Second time around: The secret origin of the Tearoom of Despair

It was exactly 10 years ago, and we were somewhere near the monastery on the pillars of Meteora, when I realised what my name was.

The lovely wife and I had just got married, and we celebrated by heading off around the world for six months. At this point, we were 30 days into a 46-day tour around Europe, and disaster had struck: I'd run out of things to read. The scenery around Europe was mindblowing, but a lot of the travel was along anonymous highways, with just grey walls and straight lines of trees to see out the window. We were on a tight schedule to get around the continent, so there were hours and hours on those dull roads, with nothing to do but sleep, drink or read. (Or all three.)

This was before the ubiquity of e-books, so almost everybody else on the tour had their own dogged paperbacks, and they'd all get handed around. I'd already burned through Robert Fisk's 1200-page History of Civilization in less than a week, and got through my Carl Hiaasen omnibus in two days, so was desperate to read anything, and there were no Enlish-language bookshops about. So I read the only Harry Potter book I've ever read, and even choked down a James Patterson novel. I got five books into Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen saga, and never actually finished the series, which isn't much of a problem, because I can't remember a single thing about any of those books.

What I do remember is this - staring out the window because there was nothing else to do, and deciding at some point that I needed to get a lot of the bullshit about comics and movies and other debris of pop culture out of my skull and into some sort of online journal, right about the time blogging became terminally uncool.

It was always going to be called the Tearoom of Despair, but I couldn't use my real name, because I couldn't bear the endless jokes about The Cure. I needed a fake name, and as we were traveling through the Greek countryside, and I saw these giant pieces of rock stabbing into the sky. And while I felt so fucking far from home, I knew that wherever I went, or whatever I did, I was always going to be Bob from Temuka.

It took another 18 months before I actually started publishing in the Tearoom, but that was where it really started, and I haven't stopped since.

This is the 1000th post at the Tearoom of Despair.

A thousand posts of ill-thought comments, and ridiculous opinions about the dumbest shit. A thousand posts of trying to convince the world that Love and Rockets is as good as it ever was, that Doctor Who really is the best TV show ever, and that Frank Miller still has something worthwhile to say. A thousand posts of bullshit, and half-arsed opinions, and desperate pleas for attention.

I've spent countless hours writing this out, and have posted every single thing with a 'fuck it, that'll do'. I still lie awake at night wondering about the next post, and have now racked up nearly 700,000 words on the dumbest subjects.

It's been going a lot longer than I thought it would last, but I'm hardly going to stop now. I feel like I'm still just getting started.

Still, real life is a right arse sometimes, and the Tearoom is in a semi-low content mode at the moment.

It doesn't mean I don't care. I still love you all. Here's to the next 1000 posts.

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Originally posted on the Tearoom of Despair on August 1, 2017. I still love doing this blog, I really do, and I'll get my shit together next month. I promise.

Second time around: Fighting Fantasy - Roaming and fighting in an open world

 Video games were hugely expensive when I was a kid, even though they were massively simple affairs, but you only needed less than five bucks to get into a whole world of adventure in the brilliant Fighting Fantasy books. Especially when they went open world.

They were a natural progression from the Choose Your Own Adventures books, offering up a tonne of sword and sorcery and adding more dice-based gaming to the storytelling as you picked your way through the narrative. They were still nowhere near as complex as the full role-playing adventures in Dungeons and Dragons, but they were the next step.

The first I ever got was Forest of Doom one one mid-80s Christmas - I'd seen them in the shops and had been begging for one - and I hid in my room to play the shit out of that game all that afternoon while all the other kids were outside in the sun. I still played it properly with the dice and everything, although after a few books I just straight-up cheated and went through the book assuming I win all the fights, because it was such a bummer to just stop a story dead because you rolled three ones in a row.

As the first in the series, Warlock of Firetop Mountain set the template, with barbarians and monsters and evil magicians and tunnels and death traps everywhere. But authors Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson were willing to bend that template as soon as possible, and got out into the dungeons and into the stars, like the fourth book Starship Traveller. (Although this was one of the few that I never successfully completed, because there was always a point where you got stuck if you hadn't picked up some sort of key information from some side-trip, and that was that, and I still feel a bit bitter about it).

Scorpion Swamp was particularly memorable, because it required you to draw a map, and gave the story more of an open world feel, where you could go anywhere It would be more than another decade before Grand Theft Auto's creators even starting thinking about an open world game, but it was already there in these cheap books.

They fell heavily out of fashion within a couple of years, but I've still held onto many of the. Especially those early ones, which had terrific covers, if nothing else. Maybe I'll give them another go. I probably won't bother with the dice, though.

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Originally posted on the Tearoom of Despair on November 2, 2020. I went back and played the Forest of Doom after this, with the dice and everything, and fuckin' smashed it.

Second time around: Going back to the Far Side

The reports that the Far Side cartoon might be making a return is fantastic news. It's always been my favourite one-panel cartoon, ever since I got given one of his books for coming first in sixth-form geography in 1991, (the most useful thing to come out of all that time I had to spend in that class).

Part of the reason it struck such a chord was because Gary Larson has just a fucking bizarre sense of humour. His gags were always full of weird puns, animals being very un-animal, and in-jokes about song titles that I never really got. In fact, there were a lot of his cartoons that sailed way over my head, but the cartooning was always so goofy, I never really minded.

(I have no goddamn idea why the cartoon up above is so funny, but it's easily one of my top five Far Side cartoons. I think it's the 'howdy, howdy, howdy'.)

But the best thing about them was the focus on idiots, from all walks of life. There were powerful idiots, and rich idiots, and idiots in cars, and idiot scientists, and idiot animals, and idiot cavemen and there is always laughs in absolute stupidity. Especially because, crucially, there were never really that mean or nasty. The idiots were all pretty harmless, and there was a zen-like attitude to the morons, blissfully going around their ineptitude with absolute ignorance.

It's a lot harder than it looks, making fun of stupid without being mean about it, but Larson always made it look easy, and I look forward to any trip back to that side of things.

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Originally posted on the Tearoom of Despair on December 6, 2019. I could use more Far Side in my life right now.

Second time around: A Wolverine gallery

When Wolverine got his first ongoing comic in the 1980s, it was so fancy they didn't have ads on the back cover, and the back page was given to some hot artist to draw some kind of Logan.

That's still my favourite Barry Windsor-Smith picture of Wolvie, right at the top there.

 

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Originally posted on the Tearoom of Despair on April 13, 2017. Look, all I'm saying is that I like looking at pictures of very hairy men with knives coming out of their hands.

Second time around: The peak of geek

I'm not as dorky as I once was, and I've always wondered when that nerd tsunami peaked. So, using the finest research methodology, I've finally managed to exactly work out what point in space and time I was at my dorkiest. I based it on the one month in history where I owned more comics than any other month.
 
It took a while, but it was easy to figure out in the end. Unsurprisingly, it was the bloody nineties. August 1993, to be exact.

I worked this out because instead of having useful information like 'how to fix a car' or 'how to arrange a mortgage', my brain is instead capable of recalling any comic I've ever owned since I was 7-years-old, purely from seeing the cover. All that fucking useless information is still rattling around in my head, doing no good at all.

But it did mean I could use the database of comic covers at Mike's Amazing World, which showed all the comics put out by the biggest publishers over the past few decades, and figure out which month was the most frenzied for comic buying. It took a couple of weeks, but when I needed to do something to switch off from the world for a while, I would go through and count out how many comics I got from that month.

It wasn't not entirely exhaustive or scientific in any way - there were some comics that were missing from the list (a lot of small publishers aren't in that database, so no Love and Rockets, or anything like that); and I only did between 1985 and 2000, because I already knew that was when I bought the most comics, by far.

