12
Breeding Lileks Out Of The Dead Land
Like hell’s mouth torn asunder, like a sudden thaw in the mountains of madness, the smoking hole left by the terrorists of September 11th, 2001, has unleashed all manner of horrors upon the world — the USA-PATRIOT Act, the Iraq War, and the literary career of Charlie Daniels. But perhaps no nightmare that flits on bat wings from that ruined waste has caused more misery than that which crawled into the ear of James Lileks and convinced him to say everything he was thinking.
Above: “Oh, yes, you will aid me in beating up all the hippies! So says…THE LEADER!”
As an inveterate Lileks-watcher, the thing that’s fascinating to me isn’t his post-9/11 ascendant conservativism. The liberal-bashing, the knee-jerk opposition to anyone who suggests the war isn’t going that well, the hopping around in a blind panic like Bill Paxton in Aliens every time an Arab does something in public — that’s all great, but you can get it better in other places, often with a free fifth of drugstore tequila. No, the thing that’s fascinating to me is that his governor has been completely removed since the second those planes hit the towers, and while he once felt content to allow his ultra-reactionary cultural tastes to come out when discussing that horrible crazy rap music or how baseball players made too much money, now he has a built-in audience of ideologically-driven dingalings who will pretty much listen to anything he has to say about anything. Freed from the necessity to be funny, clever, or even well-informed, he now feels free to give voice to his every little complaint about our culture, and permit full expression to that big chunk of his brain that lives in a world that started to go to hell when the first teenager mouthed off after V-J Day, was in in a rapid state of disrepair when Maynard G. Krebs first appeared on television, and ever since the appearance of the first hippie, has pretty much been a write-off, slowly circling the drain and waiting for al-Q’aeda to finally finish it by pouring the Drano of nuclear terrorism all over Seattle.
You can never predict what’s going to set Jimbo off on one of his darn-kids-get-off-my-lawn moments. Insolent stockboy at Target? Inoperative skee-ball machine at Chuck E. Cheese? A reminder that the 1970s happened? This time around, it’s spotting a piece of trash art at a poker store in a shopping mall. Now, a lot of people don’t really expect much from the kind of art you would buy at a poker store in a shopping mall. Even fewer people would be inspired to go on a pointless, clueless jeremiad about our cultural degradation by the kind of art you would buy at a poker store in a shopping mall. But there’s only one James Lileks. And he knows what must be done.
Reminds me of a picture I saw in a poker store at the Mall: one of those Iconic Film Star mash-ups. The most famous, I suppose, has Elvis and Marilyn and James Dean at Hopper’s “Nighthawks” diner. This one had all of the above, in a room around a pool table, with Bogart. Ack. Movie Bogie would have slapped James Dean around until he gave up the whereabouts of the Fat Man.
For you see, Bogart, he was a real tough guy, a creature of that nobler time before James Lileks was born when everything was better. James Dean, he was a rebel, a counterculture icon, the sort of greasy character that appeals to…teenagers. (As opposed to Bogey, who just married teenagers.) James Lileks, as we have seen proven over and over again, knows three things, and one of them is that anything that teenagers like is awful and will be the ruin of us all
We think they all belong together because they’re dead and they’re cool. But cool has a hierarchy. James Dean is cool because he was twitchy and TROUBLED, MAN, then dead.
Whenever Lileks uses the all-caps followed by the word “man”, he is mocking the values of anyone to the left of Father Coughlin, because hippies and punks and snotty teenage rebels like James Dean are all just sad that they found out Santa isn’t real. Lest you think I exaggerate for humorous effect, I direct you to this classic column.
Bogart is cool because he sent Mary Astor up the river and did what he did because that’s what you’re supposed to do when your partner gets killed, and he married Bacall and drove fast and smoked himself into a grave. He knew who he was and he had a good laugh and he had a good ride. James Dean shoots a Nazi in a movie, he can sit at the same table. But he’s more relevant to our time than Bogart. James Dean would be a star in a movie about Iraq war atrocities. I’d say Bogart would have turned the role down, but the idea of making that movie in the middle of the Duration – well, different times. Different culture. Different people.
Now, let’s leave aside the whole Iraq-is-just-like-WWII thing (I’d love to have that conversation with Jimbo, and ask him what he thinks about what America had accomplished in Europe and Asia by 1947 compared to what we’ve accomplished in Iraq by 2007, but that’s another entry). And let’s leave aside the I-said-it-so-it-must-be-true jibe about how Americans today are weak spineless traitors who make movies about how we shouldn’t be allowed to torture people instead of buying war bonds like they did back in the Greatest Generation. Let’s instead focus on how completely fucking ignorant pop-culture expert James Lileks is of the subject which he chose to introduce.
We could talk about his bizarre appropriation of Humphrey Bogart as some kind of iconic patriotic figure who spent the entire 1940s killing Japs and Ratzis onscreen; that would be fun. We might thus discover that Jimbo appears to have confused Bogie with John Wayne, and that he does not seem to have noticed that in Bogart’s two biggest WWII-era roles, in Casablanca and The African Queen, he plays a guy who basically goes out of his way to avoid the Nazis altogether, even collaborating with them at times, until his private morality forces him to make a dangerous decision. We could talk about how, far from playing lily-white two-fisted tough guys, Bogart in fact specialized in playing somewhat sinister figures who were morally shady, frequently compromised, straitjacketed even by their own codes, men like the deeply cynical, cop-hating Philip Marlowe and the coldly mercenary, impenetrable Sam Spade, who does the right thing in the end for all the wrong reasons. We could even talk about how Bogie was a political liberal, a man who organized a group of open resistance to the McCarthy hearings at a time when it was highly dangerous to do so, a self-described “Democrat in politics, Episcopalian by upbringing, dissenter by disposition”.
But instead, let’s talk about that dirty filthy homo fleabag proto-hippie, James Dean. When he shoots a Nazi in a movie, THEN he can sit at the same table as Bogart! But not until then!
Unfortunately, Dean died when he was 24. It is remotely possible that, had his film career lasted 36 years like Bogart’s instead of four, he just might possibly have starred in a movie where he shot Nazis. Lileks would no doubt object; probably he would have starred in movies where he joined the Communist party, smoked reefer, and sass-mouthed his mother. Oddly enough, though, James Dean actually DID appear in a few movies other than the three in which he starred, as well as some TV shows, and guess what? His very first film, Fixed Bayonets, featured him playing a G.I. in the Korean War, who, if he didn’t actually shoot godless Reds, at least presumably wanted to. He also appeared in an episode of CBS Television Workshop and an astonishing two episodes of Kraft Television Theatre as a G.I. in the Second World War who shoots Nazis, but that doesn’t count because it was on television. So the point remains: James Dean was a harbinger of our modern era’s dirty filthy treacherous hatred of manly patriotism, not an actor, and if he had lived, he would never, ever have shot a Nazi in a movie. James Lileks knows this to be true just as he knows that beloved country singer Johnny Horton is a virulent racist. If first impressions weren’t always right, you wouldn’t have them, would you?
ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said,
September 12, 2007 at 6:05
James Dean would have hated Target, just as virulently as I hate being in the Sadly, No! free speech zone.
Leonard Pierce said,
September 12, 2007 at 6:15
The other two things that Lileks knows, by the way, is that hippies spoiled everything, and that some day terrorists will nuke Seattle.
Ripley said,
September 12, 2007 at 6:35
Wait until he finds out they’ve published Kerouac’s original ’scroll’ of ‘On the Road’ as a 50th anniversary tribute. There’ll be blood in the streets, brother…. blood in the motherfuckin’ streets…
23 skidoo, kids!
Ivytree said,
September 12, 2007 at 6:45
1 The African Queen is about WWI. No Nazis.
2. Bogart made lots of WWII movies, many with an obvious populist, liberal bent — All through the Night, Sahara, and Action in the North Atlantic spring to mind.
3. Lileks is still an idiot.
Some Guy said,
September 12, 2007 at 6:57
How about we discuss Indiana Jones, who shot Nazis all the time, BUT was a college (Ivy League?) professor, and spent a lot of time in a-rayb countries, and had Arabic friends. Yeah, he found the Holy Grail, but he also slept around with women, both parties were un-married (Republicans are against that still, right? Or is just the wanton gay sex?).
You know else had a hard-on for shooting Nazis? Stalin. Where’s he land on that Macho Americana scale?
D. Sidhe said,
September 12, 2007 at 7:00
What the hell is a poker store?
