The Register had a heartwarming story yesterday about Dr. Mel. The longtime Channel 8 weatherman had been in hospice with life-threatening pneumonia but has apparently perked up enough to go home again.

Reading this, my mind flashed for a second to the Washington D.C. humorist, who was in hospice for five months, and wrote his last book, Too Soon to Say Goodbye, while he was there.

But as the story (by stalwart Register reporter Ed Stannard) explained, hospices aren’t just for the terminally ill but for certain types of emergency care. Dr. Mel has lived for years with multiple myeloma, a

In any case, Dr. Mel has been happily cheating death for years now. I interviewed him several times after he won awards in the New Haven Advocate’s Best of New Haven readers’ polls. He told me that every time he outlived the time he’d been told he had left to live, he held a party.

Dr. Mel’s gifts to the study of meteorology have been massive. Managing his finances so that he could live on what he made from teaching, he used the money from his many media opportunities (Channel 8, numerous radio stations, a longrunning column in the Hartford Courant back when it had a Sunday magazine) to create opportunities for others to study weather forecasting. He built up the state’s only bachelor’s degree program in metereology (at Western Connecticut State University). He wrote the bestselling Complete Idiot’s Guide to Weather.

Mostly, he just made forecasting seem fun and sensible and not like rocket science.

Every time I’ve ever run into Dr. Mel—on the street, at the old Pilot Pen tennis tournament (where he was treated like a god on earth for his weather-predicting abilities), in the Advocate offices for those Best Of awards–he’s been effortlessly affable. Down to earth, not head-in-the-clouds.

Dr. Mel retired from teaching last year, and from broadcasting a couple of months ago. Here’s to him kicking up his heels and resting around the house for many cold, warm, partly sunny and other days to come.

1. “Barney Google,” by Billy Rose and Con Conrad. A massive hit tune in the 1920s, but the Barney Google comic strip was even bigger. Why Mr. Google (with the goo-goo-googly eyes) was pushed from the still-running strip in favor of hillbilly Snuffy Smith is beyond me. The reprints of old Barney Google strips currently appearing on the Daily Ink cartoon site show the beginning the end, with Snuffy and his son Jughaid beginning to dominate Barney’s realm.
But Snuffy Smith has never had a hit song. There was even a sequel to the Barney Google tune, “Come on Spark Plug.”

2. An 1885 poem by James Whitcomb Riley, “Little Orphant Annie,” inspired the name of the character in Harold Gray’s comic strip, which is turn led to a popular song with a foxtrot beat which used the creepy Riley poem for lyrics. The Annie strip endured until just last year, and would have died much sooner if not for the success of the Broadway musical Annie, which is of course what comes up if you Google “Little Ophan Annie song” these days.

3. “Skippy,” Percy L. Crosby’s enlightened scamp, had a song named for his in 1931, just a few years after the character debuted. Poetic and realistic and philosophical and messy-kid funny, Skippy’s is unsung today, but was one of the biggest strips of its time, and an influence on every kid-based strip which followed it.

4. “The Funnies” by Irving Berlin:
Sunday is Sunday to my family
But Sunday is not simply Sunday for me
For Sunday’s the one day when I love to see the funnies
Breakfast is nothing of which you can boast
But breakfast to me isn’t coffee and toast
It’s coffee and toast and what I love the most, the funnies

Oh, I love the funnies
I couldn’t go without the funnies
A cup o’ coffee to my lips and in between the sips
The papers with the capers that are in the comic strips
Which means I’m simply mad about
I mean I couldn’t do without the funnies

Oh, in my pajamas
I love to read the “Katzenjammers”
A little coffee in a cup and “Bringing Father Up”
I’m dippy over “Skippy” and his little yellow pup
Which means I’m simply mad about
I mean I couldn’t do without the funnies

I’m not concerned with the news of the day
The stories of who murdered who
And for the columns what they have to say
I have no need of
I don’t want to read of

The guys and all their honeys
The wealthy daughters or the sonnies
The news about the lovely trips that people take in ships
I’d rather read about the people in the comic strips
Which means I’m simply mad about
I mean I couldn’t do without the funnies

