A Conversation With Thurman

What you may not know about my dog, Thurman, is that he is briefly capable of speech, and he uses these periods to better understand the world of humans. Here is a re-creation of my most recent conversation with Thurman.

I was walking through the dining room, where Thurman was lying so as to monitor all comings and goings in the house. As I moved by, I leaned down, pet him once on the head and said “boop.” Thurman’s reaction was immediate.

“Human, what is boop?” he asked me. I realized I wasn’t sure.

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just something humans do to animals.” At the time I was trying to collect the garbage to take out, and I didn’t exactly want an interrogation.

That feeble explanation was clearly not enough for Thurman. “Would you boop another human?” he asked me.

“I might do it to a baby,” I said, thinking aloud before immediately clarifying: “A baby, by the way, is a human puppy. You’ve seen them on walks.”

“Ah, yes,” Thurman said. “Human, would you boop The Roommate?”

“No, Thurman. The Roommate would probably not like that.”

“Human, is boop an act of dominion or of benevolent condescension?”

“It’s neither, really,” I said after having thought about it for a few seconds. “It’s more of an act of affection.”

Thurman blinked once or twice and considered this. “May I boop you, human?”

“No, you may not.”

“Human, why can I not boop?”

“Well, for one thing, Thurman, I know you were digging in mud today, and your paws aren’t clean. For another I’m not sure you’d be able to reach the top of my head without me lying on the floor.”

“Human, must the boop land on the top of the skull?”

“No, Thurman. If you’ll remember I booped you on the nose a while back.”

Thurman looked down. “I do remember, human. I didn’t care for it. My nose is very sensitive, you know.”

I apologized for the slight, but Thurman had clearly already moved on. “Human, what is the origin of the boop? As a word, I mean, not as a demonstration of dominance?”

“Thurman, I just told you that I don’t think it’s necessarily about dominance. And I don’t know. I suppose it’s onomatopoeia.”

“But the act of booping produces no perceptible noise,” he persisted. “Surely the term has origins elsewhere.”

I had to admit he had a point. “You’re probably right, actually. So then no, I don’t know why we say ‘boop’ when we boop.”

“Human, perhaps it is better not to engage in ceremonies when you do not understand their histories,” Thurman continued. “Perhaps it is unwise, as you do not understand what implications and connotations to which your are tacitly endorsing.”

I sighed, then agreed that I would not boop him any longer.

“A underside rub would be preferable,” Thurman point out.

“Fine, yes, but please remember that we call it a belly rub. Underside rub sounds weird.”

“Human, my belly is ever so soft and warm.”

“I know, Thurman.”

“Human, when may I eat a cat?”

I turned around to begin once again my explanation of why he would not be allowed to eat a cat, but by the time I did, he had turned his full attention to licking mud out from between his toes. The moment of speech had passed. I wondered if there were any pattern to these moments. I wondered what he would ask about during his next.

Be Kind

I guess we can blame Stranger Things for this—well, what I’m talking about below plus a hundred thousand memes about Barb.

Back in July, I wrote here about how much I liked Stranger Things because it re-created a lot of the entertainment I liked so much when I was a kid, save for one key thing. The show’s reconstituted Spielbergian wonder looked too good. It was missing the TV static and VHS distortion that came with all that culture, at least for me way back when. See, I grew up beyond city limits, beyond where the cable TV cable could reach, and as a result, most of what I watched came to me hissing and fuzzy, but not in the cat way. As an experiment, I tried to add these elements back in, and for reasons I can’t explain, I kept doing it—for most of the summer, in fact. You might have noticed clips popping up here and there on my social media.

The result is what you see below, a project I’m just calling “Rewind.” It’s kind of a music mix, kind of a montage, kind of a string of music video-like things but punctuated with vintage commercials. I think I was trying to create a little pocket universe of culture from the ’80s and thereabouts. It never all quite existed this way, but it’s fun to pretend it did.

Or at least I thought so. Maybe you will think so too.