Gundamhead said,
September 12, 2007 at 7:01
But…Bogart MUST be conservative! He wears a tie and a fedora and his movies are in black and white! Everyone knows liberals are grungy hippies and pointy-headed academics who are always filmed in Technicolor! And they love Nazis. Thats why they won’t shoot them.
lobbey said,
September 12, 2007 at 7:06
What the hell is a poker store?
particularly one in a mall?
objectivelypro said,
September 12, 2007 at 7:08
What the hell is a poker store?
If it ain’t dogs sittin’ around the table then it ain’t art.
Scott C. said,
September 12, 2007 at 7:14
Your descriptions of the archetypal Bogie charaters are spot on (and I was waiting for someone to remind Jimmy of the anti-blacklist group that Bogart helped to organize during the height of the HUAC hearings) with two minor exceptions:
The African Queen is set during World War I, with the misfits played by Katherine Hepburn and Bogart taking on the Kaiser’s, rather than Hitler’s, kriegsmarine. And I don’t think Marlowe can be legitimately described as “cop-hating.” He chose to live by his own moral code, a luxury that the police don’t enjoy, but as far as I can recall, Chandler’s iconic P.I. only ever expressed distate for crooked cops, the thuggish sort who staffed the Bay City force, and would take a payoff to look the other way. Spade, on the other hand, displayed a consistent, and fairly naked contempt for the police.
Otherwise, you’re exactly right. It’s amazing that someone as steeped in the pop culture of the first half of the 20th century as Lileks is can’t seem to grasp that Bogart, like Dean, was the quintessential outsider of his generation. From Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest to Spade and Rick, Harry Morgan, and Charlie Allnut, Bogart excelled when essaying faintly disreputable characters who chose to live by their wits on the fringe of society. Bogart was, in many ways, the guy Dean’s characters could easily have grown up to be — wounded men whose cynical exteriors couldn’t quite disguise the idealism within. What’s he’s not, and never would be, is a guy who would take a Macanudo out onto the lawn so his wife won’t complain about the smell, and stand there readingThe Weekly Standard by the glow of the porchlight.
vetiver said,
September 12, 2007 at 7:14
When was Gnat born? 1999? 2000? At some point, Lileks must face the unwelcome fact that the apple of his eye and the fruit of his loins is destined to become a Midwestern teenager—which leads to only one thing.
Starting in 2012, there should be a Twin-Cities initiative to distribute goo-bags (FEMA tarp, duct tape, and squeegee) to all residents, just in case they’re caught near ground zero when the fivehead goes critical.
steve EVfuture said,
September 12, 2007 at 7:20
I always understood that Bogart’s character in Casablanca was playing it apolitically, but was actually very left-leaning and had a history of involvement in the Spanish Civil War fighting the Fascists. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen it, but that’s how I remember it.
D. Sidhe said,
September 12, 2007 at 7:33
Thank you, objectivelypro. Never heard the phrase before.
Steve T. said,
September 12, 2007 at 7:38
Umm, I’ve been reading Lileks’s “Bleat” column off and on for several years. It’s always been fluff, and I’ve never really taken it seriously. By his own statements, even Lileks doesn’t take it all that seriously.
Are you maybe taking it too seriously?
The Mechanical Eye said,
September 12, 2007 at 7:49
Lileks has a talent, but it’s constantly threatened by his pseudo-cultural political babbling, which instantly turns him into an 80 year old woman nattering on about baggy pants and how much that Sikh grocery store makes her think about 9/11.
I actually don’t mind the guy who gently mocks old newspaper and radio ads, but damn does he have to remind us what a prissy, scared Babbitt he can be while he reviews movies from a genre famous for its world-weary cynicism and apolitical scheming?
Most film noir protagonists would kick his ass over his chest-beating about Nazis and terrorists.
DU
Deschanel said,
September 12, 2007 at 8:04
Ach, that Lileks character. Tremendously saddening it was- I’d actually enjoyed his retrophilia,- and he opens up about how dirty gay hippies ruined everything.
Not long ago, he described going to an exclusiive right-wing dinner at a golf club, ate filet mignon, and they all stood to sing “God Bless America”. Fine. But he described it as if he were some persecuted minority, fleeing oppression. I’m not sure what storm troopers he was expecting..
And of course he loathes James Dean: unnatractive, uncharismatic men often resent attractive, charismatic men, and sometimes go to lengths to pathetically disparage them.
After all, it’s not like James Dean can respond, right? Even better for a wimpy jerk.
Lileks is such a bourgeouis poodle, in terror at his loss of masculinity. Clinical.
Pinko Punko said,
September 12, 2007 at 8:16
From “fluff” to arch-reactionary propaganda about non-existent happier times the way things used to be is a slope that Lileks is fastly slipping down. He’s a chunderloaf, this should be clear.
Anne Laurie said,
September 12, 2007 at 8:51
I assumed Lileks was just bitter that Garrison Keillor beat him to the “wry retro-referencing Minnosotan humorist” slot… it can’t be easy when one’s best material is greeted with “Not bad, but of course it ain’t no ‘News from Lake Woebegone’.” Then he got overinvested in his daughter, which after 9/11 morphed into his current paranoia about anybody not eligible for membership in the AARP, or the DAR.
Fifty years from now, he’s going to be the exemplar of the kind of “Gosh, what well-intentioned, self-satisfied dorks populated our grandparents’ world!” japery that he’s tried to claim as his personal bailiwick. Not to mention serving as an entry in the lengthy case against American self-involvement as a mild form of insanity…
Stayg\Glassy said,
September 12, 2007 at 9:00
Wow. Long time reader. First time comment. Like Ace, I’m a little drunk tonight, but had to comment.
You powned Lileks tonight. No doubt. I probably spelled that wrong.
But as a Minneapolis resident, and Star Tribune reader and fan, I gotta say…this guy is an absolute nobody up here. In fact, in the face of all the layoffs and buyouts at the Strib, (not to mention the firings/fallout at our only anti-establishment weekly City Pages) the fact that this guy still has a high paying job is a crime.
Hopefully your response to his latest inanity will be part of the tidal wave that splashes him out of work. What a waste.
a different brad said,
September 12, 2007 at 9:11
The crucial question here remains unanswered; what the hell is a poker store?
To which I’ll non sequituriorily add; what the hell was so great about taking almost a decade to realize the Nazis were bad and should be stopped?
Stan said,
September 12, 2007 at 9:11
It gets even better today. Seems that a bunch of big ol’ meanies took him to task for yesterday’s Bleat by interrupting the 9/11 Scaredycat-fest he initiated over on the Strib blog.
Then he goes on to say how misunderstood he is, or something. It’s hard to tell what point he’s trying to make, because he obscures it with so many strawmen.
M. Bouffant said,
September 12, 2007 at 9:54
James Dean is cool because he was twitchy and TROUBLED, MAN, then dead.
What, Bogart was never twitchy? Cap’t. Queeg, as the easiest example. Unless by “twitchy” Ol’ Dimple-Chin is making some sort of snide reference like, “Well, he was one of those sissy fellers.”
Movie Bogie would have slapped James Dean around.
That’s right Jimmy-boy. “Movie Bogie.” There’re all fucking movies, w/ actors in them, who are reciting (or reading from cue cards) lines written by writers, and who are told how to recite & move & act by directors. And what you think you know about their personal lives has been orchestrated by publicists & willing to go along celebrity journalists.
So give it the fuck up already.
Qetesh the Abyssinian said,
September 12, 2007 at 10:01
Steve EVFuture: I have vague inklings of that very same Spanish Civil War side to the Casablanca character (could I have been more incoherent? Hmmm, let’s try).
Vetiver: you mean someone actually named their child, their very own flesh and blood, after an insect? That’s a little strange.
Is he going to name the next sprog after shellfish? Something with an exoskeleton, perhaps? Or something even lower down the evolutionary ladder? Trilobite would be a good name for a girl. Or Protozoa.
How about Slime Mould?
Lesley said,
September 12, 2007 at 10:15
Is it just me or do the wingnuts have that diabolical criminally insane look?
D. Sidhe said,
September 12, 2007 at 10:16
I believe Gnat is a nickname. Which is fair enough. Does the kid really have to grow up with the whole world knowing who her dad is?
Herr Doktor Bimler said,
September 12, 2007 at 10:33
Movie Bogie would have slapped James Dean around
Unless we’re talking his Fred Dobbs role, who would have stopped twitching just long enough to shoot James Dean in the back.
