42 days, you nerdy bastards.
This Isn’t Happiness
Or is it?
Artist Peter Nidzgorski adds suggested phrases to old romance comic panels as social commentary. Hilarity ensues.
Bob McLeod Draws Spider-Man
Bob McLeod was another comic artist I admired in the Eighties. I got to meet him at the first Memphis Comic Con, way back in 19 and 82.
He autographed my copy of New Mutants number 1, and somehow refrained from killing my spazzy friend who almost spilled a glass of water on a commissioned piece McLeod was working on at the time.
Anybody?
I wasn’t planning on getting into The Umbrella Academy, especially after reading a meh review or two. Then my daughter (and a couple of friends with tastes similar to mine) watched it and said it was worth a look.
And it is! I’m three episodes in and really digging it. I have heard the season finale is divisive, however.
When it rains, it pours.
From the minds of Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá, The Umbrella Academy is the story of a super-dysfunctional family of superheroes who have eight days to get it together and save the world.
And When I Get Excited, My Little China Girl Says…
I’ve never seen the unedited video.
It’s hard to imagine in these times, just how much of an uproar the unedited version of David Bowie’s China Girl video created when it was first released in 1983.
The effect on ordinary folk was like that scene in Perfume, with folk ripping off each other’s clothes and fornicating in the streets and the like.
OK, it wasn’t quite like that, but there was certainly a right brouhaha in the press and it was even banned by TV stations the world over.
The David Mallet directed video featured New Zealand model Geeling Ng, and the final moments of the video with her naked in the surf with Bowie (which got some a little hot under the collar), was a visual reference to the film From Here To Eternity.
Of course, this was all a bit of a distraction from the intended message of the video and possibly even Iggy Pop’s original lyric too.
Mainly shot in the Chinatown district of Sydney, the China Girl video (along with the previous Let’s Dance video), was a critique of racism with Bowie describing it as a “very simple, very direct” statement against racism.
Bowie said in Rolling Stone that same year: “Let’s try to use the video format as a platform for some kind of social observation, and not just waste it on trotting out and trying to enhance the public image of the singer involved. I mean, these are little movies, and some movies can have a point, so why not try to make some point.”
And in another interview at the time, Bowie opined: “The message that they [the videos] have is very simple, it’s wrong to be racist!”
Which is funny, because Iggy Pop says the lyrics are about his infatuation with Kuelan Nguyen as a metaphor for his time with the Stooges.
Thanks!
Whichever one of you bastards sent this, I appreciate it.
The Downward Spiral Is 25
And we are old. Anyway, “Closer” is undeniable, and I’m almost certain this video was my introduction to the photography of Joel-Peter Witkin.
Ramones 12th Show Ever
CBGB, September 15th, 1974. If there’s anything better than this, I don’t want to know what it is. Including the between-song arguments and Tommy bitching about how fast everything is.
1) Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue
2) I Don’t Wanna Go Down to the Basement
3) Judy Is a Punk
More AC Obsession
Pretty cool deep dive into the guitars Alex owned and played during the Big Star period can be found HERE. Some nice images as well.