Half-Mast: Jesus of Neverland

I hated Michael Jackson. I hated him in the way every young sophisticate turns his nose up at popular culture when he enters his teens. Jackson was the cherry on top of a huge mound of ‘80s mall culture; Pac Man, Care Bears, New Coke, Rubik’s Cubes, parachute pants and Casio keyboards, kiddie crap now all sun-faded and broken on thrift store shelves. He was the King of Pop, anathema to a kid embracing drugs, punk rock and adolescent alienation. He was the definition of “heavy rotation”, his 15-minute Thriller video being the one bit of MTV programming that could force video-addicted youth to change the channel. He was a media-inflicted rash that wouldn’t go away.

In truth, there was no real reason to hate him beyond his ubiquity - and perhaps the fact that, despite being a monument of youth culture, Jackson represented the old guard of shopworn entertainment. Choreographed dancing was not cool, even if it featured zombies. Stage dives were cool. Guitar smashing was cool. Synchronized dance moves were not, at least not among rhythmically-challenged white boys. Had MJ thrown down on the skate ramp he might’ve bought a little street cred, but moonwalking in his little bow tie, no matter how skillfully, was just plain fruity.

I was tempted to feel sorry for Michael when the press turned on him. But I remembered that Michael himself had been feeding the rumor mill for kicks in the old days, leaking bullshit stories about sleep chambers and the Elephant Man’s bones. Still, those old days began to seem quaint, and I found myself growing fonder of the Michael Jackson of yesterday. What were one or two nose jobs, more or less? Michael was still black then, qualifying him as a success story in breaking racial barriers in the music biz (where would Prince be without him?). Sure, he was weird. He lived with a monkey and acted like a seven-year-old girl, but hell, did you get a look at Adam Ant or the chick from the Thompson Twins? T’was the season for Blade Runner makeup and haircare exotica. Who singled out Michael Jackson for pop star oddity?

By ’87 something had changed, or perhaps I should say, worsened. The video for “Bad” debuted. Michael was white. He had a horrible little Miss Piggy nose. The weirdness wasn’t cute anymore. But oddly enough, in showing this evidence of inner turmoil (self-hatred?), in destroying his real identity to further embody a fictionalized, media-generated version of himself, Michael Jackson seemed more real to me. What had been, in my teen estimation, overrated pop stardom with nothing genuine to express, was now expressing something very interesting. He had become the pure embodiment of American fame, more tabloid than man, a poster child for the poison of media celebrity. Jackson became convinced that he could literally carve a new face for himself, and that this would be necessary to reflect the ultra-humanity that pop godhood insisted he become. And when the public reacted with revulsion, he figured he needed to keep carving. I don’t think we’ve seen a more accurate, living metaphor for the sickness of American popular culture.

Maybe self-mutilation is the inevitable finale of the celebrity cycle. The sit-com star, grotesquely famous for little reason, reduced to public humiliation in the form of a reality show or Oprah confessional, all to avoid the fate of those Atari cartridges and Tiffany cassingles lining the landfills. For Michael Jackson, identity and celebrity were one in the same, and he destroyed one trying to preserve the other. There was no “normal” life he could return to. No one could bring him down to earth because there was no earth. There was only Neverland, with its servants and sycophants, never contradicting his requests for another nose, another shot, another boy in the bedroom. Michael Jackson was as ultra-human as his video image, kept alive by the sheer force of the public gaze. There could be no second career as a record mogul, producer or Center Square. The self-made messiah must have his self-made crucifixion. And the gospel goes gold.

A quickie portrait of Karl Malden, dependable character actor. I managed to throw this one together on the fly, scratching out the drawing in ballpoint and utilizing the scanner and good old MS Paint at work. Pablo Lobato suggested he needed a "butt nose". I tried it, but I just can't do that to poor Karl, whom I liked. I try not to engage in cruel and unusual caricature. If you're looking for that, hit up some of those guys at Disneyworld.

Escape from the Planet of the Angels

Even in 1976, at the height of her stardom, it was considered trite and superficial to like Farrah Fawcett. But everyone did, of course. All the guys had that ubiquitous poster, all the girls were blow-drying their hair to Farrahesque perfection. And how cold-hearted would you have to be NOT to like her? She was thin, blond and cute, with an impossibly toothy smile and a twinkling, little girl charm – the perfect blend of innocence and sex appeal that has forged America’s Sweethearts for generations.

