Image co. Last.fm

Of course, this all took place before the MP3 and filesharing revolution. Hell, the computer I was using the play this magazine-of-the-future ground to a halt a year later when I tried to play the first MP3 I had ever downloaded - Nirvana's cover of "Lake of Fire". Well, not to a halt, precisely, but doom metal wasn't exactly popular yet and that is exactly what was came out of my speakers. Fortunately, I eventually received Republica's self-titled album for my next birthday. I wore it out. By the end of the month, 14-year-old me knew every word on that entire CD. I'm sure if I got my hands on it now, I'd be able to sing along to an embarrassing degree. And here is the video which started it all:

I start the post off lazily co-opting the script technique of the videos below. I mention how uproariously funny they are and use the word “fantastic” about three times before going to Thesarurus.com to find some synonyms. I note a comparison to some piece of high-art or cite some philosophical piece which regards itself with the concept of “meta” and of which I have read five pages, tops. I link the the first video which is slightly shorter. As it is news-related, I make an offhand crack at Jon Stewart or the Daily Show.

Now I link the longer video. It is film related and I have enough opinions on film and technique to fill an ale cask, so I go on and on. You probably lose interest at this point and begin watching the video. Hopefully. I may mention something resembling this that I saw in my youth and describe the circumstances in an equally detached and nostalgic manner. I finish the post, advertise it on every social network I subscribe to and go eat a hamburger.

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“Sublimate XXX” - Antony Gormley

Gormley's best known work is probably England's towering “Angel of the North”. At roughly six feet, “Sublimate XXX” is a tenth of the Angel's scale. The figure is composed of brushed steel and arranged so that the individual blocks seem to hover in midair. It is both imposing in the natural, industrial strength of composition while decaying in a manner suited to the digital world. There's a certain resemblance to a JPEG suffering from over-compression and littered with artifacts. Nothing is recognizable but the very essence of the figure, adding a certain inhuman dread to a distinctly human form.

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“Hubris” - Ian Davis

This painting, with its grand scale caught by eye by way of the visual allusion to the space station design in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. The little individuals on the bottom – lab coated scientists/engineers – are all either gawking at or cheering their invention. The scaffolding lines, abstracted into two dimensions, lend a vague occultist feeling to the enormous phallic object. In fact, the perspective of the entire painting struggles to retain itself in the medium. The hubris of the title is not just the object represented, but our endless attempts toward a perfect representation.

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“Untitled (Because there is no escape...)” - Muntean/Rosenblum

This work is by far my favorite of the entire exhibition, although I'm not really sure why. The quote on the bottom reads “Because there is no escape from what does not exist” - a conflictingly hopeful and damning sentiment reflected in the rest of the painting. Everything shown is in visual conflict with itself and with the other elements of the painting. One of the two figures is facing the wrong way, although the girl's withdrawn resolution makes it as though the escalator is descending. It is descending as she faces upward, gaze fixed and illuminated, her face both ready and resigned. She is early adolescent, boyish and yet there is an unmistakable curve of developing breasts. Her posture is grossly unnatural, entranced and yet relaxed with weight tilted onto her left side. Every aspect of the painting speaks of conflict, but the conflict is in the details and the overall feel of the work is a calmness. There is no escape from the clash of parts because they render an untroubled whole.

Last night, while watching my friend's newly acquired copy of the second season of the Simpsons (highly recommended!) he confided in me that he had never seen an episode of the Twilight Zone. This surprised me. My primary social circle has at some point in their lives given themselves up to the neon claws of television addiction. This is why I can watch something, say a random episode from the second season of the Simpsons which I have not seen in ten years, and recite the dialogue – pauses and grumbles intact – as if I have been diligently studying the script for a soon-coming performance.

Original Pilot Intro

I watched a lot of the Twilight Zone as a kid and teenager. Most of it took place in the form of New Year's Eve marathons, which was the only way I could catch it before we got cable. When I was in high school, the SciFi Channel put it on somewhere around the prime time hours and, having discovered the dark secret to getting Bs without doing any homework, I ate it up every night.

Alternate Intro for Season 1 or 2

I can't say the show ever genuinely scared me. Only two supernatural things scared me as a kid and I guess I was fortunate in that neither the gremlins from the movie Gremlins nor abductions by Greys featured on the show. So I was good. Honestly, the only feeling I had toward it was honest-to-goodness delight and excitement. Every episode was creepy music, cheesy special effects and a genuinely well-written twist ending. I loved the twist endings the most. I guess I could probably see them coming these days, but as a nine-year-old every single one was a chilling surprise: “It's a cookbook?!” “Oh no! His glasses!” “Holy god giant jack-in-the-box!” &c &c.

