JERKY'S BOOKSHELF: "BATTLING BOY" BY PAUL POPE

Paul Pope's "Battling Boy" is the kind of work that paradoxically fills yours truly with the urge to create comics of my own, but also with angst at the realization that I will never create anything that comes close to the quality on display in this incredibly beautiful book. The narrative, the graphics, the characterizations, the world-building... "Battling Boy" scores in the top rank on every count. Two-hundred-and-two pages of pure, unadulterated comic book bliss. When it comes to youth-friendly, off-brand superheroics, it just doesn't get any better than this.

PS - If you buy this book at Amazon through my site VIA THIS LINK, 

I get a few shekels tossed into my cup on the back-end!

RIFFTRAX GANG SCORE CABLE GIG!

The return of (some of) the MST3K gang to television has finally arrived! Check out this news from Zap2it, as vectored through the comedy aggregater SplitSider:

The Mystery Science Theater 3000 gang is making a return to television but probably not on the channel you're expecting.According to Zap2it, Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett, are turning their online audio track series RiffTrax into a TV show of the same name for National Geographic, with three episodes set to air April 1st. MST3K was canceled by Syfy in 1999, but RiffTrax has since gained an internet following for releasing ready-made MST3K-style audio tracks for fans to listen to while watching the movies. While there's no word specifically on what the crew will watch in the reboot, they're reportedly "expected to riff on some form of television programming." What that means in terms of National Geographic we'll find out on April Fool's Day.

Yer old pal Jerky, for one, can't wait! Now let's see about getting Joel Hodgson and Trace Beaulieu some decent paying work.

WHAT JERKY'S WATCHING NOW: TAKEN (2008)

Many people have criticized this film for its pat dialogue, paper-thin characterization, by-the-numbers plot, et cetera, et cetera. But they all miss the point. With his steely, note-perfect delivery of this single, crucial quote, Liam Neeson ascends to the pantheon of mythic action hero status:

"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you were looking for ransom, I can tell you, I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that will be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you."

I believe Neeson implicitly when he says such things, and that's all that matters. Screw Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes. As long as there are fathers who care more about their children than they thought was even possible, Taken will remain a film for the ages. 

GUEST POST: ACD ON THE TRAGEDY OF FOX NEWS ADDICTION

Our old pal A.C.D. writes in...

This article is okay, in and of itself, though the author is a fool to believe that the aging of the FOX viewership and its eventual dying off will lead America leftward. The military-industrial complex, Christo-Fascism Inc., Wall St., and a whole country full of angry white Libertarian racists won’t let us slip toward decency and humanity until something really awful happens… maybe when all our coastal cities are underwater and there are riots over potable water.
But what is notable about the piece is that the comment section, currently about 2000 strong, is one of the most poignant things I've ever seen on the Internet.

So many families absolutely torn apart by 24/7 Libertarian rage at things that don’t exist. So many middle-aged children saying “my father was a SCIENTIST”, “my father was a lifelong union member”, “my mother was the sweetest schoolteacher in town”, etc., and now they can’t even be at the same family gatherings because the conversation immediately gets yanked into niggers and faggots and wetbacks and socialists and fornicating sluts on birth control and Benghazi, ad nauseum.

I think of the hard-drinking playboy in my home town who has been avoided like ebola for the past six or eight years by all the decent people around the harbor, so odious now is the company of a once very-charming normal conservative. I think of my ex’s father, who now NEVER goes out in public without and NRA cap and some 2nd Amendment t-shirt on, and really can’t get through a conversation about Peyton Manning and the Broncos without railing against Obama. I see the e-mails my friends forward me from their mothers, asking me what in Heaven’s name they can do about her, how she’s making everyone hate her, and nothing they say to her will make her stop and try to be the decent human being she once was.

This truly is an American tragedy, and of course the one common denominator is Fox News. And as several commenters note, in many regions of the country it is on in every bar, every airport lounge, every doctor’s or hospital’s waiting area, every nursing home common room, every convenience store – so even if you’re not a bloodthirsty shut-in listening to it from awaking in the morning until retiring to bed at night, like my ex’s dad, it is a constant background buzz, that at some level must infect nearly every elderly person’s consciousness in Dixie, the Midwest, and the mountain states.

And it surely is an addiction, the rage it spawns, the daily fix of hate and vitriol. For just try to inquire politely if they might switch to the ballgame, and a half dozen old men and a handful of fat Libertarian younger guys dressed like Vietnam vets will shout you down, and tell the bartender not to put on the playoff game, so important is the latest Dipshit Blonde’s take on Vince Foster or Monica Lewinsky or this new musical genre called rap.