The problem was that damn TV show. Years before Baywatch advanced the artform to epic proportions, Charlie’s Angels pioneered Jiggle Television, a celebration of braless females in the era of the ERA. To add insult to sexy injury, the intro to the program suggested that Charlie, in selecting these three graduates of the Police Academy to be his private dick concubine, had saved them from tedious desk jobs with the PD, thus striking a blow for Women’s Lib. The fact that they often got to go “undercover” in revealing bathing suits was just another way to “hear them roar”, right? How could the Steinems complain about that?

But beyond the charges of sexism, the show was just plain crap. Charlie’s Angels was the four trillionth regurgitation of the cop show formula, sexed up for the guys and dumbed down for the kids. But like so many products of the ‘70s, the age of Pet Rocks and Gay Bob dolls, it came with an implied wink, a “we know that you know” nudge that sought to excuse the consumption of garbage by those smart enough to know better. Trouble was the phenomenon of “camp”, the catch-all justification for an ironic appreciation of junk culture, had imploded a decade earlier with the Batman TV show. Irony isn’t seasonal, and it can’t be recycled.

The ‘70s crap factories of Aaron Spelling and his cynical ilk came too late for Farrah’s jiggling to be packaged as camp. But that’s what they wanted us to believe, meaning Charlie’s Angels wasn’t just junk, it was dishonest junk. And its successful selling of faux irony to bored hipsters inspired the television of today, where Judge Judy can gain a following of college graduates without even the aid of the Mystery Science Theater robots.

But far be it for me to put the weight of our cultural failure on Farrah Fawcett’s shoulders. The good news is she survived it. Farrah bailed on Charlie after the first season, eventually shedding herself of the t-shirts and bubble gum cards by taking on decidedly non-glamorous roles in Extremities and The Burning Bed. And in the end, it was Farrah the smiling ‘70s icon that we fondly remembered, not the poor quality TV show that made her a star. In a decade that spewed forth so much bad taste in the popular culture, I can think of worse candidates for ultimate sex symbol.

Even if I never once believed she could solve crimes.

Husker Did

Husker Du: Bob Mould, Grant Hart and Greg Norton.

The rock and roll biz, as we all know, has always been about selling teen angst to other teens. Subsequently, rock musicians are expected to be at the height of their creative powers at around age 18. That’s a lot of pressure for a kid barely old enough to plug in his Marshal. Sure, there’s the fluke Lennon/McCartney prodigies that can spew pop masterpieces between math classes, but most kids that age don’t know an A chord from their assholes. Pop songs ain’t rocket science, but expecting the average garage band to sound sweet enough for FM is a tall order. There’s a 99% chance your band is excruciatingly shitty.

But that’s where punk rock saved the day. Punk was a collective cultural agreement to forego traditional definitions of quality in favor of creative freedom. It was a return to the early days of rock and roll, when music was dangerous, frightened your parents, spoke to teens directly through their privates and instructed them to mistrust authority. The music was raw, ugly, aggressive, and downright snotty. It invited the incompetent, arrogant youth to make the biggest, nastiest noise they could, oblivious to one’s own shortcomings and fortified against the criticism of others. Punk made it okay to suck.

Husker Du sucked. Loudly. Minneapolis residents who attended their early shows will attest, and their first LP, the live recording, Land Speed Record, testifies the Huskers had speed and volume where songs should have been. But very quickly, in defiance of the punk ethos, something alluring began to rise out of the feedback and rumble. Something that suggested this band, pioneers of angry thrash, knew a thing or two about the Beach Boys and Carol King. If there was any doubt, they threw in a cover of Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman” on their first studio album. There was irony in that, sure. But to be truly punk, one had to piss off the punks, and nothing rattled their cages like paying homage to the “straight” world.

The rules are simple if you want to be a cherished rock icon: be a young, untamed musical savant with undisciplined and unrefined energy, and never get any better. Man, they hate that – especially the punk rock crowd. Stay three chords forever, like the Ramones, and they’ll defend your honor eternally. But figure out what you’re doing, add new instruments, refine your studio production and you’re well on your way to VH1.

Husker Du got better. Loudly. The EP, Metal Circus, revealed solid songsmanship amidst the volcanic roar. With the spine-shattering double LP, Zen Arcade, a dense layer of psychedelia was added, increasing the intensity of an already explosive sound. It seemed Bob Mould was continuously powering up his guitar sound to match his atomic screaming. Greg Norton had to do likewise to keep up on bass. More often than not, Grant Hart sounded like he was tossing his drum kit down the stairs…which was perfect. To this day, I can’t listen to “Beyond the Threshold” without literally sweating. (Though my favorite Zen Arcade track has to be “Dreams Reoccurring”, simply a chunk of the “Reoccurring Dreams” recording played backwards.)

