Three Thumbs Up

This is, like, already a week old at this point, but I'm still laughing about Heather Havrilesky's take on the inner lives of pop culture critics. From where I'm standing, it seems to have gone all the way around the circle of irony and met back up again with sincerity. Hits close to home in an uncomfortably good way. (A good uncomfortable way? A good way of uncomfortableness? An uncomfortable way of goodness? I'm feeling very Stoppardian right now....)

Surely this must be some kind of reality TV stunt. "Celibate indie rock frontman goes back to Harvard—wackiness ensues!" (Ed. note: Can you still call Weezer "indie"? I guess I'm referring more to the general sound and aesthetic of their music and less to the fact that they're on Geffen.)

Cookie Monster shills for Selmer. Well, at least it's not for Nabisco.

The Pimp Ninja and I were having a discussion about the hilariously terrible, awful dates we've both been on in our day (though his stories definitely take the cake for sheer weirdness), and I declared that we need to make trading cards to commemorate these whacked-out characters and situations we've encountered. The newest addition to his deck? The One with the Bear Mace. And people say romance is dead....

Jonathan Richman and Other Things That Make Me Happy to Be Alive

Kittens, can you believe it? Jonathan Richman played "Pablo Picasso" during his show at the Abbey on Saturday night! I nearly stopped breathing. It was a total 1,000 Places to See Before You Die moment for me. He was kind of making fun of it, too, while he sang, which actually made it even better. He kept mangling the pronunciation of "asshole" every time the verse came around; it was all vowelly and Italian-sounding by the end, more like AHz-ohl. Priceless. Though I can't say that the show itself was incredible (the audience didn't really seem totally, 100% there with him; he was still getting over a monthlong bout with laryngitis; he only played for about an hour and didn't come back out for an encore), I can say without reservation that he was incredible. I can only think of a few rare people I've ever seen who are that completely at home in their own skin and so genuinely in love with the world around them. I know that sounds unspeakably cheesy, but it's really true. He kept a cowbell and a sleigh bell stick off to the side of the drumset, and he would periodically set down his guitar, even in the middle of a song, just to dance around and make noise with them. It seemed like he was having just as much fun doing that as anything else. (And, for the record, he's a much better guitar player than I ever realized or gave him credit for.)

From Fluxblog, re: Franz Ferdinand's song "The Fallen": "Though twitchy funk is their bread and butter, I definitely prefer them with their Franz-o-meter set to Ultra-Jaunt, which makes them sound vaguely like late period Grant Lee Buffalo decked out in Dior." Sentences like that make me so proud to be a blogger.

Flip Flop Flying skewers bird flu fears.

Hours, or at least minutes, of entertainment: Who's the Boss (via Said the Gramophone). Internet-type death matches between random crap. I thought my favorite was David Grohl (Foo Fighters Frontman) Vs. Kitt (The Knight Rider Car)...until I scrolled down and saw Halle Berry (The Monster's Ball) [sic] Vs. Black Forest Cake (Delicious Treat)...until I continued to scroll down and saw Keanu Reeves (Speed) Vs. The Plot of the Movie Speed (Speed). Brilliant.

A Subatomic-Size Flashlight

In the mood for a good, quick snark?

I was totally loving this article on nanotechnology as I read it over lunch today. There's something utterly charming about the weird, overly bubbly tone that eventually gives way to some of the most terrifying quantum mindfucks I could never come close to dreaming up on my own. I also love the way the author's little bio paragraph at the end of the article says, curiously defensively, "The ideas stated here reflect the personal views of the author. They are in no way related to his professional affiliation with [the university he works for]." Way to ratchet up our confidence that you're in any position to be giving us the down-n-dirty facts about fourth-generation recombinant DNA bioweapons, dude.

Miss Garland, My Darlin'

Oh kittens, we had a thrilling movie moment last night at the CIFF screening of Michael Haneke's Caché, the kind that can really only happen communally, in the dark of a theater, in the assured hands of a director who has complete control of your attention with his skilled plotting and camera work. Though I generally make no bones about giving spoilers aplenty in my blog posts, I'm not inclined to talk about this major plot point, except to say that it was one of the most genuinely shocking things I've ever seen in a movie, and this is coming from someone who actually paid to sit through the entirety of Irreversible. Now that I've read a handful of short reviews this morning, I have to laugh at all the admonitions to be sure look at the bottom left corner of the screen during the final shot, because my companions received the exact same hint last night from a ticket taker before the movie started, which made us so attuned to the potential enormity of the detail that, when we actually saw what it was, it almost felt anticlimactic. It explains nothing, but certainly adds an additional layer of complexity and mystery to an already complex and mysterious film. (Also, speaking of short reviews, I don't know what movie Jonathan Rosenbaum saw before he wrote his capsule for the Reader, but it certainly wasn't the one I saw. I'm usually the first person to be on guard against a director's punitive attitude toward the audience or characters, but that charge feels nothing short of wildly inaccurate here.) This was my first viewing of a Haneke film, but I will definitely be adding more of his stuff to my Kittenflix queue. Thanks to DS and KP for convincing me to join them for the night out.

