bEAST oVER aNTRACTICA PART 2

There's a line in an old Helloween song that goes "You better believe all the troubles you have will pay you someday." That sums up the last eighteen years of my life as a persecuted Iron Maiden fan. Man I have taken so much shit growing up from all directions for staying true to the Iron Maiden lifestyle. Even the childhood friend who first got me into Iron Maiden back in '87 called me a poser for liking it. Then after he broke me in to the world of Powerslaves and hookers from the East End, the mainstream Maiden fire kind of cooled down and even once friendly record store employees gave me crap for not adapting to the new cool trends in metal and hard rock, most of which involved the incorporation of flannel shirts and/or rap music. I even stayed with Maiden after I heard the Pope declared them satanic and banned them from the Catholic "must listen" music list.

From day one of my fandom when clear cassette tapes were all the rage through the late eighties when CDs were sold in longboxes and through the nineties as I was using record magazines to order Maiden through the mail, I kept the Maiden fire alive. I faithfully collected every Maiden album and single on some format, mostly CD. I wore the shirts as a teenager and I bought Maiden guitar tab books in Korea and I was downloading tabs I didn't have from the OLGA and all the guitar related adventures that being a fan of this band entails. I stayed with them through the multiple lineup changes and I even supported them when they released that god awful video for Holy Smoke that MTV refused to play on the grounds that it was too amateurish. Still I stayed pointlessly and moronically true to the band and to this day I still buy their crap and follow their side projects, all mostly in secret now because I can't really justify telling anyone about what I'm into. It's just not that interesting to others. As a good cover in awkward social situations I do have knowledge of what the kids are into nowadays, namely Rob Thomas Band and James Blut.

So guess what has happened down here in the last place on earth I would ever expect to find another Maiden fan? Two of my coworkers have got bitten HARD by the Maiden bug. These guys are admittedly new to the scene but they are totally batshit crazy about this band. What a bizarre turn of events. How is it possible that they've lived their whole lives and only now at this precise moment they pick this band to devote their souls to? It's mind blowing. I hope that their Maiden fire burns strong and I've tried to supply them with as much material as I could, as have other people down here who are only casually aware of the band. The birth of a new Maiden fan is always a beautiful thing, and in this instance I'm witness to twins. It's possible of course that being in Antarctica for six months takes a toll on one's sanity and this is just a passing fad in the lives of people living here right now. I also believe this situation is proof of my theory that all existence is a physical manifestation of a dream I am having and I'm actually ten years old right now and in a coma. There can be no other explanation for the Maiden mania that is currently consuming the space station.



Finding three people into the same band in one place is usually not that big of a deal. But when those people are in Antarctica and that band is Iron Maiden, you MUST believe that Steve Harris is a prophet and his songs are prophecies of future happenings in the affairs of mankind. Repeat with me now and know that it is true-"Oh well, wherever, wherever you are, Iron Maiden's gonna get you, no matter how far." You want to know how intense it is down here? My two friends went to Christmas dinner dressed in Iron Maiden shirts they bought using internet. Usually the single guys use Christmas dinner at McMurdo to impress the ladies with their finest clothes in the hopes of getting laid. But so strong is Eddie's grip on my friends that they overcame the natural urge to find mating partners in favor of impressing everyone with their scary shirts, effectively ensuring that no females would find them attractive and eliminating their genes from the pool.

Seeing two freshly minted rivetheads has had an affect on me, too. I've found their enthusiasm contagious and it has rekindled the wanting to outwardly express my fandom as well. But instead of wearing shirts or sleeping with Iron Maiden bedsheets as they do, I did what I've done since 1988 and drew a picture of Eddie. But this Eddie is a morphing of the Maiden mascot and the world famous Ivan the Terrabus. Ivan is a six wheel drive, 33 ton, 48 foot long offroad bus with 66 inch tires that takes me and other people to work out on the airfields here at McMurdo. Ivan embodies the Antarctic experience for many of the people who live down here as is evidenced by all the pictures people take of him when they come down. I put my drawing on the shared drive so that all of McMurdo has access to it from thier compruters. Now wherever I go, people are giving me secret nods and winks and calling me sir and telling me they can neither confirm nor deny the existence of said picture.

