A note on changes; two notes on…not changes?

November 22, 2008 at 3:28 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged

The glorious Max Jacobson alerted me to the fact that my moping and blaming about readership was a lot of self pity over bullshit that isn’t the fault of the people who are actually reading me complain.  Of course, he didn’t say that, because he is nice and awesome, I just gleaned it from his actual, practical advice.  He just told me that I could make a couple tweaks that would prevent people who randomly happened upon this blog from running away and never coming back.  I changed the look to something less, how do you say, lazy and actually kind of weird.  I cleaned up the sidebar.  That’s pretty much it for now.

Oh, and my favorite news.  I Ate My DVD Collection is now officially at http://iatemydvdcollection.com.  That’s awesome, though it costs money, but I have a pretty good job, so I can take the $13 hit.  Whatever.  The old link works too, but now people who remember the name of my blog can look that up and find something that makes sense.

Of course, if Max and/or anyone else has more ideas for something to add to make the site more tolerable, by all means, leave a comment (for once, you assholes)(just kidding, I love you guys deeply).  And “more posts” doesn’t count – if you want more content, write it yourself, remember?

Also, two more observations:

1) I’ve seen a few things on Pitchfork (yes, I read it, fuck you) lately that have signaled to me that it’s time to start thinking about my year-end list of music.  That’s terrifying, especially because I’ve accumulated more current music in the year of 2008 than in any other year of my life by far (48 albums, by my iTunes count – and probably 40 of which I think about positively in some way) in time to put them in a list like this.  I have to get started on it now, or else I will feel like I cheated myself.  You’ll get no more music reviews out of me until my list, because I don’t want to spend all those thoughts and then have to say something new about the album on my list (even if it’s just a sentence’s worth).  As a result, this list will probably be pretty painstaking and masturbatory, so deal with that in advance.  Also as a result, it will probably be far too long for anyone with anything to do in their life to read in one sitting, so be prepared for that as well.  It will probably be a top-20.

2) I just got “musical genitalia” as one of my Top Searches.  That is teeeeerifying.  Whoever you are, I hope you enjoyed the review, and I hope equally as much that it is not what you were expecting.

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Double digits, maybe?; Zack and Miri Make A Porno review

November 21, 2008 at 8:11 pm · Filed under Movie Reviews ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

All I’m gonna say is that it’s sad to look at my blog stats and see that I have 6 consistent readers.  You 6 are awesome people who I love dearly.  The rest of the world can go suck it.  I wouldn’t mind having the word spread though, if only for my own ego-stroking.

All right, that’s enough of that.  Zack and Miri Make A Porno is exactly what a Kevin Smith movie should be – and it’s probably just as much of a central thesis to Kevin Smith movies as Chasing Amy.  If you’re not a Kevin Smith fan by now, this review will not be for you, but by all means, read on.

I only saw Chasing Amy a couple of months ago, and it lived up to the hype of being the central Kevin Smith movie in that it had a really well-constructed plot, well-written characters, incredibly obscene dialogue, and Jay and Silent Bob, as well as a not-completely-absurdly-but-still-pretty-happy ending.  Throw in a love story, and there’s your Kevin Smith movie.  Now, of course, every Kevin Smith movie doesn’t have all of these – in fact, none but Chasing Amy do, even Zack and Miri – but they all have all of the first three, and one or two of the latter three.

But if Chasing Amy is your paint-by-numbers Kevin Smith thesis movie, then Zack and Miri is your big-picture companion.  There’s just this feel that you get with this movie, with the absolute great chemistry of characters and just the joy that comes from the eye of the camera at spending time in the world and spending time with the people.  One of the central motifs of all of the small-scale Kevin Smith movies (read: not Dogma or Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back) is that none of the central characters are bad people, or even unpleasant (all right, unpleasant in a bad way).  Life’s not all roses and lollipops, of course, but any dick isn’t given more than one scene to stink up.  All the drama in these movies (especially Zack and Miri) is between good-natured people who may have a kink that doesn’t mesh with others or just may be human – and that’s the source of drama.  That’s what’s so relatable and great about Kevin Smith movies.

Here, the two main good people are Zack and Miri, lifelong best friends in a less homoerawkwardly way than Jay and Silent Bob, who are absent from this movie, to some’s delight and some’s regret (I fall in between, and I’ll explain later on).  There’s definite sexual tension between them, but it often gets defused pretty quickly, just because they’re such good friends, and most of the time, it’s pushed on them by others.  Because they’re completely broke (and thus desperate) and they run into a gay couple, one of whom is Miri’s high school crush, which is why they meet, and one of whom is a porn star, played INCREDIBLY by the INCREDIBLE Justin Long (and thus inspired), they decide to make a pornographical moving picture, with a nice loan by the inimitable Craig Robinson, who plays Zack’s friend and coworker.

I don’t really like the story idea on the whole, but Kevin Smith is so damn talented as a writer that the central story comes about organically.  That’s what impressed me the most.  What also impressed me is, well, everything.  To be honest, though I was really excited about this movie, I wasn’t expecting lofty things because I didn’t like the idea of the story – I just felt it was an excuse for more Kevin Smith sex jokes, brilliant as they are – and because I kind of feel awkward at how pervasive Judd Apatow’s influence has gotten over the comedy landscape.  It just feels like if a comedy is in any way publicized or popular over the last couple of years, it has some Apatow in it.  And the farther away from actually being an Apatow picture it is, the worse it is, because they all try.  The ones that try independently, fail.  And I originally felt that Kevin Smith’s switch from his time-honored favorites to an Apatow roster was a little like selling out – that Smith saw the landscape, and was afraid of his inability to keep up, so he just ditched his stalwarts (for whom Smith’s movies seem to be their only roles) and made his play.

