And so our tale of romance gained and lost continues. Here's part one. There is one change. The person who is the basis for Lucille wanted her name changed to Lucy, which I felt was fair. Now get ready for heartbreak and loads of text with no graphics. I should let you know I do use an offensive term here but it is in effort to describing a particular way I was feeling and with no maliciousness behind it.
I sent an e-mail to Lola soon after the party. I asked her if she wanted to do something "arty" with me anytime soon. A few days later she replied saying she would love to only we'd have to wait a month. Law school finals were right ahead of her and she needed to concentrate on studying. I told her that this was a good idea as I was starting finals as well. No need to tell her that my finals for English Lit were a child's game compared to memorizing cases and precedents. This late in my academic career I was basically being asked "remember what we talked about a few weeks ago? How did you like it?" I would soon be given a diploma for the ability to fill ten pages of a Blue Book with my inflated opinions. With a law degree Lola would soon have the world open to her. With my credentials I could look forward to low paying (or more commonly non-paying) freelance work. Thus started my feelings of unworthiness towards the goddess Lola. A cadre of future Clarence Darrows were probably vying for her hand over on that campus. What was I? A little faggot who has more knowledge of Spider-Man's rogue gallery than social skills. Getting a date with a beautiful woman should by all means give me a more positive outlook. Instead I magnified all the ugly parts I saw in myself.
Thankfully I didn't let such gloom stop me from corresponding with Lola. I learned she wanted to be a lawyer who represents artists, perhaps finding herself working at a small boutique firm. She told me about submitting a film to the city's Jewish film festival while she was in high school (she even has an IMDb page). I mentioned the artist Mark Rothko and she wrote back this electrifying description of seeing one of his works and being devoured by the colors. Read that and her other messages I started falling real hard for the personality behind the pretty face. My opinion of her grew higher and higher. My absurd feelings about myself shrank even further.
I corresponded with Lucy about my feelings. She warned me against placing Lola on any pedestal. While Lucy loved Lola she admitted her friend could be narcissistic, impatient and elitist. A Russian upbringing had left her with little sense of humor. I tried to keep this in mind as the date grew near. Lola suggested the DeYoung Museum which was currently showing the touring Vivienne Westwood exhibit. As it happened I was reading Jon Savage's England's Dreaming, the wonderful book on English punk rock where Westwood plays an important role. She is Malcolm McLaren's friend, business partner and lover. She's the mentor to The Sex Pistol's mentor. I don't believe in fate but the idea gained some credence with me when the woman I was going mad over seemed to match me when it came to aesthetic preferences. Lucy's advice already being forgotten.
Standing outside the museum and seeing her walk towards me gave me such a warm feeling. While she was two inches tall in the distance her little hand exited her jacket pocket and waved to me while her head cocked and I could see her smile. I've seen a million smiles but the way her lips changed shape and her cheeks rose made her different than anyone else. I was put at ease and elated at the same time. She was smiling to me and only me. My low self-esteem was dissolving and I actually started to feel like a new, better person.
She stood before me and I realized that I've never seen her with sober eyes before today. I had also never seen her in the sunlight before. She was stunning, that wasn't an invention of my drunken infatuation. I saw her now as a real person, including imperfections. She had a gray birthmark on her upper lip. But that just told me all this alluring beauty was contained inside a real woman. It only made me go crazy for her in a new way.
While I was entering a dream state she apologized for being a little late. Like I cared. We entered the museum and walked through the permanent exhibits. She told me about her life and I told her about mine. She had a caustic view of her parents. She thought they should have gotten a divorce years ago. She caught herself and apologized, saying that she knew that might sound flippant to an actual child of divorce. I told her I didn't mind although I was a bit taken back by that statement. As we walked though the rooms she expressed her opinions on the paintings, not being excited by much of what we saw. She lit up when we got to the sculptures, telling me of how much she loved the process when she studied art in college. We talked about how the physical act of sculpting meant you would feel like a real accomplishment had been had. I wanted to liken it to the intimacy of sex but, in all my bashfulness, declined. It didn't feel right After all, she mentioned having a boyfriend
I was confused when I learned of this. If she was so dedicated to finals then when did she have the time for a boyfriend? Did she think of what we're doing now as a date with romantic interests behind it? She mentioned doing volunteer work at three different firms, hedging her bets in hopes that at least one would hire her. Perhaps she took a similar strategy towards men I wasn't uncomfortable with the idea.
Throughout the entire museum trip it bothered me. I didn't let it show. I still managed to give her a quick history lesson in English punk rock during the Westwood exhibit. Outside we found ourselves in a small concrete dome on the museum grounds. It was just us. Our voices echoed. I told her that I thought this was going to be something of a romantic enterprise. She said she was sorry if there was any confusion. She told me she loved Lucy but sometimes her friend says too much. I learned later that her boyfriend, Denny, was at the same party where she and I met. I still don't know why she developed a realtionship with him and not me. He was there first I suppose.
Lola asked me if I wanted to leave. I told her no. I was disappointed but I still felt a real connection here. I couldn't just turn my back on all this. Lola truly excited me. I suggested we get lunch.
At the restaurant she and I talked about family. She had a major struggle against her parents. She told me of how they needed to get used to the idea that their daughter wasn't going to just be the grandbaby-machine they thought she'd be at this age. Her fights for independence were often slapped down and decried by parents, especially in light of how traditional her older brother had been. I did a pretty good job of being the understanding and enlightened male during all this. She opened up in a way that I didn't expect on a first date. I did as well although I didn't have anything nearly as interesting to say.
We retired to a nearby bar. There she told me that even though she was in law school and appeared to have a bright future she had no idea what she wanted to do with herself. I realized that Lola grew up knowing exactly what she didn't want to be but she was still trying to find out what she does want to be. I no longer saw her as an angel from Heaven slumming with lowly humans like me. I saw her as a person with as many demons inside as any of us. At the time, invigorated by recently graduating, I was setting out to destroy all my insecurities. I want badly to help her on her fight as well.
We took a walk to, of all things, her therapist's office. During which I found out that she had never seen Citizen Kane. This would be our second "date." No person could live a full life without seeing that film. Outside her therapist's office we shared a nice long hug. The feeling it gave me was the more mature, wiser cousin to what I felt when I first saw her outside the museum. Walking back alone I saw some big writing in chalk on the ground: "You Will Die Happy."
Via Aquarium Drunkard is this Spin interview with Bob Mould coinciding with his new album from Anti- records. It gives you a good sense of the elder statesman of indie rock that is Mr. Mould.
