Prod. David Chase
2002
The fourth season is the first Sopranos to be written in the shadow of 9-11 and brought home those feelings of doom and anxiety that accompanied the months following. Now, of course, we're so used to living in this world that we've become used to it. This season Tony tries to circle the wagons and just rely on "blood," that is, his immediate family, but as the season progresses it shows even this is unreliable. Chris, his nephew is addicted to heroin. Uncle Junior is under house arrest and facing his RICO trial. And domestically, bonds start to fray and break, as Carmella asks for, then secretly takes, more control over the household finances. Tony directs his affection to all the wrong places--Ralphie's goomah, Ralphie's horse, his ex-mistress' cousin. And one by one, he loses these things too. It's a very sad season, and probably my favorite so far.
Part of the reason that we like gangster films is that we like to see a subculture much like our own but with strict, old fashioned rules. In this way, the way of the Mafioso crosses paths with Asian ideas of "saving face" and "honor". We feel these things are missing somehow, yet our true delight comes out of seeing how these rules are broken and punished, not how they are followed. One of the plot threads of Season 4 involves Johnny Sack and how he seeks justice for a fat joke Ralphie has told about his wife. The idea of besmirching a woman's honor marks this plot as almost medieval, and much of the tension of this storyline comes from Sack's intractability in the matter. We like our codes of honor, but this is getting too fundamental.
This medieval way also plays out in Furio's unrequited love for Carmela, which costs him much heartache, not unlike the traditional romance. When he returns to Italy for his father's funeral, he is told that in the old days, such a predicament would mean that he'd either have to kill the woman's husband, or exile himself (as memory serves). And he does think about doing the deed at one point.
These medieval storylines are contrasted with the more modern threads--Bobby Bacala's grief, Janice's manipulations, Paulie's divided loyalties. So, in a way, the whole season gives us both glimpses of a post 9-11 world without being didactic about it: the hard, fundamentalist way (and not in a Islamic sense), or the equally painful, soul-searching modern way. (Note that the female characters have to ask this a lot: Carmela choosing self-respect over marriage, Adrianna choosing a law-abiding future over the crime family).
Favorite episodes: "Christopher" (for the final scene in the car), "Whoever Did This" (so many great images: the wounded child, the bloody dispatch of Ralphie, Tony's solitary walk through the Bada Bing, empty and hollow inside and out), and "Whitecaps" (nothing sums up a breakup like watching the inflatable mattress go up.)
Now we've exhausted all the Sopranos DVDs, we can now get back to watching anything and everything else. Phew.
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September 30, 2004
The Sopranos - Season Four
Look! It's a ray of hope.
Angry Bear has a quick rundown on why there's plenty of hope in this battle between some-variation-of-democracy and fascism:
Not All News Is Bad News
Sen. John Kerry's state tally shrank but his overall position appears to have stabilized among likely voters in many of the 16 battleground states...Mr. Kery now leads in 11 states -- down from 12 states he held two weeks ago and 14 a month ago -- and his leads over President Bush in Florida and Arkansas are less than one percentage point. At the same time, he maintained or added to comfortable advantages in Michigan, Oregon and New Mexico...
... Presuming that all the [battleground] states -- including the 33 electroal votes from the tight Florida and Arkansas races -- go to the current leading candidates and that the other 34 states and the District of Columbia go as they did in the 2000 election, Mr. Kerry would get 297 electoral votes and Mr. Bush would get 241.
I'm quoting Angry Bear quoting the WSJ, but still...
Yeh, yeh, yeh...do the iTunes shuffle
In my current employment, I've got the iTunes loaded up on the office PC (take that Windows Media Player) and uploaded my series of Squid Lord comps for something like three full days of music, should I choose to stay at work that long.
And while I like iTunes' ability to crossfade tracks (gawrsh, it's like a radio station in here!) its shuffle play leaves a lot to be desired. I'm curious about the algorithm (or whatever) used to determine what track comes up next, because certain tracks pop up all the time. SoundJam MP does this too (yes, I still use it at home).
However, shuffle play is a great little thing when the collection is large and varied. If post-modernism is all about recontextualizing, then shuffle play is the great recontextualizer. It gives the listener those brief seconds at the beginning of a song to re-hear something, to compare it with the song that came before. It can elevate tracks from albums that were obscured by "the single," or connections between disparate genres can suddenly appear as if planned.
Bong craftsmanship
Here's a posting of scans from OUI magazine from the '70s, featuring handsomely photographed drug paraphernalia. The bongs look like works of art (well, the Ultraman mask bong looks like folk art), even the roach clips look of the highest quality. This could never be a coffee table book (most of this stuff is probably long gone) but it bloody should be.