I wrote it all down and it looked like this:

That might just be the nerdiest fucking thing ever posted on the internet, and I know that is a high bar to hurdle.

Jesus fucking Christ, what a fucking dork.

But as nerdy as it was to do this, I'm still nowhere near the levels I was in August 1993, because I have, at one time or another, owned 58 individual comic books published this month.

The nerdiness remained high, all the way through these years. There wasn't a month of published comic between 1985 and 2000 where I didn't end up buying at least 10 issues, and there are several years when I don't get any less than 30, every single month. This was, to use the technical term, a fuck-tonne of comics.

But August 1993 was the peak - it took a while to get to that point, and it never got quite that frenzied again. That was the high point of comics for me, and it's not hard to figure out why.

It's worth noting that there were always more comic buying at that time of year, because there are always a tonne more actual comics published every American summer.

That's when there were more crossovers, and annuals, and a lot of regular comics would go on a bi-weekly schedule for a few months. 1993 was particularly bad for all this - there was the Reign of the Supermen and Knightfall bollocks going on, a bunch of annuals introducing characters that nobody would ever care about again, and several thousand Infinity Crusade crossovers, as well as all the usual nonsense. June to August was always going to be packed with comics.

But really, it's all personal history behind this surge and ebb - 1993 was my first year out of school, my first year earning a wage, the first year I could buy anything I felt like.

Plus, I had a car, and I could get out of my tiny town and to the big smokes of Christchurch and Dunedin, raiding the comic shops there, and coming home with a back seat literally covered in comic book goodness.

It was also that time in my life when I went through that weird tipping point between a deep obsession with all things superhero, and the first faltering steps into 'mature' comics. A few years earlier, and it was all Marvel and DC, a few years later and they're the rarity.

I was definitely tending more towards DC over Marvel at this time, just because Marvel was stuck in a post-Image funk, while DC was really getting into the iconography of their characters, and were more willing to mess with the formula. But the days when it was all things superhero for Bob were numbered.

Most of these comics that I bought from August 1993 are long gone, the majority disappeared during the usual purges, when I realised I didn't need all those Infinity Gauntlet sequels and spin-offs, and all that post-death Superman, and all those endlessly awful X-comics, and they all went to new homes.

I do still have a small fuck-tonne of them though, sitting in boxes under the bed, a metre away from where I'm typing this. I've still got all the Legion of Super-Heroes and Flash and Cerebus the Aardvark comics I bought at the time, and most of the Vertigo from that period (I still can't get rid of Kid bloody Eternity). I still got the Miracleman and the Lobo. I definitely still have the 1963 comics and all the Garth Ennis books, (this month's issue of Hellblazer is arguably his best single comic of this period), and I was just reading the Batman comic with the sweet Arthur Ranson art the other day.

I've had most of these comics for almost a quarter of a century, and they've survived multiple purges, so as much of a cultural wasteland as August 1993 was, it still had some merit.

I got caught making this list at work a couple of times at work, and I couldn't admit what I was doing, because it was just so fucking nerdy. But it was pleasantly addictive, and mildly educational. I'm glad I did it.

I'm also still fucking glad I'm not 18 anymore, because outside of the comic obsession, I was the usual late-adolescent mess. But all I have to do is look at these covers and it takes me right back to that heady rush of young adulthood. Maybe it's worth using up all that brain space after all.

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Originally posted on the Tearoom of Despair on September 24, 2017. Sometimes, just sometimes, I really wish I still had all those reign of the Supermen comics.

Second time around: Do not mess with the cleaning ladies

There is a brilliant bit somewhere in the Thick of It, when Malcolm Tucker meets somebody he can't scare, or intimidate, or bargain with, and he just has to totally capitulate, because he has no choice. And it's a cleaning lady.

