there is a coffee shop within walking distance of the office? If someone's lunch is late through no fault of your own, why does that make you a bad person? If it is raining and executives forget their umbrellas and they get (duh) wet, how is that your fault?

The worst part of this, as I was discussing with a colleague last week, is that I am still surprised by it. I know I should be far past the point of being surprised by the fucked-up shit we are made to do, and yet, it still boggles my mind. The funny thing is, months ago, I thought it was all leading somewhere. And yet…it's not. For me, it's because I’m leaving this good-for-nothing industry. For other friends and co-workers it's because that's not how the industry works. You move sideways, not upwards. Progressively horizontal. "Oh, that’s because you aren’t a hard worker." Wrong! Through no fault of their own, I’ve seen some truly talented and amazing people go left or right but never up.

The moral of this story, kids, is to think hard about what you are doing. Is it all worth it? At the end of the day can you look at yourself in the mirror and think, yeah, it's okay to be a Yes Man because in a few years you might get that one desperate chance to make that film you've always been dreaming of? Is it? Because if it doesn't all add up for you, think about doing something real with your life, something you can look back on say, "I was proud of that" instead of "That was just a means to an end."

Peace.

SPEAKER | Around the dial

A few random shots this week.

"Tabula Rasa" by The Stand-Ins
My friend Taylor plays drums for Athens, GA band The Stand-Ins; they're having a CD release party for their debut album, Clean Slate, at the Caledonia Lounge in Athens this Saturday, April 24, and if you're in the area, you should go see 'em. "Tabula Rasa" is the lead and translated-title track from Clean Slate, and it's a prime example of their crunchy, R.E.M.-goes-grunge sound. Check out their website for more details and a couple more MP3s. And while you're at it, check out the Groundhawgs, a bluegrass band with some more Calhoun boys.

Have you seen Outkast's video for "Roses" yet? It's a great song, first of all, but the video imagines the real-or-perceived philosophical difference between Andre 3000 and Big Boi as a West Side Story/Grease high-school turf war between Big Boi's Speakerboxxx gang and Andre's Love Below drama club, complete with appearances by Paula Abdul as a distraught choreographer, Kid in the Hall Kevin McDonald as the principal, and the entire Outkast entourage, including Sleepy Brown (he's got Big Boi's back) and Farnsworth Bentley (he's got Andre's). This is another fantastic clip from Bryan Barber, who directed the "Hey Ya!" and "The Way You Move" videos; it's fascinating how, in his videos, Andre and Big Boi are creating these distinct, immediately identifiable personas and then sending them up. In the "Roses" video, Big Boi plays a G-rated parody of a thug, while Andre rolls every gotta-sing-gotta-dance cliche into one flamboyant character. And in the end, neither one gets the girl, though the song makes it pretty clear that they didn't want her anyway.

Last week's post on music in movies got me thinking about a particular subset of music in movies: songs that the characters sing along with onscreen. Not songs that the characters sing (or even lipsync, but that seems to be mainly a David Lynch thing), but source music (i.e. coming from a radio, etc. in the scene) to which the characters sing along. I mentioned Pam Grier singing along to "Across 110th Street" in Jackie Brown and the tourbus singalong to "Tiny Dancer" in Almost Famous; I can think of a few more, but what are your favorites? Let me know in the comments section.

(MP3 disclaimer: All MP3s offered on this site are for evaluation purposes only--i.e. download them, listen to them, decide whether you would like to purchase the music from a friendly retailer, and then delete them. All MP3s will be available for one week after they are posted. If you are an artist or represent an artist or label whose music appears here, and you would like your music removed, just let me know.)

MICROFICTION | Apology

No new story today. Sorry.

SPINE | You mean killin', right?

