NaNoWriMo in Retrospect

      Well, depending on your metrics, my first ever participation in National Novel Writing Month was either a colossal failure or a moderate success. If you go by word count (which is a lot of the point), then I failed miserably to reach the 50,000 word goal for the month. I was pretty sure I'd never be able to keep up the pace required to crank out that much material, and sure enough, by the end of week one, I was already hopelessly behind. Before Thanksgiving I got sick, then we traveled for the holiday, and blah, blah, blah, excuses, excuses, excuses. To make a long story short (pun intended), I ended up with less than 15,000 words produced.
      But. That's far more than I would usually produce in that time frame (I'm counting the time as about 2 1/2 weeks; after that, I worked on it almost not at all), because I've always been a terrible fiddler--I hate to commit stuff to the page that I know is going to get edited out later, and I spend way too much time finessing sentences as I go. Which takes forever, and leads to the discouragement of low output. With the artificial deadline of NaNoWriMo, I was compelled to go ahead and set some crap down, even knowing that it would never see the light of day, and that really helped push my story idea forward in a way I've never been able to accomplish before.
      So I didn't end up with anything approaching a completed book, but I did get the benefit of the mental exercise. Hopefully it will serve as a reminder as I go forward to "just write it down, stupid." Maybe I should get that printed up on a coffee mug, or better yet, a beer glass.

National Novel Writing Month: Day 1

&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp So today was the first day of my first time to participate in the annual National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. It's a cool international initiative to get writers writing by creating the voluntary and intimidating deadline of committing 50,000 words of fiction to paper (or more likely, to the hard drive) in just 30 days. While such a grueling pace is unlikely to produce the most polished of prose, it's a wonderful exercise for excessive putzers like me to simply WRITE IT DOWN, STUPID. You can always go back and fix it later.
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp The NaNoWriMo website offers scads of resources and support for participants, even opportunities to get together with--or merely interact online with--other enthusiastic writers in your area or around the world. You can share your work, or your growing word count, or nothing at all with other participants, but even after one day I've found that a high bar, even a totally arbitrary one, will likely be a good thing for my writing. I've dusted off a story idea I've had lying around for ages, and I made more progress on it today than I have in years of staring at it in my "must get to someday" file. Today's count: 1,535 words--a little short of what I'll need to crank out each day if I want to end up w/ 50,000 on November 30th. I won't be posting the whole blessed thing daily, but I've added today's work after the "Read more" jump below--what will be the Prologue--for anyone foolish enough to be interested. It's tentatively titled "Working for the Man," and although it's still in the early throes of its infancy, please remember that this is still copyrighted work.

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It Might Get Loud (2008)

&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp There's a pitch-perfect moment in It Might Get Loud, director Davis Guggenheim's loving homage to rock guitar and three of its more talented practitioners. It comes when the filmmaker follows Jimmy Page, the legendary lead guitarist of Led Zeppelin, into Page's music library, where he puts on one of his favorite 45's--"Rumble" by Link Wray. Up until this point Page has seemed quiet and cautious, secure in his status as one of rock's gods, but unwilling to give too much away. But from the moment Wray's vibrato surf-guitar growls from the speakers, Page's face lights up with glee, and he begins explaining to the cameraman what it is about Wray's performance that spoke to him as a young guitarist. He starts strumming an imaginary guitar, and when Wray rips off a particularly slow, nasty riff, Page laughs out loud over the audacity of it, his face the very picture of unadulterated joy. In that moment he ceases to be Jimmy Page, rock legend, and becomes one of us, just another guy playing air guitar in his bedroom, trying to explain to his buddy why this is the best goddamn guitar solo ever.

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"H" Is for the Hurt Behind the Humor

      As I continue strolling through the songs on my iPod, I've made it up to the letter "H". I'm surprised to find that 230 or so songs on my iPod right now begin with "H", but not so many of them are among my most favorite. Oh, there's plenty of good stuff, but it feels like A-G had more songs that I return to again and again. So picking an "H" theme proved more difficult than some of the previous letters...until I noticed how many of my "H" songs were either silly, or sad, or a little bit of both. Which got me thinking about the idea that a lot of humor has its basis in sorrow or pain. Slapstick is the most obvious example, of course, where the humor lies almost entirely in observing another's painful discomfiture and being glad it's not you. A lot of what makes us laugh is the same thing that would make us curl up in a corner and sob like a baby if we couldn't figure out how to hang a comic face on it. In that spirit I offer up my "H" songs, most of which have humor with at least a little hurt behind it.
      The Rainmakers were a great Missouri band who played an odd mix of hilarious rave-ups and more serious social satire, but everything they did came wrapped in a tight, catchy rock and roll bow. Lead singer and songwriter Bob Walkenhorst has not only a unique voice but also a biting wit and a great sense of musical humor ("Big Fat Blonde" still ranks for me as one of the great silly party songs of all time). "Hoo Dee Hoo" mixes their trademark upbeat guitar rock with a nonsense chorus and a surprisingly touching lyric of nostalgia and regret.

      "Hank" is a bluesy story-song by the Boston bar band Treat Her Right (some of its members, including the late Mark Sandman, later spun off to form Morphine). The song's narrator imagines a cry-in-your-beer story to explain the message found written on a dollar bill: "She lost. You won. I love her. Hank."

      I've been laser-burning new pits in my copy of Wilco's "Sky Blue Sky" with repeated listenings ever since it came out. Maybe I'm just getting old, but it seems harder and harder to find bands that are rock-solid musically and also produce songs with thoughtful lyrics about experiences from after college. Right now Wilco is my favorite band for grown-ups. "Hate it Here" is easily summarized by adding the line that immediately follows the title in the chorus, "since you're gone."

      And then there are the songs that just skip the humor altogether and go straight to the hurt. Sometimes the marriage of singer and song is so perfect that you just can't imagine the music and words in anyone else's voice. These final two "H" songs, "Has He Got a Friend for Me" performed by Maria McKee, and "Hurt" performed by Johnny Cash, are like that, though neither of these talented songwriters wrote the songs themselves (they were written by Richard Thompson and Trent Reznor, respectively). If someone had told me that Johnny Cash was going to cover Nine Inch Nails, and proceed to make the song his own, I probably would have thought it was some kind of joke. But watch the video. That one's Johnny's now.

"G" is for "Genuine"

gen•u•ine

--adjective

1) possessing the claimed or attributed character, quality, or origin; not counterfeit; authentic; real: genuine sympathy; a genuine antique.

2) properly so called: a genuine case of smallpox.

3) free from pretense, affectation, or hypocrisy; sincere: a genuine person.

