This Valentine’s Day, Lucha Va Voom at the Mayan Theatre is where you two lovebirds should be, in-between watching sweaty men in masks beat each other up, there’s burlesque stripteases by some of the finest ladies in the biz, including the lovely Michelle L’Amour. While there MAY be some explaining to do on why you had a hard-on even when the stripteases were going, the obvious plan of attack is to body slam your lover…on to the bed. ¡OLE!

Tickets available at ticketweb.com and our outlets:
Wacko, 4633 Hollywood Blvd
BRAT, 1938 14th St, Santa Monica
Garage Pizza, 100 1/2 West 7th Street, Downtown LA

http://luchavavoom.com/
http://twitter.com/LuchaVaVOOM
http://www.facebook.com/LuchaVaVoom
http://www.youtube.com/LuchaVaVoomVideo

Listen on as Matt and Mondo put on their big boy pants and talk to two of punk rock’s biggest heavyweights. First, the dynamic duo talk with Tony Weinbender, all-around Fest czar to discuss the upcoming Fest 10! Also joining the podcast is Less Than Jake drummer and Paper + Plastick owner Vinnie Fiorello. Vinnie talks about the upcoming Anthology release as well as the day to day of his label.

Click HERE TO DOWNLOAD!

And check out the past episodes HERE

This month’s cover art continues in the hand made parody art, though this masterpiece was painted by yours truly. That’s right, I was able to get my hands to do what my mind wanted them to for a couple of hours.

Here’s where you go clicking here ->Killer Sharks 5<- to get a zip file full of audible deliciousness.

Track Listing:
Home (RAC Mix) – Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
Soft Skin – Mountain Man
No Medication – Washington Square Park
Forty Hours – Rock Out City
Proxy – Echo And The Bunnymen
I Can’t Wait – Twin Shadow
Waking The Dead 2- Places and Numbers
Brave Man’s Death – J Roddy Walston and The Business
Eleanor, I Need A Garden – Banquets
NaNaNa – The Californian
Balmville Motel – Richard McGraw
Little Man – Good Will
Sons of Sons of Saviors – CAW! CAW!
Kapitel 1 – Under Byen
Secrets – The New Loud
Get To Know Me Better (Ecstasy Remix) – Naughty By Nature feat. Pitbull
You’re Already Gone – The Dig
Dance With Me – Stewart
Where You Wanna Go – Red Wanting Blue
The Paper – Soul Rebel Alliance

-Jonathan “The Emperor” Yost

Killer Sharks 4 brings you jams from artists from a wide range of genres and locations. 22 tracks, all free to you with a simple click of the mouse! We hope you enjoy and be sure to leave a comment here telling us what you’d like to see more of!

Make the mouse go click HERE -> Killer Sharks 4 to download your copy now. The set list:

Shaw – Lion In A Cage
Cast Spells – Pioneer Scalps
Wakey!Wakey! – Twenty-Two
The Whitsundays – I Can’t Get Off My Cloud
Kyle Michael Neal – Get Me Gone
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – Beat The Devil’s Tattoo
Walter Schreifels – Arthur Lee’s Lullaby
Hobo Jazz – Old Bones
Destroy Nate Allen – Loving You
Coffee Project – This Is Me Getting Over You In Two Chords Or Less
Maxwell Smart – Waiting
Half Past Two – 1000 Miles Away
Hesta Prynn – Can We Go Wrong
The Superions – Totally Nude Island (The Lolligags Remix)
Derek & The Darling – Hustler With A Rescue
Blasfemea – Maria
The Shondes – Make It Beatuiful
Robert DeLong – Just Movement
Magic Man – Daughter
Communipaw – Take Over
Primal Static – Waking Shadows
The Wonder Years – Logan Circle

-The Emperor

Art by the wonderful Christine Curry

Man, with all the excitement that’s been going around Racket lately (new site, Spring Issue, ummm, lunch), we’re a bit late in presenting you our third MP3 compilation in our Killer Sharks series.

Killer Sharks 3 has some insanely rad acts for you, including World’s Greatest Ghosts from Portland, Ivan Ives, a rapper originally from the USSR, some Florida punk in the form of The Tubers and Spanish Gamble, some SoCal hip hop from Late Bloomers and MC Prototype, and even some dance tracks courtesy of Veil Veil Vanish, Love Grenades and Electric Valentine.

You can make some click-love HERE -> Killer Sharks 3 to download your copy now!

