Nostalgia For An Age Yet To Come

J.K. Huysman once wrote that when the period in which one is "condemned to live" is dull and stupid (kinda like, um, now! - an age in which Reality TV rules the airwaves, Bush gets elected not once but twice, and oil addicts-in-denial are allowed to drive Hummers while lamenting our dependence on the Middle East and the high price of gasoline), "the artist is haunted, perhaps unknown to him, by a nostalgic yearning for another age."

I'm no artist, and I'm no schoolboy, but I know what I like...and lately I can relate. In the past several months I have repeatedly kept turning inward and backyard in my readings, viewing, and listening. Why, just this week I picked up two copies of the great British music mag MOJO, the ones devoted to The Who and The Kinks, both including 15-track CDs of contempo artists covering their respective Townshend and Davies-penned songs (the latter highlighted by Steve Wynn's psychedelic cover of Kinks rarity "This Strange Effect" and The Fountains of Wayne's power-poppy "Better Things.")

The week before, I picked up the Rolling Stones singles compilation box set, The London Years, because - though I am certainly on record as detesting Mick Swagger and the latter-day musical self-indulgence of these runner-ups (to the Beatles, of course, among other great British Invasion groups like the Who and Kinks, the latter of whom also enjoyed some longevity comparable to the Stones - 1961-1996 isn't too shabby a reign for the Kinks, eh?) - I grew up on those Stones R&B singles in the 60s and really dig some of those neglected nuggets on their B-sides like "Sad Day," "Off the Hook," and especially "The Singer Not the Song," which observes, nostalgically:

The same old places and the same old songs
We've been going there for far too long

Or not long enough...Yes, there's a certain security in the familiar, like Linus's blanket, for we aging Baby Boomers. My God, they've even brought Tab back (some say it never went away!), in the form of Tab Energy (3 times the caffeine plus a skinnier can designed to look more like a cannister of Red Bull, I guess).

And Hollywood movies? It's long been established that the Boomers have tried to remake every TV show of their youth, all to absolutely horrible affect, from Bewitched to Leave It To Beaver to Richie Rich to Little Rascals to Fat Albert, and so on and so on.

TV commercials, especially those for cars, seem to thrive on recovered musical memories of Boomer's formative years in the 60s and 70s. "Picture Book" by the Kinks drives that HP camera ad, anoter HP ad digs up late 70s New Wavers The Speedies performing "Let Me Take Your Foto," and so on. And how many damn ads use Iggy's "Lust For Life"?

This week, when I went to sell some CDs at CD Depot in Towson, I almost instantly invested in buying back my youth in the form of purchasingthe back catalogues of bands no longer in existence. I bought an Undertones singles compilation that I only had on vinyl, an Undertones DVD documentary produced by the late, great by John Peel, some Blondie records, a New York Punk compilation with tunes by lesser known scene makers like Mink Deville and The Mumps, and the great Wayne/Jayne County circa The Backstreet Boys.

The last couple of books I've read have been looks back too, a couple of Dylan bios, a Kinks book, two Rolling Stones bios, a Beatles book, and so on. I'm even thinking of going to see a Beatles tribute band play at Bobby B's in Essex!

When will it end? Will my last words be like Charles Kane's, as he mouths "Rosebud..."? Only for me it'll no doubt be Lenny Kaye's "Nuggets..." or "Rubber Soul."

Related Links:
Nostalgia Central

True Love = ))<>((

With that dreaded commercial holiday Valentine's Day fast approaching, I tried to think of some sentiments about the day that didn't make me gag. And all I could come up with, when musing about L-U-V, was a line from Miranda July's film You and Me and Everyone We Know. In this film about the search for meaningful relationships in a disconnected world, 7-year-old Robby (played by 7-year-old Brandon Ratcliff) is exploring Internet chatrooms and, in over his head with a flirtatious adult chatter, is asked what would like to do with her. Not knowing about sex, he thinks up something truly outlandish.

"You poop into my butt hole and I poop into your butt hole ... back and forth ... forever." - Robby

Robby signs off with the symbol of his sentiment: ))<>((

What a concept! Back and forth forever. What a way of saying "I love you"! Ah, from the mouth of babes come words of wisdom! Amazingly, the film's official Web site sells t-shirts with this infamous sentiment and symbol. My girlfriend likes to repeat this line as a testament to our undying commitment to each other (*blush*). I think that qualifies Miranda July's film as a romantic comedy.

All I know is, I find ))<>(( to be a far more passionate paen to the otherwise entirely arbitrary, shallow, unimaginative, and commerce-driven concept of Romance we celebrate with the holiday called "Valentine's Day".

Though I will, hypocritically, still go out and buy my significant other the requisite maudlin card, sweet saturated fats, and, possibly, even risque lingerie. Because, at heart, I am basically a coward.

