Race to the Finish Line

OK, I've been playing media catch-up over the past week or so, consuming (mainly) music and movies as fast as I possibly can before the end of the year, while still attempting to give them their due.

I'm finally taking time to digest Extraordinary Machine, which grows on me, almost despite myself, with every listen (does anyone have a download of the Jon Brion version I can borrow or copy? I'd be curious to hear it and compare). I just got around to picking up Late Registration, which, at this early stage in my appreciation of it, I think might actually be better than The College Dropout (can it possibly be true?). And, I recently bought The National's album Alligator, which, if you squint, is about one flugelhorn away from being Cousteau, except for the fact that it's totally not cheesy at all, doesn't flaunt its sterilizing-your-bullet-hole-with-bourbon lyrics like "Karen, put me in a chair / Fuck me and make me a drink," and has way more than mood going for it. Plus, I loves me some world-weary baritone.

Went out to see Good Night, and Good Luck on Tuesday night, at long last. Yeah, it's kind of a glorified PBS special, and the plot, such as it is, is really just a vehicle for the archival footage and the commentary on the state of journalistic integrity in this country, but it's gripping as all get-out and rabble-rousing in just the right way. The evocative black and white visuals, though perhaps a predictable stylistic choice (really, though, what the hell else are you going to do with it?), are absolutely gorgeous. Clooney's turning into quite the little director, isn't he? I've heard folks make comparisons to Clint Eastwood, but I think between Clooney's leading man persona and his occasionally smarmy self-satisfied, self-righteous attitude, the more apt comparison might be to—wait for it—the Golden Boy, Robert Redford. There's a very Quiz Show vibe in the 1950s / loss of innocence / TV-insiderness of Good Night.

King Kong is nothing short of spectacular, in both the connotational and denotational sense of the word. As CTLA has often been known to say, I laughed, I cried, I took notes. Peter Jackson can do no wrong. He's one of the rare directors I can think of who possesses the ability not only to ratchet up the thrills way beyond anything you've ever seen on screen before, but also to then use and build on that visceral response he's just elicited from you in service of deepening your emotional reaction to the story. In one of the most brilliant edits I've ever seen, the movie cuts from the heart-pounding dinosaur stampede on the island to a shot of Ann Darrow getting dropped from Kong's palm when he returns safely to his lair. Far from being just an ADD-induced switch to the next scene, Jackson and his editor knew it was imperative to harness our exhausted, breathless, terrified, ecstatic excitement and transfer those feelings, seamlessly, over to Ann. When you literally feel like you've spent a couple hours in her shoes on this grand, confusing adventure, the heartbreak at the end is all the more potent. Highly recommended. Bonus points for catching the Sumatran Rat Monkey inside joke when they're taking a tour of the boat.

And then, of course, there's Brokeback Mountain. Ah, disappointment is such a loaded word, isn't it? Now, I know I'm going to sound like a pretentious wanker for saying this, and I'm totally, 100% willing to be proven wrong, but I just can't shake my suspicion that the medium of film itself is fundamentally unsuited to tell the story this story is telling. "Brokeback Mountain," the story, is a masterpiece. Don't get me wrong, I'm no Annie Proulx devotee, and I only just read it two or three weeks ago, but I was so immediately taken with its power that I knew it was going to be (no pun intended) an uphill battle for a movie to do it justice. The translation from page to screen is admirable; it gets everything from plot points and main characters to, in a general sense, the spare, stoic tone pretty much right. But, not to get all film schooly here, I don't think Fang Lee (yeah, I know it's Ang Lee, but I heard Hugh Grant once call him "Fang Lee" and I thought it was the funniest thing ever) sufficiently accounted for the way the sexualizing gaze of the camera would transform it from a love story that happens to get tangled up in homosexuality into a homosexual story that happens to get tangled up in love.