Here’s the tracklist for you crazy kids:

1. World’s Greatest Ghosts – Phantastes

2. The Laughing -Help Me

3. Tubers – The Expense of Flight

4. Saint Motel- Dear Dictator

5. Barzin – Look What Love Has Turned Us Into

6. Best Coast – This Is Real

7. Love Grenades – Tigers In The Fire

8. Veil Veil Vanish – Anthem For A Doomed Youth

9. Rhett Frazier, inc – U Can’t Stop

10. Electric Valentine – Beat Drop

11. Heavy Young Heathens – Sha La La La La

12. Twin Tigers – Passive Idol

13. Spanish Gamble – The Art of Settling

14. The Whigs – Hundred/Million

15. The Frail – Addicted

16. Paper The Operator – The Pendulum

17. Aloha – Moonless March

18. Late Bloomers – Talkin’ Talkin’

19. Ivan Ives – All The Love That I Wasted

20. Movits! & Zacke – Först tar vi Manhattan

21. MC Prototype – Supposed To Dance (Feat. Newsbrief)

-The Emperor!

What really lies beneath the politics and the issues is a problem- families struggling to support their way of life, moving from town to town, following whatever harvest or work they can find.

Harvest of Hope, created in 1997, is moving forward to becoming a solution to that problem.

“In 1995, I began work at the State University of New York at Oneonta, responding to calls from migrant farm workers to a newly-established National Migrant Education Hotline.  A good percentage of the calls were requests for financial aid for car repairs due to breakdowns while traveling, gas, medical services, rent, utilities, food, clothing and funeral expenses. However, the federal funding for the Hotline did not provide money to provide emergency financial aid. I soon discovered that federal, state and local financial aid to migrant farm workers was often limited or not available at all,” Harvest of Hope founder Phil Kellerman said in an email interview.

With inheritance from his grandmother Dr. Helen Zand, Kellerman founded Harvest of Hope. The foundation provides emergency financial support to migrant families for needs such as utilities, medical bills, and car repairs.

Harvest of Hope also works to be an advocate for migrant workers and raises awareness for their struggles.

“Before the Harvest of Hope Foundation can solicit donations it has to make its mission clear to people, and that includes explaining who harvests and produces our food and why migrant farm workers and their families earn our support.  Due to the rural nature of their work migrant farm workers are often invisible to most Americans, and there is very real disconnect between the food we eat and those who work the soil.  Thus the Foundation is continually an ‘active voice’ for migrant and seasonal workers.  On behalf of HOH, I take every opportunity to give talks, workshops and participate in fund-raisers to generate awareness of the contribution migrant farm workers make to the food chain,” said Kellerman.

How do they raise awareness? Well, one amazing way is the Harvest of Hope Fest.

The Harvest of Hope Fest is a family-friendly all ages punk rock fest held at the St. John’s County Fairgrounds  over March 12-14, 2010. No Idea Records’ Ryan Murphy paired up with HOH founder Phil Kellerman and friend Ryan Dettra to put together this spectacular punk rock affair, all in the name of the charity.

Murphy and Kellerman met while working in Gainesville at the “Libros de Familia” afterschool literacy program, which was funded by HOH. They discovered they had mutual friends and hit it off- and then got talking about making a difference.

“The more I got to know Phil, the more I got to discover the amazing work that he does with the foundation.  I also got to know more about how much support the foundation needed and I started thinking about what I could do to help out.  Since I’ve worked at No Idea for so long, and I know a ton of bands, the most obvious thing that came to mind was to throw some benefit shows.  The idea really caught on with bands I’m friends with and a lot of great bands really embraced the idea and the foundation.  During this process, my long-time friends in the band Against Me! really got behind me in doing this and offered to do a string of shows to support HOH foundation.  They raised over $18,000 for the foundation, and Phil was absolutely blown away!,” Murphy explained in an email interview.

From there, Murphy called up Dettra (Dettra runs shows at the St. Augustine Amphitheatre and St. Johns County Fairgrounds) and asked if he could help set up a benefit show with Against Me! Together, with a $50,000 grant from St. John’s County and working with the team at No Idea (the same folks who pull off The FEST every year), the Harvest of Hope Fest was put together.

Since this was born out of Gainesville and No Idea records helped to put it together, naturally, it became a huge punk rock festival, featuring Billy Bragg, Anti-Flag, Broken Social Scene, and Strike Anywhere, among hundreds of other alternative and punk acts.