And while I still feel that way generally about Apatow, though I’m as huge a fan of his (actual) movies as anyone, Smith saved himself from falling into that pattern by writing a) Elizabeth Banks better than anyone has before, and turning her into not just a humongous new crush for everyone who feels like they missed their chance with Joey Lauren Adams, but a comedienne to be feared, b) a Craig Robinson character with some actual depth, so he is now guaranteed to have a real, hopefully incredible and long, acting career, and c) a romantic comedy that everyone can get behind.  Seeing this movie as a couple is a treat – thankfully I have that opportunity – because whereas movies like Love Actually (which is really the ceiling for the category I’m lumping right now) are great, there are always moments that make the girlfriend fawn and the boyfriend roll his eyes, and that could get awkward, Zack and Miri has absolutely zero of these moments, and the scenes that would normally have them are totally honest.  And that above all is the strength of these movies.

I don’t think I’m alone in saying that I got a little scared after Clerks II, even though it was hilarious, because it seemed like his only options as a filmmaker were making okay romance films like Jersey Girl that no one could love, but some could definitely hate because it was so rude to all of the fans that loved his comedic writing, or movies entirely rooted in his View Askewniverse that were about the same people, and he would make those movies until they were set in some New Jersey retirement home.  I though that that could happen, and while the movies would be good, they would get depressing fast.  Zack and Miri Make a Porno is probably better for me and Kevin Smith fans than it probably is in a vacuum because it gives Kevin Smith a real future as a filmmaker, a film that tells people he can make whatever movie he wants and pull it off too.  And thank God for that.

I know I didn’t comment on anything like the great performances by the leads and the music or anything like that like I normally do, but you can go anywhere else for that.  And besides, I can’t think about those things when I think about this movie; they get washed out by my above thoughts.  And if you really want all that stuff, just go here or here or here.

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A Creative Writing post, Thank God

November 21, 2008 at 2:10 am · Filed under Creative Writing, Poetry, Prose

I had almost forgotten that this is part of my stated objective of the blog.  These are the last two things I’ve written; tell me what you think, please.  Even if they make you want to puke your guts out.  Be advised that the story is a long one.  That’s why the poem comes first.

A DISTANT, CRASHING SOUND

A distant, crashing sound
is what your heart hears
through the pipeline inside you
when your brain hears my voice
from across Chicago, canned
and processed like bad fruit.
Your heart wonders
what all the fuss is about,
because you just think you’re hurt.
Your heart forgot me in May,
when the days are coated
in a humid foam that I waded through
to get to your window
where my brain made

A distant, crashing sound
that my heart only heard
just last night.
Tissues in the wastebasket,
shouldn’t that prove I care?
But I won’t lie, telling you
that it wasn’t hard to go,
since my brain was walling me off
while my heart was catching up.
Our long car silences
must have clued you in.
Last week especially,
when the CD scratched,
and through the silence,
all we heard was

A distant, crashing sound
and we looked at each other
quickly.
After I pulled over
to let the ambulance by,
you kissed me abruptly
and when all I did
was look at you funny,
we both heard again
a distant, crashing sound.

HOW TO ASSEMBLE A DOOMSDAY DEVICE

Am I just trying to be loved?
That’s the second-to-last thought that runs through the mind of an ideal supervillain just before he (or she, potentially) detonates his doomsday device.  The last thought is, of course, No, I’m doing it because – and insert your own personal motivation there (good examples are: to show them all, to prove that I’m the most evil, to bring everyone down to the same level, to destroy the world, etc., but use your imagination!).
The road to true supervillainy is not for the faint or kind of heart.  It is a series of tough tests of ruthlessness, single-mindedness, and savvy public relations (after all, if no one pays attention to you, what does blowing up the earth really accomplish?).  And, of course, if you’ve really hit it big, it requires the defeat of at least one superhero, possibly even a whole team.  And it takes more than those three to really become a star of the world of supervillainy – unparalleled brilliance needs to come into play, because let’s be honest, if you already had super-strength, you’d be fighting for the other side so you had more excuses to beat up on people without being brought up on charges.
We here at the J. Robert Oppenheimer Evil Genius Fellowship Association appreciate all of this, which is the reason we are the place those of the evildoing persuasion come to us when they need funding for their death rays, teleporters, weather control devices, and what have you.  You and we know that villains don’t have a mythical gold card with which to obtain inexplicably huge amounts of funding for ambitious projects.  It must come from somewhere, and we want it to come from us.

