Post Holiday Catchup

Well, Thanksgiving is beyond us, the "Holiday Season" has descended, the work week beckons, and I am home and - um - have a whole mess of homework for class... But I have to put something here... at least a few links, if nothing else.

First - I have been remiss in not linking to Frankensteinia's Boris Karloff Blogathon - I've been worse than that - I haven't even been reading it. He should have had the decency not to be born the week of Thanksgiving - how could he? But blogathons may end, but the internet never ends, and there is plenty there and at all the links to read...

And - a new quiz from Dennis Cozzalio - I promise to respond sometime this week.

The end of the decade lists are starting to appear - I will let Girish's post on the Cinematheque Ontario list stand for them all for now.

And? Long time internet acquaintance Evan Waters has a short radio play airing here - it should be archived for 2 weeks...

Finally? In honor of last week's concert - how about a blurry picture of the Feelies, tuning up?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Did someone say the turkey was ready?

Don't eat too much... yeah, right... don't forget to share with the kitties...

Happy Thanksgiving.

Forces at Work

Sorry for missing Friday's random 10 - I've been playing that game on facebook lately, which has advantages, being more interactive... it's purposes here are to force me to post something - to give me a framework for fairly arbitrary links posts - and to say something about music. But today - in compensation for not posting anything all week, I am going for something more substantial....

Tomorrow night, the Feelies are coming to town - I will be there. They're opening for Sonic Youth, but, much as I like Sonic Youth (and despite the fact that I have never seen Sonic Youth - one of the significant underground bands of the 80s I didn't see at the time), they are an afterthought. The Feelies are back, playing live, and the world is a better place for it.

I don't follow the music world very closely these days - I might never have known about this show if I hadn't found their web site a month or so ago. I was looking for them on the web because I was feeling nostalgic. I was feeling nostalgic because I went to see a concert a month or so ago - my niece was in town visiting colleges, and wanted to see The Airborne Toxic Event - I tagged along with her and her mother out of curiosity, and just generally enjoying live music, even though I don't see it much anymore.... There were three bands on the bill, the other two called Red Cortez and the Henry Clay People - bunch of LA bands on tour together, I guess it is... I went in innocent - I had never heard of any of these bands, and the only exposure I'd had was to look a couple of them up on YouTube, though I never finished any of the videos. I went in innocent, and came out - I guess disappointed isn't the word, but - they weren't awful - just drab, by the numbers, indie rock. They all felt like cover bands - though I admit that may be a function of me being 1000 years old, and of pretty much every rock band in the last 30 years sounding like a cover band. I don't hold that against them. They just weren't, any of them, very good cover bands. A really great cover band can make the originals sound like the copy.

You could say I'm building to something here, though it's another paragraph away.... Back to that show - none of the three were good enough to get me past guessing who they were channeling. Red Cortez? Franz Ferdinand trying to recreate Rattle and Hum era U2 - I include fashion sense and the singer's fondness for slinging his guitar across his back.... Henry Clay People? Mott the Hoople by way of Kings of Leon? They were the most interesting, by the way - Mott the Hoople? They didn't cover All the Way to Memphis, but they didn't have to - all their originals sounded like All the Way to Memphis. I think we could do with more bands trying to sound like Mott the Hoople.... And the headliners? I hate to cite Pitchfork, but - you know... Seriously? they usually sounded like New Order fronted by Chris Martin - the first half of that will keep your toes tapping at least. They too betrayed a fondness for Rattle and Hum, quoting it, and the lyrics I could catch certainly seemed up to the standards of mid-80s U2 - which is to say, godawful. And - I don't know if this is the most damning thing or not - they looked like they came straight from central casting. Lots of onstage speeches about not being from the glammy side of LA, but they still look like a Disney band. Acted it often enough too....

Okay. Enough bitchery. I was not, after all, the intended demographic (the niece is - at the bottom of the demographic, maybe, but 17-22 seems about right.) And complaints aside, it was a reasonably pleasant evening. Derivative, bland, but likeable enough. Not every band is going to knock you on your ass the first time you see or hear them. Ah - but - you gotta hope.... It does happen. Not often - but I have seen bands I'd never heard before that won me over on the spot. The Butthole Surfers, say - though I'd read about them, and I admit, that was the show, the surgery films, the stripper, the bullhorn (I missed the fire and the riot, as my ride was bored... still...) And when you get that feeling a couple times, you want more of it - and when a band you have never heard takes the stage, there's that moment or two when they still can do it - they can do absolutely anything - they can surprise you - they can blow you away - they can be perfect.... Which I suppose brings me back to the beginning.