I was pleasantly surprised to see Steve Fritz's article on Confessions of a Superhero on Newsarama today. The reason why is that I had just seen the film a few days ago on Netflix's "Watch Instantly" program. Growing up near Los Angeles I knew of the phenomenon where people would walk around Hollywood Blvd. dressed up as Superman, Spider-Man etc. and take photographs with tourists for tips. I always thought someone should make a documentary about those people. Now someone has and what they find out is pretty interesting albeit depressing.
When I started watching the film I thought I was in for a good laugh with some quirky characters. Early on there are some great moments. Joe McQueen says about his portrayal of The Hulk "People tell me 'The Hulk's not black." I tell them that in Hollywood he is!" Later Christopher Lloyd Dennis, who takes his role of Superman very seriously, lectures a new superhero on the scene, Ghost Rider, on the proper way to conduct oneself. A superhero must never smoke in public. The kid tells Supes "Ghost Rider can smoke in public, he's made of fire!" Superman will have none of it.
The film isn't filled with scenes like those. It spends most of its time exploring the people behind the tights and capes. Two of the performers, McQueen as The Hulk and Jennifer Gehrt as Wonder Woman, don't seem different than the thousand of other struggling actors in Hollywood. Instead of working in restaurants or office buildings until they hit it big they decided to get some exposure as costumed characters on the walk of fame. Gehrt's story is almost too much of a cliche. She was prom queen in the little Southern town she grew up in and then came out to Hollywood to make it as a star. Now she's going from audition to audition to get her first big break. She and McQueen are both likable but their stories aren't anything new.
It's Dennis as Superman and Maxwell Allen as Batman that steal the film. Dennis has to be the biggest Superman fan in existence. We see his apartment in the film and there doesn't to be a square inch that isn't occupied by some piece of Superman merchandise. He goes to Metropolis, Illinois every year for their Superman festival. He even has dinner with Margot Kidder. It sometimes appears that he really does believe he's Superman and being so will grant him fame and fortune. Unlike Gehrt or McQueen this isn't something to do while he tries to develop an acting career. He has some work as an actor but this is where it's at for him. Walking around with a red cape flowing behind him seems to be when Dennis is at his happiest.
Allen is the saddest figure in the film. If Batman was real it would be this guy. I assure you, that's not a good thing. He has a shady past where he apparently was a "bodyguard" for a Texas mobster. There is a staggering scene where Allen is confessing to his psychiatrist, who I believe Allen is required to see by court order, how his rage took a hold of him so bad he once killed a man. Allen is saying all this while he's wearing his Batman costume.
For Allen and Dennis this odd notoriety is the center of their lives. It keeps Allen from slipping into his old ways, although that didn't turn out to be much of a success. For Dennis it's his chance to make his reality a little more, well, super than what the rest of us have. It's fascinating but in a bit of a sad way. If you're ready for something like that I saw give Confessions a rent. Permanent Link: 6:24 PM |
0 comments
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
These are our times
I subscribe to Yahoo's AP wire feed. Sometimes I'll see two stories next to each other on the list that will tell a larger story than beyond the original intent of the individual stories. Here's the latest example, taken from my desktop a few minutes ago:
Okay, I've tried something new so that the hyperlinks work in the RSS feed. If you're reading this through an RSS feed and the links to the mp3's still don't work just click on to the blog itself and they'll be there for you. So yeah, I ripped off the A.V. Club (and will always give them credit in case you haven't noticed yet), set my iPod on shuffle and post about what I find here. Let's start listening!
This is from The Clash's odd n' sods collection. The first thing I notice about this song is how much it sounds like Springsteen even though I doubt that would be a conscious influence for Mick Jones and Joe Strummer. Things just work out that way because The Clash and Springsteen both inhabit that corner of the rock 'n' roll universe that houses "Earnest Political Whiteboys." Ted Leo, Elvis Costello and some U2 also occupy this space. It's a category I love and for my money The Clash play this role the best. Strummer sings like every syllable will change the course of human history. I'm also impressed that within this rockin' song Jones decides to add an acoustic, sort of Spanish sounding guitar solo. That's the reason why The Clash is my favorite punk rock band. They were always willing to break away from the punk rock orthodoxy.
The Ronnettes, "Be My Baby" from Back to MonoListen here!Buy here! (actually that's out of print but if you listen to any oldies station for an hour you'll hear it)
What can I say, this is one of those perfect pop songs. Brian Wilson calls it a "teenage symphony to God." If you wanted to listen to the best representation of Phil Spector's "wall of sound" this or The Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody" is where you go. Hal Blaine's drum intro announces the epic feel of the song. The rest of the song follows suit with the classical strings melding with guitars and pianos. Spector's sound was based around the idea that a three minute pop song should be treated like a Mozart symphony, which in the early 1960's must have sounded insane. Honestly, it still does but you can't argue with results. Ronnie Spector's voice is this great contrast to the music behind her. She doesn't have a big booming voice. But that miniature sound her voice has works so well because she's singing like she means every word and you're won over by how she holds her own against the orchestra.
This is another band that was quite popular for me and my friends in high school. In my sophomore year when I walked home from school this was almost always the CD I had on my Discman. I saw the band live as well that year. I was already a fan of Sonic Youth and Placebo was talking SY's alternative guitar heroics and combining them with a healthy dose of Morrissey's dour wit and sexual politics. I wasn't yet The Smiths fan I am now so I was more impressed by Brian Molko's persona than if I was a better student of rock 'n' roll's history. No matter your rock 'n' roll knowledge I think this song holds up. Every instrument on the track seems to be treated so it sounds artificial and futuristic, perhaps in reference to Placebo's glam influence where "artificial" meant sleek and cool (this is early Roxy Music's whole m.o.). For Placebo the sound is meant to be the aural representation of the decadence on display as Molko sings of a "A friend with breasts and all the rest/A friend who's dressed in leather." Gee, I wonder why I loved this song so much when as a teenager. Permanent Link: 8:51 AM |
0 comments
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Razbliuto: Chapter 1
The following is something of a change on this blog. It has nothing to do with comics, movies or music except in the most tangential way. It's a memoir of sorts chronicling certain events in my life starting from the middle of 2007. It's a risky enterprise because how the following drama played out (and is continuing to play out) is so emotionally taxing. That goes for all involved, not just me. I'm playing with dynamite here by just embarking on this series. I promise to play carefully though. I have changed the names of everyone (except myself). I will not insult or libel anyone. I will do my best to be fair to everyone even though there are some people in this story I have nothing but tremendous negative feelings towards (well, only one person really).
