The Marmot Considers

The Confession of a Pessimist

2010-08-01T01:25:00.000-07:00

This is the reason why I can't entirely give up on rooting for Humanity.

2010-07-20T19:29:00.000-07:00

The Box-Tops demonstrate why they are cooler than almost everyone who came after them.

Considers Music #1

2010-07-15T22:26:00.000-07:00

Tonight I thought of a film I saw a while ago.

Did you know Scott Walker (born Noel Engel) was once marketed as a heart-throb in the vein of Justin Bieber? It's true. You can learn this, and another amazing facts by watching 30 Century Man, a swell documentary concerning the life of Walker/Engel, one of musics last true enigmatic geniuses.

Here is my Bastard Son of Carnac prediction: Scott Walker is the next "forgotten" artist to regain mass appeal. It happened with Nick Drake. It's gonna happen with the middle Walker Brother. Not necessarily with his darkly avant-bizarre modern compositions. But a lot of his early stuff is just mind-blowing. As a young person, you may have to train yourself to like his voice, but after you do it will all make sense. The production is gorgeous on those solo records, and indeed on much of the Walker Brothers output as well. The final Walker Brothers album (Nite Flights, released in 1978) is one of those unexpected and under-appreciated treasures in the musical canon. "Den Haague", with its Costello/Talking Heads/Velvets mashup, is a particularly nifty track.

Thoughts on the World Cup...

2010-06-23T09:35:00.000-07:00

I've never been the biggest soccer fan. For most people, you like as an adult what you played as a kid, and since I never played soccer, it has remained off my radar for most of my life. Of course, bits of soccer pop-culture catch my attention every once in a while -- players marrying Spice Girls, Zidane's infamous head-butting incident, Pele (who Americans only remember because he has a short, funny name). Other than that kind of stuff, I know Jack's dick about soccer.

That being said, at a time when my patriotic impulses are becoming more and more infrequent, I've made a concerted effort to learn more about the game, as well as to follow the USA's progress as they attempt to fulfill their aspirations for victory -- or at least avoid the embarrassment of mediocrity once again.

Thus far, I've watched every USA game (twice rising at 6:30am in a sleepy-stupor to catch the game at a local pub, being that I lack TV service at my home). I've even mustered some

borrowed patriotism for Mexico (care of the girlfriend), and rooted vehemently against France, whose cheating kept Ireland out of the World Cup altogether.

But in my admittedly limited exposure to the game, I can't say FIFA (or the sport in general) is doing a very good job of winning me over as a committed fan. Here are a few reasons why:

The Referees: the soccer "pitch" is bigger than a football field, and yet it only has one referee assigned to the field of play (contrast this with American football, which uses 7 referees). Even assuming the ref can see everything there is to see, the USA has been the victim of some pretty suspicious calls thus far in the tournament. The heartbreak of having a goal "disallowed" by a referee who doesn't even have to explain his actions is indescribable. As Americans, we are accustomed to the referees from our sports being accountable for their idiocy. Not so in the world of FIFA. The refs can be bribed, stupid, or drunk (or a combination of the three) and apparently no harm will come to them. I wish I had that kind of job security.

The Acting: if I thought they actually experienced any pain, I'd call soccer players the biggest pussies in sports, but since they're just "acting" I won't attack their manhood...much, anyway. I've gotta say: the flopping is annoying. If a player is even tapped, he goes down in a heap of feigned agony akin to someone who just fell on a live-grenade. Every "injury" results in the player clutching his face and writhing on the ground, regardless of where the contact occurred on their body. If they aren't members of the Screen Actor's Guild, they should be. I understand that it's a form of gamesmanship, but c'mon: it would be better to be proud of being a better player than a better actor. In my world, we call this behavior "sandy vagina syndrome". They need to cut the theatrics and play the F-ing game.

The Action: soccer is...ahem...kinda boring. I just sat through 91 minutes of colon-clenching agony in order to see one goal (and I was lucky to even get that). Yes, since goals are rare, it is much more exciting when they happen, but that doesn't discount the fact that 0-0 ties are a frequent occurrence. I don't believe in delayed gratification. I want lots of points and I want them NOW.

The Fans: this isn't really aimed at fans of the USA, as our fan base is mostly comprised of harmless squishy white guys from the suburbs who probably care more about the NFL. I'm speaking more about soccer fans worldwide. They are just plain crazy. And I don't mean that in a humorous or endearing way. More people die at soccer events every year than any other sport. Riots, overcrowding in stadiums, stampedes, death threats, and plain old murder are all part of the World Cup soccer-experience. No joke: you can actually purchase "stab-proof" vests from vendors at the World Cup. I'm not really clear on what leads to this behavior. Soccer might be all they have (maybe their country is devoid of hot chicks, or is run by a despotic A-hole, or they're depressed about returning to their job on the dirt-farm). But soccer seems to be a worthy adversary to religion and money in it's ability to ignite absurd behavior on the part of its participants.

Vuvuzelas: those things are really, really annoying.

We Have Always been at War with Eurasia

2010-04-14T15:00:00.000-07:00

"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized." -- George Orwell (excerpt from 1984)

The United States government announced today that it will officially archive "every tweet that has been broadcast on Twitter" since the mega-popular (and stupid-as-hell) instant-messaging service was launched back in 2006. The reasoning provided was a vague and mealy-mouthed assertion that the archives will be used for purposes of sociological study.

As much as I revile Twitter (or Twatter, as it should henceforth be referred), nothing freaks me out more than the thought of my government "archiving" personal information pertaining to anything but taxes or a criminal-record.

Not that I've ever been under the assumption that the government hasn't been participating in such "archiving" since the dawn of printed media, but rarely are they so brazen as to admit to it. What has nearly every presidential administration of the last 40 years been caught doing? You guessed it: LYING. So, when our government decides to start informing us of their abuses of privacy, it means they have calculated our unwillingness to question it. They anticipated no revolution; no assault on their authority, in spite of any trespasses they commit upon our freedoms. We, the sheep, simply had a small piece of our pasture taken away. There's plenty of pasture left, right? Maybe...but for how long?

Governments do not "give" freedom. Freedom is an indelible right to every human being. Governments simply erode and encroach upon the rights of man until Power (the supreme noun in the English language) has been achieved. Sure, we need an agency that will ensure our potholes are repaired, and can act as an agent of defense from the tyranny of the common criminal. But the unchecked tyranny of Government is more frightening than any thug I can imagine.

You might think, Tweets are a "public" broadcast and were never meant to exist within the protected bounds of private-thought. I suppose that would be a valid point, if we were to assume that the messages will never later be altered for devious purposes (a la 1984). We can't always think that something as innocuous as a Tweet will always remain so. In 30 years, it is not outside the realm of possibility that Tweeting, or borrowing Mein Kampf from the library, or writing an anti-government blog entry will have major consequences.

True, we're not quite at the point where we need to fear the oft-prophesied mind-meld tyranny we're likely in for, but Tweets are (in a weird way) a form of ESP, and no tin-foil hat will ever be thick enough to avert the digital gaze of our government. Your thoughts and behaviours are as transparent as the airborne binary code of which they are composed.

Ants

2010-04-14T01:34:00.000-07:00

It is Spring, and as the seemingly endless Northwest rains begin to scale-back in their intensity (and eventually their frequency as well), it is common to be visited by creatures whose numbers, if left unchecked, rival Portland's very raindrops. I am, of course, talking about ants.

We don't really struggle with the ants in these part. We're not like Texas, where fire-ants seem to consume pets and small children on a regular basis. Nor are we like South America, where most insects want to lay eggs inside you (because you are warm and squishy and would make a good host). Rather, if you venture out into Oregon's desert regions (yes, Oregon has deserts. It's not merely home to trees and fixie-riding hipsters), you'll find the occasional giant winged ant, and carpenter ants can sometimes make an appearance in the woodwork of your home if you're not careful, but for the most part it is the presence of tiny black "sugar" ants of which we are most likely to be aware.

It's hard for me to hate the little guys. Sure, anything in large-enough numbers can be creepy (children and zombies come immediately to mind), but unless you are remiss in properly storing your bag of sour-Skittles, or happen to spill your Mountain Dew on the carpet, you'll rarely see more than a few of these diminutive creatures roaming about your abode for fallen sweets. As goes for any unwanted pest, a modicum of hygiene and cleanliness will keep their numbers at bay.

When it comes right down to it, I find ants rather endearing. They can, after all, do some pretty bitchin' stuff. Just look at their industrious nature: they can penetrate metal-threaded lids on jars, they can lift 20 times it's own body weight, and when they fight, it's always to the death (gladiator style!). Also, if you simultaneously weighed all the humans in the world, and all the ants in the world, the ants would outweigh the humans.

