Chill Factor

On Thursday, I received in the mail my order for what is unarguably the very most insanely cool anthology ever created (the Bible has now fallen from the Top Ten; sorry, God). For only forty bucks each, I bought 40 Years of X-Men and 44 Years of Fantastic Four on DVD-ROM, each of which contain basically exactly what they're titled. Oh, sure, some people might complain (*cough* kvl! *cough!*) that the X-Men disc contains only the Uncanny X-Men books (as opposed to X-Men, The Astonishing X-Men, X-Force, X-Factor, X-Man, X-Games, X is for Xylophone, or any of the other spin-offs), and does not cover the other parts of crossovers (such as Inferno or The X-Tinction Agenda, both of which essentially require you buy four titles per month just to comprehend what the fuck's going on). I, on the other hand, am deliriously happy with the set, and I'll tell you why:

It's the entire goddamn comic book! This is not Classic X-Men (or X-Men Classic, as it was inexplicably later titled), where they're reprinting the story and then giving you just a couple of little extras. No, these comic books appear to have been scanned straight out of the archival copies in the Marvel vaults, which means what? Ads! Yes, it's got the original ads in every issue, and it boggles my mind how many bodybuilding and martial arts ads there were in the 1966 issues. And then there are these ads in virtually every issue asking young boys to sell GRIT, but I'll go into that in more detail another time.

The colors are generally vivid, and the scans hold up quite well under extreme magnification. Definitely archive-quality work, here. Each individual issue is saved as a PDF file, which reads without a watermark using Adobe Reader 6.0 or higher (included in the software, though version 7.0 is available from the Adobe website), but the digital watermark is readily apparent in Apple's Preview application, so it's very much worth downloading Reader. They are organized by decade, then by year of publication, and finally by issue in separate, linked PDF files, which makes flipping through them quite easy, as the only file you have to open is the Start file on the root-level of the DVD-ROM. After that, it just opens up a new window for every click.

I'm totally fascinated by this stuff, and so I'm probably going to spend a couple of posts yammering on about it, complete with screenshots of some of the ads. I don't think I'm going to go all Scott Tipton on you people, but in the event that I do, I'll probably establish a separate blog for that. However, there's a pretty good chance that these comic books are going to take up a fair bit of my time (no girlfriend this year, I guess), because Santa (better known as TalesOfWonder.com, which beat Amazon's price by ten bucks) will be delivering The Avengers to my door in February, The Amazing Spider-Man in March, and The Incredible Hulk, Daredevil, and Captain America later on in the year.

Needless to say, I'm quite excited by the whole thing. While it's not as satisfying as having a girlfriend, these sets are less expensive and they don't complain if I want to forsake them for a few days to play Xbox. Now I'm off to finally answer the immortal question of which came first: The Mimic or the Super-Skrull?


AIM: therbmcc71

Why Aye Man

So tonight I picked up the $11.99 Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits 22-song best-of album, and it's really very good. Oh, sure, I could have just dropped four bucks on "Sultans of Swing," "Walk of Life," "Money for Nothing," and "Romeo and Juliet,"but then I figured...

Okay, I can't even keep typing this, because right now I'm listening to this audio stream by this guy named Gunther, and I can't tell whether or not this is a very elaborate joke, or whether this guy sucks worse than Peter Andre. So, anyway, if music's your thing, you've probably heard Gunther's "Ding Dong Song," which is that "You Touch My Tra La La" song. It's so fucking bad, I can't believe that anyone would seriously do this.

I mean, the whole thing is very reminiscent of the "Elektronik Supersonik" video I linked to a while back, and that was kind of a promotional thing for a Molvania tour guide that you can pick up in your local bookstore (and I recommend doing so, because it's fucking hysterical). No one could seriously make music this bad. So here's the story, from the Rhino Records site:

Gunther, the International Ambassador of champagne, glamour, sex, and respect is out to “Sexualize The World” with his bedroom beats, melodic machismo and Swedish charms.

Here it is from Gunther's official site:

Pleasureman Gunther is set to have the biggest smash-hit of the summer with his fantastic debut single 'Ding Dong Song'. Günther is a 29 years old gentleman style 2000 in his best years. Günther is a true European, his origin is Sweden but he sees himself as a global citizen.

Günther has always been in the entertainment industry and now he feels it is time to change the attitude of the world to do something better.

