Content

Video Vault: 999, Homicide

2009-09-09T09:09:00.001-04:00

I love old pre-MTV videos shot on plain white photography studio sets; see also Pop Muzik by M, Play For Today by the Cure, Radio Radio by Elvis Costello, I Know What Boys Like by the Waitresses, and about a million others.

Posted on 9-9-09 (ha!).

Kill Yr CD: The Cars, Candy-O

2009-08-09T23:22:00.000-04:00

*See Kill Yr CD: Intro

I really, really liked the first Cars album. It came out when I was about 12. I played it until it started to skip from the scratches in the vinyl, and then I played it until the needle wore the scratches down and it didn't skip anymore.

That album, along with the first Police album, was the first "new" music that I listened to. We were all, then, into the rock gods of the 1960s, the heroes of our (figurative) older brothers. The Who. Led Zeppelin. Pink Floyd. The Beatles. Bands that were either dead, broken up, or -- worse -- still limping along.

The first Cars album was new. Not just New Wave, which it was, sort of, but new. It had synthesizers. It had some nerdy guy yelping about nuclear boots and drip dry gloves. It was -- just a little bit, and in a good way -- weird.

It was also familiar. With its songs about letting good times roll and moving in stereo and bye bye love, it had a stoner vibe that the long-haired dazed and confused crowd could nod along to. There were guitar solos. All in all, it wasn't a million miles distant from Foreigner or even Boston, who were the hot new rock acts of the day.

Candy-O, their next album, took a sharp left turn away from all that. [Note obligatory "cars" reference to describe the musical direction of "The Cars." Clever, huh?] It wasn't mellow at all, like some of the first album was. There wasn't any stoner vibe. It buzzed. It clicked.

The Cars always made a virtue of being shallow, or at least ironically appearing to be, so it's appropriate that the big change between their first and second albums should be perfectly reflected in something seemingly insignificant and insubstantial. On the sleeve of the first album, Greg Hawkes, the keyboard player, has standard issue rocker guy long hair and macho man mustache. On the second, his hair is still long, but it's trimmed and stylish, and he's completely clean-shaven.

It's not just the hair, either -- his synths are more prevalent on the second album. It's a lot less rock and a lot more New Wave.

They also brought the drums forward, and sharpened them up. I really like the way David Robinson plays on this album and the next one, Panorama. I liked the drums on the first one, too, but they sounded a little muffled and conventional. Here, they're bright and banging. Candy-O came out a few months before the first Joy Division album, which is famous for its inventive use of drums, but the Cars and their producer, Roy Thomas Baker, rarely get the kind of raves for their innovative drum sound that Martin Hannett did for Joy Division.

Another thing I loved about Candy-O was how soon after the first album it came out. I was still wearing through the scratches on the first album when the second one came out, and it was cool to have them to play off each other.

I had the vinyl, which I later replaced with CD, which I've subsequently ripped to mp3. At one point I also had the 8-track version. This album is best as a CD. The iconic cover art, and design, are a little much in an LP-sized package. In a CD case, it's much more discreet and tasteful. It's so clean! All that white, and the perfect straight lines. It's all shiny surfaces and sharp, straight edges. Just like the music.

The 8 track actually had a slightly different running sequence, which wasn't unusual for 8 tracks back in the day. The particular order of the songs didn't matter as much as the overall feeling. There are three important moments, and they are all there no matter what the format.

The first is the opening song, "Let's Go," an anthem written sideways. It opens with a climactic crash and then tears off with the matching guitar and synthesizer lines that was the signature sound of these guys at their best.

The next is the bubbling, gurgling, weird, "Shoo Be Doo," building a tension that resolves in the perfectly-timed segue into the dark, dangerous title track, "Candy-O," one of the best things they've ever done.

The third is the extended intro to "Nightspots," a blurping synthesizer workout that sounds like some sort of logical arcade. The juxtaposition of fun and danger clears the decks for the remaining songs, most of which sound like the soundtrack to a morning after a night on the town where the singer isn't quite sure whether he had a good time.

The rest of the album is full of little pop gems and calculated Top 40 fare. What makes it work so well is the production. It's so clean, like they were playing under glass, like in one of those laboratories where the workers stick their arms in vacuum-sealed sleeves and reach into a box to do their work.

The songwriting and production on the early Cars albums, especially this one, built bridges to more adventurous contemporary fare like Roxy Music, Kraftwerk and even Joy Division. Even if many listeners, myself included, did not venture across those particular bridges for many more years, just having them there made all kinds of other music so much more accessible than if there had been nothing but wide chasms to leap across.

Kill Yr CD: Intro

2009-08-04T23:09:00.008-04:00

I'm thinking about getting rid of all my compact discs.

It should be simple enough. I have about eight or nine hundred of them, and I almost literally never listen to any of them anymore. There are a few scattered around the kitchen and in our cars, but those are the only places we even have a CD player anymore. I ripped everything to iTunes years ago, and the whole collection is safely digitized and backed up on multiple hard drives.

They're really not worth much. There are a few places that will give you pennies on the dollar, or some shiny trinkets. I don't mind the poor exchange rate.

It would clear out some space in the house. We have a big shelf in the computer room stuffed full of CDs, plus a few hundred laying hither and yon.

It all makes good sense. But I can't pull the trigger on it.

I am old enough to have once had a sizable collection of vinyl. I cashed it all in years ago, except for a few collector's items and stuff that can't be easily replaced. I didn't hesitate; I just sold it all for credit, and bought more CDs.

I think I am in the sweet spot of the compact disc market. They came out just about when I started college, and when I moved to Philadelphia, there were a lot of good places to buy rare and beautiful things. I spent mucho time and money doing so.

I stand second to no one in my love of the iPod and iTunes. I bought my first iPod about six or seven years ago, and I still have it, along with a few others. I have one playing probably ten or twelve hours a day. I am listening to one now.

As much as the iPod is an objet d'art, the compact disc is too, in its own way. A long time ago, the standard issue CD came in a cardboard sleeve that unfolded like a gatefold LP. Then the industry ditched that model and started jamming them into those familiar little clear plastic cases. Perfection! Square, solid, substantial, big enough to hold, but small enough to fit in your pocket. Just like an iPod. I love how it has edges, and how they feel pressed against your fingers.

But it is time to get rid of them. If I am really going to do it, I am going to have to hold a wake for a few dozen that mean the most to me. Even with that, I know there will be a few I just can't get rid of. Unknown Pleasures. Psychocandy. Loveless. Plus all the live bootlegs, remixes and CD singles I've accumulated -- real fanboy stuff. But the ordinary, run of the mill digital versions of albums have got to go. Starting now. I'm going to say goodbye to a few first, though.

We Are The World, We Are The Children

2009-06-26T21:17:00.003-04:00

Dad: Hey, 10 year old daughter -- do ya know who Michael Jackson is?

10YOD [snidely]: Yah-ah.

Dad: OK. Well, he died.

10YOD [dismissively]: I know.

Dad: Oh. How do you know that?

10YOD [airily]: There's these boys in my Sunday school class who are always talking about Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson. They like, love him or something.

Dad: ... But ... when did they tell you that? I mean, when did you see them? Because he just died today, so...

10YOD [energetically]: Oh! He did?

Dad: Yeah.

10YOD [morosely]: Oh.

Dad: But you know who he is, right? Or was, I guess.

10YOD [haughtily]: Yah-ah. Duh!

Dad: OK.

10YOD [warily]: How old was he?

Dad: Hmmm... I don't know, about my age, maybe a little older.

10YOD [nervously]: Really?

Dad: Yeah, I don't know, I guess he was a few years older than me. When I was a little kid he was a big star. You know, for as sad, twisted and bizarre as his life became, when he was a kid, he was really something. What a talent! He was just electric, you couldn't believe a little kid like that could do the things he did.

10YOD [impertinently]: Yeah, whatever.

Dad: Listen, by the time he was your age, he and his brothers were big stars with hit records, they were on TV all the time, and they bought a huge house in L.A. for their parents and all their brothers and sisters, and they all lived liked kings. What have you been doing these last 10 years?

10YOD [angrily]: Dad!

Dad: And by the way, when was the last time you practiced piano?

10YOD [testily]: ... Dad, I know who Michael Jackson is. You don't have to tell me these things. I know things, OK?

Dad: All right, all right. Did you ever see him perform? Wanna check out some YouTube?

10YOD [brightly]: Yeah!

Dad: OK, searching Jackson 5... Here's one.

Video begins. Dick Clark smoothly introduces a group of fresh-faced youngsters, led by an impossibly cute and charismatic munchkin with a stylin' vest and a foot-high Afro. They begin lip-synching "ABC."

Dad: Huh, huh? What'd I tell you?

10YOD [confusedly]: Wait a minute...!

Dad: What?

10YOD [earnestly]: Was Michael Jackson black?

Dad: ...

Dad: Umm....

Dad: Mmm...

Video Vault: Nirvana, Heart-Shaped Box

2009-04-05T09:47:00.000-04:00

Listening To: No Line On The Horizon

2009-03-14T23:41:00.005-04:00

OK, I've listened to this four or five times now, and here's what I think.

First, my biases:

I was a big U2 fan up through The Unforgettable Fire -- really, as big a fan as you could be. I didn't like their "Irish Cowboy" phase (The Joshua Tree to Rattle and Hum). I started paying attention again during the Zoo years. Achtung Baby was a better concept than an album, but it got them back on track. My favorite U2 album is Zooropa. I like some the Passengers album and some of Pop, probably more than most people. The last two albums were good if a bit safe.

No Line On The Horizon is being pushed as a more experimental album. I say, bring it on.

U2's biggest challenge has always been that they have no groove. In the second half of their career, they've usually approached this problem by dressing up the production on their records rather than revamping their songwriting. On the last two albums, they tried to pass themselves off as a blue-eyed soul group on a couple of songs, and it mostly worked. But most of the other tracks never really got off the ground, at least not until they played them live a couple of dozen times.

The new single, Get On Your Boots, starts off like Vertigo, Jr. and is full of promise, like they're going to keep pushing their boundaries. But it bogs down in the bridge part and veers off into weirdness for the sake of weirdness.

Get On Your Boots sits right in the middle of the album. The album actually opens and closes with two different versions of the title track. So far, I can't tell them apart, but I like the gimmick. It's a good song too, a simple riff and rhythm that they've revisited several times since at least Achtung Baby. The chorus and middle section seem a bit like an attempt to sound like Talking Heads circa Remain In Light -- another trick U2 has tried several times over the years. It is not the last attempt on this album, either.

One thing about U2 the last few years is they haven't been shy about trying to correct their mistakes, or at least improve their near-misses. For example, Vertigo was basically an improvement on Elevation, which itself was maybe an attempt to salvage Last Night On Earth. On the last album, City Of Blinding Lights swung for the fences, trying to be a big classic arena rock anthem, and came up empty. Here, they to back to the well for Magnificent, and it works a lot better. You'll be raising your cell phone high above your head to this one in a stadium near you later this year.

In the same way, Moment Of Surrender is another stab at the duo of Stuck In A Moment and Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own. I think they got it right last time, but this is pretty good too, with a little bit of a reggae lilt.

Unknown Caller is their most explicit ~~rip-off of~~ homage to Remain In Light since at least Lemon. I like it.

OK, seeing a song title like I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight raises all kinds of warning flags. Then there's the lyrics. On the last album, there was one line that was so bizarre that it overwhelmed everything around it: "Freedom has a scent, like the top of a newborn baby's head." In this song, Bono sings, "Every beauty needs to go out with an idiot." Plus, the bass rips off the 20-year-old Jesus Jones hit Right Here, Right Now. Hmmm.

Stand Up Comedy also recycles an old riff from somewhere (maybe Neil Young), and features the line, "Stop helping God across the road like a little old lady."

In fact, this album continues and magnifies the trend that Bono has taken with his lyrics and delivery over the last decade, perhaps first demonstrated on the song New York on All That You Can't Leave Behind. It's a sort of casual, playful, irreverent Beat poet for the 21st century, (too) obviously influenced by rap. When it works, it's an inventive end run around the dead end that faces any rock band in its Xth year. When it doesn't, it produces an entertaining car crash.

Fez: Being Born is more Remain In Light, with the hip-hop trick of throwing in elements from other songs on the album. And here's an interesting thing: Is this album really all that experimental? No, not really. Most of it is pretty conventional, with fairly tame production. The obvious exceptions are this song and Get On Your Boots. This album also marks the return of the Eno-Lanois production team as full partners. Their first collaboration with U2, 25 years ago, was on The Unforgettable Fire, which was also billed as U2's (first) experimental album. Listening to it over the years, it's become obvious that it was pretty straightforward, except for one or two novelty tracks that tilted the whole thing ever-so-slightly toward the avant-garde. Same thing here -- none of which is meant to diminish the finished product, but merely to judge it against its own stated ambitions.

White As Snow, much like a bunch of tracks late in the running order of the last two albums (Peace On Earth, Grace, One Step Closer) is simple, slow and direct. Under the right circumstances, it could be a fan favorite, but it'll probably be overlooked. The granddaddy of this type of U2 song is The First Time, from Zooropa.

Breathe is the tough kid that hangs around with Get On Your Boots, the muscle next to the flash and trash leader of the gang. This one works, and contains perhaps the best example yet of Bono's recent lyrical and vocal style.

Cedars Of Lebanon is back to the vibe of White As Snow, with a more direct and specific lyric about the Middle East. Not too sure about this one. More Remain In Light, together with a vaguely Asian feel that most people will assume is Eno's influence.

One thing I liked about the last two albums was how Bono made a virtue of the limitations of his voice, pushing up against his range on pseudo-soul numbers like In A Little While and Original Of The Species. He seems to have given up on that here, opting instead for a unique mix of Dylan's talking blues and Sinatra's weary lounge act. At least he's not repeating himself.

Overall, I like this album. It's ambitious, a lot less experimental than advertised, with a few major potholes and three or four tracks that will eventually rise above the rest as they become more familiar. The biggest surprise is the almost total absence of anything that has the Edge's fingerprints on it. For better or worse, this is Bono's album.

Watching: The Day of the Jackal

2009-01-29T18:45:00.003-05:00

It took me a while to warm up to this movie. The biggest problem is that it begins with the least competent attempted homicide since Double Indemnity. Some disaffected French army guys, pissed off about Charles de Gaulle's capitulation in Algiers, stand along a wide boulevard in Paris and open fire as his motorcade whizzes by at ~~50 miles~~ 80 kilometres an hour. Of course, they miss. Then the narrator says, "As if by a miracle, neither [de Gaulle] nor anyone else was hurt."

Wha? A miracle? Did these beauzeaus really think they were likely to hit de Gaulle with any of their shots, let alone kill him? Why didn't they roll something out into the road to stop, or at least slow down, his car? Then again, it's just like French soldiers to fail to stop an enemy from advancing past their defenses without even noticing they were there.

Well, guess what? It turns out to be less a dramatic failure of the movie than yet another tactical error by French forces. The whole scene was, basically, historically accurate:

Une:

While the OAS did exist as described in the novel, and the film opens with a remarkably accurate re-enactment of the Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry-led attempt on President De Gaulle's life, the remaining plot is fiction.

Deux:

The group set themselves up in the Paris suburb of Petit-Clamart on 22 August 1962. De Gaulle's car, an unarmored Citroën DS, and nearby shops were raked with machine gun fire, but de Gaulle, along with his wife and entourage, were able to escape without injury. After the attempt, some fourteen bullet holes were found in the president's vehicle, with another twenty striking the nearby Café Trianon, and an additional one-hundred-eighty-seven found on the pavement. This event was fictionalized in the 1971 book and 1973 film The Day of the Jackal.

With enemies like these, who needs friends?

Here it is, more or less:

These Go To Eleven

2008-11-07T22:13:00.005-05:00

Two of the quotes below are from an actual interview with the actual Alan White, drummer for actual prog-rock legends Yes, in the actual Patriot-News this week, actually. The rest are from This Is Spinal Tap. Which is which?

(1) He died in a bizarre gardening accident.

(2) You can't really dust for vomit.

(3) Well, I'm sure I'd feel much worse if I weren't under such heavy sedation.

(4) He actually died for two minutes, but the medics revived him, so he was pretty lucky.

(5) And, uh, it was tragic, really. He exploded on stage.

(6) Dozens of people spontaneously combust each year. It's just not really widely reported.

(7) I think you always feel like he's in the band. I think he feels like he's still part of the band. He's just not in the band at the moment. Who knows? One day he'll come back and do something with the band.

(8) Well, I don't really think that the end can be assessed as of itself as being the end because what does the end feel like? It's like saying when you try to extrapolate the end of the universe, you say, if the universe is indeed infinite, then how - what does that mean? How far is all the way, and then if it stops, what's stopping it, and what's behind what's stopping it? So, what's the end, you know, is my question to you.

(9) They're two distinct types of visionaries, it's like fire and ice, basically. I feel my role in the band is to be somewhere in the middle of that, kind of like lukewarm water.

(10) No. No. No. I feel it's like, it's more like going, going to a, a national park or something. And there's, you know, they preserve the moose. And that's, that's my childhood up there on stage. That moose, you know.

(11) These go to eleven.

Next...

2008-11-05T21:32:00.013-05:00

Now what?

Well, we've still got two wars to fight. I want to see President Obama activate the Texas Air National Guard, call back everybody whose service is in question, and send them over to Iraq pronto.

Also, anybody who had, say, five deferments during the Viet Nam war should be conscripted and sent to the front lines. With the bigger, better Democratic majorities in Congress, it shouldn't be hard to draft and pass the appropriate legislation. Give Cheney a shotgun full of birdshot pellets and send him on his merry way.

