Harvey Pekar: 'Ordinary life is really complex stuff'

The thing about the late, great Harvey Pekar is that he saw day-to-day life could be as exciting as Batman battling the Joker. He was really the first to tap into the power of autobiographical comix, and the godfather of the work of dozens of creators like James Kochalka, Howard Cruse, Craig Thompson, Joe Matt and my ol' pal Jason Marcy. Everyone who came to realise that the ordinary world could be extraordinary.

American Splendor was kind of an ironic title for his life's work, but Pekar took us through his mundane world -- working as a file clerk, love and obsessions and cancer and pain, the whole shebang. He was an utterly unique, cranky and unpolished voice in comics at the time he began his work -- even Robert Crumb, whom Pekar collaborated with, tended toward more fantastical, surreal work rather than the grit and grunge of daily life.

I'll miss his cantankerous voice, but am glad he's left so much behind to enjoy. Start with one of the big thick American Splendor collections, and you can't go wrong with the superb 2003 movie, which in my mind is one of the most creative and thought-provoking comic book adaptations we've seen in this era of superhero overkill. Godspeed, Harvey.

The first Beatle to be 70 years old

Happy birthday, Richard Starkey, better known as the unstoppable Ringo Starr, who's 70 years of age today. It's hard to pictured that a Beatle is now 70 -- and yes, still hard to believe only two of them survived to senior citizenhood (Sir Paul is a mere 68).

It's a funny thing to be Ringo, of course. Even the most generous assessment would have to place him as the least artistically successful of the four Beatles, although for a brief spell circa 1970 he was actually the biggest-selling solo Beatle. But I don't think anyone would say tunes like "You're Sixteen" and "The No No Song" quite matched up with "My Sweet Lord" or "Imagine." And if it weren't for Pete Best's poor fortune, we'd probably not care about Ringo turning 70 today at all. Really, wasn't he just lucky?

None of that matters, though. The thing about Ringo is that he was the gawky Beatle, the odd Beatle, the charmingly rumpled big-nosed fella who was the underrated drumming engine behind the Beatles sound, the guy who's just been happy to be here all along, the Mr. Billy Shears who sang out of tune.

He's the everyman Beatle and our eyes among the Fab Four. Even his rather goofy solo work has the amiable Ringo charm to recommend it.

Everyone has a different pick for who their favorite Beatle was, but if you had to choose which one of the Beatles to be? I bet a lot of us would want to be Ringo, the drummer who endures, the guy whose entire life was changed by a band's roster switch. Happy birthday, Mr. Starr.

T-t-talking about my Pepsi generation

I held a can of Pepsi the other day and was staring at it for quite a while, because that's the sort of thing I do. I've drank a lot of Pepsis in my time... for many years, it was my caffeine fix of choice, until the sugar/chemicals/calories etc. finally led me to scale back considerably. Down here in New Zealand, they're quite hard to find, so when I bought a case of Pepsi the other week it was a special treat for myself, the most Pepsi (Pepsis? Pepsum?) I've had in years.

I discovered Pepsi as a kid and it's always remained my carbonated beverage of choice (I appreciate the occasional Fanta/orange soda, and went through a Mountain Dew Code Red phase for a spell). I'd suck them down like water for years and it probably explains my dental distress over time. At one point during a summer camp in the late 1980s I had well over a dozen Pepsis during one long, very sleepless day/night. ... You think you're invincible for the longest time and don't ever imagine something sold in a supermarket might not be "good" for you, I guess.

But like I said, I've scaled back. I eventually became addicted instead to the utterly horrible coffee pretty much all newspaper kitchens specialize in. Since I drink my coffee black, there's less calories/sugar than soda to deal with. I go months now between Pepsis.

The whole Coke Vs. Pepsi thing? Well, I can tolerate Coke in a pinch, but I've always found it more bitter, less crisp. I always sympathize with the underdog, so maybe that's why I've gone with Pepsi. It's been interesting to watch how perpetually No. 2 Pepsi can't leave its can and logo design alone. While Coke goes with what has worked for decades, Pepsi has changed what feels like constantly.

I remain an aluminum purist when it comes to soda. I will and have drank it out of plastic bottles, but my battered palate tells me there is indeed a difference in the taste of a Pepsi in a bottle and one in a can. There's something comforting about the icy blue metal chilled exterior, about putting your mouth gingerly on the edge of the shiny cylinder. The experience of chugging one of those always-too-large-a-serving plasticky bottles is never the same.