5. “I’m the Guy”: “ravings by Rube Goldberg” and “Bert Grant” (1912). The song on this list which is truest to its origins, since the panel cartoon’s creator Rube Goldberg wrote the lyrics. “I’m the Guy”’ is a framework that allows for a multitude of jokes, and works on many levels. There’s the concept of cockiness, taking credit for grand jobs one doesn’t do (“I’m the guy who put the salt in the ocean”). There’s the absurd aspect (“I’m the guy who puts the holes in doughnuts”). There’s the all-things-in their place sense of order (“I’m the guy who puts the humps on camels”). In the strip (and on the popular cigarette-pin series it spawned), these proclamations of identity are parceled out one at a time, and ascribed to many different characters. In the song, it’s a long bout of braggadocio encompassing three verses and dozens of alleged accomplishments.

How do you shatter a spotlight at Hamilton’s? Smash a guitar during a jam on “Stinky Cheese” and let a tuning peg fly skywards.
The Sloom were so involved in the denouement of their psychedelic improvisation that that were blissfully unaware of the damage they’d caused until it was after closing time and their payment was withheld. Up to then, the band thought the club had simply switched off the spot to quell their overzealous musical uprising. But they’d unknowingly fired the first shot themselves.
The battle continues—the club says the band can play free for another half-dozen shows to cover the expense of a new spot, or pay it back some other way. Sloom is panicky, consulting anybody who’ll listen and hoping to forestall a legal jam which may match “Stinky Cheese” for complexity and annoyance.

Hydro Medusa and Style Mys back at the Bullfinch… The The Bonewars and Gal Sweet Tea, insipid jams, at Hamilton’s… Blue Braidings and Chondro, Stay! at D’ollaires… World music nite at a dining hall in the college on the hill with Nebra Scensis, Cross Opterygii and Dipnoi. Free hummus and seafood…

I think I am the only college student in town. I suddenly have three jobs.

Lyonnais, Want for Wish for Nowhere. A knock-out blend of sluggish New Romantic waifishness and blaring industrial noise. Goes much farther than you expect, so keep your finger on the headphone volume control. On the opener “Transitive Properties of Youth,” the din which grows from an intimate classically tinged intro sticks around long enough to take several different forms, from minimalist to glam. The shortest cut, “A Sign From on High” at 1:56, sounds like a netherworld orchestra tuning up, and leads into the distant and intently deadening “Modern Cavalry.” The techno beats unfurl for the album closer “Dusted at Mount Sinai,” becoming a military or tribal stomp rather than the expected dance tune. The shocks and surprises are constant. I imagine that if the legendary 1970s collaboration between Tony Conrad and Faust had concentrates on melodies and jams rather than drones, it might have turned out something like this.

Swamp Thing #1-4, by Scott Snyder (writer), Marco Rudy (penciller/inker), Sean Parsons and Michael Lacombe (inkers). DC Comics, 2011.
Deadman #1-4, by Paul Jenkins (writer) and Bernard Chang (artists). DC Comics, 2011.

I’ve noted this before, when the DC “52” universal-overhaul gimmick first hit: As happy as I am that a couple of personal fave superheroes—Swamp Thing and Deadman (now what does THAT say about me?)—have been given their own books again, I really wish that the new adventures would be more like the character’s original ones, especially in structure. What once were self-contained spooky tales with clear moralistic endings are now ongoing odysseys of existential awareness and revelation.
Yes, the independent-adventures models can lead to simplicity and repetition, but I find the open-ended manner much more lethal in terms of lazy writing. Lots of ongoing dialogue about finding oneself and gearing up for battles which, in a short-form story, would happen by the 15th page, not the fourth full-length issue.
And yet… I’ve stuck with both books, and enjoy them for their own special reasons. Swamp Thing may be consciously trying to return to the character’s mind-expanding Alan Moore era, but it has also (so far) scaled down the supporting cast, and is making an effort to maintain the series’ roots as a horror book and not just the social-satire ecological parable it became. Also, Swamp Thing’s mortal model, scientist Alec Holland, is distinct from the creature he became. As he puts it, “Here’s the last month of my life. I wake up naked in a swamp, back from the dead. I learn that, while I was gone, a vegetable copy of me was running around, battling monsters for years.”
As for Deadman, his given fate of inhabiting bodies of people in crisis always meant his own character (real name Boston Brand) was underdeveloped. What he did have was a permanent pissy attitude, an impatience at being thrust into adventure after adventure against his will, in service to the quirky whims of the goddess Rama. In Paul Jenkins’ hands, Deadman keeps his petulant gloom, impatient even while the mysteries of the universe are being explained to him.

