EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview first published on October 19th, 2006.

BY JONATHAN VALANIA Welcome to part two of our bazillion-word interview with esteemed jazz critic Francis Davis, wherein our man Fran will be talking non-smack about Coltrane in Philly, Sun Ra on Uranus and the pre-historic beginnings of Fresh Air. If you are just finding us for the first time, you can find Part One here, along with his illustrious CV. When we last left our hero, he was beaten, bloodied and long haired, handcuffed in the back of Philadelphia Police Department paddy wagon charged with aggravated assault and battery on a police officer. In other words, it was the ’60s.

Phawker: Okay, so you bust out of prison. It’s you, Tom Waits, John Lurie and Roberto Benigni wading through the swamps of Louisiana. No wait, that’s Jim Jarmusch’s Down By Law. Jumping forward, how did we decide to become a jazz critic?

Francis Davis: Slowly. In 1978, Terry Gross, who, as you know, later became my wife asked me to do a regular jazz segment on Fresh Air. She had a three-hour show in those days. And she needed to fill a lot of time. And she asked me to do a feature on jazz, on out-of-print jazz in particular. I wanted to make it clear that this wasn’t a show by some old white guy in his basement. Like, ‘this record’s really rare.’ I wanted to do a history of jazz paying attention only to the gaps. So I started writing the scripts and working hard to deliver them as if I was just saying these things off the top of my head. And then I got laid off at the record store I worked at which, you know, put me on employment compensation and gave me a lot of time. Terry and I went to England in ’79, and being out of my country for the first time I had kind of metamorphosis in a sense that you had no history. You could be anybody you want to be because nobody knows who you are. [And that was very liberating] So I really started wanting to write when I came back. And I did a few things for the Courier-Post, most of which were not jazz pieces. They paid very badly, but the great part about it was that they didn’t care if you knew something about it or not. As long as there was a Jersey connection, and as long as you remembered to mentioned what high school the person went to.

So I had all this time. I didn’t have a lot of clips, but I had a lot of the scripts, which were very good scripts actually. You know, a little over-written, but it goes with the territory when you first start to write… And I was on unemployment compensation, so I was getting a check every week and I could just sit and write. And do, like, 20 records reviews a day. And sometimes I did. So I built up this body of work and eventually people noticed me…

Phawker: Were you as interested in pop music or rock and roll as you were in jazz?

Francis Davis: Yeah, at one point I was. But writing about music for me meant writing about jazz, you know. And the other thing is that insofar as pop music is youth music, there has to be a point at which — and this certainly isn’t true for Bob Christgau — but for most of us there has to be a point at which keeping up with it, as I put it in the intro of Like Young, becomes as absurd a notion as keeping up with sex, or something. By the way, everybody hates the Killers new CD. I kind of like it, but anyway.

Phawker: How long was your little segment, about five minutes or so?

Francis Davis: Well, that’s what we always joked about. No, it was supposed to be 20 minutes, but because we had all the time in the world to fill, it was ‘Hey, 37 minutes? Fine! The guest isn’t here yet.’ And the show was live in those days too. They had very few things on tape.

Phawker: Was it called Fresh Air then?

Francis Davis: Yeah, my segment was called Interval. And you know, part of the time would be taken up by playing records. I didn’t excerpt records. I played complete tracks. That’s one thing I never liked about reviewing for NPR shows. I don’t know what you get from playing 30 seconds of something. Getting back to your question about pop, I’ve written about pop but usually just because something had interested me for years and years, like the piece I wrote about the Velvet Underground.

Phawker: Where did the Velvet’s piece first appear?

Francis Davis: The Atlantic Monthly. But that was because Bill Whitworth, the editor, asked me if I’d be interested in writing a piece about the Rolling Stones, who were mounting one of their many tours at the time. This I guess this is ’89 or ’90. And you know, no I wasn’t.

Phawker: Didn’t you call them ‘blown-out satyrs’?

Francis Davis: That’s the first sentence of the piece. I think I can write on a very personal level about pop. But I don’t think I have the kind of weight of authority that I have when I’m writing about jazz. And it’s the same thing. Bob Christgau has written about jazz but I think pop critics are treading on very dangerous territory when they write about jazz. And even Bob’s got stuff wrong. I don’t mean factually wrong. Its something I just disagree about. I think opinion is non-negotiable. It’s my way or the highway. But no, I don’t feel the need to sort of share my opinion with’ about the new Beck record, which I haven’t heard, as I do to share my opinion of the new Ornette Coleman record.

Phawker: Just to finish up the Terry thing. Is that how you guys met? Through the show?

Francis Davis: No, I think the first time we met was in the store. I dunno, the first or second time. And I remember we had a conversation about Ella Fitzgerald and about Paul Desmond. Because I really loved Paul Desmond. And she was surprised given my taste for, like, free improvisation and so on, that I liked Paul Desmond. I want to write a piece about Paul Desmond by the way.

Phawker: I don’t know anything about Paul Desmond.

Francis Davis: Paul Desmond was the alto saxophonist in the Dave Brubeck Quartet. And in a way one of the whitest players that ever lived. But in a sense he was the token black in the Brubeck Quartet. At least until before they hired a black bass player. He was a very ‘black’ player. I mean, there are many, many tenor players, including white tenor players, who were influenced by Lester Young. And the influence is kind of transparent. Because Desmond’s playing another instrument, an instrument in a high register, it’s not as obvious. But Desmond is so far behind the beat and so Lester Young-like, but in a good way. Anyway, but that’s how we met.

Phawker: And you sort of hit it off from there and the rest is history?

Francis Davis: Well, she knew I knew a lot about jazz and wanted to do a whole strip of different music features. There’d be one on jazz, there’d be one on folk music or something, and actually I was the only one who did it for a long time because people would lose interest. In fact, I think in the end we weren’t getting paid anything, or maybe $20 a throw.

Phawker: Lets jump ahead. You have been working on a Coltrane book for 10 years…

Francis Davis: Yeah. Fitfully. It’s long overdue. I don’t mean it’s long overdue in the market, I mean, in terms of the contract, it’s long overdue. Yeah, I have a very indulgent publisher. It’s a straight bio. But the publisher would be horrified to hear it described as a critical biography because they always fear that. In the marketplace that means it’s a kind of dense book that’s not really a biography but really a book of criticism. But you know, these things weave in and out. And I don’t know how you can write a biography of an artist without it being a critical biography in some ways. There have been numerous Coltrane biographies, but I think what’s missing, really, is Philadelphia. Because there were a lot of people, there still are a lot of people here, who are kind of important to the story who nobody really bothers talking to very much.

Phawker: What role do you think Philadelphia played in his art?

Francis Davis: Well, what was he, 18 when he came here? I dunno, he had finished high school. He studied at the Granoff School. I think in Philadelphia there were two things that had an impact on him. I don’t know if there’s such a thing as a Philadelphia sound. I think there’s a Philadelphia mind set, or sensibility or attitude or whatever. The other thing, the thing he became caught up in, musicians will tell you, and it’s funny, some people intend it as a criticism, that there was an obsession with technique in Philadelphia. And it’s funny, with Coltrane that technique becomes a form of mysticism. It’s almost as if like, the deeper you get into chords, the better of a musician you are, the better person you become. It’s such a discipline. Its almost like this zen kinda that. And that’s Philadelphia. And Coltrane came to epitomize that.

Phawker: When was Coltrane here?

Francis Davis: Well he got here about ’44, ’45. Again, he didn’t come here for the music. He came here for the work, along with his mother, who had recently been widowed. When he left it’s kind of hard to say. He left gradually. He maintained a residence here. Which is still there, but I’m not sure when he last actually resided here. But he was gone by ’57. He joins Miles [Davis] by ’55 and he’s kind of gone by then really. Sometimes you read things and you think Coltrane lived his whole life here or something, because Philadelphia is very possessive and it has a king-sized inferiority complex because of its proximity to New York.

(At this point, Terry calls and Francis excuses himself to make a dinner date with his wife at Zeke’s Deli. If you go, try the whitefish. Dynamite whitefish. Lastly, apologies for false advertising, there was a fairly lengthy Sun Ra discussion that must have wound up on the cutting room floor. We’ll look for it and slap it on the end if we find it [We never did.–The Editor]. We blame the intern. That’s the beauty of having an intern. At Phawker our motto is: We’ll get it right, eventually.)

EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview originally published back in 2006. It’s still a fascinating read.

Welcome to the second installment of our Grumpy Old Men series, wherein we learn from our elders and soak up their salty yarns like Bounty Quicker Picker-Upper. Yesterday we had Robert Christgau, today Francis Davis. Tomorrow? The Pope. What’s that you say? You never heard of Francis Davis. Oh buddy, it’s good thing you found us! Check out his CV:

He has written about music, film, and other aspects of popular culture for The Atlantic since 1984 and was appointed lead jazz critic for the Voice in 2004. He was jazz critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer from 1982 to 1996, jazz editor of Musician from 1982 to 1985, and a staff writer for 7 Days from 1988 to 1990. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Arts & Leisure and Book Review sections, The Nation, Connoisseur, Rolling Stone, Wigwag, The Oxford American, Stereo Review Sound & Vision, High Fidelity, the Boston Phoenix, The Absolute Sound, ARTicles, Cadence, Down Beat, Jazz Times, Elle, Audio, The World & I, The Wire, The Black American, the Village Voice Rock & Roll Quarterly, The Washington Post Book World, The New York Times Book Review, and The Times Literary Supplement (London).

Yow! He is also married to Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. We talked to him about his 10-years-in-the-making John Coltrane bio, Sheets of Sound, what it’s like to get beaten up and thrown in the hoosegow by the Philly cops for being a smartass hippie back in the Sixties, and who’s on top in bed. Just kidding. He wouldn’t answer that question.

PHAWKER: Say your name please…

FRANCIS DAVIS: Francis Davis.

PHAWKER: You’re Philly-born and -bred. Lived here your whole life.

FRANCIS DAVIS: Yeah.

PHAWKER: Where’d you grow up?