I'm relatively aware now of trying to have a good (or at least non-horrible) diet, so Pepsis are rare now. But still, to pop open that can with the familiar pffsssshht and grip that chilled object, to do the motions I've done hundreds of times before -- well, some things in life are worth indulging in sometimes.

Year in Music 2010 midterm report

So here we are halfway through the year 2010, my goodness, and I should take a look at a handful of the albums I've dug most midway through. I've been much more about the retro than the nouveau this year, digging into all sorts of 1960s/1970s stuff, far more Electric Prunes than Justin Bieber if you get what I'm saying.

But there's still some mighty cool stuff I'm listening to that isn't 40 years old, and more to come this year with albums from Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade, Of Montreal and many others I'm looking forward to. Here's 5 albums I'm digging from 2010:

LCD Soundsystem, This Is Happening

Sure, James Murphy wears that '70s Bowie/Iggy influence on his sleeve here, but the brooding, meandering techno-pop tunes on his third disc wriggle into your head and stay there. The introspective streak begun in "Sound of Silver" continues here with the marvellously cathartic 'Dance Yrself Clean' with its loud/soft pulse, while snarky singles like "Drunk Girls" continue along the parallel 'North American Scum' satire path. Dance music with a wink.

Beck's Record Club #4, Kick

Not available in a record store near you, this online-only offering is the latest of Beck and an all-star crew's free-wheeling cover treks through their favorite albums. They've done great Velvet Underground, Leonard Cohen and Skip Spence ones so far, but my personal favorite so far is their take on INXS "Kick," which gives that slick and shiny synth-pop album a new veneer of classic cool. "Kick" is the sound of 1987 for me and has some fine underrated pop tunes -- and it's nifty to see Beck and Co. do a loose, sprawling take on it. Dig around for the MP3s if you can find them online.

MGMT, Congratulations

Their debut album "Oracular Spectacular" had some great pop hits, like the inescapable "Kids." But they've taken a swerve with this dizzying shambles of an album that is a reactionary response to the fame of "Kids." It's not full of "hooks," but rather a kind of tapestry of psych-rock that dances around the edge of pretentiousness. It takes a few listens to get into the almost willfully obscure groove but I find myself coming back to this one a lot for its spacey appeal.

New Pornographers, Together

For some reason this fifth album isn't being praised quite as much as this alt-pop supergroup's other discs, but I'm still really enjoying its mix of hooks and bombast. It doesn't break the mold, but the dueling qualities of Neko Case's booming voice, Dan Bejar's snide asides and A.C. Newman's easygoing optimism still works for me. The Pornographers have massaged their style into a smooth formula, but it's not worn out just yet.

Roky Erickson, True Love Cast Out All Evil

Erickson's tale is well-known in rock circles -- hellfire singer of the psych-rock band The 13th Floor Elevators, he descended into a morass of drug and mental problems, including a lengthy spell institutionalized. Now in his mid-60s, he's found a kind of inner peace and teamed with alt-country act Okkervil River to make a beautiful, ravaged yet kind-hearted album looking back at this chaotic life. While it may lack the surreal, haunted-by-demons sting of his finest work, this is still a great, wistful coda to a strange trip of a career.

Biggest disappointment so far:

Peter Gabriel, Scratch My Back.

The man goes a decade or so between albums for this? A limp collection of covers, done with a bland orchestral backing. While Gabriel's voice is still gruff and terrific, there's a dour, labored feel to this entire enterprise, with even the world music textures that colour his best work lacking. While some work, like Arcade Fire's "My Body Is A Cage," when you suck all the joy out of Paul Simon's "Boy In The Bubble" you've messed up somewhere. It's depressing, and makes me wonder if he's "lost it" for good and if we'll ever see a follow-up to 2002's "Up."

I can't run but I can walk much faster than this

So I haven't been writing as much lately, as I've been running for my life. Well, walking really rather fast.

We finally bit the bullet and bought a treadmill a couple of weeks back, as I try exploring that foreign concept called "exercise." Walking is generally my favorite way to ease the stress a bit, but between early working hours, minding the boy after school and now, winter and darkness by 5pm, it's hard to fit it in, and not at the sustained pace I need to lose some weight. Now we can go for a walk whenever we want, in the scenic environs of our humble garage.

And once you get used to the treadmill, it's not bad at all. You have to keep up with it, in a way that forces you to sweat, but you can also lose yourself in your thoughts or some music for a spell. I've been going for a fast walk on it mostly -- gingerly building up speed. I've been having a bit of a sore back because I'm not quite stretching enough, but for brief (very brief) stints I've been managing a wee spastic jog as well.

