Glad to be a Liberal

It's been a while since I've put up a political post, so let's try one. Lots of lovely right wing scumbags to comment on.

First, there's one of our scummier mullahs, Pat Robertso, calling for the assassination of Hugo Chavez.

... then denying he did it.

... then weaseling about it. "Oh, I was 'adlibbing' - oh, I didn't mean it!"

Meanwhile, the American Legion disgraced itself: calling "an end to all “public protests” and “media events” against the war" -

"The American Legion will stand against anyone and any group that would demoralize our troops, or worse, endanger their lives by encouraging terrorists to continue their cowardly attacks against freedom-loving peoples," Thomas Cadmus, national commander, told delegates at the group's national convention in Honolulu.

The delegates voted to use whatever means necessary to "ensure the united backing of the American people to support our troops and the global war on terrorism."

Not a pretty picture.

Then there's Eugene Volokh, who's supposed to be a lawyer and a wise man (for a conservative) - writing at length about Gays and Lesbians Trying to Convert Others to Homosexual Behavior. The gist of which seems to be, gay people don't mind if bisexuals or straights are willing to sleep with them. But with charts, so it's gotta be serious. Right?

Actually, it's worse than that: apparently, he's put up a whole series of posts about homosexuality. I think Arthur Silber answered best.

A Loss

This is very sad - George Fasel, who ran a movie blog called A Girl and a Gun, has died. Despite being a hopeless movie geek, I've only really started looking for movie blogs in the last 2-3 months - this was one Lance Mannion recommended - it quickly jumped to the top of my list of blogs to read. For some reason, when people I don't know, but have started to know, die, I take it hard - I miss not getting to know people like Mr. Fasel better.

In his honor, I will list some of the better movie blogs I've come across - they are going on the "blogroll" too. (This blog is slowly starting to round into something coherent, too - after 2 years of playing...)

These are all good:

Filmbrain

Girl and a Gun

Culturespace

Girish Shambu

Long Pauses

Cinephiliac

Film Journey

Pullquote

Motion Picture it's Called

Self styled Siren

Randomized Entertainment

Sure, not all of these are strictly random - but... Like most people, I can lose hours on sites like these:

Overheard in New York
Overheard in Philly
Overheard in the Office
...And so on. I imagine everyone has one of those...
Live Journal Pictures - that really is wonderful. The cut up world.

And intentional collaborative/collective efforts: like Learning to Love You More.

Not to mention flipping through blogs...

Weekly Movie Post

This time, there are only three entries, and 2 of them repeats - I ended up watching Love Me Tonight a couple more times, and saw 2046 again. That only leaves one new film, which may be the only film covered in this post. The other two I think will require some more detail, especially 2046 (since it is new, and, now that I've seen it in a proper setting, I think it might be one of the best films of the decade.)

Junebug *** - a fine movie about the South, about a Chicago based English gallery owner who marries a man from North Carolina, and visits his family in the process of recruiting an "outsider artist"... It then turns into a kind of city folk in the sticks culture clash film, but without the usual cliches. It's a good film - fascinating, accurate, sympathetic, to everyone - it is interesting about art, especially outsider art (which it links, subtly, to broader habits, of making things, of taking pride in making things - woodworking, cooking, sewing, etc.) - on outsider art, it gets both the ugliness and passion of people like the artist here, with his psychotic civil war. Structurally, it does some notable things as well - the way Alessandro Nivola almost completely disappears when he goes home, turning into his father and brother, silent, mysterious, only emerging in a couple scenes - singing in church, the aftermath of the main plot event in the film... It's right - the way he changes when he's home - keeping his counsel, not wanting to reject them, but not part of them anymore either...

Stylistically, it's a well made indie type film with more than the usual ration of explicit Ozu references. I do mean explicit - credits on burlap, use of transition shots (within scenes even), the little tour Morrison gives of the house - as well as the broader influence of the story, the family dynamics, etc. It's not slavish imitation, and avoids the more obvious (and jolting) elements of Ozu's style - the frontal compositions, 180 degree cuts, the graphic matches and so on (which directors like Wes Anderson have adopted wholesale) - and some of the semantic elements (kids, marriages - though this is about marriage and leaving home, just seen from after the fact instead of before). But it's a clear homage, which Morrison has acknowledged.

