"The Ten-Cent Plague" by David Hajdu

Ever since Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavilier & Clay" mainstream publishers have released a slew of books (see:"Men of Tomorrow") chronicling the rough and tumble world of the nascent New York funny book business. Scrappy Jews like L.E.S. brawler Jack Kirby, Will Eisner and Harvey Kurtzman were the (now) marquee names driving the creative side of the biz but behind-the-scenes were crazy bastards like porn publisher turned DC/National head Harry Donnenfeld and M.C. Gaines, the father of Mad magazine's reluctant honcho Bill Gaines. Like the cutthroat competitors of the nearby rag trade, comic book biz was all about ripping off anything and anybody that looked like a winner and doing it cheaper and quicker to boot.

A bit of debunking the standard Bill Gaines' story is the centerpiece. Any comic history fan knows the story of the EC comics empire collapsing (Mad magazine being the sole survivor) under the specious social science of Fredric Wertham's book "Seduction of the Innocent" - and how Gaines famously melted down on live television while trying to defend his gory and gorgeous line of sleazy horror books. You may already know the story but it's seldom visited in the kind of calm detail found here. Wertham was a quack looking to sell a book on the evils of comics while Gaines has always been portrayed as something of a white knight by comic book fans. Hajdu's version spins away from the usual canon. Gaines isn't exactly made out to be a bad guy but Hajdu doesn't buy the martyr stuff either. He acknowledges the artistry of the EC books but seems close to siding with Wertham that Gaines really was something of a sleaze monger. Well, of course he was. But they were some damn fine, sleazy comic books.

Apparently, this book is the impetus behind John Landis' intentions to make a movie out of Gaines' life story (starring Seth Rogen if you believe the digital internets.) This book would be the best primary source for such a tale.

Very cool cover by Charles Burns too.

"Vintage Games" Bill Loguidice & Matt Baron

Vintage Games: An Insider Look at the History of Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time. By Bill Loguidice & Matt Barton

This authoritative history of video gaming covers a lot of bases (all of your bases?) A detailed overview incorporating orphaned gaming models (like text games1) and old-school platforms without neglecting the modern world of internet-driven orc hordes. "Vintage Games" reads a bit like a textbook in heft and style, yet enough enthusiasm filters through that it manages to be authoritarian without being dry and academic.

The book is organized around roughly chronological examples of what I am now officially designating "meta-games." In the wake of every Pac-Man or Donkey Kong, the floodgates release look-a-likes that share certain strands of DNA with slight variations on the originals. Sometimes you get a Pac-Man rip with little pizzas in a maze. Then again, doesn't every platform jumper owe a bit to Donkey Kong?

The book is apparently an off-shoot of the author's neat website Armchair Arcade dedicated to vintage games. Lots of cool stuff there, including a few chapters that were cut from the book. They also pointed me towards this site which runs 8-bit Nintendo ROMs in your browser. Brilliant idea. (and totally illegal I guess, but what-the-hey...)

(1)Yeah, I know text games are still around. Check out some recent examples at the Interactive Fiction Competition.

"Columbine" by Dave Cullen

"Cafeteria" by Jon Haddock

"Columbine"
By Dave Cullen

Most of the stuff you remember about Columbine is likely bullshit. The endlessly repeated memories and factoids that persist to this day were fished from a shallow river by a bottom-feeding media. Remember the doomed Christian girl, bravely witnessing for Jesus with a gun pointed at her head? That didn't happen. The Trench Coat Mafia tales had little to do with reality. The shooters - Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold - were not gay, Goth outcasts seeking vengeance against cruel jocks. They were relatively popular - good students with ample friends. They came from stable two-parent homes in a prosperous community. Yet Harris was almost certainely a textbook psychopath. Klebold was a fucked-up and suicidal kid along for the ride.

They did frequent Hot Topix, play Doom and listen to Rammstein. But while such lapses in taste may be responsible for pregnant teenage girls with bad tattoos, they can't be blamed for serial killers with axes to grind and arsenals aplenty.

And - as the book makes clear - Columbine was less a successful shooting rampage than a failed bombing mission. It was done by a pair of inept amateurs with delusions of grandeur. Harris and Klebold's original plans were much larger and ambitious. The shoddy, homegrown bombs that were designed to bring the building down were mostly failures. Having access to the "Anarchist's Cookbook" does not make somebody an evil genius.

