The Strange World of Thomas P. Coombe

The Year Punk Didn't Break

I liked Bradford Martin's piece in Salon about what all the "Nevermind" anniversary celebrations are missing, but my favorite part was this passage:

 Though "Smells Like Teen Spirit" compelled a wider circle of fans to listen, this does not necessarily add up to the "voice of a generation" mantle the popular media fastened on Cobain. It's more accurate to see his celebrity as an uncanny symbol of a vibrant minority of the era's young who considered themselves outside the mainstream.

Bingo. 

If the kids I went to school with owned a copy of Nevermind,it was for the same reason they owned Appetite for Destruction or Metallica's "black album" or The Chronic: because it was what kids listened to. Then again, the kids I graduated with seemed to love the music of their parents' generation. And that seemed to mean Billy Joel and Bob Seger more than, say, the Beatles and Led Zeppelin.

Very few of us saw Nevermind as a transforming moment. I don't even think I was one of them, weird little semi-outcast that I was. Nevermind and Nirvana helped build my tastes, but so did the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magic and Pearl Jam's Ten and even the Stone Temple Pilots' Core.

Its single "Plush" was pretty inescapable in 1993, but I think one of the reasons I gravitated to them was that Scott Weiland was the first rocker I'd seen on MTV who didn't have long hair, a look I didn't want/wasn't allowed to cultivate.

And I was a few months behind on Nevermind-mania anyway. We didn't watch a lot of MTV in our house, so "Smells Like Teen Spirit" came and went without me noticing. (The first time I "heard" it was a top 40 station's parody version: sung by a Julie Andrews sound alike. Oh, T-102, you are not missed.)

The first Nirvana song I actually heard was "In Bloom," the second track from Nevermind. I can remember WHERE I was too: it was the spring of 1992, near the end of my freshman year. I was in the lockerroom, and we were getting into costume for the opening night of our school play (Brigadoon).

And it was amazing. But so was "Space Oddity" and "Under Pressure" and "Bicycle Race," all of which I heard for the first time that night.

It wasn't until the end of high school, after Kurt Cobain had died, that I got deeper into the band. I don't think it was a bandwagon thing; if anything, Nirvana was even less popular then, and the singer's suicide had made him kind of a joke among some of my peers (and to my eternal shame, I participated in some of that post-death mocking).

But by the time 1995 rolled around, Nirvana had expanded its catalogue, with another album, a collection of B-sides, and the haunting "Unplugged in New York" record. And I'd read up on the band; both Michael Azerrad's Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana and Gina Arnold's Route 666: On the Road to Nirvana showed me how the band was formed.

That reading led to the Pixies, the Pixies to Sonic Youth, Sonic Youth to Beck (so, so much more than "Loser," I'd learn)...and so on.

This isn't a unique story, I know.  A lot of kids can say the same thing. Nirvana, for us, wasn't a Paul on the road to Damascus moment; it was simply the start of a journey.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Result of My Friend Frank Using the Phrase "National Lampoon's Jedi Academy"

Some background: On Facebook yesterday, my friend Frank sent a message to me and another friend, talking about a block party he'd been to. While the smaller kids played with toy light sabres, their parents played a game of beer pong.

"It was like National Lampoons Jedi-Academy," he said, which set off the following conversation. I've rearranged it a bit so it matches the chronology of the Animal House plot.

 

Frank: Who delivered a live rancor to the alumni dinner? Who dumped a truck-load of fizzies into the Sarlacc Pitt? Every fall the trees are covered in toilet paper, every spring, a Death Star explodes.

 

Frank: Adventure? Exitement? A Delta Tau Chi pledge craves not these things.

 

Frank: "I gave my love a wookie, that had no home, I gave my love a bantha on dune seas it roamed, My love for you is a story that"...<force lightning destroys guitar, Master Bluto stares> "Luminous beings are we, not made of these crude lyrics"

 

Jerry: "IS THAT A...NERF HERDER!?!"

 

Tom: They can't do that to our droids. Only WE can do that to our droids!!

 

Frank: Yoda: "Young Skywalker, appointed are you to become the special social representative to Chancellor Palpatine"
Anakin: "Great! What do I have to do?"
Obi-Won: "It means you have to make the Kessel Run to the FOOD KING!"

 

Frank: Ladies and gentlemen, I'll be brief. The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules, or used the jedi mind trick on our female party guests - we did. But you can't hold a whole jedi order responsible for the behavior of a few, sick twisted padawan learners. For if you do, then shouldn't we blame the whole Jedi Order? And if the whole Jedi Order system is guilty, then isn't this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Senator Palpatine - isn't this an indictment of our entire Galactic Republic? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we're not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the Republic of Naboo. Gentlemen!

