Beerfest, Bedazzled, a list of must-see geek flicks, and Harry Potter is completed

Beerfest is the kind of broad comedy that should've had numbers like Stripes or Dumb and Dumber. Alas, $19,185,184 is the number. Hell, it even has Cloris Leachman (horses whinny in the distance).

I laughed and laughed at Beerfest. Then I fired up the extras and laughed some more.

I usually don't try to summarize plots on movies I'm recommending because to me that's like telling you the punchline to a joke I'm about to tell. Also, plot descriptions can often be deceptively simple. For instance, the plot to The Descent is: a group of spelunking women encounter a colony of folks the Republican party appears to have overlooked thus far; hilarity ensues.

In this case though, I hope to entice you.

Two brothers own a German-themed restaurant/bar "Schnitzengiggles" (har har) after grandpa has died and requested they take his ashes to the famous Oktoberfest in Munich, Bavaria. There they will be contacted by an old friend and be shown where to put the ashes. The boys end up at a super-secret fight-club-like international beer drinking contest called "Beerfest," where the mere mention of America ever having a team solicits only mocking laughter (and this is where the other urns rest, btw). Well, seems grandpa stole the recipe for the best beer ever made, much to the anger of the Germans at Beerfest, and they humiliate the boys by beating them in a beer-drinking game and pouring grandpas ashes on them. Back home they vow revenge and put together a beer drinking team. Hilarity ensues. And that's just the first 20 minutes.

I've gotta expose myself as a wee bit of a hypocrite, kinda sorta. On this blog, and over at my second blog home, the 2blowhards, I've often opined that nudity in the movies makes me uncomfortable. Well, let me be more precise. I get uncomfortable during sex scenes because it sometimes seems only a stone's throw from a porno, and that's somebody's daughter/wife/mom/sister/etc. up there. About the only movie that I didn't feel that way was Body Heat because either Kathleen Turner was having fun, or she's a better actress than most who do those kinds of scenes. (And this from imdb.com: Actors William Hurt and Kathleen Turner wanted the crew to feel comfortable filming their love scenes. So they lined up the crew and both actors introduced themselves to each crew member. When they did this, both stars were naked.)

Truth be told, I actually enjoy gratuitous gratuitous nudity, because a woman flashing the girls atcha somehow seems more innocuous than pretending to do the horizontal bop. It's a form of brag or boast, as it were, and if someone wants to show their pride(s), well that's fine with me.

So, all that just to say Beerfest has plenty of gratuitous nudity, and only gratuitous nudity. It's all just good fun.

The movie begins with a Jackass-like disclaimer that says the folks in the film are professionals and that if you attempt to drink beer as depicted YOU WILL DIE.

Perfect, that.

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The original Bedazzled is now available!

And there was much rejoicing!

One of my top faves of all time is the original Peter Cook and Dudley Moore version of Bedazzled. Harold Ramis had a nice go at it with the immensely talented and appropriate Brendan Fraser, but he tried to remake it as a Buddhist fable rather than a Christian one. The result was something akin to Totino's Pizza Rolls: nothing like pizza, but not heinous if you don't know the context of pizza. But if you've had pizza, then ....

I suppose that someone who wasn't raised Christian wanted a quick and easy - not to mention fun - introduction to the ideas (the real ideas, not the Dawkins/Harris "big santa in the sky" stuff), they couldn't do better than this movie paired with a listen to John Cleese's reading of The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis (out of print and hard to get, but worth it).

The fact that the theology is precise in the context of Dudley Moore trying to date the cute waitress at the burger joint he works in is nothing short of amazing.

There is one scene I won't give away, but when I saw this movie for the first time, I laughed so hard I alarmed those around me. I just couldn't stop. The only other time I'd had such a strong outward reaction to a scene was in Evil Dead II when we zoom into the hero's face after he's mounted a chainsaw to his right (recently shortened) limb, and he says, "Groovy." I STOOD UP in the theatre and laughed like a fiend. Had we not been the only three audience members, I'm sure my buddies would've just filed out of the movie in embarrassment.

And speaking of gratuitous nudity, this flick contains the only instance I'm aware of in a pre-movie-ratings age. It's quick and it's subtle, but there it is. (In a vanity/makeup mirror.)

If you haven't seen the original Bedazzled, by all means, get thee hence. If you've seen the new one, believe me, nothing has been spoiled for you.

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In other news:

- Here's a list of "Fifteen geek movies to see before you die", which is pretty good. The only two legit omissions I think are Star Wars and maybe Primer.

- The self-proclaimed inventor of the dance "the Electric Slide" has sued websites for copyright infringement for showing videos of people doing the dance, but his real complaint is that they show "bad dancing" not representative of the dance he created. Ok, now, if any of you have had the joy of seeing an electric slide break out, which means you had to endure the song, too, you'll know that everyone out there sliding is at least 3 cups in, if you know what I mean and I'm sure you do (with apologies to Joe Bob Briggs). Isn't that a lot like someone suing the Special Olympics because they haven't set any new Olympic records?

- J.K. Rowling has finished the final Harry Potter novel.

In case it becomes unavailable, here's the author's announcement:

Section: Diary

FEBRUARY 6th

Charles Dickens put it better than I ever could:

'It would concern the reader little, perhaps, to know how sorrowfully the pen is laid down at the close of a two-years' imaginative task; or how an Author feels as if he were dismissing some portion of himself into the shadowy world, when a crowd of the creatures of his brain are going from him for ever.'

To which I can only sigh, try seventeen years, Charles...

I always knew that Harry's story would end with the seventh book, but saying goodbye has been just as hard as I always knew it would be. Even while I'm mourning, though, I feel an incredible sense of achievement. I can hardly believe that I've finally written the ending I've been planning for so many years. I've never felt such a mixture of extreme emotions in my life, never dreamed I could feel simultaneously heartbroken and euphoric.

Some of you have expressed a (much more muted!) mixture of happiness and sadness at the prospect of the last book being published, and that has meant more than I can tell you. If it comes as any consolation, I think that there will be plenty to continue arguing and speculating about, even after 'Deathly Hallows' comes out. So if you're not yet ready to quit the message boards, do not despair...

I'm almost scared to admit this, but one thing has stopped me collapsing in a puddle of misery on the floor. While each of the previous Potter books has strong claims on my affections, 'Deathly Hallows' is my favourite, and that is the most wonderful way to finish the series.

Recent Media Consumption, 2-2-07

49 Up
This is the 7th film in Michael Apted's opus on British class divisions and the veracity of the Jesuit motto, "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man," based on a quote by Francis Xavier. (Source: wikipedia)

I have found these films revelatory, immensely sad, heroic, harrowing, poetic, and upsetting in a good way. When you see the years fly by on these people, our common mortality and frailty just smack you in the face. Essentially, they're all happy stories (take that! you cynics), but with a solid chaser of the unhappiness that visits all our lives.

Ironically the two common themes in 49 Up are that everyone reports how they've finally become very content and happy in their own skin, and they also unanimously agree how much they hate it when the 7 years roll around and they have to do another series of "Up" interviews for the film.

Apted must've taken them at their word, because while he did leave it open for there to be a 56 Up, he also included enough "the end" commentary and imagery so that if there is not another one, there's closure. I personally hope they will all change their minds when the time comes.

The first 6 have been collected in a set, and most libraries carry it, so if you've not treated yourself to this amazing document, clear off your calendar and step up.


Open Season
Animated films have been very hit and miss in the last couple years. This one's a hit. The whole fam damily was laughing out loud throughout.

My only quibble is the depiction of the hunter. Of course, since Bambi, you can't have a hunter be a nice, decent guy in a kid's film. But this guy was one of the funnier ones depicted so far. I love it when he jumps out of his pickup and plays air guitar on his rifle. I honestly think this movie would have been a scootch better had they stuck closer to his goofy side and actually dealt with the reality that hunting is actually a noble and even necessary endeavor.


The Illusionist
Ed Norton saves any film by his mere presence, and sadly, in this case, that is the only saving grace. The premise is cool, but the ending is telegraphed somewhere in the middle of the first act. It completely loses its way after act 2, and act 3 is resolved by a character remembering moments of the film in flashback to connect the dots for those in the cheap seats who missed it the first time - which would only occur if you were necking, or had the affliction the guy from Memento has. Worse yet, it feels like a BBC/PBS retread of the old Bill Bixby (pre-Hulk) series, "The Magician".

I hate hate hate the now decade-old trend of saturating or color-tinting the palette of a film to one dominant shade. Blue is the usual culprit, but this one used a sepia tone (that's "yellow" in guy colors), making everyone look jaundiced. Basically it just emphasizes the fact that the director really wanted to do the film in black and white but didn't want to fight the studio. The studios maintain - and correctly, I believe - that when most people see black and white in the previews, they dismiss it as a dull and pretentious art film. Skewing the colors to one muted tone is NOT the way to get past this.