Truth is, I'll be hitting 40, dear god in heaven, in a little over a year, and things don't bounce back like they once did. For my first 30 years or so I didn't have to do much of anything to maintain myself, and I was in pretty decent health. But then I had an emergency appendectomy in 1999, and boy, I tell you it's been all downhill since then. I'm fortunate I'm still in relatively good shape considering my near-total lack of exercise in recent years, but I could still stand to lose a good 10-20 pounds. Time to do something about it before it's more than that.

Brevity is the soul of something or other

...Sorry, not a real post, but a few of you might find this other blog post interesting as it talks a bit about what I'm doing in my day job, as a visiting US journalism professor interviewed me and visited my workplace:
A visit to New Zealand’s biggest sub-hub

Superheroes I Love No. 3: Doctor Fate

Sometimes, when it comes to superheroes, it's all in the name and the look. Everyone made up their own goofy superheroes when they were kids, combining two words or more to make up awesome-sounding good guys and bad guys -- Robotron! Mister Amazing! Super Ant! Whatever it is, a good name can help make a hero cooler. And so it is with today's Superhero That I Love, Doctor Fate.

Who: Dr. Fate, a sorcerer of immense power who first appeared in More Fun Comics in 1940, and who's been bopping about in DC Comics in one form or another ever since, mostly as a member of the Justice Society of America.

What: An archaeologist's son, Kent Nelson discovers a mystical helmet possessed by the spirit of an ancient Egyptian wizard, and becomes all magical and stuff.

Catchphrase: Who summons Fate?

Why I dig: This one's simple, really -- it's the name and awesome costume. I think the visual of Fate's gleaming golden helmet, streamlined blue and gold costume and cape are just Superhero Classic 101 -- it sticks in your head. Fate's typically been played as one of the big guns in DC comics, right about up there with Superman in terms of power. He shows up, speaks in mystical epigrams, and battles forces of dark and mysterious power. I think maybe it was this sense of mystery that attracted me to Dr. Fate -- and the more routine his adventures become, the less appealing he is. He's had quite a variety of solo series in the 70 years since his creation, but few lasted too long and he's never quite been "A-list". Frankly I think the character works best in tandem with other superheroes.

There have been a few good runs, including his longest lasting solo series, the 41-issue "Dr. Fate" series in the late 1980s that at least at first managed to combine Fate with a fair bit of humour and still respect the character's mystery. Theres also a nice Walt Simonson run and a Keith Giffen miniseries that had some great abstract art. But honestly, since the 1990s Fate's had a rough run of it, being replaced about 10 times (today's Doctor Fate is apparently the original's great-nephew -- really?) The character's nadir was an utterly infamous mid-1990s run where Fate was reinvented as a big hairy guy with a knife. I don't know if the character's full potential has ever been met. Dr. Fate has never quite gotten the "ultimate" story such a good-looking gent deserves. But sometimes it's just enough to stand around looking cool, I suppose.

Why Lady Gaga works for me

Most Top 40 pop music these days tends to make my teeth itch, and I've never made it through more than 30 seconds of watching "American Idol." But I have to admit, I do kinda dig Lady Gaga.

I'm not like gonna follow her around and stalk her or anything, but I do admit to owning her debut album The Fame Monster and paying far more attention to her than I have to the Katy Perrys and Rhiannas of the world. Gaga has managed that trick of combining a sex-soaked image with bouncy hummable tunes without looking like a flailing lost child. Just google Gaga wardrobe and you'll see a kaleidoscope of bizarrely brazen outfits that make her look like a Martian visitor, a post-millennial love child of David Bowie and Freddie Mercury.

It doesn't hurt that Gaga does put out some decent tunes amid all the spectacle. "Bad Romance," with its rollicking hook and thumping insistence, is as good a single as I've heard in a while, with a video that manages to channel none other than Marilyn Manson in the service of a pop jingle. "Telephone" is another cheekily overwrought club anthem, with Beyonce pitching in for a song far more memorable than anything I've ever heard her do solo. "Paparazzi" manages to take a narrator from the world's most annoying profession and make them a wee bit sympathetic.

The former Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (imagine that on an album cover!) has got a hint of David Bowie about her (although her music is light-years behind Bowie's innovations, of course), in that you're never entirely sure who's the character and who's the performer. Her increasingly elaborate, over-the-top videos show her trying to lay claim to that elusive King of Pop trophy (a nine-minute saga for the "La Isla Bonita"-lite piffle "Alejandro"? Egad!)

