Preacher: Episode 1

Well, shit. 

Here’s the precis: Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and Sam Catlin’s Preacher adap is a rip-roaring, punk rock salvo, a bloody white-knuckle hell-ride, true to the outlaw spirit of the source whilst taking flagrant liberties and coming off shining.

Dare I say it, the potential is there to even elevate the material.

As you’d be well aware, AMC’s Preacher is based on Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s iconic ‘90s Vertigo book. Profane and gleefully juvenile, the book nonetheless wrestled with weighty themes: crises of faith, toxic masculinity and the scabrous myths of the American Frontier all of particular concern. The book could veer from heartfelt romance to scatological trauma and then careen into heart-rending scenes of grue-soaked ultraviolence- little wonder stoner auteurs Rogen and Goldberg were so passionately into it.

Which is not to say Preacher (the book) is a sacred text: having re-read the series for the umpteenth time recently, it’s fair to say the text has aged unevenly, with vast stretches of threadbare dead plot air and awkwardly dated politics in places. 

Still, more often than not it’s a wildly entertaining oddity, an Irishman and an Englishman’s meditation on a mythical America stitched together from a patchwork of film, television, comics and literary references. As such, the book offers solid bed-rock on which to build a contemporary, tele-episodic evisceration of “‘Murkah” and all its foibles.

The plot, as if it bears repeating? Texan Preacher Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper) is imbued with the Genesis force (the heavenly offspring of some molten angel-demon how’s-yer-father) and hits the road with ex-girlfriend Tulip (Ruth Negga) and Irish vampire Cassidy (Joe Gilgun) to hunt down an absentee Heavenly Father for an overdue explanation as to why he’s abandoned creation.

If you’re new to Preacher, it’d be remiss of me to spoil the gonzo lunacy our core trio encounter on their quest- suffice to say, Sex Detectives, poncey Anne Rice vampires and a corpulent shadow-Pope are just the tip of the proverbial.

Sure, the cast might not have been anyone’s first choices* to play Ennis’ indelible characters (well, Gilgun, perhaps), but, as the first episode concludes, you’ll struggle to imagine any other players in the key roles.

It’s vicious, it’s blasphemous, it’s puerile yet nonetheless thoughtful, hilarious and loaded with nuance. Strap yourself right the fuck in, amigos- Preacher’s here to tear you a new one every Sabbath-eve (you know what I mean, Antipodeans).

* I used to make the impassioned call that the cast of Deadwood should just have been transplanted wholesale. Wait, did I hear somebody say ‘nerd’?

Power trippin’ at 22

The ‘90s were an arid decade for sternum crushing, crank fuelled, just the facts (and the occasional epic stoned interlude ma’am) rock and fucken roll.

We flirted with the programmed, post NIN nerdcore of Fear Factory, plumbed the horny down-tuned incel confusion of KOЯN and exalted in the chugging misery of Soundgarden and their ilk, but shameless, drug chuggin’, shaggin’ and skull flayin’ guitar music had become a niche concern.

Enter one Dave Wyndorf, a New Jerseyite who’d spent the ‘80s in an act called Shrapnel, and who founded the doom and psych inspired Monster Magnet practically in his rock ‘n roll dotage, ie his mid thirties.

Monster Mags honed their sound over a couple of sludge-fuzzy EPs and albums before striking MTV gold - that used to happen - with the tripping balls party starter ‘Negasonic Teenage Warhead’ (now also an infuriating X-Men character), from third album Dopes to Infinity.

Check out that clip - someone made a lot of money with a ropey green screen and an asteroid set back in the mid ‘90s.

I was 21 when the follow up, Powertrip, dropped in 1998 - though I didn’t really get across it until it turned into the score for Friday night fire up sessions in dad’s back shed a year later - which makes me, well, you do the math.

Powertrip is a seminal, wall to wall classic - a relentless slab of sleazy-beefy, horny-high af riffage. This was cocky, leathered up, cosmic stuff with tongue jammed firmly in cheek, the likes of which I’d not yet encountered (Zodiac Mindwarp came later).

Wyndorf was 42 when it arrived, which is quite neat, in a useless and quickly discarded framing device sort of way. 

I couldn’t believe how fucking old he was.

Now it sounds like a relatively wise age to start writing about what you know for sure without fear of embarrassment, anyway.

(Opinion sure to be revised in -)

Wyndorf is sixty three now, for the non mathematicians amongst you, and still out there bringing down the thunder.

Saw them a few years back, but, uh, don’t really remember much.

Good night, I assume.

Best of 2020 mixtape

Can’t Get This Stuff No More

Here’s a piece I wrote on my relationship with my teen heroes, Van Halen, inspired by author Greg Renoff’s 2015 biography of the band’s early years.

Vale Eddie Van Halen, 26/1/55 - 6/10/20.

Here’s my mixtape of early VH obscurities.

Classic, 1978 vintage Van Halen never really blew up out here in the Antipodes.

Sure, the band’s legend is now cast in solid platinum, but I’d imagine that, back in double-denim triple-bourbon late-70s Straya, these flashy Californian wunderkinds would have presented as a musical bridge too far for the sticky carpet blooded, Acca Dacca indoctrinated rabble.

