Jesse Bradley wishes he can’t feel his face. Follow him on Instagram at questionabledecisioncomics. ​

Here is week 17 of Sam's reading journey, the metrics and first week can be found here

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jashar Awan (Illustrator)

1. Intrigue 
   1. An absolutely amazing commentary on life in America as an immigrant, an immigrant from Nigeria, and being a black woman, Adichie wrote a prolific piece of fiction. Americanah is ultimately an exceptional love story for life. Following the consternation and exhilaration of Ifemelu, readers will dive deeply into the intricacies of living in the States while being from somewhere else - a journey a lot of us folks could use. 
2. Writing style
   1. Not much to say here. It’s brilliant. Adichie at a sentence level is pure joy. 
   2. Juicy quote: 
      1. “The only reason you say that race was not an issue is because you wish it was not. We all wish it was not. But it’s a lie. I came from a country where race was not an issue; I did not think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to America. When you are black in America and you fall in love with a white person, race doesn’t matter when you’re alone together because it’s just you and your love. But the minute you step outside, race matters. But we don’t talk about it. We don’t even tell our white partners the small things that piss us off and the things we wish they understood better, because we’re worried they will say we’re overreacting, or we’re being too sensitive. And we don’t want them to say, Look how far we’ve come, just forty years ago it would have been illegal for us to even be a couple blah blah blah, because you know what we’re thinking when they say that? We’re thinking why the fuck should it ever have been illegal anyway? But we don’t say any of this stuff. We let it pile up inside our heads and when we come to nice liberal dinners like this, we say that race doesn’t matter because that’s what we’re supposed to say, to keep our nice liberal friends comfortable. It’s true. I speak from experience.”
3. Flow of storytelling
   1. The flow between the telling of Ifemelu’s story and her counterpart, Obinze, is smooth. Unlike Ayn Rand, Adichie doesn’t get caught up in the “point” of the story. Therefore the story doesn’t lull because it touches on such and such a topic. Every commentary Adichie gives swims with the story. She never manufactures something just so she can say her part. 
   2. The issue I had with the book, came about 60% through the book. The story started to drag and a great deal of “come on, get on with it” energy overtook me for about thirty-ish pages. 
4. Re-readability 
   1. This is such a well written book at a sentence level, and has amazing insights into life, that I genuinely think I’ll re-read it next year. It’s a powerful story. 
5. TESS
   1. Does not qualify. 

Final rating: Final Rating: ★★★★

Here is week 16 of Sam's reading journey, the metrics and first week can be found here

Legendborn (Legendborn #1) by Tracy Deonn

1. Intrigue
   1. If you have a child or anyone that likes YA Fantasy literature in your life, Legendborn is an absolute perfect gift. Set in current day North Carolina, Legendborn is a culturally responsive continuation of the Arthurian Legend, which tackles cultural ideas surrounding the use of magic. 
   2. I recently bought this book for a niece that loves the Harry Potter series. If you’re looking for a magical experience for your teen or tween, this is a perfect book. 
2. Writing Style
   1. Ultimately, this is where the book falls short of 5 stars. It’s also the book that makes me rethink how to judge a YA vs. an adult book. There’s just so much more didactic writing in YA, that it gets tiresome. While some YA lit manages to avoid the pitfalls of the narrator over explaining situations, this book does not. However it still falls well within grade level for Young Adults. 
   2. Juicy quote: 
      1. “Don't make your life about the loss. Make it about the love.”
3. Flow of storytelling
   1. This book is tightly told. The flow could not be more ideal. Bree’s character development moves along at a brisk pace, and the people introduced with are easy to keep straight. There’s never a dull moment. It’s an exciting book, with an excellent flow. 
4. Re-readability
   1. Exceptionally re-readable. This book could be consumed several times during the hot southern summers, or become a great book to cozy up with in northern winters. There’s enough of story variance to glean new things. 
5. TESS
   1. Does not qualify. 

Final Rating:  ★★★★ ​

​Starting this book, I immediately got the feel of the books from the humor section I’d check out at the bookstore as a kid. I feel like this is a thing that people forgot was a thing, or maybe people our age just stopped paying attention to it (or maybe authors stopped being funny). Was there any aim in conceptualizing this project to make that sort of book you’d have on the coffee table or in a basket in the bathroom? 

