Razor Burn

The ads worked.

Not that it was entirely the commercials. I’d seen ads online, too, and come across mention of Harry’s in the past when looking up potential alternatives to my usual razors of choice. The quality of Gillette’s Mach 3 and Fusion Pro Glide that I was now buying at CVS didn’t seem to match what Rite Aid was selling ere they went out of business, with the little strip of aloe that soothes your shave and lets you know when
it’s time to replace your blade falling off long before it faded.

So when spots in high rotation during the World Baseball Classic this March proclaimed that Harry’s was finally making a model — Harry’s Plus — with aloe strips and a detail blade on the back of its multi-blade head like I was used to, I ordered the starter set of that new model with one cartridge and a small can of shave gel for just $10, with tax, no shipping charge. The most fundamental aspect of advertising is to let you know that a product exists and how to get it; my need was not being invented here. I cop to having appreciated the streamlined, sharp yet scrappy image the brand projected when doing that earlier search.

A lot happened in the weeks and months since that order was placed to change my opinion.

Hear, Say

I love music. A bold take, you must be thinking, made possible only by deep reserves of courage and conviction.



The problem is that, as I’ve mentioned here at least once before, I can’t easily read
or write or hold a conversation aloud if there’s chatter going on around me — other conversations, television, etc., sadly including music with lyrics — because my brain foregrounds all of it and I’m unable to focus on any one bit to the point of utter exhaustion.

Plugging the Poll

I know that 2025 is an “off year” in terms of national races — U.S. Representative, Senator, President — but there are still general elections next Tuesday. Not just that newsy mayoral one and the couple of gubernatorial contests, either.

Booker Tour

One week after his 25-hour speech on the Senate floor began, Cory Booker spoke to Stephen Colbert on The Late Show with familiar eloquence.

“You and I are people of faith,” Booker told the host near the end of the conversation, “but there is a Civic Gospel in this country that we need more than ever.” He noted that the Declaration of Independence from a kingdom overseas was a declaration of interdependence among the people of this emerging nation as well. An extended version of the interview is now up on YouTube.

The Sixth, Lies, and Videotape

I did the absolute bare minimum in support of our democracy on January 6th,
2021: I bore witness. Sat down in front of my TV set to experience what’s supposed to be a mere, if potent, formality and stayed there all day long. I could hardly believe my eyes and ears.

How anyone watching footage of the assault then or now can honestly describe it as a peaceful expression of free speech is beyond me.

I and every other American would have been collateral damage if the rioters who overran the Capitol had successfully forced the United States Congress to halt its proceedings in some indefinite fashion. The people actually placing their lives on the line, however, were both those like the police who chose a career that puts them in a position to run towards danger, or stand as a bulwark against it, and citizens such as the Congressional staffers whose job it is to keep the cogs of government moving as smoothly as possible. We owe it to them and ourselves to never let what truly, clearly happened be forgotten, and so I share these words, reeling with turmoil over the knowledge that consequences have been avoided by too many who belittled, distorted, and outright lied about the horrific events of that day, but hoping that with enough of us speaking up and simply pointing to what the cameras saw history will get it right.

Let It Grow

I was digging into my copy of Comics for Ukraine — and so already keenly aware
of the compartmentalization we practice daily to appreciate art in the midst of tragedy or, more generally, simply live our lives even as they or the lives of others are under imminent threat — when reports came in from Israel of the horrifying assaults there
on Saturday.



The book, just recently arrived, was crowdfunded in June of last year through Zoop
to benefit the work done by Operation USA. Its subtitle is Sunflower Seeds after the curse directed at Russian soldiers by a bold Ukranian woman who told them to put seeds in their pockets so that when they die sunflowers will grow in their place on the land they attempted to occupy.

Red in the Head

I don’t always get auras with migraine episodes, and the only kind I get when I do is a strong but fleeting scent. One from not too long ago that’s stuck with me is the aroma of Big Red gum.


Ad screenshot © 1979 Mars Wrigley via Bionic Disco.

I’m pretty sure I haven't chewed or even thought much about it in close to 40 years. I certainly didn’t remember it being such a distinct sort of cinnamon — and that surprise of specificity is a recurring theme with the smells, be they a brief reminder of the brand of cigarettes Dad’s parents smoked or the musty, vinegar-ish scent of the wood in parts of Mom’s parents’ house. I’ve smelled garlic, not as prepared with any particular dish that I recall, and the breath of my late cat Pebbles.