Günther wants to change the worlds look at the sexual way of thinking, so he have started a new trend to sexualise it more in the world. "A Günther trend".
He has only started his mission to go out in the world and spread the message of Love.

The four main things in Günthers life are Champagne, Glamour, Sex and Respect!

Now, here's the kicker that throws me into the, "This can't possibly be real," section:

WHAT THE FUCK?!

Anyway, if you want a laugh, or possibly make someone's ears bleed, or clear out a party after the kegs have run dry, Rhino's got an audio stream of Gunther's album on this page, in Real, Quicktime, and Windows Media formats. And Gunther's official site is pretty much just as ridiculous as his music.

Yeah, I was going to complain about women and the fact that they have all chosen this week to stop returning my calls and/or instant messages, but I'm just going to pick up my guitar and try and finally knock out "Romeo and Juliet," which is theoretically easy, but I'm just having timing issues and ... okay, I have to stop again, because the song "I Am Your Man (G.U.N.T.H.E.R)" just started, and it's taking all of my willpower just to keep from laughing so hard that I piss myself.

This is the greatest musical crime perpetrated against humanity since Uncle Kracker covered "Drift Away," which was the greatest musical crime since Eddie Murphy's girl wanted to "Party All the Time." However, if you're a musical masochist, check it out on iTunes. For $11.99, you get eleven tracks and the music video for "Ding Ding Dong Song."

So, yeah. This Gunther guy answers the question, "What the fuck does Sweden export?" The answer? TOTAL SHIT!!!


AIM: therbmcc71

Don't Let the Green Grass Fool You

About five minutes after uploading my last post (which has yet to be disputed by anyone whose answer isn't, "Dave Matthews makes my ears bleed"), I found the unfortunate news that Wilson Pickett died. At this point, I'm beginning to wonder if this page isn't becoming a big obituary column. Regardless, here's a brief opinion piece:

Wilson Pickett was best known for the songs, "In the Midnight Hour" and "Mustang Sally," both of which I've been known to do on drunken karaoke nights. One of these days, I'll get around to doing "Land of 1,000 Dances," which is just an awesome song in its own right; notably during the closing credits to the Aykroyd/Candy movie The Great Outdoors. All three of these songs were covered by The Commitments, provided you get both discs of that (particularly awesome) soundtrack.

But I still have to say that my favorite Wilson Pickett song of all time has got to be "Hey Jude." It's one of those covers where the person or act doing the cover didn't just try to get it to sound just like the original; Pickett's version is unmistakably Pickett, through and through. It's like the Bobby Womack cover of "Fly Me to the Moon," which is virtually unrecognizable if you listen to it after Sinatra, or particularly the Bobby Darin version, which will make you question whether someone's slipped you a mickey.

But Pickett had this howl to his voice (which is quite prominent on "Hey Jude") that you just don't find in soul singers anymore. Granted, there are no soul singers anymore, now that Wilson Pickett is dead, Otis went down in that plane crash back in '67, Marvin Gaye was shot by his father, Lou Rawls died last week or the week before, James Brown went nuts, and Dobie Gray traded in what respectability he had when he let Uncle Kracker commit the crime against music that was his cover of Gray's "Drift Away."

Okay, they're not all dead, actually. Etta's still alive, Solomon's still alive, and Smokey's doing gospel (and selling gumbo). But, for me, the holy trinity of great 60's soul singers were Redding, Pickett, and Gaye. I highly recommend checking out the iTunes Essentials list of '60's Soul Hits (this link, of course, requires iTunes), and you'll start to understand what I'm talking about.


AIM: therbmcc71

Girl with Crimson Nails, Jesus 'Round Her Neck

Okay, just a brief little post as I play World of Warcraft, and it entails a scientific discovery I made today:

SCIENTIFIC FACT:

The act of hearing the song "Crash into Me" by the Dave Matthews Band reminds everyone in the world of someone else. This is not, in and of itself surprising. The surprising fact lies in the discovery that the person that you think about is not your current significant other.

Another discovery from the Umgawa Scientific Institute for Discovery of Things You've Always Known But Could Not Quantify.


AIM: therbmcc71

The Deepest Blues Are Black

So, while I'm working on my thesis about the decline and fall of X-Men comic books, I've been watching Macross, which is the original Japanese series that the first third of Robotech was based on, and I can tell you honestly: I hate it.