I am Jack's smirking revenge on the Pope and MTV.

Penguins Postscarred

GETTING OFF the nightshift and not going immediately to sleep results in me trying to figure out if my sunglasses or my headphones are the ones that connect to the iPod. So I figured it would be a good time to do computering and postcard writing. Holy crap I just spent 30 seconds wondering why spelling it "postcrad" looked wrong but "postrcad" looked right.

I guarentee if you dig deep enough into the blog of someone currently living on the ice, you'll find a post where they offer to send you a postcard. Why is it that bloggers from Antractica think normal people want their stationary? If maybe this was 10,000 years in the future and mankind has advanced space travel enough to make crappy hotels on the moon and I had a friend who went there and stayed at moon hotel and there are moon postcards-MAYBE THEN would I think a postcard from somewhere is worth having. But what is up with Antarcticans that think people want postcards from them? I postulate that the only people who want postcards from Antarctica are the people who are there writing them. NEWSFLASH ANTRACTICANS-Antarctica stationary is NOT that rare and sought after back in the states. Antacrcica correspondence does not equal the awesomeness that is MOON POSTCARDS.

Even worse than the Antarctican postcard fetishists are people from Antarctica who post their address on their blog so that you can send them stuff. This is dumb because at Atarctica airport you have to meet very stringent weight standards if you want to get out of here. If your bags are over the weight allowance you are (a) not going home or (b) going home without the fifty extra pounds of volcano rocks or penguin skulls or whatever it was you tried to sneak home in your garbage bags. Last year I was eleven pounds over because I was buying up all the postcards, trying to create an Antarctic postcard shortage. When I tried to leave here I felt terrible about it but that kind of shame apparently doesn't bother these blogger Antarcitans. If you see an address on the blog of anyone currently living in Antarcica, may I suggest that's what bowling balls and cinder blocks are for.

I've been meaning to point out examples of people who have done a good job lately of relating the Atarctican experience in the elegant medium that is web internet. Since I blow all my time on the harsh continent reading webcomics, playing with robots and drawing Iron Maiden fanart, I thought it might be cool to check out what normal people are doing here. But I forgot all teh links so you're screwed. Plus I updated Flickr Macrocrania with like 15 more pictures of me in a Christmastime situation or two around McMurdo space station. Also, pictures of penguns. It all starts at the bottom of page four and continues on through page five of the Antartica Summer '06-'07 set.

Speaking of talking rain gauges in Air Force, WreckerdSpecial.com is up and running, which is cool I guess if you like webcomics about the topic of my true life weather observing experiences portrayed in a hard hitting, reality television documentary style using little plastic army men and Microsoft Paint. It's almost worth going just to read all the crap there that alienated my coworkers and caused awkward social situations in my workplace over the years. If you go there you are the 3rd unique visitor that is not my wife or the suicidal fan of Tranzor Z that stalks me from MySpace. But hey, fans are fans. Who am I to judge.

So in short, if you are in Antarctica nobody wants your postcards and nobody probably reads your blog anyways. Back home people have better things to do like going to Wal-Mart and buying offensive shirts to wear while they throw their Wiis at their televisions. But if you are me in Antarctica then everybody wants to see pictures of you standing next to Christmas trees and they want to read your webcomicbook. Here is my address:

Esteban aka Evil King Macrocranios, SOPP
McMurdo Space Station
PSC 469 Box 700
APO AP 96599-1035

tHAT SPEcial Holiday Feeling

bEAST oVER aNTRACTICA PART 1

2002 was a weird time for me as an Iron Maiden fan. I had followed the band and Bruce's solo career throughout the 90's and the news that he was returning to the band was somewhat dissapointing. I liked Blaze and I liked Bruce's solo stuff and him rejoining Maiden seemed rather pointless to me. What new ground could they cover? Hadn't it all been done before? The live records like Live at Donnington and A Real Live/Dead one weren't all that great to me. I wasn't all that excited about Bruce returning and it seemed like a way to please the nostalgia fans to me.