I mean: the tunes are danceable, the musicianship is impeccable, and, seriously, who does their lead singer fucken think he is…?

In the ensuing years, of course, David Lee Roth dropped in for a solo jaunt (1988’s ‘Skyscraper’ tour), and the band made a belated visit in 1998 with ill-suited (watch the tour videos) singer number three, Extreme’s Gary Cherone, a paltry scrap of an affair after years of anticipation for the main game.

Trust me, I was there, bro…and in the interests of full, shameful disclosure, I’m here to admit that my first fully conscious (nonetheless misguided) Van Halen exposure was via 1991’s bloated, Sammy Hagar fronted album For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge (such scallywags!), an album perhaps best remembered for its lead singer’s dedication to gentlemen’s exercise wear and its virtuoso guitarist’s deployment of over-sized blouses paired with white jeans.

Second shameful disclosure: I’ve trialled the odd blouse/jean combo, and had a few of the Ed Van Halen hairdos over the years (fuck you, Guitar magazine cover with Jimmy Page, circa 1994).

(Quick caveat: I very quickly realised the original lineup was the real deal, and tortured the parentals with marathon listenings on long family drives, breathlessly rotating the original six albums, on tape, for hundreds of kms on end).

Drilling down into some serious, autobiographical pedantry, yours truly punched in for six months drawing the extremely unauthorised Van Halen: Strange & Twisted Tales, written by Mr Lance Watts, and, as a consequence, ended up drawing a short-lived web comic for Diamond Dave himself (also scribed by the venerable Mr Watts).

Which is all an extremely roundabout way of saying: I’ve given the brothers Van Halen, their totemic original lead singer and the minutiae of their cartoonish, soap opera hijinks an embarrassing amount of consideration down the years.

Greg Renoff’s excellent Van Halen Rising, then, strikes out boldly into completely uncharted realms of the band’s pre-history.

Where, traditionally, the group’s biographical details followed a rigid, tightly controlled (potentially elastic) narrative (the Van Halen brothers) or were beholden to fantastical, free-style embroidery with a wild, myth making eye on the spotlight (Roth), Van Halen Rising offers a forensically researched insight into the nascent, priapic evolution of the combo’s original sunshine sound, look, dynamic and power structure through the insights of over 200 interviewees from way back when.

Renoff deftly sketches his tale’s quirky dramatis personae — the migrant siblings, inseparable; the ADHD, driven rich kid; the series of dodgily mustachioed bassists and their eventual, lukewarm (okay, amiable) replacement.

Charting the band’s rise from junior high novelty act to gigging bar band, Van Halen Rising enlists a legion of former girlfriends, schoolmates, neighbours, managers, cops and riff raff to bring you a sense of the artful debauchery, calculated bonhomie, marketing chops and carnival antics of the nascent superstars’ early backyard parties, gigs and ongoing internal wars of attrition and egomania.

All the kinks, licentiousness, drive and persistence are in ready supply, Renoff’s bio is replete with refreshing colour, detail and heretofore unheard insight. Van Halen tragics (amongst whose numbers I’d cheerfully include myself) will be delighted.

Insiders like Ted Templeman, producer of the band’s eponymous, landmark debut, provide early testament to the band’s contradictory alchemy, while Renoff conjures scenes from pure anecdote, evoking an era of innocent hedonism sliding into the excesses of the ‘80s.

Ending in 1978 with the release of Van Halen’s first album, Van Halen Rising crescendos, much like Eddie’s signature six-string blitzkrieg, Eruption, with a note of sustained portent.

If you’re into the band, this book is a given; if you’re into well-spun behind the scene tales of acts in their ascent, ditto. This is an accessible, vastly entertaining, admirably researched prelude to the tale we tragics know so very intimately.

Final, shameful disclosure: your correspondent was once involved in the choreography of a high school aerobics class soundtracked to the For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge single Runaround.

It was a time.

GARBO - short fiction

Brad was in his basement man-cave, scoping the drone footage.

Sickly blue CRT flicks returned from the Wasp’s deeply primitive drone firmware.

It was a bird’s eye view situation. A peloton of soft geezers fizzed past on a tail-wind, lost focus, then returned to clarity as the sky-borne electric eye centred.

Brad adjusted settings, flicked through the bands.

The Outriders – state Gestapo, lycra-shod sentinels in light armour – rode the outskirts at sun-up, enforcing the Curfew. Silent, superannuated cops on thirty-K carbon fibre rockets.

The Yu variant had leaked to the mainland from the island state of Southern Arcadia and steadily encroached north, and here we were.

Federation at war. Eternal nightsticks. Infinite lockdown.

Vaccine supplies were decimated, meth labs requisitioned as last resorts.

Water supplies were looking average.

Food at a premium.

Thanks, hill-people.

A torn ember of sunrise, the horizon a smouldering rip of fire, briefly blinded the Wasp.

Brad recalibrated again, dropping a couple of spectrums.

Refocused.

There they were, glowing infra-red in leafy Yerwoong, average house price a lazy $2.4m.

First, the Garbo, swinging his truck’s arse-end into the bend as the pigs accelerated into a sharp left, maw gaping.