--from Dictionary.com, emphasis mine

      As I continue my extremely intermittent alphabetical stroll through the music in my iPod, I now find myself at the songs that begin with the letter "G." There are 148 such songs on my iPod right now, and as has been true for most of the other letters, they represent a broad range of my musical interests and vary in quality from disposable to indispensable. As I searched through the titles for some kind of unifying theme to wrap this post around--good, goodbye, ghost, give?--I was instead struck by a word that didn't actually appear in the titles at all: "genuine."
      "Genuine" is a pretty slippery term to toss around in music criticism--or any other kind of criticism for that matter--because its evaluation depends upon purely subjective criteria, and its application doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the quality, good or bad, of the music being discussed. The pop songs of Miley Cyrus may be catchy, good pop songs (though not my thing), but few, I think, would apply the adjective "genuine" to what she does. She and her songs are mass market products, slickly produced, tested, and marketed to a very specific demographic by a powerful entertainment company that knows its business. The Sex Pistols, on the other hand (also not my thing), though they could barely play their instruments, were "genuine." Their music may have sounded like their instruments were being sawed to pieces by angry, tone-deaf sociopaths, but they were an organic product of--and reaction to--the musical and cultural scenes of their day.
      With that in mind, here is my list of the most "genuine" G-songs from my iPod, songs that seem to me to best fulfill the above definition in that they are free from pretense, affectation, or hypocrisy, and, like Linus's pumpkin patch, absolutely drip with sincerity.

"Good Work (If You Can Get It)" by BoDeans  The BoDeans were one of my favorite bands in my college and grad school days, and while I don't have them on "heavy rotation" anymore, I can still pull out their first few albums from time to time and marvel at the freshness they've maintained. They attracted a lot of critical attention for their straight-forward roots rock sound when they debuted with "Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams," but though they've always been a college radio mainstay, they never were able to make a big mark on the charts. The video here, terrible sound notwithstanding, shows them at the height of their powers in the late 80's, tearing through a Berry-esque raveup with David Letterman's band. Paul Shaffer even gets excited enough to put his foot to the keyboard á la The Killer. Genuine three chord rock and roll.


"Goddamn Lonely Love" by Drive-by Truckers  Drive-by Truckers is a country rock band that manages to avoid the worst excesses of a genre they share with the likes of .38 Special and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Song-writing duties are shared and the lineup changes, but their albums nevertheless maintain a signature sound and mood that make them something like Alabama's Bruce Springsteen--which, if you're not sure, is a good thing. If you can't get past the "goddamn," you'll miss a haunting song of yearning and regret that sounds like it was written on a beer-stained napkin at a really dingy bar at closing time. Occasionally, a profanity is just the best word for the job. "I could take a Greyhound home; when I got there it’d be gone, along with everything a home is made up of/ So I’ll take two of what you’re having, I’ll take all of what you've got to kill this goddamn lonely love."


"God Give Me Strength" by Elvis Costello  Now you might think that performing a song with a full orchestra and Burt Bacharach on piano could violate the "no affectation" clause of my "genuine" definition. But you'd be wrong. "God Give Me Strength" comes from Costello's collaborative album with Bacharach, "Painted From Memory," and while the arrangements may be lush, the songs are none the less genuine for it. Bacharach may have that whole schmaltzy vibe, but he's a talented artist (see my Neil Sedaka discussion), and there's no doubting the feeling behind Elvis's performance in the video here. "I want him to hurt!"


"Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine" by The White Stripes  Once again my iPod discussions lead me back to The White Stripes. Rock doesn't get much more "genuine" than when it's stripped down to a guitar and a drum set, and unlike the songs on all of my local radio stations, Jack and Meg's creativity and originality keep me from feeling old. There's still great music being made out there, fellow 40-somethings, but unless you're in a huge market or have a good community-supported station, it's probably not being played on your radio. But look...here's some right here! Spank that high hat, Meg, it's been very naughty!

100 Book Meme Leaves Me at 47*

      I picked up this book meme created by the BBC from my friend Ken at kenmorefield.blogspot.com. It's a strange list of books--some from the classic "Great White Canon," some from newer books that are popular with reading groups, and a few strays from somebody's head. You're supposed to mark which ones you've read and count the total. The BBC figures for some reason that most folks will have read just 6 of the 100. How will you stack up?

Instructions:

1. Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read. [Note; I've adopted Ken's modifications, to wit: I put a 'y' by those I have read in part but not in full. I put an 'xx' next to those I have read multiple times, though the number of x's is not equivalent to the number of reads.]
2. Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3. Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4. Tally your total at the bottom.
5. Put in a note with your total in the subject.
6. Cut and paste to notes and link me in too please...

The BBC's list
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien xx+
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte x
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling y
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible y
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell x
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman x
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens x
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott x
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller y
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare yxx
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier x
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien xx
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks x
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot x
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald x
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams xx+
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky *
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll y
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame x
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens x
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis xx
34 Emma- Jane Austen x
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis xx
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres xx+
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne x
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell x
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez x+
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving x+
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding x
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan *
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel x
52 Dune - Frank Herbert xx+
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens x
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley x
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez x+
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck xx+
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas x
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie y
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville x
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker y
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce x
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt x
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens xx
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker x
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro x+
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle xx+
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad x
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery x
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams x
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole xx+
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas x
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare xx
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo y*+ (still reading unabridged a bit at a time)

* I think that's 47. I guess I don't get to count The Complete Shakespeare or The Bible because there are bits of both that I've never read. But who's read "Coriolanus" or "The Book of Numbers" anyway? Honestly.

"F" is for Frequent Firsts Like "For" and "From"

      Running across a new internet music meme at truffin.com (see my last post) has inspired me to return to the alphabetical stroll through my iPod. I've worked my way up to "F" now, and it turns out that of the 165 songs currently on my iPod that start with "F", dozens of them begin with some form of just a handful of the same words: for, from, fall, fly, and fire. Below are some of my favorites for each word.

"For" (begins 11 song titles)

• "For a Dancer" by Jackson Browne from "Solo Acoustic, Vol. 1"
  I can't claim to be a huge Jackson Browne fan; I generally like his songs when I stumble across them, but the only album of his that I actually own is the excellent and intimate "Solo Acoustic" live performance. There's not a dud on the whole thing, and even most of the between-song patter is entertaining. Here's "For a Dancer" as he was performing it in the 70's, which is not much different from the contemporary "Solo Acoustic" performance.
  