—————————
Remember when you are first assembling your doomsday device that every part is important.  Falling asleep in your lab when you should be welding is no excuse when a bolt pops loose, disablign the rotator mechanism or the cooling unit or what have you.  All that will get you is a timer stopped at 0:03 and a gloved fist to the face.  Supervillainy is a game of inches, like baseball.  Or jai alai.
The second thing to remember about doomsday device assembly is comprehensive setup.  While that may sound like unnecessary business jargon, the explanation is easy enough: if it is easy to remember how you’ve put your doomsday device together, then it is easy to fix problems and it is easy to dismantle if you’ve had a change of heart.  The only thing worse than being thwarted from destroying the world is accidentally destroying the world when you no longer want to.  And remember, the emergency shutoff wires must be a combination of red, blue, green and yellow wires (in keeping with the Oppenheimer Association by-laws).  Which wire is the correct wire is up to you, so use your imagination.  Don’t be afraid to pick the yellow wire – no hero will ever guess the yellow wire, you have our guarantee.
Thirdly, always make sure that your doomsday device has a timer.  A remote detonator, while providing more instant gratification, allows two different contingencies to happen more easily: one, the theft of the detonator.  Unless you plan on keeping this detonator in an invincible safe until the absolute split-second you plan on using it, there is always the chance of theft by a hero that may have super-speed or that may be able to phase through walls.  We here at the Oppenheimer Association know that the supervillain’s problems are varied, and we simply wish to simplify, always simplify.  The second contingency is that of cold feet.  Though we respect a well-thought decision to not destroy the earth, we also believe that most instances of the villain failing to detonate his/her own doomsday device are due to mere garden-variety nervousness or temporary moral pangs.  These should not be tolerated as they are reflective of a level of commitment below the standards of the Oppenheimer Association.
And that brings us to the most important point we will have in this manual, the point that we introduced at the very beginning – you must always know what you are fighting for.  A crisis of motivation has made many a great supervillain come crashing down on himself in the moment of truth.  Because, when you are looking at the soon-to-be-destroyed earth in the rear-view mirror of your private space shuttle powered by ketchup (or mustard, depending on the type of fuel-injection system you use), the only thing that will make you turn back (provided you have disabled the world’s space defenses, but come now, J. Robert Oppenheimer could do that from his grave, rest his soul) is you.  Without commitment, then all of this is moot.  Just ask Iratastrophe (see Appendix for details).
We do regret that this is the end of this instructional paper, but it is our firm belief at the J. Robert Oppenheimer Evil Genius Fellowship Association that each supervillain and/or evil genius should be as creative and self-motivated as possible.  After all, if we showed everyone how to be a supervillain, then how would anyone be different? If you’re still unsure of certain aspects of your prospective life of supervillainy, though, please be on the lookout for other installments in this series of instructional papers, such as “How to Hold Someone Hostage/For Ransom,” “How to Hold Multiple People Hostage/For Ransom,” “How to Introduce Yourself to the International Community,” “How to Reduce a Superhero to a Blubbering Ninny,” and of course, “How to Apply for An Oppenheimer Fellowship.”
Good luck with any of your endeavors, and as Dr. Oppenheimer would say, “You break it, you buy it.”

APPENDIX

World Saved, Iratastrophe Behind Bars After Confrontation With CapyBaron

NEW YORK, NY – After coming within minutes of total destruction, humanity can take a deep breath and go on with its daily life, thanks to the heroics of  the CapyBaron in defeating supervillain Iratastrophe.
The so-called “Long, Rodent-like Tooth of the Law” was able to disable Iratastrophe’s thermonuclear device before it could be sent to the core of the earth via a super-submarine that would have entered through the Puerto Rican trench in the Atlantic Ocean.  The device is reported to have been carrying roughly 300 times the amount of nuclear payload of the “Fat Man” atomic bomb that was detonated over Nagasaki.
“It’s all part of the job,” smiled the CapyBaron as he humbly accepted a cash reward of $100,000 from the President of the United States.  “I’m sure anyone as powerful and righteous as I would have done the same thing in my position.”
Although Iratastrophe was not available for his normal lengthy pre-imprisonment press conference, he was heard to yell, “I never should have listened to you, Claire!” at a woman behind the cadre of reporters and police officers who appeared to be weeping behind a pair of pink sunglasses.
When asked to describe the scene at Iratastrophe’s lab during their final confrontation, the CapyBaron explained: “I had just burst through the door of his inner sactum, where he was arguing with some broad – I beg your pardon, woman – and after sneaking aboard his submarine, I heard both of them begin to cry.  Really, they were just crying like babies.  That bought me enough time to chew through the correct wire with my super rodent teeth and save the world.”
When asked which wire was the correct one, he smiled broadly and laughed, “Blue, always blue.”
Iratastrophe, whose real name is Ira Gould, was escorted from his laboratory, which was located on the top floor of the apartment building in which his mother lived on Pinehurst Avenue in the Upper West Side, by local police appearing to have received a severe beating and showing multiple bite marks, is awaiting trial, but is expected to plead guilty on two counts of nefarious conspiracy and eight counts of attempted genocide in exchange for a life sentence as opposed to capital punishment.
The CapyBaron has requested to inform readers that anyone wishing to make a donation of thanks can send checks or money orders to: Schwartz, Goldstein, Hertz and Schwartz, Esq., 1120 W 46 St, New York, NY 10003.

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Musical Genitalia; Eagles of Death Metal review

November 12, 2008 at 3:09 am · Filed under Music Reviews ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

So I saw a brilliant performance tonight.  Dan Katz and Raghav Goyal, formerly named the Aristokatz, but forced to switch to the Aristogoyals because of Disney copyright issues, they are the new Disney music cover band on campus here at Oberlin.  Tonight was their debut concert, and I have to tell you, it was genius.  It was probably the worst official performance I’ve ever heard musically, but it was bad like Neil Hamburger is bad at comedy (only actually funny).  I couldn’t really explain it except that it was like musical dadaism, only gleefully lighthearted.  For whatever reason, it was pure comedy genius to me.  I mean, everyone at the Cat in the Cream (for the non-Obie readers, the campus coffeehouse) was laughing and enjoying the hell out of it for at least a half hour, but I was still dying by the end of the show’s hour, and I couldn’t wipe a smile off my face for a good hour after that.  If they hone their craft either way (towards the musical end or towards the comedy end), they really could be something special, and I’m totally serious about that.  Much love.

And of course, they’re both on the Oberlin Horsecows Ultimate Frisbee Team Organization, Esq.

Now, I know that i said I was going to do a rap roundup for my next review, but then the Eagles of Death Metal released a record, and that’s a drop-everything moment for me.  I haven’t given their first album, Peace Love Death Metal, much of a listen, but their sophomore effort, 2006’s Death By Sexy, is one of my absolute favorites.  It rocks so hard, and is so much fun.  When trying to describe their visceral appeal to others, I often fall back on the expression, “It’s like music with a giant cock.  Like, huge.”  And I think that’s fairly accurate.  You can feel the machismo ooze out of their music.  Frontman Jesse “The Devil” Hughes is cocky with a capital Cock, and he’s famed(ish) for his outlandish attitude with fans at shows, and his mustache, which is a lady tickler of the highest degree.  This guy still lives the life, as it’s obvious.