Jillian said,
September 12, 2007 at 11:38
I know there’s been a general call to move on from McAddled-mania, but I can’t let this particular one go…..
That book by Jon Chait? The one that on Monday she claimed she hadn’t read?
On Tuesday she wrote a review of it.
I am a fast reader. One summer when I was fourteen and totally bored because I lived in the middle of nowhere and I didn’t have anything worth reading in the house, I grabbed one of my mom’s Stephen King novels (yeah, yeah, I know - they suck. I was fourteen and bored). I made my way through the seventeen hundred pages in a single day of reading.
Despite that, I don’t think I could read an entire wonkfest on taxation policy AND write a review of it in the small hours between the end of September 10 and the start of September 11.
She must be some kind of wunderkind.
Krassen said,
September 12, 2007 at 12:44
Huh??? So the old and tried John Wayne - Marlon Brando juxtapose is not good enough anymore and we have make up something out of thin air about Bogie/Dean?
Since I brought it up, as far as visionary/prophetic movie icons go Brando is simply unsurpassable, so relevent today… Take a look at this for example:
“Everybody ought not to turn his back on the phenomenon of hatred in whatever form it takes. We have to find out what the anatomy of hatred is before we can understand it. We have to make some attempt to put it into some understandable form. Any kind of group hatred is extremely dangerous and much more volatile than individual hatred. Heinous crimes are committed by groups and it’s all done, of course, in the name of right, justice. It’s John Wayne. It’s the way he thinks. All the crimes committed against Indians are not considered crimes by John Wayne.”
Also, remember that interview in 1992 with Larry King, he was talking about global warming years before it became the “thing”…
Harry Cheddar said,
September 12, 2007 at 13:00
“Movie Bogie would have slapped James Dean around.”
And real life James “The Human Ashtray” Dean mighta enjoyed it.
Jason said,
September 12, 2007 at 13:34
Fans of his culture-bashing might note he used the term “mash-up” which I suppose is more timely than, say, “bricolage.” Maybe he’s trying to get ahead of the game by transferring all expressions of cultural angst from the professoriate to Gregg Gillis. Next: Lileks on how IP law protected and promoted the development of nifty vintage toasters
Wally Whateley said,
September 12, 2007 at 14:03
Now I can’t stop thinking of James Lileks as Elisha Cook Jr. in “The Maltese Falcon.” He’s a little lamb full of threats and thuggery and tough-guy posturing, but he always looks like he’s about to cry, and he folds like a cheap suit when the going gets tough.
Pere Ubu said,
September 12, 2007 at 14:20
Blogwhore:
Our secular freedoms under attack from medivalist fundimentalists!
Far as Lileks goes, it seems he’s funny when he’s not being a paranoid tittie-baby. But with the group he’s hanging out with these days, paranoia is Special of The Day every day on their menu.
Doc Nebula said,
September 12, 2007 at 14:23
You guys and Roy Edroso. Every once in a while, y’all just have to empty your silos at chowder-rangers like Lileks. You’re always hilarious when you do it, and frankly, I enjoy it, but even more frankly, it’s beneath you.
It’s like The Mighty Thor is out hurtling around the Manhattan skyline and he sees The Leap-Frog robbing a jewelry store and WHOOSH!!! ZIP!!! HERE COMES MJOLNIR MOTHERFUCKER!!! Sure, it probably happened at least once at some point during the Silver Age (it would sure explain why we never saw the Leap Frog much after around 1970 or thereabouts) but you can’t imagine Jack Kirby or Gene Colan or John Buscema ever wasting panel space on it. It would be, like, “Gimme the jewels, >sproing sproingKLAAA-BWAAMMO!bad.”
So you know, what I’m sayin’ is, absolutely, Lileks deserves it, but honestly, he’s a rodent and he’s kinda beneath you guys.
Leonard Pierce said,
September 12, 2007 at 14:35
Dude, Gene Colan created Leap-Frog.
Incontinentia Buttocks said,
September 12, 2007 at 14:40
Dept. of Unfortunate OT Crap I Didn’t Know:
From Megan McArdle’s bio at TPMCafe:
Now apparently all the Atlantic bloggers get this title, but somehow it adds insult to injury.
Cangrejero said,
September 12, 2007 at 14:50
Difficult for wingnuts: making consistent arguments.
Easy for wingnuts: lumping every single concept you disagree with into a single category (’the left’) so that it seems like your own arguments are consistent, and not the lumped together half-thoughts of an idiot.
(Not to get all Joe Morgany with all the consistent talk.)
Gary Ruppert said,
September 12, 2007 at 14:52
The fact is, it is the liberals who can make no consistent arguments, theirs are only selfinterested appeals to be morally permissive and biased against freedom.
bl0ndej0n said,
September 12, 2007 at 14:56
Jillian - even if she hadn’t told us the day before that she didn’t even own a copy of the book yet, it would be obvious that it was a bullshit review of a book she hadn’t read.
Four paragraphs of an anecdote about Larry Summers, one vague paragraph accusing Chait of being too “partisan” and throwing out all contrary evidence, and about nine paragraphs about what she thinks about tax cuts. I had to scan through a few times to find any reference to the book all, and there is not a single mention of a specific claim that she couldn’t deduce from the title.
Someone was passed along through college, eh?
Totally Straight Right Wing Guy said,
September 12, 2007 at 14:57
Mr. Lileks exudes a certain musky masculinity that is completely lacking in your average leftist Islamomexicans who populate certain “progressive” blogs. The fact of the matter is that Mr. Lileks has firm biceps and manly thighs, thereby making him the perfect representative for patriotic, totally heterosexual Americans who enjoy nothing more than spending extended periods of time … *squirt*
Uh, whoops.
objectivelypro said,
September 12, 2007 at 14:58
The crucial question here remains unanswered; what the hell is a poker store?
I found this . 5 locations in MN. If you poke around you’ll see the page with the picture Lilek’s bleating on about.
Simba B. said,
September 12, 2007 at 15:09
Ah, who could forget Lileks and the “manhole of glory”, TSRWG?
D. Sidhe said,
September 12, 2007 at 15:11
Okay, FakeGary gets style points. That was hilarious. I demand a reposting of the MC Escher Lego pic just as tribute to that.
D. Sidhe said,
September 12, 2007 at 15:13
Seriously? A store that sells poker stuff? We have those here, too. They’re called, you know, game stores. They have other shit too. Puzzles and boardgames and dice sets and Warhammer miniatures or whatever.
How much poker do you people play in Minnesota?
Phil Moskowitz, Lovable Rogue said,
September 12, 2007 at 15:14
Shouldn’t portraying Capt. Queeg while troops were in Korea be considered an act of treason? I lost all my respect for the military after seeing his portrayl of ” Ole’ Yellow Tail”.
William Burns said,
September 12, 2007 at 15:15
Way to make the T.S. Eliot reference!
Le Chiffre said,
September 12, 2007 at 15:21
I guess it’s like a baccarat store except it has poker stuff.
Perhaps you prefer to call it chemin de fer?
Pardon me while I adjust my footwear. The razor in my shoe seems to be irritating my heel.
Sarcastro said,
September 12, 2007 at 15:48
Now I can’t stop thinking of James Lileks as Elisha Cook Jr. in “The Maltese Falcon.”
I don’t know, Lileks doesn’t come off as being a gunsel - young, twitchy, armed and queerer than a nine dollar bill with three threes for change. I mean Lileks is certainly gay, but not in the good way.
What I can’t figure out is why Lileks over there links an old piece of signage from a 40s noir film to a font that plainly says it was created in 1991.
Pere Ubu said,
September 12, 2007 at 15:53
It’s like The Mighty Thor is out hurtling around the Manhattan skyline and he sees The Leap-Frog robbing a jewelry store and WHOOSH!!! ZIP!!! HERE COMES MJOLNIR MOTHERFUCKER!!! Sure, it probably happened at least once at some point during the Silver Age (it would sure explain why we never saw the Leap Frog much after around 1970 or thereabouts) but you can’t imagine Jack Kirby or Gene Colan or John Buscema ever wasting panel space on it. It would be, like, “Gimme the jewels, >sproing sproingKLAAA-BWAAMMO!bad.”
Fuck, I’d buy that issue.
g said,
September 12, 2007 at 15:55
Oh, POKER store! And here I was thinking it was a store that sold fireplace implements.
Le Chiffre said,
September 12, 2007 at 15:55
Thor isn’t so tough.