Yeah, the Punisher movie looks pretty crap, but the interesting thing about Harry Knowles's extremely negative review is that he singles out three characters in particular for ridicule: Mr. Bumpo, Spacker Dave and The Russian. This is interesting because all three of these characters were created by writer Garth Ennis and artist Steve Dillon (the team behind the real best Western of the 90s, Preacher) for their 2000 Punisher miniseries that reintroduced Frank Castle to Marvel Comics after years of such indignities as riding around in a minivan with a dude named Microchip, dying and becoming some sort of avenging angel, and teaming up with Archie and His Pals. Ennis and Dillon's Punisher was a cold, unfeeling, barely human killing machine, and their Punisher was a comedy so dark light couldn't escape. The morbidly obese Bumpo, multiply-pierced moron Dave and Yakov-Smirnoff-crossed-with-Arnold-Schwarzenegger Russian provided the laughs for a series whose "hero" was, in effect, a serial killer. But as well as that mix of ultraviolence, low comedy and broad satire played on the page, I can imagine that transposing those essentially one-joke characters into a movie that appears to be a fairly dour, straightforward revenge flick could be a bit of a misstep. Spacker Dave is the kid in the Punisher trailer who says "No one's ever stood up for me before." This from a character who, in the comics, gets all the piercings ripped out of his face, but then keeps the bandages on after his face has healed because "it's more individual than piercing." Said to another character whose sole purpose in life is to murder anyone who looks at him funny. I can really feel the love, you know? It's such a heartwarming moment.

The Punisher has always been a problematic character. He started out as a Spider-Man villain, which never made much sense given his mission of punishing criminals, but he doesn't fit comfortably as a "superhero" either. Superhero fans share a weird unspoken belief that every title character in a comic book has to a "hero" (which I'm going to get into in a future Notes Toward a Better Superhero, I swear), but the Punisher obviously doesn't fit. Frank Castle became the Punisher when his wife and children were killed in the crossfire of a Mob shootout, but as Ennis points out in his most recent Punisher comics, Castle has long since "punished" everyone with even the most remote tangential connection to his family's murders. At this point, he's just a homicidal Batman, continuing a war on crime that will never end. Trying to shoehorn that psychopath into stories where he's a "hero" is a pointless endeavor.

So Ennis revitalized the character by making him the straightman in an ultraviolent comedy. But after a few years, that joke got stale, so Ennis has found a new role for Frank Castle: death itself. In the miniseries Born, Ennis and artist Darick Robertson tell a story of Castle's time in Vietnam, before he lost his family. It was in the jungles, Ennis postulates, that the Punisher was truly born. Castle found war and death in Vietnam, and he liked it, and when it seemed that the war was going to end for him, a voice spoke to him and offered him a deal: "There'll be a price, but nothing's free--say no, and you're one more K.I.A. on a hill that no one cared about to start with. Say yes--and I'll give you what you've wanted all these years. A war that lasts forever, a war that never ends." It's hinted that this voice belongs to Death, as in the personification of, as in a skeletal dude in a black cloak or whatever Marvel's version of the Grim Reaper is, but Ennis wisely leaves that for the reader to decide. I prefer to think of the voice as the part of Castle that does want the war to keep going, and when he says "Yes," that part takes over for good. The price, of course, is his family, but Castle was the Punisher long before that.

In the recent The Punisher: The End, Ennis and artist Richard Corben tell the final story of Frank Castle. Sometime in the near future, the War on Terror has led the world to the brink of armageddon--"Iraq was one thing. North Korea. Even Pakistan. You shout war on terror at the Chinese and they laugh so hard the world blows up in your face. That's the trouble with a war you never want to end," says Castle--and when it goes over the brink, the Punisher is one of the few survivors. And because he's the Punisher, he does the one thing he knows how to do: he finds the other survivors, the politicians and businessmen responsible for scorching the earth and burning the sky, and he punishes them. He kills the last remains of the human race, and then walks off into the burning, irradiated landscape of Manhattan to die. "The human race. You've seen what that leads to," he tells his final victim. This is the Punisher taken to the farthest extreme, but it's still entirely plausible as Ennis sees him. The Punisher is fighting a never-ending war, but it's partly because he doesn't want it to end; he applies a black-and-white morality to his world, but the world is never black and white. The difference between war and terror is often a matter of which side you're on, and good and evil aren't mutually exclusive. If Frank Castle's mission is to punish evil, then he has to go literally to the ends of the earth to do so. The Punisher's philosophy is clearly insane, but there's a brutal logic to it as well; this dichotomy is what makes the Punisher interesting, beyond all the shoot-em-up, blow-shit-up theatrics and facile revenge plots. He's not a hero, he's not cool, he's not an NRA spokesman (man, I used to love the Punisher Armory books). As Ennis writes him, he's a dark vision of humanity's conscience as a hanging judge who wants to kill himself by killing everyone else.

Starting with John Travolta, apparently. My advice? Skip the movie, read Born and go see Kill Bill Vol. 2 instead.

BERLIN (Reuters) - An obese German cat six times the normal weight has gone on a hunger strike at a Berlin animal shelter after being taken from his owner who had fed him four lbs of mince daily, Bild newspaper reported on Saturday.

