Trifecta of Dorkiness

So, I know many of you out there grew up like, y'know, actual teenagers, engaging in typically teenagery behavior and listening to legitimately cool music, and it must be awesome for you when bands like Pixies reunite and go on tour and release new material and stuff like that. But, do you want to know what the pop cultural equivalent is for me? How it looks when the stuff that's inextricably linked to memories from my late teens and early twenties (and, in all fairness, those of some of my closest comrades) all of a sudden comes back to prominence? Well, look no further than a few of this week's headlines and other newsworthy happenings:

~Ben Folds is releasing an album full of a cappella groups' interpretations of his songs

~The Decemberists have released their latest album, The Hazards of Love, which is, like The Tain writ large, basically a big, gay rock opera

~Steve Martin has bankrolled a high school production of Picasso at the Lapin Agile in Oregon after a bunch of parents signed a petition protesting it's too racy.

Yep. Somewhere in the universe, the 18-year-old version of myself is exulting over this news. Here, in Chicago, the 30-year-old me is faintly wincing.

Malkmus, Miss Pettigrew

So, you know those accidentally perfect, Virginia Woolf-esque dinner parties that you have once or twice a year, if you're lucky, with good friends? The kind where all the planning comes together effortlessly, everyone looks fantastic and says wonderfully astute and witty things, the food is tasty and satisfying, and everybody goes home a little bit drunk, if not on alcohol then on the joy of companionship? That's how the Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks show at the Vic felt to me on Friday night. It didn't rock my face off or blow my mind the way shows from young, hungry bands sometimes do. It just felt warm and full and good. Malkmus was occasionally (slightly) physically demonstrative as a guitar player, but I kind of liked it best when he just turned in profile and played his solos like he was standing there brushing his teeth. He's also, I needn't remind you, an astonishingly beautiful human being. Joanna Bolme has this cute little shuffle-back-and-forth walk that she does when she's really getting into her bass lines. She's also funny as hell with the audience banter. Mike Clark wore a gold lame track jacket, which was slightly disconcerting, but I have mad respect for anyone who plays both keyboards and guitar with equal facility. And Janet Weiss...holy hell. I was never into Sleater-Kinney when they probably would have meant most to me in my early/mid-twenties, so shame on me for that, but that just means I get to discover her now with fresh ears and eyes. She's phenomenal. So foxy and so fierce. I feel like she could play the part of the lady pilot in Neko Case's song "Lady Pilot." Or, perhaps she could be the den mother for a troop of cub scouts composed of actual bear cubs.

NI and I caught an early evening showing of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day tonight and both agreed on the way out that it felt basically equivalent to a frothy bit of piffle we could have done as a play in high school. The editing was a bit lax, and it got weirdly slow in some parts (as if waiting, as NI said, for Boss to call "bllllllllllllackout!"), but it picked up enormously whenever Shirley Henderson was on screen. She's such an interesting actress, with so many shades of mournfulness that she's capable of portraying so economically, though I wish Hollywood would learn how to use her the way the Brits do, which is to say as more than just the bitchy, sniping friend. Amy Adams--charming, gorgeous, etc., etc. She oversells the part a leeetle bit, esp. at the beginning, but I guess that can also be chalked up to character decisions. Though I love Frances McDormand to bits, she felt oddly miscast in this. I think it was a bit of a waste to cast an actress with sooo much joie de vivre as such a repressed character. I guess it was all gesturing toward the end when she eventually learns (yawn) to live and love again, but some of her full-faced smiles in the final minutes of the movie felt so brain-smashingly beautiful that I wished she hadn't been just tottering about politely for the preceding ninety minutes or whatever. Though, because I am apparently a basket case who will cry at everything, if given the opportunity, these days, I have to say that I forgive anything questionable in this film for the moment when she's telling the Amy Adams character about a man she'd loved who died in WWI and she says, "But he smiled every time he saw me, and we could have built a life on that." ::quietly weeping:: Though Indian-born director Bharat Nalluri has mostly English-language films to his credit on the IMDB, I sensed a bit of Bollywood splendor in his direction, esp. when he started using those vertigo-inducing swirling camera shots in the party and musical sequences toward the end. Those shots, weirdly, helped contextualize the movie for me a little better, as far as reframing it as, basically, an elaborate dance between camps of female and male characters as they eventually find a way to merge in matrimony.