My love for John Darnielle just continues to grow. Here's his guide to whom indie boys should be crushing on now that Scarlett Johansson has gone all mainstream.

Though it's not rocking my world quite as much as I'd hoped it would based on all the superlative blogging about it, I'm still enjoying the hell out of Devin Davis's Lonely People of the World, Unite! "When I Turn Ninety-Nine" has a corking good brass line, and I woke up in the middle of the night a few days ago to a noise it took me a little while to identify as the sound of "Iron Woman" playing on repeat inside my own head.

Oliver Twist

Polanski's take on Oliver Twist was, as anticipated, a worthy addition to his body of work. His almost scientifically detached eye for recording the cumulative effects of an overwhelming menace on a powerless but tenacious individual lent itself perfectly to restoring the integrity to this, by now, overly familiar story. Barney Clark (who bears a striking and almost hilarious resemblance to Mia Farrow) has a few wonderful moments (especially the interval between downing a mug of hot gin and water and then completely passing right out of his chair), but he mostly walks around like a living embodiment of the Kuleshov effect, allowing, yes, of course, Polanski to edit around his beautiful little visage, but also allowing the other characters within the world of the story to project their own assumptions about the quality of his soul onto him without much intervention on his part. Oliver is repeatedly judged by his melancholy expression and the fineness of his features and often reaps unexpected benefits. This pleases us as spectators because, yes, he is a lovely little boy, and he's our protagonist, and we wish to see him succeed. But while we accept and even emotionally endorse, for example, Mr. Brownlow's confidence that the boy is pure of heart and deserves to be elevated from the squalor he lives in, what are we to do with this mode of operation when taken in conjunction with the problems of anti-Semitism that come up around Fagin? It's been widely discussed that he's often refered to in the novel (which, admittedly, I've never read) as "the Jew," and there's a wonderfully filigreed little tap dance of ambiguity here in Ben Kingsley's performance. He spends much of his time on screen teetering at the edge of the precipice of stereotype, never quite tumbling off, but inviting us, daring us, to blow him over with our own baggage and preconceived notions. Which is why the final scene where Oliver voluntarily goes to visit Fagin in his prison cell to pray with him, and for him, and forgive him is so, so crucial. Even more important than providing a satisfactory resolution for the narrative, this moment gives us, as an audience, a final opportunity, an unflinching challenge, a hurled gauntlet, to transmute our easy, natural sympathy for a charming little boy who will finally have a chance to live surrounded by love and comfort into a genuine, hard-won sense of compassion for a horrifying, mad old man who probably has never known and, except for this gesture, will never know again before his execution, much kindness in the world save for what he stole, grasping and greedy. Behold the power of cinema, ladies and germs. Using editing and image to comment on the art itself and to jar our perceptions just enough to lead us, changed, out of the theater at the end of the night, our sense of social justice provoked.

(A cross-country happy birthday shout-out to Giddy and her twin today.)

Strunk v. White: The Danger Mouse Remix

OK, a few last-minute tidbits before the end of the day.

A musical adaptation of The Elements of Style performed at the New York Public Library?!?! (Via Alex Ross.) Had I but world enough, and time....

In honor of Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize, I would like to share my favorite Pinter quote that does not come from a Pinter play. From--wait for it--Scream 3: "They've got Usher doing Pinter off-Broadway!" (That one was for you, Benji.)

You know you want it: TomKitten conspiracy theories on Slate. Dude, there's even a link to a time line. Dude.

Crooks and Liars has the Smurfs UNICEF ad. It's a tinny recording in French, but you'll get the general idea.

Happy Anniversary!

What it is, bitches! I was too busy yesterday to post that it was my one-year anniversary of going live on Blogger. Thanks to all y'all for fanning the flames of my egotism enough to keep me tapping away at the ol' keyboard. Here's to the coming year.

Perhaps the best band name ever? Arctic Monkeys. The 'Fork showed them some love earlier this week, and Aurgasm has the MP3s you crave. It's the heavily accented vocal delivery that does it for me. For what it's worth, people who claim to know such things say they're going to be the biggest band out of Great Britain since Oasis.

Said the Gramophone introduces you to Agent Simple, who comes across as the love child that Stephin Merritt and Jonathan Richman would have had if they'd enjoyed a passionate summertime fling in Sweden some twenty years ago. Guaranteed to bring a smile.

(Am I or am I not the absolute height of web-savvy circa 2003? I'm all, "dude, does everybody know about MP3 blogs?! They're hella tight!")

