nostalgia

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50 in 2010 — Book 3 (The Mystery of the Rogue’s Reunion)

January 18, 2010 in Books | No comments

One of the things I collect are the Three Investigator Mystery Series books. The Three Investigators was a book series, like the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, aimed at kids. It featured three teenagers going around solving crimes in Los Angeles who were initially sponsored by Alfred Hitchcock. I inherited a few of the hardcovers when I was a boy and promptly became addicted, buying (or begging) for any of these I could find. Then, you could still find them at retail bookstores, but now it seems they’ve faded to the used book bin. I’m not sure why I liked Jupiter, Pete, and Bob better than either Joe and Frank Hardy or Nancy. I think it had something to do with the fact that these kids couldn’t drive and had a very cool “office” in Jupiter’s uncle’s junkyard. I accumulated 17 of the softcovers in addition to those five original hardbacks before I grew out of them, onto more serious works like the Dragonlance series. Now, wherever I go, whenever I wander into a used bookshop (I say wander like it’s an accident. The reality is I’m scanning the internet for local places whenever we visit anywhere), I look for these books. They’re surprisingly hard to find. I’ve only run across a few as an adult and I’ve never seen one of the hardcovers other than the ones I own. That’s why I was so excited when my friend Rich told me he’d found The Mystery of the Rogue’s Reunion at Read it Again, Sam in Charlottesville. He delivered it a few weekends ago when he and his wife came down for a visit.

This is the first new Three Investigators book I’ve read in a long time and, purely from a writing standpoint, the book isn’t that great. The plot deals with a cast reunion of The Wee Rogues, a Little Rascals like show that Jupiter starred in as a child. Some silver cups get stolen and someone gets kidnapped. Jupiter solves the case and is impressed with himself, as usual. Pete almost tackles someone. Bob looks some stuff up in the library. Hector Sebastian, a fictional mystery writer who is a patron of the Investigators (he replaced Alfred Hitchcock), makes the group cheeseburgers. My guess is this is probably a weaker book in the series generally, but I’m sure some of my feelings are due to my age. Still, it was a fun read from a nostalgic point of view. And now I have another book in the series.

Thanks a lot, Rich! If anyone else sees some Three Investigator books hanging around their local used bookstore, let me know.

We had the greatest of expectations

October 27, 2009 in Observations | No comments

In high school, we went to Shows. Not concerts. Shows. These were often bands no one had ever heard of at venues that were lucky if they lasted six months. Sometimes, they weren’t at venues at all, but rather at rented halls, clubhouses, or picnic shelters. My first show was at The Fireman’s Clubhouse at Conway Marina. I saw bands at places called The Magic Bus, Club Zero, and the (horribly named) Grunge Garden, which was like seeing punk rock at Applebees. I went to shows at state park picnic shelters. Do people still do that?

Sunday night, Sarah and I went to a show. Well, as close to a show as I have been to in a long time. The Gaslight Anthem played at Tremont Music Hall. Tremont used to be an old warehouse in a warehouse district, though the gentrification of South End is creeping up to it’s doors. You park in an abandoned lot and enter the place through a loading dock. Inside, there are a few pool tables, a bar, a couple of bar tables around a small stage, a Tekken 3 game, then the big stage in another loading bay. I loved it instantly, mainly because it made me feel 15 years younger (after I figured out how to get inside). It’s a place where bands play, not a bar that has live music, not a place to be seen, but a place where bands play.

And bands did play! We arrived a little after 7:00 after grabbing some dinner at Chipotle (see, gentrification just up the street!). The doors had opened at 6:00. Early shows are a nice gesture to the all ages and working crowd. It also helps with us old people. The Loved Ones were already on the stage. I liked them a lot — they have the workingman’s punk rock feel of The Gaslight Anthem with a little more Clash and a little less Bruce Springsteen. After their set, we retreated to the bar. Sarah took advantage of the Pabst Blue Ribbon tall boy special and we watched some baseball until Murder By Death started. MBD was interesting, with a cellist and a singer/guitarist with giant mutton chops. There was lots of Tom Waits there, along with Johnny Cash and rockabilly. I felt like I was listening to the soundtrack for a post-apocalyptic Western (hey, they should TOTALLY do the soundtrack for the Dark Tower miniseries!). The only problem was I wasn’t watching a post-apocalyptic Western. I think I would really like their albums, but their set left me a little flat. You just couldn’t follow the narrative that seemed to be at the heart of a lot of their songs if you had never heard those songs before.

