MIKE MILIARD

Death of a hoop dream

MIKE MILIARD — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:37:08 GMT

Mario Hornsby Jr. was senselessly gunned down in May. Now his father is trying to make sure his death was not in vain.
This past fall, Mario Hornsby Jr., then a senior at Springfield Central High School, wrote an essay for English class.

This past fall, Mario Hornsby Jr., then a senior at Springfield Central High School, wrote an essay for English class. In neat handwriting on ruled paper, with a couple minor spelling errors, he took stock of his relationship with his father, Mario Hornsby Sr., and his responsibilities toward his mother, Monique, and younger brothers, Drevon and DeAundre.

Just last year I noticed a change in my father’s demeanor. He started to get moody and lathargic. So my first thoughts as a man was to drop out of school and get a job to ease the load of my parents. My father, knowing the power of education, told me to continue school and get a job part-time after school. . . . I always listened to my father’s advice, and it paid off. Now I’m a promising student with a great job, that’s going to suit up for the Central Golden Eagles basketball team this year. My father influenced my life in a great way; he made me a great man who can handle a bunch of tasks. It’s funny, because I was going to be another stastic on the drop-out list, but now the sky’s my limit.

Slideshow: A life cut short: Images from the life of Mario Hornsby Jr.

“When I read that letter, it just took me out,” recalls Hornsby Sr. now. “You really don’t know what’s happening in your kid’s life until you get something like that.”

This past fall, Hornsby Jr. started to turn his life around. For most of high school, he was a poor student whose report cards were litanies of D’s and F’s. But senior year, he somehow orchestrated a minor academic miracle. That first semester, his GPA skyrocketed. He made the honor roll. And, having never before played more than a couple of JV basketball games, his newfound confidence and leadership qualities led to his being named captain of the boys’ varsity team.

Then, thanks to the intercession of a helpful coach, something was on the horizon for the hugely popular 19 year old that only a few months earlier would’ve seemed unthinkable: college.

Right about now, Hornsby Jr. should be practicing his jumper, and gearing up for a preparatory year at Brandeis. But he never got to trade the chipped paint and cracked cement of Springfield’s violent Mason Square for the tree-shaded lawns of Waltham. He didn’t live to see his high-school graduation.

Schmaltz Coney Island Lagers

MIKE MILIARD — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 20:53:02 GMT

Freaking delicious
The latest offerings from New York’s Schmaltz Brewing Co. celebrate — as Elvis Costello once put it — the “other side of summer.”

Mound wisdom

MIKE MILIARD — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:29:12 GMT

Cartoons of pitchers and catchers talking are a New Yorker staple. What is so funny about rubbers?
The first pitcher/catcher cartoon in the New Yorker was also the simplest.

The first pitcher/catcher cartoon in the New Yorker was also the simplest. Drawn by Garrett Price, in the June 14, 1941, issue, it depicts a catcher, decked out in the tools of ignorance, face mask still on, approaching his pitcher for a powwow.

His advice: “Strike him out.”

“I’ve always loved that one,” says New Yorker (and, we should note, Boston Phoenix) cartoonist David Sipress. “When the manager or the catcher go out to the mound to talk to the pitcher, everyone in the world, on some level, is thinking, ‘What the fuck? What in the world could possibly be useful or relevant in what he’s saying?’ ”

This past June, Sipress drew another one-panel for the New Yorker on the same subject. Standing on a sandy mound in the middle of Shea Stadium, a right-hander complains to his backstop: “I know I could keep my slider down if they would just fire the manager.” (For those not up on the minutiae of New York baseball, that’s a sly commentary on the travails this summer of since-canned Mets skipper Willie Randolph.)

Between Price and Sipress’s cartoons, there have been at least 20 other visits to the pitching rubber in the pages of the New Yorker over the years.

In April 2001, Michael Crawford made light of Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez’s remarkably acrobatic wind-up. “Gimme a hand,” the Yankees righty, his cleat lodged inside his elbow, said to his approaching battery mate. “I’m stuck.”

In October 2006, Leo Cullum imagined a catcher’s novel remedy for a bases-loaded jam: “Let’s go slider, fastball, curve, beanball, fight, ejection, shower, beer.”

This past June, Danny Shanahan sketched a pitcher peering plateward, a pigskin in hand, about to go deep. “There’s your problem,” the catcher opined.

