where have all the Giants gone?

     I think one of the hardest lessons learned while growing up is that your idols are flawed people. The geniuses of the world are just human. My father always talks about the 1940s, 50s and 60s as a time “when giants walked the earth.” He talks about baseball players, musicians, writers and actors that were exceptional. That no one will ever compare to those people. They were, essentially, gods to him. I marveled at the things they accomplished. I wondered about all of these lost giants whom we’ll never see equal to again. Yet, now I can’t help but notice that they were all regular old flawed people.

           

            A friend of mine grew up when Ozzy Osbourne was considered a scary person. He was a god of Heavy Metal music. He was dangerous. He was crazy. He was something really cool to a teenager. This was all shattered when my friend saw behind the veil years later. The Osbournes debuted on MTV and showed the world how mundane, goofball and seemingly feeble Ozzy had become. It made light of it in nearly every episode. Now, it’s difficult for my friend to listen to the same rock music of his youth and not think about Ozzy spending an hour feebly trying to use a remote to turn on his television. The Hero-Myth completely busted.

            Today the internet has made it very easy to debunk any Hero-mythology that might start. People relish in tearing down any person that might get hoisted onto a pedestal. In fact, sometimes it seems like they intentionally put people on pedestals just to tear them down I can’t help but get in on a lot of it myself.. Children, who are ruthless and mean, are in on it more often than not. When I say children, I mean everyone under the age of 18. Message boards, Comment threads, blog posts, Facebook status’, Twitter feeds are all rife with kids potty-mouthing people. They are picking apart everything anyone does. No one is safe from crimination.

            Lately, I’ve thought about it more and more. I liked having idols and heroes while growing up. I liked the thought that there were once “giants” who walked this earth. I like to believe that “giants” may again walk this earth someday. I understand that these pedestals that we place them on are bound to be toppled over at some point in our lives, but can we try and keep it from happening to children at such a young age? 

2nd verse different from the first

I wrote this a while ago and didn't know what to do with it until now.

I like Lady GaGa. I genuinely enjoy listening to her music and watching her music videos. I’m a near thirty-year-old man who owns a few GaGa t-shirts as well. I’m not afraid to admit it. However, since the album Born this Way was released and I’ve been reading the reviews I’ve been considering what Lady GaGa means to music. Is she merely a media spectacle? Is she just a talentless attention whore? Is she the second coming? Is she just a Madonna clone? Is she really a genius? What is Lady GaGa?

I, at first, was repulsed by Lady GaGa and her poker face. The teenage metalhead in me instinctively reviled the pop music she was spewing. The hipster in me hated how much everyone loved it. It’s something I’ve been doing for many years. I can remember a number of bands that I “discovered” and later totally abandoned once everyone else knew who the hell they were. I hated all the popular music. I hated it because it was popular. I’ve since calmed down and learned to accept what I responded to by its actual content rather than its popularity. I started listening to all kinds of music. Some of my friends didn’t understand. Some still don’t. My point here is that I, like a lot of people, can be very closed minded. I think it’s easy to dismiss Lady GaGa as some media whore without much talent. I think it’s easy for people to say that she just wants to be Madonna. This reminds me of a time in the 90s when Marilyn Manson started becoming popular. People at first thought that his…shtick, for lack of a better word, was an Alice Cooper rip-off. He was essentially a more bombastic version of Cooper; a 90s version, for those that might understand what that means. By the end of the 90s he had shown that he was a little bit more than that, or at the very least, something else entirely. He used MTV to the fullest extent to get his face and music out there. The controversy that surrounded him only fueled the fame he received. Marilyn Manson became, what can only be called, a Rock Star. He was perhaps the last one we will have, but that’s a different discussion. Lady GaGa has essentially done the same thing. Love it or hate it. Now, in 2011, MTV is essentially meaningless. GaGa has used the internet and mobile phone applications to get her face out there to the masses since her initial breaking onto the scene.