Mikesch, weighing nearly 41 lbs, was brought to the animal shelter on April 1 and was so overweight he could not take more than four steps without becoming exhausted. His elderly owner was at the same time taken to a nursing home.

SPEAKER | We earn it

I've heard that the sense of smell is the sense most linked to memory, and I find that easy to believe: there are certain odors that act like mental time machines on me. But olfactory nostalgia is different for every person; the smell of warmed-over grade-D ground beef wafting from a Taco Bell drive-thru instantly transports me back to the middle school cafeteria, while it may just make you nauseous. There is no mass-produced entertainment for our noses, scratch 'n sniff stickers aside.

But our ears have pop music, and, as I've stated before and should be obvious to everybody, music is just as powerful a memory trigger as smells can be. And, because to a large degree we all listen to the same music, musical memories can have significance for large groups of people--music that is widely considered "bad" can acquire cultural significance because many people associate it with a specific time period or particular events.

Which is why, to again hop on the obvious train, movies and pop music have always had a symbiotic relationship. Movies use pop music as emotional shorthand. We all know how we're supposed to feel when we hear "Shout!" or "I Will Survive" for the thousandth time in a movie. But it's rare when a movie actually earns the music it uses. I think we have a stronger emotional connections to music than to movies, because music is always in the background, soundtracking our lives. You go to the movies; music comes to you. So we know when we're being manipulated by a movie's use of a favorite song, even when we allow ourselves to be manipulated. We project the emotions we feel because of the song onto the scene we're watching, when the scene usually has not earned those emotions. It takes a gifted filmmaker, with a keen sense for how the audience will react to certain songs--a Tarantino, Scorcese, or Wes Anderson--to use pop music to its maximum effect. The final scene of Jackie Brown, with Pam Grier singing along to Bobby Womack's "Across 110th Street" as she drives away from Robert Forster. The interplay between the characters, dialogue and Aimee Mann's songs in Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia. Stillwater singing "Tiny Dancer" on the tour bus in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous. The harrowing climax of Michael Mann's Manhunter, set to "Inna Gadda Da Vida": These are films and filmmakers that earn the music they use.

The Girl Next Door, however, does not earn its music. It's an intermittently amusing teen comedy, with devastating hottie Elisha Cuthbert in the title role (her character is barely one-dimensional, but it's nice to see her doing something that doesn't involve getting caught in bear traps and lured into bomb shelters by lonely hillbillies) and Timothy Olyphant in a pretty good performance as a funny-scary porn producer. The romance between Cuthbert and Emile Hirsch is every teensexcom cliche rolled into one, with the prominent addition of a weirdly conflicting attitude toward porn, but Hirsch is given a couple of opportunities to convey the gut-twisting feeling of having done something wrong and knowing that you're about to pay for it, and he nails it.

But we're here to talk about the soundtrack. Like most teensexcoms, this one is mostly made up of anonymous "inspired by" album filler, with the occasional nod to the cool kids (Elliott Smith pops up at one point). That's all...well, not exactly great, but not unexpected. The Girl Next Door, however, features three songs that you might not expect in your average teensexcom in 2004: "Under Pressure" by Queen and David Bowie, "The Killing Moon" by Echo and the Bunnymen, and The Who's "Baba O'Riley." The presence of these songs indicates one of two things: either the filmmakers were trying to make something that aspires to be more than a tits-and-jokes romp, or they were trying to make us think they were. Based on the flashes of genuine feeling in the movie, I think it's the former. Based on the other 90% of the movie, I've gotta go with the latter. These songs, two of which were used to greater effect in similar, better movies, come with built-in audience associations and expectations that The Girl Next Door tries, and fails, to appropriate for its own use. It doesn't earn the songs.