Without that hammer, he’s lame.
The Leader said,
September 12, 2007 at 15:59
That burst of gamma radiation made me a thousand time smarter than I was before. My current intellect makes me look down on normal humans as normal humans look down on Jonah Goldberg.
GoatBoy said,
September 12, 2007 at 16:01
“I grabbed one of my mom’s Stephen King novels (yeah, yeah, I know - they suck. I was fourteen and bored)”
Not all of them and not by a long shot. It’s fashionable to disdain an author so popular I know (though it never seems to count against Dickens and Twain who also had the misfortune of being popular in their own times), especially so for a “genre writer”. I’ll grant that a handful of the early-80s Cokehead Steve rent-payers are pretty awful and I’ll even cede that his ear for dialogue is lacking. But generally speaking, the guy sits down with a story to tell and gets busy telling it. Rarely is there a clause typed that doesn’t either advance plot or reveal character and in my book such economy is far from a liability.
Lay off the threadbare trope and stop apologizing for having sullied your hands with such dreck. It ain’t high art but that doesn’t mean it ain’t art (or artful).
Smelly hippie James Dean-type!
MzNicky said,
September 12, 2007 at 16:04
Poker stores stock paraphernalia for people who play poker: Chips, decks of cards, books on how to play “Texas Hold ‘Em,” Vegas t-shirts, and so forth. Sort of like the Scotch Tape Store in that old SNL skit, or Ned Flanders’s ill-fated Left-Hand Store. I wonder why Mr. Lileks is acquainted with such emporia, but I bet that’s where he found the picture over his mantelpiece, with those dogs sitting around the poker table but the dog heads have been replaced with the heads of Bogie, and John Wayne and Ronnie Ray-gun.
James Dean also starred in “Giant,” with Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson, and he struck oil on his own little patch of ground and was able to rise above his humble origins and challenge Big Oil (i.e., Rock Hudson) at a big super-duper banquet. I wonder why Mr. Pop Culture doesn’t mention that? Huh? Huh?
Favorite lines from “Giant”: Jett (JD) and Leslie (ET), just before his gusher finally comes in:
Leslie: Well really, Jett, money isn’t everything.
Jett: No m’am, not when you got it.
GoatBoy said,
September 12, 2007 at 16:04
“Seriously? A store that sells poker stuff? We have those here, too. They’re called, you know, game stores. They have other shit too. Puzzles and boardgames and dice sets and Warhammer miniatures or whatever.
How much poker do you people play in Minnesota?”
It’s not just Minnesota. Malls are dying, rents are dropping, vacancies abounding. Fad stores are as inevitable as they are transient. The same space may very well have been home to a Pog store some time in the dim past.
Hysterical Woman said,
September 12, 2007 at 16:13
I have to admit I laughed at this.
julia said,
September 12, 2007 at 16:24
Yeah, Bogart was so conservative that he flew to Washington with Katherine Hepburn to protest HUAC at the height of the red scare.
Possibly the fact that the guy who wrote the script for Casablanca and the guy who wrote the Maltese Falcon were blacklisted had something to do with that.
MrWonderful said,
September 12, 2007 at 16:35
Moskowitz–
You remain as lovable as ever, but I believe it was “Old Yellow Stain.” The ref is to a dye marker Queeg has the crew leave in a patch of ocean to mark where the Caine…did something (I forget), and then gave up and moved on. Hence the subsequent song, “(I Got Those) Yellow Stain Blues.”
But first: Humphrey BOGART? You mean the self-indulgent playboy twit from Sabrina? He’s going to do what, exactly, to the James Dean of Giant?
Torpedoing Lileks may be like shooting fish in a barrel. But, as I said somewhere else (I forget), SOMEBODY has to shoot them. Well shot, Mr. Pierce.
RubDMC said,
September 12, 2007 at 16:40
““I grabbed one of my mom’s Stephen King novels…”
Wow, what a great setup for my own Stephen King story -
My older brother was a grad student at U.Maine/Orono back in the 70’s (English major, Ph.D. U.Missouri, dissertation on James Joyce/Ulysses, but I digress). One of his U.Maine seminars was on fiction writing. There were 5 or 6 people in the class.
The seminar meetings were for reading and commentary. Anyway, one kid was always absent from the seminar. Just never showed up.
Except for the last meeting, when the always-absent kid showed up and tossed a manuscript on the table that he had been working on that semester.
The title of the manuscript was “Carrie,” and the kid’s name was Stephen King.
King flunked my brother’s seminar, but, hey - he owns a freaking minor league baseball team.
GoatBoy said,
September 12, 2007 at 16:52
Plug it UP!
Lame Man said,
September 12, 2007 at 16:55
Lileks:
Maltese Falcon:
So Lileks gets the words mostly, sorta right, but the meaning seems to escape him.
Seanly said,
September 12, 2007 at 17:01
In Casablanca, a couple of the other characters do refer to Rick having fought Fascists in Spain. Still one of my favorite movies and the scene where they sing the French anthem to drown out the German’s own anthem always gets me. Gives me hope that we can win out against the power-mad jackasses one day… sigh… I’m an idealist at heart.
some gal said,
September 12, 2007 at 17:04
Everyone has said all kinds of clever and well-informed things about why Lileks loves Bogey and hates James Dean. Everyone has also been much smarter than I could be in pointing out why Lileks is just wrong to interpret Bogey as he does and assimilate Dean to the “dirty fucking hippie” brigade.
Here’s another answer though for why wingnuts would love Bogey and hate Dean, even though the cultural evidence about the movies and the personal evidence about HB’s politics would all suggest he’s a bad role-model for wingnuts:
Lileks thinks Bogey is a real man and hates Dean because Dean is prettier. No more, no less. Bogey physically fits in better with the wingnut cult of masculinity that Glenn Greenwald and others are talking about.
Dean is too pretty to be a real man for the wingnuts. Add to that his presence in that iconic movie of Dirty-Fucking-Hippiedom, “Rebel Without a Cause”..and Dean will always be the wingnuts version of a gender traitor.
MrWonderful said,
September 12, 2007 at 17:05
To expand on Lame Man’s excellent point:
Lileks writes as though Spade’s actions are personal and based on feeling. “when your partner gets killed” = he’s your pal, your wife, your friend.
The actual quote shows Spade citing professionalism and business, literally. “It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of him.” (Wasn’t Spade having an affair with Archer’s wife?)
Thus, Lileks doesn’t even remember what team he’s playing for. He takes the side of liberal pussiness: feelings, empathy, relationships.
Spade, meanwhile, is a businessman. (Although he also shows a kind of class consciousness in looking out for detectives everywhere.)
julia said,
September 12, 2007 at 17:14
The self-indulgent playboy twit was William Holden.
noen said,
September 12, 2007 at 17:15
When Lileks talks about the poker store at “the mall” means of course the poker store at the Mall of America. When anyone here says “the Mall” that’s what they mean. I could get a pic of it if you really wanted. I think it’s next to the store that sells only hot sauce (and related) and is down a bit from the store that sells Nagel prints. Yes, you heard that right, suburban Bloomington is a cultural wasteland of the first order.
The “Lake Wobegone” store does better business I believe. We loves us some Garrison Keilor up here. Apparently, failed New Yorker wannabes who drone on incessantly about a fantasy town in Minnesota is big stuff. “Lake Wobegone’s” real life claim to fame is that we have a street named for us in NY City because the prostitutes around there are mostly from rural Minn. And who can blame them?
Phil Moskowitz, Lovable Rogue said,
September 12, 2007 at 17:18
“You remain as lovable as ever, but I believe it was “Old Yellow Stain.”
Always Wonderful & very correct. Thanks. Now if you could only help me with my missing strawberries.
fardels bear said,
September 12, 2007 at 17:39
Sure, lets talk about Captain Queeg: A military man who just wanted to serve his country. And the military uses him and sends him into battle. And does it again, And does it again. And does it again. And ignores the warning signs that Queeg might be losing it. And sends him into battle again. And again.
Until finally Queeg does lose it. Because sending a man into battle too many times, especially when it isn’t clear that he’ll EVER get out drives him crazy.
Now, what does that sound like today?
Oh, and another cool thing about Bogart: He was an expert chess player. Used to bring the set to the,uh set and take on all comers. No one could touch him.
prozacula said,
September 12, 2007 at 17:51
James Dean was a harbinger of our modern era’s dirty filthy treacherous hatred of manly patriotism
brilliant!
