Thursday, August 7, 2014

Ouchea

What the Hell is One Point Twenty-One Jigga-Whaaaatts?!

I'm Brendan McGuirk, and this is what I'm about.


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When this space was launched six-and-a-half years ago under a joke of a masthead whose punchline was so opaque and insular that I was sure it would be laughed at exclusively with and by myself, I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted it to be. I just knew that puns fusing rap-lyrics with nostalgic pop-culture-citations would be key ingredients. After all, those were key ingredients to me.

I was a young writer figuring out how to publish and what I wanted to work towards. To my great fortune, I had a few platforms and spaces available to me, and I wanted 1point21jiggawhatts to be the platform I used to discuss the things that weren't appropriate for the sites where I plied my wares. Comics were my career, at that point-- I'd interned out of college at DC Comics' editorial, I had worked at Midtown Comics' highly-trafficked Times Square retail location, I'd collaborated on a comic of my own, I'd begun writing about comics semi-professionally, first at PopCultureShock, then Newsarama, Comic Foundry, and ComicsAlliance. Funnybooks were my lifelong passion, so much so that I actually tailored my undergraduate degree to their unique qualifications, focusing my Bachelor's Degree With an Individual Concentration program on Writing for Visual Media. Intentionally oblique, it was my way of saying, yes, I will pursue a higher education by writing fancy essays about Spider-Man, but I won't be naive enough to corner myself into a life where those are my sole qualifications.

So 1point21jiggawhatts would be where I wrote about the not-comics stuff I loved. Sports, music, politics; I had opinions on them all, but I lacked reps in the field, so before I could venture out to try and sell THOSE opinions to prospective editors, it would be where I proved my chops, chiefly to myself, but also maybe to them. To echo my hero and pop-culture avatar Kanye West, I wasn't really spittin' game, I was scrimmaging.

And so it was for a time. I eventually began working full-time as a web editor for my hometown tabloid, The Boston Herald. Catching onto a real-life gig in publishing meant a lot to a kid that knowingly took the risk to personally-customize his college degree, and while the news industry was a churn, I took pride in being a cog. I did this and continued to freelance and write, around the internet on comics, and on this site for other fun stuff.

Then, like probably everybody, I caught a bit of mid-twenties malaise. The day-to-day of maintaining a news website went from a lark to a grind, comics became less personally rewarding, and I didn't know what I wanted to do or be. Happiness came and went, all too often with the phases of the sports seasons.

During this time, my relationship with 1point21 began to fray. After I'd covered San Diego's Comic-Con International, the week-long show that acted as a sun the entire industry revolved around, my goals within comics seemed both tantalizingly close and further than ever before. My passion, which had been such potent fuel for so much of my education and early professional life, began to wane. I kept this site as my browser's homepage, ostensibly as a daily reminder to get back in the saddle, but really as a (very Catholic) way of punishing myself, and shaming myself for allowing so much time to slip away without attempting to re-engage with my goals. For months that became years, I would say the same static image, every time I booted up my web browser, each instance a new cutting reminder of what exactly I was not up to.

When I finally would muster up the energy to put pen to pad, all I could summon were justifications for my slacking ways. I was trying to motivate, but I instead only felt the chasm between where I was and where I intended to be widen.

As happens when one's life is fraught with corrosive doubt, the circumstances of my personal life also changed. Romantic upheaval made it much easier for me to focus the attentions of my daily life on everything but my writing, my goals, and what I could only dare to name as such after a few adult beverages; my career.

But life is long and full of opportunity. While I fell out of love, in life, with comics, with some long-held and romanticized dreams, I needed something to fill the gap. After watching all of The Wire and reading all of the Game of Thrones/ A Song of Ice and Fire series during one notably nihilistic winter, I began to pack my daily life with music. I had always been musical-- unabashedly loved Disneys and musical theater, a lifelong backup singer to whatever was playing on car stereos-- but now music was the styrofoam peanuts packing the walls of my entire waking life. I filled the silence of my days with meticulously curated mixes, and consumed more, and more diverse, music than I ever had before.

After going that way for a few months, I recognized that this played into an existing pattern. Maybe this was true of other people, but I thought back to the times that I had delved deepest into music and discovery, and realized it had always come at times of great tumult. Some of this was surely circumstantial, like when I went to college and was introduced to the world of inter-campus filesharing (long ago...), but it occurred to me that part of the purpose music had served in my life was to give me a running conversation I could participate in, even when only as a listener. It kept me engaged, even as engagement levels in other parts of my life faltered.

