The Bond Legacy

For those wiling to ignore his alcohol-fueled misogyny, one of the longest standing criticisms leveled at James Bond is that he is not a very good secret agent.

Going back for another, huh Jimmie? Not like you're on the clock or anything.

It's certainly evidenced by own often he's captured by the enemy (from whom he then escapes due to their desire to out-do his own incompetence). It's also shown by how many of his comrades just seem to up and die. Or how many times he's been "killed" himself.

Like a lot of things with Bond, I was willing to ignore this for a long time. Nitpicking at plot points and worrying about realism in a James Bond movie is like complaining about how this Nutcracker Suite has simply too many arabesques. It's missing the point and, worse yet, it's the height of tedium. It's a movie. Better yet: It's a Bond movie. Some silly things are going to happen

That all changed when I started reading the books. After finishing Live and Let Die, I realize that it isn't a contrivance of the screenplay or an oversight of the director, it's is as much in James' blood as vodka.

Yeah, here's a guy with his priorities in line.

In Casino Royale, he doesn't kick down the door or save the day. He crashes his car (not due to his alcholism, mind you). He's then tortured, nearly castrated, and then by a Soviet secret agent, who basically lets James Bond live so he can appear in more books. James Bond is saved by his enemy. . . Who he then swears revenge on, because, again, he's probably blacked out and doesn't really remember exactly what went down.

In Live and Let Die this tradition is continued. Bond is, once again, captured by the enemy. They spare him the ball torture this time around in favor or keelhauling him until he's eaten by sharks. This time around there is one further evolution in Bond's dubious heroics, in that he actually does plant a mine on the villain's boat.

Aw, the rummy is all tuckered out!

But then he's saved by a shark. A SHARK.

The world's foremost secret agent and world-renowned pussy hound is saved by the chance happening of a shark arrival (which is described as an excited dog. I don't know. It was the 50's).

Bond doesn't so much uncover plots as he stumbles into them. Knocking them over like so many glasses of wine that he didn't see there. To quote Fleming (and, later on, M), he's a "blunt instrument." All of the bowties and Brioni suits are only there to disguise the fact that he's a wrecking ball. A drunken wrecking ball. There are census takers that are better spies than James Bond. It's probably why Hannibal Lector hates them so much.

James Bond is, was, and always will be a kind of crappy secret agent. I wouldn't have it any other way. . . I mean, barring the return of 1950's racism.

James Kislingbury writes comics and podcasts. You can follow him on twitter.

Donnybrook: No Longer Just the Misremembered Name of a Country Singer

Donnybrook isn't a good book. Go read Crimes in Southern Indiana instead. If I had stopped there, I would have been a happier man and I wouldn't have to write this screed. But that is a road not taken. Here I am. Angry. Bitter. And with the knowledge of so much wasted time burning at the back of my skull.

Donnybrook is never seemed like a book that would suffer from being too classy. It certainly begins with a fine impression. When we first meet each of the principle characters (a desperate, if well meaning good ol' boy-cum-family man, a troubled cop with a tragic past that doesn't matter, and a guy named 'Chainsaw'), we meet them doing what they do best. They are robbing, shooting, and cooking their way off of the page and into our hearts. The lives of these men is a hard-scrabble life at best. Life was never easy for these folks, especially not in this economy (a fact, I feel like we were told more than once, but maybe I am just misremembering my own questionable works of fiction). As a beginning, it's strong.



This all sour as soon as the plot begins in earnest. That is to say, it goes sour as soon as the lack of a plot develops. Because Donnybrook is not so much a story as it is a series of scenes cut at their most interesting point and inserted somewhere else. It is a technique that reminds me of the kind of movies we got in the 90's after Pulp Fiction had its moment in the sun. And like that great glut of movies, this story is found lacking. Instead we are reminded of better stories-- stories like the kind that made up Frank Bill's last book.

