*Hergé, not Mœbius, is generally considerd the Franco-Belgian equivalent of Kirby or Tezuka because Hergé developed the style that evryone after him, including Mœbius, would build upon. Hergé is the starting point. Mœbius is generally considerd the most influential Franco-Belgian cartoonist after Hergé. However, Herge did not have the long, prolific, diverse career of a Kirby or a Tezuka. Mœbius did; hence the comparison. Boom. [Back]

*I am not one of these David Palmer bashers. It just looks like he doesnt have much to do here.

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* Save that shit. Yer goina want it. Pour it into a washt out tin can and slap a plastic lid on it…you can get em at Petco and like that…and thro it in th fridge. Ready to use it—take the can out the fridge and put it on the stove til it’s liquid again. Not on a burner, you idiot, just on the stove, while y’r heating something or running the oven or whatever. Then careful handling that thing.

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*Weird Summer was or is also the name of a Nice Guy* Rock band from Urbana-Champaign, Illinois (the capitol of Nice Guy Rock), fronted by Bob Kimbell who is most famous to me for collaborating with Jack Logan on one of my favorite albums.

Just after they made that album I saw the two of them, and maybe Jamie Rouch on drums? perform at Mabel’s, the Champaign-area rawk club I miss the very most. Green Street (between Wright & 6th), 2nd floor, above…Record Service? something, dim & dingy, bartender with a 16-inch pompadour. Before I moved away they made it into some shiny sports bar. Broke my heart. The glory days of the Blind Pig were before my time. I saw all my faverit bands (local and touring) at Mabel’s.

Logan and Kimbell and whoever the drummer was were on the “3 Men in a Car” tour. Had the best flier I’ve ever seen—hand drawn in marker, by Logan I suspect, coverd with exhortations to come to the show. They became more and more urgent and finally threatening as toward the bottom it read “Don’t make us open this!” next to a hand that pointed to a tin can labeled “Whoop Ass.” The can-of-whoop-ass routine is a tad overused but what put it over the top is there was a picture of a can opener too. And it was one of those old school can openers. I can’t do this flyer justice.

I ripped one off…I wonder if I still have it.

Anyway, I really liked the first song on Weird Summer’s “Incarnata Mysterica” album. I don’t know if Doughty is aware of them.

* in the non-ironic sense

I’m not one of these sugar partisans. Many soda geeks eschew high-fructose-corn-syrup^* and praise cane sugar to the heavens, declaring (ferinstance) the selfevident superiority of cane-sugar Coke (kosher-for-Passover or Mexican or Canadian or whatever). (Inasmuch as I can tell the difference I prefer good old American Coke with the HFCS and out of a can. See above obviously.) Some geeks even worry over the relative merits of all the different permutations of cane sugar, like “evaporated cane juice” and other such bullshit you find on ingredients lists.

This brings me to Jones and their inverted cane sugar…

“Jones Cane Soda” was originally made with HFCS. Their frou frou, NPR-ass customers pressured them to switch to cane sugar. Now they use inverted cane sugar. Like HFCS, inverted cane sugar is a bunch of chemical witchery. It is created by turning the sucrose naturally found in sugarcane into glucose and fructose. All those fucking Boulderites drinking Jones Cane Soda probably don’t know they are consuming evil evil fructose.

To my palette, Jones sodas are overly sweet, and there is a harsh quality to them. It’s almost like they’re so sweet they’re bitter. I don’t claim to be able to taste the difference between sugar and cane juice or even HFCS, but I suspect this arises from the use of inverted cane sugar. I don’t care for it regardless.

The hilarious thing about the demonization of HFCS is it leads people to believe that cane sugar is actually good for you! I don’t doubt that a lotta fructose fucks with yr metabolism and that agribusiness is destroying our health and all that, but regardless of what kind of sugar it is—too much of it will fucking kill you!

About the Man in the Moon, that like a certain other nature spirit, I wouldnt put it past him to change his sex from time to time, if he even has one. The Kat has none, according to his creator.

*Adobo is a crazy mixture of spices that nobody really knows what it is.

*If you only know the latter-day, NPR version of Taj Mahal, you have no idea.