Yeah, I realize it’s two hours long. That was kind of the point, to make something that you could just lose yourself in—maybe keep on in the background and listen to and periodically check into and see something colorful and weirdly familiar, even if you’d ever actually seen it before. Or you could just pick a random point on the timeline and click and not know what nostalgic thing you’d end up seeing.

Again, I don't know why I felt compelled to make it, but I hope at the very least that you walk away with a song you like or some weird bit of pop culture that had somehow bypassed you before—maybe even see how some of the pairings of video chunks and old songs weren’t entirely random.

If nothing else, I hope the image of Grace Jones, eyes glowing with a demonic energy as she tries to sell you wine coolers, is forever burned into your memory. You’re welcome in advance!

Hit the jump to see a list of video and audio sources, plus most of the music video-like clips posted solo.

In order:

1. Vintage distribution company logos (original)
2. Friday Night Videos intro, 1985 (original)
3. Video for “I Want It To Be Real” by John Rocca, 1984 (original)
4. Commercial for Super Mario Bros. 2, 1988 (original)
5. “Living on Video” by Trans X, 1983 (original) + playthrough of Outrun (original)
6. Commercial for Shasta, 1983 (original)
7. “Pretty Face” by Styloo (original) + Sym-Bionic Titan episode “Tashy 497,” 2010 (original)
8. Commercial for Mentos, 1994 (original)
9. “You Are Young,” by C.C. Catch, 1986 (original)
10. Commercial for Ironsword: Wizards and Warriors II and Double Dragon II, 1990 (original)
11. “Cara Mia,” by Annie, 2015 (original) + the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe episodes “Fisto’s Forest,”  “To Save Skeletor,”  and “The Rarest Gift of All”
12. Commercial for Commerce Union Bank, 1973 (original — and please click this, because it’s from a pre-KCET Huell Howser show which is a spectacle in its own right)
13. Instrumental version of “Be My Lover Now,” by Giorgio Moroder and Philip Oakey (original) + vintage footage of Los Angeles in the 1980s (original)
14. Commercial for Magnavox Odyssey, undated but maybe from 1978 (original)
15. Opening animation from Daicon IV, 1983 (original — the song is “Twilight” by Electric Light Orchestra, but that was original to the clip)
16. Commercial for Levi’s 501 jeans, 1985? (original)
17. “Happy Station,” by Fun Fun, 1984 (original) + playthrough of Ai Cho Aniki (original)
18. Commercial for Fruitopia, 1994 (original)
19. “Tonight! Crazy Night,” by Dorine Hollier, 1984 (original)
20. Commercial for Pure Agree shampoo, 1980-something (not the original, still trying to find that file, but you get the point)
21. “Disco Band,” by Scotch (original) + underwater scene from Dario Argento’s Inferno (original)
22. Commercial for The Terminator, 1984 (original)
23. Intro to Chopping Mall, 1986 (original)
24. Commercial for Whatchamacallit candy bar, 1990-something (original)
25. “Exit,” by Tangerine Dream (original) + the video for “Ooh Shooby Doo Doo Lang,” by Aneka, 1982 (original)
26. Commercial for Vanderbilt perfume, 1989 (original)
27. Video for “Madam Butterfly,” by Malcolm McLaren, 1984 (original)
28. Commercial for Sea Breeze with Elle McPherson, 1986 (original)
29. “Eyes” by Clio (original) + the intro to Beverly Hills Teens (original) + episodes from the show that you can watch here, here, here, here and here
30. Commercial for Arrid Extra Dry with Brooke Shields, 1985 (original)
31. “Numbers” by Kraftwerk, 1981 (original) as seen on The New Dance Show, 1981? (original)
32. Commercial for Jill doll with Jenny Lewis, 1987 (original)
33. “Boy” by Book of Love, 1986 (original) + clips from playthroughs of Fatal Fury 2 (original), Art of Fighting 2 (original), Samurai Shodown (original), World Heroes 2 (original and another original), Samurai Shodown II (original and another original), King of Fighters ’96 (original), Real Bout Fatal Fury (original) and Aggressors of Dark Kombat (original)
34. Commercial for Sun Valley wine coolers with Grace Jones, 1987 (original)
35. “Diamond” by Via Verdi, 1986 (original) + the fashion show segment from ABC’s Night of 100 Stars, 1982 (original)
36. Commercial for Chunky candy bar, 1980-something (original)
37. Music video for “Love Resurrection” by Alison Moyet, 1984 (original)
38. Commercial for Dubonnet with Pia Zadora, 1980-something (original)
39. “My Little Japanese Boy” by Baby’s Gang, 1986 (original) + clips from Saint Seiya / Knights of the Zodiac that you can see here, here, here, here and here
40. Commercial for the TV movie The Nightman, 1992 (original)
41. “Follow Me” by Giusy Dej, 1980-something (original) + the disco sequence from the Bollywood Nightmare on Elm Street remake Mahakaal, 1993 (original but also do please see the rest of this bizarre gem here)
42. Commercial for Fruitopia featuring music by Kate Bush, 1994 (original)
43. “Dance It Down” by The Pool, 1983 (original) + a playthrough of Final Fight (original)
44. “A.H.B.” by Survive, 2016 (original) + the disco sequence from Prom Night, 1980 (original)
45. “Puppet Strings” P.S.A. by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, 1995 (original)
46. “I Want to Fly Away” by Blue Russell, 1984 (original) + clips from The Nutcracker Fantasy, 1979 (non-destroyed version of this clip and also an extended look at the Ragman, should you be interested)
47. “Stickerbush Symphony” from Donkey Kong Country 2, 1995 (original) + the closing credits to Soapdish, 1991 (original)