Sarah Palin, the exit door from the national stage is thatta-way. Some day, perhaps soon, the bizarre selection of this bizarre personage as a once-great political party's candidate for the second-highest office in the land may be viewed as a beautiful pop art stunt, an electric Kool-Aid freakout of the highest order, a surreal piece of performance art on a par with Salvador Dali arriving at a lecture in a limousine filled with cauliflowers. McCain's identification of ~~Plain~~ Palin as Teh Great Hope Of Th' Republican Party resembled nothing so much as Andy Warhol's cynical, ironic elevation of a series of dope fiends, transvestites and lost little girls as "superstars." Fifteen minutes of fame is just about right. I expect Palin to turn up next on a reality TV show, perhaps sharing living space with Vanilla Ice or one of the kids from Growing Pains.

Who do the Republicans have left? 2012 is a long way off, and 2016 is about a million years away, but who do they have right now? Romney? Giuliani? Arnie? Jeb? Mike Bloomberg? Is Karl Rove going to stitch together some Frankenstein's monster in some dark laboratory somewhere?

John Paul Stevens can safely retire and let President Obama nominate his replacement on the Supreme Court to a friendly Senate.

I would like to see John Edwards play a part in Obama's administration, if he wants to.

The South, seriously, what the hell? Here's the map:

I've said it before: this country actually fought a bloody war to force these Johnny Reb states to stay in the union. At least Florida and Virginia came to their senses this year.

Watching: Vantage Point

2008-09-19T21:35:00.004-04:00

Rashomon meets The Manchurian Candidate for drinks at The Battle of Algiers. They get drunk on cheap Spanish wine, then Crash into James Bond, Jason Bourne and JFK. A few months later, they give birth to this premature, underweight bastard retard whoreson of a movie.

What I learned from this movie is that the only thing stopping the terrorists from completing their evil (and complicated) plan to assassinate and/or kidnap the president (William Hurt!) is the serendipity of a little Spanish girl skipping frantically across 8 lanes of Traffic.

Ironic Poseurs Of The World...

2008-09-16T20:48:00.004-04:00

...unite and take over.

The Fox TV network is using (a crappy emo cover of) Everyday Is Like Sunday during its NFL promos. The original is a so-so track on Morrissey's debut solo album ~20 years ago.

If you played word association, Morrissey is quite possibly the very, very, very last singer you would ever link with anything to do with the National Football League.

Hang the DJ, indeed.

Video Vault: Nirvana, Smells Like Teen Spirit

2008-09-15T23:00:00.002-04:00

At the 1:05 mark: Kurt roars, "With the lights out...," and the 90s begin.

Premiered on MTV's 120 Minutes 9-15-91.

Really, Though...

2008-09-11T08:48:00.001-04:00

Where's Bin Laden?

Music: Response

2008-09-08T21:48:00.003-04:00

Making movies about music is like blogging about... um, gardening -- no, needlepoint. No, that's not it, either. Uh, stamp collecting? Something.

Really, I'll take The Glenn Miller Story, which long ago drew up the blueprint and set the standard for this sort of thing. It's got all the familiar elements: Glenn struggles early on, even pawning his trombone, takes unsatisfying jobs in other people's bands, hangs out with Colonel Potter, then has a spark of inspiration, finds a core of trusted mates to believe in (and bankroll) him, hits it big, buys a big house, marries the girl of his dreams, writes a bunch of hits based directly on his life, gets addicted to smack, and...

OK, he didn't get addicted to smack. They didn't do that back then, or at least they didn't make movies where that happened. What happens instead is that he joins the Air Force during WWII, and gets shot down over Europe traveling between shows ("gigs," as the hep cats refer to them), thus establishing a precedent observed by stars of all genres such as Buddy Holly, Jim Croce, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and my favorite star on all the K-Tel compilations, Manny More.

I really like the way Glenn's death is handled in the film. He shares one last meaningful, playful phone call with his sweetheart, then climbs into the plane and it just sort of ... vanishes ... into the clouds, in a sort of apotheosis. They don't make 'em like that any more.

They do, however, follow all of the other standard plot points established way back in the 1940s. I'm waiting for the Kraftwerk movie, which will probably never be made, so I've been watching a bunch of the others recently. (There's a bunch more I haven't actually seen, but that's not gonna stop me from writing about them.) Here's a rundown:

Movie: Walk The Line
Performer: Johnny Cash
Instrument: Guitar
Original Musical Style: Cornpone Country/Nascent Rock 'n Roll
Drug: Pills
Musical Innovation: Jerry-rigging Confessional Folk/Singer-Songwriter to Rhinestone Country
Image: Man in Black
Died As: Beloved American Icon / Pale Imitation of Former Self
Glib Summary: In which a simple country boy uses his unique musical gift to escape a life of rural despair marred by tragedy, only to lapse into paralyzing drug abuse and marital infidelity, before finally being redeemed by the love of a good woman and becoming an American icon in the process.
Classic Song Used As Way Too Obvious Music Cue: Ring Of Fire

Movie: Ray
Performer: Ray Charles
Instrument: Piano
Original Musical Style: Copycat R&B (Nat King Cole, Charles Brown, etc.)
Drug: Heroin, believe it or not
Musical Innovation: Shotgun wedding of gospel & R&B
Image: Black Man in Sunglasses (pre-Stevie Wonder)
Died As: Beloved American Icon / Pale Imitation of Former Self
Glib Summary: In which a simple country boy uses his unique musical gift to escape a life of rural despair marred by tragedy, only to lapse into paralyzing drug abuse and marital infidelity, before finally being redeemed by the love of a good woman and becoming an American icon in the process. Oh, and he's blind.
Classic Song Used As Way Too Obvious Music Cue: Hit The Road, Jack

Movie: Great Balls Of Fire
Performer: Jerry Lee Lewis
Instrument: Pian'ner
Original Musical Style: Backwoods R&B
Drug: Teenage girls
Musical Innovation: Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.
Image: The Killer
Died As: You can't kill The Killer.
Glib Summary: Dennis Quaid is way too nice to play JLL. At least he used to be before he aged a bit and started taking oily roles in stuff like Traffic and Far From Heaven.
Classic Song Used As Way Too Obvious Music Cue: Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On

Movie: Sweet Dreams
Performer: Patsy Cline
Original Musical Style: Both kinds -- country, and western.
Drug: Fringe jackets
Musical Innovation: Polished Country & Western
Image: Sweetheart of the Rodeo
Died As: Beloved Crossover Country Star Killed in Tragic Plane Crash (Pre-John Denver)
Glib Summary: Yeah, I didn't actually get around to watching this one. Rented it and had it on the shelf for a week, but... eh. Jessica Lange, though.
Classic Song Used As Way Too Obvious Music Cue: Didn't see it, but I'm guessing Crazy.

Movie: La Vie En Rose
Performer: Edith Piaf
Instrument: Voix
Original Musical Style: Gutter sluts of 1933.
Drug: Veuve Clicquot, morphine
Musical Innovation: Chansons de la rue, pour les bourgeios.
Image: Jean d'Arc in a black frock.
Died As: Everything cool about rock and roll -- the drugs, the affairs, the nervous breakdowns, the burial in Père Lachaise -- without the actual rock and/or roll.
Glib Summary: La vie, l'amour, la mort.
Classic Song Used As Way Too Obvious Music Cue: Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien

Movie: I'm Not There
Performer: Bob Dylan
Instrument: Guitar (Acoustic, then Electric) and God-awful screeching harmonica
Original Musical Style: Copycat Folk (Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, etc.)
Drug: Marijuana, etc.
Musical Innovation: Letting other people do better versions of songs he wrote.
Image: Jewish Guy in Sunglasses (pre-Lou Reed) / Judas
Died As: Pending
Glib Summary: Todd Haynes almost makes amends for his hatchet job on David Bowie. This actually broke the mold, being a cubist portrait of the man, the myth, the legend, rather than another standard rags to riches saga. Dylan means nothing to me, except as the guy in the Traveling Wilburys who can't sing, but I enjoyed this quite a bit.
Classic Song Used As Way Too Obvious Music Cue: Like A Rolling Stone

Movie: Control
Performer: Ian Curtis
Instrument: Vocals (overproduced by Martin Hannett)
Original Musical Style: Copycat Iggy Pop
Drug: Prescription meds for epilepsy
Musical Innovation: Burroughs and Ballard re-done as minimalist metallic pseudo-fascist battle hymns.
Image: Post-punk British Jim Morrison
Died As: Tragic, Haunting Suicide Symbolizing Premature End of Promising Generation (pre-Kurt Cobain)
Glib Summary: I'm a big fan, but this was a pretty dreary affair. Fortunately, 24 Hour Party People tells much of the same story with better drugs and a whole lot more breeziness.
Classic Song Used As Way Too Obvious Music Cue: Love Will Tear Us Apart

Movie: Beyond The Sea
Original Musical Style: Made to order pseudo-rock 'n roll novelty songs...eh, you know what? I already covered this one.

Movie: La Bamba
Performer: Richie Valens
Instrument: Una Poca De Gracia
Original Musical Style: No idea.
Drug: Tequila!
Musical Innovation: Kid Friendly Tex-Mex (much like Chili's restaurants)
Image: Non-threatening Hispanic guy (non-Ricky Ricardo division)
Died As: Other guy in plane with Buddy Holly and that Bopper guy
Glib Summary: Yeah, I didn't see this one either. It was a big hit, though.
Classic Song Used As Way Too Obvious Music Cue: Probably Donna.

Movie: What's Love Got To Do With It?
Performer: Tina Turner
Instrument: Screech/blond wig
Original Musical Style: Whatever Ike says.
Drug: Mascara
Musical Innovation: Getting away from Ike.
Image: Gypsy, acid queen.
Died As: N/A
Glib Summary: I only watched bits and pieces of this one.
Classic Song Used As Way Too Obvious Music Cue: Um, Proud Mary?

Movie: Bird
Performer: Charlie Parker
Instrument: Saxamaphone
Original Musical Style: Bop
Drug: Heroin
Musical Innovation: Be-bop
Image: Cool jazz guy
Died As: Early demonstration of maxim "It's better to burn out than to fade away."
Glib Summary: Saw some of this one. Forest Whitaker sure was good in The Last King of Scotland, though.
Classic Song Used As Way Too Obvious Music Cue: It's jazz; all the songs sound the same.

Movie: Sid & Nancy
Performer: Sid Vicious
Instrument: Leather jacket
Original Musical Style: Jumping up and down in front of the stage
Drug: (yawn) Heroin
Musical Innovation: Jumping up and down on the stage
Image: Glorious Disaster
Died As: Junkie / accused murderer
Glib Summary: Art from trash.
Classic Song Used As Way Too Obvious Music Cue: God Save The Queen

Movie: The Doors
Performer: Jim Morrison (and, duh, the Doors)
Instrument: Vocals, leather pants
Original Musical Style: Bad beach bum blues
Drug: LSD
Musical Innovation: Norton Anthology of American Literature set to carnival-style pseudo-psychedelic blues
Image: Lizard King, natch
Died As: Bloated Fat Parody of Self (pre-Elvis Presley)
Glib Summary: Like, wow. Hey! Who let Meg Ryan on to the set?
Classic Song Used As Way Too Obvious Music Cue: Break On Through

Movie: We Jam Econo
Performer: D. Boon (of the Minutemen)
Instrument: Singer/activist
Original Musical Style: Punk rock (learned in Hollywood; drove up from Pedro)
Drug: Corona
Musical Innovation: White suburban punks trying to sound like James Brown
Image: Flyin' the flannel
Died As: Criminally underappreciated proto-grunge martyr to the cause (pre-Andrew Wood)
Glib Summary: Sad punks talk, talk, talkin' about their long-ago glory days.
Classic Song Used As Way Too Obvious Music Cue: History Lesson, Pt. 2

Movie: The Iggy Pop movie they're supposedly making starring Elijah Wood as Iggy. It'll probably be called Lust For Life, or The Passenger if they're feeling sinister (and haven't heard of Antonioni).
Performer: Iggy Pop
Instrument: Vocals, peanut butter, broken glass
Original Musical Style: White boy garage blues rock
Drug: More, please.
Musical Innovation: Putting id directly into amplifier.
Image: Street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm.
Died As: ~~Pathetic junkie~~...actually, against all odds he survives to this day.
Glib Summary: It is highly unlikely that this supposed movie will actually be any good, but eh, who knows?
Classic Song Used As Way Too Obvious Music Cue: Any of about a dozen -- Nightclubbing, Funtime, Gimme Danger, Down On The Street, Dirt... I'm going with No Fun.

MoronMore On The VP Pick

2008-08-30T09:33:00.009-04:00

A series of corny jokes for a corny pick:

Seriously, I thought he was going to pick Bigfoot.

Did you know that McCain is more than three times* as old as Palin?

*May not be mathematically accurate.

McCain: "Palin? Where's she from?"
McCain Adviser #1: "Juneau?"
McCain: "No, I'm asking you... Where's she from?"
McCain Adviser #2: "I don't know. Alaska."
McCain: "Well make it quick, I need to pick someone right away."
[ba-domp-bomp]
(That one's older than ~~dirt~~McCain!)

Her kids are named Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper and Trig.
From Wikipedia:

Palin admits that she used marijuana at a time when the state had legalized possession of small amounts.

Insert pothead joke here.

Hubba...

...hubba...

...and more hubba...

...but is she going to shoot anyone in the face if she becomes vice president?

Vice President in Charge of Teh Hot

2008-08-30T08:17:00.007-04:00

A series of real-life emails:

First, "Beavis"* to "Butthead"*:

Whoa.
Sarah Palin is HAWT.

Next, "Butthead" to "Beavis":

She could be a VPILF.

Finally, "Butthead" to "Beavis" again:

Apparently, McCain has already "tapped dat":
McCain taps Alaska Gov. Palin as vice president pick (= real CNN.com headline)

Heh heh. Uhhhh.
*All names changed for deniability purposes.

Seriously...

2008-08-25T23:34:00.002-04:00

...five years, four thousand dead soldiers, three trillion dollars, and we still can't get Iraq to win even one stinking Olympic medal!

It Was A Dark And Stormy Knight

2008-08-21T20:52:00.003-04:00

Al Qaeda spent over two years and half a million dollars to train and prepare at least 19 guys to hijack 4 planes to crash into 4 targets on one day.

Pikers.

In the new Batman movie, called The Dark Knight, the Joker strings together plots at least as elaborate as 9-11 two, three times a day, single-handedly terrorizing an entire city with one scheme after another. Now he's robbing a bank! Now he's assassinating the mayor! Now he's kidnapping the district attorney! Now he's blowing up a judge! The police chief! Another guy I can't remember! Now he's hijacking a SWAT convoy! Now he's bombing a hospital! Did I miss any? I think I missed a few. Mr. Joker, sir -- it's time for your three o'clock detonation.

At about the two hour mark of this movie, I was exhausted, and I started to go numb from all the mayhem. It was just one set piece after another, with no rhyme or reason other than to serve as a grim march to an inevitable one-on-one showdown between (go figure) Batman and the Joker.

Of course, this is what I paid my nine bucks for. You go to a Batman movie to see Batman matching up with the villain -- and is there any more classic protagonist-antagonist matchup in pop culture than Batman and the Joker? They didn't share nearly enough screen time together. They had one good scene in the police station, but their first meeting, at Bruce Wayne's party, just kind of...ended, and the final showdown was a huge disappointment, with the bat flapping off to attend to some crisis the Joker had manufactured, leaving him (literally) just hanging around.

There was far too much extraneous stuff about Harvey Dent. It reminded me of Peter Jackson's King Kong movie -- put the monkey on top of the building already!

Here's another thing. OK, it's based on a comic book. But it's based on a comic book; it's not an actual comic book. In a movie, you've got to occasionally have some explanation of how a character arrived at a particular location. Practically every scene in this movie, at least after the first 30 minutes, depended on one character or another literally stepping out of the shadows and BAM! into the action. It's OK once or twice, but after a while it begins to call attention to itself. It's just tiresome.

Yeah, yeah, Heath Ledger was pretty good. Christian Bale was good, Maggie Gyllenhaal was an improvement over Katie Holmes, etc. It wasn't enough.

For a while right after it came out, The Dark Knight was ranked Teh Greatestest Movie Of All Time!! on imdb. It has now slipped to number 3, between The Godfather and The Godfather II. Ha! It might not even rate ahead of The Godfather III. I mean, it was OK, but just glancing down the list, Seven Samurai is number 13. GoodFellas is 15. Citizen Freaking Kane is 29! C'mon! Number 100 is Jaws. Is this movie better than Jaws? I don't think so. A year from now, neither will anyone else.

This Cracks Me Up

2008-08-19T23:03:00.001-04:00

Obvious, sure, but well done:

Goldie Yawn

2008-08-17T21:36:00.000-04:00

Phelps claims Olympic-record eighth gold medal

Meh.

The problem with swimming and a lot of other sports in the Olympics is, what can you do to stop this guy? Nothing. If he can swim faster, there is nothing you can do about it short of pulling a Gillooly. You can't play defense in swimming, or in gymnastics, or most of the track and field events.*

It's the same in golf. What can you do to stop Tiger Woods? It's basically reduced to an exhibition of one guy's skill at performing a particular physical activity.

So the first thing they should do with sports like this is give the competitors a chance to play defense. If Michael Phelps had to swim through a pool full of goons pulling him underwater while he tried to butterfly 100 meters, that would be a sport worth watching.

The other thing about the Olympics is, if they are going to play volleyball on sand, why not other sports? Why not the marathon or the floor exercise in gymnastics. Basketball would be pretty cool on sand, too. It would stop them from double-dribbling all the time, anyway.