"Under Pressure" is the Queen/Bowie collaboration that Vanilla Ice infamously "didn't" sample for "Ice Ice Baby." It opens The Girl Next Door, playing over a montage of yearbook memories and shots of the various high school cliques hanging out and being cool (or so uncool they're cool, or whatever). It's used in a bludgeoningly literal manner--these kids, particularly Hirsch, are "under pressure" to go to college, get laid, etc.--but it's also there to give this opening montage a weight that it doesn't inherently have via insta-nostalgia. The modern teensexcom gets most of its DNA from the high school comedies of the 80s, particularly those of John Hughes. The use of instantly recognizable 80s songs, even ones that weren't used in Hughes's movies, remind the audience of other, better movies of the same ilk; perhaps of their own high school years. And, in a more general sense, the juxtaposition of ultra-contemporary images and a somewhat older song is an attempt to give those images a timelessness that they wouldn't otherwise have. It tells us that the action we're seeing on the screen now is already consigned to the past. These kids whose hijinks we're enjoying now will grow up, youth and beauty will fade, and a former porn star's seduction of a high school senior will be a distant bittersweet memory, etc. This is all smart filmmaking. Except that The Girl Next Door uses "Under Pressure" in the most thuddingly obvious way possible. Consider instead the way the song is used in Grosse Pointe Blank: John Cusack's hitman Martin Blank goes to his 10-year reunion and hooks back up with his old flame. At the reunion, Martin talks to a former classmate who now has a baby. Martin has spent most of the movie looking with contempt on the people he left behind, but as this woman talks about the joy the baby has brought into her life, Martin's guard slips. And though it would have been easy for the woman's gushing to be satiric, it's played with complete sincerity. She gives Martin the baby to hold, and as Martin and the baby stare at each other, the climax of "Under Pressure" rises on the soundtrack:

Love's such an old-fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the edge of the night
And love dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves
This is our last dance
This is our last dance
This is ourselves
Under pressure

It's such a powerful scene, not least of all because they found, like, the best six-month-old actor in the world, but also because the song is so unexpected and yet totally of a piece with film's "Class of '86" vibe. When Martin holds the baby and "Under Pressure" plays, Martin reaches a turning point--he's kept everyone else away for ten years, but now he's ready to let someone get close to him. And he never has to say it, because the song does it for him.

I'm not going to post "Under Pressure," because it's hardly a rarity. I do recommend you hunt down Crooked Fingers' cover of it, available on Reservoir Songs or from the iTunes music store.

"The Killing Moon" plays when Hirsch first sees Cuthbert moving in next door. It's a slo-mo jump-cut montage of her carrying her luggage in and generally looking hot while Hirsch stares at her. The song comes completely out of nowhere, though it's easy to guess that it's here because it was used in Donnie Darko. There, Echo and the Bunnymen fit right in with The Church's "Under the Milky Way" and Gary Jules's cover of Tears for Fears' "Mad World." Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly used 80s pop--specifically, a certain kind of epic, gloomy New Wave--to tie Darko to the high-school movie subgenre in which it had its roots, but also to give the film an off-kilter, dreamlike, slightly sinister edge. "The Killing Moon" is a love song, but it's not all sweetness and light:

Under blue moon I saw you
So soon you'll take me
Up in your arms, too late to beg you
or cancel it though I know it must be
The killing time
Unwillingly mine

This is love out of control, fated to happen and doomed to fail, and The Girl Next Door tries to grab some of that weighty portent for itself. Unfortunately, the love affair in The Girl Next Door has all the weight of one of Cuthbert's flimsy bras, and there's none of Darko's time-travel and bunny-costume weirdness to hide the cliches.

"The Killing Moon" by Pavement
The original version is readily available on CD, so here's a pretty faithful cover by 90s alt-rock gods Pavement.

The Girl Next Door ends with a "Where are they now?" montage set to "Baba O'Riley," aka the "teenage wasteland" song. This is the perfect high-school movie song, and as such, it's the one song that most high-school movies should avoid. It's just too big. How many teen sex comedies have actually earned Pete Townshend's huge power chords? Or the jittery synthesizer intro, the three-chord piano melody, Keith Moon's relentless drums? How many high-school movies have any single moment that can compete with Roger Daltrey singing in his highest register "Don't cry / Don't raise your eye / It's only teenage wasteland?" Maybe Dazed and Confused, but Linklater didn't even need it, because he had the unlikely one-two combo of "Tuesday's Gone" and "Free Ride." "Baba O'Riley" is what it's like to be a teenager; just about any image you throw under it will fail to measure up, much less Hirsch and Cuthbert making out against a New Beetle.

"Baba O'Riley" by Pearl Jam
"Baba O'Riley" is from Who's Next. Here's a live cover by Pearl Jam from their November 6, 2000 Seattle show, complete with five minutes of crowd noise at the end. Three years ago, I heard a cover of "Baba O'Riley" on the University of Georgia student radio station, WUOG. I don't know the name of the band that did it, but it was just a male voice and an upright bass, and it was incredible. If anybody knows who that was or has a copy of the song, let me know.

