What an incredible Shore Leave 45 hanging with friends, making new, immediate bonds, sharing stories, ideas and laughs with plenty of shenanigans. The long-running Star Trek, Star Wars and science fiction convention now held at the Wyndham Hotel in Lancaster, Pennsylvania was a total blast with our table neighbors all around us including the hilarious horror and fantasy Novel Guys table (thanks to Christina for keeping me company in line for the complimentary autographs from Starship Troopers’ Casper Van Dien and Dina Meyer) and chatting with Star Trek: Prodigy’s Bonnie Gordon, a total sweetheart and renegade of the con trenches.
We’re grateful the time spent and knowledge gained from all the famed Star Trek, sci-fi, fantasy and mystery writers whom TJ and I are fortunate to call friends. We’re especially thankful to the bookstores we met who agreed to carry both of our books and anyone inadvertently missed. TJ rocked her panels, and I’m pleased to learn I will be a part of Shore Leave’s future panel programming. Also thank you to the vendor passing out free Godzilla 70th anniversary posters courtesy of IDW. Also, mad fun at the Godzilla panel geeking out with tons of King Green contributions from me and many others.
In honor of James Gunn’s reboot of the adventures of the Man of Steel, Superman, released this week.
We have our tickets for next week and we’re not affected by the obnoxious teeing off of this being a “woke” Superman movie. Superman has always been a story of an immigrant coming to America, all the way back to the World War II days. Created by Jewish immigrants, Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, Superman’s purpose in American culture has always been to raise the country’s morale along with the stakes of its own purpose and evolution. Superman is the best of us, the American dream splashed across a blue and red scheme uniform. Only Captain America serves as a better emblem of an earthbound, flag-waving superpatriot.
Yet Superman is the OG flag-waving superpatriot for the comics, t.v. and movies, helmed upon the heroic shoulders of Kirk Alyn (1948-1950 Superman serials actor) and the iconic George Reeves and Christopher Reeve, most especially.
So just let it be. Let Superman be who he’s meant to be, serving as a symbol of hope to his adopted land, not just the United States but Planet Earth itself. A stranger in a strange land from an entire cosmos away, orphaned through destruction. Despite this trauma and bearing the responsibility of keeping unearthly power in check for good, Superman heaps the entire world’s stress, plights and potential devastations upon his square, brawny posture.
Superman doesn’t know “woke.” Superman doesn’t have time to be “woke.” Superman always was, not just for the white privileged and middle-class male. He’s for everyone, of all races, religions, sexes and sexual preferences. He is the emblem of perpetual hope for all generations, no matter your walk of life. I’ve read Superman comics most of my life and can prove my point if you have the time and wherewithal to prove there is no stupid “woke.” Superman could own us all, but he chooses the righteous path. Sorry, Dean Cain, former Kal-El, with all due respect as one of the better Superman actors.
So let’s go, James Gunn and David Corenswet. There’s been way too much drama already for what is just a frigging popcorn superhero film going back to its roots instead of dwelling in the butt ugly miasma of the Zack Snyder era. There’s just Superman. Period.
I love me a grand looking library, and here’s one as grand as it gets. Barr Smith Library at the University of Adelaide, Australia.
Can’t you just imagine Burgess Meredith’s bookworm savant from the classic Twilight Zone episode “Time Enough at Last’s” Henry Bemis getting purposefully shut inside this paradise of pulp? I’d probably be right there with him. Reminding him to keep his glasses ever close at all times.
This is in honor of yesterday’s Black Sabbath farewell extravaganza at Villa Park, Birmingham, England, appropriately titled, “Back to the Beginning.” 40,000 metal strong came out to say goodbye to the founding fathers of the genre, united one last time with the original lineup of Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Bill Ward and Ozzy Osbourne.
It was an all-day festival which featured Sabbath and Ozzy solo material homages by Metallica, Guns n’ Roses, Slayer, Mastodon, Lamb of God, Pantera, Tool, Alice in Chains, Gojira and others. Not to mention twenty supergroup sections spanning royalty from the metal and hard rock leagues such as Steven Tyler, Sammy Hagar, Lzzy Hale, Tom Morello, Dave Ellefson, Mike Bordin, Extreme’s Nuno Bettencourt, The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith, The Rolling Stones’ Ron Wood, Living Colour’s Vernon Reid, Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan, Anthrax’s Scott Ian and Frank Bello, Disturbed’s Dave Draiman, former Ozzy Osbourne band guitarist Jake E. Lee and many others. Also, a pre-recorded rendition of Ozzy’s dirge classic, “Mr. Crowley,” led by School of Rock headmaster, Jack Black.