Gaga's main flaw is that her music lacks any real emotional weight -- when Bowie sang "Five Years" or "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide," you believed him, but when Gaga sings about what a bummer it is her cell phone doesn't work in the club, well, yeah, I suppose it might speak to the young folk but it doesn't really move you, does it? But it's pop. I suppose "Thriller" was a pretty darn stupid song when you just read the lyrics, too.

Gaga has embraced the inherent artifice, the fakery, of being a modern pop star, rather than trying to pretend she's "keeping it real." That in and of itself seems a bit like a breath of fresh air in the age of Auto-tuned insincere "Idol" aspirations. Whether she can sustain it for the long haul isn't certain; she's just 24, after all, and it's a fine line between being a star and being overexposed. Pop does eat itself.

Britney, for instance, immediately became uninteresting when her personal life mattered more than her music. I've enjoyed a Britney tune or two (especially "Toxic," a great James Bond theme song wanna-be) but she's such a tabloidy mess that I'd never classify myself as a "fan."

If Lady Gaga can come up with music that truly matches her knack for spectacle, it could be something. But if Gaga is smart, she'll also stay behind the masks for as long as she can. We don't want to know about her secret travails. We just want to dance, dance, dance.

Things that cheer me up today

Ah, it's Queen's Birthday weekend. Yes, that's right, I'm officially a subject of Her Majesty (a factoid which never fails to amaze this proud American) and this is the time we pay honour to her 502 years on the throne. In tribute to HRH, let's talk about the finer things in life...

* That courtesy of the Queen, we can now call him SIR Patrick Stewart. Engage!

• Winter may be irksome, but y'know, we don't get 8 feet of snow in our yard like we did in Northern California.

• That four+ years after buying this MacBook I finally got around to setting up a wi-fi connection. Freedom!

• The boy doing a dead-on Iggy Pop impersonation, without clothes on just before bedtime. When he's a teenager the video goes up on YouTube. Or whatever tube we have then.

• Nick Tosches' biography of Dean Martin, "Dino: Living High In the Dirty Business of Dreams" -- Martin's an entertainer I've never really cared about, but Tosches' apocalyptic Lester Bangs-meets-Cormac McCarthy prose really puts a jolt into this tale of fame and folly.

• Re-reading Brian Bendis's "Alias" series and being reminded that he really can be a pretty fine writer when he abandons his tropes and quirks.

• Woody Harrelson in "Zombieland." Redneck awesomeness.

• It's a little "Cathy," but warm cats purring on your chest.

• LCD Soundsystem's burbly, brooding new album 'This Is Happening.'

• Matt Smith as the new volatile Dr. Who, and even more so, chirpy redhead Amy Pond the companion.

• Hot coffee and waffles on a rainy Sunday morning.

Things that annoy me today

• Winter, which is like all of two days old already.

• New comic books shooting up from US$2.99 to US$3.99 in price. Yeah, that'll help a struggling industry. Already paring back my monthly reads list to about as low as it's been since the mid 1990s "Dark Ages" of gimmicky comics.

• That despite trying to more or less stay off the Internet for several days I didn't entirely avoid a spoiler about the "Lost" finale in the week between when it aired in the US and when it aired downunder.

• People who go on about the idiotic "celebrities die in threes rule" every time a couple famous people die. People famous and not die every single day and it's a sad thing, but you can find whatever pattern you want in it. Celebs die in sixes? Three people born in 1980 died this year, it's a curse? Sure, why not.

• That MGM has managed to screw up its finances so badly that both the next James Bond and the "Hobbit" movies (set to be filmed in New Zealand) are being delayed.

• How I didn't try to grow really really long hair back when I had a full head of hair.

• "Special edition" CDs that come out like 6 months after you first bought the CD and make you annoyed you didn't wait longer for the extra tracks. (Yes, I still buy CDs, as I am a living fossil.)

• Spoken word tracks on albums. They really don't work unless you're Bob Dylan.

• News organizations that continue to write about the Internet in a vaguely condescending, elitist tone, when that ship has sailed long ago and it might be good to get with the program rather than fight change.

• How ridiculously expensive and small in quantities over-the-counter medicine such as Tylenol is in NZ compared to the US.

• "Reboots" for movie franchises. For every solid move like "Casino Royale" you get a bunch of needless "Nightmare on Elm Street" remakes. Why does "Spider-Man" need a reboot, set for 2012, just 10 years after the first Sam Raimi movie? Ugh.

Coming soon: The flip side.