* Yeah, yeah, there's some minor stratetegizatizing as far as setting a pace, knowing when to hold 'em, knowing when to fold 'em, knowing when to walk away, and knowing when to run... but it's just not the same.

Blogging A Dead Horse

2008-08-15T23:44:00.005-04:00

Your vigilant media at work, meeting outlandish claims with a determined skepticism:

Reporters grill men on Bigfoot body claims
(CNN) -- A pair of Georgia men faced more than a half-hour of skeptical questions from reporters Friday as they defended their claim that they stumbled upon the body of Bigfoot while hiking in a remote North Georgia forest.

Five years ago, not so much:

A free press, guardian of the nation.

If these knuckleheads have really found Bigfoot, maybe we can send them after bin Laden next. At this point, he's just another mythical creature in the hills, but no one seems to be looking for him.

Hijinks!

2008-08-10T11:20:00.003-04:00

Video Vault: 808 State & MC Tunes, Tunes Splits The Atom

2008-08-08T19:41:00.002-04:00

This should've been MASSIVE. It came out at the same time that Vanilla Ice, Everlast and other good looking white rappers were hitting it big on the pop charts, back around 1991.

The bass line is sampled from the last section of "I Am The Resurrection" by the Stone Roses... Madchester, the dance capital of England...

Posted on 8-8-08 (ha!).

Video Vault: Robert Hazard, Escalator of Life

2008-08-08T07:11:00.002-04:00

Philly rock legend Robert Hazard dies at 59

AlbumCD Cover Bingo

2008-08-07T21:21:00.005-04:00

PSoTD seems to have abandoned this feature, so I'm ~~stealing~~ claiming it for my own.

All of the below are compact disc (remember those?) covers from the dying days of the rock era. List the name of the performer and the title of the CD to win, uh, nothing. Grudging admiration, perhaps.

Answers later.

Nice Try

2008-08-04T06:56:00.001-04:00

I wonder how many of these they've sold.

Why I Love The Internet, Part Eleventy-Kabillion

2008-08-04T01:14:00.003-04:00

Twiggy the Water Skiing Squirrel:

In the old days, we would've had to wait for this to come on some dumb show like Real People during summer re-runs.

Gloating

2008-07-28T21:43:00.001-04:00

Ha!

PHILADELPHIA -- Already bumped from the Philadelphia Phillies' starting rotation, Adam Eaton now is off the roster.

The struggling right-hander agreed to go to the minors Monday, a day after he pitched poorly in relief. A decision on where to send Eaton has not been made.

Told you so.

Video Vault: The B-52s, Legal Tender

2008-06-22T22:34:00.002-04:00

OK, really, I have nothing against the B-52s, despite my recent gratuitous jab at them. I'm not a big fan, and I have never understood the appeal of Love Shack, but they're generally a fun bunch. I saw them at F&M College 407 years ago. They were touring in support of Whammy!, which was their synth-pop new wave album and made them sound like Devo's hipster cousins. I liked it more than most of their other stuff. I always liked Legal Tender in particular:

And Song For A Future Generation is a neat concept, with the band members giving little deadpan personal ads and swinging coolly through the video:

E(e)rie

2008-06-22T22:00:00.001-04:00

Erie, PA is really not such a bad town, at least compared to some of the other mistakes on the lake (Cleveland, Buffalo, etc.) and at least for the six weeks a year when it doesn't snow. OK, it's nice there more than six weeks a year. But when I was there in late April, there was still snow on the ground, and lots of it.

June is much nicer, but I think the natives are used to scheduling many of their leisure activities under cover indoors. Which brings us to Splash Lagoon, 77,000 square feet of water park mayhem. It's also connected to at least four hotels and a couple of restaurants, so you can spend about a week eating, drinking, sleeping, splashing and generally whooping it up without ever breathing nature's own air.

I only spent a few hours there one rainy, drizzly grey autumn day in the middle of June.

I was a bit surprised to find that there isn't really a swimming pool as such anywhere within those 77,000 square feet. There is a "Lazy River" you can float along in an inner tube, and an activity pool where pre-teens were firing Nerf basketballs at each other, but nothing like a deep pit of water you could just dive into and soak in for a while. Instead, most of the attractions are water slides. OK, sounds like fun.

The first slide that I went on was called The Black Hole. It's a long narrow tube, completely dark inside. I started at the top, laid back in a comfortable repose, arms tucked in, legs out, and gently slid down through warm, foul-smelling water, banging slightly off the sides until I popped out in a gush of gurgling fluid into sudden, blinding bright light. It was, perhaps, a bit like being born.

After a brief recovery, I decided to try the Hurricane Hole. Again I laid back in heedless comfort, then was shoved down a dark, narrow tunnel, this time twisting and turning and picking up speed. I couldn't see a thing, could only feel myself falling, falling, sliding. Suddenly, I emerged in a wide bowl, circling a tiny opening far below me, slipping around at nearly forty miles an hour and falling closer to the hole with each revolution. Sooner than I expected, I dropped through the hole awkwardly and plopped into a deep pool of churning water, spinning and coughing and gasping for air. It was, perhaps, a bit like being aborted.

I hit the Jacuzzi for a while. When I had recovered sufficiently, I decided to forego the body slides and try one of the slides where you ride on an oversize inner tube.

The first one was called the Cyclone. Much like the Hurricane Hole, this one shoots you steeply down a dark tunnel until you emerge in a circling bowl, drawing ever closer to a narrow point in the center. But instead of a hole you plunge through, this one has a narrow aperture that sucks you toward the opening, through a gusher of water. All the while, sharp streams of water blast down from above, stinging into your eyes and mouth.

This reminded me of a terrifying dream I've had ever since I was about 10, where I somehow get locked in a washing machine and spin round and round, choking on churning water, totally unable to get out or to breathe, until I eventually conk my head on the wall and pass out and drown. Or wake up, whichever comes first.

That was enough on the inner tube. I went back to the body slides. The next one was called the Shark Attack. It was relatively straight and very fast. It was also very narrow and mostly dark. If you've ever had an MRI, and thought that the experience would've been improved if only the hospital staff would shake the unit randomly from side to side with great violence, and squirt about 800 gallons of water into the chamber all the while, this might be a good ride for you.

Again, back to the jacuzzi. There's a big one, dimly lit and not too hot, restricted to adults only. Nice. Hey, how often do they clean this place out? It's not like they can drain it every night and scrub down the surfaces. Splash Lagoon's "fun facts" boasts, "400,000 gallons of water are maintained year round at a tropical 84 degrees." Sounds like one big party for bacteria. Scrub, scrub, scrub. And there's a bar right in the place, and alcohol kills germs...

Video Vault: Deee-Lite, Groove Is In The Heart

2008-04-25T22:55:00.000-04:00

The B-52s always tried too hard to be hip to really be fun, like the kind of nasty clique who would invite you to their party just to make fun of your clothes. So when Deee-Lite came along, about ten years later, they were like a breath of fresh air, an inclusive, deee-groovy multi-cultural outfit whose clique was the world. They were going to dance, and have some fun. Everyone was invited to their party, and all the best parties in 1990 and 1991 had their debut album playing as the soundtrack. The whole thing is a joyride straight through, but this was the song that got all the airplay and was blasted out of a zillion convertibles on a zillion city streets for a solid year. It still sounds great today.

The video is a hoot. This is a pretty crappy transfer to digital, but there doesn't seem to be a better copy posted to YouTube. Dig!

Panda-monium!

2008-04-25T21:51:00.005-04:00

Every kid needs to visit Washington DC sooner or later, so last weekend we packed up all three of ours and headed south for a weekend getaway.

Somehow my prized GPS locked up and froze somewhere on Florida Avenue, just a few blocks from our Capitol Hill hotel, but we managed to arrive OK by driving around a few traffic circles and always keeping the Washington Monument on our right. Or something.

Anyway, we got there early Friday evening, checked in, then checked out Union Station and the Metro. The boy was pretty excited about the Metro train, or "choo choo!" as he called it.

We headed downtown toward the White House. There were fences set up around the Ellipse, and we could just barely see the White House a couple hundred yards away. There were a few other sightseers around, and someone said security was stepped up because the president was due to arrive.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, a big helicopter flew in low and slow, thrupping past the Washington Monument, and...just...hung...there, right in front of us, giving us a clear ~~shot~~ view for a good 30 or 40 seconds. Boy, if someone had a grudge against the guy... I'm just sayin'.

But maybe it wasn't the preznit after all, because over the next 20 minutes, the same helicopter repeated the same route 4 or 5 more times. The kids asked if maybe the vice president had flown in with the president, or whether he might be on one of the later flights. The wife gave the 8th grade civics class answer about the president and vice president being prohibited from traveling together, because if something happens to one of them, the other has to take over. "That's right, girls," I said, "if anything happens to Cheney, Bush will have to run the country, and he's clearly not qualified to do it." I think that one went over their heads faster and higher than the president's helicopter.

So we walked around the Mall some more. The Vietnam Memorial remains awesome. The new World War II Memorial was impressive, but maybe a little too Heroic (with a capital H). It's all soaring columns and victory wreaths and stylized eagles, reminiscent of nothing so much as the Neo-Classical architectur e favored by the Nazis -- very Triumph of the Will. In fact, if you had fallen into a coma in 1942 and woken up in front of this thing today, you wouldn't be sure who had won the war.

On Saturday we took the kids to the Air and Space Museum and the Natural History Museum, which are much as they have always been, aside from a few new exhibits and some major renovations in the works at the NHM (no blue whale!). The giant sloth has always been my favorite. (Is that the only prehistoric megafauna that shares a name with one of the seven deadly sins?) We got a glimpse of the Hope Diamond, but from the crowd jostling around it, you would have thought they were giving out free samples of the thing.

In the evening we visited the Lincoln Memorial. The girls thought the glowing red lights in the Washington Monument, placed there to keep airplanes clear, made it look like the Tower of Barad-dûr.

On Sunday we went to the National Zoo. It rained off and on, and sometimes pretty hard, but, hey, it's free! The kids liked the elephants a lot. I liked the pandas. I remember when the Chinese gave us the first pair of pandas back in the early 1970s, which is maybe the only really positive accomplishment of the Nixon administration.

These new pandas are just loaners, and I'm glad I saw them. I learned a lot about them. There are three of them: Momma, Poppa, and Baby Bear (OK, those aren't their real names). The baby was born in the zoo, the result of one of only a few successful instances of breeding pandas in captivity.

It's tough to get a panda pregnant. A fully grown, sexually mature female panda will be receptive to sexual advances from her mate only two days out of every year... which is nearly twice as often as a married human female.

We saw lions and tigers in addition to the bears, plus cheetahs, leopards, monkeys, orangutans and gorillas.

Yeah, gorillas. Here's the thing about gorillas. All monsters are scary, but some are scarier to some people than others. Everyone has their own super-scary monster that pops up in their nightmares and gives them the heebie-jeebies. For you, it might be Dracula, or the Wolfman, or Dick Cheney. For me, it's King Kong. I don't know why, but it probably has to do with having seen the campy (but still scary) 1976 Jessica Lange / Jeff Bridges / Charles Grodin re-make a few too many times as a kid.

So anyway, I'm sort of afraid of gorillas, too, even the ones that aren't 50 feet tall. They have a bunch of them at the National Zoo, including a big silverback "alpha male" and some other juvenile males. Apparently, they can be pretty aggressive.

It was raining when we visited the ape house, and all the gorillas were inside, hanging out behind the glass. The setup looked a lot like that old ~~Samsonite~~ American Tourister commercial where the gorilla beats up the suitcase.

Anyway, just as I was wondering how strong the glass separating the gorillas from the people is, and how much I might look like a suitcase to a bored gorilla, one of the younger males suddenly looked right into my eyes and started purposefully stalking out of his tree, accelerating on all fours and coming...right...at...me. With unbelievable swiftness and grace, he leapt from a limb, pounced, and, all in one motion, launched himself on a trajectory calculated to land right on my head and shoulders. It was absolutely frightening. He filled the air, big, black, malevolent, as terrifying as Dick Cheney in a helicopter, his huge arms spreading out to crash down upon me and envelop me in their hairy, smelly power.

But -- aha! -- a million years of evolution count for something: he banged smack into the glass, a clever invention of my Bronze Age ancestors, and bounced off on to the floor and scampered away. Man 1, Gorilla 0.

I had the video camera -- another clever human invention -- rolling the whole time, and here's the video below. It's nowhere near as frightening via YouTube as it was in person. But then again, I'm terrified of King Kong, so your results may vary.

It's a mad house! A mad house!

Video Vault: Orbital, The Box

2008-04-04T23:17:00.003-04:00

Time-lapse video is one of the oldest and most overused cliches in the history of filmmaking, and the last refuge of the unimaginative. It looks groovy at first, but it wears thin fast.

Here's a video where it works. One of the reasons it works is that the focus is on an actual human being, even if she does look like the sister of The Man Who Fell To Earth, with most of the rushing cityscapes relegated to the background.

It also fits well with the song, which isn't much more than an updated ride on the Trans-Europe Express.

All in all, I would much rather watch this for four minutes than Koyaanisqatsi for an hour and a half.

Smug

2008-04-03T22:31:00.002-04:00

A little over a year ago I wrote:

The Phillies will be desperate to unload this guy [Wes Helms] before his contract expires.

And so today, the shit hit the proverbial fan:

Phillies bid Helms goodbye

Desperate? Get used to it:

Because the Phillies now face the prospect of paying the bulk of his $2.15 million salary while he plays for another team, the move was something of a last resort.

So, neener neener neener to the Phillies, once again.

The Answer Is...

2008-03-03T18:56:00.000-05:00

42.

But what is the question?

Video Vault: Lo Fidelity Allstars, Battleflag

2008-02-26T00:44:00.002-05:00

This video makes absolutely no sense at all, but it's got style.

This version of the song works better than the album version because they replaced the expletive (and it's the big one) with a st-st-stuttered sound effect. I like it a lot better.

Watching: Apocalypto

2008-02-23T22:20:00.009-05:00

Another Mel Gibson epic about guys getting painted blue and cut into tiny little pieces!

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with Mel Gibson?

A few months ago, I finally got around to watching Braveheart. Meh. There were some OK battle scenes, lots of dubious history, and a totally tacked-on and unconvincing love-type thing. But through it all, you could tell that Mel was just hitting the marks he had to hit to get to the gruesome, graphic, extended torture scene that (eventually) ends the damn thing.

Then there was The Passion of the C hrist. That one didn't have anyone painted blue, as I recall, but it did have buckets and buckets of blood, blood, blood, and essentially reduced the New Testament to a latter day Grand Guignol.

In Apocalypto, Mel brings the whips and knives to a whole new continent, and uses more blue paint. Other than that, it was kind of like third verse, same as the first.

Yah, the jungle settings were pretty awesome, but I've been watching a bunch of Werner Herzog movies lately, like Fitzcarraldo, where the filmmakers actually dragged a steamboat over a muddy mountain deep in the Amazon rainforest. The settings and stunts in Apocalypto were pretty convincing, although not quite to the level (of madness) that Herzog took it.

This is a movie that isn't so much enjoyed as endured. What was the point? For all the awesome spectacle, it's barely even entertainment, by any ordinary definition. There were some thrills, just by the nature of the story, but overall, it was just gruesome and unpleasant.

Mel's some kind of religious fundamentalist fanatic, and I almost think this might have been an anti-abortion dog-whistle message to the lunatic fringe. Y'know, it was all about the slaughter of innocents, and it opens with a pretentious quote about great civilizations being destroyed from within, and it's full of symbols of fertility, and the subplot is about a seriously difficult pregnancy, and the climax of the thing is the restoration of the traditional family unit... but who can think about any of that when guys are getting painted blue and having their bellies sliced open and their heads lopped off?

It also ends with a bunch of earnest conquistadors wading ashore, in perhaps the most heavy-handed deus ex machina in the history of film, brandishing crosses and seeking to redeem the heathen hordes.

I don't know where Mel can go next, but these guys had better watch out.

The Coolest Thing Ever, Pretty Much

2008-02-19T18:29:00.006-05:00

My new/old job (don't ask) includes a bit of travel. Most of it's pretty routine stuff, covering a few well-worn paths along the turnpike, Route 81, and some other major highways.

But there's enough of it, and enough out-of-the-way excursions, to provide a reasonable excuse to buy a GPS navigation unit. So I did.

Before I bought it, I knew basically how it worked, but I didn't know just how totally teh awesome!!11! it really is.

It's so simple. You just type in the address of where you want to go, and within a few moments, the unit maps out a route. It's a neat little display.

When you start out on your trip, that's when the fun really begins.

The basic function of these babies is text-to-speech directions, which lets you concentrate on the road while the little genie in the box tells you which way to go. It's pretty ingenious.

The one I bought has a mechanized but pleasant female Stephen Hawking voice which sounds something like

in TwoMiles. Turn. Left. onto MARtin Luther Kingjunior. drive

There's also a couple of million "points of interest" which pop up, depending on the individual unit and the chosen settings, to show gas stations, restaurants, hotels, ex-girlfriend's houses, etc. Very cool.

Today I tested it out on a day trip to Scranton. (Yeah, "The Office" is set there. Whatevs.) The little GPS voice guided me out of my driveway, down some local roads and out on to the highway. By the time I got to the 81/78 split, I realized that this is going to be one of the most fulfilling relationships I've ever had with a female.

As much as I like the voice on the unit, I think there is a lot of potential for customization here. Obviously, you could have the classic back seat driver, shouting, "Left here. Left! Left, dammit, I SAID LEFT! WHY DIDN'T YOU TURN LEFT?!? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?! Great, we're lost now. Next time listen to me when I'm talking!"

