To be a loose cannon in LA

There has been a significant lack of Friedkin in my cinematic diet, so I finally caught up with To Live And Die In LA when it showed up on my Tubi feed recently. And I have to give it to old Billy, I was genuinely surprised how much it dissected the hugely dramatic idea of a loose cannon going on a roaring rampage of revenge, and showed how hollow it was.

Going into the film, I knew the fate of William Petersen's properly unhinged Dick Chance, and how that twisted the genre. But I didn't realise how much of an absolute arsehole he was before that bloody end. Chance is out to avenge his partner's death, but mainly manages to cause monstrous harm. He gets people killed, he fucks things up, all his loved ones think he's cracked, And most of all, he's a failure. His big plan to get vengeance doesn't work, he doesn't even get the satisfaction bringing down the bad guy and it's up to cousin Ira from Mad About You to get the job done.

I've seen literally hundreds of films with similar themes, but few that showed how hollow and awful that path in life can be, and the dead end it takes you down.

Loving the facsimile

Two thirds of the comics I got on a recent new release day featured George Pérez art, and considering we lost the big fella a few years ago, that's not a bad ratio. 

I get on average about one American monthly comic book every week - gotta keep that fix under control somehow - and I could never go cold turkey on new comics. But a sizable proportion of the ones I have been buying in the past couple of years are comics that were originally published years ago, and I've never been able to find them in any form until now.

They call them facsimiles, and I love them so very, very much. I don't think of them as artificial copies, they're just the latest printing of a comic that has not been in print for a very long time.

I've been unable to resist the new editions of Treasury comics from the 1970s that I only ever saw in the house ads of the time, and never in the flesh, and now I can feast on the Batman art has never looked bigger or brighter, and watch Superman race the Flash in the largest format possible.

These reissues are also wonderful for plugging those annoying holes in the collection. I've had the first and fourth issues of the wonderful JLA/Avengers crossover since they came out, but could never find copies of the middle two issues due to reprint problems, and then they were just available at the local comic store to pick up. 

And I always wanted the 200th issue of Justice League of America, especially with pages of Bolland's Batman taking on Black Canary and Green Arrow and the facsimile copy of that I just snapped up was even in that Treasury format.

These blasts from the past still have just as many thrills as they did when they were first published, and I still grab random issues when I'm at the comic shop. Why not get the first Sgt Rock comic, or a very special issue of the X-Men? They still count as something new to me.

Muting the Avengers

I survive the never ending maelstrom of social media with a heavy blocking and muting policy. It does not take much. Any gross display of entitlement, any thoughtless piece of rudeness, or any bigotry at all, and it's an instant block. Life is much better that way.

But there are some topics where good people have dodgy opinions that I just can't get behind, and that requires a delicate sense of muting. And several months out from the latest Avengers film from Marvel, I have trained my meagre social media presence to ignore all things related to that film.

On one hand, there is some mindless adoration and endless publicity that I can avoid, but on the other, I get to also avoid exposure to all the cool kids telling me how much they hate the films. So I still want to follow film writers who bang on about great transgressive cinema, but I really don't need to know how much they hate Spider-Man movies, because of course they fucking do.

I really don't get either side of the love/hate equation to the Marvel superhero movies. None of them are masterpieces, but none of them are total dogshit either, they're all just fine. And sometimes fine is okay is all right. Some basically competent filmmaking with a few things we've never seen before is all I need for a good night out at the movies. I rarely remember much about them, but that's all right, my brain is full enough.

The trigger for my latest bout of industrial strength muting was the general complaining about all the homework that was supposedly required for the new film. All the past stories that needed to be revisited to get the full effect of the latest effort. 

The biggest complaints seem to come from people who would never see the new film anyway, and I don't think you need to see a damn thing before going to these movies. I can get the gist. I don't understand the plots of almost all the James Bond films, but I like the sex and violence.

Besides, I was 350 issues behind ion Fantastic Four when I first started reading that regularly, complete bafflement about the history of every damn little thing is the point.