Jackass number two
Jaw-droppingly tasteless humor.

One stunt involves one guy putting on a bubble-boy helmet that's attached to a funnel in which a morbidly obese guy shits. The guy wearing the helmet projectile vomits from the resulting odor. Even with my vomit phobia, I doubled over laughing.

This film is filled with oceans of vomit, btw. It's the go-to joke for half the flick. The rhythm is someone does a jackass stunt, like slingshotting a shopping cart off a ramp with some poor soul inside, then there's a puke segment.

But damn if it ain't funny. The extras contain about an additional hour of stunts and vomiting not originally included in the main film.

Spike Jones (the famous director) tells the cast at one point that someone is going to get killed making these films. I think he's right. It just hasn't happened yet. Though they probably came close when they stood in front of an anti-personnel mine filled with rubber pellets. You can tell they had to stop filming for a while to let the guys recover enough so they could even stand up again.

Do watch this film, guiltily, while your family sleeps. But close the doors so you don't awake them with guffaws or retching. This movie is appropriate for adult children only.


The Descent
Nifty little horror film about a group of women who get together to do extreme outdoors adventures once in a while. This time they go spelunking in an unexplored cave in the deep south; hilarity ensues.

Man, if only they'd used the fabulous real underwater cave photography from this turkey, it'd've been a blockbuster. Perhaps someone, maybe the talents behind the amazing Tom Hanks James Bond trailer, will do a mash-up of the two films, and we'll have that classic after all.

It is scary though. In a reversal of our usual roles (I leapt up and called for Jesus while we watched The Grudge), this one got to my wife while I just kinda grooved. My lovely wife actually gasped and covered her mouth during one of the jolt scenes, poor dear.


Clerks II
I love all the films of Kevin Smith, even Jersey Girl. The man has a gift, a gift I say!, for dialogue. To my continual amazement, I never hear of Hollywood employing him as a script doctor.

Clerks II is perhaps the most sequelly sequel I've ever seen. You can watch it without having seen the original, but don't if you can avoid it.

The boys are still in McJob ruts, where they discuss the minutia of life, love, and movies. But, Kevin Smith is one of the rare possessors of a penis who can write realistic women, kids, and probably even animals. Every moment, regardless of how out-there, rings true.

This is the only movie I've ever seen that takes on the vagaries and labyrinths of racial slurs as it effects real people (I thought Crash was utter trash, Matt Dillon's performance notwithstanding), and how sometimes you can't possibly know everything that could be considered one. When I was growing up I learned and used a plethora of slurs that I had no idea were slurs. So when one of the guys trips over that same situation, it was nice to feel a twang of grateful recognition.

If you're a fan of Smith, you'll love this one. If you're not, you know you won't. For folks who've never seen a Smith film, I recommend Jersey Girl. I think it was the unfortunate victim of the "bennifer" bad press from that bastard branch of the media manufactured by gossip columnists and paparazzi.


Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
For those of you in the cheap seats, this is the sequel to a movie based on a ride at Disneyland starring one of our best character actors channeling Keith Richards as a pirate.

It's considered a kids movie, but it has monsters in it that would've kept me up for a year had I seen it before I hit my teens. The dead pirate whose head resides in a conch shell like a hermit crab gave me the fantods at this age.

Both 1 and 2 are very entertaining popcorn movies; nothing more, nothing less. The third one is due this summer. If you like big, loud, splashy movies, this one's for you.


One from the Heart
One of my charming quirks that is no end of mirth for my movie-addict buddies is that I will knowingly and purposely watch a movie that has been widely dismissed as excrement, just to see how much it sucks. Once in a very great while, I've found a movie that I thought was good, to spite the world, so that's mostly why I do it. Sometimes it's just fun to watch the train wreck.

This, of course, is in the pantheon of the biggest flops ever in moviedom. Yet, Coppola lovingly restored this film and remixed the soundtrack for 5.1 surround. And the library was able to scare up a copy through interlibrary loan, so there I was.

Dammit, the first act of this film is pretty good. Coppola employed stage play techniques, like putting one set behind another masked by a scrim curtain that becomes transparent when the set is lit. It was a clever way to show the action in two separate rooms at once. The music was written by Tom Waits and performed by him and Crystal Gale ("Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue"), and it's pretty damn good, too. (And for the George Costanza's of the world, you get a few scenes where Teri Garr is topless.)

But then....

Let me put it this way. Denver's oldest (still open) amusement park, Lakeside, has a ride called the Wild Chipmunk where you ride in a single tiny car on a roller-coaster track that contains several whiplash turns. If I recall correctly, I think there's a warning sign by the entrance that recommends people who are pregnant, have heart conditions, dentures or glass eyes should not ride the Wild Chipmunk. Kids loiter under the ride to collect the coins that jingle down after they're yanked out of people's pockets by the extreme g's.

Well, One from the Heart cruises along beautifully, and then WHAM!, it takes a Wild Chipmunk turn into utter suckitude. You can pinpoint the exact moment, too. Raul Julia and Teri Garr suddenly step into the street and a dance number materializes around them, and there you are, your glass eye is sailing through the firmament, metaphorically. I can't stress what a jarring turn this movie makes. You wonder how Coppola could've missed it. (I have a theory, read on.)

It remains terrible from that moment on. Sometimes it gets worse.

Again, maybe our mash-up talents could save this movie by doing three crucial edits: remove the Vegas strip song and dance number, somehow save the dialogue but don't show Nastassja Kinski walking on the high-wire when they visit Frederic Forrest's "thoughtful spot," and completely cut the crushed-car orchestra that Forrest conducts. Even then it would be merely good.

One interesting thing, though: in the extras it's made known that the now ubiquitous film editing method and hardware to support it, called "Non-linear editing," where the director can view any given take on-set during the principal photography, was pioneered during One from the Heart. It was one of the first films, if not the first film, to use the process during the filming.

I'm willing to bet that Coppola's energies were absorbed by learning and using that wiz-bang system, so much so that he didn't have much left over to devote to the film itself. Perhaps that's why he missed its turn into the abyss.

Film history buffs should put themselves through this experience, if their library can find a copy to borrow.

Miscellany

Here's some fun stuff I found lying around the web.

This is the most mystifying optical illusion I've ever come across. From the page: If your eyes follow the movement of the rotating pink dot, you will only see one color, pink. If you stare at the black + in the center, the moving dot turns to green. Now, concentrate on the black + in the center of the picture. After a short period of time, all the pink dots will slowly disappear, and you will only see a green dot rotating if you're lucky! It's amazing how our brain works. There really is no green dot, and the pink ones really don't disappear. This should be proof enough, we don't always see what we think we see.

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When I was in college, the evils of backwards masking (or gniksam sdrawkcab, for literalists) where artists hid satanic messages or invitations to do drugs was all the range amongst the campus crusade for Christ folks. I went to one of the talks for sheer amusement, and it was a hoot. I got quite a few crusty looks when I would burst out laughing at some of their claims. (Ah, the arrogance of youth.) My final year in college, they installed a fully packed recording studio, and I took the year-long course to learn how to use it. What fun! For one of my assignments, I pulled all the supposed messages from the albums (I had them all, natch), reversed them, cleaned them up, and presented them in class. (Got an "A" on that one, methinks.) Anyway, you don't have to go through all that trouble, because somebody has already done it for you (on the most notorious ones, at least).

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It is sometimes shocking what people will actually sell to you. Like, in theory, you're not supposed to be able to buy the infamous lock-picking gun, but clearly it's for sale, too.

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It looks like Stephen Hawking has been one-upped.

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Suppose Ms. Rowling is consulting George Lucas for names? I mean Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for crying out loud? Oh well. Like everyone else, I'll be incommunicado for a couple days following the July 21, 2007 release date. And then another era will end.

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Here's an illuminating interview with Donald Fagen about his solo albums, and his recent achievement with Morph the Cat. His three solo albums comprise a trilogy, surprise surprise, so now I'm gonna have to sit down and listen to them in order. Yay!

Oh, and he nails exactly what's wrong with most current pop:

Well it all sounds so canned that it's basically...since they use drum machines and sequences for even the ballads now…people are used to it now, but to me, it also sounds like the kick drum comes in the wrong place, or it sounds wrong. You know like it's...there's really something wrong with the groove. Although, they're getting better at mimicking real grooves. To me there's always something, and the fact that it's unchanging makes it sound, it may be hypnotic, but it has no dynamics, and it has no shape.

