RIP David Drake

David Drake has passed away.

I’m no Drake scholar and unqualified to evaluate his life and career or the majority of his creative output, including the popular Hammer’s Slammers. I’ll leave all that up to someone else.

That aside I greatly enjoyed his sword-and-sorcery work wherever I encountered it. I’ve praised his short story “The Barrow Troll” on several occasions and link to the article I wrote for Tales from the Magician’s Skull. You can find this story in literally a dozen or more collections at this point, and for a reason: It’s damned good, a wonderful little subversion of S&S and Drake’s take on the dragon sickness, a topic that also interested Tolkien and the unnamed author of Beowulf.

I’m also a fan of The Dragon Lord, which, now that I’m re-reading Bernard Cornwell’s Warlord Trilogy, did for King Arthur what Drake already did, two decades prior: Offer up a grim and gritty historical take on the myth.

In S&S circles his greatest legacy is probably his Vettius stories, published in various venues but collected in Vettius and His Friends. Swords Against Darkness I contains his excellent “Dragon’s Teeth” which I recommend as a good starting place/sampling of that character. DMR Books recently reprinted “Killer” (written in conjunction with Karl Edward Wagner) in Renegade Swords II, one of Vettius’ “friends” stories featuring the monster hunter Lycon. Also highly recommended; many have described it as “Predator” set in ancient Rome.

I recently picked up a copy of From the Heart of Darkness at Howard Days and will elevate that up the TBR. Drake wrote a lot of horror and this one looks like a great representative sample.

Drake was also recently interviewed in the Karl Edward Wagner documentary The Last Wolf. He knew Wagner as closely as few living people did.

I would put him up there with Wagner, Charles Saunders, Keith Taylor and maybe 1-2 others as the best new authors working in the 70s S&S revival.

RIP Mr. Drake. Thanks for the wonderful stories, and for your service and sacrifice to the country.

One million views, and counting

I passed a quiet milestone a couple weeks ago, of which I was unaware until a recent look at Google analytics data confirmed it.

One million views. 

As of this moment in history the creaky old blog has 1,008,307 views, to be exact.

Not sure what that really means, other than its a big round number. Before you celebrate, this includes bot traffic, one-time visitors that find the blog via image search, etc. Junk traffic.

But also good traffic, returning visitors who have taken some value in what I have to say.

1,000,000 views isn't anything worth celebrating for a website that's going on 16 years. I've never made any attempts to optimize it, monetize, etc. I've gone long stretches without posting. 

But I guess if there is anything to celebrate it's the endurance of the thing.

Of late I haven't been posting nearly as much as I'd like. A long-form non-fiction work in progress has eaten up most of my creative free time. But I have no plans to shutter this bit of cyberspace down, either, unless Google unplugs blogger.

If you've enjoyed the blog over the years thanks for reading. 

The hellscape of KISS avatars and AI art

KISS (holograms) love you!

KISS just wrapped up a 50-year career in typical KISS fashion.

Selling product.

Not content to leave the stage with a remaining shred of dignity intact, KISS left their fans with a message, and a sales pitch: “The new KISS era starts now!” And unveiled the next era of KISS.

Digitally created avatars.

The new beginning? Artificiality.

KISS presumably means to render themselves, and their income streams, immortal. “The band will never stop because the fans own the band,” explained frontman Paul Stanley.

Paying fans, with their money going to KISS in perpetuity. 

Fuck I hate the world right now.

***

Artificial entertainment is not unique to KISS. We’re being increasingly inundated with images spun out of DALL-E, text spit from ChatGPT. Fake videos with AI trained voiceovers are making it increasing harder to tell what is real.

Now we’ve got AI KISS. Holograms, programmed to move based on training data, not spontaneity.

A nightmare.

I ask, with earnestness: What is the point?

Before the advent of AI, had you asked me why I liked KISS I would probably have answered “the music."

But now I realize, it was also the band members.