FRANCIS DAVIS: Southwest Philadelphia. Around 58th and Elmwood Ave.

PHAWKER: And what kinda neighborhood was that back then?

FRANCIS DAVIS: At the time it was a very ethnic, Catholic neighborhood: Italian, Irish and Polish. In fact, many of the kids who I went to school with who were Polish still had parents who spoke, you know, Polish. Spoke Polish? Is there such a language? [laughs]

PHAWKER: Are you Irish stock 100%?

FRANCIS DAVIS: No. But Celtic. I guess my father was Welsh.

PHAWKER: And your mom?

FRANCIS DAVIS: Irish. Very Irish.

PHAWKER: And where did you go to high school?

FRANCIS DAVIS: Bartram. It was an integrated high school, which was very rare in Philly at the time. Well, I believe, anyway. And this would have been 1964 when I graduated. So not only was it very integrated, it was also the height of the civil rights era. So it was kind, of you know, hip for black kids to invite white kids to the parties and vice versa. Not that I, you know, threw any parties myself. We also had a great influx of Jewish kids, and then we even had an Indian kid, who wore, you know, a turban. And the black kids used to call it his doo-rag. So you know, I think now to find such a high school you’d have to watch a television show. I mean I think they’re only high schools like that on TV. And we had, like, hoods and National Merit Scholars.

PHAWKER: And is that what first opened you to black culture and music and things like that?

FRANCIS DAVIS: Well, to jazz, in a way. At that time there was a commercial jazz station in Philadelphia: WHAT-FM. In those days, not everybody had a FM radio yet, you know. And certainly kids’ radios tended to be transistors, which were little AM radios. So the hip thing to do was to listen to FM. In particular to listen to WHAT-FM, the jazz station, 96.5 I recall. So it probably was black kids who first taught me about that, including a kid I went to school with who was Bill Cosby’s cousin.

PHAWKER: How old were you?

FRANCIS DAVIS: Seventeen. I was reading Saturday Review and Evergreen Review and things like that. And they covered jazz in those days. There was a critic that I liked named Martin Williams, who I especially liked who also wrote for Evergreen Review and Saturday Review. Because I was reading poetry I knew about the then-named Leroi Jones, who, you know, I knew him as a poet before I knew him as a jazz writer or jazz critic. But anyway, it was a short step from reading them and those magazines to buying Down Beat and a magazine called Jazz and so on … and I noticed there were people I was reading about who weren’t being played on that station. So I would save my pennies, sometimes literally, and buy, usually cut out records that were on sale for $1.98 or so by Cecil Taylor or Ornette Coleman. So between that station and stuff I was buying I was hearing lots of stuff. And that’s how I started.

PHAWKER: And what got you into reading these fairly mature literary magazines as a teenager?

FRANCIS DAVIS: I don’t know. I always read. When I was a kid I was never treated like a kid in my family. In the house where I was growing up, I was the only male in an otherwise female household with my mother, my grandmother and an aunt. In some ways I was a little bit spoiled. My grandmother lost her son in World War II and I was named after him. And in some ways, this is sort of a a black concept, in some ways I was the replacement child for her. And also because grandmothers spoil ya anyway. But the person I was named after was smart. He was the only person in the family that had graduated from high school. Because I had his name, it was just assumed that I would be smart, too. There were never kids books around, per se. So the books I read when I was a kid were, you know, the same things my mom was reading. Which meant a lot of Mickey Spillane. I was fascinated by the look of type on a page. When I would write stuff on my own, if it wasn’t for school, I would get a piece of loose leaf paper, which was wide ruled, and do two lines in each one because it looked more squished together, like typeface.

So, you know, I was just interested in writing. My senior year in high school I got a job at the Free Library branch at 51st and Kensington. Essentially it was a minimum wage thing where you put books away. That was all you were allowed to do if you weren’t union. But during the summer it was a dream job because hardly anybody came into the library. So there’d be three or four to put away and then I had all the time in the world to read. And I could also check any book out that I wanted and not have to worry about bringing it back. There was one stretch in particular when I was a senior in high school. Right around the time of the Kennedy assassination. My grandmother died not long after that. And there were a lot of arrangements to be made. Relatives were coming from different places and nobody was paying much attention to whether I went to school or not, so I would just stay home and read. And I know that in my senior year of high school and the beginning of freshman year of college, I read probably 90 percent of everything I’ve ever read. [Laughs] That’s when I read Lolita, The Invisible Man, Rabbit, Run, etc. Pretty much everything Norman Mailer had published up to that point. And I was just digesting all this. And I was just reading these things the way people watched television shows, you know. And also not having to do papers on them or anything or discuss them in class. Again, I probably started reading say, Saturday Review, because a writer who I had read and liked was on the cover. And Evergreen I started reading because in the very first issue Norman Mailer had a piece in there. And I was kinda obsessed with Mailer back then. Especially the way he wrote about writing, how he changed this word and replaced it with another word because it was more masculine, and so on. So I started to write a novel myself. It was more or less The Great Gatsby, but with teenagers, you know?

PHAWKER: What was it called?

FRANCIS DAVIS: It had various titles. The one I remember was Let Him Be Foolish. Never finished it, by the way. It started out as a short story and became a never-ending novel. It just got longer and longer. I’m glad it no longer exists.

PHAWKER: So then you went to Temple?

FRANCIS DAVIS: Yeah, yeah. I started at Penn State. Then I went to Temple.

PHAWKER: Oh, freshman year you went to Penn State?

FRANCIS DAVIS: Yeah then I transferred to Temple. You know, Penn State seemed too rural to me. I had never been out of the city in my life. And I was used to having, like, a newsstand at ever corner. At Penn State there weren’t even corners. I used to get lost trying to find a classroom that I had just been to a few days before .

PHAWKER: There’s no grid to follow.

FRANCIS DAVIS: Yeah, to orient myself. It was also, at least in the fall of 1964, Penn State was overwhelmingly white. And suddenly I was with all these kids from small towns from Philadelphia who were the most casually racist people. They were not bad people, but the racism was just something I wasn’t used to.

PHAWKER: And what was this sort of racial mix at Temple?

FRANCIS DAVIS: Well, it was still largely white. I had classes that didn’t have a single black person in them, for example. But it wasn’t quite like Penn State. And I guess gradually it got more integrated. It’s funny, I think sometimes there’s this perception of Temple having a much larger black enrollment than it does because it’s in North Philadelphia and because of the basketball team and because of WRTI, the jazz station. But it was predominantly white when I got there. But I don’t think, outside of a historically black college, that there would have been a college I could have gone to that wouldn’t have been predominately white at the time.

PHAWKER: Tell me a little bit about what you remember of white flight in the city and how the whole city changed in that whole time period you described.

FRANCIS DAVIS: Well I never witnessed it. It was just a fait accompli. If I went back to my neighborhood today, you know, it would be completely black. I should clarify: there’s West Philadelphia and there’s Southwest Philadelphia. Back then it was very Italian, so much so that if you weren’t Italian… (laughs). Forget being black. If you were Irish or Polish you were taking your chances walking through there. Cause there were always great rivalry between the Italian kids and the Irish kids. But you know, within a few years those neighborhoods were black, predominately black. But it’s not like I witnessed it. I was gone by then.

PHAWKER: Your dad is out of the picture?

FRANCIS DAVIS: Yeah, yeah, I never really knew my father.

PHAWKER: Do you recall that big race riot that happened in North Philly in ’64? From what I’ve read it was crazy. It went on for three days!

FRANCIS DAVIS: Yeah yeah. Well, you have to remember that it seemed, between that and the next year, that there were riots all over the place.

PHAWKER: What was your reaction to all of that?

FRANCIS DAVIS: Well, dismay. Dismay. And I wouldn’t have been able to articulate why at the time. But I think looking back everybody had a sense, that the civil rights movement was relinquishing the high ground. Relinquishing the moral high ground. And certainly I think in retrospect, whatever other benefits it had, that was also true of Black Power. I mean, the moral high ground is very important. I couldn’t articulate it any better at the time. But, you know, sadness. But also comprehension. The Phillies’ ballpark used to be at 21st and Lehigh. So, I’d seen enough of North Philadelphia to know why people were fed up. I don’t know if it was smart to do what they were doing, nevertheless I could understand, you know?

PHAWKER: Okay, so you graduated from Temple.

FRANCIS DAVIS: No, I never graduated. I dropped out. After about five years. [laughs] It was the Sixties. That’s how I usually explain it.

PHAWKER: Ok. Tell me, when did you get Sixties-fied?

Francis Davis: Well, I dunno. Just in terms of the academic career. I had a habit all along of only paying attention to and going to classes that I was good in and blowing off the rest. And you know, essentially I was very good in the English courses, the history, political science, and religion courses, because mostly what you did in religion was read novels anyway, you know. Temple had a great religion department back then, by the way. I believe it was the first secular religious department in the United States. It was headed by a guy who turned out not to be all what he was cracked up to be, named Phillips, I think his first name was Bernard. But he was DT Suzuki’s translator. Suzuki is the guy who exploited…the Salinger collection Nine Stories. He was pretty lofty academically, but he wasn’t a good classroom teacher. But they had great people in the department. I remember a guy named Murray Goldman who was, in addition to being a religious professor, he was a Jungian psychiatrist, a rabbi and a songwriter, you know, who wrote songs for a short lived band that had Kevin Bacon’s brother in it. It was called Good News. So Murray would be in class and he’d quote like George Santayana and Otis Redding in the same sentence. That blew me away.

PHAWKER: But you dropped out..

FRANCIS DAVIS: I dropped out. It’s sort of like I dropped out gradually. I stopped going to classes and then I didn’t enroll for the next semester. And I was able to get a job in a bookstore. It’s not like we had a lot of money in my house, so that helped. And it’s not like I thought of…this is a long digression and I won’t get into the details, but I got arrested one night in 1968.

PHAWKER: C’mon, it’ll up your street cred.

