birthday Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

Writer/artist Steve Bissette is 70

more than Swamp Thing

I first met writer/artist Steve Bissette in the backroom at FantaCo Enterprises, 21 Central Ave., in Albany, NY, probably in 1987. Steve had come from Vermont to talk with Tom about contributing to the comic book Gore Shriek. I worked primarily on shipping the publications and mail orders.

I tried to be cool because I didn’t want to appear like a fanboy. “Oh, I love your Swamp Thing!” even though I did love his Swamp Thing. He also does some great dinosaurs.

We developed an easy rapport, partly because of his genial nature and because I was impressed by his intellect. He has a historian’s and librarian’s mind.

Steve showed up at FantaCo maybe a half dozen times before I left the company in November 1988. He also worked on a horror magazine called Deep Red, founded by the late Chas Balun (d. 2009), who was as wonderful as Steve said.

I lost track of Steve for a bit, but I started regularly commenting on his blog around 2008. Then, I would link to posts Steve wrote in my blog. I found over 100 references to Bissette, some of which were comments on his Facebook pages.

“If you work in a brick-and-mortar retail establishment, and if you tell me when I ask if you have something that I can only get it online, then you have lost me forever as a customer at said brick-and-mortar retail establishment.” I quoted that verbatim because I agreed with the sentiment.

“I always thought Bob Marley HAD to have seen or heard the BANANA SPLITS theme. Compare Bob’s ‘Buffalo Soldiers’ riff; —c’mon, don’tcha think so, mon?” I had never given any thought before, but he may be right.

IP

His thoughts on intellectual property tended to align with mine.: digital music; Disney/Marvel, SONY, and copyright overreach; can you defend public libraries and oppose file sharing?

Likewise, “As my buddy, Steve Bissette ranted – I think it regarded a policy by Adobe or Microsoft: ‘We can afford them once, and that’s what we can afford. We want to own almost all the things we buy. With few exceptions, we don’t wish to buy or support those things that do not wish to be purchased outright. We do not need more monthly bills. We do not wish to interact with you regularly for permission to be permitted to use what we purchase to use.”

His comments on boycotting Marvel/Disney movies, such as The Avengers, because of the treatment of Jack Kirby, HERE and HERE, informed my thoughts, which is why I didn’t see the Marvel movies from 2012 to 2019.

Stephen Bissette‘s open letter to DC on Facebook about NBC’s Constantine.
“My friend Steve’s dissection of DC is so deliciously understated and addresses the issue of common courtesy.”

He solved a movie mystery for me!

FantaCo

Our overlap with FantaCo is important. Even though Steve stopped working with Tom in the early 1990s, Steve and I need to ensure the record is straight. We spent some time trying to fix the FantaCo Wikipedia page, which contained much egregious misinformation, some of which has been rectified.

When I wrote about FantaCo, Steve would link to me, and vice versa, such as here.

Steve drew the cover of a book called Xerox Ferox, which debuted at the FantaCon 2013 in Albany. I got him, Tom, and several others to sign the book. Maybe I am a fanboy.

Bio

You can read his frankly meager Wikipedia page, but he worked on much more than is noted, some of which I own.

Steve attended the Kubert School and wrote the lovely To Joe, With Love: A Sad Farewell to the Man Who Opened All the Doors. He taught at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, VT, for about a decade and a half.

There are several Steve Bissette interviews I linked to:

You can NOW hear him blather [his word] with Robin at Inkstuds: PART 1 and PART 2.

Stephen R. Bissette: comics pioneer & evangelist from Radio New Zealand

Deconstructing Comics Podcast: #500 – Stephen Bissette: Comics, Movies, and Creator Credits.

The Stephen Bissette Shoot Interview! A Career-Spanning Chronicle!

Interview with Swamp Thing Comic Artist Stephen Bissette.

Stephen R Bissette – CCS instructor, monster-maker for Next Up Vermont.

Steve is one of 21 individuals selected to be inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Awards Hall of Fame for 2025.

He’s written a LOT of pieces, particularly in the past several years, some of which are catalogued here. However, this Facebook page is a better source of his recent work.

On his Facebook page, he’s mentioned life difficulties, such as the devastation caused by the Vermont flooding in 2011, HERE, HERE, and HERE, and other stuff, which I won’t go into.

For some birthday of mine, I swiped this from Steve’s Facebook page at least a decade ago – he’s a fellow March Piscean, of course – and I thought it both appropriate and true, though I’ve never seen the film:

“You think grown-ups have it all figured out? That’s just a hustle, kid. Grown-ups are making it up as they go along, just like you. You remember that, and you’ll do fine.”
– Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman), MATINEE (1993)

Peace and joy and love to my friend Steve Bissette.

The blogger turns 72

eastern part of St. Lawrence County

The blogger turns 72. He likes the number 72; it’s 2 ^3 * 3 ^2. Who can’t love that, arithmetically speaking? So, of course, this means that 72 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 18, 24, and 36.

“New York State Route 72 (NY 72) is a 15.36-mile-long (24.72 km) state highway in the North Country of New York. The road is an east–west highway located entirely within the eastern part of St. Lawrence County.”

I will remember how old I am. Probably. Remembering 71 was hard, 70 was easy, and 73 will be terrible.

As I’ve hinted at, I’m working on a project. I won’t tell you what it is yet.

One of the things that fascinated me was that when we were working on getting the daughter to go to South Africa, we had this god-awful list of things to do before she could get her visa. I realized that it took up an inordinate amount of psychic energy. It wasn’t just the time it took directly. Other tasks fell by the wayside even when I wasn’t doing anything about the visa.

Double-billed

At the beginning of February, I had two different Medicare supplement policies in effect, which I couldn’t have. When I applied through an intermediary, I thought they would tell the earlier one that I was no longer interested in using them. That was not the case, so money for both policies came from my checking account, making me feel very poor. I had to write a letter to the old company saying, “I don’t want you anymore. Give me back the two months of payments I made.”

There were bills I was late in paying. I was working on getting speakers for the Albany Public Library book reviews/author talks right up to the very last minute, and I hate doing that. Newspapers, which don’t take that long to read the newspapers, went untended.

So January was pretty much a bust in terms of what I wanted to achieve, but life is semi-normal – whatever the heck that means.

The picture I took on January 31st is a selfie, and I hate selfies. I despise them, particularly when I needed a haircut, but there was no time. I suppose I could take another one, but meh!

Grisham, Daniels, Grammer turn 70 in Feb ’25

Ferrer, Jobs, Gottfried

Here are some folks who turn 70 in February 2025, plus a few who did not make it.

Criminal lawyer-turned-author John Grisham (8th) has written a slew of legal thrillers. I haven’t read any of them, though I did see two of the nine movies made from his books, The Firm (1993) and A Time to Kill (1996).

But I’m most interested in his recent non-fiction book. “From a moral perspective, it is imperative for a society to face and correct injustice… We decided to write about and focus on the ten most astonishing cases, and publish them as Framed. There are hundreds of others.” Grisham wrote this with Jim McCloskey, “the godfather of the innocence movement.”

Jeff Daniels (19th) is an actor I’ve seen in many films, including Terms of Endearment, Purple Rose of Cairo, Heartburn, Speed, Pleasantville, The Hours, Because of Winn-Dixie, and The Martian.

He has also appeared on Broadway, most recently originating Atticus in the reimagined To Kill A Mockingbird. (I did not see him, but I did catch Richard Thomas in the touring show.)

“In 1991, Daniels founded a not-for-profit organization called The Purple Rose Theatre Company, which offers an attractive apprenticeship program for youngsters looking for a career in theatre.”

Kelsey Grammer (21st) is most noted for his two-decade long portrayal of Dr. Frasier Crane in the hit series, Cheers, and its spin-off, Fraise, and I watched virtually all of those episodes . The reboot of Frasier, which I saw infrequently,y recently ended after a two-season run. He’s also done a great deal of voice acting, most notably Sideshow Bob on The Simpsons.

RIP

Then there were these folks that WOULD have been 70 had they made it to 2025.

Miguel Ferrer (7th) was an American actor who broke through after portraying Bob Morton in RoboCop. I knew him from the movies Traffic and The Manchurian Candidate, as well as the TV procedural Crossing Jordan. His parents were the performers José Ferrer and Rosemary Clooney. He died on January 19, 2017, from throat cancer at the age of 61.

College dropout Steve Jobs (24th) founded or co-founded Apple Inc., Pixar Animation Studios, and NeXT Inc. He was responsible for developing “the iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPad, and the iPhone, which ushered in a new era in the computer, music, and film industries.” Here’s all about Steve.

He died on October 5, 2011, from pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer at the age of 56.

Gilbert Gottfried (28th): While I saw him on several programs, including The Cosby Show and Beverly Hills Cop II, most know him for the voice: the wise-cracking parrot “Iago” in Aladdin (1992) and the AFLAC duck.

In the documentary Life, Animated (2016), about a child who learned to communicate by watching Disney films, the young man Owen had a fan club. He invited Gilbert to one of their events, and Gilbert gladly showed up.

He died on April 12, 2022, from recurrent ventricular tachycardia, complicated by type II myotonic dystrophy, at the age of 67.

Musician/actor Steve Earle is 70

I Feel Alright

Someone must have given me a Steve Earle album or two back in the 1990s, probably I Feel Alright. His breakthrough album, Guitar Town, came out in 1986, going to #1 on the Billboard Country charts. I hadn’t thought of him so much as a country artist as a folk/Americana (whatever that means) musician.

He has long been an anti-war activist, opposing the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. He’s also been involved in other progressive/socialist causes. On one of his live albums, he mentioned that he sang at an early Farm Aid concert, admitting that it benefited him more than the farmers because “they didn’t know who the hell I was

His biography on Wikipedia is extensive. It mentioned his younger sister, Stacie Earle, and his late son, Justin Townes Earle (d. 2020), both of whom he has sung with. He’s been married seven times, including to one woman twice.

Writer

“Earle wrote and produced an off-Broadway play about the death of Karla Faye Tucker, the first woman executed since the death penalty was reinstated in Texas.“

He’s a bit of an iconoclast: In describing the writing of The Book I Swore I’d Never Write, he noted: “I’m writing a memoir,” he said in a to-be-published article. “I made a deal for two books, a memoir, and a novel. They made me an offer I couldn’t understand [laughs].”

He continued, “It’s not an autobiography, it’s a literary memoir, a little more abstract. It’s not like, ‘I was born a poor black child…’ and it doesn’t try and encompass every minute of my life. I think it’s about something besides me. It’s really about heroes and mentors, good and bad, so obviously the first part is about [renowned songwriter and Earle’s mentor] Townes [Van Zandt], before I started making records. The record-making aspect is in other books about me, I understand, but I’ve never read any of them.

Songs

Roughly leading to my favorite song

Goodbye’s All We’ve Got Left

The Galway Girl

John Walker’s Blues, the song about the captured American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh, created controversy. Earle responded by appearing on various news and editorial programs and defending the song and his views on patriotism and terrorism.

Christmas In Washington

The Revolution Starts Now

Way Down The Hole. Earle’s version of Tom Waits‘ song was the “theme song for the fifth season of the HBO series The Wire, in which Earle appeared as a recovering drug addict and drug counselor named Walon (Earle’s character appears in the first, fourth, and fifth seasons).” Earle is a recovering heroin addict.

CCKMP – “Cocaine can’t kill my pain.”

Hard-Core Troubador

Day’s Aren’t Long Enough with Alison Moorer, his then-wife

The Devil’s Right Hand

Copperhead Road

Feel Alright

Ellis Unit One – Music From And Inspired By The Motion Picture Dead Man Walking. Earle is an anti-death penalty advocate.

Guitar Town

You’re Still Standing There with Lucinda Williams

Valentine’s Day. My favorite February 14 lyrics

Steve Earle turns 70 today.

Annie Lennox is 70 (Christmas Day)

Eurythmics

Annie Lennox poses on the red carpet during an award reception at the Library of Congress for 2023 Gershwin Prize for Popular Song honoree Joni Mitchell, February 28, 2023. Photo by Shawn Miller/Library of Congress.