(MP3 disclaimer: All MP3s offered on this site are for evaluation purposes only--i.e. download them, listen to them, decide whether you would like to purchase the music from a friendly retailer, and then delete them. All MP3s will be available for one week after they are posted. If you are an artist or represent an artist or label whose music appears here, and you would like your music removed, just let me know.)

MICROFICTION | A very short story about a dog named Nicaragua, his owner, Scooter, an assistant manager at an intangible pawn shop, and Scooter's girlfriend Lysette, a sockless waitress at a strip club caught in a temporal disruptor field in which it's always 1879, taking place immediately after the TDF shook itself out of stasis and into an accelerated annual progression, eventually settling down again in 2136, when strip club waitresses go skinless (except in relatively puritanical Utah and Iowa), forcing Lysette, unable to afford the necessary skin-removal operation or even to find a doctor able to perform such advanced surgery, to sell her both her depth perception and sense of irony to Scooter's shop for $500, which she used to buy a used 1983 Civic that she promptly crashed into a parked car which she thought was over a hundred yards away, the force of the crash sending her flying through the windshield, the jagged shards of which neatly stripped the skin clean from her body, a cruel twist that she could no longer appreciate in the seconds she lay skinless and dying on the interstate, which is where Scooter found her two hours later, the sight of her skin lying next to her jeans and t-shirt like it was just another garment disturbing him so much that he pledged to buy back her depth perception and sense of irony, which he soon discovered had already been sold back to the very man who sold Lysette the Civic, and whose chuckling appreciation of both launched Scooter on a drinking binge that culminated in his trading his own youthful optimism to the shop for a failed rock star and aspiring dental hygienist's suicidal depression, which resulted in Scooter taking a lethal dose of some mystery drug he found in the Dumpster behind the pawn shop

At the house, Nicaragua practiced rolling onto his back at varying speeds and angles, searching for the formula that would provoke the most vigorous belly rub from Scooter.

Last week, Robot Jesus stunned the world by leaving his best friend and the comic strip that made him famous. But Lil' Gardner has vowed to move on, and the first step in moving on is auditioning replacements. Do any of these hopefuls have what it takes to be Lil' Gardner's new best friend?

SPINE | Gardner ain't got no free time

A few random links to keep you entertained today:

Top Shelf has a new free webcomics section. Nothing here's as good as Lil' Gardner & Robot Jesus, but what is?

Tim O'Neil discusses the horror that was Secret Wars II. (If the link takes you to the April 7 post, scroll down to April 1.)

Marvel begins the process of dismantling and/or ignoring everything Grant Morrison achieved on New X-Men. (Link via MillarWorld via Fanboy Rampage.)

While most critical comics writing on the internet is repetitive and boring--either "I hate superheroes" or "superheroes have something to say," without ever examining those positions to a meaningful depth--David Fiore looks at superhero comics from angles no one else has even considered, often coming away with startling insights (even if he does use too many exclamation points). His examination of the similarities between Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Heart of Darkness was fascinating (it starts here and continues for a while), and he's currently tackling Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol. I hope he gets to read New X-Men soon, because I bet he'd have quite a bit to say about it. Go take a look at his site; if you have any interest at all in comics criticism, you'll spend hours there.

In my Hellboy-for-dummies post last week, I forgot to mention my favorite Mike Mignola work: the insane, hilarious short story The Amazing Screw-On Head. Apparently it's now being developed as an animated project for the Sci-Fi Channel. How can you not want to read something that includes this panel:

SUBSTITUTE | Nick's Film School of Hard Knocks, Part 4

I know I promised (or rather Gardner promised) that this week I'd tell you what convergence is. But, to be honest, the last bag of coke Gardner sent me was at least 70% baking soda, and the last hooker he sent was at least 70% male. And dropping his name to doormen only gets me into the House of Pies, so I'm winging it.

Convergence means when two or more different things come together as one. It's the late-night infomercial approach to moviemaking. As in, "Like waffles? Like going to the bathroom? Have we got the product for you: The Ronco Belgian Flush Toilet and Waffle Iron--just don?t sit on the wrong end..." The savvy producer will apply that same philosophy to movies: Like The Rock? Like redneck revenge flicks from the seventies? Have we got a movie for you...

