But, y'know, I don't think this turned out awful or anything, so I'm sharing it here anyways. Enjoy!
Monday, February 2, 2026
Weird WC Fields
Sunday, February 1, 2026
Two Random Caricatures
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| As always, click on the image for a less-compressed, higher-resolution look at it. |
Saturday, January 31, 2026
Playlist: January 2026
Ring out the old, ring in the new...
January 2026
Freewill - Rush
Wouldn't It Be Nice - Beach Boys
Baby Face - Little Richard
Up Around The Bend - Creedence Clearwater Revival
Big Railroad Blues (2/26/73) - Grateful Dead
Intoxica - The Centurians
I'm Stepping Out - John Lennon
Never Say Never - Romeo Void
Speed of Life - David Bowie
Spillage - Minutemen
New York - Sex Pistols
The Watcher - Motorhead
Mexicali Blues - Bob Weir
I'll Spend My Life With You - The Monkees
Wasn't Born to Follow - The Byrds
On The Road to Find Out - Yusuf/Cat Stevens
Indian Lake - Cowsills
Nothing From Nothing - Billy Preston
The Glory of Man - Minutemen
If You Can See Me - David Bowie
Keep A-Knockin' - Little Richard
One More Saturday Night - Bob Weir
EMI - Sex Pistols
Monday, January 19, 2026
2025 Reading - Part III
Click here for the previous part!
By James Rolfe
2025
I've long been an admirer of James Rolfe and his work at Cinemassacre, and a few years ago he posted a video to YouTube teasing the plot to a film that he intended to make in the future. It had an intriguing premise and ended on a cliffhanger, so naturally I wanted to find out how the damn thing ended!
Time marches on and plans change in ways we couldn't have foreseen, and not too long ago Rolfe provided an update on the film: he didn't feel it was feasible to make it at this juncture as he had too many other commitments (predominantly and most importantly his family), but he still wanted to tell this specific story and decided that a novel would be an ideal format. Fast-forward to the tail end of last year-- the novel was finally released, and I picked up a copy promptly.
For Rolfe's first effort in the medium of written fiction (he has also published a memoir), I think Gnome Cave proves a promising start. It is incredibly short, but as per Rolfe that was by design. That said, I do wish the book had been even just a chapter or two longer; I think it might have benefitted from the breathing room and a bit more fleshing out of the characters. My only other gripe is that the big twist (which I won't spoil here) felt a little anti-climactic-- the story had done a great job building up to that point and provided an ominous, suspenseful atmosphere effectively. I'm not too sure the reveal that followed took full advantage of that promise.
Nostalgia, particularly the ugly side of it, is a common theme in James Rolfe's work. His most famous creation, the Angry Video Game Nerd, is an abrasive malcontent with a hare-trigger temper that plays games (usually) from the 1980s and 90s, becomes disproportionately enraged by them (which is especially funny when the games often focus on subject matter along the lines of the Berenstain Bears and "Cheetahmen"), then typically destroys the cartridges in a gloriously over-the-top manner once his fury becomes too much to bear-- usually with delightful Troma-esque practical effects. It's a consistently hilarious series that is still going strong to this day, and has been around so long it essentially predicted what has now become a disturbingly-real type of person-- people who spend all their time obsessing over their childhood memories, then going out of their way to become aggressive about them for the most ludicrous reasons. This sort of individual has been around for decades, sure, but Rolfe was very prescient in imagining the bizarre ways they would evolve as the age of social media took hold, making the series' satirical premise just as relevant as ever.
Another popular project of Rolfe's was a series called Board James, where the eponymous character would make his friends play-- what else?-- board games from his youth. BJ would take the proceedings a tad too seriously, and as the series progressed this became more and more sinister as it was eventually revealed that he was a violent madman who had trapped his buddies/victims in some sort of nightmarish purgatory hellscape shaped by obsession with board games, inevitably murdering them by the end of each episode in a brutal fashion, before they are forced to start the whole process over in the next one. Although this all sounds quite terrifying on paper (and there are some moments that are genuinely disturbing, particularly in the finale), Board James was unmistakably comedic in tone overall. Think a version of the Three Stooges where Moe disembowels Curly and Larry.