I hate the show for a lot of little reasons, because it's, by and large, exactly the same show. The voices are all wrong, which I wouldn't even notice if I hadn't been watching the Americanized version of this show (Robotech) for the last twenty years; but it's especially true in the case of Captain Gloval (now Captain Global, which reminds me too much of Captain Planet), because he had such a distinct voice. And then there's the matter of the music, which is better in parts, but the main theme sucks ("Makurosu! Makurosu!").

And then there's the matter of the names, which just irk the hell out of me. Rick Hunter is now (and technically was originally) Hikaru Ichijo, I have to get used to a whole new spelling for Minmay (which still looks totally wrong to me), Lisa Hayes is now Misa Hayase... it's a nightmare. About the only saving grace to all of this is that Roy Fokker is now Roy Focker, and watching it just gets hysterical at times, like when Hikaru says, "Don't lump me in the same category as you, Focker!" I giggle every time someone calls him Focker.

Oh, and one of the girls on the bridge is named Pocky.

I'm sure that there are a lot of people who say it's a good thing that Minmay is voiced by the original Japanese actress who did the voice of Minmay, but it gets really distracting sometimes, because she speaks "passable English," which gives you the feeling that she could go Zero Wing at any moment. At the same time, though, her voice isn't as grating as Minnmei was in Robotech, but I still hate her. I will always hate Minnmei, and no one can convince me to do otherwise.

Ooh, I just found that Harmony Gold is allowing people to download free episode of Gatchaman, which is just very cool. For those of you who don't recognize the name, Gatchaman came to the States and became Battle of the Planets. It's one of those classic Japanese series, like Space Battleship Yamato (a.k.a. Star Blazers) or Space Pirate Captain Harlock. Anyway, Harmony Gold has versions for Quicktime or optimized for the video iPod right here. It's free, so watch it and then buy the box-sets for a better reason than because Alex Ross painted the covers. Regardless, I think that every company should do this, because you can usually get a pretty good idea as to whether or not you want to see the rest of a series from the first episode.

So, why is it, then, that since I bought the first volume of Macross, I'm not buying the other two original series that Robotech is based on? Well, first of all as cool as the giant transforming robots are in Super Dimensional Cavalry Southern Cross, I've never found the love story between Bowie Grant and Musica very convincing. And then there's Genesis Climber Mospeada, which was the third series of Robotech, and ... well, I'll just get right to the best reason for not buying either of them: They weren't supervised by Matt Greenfield. That's the only reason. Now, there might be some people who are even geekier about this shit than me who would say that he's not so great, but I don't personally speak Japanese, and so I like to have a nice dub from time to time, rather than reading three lines of subtitles every ten seconds.

As I mentioned a month or two back, though, I'm sure that ADV's going to find some way to screw me over on extras or something, when they'll inevitably release a better box-set for Macross at a third of the price, with some very nifty extras. They did it to me on Evangelion, they did it to me on Robotech, and I just keep on accepting it. I feel like a battered spouse.

I still hate that goddamn Minmay.


AIM: therbmcc71

No One Lives Forever

Oingo Boingo always seems to have a good and fitting title for a blog post; fitting today because my favorite Second City teacher, Jim Zulevic, died on Monday at the age of 40. If you live in the Chicago area, you might recognize him as the red-shirted guy who did the promos between episodes of The Simpsons and Seinfeld. And now he's dead. Seems to be a lot of that going around.

Anyway, I managed to probably gross out a large number... well, no, certainly not a large number, because I only get like twenty hits a day, but I probably managed to freak out a couple of people with my coverage of the AVN Awards, and I haven't managed to get a single comment since the fourth of January, which I don't even count because it's my brother commenting.

And you RSS reader people ought to break out a fucking browser once in a while, because you're not tripping my counters, and are therefore injuring my ego by not announcing yourselves. I swear to god, one of these days I'm just going to drop the whole RSS feed from this site, because you people just enjoy being stealthy.

Which gets me back to a point I made during the Deep Purple post about two weeks back: Artists need validation, and without validation they won't continue with their art, or they won't want to share it with others. It's like I said in my away message: I got better things to do than write for people who aren't even going to fucking read it.


AIM: therbmcc71