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