Seriously. I really can’t think of anything I like less, anything that sucks the joy of living right out of me, than commercials. They just suck. Every time you sit through a commercial break you lose three-five minutes that you will never, ever get back again. And for what? So that some awful catchphrase will lodge in your brain, taking up valuable synapse space. Why should I know the exact pitch at which that guy says “can you hear me now? Good!”? I don’t need to. I don’t want to. And yet I could practically tell you what that miserable douchebag’s shoe size is, I’ve seen those godawful commercials so many times.

Then there are the various genres of commercial that are forced through our eyeballs every ten minutes or so. My least favorite (and there are so, so many types vying for that title) are the Generation X ones. Forget that they’re demographically about a decade too late. Someone decided that all twentysomething guys enjoy sitting someplace, usually in pairs, eating junk food, dressed in the kind of “slacker-hip” way that nobody actually dresses in, and either making goofy noises and giggling about it or just staring off into space like they’re on the nod. Do you know anyone like that? At all? No, you don’t–because they do not exist. They exist only in movies featuring Seth Green, which is where commercials get their information.

Then there are the “Isn’t it funny when animals bite people in the nuts?” commercials. The answer is, “No, it isn’t really funny when animals bite people in the nuts,” but thanks to that dumb fucking scene in that dumb fucking movie There’s Something About Mary where, when they’re not busy making fun of the mentally retarded or throwing jism all over the place, Ben Stiller wrestles with a dog, we now have to endure countless commercials the sole “punchline” of which is a dog or a squirrel or a ferret biting someone’s dingus. GodDAMNit but that’s so stupid. (Both the GenX and Animals Attack genres can be seen as subgenres of the All Men Are Drooling Idiots Who Only Think About Tits and Sports and Are Just Generally Really Dumb and Have No Clue About Anything and Are Also Probably Fat and Balding and Married to Hot Smart Soccer Moms ubergenre, which also, it must be added, sucks so long and hard.)

Commecials are also loud, like REALLY loud. They actually raise the volume level during the commercial breaks so no matter how hard you try you can’t tune them out. I know this doesn’t seem necessarily considering how inherently loud and obnoxious all commercials are, but that’s just it: they’re making them extra obnoxious. Most of them also have about a billion edits per minute, because none of us are believed to have attention spans anymore, a self-fulfilling prophecy on the part of commercials if ever there was one. Visually and soncially, they are designed to irritate the bloody bejesus out of you, is what I’m saying.

There are some good commercials: SportsCenter commercials (ironic, considering that most of the world’s worst commercials are aimed at what is perceived as the SportsCenter demographic), anything in which someone is severely hurt and STAYS DOWN (this is key–getting hurt and then getting back up is NEVER FUNNY), commercials with cute doggies, the Capital One commercials with the vikings and medieval warriors and Yetis and whatnot, and this commercial from about six years ago in which Johnny Cash sang about Taco Bell. But all other commercials are timesucking lifesucking wastes of everything, and I hate them, I hate them, I hate them. Anytime I watch something on my brother-in-laws TiVo, or watch a television show on DVD with the commercials cut out, or tape something and fastforward through the commercials when I watch it later, I think to myself, “Please, commercials of the world, eat my rosy Irish ass.“

Since comics is something only a few people care about, I sorta feel like I should warn people when I’m going to start talking about it. So face front, true believers–it’s time for Seanieblog to talk about comics again. (The rest of you philistines can go watch CSI or something.)

Nick Barrucci, head of Dynamic Forces, a company that makes comics-related collectibles (busts, statues, autographed comic books, foil-enhanced “special edition” comic books with fancy covers), recently issued a “call to arms” to the industry in which he outlines steps he feels will advance the medium, and the business, of comics. There are three installments, which can be found here, here, and here, at comics news site Newsarama. It’s the buzz of the biz right now.