Cartoonists often indulge in certain visual tropes, over and over again, notes Sipress. The Grim Reaper. Aliens. Cats and dogs. Snowmen. The Pearly Gates. Medieval prisoners hanging from shackles in dungeons. The wild-eyed street prophet wearing a sandwich board.

The pitcher-catcher conversation is just another example of that grand tradition. In fact, Sipress sees the pitching mound as analogous to another classic set piece. “The mound is a little like a desert island, in that there are these two people in an isolated place.”

I suggest that two people talking in private, each counting on the other in an intimate codependent relationship, suggests another cartoon cliché: the husband and wife in bed. Sipress agrees, adding that “it’s like two people in bed in the middle of a stadium. The absurdity of them having a private conversation in the most public arena is ultimately what’s so funny.”

Not by George

MIKE MILIARD — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 23:06:26 GMT

Robot Chicken: Star Wars
A long time ago, on a bricks-and-mortar soundstage far, far away, the last great Star Wars movie was made.

HIGH-QUALITY CINEMA Great stop-motion animation is better than bad CGI.

A long time ago, on a bricks-and-mortar soundstage far, far away, the last great Star Wars movie was made. The sad truth is that, since that day in 1982, many of the parodies, mockumentaries, riffs, mash-ups, and fanboy homages out there in interstellar cyberspace have been far better than any actual Star Wars film.

Hardware Wars, Spaceballs, Chad Vader, The Family Guy’s “Blue Harvest” episode, Eddie Izzard’s “Death Star Cantina” bit (the stand-up version, or the Lego re-enactment) — each is more entertaining than, say, that awful Attack of the Clones scene where Anakin and Padmé go ga-ga, gamboling with the tick-cows in a digitally rendered Naboo field. Or, I suspect, the forthcoming computer-animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars, in which George Lucas finally surrenders to his CGI fetish and gets rid of live human beings entirely.

One of the best parodies around is Seth Green & Matthew Senreich’s stop-motion Robot Chicken: Star Wars (Warner), which aired on Adult Swim last summer and has just been released on DVD. One almost wonders whether it’s as good as it is because of or in spite of Lucas’s blessing and participation.

First, fair warning: the main feature here is over quickly. It’s just 22 rapid-fire minutes. But the extras, which include deleted scenes and short making-of documentaries about production design, puppet fabrication, and stop motion, are just as entertaining.

For a show as gleefully crude as this one, it’s remarkable how much work and craftsmanship go into each lightning-fast set piece. But it’s also worth remembering that the clunky, labor-intensive look of stop-motion animation is really cool — especially to older Star Wars geeks who were weaned simultaneously on Ray Harryhausen fantasy fare, like 1981’s Clash of the Titans. And certainly in comparison to the stylized, facile-looking 1’s and 0’s that Lucas now adores. His added CGI scenes tainted the late-’90s re-releases of the original trilogy; computer effects were relied on far, far too heavily in the prequel trilogy; and the digital animation in The Clone Wars — at least in the clips I’ve seen — seems blocky and cheap. But that’s just one fan’s opinion.

A fan who’s also of the opinion that these quick-cut shorts, some only a few seconds long, are funnier than an open-mic night at the Mos Eisley: a Saturday-morning commercial for Admiral Ackbar cereal (with imitation crabmeat!); a late-nite ad for Max Rebo’s Greatest Hits (with obligatory Joey Fatone duet); Boba Fett, helmet off, coming on to a carbonite-frozen Han Solo; a Bespin weather forecast (“Cloud City will be cloudy this evening, followed by clouds”); Emperor Palpatine ordering take-out while ripping Darth Vader a new asshole for getting the Death Star blown up (“That thing wasn’t even paid off yet! Do you have any idea what that’s gonna do to my credit?”).

Eight is enough

MIKE MILIARD — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:54:05 GMT

Olympians to watch
Sometimes we’d rather root for the unknowns, the underdogs, and the uniques than the professional jerks who are only competing to sweeten their endorsement deals.

The 2004 United States Olympic basketball team featured such high-priced NBA pros as Tim Duncan and Allen Iverson — but barely limped to a bronze medal by beating Lithuania. The vaunted ’08 squad, meanwhile — featuring Kobe Bryant (who couldn’t play in ’04 thanks to his since-dismissed rape trial) and LeBron James — looks like it might be poised to suffer a similar indignity: they recently only eked a win against an Australian team that had its best guy resting on the bench.