FRANCIS DAVIS: Well, I got arrested essentially for questioning the cops. We were in West Philly at the time. They were stopping people and searching people who they thought looked ‘suspicious’ and very often that translated into anyone with long hair, really, cause they thought they’d get a drug bust or whatever. So, I actually got along really well with the cop who stopped me and searched me, we were kinda joking together, I think we smoked a cigarette together or something.

PHAWKER: You had long hair?

FRANCIS DAVIS: Yeah. So I made the strategic mistake of calling the precinct and complaining about the policy when I got home. Because the cop had more or less told me that’s what the policy was. So they sent cops to my door. And there was this whole charade of like, ‘Did somebody here call for the police?’

‘No, I called the police station.’

‘But did somebody here call for the police?’

‘No, I called the police station.’

And so on and they kept inching their way in the house. I probably wise-cracked or something. And they beat me up. And if they touch you they have to charge you with assault and battery. It was a bad case because they had charged me with assault and battery — ‘aggravated A and B’ as they put it — you know, on a police officer, but they forgot to charge me with anything else. So it’s just like, ‘So what happened? You just went up to a cop and started punching him? That’s hard to believe.’ But anyway, that night, my mother in a panic called a lot of people including my boss at the book store and my Uncle Frank the truck driver, and one of my professors, who called two other professors from Temple, so they were all there at my arraignment.

PHAWKER: So what happened? Did the case get dropped?

FRANCIS DAVIS: Yeah. I’ll tell you what was really funny. One of my character witnesses was to be one of my professors, who as it turned out had gotten arrested for picketing Hubert Humphrey because he wasn’t radical enough — boy, those were the days. Anyway, weird twist of fate, his arraignment is the case right before mine. And the judge was not very sharp, definitely a patronage hire. He had a hard time trying to keep everybody straight standing before him in the courtroom. And he points to my professor. ‘And who are you?’ And Henry had just been sentenced by him, just a few minutes prior. Like you know, a fine or something. So he says ‘I’m his professor.’ And the judge says, ‘Professor, huh? I just had a professor in front of me and I found him guilty.’

PHAWKER: And he didn’t even recognize him? Was this guy senile or he didn’t see that well or what?

FRANCIS DAVIS: Senile.

PHAWKER: Turns out, justice is blind. Just to clarify: the cops worked their way into the house and you were being cocky and what? One of the cops just punched you in the face?

FRANCIS DAVIS: Yeah. Of course I didn’t hit them back.

PHAWKER: So how much of a beating did you get? Was it more than one punch?

FRANCIS DAVIS: Yeah.

PHAWKER: They beat on you for a while?

FRANCIS DAVIS: Yeah.

PHAWKER: And then took you off in handcuffs. And charged you for assault and battery. God bless America.

FRANCIS DAVIS: It’s tough being in the paddy wagon in handcuffs because there’s nothing to hold on to.

PHAWKER: Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard about that.

FRANCIS DAVIS: You’re banging around every turn and stop. [Laughing] And you just pray they locked that back door.

End of Part One. Tomorrow: John Coltrane, Sun Ra, climbing to the top of the jazz crit-ocracy and meeting a cute little feminist radiohead named Terry.

ROLLING STONE: A new six-part docuseries revisits the Manson Family murders for a definitive portrait of the infamous cult. Its trailer promises plenty of archival footage, plus haunting re-creations and interviews with the Family that have never been revealed until now. “He was a puppet master pulling everyone’s strings,” says a Family member in a voiceover. Another adds, “I was definitely under Charlie’s spell.” (June 14) MORE

Sad, sad news. We received word today that Tom Sheehy, aka The Colonel — longtime Philly music publicist/scenester/historian, storied music biz vet, barroom philosopher, perennial guest list fixture, late-blooming recipient of a Ph.D. in 20th-century American History from Penn, colonel in the ‘MMaRmy, and frequent Phawker contributor — passed away this weekend. This week we will honor his memory by re-posting some of his greatest Phawker hits. We conclude our weeklong tribute to The Colonel with his 2011 remembrance of the night Nirvana honored a longstanding booking at J.C. Dobbs on October 1st 1991, one week after the release of Nevermind, an album that would in a matter of months make them The Center Of Everything. show that hundreds, if not thousands, claim to have attended, though in truth only 125 actually were there that night.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Kurt Cobain took his own life 19 years ago today. We prefer to remember a happier time, the beginning, not the end. With that in mind we are re-posting The Colonel’s 2011 remembrance of Nirvana at J.C. Dobbs, just as the band was going supernova.

BY COLONEL TOM SHEEHY I’d never bothered to keep a guest list before, but that night I did — beer stains and all — somehow knowing just hours after the fact that I had witnessed something historic and I wanted an artifact to share with those that would come after. I’d never before witnessed a seismic cultural shift happen beneath my feet, but on that particular night I had a front row seat for a massive generational sea change which had been brewing since the end of the previous decade, but wasn’t fully realized until September 24th of 1991, when the trio from Seattle known as Nirvana embarked on a tour in support of their new album called Nevermind that included a blistering set on that postage stamp size stage at J.C. Dobbs, where I was working as a promoter, in Philly on the first of October. Just 90 days later, Nevermind went to number one on the Billboard album chart and 20 years later we are still feeling the aftershocks.

Prior to that legendary performance, Nirvana had already played at J.C. Dobbs twice — on April 30, 1990 and July 12, 1989, when they made their Philadelphia debut. Before their April ’90 show, I chided Nirvana bass player Krist Novoselic for walking around barefoot in the bar. I told him broken glass could be anywhere in a place like this and he could seriously cut himself. Novoselic just smiled and said he had really thick skin. I then asked him how things were going, and his face struck a somewhat somber look as he shared with me some inside the band info. He told me that him and Kurt were “sick and tired of playing in places like Oklahoma, and having kids come up to us after the show and tell us how much they liked our band, but that they could not find our records in the stores. So, we’ve decided we’re going to sign with a major.” The rest is in the history books: Kurt and Chris spoke with Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, and they touted their new major label home, Geffen Records, as a cool place to be. Based on Sonic Youth’s recommendation, David Geffen signed Nirvana to his DGC label. Nirvana ended up touring Europe with Sonic Youth during the end of the summer of 1991. This was after they went into the studio with Butch Vig to make their second album, a recording that would define a generation.

In August of ’91, the October 1st date for J.C. Dobbs was confirmed. I immediately called my contact at Geffen’s publicity office to see if she had any advances of the new album. She said they just came in, and that she’d overnight a cassette copy to me. She also told me that she had just met the guys, and that they were really nice. She indicated it would be no problem setting up as many interviews as I needed to promote the date. Having previously promoted Nirvana shows, I knew how easy it was to work with those guys. However, when the advance cassette arrived the next day, I knew I would need no interviews, because my gut told me that this new album was so strong that we were going to sell out as soon as I got the show up for sale. I called my Geffen contact back just to share my enthusiasm for the record, and right away she told me she might have to rescind her previous offer for interviews because she was now getting 80 requests a day. At that moment, it was obvious to me that all around the country, and probably the world, promoters, critics and anyone else who heard the advance of that album knew that the band was going to go supernova.

Given the long, late hours the job required, I almost never got a phone call from work early in the morning, but when I looked at the caller ID that Tuesday morning at around 11 o’clock, I immediately knew it was about Nirvana, and I also sensed that the news had to be bad. The band’s road manager called from Pittsburgh to say that Kurt Cobain was feeling sick with stomach pains — those same stomach pains would take on a greater significance some three years later.  The road manager said that the band didn’t want to cancel the Dobbs show and if we could commit to bringing in extra monitors to take strain off of Kurt, then they could perform the show. Those extra monitors were ordered seconds after that phone call ended.

Over the years, I had many acts cancel at the last minute, and to this day, none of their names are memorable. A great artist will always rise to the occasion whereas the lesser ones often failed to do so and invariably wound up in the Where Are They Are Now? bin. Kurt Cobain was going to tough it out and the show was on. As support act Das Damen (a last minute fill-in for scheduled openers The Melvins) finished their set, I started to get a little anxious. Yet is was a good sense of anxiety, for I was feeling a sense of fierce pride, because I knew that something urgent and meaningful was about to take place; the room was filled with intense anticipation as the trio took the stage. As they did on most of the dates of that tour, Nirvana opened their set with a cover of The Vaselines’ “Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam” followed quickly with “Drain You.” The set was balanced between four songs from Nevermind and their Sub-Pop repertoire. By the time they hit the fifth song of the set, which was their new single, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” what began as traditional mosh pit limited to the front of the stage quickly spread and enveloped the entire downstairs floor as kids were flailing themselves over each other in a frenzy that was only superseded by the blast of sound emanating from the stage. The sight of which was simply mind-blowing.

The headline for the concert review in the Philadelphia Inquirer read: “A Trio From Seattle Rocks At J.C. Dobbs.” Critic Sam Wood remarked that “During its 45-minute set at J.C. Dobbs, Nirvana stormed with the fury of a roiling cataract.” After the show, outside the front of the club, I spoke to Kurt. I asked him how he was feeling and I also thanked him for going through with the show. I wished him and the band good luck on the rest of the tour, and then they left South Street for Washington, D.C. where they would play the 9:30 Club the following night. The next day, I got a phone call from the local WEA rep. He asked me, “Colonel? Who the hell did you have at Dobbs last night?” He went on to say, “I was driving down South Street, and the line was all the way down to TLA!” My retort was simple: Last night, we had the future.

DOWNLOAD: Nirvana Live @ JC DOBBS  10/1/91 [via FREEDOM HAS NO BOUNDS]

PREVIOUSLY: It was 16 years ago today that Kurt Cobain’s body was found. Sigh. With pinpoint accuracy, I know where I was when I first saw the video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, because it’s intrinsically linked to one of the great obsessions of my teen years; an Italian-American princess, three years my junior, who was both a card carrying member of the International Thespian Society, in league with the JV cheerleading squad AND a total Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio doppelganger, circa The Abyss. MORE

BY JON HOULON THEATER CRITIC I used to beat myself up over not being able to recall much of what I read. For instance, the only thing I remembered from the 400 plus pages of Kerouac’s rather spotty Desolation Angels was the word “passersby.” At least I got a song out of it — and that’s a fact, Jack!