By way of Boing Boing
September 29, 2004
The Spell-binding world of Yumiko Kayukawa
More wonderful printwork, this time from Sapporo-based Yumiko Kayukawa. I dig this stuff, man, we need something like this up in S.B. By the way, I found this at a gallery site based in Palm Springs. On my one trip to the city I never managed to see anything like this, just "rich people art". I wish I had known this place existed!
Julie Dermansky's fine arts
Once again, Danny Gregory points out another artist to take note of. Julie Dermansky does damn near everything, from photography to metalwork to "events" to paintings. The latter are in the neo-outsider style that is pretty common these days, and I quite like her series of Bishop Paintings.
Avengers Disassembled
Make hilarity in the comfort of your own home with a cardboard box, Photoshop, and $300 worth of action figures. What a hoot.
By way of Metafilter
September 28, 2004
Strandbeest
Theo Jansen makes walking machines out of plastic, strange, organic creatures that only need the wind to keep moving. There's a lot of movies at Jansen's strandbeest site--check it out.
By way of Metafilter
September 27, 2004
What do the Bible and Bush have in common?
Why, these wonderful diagrams over at threetwoone.org, silly.
The Royal Art Lodge
I have no idea who The Royal Art Lodge are, but it's some sort of Winnipeg-based collective. The work has a Shrigley-like feel to it, but more deadpan.
By way of The Cartoonist.
September 24, 2004
Monkey hacks Diebold machine
You gotta be kiddin' me.
Touchscreen Hack Effort Called 'Monkey Business'
But Black Box Voting on Wednesday demonstrated two quick ways that 'an unscrupulous person with no computer skills whatsoever' could sabotage vote totals, according to Associate Director Andy Stephenson.
The entire voting record can be deleted by choosing 'reset the election' on a drop-down menu, he said, or a hacker can destroy a tabulator's ability to recognize ballots by un-selecting three checkboxes on a program control panel.
There's a drop-down menu that says "reset the election"? Was this designed by the same people who install the "self-destruct" buttons in super villain lairs?
September 23, 2004
Academia meets the Sopranos: Sopranos wins
There's a lot of essays out there on the Sopranos, but like a lot of pop criticism (and academia in general), there's so little substance to these essays that, once you get past the paragraphs name-dropping theorists and philosophers, past the paragraphs that awkwardly sum up the film/tv show for those who've never seen it (but are snoozy to those who do), and finally past the references to the other books and films the author has read, there's very little analysis. I spent a little while looking around the web for some good reading on The Sopranos, and while Salon has a few good articles, this one by Martha P. Nochimson is one of the best: Tony's Options: The Sopranos and the Televisuality of the Gangster Genre
The Codex Seraphinaianus
Fans of surrealism, fantasy, and late '70s European illustration should find much to groove on in Luigi Serafini's Codex Seraphinianus, a 400-page imaginary encyclopedia of a world similar to ours populated by bizarre creatures. The above site features a little background on the mysterious work, and links to illustrations. Totally out of print, used copies cost boogaloo bucks. (Or do they?) At least the Amazon link suggests other strange books, even if there's not a Codex in stock.
Serafini has a site, but it's under construction. There is, however, a site devoted to the Codex. And apparently Serafini is just updating the original "mysterious" work, the Voynich Manuscript.
September 22, 2004
East Hampton Star - In the News
E.L. Doctorow on Bush's inability to feel.
The Unfeeling President:He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the 1,000 dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be.
Preview: Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession
When we first got cable in the early 80s, before HBO was an option to us, my dad subscribed to a channel called the Z Channel. I don't remember too much about it except that everytime I tuned in they were showing one of two films: "Agatha" with Dustin Hoffman and Maggie Smith, and "The Great Train Robbery" with Sean Connery. If you made it all the way to the end of one of these, there was a good chance you'd run into "Hardware Wars."
Well, apparently Z Channel was much more important than that--an L.A.-based channel run by a troubled film buff who, ahead of his time, insisted on director's cuts and restoration. Filmmakers like Verhoeven say it lead to their success by screening their early works. Tarantino got an education in foreign film.
Xan Cassavettes, daughter of John, now has a documentary that examines the channel and the fall of its owner Jerry Harvey.
Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession was the hit of the Los Angeles Film Festival is making the rounds soon.
The President Of The United States Is A Liar | Oliver Willis
Oliver Willis has the footage of Peter Jennings taking a page out of the Daily Show's book and showing what Bush said Kerry said vs. what Kerry actually said. You will need the new-fangled Quicktime to watch it (mp4 file). If only all news was like this. It doesn't take much to make it so. Come on, guys...