As a story, Donnybrook is nothing but smoke and mirrors. We bounce from scene to scene before we can get bored or notice that this scene makes no sense. Smoke and mirrors posing as a structure can still hold an audience captive, but the the bits between the smoke and the mirrors have to be interesting. Unfortunately, in this case, they are not. Instead we are given men named Chainsaw and a Chinese man named Fu, who might be the only named character of color in the entire book (though, luckily, minorities are spared the vomit-coated brush that Bill paints all of his white characters with). The Chinese man is named Fu. Do you want to guess what he is an expert in? I'll give you a hint: He doesn't own a restaurant and he doesn't run a laundry.

It is that special combination of gritty and trite that eventually tipped me over from mild boredom to full blown anger. I cannot pin point when this happened. It might have been when the back-country soothsayer was introduced. It might have been when I said "Fuck you" into the book. The two events might have been related. Of this I cannot be sure.

As a target of my annoyance, I eventually fixated on how taudry the book is, on how fascinated it seems to be with the most ugly things in the world. I became annoyed because it put a spotlight on these things not to tell a story or to make a point, but to show them because it could. These things are there to get a rise out of me for lack of anything better.

We couldn't get characters that we can have empathy for or enjoy the company of. Instead, like some smelly, drunken Richard Stark charicature, we get action after stupid, crap-slick action. An attempted rape? Sure. A racist cripple? Yeah, okay. Haven't seen that in a while. Another scene in a bar? I've never been to Indiana before, but I am willing to believe that it is made up solely of bars. Children literally biting the ankles of a terrible cop? Go on. What about underage prostitution? Toss that in there too! Secret incest family? Sure. What the hell!  It worked for that broad who wrote The Flowers in the Attic and she got at least two movies out of the deal!

Towards the end of the book there's a description of prize fighters huffing spray paint and I had to wonder, with so many other drugs readily available, why they would bother with such lame high school shit? Are they art major drop outs? Is Frank Bill including these scenes because he's playing a game of white trash bingo with himself? Do I actually care?

In black and white, as a list, these things all sound kind of cool. Even making fun of it, I have this thought in the back of my head that I missed how cool they really were. There is no reason that these horrible thing can't be fun ("fun" being, perhaps a relative term. . .).  We want to read about crankheads and bare knuckle boxers, to be enticed by a story, and to believe it if only for the beauty of the prose.

Writers like Cormac McCarthy, Jason Aaron, Garth Ennis, and sometimes even Nick Cave understand how to do this. These are men who write about violence, often in the same kind of back country that Bill sets this story in. They are different from Bill because they know how to forge these horrors into a story. Frank Bill puts forth these ideas like your cat puts forth a dead rat. There is no poetry to it.

Again: The problem is not the inclusion of these things. The problem is that all of this dope snorting, face punching, bear-trap snapping nonsense isn't attached to anything worthwhile. It's just stuff. It's just an ugly pile of stuff. It's a drunk man showing up at your door with a sack full of broken glass saying that he brought you a new window. It's exactly that.


The reason for all of this praise is likely down to Frank Bill being an example of the American dream. He's a guy who came out of nowhere, with his own voice, who wrote a book that, despite its flaws, does violently clip the reality of modern America. He is also a guy who seems like he would drive straight to Missouri and kick Daniel Woodrell's ass if he didn't get a good blurb out of the man.


Crimes in Southern Indiana might not be a great book, but it is a good one. It's solid as a rock. It has a unique voice and does suffer from the kind of sawed-off fragment sentences that litter Donnybrook ("Butted the hot barrel through Dote's hand" and "Released the man's arm. Listened to him grunt and thud into timber" are the kinds of sentences that seem to exist solely as a bloody-minded challenge to any copy-editor who will take them on).

Each chapter in Crimes is not so much a short story as it is a sharp slice through a brutal America. There is something tangible about those stories. And even if you don't quite believe them, they do not overstay their welcome. They are notable for being good stories about brutish things.

