You Dig on Multiverses?

Did you catch that reference?  Apologies if you did.  I finished all the Elric I’m going to be able to find, and have returned with my accursed demon blade Stormbringer to feast upon thy souls.  Or tell you about it.

I kid, I kid.  I really don’t have a lot to say about it.  There were elements that aged very poorly in terms of cultural mores, and elements that aged poorly because the march of fiction has rendered them quaint and pedestrian, but nothing wholly outrageous on either count.

Moorcock may have coined the word multiverse.  I could probably find out with a little googling but I don’t care enough to.  While now it’s in service of bloating and bleeding film franchises, it once was a very literal homage to joseph campbell’s ideas.  A victim of time, I don’t find those elements at all interesting.

Oddly, fiction from the 19th century doesn’t hit me like that.  Maybe recency produces something like the uncanny valley in writing, I don’t know.

I don’t think I ever reached the end of the story, assuming it was ever written, but that’s alright.  Tho it had more continuity than sherlock holmes, it was always written to be short stories for sff pulp mags, it seems.

In looking up interesting things about it, I discovered that Wendy Pini of Elfquest comic fame had attempted to get an animated adaptation done, and failed.

That info loops back on itself because Chaosium once did an Elfquest rpg with basically the same rules as Call of Cthulhu, and also for a time had Moorcock’s license to Elric rpg.  Did that also use the same system?  If so, it would make for an amusing combination…

Alright, I gotta jet.  Tired as hell.  Zzz.

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Elric Report

So I’m three and a half volumes into listening to the Elric books by Michael Moorcock and I haven’t been Inception’d into the sensory deprivation tank full of urine yet, so I thought you might wanna know my thoughts.  Spoilers?  Not very big ones.  Also these books are old as hell so who cares?

Reminding me of Vampire Hunter D by Hideyuki Kikuchi.  The writing is a lot more blunt than I would have imagined for the towering gothickal shadow he cast over the genre.  Kikuchi’s book may well have been influenced by it.  Indeed, the dispassionate kinda evil pretty men with long white hair that recur in anime might all be descendants of Elric; I don’t know enough deep cuts of Japanese culture to be sure.  That said, Elric is a lot more emotional than Sephiroth or Sesshomaru or Benten or etc etc.  One emotion in particular: Fear.

It’s really common for writers on both sides of the Pacific to characterize a cool badass character as never feeling fear.  I get where they’re coming from.  Cool, badass, it’s a power fantasy, and we’d like to imagine ourselves in hardcase mode as immune to all such weaknesses.  But this trope does feel pretty damn stale by now, and it always undercut the ability for the story to feel like it has real stakes.  If the worst a hero would feel in defeat is annoyed or angry, that’s a lot less intense than him feeling afraid of serious injury, torture, whatever consequences.

So that’s kind of nice, even if the character is still an outrageously special specialboy.  Ladies love Elric.  Apparently he can lay pipe with the best of ’em.  Dickmatism as the kids say.  The stories are not at all explicit about it, but one gal is a queen and is like “i know u killed my bro but take my kingdom, just gimme that somethin somethin.”  He’s characterized as having poor health, in the first book only sustained by drugs, and this specifically manifests as weakness.  What’s his stroke game like if he has no stamina?  He manages to say no to drugs by getting a cool demon sword that sucks souls and gives Elric the life energy, but in at least one of the subsequent books he still needs the drugs.  Had he gone too long without soul sauce?  Book didn’t say.

One disappointment is that he doesn’t show near as much skin as he does on book covers.  About half the search results for Elric art, he at least has his arms and leggies out.  If u got it flaunt it, boy.

Oh, I didn’t really say what I meant by the writing being blunt.  Let’s put it this way:  If this were a movie, almost all of the dialog and much of the characterization would have to be original.  It could not rely on the source material.  In the books, Moorcock just tells you things about Elric.  In a movie, you’d have to show them.  The pivotal character moments have no real buildup, they’re just plopped on you.  It feels like short stories, where there’s no time to characterize through prose and you really just need to spell out what’s going on, if the plot has any complexity at all.

I once wrote a short story wherein I earned the love story through writing, really hard pressed to keep it under 9k words.  I do think the Elric books started as short stories and were collected, at least some of them, so that’s probably why it’s like this.  It mostly feels heavy-handed in the first scene of the first book, where his whole backstory and main conflict are just dropped on you like some Acme traps on Wile E. Coyote.

I wonder about Moorcock’s monster inspirations.  How original are his beasters?   They seem pretty original, but some people know more obscure monster lore than I do; maybe they aren’t.

