I don’t like No Doubt. I want to, because Amy does, and because occasionally they’ll come out with a song that has some pretty good music (“Hella Good,” “Simple Life”). But I can’t get past Gwen Stefani’s Betty Boop voice. It just totally rubs me the wrong way. It’s only marginally better than Britney Spears’s, honestly. At least she doesn’t do all those guttural noises that Britney does, but the warbling she did when she’d hold notes on her early songs (“It’s just those little things that I feaeaeaeaeaeaeaear”) are just as bad. No matter what emotion she’s going for, I remain unconvinced. And I REALLY want to like “Hella Good,” did I mention that? That’s a badass synth riff they’ve got going there. Gary Numan’d be proud.

Another interesting thing about “Hella Good” is that you can take out her vocals and put in Madonna singing “Music” and it’d work perfectly. Has this been done on the Internet yet? Ken, are you listening?

Okay, so as recently as the introductory post on this blog I said I wasn’t going to be doing long reviews. Now all of a sudden I’m on Blogcritics. What gives?

Answer: One of the big reasons that I didn’t want to do long reviews anymore was that it was hard to justify writing stuff like that for free when I get paid for it elsewhere. But at Blogcritics, every time someone buys something from Amazon after clicking through to it from a link on your review page, you get 2.5% of the revenue! Hooray for money!

I’ve just joined Blogcritics, the delightful blogger collective dedicated to proving the axiom about opinions and assholes. The difference at Blogcritics, of course, is that they’re highly original and well-written assholes. Go take a look at my first post! (It’s basically the same thing as the post below this one, but hey, that’s the Internet for you!)

Today’s edition of Rich Johnston’s weekly comics gossipfest indicates that Marvel comics has forced new Wolverine artist Darick Robertson to make Wolverine attractive again.

FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE, IT’S ABOUT EFFING TIME!

In recent years, in a move spearheaded by writer/man-about-town Grant Morrison, Marvel has made a real effort to cash in on the innate sex appeal of Wolverine, or at least the innate sex appeal of Hugh “Curly” Jackman, by transmogrifying him from a hirsute, diminutive sack of ugly with an annoying habit of referring to himself in the third person and talking in what passes in supercomicsland as “dialect” to a leather-clad, good-looking guy with a halfway-decent haircut. In the process–which included taking his X-Men brethren out of some of the worst-designed costumes in the superhero business and putting them in outfits real people might conceivably wear–they gave one of the most prominent books in supercomics a much-needed makeover. You can say “comics are cool” as often as you want, but it’s unlikely to make any difference if your main character looks like a Brylcreemed, slightly more muscular version of the Simpsons comic shop guy. Seen in this light, making the X-Men look like a rock band and Wolverine like the lead singer was a fantastic idea.

You’d think this transformation–a sort of rough-hewn Young Brando-esque type instead of Bruno Sammartino with claws–would make sense to everybody. You’d think. But no, the fanboys are up in arms that this character, who was once the embodiment of what 11-year-olds think of when they think “tough guy,” is now a sexy beast, thereby forcing them to ask questions of their own sexuality they’d just as soon leave unanswered. So in the kind of misguided artistic move only made by mainstream comics people (or, perhaps, by whoever in Blur thought it would be a good idea to plow ahead without Graham Coxon), new Wolverine writer Greg Rucka and artist Darick Robertson decided to return Wolverine, a fictional character, to what he “really” looks like–namely, a human garbage truck with back hair.

Brilliant, no?

The result was a Wolverine solo book in which the main character bore not the slightest resemblance to the character called Wolverine in every other comic (he appears in virtually every X-Men related title on the shelves, and on the cover of each of them practically every month). Fortunately, it didn’t take long for Marvel to figure out that when Hugh Jackman is drawing in women and helping to rack up $85 million in opening-weekend box-office receipts, maybe it’s a bad idea to have a comic in which Wolverine looks like Robin Williams running around nude in The Fisher King.

Of course, they’re apparently planning to put all the X-Men back in their spandex pajamas. 8-year-olds, Dude.

New All Too Factual up today. Once a week, maybe twice? Sounds doable, right?

“I think the fuckers from Lord of the Rings should have fucking totally bowed down to Zeppelin. They should have put a Zeppelin song in Lord of the Rings! What the fuck, man? Come on! I’m actually physically angry at them that they didn’t put a Zeppelin song in fuckin’ Lord of the Rings. That’s my most important point I want to make today. They’re all hoity-toity, like, ‘We’re making the real Lord of the Rings.’ They consider Zeppelin not highbrow enough.”