It's important for me to share this information rather than just keeping it on a constant loop in the theatre of the mind. I can't afford a therapist. I go over all of this with my friends sometimes but there's something about writing it as one long story that I hope will grant me a new perspective and help me out in someway. Not to mention this is a good way for me to learn how to write a serial narrative. My mind is clouded with caffeine right now, my second favorite legal drug, and if it wasn't perhaps my hesitations would get the best of me. But here we are. The words "No! Don't do it!" are ringing in my head. But the words of Wendell Pierce, Bunk of The Wire, are ringing louder. He said a creative person should "never be afraid to be private in public."
If you're a fan of Adrian Tomine's work but always wished there to be no pictures and more Jews than this is the story for you. Dig in!
How many times should I have stopped caring about this woman? My mind can't shake her. She lived in there before I saw her in front of me.
When I was younger, before sex mattered (I didn't know what it was), I imagined being married to a woman with dark shoulder length hair who favored dark clothing and could match me intellectually no matter what. That really was what mattered to me when I was in grade school and thought Batman was the height of American fiction. Granted,that's not how I would have put it at the time. I was probably thinking more along the lines of how awesome it would be if she laughed at all my jokes and liked the same stuff I did.
I was quite inebriated when she appeared before me at Johnny and Lucille's party. For a second I thought she was a ghost. I knew people could drink enough that they would hallucinate but I had never experienced such a thing. Then I remembered when Lucille introduced us to each other very briefly when I entered the party. The woman I had always thought about had escaped the prison of my mind. Reality felt a little less real. I liked that.
I asked her if she went to SF State, where I was finishing my senior year. She said no, she was actually going to law school. I told her that since I'll be graduating school soon I've given law school a lot of thought. She talked me out of it. She said it's a lot of work, far more than any undergraduate was used to. She made it clear that you had to be really serious about being a lawyer if you were going to attend law school. You shouldn't do it just for the degree which basically was my mindset at the time.
She spoke with true authority. While she was telling me all this she was kneeling down. She chose that position so we could make eye contact as my drunken body was resigned to the puffy chair I sat in. She never seemed subservient in that position. Here was a beautiful woman in a simple black dress. She had a breathy voice and an open face. She knelt down before me but she was clearly the one in charge. I was transfixed by her. I was under her control but I knew I had a benevolent master. I thanked her for her advice. She returned my gratitude and walked away, leaving the party soon after. Soon my body actually managed to stand up. Perhaps I was reinvigorated by her presence. I told Lucille in as much excitement as I could muster that her friend Lola was "a classical beauty." This was how an English major asks "where has this person been all my life?"
Lucille was very excited that I felt this way. She rushed me to another room and proceeded to write a Lola instruction manual. She wrote down how Lola was a sensitive person, always determined to grow emotionally and intellectually. She worshiped Lucille, which was key. I was told that she was very sensual/sexual. Lucille knew this first hand as she and Lola had something of a bisexual tryst in high school. Did that excite me? There I was in my early-twenties, gobsmacked by a raven haired siren. I was being told by another beautiful woman that said siren had as much of an appreciation for the female form as I did (and probably had more experience with it). Was I excited? What do you think?
I also learned she was an immigrant. Her family were Jewish transplants from Russia. She had come with them when she was very young which is why she had an American accent. The Jewish side of my family was also from Russia and had to flee (as Jews tend to do) in the early 20th Century, ending up in the holy land of Glasgow, Scotland (my parents came to California from the U.K. when my Mom was pregnant with me). Here was something Lola and I had in common. I was in.
A masterpiece of a woman and she and I actually had a few substantial things in common. Lucille told me that if I ask Lola out I should tread carefully becuase she had just broken up with her boyfriend. I told Lucille I would.
Too bad Lola already found her new beau at the party. No, it wasn't me.
A short post but I've been thinking about this for a while
Y'know, I think it's a shame that Rick Rubin never got Johnny Cash to do a cover of XTC's "Dear God." Everytime I hear that song (or Tricky's version of it) I think how, not unlike Nine Inch Nails's "Hurt" or Nick Cave's "The Mercy Seat," it's a song that Cash would make his own. A man batting with his faith is prime Cash material. I don't know how Cash would feel about covering a song that arguably comes out on the side of atheism but perhaps in Cash's hands it would become something else.
I'm battling an Internet connection that is determined to get slower and slower by the minute. But it will take more than that to defeat my own special rip-off of The Onion's A.V. Club. The mp3 links don't work on the RSS feed for whatever reason but come on over to the actual site and you'll download everything just fine.
Sleater-Kinney might be the last rock 'n' roll band that got me really excited. I certainly want that situation to change but I haven't seen anyone else do so much with just guitars, drums and voice (if anything bands today are looking to add instrumentation as opposed to doing the best they can within a certain structure). You've got a guitar with tremolo effect in the background, a clean guitar upfront and tasteful drums by one of the best drummers in recent memory Jane Weissman. The songcraft delivers turns all of that into this powerful heartbreaking song. Carrie Brownstein's voice is always effecting. It demands you pay attention without ever sounding desperate or needy.
If I ventured in the slipstream Between the viaducts of your dream Where immobile steel rims crack And the ditch in the back roads stop Could you find me? Would you kiss-a my eyes?
Well, that's certainly one way to open your album! Van Morrison was one of the artists my Mom played a lot when I was younger. Songs like "Brown Eyed Girl" and "Moondance" are settled pretty deep in my memory. It was only until later did I listen to Morrison's albums such as this and Moondance. It's there that I discovered the complex emotional element to so much of his music. This song actually has some fairly life-affirming albeit metaphysical lyrics. But Morrison and his band make it sound so sad. Listen to how he declares he "ain't nothing but a stranger in this land."
The most important band of my high school days. I think my friends and I were all responding to a band that put so much thought and effort into not just their songs but their entire craft (in addition to the music the booklet of OK Computer made the CD something to treasure). That's the age where you care the most about music and they were the band that seemed to care the most about everything. Living in the suburbs and listening to this song gave you the sense that there's more out there than the illusion you were living in. That's something that an adolescent really values. For a lot us Thom Yorke's voice was like this guardian angel of sorts, as silly as that might sound. Permanent Link: 9:54 AM |
0 comments
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Cloverfield a.k.a. The Adventures of the Stupidest People On Earth and Their Magical Camera
Before you read this review know that there are spoilers ahead. EDIT: If you want to avoid spoilers I can direct you to two reviews that have a similar take on the film to mine one by Keith Uhlich at UGO and another by Richard Corliss from Time. Those reviewers share the sentiments I express but aren't dependent on giving away specific plot points (becuase those writers are better than I am).