Oh yeah, and one more thing struck me funny.  One of the books is called The Weird of the White Wolf.  The White Wolf is Elric and he’s having a weird.  But the book doesn’t tell us what the fuck a weird is.  The weirdest thing in the story is how he makes a bunch of really bad decisions for no obvious reason.  The worst is when the dragons come out and he is just totally unprepared for that.  He knew the dragons were there.  Even if he was like, fuck it, let’s do this even tho we’ll be dragonbait, he should’ve been bracing for it the whole time.  Instead when they come out it’s like Moorcock remembering they exist for the first time in pages.

But it’s all big dark fantasy bigness.  Sleesh slash.  Kill the guys, win the prize.  But feel empty inside.  That’s all I’m there for anyway.

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Elric of Melnidrone

I don’t listen to audiobooks, usually music, but I had an annoying task to do, of the type where more mentally engaging material was useful.  Because I don’t have the pirate skillz and am not paying for services I’d rarely use, I sought an audiobook for free on yewchoob.  I’d had some idle curiosities about Celtic mythology and listened to a bit of that, but the people reading it were too cringe for me.

I remembered I have some interest in writing a dark fantasy or two in the future and so could use some education on the subject, so I looked up Elric of Melniboné.  Despite still being under copyright, there it was, and the reader was a fairly skilled thespian type.  But the production was a lil low-budget.

You ever hear a wheezing breath and realize it’s you?  I assumed that’s what was happening to me, but I came to realize this thespian is acting his lil ass off while his partner is snoring near at hand.  It’s funking hilarious.  I do find it just tolerable enough to keep on.  Maybe I’ll get through the whole thing eventually.

First impressions: The prose is more bare-bones than I would have imagined.  The simplicity is intentional, I think, to evoke mythology.  Sometimes it’s all edgy dark majesty, sometimes it’s wish fulfillment power fantasies just this side of My Immortal.  Elric is the specialest boy.  I’m mildly entertained.

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U Can’t Say Fanny on Telly

I’ve heard “fanny” is a dirtier word in the UK than in the US, but don’t care enough to google it.  There was a US band called Fanny back in the days of yore, which I’d never heard of, but popped up on my yewchoob recs.  The four ladies in the band were all great rock musicians, but I also think it’s especially cool that there were some biracial filipinas in the mix – the sisters on guitar and bass, June and Jean Millington.  Drummer Alice de Buhr is super cool (and now married to a woman, aww*), pianist Nickey Barclay was on some extra Ray Manzarek shit.  They really looked like a group of characters, as rockers should.  If this video plays for you, observe:

The whole playlist of that performance on some German show is available as well.  You’ll recognize some cool covers, I don’t know what of their originals were hits or how big they were at all.  I got curious and hunted down a performance by the sisters in a more recent year.  Check this out too:

Nice funky bass there.  Guitar sister can shred.  The end of the German show is the song “Special Care” (flashing light warning) which they really build to an intense climax without overstaying their welcome.  Good times and great oldies, as my extinct local oldies station used to say.

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*on the rainbow representation, seems like jean-june-alice-nickey would be nope-L-L-B, if i got that right, if it matters.

Sex Nerd Needed

So there are people who go to orgies, or do poly, or just know a lot about organs and what you can do to em.  Safe sex fans.  Good people, but they are nerds.  They are not cool.

The cool sex people are the ones blowing crack pipes at uncle mike’s highway ribs and catching ultra aids from seventeen freaks through orifices they invented for the occasion.  I don’t make the rules; it’s cooler to not care about anything.  Responsible sex people are inherently less cool than diseased addicts.

Which is fine.  It’s good to be a sex nerd.  Just wanna clarify who I’m talking to before I ask my question.

Any sex nerds in my readership?  I’m trying to figure out these jokers.  Let’s call them sex jokers.  Specifically Dan the Automator Nakamura and his friends, who were responsible for the bands Handsome Boy Modeling School, Lovage, and Got a Girl.  (among others; u kno how hip hop people do)

This isn’t a huge genre of art, but it exists, and Automator isn’t the only exponent of it.  Arguably Edward Gorey’s The Curious Sofa was an example.  Basically they make sexy art that treats sex as a ridiculous joke.

But it is still sexy.  So are these artists actually expressing horniness or are they just doing a comic bit?  Or is it both?  I know Gorey was asexual, I know little about Mr. Nakamura and friends.

How do you laugh at sex while also getting off on it?  Are these sex jokers all on a grade to being litcheral clown sex aficionados?  I feel like I’m missing something.