“Working at No Idea for 10 years and being heavily involved in the punk rock community in Gainesville of course affects my end of things as far as reaching out to bands and getting them to play HOH,” Ryan Murphy said. “There definitely is a huge response in the punk rock community to help support the cause and that helps as well. Having been in the FEST every year here in Gainesville too, which is a primarily punk oriented festival, that helps who we can reach out to.  I feel that Ryan Dettra also does an amazing job bringing in a lot of the bigger indie acts, as well as hip hop artists.  It seems that our festival’s main demographic is college age kids, so we definitely try to plan accordingly.”

Both Kellerman and Murphy tout the importance of being aware of crises that affect our nation- especially for today’s youth.

“I think people are afraid to get involved with things that seems bigger than them…and that’s fair.  But getting involved in just the smallest ways can make really huge differences.  People becoming aware of issues that affect the world, and the little things they can do is very empowering.  We seem to be moving little by little towards a more aware world, whether it be environmental issues, the importance of our health, the political process, our nation’s effect on other countries in the world,” said Murphy.

With events like this, it’s hard to think that people could come away from them anyway but inspired and moved to be more aware.

“Festivals such as the Harvest of Hope Fest give me hope.  Last year we met many great youths who love diverse music and were receptive to the message about migrant farm workers.  A result from the Fest has been bands all across the country who have put on their own local shows for the Foundation. We have also had a slew of students from around the country contact us to express interest in doing service learning and fund-raising projects for HOH,” said Kellerman.

One can even see the change created in the rowdiest of concert goers- “Last year at the festival, even the drunkest and most seemingly apathetic concert goers I would occasionally catch talking to Phil Kellerman… and walking away with a more inspired and aware look on their faces,” said Murphy.

The power of knowledge, community, and music, coming together to benefit others- what could be better than that?

The 3-day festival will feature hundreds of musical acts, various information booths, a Saturday Kids Matinee (with Kimya Dawson, Justin Sane, and bouncy houses), camping, education, and environmental awareness.  Harvest of Hope Fest ticketing info, information on the organization and its partners, and anything else you might want to know can be found at Harvestofhopefest.com.

–Caitlin Elgin

These are the ten albums that have come out this year that I can’t stop listening to. I continually come back to these, whether it’s in the car, on the computer, or while I’m waiting on some chick with fifty million coupons writing a check at the grocery store. And, in no particular order, are the ten best albums I’ve heard this year:

Thrice – Beggars
Taking every aspect of what they had accomplished in The Alchemy Index, Thrice crafted an album that is as equally explosive as it is introspective. In ten songs, they accomplish an epic amount of musicianship and exhibiting a level of maturity that it takes some bands a lifetime to develop. It is made all the more incredible by the fact that I could care less about any of their work before The Alchemy Index, and now I can’t get over how rounded their new stuff is. God, this album is amazing. Standout tracks: “Beggars,” “Doublespeak”

Teenage Bottlerocket – They Came From The Shadows
I read a statement from Fat Wreck Chords/NOFX’s Fat Mike that said, “I promised myself that I wouldn’t sign a band unless I genuinely liked their music.” This motherfucker has amazing taste. Fat put out some amazing albums this year, including Banner Pilot’s Collapser, American Steel’s Dear Friends and Gentle Hearts and Pour Habit’s Suiticide. But as great as they are, it’s TBR that has me screaming along to every song. These Wyoming punks have put out a hell of an album, filled with the kind of energy that takes over. Dear lady in the Tercel, I was not yelling at you, I was screaming “Todayo!” at the top of my lungs. Sorry. –The Emperor. Standout tracks: “Skate Or Die,” “Todayo,” “Bigger Than Kiss”

Moby – Wait For Me
I think this album was vastly underrated. Though filled with the same lush orchestral soundscapes and sampled gospel-esque vocals that made Play such an amazing album, Moby shows a sort of reservation when it comes to over-doing it. Wait For Me has that multiple dimensionality to it where it lends itself to both relaxing with a book and getting some shit done. While Moby can be outlandish at times, as bald vegan electronic musicians are apt to be, he sure knows how to create beautiful songs that haunt your dreams. Standout tracks: “Hope Is Gone,” “Pale Horses,” “Mistake”

Michael Jackson – The Stripped Mixes
This album caused a bit of ruckus, but here’s one of the times where I will actually defend a major record label, and I have points to back this up. Released digitally on the day of MJ’s memorial, and in CD form three weeks later, a lot of people talked shit on Universal, saying that it was in bad taste and a money-grubbing effort. However, if you have ever worked with a major label you know it often takes weeks to even get approval for a project, let alone the packaging art, actual mixing and mastering, production and shipping. There’s just no way that the juggernaut that is Uni could have pulled that off. Now, I usually don’t give a shit about remastered, digitally remastered or remix albums. I think they are lame. However, what we have here is a collection of early MJ solo stuff, as well as a handful of Jackson 5 jams that have had a majority of the orchestration removed and MJ’s voice cranked in the mix. What you get is an insight into just how talented this guy was from day one. Standout tracks: “I’ll be There,” “Ben,” “I Want You Back”