Donnybrook has all of the same energy as Bill's first book, yet this energy is going in all of the wrong directions. Instead of taking the kinds of scenes that made Crimes stick out and building a bigger world out of them, they are chopped up, tossed around, and garnished with a sprig of pubic hair. Its length, like its violence, exists merely to exist. It's a shame, because any writer that is this fascinated with having people step on fox traps is a guy who should be actively encouraged to write more. He seems like he should be my kind of writer.

All of this made me think of Mr. Rogers. Besides his impeccible sense of style, he a man who exists as a complete contrast to modern America. He is quiet and kind and has a kind of unimpunable sincerity that I find utterly baffling. Writing this review made me think of this quote:

I think that it’s much more dramatic that two men could be working out their feelings of anger — much more dramatic than showing something of gunfire. - See more at: http://www.current.org/1969/05/i-give-an-expression-of-care-every-day-to-each-child/#sthash.Gf56XCaO.dpuf

I think it is much more dramatic that two men could be working out their feelings of anger-- Much more dramatic than showing something of gunfire.

I think that it’s much more dramatic that two men could be working out their feelings of anger — much more dramatic than showing something of gunfire. - See more at: http://www.current.org/1969/05/i-give-an-expression-of-care-every-day-to-each-child/#sthash.Gf56XCaO.dpuf

I think that it’s much more dramatic that two men could be working out their feelings of anger — much more dramatic than showing something of gunfire. - See more at: http://www.current.org/1969/05/i-give-an-expression-of-care-every-day-to-each-child/#sthash.Gf56XCaO.dpuf

Mr. Rogers wrote a perfect review of this book before Frank Bill was even born.



FUCK YOU HERE COMES THE AD CANNON BETTER GRAB YOUR BUTT

I wrote some comics! I have two stories and they are collected in both Old College Comics Presents and The Freshman Fifteen (You can buy them here). They're all made by a collection of friends who like writing, who like comics, and do not have a patience for waiting for somebody else to publish their work. We're a little indy upstart and every single purchase lets us know that we're doing something right.

I also do a podcast called White Guys, Square Glasses. This one don't cost you anything but time. Which, to be fair, is something that you can't get back, so I don't blame you for not wanting to spend an hour or so listening to two dingbats ramble on about The Hunt for Red October or Danny Trejo's upcoming (fictional) magnum opus.

And while you're at it, why not follow my twitter?

Back on the horse. . .

If there's anybody out there that reads this thing: I am sorry for not updating more. I'd like to say that it was a busy couple of weeks, but. . . that'd be a lie. I just got lazy. Sorry.

But I did see The World's End and. . . man, I cannot say that it is a very good movie.

I wish that was a good movie. I wish that it didn't remind me of how brilliant Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead are. I wish it didn't make me want to watch a good Twilight Zone episode. I almost even wish it was a bad movie, because then I could feel something besides disappointment.

I'm not even angry, because it isn't a though it's bad. It does have some pretty good jokes and even if it might not be the best directed movie in the world, it certainly has a lot of directing. It's also nice to see Eddie Marsan play something other than "goonish" or "menacing." Many people seemed to enjoy the hell out of it. I wish I was one of them. It'd be nice, because, man, what a bummer. It's a strange thing to say knowing I

Thinking about it now, I don't think I went into it with any real expectations. I know I like Edgar Wright and I certainly enjoy Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. The ad blitz and fanboy orgy that preceded the release of Scott Pilgrim left a bad taste in my mouth. If anything the odds were in this movie's favor. Somehow this movie managed to nail my lowered expectations. It's a weird feeling to have.

Maybe not getting drunk and watching movies has taken some of the sport out of it. Or it could be that I'm just tired of watching movies about random sci-fi junk. Maybe I just suck now. Like, suck real hard. Suck in a bad way, you know? It can't be that simple, though.