I saw REM in 1986 - at that time, they were my favorite band, by a long shot. I went to the concert (and they were in fine form) and came out humming - the opening act's music. (Mixed in with Little America, for some reason...) "Slipping (Into Something)" to be precise.... The Feelies, of course. I had heard of the Feelies - I knew Peter Buck produced their record - that's all I knew. They opened and completely stole the show. I saw them a few months later - they opened for Husker Du - they stole the show; they were faster, more intense - it wasn't close. And after that, I saw them every time they came to town - usually playing once or twice a year at the Paradise. They never disappointed, it never got old. I see video of their recent performances, back together after all those years - they still seem sharp and tight and as thrilling as ever. So there you go.

They are (and were) also the band that - more than anyone - signaled - something different about rock music. That crack about everyone in the last 30 years sounding like a cover band - I'm not kidding. And the Feelies were probably the first band that drove that idea home to me. Granted - this is the 1986 (and on) Feelies - Crazy Rhythms doesn't fit the theory so well... but the rest of their career feels almost like the Borges of rock. Not just for the actual covers (which very often do make the originals sound like Feelies covers) - for their way their originals sound like covers of songs someone should have written. Everything sounds like that lost forgotten unreleased Velvet Underground record, or maybe something by Iggy Pop or the Beatles you’ve never heard before. There are records that exist in dreams that seem as though they should be real, just as there are books you dream about that should exist. The Feelies are like the caretakers of these dreams, just as Borges is the caretaker of the libraries of dream books. Their songs sound familiar, half-remembered - though better than the originals must have been...

But these days, this is the rule, not the exception. Rock music is an odd genre - once upon a time it was a generational marker, a big old break with the past.... When I was growing up, no one I knew had parents who liked rock - that extends to most of the people I know within 5-10 years of me. But now - my peers are all getting old, and have kids of our own, and those kids listen to the same stuff we did. And the new music they listen to is the same as the stuff I listened to 20, 30 years ago. My niece is coming down to see this Feelies/Sonic Youth show - bands 12-15 years older than she is. Bands obviously a lot more adventurous than Airborne Toxic Event and their ilk. Though in fact - both of them feel like very "late" bands - or like - how to put this? like bands that have accepted that there isn't much more new to do in rock, so you stop worrying about that and start exploring the sounds you can make.... a new translation of Thomas Browne's Urn Burial - a new tuning, a new trick you can play with a screwdriver...

Because as far as I can tell, rock has stopped. There has been nothing new since - well - there's Rap, which is a new movement somewhere next to rock (though it's pretty much in the same boat, only since 1990 or so, not 1980)... Seriously? I'd say the Minutemen were the last band that didn't sound like what came before them. Since the Minutemen, there have been no bands that would not have fit easily into the music scene before they existed. If this sounds like criticism, it is not - I think this is true of some of my favorite bands ever - The Feelies, REM, the Meat Puppets - I like an awful lot of music from the last 20 years, from Pavement to Sleater Kinney to Mercury Rev to Six Organs of Admittance to TV on the Radio to the Liars to the White Stripes, and on and on... But they could have existed 10 years before they did. Could Pere Ubu or the Minutemen have existed in 1968? (They at least needed the Stooges and Captain Beefheart to inspire them, right?)

I have a theory about why this is, actually: I think somewhere in the 1950s and 60s, we became a completely media saturated world (or, big chunks of the world did.) Media saturation meant, among other things, that nothing ever went away. Everyone my age and younger has heard all of the history of rock and roll all their lives - we have the records, we live in and with pop music in ways my parents absolutely did not, and most of my friends' parents never did. Music, pop music, rock, rap, etc. is a completely pervasive presence in our lives: it's a given in our lives. I think, for all the insistence on the ephemeral nature of pop music, that its pervasiveness has made it almost eternal. Nothing ever goes away - at least the good stuff never goes away. I think it makes rock, and other pop forms, more like folk music - old songs passed along, new songs built on the structure of old... A nice idea, actually. I like having 12 year olds marvel that I don't have enough Elvis on the iPod, or 9 year olds play me Johnny Cash as the greatest thing they've ever heard. I mean, it is!