I described the Gaslight Anthem as “the band Bruce Springsteen would have if he were 25 today” and I stick by that assessment. I’ve been listening to them for a few months ever since my friends Josh and Jessica gave me their CD’s. They were great. High energy songs about loss, cars, death, cars, Miles Davis, New Jersey, and cars. They are steeped in classic rock (lots of references to Tom Petty, Bob Seeger, Paul Simon, and Elvis). They are sort of like a younger, New Jersey-ish, more optimistic Social Distortion. Their set was tight, full of energy, and tons of fun. While I was hoping for a Tom Petty cover (I’ve heard they cover both “American Girl” and “Refugee” live), we did get some song intros that featured “Suspicious Minds” and “Tuesday’s Gone.” I could live with that.

As we drove home down 77, flipping through Gaslight Anthem CD’s to find which songs they had played, thinking I should be driving 1958 Chevy instead of our Ford Escape, I was filled with the once familiar but now seldom felt post-show euphoria. This was why I used to go to these things all the time.

And I was home before midnight, which suits the old and has a child me just fine.

Here beneath the blue suburban skies

September 2, 2009 in Public Introspection | 3 comments

In high school, I drove a 1987 Buick Century. It was brown, with faux-velvet seats that were unbelievably comfortable. It also lacked any semblance of a stereo system, which for my musically budding ears was unacceptable. I had been an early adopter of CD’s; my 15th birthday present was a CD boombox (which still works and now plays Eleanor music at nighttime) and The Cult’s “Sonic Temple”. But there was no way I could afford a CD player for the Buick. So what did I do? I stocked up on D batteries and hauled that CD boombox around with me in the front seat.

I was reminded of this today when driving to work. I wanted to hear some Beatles. We’ve gotten rid of all our CD’s, ripping them all to the hard drive; I’ve subsequently put a bunch of music on my iPhone. So what did I do? I found “Penny Lane” on the phone, turned up the small speaker, and let it play while sitting on the front seat of our Ford Escape.

It all comes back around, I tell you.

Happy Birthday Andre

March 27, 2009 in Observations | 1 comment

I just want to wish my brother a happy 29th birthday today.

One of my favorite memories of my brother was when I was in graduate school and living in Charlottesville.  We had some family business to take care of in Owensboro, Kentucky, where we were both born.  Andre drove his brand new Jetta up to Virginia, spent the night, then we left early the next morning for Kentucky.  Driving hard all day, we made it to Owensboro at about 5:00 that Sunday afternoon.  I had made reservations at the Executive Inn which, in my memory, was the nicest hotel in town and, (I thought) a steal at $70 a night.  While the hotel still occupied its place on the banks of the Ohio, its grandeur was somewhat diminished.  The hotel wasn’t a dump, per se, just . . . vacant.  Andre and I wandered around the sprawling complex, discovering a hidden indoor pool, blue and glowing and empty.  It was like something out of a Stephen King story — two brothers at this vancant hotel, stalked by a crazed killer.  The red neon lights seeping through our balcony window only added to that atmosphere. The only thing we were stalked by, though, was boredom.  Even though it was 2004, Owensboro still rolled up its streets on Sunday night; there wasn’t even a movie that started after 5:00.

The next morning we fled the Executive Inn and did our business at the bank before heading over to Moonlight Bar-B-Que.  We waited in the parking lot for the place to open, then had a mutton sandwich for brunch.  FIlling our cooler with a few pounds of bar-b-que’d mutton and burgoo, we turned the Jetta back to Virginia and drove home.  A whirlwind trip, to be sure, but very fun.

I am proud of my brother and wish him a happy birthday.

(Sad epilogue: I just found out the Executive Inn closed last year).

