SOUND OF CONFUSION

Broadcast Football Rankings 9.26.17

Weekly installment of the BFR – Broadcast Football Rankings – September 26, 2017

1. Clemson Tigers

2. Alabama Crimson Tide

3. Penn State Nittany Lions

4. Washington Huskies

5. Oklahoma Sooners

6. Georgia Bulldogs

7. Wisconsin Badgers

8. Virginia Tech Hokies

9. South Florida Bulls

10. Ohio State Buckeyes

11. Washington State Cougars

12. TCU Horned Frogs

13. San Diego State Aztecs

14. Southern California Trojans

15. Louisville Cardinals

16. Notre Dame Fighting Irish

17. Florida Gators

18. Oklahoma State Cowboys

19. Michigan Wolverines

20. Miami Hurricanes

21. Auburn Tigers

22. Utah Utes

23. LSU Tigers

24. Duke Blue Devils

25. Iowa Hawkeyes

Things are finally starting to heat up! Next week expect TEN upsets! --yours, H. Houndstooth

ALL WEIRD ON THE WESTERN FRONT

Broadcast Football Rankings 9.19.17

Welcome to the third installment of the BFR – Broadcast Football Rankings – September 19, 2017

1. Clemson Tigers

2. Penn State Nittany Lions

3. Oklahoma Sooners

4. Alabama Crimson Tide

5. Washington Huskies

6. Wisconsin Badgers

7. Oklahoma State Cowboys

8. Virginia Tech Hokies

9. Georgia Bulldogs

10. South Florida Bulls

11. Florida Gators

12. Washington State Cougars

13. Ohio State Buckeyes

14. TCU Horned Frogs

15. San Diego State Aztecs

16. Michigan Wolverines

17. Louisville Cardinals

18. Oregon Ducks

19. Southern California Trojans

20. Texas Longhorns

21. Mississippi State Bulldogs

22. Notre Dame Fighting Irish

23. Vanderbilt Commodores

24. Miami Hurricanes

25. Florida State Seminoles

It was an exciting week in college football (aren't they all) with a little more definition—though, really, at this point, you can tell just about nothing. Here in the BFR rankings, very little change on the top and the bottom (Miami and Florida State still not playing, drag! And another hurricane on its way). A lot of changes in the middle, though, teams in and out. Next week, sure to be more upheavals. We predict some huge upsets (you'd be a fool to not predict upsets—but who, exactly?) —best, H. Houndstooth

OUR GODDESS, PENELOPE HOUSTON 1977

Broadcast Football Rankings 9.12.17

Welcome to the second installment of the BFR – Broadcast Football Rankings – September 12, 2017

1. Clemson Tigers

2. Penn State Nittany Lions

3. Oklahoma Sooners

4. Alabama Crimson Tide

5. Washington Huskies

6. Georgia Bulldogs

7. Southern California Trojans

8. Wisconsin Badgers

9. Virginia Tech Hokies

10. LSU Tigers

11. Oklahoma State Cowboys

12. South Florida Bulls

13. Michigan Wolverines

14. Louisville Cardinals

15. Washington State Cougars

16. Kansas State Wildcats

17. TCU Horned Frogs

18. Utah Utes

19. Ohio State Buckeyes

20. Oregon Ducks

21. Auburn Tigers

22. Stanford Cardinal

23. Florida Gators

24. Miami Hurricanes

25. Florida State Seminoles

Notes: After two weeks of college football you can tell so much more about how much you can't tell yet, which is ultimately nothing. For all the journalists who are already predicting which teams will be in the “playoffs”—give it a rest. Why don't you just turn college football into the next March Madness in your pathetic fantasy sports world? For everyone who is blaming individual players (anytime, but especially already), there is a special place in Hell for you. For everyone involved in sports gambling (I mean as a business, where you profit on this), there is another special place in Hell for you. There are a lot of special places in Hell; it's not clear if they visit each other. I hope so. I made a point not to change the rankings of the teams that had to cancel due to the hurricane, that's a drag. Hopefully next week will be without natural disasters, but I wouldn't count on it. What I do count on is the upsets and surprises will continue to surprise us, and if they upset you, maybe you should switch to a boring, predictable sport like the NFL. 

--Yours from a special place in Hell, H. Houndstooth

TACTICS II [1958] - PARODY

Broadcast Football Rankings 9.5.17

Welcome to the first installment of the BFR (Broadcast Football Rankings) – September 5, 2017.

1. Clemson Tigers
2. Alabama Crimson Tide
3. Michigan Wolverines
4. Penn State Nittany Lions
5. Oklahoma Sooners
6. Ohio State Buckeyes
7. Stanford Cardinal
8. LSU Tigers
9. Wisconsin Badgers
10. Washington Huskies
11. Auburn Tigers
12. South Florida Bulls
13. Virginia Tech Hokies
14. Georgia Bulldogs
15. Oklahoma State Cowboys
16. Notre Dame Fighting Irish
17. Southern California Trojans
18. Louisville Cardinals
19. Washington State Cougars
20. Utah Utes
21. Iowa Hawkeyes
22. Kansas State Wildcats
23. Florida Gators
24. Miami Hurricanes
25. Florida State Seminoles

Notes: It's hard to tell much after only one week of football, since some teams started out playing closely matched opponents, while other teams played schools who merely cobbled together a team for the occasion. But a lot more was evident than BEFORE the first week, and that didn't stop the Ass. Press from coming up with rankings—based on what? That you won a national championship four years ago? Anyway, here is the first Moss Problem BFR college football ranking. If you don't agree, here is whose butt you can kiss: H. Houndstooth

THE GREATEST COMIC BOOK OF ALL TIME by Matt Seneca

DC Showcase featuring Manhunter 2070 #91. By Mike Sekowsky with Vince Colletta. DC.I show this comic's cover in a board and bag above because that's how it first appeared to me: in a fifty cent bin like all the rest, sandwiched between shrapnelled issues of Secret Society of Supervillains and Spider-Man/Doctor Octopus: Negative Exposure. I love what boards and bags do to comics, how new and special they make them look. They remind an overanalyzer like myself that for a lot of people these things are fetish objects, bought and preserved and read hurriedly, furtively even, powerful secret totems that are not to be questioned. I used to read comics like that. I miss it, but there's no going back. The board and bag did something especially wonderful to this particular comic. Sitting there in its preservative coffin it looked for a second not like a Silver Age relic by the first dude to ever draw the Justice League, not like one of the old beater books that you always find in the discount bins. It looked almost of a part with the rest of the comics, the superhero detritus of 1999-2007 or so. 

And yet. If I saw a modern superhero comic with that cover I would fucking flip my shit, you know? That completely assured, completely unselfconscious mixture of cartoon and realist drawing, that strangely looping title script, that giant corporate logo in the upper left, the expressionist masks of those alien faces. The way the light passed through the plastic of the board and bag onto that gloriously non-unified color scheme, lime green and blood red and desert yellow mixed together into a way of pictures that we haven't seen in years. It's all here, and so casually. Code-approved. I bought it, looked inside.