EVIL Rears its UGLY Head, 2!

It's the 2005 edition of the Top Ten Most Ridiculous Black Metal Pics! Ooh, it's scary, especially the nudity...

Where I'll be Sometime Next Year

There is no ambiguity here, is there? All you need to know - it's a movie called Snakes on a Plane, and it stars Samuel L. Jackson.

Now - if they end up calling it Pacific Air Flight 121 - fuck that shit!

Snakes on a Plane.

(Via Majikthise.)

iRidin' the iRails Again

Or, this week's Friday Random Ten (13)....

1) At the Drive In - One Armed Scissors
2) Sunny Day Real Estate - In circles (live)
3) Fugazi - Blueprint
4) John Lennon - TheLuck of the Irish (live)
5) Feelies - Moscow Nights
6) Johnny Cash - The Old Account was Settled (live at San Quentin)
7) Modest Mouse - Truckers Atlas
8) Linda Ronstadt - Love is a Rose
9) fIREHOSE - Lost Colors
10) Rocket From the Tombs - Final Solution
11) Charlie Freak - Monotony (this is what shuffle is good for; a friend of mine knows a couple of the guys in this band; they're decent, kind of nu-metalish, though not unbearably so... not something I'm likely to pick on purpose, but nice to hear...)
12) Tom Waits - The Black Rider
13) Husker Du - Hanging On (live) - does this come up as often as it seems? Or have I just put this into every playlist I have? It's very cool, though; this is a great version; one of those great little 20 second Bob Mould guitar solos that packs a minute and a half of information in...

Useless Blogtrivia

I should know better, but I was bored, so I got to clicking on the "next blog" button up in the corner - and find that blogger has been almost completely taken over by blog-spammers. Something like 7 of the first 10 sites to come up were ad sites... I guess they aren't really spammers, unless they're comment spamming, but that's where I first noticed it, not here - I don't even get comment spam.... Anyway. Pretty bad. Takes away most of the temptation to blogsurf, not that that temptation comes up too often.

Stranger Than Fiction

Here's a story, about "strangelets" - I quote:

Formed in the Big Bang and inside extremely dense stars, strangelets are thought to be made from quarks - the subatomic particles found inside protons and neutrons. Unlike ordinary matter, however, they also contain "strange quarks", particles normally only seen in high-energy accelerators.

Strangelets - sometimes also called strange-quark nuggets - are predicted to have many unusual properties, including a density about ten million million times greater than lead. Just a single pollen-size fragment is believed to weigh several tons.

Very interesting stuff. (Link via Ezra Klein.)

Movies Recapped

I think this feature is starting to evolve: more than a list, though still not quite real reviews - something between. The weather has had a definite effect on this post - the rotten heat all last week kept me from doing much of anything, not even making the terrible effort to switch from cable to the DVD player.... And then yesterday, thunder and lightning knocked out internet access for most of the evening. But that takes away any excuse for not writing up blurbs - so...

One more thing: I am putting stars on these things for convenience, for shorthand, for comparison - but I hate the 0-4 rankings people like Ebert use. That's too narrow a range. I'd rather ignore all the bottom end and stretch the top end. You know - like GPA! 2.0 is passing! (So's 1.0, in some contexts - outside your major, in most places, I think.) So - ** is a passing grade: that's a film worth seeing, without a lot of reservations - though not great. *** is very good, if not great; **** is reserved for the best.... (we've also got ***** for all time greats, one of which turns up in this post!)

So then: last week's movies:

Grizzly Man *** - the story of Timothy Treadwell, a failed actor turned grizzly bear enthusiast who got himself and his girlfriend eaten in 2003 - he had shot video footage in the Alaskan wilderness for five years, and it fell to Werner Herzog to make a film out of this footage. That is a wise choice. Herzog, in his documentaries, often seems to play the voice of reason, a role he may not play as director of fiction - he is able to examine Treadwell, what he did wrong, what he did right what he was like - to show Treadwell's personality, his beliefs, as well as Herzog's own ideas. Both men tend to project their desires onto nature - Treadwell idealizing bears and animals and the wilderness, to the point of incomprehension when he finds evidence of nature's cruelty; but Herzog's response, that nature is all cruelty, murder, chaos, is equally distorting. Just the fact that Treadwell spent 13 summers living very close to grizzly bears (and was eaten when he changed his routine) tells you something - as does his footage, showing himself living very well with bears, foxes - and foxes with bears as well - shows that nature contains both, harmony and mayhem....

