This is haunting me.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071130/ap_on_re_af/sudan_british_teacher

I feel deeply ashamed for belonging to a human race that has THOUSANDS of salivating men turning out to demand the death of one woman for something that, at the very very very worst, is a tasteless joke. How can this happen? Am I one of these monstrous animals too? When are the aliens coming to pick me up? What's this about a Rapture? It's taking too long.

THE REAL DEAL BEHIND THE MUSIC

I used to think that songs were a bunch of nonsense words until I went to college and learned that behind every seemingly innocuous rock song there was either an intricate back story or an encrypted formula for raising demons.
Sure, you know that Mother Goose Rhymes are about crazy massacres and bubonic plagues. You know what every line in “Come Together” references. You know that KISS stands for Knights in Satan’s Service. You know “Like a Rolling Stone” was about Edie Segwick, “You’re So Vain” about Mick Jagger, “Chelsea Hotel # 2” about Janis Joplin, and “You Oughta Know” about Dave Coulier.
But do you know the hidden story behind these OTHER classic tunes?

1956-Doris Day-“Que Sera, Sera.”


Que sera, sera
Whatever will be, will be
The future's not ours to see
Que sera, sera
What will be, will be
Doris Day’s signature song, and a plot point in Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” was originally intended by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans as an Homeric homage to notorious Prohibition-Era ganster Uzzo Chesera, who was gunned down outside a Chicago brothel known as “The Future” by his rival, Willby Tucci.

1966-Frank Sinatra- “Strangers in the Night”


Ah, nothing spells timeless romance like Sinatra’s daring avowal of his intense homosexual encounters with Liberace at the Royal Palms in Nevada. The “doobie-doobie-doo” lines refer, of course, to the marijuana cigarettes that allowed Old Blue Eyes to relax and tune in to his more feminine side.

1966-The Beatles- “Here, There and Everywhere.”


Beatle-ologists agree that the LSD-laced lyrics find Lennon and McCartney at their most allusive.

“To lead a better life
I need My Love to be here.”

The opening lines refer to the bitter rivalry that was even then brewing between Lennon and McCartney. Paul had penned a song called “My Love” that Lennon openly scoffed at, but an offended McCartney tries to convince him the track is central to “Revolver,” and the success of the Beatles, really. The track would eventually re-surface in McCartney’s 1973 album “Red Rose Speedway.”

“Here, making each day of the year
Changing my life with a wave of her hand
Nobody can deny that there's something there.”

This stanza refers to Lennon’s acid-inspired belief that a small but powerful fairy with a magical wand is flitting all over the studio, hiding sometimes behind Ringo’s drumkit, sometimes behind the speakers. When the other Beatles assured him there was nothing there, a paranoid Lennon broke into a scream of utter terror that was luckily recorded by a canny engineer and would be sampled in the Double Vision album.

“There, running my hands through her hair
Both of us thinking how good it can be
Someone is speaking but she doesn't know he's there.”

Lennon was fond of running his hands through the hair of McCartney’s then-girlfriend, supermodel Twig. She found him repulsive and would pretend not to notice it when he whispered in her ear.

“I want her everywhere
And if she's beside me I know I need never care.
But to love her is to need her
Everywhere.”

Even though it seems to be about a woman, this stanza is actually about Paul’s eyebrow-raising affection for his pet Labrador, Martha. Martha is also referenced in “Martha, my Dear.”

“Knowing that love is to share
Each one believing that love never dies
Watching her eyes and hoping I'm always there.
I will be there, and everywhere.
Here, there and everywhere.”

This stanza was contributed by George Harrison. It is, of course, a succinct summary of the teachings of Nasundra Vanamaste, the 12th Century Indian philosopher famous for having hallucinated about at least five incarnations of Brahma.

1976-Abba- “Dancing Queen”


Abba’s biggest hit is a disenchanted put down of their biggest musical inspiration, Lou Reed, a sequel of sorts to David Bowie’s “Queen Bitch.” Reed was planning to collaborate with the pop group in exchange for 17 bricks of the finest Swedish cocaine, but “only 17” as the song claims. When the group met with the visibly strung out Reed at their Polar Studio, the former Velvet Underground lead insisted his payment took place immediately. When the cocaine could not be produced, Reed frantically assaulted a horrified Bjorn, who was able to render Reed unconscious by hitting him with a nearby instrument, (“feel the beat from the tambourine”). Convinced that they’d murdered the rocker, the Abba quartet fled the scene. When Lou came to, he set the Polar Studio on fire in a fit, (“leave them burning and then you’re gone.”) The hostility between Reed and Abba would be the stuff of legends until the tearful VH1-commissioned reunion in 1993, when the aging musicians agreed they were all too high to remember the originating incident at all.

