How do you like to enjoy a movie? Do you prefer to go in stone cold with no spoilers? Or do you like to be hot with anticipation, awaiting every mega-moment that you have seen leaked on Reddit?
Spoiler alert: I like spoilers.
Gimme them spoilers! Movies today are so predictable anyway. But I have zero tolerance for jagoffs who post this stuff in public. It’s inconsiderate. Therefore, this will be a spoiler-free chapter about spoilers.
We’ve all seen the classic Simpsons episode, am I right? Homer walks out of The Empire Strikes Back, saying aloud, “Who’d have thought Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker’s father!” Everyone in line was furious at him for revealing the big one. More recently came a douchebag who spoiled a Harry Potter book for all the faithful waiting in line to buy it. “Snape kills Dumbledore!” he yelled from the safety of his car as he drove by like a true coward.
I think it’s safe to say that whether you are pro or anti spoiler in your personal lives, nobody likes an asshole like that who goes out of their way to ruin an experience for everybody. Go back home to mommy’s basement, spoiler-troll.
When we were kids, we never went to see movies in their first weeks. Our family waited until things had died down a bit. By then we’d already bought the Marvel Comics adaptations. The Empire Strikes Back was the last Star Wars movie I saw that wasn’t spoiled. My dad bought the Marvel comic adaptation while we waited in the lobby. It was just the two of us. The big reveal had less an affect on me — I simply assumed Vader was lying, as did most of us kids. We’d already seen him lie to Lando. Then, starting with Return of the Jedi, pretty much every Star Wars movie I saw was spoiled in some way. I discovered this didn’t hamper my enjoyment of the films at all. In fact it made me want to see them even more, and savour the moments when they came.
Phantom Menace? Spoiled by Lucasfilm themselves, on the soundtrack CD to the movie. Attack of the Clones? By this time, Ain’t It Cool News was getting regular clicks. I just can’t resist the allure of spoilers! The internet has made it hard to keep a movie secret in any way.
Look at Spiderman: No Way Home. The film’s not even out yet. Pretty much everything has already been up on YouTube before Sony could take them down. (And taking them down, they are!) So I’ve seen everything. I’ve seen all the villains. I’ve seen the end credit scenes (both). The heroes, the cameos, the big moments. All filmed on some shitty, shaking cell phone where you can barely hear the dialogue.
My sister has rules about spoilers. She doesn’t want to know anything that isn’t in the official trailers. I think that’s a sensible policy. For her.
These glimpses don’t spoil movies for me. I still got the shakes, watching the terrible YouTube videos. My tear ducts got a little wet when I saw…nevermind. And based on past experience, it’ll happen again when I finally see No Way Home in theaters. Whenever that will be.
See, that’s currently the problem. With the latest Covid variants, who knows when I’ll be back in the theaters. Originally I planned to see Spiderman during Christmas holidays. Now I’m not so sure. I have to play it by ear. My grandmother (age 97) is in the hospital right now, and seeing her is more important than seeing Tom Holland and his new friends on the big screen.
So, yeah, spoil me! Spoil me rotten — but ask me first.
Always look on the bright side of life! My wife may be sick, but during a global pandemic, that makes her a priority. And as her primary caregiver, that makes me a priority too. Small blessings.
I met Jen at the pharmacy after work (the big clinics are gone now). The pharmacist is a good friend of ours. I filled out the paperwork and Jen went ahead, just as I was starting to have an anxiety attack. I really hate needles.
It’s funny, but I was listening to Kick Axe on the way to the pharmacy, and the song “Just Passing Through” came on. I couldn’t help but think of the lyrics through the lens of what I was about to do.
“Steppin’ out into history.”
Yes, we are making history every time we go for our vaccines. Whether you are pro or con vaccine, this is a universal truth. We’re making history as we do things never done before.
“Caught inside the revolvin’ door.”
It sure did feel that way as I rolled my sleeve up for shot number three.
“I’ve got to figure out this mystery, Ah too many questions I can’t ignore.”
I would love to know all the answers. I want to know how this ends. I want to visualize the endgame. But we’ll just have to wait. The universe tends to unfold as it will.
Ironically the song “Just Passing Through” is about how temporary life really is. “Just passin’ through, we all may be back someday.” OK, so I’m scared of needles, no big deal. But sometimes the Facebook doctors and Twitter trolls start to take a toll on you, just from reading their poison. But then I remember: I trust my doctor. I trust my pharmacist. It’ll be OK.
I hadn’t told my pharmacist how bad my anxiety could get, but I paced the floor a bit until I was ready. I needed something to look at while he gave me the needle. He let Jen come in the room to take a picture of me. I just looked at her Aerosmith shirt until the moment you see in the picture.