And in case you’re too TL;DR for the whole thing, here are most of the individual videos:

Outrun + Trans X

Fisto + “Cara Mia”

Cho Aniki + “Happy Station”

Inferno + “Disco Band”

“Tonight! Crazy Night” by Dorine Hollier

The opening credits to Chopping Mall

Aneka + Tangerine Dream

“Madam Butterfly” by Malcolm McLaren

Kraftwerk on The New Dance Show

Beverly Hills Teens + Clio

Neo Geo fighters + Book of Love

Night of 100 Stars + Via Verdi

Mahakaal + Giusy Dej

Final Fight + “Dance It Down”

Saint Seiya + Baby’s Gang

Prom Night + Survive

The Nutcracker Suite + Blue Russell

And finally here are all the commercials, in case that’s your thing

Revenge of the Ragman

Today I’d like to share with you something that’s terrified me for twenty-five years. You’re welcome in advance.

Many times when I was a kid, I’d end up watching a strange movie on Channel 36, the local indie station that aired pretty much nothing but strange movies in addition to reruns of Mama’s Family and Matlock. This is the same station that allowed me to watch a slasher movie re-telling of The Phantom of the Opera in which Molly Shannon played Meg Giry and also The Horror at 37,000 Feet, a TV movie that had William Shatner battling a poltergeist on a luxury jet. Neither of these scary movies is the one that lingered the most, however; that honor goes to The Nutcracker Fantasy, a Sanrio-produced, stop motion-animated version of The Nutcracker from 1979.

I’ve written about it before on this blog, and I explained how stop motion is always unsettling to me, but this movie in particular got to me as a result of the Ragman, a demonic boogeyman who appears at the beginning of the film for the single purpose of terrifying any children plunked in front of this film by well-meaning adults who thought a Nutcracker adaptation would be family-friendly. The Ragman is a crooked old ghost straight of Luigi’s Mansion who stands several stories tall as he shambles down the moonlit city streets, peering in windows to check for young children who have stayed up past their bedtime. Should he spot any, he teleports into their home and transforms them into mice.

There’s a lot more that’s weird about The Nutcracker Fantasy, but this one scene always stood out to me as something that seemed needlessly horrifying in what is ostensibly a film for children. And based on the Google hits I still get on the old post, I’m not the only one who thinks so—nor am I the only one who has been looking for a high-quality version of this scene. But just last year, Sanrio produced a new transfer of the film, along with a new Japanese dub. So I stumbled through Amazon.com’s Japanese site to ordered one, ripped it and uploaded the scene, just so you all could see how beautifully scary it is.

Enjoy!