Being Honest About My Comic Collection (the agony of Rob Liefield)

December 9, 2008 in Comics, Geek | No comments

I collect comics.  I have, on an off, since I was 11 or so.  It started with some random G.I. Joe issues which coincided nicely with all those toys I kept loosing, but the first comic I ever really remember buying for myself was Amazing Spider Man 298.  Collectors will note that this is Todd McFarlane’s first issue, which makes it valuable.  I didn’t know or care about any of that, however, when I bought it off the spinner rack at convienience store named “The Pantry” just up the street from my grandmother’s house.  That was in 1988.  I tried to buy all the Spider Man I could find after that, a feat that was made easier when Two Guy’s Comics opened in Conway, right next to my dad’s office.  Sometimes I would walk all the way from West Conway Middle to the comic store, a trek of 4 miles, to hang out and get my comics.  Come to think of it, I probably annoyed the crap out of the two brothers that ran the place.

My high school years, and the zenith of my collecting phase, coincided with the rise of The Speculator and, in general, a transition to a very crappy period in comics.  It’s sort of like what Lester Bangs tells young William Miller in Almost Famous — too bad you missed it kid, but you get to hear the death rattle.  Sure, good stuff was happening.  McFarlane was drawing AMS.  Some guy named Jim Lee started drawing Uncanny X-Men.  Robin got blown up by the Joker due to a phone-in vote.  McFarlane gave way to Eric Larsen because he got his own Spider-Man book and, later, started Image.  Venom went from being a cool enemy with a nice backstory that tied it into Spider history to some sort of anti-hero.  Somehow everthing got sat on it’s ear and Rob Liefield became popular.  Yet, truth be told, I have more Eric Larsen Spider-Man books than McFarlane Spider-Man books.  I probably have more Liefield X-Men than Jim-Lee X-Men.  Which probably explains why I think The 40 Worst Rob Liefied Drawings is so amusing.

(And I still haven’t gone to the comic shop in Fort Milll to fill in my AMS lag, dammit).

Pipe wrench fight

October 16, 2008 in TV | 2 comments

Wil Wheaton posted this.  I agree that “Take on Me” was a pretty seminal video, even for a guy like me who didn’t have cable.

Literal Take on Take on Me

Wishful Music Nostalgia

October 2, 2008 in Observations | 6 comments

The house was empty and cold this morning, so I turned on some LastFM to wake and warm things up.  I started out with acoustic singer-songwriter stuff, but post shower I switched over to the “sounds like REM station”.  About four songs in, Last gave me some Bob Mould, which really made me want to hear some Husker Du.  Impatiently, I switched over to “sounds like Husker Du” and Last dropped me into post-punk nirvana.  As I cooked and ate my breakfast, the station gave me The Minutemen, Mission to Burma, The Wipers, Fugazi, and Black Flag.  The music crept toward the 1990′s, playing some Guided By Voices and, as I went to close the computer and leave the house, Jawbreaker.  It was great.

I could say this music takes me back to the halcyon days of youth, listening to The Minutemen as I rode in the back seat of Jeff’s Delta 88 as we drove to Wilmington to see a show.  I could, but I would be lying.  I’d be lying because I really didn’t listen to those bands in high school, or even very much in college.  Can you be nostalgic for something you never actaully did?

I did ride in Jeff’s Delta.  And we did drive to Wilmington for shows at this wonderful downtown club in an old movie theatre.  But we didn’t listen to the Minutemen or Husker Du.  I knew who those bands were, but they never were played.  Sure, we played the occasional Black Flag tape, and Fugazi rattled around the floor somewhere, due to Ian and our straightedge proclivities, but this was 1992-ish.  These bands from Seattle on this label called SubPop seemed to occupy most of our time.  I also remember a fair amount of hip-hop, actually — Public Enemy, Ice Cube, and Ice-T were in heavy rotation.  We also wore that first House of Pain album out.  I am not sure if I should be embarrassed about that little fact or not.

For a long time, part of my identity was predicated on the fact that I was “into” a certain type of music.  As I get older, I am not sure if I really was into music (I’m certainly not now).  Or maybe I was just faddish in my own way, buying stuff from SubPop wheather it was good or not.  Sure, Mudhoney put out two or three really good albums.  But Tad?  Seriously?  The guy sang through sandpaper and distortion masked their relative inability to form a coherent song.  And not in an on-purpose way.  But I listened to the hell out of Tad, mainly because they were on SubPop and no one else seemed to listen to them.