It’s strange that books like this aren’t as common anymore. There are plenty of childrens style books aimed at incredibly dark humor and I do love those. It Blows My Mind is more along the lines a tribute to my love for MAD Magazine and that group of incredibly smart writers and artists that shaped my sense of comedy in the 80s.

I always loved the short comic strip quick type of humor. I grew up reading Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau, all those classics like Andy Capp and Hagar the Horrible. Years later I fell in love with Red Meat. From that quick humor of Bazooka Joe to the often overlooked writing on the back of the Garbage Pail Kids,  I’ve always been into that quick laugh and on to the next.

Would Carmine even read in the bathroom or would that be too germy?

I didn’t want to put too much bathroom humor in this book but there will definitely be a “book basket by the toilet” being disgusting in a future  book. There’s no way piss splatter doesn’t hit those books and magazines. I currently have a MAD does the 90s Collection Magazine in our hall bathroom on the back of the toilet and I move it when I pee to the sink!​

You’re no stranger to pop culture and the zeitgeist, with… you know, the thing, which your book Don’t Ever Punch A Rockstar was named after. Do you feel like people have got beyond that to appreciate you as a musician, as a writer, and as a humorist? (And as a clothing entrepreneur!!) How have things changed for you with each subsequent book and as you grow your body of work?

This is now my 5th book, and every book I’ve done has been totally different from the other. Which is in one way is a lot of fun, but also a little difficult because each time I’m marketing to a different audience. I have been lucky enough to explore different creative outlets between music and writing and found a tiny bit of success in both, but the marketing is the tough part.

I’m always writing. That’s been something I’ve done my whole life. I stumble on notes in folders of all kinds of dumb shit. Things that are meaningless like a list of modern day GI Joe characters that have names like Kay Kup - “She is a special forces barista with a reputation for making great cold brew.” 

What’s the point, I don’t know? Maybe I’ll find a use for it someday. But my brain is always on overdrive and all I can do is write this crazy shit down.

What’s the latest on the 10th Anniversary edition of the first book?
​
The new version of Don’t Ever Punch a Rockstar is really cool. I went over the final draft with the publisher a few weeks ago. DiWulf Publishing is releasing it. They do a lot of great music books and they are about to release a book about the band Adrenalin O.D.

As for my release, I changed a lot in that book. For starters I originally edited it myself. Big mistake. But the overall tone is now much funnier. When I wrote that book I was a little angrier and much more on the defense. Now all I can do is laugh.

I added more band stories, more rumors, an addendum with the books backlash when it was released and even 12% More Hatemail! Plus a new forward. I’m very happy with it. It should be out in the fall!

​You appeared in a video with Every Time I Die as their manager, Biggie. Are you a fan of guitarist Andy Williams as The Butcher in All Elite Wrestling? 

How fucking cool is that guy, he’s a sick guitarist and a wrestler. Wild.

You were always a gentleman and sweetheart when I’d run into you at parties and shows about town, but you played Biggie very gruff!

My childhood buddy Doug Spangenburg directed the video (Dan Stone filmed my part locally) and when Doug hit me up he told me he was looking for Biggie to be sort of an angrier “Uncle Harvey” from UHF. Or maybe I did it more aggressive than he was looking for. Either way I ate like 2 pounds of shrimp between takes and the “shrimp to shot” continuity is a little fucked up! I seem to play a good character that yells a lot.

How is Total Gavone Clothing going? Where are some of the most surprising places or who are the surprising people wearing it that you’ve spotted in your clothing?

Total Gavone Clothing is doing pretty good. I’ve sold shirts and stuff all over the world it’s pretty crazy. I’ve seen people rocking stuff in pictures in NYC to Europe. I started it as a place to house my books and old band stuff and basically branched off into its own thing.

What would be Carmine’s favorite shirt?

I think Carmine would enjoy the “Support Your Local Bookie” shirt!

Were there are opinions or observations that didn’t make it in the book, whether because of space limitations, because your wife said “no way you can put that in,” or anything that even gave you pause to say “I better not!” 

My wife is pretty cool letting me do me, but there might have been a few I removed to not push that envelope! There’s actually a lot of material in It Blows My Mind based on my friends and family!

I feel like this book may improve my relationships with friends that maybe I couldn’t say this or that to, but after reading the book in the back of their minds, they will think twice…Could you imagine?! Ha

Any scenarios that Mick wouldn’t draw, or that he just wasn’t able to get to that you both wish he had?