And what's more, if you want to continue with the technical thing, as far as the other instruments are concerned, if you use synthesizers for all the keyboards and stuff like that, they're always out of tune, technically, and I can hear it. It's like the top end is always a little flat, and the bottom end is always a little sharp, because the keyboards aren't what they call "stretched." Like, when a piano tuner tunes a piano, aside from being tempered, they'll stretch the tops of the harmonics so they aren't flat on the top and sharp on the bottom. So they're...there's no groove and they're out of tune

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Oscar Wilde’s last words were, "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has got to go." (source) Now that's comedy!

Peasants with torches

If the on-going fray between atheist fundamentalists and Christians is of no interest to you, please skip this post and use the time on something you do enjoy.

Ok, now that it's just us, I found a few the letters in response to Barbara J. King's article entitled "God and gorillas" (which purports to explain what our distant cousins, namely Gorillas, can tell us about religion), great examples of the debate, and its typical tone.

(Point of clarification here: I do not lump all atheists into the category of "fundie atheist", and I even believe that the majority of atheists aren't of that stripe. However, fundie atheists nearly always lump all Christians together, not recognizing or purposely ignoring the fact that typically only fundie Christians hold the ideas they find so repugnant. Most of the rest of we Christians find fundie Christian tenets repugnant and silly, too.)

I'm not presenting these in order, because these various letter-writers did not respond to each other. I have them here because they typify their particular perspective.

First, we have a fundie atheist. I'll submit that this statement posed by whomever "Natural1" is responding to (in italics): "Religious people learn this behavior from the Bible" is not something I would agree with. The Bible says over and over that you shouldn't judge or get self-righteous.

That aside, the response it evoked is kinda typical of atheist fundamentalism:

RE: What makes people controlling and judgmental?

"Can any atheist here explain to me -- where do you people get YOUR judgmental fury from, since it's not religion?

Where do atheists get the idea they can tell other people how to think?

Religious people learn this behavior from the Bible. But where do atheists learn it from?

Atheists -- please explain."

Let me take a stab at this.

What you mistake for fury is actually frustration - that as progressive, forward thinking individuals we still have to live side-by-side with so-called adults who still believe in the Easter Bunny. Get it?

Most people who believe in spirits and (G)od are pliable, putty-brains who only believe because they were told to. No critical thought. No observation. Just blind belief in a set of stories told long ago by people with little understanding of the physical world.

George Bush is an extreme example of clouded, belief based thinking. But make no mistake - there are millions of others out there who are just as gullible and who will make decisions for the rest of us based on their misguided beliefs.

Action without proof is a slippery slope - it causes some to believe in false gods and others to start wars.

Now do you get it?

-- Natural1

This is almost a greatest hits package in terms of all the typical slings and arrows atheist fundies fling at believers. Pretty much Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins summed up in one little pustule of a letter.

Next, while the letter that follows resorts to some unnecessary name-calling like the letter above, this is a pretty good response from a believer, particularly the last sentence.

Oh please

I don't need an anthropologist's permission to believe in god.

I'm really sick and tired of the way people talk about evolution as if it explains everything. Yes, evolution is obviously real, but that doesn't mean that everything about life, about human behavior was caused by evolution. That is the height of unscientific, illogical thinking. Find something that science does not explain? Evolution did it of course! Whereas before there was the "god of the gaps", now there is "evolution of the gaps". Atheists found themselves a hammer and now they think everything is a nail.

Sadly, it is often the case, but spirituality does not have to be about blind faith. People experience things that science does not explain every single day. Skeptics write it off as brain farts but that is not good enough, it does not explain the eerie coincidences. People in isolated cultures experience the same things, so it's not just a "meme". If it was just a meme it would die out anyway, instead of being constant throughout all of humanity and history.

I used to be agnostic, leaning towards atheist. I thought there was no proof, so why believe? But then, one day god tapped me on the shoulder and alerted me to his presences, so to speak. I had a near-death experience that changed my life. After that I realized that there was nothing to fear, not even death, because my soul will live forever. I don't follow any organized religions, but after that, and now, I look around and see the proof was there all along, all around me.

But still, I think it's a waste of time to preach to atheists. They are people who are the impenetrable combination of ignorant and dense. They are the country of the blind that won't suffer us uppity one-eyed creatures. They are people who just have not reached the level of maturity where they can understand, perhaps god does hasn't gotten around to them yet. It's like magic-eye, some people just see a bunch of random dots, and others know how focus and see the design embedded inside. It's like a mathematical proof, the symbols on the page prove nothing to people who do not have the intelligence and background knowledge to understand it. People do often see meaning in things that do not have meaning, but that is no reason to assume religious experience is one of them.

But I guess all of this has little to do with the article here. The article is just more glib dismissal of the real issues... so typical of contemporary thought on the matter. Completely missing is the examination of the contents of religions. Instead, they write politically-correct blather built on the baseless assumption that spirituality is the result of evolution at all. Soon I'll be reading articles about how evolution explains my belief in rutabagas. Maybe people believe in god because... gee whiz, I dunno... because of what they have personally seen and experienced?

-- BocaBaconBurger

Finally, I love this take-down of the scurrilous idea that only Christians try to get the government to kowtow to their views and beliefs (a practice I abhor, btw), or that Christians are the only ones who practice bad evangelism (not to mention the parting shot that liberal rags throw out flamebait just like Rush and Faux News):

But seriously folks

So, when was the last time the Atheist Witnesses came trespassing on your property knocking on your door unannounced and uninvited to try to convert you to their way of thinking?

Never but I can't remember the last time a religious organization did it either. Maybe the Jehovah's witnesses left a leaflet in my door once 15 years ago though.

But that's all besides the point since we all know there's one heck of a lot of ways to cram one's ideology down another's throat without ringing anyone's doorbell.

So..

If you're suggesting that atheists haven't equally tried to use laws and the political system and courts to instill their beliefs on the public that largely doesn't agree with them.... If you're suggesting that atheists don't regularly try to browbeat the Democratic Party into litmus testing out the religious (Jewish or Christian anyway)...

If you're suggesting that atheists haven't and don't continue to attack the moderate Democrats who understand alienating religious folks had damned near made the party extinct across 2500 square miles of America ... And if you want to maintain that atheists don't rush out to whatever Christian and political dialogues they can find simply to shout down and piss on people who are believers for their "stupidity", than I can only conclude that your "ilk" as another rabid one phrased it, are on different planets breathing air of different atomic composition than the rest of us.

Understand I don't like the religious right one bit. But I don't like the obnoxious atheist crowd either. And I agree with the person who per se suggested Salon is increasingly throwing red meat to it's rabids in the same way Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter do, by publishing this and similar baiting articles.

-- JoanR

Nice.

Jeez, why bother locking your car?



The Hole - video powered by Metacafe

Cat Power

This made me laugh pretty hard.

Ya ever wonder...

...if the music industry has any freakin' idea how to sell music?

According to this article, they're blocking songs made in Japan from American consumers. The hell?

"No, you can't have the song you want!" Is this the direction the music industry feels is right and good? And I bet they still wonder why they're tanking.

I also like the point of Japan being a nirvana for music geeks.

I've probably never made a more embarrassing admission on the web about my vast and eclectic musical tastes than the one I'm about to make.

I really really wanted a replacement to the soundtrack from the Robby Benson bassetball movie One on One after the old cassette tape I had gave out. Any given song from the much loathed High School Musical has more hair on its balls than this entire soundtrack, being the product of Paul Williams and Seals & Crofts, but dammit I liked it. However, not a single print was available in America. A buddy of mine was living in Japan at the time and came across it in a record store over there and snagged it for me.

And, if they have the soundtrack to One on One, they will have anything.

I can't wait till the walls come down and Japanese, Eastern Europe and such flood the U.S. market. The American music scene will be overwhelmed and the last noise you hear as it goes down will be (to steal the phrase from David Foster Wallace): "like a goat drowning in something viscous." But that will be a happy sound because it will only mean that American music will resurrect as something better than it is now.

Obama Bitchslaps Faux News

I still think he needs more experience before being the big dude, but at least he's attacked this one head on.

Obama is not a Muslim.

________
Update:

Personally, I'd like to see Gore run again.

After all he did win the popular election, and probably even the actual election. Most of the problems he had back then have been corrected (right-wing lies and his robotic demeanor, to name two).

Do Scientologists yell "Thomas H. Cruise!" when they stub their toe?

If not, apparently they should start. Someone in the "church" has declared him to be their Jesus.

If you sit very quietly, you can actually hear his publicist screaming.

Of course the comments on Digg are a snort. (I stole the title from one of the jokes.)

And whilst hunting down the reports on this - heh - revelation, I discovered this gem: Jenna Elfman got all up in the guy's grill for his t-shirt that said Scientology is so gay. I wonder how insulted gay groups must feel over the shirt; I mean, what a slam.

I was also thinking, if Scientology can get itself recognized as a religion for tax purposes, certainly the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster should be able to. Wouldn't that be a hoot?

