Flaming Pablum

Six New York City Diners in 1974

Blondie on The Bowery in `76

From "Blank Generation." It's hard to believe it's the same city...

The Summer 2019 Survey

Since, as mentioned, I'd suggest it's fair to say that Summer 2019 is officially over and done with, I thought I'd exhume this Summer Survey that I haven't done since 2016. Here goes...

Defining Moment of Summer 2019:
I would say that the defining moment, for me, would be --- after months of fretting about the prospect of our son, Oliver, departing for his first time away at sleepaway camp for four weeks -- arriving back up at the camp and seeing him bounding out of his cabin looking happy, healthy and filled with tales to tell about how much he enjoyed his time there, completely exceeding our expectations about the endeavor. The whole experience ending up being all that we'd hoped for him, and more. 

Best Purchase of Summer 2019:
Overlooking stuff I procured for my kids, I'd say the most rewarding purchase would be the pair of ridiculously indulgent YETI 10 Oz Rambler Wine Tumblers I bought to celebrate the wife & I's eighteenth wedding anniversary. Nothing says "marital bliss" like needlessly expensive outdoor lifestyle products. 

 

Best Book You Read of Summer 2019:
It was initially a toss up between Wayne Hussey's memoir, "Salad Daze" and Joe Doe & Tom DeSavia's continuation of their oral-history-styled documentation about the trajectory of L.A. punk, "More Fun in The World" (which I'm currently finishing), but if I'm being honest, it was re-discovering H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu & Other Weird Stories" (which I discussed here) that really brought me the most joy.

Best Movie You Saw During Summer 2019:
I honestly cannot recall the last film I went to, as in sat down in a movie theater to watch. I saw plenty of decent movies in the past couple of months, but I did not have the experience of attending a movie in its intending setting. I mean, yeah, I guess I enjoyed "Avengers: Endgame," but I feel like that's the lamest of possible answers. 

Best Gift You Received of Summer 2019:
For Fathers Day, my son Oliver gave me a fetching red Forbidden Planet t-shirt that I was quite pleased with. Also, my friend Rob B. surprised me with a copy of the sprawling, live Wonder Stuff boxset, Upstaged, for no readily apparent reason other than that he'd heard me mention how curious I was about it. Damn nice of him. 

Biggest Loss of Summer 2019:
I spoke about it here already, but I was quite sad to see the final demise of Manitoba's on Avenue B. 

Song That Best Sums Up Summer 2019:
Honestly, while I'm inclined to cite the new single by IDLES, "Mercedes Marxist," which arrived back in June, I can't say it's the song that defined my summer. For whatever reason, my family found itself repeatedly playing the 1978 best-of by Paul McCartney & Wings, Wings Greatest with some inexplicable regularity, although no one else seems to enjoy "Live & Let Die" as much as I. Realistically, I think the song that is destined to always remind of this summer is one by a guy named Spencer Ludwig. As mentioned elsewhere, at my job, I am tasked with putting together a fiscal-year-end highlight video, scored by various pop hits of the day by my organization's affiliates. Spencer Ludwig's "Best Life" is factoring heavily into that video -- whether I like it or not -- and it has been an inescapable ear-worm. Here it is: 

Happiest Memory of Summer 2019:
After initiating a dialogue with an estranged best friend (which I spoke about here), he suggested reconvening with another since-inexplicably-distanced friend at a Murphy's Law gig on a boat. The evening in question was far and away the happiest I've been and the hardest I've laughed in a long, long time. 

Saddest Memory of Summer 2019:
This might sound pretty histrionic, but I found the failure of Robert Mueller's beleaguered testimony to congress to really move the dial in any meaningful capacity to be pretty damn tragic. To my mind, it was a blown opportunity to make a crucial course correction, and I kinda blame Mr. Mueller for that. You may beg to differ, but so be it.

Scariest Memory of Summer 2019:
In early July, I showed up for jury duty and narrowly escaped being selected for placement on a case they'd informed me would take "at least three months," which would have fallen squarely in my busiest period at work. Suffice to say, I vehemently protested, but was called in to talk to a roomful of lawyers to explain my situation anyway. I was probably a little needlessly belligerent about it all, but managed to convince them I would very much not be an asset to either side of the dispute. I had no problems serving at the time, but this was a commitment that would have severely messed up my life. 

