Coke Vs. Prada

Yes, I'm still proselytizing about Blink. A great quote from this interview with Malcolm Gladwell, via Bushman's blog. (Thanks, B!)

"Some journalists like to write about things at the extremes. I like to write about things that go right down the middle. Pepsi and Coke, right? And I'm attracted to them precisely because to me what's most interesting is taking something we're completely familiar with and subverting it in some way. I'd rather write about The Gap than Prada, for that same reason. If you can find something weird below the surface of The Gap, that's so much more interesting than something weird below the surface of Prada. Of course something is weird below the surface of Prada.

"And whatever is weird below the surface of Prada, by the way, at the end of the day is not going to be that interesting. It's Prada; it's for one percent of the population. But The Gap, which is for all of us, that's cool if you can discover something weird below the surface. That's the way I think about things, I suppose."

"You Live on a Spaceship, Dear."

I never had the time or critical acumen to say it myself, so I'm glad someone finally said it for me: Owen Wilson was the unacknowledged key to the success of the first three Wes Anderson movies.

Chicagoans, the Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre exhibit at the Art Institute is wonderful. I'd highly recommend checking it out while it's still in town.

I'm more than happy to report that The Island is summer blockbuster fun at its finest. As Mike O'D astutely pointed out, it's not as good a movie as, say, Batman Begins, but it's a hell of a fun time nonetheless. It doles out plot points way less insultingly than it could have, and once it really sinks its hooks into you, you'll be more than happy to keep your brain turned off and enjoy the ride. I was ready to be done with it maybe half an hour before the credits rolled, but even that didn't necessarily diminish my feelings of goodwill. A perfect excuse to sit in an air conditioned theater during the hottest afternoon of the summer.

Oh, I'd forgotten what a wonderful bastard Kubrick can be. I was able to catch up with Barry Lyndon at the Siskel on Saturday afternoon, on the big screen, the way it was meant to be seen. Not only does the experience of seeing it in a theater allow you to bask in the beauty of the mise-en-scene, but it also allows the subtle, dry humor to really shine through. This movie is hilarious. In all the talk about those famous zooms and natural lighting and obsessive attention to historical detail, the laugh-out-loud humor of the piece gets pretty much ignored. Of course, the comedy is also a cunning trick to lure you into the story, emotionally, so it can kick you in the kidneys that. much. harder. in the last forty-five minutes or so. The duel, yes, the duel, but also the tiny little casket in the sheep-drawn carriage. Egads. Brilliant.

Finished the Firefly DVDs this weekend. (Thanks again, GH!!) Let the countdown to Serenity begin. These are amazing characters, and I can't wait to get to spend another few hours with them.

As Ms. Ward and I have already discussed, Bust magazine cover boy Justin Theroux is en fuego, and one hell of an enlightened human being to boot. Witness:

"Everyone in life, every day, we're sort of given the choice to make a left or a right. . . . I feel like you have to be the guardian of your own curiosity. You have to be pushing yourself to make the more ballsy choice in life or in relationships or in circumstances or in your career or whatever, you know. I've made some chicken shit decisions that I regret in my career and in my relationships and I've also made some brilliant decisions. Not brilliant in any sort of outward way, but brilliant in that I felt as though I'd made great personal gains in spite of the fact that it was the more painful decision."

Swoon. Preach on, brutha.

Love Is

This comes from Bachem Macuno, who is apparently the same delightfully sick individual responsible for the nasty Ann Coulter blog from a couple months back. Thanks to David Geb. for the heads-up.

The Beat and the Summer

Caught up with two flicks this weekend I've been itching to see: The Beat That My Heart Skipped and My Summer of Love. (Let's hear it for the Landmark--always there in a pinch when I'm jonesing for some Eurotrash cinema!)

The Beat..., directed by Jacques Audiard (whose Read My Lips I remember loving at the time I saw it but couldn't synopsize for you now if my life depended on it) and based on James Toback's Fingers (which, despite a Keitel in his '70s heyday, I have no desire to see), fits right in with my weakness for flashy French genre movies. Far from being a throwaway guilty pleasure, though, this is one of the more stunning character pieces I've seen in quite some time. In marked contrast to most American films you'd see about an aspiring concert pianist, lead character Tom, played by Romain Duris (unassailably hot, yadda yadda--you know you were waiting for me to say it), actually isn't all that talented. Nor can he simply practice himself into brilliance. He sweats and he stomps and he swears, but even after several weeks of lessons, his improvement is negligible. The lessons are, ostensibly, to help him prepare for an audition with an agent, but it's never entirely clear what his motives are for auditioning in the first place. He gives some lip service to a desire to leave his life of petty crime, but, at 28, he's getting a little long in the tooth to regain whatever skill he'd lost during a decade without serious practice. (Petty crime to one side, of course, this all hits a little close to home for me.) I won't spoil much of the plot for you, but his longing to be reconnected to his past, represented by the piano, while fighting against the entropy of his present captures with heartbreaking precision what it feels like to first start having regrets in your late twenties about the path your life is taking. There's also some interesting stuff going on here around the concept of language barrier. The characters who end up being Tom's greatest ally and greatest nemesis, respectively, speak not a lick of French, which propels his interactions with them into these heightened states of emotion fueled by music and violence. The movie's brief epilogue crystalizes these relationships with a casual confidence that feels deceptively like an afterthought on the director's part, yet sneaks in a few minutes of breathtaking acting from Duris, especially the scene where he savagely beats a man in a stairwell while weeping profusely. Bonus points for the excellent and evocative use of The Kills' "Monkey 23."

