That was Curtis Mayfield’s favorite yellow velvet suit. Most folks don’t even have a yellow velvet suit, but Curtis had a favorite one.
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Month: November 2018 (Page 5 of 9)
A keen-eyed Commentator points out Loomin’ Billy in one of the new Garcia interview clips from Long Strange Trip. Christ, he’s like the Billadook.
Go to the Dead’s website, Enthusiasts, and bring your wallets: it’s time for the Limited Deluxe Collector’s Special Edition (With Bonus Features) of the award-winning documentary Long Strange Trip. With unseen footage and previously unreleased performances, it’s the perfect stocking-stuffer for that Deadhead on your Christmas list!
Are you trying to get them to send you a free copy?
Yes.
You don’t even have a Blu-Ray player.
I would also like Amir Bar Lev to send me a Blu-Ray player.
He most likely will not. What are the special features?
Six songs from the 1970 Hollywood Festival in England, couple from ’89, some backstage stuff, and a commentary track from Amir and his editor, John Walter.
Weird that they didn’t ask you to do a commentary track.
No. Not weird. Insulting as fuck. And it just hurts the Enthusiasts.
Oh, sure. They could have had four hours of you taking bong hits and talking about the band members’ haircuts and trousers.
Right?
Shut up and post the other Garcia clip.
Bite my nads.
And we welcome you back to another episode of How Blurry Does A Photo Have To Be In Order To Make Freddie’s Cock Invisible? Today’s answer: blurrier than this. Thank you, and this has been How Blurry Does A Photo Have To Be In Order To Make Freddie’s Cock Invisible?
OR
Why is Mick wearing Danny Zuko’s varsity sweater from the end of Grease?
OR
“Darling?”
Yes, Fred?
“Stoli, would you?”
Sure. Here you go.
“Spaceeba. Ciggy?”
Here.”
“Vunderbar. Welcome backstage. Feel free to fuck everyone and everything.”
Awesome.
Ten years ago, a choogly-type pickup band was sent to prison by a military court for a jam they didn’t commit. These musicians promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the San Francisco underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the B-Team.
J.A. Lane: Muscle, explosives, HVAC repair, showing Bobby how his phone works.
Bobby “Tall Napoleon” Weir: Brains of the outfit, also the sandals of the outfit. Good with a blade. Drives the winnebago.
Mikaela “Smiles” Davis: Hacker. Undercover expert. Does that Black Widow move where she leaps crotch-first into a bad guy’s face and spins him around. Also helps Bobby with his phone.
Donnybrook “Don Was” Washerdryer: Werewolf by night.
OR
Mikaela Davis has stolen her haircut from The Runaways and God bless her for it.
Look:
See?
Oh, no!
“What!? What’s happening!?”
They’re cutting your beautiful hair, Nephew on the Dead!
“Is that what’s going on?”
Yeah.
“Huh. Well, at least we’re getting it out of the way.”
Nope. Gonna be doing this the rest of your life.
“You’re pulling my pud.”
Language.
“The rest of my life? How long is that?”
You’ll make it to 90 without trying. Unless civilization collapses.
“What are the odds on that?”
6-to-5 and pick ’em.
“If you say so. What is this called again?”
Haircut.
“And I do this…forever?”
Yes.
“Do I get to sit on The Lady’s lap?”
Not much longer. It starts to look creepy once you hit your teens.
“Oy. Any other recurring activities that no one warned me about?”
So many. Hygiene, buddy. Gotta shower and brush your teeth every single day. Cut your nails. Wait until you start shaving. You’re gonna hate it.
“What I’m hearing is that life is nothing but a never-ending slog of personal upkeep.”
Precisely.
“This blows.”
It does. Laundering oneself is a tedious and Sisyphean chore.
“Not optimal. Gotta tell ya, Uncle. This is not optimal.”
It’s not. Our bodies are made of filth. It’s a never-ending battle against stink and ass-cheese. Humans generate their own gravy.
“First of all: eww. Second: what if I want to wear my hair long?”
Like Axl?
“Just like Axl, yeah.”
Well, you’re gonna need to learn how to talk so you can tell your parents that.
“I’m almost there! I can say ‘dog.'”
Yeah?
“Yeah. But it comes out ‘duck.’ And half the time I say it about cats. Or mailboxes.”
Close enough.
“Do I get to keep the cape?”
You do not get to keep the cape.
“This deal is getting worse all the time.”
Sorry, Nephew. Welcome to the world.
This one’s just for the mean fucks out there: Andrea Long Chu on Jill Soloway’s book about Transparent. Remember the Pitchfork review of that Greta Van Fleet album? Or the New York Times piece about Guy Fieri’s restaurant? Well, this here’s the literary version.
Full disclosure: I have never seen an episode of Transparent–it’s apparently a weekly hour of Jeffrey Tambor in a dress–but familiarity with the source material is not necessary. Just luxuriate in the cruelty. Trust me on this one: read it.
Self-care: horseshit.
______ of the Year: horseshit.
Tax subsidies: horseshit.
Memoirs: horseshit.
Grad school: horseshit.
Wellness: horseshit.
Identity politics: horseshit.
Using the phrase “identity politics” as a pejorative: horseshit.
A good 80% of the Constitution: horseshit.
Non-edible fish: horseshit.
“Wholesome”: horseshit.
You, probably: horseshit.
Me, definitely: horseshit.
Where’s my Guggenheim Fellowship?