1986- Wang Chung-“Everybody Have Fun Tonight”


This song was actually full of Dylanesque allusions to the Boxer Rebellion, but they were sung into a malfunctioning microphone and excised from the single before release. Mr. Wang Chung died of an acute case of irrelevancy shortly thereafter, and the lyrics have never been recovered.

1996-Smashing Pumkins- “Bullets with Buterfly Wings”


The Pumpkins whimsically wrote the lyrics to their age-defining concept album “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” by putting a dictionary through a shredder and then gluing random resulting words together. Then they put their “serious faces” on.

2006- James Blunt- “You’re Beautiful”


James Blunt’s inspiration for this song came from being extremely extremely gay.

These and other facts courtesy of www.songfacts.com where people with waaaay too much acid on their hands think they KNOW what any given song is REALLY about.

I'm not anti-Muslim, I'm anti-stupid.

Sometimes Planet Earth makes me sick. Have you heard about this?
British teacher in Sudan faces jail and deportation for blasphemously allowing her students to name a teddy bear "Muhammad."
In order to keep up with the religious fun, the Catholic Church, which fears it's slipping behind the times, has put to death every Latin American blasphemously named Jesus, Maria or Jose. It's a great time to travel to Mexico City, if you felt it was too crowded before.

Elephant?

Bruce Willis used to look like he was having fun when bombs blew up in his face, gigantic fire balls propelling him a hundred feet through the hair: he always emerged with a little dab of soot in his cheek and a smirk. There are explosions in "Live Free or Die Hard"...

...but where are the jokes? Where's Samuel L. Jackson even? Why are we supposed to think that a Kevin Smith cameo is automatically funny?
The stunts are gargantous but steely, although there is a nice set piece involving a large van falling down an elevator shaft. It makes as much sense in the movie as it does in that sentence, by the way.
Even the usually wonderful Timothy Olyphant is bland and wasted as the baddie.
Olyphant, if you don't know, is wonderful at combining charm with menace, one of the most underrated actors out there. He was good in "Go", good in "Deadwood", even good in the misunderstood "Catch and Release", (which coincidentally also had a very unfunny "acting" turn by Kevin Smith.) But where he REALLY shines is in one of my of my guiltiest movie pleasures of the last few years, "The Girl Next Door".

That movie had some obvious charms, (see above), but not the least was Olyphant's role as a...well, basically a pimp. He found a way to be endearing and seriously scary, a guy you want to hang out with even though you know that later on he plans to stab you and take your wallet.
Now he's pulled a Britney to play the titular character in "Hitman".

I dunno how that might turn out; the games, though, were almost TOO GOOD for me. They basically drop you somewhere in, say, London: "Go kill Princess Di. Do it how a real hitman would do it." It always made me want to shake in a corner: "I can't! There's too much freedom! It's all too real, man! I can't kill anymore!"
Ok. So I will go collect the money that Timothy Olyphant's agent promised me.

Take THIS Waltz

I revisit this every once and while to hear Robbie Robertson's not-all-there remarks, and because I dig the lovable bunch of musical hobos that come out to celebrate The Band in Martin Scorcese's concert film: Dylan, Clapton, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Ringo Starr, Ron Wood and some other slightly less wonderful rockers. But seeing them up there hurts too, because it's nostalgia. Who would be there on that stage today? Where have all the cowboys gone?

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

What a brief wondrous book, saucy like a negra's hips, as Junot Diaz would say, full of merengue and tragedy, and it hit close to home like a motherfucker- (let's see, it's about an oddball Caribbean nerd with tendencies to romantic cluelessness who wants to be, in this order, "The Dominican Tolkien, the Dominican Stephen King, the Dominican James Joyce." Where other books have a quote by Shakespeare or Keats, Diaz's novel begins with:
"Of what import are brief, nameless lives...to GALACTUS"?
- (Fantastic Four, Volume 1, No. 49, April 1966)
Oh, Junot, you had me at Galactus!!!
Seriously, this is a great literary event that shows Diaz belongs up there, surfing that immigrant literature wave that has seen Julia Alvarez, Monica Ali, Edwige Dandicat, Khaled Houssein, Marjanne Satrapi and Jhumpa Lahiri become some of the most exciting English-language writers out there.

The Third?

Was it really that long ago when that delightful ogre first farted his way into our collective hearts?

