Current Favorite Fantasy Woman: Ashley Allen (PlayBoy, Miss August 1993)
Perhaps because May sweeps are over (and Nikki Cox's show has gone on indefinite hiatus), or since I refuse to pay thirty-two dollars a month for Charter Communications' less-than-satisfying cable service, but there just doesn't seem to be too much to look at on television these days. Is it any wonder, then, that I'd turn to a stack of old magazines I inherited from a friend of mine, one of which carefully separated to reveal the image of this most lovely woman? The silken-spun lockes, statuesque figure and smart smirk, alas, all went unnoticed in a year that the publication spotlighted Anna Nicole Smith (and I personally devoted to cross-cultural exotic Angela Melini), but here's betting she, like the eleven other women featured in the annual review, has since settled for makin' babies, "bacon," or just plain beautiful music with someone who appreciates them just the same.

Current Favorite Musical Composition: "Tail of the Sun" (PlayStation soundtrack)
You wouldn't know it, but there's a theme underlying this bizarre, otherwise questless videogame of caveman evolution, and it takes, of all things, a CD player to read the paintings on the wall, as it were. (That and the subtitle, "Wild, Pure, Simple Life.") The tracks, accessed piecemeal during the onscreen adventures, are arranged as if recorded for a Future Sound of Tokyo album, because amidst a backdrop of the techno that's become a multimedia trademark lie curious samples of Japanese urbania making way to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The sound engineers, whose names were credited only as such, reveal the kind of hidden talent that Jan Brady's drama teacher saw in her set designs, with a sonic landscape that rivals, certainly complements, the interactive environment.

Current Favorite Comicbook: Betty & Veronica's Double Digest
...And only because I'm not completely satisfied on either side of Grant Morrison's two fabulous monthlies for DC, JLA and The Invisibles: the former, his Silver Age-sympathetic treatment of "the World's Greatest Super-heroes"; the latter, UFO conspiracies and doomsday cults that'd have Chris Carter running for the hills. (Neither is his ill-fated Aztek, nor, I suspect, anything else ever to see print the happy medium that was his classic Doom Patrol, though his recent Flex Mentallo mini-series was awfully close.) Oh, and the merry citizens of Riverdale? Forget the speed of light, Einstein--they're the one universal constant, impervious to the ravages of time, culture, and rampant sexually-transmitted disease. And in this ever-changing world where you can't rely on your job not to be gone in the morning, friends not to stab you in the back and URL's not to lose their DNS entries, it's nice to have something you can.

Product Review: SONY SRF-M78 Sports AM/FM Walkman
(Or, The Marathon Chronicles, Chapter VII.) Usually it's my policy to carry as little as possible while running, as after so long even the smallest weight, say, a key ring or water bottle, assumes stellar super-density, but these days of more dedicated training keeping me on the track for hours at a time, I thought maybe some background music might help improve my performance like some Eighties jock movie. These trademark Sony headphones never do fit my head right, it not having an ear-to-ear groove that their designers must think is part of cranial anatomy, the wire whipped my face like it was rope I was supposed to jump, but when Prodigy's "Firestarter" came on, I was transformed into Donovan Bailey; but after sprinting a lap or two to the trememdous sound, and with Tom & Ed Chemical up next with "Block Rockin' Beats," my cardio-pulmonary system made like I had been dumped by my girlfriend again; and the Sneaker Pimps soothed me into the same sedentary pace of my sixth or seventh mile--only this was just the fourth. Round out the hour after "forty minutes non-stop KROQ" with twenty more of commercials, and it's no wonder the accessorizing, generally so effective (the ankle brace and bandanna do make a difference, really), contributed to no improvement in performance whatsoever.

Please feel free to e-mail me constructive comments, both complimentary and critical. (Guess which address I check more often.)

Copyright © 1997 I, J. All rights reserved--except, of course, those in material that's used in flagrant violation of federal laws.