I first got into EoDM when Morgan showed me them saying they reminded her of Queens of the Stone Age, a band I had shown her.  It turned out she was unwittingly prophetic – Josh Homme, lead singer of Queens of the Stone Age, is the drummer for EoDM and the secondary creative force.  Since then, it’s been a constant love affair between the band and me – whenever I want some hard-ass rock that is more contemporary than Led Zep and things of that nature, EoDM is almost always the first place I turn.

Heart On, EoDM’s third album, is less super-kinetic than their first two, and as a result is a step behind as far as pure fun, but this is easily their most musically well-developed album.  This band is no longer my version of Top 40 (meaning music that I can listen to just because it’s fun but lacks any real depth).  Now they’re just a damn good band.

Eagles of Death Metal is by no stretch of the imagination a death metal band; it’s not really a joke name, just really a “you had to be there story”.  Whatever.  There are worse band names out there. (I’m looking at you, Portugal. The Man.) They’re a blues/roots rock band to their core, with the hard-charging guitars and their fairly constant set of chords that just beeeeg to be air-guitar’d.  Jesse Hughes adds that final bluesy piece – even though it’s bluesy, not blues, since, you know, he’s white and sounds white.  There’s no grit to his voice, just a lot of confidence and just as much strong falsetto.  Hughes used to spontaneously break into an “Elvis From Hell” impersonation mid-song (see “Chase the Devil” off of Death By Sexy), but that’s left behind on this album, sadly.

As far as musicianship goes, it’s rare you see a rock band this in sync with such a high level of play all-around.  Both guitar parts, bass and drums are all on fucking fire throughout the whole record.  In a way, it reminds me of Led Zeppelin or Cream – yeah, more like Cream, actually – because no part of the band ever really chills out.  Sure, one instrument will have the most attention drawn to it at a point, but multiple listens reveal that every part is still playing its ass off.  Really great stuff.  I especially noticed it in the last song, “I’m Your Torpedo.”

That song title brings me to another point that I didn’t mention back when I was talking about the band’s masculinity.  A lot of this music’s power along that vein is in its bare sexuality.  This is “I’m-a sex you up” music, only not in a romantic way – in a fantastically egocentric way.  The courtship is all about the grandstanding, not about the end result.  Pure, brash masculinity.

If you consider that the ideal of the band, then “(I Used to Couldn’t Dance) Tight Pants” would probably be your favorite track.  The guitar work is ultra-sexy here, and really, there’s not much more to say about it than that it rocks out ultra-hard.  It’s really ditto for the rest of the album, so I’m going to spare readers more song-by-song analysis at the risk of getting even more repetitive.  I’m actually surprised this album is so consistent; even Death By Sexy had one amazingly horribly annoying song (“The Ballad of Queen Bee and Baby Duck”), and Heart On doesn’t have it.  This is a surprisingly unified album, and works fantastically as a continuous listen.  I now know at least one album that’s getting played in the car rides home for Bump and Thanksgiving.

I’m going to see Zack and Miri Make a Porno tomorrow, so expect a review of that up pretty soon.

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The rare combo review: W. and Choke

November 7, 2008 at 6:59 pm · Filed under Movie Reviews ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Actually, that title was a lie.  I really really want to review Choke because it’s so damn interesting, and even though I really did like W., there’s really almost nothing I can add to the already-present conversation about it, so just read this review that I agree with completely, then come back here for my own extra two cents.  I’ll wait.

Okay.

First off, the performance of Thandie Newton as Condi is the only real weak spot as far as acting goes.  It realizes the fears that every movie fan had of the whole movie in that it delves into caricature and becomes largely unwatchable.  And, as Harry Knowles of the very same Aint-it-Cool-News to which I linked you pointed out, that’s kind of how she already is, which means that those who like Condi may not mind Newton’s performance.  But I don’t buy that 100%.  Also, SPOILER the final dream confrontation between the two Bush presidents is really cool on the W. side of things (that should go without saying, since Josh Brolin rocks every scene), but I think Cromwell as H.W. in the scene plays it a bit too smugly and makes it a comedic scene when it really shouldn’t be. END SPOILER And I think everyone should see this movie if they like politics even one little bit.  It’s a really self-affirming movie for those of us who do.

Okay, now let’s get to the real meat.  Choke is a book by Chuck Palahniuk of Fight Club fame, and from what I’ve heard by Chuck fans, it’s not one of his best.  Still, there seems to be something about his works that makes adapters drool.  David Fincher did an unbelievable job with Fight Club, of course: I don’t think there’s ever been a movie that’s had the clichéd “incendiary” title slapped on it as much as that one, and it deserved it all to boot.  But those who are expecting Choke to be for sex what Fight Club is for terrorism are in for a rude shock.  It’s really a character study of Victor Mancini, played by the awesome Sam Rockwell.

Hi, his name is Victor, and he’s a recovering (kind of) sex addict.  He takes absolute joy in being a degenerate who flouts the rules of the pre-American Revolution historical site at which he works as a reenactor/peasant and makes extra cash by choking at restaurants and asking the people who save him for money by mail.  This is his life – being a half-assed colonial American, choking for money, and having lots of meaningless sex with random people.  Oh, and visiting his mother who has severe early-onset Alzheimer’s so bad that she doesn’t even know who he is.