It's that kind of film - it tempts you to philosophize about what it means - the film, Treadwell's life, his death, Herzog's career... I will leave instead with the note about plot: this film exists, in any form, because of Treadwell's death. It's the "grandma on the swing" rule from funniest home videos - granny on the swing is just cute video - but granny falls off the swing, it becomes a story. Which, itself, is a pure example of the Formalist rule about "making strange" - the strange, resisting element - the death of Treadwell (or a junkie rock star, coming up in Last Days) - catches our attention - and draws our attention to the rest of the material, to the everyday. Gus Van Sant has made three films in a row that exploit this device - the presence of death makes them into stories, but in doing so, gives the mundane, everydayness of the rest of the films weight. The strange element makes everything strange - makes you notice. Now, Treadwell's footage is gripping enough (I mean, he was petting wild grizzly bears, the idiot!), but his death allowed this film to be made - turned nature video into a meditation on the human soul. Really.

The Aristocrats - **1/2 - Documentary about a joke. The joke goes - a man walks into a talent agency and says, I got a great act for you; the talent agent says, what's the act? The man describes it - a string of obscenity and filth - the agent is shocked - my god, he says, what do you call that act? The aristocrats! The kick is the middle part - describing the act. How bad can you get? The film shows a swarm of comics telling the joke, talking about the joke, or other jokes, or just jokes... it's hilarious at times - it also tends to drag at times. Comedy depends on surprise, and to get a surprise out of this old a joke takes a sure touch. The best versions do that - surprise you, or succeed in the details of the scatology (George Carlin's bits about corn, and peanuts, say, make his version of the joke). The worst just list off atrocities and say fuck and suck a lot.

Last Days - **** - Gus Van Sant follows a junkie rock star around his big crumbling manse. Not much happens - there's a quartet of twits hanging around, misbehaving and annoying the star... Mormons come by, a yellow pages representative, Kim Gordon, Ricky Jay in a great turn as a talkative PI.... That's about all. As with Elephant, the knowledge of how it will end focuses your attention on what is happening - which is mostly banal, but given great gravity, because it is Life, and we know that what is coming is Death - and everything suddenly becomes precious. Macaroni and cheese, sour milk, feedback all play their roles. Another marvelous film.

Love Me Tonight - ***** - Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, directed by Rouben Mamoulian, music by Rogers and Hart. This is very close to the perfect musical - the perfect fairy-tale musical anyway (though it's also anticipating many of the devices of the "folk tale" musical [blame Rick Altman] - making music out of everyday sounds, singing out of talking, dancing out of walking, passalong songs, and so on). MC is a tailor who tries to collect from a deadbeat Vicomte, who passes him off as a baron, to buy time... while MC woos MacDonald, a widowed princess... Class contends with charm, and everything works out in the end - she gets her Prince Charming, who wasn't a prince, but he was charming... A beautiful and completely delightful movie.

Commuting with iTunes

Another Friday Random 10, though this time, it's 14, because this is, instead of the first 10 songs to pop up on the iPod, all the songs that came up on the iPod while I was en route to and from work. Thus:

1) James Carter and the Prisoers - Po Lazarus
2) Dr.Nerve - It's a Tincture (all 11 seconds of it)
3) DNA - Lying on the Sofa of Life
4) The Beatles - Honey Pie
5) Robert Johnson - Stones in my Passway
6) Wipers - Soul's Tongue
7) Godspeed You Black Emperor! - Motherfucker=Redeemer
8) The Clash - Train in Vain (Stand By Me)
9) Minutemen- Political Sog for Michael Jackson to Sig
10) Black Sabbath - Children of the Grave
11) Louvin Brothers - Just Rehearsing
12) The Kinks - (Don't) Forget to Dance
13) Come - Bell
14) Sleater-Kinney - Angry Inch

A nice run. I like the mix of traditional and avant-garde there at the beginning, moving through rather odd Beatles to the epic stylings of Godspeed... with a punk heavy second half, nicely flavored with the Louvin Brothers and some quietish Kinks. A nice mix.