Rolfe's two aforementioned, best-known musings on the dangers of nostalgia were meant to be humorous, and Gnome Cave differs from them in the sense that it a more serious work in tone. It focuses on a middle-aged truck driver named Dante who has no real roots-- essentially friendless and his immediate family have all passed on-- and he delves into an obsession with an eerie theme park ride he remembered from his youth that was the subject of demented urban legends. The subject matter is Rolfe's bread-and-butter, and it is very gripping to see him take one of his characters' unhealthy fixations on relatively inconsequential pieces of childhood entertainment seriously for once. One can certainly detect the influence of Rod Serling this time around (and perhaps even the Cryptkeeper). Dante's sanity visibly growing more askew throughout the book is the most captivating element-- you can tell something has gone wrong with the guy, but what exactly is it? His manner is chilling yet his intentions seem just out of our grasp until The Big Reveal.
It's not Rolfe's masterwork but it certainly is not bad at all either, despite the touched-upon flaws here and there. I would definitely recommend it; it's an easily digestible, engrossing horror fable that won't take up too much of your time and recalls the brand of freakiness found in RL Stine's Goosebumps, albeit taken to some darker places. If James ever decides to write another book, I'll certainly make sure to check it out.
By John Updike
1974
Prior to this, I had read some of Updike's short stories, but A Month of Sundays was the first full novel of his for me (granted it's not particularly long; I'm not trying to suggest this was a Herculean task). It's the first instalment of Updike's "Scarlet Letter Trilogy", a triad of books he put out in the 1970s that are loose adaptations of Nathaniel Hawthorne's literary classic. I haven't read the other two yet, but this blog post gives a rundown that helped give me some background on what Updike had in mind.
The story follows a middle-aged reverend named Thomas, who is sent to some sort of hush-hush retreat under the guise of "rehabilitation" after he is busted having numerous affairs, first with the church organist (whom he seemed to have the deepest connection with, and coldly fired after things fizzled out), then with a smorgasbord of female parishioners. The novel is written from Thomas' point of view during this retreat, where he is tasked with keeping a diary of sorts, where he reflects on his fall from grace, and writes a couple of cynical sermons he knows he will never be able to deliver. He eventually starts lusting after one of the retreat's employees, who (spoiler alert?) he supposedly beds in the final chapter, although whether or not this actually occurred is up to interpretation-- our only account of this comes from Thomas himself, and seems rather abrupt.
"Cynical" is the operative word here. I've heard the book referred to as "deliberately offensive" on Updike's part (I don't remember where), suggesting he set out to provoke with it (what, him? No way!). On top of interweaving the touchy theme of religion with the touchy theme of sex throughout the tale, we get a few rather detailed descriptions of Thomas' preferences, and in general he is a very unlikable individual; sexist with some questionable implied politics, and constantly behaving in ways that hurt the people around him and showing little, typically superficial, remorse about it (and, circling back to the ending, he doesn't seem to learn his lesson). He's a very jaded guy who seems to feel very little anymore, and one gets the impression his rule-breaking sexual escapades are his way of trying to bring a bit of emotion back into his existence. It makes him a bit sympathetic, if ultimately pathetic. You don't get the sense Updike wanted you to like this guy very much, but he's a fascinating enough character to fill a protagonist role.
I wouldn't call A Month of Sundays a classic, but it's competent and, in several moments, captivating. The last few chapters run out of steam and feel superfluous, as though Updike via Thomas had run out of things to say but wanted to meet the thirty-one chapters threshold (hence the title). I found my copy for a dollar secondhand, and it's a pretty brief read, so I don't regret having picked it up or anything, even though it's not anything to write home about. I looked up the New York Times' contemporary review of the book, which concluded "A Month of Sundays is a Sunday sort of book. Mr. Updike is lounging in his own backyard, enjoying a day off from his strenuous job of being one of our best writers."
