Growing Up Robin Hood

I grew up in the shadow of Robin Hood. The old 1928 Robin Hood flour mill towered over the industrial buffer between where I lived and where I went to school. Up at the top, a beacon in the foggy darkness of January mornings, the red and green Robin Hood sign was my own version of Dr. Eckleburg's eyes.
My mom held on to her childhood love of Richard Greene's TV Robin Hood. Hopefully she still does. She used to tell me about how it was one of the few places--because it was produced in Britain, I guess--where writers blacklisted in Hollywood could get work in those dark days. No doubt this contributed to a nascent image in my imagination of the Writer as Radical Hero.
--Was there a Muppet Robin Hood?--
Along with tales of TV's Robin Hood, my mom also big-upped the 1930s Errol Flynn movie. Such was the state of my childhood: TV and movies were folklore passed down in the oral tradition by elders. This is how I learned the word Swashbuckler. (My dad's preferred swashbuckler was the Scarlett Pimpernel.) Our family was friends with a family of Flynns; descended from swashbucklers, no doubt.
By the time I finally saw these live action adventures of Robin Hood, the bar had been placed impossibly high, not just by the bedtime stories my mother told, but also by repeated exposure to the high production values and rich character development of Rocket Robin Hood, seen every Saturday morning between Hercules and Spider-Man (all from the '60s) on CFQC-TV/QC8 from the time my parents finally caved and brought a (black & white) TV into our home until an geological era later when they relented and signed up for cable(our TV was colour by then), adding three American networks airing brand new cartoons to the Saturday morning mix. You have no idea the paradigm shift that led to. After years, YEARS, of the same two dozen or so episodes of Rocket Robin Hood, The Mighty Hercules and Spider-Man--along with quasi-educational interstitials like Captain Nemo of similar vintage--I could finally watch the cartoons that adorned the lunchboxes of my classmates: Thundarr the Barbarian, Blackstar, Snorkles, The Littles! Truth be told, most of these shows were awful and left little to no mark on my psyche, while here I am, waxing prosaic on the finer points of Newton the Centaur, my eyes dewy at the memory of Betty Brant's geometrically implausible coif.
Ironically, the one cartoon that did stick was even older than Rocket Robin Hood. The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour, piped in from Detroit on Channel 7, was the title bout of the Saturday morning fight card. After that it was Wide World of Sports or Detroit news or something else I was not interested in. After The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour, Saturday morning was over.
This was in contrast to the old QC8 days when the cartoon oldies block was followed by a movie of interest to a kid brain-starved by cost-conscious animation. Abbott & Costello, Pippi Longstocking, Swiss Family Robinson...the Adventures of Brian Keith in a Motorboat AKA Flipper, benign junk.
That was Saturday. Sunday had a Robin Hood of its own. That was typically the day we'd go visit my grandparents on my dad's side. Back in our pre-TV days, this was where we watched The Wonderful World of Disney and The Beachcombers (brought to you by Kraft!). At some point--after my grandparents had moved back to the city following a stint on an acreage, a stint which took pla e early enough in my life that I've always kind of considered myself part farm boy, even though I'm all city boy--when the VCR had adequately saturated Western Civ, they started playing the all-animal Disney version of Robin Hood on a constant loop at Grandpa & Grandma's. I have a lot of cousins, all of them younger than me, so there was always someone around to watch it. This is a guess, based purely on emotions, but I'd guess that movie repeated itself over and over and over from 1986 to 1991. There were pauses for Christmas specials, hockey games and Grey Cups...and I have a vague recollection of my Great-Grandfather in my grandparents living room having an opinion on the Colin Thatcher trial. But that would have to have been before the Robin Hood Era. There were also attempts at usurping Robin Hood's reign. I remember The Sword in the Stone made a valiant effort but didn't have the songs.
The songs! With Roger Miller as the troubadour rooster. Roger Miller's sublime easy listening/country soundtrack would eventually be mutilated by dancing hamsters, I shit you not.
And then there was Green Arrow.