Wow. This race is the easiest to call, ever.

Performance by an actor in a leading role
Will Smith in The Pursuit of Happyness (Sony Pictures Releasing)

Performance by an actor in a supporting role
Eddie Murphy in Dreamgirls (DreamWorks and Paramount)

Performance by an actress in a leading role
Helen Mirren in The Queen (Miramax, Pathé and Granada)

Performance by an actress in a supporting role
Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls (DreamWorks and Paramount)

Best animated feature film of the year
Cars (Buena Vista) John Lasseter

Achievement in directing
Letters from Iwo Jima (Warner Bros.) Clint Eastwood

Achievement in makeup
Pan's Labyrinth (Picturehouse) David Marti and Montse Ribe

Best motion picture of the year
The Queen (Miramax, Pathé and Granada)

Adapted screenplay
Children of Men (Universal)
Screenplay by Alfonso Cuarón & Timothy J. Sexton and David Arata and Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby

Original screenplay
Pan's Labyrinth (Picturehouse)
Written by Guillermo del Toro

And what another sucky year for movies, mang.

And she'll have fun fun fun 'till daddy takes the CD away....

Eilene Zimmerman got the duty of tackling the phenomenon of High School Musical, and delivered this dead-on observation:

Musicologist Elizabeth Upton, a professor at UCLA (and mother of two tweens) whose many areas of scholarship include children's music, says in the last decade there has been a dearth of pop music for the 5-14 age group. The reason Disney's songs are so attractive to tweens is that they are, well, pretty. "This kind of melodic pop music just hasn't been fashionable for a long while. A lot of what's been popular has been scratchy, alternative stuff," says Upton. "If you're a kid and you're going to listen to pop, Disney isn't a bad place to be. Imagine that for your entire life, pop music has been ugly, edgy or beat-heavy, from grunge to hip-hop. This kind of music is a revelation."

Exactly. They're catchy. They're pretty. I hate every song from High School Musical with a deep blue passion (and have had to tell my daughter to not play it the third freakin' time, twice was too much), but they are sparkly little nuggets of pop.

Upton is right. If you can find a local radio station that plays new music (or, even rarer, one that fits the original mold of radio, cycling old stuff with new hits), you're not going to find a lot of "pretty" music. It's either rap, repetitively mind-numbing (and usually crude) hip-hop, or cookie monster vocals over banks of droning steroidal guitars. Not much of it is downright pretty. When a pretty song comes on, you should see both of my daughters (ages 10 and 2) light up.

So, dear God, for all our sakes, let's let pretty music actually make it to radio stations and best seller lists so we don't have to die in a sea of Disney tunes. Next time you read a music critic take apart an offering of pretty, catchy (non-Disney) tunes, write them and tell them they are responsible for the demise of civilization.

It's your civic duty.


FWIW, some examples of great pretty music from the past:
- Beatles
- Marshall Crenshaw
- Queen
- ABBA
- Electric Light Orchestra
- U2
- Pink Floyd
- Eagles
- Steely Dan
- Earth, Wind and Fire

You get the idea. Fight the power.

What white guilt?

This article is explicit proof as to why every President of a University in the United States needs to shut down* the "Identity Politics" wing in the Humanities Departments (best described by Stanley Crouch via the quote "Alienation has become a commodity that you sell on an academic market.").

(*And, actually, they should keep just one "Identity Politics" prof. on and allow her (it's never a "he" - males are forbidden as they are part of the supposed problem) to continue to teach the classes, just so if anyone wants to experience the looniness up close, they can. But limit each student to just one of the classes, and it's pass/fail.)

And while the college pres. is at it, s/he should send a memo to the Literature dept. telling them to get over it and get back to teaching actual literature. (Lit. depts. are the second refuge of Identity Politics goons, much to my continued embarrassment. When I was in college, I watched our best Shakespeare prof. go from happy and fun teacher, to bitter and resentful scold where each class ended up being a hen party for gender feminists who wanted all "males" (can't use the word "men") rounded up into camps. What a loss that was.)

Anyway, pertinent excerpts below. My emphasis added.

Which brings me to the main reason I delayed writing about Obama. For me, it was a trick question in a game I refused to play. Since the issue was always framed as a battle between gender and race (read: non-whiteness -- the question is moot when all the players are white), I didn't have the heart (or the stomach) to point out the obvious: Obama isn't black.

"Black," in our political and social reality, means those descended from West African slaves. Voluntary immigrants of African descent (even those descended from West Indian slaves) are just that, voluntary immigrants of African descent with markedly different outlooks on the role of race in their lives and in politics. At a minimum, it can't be assumed that a Nigerian cabdriver and a third-generation Harlemite have more in common than the fact a cop won't bother to make the distinction. They're both "black" as a matter of skin color and DNA, but only the Harlemite, for better or worse, is politically and culturally black, as we use the term.

To say that Obama isn't black is merely to say that, by virtue of his white American mom and his Kenyan dad who abandoned both him and America, he is an American of African immigrant extraction. It is also to point out the continuing significance of the slave experience to the white American psyche; it's not we who can't get over it. It's you. Lumping us all together (which blacks also do from sloppiness and ignorance, and as a way to dominate the race issue and to force immigrants of African descent to subordinate their preferences to ours) erases the significance of slavery and continuing racism while giving the appearance of progress. Though actually, it is a kind of progress. And that's why I break my silence: Obama, with his non-black ass, is doing us all a favor.

Since he had no part in our racial history, he is free of it. And once he's opened the door to even an awkward embrace of candidates of color for the highest offices, the door will stay open. A side door, but an open door. Yet until Obama survives the scourging he's about to receive from Hillary Clinton (God help him if he really did lie about his Muslim background) and the electoral process, no candidate of color will ever be taken seriously. Clinton isn't about to leave the stage in the name of racial progress, and the pundit class has only just begun to take apart the senator's record, associates and bank accounts. Still, this is progress. A non-black on the down low about his non-blackness is about to get what blacks have always asked for: to be judged on his merits. So let's all just pretend that we've really overcome.

-- Debra J. Dickerson

Jaw-dropping, isn't it?

Plowing through the letters responding to the article, though, it was heartening to see the vast majority were of the "WTF?" variety.

I thought "Gary" had a particularly salient observation (I've edited it down, but haven't changed the meaning by taking things out of context):

First off, let's address this "white guilt" and "safe black people" nonsense once and for all. Obviously I can't speak for the entire country, but I suspect most white Americans are like me: we don't hold any white guilt, and we aren't frightened of black people. I'm not sure where these rumors started, or why they play such a smug refrain in black politics.

Like every other white person I know, my family arrived in this country after the Civil War. I'm second generation born-in-America, with my grandparents having arrived on Ellis Island, at various times, from Italy and Ireland in the 20s and 30s. This is the culture I grew up in, and lord knows, there are millions upon millions of us similarly situated. I'm sorry, but as a general rule, we don't feel the slightest personal guilt over slavery, or any responsibility for the atmosphere in the South prior to the Civil Rights movement. It had nothing to do with us, and our cultural history gives us enough of our own problems to worry about. It amazes me that Dickerson is so readily able to distinguish between held-in-bondage-blacks and African-immigrant-not-blacks, but is also so willing to lump 80% of the country together as "white".

Obama looks like his white mother, and therefore is "safe" for us to vote for? Don't make me laugh. "Swooning over nice safe Obama means you aren't racist?" What the hell? Despite Dickerson's belief, most of white people don't spend any time worrying about whether we're racist or not. We just aren't, but don't feel any need to prove our lack of racism to Ms. Dickerson, any more than I feel the need to prove to Europeans that "hey, I may be descended from Italians, but I don't like Mussolini, I swear." All this crap is too far removed from my generation and my experience.

But two things: first, you really shouldn't be throwing white people into this mix, acting insulted and condescending if we don't bother to constantly distinguish between the groups – no one is entitled to that as a matter of right. I don't demand that you understand the historical rise of Italians and Irish in America, or to recognize me as Irish/Italian, or to distinguish between the clear differences between an Italian looking person and, say, a Polish person; don't demand that I vote for Ronald Washington from Detroit, just because he's black enough for you.

(Before I read this letter, my original title for the post was "So, because my heritage is essentially Swedish and Irish, I should feel like half a victim because one of my distant ancestors kicked the butt of another one?", but I felt this letter said it better.)

Like this guy, I have never felt "white guilt."

Even though I grew up in the Midwest amongst the Lakota Sioux, and at any given opportunity they would use "white man stole my ..." complaint (fill in the blank with whatever the moment's grievance was), I just couldn't manage to give a damn.

All of that happened several generations back, and I had as much to do with it as I did the formation of the sun, and there's not a hell of a lot I can do about it now. If free education through the graduate level and monthly checks for simply belonging to a particular race aren't enough, I don't know what would be.