Maybe I should try to have more sex to figure it out.  Anyway, here’s Lovage sounding like a parody of Portishead for the sex joker set.

As I reflect, there’s probably an explanation in the years of music criticism regarding The Cramps, Mojo Nixon, Reverend Horton Heat…  Still, who wants to dig?  Enlighten me, nerds.

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EDIT to add:  Electric Six, how could I forget?  And that song S-E-X-X-Y by TMBG.  And some unforgivable shit by Jonathan Coulton and others.

The Politics of Not Working, in Song

Hey anybody here remember the Wham Rap?  Is this song for or against leaning on welfare when you’re young and sexy?  I literally can’t tell.  The lyrics about how people should not do things they do not enjoy, those feel earnest.  But the characterization of the narrator, who advocates living off of welfare programs, is as selfish, looking out for number one.  It’s ironic people see social welfare as greedy when the main reason rich people don’t want to pay a reasonable tax to support society is because of absolutely inarguable baldfaced greed.  People “on the dole” need food and shelter.  Rich people don’t need a second yacht.  They just fucken don’t.  Anyway, dubious politics aside, it’s a bop.  Glad I remembered it exists.

One could make a whole study of references to welfare in music, and what they say about social perspectives.  Roots Manuva had a song called Mind 2 Motion with the line “Social survivor still scratching on, I’ll pay that money back when I get my hit song.”  This is eminently reasonable.  Rely on what you need when you are needy, pay your taxes when you are not.  And yet, I heard that he’s just another boring conservative greedlord.  Unsurprising if true.  One day Biggie Smalls was talking about how he lived in the projects and suffered poverty, feels blessed by his wealth.  The next he was literally saying “fuck the world, don’t ask me for shit.”

Sticking to the UK for another moment, commie rapper Bobbi from QELD and Pavlov’s House reliably hates on working for a living.  Warnings for flashing lights, doom-tinged chorus, and tankie feelz.  Austerity politics will get you feelin’ that kind of way.

The USA has its own communist rappers.  Boots Riley from The Coup is the number one guy on that scene, blowing up the World Trade Center on an album cover before that became unpopular for reasons.  But on the topic of social survivin’, I’d like to quote Killer Mike’s guest rap on The Coup’s WAVIP:  “I’m over here with the welfare recipients, we ain’t ever payin’ but we stay gettin’ shit, I am with the people on the bottom fella, we gon’ riot loot rob ’til we rich as Rockefeller… The one percent better learn this shit is VIP, if we don’t nut up everybody gonna D-I-E.”

There are more low-key ways to say Fuck a Job.  In Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s seminal extremely hateable dogshit buttrock classic “Takin’ Care of Business,” the drunk guy on the mic sez, “If you ever get annoyed, look at me I’m self-employed, I love to work at nothing all day.”  I don’t know why I find that more offensive than intentionally offensive punk rock on the subject.  All he’s saying is “get an easy job.”  Could be worse.  I just don’t like the genre.  Speaking of punk rock on the subject, little known Desperate Bicycles had a song about making rock, with a very likeable message.  Backup vocals by the literal child on the drums.  “It was easy, it was cheap, go and do it.”

As for the intentionally offensive punk rock on the genre, the Dead Milkmen have two strong examples.  Nutrition is an all-around classic, covered by other bands, well-liked, and a good tune.  It captures the vibe of feeling like you were born to work but just don’t wanna, feeling simultaneously petulant and ashamed about it.  A lesser tune with a more didactic message, just literally “fuck working,” is Chaos Theory, from a later album.  “I used to get up and do my job, now I enjoy doing nothing better, I think I’ll go bum around, I think I’ll enjoy this lovely weather.  Maybe some day there’ll be a revolution, maybe some day we’ll have meaningful jobs, until that day I’m gonna be lazy, I’m not gonna be no working slob.  I am the god of unemployment, the antichrist of the american dream, I used to fight for church and country, but now I don’t give into the corporate schemes.”

That’s just being a bitch about it.  Not saying that’s my number, but I did spend a few years on unemployment at one point, and spent a lot of time back then walking around under blue skies.  Like the part in One Bourbon One Scotch One Beer when George’s landlady saw him leanin’ up against a post…  This could go on forever.

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Edit to Add:  How in the fuck did I forget Agenda Suicide by The Faint?  Content Warning:  The Obvious, Generally Grim as Balls.

Back to tha Back to tha Old School

Remember this post about Seward Park by Seattle local ’80s rap weirdo Maharaji?  My loving man did me a favor and transcribed the lyrics, so you can get a bit of the flavor even if you can’t figure out how to listen to the song on interwebs.  You won’t find this on genius dot com.