WCW said,
September 12, 2007 at 18:03
Steve T., Doc Nebula, I know what you mean. But 2 things make me think this creep should be checked out. One is that he is a touchstone for a lot of the other wingnuts, who take his fatherly persona to heart. This means he has an effect, which leads us to the second thing — the wretchedness of his message.
It was Sadly No that made me realize this in their expose of one of his other more awful moments — his “you don’t get to” hang around children if you look “disheveled” (Don’t know how to make links — http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/6579.html). Nevermind the fact that most child-molesters look a lot more like Lileks — it was the plain, outspokenly uncharitable (unChristian, really, not that I am preaching that religion) aspect of his message.
Rufus said,
September 12, 2007 at 18:13
It would be an interesting exercise to speculate which famous roles of the sixties, and, perhaps, the early seventies, that James Dean would have performed had he lived so long.
Spartacus?
Felix Unger?
Butch Cassidy?
Dirty Harry?
The Godfather?
Davis said,
September 12, 2007 at 18:14
Bogart came from a wealthy Manhattan family, engaged in leftist politics, and married a model half his age. Just the type that Lileks really admires, all right.
tb said,
September 12, 2007 at 18:16
That’s not funny, man. You can compare him to a blond version of the guy who fucks his student and winds up working in a grocery store in Election, but not to Elisha Cook Jr. No.
MCH said,
September 12, 2007 at 18:17
Aren’t the sort of righties who appropriate Hollywood figures to their tough-guy iconographies the same sort of people who, in high school, looked on all male “theater geeks” as show-tune-singing sissies?
Furthermore, what does such rampant appropriation unto iconography say about righties’ love for veneers, edifices, and false fronts?
MrWonderful said,
September 12, 2007 at 18:23
Julia
“Yikes” doesn’t begin to describe my chagrin. How right you are. Bogie was the serious, responsible older brother. My terrible.
However, Bogart did play a youthful tennis-playing nitwit on Broadway, in what I think was his first role, or leading role, or something. I’ll go quietly now.
Righteous Bubba said,
September 12, 2007 at 18:33
Furthermore, what does such rampant appropriation unto iconography say about righties’ love for veneers, edifices, and false fronts?
It says that they’re religious. A myth is a myth is a myth. It’s a short step from governing the way you think Bogie would to fearing eclipses.
Jeff said,
September 12, 2007 at 18:36
“It would be an interesting exercise to speculate which famous roles of the sixties, and, perhaps, the early seventies, that James Dean would have performed had he lived so long.”
And then, inevitably, “Falcon Crest” and “Twin Peaks”
Heydave said,
September 12, 2007 at 18:36
If I slap Jimbo’s huge, stupid forehead and no one is around to hear it, does it make a noise?
Doc Nebula said,
September 12, 2007 at 18:46
Leonard
Dude, Gene Colan created Leap-Frog.
Of course he did; it’s impossible to imagine a character more Gene Colanie than Leap Frog, other than maybe the Stilt-Man. Nonetheless, if Stan Lee had sat down with Gene for a plot meeting and suggested that maybe this issue Thor could fight that guy with the springs on his feet from DAREDEVIL, I can only imagine Gene “the Dean” Colan staring at Stan in appalled horror and saying something like “Are you fucking HIGH? Thor could turn Leap Frog inside out and wear him as an ascot!”
Of course, then Stan would say something like “Well, maybe Loki secretly does a spell to vastly increase Leap-Frog’s power, like he did with the Cobra and Mr. Hyde.” But hopefully Gene would end up pencilling something entirely different (like, Thor battling aliens with pyramid shaped spaceships in Central America, or something) and Stan, who was ‘writing’ about seventeen monthly titles at the time, would never even know.
Pere Ubu,
Fuck, I’d buy that issue.
Nearly anybody would. But in the Silver Age, comics weren’t quite that sadistic yet, so as a general rule, guys who dressed like lily pad denizens whose only super power was a set of sofa springs attached to each foot did not go mano a mano with the likes of Thor. Thor fought entire living planets. Leap Frog would get smacked around by a blind guy with a trick cane.
Mind you, the idea of some big Jack Kirby full page spread showing Leap-Frog frantically sproinging down a crowded city street, bouncing off the sides of buildings and mailboxes and lampposts and the occasional retired postal worker, screaming “HELP ME!!! HELP ME!!! HELP ME!!!! AAAAAAAHHHHHH!” while Thor is chasing him, hammer raised, bellowing something like “And now there shall fly to pieces — A VILLAIN!” is pretty solid. I’d buy the original art to something like that.
Le Chiffre,
Thor isn’t so tough.
Without that hammer, he’s lame.
Ah ha ha ho ha ho ha hee! Yes, he is. Well, the Silver Age Thor was, anyway. I think nowadays Thor has some entirely different secret identity I couldn’t care less about because it’s stupid. But your point is well taken as regards the REAL Thor, who, without his hammer, reverted to the form of a whiney little spaz named Don Blake, whom, it turned out many issues later, was just a false persona Odin created to punish Thor with. (Nowadays, Odin would punish Thor by making him a Republican politician who hangs out in airport men’s rooms, but back then comics were more innocent.)
tata said,
September 12, 2007 at 18:49
Wasn’t Bogey available to make those movies because he was 4F?
Sarcastro said,
September 12, 2007 at 19:00
I think nowadays Thor has some entirely different secret identity I couldn’t care less about because it’s stupid.
I believe Thor’s current AKA is “dead guy”. If you don’t count the Thorbot clone Reed Richards made that blasted Goliath to kingdom come during the Civil War.
Although there is a guy named “D. Blake” who showed up soon after…
Good god I’m a fucking geek.
Seanly said,
September 12, 2007 at 19:02
tata ~ a lot of actors got deferments because they were helping the war effort by making movies & helping. Also, Bogart was born in 1899 and served in the USN starting in 1918.
Seanly said,
September 12, 2007 at 19:02
oops, helping raise bonds.
J— said,
September 12, 2007 at 19:17
Lileks:
Contrast Elvis and Marilyn. All they did was play Nazi killers; they couldn’t get any other work.
noen said,
September 12, 2007 at 19:22
I don’t “get” the comics thing. Never have and never will. The only one that I remember reading when I was young was a comic version of “The Time Machine”. Other than that they all make a nice whoosh! sound as they pass by. They don’t even translate into good movies except maybe the first “Spiderman”. The rest have all been crap.
I’d much rather read something like “American Splendor” or “Ghost World” or “Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth” than about some underwear pervert. Even soft core porn like “Heavy Metal” would be better.
Doc Nebula said,
September 12, 2007 at 19:48
noen said,
I don’t “get” the comics thing.
No.
No, you don’t.
Never have and never will. The only one that I remember reading when I was young was a comic version of “The Time Machine”. Other than that they all make a nice whoosh! sound as they pass by. They don’t even translate into good movies except maybe the first “Spiderman”. The rest have all been crap.
I’d much rather read something like “American Splendor” or “Ghost World” or “Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth” than about some underwear pervert. Even soft core porn like “Heavy Metal” would be better.
For soft core porn in comics form, I always refer people to the late 70s Warren line, especially SF tittiepalooza title 1984, which, as soon as 1980 rolled around, was promptly rechristened 1994. Some of the finest jack off material my adolescent eyes had ever beheld in comic strip form.
For myself, I only prefer porn of any sort to any other good reading material when that specific mood is upon me, and I can only imagine preferring pretentious bullshit like GHOST WORLD or AMERICAN SPLENDOR to anything else at all if I had a pretty severe concussion, but, hey, that’s why they make chocolate and vanilla.
Me, myself, and I would probably hesitate to call anyone else’s beloved childhood imaginary pals ‘underwear perverts’ in the same paragraph as one indicates a fondness for the kind of Ugly People Jerking Off crap you seem to like, but I try to be more self aware than most people, and perhaps that’s a character flaw.
Righteous Bubba said,
September 12, 2007 at 19:49
I don’t “get” the comics thing.
If you like reading Greek myths superhero comics should be no different, except that the comics are much more of a waste of time. I love them, despite things like this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this.
They do not compare with Clowes and Muir, although I can do without Pekar complaining about being stuck behind an old lady at the store.
sophie brown said,
September 12, 2007 at 19:54
“James Dean was a harbinger of our modern era’s dirty filthy treacherous hatred of manly patriotism.”
I wonder. We watched rebel without a cause the other night — wanted to introduce it to my adam sandler loving twelve year old son. He was suitably impressed by James Dean.