The President Of The United States Is A Liar | Oliver Willis
Damn you, Daddy
Tucked away at the end of Gavin Smith's interview with director David O. Russell is this:
Russell: I met George Bush. Terry Semel was running Warner Bros. and had him over in the summer of '99. He hadn't even gotten the nomination yet. I was invited to meet him with a small group of people. I told him, "I'm editing a movie right now that quesitons your father's legacy in Iraq." And his face for a moment was like, What the fuck is this? And then he immediately said, "Well, then, I guess I'm gonna have to go back and finish the job." I guess they had been planning this for a long time, he and his cronies.
Three Kings will be rereleased just in time for the election...
An Unsolicited Commercial Love Story
Bag-shopping Christian single looking for handsome man also into bag shopping. Considering pregnancy. Another modest classic over at Cockeyed.com.
September 21, 2004
Love the G-Mail!
That standup chap William sent me a Gmail invite and now I'm seriously into it. After years of using the naff naff naff Yahoo mail interface, the Gmail system offers many answer-to-my-prayers features. The interface is simple and graphics-free, like the main Google web site. Yes, it does have text ads running down the right-hand side, but it took me several days to even notice them. And after I did notice them, I went back to ignoring them. My second favorite feature is its ability to remember frequently used addresses just like a regular email app. finally, it can collapse and expand back-and-forth exchanges, allowing for a continual thread on one screen.
I still have six invitations left. If any reader of this blog would like one, please drop me a line.
Fading Ad Campaign
Frank Jump photographs fading ads seen on the sides of buildings in NYC. Some of these ads are all we have left of that time as buildings get torn down, or the lots in the front of them get built up. Fading Ad Campaign
By way of Creative Generalist
LRB | Andrew O'Hagan : The God Squad
There's some gems in this Andrew O'Hagan portrait of the Republican National Convention. Sometimes it takes a Brit to show us that things are more insane than we think.Andrew O'Hagan : The God Squad
Dick Cheney appeared onstage like a morbid family retainer. He knows where the bodies are buried; he pipes once again for the enemies of peace and sings for the greatest supper in the world. Cheney's speaking style relies on one fact followed by six lies: 'President Bush delivered the greatest tax reduction in a generation, and the results are clear to see. Businesses are creating jobs. People are returning to work. Mortgage rates are low, and home ownership in this country is at an all-time high. The Bush tax cuts are working.'
By way of Phil, who is now very afraid of visiting this country again. Don't worry Phil, these nutjobs are really a lot of cowards.
September 17, 2004
Yet another to our cause...
A friend of mine, George Yachtisin, who once wrote for the Independent and now serves as publicist for UCSB's Arts & Lectures (that's how I met him), has now started his own blog called I'm Not One to Blog, But...
He claims that "in order to put the spurs to the pony that is my dwindling imagination, it seems necessary to see if I can keep one of these [blogs] going." He also hopes that the blog will be a daily musing on a random song, "or, I should say, let a song lead my writing."
The first entry is on Phil Manzanera/Brian Eno's Big Day, which shows the man has taste.
Welcome aboard, George...
Sopranos Season Three
Prod. David Chase
2001
Sins of the fathers...Season Three of the Sopranos (yes, I know we're going at a bloody clip) is much stronger than its predecessor, almost as if the out-of-control Ralphie (Joe Pantaliano) was infecting the entire show. We have beatings, a grim rape, numerous bullets to the head, and plenty of people not thinking straight at all.
Tony tries to keep one son (his) out of the business, going as far as enrolling him in a military academy. Yet he fails to keep the son of his former boss--the drippy Freddie Prinze Jr.-lookalike Jackie Jr.--out of the game, despite numerous warnings and slappings about. The results are inevitable, tragic, and a waste.
Elsewhere, some of the episodes this season are some of my favorites. The premiere, Mr. Ruggeriostktktk Neighborhood, focused on a few days in the life of the Sopranos as the FBI try to plant a listening device in their house. It was a taught, time-specific episode, unlike the rather loose, rat-ta-tat plotting of a usual episode. Plus the use of the bootleg mashup of "Every Breath You Take" and "Peter Gunn" was hair-tinglingly brilliant. (The female tennis instructor who had the hots for Adrianne also tingled the body, just not the scalp.) I also liked the Blair Witch-meets-Joisy episode where Paulie and Chris get lost in the woods after being overpowered by a hardy Russian they have taken out to whack. Their fate juxtaposed with Tony's problems with his hot goomah (Annabella Sciorra, oozing sex) brought out the black comedy this show does best.
