Meet Professor J

Professor J (Pr&-'fe-s&r 'jA) is a post-collegiate, pre-professional twenty-something educator, novelist, bad-ass air guitarist living and rocking in Greensboro, NC. A graduate of Union University and the Univ. of North Carolina at Greensboro, Prof. J is JBB’s resident expert on the culinary arts, female vocalists, long distances, and boy-stuff. We wonder, “Why couldn’t Jay have been such a dish?”

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REVIEW: Catastrophe Keeps Us Together

Professor J on
Rainer Maria's Latest

*Chance It'll Melt Your Face Off= 80%*

Caithlin De Marrais, the de facto lead singer of Rainer Maria, always sounded like she was on the edge of a cliff, one good shove away from catastrophe. Her voice was ragged, sharp, careening all over the place. It had no center, no focus. Perhaps that was that fault of her band-mate and sometimes singer, Kyle Fischer. His voice is not pretty; it’s even threatening– so let us point to him as the needle between Caithlin’s shoulder blades.

On the band’s new disc, Catastrophe Keeps Us Together, that needle has been removed. Caithlin sings like a woman reborn. Her voice is full and in control, the edges are smooth and only gouge you when she wants and needs it to. Because of this difference and also, one suspects, the influence of producer Malcolm Burn (of Emmylou Harris and Bob Dylan fame), the band sounds tighter than ever. Rainer Maria is polished, refined, poised, and ready to attack.

I know polished is a four-letter word in indie land, but here it serves its purpose and serves it well. Now that the frayed edges are gone, we can see inside the songs, hold the lyrics in our hands, and taste the melodies. The opening track, “Catastrophe,” rides a galloping drumbeat and Caithlin is in complete control until the guitars fall in on her at the chorus. Then she lets her voice rip. In Rainer Maria’s earlier days, this would have been an out-of-control mess, manic energy with no destination. Now there is a point– and it’s sharp.

Make no mistake, this is a still a guitar- and drum-driven band. For all of her newfound vocal ability, Caithlin would be lost without the crash-and-strum combination of her band-mates, who know when to pull in the leash and when to let it go. When she sings “You turn me on and off,” in “Life of Leisure,” you wonder if she isn’t referring to the souls behind her.

Although Rainer Maria plays the loud/soft dynamic well, it is still an indie band at heart and its songs are unpredictable. The best track, “Already Lost,” adheres a little too closely to the arena rock-ballad template, but the song is all the better for it. The beat builds and builds, hinting at the booming chorus to come; the cymbals herald its arrival. When Caithlin finally lets loose and booms out, “I waited up all night,” like a heartbroken Cyndi Lauper or a hell-bent Jenny Lewis, you’ll find yourself itching to strike that lighter.

The album closes with a Bob Dylan cover, “I’ll Keep It With Mine.” Although some might see this as a sign that the band has nowhere else to go, at the end of the day, the cover is simple, pure, heartfelt, and in control of its path.

All in all, these are not bad qualities to find in a song or, for that matter, in a band.

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JBB Wants YOU!

Jack Black's Body
Now accepting articles, photographs, and souls.
jackblacksbody@gmail.com
May the inspirado be with you!

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Meet Bombshell Leslie

Bombshell Leslie (Bäm-"shel Less-lee) is a post-collegiate, pre-professional twenty-something actress, writer, receptionist, and muse living in Lincoln Park, Chicago. A graduate of Southwest Missiouri State University, Bombshell Leslie is JBB’s Marilyn Monroe, Cleopatra, Luna-tic, burlesque, bombshell-stuff expert. She enjoys chicken noodle soup, her Pheobus, and street fighting. She will cut you.

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Glorious & Ghetto Happenings

An Exploration of Human-Lunar Phenomena
by Bombshell Leslie

It’s been a hard week, people. I’ve been dropping things, stumbling down the street, and generally questioning the direction of my life. It’s enough to make me want to sit in my bath tub and cry like a little girl.

Yet, I am relatively comfortable with this madness because, in about a week or two, my luck is going to change. That homeless guy on the 22 Clark St. bus is going to stop playing with my hair. My father is suddenly going to realize the profound wisdom of my stance on capitol punishment. I’m going to find my godforsaken can opener. Things are going to get easier. Why? Because the now-waning moon is going to be waxing soon, gathering strength rather than losing it, and infusing me with energy and inspiration rather than sucking my will to live.

I am a firm believer in the moon’s ability to affect life on this planet in much the same way that it affects the oceans’ tides. My less than concrete understanding of this phenomenon does not detract from the very real influence I recognize in the ebb and flow of my own life and its alternately glorious and ghetto happenings. Invariably, when I make this remark to my friends, they raise indulgent eyebrows and nod sympathetically. Luckily, I move in an open-minded and accepting social circle.