Parts of it are pretty smart. The world of comics fandom is famously insular, and despite the high awareness levels in the general population of Hollywoodized characters like the Hulk, the X-Men, Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, etc., very few fans of these movie characters actually buy their comics, either in their monthly pamphlet form or in collected edition paperbacks (though that last bit is changing a little). Comics DOES need to advertise, then, to get people aware and interested in the medium. Barrucci proposes a fund for paying for the ads, and a slogan along the lines of “Got Milk?” Good ideas both.

But the slogan cannot, must not be “Comics Are Cool.” The very fact that you need to say they’re cool will be perceived, correctly, as a sign that they aren’t. It reminds me of when Long Island modern/altrock radio station 92.7 WDRE, in an effort to survive during the mid-90s corporate-alternative-radio explosion (during which NYC area stations Z-100, KROCK, WNEW and Q104.3 were all playing some brand of alt-heavy radio), began calling itself “The Underground Network,” and referring to itself as such about 20 times per hour. “How underground could they be?” I thought, and changed the channel. That’s what people will do if “Comics Are Cool” is plastered all over the place, and I don’t care how many pictures of Samuel L. Jackson or Ben Affleck or even J.Lo reading the latest issue of The Ultimates you put up on bus stops.

Aside from running ads before comics-derived or inspired films, which seems like a) a no-brainer and b) something that’s within the realm of possibility for the comics companies to finagle, the right-in-front-of-you-all-along obvious place for comics ads is college newspapers. The clothing-company lifestyle publication for which I am a freelance editor has used ads in college papers to great success, at a fraction of the cost and with an exponentially more appropriate demographic as the hugely expensive and probably ineffectual ads we occasionally run in big fashion magazines. If a company like Marvel put a few thousand dollars aside every month to advertise the latest Daredevil, X-Men, X-Statix collection in The Yale Daily News, allowing for a place in the ad where local comics stores could put their address, they’d increase sales dramatically, I guarantee you. And that’s for superhero stuff, which in its comics form might be seen as geeky. When Fantagraphics pulls itself out of its financial doldrums, perhaps they might consider plugging their brilliant, sophisticated books in college papers (if they don’t already do so). Kim, Gary, Eric, Dirk et al, believe me: people will go and buy them.

Another problem with Barrucci’s recipe for greater success is his, let’s be honest, embarrassingly narrow definition of comics.

Quote: “Comic books are the best, most original, most beautiful art form ever – the perfect merging of art and story, hitting readers with a full experience.Where else can you go and get a monthly dose of Superman, Spider-Man, Justice League, X-Men, Transformers, each and every month, whether or not you’ve got the same writers or artists or different.”

Arrrgh. Yeah, look at all that wonderful variety! An alien who hits people! A radioactive spider guy who hits people! A group of various strong flying people who hit people! Mutants who hit people! Robots who hit, well, robots! I love superhero comics in particular and genre-based comics in general, and I don’t subscribe to the idiotic notion that it’s the prevalence of superheroes in comics that keeps comics from gaining more of a foothold in the popular eye (they seem to enjoy them to the tune of several hundred million dollars per movie over in the film world, thank you very much, and TV shows like Buffy and Smallville and the animated DC character cartoons do just fine), but if this is the best you can do in enumerating the books that make comics great, you probably don’t deserve to be telling anyone how to get their collective act together. Hell, of the books he names, only Spider-Man and the X-Men currently have monthly editions that pass even the relatively lax critical muster in the superhero-fan world, for Pete’s sake! And this is to say nothing of the fact that Barrucci makes a living off the kind of non-comics ephemera–essentially, toys and ridiculously expensive and unspecial “special editions”–that crowd out regular comics for shelf space and hard-earned dollars in the first place.

Moreover, the “whether or not you’ve got the same writers or artists or different” angle is disturbing. The indie/underground/altcomix scene has long argued that the rotating creative teams on the superhero books, if not the very fact that (for the most part) separate people are writing, drawing, inking, lettering and coloring even the best books from the big companies, strip the comics of much of the artistic cohesiveness they might otherwise have. To a certain extent this might not matter–only a relatively small percentage of moviegoers go see movies for their directors, for example–but in other media, audiences certainly follow individual actors, musicians and authors. Encouraging newcomers to comics to blindly follow characters around regardless of who’s writing or drawing them will inevitably lead to those new readers coming across a really, really terrible version of that particular character. Though I see how it’s important at least initially to engender interest in characters (I got into comics because I loved Batman, not Frank Miller or Grant Morrison or whoever was writing him), it’s much better in the long term to cultivate readers with the capacity to recognize and reward talented creators with repeat business.