Friday the Thirteenth, is It?

Another Friday - I've had a more productive week than usual, thanks to internet goofballs and some significant anniversaries... I have another paper to write and am procrastinating on that, so I might get a few more posts up here in the next few days... Still - habits are useful, so let's maintain this one.

Links? there have been a ton in the past week or so - I should have plenty... the high point for film writing is probably David Cairn's Vertigo post from last week - actually the culmination of a series of posts on Vertigo, itself the high point of his ongoing Hitchcock series. He's already on to North by Northwest... I would hope everyone is already following along...

Dennis Cozzalo is the latest to take issue with Richard Schickel's attack on Robert Altman. I've commented on a couple of the earlier remarks - at Scanners, and at The Moviezzz Blog - I don't have anything profound to add to the other comments (especially not to Cozzalio's outstanding essay), just that anyone who thinks that Altman made careless, shoddy works needs to pay more attention. Dennis mentions someone who was turned off by Altman's excessive control - I don't quite buy that, but at least I understand the argument. A professional critic writing of Altman "How did a man with no interest in the fundamentals of film get taken seriously for as long as he did?" - is guilty of professional malpractice.... (And whoever paid him for a book review should demand their money back - Schickel barely mentions the book.)

And - one more - another marvel from Roger Ebert. Whatever he was as a film critic, as a blogger and columnist, he is on a very short list of the best there are.

And end it with some "too-easy blog fodder" (cause god knows I need all the help I can get), a random ten:

1. Danielson - Five Stars and Two Thumbs Up - I think this is the last thing they released as a band - kind of too bad, they're good...
2. Daniel Lenoir - Agave
3. Outkast - Humble Mumble
4. Asian Dub Foundation - Naxalite
5. fIREHOUSE - Down with the Bass
6. The Mars Volta - Cygnus... Vismund Cygnus - today's shameless guitar wanking, though Omar Rodriguez can wank with the best of them...
7. NIel Diamond - I Got the Feeling (oh no, no)
8. Beastie Boys - Shadrach - always good to hear from the beastie boys, especially this, one of the great record...
9. Velvet Underground - Black Angel's Death Song
10. Bob Dylan - On the Road Again

And video, since - video is good: look! fIREHOSE!

The Great War Remembered

I think Veteran's Day might be my favorite holiday - or, not favorite, not exactly that - but the one I find most - moving? It's certainly the one "serious" holiday I seem to post about every year. It may be that it has retained much more of its "true meaning" than any others - Memorial Day or Labor Day are markers of the seasons, excuses to have a cookout - they're underlying meanings are, not forgotten, but moved back in the mix. Veteran's Day - barely celebrated anymore (though I think one of the reasons it holds onto some of its power is that when it is celebrated, it's celebrated on the Day Itself - the Monday holidays tend to lose their specificity over time) - means almost nothing except what it means.

Though I suppose what it means is open to dispute. I agree with Jim Henley - that what it means to me is mostly Armistice Day. I much prefer to treat Memorial Day as a day to remember the dead; Armistice Day should be precise. It should be about 11/11/1918, the end of the Great War - WWI needs to be remembered, in itself. That war seems to have a special place in the disasters of this world - it represents a sharp and clear rift in the human experience, and unlike most such events, there is nothing whatsoever one can find in it to take comfort from. It isn't hope dashed or desires thwarted, it's stupidity, callousness, arrogance and mass murder. It was not set off by any great causes - it represented no special evil that had to be stopped (neither side can claim to have been fighting for the good) - nothing good came out of it. The opposite....

It is odd: I studied history in college, and understood the importance of the war, its place in political history,,, but it's only been later that I've felt the full impact of it. I've kept on taking classes, but, since college, mostly film, lit, art classes, or intellectual history... And this just constantly underlines the ways WWI was a break from what came before. Studying German film - how can you miss it? it's everywhere in their films; it shaped their whole culture, obviously. But it shaped everyone - spawned new movements, shaped the art of the 1920s and beyond - and defines how that postwar art is a complete break from before.