Obviously you needn’t read all 2000, just graze and nibble, but it is heartbreaking, worse than Alzheimers, the rage-ifying of our elderly, and their subsequent self-imposed social isolation.

- A.C.D.

Thanks, Ace. Excellent First Amendment material, here... just like the old Daily Dirt days! - Jerky

A FRIENDLY REMINDER AND AN UPDATE

Hello friends;

This post is just a friendly reminder that Daily Dirt Diaspora is not the only blog that yer old pal Jerky puts out. In fact, it's the one that sees the least activity these days. So please be aware of the Useless Eater Blog, which is where I examine conspiracy theories, the occult, the paranormal, parapolitics, paraculture... in short, all manner of aberrant thought and philosophical esoterica. With its daily Paracultural Calendar updates and the recent addition of regular features the Memory Hole, Pop Occulture, the Woo Files and Paradigm Shift, this is definitely the blog that sees the most action.

There are some big changes in the works here at the Daily Dirt Diaspora, so keep watching this space.

Cheers!
yer old pal Jerky

PS - Come join the Daily Dirt Diaspora group on Facebook if you haven't already!

"GET ME OUT OF THIS CHICKEN OUTFIT!"

It's no secret that yer old pal Jerky loves him some comic books. From pumped up adolescent power fantasies to transgressive tales of grisly horror, I love them all. I grew up collecting them, and I've occasionally tried my hand at creating them (keep watching this space for more news on that front). So I feel that I do bring a certain degree of expertise to the table when it comes to my opinion on the quality of these four-color funny books.

Which brings us to today's subject...

Yes, that’s correct; you’ve just watched a video trailer for a comic book. And oh, what a comic book!

With Chicken Outfit, artist/writer Joe Deagnon and co-writer Kirby Stasyna deliver a compelling narrative that is utterly unique in the annals of illustrated comedy. That's because, in the course of sharing with us their tales of modern workplace woe and misery, they actually manage to make some surprisingly astute observations on the grim, existential anomie of Late Capitalist decline... especially for those of us working in the so-called "creative" industries.

Of course, there is a well-established tradition of observational workplace humour. Tales of shitty bosses are a dime a dozen. So what sets this book apart from the fray?

The secret to Chicken Outfit's success, in yer old pal Jerky's considered opinion, is that Deagnon and Stasyna filter their critiques through a unique gonzo kaleidoscope of lurid "grindhouse" exploitation movies and taboo-shattering underground comix, simultaneously exaggerating them and making them more palatable.

But don’t take my word for it. Check out Chicken Outfit for yourself, either by ordering a gorgeous full-colour print copy, or by downloading a digital version to your “iSlab” or your “Kindling” or whatever other ridiculous device the kids are using to peruse their digital medias these days.

Oh, and that ad you see in the upper right hand corner of this page? The one promoting Chicken Outfit? The boys didn't pay for that space. I offered them up that prime hunk of virtual real estate purely because I believe their book deserves promotion. So no, this review is not an example of me whoring out my fat ass for a cupful of ducats.

Not that I’d be opposed to such an arrangement, if you have something that needs promoting and you should be so inclined.

Call me... We’ll talk.

DIE MONKEY DIE! HERO

Before Tenacious D... Before Foo Fighters... there was Toronto's own one man rock-and-roll wrecking crew, DIE MONKEY DIE! Love this tune. Can't believe it's got so few hits on Youtube. Make this part of your daily living soundtrack!

THE LAST HALLOWEEN - TRAILER!

My latest short film is finished, and almost ready for your hungry little eyeballs to ogle! In the meantime, enjoy this excellent TRAILER!

SAVING THE OLYMPICS FROM THEMSELVES

Thanks to the Russians having passed a slew of anti-LGBTQ legislation, there has been a growing chorus of outraged voices calling for either a boycott or an outright relocation of this year’s Winter Olympics in protest. That’s not going to happen. The 22nd Winter Games are going ahead in sunny Sochi. And while it’s certainly true that there is a certain bitter irony to holding, say, a figure skating competition in a country that has just legalized gay-bashing, it’s easy to lose sight of the even bigger problem facing the Olympics: the fact that they’re pathetically out-dated and brain-numbingly boring.

You don’t have to be terribly interested in the Olympics to know they’re in serious trouble. At no time in the hundred-plus years since a French aristocrat revived this Pagan ritual in a failed attempt to prepare his countrymen for the coming century of Total War has the situation been so grim. Contrary to the nostalgic whining of understandably bitter former Olympians — whom the networks regularly trot out in a misguided attempt to impart historical gravitas to an event that is irreversibly rooted in The Now — the problems have nothing to do with performance-enhancing drugs, or crass commercialization, or the emerging dominance of eugenically engineered hermaphrodites from China. No.

