This week, a short-but-sweet hour-ish long podcast wherein the gang shows up, cracks wise, and then splits. Also, a cast member leaves the show! Yikes!
Also, we revisit the Jimmy Ether clip where he tells us what rich people do for kicks. Hint: they do not actually do that.
Bite-sized fun!
Download/listen HERE!
Subscribe on iTunes HERE!
Goodbye song by Virgil Henry
See you next week!
This week, a short-but-sweet hour-ish long podcast wherein the gang shows up, cracks wise, and then splits. Also, we revisit the Puppet Lady incident. What happens when you mix puppets with foul-mouthed podcasters? Badtimes.
Bite-sized fun!
Download/listen HERE!
Subscribe on iTunes HERE!
Goodbye song by The Du-Droppers.
See you next week!
Another pill-popping episode of the internet’s wildest party awaits you!
Tonight, the gang takes on 1967′s’s anti-showbiz camp classic Valley of the Dolls, starring Barbara Parkins, Sharon Tate, and Patty Duke!
Plus: Hits from Hell, the top 5 bottom 5 DVDs of the week, weird news, Songs about Girls, and lots more!
Listen/download HERE!
Subscribe on iTunes!
Or listen any time on Movies About Girls Radio!
More fun: Leave us a voicemail! 617-300-0669!
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PS: Songs on tonight’s show performed by:
Rufus Thomas
Margot Guryan
The Eels
Mae West
Kay Martin
Paddy Roberts
Thanks for listening!
Next show: Advanced Demonology, Lesson 2 on Xmas!
['On the Boarderline' is an ongoing segment on the Movies About Girls Show, in which I talk about my high school/post-high school band Doctor Rock. As the intro goes, it's done 'song by song', meaning there's probably around 100 episodes to come eventually. What follows is the script of the segment, as well as the .MP3 of the episode's featured song.]
Hello listeners, and welcome to episode two of On the Boarderline: A Doctor Rock-umentary. Over the coming weeks, months, maybe even years and possibly even decades, we’ll be working our way through the back catalogue of these fondly remembered superstars of the Ballarat, Victoria music scene, song by song by song by song by song.
In this episode, we continue looking back at the very early days of the band, and their growth from nothing to something. When we left off last week, the band were midway through the first ever live show, at Josh from Mr Feenjeen’s 17th birthday, and about to begin a song that would prove, possibly more than anything else written at the time, just how purposefully, irritatingly and obtusely different Doctor Rock were aiming to be.
Abasid was a loosely structured instrumental Middle Eastern styled jam, normally lasting somewhere between five and ten minutes. Sometimes less, sometimes more. Eventually, almost a year later, it became a proper song called I Swear to God, with lyrics and structure and a regular running time of around 3:50 and everything. That was later though and before all that, Abasid was a lumbering behemoth of a song; an ambitious jam played by musicians who, given their experience and ability, should have had no place playing ambitious jams.
In fact, if there’s one thing particularly memorable about the first gig, it’s just how unready Doctor Rock were for an audience. Probably that’s true of every single band, and it didn’t matter, of course – debuting at Josh Feenjeen’s party wasn’t exactly playing an industry showcase or anything – but there were problems. Problems aside from, as mentioned last week, our lack of a singer and drummer, which had forced me to attempt to play bass and sing badly at the same time, and had required the use of keyboard drums from Scrappy’s Casio.
There was also the guitar situation. At this time, we had Clemo and Jake on guitar – in theory, one of them was probably rhythm and the other lead, but I doubt anyone could have worked out which was which. Frankly, Jake and Clemo probably didn’t know which was which, and neither seemed in a rush to nominate themselves for one position or the other. Mostly, I would say this is because Clemo was barely capable of power chords at the time, and Jake was apparently completely incapable of doing anything other than standing there blankly looking at the rest of the band while holding his guitar. It’s kind of the defining image of the band at that time.
It’s probably a sign that maybe the practice should have continued all day before the party, and the band should really have skipped two hours spent waving at the Queen as she drove around the lake. But you know, it’s the fucking Queen – what can you do, right? Can’t ignore the fucking queen.
What, you may be wondering, is an Abasid? It’s a Baghdad based dynasty that ruled from 750 to 1258. It’s also the first sort of vaguely Middle Eastern sounding word in the dictionary. There is, now that I think about it, some possibility that the song wasn’t actually yet known as Abasid at this early stage – for a very brief period, it was known simply as ‘Prince of Persia’. Because, you know, nerds.