In the halls of the most powerful people in the country, Tucker has something on all of them. But when one of those meatheads disrespects a cleaning lady who is only trying to do her bloody job, Tucker can't bribe her, or threaten her, and he bloody knows it.

Because she hasn't got much, but she's got her pride and she's not playing the silly little games that the flesh-sacks in suits around her are playing. She's got more important things in life to worry about.

And Tucker is proper fucked, because the cleaning staff have access to everything, and hear it all, and are almost always ignored, but they know everything that is going on.

So Tucker never loses his cool at them, and is always polite with the staff. He does the same with his secretary, showing her a bit of respect while methodically dismantling the egos of the politicians he works with, because he knows that power is an illusion.

This is why it's always best to be polite, and say please and thank you to the people who clean your offices, or drive you home, or make your food. Not just because they can totally fuck you over if they wanted to, but because they bloody well deserve a bit of respect. 

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Originally posted on the Tearoom of Despair on October 28, 2019. I still see people making this absoltely rookie mistake all the time, and I can't make it any clearer - do NOT mess with the cleaning ladies.

Second time around: My favourite Ditko

This is my all-time favourite Steve Ditko panel - the velocity of the superheroes smashing in from either side, ready to collide with the hapless Beetle, who has all the time in the world to see the hurt coming down on him. Sheer bloody perfection.

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Originally posted on the Tearoom of Despair on March 8, 2019, but that image is an eternal banger.

Second time around: How to find new music - no context, all feeling

Like all right-thinking people, I'm moderately terrified of having my tastes for culture and entertainment atrophy as I get older and older. To be one of those people who just read, watch and listen to the same old shit, and to be blissfully ignorant of all the great new stuff out there.

So I often try some new comics, or watch a TV show or movie that is far outside my comfort zone, or start a new one-person book club to find my next favourite author. (This is working particularly well, the last two books have been absolutely excellent.)

But when it come to finding new and interesting music, the task is both easier and harder than it has ever been, but I've got a system set up for that as well - all I have to do is strip out all the context, and focus on the content. Easy.



Sometimes I like to get clear-skin wines - wines that have no real label or brand on them that you can pick up cheap at liquor stores and supermarkets. All you are told is that what kind of wine it is, the alcohol content and the country it comes from, and that's about it.

They're never great wines, but they're never truly awful either, and this averageness can be a bonus. They make good cooking wines, for instance, and can be smooth enough for the roughest pallet after a tough day at work.

Even better, it strips away all the bullshit behind the brand, and means the wine has to stand on its own merits, with no preconceptions or pre-judgements. It is what it is, with no context, and survives and falls on its own merits, and that's the same vague ethos I take with me when I look for new music.



I still like and listen to all the hundreds of bands and artists I always do, all the bands I've loved and lived with for fuckin' decades. That's always there, but this appreciation of good music isn't a bucket with a limited capacity, there is still plenty of room for more.

But it can be so hard to find good, new music, mainly because there is just so bloody much of it - dozens of singles and albums are released every week, all over the world, and the amount of new music piles up and piles up, and so much undisputed genius is lost in the crush.

In this regard, a gatekeeper has never been more important, and it always helps to have a trusted opinion point you in the right direction. But we live in such a playlist culture - radio isn't the mass medium it once was, and nobody can keep up with it all. It doesn't mean you shouldn't try, but you should always be aware of the mammoth task of digging through hours of sonic art.



At the same time, it has never been easier, and you can find almost any recorded song in the history of mankind on Youtube. Radios are still there, and there are all kinds of streaming services, and if you know exactly what you are looking for, you can find it easily enough.

There are also specific radio shows and podcasts that can act as an excellent entry point to new music - I love listening to RNZ's Music 101 show on Saturday afternoons, and not just because I also work there  - although it can be easy for good songs to slip through if you only hear them once, and they don't stick in the head straight away.

*

Everyone follows their own path when it comes to finding the music that speaks to their soul, and my own method of finding the new stuff is just as complicated, silly and effective and as anybody else's, and it uses the cutting-edge technology of 30 years ago.

