The Cruel Hand of Jabba

In my blog yesterday about the wedding trip, I made mention of my heterosexual life mate, Jabba, who has traditionally been the co-star of most of my greatest adventures. But it isn't all candy, rainbows, and whiskey with us... no, there's another side o our relationship. As Jabba himself put it yesterday, "despite being one of your best friends I will always find a way to mushroom stamp the things that you love." Where oh where do we begin with that?

First of all, I'm not going to explain what a mushroom stamp is. If you don't know, you can find out for yourself at Urban Dictionary.

Now, let's dive into a few examples.  First, there's Gwen Stacy, Spider-Man's first girlfriend. I've always been a fan of their love story, so much so that watching it play out in The Amazing Spider-Man this summer was a crystallizing moment for something in my life. She's the co-star of one of my favorite comic book stories, Spider-Man: Blue, a story I love so much I wrote a quite thorough blog about it once. She's a beloved character. Her death is one of the defining moments in comic book history... and since I've known him, Jabba has put forth the idea that she was a whore. So of course, a few years after he first posited it to me, a story came out in which it was revealed that she not only slept with the original Green Goblin, but she had two kids with him from that night of passion. Boy, did Jabba enjoy being right about that one; in fact, he enjoys it so much he brings it up every time her name pops up...

This illustrated Tommy Lee Jones love scene brought to you by Jabba the Black. Fuck you very much, Jabba.

Then there was the time my favorite author, Terry Brooks, had his own panel at the New York Comic-Con because he had written a graphic novel. He's been my favorite author since the seventh grade when the first book I read of his, The Talismans of Shannara, gave me my first inspiration to be a writer. In this panel, someone asked him about books that he loves, and he responded with The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley... a book that I find to be a complete bastardization of Arthurian legend in which Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot have a threesome. It is one of the three books I loathe most in the world... so of course hearing my favorite author praise it filled Jabba with unimaginable glee.

Wait a minute. Gwen... Guin... I'm starting to notice a pattern...

Then there was the time we went to see Return of the King in theaters on opening night and, right before the start of that three-hours-plus epic, he points out to me a flaw in the screen itself that I was then unable to take my eyes off for the entirety of the movie. Fuck you very much Jabba, again.

I mention these few instances out of many to preface a story I left out of the wedding blog yesterday. During the course of our time listening to Spotify in the hotel room, I introduced Jabba to Marianas Trench, a band I've been listening to a lot over the last few months who have a lot of songs I've really identified with lately. One such song is:

I really like that song. The female voice belongs to guest-star Kate Voegele. Now, Jabba was unimpressed with their music, so he took to the internet and did his thing. After all of a minute of research, he found that they've performed this song live with the bane of my existence, Carly Rae Jepsen, on numerous occasions. I hate that woman and her mindplague of a song, Call me Maybe, with the fiery heat of a thousand supernovas... but I let it slide, because sometimes you're on the road and you need a voice and they're all Canadian so whatever. But then Jabba dug just an iota deeper, and discovered that the band's lead singer, Josh Ramsay, not only has a co-writing credit on that accursed Call Me Maybe monstrosity, he's also the song's only producer.

So consider Marianas Trench mushroom-stamped.

Fuck you very much again, Jabba, you sour apple asshole!*

* said with grudging love, of course.