Now I’m boosted with a Pfizer-Moderna-Pfizer combo, an effective mixture against Covid19; so say the studies. I’m glad that this is done just before the holidays. I’ll be at maximum efficacy right around the time we go out to dinner to celebrate Jen’s birthday, almost to the minute! As always, I promise I’ll update the world if either of us experience any adverse effects.
RECORD STORE TALES #957: Star Wars at the Mall 1981
Cast your minds back to a time before the internet. Before DVD players. Before we all had VCRs. Prior to the advent of on-demand TV. If you wanted to watch Star Wars…you couldn’t!
There isn’t much more to be said than that. We had our records, to listen to the soundtracks, and “The Story Of…” discs. We had novels and comic books. We had our action figures. If we wanted to watch Star Wars, we had to use the ol’ imagination and memories.
Given that lots of kids would love to watch Star Wars at any given moment, there was a demand. And nature decrees that a vacuum must be filled. I remember that there was a Star Wars play at the mall. A few actors, maybe six or seven total, wearing budget costumes, and doing the best job they could. I remember it being really bad, but I found a photograph that indicates it might not have been as terrible as I thought.
We can only guess who the actors were. Students? A travelling troupe, adventuring from mall to mall? All to sell toys! Kenner was king! Kids flocked to the toy sections, begging mom for a Bossk figure. Why not have a Star Wars play to promote it? Perhaps kids can be the harshest critics and this play wasn’t as terrible as I recall….
We only snapped the one picture; film was expensive. But the costumes don’t appear all that bad. Sure, it looks like Chewbacca is wearing a sweater. I don’t remember Princess Leia having gold trim on her gown. Is that Old Ben Kenobi on the far left? It’s a shame we didn’t get a picture of Luke or Han, but Vader’s helmet does not look bad, nor Chewie’s head. At least not from this angle. Could we have taken a worse picture? You have to give Leia some credit for the nailing the hairstyle, and a killer pair of boots!
The wall behind looks like the barriers that go up when a store is being renovated. You can also see some litter on the ground. Consensus seems to be that this was Stanley Park Mall, due to the familiar flooring.
It started in second grade, and for no reason that anyone knows. There was a kid in my class named Steve. My enemy. A born bully, he had his radar locked onto me the very first year we met. Because he was the classic bully, needing to project strength to the other kids, he sensed that I was the only one he could go after and wouldn’t fight back. That’s how bullies operate. Picking on me in class, in the school yard, in gym. He always had someone else nearby, and I was always alone. The teachers did not care. Catholic school was the worst, because the teachers preferred to ignore these things or blame both parties. They thought that teaming me up with Steve in gym was a way to make us get along. Teaming up the abused with abuser. Real smart. We had to do stretches together and support each other as we stretched back and forth. The thought of touching that bastard’s skin made me feel sick. Needless to say, I hated him just as much afterwards as before. Well done, Catholic school teachers!
The torment went on for a couple years until I finally had enough. In grade four he went one step too far and I fought him at recess one day — our first actual fight. I lost it and pummeled him. He later claimed that I broke his tooth, which I doubt, but I took it as bragging rights. I remember a bigger kid lifting me up off of Steve and dragging me away. “He started it!” I screamed. “He started it!” As usual, the victim got in as much shit as the perpetrator. That’s just how bullying works. We both had to go to the library for detention after school, but I don’t think either of us actually went and I don’t think any teachers noticed. I could care less — I knew I was in the right. When you push someone relentlessly eventually they push back. Half of the thrill for the bully is finding out how much they have to push to get to that breaking point. It took him two years. Shithead Steve got what he deserved that time, and there was no way I was accepting a punishment for it.
Steve wasn’t in my class for grade five which was a reprieve. It was not to last. Grade six was bad. He was back at it, but I had an idea. The Catholic and public schools had March break on different weeks, and when Shithead was going at me hard that month, I asked my friend Bob to show up at school to intimidate him. Bob was off for the break, was two years older, and towered over everyone else. He didn’t show up on the Wednesday, and the bullying intensified that afternoon. When he did come on the Thursday, I introduced him to Steve, who fell over backwards in fear. It was awesome. Bob didn’t have to do anything. He did just stood there and smiled. His imposing size did the rest and Shithead left me alone for a while again. But not forever.
Grade eight was the worst year for bullying. It was the year of the Mount Mary retreat. But it was also the year I got Steven off my back, permanently.
In September ’85 he started at me right away, and I wasn’t taking it. Bob was trying to teach me to stand up for myself. So, this was going to end. I was done taking his shit. I challenged him to fight and finish this. After he no-showed the first appointed date, I insisted — absolutely insisted — that we do this on my turf. No unfair advantages for him. So we met at the baseball diamond at Stanley Park School. He brought a bunch of his friends. All I had was Ian Johnson and Kevin Kirby, who weren’t really my friends at all. They sure didn’t seem like they were on my side. They made it clear they just there for the show. I was saddened but not surprised that my “backup” was just there to watch a fight.