There might not be much of a market for that, though. What'll probably happen, is there will be some clever tie-ins with movies and video games and stuff. I bet they'll have a Grand Theft Auto version within a year. I'd like to see a Lord of the Rings version, with a Gollum voice being all like:

There's some stairs, and a tunnel... Come along, hobbits. Very close, veryclose, to MOR-dor.

Actually I'd probably go for the Speed Racer version, with Trixie and Sparky randomly exclaiming, "OhH!" every couple of miles. The characters in that show already have the weird, clipped vocal delivery we're all going to have to get used to as we give more of our lives over to machines. "Speed, TurnLeftHERE. then follow the ROAD: until you come to a bridge, then crossit to. the other SIDE." There was one episode where Speed was temporarily blinded, and Racer X (who, unknown to Speed, is actually his older brother Rex, who left home years ago!) guided him to the finish line by telling him which way to turn and when to speed up and when to slow down. That's basically how GPS works, except Racer X is even cooler.

Anyway, these things are definitely the wave of the future, and it's no coincidence that Knight Rider is making a comeback. And they're only going to get better. Ten years from now, it will be unthinkable to drive anywhere, except the most routine of trips, without using GPS. We will take them for granted as we do cell phones now. (Well, most of us. Here's something I've noticed: every* woman under the age of, say, 30, has a cell phone permanently attached to her ear while driving -- and yet, every* married guy I know complains that his own wife, where said wife is age 30+, never* has her cell phone turned on, or never* has it charged up, or never* answers it, or never* remembers to take it with her when she leaves the house, etc. Why is this? It's a conundrum. Something about getting married apparently causes women to lose the cell phone function.) People driving without GPS will be met with the same incredulity as Luke Skywalker was when he switched off his computer while attacking the Death Star. When they're completely and routinely integrated with real-time traffic (some are already), weather, tire pressure, blood alcohol content, etc., well, why have a driver at all? Just set the cruise control and hop in the back.

[*A generalization; your results may vary.]

Twenty years from now, the GPS will just display an overlay map right on the windshield of your car as you drive. (Gas will be $82 a gallon, but that's a problem for another day.) Kind of like that one episode of Speed Racer where the plans for the Mach 5 were actually printed on the windshield of the car. In fact, why not just make the interior of the car a sort of virtual reality, or a big video game display? Either that, or give us all homing robots like Speed Racer had.

So tell me again -- why are we shooting down satellites?

Semi-related video:

NASCAR Coach Reveals Winning Strategy: 'Drive Fast'

I Can Haz New Bloggin Space!

2008-01-10T20:49:00.000-05:00

I moved upstairs. It's still a work in progress.

Happy Birthday, Elvis

2008-01-08T22:20:00.000-05:00

I always thought Bono nailed it in his poem/song Elvis Ate America. Here's a video someone put together and posted on YouTube:

Watching: Dieter!

2008-01-08T00:03:00.000-05:00

No, not this guy:

Dieter Dengler, subject of not one but two films by Werner Herzog. The first is Little Dieter Needs To Fly, a documentary made about ten years ago. The second is an action flick made a year or so ago, Rescue Dawn, starring Christian Bale.

Basically, this dude was shot down over Laos during the early part of the Vietnam War, and endured unbelievable hardship in a prison camp for a few months before escaping into the jungle. Then things got really bad. Somehow, he made it out and was rescued. I think one of the movies said he was the only American POW to escape from a camp during the war.

I liked the doc better. Dieter was a candid and enthusiastic host to his own story. His descriptions of the torture and misery he suffered were matter-of-fact, and there was a weird, peculiarly German, psychological component in having him re-enact some of it. Also, Herzog loves to explore Nature's casual cruelty toward human survival, and this story was a great example of that theme.

Rescue Dawn was pretty good, probably the second-best movie featuring Christian Bale held captive by sadistic and inscrutable Asians. I'd rank it behind Empire of the Sun, but ahead of Batman Returns.

Here, he plays Dieter as resourceful and optimistic. He dropped a lot of weight (Dieter weighed 85 pounds when he came out of the jungle), but didn't seem too concerned with getting inside the guy's head or doing a straight-out imitation of him. Too much of the movie took place in the prison camp, and not enough in the jungle, for my taste. It became too much of a standard issue POW escape film.

Of course, there are some great POW films, and this one stands up pretty well. It's interesting how these movies have consistently gotten more graphic over the years, to the point of being almost torture porn.

Start with Stalag 17, which was pretty tame in showing the treatment of the prisoners. I mean, they made the one guy stand at attention for hours and hours, but that was about it, and they only showed a couple seconds of him collapsing in fatigue. The prisoners got visits from the Red Cross and held a Christmas party where, if you squinted hard enough, some little squirrelly guy with a mop on his head could look like Betty Grable. Meanwhile, William Holden was running a thriving black market Walmart under his bunk and waltzing into the Russian women's camp. I mean, come on, these were the Nazis!

In The Bridge on the River Kwai, the Japs put Alec Guinness in an oven for days on end, which was pretty bad. The thing is, it all pretty much happened off screen. And hey, William Holden escaped from that one, too, and ended up on an island with some nurse before they sent him back to blow up the bridge.

In The Great Escape, the Nazis locked Steve McQueen in solitary so often that everyone called him The Cooler King, but at least they let him have a ball and a glove. And, hey, it's not like they were being arbitrary -- he kept getting caught trying to escape. Meanwhile, Charles Bronson was tunneling halfway to Sweden and James Garner was lamely trying to fill William Holden's shoes as a one-man general store. And I could be wrong, but I don't remember any of the guards laying a hand on any of the prisoners. Mostly, they just stood around dumbly while dozens of Brits and Americans (and a few Aussies) dumped dirt out of their trouser legs and sang Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Slaughterhouse Five kicked it up a notch, except of course it was the Americans doing most of the damage against their own guys.

I don't really remember much about Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, except that the Japs buried David Bowie up to his neck in the hot sand. It didn't stop him from making Blue Jean, though.

Then came the Rambo movies, and all hell broke loose, I guess. So now we have to actually see Christian Bale getting hung upside down and spun in circles, and dunked in a well up to his chin, and dragged behind an ox. That's entertainment.

When Wish Lists Work Too Well

2007-12-29T10:52:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas

2007-12-25T09:35:00.000-05:00

Yes, Virginia (2007)

2007-12-24T19:23:00.000-05:00

The scene: Why, 'twas the night before Christmas, of course!

Fade in. ~~A tenement building on the Lower East Side~~ A cluttered living room in a modest suburban home.

Me: Hey, kid -- whatcha doin' on my computer?

8 Year Old: I'm looking at the North Pole on Google Earth.

Me: Oh? Why are you doing that?

8YO: I want to see if Santa exists.

Me: ... !

8YO: He's supposed to live at the North Pole, but I don't see any houses or buildings or anything.

Me: Oh -- well, Santa has, like, magic powers and stuff. Shield rays. Yeah, that's it. He has shield rays to keep the, uh, satellites from photographing him.

8YO: Hmm.

Me: Plus, I think there are, um, international treaties that, ah, make it illegal to show Santa's village at the North Pole. You can only show the ice and snow.

8YO: Treaties?

Me: Yeah, um, treaties. Even the North Koreans observe them. After all, everyone loves Santa Claus, right?

8YO: I guess.

Me: Good. Good. You run along now. Let Daddy use his computer. Go get ready for Santa. Santa's coming tonight!

8YO: Oh boy!

Me: [Phew!]

All: Merry Christmas, everyone!

[exeunt]

The Best Christmas Present I Will Receive This Year

2007-12-23T23:18:00.000-05:00

No, not the light up Frank Sinatra tie:

If you are an American male around 40, unless you were a total Melvin, you will instantly recall what this is, and why, in its day, it was cooler than the iPod and the Wii combined. In fact, in a strange way, it sort of was the iPod and the Wii combined.

Well, I may have been at least a partial Melvin, but I had one of these treasures. And like everyone else who had one, I played it incessantly. It didn't take long to master, and then it was just fun, the way pulling wings off flies was fun.*

*We never actually pulled wings off flies when I was a kid. If there had been a video game called Pull Wings Off Flies!, it probably would have been fun, and we would have played it. But there wasn't -- at least not that I remember -- and it's not like we were going to actually, you know, go outside and find flies, let alone catch them, and then pull their wings off. They had, like, germs and stuff. Ick.

Yeah, you could challenge your friends to head-to-head competition on this gizmo, but the real fun was in seeing how high you could run up the score, how long you could hold the ball on a scoring drive, how far you could go on a single touchdown run, etc.

They quickly came out with a Version 2.0, which featured multiple offensive players and even passing, but it just wasn't the same. In fact, come to think of it, it is again very similar to what happened with the iPod. As much as I love my video iPod, in some ways I still prefer my clunky old black and white audio-only model.

In many ways, 1977 was the key year in American pop culture. There was Saturday Night Fever, and punk rock (which we heard about, but never actually heard until much later), and Roots and of course Star Wars, and this glorious hand-held electronic football game. At age 11, I was just becoming dimly aware of the larger world, but this football game was a self-contained plastic representation of all the excitement, adventure and really wild things that the eighties would surely spill forth.

I don't know what happened to mine. It probably got tossed with my Thurman Munson RC Cola can and my Kung Fu Grip GI Joe.

But --
about 6 or 7 years ago, at a ~~yard~~ sidewalk sale in South Philly, I found one. For a dollar.

Well, let me tell you, that was about the best dollar I've ever spent.

I haven't actually played it much since then, but just the security of knowing that I have one has been well worth it, a thousand times over. (I named it "Rosebud.")

My daughters will soon be pre-teens. The little one turned six and a half the other day, which, if you think about it, is halfway to being a teenager. [Shudder...] The big one will be nine in less than a month.

They are into all the groovy kid stuff, despite the fact that we don't have cable TV to ~~poison~~ influence them. One of their favorite things is Webkinz, which actually looks pretty cool and makes me wish it had been around when I was a kid.

So the big one was showing me the extensive Webkinz world she has created, when I remembered that a day or two ago I saw my Mattel Electronics Football game sitting undisturbed in a drawer somewhere. Sure enough, all it needed was a common 9-volt battery, and it's as cool as it ever was. Even the soon-to-be-nine-year-old thinks so.

Merry Christmas!

Video Vault: Siouxsie and the Banshees, Kiss Them For Me

2007-12-16T22:10:00.000-05:00

This keeps coming up in iTunes lately, so here goes.

By 1991, every struggling post-punk act had to start jumping on whatever bandwagon happened to pass by. One of the most promising trends of the day was the whole Madchester indie-dance thing centered around the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and other New Order acolytes.

Lots of bands that had previously been all doom and gloom suddenly aimed for the dance floor. The Cure did, and the Fall, and Echo and the Bunnymen, and the Jesus and Mary Chain too, so why not Siouxsie and the Banshees?

Siouxsie threw her eyeliner into the ring with Kiss Them For Me, a jaunty little number built around a drum sample from PSK by Schooly-D (no, really!) ... which is ironic, because the Banshees had a drummer, named Budgie, who was supposed to be pretty good. I guess he made tea while they recorded this track. In fact, the whole song is pretty much a vehicle for Siouxsie's vocal, plus some stuttering guitar and vaguely psychedelic synthesizer swooshes and (fake?) strings. Steve Severin, usually an inventive bass player, is just along for the ride on this one.

And just on a purely superficial level, Siouxsie looks quite fetching in this clip. She cleans up real nice.

BONUS!
Also: Peek-a-boo!

Hey, when you've gone through as many guitarists as these guys have, eventually you hit upon the solution: just come up with a killer song that doesn't rely on guitar at all! I like this one a lot. Great drumming by Budgie, and Severin growls out a menacing, minimalist bass figure that's full of attitude. (He also poses like Gary Numan's nerdy cousin in the video.)

Show Your Blog Space Day

2007-12-16T21:47:00.000-05:00

As commanded by PSoTD, here's where the magic happens:

When the boy became big enough to demand his own room, *poof* went my office. I got booted downstairs to a space in the living room between the bookshelves. It has actually worked out pretty well because I can casually do things on the 'puter while the rest of the family is downstairs doing their stuff. Plus, it's closer to the kitchen.

The paintings on the wall are two of a set of a dozen or so done by a guy I used to know. In this particular series, he used the same objects, a pair of flower pots, in each image, but did each painting in the style of one of the masters of modern art -- Cezanne, Monet, Picasso, etc. I can't remember which artists these two represent. I know the one on the right has some sort of collage elements, including an obscured theater ticket. The artist, Mike, died not too long after I bought these, about ten years ago.

I had a wireless keyboard and mouse but I didn't like the way they worked. Too clumsy. So my plan here is to cut a hole in the back of the workspace so I can run the wires down behind the monitor, instead of having them dangling over the edge. Or I might move back upstairs, into the last remaining spare bedroom, and let my wife enjoy the convenience of first floor blogging.

This Is Just Wrong...

2007-12-13T12:04:00.000-05:00

IKE 'BEATS' TINA TO DEATH

...but funny.

Best. Elvis. Ever.

2007-12-12T21:05:00.000-05:00

Jack White in that new movie that's coming out, Walk Hard:

He was also great in Cold Mountain. Is there anything he can't do?

Connect The Dots

2007-12-11T13:11:00.000-05:00

I haven't seen any news source make this rather obvious connection:

Last year, Dubya said:

Within months of September the 11th, 2001, we captured a man known as Abu Zubaydah...
After he recovered, Zubaydah was defiant and evasive. He declared his hatred of America. During questioning, he at first disclosed what he thought was nominal information -- and then stopped all cooperation...
We knew that Zubaydah had more information that could save innocent lives, but he stopped talking. As his questioning proceeded, it became clear that he had received training on how to resist interrogation. And so the CIA used an alternative set of procedures. These procedures were designed to be safe, to comply with our laws, our Constitution, and our treaty obligations. The Department of Justice reviewed the authorized methods extensively and determined them to be lawful. I cannot describe the specific methods used -- I think you understand why -- if I did, it would help the terrorists learn how to resist questioning, and to keep information from us that we need to prevent new attacks on our country. But I can say the procedures were tough, and they were safe, and lawful, and necessary.
Zubaydah was questioned using these procedures, and soon he began to provide information on key al Qaeda operatives, including information that helped us find and capture more of those responsible for the attacks on September the 11th.

It has long been suspected that "these procedures" = waterboarding.

Anyway, this Abu Zubayda guy's name came up in the news again this week, after it was disclosed that the CIA destroyed videotapes of his interrogation. Now there's an ex-CIA agent who tells the same story as Bush, except instead of characterizing what the CIA did as an "alternative set of procedures," he just describes what those procedures actually were:

The former agent, who said he participated in the Abu Zubayda interrogation but not his waterboarding, said the CIA decided to waterboard the al Qaeda operative only after he was "wholly uncooperative" for weeks and refused to answer questions.
All that changed -- and Zubayda reportedly had a divine revelation -- after 30 to 35 seconds of waterboarding, Kiriakou said he learned from the CIA agents who performed the technique.

"Waterboarding" itself is a euphemism for water torture. It's a war crime. And Bush (or more likely, Cheney) approved it:

In a separate CNN interview, Kiriakou said the Justice Department and National Security Council reportedly approved waterboarding and other "alternative" interrogation techniques in June 2002.
"It was a policy decision that came down from the White House," he said.

Watching: 25th Hour

2007-12-08T00:37:00.000-05:00

Spike Lee has always paid close attention to the music in his movies, with some memorable results. One of the best was the club scene in 25th Hour. It's a little masterpiece of not only music, but editing, lighting and acting. Viewed standing alone, it plays a bit more as a light comedy than it does in the context of the larger movie. It works as a self-contained story that wraps up a minor plot thread between two of the secondary characters. Great stuff:

Yes, it's another Philip Seymour Hoffman sex scene. Well, almost. If not exactly sex, still more amorous activity than I want to see from him, anyway.

The movie was pretty good. I like almost anything where Edward Norton gets beaten to a pulp.

The Jump Is The Easy Part...

2007-12-03T13:51:00.000-05:00

...it's the landing that'll get you.

A testament to the limits to which the human body can be physically pushed:

He looks like a crash test dummy.

One of my enduring childhood memories is listening to the radio coverage of Evel Knievel's attempt to jump Snake River Canyon in his rocket sled thingy. September 8, 1974. He didn't make it.

He didn't make it in this one, either. Well, he did, but he didn't exactly stick the landing. Of course, he realized that it's better theater to crash than to land successfully. And bones do heal.

One question. I've seen this clip many times, but never noticed until now: did Evel crap his pants on the landing? Check it out at about the 40 second mark. It's probably an abrasion from the asphalt, but you couldn't blame him if he did.

No Mo' Blo Po

2007-12-01T22:34:00.000-05:00

Shorter wife:

I'm Just Sayin'...

2007-11-24T21:14:00.000-05:00

...my Christmas wish list is up to date. I'll probably keep tweaking it over the next couple of weeks. The little linky thing lives on the right side of this page.

Rudolph The Red-Nosed Passive Object

2007-11-23T22:09:00.000-05:00

This song has always bothered me.

As I've mentioned before, it starts off by throwing out an inane question, in that little spoken-sung prologue:

You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen
Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen
But do you recall
The most famous reindeer of all?

This is kind of like starting a song about a famous comedy team thusly:

You know Chico and Harpo
And you even know Zeppo
But do you recall
The most famous Marx Brother of all?

Yes! Yes, I recall him. He's the most famous of all! You've answered your own question.

But what really bothers me about this song is that it completely denies Rudolph, the nominal main character of this particular tale, any active role in the narrative. For a story purporting to be about him, he's oddly denied any actual personhood. Reindeerhood. Whatever.

