Tuesday, December 28, 2004

In a Fit of Pique


 Posted by Hello
I received this in the mail last week and was so deeply offended by the cover image that I couldn't stand the thought of even seeing it lying on my coffee table for the duration of time it would take me to read through it. So, I got a little creative. Much more satisfying (and accurate) this way, don't you think?

Monday, December 27, 2004

Me All Over

**Giggle** This is me all over.

I, embarrassingly, finally got around to watching the last two episodes of the last (seventh) season of Buffy this weekend. No, really. About a year and a half on, I still hadn't seen the series finale, even after purchasing the whole durn thing on DVD. But, karmically, I think it's because I didn't need those episodes in my life until just now. Ah, Joss. I'm all about the cookie dough metaphor, I'm all about the little girl at bat. (I'm also all about "I'm drowning in footwear!" but we'll just stick with the schmoopy girl-power stuff for now.)

Everyone should send Brendon an e-mail today wishing him a very happy birthday. Brendon rules. This is something you should just know, instinctively, without thinking about it, the way you know Tallahassee is the capital of Florida or the way you know all the lyrics to the theme song from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

The Sarcasm Point

Genius, pure genius. As an editor, this is the best holiday gift I possibly could have gotten this year.

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Listmania

OK, so Pitchfork issued their list of this year's 50 best singles today, so I guess I should take that as my cue to list my own personal favorite songs from the year. I know that not all of them are from 2004, but will you forgive me if I list them in a sequence and running order that would fit on an industry-standard 80 minute blank CD? I thought so.

1. They Put Her in the Movies--Jason Falkner (Bliss Descending EP)
2. 40'--Franz Ferdinand (Franz Ferdinand)
3. Come As You Are--Caetano Veloso (A Foreign Sound)
4. Stupid Memory--Sondre Lerche (Two Way Monologue)
5. Get Your Hands Off My Woman--Ben Folds (Super D EP)
6. Length of Love--Interpol (Antics)
7. Serenade for the Renegade--E.S.T. (Strange Place for Snow)
8. Where Is the Line--Björk (Medulla)
9. Wicked Little Town (Tommy Gnosis version)--The Bens
(Wig in a Box: Songs from and Inspired by Hedwig and the Angry Inch)
10. Our Mutual Friend--The Divine Comedy (Absent Friends)
11. Bathtime in Clerkenwell--The Real Tuesday Weld (I, Lucifer)
12. The Rat--The Walkmen (Bows + Arrows)
13. Red Right Ankle--The Decemberists (Her Majesty the Decemberists)
14. We Looked Like Giants--Death Cab for Cutie (Transatlanticism)
15. Stupid--The Long Winters (When I Pretend to Fall)
16. I Was Made to Love You--Polly Paulusma (Scissors in My Pocket)
17. The Art Teacher--Rufus Wainwright (Want Two)
18. Memory Lane--Elliott Smith (From a Basement on a Hill)
19. Walking to Do--Ted Leo/Pharmacists (Shake the Sheets)

Honorable mention: the Stills’ “Lola Stars and Stripes,” Maroon 5’s “This Love,” the Flaming Lips’ live, acoustic version of “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots,” the Hives’ “Walk, Idiot, Walk,” N.E.R.D.’s “The Way She Dances,” Travis Morrison’s “Born in ’72,” Wilco’s “Muzzle of Bees,” Loretta Lynn’s “Portland, Oregon,” the Lashes’ “Death by Mixtape,” Britney Spears’s “Toxic,” and Courtney Love’s “But Julian, I’m a Little Older Than You.”

Also, tonight is the longest night of the year. Let's take that time to mourn whatever was darkest in our lives this year, and then try our damnedest to move the fuck beyond it as the days begin to get progressively lighter again. Can I get an amen?

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Killer's . . . Snuggle?

Does shit like this seem vaguely reminiscent to anyone else of the creepy final scene from Killer's Kiss?

Friday, December 10, 2004

Band Name?

If there's anyone out there in need of a band name, I've got one for you:

Gamma Night Box.

Every time I walk west on Superior toward Orleans, I always notice the library-style drop box built into the wall of the building where Gamma (I guess it's a photo lab) resides, and always take great delight in the label that reads, in big, bold, block letters, "Gamma Night Box." What a fantastic name that would make for a band! And every time I see it, I lament the fact that I, theoretically, would have to form and then disband the Mean Little Dogs, the Rhea Perlman Approximation, and the Whom before I would have a chance to use the name as my own. So, in the interest of getting the name out into the collective consciousness where it belongs, I'm offering it up here. Any takers?

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Gettin' Squirrelly

For the romantics in the house, check out the entry dated December 7. My favorite sentence? "This is how you find the man/woman of your dreams, stupids: You refuse to waste time on the man/woman of your loneliness-fueled spreadsheets."

The Onion issues its year-end roundup of best albums. Egotistically, I quite enjoyed Stephen Thompson's best songs list at the bottom of the page since he includes both Sondre Lerche's "Stupid Memory" and The Walkmen's "The Rat," two tunes which will appear on my own personal best of 2004 mix.

Oh, the Rude Pundit just makes me feel all warm and happy for the holiday season!

Monday, December 06, 2004

Note

A note to potential male suitors: the smell of Aqua di Gio makes me want to retch. Ignore this fact at your own peril.

Pop Culture Round-Up

Why didn't anybody tell me that Cy Coleman passed away recently? I read about it this weekend in an issue of Entertainment Weekly that was already a couple of weeks old when I got around to flipping through it, and was saddened to hear it. I listened to a bit of the original Broadway cast recording of City of Angels as I was getting ready for work today, in mourning.

Closer was disappointing. There's simultaneously much and little to say about it. I haven't yet read Marber's original stage play, but would like to do so sometime soon, to glean any new insight into what went wrong with the movie. Part of the reason is that it was abysmally miscast. I know what you're going to say: "that cast is a big part of the reason why I wanted to see the movie in the first place!" And I agree with you. That's what got me in the door, too. However, as I was watching the movie, I started to realize that just because you're making a movie about sex doesn't mean it always has to contain inherently sexy people. In fact, sometimes a sexy movie is strengthened by the ordinariness of its actors. After giving the matter some thought, I've decided that Clive Owen should have been replaced by his King Arthur castmate Ray Winstone, Juliet Stevenson should have appeared in the Julia Roberts role, Paul Bettany would have ripped the place up as Jude Law's character, and Ludivine Sagnier would have been a much better choice than Natalie Portman. Feh. I dunno. I'm, in theory, a big fan of the fucked-up, bed-swapping, sexual manipulation, emotional cruelty genre, but I can't remember the last time I saw one that was actually worth my time. (Don't get me started on either We Don't Live Here Anymore or The Shape of Things.) There comes a point at which, if the characters haven't been so perfectly conceived that their littlest movement or gesture becomes heartbreaking because of the way it resonates with everything that came before it, you're just trying to out-LaBute LaBute with frank language and despicable behavior in an effort to shock the audience. That's not teaching me anything about the human experience. It's just kind of boring. (To read more about the movie, check out Stephanie Zacharek's write-up on Salon. It's one of the few recent movies I wholeheartedly agree with her assessment of. On. About. Sorry for the prepositional spew there.)

And, if there's one comedy truism that Arrested Development proved incontrovertible with last night's episode, it's that tear-away pants are always funny.

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

Odd. Dark. Irresistible.

Stocking stuffers for that special little tyke in your life?

You may not know it yet, but you neeeeed a little James Ellroy in your life today. What a bastard.

It's been bouncing around the internet for the past week or so, but, if you haven't heard it yet, you should definitely check out the Walkmen's hilarious new downloadable single The Christmas Party.

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Open Letter (#2)

To the Men Who Serve Me Food and Drink:

You do know that you have a special place in my heart, don't you? Jonathan Ames has a great line in one of his essays or short stories (I can't remember where I read it) about how he always finds himself falling in love with waitresses because they're kind and they bring him food, and I'm feeling very much the same about three of you guys, specifically, right now. And, though I usually, privately, have this kind of reaction whenever I see you individually at your respective places of employ, I'm driven to proclaim my love publicly, en masse, today because of the fact that I experienced this phenomenal trifecta of unbidden warmth from you within the past twenty-four hours.

I wouldn't necessarily lump this current flush of emotion in with the traditional conception of a customer service crush; I don't want your number, I don't want to bring you home, I'm not obsessing about the idea of seeing you the next time I stop in to your establishment. My love is chaste and pure from, well, not exactly afar, but not anear either. But. Unassuming bartender who was reading Anna Karenina? Affable stoner barista who greeted me with a heartfelt "good to see you again"? Hot rock 'n' roll waiter who gave me my lunch for free? You guys just kind of kill me. In a way that a more-than-healthy tip can't really compensate for. I hate that I get so freaked out by these moments of genuine human interaction that I often don't know how to properly respond to them at the time. That just speaks so ill of the headspace I'm usually mired in as I slog through my daily routine in the city. And yet--you make the effort to invite me, in your own ways, to pull my head out of my ass, though you barely know me from the next preoccupied twentysomething accessorized with one-inch indie band pins and messenger bag. You make the effort to treat me with a graciousness that, though I might not show how much I truly appreciate it, shines very, very brightly in the moments I find I need that illumination the most.

Thursday, November 25, 2004

Honk If You Love Our Sidewalks

Here's a brief photo essay of sorts from the wedding weekend in Louisville.

Friday, November 19, 2004

Ted Leo

Just when I thought this fall's concert season couldn't possibly get any better, it found a way to top itself yet again.

