Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Yo Joe!

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There’s something inescapably magical about GI Joes; i never seem to lose the urge to play with them, regardless of my increasing age. Those three and three quarter inch warriors were the ultimate in playtime passtimes — cheap, (dis)poseable, and anonymous enough in design that they could play multiple roles in any story. Your Joes didn’t have to take on the roles outlined in their cartoons and comic books; they didn’t have to play themselves.

The times i most miss have an army of pint sized heroes and villains to play with is after seeing a great fight scene. After the Matrix movies i was jonesing for Joes, and after Return of the King i was practically frothing at the mouth, wanting to go to my mother’s house to dig the guys up. Some web investigation proves that Joes lend themselves to more imaginations than just mine… Joe fans all around the net create comic-style dioramas to tell their original stories to the world!

Finding things like these make me wish that the internet was around when i was a kid. For one thing, you can track down any figure you want in a matter of minutes, making it oh-so-tempting to rebuild your dream army for just a couple hundred dollars (especially with the new and apparently unlimited Funskool reprints of the 80s figures). I had never even seen the elusive Cover Girl before i found YoJoe a few years ago (to this day i have dreams about finding that figure in a toy store). Forget eBay for this; the best sites i’ve found include Guru Planet (a little pricey, but well stocked), Small Joes (good for newer figures), and Joe For Sale (which even offers its very own GI investment opportunity, which hits a soft spot, considering my Record Kingdom experience).

One element of the Joes that i always had a conceptual problem with the fact that Cobra Vipers were sold one-per-package; wasn’t the point that they were a single trooper in an anonymous multitude? I suppose i was supposed to buy four or five of each viper to construct a suitable army, but i don’t think my mother would have financially supported that habit. However, other Joe fans built armies in this fashion, and now Hasbro has released it’s first army building set of the popular Cobra robot BAT for less than the $18 it would have originally taken to buy these figures separately. These figures are a hit with collectors (especially since original BATS pull a hefty price on the resale market).

All of these online Joe-resources makes me want to blow a couple hundred dollars on some vintage plastic, but so far i have resisted. When would i find the time to play with them, anyhow? Surely it would only serve to take away from future Trios. But this exercise just left me drooling about all the childhood toys i could re-own via the internet; i could even get a new Bionic Six Meg, who played Madonna on her GI Joe USO tour!

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I love surprises. For example, in elaborating on the music of Peter Mulvey for Anthony, i discovered that Mulvey-tabber Josh Woodward has his own page, complete with video of Peter, MP3s of a recent full-band show (including, swoon, an electric “Wings of the Ragman“), as well as recordings of his own music (including a raucous cover of Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues“). Josh’s name is one that i instantly recognize from the Mulvey fan list, and also from the site MulveyFan (and, take note Lindsay and Dante, apparently FruHead as well).

(And, less this post end without any self-centered content, note that Josh started about a year ago, which still leaves me as the reigning champion song-blogger. Well, actually, Scott Andrew started before me, but i have yet to ascertain if he did anything Trio-y at the inception of his page. Still, Scott is currently the coolest songblogger, as he just released a rad new EP of mostly web-debuted tunes that you should definitely, definitely buy.)

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/10/106575820581615783/

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”Why finish a song when you can start a new one?”

It might sound silly to you, but to me and a lot of other songwriters it’s a question that comes up every day. It happens to be posed from my favorite living songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/arranger/producer, Jon Brion.

(Here’s where i was going to link to the excellent NYT article about him, but now you have to pay to read it. Which is sad, ’cause this was such a nice link-centric weblog post, but, oh well. Maybe i’ll shell out the $2.95 and mirror it here. Some excerpts are currently living here. Luckily, Izabelle is a freaking genius and reminded me that all of Drexel has a free subscription to the NYT, so here is a virtual clipping.)

Brion, a genius along the lines of Brian Wilson or Phil Spector, not only plays on and produces recent work from songwriters Macy Gray, Rufus Wainwright, Aimee Mann, and (my personal favorite) Fiona Apple, but also wrote and arranged the score for Paul Thomas Anderson’s latter two films, Magnolia and Punch Drunk Love. Oh, and he has his own (previously impossible to order) album, Meaningless, which apparently represents less than a tenth of his entire song catalog — because, if we only hear the recordings of his songs, we’ll never hear them “finished.”

Genius. Freakin’ genius. If i were to put together an all-star cast to record an album with, Brion would definitely be my number one, no exceptions, no substitutions, no replacements choice to be the producer. And, actually, maybe also the guitarist, pianist, drummer, string arranger, and backup singer as well.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/09/106268009878883250/