Advertising had led me to believe that "Shrek the Third" would be all about little green men, but nope, only tangentially, although I am sure we will see more of them in Shrek 4 and 5 and the Broadway show and the Animated Series and the 20 year Reunion and... I liked it fine, even though it recycles virtually all of its jokes from the first two movies. I'm not going to make any "Wreck" jokes, or God forbid, "Ogre-rhymes-with-Thank-God-That's-Over" jokes.

"Be There to Love Me"

Steve Earle famously said of Townes van Zandt that he was America's best songwriter and he "would stand with his cowboy boots on Bob Dylan's coffee table and say that." Van Zandt's no doubt flattered riposte: "Well, I've met Bob Dylan, and his bodyguards won't let Steve Earle anywhere near that coffee table." Earle was cutely exaggerating: Van Zandt's songs have a more parochial feel than Dylan's. Dylan belongs to America, Van Zandt is a Texan through and through. And the sadness in that stark profile emanates through too many of his lyrics- it can be a little too much. Dylan has many faces. Van Zandt had one- a strikingly tragic one at that. So, sorry, Earle. Still, it would be funny if you ever did make it to that coffee table.

Nice set.

Stephen King edits this year's anthology, and that may be the reason why my branch's copy was tagged as a "Sci/Fi" item by some illiterate librarian (less of an impossibility than you might think). Nice collection, but it's a little more pale and proper than I would have liked from Stevie, (he's respectable now, doncha know.)

Hairspray!

Now this is a toe-tapping good time!

Ah, the sound of nails on a blackboard in the morning

"Chalk" is doomed to go unrewarded, like the teaching profession, but that's wrong. Rent it. Although it never really comes together as a movie, it has a lot of squirmy guffaws along the way. Anyone who's a teacher, who knows teachers, or who went to school at some point in their lives will find some truth here. So yeah, this pretty much includes everyone.
(Except you, you home-schooled, socially fumbling Imaginary Reader.)

"The Overlook"

Michael Connelly's new Harry Bosch thriller is slight and predictable, (it was originally serialized for "The New York Times Magazine", so that's the excuse.) Even his trademarked use of "funny names" is soggy this time around. If you'd never read Connelly's jazz-soaked stuff, it's all very pun friendly- he'll have a cop team named Heckolls and Jekyll, or a pimp called Chip Andale. This time around, the title is also the name of a certain famous hotel at which Jack Nicholson stayed, and a character's sole posession is "The Stand", and a "wit" is protected by changing his name to Stephen King. See the connection?

"Orthon the Archer" and "The Fencing Master"

Dumas flood!
"Orthon the Archer" is a medieval tale of unjustified jealousy, lost and regained fortunes, love that triumphs and, coolest of all, archery! While "The Fencing Master", a Russian travelogue, is about how unholy cold it is in Russia.

Maitre Adam Le Calabrais

Dumas' "Master Adam the Calabrian" is an uncharacteristically short but very funny comedy about gullible villagers, a "miracle", and a crafty, dashing bandit. I think Calabria is fictional. Like Kazakhstan.

Read the Borat book! It's fuuuunnee!

"Captain Paul"

Dumas intended "Captain Paul" to be a sequel to James Fenimore Cooper's "The Pilot"- and it isn't, it merely borrows the name of the historical Paul Jones to craft a complex family melodrama with a bit of nautical action. Of interest: the admiring portrait of American democracy. The French looooved the Americans... How things change. Funny scene: when the ingenue tells her boring-but-rich fiance she loves someone else, the dude is like, "What's love got to do with it? Keep your lover, of course, it's what everyone else does." The plot is a pretzel, though.

Acte

"Acte" is Alexandre Dumas' first proper novel, a romance of the times of Nero that anticipates Sienkiewicz' classic (and now forgotten) "Quo Vadis" as well as the similarly leaden "Last Days of Pompeii" by Bulwer-Lytton. Aside from the historical value for Dumas' fans, (namely, me and three French guys attending the Sorbonne), "Acte" has a few fine picturesque scenes and a strong character in Nero's hermaphroditic slave.

"I'm Not There" Soundtrack

That the soundtrack to Todd Haynes' Bob Dylan bio is heavy on my rotation doesn't surprise you, Dear Imaginary Reader.