Beijing 2008: Special issue: China, Tibet, and the Olympics

Then there’s the Jamaican bobsled team, who, in the 1988 Calgary Winter Games, didn't even finish a run to officially qualify — the only team out of 26 nations to DQ. They became the darlings of the Games, and their story was made into a Disney flick starring John Candy. (Er, you win some, you lose some.)

Point being, sometimes we’d rather root for the unknowns, the underdogs, and the uniques than the professional jerks who are only competing to sweeten their endorsement deals. Here, then, in honor of China’s love for the auspicious number eight (the Beijing games are to kick off this Friday, August 8, 2008, at 8:08:08 pm), are eight athletes from around the world you may or may not have heard of.

MA LIN, CHINA, TABLE TENNIS
“Boring, dry, and extremely effective,” Ma’s official bio describes his style of play. Uh, whatever happened to “Swifter, Higher, Stronger?” No matter. Ma, who joined the Chinese national team 14 years ago (at age 14), is a ruthless competitor. He “isn’t trying to please a crowd,” he’s just gunning for a win. We still think we could beat him at beer pong after a few keg cups of Milwaukee’s Best.

LUMINIŢA DINU, ROMANIA, HANDBALL
Dinu, whose name means “little light,” is a blindingly popular figure in Romanian handball. Indeed, she’s considered the greatest goalkeeper in that country’s history. But don’t take our word for it — consider the following news account: “Două dintre componentele de bază ale echipei naţionale de handbal feminin a României, portarul Luminiţa Huţupan Dinu şi pivotul Ionela Gâlcă Stanca, nu au fost convocate în lotul tricolorelor pentru returul cu Islanda, din barajul de calificare la Campionatul European 2008.” (We’re assuming you speak Romanian.)

Found farce

MIKE MILIARD — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:05:40 GMT

Spaced makes it to DVD
Simon Pegg is funny.

FEY APPEAL Pegg’s may be the famous name, but the real discovery here is Jessica Hynes.

Simon Pegg is funny. Anyone who’s seen Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz knows that. So why has it taken us so long to find out about Jessica Hynes? Known by her maiden name, Stevenson, back when she created the BBC series Spaced with Pegg and director Edgar Wright in 1999, Hynes is a comedy dynamo: pratfalling, deadpanning, and decked out in thrift-store chic, she’s a little like a North London Tina Fey.

It’s a mystery why Spaced: The Complete Series (BBC) has taken this long to be released stateside on DVD. As Saturday Night Live’s Bill Hader says, in an effusive packet of press blurbage from high-profile fans (Patton Oswalt, Diablo Cody, Eddie Izzard, Judd Apatow), Spaced is “the show we American comedians watch and say, ‘How the hell did they get away with this?!’ ”

For Spaced novices: Pegg plays Tim Bisley, a comic-book artist who works in a comic-book shop (with a boss whose name is Bilbo Bagshot). Hynes is Daisy Steiner, a writer who doesn’t do a whole lot of writing — she’s far too busy being bubbly and babbling, doting over her miniature schnauzer, Colin.

Tim and Daisy, platonic friends, decide to pose as a “professional couple” so they can apply for an exclusive apartment. Not that their landlady, Marsha (played to pickled perfection by Julia Deakin), who’s never without a bottle of wine in one hand and a lit fag in the other, is all that picky. They get the flat and soon find themselves neighbors with Brian Topp (Mark Heap), a conceptual artist who deals in “anger, pain, fear, and aggression.” (“Watercolours?” Daisy asks. No, he says. “It’s a bit more complex than that.”) Tim’s best mate, Mike Watt (Nick Frost), a militaristic geek with detached retinas, and Daisy’s fashionista friend Twist (“my parents were hippies”), played by Katy Carmichael, round out the cast.

Over Spaced’s two too-short seasons, we follow the quotidian existences of these six characters, who co-exist, as one promotional blurb puts it, “in a world perched precariously on the edge of normality.” But though these humdrum lives may lack a certain élan, they’re related to us with a cartoonish joie de vivre: flashbacks and flash-forwards, jump cuts, rapid-fire edits. Tim is a video-game addict and a movie geek, and the funniest thing about Spaced is how these banal lives — clumsy romantic entanglements, joblessness, procrastination — are presented using the language of silver-screen epics, sci-fi movies, and horror flicks.