 

Frank: THE JAWAS STOLE OUR DATES!

 

Jerry: They're even taking the stuff we didn't steal, like the power converters from Toshi Station.

 

Tom: Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to defeat the dark side.

 

Tom: Face it, Luke, you threw up ON Jabba.

 

Jerry: "Was it over when the Empire blew up Tatooine? HELL NO!" "Tatooine?"
"Forget it, he's rolling.

 

Frank: Grand Moff Tarkin! Grand Moff Tarkin! For God's Sake, they're looting the FoodKing!

 

Jerry: (Scene during the rebel attack on the Second Death Star. Commotion.)

"ALL IS WELL! ALL IS WELL!!!!!"

 

Frank: Senator & Mrs. Han Solo '64, Coruscant.
Chewbacca "The Wookie" '64: Whereabouts Unknown
Jar-Jar Bink '68: Psychiatrist, Encounters Inc.
Anakin Skywalker '64: Dark Lord of Sith, Galactic Imperial Army, '66. Killed by his own son, battle of Endor 1969.
C-3P0 '64: Aid to Emporer Palpatine 1967. Indicted & Convicted '72. Smashed to a million pieces at the spice mines of kessel, '74.

 

What I've Been Watching: "Why Can't You Be More Like Game of Thrones" Edition

 
Dear Pillars of the Earth,

My girlfriend was/is on your side, and she and I are usually simpatico when it comes to TV shows. But I suspect that may change when she finally sees Game of Thrones, which did the whole medieval political intrigue much, much better.

What's that you say? Game of Thrones isn't really "medieval" because it takes place in a fictional universe?

Too bad. Putting aside the fact that it's based on the "War of the Roses," GoT's universe still feels more real and authentic than yours, dragons and direwolves and all.

Honestly, there were times I felt like I was watching a Dickens adaptation. You gave us heroes who are impossibly noble, villains who are eeeeeeeeeeeeevil, long-buried secrets, a sprawling cast of characters, and (spoiler alert) an ending in which the wicked are punished and our heroes prosper.

That's fine for Dickens, less so when adapting a novel written 22 years ago.

And it's not like I wanted a Game of Thrones clone, just more nuance in your characters, and much, much more tension in your story. It seemed like any time a problem was introduced or a plot was formed, it would be resolved/put into motion in the next scene.

You assembled an impressive cast: Ian McShane, Rufus Sewell, Hayley Atwell (above), plus Donald Sutherland and a wasted Alison Pill and stuck them with weak material.

The intersections of power/religion/war/politics/art/lust could have made for a powerful series. What we got was pandering nonsense that I thought TV had left behind decades ago.

 

 

Shine On, Black Diamond

I mean no disrespect to any readers who are living there, but Ashland -- the town where I grew up -- seems like a sadder place every time I go back.

Part of it is just the passage of time: other than my grandmother, the rest of my family lives elsewhere, giving me less and less of a connection to this place where I spent my first 18 years.

Someone else lives in the house where I grew up. 

Behind that house there’s the Willow Park.

In the 1980s, the borough had all but abandoned it (or so it appeared to me back then), making it a perfect place for 9-12 year old boys. Who needed actual playground equipment when we could build elaborate tree forts and carry out an invisible, one-sided war against teenagers who rode through the woods?

But now the Willow Park is an actual, well, park, with benches and swings and a softball field.

Equally depressing: there’s an entire block of downtown Ashland where nearly every building is for sale or rent. (Including the dearly departed, oddly named Gay Store, which deserves an entry of its own someday soon.)

The only thing left is a tobacco store. There wasn’t even enough business to support a fucking dollar store.

None of this, however, makes me as sad as the loss of Black Diamond Video.

My Friend the Liar

I've been interviewing politicians and other government officials on a regular basis for 13 years now, and I'm sure at least some of them have lied to me.

But I couldn't tell you what any of those lies were. None of them were as memorable as the ones told to me by Keith Mullin, my best friend when I was 11-years-old.

With two working parents, I spent a lot of time growing up with my grandfather, who lived a few blocks from us. Keith * lived next door. We'd known each other for years, but somehow became closer friends when I was 11, drawn together by nothing more geography and a love for the G.I. Joe cartoon and action figures.

There was little else we had in common. I was a mouse of a boy, Catholic school student, altar boy, bookworm. Keith had knives, rode his bike too fast, used the word "ain't," and didn't own a winter coat.