"Give the land back." Sure. Let's start with your house. And, for the record, all the land that was "given back" was pretty promptly sold to someone who had the funds to buy it.

"Well, you are on the 'winning' side, so that's why you don't care" is usually the next refrain, but again, I'm not on any side. I inherited things the way they are just as everyone else my age did. I didn't win anything. In my home state, someone of Lakota descent can literally attend college as long as they want to for free. Hell, I'd have stayed until my liver gave out, had I had that opportunity. Who's the winner again?

(Further, imagine had it been the Chinese, or the Arabs, who'd ventured out and not Europeans. What would your world be like, then? Bush baby is a freakin' cake walk compared to Mao or Mohammad.)

And it's not as if I don't have the opportunity to have multi-generation grievances over injustices in the past. My family once pretty much owned a small town, because we owned the only restaurant, the only bar, and the grocery store. One night my grandma sold a shot of whiskey to a guy who later got into an auto accident where he killed people. I don't know who exactly sued - the victims or the drunk - but someone sued my family out of the ownership of all their property on the grounds that my grandma was responsible for giving him the drink that allowed him to kill people. My family left the town in poverty and had to start anew elsewhere. Had that not happened, my brother and I would probably be pretty wealthy at this moment in time.

Even before I knew of this particular chapter of family history, it has always struck me as odd that the law can actually go after a bartender or bar owner if someone who drank there later gets into trouble. That flies in the face of personal responsibility. The reasoning: if you sold me the crack, it's your fault I'm a crackhead. That just doesn't wash with me. How is a bar owner any more responsible for the actions of a drunk any more so than the owner of a liquor store?

Given that, should I hunt down the family of that drunkard, or the family of those who were killed, those who essentially took all of my family's wealth and possessions and hound them for reparations for generations? Hell, no. What happened, happened, and it's over now.

So I've got no white guilt whatsoever, thank you very much.

Any guilt I carry around is for stuff I've done myself (or, y'know, have allowed to occur when I could have changed things).


For the record, I don't think Obama is experienced enough to be the pres, yet. (Not that Georgie Porgy was/is, but he's a puppet for a shadow council anyway.) We don't have enough info about him given the resume he does have. Let him be a Senator for a while before he tries for the office that turns everyone's hair white. (And why is that, you suppose? Do they take every pres. down to the x-files office, show them the truth about aliens, or the memos from the Vatican regarding the third secret of Our Lady of Fatima, or pictures of Margaret Thatcher nude? What could it be?)

____________
Update: In a sort of "response" article to the one above, Salon's Gary Kamiya says this:

"Of course, the fact that white people are the majority in America makes it easy for them not to feel 'white.' A majority group's racial identity, since it encounters no external obstacles, singling out or bigotry, is always invisible to itself."

Here is another fallacy that folks who don't think of themselves as "white" subscribe to in America. I've been singled out or have been the subject (I hate to use the word "victim") of bigotry plenty of times.

Here are just two examples:

When I lived in Florida, I frequented a local KFC. If I walked in when the white manager was not working, leaving the all-black staff, and was first in line at the counter and a dozen black people walked in, they would all be waited on ahead of me. If the white manager were working, the reverse would occur, where I would be pulled to the front of the line around any black people. This happened so frequently that I would look who was at the counter and get in line accordingly. I had tried to not be put ahead of black people who were ahead of me once, but the manager would not have it any other way. Of course, complaining about the reverse might have been dangerous.

Again in Florida, I had to drive through a portion of the town to get home euphemistically called "French Town" which was the local black ghetto. When it was daytime, no problem. However, when I had to cross it at night, there was the potential I'd get trapped at one of the two lights. Invariably when I did, people would come up to the car, usually the hood, and pound on it or rock the car, yelling some racist thing at me. Only once did someone come up to the window.

During my afternoon peruse of the latest on Digg, I found this lovely article.

So let's not fool ourselves that white people walk around oblivious and free from racial harassment.

Please don't read this until you've mentally played the theme song from "Mr. Ed" in your head a couple times. Especially Vegans.

Back during the "Brokeback" controversy, I opined that it would be a bigger scandal had they hauled off and fucked a sheep. Well, seems I had spoken too soon.

From Andrew O'Hehir's reports from Sundance:

There's already a media mini-flurry around "Zoo," the quiet, sensitive, resolutely unsensational documentary about virtually the most sensational subject you can imagine. OK, no, it's not about vagina dentata. But it is about a small community of men in rural Washington state who used to get together on a ranch to have carnal relations with animals. Specifically, with horses. That is, with stallions. One of these men was dumped at an emergency room in July 2005, where he died of a perforated colon. A subsequent investigation of the ranch he had been visiting uncovered many hours of videos of men enjoying similar activities.

Much about this case remains shrouded in mystery. It's amazing that director Robinson Devor got any of these guys to talk to him at all. None of them reveals his real name, and several won't appear on camera. The dead man, purportedly a midlevel U.S. intelligence officer in an unspecified agency, is identified only as "Mr. Hands." Since there's no archival footage to work with (the ranch tapes remain under wraps, unsurprisingly), most of Devor's film consists of re-creations, using actors on substitute locations, narrated in voice-over.

It would be ludicrous to claim that "Zoo" dispels prejudice against people who have sex with animals; these men themselves understand that their practices are not socially acceptable. (They refer to themselves as "zoo," short for zoophile or zoophilia. They say, "I'm zoo," as other people might say they were gay or straight.) But at some level this film will confuse and surprise you. For the most part these guys seem like gentle, lonely and odd people, poorly socialized to human life. They insist that their love for their horses is genuine, and make clear that for the activities they have in mind, no coercion -- and not much persuasion -- was required.

To Bible-believing fundamentalists, of course, there isn't much difference between the activities presented in "Zoo" and ordinary, garden-variety homosexuality.

No, there isn't, Andrew. Unless you consider the vegan angle, then it's worse.

Dude, most of us view that part of the anatomy as "exit only." Particularly when it involves something roughly the size of a louisville slugger. (Even those of us who aren't fundies. Thanks for the obligatory swipe at Christianity, btw.)

Still, I have to see this movie. Truly, what could be better entertainment than a serious documentary about guys who like getting fucked by horses? I'll probably round up the gang and tap a keg.

Let me leave you with this, though. My father-in-law had a good one this last holiday season that I've forgotten to thread into a post until now. But, he asked the very legitimate question (with his tongue firmly in cheek):
"Do vegans breastfeed?"

Even I didn't know...

Bob Dylan wrote every popular song, ever.

Salty Egg Vegetable Sponge Liver Pig Soup

Oh, this is a gem.

Digg dug it up.

Some commenters began to call BS on it as a fake, but then a prof. of Chinese pipes up and 'splains how they really are direct literal translations using a current Chinese to English dictionary that includes modern slang. S/he reports:

"The problem here is that the word 'gan' means both 'to dry' and 'to do,' and the latter meaning has come to mean 'to fuck.' Unfortunately, the recent proliferation of Colloquial English dictionaries in China means people choose the vulgar translation way too often, on the grounds that it's colloquial. Last summer I was in a spiffy modern supermarket in Taiyuan whose dried-foods aisle was helpfully labeled 'Assorted Fuck.'"

Y'know, I've not seen any aisle in my local Walmart labeled thus, but some certainly should be.

That Explains Things a Little

I've always wondered why the corporate habit of massive layoffs simply to meet projected earnings - even when the company is solvent and does not need to have the layoffs to survive or even be profitable - has never been a bigger blip on the media's radar. Everyone I know has been hit by it at some point.

Even having a corporate-friendly administration in the White House wouldn't entirely explain it away, because Republicans get laid off in droves, too.

The disruption in people's lives is nearly equivalent to a death in the family and other traumas of that level, but every year hundreds of companies do it, and the media reports nada. (Maybe they report the numbers.)

So, why the silence? Here ya go:

From "The Fix" of Jan. 19 on Salon:
Huge layoffs yesterday at Time, Inc.: The media company cut nearly 300 jobs, mostly from the magazines People, Time and Sports Illustrated, saying that the company is attempting to refocus its efforts in digital media. (Variety)

300 people a HUGE layoff? Wow. Methinks they need a little perspective.

I've been in companies no where near the size of Time, Inc., and they've laid off half a grand of folks just because. I once worked for a company that regularly laid off people who'd reached a certain pay grade, and hire someone in their place for less.

But, clearly the media doesn't notice it because it's not happening to them. Mystery solved.

TLD: True story: One layoff I survived was just amazing regarding the callousness and cluelessness of the company. No one knew it was coming (except, of course, some upper management), but then the HR people started showing up at cubes and asking the person to follow them.