I cannot remember the last time I was rocked as hard as the Ted Leo show rocked me last night.

It was a sort of unfathomably good night. First opener A Set was a bit on the bland side, but whatever. The Natural History surprised us all by being sexy and solid despite the lead singer's relative toolishness. (We were speculating the entire set as to where and what his inevitable small, tasteful tattoo was.) The Tossers were . . . amazing. An Irish punk rock party fueled by drunkenness and righteous indignation and an electric mandolin. And what can possibly be said to do justice to Ted and his Pharmacists?

Everyone says how incredible he is in concert, but he is truly one of those musical phenomena that must be seen to be believed. There were times when his right hand was a total blur, he was playing so fast. The weaknesses in his voice that sometimes get unfortunately magnified on his recordings positively melt away under the heat of a live performance. He's the real deal, kittens. There was such a great feeling in the room. He broke a string on what would have been their final song (I think it was "Shake the Sheets"), then apologized and said, "we can't go out on a string break like that. If it's OK with the drummer and the bass player, we'll play some more, all right?" And then they just kept playing. He didn't seem to want to stop, the audience couldn't get enough, members of the Tossers started spilling out onto the stage from the wings and taking swigs from Ted's bottle of Jameson. Granted, the show didn't start until 9, but we didn't get out of there until something like 12:45. Even Giddy said it was one of the best shows she's seen in a long time.

And, even if it had only been a mediocre show, their collective facial hair alone would have been worth the price of admission. Go to the photos section of the official site, and marvel at the drummer's Richie Tenenbaum caliber beard and imagine the fro-tastic bass player with some mightily impressive whiskers of his own.

Monday, November 15, 2004

I Heart Huckabees

The thing that sucks most about movies like I Heart Huckabees is that they're designed to flatter the audience into feeling "intellectual" or "deep" without actually providing any kind of legitimately sophisticated content to back up that borrowed aura. Sure, no studio wants to finance something like that when the idea only exists on paper, but as soon as someone finally does put some money behind it, they acquire the cachet of being a patron of a "mad genius."

And seriously, are there any other kind of geniuses these days?

Anytime I read about a director who simply has a personal vision that's the slightest bit off-beat, s/he gets praised as not just being a genius, but being a mad genius: Tarantino, Spike Jonze, even Peter Jackson. Don't get me wrong, kittens, I'm a fan of all three of those guys, but I just object to the knee-jerk classification that dictates they get described in terms that are both hyperbolic and reductive while the plain old unflashy geniuses like Richard Linklater or David Gordon Green are, if not outright ignored for the ways they're moving the medium forward, at least subject to a kind of prissy appreciation that stops short of the respect they're due because they're not, y'know, "mad." Whatever. The whole mad genius thing has been bugging me for a while now because it just smacks of the most insulting kind of American anti-intellectualism. The classification "mad genius" is a handy way we've found to begrudgingly acknowledge objective excellence/superiority in the arts while simultaneously simplifying it into/dismissing it as something more or less quaint. The perception seems to be that "a genius" is staid, stodgy, the provenance of fusty old professors--we got no use fer that. However, "a mad genius" is cuddly, undisciplined, and, moreover, the kind of artist we fancy we would be if someone would finally recognize our hidden talents. (This kind of goes back to the unexpected and challenging point raised in The Incredibles: if everyone is special, then no one is.) And, maybe this is all more on-point than I even meant it to be since the frustrating averageness of Huckabees is perhaps what riled me most about it--a high-profile Hollywood director as scandalously talented as David O. Russell who also happened to study Tibetan Buddhism with Bob Thurman should have been able to come up with a movie that was a bit more intellectually rigorous than this glorified film version of the "whoa, dude, what does it all mean?" conversation that pretty much all of us had at some point during our freshman year in college.

I love a good madcap cinematic romp. The promise that this was going to be an existential comedy had me humming with anticipation to see the thing. To be fair, there was probably no way it was going to live up to a) my anticipation of it or b) my standards. I mean, short of being written by Tom Stoppard, I don't think the movie possibly could have done justice to its primary conceit--at least in the way that I would have wanted to see it. But regardless of the fact that the movie didn't succeed philosophically, it fell on its face comedically as well. Film comedy has got to be controlled chaos. I was reading an interview with Russell in the Tom Hanks issue of Premiere magazine, and, aside from the fact that the interviewer claims this movie has "more layers than a Viennese pastry" (uh, no), she also pulled out of him descriptions of his working methods on set, which included shouting to Naomi Watts, "get crazy, you bitch!" I'm not at all offended by the idea of a director being a bit belligerent to get the performance s/he needs out of an actor, and I don't buy into the idea that George Clooney likes to perpetuate that Russell is some out-of-control maniac who gets off abusing PAs, techies, extras, and actors just for the sake of a power trip or whatever. I only include this anecdote here to make the point that, even if you have to be a bit unorthodox to make magic happen for the camera, you have to edit the shit out of it to make it all worthwhile for--hello!--the audience. (Remember us? The ones you're flattering to feel so smart and superior to the characters?) Improvised wackiness is only fun to watch if it's one of the last three skits on Saturday Night Live, when you know everybody is tired and kind of hates the dregs of the material that are left to slog through. There's no excuse for it on film. Lots of actors shouting random shit at each other and delivering lines with weird interps that are weird just for the sake of being weird isn't funny. It's just self-indulgent. And I've got no patience for it. Especially when you then layer the "quirky" Jon Brion score on top of it to indicate, "hey, lookit how quirky we're being!" ("Cue the jazz waltz orchestrated with dulcimer, concertina, and xylophone. D'ya think that'll help clarify how sensitive yet conflicted the protagonist is at this point in the movie?") Brion's on his way to becoming indie film's James Horner.

Of course the film had its moments. Jason Schwartzman on a bicycle is a beautiful thing. Jude Law remains the man--and no, it's not just because he's hot. Brutha can act. The scene in his office when Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman ask him about his family, then play him the tape of the Shania Twain story being repeated ad nauseum captures one of the most gorgeous mental and emotional transformations I've seen on screen recently. You see guilt, rage, self-loathing, and self-pity all trapped under the glass of a lifetime lived as the most popular and good-looking guy in the room. It's astounding. And, when he is given the right material, I will stand behind my conviction that Mark Wahlberg is a more compelling screen presence than almost anyone gives him credit for.

This movie is bound to blow away some 16, 17, 18 year old kids. It'll give them grist for dozens of 3 AM diner conversations and should awaken in some of them a realization of the possibilities of cinema as an art form. I'm not 16, 17, 18, though.

Ahem. Right. Or, as Nora Rocket said as the credits rolled, "four horses were in a race. These horses were the early works of Wes Anderson, Schizopolis, Richard Linklater's Slacker-era films, and a piece of shit. Unbelievably, it was a four-way tie."

Friday, November 12, 2004

"O.C." Also Stands for "Odd Couple"

I was doing my laundry while watching The O.C. last night, so I was, unfortunately, a wee bit distracted (the inaugural outing to the Jolly Roger laundromat provided a whole fleet of new stimuli to overwhelm my poor little brain). But, from what I could see/hear, I just love, love, love that the show--rather than being the Trojan Horse that turned Seth Cohen into one of the most powerful "people" in entertainment--has become its own version of The Odd Couple for a generation. That Kid Who Looks Like Russell Crowe and Adam Brody banter like the best of them. Their relationship is vastly more compelling than anything they have going on with the Marissas and Annas and Summers and whoevers. Of course, it helps that the dialogue in the scenes they share together is usually the best-written stuff in the whole show, but it still brings me no end of joy to know that the kids who are tuning into Fox for their weekly fix of fashion or drama or indie music are also being treated to writing every bit as gleefully rhythmic as anything Aaron Sorkin or Joss Whedon or Amy Sherman-Palladino have written at the top of their respective games. Now, hold yer horses there, kittens--I realize Schwarz & Co. are nowhere near as consistent or unapologetically literate as those three, but still, they do share the same love of language, the delicious sound, feel, shape of words delivered at top speed. Carry on.

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

Technology Used for Good, Not Evil

There has obviously been a lot of discussion about the role the so-called blogosphere played in the months leading up to last week's election. (Doesn't it seem like it happened a lifetime ago already?) But, I think it's equally important to give credit to the folks who were highly creative in their use of other new and unconventional technology to fight the good fight. Of course, the fact that NASA technicians and cartogram production software should be required to illustrate COMMON BLOODY SENSE is another matter entirely.

Monday, November 08, 2004

MLBO'D & AMF 4-Evah

Quoth the doorman, "I see you guys got your picture taken. How'd that work out for you?" Shut up, dude. We're so hot. Posted by Hello

17 Reasons Not to Slit Your Wrists

From Michael Moore's website.

Friday, November 05, 2004

Sondre Lerche

Fantastic show at the Double Door on Wednesday night. I'm really glad we decided not to ditch it just because we were so depressed. The finest indie-pop music Norway has to offer is apparently the perfect thing for the post-election blues.

Sondre Lerche (whose last name is pronounced "lair-key" and not "lairsh," the way I'd been saying it) is actually even more talented than his CDs reveal. His freakishly golden vocal intonation was perhaps matched in impressiveness only by his freakishly golden skin tone. (The kid looks like he's made of marzipan.) He played solo for the majority of the set, accompanying himself on electric guitar, and then, showing an exquisite sense of control over the evening's pace, brought openers (and friends) The Golden Republic back out to rock with him on the last three or four numbers of the night.