Krofft fare

MIKE MILIARD — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:55:23 GMT

Sid and Marty show MySpace how psychedelia’s really done
My favorite Sid and Marty Krofft production is one they had nothing to do with.

Where has all the Gonzo gone?

MIKE MILIARD — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:16:41 GMT

In the first presidential election since the death of Hunter S. Thompson, we finally realize what we've lost
On top of everything else they’ve blighted over their awful eight-year reign, the Bushies did this: they killed Hunter S. Thompson.

On Election Day in 2004, Hunter S. Thompson put down his tumbler of Wild Turkey and put forth a proclamation. Writing in his weekly espn.com sports column, “Hey Rube,” he laid out a high-stakes bet: “Kerry will win big today. I guarantee it. The evil Bush family of central Texas is about to suffer another humiliating failure on another disastrous election day.”

By nightfall in Woody Creek, Colorado, he’d be proven wrong. And, by the following February, just 110 days later, he’d be dead.

There you have it. On top of everything else they’ve blighted over their awful eight-year reign, the Bushies did this: they killed Hunter S. Thompson.

Yes, of course, he killed himself. (In fact, he’d talked about suicide his whole life. In 1977, in the introduction to The Great Shark Hunt, he fantasized about defenestrating himself, musing that he’d already lived “13 years longer” than he’d planned. By the time he perched himself on a stool above his IBM Selectric and put a .45 pistol in his mouth, he was all but paralyzed. Paralyzed physically by increasing decrepitude — hip replacement, back surgery, broken leg — and paralyzed professionally by the Gonzo caricature he’d created. It was time to go.)

But, say some who knew him, darkness finally fell when America ignored that last fleeting chance for a course correction in 2004, willfully re-electing that “treacherous little freak.”

“I did start to worry about him right after the Bush election,” says his second wife, Anita, in producer-director Alex Gibney’s excellent new documentary film, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. “That, I think, was a trigger.”

“I think it broke his heart,” says William McKeen, author of the new biography Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson (W.W. Norton), by phone from Florida. “[Thompson’s literary executor, Douglas] Brinkley said he stopped even joking. He just went into a really dark, foul mood. A couple of other friends blamed the suicide on the political climate. Hunter couldn’t live in that country anymore.”

And so we find ourselves, one week after what would have been the good doctor’s 71st birthday (July 18), muddling through the first post–Hunter S. Thompson presidential election. We find ourselves missing his political voice — and wishing he was around to see the Crawford crowd finally slink away.

In Gonzo, Thompson’s first wife, Sandy, rues his suicide. It was not a “courageous act,” as some called it, she says. It was cowardly. And it robbed America of an inimitable voice at a crucial moment. “This is a time when a together Hunter Thompson could make a difference in this country.”

CSNY Déjà Vu

MIKE MILIARD — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:08:49 GMT

Still rocking in the free world
If some think “four balding hippie millionaires” should just can the politics and play the hits, that’s not how Neil rolls.

Wait, who is this?

MIKE MILIARD — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:52:30 GMT

Andrew Earles and Jeffrey Jensen shine the dim light of cultural obscurity on the prank phone call
Earles and Jensen’s calls, primarily perpetrated on unsuspecting denizens of Memphis and New York, are strange and wonderful specimens of telephonic performance art.

THEY’VE GOT BALLS Andrew Earles (right) and Jeremy Jensen (in leather) create strange and wonderful prank-call comedy that borders on performance art.

Earles & Jensen, "The Yogurt Machine" (mp3)
Earles & Jensen, "Kurt Loder Has Lost His Mind" (mp3)
Earles & Jensen, "Barbara: A Realistic Portrait" (mp3)
Earles & Jensen, "Barbara’s Husband Clears The Air" (mp3)
Earles & Jensen, "Christopher Fucking Cross" (mp3)
Earles & Jensen, "Bleachy Is Back In Town, Look Out" (mp3)
Earles & Jensen, "Bedroom ETA: A Jermaine Stewart Cover Band" (mp3)
Earles & Jensen, "My Friends Call Me Ditchweed. Don’t Ask. OK, Go Ahead and Ask" (mp3)

Having titled their self-released 2002 prank-call debut CD Just Farr a Laugh — a reference to one call’s poking fun, in passing, of M*A*S*H star Jamie Farr’s autobiography — Andrew Earles and Jeffrey Jensen made a decision. For the disc of new material accompanying the record’s recent Matador reissue, Earles and Jensen Present . . . Just Farr A Laugh Vols. 1 & 2: The Greatest Prank Phone Calls Ever!, a more substantial connection to America’s favorite Lebanese cross-dresser was warranted.