The world changed, in almost unprocessable ways, between about 1870 and 1925. (A point I've noted before.) It's a different world after WWI - the maps are different, the idea of what human beings are was different - how we represented ourselves was different. And the end of the war - euphoric as it may have been on November 11, 1918 - didn't resolve anything. The peace turned out as bad as the war - given the fact that the peace led directly to WWII, and even larger even more horrible event - the peace may have been worse than the war. So maybe today is best seen as a chance to mourn for a lost chance - the Armistice should have ended the war, should have found a way to make something good of the horror, to find a way not to do it again. But they botched it....

So it seems good to remember it, the war, the people who served in it. To remember the possibility of peace that came with the end of the war - as well as the failure to achieve peace. Remembering World War One, specifically, is an almost necessarily anti-war act. I have noticed this in films: it's an old adage that it is impossible to make an anti-war war film - war is too cinematic, too exciting. And that's more true than not - but I've noticed that most of the best really anti-war war films are WWI films - Paths of Glory; Johnny Got His Gun; All Quiet on the Western Front; Gallipoli, to name a few. It's a war that is very very difficult to romanticize, to find any redemption in. Even heroism is almost impossible in the trenches - all you can do is die or wait to die. WWII - has villains; wars like Vietnam - it's too hard not to take sides, anti-war films there become anti-Vietnam war films. The closest I can think of to the tone of WWI films might be some post-WWII Japanese films - like Fires on the Plain or the Human Condition, or even, at times, Letters from Iwo Jima. Those films probably get their effects by showing the common soldier's suffering and sense of betrayal alongside the knowledge that they are not fighting for anything worthwhile. The postwar Japanese films that reject Japan's cause in the war while retaining sympathy for the soldiers in the war gets closer to the deep pessimism of World War One films...

I'm rambling a bit. I'll leave with one more note - the last three surviving veterans of the war: Claude Stanley, John Babcock and Frank Buckles. Good work, gentlemen...

German History, Good and Bad

It was 20 years ago today that the Berlin Wall came down. It had been coming for some time - the eastern Bloc was coming apart in the summer of 89, with demonstrations at the wall for some time (Wikipedia's account.) And then, Günter Schabowski, a Politburo member, announced that travel restrictions would be lifted, immediately. A mistake - travel restrictions were being lifted, but there was not supposed to be an official timetable - Schabowski didn't actually know anything about the plans, and gave the timing on his own. But the news was broadcast, and people went to the wall - and another man, a border guard named Harald Jäger, after not being able to get an official answer on what to do - opened his gate and let people through. And it all ended well.

Alas, not all anniversaries from German history are so happy. November 9 is also the 71st anniversary of Kristallnacht - the pogrom organized against Jews after the death of a diplomat, Erst Vom Rath, assassinated by a Jewish boy in Paris, Herschel Grynszpan. Joseph Goebbels set the riots moving - the state jumped on the "spontaneous" violence to disarm the Jews, seize property, and so on. It marked an escalation in the Nazis campaign against the Jews - even though the general public did not seem to approve. They didn't resist either. As the Nazis continued to persecute the Jews, they did it with less fanfare - they professionalized the process, left it to the SS and kept the public out of it. And this ended very badly.

On the Making of Films

Someone was filming in Harvard Square tonight. I passed through, stopped for a burger, went on to the Harvard Film Archive to see Lisandro Alonso's Liverpool, with Alonso in attendance. This proves a rather jarring juxtaposition. Alonso spoke of shooting Liverpool with a crew of 10, or 12 people, plus actors - who are mostly locals recruited to appear, playing something close to themselves. There were that many trucks parked around the side streets outside.

I know that's how most movies are made, with armies of technicians surrounding the performance and photography of the story - and I know when it works, it works. But it still feels somehow insane. I don't know what they were shooting tonight - I don't really care. I know it won't be as interesting as Alonso's film; I suspect it won't be as interesting as an imaginary film made, say, following me, in my peregrinations. Why not? That's not far from what Alonso's Fantasma is - 2 men (mainly - 3 other actors appear as well) wandering around a building, waiting for a film to start and play) - it's as good a story as any. I can imagine this film - it would follow me, though wouldn't pay much attention to me. Might linger, instead, on the people setting up the lights and reflectors for the filming in the square, or the crowds watching the kids putting on some kind of show in the pit; might spend a moment with the crew at the burger joint, then with the three guys from the film crew who came in to eat; might follow me to Newbury Comics and listen to the kids talking about comic books behind me; down the street to Starbucks, maybe watching your humble blogger for a minute, checking his phone for messages, or reading about Munchhausen, though more likely watching the big family in the corner, eating coffee cakes, the kids wandering around; or going outside with the barrista for a smoke. Finally when I leave the camera comes too, to the Archive, buy a ticket, go in sit, let the camera drift off across the crowd - and finally the house lights go down and the screen lights up and the movie plays...