So I don't find myself missing much by cutting out the chatter. It can make the end experience better because it's no context, all feeling. I've enjoyed the past few years of Doctor Who a lot more because I haven't been interacting with that vast and sprawling fandom at all, and I greatly enjoy going to see films as soon as they come out on a weekday morning, before any reviews or general hot takes ruin it for everybody

So I won't know much more about the new film before I go see it in December- unless they put a big spoiler on the sides of buses or something - and I look forward to that marvellous experience all the more for it.

Bowling With Corpses: She paused to examine her own heart

- Bowling With Corpses & Other Strange Tales From Lands Unknown 

Art and story by Mike Mignola

Colors by Dave Stewart

Letters by Clem Robins

Burn, baby, burn

I might not find the most excellent Milk and Cheese comics by the even more excellent Evan Dorkin quite as funny as I did when I was a 21-year-old edgelord. 

But the older I get, the more I think their ongoing rampages of destruction are entirely justified. 

The best guitarist I ever saw

I've had the extreme good fortune of seeing a handful of the world's best guitarists do their thing in the flesh. I've watched Neil Young shred it up with his Crazy Hose buds, and I've seen Jack White play to his audience of one.

There are many, many of the world's greatest guitarists who I have not seen, and never will. I'll never see Hendrix in the flesh, or any of those 60s greats that have, at the very least, retired from constant performing.

Then there are the great bluesmen of the old days, whose work survives in scratched permanence, and they were doing great work a century ago. And there are the people I've seen in pub bands who never broke big, but could do remarkable things with their guitar. And even some mates - my friend Louis has some of the best slowhand technique I've ever seen, but is content letting it rip at jam nights at the local pub.

But when it comes to the big shows and the big stars, there is one guitarist who genuinely impressed me more than anybody, and that was Tom Morello.

I didn't even know Prophets of Rage was a thing - a supergroup of members from Public Enemy, Audioslave, Cypress Hill and Rage Against the Machine - until my mate Brian convinced me to go to their show, and I was fucking glad I did because it was one hell of a gig, with that kind of back catalogue to dive into.

It was also a great fucking show because I spent almost the whole time staring with absolute adoration at Morello's guitar playing. I'd seen the big man perform a thousand times in music videos and concert films, but seeing him show off all his tricks in front of a huge audience was a total trip.

He shredded the big riffs, of course, but his playing was also so light and playful. He actually made feedback work as a separate instrument, and filled in the songs with all kinds of crazy noodling about. He had been doing this for several decades now, and obviously knew how to impress a crowd, but made it look like he was coming up with new ideas on the fly, as if this was the first time he'd ever thought of playing his guitar upside down.

And he made it look so easy, as if the six-strings were another part of his body, and playing unearthly sounds on it was just as natural as walking.

I've seen a lot of the huge bands I grew up loving, and look forward to seeing more - I finally got to see Pulp this year, so anything is possible! But it would take something to beat what I saw Tom Morello do on stage that one time.    

How Rocky Horror always made me a better person

Re-watching a film you used to be obsessed with is always a strange experience, and the longer it's been since you last indulged, the stranger it gets. Some dialogue, characters and entire scenes can seemingly be forgotten, until the re-watch drags them up from somewhere deep in the memory, and you realise you never forgot any of this shit.

Last week I watched the Rocky Horror Picture Show, a film I was brutally obsessed with for an incredibly brief time many years ago. It was the first time I'd seen it in more than a decade, and it was bloody awesome. I knew every song (up to a very particular point) backwards, and greatly enjoyed drinking in its unique vibe again.

Looking back, with its themes of wild and rampant sexuality, it probably wasn't the best film to be watching over and over again when I was 12 years old. But it really did help me become a better person, so maybe it was exactly what I should have been watching.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show remains a strange and goofy movie that is unlike anything else ever put on film. A lot of this is due to the fact that it remains oddly timeless - a pastiche of dopey fifties horror films made in the seventies, on very limited sets that have no foundation in the real world. It's a hermetically sealed world where everyone bursts into delightful song, or gets on down into some dirty sex, and it all takes place in a tight little universe.

Fortunately, almost all of those sings are still just as irritatingly catchy and meaty as they ever were - everybody knows the Time Warp, but each song, which come along at surprisingly regular intervals, is infinitely catchy. Over at The Frankenstein Place is a dose of haunting glam, Sweet Transvestite has some great thundering keyboards, I'm Going Home is still fucking heart-breaking, and the whole Science Fiction/Double Feature thing is a fantastic bookend.