My Summer of Love will get you in the door with the voyeuristic promise of some first time schoolgirl lesbian experimentation, but it'll keep you with its assured sense of pacing and storytelling and fine acting. Though there are more than a few passing similarities to Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures, I wasn't really distracted by the fact or tempted to interact with the movie on anything other than its own terms. Nathalie Press has sly and effortless comic timing, and Paddy Considine pulls off the nearly impossible feat of successfully giving a portrait of a man playing at faith, who thinks he's convinced himself that he really believes, yet is most real and most likable as a character when the mask drops in anger to reveal the violent, tangled mess of his soul.

I [heart] the CTA. Anybody have any fun tales of woe from the commute last night? I stood on the brown line platform at Chicago Avenue for about forty-five minutes last night, then Nora Rocket and I decided to race each other home: she stayed there, I opted to take the Chicago Avenue bus to the Western bus, and we promised that the first one home would call the other. I was just pulling up to the light at Western and Wilson when my cell phone rang at 7:08. Good times.

Lighting Up the Night

I just thought this was nice. (Image via Flip Flop Flying.)

I wonder if it would be possible to get a recording of DS bellowing "a reeeeeeeeeeeal weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeird-o" to use as my cell phone's ring tone. Classic. (The Neo-Futurists' summer series It Came From The Neo-Futurarium IV: Spawn of The Neo-Futurarium! runs Thursday nights until August 11.)

I hope all you kids heading out for Intonation this weekend have a great time. Stay hydrated and say hi to the Decemberists for me.

Sufjan

Ohhhhhhh my goodness, what kind of crazy musical genius do we have on our hands here? An interview with Sufjan Stevens from this week's Onion A.V. Club (and, just for snicks, one from Gapers Block too, posted last week for the official July 5 release date of Illinois). Though "Decatur" is definitely in the running for my year-end CD comp, when he plaintively sings "I've made a lot of mistakes" at the end of "Chicago" . . . man, that just hits me, as CTLA once said, somewhere between my heart and my lungs. Love it.

Clap Your Hands Dites Oui

Remember when I attempted to single-handedly ignite an ecstatic firestorm of buzz around Seattle band Dolour? I been schooled. This is how it's meant to be done, kids: behold Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, current darlings of Pitchfork and Tiny Mix Tapes, among others.

Travis Morrison is the fucking bomb, man (link via Morrison's own site). I'm so sad I completely missed the heyday of the D-Plan, but I fully intend to follow Uncle T wherever he ends up going.

The weather in Chicago today feels like the kind of days I always inadvertently ended up going to the beach as a kid: overcast, humid, neither particularly warm nor particularly cool. (Oui, I grew up in a Parisian banlieu, delicately nibbling on stale French bread that maman had stubbed out her Gauloises on. Pauvre cherie.)

Heaps and heaps of love go out to the newly expanded Pollen family, who welcomed Cora Jo into the world on Sunday, July 10.

Summer Reading

"Once we walked into the house and Rod's dad, who insisted I call him Burt, was sitting in his red chair with his black slippers on, and said, 'Boys, boys, listen to this one,' and just then the needle met the small vinyl grooves of the record and 'Time After Time' by Chet Baker began playing, the strange haunting voice of a man that to me sounded like a woman, so that I asked, 'Wow, who's this lady?' and Rod's dad nodded and laughed and said, 'That's Chet Baker, son, the trumpet player,' and I said, 'He sounds spooky,' and Rod's dad said to Rod, 'This was the first song your mother and I ever made love to,' and I thought that was a little strange for him to say, but I didn't say anything. I just listened, and the more I heard that ghostly, quiet, nighttime voice rising, the more I was thinking about Gretchen and kissing her to a song like that, and then it was over and we were all standing around silent and Rod's dad said, 'That's how you should feel after you hear a good song. Like a brand new man,' and I said, 'Burt, I know what you mean,' and we walked off into Rod's room, still kind of listening." —Joe Meno, Hairstyles of the Damned

"I understood, suddenly, why Hitchcock had given the secret away in the middle of 'Vertigo.' The surprise is revealed because Hitchcock could not see what was surprising. He didn't think that there was anything bizarre in the idea of someone constantly being remade in the image of someone else's schemes or desires or weird plot points, because he thought that this is what life and love consist of. Suspense, not surprise, was the element Hitchcock swam in—not What next? but How will we get to the inevitable place again? Hitchcock himself, after all, did not adapt to circumstances. He made circumstances adapt to him. When Grace Kelly married a prince, there was Kim Novak, and when Kim Novak rebelled there was Tippi Hedren. Every five-year-old has one fish, as every great director has a single Blonde. What Hitchcock's films of the fifties have in common with all the world's religions is the faith that death can be overcome, or at least made tolerable, by repetitive obsession. First the mind, then the pain, and then the echo: that is the order of life. James Stewart learned this and now Olivia had, too." —Adam Gopnik, "Death of a Fish" (The New Yorker: July 4, 2005)

Thanks!

Big thanks go out to the good folks at Blogger for fixing the weird spacing/leading issues I've been having around here for the past two weeks. And, thanks to my readers for politely ignoring the tight layout and soldiering on through my Tom Cruise rants and other ephemera in spite of the inevitable eye strain. Nothin' but love to the lot of you.