I think my point here is that I wish I had spent my time listening to music that was good instead of music that was, simply, not what everyone else was listening too.  Except that, given punk breaking all over the place in the early 1990′s, everyone began listening to a lot of music that they hadn’t listened to before.  I died a little inside when Kristi, a popular, preppy girl in my trig class, told us her favorite song was “In Bloom”.  The sudden poularity of music that I once held as my own (or rather, “ours” and we all knew who “we” were) complicated matters even further.  Why didn’t I go and find Jawbreaker, then?

Maybe I am being too hard on myself.  I was a poor kid who lived on a farm outside of Conway in the days before the internet.  How was I supposed to know anything about music?  Still, I think I could do myself a world of good if I went back in time to 1991 and gave myself Double Nickles on the Dime, Let it Be, and some Mission to Burma seven-inches.

Does anyone else feel this way, or is it my own getting older, preoccupation with nostalgia navel-gazing?

Nostalgia — A Basic Definition

September 15, 2008 in Geek, Observations | 6 comments

One of the things I am interested in exploring in this blog is nostalgia both my own and the general preoccupation with the past of popular culture that seems to dominate geek culture in general.  I thought I’d start this exploration with the dictionary definition:

nostalgia

Main Entry:
nos·tal·gia
Pronunciation:
\nä-ˈstal-jə, nə- also nȯ-, nō-; nə-ˈstäl-\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
New Latin, from Greek nostos return home + New Latin -algia; akin to Greek neisthai to return, Old English genesan to survive, Sanskrit nasate he approaches
Date:
1756
1: the state of being homesick : homesickness2: a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition ; also : something that evokes nostalgia

From Meriam-Webster online

A couple of observations:

  • The Old English parent word is interesting — “to survive”
  • I was surprised “homesickness” is the primary definition.  I never really think of the term as referring to homesickness, even though it makes perfect sense.  It’s the second definition that usually comes to mind.
  • I am also surprised at the negative connotation of the second definition.   I tend to consider nostalgia as somewhat negative, but I am not sure it’s thought of that way by most.
  • I often think of nostalgia as “yearning for some past period”, but never really thought about it meaning “a return to an irrecoverable condition”, although that makes sense.  What is youth but an “irrecoverable condition”?


What does “nostalgia” mean to you?

Old Fogey Alert — Rock Heroes

September 10, 2008 in Observations | 5 comments

Monday, after I put our daughter down for her nap, I plopped down on the couch for some rest.  Turning on the TV, I caught a commercial for Rock Heroes.  It’s your usual classic rock CD compilation, long on 1970′s hard rock (Alice Cooper) and 1980′s quasi-metal (The Scorpions).  What I found unusual, though, was the tag line: “The biggest collection of rock hits from your favorite video games.”  Apparently, what they’ve done is taken a bunch of songs from Guitar Hero and Rock Band and compiled them on a CD (hence the clever title — Rock Hero — get it?!).  This tag line grabbed me because it drives home the fact that, for a bunch of kids, these games may be the first exposure to these songs.  This freaks me out a little, in the “you’re getting old” way, but I am not sure that it should.  Sure, I had parents who listened to a fair amount of rock and roll, leaving me a legacy of Black Sabbath and Lynrd Sknyrd albums.  And I never completely grew out of high school classic rock phase epitomized by “discovering” Led Zeppelin.  But I was (and am) exposed to a lot of music through various forms of commercial media.  Call me a Philistine, but I wouldn’t know anything about classical music at all but for TV commercials.  Certianly, movie soundtracks have exposed me to lots of music.  Here, I think if the sountracks to Singles (or any Cameron Crowe movie), The Crow, Trainspotting, Garden State, and Dazed and Confused.  So if one grants that video games are a media format on par with movies — a premise I’m at least willing to consider — I am not sure that there’s anything wrong with today’s kids playing along with Bad Company in Rock Band 2, then going out and buying Rock Heroes because they like the song.  Now, whether or not they actually buy CD’s anymore is a different story.

Edit:  Holy Crap.  I just checked out the song list for Rock Band 2.  Not only will the new Guns n Roses song be debuted on the video game, but it has “Tangled Up In Blue”.  That’s right, Bob Freaking Dylan on a video game.  I just don’t know what to make of that.

