Four big thoughts about the chunky cassette tapes on the new release shelf

Four thoughts that quickly went through my thick head when I saw the above display at a local store:

1) Oh cool, cassette tapes must be making a comeback. That's nice. Tapes were the way I first heard the music I really loved.

2) They're having a laugh asking forty bucks for Mariah Carey's Christmas album. I'm sure I could get you a copy for 50c down the dump shop, it sold like gangbusters for decades and millions of those tapes are still out there in the world.  

3) Putting the new Phoebe Bridgers album out on tape is probably a great idea, but giving it a flimsy cardboard cover defeats much of the point that these things are an object, a chunky slice of possibly unearned nostalgia, and the extremely resilient plastic covers that the tapes went in is a big part of it. It's bad enough that the new CDs I still buy to listen to in the car come in flimsy carboard covers that quickly rip apart, instead of the sleek plastic of the originals, but if you want people to pay forty bucks for some kind of cultural artifact, you have got to give them some heft.

4) I don't need new tapes, I still got ones that I bought in the 80s, man. 

How to be absolutely rubbish at self promotion

I was recently reading a short book about David Lynch and, as always, I came away with a sneaky admiration and blatant jealousy towards his dedication to the Artist Life, although I do feel sympathy for the loved ones he ignored in that never-ending pursuit. 

I don't have anywhere near that kind of dedication, but do still feel that need to create something from nothing, like almost everybody else in this world. I'm not particularly talented at drawing pictures or carving sculptures, and lack the collaborative skills to create something bigger like a movie.

But I do like putting words in a particular order to make fleeting thoughts permanent, which is how I've managed to keep this blog going for almost two decades, and I do like writing stories. 

I enjoy the problem solving of a larger narrative, putting it all together in a way that makes sense, playing around with grammar and plot convention to try and scrape out something new to say. I adore having finished a short novel, and completing it to my satisfaction.

What I really hate is the idea of trying to sell it, or even having to advertise in any way whatsoever.

I never do any kind of promotion for this blog, and have multiple novels that I've completed and lost all interest in actually doing something about it afterwards. The idea of having a larger social media presence to put the word out there about something I've created, of having to go out into the world and selling it, just repels me.

There's definitely some cowardice in there. If I never show anything to anybody, nobody can tell me it is terrible - or worse, boring - and I stay in my safe little bubble. But for me, the work really is the thing. I care too much about the journey to ever give a damn about the destination.

It's one of the things I always liked about Banksy, and while he has a talent for acerbic wit and some pretty stenciling, his greatest accomplishment is his anonymity. People try to out him every few years and I never pay any attention, because it's all about the art, and nothing about the human behind it.

That's my excuse for that cowardice, and how once I have finished something, I can just move on to the next thing, and don't look back.  

All my dreams come true

I sound like a fucking idiot every time I go to one of the local comic book stores - the absolutely excellent Iron Age Comics in Auckland's beautiful Eden Terrace, which I recently scored a bunch of mindbogglingly good $1 comics - because every time I'm in there I say something like 'holy fuck, I've been looking for this book for 30 years!' like a goddamn rube.

It's true, though. I had been hunting for the first Love and Rockets sketchbook since the 90s - I got volume two not long after it was published, but never saw the first edition anywhere until the week before last. And I had been after Lars Pearson's 'I, Who' book about all the Doctor Who novels since at least 2001 (and finding i recently could not be more timely); and the DC Comics Presents annual with Superwoman had been on my list since sometime in the 1980s.

I sound like an idiot because I actually am an idiot, but it doesn't take much to please a fool and I am so incredibly chuffed to get these treasures I was after for decades, and then just fiund sitting on the shelves. 

Looking for the next big nerd project

While I try to vary the type of novels that I read as much as possible, Doctor Who books have been a constant in my life for the past seven or eight years.