But in the middle of that field of noise grew real songs: “Pink Turns Blue”, “Newest Industry”, “Somewhere”, “Never Talking to You Again”. New Day Rising, the follow-up LP showed even greater songwriting skill at work: “Powerline”, “If I Told You”, “Celebrated Summer”, “Terms of Psychic Warfare”. Both Mould and Hart were crafting great pop songs out of the sturm und drang, creating real excitement by hanging hummable pop hooks onto their wall of distortion. Nothing else sounded like it. It was only a matter of time before they fell out of favor with punk purists.

Could Husker Du have ever really “sold out”? Could they have made it as a mainstream pop band? Certainly, the sound was becoming a little more palatable, calmer by Husker standards, anyway. When Warner Brothers signed the band in 1985, the label hoped they would be releasing Flip Your Wig, the album Husker was currently recording. Du gave that one to SST instead. I’m convinced that, had Warners gotten Wig, instead of the comparatively sludgy and ponderous Candy Apple Grey as the band’s major label debut, things would’ve been different. Imagine “Makes No Sense At All” as their first Warner single, instead of “Sorry Somehow”. A world of difference.

The double-LP, Warehouse: Songs and Stories, was great, a solid set of radio-ready rockers with clean production that didn’t jeopardize the signature Husker roar. But by then it was too late. Like the Beatles before them, the band was torn apart after the suicide of their manager, David Savoy. Mould took over the business end of things, further straining relations with the heroin-addicted Hart. Bob cancelled shows on the Warehouse tour after Grant’s methadone supply leaked out of the bottle, leaving the drummer subject to withdrawal. Hart quit the band.

The Huskers always claimed they weren’t a punk band, which is what punk bands always say. They knew they’d have to grow beyond the expectations of the safety pin set, and it’s difficult to imagine the hardcores stage-diving to “Hardly Getting over It”. But still, watching them trying to win over the mainstream on The Joan Rivers Show is high comedy. One look at that farce tells you Husker Du could never be anything but they were. Which, ultimately, may be the lesson punk was trying to teach us.

Loudly.

Bye Bye, Buzz

The Evitt sent me the above image, using one of my Infinite League drawings and some gimmicky website or other. I like the effect of seeing Ash art appearing on these old television sets, as if I had my own Saturday morning cartoon in 1976. In reality, I’ve never had that kind of opportunity to be Part of the Problem. But I have to confess the sight of these crummy old TV sets has me feeling overwhelmingly nostalgic.

In this new dawn of widescreen, high-definition, digital television, the fuzz and crackle of VHF broadcasting has now become an antiquated condition, known only to the eldest TV generation. In particular, the crappiest of these dinosaur sets, like the old portables pictured above, are now completely extinct, unlikely as they are to be converted to the new digital signal. This is the type of television I’ll miss most, the buzzing, black and white miniatures with scrolling vertical hold. I picture them plugged in on garage workbenches, tin foil on the antennae, desperately trying to maintain the sound and video of some deadly dull Saturday afternoon fishing show, while an aging dad secludes himself from the wife and kids by pretending to fix a toaster. An occasional tap on the channel changer might temporarily improve reception, but needlenose pliers are required to turn the sound up.

This was MY television, droning in the corner with strangled rabbit ears, surrendering to static when you walked two steps in the wrong direction. It was tiny and malfunctioned constantly, and it broadcast only two of the four available channels, putting you at the mercy of whatever public affairs program or Laurel and Hardy movie or college basketball game happened to be on. And at 1 or 2 am, the Star Spangled Banner played and the stations shut down, leaving that same hissing static that spoke to Carol Ann in Poltergeist. Let me emphasize that for those of you having grown up with nothing but cable: TV WENT TO BED. The box went dead for several hours. Not a program was stirring, not even a buckwheat pillow infommercial.

In short, this was TV that knew its place. It didn’t take up an entire wall of a McMansion living room, blasting Spider-Man 3 on demand with the booming bass of Surroundsound., and it didn’t offer 800 channels 24 hours a day. It sat unobtrusively on a shelf, doing its best to spit out Hollywood Squares between fits of distortion, just another element of environmental control, like the bubbling of a fish tank or hum of a window unit. It was often on, but rarely watched. And when it got out of line, it got smacked. And if it got especially irritating, unplugged. You were bigger than TV and you made the rules.

So now, in an age where television’s non-stop strobe of high-def intensity may soon be injected directly into your vein, I bid farewell to VHF, the Little Television That Could, But Usually Didn’t. So strange to think that Newton Minow’s “vast wasteland” used to be so very, very small.

Two-Toned Memoir

Color version of a black and white classic. Not an easy task eliminating all that crosshatching on the original. (Click for bigness.)

