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Saying Michael Jackson isn't culturally relevant seems as silly as claiming Elvis or the Beatles or Bob Dylan aren't culturally significant. Yet two weeks after his death, it still seems to be hip among my friends and the interweb to poo-poo Michael Jackson's cultural relevance. I think that stance was difficult to uphold in the days after he died (especially considering he basically broke the internet in the hours immediately after the announcement of his passing), and has not gotten any easier since. Perhaps Jackson hasn't been musically relevant in a good 15 years, but his cultural significance has remained by virtue of the quality of his '80s music output and his personal and legal issues in the interim.

How else do you explain the sales figures still being reported from Billboard regarding how much Jackson music is moving even now? From June 29 through July 05 (Billboard uses SoundScan to capture data on a Monday to Sunday calendar), Jackson's solo catalog moved 800,000 copies in the U.S. alone. That breaks down to roughly 650,000 physical albums and 150,000 downloaded albums.

SoundScan also reports Jackson owns the top album spot this week with Number Ones, and he holds the top two spots on Billboard's Top Comprehensive Albums chart with Number Ones and Thriller.

Jackson died on a Thursday, so posthumous sales the week of his death really only account for sales made Thursday evening through Sunday night, yet he held eight of the top ten spots on the Top Pop Catalog Albums chart. This week, he has captured all ten spots at the top of that chart. (Numbers one through six and eight through ten are solo, number seven is a Jackson 5 album.)

Despite the fact that I'm amazed so many people didn't have Jackson's music in their collections already, and even more amazed at the shot in the arm Jackson's death has meant to the sales of physical albums, I don't understand how you make a case for his cultural insignificance. I would argue that his last relevant album was 1991's Dangerous, but culturally his entire musical output, his position as a fashion icon, and the freak show quality of his both his celebrity and personal life solidify his relevance.

The holy trinity of '80s pop, consisting of Jackson, Madonna and Prince, will always have cultural relevance as well, regardless of child abuse scandals, adoption problems, or record label lawsuits.

Geek is Good

Some updates on Deus ex Comica: The Rebirth of a Comic Book Fan...

I had a blast a couple Sundays ago meeting and chatting with folks and selling copies of the book alongside my friend and editor John Booth at the Akron-Canton Comic Con. I got to chat with people like local artist and comic fan Chris Martin (looking forward to his show at Red Light Galleries in Akron’s Northside District) and with comic artist Tommy Flick, who also had a table at the show.

If you have been checking out the sidebar of the blog, you may have noticed that Deus ex Comica is now available through Target.com, and available once again through Discount Comic Book Service (thanks, Zack!).

Also, today Wired Magazine’s great GeekDad blog ran a review of the book that was especially gratifying. I’m really excited about what the author of the review, Curtis Silver, had to say, particularly since he came at the book from a DC fan’s perspective. Stay tuned for an interview on GeekDad coming soon!

If you've read and liked Deus ex Comica, please consider taking a moment to rank and review it at Amazon, Lulu, and/or GoodReads and recommending the book to a friend. I sincerely hope you’ve enjoyed my book and appreciate the support!

Home

We said good-bye to Vinnie today. His last “Vinnie Here” column ran in the bulletin today. Before Mass started, we sat down in the pew and read the final conversation that Father and Vinnie had to share with us. And the kiddo saw Father up near the alter preparing for Mass, and he went up there by himself and told Father he was sorry Vinnie died and that he liked Vinnie and that Vinnie was a good dog. Then the kiddo came back to us, sat down, took a pencil out of the pew and drew a little halo and wings on the picture of Vinnie that has accompanied all the inspirational columns in the bulletin week after week and year after year now.

In his homily today, Father talked about how hard it is to deal with loss, and how amazing it is the way four-legged friends become family and so important to us. After both Father and much of the congregation composed ourselves, he also told us the story of how the internet is a funny thing... how it can get you into trouble. Like it did for Father on Friday. He read the story in the Akron Beacon Journal about shipping dogs from the overcrowded Summit County shelter off to a Buffalo shelter. He then got on the internet and looked through the dogs available in Akron, but none of them connected with him. But from that site there was a link to a Labrador rescue site in Dayton, and the very last dog on the list was The One. Looking a lot like Vinnie, this female dog made her way into Father’s heart.