Something for Everyone

Whether your nightmares are haunted by aliens, Scientologists, Dakota Fanning, or cinematic hackery, there's something for everyone to fear in War of the Worlds. It's been a while since I have actively disliked a film as much as this one. It wasn't even so much that it was completely unsatisfying (intellectually, narratively, emotionally, even popcornily) . . . it's that Spielberg's authorial voice comes off as casually fascist in the most grimly repulsive pop nihilistic sense imaginable. The utter cynicism in the way he films crowd scenes makes me nearly sick to my stomach. The unwashed masses—variously whimpering and animalistic—are helpless, selfish, and in need of the superior guile, cunning, and guidance of Ubermensch Ray Ferrier. (Ugh, yes, that's Operating Thetan Cruise's actual character name: Ferrier. As in, containing the Latin root for "iron.") Sure, he's a hapless schmuck of a father, but, by God, he does what needs to be done, from figuring out how to fix a minivan that was previously thought inoperable after being fried by the aliens' electromagnetic force fields to blindfolding his sensitive, innocent daughter before killing a man in cold blood to chucking a hand grenade up into a giant alien-robot vagina (well, you tell me what that orifice was supposed to be!) in self-defense. I mean, we're supposed to go along with this as some sort of allegory for 9/11, right? (Even though, in the world of the film, there is a definite awareness of and a handful of references to terrorist attacks, which puts it all a bit on the nose, as if we wouldn't have figured out the parallels ourselves.) Well, wasn't one of the minor miracles to come out of that tragedy the widespread cooperation and general bravery of so many innocent bystanders (not to mention, of course, the NYPD and -FD) in Lower Manhattan? It's amazing how often Spielberg gets labeled as "fuzzy" or "soft" when his loathing of humanity in general is so thinly veiled.

I'm willing to give him credit for the sheer visceral kicks of the first 30 or 45 minutes—primarily the scene where Tommy Tom-Tom runs into town and witnesses the first alien tripod bust up through the street and start vaporizing people. The sense of dread and uncertainty and confusion and pure fight-or-flight instinct was palpable and definitely put you, as a viewer, in the scene in the first person. But all this "making pop poetry out of our fears" bullshit is strictly wishful thinking, a feeble attempt to unite our collective memories of Spielberg's past glories with his own inflated sense of importance as a cultural critic of the highest order. Give me Stephanie Zacharek's searing critical indictment or Signs on DVD over this crap any day of the week.

Let's see. Things for me not to be pissed off and bitter about? Long weekends, Coronas on the beach with friends at dusk, Malkmus's Face the Truth, Sufjan's Illinois, Hairstyles of the Damned, Firefly on DVD, and Mac's description of Carrie Brownstein (after attending a Sleater-Kinney concert in the ATL) as a sex popsicle.

Album A®t

I assume many of you music lovers and Pitchfork readers have been keeping up with the story of how Nike ripped off Minor Threat's iconic album art without permission for a Nike Skateboarding tour poster and then subsequently apologized and pulled the ad. Today brings this link (via Stereogum), with a collection of similarly manipulated classic album covers ranging from the completely unartful to the sublimely hilarious. Stereogum's selection of highlighted favorites is probably the best of the bunch, but I was also tickled by the treatment given The Velvet Underground and Nico, Britney's best-of compilation My Prerogative, Gang of Four's Entertainment!, and OK Computer. Prepare your wrist for a lot of scrolling, and enjoy.

I haven't yet mentioned that I saw Me and You and Everyone We Know earlier this week because I'm still trying to figure out how to talk about it without sounding like a douchebag. My emotional response to the film (heightened by some personal shit that's been weighing on my mind more heavily than usual recently) so far eclipsed my critical faculties during the hour and a half I was in the theater that I'm not sure my experience of the movie is really all that interesting to write (or read) about. All I know is that I went through, emotionally, some of the highest highs and the lowest lows I've felt during a movie in a long time: laughed myself near to hyperventilation during an early scene that revolves around the explanation of the phrase "I want to poop back and forth," then dissolved into body-wracking sobs near the end when a character's private grief is cathartically turned into public art. In my estimation, it is earning its comparisions to David Gordon Green's George Washington (esp. in its gentle, generous use of young, nonprofessional actors), but I'd certainly like to see Chuck and Buck given its due as well (for what it's worth, in the credits of the film, director Miranda July does thank C&B director Miguel Arteta, with whom she's apparently collaborating on a project called Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody?).

The Siskel does Kubrick in July. Sign me the fuck up!

The Big Fish: a fascinating article on the genesis, life, history, and enduring legacy of Suck.com (via Heather Havrilesky's Rabbit Blog).

For those of you who live in or will be visiting Chicago this weekend, please feel free to join me, Benji, and the O'Ds in Grant Park for the annual July 3rd fireworks display. If you just can't get it up for the idea of celebrating America's freedom from British rule with an obscene display of pyrotechnics, you can look at it as a convenient opportunity for self-immolation in the wake of Justice O'Connor's resignation. Hope to see you there regardless.

H.Lo & the Daniel

Danny & Holly
Originally uploaded by wrestlingentropy.

Pictures from Holly and Danny's wedding are now available for your viewing pleasure on Flickr. (I dumped some other new pictures in there as well, just for snicks.) Enjoy!

Represent!

Hahahahahaha! The Polish Plumber (link via Nerve's Scanner). I haven't felt this proud of my heritage since the first week I started living in Chicago. This is pure fucking unadulterated gold.