I say all of this because I am experiencing an infestation of sorts at the moment. Nothing major, just a few drones scoping the place for a morsel to eat. But what really interests me is their recent fascination with climbing the wall in front of my computer station. There is nothing at all remarkable about this wall; but about every 5 minutes or so, I see a solitary ant winding his way toward the ceiling. I didn't think too much of it at first, but they just keep coming and coming, pressed by some intrinsic desire to get to the top.

I wonder what it is they think they'll find there. Heaps of sweet, sticky sugar beyond their wildest dreams? Super-sexy female ants? That celebrity ant from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids? Since there is nothing on my ceiling that could serve as a food-source, these ants are following their their instincts toward absolutely nothing. I'm almost tempted to put something up there for them to find, but it would be cheating them of the truth of their very existence. No matter how many ants scale the dizzying heights of my bedroom wall, there will never be anything there worth discovering. For all their marvels, ants really don't understand what drives them. They simply "go," highlighting their own existential bankruptcy with every inch they climb.

It is sad and humbling to watch this process repeated with such regularity.

Quite Possibly the Funniest Thing I've Ever Seen

2010-04-06T23:12:00.000-07:00

Ummmm...OK. So, the other night I decided to sit down and watch the remainder of the Dirty Harry films that I had not yet seen. I knew they would probably suck, but it's just one of those OCD things a cinema "completist" must undertake. But nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to witness when I pushed 'play' to begin The Dead Pool (the 1988 conclusion of Clint Eastwood's "Harry Callahan" character). When I first saw this scene, my brain almost exploded by overloading with too many questions at once. The first (and most important) question, is "how did I manage to miss this beautiful piece of cringe-inducing pop-culture gold all these years?" This is cinema at it's most awe-inspiring (not in the same way as Welles or Melville, but awe-inspiring nonetheless).

But there are other important questions and observations as well, and now that my mind has had sufficient time to digest this filmic treasure, I will ask them here. I'll try my best to pose the questions as they occurred to me upon my first viewing. Let's take a little swim through...The Dead Pool. Do yourself a favor and watch the clip in full-screen.

4 Seconds into video: Holy crap...is that...Jim Carrey? It is! Weird.
6 Seconds into video: Why is Jim Carrey lip-synching to "Welcome to the Jungle" while wearing a priest's collar?
21 Seconds into video: That look he just gave me made me feel really uncomfortable.
31 Seconds into video: Jim Carrey is doing "The Shimmy" to a metal song.
32 Seconds into video: I'm convinced that Jim Carrey has never heard a metal song, or seen a metal video in his life. This is what he "imagines" metal stars to act like.
37 Seconds into video: Why is he scratching his neck? Does he have poison-oak?
42 Seconds into video: He clearly does not know the words to the song.
47 Seconds into video: He squeezes what appears to be an invisible pair of breasts. Then he squeezes his own invisible breast.
50 Seconds into video: He is unmistakably rubbing his ass-crack on the post of the bed behind him.
Rest of video: more evidence that he does not know the words, more creepy dance-moves, and yes, he just removed his shirt. WTF?

And lest you think that this is all The Dead Pool has to offer, fear ye not! It also stars thespian extrordinaire Liam Neeson as a pony-tailed film-director who may or may not be a closeted-homosexual. If that's not enough for you, the obligatory franchise car-chase through the sloped streets of San Francisco is carried-out by none other than a remote-controlled toy car rigged with explosives. Last, but not least, the film features all of the racism and gore you've come to expect from Clint Eastwood.

The SF police-department should really think about getting that guy a tazer. It would save them a load of paperwork, not to mention the litigation that comes with shooting every perp he encounters in the head.

The Vinyl Countdown

2010-02-26T11:01:00.000-08:00

I recently had the misfortune of having my vehicle broken into. Anyone who knows me also knows that I expect no better from humanity. Not only was the experience a huge hassle, but in addition to making off with some of my goods, the thieving pricks also smashed a cactus (which happened to have a huge amount of sentimental significance) that I had sitting in the back seat.

I share all this because I recently stumbled upon the list of vinyl records that the villians abscounded with, and I thought I would share it with you. I'm sure the soul-less crooks have no idea why most of them are significant (they probably just wondered what sort of fag owns a Sinead O'Connor record), and though I requested every local vinyl-shop in the city to let me know if they happened to see such a collection, I have given up hope that I'll ever see my belongings again. Here's a list of what they took (all were original pressings):

The Damned: self-titled
Thelonius Monk: Monk's Dream
They Might Be Giants: Flood
Michael Brook: Hybrid (Japanese import)
Sonny Bono: Inner-views
Bob Dylan & the Band: Before the Flood
The Cult: Electric
Gary Numan: The Plan (UK import)
Tubeway Army: Replicas
Neil Young: Landing on Water
The Dickies: Dawn of the Dickies
The Everly Brothers: The Fabulous Style of...
The Everly Brothers: Two Yanks in England
Liz Phair: Exile in Guyville
Tangerine Dream: Cyclone
The Beatles: Hey Jude EP (Argentina pressing)
The Animals: Animal Tracks
Antipop Consortium: Arrhythmia
Sinead O'Connor: I do not Want...
Jean Michel Jarre: Equinoxe (French pressing)
Yo La Tengo: Today is the Day

...oh, and they also nabbed by copy of Purple Rain on DVD. It's enough to make a guy go vigilante.

You put the "Ouch" in Douchbag (key traits of the common hipster)

2010-01-01T22:56:00.000-08:00

When faced with the lofty task of ascribing boundaries to indecency, Supreme Court justice Potter Stewert once famously said, "I can't define pornography, but I know it when I see it."

The same can be said for the method of defining a "hipster."

I was recently faced with this question, and lest any immature, uncouth, obnoxious person mis-identify those of us who clearly fall outside the definitional boundaries of the offending adjective, I thought I would take a minute to provide the masses with a handy guide for more easily identifying these increasingly ubiquitous (especially in Portland) creatures.

The reason why I feel this is important is this: hipsters are awful. They're a cultural virus; a blight on art and community. They spread and fester in an area just long enough to inflate the cost of living, before moving on to the next unsuspecting town. They poison the aesthetic well with bad art. They dress in clothes which any normal person would find embarrassing. They profess a liberal agenda, but are mired by their own arrogant self-service. And they have taken the torch from the hippies and punks of yesteryear by blissfully ignoring the brokenness of the failed ideologies of those groups.

The following list is by no means exhaustive, but you might be a hipster if...

You find PBR too mainstream.
You wear glasses, but don't actually need them.
You only smoke when you drink, or only smoke to "stay skinny".
You ride a fixie.
You have a mustache (of any variety).
You own more than three flannel shirts. Bonus points if any of them have hoods.
You insist that Mudhoney was a better grunge band than Nirvana.
You own more than one 12" vinyl single by the Smiths, and/or can identify someone in the band not named Morrissey or Marr.
You work at an advertising agency.
Your pants end above (but near) your ankles, or are so tight that they cannot be taken off without turning inside-out.
You have had a mixed-media art showing at any venue other than an art gallery (bonus points if this venue serves alcohol).
You are in a band with more than 3 words in the title.
You do not pay rent with income from a real "job" (selling pot does not count).
You ride a vintage scooter.
You take no issue with wearing a trucker hat and aviator sunglasses at the same time.
Waking Life is your favorite film.

2009: My Year in Movies

2010-01-01T21:52:00.000-08:00

Much like 2008, I watched more than a few films in 2009 (362 of them to be exact. To view the complete list, click HERE). Maybe I'm getting more picky in my old-age, maybe I'm becoming smarter about the cinema, or maybe there just aren't that many unseen (to me) films left out there to blow my mind, but I consider 2009 a dry spell in terms of discovering a significant quantity of amazing flicks. But in my travels, I did come across a few "must-see" pictures. Here they are...enjoy.

Must-See Westerns
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968, Italy) - Directed by Sergio Leone
A Fistful of Dollars (1964, Italy) - Directed by Sergio Leone
Hang 'em High (1968, USA) - Directed by Ted Post
The Great Silence (1968, Italy) - Directed by Sergio Corbucci
The Tin Star (1957, USA) - Directed by Anthony Mann
*****
Must-See Horror Films
Antichrist (2009, Multinational) - Directed by Lars von Trier
Let the Right one In (2008, Sweden) - Directed by Tomas Alfredson
*****
Must-See Crime Dramas
In Cold Blood (1967, USA) - Directed by Richard Brooks
Hard Boiled (1992, China) - Directed by John Woo
The Hit (1984, United Kingdom) - Directed by Stephen Frears
Crime Wave (1954, USA) - Directed by Andre de Toth
The Aura (2005, Multinational) - Directed by Fabian Bielinsky
This Gun for Hire (1942, USA) - Directed by Frank Tuttle
*****
...and a few from various genres not to be missed...
Come and See (1985, Russia) - Directed by Elem Klimov
Europa (1991, Multinational) - Directed by Lars von Trier
Woman in the Dunes (1964, Japan) - Directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara
Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987, France) - Directed by Louis Malle
The Longest Day (1962, USA) - Multiple Directors
JCVD (2008, Belgium) - Directed by Mabrouk El Mechri
Noi the Albino (2003, Iceland) - Directed by Dagur Kari
The Conformist (1970, Italy) - Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci
Persona (1966, Sweden) - Directed by Ingmar Bergman
Vanishing Point (1971, USA) - Directed by Richard C. Sarafian
The Thin Blue Line (1988, USA), - Directed by Errol Morris

Best Albums of the 1980's

2009-10-06T00:36:00.000-07:00

In terms of music, there was a lot of horrible shit churned-out in the 80's. There really is no other way to put it. It was the decade of Reaganomics, cocaine, plastics, Max Headroom, and a frighteningly voracious yuppie consumerism that spilled its way into every facet of modern Western society. Thus, when we turned on the radio, we were given Wham. And The Thompson Twins. And Winger. And hundreds upon hundreds of equally dismal musical prospects.