  


• "For Heaven's Sake" by 16 Horsepower from "Low Estate"
  The sound of 16 Horsepower is a little hard to describe--imagine if you saw a sign outside a club that said, "Hootenanny Tonight," and when you went inside you discovered that the band playing the hootenanny was Nirvana. The sound on this live version is pretty rough, but here you go:
  
  
  and the "For" also-rans...
• "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her" by Simon & Garfunkel
• "For Everyman" by Jackson Browne
• "For My Lover" by Tracy Chapman
• "For Never More" by The Reverend Horton Heat
• "For The Loser (Hallelujah!)" by the Rave-Ups
• "For The Turnstiles" by Neil Young
• "For Tomorrow" by Blur
• "For You" by Tracy Chapman
• "For Your Babies" by Simply Red

"From" (begins 9 song titles)

• "From My Own True Love (Lost at Sea)" by The Decemberists from "Picaresque"
  Any band that would actually know the meaning of the word "Picaresque" is already one up in my book, and their quirky, prog-rock, English Major-friendly songs seal the deal for me. "From My Own True Love" is not necessarily the song I would pick to introduce them to a prospective listener (that would probably be "The Mariner's Revenge Song"), but it still gives a pretty good idea of what The Decemberists are all about. The only version I could find at YouTube is one some fan attached to one of Spielberg's most shameless moments (from "Saving Private Ryan"), but what are you gonna do?
  
  


• "From Blown Speakers" by The New Pornographers from "Electric Version"
  The New Pornographers are a fantastic power pop band cobbled together from members of various (mostly Canadian) bands, led by Carl Newman and sometimes featuring Neko Case on vocals or backing vocals. Even the most casual reader of this blog will probably have encountered my infatuation with the inimitable Ms. Case and therefore not be surprised with my interest in any musical project that includes her, even down to "Neko Case's Favorite Scottish Martial Music for Solo Accordion" (if you've got a copy, I'll give you $50 for it). But TNP are definitely their own thing, with or without Neko, and their mostly fast, loud, and impossibly hook-y pop tunes couldn't be much further removed from Neko's dark and brooding solo work. Her participation, therefore, is just another excuse for me to think she's great.

and the "From" also-rans...

• "From A Late Night Train" by The Blue Nile
• "From Her To Eternity" by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
• "From Here To Eternity" by Big Country
• "From Our T.V. Teens To The Tomb" by Maria McKee
• "From Rags To Riches" by The Blue Nile
• "From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea" by The Cure
• "From the Morning" by Nick Drake

"Fall" (begins 9 song titles)

• "Falling for the First Time" by Barenaked Ladies from "Maroon"
  Speaking of impossibly hook-y power pop bands, Barenaked Ladies rank with the best of them. They've quietly put together a decades-long career that, without the benefit of any real breakthrough hit songs, has nevertheless built them an enthusiastic critical following and a near-cultish fanbase. I have to admit to being a late-arriving passenger on the Barenaked bandwagon (early 00's maybe?), but what I lack in "I-knew them-when" cred is made up for by my zeal of the newly converted.
  
  

and the "Fall" also-rans...

• "Fall At Your Feet" by Crowded House
• "Fall Down" by Toad the Wet Sprocket
• "Fall Down (Like The Rain)" by The Mighty Lemon Drops
• "Fall On Me" by REM
• "Fallen" by Sarah McLachlan
• "Falling" by Glen Phillips
• "Falling In Love Again" by Linda Ronstadt w/ the Nelson Riddle Orchestra
• "Falling Through Your Clothes" by The New Pornographers

"Fire" (begins 7 song titles)

• "Fired" by Ben Folds from "Rocking the Suburbs"
  I really like Ben Folds a lot, mostly because it's just so nice to see a really talented musician break the guitar-bass-drums mold of pop and rock music and create a signature sound. This is a song about how sometimes there are just so many people around that you want to tell them, "get the hell off my planet, you're fired." In the clip below, an a capella group from Stanford enters their version of "Fired" into an a capella contest of Ben Folds songs. No, I don't know if they won, but they're pretty good.
  
  

and the "Fire" also-rans...

• "Fire" by Bruce Springsteen
• "Fire from Heaven" by Guadalcanal Diary
• "Fire In The Engine Room" by Richard Thompson
• "Fire In The Hole" by The BoDeans
• "Fire Island" by Fountains of Wayne
• "Firecracker" by Ryan Adams

"Fly" (begins 8 songs)

• "The Fly" by U2 from "Achtung Baby"
  The first incarnation of U2's mega-stardom, which peaked with the smash release of "The Joshua Tree" in 1987, had faded a bit by 1991, when I went to live in Japan for a couple of years. By the time I bought "Achtung Baby" as an import in Fukuoka that year, I had been listening to their earliest hits for nearly ten years, and their readily identifiable sound had grown a bit stale. When I got home and stuck it in the boombox, "Zoo Station" and the early tracks of "Achtung Baby" made it clear that they had found a new direction, but I wasn't fully convinced until track seven, when the Edge kicked in with that snarling, echoey lick that opens "The Fly." I wore that disc out during the next two years, and to this day, hearing any of the tracks on "Achtung Baby" will evoke the smell of tatami mats and the udon shop, and a thousand other associations of that great time in Japan. "The Fly" should always be played at MAXIMUM VOLUME, and since the only thing that sounds worse than streaming audio is streaming audio played at maximum volume, you should get the CD, punch track number seven, and TURN IT UP.
  
  

and the "Fly" also-rans...

• "Fly" by Nick Drake
• "Fly By Night" by Rush
• "Fly From Heaven" by Toad the Wet Sprocket
• "Fly On The Wall" by XTC
• "Flying" by Chris Isaak
• "Flying" by Joe Jackson
• "Flyswatter/Ice Water Blues" by Lyle Lovett

Fantasia on a Theme By Thomas Tallis: Yet Another Music Meme, Mad-Libs Version

Take your iPod in your hand:

1. Put your music on Shuffle.
2. For each question, press the Next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!

IF SOMEONE SAYS “IS THIS OKAY” YOU SAY?
Sleight of Hand (Pearl Jam)

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
These Dreams of You (Van Morrison)

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Independence Day (Bruce Springsteen)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?
Love Fall Down (Dreams So Real)

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Doo Wop [That Thing] (Lauryn Hill) And I have always lived by it.

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Insignificance (Pearl Jam) ouch!