Two missteps: the very awkward final Livia episode, where Marchand was pasted electronically into one last scene with James Gandolfini (memories of Bruce Lee in Game of Death!). It didn't look right and it was obvious, awkward, and sad that Gandolfini was acting to air. The episode came back, though, and delivered a knock-out ending as Carmela lets rip at the wake and speaks what's on everyone's mind.
The other sour note was Chase's attempt to universalize the sad song sung by Uncle Junior at the finale's funeral. The soundtrack switched from the Italian song to a Chinese ballad, a Portugese fado, and beyond, a real jarring experience.
This third season ends with numerous loose threads, and the sense that the chaos hinted at here is one mistake away from exploding.
Create your own spam shirt
Take your own baffling spam subject line and turn it into a equally baffling tshirt. A bit pricey at about $40, but if you've got the dosh...
SPAMSHIRT
By way of Boing Boing
September 16, 2004
The Vintage Mencken - H.L. Mencken (ed. Alistair Cooke)
Vintage
1951, reprinted 1990
I picked up this Mencken book after seeing his name used many times in the same sentence as Twain. Before then I hadn't heard of him, but fortunately Amazon had a good guide to him and the Book Den had it in stock.
Selected by Alistair Cooke, this is a fairly decent overview of the man, starting off with Mencken's memories of Baltimore, the city he rarely left, and ending with an essay on death.
Mencken was one of the original crusty curmudgeon journalists, chomping on a cigar, attacking the typewriter, and assailing all preconceived notions, left and right. He's not exactly a fan of democracy, either, if by that you mean mob rule. In one of the most fascinating long articles near the center of this collection, "The National Letters," he takes on the paltry (up to the time of writing, 1920) contributions made by Americans to world literature. (Hemingway and Steinbeck were right around the corner, but miles away, and that doesn't necessarily mean Mencken would have liked them.) His view that it is our inherent Puritanism, coupled with a pleasant moderation, which has led to weak lit is close to Robert Hughes' view of American art before the Modern era. yet Mencken's prescription is for the creation of a true aristocratic class. This is a hard thing to parse, but he doesn't mean the rich either, who have all the money in the world but no sense of heritage or class. (He has a lot to say about the idiotic rich, as well.)
Elsewhere, his look back at the Wilsonian era is notable for its parallels to life under Bush: fearmongering (Germans instead of terrorists), a leader who speaks in sound bites without substance, a cowed press and academia, intolerance of dissent. But enough of me, here's some choice quotes by Mencken that should give you some taste:
Civilization is at its lowest mark in the United States precisely in those areas where the Anglo-Saxon still presumes to rule. he runs the whole South--and in the whole South there are not as many first-rate men as in many a single city of the mongrel North. Wherever he is still firmly in the saddle, there we look for such pathological phenomena as fundamentalism, Prohibition and Ku Kluxery, and there they flourish."--from "the Anglo-Saxon"
Or how about this comparison found in a review of what we would now call a puff-piece bio on Wilson:
"This incredible work is an almost inexhaustible mine of bad writing, faulty generalizing, childish pussyfooting, ludicrous posturing, and naive stupidity. to find a match for it one must try to imagine a biography of the Duke of Wellington by his barber."
Ouch.
Mencken also wrote many an epigram: "Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it."
"Puritanism--The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."
Who knows what Mencken would have made of Bush, but I don't think it would have been favorable. He certainly would have seen through the phony bravado and "common man" play-acting, as he does in his reports of politicians excerpted here (when FDR wins the nomination during a very tight convention night over challenger Al Smith, Mencken is sure it will spell upcoming defeat for the Dems.
For the insight into American tastes and politics, this book is worth reading. Although Mencken's style is wordy, it still has bite. Charges of racism are refuted at least in this volume by his strong support of allowing blacks and whites to mix in public (in Baltimore, of course). He is quoted elsewhere as putting down the intelligence of the "negro," but read alongside his even more vicious attacks on religion, corrupt politicians, and the great unwashed, Mencken lets them off easy.
Side note: This book's previous owner, I would guess, looks to be an angry undergrad, full of righteous political correctness, who had gone through the book and checked off all the sentences where Mencken fails as a member of the 1990s. This, of course, is missing the point, but these wrongheaded annotations almost seem appropriate to this volume.
Gothamist: Ode To A Grecian Coffee Cup
If you don't live in the New York area but watch Sex and the City and/or The Sopranos, you may notice that characters drink to-go coffee out of a particular blue and white cup. Not being able to see these in a close up, I wondered, is this a brand or just a beloved generic cup? My friend Peter Nacken soon weighed in with the answer. Then follow it up with links to more cups and the t-shirt.