Victor’s a complicated guy, which is made harder by the fact that he’s a total asshole, and revels in it.  The ongoing conflict for the viewer is whether or not to root for Victor.  His undying attachment to her is totally selfless at first glance – she thinks that her son never visits and turns the whole hospital against him, despite his devotion – it turns out that his repeated death wishes on her aren’t just latent resentment; he actually wants her to die, just only after she discloses his father’s identity.  And that search takes such a ludicrous twist that I won’t even go into it at all.

The other thing that happens at the upscale hospital where Victor’s mother (played incredibly by Anjelica Huston) is staying is that Victor meets Paige Mitchell, a new doctor taking care of his mother.  Where their relationship goes is purely fascinating to me, but other people I talked to were not as impressed.

This movie was adapted and directed by Clark Gregg, who also plays Victor’s boss (and kick-starter of most of the funniest scenes in the movie) and played Agent Coulson of SHIELD in Iron Man over the summer, for those who want a better mental image.  I really like the direction – the flashbacks are all necessary and don’t feel cheap, which lots of flashbacks do when they’re pulled off wrong.  I’m pretty sure this is Gregg’s first effort in both writing and directing, so kudos for him and I hope to see more work.

I think the strength of the screenplay is that all of the major characters are dynamic – their personalities, or at least how the audience views them, change over the course of the movie, so that the audience doesn’t feel like they’re a step ahead of the script – in a way much different from Fight Club, I feel compelled to add.  While Huston’s turn as the mother is obviously the best supporting job, I think that Denny, Victor’s best friend, played by Brad William Henke (I haven’t heard of him either, but he’s apparently in the upcoming Star Trek movie playing some guy named “Uncle Frank,” which makes me twice as excited for the movie just because there’s an Uncle Frank) is pretty close.  He goes from a chronic masturbator with an attitude almost as bad as Victor’s into a genial, peaceful guy that just seems content with who he is and what he does.  It doesn’t seem like an earth-shattering transformation  while it’s going on, but when I thought about the movie after, it really hit me how much he changed and how much for the better.

Sorry for the delay in posting this – again.  It was one of the tabs on my browser, half-written, for days and days.  I think I’m going to do another combo review next – a rap roundup, if you will, of some major hip hop releases of the year, like Lil’ Wayne and T.I. and maybe something else.  Stay tuned.

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Fall break – a quick retrospective; Flying Lotus review

October 29, 2008 at 4:41 pm · Filed under Music Reviews ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

I ate sooooo well.  I thank the Thompson family for this profusely.  I ate really damn well.  I also did another thing a lot, and it was better than it is at Oberlin.  I won’t get more specific than that.  I also found hard copies of Pinetop Seven albums (my two favorites to be exact), which had previously been mysteriously erased from my hard drive.  A quick look at my favorite albums ever will tell you that my two favorite Pinetop Seven albums are two of my favorite albums ever.  This was important.  I can not tell you how surprised I was to find these CDs (used! someone else has listened to this band!) in a store in Dallas.  Thank you, Dallas.

I also got a chance in Dallas to do a lot of listening to music, so I’m all set for a little while as far as subject matter for the blog goes.  First up is a CD that’s been growing on me steadily for a few weeks, after I got my hands on it much earlier(it was then ignored for a long while).  It’s called Los Angeles and it’s by this guy who calls himself Flying Lotus, which sounds both like an emo poem and a karate technique.  But neither of the two have much to do with the music, which is kind of like dubstep (a genre that I touched upon in this review, in which I linked to this Wikipedia article that attemps to explain it), but since no one really wants to come out and just call it dubstep, I don’t think I’ll rock the boat.  I think it may be that this album has a little brighter feel than the generally overpowering dread that powers dubstep.  It’s instrumental hip-hop at its core, I guess.

A quick way to decide whether or not you will enjoy this album is to think to yourself: do I mind almost constant, sometimes-subtle, sometimes-not static as an instrument in music? Because it’s used basically the whole way through, and if you’re going to be annoyed by something like this, small as it is, then it’s best you skip it and ignore what’s going to be a positive review from me.

Of course, that’s only a first test.  If you don’t mind static, then the rest of the music is still left.  Like all instrumental hip-hop, it’s focused on the beat, which goes beyond just drums.  As far as I know, the drumbeats here are all drum machine or samples, which is fine.  But there’s also the prominent sub-bass, which is what makes me think it’s a lot like dubstep, and some auxiliary percussion like the bells in “Camel”.  That means that to get the full effect of this music, don’t listen to it on crappy laptop speakers.  These beats are simple and cool, and they subtly progress in each track like a good little instrumental track should.  But the tight packaging of each track, as opposed to painfully long techno songs, make this a very accessible record for the electronoob.

Above the beats, all bets are off, as the (electronic) instrumentation is different on each track and is always super-cool, though there’s a very strong common thread throughout the record.  That’s how I would describe this whole album – just plain cool.

To get a little bit more specific, a few of my favorite tracks are “Comet Course,” a bit more uptempo than the rest of the album, and a bit more cosmic, as the title suggests, but still in the overall milieu and an awesome beat, “GNG BNG,” which has two separate and completely awesome beats which I always bounce too, and “RobertaFlack,” which seems a lot like just an electronic version of a cool jazz track.  Very mellow, very groove-oriented, and with some wispy female vocals snuck in there (that happens more often as it gets towards the end of the album – still, we call it instrumental because the voice is just part of the mix – wholly an instrument as opposed to that term being lauded upon just a great singer, ahem Fleet Foxes).

P.S. – Did I mention that Flying Lotus, real name Steven Ellison, is Alice Coltrane’s great nephew? Alice Coltrane was John Coltrane’s wife, don’tcha know.