We tangled. A lot of me chasing him around. I landed a punch in to the head — I’d never hit someone in the head with my fist before. I dragged him down on the ground and just beat the piss out of him. Then he got up and started running in circles. I nailed a few painful kicks on him, grabbed his shirt and got him on the ground again. I didn’t want to injure him. Just wanted him to cry. I stayed away from the head and face and laid a beating on his upper body. My watch broke, a fragile Transformers watch that I wish I still had. Steve cried and screamed. His scream was ungodly, but the truth is, like a sadist, I savoured every one. I wanted more. Heinous? Then this is my confessional. Over the last seven years, how many times did that bastard make me cry? He had this coming — and far more than I was willing to deliver. I just wanted to hear him scream again.
I let him up and then he started running around again, taunting me. This went on several times. Me getting him on the ground for a beating until he cried, then I’d let him up and he’d start running around again. He grabbed my hair a lot but I don’t remember him landing any hits.
Finally I’d had it with him. He obviously wasn’t going to concede, and I wasn’t going to damage his face. I decided to bring the evening to an close with a final humiliation. One more time, I got the little bastard on the ground and gave him a sound beating. Then I got up and gave my speech. It was a verbal tirade on the Art of Being a Loser. As he lay in the dirt, I declared Steven to be nothing more than a malodorous piece of shit, and the absolute loser of the day. It was pretty epic; I just improvised but it was Shakespearean thunder to me. I ended my little speech by proclaiming that everyone already knew that he was a loser.
“That’s all you are, and that’s all you’ll always be.”
I got on my bike and rode off alone, to the deafening silence behind me.
Home again, I went into the kitchen and told my mom I broke my watch in a fight. I burst into tears because I thought she’d be so disappointed in me.
I was also worried what the reaction would be the next day at school. After all, I declared myself the winner and departed alone on my bike. Would Shithead accept his defeat? Apparently so. He left me alone for the rest of the year. Either Kevin or Ian came up to talk to me later. “I was thinking about what you said about Steve. You were totally right. He IS a loser, and he’s always going to be one.” The validation didn’t matter as much to me as the fact that Shithead Steve was scared off. And he was. He kept his distance from then on.
At the end of the year he made some half-hearted comments about a rematch, but it was not to be. I caught Mono and was home sick for the rest of the school year. And that was the end of my enemy. He tried to make a comeback in grade nine, but his bullying powers were gone.
A loser for life. My predictions were correct. Today he is a pathetic antivaxxer, an angry drunk, and still a total piece of shit. He lived up to the full potential that we all saw that night on the baseball diamond in 1985. Well done.
I’ve always had a solitary side. Music is a fascinating hobby because it unites introverts and extroverts alike. Everyone has their own preferred environments to enjoy music. Whether you like to go out and rock it at a show with your buds, or whether you like to listen to a record alone with the headphones on, music unites us.
There is a certain amount of joy in both ways of life. Ultimately, most people experience music in a mixture of both settings.
Some of my happiest memories were spent with music, by myself, with nothing but my thoughts and feelings. When I’d get a new album, typically the first thing I’d do was go up to my room, close the door, and rip off the cellophane. Hit “play”! I’d read the lyrics, the liner notes, and study the artwork. Then, after a heavy dose of rocking, I’d emerge to tell anyone who’d listen how awesome the album was. That would often be my sister (usually uninterested). Or, if it was a special occasion like Christmas, and the album was a gift, I would go downstairs to tell my gift-giver how much I loved it. That’s how many first listens went down in my house.
I liked to keep my brain occupied while listening to music. If I wasn’t studying the lyrics or artwork, perhaps I was reading a book. Or doing homework. Or drawing. Or going through my growing stack of Hit Parader magazines, looking for pictures and info.
I’d allow myself a few minutes of air guitar when a favourite song came on. Just drop what I was doing, and hit those air-strings. Give it my all; burn off some energy. Or perhaps I’d pretend I was Bruce Dickinson, fronting Iron Maiden at Long Beach Arena.
I was generally left alone. Sometimes my sister would have a comment about the music blasting from behind my closed door. “There was one really good song,” she might say if I was playing Poison or Warrant. If it were Priest or Maiden she’d complain, “All I could hear is screaming”.
In 1988 I got my first guitar. Periodically I would attempt to pick along to songs, but that was a futile endeavour. I may as well have been playing air guitar. A few years later, my sister got a pair of drum sticks with her VHS copy of Wayne’s World. I would steal them and attempt to drum along to albums. Poorly.