I've been regularly reading all the Doctor Who New Adventures books published by Virgin in the 1990s. after completing my collection of them a decade ago (after 20 years of searching). It made perfect sense to read them all in order, and actually follow the whole story across thousands and thousands of pages. It took me a while to get going, but after a while I started sticking to a schedule of reading one every month, and now I've just knocked off Bad Therapy by Matthew Jones, number 57 in the series.

There were 61 novels in all, so I am just about there. And while I am enjoying the accomplishment, the obvious question is about what to do next. What long series of novels can I spend the next few years churning though?

I was considering the Wild Cards books, about the strange world of Aces and Jokers and their superhuman wars. I read the first half dozen in the 90s, but haven't really dipped into it since then. I would have to track down at least a dozen or so books before I got into that, though, so that one might be one for later.

Maybe all the James Ellroy books - I enjoyed the fuck out of his most recent novel and have read all of them at some point of another, but never in any kind of order. I just don't think immersing myself in the headspace of his incredibly deplorable characters for a long period of time would be that healthy. 

I'm leaning towards more Doctor Who, in some form, because they've been enormously entertaining. I do have all the Bernice New Adventures books, and that could last me a couple of years. Or maybe I can time travel into the past with the Virgin Missing Adventures, although I am still maddeningly short of a full series. I could even get started on the BBC Books with the Eighth Doctor, although there are massive holes in that series.

I don't have to rush. I have longform comic things that I can get into, I recently spent weeks reading almost nothing but Garth Ennis comics about the Punisher, and still remember how a full read of Lone Wolf and Cub helped get me through two Covid lockdowns, but they usually only take a week or two. And watching a whole longform TV series might take a couple of months - I just started ripping through all the Tales of The Crypt episodes last week. 

But a series of novels can take years to get through, and that feels like something of an accomplishment. A small amount of dedication and some perseverance. That's all it takes to tackle the most massive of narratives.

My peak dad is explaining Storm on the work to school

Like all parents of young children, I ache for the babies they once were, but I do adore the creatures they are becoming. Especially when they ask me about the X-Men.

We walk to school every morning, and it takes about 20 minutes through mainly quiet suburban streets, and we spend that time talking about the usual things, like the other kids at school, and what they have been learning, and what they want to eat for a snack when they get home.

But we have also recently been spending a lot of time talking about superheroes, and it feels like the most useful I've ever been as a parent. When the seven year old needs to know the back story of Iron Man, I've got the goods, and when she demands a list of all of Wonder Woman's enemies, I can spend 10 minutes just talking about the Cheetah.

Filling young brains with this nonsense might be intellectually dubious, but in a world of never-ending uncertainties, the kids can be reassured that their dad knows his superhero shit. This gives me an enormous sense of wellbeing.

There are interesting side effects - after giving up some details about the X-Men and Storm in particular, I did catch the kid out in the back garden, trying to move the clouds with her mind. I tried to not laugh too much, but the skies did quickly clear, so she definitely got the last laugh. (The whole neighbourhood has also recently avoided rain showers that soaked nearby suburbs, just enough to make me wonder...).

I just have so much useless information stored away, ready to come out whenever anyone asks, and nobody has ever asked before. Endless hours with the Marvel handbooks and the DC Who's Who and it finally pays off. 

I do desperately want the kids to find their own things, and encourage them to consume entertainment that baffles me, and delights them. But if they ever want to know about the Legion of Super Heroes, I am one million percent here for them.

Justice League America: I never learn!

- Justice League America #33 

Art by Adam Hughes and Art Nichols 

Words by Kieth Giffen and JM DeMatteis 

Letters by Bob Lappan 

Colours by Gene D'Angelo

They spilled AI on my Batman comic!

I don't know if the miscreants who put this execrable blurb on the back of a perfectly serviceable Batman comic used AI for it, or if their brains have just been so rotted by AI use that they think saying 'This intentional focus reassures readers of a steadfast commitment to a more authentic, detective-driven experience...' is an acceptable thing to say about a Batman comic book.

