Puttin' on the Ritz

Busy day today, so I'm going to turn the fashion criticism over to some other nancy. Take it away, Miss Ritz!

What the--?! Aw, now you've gone too far! Don't give me that look. Listen, little missy, I happen to know for a fact that you've made some pretty tragic fashion decisions yourself. Exhibit A:

In a desperate bid to impress that cute teacher (not that I blame you) you tarted yourself up like a cheap French whore. And that Lilt home perm is out of control. (Or is it a Jheri curl?) Why don't you just marry Jim Baker and get it over with? And now for Exhibit B:

Yeah, I think I saw this look on one of the Olsen twins. And Courtney Love wore this ensemble to a custody hearing. That's mighty poor company, Ritz. So how dare you presume to judge one of the most important cultural icons of the 1970's and 1980's? HOW DARE YOU?!!

Great, now I'm in a saliva-frothing rage. Time to go Christmas shopping!

My Dinner With Antron

Hey, guys! Don't panic... I know I usually only show up to deliver messages like "Jeremy's computer crashed and there'll be no more blogging for three-and-a-half years" or "Blockade Boy went out line-dancing with Battallion and that was a week ago and we haven't heard from him since" but this time I'm just here for fun. Blockade Boy thought you might like to hear about my visit with my cousin, Antron, "the" Antron, the one from "Micronauts" #36 (December, 1981).

Antron was in town on a sales call -- he works as a rep for a company that sells those vinyl deals that separate ceramic tile floors from carpet in office buildings -- and he invited me out to dinner. It was great seeing my cousin, especially because I don't often get the chance. When we were larvae, my parents and his parents got in a huge fight over a liverwurst sandwich someone had dropped on the ground at a picnic and that led to a lengthy estrangement. At age twelve, Antron witnessed both his folks getting stepped on by a fat guy at the beach. Antron quickly found himself homeless. Unable to find employment both because of his speech impediment and the racist propoganda put forth by the Royal Family, he developed an addiction to sugar water. To support his habit, he fell into a life of crime. Swept along by the revolutionary tide of the new Baron Karza administration, Antron cleaned himself and joined the military. I only saw him once during this period. I was shocked by how much he'd changed. Formerly a very solemn but sweet young man with bright twinkles in his eye-facets, he had become a grim, strident fundamentalist who had even taken the extraordinary measure of shaving off his sweet man-perm (the traditional hairstyle of our people) and painting his carapace dark gray in order to emulate his hero, Baron Karza. He was like a stranger to me.

Since the collapse of Karza's regime and the new spirit of egalitarianism and economic freedom that has spread over our land, my cousin has abandoned his Karzist philosophies and reinvented himself once more. Now a happy and successful vinyl... um, thing salesman, he divides his time among work, charitable causes, his wife and egg-sacs, and, of course, maintaining his kick-ass man-perm. He looks back on his days as a revolutionary with both pride and bemusement, and he had some interesting tidbits about the famous counter-revolutionaries known to your planet as the Micronauts, and especially about their leader, Commander Rann.

"Rann was a racist dickweed-dickweed," said Antron. "Sure, he was a big-big astronaut hero but his political views were as provincial as they could get-get. He just couldn't believe someone-someone with our background could engage him in a fair fight. I remember a Microverse Today article where he said he thought all the insectoids fighting-fighting for Karza were grown in a test-tube or something. Jackass-jackass. I could hold my own with that brain-dead space-jockey because I got educated-educated -- something that was illegal when the Royal Family was in power. Karza did-did everybody a favor when he wiped out those throwbacks. And then we were left with their skanky-skanky daughter, what's-her-name with the hooker wig... bah!

"I remember when I had a shot-shot at Rann. Just the two of us-us, mano-a-pincer. It was sweet-sweet. My squad-squad had followed the Micronauts to Earth and had them cornered in a school, which was I thought was delightfully ironic-ironic. I pinned him against a wall-wall and grabbed a spiky Earth artifact to finish him off.

"And then I don't-don't know what happened. He flipped me around in some kind of freaky ballet maneuver and stuck my ass in the wall and I do mean-mean my ass. It took-took Lobros and Centauria to pry me back out. It was-was humiliating. You know-know, I still get cramps back there when it rains?" Antron silently chewed some of the lima bean we'd been dining on, and I could tell his mind had drifted back, to another time, to another life, when he'd been a warrior. He didn't say much the rest of the evening. I may not see my cousin again for quite some time, but I have no doubt that I will see him again.

He's a survivor.

And Now Membros With An Urgent Announcment

Hello, all! Membros here, official spokesmonster for Blockade Boy. People say my brains are exposed, but what they're looking at is really my rockin' man-perm. I'm the Mike Brady of the Micronaut World! And now my announcment: the second part of Blockade Boy's discussion of the Zodiac Cartel has been unavoidably delayed because Safari crashed on Jeremy Rizza's ancient Mac (from 1998!) and destroyed the post which Blockade Boy was too lazy to have saved in draft form, and now it's 7:08 in the morning, Central Standard Time, and Jeremy Rizza is going to be late for work (again!) and for some weird reason he won't let Blockade Boy on the computer if he's not at home. Go figure. So Part Two will have to wait until either lunchtime or tonight. From everyone here at the Blockade Boy Organization, our sincerest apologies. In the meantime, enjoy my perm!

Nuclear Bedhead

See what happens when you forget to wear sunblock? I bet that smarts like the dickens!

But I kid. Because I love! To hate! This is "Binary," a.k.a. one of the many ways Ms. Marvel got totally jacked up by Chris Claremont (one of the most creatively bankrupt authors in comics but I shan't go into that here.) Sure, those energy spikes look very "rad" and "groovy" and "the bee's knees" and whatever else you 20th/21st century types say about edgy fashion. But they clash with the sleek sluttiness -- er, sexiness that is -- of her white super-togs. My prescription? A perm!



There we go!

Y'know, I'm suddenly hungry for macaroni and cheese, and I don't know why.