The kind of experiences that I had with music in solitude in my room were rarely equalled in a group setting. My best friend Bob and I would play music and discuss it, while drawing pictures or writing stories. That was the kind of thing I enjoyed most. “Listen to this cool part, I wonder how he does that,” one of us would say mid-song. “What did he say there?” was one common remark. “I have no idea,” was usually the answer.
Treasured memories. But a lot of that time with Bob was actually enhanced by our separate listening times alone. When we met up on weekends, we were ready to show each other something cool we had heard, or had drawn. Perhaps I had some new theories about Iron Maiden’s Seventh Son of a Seventh Son concept that I had to share with him. The times we spent alone in our bedrooms listening to albums prepared us for the times listening together. We had specific things we liked and wanted to share. It was always nice when one of us got the other into a band. He got me into so many, the last of which was probably Extreme.
When the CD began supplanting the cassette in my life, I added another activity to my solo listening sessions. I still liked to have a cassette copy for portability once I started buying CDs. So I made cassette copies of all my CDs, so I could listen to them in the car or on a Walkman. (I did not get a Discman for quite a few years, as I did not trust them to keep my discs unscratched.) Many happy hours were spent making cassette covers for my CD dubs. I got better and better at it over the years, but sometimes making the cover was as simple as sketching a logo and neatly writing all the song titles down.
While I have had some amazing times singing at the top of my lungs gathered with best friends and associated buddies, some of the best times were spent listening alone!
The last time I went to see a movie, it was a V.I.P. experience and I had never heard the word “coronavirus” in my life. This time was starkly different but enjoyable in its own way.
I’ve been wanting to see a movie in this pandemic ever since Tenet hit theaters in 2020, but that was before vaccines and many people were not ready to be back in cinemas yet. 2021 is different, and I’ve been enjoying stores and dinners out once again. Time to go see a movie! Eternals it is! Now I’m completely caught up in the MCU, just in time for Spiderman: No Way Home!
Eternals hasn’t been doing well, and for a Sunday matinee all that was available was the standard 2D showing. (I could identify scenes that looked like important bits were cropped out from the Imax aspect ratio.) My original intent was to see the movie with our friend Vu, but he’s a busy pharmacist and at the last minute, could not get away. I was already at the theater, so I went ahead and bought my ticket. Morning show: less than eight bucks! Occupany: I was one of five people total!
I got comfortable in my seat; with the nearest person many rows away, I felt more comfortable than I’ve ever felt in a movie theater. Not a sound from the others (not even a laugh at the funny scenes) and absolutely no distractions. I don’t think I’ve ever had that experience in the cinemas before. As per cinema rules, I was also masked for two and a half hours with no difficulty whatsoever. In fact my usually cold nose was very happy to be masked.
I usually look forward to the trailers, but all I saw was shit. Morbius looks awful and the fan-service trailer feels like a promotional clip for more than one movie. I grew impatient. Bring on the Eternals.
ETERNALS (2021 Marvel) Directed By Chloé Zhao
I really wanted to like the Eternals. Just days ago I acquired the last Eternals action figure of the ten: Ajak, Salma Hayek’s character, healer and leader of the team. She was a Walmart exclusive. More like Walmart “elusive”! The designs of the costumes, with unique colours for each character, were intriguing. With all ten characters in hand, I was familiar with all their names and powers.
There’s Thena, Angelina Jolie’s goddess of war who can manifest blades and shields. Gilgamesh (Don Lee), the powerhouse with a mighty punch. Sprite (Lia McHugh), the master of illusions and storytelling, trapped in a child’s body. Druig (Barry Keoghan), the brooding controller of minds. Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), a star of the silver screen who can fire bursts of energy from his hands. The master of technology, Phastos (Bryan Tyree Henry), can create devices of great power and ingenuity with his mind. Makkari (Lauren Ridloff) is the speedster and seemingly much faster than Quicksilver himself. She’s also deaf and signs with her teammates. Ikaris (Richard Madden), upon whom the legend of Icarus is based, is perhaps the most powerful, with strength, flight, and cosmic energy eyebeams. Finally there is Sersi (Gemma Chan), the actual central hero of the film, who can convert any non-sentient matter into anything else. Air to water, earth to wood, her choice. They have been here for 7000 years, shaping our history and becoming our heroes of ancient legend.
That’s a lot of characters, and doesn’t include the underused Dane Whitman (Kit Harrington), Sersi’s boyfriend and spinoff setup device. Kingo’s valet Karun (Harish Patel) has more screentime than the future Black Knight. Dane’s lineage is briefly hinted at, and the Ebony Blade mentioned, before being revealed in a post-credit scene that we’ll discuss later. The point is, Whitman is not important to the story. He begins as the “regular person” perspective character that we can relate to, as the strangeness unfolds. But then he disappears and only at the end do we cynically realize his true purpose: MCU world building.