It might surprise you, though, that I quite like Cat Power's cover of "Stuck Inside of Mobile (With the Memphis Blues Again.)" While this may very well be the best, hippest collection of Dylan covers ever put together, ('cause I say so, certainly better than Bryan Ferris' recent, painfully unnecessary "Dylanesque"), Dylan's catalogue is so immense that this feels like barely dipping the ladle. So basically you get some awesome people covering some awesome, mostly not over-covered tunes, and some downright rarities! Probably the only exception is Eddie Vedder's routine run through "All Along the Watchtower"- not a dig at Eddie, I think his "Masters of War" cover on the Dylan 30th Anniversary Celebration is one of the best Dylan covers ever.

Big Kim!

Like Peter Kuper's work, Kim Deitch's all but bursts with cartoony weirdness, pyschedelic detail that makes every page worth poring over. "Shadowland", while not as coherent as his magnificent "Boulevard of Broke Dreams", is a nice little ticket to the creepshow, (Deitch admits to the subconcious influence John Wayne Gacy's clown make up had to the look of one of the pivotal characters.)

Robot Chicken Season 1

Stress-reducing hormones are released whenever cultural recollections of your childhood and adolescence are juxtaposed with your heightened understanding of life's terrifying finality.

So it's funny when Snorks are raped.

Stop.Forgetting.To.Remember.

Peter Kuper's book is great. Get it.

Captivity

So, someone saw "Saw" and...

So-so.

I Now Pronounce You F**kin' Boring.

It's okay for "I Know Pronounce You Chuck and Larry" to be the most homophobic, sexist, and racist movie in ages because it has a nice message about how it's funny to be a repugnant fairy. Who else is there left to laugh about? Oh, that's right, gooks.

I hate movies like this, that have their asses covered (no pun intended) with every possible Hollywood-approved demographic, but I would hate them a little less if they were FUNNY. Hey, not that gay men prancing around to "Dancing Queen" aren't hilarious, but, geez, what exactly DO they do when they're not in full diva costume at the White Party? Do they shrivel and disappear until the next wrist-flapping extravaganza? Or do they have to become, like, ACTUAL human beings?
Nah, couldn't be.
Whatever, maybe I'm being mean, maybe the movie does have its heart in the right place- but sadly its head is nowhere to be found.

"Up in Honey's Room"

Man walks into his bedroom carrying a sheep in his arm: "This is the pig I've been sleeping with behind your back!"
The man's wife snorts: "You idiot! That's not a pig, that's a sheep!"
Man: "I wasn't talking to you!"
Oldie but goodie, courtesy of Elmore Leonard's "Up in Honey's Room," which, interestingly enough, is NOT about the current apiary crisis.

Leonard's dialogue is as crisp as ever, still punchy at 97, and Honey Deal is a sexy broad, but this is a go-nowhere farce. Only for fans.

Popeye! Not the Chicken!

*sigh* Popeye is the man.

I sometimes wonder about cartoonists- exactly what kind of 'spinach' was Segar on when he decided that nothing could be more appealing than the love affair between a toothless, pipe-smoking, half blind sailor with elephantiasis and his titless, faithless girlfriend? And damned if it didn't work!

Night Watch

Now here's a series of dream images that obey internal logic and amount to something... That something isn't nearly as impressive and original as it thinks it is, (the world is divided between Light and Dark forces, and they're both sort of gray at the end of the day- DONE), but "Night Watch" is still the closest thing to an appealing blockbuster Russia has ever produced. While here in the States it never became the cultural phenomenon it was over in Europe, "Night Watch" is as compelling as the original "Matrix" and far superior to "Underworld," "Ultraviolet, "Bloodrayne" and such tales of Gothicky sci-fi fighting.
With enough adrenaline to jump past several plot holes and special effects that suggest all that Russian mafia money is being put up to SOME good, I totally recommend this. And what the Fox Searchlight version does with the subtitles is easily the most creative thing I've seen in a translated movie, talking as a captioner. Subtitles fade in and out as the character's voices strenghten or weaken, grow in font size with screams, collide with each other during fights... Clever, and in some ways this is something that every subtitled import should take a page from.
Also, "Nightwatch" has a "Buffy" reference. In Russian. That is cool.

Outlandish

Actors lost in L.A. between reality and fiction and dream and celluloid; women who suddenly turn into other women, and then back into themselves, and them into hats while watching burlesque shows; the austere classical beauty of Laura Dern; random acts of lesbianism; musical interludes; CREEPY SHIT; people talking in made up languages, like Polish.
Aaaah, must be time once again for a movie by David "WTF" Lynch.

