Borat's Cultural Learnings

I've started to think that getting ready for the Borat movie is like training for a marathon. At first, you can only do a little bit at a time because it hurts, it motherfucking sears every cell in your body, but you're hoping you're going to have built up enough endurance to go the distance on the big day.

It took LK and me, oh, I think about five months to get through the two first-season DVDs of Da Ali G Show, just because, unlike other HBO shows we've loved devouring on DVD, even at only 20-30 minutes to an episode, we can't handle much more than that in one sitting. We're terrified that the movie, at 80+ minutes, is going to wreck us emotionally, that we're not going to be able to do anything else for the rest of the day. However, much like a nice, relaxing colonic irrigation, I think it'll ultimately be worth it.

After we finished the "Belief" episode of Ali G last night and then tried to continue watching regular television, everything looked so disgusting and decadent. Under his various guises and with his various alter egos, Sacha Baron Cohen is utterly masterful at not only exposing odious interpersonal behavior and social blind spots but also at formulating incisive metacritical commentary on the most noxious aspects of televisual media by reflecting them back to us all engorged and pus-filled with their own vapidity. (And, not only televisual media--just look at the way he's exploding/exploiting the low-rent tendencies of the internet with his chintzy official home page and our Amurr'can perception of the garishness of non-Putumayo-ized "world music" with the straight-out-of-the-flea-market graphic design on the soundtrack CD.)

I only know the most basic talking point soundbites about Cohen's career pre-Ali G, but it seems that, with his gift for physical comedy (OMG, I'm still laughing at the bit [NSFW], beginning around 3:30, where he's learning how to throw a lasso and, while he's swinging the loop above his head with one hand, ends up tossing the straight end of the rope that's in his other hand) and inspired gibberish ("wahwah wee-wah!"), he surely could have settled for being a handsome, slightly daffy Britcom star with some quality supporting roles in Hollywood in the Jack Davenport or even Hugh Laurie mode. But no, in a prime example of the most noble aspects of the court jester tradition, he's making us laugh at stuff that would be untellable in any other idiom. He's pushing (stretching? perforating?) every imaginable limit--sexual, racial, cross-cultural--forcing us into a headspace that fundamentally alters the way we consume pop culture artifacts after we've peered at the world through his bullshit filter for a while.

And, what's perhaps most shocking is how unexpectedly jarring it is to be reminded of what we usually fancy we already know, of the high level of toxicity in so much of the crap that we more or less voluntarily subject ourselves to, visually. The cooking shows looked foul and vaguely sexualized with their close-ups of glistening dough being manhandled by mild-looking public access chefs; all the people on sitcoms looked ugly and stupid and mean. In a particularly perverse turn of events, the only thing I could bear for any length of time after we took the DVD out of the machine was the last fifteen minutes or so of The Shining dubbed into Spanish, which, of course, was no less misanthropic, but, compared to the subconscious sleaze permeating the best of a random Sunday night's rabbit-ear offerings, at least Kubrick's worldview is artfully hateful. (Plus, there was something indescribably delightful about hearing the Spanish-language actor voicing Jack Torrance bellowing "Danny! ¿Donde estas?" as they chased each other around the labyrinth.)

So, all hail Sacha Baron Cohen for giving us a perspective that's painfully necessary as a stiff corrective to the vast quantity of shit we're being inundated with on a daily basis that's necessarily painful. If he can keep the social satire up at such a deliciously, deliriously high level, maybe he'll be unironically invited to host the White House Correspondents' Dinner next year. A girl can dream.

Cold War Kids (Live at the Hideout)

(My humblest apologies to drummer Matt Aveiro for not including him in the set of pictures above. My camera's too shite and my skillz with it are too weak to be able to zoom back behind the drumset and get any kind of picture in the low concert lighting. Stay gold, though, Ponyboy--you're a hell of a fucking drummer.)

Went to the Hideout with LK on Saturday to see the Cold War Kids for the third time in five months. I was proud of these young pups for nailing their debut as headliners, and even more proud of the audience for being so loving and supportive. "Hang Me Out to Dry" and "Saint John" are turning out to be fantastic communal shout-alongs (lead singer Nathan Willett was actually harmonizing with us during the "Hang Me Out to Dry" set-closer before the encore), and when Aveiro's snare broke as they were kicking into "Expensive Tastes," a girl in the front row started clapping where the snare hits should have been, and about half of the rest of the crowd picked up on it and carried the rhythm until the drums were fixed. It was a sold-out show, and this crowd wanted to be there. I was up near the front, so if the indie rock salute (as John Roderick once brilliantly called it: arms folded across one's chest, weight back on one's heels, body motionless and face expressionless) was being given near the back, I wouldn't have been able to see it anyway, but, regardless, I tend to think there probably wasn't all that much hipster posturing going on that night. It takes no little effort to get to the Hideout, more effort than it's worth to show up simply to be snide. The band was feeling the love for Chicago, too. They say plenty of nice things about the venue over at their official site (scroll down to the entry dated 10-20-06), sweetly calling it one of "the most vibey rooms in this country." The fact that they just walked right in the front door before the show, like a little gang of exquisitely relaxed housecats who'd just woken up from an afternoon nap on a warm windowsill, and wandered around, chatted some folks up, and grabbed some drinks speaks volumes to the Hideout's atmosphere and to the band's real-deal-ness.