On Rangers and 4th Edition

September 3, 2008 in Gaming | 5 comments

Much blood and internet ink has been spilled about the 4th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons.  Many, many reviews and thoughts have been written.  Even though I’ve read through the PHB, I am still firmly in the “I need to play it” camp.  Yet as I read through this book for “Arcane, Divine, and Martial Heroes” and in particular the ranger class, I had a realization — if this book somehow were transported through time to 1986, the year I started playing D&D, I am not sure I would have liked it.

I really got into D&D for one reason (okay, three).  First, Ricky Terzo seemed like a cool kid and he played it with his older brother (who was kinda scary but also cool).  Second, I read The Chronicles of Narnia in third grade and the idea of wizards and such stuck with me.  But the real reason was, that 6th grade fall, I read The Hobbit for the first time and it kicked my 10 year old ass.  I suppose the Narnia books planted the seed, which was kept watered by things like A Wrinkle in Time, but The Hobbit dumped Miracle Grow onto my love of fantasy.  Mrs. Ricks had a copy in her classroom library — the tan mass market paperback with the original Tolkien illustration of Bilbo riding the barrels into Lake-Town on the front.  I don’t remember why I picked it up, but I checked it out, took it home, and devoured it.

The Hobbit, of course, was just the beginning.  “WAIT!  There are three more books?!  And Bilbo’s ring is somehow evil!  Gimme those things!”  So I snagged Fellowship from my cousin’s house (She worked at a bookstore; her copy was a mass market stripped cover.  The blue one.  I still have it.  Sorry, Paris, but you were supposed to throw that away anyway).  Christmas that year was spent at my mom’s in Maryland and I read The Two Towers.  Christmas morning I opened the Red Box Basic Set.  I was in.  School started again, Ricky moved away, and all my friends began playing D&D. 

What does any of this have to do with the 4ED ranger?  Do I really have to spell it out for you?  I began playing D&D because I wanted to participate, somehow, in stories like The Lord of the Rings.  For awhile, I wanted to participate IN the Lord of the Rings.  That following summer, we spent the better part of our waking hours in a quest for The Bow of Legolas.  Tolkien had a HUGE influence in how we saw and played the game, even if, as Gygax claimed, he had little influence on the construction of the game itself.  When we “graduated” to the hardback AD&D books, we were all enamored with the ranger.  Now, we could play Aragorn and his Dunedain!  There he was — skilled woodsman, magical powers, even the freaking name of the class was RANGER!  Awesome!  (And you don’t have to tell me there were all sorts of non-Tolkien stuff in the 1ed ranger.  I know about the giant fighter and the favored enemy and the two weapons.  NOT Aragorn.  I get it.  But the class was called a RANGER!)

(Ironically, I cannot remember ever actually seriously playing a ranger until I was in graduate school.  And he got turned into a chimera.  That sucked).

The point is that Tolkien led me to D&D.  The Tolkien elements in D&D kept me there long enough for the game to become entwined with my adolescent identity.  But now, there is very little Tolkien left in that ranger, because he’s not a semi-magical tracker at all.  Now, he’s an archer or a two weapon fighter.  He’s a striker who deals lots of damage.  He has some cool combat stuff. But I don’t look at him and say “I want to play this class because it sounds like those cool guys Aragorn was part of!”  So I don’t see the 11 year old me really being interested in this stuff, because it has little to do with the reason I was playing the game in the first place.

Hold your flaming, folks.  I know I am not 11 any more.  I am not remotely claiming Wizards of the Coast stomped all over my childhood.  That was 20 years ago.  The 11 year olds of today know LOTR through the movies.  They’ve encountered fantasy through all sorts of different mediums — there’s video games and manga and Harry Potter and all sorts of other things (although why there isn’t some Harry Potterish stuff in this game now I don’t get.  Didn’t a few kids read those books?  A few kids that maybe want to play games where they can do Harry Potter sorts of things?)  I am just saying a big reason I got into D&D in the first place doesn’t appear to be in D&D anymore.  The game has moved on.  I have moved on.  Both are inevitable.  Yet there is still this nostalgic lament that, had this book been my edition of D&D, I may have passed it by.  And who knows what would have happened then.