Check it out:

Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer
Had a very shiny nose
And if you ever saw it
You would even say it glows.

Right off the bat, the story is not about Rudolph, or his thoughts about his unfortunate condition. Instead, an omniscient narrator identifies that condition as the defining trait of not just Rudolph's physical being, but ultimately of his character. Rudolph himself is completely passive, an object to which a red, shiny nose, which apparently even glows, happens to be attached. The narrator then moves on to engage in conjecture about how you, dear listener, would react should you ever actually encounter this poor creature.

All of the other reindeer
Used to laugh and call him names.
They never let poor Rudolph
Join in any reindeer games.

Compare this, for instance, to Frosty the Snowman, who is an active agent in the song bearing his name.

The next verse considers the reaction of another group interacting with Rudolph, i.e., all of the other reindeer. There's a brief, fleeting recognition of Rudolph's status within -- or rather without -- the group, but again, it's from the point of view of the group regarding him as Other. The story is Rudolph's forced exclusion from the community, rather than his response to his exclusion. All of the action is given to other actors, never to Rudolph.

Then one foggy Christmas eve
Santa came to say
"Rudolph with your nose so bright
Won't you guide my sleigh tonight?"

Here another character is introduced, Rudolph's employer/protector, who has presumably been turning a blind eye to his mistreatment at the ~~hands~~ hooves of all of the other reindeer. Seeing an actual use to which Rudolph's malady can be put, in the service of the agenda of the employer-turned-exploiter, Santa springs. Notice also that Rudolph is now prized for his constituent parts, rather than his talents as a whole, fulfilled being, much like any farm-raised animal is slaughtered and its corpse picked apart for its useful properties.

Next comes the most telling part of the whole song. Rather than a verse featuring Rudolph's response to Santa's plea, the song skips straight to the reaction of those around him:

Then how the reindeer loved him
As they shouted out with glee
"Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer
you'll go down in history!"

It's far from clear that Rudolph has even assented to Santa's request. In fact, a logical, if vengeful, response would have been for Rudolph to tell Santa to get stuffed:

Santa and you other reindeer
Mrs. Claus and all you elves
You're a bunch of selfish assholes
Why don't you go and fuck yourselves?

The actual outcome of Santa's proposal is a little unclear. The reindeer who now love him may be jumping the gun, in that the way the song is constructed, it's not clear whether Rudolph has responded at all, but they assume he'll help dear old Santa, or whether he has responded, and his response simply hasn't been included.

If the former, notice what this says about Rudolph, and by extension, workers the world over: after silently suffering years of mistreatment from his peers, with no consequence from his and their master, after being systematically excluded from their games, and presumably from any substantive interaction with the group, Rudolph is now supposed -- in fact, expected -- to be grateful for the opportunity to (finally) contribute to the goals set by the group and its leader (which, incidentally, he had no part in setting, and in which it is not clear that he has any tangible interest). Meanwhile, how he feels about this is deemed so unimportant as to not be worthy of mention.

If the latter, notice again that this is the final, and most telling, instance in which Rudolph is not even granted an active role in his own tale. Either way, the emotion here belongs to the other reindeer, who now love him and shout out with glee. Rudolph's reaction is not recorded. His reward is to be lauded by future generations -- to "go down in history." Again, he does not act; he is acted upon. The present-day joy and glee are experiences that belong to the other reindeer. They, not he, have undergone a journey of self-discovery in which important lessons have been learned. Rudolph's status as an outsider is cemented. Ironically, he'll go down in history, presumably in story and song -- a song which doesn't even grant him an active role in his own story, or acknowledge his individuated experience. Some reward.

Watching: Before The Devil Knows You're Dead

2007-11-21T20:35:00.000-05:00

They say Hollywood can be a tough place for actresses over 40 -- hell, 25. For instance, Marisa Tomei, age 42. She's not exactly a household name, but she has won an Oscar (OK, it was for My Cousin Vinny, but still) and been nominated for several other awards.

That's all very nice. In this movie, she (or her body double) is called upon to have graphic, gratuitous sex with the sweaty, flabby Philip Seymour Hoffman, right in the opening scene. OK, he's an Oscar winner, too, but it's not the same thing, is it? Later, she has a topless scene with Ethan Hawke. (She's topless, he's not.)

OK, she does have one good, fully clothed scene later in the movie, where she actually gets to, like, act and stuff, with words and crying and tears and everything. Still, kind of slim pickings. I guess she can always go home and gaze at her Oscar statue, which not every actress can.

The movie itself was a bit of a disappointment. Like Reservoir Dogs, there is a jewelry store robbery that goes horribly wrong, and the story is told in a looping fashion, with lots of flashbacks tied to particular characters. Reservoir Dogs notoriously featured one character pretty much bleeding to death throughout the whole movie, another character getting his ear sliced off and being doused with gasoline, and everybody dead after a big Mexican standoff at the end. But it was fun, and funny, and stylish. This movie was stylish, but unpleasant and tiresome. The robbers have no way out, and the second half just consists of them getting more and more desperate as their situation gets worse and worse as they get deeper and deeper into trouble. The film wasn't bad; it just didn't make for a very pleasant night at the movies.

Möbius Strip

2007-11-21T08:41:00.000-05:00

My brain hurts:

Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan says top administration officials -- including President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney -- were involved in his "unknowingly" passing along false information about the leak of a CIA operative's identity.

...

Asked about the released excerpt, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said, "The president has not misled his spokespeople, nor would he."

The Leader is powerful and good. No, I don't know what "irony" means. Why do you ask?

Video Vault: The Cult, She Sells Sanctuary

2007-11-20T22:26:00.000-05:00

In the early 1980s, there were lots of people whispering that Jim Morrison didn't really die in that bathtub in Paris. And then suddenly, there was this video, which seemed to be confirmation that he had been hiding out all this time, writing poetry and waiting to get back out in front of a rock band.

OK, so on closer inspection, it wasn't him after all. In fact, it was just Ian Astbury, auditioning for the role of singer in the re-formed Doors. Which, in fact, he would successfully land about 15 years later.

So the video is a lip-synching performance piece with this weird long-haired British American Indian wannabe, a peroxide Billy Idol clone on guitar, some sort of neo-psychedelic dood bass player, and the drummer for Big Country sitting in, apparently just collecting a paycheck (watch him just about bolt off the drum riser as the last notes ring in the air).

In 1985, when this was released, "alternative" acts just didn't do the things these guys do on stage in this video. First off, the long hair was a real no-no. The scarf, vest, headband, pendant, frilly shirt and fringe jacket, all possibly purchased at Steven Tyler's yard sale, were very unfashionable. Then there's the Daltrey-esque twirling of the microphone stand, the David Lee Roth jump splits, and the Jagger strut, all a pretty far cry from Morrissey and the other hip acts of the day.

The song itself is really interesting. Like the video, it combines a lot of disparate rock subgenres that didn't ordinarily mix together comfortably at that time. There are psychedelic sounds, an anthemic guitar part that fit in with the U2 and Big Country style of the day, and a hard rock attitude, all in a conventional "alternative" or "college radio" structure. This song, along with Love, from the same album, presented a kind of a watershed moment. It threw down the gauntlet and forced the hipster wannabes of 1985 (yeah, that was me) to decide whether there was more indie cred in admitting to liking it, or blowing it off as uncool and continuing to listen to Depeche Mode or something. It was a tough call.

A couple of years later, these guys blew up the playing field by growing their hair long and scraggly, putting on scruffy clothes, turning their amps up to eleven, and unapologetically turning into a full-fledged hard rock band. Guns 'n Roses opened for them! Their album, Electric, along with Nothing's Shocking by Jane's Addiction, and all the Led Zeppelin samples on Licensed To Ill, brought hard rock back to the punk kids who had grown up on it in the 1970s but rejected it after hearing The Clash (yeah, that was me).

Yes, These Are Bad People...

2007-11-20T13:12:00.000-05:00

...but I LOL'ed at this: Cheney names turkeys: Lunch, Dinner

More.

Watching: The Fountain

2007-11-16T22:10:00.000-05:00

I don't know what to think about this one. It's probably best to not think about it at all, but to feel it instead. I don't think (there's that word again) it is meant to be experienced literally or intellectually. It is one of those movies that is intended to be experienced on a more intuitive, emotional level. The problem is, it didn't completely work on that level.

The Fountain is a lousy title for a movie, and it's kind of misleading. It's not the Fountain of Youth that's the subject here, but rather the Tree of Life. Same thing, really, but still.

Hugh Jackman plays a character who has, more or less, become unstuck in time. He's a Spanish conquistador, a medical researcher in the present or near future, and some sort of bubble boy floating up to the Mayan underworld in an imagined future. In all three settings, he's seeking and/or tending the Tree of Life as a promise of immortality, trying to keep himself alive and Rachel Weisz from dying.

The Fountain raises some of the same kind of Big Questions as 2001: A Space Odyssey or other meditations on man's place in the universe, the end of life, etc., but it ultimately backs away from the answers it suggests. In fact, it is probably a mistake to suggest answers at all. A film like this succeeds best by being open-ended and non-literal. This one was too specific and tethered to the main plot.

I am not sure what the people who made this film were thinking. I am not sure what motivated Darren Aronofsky, a talented and provocative director, to make this movie, and I am perplexed as to why any major studio would greenlight it. What kind of expectations could they have had? They couldn't have expected it would be a hit, or make (much) money, even with semi-big stars like Jackman and Weisz in it. There wasn't even any gratuitous sex or violence to exploit, just one semi-suggestive scene with the stars making out in a bathtub.

Where is the audience for this movie? Did they think this was going to fill theaters for weeks at a time? How were they going to market it? As it turns out, it's a good movie to watch on a big new high-definition TV, because it does look great, and the dialogue is so hushed and whispered that you almost need the subtitles on, but was that really the marketing plan for this movie? I'm curious.

So maybe this movie wasn't a success, but at least it was an interesting... failure is the wrong word... attempt.

Video Vault: The Psychedelic Furs, Love My Way

2007-11-16T20:04:00.000-05:00

This is the moment when one strain of post-punk splintered off into New Wave. Oddly enough, it was the geeky hippie recluse Todd Rundgren who produced this song and album, as well as a number of other successful early 1980s synth-pop tunes.

This song was a semi-hit and a staple of early MTV. I remember my head-bangin' metal-lovin' brother stomping through our living room, pausing to take in a few seconds of this video, then sneering, "Where's their drummer?" I'm not sure whether he was being ironic or not.

Wow, looking at this now, 25 years later, it's hard to understand why David Bowie didn't loudly and vigorously complain that Richard Butler was ripping him off. Maybe because the rest of the band looks a little bit like the Velvet Underground, and Bowie had a long-standing obsession with the VU. Or maybe because this song was better than anything Bowie was doing circa 1982, and it didn't hurt him to have people think this might've been him.

As Time Goes By...

2007-11-12T21:20:00.000-05:00

...or, Up and Down in Paris and London.

The wife and I recently watched the entire Up Series. It's a sort of proto-Truman Show on tea and crumpets. The set-up is simple enough: in 1964, British television, intending only a one-off documentary, put a bunch of little buggers in front of their cameras to get a glimpse of the future leaders of the Empire. The result was an amusing, but slender and facile, product that could've been titled Blimey, But Children Do Say The Most Remarkable Things.

They checked in on them again seven years later and found that The Kids Were Alright, despite the horrendous fashion sense, oversized ears and appalling dental habits characteristic of British youth throughout the ages. (Hey, glass houses, over here!) Again, this episode, conceived and presented as a clever sequel to the original, was unassuming and ultimately underwhelming.

Then, a funny thing happened. The director, Michael Apted -- perhaps pre-emptively atoning for inflicting upon the world the Sting ~~rock~~jazzumentary Bring on the Night -- stuck with the concept, hauling the little lords, ladies, lads and lassies back in front of the cameras every seven years, right up to the present. And in the process, something like greatness was stumbled upon.

Part of the accidental genius of this project is that, although conceived long prior to the home video market, it was absolutely made to be presented on DVD. Whereas the original audience had to wait seven years between updates, you can now pop the discs in and watch the whole 49 years unfold in about a week.

Unfortunately, the producers of the series still haven't gotten to the point where they've really made use of the possibilities of the medium. The DVDs are barebones, with skimpy bonus features and no subtitles for the most part.

The lengthy intervals between the films also means that there's a lot of repeated background stuff designed to re-orient viewers who may have forgotten which one of the obnoxious public school upper class twits wanted to be a barrister and which wanted to be a solicitor.

Unlike, say The Real World and similar "reality" television shows, there are no contrived plots and no stacking of the deck intended to cause fur to fly. (In fact, there's almost no on-camera interaction among the participants after age 7 at all -- the people involved have parallel, but self-contained, lives.) This lets us see the forces at work upon them. The producers of this series, being British, are first and foremost concerned (obsessed?) with class. The series starts from the (mostly unspoken) premise that, in England, Class Matters. The premise is probed only gently until the kids hit 42, when the question of class and its effect on them is explicitly asked of each of them, and they respond thoughtfully and convincingly. Their verdict: Yes, But. My brash Yank take on it is, Does class matter to what? Success? Wealth? Career Opportunities (the ones that never knock)? The likelihood of turning into a complete wanker? The answer is yes. Does it matter to happiness? Not as much as personal satisfaction in those areas and, more importantly, in family relationships. Yes, class is a factor, and a big one, but it's not completely determinative.

Apted's methods, like the series itself, are disarmingly simple, almost artless, but in retrospect wise and effective. He never appears on screen, which gives him a god-like evaluative distance as he prompts his subjects. His major rhetorical device is to just ask, "Why?," thereby nudging his subjects to ever more candid dissections of their lives.

(It's ironic that Apted has also directed two James Bond movies, given that that series has presented an intentionally idealized and fantastic portrait of quintessential Englishness over exactly the same period of time, and at comparable intervals.)

Surely most people who watch the series will be drawn to the tale of Neil, who starts off so full of promise and cheer, only to fall steadily but shockingly through cynicism, despair, untreated mental illness and virtual homelessness in quick order. The other really memorable character -- in every sense of the word -- is Tony, who charts a course from scruffy East End dreamer to small time hustler to honest working class striver to devoted family man enjoying his holidays in the sun. Tony would be the one guy in this show who would be the most fun to have a pint with. Or two.

We also watched Before Sunrise and then, a few days later, Before Sunset. The first is the well-regarded Richard Linklater film wherein Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy wander around Vienna deciding whether they should fall in love before he has to catch a train in the morning. The second is the sequel, both set and filmed nine years later, wherein they meet again in Paris.

I liked both of these movies a lot, but I found the second one to be richer and more rewarding.

In the first one, they are young, free, hopeful and open. Jesse is on the rebound and Celine is eager to flirt and be flirted with, as a sort of trial for stepping out of Eastern Europe and seeing something of the world.

But in the second one, they have families and careers and apartment leases and cell phones and all the other trappings of young adulthood.

It is one thing to backpack through Europe chatting up French girls when you are 23. It is quite another to make momentous decisions about life and love when you are 32 and everyone has complicated bonds connecting them to other people, who do not share in the decision-making process. People will get hurt by the consequences of the actions of these characters.

The wife says the second film functions as an anti-Casablanca, not only because of the "we'll always have Paris" aspect, but because it all comes down to a decision whether to get on a plane or not.

I agree with Roger Ebert that the people who made these films should consider making a third film in a few years ("After Sunset"?), and then continue with new installments every nine years. The wife says, no, the story is over -- what is there left to say?

If you have young daughters, or even if you don't, you will be familiar with the many princess stories in which the heroine wins the love of the handsome prince, and the story ends with the line, "And they lived happily ever after." As if it's that simple! As anyone who has ever been married can tell you, the hard work is just beginning.

Before Sunset ends with one of the great closing lines in recent film history, and it sure looks like Jesse is settled in comfortably on the couch in Celine's apartment. But the story certainly doesn't end where the movie does. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if, after Celine's done slinking around to Nina Simone songs (or, OK, the next morning), Jesse hightails it to the airport and flies off to see his kid. It's complicated.

Sentenced

2007-11-12T21:01:00.000-05:00

This song by Of Montreal, called A Sentence Of Sorts In Kongsvinger, came out a couple of months ago. It's pretty catchy. It sounds like Badly Drawn Boy getting together with the Cardigans to cover Bowie's Sound + Vision, but going off on a slight tangent. Then, about two-thirds of the way in, Paul McCartney drops by and gives them one of his classic interludes.

There doesn't seem to be an official video on YouTube, but there are some good unofficial guerilla-style amateur concoctions. This one by the Dandies is a lot of fun:

Watching: Open Water

2007-11-08T21:30:00.000-05:00

You know that famous moment in Jaws when the shark first appears and Roy Scheider tells his shipmates that they're going to need a bigger boat?

You know what would be even scarier? If you removed the adjective. As in, "We're going to need a boat." Any boat.

Because if you don't have a boat -- never mind how big it is -- you're in the water with the shark. Or, in this particular case, sharks.

And so it is in Open Water. The setup is barebones: semi-obnoxious overworked yuppies rush off to an improvised Caribbean vacation, join in a scuba-diving day trip, and, thanks to a clerical error, are forgotten in the water when the boat takes off.

The rest consists of the two of them drifting, floating and bobbing in the water, cursing their luck, resisting the temptation to blame each other, and watching the sharks circle. Quite literally.

They also pretty much move through the Kubler-Rossian five stages of dying. The best was stage two, anger, especially when the doggie-paddling doomed guy screamed at the heavens that they actually paid to have this happen to them. The fact that he looked like a water-logged Steve Carrell made it even better.