More often than not, this encouragement on the part of my audience leads me into one of my favorite tirades: What’s up with the scientific community’s inability to provide good solid evidence for me to hang my hat on? A little research on my part has revealed that earnest studies of the moon and human behavior began right around the time The Simpsons first aired. Why hasn’t this issue been more extensively studied? As for the few tentative forays that have been made, what has modern science produced in the way of an explanation?

My terribly sophisticated research methodology has uncovered the fact that the contemporary debate over the moon’s effect on human behavior is being almost exclusively fought out between the scientific titans England and Australia. Both countries have committed their governmental and academic resources to undertaking a serious investigation of lunar-human phenomena and have, thus far, come up with facts and figures that directly contradict each other. Excellent.

The Bradford Royal Infirmary in Bradford, England reviewed Emergency Room admissions over a two-year period. They noted that the incidence of critical animal-inflicted injuries, such as dog bites and bear maulings, were twice as high on the dates of or immediately leading up to the full moon. Not to be outdone, one Sydney Chapman (who, let us note, is lacking in academic prefixes) at the University of Sydney, Australia, did the same study in Australia and rather stubbornly found the opposite to be true. Not only was there no correlation between the full moon and animal attacks, but the ER admissions reflected an overall decline during the full moon.

Mr. Chapman offers no explanation for why English critters would be so affected by the moon’s phases, while the emotionally balanced Australian fauna are impervious to such neurosis. In turning his scientific experiment into a personal attack on Britain’s wildlife, Mr. Chapman betrays a rather imbecile colonial inferiority complex.

*It should be noted from this point forth that the author is prepared to completely reject Mr. Chapman’s findings on the grounds of his being Australian. She will assume the educated reader feels the same. *

Just to show that we, as a people, have forgiven all past occupations and oppressions, the scientific facts and figures produced by the few American researchers in the field seem to align with those of our buddies across the pond. A homicide study in Dade County Florida that spanned fifteen years, found that when plotted against the waxing and waning of the moon, the frequency and volume of murderous activity consistently rose and fell in a concurrent manner. In other words, when the moon was in its first or last quarters, relatively fewer first dates and baby showers ended in tragedy. But when the moon was full, the average Miami resident was significantly more likely to be impaled by a loved one, or have a complete stranger throw a brick at his or her head.

Historically, this is not a new concept. In Victorian England, the “Lunatic Defense,” claiming that an individual could not be held accountable for his or her actions during the full moon, was regularly invoked in criminal court. The massive Stock Market crash of 1929 was blamed on the approaching full moon by many members of the press. And to this day, multi-million dollar lumber-harvesting contracts in Southeast Asia and the rainforests of South America are timed in observance of the moon’s movements.

Some years ago, the Philadelphia police department commissioned the American Institute of Medical Climatology to investigate the correlation between human behavior and lunar activity. Arson, kleptomania, suicide attempts, and reckless driving topped the list. According to those in the know, these are all apparently “Psychotically Oriented Crimes.” In fact, 81% of mental health professionals surveyed in the United States and Europe believe that lunar cycles directly affect human behavior. No Australian psychologists could be reached for comment.

So what does science offer by way of explanation for the link between the moon and human behavior? The leading theory is this: The small gravitational influence exerted by the moon governs the ebb, flow and general tidal activity of Earth’s water bodies. As it would happen, the human body is composed of 80% water. The hypothesis is that the human body experiences a “biological tide” not unlike those observed in nature. According to the Journal of the Florida Medical Association, “82% of post-operative bleeding crises occurred nearer the full moon,” suggesting that the moon’s pull affects blood-flow as well. And as it turns out, those South American tree-ring lords are quite wise in timing the harvest with the moon—the full moon causes sap to rise in the trees, attracting all manner of nasty insects.

Dr. Robert Doyle of King’s College, London, proposes that while there is a marked change in human behavior during full moon phases, it may be attributed to evolutionary conditioning rather than a perpetual relationship. “There is certainly reason to believe that people’s very personalities do change,” he says, “but not because of any astronomical force. In the days before artificial lighting, the full moon created optimal lighting conditions for feeling carefree and mischievous.”

Try as they might, scientists cannot find proof-positive that a link exists. Even more discouraging is that those who do undertake to establish a link are coming up with contradicting evidence. “The studies are not consistent,” says Dr. Kelly of the University of Saskatchewan, “For every positive study, there is a negative study.”

Well, I say try harder.

Dr. Aussie can tell me until he’s blue in the face that the moon’s movements don’t affect my psychological well-being or the major events in my life. But let it be known that every day, I bust out my Astrological guide to see what the moon is up to, and I act accordingly. In February, it warned me that the full moon of that particular month was extremely strong (being very near the Earth) and would bring with it some serious happenings. That week I got an obscenely large tax return and met the man of my dreams. So there.