I started seeing more live music, making sure to experience the artists that affected me most in their optimal habitat. I started expending more and more energy on music, consuming it with great intent, sharing my discoveries with anyone who would listen, and being consumed by it. It was true love, one that reached back into the recesses of my life, but that also had an open-ended future. My uncle had been a struggling musician until joining the Knights of the Keyboard ranks himself, once upon a time. That decision led to a new life for him across the country, a book bearing his name being published, and eventually, a life-changing time as an American ex-pat in Thailand (it's both not as bad and worse than you might imagine). My sister, who had been a diva our entire lives, who could be counted on to belt out the Mariah hits at the top of her lungs with each daily shower, was blossoming as a young performer herself.

It started to seem like maybe music was going to somehow prove to be a key to whatever was to come next.

Eventually, my frustration over lack of creative output began to boil over. Then, another young American man who had once shown great promise in his field but allowed distractions to interfere with his calling, began staging a return, and announced himself ready to take back the spotlight. It was decided. My comeback would come on the coattails of a man that inspired me long ago, during another transitory era. I would write a massive exploratory piece on Justin Timberlake. It was an exercise just trivial enough to feel consequential, or perhaps vice-versa.

I took far too long and published my opus. It was an album analysis, but it was also a mission statement. I didn't want to apologize for the romanticism of my goals and dreams any longer. I had no options other than to be the guy I am-- the guy that spends 4k words discussing the ways a pop star's commercial celebrity vehicle dedicated itself to telling a meta-story about the pursuit of True Love, through anecdote, observation, and funny image juxtaposition. It made sense in my head, I had to see if it would on the page.

It was a project, I tackled it, it felt good. Then there was more down time. I knew I had gotten the ball rolling so I could get the ball rolling, but I still wasn't sure where to direct myself next. I had long since retired my standing gigs in comics, and I wasn't quite ready to go back to that world. I tooled around on other projects, losing months to trying to find a coherent take on Kanye West-- the man I consider to be the most influential artist of my lifetime-- only to find myself babbling without end.

Still, I got deeper into the world of commercial music. I started to see everyone I had always meant to see.

I saw the Compton valedictorian, Kendrick Lamar. I saw schizophrenic alt-R&Ber The Weeknd. Janelle Monae, music's highest energy performer. Ascended NYC throwback Joey Bada$$ and TDE conspiracy theorist Ab-Soul. I saw the artist that makes me most sentimental, John Legend, and the one that makes me most inspired and engaged, Kanye West. Maybe all I was doing was seeing a bunch of music I already knew I liked, but I was thinking about it all an awful lot, and sorting out how to best give those thoughts shape and life.

I took some time off my Yeezus-feedback loop to try something different, and more finite. And I found that, with the work I was doing, even the parts that weren't seeing the light of day, I was feeling better about my dexterity and capacity. I was getting the reps in, finally, and coming to terms with some of the things I felt had held be back in the past-- namely my willingness to seek out help from those who would offer it.

One of the luxuries afforded to me during my time away from "working," was a role in the wonderful community that sprang forth from, of all places, my neighborhood sports bar. As the son of a relatively well-known local bartender, I had spent a good deal of my formative years in some of Boston and Cambridge's better-known bars, but Parlor Sports was the first place that I dared call my own. Close with the staff and the regulars, I was made to feel free to be my obnoxious, outspoken self, because in a place where everyone's an asshole with an opinion, nobody needs to feel badly about it.

A friend I knew through the bar had recently come to some notoriety for work he did for MIT's Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. He had encouraged me to find my way into that conference, as it was a real hotbed for the major sports leagues and teams, the sports industrial complex surrounding those leagues, the statistics and analytics community, and the sports bloggers' community. It promised to be a cool place to be.

I finally crossed streams and pitched to editors at my day job. The Herald would cover the Sloan Conference. The first day was a general overview of the event (and me being blown away), the second day was about the competitive nature of the games, and the event itself, and shit, I dunno, maybe sports overall.




It was a very exciting experience, but not entirely a new one. It was broader, but in my life as a comics-guy, I'd covered plenty of industry conventions. Nothing could be more intimidating than my first time working San Diego's Comic-Con International. I thought back on that as I settled into the media room that first day of Sloan, regaining my bearings after so long away from this kind of work, where I was truly engaged. San Diego's a huge convention in comics, and covering it had been a personal milestone, but it was one that had come in 2009. I hadn't made it back, but as I pulled up desk space I wasn't thinking about how long it had been in between, I was thinking how grateful I was that I had the experience, and could reasonably assume I would be able to write something coherent about my time there.