Cullen describes how a daisy-chain of inaccuracies were fed to the media and gave them exactly what they needed to sell papers with little regard for accuracy or logic. A witness repeats sketchy, third-hand information to the press which is seen by other witnesses who then pass that skewed reality on to other media outlets. There were two-thousand witnesses to the Columbine shooting, it's a textbook worthy example of the unreliability of eyewitness accounts.

"Columbine" treads a cautious line recounting the lives of the shooters. Painting them as larger-than-life monsters - as ersatz Manson heirs - would create martyrs for the creepy death-metal crowd that canonizes John Wayne Gacy. Making them pitiful and sad would piss all over the graves of their victims. Cullen does a good job mixing a sober and journalistic worldview with a novelist's knack for telling a compelling story. This isn't a tabloid "TRUE CRIME" book. "In Cold Blood" or "The Executioner's Song" are more apt comparisons.

The important stuff here might not be the survivor's tales or the confused response from law enforcement. It's how the incident was re-purposed and retold according to who was doing the telling and - more importantly - why they were telling that story.

The closest thing to the "real story" is between the covers of this book.

You Should Not Have a Cow.

"The Simpsons. An Uncensored Unauthorized History"
By John Ortved

I seem to recall vague chatter a few years ago about Matt Groening writing a book chronicling his version of Simpsons history. Maybe the mildly unflattering portrait presented here will get him off the couch. If what I hear is true, the couch is made of thousand-dollar bills woven together with the finest 24-karat gold thread. So it's understandable if a guy gets a little comfortable.

The standards set by contemporary oral histories - say Legs McNeil's "Please Kill Me" or George Plimpton's seminal "Edie"- invite a minimum of first-person incursions by the author. John Ortved injects his own point-of-view way too often and with a fist full of ham. It doesn't help that his insights tend to be a tad bush league and snarky. It's like the Comic-Book-Guys have taken over the asylum. Or maybe it's exactly like the comments section on a Simpsons website. I have never seen an episode of "24" but does it really "endorse" torture like Ortved says? And Homer Simpson mistaking Stephen Hawking for Larry Flynt is pretty goddamn funny but is it the "best single joke they ever came up with?" Was there a voter referendum about that? Maybe I missed it. It's OK if Douglass Rushkoff wants to hold the Simpsons crew responsible for funding the uber-conservative Fox News Network (d'oh!) but subsequently loading the text with others who parrot that overambitious trope is a bit of fair and unbalanced mongering that would make Bill O'Reilly proud.

An array of familiar names from Conan O'Brien to Rupert Murdoch go on record but notably absent are the folks who also take the biggest lumps; Groening, James Brooks and long-departed producer Sam Simon. Predictably no one is exactly rushing in to defend them.

The idea that Groening hogs too much credit (and makes too much money) has been internet fodder for years and it's not entirely fair (even if Matty-boy owns up to it in his "aw-shucks" regular guy way.) The show has obviously grown to be quite a mammoth, collaborative undertaking that no single person can take credit for it. Still, it started with Groening's aesthetic, his quirky voice and his clean, deceptively simple drawings.(1) It's the TV equivalent of an internet start-up. Simon and George Meyer et al may have made the show a powerhouse of yuks but they jumped on the bus a few exits down the turnpike.

And day-to-day music guy(2) Alf Clausen rates a single mention? WTF? Likewise, the various efforts by the voice cast to up their remuneration gets a lot of ink but other than that they are not really part of the story here. It's really about the writers and a truckload of them have contributed through the years. And that is probably the way it should be. The Simpsons might be a cartoon but it's a writer-driven show and this book makes that abundantly clear. The book (expanded from a Vanity Fair piece a few years back) feels rushed. Typos and redundancies appear a bit too often.

I'm still waiting for Groening's take but I'm not holding my breath. Reservations aside, this is a good enough read. I plowed through it in a single evening. Problem is that this book will probably be the final word for a while - a lackluster effort like this is likely to discourage anyone else from attempting to do a "fair and balanced" look at the show. Too bad.

Footnotes:
(1) Saying Groening can't draw - stated more than once in the book - is idiotic and missing the point. It's like saying Charles Schulz can't draw because Charlie Brown was just a circle and a couple squiggly lines or that Walt Disney was a fraud because he didn't actually draw Mickey Mouse.

(2)Danny Elfman is responsible for the wonderful theme song but Alfie is what it's all about when it comes to actually scoring the series episodes...and he contributes much to the various parodies and diegetic music that you hear in each episode.

Goats, Boxes, Staring...

George Clooney stares at goat.

A strange pair of random, head-scratching movies landed in the multiplex this week. "Men Who Stare at Goats" & "The Box" are big studio flicks mining the territory usually reserved for quirky "indie" fare.