51 Favorites: #15

I’ve had Don McLean’s “American Pie” on the list of things to include in this
series from the start.



Once upon a time, I figured that when I did finally write about the song it would be
in large part to annotate or explicate it. That was before. It was before cyberspace got quite so full; before I realized that with age the mystery and myriad possible interpretations of the lyrics grew more interesting to me than any definitive answers; before McLean slowly began to break his silence on the subject, most recently and distinctly in a documentary that premiered on the Paramount+ service last month called The Day the Music Died: The Story of Don McLean’s “American Pie”.

Going the Distance

Few of us have made it to the end of 2020 without feeling a sense of loss, I suspect, even if we’re fortunate enough not have been directly visited by the most unspeakable of tragedies.



I’ve rarely strayed into social commentary here on the blog, preferring to keep it focused on fun stuff and critiques of pop-cultural pursuits.

Tom Spurgeon 1968-2019

I didn’t know Tom Spurgeon, a longtime critic and lover of comics who passed
away last week at just 50. We met but once at a convention. I know his work, though, and I know a lot of other people in the comics world who did know him, admire him, care for him.



Spurgeon was editor of Fantagraphics’ The Comics Journal for several years before launching his website The Comics Reporter.

Stella Saner 1916-2016

Stella Saner would have been 100 years old today, had she not passed early in
the morning of January 21st with her daughter, my mother, at her side.

Here’s a lightly edited version of what I wrote to read at her memorial service.

The Case of the Chemicals Indicated

I’d say that a funny thing happened on my way back from a long-overdue visit to
family in California, but it involves the Transportation Security Administration and wasn’t really funny — except insofar as it was Batman’s fault.



At the Bay Area fixture Cost Plus World Market, I picked up a figure like the one
shown here.

Coin Drop

I didn’t have the exact 21¢ in change in my pocket earlier tonight that I’ll usually make sure is on me when I go to Chipotle, where I know my sofritas bowl is $7.21 with tax, but I did at least have a penny. The cashier apparently thought the penny was too in-significant to ring up, however, because I still got $12.79 in change for my twenty-dollar bill (and single penny). So not only wasn’t I rewarded with the “How did you do that? You-- You’re a warlock!” look of wide-eyed wonder I’m used to in today’s world when the register displays round change, I’m now out a fricking penny.


Related: Cold Beans • A-Ha Moment • Razor Burn

Une Monde

I prefer to keep the blog light, but the Charlie Hebdo executions cannot go unmentioned.



The juxtaposition between this subject and the frivolity of things that surround it is absurd. You’ll mostly find any sociopolitical discussion here prompted by examination of a given piece of entertainment. Writers and editorial cartoonists being killed for doing their jobs, however, for provoking thought, for challenging doctrine and indoctrination, for calling bullshit on armed thugs whose perversions of spiritual belief are so counter to the better angels of human nature that they can only impose their points of view through physical intimidation, well, although I know that it’s not inherently more vile than other episodes of violence or injustice visited upon people around the world daily, be they splashed across the media or unconscionably overlooked, it simply hits so close to home that in this instance I can’t not stand up, virtually speaking.

Robin Williams 1951-2014

That was a really difficult post title to type.


Original photo: Jim Britt for ABC © 1978.

I was introduced to Robin Williams, who died on Monday at 63, as Mork from Ork
— first on Happy Days; then, of course, on Mork & Mindy. Although I’m two decades younger, I aged with him, through his stand-up and dramatic roles and talk-show appearances and film comedies and, just this past year, his return to network TV.

Which I think is a big part of why his death hits so hard.

New Dream Titans

One fringe benefit to migraines — which to be clear, I would gladly do without if it meant the migraines would stop too — is even more, and more vibrant, dreams than usual.

