Just a quick upload.. A cool, detailed sketch my daughter finished recently, thought I'd share.

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In the mid 80s, there was a TV pilot for a never-realized series Condor. Set in the near future of 1999, it was based around a human agent (typical '8os cop meme, a maverick who plays by his own obnoxious rules) and his good-looking android partner. The old school agent predictably resents being paired with the new soul-less technology. But over the course of 80 delicious minutes, he learns to respect it..

Condor had a pretty good cast, including Fresh Prince's Uncle Phil, and Wendy Kilbourne as the beautiful robot..

An interesting element is 1985 conjecture on how the world would look in the near future.. oversized drones and urban three-wheelers were part of that speculation.. They did a pretty good job balancing potential progress with factors of daily life that don't change much. And this to me, is the most disappointing aspect of Condor not making it.. missing out on more of the futuristic aesthetic, because they seemed to put effort in to this part of the pilot. There are couple places now to stream Condor, and it is a cool cultural artifact of how some foresaw the start of the 21st century..

Part Maxwell Smart, part Dean Ween.. Christopher Proctor (a TV icon that could've been).

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It's common to hear about negative encounters with celebrities.. so for the sake of balance I wanna share a positive (throwback) celebrity experience I had..

Summer of '99 I was working at a sunglass retailer in Ocean City, Maryland. We were right on the boards, so there was a lot of foot traffic at night. And one night, Foo Fighter Dave Grohl dipped in.. It didn't surprise me, because I was aware he was from the northern Virginia area.. and the DC suburbs produce a lot of Ocean City's tourists. It was an unusually slow night, so I was working solo, and Grohl was the only customer in the shop then. He said he was looking for nighttime shades (I assume to cloak his identity). In the late 9os, as a Nirvana alum and current Foo Fighter, he was easily recognizable.

I didn't mention that I recognized him, and just talked him up like any other anonymous customer. I asked him about this forearm ink.. we talked a little bit about the store's bright yellow paint job. He noted that yellow was perceived as a uniquely unfriendly color for marketing. It was a cool conversation. And after he picked a pair of glasses, and paid.. he gave me a $20 tip, (that he wouldn't let me refuse). Which in that era was probably equal to 4 hours of work. So I was flattered and grateful..

Guess I was just feeling nostalgic, and wanted to show some love for the civilized celebrities. I had mixed encounters with different famous folks after moving to LA. Grohl stands out as decent.

Years ago, I briefly alluded to this chance encounter with Grohl in Natrrain #13.

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I was once pretty immersed in hardcore/punk.

I made an effort to see & support a lot of bands in small to medium venues. In the 90s and early 2000s, I went out to watch a lot of friends and co-workers perform. Bought tickets for shows in Virginia and Maryland.. Los Angeles, and went down to Orange County and San Diego a couple times. I've written reviews for DIY shows and albums. Contributed art to other zines, and bands over the years. I have no musical talent, but like to think my punk bona fides are established enough for (semi)constructive criticism. And as preface, no disrespect is meant to some of the great music produced.

Something that drew me to punk, and the hardcore scene, beyond just its sound, was its claim to be a refuge for free expression. Part of the punk ethos was that it was rejecting the closed-mindedness of mainstream society. A big component of 80s punk was its rejection of Reagan & the Religious Right's (perceived) bigoted conservatism.. fair enough. But I noticed over time, punk became equally rigid in its own ideology. Punk really wasn't a counter genre, of open-mindedness. It was just an opposing form of closed-mindedness. It wasn't truly rejecting cliquishness; just offered a different clique. You had to share and advance punk's left-wing viewpoints and punk's atheism.. or you could be ostracized. I experienced this a couple different ways while doing Natrrain.

This hypocrisy was apparent to me back in my club-going days, but is even clearer to me in hindsight. Also notice in retrospect, that a lot of the political positions of punk never materialized in to concrete political action on their part. A lot of aging punks remained in the role of social critics (nothing wrong with that). But when some are still railing about the Religious Right and/or the W. Bush years, they reveal a windmill-tilting, arrested development. And they're basically severed from political reality. A reality where conservatives have largely been purged from, or abdicated, a lot of cultural institutions like mainstream media & universities, etc.