–Evan “Didn’t Play ‘Mrs. Robinson,’ Then Gave Us the Finger at Yale Spring Fling 1997” Dando, in an interview by Jancee “Annoys the Crap Out of My Wife” Dunn in Rolling Stone

Permalinks! That’s what “plink!” means. Thank-props to Kennyb, programmer extraordinaire. Just from reading other people’s blogs I’ve gotten a sense of how hugely problematic the popular blogging thingamajiggers are, and meanwhile I’ve got my own personal Cornell Engineering Master’s Degree Holder figuring out how to make it so people can link directly to posts about my brother’s sex life. What a country!

Well, I’ll just say that I just watched Cybill Shepherd, as Martha Stewart, put on a conical hat and act like a quote little magic gnome unquote in an effort to seduce Tim Matheson. You tell me, folks. You tell me.

See the little fish up there near the top of the page? Hold your little mouse cursor thing over it. See? Isn’t that funny? Hat tip to Chris Onstad for letting us rip him off inspiration.

As my friends and family can readily attest, I am so far ahead of my time. But even though I’ve been drinkin’ PBR since well before the last millenium, I’ve still got to give credit to a) My father-in-law and b) Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet. (I feel much the same way about Heiniken as he does, too.)

Apologies to anyone who came to see this blog and wasn’t even able to access the page. The server that alltooflat is located on goes down more often than Linda Lovelace writing about the Titanic on Blogspot. (That worked on so many levels. Damn, I’m good.)

Not sure how much either gentleman would appreciate being compared to the Blob and the Juggernaut, but basically you can’t go wrong with a Frank Miller interview conducted by Gary Groth. (It’ll only be up for a month or so, so now’s the time.) (This concludes Fantagraphics Suck-Up Week at Seanieblog.)

Permalinks pending. As are archives, and the ability to see more than the last handful of posts, and timestamps, and links from the other relevant parts of AllTooFlat.com, and the overall ability to view the page at will without the dumb server melting down. Master programmer Kennyb has been hindered by our fricking CONSTANT server problems, but I have faith in his handiwork. Y’hear me, baby? Hold together.

Hey, I enjoy the San Diego Comic-Con as much as the next nerd, but this –well, it made me glad I read through an issue of Spin (where I first saw it mentioned), which is saying something. Too bad it conflicts with my regularly scheduled geek activities.

My wife is awesome for many reasons, one of which is her amazing ability to get me to like good music I should have liked in the first place. Back when I was in college she labored for literally months to get me to listen to Radiohead’s OK Computer, a thankless task until I finallly heard the first notes of “Airbag” and began a three-week jag of listening to that album and that album alone 24 hours a day. More recently, she got me into Interpol after I had written them off as trendy rip-off artists (they’re neither) and Queens of the Stone Age’s Songs for the Deaf after I’d written it off as spotty and dull (it achieves what Alvy Singer might call “maximum heaviosity”).

Her latest stroke of genius is reintroducing me to Tori Amos’s latest, Scarlet’s Walk. When I was in high school I got into Tori right around the same time I got into Pantera, and for the same reason: Trent Reznor liked them both. I loved Tori’s first three albums, and still do: they’re haunting, beautiful and brutal. But she started to lose me on the producery From the Choirgirl Hotel, and she shook me entirely with the double-disc To Venus and Back (the first disc of which seemed like a fairly spectacular failure to become Bjork and the second of which, a live performance, seemed unenjoyable unless you’re part of the hermetically-sealed world of Toriphiles, aka Ears with Feet (don’t ask)). At that point, I kinda preferred to make believe that she had lost weight and recorded two great records under the name “Fiona Apple.”

But Tori’s covers album, Strange Little Girls, was a return to form: the arrangements were sparse, tense and genuinely creative, with the usual riveting guitar work by King Crimson/Bowie/NIN axeman Adrian Belew and fascinating versions of songs from “Enjoy the Silence” to “I’m Not in Love” to “Heart of Gold.” Scarlet’s Walk follows in that project’s footsteps, with tons more attention to songcraft, allowing her vocals and piano to go unsmothered by electronic noodlings. It’s a long album without a weak track in which each song serves a different and vital purpose. My favorites, “Crazy” and “Your Cloud” (as well as the wonderful single “A Sorta Fairytale”) are as different from each other as they are from every other song on the album. Much has been made of the whole “It’s Tori’s take on post-9/11 America,” but it’s Tori’s take on her own voice, instrument and relationships that make it great.

So thanks, Ferg, for doing what you usually do: pointing out all the wonderful things I overlook.

Chorus: Awwwwww.

Clearly, I lied.

In a move that surely has Tom Spurgeon spinning in his non-grave, Fantagraphics, publisher of some of the god’s-honest best comics in the whole world, has issued a plea for people to go to their website or call their number and buy their stuff. Their big graphic novel distributor has gone belly up and it’s caught up with them in a bad way. If you like comics at all, or even if you don’t (unlikely if you’re reading this blog, God knows), please go to their site, snoop around, and pitch in. (Hint: Buy Jimmy Corrigan.)

This is the first Seanieblog post! So huge!