Video Vault: 999, Homicide

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

*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

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

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

Listening To: No Line On The Horizon

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

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

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...

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

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...

...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

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...

Where's Bin Laden?

Music: Response

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

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 dirtMcCain!)

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

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...

...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

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

Obvious, sure, but well done:

Goldie Yawn

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.