If Jack London had been born a hundred years later, he might have made movies like this one instead of writing short stories. The terror that is slowly revealed is not the voraciousness of nature and its creatures, but its indifference. Sure, the sharks poke around at the hapless stranded divers, and even take a nibble or two, but that's not what ultimately dooms them. It is the emptiness, the estrangement from the ordinary comforts and necessities of life, that is the killer. Nature does not care. We have to actively strive to remain alive. It's not so much nature's hostility to man, or man's inhumanity to man, as man's general incompetence, randomly applied to his fellow man, that'll get us all killed.

Attack Of The Clones

2007-11-04T20:33:00.000-05:00

It's disturbing to learn that, in the near future, there will still be Maxim magazine and Aquafina bottled water, but no one will be familiar with Blade Runner. Or Total Recall. Or Minority Report. Or any of a hundred similar movies about eerie futuristic dystopias, not just the ones based on stories by Philip K. Dick.

So when, for instance, in The Island, "Lincoln Six Echo" and "Jordan Two Delta" (don't ask) escape from their brave new world and wind up in a roadside dive with Steve Buscemi (don't ask), full of questions about who and what they are, couldn't he just loan them copies of Logan's Run and The 6h Day and let them sort it out for themselves?

But no, no one ever does this in these movies. In fact, it's a curious feature of futuristic sci-fi movies that the one thing that their inhabitants lack is awareness of, and easy access to, futuristic sci-fi movies. Apparently, all of the DVDs we've been buying over the last decade are going to degrade even faster than our wretched mortal coils.

It is the mortality of those coils that is the subject of The Island. The plot is about producing a steady supply of replaceable body parts for people rich and vain enough to want them. The movie would have worked better if it had implicated its own makers, say by positing Hollywood producers as the clients for such a service, rather than some Scottish guy who designs boats for a living. Yeah, those greedy heartless boat makers really piss me off.

In the movie, the clones served as "insurance policies" for their "sponsors," providing them with backup organs such as livers and kidneys for easy transplant in case of need. I would like to see a movie where the director of a big budget action picture goes into a coma, and they have to find a replacement brain for him. The jokes would write themselves!

It is, of course, an irony that a movie about extending the lifespan of certain privileged humans by harvesting the parts of other creatures is basically a hodge-podge of elements from many, many previous movies. It is an irony that is largely unexplored by the makers of this film, who mostly throw a few ideas out there as a pretext to blow stuff up real good and drive various vehicles real fast.

Being an American male born in the late twentieth century, I'm a sucker for a good car chase, and this movie had an OK one. The heroes release train axles from the back of a truck they're riding on, sending them clanging in to traffic to thwart the bad guys chasing them. It's kind of hard to believe the driver of the truck wouldn't have noticed this and pulled over after the first few axles fell, but maybe there's some sort of Teamsters regulation about this.

(Why are all the best car chases in sequels? The big three are The Road Warrior, Terminator 2, which has two of them, and perhaps The Matrix Reloaded, which loses points for excessive use of digital effects and for its deus ex machina resolution.)

It's also kind of hard to believe that in the year 2019 or whatever in Los Angeles, with a metro population of roughly 20 million (not counting clones), you could track down someone named "Tom Lincoln" or "Sara Jordan" just by using their first and last names. I mean, even the original Terminator, in 1984, had to go through the phone book and kill a couple of other Sarah Connors first before stalking the real one.

At the end, when Lincoln ultimately frees the slaves -- er, clones -- they all come pouring out into the sunshine in their matching white unitards, lining a desert hillside and breathing the free, non-contaminated air. I was quite overcome, not with emotion, but with a jumble of associations. First, as the camera panned high above them in a helicopter, I thought they might break into a chorus of "I'd like to teach the world to sing." Then I thought, the people who argue against expanding the welfare state are going to have a conniption when this crew of uneducated, unemployed, unskilled laborers hits Los Angeles. Finally, I thought that with their matching white outfits and blank suggestibility, they might be lining up to catch a ride on the spaceship behind the Hale-Bopp comet.

The wife had a simpler take on the scene. She thought they looked like the Polyphonic Spree. It's good to know that her quick wit and familiarity with emphemeral pop culture haven't been completely eroded by nine years of pregnancy and parenthood.

So yeah, this movie sucked. On the other hand, if we're really going to clone people, we might as well start with Scarlett Johannson.

Swindle

2007-10-29T20:34:00.000-04:00

This week marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols. The album is getting the whole commemorative re-packaging treatment.

I did not realize any of this when I sat down to watch The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle this weekend. I had seen it several times before, twenty years ago when my roommate had a Japanese import videotape copy that we used to watch sometimes.

This is the notoriously-biased, Malcolm McLaren-endorsed version of the Sex Pistols creation legend. In fact, it was so biased that the director, Julien Temple, flagellated himself for years before ultimately issuing the corrective The Filth and the Fury, which presented the band members' version of the same story.

The problem with TGR&RS isn't that it's inaccurate or unfair -- after all, this is punk rock, and as long as it's entertaining, it can be all of those things and more. The greatest insult in punk rock was to label something "boring." This film is boring.

OK, the few snippets of Sid Vicious jumping around in his underwear lip-synching Eddie Cochran songs are pretty good. He definitely had charisma, and he wasn't a bad singer for that style.

The best moment is when McLaren, holding a (staged?) press conference, engages in a quick rhetorical roller coaster ride that ends with him putting words in the mouth of a French journalist who agreeably, and casually, labels Johnny Rotten a "collaborator," in the sense of the Vichy Frenchmen who worked with the Nazis, for the supposed sin of listening to the advice of record company executives. Of course, five minutes later, McLaren, Cook and Jones are in Brazil with Ronnie Biggs and a Martin Bormann impersonator, in full Nazi regalia, singing Belsen Was A Gas. Hey, at least it was offensive, rather than just boring. Unfortunately, both the movie and the band had long since been reduced to cheap confrontational shock tactics by that point.

American Caesar Update

2007-10-20T10:49:00.000-04:00

Paranoid, moi?

Some dude in Slate explains how Bush/Cheney could semi-legitimately continue in power after their sell-by date, while expressing doubt that they actually will. Money quote:

I wish I did, but I see nothing in the document to prevent even a "localized" forest fire or hurricane from giving the president the right to throw long-established constitutional government out the window, institute a number of unspecified continuity policies, and run the country with the guidance of the "National Continuity Coordinator" and with the "Continuity Policy Coordination Committee" for as long as the president sees fit.

Again, I'm just sayin'.

Cowboy Junkies

2007-10-20T10:45:00.000-04:00

Friday, October 19, 2007 at the Whitaker Center in Harrisburg.

I Can Has Meme?

2007-10-18T20:33:00.000-04:00

I almost never do these, but out of my deep respect for PZ Myers, and because I don't want to piss off PSoTD and have him bring his awesome (though geographically circumscribed) powers to bear on me, I'll play.

There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”. Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:
You can leave them exactly as is. You can delete any one question. You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change “The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is...” to “The best time travel novel in Westerns is...”, or “The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is...”, or “The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is...”. You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...”. You must have at least one question in your set, or you’ve gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you’re not viable.

First of all, the path of how this ended up here:

My great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Pharyngula.
My great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Metamagician and the Hellfire Club.
My great-great-great-great-grandparent is Flying Trilobite.
My great-great-great-grandparent is A Blog Around the Clock.
My great-great-grandparent is archy.
My great-grandparent is Why Now?
My grandparent is Rook's Rants.
My parent is PSoTD.

And now, the questions:

The best movie sequel in SF/Fantasy is: The Road Warrior.
The best “bad” movie in SF/Fantasy is: Planet of the Apes (1968).

The best sexy song in pop is: Glory Box by Portishead.

The best flavor filling in PopTarts is: brown sugar cinnamon

The best remake in SF/Fantasy is: Planet of the Apes (2001).

Tagging:

Another Monkey

Savage Mama (gotta get her to post somehow)

Jor Jazzar (ditto, but replace [her] with [him])

Adzenwhozawhatsits

I'll keep this non-functional vestigial remnant of the meme:

Remember, when you're looking for someone to blame for your problems, the easiest route is to blame your parents. Even in memes!

American Caesar

2007-10-17T18:19:00.000-04:00

I have said it before, more than once: there is a non-zero chance that Bush (well, actually, Cheney) will not voluntarily cede the presidency in an orderly fashion on January 20, 2009.

Check out the President's press conference this week:

Q Mr. President, following up on Vladimir Putin for a moment. He said recently that next year when he has to step down, according to the constitution, as President, he may become Prime Minister, in effect keeping power and dashing any hopes for a genuine democratic transition there. Senator McCain --
THE PRESIDENT: I've been planning that myself. (Laughter.)
...
Q ...And what would it mean for Russian democracy if, when you leave power, assuming you do, in January 2009 -- (laughter) -- if Vladimir Putin is still in power?
...
Q Will you be disappointed if he stays in power after you're gone?
THE PRESIDENT: I have no idea what he's going to do. He -- I asked him when I saw him in Australia, I tried to get it out of him, who's going to be his successor, what he intends to do, and he was wily. He wouldn't tip his hand. I'll tip mine: I'm going to finish -- I'm going to work hard to the finish. I'm going to sprint to the finish line, and then you'll find me in Crawford.

OK, it's mostly snarky frat boy "humor." Gotta love that White House press corps(e), dutifully yukking it up with him. He's gonna declare himself emperor! Ha ha ha! Stop, you're killin' me! What a kidder!

I'm just collecting data here. Mark your own calendars accordingly.

I'm Not Defending Him This Time

2007-10-06T07:25:00.000-04:00

Let me give you my world view on this. Like you, I'd like them home. I really do.

He really just can't speak the English language very well, can he?

But my decisions have been based on my -- or at least my belief that what we're seeing is one of the -- a great ideological struggle between forces of ration -- rational behavior, decent people, lovers of liberty, versus radicals who have a belief system and they're willing to murder the innocent to achieve -- to advance their objectives. That's how I view it. I don't think you're a religious person if you murder the innocent to achieve political objectives. I think you're a person who is manipulative and cynical and willing to kill in the name of religion; I don't think you're religious.

Now I'm confused. Which side are we again? The ration -- rational one? Oh. OK.

Secondly, a lot of my decision making has been influenced by what happened on September the 11th, 2001. I vowed that day that I would do everything in my ability to protect you, and that I would -- I wouldn't tire -- I can't remember my exact words, but I would stay on the job. And that's exactly what I have been doing.

"I (yawn) said somethin' like, (yawn) y'know, protectoratin' the 'merican peoples, or somethin'... can't remember right now... you get the idea. In (yawn) other words, the 'merican people got to be (yawn) protectered, and it's the job of the preznit to (yawn), to protectorate them."

This war is really hard for the American people to understand because the enemy uses asymmetrical warfare. They use hundred-dollar weapons to destroy half-a-million-dollar vehicles -- which has got to, as a taxpayer, concern you. I understand that. I understand it.

Always with the taxes! What, the problem with Iraq is that we're paying retail?

The American people understand the war. They're against it.

They attacked America -- the last time we were attacked, by the way, prior to September the 11th was Pearl Harbor.

Uhh...

He missed a great opportunity to bash Clinton here.

And I fully understand, you know, that people just are anxious about seeing death on their TV screens.

Why does he keep saying this? Doesn't he understand that the opposition to the war grows out of so much more than just the visceral distaste for "seeing death on their TV screens"? I don't even watch television, and I've been against this thing from day one, because the stated reasons for it never made any sense, and because it is not in our national interest.

And since when do Americans not like to watch violence?

You know, probably the most disappointing thing about my experience in Washington is the harshness of the discourse; is the zero-sum attitude. And I've tried to do my part by holding people with respect and to -- you know, talking about people in such a way that it doesn't degrade the process. ... I'll still try to do my best to treat people with respect. It's the best thing a President can do, it seems like to me. And the other leaders ought to be doing the same thing. If you disagree with a person, don't make it personal. Don't feel like you have to tear the other person down in order to make a political point.

Uh...

In Which I Again (Initially) Defend George W. Bush

2007-10-05T17:47:00.000-04:00

The president is getting a lot of flak for saying this:

Expansion of this business has provided people new opportunity employments -- new employment opportunities here in Lancaster County. You know, when you give a man more money in his pocket -- in this case, a woman more money in her pocket to expand a business, it -- they build new buildings. And when somebody builds a new building somebody has got to come and build the building. And when the building expanded it prevented [sic] additional opportunities for people to work.

OK, taking the [sic] first: Clearly he meant "presented." I've seen enough sloppy transcription in my day to believe he may have even said it. Even on his best days, he's imprecise in his diction, so most likely he slurred something like "prebtnented," which the poor soul hired to transcribe his rambulatations just couldn't quite make out.

(OK, I've now watched the video, and he definitely said "prevented." The man's just not a good public speaker. Horrible body language, too.)

Anyway. The other stuff -- the inversion of the polysyllabic terms, the man suddenly turning into a woman, the sudden change of "thought" in midstream, the awkward construction of "somebody has got to" and "when the building expanded" -- those are just his normal rhetorical hiccups. Lots of people have them when they speak extemporaneously, although most of them aren't the preznit of the untied sates of ummerka.

The bigger problem is this: Is he daft enough to believe that this is how people make business decisions in a free market economy? "Hey, I've got a few extra bucks, I think I'll expand my business!" Now, I'm just a former liberal arts major, but don't most business people do their due diligence, looking at things like projected revenue vs. costs, interest rates for borrowing money, and, perhaps most importantly, whether there's a "demand" for the extra "supply" that would result from expanding their business?

(Hey! Bush recently said this: "I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room." Couldn't you use that same "logic" to argue that business owners have access to investment capital in America -- after all, you just go to a bank?)

Sure, having some spare cash on hand can help push the decision, but I've got to bet that lots and lots and lots of business owners are taking the cream skimmed from Dubya's tax cuts and buying vacation homes, investing in the stock market, and, I dunno, upgrading their Netflix subscriptions. Sure, sure, those things all affect the economy too, but nobody's just deciding, what the hey, I guess I'll expand my business, just because they've got a few dollars more thanx to this administration's Norquistian fetish for cutting taxes, are they?

Then again, given the way Bush ran Harken Energy (not to mention how his pal Kenny Boy ran Enron), maybe he does think this is how it's supposed to work.

RNRHOF Follies

2007-10-04T20:24:00.000-04:00

Rock on:

Madonna, the Beastie Boys, the Dave Clark Five, Leonard Cohen, Afrika Bambaataa, John Mellencamp, the Ventures, Donna Summer and Chic have been nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next year.

Afrika Bambaataa! OK, Planet Rock is one of my favorite records, but it's pretty much Bambaataa's only claim to fame. (Well, that and the innumerable identical-sounding cash-ins that followed it.) I've never really been too clear on what his actual contribution to the song was. The performer on the track is credited as Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force. The Soul Sonic Force was, at least in that incarnation, three rappers. Bambaataa was a DJ. There's no DJing on the record. The whole thing was played and programmed by John Robie and produced by Arthur Baker. And, of course, the main melody and the rhythm were both ripped off from Kraftwerk. They're still waiting to get nominated. It's a dirty shame.

Rollins Band

2007-10-02T18:32:00.000-04:00

Well, they did it, so good for them. I said they wouldn't, or couldn't, or didn't really want to, but they did, so bad for me. I rooted against them all year, and cackled with glee whenever they lost, but it didn't matter. They went out on the field and won.

You can pick apart the way they did it, and take some satisfaction in some of the spectacular, but entirely predictable, failures along the way. Wes Helms sucked, just like I said. Adam Eaton sucked, just like I said, and he isn't even on the playoff roster. Pat Burrell was more than OK, just like I said. Jamie Moyer was up and down, just like I said. Jayson Werth helped, just like I said. Rod Barajas didn't, so I missed on that one. Antonio Alfonseca pitched way too much, but they survived anyway. Freddy Garcia got hurt, and so did Jon Lieber, but they were able to find guys to mostly pick up the slack.

They won because their stars -- Utley, Howard, Hamels and Rollins -- played like stars, even though the first three missed time with injuries. They won because the Mets spit the bit. And they won because Charlie Manuel had the stones to play the guys who produced, and sit the guys who didn't, regardless of their paychecks, egos, reputations, or whatever. He still gets bashed a lot for his in-game strategizing, but he commanded the respect of the team and made the personnel moves he had to make. Good for him.

So, to the ~~horror~~ bemusement of some, he will undoubtedly return next year, and he might even be voted Manager of the Year this year.

Not only that, Jimmy Rollins might win the MVP. This started as a whisper among the Philadelphia Daily News guys sometime in August and has picked up steam to the point where he's probably the favorite. Peter Gammons, Jayson Stark and Tom Verducci, probably the three most influential baseball writers in the country, all say he's their choice.

I would like to oppose the notion that Rollins is the MVP, but I can't get too worked up about it. He's probably not really a bad choice at all. Look around the National League.

The most devastating offensive force in the game is (still) Barry Bonds, but he doesn't play every day, and he's now a craptacular defender at an easy position. Plus, the Giants suck.
Albert Pujols deservedly finishes in the top 5 every year, but he had a so-so year by his standards, and the Cardinals tanked.
Chipper Jones had a good year, but he's not going to win it.
David Wright was just as good, but nobody on the Mets is going to win anything after their collapse.
Prince Fielder hit 50 home runs, leading the Brewers into surprising contention. But he didn't really do anything else -- he made more errors at first base than Rollins did at shortstop -- and the Brewers faded at the end.
Jake Peavy was great, but the writers stopped giving the MVP to starting pitchers a long time ago.