Maybe it's just because living in the times you live in makes them feel more urgent and self-important than they actually are, but I can't remember much casual experimentation within the mainstream over the past half decade. Brendan McCarthy's outta-nowhere shorts aside, it's like Jemas-era Marvel was the capstone for a tradition that pulsed long and heavy for the years that ended there and started, well, about here. This comic was released in mid-1970: Marvel had definitively stolen DC's biggest-publisher crown, the undergrounds were waning, pretty much every superhero franchise that's still around today had been created. It was the beginning of lean times for mainstream comics, the comedown off what will all but certainly forever remain the hero industry's greatest moment biting in hard. Things had changed in comics, and things would change more still. The quasi-underground publication Witzend was reintroducing the theory of artist over character to a mainstream that'd abandoned it since compiler Wally Wood's salad days at EC Comics, testing creator-owned genre strips like Steve Ditko's Mr. A on an audience that, like the material, gravitated toward an area somewhere in between the scruffy total-freedom undergrounds and the suffocating banality that the heroes were already falling victim to.

In time, independent publishing would gain its foothold in comics by exploiting this very territory, offering the more talented, further-out Marvel and DC hacks an arena to go a little wilder, throw down a little harder, get paid a little more. Books by companies like First and Eclipse, by creators like Jim Starlin and Mike Grell and Howard Chaykin, may not look all too different from the rest of the genre crop in the brilliant light of today's fusion-comics world, but the simple opportunity to drop house style from the stories and cape'n'cowl inflection from the art kicked off a movement that hero comics are still feeling the benefits of today. The Frazer Irvings, the JH Williamses, the McCarthys can only find a place in today's Big Two because the genre books that stretched a little past the boundaries proved it's really okay not to look like Kirby or sound like Lee. In one of the most creatively repressive areas of comics, they proved that you could do your own thing and still make some money at it.

But before that it was a lot dicier. There's a reason the early-mid '70s are littered with so many far-out gems of bizarro expression that seem like they should never have been a part of mainstream comics: they shouldn't have. The Howard the Ducks and Fourth World sagas weren't Marvel or DC's province, but given that those two were the only game in town and, like I said, it was a failing market, some of the business leaked through anyway -- usually in places like Showcase, the venerable DC new-title-tryout book that round about a decade earlier had given birth or rebirth to the Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Atom, the Justice League, ad nauseam. If Mike Sekowsky, the career DC workhorse whose oeuvre stretches back to the high Golden Age and spans a million competently-drawn comics, many of them starring famous characters, had wanted to do his Manhunter 2070 book ten or fifteen years later, he would have done it as a slick, ongoing creator-owned at Eclipse or somewhere similar. It fits right in with the orbiting space-junk that the early independents traded in, excellently drawn by a craftsman who put a bit more time and thought into it than usual, production value a little higher than average, eschewing the flying men for another, equally hackneyed genre -- just as long as no one's wearing a cape, for godsake -- and covering up the strange sense of absence inherent in superheroless comics drawn by a superhero artist with a breeze of extra inspiration.

The difference between MH2070 and the raft of similar books that followed in its wake after a decade's interval is in the style of the thing. Where the best books of the '80s creator-owned boom (Chaykin's American Flagg, Rogers' Captain Quick) pointed their visions far into the future -- such that they've only begun to feel "modern" in the past few years -- Sekowsky's book is stridently of the past, incorporating none of the emblematic '70s grit and scramble for higher ground or even any real influence from the Marvel Age cats. No, stylistically, Manhunter is a classic-era DC book through and through, a science-laced permabulation through the stars drawn in the rarefied, technically superb Infantino/Toth house style. The calendars will tell you this book's less than 15 years removed from American Flagg, but where it counts the temporal distance is more like half a century.

And that's what makes Sekowsky's book so interesting. He's playing the same song he always did, probably the only one he knew how to play; but the exhilaration and verve he puts into his moment in the spotlight -- with good colors, with no heroes, with no writers -- nonetheless belongs to a tomorrow he would never be a part of. Standing on the teetering platform between the two eras, an artist rooted in the past, pointing to the future, he draws...Let's take a look.

 Right off the bat, this comic hits a little different than its contemporaries, discarding the obligatory opening splash in favor of a simultaneous-image montage full of white space that sets the pictures in an infinite background. No panel borders: it all just floats there, not tied together but somehow still cohesive. I know I just said that Sekowsky doesn't display much Marvel influence in this book, but this page is the first of a few notable exceptions, all of which point to the study of one Marvel artist: Jim Steranko. This comics page-as-mural approach looks to my eyes like a definite attempt at a Steranko-style presentation switch-up, though done in a rickety, asymmetrical way that lacks the graphic design verve of the master. It's still interesting, though, the planets sprinkling out into the text and the cartooning styles switching up fast and furious on the alien-thug portraiture. 

If more proof's needed as to the Steranko derivation, check out that bit of destroyed rocket ship at bottom left. The chiaroscuro and detailed machinery go back to Wally Wood, but the tight, technical Cubist pen detailing on the rockets is pure Steranko, as is the bold use of color against massively spotted blacks. 

It's important to note the Steranko influence on this book, especially given how Sekowsky leads with it: in 1970 Steranko was the furthest-out artist the mainstream had ever seen, and it would be a few years before the next generation really emerged to walk in his footsteps. (That next generation, of course, would provide the mainstream-moonlighter backbone of the early independents with not a few significant vertebrae: Starlin, Rogers, Chaykin, Steve Rude, et al.) Until then it was all stuff like this, somewhat uncertain bats at the bold new style Steranko had crammed his pages with. Still, in '70 even the most rudimentary Steranko alignment was some kind of a statement, as Neal Adams and his subsequent followers had emerged to steer mainstream comics art back into a more traditionally illustrative, exaggerated-realism mode. Look at a comic nowadays: that's the stuff that won out, boring lines and figurework not pop art and colors. Sekowsky puts himself on the losing team from page one, but man does that space-fragment look gorgeous to me.

Page 2 panel 1:

The Style of Mike Sekowsky. This stuff is mad derivative, mixing more-or-less-equal parts Toth subtractvism, Infantino designy staging, Caniff black-spotting with a workmanlike slapdash quality and liberal bits of whoever-was-inking-him (Vince Coletta in this case, the trademark thin pen line very much in evidence). Somehow it's a beguiling mixture, putting spiky angles where Caniff and Toth favored soft shapes (the mountains) and going all cartoon-minimalist on the figures and equipment. Stuff like the almost-sketched faces, the lack of holding lines on the spaceman in orange's left arm and his silhouetted hands, the naturalistic-yet-stiff body language of the alien -- it's obvious Sekowsky can really draw. That he chooses to forgo detail in favor of the rich environment and strange atmospherics of panels like this one only testifies to it.