Neither of us had parents who bought us toy whenever we wanted, which meant our G.I. Joe collections were far from complete, forcing us to improvise.

In our scenarios, COBRA was still a "terroristic organization," the way the cartoons described it. But here, it was more like the terrorists I saw on the news in 1987. The COBRA guys drove around in beat-up old cars and vans, not high-tech tanks.

(Something about that made the play experience more enjoyable back then; it seemed more authentic, or as authentic as you could get when dealing with a snake-themed paramilitary group.)

Other times, we'd explore "the bank," a dangerous wooded area filled with junk and sinkholes.

("Bank" was, I think, short for "embankment." "Don't go over the bank," was a pretty familiar warning in the neighborhood growing up, one that Keith and I other more daring kids ignored. Years later, my brother and I -- with the help of our uncle -- would make a very, very low-grade horror movie called "The Thing From Over the Bank." Keith was no longer in the picture at that point, which is too bad, because he'd have been great.)

And as Keith and I became friends, I started hearing from other kids about the stories Keith would tell.

Why Cars 2 Didn't Work For Me

My sister-in-law texted me a few weeks ago with grim news.

"They want to see Cars 2. And Mr. Popper's Penguins." That was followed with something about shooting herself.

The "they" she's referring to are her son Bela and daughter Claudia, ages 2 and 3. They had seen the Kung Fu Panda sequel, and apparently seeing previews for these other kid-friendly movies had gotten them interested.

I couldn't blame Amber for being unenthused by the notion of spending 90 minutes with Jim Carrey and dancing CGI penguins*, but I felt the need to defend Cars 2. Or more to the point, to defend Pixar.

"The Pixar movies aren't like other kids movies," I wrote back (and a lot of his is paraphrasing). "They're not loud and hyperactive. They won't be dated by pop culture references the way a lot of cartoons are now. Adults can appreciate them as much, if not more than, kids..."

Etc. etc. I wasn't all that original in my pro-Pixar arguments. But I was convincing...sort of.

"Fine," Amber wrote back. "YOU take them."

And so we did. It was semi-disastrous. The kids seemed bored -- although later they apparently couldn't stop talking about the Cars -- and we left close to the end following a complete meltdown.

And I learned two things:

1. 113 minutes is far too long for a kids movie, especially one that follows 15-20 minutes of trailers and the standard Pixar short that follows its movies.

2. This is the first Pixar movie I wouldn't see again.

Don't get me wrong: it's not a bad movie. I didn't groan through it, the way I do for even the trailers for things like the Smurfs, those Chipmunk movies.

Even if it feels more like a kids' movie than, say, Finding Nemo or Monsters Inc, it's clever, it moves quickly despite it's running time, and the characters are all pretty likable.**

If I hadn't been worrying about two toddlers the whole time, or fielding their questions, I wouldn't have been bored.

Yet the movie didn't really work for me, and I think that has a lot to do with the fact that the cars' universe doesn't really work for me.

Whether they've centered around toys, fish or superheroes, the Pixar movies have all existed in a recognizable world. 

But what world are the Cars in? It's one that includes TV, restaurants, Tokyo, Paris and London...but no people.

So where did the cars come from? Is there some sort of Planet of the Apes situation at work? Or are we seeing -- as cartoonist Joel Watson suggested recently --the world after SkyNet?

Or maybe it has to do with the notion that I can't identify with a car. I've written before about how I didn't as weepy over the end of Toy Story 3 as the rest of the country apparently did, but I at least always thought my toys had some sort of personality.

But never my cars. I've never loved a car, given one a nickname, or even called it "she." It's just an expensive, important tool. 

And finally, there's part of me that's a bit disappointed that the last two Pixar movies (as well as the studio's 2013 film, Monsters University) have been sequels. Not bad ones, or derivatives ones. But they're still sequels. As much as I admire their willingness to expand the universes they've created, I'd rather see them create new ones.

 

* Seriously, what is it with dancing penguins? When we saw Cars 2, there were two different trailers that featured them.

** Even Mater, the tow truck voiced by Larry the Cable guy, who I normally find pretty distasteful. 

What I've Been Watching: Rip van Winkle Edition

Dear lord. It's been three months since I've posted. I'm not sure that means anything, other than that I paid TypePad around $20 to ensure that anyone who wanted to read my half-formed thoughts on Lost finale was allowed to do so.