"Men Who Stare..." chronicles a strange (and roughly factual) convergence between black-ops military tacticians and the kind of strange pseudo-pscience usually featured on late-night radio shows devoted to psychic spoon benders.

George Clooney is quite a hoot as a shadowy military contractor convinced he possesses psychic powers that allow him to reconfigure clouds while clouding men's minds. Kevin Spacey, Ewen McGregor and Jeff Bridges show up as fellow mystic warriors of varying degrees of sincerity and ability. It's a psychic sausage-fest with nary a significant female speaking role in site (except for a hot-tub montage featuring ample cleavage.)

"Men Who Stare at Goats" is a rather peculiar old-fashioned comedy. It's akin to those 1960s wide-screen extravaganzas peppered with weighty actors in fluffy roles. Lightweight? Perhaps, but it's nice to see a leisurely comedy that doesn't cram jokes down your throat at a million miles an hour. Maybe that makes for a less-than-stellar joke per dollar ratio - compared to any Judd Apatow vehicle of recent vintage, say - but it's still pretty damn funny

"The Box" is the film director Richard Kelly should have made after his cult-fave rabbit from hell opus, "Donnie Darko." Kelly's spasmodic aesthetic would have better served had he followed up with this instead of the entertaining (and over-cooked) "Southland Tales." I liked "Southland..." quite a bit. It's a sprawling, overblown mess of a flick but it's also entertaining, weird and quite funny in places -although sometimes it's hard to tell if bringing the funny was intentional or just a byproduct of so many strange ideas crowded into such a small space.

"The Box" takes a story by Richard Matheson (seen in a vastly different version in the John Landis "Twilight Zone" feature film) and elongates the quirk and weirdness a bit too thin for a full length flick but for at least half the film it works quite well. These folks definitely live in the same world as the Darko family. Hell, it looks like they live on the same block.

Many mysterious folks parade in and out of the story like refugees from "Twin Peaks" but ultimately the more wildly the narrative spins, the less interesting it becomes. Like "Twin Peaks" at its best, "The Box" has its moments. You would be hard pressed to say what exactly is going on at times but when it treads the line between slightly off-kilter suburban banality and full-tilt weirdness, it can be satisfyingly unsettling. Like -dare I say- "The Twilight Zone."

an albatross - Rehearsal footage (2006)

an albatross - "Divine Birthrite (Maiden Voyage of the Grape Ape)"
Behind the scenes with "an albatross" during preparations for their 2006 tour @ Cafe Metropolis, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Shot & chopped by Kevin Dougherty

Yippy for Yowp!

"Yowp" is a niche site devoted to exhaustive analysis of early Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Since a large part of my life is devoted to exhaustive analysis of early Hanna-Barbera cartoons, I'm pretty excited.

Yowp might dwell a tad too much on dissecting gags and recounting plot lines of specific shorts(1) but they redeem themselves in a big way with a vast knowledge of the origins and implementations of the background music (sometimes tagged "incidental music") used in Hanna-Barbera productions.

Much of the music you hear in early television was culled from "production music libraries." Pre-packaged music has been used since at least the early days of radio and Poverty Row B-movies. The libraries were delivered as a series of 12-inch discs or reel-to-reel tapes and usually came with a printed catalog that classified the music according to various parameters like length, theme, mood and style. Producers paid a nominal fee for the actual physical discs and were assessed an annual fee that varied according to how the music was used. Some libraries would bill on a "needle drop" basis: a pro-rated fee based only on tracks they actually used. This last practice has led to some problems with contemporary repackaging of old tv and film properties since certain library music was not intended to be licensed in perpetuity. As a result, I'm told that the incidental music in the "My Three Sons" DVD was changed because of licensing issues.

A typical disc might feature the work of a single composer or it might be tailored to a specific category of music or usage.Some discs might contain familiar pieces of classical music or recognizable period pieces (i.e. at least one rousing Sousa march.) Other discs might be devoted to generic "sound-alike" songs recreating popular genres like country or rock and roll but without relying on previously published (i.e. expensive) works.

But the true gems are the custom tracks created specifically for the libraries.

A good music library disc might use a certain melody as a starting point then rework the same melody in various ways (faster and slower) on different tracks. Each piece was usually pop-song length or less (1-4 minutes) As a rule they were meticulously metered and structured very carefully so that with a bit of editing they could be looped and extended or seamlessly joined with other pieces from the same library.

The music libraries were usually created for "non-exclusive" use. Hence you might encounter the same piece of music in Quick Draw McGraw, Gumby or a Russ Meyer flick.