I don't think it's either of those, but I do know that I'm a different guy than when I saw Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. The difference with those movies and with this movie is that I didn't care what happened in The World's End. Shaun of the Dead sets up its stakes very well. You know these characters, you know this situation and, getting away from the bare minimum stuff, it has a spark and a life that I can't quite put to words. Hot Fuzz doesn't have the same impact, because the creative team is a known quantity at this point, but it still manages to craft a funny world where even if you don't buy into the antagonists, you do buy into the characters. The World's End doesn't have that. It isn't a very good buddy movie and it isn't a very good science fiction movie. There are some pretty good laughs tucked into the film, though. That helps. That helps quite a bit.

But, man, I don't know. I don't want to complain about this movie, because, again, it isn't terrible. There is nothing wholly objectionable in this film. Yet, having it sit with me, I can't help but feel that it is a movie that is merely okay. Knowing who made it and what went into it, isn't that so much worse than it being out and out terrible?



SIDE NOTE: I'm hoping this is one of those movies that I realize years later that I was wrong about. Probably not. But it's nice to be wrong some times, isn't it?

SIDE SIDE NOTE: And on another note, since we're all cool here, can we all just admit that "The World's End" is a bad title?

So Long Stink State: Road Trip Journal IX

Yesterday we finally got the fuck out of Wyoming

We're now in northern Colorado and it's almost as though we're back in a civilized part of the world. There are people with teeth and there isn't nine bars open at breakfast and it doesn't look like a place that's just looking for a bomb.

Even my dad, in his obliviousness to Wyoming's hicks and horrors said that Colorado is a great state. Apparently it's his favorite state to travel to outside of Ohio (and telling from his constant, unsolicited editorials, it might even be nicer than California, which he apparently hates passionately. He says this almost like we're not going back there). Colorado is a pretty nice place. I have some pretty decent memories of this place and, at the very least, it isn't Wyoming.

Hey, why does Wyoming have so much wind? Because Nebraska blows.

Here's proof that I'm no longer on the frontier: This coffee shop that I'm at sells kombucha.

Part of the trip's appeal is to see things and places that I don't normally see in California. Things like indigenous trees. Things like open country. Things like fresh air. Things that LA normally doesn't care about or can't be bothered to have. Though, Colorado has the same kind of appeal that a lot of Los Angeles has, which that it doesn't make me immediately and palaply feel the specter of death.

I mean, they smoke weed and make kombucha up here. This is God's country. Clearly.

I guess I should draw more. Or just do more of something. Listening to podcasts and twiddling away on a “travelogue” is hardly actual work. I'm supposed to get stuff down out here. In a way I sort of have. I started and finished Ledfeather, a book my friend gave me. It's. . . incomprehensible, but I finished it. Since it's by an Indian and Indians, I'm just going to assume that it's a cultural thing so I don't have to live with the thought that the only Native American author I've ever read (besides, like, one Sherman Alexie short story). The idea of that makes me sad. Guilty sad. White guilty sad mess.

I am writing, though. That's nice. I also started up Jo Nesbo's Headhunters, so that should be fun. I can imagine Jamie Lannister pulling a Chigurh.

Anyways, I'm at a coffee shop. There's a flat screen TV on the wall (because what doesn't have a screen nowadays?) and the news is playing. The story is about Paris Jackson testifying in a civil trial. And now I kind want to go back to the country. I know the news over there is going to be the same. It's just that I get the sense that up there people might not watch it. The kombucha is nice, at least.

High Light of the Day: We saw a bear.

Low Light of the Day: It was a baby bear separated from it's ma. Shit suuuuucks.

The Show Men the Way Out State Part VIII

Every time I dislike something this far away from home, I get this feeling n the back of my head that I'm just that way because I'm a snooty, delicate Los Angeles douchebag.

But fuck Wyoming. It's a sea of nothing.

None of this is helped by the fact that I started my day watching Dick Cheney talk about how the NSA domestic spying program isn't being sold well because the executive branch has lost some of its respect and prestiege. Dick Cheney said that. I don't think he was being ironic.The rest of the day went kind of like that.

Being stuck in a car with my dad for the eighth day in the row is start to wear on me. I hate this state. I hate going through it. There's nothing here worth looking at any longer. I know I'll be better with it behind me. I have to be.