So in 2002 Iron Maiden released Eddie's Archive, which was a box set with three double CDs. The first two were live material from the early years with Di'Anno through about the Seventh Son of a Seventh Son era. At the I wasn't interested in another nostalgia themed release and I passed on it. I still kept collecting their singles and new studio recordings but I swore off live albums and compilations. After getting the Run to the Hills live CD released in conjunction with Eddie's Archive, I figured Eddie's Archive was just more of the same live stuff I had 10,000 times over. I felt that none of their live material could ever be as good as the Live After Death and Maiden England CDs were to me. All the subsequent live recordings I felt were a waste of time. I decided I didn't need a 10,000th version of the song Iron Maiden live. But last week I figured I'd give this box a try and I was pleasantly surprised. In fact, it blew me away.

One of the double CD sets included in Eddie's Archive is Beast Over Hammersmith. I will wait for you to read about it at Wikipedia and then come back here for my thoughts on the awesomeness of this recording. What I intended to do here was a review of the whole box but what happened was I was so overwhelmed by the awesomeness of just the first disc of Beast Over Hammersmith that I decided to write about the tracks from that instead.

Beast Over Hammersmith was recorded live in March 1982 shortly after Bruce Dickinson joined the band but before Clive Burr left. So it's a snapshot of one of my favorite Maiden lineups at a time when the band had yet to make it huge and much of their now classic material was fresh and new. In other words, imagine if Jesus appeared tomorrow and told everybody he had a voice recording of the Gettysburg Address he wanted everyone to listen to. How incredible would that be? Well, listening to Beast Over Hammersmith is INCREDIBLER.

BOH is a great recording and because it's from the awkward period before most of the classic Bruce songs were written, the majority of the tracks are not usually associated with him. But this isn't just Bruce sings Di'Anno. Mixed in with material from the first two albums are songs from The Number of the Beast, which had yet to be released at the time. What a fantastic concert to have attended. What a great time in human history. Here's what I think about the tracks from disc one of Beast Over Hammersmith:

Murders in the Rue Morgue-What a treat to kick off with a live rendition of a song rarely ever on any official release. The only other Bruce version I remember of it live was as a B-side on 1985's Running Free Live single. I still remember the first time I heard that B-side. I was like, "Holy crap a live version of Murders in the Rue Morgue with Bruce!" Now I'm all, "Holy crap a live Clive Burr version of Murders in the Rue Mourge with Bruce!"

Wrathchild- In my heart this will always be a song best sung by Paul Di'Anno. Regardless, what I love about this version is that Bruce sings the lyrics so clearly. In fact for the last 20 years I had always thought the opening line was "Born unto a scene of avarice and greed...", but here Bruce clearly sings "Born unto a scene of angriness and greed..." So for the past twenty some odd years I have been singing it wrong!

Run to the Hills-Man Dickinson sings the chorus in a really odd way just about every time here but it's still awesome! To give you an idea of how magical a place in time this concert was, it takes place after Run to the Hills was released as a single but before The Number of the Beast came out. I love how they left in the monologues between the songs that Bruce delivers. What's ungodly cool is how at the end of this song he says "We've got a new album coming out on March the 22nd in a couple of days time." It's like if Jesus was lead singer in a band and at their first concert he grabs the mike and says, "From now on the world will be awesome," and then the world becomes awesome. Wow. It's crazy imagining a time in human history before Iron Maiden released Number of the Beast. What were we listening to back then? Did we just beat our ears with rocks? I don't remember.

Children of the Damned-At this point in the concert the audience is already familiar with most of the songs played with the exception of Children of the Damned, which is the first new unheard Maiden song whipped out live in this set so far. If I was in the audience I'd think, "Hold on-did he just say 'Peeling the skin from his eyes?'" Thematically, CotD still fit the Maiden mold of the time, being a song based on a story from movies, history or literature. Between Run to the Hills and this song, if I was a member of the audience I'd say the new album looked promising. So the audience is all like, "Okay, cool, we're getting pretty decent new Maiden songs with this new singer guy". But they hadn't heard anything yet.

The Number of the Beast-Then NotB is played and the world is changed forever. How friggin awesome and yet odd it must have been to be there when the Revelations 13:18 intro to NotB is read and not have anyone in the audience screaming along with it (as they do in every subsequent live recording). This would qualify as the earliest live recording of this song I have ever heard. This is truly history in the making. If I was in the audience after they played this song I would have passed out from the blood rushing to my weiner and my brain exploding at the awesomeness. Truly a key moment in the human experience.