But wait...pop music (as we know it today) was developed and perfected in the 80's, taking cues from disco's glitter and the sex-drenched energy of artists like James Brown. There was also the entity formerly known as MTV, which shifted "the now" away from the bustling coasts and into the homes of every home in America equipped with a cable-box (including cities with names like Kalamazoo, Dubuque, or El Paso).

It was also a decade in which the independent spirit really began to manifest itself in such a way that being "indie" didn't mean that only residents of your small city would hear you. Bands from places like Hoboken and Minneapolis began to appear on the national radar with alarming regularity. It is up for debate as to why this began to occur, but rebellion takes many forms, and I can't help but think that many artists just couldn't take any more of the old musical regime. Musicians finally figured out that it is much more satisfying (albeit less profitable) to be Alex Chilton than it was to be Jim Morrison. And being that many of my favorite 80's records were recorded by non-American outfits, it's a safe assumption that this creative coup was being waged in other Western countries as well.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here today to celebrate this thing called life." My favorite records of the 1980's...

Prince - Purple Rain
The Stone Roses - self-titled
The Sound - Jeopardy
Brian Eno - Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks
Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation
Pixies - Doolittle
Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine
The Jesus & Mary Chain - Psychocandy
Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska
The Cure - Disintegration
Spacemen 3 - The Perfect Prescription
The Replacements - Let it Be
Joy Division - Closer
The Smiths - Louder than Bombs
Mission of Burma - Vs.
The House of Love - self-titled (1988)
U2 - Boy
Talk Talk - Spirit 0f Eden
Love and Rockets - self-titled
Kraftwerk - Computer World

And a few not to be missed...

Echo & the Bunnymen -Ocean Rain
Modern English - After the Snow
Guns n' Roses - Appetite for Destruction
The Feelies - Crazy Rhythms
Violent Femmes - self-titled
Felt - Forever Breathes the Lonely World

While you were distracted by Grunge...(the 20 best records of the 90's)

2009-10-05T23:53:00.000-07:00

As Rob Gordon so poignantly inquires in High Fidelity, "What came first, the music or the misery? Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?" You would think that there has been enough distance between now and the 90's (i.e. the formative years of my youth) to be able to accurately answer that question, but I'm no closer to a conclusion than to discovering a cure for cancer.

Maybe it's one of those unanswerable inquiries, such as "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" But I really suspect that pop-music and misery are bi-directional forces, feeding into each other to create a sort-of cultural feedback-loop, and invariably setting us up to have our hearts eventually be crushed by the world (pronounced "girl"). It was grunge that originally weasled it's way into the canon of my musical preferences, but I ultimately found it too one-dimensional to sustain itself as a long-term symbol of my own adolescent turmoil.

Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen...
U2 - Achtung Baby/Zooropa/Pop
Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral
Sonic Youth - Goo
Radiohead - OK Computer
Sunny Day Real Estate - Diary
Elliott Smith - XO
Depeche Mode - Violator
Hum - You'd Prefer an Astronaut
Pedro the Lion - It's Hard to Find a Friend
Catherine Wheel - Ferment
DJ Shadow - Endtroducing
Ride - Nowhere
The La's - s/t
Portishead - Dummy
A Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory
The Stone Roses - Second Coming
Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Yo La Tengo - I Can Hear the Heart...
The Verve - Urban Hymns

Top-10 Heavily Considered (and "must-own") albums of note:

Built to Spill - Keep it Like a Secret
Galaxie 500 - This is Our Music
My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
Massive Attack - Mezzanine
Pulp - Different Class
The Psychedelic Furs - World Outside
The Vaselines - The Way of the Vaselines
The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Methodrone
Guided by Voices - Do the Collapse
Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions...

Now that it's over, can we just do the 60's again?

2009-09-29T17:18:00.000-07:00

The business of music has been something of a mechanized beast since the days of the player piano. As soon as live music began to take a backseat (or at least ride shotgun) to recorded formats, the artists creating it found themselves having to labor under the ever-growing expectations of commercialism. From Tin Pan Alley to Casey Kasem to the over-blogged indie explosion, the music industry has had no issues existing as a sort of virtual sausage-factory. Every effort to break free from this system eventually ends up becoming part of it, until Indie, and pop, and punk, and everything in between becomes a garbled bastardization of everything that preceded it.

At no time has this been more apparent than in the last decade. The Internet let us hear EVERYTHING that had ever been recorded (probably for free if you are of a certain moral latitude), and home recording not only became financially viable, but has almost itself become the standard. These facts led to something that had not really occurred since the opening chords of "Twist & Shout": music stopped moving entirely. Instead it circled in upon it's own history, becoming progressively bankrupt. Every decade found itself being re-examined, rehashed, and retooled. Until the 2000's, every decade saw the exploration of musical territory previously untread by the preceding decade (psych in the 60's, punk in the 70's, grunge in the 90's, etc). True these genres borrowed various themes and threads of their predecessors, but they were also their own unique entities. But as the music via Internet phenomenon took hold, musicians were less apt to explore new territories than to coast on the labors of past visionaries.

Not at all does this mean that there wasn't great music created during this decade. On the contrary, bands like Interpol gave us more of what we didn't get enough of the first time around. And there were a few bands that really tried to blow it all apart (Menomena, for one). But this decade was more like dessert than a meal. It got less filling as the decade progressed, and I'm starting to get really hungry. Here are the few records that will serve to tide me over until (or if) we ever experience the sea change that music so desperately needs (because if Vampire Weekend is the best we can hope for, I'm going to drink the Kool-Aid right now).

Radiohead - Kid A (2000).
The Wrens - Meadowlands (2003)
Trail of Dead - Source Tags and Codes (2002)
Primal Scream - XTRMNTR (2000)
Sigur Rós - Ágætis byrjun (2001, US Release)
Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights (2002)
Unwound - Leaves Turn Inside You (2001)
Modest Mouse - Moon and Antarctica (2000)
M83 - Dead Cities, Red Seas, Lost Ghosts (2003)
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Howl (2005)
Yo La Tengo - And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out (2000)
Erlend Øye - Unrest (2003)
Logh - Every Time a Bell Rings... (2002)
Spiritualized - Songs in A&E (2008)
Sonic Youth - Murray Street (2002)
Neil Halstead - Sleeping on Roads (2002)
Air - Talkie Walkie (2004)
Dismemberment Plan - Change (2001)
Autolux - Future Perfect (2004)
Fugazi - The Argument (2001)

The judges (me) were hesitant to leave the following fine recordings off the list:

Sunny Day Real Estate - The Rising Tide
Royksopp - Melody AM
Menomena - I am the Fun Blame Monster
Sufjan Stevens - Seven Swans
Elliott Smith - Figure 8
TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain
The Streets - A Grand Don't Come for Free
Pedro the Lion - Control
The Besnard Lakes - ...are the Dark Horse
Justice - †

A Hazy Shade of Winter

2009-05-08T00:26:00.000-07:00

When I was 20, young, and spry, I used to listen to Roger Daltrey sing "My Generation" and think that I understood.

"I hope I die before I get old."

Those words were the ultimate dare; a spitting in the face of life and what was to come. I felt solid and impregnable; immortal and resistant to what Hamlet called "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."

What I and most of my squishy and overstimulated suburban-kind fail(ed) to see was that this perceived invincibility was due to nothing more than the fact that, up unto that point in life, I had experienced very little actual adversity. A thing like poverty, or sickness, or divorce remained something of an abstract, and the closest I ever got to death was in 16-bit form at the arcade. However, one learns that leering at life with a punk-rock sneer isn't all that courageous when life has not yet revealed its indeterminately monstrous nature.

So here we are, 10 years later. I'll spare you the details of why I'm a little miffed at the whole song & dance, but let's just say if those 10 years were a poker game, I would have cashed-in my chips around age 25 and tried something else a little lower on the intensity scale (shuffleboard, maybe). I suppose the years could have been worse (I do remain polio-free, after all), but a life I once thought was going to resemble La Dolce Vita, somehow turned into a lost outtake from Fight Club (sans the cornflower-blue ties).