Lucero – 1372 Overton Park
Lucero has been a favorite of mine for the past four or five years, and I have to say, I think this is their most solid album to date. Now, they have individual tracks on Tennessee, That Much Further West and Nobody’s Darlings, but for an album on the whole, THIS is what it seems they have been striving for. Having added a small horn section has given them a revitalized sound while taking away nothing from the Southern twang this “punk/country-ish” band has become known for. Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle are all known for their scenes, and often pump out clone after clone of musical acts. Lucero manages to break out from the stereotypical Memphis mold, while being a credit to the city’s legacy. Standout tracks: “Darken My Door,” “What Are You Willing to Lose”

La Coka Nostra – A Brand You Can Trust
Between the shit that has infested MTV and crap-hop that seems to be made solely for the purpose of having girls grind their man at clubs, I was worried about the future of hip hop that focused on clever word-play and was made by people who you’d actually want to have a conversation with. Then La Coka Nostra comes on the scene. It doesn’t hurt when your group is made up of House of Pain’s Everlast, DJ Lethal and Danny Boy, along with underground MCs Ill Bill and Slaine. Add fantastic guest spots from Snopp Dogg, Psycho Realm’s Sick Jacken, Cypress Hills’ Sen Dog and B-Real and Immortal Technique. I mean, with this lineup, it would be hard to fuck it up. Standout tracks: “Brujeria,” “I’m An American,” “Fuck Tony Montana”

The Hold Steady – A Positive Rage
Like remasters, live albums hold little appeal for me. Imagine my surprise when the Hold Steady live CD/DVD blew me away. Recorded at Chicago’s Metro Theatre, The Hold Steady blast threw a sixteen song set list that has the perfect balance of the band’s bar-jukebox-ready jams and Craig Finn’s playful banter with the crowd. Finn’s raspy voice is the kind that you try to match when you think no one can hear you, and Franz Nicolay not only plays keyboards, accordion and harmonica, but have you seen his mustache? I can only dream of such manliness. Standout tracks: “Barfruit Blues,” “You Can Make Him Like You,” “Citrus”

Dear Landlord – Dream Homes
Holy shit, where do I begin with this one? The band that’s half Copyrights and half Rivethead somehow quadruples the energy found in either. From the first second of opener “I Live In Hell,” you find yourself assailed by the maximum possible amount of rock that anyone can handle. (You can see what I am talking about by downloading Killer Sharks 2!) Just like most proper punk bands, they keep the songs short (average of 2 minutes each) and filled with fist-pumping energy and plenty of “whoa-ohs” for added sing-along-ability. Possibly the best punk album released this year. It’s fucking awesome. Standout tracks: “I Live in Hell,” “Lake Ontario,” “Whiskey and Records”

The Dear Hunter – Act III: Life and Death
Casey Crescenzo’s bearded ass takes a step back from The Receiving End Of Sirens to create a weird pseudo-prog rock opera filled with lots of references to sex and hookers. I mean, what’s not to like? Layered vocals, a huge variety of instrumentation and Crescenzo’s ability to actually sing versus scream all make this album stand out from the over-produced pop-rock albums that have dominated 2009’s musical landscape. Now I have to go back and listen to the first two acts as well. Standout tracks: “The Tank,” “Mustard Gas,” “He Said He Had A Story”

Austin Lucas – Somebody Loves You
I think if more people were aware of this album, you’d have a lot less people saying “I listen to everything but country.” Lucas and his family of musician types have put their skills to task and come out with an amazingly well-written album that has everything from guitar vocal ballads to banjos, fiddles and the always-welcomed steel guitar. These are instruments that can be employed in everything from forlorn ballads to rowdy bar anthems, and are used perfectly to emphasize the album’s gorgeous imagery. While some of the vocal duos are reminiscent of the Johnny/June Cash ballads, it’s kind of creepy to make that comparison when it’s his sister’s lovely singing. Eek. Standout tracks: “Somebody Loves You,” “Singing Man,” “Wash My Sins Away”

–Jonathan Yost

That same maroon sky that gave birth to 12 to the Moon and War of the Worlds also bequeathed The Forbidden Planet, Star Trek, Star Wars, and other novels and films too numerous to count.  It has also given rise to one of the 20th Century’s most popular computer game franchises, an interactive tale of science, mystery and intrigue that continues to tantalize and enthrall, a little over a decade since it came out.  Fans call it SMAC or SMACX, but to the outside world, it is known by another name- Alpha Centauri.