P.P.S. – Thanks to the one person who voted in my last post’s poll.  I know it’s only been a couple of days, but really, guys? I thought somebody read this blog.  I guess it’s just a little more masturbatory than I thought.

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Yo Mama; TV On The Radio review

October 27, 2008 at 10:57 am · Filed under Music Reviews ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

What? Me, get sidetracked? Me, forget about my own blog? Yeah, well, yo mama’s so forgetful, she…well, I’m bad at coming up with those jokes.  Anyway, the point is, I’m a little mad at myself for my being lax with this blog, and I think I’ll be doing more of it from now on.  The obvious choice for the beginning of my revival is the new album by my boys, TV On The Radio.  Their birthday present to me (hey, it did come out the right week) was at first titled Dear Science,, but they did drop their comma, apparently because it complicated sentences like this.  But after Dear Science, I’m not quite sure what to review.  I’m positive I’m going to have one more review out of stuff I watched/listened to over fall break, which I spent in absentia in Dallas, but I’m not sure what it should be.  Should I find some new music to review that I’ve been getting into, like London Zoo by the Bug or Los Angeles by Flying Lotus, or should I review one of the movies I saw (Choke or W.), or something else?  I’m going to use the poll feature that I just discovered to see if I can leave it up to you yabbos, as Menick would say.

Dear Science may wind up as my favorite album of the year, and even so it’s a little disappointing.  That’s just a function of the ludicrous expectations an album like Return to Cookie Mountain creates, especially when it’s just the second album by a band, especially a dynamic band like TV On The Radio.  I think that a lot of die-hard fans like myself have reacted like myself – initial shock and ambivalence, followed by a gradual warming.  This is not an album like TV’s first two, but then, Return to Cookie Mountain wasn’t like Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes either.  The third album by any band gives you a sense of what they’ll be in the future, and TV On The Radio have told us here that they’re going to keep changing and keep surprising.  Thank fucking god.

Dear Science is not really a rock album.  Not at all.  The closest genre I can pin it on is funk, but only because it’s so funky.  It’s not really funk either, more like where funk wants to be in 20 years (maybe post-funk? Yeah, I like that).  But this album isn’t so uniform, so I think I’m just going to go track-by-track, like a real fanboy.

  1. “Halfway Home” – Damn catchy, the most memorable song of the bunch (though not really the best).  The beat is almost as propulsive as “Wolf Like Me,” but the vocals keep it more snakelike and soulful as opposed to charging like its predecessor.
  2. “Crying” – One of my three favorites on the album.  I like the little tight guitar figure, something that we really haven’t heard from TVOTR much.  This is the closest to funk or soul that they get throughout the album, and I think it really colors the rest of the whole piece.  Kyp Malone establishes himself here as on almost equal footing with Tunde Adebimpe as a singer, and he sings just about the same amount on this album.  Their voices are subtly different, Malone’s a bit more versatile, Adebimpe’s a bit stronger.  He sings all three of my favorite songs on this album, but that’s not Tunde’s fault.  By now though, we know that Kyp’s a better songwriter.
  3. “Dancing Choose” – Okay, Tunde raps here.  That’s cool enough.  But if you need more, a) he can really do it, b) his lyrics are really clever, c) the chorus is really catchy, and d) like on nearly every track, the horn section is badass.  There.
  4. “Stork & Owl” – Least memorable track on the album.  Kyp Malone does some great work with vocals, and the production is all there and cool, but something doesn’t mesh with me.  I think this is what separates Dear Science from You & Me, meaning that You & Me is better by just that much.  Not a lot, but I don’t have any bones with any song there, and this is just a little bit off.
  5. “Golden Age” – And just when Dear Science was about to lose momentum, here comes another off-the-wall-in-its-funky-awesomeness track.  TVOTR loves itself some Track 5 – “Mister Grieves” from Young Liars, “Ambulance” from Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes, “Wolf Like Me” from Cookie Mountain, and now this.  There’s nothing really eloquent to say here, just listen.  I can only say that this is the most immediately appealing (read: mainstream) song they’ve ever done, and the second of my three favorites.
  6. “Family Tree” – The only real mellow track on the album.  “Stork & Owl” and “DLZ” are both downtempo, but they have a lot of angst that they work with, whereas this reminds me a little of Coldplay, except, you know, better.  There’s delicate piano throughout, but the minimalist percussion (drum machine? Jaleel Bunton, what say you?) keeps the pace slowly going.  This is not TV On The Radio, but it’s very lovely and nice.  It works.
  7. “Red Dress” – And back to the awesome funk.  The best lyrics of the album open this track, and it only stays awesome from there: “Fuck your war/’Cause I’m fat and in love/And the bombs are fallin’ on me/fo sho/But I’m scared to death/That I’m living a life not worth dying for.”
  8. “Love Dog” – This is more like the TV On The Radio I know.  A little shuffle with some vibes, some “ooh”s from Tunde, and you have just another very good TVOTR song.
  9. “Shout Me Out” – Straightforward, catchy, relaxed pop.  Constant guitar triplets in the first half add depth and keeps the song moving forward.  And then it breaks loose and we get the classic “Amen break” drum beat, scientifically proven to be the most propulsive beat in music.  Really good song.
  10. “DLZ” – Tunde’s voice owns this track.  The way he growls the word “nevermind,” turns a word that normally is the most passive into a war cry.  Jesus.  Deep, dark funk.  The production can be credited for the dark feel, with the drums’ echo and the horns section.  I love this goddamn song.
  11. “Lover’s Day” – This song is the third of my three favorites, and it’s an “I’ma sex you up” song in the classic vein of “Sexual Healing”.  The only twist here is that it’s a celebration, a rejoicing of carnal sex on an epic scale.  The song just gets bigger and bigger, even though the lyrics stay ludicrously intimate, like “I’m gonna take you/I’m gonna shake you/I’m gonna make you cum/Swear to God, it’ll get so hot/It’ll melt our faces off.” Yeah.  That other C-word was used, in a non-smutty and non-ironic way.  Did it just blow your mind? No? Well, it’s cool anyway.

