Neil Gaiman, Multiple titles
- Death: The High Cost of Living (Started September 25 � Finished September 25, 2003; 104 pages)
- Death: The Time of Your Life (Started September 25 � Finished September 26, 2003; 96 pages)
Some other people might have to confirm this, but I think I went to my first punk show somewhere around 1983-4 to see The Faction, Aggression, Ill Repute, and The Drab. I still had long hair in those days, something Brian insisted was going to get me beaten down.
Soon after I went to a shaved head and then a brief Sid Vicious phase with spiky blue-black hair. When I realized I was spending more time in the bathroom working on my hair than my sister, I opted for the Misfits Devilock, which I still have, more out of comfortably and familiarity than anything else. And yes, I had the unfortunate era with the thick black eyeliner to match the Devilock.
But we won�t talk about that.
Anyway, That�s a long time to be a dopey looking punk. But despite the time that has passed, I never really had a punk rock girlfriend. Oh, I had lots of girls who were into punk, which was pretty much a prerequisite as all I wanted to do was play music and go to shows. But if I showed you a picture of my second serious girlfriend, you would have thought she was a hippie (which she most certainly wasn�t � I have standards).
But the rest of the girls I dated fell into two categories: Plain Janes, or Death Rockers. The first category stemmed from the same reason I stopped spiking my hair every morning � if you spent too much time getting ready, you really had nothing more than a costume.
But the death rockers were able to maintain a safe distance from the public maintenance profile, as all most of them needed were some white pancake makeup, black eyeliner and some lipstick. Throw on some black clothes and a new dye job for their hair every three months and they were ready to go.
So yeah, I dated quite a few deathrockers. This was a time that while there still were classifications � punk, skinhead, deathrocker, goth, skater, etc., etc., ad nauseam � everybody seemed to get along with each other; we were all freaks.
Just to further the embarrassing stories about myself, one of the neatest things I remember was when the Oakridge mall police decided to sweep the center and expel all the �weirdoes.� I don�t remember what their reasoning was, all I know was that we were picked up early on, placed into a forced procession through the mall, and by the time we reached the other end there were at least 80 people, all freaks and all being escorted out. It was an image straight out of Surburbia.
The reason I liked that incident so much was the show of solidarity, even if it was forced upon us. All of us were laughing and joking as we were marched along, and it�s the last time I remember seeing a scene where everybody � and I mean EVERYBODY � liked each other.
Shortly thereafter, American Nazi Tom Metzger started his skinhead recruitment movement, called �White Aryan Resistance,� or WAR. The skinheads being, well, not so bright, signed on. The punks such as myself, told the skins they were fucked, and the tensions ran high. The deathrockers and skaters drifted away, wanting to avoid conflict.
And yet I kept dating deathrockers. I�m not exactly sure why, but I think punk was moving toward a more imbecilic nature, with the Angry Somoans and the Descendents becoming more popular than bands like The Subhumans and Dead Kennedys. The deathrockers at least still liked to think, albeit they only thought about how nice it would be to die.
Death, one of the side characters in The Sandman comic series, appeals to a lot of deathrockers. After all, she�s inhumanly skinny, she wears thick black eyeliner, has hair like Siouxie, wears a lot of black, including high black boots (which I still find extremely sexy), and wears Egyptian jewelry around her neck. To top it off, her name is Death! You can�t get any more deathrock than that!
But really, is Death all that great of a character? I loved her at first, and I even found an action figure to mount to my car so I would be riding with death, just like a certain MST3K episode. But now, as I have finished all of The Sandman run, I�ve found Delirium to be a far more fascinating character. I know this entire rant won�t make sense to anyone who hasn�t read the Sandman series, but what the hell. You should read more.
Death, in The Sandman and in the actual world, is not supposed to be a character to be fascinated with. Death just is. My favorite Death moment in the series comes when one unfortunate protests about the unfairness of being taken too soon. �It�s not fair,� he laments, �I didn�t get the same chances others did.� She answers by saying he got the same as anybody else � a life.
I love that line, but that�s what I mean about not being fixated on the character. She just is, so why be enthralled with her? You�ll meet her soon enough. Meanwhile, in The Sandman series and in life, the other characters work through their trials and tribulations. That�s what appeals to me � the act of trying. Sometimes you succeed and other times you fail, but until Death comes (again, in the series and in life), you should be doing something.
I think Gaiman understood this when he invented the character. So the fact that these two knockoffs were produced in the first place make me less enamored with the character. It reeks of giving the people what they want. The stores, while good enough, seem to have spawned not out of a desire to tell Death�s story, but to sell Death�s story to an eager audience.
The fact that these books contain forwards from Claire Danes and Tori Amos I think proves my point, as they don�t make any sense. Consider this line from Tori Amos: �She [Death] says things no one else seems to come up with, like let�s have a hotdog and then it�s like nothing�s impossible.�
Deep. She�s obviously nailed the accessibility of the character to the public at large. Or how about this gem from Ms. Danes: �I wonder what she [Death, again] smells like? I�m sure it�s fresh and clean and her laugh must be tinkly or maybe it�s warm and chuckly, but what ever it is, Death laughs a lot.�
Jesus Christ. I can�t say for certain, but I think I dated Claire Danes. Either that or all these deathrockers recite the same mantra: �Death Smells Fresh and Laughs a Lot. Death Smells Fresh and Laughs a Lot.�
Anyhoo, I�m pretty certain this was made for the Death hordes that have already read this, and I�m sure they love it. Even a Sandman fan such as myself thought is was pretty good, though totally superfluous. Now that I�ve read it, I would ask a deathrock chick what she thought of it, but as I haven�t been to the mall lately, I haven�t seen any.
Maybe that�s why I�ve been single as well. After all, I still have the same goddamn haircut.