Page 3 panel 1:

The cat at lower left is Starker, our hero, the titular Manhunter. A grizzled, driven battle vet of few words and impeccable taste, he recalls Steranko's Nick Fury and brings along a very Steranko-esque panel. Tilted camera, hot girls used as scenery, flashy space background, and the big intruding op-art device of the monochrome die: it's all part and parcel of the Jaunty Jim playbook, and making the protagonist the kind of motherfucker who puts all his cash on black 13 the first time we see him goes right along. Starker, though, whether through total naivete or immensely well-calculated subversion on Sekowsky's part, ends up as a crazier character than even Steranko ever managed, as we shall see.

Page 3 panel 5, page 4 panel 1:

Ahem, as I was saying. This cad is bringing back not one but two intergalactic space-skanks to his private, luxe orbiting satellite! Then you turn the page and get an explanation for it which I imagine the editors thought was there to lend a modicum of decorum to the whole bit, but which, um, are you kidding me? This smooth silver fox has been hired by a rich daddy to chaperone his two spoiled party-girl daughters across the galaxy? Okay whatever, maybe forty years ago it actually didn't occur to some readers that there was sex going on in the background of this comic, but nowadays, please, and that backstory makes it so much worse! Look at how tall they are in comparison to him, look how unsteady on those high heels, look at what the girl in the black is wearing! These are two teenagers spending their vacation being tutored in the ancient arts of love by a violent, sexy old bachelor. Comics do not get much more inappropriate than Manhunter 2070.

Also, dig the colors on Starker's spaceship in the top panel -- nobody's credited for the job, this book being a product of the dark ages, but those visible brushstrokings and that violent contrast between the orange and blue were not at all common for the period. This is only one of many panels where it's obvious that the colorist was really going for it in a way that just didn't happen on the mainline Marvel/DC stuff at the time.

Page 6:

All right, I'm about to get all Freudian, but this is just mind-boggling. Read it, man: these two nymphs in inexpertly applied, Colletta-girl makeup are trying to get Starker to stick around for, well, we can guess, but y'know, duty calls since this isn't that kind of comic. So they settle for a peck on the cheek and admiringly watch him speed off to adventure because he's just that rock hard all man. It's a scene that plenty of other comics from Caniff on down have used.

But I'm sorry, there is just some crazy fucking sexual subtext on this page. Sekowsky can't help but let a "big boob" flop out into the dialogue as this girl in a costume right out of Georges Pichard plants a big wet one on Starker, which is enough of a brush with pure masculinity

to get her apparently basking in a warm, orgasmic afterglow in the next panel. As a giant penis shape protrudes from her face. And then look right and read some of the most hilariously loaded narration is comics history. I'll repeat it, it goes: "And the two girls watch STARKER ZOOM OFF into the VELVETY BLACKNESS." Emphasis mine. Dude, a guy named Starker who makes a habit of zooming off into velvety blacknesses? Coupled with that picture? What more could I add?

Page 10 panel 6:

Okay, so he goes to collect the bounty on some bad guys, who are holed up on a planet where everything is viciously carnivorous. This is a picture of flying piranhas trying to eat through Starker's air bubble to get to his face's flesh. Which is cool n shit, but just look at the real meat in this panel, the intense punk/abstract art design of the composition. The staging of the previous panels makes it easy to tell what's going on here, but the near-total lack of any figurative elements, the exploding fury of the black shapes radiating outward from what we can just identify as a human head, the jagged overlapping, the fierce green background and the red raygun! This is way past pop art, we're approaching Gary Panter territory. Colletta's scratchy inks help out quite well here, too: when what's required is the opposite of slickness that guy is your man!

Page 11 panel 1:

Another exploration of a similar theme, with the flying piranhas now being devoured by flying barracudas before they could get through Starker's spacesuit. This is a really incredible panel, Sekowsky's depth indicators flashing across the frame intermittently rather than resorting to the usual solid backdrop. Or at least here the solid backdrop is the figure itself, the ostensible focus of the panel, with the hero's face popped out in pink against an unforgiving blue field. The shadows of Starker's spacesuit, especially at the bottom, also deserve a mention, their shapes echoing the black shapes on the fish themselves, filling up the panel with what isn't actually there and adding greatly to the disorienting whirl. That half-a-face sliver of humanity right in the middle of the cyclone is phenomenal: he's really hiding, curled up in his armor, and Sekowsky brings the facial detail in a way he hasn't in previous panels to really nail down the acting, the unmoored feeling.

Page 13 panel 1:

This is just a really interesting composition. Drawing's pretty good, I love the spotted blacks on those mountains, but what really impresses me is how much depth comes across when it's not actually there in the picture. For Starker in the background to be that big in comparison to the bad guys in the foreground he's gotta be crashing what, like less than fifty feet away. But Sekowsky makes it seem like a significant distance with everything he puts between the shot-down hero and the human villain closest to us: color masks over the two villains behind him, pushing them way back into the frame even though they're standing right next to him, and then a big wash of black that cuts the hero's figure off even further.

In comics, two depth fields behind the foreground is usually like trees, mountains, or building, city skyline -- miles and miles -- but here Sekowsky uses that convention to trick our eye into adding distance that isn't drawn in. He does it for the most utilitarian of reasons: he doesn't want to sacrifice the detail of Starker's fall to earth by drawing him as a tiny little dot against the sky, and beside that he's got a killer scene with some carnivorous rocks (yes) to squeeze in before the evildoers can catch up to the leading man. It's just fascinating how adroitly he achieves that, without even trying.

Page 15 panels 3-5, page 16 panels 1-2:

This is such a great action sequence. It's very well-drawn, of course, with a wonderfully harmonious mix of claustrophobic linework, rich spotted blacks, and open colored space; but it's the staging, the blocking-out of the action and the body language that really makes it for me. It's totally relentless. First we get the slow, unusual slithering snake-like motion in the first panel, all tension and build, and then everything explodes out of the barrel of a raygun in one single static instant, a giant pop that's followed by another as the camera swings into a totally wild angle, the background falls to heavy-benday brown, the only motion in this frozen snapshot of a panel coming from the weirdness of the composition and the crunchy scuffle of marks around the villain's space-sled. After these two stamped-down quick hits we veer wildly into the extreme physicality and gesture of the next panel, with its contortionist body language, and the figure animation of the next, with the still camera recording an immediate reaction to the previous panel's action.

It's a disorienting flurry of techniques chopped up and employed with a masterful craft and attention to detail, about as far from the blazing impacts of Kirby or Adams as you can get, but the kinesis in the scene's staging, the roving, digging camera and the dead-on, solidified figurework sells it nonetheless. Excellent stuff.