Another Life-Has this song has ever appeared live on any official release, sung by either Di'Anno or Dickinson? Whoa! Another rare treat for me to enjoy, although I think it's one of those that sounds best when Paul sings it. I guess that's part of the fun of hearing live recordings from this era-in retrospect I wonder why Dickinson was singing these songs but I understand that from the perspective of a fan at the time there were certain expectations of the setlist.

Killers-The throat ripping way Bruce screams "Scream for mercy" has got to be heard to be believed. This is one of the rare occasions where I think he does a better job on a song originally sung by Di'Anno. Speaking of Killers, if you got "The Early Years" DVD and you saw that crazy awesome alternative lyrics version of Killers sung by Paul, the "BBC Archives" 2 CD set that's also included in Eddie's Archive has it!

22 Acacia Avenue-Fantastic version of this song where Bruce actually sings instead of screaming it as he does often on other versions.

Total Eclipse-Holy crap has there ever been a version of this song live released anywhere else officially? I know this same track also appeared on the Run to the Hills Live single in conjunction with Eddie's Archive, but that's it. I think since '98 Total Eclipse has appeared as part of every subsequent pressing of the NotB CD, but when I was a kid it was only available as a b-side on the NotB single. Disc one of Beast Over Hammersmith ends strong with this track, which is one of my favorites. Thank you Iron Maiden, thank you Eddie, and thank you, the boys.

Of Beings Moist and Famous

The one childhood celebrity I most admired as a kid was Kool-Aid Man. Wherever he went parties erupted. There was women and dancing and all sorts of hilarity bursting forth just because he showed up. I wanted to be like him. I wanted people to be happy to see me like all the kids were when he shouted "Oh Yeah!" Most of all I wanted the power to walk through walls. Maybe I was projecting a bit but I always sensed a hint of anger in Kool Aid Man, I guess you could say I saw right through him. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that the mother of excess is not joy but joylessness. So I wondered, Kool Aid man, what joylessness are you hiding behind your excessive partying and wild fruity flavors?

When I was a young teenager I really had nothing in common with my 7th grade classmates but for some reason I still thought they were all reading comic books like I was. I just thought comics was what everybody did, even girls. I also thought everybody at school was obsessed with me but they just had funny ways of showing it, and those funny ways were by ignoring me completely or throwing rocks. I just figured that everyone who knew me was a big fan and they all wanted to be my friend although I had done nothing of note or interest and I was remarkably nerdy. This was all totally understandable from my point of view because at the age of 14 I was totally batshit crazy.

Then came the day in 1988 when I could not hide my celebrity any longer. I did something so great and so newsworthy that I expected the kids at school to no longer be able to hide their starstruckedness when I walked the halls. I became a published author in a periodical with a nationwide circulation of over 100,000 readers. In other words, I got my letter printed in the Transformers comic book issue #42. That was the geeky robot nerd equivalent of winning the lottery, the Nobel Peace Prize and starring in porn.

I was shocked upon reading that letters page for the first time. Not only was my letter printed, it was the first one in the column, and it got responded to by the editor. Many letters got printed without editorial response, but so well written and thought provoking was mine that the editor of the comic responded to it. Or maybe they just read it and thought I was smoking the most rare and exotic crack on the planet and my bizarre thoughts had to be shared with children everywhere. I did notice they rewrote a lot of it to make it sound more interesting and as a coping mechanism I tell myself that the nerdiest portions were embellished by the editors. Almost twenty years later reading the content of my letter makes me cringe with horror. What a total robot nerd I was! Because I like to share the most shameful and embarrassing moments from my life, here it is transcribed for you, gentle readers, in all its cringe inducing glory:

"Dear Misguided Autobot Lovers,
I just gotta write this: In issue #37 you made the Predacons look like a bunch of miswired clods. It just ain't fair. Stop making the awesome Decepticons look like a meeting of Wimps Anonymous. Sure, they're not the friendliest guys in the world, and Ratbat may be a jerk, but have some sympathy.