Filmic Round-Up

Only four this week - odd. Watched The Son twice, though - that makes a difference...

Elevator to the Gallows - *** - Jeanne Moreau wandering Paris at night looking for her lover - who's trapped in an elevator... They'd schemed to kill her husband - it worked like a charm - except he left something behind - and when he went back... everything went wrong. Sleek and tense and ironic, with its doubled pair of protagonists (2 kids steal his car and pretend to be the lover ad his wife) getting each other in trouble... And Moreau is just very cool, looking like Bridget Lin in Chungking Express (I don't know if the resemblance is intentional, but it could be.)

Broken Flowers - ***1/2 - Jim Jarmusch directs Bill Murray as an "aging don Juan" (named Don Johnston) who gets a letter from an anonymous old flame warning him that he has a son. His neighbor urges him to find the woman - so he sets off across the country looking for which of the 4 possible lovers sent the letter. Murray plays it in complete deadpan mode, but he makes everything, every twitch, every movement of the eye, every angle count. It's quiet and sad, but very well done...

The Son - **** - The Dardennes brothers have won 2 top prizes at Cannes in 6 years, for Rosetta and L'Enfant - they probably could have won for this as well. Tells the story of a carpentry instructor who takes on a new apprentice - who clearly causes him great stress. Slowly, we learn why... it is about revenge and forgiveness and transference, and probably most of all, about work as redemption, about practicing a trade as a religious act. It is also, in a strange way, a kind of musical - the sounds of carpentry, the band of hammers and whine of saws - the synchronized movement of people working, apart and together, becomes music, and becomes a dance. Certainly the camera dances with the actors - the star, Olivier Gourmet, describes the process as a kind of ballet, during an interview included on the DVD. It is a great film indeed.

East of Borneo - **1/2 - more bad films - but this is a different order of bad film. The source material for Joseph Cornell's surrealist found footage Rose Hobart - the original is no slouch on the weirdness front. Rose plays a woman looking for her husband in the wilds of Borneo - she finds him living with a decadent Prince far up in the jungles - melodrama rears its ugly head for a scene or two, the the crocodiles swarm and volcanos erupt.... Not quite as brilliant as Guy Maddin's review would lead you to believe, but a keeper anyway, with it's off synch editing, stock footage of beasts, bad acting, decadence, symbolism, and the like.

Another Friday Random Ten

Hee we are, then - first 10 songs to come up on the iPod.... annotated, even. I don't know if this will be a lasting innovation....

I've got my replacement for my (broken) big iPod - I can't say it shows, exactly, since nothing really obscure came up - actually, I had most of the obscure stuff (White Heaven, say) on the emergency iPod - if Sweet or Glenn Gould or Heart had come up, that's probably more due to getting all my music back... Anyway, here goes!

1) Pixies - Gouge Away
2) Pretenders - Tattooed Love Boys - if I were doing coolness audits, this gets a 10 - one of the first punk songs to make me sit up and notice - and one of the great guitar solos....
3) Sly & The Family Stone - Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) - Sly and company always rank high on the coolness scale. On any scale.
4) The Blank Theory - Sour Times - I don't know anything about this - comes from some compilation. Sounds okay, but I can't say anything else about it.
5) X-Ray Spex - Art-I-Ficial - first rate, this.
6) White Heaven - My Cold Dimention - Michio Kurihara and the boys swipe the riff to War Pigs, Kuri does some wanking... decent stuff, but there's better. The more Kurihara in a song, the better it is, and this is kind of short and conventional.
7) The Band - the Night they Drove OldDixie Down - a classic.
8) Red Crayola - Former Reflections Enduring Doubt - I'll take it, though I tnd to like Red Crayola's albums better than their songs in isolation - the flow of songs, sounds, etc., tends to work better than the songs by themselves. But this is pretty cool.
9) Cream - Swlabr - Cream is palatable. As long as Clapton knows his job is to play guitar he's fairly safe.
10) Wire - Men 2nd - Wire is always welcome.

Movies Weekly

I may have missed the Friday Random ten (I was at Fenway, booing Manny*), but I can make my weekly movie post, I hope. Thisweek brings us a couple new films, a couple DVDs, and a gift from TMC...