It wouldn’t be a Marvel movie without some deus ex machina to boot — or maybe characters just like to wait until the last possible minute before revealing their presence? That said, Ikaris does know how to make an entrance.
Many of the characters are quite delightful. One feels for the relationship between Thena and Gilgamesh; one the sick and one the caretaker. Poor Sprite feels cursed as a 7000 year old child who can never age, never to know love or even what it feels like to be treated as an equal. Phastos, the master of technology, is haunted by his past. He thought aiding humans to develop new sources of energy would help their society advance. As he stood in the ashes of Hiroshima, he realized how wrong he was. He has retreated to an anonymous family life with a husband and a son. Thena, wonderfully portrayed by Jolie, has the equivalent of Space Alzheimers, lashing out in violence in fitful rages of memory loss.
Other characters go undeveloped. I loved watching the speedy heroics of Makkari (Mercury), the girl with attitude, but never get a feel for her character otherwise. Kingo is the entertainer, loving the spotlight and admiration of humans. He displays wisdom, insight and his own unique perspective on events, but we never really get a feeling for what makes him tick.
Then there is Druig, the intriguing Eternal who can control minds. With a thought, he could end all war on Earth, but he is forbidden from interfering. Forbidden by who?
The complex story of love, deception, legend, history and family takes two and a half hours to unfold. It is told in the form of flashbacks and exposition, lots of exposition. The initial cover story is that the Eternals were sent to Earth to protect intelligent life from predators called Deviants. That turned out to be a lie, but they are forbidden from interfering in human affairs unless Deviants are involved. This comes right down from those that created both Eternals and Deviants: the Celestials. The Deviants were their mistake, and the Eternals are the correction.
Again, a lot to sort out in under one movie. So in sum: 11 new characters (including Whitman), and three new factions. Sort of new.
We’ve seen Celestials before in the Marvel universe: giant beings of immense power. Peter Quill’s dad Ego the Living Planet said he was a Celestial. The space colony of Knowhere was built in the severed head of a giant Celestial. The ultimate villain of Eternals is Arishem, a planet-sized Celestial who helps creation continue in the universe. Celestials create new suns and life in the universe. meanwhile, new Celestials are born in the heart of planets and feed on the life energy of intelligent beings like humans. And it just so happens that a new Celestial named Tiamut is about to be born right in the middle of our Earth. We die so that the Celestials can continue to create new life. It’s a cycle.
And it also turns out that the Eternals are not the protectors of humans that we assumed. They were only to protect them until such time as the new Celestial growing inside Earth had absorbed enough life energy. This happened after the “Blip”, the moment in Avengers: Endgame when half of life in the universe was restored with the Infinity Stones. Now some of the Eternals have grown so attached to humanity that they don’t want to fulfill their purpose. They want to stop the destruction of the Earth. Others cannot imagine disobeying their Celestial masters. As you can imagine, this boils down to an Eternal vs. Eternal showdown at the end.
Any battle scene with the Eternals in this film has merit. Since each character has their own power, they find creative ways to use them in concert together. Unfortunately, the Deviants (who are being sold as the main villains but are really a just side threat) are not very interesting foes. They look like Bayformers from one of the really bad Transformers films; all sinewy with tentacles that seem to defy physics. Generic and uninteresting to look at. One of the Deviants learns how to steal powers from Eternals and becomes a new threat. We’re never really told why he can do this, but he does, and he evolves.
With the battle lines drawn, two groups of Eternals fight. Needless to say the do-gooders trying to save the Earth, led by Sersi, are triumphant. However the planet’s surface itself is scarred by the near-emergence of Tiamut the Celestial, and this will undoubtedly be referenced in Marvel movies and shows in Phase 4. Our heroes and villains split up and go their separate ways. A defeated Ikaris flies into the sun, almost like his mythical counterpart. A small group take their triangular spaceship the Domo to go look for more Eternals. And they find one almost immediately, in the mid-credit scene! Patton Oswalt fans will like this, and what it could mean for the future.
In a clunky but hype-worthy post credit scene, Kit Harrington reveals his family’s cursed blade, but before touching it, is asked by an offscreen voice if he’s really ready for it. Of course we know he will be, in whatever spinoff he appears. But what really matters is who the offscreen voice is. Thanks to director Chloé Zhao, we know it was a guy who’s kind of an expert on blades. Welcome to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Blade (Mahershala Ali)!