By Alice Munro
1978
This will be hard to write about, as I'm still not entirely able to wrap my head around the experience. When I was about halfway through reading Who Do You Think You Are?, I was made aware of Alice Munro's daughter, Andrea Robin Skinner's recent essay about the horrifying abuse she faced as a child and Munro's complicit role in it. What's more is that Munro seemed to use her daughter's woes as direct inspiration for parts of this specific book. To say the least, it certainly cast a massive shadow over finishing it up.
Who Do You Think You Are? is a series of short stories tracking the life of a Canadian woman named Rose, from childhood to late-middle age. As the title suggests, Rose is always on the search for some kind of identity that seems to just elude her grasp, wanting to fit into a world that often seems to not want to accept her on her own terms. The book is incredibly well-written, obviously, as it is arguably the most acclaimed work of Munro's (a canonical modern author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013). Rose's emotional journey easily pulled me in and her setbacks felt like punches to the gut to read about. All that said, I don't really think I can write any more about it. Finding out about the book's viscerally-upsetting origins colored the experience in a very uncomfortable way that I'm not eloquent enough to put into the proper words, nor do I think I'm really qualified to.
The "Art vs. Artist" debate is an all-too-common one nowadays that tends to just go around in circles. I suspect there will never be any universally-satisfying answer to something so tricky and wide-ranging in scope. I am generally not of the camp that insists you automatically cannot take in a powerful work of art if its creator did terrible things-- it depends, it's a case-by-case basis to me. There are a lot of variables to consider (is the artist still alive? If so, will they benefit directly from your enjoyment? What's the historical context? What's the bigger picture? What can be gained from engagement and what harm can be caused And so forth). It's undeniably a great book from a great author, and Munro is dead (and I bought it secondhand anyway), but considering how directly linked Who Do You Think You Are? seems to be to her daughter's story, it's hard to not feel that there is much about the book that becomes very difficult to approach while trying to remain sensitive and respectful. The mere idea that I'm even struggling with such a thing already feels superficial and even a tad selfish to me, as what ultimately matters the most is not my experience with the book, or yours', but the feelings of Andrea Robin Skinner. She was the one affected by what happened, not us, and having complicated feelings about a book is nothing compared to what she must have went through.
I think it's best to end this all with a quote from Skinner herself on the matter: "I never wanted to see another interview, biography or event that didn’t wrestle with the reality of what had happened to me, and with the fact that my mother, confronted with the truth of what had happened, chose to stay with, and protect, my abuser."
By John Kennedy Toole
1963/1980
A Confederacy of Dunces swiftly became one of my favorite books of all time. Just a few chapters in, I could feel it taking that place in my personal pantheon. I don't really know what I could possibly say about the book that would do it justice-- all the highest compliments have been paid long ago, including a Pulitzer Prize a year after it was finally published in 1980 (as you might already know-- it's probably the most famous tidbit about Dunces, as well as what drew my attention to it in the first place-- its author, John Kennedy Toole, wrote it in 1963, was unable to get it published, and wound up shelving it. He took his own life later on, and his mother shopped it around to publishers after).
I laughed out loud at least every few pages. It is so funny, and so honest-- its portrait of humanity, peculiarities and delusions and all, is practically unparalleled as far as I'm concerned. The story's characters, particularly its lead Ignatius J. Reilly, live and breathe during the 400-odd pages. There's a relatively large pool of characters with their own little stories going on separate from one another, yet the way they interweave into a web that all comes together flawlessly and hilariously in the end is nothing short of masterful. I had the time of my life reading A Confederacy of Dunces. If you've never read it, I urge you to get on that yesterday.