Lerche's tunes are so durable, they stood up brilliantly to all the stripped-down revamping he subjected them to, and he managed to do it without making the show feel like you were listening to some kid practicing in his bedroom. They've got a real jazz standards feel to them. He was (can I say audacious?) audacious in his use of dynamics, and we were positively hanging on every pianissimo, every sforzando. It almost felt like the show should have been booked at the Green Mill, there was such a cabaret sensibility in his performance--right down to his a cappella rendition of "Moonlight Becomes You" and his charming and witty between-song banter. Until, of course, they blew the roof off the place with balls-out rock versions of "Sleep on Needles" and "Virtue and Wine" (the latter of which he described as being "the wonderful world of bossa nova meets the wonderful world of punk").

OK, now that we've established that Lerche is truly a musical force to be reckoned with, let's talk about The Golden Republic.

They're about an album's worth of material away from being a pretty great band. But they're not there yet. Which is why you tour as an opening act, you know? It's practice. M.O. and I were counting the number of times that lead singer Ben Grimes must have been making mental notes about the relative success of his one-liners, monologues, and other shtick. (We imagined him thinking, "Note to self: that didn't work.") He seems like one of those guys who, among his intimate acquaintances, is probably pee-your-pants funny, but he hasn't quite been able to translate that to the stage yet. Part of the problem was the way his bandmates kind of left him out to dry whenever he got stuck in the corner of an attempted joke and couldn't manuever a three-point turn out of it. He faired much better trading quips with Lerche. In fact, one of the best exchanges of the night came after Lerche gave The Golden Republic a really impressive compliment; he said that he'd never found the right band to pull off the bossa nova meets punk sound of "Virtue and Wine" until he started working with these guys. Grimes picked that up and ran with it, saying, "Oh yes, I started taking bossa nova and punk lessons at a very young age. I came by it naturally. My mother was Brazilian, and my father was ... punk?" It was the biggest laugh he got all night. ("Note to self: that one worked.")

At any rate, that, my friends, is what I want out of a rock 'n' roll show. Intimate, energetic, goofy, surprising, imperfect, and paced within an inch of its life.

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

What Happened to Our Country?

On the El this morning, as the train snaked through the now almost barren treetops high above the city, I could see half the sky was cautiously becoming sunny. Puffy white clouds covered huge swaths of blue, but the sun was muscling its way through the gauze, enough so that I had to put on my sunglasses. The other half of the sky was cloaked in enormous purple-green-gray clouds of death. It looked like an impending storm or a conflagration or Mordor. I couldn't understand how these two extremes could coexist in the same sky, at the same time; I couldn't reconcile the knowledge that one would eventually give way to the other--unpredictably, irrevocably, and without warning--with yesterday's damnably foolish sense of optimism that the sky had to clear up eventually.

I almost started crying.

I'm scared. And not in an abstract, theoretical kind of way. I'm scared in the very real, physical way I'm scared when I'm in an unfamiliar part of the city late at night, walking tough but certain that if anyone tried to fuck with me I would be all but powerless to defend myself in the conflict. Will someone please tell me how I'm supposed to defend myself? Will someone please tell me why half of the people in this country refuse to see or understand the kind of sickening danger they're quite literally asking to march headlong into in the name of morality or values or money or ignorance or what-the-fuck-ever? Will someone please tell me how we're supposed to get this place back on track?

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Doing Your Civic Duty Is Sooo Sexy

I got up early this morning and went to the polls and voted the shit out of that shit. I hope you've done the same no matter what terms you use to describe it. See you on the flip side, kittens. . . .

Monday, November 01, 2004

Undapants

For those of you who were involved in the making of the underwear mix CD last month, I'm delighted to report that its recipient loves it and thinks it's hilarious. We listened to it on Saturday night after an exhausting day of packing and moving, and the giggles were much needed. Thanks again for your support and help with my first-ever concept mix!

The final track listing is as follows:

1. Los Angeles, I’m Yours--The Decemberists
2. Those to Come--The Shins
3. Stars of Track and Field--Belle and Sebastian
4. Pinch Me--Barenaked Ladies
5. Favorite--Liz Phair
6. Underwear--Magnetic Fields
7. Where Are My Panties?--OutKast
8. Rent-a-Cop--Ben Folds
9. Pasties and a G-String--Tom Waits
10. High Water (For Charley Patton)--Bob Dylan
11. In Spite of Ourselves--John Prine and Iris DeMent
12. Mary Jane’s Last Dance--Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
13. Abracadabra--Sugar Ray
14. Underwear--Pulp
15. Double Team--Tenacious D
16. The Way She Dances--N.E.R.D.
17. My Friend Goo--Sonic Youth
18. But Julian, I’m a Little Older than You--Courtney Love
19. Dedicated Follower of Fashion--The Kinks
20. I’m Not Wearing Underwear Today--from Avenue Q
21. (I Wanna Be) Your Underwear--Bryan Adams

Friday, October 29, 2004

"How I Learned to Start Worrying . . . "

Courtesy of Kittenpants: "How I Learned to Start Worrying and Hate Everyone". This is my kind of political commentary.

Election Night?

Is anyone (local) gathering folks together to watch election night returns on the telly? I'm starting to get the panicky, nervous feeling that I usually only get before New Year's Eve, that feeling of, "I very badly want to be in a warm, comfortable place with people I love in case the world ends." I'd offer to host, but that'll only be two days after our move to the new apartment and I'm sure everything will be in complete disarray. Please e-mail or call or leave a comment below to let me know if there's room on your couch for my little bum!

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Em Takes on Dubya

Have you guys seen the video for Eminem's vehemently anti-Bush rap "Mosh"? It seriously almost brought tears to my eyes. (In a good way.) Check it out, and spread the word.

NOT a Balehead

It seems like at least once a year for the past five or six years, someone's always forecasting how Christian Bale is poised to become the brightest shining mega-supernova of all hyper-celebrity actors in the known universe. And, curiously, it hasn't quite happened. (Yet. Yes, Batman is still on the way.)

I don't know, maybe it's because I was of the tween demographic (before it was called that) that Newsies was aimed at in its original theatrical release or because Little Women ranks high on my all-time favorite list, but, in my world, Christian Bale always has been a huge star. It's just an unquestionable fact of my pop cultural consciousness. So, the debate surrounding his fame or stardom or talent or box office viability or whatever has always struck me as being a combination of odd, redundant, and, I dunno, square?

Anyway, this week Cintra Wilson has a go at this sub-sub-sub-genre of entertainment journalism, the "Jesus! Christian Bale Is a Superstar!" revelation essay. It, typically, made me laugh out loud ("when I am Supreme Dictator, I will demand that all Americans watch [American Psycho] every Christmas morning"), grimace ("[humor] so subtle that American audiences probably missed it entirely (I did, on first viewing)"), and want to revist his (ahem) body of work again sometime soon.

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

R.E.M.

Let me just start off by saying: the audience cheered for Peter Buck's mandolin.

I'm not kidding you. I realize that much of it probably had to do with the fact that it made its primary appearance for the much loved solo in "Losing My Religion," but still. We cheered for a small stringed instrument. And that, my friends, is a beautiful thing.

Much of my experience of the concert was colored by the fact that our seats were way the hell up in the nosebleeds. From that height, sitting among rows and rows of such exquisitely polite, well-behaved folks, it felt like I was passively consuming a spectacle rather than actively participating in a musical experience. And not only that--except for a few rare moments when some sort of unexpected energy would flicker and electrify the air, I didn't feel . . . moved. And not that every show I go to has to blow my mind or change my life, but it just would have been nice if everything didn't feel so clean and rehearsed. The musicianship was a little too impeccable, you know? It's not like I wanted someone to fuck up, either, though. I just wanted to feel like I was witnessing something unique. Something that was just for us, on just that night. And maybe something unique was happening on the floor that I couldn't feel up there where the sound quality wasn't much different than turning up my stereo a little louder than usual and where the intoxicating vertigo compensated for the fact that I was in no mood to shell out for sweet-smelling beer in plastic cups. **shrug**

I hate having to be so harsh, especially considering how out-of-control hot Michael Stipe is. That rock star energy, those fantastically sexy, snakelike origami poses, the reedy caterwauling about Andy Kaufman and the one he's left behind. En fuego, baby.

And though yes, I'm voting for Kerry on November 2, blah, blah, blah, there was the asshole, punk rock part of me that very badly wanted to start chanting pro-Bush slogans in the middle of the crowd just to watch everyone's heads explode.

Monday, October 25, 2004

A Very Musical Monday

A silly interview with Paul Banks from Nerve.

Colin Meloy talks to Pitchfork about the Decemberists' forthcoming album Picaresque.

Ben Folds explains why he had to cancel a recent gig at the University of Oklahoma.

Friday, October 22, 2004

iFilm Goodness

The Jon Stewart/Crossfire affair for those of you who, like myself, missed it the first time around. It's been bouncing around the internet all week, and I finally had a chance to check it out today. Wicked good stuff.

Jon Stewart spinning himself on The Daily Show.

Triumph the Insult Comic Dog visits spin alley the night of the third debate, in a segment they call Poop Valhalla. Finally, Triumph leaves the helpless Star Wars geeks and other essentially harmless schmucks alone and gets back to sending up the bloated assholes who really deserve it.

Here's iFilm's page dedicated to Team America. I would especially, especially recommend scrolling down to check out the clip of "Lonely" or "Kim Jong Il Takes On Hans Blix."

Thursday, October 21, 2004

"Maaatt Damon!"

(Not to be confused with Johnny Damon, of course. Congrats, by the way, Red Sox fans. Fuck those Yankee steroid bastards. Wait, wasn't that the name of that Wilco album?)

