JUST CALL ME "IL BUNCHO"

Cover art by Francesco Biagini.

A few months ago I was interviewed by comics journalist Antonio Salinas for an Italian book on the career of superstar comics author Grant Morrison, and he just posted a shot of me holding my comp copy of the book to the book's website. The interview was fun on its own, but it was a real kick to see my words rendered into Italian alongside images of the original Chris Weston art that I own from THE FILTH, the massively-bizarre series of Grant's that I edited for ten and a half issues before getting the boot from Vertigo (it was a thirteen-issue series). You can see my smiling and freshly-shaven-pated mug with Italian text by clicking here, but the photo sans text is seen below.

And words cannot express how much I love this:

From the GRANT MORRISON ALL STAR website.

STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION-EPISODES WORTH KEEPING

NOTE: I originally wrote and posted this a little over six years ago but I'd taken it down in order to add photos, and while forging ahead in the overrated train wreck that is BATTLESTAR GALACTICA I was reminded that I needed to finish it, so here it is. And special thanks goes out to regular reader Will, who correctly pointed out that I had confused the two-part "Gambit" with the one-part "The Chase." You can read his comment below, and I have corrected the post accordingly.

Purportedly the most successful television series produced for syndication during its day, STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION ran for seven seasons and an impressive total of one hundred and seventy-eight episodes (of which only one was a “clips” show). It aired daily on the SPIKE TV network for years and is available on DVD in exorbitantly priced full-season boxed sets, and with such constant exposure it’s easy to see that much of its run was mediocre at best and downright fucking terrible at its worst.

The disastrous first season was easily the most dire in the show’s entire run, a creative train wreck across the board, complete with cheap looking sets, howlingly bad scripts, ridiculous costumes — remember the unisex skirt outfits for male crewmembers? — and the embarrassing agony of seeing the actors slowly figure out their characters. Captain Picard comes off as a bit of a martinet, Riker is a smirking frat boy in space, Counselor Troi begins a seven-season career of virtually nonstop irritation (though that Marina Sirtis is very easy on the eyes), Dr. Crusher is a bore, Worf is little more than a stoic baritone with a turtle glued to his forehead, Tasha Yar is the stereotypical tough gal, and Data is little more than a dull Spock wannabe. And DO NOT get me started on Wesley Crusher, perhaps the single most off-putting character in the history of sci-fi television…

Having watched this season again a few years back, I have one question about it: How the fuck did a show this bad get renewed for another season? Simple answer: STAR TREK fans will put up anything just to get a dose. How else does one explain STAR TREK: VOYAGER and the majority of ENTERPRISE?

I watched NEXT GENERATION during its original run on New York City’s Channel 11 and missed perhaps three episodes, but when it started running twice daily on SPIKE I can finally say that I have seen the entire series from start to finish as recently as six years ago, so what follows is my rather fresh-in-my-memory list of the relatively few episodes that I would watch over and over again. Not all of them are good, but all entertain me for different reasons and if I could assemble my own DVD collection of choice episodes without having to deal with the blatant extortion that is the list price of any given season boxed set, these are the ones that would make the cut:

SEASON ONE

# 3 "The Naked Now"

A disease first seen in the original 1960’s STAR TREK series removes the crew's inhibitions and Data gets some pussy. A bad, derivative show that’s worth it just for the look on Data’s face when Tasha Yar jumps his artificial bones.

# 4 "Code of Honor"

It's "Where the white wimmen at?" time on the planet of the Negroes when their leader gets a look at Tasha Yar and loses his fucking mind. Unimaginably terrible and so un-PC that it’s an unintentional comedy classic. To all you white NEXT GEN fans out there: I defy you to watch this with black friends present and not cringe.

# 20 "Heart of Glory"

The first taste of the Klingon fun to come as two of Worf’s people show up and we get our first look at the finer points of Klingon culture.

# 22 "Skin of Evil"

Tasha Yar gets killed while battling the evil pudding man (and I did not give a shit). Reminiscent of a bad classic DOCTOR WHO installment, this makes the cut because of Armus, a total asshole of a monster who I swear to God looks like ambulatory molasses or something.