By Rudolph Grey
1992
Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood USA
By Will Sloan
2025
Closing out the year, I read two books in tandem on the same topic, one old (well, not really all that old) and one new. The topic was a longtime fascination of mine, filmmaker Ed Wood.
I've always had a great time with StarCrash, and many of these "bad" flicks. I enjoy watching them as much as I enjoy watching a "good" movie. I think about them often, and like I mentioned, I just about have several of my personal favorites memorized. So how can I call these movies "bad" at this point? Sure, they're... not conventionally competent, let's put it that way. But I feel that long ago, I mostly shed the ironic, condescending perspective I initially came to those films with. Their idiosyncrasies fascinate me in an earnest way; the atmospheres they often achieve, so unlike anything you see in the more conventional works, are unique and genuinely entice me. Watching these films can feel like getting a chance to explore a different universe, one where everything is not what you've been led things are "supposed" to be, yet it's all captivating and you are glad to spend some time immersed in this distinctive, uncommon environment. I admire their offbeat nature, and by this point I truly believe I am doing so in a mostly earnest way. They're sort of like an eccentric old family member; amusing in their strangeness but I love them with all my heart and I promise you I am not aiming for sarcasm as I write all this.
If a movie gives me this much positive stimulation, can it really be "bad"? To me, a bad movie would be something that gives you absolutely nothing, something bland and forgettable. Watching a bad movie is watching something you dislike, a negative experience in general (even if its a fairly trivial one as far as negative experiences go. That is not how I would describe the works I've been talking about-- I enjoy myself watching then, and actively opt to do so often.
To wit, I think about the king of this domain: Ed Wood, who has been deemed "The Worst Director of All Time" the same way Aretha Franklin is unquestionably "The Queen of Soul". You probably know his output, if you're reading this-- Plan 9 From Outer Space, Glen or Glenda, Bride of The Monster are the most famous ones. While those movies are all too weird for polite society, they grab your attention and never let it go, even after they're over. Hence why Wood has such a strong posthumous reputation that includes a Tim Burton-helmed biopic. He deals with themes that unapologetically feel like drive-in B-movie fare in their purest, least compromised and distilled form; his work seems to have emerged from some sleazy gutter in Hollywood, yet never sheds this reverence for the city's starry-eyed glamor, and feels almost refreshingly naive and earnest in doing so; his work tonally feels like a collection of dreamscapes that let you view some part of your subconscious that you might never entirely come to understand. How can someone who does all this be "bad", let alone "the worst"? I don't know who I would bestow that insult-moniker upon off the top of my head, but to me, Wood is very far from that hypothetical person's orbit. The Worst Director of All Time would not be nearly as interesting.
Nightmare of Ecstasy is essentially the Bible of Ed Wood; an oral-history account featuring interviews with just about everyone who knew him and even some archival thoughts from the maestro himself, organized chronologically enough to serve as a de-facto biography. While Ed Wood's cult following had been very much brewing prior to Ecstasy's publication, it sort of served as this dam-burst moment that brought him into the realm of legitimate celebrity, with the aforementioned (Disney-produced!) biopic and references on Seinfeld emerging in its wake. It tracks Wood's life as a biography is meant to: youth, army service, beginnings in showbiz, hooking up with Bela Lugosi, Lugosi's death and Plan 9 crawling out of that wreckage, his fortunes dwindling, alcoholism worsening, his later career as in porn, and his depressing final years where he lived bottle-to-bottle in a mutually-abusive, codependent relationship with his common-law wife Kathy, bleeding money until they're homeless and Wood dies crashing at a friend's apartment for a spell. Ed is humanized in these accounts much more than he typically is in pop culture; sure, he does lots of funny stuff (often unintentionally), but he was a person and this doesn't get lost. I feel like this is often the case whenever Wood is discussed, it seems as though making shoddy films is used as a pretext to turn him into a comedy punching bag much of the time. Even the Burton bio, while well-meaning and sympathetic, takes a fairly condescending view towards him.