The king of production music was Capitol records which released various libraries targeted to different markets under a wide variety of titles.The Capitol library is all over "Leave it to Beaver", "Ren & Stimpy" and many other programs. You can still find old production library discs at record collector shows and if you know anyone who works at a college radio station that has been around a while, you can occasionally find a dusty milk-crate in the basement filled with stuff that even the program diector wouldn't steal.

Yowp features links to great MP3 rips of classic H-B production music that are meticulously identified and credited to the original composer(s). Even if you don't get excited about the cartoons here, the music is a great resource to anyone creating short films or animation.(2)

Footnotes
(1)Whenever I read an article about a film and half the text is devoted to retelling the story, I feel a bit gypped. Filmfax magazine does this a lot. A ten page article about "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" doesn't need five pages of filler retelling the plot point by point. Old movie reviews used to do this too but they were cranked out on tight deadlines so they relied heavily on press book plot summaries to pump up the column inches. Likewise here, if I'm going to the trouble to read about a specific "Pixie & Dixie" short then it's a pretty safe assumption that I have already seen it.

(2) Well, not LEGALLY mind you.

Where the Weird Girls Are: "Ginger Snaps"

In anticipation of Halloween (and pondering the forthcoming reboot of Universal's "The Wolfman") I decided to revisit the proto-Twilight teenwolf tale "Ginger Snaps" and see if plays as good as I remember.

A 12-pack of cheap beer and a few hours later, the answer is a resounding yes.

"Ginger Snaps" has everything you need kids. Cute goth girls, blood, violence, casual drug use, slangy, funny teen dialogue (this Bud's for you Diablo "Hamburger Phone" Cody) and that extra special sheen of Canadian otherness usually found in Cronenberg/Guy Madden films and strange bacon products. Although unrated in the U.S. version, "Ginger Snaps" is very much akin to a hard "R" flick but in a strange Canadian-film-board-financed manner that eschews nudity while embracing the aforementioned casual drug use, a fucking shitload of F-bombs and gore galore.

And (in a bit that would raise hackles in a lower 48 movie) one scene features a public school nurse extolling the virtues of condoms to our young heroines.

Did I mention the multiple, graphically disemboweled puppy dogs?

I have been meaning to write something pithy about "Ginger Snaps" but those snappy bastards at the A.V. Club scooped me with this entry in their ongoing series "The New Cult Canon."

After reading the 'Cult Cannon' piece, I realized that maybe I was curious to see this after sitting through the cavalcade of fail in the similairly themed "Jennifer's Body."

Here's a little bonus I found on the YouTube. Something that my cheapo pawn shop dvd lacked. A neat little audition clip featuring the foul-mouthed 'Ginger' hotties.

"Where the Weird Things..."

Yes, it works. I'm pleasantly surprised. Spike Jonze may have a pretty good track record for mining gold out of erratic components but the combo of Dave Egger + James Gandolfini + Muppets sounded a bit too left field to succeed.

Armchair Freudians and community college psych majors will have a field day with some of the weird symbolism on screen. And despite the debate over whether this is a proper film for the kiddies, quite a few were in attendance, babbling away as I longed to watch the film in peace. It's fine for your kids unless they happen to be kind of stupid and illiterate. Nothing scarier or weirder than anything you might encounter in "The Wizard of Oz." The voice work was fantastic. Whenever I see "name" actors prominently featured in animation credits, I get a bit annoyed. But James Gandolfini, Chris Cooper, Paul Dano are credible actors with very distinct voices and they really sell it.

A.P. Magazine piece...

This is a piece I wrote for A.P. magazine's website. It's about doing shows at Cafe Metropolis, a small music venue in Wilkes-Barre PA. It was a fun piece to write, but for some reason they cut out a nice quote from Bayside's Anthony Raneri. The quote is restored here at the end of the article.

Also missing is the credit for the truly excellent photographer, Kristen Mullen, who has much better things to do on her day off than deal with me. Check out her work here.

A.P. magazine online-

For the past 13 years, my friends and I have been running our own "venue" - the Cafe Metropolis in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. We started out about as DIY as you can get, with a hacked-together sound system in a former paint store. It has been nerve racking, exhilarating and not very lucrative, but it's also been a heck of a lot of fun.

Opening an all-ages club is more complicated than booking bands at the American Legion hall. You need to take care of a million little details. You have to decipher health and safety regulations that were apparently written by Martians. You negotiate with landlords, cops and surly neighbors. And you have to pay Fall Out Boy at least $60 or they won't have enough gas to make it to their next gig.

