Bossypants
By Tina Fey (Reagan Arthur Books, 2011)

I’m not the biggest Tina Fey fan. I feel respect, admiration, but also the frustration that, as SNL newsreader, Mean Girls screenplaywright and 30 Rock creator, she’s settled for too many easy laughs and obvious set-ups. I guess you could say that about this book too, since it’s in the conventional memoir format, without any of the envelope-pushing provocations of, say, Sarah Silverman or Dave Eggers.
Yet despite its shortcomings, I had to stop reading this book in bed because I was giggling and chortling so frequently that my wife couldn’t get to sleep. The wisecracks disarm you here in a way they don’t in Fey’s other comedy media. She’s also much more endearing here than I’ve found her to be in her movie or TV projects. The chapter in which she exalts her father while attempting to analyze and justify some of his conservative and un-PC impulses, is not just well-crafted but crafty. The book could easily have been a knock-off, the obligatory literary stage in a mutli-pronged celebrity career. Instead, it’s so moving and mirthful it knocks you for a loop.

The Taw Rats were “The Taw Rats (featuring Joe Smith)” for so long that, when Joe Smith stopped being featured, they didn’t quite know what to do. So they did nothing for a well. It wasn’t as if it was false advertising. But one former admirer of the band in particular got upset anyway: Joe Smith.
Smith, as we overheard the other night from an adjoining table at the Bullfinch, wants the Taw Rats to change their whole name.
“What if we just find someone else to feature?” was one hilarious burst of words the erstwhile bandmates got to fit in edgewise during Smith’s rant. Which led to an outpouring from the once-permanent “guest guitarist” about how crucial he was to the band.
We’re already gathering evidence to the contrary: Smith wrote none of the Taw Rats’ (few) original songs, rarely rehearsed with them, and did none of the businessy things like booking them or sticking their fliers on phone poles.
The rest of the arguments will be fought in public. Expect The Joe Smith Band (featuring Joe Smith) at a pub near you. Not to mention the newly formed Not Featuring Joe Smith Band (formerly The Taw Rats).

Why does Gar always seem to have so much money? He says it’s something to do with taxes.

Neon Indian, Heart: Decay
Winding dance music about decay seems like it’s everywhere. Based on this short burst from a forthcoming album, this one’s distinguished by a misintuitive mix that places certain beats and airy noises much further up front than you expect. But it’s still mood than substance.

I got me this neat Deadman badge from Midtown Comics in Manhattan last month. Put it on the bowler hat, rare honor for a badge.

I would’ve been a charter member of the Deadman fan club if they’d ever had one. I was there with mourning-bells on when the character first appeared, rendered by Carmine Infantino and then by Neal Adams, in Strange Adventures Comics. I was six years old, but the Comics Code Authority was on the case, making sure that kids could not possibly be creeped out by the adventures of a brutally murdered ill-tempered circus aerialist who could swoop into the bodies of living people and take over their souls quicker than he could say “Boo!”

Deadman is now a revered cult hero, hardly the first dead comics hero (that would be The Spectre, a quarter-century earlier) but among the hardiest. Back then, there were no “cult” heroes, only poor-selling ones. Nobody at the schoolyard cared whether you read Deadman. It was something uncool you kept to yourself. Ditto Len Wein & Bernie Wrightson’s Swamp Thing and E. Nelson Bridwell & Joe Orlando’s Inferior Five and Bridwell & Bob Oksner’s Angel and the Ape.

Deadman rated a National Lampoon parody (in which villains are stopped by a plummeting lifeless corpse), drawn by Neal Adams himself. Dave Bullock revived (resurrected? Reburied?) for the cool Wednesday Comics miniseries a couple of years back. Neil Gaiman used him for the supernatural superhero miniseries The Books of Magic. Deadman’s got staying power, which I guess in his line you call immortality.

But mostly the cool DC characters of this ilk are used to remind us that DC operates an entire universe and not just a stock ensemble company that wears nothing but “S” insigniae or batcowls.

Every time there’s a cataclysmic worlds-changing event in comicsdom, that’s when the minor stars get trotted out, usually unrecognizable except for their costumes. The grief-stricked Elongated Man of Identity Crisis. The uncharacteristically subtle Swamp Thing of Brightest Day Aftermath. The suddenly overbearing Oracle once Batman died. And now—for Flashpoint, a multi-comic reinvents the origins and working relationships of dozens of DC mainstays—a Deadman who isn’t even dead yet and already has a too-fast-to-live attitude.