But the whole Jim Baccus in an apron thing. What was that about?
GoatBoy said,
September 12, 2007 at 19:54
“I believe Thor’s current AKA is “dead guy”.”
Nay nay. By Odin’s eye socket! Thor is alive and relaunched and he rode in on a week-long Oklahoma City tornado.
Passive Aggressive Flamewar said,
September 12, 2007 at 19:56
I’m on!
Righteous Bubba said,
September 12, 2007 at 19:57
Me, myself, and I would probably hesitate to call anyone else’s beloved childhood imaginary pals ‘underwear perverts’ in the same paragraph as one indicates a fondness for the kind of Ugly People Jerking Off crap you seem to like, but I try to be more self aware than most people, and perhaps that’s a character flaw.
That’s a little harsh. The “underwear perverts” bit comes from here in which the companies that own your childhood heros attempt to own your language as well.
Bennett said,
September 12, 2007 at 20:00
Perhaps Mr. Lileks might rouse himself from his narcissistic stupor to watch one of the movies Bogart himself produced—the ones he cared most about—and inparticular one in which he starred. “In a Lonely Place,” opposite Gloria Graham and directed by Nicholas Ray. Among other things, the films say: the movie Bogart is crap, as are all movie personas; here’s what a real humamn is like. A real human is full of nameless anger that can make him a misery to others (here’s looking at you, Lileks). A real human can be so fucked up by the violence he experiences in war that he causes more violence (hmm?). In real life people fall in love because the soul of their beloved compels them, so a beautiful young woman (Graham) finds herself in love with a cranky, worn-down geezer (Bogart). In real life, when someone pretends to be Bogart and beats up a kid he thinks is like James Dean, the horror and shame of causing such suffering makes him face himself (this happens in this film). And in real life, unlike in the fantasy land or conservatives, there is little redemption and none at all when we continue to behave in exactly tthe way from which we must be redeemed. That behavior is exactly what Lileks does when he whinges on & on for years now about the world not going according to his plan for his own greatness and comfort.
kiki said,
September 12, 2007 at 20:07
Cool, a comics debate! Gilbert Hernandez is Lord.
Personally I gave up on superheroes (TM, apparently) during Chris Claremont’s tenure on X-Men, during which he killed and then immediately resurrected pretty much the entire cast twice during a 12-month period. I began to feel the creators were a little more committed to cheap emotional button-pushing and splashy “EVERYBODY DIES!!!” covers than they were to continuity and high-quality story-telling.
julia said,
September 12, 2007 at 20:09
Gracious, no, MrWonderful, not on my account - it’s one of my daughter’s favorite movies, so I saw it last week.
Righteous Bubba said,
September 12, 2007 at 20:17
Personally I gave up on superheroes (TM, apparently) during Chris Claremont’s tenure on X-Men, during which he killed and then immediately resurrected pretty much the entire cast twice during a 12-month period. I began to feel the creators were a little more committed to cheap emotional button-pushing and splashy “EVERYBODY DIES!!!” covers than they were to continuity and high-quality story-telling.
The story-telling was low quality before then as well. It just hits you right because that’s the way myths work.
Jrod said,
September 12, 2007 at 20:30
When someone says “I don’t like comics!” it makes about as much sense as someone saying “I don’t like paintings!” or “I don’t like movies!” It’s a medium for Eris’ sake. Granted, few media are as dominated by one genre as American comics, but super heroes are not the only game in town.
What I do when one of my friends starts going on about how he/she “hates comics OMG” is I give them volume 1 of Preacher. Twelve hours later, at 4 am, when they’re finishing off volume eight, they have a new perspective.
Not to say I ain’t a nerd, of course. I can tell ya that Thor is back to his Donald Blake alter-ego but is spending his time as Thor rebuilding Asgard in the middle of Kansas, and I get excited as a little boy when the new World War Hulk comes out. In the end, though, I’d still rather sit down with a new Stray Bullets or anything by Alan Moore. Promethea ended too soon… too soon. Anyone here read Lost Girls? My town has a lame comic store that doesn’t carry that sort of thing so I’ll have to resort to Ebay I think.
kiki said,
September 12, 2007 at 20:32
“The story-telling was low quality before then as well. It just hits you right because that’s the way myths work.”
Of course; I wasn’t trying to imply that superhero comics suddenly started to suck at this point; rather, I suddenly started for some reason to start noticing that they sucked.
Having said that, Grant Morrison’s Animal Man is quite fun (quote: “We’re told that comics are more ‘adult’ now because they contain more cursing and violence; God help us if that’s what ‘adult’ means”), as is Marshall Law, but that’s more of a satire on superheroes (and particularly the psychosexual, “underwear pervert” aspect of their behavior).
kiki said,
September 12, 2007 at 20:34
Lost Girls, I’m sorry to say, had some butt-ugly artwork. For that title I think they needed an artist who was better at drawing, y’know, girls.
NickM said,
September 12, 2007 at 20:39
What would movie Bogie have done to the simpering, prize-melon-headed, virtually shoulderless Lileks had he caught him skulking around a poker store?
Righteous Bubba said,
September 12, 2007 at 20:45
When someone says “I don’t like comics!” it makes about as much sense as someone saying “I don’t like paintings!” or “I don’t like movies!”
Noen clarified that she does like comics, just a certain kind, which is fair enough I think.
The superhero thing is a lot like rock and roll: get a few elements together and a great song is a great song even if it’s the millionth one about partying and girls. It leaves room for a fantastic amount of garbage, which I also seem to love. Oh well.
Johnny Coelacanth said,
September 12, 2007 at 20:57
A comics debate? Watchmen FTW.
Johnny Coelacanth said,
September 12, 2007 at 21:00
“pretentious bullshit like GHOST WORLD or AMERICAN SPLENDOR ”
Hey, Doc Nebula (great underwear pervert superhero name, btw), did you ever actually read American Splendor? Harvey Pekar may be a lot of things, but pretentious he’s not.
Hoosier X said,
September 12, 2007 at 21:05
I cried when they shot “Old Yellow Stain.” I’m not ashamed to admit it.
Jrod said,
September 12, 2007 at 21:14
Well, to be honest I just wanted to give Preacher a plug. Seriously yo, it’s awesome.
celticgirl said,
September 12, 2007 at 21:15
I don’t really ‘get’ comics either. Actually my favorite version of Thor is from “The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul” by the late great Douglas Adams. If you’ve never read it you’re definitely missing out on a great take on Odin, Valhalla etc. and man’s relationship with the gods.
Hoosier X said,
September 12, 2007 at 21:15
But the whole Jim Baccus in an apron thing. What was that about?
It was those Hollywood liberal hippie types and their political correctness. They knew putting Mr. Magoo in an apron would embolden the Vietnamese. Remember the Ho Chi Minh tape where he specifically belittled that scene and went on and on about Betty Friedan?
Kathy said,
September 12, 2007 at 21:16
Mr Lilicks looks like one of the stupider sit-com dads.
MCH said,
September 12, 2007 at 21:20
Mr Lileks is, like many unfortunate men (such as Huey Lewis), the owner of an ass-chin.
He is, however, the first I’ve seen to also be the owner of an ass-forehead. What’s up with that? Did he walk into a door?
Al Stewart said,
September 12, 2007 at 21:23
In a morning from a Bogart movie
In a country where they turned back time
You skulk through the poker store just like James Lileks
contemplating a war crime.
Legalize said,
September 12, 2007 at 21:25
Oh dear, a comic book discussion. I propose we move the discussion to the finer points of the infield fly rule.
Righteous Bubba said,
September 12, 2007 at 21:25
Well, to be honest I just wanted to give Preacher a plug. Seriously yo, it’s awesome.
It’s on the list. My own can-do-no-wrong guy is Chris Ware, which I amusingly typed as Muir above. Fuck you Sadlies for putting that in my brain!
It might also be worth plugging Persepolis considering bombing Iran is on the horizon and all.
Kathy said,
September 12, 2007 at 21:25
i don’t *get* comics either, or *graphic novles*, but I really enjoy the company of those who do. Imaginative and humorious, they don’t make me feel like a gred drone, either. I’ve enjoyed reading this thread, too. My 9 year old daughter loves Inuyasha, and reads the books back-to-front quite happily. Now she wants to study Japanese, so I’m looking for an instructor.