"My" company had recently bought another company in order to utilize it as a component of our product. (This is done a lot, actually. Just open the "about" screen in Microsoft Word and look at all the companies they bought in order to use their functionality.)

Usually when this happens, the company that's bought faces the majority of the layoffs due to duplicated roles and depts., and at first that was the case. But they were a cagey bunch of folks, and complained that of those left from "their" company, none of them were in leadership roles, so some of "them" were rewarded with just that. Immediately they went to work insuring no one else from their old company got laid off, and boy did it work. So much so that "we," the existing company, suffered the most layoffs, and eventually were completely routed. The company "we" bought effectively took us over.

But before that happened (and when I finally got the boot), the first big round of layoffs for "our" part of the company (after "they" had gotten power and arranged it) was simply amazing in its scope.

We took up three floors of a huge office building. The building was essentially cut in half by the elevators, break rooms, and staircases. On either side of that column was a huge cube farm, about 10 deep by 10 wide - the typical rat maze/veal pens of corporate America.

I was on the phone essentially playing Master of Ceremonies with a group of about 10 people who were given the responsibility of sorting all our documentation into one pile, as it were. We had these calls that would take up the entire morning once a week for about a month to complete the effort.

Since I was the was who had to do the talking for what amounted to half of the 4 hour phone call, I couldn't go on mute or step away for a bit. The folks who got it first came by holding their cardboard boxes to shake my hand and mine various "call me", "write me", "keep in contact", "here's my card", and "let's grab a few cold ones tonight" messages as I kept having to say things into my headset like, "Ok, Stan, I agree that sections 3.5 through 3.8 should become the primary text for that product. Wendy, I think I recall from an email that you wanted to include the forward from the..." etc. etc. I couldn't say goodbye. I could only wave, shrug, gesture, and shake hands. The stream of shocked and sometimes teary-eyed comrades stayed steady all morning.

It dawned on me sometime during the call that I was probably laid off, too, but they knew what I was doing (it was supposed to be the final meeting/call of its type), and were just waiting for me to complete the effort. We got done at about 12:30, and I took my headset off and stood up.

Every single cube in my visual field was now empty. They'd nuked my whole side of the floor. Even some of the offices along the edge were dark. There was litter all over the floor. The desks and walls of the cubes had the dust marks where pictures and knick-knacks had been removed. Abandoned pens, paper clips, and rubber bands were everywhere. The push-pins on the cubie walls formed vast constellations. It was one of the saddest sites I've seen, because just that morning it had been bustling.

Well, my bladder had reached the proportions of a dirigible, and I wanted to see the damage throughout the building, and hopefully my wandering would keep me ahead of the HR reaper for a few more minutes while I located a sturdy box. I sauntered past the office of the guy who'd been my boss two reorgs back; he was a great guy, one of the best bosses I've had. He seemed shocked to see me, which I took as proof that I was marked. He asked if I knew if I had a job or not. I told him I didn't know, and asked about him. He said he was fine, but he'd need to catch up with me later, and closed his door, seemingly angry.

I later found out he immediately called my current boss and read him the riot act about how inappropriate it was that I didn't know my fate yet. When I returned to my desk, a message was waiting, which I assumed was from HR telling me to <Ironic Bob Barker Voice>Come on down!</Ironic Bob Barker Voice>, but it was my boss apologizing all over himself (he was really a good guy, too, btw), and telling me I was safe. He knew I was on the other call and wanted to wait until it was over, but then got sidetracked by the layoffs in his building. (Yes, there was another whole facility that was getting cleaned out, too.)

The five of us that were left moved into the cubes over by the windows. About two months later, someone from HR or facilities noticed what we had done, and reassigned us to cubes away from each other on another floor, as far from the windows as possible. They didn't want us to get uppity, after all. We should feel lucky, doncha know.

Shortly after that, the empty cubes around me started filling up with guys from India who mostly kept to themselves. I learned I had to wait in the morning until they started talking to each other before I could talk to them, because they all had pictures of Vishnu at the entrance to their cubes, and they would kiss their hand and touch the picture and bow to it for a while every morning, and then sit and say a prayer.

A few months later, I got laid off, too, along with the rest of those few left from the original company. This was when Bush's first depression had hit, and half the folks in my culdesac were unemployed as well. It was an amazing and rough year. (My primary shock that year was our loss of a baby through miscarriage just weeks before she could have survived. I got laid off the day I came back from my week off for mourning. So if you read those posts, that's what my primary focus was.)

And, for the record, the layoff I described here was the kind that I actually understand. Having redundant staff makes no sense. However, there are still vast swathes of companies that do layoffs merely to meet projected earnings, or to replace workers with slightly cheaper ones (while the CEO gets a million-plus bonus), and when it's not even close to a financial necessity. That's immoral, in my book.

So, I'd always wondered why the media just missed the boat on the pervasiveness of layoffs, and the immorality of most of them. Until today. Verdict: It's just not about them, so who cares? Crass loudmouths and millionaires with bad comb-overs feuding are more interesting, you see.

Rock trivia, factoids, ephemera

All of these are stolen from found in the fun new tome: Is Tiny Dancer Really Elton's Little John? by Gavin Edwards. I heartily recommend it for all music noids.

(Oh, and it contains the best definition of rock and roll I've found: "[B]y "rock," I mean "the whole megillah of popular music since 1955, based on the union of blues and country, but encompassing soul, folks, hip-hop, distorted electric guitars, and the funky chicken.")

- Steve Wonder briefly lost his sense of smell and taste after a car accident in 1973. He got most of it back eventually.
- Bono of U2 is 5' 6" tall.
- John Mayer has synaesthesia where he sees/experiences colors when he hears music. For instance, his first hit "No Such Thing" is "red over white." And "'Dave Matthew's Under the Table and Dreaming was like a kid breaking into a paint store.'" (I have a touch of this myself. I taste candy when I see multi-colored Christmas lights, for example. Mayer mentions he's way into the melody of music, and so am I; which leads me to wonder if folks with synaesthesia all lock onto the melody when they listen to music.)
- Elvis Presley "liked girls in lacy white panties, with some pubic hair coming out the sides."
- Elvis Costello's album Blood and Chocolate was so named after girlfriend Bebe Buell's (she of many rock star couplings, mother of Liv Tyler) need for chocolate when she was having her period.
- Huey Lewis has a big dick, second only Iggy Pop's amongst living rock stars, with Jimi Hendrix weighing in for the deceased.
- The original "chorus" for Chic's "Le Freak" was not, "Aww, freak out!" but "Aww, fuck off!" because composer Nile Rodgers was turned away from Studio 54 even when they were playing his previous hit inside. The bassist was religious, hence the change.
- The Beatles' "Yesterday" is the most covered song written in the rock era (see above for definition). "Summertime" from Porgy & Bess is the most covered song of all time, not counting Christmas songs.
- Neil Young personally paid for the recall of all 200,000 copies of the initial pressing of Comes a Time when he discovered it was pressed from a damaged master tape. He shot all the boxes with a rifle.
- Donald Fagen and Walter Becker of Steely Dan wrote for the (in)famous Brill Building, and one song, "I Mean to Shine," was done by Streisand.
- "Charlie Watts legendarily picked up the Rolling Stones' backbeat from the movements of Mick Jagger's ass."
- Stevie Nicks on Lindsey Buckingham: "'He could take my songs and do what I would do if I had his musical talent. When he wasn't angry with me, that is. That's why there's seven or eight great songs, and there's fifty more where he wasn't happy with me and didn't help me.'"
- It's now kinda common knowledge that Bachman Turner Overdrive's song "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" was never meant for release, and the stuttered vocals are really Randy Bachman ribbing his brother - the manager of the band - about his stutter. Here's the new news: His brother stopped stuttering after that.
- Alanis Morissette has a twin brother, and Justin Timberlake - like Elvis - had a twin sibling that died at birth.
- The supposed death wail of a woman being murdered on Ohio Players "Love Rollercoaster" is actually keyboardist Billy Breck screeching.
- George Harrison once told John Bonham of Led Zeppelin, "'The problem with your band is that you don't do any ballads.'" (Cheeky, even for a Beatle, imho.) Page responded by "'purposely [sticking] the first two notes of 'Something" on 'The Rain Song.''" (A ballad.)
- Gregg Allman avoided the Vietnam draft by shooting himself in the foot. His brother Duane later snuck into the emergency room and absconded with the moccasin with the target painted on the top.
- Tom Waits, Rickie Lee Jones' boyfriend at the time, provided the title/lyric/hook for "Chuck E.'s in Love" by saying those exact words after hanging up from a phone conversation with said Chuck who'd followed a girl half way across the nation. And the line about Chuck being "in love with the little girl who's singing this song" was just artistic license. She was Tom's girl.
- Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" is about a (wealthy) boyfriend she (also wealthy) had way before she was popular as a singer (according to her husband, Jim Hart). She auctioned off the answer in a charity action and Dick Ebersol was the highest bidder, and thus knows the secret. She has explicitly denied it was neither Mick Jagger (who wasn't slated to do the background vocal, but when he offered to pitch in, the original choice, Harry Nilsson, graciously bowed out), nor Warren Beatty. However, Beatty did assume it was about him and once called Simon and thanked her for the honor. (No doubt "heaven can wait" merely so they have time to make enough room for his freakin' ego.)
- Don Henley claims he was the father of the child that Stevie Nicks aborted (to her deep, lasting regret), for whom she wrote the song "Sara" (which is heartbreaking to listen to, once you know).
- The first time the Beatles' had LSD, a dentist who was holding a dinner party for them had slipped it into their after-dinner coffee without their knowledge. They did not have a good time. Reportedly a lot of screaming was involved.
- During the recording of Donna Summer's "Love to Love You Baby" she was (in her own words): "'...on my back. I couldn't do the song with four guys staring at me, so I lay down on the floor; we put up curtains and shut the lights off.'"
- Pink Floyd once tried to record a whole album using household items rather than instruments. They bailed after a month of trying and recording only about a minute and a half of music.
- The band Jimmy Eat World got their name from a drawing done by the guitarist's brother during his fight with another (elder) brother, which showed "Jimmy" shoving a planet down his throat and containing the famous caption, which the band regrets using as their name to this day.
- Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Robert Johnson, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison all died at 27.
- James Taylor wrote the first verse of "Fire and Rain" in his basement apartment in London, the second in a New York hospital where he landed due to his heroin addiction, and the third verse in a Massachusetts psych clinic.
- Mama Cass and Keith Moon both died in the same London flat, which was owned by Nilsson (during both deaths). Pete Townshend subsequently bought the flat from Nilsson who no longer wanted it. (The book contains a great crack from Townshend regarding the issue.)