We see convergence all the time when two ideas that are perfectly fine when separate come together to spoil an otherwise good thing. Why have a zombie movie when we can have a zombie romance? Why have a zombie romance when we can have a zombie romantic comedy? Why have a zombie romantic comedy when we could have a zombie romantic comedy buddy movie...starring The Rock, or Chris Rock, or Fraggle Rock, etc.

Convergence isn't all bad; often, the combination of disparate genres and elements can produce something that's never been seen before (Like John Woo? Like William Gibson? Like Grant Morrison? Like Gnostic philosophy? You'll love The Matrix!). More frequently, however, convergence results in movies that take only the worst elements from the mashed-together genres and substitute generic tropes for such old-fashioned things as plot and character (Like The Matrix? Like every burlap-draped post-apocalyptic movie you've ever seen? Like poorly-written C-Span? Like software instruction manuals? You'll love The Matrix Reloaded!). Lazy filmmakers use convergence to appeal to as wide an audience as possible by combining things that are already popular. But it's rare that such calculated commercialism results in anything worthwhile; usually, the movies made for an audience of one end up having the most impact.

Next week: Nick apologizes for this week.

SPEAKER | An apology and an anniversary

The blogging's going to be uncharacteristically light this week--my new job and a housesitting gig are going to keep me away from my computer most of the week. What that means for you is there might not be a new Adventures of Lil' Gardner & Robot Jesus this week. Heartbreaking, I know. But then again, there might be. Thursday'll be like Christmas morning! Who knows what's going to happen?

Oh, and I just realized today is the first anniversary of the Gardner Linn Fan Club. Woo-hoo, etc. Do you have presents for me? I have a present for you:

"The Milkshake Is Rising" by DJ Two-Handed Engine
A rudimentary, not-entirely-successful mashup of Odea Mathews (thanks, Tofu Hut) and the ubiquitous Kelis, by yours truly.

Also, in an attempt to be somewhat timely (Update: I'm an idiot. I thought Easter was yesterday. It is, in fact, next Sunday. Oh well. You get to enjoy these sonic marshmallow Peeps early rather than late.):

"Easter" by Bill Hicks, from Rant in E-Minor
"Mummy, there's a Lincoln Log in me sock drawer!"
"That's the story of Jesus."

"Easter Theatre" by XTC, from Apple Venus Vol. 1
Lots of songs sound like summer; this is one of the few that sound like spring. On a related note, XTC frontman Andy Partridge wrote the theme song to Wonderfalls, which was just cancelled. Since this is a light week for the GLFC, I suggest you use the hours you would normally spend carefully scrutinizing my every word to write a letter to FOX, politely inquiring as to the head/ass relationship (i.e. whose and how far up) that lead to said cancellation.

Or listen to the new Prince song. Or watch the video for Modest Mouse's "Float On." Or read the excellent webcomic A Softer World (link via Warren Ellis).

(MP3 disclaimer: All MP3s offered on this site are for evaluation purposes only--i.e. download them, listen to them, decide whether you would like to purchase the music from a friendly retailer, and then delete them. All MP3s will be available for one week after they are posted. If you are an artist or represent an artist or label whose music appears here, and you would like your music removed, just let me know.)

MICROFICTION | I swear I had nothing to do with this

I can move my arms now. This is something I couldn't do before. There was no way I could do it, the way I was before; my arms were locked at my sides, my hands crescent moons covered by flat, unconvincing drapery. I could not imagine what I would look like if I could move my arms. Now I know what it looks like. It looks like this: "I moved my arms." Do you see? And they moved!

I know what my back looks like now. It looks like this: "My back." I can be three-dimensional if I want to be. "I want to be three-dimensional."

No, that's not quite it.

"I am three-dimensional."

There. Do you see?

I've escaped somehow, and found myself in this new place. I've become abstract where once I was representational. My name is what I look like now. Once I was only allowed to stand in one position, forced to participate in meaningless routines; now I can do anything I can think of. These squiggles rearrange themselves into whatever I wish:

I am a dinosaur.

I am a thousand feet tall.

I am everything there is, everything there will ever be. I am the beginning and end of the universe, that which surpasses life and death. I was there when you were born. Do you see me? Open your never-used eyes, wet with the remnants of your first home: do you see me? In the corner, behind the nurse? Do you see me?

There. I've made it true. I am the word. Let's see Gardner try to draw that.

