My coverage of the Saturday events at the Daffodil Festival, for ct.com, is here.

My New Haven Advocate cover story on the Meriden Daffodil Festival is here.

My preview of the Cherry Blossom Festival for Daily Nutmeg is here.

My feature on Elm City Market for Daily Nutmeg is here.

My preview of the Powder House Days ceremony on New Haven Green is here.

My story about Never Ending Books for Daily Nutmeg is here.

My profile of James Velvet for Daily Nutmeg is here.

My recent Week in New Haven preview columns for Daily Nutmeg are here, here, and here.

Dave Kelsey of the invaluable Golden Microphone concert series posted this highly flattering photograph of me playing ukulele in the Food Tent at the Meriden Daffodil Festival last weekend. I am grateful and humbled.

I have made a lifelong habit out of missing Pulp. I was aware of the band, but not enthralled until Pulp’s Hardcore album entered my head as the featured in-flight music on one of the first big trips I made as an adult to England. I listened to the album over and over for the entire flight, then upon landing used the discount coupon Virgin had provided and bought it immediately on cassette.

I missed a chance to see Pulp live on that very trip. Later, back in the states, I missed the band consistently on its infrequent yet dogged attempts to break into the U.S. charts.

I actually held a ticket to, and attended, a star-studded benefit for Tibetan relief hosted by the Beastie Boys in Washington D.C. while I was in the nation’s capitol for a journalism convention in the late 1990s. I sat through a series of jazz and jam bands just to see a couple of Britpop acts I liked. Shortly before Pulp was to appear, lightning literally struck the stadium, jolted one concertgoer into the hospital, cracked a cement bleacher, and cancelled the rest of the show. That night, it was announced that the bands which hadn’t played would resume the show at a famous Washington rock club. I was in that very club at the time of the announcement, holding the precious ticket. Criminally, the club staff made me go outside in line rather than stay put. The line wound for several blocks, and I never got back in. Pulp played, of course.

A couple of weeks ago, Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker gave a reading of his poetry and lyrics at Yale, a few blocks from my home. I had no idea until I read about it a few days later in the Yale Daily News. The coverage is here.

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/apr/13/music-and-lyrics-with-jarvis-cocker/

Pulp reunited last year, but their only U.S. date was at the Coachella festival. Perhaps because he was in the states, Cocker’s BBC Radio 6 music show Jarvis Cocker’s Sunday Service hasn’t aired since April 1, with no upcoming episodes on the schedule. Luckily, a separate series, Jarvis Cocker’s Wireless Nights on BBC4, is available as a podcast.

Last month Jarvis Cocker mentioned that he’s writing new songs with the reunited Pulp in mind. It seems I will have many more opportunities to miss this band.

 

Still uncertain which edition of Archie Meets Kiss I need to buy—the trade paperback for a reasonable $10, of the hardcover with the bonus 30 pages of what-exactly for 20 bucks more. I am not of the Kiss Army; on the contrary, I am a charter member of the ever-growing civilian “Kiss Was Never Cool” brigade. But I do think the band is well suited to comic books, from the Marvel ones in the ‘80s to this one now.

In its original conventional comic-book form, the Archie/Kiss match-up was so popular that I missed an entire issue of the four-part series and was unable to find it anywhere. The storyline is full of missed opportunities—The Archies and Kiss are both in it, plus there’s even a panel showing Josie & The Pussycats turned into zombies, yet there’s almost no mention of music. Instead, it’s one of those far-out interplanetary adventures which don’t sit very well in the Archie universe, even with Sabrina the Teenage Witch as conduit. I would much rather have seen a battle of the bands, with “Sugar Sugar” finally getting its due as the spiritual forebear of “Christine Sixteen.”

Switched bedrooms with Mar. Best sleep I’ve had in days.

Last column, we misused the word “anachronism.” Some grammarian pals at the college on the hill corrected in such a snotty manner that their Wite-Out went up our nose.

What the spell-checkers din’t know if that we were deliberately punning on The Anachros, which was the band the Formal DeHydes descended from. So we may brandish our creative license, surely.

Guitar-wielding comedian Advanced Heel has his first-ever solo headlining set Sunday at the Bullfinch. “I’ve never headlined before, on purpose,” Heel swears. “I know how weird what I do is.” Yet one of his radio rants is catching on at college radio and he wants to be “prepared.” Heel’s not the first to test such waters at the Bullfinch. If you can stand a doule-sized set of strummed comedy, which follows an aggressive set by Size 14 Shoe, stick around, and shout catchphrases such as “And then I hated…” or “Set me loose…” or of course the fast-rising “Dial me down!”