Mick had an open canvas to work with artistically. He pretty much drew the ones he wanted to draw. Whether he had a vision of which ones to illustrate from the subjects I provided, or one he really liked and wanted to bring to life… he pretty much did his own thing. The only ones I really wanted were the Wizard one, the phone swiper and the "do you want to hold my baby".

I really thought the Old Rose in Titanic would have been a funny one, with Carmine holding Old Rose on the bow and trying to get that jewel!

He also lives in Australia so we did this book long distance. That in its own I think is an amazing accomplishment for two independent guys working ideas over texts and emails!

But Mick is so busy, he just posted a new Agnostic Front shirt he designed for their tour that starts this week with Sick of it All and I know of some other stuff he has coming up. Somehow he manages to draw daily. It’s very impressive to me.

You, or at least Carmine, are often surprising with what aren’t just merely antisocial views or a cranky attitude, but very specific pop culture opinions. 

As much as Carmine complains about neighbors, waiters sitting down at his table and a slew of other antisocial attributes, I still see him as social. He’s very social just on his own terms!

There are a few pop culture things in this book that I think people can relate to... I really tried to keep things out of the book that were a little outdated but that was for a specific reason.

Here are some rapid fire pop culture questions based on topics from the book... okay, while neither you or Carmine would say “Change My Mind,” what is the opinion that would be on the banner of your Steven Crowder table?

That Steven Crowder table is in my feed somewhere almost every day. Lately it’s been more of those ladies crying and the cat and DiCaprio from Django laughing a little more.

Can you elaborate on the pros and cons of Doc Hollywood? Or other underappreciated Michael J. Fox vehicles?

I was thinking of Michael J Fox the other night. Do you realize he almost bangs his mom in Back to the Future and then almost bangs his aunt in The Secret of My Success. The 80s were wacky and it was all a-ok!

Fellow bald American singer Billy Corgan sang, “Emptiness is loneliness, and loneliness is cleanliness, and cleanliness is godliness, and God is empty, just like me.” What would Carmine say to that?

First off Carmine would lose interest in that verse cause it’s a lot of mumbo jumbo. But I always loved that simple line, “The world is a vampire.” That’s a line I think Carmine would also respect!

This question is inspired not only from the fact this is an illustrated book, but some discussion online I've seen as of late around two comic strip orange cats - my burning question, is Carmine a Garfield guy or a Heathcliff guy?

As much as I wish Carmine was more like Heathcliff, he’s for sure Garfield!

Bob Odenkirk is another writer, humorist, and performer like yourself who has branched out. He got roles in Little Women and as an action star! What would be your dream movie role, or starring vehicle for Carmine? If Hollywood made you cast someone else as Carmine, who would you pick? Any chance of a Little Carmine kids show, or Baby Gavones?

First, I find Odenkirk very inspiring. I listened to both his interviews on Howard Stern and his list of accomplishments is awesome. He has worn so many hats and it’s paid off for him. I loved Nobody, it’s a real cool film. Saul Goodman’s character goes without saying. He has a new book out I’ve been meaning to pick up.

We have an idea for a cartoon that revolves around an elderly Carmine telling stories from his past. I have some thoughts on paper, that would be a dream for Mick and I.

We have had this conversation about what real actors we could see playing Carmine. I see a specific guys look like the late Jon Polito or a guy like Robert Costanzo. I could see Stephen Graham crushing that character as well!

Mick and I are constantly kicking around ideas and as you mentioned earlier about current pop culture stuff, I actually have a tremendous amount of outdated stuff for a sequel called It Used to Blow My Mind.

The book would be along the same lines as this one but Carmine is a cigar smoking kid (same head, little body) and he is talking about stuff we all grew up with that sucks. Unrelated to 2022. Old school shit and kids issues.

For example: RUNNING ERRANDS WITH YOUR PARENTS: You got me, I wanted to spend all Saturday afternoon sitting outside the waiting room of Sears while my mom can’t decide what she likes.

You get the idea…. I have a ton already.

​What else coming from you do we have to look forward to this year and next? 

I’m going to be working on more Carmine stuff. We have a fun Instagram where we make funny pics and shit Carmine related almost daily @itblowsmymind

And Mick, be sure to follow him at @micklambrou.