So it's going to come down to Rollins or Matt Holliday. Really, either one would be fine. Holliday has prettier offensive numbers, but (a) he's an outfielder, and (b) he plays in Coors Field. He led the league in RBI, and the writers love that, but they're also dazzled by Rollins' 20-20-20, 30-30, etc. etc. across the board act. Rollins' rate stats are only marginal for an MVP candidate. He put up big totals because he batted more than anyone -- not just this season, but ever. He also led the league in outs. But there's real value in playing every day, and he was at least as good on the bases and in the field as he was at the plate. He's credited with 28 Win Shares, which is only tied for 6th in the league, but well within sight of the guys ahead of him.

Rollins said before the season that the Phillies would win, and he's perceived as one of their leaders, especially with Utley and Howard missing time with injuries. It ain't bragging if you can do it. He did it. They did it.

Music To My Ears

2007-09-26T18:06:00.000-04:00

Record industry veteran Howie Klein sez "ja!" to Kraftwerk in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Powell In Hershey

2007-09-25T19:04:00.000-04:00

Colin Powell comes to Hershey:

"The surge that we are undertaking right now has had some success in reducing the violence, but that wasn’t the purpose of the surge," Powell told his audience at the Hershey Lodge and Convention Center.

The purpose was to give the Iraqi government time to stand up, Powell said. "So far, the surge is not a success, even if Gen. (David) Petraeus’ part of it is working," he said.

Even so, he's in for another Friedman Unit or so:

The window of opportunity is narrowing, Powell said. If Iraq’s government isn’t standing on its own within six to eight months, American troops will have to come home, said the man whose historic argument to the United Nations in 2003 that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction was arguably the critical moment in the run-up to the American invasion.

In Which I (Initially) Defend George W. Bush

2007-09-21T20:54:00.000-04:00

The president is getting a lot of flak for saying this:

I thought an interesting comment was made when somebody said to me, I heard somebody say, where's Mandela? Well, Mandela is dead, because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas.

C'mon. I'm pretty sure he knows that Nelson Mandela is alive, or at least that Saddam Hussein didn't literally kill him. And even if he doesn't, the context of the comment was clearly about hypothetical Iraqi versions of Nelson Mandela, as symbol of a pan-nationalist struggle for political power, not the actual Nelson Mandela as a living, breathing human being.

Still, people are making a lot of cheap jokes at Bush's expense, citing it as another example of his ignorance. It's not. It's an example of his imprecision with language. But it's also an example of his willful, calculating mendacity. On the eternal question, "Stupid or lying?," this one's closer to the latter.

The thing about Mandela is, he didn't just appear on the scene when the South African regime toppled over. He was one of the reasons it toppled over. He was imprisoned for decades precisely because of the threat he represented to the state. His imprisonment played a large part in mobilizing opposition to apartheid and the S.A. government throughout the world, and in its eventual downfall. He was the very epitome of a political prisoner. When he was released, and the vote was extended to blacks in South Africa, it was natural that he would be elevated to power. Same thing happened with Gandhi, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, etc. (Yeah, Castro, too.)

Now here's the thing. Before the invasion of Iraq, the neocons constantly assured America that we would be greeted as liberators, welcomed with flowers and candy, it would be a cakewalk, etc. Was there, at that point or at any point during Saddam's rule, an Iraqi version of Mandela or Gandhi? Was there someone inside of Iraq, under house arrest or in some gulag somewhere, who served as a symbol of internal political opposition to Saddam? I never heard of anybody like that.

Which is not to say that there wasn't widespread underground resistance to Saddam and the Ba'athists. And maybe Bush is right, that Saddam didn't merely toss his opponents in a dungeon somewhere, but actually killed them (all) -- although the horror stories about Saddam's use of Abu Ghraib would seem to contradict that. If so, Bush should've invoked Steve Biko, not Nelson Mandela.

The most visible political opposition to Saddam, pre-invasion, was a group of exiles called the Iraqi National Congress, centered in London and headed by Ahmed Chalabi. This was the guy put forth by the Bush Administration as Iraq's Nelson Mandela. Their post-invasion plan was thus the underpants gnome-like:

1. Topple Saddam.
2. ?????????????
3. Profit.

...with number 2 being some vague notion of "Chalabi runs things, somehow."

But, as Donald Rumsfeld said at the time, democracy is messy, and their designated Mandela didn't fare too well:

Chalabi failed to win a seat in parliament in the December 2005 elections, and when the new Iraqi cabinet was announced in May 2006, he was not awarded a post. Once dubbed the "George Washington of Iraq" by American neoconservatives, he has fallen out of favor and is currently under investigation by several U.S. government sources. He is also wanted for embezzling nearly $300 million through a bank he created in Jordan.

So the real answer to the question, Where's the Iraqi Mandela?, is he's currently under investigation by our own government, and he's wanted in Jordan. Heckuva job, Ahmed. Mandela never polled like this:

In August 2003, the U.S. State Dept. conducted a poll among Iraqis and Chalabi was the only candidate whose unfavorable ratings exceeded his favorable ones... In a survey of nearly 3000 Iraqis in February 2004 ... only 0.2% of respondents said he was the most trustworthy leader in Iraq...

So Bush was -- gulp! -- wrong: there was an Iraqi Mandela, one that Saddam didn't kill, one that we armed, funded and marketed, one that we groomed to take over while we were declaring Mission Accomplished, and one who was soundly rejected by the very people he was supposed to lead to glorious democratic peace 'n stuff.

So was there really a qualified, legitimate Iraqi version of Mandela somewhere in the world in March of 2003? Who knows. But such a person had not self-identified on the world stage, and counting on the Bush administration and its enablers to identify him or her, if one existed, is like asking a monkey to find a unified field theory. After all, this is the same crew that formed a vice presidential search committee headed by Dick Cheney, which then recommended as vice president ... Dick Cheney. These are the same guys who knew for certain that the WMD were in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.

Bush thinks he is Truman, Churchill and Lincoln if only they'd been personally blessed by the baby Jesus, so why shouldn't Chalabi equal Mandela? It is typical of these clowns to put forth a charlatan like Chalabi where a Mandela is called for, and then to proclaim that no one could have foreseen that anything would go wrong with their brilliant plan. Pathetic.

Watching: Marie Antoinette

2007-09-17T23:46:00.000-04:00

Lost in Translation is a very good movie by Sofia Coppola about a sheltered young woman alone and adrift in an alien culture, spending her time aimlessly while surrounded by superficial luxury.

So for a follow-up, Ms. Coppola draws from the same well again, and gives us this movie about a sheltered young woman alone and adrift in an alien culture, spending her time aimlessly while surrounded by superficial luxury.

This one was not so good, and not just because it didn't have Bill Murray in it. (He would've made a good Louis XV.)

The biggest problem is that Marie Antoinette just isn't a very interesting character. Her role in life, and history, was not to act, but to be acted upon, and that doesn't make for good drama. At least, the pre-Revolution Marie Antoinette that this movie focuses on isn't very interesting. If you read about her, all the really interesting stuff happened after Bastille Day. This movie ends -- SPOILER ALERT -- with her being seized by the (unseen) mob, tragically bringing a premature end to a non-stop Euro-disco party.

It's all about the point of view. There could be a valid purpose to presenting the material in this way, if it were, for example, to show some parallel with contemporary life, or just as social criticism in general. This was more of a character study, showing the tragic naivete of Marie, but it failed to appreciate the context in which she lived.

The politics here are a bit unsavory. Here's the writer-director, a third-generation member of Hollywood royalty, working with her legendary father as the producer, her brother as the assistant director, and her cousin co-starring as the king, all making a movie about the decline and fall of the nobility, a gilded age brought down by ignorant peasant rabble. The final shot of the movie is extremely annoying in this regard. It shows Marie's bedchamber, the morning after the crowd has stormed Versailles, defiled and broken. The people who did this are nowhere to be seen, and no motive is assigned to their actions. All we see are the effects of what they've done to this belle epoque, the physical destruction they've wrought on the beauty, glamour and order that was Versailles in particular, and the aristocracy of Old Europe in general. It is disturbing that this is the message Ms. Coppola apparently finds in this story. When Wordsworth said:

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive
But to be young was very heaven!

he was talking about the Revolution, not the corrupted regime that preceded (and necessitated) it. It's surely more fun to lounge around drinking champagne, gambling with the peasants' tax money and listening to Bow Wow Wow, but is it really something to be celebrated?

Well, at least the soundtrack was good. Plus, there was a Judy Davis sighting.

Homicidal Fundamentalist Terrorists Condensed

2007-09-11T20:04:00.000-04:00

Shorter Osama Bin Laden:

O, oppressors of the infidel West: have you considered the tax advantages in switching to Sharia law?

Plus: You could save a bundle on your car insurance.

Also: Lose weight now! Ask me how.

Video Vault: The House of Love, I Don't Know Why I Love You

2007-09-08T22:08:00.000-04:00

A classic piece of power pop, tinged with psychedelia, and a big alternative hit circa 1990. This fit in well beside the Stone Roses, and anticipated the rise of Brit Pop with Oasis and Blur a few years later.

The bridge in this song (the part that begins, "Television turns me on") is just a sublime piece of pop construction.

These guys had some other good songs, and the album this was on was pretty solid, but they never came close to this before or since.

The video, ehh, it's just product to get the song out there and on to 120 Minutes. It worked.

Watching: Empire of the Sun

2007-09-05T23:55:00.000-04:00

This may or may not be the best Steven Spielberg movie about civilians interned by an Axis power during World War II, but it's pretty darn good.

First off, a young Christian Bale gives probably the best, most varied and intense performance by a child actor I've ever seen, better than that weird expressionless kid from The Sixth Sense, better even than anything Alfalfa ever did on The Little Rascals.

The story was OK, nothing great. It's based on the truish, realish memoirs of famous sci-fi guy J.G. Ballard. Spielberg mostly restrained himself, except for one or two short scenes where the kid was skipping around the prison camp trading marbles and shining shoes like some demented member of the Goonies, as if it was all some Excellent Adventure. Mostly, he hung back and let the pictures tell the story in an almost expressionist style. Yeah, the music went over the top a bit, but thank ~~god~~ Flying Spaghetti Monster there was no voiceover narration.

All in all, if you ever want to watch a movie about Occidentals encountering the mystery and mystique of the Old Orient during wartime, you could put this in a bag with The Last Emperor, The Killing Fields (which, like this movie, features a pretty good performance by John Malkovich) and even the legendary Bridge On The River Kwai, and you'd be OK with whichever one you pulled out. It was a hell of a lot better than Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, anyway.

Jump In The River

2007-09-04T22:12:00.000-04:00

Last month, the popular and perennial mayor of Harrisburg somehow pulled off what looked like one of the greatest island-related transactions EVAH:

Harrisburg has agreed to sell 102.5-acre McCormick's Island and a nearby, 2.5-acre island for $110,000 to the Central Pennsylvania Conservancy, which intends to preserve the undeveloped Susquehanna River islands in their natural state.

OK, so maybe it's not quite as good as buying Manhattan for $24, but still, it's not bad for a little bitty island covered with trees and lying in the river way upstream from downtown H-burg. Here's a picture:

Very charming, I'm sure. According to the news reports at the time, it floods whenever the river rises, no one has lived on it in living human memory, and it's surrounded by rocks and other nasty stuff in the river.

It's also in the shadow of the I-81 bridge. But there are birds on it, so, hey. Leaving aside the question of what precisely the conservancy is preserving it from, since it seems to be a pretty unlikely candidate for development, if they're happy, good for them. And good for the mayor for conjuring a hundred grand out of thin air, or at least weeds and rocks.

The deal's not finalized yet, so the city still owns the island for a while.

So, guess what? Some enterprising souls hosted some sort of Burning Man-esque rave/camp-out/dancey thing this past weekend. It went OK, except they didn't have any kind of permit, some guy drowned and everyone who attended got arrested and fined.

The paper sez:

More than 100 out-of-state and an unknown number of in-state partygoers were cited Sunday after a city man drowned Sunday morning and the event was cut short.

...

District Judge Robert Carl Jennings III set the fine and costs for all of those charged at $1,051, the maximum allowed by the law.

So wait a sec. Math check: More than 100 people at $1,051 each. At a minimum, that's $105,100. The cops said there were 1,000 people there; the organizers (sic) said 300-500. Either way, at a thousand bucks a head, the city stands to collect way more in fines, for one activity on the island, than the conservancy is paying to buy it.

Maybe selling it isn't such a great deal after all.

Rehab

2007-08-30T23:42:00.000-04:00

The wife sez this video is teh awesome! I just think it's funny that it includes a guy sitting on a toilet and tapping his foot. (Check it out, about 55 seconds in.) Doesn't he know you can get charged with disorderly conduct for that?

Watching: 300

2007-08-28T23:58:00.000-04:00

If the ancient Greeks had had helicopters, this could've been Black Hawk Down. Like that movie, this was just straight War Porn, all senseless, glorious slaughter of a faceless enemy caricatured into a force of pure malevolent Evil. I pretty much expected that going in, so I just sat back and soaked in the spectacle. As spectacle, it was OK. The DVD case had a quote comparing it to the original Matrix. Please. (The leering god-king Xerxes looked like he wandered off the set of Stargate.)

I hated the politics of 300. There's no escaping the parallels with contemporary global relations, however much the filmmakers might protest. Well, 300 was based on a ~~comic book~~ graphic novel, while Black Hawk Down was based on a series of articles in the Philadelphia Inquirer, so I'm not sure what that means.

(Oh, yeah: and this was another one of those movies starring a member of the cast of The Lord of the Rings and based on a ~~comic book~~ graphic novel. This one had Faramir in it.)

Go, Bo, Go!

2007-08-28T23:33:00.000-04:00

Bo Diddley's heart is thumping out of time, but the Bo Diddley beat will never die.

Every rock band eventually does a song with a Bo Diddley beat. One of my favorites is "Bo Diddley Is Jesus" by the Jesus and Mary Chain. (They also did the bestest-ever version of "Who Do You Love?") It's a good title for a song because it implicitly acknowledges that everyone rips off Bo sooner or later, and because all of Bo's albums were called Bo Diddley Is A Cowboy, Bo Diddley Is A Gunslinger, Bo Diddley Is A Surfer, Bo Diddley Is An Astronaut, A Pastry Chef, A Graphic Designer, Whatever.

I once saw an amazing clip in one of those history of rock and roll documentaries of Bo on live TV in the 1950s, unbelievably raw and pounding. I couldn't find it on YouTube, but this clip from 1964 is pretty good:

Watching...

2007-08-22T23:14:00.000-04:00

...whole bunches of movies.

Cast Away: Actually watched this one straight through on DVD on the big TV in the family room with the wife, a rarity these past 972 years.

Tight-ass FedEx android Chuck Noland (get it? No Land) gets stranded on an uncharted desert isle in the South Pacific, grows a beard, and slowly goes insane. Starring Tom Hanks, it's good clean wholesome fun!

Was this movie some kind of metaphor for college? Here's a guy who goes away for four years, gradually learns a bunch of skills that have no use whatsoever in the "real world," and finally comes back home to find that his long-time sweetheart has moved on and married some boring dentist. It's like getting a liberal arts education, only with coconut milk instead of beer.

Ah, this was OK, though. As a Zemeckis-Hanks project, it's aimed squarely for the multiplexes rather than the art houses, so there isn't the kind of deep, meaningful, philosophical gloss that (the late) Bergman or Herzog would bring to a similar tale. It also invites the temptation to shout, "Swim, Forrest, swim!" when he's trying to get off the island.

Still, the abstract ending is kind of a downer. I figure whatever was in the FedEx box is the same thing that was in Jules' brief case in Pulp Fiction. Chuck doesn't get the girl, but he can probably get a pretty decent advance for a true life adventure book, followed by a few appearances on Oprah and a speaking tour of midwestern colleges.

The Quiet American: Watched this one on DVD spread out over 4 or 5 days. Had to go back and forth a bit.

I really liked this movie.

Brendan Fraser does some goofy action movies sometimes, but he held his own with (Sir) Ian McKellen in Gods and Monsters, and he was fine playing opposite Michael Caine here.

I have no idea how this compares to the novel upon which it's based, but I liked the way it slowly built momentum until it all rolled together into a really cohesive story. Yeah, the whole thing where the Girl represents Vietnam was a little heavy, but the political intrigue involving Fraser's character breezed right past that and made the movie work. It also provides a good background about what was going on with the French and Vietnam prior to the start of the American entry into the war. Good stuff, and not at all a dry history lesson.

Bubble: Or, Ocean's Zero. Watched this on Netflix via the Watch Now feature, or whatever it's called, on my computer, more or less straight through.

Part gimmick, part docudrama, part reality show, this is an ultra-low budget "experiment" by Steven Soderbergh starring Nobody and Nobodier in a pretty how town. It turns into a sparsely constructed murder mystery that isn't really much of a mystery at all, but more of a sociological character study, sort of Love and Death in Appalachia.

Well, guess what? It totally worked. At an hour and thirteen minutes, it wasn't much more than an Afterschool Special, but it was a nice little story well told. By the time the final scene plays out, it's actually pretty chilling, in a Banality of Evil sort of way.

(What's with the description on Netflix? "Steven Soderbergh's offbeat film follows the antics of townsfolk turned detectives who try to unravel a murder mystery -- and end up discovering a bizarre love triangle." Nuh-uh. Don't be fooled -- this isn't one of those ironic David Lynch microscope slides. There were no antics here, and no one was really unraveling much of anything. Bizarre love triangle, well, maybe. Kinda sorta.)

If they remade this as a standard Hollywood feature, it would star perhaps Kathy Bates as Martha, Hilary Swank as Rose and, I dunno, maybe Jared Leto or somebody as Kyle. Fleshing it out with stars and subplots and production values and such would probably suck the life right out of it, though.