# 25 "Conspiracy"

Worth it solely for the goriest scene in the show's history.

SEASON TWO

# 34 "A Matter of Honor"

Riker serves on a Klingon ship thanks to an exchange program and experiences deep space warrior society firsthand. The crew of brusque and violent soldiers are surprisingly endearing, and this is the episode where we finally see that Riker’s not just a douchebag. I just wish the Klingon officer Riker bonds with were given a name and seen in more than just this story.

# 35 "The Measure of a Man"

Data's sentience is put on trial, and his character is truly put on the map.

# 36 "The Dauphin"

Wesley finds first love with a very unusual girl... Perhaps the only tolerable Wesley Crusher story, this one really belongs to his love interest.

# 42 "Q Who?"

Meet the Borg. And what's up with Q's comments about Guinan? Hmmmm...

# 44 "Up the Long Ladder"

The ultimate in Irish stereotyping, only with the added perk of being set in deep space. It's a piece of outright shit, but it has to be seen for it's sheer hilarious offensiveness and should be aired annually on St. Patrick's Day.

# 46 "The Emissary"

Introducing K'Ehleyr, Worf's mate. Yet more Klingon stuff, and the episode that made Worf a major player.

SEASON THREE

# 63 "Yesterday's Enterprise"

Worth it for setting up a major continuity point that would unexpectedly return to haunt the rest of the series, but otherwise highly overrated.

# 65 "Sins of the Father"

The ongoing Klingon saga begins as Worf's family is stripped of honor.

# 68 "Tin Man"

Worth it for the most interesting non-humanoid alien life form in the entire series.

# 69 "Hollow Pursuits"

Introducing Lt. Barclay and his holodeck addiction.

# 74 "The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1"

The Borg abduct Picard and a lot of really heavy shit ensues. One of the best season cliffhangers in TV history, yet part 2 sadly falls as flat as a housecat squashed by a semi.

SEASON FOUR

# 81 "Reunion"

The Klingon saga continues; K'Ehleyr is murdered and Worf meets his son.

# 87 "Devil's Due"

Worth it for the evil “goddess” Ardra.

# 95 "The Drumhead"

A tense look at a conspiracy witchhunt.

# 100 "Redemption, Part 1"

The Klingon saga continues; Worf embraces his heritage, fucks off out of the Federation and gets involved in a Klingon civil war. Plus, we meet Sela...

SEASON FIVE

# 101 "Redemption, Part 2"

The Klingon saga concludes. Worf regains the family honor and we get the scoop on what's up with Sela.

# 102 "Darmok"

A fascinating study of inter-species communication, this gets my vote as the second-best episode of the entire series.

# 103 "Ensign Ro"

Introducing the coolest recurring crew member.

# 121 "The Perfect Mate"

Romantic tragedy in the face of arranged marriage for peace. You’ll really feel for Picard as he endures one of the ultimate male fantasies brought to life and comes up with bubkes.

# 125 "The Inner Light"

Picard relives the life of a long-dead man. To say any more would give it away, but this is hands-down the best episode of the series.

SEASON SIX

# 134 "A Fistful of Datas"

Yet another bad holodeck malfunction yarn, saved by an ultra-hot Troi in gun-slingin’ leather and the only truly fun episode that focuses on the strained relationship between Worf and young Alexander.

# 135 "Chain of Command, Part 1"

Picard is captured and tortured by the Cardassians while Captain Jellico (Ronny Cox) whips the Enterprise crew into much needed shape. Special points for getting Troi out of those stupid mauve PJ's and into a fetching uniform, and the hard-assed Captain Jellico should have been spun off into his own series.

# 136 "Chain of Command, Part 2"

Picard endures torture at the hands of Gul Madred (David Warner) and proves his complete and utter indomitability. A tour de force performance by Patrick Stewart.

# 142 "Birthright, Part 1"

Worf discovers a remote Romulan POW camp populated by Klingons, with more going on than is obvious at first. Features a short crossover with STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE.