Conceived by Sid Meier- the mind behind The Sims games and the Civilization series- and Brian Reynolds, in many respects the story of a marooned space crew on a Earth-size planet owed much to its predecessors in film and TV and video games as well.  But for a software franchise, it was revolutionary- ushering in an era of blazing graphics, unique turned based play and a narrative style that is still being felt in the industry today. Just ask Troy Goodfellow.

“It was a turn-based Starcraft- each faction is unique and requires a unique approach,” he said in an email interview.  “It laid the foundations of many ideas, like Civics, that would be central to Firaxis [Games] later triumph in Civ 4.”

Goodfellow should know- he’s somewhat of an expert on SMAC and Firaxis- the company where many of Meier’s and Reynolds’s ideas come to life.  As a student in the late 1990s, he played the game sporadically, exploring the world of Chiron (“Planet” to SMACers) bit by bit.  Today, he’s a blogger and frequent contributor to sites like Gameshark as well as Gamesradar and dozens of game magazines besides.

According to Goodfellow, he was sold on the game long before his hands touched the cardboard box.  The reason had as much to do with name recognition as quality.

“Meier’s name was an automatic guarantee of quality at the time,” he said,  “but I didn’t buy [the game] automatically.”

But when he did, his interest only increased.  Not only was the game addictive and fun to play, the characters within- survivalist leader Corazon Santiago, academician Prokhor Zakharov, UN faction leader Pravin Lal of the Peacekeepers, and Miriam Godwinson among others- were believable as well as human-like.  And sometimes, their personalities, and rigid philosophies led them to make unthinkable decisions that affected the players. The resemblance to real-life was uncanny. It was also what kept players glued to their seats.

“The main attraction of the game was- and still is- how they [Reynolds and Meier] set up a world of recognizable and distinct factions, each one an exaggeration of real-world types.  The scholar, the businessman, the environmentalist…each type is pushed to an extreme where their ideals become the ‘right’ form of government.  The result was a world of personality, compared to the leaders in Civilization 2 SMAC leaders seemed to have real character and priorities, meaning that you could anticipate their desires.”

But if the social aspects of the game kept players hooked, they were even more hooked by the technology of the game.  Borehole clusters, nerve staples, synthetic fossil fuels, and much more besides.  It sounds like the stuff of science fiction.  The reality is anything but.

“The technologies here violate no physical law,” science writer Paul Gilster said in an email interview. “We can see there is nothing in physics to keep them from working.”

Case in point: space elevators. Long a dream of physicists and geeks alike, governments and private agencies have been working towards making them a reality for years.  As early as 2000, NASA’s Advanced Projects Office drew up plans for just such an eventuality, hinging on nanotechnology.  Specifically, carbon nano tubes, lightweight materials 100 times stronger than steel.

Synthetic fossil fuels are no laughing matter either.  Although the implementation is nowhere near as sophisticated as it is in SMAC, already research and development is being done into making “synth fuel” as real as good ol’ Texas tea.  Clean coal technology is one example.  But there are others as well, some rarely unheard of outside of college campuses and government labs.

The race to colonize space is no less real.  But it has its hiccups- mainly politics and funding, but mostly funding.  That includes everything from spacecraft to the systems that power them.

In 2007, NASA cancelled its Institute for Advanced Concepts program.  During its nearly ten year run, the Atlanta-based IAC fielded proposals from scientists and academics from a variety of fields, everything from bio-nano machines to the Cave of Mars project to the fortuitously  worded New Worlds Mission. Total cost of the project?  27.3 million.

To put it in perspective, NASA spent nearly 15 billion in federal dollars for all of 2007, a fraction of the funds spent during the entire Mercury, Gemini and Apollo projects combined.

“At present, advanced propulsion technologies are not being seriously either within NASA or the European Space Agency,” Gilster said. “We have only a limited amount of work on solar sail technologies going on throughout the world, but what we might consider advanced studies for the future of the sort [portrayed in SMAC] is all in private hands, and here the problem is that researchers work often on their own time and sometimes have trouble connecting with each other in the same areas.”