This sympathy is especially important when it comes to the recurring struggle in Ed's life: gender. Ed was a perpetual cross-dresser, and while he insisted he was heterosexual and cisgender (Wood used "he" pronouns, I'm not attempting to misgender him), some of the stories give the impression like he might have been in denial even to himself. Pop culture tends to really mock Wood when it comes to this aspect of his life, especially re: his debut film, Glen or Glenda The assignment was to make an explotation-ish documentary in the wake of Christine Jorgensen, the woman who. had the first widely-publicized gender-reassignment surgery. Ed took that ball and ran with it: he wrote, directed and starred in a final product that focuses on his character's (Glen) internal struggle with what we would now describe as gender dysphoria. He fears what will happen when his fiancee founds out, he fears being arrested, he fears the stress be coming so unbearable that things end in suicide. He has a nightmarish dream sequence where the Devil taunts him, all the while the film's narrator repeatedly insists that Glen is a perfectly heterosexual, virile man. He yearns to be "cured" of his dysphoria, and finally is in the film's poorly-aged happy ending. There is lots about the film that is funny and not in transphobic "ha-ha, he wants to be woman" ways, but the undercurrent is sort of heartbreaking-- it reads as Wood's plea for tolerance to 1953 society, all the while he ultimately knows it will fall on deaf ears. Nightmare of Ecstasy has a quote from a friend reiterating that Ed told him the movie was "my story" (I'm paraphrasing from memory so perhaps I'm slightly off).
If you feel for Wood after reading all this, then Will Sloan's new book, Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood USA is for you, just as it was for me. Sloan presents an analysis of Wood's work and its themes that engages with it all earnestly and on its level, rather than going "gee these films are stupid" as has often been the protocol. His introduction to the book features very similar sentiments to my above musics on whether these are truly "bad" movies, and I knew I was at home right away as I read that.
The two books work very well as companion pieces. One is the facts, and the other is some analysis (as well as some more facts, including a few debunkings of information that was in the 30 year-old Ecstasy book-- no, Bela Lugosi did not die with Wood's latest script in his hands). There are several other volumes on Wood that I have not gotten around to yet, but I would definitely say this was a wonderful double feature that Wood have done Ed proud. Wocka wocka.
...And with that, we've recapped my 2025 reading! Who knows where we go from here? In 2026, I have two goals:
I. Finish more books. Ever since I was a teenager I have been plagued by a compulsion to read dozens of books at once, and consequently it takes me ages to finish just one. My method of cycling through several just isn't doing it for me. I've gotten a bit better at that lately!
II. Read more fiction. As you may have noticed, the vast majority of the books I've discussed are all biographies! I'm trying to broaden my horizons there.
See ya next year!
Sunday, January 4, 2026
2025 Reading - Part II
Click here for the previous part!
By Elijah Wald
2015
Last December, a biopic about Dylan's earlier years came out to much fanfare (notably, it had the stamp of approval from ol' Zimmy himself). For those wondering my thoughts on it: I liked it! Thought it was quite good. Ed Norton's performance as Pete Seeger, especially, was phenomenal. The film took a few liberal departures from reality, but this is to be expected with a biopic.
What I wasn't initially aware of was that it was an adaptation of a book. I made a beeline to the library (a few months after I saw the movie, if we're being honest... not a particularly beeline-ish beeline) to get a copy.
