They shot Captain America & Apes

I don’t understand how things like this work out – I read (for the first time in years mind you) a collection of Captain American comics and now Marvel has gone and killed him.

I suspect that this is not forever – hell – they killed Cap off a time or two in the past – it could however mean a long break where the man Steve Rodgers leaves the identity behind and someone else takes it up (that also has happened before – the Nomad story arch comes to mind).

These have to be troubled times for the writers of Cap – with the country about 1/3 thinking W is god and 1/3 thinking he’s the devil himself and about 1/3 thinking he’s an ignorant knee biter who can’t find his own shoes in the mornings – dealing with a character who assumed to be the embodiment of this country is going to be tough as hell – because face it, no matter what you do, somebody is going to yell like hell about it.

We seem to be dealing with two competing ideas of what a patriot is, one is a my country right or wrong kind of mind set, the other a desire of the country to live up to the ideals of its founding documents (full disclosure I side with the latter) and these days there is very little connection between the two. Again I think the My country right or wrong is a dangerous tribal (it’s okay if we do it) mindset that shows a desire for big daddy to come and smite the bad guys and lead us (a king or a Caesar) but that’s not a real concern of a comic book company – they are trying to sell comic books – which makes Cap problematic in these times – where one side routinely accuses the other side of being on the side of this countries enemies.

Cap faded away in the 50’s as well – as comic books, under the general conformist hysteria of the age, were accused of all shorts of heinous things – it damn near destroyed the industry and the industry has a long institutional memory about such things. So you’d expect them to tread lightly here.

So it has to be a tricky character to handle now – and maybe this is part of how they are going to handle it – we’ll have to see.

As I noted yesterday – Scooter Libby was convicted on 4 of 5 counts including being a grown man and having a nickname like Scooter. What the hell is that all about? I can only assume he was known for running around doing his master’s bidding

The Walter Reed scandal threatens to engulf the entire system – and W has appointed a commission – Bob Doyle who is a veteran and someone else whose name escapes me –
I don’t expect much.

Was going to give you a blow by blow of the results of watching both The Mighty Gorga and A*P*E in the same evening – short version: A headache, praying for the second damn movie to just end, running out of gin, and thinking about clubbing myself into unconsciousness to avoid permanent damage, praying for a power outage – but the death of Cap and the pressures of the job today have made that impossible – however I will give it to you as soon as I can – once the damage heals – I still have this ache in the back of my neck like my brain was trying to escape down my spinal column, I twitch oddly at the mention of the word ‘ape’, I have no memories of my second grade – and no real will to live, (I mean what’s the point, life’s all an absurd farce anyway and the planet’s doomed and love is for me just some kind of bad joke with me as the punch line) – actually the damage was quite light considering I’d just sat through and paid enough attention to take notes about two of the worst movies I have ever seen in my life. Kid’s don’t this at home – I am a professional – or I would if there were jobs where people watch mind numbingly bad films until they found themselves waking up in a pool of sweat with an empty gin bottle in one hand, the remote in the other, cans of red bull and empty bags of cheese doodles on the floor, and the word REDRUM written in red crayon on the TV screen and the walls and the mirror in my bathroom.

In related notes – I was able to find a copy of the Monster times 1974 list of the 50 worst monster movies ever made (along with a supplemental 50 others that were almost as bad) – and plan – for your delight and discomfort to watch as many as I can and report on the damage here in this blog. A man needs a goal and this one seems to be one I can do.

Next week the 15th the ides of March – we are playing at the Waltz Astoria (23-14 Ditmars Boulevard, Astoria, New York 11105, 718.95.MUSICat 9 pm. Waltz-astoria.com) Again this will be a more laid back gig than normal – we plan to tell some of the stories behind our songs – in case you want to know.

Later.

Peace, Love, Shield slinging.