If there's one thing I've learned in this crazy, mixed-up world, it's that Matt Stone and Trey Parker are good for what ails ya.

Sick with the pink-eye-chills-and-wheezing-cough flu of death that your roommate has brought back from New York? Pop in the South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut DVD and at least you'll be laughing through your feverish delirium. Overwhelmed by innumerable life stressors? Take an evening to indulge in Team America: World Police and shit doesn't seem so bad after watching puppet sex, puppet puke, and puppet death for some 100 minutes. No, really.

I admit I was a pretty easy target for this movie. I went in wanting to love it, so it would have had to have been pretty bad for me to say much of anything against it. So I'll get that anything out of the way right now: yeah, the satire gets a little threadbare toward the end, especially when the peacenik members of the Film Actors Guild (yes, F.A.G.) start taking up arms in just as ugly a way as any of the equally stupid-looking American military cowboy types that the filmmakers have been lambasting throughout. And, though I think condemning the resolution as "cheap militaristic fatalism" is a bit much, the whole pussies, dicks, and assholes speech does seem a bit facile. This is where the collision of political satire and blockbuster action movie pastiche chafes most, and the fact that the latter is privileged over the former reeks more of cop-out than Parker and Stone's easy-breezy "we want everyone to laugh and have a good time" stance might suggest. They know how smart they are. And though they obviously despise celebrities who use their fame as a soapbox from which to espouse their usually pedestrian political viewpoints, why even touch this topic with a ten-foot pole if you're not really willing to go balls-to-the-wall with your own personal politics?

But I digress.

It's sick, it's hilarious, it's (mostly) everything you want a fucked-up puppet movie to be. The songs are, as ever, so cleverly right-on they're worth the price of admission alone. Even the diction is hilarious in its over-the-top accuracy ("Ah-meh-eh-ree-ee-kah!"). The pinnacle is Kim Jong Il's token sad-bastard ballad "I'm So Ronery," though the Rent send-up "Everybody Has AIDS!" ("Come on everybody/we've got quilting to do!") runs a close second. The puppet sex is just as ridiculous and obscene as they meant it to be (as Cassius so eloquently put it, "it's not so much what they do, it's where they have to put the strings." HEY OH!), and the puking sight gag mentioned above seems timed, much like old Marx Brothers routines, specifically to be seen in a theater with an audience. The dialogue (the women bonding: "I treasure your friendship, Lisa!") is so brilliantly flat, it's straight out of Syd Field, and their goosing of every conceivable action movie convention adds up to a kind of hysterical, Platonic, ideal vision of the very concept of "Blockbuster" that surely has Don Simpson rolling over in his grave, wishing he'd had the sack to do it first.

And, I don't know why the Matt Damon puppet--in all his chinny, sandy-haired glory--is incapable of saying anything other than his own name, but, by God, that's the funniest and most gratuitous celebrity pot-shot I've seen in ages.

Monday, October 18, 2004

Lists

A recent batch of excellent McSweeney's lists:

Bands and Musicians Whose Careers Would Be Quite Different Had They Initially Misspelled Their Own Names

Alternative Names for Move On . Org

Lame Excuses Roommate Has Given for Breaking Dates or the Smiths Lyrics?

Alternatives to the "LOVE HATE" Knuckle Tattoo in Order of Increasing Rarity

E-mail Addresses It Would Be Really Annoying to Give Out Over the Phone

X-fire

Here's the complete transcript of Jon Stewart's routing of Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson ON THEIR OWN SHOW. Damn. Wish I coulda seen it when it aired.

Interpol

And, as my month of concerts begins to wind down, we come to Interpol.

Another enormously satisfying show at the Riv. In stark contrast to the Death Cab crowd, this was one of the most lovingly boisterous yet respectful audiences I've been a part of in a long time. The fever pitch of enthusiasm that erupted the moment they took the stage was sustained, undiminished, throughout the entire set. It was amazing. And, toward the end of the show, when the band totally cut out after the first chorus of "PDA," the house went out of their minds with delirious anticipation waiting for the second verse to kick back in.

They played as well as they ever have, and, as Giddy astutely pointed out, they're still having fun with the tunes from Bright Lights, even though they've been living with them for well over two years now. Paul's voice just keeps getting stronger and warmer, and Kessler's guitar work is laser-sharp. My only (minor) complaint about the show is that the way the lights were set up didn't allow me to see Sam at the drums. I couldn't take my eyes off him when we saw them play last year, and I wish I would have had the chance to do the same this time around.

But, they played "Length of Love," so I can't complain about anything at all, really. Best. Song. Ever.

As far as the opening bands go, I wanted to like The Secret Machines more than I actually did, and though the vocalist for Hail Social was a bit lacking, I was pleasantly surprised by how sharp they were on the whole.

Friday, October 15, 2004

"I Am a Golden God!!!"

A rare interview with Billy Crudup in the New York Times.

Death Cab

I loved you, Guenivere, I loved you Guenivere, I loved you.
I loved you, Guenivere, I loved you Guenivere, I loved you.
I loved you, Guenivere, I loved you Guenivere, I loved you.
I loved you, Guenivere, I loved you Guenivere, I loved you.
I loved you, Guenivere, I loved you Guenivere, I loved you.

Did I ever tell you my middle name is Guenivere? Yeah, that's what the "M" stands for. Wait a minute . . . uhhh . . .

Great, great show last night. Almost better than it had a right to be considering how completely shitty the audience was. Well, maybe it was just the people in the upper deck around me. I mean, it just sort of boggles my mind how these people who, obviously, must be Death Cab fans can also be such utter fucking assholes. Aren't Death Cab fans supposed to be sad, vaguely whiny, largely passive-aggressive hipsters and their alterna-hot emo girlfriends? Why in God's name would this obnoxious cunt (British definition) repeatedly yell "YOU SUCK!!!" to goofy, adorable little Travis Morrison? Granted, this new solo project he's embarked upon is not everyone's cup of tea (it's not designed to be), but if you don't like it . . . um, go get a beer and wait for it to be over. This guy's irrational anger and confounding disrespect infected the mood of the whole joint. Well, that's what you get when Q101 sponsors, I guess.

But, Death Cab, ah, Death Cab. I mean, wow. Those boys can play. Much like at the Rufus show the previous night, I always find myself in awe of these singers who open their mouths and sound exactly the way they do on their albums. I mean, how does Ben Gibbard just walk around on the streets knowing he can make that noise come out of his body?

And the songs, the songs! I got a little teary when they launched into "The New Year," and I actually got to hear him sing "I wish the world was flat like the old days / then I could travel just by folding a map / no more airplanes or speed-trains or freeways / there'd be no distance that could hold us back." That line just sends chills down my spine. And, not to keep singling out tunes from Transatlanticism, but what they did live with "We Looked Like Giants" became an incredibly profound, visceral experience. During the instrumental break that, while gorgeous, can feel a bit meandering on the album, they built into this thick, gauzy, sexy, multilayered wall of sound. I involuntarily exclaimed "Jesus!" when they suddenly brought it back down again for Ben to cry out the final "together there / in a shroud of frost the mountain air . . . " Unbelieveable.

I know I sound like a smitten 16 year old right now, and I'm OK with that. I adore this band.

Thursday, October 14, 2004

Rufus

The Rufus Wainwright show at the Vic last night was, predictably, outstanding.

He played a handful of new tunes from the forthcoming Want Two, including a song he wrote as a tribute to Jeff Buckley, in which he casts himself in the role of Orpheus going into the Hades below the Mississippi River. No joke. It was gorgeous, and highly emotional. He then nearly caused all of our hearts to stop by segueing directly into "Hallelujah." Other song highlights from the evening included "California," "The Art Teacher," and "Gay Messiah."

His solo shows put his personality center stage since he doesn't have a backing band (and, as much as I love her, Martha) dividing our attention. Much like his music, he effortlessly glides between being silly ("I hope you Want Two! Hahahaha!"), sexy (when a roadie makes an unexpected appearance on stage: "Wait, what are you doing out here? **shakes head** Spanking."), confessional (telling the story of his initially conflicted feelings about Buckley), insecure ("should I stand when I play guitar instead of sitting on the stool? Is standing sexier?"), and everything in between. There's something so startling and refreshing about going to a rock show and not seeing someone perform a persona in addition to performing the music you've gone there to see. He's grown and relaxed as a performer so much since I first saw him live. It's kind of hard for me to believe that this confident, peaceful troubador crooning at the piano last night is the same guy who I saw strip off his grimy vintage t-shirt during the big crescendo in "Evil Angel" two years ago.

(Personal to David Berkeley, Rufus's opening act: use the upper register of your voice more frequently. Your high notes are strong and exciting. You'll differentiate yourself from the glut of sensitive acoustic singer-songwriter guys if you push the limit a little bit. Just a thought.)

Death Cab tonight . . . quite looking forward. I [heart] Ben Gibbard right now.

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Not a Fetish Site!

When a colleague at work sent me this link called "BikerFox", I had a moment of hope that perhaps, a la Suicide Girls, someone out there had finally zeroed in on my fetish for impossibly, unstoppably hot bike messengers. Oh, was I ever sorely, sorely mistaken. I feel bad laughing, but . . . come on, now.

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

My People

I don't believe they have t-shirts, too.

Thursday, October 07, 2004

War Is Costly

So was my Starbucks this morning.

My usual "tall coffee with room" has gone from $1.54 to $1.65. That's bullshit I say. I gotta buy a coffeemaker. Perhaps I'll put one on lay-a-way and pay for it in eleven cent installments.