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Store Bought Bones (The Raconteurs)

WHAT IS 2+2?
Blue (The Jayhawks)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
I Need You Tonight (Buddy Guy)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Government Cheese (The Rainmakers)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Rockafella Skank (Fatboy Slim)

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Goin' Downtown (Joe Jackson)

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Scuttle Buttin' (Stevie Ray Vaughan)

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Pretty Girls (Neko Case) This could explain a lot. I suppose after four boys, Mom might have been in denial when she had a fifth and just decided to think of me as her "pretty girl" instead. :-)

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
Fruits of My Labor (Lucinda Williams)

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Golden Rope (16 Horsepower)

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
You'll Be Mine (Stevie Ray Vaughan)

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Heart of Gold (Neil Young)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Misery (The BoDeans) ouch again, this time for my friends

WHAT’S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
Sleep Now in the Fire (Rage Against the Machine) that's my favorite so far

HOW WILL YOU DIE?
Henry (Keb' Mo') I will now avoid all people named Henry

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
Perfect One (Phil Roy)

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
Edible Flowers (The Finn Brothers)

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
The Other Side of the Coin (Solomon Burke) that one almost sounds profound

WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
Duvet [Lain Theme] (BOA)

WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
Fleashine (Kelly Joe Phelps)

DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
An Emotional Time (Hothouse Flowers)

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
The Rising (Bruce Springsteen)

WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
Adelaide (Ben Folds)

WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (Ralph Vaughan Williams)

Kumo No Yukou, Yakusoku No Basho (2004) The Place Promised in Our Early Days (DVD)

      I'm not a die-hard fan of the anime genre--more of what you might call a hopeful fan. It's a genre that I want to like, because it puts science fiction and fantasy out there into the world, reconnects me with Japanese (pop) culture, and because I appreciate the craftsmanship involved. But even more than mainstream Hollywood, the world of anime relies heavily on a handful of tired formulae aimed mostly at very young viewers, and because of the relatively low production costs of anime, its crap-to-quality ratio is shockingly high, even by Hollywood's standards. A few directors and their anime have stood out and can pass the "blush test" with serious film fans--Ohtomo with Akira and Steamboy, Oshii's Ghost in the Shell, Arias's Tekon kinkuriito, and of course just about all of Miyazaki's work since the Lupin movies. There are others of course, but sadly, most of it is disposable, at best.
      That's why it's always so nice to encounter an anime that makes me feel like my appreciation of it could benefit from a second viewing. The Place Promised in our Early Days, directed by Makoto Shinkai, is such a movie (a more literal translation of the title would probably be "The Clouds Will Part to Reveal the Land of Promise," but the English title is apropos). It's an alternate history tale about a post-war Japan in which Japan's northern island Hokkaido was occupied and isolated by a mysterious political force called "the Union," which erected a gigantic, mysterious tower that looms over the entire country and feeds the curiosity of two high school friends who plan to build a homemade plane and fly it to the forbidden zone of the tower.
      It's an enigmatic story about youth, divergent lives, and a search for purpose in the world, and if my memories from long-ago readings serve, has interesting parallels with Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine. It's also one of the most visually beautiful anime I've ever seen, including Miyazaki's best work. If you're even slightly curious about dabbling in anime, I would recommend Place as an exemplar of what the genre can accomplish.

False Familiarity Breeds Mistaken Contempt--Watching British Film

      As I have very probably mentioned here before, Albert Finney is one of my favorite actors, and I've always been impressed with his uncharacteristically understated performance as a failed English schoolmaster with an unfaithful wife in Mike Figgis's The Browning Version, based on the Terrance Rattigan play. So I was very surprised to discover only recently that the movie was in fact not the first film version of the play; Michael Redgrave played the Finney role in a 1951 version directed by Anthony Asquith. Redgrave, too, proved excellent in the role of the anti-Mr. Chips, and now I can't decide which version I prefer; they differ only slightly in interpretation, but the differences--especially in the treatment of the unfaithful wife--seem significant.
      Anyway, both versions have got me thinking about British actors and British films, and have reinforced a belief of mine that there are some British dramas that can really only be fully appreciated through the filter of that peculiar British aesthetic of self-repressed emotion and the famous stiff upper lip.
      I’ve noticed over the years that many American viewers of films such as The Browning Version or Remains of the Day or The Winslow Boy chafe with impatience—why doesn’t he/she just tell her/him how he feels? Why don’t they act on what they’re obviously feeling? This American frustration with reticence and reserve will often damn the element of a certain type of British film that is in fact the very primum mobile of the drama—this self-repression is the very core around which The Browning Version and Remains of the Day revolve, for example.
      I have a half-baked theory about this. Because of our shared language and a great deal of shared heritage, American viewers might be lulled into the notion that we also share our culture with Britain. Although Britain’s cultural assumptions are probably closer to America’s than those of most other countries, there are many large discrepancies between the two, and these gaps (and a viewer’s familiarity with or ignorance of them) color our experience of British art, in this case, film.
      Of course this is true of other cultures as well, but if I’m watching a Romanian film, for example, my lack of familiarity with the language and the culture have predisposed me to, as much as possible, view the film around my own cultural lens rather than through it. Knowing that I'm on foreign ground going in helps make me more empathetic to what the filmmakers are trying to do visually and dramatically. But with a British film, my supposed familiarity (which might often prove to be false) can easily breed contempt.

"E" is for "Eclectic"

      I've been walking through my iPod's playlist letter by letter, and although "E" is the most common letter in the English language, it's not necessarily the most common first letter of song titles, at least according to my small sampling. Of the 3,401 songs currently loaded on my iPod, 85 of them start with the letter "E"--less than 2.5% of the total (if all 26 letters were represented equally, "E" should begin about 3.8% of the song titles). But those 85 songs seem to represent a little bit of everything from everyone in my music collection, including 16 songs that begin with the words, "Everything" or "Everyone." That makes "eclectic" today's watchword, and I've decided to feature the most disparate collection of "E" songs that I can concoct, a truly jarring playlist of great--but incongruous--music.