I’ve paired it with the audio track from the American version, from a YouTube clip that had previously been the best available version of the scene online. No longer! The American voice cast featured Melissa Gilbert, Christopher Lee, Jo Anne Worley, and Eva Gabor, BTW, but you can’t hear any of them in this clip.

I’ve yet to decide what I’m going to do with the rest of the ripped film, but don’t be surprised if you see it surface on this blog sooner or later.

Nostalgic nightmare fuel, previously:

• The Foul Horror of the Zombie Sandy Duncan
• That One Brady Bunch Where Everybody Gets Shot to Death
• Baby Doll Revisited
• A Midnight Swim With Anthony Perkins
• Ethel Gets Eaten: Nancy Cartwright and the Twilight Zone Movie

Why I Grew a Mustache

Last weekend I went to a barber for the first time in six years, not to attend to anything on the top of my head (as I’ve been seeing to that myself) but to allow a professional to tidy up my mustache. For a relatively small sum of money, my mustache got twenty minutes’ worth of snipping and shaping, and I got some tips on how I can keep it looking good until the next time I make an appointment. I highly recommend it.

While sitting the the chair, the barber asked me why I chose to grow this thing in the first place, and I actually didn’t know how to answer. Here, then, is every possible reason I can think of.

• Because the fact that I’ve had a buzzed head for the last six years has limited what I can do to change my appearance, and growing a mustache seemed like a shorter-term investment than a face tattoo
• Because manliness?
• But similarly and separately to connect with my heritage as a gay homosexual
• To repulse women
• More specifically to make a woman in front of me in line at the grocery store glance back, glance back again and then none-too-discreetly slip into another line, presumably because she thought I looked like a creep
• To look like a creep, maybe
• To provoke female acquaintances who have never otherwise commented on my physical appearance to tell me that they hate my mustache and that I should remove it
• Apparently to make twentysomethings on various apps begin conversations with “Hey, daddy” or something thereabouts
• So that when I take an Instagram selfie and have it show up on my Tumblr my photo then gets reblogged on various fetish sites of varying levels of NSFW-ness
• To give myself a single distinguishing physical characteristic (finally)
• To draw attention away from my unpleasant personality
• Because I’d grown accustomed to the various asymmetricalities of my body and needed a new one to obsess over
• If I’m being really honest, I may have grown it to punk my friend, who’d invited me to be a groomsmen in his wedding but whose bride did not include facial hair stylings on her PDFed guide to appropriate groomsmen looks
• And to continue that honestly, I’ve kept it maybe because I think his bride suspects that this was the case and I’m scared she will beat me up if she knew that I’d made an effort to become “that random guy with a mustache” in her wedding photos
• Because the groom himself cannot grow one
• Because neither my brother nor my father can grow one, now that I think about it
• Because I knew I’d be getting a dog who had his own killer facial hair game and we needed to match
• Because I felt I’d mastered the art of eating and sneezing and needed to complicate both those actions in order to challenge myself
• Because years of playing Nintendo games have led to me realize that I’m more of a Luigi than a Mario
• Sex stuff
• And finally because Stupid Sexy Flanders is too good of a Halloween costume to pass up

“Why Don't You Tell Us How Your Really Feel?”

There’s a sort of person who, upon hearing someone else speak passionately about a given subject, will respond with a certain stock phrase: “Why don’t you tell us how you really feel?” And when they do, they hit the “really” Chandler Bing-style to emphasize their point. They might smile. They might feel very satisfied for having said this.

Here is some information about that person.

That person is the worst. That person thinks it’s okay to use a cliched, straight-from-a-bad-sitcom phrase to tell you (or maybe sometimes me) not to speak your mind—or at least not to speak it in such a decisive manner. That person wants you to hedge your statements in softeners like “maybe” and “it’s possible” and may even want you to apologize before you offer your opinion, as if you didn’t get the proper permission before you talk.