5x2 - *** - moment to moment, shot by shot, Francois Ozon is one of the best directors in the world. He's not necessarily showy (though sometimes he is), but he makes everything he does seem right. This is the story of a marriage, told in reverse, from divorce to first attraction, in five discreet episodes. Critics have sniffed at the structure, and maybe they have a point - but it serves a couple purposes that can't quite be gainsaid: it keeps you from investing in the suspense of what will happen - you know what will happen - so you don't think about how it will turn out; because of this knowledge, Ozon is free to concentrate on the incidents in their isolation - and on those moment to moment, shot to shot details. And, it allows Ozon to pose other couples against the main pair, in a more interesting way than if he had told the story chronologically. This strikes me as more important than most of the reviews I've seen notice - that each section (except the first) brings on a different couple, who pose a kind of alternative to them.... I don't know if this is enough to make it really work - except that it does work, at least it kept me completely engrossed, in the fate of a pair of people who aren't really worth the trouble.

Wedding Crashers -*** - there seems to be a wide range of opinions about this, critics (kind of) hating it, loving it, everything in between: I'll have to come down on the liking end of the scale. It's funny; Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson are both in great form... the story? it's got a couple wild boys settling down because of women - oldest plot in the book - except, the women here aren't exactly all that settling. True love, here, is finding someone who wants to join you in doing what you want to do anyway...

The Merry Widow - **** - Ernst Lubitsch directs Maurice Chevalier and Jeannette MacDonald - plus the requisite second bananas - Edward Everett Horton, Sterling Holloway, etc. - in a classic Viennese musical comedy. And who can resist? And what would possess anyone to resist?

42nd Street - **** - I see that look - yes, yes, more Berkeley. This one's on DVD so I can take another look... I've finally gotten around to reading Rick Altman (all that Berkeley adulation back in May and June was the start, not the end...), and am looking at 42nd Street in his terms. It's interesting - some of the elements he stresses are in full swing here (the modulation from real to ideal, the "audio dissolve") - others, such as the formation of the couple, are less clear. It would be interesting to spend some time on this film, in that context - I may, but not tonight. I will limit myself to this - the duality of work and art (real/ideal, inside the machine/above the machine, etc.) - the way the backstage part of the film builds toward the explosion of the Berkeley numbers, which themselves repeat the pattern, building from the stage possible to pure cinema - and maintaining the "real" (the real stage, I mean - the painted backgrounds in the 42nd Stret number, for instance) and the "ideal" (here, the illusionism of the cinema - the creation of depth and cinematic space during the number.) Etc. It is a glory of a film....

Showgirls - 0/inc. - ah. So lately I have been trying to track down crappy movies, and see if they really are crappy. This is an obvious candidate for that. Well - unfortunately, the DVD did not cooperate - giving up the ghost somewhere around the 52 minute mark. So now what? Is it fair to praise or trash it without seeing the rest? No, probably not - thus the "incomplete". But do I expect the rest of the film to change the impression of the first half? Not really. The odd thing is, it's actually rather difficult to attack it. Film Quarterly, for example, ran a roundtable discussion of it a couple issues back - the contributors ran off the predictable litany of its virtues - it is camp, it is satire, it comments, fairly meaningfully, on gender, race, class, sex, performance, drag, genre, movies, Las Vegas, etc., it establishes visual motifs of the double, the mirror, the whole nine yards. Al that is true - that stuff is all there. And it's probably supposed to be there a good deal of the style, feel, structure - good bad or indifferent - are pretty clearly intentional. So - why isn't it a neglected, misunderstood masterpiece? Well - partly because all of those things, whether they're in the film or not, are more interesting to talk about than to watch. They are in the film - usually in a bland, literal, calculated way - which it parodies, ironically.... The terrible sense one gets, in the end, is that Showgirls is to, oh, 42nd Street, what Creed is to The Ramones. Yeah - Creed is a rock group - look! they have a guitar player, he's got a leather jacket, they have a long haired singer, they sig songs! - it's rock, right? But it's just - just - just -