But then I read U and I by the great Nicholson Baker where he admits to only retaining a tiny bit of his literary hero John Updike’s canon. I figured if Baker could only summon up a phrase or two of JU then my own lack of retention wasn’t something to necessarily worry about. Until my recent deep dive into Shakespeare (which I wrote about here), the only line I could remember from Lear was Cornwall’s “out vile jelly!” which he delivers while relieving Gloucester of the same. Even thinking of that phrase always makes me blink if only to make sure my eyes are still in my head!

At the radically edited production of King Lear at the Bristol Riverside Theater, which ended its run last night, they only performed the scenes that included the King himself. There was, alas, no vile jelly plucked from Gloucester’s sockets, at least not on the stage. A disappointment for sure. How could there be no vile jelly?

They did, however, retain Lear’s infamous cri-de-coeur: “Never. Never. Never. Never. Never.” I’ve puzzled over this line. Why five negations? Could it be the formal requirements of iambic pentameter or is it something more profound? To be sure, five may be wanting nowadays. Off the top of my head here’s a quintet:

Never have I been more embarrassed to be an American.

Never have I felt more East Coast and elite.

Never have I more ardently wished that the Kiss concert I reviewed last week for Phawker would have lasted forever.

Never has Shakespeare felt more relevant to me.

Never has Lear, in particular, felt more apropos. A mad King demanding complete loyalty and banishing those who do not conform. Sound familiar?

Director Eric Tucker – who heads up New York’s Bedlam theater and was voted Director of the Year in 2014 by the Wall Street Journal (the ultimate in fake news!) – pulls the phallic plug, as it were, in his Lear, subtitled “Who Is It Who Can Tell Me Who I Am.?” I’m not sure, Maestro, but I was intrigued by the all-female cast and what that would mean in terms of the male gaze – I found my own gaze leering at this uniformly attractive bunch.

The concept of an all-female cast is hardly problematic: in Elizabethan times, men or boys played the women’s roles. Take Twelfth Night, for example, where the part of Viola would have been played by a boy playing a woman playing a man. Willie the Shake was no cis-gender square, I tell you.

The interesting thing about Tucker’s take in Bristol was that the females in the cast playing the men did not necessarily pretend to be male. King Lear, played by the wonderful Zuzanna Szadkowski, appeared as a Cosmo drinking, purse carrying, red fingernail-ed and lipsticked mama whose ample bosom more than filled out her purple dress. She shed that dress as well as her wig in her transition into madness, pouring water over her own head and reinserting the phallus into the proceedings in the form of a whiskey bottle wedged between her thighs which she stroked in onanistic fury. A most peculiar King – or should I say Queen? – Lear, indeed. Affecting, nonetheless.

Szadkowski modulated her Nevers to a peak by the third and then a quieting on the last two. The effect was one of fearful symmetry; defiance followed by resignation. Now that unfortunately sounded very familiar.

Curiously, the last two Shakespeare productions I’ve attended have been along the Delaware. First, Hamlet at the Seaport, and then Lear further upstream in Bristol. Like a river, Shakespeare, in the most capable hands, flows beautifully in spite of the Bard’s sometimes jagged plots. The language carries things. But the compression of these tributary productions from their four hour folios to less than two hour presentations resulted in a fractured feel. But, then, a fracture may, in fact, be more apposite to these times.

Tucker ended his Lear on a hopeful note of reconciliation – a note that perhaps best encapsulates the reorienting of the male gaze into a more female one, a more receptive vs. aggressive one – between the Queen and her estranged but now redeemed youngest daughter, Cordelia. The Shakespeare original contains no such note. And I’m afraid neither does our future.

Mean Girls, the 2004 smash teen romcom written by Upper Darby’s Tina Fey and starring pre-demise Lindsey Lohan, is a cautionary tale of a teen’s need for validation in order to compete in the perpetual popularity contest that is high school. It’s the story of Cady Heron, who just transferred to North Shore High after growing up in Kenya. Because she was homeschooled for the first 16 years of her life, Cady lacks the social skills it takes to fit in at her new school. Mercifully, two high school outcasts, Janice and Damien, befriend her. Janice and Damien’s sworn enemies are a clique of cruel but glamorous girls — Regina George, Karen Smith, and Gretchen Wieners — they call “The Plastics.”

When Regina makes an insincere overture of friendship to Cady, Janice and Damien sense an opportunity to divide and conquer from within and insists that Cady join their clique. Cady agrees to Janice and Damien’s sabotage plan, but seduced by the social perks and privileges of being in The Plastics she switches allegiance to the titular mean girls. She pretends to be dumb––despite being quite the mathmatician — to impress Aaron Samules, Regina George’s off-limits ex-boyfriend. Predictably, Regina decides she wants back when she finds out Cady has a crush on him.

Regina and Cady go back and forth from one tortuous plot to the next trying to deceive one another. Cady tries to make Regina fat, Regina makes out with Aaron Samuels in front of Cady––you get the idea. Infuriated by Cady’s rise to high school fame, Regina shares her “Burn Book” with the school principal. The book includes insulting lines about nearly every female at North Shore High, including the allegation that Cady’s favorite math teacher, Ms. Norbury, is a “drug pusher,” provoking a full-on catfight.

An assembly is called, and Ms. Norbury demands that all of these women must unify and apologize to one another. It doesn’t go well, and Regina storms out of the school, followed by Cady who tries to apologize. Distracted by the torrent of insults she is hurling at Cady, Regina is hit by a bus. Feeling guilty, Cady takes full responsibility for the burn book and is suspended and banned from North Shore’s momentous Spring Fling. Upon Cady’s return to school, Ms. Norbury decides her personal punishment for Cady will be forcing her to join the mathletes for finals, and she wins it for the team––because everybody loves a happy ending. It’s probably no coincidence that Spring Fling falls on the same night as the mathletes’ finals. Grateful to Cady for the win, Ms. Norbury pulls some strings and gets Cady into the dance where she is crowned Spring Fling Queen. Her acceptance speech is wise and mature beyond her years. To show the worth of each and every self-conscious/self-loathing girl in the room, Cady breaks her crown into pieces and dispenses a piece to each girl while explaining why their lives matter.

Fast forward 15 years, and Mean Girls is now a stage musical that had its premiere last night at the Academy Of Music. Everything is pretty much the same as the movie, except there’s this thing called social media that is making everyone’s lives worse– spreading rumors, sowing chaos, and creating unrealistic expectations of perfect, airbrushed lives. Nevertheless, everyone breaks into song and dance at every chance imaginable. The choreography and set changes are seamless, but chopped into song and dance numbers the plot is hard to follow, even for someone like me who has seen the film more times than I care to admit.

As with the movie, the supporting cast steals the show. Damien (Eric Huffman, the “too gay to function” best friend of Janice, is hysterical. Karen Smith (Jonalyn Saxer), one of The Plastics, is equally as hysterical with her stupidity and bluntness. And Ms. Norbury – played by Tina Fey in the movie and Gaelen Gilliland in the musical – has some of the best quips, as does North Shore High School’s Principal Duvall.

My only other complaint is the musical’s messaging seems tad heavy-handed compared to the light, but no less pointed, touch of the film. By the end of the film, it feels like you’ve just watched Tina Fey poking fun at the awfulness that is teenhood with just the right ratio of snark and tar-black humor. The Broadway version feels like a highly professional high school musical that’s trying a little too hard to teach you a lesson. Still, the nostalgia factor was a blast, and Tuesday night the Academy of Music was packed with females who were teens and tweens of 2004 reliving the cringe-worthy but life-defining melodramatics of high school rendered in song.

MEAN GIRLS THE MUSICAL NOW PLAYING @ ACADEMY OF MUSIC THRU DEC. 1

BY PEYTON MITZEL I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why the animated Netflix series Bojack Horseman, now in its sixth season, resonates so strongly with me. It’s an animated metafictional critique of stardom about a washed-up sitcom star named BoJack, who also happens to be an alcoholic horse, struggling to find functional happiness in the crushing shitstorm that is the world these days — so it’s not exactly telling me my life. And yet, despite the fact that I was 17 when I started watching the show, I found myself relating to the roughly middle-aged characters and their hardships, even though half of them are some species of talking animal — with voices provided by the likes of Will Arnett, Amy Sedaris, Alison Brie, Paul F. Tompkins, and Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul.

In short, the show is about BoJack attempting to reconcile his boozy, demon-riddled existence with the pursuit of happiness and all that it promises. The possibility of positively impacting those around him and receiving genuine love in return, not to mention learning essential adulthood skills like self-control and self-care, becomes a carrot on a stick for the titular horse who spends most of his time falling off the wagon and dealing with the repercussions.

In addition to chronicling BoJack’s eternal search for peace and meaning, the show features an abundance of diverse characters in terms of sexuality, gender, race, economic status, political affiliation, and personal history, further complicating an already densely-layered commentary on contemporary life. Bojack Horseman has always been an outlier among the fluff and sameness that pervades our entertainment-obsessed world, all of which the show satirizes in the course of documenting the trials and tribulations of complicated characters. But above all things, it’s just damn funny.

In advance of the October 25th premiere of the sixth and final season, I was lucky enough to secure an interview with Raphael Bob-Waksberg, the show’s creator, who just published a collection of short stories over the summer called Someone Who Will Love You In All Your Damaged Glory. We talked about the state of television, how the writing process for a Netflix series compares to years of short fiction work, drilled down on particular stories from the collection and specific episodes from BoJack. No matter how the closure, or lack thereof, arrives with the conclusion of BoJack Horseman, it’s good to know that Raphael Bob-Waksberg is not ready to close off his creative valve: this collection of short stories will always be there for us, as well as his new series Undone, about the surreal aftermath of a woman’s near-miss with death, and whatever bittersweet existential micro-crises await on the horizon.

PHAWKER: Just before we start off I just wanted to say this is my first interview ever.