When evaluating a film you have to take it for what it is and not complain about what it isn't. I can't give a sword and sorcery film a bad review becuase it had no murder mystery in it. That makes the task of reviewing Matt Reeves's Cloverfield difficult for me becuase the very concept of the film is the source of so much of my dissatisfaction. The film is meant to be a raw, documentary-style (really, home video-style) version of the giant monster film. The goal is to bring some humanity to a genre where the first thing people think of is a guy in a rubber suit trampling on cardboard miniatures of Tokyo. It's a neat idea. It didn't work.
The film's style ends up highlighting the film's biggest problem. That is the plot depends on unrealistic human behavior and contrived situations. Flaws that I might overlook in a traditional disaster movie come off as laughable here becuase they are so upfront in the narrative. Before the monster even shows up these characters act more like they belong in an hour-long urban dramedy than real life. There's a love story that requires the characters, all of them not just the would-be couple, to act like the fact that two young beautiful rich people had a one-night stand is a matter of life and death. Characters say things that are painfully obvious but in manner as if they have just come upon the world's greatest psychological discoveries. These people shouldn't be shot with a jumpy handheld camera. They should be presented with the shiny and sleek look of something like Sex & The City or Felicity (which Reeves is the co-creator of).
When the shit goes down and the monster starts wrecking havoc you would think that the "yuppies in love" storyline would be thrown to the wind. No such luck. Now the characters actually are faced with a matter of life and death and all the main dude, Rob, can think about is seeing his #1 crush who lives in midtown. They defy a military order to evacuate the city to say nothing off the fact that there's a giant monster doing the Godzilla Shuffle all around Manhattan GET THE FUCK OUT!!! It's in that moment where in an empty alley these five characters decided to set off on this adventure (and film it!) that Cloverfield's biggest problem is most evident. The film's look is realistic but what is playing out before us is so bogus. I'm not talking about the monster, I can suspend my disbelief for that. It's the fact that the entire reason the events we are seeing over the next hour are happening is becuase the characters act like idiots.
From that point on the film strikes a rhythm of going between intense action scenes to calm moments where the characters collect themselves. You can guess what my objection to the quieter character moments are. Yet I also had a tough time with the action scenes. In fact it is where I have trouble with the whole point of Cloverfield. There's a scene early on where the Brooklyn Bridge is destroyed (hey, I told you there would be spoilers). I would have loved to have seen that shot with multiple cameras on cranes and helicopters with precise editing and a powerful soundtrack. Instead we get a bunch of blurry zig-zags. I'll give Reeves and screenwriter Drew Goddard credit for being so committed to their concept. But what it gives us is an inferior version of a monster movie. What could be a really exciting action sequence becomes an incomprehensible mess.
There is one sequence where I think the P.O.V. style pays off. So the monster apparently has some kind of monster dandruff that he shakes off and becomes these spider-like creatures. While walking through the empty subway tunnels the characters run into and then run from these creatures. The characters get attacked by these creepy crawlers which attempt to drag the humans somewhere. Luckily the creatures are defeated even though one woman is bit pretty badly. The claustrophobic feel of shooting with a handheld camera actually works with something so horrifying happening in such a tight space. The scene's effectiveness is undercut later in the film due to some confusing writing. Now apparently if you get bit by one of these ugly things you explode in an hour or two. So...why do they jump on a person and hold on to them for dear life when one bite will eventually kill the person ? Why do they drag the victims away somewhere? What use would they have for something that is pretty much just a blood bomb at that point? The film doesn't have any moments of exposition that explains these monsters. That is actually a welcome relief from some of today's overlong sci-fi/fantasy films. It also means that certain events, like the death of a character, come out of nowhere. I understand the randomness is meant to be another aspect of the film's style. But what we end up with are giant plot holes and confusion.
If you can get into what this movie is trying to do you'll probably enjoy it more than I did. Maybe you won't be filled with class resentment when you are introduced to the cast. Maybe you won't miss a nicely structured plot. I just couldn't help that think that while Cloverfield is different from regular sci-fi movies it is hardly an improvement. It just proved to me why the techniques of traditional moviemaking are so important in the first place.
I caught a sneak preview screening of Cloverfield last night. I have a review all ready to go but it ended up being so spoiler-iffic that I decided to it would be unfair to post it before the film is in general release. I can tell you this: when I came home I put Godzilla vs. Hedorah on the top of my Netflix queue. I hope it will make me forget all about the stupid, stupid movie I saw last night. Hey, maybe you'll see it for yourself or maybe you'll read my review anyway when I post it on Friday.
I can recommend the film if you're the type of person who sees a Godzilla movie and instead of a getting a kick out of a giant lizard who has atomic breath you're saying to yourself "yes, but what are the vapid pretty people doing during all this?" Permanent Link: 12:20 PM |
0 comments
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Dylan Days pt. 3: Highway 61 Revisited
There is no code! There's nothing to crack! What are you looking for? The guy wrote songs. Wrote great songs, that's it. End of story. - Tom Scharlping of The Best Show on WFMU after seeing I'm Not There
There was a bit of a factual error in my last Dylan Days post. I made it seem that the Newport performance with members of The Paul Butterfield Blues Band happened first and then Bringing It All Back Home was recorded. The Newport show happened in between the recording of that album and this one. I'm not attempting a biography of Dylan here but I'm still going to try and not let factual mistakes like that happen again. With that admission of my infallibility out of the way let us now tackle one of the greatest records of all time.
You can't deny that first song. A lot has been written about "Like a Rolling Stone," Greil Marcus wrote a whole book on it. I want to focus on how the song is the high point of this stage of Dylan's career. Listen to how the guitar and organ mesh right in the front of the song. When Mike Bloomfield (guitar) and Al Kooper (organ) joined Dylan's band the records hit the aspirations Dylan had harbored since probably before Bringing It All Back Home. What was promised with "Subterranean Homesick Blues" was fulfilled many times over. The band (not The Band, that would be later) perfectly reflect Dylan's screed. The personal sentiments of "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" meet the political finger-pointing of "It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding." Is Dylan lambasting a society girl (many think it's about Warhol pal Edie Sedgwick)? Is Dylan indicting the entire hippie movement? A work like this can't be just explained away with one simple interpretation. It wouldn't retain the power it has kept over so many decades if that was the case. I am sure of one thing. When that snare is hit in the first second of the song and later when the band rises whenever Dylan asks "how does it feel?" the boundary between instrumentation and words is demolished. Dylan originally meant this to be a twenty page short story. I couldn't imagine everything here being communicated in just prose. This is one complete and confident six minute, fifteen second explosion.