Another theoretical gem offered up by the University of Sydney chalks the whole thing up to selective memory, or what psychology dubs “confirmation bias.” This implies that because some beliefs are so essential to us, or so thrilling to cling to, we will seek out and mentally highlight information that confirms our individual and collective theories, while ignoring evidence that contradicts or undermines them.

I heartily reject this notion as well. This is a phenomenon that has been puzzling mankind for thousands of years, not some sort of disorganized mass hysteria. As for myself, perhaps there may have been an instance in my life when the moon failed to exert its almighty influence on my mood and inclination towards psychotically oriented crimes, but I certainly cannot recall it.

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Meet Toe-Sock Doug

Douglas (Doo-glasz), aka "Toe-Sock Doug," is a post-collegiate, pre-professional twenty-something writer-architect-bookseller living in the Windy City. A graduate of Syracuse University and the University of Chicago, Toe-Sock Doug is JBB's resident zombie, robot, dinosaur, boy-stuff expert. He enjoys birds, music, and motion pictures, and has taken the trolley to work. We all ask: "Why can't they be more like Doug?"

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Why Zombies Are So Great

An Analysis of the Undead
by Toe-Sock Doug

Ahem. Alright. Let’s do this. Time to inject some testosterone into this dainty girly-blog. Time to finally do our namesake, the mighty Jack Black and his body, proud. I shall begin this, a stirring treatise affirming the irrefutable greatness of the Living Dead, by quoting a character from the work of… uh… Truman Capote? I believe it was his conflicted belle, Holly Golightly, who said (and I paraphrase) “All men like horses and baseball.” To update this to represent the modern man, I would immediately append “as well as dinosaurs, robots, and zombies.” For what man among my lofty tribe can claim to be uninterested in either of these subjects? Not a one, I assure you. So now, without further non-verbal grunting and exaggerated chest-beating ado (but with parenthetical digression a-plenty) I will attempt to explain just why zombies are so great.

For reasons unknown, the dead have returned to walk the land of the living. At first, we hear news of just a few scattered, isolated incidents, but things quickly get out of hand. Cue violence and gore as much brain eating ensues. But all is not lost. A few tattered remnants of humanity remain and a resistance movement or two forms. Cue additional violence and gore and end on uncertain terms. Roll credits and repeat (for in the realm of the zombie there is always room for a sequel or three). Such is the plot of a zombie narrative. A wee bit predictable, you might say. Of all the wack-ass genre stylings, why does this story keep getting told? Just what is it about the Living Dead that horrifies, fascinates, and entertains us enough to keep their decomposing malodorous corpses hanging around?

(Before I go into specifics, permit an opening caveat to the zombie-centric. This is a well-informed but incomplete analysis. Let’s call it an introduction. Zombies 101. I could expound vaguely on the origins of zombies: their African hey-day, how they crossed the Atlantic, arrived in Haiti only to grow intimately involved with Voodoo, were re-imagined in the 60’s by George Romero and were co-opted ever since.

But enough zombie pre-history.) This article is based upon my completely random conglomeration of zombie lore gleaned from some of the most popular and interesting zombie narratives of the last forty years. So don’t go all “How could you forget BrainFeast 7!? It’s such a classic!!” Save your obscurantism, Jackson.* I’ve tried to keep this ungainly project well-rounded by using source material from as many different art-forms as possible. I reference film (Night of the Living Dead, Evil Dead 2, 28 Days Later), cartoons (The Simpsons “Dial Z for Zombie”), the short-story and the novel (Stephen King’s “Home Delivery” and Pet Cemetery, respectively), and the graphic novel (Robert Kirkman & Tony Moore’s The Walking Dead). Having dealt my critics an undeniably mortal blow, on with the show!

Reason #1: Zombies are great because utopias kick ass. All Zombie stories are utopian. It’s etymological: U-topia = “the great place.” Just ask Sir Thomas More, Francis Bacon, Karl Marx, Aldous Huxley and, to a lesser extent, the dudes that came up with Fru-topia soft drinks. In order to establish your utopian community you need a ground-clearing tabula rasa moment, which very few scenarios accomplish quite as well as a zombie holocaust. It doesn't matter why the dead have returned to feast upon the brains of the living; the creative mind is more concerned with their production than their purpose. These hideous creatures are spawned in far-out ways, running the gambit from nuclear radiation, scientific and military experiments gone awry, celestial misalignments, magic spells, Love (ironic, right? and also ingeniously employed with a little help from an Indian Burial ground by both King and the Simpsons) or the fact that Hell is now full and the sprits of the damned are forced to return to their decomposing, corporeal containers for one last dance on Earth.

