What Comets, Stars, and Moons are all about

YouTube can be a complete nostalgia trap. I went on it last night looking for a Q-Bert commercial and became distracted for roughly a half hour as I followed recommendations in the right column. I eventually ended up on this bizarre cartoon from the very early 80s: Gilligan’s Planet. Apparently the premise is that while the Professor was unable to build a raft to get the Castaways off the island he was somehow able to build a spaceship (coconut milk as an energy source?) that rocketed them into space resulting in a crash landing on a faraway planet.

This is the most complicated Gundam I have ever seen. First, Grace Jones fires herself at you like a missle. Then, she tries to melt you with her sonic vocals. Then, she returns to her head. What? Just watch.

Today, thanks to my ITunes being set to random, we begin yet another feature at CSM, “Musical Perversions.” I honestly don’t know if there will be any follow-up “musical perversions,” but there could be so it seemed worth creating a new tag.

Most people have at the least heard of GWAR. The theatrical thrash group has a reputation for raunchy and disturbing stage shows skewering politics, religion, sexual taboos, and so much more. They have outrageous costumes and claim to be from outer space and have come to Earth to reign terror upon the populace.

My first exposure to GWAR came in fifth grade when someone dubbed me a copy of Scumdogs of the Universe. I don’t remember who and I have no idea what happened to the tape, but do remember it was very naughty. Case in point, this song that just randomly played in my ITunes and inspired this post: “Sexicutioner.” A quick scan of the thousands of songs in my music library reveal this to be the only GWAR track in my hard drive and I have no clue how it got there. The Sexicutioner, wikipedia tells me, is a side member of GWAR and “was summoned in an ancient ritual by Oderus, and was raised from infancy to become Scumdog material.” Of course, the song says he comes from France and “when you are in France, you pull down your pants.” Yep. e also has a predilection for adding the letter “s” to any word that starts with “ex”, such as “sexcuse me.”

GWAR :: Sexecutioner

Today we start a new regular feature on What Comets, Stars, and Moons are all about, the Guilty Pleasures. These are songs that I secretly rock out to in my loft to the chagrin of all my neighbors. I now open this secret door to all of you…but…um…let me put on some pants first.

All that really needs to be written about “Let’s Go All the Way” by Sly Fox is “zhum zhum zinna-ninny.” A cooler vocal rhythm bed is difficult to find in the world of 80s music and it is a constant surprise to me that no one has yet to cop it for a modern hip hop song.

“Let’s Go All the Way” also features poignant lyrics defining the time:

“Livin’ in New York looks like an apple core/
Asphalt Jungle got to be a man of war/
California dreamers sleeping in the sand/
The Hollywood Squares are living in Disney Land”

New York City - the Big Apple - apple core! Get it?
To me the song expresses a deep frustration with the way of the world and the only option remaining, to put it bluntly, is to fuck the days away until the bomb is dropped.

Sly Fox :: Let’s Go All The Way

I don’t consider my introduction to the Dead Milkman as part of my path into punk rock. For me, the Dead Milkman were part of the bridge between “Weird Al” Yankovic and a larger goofy music Universe because they came at a time when I didn’t have easy access to money or unmonitored music store consumption.

I consider myself part of the final “Community Bus Stop” generation. I grew up in a rather safe development called “Pilgrim Hills” which was composed of roughly six streets making up around 2.5 miles of road. When I was growing up the busses would pick up fifth grade and up at one of three bus stops in the development and starting in ninth it was one of two bus stops. These days, when I go home, it makes me sad to see that every grade is picked up in front of their homes - even high school. This is detrimental to the growth of kids for many reasons. One, you lose out on meeting the other kids on your block and suffering together through the winters when the bus is running late. Two, and I hate to say it as a former target of a neighborhood bully, but you lose the neighborhood pecking order. Don’t take this the wrong way, I hated being bullied, but for as horrible and awful and spirit crushing as it was, it made me who I am today. It also forged alliances within the neighborhood as we plotted ways to get back at or deal with the bully. Three, you lose the independent streak of not going straight home from the bus stop no matter how many times mom tells you to come straight home. So many times we would get off the bus, throw our book bags in the front yard of the kid who lived nearest to the bus stop, and run off and get mucked up and filthy in the woods or have a spontaneous snowball fight. Four, exercise. Hello, will it kill your kid to walk half a mile in the morning?

Anyway, what does this have to do with the Dead Milkmen? The bus stop is where I was given a copy of Beelzebubba and it quickly became one of my most played cassettes of my formative years. The tape came from a kid who was two years older than me and, while I didn’t at the time get many of the tongue-in-cheek references, it was goofy and silly enough for me to enjoy. I didn’t know what a “punk rock girl” was, but I sure did want to hang out with one, because, to quote my 11-year-old self “hey, they started playing the Beach Boys on the jukebox and she started screaming! I love the Beach Boys, too! Wow, punk rock girls are cool!.” The other song I listened to a lot was “Stuart.” I don’t recall if I had any concept of the words “queer” and “homosexual” at that age and I think I liked it because it referenced aliens. The album also taught me that trying to burn banana peels is not such a good idea. It wouldn’t be for a couple more years that I would actually learn about the history of the Dead Milkmen and discover that they had more albums, such as the seminal DM album Big Lizard in my Backyard.