Then, a gleaming lethal filament licking across the screen, neck height.

A thick black tube, concertinaed, guzzled human fat from an expensive hotel’s trap on a monitor. A face, bloated and fatally aerated, gurned up from another. A hedge-trimmer bore down on exposed genitals, making blunt, bloody work. A beer keg full of fresh viscera briefly winked by on yet another.

Brad popped a No-Doze, chewed, tasting earthy upper.

His jaw locked as the peloton accelerated into their decapitations.

Six heads cascaded, thunkity thunk thunk thunk (thunk thunk), quick, clean and satisfying.

The Garbo made short work of it all – bodies into the crusher, bikes requisitioned.

A street sweeper, bringing up the rear, sorted the heads-errant situation.

Here’s what was happening.

The Revolt was on.

It was Brad’s day off – he was a delivery driver – which meant he worked a shift manning the drones.

The Yu variant – that’s Greek, by the way – had cast the Class diaspora into even more extreme relief. The haves had their Outriders protecting their largesse, the have-nots were merely fucked. Essential servitude was the order of the day, probably a death sentence, while the non-essentials wallowed.

Brad had a plan, though.

He could broadcast the Truth.

The Wasp just needed carbon fibre.

More antennae to throw the signal.

More Outriders, more pelotons.

The fat-trappers, the keg-haulers, the arborists and all of the other invisible laborers were out there, collecting.

Getting it done.

Doing the work.

Boosting the signal.

Brad tapped at the keyboard, offering coordinates to another Wasp, another cohort of workers in the Capital.

Parliament House.

He popped another No-Doze, tasted dirt, and hit send.

Time to do some actual work.

Best of 2019 mixtape

ET CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES (sigh)

Extremely white middle class confession: I’ve never been able to maintain interest in more than one telly show at a time.

I am an individual for whom peak prestige telly has been alienating.

As a somewhat early adopter of the no-telly aesthetic – not to mention being at the whims of the Australian internet infrastructure farce – the ol’ boob tube hasn’t really been my go-to entertainment source since the Buffy shows finished up.

Thus, a decade or two of “must watch or be a pariah at the watercooler!!!11!” hot takes have washed over me like a warm, numbing antiseptic wave of DGAF.

Of course, I’ve dipped in here and there over the years, but have been left nonplussed by the culture of constant mandatory viewing, usually tapping out after an episode or two (see: a list too long to include here).

The advent of binge viewing felt like a punishment, unless suitably medicated.

By and large it’s been one show at a time for me, ever since Joss Whedon hung up his vampire slaying fedora.

HBO’s Watchmen is currently my show.

Disclosure: I have seen approximately three episodes of Damon Lindelof’s oeuvre, combined.

Watchmen, the show, is set thirty odd years after the books.

It’s a world where superheroes were outlawed, but in which cops now wear masks. 

White supremacy underpins the show’s narrative, much as it does our present day.

Nothing is really that different, but everything is.

There’s a man in a castle stage managing clones, a superman exiled on Mars and a 105 year old African American man maybe lynched the police chief and just might be the ur superhero in this universe.

They might even all be the same bloke.

But probably not.

The show runs the gamut of Important Concerns, pivoting off, updating and expanding on Co-Creator Dave Gibbons’ work (that one’s for the credits nerds).

The morality of justice and the murky notion of heroism is back under the microscope here, promising to prove irksome to those who like their worldview high contrast.

Which is to say: I despair that there those who still think cop = good guy as much as they think Rorschach, the book’s protagonist, is a hero.

It’s eccentric, it’s educational, it elaborates on and expands the originals in weird and wild ways and that’s just the first two episodes: HBO’s Watchmen is my show.

BATTEN, DOWN - short fiction

Batten: 26.3645° S, 152.9677° E.

The Mayor, Jimbo Paddock, had annexed the surf beach and area surrounding his wellness cafe at sunset.

He was a boiled-pink, barrel-chested, lats-flared, fluoro dick-stickered, self-funded retiree Spartan with an iron-streaked braid.

Murdered the fuck out of a bunch of families and resort staff, right up in our faces, as the light dimmed.

Jimbo was into exotic food and carried a spear he’d made from his decommissioned Cool Cabana. He’d slung the shade sail’s bloodied polyester sleeve over his shoulder, filling it with gory trophies of his innumerable kills.

A real mean Boomer survivalist motherfucker.

An apexagenarian predator.

The resort sauna’s toilet had been full of blood.

That’s when we’d decided to make a break for it, obviously.

It was our first actual family holiday in, well, ever. We’d burnt all our financial bridges for this solitary 72 hours of scheduled familial bliss: me, him, bub.

Saved like fuckers for a weekend on the white sand.
Aspired.

Gone hard.

Sweated, scrimped, saved.

Sacrificed.
Argued.

Saved again.

Remortgaged.

Gotten a loan.

Argued.

Gotten a loan from the parents.

We needed the break.

It really was that dire.

Of course we were at each other’s throats.

So it was sort of a relief when the end of the world kicked in…

Read the full story in Yarns From the Fuck-You-Ni-Verse.