“So we called the hot-dog establishment that Klinger always namedrops in M*A*S*H, Tony Packo’s Hot Dogs, and we had, like, an hour-long conversation with those people,” says Jensen. “But regardless of how over-the-top and absurd the things we were saying, they believed all of it.”

Claiming they were writing Farr’s nine-volume bio, the pair phoned other Toledo landmarks. But everywhere they dialed, no dice: “We were hoping to get some outrageous responses, but we didn’t,” says Jensen. “So, in a box somewhere, there’s probably like six solid hours of us having really absurd conversations about Jamie Farr’s life.”

They can’t all be keepers. But luckily, most of them are. Earles and Jensen’s calls, primarily perpetrated on unsuspecting denizens of Memphis and New York, are strange and wonderful specimens of telephonic performance art. A man rings up a tattoo parlor, hoping his tat depicting “a monster truck being impaled on an upside-down cross” might somehow be doctored into an image of Kenny from South Park. Someone purporting to be Van Halen’s Michael Anthony tries to pawn his Jack Daniel’s bass guitar. A thuggish but sensitive gangsta seeks to rent VHS copies of Terms of Endearment and Cocoon 2: The Return. A wizened 67-year-old burlesque dancer seeks an audition at which she can shake her cottage-cheese ass.

Give the drummer some

MIKE MILIARD — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:36:51 GMT

Fundraiser for Vicente Lebron
A couple weeks ago, the Phoenix brought you the sad and disturbing tale of Vicente Lebron.

The Baseball Project

MIKE MILIARD — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:31:47 GMT

Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails | Yep Roc
The smart, funny, fanclub chants herein, each as catchy as Willie Mays in the ’54 Fall Classic, are gemlike tributes to the characters who’ve made that diamond shine.

Tokyo roses

MIKE MILIARD — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:58:10 GMT

Jeopardy! Japanese style
It’s a special people indeed who can cast off the twin yokes of rigid history and a driven work ethic to spend time unwinding in Day-Glo game-show studios.

STARTO! Smack in the middle of the Tokyo megalopolis, stateside stereotypes run free.

It’s a special people indeed who can cast off the twin yokes of rigid history and a driven work ethic to spend time unwinding in Day-Glo game-show studios, tapping hand drums and howling with laughter at stunts like “Human Tetris” (players must contort their bodies to fit oddly shaped cut-outs in an advancing wall), “Human Bowling” (self-explanatory), “Do Not Laugh” (contestants who violate that rule are punched in the gonads), “Marshmallow Eating Contest” (with faces attached to a wall by rubber bands, players try, Tantalus-like, to munch the puffy confections dangling before them), and “Old Man Bites Tenderly” (don’t ask).

Heretofore, Americans who wanted to watch adults engage in such activities had to head to YouTube. But at long last, the network sages have responded. There’s the new Wipeout (ABC, Tuesdays 8 pm), a Japanese-inspired series that pits contestants against each other as they stumble and belly-flop over such obstacle-course stunts as “Big Balls” and “The Dreadmill.” There’s also Hole in the Wall, a program based on “Human Tetris” that’s set to premiere on Fox soon.

But the best of the bunch is I Survived a Japanese Game Show (ABC, Tuesdays 9 pm). Here, 10 Americans compete on a game show called Majide — which loosely translates as “you must be crazy.” What’s different from Wipeout, however, is that the contestants are battling in Japan. Moreover, the zaniness of the competition is like the gooey-chewy center inside a reality-show chocolate. Think of it as Survivor meets The Real World meets Lost in Translation.

Smack in the middle of the Tokyo megalopolis, stateside stereotypes run free. Cathy, from Staten Island, is the bitch. Justin, from Alabama, is the guileless good ol’ boy. Darcy, from Idaho, is the sweet small-town single mom. Bilenda, from North Carolina, is the sassy black chick. And Andrew, from Boston, and Olga, from Medford, do their part to up the Masshole quotient.