Maybe I'm just being immature, but considering how rife the tropes of the traditional movie Western are with homosexual undertones (as Stephen Holden aptly points out), it took everything in me not to want to snicker like a madman each time, pre-consummation, the two characters so much as glanced at one other, not to mention anytime anyone said anything about "fishing," "hunting," or "horseback riding." There's even a latent giggle in my tendency to, however affectionately, refer to the movie as The Gay Cowboys. I shouldn't have wanted to do that. I would never even be tempted to give the short story that nickname. I could stick a pen in my eye for temporarily reinforcing the unbelievably still-lingering, century-old fallacy that cinema can't summon the psychological richness that literature can, but, goddamn it, the visuals kind of trivialize what Proulx was trying to do here. Even without nudity or explicit sex scenes, film invites us as viewers to voyeuristically consider bodies in motion and when those bodies belong to two beautiful men kissing rapturously on the mountainside, then, by golly, you've got yourself a gay cowboy pitcha, no matter how much dialogue and how much Method is expended in service of the idea of it being about greater social issues or, yes, even capital-L Love.

The way I see it, this story is not about sex. It's not about homosexuality. It's about love. I know it's a slippery slope to talk about love in the context of gay rights, or, hell, even just general societal acceptance, but that's exactly what's so fascinating, to me, about Proulx's story. She posits this situation where two people who are the loves of each other's lives, and use their sexuality as a means of expressing it, don't know what to with themselves or the intensity of their feelings because they live in a culture that hasn't built room for the possibility of romantic/erotic same-sex relationships. In a variation on the drum that Dan Savage has been beating in this repressive, reactionary Bush era, our collective ability to deal with the reality that men will want to have sex with other men and women will want to have sex with other women should have fuck-all to do with notions of love or fidelity precisely so that when love does enter the equation, as it so clearly does in the case of these two characters, it doesn't result in the large-scale destruction of a person's family, other relationships, and sense of self. Of course, what better way to dramatize this conflict than in the context of stereotypically rigid gender roles carved out of the myth of the West. (Paging Dr. Higgins, ABD.) This place where public pressures collide with private certainties is the crossroads of heartbreak and tragedy. The last line of the story says it all: "There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it."

My point being, did I get any of that out of the movie? I don't think so. (Please, by all means, let me know if you did.) I got a sense of heartbreak, a sense of "that sucks," and even a sense of poignancy in that final shot, but the fact of its being filmed added nothing to what was already present in the story. It just shifted it to another medium that leans a little more heavily on our heartstrings and robs some of the interesting tension that comes from what Nick Hornby described in this April's Believer as literary fiction's "ability to be smart about people who aren't themselves smart, or at least don't necessarily have the resources to describe their own emotional states."

Are all you other filmies keeping up with Slate's annual Movie Club? (Thanks to Mike O'D for reminding me the exchange had begun.) It's an awful lot to take in one go, but fun to rub your own opinions against. One of my favorite turns of phrase this season, courtesy of A.O. Scott: "I of course am pro-evil, anti-Christmas, and in favor of Brokeback Mountain being taught alongside Darwin (and, for that matter, Darwin's Nightmare) to schoolchildren." Also, Rosenbaum gives a very cool shout-out to his "friend and favorite film academic" Jim Naremore, whom I would probably describe with those two terms as well.

Happy fourth anniversary to the O'Ds today! And happy new year to the rest of all y'all, as I doubt I'll be posting again until we flip to '06. Cheers.

Viva Harvestime!

Attention denizens of Lincoln Square: the Harvestime grocery store has been remodeled! And not just remodeled, but expanded! I hadn't been shopping in a week or two, so imagine my surprise when I stopped in last night and saw that the wall behind the former produce section had been completely knocked out so that the store could take over the entire adjacent building. My sister didn't quite understand why I was reeling for the first five minutes or so as we explored the newly spacious floor plan, but I assured her that, to those of us who live in the 'hood and shop there regularly, this is a very big deal. Check it out.