Honestly, I think the book surpasses the movie, as much as I did enjoy it. Like the film it spawned, Elijah Wald's book walks us through the beginning of Dylan's career up until his famous polarization of his folkie fanbase upon whence he plugged in his electric guitar and started rocking and rolling and so forth. Now, I'm no newcomer to Dylan-- a lot of the information concerning him was information that I already knew. What I didn't know, however, was all that much about the life of Pete Seeger, who this book admirably devotes about equal time to. I knew a basic outline of who the man was, but I found myself coming away from reading this feeling like I had gained a much richer understanding of him and where he had come from. A very fascinating and remarkable figure who deserves more than being relegated to the cranky-old-fogey-telling-Bob-to-turn-that-infernal-racket-down role he is often shoved into whenever people talk about The Legend of Electric Dylan. Wald evidently sought to rectify that by spilling (almost) as much ink on what Pete was up to in the mid-60s as he does Dylan's adventures.
As it turns out, he was more open-minded about the electrified material than he is typically given credit for (Dylan wasn't even the first electric act he had at the Newport Festival!), and no, he didn't attempt to cut Bob Dylan's seismic set at Newport '65 short with an axe to his amp cables like you might have heard. People are complex, and-- brace yourself-- Seeger had a bit more going on than the conventional wisdom of music lore generally allows him whenever it recounts this tale. It was refreshing to see a take on the events that made a point of thoroughly separating fact from fiction-- as iconic a story as the fiction may be.
By Arthur Marx
1974
(Serendipitous? I picked up some Martin and Lewis DVDs earlier today.)
One of the greatest comedy duos who weren't named Laurel and Hardy are examined in this volume written by Arthur Marx (son of Groucho). We begin with their chaotic beginnings as a nightclub act, follow them as they ascend the mountain to superstardom, and brace ourselves as things sour and the two race towards their acrimonious breakup, largely thanks to Jerry Lewis' swollen ego (the book does not paint him very kindly, although I don't think it was too out of line in this respect. Brilliant comedian, but by all accounts a very taxing man to be around). The aftermath and the solo careers that emerged in its wake are analyzed as well.
What's especially interesting about this book is what's not in it-- being written in 1974 informs a markedly different view of Jerry Lewis' career than what we have now nearly a decade after his death. When Martin and Lewis split, just about everybody thought it would lead to the latter flying higher than ever and the former descending into obscurity. Jerry was the funny one, and under-utilized Dean just sort of stood around and looked pretty most of the time; not hard to see why this was the go-to prediction. Of course, it wasn't to be-- it took some patience, but Dean Martin became one of the most beloved singers of his day and remains a definitive crooner, having at least three or four tunes from his repertoire that are familiar to everybody on the planet.
Jerry, on the other hand, started off strong with a string of popular, crowd-pleasing movies, but ran out of gas when it became evident that he would simply be unable to reign in his infamous ego. When you have talent and enough people notice it, you tend to get surrounded by ass-kissers who will tell you your farts smell fantastic while they're down there. If this persists long enough, you may start to believe it yourself. Such was the case for Mr. Lewis upon reaching household-name status; he was seemingly convinced he was the logical heir to Chaplin, but many have gunned for such a title and none achieved it. In his bubble o' fame, he fell out of touch with what the moviegoing public wanted. As audiences consequently grew less and less interested in what JL had to offer them, the promise that was shown in his first few solo films like The Bellboy and Cinderfella seemed to evaporate, leaving the 1950s' favorite clown perennially trapped in the shadow of his ex-partner, a picture of potential left unfulfilled.
The book's narrative ends around the time of The Day The Clown Cried, Jerry Lewis' legendarily ill-advised project that was emblematic of the gulf between what Lewis thought he should be doing and what people actually wanted to see. It would have had Jerry portraying a clown who ends up in a nazi concentration camp and becoming a sort of angel of death(?) for imprisoned Jewish children. A masturbatory warped version of The Great Dictator that, in place of Chaplin's heartfelt plea for the world to reject fascism, is a hollow vehicle for some asshole character to dance around the backdrop of the Holocaust, which is transparently his set piece for no reason other than he really, really wants an Academy Award (hey, it ended up working for Benigni! To Lewis' credit, there's no way it could have been more soulless than Life is Beautiful).