And it's all held together by a fine cast, including the young and unflappable Susan Sarandon, and a ensemble who had mastered the roles in the stage show.  Tim Curry has done many fine things over his long career, but nothing beats his sly, snide and spectacular Frank N Furter.

Even with the groovy songs and unique atmosphere of cheery and gross dread, Rocky Horror still has some flaws. Some parts of the story are needlessly cruel, and some of the sexual politics are incredibly dated. And it's easy to see how the whole thing could be repulsive to certain people, with its callous disregard for taste and social niceties.

But it's precisely  those things that still make it an attractive experience for some. For many beautiful freaks and lovely geeks, Rocky Horror is still one of the greats.

My own obsession with the movie was oddly limited, in more ways than one. I had a copy on video tape when I was 12, but it ran out of tape almost exactly halfway through the film, right after the point when Frank separately seduced Brad and Janet.

So I just rewatched the first 45 minutes over and over again, because that was enough. I loved the look of the film, and that unique and unusual atmosphere. I would watch that same 45 minutes over and over again, memorising the tunes and dialogue through sheer osmosis, (although I had to play 'Hot Patootie, Bless My Soul' a million times over to figure out what Meatloaf was on about). I pestered my parents to rent out a copy from the video store so that I could see how it ended, and was thrilled to see the second half continue with the same bizarre vibe. They didn't really understand the attraction, but indulged it.

It didn't last long - youthful obsessions like that rarely do - and I was over Rocky Horror by the time I was a teenager. It was still something I would watch now and then, but the spaces between those viewings stretched out further and further, until I didn't watch it for 10 years.

A brief aside on the experience of watching Rocky Horror - I never, ever got into the whole audience participation thing, something Rocky is truly infamous for, and actually found myself actively turned off the movie by those fan events.

It's hard to really explain why, especially when so many outsiders and loners found those special movie screenings a revelation, all over the world. There are plenty of people who couldn't even think of watching the movie on their own, because the communal experience was what it was all about.

Not for me - right at the height of my Rocky Horror love I got a hold of a soundtrack album that actually included the whole audience participation, and it was so fucking annoying and restrictive and elitist that it turned me right off the idea. It was something about the strict rules over what dumb lines to insert in any gap in the movie, and the loss of the movie's silent charms, that was so off-putting.

I went to one live show once, and it only took five minutes for one person to get loudly upset because the others "weren't doing it right".

Still, while I'm just a grumpy old shit on this issue of watching it with a crowd, I can point to one way that the Rocky Horror Picture Show made me a better person, and I'm so glad it did.

Because when I was going through that phase of watching it every day at school, I was literally living on a farm outside a small rural community in New Zealand in the mid-1980s, and that whole scene was conservative as shit. And growing up in that place, I was a bit of a conservative little prick, worried about things like homosexuals and transexuals and anything that could be classed as 'abnormal'. I never experienced anything to do with it, it wasn't really on TV or anywhere, and I knew a few camp adults, but they just seemed really happy all the time.

So Rocky Horror was actually one of my very first exposures to all these issues, with some very mature moments in between the rock and roll. And seeing a man in sexy ladies underwear seduce both Brad and Janet was an absolute revelation, because I suddenly discovered I had absolutely no problem with any of this. Confronted with some very adult issues at a reasonably young age, I couldn't see why people were so scared of this sort of thing. Because if Rocky taught me anything, it's that you should just be happy with who you are, no matter what the rest of the world says.

Confronted with these things, I really didn't think it was any big deal. If feeling good about yourself means putting on some tight pantyhose and slipping the odd nipple out, go for it. Who cares what anybody else thinks?  I'm still painfully heterosexual, but if people want to change clothes, or genders, or anything like that, then I don't want to get in their way, and I encourage them to do whatever makes them feel good, because we could all use a bit more of that in life. I may have been a small minded little son of a bitch, but Rocky Horror opened that mind right up.

I'm many years older now, and a lot of things have changed. But some things haven't.

I still love the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I love the way Richard O'Brien's kiwi accent only pokes through once (when he yells that they never liked him, right at the end), I love the American Gothic thing at the start, and I love that it's still as funny as hell - the 'Brad! Janet! Doctor Scott! etc...' bit is a strange comedic highlight.

