#but I did tell her I don't remember jack shit. whoops

[bluastro-yellow]

there's only one end-of-the-day debrief :'( ?!?

[cleromancy]

one thing i love about ALPoD is like. the whole flashback Janet & jack are like talking about tim and not to him:

(under a cut ooga booga)

you can't always judge how old a character is supposed to be by how they're drawn (and this is dick and tim we're talking about, they don't age at the same rate), but considering that tim does remember this there's no way tims intended to be too young to communicate with... and his parents are not shown to do that. at all. even as janet actively is talking about how shed worried about tim, it doesn't occur to either her or jack to ask tim if hes enjoying the circus, or if he'd like to say hi to or take a picture with the performers.

which wouldn't be striking on its own, even when directly followed by dick as the first person to talk directly to tim in this flashback:

the contrast was i think what made me notice it, and especially since its followed by theeeee following:

and y'know to move the plot along dick has to urge him to keep going, tell the whole story. and i mean. its also *preceded* by tim doing something he used to do kind of a lot, which was if he had to talk to someone older about a concern or his feelings or stuff along those lines he'd say something about not wanting to bug them not wanting to cause trouble maybe its nothing... that sort of statement yk. anyway when tim picks up his story thread its with this:

and i think its interesting that we see jack and janet discussing whether tim is old enough to go to the circus without getting scared (and i do think its interesting the comment jack made up there abt boys vs girls like. this is absolutely a man who had some shit to say about how no son of his is gonna be a sissy... be careful what you wish for man, your sons gonna grow up to roam the streets brawling with people twice his size.) (And hes going to be a sissy while he does it.) (in a grand robin tradition.) (im_just_a_sissy_jasonrobin.jpg)

where was i going with....

OH RIGHT LOL i just think its neat that we had them talking about tims emotional wellbeing re whether hes old enough for the circus without ever actually talking to tim about it AND THEN WHEN TIM WITNESSES A LEGITIMATELY TRAUMATIZING EVENT... like. nothing, lmao. like the contrast there!!

(SIDE NOTE: timothy if your parents "made a copy" to send to dick why did you STEAL HIS COPY. OF A PICTURE YOU ALLEGEDLY OWN. I DO NOT BELIEVE YOU. WHY ARE YOU LYING. like there are a lot of possibilities but theyre all conjecture and FRANKLY im already teetering on ridiculous in how deeply im reading into a very short piece of this story lol)

and tim is like. bitter about his parents already as of his intro storyline. hes not like overtly complaining about them or anything but the disparaging comment about how they're always travelling and normally stick him in boarding schools... also like. to be honest i don't think his parents were like "yeah its totally fine for our 13 year old to spend the vacation week by himself," i think tim simply did not tell them when spring break was this year, whoops :) must have slipped his mind. its entirely possible its slipped his mind multiple years in a row

and you know what ELSE i like

the babys first instinct in that situation. was to try and *save dick from batman.* much to FUCKING think about

............ok thats kind of offtopic from my original point which was. I Think Tim Was Mostly Nonverbal Until He Was Like Six. Thanks For Listening :)

[cureforbedbugs]

MIX 4: Later You Will Laugh When You Remember It

Stereo Total - Holiday Innn

Touch & Go - Would You...?

Komeda - It's Alright, Baby

The Chinkees - You Don't Know

Hal Willner - Do You Hear Me? (No Pie)

Suzi Quatro - Can I Be Your Girl

Linda McCartney - The Light Comes from Within

Kyra - Agitated

Freibier Ideologen - Mauerstraße [Wall Street]

Bob Log III - I Want Your Shit on My Leg

Rev Horton Heat - Texas Rockabilly Rebel

Royal Crown Revue - The Contender

Wondermints - Arnaldo Said

Rialto - Monday Morning 5.19

Silver Sun - I'll See You Around

The Misunderstood - Children of the Sun

Penelope Houston - Worm

Imogen Heap - Getting Scared

Goldie - Temper Temper

Space - The Ballad of Tom Jones

Akasha - Sweet Child of Mine

The King - Come As You Are

This might be the mix that feels the most 1998 to me in 2022, though I doubt most of it was super popular in 1998, with a few exceptions. You’ve got Stereo Total doing their thing the best they ever did their thing, which is always. You’ve got Touch & Go with a song that brings flooding back the (intentionally?) stale irony of the mid-to-late-90s—Viva Variety and lounge songs about dick size and the Moog Cookbook—while also suggesting this mode was petering out; the song plays its single sample to death and wheezes across the finish line. This is two years after the Gen X hipsters in the Simpsons Lollapallooza episode recited the epithet for the era: “Are you being sarcastic, dude?” “I don’t even know anymore.”

There are some fun oddities here: Hal Willner’s (RIP) only credited solo album, Whoops I’m an Indian, offers up a frenetic Jack Webb pastiche; Suzi Quatro’s shelved 1983 album sees the light of day and sounds right at home in 1998, as does Penelope Houston, from the punk band the Avengers, with an idiosyncratic solo effort; Linda McCartney’s “The Light Comes from Within” features her final vocal, recorded days before her death, in which she tells off some corporate anti-environmentalist (or something) with “you’re fuckin’ no one, you stupid dick.” Neneh Cherry wrings a surprising amount of pathos out of a trip-hop “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” I’m reminded that Imogen Heap’s first big break was on the I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel soundtrack. (Really, there is no reason that soundtracks needed to be this good in 1998.)

The mix is rounded out with some killer sunshine pop (there’s an all-power-pop mix down the road on Mix 16) from Komeda, a pre-Brian-Wilson-fandom Wondermints, the Misunderstood, and Silver Sun, who all do some immaculate genre pastiche. The Chinkees’ “You Don’t Know” is one of a tiny number of ska tracks to make it from within an ocean of the stuff. Goldie and a second appearance by Cerys Matthews from Catatonia (last one I promise) sound great b/w an Irish Elvis impersonator singing a Nirvana song. And sure, there’s some psychobilly bullshit (Reverend Horton Heat) and psychobilly actual shit (Bob Log III’s “I Want Your Shit on My Leg”). How could I resist? At least I limited the dying gasp of the swing revival to one inclusion (at least until you hit the jazz mix at #13).