Gilster is working to change all that.  Along with his friend and colleague Marc Millis, a veteran of NASA’s Breakthrough Physics Project, he has founded a non-profit organization, the Tau Zero Foundation, working to address the conceptual and financial issues of space travel.  In addition, Gilster hosts a website devoted to space travel, titled interestingly enough, Centauri Dreams.

Even if interstellar travel of the type Sid Meier promises gets off the ground, the social and political ramifications, to say nothing of the financial costs, are huge. Generational space flight would radically redefine human beings’ ideas of time, even aging. Politics would no longer be national, or geopolitical, it would be intergalactic.  Hello, United Federation of Planets.

For Gilster, the main need to travel into deep space is one of survival.  In a fragile world beset by resource wars, plagues, and Deep Impact-style asteroids, men and women need to get off this rock more than ever, preferably sooner than later.

“As long as we remain only on a single world, we run the risk of asteroid or comet impacts of the sort implicated in the death of the dinosaurs, or nuclear war, or plague or any number of catastrophic events.  In order to learn how to prevent a possible impact from an asteroid, we will need to develop a space-based infrastructure capable of working in the outer solar system, so as to be able to get to an object like this, years in advance.  Interstellar flight then, is all about protecting the species on the one hand and, if it turns out human interstellar flight is too difficult, expanding our range of understanding by sending robotic probes, perhaps at the nanotech level, to the nearest stars and beyond.”

For others, though, the interest in deep space is more visceral, even if they experience it via a video game.

“Humans have always been fascinated by stories of exploring the unknown,” Professor J.P. Telotte of the Georgia Institute of Technology said.  “Artists of every ilk respond well to allowing the imagination to play, and the farthest reaches of space would seem the ultimate possibility for such free play of imagination.  In the realm of science fiction, there is special appeal, as evidence the number of books that suggest the genre is about satisfying a human impulse for wonder.  Voyaging to the stars allows for stories that pointedly address that wonder.”

Though Telotte’s view of the media’s attitude with regard to space travel is less than optimistic, owing to the scores of dystopian dramas on TV such as Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica, in addition to coverage of accidents such as the breakup of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia, he has no doubt interstellar travel will become as commonplace as air travel is today.

“Each technological advance, such as powered flight, jet flight, rocket flight, interplanetary travel, has beckoned us to further steps.  Interstellar travel strikes me as the logical culmination of all those impetuses—the furthest point of exploration, the furthest frontier, the furthest reach of challenge to our technological developments.”

For Goodfellow, the experience with SMAC, and ergo space travel began and ended in front of a computer.   But all three men share the same sense of awe and fascination with the heavens that inspired Meier and Reynolds to mine it for material.  Only centuries can tell whether that same wonder, passed on to countless generations, will see their children realize their forefathers’ dreams of a new heaven and new Earth.

But one can always dream.

–Jack Winn

By day they are just another nameless face. Come night, though, they take off their coats and jackets and blouses and skirts, and put on their capes and cowls, and become something else. Some call them misfits. Others refer to them by more pejorative titles.  But they prefer to think of themselves as something more.

They are superheroes.  Real life superheroes, and while they aren’t exactly in the majority, they are vocal, and their presence looms too large to be ignored.

One such individual is Amazonia Alkidike.  It’s not her real name of course- her real identity is a closely guarded secret, as with many of the individuals profiled for this article.  Yet her story, like many who end up taking up the crime fighting cause, is all too common.

“There was an incident in January 2002 that happened right in front of me that prompted me to start this path,” she said in an email interview. “I saw a woman have her purse snatched right in front of me and she slipped on ice and broke her ankle. I did nothing but stand there and watch. I was horrified and angered at the same time.”

She filed a police report, of course. But then she just as quickly forgot about it. At first the Lowell, Massachusetts resident did nothing and went on with her life. She threw herself into work, family, and many other things, like many of her fellows do. Yet as time went on, she became more incensed and angry at the crime.

One day she happened to be sitting at home watching television when one of her favorite shows came on- Batman.  Whether it was the live action or animated series, we’ll never know.  Regardless, a flicker of inspiration flared inside of her.  Almost immediately, she headed into her closet and fished out all her old comics, searching for that right costume or pose to strike an intimidating look in the eyes of the wicked.

But Amazonia had a problem. By her own account, she is a fit, athletic woman, but not enough to fight crime in earnest. So she drew up a to-do list, got a gym membership, and started on the road to becoming Lowell’s first real life superhero. Her transformation happened in earnest months later.