I'm not going to argue about the finer points of destiny and how much of what/where we are is due to our own choices. Here's the thing about destiny: I know what I know, you know what you know, and we're both idiots on the subject. Philosophy is to truth what masturbation is to sex (i.e. a poor substitute for the real thing). So, whether you believe that God tied you to the train-tracks, or that you walked there and tied yourself to them of your own accord, we can both agree that you're eventually going to meet the train. In the meantime, you just find things to do to keep your mind/heart occupied and hope that train got held up somewhere near Kalamazoo.

True, I'm never going to cure cancer or start the next Google/Twitter/Facebook/Whatever (I'm not that brand of smart), but one should have goals. These are the (totally superficial) things I will accomplish before I turn 40:

5.) JUMP OUT OF AN AIRPLANE. While I might be done spitting in the face of life, for some reason I still feel the need to make gravity my bitch. Newton and his silly apples be damned...we have parachutes!

4.) PLAY IN THE WORLD-SERIES OF POKER. It's the chess of the everyman, and if there ever was an unremarkable everyman, I'm surely in the running. The $10K entry fee seems a bit daunting at this point, but I can always sell a kidney, and it will be worth it if only for the off-chance of getting to punch Phil Helmuth in the face.

3.) OWN A COPY OF THE "BUTCHER" COVER. For some reason The Beatles thought it would be a good idea to drape themselves in meat and doll-parts for use on the cover of Yesterday and Today (unshockingly, contemporary audiences disapproved of this concept. Go figure). Following public outcry (likely from the bulk of the Herman's Hermits fan-club), the LPs with this photo were either modified with a "paste-over" photo, or destroyed altogether. However, a few survived and are considered to be the Holy Grail of Beatles vinyl artifacts. I even got to touch one once while on tour in Los Angeles (it was positively electric, like dropping a hairdryer in the bath, or having Angelina Jolie suck on your earlobe). I want me one.

2.) PLAY ON-STAGE AT FIRST AVENUE. Ever since I saw Prince rolling around its stage in Purple Rain, First Avenue has been calling to me. I've already shared a stage with another of my top-5 artists (Spiritualized) a mere 1 week apart, so I don't think playing First Avenue is out of the question. Maybe I can even start my own little rivalry with Morris Day and the Time. I just hope it's during the Summer. I've been to Minneapolis during the winter...my ass-cheeks are still frozen to the seat of my rental car.

1.) SELL A SCREENPLAY. I'll definitely write a few of them, but I'm determined to get at least one made into an honest-to-goodness flick. No life as an artist is complete until you've seen your creation perverted and bastardized by a clan of low-life producers. Apparently I haven't learned any lessons from Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Chandler, or any one of the dozens of other admirable authors cum screenwriters...Viva Hollywood!

Stalker? I Barely Knew Her!

2009-04-23T00:15:00.000-07:00

So, they're shooting a Harrison Ford film next door to me right now. I don't mean in the general vicinity, or in the neighborhood...I mean directly next door in my neighbor's house. The Blade Runner himself is so close that it's tempting to dress up as Chewbacca and mill about my property, just to see how long it takes for the film-crew to call security. I'm at least going to yell "Han shot first" in his general direction to see if I can't get a glance thrown my way (Han did shoot first, by the way).

I think the movie is a feel-good biopic about triumph in the face of adversity, or some such nonsense. It's the kind of film I hate more than any other genre (other than musicals). It's about some guy named John Crowley, as opposed to Aleister Crowley (although playing the part of the founder of the Church of Satan would add a unique bent to Ford's oeuvre). I know almost nothing about it, but here are my locked-down guarantees: it will be weepy, there will be sweeping orchestral strings on the soundtrack, and it will suck. Save your $9 and go rent Blade Runner instead.

Interestingly enough, he already has stalkers. There are two unidentified (and age nondescript) females waiting in their cars across the street, just hoping for a glimpse of Mr. Ford (or Mr. Solo, or Mr. Jones, or Mr. Spencer. Did anyone else see What Lies Beneath? I didn't think so. What a turd). How did these psychos...er, I mean "fans"...find out where he was going to be? It's not like he's sending Twitters or using Facebook to advertise his whereabouts (although, reading "Harrison is currently cleaning out the litter-box" would be amusing).

To all stalkers, paparazzi, and whoever else: as my grandfather would say if he actually had one, "stay off my lawn."

2008: My year in movies

2008-10-28T16:00:00.000-07:00

I watched a lot of films in 2008 (313 of them, to be exact. To view the complete list, click HERE). I thought I would share with you some recommendations, in an attempt to further exacerbate my tendencies toward pop-culture fascism. Enjoy!

5 Must-See Film Noirs
Le Dolous (1962, France) - Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville
Murder, My Sweet (1944, USA) - Directed by Edward Dmytryk
The Big Sleep (1946, USA) - Directed by Howard Hawks
Chinatown (1976, USA) - Directed by Roman Polanski
Kiss Me Deadly (1955, USA) - Directed by Robert Aldrich
*** *** ***
5 Must-See Crime Dramas
Bullitt (1968, USA) - Directed by Peter Yates
Youth of the Beast (1963, Japan) - Directed by Seijun Suzuki
Classe Tous Risques (1960, France) - Directed by Claude Sautet
White Heat (1949, USA) - Directed by Raoul Walsh
Rififi (1955, France) - Directed by Jules Dassin
*** *** ***
5 Must-See Horror Films
Them (2006, France) - Directed by David Moreau
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978, USA) - Directed by Philip Kaufman
Hour of the Wolf (1968, Sweden) - Directed by Ingmar Bergman
Alien (1978, USA) - Directed by Ridley Scott
Funny Games (2008, USA) - Directed by Michael Haneke
*** *** ***
5 Must-See Dramas
Blow-Up (1966, UK/Italy) - Directed by Michaelangelo Antonioni
The Beat that my Heart Skipped (2005, France) - Directed by Jacques Audiard
Time of the Wolf (2004, France) - Directed by Michael Haneke
Chungking Express (1994, China) - Directed by Wong Kar-wai
Two-Lane Blacktop (1971, USA) - Directed by Monte Hellman
*** *** ***
5 Must-See Comedies
24-Hour Party People (2002, UK) - Directed by Michael Winterbottom
Angel-A (2005, France) - Directed by Luc Besson
The Butcher-Boy (1997, Ireland) - Directed by Neil Jordan
Taking Off (1971, USA) - Directed by Milos Forman
A Hard Day's Night (1964, UK) - Directed by Richard Lester

Don't You Think the Joker Laughs at You?

2008-09-29T12:04:00.000-07:00

The Beatles are intimidating.

If you are a casual fan having heard no more than their (truckload of) #1 singles, staring down the barrel of their remaining canon (pun intended) can be overwhelming. For a band whose existence spanned the length of a mere seven(ish) years, they released an immense amount of material, barely having their heels nipped-at by the other relevant bands of the era. It's hard to chalk-up an official count of Beatles releases during that time, due mainly in part to their scattershot (and progressive) method of music merchandising, but they released no less than 19 full-length LPs and major EPs during that era. With contemporary bands like Radiohead (or better yet: U2) taking a seeming eternity to compile enough songs for their official releases, it boggles the mind to think that The Beatles were able to release their entire catalog of pop-culture-axis-altering music in the time it took U2 to move from Pop to How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.

Intimidating? Yes. So, where do you start? The cutsie (but better than anyone else) guitar-pop of their first few records might be interpreted as a bit cloying to today's attention-span-of-a-gnat audience, while the unbridled sonic exploration of their later works might lack the bouncy hooks that some folks (especially my mom) really crave. Amassing a collection of 18 albums could be financially crippling to the average music consumer (vinyl junkies in particular). Many of my closest musically-inclined friends have neglected assembling the collection for this very reason.

This leads me to my next question. Let's say you've completed your collection. Let's say you've listened to it so many times that your record stylus has almost worn through to the other side of most of the albums. Let's also say, that after years of listening to the Fab-Four in high-quality headphones that you've even compiled pages upon pages of notes pertaining to the manner in which the songs are mixed and arranged (only someone with no life would do this, right? Ahem). Now, after all this, you want to start reading about the band. Even if you've read The Beatles Anthology (as likely a place to start as any), the only thing more daunting than tackling the band's musical output is the unbelievably F-ing MASSIVE amount of criticism dedicated to the subject. Still, new words are being written about The Beatles every day, with some of the (best) authors/writers still able to find new and uncharted approaches with which to dissect the band and its members.

Though, there is one question I've never heard posed, so I will pose it now: was it all really what it appeared to be? The Beatles were a band compiled of equal parts enigmatic genius, ambiguity, contradiction, and flat-out weirdness. The things being written about them should be made of the same stuff. To get at the core of a risk-taker, one must take risks, so here is mine: I think they were just screwing with us.