Zhao’s knack for an outdoor scene made this Marvel movie seem bigger than any before it. The cosmic themes with a grounded Earth setting helped the movie stay accessible. At all times, our characters feel like humans. Her direction provides a visual feast, as well as human characters.
But it’s congested. While not fast paced, it feels like characters and concepts are rushed. Who is Phastos, who is Kingo? Let’s find out more about them. What has Sprite been doing all these centuries? Are Druig and Makkari ever going to hook up, and if so, why has it taken them 7000 years? Seriously, you could do an entire film on Druig and what he could have been up to, building strange utopias in the jungle. Makkari looks like she’s been on a hell of a lot of adventures, plus she can read a book in seconds. Let’s find out more about her, please.
Nitpick: in the film, Dane Whitman asks why the Eternals didn’t try to stop Thanos or anything else that’s happened in the MCU. I would also ask where the other Marvel heroes are when a giant head and hand start to emerge from the ocean. Where’s that beeper to Captain Marvel at a time like this? (Granted, she had to go somewhere pretty urgently at the end of the last Marvel movie, perhaps excusing herself from helping out in this film.)
Following so closely behind the truly Marvel-ous Shang-Chi, Eternals feels like an unfortunate misfire. The proof will be how it goes in rewatches. Two or three years down the road, it might be better appreciated. Or, it might be seen as an unfortunate corporate launchpad for new characters and concepts in the MCU. Those who enjoy the cosmic side of the universe, as seen in Guardians of the Galaxy and Loki, will delight in the massive Celestials, very well executed on screen. Could this all be priming our senses up for the eventual arrival of Galactus in Phase Five? Just speculation of course, but it seems more than possible.
See Eternals, but maybe do some research on the characters first before you go in completely dry.
3/5 stars
On my way out, I said “screw it, I’m getting some popcorn”. I didn’t have any during the film having just had an early lunch. I buttered it extra heavy and brought it home with me.
RECORD STORE TALES #953: The Moment I Dumped Conspiracy Theories
With a lot more free reading time on hand after quitting the Record Store, I dove back into one of my favourite childhood topics: UFOs.
It was Canadian nuclear physicist Stanton T. Friedman who re-convinced me there was something legitimate about the subject. Described as a “genius” by those who knew him, Friedman spent 50 years as a ufologist. He often said, “Most sightings can be easily explained. We’re not interested in those.” His point being there is a small but baffling number of contenders, that have yet to be fully debunked. I began buying up his books, and found his stance as a “facts and figures” man quite convincing. He was quite convinced that the United States and other governments had engaged in a “cosmic watergate” to cover up certain unexplained events. He went to great lengths to find and verify documents in US archives, going so far as to find out if certain typewriters were used in certain offices. If they were not, then the document was a forgery and he discarded it. He put a tremendous amount of time into his research. After seeing him speak in a documentary called Out of the Blue, I was intrigued.
I bought every book by Friedman that I could get my hands on. To balance it out, I also read The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. It is important to read the view of the sceptic, but even so I thought Carl overlooked some things. Then I bought Jesse Ventura’s book called American Conspiracies, which expanded the field into JFK, 9/11 and more. Only one chapter on UFOs, but Ventura’s experiences were interesting at least. Finally, I misguidedly bought a highly reviewed book by Richard Hoagland and Mike Bara in which they presented for evidence a number of photos of “glass domes” on the moon. Suddenly and unwittingly, I had crossed the Conspiracy Threshold.
The Conspiracy Theshold is the line between the conceivable and the asinine. It’s subjective, but exists for all who delve into the world of conspiracies, just as certain and invisible as the air in their lungs. Much like the line between clever and stupid, it is a fine line that differs from person to person. Glass domes on the moon was way, way past my threshold.
What happens if you go further? In my experience, all conspiracies eventually flow to a weird, apocalyptic religious end. How far you go is up to you, but that’s where all roads lead. For example, when I followed UFO conspiracies too far on the way to the top…Barack Obama ended up a being satanist lizard alien.
Q Anon are now the latest who believe in lizard aliens. Cool story. Hey, you know what, I saw “V” as a kid too.
There are variations of the lizard alien theory, with the Queen, the Pope, the Clintons and the wealthiest families in the world all secretly running things in their lizardly ways. You’ve heard of the Bilderbergers? They’re the head honchos, when it’s not the military-industrial complex or the Pentaverate. They’re all aliens, demons or both. It’s a fine line — some who believe that the concept of aliens violates the Bible say that aliens and demons are the same thing. Whatever the finer nuances of a given conspiracy theory, this is where they all lead, if you follow the breadcrumbs all the way.
By that time you’ve either realized you’ve gone too far and need to take a step back, or you’re too far gone to be reasoned with. Not surprisingly, today’s “Pandemic Conspiracies” ultimately take you back to…lizard people and the End of Days. Go far enough down the rabbit hole and eventually you become the rabbit.