“There had been an uprise in things like that [the January ‘02 mugging].  I knew something had to be done, so I went on my first patrol in May of 2002 and never looked back.”

She’s since been retired from the life. But in her seven years as a superhero, she’s logged literally dozens of nightly patrols, made acquaintances on the local police force, and developed her own contacts within the Real Life SuperHero community, or RLSH for short.  She is a founding member of the Vixens of Valour and has been active in the Heroes Network, an international registry of like-minded superheroes, as well.

But as with many superheroes, she was made and not born.  Nothing came easy for her.

“When I first started I tried to stop a fight between like six guys.  It did not go well and I almost landed [sic] getting raped. But it did not stop me. In fact I learned new techniques from that including just calling the police and watching. But I will jump in when someone’s life or safety is at risk, no matter what the risks are to me.”

As with many RLSHers, Amazonia’s identity and lifestyle was largely her own creation.  But sometimes, it’s the other way around. For Catman Hero, that was especially true.

“Unlike a lot of other RLSH out there, I didn’t choose my name.  It was given to me,” he says. “I was told that’s the way it was supposed to be.”

Even before he was formally inducted into the inner circle of superheroes, of the idea of Catman Hero, or Catman for short, burned in his soul.

“The idea came from a few old friends of mine and me years ago.  But originally I wanted to be a member of the Pa Kua Heroic Council.  Fate deemed otherwise.”

But Catman kept on keeping on. He formally began training in April 2006, studying  martial arts and working hard to better himself not only physically but mentally and emotionally as well.  A year later, he went on his first patrol.  From that first day on, his has never stopped working to improve himself, and as always, the focus has always remained where it has belonged- on the victims and the authorities, and not himself.

“I won’t ever consider what the police and paramedics do less than what I do,” he says. “I personally believe we [real-life superheroes] draw more attention because we do it with our own individual style. Each of us have our own suit, and each suit says a lot about each hero, their area, their environment, and what they do personally. We all have our strengths and weaknesses.”

Even with the general solidarity expressed by Amazonia and Catman, differences exist.  Between gender, location, upbringing,and overall philosophies, sometimes these differences come into conflict.  Not between individuals per se, but whole communities, or sub-cultures.

And sometimes, those things can get in the way of superheroes doing their job.

“My gender has been a hindrance to what I can do,” Amazonia says,  “but I have learned over the years to compensate for that.”

Compensation is one thing. Yet as women such as Amazonia have learned, compensation can only go so far, even within their own community.

“There are one or two men who come on a little strong or chauvinistic and it is really frustrating to try and talk to them. Because they try to put me and other women in the community down, but I just stick to my guns and answer as intelligently and as politely and positively as I can.”

Even without the gender issue, sometimes it can be easy to be misunderstood.

“People tend to be afraid of me,” Catman says,  “but that’s because they don’t understand me.  When they get to know me, they change their mind.  But they have to go past what they see with their eyes.  Of all the things they have to do, teaching people how to break stereotypes and be themselves is one of the hardest, but by being a genuinely nice guy and trying to inspire as many people as I can.”

Part of the mistrust has to do with the ambivalent attitude many Americans have towards vigilantism.  While many real life superheroes are a far cry from Superman or Batman or even gun toting rebels such as The Punisher and Grifter, sometimes they can run afoul of the law, even when they aren’t trying to step on authorities’ toes.  Whether the mistrust stems from a fear that they will “get in the way,” few can say.

What can be said is that the tensions between cops and real life superheroes is an ever present one.  A 2009 article by the UPI press service detailed San Diego Police Department’s frustrations with two would-be superheroes, Mr. Xtreme and MidKnight.  While most superheroes tend to observe and report, Xtreme and MidKnight went one step further- they got physical with subjects, and unlike the real life cops of Metropolis or Gotham, the SDPD did not take too highly to it.

As one cop quoted in the piece suggested, “Anyone who goes out and tries to assist law enforcement by handing out fliers and being proactive against the criminals is appreciated, but when you physically involving yourself in crime fighting, that’s vigilantism.”

The concern with people taking matters into their own hands is a real one, dating back to the Dark Ages, when police forces as we know them today didn’t exist. The mythical character of Robin Hood is based upon real life vigilantes in England. Then there is the Beat Paoli, a medieval secret society based in Sicily which protected wayfarers and commoners from robbery and other crimes. They are said to be the real life inspiration for the Mafia; most Mafioso from the region trace their origins to the medieval sect, a source of pride for gangsters and non-gangsters alike.