My theory is as serious as it is tongue-in-cheek; an unresolvable contradiction worthy of a band who made unresolvable contradictions their flagship product (they were, after all, the first boy-band to ever drape themselves with dismembered doll-parts and meat). Further, in no way am I questioning the legitimacy or success of the band. Even if they were just taking the piss out of us, their experiments were the stuff of Midas' legend. While their catalog is not without its rough-edges, most of their songs just, well, worked.

Here is how I imagine it all doing down: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Martin are all sitting in the Abbey Road control room discussing their next project, having just wrapped up the release of Revolver (which was, immediately by some, considered to be the best rock record EVER). Capitol records, whose insatiable hunger for chart-topping singles led to them initially telling Brian Wilson to stick Pet Sounds (maybe the 2nd best rock record ever) where the sun don't shine, had been tolerant of the mildly (but increasingly) experimental nature of Help!, Rubber Soul, and Revolver, if for no other reason than the few pop-centric singles embedded in those albums. At this point, if you are The Beatles, you have to feel like you just can't miss. And, through the lens of arrogance, genius, drugs, and success, they were probably right. So, why not blow it all up (a la Tyler Durden) and build it all over again? After all, they owned rock and roll, and while Beatlemania had seen a decline in its screaming-little-girl fanbase, they band were still the world's foremost critical-darlings. The genre was theirs to do with what they wished.

First, they abandoned touring altogether. Studio-only projects are commonplace these days, but when The Beatles said no to the touring it was unheard of. They had legions of (profoundly small-minded) fans burning their records, had to constantly solve the logistical and financial nightmare of playing stadiums, and almost ended up being permanent residents of Imelda Marcos' Filipino fun-land. As big as the band was, they were still obviously at the mercy of the world around them. In their claustrophobia-inducing world, the best way to take back control was to leave the world behind. Scrapping the touring lifestyle was one way to do this. Immersing themselves even further into the culture of conscious-defying substances was another. Writing the album equivalent to pop-music gibberish was the best.

Jean-Luc Godard once said of Resnais' Hiroshima Mon Amour, "it is the first film without any cinematic references." The same can safely be said about Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in a musical context. Or maybe it is the first record with EVERY musical reference (another one of those Beatles contradictions). It is a concept album (kind of); a self-celebratory series of "what-if's?" Anything goes (and anything did), and despite the clamoring of Capitol and Brian Epstein for new single-friendly material, the band continued their journey into the territory of the weird. George Martin, as willing (perhaps more so) to embrace new technology as any member of the band, acted as a Sherpa of sorts, assessing the available technology and turning the studio into a Rubik's cube of musical possibilities. When technology couldn't meet the demands of the band, they simply had it invented (see automatic double tracking). When viewed objectively, the album's whirlwind of stomp-boxes, harmoniums, unusual vocal-tracking methods, rotating Hammond speakers, animal noises, calliopes, sitars, and mellotrons makes it not impossible to picture Lennon smirking sadistically at the band's fanbase. "See, you bastards? This is what thou hath wrought! 'Love Me Do' be damned! We're going to make you listen to barnyard animals and you're going to EAT IT UP! We're even going to add a tone to the trail-off groove to piss off your dog!" Only in the skewed mind of Frank Zappa did this record look like a cash-grab.

Still not convinced? I give you The Magical Mystery Tour, the soundtrack to a film so absurdly self-indulgent, abstract, and anti-pop that it left some critics wondering if it really was a joke. Anyone who could argue that sex-appeal and record sales were at the forefront of the band's intentions at this point is a better expositor than myself.

Even if we are listening at our own expense to the unchecked whim of a gang of Puck-like sonic pranksters, the pranks are nonetheless perfect or legitimate in terms of their ability to stand alone as pieces of art. Maybe The Beatles weren't consciously drawing a parallel between their songs and something like Duchamp's Fountain, but maybe/probably they were. The music of The Beatles can be seen as a sort-of will o' the wisp, moving comfortably between the realms of pop-perfection and avant-garde weirdness, begging and daring anyone to follow. The band staked uncontested territory in both spheres by possessing the genius to do so. More importantly, though, they had the nerve to do so.

McCartney in particular maintained the spirit of experimentalism throughout his career. What do you do when you have been one-half of the greatest songwriting teams to have ever existed? Anonymously release two ambient techno records, have one of your records re-scored as an instrumental anti-rock/avant-jazz opus (also anonymously) , and brave the murky depths of total self-production (see McCartney and McCartney II), that's what. Knowing that he could never repeat the genre-defining significance of The Beatles as a unit, he could have clung pathetically to the resonance of his own past (see Richard Starkey). Rather, McCartney saw music as a medium without boundaries (commercial or otherwise), permitting him the fullest breadth of artistic freedom imaginable; a breaking of the musical eggshell that began with his stint as a Beatle.

Would someone who gave a sh*t about sales release Twin Freaks? Probably not.

Album Review: PORTISHEAD - THIRD

2008-09-25T22:23:00.000-07:00

When I heard they were reuniting, I did everything I could to implement upon myself a ninja-style media blackout pertaining to all-things Portishead. I avoided every mere mention of the band, every piece of news, and every live cut orbiting the blogosphere for the last six months. In fact, in the two weeks following the release of Third, I must have made three trips to purchase this record, only to leave empty-handed every time. I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t risk the potential for a band so intrinsically linked to my musical upbringing (not to mention a band I absolutely adore) to somehow fail artistically upon their reunion. It turns out that my hesitation was unjustified.

While Beth Gibbons’ vocal oeuvre has been noted to stand as a bit one-dimensional at times, Third sees her exploring new melodic and lyrical territory, all the while maintaining her ability to dig her nails into the ventricles of your heart. The album opens with “Silence,” a jungle meets break-beat offering that quells any expectations for what one thought the Third should/would sound like. This track, along with “Plastic” and “Hunter,“ inhabits a more jigsaw-like territory than any songs contributing to the velvety-flow of their first two albums; its elements cobbled-together in a jaggedly abrupt, but never distracting manner.

In contrast with the rip and paste aesthetic of the previously mentioned tracks, most of the remainder of the record’s songs are unbending and repetitive (but not at all in a negative way). Songs like “Nylon Smile” become intoxicating and hypnotic, nesting themselves into the dusty and unused corner of your conscious; a part you weren’t quite sure was there but are happy to discover, much in the same manner as Syd Barrett’s solo work (though, by a very different approach). “We Carry On,” with its proto-industrial rhythm fits this mold (it’s like Stereolab with teeth), as does “Machine Gun,” which is more creepy and paranoid (and adventurous) than anything the band has ever released. The song’s conclusion melts away into the territory of a lost Vangelis track, and would feel at home among Blade Runner’s end-credits. It should be noted, however, that the song-title and staccato-snare framework of “Machine Gun” were used on Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys 28 years prior to the release of Third (Portishead should’ve done their homework and named it something different, I guess).

Third’s standout tracks are “Small,” a gothic chamber-opera bookended by a synth-driven darkwave meltdown, and “The Rip,” which is perhaps the best song the band has ever written (unique and fragile, the song inches towards its conclusion of a claustrophobic heartbeat’s pulse and the whir of a lover’s blood coursing just beyond the boundary of their breast). It is undeniably beautiful, expectedly melancholy, and wholly addictive, which leaves the question: if Portishead had this kind of material in them all along, why have they been hiding?

Best of 2007 Music

2007-12-17T20:45:00.000-08:00

In order to establish my opinion as my own, I am posting my "best of 2007" music list the night before Pitchfork releases theirs. Being that they tend to bend popular opinion rather than assess it, I'm going to say my piece and wave goodbye to the year. 2007 marks one of the most "uninvolved" years for me as a music fan. Life simply got in the way this year, and I couldn't devote the time necessary to stay on top of what's out there. So...this list may look incomplete, and perhaps I'll get around to discovering those few gems that I overlooked, but this is what I know of the year, so here it is (in no particular order):

The Cinematic Orchestra - Ma Fleur (Ninja Tune Records)

Eluvium - Copia (Temporary Residence)

Fridge - The Sun (Domino Recordings)

Caribou - Andorra (Merge Records)

Kammerflimmer Kollektief - Jinx (Staubgold Germany)

Library Tapes - Hostluft (Make Mine Records)

Thurston Moore - Trees Outside the Academy (Ecstatic Peace Records)

Grails - Burning Off Impurities (Temporary Residence)

Menomena - Friend and Foe (Filmguerro Records)

Panda Bear - Person Pitch (Paw Tracks Records)

A Place to Bury Strangers - self-titled (Killer Pimp Records)

Ethan Rose - Spinning Pieces (Locust Records)

Valgeir Sigurðsson - Ekvílibríum (Bedroom Community Records)

Two Gallants - self-titled (Saddle Creek Records)

Yndi Halda - Enjoy Eternal Bliss (Big Scary Monsters)

Deerhunter - Cryptograms (Kranky Records)

The Besnard Lakes - ...are the Dark Horse (Jagjaguwar Records)

Do Make Say Think - You, You're a History in Rust (Constellation Records)

Radiohead - In Rainbows (self-released)

The Twilight Sad - Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters (Fat Cat Records)

alt.nerd.obsessive - Top Ten Comic Book to Film Adaptations

2007-11-28T22:43:00.000-08:00

Let it be said that I stopped collecting comic books shortly after high-school.