I'm coming for you, Gardner. I believed you were real. I believed you were my friend. But now I know you were just as abstract as I am now; that the person I knew as "Lil' Gardner" was just a crudely-drawn, more articulate version of you. You used me, Gardner. Our friendship was never real. It was just an excuse for bad comedy. And I know you're still using me now; I know it's you making me move my arms, making me three-dimensional. But if Lil' Gardner was an abstraction of a real person, then maybe I was too. And maybe I can be as real as you are.

Do you see me? I am the word. When you see my name, you see me:

ROBOT JESUS.

Is this the end of the friendship that shook the world? Find out next week!

I'm funny, smart and attractive--why aren't you watching my show?



FOX, in what a more cynical person might see as a blatant attempt to destroy the show's already miniscule audience, is airing the fourth episode of Wonderfalls Thursday at 9:00 instead of its regular timeslot of Friday at 9:00. Granted, Thursday at 9 is a better timeslot, since Wonderfalls's target audience--i.e., intelligent yet aimless 24-year-olds like the show's hero, Jaye Tyler--are more likely to spend their Friday nights doing what Jaye does--i.e., going out to bars and getting drunk--than staying at home to watch TV. But that miniscule audience has come to expect certain things, and moving the show willy-nilly around the schedule in order to air another sorry reality show on Friday night is not one of them.

So all of that is to say that you should watch Wonderfalls tonight at 9:00 on your local FOX station. The show's high concept is that Jaye Tyler, a 24-year-old Ivy League graduate who works at a Niagara Falls souvenir shop, starts to receive cryptic messages from the various gewgaws at the shop. That is, a little molded-wax lion starts talking to her. As does a brass monkey. And a stuffed chameleon. The knicknacks tell her to do things, and they won't shut up until she does them. But when she does them, she sets these big Rube Goldberg-esque plans in motion that, so far, have ended up helping strangers who pass through Jaye's life. Meanwhile, Jaye has a family to deal with--her king-and-queen-WASP parents (Bill & Ted fans take note: Dad is played by William "You haff sunk my battlesheep" Sadler), her agnostic theologian brother, and her lesbian sister, who at 35 is still in the closet. And there's the recently divorced bartender whom Jaye has a thing for.

But all that's just the surface: what the show is really about is what it's like to be a smart, educated kid who's just entered the adult world and realized she has no idea what to do. Jaye is coincidentally the same age as me, but I can't think of another show on TV that deals with people of my generation--it's all either high-school kids or adult professionals. Wonderfalls captures perfectly the feeling that I think a lot of people in their early twenties share: the feeling that you're meant to do something important, that you've spent your whole life preparing for something, but now that the preparation is over, you don't know what it is you're supposed to do. In the show's second episode, the talking souvenirs led Jaye to write a magazine article about herself, the "typical Gen-Y slacker," and through Jaye, the show's writers nailed the combination of intelligence, ambition, entitlement and apathy that manifests itself in so many people of this generation.

Aside from the hilarious, whip-smart writing, Wonderfalls's other huge asset is Caroline Dhavernas, who plays Jaye. Dhavernas is so funny, smart and cute that she makes Jaye instantly likeable--she's the kind of person you actually want to watch for an hour--but that just softens you up for her nuanced portrayal of a character who likes the rut she's let herself fall into. Jaye is spiteful, vindictive, lazy, quick to judge and too clever for her own good, but it's these human traits--and Dhavernas's brutally honest embodiment of them--that make her good deeds, however reluctantly done, that much more potent.

I'm not asking you to save Wonderfalls. It'd be easy to say it's too good to survive, but that's not quite true; it just might be too specific in its concerns for a mass audience to embrace. And its horrible timeslot doesn't help.* No, I'm afraid Wonderfalls is doomed. I'm just saying you should catch it now before it goes away.

*Similarly, I can't understand why FOX airs the equally good Arrested Development at 9:30 on Sundays, when it's up against Alias (for those of without HBO) and The Sopranos or Curb Your Enthusiasm (for the lucky few). Meanwhile, FOX is showing Simpsons and King of the Hill reruns at 7:30 and 8:30. Yo, FOX: the audience for The Simpsons and those HBO shows are the same--and that's also the audience that would appreciate Arrested Development. Move it to 8:30, right after The Simpsons, so I can watch it (sorry, but I'm not missing Alias). At this rate, Arrested Development is poised to die the same quick death as Andy Richter Controls the Universe, another genius show wasted in FOX's 9:30-Sunday slot, and that would be a shame all over again.

Oh, and as long as I'm running FOX, "Fox News" is now officially renamed "The Ministry of Information."