Another thing-are the Throttlebots gone forever? Their bodies don't look so good. I spent most of my allowance collecting them and then you go ahead and do this. Now I've got to find a car crusher that will smash such tiny cars!

Overall you people are doing a wonderful job. I wanna see Octane meet up with Ratbat. That should show the Ratster how to conserve fuel! Keep up the great work. Oh yeah, I loved the Headmasters!"

Oh god that was painful. I swear if you ask me today I will deny all knowledge of what a Ratbat, Octane, Throttlebot, or Headmaster is. So maybe it's for the best that none of the other kids at school read comics and maybe it's good that nobody I ever knew read that horrible horrible letter. But at the time I really wanted them to. I was so sure that the next day at school I would be swamped with people wanting me to sign their robot comics. I was sure I would be a seventh grade Kool Aid Man. Instead what happened was everyone was getting ready for spring break and one boy named Mickey brought a water gun to school. I was excited about my letter being printed and when I told Mickey outside at recess he sprayed me in the crotch with his water gun so it looked like I pissed myself. And as I lay alone and embarrassed, gazing up at the sky while laying flat on the ground during recess, I realized why Kool Aid Man was so pissed off all the time. Because being famous sucks.

Color My World FLATTENED

When people down here at McMurdo Space Station showed me thier pictures of little paper dolls in various locations around Antractica, I thought it was all part of some strange real life internet meme. I pretended I knew what was going on but inside I was screaming, "Why is everybody carrying little paper dolls around and taking pictures of them? GIVE ME THE URLs." Plus they were giving the dolls weird names like "Flat Stanley" and "Flat Chloe" and I couldn't figure out how this insane idea started or how it was spreading, but I figured, okay, I'll do something like this, too. All I had to do was make my own paper doll and then I'll take some pictures and I'll be cool like everybody else. So I printed up a drawing of Artoo Detoo and I cut it out and decided that I would call my paper doll "Flat Artie".




What I didn't know was that Flat Stanley is a legitimate project to promote literacy and writing among schoolchildren. It involves little paper dolls being mailed to various parts of the world. Ideally if I was doing it correctly, the doll would be hand drawn and mailed to me by some little kid and then somehow reading would happen. Who knows how it works. All I know was that I'm a total moron who made a little paper R2-D2 and I was taking pictures of it being held by a toy robot in various locations around McMurdo Space Station.



I think that by (a) making the doll myself and (b) making it a robot, I effectively (c) committed slanderous blasphemy to Flat Stanley and all the kids who pray to him for literacy skillz. I feel kind of dumb because instead of participating in the Flat Stanley project I ended up making a mockery of it and myself. I wish I never would have googled "Flat Stanley" because knowing what I know now totally deflates the feeling I had. The feeling that playing with paper robots meant I was all hip and cool and internet compatible. In reality it just meant I'm retarded.



Thank goodness I didn't share these pics with anyone here at space station. They don't understand me like you do, internets. You're not like the rest of the Antracticans. You know me and you think I'm cool.

What did you just whisper to me through my screen?

Oh, I love you too, internets.

Meta Macrocrania

The Antarctica Summer 06-07 set over at Flickr Macrocrania gets updated today with pictures I took when I climbed Observation Hill, which is right next to McMurdo Space Station. There are also nice shots of me goofing off at work and playing with toy robots in Antractica.

For everybody who has been wondering what's up with Wreckerd Special, I'm changing hosts because I've finally outgrown Geocities. (Yeah, I know-welcome to 1999.) There's growing pains, though. Until the DNS propogates wreckerdspecial.com I have to use the crappy IP address for the link and that takes forever. That's why it doesn't load fast but it's still the same lame comic about my observering days in Air Force. There are like four new strips, though. If you're waiting for that crap to load let me tell you now-suspense breeds dissapointment.

Speaking of dissapointment, this week's topics on PSMR will include my review of an old Iron Maiden CD boxset, the adventures of Flat Artie, and my rumblings on the time I got a letter printed in the Transformers comic book in 1988. All that plus the usual Toy Robot Ad from 20 Years Ago of the Week. So make sure to erase me from your bookmarks now.