I traded my modest collection (about 4000 in all) for a shiny red Gibson Les Paul Studio-Custom guitar. In the end, I pretty much just traded one obsession for another, but my love of comics never fully went away. Though I'm no longer a consumer of geek-related products (unless music and movies count), I do enjoy a good comic-related film now and then, and get pretty hostile when a comic I love gets the fecal treatment from one of the seemingly numberless hack directors working in Hollywood. I don't expect perfection (after all, comics are about having fun). However, someone should be put to death for the tragedies that befell franchises like Ghost Rider and Spawn. That being said, justice has been done for some comics upon their cinematic permutation. Dare I say, some were adapted so well that the comic will forever be overshadowed by the film which follows it. Here are what I consider to be the best comic to film adaptations. Hands down. EVER!

10.) A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE - First of all, David Cronenberg kicks ass. Second of all, William Hurt kicks ass. Third of all, it seemed unlikely that Viggo Mortensen would ever shed his image as the pretty-boy Hobbit King. Go figure...he's actually a talented actor. Also, it is nearly impossible to broach the subject of the mob without sinking into mucky cliches of Italian-mobster lore. This story does it, and does it well.

9.) OLDBOY - There will be a lot of Asian works on this list. That may be because I'm a huge fan of Asian cinema, or simply because they write fantastic comics that are easily translated to film. Oldboy is akin to films like Audition, in which we are witness to something brutally horrifying, which is made all the more so by the fact that the horror is manifested in our own world. There are no aliens or ghosts to stir the fear within us. Rather, the darkness we are shown is the darkness within humanity.

8.) AKIRA - If your exposure to Japanese animation ended with Voltron, I pity you. While I'm not one of those guys who obsesses over anime, there are a few classics that I consider to be must-see material. It is wonderfully violent, lushly beautiful in its visual presentation, and remains a relevant examination of Japan's increasingly apocalyptic post-war perspective.

7.) THE CROW - Alex Proyas (also director of Dark City, which is shockingly not based upon a comic franchise) has the ability to create a darn fine mise en scène. It's hard to imagine a film like Sin City being made without The Crow existing as a touchstone. Plus, the soundtrack effing amazing. The Cure! Jesus and Mary Chain! Nine Inch Nails (covering Joy Division)!! It's an indie-kid's wet dream.

6.) AMERICAN SPLENDOR - Who would have thought a bunch of yuppies and overpaid Hollywood-types would have had the will to stand in the snow for hours at Sundance to see a movie about a comic-book author? It flies in the face of my most fundamental assumptions about the world.

5.) SIN CITY - Yes, Jessica Alba plays a stripper. No, she does not strip. She is one actress in a long line of many who seem to be partaking of this trend. Sadly, many critics were more intent on pointing out this fact than recognizing the film's true brilliance. It's a simple premise, really: make a movie which is based upon a graphic novel, and make it look like the graphic novel. We've seen a few imitators already, but mark my words, you will see a hundred more before the end of the decade. Though it was a critical sleeper, it will likely be studied in film-school classrooms in the not-so-distant future. It's no Citizen Kane, but it changed cinema as we know it.

4.) GHOST IN THE SHELL - I originally watched this movie because The Passengers (which was basically U2 + Brian Eno) had written a song for the soundtrack. I had no idea as to what I was about to behold. The sheer scope of this film is staggering, as is the beauty of the animation. Perhaps the full-force of this film will be lost on someone who didn't see it around the time of its original release, which corresponded with the advent of the Internet, but I still think it's worth seeing. Computers gaining self-awareness is nothing new (see 2001: A Space Odyssey, Terminator 2, et al), but this was the first film (as far as I know) to successfully intermingle that premise along with the notion of the human soul as a "thing".

3.) EVANGELION: THE DEATH OF EVANGELION - While Ingmar Bergman gets the lion's share of recognition for blending philosophy and psychology into a celluloid format, nobody has ever done it in as pure a form as the Evangelion: Neon Genesis series. What do you mean by that, you ask? I mean that the last two episodes of the show feel like Freud digging at your brain with a plumbing-snake. This film is, unfortunately, completely irrelevant to those who haven't watched all 26 episodes of the series, but it is totally worth the commitment. Completing Evangelion is a life-changing experience, and I say that with no hyperbole intended.

2.) V FOR VENDETTA - This is one of those films that I wasn't sure I liked upon first viewing. I have since found it increasingly (and monumentally) enjoyable upon further encounters. I blame this primarily on the misleading advertising campaign that accompanied it upon its release. The studio implied another Matrix-style thriller, where lots of sexy people blow up lots of sexy things in lots of sexy ways. But the film is really about none of those things. Rather, it is a beautiful film which cocoons one of the most ugly and frightening facets of human-history: the mass sedation and eventual destruction of mankind's collective-will.

1.) GHOST WORLD - Starring a surprisingly frumpy (if not downright homely) Scarlett Johansson, Ghost World is a near-flawless film, and is the remarkable embodiment of the post-Gen X identity crisis. It is a film so blatantly fresh and daring that it is almost impossible to speak about in a concise manner. So I will just say this, watch it now!

Radiohead Falls into Place -- Thoughts on "In Rainbows"

2007-10-16T22:07:00.000-07:00

Due to the sheer volume of music I consume on a daily basis, there are really only three bands whose records I can be bothered to review on this here blog: U2, Radiohead, and (if the miracle of posthumous resurrection is ever perfected by anyone other than Jesus) The Beatles. So, it should be obvious that the records I review here will be few and far between, but here are a few thoughts pertaining to the newest Radiohead platter for your consideration.

THE RELEASE

When the announcement dropped regarding the band's intention to release the album in such a bizarre fashion, more than a few of my musical chums were left scratching their heads and asking, WTF? I, myself, was doubtful and curious as to how they would pull it off, a thought-pattern which hearkened back to my days as an undersexed high-school virgin (the mechanics of the process made sense, but heck if I knew how to go about making it happen or how successful it might be). But the release of In Rainbows came and went (as did my virginity. Nyuck, nyuck.) without a hitch, and the record industry will never be the same. It's not like their idea was anything new (Prince has made more than one attempt to incinerate the record industry over the years). It's just that it was going to take the most major of bands (with a major brass-pair) to pull the trigger and await the aftermath. U2 certainly wasn't going to scrap their cushy deal with Interscope, so who else was it going to be? But apparently the water is fine and sheep are now lining up to mimic this approach. The record industry has been cowering in fear for years now, hoping to avoid their inevitable transition into the annals of the obsolete. But Yorke n' Co. just pulled the linchpin, and the whole chimera is going to come apart at the seams. This is where everything is different from now on. It won't happen overnight, but the sea change has been sparked and you will see the industry evolve and refocus itself out of the cluster-storm of uncertainty that has plagued it since the birth of iTunes (and the death of Kurt Cobain).

THE MUSIC

I'm not sure there has ever been a truly "perfect" album from the rock-era, but OK Computer and Kid-A are as close as you will get. They are two of the high watermarks in recording history, and are a daunting standard to aim at for any musician, and even more so for the guys who wrote them (this is the reason why guys like JD Salinger create a masterwork and then shut themselves off from society, never to write again). Thus, it's not fair to expect that measure of greatness to be repeated. However, we should indeed expect greatness in some form. Hail to the Thief hinted at it, but ultimately suffered from its own bloated loftiness. Amnesiac felt like leftovers from a really great meal (still tasty, but never to attain the deliciousness of the original serving). But with In Rainbows we are seeing a step in the right direction. Despite its lack of physical packaging, it still felt like an "album", rather than merely a collection of songs. There is a cohesiveness, as well as a pastoral thread, that allows it to feel as thus. The frigid and angular architecture of past Radiohead efforts have been effortlessly substituted for a unique tinge of intimate warmth, and dare I say, "soul". As angst-ridden as Thom Yorke has been in the past, soulfullness has never been his strong suit (nor has it needed to be). But it works for him here and I managed to digest it without really questioning it.

"15 Step" proves to be a perfect choice to open the record and set my spine a-rush with goosebumps. "Videotape" is the album's weak-spot, but can pass fairly inoffensively due to its placement at the end of the tracklisting. But the true greatness of the band can be illustrated no better than by "All I Need", which may be one of the top-ten songs they have ever recorded (even in light of the fact that it is too short. The final progression should have continued for at least another minute! I think I'm going to take it into ProTools and extend it appropriately). The rest of the tracks can be labeled as nothing less than great. Even though a few could be classified as "under-realized", a so-so Radiohead song is still better than the best songs of most artists.