Strange to me, when punks still imagine their dyed hair & ink to be counter-cultural. Aesthetics is a front where punk definitely gained ground and mainstreamed. It's common to see purple hair and neck tattoos at any PTA meeting or gathering of 21st century soccer moms. There's something tragic and grating to me, how punk became very much like a cliquish, inflexible way of thinking. It's a mindset they originally set out to destroy. Guess this is typical in a lot of cultural revolution though..

still ready to battle jocks & Reagan voters?

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Paintings have basically become our most valuable visual resource in remembering the Battle of Hampton Roads. Even though this one is dated 1886, a full generation after the 1862 battle; it's close to how I envision it, the darker greenish water, smoke pouring out from point-blank body blows..

A famous Kurz and Allison 1889 depiction of the battle. One of my favorites.. but in this version, the water looks so damn light it looks like they're fighting in the Caribbean. And maybe the water was less polluted back then, but..

Wonder if these two paintings shared the same primary source description, or earlier sketch, as their model. They look so fundamentally similar(?)

Mort Kunstler did a great painting of the battle in the '8os. It has a unique feeling, where both the Monitor and the Merrimac (turned CSS Virginia) kinda look more like organic sea monsters.

USS Monitor vs CSS Virginia (Kunstler)

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This early '8os TV movie is an interesting cultural artifact.. It's basically a dated cautionary tale on Dungeons & Dragons. A young Tom Hanks plays a college kid whose fragile emotional/mental health leads him to an escapist obsession with his D&D character. In a melodramatic scene, Hanks flees in to NYC and damn near leaps off the roof of the Twin Towers.

In 2023, it seems funny to look back on this institutional mistrust of D&D, especially on the heels of a major studio movie that basically now glorifies the D&D universe. But I remember some of the concerns & hysteria about D&D's potential to warp the minds of nerds.

The understandable parental anxiety of the late '7os & early '8os was that the line between reality and role-playing fiction could become blurred. And because D&D had demons & violence, the game play may carry over in to every day life and create killer elves & wizards. And there was an element of truth in these concerns. But I think every hobby has potential risk, and many hobbies and pastimes have been subjected to hysterical skepticism at some point. Video games, rap & heavy metal, etc. are things that have been cited for creating killers & psychos. And at times, those accusations aren't incorrect. But over time, the public is able to weigh an artform and/or hobby's net negative impact on its purveyors and fans. And even tho there have been isolated cases where D&D was believed to have a violent influence (the Shawn Novak case is one I remember well), I feel like D&D is now viewed as a harmless pastime. 

The movie wasn't great, but not terrible either. I did kind of get a sense tho it may have had a demoralizing effect on D&D players at the time(?) RPGs already had a reputation as a dorky, marginalized hobby, and D&D was being additionally demonized, when depicted as a gateway to psychotic breaks.

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I was reminded of an old (original) Twilight Zone episode recently.. The season one episode Mr. Bevis. Basically the story of a nice guy, down on his luck. Mr. Bevis is a single guy, with a beat-up ride, tenuous employment, with harmless (but childlike) hobbies. He is a good-hearted man, who paints a sympathetic character as he loses his job, and his hooptie is totaled in a freak accident.

So Mr. Bevis understandably heads to the bottom of the bottle, until he makes the unexpected acquaintance of a sort of guardian angel (played by Henry Jones, who later was in the underrated, short-lived series: Mrs Columbo)

'Mr. Bevis' with actor Henry Jones..

Mr Bevis is basically given a new life, but it doesn't fit what he truly wants. So his genie (without a bottle) gifts him back his original, modest (but fulfilling) existence. Including his outdated car.

So after downing a series of double shots, Mr. Bevis exits the bar and finds his ol' trusty ride waiting for him.. courtesy of his mystical benefactor. The guardian angel even relocates the vehicle, so a nearby cop can't ticket him for illegal parking. And the contented Mr. Bevis simply DUIs off in to the sunset..