For what it's worth, all the people I work with at the CBCM say (I'm paraphrasing here) everyone needs to chill the fuck out about the avian flu. Unless, of course, you're flying to Hong Kong anytime soon with the intention of having unprotected sex with infected migratory water fowl, in which case, I think you have some other issues to worry about.

A Farewell to Smurfs?

I'm trying to do something with a Papa Smurf/Papa Hemingway pun here, but unfortunately coming up short. This sounds disarmingly intense, which, I guess, is the point. (Thanks again, JP.)

The Little Boy in Me? I Call Him Doug.

Shit like this totally brings out the little boy in me. I'm absolutely delighted by the food chain gross-out drama right now. Python vs. Gator Death Match '05!!!!!!! (Thanks, JP.)

On much the same note, I've been on a real science kick these days, especially after proofreading our forthcoming kids activity book Exploring the Solar System, so I also quite enjoyed Michael Brown's geeky/goofy insouciance here regarding the discovery that our unofficial tenth planet, 2003UB313 or "Xena," has its own moon.

Mnah Mnah

Yes! Yes, yesyesyesyesyesyesyes! This is an excellently written, smartly argued close reading/review of Gimme Fiction and an eloquently conceived, passionately convincing case for Spoon as one of the premier rock bands working today (via Said the Gramophone). I narcissisticly love having my own opinions corroborated by other denizens of the blogosphere.

Will someone please explain to me why I absolutely agree with Michelle Collins's indifference toward Ricky Gervais and The Orifice? Although I haven't yet seen the Christmas special, I finally got around to watching seasons one and two within the past two weeks, and I have to say I'm also resoundingly underwhelmed. The first season beats the shit out of the second, that's fer damn sure, but I was nevertheless nowhere near as wowed as I expected to be. Maybe my expectations were too high, based on all the "BEST EVER!" chatter surrounding it, and it does certainly possess that British je ne sais quoi where the comedy can't fully blossom until you've not only watched it but also talked about it and quoted the funny bits with someone else, but I still can't help feeling that it's not actually as sociologically trenchant as popular opinion claims it is. I dunno. The second season started to go wrong for me when it actively began painting David Brent as a bigot, rather than just making him a clueless dipshit who happens to accidentally say bigoted things. It's a subtle distinction but one that, I think, the uncomfortable humor really hinges on. And, as for the uncomfortable humor, there is a tremendously fine line between what is uncomfortable because it's something that actually happens in life versus stuff that's uncomfortable because it makes you say "gosh, wouldn't that be uncomfortable if that happened?" Watching the first season, I actually felt sick to my stomach because of the devastating accuracy of some of David Brent's character tics, especially all the cross talk in situations where his power is threatened (with Jennifer, with the facilitator during training day, etc.). Whereas in the second season, especially during the unfortunately unfunny comic relief episode, you get the cruel de-pantsing of one of the anonymous drones and the whole interpretive dance sequence. Those moments are just begging to be declared "ooh, awkward!", but, both of them seem a little too over-the-top to really feel intrinsic to the office setting, and, isn't that the whole shtick this series is riding on? That, here we're shining a light on all the fleeting moments of discomfort that arise in this specific setting that most everyone has experienced yet no one really talks about? De-pantsing is cruel and awkward anywhere (and, let's face it, do people really get de-pantsed anywhere other than in a middle school locker room?), and calculatedly "wacky" and oblivious interpretive dancing...well, does that actually happen anywhere outside film and TV sets where comic actors and writers are just getting off on the idea of their comic actor and writer friends doing outrageous things to make each other laugh with the tacit assumption that the audience will automatically find anything they shit out of their gifted little comic sensibilities howlingly funny as well?

Are these pointless arguments? Are these the kind of arguments that I scoff at when other people launch "but that would never happen in real life!" critiques at me about movies I love? I don't think so...the "that would never happen in real life" defense absolutely does hold water when the piece in question is rolling mockumentary style. If you're going for veracity, you can't be selective about it. You can't decide it only applies to some of the characters, but not the ones being played by the writer/director/creator/mastermind/mouthpiece.

OK. Enough with eviscerating Gervais. There are plenty of things I did adore about the show. The Tim/Dawn arc was incredibly satisfying (not to mention that I might have a little crush on Martin Freeman) and I think Gareth might actually be the most funny, interesting, and accurate caricature/character in the whole series. And I have to say that the two line outro at the end of the third episode in season two--"My knees hurt."/"No they don't."--made me laugh way harder and way longer than I thought it would.

Has everybody already seen this faux-preview that makes The Shining look like it was directed by Cameron Crowe? A friend forwarded it to me this weekend, and Nerve highlighted it as their favorite pic of the week. As I've stated in this forum before, I totally love previews, and I think this is a brilliant way of exposing how you can manipulate anything to look like anything given the right editing and music.