September 15, 2004
The Virtual Window Project
If you have a spare LCD screen or two, why not make your own Virtual Windows? I could think of stranger uses for such a thing (such as having the screens broadcast what was in another room, or just featuring completely inappropriate landscapes.) On the other hand, would streaming winter scenes make a hot room feel cooler?
Do you Crash?
The web is a many splendored thing. There's now a fairly extensive archive of CRASH magazine, a magazine devoted to the Spectrum computer that I barely remember reading back in the '80s. I think my friend subscribed. Cool.
Falloojeh 9-11
Riverbend in Baghdad finally gets to watch Fahrenheit 9-11, albeit on a bootleg.
I can't explain the feelings I had towards her. I pitied her because, apparently, she knew very little about what she was sending her kids into. I was angry with her because she really didn't want to know what she was sending her children to do. In the end, all of those feelings crumbled away as she read the last letter from her deceased son. I began feeling a sympathy I really didn't want to feel, and as she was walking in the streets of Washington, looking at the protestors and crying, it struck me that the Americans around her would never understand her anguish. The irony of the situation is that the one place in the world she would ever find empathy was Iraq. We understand. We know what it's like to lose family and friends to war...to know that their final moments weren't peaceful ones...that they probably died thirsty and in pain...that they weren't surrounded by loved ones while taking their final breath.
September 14, 2004
Pinball's Golden Decade?
Oh man, you better believe I want this book. These are the machines I grew up playing. Here's a description from the Amazon site.
The Pinball Compendium: 1970-1981: "Exciting and challenging, pinball games have been enthusiastically played since their inception in the 1930s and are treasured by countless collectors worldwide. This lavishly illustrated book chronicles pinball games from 1970 through 1981, one of the industry's most prolific eras. Hundreds of machines from Gottlieb, Williams, Bally, Chicago Coin, and other manufacturers are showcased -- including many never before published. The extensive text provides descriptions of the games, their special features, historical significance, release dates, and designers. Collectors will love the exclusive interviews with some of pinball's greatest designers and artists. Current values are listed for each machine shown in the book. Along with its companion volume (covering the 1930s to the 1960s), this is a wonderful reference and a tribute to all who were part of pinball's fascinating history. 8 1/2' x 11' 800 color & 30 b/w photos Price Guide/Index "
A bit pricey, though.
Thank goodnes that in the mean time there's this.
David Woodard's Dreammachine
Interview with David Woodard, collaborator with William S. Burroughs and builder (though not inventor) of the Dreammachine.
DW: In college, I found the Dreamachine would cure my own writer's block. When I mentioned this to Burroughs, he concurred. That is the extent of what I know about his use of the machine for that purpose. In 1997, when we were both living in Lawrence, Burroughs tended to use his two Dreamachines together as a postprandial ritual along with a marijuana cigarette. He would write the following morning.I think the Dreamachine's most distinctive property is its (potentially insidious) subtlety. The machine is similar to absinthe, in that both create a residual language-oriented delirium of which the user tends not to be aware. Fortunately light pulses do not yield the additional effect of Syphilis-like rotted brain stem.
Before I go rushing out to buy one, a handmade Dreammachine will set me back $500. Damn.
Los Angeles Plays Itself
Dir: Thom Anderson
2003
On Thursday night I rushed down to L.A. after work to meet Jon for the one-time screening of Thom Anderson's three-hour opus, "Los Angeles Plays Itself." This film, made entirely out of shots from other movies, took something like ten years to make, and, like Fahrenheit 9-11, is so densely packed with information and ideas that it feels like a book. (Moore's film has one central idea, Anderson's has several).
Anderson's main thesis--and as a professor of film at CalArts for decades (Jon took some of his classes) he thinks academically--is that Los Angeles has failed to receive the sort of representational respect that is reserved for cities like New York and Paris.
You wouldn't shoot Grand Central Station in New York and then call it "Grand Central Station, Phoenix," would you? But that's what often happened through the years to many Los Angeles landmarks, as Hollywood seemed to use the city as one big backlot, cultural importance be damned.
In the first half, Anderson explores how architectural landmarks and modernist architecture in general are misused in the movies, and sometimes celebrated. Modern homes that were once examples of a bright future always seem to wind up cast as the lairs of villains and drug lords. To illustrate his points, Anderson has at his hands all of Hollywood's output, copyright be damned (this may explain its small release, its succes as a film, and a case for 'fair use'). It's fascinating to watch the same interior pop up over the decades, sometimes as a hotel, sometimes as an apartment, set in the past, set in the future--like watching an actor's reel.