HOW IT RATES

If I wrote for Pitchfork -- 8.0

If I wrote for Rolling Stone -- Four Stars (out of five)

If I wrote for Spin -- B+

If I was me -- Pretty Effing Fantastic!!

Digital Video & the Death of the Urban Legend

2007-09-29T15:05:00.000-07:00

Everyone has heard about them. Those scandalous little nuggets of depravity which slipped through the production cracks of the Walt Disney Company. Before the age of digital media, most of these conjectures were based upon hearsay, speculative opinion, or (at best) grainy video evidence. Is there really a picture of a nude woman in The Rescuers? Does Jessica Rabbit really have a Sharon Stone-style crotch shot in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Does the word "sex" really appear in the sky during The Lion King? Are the phallus-centered rumors about The Little Mermaid true? The answer is yes on all accounts.

It would be hard to determine exactly why or how these things (plus a few audio legends, which are too difficult to feature here) were allowed to be included in these films. Before the rise of home-video, the only manner in which you could view a film was in a theater. So, if someone thinks they saw something, they're probably not going to keep going back to confirm it. Even with the advent of VHS, there was really no way to pause a scene with any clarity. Most of these legends pass so quickly that you could never really be sure of their existence. However, in this age of high-resolution digital media, you can pause on any frame with absolute clarity. We can now easily prove the existence of such things (that is, if Disney hadn't made it a point to edit them out of newer prints of the films in question).

There are a couple of reasons why this is on my mind. A few years ago, I was pursuing an Education degree, during which I interned for a media class at a local high-school (and shortly after which I switched majors. Teenagers are vile). In this class, there was a rather enterprising young lady who had put together a video presentation of the legends in question (mind you, this was in the days before You Tube), and proved the existence of all of them. Additionally, I have been thinking about the transfer of power regarding the entertainment industry and the consumer. Where before, the industry had all the power. They would show us exactly what they wanted us to see and we were powerless to do anything more than absorb it (cartoon nudity and all). Now, any product that hits the market can be dissected, studied, and pirated at will by the consumer. We now have the power to hold the industry accountable in ways we never could before. I'm sure tidbits of naughtiness are still included in modern films by rogue (and/or disgruntled) animators, but I guarantee they are on par with the Holy Grail in their ability to remain shrouded.

It's not that I'm in favor of exposing children to the wiles of adult perversity. It's just that, you have to admit, speculating about urban legends is kind of fun; being able to ask, did you see it or didn't you? The idea that the quest for accuracy is unending is what makes it worth pursuing. Before the digital age, we couldn't really prove one way or another if Pink Floyd or Judas Priest had included subliminal messages in their songs, or if you could actually see Jessica Rabbit's snatch. But in the age of Pro Tools or Adobe Premier, you can dissect audio & video down to the tiniest spike of the waveform, or the tiniest image detail. The mystery has been spoiled by a bunch of Ones and Zeroes. The 'Crusades'-style search-and-destroy mission enacted by the Disney company regarding these films does nothing more than prove that there is something to be hidden. But then again, that's what people get for watching films from a company started by a Nazi-sympathizing anti-Semite.

The "You've got to be effing kidding me" news story of the month

2007-09-07T00:21:00.000-07:00

KATMANDU, Nepal: "Nepal's state run airline sacrificed two goats earlier this week, hoping it would please the gods and resolve technical problems with a troubled jet, officials said Thursday. One of the airline's two Boeing 757 aircraft has been grounded for maintenance since last month. Hoping to end those problems, the airline sacrificed the goats earlier this week, according to an airline official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. It is common in predominantly Hindu Nepal to sacrifice animals hoping for good luck and blessings."

OK, first off: this is exactly why I find it so hard to leave the comfy haunts of my home country. Michael Moore can make as many documentaries like Sicko as he wants, but at least in this country I don't have to worry about sacrificing a furry creature in order to make sure my transportation functions correctly.

Second of all, this is 2007. That means that every person on the planet should be logical and enlightened enough to realize that there is no connection between snuffing out a goat and the engine of an airplane. If you believe this, you are a retard. It is not God's job to fix the disintegrated bearing inside the plane's engine. That is the mechanic's job. If the mechanic fails to fulfill his end of this precarious bargain, then the plane's passengers are going to be turned into cottage-cheese when they plummet to their fiery demise. Nothing aggravates me more than people who neglect their free-will as some sort of testament to their belief in a deity. That goes whether or not you are a plane mechanic in Nepal, or a suburban house-wife in the USA (I once knew a woman who actually prayed to God before buying a coffee-table, in order to make sure He wouldn't object. Good news for her: I think they make pills for that now).

Third of all, don't go to Nepal unless you really want to see if your seat cushion will act as a flotation device (and since Nepal is a landlocked country, it probably won't do you much good.)

Kraftwerk and the Amazing Techno Color Dreamcoat

2007-09-03T21:17:00.000-07:00

I made an interesting discovery tonight. I was perusing my vinyl collection, trying to find the perfect record to fit my mood, and I came across the first full-length LP I ever owned: Breakdancing (on K-tel Records, which nicely supplemented my repeated viewings of Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo). My mom gave me that record when I was like five years old, but made me promise not to try the headspin move, upon punishment of death (or my neck snapping, whichever came first). I used to listen to the crap out of that record while racing slot cars and playing with He-man figures, which is evident due to its current state of disrepair. But it still plays!

I was comfortably drifting into the gentle arms of carefree nostalgia, grooving to what had always been my favorite song on the album (called "Tour De France"), and was jolted out of my hazy bliss by the thought, "Hey, this sounds an awful lot like Kraftwerk." A quick glance at the liner notes confirmed what I had suspected. It turns out that ever since I was five, I had been a Kraftwerk fan and didn't even realize it.

This got me thinking: is the reason why I purchased my first Kraftwerk record (at 22 years old) simply a result of being exposed to them as a child? Furthermore, is the reason I listen to Pinback (who sometimes sound eerily like Hall and Oates) due to the fact that I could sing every lyric on Rock n' Soul: Part 1 record by the time I was six? Or is Pixies one of my top-ten favorite bands due to the fact that when I was a pre-teen I randomly checked-out Bossanova from my small-town public library? It's a strange "chicken or the egg" conundrum. Just how much do our early exposures lend to the maturation of our later tastes?

Not that I wasn't exposed to all manners of crap. My mom owned enough Lionel Richie and Barbara Streisand albums to drive a gay-man daffy. But somewhere, deep in the recesses of my adolescent brain, I came to the conclusion that my dad's Pink Floyd & Black Sabbath 8-tracks and Beatles records were somehow much more appealing than my mom's Neil Diamond albums. And not that I always had such discerning taste. I, like most of my indie-snot peers, went through their "my God, what was I thinking?" periods (yes, I owned a Bryan Adams tape once). But somehow I weathered that harrowing and desolate valley and have emerged victorious. Do I have Kraftwerk to thank for it? Did I escape the clutches of deathly pop-mediocrity thanks to my subliminal indoctrination into the world of great music by a bunch of fruity, keyboard-playing Krauts? It's a mystery for the ages.

The Greatest Thing Ever

2007-08-21T19:47:00.000-07:00

Remember that scene in David Fincher's SEVEN, when Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman discover the "sloth" victim? Basically, the guy had been tied to his bed for a year whilst his muscles atrophied and he withered down into a living corpse (but was kept pine-forest fresh by a truckload of those little tree air-fresheners). Well that, my friends, is now my own fate as well (although it won't take Kevin Spacey tying me down to achieve it). And I couldn't be more excited!

You might wonder what could possibly result in this most bleak of all futures, or why I would be so eager to embrace it. The answer is this: The Criterion Collection. The folks at Janus Films, who have been the world's foremost authority on classic (and/or foreign) cinema, have released a 50th anniversary box-set containing 50 (!) different films. It is now my life's goal to obtain one of these box sets, lock myself inside my apartment, and watch them all without regard to work, family, food, friends, or personal hygiene.

To acquire all of these films separately would cost well over $1400, and would be a nearly impossible feat, seeing that many of them are out of print and fetch exorbitant prices on eBay. And we're talking about the absolute finest quality prints and transfers of these films available on the planet, all shown in their original cut, and in their original aspect ratios (as the directors would have intended in the days before VHS bastardized the way in which films are screened. Die pan-and-scan! Die!). Where else are you going to find a box set containing Wild Strawberries, The 39 Steps, Seven Samurai, M, and The 400 Blows? Nowhere, I tell you! Plus, it comes with a neato book and slipcover. I am now a man on a mission.

Why you gotta be hatin' like dat?