You know, I don't know if what I wrote about those two days was totally coherent. It felt great to do, either way. Sports, and the way we talk about sports, and how talking about them intelligently can help discussion in other intellectual arenas, are all passions of mine. Writing words down about what it was like there felt very, very good.

Opportunities beget opportunities. One of the things I had written for this space caught the eye of an old friend and editor who wanted to know if I was available to write some stuff about some comics again. For a while I had felt like I wasn't able to do that, write about comics with conviction and perspective, but now it felt different. Comics weren't going to threaten to take over my world, but there was certainly room for them to be part of it.

Best Shots Review: Thor #18, 
Jason Aaron & Das Pastoras,
Marvel; Newsarama
I am an unyielding sentimentalist, and wrote my first comics' review in some time on Thor, because Thor is my idol. I love Thor so outwardly that it's a punchline, but the thing is, I think humbling one's arrogance is a valuable lesson, and that's what Thor's about. More macro, I like superhero stories largely because the best of them are about being your best self, and how that is the clearest path to happiness. I'd love to have a hammer I could pick up each day that assured me I was worthy to carry it; I could know if and when my worth began slipping. If Mjonlir represents anything to me, it's assurance. Coming back to comics by talking about a story where my favorite character acted like an asshole couldn't have been any more perfect.




Best Shots Review: Fatale #20, 
Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips, 
Image; Newsarama
One of the nice things about coming back to comics after being out of the cycle for a bit was I had a clean sheet to freshly discuss some long-running stories, like Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Fatale. Theirs is a creative partnership that really any serious comics' fans are well-versed in, but they've retained their magic on each project, taking new risks on new stories. I was thrilled to sink my teeth into the work of such masterful storytellers.



Opportunity begets opportunity. Micheal Christmas, a young rapper I'd written about for an experimental piece was going to be playing a gig the night before Sloan, just on the heels of his mixtape release. He was an act that you could reasonably say I was stanning, and I thought it would be an interesting show for the Herald to cover, as there isn't often a local rap act that attracts the daily's eye. I approached our music writer, who very graciously extended the invitation that I contribute to his Herald blog space with some live concert reviews.




Best Shots Review: The Auteur #1, Rick 
Spears, James Callahan & Luigi Anderson, 
Oni Press; Newsarama

Rick Spears was a guy whose grungy, punk-rock work I followed pretty closely in my New York days, but I'd lost track of his stuff. The Auteur, with James Callahan, is a total riot, I couldn't get over how many ideas were jumping around each page.

I was also pretty happy that I felt like I'd found something worthwhile to say about a book with something worthwhile to say, which was very satisfying.




Best Shots Review: All-New X-Men #24
Brian Bendis, Stuart Immonen von 
Grawbadger & Gracia, 
Marvel; Newsarama
It wasn't going to be long after I got back into writing about comics before I got re-acquainted with probably my favorite comicbook writer, Brian Michael Bendis. He had taken over the X-Men franchise, as he once had The Avengers, and I was completely in the dark about it. I gorged on the two ongoing series he had been penning for over a year, not stopping until I caught up with this then-current issue.

As a result of the gorging, I opted to react to the series as a whole, and the direction I thought the X-Men's world was being led in. I loved how unabashedly comic-booky the story was, where characters were meeting their past/future selves in hopes of learning the most valuable lessons. The best X-Men stories are the most over-the-top ones, and I was impressed at the stories' scope, especially to read as a whole.




Best Shots: She-Hulk # 2, Charles Soule,
Javier Pulido & Muntsa Vicente, 
Marvel; Newsarama
As Marvel has become a behemoth entertainment brand, they have taken some of their sub-top-tier titles out of the megaplexes, where the summer blockbusters play, and moved them into the independent movie houses, where it's cooler to bring a date.

She-Hulk is a quirky book, and I'm totally not above saying that a girl about a hyper-competent professional woman has "broad appeal." Because I am a pig (albeit a well-intentioned one).




I'm psyched to talk comics, and music too, but really what gets me going is the shit that I love. I love being inspired by great art, which can be pretty easily traced back to one of my first creative loves, Jim Henson's Muppets. Of course, I am not the only person born between 1970 and 1990 to have been inspired by Kermit and the gang, so when I heard that someone that had written a book about how to make money through the pursuit of their dreams was delivering a lecture on her findings, I really had to know more.