I don’t really recall what the first version of Abasid, played that night, sounded like. Maybe it wasn’t bad, but more likely it was dreadful, overlong and ponderous for the audience. As with last week’s episode, we’re light on actual audio from the show in question. However, while last week we heard a selection from the ’45 Minutes of Rock’ demo, this week we take Abasid from another early demo – ‘Sing Along With the Doctor’. ‘Sing Along With the Doctor’ was a demo put together by Scrappy and I – just keyboard and bass – to allow incoming Doctor Rock singer Matt to write lyrics. The kind of sparse weirdness you’re about to hear is probably quite similar to that first gig.
So enjoy this week’s selection, friends, and please, do look out for the .MP3 below. Until next week, this has been ‘On the Boarderline: A Doctor Rock-umentary’.
Download Abasid
['On the Boarderline' is an ongoing segment on the Movies About Girls Show, in which I talk about my high school/post-high school band Doctor Rock. As the intro goes, it's done 'song by song', meaning there's probably around 100 episodes to come eventually. What follows is the script of the segment, as well as the .MP3 of the episode's featured song.]
Hello, and welcome to episode one of ‘On the Boarderline: A Doctor Rock-umentary’. Over the coming weeks, months, maybe even years and possibly even decades, we’ll be working our way through the back catalogue of these towering giants of the Ballarat, Victoria music scene, song by song by song by song by song.
This week, let’s start at the start, with the very first song written by the band. Doctor Rock began life in early 2000. I’d spent the previous year and a bit in a Greenday-esque pop punk band called Mr Feenjeen. I found artistically unsatisfying, although it did result in a girl named Claire from Ballarat Grammar School touching my penis in a playground one night at 2am after playing at a party. So, following practice one day I decided to quit, which was convenient timing because the band was going to fire me anyway.
But lack of a band wasn’t going to stop me, though, and my considerable musical genius could not be held back. I’d had a taste of the rock and roll lifestyle: booze, parties, playing hard, staying up past bedtime, adoration from the audience, girls touching my penis, the whole deal. If I started my own band, surely there would only be more of this kind of thing.
Now might be a good time to mention that this was an entirely incorrect assumption. Yes, Doctor Rock was nothing if not a gateway to large quantities of booze, and a couple of parties, some moderately hard playing and even a couple of late nights. However, adoration from the audience and girls touching my penis turned out to be something related more to being in a pop punk band than simply being in a band. Doctor Rock, as you have probably heard by now, was not a pop punk band.
In fact, in the beginning, Doctor Rock was almost not even a proper band. Doctor Rock was almost not even called Doctor Rock. It was almost an electronic duo called The Tokyo Joystick Allstars, featuring my guitar playing buddy Jake and I. Unfortunately, we quickly realised neither of us knew how to be in an electronic duo. So we gathered up a few more likely members – another guitarist, Clemo, and a young keyboard prodigy named Scrappy – and started a real band. A real band called – after a little brainstorming of various names – Doctor Rock, after the Ween song of the same name. It was down to either that or Captain Fantasy.
Granted, it wasn’t a complete real band, but it was certainly getting there. We didn’t quite have a drummer, for example – the first few practices, and the band’s first public appearance, featured Scrappy on keyboard drums. and we didn’t have a dedicated singer – I had my hand up for the position, but wasn’t what you’d call capable in regards to playing bass and singing at the same time. At all.
Nonetheless, it was time to write some songs. The first was written in instrumental form as a direct response to being in Mr Feenjeen – a tune written in 3/4 time called Your Last Fucking Waltz, a halfhearted protest against Feenjeen’s regimental devotion to 4/4 timing. We practiced it a few times, in my dad’s shed (among the 14 strung up drying pot plants), my bedroom, and elsewhere. Eventually, we secured our first show: opening at Mr Feenjeen singer Josh’s 17th birthday. We practiced the whole afternoon leading up the show, over and over, except for a couple of hours during which we went and waved at Queen Elizabeth II as she drove around Ballarat’s Lake Wendouree.
So there we were, standing awkwardly in the middle of Josh’s party – Clemo, Scrappy, Jake and I – ready to invite the world to experience Doctor Rock for the first time. Future Doctor Rock members – drummer Mick and singer Matt – were there watching. And we, well, I don’t entirely remember what we played first. Maybe it was Your Last Waltz. Maybe it was our ill-advised and never repeated cover of Duran Duran’s Girls on Film. Maybe it was our oft-repeated cover of Ween’s Doctor Rock. Maybe it was an extended Middle Eastern jam we called Abasid – but we’ll talk more about that one next week.