Reconsidering Tom

Spurred by not just the (perhaps?) ironic comment appended to the post below, I've been feeling a bit bad about blindly labeling poor Tom crazy the way the rest of the media has. Irritating and self-righteous, sure, but is he certifiable? I don't think so. Rather, in keeping with a piece of wisdom I read somewhere a while ago: we get exactly the celebrities we deserve. And who is a better barometer of what we as a mainstream (pop) culture deserve than Tom Cruise? In the '80s, he reflected youthful snottiness and greed back to us. In the '90s, he flirted with extreme sports and more than a glimmer of ambiguous sexuality. And now, in the '00s, he's reflecting back our culture's fundamentalism to us. Not just religious fundamentalism, but also the reactionary male desire to be worshipped by an emotionally/sexually pliable sweet young thing about fifteen years your junior. I will go to the mat any day of the week for his performances in Eyes Wide Shut and Magnolia (and, on alternating days, Jerry Maguire, too), and I'm not saying that this role-playing is in any way conscious on his part, but this does help me get my head around the current juggernaut a little easier. All of which makes me long for Ben Stiller to pull his killer Tom Cruise impression out of retirement for some badly needed satirization to let off some of the pressure that's built up around him. (Say it with me now: "I think I'm entitled.")

On a related subject, Slate's Explainer gives the 411 on why the Scientologists aren't so much fans of psychiatry. An informative short primer.

After my first ride on the Flaming Wheel of Death down at Navy Pier last night, I am happy to report that it's not particularly flaming nor indicative of imminent doom in any way. If I had to hear the first verse of "Sweet Home Chicago" one more time, though, I might have jumped out of the plastic bucket we were sitting in.

I partied like Lindsay Lohan this weekend. Many thanks to the Grinnellians and P. Ninny, respectively, for keeping me lubed up for a solid twenty-four hour period of time. I feel I've fully compensated for all the drinking I'd not done earlier this season.

Mission: Impossibly Annoying

Whoa boy, did Tom Cruise turn a corner onto Crazy Street somewhere! Though I'm not writing off the potential popcorny pleasure of War of the Worlds just yet, you could not pay me to watch any of his appearances on the chat-show circuit right now. I'm perfectly happy getting my gossipy updates from the likes of Pink Is the New Blog and Defamer. For a quick and relatively painless recap of what happened on The Today Show this morning, check out Stereogum and (my fave) You Can't Make It Up.

Pirate References=Never Not Funny

From this open letter to the Kansas School Board. The sentiment's a bit cheap, but, well, so are most of the retards who're all "separation of church and state? Meh."
 

Batman and Beyond

Batman Begins is unequivocally worth your time. The blend of realism, fantasy, drama, comedy, and blockbuster does more than just promise a little bit of something for everyone; it allows you to actually emotionally engage with the characters and the story, while still having a hell of a fun time, without feeling like you've whored yourself out for the evening to the tune of $7.50. (Davis Theater, suckers.) Kudos to Christopher Nolan, who earns substantially more of my esteem with each new project he touches. The performances are stellar, with the possible exception of Katie Holmes (perhaps you've heard of her?) who, as David Edelstein so brilliantly points out in Slate, comes off like "a know-it-all student council president." But Christian Bale impresses as always, Liam Neeson just keeps getting better with age, Tom Wilkinson continues to prove himself a chameleon par excellence, and the unassailably hot Cillian Murphy slips into his evil genius role (and American accent) with guffaw-provoking zeal. (The good kind of guffaw-provoking.) Bonus points for cool Chicago landmark trainspotting.

The mix tape event at Quimby's on Saturday night was super-fun. (I got an actual mix tape in exchange for the CD I brought along—how hot is that?!) Sean Carswell's reading from Barney's Crew had me cackling like a madman (mostly because it reminded me of several friends' humorous tales from their own tours of duty in the land of manual labor), but Joe Meno's short story about an ill-fated tryst with The Office Girl (from his forthcoming collection Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir) was, hands down, my favorite of the evening. It was sharp, witty, poignant, and shot through with a shimmering thread of romantic urban melancholy. (**Sigh** Are you taking notes? This is the way I could describe most of my other "hands-down favorites" in myriad other media.)

I went back to my summertime blonde hair this weekend, but, considering the way I've been styling it all crazy spiky/poofy, now I think I kind of look like Jim Jarmusch. Jim Jarmusch is hot, right?

EDIT: And the Paris Hilton award goes to: me, for the inadvertent yet unironic use of the word "hot" in all three of the preceding paragraphs.

Open Letter #3

Dear Ted Leo:

You are everything I've always wanted in a rock musician. You are fast, you are loud, you are hilarious, you are sincere, you are brilliant.

Love,
allison

Dear Guy from the El Whom I May or May Not Have Spilled Coffee on This Morning:

Dude. It totally wasn't my fault. In the rush to get out of the car at my stop, the guy in front of me swung his bag up on his shoulder and knocked my wrist in the process, causing me to almost lose control of my travel mug. I'm clumsy, but I'm not that clumsy.

With sincere apologies,
allison

My Unofficial Tiger Beat Post

Bad form, Owen Wilson! (Link via Kittenpants.) I want to have slightly fewer of your babies now.

Great artists and other famous people who could (or couldn't) say the sentence "I am ridiculous."