Page 16 panels 6-8, page 17 panel 1:

A super-creepy death scene that gets over almost entirely on suggestion. I'd imagine any modern artist would've been unable to resist the intensity of a full-on closeup of the cannibal ants swarming over Lester here's agonized face behind the plastic air bubble, slowly picking away the flesh as they went, but Sekowsky had to deal with the Comics Code and there was no way in hell he could have gotten away with that in 1970. What he improvises, though, with some key help from the colorist, is even nastier -- more suggestion than depiction, in the classic horror mode. The nauseatingly fleshlike color and texture of the grubs as they swarm into the spacesuit is unsettling enough, but the desperate, theatrical plight of the villain's figure as he runs away, dripping death-bugs and flanked by screams is truly horrible, and the camera's full 180-degree swing around him as his motion's cut off by death is a deftly considered bit of composition, as is the shrunken, skeletal form that can no longer fill up the spacesuit. Then, the money shot -- not a gory blood-mask but the white glint of a shadowed skull, picked as clean as the plastic shield surrounding it -- really pounds in how bad a number the ants did on this poor sap. (I'm actually kind of surprised this panel got through the censors... thank god it did!) The sudden blue sterility of that last panel after the hot pink and purple of the previous ones is another nice touch.

Page 17 panels 2-5:

Another sweet bit of action, with Sekowsky again favoring a separated action/reaction approach instead of the more typical, robust figure interactions of Kirby or Ditko. The clean-ass right angle of the opposing forces in that top panel make its pop just terrific, and then Starker's graceful body language and the sudden starbursts of energy going off around him as he blasts back really sell the aerial, gravity-free setting of the battle. That third panel is pretty great, too, a nice chunk of totally comic book-abstract picture making.

Page 21 panels 2-4, page 22 panels 1-2:

And here's another example of Sekowsky producing an interesting effect despite being forced away from the most logical path by the kids'-comics mores of his times. The panel we all want to see is Starker just burying that sword in the dragon-thing's eyeball, blood and vitreous humor spurting, beast howling, knuckles white. But again, in a DC comic of the time there's just no way. Instead of that indelible point-of-impact panel, which is what belongs in 22.1, we get something else: a near-repeat of the previous panel, layering more exposition, more wait, more tension onto the space between that massive, baleful eye and the sharpened sword-point. Look at those two panels -- it's the exact same moment drawn twice, the angle widened and ramped up in the second panel to really grip you before it...

Before it lets you go with a rather disappointing after-action panel to wind things up. It's anticlimactic because the times demanded it be, but Sekowsky's innovative cross-page panel-doubling really works the moment over nonetheless.

Page 23 panel 2:

Really great, legitimately intriguing cliffhanger, an incredible rarity for its time. Even these days most genre books hook you for the next installment by foreshadowing some action face-off in the works, rather than a character revelation. Let alone the fact that -- even still! -- such character motivations are almost never revealed. Why does Hal Jordan fight crime as the Green Lantern? We, uh, haven't gotten to that issue yet, but Sekowsky's bound and determined to make his Manhunter a more interesting character than the average masked dope by his second book. This is another place where MH2070 really bears a resemblance to the early creator-owned action books: interest in who the heroes were as people was a big hallmark of '80s genre comics, but it was very sparse indeed before then, and this is a pretty special treat, considering.

Page 24 panel 5:

Hang on, we're not done quite yet! Three additional pages follow the end of Starker's feature adventure, the first two of them constituting a quick-hit enslaved-by-aliens story. It's pretty nothing, most resembling those page-long Hostess cupcake ads, but it works as a way to introduce a formula to the Manhunter's adventures: here, as in the feature, Starker battles some alien creepazoids before hauling them in to the law for a nice bounty. It's also got this panel, which is a further display of Sekowsky's unusual flair for action. Concentrated entirely on the receiving end, with no figure interaction at all, it stands up thanks to Sekowsky's note-perfect posing, not to mention the almost photorealist shaping of the shadow on the floor. It's not much in terms of actual motion, more a thick block of solid weight positioned so precariously that we can't help but feel its instability.

Page 25 panel 4:

Power Plus Purple is the street name for a particularly potent strain of marijuana grown in Oakland, and judging from this comic book I wouldn't be too surprised if Mike Sekowsky himself was in on that little tidbit too.

Page 26:
The last page of the book is a full-page ad for the next issue, constructed in much the same white-backgrounded, borderless manner as the first. It's a great exercise in one-page storytelling all by itself -- Showcase got canceled with #93 and I wouldn't have been too surprised if Sekowsky wasn't sure his next comic would ever see the light of day, because he packs a whole issue worth of story into here. It's worth noting also that this isn't a house ad that ran in all the DC books -- this is Sekowsky consciously choosing to draw an ad on the last story page of his comic, which is pretty fascinating if you ask me. It's reminiscent of Brendan McCarthy's one-page ad "Pop!" (still the best comic that guy's done this century): aestheticaly unified with the rest of the issue, but using the form itself to point aggressively at the new, at what comes next. Like this whole thing, it's tied down into a present that didn't have much place for it, but it didn't shrink for a second from the future in which it would finally find a place.

See Matt Seneca's Worldwide Webpage

Introducing the BFR: Broadcast Football Rankings

Even though I have the biggest satellite dish allowed by the FCC, it has come to my attention that the only sports left on broadcast television are football and golf. It is my personal opinion that college football is the finest sport out there, but it has been severely compromised by the introduction of the Bowl Championship era, as well as sports betting. Therefore, we here as the Moss Problem have introduced a new ranking system called the Broadcast Football Rankings. (BFR.) This is an anonymous and secret board of sportswriters who will come out with a new ranking after each week of college football, which will then be posted here by Moss Problem reporter, H. Houndstooth, along with a rundown of the recent action.

The BFR ranking will not take into account or be influenced by Las Vegas odds, sports bookies, or organized crime, which we feel has absolutely no business being part of amateur athletics. Furthermore, we will crown a National Champion in the first week of December, following the major conference championship games. We will then consider the college football “bowls” exhibition games, having no bearing on the championship, as they have been corrupted with the big money and gambling influence of cable television and organized crime. It is our sincerest hope that this change, and this new ranking system, will bring the college football fan back to the long past excitement and accessibility of this great sport.

—Anthony Franciosa, Editor, The Moss Problem, September 2017

THROUGH WITH SPORTS

It has long been my mid-July tradition to enjoy two of my favorite activities at once on Wimbledon finals weekend: watching sports on TV and morning drinking. I usually prepare a bowl of fresh strawberries and chill the finest bottle of Champagne $10 will buy and tune into the live coverage of the women's final, mid-morning on Saturday. As the women's final, in recent years, rarely goes beyond two sets, I normally don't consume more than a glass or two, but on Sunday, the traditionally marathon-length men's final allows me to get through the bottle and then conveniently miss church!

I was fortunate enough, through the generosity of a special lady friend, last year, to attend Wimbledon in person, something I'll never forget. SLF has since moved on to deeper-pocketed pastures, so this year's tournament has been bittersweet, and also sad that I haven't been able to see a single match—so how much was I looking forward to this morning's final, featuring my favorite ass-kicker of all time, Venus Williams. Traditionally, regardless of the broadcast of matches throughout the tournament, the men's and women's finals have been network broadcast on this weekend, as they have the universal stature of the Super Bowl, World Series, Indy 500, and Kentucky Derby. So imagine my disappointment to find that the tennis is only available in ESPN—thus, not available.