"Like A Rolling Stone" contains strong imagery but it's clearly grounded in real life. I don't know if you can say that about the next song "Tombstone Blues." Knowing I was going to write about it for this series I tried to do what Scharpling in the opening quote detests. I tried to crack the code. When Dylan sang "The king of the Philistines his soldiers to save/Puts jawbones on their tombstones and flatters their graves/Puts the pied pipers in prison and fattens the slaves/Then sends them out to the jungle" is he singing about Vietnam? Maybe. Frankly I don't know and I will never know. In the slight chance I ever meet Bob Dylan I'm certainly not going to demand he explains "Tombstone Blues" and other dense songs lyrics by lyric. Like the works of David Lynch, which I also adore, there's a danger if you try to unravel everything that doesn't make sense. You have to fight that part of your brain that wants everything to be completely clear and cohesive. It's not easy but that challenge is honestly one of my favorite things about Lynch and Dylan's work. I can sit back and get a heaping dose of weirdness that makes it own kind of sense. That and drummer Sam Lay churns out a backbeat that can't be stopped.
Most of the album fits into that strange area of powerful blues rock playing behind verses that would confuse William Blake. Right in the middle there's a change. "Ballad of a Thin Man" is a departure from an album that itself is a departure from what Dylan was known for. The song is based around this piano riff that rings like gothic church bells. The danceable shuffle heard previously is gone. Now things have slowed down to a menacing lurch.
Similar to "Like A Rolling Stone" this is another of Dylan's sneering put-downs. But if the first song was skewering the youth of the United States at the time then in "Ballad" he sets his sights on the establishment. I actually did manage to catch I'm Not There which featured a music video of sorts for this song (performed by Stephen Malkmus and the backing band collected for the soundtrack). I knew this before seeing the film and was very apprehensive about the idea. I had seen the wretched Across The Universe months earlier and had found the one-dimensional interpretation of Beatles songs irritating. I was glad to see in the context of the film the sequence in question is somewhat more complex. Journalist Keenan Jones (Bruce Greenwood) first asks the Highway 61-era Dylan, represented by a character named Jude (Cate Blanchett), about his new direction. The journalist soon discovers Jude's elusive and nasty disposition and begins to needle the singer about how he acts like he's above the rest of the inteligencia interested in politics and poetry. Jude is tired of the questioning and just cuts the interview off. In the film "Ballad of a Thin Man" is Jude's response to Jones. He can't articulate how he feels through normal speech. He can only really express himself, and rather forcefully so, in verse.
I've listened to the song many times before seeing the film but now I come to it from a whole new angle (which I suppose is a testament to director Todd Haynes's accomplishment). I never thought of the side of the accuser in this song, just Mr. Jones and the carnival that berates him. Now I have a somewhat more complete idea of the song. The narrator wants to turn the tables. He or she wants the power that Mr. Jones has had all along. Now Mr. Jones is subjected to the rules of "the freaks." It's a major theme in Dylan's work. What is meant to authentic, which can be summed up as "the system" or "the old order," is rendered suspect. What is meant to inauthentic now has new power invested in it, at least it does Dylan's dark imagination. In the film it is depicted that The Black Panthers listen to the song (specially Huey Newton tries to explain the song to a skeptical Bobby Seale). That is a fact about the song and The Black Panther Party. It makes sense that a group who wanted to turn American society upside-down would respond to "Ballad."
There are hundreds of more things I can write about this album. I'll resist going over all of it lest I exhaust my analytical faculties and bore you all. But I can't discuss this album without writing something about the eleven and a half minute final track "Desolation Row." It recalls the second side of Bringing It All Back Home with its quiet acoustic guitars and ominous, bleak lyrics. Like "It's Alright Ma" this is another take down of all of society. In this apocalyptic vision there's no point in dividing things up between the Mr. Joneses of the world and the sideshow. But while "Ballad," "Rolling Stone" and "It's Alright Ma" are all very angry "Desolation Row" is told by an objective observer. If you want to assign an personality to the narrator it would have to be "resigned." Resigned to the fate of a world already lost.
Now the moon is almost hidden The stars are beginning to hide The fortunetelling lady Has even taken all her things inside All except for Cain and Abel And the hunchback of Notre Dame Everybody is making love Or else expecting rain And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing He's getting ready for the show He's going to the carnival tonight On Desolation Row
I honestly could not bring myself to break up that stanza. Everything there is pure Dylan. There's the imagery of the carnival, which was apparently a young Dylan's only escape from the suburban boredom of Hibbing, MN. There's the Biblical allusions. Dylan tells us that all that's left in the world are the idea of victim and victimizer. They are joined only by human aberrations like the hunchback of Note Dame. They are the only ones who can stray somewhat outside the destructive dichotomy of Cain and Abel. The imagery of rain is used again to signify doom like it was in "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall." Then it was meant to suggest atomic weapons but in this age of global warming and climate change perhaps rain itself is enough to mean doom. There is one person who tries to stand up against all the calamity. Dylan doesn't let us know how well the Good Samaritan will do. He doesn't breathe any heroism into the narrator by making him or her the samaritan. It's just another part of show.
Gee, I guess I did end up "trying to crack the code" there, didn't I? Perhaps some Dylan songs are just nonsensical fun and others deserve to be figured out. The hope isn't that we get the "right answer" and win some Bob Dylan No-Prize. By looking at "Desolation Row" or "It's All Right Ma" we're trying to uncover something about ourselves.
I was late with this Random Friday so I figured I'd just move the column to Mondays from now on. It's easier for me to do all this when I have a weekend to myself. Anyway, all credit to the A.V. Club, you can download these mp3's even though the links don't work in the RSS feed and if you like what you hear why not buy it?
I discovered Scott Walker because David Bowie talked about him as an influence. You can certainly hear that in this song. Walker has that deep voice that can go from an intimate feeling to something with a sense of grandeur quite easily. I certainly notice that in Bowie's singing style as well. Walker's music got more and more challenging as his career continued. It's evident on Scott 4 but this is a pretty accessible number, so much so that I was surprised it was an original composition. That is until I actually listened to the lyrics. "We keep reaching beyond us/Through the shape shifting clouds/Why ain't I like you brother/So electric, so proud." Yep, that's Scott Walker!
This certainly makes sense to follow up a Scott Walker track. I think this is one of those perfect Waits tracks. If you've never heard Waits before this is a good song to see if you'll dig him or not (as opposed to the instrumental from last week). It's a calm, introspective song where the lyrics take the lead. You can tell that Waits started off as '70s California singer-songwriter. But it also has that accordion sound which displays the Kurt Weil influence that was appearing in Waits's music at the time (and has really never left). Of course, there's Waits's "gargling with switchblades and whiskey voice" dominating everything. How you feel about that voice pretty much makes it clear whether you're a Waits fan or not. You can probably guess where I stand.
Here's a live version, I believe from the concert film Big Time, that has some more instrumentation but is still just as sensitive as the song should be.
Stevie Wonder, "I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever" from Talking BookListen here!But here!