Other highlights of the book include:
- The hilarious observation (regarding the fact that Barry Manilow did NOT write, "I Write the Songs" - Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys did) that: "The song was recorded by the Captain and Tennille and David Cassidy before Manilow got his hands on it, which is some sort of strange '70s light-rock trifecta." (The whole book is amusing that way.)
- The odd synchronicity between The Wizard of Oz and Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon is described in full, so you don't have to bother experiencing it yourself (especially if you aren't altered). Any purposeful coincidence (ooo, did I just make a new oxymoron?) is cleverly debunked.
- An investigation of the rumor that Kurt Cobain wrote Hole's (Courtney Love's) only good album, Live Through This.
- An examination of whether or not Ringo Starr is/was a great drummer.

Apologies for leaving you hanging re Edwards' verdicts (all of which I think are dead-on), but I've got to leave you some reason to read the book (and in case he ever reads this post and contemplates litigation - if you are reading this Mr. Edwards, just consider this a free full-page ad!).

Speaking of the Beatles (and this was not in this book), I read in an article on the web that John Lennon briefly thought he was Jesus Christ, and announced that revelation to the other Beatles in a meeting called for that specific purpose (search for "Jesus" (har har) in the article to get to the goods). What a moment that must have been, eh? Besides the fact that it's kinda funny (especially since Lennon got over that delusion - apparently Yoko was good for something), I just love the irony that the guy who wrote the most popular atheist hymn thought he was Jesus once.

Finally, last year I read two separate books (one, two) on the music scene of Laurel Canyon that spawned well over half the songs from that era (late 60s, early 70s) and have dominated FM radio since, but this book sums up the whole schmear on three pages, 132 through 134 - to be precise. And I mean it. He hits all salient factoids in those few paragraphs (save for perhaps Mama Cass's phenomenal drug use and litanies of who screwed whom*), where it took the other two books over 300 pages to relay the same info. That is not to say I didn't enjoy the other two, but I did read them primarily for the trivia, and could have saved a lot of time.

(*So here's the short version for you completists: Pretty much everyone who was anyone in the Laurel Canyon/Californian music scene got a whack at Joni Mitchell, Michelle Phillips, and Grace Slick (except Marty Balin who considers it a source of pride that he was the only band member who didn't do Slick), with Linda Ronstadt probably achieving the same thing, but managing to leave the names out of it. More notable, though, was that Ronstadt was more egalitarian in that she often, uh, bonded with a lot of the band members and recording studio folks she, uh, worked with, and wasn't as much of a star-fucker. Stevie Nicks, after Buckingham, had an affair with Mick Fleetwood before she moved on to Henley. However, the biggest slut of all was Jackson Browne, even compared to Don Henley and Glen Frey, which brings new light to the song, "Doctor, My Eyes.")

I literally didn't put Is Tiny Dancer Really Elton's Little John? down once I turned the first page. What a blast!

The Best Set of Aurora Borealis Pictures I've Seen

Kam Lake, NWT
Originally uploaded by antennas.

Oddly, a lot of folks who manage to get good pictures of the phenomenon post them in little postcard sizes. These are spectacular and big enough to be your wallpaper.

Yeah that looks about right


For you visual folks out there who've always wondered....

"It's a planet! Who knew." Part 2.

Ok, when you use this as a title for your article, you've gotta include at least one wink to the audience: Uranus Has a Dark Spot

But, no. Not this journalist.

Nor this one.

Rectify!

I always have kind of a Beavis and Butthead response to that word, so it's a favorite of mine. I imagine it said like a black Baptist preacher would scream "Sanctify" or whatever it is they yell a lot. (I'm pretty much Lutheran/Presbyterian and if anyone stands up and starts yelling in church, we assume s/he's having a medical emergency.)

Anyway, of course after I post my grousing "2006, what the hell?" post, I encounter two CDs from the year that are pretty damn good.

One kinda doesn't count because it's a soundtrack (but, hey, any grouping of good songs is a reason to indulge in a little snake-handling, to continue my religious references and if that's what floats your ontological boat), and the other I originally wasn't impressed, but upon a revisit, was duly impressed.

The soundtrack is "Marie Antoinette". I have yet to see the movie as it's not on DVD, but got the soundtrack and was really pleased. Beautiful mix of classical music, 80s rock and, dear Lord, the manufactured band with the hottie jailbait lead singer (I think she was 16 at the time), Bow Wow Wow.

"The Animal Years" by Josh Ritter, upon second listen, really opened up to me. Maybe my mood was off first time I listened to it. But it's a Dylan-esque set from someone who can actually sing. If you like thoughtful, folky stuff, you'll love this. One of the songs I like best, "Thin Blue Flame" (right-click and save as) is available as a free MP3 download on the site.

Enjoy.

Some trivia

Apparently they're going to make a new Star Trek movie that centers around the original crew prior to their "going where no man has gone before" (to which my eldest daughter gleefully screams, "The ladies room!", thereby making the joke officially multi-generational).

Anyway, the EW article announcing this shows this picture.



Now, Scotty was not a lefty, so why is he holding his phaser in his left hand? Well, they hid it entirely during the series, but Doohan was missing the middle finger of his right hand from a WWII battle injury. It's kinda fun watching the old series and seeing all the gyrations they go through to not show that hand.

Maybe that's why Scotty could always get things done so quickly; he only had to count to nine when everyone else had to go on to ten.

Yes, it's art

Back when I lived in Minneapolis, I was heavily immersed in the world of visual art simply through association with buddies who were trying to break into the local scene. I attended so many gallery openings that I learned the rhythms, the accepted behavior, etc. and of course I saw a lot of art. (Or attempts thereof.)

As with all the arts, there is necessarily a lot of chaff amongst the few grains of wheat, so I considered a showing successful if I liked even one piece.

(Not counting naked pictures, by the way. A work containing a nude is a gimme because we all find the human body intrinsically interesting, so art depicting the same is automatically interesting just because of that. That didn't disqualify a piece from being something of true imagination and quality, it still had to pass the personal test of like it/hate it. To be honest, though, I can remember only a couple times where a nude was interesting beyond nakedness.)

Nonetheless, to this day if you put a gallery somewhere on my path, I will wander through it.

Had I encountered this during a show, I would have loved it.


But is it art?

This is essentially what all special effects houses do for a living. I'm impressed that Patricia Piccinini went the gallery route rather than the Industrial Light and Magic route, simply because it's a great way to stand out and be unique. But now that she's done it, it's done for good. If other artists started offering sci-fi creature statues, it would now be passé.

So, yeah, it's art. But I think getting this stuff into galleries in the first place is the larger accomplishment.

I think you can see his jaw breaking...


via eatliver.com

Also, the dad in the black hat to the left ain't doing the best job of protecting that little head. And what a cutie! Got her hands up, too, not knowing why. Gotta love kids, mang.

I don't know what this is...