Reason #2: Zombies are great because destroying existence kicks ass. What the Living Dead effectively accomplish is to destroy existence as we know it. No more morning talk radio, or lines at the supermarket. Your credit score is now somewhat less important than finding food that has not gone rancid, or a place to sleep, safe from the wanderlust of animated corpses. This is essentially the glorious and excessively destructive part of the French Revolution all over again. And it’s only a matter of time before some savvy leader (a white man) gets a posse together to establish some sense of normalcy in a world gone to shit. Normalcy in this case is code for “severely screwing over minorities.” If you are a black man, you will likely get “accidentally mistaken for a zombie” and lynched. If you are a woman, chances are you will also get screwed over, quite literally. And children? Please. Suffer the little children as they fall prey to parental incompetence only to become zombified and return to spade their dim-witted mothers a dozen times in the chest.

True, a utopia has never been a great place for non-white men– but minorities worry not. Like the society replaced by the zombie-engendered utopia, white men will still heap sufficient troubles upon themselves, all on their own. For this foundling utopian community is by no means a sure thing. Just ask the Jacobins who may not have had flesh-eating zombies to deal with, but still found themselves fighting off one counter-revolutionary movement after another with the help of their good friend Capt' Guillotine.

Reason #3: Zombies are great because they must needs ultra-violence in order to be dispatched and, as Alex from A Clockwork Orange taught us, excessive violence most certainly kicks ass. Guillotines being scarce in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, many survivors opt for shotguns, which just as effectively sever that intimate bond between the head and the rest of one's corpus. Having established the zombie narrative’s proclivity for utopias, we can also affirm: Zombie culture is a critique of Late Capitalism. A rather transparent and unflattering critique, at that, which leads to… Reason #4: Zombies are great because Late Capitalism decidedly does not kick ass. What are zombies if not the perfect embodiment of the lower middle class American blue-collar wage-slave? Zombies exist only to consume and reproduce, and the American middle class appears to be doing a bang-up job accomplishing this task as well. Granted, this treatment of the average man is deeply jaded and hopelessly elitist, but who can disagree with at least the pretenses of this analogy after witnessing just two minutes of the stock footage from any Wal-mart at 5:00 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving? Soylent Green isn’t people— zombies are people!

In order to firmly link the character of a zombie with the admittedly stereotypical lower middle class American, perhaps this is a good time for a zombie character trait summary.

I. Zombies are completely mindless. They cannot solve even the most rudimentary logic games. Some movies and stories exploit this fact to brilliant black comedic effect. (Reason #5: Zombies are great because comedy engenders laughing and every time a child laughs a fairy is born.)

II. Zombies are creatures enslaved by their basic animal need to consume. They have no other desires. Be careful– it is easy to surmise that zombies actually try to reproduce or conversely, destroy things that are not zombies. But don't be fooled, these are the mere side effects of the zombie's sole drive to consume. If a zombie didn’t have to eat, it most likely would be on the lazy boy watching the game, trying to ignore your pleas for attention while you slave over the hot stove, fold the laundry, or burp Junior so that he doesn’t vomit all over the place.

III. Zombies are dead. The bodily functions of a human that has died and become a zombie have ceased. Therefore, zombies do not need to breathe and they cannot feel pain. The young people of today will try all sorts of illicit substances in order to achieve just such a physical dislocation. (Reason #6: Zombies are great because they beat you at your own game. Sorry, young-people-of-today.)

Well I’m running out of time, space, and energy and, very zombie-narrative-appropriately, I have not planned any sort of formal conclusion. As such, you might find any number of sequel articles re-postulating the greatness of the zombie, from Reason #7: Zombies are great because they can’t have children to Reason #29: Zombies are great because they blaspheme religion by making the ‘afterlife’ somewhat less than heavenly, straight down the line to the oft overlooked Reason #104: Zombies are great because in the moonlight they dance better than you do. Thank you for indulging this old man’s fondness for the Living Dead and like the topic on which I’ve preached, I’ll more than likely return to eat away at your brains with more mindless musings.

*Eds. Note: Toesock Doug is not specifically referring to a reader named Jackson, but is using the name as a general address, much in the manner of "chief," "scout," or "dude."

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Why Jack Black's Body?

The phrase "Jack Black's Body" captures every aspect of the many-faceted, multi-dimensional, mysterious magazine that is JB's Body ...

1. it's literary, as in "john brown's body"
2. it's historical due to the actual john brown
3. it's contemporary because of the actual jack black
4. it's cinematic by way of jack black's illustrious film career
5. it's ironic- his body being one of jack black's lesser attractions
6. it's unpredictable, like JB
7. it's scatalogical, like us
8. it's musical, like the D
9. it's artistic, encompassing many shades of black
10. it's the rock band we never were

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