Talkin' 'Bout The Good Ol' Days - M.U.S.C.L.E.

I've been getting these tiny figures for Neil lately called Gormiti. They're from Belgium or Zaire, or some other place. Of course, I get them because Neil likes them; my feelings have no place in the matter.*

But they'd set me half-remembering toys from when I was a kid. Being old, I couldn't quite get a handle on them. Google to the rescue! Millions of Unusual Small Creatures Lurking Everywhere. They were tiny and pink and seemed at the time to be wrestlers. Intergalactic alien, robot, superhero wrestlers.*2

Of course, nowadays, tiny figures have the luxury of being painted and existing to battle over the fate of Gorm. Gormiti belong to one of six tribes, each nature-themed.*3 There's epic destiny and ecological concern for today's five year old. Me, I just wanted to make weird guys beat each other up to prove their worth.*4 Take young me to the corner store, steer me past the Pocket Rockers*5 and over to the M.U.S.C.L.E. guys, buy me a Snickers bar I could stick in the freezer and throw in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comic book and I'm good.

With the recent resurgence of all things Eighties, from He-Man to The Smurfs, it's just a matter of time before M.U.S.C.L.E. returns. Maybe this time around they'll make the figures action-ready and forgo the 'hands on hips' pose of power that didn't allow for making the figure punch.*6

This has been "Talkin' 'Bout The Good Ol' Days", the preeminent thrice-apostrophized blog series on the interweb.





* That's the official line, but I'm enough of a geek that I look forward to new ones at least as much as he does.

*2 I don't know what 'Lurking' had to do with wrestling, but then again, there weren't 'Millions' of them either. Hundreds, maybe, but that would have made for an awkward acronym. H.U.S.C.L.E. connotes a different type of wrestling entirely.

*3 Yes, sectarian violence is everywhere. Even in Gorm. Give me the good old days when it was "G.I. Joe against Cobra, the enemy, fighting to save the day". You knew where you stood. You were "fighting for freedom over land and air". Never mind securing the oceans. The Joe team had Shipwreck, but he obviously wasn't a competent sailor. The first clue is that he was saddled with a codename denoting naval failure.

*4 I was a tiny roman emperor, but nobody won their freedom.

*5 I remember that the commercials for Pocket Rockers used CCR's "Down On The Corner", excising any reference to Willy and the Poorboys. Tragic in retrospect, but I was untroubled at the time, having no concept of John Fogerty's copyright battles with his record label. Now I know better and kind of hate Fisher Price a bit for forever linking the jingle with the song in my mind.

*6 Headbutts are a nice change of pace, but everybody knows that haymakers win intergalactic wrestling bouts.

Birthday and Daily Attempt

Two and a half months, you say? Bullshit. That can't be right. Anyway, here's some pictures of my babies and some cake. So begins the "Justin tries to update every day and probably stops after two consecutive days" TNOTBEM extravaganza*.

The badass sandcastle cake was baked by the lady of the house, but the pestle-ing of the graham crackers into a facsimile of sand par excellence was all me.





As my daughter Niamh turned a year old, I finally decided to help her with something. Prior to this, I had a strict hands-off policy in place. You'll notice that my "future glasses"*2 are hiding the shame in my eyes.




Niamh is about to go all 'Sean Penn'*3. Guess who's playing the part of the papparazzo?






Here's Neil. We go way back. Must be five years if it's a day...

Oh God, I'm so old.








Once I was a man (arguably). Now I am hammock.







* It's not going to be exciting, people. But then again, it hasn't been an exciting two and a half month silence, either.

*2 My future glasses are proof that not all drunken drug store purchases need be cause for regret. And they're red. Haven't worn red since the "Converse Debacle of 1996".

*3 No, she's not about to argue passionately for human rights. The other Sean Penn thing. With the punching and the yelling of obscenities. Tiny fists and "big girl" words are an adorably effective way to get knocked unconscious.

Why You Should Read Rival Angels

Shameless self-promotion time, loyal reader*. Monday morning on the Rival Angels web comic site, a little baby of mine will egg tooth the hell out of it's enclosure and breathe free among the internets for the first time.

What's Rival Angels? It's the web's number one wrestling comic. Created, written and drawn by my fellow Workshed Studio keyboard monkey, Alan Evans. I've helped out with storyboarding, editing, and some dialogue in the past (and will in the future), but this time the content is all-original, all-Justin. I promise, I will not let the awesome falter.

For those who follow Rival Angels, the long-awaited origin of Sun "Li'l Dragon" Wong will finally be told. For those who don't follow Rival Angels, give it a look anyway. What's the worst that could happen?

A postulation in steps:

1) You read Rival Angels at work.

2) Your boss finds you reading it.*2

3) He/she flips his/her lid and starts screaming "Porn Violation!"

4) You hurriedly try to explain that women wrestling doesn't always mean porn and lurch up from your desk only to knock over your coffee, scalding both of your groins in a feat of physic improbability.*3

5) While nursing your damp, toasted parts you are spied by a coworker who has long suspected panky of the hanky type between you and aforementioned boss and now has the proof, what with all the screaming and genital rubbing.

6) Your boss panics and wraps his/her lanyard around the throat of the ill-informed office gossip, ending their ill-informed life both easily and tragicomically.

7) You and your boss are now both on the hook for at least manslaughter.*4

8) While disposing of your 'prison ticket', you have ample time between grunts and daydreams of the Weekend At Bernie's variety to explain to your boss just what Rival Angels is all about.*5

9) Your boss is intrigued and reads Sun Wong's origin for him/herself.

10) A brief conversation ensues in which you tell your boss how to subscribe to the Rival Angels web comic.