Sadly, no audio of the show has survived – just one single photo – nor any audio from the keyboard-drums-era practices. So, instead, we fast forward a month or so to hear Your Last Waltz from one of the group’s first practices as a full band – a demo cassette that later became known as ’45 Minutes of Rock’. Enjoy, listeners, and please look for the full .mp3 below, if you’re into that kind of thing.
Download Your Last Fucking Waltz
['Quiz Me Quik' was a weekly GameSetWatch column, in which I picked offbeat subjects in the game business and interviewed them about their business, their perspective, and their unique view of life. This time - an enlightening chat with Matt Hestill.]
It’s been interesting reading Michael Walbridge’s series of interviews with prominent games journalists, and Simon Parkin’s recent column on the same subject. It’s really given me pause to think about some of the people I admire in the field; Michael is actually interviewing a number of them. There’s plenty of other people who I think exemplify the great things about games journalism – intelligence, an ability to think critically and a desire to move journalism past its occasional stagnancy in the mass-market commercial field. While a disappointing number of people writing about games are all too satisfied with towing a line of mediocrity, these people are pushing forward and asking, ‘Why can’t we expect more?’
Unfortunately, all of those people were too busy to talk with me, so I contacted my old acquaintance Matt Hestill instead.
You might know Matt from his blog, It’s Matt Hestill, Stupid - a surreal collection of self-obsessive rants and reviews, all written in Hestill’s somewhat underwhelming stream of consciousness style, punctuated with the odd bit of freeform poetry.
Or it was, anyway, until Hestill snapped in late January and deleted every single post because “the comments were just annoying and you people don’t deserve my insight into the games industry anymore so you can all just get fucked”.
“Hey Matt,” my initial email read. “I want to interview you for GSW, man. What have you been up to since you stopped the blog? Are you even still writing? Haven’t seen anything around lately. I thought you were meant to be doing some stuff for 1Up or something.”
“Wallis,” he replied. “Busy always. Here’s the interview’s focus: I am the next evolution of games journalism. The blog was my chrysalis. I was the pupa. Shutting the blog was the pumping of the hemolymph into my wings so that I might emerge stronger and more beautiful; flowering and rocketing. Now I am the butterfly, Wallis. Soon I will fly above the caterpillars of games journalism. Skype me.”
So, it quickly emerged that Matt had recently had something of an epiphany while rereading Kieron Gillen’s reknowned New Games Journalism manifesto. And then reading everything he could find on games journalism’s need for a Lester Bangs. And then reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. And then, the following is what transpired, immediately after connecting to Hestill via Skype.
['Quiz Me Quik' was a weekly GameSetWatch column, in which I picked offbeat subjects in the game business and interviewed them about their business, their perspective, and their unique view of life. This time, we get a little weird.]
This column seems to be turning into some kind of weirdly self-absorbed trip down memory lane for me, at least in the introductions, though it has on occasions made its way throughout the column proper like some kind of terrible beard-stroking, sky-gazing virus.
It’s like I’ve just discovered informal first-person journalism or something, except that I’ve been writing like this for other places for a while now.
Anyways, given the lack of angry comments calling me out on my egotism, I assume it’s not getting up anyone’s nose, which is lovely. And, on the odd chance that it is – and, by extension, I am – getting up your nose, hoo boy are you going to hate me this week.
Back in early 1992, while in Mr Harris’ grade four class, I was engaged in some kind of cartooning cold war with my best friend Sam. I had created – amongst other things – a family of anthropomorphic radishes. He had created a family of anthropomorphic echidnas. And though we were best friends, we did have more than a few blow-ups: he copied me, you know? I like to think I was ahead of my time in regards to intellectual property protection rights.
Anyways, the one thing I had going that he didn’t was a video game design document. It was, admittedly, not a finished design document, but it was better than nothing. Unfortunately, I didn’t know the first thing about programming, and nor did any of my friends, so the Jaton the Radish game never really got underway – discounting a brief, unsatisfactory, jaunt into the world of Macromedia Director later that decade.
The documents, however, survive, and have been scanned for your enjoyment in an extraordinarily painful and time consuming manner: the scrapbook I used at the time is something like A3.75 or some inconvenient measurement. As such, the scanning was done in four sections for each page, before they were all stitched together. Goddamn it.
Back to the point at hand: since this column is called Quiz Me Qwik, and not – I don’t know; Show and Tell Hour or something, I’ve decided to interview myself about the project and its influences. Narcissism ahoy!
['Quiz Me Quik' was a weekly GameSetWatch column, in which I picked offbeat subjects in the game business and interviewed them about their business, their perspective, and their unique view of life. This time... I went a little off the rails.]