Anderson also talks about "high tourist" and "low tourist" directors, the high ones being someone like Hitchcock, who, for example, created such a portrait of San Francisco for "Vertigo" that the city is a character in the film. A "low tourist" director avoids landmarks but tries to get the city right, and of these there are very few. Billy Wilder is one--Anderson lauds "Double Idemnity" and "Sunset Blvd" as being very faithful to the geography and feel of Los Angeles. He also praises the original "Gone in 60 Seconds" and "Kiss Me Deadly."
The second half devotes itself to more indepth discussions, including the similar "secret histories" on show in "Chinatown" and "L.A. Confidential". Not so secret, is what Anderson says of these histories, the issues were front page news, but Polanski and Towne's film coincides with Los Angeles developing a self-awareness, and creating a "secret history" to please that which wants cynicism to rule is the order of the day. Finally, Anderson looks at the true "secret histories" of Los Angeles--representations of its Black and Hispanic populations, which are usually invisible.
Anderson admits in interviews to coming to favor a traditional Bazinian realism in his films, and it parallels his leftist leanings (the sardonic voice over--by Anderson's friend standing in for the director--makes this clear almost from the beginning.) The film will make you appreciate architecture in film and have you glancing more at the backgrounds of films next time you go to the cinema. It will also be a must-own film when it comes out on DVD, for it can act as a reference work on top of a statement about representation. There's even talk of an accompanying book to contain all the material the director couldn't include.
Film fans will also want to debate Anderson's omissions (no David Lynch? no Kenneth Anger? Only a glimpse of Tarantino?) and also hunt down some of the more obscure but intriguing films he shows (on the intelligent side, "Killer of Sheep" by Charles Burnett; on the dumb side, "Death Wish 5" and Stallone's "Cobra").
Made for peanuts, it's no small irony that this is one of the most thoughtful and straight out beste films of the year.
Also: Interviews with Anderson here (with Steve Erickson)here and here (with Andrew Tracey).
September 13, 2004
An open letter to all my favorite bloggers
Can we talk a little bit about RSS feeds? As a devoted blog reader (and writer) I use an RSS reader to keep up with all my blogs. My request, my wish, is that all blogs be turned on to "full post" in the preferences of whatever service you are using. If I have to continually click through to your site to read a post, what is the point of an RSS feed to start with?
My recent sojourn into the working world of the cubicle has also brought another negative regarding less-than-full posts in the feed: While I can access all my blogs through my RSS reader, the "evil-corporation-that-shall-remain-nameless" web blocker will not let me continue through to read posts on certain sites, those marked "personal" and "political" equally.
So please, switch on "full post" in your prefs. It doesn't hurt. Do it for your readers.
September 09, 2004
The slow death of punk
A slightly whiny essay in the Guardian by Jonathan Harris tells us that British rock is doomed! Doomed! I tell ye. For evidence he holds up Franz Ferdinand: "well-adjusted, polite, and politically inert." They won the Mercury Prize the other day, and gave a thankful, modest acceptance speech, instead of, I guess, hurling the award at somebody. Harris' main points seem to be that life under Blair and New Labour hasn't been sufficiently horrible enough to produce the proper rage-filled conditions condusive to punk. You could ask that question of America too, as we've been far worse off under Bush, but where's the music? Perhaps music as an outlet of outrage isn't working anymore in a world of street protests, Internet, flash mobs, and MoveOn. Young musicians are more apt to blame their parents than society for their ills (hence the awful whinge-punk of Blink 182 and others).
Now, an artist like Elvis Costello always wrote about both, the external society and the internal hell of relationships, but he, like others, were able to understand that both were the same thing, essentially. "Emotional Fascism," as Costello originally titled Armed Forces in 1979. So possibly one reason this isn't happening anymore is that we can't make the connection. The machine of society runs quietly in the background...
The Moviegoer - Walker Percy
Noonday Press, 1961
Man, I really wanted to get this book, to get into this book, but it just did nothing for me. Walker Percy's novel of existential crisis set in New Orleans is often talked about in glowing terms by its fans. It seems to have the ability to put voice to a early-30s malaise, and many readers identify with this strongly. I would have thought I was prime material for this, but apparently not. So much of the writing struck me a unnecessarily and deliberately vague, though taken in small does, Percy's prose is quite lucid. Yet there was nothing drawing me from page to page. Maybe I'm just an idjit, but I kept losing track of what was being talked about.
The plot is minimal--a few days in the life of Binx Bolling, a 30-year-old manager of a brokerage firm. He spends his days either visiting movie theaters, where he feel he can connect with the reality on screen more than real life, or taking one of his secretaries out in his MG for a bit o' rumpy-pumpy down near the shoreline. There's also his aunt who is ready with advice and comes from a distinguished family, and his cousin Kate, who suffers from some mental illness that is not entirely spelled out.