The other point I’d like to make about Lady GaGa is that I don’t really see her as a musician. She’s more like an Artist. I was going to say that she is a Performance Artist, but I don’t think that’s so much the truth as she IS the artwork. She uses herself as a canvas for numerous works of art. Her music is only one part of that artwork. The songs, taken alone, are catchy pop/disco tunes, but not much more than that. To take the music without the full package that is Lady GaGa and her stage show is missing the point.  She is silly. She is awkward. She can be beautiful, but most times chooses to the strange over the pretty. I commend her for this. It challenges people. A lot of people will rail against it. A lot of people will love it. Some people won’t know what to think about it, but it will make them uncomfortable. This is what any artist can truly hope for. I like Lady GaGa. She has come very close to achieving something I have always wanted to achieve. She has found a way to meld her artwork (or someone else’s) with music to present a complete work of art to which people really respond.

First Rant about comics

Hello and welcome to my blog. I’ve been told numerous times by friends that I needed to start one of these, so now I’m finally doing it. I want to say, up front, that I don’t always have perfect grammar and I know my wife will loathe me posting anything that isn’t perfect, but it’s going to happen. I’m going to screw up.  Expect run-on sentences, comma-splices, poorly worded sentences, and all of it written in a conversational style. I hope this won’t detract from what I’m saying or drive anyone away. So, without further ado…

Lately I’ve been reading a number of back-issues of Marvel Comics Presents. I noticed a lot of talented creators getting their start in those pages as well as some established creators doing some nice work. People like Joe Madureira, Jae Lee, Sam Keith, Peter David, Tim Truman, etc… I started thinking about how there isn’t a good anthology book on the newsstand today. Scratch that…Dark Horse has revived Dark Horse Presents which is attracting a lot of great talent. However, it stands alone and I have no idea how well it’s doing in terms of sales. I picked up a recent issue because it had a Ricardo Delgado story; A new Age of Reptiles tale. It was great.

            I started thinking about the state of comics today. They don’t sell as well as they used to, but they also seem to be more in the public consciousness. We’ve seen a number of comic book based movies do very well at the box-office lately. So, how is Marvel welcoming new readers that might want to check out an Avengers comic once they see the upcoming movie? They can go to their local comic shop and find…Avengers, New Avengers, Secret Avengers, Avengers Academy…wait…what the hell? How the hell is that a good thing for a new reader to find? X-men comics are known for having many different titles since the late 1980s. X-Men: First Class fans can go to their local comic shop and soon find 8 different X-titles to choose from. Not to mention one-shots or mini-series that may be out there.

            What if they could have one book called Avengers and one book called X-Men? They could have a back-up feature that would showcase stories of the other teams. Make the issues have a higher page count. Hell, make it a double sized book containing two complete issues. My other idea is that you could have an anthology book outside of the main title. You could have an Avengers ‘family’ anthology. It could contain stories of the Secret Avengers, the Avengers Academy, and the New Avengers. Deadlines could easily be met by the authors and the artists because they are only doing eight pages or so every month! You could do a special issue every now and then that might focus more on one of the particular titles. Do the same thing with the X-family of books. Fans of the movies can go to the store and find the Avengers comic or the X-Men comic and not feel daunted by the thought of 8 different titles from which to choose.

            It just seems strange, to me, that with comic books selling less and less that the big companies are putting out more and more titles. Where is the promotion? Where are the commercials on Saturday mornings? Where are the banners and ads on the internet? The only places I see comic books promoted are on comic book websites. Do you know where I see promotions for pills, anti-aging creams, cat litter, mops and brooms, etc…? They are EVERYWHERE online. I see them when I look at the weather, video game news, world news or just silly videos. I see ads for all the things previously listed and more. Where are the comic book ads? Comic books try and sell more books by bagging them or having variant covers, but the only people who are buying those gimmicks are the people buying comics in the first place and that pool is quickly drying.

            I bought my first comic book at the E-Z Mart gas station by my house. It was the last chapter in a story arc. I loved it. I bought more. I was a little confused by things, but I made my way through it and bought more. I still buy comics today because of that issue. I wish companies would put comics back in front of children. Distribute them to places people go; the grocery store and the convenience store. I also wish comic book companies would quit rebooting things and putting out new number one issues to try and get new readers. It didn’t matter to me that my first issue wasn’t a number one. Trust your creators to be able to make an interesting story that will entice readers whether it’s the first chapter or the last chapter of a story. If people know about it, they will buy it. If it’s good, people will continue to buy it.