Zabriskie Point - ***1/2 - meanwhile: here's Antonioni trying to do a hippy flick. It's interesting, if never quite functional. Has some great shots of LA at the beginning - industrial wastelands, billboards, freeways... then heads out into the desert, where the boy and girl Antonioni has been somewhat aimlessly following meet. They go into the desert and flirt, and when the sex starts, Antonioni stages a very strange mass orgy in the dust - which now strikes me as a distant homage to The Merry Widow (or film like it) - in the Lubitsch film, there is a montage toward the end of Chevalier and MacDonald dancing - they dance alone in a room, then are joined by hundreds of dancers - Lubitsch cuts to another room, they dance alone, then hundreds of dancers come in - repeated a couple more ties... The Antonioni has the same effect - though it's silly rather than exhilarating. What is exhilarating, though, is the ending - ah, the redemptions of imaginary violence and Pink Floyd!

*I didn't boo Manny! the crowd did, and I don't blame them - but hey - he gets a big hit (like he did today), and all is forgiven.

Movies, Dully Listed and -

- I am going to try this. What does it look like? I don't know. This is just what I have seen since the last post about movies. I am going to adopt a shameless rating system, 1-4 stars, just like Roger Ebert! Sort of. Throwing in what commentary occurs to me. In an ideal world, something like this would become a weekly tradition, a Sunday night tradition, in the spirit of the Friday iMusic-blogging, and any other spirits I can conjure. I need some spirits if this blog is going to be anything other than a once a week music post...

Murderball ***
Youth of the Beast (DVD) ****
The Beat My Heart Skipped ***1/2
Batman and Robin (DVD) **1/2 - I have been trying to watch some crappy movies lately - to test myself, see if they are really all that crappy. This one, actually, crappy as it is, is not as crappy as it could be. Yes yes, the dialogue is appalling, the story is dim-witted, the spectacle is tiring and direction lacks any juice - for all that, it almost achieves the campiness it aims for - the spectacle here has slowed down from Batman Forever, and that makes it work better - the set design and colors and lighting - the whole works - works better slow - it looks more like a comic book or the TV show - and that is good, at least here. Uma Thurman in particular seems to get the idea, and camps it up with real gusto - she has the eye-rolling scene chewing absurdity of the TV villains; she's quite good. The rest... well... still... what can I say?
2046 (DVD) ***1/2 - I also saw a trailer for this at the movies - I am pleased. It is gorgeous indeed, even on DVD, but the TV cannot do justice to its widescreen, rich, lucious lighting... I shall reserve judgment on it until I see it in a proper setting - though it looks pretty good as is.
Happily Ever After - **1/2 - I was disappointed, somewhat to my surprise. A French ensemble comedy that didn't quite go anywhere.
Batman Forever - ** - I should hate it, but... it's passable, Carrey and Jones ham it up in fine style, and it almost manages... but in the end, this is probably the dregs of the franchise - that alone is perhaps a radical statement, given the usual reception of Batman and Robin - but I have to call what I see...
Me and You and Everyone We Know - *** - one of those films I couldn't help finding fault with, but that somehow adds up to more.... I think what it gets right - the kids, the performances (by John Hawkes and the kids playing his sons, especially), the structure - the loose arrangements of stories around a fairly convention romantic plot that it keeps in the background - outweighs what it gets wrong... some of the cutesier dialogue, some of the more overt symbol mongering, and anytime Miranda July herself appeared on screen - what an obnoxious character she played! On the whole then... I liked it. (This is one I may come back to when I have a chance.)
Mysterious Skin - **1/2 - billed as the Gregg Araki film that doesn't suck, it managed to reach that not very exalted level... ad maybe more. It started slow, but got better - Araki found a rhythm in the last third, and the characters seemed to outgrow the cliches they'd begun as... the acting is quite strong, and it ends on a powerful note.

In Memorial

...to an old friend - one of my brother's cats, Katrina. Aged - 14 plus - has expired of kidney failure, I believe. Poor old cat! She was a sweetheart...

In her memory - here she is. A kind of special Friday Cat Blog....

And a close up, looking for some petting:

Friday Random 10, Again

And, another quick and simple one. One of these days....