The first time I caught the band, when they opened for Tapes 'n Tapes, I was mesmerized by Willett--his voice, his presence, the weird way he was banging on his chest like a conga drum. The second time out it was all bassist Matt Maust, all the time. Last weekend, I couldn't take my eyes off guitarist Jonnie Russell. Brutha's got it going on. His wiggly guitar sound is, like, the meat of the whole band. Everything is built around what he's doing. Their songs are extraordinarily percussion-driven, to be sure, but he's creating the whole vibrant midrange that allows the drumming and maraca-rattling and bass-farting to be as striking as they are. He gives the jams a dock to swim away from and back to. And he does this all without sacrificing an ounce of excitement in his own playing. Not to mention that he can sit in on piano when Willett just wants to rock the mic and provides perfect, unassuming, unobstrusive falsetto vocal harmonies. Amazing. My attention span is pretty short these days, and I should be sick of these guys by now. But I'm not. As Sean Moeller remarked when he had the band 'round the Daytrotter headquarters earlier this summer, "most bands are fucking lucky to have one dude with charisma" and yet they, incredibly, have four. Guess I have to make the effort to see them live at least one more time to finally give Aveiro his due.

More pics over on my Flickr page.

Until I Know What I Think

Did y'all see the Dean's interview in Popmatters this week (via)? Everyone and their barista has been excerpting from this quote, but it's just so damn smart, I can't resist doing the same:

"I am a good critic in that I don’t write about things until I know what I think of them. For me, it’s the essential part of my writing....
My tastes don’t evolve; they broaden....
There’s a record on in my house 12 to 18 hours a day. It’s so I can process it. It’s about acclimating my body-mind continuum, which means that the acclimatization process will have occurred so when I concentrate later I have a better notion of what I think."

That just feels so sensible and so sane in the midst of all the rest of the...chatter.

Speaking of chatter, the less said about Pitchfork's review of the Cold War Kids album today, the better. Aside from the fact that the reviewer's ad hominem attack against bloggers seems really, really whiny and perhaps would have been more appropriate to a LiveJournal entry than a respectable record write-up in a respectable web mag, it's also just, huh? I dig the criticisms to a point, but monolithic melodies? What does that even mean? Cleaner and annoyingly louder, sure maybe, but preachy narratives? Preachy? Your guess is as good as mine. The invaluable Cindy Hotpoint has more to say, better than I can say it right now. And anyway, dudes sold out their gig at the Hideout this weekend, so I'd wager they're not really crying into their maracas all that hard. LK and I will be there, loving every sweat-filled minute of it.

Fo rizzle, why do the stingrays hate us and want us to die? (Write your own "I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Stab Your Ass" joke.) OK humans, group huddle over here: best to not anger them any more than we apparently already have, so for the LOVE, please nobody put one on a treadmill or make fun of them on Ugly Overload. Agreed? Agreed.

Ben Folds 'n' Blondes

There's so much Ben Folds love floating around the series of tubes this week I can hardly stand it.

I'm not sure I buy Eef Barzelay's reading of Ben's cover of "Bitches Ain't Shit" (at Said the Gramophone), but I fully support his recommendation that we "reflect on this song and why Ben Folds is generally dismissed and sometimes loathed by the indie rock illuminati."

Similarly dismissable Weird Al Yankovic jokes (at the Onion AV Club) about how he and William Shatner lower Ben's street cred.

It's not from this week, alas, but I recently snagged Kottke's link to this video of Ben covering "Such Great Heights" live for some Australian TV show. Sure it's gimmicky, but it works.

In other music news--squee!--the arrival of the Long Blondes' debut full-length Someone to Drive You Home is imminent! Thanks to James Green Pea-Ness, listening to their "Fulwood Babylon" has bordered on an obsessive-compulsive behavior with me since the summer. (Seriously, the spoken-word interlude alone is enough to send me into seizures of glee, never mind oh-ohhhhhhh! that bass line.) I can't wait to see the rest of the goodies these kids have up their sleeves.

Here's a good Neutral Milk Hotel joke worth a giggle for the indie nerdz. Or, for pastry nerdz, too, I suppose.

The Long Winters (Live at the Subterranean)

Kittens, have you rocked out recently? Have you raised a glass (or three) of whiskey to your lips and pogo'd yourself sweaty and screamed along to the harmonies you knew and shouted out requests not like a douchebag but like a person who figured that was the best way to let the band know that you love their work and are thankful for what their work has meant to your life and smiled so hard that you didn't even realize how much your jaw hurt when it was suddenly 1:30 AM and the bouncers were kicking you out onto the street with guitar strings and poetry still ringing in your ears? If you haven't, you should. And if John Roderick and his Long Winters aren't the band that would elicit that kind of reaction in you, then find one that will and check for local tour dates on their MySpace page, because, goddamn, you need to feel as good as I felt on Friday night at the Subterranean. It was the kind of good feeling that makes you think irrationally hopeful thoughts about music saving the world one indie rock bacchanal at a time, the kind of good feeling that you can't even quite put your finger on after the fact because you were too busy enjoying it while it swept you up and carried you downstream.