# 143 "Birthright, Part 2"

See above. And it’s a shame that they never brought back Ba’el…

# 144 "Starship Mine"

As the Enterprise sits stationary in drydock, a group of thieves attempt to steal it while the crew is planetside, unaware that Captain Picard has returned to the ship to retrieve his horseback riding saddle. Lesson to be learned: Do not fuck with Captain Picard's ship.

#146 "The Chase"

It's the Enterprise against the raiders of archaeological sites. A so-so installment that is worth seeing since it finally explains why nearly all STAR TREK races are humanoid.

# 149 "Rightful Heir"

More Klingon fun as Kahless, the legendary founder of the Klingon ideal, apparently returns from the grave.

SEASON SEVEN

# 163 "Parallels"

Worf is caught in multiple alternate realities, some of which reveal intriguing possibilities he'd never considered...

# 167 "Lower Decks"

A look at four junior officers, including the adorable Ensign Sito Jaxa (Shannon Fill).

# 176 "Preemptive Strike"

Ensign Ro infiltrates the Maquis with unexpected results.

So out of a total one hundred and seventy-eight individual episodes I would keep only thirty-six. That ain’t a good average, kiddies.

THE FINAL SHEARING (MAYBE)

For the past few days I had been weighing an option faced by many middle-aged men, and after getting a second opinion from a person whom I respect, I have taken what could be a permanent course of action. In four months I will be forty-six years old and I still haven't quite wrapped my head around the fact that I'm really that old, but the natural aging process reminds me almost daily that the bloom of youth is fading and that certain changes must be addressed and applied. Fortunately the situation I was mulling over was in no way threatening to my well-being, but rather a case of personal aesthetics.

My formative years took place during the era of "black is beautiful," a theoretically excellent period in which American black folks were encouraged to embrace our own awesomeness and differences from the rest of the melting pot. Not at all a bad idea, and one of the things we encouraged ourselves to do was the embracing of our famously kinky hair and grow it out into a "natural" that eschewed ages of wearing it close-cropped or straightened via "the Process" in a presumed attempt at denying our ethnic roots (translation: "trying to look white"). During the decade spanning the late 1960's through roughly the late 1970's, the "natural" Afro was everywhere and the more ginormous and spherical, the better. Notables like Angela Davis rocked 'fros that looked like they had spongy, ebony Death Stars organically sprouting from their skulls and it was not only visually impressive, it was downright fucking majestic. They were a powerful visual symbol of freedom and soul, and its like has not been seen or felt since. Those examples of cranial topiary made their hippie-era wearers resemble proud lions or some grand creature from ancient myth, and no rocker of the Afro style had a greater impact on me than Jim Kelly, the super-cool black co-star alongside Bruce Lee in ENTER THE DRAGON (1973).

Jim Kelly, my Afro role model, as seen in the classic ENTER THE DRAGON (1973).

I didn't see ENTER THE DRAGON until I was fifteen but I was quite familiar with the visual of Jim Kelly, thanks to his ubiquity in the era's numerous martial arts magazines. Even mere static pictures of the guy gave off a near-palpable aura of refined martial cool, in essence making him a sepia analog to Bruce Lee, and upon reaching that point in adolescence where one seeks to in some way glean a measure of cool from their pop culture idols, I claimed Jim Kelly's awesome warrior 'do as my own follicular template. Once I was finally allowed full autonomy over how I wore my hair, I went for the Jim Kelly look with a vengeance and it took me nearly two full years of letting it grow wild before it reached the desired sphericality. Once it was more or less where I wanted it to be, I swear that shrubbery-like coiffure fueled my young man's piss-and-vinegar attitude and served as part of what made me visually unusual and an individual in my hometown (as though simply being a Negro in that locale was not enough to accomplish that) and on the campus of my university. A surprisingly erudite wildman a la the post-Shamhat Enkidu, if you will.

The young, sword-wielding Bunche during the late summer of 1986: rockin' the 'Fro and living as a free-spirited, merrily-stoned, aspiring warrior-artiste.