Believe me, I have looked into what it would cost to have cable TV in my life, and even if it was something I wanted in my life (which I adamantly don't, except for sports broadcasting, as I don't need a thousand channels of garbage) I found that the cost of it would be more than the cost of a second car, which is ridiculous, seeing how I can't afford a first car (I mean one that, like, runs). If you haven't noticed, the money that's being allowed to separate itself from the wealthiest one-tenth or hundredth percent of the fat pigs has drastically reduced in recent years. That means less for us who enjoy baseball, which is also no longer on broadcast TV in my hometown (the Major League team having their own cable channel). When the people finally get around to burning down the government buildings throughout this country, maybe the fat pigs will all gather in a pathetic circle and mutter, “Hmm, maybe we should have kept using TV as the opiate of the masses rather than trying to switch over to the more profitable (for us) opioids as the opiate of the masses.”

As for me, I'm a sports fan, but that means sports on TV. I used to be collage football fan, but then they had to ramp up the greed, with each conference having their own cable network, and broadcasting almost all the bowl games (certainly all the good ones) only on cable. So fuck collage football, I said, and that was the last straw. But there was still collage basketball, and the NCAA Tournament used to be the best sporting event on TV all year, until they switched it to where 75 percent of the games are on cable TV. 25 percent is actually worse than nothing, in this case, so fuck the Final Four, and that was the last straw.

Then there is (was) the NBA, which used to be my favorite. It is now all but unwatchable. No, let me rephrase that, it's unwatchable. I have no interest, and maybe it's not the NBA's fault, because after watching these few great years (Celtics/Lakers, Pistons/Bulls) how can anything match up. But I'd still try to watch the playoffs, until they decided to put all of the playoffs (except for the finals) on cable TV, so I said fuck the NBA, and that was the last straw.

Except, as a (as I said) hopeless, massive sports fan, I still watch nearly anything. Well, I've never been able to get into ice hockey (maybe I should try) and things like bicycle tricks and crashing trucks in the dirt don't count, to me, as sports. But I actually watch NASCAR and golf, though both have gotten increasingly boring (and that means, booooring). And now, half the NASCAR season is on cable TV, so I said fuck NASCAR, and that was the last straw. Which pretty much leaves golf, a sport which currently musters its most excitement from Tiger Woods DUI reports. I have some nostalgia for Monday Night Football, which I'd never miss as a youth, but now since that is on cable (or was, or switched to Thursday Night or Saturday Night football, who can keep up?) and I can pretty much never see the games of teams I want to see anyway, the NFL is just not enough for me. And my favorite two sports, soccer and Formula 1, have never been on TV in this country.

So is that four or five last straws? How many more chances can I give to sports? No more. I'm sad to say it, because I want to be a regular guy, and I like the idea of sports as a live event in which the outcome is not known, but I'm afraid, for me to enjoy sports, it's all about the TV coverage. I must see it happen. I don't even care who wins or loses, I don't give a shit about stats. I like the game, visually (with sound—which is why sports bars playing silent TV with a moronic music soundtrack does not work for me). Sports IS sports on TV, for me. And since it's all now become, like a Lamborghini, a vacation in Hawaii, or dinner at a steakhouse, something I can not afford, it is over. I am officially through with sports, and if ESPN wants to interview me about it, fine, but I don't think they will, because I will say “fuck” on the air.

Cafe Corazon

Cafe Corazon - Riverwest (the distinction must be made because there is a Cafe Corazon in Bay View now) - is at 3129 N. Bremen Street, in a very cool old building that I had some dealings in, in the past - so now, seeing it completely transformed into something else is both pleasant and disturbing. I wonder if there is a word or term for that, when a building you are used to seeing as one thing gets turned into something else? Let me try to think of one: how about Brain Map Renovation. No, that's weird, plus I think that's a band. I'll keep thinking. Anyway, I was saying nearly 20 years ago that if I could start a business I'd open a burrito place in the Riverwest neighborhood, because there wasn't one, and it'd be a sure success, even someplace at Taco Hell level (and I don't even eat burritos). There is just a certain ratio of how many burritos you can sell in relation to how many bars, hipsters, and college students are in the vicinity, and based on that, this neighborhood could support about 1000 burrito places!

The good news is, this place opened, and it has good quality food, is delicious, they renovated the space nicely, the wait staff it great, out back is a bike path and a glimmer of nature, and it's not going away (hopefully). The only downside is, if you come here at certain times (like Taco Tuesday, Thaco Thursday, right before the Brain Map Renovation show, etc.) it's the Philadelphia Zoo. So choose your visiting hours wisely.

As usual, I forgot to photograph my food until I took a breath and was halfway through. I was excited to see Migas on the menu, since I have a particularly warm spot in my heart for that dish ever since I ate migas regularly at this place - oh, was it Kokomo, or Iowa City (you'd think I'd remember) - anyway, which was particularly delicious because it was made with homemade tortillas. This migas wasn't quite as good, but that's not fair, since, you know, nothing can compare to your first kiss, your first beer, your first six figure publishing contract. This was, however, delicious. But this seems like a good place to bring this up: nothing can compare with really tasty homemade tortillas, but they are a pain in the ass to make. Well, maybe not for the experts, but a lot harder than taking them out of a package. But it's worth it! Also, yes, this was from the breakfast menu, and I was thrilled to see that breakfast is served until really late (I think 3pm? Should have wrote that down). Anyway, the best breakfast is Mexican restaurant breakfast, it's great when it's served late. After all, hardly anyone in this neighborhood gets up before noon!

For more Mexican Restaurant reviews, visit Avocado Taco

"YESTERDAY"...AND TODAY

THE ARCADE FIRE "The Suburbs" CD [2010]

Teenage David Byrne-like voice tells of Suburban Warfare, tearing down the houses they built in the Seventies, Subdivisions vs Subdivisions, an Endless New Stalingrad fought in Cul-de-Sacs, Brady Bunch House Strongpoints, all the adults soon dead, kids on bikes rounded up by mysterious "Cops" and "Re-Educated" in Deluxe Concentration Camps. San Francisco's "gone," the narrator is nostalgic and keeps re-visiting the ruins of the Universal Suburban War, he can't find his house (presumed destroyed) and some kind of population explosion post-war pushes he and his friends into the New Sprawl, endless, outward from Dead Cities, and a New War several times every day, until a woman-girl finally sings a song about how we will never escape from the Sprawl. Staggering.

SPORTY SPICE EXACTS HER POUND OF FLESH

Stalkers and Serial Killers are Easy Prey for Our Superstars. Mystery Men and Baby Dolls and Punks and Punk Rockers, All are Dispatched with a Disarming Alacrity. The Cute, the Lovable, None of You are America's Favorite Pastime (What is? Swinging Baseball Bats at Random Skulls?) My Loveliness I Wear Like a Death-Mask and for Religion I Worship a Corpse on a Cross.