It may be that you have overstepped in talking. Sometimes you get heated and your words take a tone that is inappropriate for a given situation. You may need a reminder to check yourself. That’s entirely fair. But with respect to that, here is the worst quality of the person who speaks the phrase “Why don’t you tell us how you really feel?” or some variant: They don’t actually want you to realize you’re violating some conversational rule. They want to make you feel bad, to be embarrassed for having participated. They’re trying to make you stop talking. And they’re not attempting to go about this directly or even by inventing their own turn of phrase. Instead, they pick this garbage saying—a chunk of words that verges on “Smooth move, Ex-Lax” in terms of datedness and triteness, a phrase that approaches sarcasm but somehow even falls short of even that. It’s this cowardly form of indirect communication in which this person conveys a message but hides behind words that superficially would seem to mean the opposite. It’s a reprimand form of “Gosh, it’s really hot in here” when you actually mean “Would you mind opening the windows?” but you’re not willing to actually make that request.

This is a person you should make an effort to avoid talking to them in the future.

In closing, here is a picture of a baby duck sitting in a ladle.

Falling Eggplants and Gay Pixels

For all but the deepest subset of the Venn diagram overlap of nerds and homosexuals, this may well be your introduction to the bizarre gayness that is Cho Aniki. I’m honored to extend the opportunity.

I’m still on my kick about being from the generation of pixels and VHS static, and I’m still mucking around with weird video clips and lesser-known pop songs from the era as part of a larger project. I’m not quite sure yet what, exactly, that project will turn out to be, but at the very least it will be interesting to look at.

Yesterday, I finished one chunk of it that may just merit a post on its own. Here, please enjoy inasmuch as it can be enjoyed.

If your response to all this is “Wait, what the fuck?” then you are correct! This is footage from Cho Aniki, a Japanese video game series whose name translates as “Super Big Brother” and whose chief contribution to the world is a lot of nonsensical homoerotic imagery. The games have largely not been released outside Japan, and consequently a lot of people in the U.S. don’t know that it even exists, despite it being one of the stranger assemblages of pixels ever. This particular clip comes from a playthrough of the second game in the series, 1995’s Ai Cho Aniki. (The original video has been edited, truncated and manipulated. The song I synced to it is “Happy Station” by Fun Fun. Also also, what is the deal with Japan and eggplants?)

And if you’re interested, here’s another piece of the puzzle: the disco sequence from the Bollywood Nightmare on Elm Street, manipulated and destroyed, with another italo disco gem added in.

The song is “Follow Me” by Giusy Dej, BTW. Happy Cho Aniki Awareness Day!

Why So Many Gay Guys Like Barb From Stranger Things

Heads up: This will spoil the first season of Stranger Things. If you haven’t finished it and don’t want it spoiled, don’t read this yet. Also, what are you waiting for? It’s only eight episodes. Call in sick today and finish it.

I’d been stoked for Stranger Things, and I felt gratified once it went live on Netflix that other people seemed to enjoy it as much as I did. However, all the social media posts about the show seemed to be echoing back to me one observation in particular that I didn’t expect: that Barb was awesome. I liked her a lot, despite her scant screen time, but I’m a weirdo who always roots for the underdog girl. In this instance, I was not alone in pulling for Barb. It also happens that most of the people posting about Stranger Things in my various feeds happened to be gay nerds of one stripe or another. So what is it about this mom-jeaned wonder that made gay dudes dig her? (You know, aside from her on-point-for-the-era fashion sense.)

After all, Barb (Shannon Purser) vanishes before the opening credits of episode three, when the shambling horror that is the show’s big bad pulls her into the swimming pool of doom, never to be seen again… save for a particularly nasty shot of her in the penultimate episode, when the viewer learns that yes, she’s completely dunzo—a corpse in the Upside-Down with a hell leech squiggling around in her mouth. It’s brutal to learn, especially if you, like me, had been hoping that she’d be rescued.

We gay nerds like our genre heroines, but Stranger Things actually offers four other female characters who get to do a lot more than Barb does. There’s Joyce (Winona Ryder), a small-time Sarah Connor who’s just the latest in a long line of fearless, strong moms in sci-fi works. There’s Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), the telekinetic marvel who actually takes down the bad guys. There’s Nancy (Natalie Dyer), the Lisa Simpson-level goody two-shoes who finds an inner courage to become a hero in her own right. And there’s even Nancy’s mom (Cara Buono, a.k.a. Dr. Faye from Mad Men) who gets more to do than Barb does just by virtue of the fact that she survives through all eight episodes.

So why the hell would we like Barb so much? My theory is that for gay guys—and maybe also non-gay guys who had similarly difficult high school experiences—Barb reminds us of the selves we left behind back in the day, the not-yet-fully-realized versions that we want to go back and help or save or maybe just hug.

Based on the little we get to know about Barb in the first two episodes, we get that she’s Nancy’s smart and loyal best friend. She has a flair for fashion, but that doesn’t really put her on the radar of any of the popular kids, and she’s literally out of focus in the background of some of the shots in which Nancy is interacting with them. (If there’s a he-Barb lurking around somewhere, who can see her for the radiant, ruffled flower she is, we never get to see him.) She only gets invited to the party at the home of BMOC Steve Harrington (Joe Keery) because she is Nancy’s plus-one, and again, the boys don’t seem interested in her to the point that no one even reacts with much concern when she cuts her hand—and even then, she only cuts her hand in a vain attempt to shotgun a beer, just to prove to these cretins that yes, she’s like everyone else and can party like a normal kid. That felt familiar.

To paraphrase that great poet of our generation, Katy Perry, she’s a plastic bag who has yet to realize her status as a firework. Watching the second episode in particular, I wanted to tell Barb that it would be okay—that she’d get in to a good college where a bunch of art fags would celebrate her prim but daring style, and that everything would be okay in the end.

Only that doesn’t happen. It doesn’t get better for Barb. She dies without anyone aside from Nancy realizing how great she is, and even then, Nancy’s last interaction with her is shooing her away while she goes to make penis-vagina with Steve. Yes, even that is telling of the kind of relationships a lot of closeted gay guys had with their ladyfriends of choice back in the age of raging hormones. We’d be there, steadfast and protective, until the prospect of a more deeply realized male-female relationship presented itself, at which point we’d be left to wait downstairs while some people’s virginities were lost and others remained intact.

I’m projecting, sure, but I feel like for this gay guy in particular, the horror of Barb’s death wasn’t just that it seemed like if anyone should have been safe, it would have been her. No, it’s the weird “what if?” of never moving on from the Upside-Down of high school life and never having people finally appreciate you for the things that make you special. She has glam hausfrau style down, for sure, but I’m certain that’s not the only reason we gay nerds are rooting for her in a fashion way out of proportion to how much we see her onscreen.

I love you, Barb. I wish it had been different for you.

Miscellaneous notes:

• I keep accidentally referring to the Upside-Down as the Underwhere, which I think should be the name of something.
• I can’t stop listening to the previous compositions by Survive, the band that did the show’s soundtrack. Survive is the Disasterpeace of 2016.
• Variety had a good interview with the Duffer Brothers that offers, among other things, some rationale about why Barb and Barb alone should have been the one character to get offed in the show’s first season, as well as the tidbit that Shannon Purser had never professionally acted before this series.
• If you haven’t yet, check out my fucking up of the Stranger Things trailer in the style of footage from a decayed VHS cassette.
• Cole Escola did a less-than-one-minute bit about Barb’s mom learning about what the fuck happened to her daughter, and it’s gold.
• I was born in 1982, but that doesn’t mean I understand how women dressed in the first decade of my life. Consequently, it’s hard to tell if Barb’s style would have read as avant-garde in 1983 or just plain dowdy. I have similar issues with Jane Fonda’s wardrobe in 9 to 5.
• Just in case you wanted a closer look at our last image of Barb, you can see it here. It’s awful. Barb deserved better.
• I maintain that Barb is equal parts Martha Plimpton’s character from The Goonies and Lucca from Chrono Trigger.

Homo culture, previously:

• How my friend’s stepdad gave Princess Peach to gay nerds nationwide
• How Madonna debuted Dick Tracy with an all-male kickline
• Why Saint Seiya is gayer than you remember
• How a gay guy probably invited the high-five
• Why Mr. Belvedere is gayer than you might think