Michaelangelo Matos holds forth on the June/July music issue of The Believer. Whereas I agree in theory that their indie-rock-centrism could stand to be toned down a bit in general, The Believer does tend to be extraordinarily good about featuring unconventional profiles of unconventional scientists and visual artists, which, coming from a "literary" magazine, seems ultimately more worthwhile to me than any attempt they could subsequently launch to provide unique and in-depth write-ups on the whole spectrum of cutting-edge musical genres. I mean, I would imagine that a large chunk of The Believer's readership consumes other magazines like Paste, Punk Planet, and Pitchfork (yes, I picked those three just for the alliteration), all of whose raison d'être is more specifically music-based, so it's not like we're hurting for music news and coverage on whatever microgenre we happen to be passionate about, y'know? But, I don't even know what I don't know about many interesting scientists and visual artists for the most part, so I'm perfectly happy to suffer through yet another interview with Jack White or Karen O if it means I can read an interview with the guy who sequenced the human genome. It just strikes me that Matos is looking a little too myopically through his own music reviewer lens here.

I finally finished Blink this weekend, and I luuurved it! I have a total nerd-crush on Malcolm Gladwell right now. He's a brilliant journalist. I'm in the mood to recommend this book to everyone.

CTLA, it's all you: a call for academic papers on Brad Pitt.

Never fear, I'll get to Mr. & Mrs. Smith in a moment, but I'd first like to rave about Mysterious Skin. It's definitely not a movie for everybody, but it's beautiful and challenging and rewarding for those who are willing to go with it to some unpleasant and uncomfortable places. It's one of the few movies I've ever seen where a character is repeatedly referred to by other characters as being "exquisite," "like a god," etc. without it being a cheap indicating trick from the screenwriter--when the character is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (yeah, I know; who knew?), he really is exquisite, like a god, etc., while still conveying multiple fucked-up layers of hurt, pride, mischief, loneliness, longing, confusion, boredom, frustration, and pure teenage lust. As pretty much all the reviews have mentioned, Gordon-Levitt gives an electric performance here, one that would be career defining if more people were likely to see it. Which isn't to say that he's the only reason to catch the flick.

I'm sure much of it can be chalked up to the source novel, but this movie deals with the issue of childhood sexual abuse in perhaps the least shrill and hysterical way I've ever seen. The film focuses on the parallel lives of two boys who share a lot of contextual similarities (absent father, doting mother, a close friendship with a slightly older woman) and how their paths diverge (and, of course, eventually converge again) after being molested in their youth by the same baseball coach. By tracking their respective paths, the film is able to present a provocative and well-rounded view of the ways that a traumatic event like that can completely redefine not just that person's perception of the world, but who that person is in relation to his world. It's also a beautiful illustration of the human impulse to force the circumstances of our lives to fit into our most gaping emotional holes in an attempt to, however imperfectly, get our needs met, to create meaning out of personal chaos. There's some clumsy dialogue and symbolism here and there, and, despite my love for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I'm still not convinced that Michelle Trachtenberg could act her way out of a wet paper bag, but I have a feeling the overall impact of this movie is going to stick with me for a while.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith is a delightful, and delightfully lightweight, summer blockbuster. Though I vastly prefer the way the Kill Bill movies used two assassins' to-the-death rivalry as a metaphor for male/female relationships, Mr. & Mrs. Smith does achieve an approximation of screwball comedy's insouciant, double-entendre-laden banter. It gets a bit one-note after a while (the Missus shoots the Mister in the thigh and he's just kind of lovingly irritated with the accident), but I wasn't really expecting much else out of it to begin with. Yadda yadda, sex appeal, yadda yadda, are-they-or-aren't-they? All I have to say is, going back to Buffy [spoilers ahoy, CTLA, LBLA, KP, etc!], while superficially hot, the scene where Angelina and Brad have steamy and violent sex in the wreckage of their suburban home carries only a fraction of the weight that a remarkably similar sixth season scene between Buffy and Spike so famously does. Also, Adam Brody's "who are you people?!" was one of the best timed and delivered lines in the whole movie. And, yes, that's a fairly explicit slam on Vince Vaughn's movie-long Will Ferrell impression masquerading as a comedic foil performance. (Oh, snap!)

Working Summer Hours...In My Head

I'm totally loving Pink Is the New Blog right now.

Good news, music fans. The Double Door is safe (link via Gapers Block).

From Me Fuck Pretty One Day on Tiny Mix Tapes: "You should know that any sex that you will ever have in your entire life will NEVER be as hot as the sex that Brad and Angelina have. I would like to think that the sex I imagine for them in my head isn't even as hot as the sex they have in real life."

EDIT: Oh all right, and a bonus link, from Last Plane to Jakarta. "YELL YELL YELL I AM GONNA YELL AT YOU!" (Hilarious.)

Anne Bancroft

Anne Bancroft, 1931–2005.

I would like to take a moment to memorialize the great woman with (quel surprise!) a stupid personal anecdote. Back in the days at the 1945, Pitchman was incredulous when we told him that she was, indeed, married to Mel Brooks. "Huh," he said. "I would have thought that he'd be married to some sort of Rhea Perlman approximation." The phrase "Rhea Perlman Approximation" so delighted me that it immediately shot to the top of my own personal prospective band name list.

Mrs. Robinson, may your seduction of wayward college graduates be eternal.

A Very Felusian Aviary

Birds That Aren't (link via Flip Flop Flying). The Grayscale Tiff is my favorite.

Save the Double Door! While not a regular attender of the venue, I do have some fond memories of nights out there and would hate to see it replaced by (the horror!) a Banana Republic.