Alright. I'm going to finish this coffee and meet the day.

High Point of the Day: Sleep. Because Wyoming can't hurt you in your sleep.

Low Point of the Day: All of it. It just kept on going and going and then there's the tears.

Waldoism of the Day: “Just close down the border!” – His solution to our current immigration problem (note that border isn't the Canadian border for some dang reason).

Hot Springs Eternal: Road Trip Journal Part VII

Hungover. So hungover.

Maybe it's just the abuse I've done to my body, but I am in no real mood to chow down right now. So maybe that's what makes these items from La Comida so unappetizing--

Breakfast Quesadilla-- Yeah, sure, okay. I'm willing to let breakfast tacos happen, so I'll willing to let this happen. Okay. Go on.

Fruit Quesadilla-- Wait. . . What? What the fuck is that even?

Breakfast Churros-- Alright, I'm going home.

Breakfast Margarita-- Not an actual item, but it was what a man and his wife were drinking on the patio.

I'm sitting here in the shade of this hotel's awning, listening to Miles Davis and watching their waterfall flow. I'm sure I embarassed myself last night. That's almost assured. But this is the west. If I can't just get ino a vehicle and start fresh here then where could I? 

 I survived this hangover, I'll survive the next. Also, I think I drunk texted myself into a hunting trip this fall. So that's a new mistake to live through.

High Point of the Day: We found a hotel that doesn't look like a place snuff porn victims were dumped. That was great.

Seriously, though, it was Cody's Dug Up Gun Museum. It's got the coolest collection of rusty shit that you're ever going to see. I mean, if that's your sort of thing.

It isn't like the Cody Center of the West that's up the block, which is simply overwhelming with its content, this place tells a story.Why was this weapon dropped? Who was it that lost this weapon? Why weren't they ever picked up? There's some very obvious reasons for some of them, but then you wonder with

Like I was saying in an earlier entry, these things tell a story.

Low Point of the Day: At the Firearms Exhibits at the Cody Center of the West, I was looking at a Gatling Gun in a display case when I noticed an Indian fellow sitting there staring at it. He then asked me and my dad "It looks happy, doesn't it?"

I don't know if I had a good response to that.

Waldoism of the Day: “This bar is full of the three B's: Bikers, billionaires, and bums.”

Et Cetera: Besides the abundance of camping and gun stores, proof that I am no longer in California can be seen in the little things. There's the laxer smoking laws, there' the fact that I haven't seen a red curb in six days (the same goes for parking meters), and, more than anything, it's the proud lack of a state sales tax over here that really hammers home that I am not in the bureaucratic stronghold that is California. But then you just get the weird things.

“Fireworks Outlet.” Now, I don't know about you, but I were to buy fireworks, I don't think an outlet store would be the first place that I'd head to. If push came to shove, I mean.

As I am writing this in the car, a man walked by without his dog on a leash. Maybe we've got a few things figured out in California that they just don't want to admit to. The opposite is probably true of us, though, right?

Internetless in Montana: Road Trip Journal Part VI

Our streak of decent hotels was broken last night. God, was it ever. Out of desperation or fear or some other base emotion, my dad settled on a place called the "Big Sky Inn." I cannot implore you enough: Do not spend the night here.

Everything was wrong with it. Cheap towels. Cheap beds (which I'm pretty sure had a plastic guard on them, you know, the kind they put on the beds of kids who piss themselves). Pilows with less give than the average cardboard box.Then we couldn't even get to sleep properly because we'd be woken up by a train high balling it on the tracks across from us.

Sometimes you gotta eat some mud to make the custard stand out. That's a saying right? I don't know. I'm running off of not a lot of sleep and a minor hangover. I'm satisfied enough with just being able to form words.

We're headed into Wyoming. Tomorrow (or today or the next day, depending on when this gets posted) we'll be in Cody. With any luck we'll be staying at the Irma, which, for those keeping score, was established, like the rest of this town by Will Bill Cody.

Until them, I'm just going to try to hold this meal down and forget that I ever hard the name of the Big Sky Inn.

