Tag Archives: metaheadcanon

King Mob in Philadelphia

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An accounting of GM Magic


I met Grant Morrison briefly at a signing in Philadelphia in 2002.  I was 21, hungover, sleep deprived, and rather well in tune w/ the dune (Stoned). (This being the day after the first Punk Rock Prom on Madison Drive.) I’d brought a small collection of my comix to show them, which I clutched nervously.

Through the fog I was trying to think of ways to communicate quickly and clearly that I was hip to real arcane shit. My skepticism about the explanatory power of a few short words, esp. in matters zen, led me to briefly entertain the harebrained notion that the body language of a hearty *THUMBS UP* might somehow be the ticket.  As the line shuffled forward I decided the more practical approach would be to ask them if they read Robert Anton Wilson.

Along my way to the front of the line my shyness and introversion also changed my mind about showing them my comix.  Which suddenly seemed like a stupid and embarrassing thing to do.

Frank Quietly was at the signing too, parked right next to GM.  I got to him first and gave him a copy of Earth 2 to sign. While exchanging pleasantries w/ FQ I heard someone say, “Did you make these?”

I look over and Grant Morrison is happily flipping through the comix I had decided not to give them!

Mind you, I was in a few altered states at the time, but my genuine experience was/is of having no clue when/how they got those comix.

They were indeed a reader of Robert Anton Wilson, succinct encouragement for my work was offered, they signed my copy of Animal Man #26, and off I went.

Though just as I was stumbling away I heard a booming voice call “Oi!”

I turn around and GM is beaming a huge grin and pointing at the hand lettered title block on one of the comix I gave them:

“SUBURBAN LEGEND COMIX: Sort of like Alan Moore before he stopped selling drugs and read all them books”

Thence they gave me an enthusiastic *THUMBS UP*

A few months later GM opened up a short lived website for their new creator owned work, wherein I had a cringe inducing fan letter published, with the following generous response from Morrison, reproduced here in its original glowing red :)))

YOU AND YOUR KIND ARE THE ONLY THING THAT KEEPS ME SLOSHING FORWARD THROUGH THE SILT OF TIME.

THERE’S ONLY ONE GENERATION. I’M GLAD TO SEE THAT IT NEVER DIES

SIGNAL/STATIC

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Though the VCR and accompanying VHS library were excellent tools for exploring ideaspace, live TV was my constant companion.

10 or so channels of broadcast signals, permeating the skies, dialed in through the static of a temperamental TV antennae.

It was definitely an imperfect connection to the global village, but there was a certain charm in trying to adjust the rabbit ears to catch just enough of the transmission to see the show. Unwound wire coat hangers adorned with tin foil, bent this way and that, until some random and arbitrary arrangement magically tuned in the desperately sought signal.

For bonus points this was often done on black & white TV sets, because though color TVs had been around for 2 decades already, those more expensive sets were usually reserved for adult spaces, and most other TVs I’d encounter as a kid were ancient, tiny, and lacking in color.

Then came one day the cable!

Video Home Systems

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A point of pride in my youth was figuring out how to program the VCR, which basically just meant scheduling when, what channel, and for how long the VCR would record. An unimpressive capability by current standards, but for a 7 year old in 1987, what wanted to watch late night hockey games, it was pretty neat. Hyperbolically marveling at the complexity of VCR programming was a staple of 80’s sitcoms and stand up comedy, and I very much enjoyed having a one up over the adults, no matter how arbitrary.

Though I wouldn’t unlock the true power of the videocassette recorder for a couple more years, when I stumbled upon the magic of AV inputs & outputs.

In addition to the VCR we also had a Camcorder, which was itself itself a miraculous gizmo, and while I had fun enough making terrible home movies, there was something even better that it could do…

The Camcorder recorded onto these small tapes, VHS-Cs, which couldn’t fit in the VCR. So if I wanted to watch something recorded by the Camcorder I’d have to use these yellow, red, and white tipped cables to connect the Camcorder’s output ports to the VCR’s input ports, at which point the signal would go from the Camcorder to the VCR to the TV. Even as a live feed, with the obligatory recursive feedback loops, But then! I noticed the Camcorder also had input ports and the VCR also had output ports, which gave me a crazy idea…

So let’s say, hypothetically speaking, I rented Batman (1989) from the local video store, and I put the VHS in the VCR, with the AV cables connected so the signal was going out from the VCR and into the Camcorder, and I pressed play on the VCR and record on the Camcorder, could I make my own copy of Batman?

My grand experiment. Too good to be true though, right?

Imagine my delight when this great work was accomplished!

It was a 2 step process whereby I had to record from the original VHS to a VHS-C and then back to a blank VHS.

I began earnestly and diligently archiving the sacred culture of my people on super long play magnetic tape. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Wrestlemania VI, The Great Outdoors, Robocop, everything that was good and awesome in my world went into the collection. My bootleg akashic records. Information do want to be free though :)))

The Same Roturns

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I’m a little bit too old to be a digital native, the media sphere of my youth was comprised of an electric meshnet of cable TV, the VCR, and a camcorder. With these now primitive tools I cobbled together my analog worldview.

One of my earliest memories, around the age of 3, is an obsession with the rewind button on the VCR. I had a VHS recording of the Looney Tunes short film “Duck Amuck” that I would obsessively watch over and over again. In the cartoon Daffy Duck gets into an argument with his animator, which escalates into a surreal metafictional hullabaloo. As soon as the story reached it’s epic conclusion, with a long press of a button, I’d return again to the beginning. An interactive, non-linear, medium aware, story circle, repeating again and again and again, until! I broke the RWD button. One of the first times I remember ever really getting into trouble as a kid.

Broken RWD buttons were epidemic in early 80’s VCRs, resulting in the proliferation of a separate device made just for rewinding VHS cassettes. Ours looked like a red sports car. It’s little engine roared as it rewound tapes back to their beginnings at incredible speed. VHS tape rewinding etiquette may eventually come to the attention of future anthropologists, wondering about the cultural significance of the ancient aphorism “Be Kind, Rewind.”