Nearly as entertaining as the game-show stunts is watching the Yanks grapple with Nipponese culture shock. Standing in Shibuya Square, with pedestrians swarming the streets like worker ants while towering neon signs pulsate with kana glyphs, middle-aged Ben marvels that he was “sitting on a couch in Punxsutawney” just the day before. In the house they share, things are even kookier. The beds are on the floor?! No shoes allowed!! Sake tastes like lighter fluid!! Dried squid!?! The toilet has . . . a remote control!!!

We're number 48!

MIKE MILIARD — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 20:21:12 GMT

Mass drivers really do suck
Massholes have no business being behind the wheel.

One of these days, people will smarten up and stop funding studies that only confirm what everyone already knows. Until then, we have the new GMAC Insurance National Drivers Test, which offers irrefutable proof that Massholes have no business being behind the wheel. As if we needed any.

The numbers don’t lie. In a survey of 5524 licensed drivers from the 50 states and Washington, DC, Massachusetts motorists ranked a woeful 48th in basic driving knowledge. Perhaps the only surprise is that New Yorkers, New Jerseyites, and District of Columbians scored worse than we did.

On a written test — 20 questions lifted directly from state DMV exams — Bay Staters had an average score of 75 percent. (At least a 70 is required to pass.) Worse, more than 24 percent flunked outright.

The Northeast as a whole scored worst, on balance, with the lowest average test score (76 percent) and the highest average failure rate (nearly 20 percent). Meanwhile, those goody-two-shoes Midwesterners got the best grades, with a failure rate of just 11 percent. And, as much as I hate to say it, ladies, 20 percent of you failed, versus 13 percent of men.

There you have it. Nationwide, perhaps 33 million licensed Americans — more than 16 percent of drivers on the road — are unfit to take to the streets. And here in Boston, we’re doing our damnedest to keep those statistics up. Of course, far more endemic than the drivers who don’t know the rules of the road here are the ones who know them and choose to flout them.

Our streets are narrow; our signs either confounding or nonexistent. We interpret speed limits as mere suggestions. We see yellows lights like a bull sees a matador’s red cape. We lean on the horn mere milliseconds after lights turn green. We have no use whatsoever for turn signals. We swerve suddenly and unpredictably. We pay scant attention to lane divisions. We do not yield when merging onto the highway. We pass on the right. We drive on the shoulder. We tailgate to intimidate, and stop short to exact revenge.

From our rotaries to the infamous “Boston Left Turn,” our streets are object lessons in controlled chaos. Why? Richard Trachtman, co-author, with Ira Gershkoff, of The Boston Driver’s Handbook: Wild in the Streets (Da Capo), says it does indeed all go back to those meandering colonial cow-paths. “It starts out with the layout of the city,” he says. “Those narrow, curving streets. There’s kind of a disorganization that attaches itself to the whole thing.”

Bo Diddley was a gunslinger

MIKE MILIARD — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:10:37 GMT

1928-2008
Grab a stack of albums at random and scan the liner notes. Ten bucks says you’ll find the name “E. McDaniel” listed among the song credits on at least one of them.

Grab a stack of albums at random and scan the liner notes. Ten bucks says you’ll find the name “E. McDaniel” listed among the song credits on at least one of them.

That’s Bo Diddley — born Ellas Otha Bates, in McComb, Mississippi. He later adopted the surname of his mother’s cousin, Gussie McDaniel, who raised him, before taking his famous stage name in the ’50s. That he is one of the most covered songwriters in music history is beyond dispute. What’s really remarkable is the catholicity of the artists who’ve dipped reverently into his catalogue — from “Diddy Wah Diddy” (Captain Beefheart) to “Before You Accuse Me” (Clapton, Creedence) to “Who Do You Love?” (pretty much everyone else).

Billy Childish recorded an excoriating album of Diddley covers. The Fall’s Mark E. Smith lauded him (“He had the best riffs and the drums are whacking out.”). And, of course, be it Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away,” the Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now?” or Bow Wow Wow’s “I Want Candy,” that Bo Diddley Beat — chug-chug-chug, chug-chug — is inescapable in rock music.

“He was playing really rhythmically, and I think you can trace that stuff back as far as having a direct link to African rhythm,” says Berklee professor Dan Bowden. “It really broke through in the pop market and obviously had an appeal for a wide range of listeners. People really grab on to that rhythm and use it through the generations.”