A Terry Gilliam triple feature: The Brothers Grimm, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, and Lost In La Mancha. Watched them all on DVD in bits and pieces, which is typical.

Even at his best, Terry Gilliam makes some ugly, off-putting movies. The Brothers Grimm was not one of his best. It sure was ugly, though. And loud, over-designed, dull and just basically unpleasant. I'm sure it has its admirers, though.

Fear And Loathing, well, I'm no fan of Hunter Thompson, but again, this was just unpleasant. Is there anything more simultaneously boring, excruciating and pathetic than watching someone else take drugs?

Man Of La Mancha is a documentary about Gilliam's longstanding dream to bring Don Quixote to the screen. They tried to gin this up as a tale of soulless suits cruelly trampling all over Art and Imagination, but really, the story is that Gilliam's 112-year-old leading man got sick and couldn't do the film, and there wasn't really any other choice but to cancel the production. Ho hum.

Pan's Labyrinth: Watched this on DVD with the wife one night, with breaks for kid care and more booze.

Maybe I'm just missing the boat on this one. It's got a stack of glowing reviews, and it's one of those movies that everyone seems to be talking about for the last year or so, but I just don't get it. This is the kind of movie that used to sell cappuccino to self-satisfied yuppies at the Ritz Five. It was OK, but nothing special. But maybe I'm just missing something.

The Science of Sleep: Watched this partly with the wife, partly by myself, on DVD, over the course of a week or so.

See entry for Pan's Labyrinth, above. I liked Amelie better. Everyone wants to sing the praises of Michel Gondry, but I didn't really like Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind much, either, and it wasn't because of Jim Carrey.

The Departed: Or, Gangs of Boston. Watched this on DVD over two nights. Wanted to keep watching straight through, but got started late and was just too damn tired. Couldn't wait to pick it up again the next night.

Yeah, this was good. Scorsese brought an undeniable technical brilliance and decades of experience with similar themes, but when he cranked up "Gimme Shelter" for the umpteenth time, it was like your crazy old uncle telling war stories -- again -- at the dinner table. Lay off, old man. Trust the story. And trust the stars. DiCaprio, yes -- it's good to see him doing some heavy lifting again instead of just coasting. (Or just throwing out an accent for two hours, like in Blood Diamond [watched that one partly on my iPod, partly on DVD.] Blehh.) Nicholson, OK, even though his Bah-ston accent and soul rebel hairstyle made him sound and look like a particularly malevolent George Carlin. Marky Mark, getting better all the time. But Matt Damon, who knew? Ed Norton should be on the phone to his agent, demanding to know why Damon's eating his lunch. Even after the Bourne movies, I didn't know he could carry a movie like this. Good for him. (I'm just gonna overlook his part in The Brothers Grimm for now.)

This needed star power and an experienced hand leading the way, because the story was pretty contrived. The source material is a Hong Kong police movie from a few years ago, pasted on to some true life Boston gang stuff. Well, Marty has always been able to spin pulp into gold, most of the time, and now that he's a bona fide legend and Oscar(R) winner, he can command the stars and dollars to do it for another decade or so.

The Simpsons Movie: Saw this in the theater!

D'oh!

Video Vault: Mojo Nixon, Elvis Is Everywhere

2007-08-18T00:18:00.000-04:00

's true, y'know.

Jon!

2007-08-17T23:42:00.000-04:00

Stewart filets some idiot who wrote a book about Cheney:

The best (only?) national journalist working today.

Video Vault: New Order, The Perfect Kiss

2007-08-10T22:30:00.000-04:00

This song came at the end of the most creative period of New Order's long and storied career. It's one of their highlights, another in a long line of understated anthems that merge machine-driven electronic sounds and rhythms with traditional "real" instruments like guitar and drums.

I've seen New Order in concert about four times, and I always love those moments where there's a cacophony of multi-layered, polyrhythmic sound pumping out from the stage, and no one in the band is actually playing an instrument. One time when I saw them, Barney introduced Fine Time by saying something like, "This is our new single, and we're going to be playing to it... er, playing it to you so you'll go out and buy it." Peter Hook sauntered to the microphone, and with perfect timing, archly mumbled, "Freudian slip."

This video contains some pretty good examples of the band standing around aimlessly while their pre-programmed machines do the heavy lifting. It also highlights their dedicated amateurism. Peter Hook is wearing a leather jacket and plain grey sweatpants, I think, and check out Barney's "guitar solo" about halfway through, right before he starts banging away on a cowbell, of all things.

The thing is, they never just completely turned the machines loose. Their best moments, as in this song, Everything's Gone Green and 5-8-6, were always when they gave the machines a good lengthy head start, then chased after them on guitar and, especially, bass, and raced along together to form a glorious, delirious hybrid Man Machine. The last two minutes of this video provide an excellent example of this.

They performed this song live for the video, and I think it's the best recorded version of the song. Casual fans are probably most familiar with the extended version on the greatest hits collection Substance. The version on Low-life was trimmed down into a tighter, more compact form. They completely cut out the bridge, but you can hear Barney start the "Wh..." sound in the first line. (Listen to the version on Low-life at the 2:24 mark).

This video was directed by Jonathan Demme right after he did Stop Making Sense, the Talking Heads concert film. This is done in a similar style, with lots of long-take close-ups that focus on the musician's faces rather than their flyin' fingers.

The video was a shock. After years of obsessively refusing to appear on their album covers or otherwise engage in standard rock-ist promotion, both as Joy Division and New Order, here they were, under the bright lights of their rehearsal studio in what is either an early use of digital video, or some sort of high definition video tape.

It's a nice little touch, sort of an in-joke, how Demme begins the video with a few seconds of abstract blurriness, then lets Gillian Gilbert step into the frame in full focus. There are simple cuts to matter-of-fact closeups of each band member, and then Demme just keeps them front and center, big as life, for nine minutes.

The two things people always remark upon after seeing this video are the sampled frog sounds and the look of sheer boredom each band member displays at least occasionally. I also like the part near the end, when you can see their manager, Rob Gretton, leaning in the doorway, obviously digging the performance. (At least I think it's him; it might actually be Tony Wilson.* And I think that's Arthur Baker obscured behind the glass.)

*Holy crap, it looks like he just died today! Kiss of death, indeed.

The War of Northern Southern Agression

2007-08-10T13:37:00.000-04:00

Breaking news from today's Patriot-News online:

Two Virginia men have been cited for a fight in a motel parking lot over an issue of geography.

Middlesex Twp. police said that about 11:45 Thursday night, John L. Snyder Jr., 26, of Lake Ridge, Va., and Jermaine R. Graham, 24 of Stafford, Va., who both work for a moving company, got into an argument over whether Virginia was north or south of Pennsylvania. The fight was broken up by co-workers.
Snyder suffered minor injuries from the fight and from falling down because of his level of intoxication, police said. He was taken to Carlisle Medical Center and was cited for public intoxication. Graham had no injuries, and was cited for disorderly conduct.

If they had been from West Virginia, there wouldn't have been an argument -- they would have both said "South!" Ba-dum-bum.

(BTW, shame on the Patriot for not including in the article a definitive statement whether Pennsylvania is north or south of Virginia. This is just going to lead to more arguments.)

Philadelphia Daily News Columnists Condensed

2007-08-09T18:13:00.000-04:00

Shorter Bill Conlin: In my day, pitchers threw nine innings, uphill both ways in the snow, and they liked it!

Shorter Michael Smerconish: The time for the Democratic candidate for mayor to begin fulfilling his campaign promises is now, before he's taken office or even prevailed in the general election; he can start by magically increasing the disability pension paid to this firefighter of my choosing, whom I've cynically compared to the heroes of 9-11 for no apparent reason.

Shorter Stu Bykofsky: What this country needs more than anything is another 9-11 so we can once again unite in support of the misguided priorities of a temporarily popular president, whoever he (or she) (but mostly he) may be.

Shorter John Baer: Another (yawn) member of the Casey political dynasty (yawn) might run for an office (yawn) you've never heard of (yawn).

Shorter Ronnie Polaneczky: These heartless municipal bureaucrats like, totally, took this one kid's skateboard ramp 'n stuff, just because he, like, left it in a city park or something. That sucks!

Patriot-News Columnists Condensed

2007-08-09T17:55:00.000-04:00

Shorter Sara Bozich: Hey, I know -- I'll write about hamburgers! What a great idea!

Shorter Alexis Dow: Jazzzzzzz...zzz...zzz...

Shorter Kira Schlechter: That guy who used to sing with Foreigner doesn't sing with them any more.

Shorter Anne McGraw Reeves: Stop whining, or I'll turn this column around, I swear!

Shorter Nancy Eshelman: Do the crime, do the time.

Shorter Herb Field: Let's all pay more for gas!

Watching: Little Miss Sunshine

2007-08-08T23:46:00.000-04:00

With Toni Collette, a geeky kid and a climactic talent show, this could have been called About A Girl.

The world can always use another Alexander Payne movie, or, failing that, a decent imitation. This was a pretty good imitation of Payne's roadtrip movies, Sideways or About Schmidt.

LMS was actually directed by the team that made all those Smashing Pumpkins videos a few years back. Like Payne, they hold their characters at arm's length, although they do display a little more affection, or at least sympathy, for them than he does. The visual style is full of bright, sunlit exteriors and deadpan composition that sets up little moments of pure comedy without jumping up and down about how clever they are, as, for instance, Wes Anderson and his growing legion of copycats sometimes do.

This was the second movie I watched this week where big laffs were generated by how hard it was for the characters to start a beat-up, broken-down automobile. The other was The Gods Must Be Crazy, one of the funniest movies ever made.

This was not one of the funniest movies ever made, but that's a tough standard. It was good, though. It found its own sweet spot where it was funny without being too cutesy or quirky, and without the edge and pre-teen painfulness of, say, Welcome to the Dollhouse. Steve Carrell really held this movie together, without having much dialogue or any character development at all. Good for him.

I was sure that the geeky kid's music during the talent show finale was going to be Baby Got Back, and I wasn't far off. The actual choice was slightly tamer, though. Even so, I have to strongly disagree with the lady at the library who told me that it would be something that my daughters could watch and enjoy. (They didn't, although Prima did come downstairs during the thrilling conclusion. We sent her back to bed.)

Watching...

2007-07-28T00:47:00.000-04:00

Netflix has a new feature that lets subscribers watch movies instantly over the Internet. To test it out, last weekend I watched Chinatown, which I've seen many times before. It worked great. As usual, it took me two or three nights to get through a single movie. Each time I paused or shut down the movie and started it up again, it started in exactly the right place. The connection was perfect, even over our spotty DSL line, through the upstairs router, and downstairs to my wireless desktop card via a range extender on the other side of the room. The picture looked pretty good. Chinatown is a challenge for a little LCD computer screen, because it has a lot of lowlit scenes and closeup details. If I had never seen it before it might have been tough, but it looked OK.

In between watching that, I was also watching Rushmore. That took a couple of days, too.

I never noticed it before, but the two movies share one very similar bit of dialogue:

Chinatown:

Jake Gittes: How much are you worth?
Noah Cross: I have no idea.
Jake Gittes: Over ten million?
Noah Cross: Oh my, yes.

Rushmore:

Max Fischer: How much are you worth, by the way?
Herman Blume: I don't know.
Max Fischer: Over ten million?
Herman Blume: Yeah, I guess so.

Both of these conversations come pretty deep into the movie, at a key point in the plot.

Coincidence? I don't know. But the main female character in Rushmore has the same last name as the villain in Chinatown: Cross.

Eating...

2007-07-27T23:48:00.000-04:00

...hamburgers. Mmmm, hamburgers...

Is it a coincidence or a trend? There are two new restaurants in the area that seem to operate according to the same business plan. Digs Burgers recently opened in downtown Harrisburg, and Five Guys, a regional chain, has a new location on the West Shore. Both serve burgers, fries and little else. They position themselves a couple of notches above Wendy's or McDonalds, but they still seem to be aiming pretty low. Maybe the best comparison would be to a slightly upscale White Castle.

I've been to each place once. Digs was OK, nothing special. Five Guys was a little better. They're both no frills, counter service joints, but they should work on keeping the interior a little cleaner. The burgers are good, but not anywhere close to the ones at Jackson House, which are by far the best in the area.

I'm still waiting for the restaurant where you can gladly pay Tuesday for a hamburger today.

Video Vault: The Hives, Hate To Say I Told You So

2007-07-27T23:04:00.000-04:00

When I first heard this song, and then saw the video, I thought this band would be huge. This was back around 2000-2001, just before the whole neo-post-punk thing was ready to explode with the Strokes, the Killers, Franz Ferdinand, etc. etc.

Three of my favorite bands today are Interpol, the White Stripes, and especially the Arctic Monkeys. In this video, the Hives put together almost everything that's great about those bands in one package of three minutes and nineteen seconds.

I'm not sure what went wrong for these guys. Their second album (the one after the album this song was on) got a lot of hype before it came out, but it sank without a trace.

In Case You Missed It...

2007-07-26T18:32:00.000-04:00

Greenwald pwns Klein.

Patriot-News Columnists Condensed

2007-07-26T18:18:00.000-04:00

Shorter Brett Lieberman: A couple of pointy-headed professors have reached the shocking conclusion that the Bush Administration may, may, be operating in a somewhat lawless fashion.

Shorter Alexis Dow: There's some really weird music coming to town this week.

Shorter Anne McGraw Reeves: Sting is a hero to us all not for his participation in many politically correct causes like saving the Amazon rainforest and raising money for African famine relief, but for the simple act of courageously playing a beat-up old bass guitar, thereby clearly demonstrating his intention to defy our culture's unhealthy obsession with self-improvement.

Shorter Kira Schlechter: That guy from Men at Work played here the other night.

Shorter Sara Bozich: ~~I told you I was all out of ideas! So, no column this week, bitchez!~~ [Oops, see comments! -- Ed.]

Shorter Sue Gleiter: There's another one of those places where you can pay to cook stuff in their kitchen instead of getting your own kitchen all messy and gross.

Shorter Mary O. Bradley: Mmmm, brownies...

Shorter Nancy Eshelman: [comment withheld to preserve author's potential inheritance]

Philadelphia Daily News Columnists Condensed

2007-07-26T07:57:00.000-04:00

Shorter John Baer: Boy, the governor's plenty steamed about being stabbed in the back on that SEPTA-turnpike thingy.

Shorter Michael Smerconish: The failure of the declared presidential candidates to talk about capturing or killing bin Laden, during a whole 15 hours of debate so far, is much, much worse than the completely excusable failure of the Bush Administration to actually, you know, capture or kill him over these last 6 years.

Shorter Bill Conlin: Barry Bonds, wah!

Shorter Rich Hofmann: Think I'll kick the tires on the Phillies bandwagon a li'l bit.

Video Vault: The Cure, Just Like Heaven

2007-07-20T22:49:00.000-04:00

Around 1983 or so, Robert Smith must have changed therapists, or found a really effective anti-depressant medication, because after years of pushing the Cure into being yet another third-rate Joy Division clone with bleak fare like Faith and Pornography, he suddenly started writing upbeat, goofy tunes like The Lovecats and The Caterpillar. But these were essentially novelty songs, lithium-filled trial balloons that floated away quickly without pointing out a path for further development.

Soon after, he came up with In Between Days (Without You), a breezy, straight-ahead, mid-tempo rock song. Bob opened it with a typical, and classic, lament, "Yesterday I got so old, I felt like I could die," but instead of mumbling it morosely, he shouted it triumphantly. Or perhaps he had simply been outflanked by the Smiths and decided to call a grinding halt to all the angst-ridden dirges. Anyway, the song was a big hit on what was then called College Radio (sic).

In fact, it was so successful, that a few years later, he basically wrote the whole thing again, this time tweaking the chord sequence and calling it Just Like Heaven. This worked even better. New Order liked it so much that, after years of watching Bob rip them off, they stole it for a track they called All The Way. Just Like Heaven was the biggest of several big hits off of the Cure's shambling double album with the triple name, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, and it became a defining moment in what was then called Alternative Rock (sic).

Lots of people are completely immune to the charms of the Cure, and that's OK. But if you can't dig this song, and particularly the video, well, then I guess there's always Nine Inch Nails or something.

The video shows the new, user-friendly Cure, featuring Bob as a morbid, androgynous Stevie Nicks. By the late 1980s, when this came out, everyone this side of Siouxsie and the Banshees had pretty much given up on all the Goth hair and makeup as a serious fashion statement. Bob responded by growing his hair out to comical proportions, putting on 40 pounds, and throwing on cheap sneakers which he was apparently too fat to reach down and tie. (He doesn't look too bloated in this video because there's some weird vertical stretching going on that elongates all the band members. He would later inflate to a size that would earn him worldwide recognition as the post-punk Elvis.) The effect is playful to the point of being clownish. Whether it was intentional or not, it was pretty smart marketing to attract a legion of teenyboppers who might have been scared away by Skinny Puppy or Nitzer Ebb.

When this song came out, I was working in a nightclub that hosted under-21 dances once or twice a week. I can testify that this song launched a thousand furtive romances among the hipster alterna-kids who patronized (in every sense of the word) the club. Who knows, there may now be a bunch of teenage Robert Smith Somethings running around as a result.

The post-script is that about a year or so later, Bob must've been off his meds again, because he reworked the same basic structure for (at least) the third time, stripping it down to its essential backing track and breaking out the eyeliner and valium and calling it Lovesong. It was their biggest hit to date, one of the standouts on what Kyle Broflovski would later call "the greatest album ever," Disintegration, and a highlight of what was then called Modern Rock (sic).