1. "Easter Parade" by The Blue Nile--Mellow synth-pop Glaswegians The Blue Nile may not be prolific (they've produced only four albums in their 20+ years as a band), but what they lack in quantity they make up for in quality (or clichés to that effect). Their sweet, soothing melodies and languorous rhythms are simple enough for easy access, but reward repeated listenings with surprising nuance. In "Easter Parade," lead singer Paul Buchanan talk-sings his way through a nostalgic picture-poem, apparently inspired by a found photograph.
2. "Eat Steak" by The Reverend Horton Heat--This song isn't the best example of the Rev's manic "psychobilly" brand of raucous, adrenaline-fueled rockabilly, but it definitely reflects their unapologetically irreverent sense of humor. Although Boston Market restaurant briefly made "Eat Steak" their theme song, they carefully left out the lines, "Look at all the cows in the slaughterhouse yard, gotta hit 'em in the head, gotta hit 'em real hard; first you gotta clean it then the butcher cuts it up, throws it on a scale, throws an eyeball in a cup." It's like when Levi's or whoever used a ruthlessly bowdlerized version of CCR's anti-establishment anthem "Fortunate Son" to sell jeans. Further proof that irony is, in fact, alive and well.
3. "Electra Made Me Blind" by Everclear--I can never recommend Everclear without equivocation; they miss as often as they hit for me. "Electra" is definitely one of the "hits," though. They're also one of those bands whose music suffers at moderate volumes--you've got to PLAY THEM LOUD. The straight-up jangle and holler of "Electra" is no exception and is about as far from the sweet pop of "Easter Parade" and the cornpone country of "Eat Steak" as you can get.
4. "Everything is Everything" by Lauryn Hill--There's not one but three songs that start with "E" on Hill's outstanding "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill," but "Everything is Everything" is clearly the best. Even the video is cool, as all of New York City becomes a giant disc on her DJ's scratch platter, with Empire State as the spindle. My paper-thin collection of hip-hop may be hopelessly whitebread and devoid of gangsta cred, but an appreciation for Lauryn Hill requires no explanation or apology.
5. "Effect and Cause" by The White Stripes--A high hat, a snare, a tambourine, and an acoustic guitar are all The White Stripes need to flesh out this witty three-chord romp about getting the wrong end of the stick. I don't really need 85 songs from dozens of different bands to put together an eclectic playlist--I could just grab a handful of White Stripes tunes at random and likely come away with some hard rock, some blues, a little country or bluegrass, or some unclassifiable business featuring Jack on ukelele.
6. "The Electric Version" by The New Pornographers--I have to confess that the only reason I originally sought out The New Pornographers when I heard about their debut album "Mass Romantic" was because I knew that Neko Case was part of the ensemble that formed from various, mostly Canadian pop and rock outfits (ahhhh, Neko). It quickly became clear that TNP were a very different kettle of fish from the sort of things that Neko does on her own, but when they come together periodically from their other musical projects, the impressive collection of talent, led by main songwriter Carl Newman, produces track after track of infectious, hooky power-pop tunes that put 98% of the crap in commercial radio's heavy rotation to shame. If "The Electric Version" doesn't make your head start bobbing, then there's just no bob in you.
7. "Evidence" by Susan Tedeschi--My introduction to the straight-from-the-diaphragm electric blues sound of Susan Tedeschi came via my favorite radio station, WYEP in Pittsburgh, who featured her second album "Just Won't Burn" when it came out in '98. I loved the songs, but I truly fell in love with Tedeschi when I bought the album for myself and saw the picture on the cover. It wasn't so much that she was totally hot (she is). What really won my heart was the revelation that her guitar was festooned with Colorforms™ stickers (remember Colorforms?), including Eeyore and Tigger, my personal spirit guides, yin and yang. "Evidence" comes off her most recent album "Hope and Desire," and features her in full Koko Taylor voice, covering a great soul song by George Jackson and Raymond Moore. I swear it was the Colorforms. Not the hotness.
8. "Prelude in E" by Frédéric Chopin, performed by Vladimir Ashkenazy--OK, this one is a bit of a cheat because the "E" doesn't come first, but I figured that the "E" is essential enough to the work to count. I enjoy classical music and have quite a few classical CD's, but for whatever reason, only a few have made it to my iPod, including Chopin's exercise in creating short piano preludes in every key of the musical scale. Maybe I have a short attention span, or maybe Chopin tapped into something elemental with these eclectic fragments. Whatever the appeal, I never tire of them. Even if you think you don't know anything about classical music, you'd likely recognize at least three or four of the preludes if you heard them--including the "Prelude in E"--that's how much popularity and presence they've maintained.

Curmudgeon's Corner (6)--Netflix Just Doesn't Understand Me

      First off, you should know that Smokey Burner, the Broken Stove's resident curmudgeon, loves Netflix. When Smokey bought his first DVD player back in 1999, it came with an introductory come-on offer to join a fledgling mail-order movie service that would ship him DVD's in the mail--as many as he could watch for a flat monthly rate--and their selection was already way better than the small shelf of DVD's available at his local Blockbuster (now they've introduced their on-demand box to instantly watch downloads on your TV). Smokey signed on, and has never regretted his decision. Smokey owns some Netflix stock, for crying out loud.
      But sometimes, Netflix makes Smokey just want to sit down in the middle of the road and have a good cry, because there is perhaps no more eloquent proof of the continuing inability of computers to extrapolate than Netflix's movie recommendation algorithm. Smokey has given Netflix his opinion about more than 3,400 films--albeit through the very limiting 1-5 star rating system. A fifteen minute conversation with another human film lover would no doubt yield an excellent list of recommendations for movies that Smokey has not yet seen but would thoroughly enjoy, but after almost ten years of tracking Smokey's movie-watching preferences, Netflix's bank of UNIVAC's still spits out head-scratchers like this:

Because you enjoyed

• All About Eve
• All Quiet on the Western Front and
• Annie Hall

we think you'll enjoy Shoah (ed. Claude Lanzmann's highly-regarded 4-disc documentary on the Holocaust)

      WTF?! What do these three movies possibly have in common with Shoah? OK, yes, the directors are all Jewish. But two of the three movies have absolutely nothing to do with Judaism, and the third is a romantic comedy. That would be like recommending Time Bandits (short actors) because Smokey liked Gangs of New York and Death to Smoochy (short directors). (That's purely hypothetical, by the way--Smokey liked Time Bandits but not so much Gangs of New York, and nobody liked Death to Smoochy). Is it because Woody Allen's character in Annie Hall keeps going to see The Sorrow and the Pity? Does Bette Davis compare Anne Baxter to Goebbels and Smokey just missed it? Is some ghost in the Netflix machine having Smokey on?
      Netflix has offered a million bucks to whoever can improve their Cinematch recommendation algorithm by a certain measurable percentage. So Smokey has a request for all you math and code geeks out there: please drop your silly pet projects like calculating Mars orbital approaches for JPL or mapping cancer's genetic triggers for Sloan Kettering and get to work on this problem for Netflix. Smokey's future movie-watching happiness depends on you. Smokey says, "Give a hoot, film compute."