People made the music. Putting aside debate about their actual talent, Gene, Paul, Peter, and Ace blended their unique backgrounds and experiences to write songs. They had several false starts and tentative steps toward their final brand image. It was a messy path of false starts, playing shows in high school gyms in front of a dozen disinterested fans, before they finally hit it big.

The end product was, almost miraculously, pretty awesome, at least from an entertainment perspective. 

Paul Stanley is a human being possessed of loves and interests, passions, faults, foibles, and flaws. As were the other members of KISS. Together they wrote great songs and terrible songs. Classic albums and awful clunkers. They did some amazing tours, limped through others, and put out some really shitty merchandise.

I love it all.

I love it because KISS is unique, and every member that served in the band, unique (especially Vinnie Vincent). It’s what makes them entertaining. This humanness is an incalculable part of what makes KISS endearing to its fans. 

KISS is easy to pick on, and mock. “They were already artificial!” OK, fair enough. But they were and are real people who against long odds, built a career most would envy.

The next era is a mockery, and its only just begun.

Will AI generated Paul Stanley paint pictures, bang groupies, have children, fight with digital Ace Frehley on Eddie Trunk? Will the band members write ChatGPT generated memoirs about their “tours”? Inspire new AI artists?

Are we supposed to go to concerts and cheer on holograms?

There is no point to AI generated art. It is soulless in every sense of the term. Because there is no soul behind it, not even a ghost in the machine. Just scraped and aggregated data, vectored and served up.

One small bit of good news is that it appears AI generated art is not copyrightable. And it doesn’t deserve to be, because there is nothing worth preserving in it. It is the pinnacle of corporate, Silicon Valley soul-lessness, a golem of circuitry built from the flesh and blood output of real artists.

If we had any sense as a species, AI would be put to use solving actual big problems like climate change and nuclear fusion. Detecting cancers unseen to the naked eye. Or automating soulless, mind-crushing tasks.

To be fair AI is being used in some of these applications. I hope these succeed. But most of the product development is being applied in the creative industries, and white collar businesses. 

Why? As with any open question about business, the answer is the same here as with any other: follow the money.

Companies are now rapidly training niche AIs and then selling them as subscription products. Businesses are already outsourcing human labor to machines, reducing overhead expense and increasing their profitability to shareholders.

This is commerce, not art.

Worse, kids are using it to write papers, teachers to grade these fake papers, “creators” to fuel their content pipeline. What are we learning? What is more impressive, a guitar virtuoso who has spent 25 years mastering his craft, a generational talent like Frank Frazetta painting with fire, or some kid putting prompts into DALL-E?

People are the losers in the AI race. As are dignity, hard work, effort, and talent.

So is the future. We’re sacrificing that, too. And we’re making a mockery of the past.

A massive part of the appeal of Conan and Solomon Kane and Kull is its creator, Robert E. Howard. Howard was rooted in Cross Plains, possessed of a voracious reading habit, writing talent, and an imagination as big as Texas. He was complex, contradictory, full of great passions, “giant melancholies and gigantic mirths.” All of it formed the wellspring of his art.

AI has none of this. There is no background to excavate, no influences to explore, no literary legacy to debate, no arguments over places in the pantheon. 

AGIs have no history. They never worked on oil fields, felt the sting of lost loves, experienced the alienation of an artistic soul in a town whose residents despised its craft.

AI generated writing is the death knell of literary criticism. How can one say anything about the output of a program, scraping and training itself on massive data sets of already existing content? A hellish, endless loop of sophisticated repetition and large-scale copying, including everything Robert E. Howard ever wrote?

To recap: AI generated art, including images and text, but also AI avatars, AI music, all of it, is void of meaning. It is shallow, empty, and purposeless.

Inhuman.

I will not be part of creating it, or consuming it. 

Neither should you.

October reading update

I set an annual reading goal of 52 books. Which I rarely meet, but it gives me a north star to steer toward. To have any shot of reaching that goal I need to have a book going at all times. 