Window Dressing

I know, I know, it's incidental. You can't judge a book based on the musical taste of its author. But I'm like, damn, how nice is it to read about detective story about a guy who can chapter-and-verse Bad Brains and Wu Tang?

Yeah, yeah, George Pelecanos name-dropped Lungfish in--which one was it? Couldn't have been King Suckerman, musta been, um, Shame The Devil?--but this is different. Dewey Decimal doesn't just happen to hear these sweet jams on the radio while casing a joint or whatever. The music matters to the plot, the character development, the book itself.

No surprise, considering the source. Nathan Larson, writer of this book I'm reading with great gusto and pleasure The Nervous System (as well as its predecessor, The Dewey Decimal System) is a stone cold musician. Used to play guitar in Shudder To Think, a band I listened to a lot in high school, currently does scores for the movies and plays in A Camp.

I've had to learn patience with the musical tastes of writers of detective stories. I threw my copy of G.M. Ford's otherwise excellent Fury across the room when the male and female leads canoodled to the tortuous strains of that horrible Santana, featuring Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20 song. I had mellowed by the time I got to my hero Paco Ignacio Taibo II's Santana obsessing in Leonardo's Bicycle. I even checked out some Santana, and though I'm still no Santana fan, I can dig it.
And, y'know, for all that I worshipped and emulated the writing style of Richard Meltzer during my rock crit salad days, I almost never liked the music he liked, or said he liked. So there's that.

Movie Time!

A list of movies I'm certain I saw in theatres up to around age 20. I'm not including movies I saw as matinees at the Broadway Theatre, because they were somehow more informal, though often better movies. Same goes for drive-ins. Same goes for the second-run theatre in downtown Saskatoon in the early 90s, the Paradise? In approximate chronological order:

The Rescuers
Fantasia
Bambi
Cinderella
Return of the Jedi (twice)
A Fine Mess
Mannequin
Moon Over Parador
Cadillac Man
Bird on a Wire
Air America
Batman
Thelma & Louise
Regarding Henry
Three Men and a Little Lady
Lionheart
Paper Mask
L.A. Story
Last of the Mohicans
Night and the City
Blade Runner
The Good Son
Dumb and Dumber
Pulp Fiction (twice--maybe three times)
Seven (or is it Se7en?)
Broken Arrow (twice)
Nelly et Monsieur Arnaud
Mission: Impossible
The Man Who Knew Too Little

Check, 1, 2...this thing on?

Ahem.
Just clearing my throat, here. Seeing if this thing still works.
They've changed the layout since I was last here, but you probably can't see that. It probably still looks like the shirt of a dude on the cover of a Louis L'Amour paperback, right? That's what I'm going for. That's what I was going for.
Honestly? Don't know what I'm going for now. We'll see.
Just figured I dust this thing off, and start up again, just to do it, just to put my hands in motion.
I've been busy. Yes, I have. If you wanna catch up, start at the top HERE and work your way back. Then, dig what I've been reading HERE. Some scattered musical mutterings HERE. I was blogging HERE for most of 2011 and did some good work, occasionally.
I've got a couple of big things on the go--and a couple of small things, too, I guess. But, um, the more I write, the more I write. So watch this space.

For Column

Simenon Peppard Vanier Vancouver Orwell Benson Chief Dan Seurat Braque Harrison Bernard Shaw Costanza Pelecanos Takei Burns Plimpton Herriman Bowering Carlin Gershwin Jones Moroder Romero Bailey Christopher Reeves Lowell Gorgeous

The way we look to us all

It was a slow day, and the sun was beating on the soldiers by the side of the road...

These are the days of tantrums and meltdowns, this is the terrible twos.

It's time to leave the park, but she doesn't want to go. It's nearly lunchtime and I still need to pick up some groceries before we settle in at home for the afternoon nap. There was an issue with an older girl who was grabby with the toys in the sandbox which led to a struggle over a shovel.

"Okay, it's time to go," I pick my daughter up and she screams. I carry her over to the stroller and explain that we have to go to the grocery store (a trip she usually likes) and then go eat lunch.

"No! I don't want to!"

We fuss with the stroller, but she twists and writhes. I throw her over my shoulder and push the stroller awkwardly with one hand. I abandon the shopping without a second thought and starttoward the northeast corner of the park, toward our place. She continues to flail and scream. Every few yards she wrestles free enough to start sliding down, so I have to stop, set her down, chase her, throw her back over my shoulder. It's awkward enough in front of the other kids and parents. But we have to go past the congregation of smokehounds and boozers who've claimed the corner of the park nearest our street.

For the most part, these people keep their distance from the playground. We've probably been to the park hundreds of times, and I can count the altercationsbetween the two solitudes that I've seen or been part of on one hand. Three of those have been me asking them to burn their reefer a bit further from the sandbox, and they've always been accommodating. When my daughter was smaller, she used to blow kisses to the people sharing a bottle on the east side benches (she blew kisses to everyone for a few weeks the spring she was 1). People are people, it's a public park, and I don't begrudge them their mostly out-of-the-way spot to spend the day.

I see a couple of dudes hanging at the bench along the path, smoking, yakking on their phones. Whatever. I hold on tight and try to get past them as quickly as possible. My daughter is still screaming, still thrashing.

Beyond pushing forward, I don't react. There's no point. She's lost in her fit and won't hear me anyway. It's embarrassing in front of the other parents and humiliating in front of people without kids. I know what they're thinking, I used to think it too. My face is hot and throbbing. I'm tired and cranky too, I whisper in her ear. Let's just get home and it will be okay.

We get to the edge of the park. I set her down for a second to get my bearings before we approach the crosswalk. It's a busy enough street and sometimes we have to wait a while for any cars to let us pass. I'm having a hard time negotiating the stroller and the howler. She howls and slaps at me. "Enough!"

She stops to catch her breath before launching into another howl and in the eerie, eye-of-the-storm calm I hear: "Why don't you get your brat out of here!"

I throw my daughter over one shoulder and turn my head over the other, finally given an outlet for the burning shame and frustration. "Why don't you go fuck yourself!"

I'm immediately aware of what I've just done. I had been embarrassed by my daughter's behaviour, but now I'm ashamed of myself. A woman on the other side of the crosswalk is looking at me. As we cross, she smiles sympathetically. I carry my daughter up the hill to finish her tantrum behind closed doors.

A day later, I'm picking at the florist on my way home from work. My daughter's not the only one in our family who can be unreasonable and awful to be around at times. I don't even know what I get, African Violets, maybe. A small, colourful arrangement. I take them to the counter to pay for them, and there's the woman from the crosswalk.

It's a big city, but a small neighbourhood. Especially when you spend most of your time in the company of young children. She must recognize me. I don't know, maybe she doesn't. Maybe when people see me out with my daughter, they remember her more than me. I'm like that with my neighbour. He's introduced himself at least twice, but I have no idea what his name is. His dog, on the hand, I know her name and I know her age. He seems like a really nice guy and I'm too sheepish to ask his name again, even though remembering his dog's name but not his is a totally sympathetic and possibly endearing thing. I've had that conversation in my head every single time he says "Hi, Emmet" when I pass him on the street.

The florist must know, as all florists can't help but know, that men don't buy flowers in August because they're proud of themselves. She must know that I've said something shitty to my wife and that I'm putting in some, however token, however clichéd, effort to say, "hey, I'm not completely self-centered." She must think I'm a horrible person.

Maybe it's time to move.

Since Nobody Asked...