This is why it’s disturbing to hear Barrucci talk about Free Comic Book Day, an annual giveaway in comics stores, in terms of making sure that only stuff involving the biggest characters is distributed. Everybody already knows that they can find a Batman or Spider-Man comic if they want–the question is, what else is out there? An issue of Acme Novelty Library, or even of Alias (the comic, not the TV show) might go a long way to getting the word out that there’s more to comics than what you’re already aware of.

Now we’re getting to the biggest problem with Barrucci’s plan–increasing, through pseudounionization, the power of comics retailers. Folks, I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a comic book shop, but the odds are you haven’t. There’s a reason for that: THEY SUCK. You know the Simpsons Comic Shop Guy? That is not satire. That is real life. There are exceptions–glorious, ecumenical, clean, bright, well-staffed, orderly exceptions like New York City’s Jim Hanley’s Universe, with its alphabetized rows of every comic known to man, or Midtown Comics, with its user-friendly website that allows you to preorder every comic from the most popular to the most obscure–but for the most part these stores are staffed by and cater to the worst type of fanboy, who hate any shake-ups in the “lives” of their favorite characters, hate artsy comics with a passion, resent any efforts to shake things up, and demand the kind of convoluted, backstory-mired stories (we call them “continuity-based”) that the “Direct Market” (as the comic shops are called) thrives on. They need people to keep coming back month after month to support the increasingly cost-ineffective pamphlet format, and the indecipherable storylines make that happen, as opposed to self-contained, generally more interesting storylines that lend themselves to collection and therefore to sale in big chains like Borders, Barnes & Noble and Amazon. The industry is starting to realize that the bookstore market is where the future of the medium is, something comic-shop retailers, understandably, will fight tooth and nail. If we allow them to exert more influence over the kinds of comics writers and artists produce, we won’t be shooting ourselves in the foot–we’ll be shooting ourselves in the face.

My own recipe for increasing sales and audience size for comics is a pretty simple one, and given what’s becoming conventional wisdom amongst comics pundits, fairly uncontroversial.

1) Advertising is a good idea. Let’s not go nuts–that money could be better spent increasing the salaries of the artists and writers, which will increase the quality of the books simply by virtue of allowing them to quit their day jobs–but it’s important to get the word out. Advertise in college newspapers as a first step, and take real advantage of the free press provided by comics-related movies by muscling in on the trailers.

2) The bookstore market is the future. Alternative publishers like Fanta have known this for years, ever since they saw creators like Art Spiegleman and Chris Ware do very well in the bookstore market and began publishing their collections themselves. Manga (Japanese comics) publishers freaking clean up in B&N and Borders–their comics are now the most popular in the country, largely without any help from comics-only stores. Marvel has begun increasing the amount and quality of their collected editions–whether this precipitated or was precipitated by the increase of quality in their writing and art over the last three years or so is a refreshingly positive chicken/egg question to answer. When comics are no longer primarily sold by fat bachelors in their 40s to teenage Slipknot fans with Vampirella on their pull list and nary a girl, let alone a woman, in sight, we’ll have made progress.