Father told us how he kept enlarging and then minimizing her picture, over and over. Then he picked up the phone, figuring that no one would be around on the day before the holiday. But someone did pick up, and Father chatted with them about the dog. Then Father told them he didn’t really know when he could make it down to Dayton... and the person on the other end said, “But I’m headed to Pennsylvania on Sunday afternoon and have to go right through Akron. I could bring her if you’d like!” And that’s how we came to have a new church dog. Not one better or worse than Vinnie, not a replacement, but simply a new member of the family.

This week we’ll be headed out to PetSmart to pick up a gift card and the kiddo will be making a welcome home card, because we want to make sure Minnie knows, just like Vinnie, that she is loved and she is home.

Vinnie's Gone

We had a lot going on last weekend… we had a wedding to attend Saturday and then Sunday I had a table at the Akron-Canton Comic Con selling copies of Deus ex Comica alongside my friend and editor John, who was selling copies of his book (also expertly edited!), Collect All 21. So we didn't make it to Mass Sunday morning.

If you've read my book, you know the kiddo spends one week every summer at my parents' house in the same tradition that my sister and I spent a week at our dad's parents' house when we were kids. That week this year for the kiddo is this week.

So Thursday morning, the kiddo sees the story about Vinnie, our parish dog, passing away in the Akron Beacon Journal. He calls us from my parents' house crying, horribly upset over Vinnie dying. Just a heartbreaking moment as a parent. One of our two dogs had back surgery about five years ago, is getting old, moving slow, and growing blind. My wife and I have commented a lot over the last few months about how much of a downhill slide the dog seems to be on. Nothing bad enough to have to make the tough decision yet, but we know it is looming in front of us, so maybe it’s a good thing the kiddo’s going through these emotions now with Vinnie.

For a few years now, Father has been writing his pastor’s message in the weekly bulletin as a conversation between him and Vinnie. Sometimes I think the kiddo’s favorite part of Mass each week is reading the Vinnie story. Many were collected in book form a year or so ago, which I have really enjoyed revisiting. We celebrated the kiddo’s first communion this May, and he decided to spend part of his gift money on his own copy of Vinnie Here. So as he was crying into the phone, asking us to give extra hugs to our dogs from him while he's away at grandma and grandpa's and telling me he was going to be so sad because there wouldn’t be any more “Vinnie stories,” I reminded him that he had Vinnie’s book and he can read and reread all those stories as much as he wants.

A couple weeks ago, Vinnie was roaming church before nine o’clock Mass. The kiddo’s face lit up as Vinnie sided up to and poked his head into our pew. And there were lots of pets and wags and smiles. I’m glad we got to see Vinnie that morning. Those personal greetings always meant so much, and that recent one makes his passing seem a little easier for all of us to take now.

Quiet Nights, Disarming Chanteuse

Diana Krall
30 June 2009: State Theatre at Playhouse Square, Cleveland, Ohio

I feel bad for Diana Krall. Her career took off a couple decades too late. Her smooth jazz offerings would have been right at home in virtually any Nora Ephron Meg Ryan vehicle from the '90s. She is clearly the heir to Harry Connick, Jr.'s mantle in that regard. And as a part of my Father’s Day bounty, I received two tickets to see Ms. Krall on her current tour.

Krall's personality in concert is downright goofy in the most endearing way, which stands in contrast to my preconceived ideas about her going into the show. And this may be a case of a few years between the performance captured for posterity on her Live in Paris DVD and CD and the reality of marriage and motherhood, but it was welcomingly disarming. The music is still sexy and sophisticated, but her banter with the audience is adorably disheveled. As much as I enjoyed Mrs. Elvis Costello's music, I found myself looking forward to the between-song chatter about rainy-day moods, crayon-defaced hotels, her husband, her hometown, and everyday life as much (if not more so) than the songs they bookended.

Jeff and Anna are our most reliable concert-going companions, everything from A Flock of Seagulls/Men at Work/Smithereens/Violent Femmes quadruple bill to Erasure to Eddie Izzard to U2 to Sisters of Mercy and on and on. (Technically you could even say our concert history dates all the way back to 1989 when we all attended the New Order/PiL/Sugarcubes concert at Blossom Music Center... albeit, separately). So we met Jeff and Anna at the theatre before the performance and went across the street for coffee and dessert after the show. What struck me was that no one mentioned the show at all at the restaurant. No references to what we thought about the performance, her banter, nothing. That seems just odd. But maybe it's because the music Krall produces is very much about mood as much as it is about the music itself.