But I like it! (NSFW, btw)

2006 - All that will be remembered is "Crazy"

We Americans love our nostalgia don't we? I do. Thus, the ritualized "year in review" stuff is always fun in that regard. Even years like this.

So, this here's a slamdance through the "year in review" according to moi. (My abrupt segue reminds me of that old joke about redneck foreplay, which consists solely of, "Brace yourself, Marge.")

Let's start with the top grossing movies:

1. "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," $423.3 million
2. "Cars," $244.1 million
3. "X-Men: The Last Stand," $234.4 million
4. "The Da Vinci Code," $217.5 million
5. "Superman Returns," $200.1 million
6. "Ice Age: The Meltdown," $195.3 million
7. "Happy Feet," $176.2 million
8. "Over the Hedge," $155.0 million
9. "Casino Royale," $153.4 million
10. "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby," $148.2 million
Source: CNN

Boy, but ain't Hollywood in a slump? Cartoons and comics rule the day. Nothing much wrong with that, but grown-ups just didn't have a lot to choose from this year, eh?

I saw all of those, except 7, 9, and 10. I'll see 7 and 9 on DVD, but not 10, the Nascar sendup. The entertainment folks on the coasts paint rednecks with such a broad brush anymore (Think, "My Name is Earl"), that "The Beverly Hillbillies" was subtle in comparison.

Of those movies I saw, I was mostly entertained. "Da Vinci" was dull, surprisingly, because the book - as preposterous as the premise was - was a page-turner. I thought "Cars" was a retread of every sports movie ever made (the "big show-down" genre, not the "he dies at the end" genre). "Pirates" was a messy, loud popcorn movie that was more grotesque than it needed to be, but today's kids don't seem to bat an eye at a thing with a realistic octopus for a head. The superhero movies entertained in the moment, but I'd have to work to recall the plots. The only sticky image was Superman's unconscious plunge to earth after he tossed "Manhattan Island, the sequel" into space. "Ice Age" had the best jokes.

My favorite this year was The Matador, a sleeper at best.

---

How about music?

Top 10 best-selling albums released in 2006 (worldwide):

1. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Stadium Arcadium
2. High School Musical - High School Musical Soundtrack
3. Justin Timberlake - FutureSex / LoveSounds
4. Rascal Flatts - Me And My Gang
5. Pink - I'm Not Dead
6. Nelly Furtado - Loose
7. Beyonce - B'Day
8. Andrea Bocelli - Amore
9. Evanescence - The Open Door
10. Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_in_music

I've heard 10, 7, 5, and 2 (Lord help me), and only 10 was worth the time and electricity. Though, to be honest, I don't play the whole CD because it has rap on it. I have cherry-picked the bouncy hits for MP3 players, and have probably shelved the CD for good.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers begin to sound the same to me after a couple tunes, so I didn't even give it a courtesy listen. I've got 3 on hold at the library, since it has ended up on a lot of "best of" lists this year, though my hopes aren't high, given the fact that "High School Musical" is the best selling album of the year (on some lists), and the fact that he's the alumni of a boy band.

The 10 Top Singles were:

1. Bad Day - Daniel Powter
2. Temperature - Sean Paul
3. Promiscuous - Nelly Furtado featuring Timbaland
4. You're Beautiful - James Blunt
5. Hips Don't Lie - Shakira featuring Wyclef Jean
6. Unwritten - Natasha Bedingfield
7. Crazy - Gnarls Barkley
8. Ridin' - Chamillionaire featuring Krayzie Bone
9. SexyBack - Justin Timberlake
10. Check on It - Beyoncé featuring Slim Thug
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_in_music

Of those, I've heard only 1, 4 (Lord help me), and 7. 7 was the only one I liked. 4 still tickles my gag reflex if I'm trapped in public with it blaring over the soundsystem of the store/restaurant. I even have trouble listening to Weird Al's parody of it, though Al's reedy voice oddly makes it more tolerable than the muppet-like vocal of the original song.

The music industry has largely faced up to the fact that it's not illegal downloads that're kneecapping the industry (it's the sucky music, stupid). However, I read somewhere that the major labels will not sign an act that's over the age of 25, so they still haven't learned all the lessons they need to, apparently.
_____________________
Update: "Album sales in the U.S. were down 4.9 percent in 2006, the seventh straight year of decline, while digital downloads jumped 65 percent over 2005's numbers. Selling 3.7 million records, Disney's "High School Musical" soundtrack was the year's best-selling album, but it was also the lowest-selling No. 1 album in the 15 years SoundScan has been keeping track." (via Salon, via Variety)
_____________________

Radio stations are up for sale in droves, but no one's buying because no one above the age of 25 is listening to radio. (Won't it be nice if radio comes back someday? I've always wanted to run one. Hmm....)

The only two CDs I still play that I bought this year are Morph the Cat by Donald Fagen, and At War with the Mystics by the Flaming Lips. Oh, wait, there's also Andy Narell, whom I discovered on a Windam Hill disc because MPC2 loves going to sleep listening to "smooth jazz." It's essentially steel drum jazz, believe it or not, and I find it interestingly soothing and stimulating at the same time.

Either this coming year will be a worse year in music, and you'll see reports of layoffs and selloffs re the major labels, or this will be one of those years the pendulum swings back, and we get a bunch of new good music via the labels trying to save themselves by releasing anything and everything. I bet on the prior because radio's still broken, and if you can't get the tunes out to the people, they don't go to the store.

Found two sites that posted "best of" free MP3 lists. So far, I like a handful of the songs. Check'em out:
- Salon
- Iheartmusic

I think when people look back to this year in media, the only thing that will end up anthologized and remembered is "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley (though I think "Smiley Faces" is the superior song).

---

I researched the best book lists for this post, but didn't find much there that inspired me to write about it.

Off the top of my head, I don't recall reading any fiction this year that really grabbed me. I seem to recall liking S. King's Cell, but that's all that comes to mind.

I finally encountered a great little tome that tackled most of the issues facing Christianity today entitled, Judas and the Gospel of Jesus, by N. T. Wright. It's scholarly and entertaining - two worlds that often don't intersect - and it covers a fun gamut of false gospels, Gnosticism, church history, modern critiques of the faith, and so on. Fellow Christians should definitely give it a look, and, for that matter, anyone who wants a brief overview of the stances of modern, orthodox Christianity (I'm casting that net rather wide to include Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholicism, and all Protestant variants that don't claim a modern prophet).

Looking back over the blog, I recall that I also liked Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin. (Though only the paperback was released in 2006.)

Wow. Just three standouts. Maybe I should cut back on my reading if those are the remains of the day, considering all the books I've read this year.

---

Of course the big story outside of the entertainment world was the Republicans getting swept out of power for being shitheads by advertising themselves as conservatives for smaller govt. but then proceeding with the biggest, unconstitutional powergrab in American history whilst reconstituting the Nixon administration in all of its putrid glory - sans intelligence, of course. (My favorite summary is still, "Monica Lewinsky had more president in her than Bush ever will.")


Though it officially kicked off last year with the publishing of two (or three, depending on how you cound) new atheist hymnals (and I only use those terms because it pisses them off so much) by Dawkins and Harris, fundie atheist evangelism begins to mount in the new year on Digg and Youtube (via blasphemychallenge.com). This article provides a nice summary and some pretty thorough linkage.

Most of the missionary work centers around mocking Christianity and declaring believers to be of lesser intelligence and education than atheists, so of course things aren't going so well for that effort. (Maybe a little Marketing 101 is in order for our brethren of supposed superior intellect who envision only a void in the God-shaped hole in our souls, which don't exist, of course.)

One of the more annoying elements in this movement is the simplistic (mis)understanding of Christianity that most of the self-professed, fundie atheists have. They would do well to read N. T. Wright's book, linked to above.

(And let me re-state that I have absolutely nothing against atheists or atheism whatsoever. Whatever your views on God, the afterlife, the lack thereof, etc. are fine with me - as long as it never moves to suggestions of violence or suppression. My issue is that a lot of fundie atheists (just like some fundie Christians and Moslems) get kinda strident about suppression, and Sam Harris has offered execution of Christians as one possible means of achieving a religion-free utopia. Sorry, but you can fuck off, Mr. Harris.)


Supposedly Saddam took the big swing into eternity, and you can view it on Youtube, so I did. ...I dunno... After he drops, there's a long gap in the video before we are shown his face, cocked up beneath the knot. He doesn't look very dead to me. From what I understand, that particular type of death shows pretty clearly on the face. Don't be surprised if he joins the conspiracy nut list of someone who's presumed to be not really dead.

Finally, Slate has a nice roundup of "the year in culture" which concludes this post better than I could.

You Won't Let Those Robots Eat Me...

Best use of "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" in a Youtube video featuring a creepy walking military robot.



Happy New Year!