These people have sucked the fun out of conspiracy theories. With just a hint of sadness, I for one will never travel that aisle of the bookstore again.
The internet (otherwise known as the “information superhighway” or “the weeb”) was just beginning to enter public consciousness in 1995. Hollywood struck while the iron was hot with Hackers, a pretty shitty movie starring Johnny Lee Miller, Matthew Lillard, and Angelina Jolie.
I saw Hackers in the fall of ’95 at a drive-in. It was so bad that when the film broke partway through the movie, I didn’t even care. “I want to see the rest of the movie!” complained my girlfriend in the other seat. She was mad; she didn’t want a refund, she wanted to see Hackers. They eventually got the movie back up and running, for what it was worth. We mocked the corny dialogue about “14400 BPS modems” and terrible visuals. “That isn’t what the internet looks like!” She was right.
The only lasting impact the movie had was its CD soundtrack, which was still in demand six months later. Featuring the Prodigy, Orbital, and Underworld among others, Hackers was popular with the growing electronica crowd. It was also hard to find used, and expensive new.
As discussed in Record Store Tales #795: A Case for Security, CD theft was a major issue for local stores in the mid-90s. There was a roving gang of thieves called the “Pizza Guys”* who ripped off CDs from major chains and then sold them all over town. The cops were aware of the situation, and instructed us to keep buying from them so they could collect evidence. We followed their instructions and they had pages and pages and pages of information on these guys. What they sold, where, and when — and what ID they were using.
Nobody liked dealing with those guys. They were rude, and drew attention to themselves with the massive amounts of new releases they were selling — multiple copies. They were cocky and got bolder week by week. But not as bold as the rookie employee dubbed “The Boy that Killed Pink Floyd”.
He wanted the Hackers soundtrack. He wasn’t willing to pay new prices and he had his name in the computer for a used one. Then he got a bright idea. He didn’t “ask” the Pizza Guys for a copy. He just made it really obvious that he wanted one.
One day when we were buying CDs off the Pizza gang, the kid asked, “No Hackers in here, eh?”
A few visits later, the gang was back. Entering the store, one of the leaders smiled, nodded and simply said “Hackers!” He had somehow acquired a copy, and even acknowledged the request. I don’t know how our kid didn’t get fired for that one. The boss was not impressed! He finally got his walking papers after special ordering an expensive Pink Floyd CD single, deciding he didn’t want it, and putting it on the shelves to sell as a used item. That was the end of the Boy Who Killed Pink Floyd!
Special thanks to Jennifer Ladano for telling me to write this story down!
RECORD STORE TALES #951: Set Your VCR! It’s 1986 and KISS Meets The Phantom Is On Tonight!
When thinking back about my earliest rock and roll discoveries, it’s important to recall the order in which I got the albums, or first heard the tunes. It seems like I had always known “Rock N’ Roll all Nite”, but since my first Kiss albums were Alive! and Hotter Than Hell, those were the songs I knew best. And I barely knew them! I got my first Kiss in September of ’85. But I was learning slowly. Eventually I’d get Asylum, and gradually tape Kiss albums from my neighbour George.
Something else happened that exposed me to Kiss in a new way, that I sometimes forget about. It was the first time I saw Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park.
Everybody knew about Kiss Meets the Phantom, but few of us were old enough to have seen it. When it showed up in the TV guide one week, on some Buffalo station, it seemed like every kid with access to a VCR set it to record. It was being shown at something like 1:00 in the morning on a Sunday.
Upon waking, I got my sister up early and we raced downstairs to watch. We did not have time to watch the whole thing that morning. It was winter, possibly the tail end of Christmas holidays, and we were off to the lake for one day. We watched some, went to the lake, had lunch at the Embassy, and came home to finish the movie.
I noticed there were far more ads to fast forward through on late night TV than during the day!
Actual ads from the actual tape of the actual night.
My sister recalls liking Kiss Meets the Phantom; my memories are quite different. I was bored to tears any time Kiss wasn’t on screen, and you had to wait through, like, an hour (with ads) for Kiss to arrive at the bloody park! I didn’t know who this Anthony Zerbe fellow was, but at age 13 I considered him possibly the worst actor I had ever seen.
It was my first time seeing Peter Criss on video and not just still photos, and I was surprised at his voice. I told everyone, “Peter Criss sounds like Aquaman.” I had the show right, but the character wrong. Michael Bell did the voice of Peter Criss in Kiss Meets the Phantom, and Wonder Twin Zan in the cartoon Superfriends. Legend has it that this was because Peter didn’t show up to loop his lines in post-production. Whatever the case, it led to a different urban legends: that Peter Criss had given up rock and roll, and taken up a lucrative career as a cartoon voice actor!