SEWARD PARK

by Maharaji

If you’re searching for a way to reach your peak
Come to Seward park with the pretty little freaks
Lay in the grass, let the sun hit your face
Drink cherry coolers while you listen to my bass

Here’s your chance to make your dream come true
Just hop in your ride when the sky’s plain blue
Roll down your window, let the freaks hear my song
Cuz my voice is really kinky and my beats so strong
I’m Maharaji baby, you know who I am
Come give in to the Seward Park jam
I see you on the sidewalk with your long silky hair
Eyes of light green with your skin complexion fair
Bermuda shorts and those tight, tight jeans
All the guys will name you
the Seward Park queen
Hot hot fun
In Seward Park
Oh girl
You know I want to enter your world

(groaning and heavy breathing)

Oh girl

Seward Park
Freak

You look so good, I can taste you from here
But that’s not the point, let me make myself clear
Oh baby, don’t you know I’m like a lifesaver
Just whisper in my ear if you want a new flavor
Physical changes
Naturally delicious
When you lick your lips, I get real suspicious
Mixed emotion, a climax stimulation
Wonderful memories of fantastic penetration
This brief encounter
The proper vitamin
I can ensure you baby that you’ll be back again
So come on and get it, and don’t waste your time
Cuz a freak like Maharaji you will never find

Seward Park
Gets crazy after dark
Sure enough baby
The dogs will start to bark

(dog fx and car horns)

You’re delicious dirty girl
with all your freaky friends
I see your golden face on the hot weekends
Walking your dogs
Or playing your box
Beads in your hair with your polka-dotted socks
I like to watch you move
To my northwest hot funk energized groove
Make no mistake by staying at home
Come dial a freak on the telephone
So how would you like it if I went and hopped a ferry
I’ll leave my phone number
you can even call me Terry
I think of Seward park on a hot summer day
Come take a deep breath the Cosmic Legion way

(grunting and moaning and dogs fx)

Deep breathing baby

Effective is compassion with universal powers
the feelings flowing through your body each and every hour
Your destiny’s fulfilled so lay on your back
I can help you out with a freak attack
My multi-track funky flex was all you freaks’ choice
It’s absolutely free
You know you feel moist
So let me know
Oh
What’s on your mind
Let me know your true feelings all of the time
Come my desert flower, come plant your seed
So I can eat the fruit coming from your tree
Relax

Ooh
Ooh-ooh

Intellectual essence, and all your finesse
You’re the finest freak in the great northwest
With your hot luscious tongue and your emotion lotion
Your strawberry lips, that’s your freak secret potion
With video cassettes of I Dream of Jeannie
You can sit in my spa with your two-piece bikini
Uhh

My lady Monica kicks
At Seward Park
Sir Mix-a-lot kicks
At Seward Park
Kashay kicks
At Seward Park
Jazzy D kicks
At Seward Park
The Wicked Angel kicks
At Seward Park
DJ Nasty Nes kicks
At Seward Park
Your dog wets a tree
At Seward Park
Your mama barbecues
At Seward Park
Spicy Shannon kicks
At Seward Park
Phantom of the Scratch kicks
At Seward Park
The Desert Sheik kicks
At Seward Park
Lawanda kicks
At Seward Park
I throw my Frisbee
At Seward Park
I steal your girlfriend
At Seward Park
I make love to you
At Seward Park
The Cadillacs ride
At Seward Park
The low riders roll
At Seward Park
Ain’t no dust
At Seward Park
The Central District kicks
At Seward Park
The south end kicks
At Seward Park
Everybody kicks
At Seward Park park park park park

–

Back 2 tha Old School

Occasionally over the years I would remember this song that played on the local radio when I was ten – Seward Park, by Sir Mixalot compatriot Maharaji, who was name-dropped in My Hooptie and Posse on Broadway.  The most recent time I remembered this, I went on a little tear through the internet for it, to no avail.  Seward Park is not on yewchoob, or sheisty downloading places.

But I did find the website of another Seattle rapper, Kid Sensation, and sent an inquiry about Maharaji, because these guys all knew each other.  Mr. Sensation’s publicist(?) got back to me, with a screen cap of a conversation with a Seattle DJ named Nasty Nes, who I realized I’d seen before in the video for Posse on Broadway, as well as a poster in Saap Fusion where I used to get my ube smoothie supply.  Used to!  Why don’t you have the ube smoothie anymore Saap?  wtf.