This morning, I’m heavy sighing all over the place as I scroll through my social media accounts and finding countless photos and videos of fans and metal icons attending “Back to the Beginning.” I’m jealous AF, but also incredibly happy for everyone who made the trek for this momentous valediction. Of Black Sabbath’s entire rollcall of members, I got to interview Bill Ward, Ronnie James Dio, Glenn Hughes, Vinny Appice, Bobby Rondinelli and session drummer, Tommy Clufetos. Not too shabby.
This sense of finality feels genuine for once, unlike other so-called “farewell” tours of legacy bands that were anything but. Yes, Black Sabbath dropped The End: Live in Birmingham, a 2017 concert document of the final show from a long stretch with the Ozzman back at the helm. Yet this event, “Back to the Beginning,” carries a sense of purpose to close the book on Sabbath’s teeming psalms of boom and let it rest while the foundation is still alive to savor the moment.
Like everyone else in the metal community, this week I’ve spent time spinning the Sabbath catalog. In deference more so than a sense of loss, as I hear some people referring to this moment, as if we’re mourning instead of celebrating. As if. From Sabbath’s iconic Ozzy days (inclusive of 2013’s revival album 13), I found myself spinning Sabotage, Master of Reality and Vol. 4, my favorite albums from that era, before inevitably dipping to the Dio era (which I have tremendous affection for) and a run through Mob Rules and Heaven and Hell. In my story, “Meteor Shit” from my just-released horror collection Bringing in the Creeps, my lead character, Kevin, is a chastised middle schooler with a love of Stephen King and Black Sabbath. I concentrated on the Dio era in that story in keeping true to its 1982 setting, when we kids could never project this pivotal curtain call in 2025.
Would that the late Ronnie James Dio could’ve made it to this moment in time to share the stage with Ozzy, who sang from a black throne onstage. Ozzy claims this show is his final live performance, period, due to his ongoing battle with Parkinson’s disease. Dio and the core of his tenure in Sabbath at least had their own glory ride moment as the rebranded Heaven and Hell before Dio succumbed to stomach cancer.
Yet I can only imagine the titanic feeling in Birmingham from the metal community last night when the original foursome splintered the air one last time. I’m seeing and reading pictures of tears being shed, a cavalcade of horns-up salutes, a pair of superfans hopping the gate and getting selfies at Mapledurham Watermill, the location of Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut album. Plus none other than Jason Mamoa wishing his friend Phil Anselmo of Pantera well at the stage before leaping over the iron barrier and swimming his way through the throng into the mosh pit. An immediate all-time metal moment.
Farewell, Iommi, Butler, Ward and Osbourne, there’s nothing left to prove. Supernaut lords of this world and the next.
Namaste, readers, and thank you as always for taking a few minutes of your day to pop in here at Roads Lesser Traveled. I bow to you with my unending gratitude. Wherever you are in the world, may today be special.
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve done a Five Things Friday, and I had to cut out a few extra things actively popping inside my hyperactive mind. Perhaps those will appear in another installment, but for now, here’s what’s at the forefront:
One: I want to thank everyone who has been spreading the word about my new horror collection, Bringing in the Creeps and accepting ARCs for reviews, contest submissions and future signing events. Of course, a hearty thank you to my good friend Mia Dalia for this nifty ad helping my cause. I had the pleasure of being one of a cool gang of guests this week for the virtual re-release party of Mia’s fantastic horror collection, Smile So Red. I own the original edition and I’ll be the first to tell you Mia is a rising star in the genre. Get in on ground level with Bringing in the Creeps and Smile So Red now! Your support all-around is deeply appreciated. Rockers, all of you!
Two: I came out of the gym yesterday revved up, happy for a grinding workout, happy to have come out on the good side of a health scare, happy to have a new regimen for the future, happy to have been given good news about a story submission and happy to hear from a bunch of friends, old and new. I know conventional wisdom advises there’s no way for this to work perfectly, but I will do my best every morning from here on out silently saying a new mantra: May today be great and tomorrow even better.