The first recorded masked vigilante group to show up on the scene was the Bald Knobbers, a dozen or so Missouri men who took revenge on violent bushwhackers in the aftermath of the American Civil War. You could say they were the first real life superheroes.  Yet regardless of their name or association, all these individuals- Robin Hood, the Beat Paoli, and even the Bald Knobbers- tended to have their own definitions of what did and did not constitute justice, and in a world without rule of law (medieval Europe and post-war Missouri definitely apply), that tends to be whatever the vigilantes and magistrates think it is.

Without an agreed upon body of law, one person’s vigilante is another person’s freedom fighter, and vice versa, making the very definition of crime suspect. Even today, vendetta killings are commonplace, even in places as far flung as the Philippines and Yemen. Absent the modern, Western-style form of restorative justice, retributive justice is the norm, and the violence devolves into a vicious cycle of killings and reprisals.

Even when a society has a rule of law, there is sometimes a double standard.  The series of lynches by the KKK and the “night riders,” contemporaries of the Bald Knobbers during the late 19th Century, is a prominent example. Between 1865 and 1890, nearly 5,000 individuals lost their lives due to extrajudicial violence, mostly African-Americans, but also Jews, adulterers, and homosexuals.  Republicans who opposed Jim Crow were not exempt either.  Anyone who didn’t fit the prescribed profile of the law abiding, peaceful American was a target, and this continued well into the 1960s, moreover these extrajudicial killings went unsolved for many years, meaning that law enforcement and society at large condoned those acts.

When a society decides that vigilante behavior is not in its best interest, in puts programs in place to discourage those behaviors. Police step up their offenses, and round up perpetrators of crime as well as would-be vigilantes, for the safety of the criminal as well as the vigilante himself, and ergo the entire society. Yet individual acts of vigilante justice do go unpunished.  Bernard Goetz, “the subway fugitive” of New York City, is a prime example.

Yet police have yet to figure out how to deal with the real life phenomenon of the vigilante hero in the cape and cowl. It’s a largely new one. According to a survey of Google news searches from 2000-2009, only six stories on real life caped crusaders were published in that ten year period, out of a total of 281 stories. Most are about the latest Hollywood blockbusters or satirical takes on comic book superheroes. The few that do focus RLSH in general tend to be of a comedic, human interest variety.

Further complicating the relationship between RLSHers, the police, and the public is the definition of “real-life superhero.” Few question that firefighters, police officers and paramedics are heroes.  But are their feats of courage enough to make them superheroes?

The media seemed to think so in 2001.  After the Trade Centers collapsed, there were between 1,000 and 1,700 uses of the term between 2002 and 2009.  Of those, a significant majority referred to the actions of the NYFD and NYPD officers on Sept. 11th, as much as they referred to superheroes, real and imagined.

Yet contrast that with the reaction many have to real life caped crusaders, and the picture is stark. Firefighters? Heroes, superheroes even. But superheroes for real? Man-children (or women-children, as it were) fit to be mocked. The fact that adults, at least those in the West, have a pejorative attitude towards these individuals lies in our concept of what it means to be an adult and a child-specifically, the concept of play.

The concept of play was first diagnosed as universal to humans as far back as the 1890s by psychologist G. Stanley Hall as well as Freud, Jung, and William James. Jean Piaget later redefined it to refer to actions performed exclusively by children. Yet in the West, the concept of play or play acting is largely reserved to children alone. Google Jean Piaget and play-acting- there are literally thousands of articles and dissertations on the subject, but very few on (non-sexual) adult role play.

Those websites that do choose to focus on it tend to focus on the subject of cosplay (which RLSH clearly isn’t for a host of reasons), or sexualized role play.  A Google search of “roleplay and adult,” for example, turns up over 2,500,000 hits ranging from adult-oriented RPGs to paraphilic infantilism.  A similar search in Google Scholar turns up 33,000 hits, everything from interpretive reproduction (?) to deviant sexual behaviors to examinations of pure vanilla MMORPGS like Warcraft.

What this says about our society is unclear, yet regardless of the root causes, the perception of dressing up as a something only children or deviant perverts do is not unlikely to change.  Unfortunately for RLSHers, that is a stigma many are going to have to live with, for now.

In the meantime, Amazonia is doing well. She has her own audio blog on Blog Talk Radio, marking her first foray into internet journalism since her retirement. Catman’s not doing too shabby himself, with a Myspace page and his own following of fans.

As the superhero and super-heroine show, being a superhero isn’t without sacrifice, and isn’t for everyone.  But sometimes, good things come to those who wait. Very good things.

–Jack Winn