I am Sporty Spice. I Fade and Glow.

ODE TO DARLENE LUSTIG

Darlene Lustig, protector of the defeated,
Raped in a jail, victorious for all time----

For her, I'll go to Mars,
And name the desert Lustig,
And the highest point Mt. Darlene.
But this doesn't matter----
Right now she's gone.
And this is really an impossible situation----

One night once she was in my room, she really was.
There was some risk to our lives,
But we slept together like madmen anyway.
We had money and we spent it,
In fact we had the world.
So we used it up.

The world gone, we stood side-by-side
On a summit, high on the fact that we didn't care,
Not about anything except each other.
And in the morning she went out
Into the desolate world
And she never-never came back.

This fraudulent weather is so sad.
This happy day so fake.

"COLORFUL" WARS vs DOOMSDAY CLOCKS

1945 ruined August forever after. No more Central Powers vs the Entente, no more Crown Prince Franz Ferdinands shot in their touring cars or Rapes of Belgium, no more Russian Armies invading East Prussia, no more French Theories of Attack toward the Upper Rhine, no more "Which side will Italy join?" Now we commemorate A-bomb blasts. However, 11/11 worked wonders for November. Armistice Day, dammit!

HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND REPEL PEOPLE

YOU ARE LUCKY! Fall Down Face-First on Your Sara Lee Cheesecake! Drive to the Strip Mall! ROCK THE U.S.A.! March For and Against Abortion! Throw Coins at the Fountain! WAY TO GO, AJAX!!

WE LOVE YOU

SS: ANATOMY OF A CRIMINAL STATE
Why does crime always have to result in evil?
Why can't crime be committed with the good in mind?
Can't the criminal be disciplined enough to use his cunning in a selfless way?
Overrun the weak, co-operate with the strong.
Life as a movie.
It could work but it hasn't so far, chiefly because of the prime movers involved: psychotic to a man.

"When I hear the word 'culture', that's when I reach for my revolver." ---Goebbels.

An apt one-sentence summation of the Twentieth Century.

AGAINST THE TOWN/SEVENTY-TWO HOURS CRUSADE

"So I've temporarily been condemned to FLESH and in Midwest United States no less----yes, it looks like a time to find knives and ammo and random objects of our affection but this is the Two Thousands, we do acknowledge that fact, so I, Sporty Spice, hereby decree a modified Kill-Spree where *sigh* NO ONE IS KILLED....

"So, so Posh Spice is SO disappeared (Scary won't return calls and Ginger's busy with United Nations. Baby is irrelevant.) Posh is just GONE and she was the best of us five!" [Don't even dare to demur! Sporty is talking about HER MAYBE-DEAD GIRLFRIEND!]

"In a random city, my first objective is the Kids and I will find a way to 'Win', if not with a Rockstar Girl, then we commence a Whispering Campaign, we can't miss! 'Your parents are wrong about everything! Pay NO mind to the Sick Sad Creeps!'

"And there're Pretty Girls everywhere you look, follow them and soon you'll find the Simulacrum of Posh Spice...she could be Twelve or Forty, whatevs--spend Real and Intense Time with the New Posh, brainwash her with the TRUTH and when that's over walk away, walk hundreds of miles away----the horrifying worthless town is changed for the better, I, Sporty, am maybe happier and Our Real Power is ever-spiraling UP...."

The Born Loosers

Proposal for Reality Program

Title: Born Loosers

It's a simple premise. Contributors to sporting news message boards from across the Internet will be selected to appear on a half-hour sports talk show in which they will be encouraged to discuss current sporting news topics.

Participants will be encouraged to use foul language, threats, and actual physical violence against each other. Possible sports figure guest stars. Possible games and contests pertaining to show themes.

Venue: Ideally the program would air on a cable network in order to be able to exhibit adult language, situations, and disturbing behavior.

Estimated budget: $100, 000 per episode.

SPORTY SPICE DEATH HOAX

I heard on the radio yesterday that Sporty Spice was dead. Melanie Chisholm, Mel C, not Mel B, or Scary Spice. Turned out to be an anonymous internet stunt.

Fly High, You Flowerpots!

I ASKED LOU REED TO SIGN MY ASS WITH A QUILL PEN

It’s the day after I heard that Lou Reed died, and even though I haven’t paid much attention to anything he’s been doing for several decades, his music was important to me, bandmates, and friends, so I thought I’d write something down here. We used to refer to him as “Uncle Lou”—meaning, I guess, both a blood relative reverence and also irreverence, as in the perverted uncle disowned by the family that no one talks about. I vaguely recall “meeting” him once, when we—I don’t recall who, Keith Busch?—drove up to a record store on Coventry where he played a live radio show and then you could wait in line to have him sign a record or something. (He was very small and wearing a blue hoodie.) I felt embarrassed but went through with it and asked him to sign something ODD—can’t remember what now! Maybe it was a copy of Dharma Scum, a “garage novel” by Sean Hill and myself, or maybe this was before we wrote that, so maybe I asked him to sign my ass with a quill pen. It probably wasn’t THAT, but it was in that spirit. He smiled and gave me a funny look.

Like rock’n’roll, Lou has died countless times already, though I don’t want to get into the negatives here. But neither do I want to write a “tribute.” By the time they built that Clown Factory in Cleveland, rock’n’roll had been buried too deep for anyone to ever pretend to know it, but it does persist like an annoying friend (the kind where you don’t need enemies). I guess it died just about the first time anyone decided that they had this burning urge to write about it, and seeing how there’s not even room in the coffin for another nail, I’m just going to kind of blow my nose over my record collection here.

Now, in the last six years I’ve moved five times, and each time I’ve left a lot of shit behind, including my record collection, except for a handful. I’ve picked up a few at yard sales here and there, but since records are back “in” now it’s too expensive to go out and buy back what I once owned. So here in this small hotel room I’m living in now I’ve got—I just counted them—60 odd records (some odder than others: Dory Previn! The Rockin’ R’s?) I just went through them to see which Lou Reed records I have, and the grand total is two! Most shockingly in absence is my all time favorite, STREET HASSLE (1978) – where is it? There is NO WAY I don’t have that record! Yet, it’s not here. I have been robbed! Just that cover, one of the best album covers ever (what the hell is that red ball?) A great, weird record. It sounds like no other. Oh well, I can’t take it to my grave (maybe Lou did).