You Still Can't Go Home Again--Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

      I can't pretend that I approached the new Indiana Jones movie with anything like high hopes. George Lucas's repeated, failed attempts to recapture the lightning of Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark in a bottle, coupled with Steven Spielberg's frustrating "more is more" approach to filmmaking, left me walking into the theater with nothing more than the fervent wish, "Please, please don't let this suck."
      It does not suck. But neither are you likely to leave the theater with that same feeling I had as a teenager, walking out of Raiders for the first time, thinking, "Man, I have got to see that again!" It might be wrong to let nostalgia for my early movie-going years--a time when Star Wars IV and V, Raiders, Blade Runner and Terminator burst upon my nascent cinematic sensibilities in rapid succession--color my evaluation of the new Indiana Jones, but let's face it, nostalgia is exactly what this franchise is all about. Raiders embodied Lucas's and Spielberg's nostalgia for the Saturday matinées, the serials that left the swashbuckling hero in an impossible situation each week, only to show his improbable escape into yet more trouble the next. In the 80's those kind of movies didn't exist anymore--couldn't exist anymore--except in their memories, so they re-imagined them for another generation. In much the same way, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull embodies our nostalgia for Raiders. Movies like Raiders don't exist anymore either, except as parodies of themselves (where Raiders winked, today's actioners leer), but Spielberg and Lucas are savvy enough to know that those of us who remember Raiders with the same fondness they remember the old serials are willing to give Indy a special pass.
      Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has a plot of sorts, much in the same way that porn movies do, as a vehicle to move from one action setpiece to the next. Evil Commies have replaced the evil Nazis of the previous movies (affording Ford the chance to growl, "Russians," in exactly the same disgusted tone he once growled, "Nazis"), led by the sinister, sword-wielding Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett), who sports the wickedest Prince Valiant hairdo ever seen outside the funny papers. Spalko wants Indy to lead her to the MacGuffin, which this time around is a mystical crystal skull that she and the Russkies will somehow turn into the ultimate weapon in a new kind of "psychic warfare." Along the way Indy hooks up with Mutt (Shia Lebeouf), a motorcycle-riding, switchblade-wielding greaser who's looking for his missing mentor, Professor "Ox" Oxley (John Hurt), who disappeared while searching for the skull and the legendary city of gold, El Dorado. And, oh yeah, Mutt's mom turns out to be Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), Indy's spunky love interest from Raiders. And I haven't even mentioned George "Mac" McHale (Ray Winstone), who we're told is a great spy buddy of Indy's from their war days, and who may or may not be working with the Russians or the CIA, or both, or neither.
      None of this matters, of course, any more than the arrival of the pizza boy in the aforementioned porno matters; we're mentally fast-fowarding to the sex scenes action scenes. Action is something that Spielberg knows well how to orchestrate, and action is what he gives us; we get a rocket sled, a digital counter ticking down from ten, a motorcycle chase through an Ivy League campus, a swordfight across the gap between two speeding jeeps, poison darts, angry natives, voracious man-eating ants, monkeys, shout-outs to Tarzan and Marlon Brando, inter-dimensional beings, and not one, but three rides over a waterfall in an amphibious vehicle. Oh, and a thermonuclear blast. This is a partial list.
      All of this rolls along pleasantly enough--Spielberg is too skilled a craftsman ever to let the patched-together story collapse completely under the weight of all the CGI gee-whizzery. There are even a few real-live stunts with real-live stuntpeople, perhaps for old times' sake. But there's no magic here. The chemistry of Marion and Indy's love/hate relationship has been lost, replaced with loud, unfunny bickering that's so annoying, even one of their Russian captors begs them, "For God's sake, please shut the hell up!" The constant nods to icons of the franchise--the hat, the whip, the fear of snakes--simply remind us how much we prefer the original to what we're watching now. Winstone and Hurt are given almost nothing to do, and everyone else seems to be very professionally going through the motions, killing some time until they're told to go stand in front of the green screen again. I don't really blame Lucas and Spielberg for being unable to recreate the magic of Raiders in the face of so much audience nostalgia; it's an impossible task. I just wish they'd stop trying.

WalMart Purchasing Department Harbors At Least One Rebellious Soul

      For the first time ever, and much to my own surprise, today I found myself purchasing one of those 2-in-1 Double Feature DVD packages from WalMart's bargain bin. You know the ones--Steven Seagal in Exit Wounds and Half Past Dead, or Honey I Shrunk the Kids boxed with Honey I Must Fulfill My Contractual Obligation.
      But somewhere in the bowels of a cubicle dungeon, deep in the dark heart of Bentonville AR, at least one huddled mass must be yearning to breathe free. He or she--giggling maniacally all the time, I'm sure--somehow managed to ensure that WalMart's bargain double feature inventory includes A Darren Aronofsky Collection: Requiem for a Dream and π. Neither of which did I previously own. For just 9 bucks! That's...um...less than 5 bucks each!
      Fight the power, my ghostly friend, fight the power.

My (Not Quite) Fifteen Minutes of Fame

      When I lived in Pittsburgh, WYEP 91.3FM was my radio station of choice. A community-sponsored station, YEP has always featured a great, eclectic playlist--as I write this, they're playing the latest from Drive-by Truckers. Before that was Jackson Browne, Del Amitri, Counting Crows, Okkervil River, and Marc Cohn. Even after moving away, I've kept up my membership and continue to listen to YEP on their internet stream. I've found a lot of great new artists that way.
      One of YEP's regular features is called "My Fifteen Minutes." The morning DJ, Cindy Howes, solicits three-song playlists from listeners--with or without a unifying theme--and plays them during her morning show. Once a week, on Friday, she'll choose one listener to be a guest DJ to introduce and chat about his playlist. A while back I sent her a playlist with the theme of "first tracks that blew me away," which included "Litany (Life Goes On)" by Guadalcanal Diary, "East of Eden" by Lone Justice, and "Set Out Running," by Neko Case. Last week Howes called me for a brief phone interview, and on Friday, at 7:15AM, I had my (not quite) fifteen minutes of fame as a guest DJ. I usually hate hearing my own voice recorded, but I was relieved to discover that I didn't say anything too inane or otherwise sound like an idiot. I was briefly nonplussed by the fact that the 20-something Howes had to ask me how to pronounce "Guadalcanal" (do they not teach WWII history in school anymore?), and unfortunately YEP didn't have access to the out of print "Litany"; we decided to replace it with "Watusi Rodeo," even though it's not a first track.
      Unfortunately, I screwed up my program that records internet streams, and although YEP has several podcasts of their various shows, "My Fifteen Minutes" isn't one of them. So my fifteen minutes have been lost to the ether. But it was still fun to pick songs for my favorite radio station and get to talk about them on-air. Now if only the Triangle had decent community radio, I could contemplate another career change--to DJ.

Who Will Watch The "Watchmen"?