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Was thinking about an ol' pen pal recently, and unfortunately learned she passed away in 2021. I hadn't corresponded with her since the early 2ooos, but I always appreciated the work she put in supporting and creating music around Hampton Roads.

When I knew Holly, her last name was Womack, but I remember she used stage names when playing in bands. And in her online obit, it looked like she had a married name. One of her zines was Fresh Rag, and then Cranked Up (and looking at this cover ^, maybe also Cranked Up Really High?)

(Cover model: Ms. April May)

I had already moved to LA when Holly was publishing her 'zines, but I was still in touch with several zine publishers covering Hampton Roads' rock. And appreciated the reports on Norfolk..

(from Fresh Rag, prophetic about what was happening in Norfolk real estate too)

I think Holly was also interviewed for the documentary Hardcore Norfolk, which did a good job covering the history of Hampton Roads rock, and how it was unfortunately fading. But truth is, organic local rock scenes are dwindling in most areas. It's not like the stretch between the mid 70s thru mid 90s, where a number of live, local music scenes (LA hardcore, NYC punk, Seattle/Washington State grunge etc) were being locally grown, honed and fostered by local 'zines and record labels. It's a different time, with different technologies, appetites, local media etc. But Holly did good, reporting and uplifting her local music community.

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proto-Gronk

Everybody knows the great Gronk (Rob Gronkowski).

But before Gronk's football fame, there was an obscure Gronk on the ol' Masters of the Universe series. A brief, esoteric cameo..

(Gronk: from the episode Orko Loses His Magic Powers)

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Want to mention this book real quick. A recounting of Hurricane Katrina, told thru the illustrated (and personal) accounts of a handful of New Orleans' residents. Basically, the author (Neufeld) is an illustrator who was in New Orleans doing post-Katrina volunteer work. If I remember right, he was eventually commissioned to gather, then recreate the accounts of survivors he encountered. I think Neufeld did a really good job selecting a cross-section of survivors. He definitely humanizes each person. My only (unsolicited) criticism would be the glaring, virtual omission of the many reported crimes/depravities during Katrina. But in Neufeld's defense, he admits the depicted accounts are "quite particular and highly personal".. fair enough.

The first chapter The Storm, was really well done. Neufeld shows the arrival of the storm with some strong, ominous images using very little dialog or text (see the top half of the book cover ^). For me, this first chapter was probably the most memorable part.. And the book is a nice historical document of positive Katrina survival stories.

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Americanus Superfanus

For more superfan content: http://natrrain.blogspot.com/2021/03/second-act-of-lower-learning-act-one.html

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Added color to this Nat family portrait. Contains a lot of the recurring characters. Flanked on the front row by Creeps & Nathaniel, then Sharpie and Pudgy Nauseous on the other side. Also got Edgar Allan Toe and the Texas Weiner Man lurking in there.

On a note of nostalgic Nat Rrain friends & cast, I touched up an old page. There's some 'Loose Screws' graffiti visible in there. I used to collaborate with them from time-to-time on zine releases. This re-release is dedicated to my cousin, Big Philly.. Rest in peace.

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Over the last decade, and a couple funerals, I've been thinking about our society's beliefs on the afterlife. There seems to be a universal belief both within Christianity and America's wider pop culture, that Heaven is the (righteous) soul's final destination. But my understanding is that Christianity actually teaches that our final destination is living in a resurrected body, on a renewed Earth.

If you attend a Protestant church, you're probably reciting the Nicene Creed every week, which states.. We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come

This pretty clearly refutes the idea of Christians awaiting Heaven as the anticipated, final destination..

I came across a valuable table of Bible verses, that expounds on the idea that Christians (and earthly creation) are awaiting a resurrection of the body, and not a disembodied soul that ends up in Heaven. 

And this understanding of Christian eschatology doesn't deny there is a Heaven, but it explains that Heaven is not where human souls are ultimately destined for.. We are waiting for perfected, resurrected bodies, designed for God's renewed planet. I guess there are different interpretations tho, because I even hear (some) pastors doing the bit about loved ones in Heaven looking down on us, awaiting our arrival in to that eternity.

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Sharpie Stands

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