Not as strange as Walker or Waits but certainly as much a singular a talent. I first heard this song at the end of High Fidelity. I never really thought of Wonder before then. Certainly I had no idea of this time in his career where he was really experiment with funk and soul music. Now I love this era of Wonder's music. He's an artist that had all the available technology before him but he didn't use it to make something cold or technical. He made sure all those synths and all that studio multi-tracking was used towards making something that still felt very human. It was still, there's no better word for it, soulful. I dig songs like this that have an endless feel, where the chorus is repeated so many time. It sounds like the players just love performing and don't want to let go. That's an enthusiasm that when it works I really fall for.
Let's end this post with something that has nothing to do with music but rather a little plug for myself. I did a little chat with Jeff Lester over at Savage Critics about modern comics and their fans. I tried to open up the discussion past the "I hate big crossovers" tone that many, including myself, have fallen into. I hope you enjoy it. Permanent Link: 10:44 AM |
0 comments
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
We've met before, haven't we?
I didn't seem so long ago that the idea of a complete Twin Peaks DVD set was just a far off idea to most David Lynch fans. Last Christmas season saw that dream come true. Now another of Lynch's project that desperately needed rescuing from the Hell that is a shitty transfer and pan-and-scan is getting a reissue. On March 25th Lost Highway gets a widescreen DVD release. Since Lynch is doing an interview for the film I'm willing to bet he was involved in the transfer as that's how he's done it in the past. He's pretty particular about these things or haven't you heard?
Lost Highway is the first film of these surreal tales of L.A. Mullholland Dr. and Inland Empire followed. I like to think of it as "nightmare noir." This film especially feels as if Howard Hawks or Don Siegel decided to tell stories based on dream logic. It features Richard Pryor's last film role and probably the last film Robert Blake will do where the plot consists of a man being accused of killing his wife. Permanent Link: 1:46 PM |
4 comments
"I understand I'm playing a whole planet"
Whenever I mention Orson Welles (which I do a lot) some people will bring up the fact that his last role was the voice of Unicron, the planet devouring planet in the animated Transformers movies. Here are two clips where the people behind the film talk about working with Welles (that's right, both Trasnformers movies have deluxe DVD editions but Welles's Chimes at Midnight isn't even available, to say nothing of The Other Side of the Wind).
This clips puts a pretty positive spin on things, which contradicts what Joseph McBride wrote about Welles's experience on the film in Whatever Happened to Orson Welles? Welles had done a lot of crap to finance his independent projects but this seemed to much for him.
This clip seems to be a bit more in line with what Welles came away with. The idea of Welles stroking his cat while reading these lines reminds me that it is a tragedy Welles never played Blofeld in the Bond movies. Permanent Link: 10:19 AM |
1 comments
There are just somethings on the Internet that scream "link to me on your blog!" The A.V. Club had the bright idea to take comedian Patton Oswalt and have him actually "eat his words" but trying the KFC "Famous Bowl" he has satirized in his stand-up act. What did Oswalt find? From the article: "The gravy, which I remembered as being tangy and delicious in my youth, tasted like the idea of blandness, but burned and then salted to cover the horrid taste. The mashed potatoes defiantly stood their ground against the gravy, as if they'd read The Artist's Way and said, "'I'm going to be boring and forgetful in my own potato-y way!'"
The article has plenty of funny stuff to be found. It's a great example of Oswalt's type of comedy, where he just locks in on a target and destroys it with a heaping amount of grotesques descriptions and pointed references. Permanent Link: 10:16 AM |
0 comments
Monday, January 07, 2008
The obligatory Wire post
Every time a new season of The Wire premiers all the blogs, all the good ones at least, go crazy. The show is certainly the underdog of the HBO family. The Sopranos, Deadwood even Flight of the Concords seem to get more ink in the mainstream press. But those of us who know and love David Simon and Ed Burns' creation will always have a big place in our hearts for their depiction of Bodymore, Murderland.
Another of the litany of Wire articles floating around the web that stuck out to me is Mark Bowden's profile of Simon. As you will read in the article Simon did not participated in the article, in fact he very much opposed it. Bowden clearly loves the show but his profile raises the biggest problem the show has, its sense of hopelessness. That problem is also brought up on the TSOYA interview where Pierce talks about how he and actor Sonja Sohn argued with Simon over the idea that there's "no hope" in the world The Wire depicts. I love The Wire becuase it's so real and becuase it tempers its cynicism with the humanity it gives all its characters. But I am uneasy that all of the show's ideas lead to a conclusion that is too bleak to be applicable to real life.
All that being said I do believe in Simon's main point that "in this postmodern world of ours, human beings—all of us—are worth less. We’re worth less every day, despite the fact that some of us are achieving more and more. It’s the triumph of capitalism." I embedded the scene above because I love The Bunk's speech about how "we used to have a community but now we just have bodies." Tying this back into my last post (becuase really, when talking about Spider-Man the gritty streets of Baltimore are inevitably the next subject) I find in myself a greater and greater fascination with the past, particularly America during the 1960's and 1970's. I experience the comics, the music and the films from those areas as if they're new. One of the reasons I do this is because it seems back then, and born in '83 I really can't know but go with me here, there was a sense you could depend on the integrity of the human race. Things could get bad inside a society but you could still believe in the idea of that society in the first place. Now things feel too fractured and all of our modern advents seem to make the world colder and life lonelier. People think of themselves before society more and more, even though you can only improve one while improving the other.
This is a very important thought to me but I don't know if it's making any sense. Do I sound crazy in the last paragraph? I know I'm going to think more about this no matter what but maybe I just need to hear what other people's opinions are.
A few days ago a colleague of mine asked why I didn't write about comics on this blog as much as I used to. I told her that there's just not much being currently published that really excites me. I like the four or so titles I follow regularly but I can't imagine it would be very entraining for me to just read "hey, Daredevil's still good!" every month. Looking over old posts on this blog I'm amazed that I could muster up the energy to write paragraph after paragraph about comics I didn't even like. I can barely achieve that same feeling to write about a comic I pay good money for twelve times a year. The funny thing about that conversation is not an hour later after it ended that the old spark returned. I didn't rediscover it in anything new. I found it in page after page of comics created before I was born or when I was a young child. Burying my head in Essential Spider-Man Vol. 3 started my relapse. I predict that by the end of February I'll be drowning in page after page of black and white newsprint with images of Batman and The Silver Surfer splashed upon them.