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Rich Dork

This is a hilarious Pitchfork spoof!

(Shut up, dude. I know. I read Pitchfork every day, too.)

Brown Bunny

From last evening--

CTA: What was the deal with that e-mail? I could barely read it. It was this weird combination of shame and incoherence.

AMF: It was like a Vincent Gallo movie.

Monday, October 04, 2004

Janet Leigh

Janet Leigh, 1927-2004

With the most deep and heartfelt respect, I invite those of you who know the anecdote to repeat it once again with me now.

Jim Naremore (to Janet Leigh): Ms. Leigh, do you realize you were in three of the best movies ever made? Touch of Evil, The Manchurian Candidate, and Psycho? (to Eva Marie Saint) Uhhh . . . and you were in some very good movies as well.

Rest in peace, Ms. Leigh. Film fans around the world will miss you.

Thursday, September 30, 2004

Personnel

This, from GH (I'm assuming someone e-mailed it to her):

The personnel office received an email requesting a listing of the department staff broken down by age and sex.

The personnel office sent this reply:

"Attached is a list of our staff. We currently have no one broken down by age or sex. However, we have a few alcoholics."

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

Now It's Time to Say Good-Bye

This week, Professor Bartlett tackles gender, race, class, and nationality. I think he must have known I promised to lay off him after today so he decided to go out with a bang.

Children, to be honest, I don't really have the energy to bang right on out with him. It's not that I've been beaten down, it's just that I'm booooooooooooooooored. Bored. Predictable stupidity is crushingly boring.

But, we press on, for form's sake.

What would possess him to say that Minnie Driver's album will enjoy a "smashing success" despite being not as interesting as either Norah Jones or Natalie Merchant? I mean, how completely insulting to say that music's mediocrity assures its popularity. It's insulting to the artist ("darling, your crap will be popular regardless, so don't try to stretch or improve yourself at all"), insulting to people who, you know, have ears, and, in its own way, implicitly insulting to female musicians. Just because something's popular doesn't mean it's crap. Actually, I have a feeling Minnie Driver's album will probably be an astounding flop. When's the last time you've heard anyone say anything nice about 30 Odd Foot of Grunts or the Bacon Brothers? Exactly. And as far as contemporary female actress/singers go, though I think Driver's a fine and consistently underrated actress (Cassius, care to get into it all over again about her performance in An Ideal Husband?), she's no Hilary Duff or Lindsey Lohan with the potential for tween crossover appeal, either.

"It will, of course, be tempting to treat [Elliott Smith's From a Basement on the Hill] as an extended suicide note set to song . . . " Of course. (It's that "of course" that rankles.) Because a person's music is always inextricably bound to a person's life. And certainly Smith's music, taken on its own terms, will never be as interesting as what the trainspotters read into it for their own macabre amusement. Get a clue, Tommy. You're not only belittling Smith's legacy as a musician, you're also belittling Smith's legions of fans who are still out of their minds with grief about his passing and are desperate to hear whatever shreds of his genius the man left behind. Though Smith's music always was laced with a keen sense of his own mortality, most folks I know (including, emphatically, myself) will be tempted to treat From a Basement on the Hill as nothing other than the precious gift it assuredly will be.

Though Michaelangelo Matos and Oliver Wang have already, rightly, pointed out that Tommy isn't exactly up to the task of writing intelligently about hip-hop, who would have thought he'd write himself into such weird little corners writing about race as well? His commentary on Nelly's collaboration with Tim McGraw, despite the fact that he calls it "both brilliant and absurd," doesn't quite go, you know, there, but then he really outdoes himself by going out of his way to point out that Bloc Party's and The Dears' lead singers (Kele Okekure and Murray Lightburn respectively) are black. With a hilarious lack of self-awareness, he ponders (re: Lightburn), "Apparently I'm alone in finding this [his skin color] noteworthy, because other than a short profile in the Guardian, I haven't found a single review or feature on the band that mentions Lightburn's surprising ethnicity." Um, yeah, you probably are alone in finding this noteworthy, Tommy (or, at least, you're alone in feeling the need to waste bandwith writing about it rather than just offhandedly observing to a friend, "huh, he's black, that's interesting" and leaving it at that). Most respectable writers got past the "but he sounds white/black" school of music criticism, oh, about five minutes after Elvis took over the world. Get a grip, Tommy. At the risk of being too woo-woo, touchy-feely here, music is colorless. Unless the music very specifically deals with a racial agenda (and even then...), you're not helping our collective appreciation of the songs by pointing out something as insignificant as a musician's color.

"The globalization of hip-hop has become inevitable." Oh, SPARE US, PLEASE, Tommy!! You're hurting me with your ill-informed philosophizing. It's like the out-of-touch uncle at family gatherings flapping his jaw and trying to sound informed about every topic at the dinner table. Which is even more unfortunate since, based on the photo on his blog, I'm assuming Tommy is probably in his mid- to late twenties and, as such, kind of has no excuse for being ill-informed--especially about music, especially considering it's HIS FUCKING JOB to be informed if he's going to be writing about it. His "appreciation" of Senegalese rapper Shiffai is valuable in that it exposed me to a performer I might otherwise have been unaware of, but my God, his White Male New York Ego has positively stained any of his good intentions here.

Truthfully, I'm glad that my anti-Bartlett month is over. I'm tired. I'll still be reading his column from week to week, mostly as a consumer, but never not as a critic.

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Yes, Children

Yes, children, there is a Santa Claus, and it appears that he visits in the early fall and is quite possibly gay.

Sunday, September 26, 2004

Just Because They Asked So Nicely

Go check out Better Propaganda. They're a Chicago- (and San Francisco-) based enterprise offering free downloads and mini bios of all the kewl new bands. Tommy Bartlett gets many of his best mp3s from this site, so why not skip the middleman and go straight to the source? Ah, so this is what freedom from tyranny feels like. . . .

I Fear Change

Raise your hand if the Reader's new print design also stresses you out. So many colors . . . which way are the sections supposed to unfold . . . ?

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Why?

Why, why, why do the newspapers insist on running huge, garish, unavoidable pictures of the U.S. hostages in Iraq on their covers? I'm speaking here primarily of today's issue of the Red Eye. I was having a perfectly pleasant morning walking east on Chicago Avenue toward the office when I happened to glance at one of those ugly red paper machines and see the image of Jack Hensley, blindfolded, trapped behind the glass door. Sure, this probably sounds like I'm ostriching myself away from current events, and, honestly . . . that comment probably wouldn't be completely unfounded. It just depresses the fuck out of me. I know enough of what's going on to be informed; I don't need it shoved in my face at 8:30 in the morning. If I felt the need to see the digital photos, I could have Googled that shit. Don't force it on me. Don't turn it into something to be consumed and then discarded, like Britney Spears's wedding photos. And it's not just the media's use and abuse of those images; it's the actual reality behind the photos that really depresses me. The hatred, the violence, the capacity for true evil in the hearts of human beings. I don't care what the fuck Hensley was doing there, and this is certainly not xenophobia speaking. Sure, there are all kinds of extenuating circumstances involved in that situation, but the fact is that we are talking about torture and beheading. It's just so, so sick, so sad.

I Can't Believe He Actually Put the Accent Over the "U"

It's actually completely coincidental that September, the month I've declared the "I Hate Tommy Bartlett" month, has five Wednesdays in it this year. Just more of my vitriol to suck down, beloved friends!

So, aside from the fact that he, very pretentiously, put the accent over the "u" in Medulla (the frickin' album cover doesn't even use the accent), Tommy's actually pretty right-on in his reading of the album. "I think Medulla is brilliant, one of the best records I've heard this year. I also think it's the least successful of Bjork's five studio albums."

As I've stated elsewhere on this blog, I feel like Bjork's all-vocal mission led her astray when it came to the lighter, funner, more dance-y tracks, so I'm inclined to agree with his statement that "Desired Constellation" is one of the better cuts. However, I will take him ever so slightly to task here for choosing that song specifically; I feel like part of the reason "Desired Constellation" is so easy to relate to and love is because it sounds the most similar to the bulk of Vespertine. (It was kind of hard for me to believe when I checked the liner notes that Matmos weren't responsible for the programming; I could have sworn that dark, dense glitch-field had their fingerprints all over it.) So, Tommy, though it's totally valid to make the distinction between the all-vocal tracks and the ones that use more actual instruments and programming, maybe you're just having nostalgia for an album you've already digested.

[Side note: as ever, Bjork discussing her own work is vastly more interesting than most anything the music critics are saying about it. A friend recently pointed me in the direction of this brief but thought-provoking interview from Newsweek.]

Ah. Now on to the mock-worthy nit-picks.

What's with the proliferation of short parenthetical phrases this week?

"(mostly rapturous praise)"

"(reluctantly)"

"(jubilantly)"

"(I might as well say it)"

I love the kind of borderline autistic ruts he gets into, where he locks on to a phrase or a rhythm in his writing that he just uses over and over and over again in the SAME damn column. I know I can get kind of redundant in my own writing; we all have our pet words and phrases we trot out more frequently than we'd like to admit. But his tics become almost comical in their frequency and density.

Also, calling The Arcade Fire "the most hyped band of the moment"? Hilarious. I mean, yeah, Pitchfork has annointed Funeral as among the best new music of 2004, but there's just something so wonderfully, pathetically snobby the exclusionary diction there. "Wellllll, YOU may not have heard of this band, my dear, sweet child, but if you were privileged enough to rub shoulders with the cabal of brilliant, underappreciated artistic types I run with here in New York, you would certainly know what I'm talking about. But you don't live a life as fantastically urban, or urbane, as mine, so allow me to feed my opinions and prejudices directly to you."