RAPHAEL BOB-WAKSBERG: Oh!

PHAWKER: I’m a big fan of BoJack, I have been since it started, and the editor of PHAWKER just asked me one day if I would wanna do this interview if he could set it up, and you know, here we are.

RAPHAEL BOB-WAKSBERG: Okay, well, you’re doing good so far.

PHAWKER: Yeah, thanks. I really enjoyed reading the book. I’m wondering what your writing process or routine for the book was like and if it resembles the process for BoJack at all?

RAPHAEL BOB-WAKSBERG: Yeah, um, in some ways it does, in other ways not at all. I mean, even I would say it doesn’t necessarily resemble itself, because I wrote this book over a very long period of time, and over different periods of my life, so it was like it was written kinda between the breaks on BoJack, some of it was written before I even sold BoJack, some of it was written back when I lived in New York, a lot of it was written here in L.A. So really it varies from piece to piece, you know, some of the pieces I didn’t even know what I was writing necessarily—if I was writing a short story or what shape it was going to be. But my writing process in general, you know, when I’m not working on a show, when I’m working on something, either a show to be sold, or these stories, or anything else, you know, I try to work away from home, I’ll go to like a coffee shop or a library or something, where I don’t have access to the internet, I try to leave my phone in my car. [laughs] If I have my phone on me , I will get distracted. And then I just try to, you know, work, I guess. And it’s helpful sometimes to have a collection of short stories you’re working on, because then if you get stuck or bored with one, you can just move on to a different one and let that one breathe for a little bit.

PHAWKER: Right. I mean that makes sense, there are a lot of different aspects and ideas that get hit—I found myself relating to a lot of different—a lot of those different topics, and it makes me wonder what the audience is for that book? And if it relates at all to BoJack?

RAPHAEL BOB-WAKSBERG: I don’t know who it would be! I guess that’s a question for the PR department or the marketing department rather than me. I think the audience is—I was mostly writing for myself, and stuff I thought was interesting, or funny, or sad. And I guess the audience would be people who respond to my writing. I guess—yeah, fans of BoJack would probably like it and I think fans of short stories in general, or people who have experienced love might enjoy it.

PHAWKER: Right, there’s some pretty experimental stuff in there. The story “Lies We Told Each Other” is made up of a couple’s false statements that they’ve made throughout their relationship, and there were two in there that struck me particularly: the first was “I’ve never felt like this before.” and secondly it was “This moment, right here, is the happiest moment of my life.” They made me think of the way that pop music pushes this notion that love is relentlessly euphoric, and, in writing the book, did you want to kinda shoot that idea down about love or is the way you write about love getting at something bigger?

RAPHAEL BOB-WAKSBERG: Yeah! You know, I think love can be euphoric, certainly, and I think in those moments, perhaps, those characters were truly experiencing that euphoria, you know? I think there’s something—what’s fun for me about that story in particular is kind of “What is a lie?” And, you know, the idea that some of these lies are deliberate untruths, and some of them are ways in which they’re revealing more about themselves than even they intend. But I think love is hard work, and I think that a lot of what this book is about is kind of the treachery of love, or the dangers of love, or the work of love, and I think, you know, the question that maybe posited by this book is “Is it worth it?” You know, given all that it does to us. And I think some of the stories seem to argue that, “Yes! It is worth it!”, and some of the stories…[laughs]…well, maybe it’s not. Ultimately the reader should decide for themselves what argument resonates more with them.

PHAWKER: That’s a good point, I remember reading somewhere that you said you think that a lot of the stories were optimistic. I see where you’re coming from, that’s what I thought when I was reading them. They’re not necessarily, like, optimistic for the characters, but for the reader.  “We Men of Science”— when I finished reading that, I was thinking, like, ‘Wow, you know, I’m in not-such-a-bad spot, actually.’

RAPHAEL BOB-WAKSBERG: Ah! I’m glad I’m not that guy.

PHAWKER: Yeah! At the end, at the Acknowledgements section, I noticed that you thanked your team for guiding you away from certain ideas, you know, they asked you “Are we sure about this one?” and what came to mind for me was the scene in the story “More of the You That You Already Are” where one of the employees shows his penis to a group of deaf children and he claims that he mixed their condition up with blindness—that was hilarious.

RAPHAEL BOB-WAKSBERG: Well, thank you.

PHAWKER: Do you mean to suggest that there were more shocking examples—things that were gonna happen in the book originally?

RAPHAEL BOB-WAKSBERG: Yeah, I’d say some shocking, some, uh, just poorly written. [laughs]. Some just were not good ideas, or maybe stories that felt good but didn’t quite fit with what the book as a whole was doing, certainly some of their recommendations were on matters of taste and others were just on quality, or appropriateness for this specific collection.

PHAWKER: Right, right. What do you mean by that, was there originally something in there that didn’t have to do with love? I noticed that there was a theme of—sometimes it was romance, but sometimes it was centered on family stuff.

RAPHAEL BOB-WAKSBERG: Yeah, and so I think there were, you know, occasionally stories, or even moments within the stories, that felt less relevant, it was just hard to put your finger on exactly what made the story fit in the collection or not. Some didn’t quite fit, and my editor’s really helpful about articulating that to me.

PHAWKER: Right, okay, alright. Was that story, “More of the You That You Already Are,” did that come about because of the Trump presidency at all, was it inspired by that at all?

RAPHAEL BOB-WAKSBERG: Um, I mean, that’s the world that we’re all living in now, so it’s hard to say that that did not influence me. And I sort of think that’s an idea that has been, um, discussed a lot, the idea of being, that, you know, what does the presidency do to a person? Do people rise to the occasion, or does it just bring out more of the you that you already are, it just kind of—you are who you are and the office doesn’t change you.

So I think the, you know, the contemporary philosophy that would seem to be the case is that it does not change you. Although one of the—what’s interesting about this story, or one of the things that’s interesting about the story, is that, you know, the main character in it is Chester A. Arthur, who I actually believe is a counterexample of that, I think Chester A. Arthur is someone who was pretty corrupt when he, you know, wandered into the presidency. Because Garfield got assassinated. And then I think he was awed by the majesty and the responsibility of the office, and then he actually did make some changes to himself and to the country because of that. So that was really the counterexample.

PHAWKER: I was wondering if Trump inspired the Mr. Peanutbutter running for governor subplot in BoJack?

RAPHAEL BOB-WAKSBERG: No, I mean, you know, when we first introduced that idea at the end of season three, I guess Trump had already announced his candidacy by then, but it was not—we didn’t think he was gonna win! It was more based on Arnold Schwarzenegger running for governor in California and the idea of celebrities running for office in general. So I think if we’d known what a spectacle and a circus the whole Trump campaign and administration was going to be, we probably would have stayed out of that area completely. But I’m interested in what you said about the main character of that story, really it’s something… I’m… That, I think is a common trope in a lot of my work, passive characters, or characters who just wanna kind of get through the day, and go along to get along. Or they aren’t really interested in making big changes one way or the other, and kinda get swept up by stuff. They certainly—you know, the character in “The Up-and-Comers” has a similar sensibility of like, “Hey, I guess I’m a superhero now, here I go.” And certainly that was a big part of BoJack in the early days, was the guy who just wants to like stay in his house and like not be bothered by anybody.

So something about that sensibility I think is, maybe, harder to write and make interesting, because I think we’re used to active characters—you know, when I’m reading fiction or watching stuff, I wanna see active characters who want things, or try to get them, but I’m attracted by the idea of passive characters, that feels more true to life to me, I feel like so many of us are kind of just going through each day, you know, and not necessarily looking for anything, for big changes, and we’re, you know, we’re trying to hold on to what we have and just kinda keep pushing forward. That’s an archetype that is interesting to me, I think.

PHAWKER: So what you’re saying is that “Up-and-Comers” and “More of the You That You Already Are” were less focused, perhaps, on their setting, they were less commentary on maybe the superhero genre, or the state of politics, and more about putting a character who wants to be passive into an active role, like forcing them through that struggle?

RAPHAEL BOB-WAKSBERG: Well, I wouldn’t say they’re less about that or about that. I just think they’re things they have in common. You know, I don’t know if you could say the story is 25% this and 38% that.

PHAWKER: “We Men of Science” and “These Are Facts” were some of my favorite stories in the book — and some of the longest in the collection. Which makes me wonder if you might have a novel in the works?

RAPHAEL BOB-WAKSBERG: I don’t know, I don’t think so. Maybe, some day. I’d kind of like to try my hand at other things, but a novel is such a large endeavor. I really enjoy the art of the short story, as both the writer and reader, I mean I don’t really love reading novels, so… [laughs]. You know, I have a short attention span, I like to keep things short, quick and to the point. Even my longer short stories are still short stories. But maybe!? You know, I mean I’m working on a TV show now that’s been going for six years. In some sense, a very long formed story. If I could boil down all the incidents that happened to BoJack Horseman over the years I could probably get a pretty good novel out of that.

PHAWKER: Has writing BoJack and figuring out that character helped you at all to work out some of the stuff that went into the short story collection, or vice-versa?

RAPHAEL BOB-WAKSBERG: I would say yes. First of all, I think writing for TV has made me more incident-focused as a writer, you know, I think prior to this, if I had written my short story collection first, it probably would be more stories that just kinda felt like, oh, it’s, you know, a picture close card with people and a place. And TV’s all about, you know, changes occurring, and characters, you know, moving in some direction while also staying the same. But, you know, you want stuff to happen when you watch TV. And that’s, so I think, a lot of my stories have things happening in them, they’re real stories. And, you know, there’s activity that occurs. I think the, writing the form of the short story, and writing these prolonged narratives in one person’s voice gave me the confidence to write the “Free Churro” episode of BoJack, which is just one long monologue from BoJack, I don’t know if I would have done that or had the confidence to do that had I not been working on these short stories at the same time.

PHAWKER: That episode’s crazy. Speaking of which, how did you manage to get BoJack green-lighted by Netflix? It’s not an easy sell. You know, it’s a cartoon about an alcoholic horse in Hollywood, like how’d you make that happen?