I'm glad to see that so many other bloggers on Ye Olde Internette have been providing links to this weekend's "Lazy Sunday" Narnia rap from Saturday Night Live, because it's incredibly funny, but my sister and I have been in continual hysterics about a different sketch that appeared later in the show, "Two A-Holes Buying a Christmas Tree." For the past two days, during pregnant pauses in conversation, we've taken to saying to each other, "you look like a rabbit."

Pitchfork lists their Top Fifty Albums for 2005 today. As suspected, Sufjan's Illinois is tops.

And, speaking of best-of 2005 lists, big, big love goes out to the Real Slim Chaney for his gorgeous work on the packaging and liner notes for my CD compilation. That's right, kids, pin.monkey.press will make all your craft dreams come true! Out of towners, I'm going to try to put the packages in the mail today. In towners, if I haven't called you personally yet, be sure to get in touch with me before you leave for the holiday if you want yours for the road. There's only a limited number of schmancy packages available, so if you snooze you lose. (Though, I'll of course be happy to burn you a copy of the disk itself.)

Best of 2005
Originally uploaded by wrestlingentropy.

Track list:

1. Swimmers—Broken Social Scene (Broken Social Scene)
2. The Bleeding Heart Show—The New Pornographers (Twin Cinema)
3. Fire Snakes—Laura Veirs (Year of Meteors)
4. Ultimatum—The Long Winters (Ultimatum EP)
5. Fake Palindromes—Andrew Bird (The Mysterious Production of Eggs)
6. This Year—The Mountain Goats (The Sunset Tree)
7. Is This Love?—Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah)
8. When I Turn Ninety-Nine—Devin Davis (Lonely People of the World, Unite!)
9. Dogs Were Barking—Gogol Bordello (Gypsy Punks: Underdog World Strike)
10. Scripts—Stratageme (Mis Amis)
11. Tippin Toxic—Mike Jones vs. Britney Spears (Hollertronix—Vol. 2, EP)
12. No More Shoes—Stephen Malkmus (Face the Truth)
13. Missing—Beck (Guero)
14. My Mathematical Mind—Spoon (Gimme Fiction)
15. Chicago—Sufjan Stevens (Illinois)
16. Brothers on a Hotel Bed—Death Cab for Cutie (Plans)
17. The Engine Driver—The Decemberists (Picaresque)
18. Sadie—Joanna Newsom (The Milk-Eyed Mender)

Up Jumps Da Button

Who knew I was such a freakish anomaly? I've recently discovered that, apparently, I am the only person I know who buttons her shirts from the bottom up, instead of from the top down. The vigorous indignation that this admission has aroused in the past three days when I have questioned a series of friends and loved ones about it seems even more heated than the ire provoked by other perennial favorite us-versus-them chestnuts like "pop or soda" and "toilet paper unrolling over the top or from underneath." I try to reason with these sartorial Stalins by likening my directional preference to the zipping up of a zipper, but that logic has been roundly met with dismissive snorts and/or eye rolls preceding the supposedly irrefutable proof, "it's called a button-down shirt, Allison." For the love of God, are there any other button-uppers out there? Should we start a support group? I just want to be loved for who I am! Dare to proudly come out of the closet* with me!

*You know you were waiting for me to say it

I've Got Music to Keep Me Warm

Hilarious: "Now That's What I Call Blogging!" (via Stereogum). Downloadable Christmas mixes at The Test Pilot (also via Stereogum) as well as Gorilla vs. Bear and Good Weather for Air Strikes (the latter two via the Test Pilot post). If you're looking to snag the lot, be forewarned that they do overlap on a number of tunes. Matthew Perpetua outdoes himself on Fluxblog today, writing about the GENIUS that is Mike Jones. (Mike Jones's "Tippin' Toxic" will appear on my year-end best-of mix and I can thank Fluxblog for introducing me to it.) Giddy sent me a link to this Pandora web site yesterday, and though I haven't had a chance to play with it as extensively as I'd like, it looks like it might be useful for learning about new music in the future. Dig the weird, overly specific yet somehow still vague descriptions of the musical style you choose to explore.