Only one Wednesday left in September, kittens. Get your vitriol while it's hot. (Though if you think I'll permanently swear off giving him a hard time just because the month is over, you're sorely, sorely mistaken. Tommy Bartlett will always have a special place in my spleen.)

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Thursday, September 16, 2004

Linky McLinks

Kittenpants is certainly one of the best new sites I've stumbled upon recently.

"Five ass-related words I think I use a lot"

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

I'm Late Coming to the Table (Again)

Looks like I've already got some others in my corner here. I did a quick Google and found these three other blogs eviscerating Mr. Bartlett. Whereas I'm content to just sneer from a distance, they dive right in and shred him line by line. Well done.

See May 1, 2003, "Get Lost Indeed".

See Saturday, May 22, 2004, about three paragraphs down.

See Sunday, May 23, 2004 "How to Write on Music, Part 439".

Tommy Bartlett Update

Tommy Bartlett said nothing to actively piss me off in today's Wednesday Morning Download. Well, except when he said he finds Usher "entirely unexciting as a singer, a songwriter, a dancer and, yes, even as a sex object." Which doesn't anger me as much as it just makes me shake my head, like an older, wiser sister or aunt who's just waiting for him to pull his head out of his ass. Ah, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy. It's a good thing we plebeians have you! Otherwise we might be stuck in a world of fun music that we actually enjoy without having to be snobby about! Thank you for saving us from ourselves, for being such a guiding light of taste and sensibility and intelligence.

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Best. Week. Ever.

Check this shit out, yo:

Rufus Wainwright at the Vic 10/13
Death Cab for Cutie at the Riv 10/14
Interpol at the Riv 10/17

And I've got tickets for all three! So exciting.

Poem?

I love Michael Barrish.

Sunday, September 12, 2004

Offensive Celebrity Statement of the Week

Just when I was starting to not begrudge her her fame, happiness, and success, Gwyneth Paltrow lets this kind of garbage fly out of her mouth in Entertainment Weekly, re: the MTV Video Music Awards: "When you're covered in spit-up and you're kind of overweight, the idea of having someone blow out your hair and putting on a good outfit sounds nice. . . . But I just feel like an impostor now going into that world. I have to remind myself that I've got to go be Gwyneth Paltrow. And I don't even know what that means."

Kind of overweight?

A good outfit?

I don't even know what that means?

**sigh**

My circuits are jammed trying to get my head around how many levels of WRONG are embedded in there.

Gwynnie, we short, chubby, low-20K/year single urban gals wearing Old Navy salute you.

Thursday, September 09, 2004

Grab Bag

Cintra, sometimes I hate you and sometimes I love you. Right now, I pretty much love you.

Thanks for the laughs, Kittenpants!

Billboards have started popping up all over the city for the new UPN show Kevin Hill. Whereas that shouldn't merit any notice under normal circumstances, this show happens to star Taye Diggs. Which means, Taye Diggs has started popping up all over the city. **swoon** The show sounds like it has an unbelievably retarded premise, but, my God, if that man isn't just this side of physical perfection. . . .

And in other billboard news, there's one on the north side of Chicago Avenue just east of Franklin (in the empty lot next to Bar Louie) advertising the tenth anniversary edition cover of Chicago Social magazine--featuring Adrien Brody. I nearly dropped my bag of Thai takeout when I saw it for the first time.

Wednesday, September 08, 2004

I Could Travel Just by Folding a Map

I know I should probably be writing about my continuing thoughts on Medulla* or how I've recently fallen in love with Ted Leo~ or how I was mildly disappointed by We Don't Live Here Anymore^. But . . . all I really want to talk about right now is how amazing Transatlanticism is.

I know, I know, I'm a little late pulling my chair up to the Death Cab for Cutie table. And I'm sure a zillion fans who've loved them since waaay back when will be more than happy to get on my case about how much better and more sonically interesting their early stuff is (I burned a copy of Giddy's We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes, so just hold yer horses; I'll get around to listening to it eventually). However, I've been listening to Transatlanticism intermittently at least since early July, and it's still surprising me with new corners to get lost in and new connections to make in order to climb back out of the confusion.

First, let's talk about the fact that the album makes a complete loop on itself. Is this widely acknowledged by the fans? Have other albums by other artists done this before and I've just never known about it? Regardless, Chris Walla, you're a genius. The feedbacky hum that ends "A Lack of Color" is the exact same noise that begins "The New Year," so if your CD player automatically replays the disk from the beginning once it reaches the final track, there's no interruption. It makes a seamless transition. And I don't think it's just a clever parlor trick. It's like an aural literalization of the lyric, "I wish the world was flat like the old days/then I could travel just by folding a map." Which makes complete sense, since that lyric (and the lines that follow it: "no more airplanes or speed-trains or freeways/there'd be no distance that could hold us back") is the album's Rosetta stone.

It took my now-regular weekend road trips out to Indiana for me to realize that Transatlanticism is all about distance, using transportation symbolism as that theme's (pardon the pun) vehicle. When you're alone in your car, doing 80 miles an hour on Route 30 early on a misty Sunday morning, phrases like "in the back of my grey sub-compact" and "from the passenger seat as you are driving me home" tend to lodge themselves in your brain. The album itself almost seems like it wants to fight how much it talks about transportation; aside from the glorious "Title and Registration," there are no direct references to travel in the first half of the album. Then, you get a hint in "Tiny Vessels" and "Transatlanticism" (the former's vacation in Silver Lake and the double meaning of the vessels of the title, the latter's overjoyed people who took to their boats), which eventually leads into the deluge of the final four songs. At which point, of course, you get kicked back to the beginning of the album again. The rush of imagery is both like acceleration and like the kind of verbal diarrhea that comes from repressing an emotion or preoccupation too long--at a certain point, you just can't stop yourself from talking about it and you unwittingly start to reveal the complex, interlocking infrastructure holding your neuroses together. Which is maybe why that image of folding a map is so potent for me: what at first seems like a magic trick that will bring you closer to your heart's desire actually reveals itself as a Mobius strip, keeping you locked in a cycle of obsessive memory.

But what prevents all this from feeling self-serving or self-pitying is the sweeping, epic romance of the thing. Ben Gibbard keening "I need you so much closer" is quite literally the heart of the album. Nestled near the end of track seven (of eleven), it's both the voice of the child in us who never really grows up, murmuring a repeated phrase to lull himself to sleep, and the voice of the frantic lover, chanting a sweaty, desperate prayer against the darkening night. The question then becomes, would it have been better for that prayer to go unanswered?

The fragile perfection of "Passenger Seat," the very next track, starts off in a moment of sublime, peaceful happiness, his wish granted. Then, inexplicably, he starts pondering a crash ("do they collide?"), perhaps suddenly realizing that sometimes far apart is close enough and that sometimes celestial bodies would do best to keep their distance in the interest of avoiding a violent, fiery demise at each other's hands. And yet that dark little cloud in the perfectly clear sky of that moment doesn't affect his capacity for grand gestures of chivalry: "when you feel embarrassed, then I'll be your pride/when you need directions, then I'll be the guide" (note, again, here the map/travel image). But that relationship's ultimate inability to be sustained gives way, not to a spectacular flame-out, but to claustrophobia: the smothered romance of "Death of an Interior Decorator" and the cramped and airless quarters of "We Looked Like Giants," where the desire is intoxicating but choked with doom.

The sound of waves crashing on the beach at the beginning of "A Lack of Color" feels expansive here, and the sweet harmonies lacing the lines "I should have given you a reason to stay" are far more wistful than regretful. The repetition here reminds us of the repetition of "I need you so much closer," this time signaling sorrow, but also resignation, if not necessarily acceptance. After all, the whole drama gets played out again when the album restarts itself.

I am, obviously, just completely entranced with how breathlessly, intricately beautiful this album is. I think it’s telling that the last CD I listened to and found essential to do a close reading on in this manner was Bjork’s Vespertine. And why haven’t the critics been up to the task? Pitchfork’s is one of their retarded concept reviews. Rolling Stone’s is pleasant enough, but not exactly in the proper amount of awe. Typically, The Onion's review is perhaps the only one I've read that agrees with me and is, therefore, right. (Is this sarcasm? I dunno; is it?)

Go, go listen to this album now.

1

It's started to kick in for me, but the question that's keeping me up at night now is, is there any reason for cuts like "Triumph of a Heart" or "Who Is It"--commonly known among reviewers, fans, and other proselytizers as "the more accessible tracks"--to exist specifically in the a cappella style? It seems that they could have just as easily fit in to an album like Post with more traditional electronic orchestration (leave it to Bjork to force me to use a phrase like "traditional electronic orchestration"!). They just don't seem as inextricably linked to the all-vocal mission of this album the way "Where Is the Line" and "Mouth's Cradle" are, and that kind of bugs me, mostly for the sake of trying to defend her to her detractors or to those who've lost their faith in her infallible brilliance.

2

Ted! Ted! The Tyranny of Distance knocked me on my ass! What a gorgeous album!

3

Seriously, Pete and Mark, there wasn't enough money in the film's budget to get you guys some frickin' razors and shaving cream?

Arg! Arg! I Hate This Guy!