 

Only 5 Minutes (which never is) opens for One Use at the Bullfinch tonight. Nothing funny there at all… Hamilton’s has Grape Beverage and Jerky Gift Box, European and Jamaican dance covers respectively… An Evening With Nero Kwik at D’ollaire’s. Didn’t he just have that one hit, on his only album? What the hell kind of evening is that?…

My “Spring Theater Preview” cover story for the New Haven Advocate is here.

My peek into the bean bag chair room at Rubber Match (for Daily Nutmeg) is here.

My meditation on the importance of Gag Jr.’s Corner (also for Daily Nutmeg) is here..

New Haven Theater Jerk has a bunch of new entries, plus theater calendar updates, here.

Got an email that last week that Bruce McCall was in the “Artist Spotlight” at the online New Yorker Store, which sells quality reprints of the magazine’s covers and cartoons. I’ve been a McCall fan since he helped define the National Lampoon style of detailed parodies which were conscious of the style and importance of every element of the thing being lampooned.

McCall didn’t draw funny luxury cars, he drew them in the context of car catalogues and the hopes and dreams of bygone days. His contribution to the full-bodied National Lampoon Sunday Newspaper Parody was that most essential of taken-for-granted elements, the supermarket advertising circular. McCall’s gags were extreme—the market was named SwillMart, it sold “rubber meat”—but contained within realistic trappings. He was parodying not just stupid culture stuff but the brochures, magazines, and ads which delivered them.

Now he uses New Yorker covers to spoof magazine covers. He works in traditional styles common when there were a zillion other lit/culture mags on the newsstand. You often have to study a McCall cover to get the joke—it’s not an automatic or clear realization, the way nearly all magazine covers are meant to be.

He seems to be good for four or five New Yorker covers a year. I miss his prose writing, having enjoyed his elaborate multi-page works for the Lampoon and his sensitive yet sarcastic memoir of his Canadian upbringing Thin Ice. He still writes, but is lucky to get the New Yorker’s Shouts & Murmurs slot even two or three times a year.

I know he’s older, and I see from the internet that he’s working on a children’s book and other things. But I wish the “Artist’s Spotlight” was a little broader.

In any case, the light’s shifted. This week’s “Spotlight Artist” at the New Yorker store in Charles Barsotti, a talking-dog and “little king” cartoonist without a satirical or parodic bone in his body. All hail Bruce McCall!

…from Jughead With Archie Comics Digest Magazine #69, July 1985.

Surprise!

Noise Annoys

Fair Despair

Eat Treat

Keen Scene

The Injured Party

Nap Flap

Breath Taking

View from the Pop

Wide Birth

Help Un-Wanted

Top Secret

Trap Flap

Bowl Goal

Dense Sense

Guess What’s for Lunch?

Dream Scene

Cycle Saga

Dynamite

Anything to Help

Anything She Wants

Hark Bark

Trash Flash

That Fabulous Face

Follow the Girls

Watched Watchers

In Good Hands

Well Read

Pet Parade

Food Monster

Clock Yock—or Are You Tense, Tired, All Wound Up?

Droppin’ In

Scheme Scream

No Horse Sense

All Washed Up

Impulse

Birds of a Feather

Easy Does It

Ham on Wry

Cool Rule

…and Eerie Ear

 

“View From the Pop” is a word puzzle contained within an image of Archie’s father’s head.

If you’re curious what the mystery is in the Li’l Jinx story “Guess What’s for Lunch?,” it’s that a puppy dog has been stashed in Charley Hawes’ picnic basket.

Started a letter to whatever government agency is in charge of household heating. Fell asleep writing it.

That new dollar store on Main Street, The Buck Stops Here, is good for more than chocolate covered peanut cravings. When rockabilly dfrummer Jimmy Joe Bob Buck of the Hair Straighteners had a transportation mishap—his mom drove his drums to the wrong town—he improvised by rushing to said cheap-goods emporium and loading up on flower pots, metal cans, snow saucers and anything else that would hold a beat.

His sticks were giant novelty pencils, tassels still attached.

Considering how many proper drum kits JJBB has already trashed in his short, meteoric (more like typhoonic) career, it’s amazing that most of this one survived the furious set.

When a pot could not suffice, Jimmy simply pounded the floors and walls. A soundman’s nightmare, but a rock fan’s demented dream. (Being juiced on high-chemical dollar-store soda pop definitely helped.)

Plans have already been hatched to deliberately send Mrs. Bob Buck on more wild goose chases whenever her son is gigging near a dollar store.

 

At the Bullfinch: Singer/songwriter Kera Premium, who will later sing along with mammoth college choral ensemble Sleek Luxurious… Four Bottles at Hamilton’s, which is what you’ll need to imbibe before they sound good. Kidding, guys. Three’s plenty… D’ollaries has The Formal DeHydes, garage insanity from France (or so they c’est). Best booking there in ages; a pity it’s such an anachronism for the club…