I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: THE DOUBLECLICKS-Pirates!  The PPDXYAR EP (2012).

I wanted to explore more of The Doubleclicks’ music, and their site showed off this EP.  It was made for Talk Like a Pirate Day (you’re already sold, right?) and EP is a tribute to the Portland Pirate crew of PDXYAR (whatever that is).  The first song is “The Pirates of PDXYAR highlights what I’ve come to understand is the real Doubleclicks sound: ukulele and cello.  But this one also has a host of backing vocals (make and female).  The song is all about the pirates of PDXYAR and how they came to be and how the represent Portland.

The second song “How Not to Touch a Pirate” is a simpler song which insists that, tempting as it may seem, you should NOT be touching any of the pirates (this seems like a real inside joke).  Its amusing and would probably be funnier if I knew more about PDXYAR.  And oops, this song even has an F-bomb at the end–watch out!

The final track is a remix of “The Pirates of PDXYAR, ”  And mostly it allows more funny backing vocals.  It’s a better, funnier track because of it.

I’m not sold on The Doubleclicks yet.  I like them, but I think more in small doses.

So it turns out that PDXYAR is a Portland-based pirate crew, which you can read about on their website.  The lyrics to the song seem to explain  the origins of the pirates (kickstarter).  Frankly, I don’t know why the pirates (and the Doubleclicks) haven’t appeared on Portlandia yet.

[READ: February 7, 2013] Alison Dare: Little Miss Adventures 2

Volume 2 of Alison Dare is just as fun as Volume 1.  Although I admit the first story was a little confusing (I was never really sure exactly how these books were published originally, so it wasn’t clear that the first few stories were connected.  Although in retrospect it seems obvious enough.

In the first story, “What I Did on My Summer Vacation” it’s obvious that Alison doesn’t have much in the way of the excitement that girls expect from her.  So she makes up an elaborate story which all of the girls (except her two close friends) find wonderful   In “The Unbelievable Truth” we see what really happened (and we see that Alison’s story wasn’t far off, but that details make all the difference).

In “The Perfect Gift” the Blue Scarab (aka Alison’s dad) searches for the perfect gift for his daughter.  But that proves harder than he thought, especially when she accidentally takes a precious jewel that he has recovered in a mission.  In “A Day at the Museum” the girls open something they shouldn’t and unleash a plague.  This ties to the previous story in an unexpected way.  And in “The Gift Exchange” the previous two stories come together for a satisfying conclusion.

With all of the cross story ideas this first section was a lot of fun.  It was very different from the second book “Alison Dare and the Heart of the Maiden” which proves to be an oversized two-parter continued in the next book (the third book in this volume .  This story proves to be a lot of fun because Torres and Bone have our heroes relive certain adventures after having been gassed by a combination of incense and skunk, causing amnesia.  Each time slightly more is revealed and slightly more of their memory returns  and yet they wind up repeating some of the same events each time they wake up (after oversleeping, of course).

Alison’s mother becomes involved in the saga (which Alison and her friends help to solve despite the amnesia).  But what’s fun about the story is that the girls get in trouble for doing something very minor at the end of the story (especially given what they’d been up to).  For what proves to be a kind of fun and silly story there’s a lot of action and intrigue and the story is well-designed and clever.  Plus, there’s fighting nuns and a story about Joan of Arc!

The volume ends with some Sunday comics.  These comics look like Sunday panels and redo some of the stories included here in a Sunday comics format.  One or two continue for multiple weeks but with  punch line at the end of each week.  I can’t find out anywhere if these were ever actually published as Sunday comics or not.  But it’s fun to see a familiar item in an unfamiliar format.

I believe that this was the last volume of the Alison Dare series.  Which is a shame, it was a fun adventure series starring a daring young girl.