Anyway, Nasty said something like, that song was produced by Mix and never released, not even as a single, and even tho he has a tape, he can’t do anything about releasing it, outside of radio broadcasts.  His radio show is long gone, however, my boyfriend Mr. The Beast from Seattle is an internet wizard and found Nasty Nes radio shows, so you can hear Seward Park!  It’s just a lil tricky.  Go to https://www.rapattacklives.com/rapatt%20nightbeat/rapattshows/ and scroll down to January 8 2017.  See if you can figure out how to play it because it ain’t working for me on the site, my dude had to do some hack-the-planet junk to get a mp3 of it.  But yeah, it’s about 20 minutes and 5 seconds into this thing. I FUCKED UP!  Read the audio program backwards.  Call it 1 hour 40 minutes 56 seconds in.

The song isn’t exactly like I remember it.  The music is about the same, I didn’t remember how much of it was spent lusting after this Seward Park “freak.”  But the main thing I misremembered is that his voice isn’t quite as Humpty Hump as it was in my imagination.

And what about the man himself, Maharaji, aka Terence Matthews?  In May of this year he had brain surgery, but he seems to be doing fine now.  He’s on facebook and has some kind of affiliation with a food truck called Lumpia King, and a barbecue sauce business called We Be Smok’n LLC, but I don’t have facebook so the deets are a bit unclear to me.  With that, I return to my regularly scheduled eternal sighing.

u___u

–

a song about memory, kinda

500 Words on the Topic of Hellraisin’

My donors are so shy and unimposing.  I have a guess who one of them is, and if I’m right, he might like a word about cenobites…  Jeezis Shit, I just went searching for the origin of the quote “Sticks and stones may break my bones but whips and chains excite me” and the entire internet thinks Rihanna came up with it.  I heard that shit in junior high and I’m forty-seven years old, so … time travel?  I was thinking, maybe Andrew Dice Clay, but that didn’t come back with anything.  Why can I imagine it in Woody Allen’s voice?  Somebody help me.

Anyway, sexy menace.  Tearing your soul apart as a euphemism for the ecstasy of orgasm.  Chains and blades and hooks with a life of their own.  The black-eyed priests and nuns and less specifically gendered clergy of Hell, in sexy leather clothes, ready to give you the business.  You know you want it.

Something about the cenobites from Clive Barker’s Hellraiser (original story Hellbound Heart) is just sooo iconic.  They are gods among monsters.  I’d love to come up with something that hits the same way, but is it possible?  Is that kind of idea just lightning in a bottle?  Were they a Platonic Ideal just waiting in the realm of Forms, and Barker just happened to be the first guy to pluck them from that airy plane?

There’s the seeker.  Frank “Come to Daddy” Cotton and his ilk.  Somebody chasing a high that can only be found in transgression, and there’s never enough.  Then there’s the box.  Beautiful, elegant, small, activated by touch, by curiosity.  The cracks in the world, admitting the power of Leviathan.

Then there’s the Apostles of Pain.  The cenobites.  Love those guys.  I’m not into S&M, not really, but the look of it all?  Very cool.  I like cool things.  I like the aesthetics.  Total poser, I know.  I remember being in The Metro on Seattle’s Broadway buying leather accoutrement, and the clerk asked, “Stocking up for a good time?”  I felt so uncool.  Whaddyagonnado?

I guess I could seek the box, do that fiddly hand jive, unlock the lament configuration, and get my cool on.  Or my flesh off, whichever happens first.  I’ll be like the doctor in Hellraiser II, “To think, I hesitated!”

I came up with the core of a formula for trying to arrive at the power of Icon in monster design.  Come up with Sinister Themes of the monster, Visual Motifs, Colors, Shapes, Textures, Powers, and Places associated with them.  You can see some mention of it here.  I still haven’t successfully used it to come up with anything interesting.  Just never got around to it.  Maybe on another one of these posts.

For now, this post will just be a note of admiration for the creation of a master.  Maybe when I’ve sold my screenplay for Gun Lemurs and made a bank full of money, I can buy the time to pursue my own immolation.  To earn that charisma.  Wish me luck?

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Hierarchical Perspective

There’s this concept in art history called hierarchical perspective.  As I recall, before the rules of realistic perspective were worked out from observation of reality, artists would draw character’s and object’s size relationships based on how important they were.  Jesus lookin’ fifty feet tall next to a king who in turn dwarfs the peasantry, that sorta shit.

I wish I had a higher quality version of this music video.  I like it a lot.  The tiny mans always make me feel some type of way about art history.  Or maybe I’m just a giantess fetishist.