My buddy Graeme, he of Savage Critic and io9 fame, has told me that he occasionally gets bit by a bug that compels him to read volume after volume of Claremont's Uncanny X-Men in Essentials form. I've always read the big "phone books" of comics, my favorite being Essential Howard the Duck, but for me it was more out of an academic desire to catch up on comics history. Now it's the addictive nature of Stan Lee era Marvel comics, Noel Murray writes about it in his article about the Essential books, that has grabbed me. I devoured the Lee/Romita Spider-Man stories. They're a perfectly paced superhero soap opera. There's always some drama involving Aunt May and Gwen Stacy but these big slugfests with Spidey up against The Vulture or Mysterio always taking a firm lead in the narrative. I feel like I've got a darn good read out of each issue. Then there's also this great tingle in the back of mind saying "I don't know what's going to happen next with ol' Peter Parker but I gots to find out!" That feeling became so strong that my superhero jones reappeared in full force and I soon find my way to the local used bookstore.
I got Essential Spider-Man Vol. 3 for cheap on a whim a few months ago, only cracking it open recently. A few days ago I walked into Green Apple Books on Clement St. with a handful of books off my shelf that I had read long ago or was never going to read. I traded them in for more Essentials and even a Showcase books, DC's answer to the Essential line. It was Showcase Presents Batman and The Outsiders. I got it because I know the '80s was a wild and weird time for DC. You'd get Howard Chaykin's The Shadow or Watchmen and then you'd get Sonic Disrupters (I only know it from the house ads in DC back issues, where the tagline was "The United States Army vs. The United States of Rock"). The idea of the ever aloof and menacing Batman starting up a team that included Metamorpho and some rainbow girl was irresistible. I was pleased to find out the book is a great example of classic superhero storytelling. Mike W. Barr makes time for the characterizations of a team of misfits clashing against each other and there are even moments of political subtext. Those aspects of the stories are only touched on lightly, though. Like the Spider-Man comics I'm reading Barr and artist Jim Aparo's first priority is to come up with a ripping yarn with action and twists coming every which way. The creative team doesn't get distracted by devoting page after page of Batman asking himself how he could quit the Justice League and start a new team with a bunch of weirdos. The reader gets a few strategically placed thought balloons to deal with that and then it's back to hunting down Baron Bedlam or whoever. That sharp focus in storytelling is something I didn't find when I read a lot of current superhero books.
Come to think of it I never really had superhero comics this good growing up either. I started reading comics in the early '90s, the eras of expansive X-Men crossovers and dead Supermen. It's amazing I wasn't repelled by comics becuase that was such an unfriendly time for kids to be discovering superheroes. But I knew there was this wide patchwork of imagination as the foundation for all these stories and that kept me interested. My friends and I would collect the Marvel trading cards as well as the comics. From these tiny pieces of cardboard I gleamed the seemingly endless supply of mind-blowing things going on. I still remember the jolt I got reading about Ego the Living Planet and Eternity, not just a concept but an actual character who hung out with Dr. Strange. I was promised all these cool ideas but what I was getting in the comics was incomprehensible crossovers like Fatal Attractions. Hey maybe they made sense to an adult reading them at the time but as a kid who only got to go the comic book store every two or three months I had no idea what was going on.
At the time I started this blog I worried about balancing the time I spent reading superhero comics with the time I read reading independent art comics. Now I get art comics and manga sent to me for free to review for Publishers Weekly. I indulge in the dreamlike world of superhero comics with no guilt, although I do have to stop myself after a while and read a prose book. All the Essential and Showcase books I'm reading and will read are a kind of "new nostalgia" for me. They're old comics that probably serve as reminders of younger days to most of the people buying these books. To me it feels like I'm getting dose after dose of the superhero excitement I was always looking for.
I'm actually interested enough to check out some of the modern superhero comics I've been hearing good things about. If I do it would be by picking up the collected editions. A lack of time and a shitty memory has spoiled reading comics monthly for me. I suppose I'm spoiled getting two years of a comics run in one of these books. For right now I've got the feeling that I'm back in the tights and capes game. Permanent Link: 10:48 AM |
2 comments
The Rock Legend Who Wasn't There
Screenwriter Todd Alcott has been examining the films of the Coen Bros. on his blog (not only is the guy smart he actually had a small role in The Hudsucker Proxy). It's all good stuff but of particular interest to me was this post about The Man Who Wasn't There that discusses the Coens, Charles Schulz and Bob Dylan, all Minnesotans, in its introduction.
Alcott writes about the stoic Midwestern mindset which asks one to not call attention to oneself. For Dylan its used as a possible explanation of why he tries on so many different masks. He seems to want to hide something, fulfilling the quiet Minnesota tradition. Wearing a mask also allows Dylan to become a larger than life figure. That desire seemed to just as strong to Dylan as becoming obscure. Hey, we have to love our contradictions. Granted, the latter desire lessened as he grew older. I suppose that matches the personalties of most people. From what I've seen when people hit thirty the great visions they have for themselves drift away as reality sets in.
These late night ramblings are preparing us for when I attack Highway 61 Revisited, which I hope to this week. I only have a loose grasp of what I want to talk about but I can tell you right now it will be partly informed by Tom Scharpling's review of I'm Not There. He didn't like it. I'm probably not even going to seen until it comes out on DVD. By then I'll probably be writing about Empire Burlesque or his stuff with the Traveling Wilburys.
Back to the Coens, The Man Who Wasn't There is one of my favorite films of their's. That film did for me what Sin City does for so many others. It has a lot of my favorite film aesthetics that I just love to bathe in. It seemed to be overshadowed because O Brother Where Art Thou was still in the public mind and The Man Who Wasn't There doesn't really jibe with the other film. The same thing happened with The Big Lebowski being overshadowed by Fargo. I think No Country For Old Men deserves all the hosannas it's getting I just hope the next Coen Bros. film gets lost in the shuffle. Consulting IMDb I see the next film stars Brad Pitt and George Clooney in some kind of caper so maybe there's no reason to worry. But what's this!? They're not working with cinematographer Roger Deakins this time? What will the film nerds of the world have to say about this? Permanent Link: 1:00 AM |
0 comments
Friday, January 04, 2008
The (Downloadable) Random Fridays
I don't know why it is but for some reason the hyperlinks to mp3's don't work on the RSS feed. I'm going to try and fix it (although I have no idea how). To all of you reading this from a feed just click on to the actual blog and you'll be able to savor the sweet sounds I bring you. So yeah, I ripped of the A.V. Club, set my iPod on random and then blab about the first three tracks that come up. It gives me something ot look forward to every week. Enjoy.