Word That Best Describes Summer 2019:
Intangible.

 

Dancing Around Midtown

Things are shitty. The news is all depressing. Everybody’s on edge. The economy’s in peril. The planet is roiling. There’s an overall vibe of hostility and fear. Everything sucks. Our president is an evil, fucking moron.

Still, it’s Friday, … and it’s still summertime.

If possible, find a reason to be joyful.

Tommy Lee for the Win!

Full disclosure: As unseemly as it may sound from the lofty perch of 2019, I was fully on-board with the 1983 iteration of Mötley Crüe. Upon my first viewing of the heroically ridiculous video for “Looks That Kill” -– finding the band looking and sounding like a louder & stupider KISS, if such a concept is imaginable -- I immediately rushed out to buy myself a copy of the album that spawned same, that being the not-just-a-little-stupid Shout At The Devil. As I mentioned on this post last year, while this album and –- yea verily -- the band that spawned it are, for all intents and purposes, roundly indefensible on pretty much every quantifiable level (musical ability & execution, taste, basic human conduct), I will never part with that record. I’d guess one could call it a “guilty pleasure,” but as a crotchedy almost-52-year-old guy, I no longer feel the compulsion to harbor any guilt about my listening habits. While we’re at it, I also quite enjoyed the band’s first record, that being the equally idiotic Too Fast For Love, and think they had some fine mid-career moments like “Primal Scream,” “Kickstart My Heart” and the title track to Dr. Feelgood. Don’t agree? Too bad. Go listen to your Joni Mitchell discs and leave me alone.

In any case, despite my stubborn affinity for the Crüe, I have always been well aware that the gentlemen in the band didn’t exactly qualify for membership in any think tanks. The descriptor “cerebral” is not an adjective frequently used in tandem with the likes of Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx, Mick Mars and Tommy Lee. That’s not an indictment, but rather just a fact. While I’m sure each of those guys might be happy to oblige, one wouldn’t normally seek out Mötley Crüe to ruminate on pertinent issues of the day. That’s just not what they were renowned for.

Beyond their music, the band was quite renowned for its cartoonishly prurient antics as captured in epic style in the oral history, “The Dirt,” partly ghost-penned by an old colleague of mine, Neil Strauss and later turned into a needless film I did not see. Beyond what’s detailed in “The Dirt,” the boys’ extracurricular activity used to serve as frequent fodder for low-grade tabloids. By all accounts, Mötley Crüe personified a certain hirsute variant of rock idiocy. That’s what they did.

As such, I stopped paying attention to the Crüe’s doings some time ago, perfectly content to relive their hoary glory days via the occasional spin of Shout At the Devil. As of 2019, I believe they’ve officially retired after numerous farewell tours, but am not entirely certain -– nor do I really care.

This all said, when I spotted the below tweet from Crüe drummer Tommy Lee, this morning, I felt compelled to dust off the complete Mötley Crüe discography.

Enlightened words come from unlikely sources, sometimes.

Scarred for Life: Looking Back at “Heavy Metal: The Motion Picture”

It’s a frequent and overused descriptive flourish to suggest you were “scarred for life” by a bit of pop culture, but I have the rare honor of asserting that I was literally scarred for life as a result of my viewing of “Heavy Metal: The Motion Picture.”

Released 38 years ago today, the movie was already the subject of much discussion for the 13-year-old me and my friends, at the time. It being “rated R,” it was uncertain whether we’d be able to attend, but our collective suspicion was that it was unlikely. That didn’t stop each of us from snapping up the official soundtrack, a sprawling double-LP with a lovingly illustrated gatefold sleeve, featuring great tracks by Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Cheap Trick, Devo, French metal band Trust and …. err….some not-quite-as-great stuff by Sammy Hagar, Don Felder (he of the Eagles), Journey and a few others. Still, it being the seemingly perfect marriage of loud rock’n’roll, science fiction bullshit and soft-core sexytime, it seemed like everything we’d have ever wanted to see wrapped up in one package. We simply HAD TO FIND A WAY!!!

In this capacity, fate deceptively smiled on myself and my good friend Charlie. Somehow, we managed to coerce Charlie’s mom to take us. I don’t remember if she was unaware of the film’s rating, or blithely oblivious about the film’s alleged undercurrent of libidinous titilaton or if she simply didn’t care, but she said she’d take us. That’s all that mattered.