Half-Mast: David Carradine

It is 1974. I am five years old. My brother, 9 years my senior, has just finished watching his favorite television show. He enters our shared bedroom to engage in what has now become a weekly, post-prime time ritual. He stands with feet wide apart, his arms slowing whipping the air, his fingers in tight, claw-like configurations. He says nothing, his eyes gone trance-like. He slowly tiptoes toward me (being careful not to “tear the rice paper”, you understand), moving in to strike. He will now proceed to pummel me senseless for the remainder of the evening.

My brother’s violent hypnosis was the result of Kung Fu, a weekly television series that centered largely on rednecks getting beat up in slow motion (a TV formula that remained popular throughout the 1970s). It was a show made – some would say market researched – for its time. The martial arts craze was in full effect. Bruce Lee, who had been considered for the starring role in Kung Fu, was wildly popular among American teenage boys, as was Marvel’s Master of Kung Fu comic book, crammed with ads for martial arts instruction by the likes of Count Dante. Kids watched Hong Kong Fooey on Saturday mornings. The new line of GI Joe action figures came complete with Kung Fu grip, while Big Jim, Joe’s sports-obsessed cousin, was designed for full-on karate chop action. The whole mania peaked with “Kung Fu Fighting”, a ridiculous and ridiculously catchy disco hit.

But, aside from cashing in on this mania, I always felt the reason the Kung Fu television show was so well-received during this period was that Kwai Chang Caine, the fugitive Shaolin monk played by David Carradine, was essentially a hippie. Granted, the counterculture overtones were far more overt in the film Billy Jack, where the karate master literally hung out with folk-singing Berkley communals. But Kung Fu also delivered the hypocritical thrill of a rarely-bathed, Buddhist man of peace who came through with a couple of good ass-kickings each episode. Caine kept the Vietnam protesters happy with a few Confucian bromides about the peaceful upkeep of one’s chi, but rest assured, when tobacco-spitting cowboys started in with some white supremacist swagger, kicks to the head were imminent. Shows like Kung Fu signaled the victory over pothead pacifism by the lust for the action-packed. Boys will be boys, no matter how long they grow their hair.

Though it was obviously the product of committee effort (and another of TV’s many excuses to reuse Old West sets), the show wasn’t half bad. Its quiet pace was unusual for a television drama, the cast was professional and the offbeat soundtrack, made up of ancient Chinese string and percussion instruments, sounded a little like Harry Partch. The one issue people had the program was pretty glaring: David Carradine ain’t Chinese. But even this brought another interesting level to the story, I thought. Like Mr. Spock before him, half-breed Caine has a conflict between his stoic, Buddhist self and his “human” needs to get laid and beat people up. Surprisingly, Carradine was able to convincingly portray a Chinese master of the martial arts while being neither Asian nor trained in kung fu. Of course, stunt doubles are also worth their weight in gold.

Ultimately, Kung Fu was, in those heady years following the ’68 assassination season, a treatise on civil rights. But while it seemed that the arrival of social realism in mainstream entertainment was the surest sign that the times they were a’changin’, it turned out to be another passing TV fad. As the ‘70s came to an end, the Maudes, Bunkers, Chicos and Mod Squads were cleared out to make way for the Reagan era, when the Drummonds and Cosbys tackled issues of race by pretending they didn’t exist. Those bitch-slapped rednecks of Kung Fu were, as it turned out, an oppressed majority, tired of being picked on by those liberal homos in Hollywood. Far from the wandering peacenik that was Kwai Chang Caine, the martial arts stars of the ‘80s became aggressively Schwarzeneggerian, leather-clad Rambos who ninja-starred first and asked questions never. In short, the Shoalin BECAME the redneck.

The transition was short. After all, my brother’s fixation on walloping his younger, defenseless brother wasn’t inspired by Kung Fu’s themes of spiritual balance and struggles for social justice. He, and all the karate chopping youngsters of that era, were in it for the kick-ass. In the ‘70s, the helping hand of brotherhood had a Kung Fu grip.

America in tatters?

Someone, several years ago, burned a flag somewhere in our neighborhood. I don't know whether it was burned ceremonially or in protest, but ever since, I've been finding bits of the flag like those above regularly in our yard. I'll leave it to you to determine the symbolic significance of this.

Antique Thrdgll Musix

Here's a little unpublished number from around 2001, one of the last recordings committed to tape on the old cassette 4-track. An awkward instrumental called "Pat Doesn't Have a Mink Coat":

http://thrdgll.tripod.com/patdoesnt.mp3

Yes, 2009 is shaping up to be the year of the Ashley portrait - perhaps this was the positive change the Obama campaign kept promising?. Here's the Grumpy One's mug done up Atari 2600-style by bead artisan extraordinare and domestic life partner Melissa Earley. I look like I'm made of styrofoam pellets, just the type of makeover I've always longed for.