She Used to Have a Carefree Mind of Her Own

Oh my God, my heart almost seized up this morning in a contraction of pure delight when I read this: Britt Daniel will cover Elvis Costello's "Veronica" on an upcoming episode of Veronica Mars. It's a real Christmas miracle! (I love saying that anytime something even mildly pleasant happens during December. The cuffs of my pants didn't get soaked in the snow and slush? It's a real Christmas miracle! My tom yum soup came to the table spiced just right? It's a real Christmas miracle!) Somebody better rip an MP3 off their TiVo and make it available online after it airs.

I guess this is as good a time as any to announce that Gimme Fiction is the number one album on my personal top ten list this year. How'd it sneak past Sufjan and Laura Veirs and the Decemberists? Hell if I know. But, as much as I've tried to look at it from every possible angle, there's no denying it at this point. It's just the right length, it's creepy and cryptic and somehow optimistic (the Addams fam-i-ly ::snap, snap::), it's an incredibly earnest meditation on the role of artiface artifice in our lives, and, of course, it's a magnificent vehicle for Daniel's voice. I would probably love any band that featured a vocalist as charismatic and precisely balanced on the edge of chaos and razor-sharp control as he is, so it's just a massive, massive bonus that Spoon is also so interesting musically. Gimme Fiction, ladies and germs, Gimme Fiction. Me and Steven King, man, we're riding this one into the sunset. (Ed. note: ::gag::)

Speaking of top ten lists, the Onion A.V. Club covers the year in music in this week's issue. Essential reading, as always.

Has anybody else been watching House on Tuesday nights? It doesn't really have any of the traits that are usually prerequisites for me to get into a television show (cumulative emotional attachment to richly drawn characters, intricately layered storylines that build on each other over weeks and months and years, supernatural events and/or sports writers), but I nonetheless have come to genuinely look forward to flipping over to Fox after Gilmore Girls is over. Oh, how I do love Hugh Laurie, and it's always good to see the once and future Bobbi Bernstein getting steady work. A killer Cynthia Nixon guest spot last night, too.

You Can Read My Dorky Summaries or Just Click on the Links

Though I have a fairly healthy appreciation for the surge in esteem comics and comic artists are garnering in mainstream culture (what with my natural affinity for geekiness of all stripes), I've yet to take the time to actually educate myself about any of the major players and their work (recommendations, DS, or anyone?). However, I do know the hotness when I see it: Chris Ware illustrates the cover for a new edition of Candide, as the first in a new series of classic works from Penguin Books featuring fresh, sexy covers by contemporary comic artists. Drool-worthy stuff indeed.

The Decemberists sign to Capitol. I officially have no opinion about this. Colin Meloy's lady Carson Ellis is also expecting a baby, which is cool. I just hope that the inevitable song for the baby that will no doubt appear on a future album isn't annoying and/or lame. However, I am thrilled beyond belief that Tucker Martine is helping Chris Walla with producing duties when the Decemberists go back into the studio. I think he has the potential to be huge on the indie scene, based on the lusciousness of his work with both the Long Winters and Laura Veirs this year.

Richard Pryor

It's not exactly like no one saw this coming, but it's still a bit of a punch in the gut to hear that Richard Pryor passed away today. I will be forever thankful to CTLA for loaning me his rented DVD of Richard Pryor: Live in Concert (which appears on Jonathan Rosenbaum's list of his 1,000 favorite films in Essential Cinema). It's an astonishing bit of stand-up comedy, one that is based in extraordinarily sophisticated storytelling way more than it is in cheap joke-telling. Anyone who wants to talk about the "honesty" of a performer, be it musician, actor, or comedian, needs to calibrate her yardstick to the naked, raw personal exposure offered up by Pryor here. My other treasured cinematic memory of him is, of course, his appearance as the eponymous fraud in The Wiz. The film hasn't exactly aged well or anything, but the final, maybe, twenty minutes are still absolutely emotionally scorching. The fear of being found out that you see in his eyes when Dorothy finally confronts him in the cold, echoing hangar where he sleeps on a ratty old cot, hiding away from the eyes of everyone who expects him to be the grandest of the grand when he's really just a quivering mess of insecurity and failure himself, is so private and so potent, it's almost difficult to watch, and even more difficult not to interpret as an utterly truthful representation of the clammy fear his own fame and success forced him into. He will be missed.