And I'm still trying to keep that open mind going. I've seen plenty of other sexual shenanigans since Rocky Horror, but as long as it's this much fun for everybody, I'm up for anything.

(This was originally posted on the Tearoom of Despair in 2015, and I'm dusting it off in honour of Tim Curry, who really was one of the greats. I just read his memoir a couple of months ago, and he was just a super dude. RIP, Tim.)

Whatever Happened To...? A reprint request

The big comic companies have been reprinting all sorts of crazy things lately, but one comic I wish they would still republish is the 'Whatever Happened To...' back-ups in early 80s DC Comics Presents, where they would dig up some obscure character, and give them a proper send off, or maybe even a new lease of life. 

The main motive for these stories was quite clearly so the company could hold to the copyrights to characters they had no idea what to do with, but the tales themselves were often quite charming and nerdy, and could feel oddly important in the histories of Robotman or Hourman, or some other Golden Age hero. 

It might happen one day - DC is putting out a comic that is nothing but Joe Kubert covers soon, which is also 100 percent my jam -  so I can still dream about a book of codas.

The Matrix is glitching hard

One of the side effects of moving house and actually sorting out the collection for the first time in years is that I keep finding I have multiple copies of the same comics and toys, even though I have no idea where the hell the multiples came from.

They are the most random things - a complete double up of six issues of the Kev series by Ennis and Ezquerra, several Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition comics. While cleaning out the kids room I found the same puzzle in two different toy boxes, when I always thought there was only one.

I can only assume that or reality really is something like the Matrix and it is getting so glitchy and buggy that there are repeated errors. Like it's not even trying anymore to keep track of how many comics there are in the world, or even in the cardboard boxes I have in the shed. 

The radio doesn't help - after talking to a friend about the wonderful Kiwi band the Straitjacket Fits during a recent catch-up, I heard two of their songs on two different rock stations on the drive back home, and I never randomly hear their music out in the world.

And then when we moved out of old place, I met the guy who was going to move in with his family, and I recognised them as the DJ who plays at the kids' school disco. I don't know 99.9 percent of my neighbour's names, but I knew that guy.

Are there only so many people in the world, the universe has to keep using the same characters? Does reality need more quantum computing power? 

I don't think I'm going to try and jump off a tall building to fly like Neo to test the theory, but I am getting rid of those extra Kev comics. They freak me out.

The joy of admitting you are wrong

One dull weekend in the late 1990s, I got into a slightly heated argument with some dude I hardly know over an actor who appeared in The Fast Show, the wonderful British sketch comedy programme. I was certain that an actor in that was also in a recent movie, and that other somebody was certain it was someone different.

Until that point in time, it would have been hard to convince me I was wrong - and I was very, very drunk at the time, so I was totally steadfast - but we also had the internet by then, and we looked it up, and I was 100 percent wrong about it.

What I could not convince anybody else was that I was fine with being proven wrong, because I have often been wrong about things, and there is no real growth or development in a person's life if they can't admit that.

It was hard to convince them that I was okay with being wrong, because it's human nature to be upset about it, to feel a little foolish or chastened. 

Which, of course, is an attitude that is responsible for a lot of shit in the world these days. World leaders who can't admit they might have fucked up, and double down on their catastrophes, because the very idea that they could learn from their mistakes - and maybe even avoid them in the future - is completely unthinkable.

I'm wrong about all sorts of things, and I change my opinion all the time. I look back at things I wrote on this blog a couple of years ago and think that I sound like a total dipshit, as my tastes and opinions change, and I reassess things and come to a different conclusion.

I don't regret all the Radiohead hate I hurled at my mates after they fell for the first album - Thom was a whiny git and Creep just tried too hard, I insisted - but turned all the way around when OK Computer came along with the sound of the future. I was happy to admit I was wrong, and change with the times, and I could live with the constant reminders I got about my earlier hatred.

Usually it's the other way around, and I dislike stuff that I once thought was the bee's knees, and there are just too many examples of that to go around, because the movies and comics I once loved can now look clumsy and dumb.

I change my mind all the time and I'm not going to deny what I once felt. Human beings are complex creatures and contain multitudes, and can have different opinions from day to day, let alone over years.