Cary Tennis recommends a modicum of appropriately timed self-censorship on Salon.

Recharging

Tiny Mix Tapes' Automatic Mix Tape Generator. My favorites thus far are "a mix of songs whose titles rhyme with other song titles in the mix" and jhox's response to "the file clerk's lament."

In related mix tape news, Giddy and I are planning to attend Quimby's mix tape event next weekend. Those who are brave enough to put your music taste where your mouth is (uhh...) are encouraged to meet us there.

Salon's recent article about Gunter von Hagen's Bodyworlds "exhibit" (and others of its ilk), which M&M, CTA, and I took in at the Museum of Science and Industry yesterday afternoon. I'm still recovering. **shudder**

Lisa Carver's essay about Chick Lit on Nerve, which starts out as your standard "this genre is crap!" harangue, but which turns into something much more interesting toward the end.

Michelle Collins on Mark Harmon.

The brilliantly sick individuals at Kittenpants weigh in on the Yale economist who's teaching monkeys how to use money.

Pick up one (or both) of their newly designed buttons and support the good folks at Chicago's own Gapers Block.

I have recently decided that kefir is the best thing on the planet.

Check out, bookmark, ponder, and enjoy the estimable Michael O'Donnell's new web page. (Now also featured in my sidebar at left.)

Clear your calendars, kittens--it's an F*IN Dance Party on June 30!

The Long Winters (or, more accurately, John Roderick) enjoys a small profile in this month's Paste magazine and a large one in the June/July double issue of The Believer. I'm already getting excited about the unnamed and unreleased third album.

Colin Meloy's strummy, acoustic cover of Joanna Newsom's "Bridges and Balloons" that appears on The Believer's 2005 CD comp makes me smile. Hard.

Please don't make fun of me when I start wearing these clogs. They're like butter for your feet.

Yet another hearty congratulations to HLo and the Daniel, who were wed on Saturday. Pictures soon to come.

Height

Of course I've had fantasies about such arrangements in my own personal concert-attending experiences, but Craig Robinson? Craig Robinson goes home and prepares a graphic. Genius.

Long Weekend Pop Culture Binge

I've had at least two conversations in the past month that have started with people asking me, "so, what did you think of Crash?" And I've had to disappoint both people, and tarnish my cinemaphile's reputation, by admitting that I hadn't seen it yet. So I made a point of inaugurating my weekend of moviegoing with it. It's a lovely and thought-provoking piece of work, both topically and formally. Jonathan Rosenbaum's meta-review does a good job of parsing the ways a film's structure (and our awareness of structure as structure) is inextricably bound to its ultimate impact on its audience; I found his methodology especially helpful as I was examining my own reactions to this movie. Like Rosenbaum, though I had some concerns about the script's dependence on coincidence, as well as the questionable emotional manipulation inherent in some scenes involving a saucer-eyed young Mexican girl and a deus ex machina in the form of a red box of bullets, I decided that I was willing to overlook these contrivances as tropes of the "we're all connected" genre (perhaps best, and most familiarly, represented by P. T. Anderson's Magnolia) and because I liked so much of what the movie was trying to do and say. Sure, it can be construed as weepie liberal feel-goodism (as both The Onion A.V. Club and Salon don't hesitate to loudly whine), but with so many wonderful performances and with such an earnest attempt to interrogate racial issues that pretty much no one else in popular entertainment has the balls to touch these days (even though we so sorely need it), I was more than happy to go where the movie was taking me. I'd especially like to single out Michael Peña's exceptional performance--I remember him from a few episodes in the second season of Felicity (you best wipe that smirk off your face right now) and was delighted to see him rise to the challenge of being (for me, at least) the vibrantly beating heart of the film.

Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle made for an enjoyable Saturday afternoon matinee, though I share a lot of Andrew O'Hehir's ambivalence about its relative worth in the grand scheme of Hong Kong things.

I'm a sucker for rough-and-tumble gangster-ridden Brit-noir, so I was eager to see the quietly lauded Layer Cake; however, having already seen the modern apotheosis of that genre in I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, there wasn't much left for me to get excited about here. It's clear the script was adapted from a book--it's way too talky, in the sense of "and now we will have ten minutes of spoken exposition." However, based on his performance as the never-named lead character in the film, Daniel Craig is the perfect choice for the next James Bond. And by that I mean he is a solid, competent, unflashy actor who looks stunning in his wardrobe. (Holy hell, can that man wear a suit. I'm not the most fashion-minded person on earth, but, as with Brad Pitt in Soderbergh's Ocean's movies, it's kind of hard not to notice the way even his slightest movements all but purr to the camera "this is how clothes are meant to be worn by a man.") If, as Doug Liman said in his recent interview in Entertainment Weekly, there's a "specific formula for James Bond where they [the producers in charge of the franchise] don't want it to be too original. . . . They want them to be just like the ones that came before," Craig was right to be chosen over Colin Farrell (too naughty), Clive Owen (too darkly smoldering), Hugh Jackman (too Aussie), or whoever else had once been up for the part because he's calmly and blandly appealing while still being enormously attractive and manly. But watch Michael Gambon mop up the floor with him as an actor, and it becomes apparent that he'll be right at home at the center of a splashy but mostly hollow blow-up franchise.

After finishing Denis Johnson's The Name of the World (lovely, spare prose, as ever, until he gets into the scenes where you have to spend time with yet another of his young, earthy, sexy, witchy, eminently desirable enchantress characters), I bowed to the zeitgeist and have just started reading Blink. I hope that I enjoy it as much as I enjoy a) the idea of the book, b) the synopses recounted to me by other folks who've enjoyed the book, and c) the idea of Malcolm Gladwell in general.