Sometimes I get stuck in ruts, selecting books based on what I think I should read, rather than what grips me and keeps the pages turning. Earlier this year I found myself burned out on sword-and-sorcery fiction. Not that what I was reading was bad, it was just too much of the same, and I found myself reading it out of some sort of obligation. I was slogging along, and my reading pace was slowing down.

So in June I decided to change things up. I put down the S&S (with one exception; see below) and dove headlong into stuff I really wanted to read. Here’s what I’ve read since June:

1. On the Road, Jack Kerouac 

2. The Eyes of the Dragon, Stephen King

3. The Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris

4. Gov’t Cheese, Steven Pressfield

5. Watership Down, Richard Adams

6. Fargo Rock City, Chuck Klosterman

7. Adventures of a Metalhead Librarian, Anna-Marie O’Brien

8. Heavy Duty: Days and Nights In Judas Priest, KK Downing

9. Night Shift, Stephen King 

10. Face the Music: A Life Exposed, Paul Stanley 

11. Lord of a Shattered Land, Howard Andrew Jones

12. Nothin’ But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the 80s Hard Rock Explosion, Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock

13. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway

14. I Am Ozzy, Ozzy Osbourne 

15. Red Dragon, Thomas Harris

Right now I’m working on two books, Max Brooks’ World War Z, and Ethan Gilsdorf’s Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, making good progress on both. That will put me at 35 books YTD.

You can see a couple clear interests emerging here.

One is horror. It’s October and I’ve got the Halloween itch. Stephen King and Thomas Harris at their best are tough to beat for delivering chills. I burned through Night Shift in a couple days, as well as Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs. Harris at his best might be a better writer than King, though the latter has the superior imagination (Harris also only seems able to write about serial killers. Except for Black Sunday, which I mean to pick up one day).

I’m also engaged in writing a heavy metal memoir and so have been mainlining memoir and history of that genre. Gov’t Cheese is (non metal) memoir and Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks is also a memoir of sorts, a story of a dude coming to grips with his gaming past and the broader need for escapism. These books have not only gotten me in the mood to write but also provided a template for how I might tackle my own book.

Ozzy was an absolute lunatic in the 70s and 80s but you probably already knew that.

For Whom the Bell Tolls was a palate cleanser after a steady diet of 80s debauchery, but proved to be a terrific book.  

A couple of these are re-reads. I read Red Dragon a long time ago, long enough so that much of it feels new to me again. Though I remembered all the broad strokes and how the killer is ultimately caught. Which doesn’t matter—you read a book like this for the journey, not the destination. Harris does a masterful job sketching Dolarhyde’s entire backstory in a gripping 22 page sequence.

World War Z is also a re-read.

I recommend everything from the list above.

Still learning from my Dad

Me and the old man! At The Barking Dog, Amesbury MA.

I’m 50 years old and still learning.

Still learning from my Dad.

Dad is 79 and dealing with a host of chronic conditions—name it, he’s probably got it. His mobility is greatly diminished. He needs a cane, sometimes his walker. Most of his friends are gone, so he gets lonely. He has a grumpy, nippy “lovebird” as a companion.

I help him out. I pay his bills, help him with medical appointments, because he doesn’t text or email. Run a vacuum around his condo.

Last night we had a wonderful little impromptu dinner out.

Here’s the sad admission: It took some effort on my behalf.

I had planned to swing by Dad’s condo, check in on him, and pick up his mail. But he mentioned he wasn’t in the mood to cook and was planning to go out to dinner, alone.

I hesitated. I kind of just wanted to go back home. I am trying to eat better—do I really want restaurant food on a Tuesday? All the excuses.

After a few seconds of indecision I mentioned I was free, and that I’d go with him.

To say it was worth it is an understatement.

Dad misses his deceased friends, especially Willie, who he worked with, side-by-side, for the better part of 40 years. I knew the story of Willie’s retirement but asked Dad to retell it anyways. Willie said he’d leave a bottle of Jameson on his desk on his last day. My dad knew the day was coming, but Willie surprised him, sneaking out one day after lunch. But not before leaving the bottle and a few shot glasses.