And world leaders, or the odd in-law who doesn't like to be called out on their racist attitudes of old, who just can't admit that they were wrong, are really missing out on something. I am glad to be proven wrong about something, because I learn from it. I never got anything wrong about The Fast Show ever again, at least.

Bone: Well, bless my buttons!

- Bone #3

By Jeff Smith

I'm never getting to the 13th Doctor

I have spent a significant portion of the 2020s playing the online Doctor Who: Thirteen game on the doctorwho.tv website. It's a variation on the classic 2048 game, where you have to slide tiles to double numbers, only they do it with all the Doctors. I have played it hundreds and hundreds of times, and I have never come close to getting to the 13th Doctor.

The screenshot above is as close as I ever got, up to the 12th, but was nowhere near getting all the other Doctors needed for that last regeneration. I do actually get 13 Doctors, because they count the War Doctor, but there's no Jodie Whittaker for me.

I'll keep trying, though. The Doctor wouldn't give up, no matter what number they were.

The death of MF Doom: Just let people live where they want

The ongoing demonization of immigrants around the world drives me crazy, and I am constantly disappointed by political parties that profess to be on the side of justice and compassion, but still use immigration as an obvious scapegoat to appease all the moronic bigots in society.

I am ridiculously pro-immigration, the people who move into a new community bring vibrancy and life to the places they join. The school my kids go to is full of families from dozens of different nations, and I adore their exposure to all new traditions and histories and cultures and ways of thinking about the world.

But if I had to choose one small example of how fucked up the entire global immigration system is, it's in the sad death of MF Doom.

Doom was a terrific artist, his beats were epic and his wordplay was sublime. There was depth to his music, an intelligence and humanity lurking beneath that stark metal mask. His work with Czarface was legit my single favourite album of the past decade. 

And you had this guy who did wonderful music, and his words were poetry, and he died far away from home, kicked out of America by the dullest of bureaucracies.

What kind of a society is that, when you can just dispose of artistic genius like it is nothing? Doom's history of nationhood was complicated, but every life is complicated, all pounded into submission by the brute force of the system, and there was no recourse for Doom to get back to his family, his friends, the world he grew up in. 

When societies treat their greatest artists like this, those societies are worth nothing. And all this happened to Doom before the current shitshow that is the ICE nightmare gripping the US, and there will inevitably be more great minds and great people currently being forced to leave the place they love, because John Q Fucknuckle doesn't like how many brown people are working in his fast food joints.

Borders are just lines on paper, that fuckwits use to justify their own feelings of superiority and cruelty. Because if you can't see the value of keeping poets like MF Doom in your nation, you are no nation of worth at all. 

Awards always beat cockroaches in the pie game

There was a grimly fascinating exercise in human behaviour at the local bakery in the past couple of months, and I got to see what really matters to my friends and neighbours, and I am honestly not surprised by the clear result of it all.

It's a very bougie bakery, with $12 pies that are, admittedly, fucking excellent. Of course I tried them, I have very serious opinions about meat pies, and had to see if their special Philly Cheesesteak pies were really worth $12.

And then the store shut down for a week, and I thought they were just on holiday or something, but it turned out they had a cockroach infestation. And despite a quick clean up and the prominent display of a 'A' health rating in the front window, it definitely had an impact on business. There used to be constant lines out the door for their terrific pies and excellent sourdough options, now there was only ever one or two people in there. 

It was never empty, but it certainly wasn't as popular any more. If you're going to pay premium prices for your grub, you want to know it won't have a cockroach leg in it or something. I didn't think it would last much longer - fancy eateries must have massive overheads - and I did feel quite bad for them, and then the NZ pie awards were announced last week.

I'm not the only one in Aotearoa to have strong opinions about pies, all five million of us have very clear judgements. My five year old has some extremely valid thoughts about what makes a good pie. So the pie awards have great weight.

Even my own apathy towards all awards everywheer is tempered slightly by the pie angle, and it is always interesting to see what comes out on top, and watch the inevitable feeding frenzy that follows, as fairweather pie fans descend on the award winner.