))<>(( Related Links:
Buy the Shirt!
Back and Forth Forever (Great blog review of You and Me and Everyone We Know)

Say No To VD!: Anti-Valentine's Day Links
Be My Anti-Valentine
Alternative Sweet Hearts
Anti-Valentine's Day Central
12 Steps for Anti-Daters
Love Sucks Month

Ivan Brunetti: Heart of Darkness

I stopped by Atomic Books last night to pick up the long-awaited issue #4 of Schizo (published by Fantagraphics Books) by my favorite black-hearted comic artist, Ivan Brunetti. I actually met Mr. Brunetti years ago at DC's Small Press Expo, and interviewed him for my public access TV show, ATOMIC TV (Brunetti appeared with a John Goodman Flintstones movie edition doll that he had modified to look like a Mini-Brunetti, replete with glasses, beard and trademark vest!). Brunetti is brilliant, an incredibly well-read, well-versed, well-dressed, talented artist but the reason I love him is his heart of darkness. No one is as cynical, morose or despairing as Brunetti, who is even more miserable than Doestoyesky's Underground Man, more bitter than Ambrose Bierce, more loathing of humanity than Pol Pot He even told me that his name literally translates in Italian as "little shit-brown man." Yes, Brunetti is one of those textbook pessismists who sees Bobbitt's penis as being half off rather than half on. But he's also amazingly funny (albeit in an Abyss staring back at you kind of way)!

To understand Brunetti, one need only look at his worship of Charles Schulz, who he considered the "Brando of Comics". For everything you need to know about Mr. B is in Peanuts, the comic strip he calls an "epic haiku." In his mind it redefined newspaper strips by bringing a psychological depth and raw emotion to the funnies. In his front-cover strip for Schizo #4, "Wither Shermy?" (Shermy was an early Peanuts character and a boy of firsts - he spoke the first line of dialogue in the debut strip and played first base on the baseball team), Brunetti waxes poetic on Schulz and his strip, calling his humor "at once tender, melancholy, joyous and savage" and lauding Peanuts for its redefinition of the "gag strip" in which jokes are often replaced with "merely a lingering sense of pain or sadness." No better words could be used to describe Brunetti's own work. But in place of Charlie Brown ducking as a baseball flies over his head on the pitcher's mound or falling on his back as Lucy once again pulls the football away from him during a field kick, substitute a panel showing Ivan Brunetti blowing his brains out or dangling from a noose. And then having someone piss or shit on his decaying corpse! (Did I mention he's dark? Darker than Turkish coffee?)

Schizo #4 shows the depth of the despair in Brunetti's depressing world view. In Schizo issues 1-3 he obsessed over his soured marriage and hellish divorce while he eked out a living as a freelance illustrator and comic book artist. These days, he lives with his two cats and an antique mannequin named Iris while working as a Web designer (which he describes in his Website bio as being "a cruel irony of fate for this hermit-like, nostalgic Luddite"). And his relationship with the world has gotten even worse, if that's imaginable. His strips in Schizo #4 show the effects of his increasing withdrawal from the oustide world into the safety of the nostalgic past, with celebrity bio strips dedicated to such ill-fated, lonely, or misunderstood idols as Louis Brooks, Francois Hardy, Erik Satie, Val Lewton, Soren Kierkegaard, Piet Mondrian, and nasty French misanthrope Joris-Karl Huysmans.

The recurring motif throughout all the Schizo strips is the plight of the artist to die poor and unrecognized in today's cultural Babylon, the agony of unrequited love, the torment of over-analysis, and, as one strip is entitled, "The Horror of Simply Being Alive." Brunetti seems to be constantly at battle with himself, despising his "bumbling, corpulent mass," plagued by fear and self-doubt, unable to get through work days without "happy pills" or sleepless nights without alcohol or thoughts of suicide. Even when he writes that he finds himself having sex with "the most beautiful girl in the world," he can't enjoy the moment, whining "Of course, I dread the moment when the relationship will implode...better not let myself get too happy."

Don't worry Ivan, that'll never happen! Even though the word is that he's getting married again, it's doubtful that the institution of matrimony will change his world view (at least, not going by his starter marriage!).

I'm just a little afraid of how much Brunetti and I have in common. He loves stupid Sanrio products, the Marx Brothers, Francois Hardy, Frank Capra, and pornography just like me. But we draw the line at his obsession with Drew Barrymore. I can handle gag panels of characters guzzling AIDS-infected blood, but Drew worship? I'll never be that sick!

Related Links:
Ivan Brunetti's Website
Atomic Books
Fantagraphics Books
2002 Chicago Artists of the Year - Ivan Brunetti (City Pages)
Suicide Girls Interview
Comic Book Galaxy Interview