But, as with many things we admired and aspired to until we gained wisdom and fully understood them, the "natural" was anything but what our ancestors in the Motherland wore. The simple reality of the situation that Africa is hot. Really, really fucking hot, and maintaining a basketball-sized head of thick, woolly hair is not only potentially unhygienic, it's also hot and uncomfortable as a motherfucker. Hence native Africans since Day One having the good sense to either keep their hair cropped super-close or non-existent altogether. The shit I and other black kids of my generation grew up seeing depicted on a plethora of cheesy black light posters — comic book-style images of proud Nubian men and women with idealized physiques, sporting faux "African" garb and planet-sized hair, while herds of zebra ran across an idyllic veldt; images less realistic than those seen in the Black Panther's Wakanda — was therefore complete and total bullshit, and even if our parents knew that, they kept mum in order to instill in us a sense of pride that was lacking for many of them as they grew up under segregation during the dire pre-Civil Rights days. I can get behind the intent, but no one told us that the perfect 'Fro was largely a fantasy, and a fleeting one at best, and discovering that is a good hard kick in the skull to those of us who put in the time and effort to cultivate and care for one.

Yer Bunche in the late 1990's: hair so thick, you could have dragged me by it behind a tow truck and it would have remained attached.

As I entered into my late twenties and early thirties, I grew weary of maintaining my full-on 'Fro and I began to experiment with either shaving it outright — my first attempt at which I achieved by shaving my head smooth with a couple of those cheap plastic disposable razors, resulting in my friend Jared correctly observing "You look like you got into a fight with a cat and lost" — or wearing it in the occasional "'Frohawk" style.

The "'Frohawk," circa Halloween 1997: note the height and thickness as seen when not obstructed by having hair on the sides of my head.

Then — I'm not exactly sure when — I realized it was much easier and far more comfortable to simply shear it all off with a buzzer and render my skull completely smooth with a razor in the shower. I felt cool with that because I was no longer a kid trying to figure out how to be a man, and black men happen to look pretty good bald. Plus my hair still grew back with considerable zeal, so if I wanted to return to the full wool, why not?

Then came a summer afternoon two years ago, when my mom came into the city and we wandered about lower Manhattan, eventually stopping for a rest in Washington Square Park. As we sat in the sun, I ran my hand through my hair and noticed how thin it was in some areas. I remarked upon this to my mother and after a moment she said she'd noticed that my once-luxuriant mop showed through down to the scalp here and there, but she had been loath to say anything. Following that I went home and snapped a shot of the back of my head so I could have a look-see and judge for myself. What I saw confirmed what I'd feared, specifically that some of my hair had reached the consistency of cotton candy and that while it was not falling out in hunks, areas of it simply did not grow past a certain point anymore. Thus it was that I began either shaving my head bare or steadily keeping it buzzed very close.

I let it grow in in full starting in early October in anticipation of winter, but again I felt the area of sparseness and contemplated just lopping it off again. I kicked it around and around, again photographing the back of my head for visual reference, and finally I asked my dear friend Sukihoshi for her opinion when she came over the other night.

Late on Sunday afternoon: my amazing see-through 'Fro.

She appraised my noggin and blithely said, "Aah, just cut it off." I took that to heart and waited until early yesterday afternoon to hit my skull with the buzzer and then hit the shower with my Gillette Mach-3 razor in hand, and now my cranium is once again as smooth as a boiled egg, shorn for what just may be the last batch of hair that I allow to grow there for more than a month.

My just-buzzed-off hair in my bathroom's sink.

What may be my final batch of shorn longish hair, looking for all the world like a Tribble as played by Clarence Williams III.

The return of the "smoothie"-style Bunche.

My bushy hair and I certainly had our fun over the years, so really I don't regret ridding myself of it, but doing so is kind of an admission of defeat at the hands of the turning of the years. Oh, well. At least I did once get to have my hair at a good enough length to wear a Devo energy dome during one of the band's shows on a very humid summer day a few years back, and the humidity and the plastic helm's shape teemed up to effortlessly shape my Afro into a naturally-occurring new wave ziggurat. A good memory, and here are the photos to preserve it.

At the McCarren Park Pool Devo show on 6/26/2008: with energy dome...

...and without.