1. Ramones - Blitzkreig Bop - where it all started
2. Sleater Kinney - Banned from the End of the World
3. 15.60.75 (The Numbers) - About the Eye Game - this band and this record (Jimmy Bell's Still in Town) probably are the most underrated band and record in history.
4. At The Drive In - Napoleon Solo
5. Bjork -Verandi
6. Velvets - Candy Says
7. U2 - The Fly
8. Sunny Da Real Estate - Grendel
9. Fugazi - Cassavetes
10. Donovan - Sunshine Superman

iEulogy

This is a sad post. Not the end of the world - but the end of an iPod; and a couple weeks of irritation getting it replaced. It was working fine last week - thank god for that! This post documents its last triumph, 2 1/2 hours on the train, coming back from vacation. A couple days later - nada! woulnd't boot! (And bad timing too - a bunch of kids trying to sing on the subway - No! do not sing on the subway trains! even if you are moderately competent singers! do not do it! do not!) Anyway - this is a long post: I jotted stuff down while I was listening, and have added some since.. That (and inconsistent internet performance, oppressive heat and humidity, and sloth) have delayed the arrival of this post: but I hope it is worth waiting for! There are 35 songs here - that's a pretty good haul....

1) Que Vida- Love: this list was randomly generated, on the iPod, by opening the "Songs" list and starting at the beginning. This is the beginning, thanks to the spanish punctuation that marks the title. This never shows up on these lists since I always jump to the the next song. But this time, I'm leaving it in. It's a good song, after all - and it only seems right.
2) Red Morning Light - Kings of Leon: I don't have much to say, except it's a better song than I remembered - got this record, didn't listen to it all that much... but not bad.
3)Ye Olde Battlaxe - Danielson Famille: always welcome - "give it up for your momma!"
4) Exit Does Not Exist - Modest Mouse: lack of insightful comment does not imply comment. This is early MM, lots of guitars scratching each other like angry cats. Good stuff.
5) Walk on the Wild Side - Lou Reed:This song has a place - memories - I remember hearing it on the radio, when I was very young. I had no way to know what the lyrics were about. It sounded great and seductive and a bit scary, though. And the colored girls go do-de-do-de-do...
6) Everyday - Yo La Tengo: so far the iPod seems to be running a tribute to what I listened to from 1999-2001... right.
7) Marooned - Wire: no comment recorded...
8) Circles - Dag Nasty: uh oh! negativity! "Dull DC hardcore" says my notes... oops.
9) Electricity - Captain Beefheart: very cool; back to that 99-01 thing - a period where I started buying a lot of records again, concentrating on edgy, punky stuff - some contemporary, some classic - the Captain led the way, among the latter group...
10) Little Queen - Heart: the notes read, "better songs on here, but hey" - I think I was referring to Heart songs - should I admit to being a Heart fan? even just sort of a Heart fan? I should have pretended this was there for ironic or nostalgic reasons, but it really isn't...
11) Long Black Veil - Johnny Cash (live at Folsom): Stunningly beautiful song, with the bit where he almost breaks himself up ("I'd been in the arms of another man'swife") - then ends with the routine about a glass of water... the range Johnny Cash represented in everything he did...
12) Crown of Love - Arcade Fire: another good song, unglossed
13) I Think I Love You - The Partridge Family: oh, you mean this? but while this may be cheese, it's pretty cool cheese - goofy, but rather well constucted and written, and the kind of thing you turn up when you hear it on the radio, whether you're laughing at it or just digging it. Irony or pleasure you ask? both! sheesh!
14) Numb Erone - The Residents: I need more of their stuff. Odd, but fascinating tunage...
15) What's So Good About Goodbye? - Smokey Robinson and the Miracle: one of the greats here. Another of the greats, really - Lou Reed and Johnny Cash have come up, the Captain - Smokey is in that company.
16) One More Night - Can: cool quiet, understated, sexy stuff. Another band I went after when I started buying lots of records again... a bit later - 01-02... lots of Kraut rock and Japanese noise from that period.
17) Shakin' Through - REM:back when Michael Stipe refused to enunciate. God bless him.
18) Traveling Riverside Blues - Robert Johnson: "you know what I'm talking about" - go get em, Robert!
19) When My Baby's Beside Me - Big Star:god damn, what a gorgeous song! I went too long without listening to big star - a story of technology (the end of the LP)... I am very glad I found this CD, and stopped pretending I was going to set up the record player again...
20) Cortez The Killer - Neil Young (live) - very cool, but I have to admit, the Built to Spill version might have it beat.... if that had come up, this would have been a shorter list though!
21) A Second Life - Damon and Naomi (with Michio Kurihara): this comes up all the time - probably because I've added it to about 6 playlists. I'm not complaining. They are really good - this new record is really good... they are quiet, soothing, yes, but with a cool, sexy edge to them - and then Kurihara comes in, his solo (here) shocking, beautiful - top of the line song.
22) Embassy Row - Pavement: geez - this came up on the last one, didn't it?
23) Gravity Rides Everything - Modest Mouse: makes you want to buy a minivan! well, you know. That and a sexy soccer mom... Hey - I'm not complaining. A nice song - I'm not gonna begrudge Isaac and the boys getting a paycheck along the way.
24) Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands - Bob Dylan: a pretty song, this...
25) Breadcrumb Trail - Slint: this band grew out of squirrel bait, apparently - a band I never heard, but remember reading about back in the 80s, in Spin, for instance... Slint is interesting enough - got a nice slow burn about them... bought this because of the publicity about their "reunion" - pure curiosity...
26) Awaken - Six Organs of Admittance:
27) The Art of the Fugue: contra - Glenn Gould: um - what am I supposed to say about this? classical music (and a lot of jazz) doesn't make as much sense on the iPod as it could...
28) Light My Fire - Emma Franklin: from one of those Mojo compilations... this one sounds like the singer has, some time in her life, actually gotten laid. (The poor Lizard King - handsome to look at, in his youth, but about as sexy as a mangy rat.)
29) Return the Gift - Gang of Four: cool, cool, cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. "We'll send you an inside shower." Thanks! (They, on the other hand, are sexy as all fuck.)
30) One PM Again - Yo La Tengo: 30 songs in, te first band to repeat! pretty good, I have to say.
31) Pig's in Zen - Janes Addiction: nice to hear old friends... pig is nude, unashamed...
32) Till the Morning Comes - Grateful Dead: pretty sog - lots of them on that record - kind of dull, but great material.
33) Baby's on Fire - Eno: this isn't dull. Being a fan of guitar wannking, this will always be a classic - it's more interesting now, knowing that the guitar player has a name - Phil Manzanera, if I'm not mistaken. It's interesting, knowing it's someone I can trace to other records - listen for the similarities to something like "Gun" - it adds a dimension...
34) Motherbanger - Chris Morris:A very funny, and pretty damned good, Pixies parody - "I want to have sex with a mutant ibex"...
35) Remainder - Rites of Spring: and we're home....