Other than a few stray flakes I noticed on an otherwise unprecipitative day last week—could have been volcanic ash, or dandruff, I suppose—we haven’t had snow on the ground in New Haven since the Saturday before Halloween. There’s hope we won’t be cashing in snow days as blithely this winter. The city’s saved on plowing. But I’ve got two daughters who were perplexed at the utter lack of a white Christmas, particularly when rain and below-freezing temperatures seemed to come on alternate days for half of December and never meet.
This week, we’re told, will be “mostly sunny’ by day and “mostly cloudly” by night, with “rain likely” on Thursday. In the bleak midwinter.

Found a six-year-old list of “Top Ten Superman Songs” here, and while several of its entries were enlightening, I was surprised at how many key Supes songs it didn’t mention. Here, then, are ten more:

The Kinks, “(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman.” From the last great Kinks album, Low Budget. Of course, because of the time it came out (1979), there was a crappy endless disco remix to contend with.

Gruppo Sportivo, “Superman.” This is the Dutch New Wave band which satirically spun the then-ubiquitous Claptonization of Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff” into “I Shot My Manager.” Their “Superman” is about vulnerability in incipient love relationships, and endearingly stutters out the hero’s name.

Five for Fighting, “Superman (It’s Not Easy to Be Me).” Sure, this band/person represents a certain brand of limp VH-1 self-flagellation which screwed mainstream pop for several years in the mid-‘90s. But I thought FfF did it better and more earnestly than the others. (Also absolved: Ed Harcourt).

Soulja Boi, “Crank That”:
Soulja Boy up in da ho’
Watch me lean and watch me ro’
Superman dat hoe then watch me crank that Robocop
Super fresh, now watch me jock,
Jockin’ on them hatas.

It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s Superman Original Broadway soundrack, “You’ve Got Possibilities.” Super-catchy Charles Strouse/Lee Adams song from the 1966 musical.

Donovan, “Mellow Yellow”: “Oh, Superman or Green Lantern/Ain’t got nothing on me.”

Aaron Tippin, “Honky Tony Superman. The video is a big comedy spectacular featuring George Lindsay, the guy who played Goober on Mayberry RFD. There’s a whole “Jailhouse Rock” dance for no apparent reason.

Dio, “Sunset Superman.” From the Dream Evil album, 1987. Classical intro. Then the screaming begins. There’s a lyrical reference to Cornell Woolrich noir mystery The Night Has a Thousand Eyes.

Marius Muller-Westernhagen, “Superman.” “Superman ist tot,” the German light-pop guy singes. A big One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest comedy vibe on the video:

The Clique, “Superman.” That ign.com list noted above mentions the REM cover of this song, but it can’t hold a lump of kryptonite to the 1969 original with its staggered vocal slurs and disorientingly changing rhythms.

The Rockin’ Robbers flaunted the avocation that’s right in their name. The band’s bassist is being held on 17 counts of breaking and entering, concerning a rash of computer thefts at the college on the hill.
Recent RR gigs, we’re told, have featured elaborate computerized backing tracks. Singer Rob insists the band name came from a combination of his name and that of original drummer Bert Baczynski. Rockin’ Rob’s appalled at the insinuation that ill-gotten gains infused their new electronic elements. He offered to produce a receipt for the computer the band recorded with, then demurred. “I’m not getting involved in this,” he said.
The Robber(t)s are interviewing new bassists.

Wolf Spiders at the Bullfinch, with Chelicerae… Jingle Shell and Orb Weavers at Hamilton’s… Modern goth-blues nite with Long Jaw Huntsman, Dragline and Damselfly at D’ollaire’s…

Since I’m stuck in town, decided to go to work. They were surprised to see me.