It's like pressing a bruise, the fact that I keep reading Salon's Wednesday Morning Download just to get angry with Tommy Bartlett. (I know the byline he uses is Thomas Bartlett, but it's just so much more emotionally satisfying for me to refer to him in the diminutive, especially since that's also the name of two cheesy-ass roadside attractions in Wisconsin: Tommy Bartlett's Robot World and Tommy Bartlett's Sky, Ski, and Stage Waterski Show.) This week's rage-making offense comes from the fact that he starts his last free download description with another "full disclosure" statement: "Full disclosure: Sam Amidon is my best friend, so you could say that I'm not an unbiased judge of his work." Get a grip on yourself, Tommy. We're not interested in you and your friends and your life. We want you to act as a sieve for us, filtering out the good downloads from the bad; we don't want you to use this column as an excuse to foist your own taste on us. You already have a blog; why do you need this platform, too? Are you that much of an egomaniac?

Friday, September 03, 2004

Artistic Ovulation

I'm convinced that Bjork's new album Medulla just made me ovulate. I swear to God, it's comprised of the most fertile sounding music I've ever heard in my life. I'm nowhere near ready to launch an analysis in print just yet, but I couldn't let the week end without some mention of the fact that it hasn't left my CD player. After all, as the cute pierced guy at Borders said, "Ah, the release of the new Bjork album. It's like a holiday, isn't it?"

Also, Jacques Tati's Playtime is similarly stuffed with ideas--miraculously, without causing sensory overload. Had the extreme pleasure and privilege of catching it at the Music Box with CTA last eve on the big screen, the way it's meant to be seen. (As Jaime N. Christley said of Playtime in his "Great Directors" entry for Tati at Senses of Cinema Dot Com, "Playtime on video is the same as 2001: A Space Odyssey or Lawrence of Arabia on video: the television monitor cannot possibly suffice.") Again, I'm not exactly feeling up to the challenge to deal with it in print, but I'll just leave you with my thought on how the movie was divided: the first part of the movie says, "you may not be ready for the city," but the second part says, "but the city's not ready for you, either." Which inevitably leads to the most beautiful kind of breakdown, chaos, and improvisation.

Wednesday, September 01, 2004

More Journalistic Doublespeak

But this time, it's not about Dubya.

Though I appreciate the service he provides with his Wednesday Morning Download column, I hate Salon's Thomas Bartlett with a white-hot, flaming passion.

"What is it that you're in a snit about now?" you may ask.

Well, when he says, "Full disclosure: I appear on the compilation [Barsuk's Future Soundtrack for America] as the keyboardist in Mike Doughty's band," it is the most thinly veiled example of self-aggrandizement I've seen in print perhaps since my days dabbling at my university's weekend entertainment magazine. "Full disclosure"? Come now. You're not exactly revealing this deep, dark secret about your personal, political, or professional affiliations that exposes an unfortunate but unavoidable conflict of interest for the sake of journalistic integrity. No, you just want everyone to know that you're this hipper than thou indie fuck making a few extra dollars (and a whole boatload of street cred) on the side playing keyboards in a handful of obscure rock bands. Believe me, no one gives a rat's ass. No one thinks you're cool, no one thinks this makes you a better or more informed or more interesting writer. In fact, your own musical ambitions might actually make you a worse writer/critic since professional jealousy is more likely to cloud your judgment (e.g. his needlessly spiteful criticism of Bob Pollard and GBV's swan song). You can't have it both ways, Tommy. You can't be both Lester Bangs and Chris Walla. Sure, Richard Meltzer fronted a punk band and wrote lyrics for Blue Oyster Cult, but he's a dickhead, too.

Tuesday, August 31, 2004

The Best Show on Television

Ooh, between the end of last season and now I'd forgotten how much I loooooove The O.C.!

Monday, August 30, 2004

Musings on the Names of Atlantic Storms

The Great Benji Kelnardo writes:

Lately, with way too much time on my hands, and with the arrival of the apex of the Atlantic storm season, I have been thinking about the names given to these storms. For some quick background info, there is an actual council (seriously) that convenes every five years to name the Atlantic storms; sounds like a great job to me. There are four main rules. First, there must be a name for every letter of the alphabet through W, so that the first tropical depression of the year begins with the letter A and goes down the list. Second, the names must alternate between a male name and a female name. Thirdly, the names must reflect the languages of the countries that the storms hit, meaning, the names are equally English, French, and Spanish. Lastly, after a major Hurricane hits that name is permanently retired. Therefore, there will never be another Hurricane Andrew.

However, I have been baffled by many of the choices of these names. Hurricanes or Tropical Storms should have names that strike fear into the hearts of people. After all, last I heard Hurricanes are scary. Let's review the names of a few of the major Hurricanes that have hit the United States in the past twenty years. Four come to mind immediately: Hugo, Floyd, Gilbert, and the recent Charley. Are you kidding? I went to high school with a Hugo and a Gilbert and guess what--in gym class, when teams were being picked, at the end would be Hugo to my left and Gilbert to my right. Floyd? I know a puppy named Floyd. Charley? It may be a different spelling, but the most popular Charlie I know of is mocked by his own dog.

If this so-called council expects anyone to take these storms seriously maybe they should give them serious names. Can't you just see these jerks sitting there laughing about naming these storms? Is it any surprise that there is always a huge amount of people who refuse to evacuate? Oh no! Here comes Gilbert! What am I to do! Can you seriously imagine being frightened by anything named Wilfred? No joke, if we get to a W, the storm's name will be Wilfred. I concede that finding a W name that's scary is not easy, but why not Warren, for example? I'd rather be frightened by a storm named after a Hollywood cad than some old actor selling oatmeal.

There is hope on the horizon. Saturday, Tropical Storm Gaston hit South Carolina. Now that's a name. Say it--Gaston. Now close your eyes.............
Did you envision a thick-necked Frenchman with a bad attitude and cigarette? Well you should have. "Haw! Haw! Silly American! That will teach you to rename your snacks Freedom Fries!" You try to tell me that when you are in the path of something named Gaston that you wouldn't leave in a second.

This all brings me to a single conclusion. I know one thing to always be true--the one thing that brings Americans together like nothing else is xenophobia. So there is the answer: no English names at all, only foreign names. Think of the effectiveness! Everyone hates the French, even the French hate the French. Gaston--need I say more? More Spanish names. I don't know about you, but the first thing I think of when I hear the name Roberto is a switchblade (was that a line? did I cross it? I didn't really mean to offend). We could even expand it to other languages. Can you imagine how people would react to Hurricane Osama?

I am calling on the public to join me in this call to action. Maybe we, the humble citizens, can begin to demand more accountability of our Atlantic Storm Naming Council. Why are the Presidential Candidates not talking about this? Is Florida not a battleground state? An absolute outrage. The safety of our citizens now rests on our shoulders, and if we do not take it seriously the consequences could be devastating.

Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Monday, August 16, 2004

1-55652-552-4

Doug Crandell, author of Pig Boy's Wicked Bird for Chicago Review Press celebrates his literary debut in a poignant and permanent way. Publishers Weekly rewards him with an outstanding review (They say, "Richly anecdotal, the work leaves no detail unexamined, whether physical or ethereal" and "Crandell addresses everything…with poetry and imagination") as well as making him part of their Pictures of the Week feature.

Friday, August 13, 2004

Resource

Oh, fuck me, this is gorgeous!

I've been a fan and casual reader of Senses of Cinema for at least a couple of years, but now that they've redesigned the site, it's much easier to use. I was tooling around and discovered this amazing resource, which, I'm assuming has been there all along, but I'd never really noticed or appreciated since the links were kind of difficult to make heads or tails of. Go, read, enjoy, be enlightened.

Thursday, August 12, 2004

Peekaboo

Main Entry: (1) peekaboo
Function: noun
Date: 1599

: a game for amusing a baby by repeatedly hiding one's face or body and popping back into view exclaiming Peekaboo!

Main Entry: (2) peekaboo
Function: adjective
Date: 1895

1 : trimmed with eyelet embroidery a peekaboo blouse
2 : made of a sheer or transparent fabric; also: revealing usually small areas of skin
3 : offering only limited display or disclosure especially of a teasing sort peekaboo publicity

Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Garden State

It was inevitable, wasn't it?

There's no way that the actual, full-length version of Zach Braff's Garden State was ever going to live up to the beauty of the preview. And, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, if nothing else, that means Braff was able to come up with about three minutes, total, of extremely evocative images during his first time out as a director. Which is more than I can say of Van Helsing or King Arthur. That preview is its own work of art, visual poetry as pure and stunning as anything we're likely to see in 2004.

Within the last year, the sensitive filmgoer has been treated to Lost in Translation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Before Sunset, three extraordinarily powerful and devastatingly romantic films dealing with similar themes of rootlessness, memory, and longing, so Braff had a hell of a lot to live up to if he hoped to make an impact on the kind of audience that's likely to see such films. But, what a compliment in and of itself that Garden State can even be mentioned in the same breath as those contemporary masterworks. (I'll spare you the pain of additional comparisons to The Graduate and Harold and Maude since, outside of acting as inspiration for the lonely-boy protagonist and the general quirky aesthetic, those films shouldn't automatically be classed with Garden State. And, as with Igby Goes Down and its Salinger nods, Garden State's relative merits shouldn't be confused with the merits of its referents and it shouldn't be blindly praised just because the filmmaker has the same good taste in movies and books that you do.)

Perhaps I'm being too hard on Garden State. It was certainly lovely. I laughed out loud several times, was genuinely touched by the moment when Large hugs Sam's mother, and have decided that no one's doing barely contained anger on camera these days like Peter Sarsgaard. If I'd happened upon it randomly, divorced from the unique brand of indie-hype that it's spawned, I probably would have wholly embraced it as one of "my" movies. (If you've seen the DVD shelf at my apartment, you know what I mean.) But. (But.) There is (however adorable) a bit of baby fat clinging to the writing, and the general sense that, for all Braff's talent and resources, my friends and I, if we were working at the top of our collective games, probably could have come up with something comparable.