My dad and five other guys spent the afternoon toasting to Willie while his boss looked the other way.

I also learned something new: Dad was invited to two weddings of much younger guys he worked with, but never hung out with.

Who does this happen to? My dad.

He always was charming, and he still has that social fastball. My Dad engaged the bartender far better than I could have yesterday, or any other day. I just needed to get him away from the TV. 

He had a great time. In turn, he got me out of my ennui.

I feel helpless sometimes when I’m around him, watching his slow decline. Yesterday he helped me as much as I helped him.

When I’m feeling isolated at work, bleeding into my personal life, it’s always the same cause: A lack of engagement.

I know need to spend my time not stewing on my own inadequacies, but helping out others.

Some career/life advice:

👉 Connect with people. Face to face if you can. If you’re an introvert, push through the resistance.

👉 Don’t assume; you’ll get burned through lack of communication

👉 Be clear about what you want. Listen in return.

👉 Be kind.

Thanks to Dad I am reminded of what I need to do. It doesn’t come naturally, but I’ll keep working at it.

Ace Frehley, Nashua Center for the Arts (Aug. 2023)--a review

We had good seats... up close and personal with Ace Frehley.

Wildly unexpected: Ace Frehley played a cover of Thin Lizzy’s “Emerald” at the Nashua Center for the Arts last night. But I’ve come to expect the unexpected out of Ace.

The former KISS lead guitarist has always been a loose cannon. That’s what led to his departure from the band; Ace quit in 1982 but his time was coming to an end regardless. He loved booze and drugs too much, lacked discipline and seriousness, and was unreliable. Which of course put him at direct odds with the businessmen and defenders of the KISS brand, Paul and Gene.

Ace went on to have a moderately successful solo career with Frehley’s Comet, famously reunited with the band for a reunion tour in 1996, and left again in another huff in 2002. In his wild biography No Regrets Ace sends most of his ire in the direction of the controlling, sex-addicted Gene Simmons; today he is openly quarreling with Paul Stanley, who himself stooped to Ace’s level by denigrating Ace’s playing and professionalism (despite the fact that Paul is openly using vocal tracks to cover up his shot voice).

It's rather pathetic, watching the infighting of 70-year-old men who hit the equivalent of the lottery in the 70s but can’t seem to get beyond their own egos and let the past remain there.

But to be honest, it’s also fucking fun, in a watching a train wreck from afar, guiltily, kind of way.

When you’re a deep fan of KISS--the kind who goes beyond the music and explores their crazy history, the rise and fall and glorious return, the nonsense of albums like Unmasked and The Elder and weird transient members like Vinnie Vincent, and all the merchandise spinoffs and now public beefs and shit-stirring—it’s like participating in a reality TV show spanning 50 years, with dozens of spinoffs and subplots. It’s endless and endlessly fascinating.

There aren’t really a lot of good guys.

KISS (the current incarnation) does not precisely even play concerts anymore, but put on a highly choreographed performance; everything is calculated and planned. Zero spontaneity. Yeah, Gene/Paul/Tommy/Eric put on a much bigger, brighter, and more colorful show than Ace, and KISS sounds much better, but it’s plastic. For almost 20 years now, perhaps since the “farewell” tour of 2001, it’s been essentially the same thing; the last unique show I remember KISS putting on was Psycho Circus and its ill-conceived 3D effects. 

Ace has slouched along with his own solo career since the mid-80s. He’s never had a good voice, never taken care of himself physically (though he says he’s been sober since 2006), BUT he does his brand of loose, boozy rock well, and has surrounded himself with a talented band including three dudes who can all sing, and share the vocal duties and take the load off what is clearly at this stage a very frail Frehley.

So KISS isn't great these days, and neither is Ace. But I still love them both.

Concerts have always for me been about good times with friends, and unique experiences, first, and the music, while important, is second. Last night was a fun experience, and the music was OK too. It checked the boxes for a good time. And it was.