This is how I do it: I get these free CDs that still come with music magazines, and there are about four or five magazines a month that provide this, usually British mags like Mojo and Uncut. Between all these free CDs, there is a huge variety of new music of all genres, and weird, esoteric old stuff.

Some of the magazines I buy, but most of them I get through the local library, and I rip all the songs onto a hard drive, and there are dozens and dozens of songs every couple of months. And then I burn them back onto another blank CD, which is then full of hours and hours of strange new sounds to get through.

And then I blast them in my car until I've figured out what I like.



The rules to this plan mean I have to listen to every song for at least two minutes, five times over, while driving around. It takes more than a month of driving to and from work and the comic shop, (my two main destinations by car), to get through one of these giant CDs like this.

Even if they're awful, droning bullshit, or whining, irritating novelty songs, they get two minutes, and I go through them five times until I'm absolutely sure of whether I like it or not.



It takes five times. Every time I start a new one, the first listen is always a crushing disappointment because I can't follow any of it, then on the second and third time round, the good stuff starts to stick. By five, I know which ones I like, and which are just too fucking annoying.

There are certainly songs that I like straight away, that are self-evident in their genius, and become instant classics, right from the start, but they're rare.

Repetition works for everything else. It takes the familiarity of a tune to really judge it, we're all still little kids when we find a song we like, and just want to listen to it over and over again, until it lodges in the head forever.



The stuff that strikes the right chord for me is usually rock and roll in some way, but I'll give anything a go, any genre, any artist, any band. I love a fat beat and deep bass and heartbreaking melodies and don't think this is too much to ask.

The names don't come up on the car stereo, so I never saw who the artists actually were until I make the conscious effort to look them up on the internet. There is no hype, and no prejudice in trying this music this way. If it's good to drive around town to, that's all you need.

New tunes on the motorway, skipping through six songs while stuck at the lights, tapping out the beat on the steering wheel. That's how I find the good music.

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Originally posted on May 2, 2017. I'm still using this awkward and complicated method to find new music, and it's still paying off big time.

Second time around: My one big idea for the DC Multiverse

I would always rather have something that tries to be crazily ambitious and fails, than anything that plays it safe and uses the excuse of taking things 'back to basics'. This particularly applies to Doctor Who, and after the last series showed a crippling lack of ambition, I fan-wanked all over the place a few months back with my idea of the unknown history of the main character from before he was William Hartnell, and his other roles before he took on the title of The Doctor.

But it also applies to the big, dumb superhero comics that I can never really get over, and with so much opportunity that the DC multiverse offers, it's always a bit disappointing when the biggest idea seems to be turning Batman into the Joker.

The dark multiverse shenanigans of the past couple of years might feel edgy and groundbreaking for some, but surely the people creating these things actually want to do something new and different. Don't they?

Shit, if I had my way - and I can happily share this nonsense here because there is no way in hell I'll ever have my way - I'd be making the DC multiverse a lot more metaphysical, and have the different universes housing the souls of the same characters, with their spiritual essence traveling between universes at the point of death, so that the Bruce Wayne of Earth-2 isn't just the same person as Earth-1 Bruce physically, they're the same person spiritually, and the afterlife that has been well established in many, many DC comics is a way-station on the soul's journey, before the souls head on to the next universe, in an endlessly self-perpetuating cycle of rebirth and renewal, so you could create an endless rebooting, and it's always the same person, even if they can't remember their past lives, and the time differences would all be a bit Jeremy Berimy, but that's easy to fix with an exposition box or two, and we can have endless Bruce Waynes, always updating for a new generation, never bogged down by years of bullshit, while also hinting at the actual meaning of life, at least in a fictional universe, and oh shit, I've just bored everyone to death again.... 

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Originally published in the Tearoom of Despair on November 30, 2019. Wait, listen, listen man...