11) A longer conversation ensues in which you explain to your boss just how to set up a Google or Yahoo homepage in order to receive no fewer than thrice-weekly updates from Rival Angels.com via a blog aggregator.

12) Days pass, then weeks; you both realize that the office is a better place for the loss of that silly gossip your boss strangled.*6

13) Still enjoying Rival Angels, you come to form a close bond with your co-conspirator. You've gained a friend.

14) Years later, a man comes to you demanding hush money. He threatens to expose your murderous ways. Your boss rightfully lets you deal with it. After all, he/she has already killed someone for your benefit.

15) Upon delivery of the hush money, you take some initiative for once and follow him back to his den of thievery and find a flourishing white slavery operation.

16) Remembering some of the awesome wrestling maneuvers from Rival Angels, you clean house, setting free the grateful slaves and feeling real good about yourself in the bargain.

17) The police refuse to listen to the blackmailer; because really, who's going to take the word of a blackmailing white slaver as gospel?

18) In fact, the gossip who your boss 'instantaneously laid off' was wrapped up in the white slavery operation too.*7

19) You write me an email outlining the events of your life since reading Rival Angels and I fictionalize them in a blog post to solicit others to read Rival Angels.

20) Some other person begins back at step 1.*8

If that's the worst that happens as a result of reading Rival Angels (particularly starting Monday, April 27th), you've got no reason not to.



* Shame filled self-promotion is just too hard to fake.

*2 Say it with me; "Alt-T to switch between tabs".

*3 Why were your groins so close?

*4 Manslaughter could be parsed to read "man's laughter", but there's nothing funny about the word without that apostrophe and that space. English, huh?

*5 Rookie wrestlers living together; laughing, loving, learning, piledriving.

*6 The replacement is nowhere near as gossipy, buys you a drink occasionally, and does not smell of citronella. Maybe they're hot, but let's not get greedy.

*7 That was fortunate.

*8 Spoooooky.

Callisto - Torsten Krol

If Torsten Krol's debut novel went no further than the setup, a floundering young high school dropout getting in over his head in the go-nowhere titular town, it would be a great read. Krol has a fantastic gift for fleshed-out character creation and a command of quirk to rival that found in the best movies of the Coen brothers. However, like the Coens, Krol's story wades into the shallow end of strange and then something takes hold of its feet and drags it down into epic depths of weird and wonderful.

Odell Deefus is a loser by most objective standards. He's a drifter with no prospects who hits upon the terrible idea of joining the U.S. Army circa 2007 to fight "the mad dog Islamites" and gain recognition as a person who matters. His plan takes him in the direction of an Army recruitment center in Callisto, Kansas. Deefus's car, however, falls short of the goal by dying at a farm on the outskirts of town. You could call it fate, but only if you believe in a terrible God who enjoys laughing at the tribulations of the less fortunate.

This unscheduled detour assures that all of his plans, ill-thought as they were, have now gone off the rails, depositing Odell in a perfect storm of cross purposes and competing agendas. How does one man escape the entaglements of murder, lawn mowing, drug dealing, terrorism, local news, televangelism, small-town grudges, national politics and military "justice" armed only with a love of rum and Condoleeza Rice? Can not quite sharp enough instincts and a cracked spine copy of The Yearling guide Odell out of the troubles he's both fallen into and created for himself?

Callisto is a book equal parts George Singleton and George Saunders; exploring small town eccentricity and nation-sized paranoia; both a story of personal inventory and a chronicle of national dread. Far from another safe, 'there he goes again', funny, sad sack story, it's also a hilariously brutal indictment of a society too ready for story and not able to question what they're given. Odell Deefus is the post-9/11 Middle American Everyman, not stupid but unthinking; affable but less wise than the times demand. His journey may be highly improbable, but his part in the story rings true, God help us.

Captain Freedom - G. Xavier Robillard

You've got super strength, superhuman reflexes, blistering flight, weather forecasting ability par excellence and a devastating eye towards fashion. You are globally known and celebrated, have a smoking-hot villainess girlfriend and have a secret headquarters requiring Segway use to traverse comfortably. Never mind that you can't connect meaningfully with an archenemy or kick this pesky cocaine habit; you're still on top.

Until you're not.

You've hit the bottom of the barrel, picked up the barrel, and chucked it into the engine of your corporate jet. It's tailspin time, and not even your talk radio-powered sidekick can help you now. What's a super powered narcissist to do? How can you see your name in lights again? Where's the exit to easy street?

Captain Freedom, he of the repressed childhood and urge for a good Q rating, begins this first-time novel from G. Xavier Robillard at a crossroads. What better way to find where you're going than by examining where you've been? In this clever satire, our (quasi-)hero is heavily invested in a life coach's instruction to explore his origin story. We're brought along on the ride through spot-on characterizations of callous celebrity mentality and image-conscious heroics to quest for the acclaim that's eluded the Captain.

For fans who can appreciate the absurdity of superhero comics and the dangers of living a life unexamined, Captain Freedom is a worthy addition to the growing canon of meta-comic novels. With a background in writing for McSweeney's and Comedy Central, Robillard comes well-equiped to dish out the snark, sarcasm and ridiculousness that his protagonist traffics in to great effect. While exploring the behind-the-scenes of superheroics isn't a new concept, Robillard's marriage of that start point and the behemoth industry of celebrity is a fresh twist of the knife that rewards us all for the inanity we've unwittingly absorbed through cultural osmosis.

Captain Freedom is a hilarious critique of what our heroes are, what they need to be, and what they are driven to do to stay on top. Remember; it's not how many people you saved from the volcano, it's how long you can wait until the news crews get there before going into action.