Who will step up to render the next portrait of Ashley Holt? Come on, people. Never let it be said that when the torch was passed you did not heed the call...or some such Kennedy-esque motivation. Round head, beard, big "Andy Rooney" eyebrows and you're done. Get to work!

His Brownness

B&W and color versions of just-completed self-portrait. I think I've captured my eternal bitterness and snobbery pretty accurately. This being one of the few pen and ink (ie - Flair pen) pieces I've attempted in recent years, I went way overbaord with the hatching, which looks good on the original, but closed up severely when I scanned it. Ah, whattayagonnado?

A bit more realism than usual on this one. I'm not sure why - it just came out that way.

Salve Arm Adventures

I'm still working through this season's midlife crisis. While I'm trying to decide if I'll ever make any sort of art ever again, enjoy this lost episode (click to swell):

"You kids get offa my lawn!"

Portrait of Screaming Ashley by the legendary JJ Ohlinger.

(No, I am NOT missing teeth. Mr. Ohlinger has given me excess gums for reasons I know not.)

Suspenders and a bra?!

Lumberjack illo for this year's FLUKE anthology. (Click to gigantify)

Online commentator Benjamin D. Brucke tries to point out the hypocrisy of my argument that Dave Sim can't draw hands...and inadvertently creates a thing of beauty.

Symptoms Include: JJ Ohlinger

Portrait of the infamous JJ Ohlinger; artist, impresario, matador and onetime Queen for a Day contestant. Those who consume the free food of Greenville's numerous art openings will recognize JJ by his world-renowned midget toss and angelic rendition of "Papa Don't Preach", no gathering of the arts community being complete without them.

Be sure to check out JJ's award-winning artwork here, featuring portraits of all his sexual conquests.

A Toby by Any Other Name...

(I'm late, but I'm still at it. Click to supersize.)

However...

While awaiting Obama's Socialist Utopia to save us all from economic doom, I have been forced to accept a soul-sucking, full-time job with an 80-minute commute. This, I'm afarid to say, does not bode well for my plans to document the year of 1977 in caricature form, nor engage in many creative projects at all, practical or otherwise. It does, however, give me the perfect opportunity to engage in one of my regular nervous breakdowns, in which I completely reevaluate my pathetic life's goals, perhaps giving up art entirely for the billionth time to become a nun or a racecar driver or both.

While I'm climbing the walls over this existential conundrum, please at least TRY to enjoy these animated insanities written by the completely batshit Troy England Evitt III:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8WZv87HnHA

Ev created these with the endlessly-entertaining moviemaking site, www.xtranormal.com

Thrdgll Communiques will resume shortly. Avoid panic buying.

Giving me the business (while possibly stealing it away)

Comics Journal message board regular Paul Salvi is making me nervous. Noticing I had omitted the Superboy actors from my Krypotonians of the Silver Screen collection, he decided to fill in the gaps by doing an effective Ashley Holt impression. Great, more competetion, just what I needed. Here's John Haymes Newton and Gerhard Christopher, both Superboys from the syndicated show of the early '90s.

The Powah; A Play in One Act

(Conversation I had with Melissa first thing this morning:)

Ash: I dreamed that you were fighting for farmer’s rights.

Mel: Yeah?

Ash: You went to work at the Chapman Center (local arts center where she works in real life) and you came home all Jane Fonda’d up, with buttons and leaflets, talking all kinda “power to the people” stuff.

Mel: Was that doing anything for you?

Ash: It was kinda gettin’ on my nerves.

Mel: That's because you have no soul.

Ash: I have a soul! That’s why I hate joiners!

Mel: So you’re a “joiner” if you want to help out farmers?

Ash: Yeah. It’s cuz I’ve been reading Studs Terkel. Stinkin’ pinko! Makes me wanna join the FBI.

Mel: So you can snuggle up to J. Edgar?

Ash: I wanna be like one of those guys who hassled Jospeh K.

Mel: I thought you wanted to help out the Little Guy.

Ash: No, I want The Powah! For once in my miserable life, won’t someone give me THE POWAH! (Pause) That’s going to be my campaign slogan.

Mel: It sounds like a Morrissey song.

Ash: Morrissey doesn’t want power, he just wants to be able to eat a big box of chocolate without gaining any weight.


(In truth, of course, I adore Studs Terkel and his lifelong advocacy of farmer's rights, unions, bonus marchers, sappy folk music and Paul Robeson. And hell, man....I AM Joseph K!)