I'm One Step Away from Glow Sticks and Pop Rocks

My lovely houseguest (the third, for those of you keeping score at home) was in town this past weekend to complete the second four-day portion of her Thai yoga massage workshop at the River West branch of the Moksha Yoga Center. She invited me to come along with her to a holiday potluck/talent show gathering at the studio on Saturday night. I went mostly as a gesture of good faith, since she'd come with me to a party with my friends the night before. (Which was all kinds of fun, by the way, C&LLA. Thanks for hosting.) But, what with leaving my cozy, recently Christmas-ized apartment in the sleety snow and anticipating feeling awkward standing around in a room full of sexy yoga practitioners, I'd pretty much already made up my mind that I wasn't going to have a good time. (That doesn't sound like me at all, does it?) Let me tell you, though, all the awkwardness was TOTALLY WORTH IT when the final act of the night took the stage. They were two guys from Chicago's Spunn dance company (yeah, I'd never heard of them either), and all the pent-up anxiety I was feeling about being there came out in a cathartic rush of sudden, unexpected tears because of the pure beauty of what they were doing. I know it sounds kind of ravey and lame to describe; they were basically just spinning around with some fluorescent tie-dyed flags under a black light. But, in that moment, it was the most wondrous thing I'd ever seen. (Shut it, haters—I was totally sober and un-chemically altered.) I was electric with thankfulness to be alive and there to see it. I felt like Dana Whitaker after going to The Lion King on Broadway: "It was really quite something. It was exactly where I was meant to be at that moment. It was like church. I didn't know we could do that; did you know we could do that?" (Why does everything in my life have to come back to Sports Night?)

(Speaking of my being electric: I shocked myself in the ears last night. No joke. I was wearing my headphones, which were plugged in to my portable CD player, which was zippered in to the front flap pocket of my messenger bag, which was sitting on my lap as I was on my way home on the El. I wanted to transfer my plastic H&M shopping bag from my right hand to my left, but as I passed it across the front of my body, the static electricity leapt off the bag and traveled through the zipper, up the wire, and straight into my skull. It was one of the most ridiculous and ingenious ways I've ever mildly injured myself.)

I don't think there's ever been a contest I'd be more capable of winning: Said the Gramophone is asking folks to make their top ten album list for 2005, then write a haiku about it.

If the time ever comes when the whole husband and baby thing becomes a viable option for me, I want my marriage to look like this. BAK recently turned me on to Dooce, which is my new favorite blog. She's the mimi smartypants of Utah.

A Perfect Day for Banana Phones, and Other Stories

Banana phone,
originally uploaded by wrestlingentropy.

OK, so this is just the most recent in a long line of photos I've taken of my sister in ridiculous situations (e.g. posing with the fuzzy purple tire monster in the kids' corner at the auto parts store [?], sitting on the edge of the fountain in front of the garbage dump in Northwest Indiana, etc.). I was trying to kill the roll of film and insisted she needed a funny prop. (Bananas in your ears? Always funny; am I right?) She's stopped protesting as much when I tell her to do these things; I suspect she's actually beginning to enjoy it. (More random new, semi-recent photos here.)

Wow. Somebody found some old, undiscovered Jeff Mangum demos in a house in Louisiana. It's been a resoundingly good year for NMH fans between the release of Kim Cooper's 33.33 book on In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Mangum's surprise guest appearances onstage with Olivia Tremor Control and Elf Power in New York, and Pitchfork enshrining In the Aeroplane as a classic 10.0 album.

Monkeys with accents, also always funny.