I’ve become mildly fascinated with this little mystery lately. It’s a FAQ detailing the ‘programmers door’; an un-openable feature of the designers ending of Chrono Cross. According to the FAQ, there’s a lot of really weird things that can happen in that ending, if certain conditions are met. But, of course, it’s random whether or not they will be met, and so results may vary.
The overwhelming cynic in me suggests pretty much immediately that this is complete crap. It’s entertaining crap, at least, and seems to have enough basis on what really happens in the game to be believable for some people, but crap all the same.
But then, some people – especially younger gamers – will believe anything. I’m not talking about the EGM Sheng Long prank style stuff so much as simple playground stories. Things like the hidden level on the island above the Top Secret Area in Mario World; hidden characters in Wrath of the Black Manta, and so on. Stories that are products of a time when technology hadn’t quite caught up with the imaginations of nine year olds yet.
There are two examples that stand out for me. When I was younger, I only really had a 286 for games; we did have an Atari 2600, but it was pretty well broken by the end of 1988. Most of the games played on said 286 were “gifts” from a friend of my sister, and didn’t come with any documentation. Therefore, I had little idea of how to actually play them, and so when my friend Michael Trewartha told me in year four that he knew how to get further in two particular titles that had stumped me, I was all ears.
In a way, that’s something infinitely more insidious than April Fool’s jokes in magazines. That’s taking advantage of the trusting innocence of someone who doesn’t even know how to play the game. That’s not making up tales about how you found a secret ending for Double Dragon II which involves the evil clone end boss turning into a two headed dragon – it’s deliberately misleading someone looking for help in a basic sense.
And so, I tracked down Trewartha to ask about this gross displacement of trust, and to fish for an apology that should have occurred 16 odd years ago.
['Playing Catch Up' was a weekly Gamastura column, in which I picked notable subjects in the game business and interviewed them about their career. This time - I had the chance to talk to the one and only Steve Englehart, writer of some of the best comics of the '70s.]
Today’s Playing Catch-Up, a weekly column that dares to speak to notable video game industry figures about their celebrated pasts and promising futures, speaks to Steve Englehart, co-designer of 8-bit Atari titles Final Legacy and E.T. Phone Home and writer of 2003 PC and Xbox title Tron 2.0.
Englehart’s career began as a comic book writer. His first work was as an art assistant to Neal Adams on issue 10 of Vampirella in 1970, though he was soon drawn to working as a writer, and worked on popular and critically acclaimed runs of Incredible Hulk, Captain America and Avengers for Marvel, where he was known to fans as “Stainless” Steve.
A dispute with then editor-in-chief Gerry Conway over being forced to split Avengers 150 into two issues – and the fact that Conway added a number of pages of his own scripting to the latter – precipitated a move to rival publisher DC.
Over the course of the next year or so, he worked on Justice League of America and a celebrated eight issue run of Batman stories in Detective Comics before finally leaving the industry altogether, with, he says, the intention that he “wouldn’t be coming back”.
His first novel, The Point Man, was printed by Dell Publishing in 1981, and Englehart was immediately asked to write a second, which he planned would focus on “the then-new and exotic place called the Silicon Valley”.
“That came to me because that was when I got into games, as a player,” he says. The area also happened to be just down the road Englehart’s home in Oakland, so Englehart called on a friend of his, Ted Richards, who had worked in underground comics like Dopin’ Dan while Englehart was at Marvel.
“Ted was working at Atari, and he was the only guy I knew in that field,” Englehart explains. “I asked him some questions about how the industry worked, and he said, ‘I don’t know the answer to any of that stuff, but come work for us’. I protested that I had a contract to write a novel. He said: ‘But we’ll give you a computer’.”
“So I returned my advance to Dell,” Englehart laughs, “in exchange for an Atari 800.”
The lure of the computer wasn’t the only factor, of course – Englehart explains that the possibility of a career in the industry proved too compelling and tantalizing an option to turn down. “I was fascinated by the computer and game industry, which was, again, just blowing up,” he comments. “I decided that there were lots of things I could do with my skills; that novels would still be there, etc.”
“The point, I guess, is that having an impressive background and unimpressive computer skills was the norm for those days,” he muses, “as we all helped shaped what the industry became. There were certainly people with great computer skills, but when the industry took off, the norm was more like me.”
Despite the change in industries, he comments that initially he felt “the only real difference was commuting to and from Milpitas every day and working in an office”.
“As a comics writer/novelist I had worked at home, by myself,” he says. “But a guy named Gary Fox also worked at Atari, in another division, and we shared the commute – he had an Alfa Romeo Spider convertible. And the guys in the office were a fun group. So the office life was different for me, though commonplace to most of the world.
"The Citizen Kane of Podcasts!"