Did everybody read that amusing article in Esquire where they get George Clooney to Google himself? It's nothing earth-shattering, of course, I just felt like it was kind of a clever conceit.

"As he struggled to edit his story down to just *three* words, Hemingway's frustration grew. '"For Sale: Baby Shoes...." FUCK!'" --Merlin Mann

No Country, Michael Clayton, & Bon Iver

No, I did not watch the Oscars this weekend. No, I do not feel bad about it. And, no, I did not like No Country for Old Men when I finally saw it about a week and a half ago. It's not even an active dislike. I actually felt profoundly indifferent to it, which means that, yes, it probably is the defining film of '07, just in a different way than the Academy meant. I found it fairly vapid, even tedious, which, if I give it too much credit, I could conceivably believe it meant as The Point. But, I think it's more a case of emperor-has-no-clothes. Motivation-less evil holds no interest for me in film right now, especially, in Chicago, mere days after the NIU shooting. I almost could have wept for the waste of Javier Bardem as Chigurh; you could just feel the stoppage of life force in him, and for what? To make some inane point that bad people exist and do bad things sometimes for little apparent reason? Whatevs. I'll take a pass on this one. I did kind of like Woody Harrelson in it, though, and Josh Brolin really had quite a year, didn't he?

Michael Clayton, though, I liked. Quite a lot, actually; way more than I thought I would. I liked especially how, post-Erin Brockovich, it didn't really even pretend to be "about" the ethical issues raised in the lawsuit, that at its base, it was really just saying, mostly through the Clayton character, "this is what it feels like to be an adult. You've got a lot of shit hanging over your head, every day, and the moment you make a choice in one direction or another, whether it's the 'right' choice or not, it will inevitably affect about sixteen other things going on in your life, mostly in ways that your family and friends won't understand or probably like." It feels right. Wilkinson I love and it was certainly the flashy role, but I'm glad Tilda Swinton won the Oscar. People often talk about an actor's lack of vanity, but I think the notion couldn't be truer of her performance here (much more so than something broadly creepy/gross like Charlize Theron in Monster). Between her sweaty pit stains in that early scene in the bathroom and the almost imperceptibly slight roll of pudge bulging out over the line of her pantyhose when she's getting dressed for the day, this is the true face of evil in the drag of incredible banality.

All I want to listen to right now is Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago. I think I listened to it four or five times in a row on Monday. I can't even rave about it properly; it's so good that all I can really do is state its goodness like fact. It is a very good album. Listen to it now before it gets co-opted by soundtrack supervisors who will borrow its magic for dubious marketing aims.

Did everybody catch Bill Hader's incredible DDL/Daniel Plainview impression this weekend in SNL's inevitable Food Network spoof [link updated] "I Drink Your Milkshake"? The conceit is obvious, and I'm pretty much over the catchphrase-aliciousness of the whole thing at this point, but the way he yelps "I'veabandonedmychild! I'veabandonedmyboy!" (at minute 2:19 1:50) like it's all one word fucking killed me. Great stuff.

All Quick-Like

Yes, I discovered this outside my apartment building as I was on my way to work earlier this week. It gave me quite a shock--the kind of shock that can only truly be registered with the immediate involvement of my cameraphone. It's going to be a nutty year, kittens!

RIP, Bobby Fischer, you crazy-ass bastard.

"Musical theater just somehow got a whole lot gayer!"

"Unless he's using 'ironic' ironically, which is so meta it just blew the trucker cap off my mustache."

Top Ten Best Ever (via)

Eat shit and die, Doomsday. The RTA funding (fucking finally) went through.

In other local news, apparently it was first revealed way back in the fall, but I finally just saw the revised Chicago 2016 logo on the wilds of the city streets while I was out and about a few days ago. I think it's quite nice and worth noting.