I thought Gene’s distorted voice was tiresome after a while, and Paul seemed the coolest. My sister liked that Kiss were like superheroes with powers. On the other hand, I didn’t like that. If Paul Stanley couldn’t shoot a laser beam out of his eye in real life, I didn’t understand why he would in this movie. They were still Kiss, still playing the same Kiss songs, but also super-powered. My rigid brain couldn’t reconcile the two.
As for the music, the movie contains several songs that I heard for the very first time that day. “Beth” (acoustic, no less), “Shout It Out Loud”, “God of Thunder” and “I Stole Your Love”. (“Rip and Destroy” doesn’t count.) Now, because I didn’t know these songs, and there were no captions, I had to guess at the titles. “Shout It Out Loud” was the easy one. But these were the live versions taken from Alive II, fast and reckless. Not to mention we were hearing it on a TV with mono speaker; state of the art for the time, but not for proper music listening. So that’s why, for that day at least, I thought “God of Thunder” was “Not a Doctor”, and “I Stole Your Love” was something that sounded like “I Ho-Jo-Ho”.
The process of discovering Kiss was so memorable because it’s so fun. The superhero character aspect appealed to my sister and there’s no denying that it had something to do with why I loved Kiss too. But hearing the songs and albums for the first time can only happen once. And I can clearly remember a tinge of sadness when I finally acquired Rock and Roll Over, the last original Kiss album I needed to finish my collection. I was starkly aware that I was having this experience for the last time: hearing a classic Kiss album, guessing who was singing the songs by the title alone, and discovering hidden favourites. As I learned when Crazy Nights came out, hearing a new Kiss album was simply not the same as discovering the classics!
Kiss Meets the Phantom was a struggle to sit through then, but fortunately I saw it at an age when Kiss still seemed larger than life. Objectively, it is a pretty terrible film, best enjoyed as a trainwreck. The best parts are the concert scenes, which was the closest I got to seeing Kiss live at age 13. It was my first exposure to some really important songs even if I wondered why Gene was singing about being “Not a Doctor”!
Always nice to repost a seasonal classic. Enjoy this Halloween tale.
RECORD STORE TALES Part 241: Halloween, KISS style!
Our annual inventory count fell on October 31. For five years straight, I never got to dress up, hand out candy, or do anything fun on Halloween because I was too busy counting discs and CD towers! However in the early days, this wasn’t the case. Halloween 1996 was actually a pretty good one.
Like most malls, ours had a few Halloween contests. T-Rev entered the store in the Pumpkin Carving category. He and I came up with the plan to do a Kiss pumpkin. T-Rev, the store owner’s brother, and myself gathered in my mom’s workshop in the basement. My mom had plenty of paint, and I was good at drawing the Kiss makeup designs. T-Rev had the idea to make the pumpkin Gene Simmons, and figured out how to make a pumpkin tongue stick out. I must say he did an amazing job.
The first step was to spray paint the pumpkin white. One of the guys did the cutting. Then, I drew the Demon design with a black magic marker. We thought the nose needed to be more three-dimensional, so I cut it out a bit. Together, we began colouring in Gene’s makeup. We needed something to define the eyes of Gene, and T-Rev thought of using pumpkin seeds. We added a wig, and voila!
T-Rev propped Gene up on the magazine stand outside the store. Immediately we started getting compliments, and the response was pretty unanimous: We had done the best job in the entire mall.
Unfortunately, the judges didn’t base their ratings on who had done the best job. They were only marking the results, whether the store employees did the pumpkins themselves or not! A store that hired a professional carver won first place. We came in second. There was no prize for second. T-Rev and I considered that to be cheating. Cheatie-cheatertons.
The contest was over, and not too soon: the pumpkin had begun to rot, as pumpkins do. That didn’t stop a customer from coming in on November 1st and offering him $10 for it. T-Rev accepted his gracious offer, even though the thing would be turning horrific in a day or two. A fool and his money, right T-Rev?
By 1997, the store had moved out of the mall. This was our last pumpkin carving contest, but at least we had the satisfaction of winning the popular vote. As far as I’m concerned, we went out on top. My personal consolation prize was later on, Halloween 2006. By this time I had moved on to United Rentals. They took Halloween very, very seriously at United Rentals! I dressed up as Paul Stanley, and this time, I finally won first prize!
Phantom Menace? Spoiled by Lucasfilm themselves, on the soundtrack CD to the movie. Attack of the Clones? By this time, Ain’t It Cool News was getting regular clicks. I just can’t resist the allure of spoilers! The internet has made it hard to keep a movie secret in any way.
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