High Point of the Day: Dad managed to snag a pair of antelope heads for a god price at a place in Billings. That's all wel and good for him, but on the plus side, that means I get an antelope in my room. Finally. We also hit up a bar, the New Atlas, which was pretty cool. It had not only one old-fashioned back bar, but two-- that and a ton of taxidermy. Not a bad place to drink away the fear of falling asleep in a place not nice enough to be an Indian burial ground.

Low Point of the Day: I've already been over this. Now let us never speak of that place again.

Waldoism of the Day: “Their slogan should be 'Did you die at the Big Sky.'”

I've got something to say!

All this talk about Ann Coulter being a "racist." Pleas! Sell you sad story somewhere else! Muslim isn't a race! It's a choice! Same thing being a papist or in a trade union or Arab. And as for my so called "distasteful" flaming cross display, if you want to scare somebody out of the neighborhood, I'd like you to come up with a better idea.

Oh, what's that? Use ghosts? It's 2013, people aren't even scared of vampires anymore and people give so little of a fuck about werewolves they carry them in handbags. Ghosts? Please. Sit back down.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, yes you can drive a lawn mower on city streets while drunk, but you can't drink while driving. Fun law fact. Next question.

This is the Avengers Entry

I just got out of Marvel's The Avengers (or if you're from Europe Marvel's Avengers Assemble) and I will get to my opinion of the film, but in light of the things that

Here are the facts:
I went to beverages and more and ran into my friend Simon Estrada. He is a talented artist. I then bought a Tsing Tao and a bottle of Cutty Sark.

I got a burrito, ate that burrito, filled my flask up, and watched half of Community (sorry, I will check it out on Hulu).

I went and watched Marvel's The Avengers (because I refuse to not spell out its stupid, stupid title).

Afterwards I went to the adjacent Yard House and got a Guinness.I thought about getting two, but then again I drained that Sark flask and had to get home to a dog and a cat and hell.

I chatted with a couple.

That is always precious. Talk to people. That is why I hate clubs and trendy bars. It casts off basic humanity. Nobody should or would or could talk to anybody there. That is why I talked to this couple.

Damnit. We are none of us misanthropes.

Side note: Is friendship necessarily a thing? Must it be?

We move on.

After befriending said couple and chatting about sports (they agree that the Yankees are Hitler youth and the Red Soxes are from Boston) the bar hit last call and I gave them a tour of Old Town Pasadena and ended up at Barney's Beanery. We talked. We touched hands. He went to the bathroom.

And that is when I was informed that I was leading him on. Suddenly one or two stray comments made sense. As it turned out we were due for a threeway. I was the catalyst for the threeway. Alright. I let the lady know that, sorry, that was not my scene, hon. I was, unfortunately, straight. The fellow returned. Then I went to the bathroom.

Holy crap, dude, I am in a bathroom. I do the bathroom thing and finish up and walk back up the stairs. There is a local looking dude. I appraise him. "Hey, man, I don't know. That sounds like a situation." I know, right. "Yeah!" Yup.

I am in a situation. It is official.

I rejoin with said couple.The guy pays the bill and we head out and I decide to guide them to their hotel, them being out-of-towners to varying degrees. There is no way I'm letting people tell their neighbors that LA (Pasadena) is full of assholes. Never that. Also, hey, if Israel can find peace so can we. I am no ideologue.

We part ways.

I call up my friend Alex and talk to him about this. We do. Then we talk about other things. That goes on for some time.

I decide to write about this.

And here we are. Afterwards, I write about this and then decide to write a worthwhile version of this story in addition to a short story based on this experience because, man, what the fuck vibe is it I am giving off?

Apparently not a vibe, but A Vibe. The Vibe, even, something that makes Chaos Theory a doctorate.

It's weird.I don't even get carded anymore. And that preclude the Ralph's on Colorado. They know my ass by now, shamefully. They know me for my dad too. But bars I have never been to don't even card me> The hell? And first of all, what hell?