I'd, of course, been looking forward to the Long Winters show for weeks, but idly, not altogether consciously. But when I dialed When I Pretend to Fall up onto my iPod on the way home from work on Friday night and realized, holy shit, it's been well over two years since I've seen these guys in concert but now I'm mere hours away from hearing all my favorite songs live and warm and loud, I got all giddy, all too-excited-to-sleep-
on-the-night-before-your-birthday goofy. And, woof, was I ever rewarded for those years of patience. They played everything I wanted them to play (well, with the notable exception that I don't think they did anything from The Worst You Can Do Is Harm--"Carparts" or "Copernicus" might have been nice), but a rock-fucking-solid representation of stuff from the new one and When I Pretend to Fall. Which is not even to mention, of course, "The Commander Thinks Aloud" (a definite crowd-pleaser in its incredibly poignant way) and set-closer "Ultimatum," in its acoustic ballad incarnation. John joked, "when's the last time you went to a show where the band played an all-request Friday?" and if that really was an all-request set, man, that's a testament to the wisdom of crowds or some shit. Or, a testament to all the hipsters liking the same songs that I do. But, I'd actually prefer to think of it as a testament to this sentiment from John's recent interview in PopMatters:

"[Roderick] claims it’s important part of his music that it 'do work' in other peoples’ lives. 'There are songs out there that make people happy, simple as that, and there are songs that help people to be alright even though they’re sad. I could easily write sad-bastard music all day, featuring one lonely guitar and a glockenspiel, but I choose to make rock music because it’s fun and life-affirming and there are plenty of young, bearded guys in denim jackets to fill the sad music void.'"

Amen to that. Easily one of the best nights out I've had recently. In contrast to the standard issue up-the-nose photo-pit concert pictures, I snagged some bird's-eye view snaps from the upper deck this time 'round; they're posted to my Flickr page.

Openers What Made Milwaukee Famous were fantastic. I'd been especially keen on hearing them after reading a ton of enthustiastic write-ups on the interweb, so I'm glad they lived up to whatever hype I'd attributed to them in my own head. (They're cute as hell, too. Especially the shaggy haired keyboard player who, a propos of pretty much nothing, popped his head out from his stage-right corner, smiled at me and my girls up in the gallery above the stage, then disappeared again to finish the set.) I'm eager to pick up their recently re-released album and eager to try to get "Sweet Lady" out of my head. (Yeah, I'd like to see you try to dig it up after it's been sinking its roots in for four days straight.)

Menomena was interesting, if a bit wanky with the experimental rock. I'm sure they're a fine band and all, but they were pretty much exactly what I was not in the mood for when I came out for a night of feel-good power pop. To their credit, the drummer was really amazing to watch. At one point, he put an old film reel on one of his toms to get kind of a heavier rim sound through the whole song. That was cool. The dream catcher hanging in the hollow of his kick drum, however, was not.

Happy belated birthday to my girl MJ out in Boston, and, for those of you who haven't heard yet, my brother finally got a job--the Beaner is moving to San Francisco!

The Funny

I often fancy I would sacrifice some important appendage to be as funny as Cintra Wilson. Her latest installment of The Dregulator nearly killed me last night. Keeled me, I say.

Frank Chromewaves: "If all the print magazines are starting blogs, does that mean that bloggers should start print magazines?"

Go befriend the Geek Method boys.

Happy Decemberists day, everyone! (I've got that one on pre-order, too, and am hoping it will arrive this afternoon.)
EDIT: Oh, balls. No CD in the mail for me today. Boo.

"How Do I Handle Knowing What They Just Told Me?"

There's a really great interview with David Sitek of TV on the Radio on Pitchfork today. Return to Cookie Mountain has been getting some heavy rotation on my iPod these past few weeks, and I'm bummed to be missing them live with Grizzly Bear next week. (Do you hear that noise in the distance? That's the sound of Giddy shouting "toldja so!" from across the Atlantic.) Check out Sean Moeller's excellent progressive review of the album over at Daytrotter; I love how he manages to sneak a Mike Skinner reference in on day four.

The interview portion of this podcast with Britt Daniel is pretty much the most boring thing ever, but the pictures are cute, and it's nice to hear him reach into the back catalog and play cuts from A Series of Sneaks and the "Love Ways" EP in addition to "They Never Got You" from Gimme Fiction.

Hellz yeah, the Cold War Kids are headlining their tour this fall now that the Futureheads have bowed out due to illness. I bet there will be more schedule reshuffling to come as they iron out all the plans, so I'm not sure if they're still going to be at the Metro on October 21 or what, but I'm looking forward to seeing them again whenever, wherever they end up playing. (Yes, that'll be show number three for me this calendar year. Slightly obsessed.) I've got their debut full-length Robbers and Cowards pre-ordered from Insound so it can be delivered to my grubby little paws before its official release next week. Can't wait!