Thanks for chatting with me, I love the book and I'm excited to share it with the Meow Meow Pow Pow readers!

Thanks I really appreciate it! I’m glad you liked it!!!

What happens when the sons of a Tuskegee Airman, a bait and tackle shop owner, and an aspiring spy novelist meet the garage band who lives next door to rock legend Joe Walsh, in the shadow of the record industry's Payola scandal and the live music industry's pivot towards bar bands doing covers? It sounds like the setup of a Thomas Pynchon fever dream, but is in fact the catalyst for the indie music scene as we would come to know it from the 1980s through present day. 

"It shouldn't have worked. But it did."

Until it didn't...

I have loved Jim Ruland since the night I met him at Todd Taylor's house several years ago after a Razorcake/Gorsky Press podcast recording I did with Myriam Gurba and John Ross Bowie. So yes, I was going into reading his new book "Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise and Fall of SST Records" (432 pages, Hatchette Books) with some bias. I also went into it with a preconceived notion as to what it would cover and in what detail, as so much of the Black Flag story has been told before in the published journals of vocalist Henry Rollins, and the punk rock and hardcore scenes of the early 1980s have already been so well documented - I don't know many punks who haven't watched the Youth Brigade/Social Distortion tour drama unfold in the documentary "Another State of Mind," or hasn't read all there is to know about the New York CBGB or Washington D.C. scenes in any one of a number of books covering those. But like a family trying to enjoy a day at Polliwog Park and instead witnessing Ron Reyes and Dez Cadena wrestle in front of a drunk and screaming Keith Morris, I stumbled onto more than I had expected.

​The author behind the co-written autobiographies of Morris (My Damage) and Do What You Want by Los Angeles punk institution Bad Religion (as well as an upcoming memoir by Evan Dando of The Lemonheads) has gone way beyond just filling in the blanks of Black Flag and SST Records founder Greg Ginn's role (without his participation in the book, even!). Ruland has given America its own England's Dreaming, chronicling the birth of indie music in the way Jon Savage chronicled the birth of UK punk. He spray paints the walls with a complete portrait of not only "ground zero for the early LA punk scene," but how a DIY touring circuit built by Chuck Dukowski and sympathizers across the country, college radio and small record shops, and late night hours MTV programming formed the culture of what came to be known as "alternative music." Not the subculture, but the blueprint for indie music as we are still experiencing it today.

Ruland draws from decades of interviews published in zines only seen by a fraction of today's current music listeners, conducting original research and interviews, and linking together factoids, anecdotes, and material written from such fellow historians as Michael Azerrad, Jimmy Alvarado, and Stacy Russo (two of whom I may have spent a minute or hour or two alongside at a zine fest - here's a clue, it ain't Michael).  This unearths some previously obscured truths. For instance, many of us watched Penelope Spheeris' "The Decline of Western Civilization" on VHS tapes years and years ago, but things I discovered from this book included that Morris had pitched singing for Black Flag on camera after he was already out of the band and after Reyes was already their new vocalist. Ginn and company declined, but got in the movie anyway. Also, that the documentary was more of an ad for Slash Records bands (I hadn't known Speeris was married to then new owner of the label) and, as Ruland tells it, a precursor for reality television rather than an infallible document of the era. Even the genesis of "slam dancing" is revealed to be partially a fabrication by Los Angeles Times writer Patrick Goldstein, which "caught on and gained cultural currency outside of the scene," Ruland writes, "much to the irritation of punk rockers in L.A." 

That the first drummer of Sonic Youth is the same guy who played one of the joyriding valets in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" is a fun piece of trivia some of us may or may now know, but how many of us knew Ginn turned into a pot-smoking techno-loving Deadhead, or that "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening contributed album art for Henry Kasier, or that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's daughter was an SST intern, or that director of terrible film "Arlington Road" Mark Pellington was the MTV employee who helped get Bad Brains in rotation on "120 Minutes"? (Hey, I'm allowed to make fun of that Jeff Bridges/Tim Robbins mess I saw at midnight in 1999, because I am such a devotee of Pellington's other work like the most poignant music video of all time, The Connells' "'74, '75" --- I'm your sorry ever after, Mark!)

Ruland's book ends with a call to action, advocating for Ginn to release long dormant works back to their artists so that they may preserve the legacy of the music. It's idealistic, it may be a lost cause, but how appropriate is that, all punk considered?