Three: I was invited to submit a story based on a certain theme that has me reuniting with some old friends, Clive Barker’s game-changing Books of Blood. I read the first book in my teens during the late Eighties and saw what everyone else did, the future of horror. Someone who could actually give Stephen King a run for his money. Eventually I got the other two installments and remember being giddy when the film adaptation of Rawhead Rex came out in 1986, literally after I’d read the story from Volume 3. Not precisely what Barker had intended, and I understand the man disowns the film version, but a gory bit of fun if you take it for what it’s worth. I read the Books of Blood trilogy again in the Nineties, but it’s been all that time since I’ve pulled them out. So happy I did.
I started writing a full page of a new story after re-reading Book 1, feeling energized and giddily grossed out in the same way I had reading “The Meat Murder Train,” “The Yattering and Jack” and “In the Hills, the Cities.” Alas, what I’d written was a pale shade and I hit an immediate rut. I sent it to the digital trash can. You can’t force that which doesn’t serve. So on to Book 2! For certain, Barker’s eloquent voice continues to raise the bar for all horror scribes, all these decades later.
Four: My baseball team may not be doing so hot in MLB this year, but the sport has hit a new golden age and a higher level of play. If This Week in Baseball was still a thing, it might consider going full hour just to contain the daily highs of highlights. There are very few pedestrian ballgames these days, despite many naysayer complaints of baseball being a slow sport. Whether you consider them heroes or the enemy, if you’re a fan of the diamond, let’s be grateful for Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge alone, even when they’re sinking, mashing or striking out our hometown heroes. These locked-in Hall of Famers are two major components why MLB still matters greatly.
Five: It’s Independence Day for Americans, a holiday which was spent annually in the company of my aunt, uncle and cousins in a decades-standing family 4th of July picnic tradition at the Carroll County Farm Museum in Westminster, Maryland. It went on from when my cousins and I were all youth through the time all of my cousins’ own respective broods grew up. Fried chicken, potato and macaroni salads, sweets of all kinds. Marathon convocations in the blazing heat under a pavilion from mid-morning to dusk and the reason for the season, a reliably stout fireworks display.
The picnic meant the most to my mother and my late aunt, and we all dutifully showed for the gathering surrounded by live country and folk music, clog dancers and, depending on the year, elbow-to-elbow maneuvering with other attendees trying to play touch football, frisbee and simple rounds of catch with the baseball. We showed until one year we didn’t and that was the linchpin to finality. Eventually my cousins and their offspring spread out across the country and even across the pond.
I breathe all this nostalgia, not out of some aching desire to return to those ways. Everyone’s had enough as we’ve gotten older, and that’s more than fair. I mention it because this is the America I know and love, patriots at heart who knew one another’s political allegiances and in general, kept that business kicked to the curb. We were Americans celebrating our country under the bask of punishing sunrays, but our loyalty to country and family was why we did it. That spirit is gone for me, not because of the family splitting off and starting their own traditions amongst themselves. It’s only natural. Our tradition had a good run. For me, the spirit is gone because the America we gathered to celebrate, wearing the year’s latest 4th of July tee from Old Navy is no longer a bipartisan experience. I’ll leave it rest there.
Nonetheless, may your Independence Day instill your heart with pride and the wherewithal to be.
One of the most crankable tunes from the later Seventies and early Eighties new wave scene is Missing Persons’ riff-o-matic strutter, “Walking in L.A.”
Most folks who know and care about Missing Persons recognize them for their heavy synthesizers and particularly punkette lead vocalist Dale Bozzio’s pipsqueak rim shots. She savvily dropped them with precise timing as accent marks at the end of verse lines, most famously to the point of delightful annoyance in “What Are Words For.” Or in this song’s case, as a snarky pop at the tail of “Walking in L.A.”‘s” choruses to punch out an “ay-ay!”
All to juice up her former husband Terry Bozzio’s jab at the pretentious elite of Los Angeles circa 1982. Also reportedly cooking up this juicy number in reaction to many local comedians of the day poking fun at everyone in the city driving around aimlessly. Likely to peacock behind the wheel more so than for actual commuting purposes.
What I love best about this song aside of the biting sarcasm and Dale Bozzio’s jagged huffing are those punchy, snapcase guitars. You can’t not plow this sucker into the open air from the rolled down windows of your car. No doubt the precise subtext behind the message Missing Persons was dropping here.
Roads Lesser Traveled 