"Ticket to Ride" by the Carpenters has to be one of the weirder covers. Still, I'd give a lot to be able to sing like Karen Carpenter.

Um.

Here's some Mad Max footage set to Motörhead. Because I am metal, totally.

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Today I had a lobster burrito and a Negra Modelo with an ocean view, plus other pleasures. I lived like I was livin' in paradise.

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The JLA Satellite blog finally got around to reviewing Justice League of America #124, the very first comic book I remember buying. It was on sale at the little grocery store at Lopez Lake, a regular destination for our family vacations, and maybe it was the spooky cover, but I was drawn to it like Batman to a mugger, and though I've drifted away and come back to comics many times in the intervening years, I've loved them ever since.

People in the comments to the blog post are dissing the co-writer of that issue, Elliot S! Maggin, but he wrote Last Son of Krypton, which remains one of my all-time favorite novels, and I will always love him for it.

I should get a new copy. Mine would fall apart if I touched it.

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She really was an alto angel, though, Karen Carpenter.

I could be mistaken, but I think The Mighty Hercules ran in syndication on KHJ Los Angeles, Channel 9. And if you grew up in LA, I know what you're thinking: Channel 9? Nothing good ever came on Channel 9. Channel 9 was, like, Bowling for Dollars.

But that's neither here nor there.

The Mighty Hercules theme song is awfully catchy. In fact, the melody runs through my head with alarming frequency, because the tune is just awesome. But of the lyrics, all I've ever been able to remember is the part about Herc having the strength of ten ordinary men.

Turns out they're quite evocative. To wit:

Softness in his eyes
Iron in his thighs
Virtue in his heart
Fire in every part
of the mighty Hercules!

When I was a kid, I liked dirt. We lived on a two-house lot in Venice, California, my parents and my brother and I renting the little front house, and my grandparents renting the little back house. Between the two houses, we had a palm tree, the Bin of Spiders and Forgotten Wood, a cage that sometimes held pigeons and for a while held a pheasant, and dirt.

I liked to dig holes. Digging holes was a good way to access more dirt. The dirt contained small treasures: stones, fragments of chalk, worms, last year's Hot Wheel, mummified cat poo. But if these archaeological treasures were the message and dirt was the medium, I was a media kid. It was about the dirt. The UPS-brown sand, the way it turned into loamy soup with the addition of water, the deeply satisfying moist, packable mud.

I know we had other kids in my neighborhood. I was aware they existed. Sometimes I heard the noises they made as they conducted their activities or whatever. Sometimes I even encountered them. But they were largely irrelevant, as they were not entirely made of dirt. It wasn't their fault. I no longer blame them for being other than dirt.

The stuff at the bottom of my coffee cup is rather dark and thick this morning.

I fell down the YouTube hole again.

I was looking for an 80's song that I've only heard on the radio three or four times but remember liking, and it turned out to be Voices by Russ Ballard.

Who's this Russ Ballard fellow, I wondered. As I'm sure everyone but me knew, he was the lead singer and lead guitarist for Argent, which means he's responsible for Hold Your Head Up, which is a good stomp-along classic rock song, especially enjoyable if you've got a beer mug and a table to pound it on. He's also a prolific songwriter who penned one of my favorite sing-in-the-car songs, Rainbow's Since You've Been Gone.

What really surprised me was that Argent was the originator of God Gave Rock 'n' Roll To You, which I thought was a KISS original, and one of their few songs from the post-makeup era that I actually really like.

Argent's version contains lyrics dealing with loving one's neighbor and refraining from stepping on snails, but KISS rewrote most of the verses to appeal to their core audience of white suburban male teens dreaming of rock godhood, most of whom grew into white suburban male middle-agers dreaming of rock godhood and more time off for golf.

Here's the KISS version. And here's the version from Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, which appears to be the KISS rendition with a bunch of Steve Vai guitar grafted on.

And just for the completists, here's a really shitty version by Petra, who should have their keyboards repoed.

Be sure to turn up your speakers and click all the links. Especially if you're at work.

I want to do nothing but watch superhero cartoons all day. But that would be irresponsible.

I am bothered by the intrusion of 3-D animated elements, such as spaceships and cars and disco balls (seriously), into otherwise 2-D animated productions.

Otherwise, I'm getting the same buzz from Justice League Unlimited that I used to get from comic books before they started with the incessant retconning. But I guess that should be no surprise, given that my introduction to superheroes wasn't through comic books as much as it was through syndicated repeats of the Filmation Aquaman, Superman, Batman, Atom, Flash, Hawkman, Teen Titans, and Green Lantern cartoons (and, omg, the Ted Knight narration!). And of course the Ralph Bakshi Spider-Man. Of course.

And the stuff that hooked me is actually pretty crappy compared to JLU. Today's kids, they got it lucky.

Anyway, I'll stop blathering about it for now, because this journal is threatening to become a 70's nostalgia blog, and I do have a life outside Micronauts and Planet of the Apes and the Legion of Doom.

Shut up, I do!

This morning was eaten by the DMV, where I finally got around to getting my California license and registration. Even though I haven't had a California drivers license since 1993, I was still in the system, and when the clerk saw my old picture (taken when I was 17, I think) she omg-ed and turned her screen around to show me. I looked at that boy's face and laughed. Since then, I've gained seven inches in height and lost my starter mullet.

It'd be so easy to make fun of that boy, but for some reason I'm feeling kindness towards him today. He made a lot of mistakes before and after that pic was taken, but he wasn't such a bad kid, really.

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Speaking of being a grown-up, those comic books that came with the 45-rpm recording of the narration that we had some discussion about in this post were called PowerRecords, and blogger Rob Kelly has been posting complete scans and MP3s of some of them.

The pages are very media-heavy and take a long time to load, so be warned.

No Star Trek yet, but he does include my fondly remembered Escape From the Planet of the Apes.

This, this, this is what the Internet is for.

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And speaking of kids, today is the birthday of the brilliant, beautiful, talented, and luminous Heather Shaw! Happy Birthday, Heather! You are just SO awesome!!! :-D

Accused of a crime he didn't commit, never more than one step ahead of those who would steal his freedom, he is always on the move, seeking to exonerate himself, but never forgoing an opportunity to help those in need.

No, not The Fugitive, nor The Incredible Hulk. In this case, it's Joe, a German Shepherd.

I had totally forgotten Run, Joe, Run, but I'm sure I was watching it in 1975 or '76.

No, really, my relationship with YouTube is totally healthy.

Offered without comment, Electra Woman & Dyna Girl: