Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 6/20/25
New Knee, Who Dis? edition
We made it back from Cross Plains just in time to start the process of getting Janice to the hospital for her knee surgery. It’s been a hell of a time here at the ol’ Apocalypse Bunker, with both internal and external stressors, and while the next two weeks won’t be normal, they will at least be less fraught with worry and strife.
Trip Report, Part 2
Hey, look, I was awarded a thing! You can read more about it here on the NTAB blog: Black Circles and Fan Gatherings
This is my first “Lifetime Achievement” Award, one I never intended to win. You don’t do these things because you want a trophy. You do these things because you think they need doing. And then, sometimes, people find a way to thank you for it. That’s how I’m treating this, as an “attaboy” for volunteering, offering help, and utilizing my gifts (meaning my writing and performing skills) to further educate people about Robert E. Howard in the context of being a Texas Writer of Note, and to try and repair some of the damage done to his literary reputation by previous diverse hands.
Looking back over the past twenty-odd years at all of the essays, articles and introductions I wrote, the biography, all of the live lectures and performances and dramatic readings and everything else, I am very proud to have helped change the narrative around REH into something a bit more flattering and certainly more even-handed and sympathetic. I also realize that I’m not done; there’s still more stuff to do and people have made it very clear that I’m not going anywhere.
There are a lot of YouTube videos up now, talking about Howard Days this year. This is one of them. Lion, from the Hobbies of a Man YouTube channel, has an offshoot channel called the Sword and Sorcery Bookclub, wherein he recounted his second visit to Cross Plains, in a Howard Days After Action Report.
The Fists at the Ice House panel is always a favorite for people. Here is the recording of this year’s panel from the Stygian Dogs YouTube channel. According to all of the feedback we received, this was one of the best Ice House panels ever.
Health and Wellness Update: One Knee Down, One to Go
The Director of Bunker Operations is out of surgery and her new knee is installed with no muss, no fuss, and no bother—but with plenty of painkillers, presumably packed around her patella like ice in a cooler. She will take it easy for a couple of weeks to recover, and then she’ll be up on the new knee, getting stronger, until she’s well enough to replace the other one, much like when you get your tires rotated and balanced, you put the front tires in the back and vice versa, in pairs, so you don’t list to one side.
Bunker Ops is happy to hear from folks, so if you have well wishes, you can send them via the usual electronic means. We have advised her to refrain from replying to all’a y’all until the drugs kick in, for maximum humor value, so please, keep it brief.
KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park: A True Story
There’s a scene in Buckaroo Banzai: Across the Eighth Dimension, where Jeff Goldblum explains the film’s backstory; aliens punched a dimensional hole into our world in Grover’s Mill, NJ, in late October, 1938, leading Orson Welles to broadcast that aliens have landed. Only the aliens hypnotized Welles into admitting that it was just a radio hoax. Thus, the lectroids from Planet Ten were able to remain amongst us, undetected, until Buckaroo Banzai breached the dimensional barrier and gave them a way to escape the confines of Earth.
It's a nice bit of fiction, contrived for the necessary B-movie vibe in the film. But what if I told you that it happened again, in 1978?
I should explain, briefly, the plot of KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park even though I realize you have already seen it several times:
The members of KISS, who totally have super powers, are pitted against a mad scientist who is creating evil robots at California’s Magic Mountain Amusement Park. He even makes evil KISS robots, who take their place onstage and ruin “Hotter Than Hell” until the real KISS shows up and they have a big fight, play “Shout it Out Loud” and send the mad scientist to jail.
The movie was a real clunker, produced by William Hanna and Joesph Barbera, made for pennies, and was one of more embarrassing chapters in KISS-tory.
It was also completely true.
There really WAS a phantom of the park, and he DID create realistic KISS robots, designed to suck. The problem was, a bunch of people at the amusement park freaked out, and they had to quickly issue a statement, “No, no, it’s just a TV movie, see?” They slapped a script together out of old Scooby Doo set pieces and spent juuuuust enough money to pay for Chroma Key optical special effects. A few months later, KISS released their four solo albums, and everyone moved on with rocking and rolling all night, and partying every day.
Meanwhile...beneath the bowels of Magic Mountain...
The real Phantom of the Park, now that the heat was off, was free to start his plan of replacing rock stars at the height of their popularity and creativity, with identical, sophisticated androids, who proceeded to drive the career of the musician they were doppleganging up on into the void of mediocrity. And he’s been doing it ever since.
Consider, if you will, Aerosmith. How on earth do you reconcile “Walk This Way” with “Livin’ on the Edge?” You can’t, because one of those songs was written by Aerosmith, and the other was manufactured with focus groups in labs to be as flat and lifeless as possible, all the better to go down smoothly.
It’s the only thing that makes sense, when you think about it, and you can see it coming from orbit. Over the years, the Phantom of the Park managed to capture, imprison, and I don’t know, Clone? Freeze? legions of rock and country pop stars. Science experiments? Brain dissection? Who can say? Only our corporate overlords know why.
Of course, the Internet sped things up considerably, and the Phantom of the Park expanded operations into movie stars (what, you think Tom Cruise would have ever jumped up on a couch during an interview? That was the ‘bot, man!) and celebrities, each one a separate data point designed to lower the average intelligence of your friends and neighbors. Check it out, if you don’t believe me. Has your favorite author fallen off? TV shows starting to suck? Did you even bother to buy your favorite band’s last album? Well, now you know why, don’t you?
It’s all right there. Josh Groban? He’s fresh out of a pod; the Phantom doesn’t even bother swapping out celebrities anymore. He’s just making his own, mediocre homunculi and selling access on the server to the highest bidder. Come on, people!
This is my metaphor for our Industrial/Entertainment Complex. There’s so much stuff to consume, all watered down by the lowest common denominator, and it’s all thanks to our Old New Corporate Overlords. Everything is Taco Bell.
This is why we need a new force to take on the Phantom. I nominate GWAR.
In the '70s Joe Barbera was trying to build Hanna-Barbera into something akin to Disney (now more than then), but nearly everything live-action he produced was a suck-fest. So Hanna and the staff said "quit doing this stuff", and he did.