Last year for Halloween I was Bip the Clown, a famous creation of the then recently passed master of mime, Marcel Marceau. I thought it would be good to go an entire day without talking, yet it seemed to arouse violent annoyance in as many people as liked it.

I think it made me realize that I like mime, especially when it's darker and scarier... as in the mimetic acting of German Expressionist silent film... as well as comedians like Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon, Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin, who were all essentially mimes. And, come to think of it, so was Cesar the somnambulist in Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari... whom I was for Halloween a while ago, come to think of it.


Mime has its roots in ancient Greece but most conventions of modern mime were developed by the Bohemian mime, Jean-Gaspard Deburau, who adapted aspects of the commedia dell'arte for nineteenth century French actors. His most famous character was Pierrot, the moonstruck, dumb romantic in white face and poofy threads. He was portrayed in Marcel Carné's Les Enfants du Paradis.


In the 1920s, Étienne Decroux created a highly original take on mime, focusing on statuary poses, a technique known as corporeal mime.

Guitar Games

The first installment in the Guitar Hero series was released in 2005. The developers at Harmonix were obviously inspired by 1998’s Konami’s GuitarFreaks, in which players also use a guitar-shaped controller with colored fret buttons on the neck and a pick lever to score points playing along to rock music. That game never took off on the level of Guitar Hero though, partly because GuitarFreaks required players to shred along to the likes of Mutsuhiko Izumi, 桜井 敏郎,  小野秀幸, 前田尚紀 and Jimmy Weckl (né ジミー・ウェックル), who composed songs especially for the game. Guitar Hero's innovation was including 47 AOR songs by the likes of the Ramones, Deep Purple, umlaut-abusers Blue Öyster Cult and Motörhead -- songs that, whatever you think of them, are seared into your brain if you've ever drank a Mountain Dew, rode in a Z-28, watched a television commercial or shopped at Amoeba. That means even if you've heard "More Than a Feeling" 603,501 times more than you ever wanted, you'll have no problem playing along.

In 2006, RedOctane (the manufacturers of the guitar controllers) was purchased by Activision and Harmonix was bought by MTV. In 2007 Harmonix released, through Electronic Arts, Rock Band -- basically an expanded version of Guitar Hero which added other instruments, another innovation inspired by Konami’s games of the previous decade which followed up GuitarFreaks with DrumFreaks and KeyboardFreaks.

Titan
Titan was discovered in 1655 by Dutchman Christiaan Huygens. It orbits Saturn. Huygens named it Luna Saturni. When more moons were discovered, it was re-named Saturn II, then IV, then VI, which stuck as the official title, even though there are at least 19 moons in closer orbit of Saturn. It's also been referred to as "Saturn's ordinary satellite," but Titan is anything but ordinary.

   



Titan is the only body in the solar system, aside from Earth, with stable liquid bodies at its surface* and a dense atmosphere. Its landscape is relatively smooth, although there are mountains. As on Earth, the air is primarily composed of Nitrogen. Methane and Ethane clouds produce rain, wind and weather that give it seasons. It also has subsurface oceans*.



 

No wonder Metallica is so successful and so goddamn terrible now. What were you doing in high school?  Here's what Cliff Burton was doing with Faith No More's guitarist, Jim Martin:

Mmm.  I never heard anything like that at my high school talent shows. Closest anyone came was a spot-on Night Ranger cover band.

Before Hanoi Rocks, guitarist Andy McCoy and bassist Sam Yaffa were playing with the (locally) famous Finnish punk band Pelle Miljoona Oy. This is a 1980 performance of the song "Olen Kaunis":

The next clip is an early promotional video for the great "Motorvatin'" with original drummer Gyp Casino.  This was also the best hair period for singer Mike Monroe. Surely, David Sylvian felt so inferior that he cut his mop off, resigning himself an artsier David-Bowie-circa-Low 'do. Nothing will make one give up glam faster than seeing a much prettier rival with a better head of hair. Just ask Brian Eno.

The band replaced Gyp with the ill-fated Razzle on drums and the following is purportedly the first visual recording of his being with the band. They do "It's Too Late" (where they pretend to play each other's instruments) and The Damned's "Problem Child":

I searched high and low for a live performance of my favorite song, "Tooting Bec Wreck," but couldn't find one. As a second choice from their greatest record, Back to Mystery City, here's "Mental Beat":

I wasn't aware until traveling the byways of YouTube that a video for "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" existed, but here 'tis:

After Vince Neil "vehicularly manslaughtered" Razzle, the group broke up and went on to various other projects, the best of which was undoubtedly The Suicide Twins, featuring McCoy and fellow Hanoi guitarist Nasty Suicide. Their best song was "Sweet Pretending," which is the best acoustic glam song that Jesus & Mary Chain never recorded:

Monroe struck up a friendship with Little Steven from the E Street Band, which eventually led to a short-lived punk band, Demolition 23. Little Steven left before much recording was done, but they did write an über-catchy pop punk song, "Hammersmith Palais":

Finally, as McCoy was getting over a prolonged bout with alcohol and drugs (or, at least, learning to function better with them), he had a Finnish #1 single with the appropriately entitled "Strung Out":

Monroe and McCoy would eventually reunite, but about the best that can be said of the new version of the band is that at least it's not Him.