Mercifully, it was never completed, being scrapped after Jerry presumably had a moment of extreme mental clarity the likes of which Buddhists have sought out for years and asked "What the fuck am I making?" To date, it has not been released in its unfinished entirety (but every once in a while it seems like it almost comes out), although some have seen what exists of it, including Harry Shearer:
"The closest I can come to describing the effect is if you flew down to Tijuana and suddenly saw a painting on black velvet of Auschwitz. You'd just think, My God, wait a minute! It's not funny, and it's not good, and somebody's trying too hard in the wrong way to convey this strongly held feeling."
This bleak note ends Marx's story, but as you probably know did not necessarily end Martin and Lewis'. Just two years after the book's publication, the two reunited on live television courtesy of one Frank Sinatra and reportedly rekindled their friendship thereafter. In 1982, Martin Scorsese cast Jerry Lewis in what was quite a departure for the Nutty Professor, a role in The King of Comedy. Lewis got a chance to reveal a different side of his acting chops, and although the film didn't exactly set the box office ablaze, it was met with acclaim with many singling out Jerry for praise. His film career never really regained the momentum it had in the early 1960s, but he had given his public one last great performance for the books.
The Pirates & The Mouse: Disney's War Against The Underground
The Air Pirates, ostensibly led by Odd Bodkins creator Dan O'Neill and featuring several young cartoonists who would go on to become legends of the industry shortly after (Bobby London, Shary Flenniken, Ted Richards and Gary Hallgren), self-published some comic books that featured Disney characters like Mickey and Minnie Mouse smokin' dope and enjoying the free love of the times, much to the chagrin of said characters' corporate masters. (Supposedly, O'Neill actually wanted to get sued, and saw to it that copies of the book would be placed directly on a conference table at Disney's offices. Eccentric guy, as you will find out!) Disney took things to court, and the case dragged out for much longer than one would have expected, particularly due to O'Neill's repeated provocations (he kept putting out comics featuring Mickey during the whole ordeal).
As I mentioned earlier, to this day people debate the Air Pirates case-- yes, they drew on-model versions of Disney characters in their comics, but at the same time the stories were so outlandishly raunchy that nobody in their right mind could have ever mistaken it for a genuine Mouse House product (not to mention the books were distributed in head shops and the usual hippie haunts, rather than newsstands or... basically anywhere a child/Disney's regular audience would be able to get their hands on it. In fact, I would argue the lawsuit exponentially increased the chances of the general public looking at the books, as it raised their profile quite substantially).
By Bob Levin
2003
As everybody knows, the one thing The Walt Disney Corporation loves the most is when people parody their work, making liberal use of their copyrighted characters in doing so. Unfortunately, it seems that a group of underground cartoonists from the early 1970s who did so caught them at a bad moment, igniting a lawsuit that lasted eons and a debate about Fair Use vs. plagiarism that still gets quite heated mileage a half-century later.
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| Bobby London's model sheet for Goofy. Click on the image for a better look! |
Bob Levin's book on the matter interviews just about everybody concerned with the story-- each member of the Pirates, several of the lawyers involved, and so forth. I've been weirdly fascinated by the entire caper ever since I was in middle school and I first started getting into the history of the underground movement, so a lot of the material in here was not all that new to me-- but I would have to say that it must be the definitive account of the story. It also features some cool art I hadn't seen beforehand.
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| Gary Hallgren's model sheets for Horace Horsecollar and Pete. Click on the image for a better look! |
The Pirates' tomes are available to read on the Internet Archive as of this writing, so you can decide for yourself whether they crossed the line or not.
Crumb: A Cartoonist's Life
By Dan Nadel
2025
While we are on the topic of underground comics, let's close out this second instalment with the much-anticipated biography of Robert Crumb. Done with the participation of the man himself (as you may have intuited through the cover illustration present here), it's a highly in-depth, nothing-held-back look over his life and art. This is not particularly new territory for Crumb, as much of his work is quite famously autobiographical and willing to tell you every nasty detail in his trademark guilty-confession-esque style, but it certainly is interesting to see it written from the perspective of a third party for once (particularly one who isn't ashamed/aroused by much of the proceedings).