I continue to be enamored of Gimme Fiction, and I've begun to realize that a big part of it is that the album sounds to me the way that I always want Wilco to sound. I mean, I love me some Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but even that album just doesn't do it for me the way Spoon is doing it for me right now. (And three . . . two . . . one. . . . A and O, you can start posting your "heresy!" comments now.)

Photoblogging Comedy

This is the fucking funniest thing I've seen all week. (Link via Kittenpants, whose own commentary on the matter runs a pretty close second.)

Happy birthday to my sweet HLo today!

Dolour

All right, kittens, I'd encourage you to queue up (no, there along the wall, th-there, to the right) for your complimentary helping of Next Big Thing. You heard me.

Thanks to the beauty of the shuffle function in iTunes, I was recently introduced to the song stylings of Dolour, via their SXSW-approved MP3, "Cheer Up, Baby." On the strength of that single, which I've been listening to fairly relentlessly for the past two weeks or so, Giddy and I made the effort to catch their first-ever Chicago gig at the Abbey last night. (That's right, a Monday night rock show. I'd encourage you all to experience this phenomenon at your earliest convenience: ample parking, cheap drinks, enough room to stand on the main floor without an obstructed view, band members thankful to you for turning out at all.) Based on the combination of their strong, energetic set, ridiculously cute front man (songwriter and general Dolour mastermind Shane Tutmarc, all pointy Jimmy Fallon nose, bright white teeth, and complexion like a limpid pond tucked away in the Alps somewhere), hook-tastic songs, and go-get-'em rock 'n' roll attitude, I think they have the potential to be huge. Huge. I'm happy to be discovering them on their way up. (As touring bassist Robin Pecknold happily told us as we were chatting around the merch table at the end of the night, Giddy and I were the only two people there that they didn't already know. Points for us.) The new album is New Old Friends. You know you want it.

Openers (and Dolour friends) The Catch worked their self-awareness of being a chick band to the hilt, in the best possible way. Look for good things from them, too. (And, yes, before you cry sacrilege, lead singer Carly Nicklaus does earn her comparisons to a young Björk.)

CRP in the 'Fork

Ned Sublette's highly praised Cuba and Its Music gets another glowing mention in the press today, this time on the 'Fork. A nice Monday morning surprise.

Spoon

Damn you, indie tastemakers, damn you all to hell for being right yet again. Spoon's Gimme Fiction really is that good. Aurgh. (Stay tuned for the likely inclusion of "My Mathematical Mind" on my own year-end best-of CD comp.)

I'll Bring the Road, You Bring the Trip

OK, so who wants to go to St. Louis with me in late June to see Jonathan Richman perform at Blueberry Hill? I'm currently in the throes of a major Richman fixation (mostly thanks to his best-of collection Action Packed, with a healthy dose of Modern Lovers thrown in for good measure, of course) and would love, love, love to see him live. Alas, however, my lack of unsuspended license prevents me from just renting a vehicle and going it alone. So, c'mon--who's up for it?

Revenge of the Coffee Wench

In stark contrast to the lovely, lovely male baristas (baristers?) who work at my neighborhood coffee shop, there is one particular woman who, for reasons unknown to me, hates my motherfucking guts. I have griped about her on many previous occasions (such as the time when I accidentally ordered, in Starbucks lingo, a "tall," rather than a "small," coffee, and she told me they'd be happy to break my kneecaps for me if I didn't break that habit) and she's actually a big part of the reason why I don't patronize that fine establishment as frequently as I used to. (Well, that and I've come to enjoy the ritual--and the savings!--of just making my own damn coffee at home.)

At any rate, I was running late this morning and decided to stop in on my way to the train. Oh, and was I ever so pleased to see Suzy Sunshine behind the counter. I quickly and efficiently ordered a small dark-roast with room, paid for my fix, and skedaddled toward the brown line. I drank about half the cup on the train and the other half after I'd arrived at the office. Well, even though I've been at work for close to two hours already, I still feel sluggish and have developed a low-grade headache.

DO I HAVE TO SPELL IT OUT FOR YOU PEOPLE? THE WENCH SABOTAGED ME! I'M CONVINCED SHE GAVE ME A CUP OF DECAF!

Either that, or she's just got me so psyched out that my banner of paranoia and my standard of neurosis tend to fly a little higher after I've had a run-in with her. You be the judge.

2 More 5ives

Merlin updated his lists of five things today!

Five Things I'd Like to See Engraved on Little Rubber Bracelets

Five Favorite Spoodley-Spoodley Guitar Solos (Hee hee hee! "Spoodley-spoodley"!)

Hitchhiker's Guide

After much anticipation, I finally got a chance to catch up with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy yesterday. While I can't say it lived it up to all my expectations, I certainly enjoyed it and consider it an afternoon and a few bucks well spent.

It's been an age since I've read the book, so my complaints are certainly not of the trainspotting variety. And "complaints" is even too strong a word, now that I see it sitting there in pixels. It just felt a little off to me, and I think that can be chalked up to a) a first-time director who's still working on a sense of how to pace a major, full-length motion picture and b) the way that this movie, almost inadvertently, is an object lesson in the competing strengths and weaknesses of American and British styles of acting for the camera.