      Back in the late 80's, mostly in grad school I guess, I became enamored of a few absurdist comic books and strips like "The Flaming Carrot," "Zippy the Pinhead," and--to a lesser degree--"Cerebus the Aardvark." They appealed to my love of the offbeat and the iconoclastic, and in a conservative place like Waco, Texas, allowed me to maintain a highly inaccurate self-image as an ahead-of-the-curve hipster, too cool to be held back by my temporary dalliance in such a cultural backwater. The very fact that these comics were actually available in a Waco comic book store should have clued me in to the highly relative nature of my hipness, but that observation escaped me at the time.
      At any rate, my periodic searches for back issues of Flaming Carrot eventually led me to the works of Alan Moore, including "V for Vendetta" (see the cool, cloak-rippling action image to the right) and then "Watchmen" (1986-87). Along with writers like Frank Miller ("The Dark Knight Returns") and Art Spiegelman ("Maus"), Moore helped legitimize comic books as a forum for serious issues and launched an era of comics during which--for better or worse--most of the tired old superheroes were re-invented as brooding, conflicted neurotics, struggling to reconcile their physical superiority with their sometimes dubious moral codes.
      "Watchmen" is interesting partially because with a single exception, none of the main characters has any superhuman powers at all. They dress up and fight crime in an alternate version of the 1980's in which the U.S. rapidly approaches all-out war with the Soviet Union, but they're not superheroes, merely "costumed adventurers," or as other characters bluntly point out, vigilantes. At least two of them, "Rohrschach" and "The Comedian," can easily be viewed as sociopaths. They make the citizenry nervous enough to enact laws specifically aimed at curbing the activities of costumed adventurers, and throughout the twelve chapters a recurring graffiti tag appears, "Who watches the Watchmen?"--a quote from one of Juvenal's Satires.
      The quote got me thinking--who will watch Watchmen when director Zack Snyder (300, Dawn of the Dead) finally brings it to the big screen in 2009? I recently re-read "Watchmen" in its omnibus edition, complete with a cover blurb from Time magazine declaring it one of the top 100 novels since 1928 (Since a very cursory look at novels from 1987 alone quickly produces three that are better--Beloved, Bonfire of the Vanities, and Black Dahlia--that declaration sounds pretty ridiculous). It has many strengths, but will they translate to film? Overlapping dialogues help move the action along and counterpoint different plot elements; inter-textual material between the chapters in the form of diary entries, book excerpts, newspaper clippings and such offer important exposition without resorting to endless static panels of talking heads; a meta-fictional subplot in which a boy reads a comic book obliquely parallels the story arc of a main character. All of these integral elements work very well on the page, but can Snyder find a way to incorporate them into a 90-minute comic book blockbuster? Will he even try?
      Obviously the fanboys will turn out no matter what he produces; "Watchmen" enjoys legendary status in the world of comics and graphic novels, and the blogosphere has been following every tiniest development in the movie's production with bated breath since it was first green-lighted. But after the opening weekend, will anybody else be interested in a superhero movie with no superheroes? The primary demographic for the movie probably has only the vaguest notion about the cold-war nuclear fears that lie behind the original. However, in today's political climate, a story that hangs on one character's drastic, Machiavellian, and unilateral solution to avoiding World War III should provide a filmmaker plenty of grist for his creative mill and a chance to widen Watchmen's appeal beyond its fanboy fanbase. If he doesn't spend too much time reading the fansites, that is.

OMG! That Was So Cool!--Sea Monsters in 3D

      My wife's six year old nephew and his family have been in town this week, so we've been looking for interesting entertainment options for them in the Triangle. Today we decided to take in Sea Monsters: a Prehistoric Adventure in 3D at the IMAX theater in Raleigh. The last time I saw a 3D movie was about twenty-five years ago, trying to balance on my nose a pair of those cardboard red/blue glasses that they used to use to create the 3D effects. That was also a sea monster movie--Jaws 3--and it was wretched, wretched.
      Well 3D has come a long way, baby. Obviously aimed at a young audience, and despite a few moments of dubious theorizing and over-dramatization a la the Discovery Channel, "Sea Monsters in 3D" was nevertheless enthralling from beginning to end. Mostly computer animated with a few live-action scenes of actors playing paleontologists and amateur fossil hunters, "Sea Monsters" dramatizes the lives of a few of the sexier species of prehistoric marine life. The visual effects are truly impressive, to the point that objects seem to actually pass behind you as they cross your field of vision. The theater was filled with school groups, and every menacing approach of a toothy leviathan elicited delighted screams of terror from the crowd. They would also wave their hands in the air in a futile attempt to grab the floating objects that did in fact seem within the viewers' grasp.
      I'm not sure who enjoyed it more--my nephew or me.

Sound and Fury--Polanski's Macbeth (1971) DVD

      I had never before seen Roman Polanski's Macbeth, but a film group discussion and the presence of Jon Finch in the lead prompted me to get it from Netflix. A quick glance around the internet turns up reviews that make much of the fact that this is the first film Polanski made after the Manson murders and his wife's death. I'm generally leery of biographical criticism, preferring to let the "text" speak for itself, but there's no denying that Polanski's Macbeth is by far the bleakest version I've ever seen (and I've seen "Throne of Blood"!).
      At first, I liked it. The cinematography is dark and claustrophobic; the sun is almost never seen. When it is, it appears as a faint, distant stain behind the clouds, or as a bit of blue sky, but always outside the dark gates of Macbeth's keep. I've always liked Jon Finch in Shakespeare (he did two really great Henry IV's for the BBC), and he's very good again here. Polanski's Lady Macbeth (Francesca Annis), however, is a disappointing nonentity--she says all of her important lines, but this Macbeth needs little convincing, and she comes off as being weaker than he, which doesn't jibe with my reading of the play at all. If Macbeth is pure ambition from the beginning, then there's no tragedy.
      There's no doubt that this is the production of a talented filmmaker with the skill to transfer his vision to the screen. But Polanski's apparent vision of Macbeth reminds me of some of the complaints about the nihilism of "No Country For Old Men." MacDuff doesn't so much save Scotland as simply put a broken man out of his misery. When a filmmaker actually agrees with Macbeth that life is "a tale told by an idiot/full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," one can't help but wonder, "so why bother?"