The speaker had written a book titled Make Art Make Money after coming to some notoriety for a piece she'd published on the integrity-challenging resurrection of the Muppets franchise. It was exactly the sort of thing I was eager to both hitch my wagon to, and give a little extra shine. I did everything short of dedicate the piece to the lovers, the dreamers, and me. 

Best Shots Review: Rocket Girl #4,
Brandon Montclare, Amy Reeder, 
Image; Newsarama
Rocket Girl was made by some of my dearest friends in comics. Amy is one of the best people you can do karaoke with, and it's to Brandon, who I worked with at DC, I owe my first byline. 

They also made a fantastic comic. Knowing the two of them, I wonder how much time they spent focusing on heady concepts like "the nature of grown-ups through the eyes of children," when they could just talk about how to make awesome things happen on the page, but they're both very smart, so I wouldn't put both past them. Covering this book restored some of my feelings of community within the world that I'd lived in for so long, but felt very far away. It was quite literally inspiring.




I felt like, if there was anything that the Herald didn't cover as in-depth as it might, it was rap music. Hip-hop has been the dominant cultural force of the late 20th century and early 21st, but in some respects it still fights for recognition and respect.


Donald Glover's stage presence as Childish Gambino impressed, but what got me was the ambition of his show, taking on things like the impact of the Internet, American Blackness, and identity, all while carrying the stage and dropping some of the most intricately-wrought bars you'd ever heard.

Something I wanted to avoid in my comics' coverage was gravitating towards the same stories, titles, and creators I'd read forever. I didn't want to neglect the work of fresh creators whose work I hadn't already been exposed to. There's an exposure/ Shutter pun to be be made, but we're above that.



Best Shots Review: Batman #30, Snyder,
Capullo, Miki & Plascencia,
DC; Newsarama
Sometimes, though, you've gotta dance with the girl that brung ya, and with me, that means superheroes. Batmans was in the middle of another origin reboot, part of a line-wide continuity reset by DC Comics (a decision I was, at best, ambivalent over), and I was happily surprised to discover that not all change was bad.

I think diversifying the sorts of art I was inspecting and discussing was what led me to look at this book as an artifact of Batman the multimedia entity. Cracking the cultural code of Batman as a pop star was the beginning of shape the way I saw all forms of modern-day iconoclasts.



Speaking of iconoclasts, for my money, Black Dynamite might be the greatest hero of the 21st century. Well, he or Django Freeman, anyway, and it's no coincidence that both are retroactive 21st century historic insertions. Like Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, they allow us to re-align history's injustices in accordance with the values of today, or at least through its satirical prism.


I'm probably, y'know, a feminist. Although describing myself that way kind of makes me feel like a self-justifying contestant on I Know Black People. All I can really say is I grew up in a world of women, and I'm, y'know, down with the struggle.

There was no getting around the familial femininity of the Haim show, so I didn't. Which meant writing a bunch about the girls' hair. I'm also curious if they lifted a phrasing from a favorite movie on a favorite song of theirs.


Brian K. Vaughan tells big stories, but intimate ones. Along with artist Fiona Staples, Saga is a huge tale of culture and community and family and humanity. It's a grounded story about, like, space-wizards and fairies making babies and royal robots and murderous bounty-hunters. Above all else, it's a story you never see coming.


I don't have the same energy to dive into the hype-machine of multi-part,  mega-event storytelling that I once did, but I thought there were some interesting choices being made on Jason Aaron and Mike Deodato's Original Sin, that set it apart from many of its contemporary stories.


"Wu Tang is for the children. We teach the children."

That's what ODB said at the 1998 Grammys, and sixteen years later, we can say history proved Dirt McGirt correct. I think the followers of Tyler, the Creator and Odd Future are the very kids that ODB had in mind, who flout authority and that hold originality as the value above all else.


For all the progressive energy of our society, there's still some detritus to be cleared up. I think Sex Criminals is an important book, in the way it both treates sex and mental health.


The opportunity to cover the massive JAY Z, Beyoncé On The Run tour was an exciting uptick in scope. I was eager to see two legends hold the stage. Beyoncé is a figure that has long-fascinated me, largely because she soaks up the bandwidth of so many women, so her performance was something I looked forward to reacting to. Jay Z had never been my favorite rapper, but now I was an occasional-rap-writer, with the chance to see what the biggest institution in rap had to offer.