Best of all, the guy was one of music’s quintessential bad-asses. It wasn’t just the black fedora tipped low, or the omnipresent shades, or that iconic open-tuned square Gretsch that he crafted himself. It was his sheer force of personality, his convention-smashing creativity. Many of his songs only had one chord. He was playing behind his head and with his teeth when Hendrix was still in the Army. His 1959 jive-talking “Say, Man” is considered by some to be the first rap song.

He was hot shit, and he knew it: Bo Diddley didn’t just refer to himself in the third person, he named songs — “Bo Diddley,” “Diddley Daddy” — and entire albums — Go Bo Diddley, Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger — after himself. (And he wasn’t lying about the gun, either: for a time in the ’70s he served as a deputy sheriff in New Mexico.)

Old 97's

MIKE MILIARD — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 21:46:28 GMT

Blame It on Gravity | New West
The guitars ring clear and true, the backbeat is snare-tight, the harmonies are heavenly, and the Old 97’s are back.

Spirit of '76

MIKE MILIARD — Tue, 27 May 2008 19:47:33 GMT

Swingtown takes a hit of Tab

FREE LOVE Can the show’s erotic charge blow away the period details?

What a difference 16 years makes. The stylish, justly celebrated Mad Men (AMC, returning for its second season next month) begins in 1960, as Eisenhower gives way to Kennedy. It’s an era that’s re-created — as far as this Gen-Xer can tell — with exacting verisimilitude. The suits are sharp, the shirts are starched stiff, and each hair is lacquered tight with shiny Brylcreem.

By 1976, however, when Swingtown (CBS, Thursdays, 10 pm) takes place, a lot has changed. And those brownish-yellow years of Ford/Carter malaise are conjured just as faithfully — right down to the pull-tab Tab and FM dials full of MOR schmaltz (Rita Coolidge, Seals & Crofts). The polyester is chintzy. The men are shaggy and hirsute. Things, in other words, are a little less buttoned down. In fact, “unbuttoned” is probably the mot juste.

Because Swingtown, as its Steve Miller Band–derived title suggests, is about swingers. Spouse swapping. Consensual infidelity. And one can only wonder how different it might be were it on HBO (or AMC) instead of safe and staid CBS.

We find ourselves in a leafy cul de sac somewhere outside Chicago, where commercial jet pilot Tom Decker (Grant Show) has returned home to his amorous sparkplug of wife, Trina (Lana Parrilla) — bringing with him a stewardess, like a souvenir from another city. As he attends to her in the bedroom, Trina is in the living room, gazing lovingly at his photograph.

Not long after, Bruce and Susan Miller (Jack Davenport and Molly Parker), two yearning suburbanites with a couple of kids, move in across the street. And when the Deckers stop by with a bottle of Dom Pérignon to invite them to their Fourth of July party — “we’ll light some fireworks, you can make some new friends, whatever you’re into” — there’s no mistaking what Trina means when she suggests, “You might wanna get a sitter. This party will go late.” Cue Redbone’s “Come and Get Your Love.” Bomp-chicka-wow-wow.

“We were busy raising our kids when the Woodstock counterculture began,” demurs Susan when Trina broaches the subject of a foursome (after giving Susan her first Quaalude, natch). “I’m happy to tell you,” Trina replies, “that the train is still boarding.” And so, tremulously, one attractive couple are introduced by another attractive couple to the illicit thrills of extramarital canoodling. Tom rubs Susan’s shoulders as Bruce watches with a mix of trepidation and arousal. Trina takes Bruce’s hand. And away we go.

Rage against the machines!

MIKE MILIARD — Wed, 28 May 2008 18:24:01 GMT

Could robots take over the world? In many ways, they already have.
We’re on the cusp of a perilous era. Our pitiful carbon bodies are evolving much slower than the silicon and steel gizmos we’re inventing. And the guys in the lab coats and pocket protectors are starting to worry we’ve opened Pandora’s hard drive.

Massively intelligent artificial brains with no further use for humans. Armies of robotic clones, ever replenishing their ranks. Nimbly mechanized BigDog quadrupeds that can’t be toppled as onward they march. Self-replicating swarms of ecosystem-destroying “gray goo.” Military killing machines with no moral compass built in.