3) Sometimes I feel like this is the most important: Quit talking about how much comics needs help! Even though it’s a dumb slogan, comics are cool. There are big famous superhero comics that are really entertaining right now; some of them, like New X-Men and Daredevil, are beyond entertaining and into great. There are amazing indie comics by people like Phoebe Gloeckner and Joe Sacco and Dan Clowes and Chris Ware coming out month after month, in collections people can easily buy and read. And there are gems in the middle ground, like Hellboy and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, that are ready to burst into the spotlight thanks to upcoming movies. Comics are cheap, visceral, enjoyable entertainment that rival literature for descriptive power and film for depictive power. They’re increasingly available in big stores in little towns. And they’ve maintained just enough of an air of “danger” from their days as juvenile-delinquent bugaboos, underground rabblerousers and hypey Hollywood next-big-things to make them edgy. Why bother accentuating the negative when there’s so much positive to talk about? Simply act like comics are popular, important, and (yes) cool already. Enough comics fans start doing that, and soon enough, they will be.

Off he goes, into the Wild Poo Yonder…

Shopsin’s is an incredible restaurant located at 54 Carmine St. in the West Village. I discovered the place through a coworker, and it’s become Amy’s and my favorite restaurant. It’s run by a couple of aging ex-hippies, Eve and Kenny, and their kids, and if it has one thing on the menu, it has 400. I am not kidding, folks. If they put their menu online it’d crash your browser, that’s how big it is. There are probably 100 soups alone. And everything is awesome, and in huge portions. It’s like home cooking if your parents were part of every ethnicity known to man: Italian, American, Middle Eastern, Mexican, Southern–it’s amazing. The best part about the place is its idiosyncracies. No parties more than four allowed; no cell phones allowed (and they mean business about that; Kenny Shopsin will get really pissed if you start talking on one); there are board games to play with; and when you leave, you can select a free piece of candy from the many boxes of candies they have available. Plus there’s great old-timey jazz and ragtime playing at all times.

I just found out that Eve Shopsin died this week. When Amy and I were in there on Friday, our usual time, she wasn’t there, and I overheard that she was in the hospital, but it didn’t seem like anything serious. Apparently whatever killed her came out of nowhere. This is really, really sad, as time and time again we told Amy’s folks that we’d take them next time we were in town so they could see what the place was like. I doubt that they’ll shut it down, though I’m not sure, but one thing’s clear–it won’t be the same.

My cri de coeur too much for you? Then please enjoy some mindless stupidity. I know I do!

Let’s get one thing perfectly clear: Thor Heyerdahl sailing across the Pacific on the Kon-Fricking-Tiki: That’s a “journey.” Getting booted off For Love or Money in the first round: That’s “pathetic.”

Looks like another Corky’s been left with nothin’. The question is, does he hate us? And does he hate our ass face?

You can’t really blame me if I didn’t have high hopes for the most recent Marilyn Manson disc. I’ve learned the hard way that my loyalty to bands I loved in high school can all too often reap a harvest of shattered expectations (and a lighter wallet–well, a lighter wallet on the part of the band in question’s publicity department) when a new album comes along. I got seriously, seriously burned by the most recent Massive Attack, Korn and Ministry records, though at least the latter two had one good song apiece (“Here to Stay” and “The Light Pours Out of Me” respectively). So when I picked up Manson’s The Golden Age of Grotesque I ripped it to my iPod, gave its first four tracks a perfunctory listen and gave up.

Silly rabbit. Inspired indirectly by my wife, whose encouraging words often prompt me to revisit albums I’ve written off (though she’d shudder to find out she’d in some way encouraged me to listen to more Marilyn Manson than I otherwise would), I decided to give the album another shot. Smart move. Grotesque is really quite a record.

The thing about Manson is that each album, for all their superficial (and sometimes not-so-superficial) similarities, function on their own terms. Portrait of an American Family was his tribute to scary kiddie movies, basically; Smells Like Children, mainly a remix EP, continued in the same vein but introduced covers for a shot at airplay; Antichrist Superstar was his real bid for industrialmetal fame; Mechanical Animals was his take on glam; Holy Wood was a synthesis of everything that had come before, particularly its two immediate predecessors. (It was supposed to be the third entry in his “triptych,” a description even I, a great fan of overly ambitious rock projects, found pretty freaking pretentious).