As I sat in the gorgeous State Theatre, where the sound was absolutely amazing, I couldn’t help but think that taking jazz out of the intimacy of the club is almost a disservice to the experience. The venue was too large to feel cozy, but Krall and her backing musicians filled every inch of the hall with their big sound, her smoky voice, and enchanting conversation.

Disclaimer: I certainly didn’t set out to have this read like a string of backhanded compliments, but reading back over what I just wrote sort of comes off that way. In reality, I sincerely enjoy Diana Krall's music and the mood she is able to create.

Nineties Nihilism With a Beat

Nineteen ninety-three was an interesting year in music for me. It was the year I realized nihilism was a mainstream concept. Songs like Beck's "Loser", Cracker's "Low" and Tool's "Sober" caught me off guard in their portrayal of self-loathing as an acceptable state of being. Sure, Trent Reznor's Pretty Hate Machine predates this party of self-hate, but that was wrapped in an industrial-pop wrapper. Fully influenced by grunge and the D.I.Y. sounds coming out of Seattle, these songs had a more organic bent to them.

"Soy un perdedor" (Spanish for "I am a loser") is how Beck begins the chanting refrain of Mellow Gold's "Loser" before continuing in English with "I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me?" For me, it captures the post-college, adrift-in-your-20s feelings so many go through. But I remember hearing the song for the first time and marveling that this sentiment was being put out there for mass consumption and actually getting commercial play.

While Beck has proven relevant across decades, when David Lowery unwrapped Cracker he already had a go-round with the '80s eclecticism of Camper Van Beethoven. "Low", off Cracker's Kerosene album, may not tread in exactly the same waters as the other songs with its drug references, but thematically and aesthetically it fits right in.

Similar to these others, Tool's "Sober", off of the album Undertow, paints a dark, self-destructive picture...

Why can't we not be sober?
I just want to start this over
Why can't we drink forever?
I just want to start this over

I am just a worthless liar
I am just an imbecile
I will only complicate you
Trust in me and fall as well

I will find a center in you
I will chew it up and leave
I will work to elevate you
Just enough to bring you down

There were other songs and albums released in 1993 beyond this sad selection. Songs like Janet Jackson's sexual awakening on "If" and "That's the Way Love Goes" were both released that year. Aerosmith continued their rise from the ashes with apostrophe-heavy singles like "Livin' on the Edge" and "Cryin'". Whitney Houston was annoying people everywhere declaring "I'm Every Woman", and Salt-n-Pepa were teaching the world how to "Shoop". Grunge was in full-swing by 1993. Pearl Jam released their second album, Vs. and Nirvana released their incredible last studio album, In Utero.

But what happened with the nihilistic singles from 1993 has always stuck with me for some reason. I'm not necessarily a huge fan of any of those three songs, but for some reason they marked a turning point -- not necessarily in the world of music, but in my world and how I perceived music.

741.5973 B554d

I love my local library. Always have. When we lived on Merriman I considered the Main Library “our” branch, and I would take the kiddo to the library at least once a week to hang out and explore. Now that we're in the suburbs, I have fallen for our local branch, and the kiddo still loves going to pick out a chapter book or computer game or graphic novel regularly. We have always taken advantage of the great programs the library has to offer -- Thursday Movies @ Main and Main Event Talks, the Summer Reading Program, and on and on.

That's what makes it even more cool to know that if you live in Northeast Ohio, our awesome Akron-Summit County Public Library has purchased fifteen copies of Deus ex Comica: The Rebirth of a Comic Book Fan and made them available for borrowing, including two at the Main Library (one in Pop Culture and one in Special Collections) and two at my local Fairlawn-Bath Branch!

Cathy Morgan, the Adult Services Librarian at my local branch, feels strongly about supporting local authors and has been behind my book from the moment she found out about it. I stopped in to see her earlier this week, and she couldn't wait to take me out onto the floor of the branch to show me where my book is displayed! And she and I are both eager to have me do an author's visit at her branch this fall, so stay tuned for more info over the next few months as we finalize the details of the event. In the meantime, check out a copy of Deus ex Comica to support our local library, and if you like it, please consider buying a copy to support a local author.