In 1972, there was a schism in the world of “underground comix”. Its poster boy, Robert Crumb, had licensed his controversial Fritz the Cat to a pair of Saturday morning cartoon men, for a feature film production. Depending on whom you ask, the final result is either the fault of Crumb’s intransigence, the director’s dabbling, or the distributor’s trepidation about the content. The reality is that Fritz was never meant for franchising.
Category Archives: Nostalgic Obsessions
Animation Analysis: Fritz the Cat
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Filed under Animation Analysis, Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee
About “Star Wars”
THE POLITE VERSION
I am officially breaking from the Star Wars franchise, in all regards. Being that I am maintaining a fantasy fiction franchise of my own, Ceaseless Fables of Beyonding, I cannot continue to absorb the intellectual properties of other creators, for fear of possibly regurgitating them. Respectfully, I will not be seeing any upcoming Star Wars films, and will in fact be avoiding them for this reason. I wish the cast and crew, present and future, well. I’m sure the new episodes will be heralded as everything the fans have always wished for, and will gross billions of dollars. Please in turn respect my decision to distance myself from this franchise. Thank you for your understanding. “May the Force be with you.”
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Filed under Bad Influences, Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Unfairly Maligned
Andrew Lloyd Webber
That Turd of Shame should be bigger. I still have that Jesus Christ Superstar LP, for crying out loud. But take heed; without ALW’s bloated messiah opus, Mr. Show would never have given us Jeepers Creepers Semi-Star.
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Artifacts of Early Gaming
Earlier today, I suffered a terrible tumble from my high horse. During yet another lament about the endless saturation of smartphones, my rose-colored recollection of my own childhood was shattered when I realized that in grade school 35 years ago, my generation was gazing at little electronic rectangles too.
They weren’t easy to get, either; I only ever saw them in the windows of weird electronics stores in NYC, the kind of places you’d expect to have a mogwai for sale. Most of the games didn’t take regular batteries, but instead used the teeny watch kind that you had to ask your grandma for (grandmas always had them). Typically, the sound consisted of high-pitched beeps, and could not be turned off, so play was often halted by grown-ups with more hearing than patience.
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All Hallows’ Eats
As Halloween approaches, we celebrate by getting sick on weird candy. To kick off this recurring feature, here’s an article from October 31, 2007.
What, you thought I was too busy to hand out treats to you fine kids? Hell no! How could I show up empty-handed, with all the hard work you guys put into your costumes? Sure, maybe you’ll be a little disappointed with what I have to offer, but since I at least made an effort to please you nice kids, maybe you won’t huck eggs at my quaint little Web 1.0 home here.
I’ll be blunt; my choices aren’t very original, but I hope you nice kids won’t hold that against me. I can see the glimmer of apprehension in your eyes behind those clever masks, no doubt caused by the realization that my home smells like compacted ass. Perhaps my shambling and tattered clothes suggest a feral man easily spooked by traffic’s roar. I assure you the corpses on the lawn are decorations and not interns.
‘Tis the Season. Let’s eat some CANDY!
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Filed under Bad Influences, Eatable Things, Nostalgic Obsessions, O'Shloktoberfest
Ass-tacular Album Art
Why do bad covers happen to good albums? Is there some sort of unspoken “aesthetic limit” that dictates that a certain quantity of enjoyable music must be balanced with a cover so hideous that joints cannot be rolled upon its surface? Sure, album art itself has more or less gone the way of the dodo in the past ten years, but does that mean that such a tremendous percentage of album covers have to be such a graphic-design abortion?
We’ve all seen one of those “Worst Album Cover” sites at one point or another. I’m not trying to compete with any of that. However, I do intend to share with you the albums that have personally irked my damned fine artistic sensibilities. You’ve probably seen these before, maybe you haven’t, maybe you wish you hadn’t. You won’t have to worry about any Roger Dean covers, because everyone I’ve ever met who was into Roger Dean was a total douchebag, thus I seldom bother to listen to albums with Roger Dean covers.
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Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Nostalgic Obsessions, Unfairly Maligned, Worst Of All
Axl of Nazareth
I never liked Guns ‘N Roses, and this might surprise you, but my reasons are weird. On the surface, I found Axl Rose grating and embarrassingly trashy, although the other band members were really good, and their album Appetite For Destruction was my earliest exposure to the art of Rob’t Williams. But I never could abide a poseur, and in my opinion, Axl Rose has built a career impersonating the lead singer of Scottish hard-rock band Nazareth.
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Aerosmith
Here’s the thing about Aerosmith. They lost touch with their artsy-fartsy roots.
What exactly do I mean by that? Well, let’s have a gander at the classic Aerosmith logo. Continue reading
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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Nostalgic Obsessions, Thousand Listen Club, Worst Of All
Billy Joel
If you grew up in 1970s suburban New Jersey, as I did, you cannot judge Billy Joel or Bruce Springsteen objectively. It is analogous to Alabama’s relationship with Lynyrd Skynyrd. A recording artist encapsulates the zeitgeist of a time and place so perfectly, the music becomes inseparable from that region. You can’t criticize it; it’s too much a part of your identity.
Billy Joel may as well be my uncle. The man has penned tunes that I cannot distinguish from my own personal experiences. People mock and laugh at Billy’s foibles and shortcomings, and it never sinks in. The places and emotions he has brought to life are just too vivid for me. Continue reading
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Bouillon Cube Theory
Almost every single aspect of my personality can be explained by one simple fact: when I was a kid I ate a bouillon cube.
I was too young to know better. I had witnessed the flavor sorcery that resulted when my parents would cook with a bouillon cube. Surely, I reasoned, if it made dinner taste that good, then a whole cube of it would be a trip to flavor heaven. I even imagined it might expand into a steak or a burger, like in The Jetsons. So one evening I sneaked into the kitchen, unwrapped a beef cube, popped it in my mouth, and chewed it up. Continue reading
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