Crissa said,
September 12, 2007 at 21:26
‘poker store’ aka ‘games store’ where you can buy board games and chess paraphernalia …poker is very profitable for selling clay chips and cases and felt mats; and the same companies that produce the cheap stuff also produce ‘pieces of art’ with the same wood and glass manufacture.
Depending on the owner/buyer you’ll find various amounts of drek in the store, sometimes lots of cardboard cutouts from movies, suits of armor are traditional, swords and knives and those ugly lamps and statuettes with half naked women with badly positions and proportioned chests on them.
Uhh… I used to work in on. Not that we had any half naked statuettes. But the store in the mall did…
EJ said,
September 12, 2007 at 21:32
Even stranger is the paragraph right before the one quoted:
Jayne Mansfield. I always preferred her to Monroe, because frankly Marilyn seemed a rather dim bulb. Mansfield had more forthright sunny cheer; she seemed to enjoy herself, and life, much more than MM. Which made her suspect in the eyes of tortured English Lit grad students, I suppose. Too American.
Aside from the fact that a lot of people who knew Marilyn Monroe well have always maintained that she was actually pretty smart - what in god’s name is he blathering about? What tortured English Lit grad students? Is he somehow trying to say that the librul elite is responsible for Marilyn being more popular than Jayne Mansfield? I mean, in all honesty, I fear for his sanity. I agree that Mansfield is under-rated, but beyond that, does this paragraph make the slightest bit of sense to anyone?
Robert Green said,
September 12, 2007 at 21:33
are we all being a little bit fucking prolix about a sadly no! lileks post? over 100 comments in a morning?
calm down. important parody-necessary shit is happening, like the entire reichosphere’s reaction to petraus.
what, you say? get my own blog?
eh, kids today.
Doc Nebula said,
September 12, 2007 at 21:40
Picking out one particular comment in this ongoing ‘comics debate’ I seem to have started, as, hopefully, somewhat representative, and making some interesting points to sproing back off of:
Jrod said,
When someone says “I don’t like comics!” it makes about as much sense as someone saying “I don’t like paintings!” or “I don’t like movies!” It’s a medium for Eris’ sake. Granted, few media are as dominated by one genre as American comics, but super heroes are not the only game in town.
It’s true enough, and seems to be shaping this debate into a classic “those who love superhero comics vs. those who refer to superheroes and their fans as ‘underwear perverts’ ” type Battle Royale. I should stay out of it; nobody ever convinces anyone at the end of these things of anything they didn’t already believe at the beginning.
Having said that, I am not merely a superhero comics fan, but a Silver Age superhero comics fan. I dislike a great deal of the post-Silver Age, and tend to lump it all together as ‘the Modern Age’, which I mostly say with great disdain. There are a few Modern Age writers whose work I enjoy, and certainly, the oft mentioned Alan Moore is one of them (having said that, I am one of the few who finds WATCHMEN to be a deeply flawed work, much preferring Moore when he is working with characters of his own creation and not simply sodomizing material others may have some emotional attachment to, apparently for nothing more than the sheer joy of imagining the look on the face of a classic Blue Beetle fan when they witness a mob of katied up knot tops beating an elderly version of BB to death with his own civics trophy).
Now, the disdain that most of the ‘underwear perverts’ crowd feels for superhero comics generally originates in the Silver Age, which was admittedly more childish and innocent and thus, less ‘realistic’ (’realistic’ presumably meaning, nobody got raped by Dr. Light). The lack of realism varied in degree; DC was putting out Silver Age material for 9 year olds, while Marvel tended to target a more mature audience of adolescents (and it’s important to remember than in the 60s and early to mid 70s, nobody assumed that adolescents had to be emotionally retarded and/or possess microscopic attention spans; superhero comics written around those prerequisites really didn’t start to hit their stride until the late 70s/early 80s… right around the time Claremont’s X-MEN and their various doppelgangers really started to have an impact on the genre as a whole).
What I do when one of my friends starts going on about how he/she “hates comics OMG” is I give them volume 1 of Preacher. Twelve hours later, at 4 am, when they’re finishing off volume eight, they have a new perspective.
PREACHER is a wonderful example of the kind of Modern Age comic I hate the most, and the things I hate about it are generally exactly the same ‘qualities’ that commend it to the average Modern Age ’superhero’ comics fan. Everything that the Modern Age fan who hates the Silver Age loves about the Modern Age is embodied in this comic.
Me, when I run into somebody who hates comics, or who loves comics as a medium but can’t stand those horrible superhero things, I try to give them a GOOD superhero comic, like some Cary Bates SUPERMAN stuff from the 70s, or Englehart’s first run on DETECTIVE, or Steve Gerber’s DEFENDERS or GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, or even some of Alan Moore’s America’s Best Comics stuff, especially TOP 10. If I’m trying to convince them that the medium itself is a valid one, I always pitch some of Gaiman’s SANDMAN at them.
But I’d have to have a really good reason (read that as “she’s a babe” if you like, I won’t try to duck it) to try any of that on anyone making such a declaration, since to me, someone saying “I hate comics OMG” or “I hate superhero comics why aren’t you reading GHOST WORLD you cretin” is on about the same mental level as somebody who confesses to being the biggest FLAVA OF LOVE fan in the world. I just don’t have time for anyone who is that big an idiot, sorry.
Not to say I ain’t a nerd, of course. I can tell ya that Thor is back to his Donald Blake alter-ego but is spending his time as Thor rebuilding Asgard in the middle of Kansas,
Somebody blew up Asgard? Was it terrorists?
and I get excited as a little boy when the new World War Hulk comes out. In the end, though, I’d still rather sit down with a new Stray Bullets or anything by Alan Moore. Promethea ended too soon…
I enjoyed PROMETHEA greatly, but I have to admit, I enjoyed the early issues that actually had something remotely resembling coherent plots more than the later “let’s take an illustrated comic strip tour of the entire history of metaphysics” stuff. And much as I enjoyed PROMETHEA, I enjoyed TOP 10 even more. But much as I enjoyed both of those, the Moore comic I like the most is FROM HELL.
too soon. Anyone here read Lost Girls? My town has a lame comic store that doesn’t carry that sort of thing so I’ll have to resort to Ebay I think.
I haven’t read LOST GIRLS. Mostly because I’m really not sure I want to go to Alan Moore for my monkey spanking material, especially when there’s a new HOUSEWIVES AT PLAY out next month.
In the end, the ’superheroes vs everything else’ debate strikes me as pointless. It’s much the same thing you can hear in any medium at any time — art film fans loathe the Star Wars stuff, fans of great literature won’t read Stephen King (and drip contempt for those who do). All I can tell you is, yeah, I’ve read AMERICAN SPLENDOR and yes, I really do find it pretentious, in its “oh look at me I’m so goddam ultrarealistic and grim n gritty and I would never sully my fabulous art with anything remotely like a plot or any slight element of imagination that’s for CHILDREN god someone kill me now” sensibility.
I read for fun. Silver Age superhero comics, however stupid and childish many of them may have been (and many others were nothing of the sort, check out Englehart’s DR. STRANGE or Gerber’s MAN-THING if you don’t believe me), were always fun. Precious little in the Modern Age of superhero comics can say that, and if there’s a single word in the English language that could never be applied to AMERICAN SPLENDOR or GHOST WORLD, well, ‘fun’ would be the one.
Notorious P.A.T. said,
September 12, 2007 at 21:41
From good ol’ Wikipedia:
Humphrey Bogart plays Rick Blaine, a bitter and cynical American expatriate in Casablanca, who owns “Rick’s Café Américain”. Although Rick professes to be neutral in all matters, it is later revealed that he had run guns to Ethiopia to combat the 1935 Italian invasion, and fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War against Francisco Franco’s fascists.
See! He was a Republican!
As for Stephen King, he writes two kinds of books: those where the victims are mainly men (”Misery”, “The Stand”, “Shawshank Redmeption”) which are horror masterpieces, and those where the victims are mainly women, which I can not stand.
Notorious P.A.T. said,
September 12, 2007 at 21:45
I was hoping that “See! He was a Republican!” would come across as more sarcastic than it did.
Righteous Bubba said,
September 12, 2007 at 21:55
Doc, in your screed you have neglected to mention what makes your favourite superhero comics worth paying attention to above better material like “Ghost World” (and by better what I mean is better) while acknowledging that they’re written for kids.
Jrod said,
September 12, 2007 at 21:55
Chris Ware is a genius. Since we’re pluging stuff now:
Adolph by Osamu Tezuka is one of my favorites, but it’s hard to find. If you live near a good library they might have it. A tale of three men named Adolph during World War II.
Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse. Another one that’s probably out of print. It’s the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a novel in comic form. A young man struggles with his homosexuality while getting involved in the civil rights stuggle of the early sixties. I only paid a dime for my copy, and it’s the best ten cents I ever spent.
Jinx by Brian Micheal Bendis, before he was bought by Marvel. Actually all of his stuff from his indy days is excellent. Alias is his best Marvel book, and not just because Luke Cage is a character. Though that helps.
Fables by Bill Willingham and various great artists. Bigby is my hero.
Four suggestions for those who don’t get comics.
Righteous Bubba said,
September 12, 2007 at 22:02
A Chris Ware page from The New Yorker.
Righteous Bubba said,
September 12, 2007 at 22:09
Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse.
I remember reading some press about this. Thanks for the reminder. He’s got a lot of material about it on his site.
a different brad said,
September 12, 2007 at 22:11
Lots of fun digressions.
Stephen King- One of his sons was a classmate of mine in undergrad. Looked and behaved like a poorly shaved ape. Unfortunately I ended up taking a number of classes with him in the classics dept. He had a tendency to repeat what the prof just said back at him. And he peeped on my long term gf at the time in the shower. Apparently he did that frequently. Hairy bastard.
I was huge on comics as a kid, from the age of 6 or 7 right up until the sex, drugs, and rock n roll kicks in at about 14, tho there was a year or two of overlap. Last thing I bought back in the day was the end of the Age of Apocalypse X-Men series. Wasn’t that I came to dislike comics so much as I needed that money to buy pot to smoke with the preppie girls at my boarding school who thought it was sooooooo strange, and therefore desirable, that I liked neither phish nor dave matthews.
I did buy the civil war trade paperback, n it was interesting. Also a reprint of the death of captain america, who’s really obviously not dead but in a coma of some sort.
And while I was too young to read much american splendor, the flick of it has to be credited as the greatest homage to geek love I’ve ever seen. Geek love is strong, n I miss it.
Righteous Bubba said,
September 12, 2007 at 22:21
Wasn’t that I came to dislike comics so much as I needed that money to buy pot
Comics are free these days although maybe not as comfortable to lie around with.
And while I was too young to read much american splendor, the flick of it has to be credited as the greatest homage to geek love I’ve ever seen.
I thought American Splendor was tedious and unremarkable and I didn’t think Harvey Pekar had anything striking to say. The film, however, is really terrific.
Batocchio said,
September 12, 2007 at 22:30
I’ve noticed conservatives, or recent conservative converts, often seem ignorant about films, or maybe it’s the basic comprehension thing that trips them up. One of my favorite bits was when the Fox News crew expressed concern that one of John Roberts’ favorite films was Doctor Zhivago, because it was “a litle bit commie,” which is sorta like, I dunno, saying Roots is “a little bit pro-slavery.” But hey, you can’t trust them Ruskies…
Hoosier X said,
September 12, 2007 at 22:39
apparently for nothing more than the sheer joy of imagining the look on the face of a classic Blue Beetle fan when they witness a mob of katied up knot tops beating an elderly version of BB to death with his own civics trophy.
I’m a little dubious that this was Moore’s only motivation for The Watchmen. Did he tell you this?
Why would Moore be so obsessed with honking off all those classic Blue Beetle fans?
The many classic Blue Beetle fans I know are very nice, and I can see no reason why Moore would pick on them as a group. Is he really such an ogre? I had no idea.
Notorious P.A.T. said,
September 12, 2007 at 22:43
Yeah, superheroes suck. That’s why that “Heroes” show bombed, and that “Batman Returns” movie was a flop.
professor fate said,
September 12, 2007 at 22:46
Okay why hasn’t anybody said “Underware Perverts” is a good name for a band.?
Jrod said,
September 12, 2007 at 22:57
I think Ragnarok happened, or something. I dunno, I only read the new Thors cuz my friend had them. Thor came back to life because his myth was too strong for him to stay dead. Or something.
I liked the murderous clone Thor better. Though my favorite comic Thor is the one from Savage Dragon.
sunkin meh battleship said,
September 12, 2007 at 23:02
That dood with teh foto on top likes ‘em some oldies cuz they way too dead to be laughin at teh massive foreheads.
Anne Laurie said,
September 12, 2007 at 23:11
Aren’t the sort of righties who appropriate Hollywood figures to their tough-guy iconographies the same sort of people who, in high school, looked on all male “theater geeks” as show-tune-singing sissies?
No, the Lileks and Goldbergs are the kids who were relegated to “Props” because they were too stupid or lazy to memorize lines and they couldn’t carry a tune in handbasket. (Yes, they were ugly too, but at most high schools there are so few male students willing to be involved with the show-tunes crowd that any Y-chromosome carrier can be a “star”, unless they just can’t or won’t do the friggin’ job.) That’s one of the early warning signs of Rethuglicanism… they’re the kids who are fascinated by the glamour and social status of performing, but totally unwilling to do the work involved in actually putting together an act anybody would want to watch. When they fail to get awarded some kind of Big Role which would involve nothing more challenging than showing up half an hour before curtain & standing under the spots repeating what they remember of the rilly kuul lines from last night’s Adam Sandler movie, they “retaliate” by announcing that all the successful male theatre geeks are sissys, and all the female TGs are “putting out” for the faculty director. I believe this is where Karl Rove discovered his vocation, in fact…
As for Comic Books, most of us love the style we discovered at some vulnerable point in our aesthetic development. I’ll always have a weakness for Gene Colan because he was doing strong women characters when I was stuck in an all-girl parochial high school. And for Sheldon Mayer, because of Sugar. I know Alan Moore and Harvey Pekar are technically better artists/storytellers, but I have so many other things to do with my time these days that I just can’t commit to appreciating their ouevres, y’know?
Righteous Bubba said,
September 12, 2007 at 23:12
I liked the murderous clone Thor better.
It’d be fun to have a “no punches pulled” Thor, so guys rob a bank or something, Thor throws his hammer and their skulls are pulped.
stogoe said,
September 12, 2007 at 23:19
Brian Micheal Bendis
I have to say I loved Powers, and I vastly prefer the Ultimate Marvel universe because there’s not (yet) sixty years of godawful backstory.
Fables by Bill Willingham and various great artists. Bigby is my hero.
Eh, Bigby. I like Boy Blue and Jack, myself. But Bigby’s not bad.
One thing I’d like to plug is DMZ, written by Brian Wood. Good stuff.
Moominpapa said,
September 12, 2007 at 23:24
You didn’t have to write any text for this piece at all, you know. “Breeding Lileks out of the dead land” is simply the most brilliant headline pun I have seen yet on Sadly, No!. Kudos to you, gentlemen.
Dan Someone said,
September 12, 2007 at 23:24
apparently for nothing more than the sheer joy of imagining the look on the face of a classic Blue Beetle fan when they witness a mob of katied up knot tops beating an elderly version of BB to death with his own civics trophy.
I’m a little dubious that this was Moore’s only motivation for The Watchmen. Did he tell you this?
I’m pretty sure Doc was using a little hyperbole here. But what do I know?
I’ll tell you what I know: The best reason for appreciating superhero comic books is that they almost always, at one point or another, involve a boot
to
the
face.
mikey said,
September 12, 2007 at 23:25
I’ve actually followed this thread all day. Interesting. A lot of passion in some rather obscure areas. I have absolutely nothing to offer.
The last movies I saw were “A history of violence” and “Master and Commander”. No, waitaminute, a couple weeks ago I kinda paid attention to “Three Kings” on cable. It was not at all what I expected, and I think it might be pretty profound. I’ll get the DVD one of these days.
The last comic book I read was in 1970. I never liked superheroes, because I always knew that with enough firepower I could kill anything. That, I had to figure, included dudes in capes.
The only thing I know about Lileks is he did a series on the painter that painted women with their panties around their ankles and celery in their possesion. I think I got clued into that during the great sammich war.
I’m not sure what the proprietors are up to, though. In the last five or so days, since HTML’s last, there’s been about a dozen from Gavin, one from Bradrocket and one from mister pierce. Is this the summer hiatus?
mikey
Righteous Bubba said,
September 12, 2007 at 23:40
I never liked superheroes, because I always knew that with enough firepower I could kill anything. That, I had to figure, included dudes in capes.
Pfft. You’d miss. Unless it was really a clone, a robot, or a naive friend fooling around with the kooky thr