The star of this album throughout is unquestionably David Sitek’s production.  As Sam Walker told me when we geeked out to each other about this album, this production is unbelievably immediate.  The music isn’t clouded in haze like Desperate Youth or the way prog-rock seems to be going these days.  It’s catapulted into your face, but in a very unique way, because that’s the only way Sitek knows how.

I will now wipe the fanboy semen out of the inside of my pants, and hope that you will forgive me and continue to read this blog, because it won’t happen again on our second date, it’s just that it was just so hot, oh god, oh god…..

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Party, I mean, WOO PARTY; Harold and Kumar 2 review

September 24, 2008 at 4:00 pm · Filed under Movie Reviews ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

So after a few weekends in a row of getting trashed one day or the other, with each successive weekend getting weirder (Part 1: Matt insults a transgendered student, Part 2: Matt meets 40 different people around Oberlin and has to be reintroduced to about 30 of them in the next week after remembering 0 of them, Part 3: Matt is part and parcel of a naked party, and promises himself not to drink Old Crow whiskey ever again, Old Crow having been responsible for parts 2 and 3), it was nice for last weekend to have been a quiet one.  I watched a couple of movies, played well at the frisbee team’s scrimmage, stayed sober.

That’s good, because this weekend might be my most insane weekend ever.  Friday night is a decades costume party for a friend’s birthday (I’m going in a zoot suit), Saturday morning-afternoon is a frisbee tournament, Saturday evening another birthday party, Sunday morning-afternoon the continuation of that  same frisbee tournament, Sunday evening my birthday party, which is really just going to a Born Ruffians concert in Cleveland.  Homework, we hardly knew thee.

Speaking of party, there isn’t a party on Earth that could top the jubilation Harold and Kumar must have felt at the instantly-classic bottomless party in Harold and Kumar 2: Escape from Guantanamo Bay. Oh sure, the party has very, very little to do with the plot of the movie, as do most of the events, but it is easily the most memorable scene.  It’s hard to forget full frontal nudity, both the easy-on-the-eyes female kind and the as-hard-on-the-eyes-as-two-diamonds-scraping-together male kind.  HK2:EGB follows much the same formula as the first movie: Harold and Kumar are constantly on a singleminded mission, but spend more time sidetracked with crazy people in crazy situations than actually moving toward their purpose.  And Neil Patrick Harris is a crazy bastard.

This movie is not as fantastic as some people make it out to be, but it’s also by no means bad or even mediocre.  It’s a funny movie with some pretty serious flaws.  What pushe HK2:EGB into the positive side is the great delivery of every single line by John Cho (Harold).  He is so pitch-perfect in this movie, even making mundane lines funny.  If I type out, “We’re on a plane to Amsterdam.  It’s the weed capital…of the world,” nothing special.  With Cho’s delivery, it becomes a quotable quote.

Kal Penn as Kumar is funny too, he has some great lines, but he gets scenes stolen from him left and right.  Mostly by Cho.

Rob Corddry’s character, the unbelievably stupid Homeland Security agent who is the profiler and the massive racist, is pretty divisive.  People who love watching assholes and who don’t mind horribly bigoted actions like dropping pennies in front of Jews as an interrogation torture technique will probably like his character.  People who quickly get tired of Al Qaeda and North Korean jokes will not.  I was kind of on the fence, but I definitely didn’t like him.  I’m on the fence about whether I hate him or not.

Neil Patrick Harris is a god.  Anyone who’s seen this movie or Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog, reviewed on this site, probably knows this by now.   I just wanted to let you know, whoever you are.

Also, keep an eye out for “Terrible” Terry Tate.  I really wanted him to tackle Rob Corddry after the grape soda incident.  Just know, we got Triple T up in this bitch.

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Oh, great, I’m doing this again; In Bruges review

September 19, 2008 at 12:19 am · Filed under Movie Reviews ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

What a douche I am.  I promised an early return to blogging, what with arriving on campus two weeks before class with nothing to do, and wound up with not just an on-time return, but a late return.  I guess once I got used to not writing, it all just went downhill.  Anyway, after BOTO got its act together, it was time for monkey see, monkey do.

I’ve done plenty of watching movies recently, not so much listening, and some creative writing.  So we’ll go easy on the music reviews for the time being, but being at Oberlin – meaning being within Oberlin’s majestic file-sharing network – should give me plenty to stock up on.

My first review of the semester is Martin McDonagh’s brainchild In Bruges, actually his first feature film.  It’s quite ambitious for a debut, though he must have had some confidence based on the fact that his only other studio film, a short subject titled Six Shooter, won the Oscar for best live action short back in ’04.  In Bruges, like Six Shooter, is an incredibly dark comedy.

I’ve never seen the short film, so I’ll stop making comparisons at this point.  In Bruges is about two hitmen, Ray and Ken, played greatly by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, ordered by their boss to hide out in Bruges (pronounced broojh), Belgium, after a job gone bad.  We don’t exactly know what exactly went bad, or why Bruges, but this movie isn’t about the mysteries of that.  Gleeson and Farrell take time debating it out loud, so the audience doesn’t have to get too preoccupied with it.

The entire film’s formula goes as follows: the dialogue is hilarious – exactly what you imagine British/Irish repartée to be in film, with some midget and drug jokes thrown in (Lots of midget jokes, actually),  And the action and plot events are black as the night.  Everything goes sideways, people’s past actions come back to haunt them, etc.  And when I say “formula”, I don’t want that to be taken as an insult.  I really only realized this about the movie now, and I saw the movie a couple of weeks ago.  It didn’t tarnish my viewing at all.