I don't think I was naive. I saw the commerce driving the collaborative event, and said as much. Still, I did want to believe in that perfect love story, anyway. With the divorce rumors now reaching critical levels, I feel like they had me fooled. Cliché, cliché, cliché...


I like to think of myself as a curious guy. Sure, I was once the kind of kid that would say "I listen to every kind of music, except for country," but we can grow, and change, can't we? I sure hope so. Anyway, Southern Bastards, the South, and the flavor of places.

Something about covering the Jay Z and Beyoncé show made me look at the work I was doing differently. Maybe I wasn't faking it anymore, and maybe I hadn't even been faking it before, even if I thought I had. Ever a reflective guy, a new book came out from an old favorite creator, which got me reminiscing to the last time he'd put out a comic.

I dug up my four-year-old review of the Scott Pilgrim finale, and was pleasantly surprised to learn I did not hate what I had written. And because I am not a subtle writer, or person, really, I could remember back to the state of my personal life when I had written it. I decided I was proud of the piece, and proud of my progress.

My prideful acceptance turned out to be fortuitous, and very thematically relevant to Bryan Lee O'Malley's Seconds graphic novel.


Eventually, of course, things came full circle. An opportunity arose to review the live show of someone I had seen perform a million years ago, in another life...

Seeing Justin Timberlake perform during the FutureSexLoveSounds tour at Madison Square Garden was one of the last things I did as a New York resident, in 2007. I brought the woman I was dating, she was a big fan and it was meant to be a big gesture, and left the show a full-on convert. Two months later, both the city and the girl had broken up with me. I bought into that Justin record so hard that it was okay, that I lived it, adopting some of its glamour to see how it fit, and what powers it may grant. Which was silly but fine, and gave that album a deep and lasting personal resonance.

This time I got to go as a professional, and bring my sister, the diva, and I was once again in awe. He fulfilled that show's promise. I was less starstruck, though, because this time I was more fascinated by the mechanics of what he was doing, and why. I somehow failed to mention his "constituency" in my presidential-flavored piece on the show, which haunts me, but it was very clear why he has remained a beloved personality; because he really wants to be beloved. And hey, game recognize game.

You know who's great? Mom. 

I'm among the many blessed with a great mom. She had me young, so I got to see her drive herself through an early career, her higher education, and was witness to her overcoming incredible hardships. She's my hero. She's Wonder Woman, to me.

Not, that, y'know, she's a warrior princess or whatever, but she is tall, and does have dark hair. And loved Linda Carter. And studied a lot of Greek civilization stuff at Wellesley. Waitaminute maybe we're onto something... 

Anyway it's kind of commonly held among the comics' community that Wonder Woman does not quite get the popular or commercial recognition she deserves, but the current iteration by Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang has really done the character justice. It's smart, it's nimble, and it's feminist without even a hint of politics to it. It's self-evident, which is a testament to creators that know how important tone is to the receptiveness of audiences. Of course, the two will soon depart the series, which means it's all the more important to celebrate it while it lasts. Wonder Woman deserves to be made proud.

The best part of this year's work has been looking forward to it. Conversations that I started here, at 1point21jiggawhatts, in an empty room, have migrated to more populous rooms, which means the experiment worked in part, at the very least. I find, though, that what's been rewarding about the work discussed above is not that more people are listening to the discussion, but that I'm more satisfied with what's being said. The work still isn't quite the shape I want it to be, but it's demonstrably closer than it was, just by existing. 

There's excitement on the horizon, as well. This weekend, I get to see my boy John Legend for the second time in the year, this time with an opportunity to share my thoughts on it, and to share the show as well. Drake & Lil Wayne could happen in a few weeks, Sam Smith a few weeks after that. Opportunity begets opportunity, as does community, as does commitment.

This is the part of this conversation where I wonder if how much vanity is required to even have it. I've always hated the idea of being self-obsessed, because there's so much other awesome shit to obsess about. So I've gotta just hope that it's more the former than the latter, or better yet, believe it. 

Belief is a funny thing. Funny actually requires a good deal of belief, too; belief that a reference will be mutually understood, or that someone will hear the humor of your punchline. Sure, there's a little bit of fear, anxiety and uncertainty, but pack enough belief and no one need know the difference.

-Brendan P. McGuirk
August 7, 2014
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