2007-08-13T22:47:00.000-07:00

Time for the most banal, non-cerebral musing ever: why does everybody (except myself) seem to vehemently hate those fluffy orange marshmallow circus peanuts? I have never met somebody who actually likes them, yet they are ubiquitously available in almost every drug store, grocery store, and dime store (I have yet to find them at Costco, but a man can dream). Surely, it cannot be me who is buying enough of these morsels from Heaven to keep confectioners in business. Willy Wonka never bothered making them in his Henry Ford meets Wizard of Oz-esque dystopian chocolate factory (believe me, Wonka was an oppressive, facistic, pinko A-hole), and Hasbro failed to include them in their pro-diabetes tour-de-force "Candy Land" (I heard Lord Licorice petitioned for the inclusion of Circus Peanuts, but he was overruled by King Kandy). They are even responsible for the invention of the most hallowed of all sugary breakfast cereals: Lucky Charms (in 1963 a General Mills employee discovered that bits of the peanuts tasted good in an otherwise healthy cereal). I wouldn't count them in my top-5 favorite candies, but c'mon. They're so freaking good! Why do I seem to be alone in thinking so?

The Paradiddle Riddle

2007-08-03T23:24:00.000-07:00

Lists. There are few things out there that aggravate me more than a shoddily assembled list pertaining to something that I love. Now, I understand that when viewing any list, one must take into account a certain subjective flexibility. Let's face it: most lists (when art is concerned) aren't compiled using the Scientific Method. Rather, they are compiled on the basis of opinion (public or otherwise). However, even with this premise in mind, it was hard to ignore the nauseating inaccuracy of Stylus Magazine's recent list of the Top 50 Drummers of All Time (see the full list at: http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/weekly_article/stylus-magazines-50-greatest-rock-drummers.htm).

I felt a similar fury toward Rolling Stone Magazine a few years ago when they released their "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time" list (Jack White was in the top 10, yet Prince didn't even make the cut. Do they know anything about music? The guitar solo at the end of Prince's "Lets Get Crazy" is among the most throat-throttling guitar solos of all time; the kind of solo that Jack White has wet-dreams about playing). Being a drummer myself (though admittedly not one who would ever make a list such as this), I feel I am all the more obligated to make a few observations about the selections that Stylus has chosen.

Complaint #1: Janet Weiss (#48 on the list). Sleater-Kinney always struck me as one of those bands who were popular because girls (or Grrrls) felt empowered by their music, or because male rock-critics wanted to sleep with at least one of them. Weiss is a decent drummer, but never played anything that hasn't been heard before and been done better (probably by someone with a penis).

Complaint #2: Gary Young (#42 on the list). I love Pavement, but frankly, Slanted and Enchanted is a terrible record. Don't give me the rap about it provoking a sea change within modern-rock. It sounds like crap. Young's drumming is one of the prime factors behind this premise. Newsflash: Young wasn't a revolutionary drummer...he was drunk, stoned, and probably certifiably insane.

Complaint #3: Jim Eno (#31 on the list). How can the drummer of a band known for its minimalism be considered among the best of all time? If playing simplistic beats gets you on this list, then where is Meg White?

Complaint #4: Ringo Starr (#26 on the list). The magic of the Beatles was the musical chemistry. Just because he was in the greatest band of all time, doesn't mean he is among the greatest drummers.

Complaint #5: Neil Peart (#22 on the list). ONLY NUMBER 22?!? He should have made the top 5! It's like saying Shakespeare was "kinda alright" at play writing. Peart is a drumming god. Even if you have no interest in listening to Geddy Lee sing about trolls and fairies and stuff, you can always be hypnotized Peart's inhuman drumming chops.

Complaint #6: Larry Mullen, Jr. (#21 on the list). Please keep in mind that I am one of the world's biggest U2 fans. I have been absolutely retarded for that band since I was about 10 years old. However, similarly to the Beatles (and The Edge notwithstanding), U2 is the sum of its chemistry. Mullen is a round peg in a round hole, and that is why he works so well with U2, but squaring-off against another drummer is not going to be where he finds victory.

Complaint #7: Mitch Mitchell (#18 on the list). I will say it right now, Mitchell is the greatest rock drummer of all time. He is to drums what Hendrix was to guitar. It is simply unfortunate that they played in the same band together, because he was faced with living in Hendrix's shadow rather than getting the credit he deserved. Why do you think Band of Gypsies wasn't on par with Electric Ladyland? Because Mitchell didn't play on it. Do me a favor, listen to Are you Experienced and ignore the guitars. What you will hear is drumming that sounds like it came from another planet.

Harry Potter and the New World Order of the Phoenix

2007-07-17T16:40:00.000-07:00

It was raining the day I purchased it. One of those little details you remember; I'm not sure why. My loft isn't much of a walk to Powell's in Portland, but I didn't want to run the risk of being spotted by...well...anyone, so I dressed as incognito as I could muster (the typical celebrity get-up of a track jacket, baseball cap and sunglasses). As I approached the bookstore, a mild moment of panic swept across me, and I thought it might be better just to forget the whole ordeal and grab a slice at Rocco's instead. I even thought about paying the homeless guy out front to go in and buy it for me. Not being a guy who is into porn, I wonder if this isn't a similar scene to one played out in front of the Castle Adult Store several times a day...

But it was not porn that I sought, it was a simple children's book. So, I mustered some resolve and made my purchase, mentally making note of how much of a nuisance it was going to be to carry the F-ing thing home, about how many forests were defiled to print this "best-selling series of all time", and if it would ever make a good weapon in the case of a home invasion.

Now the book sits...and waits. Waits to be read. Maybe on another rainy day. Maybe during a period of personal lonliness. Maybe to quell one of my many bouts of ennui. The hard part is over. The purchase has been made. It is now time for me set my predjudice aside; to make my archetypal decent into cultural darkness and read it. Will it be worth my while, or will I have been better off reading another juggernaut piece of literature (such as Atlas Shrugged or Gravity's Rainbow)? The journey soon begins, and we shall see. Jesse...meet Harry Potter.

....

It is a series which has sold in Biblical quantities (literally). For years I have avoided Mr. Potter like the plague; ascribing it a certain "Pop Culture Trojan Horse" for the brain status, similar to Ikea furniture (i.e. pretty to look at, but shoddily constructed and will probably collapse, killing small children and pets). I have an F-ing English degree, after all. Won't Albert Camus smite me with a bolt of lightning if I read something like Harry Potter? But, as it always is, knowing is better than not knowing, and I feel I can no longer judge something of this magnitude without having fully devouered it.

Yes, it goes without saying that I am an eliteist. It's not that I wholeheartedly defend this sort of (what is usually viewed as) culturally reprehensible behavior. It's just hard for me not to view the world in terms of a cultural economy (i.e. haves & have-nots).

There is an economic principal behind every major facet of the human experience. Take romantic relationships, for instance. A relationship only works when founded upon mutual give and take. If one party consumes a disproporionate amount of the available love (or trust, respect, patience, etc.), the relationship will tend to break down under its own imbalance. This model also works when viewed in terms of one's financial livelyhood. If you are gainfully employed, your output will typically reflect your financial recoupment. Under a capitalist model, if your efforts and intelligence can be applied to a business setting, you will be rewarded.

So it also is with culture. To acquire knowledge generally takes effort. I'm not talking about the cultural drivel we imbibe during the course of a modern American day (i.e. anything involving heiresses, daughters of pop-stars, etc.). I'm talking about the knowledge contained in the sub-dermis of culture; tidbits of info one must make a special effort to encounter. In a really convoluted way, I'm saying that if you make the effort, it should therefore be your right to feel a sense of accomplishment. If you have read Keith Moon's biography and know the name of the hotel at which he crashed his car into the swimming pool, then you're that much better than the guy who doesn't.

Maybe being "that much better" is a relative term, but it is what it is. The notion that we should be apologetic for having standards in what we take into our minds and hearts is absurd. I will not apologise for feeling better about reading Keith Moon's biography than swilling copious amounts of American Idol. I have earned the right to feel better about it because I made the effort. The same luxury goes for some dude who can intelligently discuss quantum physics, Old Testament geneaology, or the 1986 Mets pitching roster. Each one of those people, in their own way, is culturally elevated above those who don't possess the same knowlege.

This Harry Potter thing seems to be more than just a flash in the pan. It takes effort to read a novel. And while JK Rowling isn't on par with Chrisopher Marlowe or E.E. Cummings in terms of literary potency, I can applaud society's effort to digest it (especially when the readers are under the age of 16). The cultural black-hole caused by modern rapid-fire media hasn't fully taken hold of our culture, and this is demonstrated by the fact that people are still willing to wait in line and commit to mentally processing a 700 page book word by word to fill themselves with an experience they couldn't obtain otherwise (I'm told the films don't even come close). That's pretty cool. I'll join the camp, if only for a day, to see what this thing is all about. It probably won't change me, but only with the effort will I reap the reward: the ability to call guys like me ignorant. A priceless reward, indeed.