Your Hoodie Can Not Be Used as a Flotation Device
All Time Low, Bayside, Cursive, Fall Out Boy, Gym Class Heroes, Hawthorne Heights, Mastodon and a million other cool bands from every state and more than twenty different countries have played Cafe Metropolis. Even better, great local bands like the Menzingers, Title Fight and Motionless in White have launched their careers on our grimy little stage.

The most important lesson I learned over the years? Running your own show is not quite the same thing as seeing a show as an audience member. It's fun - but it's a different flavor of fun. When I Am The Avalanche is on stage and somebody stuffs a hoodie down the toilet bowl, it's not going to wait until the song is over. When Ted Leo is tuning his guitar, and he gets interrupted by a screaming, naked man (covered in red paint) you know this is not like working at Wal-Mart.

...Location, Location, Location
The first thing you need is a suitable location. Ideally, you want a space that is at street level. Climbing stairs with Marshall amps is not going to endear your venue to musicians. Also, anything above the ground floor means dealing with stricter fire and safety codes. If you are going to attract touring bands, you need to find a place that can hold from 100 to 300 people. A good rule of thumb is you need three square feet of floor space for each person. Ideally, that means between 1000 and 2000 square feet (about the size of an average McDonalds.) Anything smaller and you are going to have a hard time booking bigger bands. Don't just scan the real estate ads in newspapers, get out and look for empty buildings. Knock on doors and ask around. Landlords are going to be skeptical and tricky to deal with. One way or another, they are going to know what is going on, so you won't get far trying to bluff them. And if someone asks you to sign a lease, please talk to a lawyer before you sign your life away.

Lawyers, Guns and Money
Being in it for the long haul means being legal, and that means wading through a maze of permits and red tape. Local zoning and fire department regulations are complicated and vary wildly from town to town, but they are usually well documented on line. Do your research. At minimum you will probably be required to have two exits and at least one bathroom. You will raise a lot of red-flags if you march down to city hall and ask them what permits you need to open a punk rock/all-ages club. It's not exactly something that makes the suits comfortable. Play nice and tell them you are opening a coffee shop or a cafe that features live entertainment. You don't have to lie, just make it easy for bureaucrats to put you in a category they already understand.

You also need a sound system. This is going to be your biggest expense. You can start by renting small P.A. (public address) systems from a local music store for between $100 to $300 per night. Eventually, we started buying sound equipment piece by piece until we had a fairly decent set-up.

It's (Not) About the Benjamins
Dealing with bands and booking agencies is not always a walk in the park. The first thing you need to calculate is what the promoters and agents call your "nut." This is the amount you have to earn from every show to pay your expenses. If rent and expenses add up to $2000 a month (not including what you pay the bands...or your workers) and you can do ten shows every month, then you need to clear at least $200 every time you open the doors. One typical method of compensating performers is something known as the "door deal." A door deal means you agree to split anything over your nut (e.g. the $200) with them. Touring bands usually want a minimum "guarantee" (an amount of cash agreed on beforehand) that they get paid regardless of whether anyone shows up or not. Sometimes the deal will include a minimum guarantee and a percentage of the take beyond a certain dollar amount.

We have paid guarantees as little as $50 and as high as $1000. Use your head when making deals. Be honest and upfront with booking agents and - this is critically important - don't be afraid to turn down a show if you don't think you will cover your costs. A hole in your schedule is better than screwing somebody over...or emptying your bank account every time a show does poorly. Do that enough and you can't last very long. Be sincere and flexible and most booking agents and bands will want to work with you. The idea is to create something that is sustainable in the long run. You have to worry about money constantly and sometimes that means tough decisions. Then again, if a band drives 300 miles in a snow storm and only ten people show up, don't be a jerk and give them half the door money. Give them the entire $60. Pete Wentz might remember that next time.

"Cafe Metropolis is the perfect example of a great punk rock, d.i.y venue. It is the kind of venue that can rarely survive in most places but in a music hungry community like Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, with nowhere else to see shows, they've kept their ticket prices low and kept the focus on music and community, not money. If it says anything, its the only venue that we played at on our first tour in 2000 that I still love to play at now." - Anthony Raneri (Bayside)

Old School Bruno

Craptacular!

In the tradition of "Legends of the Superheroes" and the Bea Arthur anointed "Star Wars Holiday Special" we present the ice skating/live-action/animation/fury masterpiece "The Hanna Barbera All-Star Comedy Ice Revue." -Scraped from the fine folks at Cartoon Brew