Not a dog in the lot - not even any filler (since I'm not here to apologize for Heart or the Partridge Family). A very nice goodbye. I may do this again when the replacement comes in. Take a long train ride, just to get my money's worth from the toy...

Flickers of Life!

in the form of a (day late)Friday iPod post.... there may be another friday iPod post, last week's - in the form of a eulogy for my new iPod, which gave up the ghost, but not before providing 2 hours of train riding random entertainment - whch I am inclined to share.

But right now - just a random 10, from my old (though reloaded) iPod:

1 Stereo Sanctity - Sonic Youth
2 Tzomborgha - Ruins
3 Excitable Boy - Warren Zevon
4 Money Folder - Madvillain
5 Embssy Row - Pavement
6 Shelter from the Storm - Bob Dylan
7 D. Boon - Uncle Tupelo
8 Do It Clean - Echo and the Bunnymen
9 Sloth - Fairport Convention (live)
10 Bonnie and Clyde - Serge Gainsbourg

Friday is iPod Day

and do we have a random 10 for you! yee haw! just barely, I have to admit - the battery was run down to its last gasp... just snuck this in there.

1 Dawn - Mahavishnu Orchestra
2 I threw it all away - Yo la tengo
3 Camel Backwards - Sunburned Hand of the Man
4 Lost in the Supermarket - the Clash
5 Ricky - Butthole Surfers
6 Change - Asian Dub Foundation
7 Tundra/Desert - Modest Mouse
8 When you're gone away - The Waterboys
9 Don't Worry - Pere Ubu
10 Blueprint - Fugazi