I don't have much else to add, but don't get me wrong-- I highly recommend this one, it was a great read that I blazed through because it kept me hooked. I would put this up there in the upper-echelon of biographies that I've read, with the likes of Brian Jay Jones' book on Jim Henson, Peter Guralnick's two volumes on Elvis Presley and James Kaplan's also-two-volumes on Frank Sinatra. Thorough and engrossing.
Part the Third, which should close out this verbal vomit, will hopefully be up before the end of the month! Stay tuned!
Thursday, January 1, 2026
Dagwood Belongs To The People Now
As you've probably seen countless online articles about now, works from 1930 have entered the public domain in the United States (the main character of the world). This includes primordial versions of Betty Boop and Mickey's mutt Pluto, the Marx Brothers' film version of Animal Crackers (it was a play first!), the Nancy Drew book series and William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. Maybe we can put together a film adaptation of the latter starring all those characters. Who wants to bankroll that?
1930 also included the debuts of Blondie and Dagwood, as Chic Young's long-running comic strip made its first appearance on September 8th of that year.
Before you get your slasher flick where Dagwood slices his victims up into sandwich meat into pre-production, you might want to know that the strip started off very differently from what most of us tend to think of nowadays. There were no sandwiches (giant or otherwise), and Blondie and Dagwood had no kids as they were not even married yet-- they were college-aged! About 18-20 or so. The first few years of the strip's run focused mainly on Blondie and Dagwood's attempts to court one another, much to the disapproval of Dagwood's wealthy parents (who eventually end up disinheriting him once they finally marry, hence why he's been stuck in a soul-crushing 9-to-5 job like the rest of us for the last 90-odd years).
To wit, I thought it would be fun to post the first month of the strip in its entirety to commemorate the moment. I have the first six years archived in their entirety on my personal digital comics stash, and, hey, sharing these in their entirety ain't piracy anymore!
Click on any of the images for a good look at them. Also, you might notice there's only one Sunday strip-- this isn't due to any omissions, the Sunday strip started on the 28th of the month. (Interestingly, the Sunday strip initially seemed to exist in a separate continuity from the dailies, and had Blondie dating a number of non-Dagwood guys, most prominently a hothead named Hiho.)
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Wednesday, December 31, 2025
Playlist: December 2025
Happy New Year, all! Hoping to finish up the next instalment of my 2025 reading retrospective soon. In the meantime, here's what I was listening to in December:
December 2025
Baby, You're A Rich Man - The Beatles
Let Me Be - Dave Clark Five
Stumbling Block - Champion Jack Dupree
Majestic - Wax Fang
Pay You Back With Interest - The Hollies
On Top of The World - Cheap Trick
Tug of War - Regina Richards & The Red Hot
(Song For My) Sugar Spun Sister - The Stone Roses
It's Time - Jimmy Cliff
Blue Monday - Fats Domino
Live With Me - Rolling Stones
Voices in The Wind (Take 7) - Heinz
Feel So Fine - The 'N Betweens
The Boy in The Paisley Shirt - Television Personalities
It's You - The Hollies
If I Were You - Peter & Gordon
Run Away From Life - The Monkees
Loneliness - Mickey Leigh's Mutated Music
Lost Someone - James Brown
Dust My Broom - Elmore James
Fallout Shelter - Dave Clark Five
You Don't Believe Me - The 'N Betweens
Roads To Nowhere - The Gurus
Watchin' You - KISS
Tired Angels (To J.M.H.) - Mountain
Sister Morphine - Rolling Stones
The Candy Man - Sammy Davis Jr.
Merry Xmas Everybody - Slade
Wednesday, December 24, 2025
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