We’re on the cusp of a perilous era. Our pitiful carbon bodies are evolving much slower than the silicon and steel gizmos we’re inventing. And the guys in the lab coats and pocket protectors are starting to worry we’ve opened Pandora’s hard drive.

Technology rules us. All day, every day, we interact with machines. What if they decided, some sunny afternoon, that they no longer wanted to interact with us?

“Open the pod bay doors, HAL.”
Smart robots could indeed stage the big takeover. Many experts think it’s inevitable. And the “technocalypse” won’t necessarily come courtesy of bipedal humanoids wasting us with lasers. It could be more insidious: surpassingly cerebral supercomputers simply deciding they don’t like us, or planet-devouring microtechnology run amok.

Our best hope is to become more like them. To make the great leap forward from human to cyber-enhanced post-human. Only then might the billion-casualty war between Cosmists and Terrans be avoided. (Er, we’ll explain that one later.)

The AP reported a couple months ago that Japan is well on its way “to a future . . . where humans and intelligent robots routinely live side by side and interact socially.” There are more than 370,000 robots employed at factories across that country — nearly 40 percent of the worldwide total. Robots in Japan are “serving as receptionists, vacuuming office corridors, and spoon-feeding the elderly,” the story reported. “With more than a fifth of [Japan’s] population 65 or older, the country is banking on robots to replenish the workforce and care for the elderly.”

Just think of all the time we’ve wasted fretting about climate change and looming recession, nuclear war and bioterrorism. Perhaps we should worry instead about destruction or subjugation at the steely hands of these man-made monsters?

More and more, the innocent subservience of Kraftwerk’s “Die Roboter” — from 1978’s classic The Man-Machine, in which helpful automatons chant “Ja tvoi sluga, Ja tvoi robotnik” (“I’m your slave, I’m your worker”) — seems a wistful relic of the past. These days it’s better summed up by Flight of the Conchords, cavorting in silver cardboard boxes as they cheer the downfall of their meat-puppet masters: “The humans are dead. The humans are dead. We used poisonous gasses. And we poisoned their asses.”

Found art

MIKE MILIARD — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:21:44 GMT

Jon Strymish’s cluttered vision
Photographer Jon Strymish’s truck is a mess.

Josh Ritter photographed by John Strymish

Photographer Jon Strymish’s truck is a mess. “It’s a chaotic clutter of stacks of photographs and negatives, empty film canisters, [and] remnants of his past meals,” says friend and fellow shutterbug John Nikolai. “I’ve seen plants growing out of frightening dark corners of it, where there’s muck and filth. He could make an exhibition out of his truck as easily as he could his photography. It’s somethin’ else.”

Strymish is so scattered, in fact, that he’s been the subject of scholarly inquiry. Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman’s 2007 book, A Perfect Mess: The Benefits of Disorganization (Little, Brown) included a chapter parsing his unorthodox work habits.

And, as it happens, Strymish works with books. The whole reason his truck is in such abysmal disarray is that he spends so much time co-managing the towering and sprawling New England Mobile Book Fair (NEMBF) in Newton Highlands. “I work seven days a week, which doesn’t leave much time to clean the house or the car,” he says. “If I could have time to keep things straight, I would. But I work really hard to keep the bookstore straight.”

That said, NEMBF also exists in a state of near-entropy. “It’s sort of chaos,” admits Strymish. “It’s probably the biggest business in America without a computerized inventory system. Floor to ceiling books. As much as we can carry.” So how do they keep the place in order? “We mostly just work hard.”

You can thank that blithe but serious-minded approach to life for Strymish’s new photo exhibit, “These Are From the Negatives in My Car,” which is currently hanging at Club Passim in Harvard Square. When the club called up looking for some prints to hang recently, time was tight. Strymish didn’t have the leisure of being too discerning. So he had a thought: “What could I find in my car to print?”

While sifting through the flotsam of his truck, Strymish plucked negatives as he found them. Then he developed them. The results — 20 or so stately black-and-white portraits of local musicians, among them Josh Ritter, Rose Polenzani, Kevin Barry, Aoife O’Donovan, and Jennifer Kimball — prove that one man’s “trash” can be everyone else’s treasure.

Soltero

MIKE MILIARD — Mon, 12 May 2008 21:11:18 GMT

You're No Dream | La Société Expéditionnaire
Songwriter Tim Howard has been peripatetic lately.