The writing in this film is a joy (see above, British/Irish repartée), with lots of merry cursing (“You retract that last bit about my cunt fucking kids!”) to liven it up.  Colin Farrell seems like kind of a divisive, or at least divided, actor.  He has mostly done pretty bad movies, but has made a couple interesting choices, and he seems to be getting better into his 30’s.  I personally liked Alexander, though it was a bit long.  I thought Farrell was great, although overshadowed by the even-more-interestingly-careered Val Kilmer in their scenes together.  Here Farrell is very good, if not the strongest actor in the movie.  He really knows how to get a laugh, it’s when he gets weepy that he drops off a bit.  But not all that much.

The strongest actors are Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes, Fiennes a bit more so.   Gleeson is paternal, wise, workmanlike, a bit presumptuous, and a bit simple.  Those may seem contradicting; they don’t to me and aren’t in the movie.  Fiennes is a cunt. (The movie’s words, not mine.  But I would have to agree.) A wondrous, wondrous cunt who, when his wife tells him to stop bashing a phone against a desk in anger (“It’s an inanimate object!”), screams “You’re an inanimate fucking object!” (Farrell notes, “Jeez, he swears a lot, doesn’t he?”)

This review was pretty crappy and fragmented, because it was written in spurts over a month’s time.  I promise to come back stronger with my next review.  Keep your ears to the ground.

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What kind of summer has it been; Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson review

August 13, 2008 at 3:22 am · Filed under Music Reviews ·Tagged , , , , ,

With Helena’s arrival today, I will be marking the final phase of summer vacation, this last week in town.  This summer shot by like a bullet – a hot, thunderstormy, musical, bloggy bullet.  I didn’t get to hang out with my friends as much as I wanted because my schedule was the opposite of everyone else’s except Ben, who had the same schedule, and was just as drained as I was at the end of work, but we hung out a reasonable amount anyway.  He’s cool.  He’s a cool guy.  With everyone else, it feels like I missed an opportunity.  Sad face.  I don’t think it was this blog’s fault, because I wrote almost all of my entries after 2 AM, so it didn’t really take away from anything but sleep.

The reason I felt the need to sum up was because I think I’m going to take a break until I get to Oberlin, which is August 19th.  This next week’s going to be very crazy, and this blog would complicate things too much.  But I will check up every so often to see if anyone else wrote reviews to fill the void (hint, hint).  But once class restarts, I will be in a creative writing workshop, so get ready for creative writing pieces to start becoming a bigger part of this site.  I don’t know if they will take the place of reviews the day they post them; I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

I knew Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson first when he opened for TV On The Radio at their free awesome concert at McCarren Park Pool last summer, and I thought he sounded a lot like Alec Ounsworth of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, but he seemed really cool and he was as good as any opener-for-an-opener I’ve seen.  So when I saw Pitchfork review his debut album, and I found it available online, I wanted to give it a try.  Wouldn’t you?

Well, having given the album a really good listen or two, I can say that my comparisons of MBAR to Ounsworth were not as accurate as I had thought, but not completely off.  His self-titled album (Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, for those keeping score) is at once classic singer-songwriter fare and anything but.  Listeners can tell that his studio recordings are just beefed up versions of songs originally meant for one man and his guitar, and his songs are very personal (and fucking DARK); but his influences of Grizzly Bear and TV On The Radio (GB’s Chris Taylor produced the album, and TVOTR’s Kyp Malone contributed to it as well in ways that I’m not exactly sure about, but I’m guessing they at least included backup guitar) take the songs to a shambling, ethereal place reserved for the aforementioned bands that have such a clear idea of their own sound that they can do anything within it.  And speaking of shambling, ethereal places, I should mention that this album is entirely about drug use and depression, using personal experiences which are way more intense than I anticipated.

Well, not every song is chiefly about drug use, but it’s all at least inspired by it and tangentially having to deal with it.  Album opener “Buriedfed”, also the best track on the album (why does that always happen? Have some place to go, people!), is a story about a man who kicks open the casket at his own funeral and the crazy things that happen to him after.  But there’s also an aside about drugs, in which MBAR slurs, “Reckless ruin is killing high/A great, fine victory we’re still alive/My, my, what a surprise/I got home late, I don’t care/Better late than never, dear.”  It starts out contemplative and mournful, and turns into a rousing anthem (though I don’t want any anthems to exist for drug use or kicking open caskets) and campfire chant.  It’s also one of two songs whose lyrics I could get in their entirety; the only other one was second track “The Debtor,” which is more directly, and more poetically, about, ahem, drugs.

In it, Miles mumbles, “Tried to stop the bleeding/It’s a shame that you failed/The red fell so hard, it hailed/Tried to kick on Tuesday/But I didn’t succeed/The air was too thick to breathe.” I don’t want to imply that MBAR is unintelligible, he just acts like the druggie he portrays in his songs, and was before and after this album was recorded back in 2006, though he, if you read the article I linked to, is clean now, meaning he smokes a ton of weed, but nothing else.

After reading that article, I found that MBAR fascinates me.  If his success grows, he will have lived the rock star life to its fullest, in the best and worst ways.

As a whole, this album is very compelling, and musically interesting, but it lacks charisma after the first few songs, which means that even at a reasonable length, this album drags.  But then again, that’s the difference between MBAR and bands like Grizzly Bear and TV On The Radio: they’re more developed, more confident, so they know what to do with their sound.  So I can’t give this album a positive review, just a pretty good.  But that doesn’t mean I’m not looking forward to his next.  I think Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson can go places, especially if he finds something better to call himself.  Jeez.

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