Part of what's exhausted me on most of the DC books that I once enjoyed so much is that they've all become so self-reflexive & insular. Their subtext, if they have any, is themselves. One of the last Teen Titans books I read (circa Infinite Crisis) involved a literal Revolving Door of Death! And of course, Watchmen and DKR were loaded commentaries on superhero comics (as is Grant Morrison's Batman saga), but they also had loads to say about REAL LIFE! Especially Cold War paranoia, the gift that kept on giving--superheroes as nuclear proliferation; Frank Miller had Sovietstate-sponsored Superman vs. quintessentially American capitalist rugged individualist Batman; Alan Moore gave us Dan Dreiberg's dithering liberalism and Adrien Veidt's aggressive interventionism on the left vs. the obviously psychopathic rightwing vigilantes Rorschach and the Comedian. These were comics about comics, yes, but they also spoke to world in which they were created.DC recently announced that in September, they will be relaunching all of their superhero titles from issue #1 with fresh, younger takes on all of their characters. I've suspected this was coming since just before 2005's Infinite Crisis, when DC started really ripping into its own past and undermining much of the history that gave its ongoing stories such fantastic emotional weight. Dead sidekicks were resurrected, unknowable secrests were revealed, Batman started wearing a yellow oval around his chest insignia again, a lot of stuff was just clean foolish.
But there was a clear attempt being made to clear out the cobwebs of history. At the respective ends of both Infinite Crisis and 2008's Final Crisis (echoing the events of 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths) the DC Universe was remade with mostly cosmetic changes. After Infinite Crisis, for example, it was revealed that the people of Superman's home planet Krypton had dressed in white flowing robes rather than the red tunics we saw them wearing in 1986. I'm actually not sure if there were any retroactive changes following Final Crisis. I don't think most of the people who write DC Comics even read that one.
And then there was the bizarre All Star line of comics. They sold like gangbusters and they were loaded with novel meditations on the Superhero's place in the modern world. But they were fraught with production issues, and DC didn't even try to spin the excitement over them into anything else.
Anyway, they've been tinkering around with the idea of of starting over for at least six years, and they're finally doing it. Sort of.
The information they've released about the new comics indicates that the continuity of their two best-selling lines of superhero comics, the Batman and Green Lantern titles, will remain fairly undisturbed. And I'm like, OH REALLY?
Because if you're going to go to the extreme of restarting Action Comics, the single most important comic book series in the history of comic books, from #1, but you're not actually starting at the beginning of the story of the DC Universe, that's pretty much total bullshit. Basically, it's the same thing DC did following Crisis on Infinite Earths 25 years ago. Some things (Superman, Wonder Woman) were totally different, some things (Green Lantern, the Flash) simply carried on. Some, like Batman, were a hodgepodge of new and old.
Here's how I would do a DC relaunch.
Start with just two titles, Action and Detective, and keep them fairly true to their historical significance. Superman first appeared in Action Comics #1, and that's where the story of superheroes should begin: The first public appearance of Superman in Action Comics #1. That's the Big Bang moment for your brand new fictional universe. Superman emerges, world in awe. After the first storyline is complete, you can launch Superman #1.

Batman is slightly more problematic. He didn't show up until the 27th issue of Detective Comics. So you launch Detective, but keep it Batman-free until #27. That gives you just over two years to build up Batman's mythos. Open the first issue as Batman: Year One opened, with Bruce Wayne returning to Gotham after his years abroad spent training to fight crime. Let him have costumeless adventures, let him fail and learn and grow into the Dark Knight. Give him 26 issues to figure it out. And then, on the last page of issue #26, let the bat fly through his window, ushering in his destiny. Think of the excitement you'd create by withholding Batman's first appearance. Comic fans would go nuts. Or you could even put Detective out weekly, if you don't want to wait two long years to sell Batman comics. Make it an anthology, showcase the street-level characters that will populate the new DC Universe.

Heck, make both Action and Detective weekly anthologies for their first two years, showcasing the flashy sci-fi heroes (Adam Strange, Green Lantern, etc.) in the former and the gritty urban heroes (the Question, Black Canary, etc.) in the latter. Have those be the only regular DC superhero comics on the shelves for at least the first year. That's a real commitment to your fresh start.

I, frankly, have no idea what to do with Wonder Woman. The tried and true method of bringing the character back to its roots that's worked so well for her male counterparts is problematic because, well, her roots are problematic.

Obviously, DC didn't ask me and they're going their own way on this. From what I've seen, I'm not hopeful. But I haven't really been following DC comics that closely the last three years anyway. Grant Morrison's Action Comics looks promising, especially since in his excellent and chatty new book Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human he repeatedly refers to early Superman as a socialist, and I can't wait to see how that plays out. Everything else, though, I don't know, not my thing.