Even though this is meant to be a showcase for the eponymous guitar player in Davis's line-up of the time it's actually the electric keyboard and drums the make the song for me. They have this heaviness to them, like when hard rock bands use to have keyboard players in the band. I know this is sort of the cliche jazz album to have if you're a rock 'n' roll guy (although I have others) but that shouldn't subtract from the fact that Bitches Brew is the amazing piece of work. I guess this song is the most accessible, being the shortest and showcasing McLaughlin's bluesy guitar soloing. Actually, McLaughlin strikes the balance between what Albert King and Eric Clapton were doing with the traditional jazz guitar playing. The fast licks he pulls off sound like an electric Django Reinhardt to me.
I have a ton of Cramps stuff in my iPod. To me they're a lot like The Ramones where it's clear their love of trash culture was turned into something really creative and awesome. Now being campy doesn't mean anything but I'm sure in 1980 having a guy who sounds like a mutant Elvis must have been nuts (The King himself was only dead three years then). At this point the only punk rock I can really listen to has to have that Americana roots music side to it. X, Social Distortion or The Clash, stuff like that. The Cramps have that too but they turn it into something far more strange. They just don't want to sound like Elvis on speed (uh...), they want to capture those shitty Elvis movies and merchandise that came with the culture of rock 'n' roll back then. They're basically like a John Waters movie, one of the really fucked up ones from the late seventies, in the form of a band.
Hey, it's Tom Waits but without that Tom Waits-y voice we all know and love. This isn't my favorite Waits instrumental, that would be "Midtown" off of Rain Dogs, but this is still pretty awesome. Sort of like the Davis song above this has a chunky organ sound I love. Here we get that creepy, carnival-esque feel that fits right into the album. I suppose that's the curse of shuffling songs. What's meant to be there to reinforce the feel of a whole album is taken out of context. But hey, this is the format and I'm sticking with it. Permanent Link: 1:01 PM |
0 comments
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Every Dream Job a Heartache
Flying between LAX and SFO during a busy holiday season I was waiting quite a while for my plane, delayed by two hours. To keep myself from going insane I bought the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly, the one that looks back at 2007. Little did I realize that true insanity already thrived within these pages! Flipping through the issue before I bought it I saw there were editorials where writers spotlighted trends for the year. I enjoy articles like that so I read those first. I soon discovered these articles didn't contain insights on the entertainment industry as much as they contain insights into the people who work at Entertainment Weekly. What they says is not pretty.
Let's get past the first article of their "Trendspotting" feature. "The Geek was King" in 2007 it declares. Yeah, that same basic article has been written in various publications for the past five years now. Graphic novels are respected, people line-up to see movies about superheroes, video games make lots of moneys, everybody's on the Internet...we get it. What struck me was when the EW writers wrote the autobiographical pieces, which make up most of the articles here. The signs start with the point-counterpoint of Marc Bernardin and Ken Tucker on the merits of DVR. The two articles are basically about having too much TV to watch. It's the first time I see these anxieties erupt from an abundance of modern middle-class spoils.
Those anxieties would come front and center for Whitney Pastorek's highly distressing article "I Officially Became Old." At 32 Pastorek finds herself totally out of the loop of what's popular in popular culture. She writes of how she's appalled by ugly MySpace layouts, the debacle that is the MTV Music Awards and the fact that she needed earplugs at a Panic! at the Disco concert.
Pastorek thinks the problem's with her, that she's an old fogey becuase she prefers the creativity of playing actual guitar to the button-pushing monotony of Guitar Hero. Her perspective confused me. I'm 24 and I'm as out-of-touch as she is, by choice. Everything she listed as being repelled by is pure shit. She shouldn't feel bad about feeling that MTV's programming is "insulting" and "unfathomable." That's exactly what it is. MySpace is an ugly looking website. Guitar Hero, which I have admitted to enjoying on this site, does offer some proof that young people's brains are being trained for carrying out preordained tasks rather than creative thinking. Not to mention the fact that she should wear earplugs at every concert she goes to. That's just being healthy.
I think it's sad that she's letting these idiotic phenomena make her feel bad. Perhaps she shouldn't have faith in youth culture in the first place, calling MTV "my generation's salvation." When Pastorek was my age, circa 1999, the network couldn't get enough of Limp Bizkit and Korn. Some salvation. She's taking all this trash far too seriously, more seriously than those thriving on it. When it comes to reality TV and viral videos most people know how bad it is. The fans of such shit just use it as a chance to gain an empty sense of superiority by seeing the worst modern America has to offer and saying to themselves "better him than me." It's to Pastorek's credit that she does not succumb to such a sentiment although I wonder how much better this alternative is.
A spiritual twin to Pastorek's article is Jeff Jensen's "The Strike Made Me Free." This has a more upbeat feel but there's something pathetic underneath it. Jensen thanks the lack of content due to the WGA strike becuase now he has time to hang out with his kids. He now knows that his daughter has an imaginary friend Star Girl who "can only survive as long as she wishes on a star." I think that's cooler than most TV shows. It's sort of heartwarming. That's what I thought until I asked myself what if we lived in a world where the AMPTP were not completely greedy assholes and actually granted the WGA the changes they wanted. Would Jensen never see his kids except for dinner time? Hell, if the WGA got what they wanted then we would see writers put some energy towards programming for network's websites since now they'd actually see money from it. Then Jensen would be glues to his TV and his computer. In that case it's a victory for family values that writers are getting screwed!
The thing is for me, I would love to have the jobs Pastorek and Jensen have. It's what I'm training myself to do, more or less. I already write about pop culture with my work on Publishers Weekly and the Podthoughts stuff on Maximumfun. To be a regular contributor to a magazine that pays me to watch TV or see movies is my dream job. For Christ's sake on page 57 of this frigging magazine Gary Susman wrote an article about how pies showed up in a few things he's watched this year. For that he probably got paid what a steelworker or coal miner sees in a month at least. But I suppose there's a catch to having such a cushy (and let's be honest, useless) job as pop culture critic. You become crazy catching up with all the garbage that gets thrown your way. Later in the magazine film critic Lisa Schwarzbaum goes down her top ten films of the year. For Zodiac she declares "lack of resolution is one of the defining conditions of our time, leading to symptoms of anxiety and obsession." When Pastorek, Jensen or any of the other people at EW are staring down the vault of horrors their TiVO has stored from them I wonder if they ever feel that way? Permanent Link: 10:11 AM |
0 comments
I can't think of a better way to ring in the new year than with the upbeat sounds of good ol' Lenny Cohen. With this post I decided I'm going to try my hand at being one of those mp3 blogs you have all heard about (in 2004 or so). Not that this will be the main focus of the blog, just another aspect of it.
Now that I'm back I'll return to writing about that other Jewish kid with an acoustic guitar as well as comics and movies and who knows what. Maybe meringue. Maybe I'll devote a whole month to meringue. Permanent Link: 1:01 AM |
1 comments