But my life outside the blog continues to be busy, and I no longer have the time to watch any shows as they air. Since Fringe, um, "Petered out" in May, I don't think I've watched a single thing on TV in its original time slot other than The Killing, which I'll get to soon.

So let's catch up:

• So yes, Fringe. Wonderful, wonderful second season. Who'd have thought there'd come a day when Anna Torv's performance (or performances) would be one of the show's assets, rather than one of its drawbacks. I even liked her Leonard Nimoy voice (actually, I found it adorable), although I know it drove some people nuts. But that finale -- 40 minutes of a frightening-but-ultimately-meaningless "what if?" future followed by an ending twist that will almost certainly need to be reversed early in season four -- was grating...
• ...yet not as grating as The Killing's finale. For me, the best part of the detectives solving the Rosie Larsen case is that we were done with it. AMC's first failure, although I'm jussssst curious enough to come back next year.
• The same night The Killing disappointed millions, Game of Thrones cemented its place as a serious contender for best show of the year. (We'll see what Breaking Bad season four and Boardwalk Empire season two have to offer.) This show is just about flawless: smart, exciting, funny and tense, with not a single character or storyline I was bored with. Season two can't come fast enough. I'm reading the books now, which are just as compelling as the series.
• A few months back, I read The AV Club's Ten Reasons You Should Be Watching the Vampire Diaries, and put the show on my "to get to eventually list." Turns out they were mostly right; this IS a fun show, at least so far. As fun as True Blood used to be, before the writers decided they needed 50 storylines at once.
• And now we're in season four of True Blood, and it's as overstuffed as ever. I'm hoping Fiona Shaw can grow into the type of villain Michelle Forbes and Denis O'Hare gave us in seasons past, yet I'm still thinking what I thought all last year: this show would be a lot better if it focused on its "I could give a fuck" vampire characters Eric, Jessica and Pam and forgot everyone else.
• That's all for now. Breaking Bad returns in a little over three weeks, which is reason enough for me to blog more regularly. I kind of miss this.

Tom Coombe

Why I'm Not a Superhero

BRUCE WAYNE

Incident: Sees bat fly through window.

 

Reaction: Decides to use it as a symbol to strike fear into the hearts of "superstitious, cowardly" criminals of Gotham City.

 

Tom Coombe

 

Incident: Finds corpse of bat in his front hallway.

 

Reaction: Gahhhhhhh! Aggghh...What the...Bleccchh...I need a bag...I have to wash my hands...Ewwwwwwwwww... *Several hours of rabies panic before being reassured by his mom that he'll be fine.

 

Goodbye, "Tom On TV."

"Tom On TV." Looking back, it's an unfortunate name for the blog. I couldn't even stand it as a Twitter handle for very long, which is why I've been @TomCoombe for several months now.

But recently, I've come to realize something: as passionate as I can get about TV shows and movies, I just don't have the time to write about them anymore, at least not on a weekly basis. Back when I had a job with fewer responsibilities -- and later, when I had no job at all -- it was nothing for me to follow The Office, or Lost, or Breaking Bad from week to week.

These days, I just don't have the energy to sit with a notebook in front of the latest Fringe or Community and try to craft something interesting to say about what I just watched. There's a lot of people on the internet doing that already, and doing it much better than I ever did.

I'm not shutting this blog down. I like having it, and like being able to have an outlet for non-journalistic writings. So, sometimes I'll write about TV, or a movie, or a book, or just something weird that I witness. 

Thank you, to my handful of readers. I hope you'll enjoy where I take things.

Fringe: When Peter Met Olive

Once again, going back in time has done a world of good for Fringe.

Last year's "Peter" not only flashed back to show the events that set the series in motion, it moved the series to new creative heights. 

"Subject 13" wasn't quite as good as last season's 1985 episode -- and I have the same problem others do with the fact that this show began with Olivia and Walter/Peter as complete strangers -- but it offered a lot to like, including:

• Our first glimpse of both versions of Walter in roughly the same stage of their lives. They're both grieving fathers, and although "Walternate" is probably in a position of more power -- having created the "Star Wars" missile defense system -- the contrast between them is nothing like what we'll see in their 2011 incarnations. 
• The extended, camcorder-eye, Walter-experiments-on-Olivia sequence. The fast-moving procedural that was Fringe, season one never would have slowed down to do something like this.
• The fact that 90 percent of the main cast was gone from this one and I didn't even miss them. The kid actors playing young Peter and Olivia, and Orla Brady as the two Mrs. Bishops, were fantastic.
• The return of the 1980s style opening credits.

Tom Coombe