The three main Americans actors in the film--Mos Def, Zooey Deschanel, and Sam Rockwell--are these glowingly beautiful, absurdly magnetic forces of nature. Your eyes are drawn, almost against your will, to the vision of these exquisite bodies in motion. They are three naturally gifted, ridiculously charismatic performers who command your attention with the sheer force of their presence. But then, when these bodies are in motion, which they are fairly relentlessly for the full 110 minutes, they're doing way too much. They don't seem to have much control over their spastic, rangy movements, and, when projected onto a full-size movie screen, they almost feel like they're lacerating your eyeballs. For the most part, they're unfortunately not using their substantial power for the good of the piece. The goofball, calculatedly "wacky" overacting just starts to feel exhausting. Of course, a lot of this could have been edited around or otherwise toned down by the director, so they're not entirely to blame for these faults.

The Brits, on the other hand, are much more subtle with their genius for language and in giving the camera tiny little fillips of unexpected emotion. I'm glad that I went into the movie as one of the last comedy-minded Anglophiles in the States who hasn't yet watched the original BBC version of The Office on DVD because I had absolutely no expectations of Martin Freeman and his performance as Arthur Dent. As such, I was able to appreciate the fact that he was pretty much, well, um, perfect. He held the movie together in absolutely all the ways that it needed to be held together. Bumbling, hapless Brit-schmuck demeanor? Check. Enough instant chemistry with Trillian that you actually hope they end up together at the end of the movie (and, more importantly, believe it when she chooses him over the dumb-but-dashing Zaphod Beeblebrox)? Check. An emotionally and dramatically satisfying mix of annoyance and wonder at his travels through the galaxy? Check. It was a thankless and huge responsibility for an actor to shoulder, to unite the many different, zany characters and scenarios, yet he manages it seemingly effortlessly. One particularly gorgeous example of his restrained underacting occurs when Slartibartfast shows him the factory floor where customized planets are built. That moment alone is worth the price of admission. Arthur kind of hunches over and covers his mouth with his hand in an expression of awe and wonderment, clearly overcome with a reverential sense of beauty and appreciation for what he's privileged to witness there. It's a stunning piece of acting. (Then, not five minutes later in the scene, after a brief conversation about how mice are actually the most intelligent beings on Earth, Bill Nighy as Slartibartfast says, "I don't quite know what you mean when you speak of this . . . 'cheese'." He slips the comedy in way under the radar yet delivers the line with such unshakable conviction that he actually makes you believe for a moment that you don't know what cheese is either.) It's these little jewel-like interactions that gave the movie an emotional depth that I honestly wasn't expecting.

Of course, nothing I've written above is in any way applicable to the acting style of John Malkovich, who, I think, must actually be from the same planet as his character.

Also, I'm happy to report that Neil Hannon is in exquisite vocal form on his heavy-swinging version of "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish" that plays over the closing credits. (However, I'm rather annoyed with iTunes for declaring it an "album only" track, in effect forcing me to pay $9.99 for the entirety of the instrumental soundtrack if I want to be all completist about having the song in my collection. Fleh. Isn't that the whole point of iTunes? To be able to cherry-pick a specific song or two without forking over the cash for a bunch of other stuff that you're honestly never going to listen to?)

In other music news, John Darnielle all but revivalized me at the Mountain Goats show at the Logan Square Auditorium on Friday night. It was a great night out, all springtime humidity, Jim Beam on the rocks, Darnielle's peculiar voice, and his phenomenal little songs like emotional bottle rockets. Also, opening band Shearwater turns out to be something of a side project for Okkervil River's keyboard player Jonathan Meiburg, whose voice I vastly prefer to Will Sheff's. (Plus, as I told Meiburg and violinist Travis Weller at the merch table at the end of the night, I'm instantly a fan of any band who can rock a melodica the way they did.) Their brand of rootsy emo (earnest stream-of-consciousness lyrics, guitar feedback, and overly dramatic dynamics) isn't something I tend to want to listen to on my own time, but it's enjoyable enough live. Plus, Meiburg used to be a graduate student in ornithology, which is just another instance of the weird bird-related synchronicity in my life this spring.

And, a hap-hap-happy birthday to BAK today (you sexy thang)!

Cover Me

Oh my nerd, I am totally geeked out with excitement about this:

Shins, Decemberists, Spoon Head Believer Comp.

**swoon** They had me at "Bridges and Balloons."

(Also, a belated happy b-day to both Nick and Mike O'D. Love you guys!)

OCD

I often do not use the office supplies on my desk for the purposes the great office supply god, in his infinite wisdom, intended them. (Anyone who was around the day when I was slicing the plastic off an advance copy of a book with an Xacto knife and then punctured myself in the finger so deeply, and with such force, that bright crimson blood coursed down and around my knuckles can attest to this.) As such, my office supplies show a lot more wear and tear than the average person's.

Just for a change of pace, though, today I actually wanted to use one of my two silver letter-openers for the purpose of opening an actual sealed letter. I looked at both of them and realized they were both covered in a gooey, gummy substance. (Most likely remnants of packing tape that I'd tried to slice through on a previous occasion.) So, I went to the supply closet to fetch a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towel, then came back to my desk and started carefully and meticulously wiping off the gunk. A coworker walked past my cube and glanced down at me, my brow furrowed in concentration. With a quick, sharp sense of horror, I looked up at him, then burst out laughing, and said, "I bet this looks really obsessive-compulsive, doesn't it? Me, cleaning my letter-openers?"