Now, this is going to make me really UNPOPULAR but I don’t give a rat’s ass about the Velvet Underground. Sure, I like them, but then I like the ARCHIES, too, but Lou Reed’s second career, as “Lou Reed” is where it really connects for me. And I take that back, Street Hassle isn’t my favorite record, that would be METAL MACHINE MUSIC (1975) which contrary to what people seem to think IS music and you CAN listen to it. It’s not a fuck you to the record company or the fans, it’s a LOVE LETTER. I, however, gave my copy to Jeff Curtis, because he has a radio show and has actually played it on his radio show. In fact, a great tribute to Lou Reed would be to play the entire four sides on the radio (maybe toward the end of the show, then, barricade yourself in all night while the final lock groove goes on and on and on—just an idea). Sadly, I’m also missing LOU REED (1972) with the druggie art cover, I really love that album, but my copy was trashed, and every copy you find looks like someone threw up on it after OD-ing. I also don’t have TRANSFORMER (1972), which is sad because I LOVE that record, but what’s even sadder is that about half the songs have been used in commercials for heinous products and corporations (who I guess didn’t listen to the lyrics?) because it’s about the catchiest set of jingles you’re ever going to hear. I also don’t have SALLY CAN’T DANCE (1974) and CONEY ISLAND BABY (1975) both of which I really love, and shouldn’t have too hard a time picking up somewhere since no one seems to like them. Some of his records after 1978 I enjoyed at the time but don’t really care to listen to anymore.

What do I have, then? Two records I managed to save because they’re like two books of the Holy Bible to me. LOU REED LIVE: TAKE NO PRISONERS (1978) has a way too long title, a hideous cover (though a ballsack is prominently featured) and it’s LIVE. The live rock record is really one of the most dismal mistakes in rock’s portfolio of bad ideas, but THIS record! It’s the one live record you should listen to, and well, just one of my favorite records to put on when I’m in a Scotch and cigarettes kind of mood (but without the Scotch and cigarettes). It’s a double record, folds out, and the inside is a hilarious giant photo of Lou with a cigarette, obviously taken at the same time as the Street Hassle cover (there’s that red ball again), his aviator sunglasses look like they’re covered with perm grease. It’s somewhere between a comedy record, a lounge act, and “live rock” as well as it can be played. It starts out with a pretty formidable version of “Sweet Jane” which he almost immediately interrupts to go into really funny stream-of-consciousness improvisations and complaining: “I never said I was tasteful. I’m not tasteful.” During an extended version of “Walk On The Wild Side” he sets out to tell the story of the origin of the song but keeps interrupting himself, talking about critics, particularly Christgau: “Can you imagine working for a fucking year and you get a B+ from some asshole in the Village Voice?” But also other people like Warhol superstars and celebrities like Norman Mailer: “I met Mailer at a party, he tries to punch you in the stomach to see how tough you are… he’s pathetic… ‘Come on man…’ What? You’ve got to be kidding? Somebody step on him, man. Go write a bible.” Because of the Stereo Binaural Sound recording process, this is a weird listening experience, especially with headphones (not only can you hear Lou brutally addressing members of the audience, you can hear individual members of the audience). “I sing when you shut up.” Causing feedback: “Isn’t that annoying? I can drown you out. Leave if you don’t like it.” But it’s actually all very loving, believe it or not, he loves this audience, and what he’s doing, that’s the sense I get.

I lied when I said those other records were my favorite all-time Lou Reed records because my favorite actually is the other one I have, BERLIN, which is from 1973, the year I believe is the pinnacle of American culture (that’s right, it’s been downhill for the last 40 years). I suppose I’ve listened to this record more than all of his others combined, so I don’t put it on that much anymore—but I still do once in awhile when I need something to cheer me up. People often say it’s depressing, meaning the music, the lyrics, the content, but I don’t understand that, really… I mean, isn’t a lot of art about sad subjects? The songs are all very beautiful, all of them on this record, and I find that uplifting. I think people constantly confuse depressing with sad. I find bad art depressing, maybe, but mostly I try to ignore it. What I love about this record is that it’s so over the top, it’s extreme, melodramatic, emotional. I love to think about these people in the studio, how they must have felt recording it. I hope they felt like they were doing something great. I don’t mean to criticize people who find this record too sad to listen to, I guess, I mean the story it contains IS pretty heartbreaking! But I take it as a story, that’s all. Maybe it’s the ultimate compliment, ironically, if you’re making sad art, when it’s too sad for people to even want to experience. By the way, I sure have quoted Lou Reed a lot over the years, to the extent where it’s like his lyrics have become part of my personality. I think my favorite one of all comes from the last song on this record: “Just goes to show how wrong you can be.”

AUTOMATIC RESPONSE

Dear Robo-Poet: Please disconnect your phone, pulverize your computer by sledgehammer, cancel your mail, move to Hawaii where you'll never check General Delivery or even touch a payphone...your pain is so immortal that no mere friend could ever hope to qualify to hear your translations of the word of God into a rarefied English. Sporty Spice is a blip on a sonar screen next to the towering importance of your literary self! Signed, Secret Spice, Worthlessville, Ohio.

A PSYCH WARD IS A BORE MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE

Your behavior is scrutinized and the worst deductions are made about you. There is too much food, way too much time, gossip, personalities always carry the day, above all so-called "professional" behavior. In this hospital (University of Cincinnati Medical Center, 8 West, my ward) nothing really important I can see goes on and nothing too horrifying either. The goal is to stack everyone on a shelf and feed them and let them rest, drugging them back to their "proper levels." Our failure to move on in life keeps this carousel spinning. Soon. Something. Somewhere.

WORLD WRECK PERFECT

We are not sunny here, we are skyless.
I want to remember the way out:
Snappy lines, the unremembered truth.

The grim path, correct and incorrect,
Never changes, the truth flickering
Madly never changes.