We were out in Long Island, at the time. Charlie’s mom had to go drop off his little sister at a playdate, after which time she was going to swing back home, pick us up and take us to the movie. Suffice to say, we were AMPED UP!

I believe we were repeatedly cranking “The Mob Rules” from the afore-cited soundtrack at neighbor-worrying volume. I was standing on Charlie’s bed, emphatically air-guitaring with Tony Iommi’s signature riffage on same (which I spoke about way back here). We were seriously ready for this movie.

From below, we heard Charlie’s mom’s car pull into the driveway. It was officially GO TIME! I litearlly leapt off of Charlie’s bed, aiming for a nearby chair. The plan -– such as it was – was to vault from bed to chair and then out the door. That was my plan. In retrospect, it was an ill-considered one.

As it happened, the chair was a folding chair. Upon landing on said piece of unfortunate furniture, it did just that -– folded, significantly altering my already-not-entirely-well-conceived trajectory. I ended up slamming my head -– or, more precisely, my FACE -- against the side of a nearby suitcase.

Instantly, there seemed to be blood everywhere.

Charlie’s mom rushed in and started talking about taking me to the hospital, but –- even in my bloodied shock -– I was adamant. "WE ARE GOING TO 'HEAVY METAL'!!!!"

Quite unbelievably, in retrospect, I managed to make a convincing argument. Charie’s mom put one of those flimsy butterfly bandaids over the gash below my mouth, tenuously closing the NEW HOLE IN MY HEAD, and …. took us to the movie.

Charlie and I sat in one of the front rows of the Hampton Arts theatre in Westhampton Beach, bug-eyed with excitement. I remember tasting lots of blood mixed in with my popcorn.

And, ….that was basically that. As far as Charlie and I were concerned -– we had WON! We got to see the movie that none of our other friends had managed to. And we thought it was awesome.

Time, as it is known to do, passed.

For one reason or another –- presumably due to the complexities of music licensing -– “Heavy Metal” was glacially slow to ever arrive on VHS.

There was no official release for years. Tied up, for some reason -– of prurience? Taste? Pending litigation? -– one was not able to view it outside of grainy, distorted bootleg copies. I did not lay eyes on the film again for well over a decade.

Then, at some point in 1996, the movie was finally released on VHS and DVD. In the ensuing years, the scar left by my heroically stupid pre-movie stunt essentially became part of my permanent physiognomy. As such, I figured I should own the film, right?

So I bought it, took it home, unwrapped it, opened up a beer, and sat down to watch the thing for the first time since that fateful summer afternoon in 1981.

Lemme tell ya ….

It’s basically crap.

While my evidently easily-impressed 13-year-old mind might have been blown by the dazzling visuals, allegedly lifelike animation and sensory-engulfing experience of the original 1981 film, the scarred and cynical 29-year-old me was not quite as wowwed. If anything, I was wowed by how lame it was. The animation was fairly rote, the writing was trite, the plot was wafer-thin, the perceived risque elements were juvenile and insipid and the overall execution was essentially unexceptional. And for this, I wear a scar.

So, yeah, not everything ages like wine.

Daybreak Express

Rest in peace, D.A. Pennebaker.

Crumb is a Prophet

At some point in the early `90s, someone gave me a set of postcards by underground comic legend, R. Crumb.

For those unfamiliar, Crumb is most renowned for his distinctive characters like Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat, the “Keep On’ Truckin’” guy and a host of others. His notoriety was pointedly furthered, some years ago, by a great documentary about the man, his pronounced peculiarities and his penchant for the subversive. 

In any case, in the wake of Trump’s inarguably racists tweets and pugnacious double-downs about certain congresswomen, I was reminded of one of those postcards and did a Google search to see if I could find it. Sure enough, up it came.

Is it just me, or doesn’t this look astonishingly familiar?

Exhuming 'The Egg Walk'

This experimental film below is described thusly:

Created by Anna Coates in the mid 1980s as a performance piece, it was turned into a film a few years later by Alan Steinfeld. It has been seen as an eerie prelude to 911.

See what you think.

What Is Killing Joke?

I know the answer ... do you?