So, if you have never seen it, go on YouTube and watch some Twilight Zone. escodavi has a few episodes in great quality.

After watching an episode of the unnecessarily ill-fated show Freaks and Geeks a few chums and I started my high school's Dungeons and Dragons club. Unfortunately, a club-wide lack of organization devolved it into a room of screaming nerds before you could say “roll for initiative.” Finding absolutely no fun in the chaos, one of my closest friends and I obtained the necessary manuals and defected to his basement, eventually convincing his girlfriend and a few others to join in the fun. We started playing every weekend. That was ten years ago. These days, I play D&D (3.5) every other Sunday. We have neither the teenage stamina nor empty schedules for twelve-hour marathon sessions anymore, but the gang still looks forward to pizza, metal and goblin-slaying.

...and, much like any other group of D&D players, we quote this incessantly:

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This is the first page of Grant Morrison's hyper-lauded All-Star Superman series. It is also the most perfect example of how you tell a globally-recognized superhero's origin in this day and age. Morrison had to retell it in All-Star because he was spinning his own continuity off right at the last panel. His Superman was not the current Superman inhabiting the DC multiverse. Everything would be different in his comic, because he wanted to tell the story of his Superman, and not decades upon decades of conflicting editorial decisions.

Comics characters, especially highly socially cemented ones – Superman, Batman, the X-Men, et. al. – do not have an origin story. No, that's not exactly correct - they do not have a single origin story. The variations are as multitudinous as they are frequent. You can't go to the very first telling as that is akin to gleaning insights about a Picasso through a cave painting. You also can't go to the most recent as origins, in these days of ever-present crisis, tend to be twisted into barely-coherent and staggeringly illogical pretzels meant to fit the conceits of the latest sell-you-ten-one-shots-a-month, it-all-ends-here crossover event.

With this page, Morrison boils down the mythology to both what you need to know and what has been stable throughout Superman's protean history. Eights words within four captions on four panels and suddenly you don't have to worry about whether Brainiac was responsible for the explosion or if a baker's dozen of other Kryptonians made it out of there alive. Certainly, the comic regularly references minutia from decades-forgotten issues in countless cellars, but there exists no expectation of recognition. There's no “SEE ISH #571” here; only a quick and satisfied smirk when the writer dusts off and wields a character or plot device long deleted from the continuity. And it all begins with a story told by the reader as much as Morrison himself.

Related posts:

1. I’m Your Biggest Fan, Pt. 1 of 3
2. Catch Up With The Sun

The Amen Break. Got it, right? Now think back to watching Scooby Doo. Remember the brief sound clip that happened every time a character would dash in mid air and then zoom off? It was a quick bongo beat and then a “zip!” That's sound effect is called the Bongo Run:
[See post to listen to audio]
Audio co. 8bitcollective

Logo by glomag.

Well, animalstyle of the 8bitcollective chiptunes music group had a brilliant idea. What if you were to make tracks revolving around the Bongo Run instead of the Amen Break? Well, the result spawned one of the tiniest and most insignificant yet incredibly entertaining electronic music subgenres ever: Scoobycore.

TALKTOANIMALS' breakcore track “Scoobie's Doobie 48 Hour Challenge” is my favorite:
[See post to listen to audio]

hartfelt's “I Would Have Gotten Away With It” is a close second:
[See post to listen to audio]

Oh, and if you've got twenty free minutes, you can also check out this short documentary on the Amen Break. The video isn't particularly relevant, so you can just have it on in the background:

Related posts:

1. Gypsy Death and You

Photo, edited, co. La Roux.

Maybe it’s the guilty pleasure of hearing a twenty-two year old sing breakup songs, or the fact that her entire aesthetic is 1995 by way of 2015. Or maybe the fact that she made a name for herself (she’s had a #2 album and a #1 single in the UK) without either being conventionally attractive – and emphasizing the fact! – or particularly original. What I really think it is, is the earnestness of her sound. She knows she’s cribbing, but the doesn’t matter to her. She sings her heart out to obvious lyrics over remaindered rhythms and it just works. And I can’t get enough of it.