I realize this comes hot on the heels of a woman my mom's age (but not looking like it) propositioning a situation where she might teach me things that younger women do not know. This happened at the Rancho. This is a fact. There is more to this. I'd tell you what but it'd get in the way.

My life amounts to something 19 year old me would have begged for. It is madness and I am grateful that he never ran into these things.I could never make up this shit and as I get older and less creative the only things I can truly put to paper are the mistakes that I remember not making, because, seriously, this might as well be the Gomorrah that killed Lot's wife. And she had not tales to tell.

It'd be a curse if it wasn't so silly.

I'm Afraid of American Vampires

If you like comic books of a pleasing nature then you should already be buying American Vampire. I mean, if you're not, what are you, some sort of an idiot? It's got everything: Compelling characters, gross amounts of elaborate gore, cowboys, Stephen King, a loving rendition of recent American history, and wonderful art. Just because I liberated my first hardback from Borders when they were closing doesn't mean you

With all of that said, I just bought the third trade paperback. My local comic book store didn't have the second one in stock and not only did I not feel like waiting to buy them in order, the third volume is about Nazi vampires and Japanese vampire bio-organic weapons.

It's a great book, all told. There is a certain amount of spit in my eye, though, and I keep coming back to it. It is plaguing me.

I've found two glaring historical inaccuracies in the book. Naturally, they were about booze and guns.

INACCURATE FACT NUMBER ONE--
The mai tai is mentioned in the first arc. The mai tai was not invented officially (or named the "mai tai") until the 1950's when tiki themed bars were as common as people with jobs and crippling diet pill addiction.

INACCURATE FACT NUMBER TWO--
2) One fellow is clearly using a Colt Python. While one of the coolest and most iconic handguns ever to exist, the Colt Python was not minted until, again, the mid-1950's, when handguns were as common as people with jobs and airplane pilots' mistresses.

Also, the book is about vampires and everybody knows the last vampires were killed by the Vatican's secret army in the mid 17th-century and those who were no vanquished fled to Outer Thule to bide their time and dream of the day when man would fear them once again.

Maybe the aesthetic he was going for was one slightly ahead of the times. Lord knows that's a common thing to do, especially in books that are as steeped in science fiction and fantasy as a book about the legacy of fucking vampires in the goddamn United States. Metal Gear Solid 3 had its hover chairs, so why not let American V-pire (as we all call it down at the comic mine) have its anachronistic booze and Dirty Harry guns?

Oh, also a helicopter appears in the book to save the day, but I'll let that one go, because what kind of a nerd gives a good goddamn about the history of helicopters?

And, now to consecrate my love of this book, of blood suckers, and of David Bowie references apropos of nothing, here is the opening of The Hunger-- which is perhaps the bluest movie of the time.

The Good Life Can Never Die

MOOSE MAYDAY: A seemingly intoxicated moose was discovered entangled in an apple tree in Gothenburg, Sweden, Tuesday. Per Johansson, 45, said he heard a roar from the garden and found the moose. The animal may have gotten drunk from eating fermented apples. (Per Johansson/Associated Press)

(via the Wall Street Journal.)

Things My Dad Said Tonight

On putting soup in a bowl: "This is so complicated."

On Michael Jackson: "I don't understand why he never did the blues."

This is my life. This is the only one I have.

Bill Murray is a Better Man Than All of Us

Because apparently he likes to just show up to karaoke night and buy people drinks.

God bless 'im.

Shit That Ain't There No More

Does Schlitz even still exist? I know I've seen the label before, but I can't tell if I saw it on some antique, tin sign at one of my dad's friends' houses or if I've seen a real, live Schlitz sign in nature. Hmmm. I'm going to have to drink on this one.

I Found Out What I Want to Do In Life

This. This is it.

Jeb Corliss wing-suit demo from Jeb Corliss on Vimeo.

Whatever I'm doing with my life, I'm clearly doing wrong.

What kind of joint is this?

Galco's is Great

I gotta go there again.