The supposed cleverness in this reworking is sheer obviousness. Boston Brand, destined to be Deadman, is a circus acrobat. Hey—so were the Graysons, the trapeze-grabbing clan which begat Batman’s sidekick Robin (aka Nightwing, aka Batman).

On the other hand, the cover of the first issue of the three-issue Deadman Flashpoint series is pretty cool—circus postery, with nice use of white space.

And they gave me a Deadman badge about it. Something I’ve been waiting for all my, uh, life.

Tweens sneak into the 18+ side of Hamilton’s from time to time, sure, but one of the diehards who would most benefit from a spot at the front of the stage on All-Ages Nites won’t get the chance. Because everybody, absolutely everybody, knows he’s just 16.
They call him Word List.
Word List’s dad is keen to get his progeny into the nearest big-deal university (maybe even the college on the hill, but we suspect WLD is shooting even higher). The boy’s been prescribed a steady diet of vocabulary exercises, so as to up his SAT scores when the time comes.
But what Word List really wants to do is rock.
When a hot local band beckons, the wordbound youth attempts an escape. Pretends to be studying in his room or (while he could still get away with that charade) the library, then hops a bus from the suburbs.
Unfortunately for him, the direction in which he flees is all too clear. Blame our tight-knit, three-club music scene. The boy can barely settle into a seat at the juice bar before you hear a booming voice yelling his name. This wild call of the wounded Word List Dad can cut through the din of the most punkiest band. (Guess we ought to consult a few word lists ourself, huh?) The cringing child sloughs off home to receive his punishment.
Some of us in the scene have experienced this awkward encounter so many times that we’ve flat-out asked Word List why he still bothers.
“This is where it matters,” he says, and he says it again. “This is where it matters.”
Nice choice of words.

Spent all my money (after rent) on music. Couldn’t help myself.

Kids on a Crime Spree, We Love You So Bad
If Buddy Holly had lived, he would’ve gone to college (Jean-Paul Sartre 2), darkened his mood (“I Don’t Want to Call You Baby, Baby”) and continued to mess around in the studio (“Trumpets of Death”). But however fuzzy and musty he’d get, he’d still be chirpy and winsome.

Dentist yesterday. I’d broken my “flipper” (fake front tooth) and needed a new one.
It’s a curious procedure. The dentist and assistants rush into the room with a warm wad of bright yellow putty, freshly boiled, and shove it into your mouth before it has time to cool. Then they stick a horseshoe-shaped mold in there and urge you “Don’t bite down!”
I was picking yellow guck out of my teeth for hours. Brought up memories of eating playdough as a child.
But the real image I carry away from the experience is of dentists rushing around. The whole dental appointment thing is usually so sedentary—someone dressed austerely in white painstakingly picking at your mouth, having a leisurely one-sided conversation.
This, on the other hand, was like some weird new sport, like they’d have on some embarrassing TV competition. How fast can you fill the mouth with yellow goo?
The tooth fairy is mortified.

Billy coffee wants to be a pop star so he can live his dream—of owning a chain of coffee shops.
“All I need is one hit record,” he explains. “I would know exactly how to invest that money,” says the idealistic caffeinator. It sounds like a chemical high, but Billy (who’s not to be confused with Jimmy Bean, another local barista with pop star dreams) has it all mapped out. Coffeeshops figure in every step of the process.
“You record live at the shop during open mics,” he proposes, “or after hours, when it’s quiet. You sell the music through a network of shops.
“And you drink lattes while listening.”
The sticking point (besides the spilled sugar on the countertops) is finding music which will enthrall the average coffeeshop patron. “No problem,” Billy says. “It’s world jazz. World jazz is like Columbian beans—the great common denominator.”
Asked to name three worthwhile world jazz acts in our area that he can exploit, Billy pauses… then offers us a cup of coffee on the house.

Strangely quiet out there tonight. A no-name open mic at the Bullfinch, a private party at Hamilton’s and—whoa!—great thundering metal rampage at D’Ollaire’s with Edmontosaurus, Monoclonius and Chasmo…