Scottish-born Annie Lennox dropped out of the Royal Academy of Music to become part of the late 1970s new wave band the Tourists. I wasn’t familiar with them. They had a couple of UK hits, the familiar tune, I Only Want To Be With You (1979) and So Good To Be Back Home Again (1980).

The band broke up in late 1980. Lennox and Dave Stewart split up as a couple but decided to continue working as the musical duo Eurythmics.

I have two of their vinyl albums, plus their greatest hits on CD. After she went solo in 1992, I got two CDs.

Five years ago, my wife and I went to MassMOCA to see ‘Now I Let You Go…’ an art installation by Annie Lennox.

Coverville 1514: The Annie Lennox Cover Story II

Some songs

When Tomorrow Comes – Eurythmics. It was no released s a single in the US.

Missionary Man – Eurythmics. “Upon the single’s US 1986 release, the song was described as being inspired in part by Lennox’s 1984–1985 marriage to devout Hare Krishna Radha Raman. When discussing the song’s inspiration and meaning, Lennox stated ‘Obviously, there is a personal meaning in [Missionary Man] for me, because of my past history. But I also think that there are a great deal of people in the media, in the form of politicians or religious speakers or philosophical people, people who are generally trying to have some power over other people, who I just don’t trust.'” #14 pop (1986), Grammy for Rock Vocal Duo.

Who’s That Girl – Eurythmics, #21 US pop in 1984.

Two Angels

Angel – Eurythmics It “would be the duo’s final single for almost a decade (discounting the re-release of two older singles the following year)… Lennox said in an interview at the time that the song was inspired by the death of her aunt, as she sings about a woman who has killed herself and now has ‘gone to meet her maker.'”

There Must Be An Angel (Playing with My Heart)”- Eurythmics. It “features a harmonica solo by Stevie Wonder. The song became the duo’s only chart-topper in the United Kingdom. #22 US pop (1985).

No More ‘I Love You’s – a cover of a song by a group called The Lover Speaks, the 1st song on her album Medusa, #23 US pop and a Grammy winner for pop female vocal.

Why -Annie Lennox. “It was taken from her debut solo album, Diva (1992), and reached number five in the United Kingdom. In the United States, “Why” peaked at number 34 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number six on the Adult Contemporary chart… Stereogum ranked “Why” number one on their list of “The 10 Best Annie Lennox Songs” in 2015.

With QoS

Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves -Eurythmics and Aretha Franklin. “A modern feminist anthem, it was… featured on both Eurythmics’ Be Yourself Tonight (1985) and Franklin’s Who’s Zoomin’ Who? (1985) albums. [I have both albums.] The duo originally intended to perform with Tina Turner, who was unavailable at the time and so they flew to Detroit and recorded with Franklin instead. The track also features three of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers: Stan Lynch on drums, Benmont Tench on organ, and Mike Campbell on lead guitar, plus session bassist Nathan East.” #18 US pop (1985)

Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) Eurythmics, their breakthrough hit, it reached number two on the UK Singles Chart and #1 US pop (1983)

Would I Lie To You – Eurythmics. In the heyday of MTV, it was probably one of the Top 10 favorite videos, #5 US pop (1985).

Annie Lennox has been involved with AIDS activism, wmen’s rights, and antiwar activities. In February 2024, at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards, during an in memoriam segment, she performed [with Wendy and Lisa] late singer Sinéad O’Connor’s song Nothing Compares 2 U; Lennox repeated her call for a ceasefire and ‘peace in the world.'”

While it’s a bit precious, I think the description of Eurythmics’ 2022 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is not wrong.

“Much like the moment in The Wizard of Oz when the film turns from black-and-white to Technicolor, the opening strains of Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” irrevocably changed perceptions of 1980s pop-rock. Employing the mechanistic funk of Krautrock, the grit of gospel, and the strangeness of psychedelia, Eurythmics’ genre- and gender-fluid pop vision was both futuristic and beholden to past eras, while remaining eminently accessible.”