WHY THE WEB SUCKS/FLAMEWAR

I saw a link to an article at Huffington Post about a kidnapped professor in Arizona: "Veronica Perez Rodriguez, Northern Arizona Professer [sic], Escapes Kidnappers In Mexico."
Never mind the typo in the headline. That's a subject for a different post. I was curious about the content-to-"crap" ratio. Here's a miniaturized screen capture of the page that I got. I used Photoshop and hid the actual content (it's covered in red). In other words, the red area represents the information that people actually want to see when they arrive.
The content occupies about 5.2% of the page. The remaining 94.8% consists of ads, links to other pages, links to social crap, a Bing search, a Twitter box, unhidable comments, navigation tools, and who knows what else.
The HTML code is 410K, and it loads eight additional HTML documents, 272 graphic images, 21 Javascript files, 8 CSS files, and about two dozen other files. Loading the page makes 294 HTTP requests, and gets 1,868,368 bytes. It has at least 332 hyperlinks.
The text "facebook" is used 109 times in the raw source document. The text "twitter" is used 122 times.
If you actually read the article, you find that it's just an article and video duplicated from another site -- an excellent example of how a content farm works. This sort of thing probably represents the future of the Web, and it will only get worse. You can avoid some of the garbage by using an ad blocker, but it doesn't hide the fact that this web page is 95% worthless. In fact, it's 100% worthless when you consider the fact that you can find the exact same content elsewhere.
The page where they got the content from is also obnoxious, but not nearly as bad as HuffPo. When you use an ad blocker, it actually looks pretty good.
http://j-walkblog.com
DLN: What's with all these forwards?
THE MOSS PROBLEM: Really? Get bent, fucker.
DLN: Why are you such a retard? I just asked what you were up to and you act like an ass.
This is why I had to cut off the phone biz. I know part of you can't help it and I feel terrible for the part that can, but sometimes like now I can't tell the difference and I just don't feel like getting treated like dirt for no reason.
If you're well then you're a jerk. If you're not then I'm sorry and I look forward to talking when you've cycled out and into a better state.
MP: I'm not allowed to call you. I'm not allowed to write to you. Only certain DLN-related topics are discussable.
Sending you an article fucks up your life about as much as seeing my name on your call i.d. screws up your life. Your intolerance is staggering, your egotism outrageous. I love you and all and I always will and I am as flawed as they come and you ARE brilliant and all that but no one calls shots in my life lording whatever over me except my future wife and you are definitely not her. I realize you don't need me, I don't need you, but you're a cool guy and I won't play the abused stepchild ever.
DLN: Get bent, fucker? That's what you say to me when I ask what's going on? And now this? What an overreach. Phone is out for obvious reasons though it doesn't make me happy. E-mail is always fine except when you start this kind of crap. Topics are all on the table; where do you get that we can only talk about me? Because you refuse to talk about yourself? I'm not intolerant, I suppose, unless endless phone calls and being abused in e-mail and not liking it is a sign of intolerance.
This is all a two-way street. Ponder both sides, please.
MP: I'm sorry. You're right. "Get bent, fucker," was the extremely worst thing to say. I will regroup, stop spamming you, and try to be human. I suck sometimes.
DLN: Thanks, same here, not trying to pick a fight, I just get it from all angles and it's hard to know when to defend and when to absorb or ignore.
SRM: I accept yer apology...That's the first time I've ever witnessed you flipping-the-fuck-out...Wasn't pleasant. Especially since I seemed to be the one, to have spawned yer Beast. I kept reminding myself that you bark and not bite...I wanted badly to serve you a Karate Chop. But, that probably could have made you imagine that I was a Praying Mantis-style Kung Fu Instructor, at the Fairfield YMCA....and then yer phone call to yr mom would FORCE a call from her to yr paternal arch-nemesis....eventually --tho not TOO far down-- leading to Haldol-induced phone calls begging me to smuggle you-in a few smokes, at Sinclair (sp?) State-where, evidently their professional staff haven't-yet adopted anywhere near-a progressive game-plan, with their five-shelved Darius Case-File...
--I was stuck in the pouring rain. Placed my properties, which you whizzed-out, from yer apartment door-into/onto the floor/stairs...placed them in the dumpster-covered with an empty/discarded Utility of a LaRosa's Pizza Box (a LARGE==My GuD LuK), behind yer complex...waiting fer my Folks to pick me up. They were in the middle of an evening out, enjoying a nice dinner, fer my Dad's Eighty-Years-Old Birthday --forcible phone-- voice interrupting their celebration, soaked, pissed-off, confused, stuck-fer-a-cab (I called about seven friends and cabs-with no dice)...
--(I, the Victim of-)-your overly-physical harangue, coming out-from-nowhere-My tormenting consequence of The Defining dipshittedly, uninspired and garden-variety Flaked Nonsense - (myself, personally-) having nowhere CLOSE to becoming reckoned with-added with disappointing-futility thoughts - "reckoning" what you normally do/who you are, predictable lack of abilities to inspire...Realizing the difference between Rant and mindless middle-aged chatter...
Dexedrine vs. Dextromethorphan....
Talking FAST vs. Talking Mumbo Jumbo...
Ambition vs. Apathy...
Elementary Discussion vs. Confrontational Misinterpretation...
Intentional Personal Neglect (--with available "betterment" means, on hand) vs. Disappointment Surfing With State Aid...
A man and a woman-soon, later, another one of yer neighbors were walking into the building...Was walking towards them, to mostly get out of the downpour...There were NO shelters. No-frills style-parking garages, unlocked buildings, business establishments, nor otherwise...After some kind words, I was let into yer building. Waited in the laundry room, with all my shit (it stayed dry, in the dumpster. LaRosa's Pizza Parlours kick ass...)
...Miserable and rain-soaked approaches lay-down a sympathetic demeanor-even in the most miserable assholes I explained that the crap on the floor was mine and that you'd thrown me out. One of these folks asked me if it was a "lover''s spat" (meaning=You & I = L u V ) - - I said it wasn't...and didn't really bad-mouth you at all, if I remember...I remember a Black girl mentioning that you were (=-she views you as--) "quiet"...No "Gay Talk" was inferred.
I ONLY apologize fer my (sarcastic), confrontational "advice"-regarding yer trends in regards to yer publishing choices/apathy towards profiting from personal Arts & Crafts. etc. etc. etc.
I'll listen to yr voice mails. I'll notice yr e-mails...
That's about IT.
Good luck.
http://themossproblem.blogspot.com

GILMORE TAMNY, QUEEN OF THE YIPS

Chickfactor: When did you first publish WIGLET and why?
Gilmore Tamny: Started it in November of '90 after I'd moved to Cleveland. I'd been writing stories in college and giving the whole trying-to-get-published thing a whirl, which, ugh, was seeming pretty miserable. My boyfriend showed me some zines--they were a complete revelation--and I knew that's what I wanted to do.
CF: What sort of things were in WIGLET?
Gilmore: Interviews, comics, a confessional or two, essays, short stories.
CF: What thing in WIGLET were you most proud of?
Gilmore: Ah, I think it had a really specific feel to it.
CF: Why did you stop WIGLET?
Gilmore: I'm glad you asked me that. I've felt bad I've never written back to the people who've asked for issues or why I stopped putting it out. It was a convergence of miseries, really. I was having problems which I didn't feel comfortable writing about, it didn't fit into the WIGLET idea, but couldn't really talk about anything else, either. So I just sort of shut down and played guitar all the time. Also, the person who had been the inspiration for WIGLET had gone crazy a few years before and was going in and out of jail and institutions, which was just depressing as hell and I kinda needed to put an end to that era of my life. That's all kind of grim, but I don't know, it worked out for the best, I think I was getting ready to do something else anyway.

THE STORY OF ROCK

Buddy Holly said, "I guess it doesn't matter anymore" and he is so correct. I know you're fanatically devoted to "The Day the Music Died," you like to sing along with your good friends while drinking wine and I heard about your heroin abuse episode at this year's Jimmy Buffet concert. "Everybody in my office is a junkie!" Congratulations.

"Rock" is the triumph, finally, of the Loser.

THE SCHEMATIC STRIKES! by Jeanne Falstrom 1985

priscilla painful on a midnight walk
shouting shallow thunder upwards
as i laugh with envy
poor poor priscilla i say
but as always i really mean me
and she loves me until she gets
bored
then flies to a lighthot lamp
then dies
i pretend not to care
but as always i suck
and i loved priscilla
(when i was
bored)