Ace busted out a lot of old KISS tunes including “Parasite,” “Detroit Rock City,” “Cold Gin,” “Shock Me,” “Deuce” and “Love Gun.” He played many solo hits, including (of course) “New York Groove,” but also “Rip It Out,” “Rock Soldiers,” “Snowblind,” “Speedin’ Back to My Baby” and “Hard Times.”

I think I got them all, but I wasn’t taking notes, either.

Oh yeah, and “Emerald,” which was a pleasant surprise. 

Wayne and I. 

The usual weird Ace-ness accompanied all of this. Ace slagged Paul once; Ace admitted he can’t sing Love Gun, “but neither can Paul” before turning over the vocals to his drummer. He told a weirdly placed story about falling down his stairs in his own home in a sort of half apology for not being as spry on stage (he never has been). An odd fedora wearing promoter who resembled a faux pro wrestling manager lurked along the side of the stage taking pictures, and at the end of the show held open a bathrobe for Ace to step into. 

Ace shared interesting short anecdotes about old KISS songs (conceiving the riff for Cold Gin on the subway, Gene admitting not knowing what lyrics of Deuce meant, etc.). And of course he played a smoke show solo.

Nashua is a little rough around the edges but the main drag was loaded with breweries, restaurants, and pubs. We watched one overserved dude make an ass of himself before moving on.

Fun stuff, quirky, unique. Another one for the record books. 

My friend Wayne and I both remarked that this may be the last time Ace comes this way, based on his condition, but one never knows. He is after all, a wild card, and may yet have an Ace in his deck. OK, that's enough card metaphors for one day.

Watership Down and the importance of stories

We tell stories to give life meaning. Stories show us how to behave, and teach us what matters, through the power of narrative.

Stories convey Truth. Lacking a shared set of stories we can believe in, life is cacophonous noise.

Some stories are hard to hear, or don’t end well. But the same can be said for some aspects of life. I am drawn time and again to stories of heroism, of hard struggle in dark places against long odds. 

I think these are the best stories, and the ones that matter most.

This is one reason why I keep coming back to Watership Down. I recently completed either a third or fourth re-reading of this 1972 classic by Richard Adams. As with all the great books I’ve read, I learned something new, again, in its familiar pages.

Great books meet you where you are in life. This time Watership Down met me in a new place, at age 50, with my children now full grown and headed off to college in the fall, leaving my wife and I empty-nesters for the first time. My girls are on their way to building lives, and their story has a lot to unfold. My life is still building, but I’ve shifted, subtly, from chasing a career and building a family, to passing on the wisdom I’ve accumulated. To telling them about my story, in the hopes I can convey a little wisdom and improve their chances of making better choices and building better lives. 

So yes, this re-reading of Watership Down taught me about the power of stories.

The Rabbits tell each other stories of El-ahrairah, a great hero out of legend. He is the ideal, but because he is a rabbit, not a man, he is the ultimate rabbit ideal. A master thief, because rabbits steal from gardens. A prey item for a thousand hunters, because rabbits are relatively weak. But these deficiencies are offset with his great gifts of cunning, and great speed, driven by the power of his back legs.

El-ahrariah is a hero. Not without flaw; he sometimes makes poor choices, and suffers the consequences. He often falls victim to his own pride, and overconfidence. But he never gives up, and against every fiber of his being confronts the Black Rabbit of Inle’, and offers up his own life to secure the safety of his people. It’s a lesson in sacrifice for the next generation, which in the end is what being a good parent is all about. 

The Rabbits tell the stories of El-ahrairah again and again, because they give their brief and often terrifying lives meaning. And something to hope for. His stories inspire Hazel, the hero of Watership Down (one among many), to lead his warren on a long journey through many dangers to safety, beyond the reach of the careless destroyer man.

Eventually El-ahrairah passes on, just as Hazel and Bigwig pass away. But their stories remain, and inspire, if we continue to pass them on. 

Even if El-ahrairah is just a myth, his is a story worth believing in.