And when that tarnished local store won the Supreme Award for its bacon and egg pie, I had to see if it had an impact on business, and for the last few days it has been back to lines out the door 

I wasn't going to get into line - I think bacon and egg pies are not quite an abomination, but they are definitely getting there - but I got my kicks on seeing all those pie loves snake down the street again. Because a health code violation is all well and good, but if some randoms say it's the best in the country, maybe that's more important than a cockroach or two.

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The fine end of Roddy the Ruin

I am nowhere near as emotionally invested in House of the Dragon as I was in Game of Thrones - mainly because every single character in the new series is just a total cunt - but I am so happy for Tommy Flanagan getting one of the top five death scenes in all of the Song of Ice and Fire.

This has been a Jackass century

I don't know these people, and clearly most of them are irredeemable dickheads who would be absolute pains in the ass in real life, but I did feel genuinely sad when the last Jackass film wrapped up.

They always say it's the last one, but it seems like they really mean it this time, especially with the greatest hits aspect.

If it is the end, it really is the end of an era, because Jackass has been a constant presence in my life for the 21st century. I still think their films are funny, charming and occasionally really clever. And if it's ever taught me anything, it's that if you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough.

It came in as the end of another era - Jackass was one of the last video tape phenomenons I remember. There really wasn't any of the internet video options we have today, so unless it was broadcast on television, the only way you could see the earliest Jackass films were on video, which could only be found down at the weird local skate/head store, or through a mate who copied it from another mate who got it from the ninth version of hell, judging by the quality of the final product I saw.

I still remember the one piece of footage that sold me on Jackass forever - it was the one where Danger Ehren dressed up as a football player, intercepted peoples' fast food orders and ran off with them. Which was mean and cruel and really, really funny, but the best part about it was the spiking of the food on the ground in front of the victim. Just so dumb and silly, and full of life and joy and celebration.

And it's this joy that has made it endlessly watchable. They have exquisite comic timing (nothing is better than the giant high five in the third film), some truly radical ideas (the bungee jump with Wee Man and Preston that actually pays off) and a fearlessness that it actually admirable (everything else). There is real pleasure in the laughter of the people watching their mates do terrible things to their scrotum, only beaten by the endlessly wonderful 'why do I have to be Steve-O' whine.

But it's the joy of the thing, the kick of doing something that makes your best friends fall on the floor laughing. The hugs and concern at the end of something properly painful, and the sheer glory of loving life and living it as hard as you can.

And we've grown old with them over the years, and each film has had its own vibe - I think there is a weirdly obvious order of quality in the movies and it's 3, 1, 4, 5, 2 - and we all feel those aches and pains, and didn't need to crash a giant shopping trolley to get them

And all the things that happen when you grow old, fall out with friends, or just lose touch, or there is genuine loss - RIP Ryan. All that partying is having a definite impact, and the hair is a lot greyer, even as Chris Pontius remains forever ageless, so maybe it really is time to call it a night. 

New home, same bookshelves

There is a lot of work in moving into a new house, and my wife absolutely hates the whole moving process. But I have to bite my tongue when she makes her entirely justifiable complaints, because I'm already so very bad at hiding how much I love it.

It's back-breaking and frustrating and I am getting way too old to lift all those boxes full of Judge Dredd Megazines. It's financially draining, and requires stupid amounts of paperwork, and you have to figure out the new rubbish bin times, and how you're going to mow the fucking lawn.

But I've lived in 42 houses in my life so far, and I'm not just used to the process, I'm actively into it. I love sorting everything out, I love figuring out the new configurations for the bookshelves. I love consolidating and sharpening the collection of nerd shit I have. I love working out where everything can go. Where it all fits.

We have finally moved from renters to homeowners, so we won't be going very far anytime soon, but I still desperately sorting out the massive piles of Comics Journal issues, and work out where they are going to go, as fast as I can. Setting out a little space on this piece of land for my pile of Doctor Who novels.

I almost got crushed by several bins of 90s music mags while sorting them out the other day. It would be a truly dumb and extremely fitting way to exit this world, but for a split second there I thought the last thing I would ever see was a NME cover with the lovely Louise Wener on it.

I'm making some real progress sorting all this out, but I still haven't felt the sense that this is my land, and instead of all my earnings going to a landlord, it's going into this property that can go to my kids one day. And everyone keeps telling me that I will be so invested in things like property taxes and interest rates, but I never gave a shit about any of that before, and have no desire to start now.

But I do recognise this feeling of getting all my shit together - and I've got a lot of shit - on a property that is a lot smaller than the past few places we've been in. It's a lot of sorting, of getting everything together and working out what I actually need to keep handy, and what I need to show off, and I'll never get sick of that feeling, no matter how decrepit my aging body gets.

Happy birthday, Evie!

I have now been a parent for exactly seven years today, and it has absolutely been the best seven years of my life, and it really has felt like it's been seven seconds.

Throwing hands with Doctor Strange

Sometimes, when I'm standing around waiting for something, I'll have my hands behind my back, and I'll make the hand gestures that Doctor Strange makes behind his back towards the end of the original Infinity Gauntlet, as drawn by the mighty Ron Lim.

I do it without even thinking about it, as an unconscious thing, but I haven't managed to open any portals with my mystical gesturing. Not yet, anyway.

Only Hollywood makes me cry

I've been a fool for Tarantino films since the start, when me and my mates all walked into Reservoir Dogs as innocent 18-year-olds, and all walked out cinephiles for life. His films are smart and witty and clever and stylish, and sometimes they get quite emotional - but the end of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is the only one to bring me to tears. 

It was the last movie I saw before I became a parent - quite literally, the wife and I saw it the day before our eldest was born, and I spent a large part of the long run time hoping our little treasure would stay put for a few more minutes. And then the real life tragedy of what happened to Sharon Tate and her friends in that house is avoided, and the world of the film is just a tiny bit brighter because of it. 

The main characters' righteous violence against the Manson murderers who invade their home is initially hard to take, with big men murdering much smaller women with their flamethrowers, attack dogs and bare hands.

But when you know what really happened - that they carved up a heavily pregnant woman in the most horrific way possible, a dog biting off their face in this fictional context is getting off lightly. Watching it that first time, with the most pregnant woman in the world sitting next to me, I cheered on the carnage.

And when it's all over, and Rick Dalton is invited into the Tate household and greeted with love and hugs, it's heartbreaking. It's the ultimate Hollywood ending, where the good guys win, and the most awful tragedy is avoided. And there is real sadness in the fact that this isn't what happened in real life, that those more people in the Tate house had the most awful of endings.

Those final moments are the quietest of conclusions to a Tarantino film, and the weight of real history weighs heavily on this happy ending.

But if Hollywood is a place of dreams, this is the most pleasant of them, where the Manson killers pick the wrong fuckin' house to crash, and the world isn't poisoned by their stupid cruelty. That's worth a tear or two.

You're paying way too much for your pot, Lester

American Beauty's reputation has diminished greatly over the years, even if it does have a moment of sublime beauty with the trash bag. Most people bounce off the obviously problematic stuff with a middle aged loser lusting over a teenaged girl, but the thing that always annoyed me the most about this movie is how much Kevin Spacey was paying for his weed.

The late nineties were my peak stoner age, so I was having a good fuckin' time when I saw American Beauty for the first time, after the usual morning sesh with Shane over the back fence. It was totally a vibe movie, and I was into it. 

And then Lester happily pays two grand for a tiny amount of weed , and I could not believe what he was doing. Three hundred for the ounce of regular marijuana seemed legit, but in all my dealings, I never met - or smoked - a single strain of weed that was worth that kind of money. You might as well be buying cocaine if you're going to spend that much.

(It also cracked me up how it was "genetically engineered by the US government", when the best weed growers are old crusty guys named Funk or something who knew more about pot than anything any damn government scientist ever dreamed of.)

I think about this now and then, because pot is still largely illegal in this part of the world and the local constabulary like to put out statements saying they have busted a big cannabis operation and seized millions of dollars in weed, but then you only have to do some quick back-of-the-envelope calculations to realize the cops are full of shit because it turns out they're valuing it at $4000 an ounce, and nobody is ever going to pay that much for an ounce, even if it's personally sourced by the freaky kid next door.

So when I need my American beauty fix in the future, I might just watch the trash bag scene again, and forget about the rest of it. The cost of pot is enough, let alone the yuck of Spacey. 

Love and happiness forever!

It's a bit of a joke, when Ewan McGregor's insanely charming Alex makes the toast in Shallow Grave - forcing his partying flatmates to drink to 'love and happiness forever', He's being a dick about it, and it's all obviously about to go wrong and there will be corpse desecration and murder, but he's still demanding the oath. 

But I'll drink to that idea, any day. It's all everything we all need - what can be better than love and happiness forever? Maybe Nathan Barley's 'peace and fucking'.

Best dollar sale ever

I have always been a fiend for the $1 comic sale. Regular issues of American comic books are getting perilously close to $12 in local money, but give it a few years, and a lot of that stuff will end up in the cheap bins, and that twelve bucks will buy me a dozen slightly trashed old comics. 

A vast chunk of my comic collection was swept up from bargain bins, and I never miss the kilo sale at one of my local stores. But when the most excellent Iron Age Comics announced it was doing a special sale, I really did not expect it to be the best dollar comic sale I've ever been to. But that's what happened, all the same. 

It was a good sign when the first thing I see in the first box is Fantastic Four Annual #4, the one where the old Human Torch comes back - a pivotal moment in the early Marvel Universe, and it's just sitting there. It was missing a back cover, but was still a thing of beauty, in all its roughed-up glory. 

Then I found Avengers Annual #10 in there, and a bunch of other Avengers from the early seventies and many 60s and 70s oddities like ancient Justice League of America, prime Kirby Demon and loads of Marvel Two-In-One, and they're all just a buck each. 

They are, obviously, in awful condition. Some of them have been warped and torn by water damage, and some come with covers that have clearly been attacked by rodents, but a beat-up comic has just as much as charm as one that still smells like the printers. 

And if the cover is getting gross, there is so much thrills inside, so much beautiful artwork, for the cheapest of costs. Son of Satan issues and loads of terrific DC Comics Presents, including the one with the first ever New Teen Titans. A decent chunk of the post-Kirby Return of the New Gods, because why the hell not?

It's taken me weeks to get through them all, because Bronze Age comics are dense as hell, but two things are certain - short of straight-up stealing something, this is the best bang for buck in all  entertainment, and that I'll be there for the next sale, every time.

All the time in the world when you're unemployed

I haven't been properly unemployed for years now, but there were a couple of times when I was younger when I just could not get a job and I remember how much it sucked, so I'll be doing all I can to ever avoid being in that kind of situation again, especially when I have actual dependents in my life now. 

I was out of work for about four hours the last time I quit a job due to pisspoor management, and had two different offers in those few hours, so I hope I'll be okay. 

While there was some freedom to being free of the various obligations of employment, it fucking sucked. It sucked how much you had to scrape through every day with the barest of sustenance, and it sucked how much you were forced to rely on the generosity of family and friends just to pay the fucking bills. It sucked that you couldn't watch or read all the things you really wanted to, and you certainly couldn't go out at night, because there was no spare cash by the time the dole came through. 

The only thing you did have was free time, just acres of it, and I always managed to fill it out with endless books and movies, and so much of the film and general geek knowledge and experiences I have now is a result of the months when I had nothing better to do, so many years ago.

I didn't have the endless options of today, where you could spend all day on free streaming sites and never get bored, but I could hire eight movies on video tape out for a week for $8, and might even watch some of them twice. And when you're burning through so many films on grey Tuesday afternoons, it forces you outside your comfort zone, inspires you to try something different, and that leads down all sorts of wonderful paths.

And when I got bored of the movies, there was always books, and I would haunt the local library and again, try out novelists I wouldn't ordinary bother with. During my last extended period of homelessness, I started looking for older, classic books, and fell into an exceedingly pleasant Graham Greene wormhole.  

And when that also got a bit much, I could always try some writing myself, and churned out hundreds of pages of unreadable prose, trying to find some kind of voice.

The only other thing I would do is walk, a good walk never cost anything, is good for the health and the soul.

That's how I got through the day when the days got too long, and I didn't have any work to fill them, and there was some pleasure in it. It still sucked like nothing else sucks when you're an adult, but there was some light in those endless days.

Fury - My War Gone By: He wants to keep on fighting

- Fury: My War Gone by #3

Art by Goran Parlov

Words by Garth Ennis

Colours by Lee Loughridge

Letters by Rob Steen