When "Don't" Becomes a Positive Imperative--the "D" Songs

      As I continued tripping through my iPod, I discovered that I currently have 117 songs loaded that begin with the letter "D." Then I noticed that 20 of those songs start with the word "don't"--that's more than 1 in 6 of the "D" songs that start with the same negative imperative.
      At first I found this really depressing. Am I that drawn to the negative? I mean, I know that I can be pretty cynical; I've often spoken with friends about my affinity for "angry artists," the sarcastic and dispossessed who rail against Fate and shake their fist at God. I still have a very fond memory from high school of a poster I saw at Spencer's Gifts in the mall. The poster had reprinted a dictionary definition of the word "defiance" along with a cartoon of two figures--a mouse and an eagle. The eagle was diving, talons outstretched, toward the mouse, who, on the verge of death and with nowhere to run, stood baring his teeth at the eagle. And giving him the finger.
      OK, posters at Spencer's don't count as art, but I still love that kind of stuff, both in pop culture and in art. Was that the kind of impulse that had led me to collect so many songs that start with the word "don't"? Am I doomed to bitter old farthood, constantly complaining about the empty half of my glass and shouting at the kids to stay the hell out of my yard?
      Well, as it turns out, I may yet be redeemable. Because when I started looking closer at my "Don't" songs, I realized that despite the first word in their titles, many of the twenty songs turn out to be quite positive, if not downright Pollyanna-ish. Oh sure, there were a few downers, like Ryan Adams's "Don't Ask for the Water." With lines like, "Don't ask her for the water, she'll teach you to cry," that one can hardly be called positive. But quite a few of them can be, and here are some of the best:

• "Don't Give Up on Me" by Solomon Burke--King Solomon is one of those 60's-era soul singers who came up through gospel, but unlike many of them, he's still going strong (I think he recently did a show in Durham). "Don't Give Up on Me," the album's title track, is the plaintive plea of a man who knows he doesn't deserve a second, or third, or fourth chance, but he ain't too proud to beg. This track would easily have won its bracket in the "C" is for Crooner competition. His voice no longer has the silky smoothness it had in youth, but like Billie Holiday at the end of her career, Burke has learned how to milk a good song with impeccable phrasing and by infusing each line with a lifetime of hard-won experience. On this album he does some powerful covers of great songwriters including Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, and Bob Dylan. And he makes them all sound like soul. Nice trick.
• "Don't Let the World Get in Your Way" by The Jayhawks--You may have noticed that The Jayhawks turn up a lot on these "best of" lists. Catchy melodies, intricate harmonies...if radio and music TV weren't such corporate, creative wastelands, and if the goddess of music were still in her heaven, these guys would be multi-platinum superstars, the American Beatles. In fact, you should click this link right now and buy one of their albums. Do it! Do it!
• "Don't Need Anything" by Glenn Phillips--Phillips is the former lead singer and main songwriter for the now-defunct Toad the Wet Sprocket, one of my favorite bands of the 90's. His solo album "Winter Pays for Summer" doesn't match his best work with Toad, but a few songs stand out, including this simple, almost naïve little melody for one voice and piano. It's essentially a list song about contentment, naming the humble collection of things the narrator has, and always returning to the refrain, "I don't need anything that I don't have." How's that for a positive use of "don't?"
• "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House--this one has already turned up in a previous iPod discussion, so I'll just say, "Don't dream it's over...when the world comes in, they come, they come, to build a wall between us; you know they won't win."
• "Don't Give Up" by Peter Gabriel (with Kate Bush)--The most desperate and least obviously positive song on this list is rendered even more poignant by the hope it ultimately offers. Gabriel's part lays out the bleak narrative of a redundant man. Unemployed and unable to find work in hard times ("I never thought I could fail...no one wants you when you lose"), his distress grows to thoughts of suicide. But at each crucial moment of his despair, Bush's ethereal voice intrudes with her simple but fervent encouragements ("when times get rough, you can fall back on us; don't give up, please, don't give up"). Despite the song's grim portrait of a perplexed man at the end of his rope, it's Bush's voice that we hear last--"Don't give up, you know it's never been easy; don't give up because I believe there's a place, a place where we belong."

I Am Legend (2007) DVD

      I purposely avoided seeing "I Am Legend" in the theaters because, while I'm usually pulled in by Will Smith's effortless charm and generally enjoy the movies I've seen him in, the original novella by Richard Matheson upon which the movie is loosely based was one of my earliest and favorite adolescent encounters with the horror genre. The landscape of movie adaptations is littered with the horribly mangled corpses of my favorite books. So when I finally gave in and rented the DVD, I fully expected to hand this review over to Smokey Burner at the Curmudgeon's Corner for a good old-fashioned rant. However, I'm forced to admit that although the movie not only ignores most of the original story, and in fact betrays its central premise (thus rendering the title meaningless), it doesn't really deserve the Full Smokey. Taken on its own, "I Am Legend" compares favorably to most of the monster movies that Hollywood currently produces, and if it had only followed through on a few promising moments, could actually have been pretty good.
      The movie opens with Robert Neville (Smith) as the last living human in New York and perhaps the world, having inexplicably survived a terrible virus (engineered as a cure for cancer) that has killed most of the population, and turned the survivors into ferocious, vampire-like zombies that come out at night to feed on...well, we're not really sure. Despite being an intelligent scientist, Neville employs what might be the least-likely-to-succeed method of deer hunting since the invention of the thrown rock--attempting to shoot them (and drive) as they run from his speeding sports car (try an upper-storey window, genius)--but the chase offers some cool establishing shots of a post-human New York City. With his faithful German Shepherd dog Sam, Neville spends his days collecting foodstuffs, working his way through the DVD's at the video store, and researching a cure for the zombie virus in his extremely well-set-up basement laboratory. He spends his nights behind shuttered windows, huddling with Sam in an empty bathtub until the zombies go back to bed.
      This all sounds pretty stupid, and I guess it is, but Smith manages to hold one's attention in his essentially solo performance, with a little help from Sam. And just when the viewer might be tiring of dealing only with them, two more survivors appear--a young Brazilian woman, Anna (Alice Braga) and the boy she cares for, Ethan (Charlie Tahan). Neville's shaky interactions with them--he's been alone with Sam for three years--create some of Smith's best scenes in the film. Unfortunately, their arrival marks the beginning of the end of the interesting portion of the movie, and the rest devolves into a standard-issue, jump-scare CGI fest, with ridiculously fast and powerful zombies serving only as bogeymen to drive the final action.
      It's too bad, because for a moment, following a scene where the zombies actually trick Neville into a life-threatening situation, I thought the movie was set to explore the latent humanity in the zombies, whom Neville has viewed to this point as mere beasts. Such an exploration would have led naturally back to the very themes that make the original book so interesting--when there's one (or three) of you and hundreds of thousands of them, maybe they're the future of the human race, not you. Sadly, pursuing those themes apparently would have required too much effort, either from the filmmakers or perhaps from the audience expected by the filmmakers. In any event, thanks to Smith, what we're left with makes for an entertaining-enough rental--especially if you've never read the book.

SPOILER ALERT AND WARNING: Animal lovers should know that there are a couple of very disturbing scenes involving Sam. While they're not at all exploitative, being central to the plot and very well-acted by Smith, anyone who is disturbed by bad things happening to animals should be prepared.