Stan Lee taught me how to read. Not personally. He didn’t come to the house with a hornbook or anything. But he wrote “With great power comes great responsibility,” and “Petey, eat your wheatcakes,” and “UNCLE BEN! NOOOOOOO!” and that was my very first education. Spider-Man comics. Alexander the Great had Aristotle as a tutor, but I had Peter Parker stashed in milk crates under my bed. My mother deciphered the squiggles for me, or maybe just underlined the words with her finger as she read them to me. The precisities of my mother’s pedagogical methods are not known to historians. Then Stan took over. He had words, oh such words. Zounds and forsooth and uncanny and hero and villain and neighborhood. Super fucking words, True Believer.
He wasn’t perfect–he was a vain, gullible, credit-stealing, gloryhound–but neither are you and you didn’t create the Fantastic Four. Or name the Hulk. And you certainly didn’t teach me to read. ‘Nuff said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: That’s Stan the Man in the monitor in the above page; this is from 1978’s Marvel Team-Up #74 and Spidey is “teaming up” with the Not Ready For Prime-Time Players while Stan hosts the show. I swear.
Marvel Team-Up, hereafter known as MTU, was Spidey’s second book. Until Wolverine showed up, Spidey was the most popular of the Marvel characters, and so he got two titles. Marvel used MTU to introduce new heroes or reintroduce forgotten ones, and workshop new bad guys. The guests varied wildly: sometimes Peter would run into Thor or the Black Panther, and other times he would fight Frankenstein’s Monster. I swear.
I need you to stop doubting me when I tell you that comic books are dumb. I feel like I offer you a piece of evidence, and you refuse it, even though I’ve proven myself correct time and time again while speaking on this particular subject. You must not take my word on medicine, or politics, or business, or love, but I am a goddamned expert in the subject of “How dumb superhero comics are.” Please stop resisting me on this. LISTEN TO ME, FUCKERS.
That escalated. Stop it immediately.
I can’t help it, man. I’m all about consent. And I want the Enthusiasts to consent to me. I need them to, really. How do I make them consent?
We’re going to have another HR meeting if you keep this up.
CONSENT TO ME, FUCKERS.
Just show the nice people what kind of pickle our friendly neighborhood wallcrawler has gotten himself into.
Okay.
They always left Spider-Man’s mask on when they shackled him to the spagmoidinizer.
I wasn’t kidding. Look at these scrubs Spidey has to deal with:
Points for “Tatterdemalion,” Marvel. That is a good word and an even better bad guy name. Points off for literally everything else. For God’s sake, the man has been an Avenger, and now he’s gotta hang out with poorly-drawn werewolfs in a sewer? Oh, and that character’s name isn’t “Werewolf,” it’s “Werewolf By Night,” which you shouldn’t think about too much, or at all. That’s not water. It’s effluvia. Spidey made out with Kirsten Dunst and Emma Stone, but now he’s up to his spider-balls in shit soup. It’s not right to do to a man.
At least that’s the last time Peter will have to deal with werewolfs.
I should have been more specific.
(Oh, the Man-Wolf? That’s J. Jonah Jameson’s son, John. John was an astronaut, and he went to the moon. While there, he saw a glowing rock and picked it up. The rock, naturally, turned him into a Man-Wolf. How many times do I have to tell you that comics are dumb?)
Anyway, back to the dead guy. Peter and Mary Jane Watson score tickets to Saturday Night Live, hosted by Stan Lee because Marvel Comics exists within Marvel comics. In the fictional universe that the heroes punch one another in, there is a company called Marvel that publishes comic books starring the heroes from that reality. There’s a Captain America comic book in the reality where Captain America’s real. In fact, Captain America once drew his own comic book. Don’t think about that.
Stan Lee does a monologue–he is drawn as elaborately coiffed, lean, and dapper–and makes several jokes about meeting with The Thing. It is at this point that one could begin pointing out logical inconsistencies like that tiresome fellow on YouTube who notices errors in films, but one could also remember that this is a story in which John Belushi sword-fights with a 7-foot samurai.
The issue’s not been reprinted since, due to rights bullshit, but I remember every panel. The hero was ineffectual and wouldn’t shut up, and the bad guy mostly paid the hero no mind anyway, and everyone learned a valuable lesson in the end, though no one could agree what it was. It was my kind of story. Thank you for writing it, Stan Lee.
He didn’t. Chris Claremont wrote it, Bob Hall did the pencils, and Marie Severin inked.
Excelsior!
You’re an asshole.
The fires Out West get worse each year, and so do the storms Back East. We won’t discuss what’s happening Down South. Or in Texas. Climate Change is affecting our lives in greater parcel day by day, and this photo displays a tragic byproduct of the earth’s warming: it is November, and Woody Hayes has not yet entered hibernation.
You know the annual schedule, Enthusiasts. During the spring and summer, Woody appears at every single festival on the continent. Pretty much doesn’t stop soloing from April to October, except to deliver his signature blues-influenced vocals, which have been described as “blues-influenced.” If there’s a field and a truck selling vegan burritos, Woody Hayes is there and he’s been soloing for twenty minutes. Turquaz will be on next. They will invite Woody back out to jam on Beer Drinkers And Hell Raisers.
In late September, a shift in the wind causes Woody to briefly stop soloing. It’s time. The world is different now. It is time. He could not explain it, not to you. That it is time is a sub-verbal knowledge. All is changed. Woody goes nuts on catering. Mostly salmon, but also everything else. He puts on 100 pounds in around a month, then returns to his home in the Smoky Mountains that he shares with his wife, Joyce. There, he plugs his asshole with leaves, mud, and moss, and then retreats into his custom-made hutch. He will slumber there, living off his body fat, until summer comes and the festivals begin.
But it’s November, and the fucker’s still awake.
We broke the sky.
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