Did you all watch the Tom Cruise video this week (via)? It's creepy, sure, but hardly unexpected. Gawker rightly points out that he's speechifying with "all the wide-eyed fervor that he brings to the promotion of a movie," but, rather than providing that "aha!" moment for me, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt the depth and vigor of his commitment to Scientology, it actually unseats it all a little bit for me. All his vague, repetitious rhetoric about helping people and "doing more" doesn't really sound devout, it sounds hollow, like he's giving the Scientologists the sound bites they want, the same way he'd give entertainment journo-parasites a few easily quotable words about how great it was to work with a certain director or actor. Obviously, this is all just performance, that's no shock. But, it makes me more curious about what it is in him (or perhaps isn't in him, alternately) that makes it so easy for him to hire his still considerable charisma out to these shadowy, monolithic entities. Is it something as predictable as the daddy issues that get rehashed in the controversial-to-exactly-no-one unauthorized biography that just came out? Is it just one more example of his shrewd business acumen, knowing how to hitch himself to the rocket power of the highest bidder? But, if that's the case, Hollywood is understandable, but why Scientology? Anyway. These are all ponderables to be pondered.

Baby Teeth!!!!!! In my brain, they're now having a sexy musical cage match with Bound Stems for the honor of being my fave-rave local band.

Cold?

Then keep yourself warm with some of these essays; jane dark's sugarhigh! has been particularly en fuego of late.

· On Britney

· On Hannah Montana and Taylor Swift

· On Gossip Girl

Boxer, and Other Bits & Bobs

Required reading: Joss Whedon's short and impassioned essay about the Dua Khalil murder.

Great interview at the Onion A.V. Club with one of my fave contemporary comedians, Louis C.K.

My opinion of Boxer hasn't really crystallized yet, which is as it should be, considering the way Matt and the brothers like to hide little time bombs of feeling throughout their songs that are designed not to explode on you for months. But, man. I just hear those opening piano chords of "Fake Empire" and instantly feel like I want to burst into tears. That's got to be a good thing. So far the album seems to breathe best over actual stereo speakers, rather than through headphones. All the empty space around Matt's vocals comes through a little more clearly, and poignantly, that way. And, though I take exception with the way Pitchfork asserts that this is "a drummer's album" with the phrase "Bryan Devendorf becomes a main player here" (emphasis mine), as if he's suddenly gotten good out of nowhere, as if the previous albums aren't chockful of brilliant drumming, the point is well taken. Those snare snaps and other fills in "Mistaken for Strangers" are every bit as likely to get stuck in your head as the chorus.

Happy Towel Day, everybody!

And, of course, happy 30th to my girl HLo-M. (That looks like the symbol for some sort of chemical compound.)

Enjoy your holiday weekend, my kittens!

Two Great Tastes, Etc.

Eagle-eyed (and -eared) FoWE (Friend of Wrestling Entropy) Benji Kelnardo recently alerted me to the fact that Beyonce and Shakira have collaborated on a song, and its attendant video, called "Beautiful Liar," which will appear on the forthcoming deluxe edition of B'Day.

As many of you know, I have deeply mixed feelings about both these artists, but may I hazard here a "holy shit"??? What perfectly crazy motherfucking genius came up with this idea? This is why we follow pop culture, kittens. I think I had five orgasms when I watched this for the first time:



People, we can achieve world peace with this video. Please spread the word.

Cintra on Anna

I love Cintra Wilson for her sublime snark, but when she occasionally tamps it down just enough to reveal sympathy for the most maligned objects of pop culture obsession, she can take my breath away. Some of the best writing I've ever read on Michael Jackson is in the essay "Jacko, the No-Nosed Man from Motown (A Morality Fable)" in her collection A Massive Swelling, and she does it again today in Salon with her brief piece on Anna Nicole Smith's death.

Bristling at the numerous obits that refer to Smith as "famous for being famous," she chides them [snip]:

What needs saying -- what it seems nobody has yet said -- is that when she was able to suppress her demons enough to pull herself together and look her best, she was fabulously gorgeous. Numerous red-carpet moments, the footage of which we now run over and over again like a televised rosary in order to understand her death, reveal this. Anna Nicole was a star because she possessed an unusually large amount of beauty.

Seriously, it's a really great piece with some really great writing. Please do check it out if all the other unavoidable, sour-tasting memorializing floating around in the ether today has left you feeling scummy.