Two weekends ago I had a nasty, persistent episode come on that meant by the time I crashed I’d been awake for well over 24 hours and then ended up sleeping for close to 12 hours into the evening the next day when I needed to get stuff done. At least a couple of memorable experiences resulted from the ordeal: First, I had an adventure in outer space during the Blackfire / Gordanians arc in Marv Wolfman & George Pérez’s classic New Teen Titans run (not the only time it’s figured into my dreams). Later, I attended a dance recital where someone was attempting to fix me up to the frustration of my good friend Nick Offerman, in character as Ron Swanson, who had accompanied me and thought I was going to show him around Philadelphia.

After sharing the above on Facebook, I received sympathy, of course, along with suggestions on dietary changes that might alleviate migraines, a Little Nemo in Slumberland reference, and the revelation that a certain friend never dreams when enduring migraines — except for infrequent ones in which she has a splitting headache and wakes up with, naturally, a splitting headache. That’s happened to me too but thankfully quite seldom.


Related: Head Space • REM Brands • HIVE Minded

Stan Musial 1920-2013

A dream personified for both those who love seeing poetry in their statistics and those who love seeing the game played the right way, Stan Musial left this mortal coil on Jan. 19th at the age of 92.


Trading-card photo © 1953 Bowman Gum.

During a couple of my years away from the comics world and without an Internet connection, I was fortunate enough to live next to a library. I mostly read nonfiction and young-adult fantasy as neither my comprehension nor my retention were great (not that they’re where I’d like them to be now) — essentially, I needed books that weren’t too complex for me to follow as I read and/or to remember where things left off when I had to stop for a while. One area of interest into which I got to delve more deeply, being freed not by choice but by circumstance from having to stay current with the latest in my hobby-turned-profession, was baseball; I read up a little on the likes of Musial, Willie Mays, and Mickey Mantle.

Further Adventures in Maybe Twitting

I’ve been on Twitter now — @BrianLamken — for almost exactly six months. My reason for joining was as much to connect to folks with whom I’d fallen out of touch as to share my particular brand of pith. Honestly, I’ve wrestled with how to incorporate Twitter into a daily life that isn’t nearly as productive as I would like and that is far from conducive to participation in a site or app built around quick churn of neverending content. The same explanation holds at least in part for why it took me until the other day to finally join Facebook.
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Giving up Twitter several times and then getting sucked back into it after checking
the feeds of a few eminently followable people finally let me comfortably arrive at my current relationship with the service, which is to post links to my blogs when I remember, throw out some random humor when I can, even participate in conversations when focus and priorities allow, all with the understanding that it’s gonna come ’n’ go. Twitter is basically a radio station made up of its users’ contributions: It’s always there, and you’re guaranteed to miss out on stuff you’d love to hear, but you can’t have it on all the time. You can’t be “on” all the time. You just have to let yourself tune in when you can. Facebook and the blogosphere are — chat rooms and bulletin boards and Usenet newsgroups are/were, since the dawn of cyberspace — the same way, although Twitter is so high-volume and has so many streams that it’s singularly impossible to catch everything (the understanding of which I think might ironically be an ingredient in what makes it easier to take it and leave it).

I realize that the preceding may sound ridiculously obvious, but from my experience
a good number of you will understand where I’m coming from. Some folks have a literal mania about being comprehensive, some folks think that they really can absorb it all, some folks don’t feel that it’s worthwhile — or representative of their own value as a participant — to engage with anything that they can’t engage with fully. While it can be hard to give in to the tide without feeling like you’re letting the technology beat you, in doing so you’re actually the one controlling the technology. Or to put it another way, Ain’t nobody gonna read the entire Internet.


Related: Adventures in Maybe Twitting • S Is for... • Mxy Business

Après le Déluge

Bryan Walsh contributed a good piece on Hurricane Sandy to last week’s issue of Time.



He details Sandy’s effects but also suggests how to prepare as storms like Sandy — a hurricane turned post-tropical cyclone after merging with the Arctic jet stream to form a hybrid nor’easter that some dubbed “Frankenstorm” — become a fact of life in what (most rational minds now agree) is an era of consequential climate change.

I’ve felt a bit of survivor’s guilt over Sandy, to be honest.

42 Is Me

When the dad of a dear friend gave me a copy of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in 5th grade — for me, obviously, not for him — I’m sure I didn’t think of the cosmically resonant number of 42 in terms of the age I’d be over three decades hence.

And yet here we are. I don’t know if reaching, in human years, the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything will impact my existence in any positive way but it’d sure be nice.