The problem, in a word, is familiarity. And as you already know, familiarity breeds contempt. Tradition is one thing, but in this six-second-maximum viral Vine video world of ours, the Games as they stand are positively rut-stuck. 

How much longer can the world’s atrocity-primed, vicarious intensity junkies go on pretending to care about wholly interchangeable, monomaniacal sports-obsessives performing the same old competitions in the same old way, time after time after time? The difference between performances among top athletes is now measured in milliseconds and millimeters, barely perceptible to the human eye. Either that, or they’re dependent upon the whim of “judges” blinded by patriotic fervor and susceptible to bribes and threats. Aside from the frustration caused by the occasional outrageous decision, the Olympics are about as compelling to watch as vomit drying.

But the Olympic Games can be saved. And yer old pal Jerky figures he’s just the man to do the saving. In fact, I feel as though my total disinterest in all things sports will paradoxically help me bring a fresh perspective to the situation at hand!

Continued at RIOTWIRE.COM!

THE RISE AND FALL OF COLIN WILSON

Colin Wilson, author of The Outsider and The Occult: A History, passed away this week. He was 82 years old. This overview covering Wilson's incredibly rocky career kick-off is very interesting stuff, indeed, and a must-read for any and all fans of this amazingly prolific personality, whether you favor his pioneering true crime work, his "unsolved mysteries" compilations, his literary criticism or his fiction (the Spider-World series being particularly fun juvenilia).

Personally, I've always been of two minds about Wilson. On the one hand, at his best, he's a crafter of compulsively readable books about undeniably intriguing subjects. The aforementioned The Occult, from 1971, is a classic of the genre, with an encyclopedic breadth topped only, perhaps, by its direct forerunner Bergier and Pauwells' Morning of the Magicians (1960), without which The Occult - and pretty much the entire Occult and New Age revival in publishing - would be unthinkable.

On the other hand, when it came to his pet pecadillos, Wilson could hardly be called an impartial or "scientific" reporter. He tended to err on the side of credulity, accepting wild claims at face value. This fault is particularly evident in his writings on everything from ghosts to UFOs to "Faculty X"... a kind of primitive clairvoyance that he claimed all humans at one time possessed. For this reason alone, Wilson's value to any modern-day truth-seeker is suspect as anything more than a provider of excellently written and highly entertaining summaries - jumping off points - for the serious student of aberrant thought and High Weirdness.

Rest in Peace, Colin Wilson.

"THE WIRE" CREATOR DAVID SIMON ON THE TWO AMERICAS

Pretty interesting, allegedly impromptu speech delivered by David Simon, creator of The Wire - probably the finest television drama of our generation - at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, in Sydney, Australia.

America is a country that is now utterly divided when it comes to its society, its economy, its politics. There are definitely two Americas. I live in one, on one block in Baltimore that is part of the viable America, the America that is connected to its own economy, where there is a plausible future for the people born into it. About 20 blocks away is another America entirely. It's astonishing how little we have to do with each other, and yet we are living in such proximity.
There's no barbed wire around West Baltimore or around East Baltimore, around Pimlico, the areas in my city that have been utterly divorced from the American experience that I know. But there might as well be. We've somehow managed to march on to two separate futures and I think you're seeing this more and more in the west. I don't think it's unique to America.
I think we've perfected a lot of the tragedy and we're getting there faster than a lot of other places that may be a little more reasoned, but my dangerous idea kind of involves this fellow who got left by the wayside in the 20th century and seemed to be almost the butt end of the joke of the 20th century; a fellow named Karl Marx.

Continue reading at The Guardian.

THE GAIACIDE CONTINUES APACE

"The starfish seem to waste away, ‘deflate’ a little, and then just disintegrate. The arms just detach, and the central disc falls apart. It seems to happen rapidly, and not just dead animals undergoing decomposition." 

The Pacific Ocean is dying, apparently...

TORONTO MAYOR ROB FORD ADMITS OF POLICE: "OF COURSE I KNEW THEY WERE ON TO ME!"

The fun starts ten minutes and 35 seconds deep into the morbidly-obese, crack-smoking, pig-eyed mayor of Toronto's "impromptu" interview with Toronto talk radio fixture John "Johnny" Oakley.

R.I.P. PETER WINTONICK, GLOBAL AMBASSADOR FOR DOCUMENTARY FILM

Montreal-based, Ontario-born documentarian Peter Wintonick passed away today at the age of 60. He had recently been diagnosed with liver cancer. Join me in celebrating this great man's life and work by watching his most well known and important work, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media.

GO BANKSY, GO!

THIS is a chronicle of UK artist Banksy's recently completed New York graffiti residency. It's a month's worth of fun!