RAPHAEL BOB-WAKSBERG: I don’t know, I mean I just went into Netflix and pitched it to them and I kinda talked them through the arc of the first season. I think what I said at the time was what I really liked about Netflix shows, which there were only three or four at that time, I said I like how serialized they are, like you don’t see a lot of serialization in adult animation. So that you kind of take the audience’s expectation of it’s just gonna be a silly cartoon show, then kinda surprise them by having it be serialized, having it grow over the course of the season, change, and you know, start at something very light and goofy but ultimately become something much more melancholy, meditative, but by the end of the season people are going ‘Oh my god, this horse actually made me feel something, how is that?’ I think Netflix liked that pitch. They said ‘Alright, make your show.’

PHAWKER: I remember when that show came out, and I was probably fifteen or sixteen at the time, and I was looking at the art, you know, on the app for BoJack Horseman and it looked like something that would have been on Adult Swim. And that’s what I expected it to be, and I started watching it and I was like “Whoa! This just got really deep, this just got way more deep than I expected it to go.” One of the things that it does is it satirizes Hollywood and the film industry pretty heavily. I’m wondering what your take is on the notion that we’re currently in a golden age of television, peak TV as it were?

RAPHAEL BOB-WAKSBERG: Well I think those are two very different ideas, right? I mean golden age of television suggests quality and peak TV suggests quantity. I don’t know if both those things are true, you know? I also think peak TV was coined by the president of FX, John Landgraf, like five years ago. And TV has only grown since then, so clearly that was not peak TV. It would be naïve to say we’re at peak TV now, when the graph seems to continue to trend upwards.

But I think it’s fair, it’s a wonderful thing to have so much more TV because I think it allows more kinds of stories to be told and more voices to be heard, you know? Like whenever I hear people complain about, you know, oh there’s too much TV now, I think like, oh really? Is there too much TV about native American gay people? Or transgender Palestinians? You know, like, there’s so many stories to be told. Maybe they’ve reached saturation point for stories about white men, I think that just challenges us to find those other stories and tell those other kinds of things.

I think it’s wonderful that there’s so much, and I think that, I guess, maybe, the last ten years you need to adjust your expectations for what it means to be a fan of TV and keep up with TV, because I feel like TV is now like books, or music, you know? We have to lose the expectation that you’re gonna get to all of it in a given year, or all of the good stuff, right? Like I would never expect that I’m going to read every single good book that comes out in a year. And I think for a while it was possible to watch every single good TV show, and that’s just not true anymore. And I think that’s okay.

PHAWKER: BoJack represents a pretty broad diversity of characters, you know? Todd is asexual, which is not frequently represented. Do you think that BoJack’s diversity helped to expand that trend onto other television shows? Maybe Netflix originals?

RAPHAEL BOB-WAKSBERG: Um, I don’t know, I wouldn’t give BoJack credit for that, I think it’s part of a growing trend in general, is I think, like I said, I think people are looking to hear new voices on television tell different kinds of stories. I’m happy to be a part of it in the small way that I have been, but I think it’s something to continue to look at and push for, and figure out okay, what stories have not been told in this, you know, too-much-TV era.

PHAWKER: What about season 6 of BoJack, is that—any information on the table yet?

RAPHAEL BOB-WAKSBERG: Uh, nope. It’s coming soon, we’re working on it. Nothing to announce quite yet. Probably see some news about that soon. [EDITOR’s NOTE: It has since been announced that the season six will be the final season of BoJack Horseman]

PHAWKER: Is there anything else you’re working on right now?

RAPHAEL BOB-WAKSBERG: Yeah, actually, I have a new show Undone coming to Amazon, I don’t know when this interview’s gonna be posted, but the show comes out September 13th. I co-created it with Kate Purdy, who’s a writer on BoJack, who wrote episodes such as “Time’s Arrow,” “The Old Sugarman Place,” “Downer Ending,” so if you’re a fan of those episodes, you’ll really dig this show.

PHAWKER: Those are some hard-hitting episodes.

RAPHAEL BOB-WAKSBERG: Yeah. Well, this is a new hard-hitting show. It’s called Undone, it’s on Amazon Prime. Check it out!

PHAWKER: Alright, I think that’s all the questions that I have for you.

RAPHAEL BOB-WAKSBERG: Great! I think you did a great first interview, well done.

BY LARA MICKLE In 2001 Selena Mooney quit her job as director of technology for Ticketmaster and moved back to Portland and ingratiated herself in the city’s thriving punk rock/stripper scene. She started with a handful of ladies and now has thousands globally. Inspired by Bunny Yeager — who famously photographed Bettie Page, the patron saint of the punk rock stripper scene — she began taking retro-style pin-up photos of her friends, most of them tattooed, pierced and dyed blue, green or purple.

The SuicideGirl look is some ratioed combination of sultry, vintage and riot grrrl. It was the Internet that made them visible to the naked eye of the heretofore blinkered mainstream, forever exploding the media-ascribed hetero-normative barbie-doll beauty standard of the preceding century. They didn’t give a damn about a bad reputation, they embraced all that society had deemed as transgressive and disqualifying adding an element of danger and rebellion to previously agreed upon notions of female desirability. The overwhelmingly positive response Mooney got from sharing the photos online got her to thinking: maybe this could be a thing.

Borrowing a provocative epithet from Chuck Palahniuk’s 1999 novel Survivor, she started referring to her models as ‘suicide girls,’ changed her name Missy Suicide and launched a subscription web site featuring her photos. Behold the SuicideGirls brand was born and soon to be blowing up on an Internet near you. Fast-forward 18 years and a lot of tattoo ink and purple Manic Panic under the bridge, and the SuicideGirls’ Blackheart Burlesque is coming to Underground Arts on Saturday October, 5th. Recently, we got Missy Suicide on the horn to discuss all the aforementioned and the ever after.

PHAWKER: How did SuicideGirls get started? Why do you think it took off?

MISSY SUICIDE: Well, I started SuicideGirls because I believed, at the time, the greatest power of the internet was bringing people together and creating community and you know this was a time before Friendster or Myspace or Facebook or Twitter and so it was kind of an unproved theory at the time. We were one of the first social networks. I feel like over the past 18 years I’ve been proved very right. People want to share their lives. At the time it was a whole different world.

PHAWKER: This was long before social media really took off?

MISSY SUICIDE: Yeah, it’s been 18 years. Which is crazy; the girls born after Tuesday [September 3rd, 2001], because Tuesday is the anniversary, will have not known a world without SuicideGirls. Like they will be eligible to model for SuicideGirls and they will have not known a world that existed before SuicideGirls.

PHAWKER: Why did you call it SuicideGirls?

MISSY SUICIDE: It’s a Palahniuk reference, he wrote Fight Club, and in his book Survivor he describes the girls living at Pioneer Square in Portland as ‘suicide girls.’ It seemed like a good moniker. [It was] the girls that were willing to commit social suicide by choosing not to fit in. You know, it was also 18 years ago, it was very… much more conservative I feel like, than we are today so it was much more of a rebellious act to declare that you felt comfortable with your body and that you thought that you were beautiful. Now with Lizzo and the Dove campaign there are so many advocates of accepting the skin that you’re in and just feeling beautiful being who you are. But, back in the day, even just saying that you loved your body was quite a revolutionary sort of thing to say.

PHAWKER: What is the criterion for becoming a SuicideGirl?

MISSY SUICIDE: You just have to be confident and comfortable with your body and yourself. There’s no real formula for girls with X number of tattoos and Y color of hair. We’ve got girls who have tons of face tattoos, we’ve got girls who have no tattoos. We’ve got girls who have 28 piercings and girls with zero piercings. We’ve got girls with Vitiligo and girls with different bodies. They’re all accepted as long as they feel confident and comfortable with their bodies and with themselves. But really, the only requirement is that you feel comfortable enough to share your bare breasts and bottom.

PHAWKER: Is it a full-time job? If so, how much can you make in a year?

MISSY SUICIDE: It is not a full-time job. You’re paid per photo set, but girls can also get tips now. It’s not something that I suggest that you make your full-time job. Girls can leverage their social media and start to gain followings and become influencers, but I see it as a side hustle, not a full-time gig.

PHAWKER: How has #MeToo changed the game both for sex workers and women in general?

MISSY SUICIDE: I feel like the #MeToo movement made people believe what women are saying, that in itself is such a revolution. That women can just tell what is happening to them and people believe it now, as opposed to before when people were like “Oh whatever” or dismiss it, they’re really taken seriously now, and I feel like that is super important.

 PHAWKER: Did you see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood? If so, what did you think?

MISSY SUICIDE: I saw it in the Cinerama Dome, and the air conditioning was broken. So, it was like two hours and forty minutes of sitting in a hot packed theater, so I feel like I need to watch it again because I was not in the best place.

PHAWKER: What do you make of the criticism that Tarantino is a misogynist and gave Sharon Tate/ Margot Robbie short shrift?

MISSY SUICIDE: Just to be objective about it, she’s not really the main character in it, it’s kind of like his fantasy world about these other characters. It is a buddy picture at its core. He explores the relationship between the men that you don’t usually see. I felt like it was a really honest deep dive into male interpersonal links, in the sixties too, which was not exactly the touchy feely sort of guys moment. Not every movie has to be about women, if that was not his main goal.

SUICIDEGIRLS BLACKHEART BURLESQUE @ UNDERGROUND ARTS OCT. 5TH

Photo by JOANN LOVIGLIO

EDITOR’S NOTE: Heading up to Solid Sound Festival (aka Wilco-Con) tomorrow — throwing this up to get in the mood. FYI, that immaculate recording of Wilco’s set at 2017’s Solid Sound that I link to below is full-on Band of Tweedy godhead, if you’re into that kind of thing.