Along the way there are numerous diversions with a small cast of characters in an around New Orleans. I'm sorry to say, I've forgotten most of them.
Bolling has a brief revelation early on in the book--he sees through the dull surface of reality and tries to comprehend the true timeless state of the universe, and this is what sets him off on "the search"--the lifelong struggle to achieve that state again, to know that he's onto "something." I should have been fascinated by all this, or amused, but I was just unaffected. Better luck next time.
September 08, 2004
XTC - Big Express
Virgin CDVX2325
1984 reissued 2001
Big Express was XTC's second album after Partridge gave up touring, decamping to become studio band. This has always been one of my "second favorite" XTC albums, in that it never finds its way to the top spot. Highlights are the underrated "Wake Up"-a Moulding song that actually found itself released as a single to complete indifference. But I love the way the duelling stereo guitar intro fools my ear everytime, sounding like four-four, but turning out to be backbeat when the drums come in. It also has a great "Walrus"-like ending. Big Express also contains a suite of songs that look at life in England: "Red Brick Dream" "Washaway" and "The Everyday Story of Smalltown" which celebrate as much as they criticize village life. The remaster is sparkling, although the album has always sounded good, even on the cassette copy I had 10 years ago. My only complaint is that sticking so close to rendering the original album art has resulted in the lyric sheet being unreadable.
Pros: Terrific production, great playing, wonderful pop melodies
Cons: "Train Running Low on Soul Coal" goes on and on.
Roger Eno - The Flatlands
Thirsty Ear THI66036.2
1998
Found this Roger Eno album down at Pennywise Records in Pasadena. I'd never heard of it, but any Eno is okay with me, usually. Flatlands is Eno's attempt to turn a string quartet into a sort of ambient synthesizer. Avoiding the sunny romanticism of "Between Tides" from some years back, the album is a sort of no-man's land between synth-wash background music and chamber music that threatens to become melodic. It's not a bad album, neither it is a good album. It just sort of exists and then it ends. I've put it on several times and tried to pay attention to it, but that feeling never lasts.
Pros: Pleasant, a nice melding of strings and ambient thought.
Cons: Too long without much variety.
XTC - Black Sea
Virgin CDVX2325
1980 reissued 2001
Ah, good old Black Sea. This, along with Big Express (remaster), turned up used and cheap at Morninglory Music. The Mummer remaster was lovely and made me re-evaluate a few songs, so I grabbed this quickly. Black Sea is the last really rockin'-out XTC album, one before the blossoming of English Settlement. On one hand that means it's consistent in tone--the Black of the title and the deep sea diver cover really suit the dark music contained within. On the other, Andy Partridge's skill at melody hasn't yet developed and is still battling it out with his desire to aggravate with yelps, shouts, and mono-tunes over rock riffs (the interminable "Living Through Another Cuba"). It's Colin Moulding's songs that hold up best, which here include "Generals and Majors," "Love at First Sight," and the bonus track "Smokeless Zone." The best Partridge songs turn out to be the singles: "Respectable Street," "Sgt. Rock," and "Towers of London." It's songs like "Respectable", "Towers," and "Paper and Iron" that look towards the dissecting of England that is to come on English Settlement.
Pros: The hardest XTC has ever sounded. "Respectable Street" rocks! As does "Travels in Nihilon"
Cons: Sonic palette not as varied as future releases.
Granta 86: Film - Edited by Ian Jacks
Granta Publications, Summer 2004
This summer issue of Granta is devoted to Film, and there's quite a lot of good reading here, mostly all of it non-fiction. Editor Ian Jack's view of film centers around '70s art cinema, which isn't entirely a bad thing. There's an lengthy excerpt from John Fowles' diary dealing with the on-again-off-again making of "The French Lieutenant's Woman," which, typical to Fowles, disparages nearly everyone he comes into contact with. Interesting encounters with Dennis Potter, Harold Pinter, and more. There's an account of being a rat trainer called on by Werner Herzog to populate his film Nosferatu with over 18,000 rats. Most die. (Being a Herzog film, many of the film crew nearly die too).
Jonathan Lethem's piece on Cassavettes makes me want to rent several of his films (I've only seen Husbands, and I'm told this is not the place to start). There's a memoir by Shampa Bannerjee about playing Durga, Apu's sister in Pather Panchali, but this is mostly anecdotal. I also liked the remembrance by Andrew O'Hagan about his two years as the Telegraph's film critic, from which he earned little respect.