The Golden Age of Grotesque is actually one of Manson’s more original conceits. In the months preceding its release he gave a lot of interviews in which he claimed hip hop was going to be a big influence on the record; for example, he cited with admiration Ludacris’s self-appellation of the title “Ass Valedictorian.” But now that the record’s out we’re hearing and seeing a lot of references to Weimar Germany’s cabarets, a favorite muse of Roxy Music, late-glam Bowie, even the Doors.

What Manson did, as becomes apparent on the record, is draw a parallel between the two scenes so obvious that it’s difficult to see: Both these movements can be summed up in the words “party and bullshit.” The Germans who frittered the nights away while their country slouched toward Bethlehem and the hip hop artists who rap almost exclusively about the size of the rims on their luxury cars while war rages and their fans (and sometimes themselves) are shot in the streets are perhaps the two purest exponents of style-over-substance that popular art has seen in the last hundred years. This fact is, of course, cast into starker relief due to the dire circumstances surrounding these Neroesque figures.

So Manson and his compatriots (who, with the apparently forced departure of longtime bassist, co-writer and best-friend Twiggy Ramirez, are looking increasingly like a remake of Village of the Damned as costumed by Jean-Paul Gaultier) indulge in the slick production, spastic beats, murky bass, tossed-off ball-court insults and cunning wordplay of hip-pop, weave in the glamour, excess, martial overtones and polymorphous perversity of cabaret, and come up with a pretty riveting brand of frightening metal. Highlights include the opening “Thaeter,” which in the grand tradition of creepy Manson album-openers sounds precisely like the tuning-up of the house band in hell; the first real song “This Is the New Shit,” which, surprisingly, is actually true; the final real song, “Vodevil” (pronounced “vaudeville,” you see); and the wonderful title track, which sounds an awful lot like an outtake from the darkest days of Bowie‘s Aladdin Sane or Diamond Dogs period and features the boast “We’re the Low Art Gloominati and we aim to depress.” Believe me, I’d have been depressed if this record wasn’t as good as it was.

Interestingly, another mercurial artiste came out with an idiosyncratic take on hip-pop right around the same time as Manson. Prince Paul (he of De La Soul and the incomparable Handsome Boy Modeling School) made Politics of the Business as a test to see if, despite his using all the production techniques and cliches of his jiggier peers, he’d still get shunned by radio and video simply by virtue of being Prince Paul. Naturally he uses the cliches a billion times better than anyone else–“Original Chryme Pays” features a verse from one of the Beatnuts about how he’s trained his children to help him shoplift clothing from department stores; how’s that for an original gangsta?–so naturally no one’s playing the record. A cryin’ shame: the Neptunes-worthy hookiness of “Make Room,” the blistering verse from Guru on “Not Tryin’ to Hear That,” and the hysterical wishlist rattled off by Kardinal Offishall on “What I Need” all deserve heavy rotation. (Look for a cameo by Ralph Nader, of sorts… apparently a friend of Paul’s who was slated to DJ at Nader’s MSG rally was asked to bring his own turntables. “He can’t rent turntables and he’s gonna run the country?” Yet another reason for Gore voters to dislike the ol’ spoiler.)

Yesterday as I came home from work I saw two birds mating outside our apartment. I’ve actually seen birds mate a couple of times, and described these occurrences to my wife. “There’s a lot of down time,” I said. “Two seconds of the guy actually successfully on top of the girl, flapping his wings, and then he falls off and they just sorta stand around looking at each other.”

“So it’s pretty much like when humans mate,” she replied.

I don’t know Michele Catalano from a hole in the wall–I just know she helped found The Command Post and that some neat people around the blogosphere like her–but man, she’s dead wrong about voting down school budgets. The tipoff should have been that she agreed with creepy ur-conservative John Derbyshire–always a bad sign.

The long and the short of the budget situation is that regardless of whether or not the money could be better spent than it is in whatever budget you’re voting on, voting it down will do nothing to change that and everything to hurt the people who deserve it least, namely the children and the teachers. The time to change how the school board devises the budget is when it comes time to elect the school board, not vote on the budget.

If you live on Long Island, please vote yes on your district’s budget today!

And, um, hi, Michele!