I know it matters who makes a film: if I made this, it would probably be terrible - if Alonso made it, it would be intriguing, amusing, and better than anything they could be shooting outside. Though if Wes Anderson or the Coen brothers had been shooting outside - well, all that material would be put to a good use. But still. All things being equal, I would rather see more films like Alonso's - or films in the same vein - Pedro Costa, Jose Luis Guerin, there are others... Like the others, Alonso makes films about places - he goes to the places - he stays in the places, he finds people there, and works with the people, and creates films close to their lives, maybe adding a kind of plot (homecomings, often enough) to organize the material. It makes movie making into a community project - he said, last night and tonight, that the people in his films aren't sure what to make of them - but they all loved the process of making them. I like that.

I Am Legion?

I find that I have achieved the dream of film lovers everywhere - I have been cast as a Supervillain! The honor comes courtesy of Dan Schneider, a critic of sorts I've poked at a few times, here and abroad - out of the thin stuff of 3-4 arguments, a couple links, a comment or two, he has made of me a veritable Mabuse. I am, I gather, everyone who makes fun of him in comments at No Ripcord; I am most of the participants in this thread at Empire Online. I have even apparently persecuted the poor man at Wikipedia.

Unfortunately, I don't think I can accept the role. If you read the book, you will find, Duke Beeson is the supervillain, master of disguises - Weeping Sam is just his number one henchman. (Though he does have the ability to appear at will when his name is spoken, just like the devil, or anyone with access to Google.) And I, as Dan rightly points out, am but an "apathetic old man"* - how true, how true. I can barely muster the energy to post here once a week - I could never meet the responsibilities of a Man of a Thousand Screennames, All of Them Evil... I have no idea, really, how Dan got the idea I was all those people in the first place - maybe I'm just the only person to actually try to take him seriously long enough for an actual conversation, unedifying as such things may be in the end. I don't know.

I do know it's probably wrong to encourage such behavior - I'm sure Mr. Schneider will get a shiver of joy when he learns I'm writing about him, and take it as confirmation of his claims - if I weren't cyberstalking, how would I know he's written about me, hmmm?** But I don't care. Hell yeah, I keep an eye on Dan's blog and posts - people like that are good for a cheap laugh. And sometimes, like that Dekalog post, wrong in interesting enough ways to give me something to write about. (Though he's a shamefully easy target.) And - though I hate to admit it right at the moment, he puts up a fair amount of interesting stuff at that blog. He's almost human when he writes about trash cinema. (And some of the other contributors aren't entirely bores - particularly Wassim Diab, who actually seems to go to the movies once in a while.) But mostly - all right - it's the comedy. It's the magnificence of someone defending himself from being called a terrible poet with a line like "Note the assertion of my terribility as a poet without any back up." What more backup could you want than a poet using a word like "terribility"? And yes - he's a barn door of a target if you want to start sniping at the bad prose - but... what can I say?

In the end - the big reason to respond is that he's going out of his way to cut himself off from response. No comments allowed at his blog; articles like this posted at his web site, with no means of public debate - that's crap. And granting that he doesn't matter, exactly, but he pulls this shit on actual professionals, like Edward Hoagland - and bleats like a baby when called on it. He isolates himself from direct contact with his critics - then issues long, stupid screeds about them, where he gets to claim to win the arguments he didn't actually have.

* You have to scroll up a bit from the link to find that - it's just "pathetic" old man at the link; I thought the other might be a typo, but Dan also notes in this document that he doesn't make types, or he corrects them, and since this one has been there a week or so, surely, he would have changed apathetic to a pathetic if he meant to. Anyway - "apathetic old man" is much better - it's even a decent paraphrase of the Beefheart quote on the masthead.