It's an easy read this issue, and brings back many names that used to be household (the trio of German directors--Herzog, Wenders, Fassbinder--who revolutionized their country's cinema), if not for a reconsideration, but at least to blow the dust off the spines. But you may come away from the issue feeling that cinema has died and all that's left is curation.
September 07, 2004
Sopranos Season Two
Prod. David Chase
2000
It must have been hard to top Season One of the sopranos, and many episodes of Season Two aren't as plot-driven as the first. If this was a symphony, season two would be the exposition part after the statement of the theme. The characters of Richie (David Provale) and Janice (Aida Turturro) are brought in and slyly dominate the season, rounding out their stories very neatly near the end (a big shock, too, in how they did so.) One thing the show reveals is how by toying with genre, the program becomes open to all sorts of experimentation. The show is able to contain realism and surrealism without feeling off. It's that most magical of shows, one that creates an entire universe. You believe that anything can happen.
Violence is treated realistically here, with short, brutal beatings that don't last too long, unspectacular car crashes, bullets dispatched without witticisms, and plain knuckle(head) punches. And by doing so, the show never glosses over its characters' lives of crime. The finale montage, showing the happy extended Soprano clan intercut with shots of ruined lives and illegal schemes run their course (the trashed offices of the 'boiler room,' the bankrupted sports good store, reminded us in a lovely cinematic way of the exactly what we're celebrating. This is capitalism, baby, as we're often reminded.
And, criminy, what other show would use a Pierre Henri piece on its soundtrack?
Also: My wife has been studying Carmela for pointers. I'm in trouble, I think.
Favorite episodes: The D-Girl (mainly for Alicia Witt--oofa!--but also for the parody of Hollywood), Knight in White Satin Armor, and Funhouse (obviously).
Favorite line: Unrepeatable curse when Uncle Junior falls over in the shower.
And finally: Adrianna (Drea de Matteo) is hot. As is Oksana Babiy (Irina, the mistress).
Sopranos Season One
Prod. David Chase
1999
It took something like seven episodes before my better half got into the Sopranos. (It took me three). That may be a long time for some, but understand that in learning English as a second language all those years ago, there was no week devoted to Italian-American Mafia slang and its sentence structure. Imagine getting your English down fluently and then encountering a line such as "For his mother a smoke he hires!" said in a rising tone.(Imagine you even know that a 'smoke' is a derogatory word ahead of time.)
No wonder she couldn't get into Goodfellas a few years back...
So anyway, after years of people telling me that the Sopranos is essential viewing, the box set for Season One turned up at the library of all places, allowing us the leisure of watching all 13 episodes over the course of a week.
One of the great pleasures of the series is how it intersects with our shared cultural knowledge of previous gangster films. This intertextual referencing occurs within and outside the world of the Sopranos. While Tony Soprano's crew talk about the Godfather and Silvio does impressions of Pacino, we also get a kick out of the fact that Christopher shoots the toe off a donut-shop vendor, replaying a scene from Goodfellas in which the same actor (much younger) gets his foot shot by Joe Pesci. Or how the attempted assassination of Tony is a homage to Don Corlione's shooting in the original Godfather, with a smashed orange juice bottle alluding to Brando's dropped bag of oranges.
That the Sopranos discusses all this marks the show as a major post-modern text, yet it's a real drama, not diluted with snarky irony. James Gandolfini went from appearing in films as a heavy or a psycho (8mm for one) to appearing fully formed as Tony Soprano, simultaneously ruthless and vulnerable, with no winks to the audience, no grandstanding. These are the kind of breakthrough roles most actors never get.
The season arc--the taking over of Uncle Junior's business and Tony's mom's plot against him--plays out slowly and satisfyingly. Once again the hour-long drama series shows itself to be the closest we get to a novel in film.
The finale sets us up for a Godfather-esque "massacre during christening" sequence, with Michael's death in the woods, but then throws us a curve as Uncle Junior and crew are indicted. The closing scene, with the crew and family huddled inside Vesuvio during a storm was an oddly suspenseful way to round out the season, and keeps us on our toes for the next.
Favorite line: "Who do we blame for your hat?"--Paulie to Christopher, when the latter rushes in wearing a floppy fisherman's cap.
Danny Gregory's New Book
Oh man, everytime I think my childhood memory's been tapped, along comes some other web site/documentary/book that reminds me of something I had relegated to the attic of my brain. This time it's filmstrips, those little rolls of slide film that would teach you things about the world as you followed along to the audio. BING! Turn the crank for a new picture. BING!
Danny Gregory, master of illustrated journals, has just put out a book celebrating these notoriously cheesy strips. Me wanna. But does the book make a BING sound before I turn the page? One can only hope.