Either way, this is an anti-blurb. They are meant to be selling you on this comic, not actively turning you away. There are many things about the use of AI that are wrong and indefensible, but actively doing the opposite of what they should is certainly one of the big ones, and one even the money men should understand.

Student radio forever

I still feel like a total perv when I get into the pop music produced by young female musicians - while I am very much not the target audience for it, I can't help it if they keep making some stonking music. Our household has been listening to a lot of Phoebe Bridgers lately.

I also feel similarly awkward when I listen to student radio too much, but they also give me great music to listen to, and I can't do much about that either.

The main reason I end up listening to so much of the local student radio station is the very dumbest reason in the world. I only listen to the radio while driving around town, and Auckland University's BFM is the only radio station that plays music at the top of the hour, and I get unheathily angry at the ads all the other stations are playing (I even have a oddly visceral reaction to the way every ad ends with somebody saying 'tees and cees applies', as if that is just so much cooler than saying 'terms and conditions').

And every other radio station (apart from my beloved public broadcaster, if I'm in the mood for news), fills the airwaves with their awful braying commercials, except for the students, and I just end up listening to them by default.

But I also still like the shabby nature of student radio. I never really went to university, but I still adore the drawl of the young student announcer, the bored monotone is quite relaxing compared to the hyperactivity of the commercial radio DJs.

And, most of all, it's where I hear the new music that I would never hear anywhere else. All the hip young things and the forgotten legends. There is always a part of me that craves the new sound, the tune that isn't like anything else in the world, and the student radio delivers it up every single day.

And then there are the shows focused on hardcore dub, or old school reggae, or eternal old country tunes, or thrash metal. Old beats and archaic sounds that are as fresh as anything else produced in 2026, because they are new to me, and not like anything else on the airwaves. I still feel old while I listen to them, but not that old.

Old men and their books: Red Sheet

Red Sheet
By James Elloy

I never know what the hell is going on in James Ellroy books. It's always a huge, convoluted mess of reprehensible people - a volatile cocktail of racism, lust, power and political ideologies running rampant, as communists and Christians alike commit horrific killings in post-war LA. 

The big picture is always easy enough to follow - there are hard twists in his stories, sudden revelations that burn into the page - but it's the details that really matter. You can't skim read Ellroy books, you'll miss something vital, especially with such a sprawling cast of characters, although some important points get hammered over and over again in macabre rhythm. There's just so much to keep track of, you need to mind photograph it all like the fictional Nazi detective Hans Maslick advises.

It's page after page of surveillances and break-ins and putting details together, before exploding into sudden violence. The action scenes are also hard and fast and brutal - evil men don't get socked in the jaw, they get their noses bitten off, or their feet set on fire.

Red Sheet has all of this usual Ellroy malarky, as well as a brilliant mystery - who are the four evil motherfuckers who murdered priests and raped nuns in the Spanish Civil War and have been running discreet death squads on the American west coast for decades, and how much do these feverish 20rh century ideologies tarnish the entire world?

The Freddie Otash books are more focused than the second LA Quartet he has also been working in for the past decade or so, with that first person narration, is all coming through Freddie's head, and full of the analysis he puts on scenes of atrocity.

His brain takes in all the incredible details, I still love the way his characters toss a room, and I really like the sound of the Cure, when powerful men get too strung out on speed or booze of women, and they hole up in the back of a Chinese restaurant, get hooked up to a glucose and morphine drip, get some full blood transfusions, eat a fucking shitload of chop suey and come out feeling like Superman. That sounds like fun.

I always deeply enjoy the Ellroy books and never recommend them to anybody because these stories of psychos and stone cold killers are most definitely not for everybody. And his style is extremely idiosyncratic, - it was getting more abstract in the later American Tabloid books, but has been pared back a little by Freddie's narration. It's easier to follow, but also packed and bopping and machine gun delivery. 

It remains incredibly hard to write about his books without imitating that style, but nobody could capture words like James Ellroy does, even when they are put together for the most appalling crimes.