Monday, August 09, 2004

Atkins in the Workplace

So, my managing editor is currently completely obsessed with her Atkins diet, and today during a project meeting when we were discussing the fact that the author of one of our books was sending us a bunch of crappy scans on disk, she said, "yeah, more than half of the images were, like, 72 dpi, totally low-carb, um, I mean, low-res."

Sex and Dating in the 21st Century

Screw volunteering to register voters in swing states; the good people of Alabama need vibrators! Who's with me?

This makes my standard carbon monoxide detector excuse seem pale by comparison.

Wednesday, August 04, 2004

Open Letter

Dear Shaggy-Haired Hipster Boy Who Made Eye Contact Twice, No, Three Times with Me on the Bus This Morning:

It's amazing how we can sniff each other out, isn't it? How we're able to locate another person in a crowd that we know we'd probably be friends with if we had the chance? I'm sure you were listening to something interesting on your iPod; should I hazard a guess? Death Cab? Iron + Wine? Or something vintage, like The Clash or Iggy and the Stooges? I admire your boldness for going with that neon orange messenger bag. It was just like Kate Winslet's hoodie in Eternal Sunshine. Did you glance my way on accident? Were you just looking back behind you to see if there was an empty seat available or a better place to stand? Or did you notice something in me that you thought was interesting? My spiky hair with the fading purple streak, perhaps? My black plastic frame glasses? Were you wondering what I was listening to? (Alas, I can't afford to plunk down for an iPod right now, but it was Kurt Elling's Man in the Air in my trusty CD player. Are you surprised? Were you expecting Guided by Voices? The Mountain Goats? Gang of Four?)

Hipster Boy, I know I looked stressed out, and that's because I am. Aside from the fact that I'm not, and never have been, a morning person, and that my schedule was thrown off kilter because one of my roommates decided to take a shower at an unpredictable time while I was still in the midst of going through my prework routine, I've got a lot going on in my life right now. My poor little family is falling apart and I'm wondering what's going to happen to all of us. I had trouble falling asleep last night (a combination of the loud, beautiful thunderstorm and just too much on my mind), and I was feeling vaguely nauseated this morning, which is fairly typical of how my body processes undue amounts of stress. That's why I was scowling on the bus. I would have smiled at you, I wanted to smile at you, but I just didn't have one in me today.

I'm pretty assiduous about keeping to a regular schedule, so, if you are as well, there's a good chance we'll be seeing each other on the #66 again between 8:15 and 8:30 on weekday mornings. I hope things won't be awkward between us now that I've opened up to you like this. You probably just thought I looked like a girl you went to high school with, and I've gone and blown things all out of proportion. But I just wanted to say hi, and that I appreciated that you paid a little bit of attention to me. These days, it's the little things like that that make all the difference.

allison

Monday, August 02, 2004

Inspired Casting

Will someone finally PLEASE cast Owen Wilson and Renee Zellweger in a movie together as brother and sister? The blonde hair, squinty eyes, lemon-pucker lips, raspy Texas drawl? It's bound to happen eventually, and it will be beautiful.

Thursday, July 29, 2004

Even She Can't Completely Ruin Writing This Good

Entertainment Weekly reports in its July 30 issue that Heather Graham will be joining the cast of Scrubs this fall, playing a psychiatrist at the hospital. A line of dialogue from her debut episode: "Show me a well-adjusted, successful man who wants to settle down and have kids and I'm not interested, but find me an alcoholic in his mid-30s that still thinks his band might make it, and just tell me where I can show up and buy him dinner."

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

I Know How He Feels

From Already Dead by Denis Johnson

"My life is strange," I told him.
"I don't like it when you cry."
"I'm not making it out there, Bill."
"No. Nobody is."
"What do I do now? What do I do?"
This got him going. "Hey! I've taken stock, I've made an assessment, I've done the thing sitting out here counting my fingers and toes and actions. And I got the truth on one side and my lies on the other, the nutty stuff and the stuff that's real, and we've convened, me and the trees and the spirits, and I got it calculated that the only thing I ever did right was buy that oak flooring for the cabin when they tore up the bowling alley in Point Arena. That's it, the oak flooring."
"It's very nice."
"I can't advise, is what I'm saying."
"I understood you."
"I mean everything else is on the failure and insanity side."
"But what a floor! Something to envy."

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

Two Quotes and a Definition

"A movie, I think, is really only four or five moments between two people; the rest of it exists to give those moments their impact and resonance."
--Robert Towne, screenwriter, Chinatown

"A man's got to believe in something. I believe I'll have another drink."
--W. C. Fields

Main Entry: spam
Function: noun
Etymology: from a skit on the British television series Monty Python's Flying Circus in which chanting of the word Spam overrides the other dialogue
Date: 1994

unsolicited usually commercial e-mail sent to a large number of addresses

Friday, July 23, 2004

Ad Hominem

Ouch. The rage didn't have to be that violent, or that squarely aimed at the man instead of his writing, but I definitely understand the impulse to really lay into Chuck Klosterman. I only made it halfway through Sex, Death, and Cocoa Puffs before discarding it with a sneer and a snort. Why this guy has been lauded as much as he has really makes my head hurt, and I no longer just think it's professional jealousy. Cintra Wilson is often just as wrong-headed as he is, but at least she's consistently funny and interestingly wrong-headed.

Thursday, July 15, 2004

Fahrenheit . . . Fe(26)?

From Publishers Lunch:

Why Is Reading Really at Risk?

Because of things like this, dateline Cedar Rapids: "A church's plan for an old-fashioned book-burning has been thwarted by city and county fire codes."

Under the you-can't-make-this-up header, district fire chief Brad Brenneman objected because, "We don't want a situation where people are burning rubbish as a recreational fire."

One ever-helpful fire inspector "suggested shredding the offending material," but the minister behind the idea, "Said that wouldn't seem biblical."

Because, in Essence, That's Really Just a Knick-Knack

Giddy and I were both 100 percent sober, I swear, and having a discussion about broken bones.

A: But why didn't we evolve so our bones are no longer breakable? Wouldn't that make more sense?

G: Well, yeah, but then that would mean our bones would have to be made out of something different. The elements don't change. It's not like you're going to find a lizard made out of gold.

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Truer Words, Part II

"Will find nice sensible boyfriend and stop forming romantic attachments to any of the following: alcoholics, workoholics, sexaholics, commitment-phobics, peeping toms, megalomaniacs, emotional fuckwits, or perverts. Will especially stop fantasizing about a particular person who embodies all these things." --Bridget Jones's Diary

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

Truer Words . . .

"You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the U.S. of arrogance, Germany doesn't want to go to war, and the three most powerful men in America are named 'Bush,' 'Dick,' and 'Colon.' Need I say more?" --Chris Rock

Monday, July 12, 2004

Music News, Part II

Check out the new design on All Music Dot Com. I use the site for everything from settling bets among my roommates at home to fact checking manuscripts at work, so I'll be curious to see how much this redesign throws me. . . .

Music News

So much good music news to greet the morning (and the week) with!

McSweeney's and Barsuk, like peanut butter and chocolate, two great tastes that taste great together.

A fair and balanced review of Divine Comedy's Absent Friends (on Pitchfork, of all places!!!), made all the more noteworthy by the admission in the final sentence that someone other than me also regards Fin de Siecle as Hannon & co's finest hour.

Bjork being all freaky and gorgeous, talking about her forthcoming vocals-only disk, Medulla.

Colin Meloy and his Decemberists are heading into the studio soon to begin work on a new album, with a little help from Chris Walla, no less!

Friday, July 09, 2004

Inspired By (No Guarantee of Actually Being Inspired, Though)

OK then. So, inspired by the list of summer albums on Nerve I linked here yesterday, here's my own Top Five summer albums list.* Forgive the nostalgia factor. It's a list-making inevitability.

Sophie B. Hawkins, Tongues and Tails—-This album is all sexy, late-night humidity. When the sound of the train on the tracks rumbles through your ears at the very beginning of "Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover," then oozes into that fat, synthy groove, it’s 3 A.M. on dark back roads with the car windows down, no matter where you are or what time it is.

Rufus Wainwright, Poses—-Rufus made this album at the height of his own self-destructive decadence, and, as such, it has a hazy, lush vibe tinged with a melancholy awareness of one’s own mortality. It’s the ideal soundtrack for throwing caution to the warm, summer wind in that moment right after you ask yourself, "but what does it all MEAN?"

Barenaked Ladies, Maybe You Should Drive—-Yeah, yeah, yeah, how tragically unhip are BNL? Whatever. Listen to this album while driving through a cornfield with your best friend in the dead heat of late July in Indiana sometime, then get back to me.

Duncan Sheik, Duncan Sheik—-Depending on the night, this album is either a chilled glass of white wine that will get you just high enough to fall deeply in love with everyone around you, or it’s an air conditioned room where you can hide away from all the inflamed passions that have scorched everything you thought was beautiful in your life while you weep one salty, art-directed tear.

Mos Def, Black on Both Sides—-"Well, from my understanding people get better when they start to understand that they are valuable. And they not valuable because they got a whole lot of money or ’cause somebody think they sexy; but they valuable ’cause they been created by God. God makes you valuable. And whether or not you recognize that value is one thing." A declaration of independence for a glorious summer in the city, sorely needed after making it through yet another Midwestern winter.

* For a continuation of this topic and to see several other examples of Top Five Summer Albums lists, please go here.