** Because someone posted a link in the comments, you dopey fuck.

Weekend Roundup

I am going to keep trying to maintain at least a basic schedule, Friday(ish) music and links post, if nothing else. I have to do it tonight, though, for reasons which might as well be the first link: Lisandro Alonso will be at the Harvard Film Archive this weekend - I want to catch as much of that as I can, starting tomorrow.

I suppose I should say something about the elections this week - Maine's rejection of gay marriage is disappointing; Washington's acceptance of domestic partnerships (just not calling it marriage) is more encouraging, and instructive: it's hard not to think that it comes down to the word, "marriage", motivating the bigots enough to come out and vote... The substance continues to move toward marriage equality - the language is likely to follow soon enough. Though as an aside (though an important point) - I do not like the idea of putting civil rights to a vote. There's a reason the Bill of Rights was made a condition to the passage of the constitution: equality, protection under the law, etc. should not be dependent on the will fo the majority. We all know it is, in fact - but it shouldn't be.

The rest of the voting is more routine than it got credit for - I think there is a lot of interest in politics these days - momentous decisions needing to be made and so on. These issues keep interest in politics high - people are paying serious attention to otherwise routine elections, reading all kinds of things into them. The one you probably can read something into was the NY-23 race - a disgraceful episode, best dealt with by Roy Edroso, with some postmortem from Lance Mannion as well.... That one is interesting. The loony right (the very silly party) seems determined to wreck their own party, and apparently the country - Mannion has a good take on it. Ego mixed with posturing, without much in the way of any policies. (Colbert sums it up - "I have no clue about that" - "the GOP's vision of the future".) I suppose we can count on foreign adventurism, authoritarianism, and as much race baiting and any other bigotry they can cram in will be there... I doubt that race will be the end of the very silly party - they are likely to become more and more radical, and less and less electorally relevant, and may take the rest of the GOP with them.... though they can still do a world of harm, especially if the Democrats cannot deliver. The Democrats need to pass some good legislation - they need to do something that moves the health care system - even if it isn't all that big to start with; they really should do something to rein in banks and the crookeder parts of wall street - they need to do things that have palpable effects on people's lives, as well as demonstrating willingness and ability to act. They are much worse off if they don't pass health care laws than if they pass half-measures. If they govern well, the Republicans could self-destruct, in the short term anyway.

Anyway, meanwhile - in the sporting world, alas, Evil has once again triumphed. Though they did it, the bastards, by using their money intelligently - after a decade of dumb signings, lots of bloated salaries on the downward slope, they brought in the 2 best players available, 2 prime of their career stars - they developed their own players and got performances out of them - they acquired useful parts like Nick Swisher... And there's something to be said for a team that has what - Pettitte, Rivera, Posada, Jeter - 4 guys with 5 rings, on the same team? Anyway.... last week, I saw Damn Yankees - very nice film, but a reminder that there's nothing new about the Yankees' domination. Hell, I've had it good - I've lived through their 2 worst droughts, the late 60s/early 70s, and the 80s - and this mini-drought, in the 00s... they've only won 7 championships in my life, compared to 20 in the previous 40 years. 7 is still more than anyone else, but...

There's a neat article about the aesthetics of baseball coverage at TCM's blog. I can't say I obsess over the world series when the Sox are not in it, but I watched some - with the sound turned very low... and have to say, they were very well put together...

That's enough... Music, now - random 10! here goes....

1. Arcade Fire - Black Mirror
2. Pylon - Go - one of the great, mostly forgotten bands...
3. The Red Krayola - Chemistry - another one...
4. Smokey Robinson and the Miracles - Mickey's Monkey
5. Brian Jonestown Massacre - (Baby) Love of My Life - just a scrap of a song...
6. Tom Verlaine - New - instrumental...
7. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible - you gotta love this, 12,500 songs and 2 come up from the same record...
8. Fleetwood Mac - Go to Move - Jeremy Spencer workout, from the Boston teaparty...
9. The Distillers - Beat Your Heart Out - not altogether sure why I own this, to tell the truth...
10. Husker Du - Ice Cold Ice - live... better than the record; I loved Husker Du in the 80s, but thought Warehouse, Songs and Stories was dull and drab through and through - partly because of songs like this, with lyrics that sounded almost as cliched as mid-80s U2... "ice cold ice"? - but they could ratchet that stuff up enough live to make it work, almost...

Video? A very cool video of the Arcade Fire playing "Neon Bible" in an elevator...