Phonogram by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie

Short review: Phonogram author Kieron Gillen invented New Games Journalism. NGJ is bollocks. Phonogram is good enough that I forgive Gillen for NGJ.

Phonogram is the story of Dave Kohl, unlikeable bastard and powerful phonomancer. Remember those times when you heard a song and it just plain changed your life? You might have been filled with inexplicable joy and wonder. You might have experienced a sudden oracular divination. You might have just be hypnotized for two hours as you listened to the song on “repeat.” Music is power, and phonomancers use this power to weave eldritch spells of weird intent.

This actually makes a lot of sense.

Kohl’s phonomancer identity is centered around Britannia, goddess of Britpop, risen in 1964 and returned in 1995. It was this second renaissance, during Kohl’s formative teenage years, that opened Kohl’s eyes to the power of pop music. But now someone or something is messing with the timeline, causing Kohl’s memory and taste to get all jumbled up and threatening to undo the very foundations of the British scene. So Kohl has to find out who, and why, and ideally stop them.

Phonomancer is extremely specifically about the Britpop summers of 1995 and 1996, when Blur vs. Oasis was more important than any conflict in the Middle East, and Pulp released Different Class and it became impossible to remember what music was like before Common People. The book is absolutely steeped in references to minor and sub-minor bands from the era. Each of the six issue covers is a subversive riff on a crucial album from the era (Wikipedia annotates). The OCD-level name-dropping would be obnoxious, save for two factors: a witty glossary for us poor lost Americans, and the fact that Phonogram is only using Britpop as the canvas for its tale of music, obsession, and nostalgia gone wrong. The authors have joked in interviews that were Phonogram to be made into a movie, it would be about grunge and set in America–but have also added that the story would lose anything in translation.

Like all good music, Britpop changed the lives of Phonogram’s characters. But was Britpop about anything? Or was it just about selling lots of records to a lot of people hopped up, as Cocker put it, on E’s and whizz? That’s the fundamental question of the story: how can you center your life around something that, in the grand scheme of things, might not be important?

Manic Street Preacher’s The Holy Bible was a pivotal Britpop album that never saw U.S. release due to the untimely disappearance of their guitarist, Richey Edwards. The line “I know I believe in nothing, but it is my nothing” comes from that album’s “Faster.” Before reading Phonogram, that line struck me as unbelievably nihilistic. How can you believe in “nothing”? More importantly, why? But now, I see it as unbelievably positive, an affirmation that the sheer idea of belief is more important that the object. Phonogram is about believing music has that power.

A lot of Western movie stars sell out for Japanese television commercials, but at least Tommy Lee Jones has done so with surreal class.

1. Alien Jones eats at a Yoshinoya.
2. Alien Jones works at a factory.
3. Alien Jones works at a Don Quixote.*
4. Alien Jones delivers a package.
5. Alien Jones gets a parking ticket.
6. Alien Jones works at a karaoke box.
7. Alien Jones works at a host cafe.
8. Alien Jones hands out pamphlets.
9. Alien Jones works at airport security.
10. Alien Jones goes home…or does he?.
11. Alien Jones visits a hot spring.
12. Alien Jones visits Akihabara and a maid café.

My first reverse culture shock when I returned to the U.S. was the day after I arrived in California, when I couldn’t buy canned coffee at Ralph’s. I looked and looked but just couldn’t find it. Eventually, I understood that was because they didn’t sell it, and something inside me ached. (See #10.) Cold or hot, canned coffee is a delicious and powerful shot of tasty energy for just over a buck. It fills an important market niche in between “tap water” and “32 oz., $5 latte” and, along with unflavored unsweetened teas, is something we desperately need more of in the States. No wonder SUNTORY BOSS is the boss of them all since 1992.

I should mention that I started another blog with some friends a few weeks ago. Thorp Force Five is a daily love letter to the most surreal and humorous daily comic strip in the newspaper. That strip is, of course, Gil Thorp.

Love and Berry has an English website now, so you can enjoy all the lovely backstory in your native tongue. Perhaps the most exciting revelation is that Love and Berry are both 14…in Fashion Magic Years! I think a Fashion Magic Year is about 1.3 Earth years long, due to the off-season.

I stole this from Insert Credit, but they got it from Christian originally, so it’s not really stealing.

I am going to buy this shirt. And then wear it while sporting this hat.

Update: I found out that their headquarters is literally three blocks from my apartment. As the highest-ranked personal hit for “Vestal on the Internet, I think I’m going to march over there and demand they give me tribute. Or at least make me their mascot.

Why should you watch this Half-Life 2 machinima? BECAUSE YOU ARE HEADCRAB ZOMBIE!