Below are the two songs I listened to the most:

Dead Milkmen :: Stuart

Dead Milkmen :: Punk Rock Girl

I  must be stressed because I just got a little teary-eyed when I read that Leonardo DiCaprio is in the running to play Captain America. This was a welling up of joy, not sorrow. My dream growing up was to see my comic book Universe big and large on the silver screen with a wide swath of characters being transformed from ink to celluloid. All of the films would reference each other and feature cameos of other heroes. This is why Iron Man blew me away, it was Iron Man in the Marvel Universe, not Spider-Man alone in a Spider-Man Universe. My first choice for Captain America was Matt Damon. He has that corn-fed all American look that personifies Steve Rogers, the man behind Cap’s mask. Leo never crossed my mind and I don’t think he is a 100 percent perfect fit, but he probably lands in the high 80 percentile, which is good enough for me. A much better choice than the previously rumored Matthew McConaughey.

Captain America is supposed to be a period piece and that means we may get to see him punching the lights our of Hitler. And the end of the film…well…anyone who knows the history of the Avengers and believes Marvel will make that team-up film a reality knows how it will hopefully end. Sigh.

I did it. Mostly. I disconnected. One of the most important parts of this trip was disconnecting. I have now gone 10 days without touching dane101 with the exception of leaving a random comment here or there. I’m really proud that the website has gotten to the point where I can actually walk away and it will run itself. That was a major goal when we first started the experiment more than three years ago. Apparently the contributors also did a podcast without me yesterday and I’m very excited to hear how it turns out. Driving for a full day from Savannah back to Connecticut gave me a lots of time to meditate and decompress on what has been making me happy day-to-day and what hasn’t. I know I love dane101 and I enjoy planning events around the website. The pub quiz is a monthly success, What’s Your Damage was a moderate success and is about to come off of hiatus, Storytellers had a decent turn out and we can grow it, and our last two one off events were huge. The Majestic saw more than 400  Sex and the City fans through the door last night for our Sex in Mad City event and our Halloween event was one person short of a sell out and we were able to pay each band $300 and give Second Harvest $500. These are all successes and I should be able to build on them as I continue to learn how to delegate and let go a little bit of the baby (dane101) Shane and I have raised since April of 2005. The future is bright.

I’ll have updates from my trip to Savannah later.

This is the first time I’ve been home in the late Spring/early summer in four years. I had nearly forgotten how lush and beautiful my home town of Coventry can be this time of year. Many of the farmlands have been bought up and replaced by ugly developments resulting in a thinning of the thick woods that border most of the back roads in my home town, but there is still enough to make me long for the foolish and dangerous days of racing through the twisting blind turns to get to a friend’s house or find a secluded make out spot. Sadly, my sure thing make out spot has been replaced by a paved road leading to McMansions. I feel for the high schoolers who long for seclusion and a place to get so caught up in fever that you don’t even notice the lights of the squad car shining through your hatchback window until it is too late and you are snapped out of it by the loud tapping of a hard metal flashlight.

Shortly after I moved away from Connecticut my home town was graced with it’s first two chains; Dunkin’ Donuts and CVS. The Dunkin’ Donuts isn’t too much of a blight as the store front is rustic and fits in with the general character of the historic town. The CVS, just a football field length from a cemetery that features headstones from the early 1800s, to me is a blight, but I can accept it. What bothers me is this new battle being waged by Walgreens. The company wants to build a store nearly across the street from the CVS in a lot currently occupied by an old farm house. When I was growing up finding a Walgreens in Connecticut was a rarity, now, if you go to somewhere like Manchester or Vernon there seems to be one Walgreens for every mile.

The company started in Illinois, so it isn’t surprising that living in Wisconsin the only pharmacy option seems to be Walgreens. I have come to loathe the chain. When I go into a Walgreens the stores always feel dirty and poorly laid out. For some reason CVS, while pretty much the same thing, typically feels cleaner and easier to navigate.

Besides contemplating the corporate pharmacy wars and the negative impact they are having on the town that Capt. Nathan Hale also called home, I spent most of Wednesday in cemeteries and town halls. I’ve been researching my family tree and the few times I make it back east I try to spend at least a portion of the time interviewing family members and visiting long dead relatives. This trip revealed a rather odd family story.

My great grandmother was born in 1897 to George and Victoria Goodspeed. Her name was Irene and she also had a twin sister named Inez. On Feb. 12, 1918 Inez would marry John Crockett, Jr. (side note: I’ve traced the Crockett line back to the same Irish town where Davy Crockett’s great-great-grandfather set hailed from, but have yet to connect myself to the frontiersman directly). Almost one year to the day later, Inez died. I haven’t been able to confirm that this was during child birth, but the records for the cemetery plot have Inez listed as being buried with “Baby” Crockett who was born in 1919 and died in 1919. John would later go on to marry my Great Grandmother Irene (yes, the twin of his dead wife). John would himself pass away in 1932 widowing my great grandmother and leaving her with two daughters and a son.

The whole reason I started this ancestry project was to try and find out what happened to my grandmother’s sister, Arlene Crockett. Grandma says one day Arlene just left and they never heard from her again. My Grandma was born in 1923 and Arlene was born in 1926, so every time I revisit this genealogy stuff I get a little more desperate, because I’d like to find out what happened to Arlene before my Grandma passes on. It has been a tough row to hoe, because the census has been the most helpful document for putting pieces together, but the census records are only released every 70 years. That means I won’t be able to obsess over 1940 until 2010.

With that, I need to prep for North Carolina.