“A few years ago timed slowed down, we got a diagnosis [wife Sue Miller was diagnosed with Lymphoma] that derailed things so we played songs to each other, me and [my son] Spencer, to speed up the time. Killing time without hurting anyone else. That’s what [the band] Tweedy is all about…Jonathan Richman tells this story about seeing a sign at a truck stop that says: Everyone you meet is battling something you know nothing about, so be kind. I did some research and turns out Plato said that first. So many things going on right now that bother me. My response is to be kinder to people…I hate Trump. [audience cheers] Forget it. He’s not even worth mentioning, just a sick old man. But remember, everyone you meet is battling something you know nothing about, so be kind.” — JEFF TWEEDY, Solid Sound Festival, North Adams, Massachusetts, June 25th, 2017

LISTEN: Wilco set @ Solid Sound Festival June 24 2017 [AUDIO]

RELATED: The Shaggs were three sisters from rural New Hampshire who were just this side of collapse when they strapped on their instruments and sang like the pre-massacre Manson Family tripping their brains out Spahn Ranch under a bad moon rising. The Wiggin family was, by all accounts, a study in Pepperidge Farm country gothic. Daddy Austin Wiggin Jr. worked in the cotton mill and applied every coffee can-ful of cash he could earn toward his dream: that his three eldest daughters–Betty, Helen and Dot–would one day become international pop stars. Just one problem: Despite years of music lessons, none of the Wiggin girls could play or sing in a way that you would call “good.” But to Austin, and succeeding generations of astute listeners, it was beeyootiful music when his daughters picked up their guitars and beat on the drums, together in the same room, if not always the same song. Named after the girls’ thick, horsetail-length hairstyle, the Shaggs were born in 1967, taking miscues from the Monkees and Herman’s Hermits songs they heard on the radio. They pretty much had to make it up as they went along, as their father would not allow them to attend rock concerts and insisted on home-schooling to allow more time to work on their music. Recorded in 1969, Philosophy of the World is as much an intriguing anthropological find as it is a timeless, albeit unintentional, statement of outsider art – Frank Zappa hailed it as his third favorite recording of all time. Everyone should hear it once before they die. – JONATHAN VALANIA

RELATED: As a New Hampshire resident and an outsider music geek, one of the acts I was most looking forward to seeing at Solid Sound was The Shaggs. For those who don’t know, the Wiggins sisters were a trio from Fremont, New Hampshire who were encouraged by their father to form a band and cut a record. The Wiggins girls’ amateurish sound and lack of musical ability didn’t win them any fans with radio stations. It wasn’t until long after The Shaggs’ lone 1968 LP, Philosophy of the World, began to be discovered, shared, and enjoyed amongst notable fans, including Frank Zappa and Kurt Cobain, that the band began to enjoy a cult following amongst collectors of outsider music. The reunion of the surviving Wiggins girls at Solid Sound was exactly what anyone familiar with the group would hope for. The ladies performed alongside a supporting band and sounded as perfectly imperfect as they did fifty years ago. Some folks in the Solid Sound audience got it, others didn’t. Regardless, everyone in attendance was respectful and supportive. I cried tears of joy and applauded until my hands hurt. MORE

FRESH AIR: When CBS All Access unveiled its new version of The Twilight Zone earlier this year, the general consensus was that the initial episodes in the new series had fallen short of Rod Serling’s original version. Not only were they unworthy of The Twilight Zone of old, but they also weren’t nearly as good, or as smart, as a show that had begun in England in 2011, Black Mirror.

Watching Black Mirror‘s three brand-new installments on Netflix makes it clear that the series, in our current TV universe, claims and holds the fantasy anthology series crown. Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones head the team behind this show, which uses the technology of today — and the possible technology of tomorrow — to frame, inform or drive its stories.

Brooker wrote all three of these new episodes, and their scope is as wide as their impact is deep. One story is about a pop star whose personality is marketed in an Alexa-style computer figurine. Another is about a driver for an Uber-type company who blames a social media company for his personal tragedy. And a third — the most haunting and daring of the three — is about two buddies who try out a new, virtual reality version of a favorite hand-to-hand combat video game they played some 10 years earlier. MORE

[Illustration by ALEX FINE]

FRESH AIR: Cult filmmaker and self-described “filth elder” John Waters, 73, has plenty of ideas about what older people should and shouldn’t do. The worst thing, he says, is to get a convertible: “Because believe me, old age and windswept do not go hand in hand. It’s really a bad look! You can’t be trying too hard to rebel [when] you’re older.” Waters knows about being a rebel. He became famous for his 1972 film Pink Flamingos, in which the characters compete for the title of filthiest person alive. That film became a midnight movie classic and led to other films, including Female Trouble and Hairspray. Along the way, Waters became accepted in the mainstream more than he ever expected. Hairspray was adapted into a Broadway musical, and he has also given a commencement address and had museum retrospectives. Though he jokes that he can’t be anarchist — “I have three homes!” — he adds, “There’s plenty of rules that you can still break. … I think you have to use humor and you can’t be so angry about it.” Waters looks back on his unlikely path to respectability in his new book, Mr. Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder. MORE

RELATED: Q&A With John Waters, Lord Of The Trash DISCUSSED: LSD, outsider porn, fuzzy sweaters, uptight gay bars, Charlie Manson, Johnny Mathis, censorship, why the Chipmunks are far superior to the Beatles, and why he hasn’t made a film in years.

BY JON SOLOMON & MAGGIE SOLOMON-SCHELLER Rushing straight from the airport into McCormick Place with my 10 year-old daughter for our weekend in Chicago at Star Wars Celebration, it was hard not to channel True Hero of the Rebellion Wedge Antilles in the cockpit of his X-Wing, gazing upon the Death Star for the first time: “Look at the size of that thing.”

Tens of thousands of Star Wars fans from all over the planet gathered at the nation’s largest convention center from April 11th through the 15th for the 20th annual edition of this enormous event, a potentially overwhelming mixture of panels, screenings, exhibits, exclusive merchandise, reveals, demonstrations and special events.

She and I [pictured, above] had been planning this trip for nearly a year.

Having lived in Chicago for the majority of the 1990s, this was the best/worst location for the first Celebration since 2017 in Orlando to be held. We had numerous options of friends to stay with and a long list of favorite places to eat. How could the two of us not go together to Celebration for the first time?

Besides the scope, the thing that struck me about Star Wars Celebration was the positivity and inclusivity of it all. With the recent talk of “toxic fandom” the past year plus, everyone we encountered – with the odd outlier of a trio of sheepish kids wearing homemade “red circle with a line through a picture of The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson” pins – was warm, friendly and willing to share their love of Star Wars happily with us.

Seeing Kelly Marie Tran, who had been pushed off the Internet following the release of The Last Jedi due to bullying get two different extended standing ovations as people chanted her name was especially beautiful to witness.

Daily panels such as Creating a Space for Queer Fandom and Navigating Gender, Crossplay, and Trans Costuming in a Galaxy Far Far Away made everyone feel welcomed, not just dudes in their 40s like me.

Our first Celebration experience was a success in retrospect for two reasons: Advance planning and an understanding that we would never be able to see or do everything. Once the schedule was announced, we put all the events we wanted to attend into a color-coded spreadsheet and then tried to focus on the top six things we hoped to be present for: The Episode IX panel on Friday, the Star Wars Rebels Remembered panel and the cosplay competition on Saturday, then The Mandalorian panel, a taping of the podcast Star Wars Minute and The Clone Wars panel come Sunday.

To be in the basketball arena where the Episode IX and Mandalorian panels were taking place, you had to win a lottery.

In a hilarious twist, my daughter won entry for IX while I did not.

“We’ll figure it out,” I told her.

Getting up in New Jersey at 4:00 am ET on Friday to head to the airport was less than ideal, and we landed with under two hours until the Episode IX panel’s start time. Missing our first train out of O’Hare when the door shut in my daughter’s face was an inauspicious development, but one “L” Blue Line ride and an improvised switch to an Uber later we were at Celebration with only 20 minutes to go.

Her badge is picked up at will call and now we’re running up the street to the arena with our luggage in tow, me in a This Is Not A Ric Olie T-Shirt t-shirt, her in the same vintage yellow Return of the Jedi tee I once wore when I was her age.

Reaching security, I pull up the QR code she needs to gain access.

Security doesn’t even scan it and we both rush in the door. I’m historically more of a Han Solo luck-believer, but let’s be honest – the Force is with us.

We find our seats with three minutes to spare.

The lights go down.

A video of outtakes and rare footage from throughout the 40+ years of Star Wars starts playing.

My daughter grabs my hand and I immediately begin crying.
I’ve never seen her clap, woooooooooooooooooooo and give as many standing ovations as she does over the next hour and throughout the subsequent three days.

Following the first trailer for The Rise of Skywalker, we stow our bags and jackets in the media room and hit the floor.

Name a Star Wars character and someone’s dressed as it, from Muftaks to Zabraks.

There are seemingly more Ahsoka Tanos than Han Solos.

Multiple people are attired like deep cut characters from 1978’s Star Wars Holiday Special, which only aired once.

Ask anyone for a photo and they’re happy to oblige. Some have complimentary trading cards and pins to offer in exchange.

The best costumes are mash-ups combining other elements of popular culture – a blue, mustachioed “Thrawn Swanson,” and a boombox-wielding, gold chain-wearing Run DMC stormtrooper trio for example – or those that swap familiar conventions – like a female Kylo Ren strolling hand-in-hand with a bearded Rey by their side.

Former WWE champion CM Punk walks the floor without even being recognized.

It wasn’t all perfect.

A few attractions and the official Star Wars Celebration store had absurdly long lines, though those seemed to dissipate as the weekend went on. By Sunday we didn’t have to wait the countless hours people reported losing earlier in the week.

Additionally, the Star Wars Celebration app that was supposed to help you virtually queue for specific panels and scheduled events did not work for most attendees until midday Saturday and only stopped being fully wonky come Sunday. ??The app functioned as intended during 45 magical seconds on Saturday, where we were able to move up to the fifth row of the cosplay competition because preferred registration was briefly online.

By the time we were seated it had stopped working again.

Towards the end of the first day, we’re heading back from some cosplay booths, when we approach the Star Wars Show stage in the center of the floor – the hub of the event where guests are brought out for live interviews broadcast over the Internet. Each time we’ve passed it a small crowd has surrounded the stage, but this time the actor who played Enfys Nest in Solo: A Star Wars Story is talking to one of the hosts. My daughter, who went as Enfys Nest for Halloween last year, gets super excited. I’m 6’3” and she’s still under five feet tall, so once she dashes into the crowd to get a better look I can’t see her.

Which is fine, because I’ll just find her after this segment wraps. Right?

Then they bring out the bold-faced names.

John Boyega, followed by Anthony Daniels, Kelly Marie Tran, JJ Abrams and Oscar Isaac. The crowd swells around the stage. My daughter is gone. It is cool at first. I know she’s likely having the time of her life. But after 45 minutes of pacing and searching I realize I’m both embarrassed and getting increasingly anxious. After an hour, I understand I have to report this to security.

So I do. Sheepishly. I wait at Fan Services as staff with walkie-talkies confer based on the description I’ve given them.

Following another 30 minutes of looking around, my phone finally rings. A very nice man from security on an entirely different floor of McCormick Place has my daughter with him.

So glad we reviewed what my cell number was several times on the plane. The way she tells it, she realized after watching a few interviews from the spot she’d squeezed into in the very front row that she didn’t know where I was.

When she needed to find me, she couldn’t, so she went back to the best people she thought could, a group of Mandalorian bounty hunters who were accepting “bounties” for charity, promising they could locate anyone on the convention floor. After talking to them (“you’re looking for a tall guy in a blue hoodie”) even they realized this was something security had to handle.

Reunited, I discovered that the best possible thing that could happen when you’re 10 was getting lost at Star Wars Celebration. Security had rewarded her with all sorts of limited edition pins and hard-to-find exclusives while I was fretting.

We stopped in to say hello to author Jason Fry leading a storytime for younger kids and wearily stumbled off to dine on well-earned Costa Rican burritos and oatmeal shakes.

After a nice breakfast, day two is spent mainly at panels. Rebels Remembered rolls right into the queue for the cosplay competition, won by a guy wearing a remarkable yellow loader droid MC-219 apparatus (think Ripley at the end of Aliens) so large he can’t actually walk up onto the stage, but so realistic he could have come straight from a film set.

These panels are a great way to rest our legs succeeding so much frantic walking the day prior.

I’m psyched to spot a Bor Gullet/Bodhi Rook duo [pictured, below] and ask to take their picture. Afterwards the woman dressed as the tentacled Mairan requests to see my phone, telling me she is “still working on her pose.”

On an unexpectedly snowy Sunday (it snowed for nine straight hours!), we wrapped up our first Celebration with a meet-up for Star Wars Minute listeners at a restaurant downtown. This is the show that cemented our family’s shared fandom of Star Wars, forming the foundation of countless in-jokes as the hosts examine each film in the series minute-by-minute.

My daughter holds her own among the stories and quips, though she later tells me it was strange to meet the show’s Alex Robinson and Pete The Retailer [pictured, below] in person because “I sometimes forgot I was talking to them and not listening to a podcast.”

Of course they have a free replacement for the long-out of print SWM shirt she outgrew to give her, because it is that sort of weekend.

While our first Star Wars Celebration was equal parts incredible and daunting, I appreciated the choose-your-own-adventure nature of it all.

It was difficult for two people to have the exact same experience.

We spoke with families on the “L” who went to a whole different list of panels and events than us, with almost no crossover.

You could attend a specific batch of scheduled experiences just as easily as you could spend your entire Celebration walking around, or perhaps focusing on autographs and photographs with assorted guests.

I saw so many snapshots of booths, costumes and rooms that we never came across in our exploration. Even on our final day at Celebration, where we spent the most time on the floor.

But that was easy to come to terms with, given we ended going an astounding six-for-six with our top priorities.

Although we arrived overwrought, we left less than 72 hours later feeling like seasoned, welcomed veterans, already making plans to craft costumes for 2020 and reconvene with new friends for next year.

While as Yoda once said, “always in motion is the future,” I’d be surprised if we didn’t find ourselves in Anaheim twelve months from now for our second Star Wars Celebration.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS: Jon Solomon is an award-winning DJ at 103.3 fm WPRB, where he has hosted a Xmas marathon broadcast the past 30 years. He also runs the record label Comedy Minus One and drinks a lot of seltzer. His favorite Star Wars character is Nien Nunb.Beyond absorbing all things Star Wars, his daughter Maggie loves to ride her bike, play piano and do ballet. She wants you to know her favorite two books are currently “Property of the Rebel Librarian” and “Lost Stars.” They live in central New Jersey with their wife/mom Nicole.

BY BILL HANGLEY JR. So Facebook turns fifteen this month. Big deal. I’m turning fifty, and here’s my gift to myself:  Beat it, Facebook. As in, get lost, you creepy leeches. Make tracks. Go bark up somebody else’s tree. You’re not “social.” You’re chemical – a meticulously engineered subconscious compulsion. Ever see the opening credits to that Cartoon Network show, “Robot Chicken?” Where the mad scientist forces the helpless bird to watch a hundred blaring TV screens at once? That’s you, Facebook – only us chickens aren’t tied down. We just sit there, staring at your endless scroll, waiting for that dopamine jolt of somebody saying something nice about us.

I know, I know – nobody made me sign up. Nobody made me stay.  But there I was, for twelve years, me and my 2.32 billion friends, sharing, chatting, squabbling. Now I’m gone. And it feels …. Great. “But Bill!” you cry. “Think of the kittens! Think of the puppies! Think of your friends and your family and your cousin’s terribly misinformed high school buddies and ….” Well, Bill thanks you for your concern, Facebook. But let Bill share a little story about the only brain he has.

_______

IT WAS A blustery, gray day, and I was doing one of my favorite things: rambling around Philadelphia on my bike. I was taking a break in Strawberry Mansion when I spotted the wasp’s nest. It was big. And dead. Its outer shell was gone, reduced to papery shreds. But three tiers of its once-hidden inner comb remained, delicate and doomed, bobbing and swaying in the cold wind like a ragged Chinese lantern. For a moment I was captivated: the naked nest; the iron-black branches; the glowering sky …. then suddenly, that familiar tug.

“SHAAAAAARE!”

I felt my hand drawn to my camera. I pictured the picture on the screen, the little red numbers ticking up “likes” and “shares.” I felt the jets of chemical joy, the dopamine rush of rising social status … me being praised, me being affirmed; me being reminded of me, me, MEEEE ….

In other words: I looked at a wasp’s nest, but I saw Facebook. I’ve felt that tug a thousand times, and if you use social media, so have you. It’s the subconscious chemical response that drives them all: Twitter, Facebook, Reddit. We don’t even need to be logged on. All we have to do is see something we think our network will respond to — a wasp’s nest, a sunset, some outrageously offensive clickbait – and the dope taps fly open.

As the New Yorker’s Maria Konnikova put it:  “The mere thought of successful sharing activates our reward-processing centers.” That “mere thought” turns quickly into action, steering us away from whatever we’re seeing and back to our screens for more chemical treats. Locate stimuli, get reward, share stimuli, get more reward.

Good dog.

Facebook likes to talk about how it creates “connections” and “community.” But it’s more accurate to think of it as a drug dealer who gets you high on your own supply, in exchange for sales leads. All you have to do is bring it shiny objects that other people will like – or hate – enough to share. It’s all dope-driven, and the company doesn’t even need to make the dope. No wonder it’s rich.

And none of this is any secret. That day in Strawberry Mansion, it just happened to hit me particularly vividly: this is how Facebook really invades our privacy. This is our world now. A guy can’t even spend ten seconds in a parking lot looking at a dead wasp’s nest without feeling a powerful and wholly uninvited urge to go feed data into some money grubber’s website.

It took a conscious effort, but I left my camera in my bag.

________

NOT EVERYONE can ditch social media, and not everyone should.  Yes, it exploits its users. But its users exploit Facebook, too. Facebook is the Pennsylvania Railroad of the New Gilded Age – a revolutionary communication network of unmatched potential and reach that just happens to be run by blinkered monopolists.

These new tycoons can’t be happy about the new normal they now face: the parade of ugly headlines; the eroding public trust; the record-setting fines; the attacks from public officials (“digital gangsters”); the rejection by respected news partners (“they’re not taking anything seriously”).

But none of that will slow Facebook’s growth anytime soon, or Twitter’s or Instagram’s. The digital robber barons of Silicon Valley don’t care if I quit social media any more than Phillip Morris cared when I quit cigarettes. Like Big Tobacco, Facebook’s solution to trouble in old markets will be to expand into new ones: India, Mexico, South America, Southeast Asia.

So the people who improve social media will be people who use it. Gilded Age progressives didn’t beat the railroad barons by riding horses, and anyone who wants to do any good in the 21st century, myself included, will have to engage with social media somehow.

All that said: a growing body of research shows that those who do quit Facebook tend to feel better off for it. A Stanford/New York University study is the latest: quitters lose some “news knowledge,” but they socialize more, feel better about themselves, and take less extreme political positions. The latest crop of “I quit” op-eds echoes the findings: “Living without it made me realize just how little it contributes to my life,” wrote one quitter recently. “The fallout has so far has been exactly zero,” wrote another.

For me personally, I had fun and learned a few things, but was time to go and I’m glad I’m gone. Everybody has to make their own cost-benefit calculation, but I can recommend quitting to anyone who feels like social media uses them more than they use it.

Facebook has networked half the planet – a staggering achievement. At fifteen, it’s just getting started. But I’m turning fifty. Only so many years left. And this much I know: when I look at something, I want to see it, not a Facebook post about it.

So sayonara, you royal blue glue trap.
And happy birthday to me.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Bill Hangley Jr. is a freelance journalist and Philadelphia native. His work has appeared in Phawker, the Public School Notebook, WHYY News and Reader’s Digest. He can be reached at billhang@msn.com.