I could maybe sort of explain to you what happens in "Inland Empire", a lot of suckers will, but I suspect David Lynch has a hearty laugh anytime someone tries to wrap his multiple plotlines. Lately I feel a lot of movies contain their knowing auto-critique in their dialogue, and when Laura Dern's character(s?) says: "I just can't tell what came before and what came after, so it's laid a mindfuck on me," that says it all. There's the making of a cursed movie in Hollywood, some mysterious murders in Poland, and a TV show/Beckett-ish play with scary bunnies, (scary bunnies are indie rock hackery at this point, so people, stop).Oh and you know those Japanese movies where some ghoulish thing is walking towards the camera from a distance and suddenly there's a sharp cut and they're all up on your face shrieking?!? David Lynch knows them too.
At nearly three hours of barely sensical scares, "Inland Empire" is a patience tester. While the images are (usually) fascinating, they fail to be intriguing. Why? Intrigue evolves towards a resolution, but once you've absorbed the film's aesthetique you understand that no resolution is possible: a character will walk towards a door while scary music plays, open it, and suddenly it's a forest in Poland. Once you learn that you will learn nothing, you can't help but care less. Symbols will be thrown at you, dialogue will recurr, and icky sexy things will happen. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, and at that running time for every indelible image you will get twenty inert, pretentious ones. Genius resides here alongside the ridiculous film school "experiments" "Ghostworld" so deliciously skewered. "Doll. Mirror. Doll. Desire."
Still, very much worth watching. Just not all at once.

The Great American Novel? Eh.

It stands to reason that Philip Roth's "The Great American Novel" is about Moby Dick and baseball and gab. But maybe I'm one of those annoying, easily-offended people behind my grizzled, slur-slinging facade, because frankly I was a little repulsed by the casual, "funny" mysoginism of a book that invariably refers to its female "characters" (such as they are) as slits. "The dumb slit was still around, looking at her slit. What a slit! Clean my cum off your stomach, slit, and get going!" That, and I'm not a baseball fan. So yeah, my least favorite Roth novel (so far).
This is what Philip Roth wishes he was doing on a Friday night:

This is what he's actually doing.

Powers: Who Killed Retro Girl?

Brian Michael Bendis is the bomb; even when "Powers" is only putting you through the paces of a superhero/police procedural, he does it with panache. Have to start reading the rest of this series.

Fair and Balanced on Michael Moore... You're only going to get that sort of thing here, folks.

Just the facts, ma'am.

He's a great filmmaker. He's made a series of movies of consistently high quality. Frankly, I will sound ignorant when I say this, but until I saw "Roger and Me" I didn't realize that a documentary could be important, funny and engaging, and not just something boring about Hitler or the mating habits of seals. Whatever you think about his movies, you will definitely think SOMETHING...But if you're a Republican or resist his basic messages, you won't think anything NICE.

He tried to come across as a huggable bear for a while, still tries, but as he become more successful and was given more of a soap box, it turned out that he was very dislikable. He's a big fat asshole. He probably smells. He makes Kevin Smith look super hot...
He is also a very canny showman.

His movies are funny, moving, and shocking...
And he achieves these effects through editing and manipulation, as has done every other film maker throughout the history of cinema. If you're upset because a movie is edited, then perhaps movies aren't for you. May I recommend gardening?

He has his head up his ass...
And so would you, if you were a deeply divisive personality who only encounters people who worship you or want to crucify you.

"He is not fair and balanced. I like O'Reilly! Now that man tells it like it is!"
Moore doesn't have to be fair and balanced just because he's documenting real events. He's out to make a point and will use the footage that helps him prove his point. If he went like: "I think HMOs are bad. But I guess they can work for you, if you're upper middle class and have a mild disease. So I really don't know." THEN his movies would suck.

He's a bully...
But the left needs bullies too, it can't all be fags and hippies.

He's Un-American...
If by Un-American you mean that he believes that America shouldn't be static, can use fixing, and he looks globally for alternatives and solutions.

He loves Canada. He thinks Canada is the Garden of Eden.
Let me tell you, it's damned cold in Canada. Adam would certainly not be running around naked in Canada, and that whole nonsense with the fig leaf wouldn't have taken place.

For every target that he brings down effectively, he's as liable to shoot himself in the foot. Remember "Bowling for Columbine"? He spends the whole running time talking about how America has a race problem, and when Charlton Heston graciously meets with him and AGREES: "America has a race problem," Moore is like: "Racist! Gotcha!" You know, I pretty much hated Charlton Heston right until that "interview", which made him sympathetic. It's clear that Moore had absolutely no intention of hearing anything Heston had to say. He wanted to somehow make him responsible for Columbine, against all logic, because it was what he needed for his movie. Same damn thing hapenned in "The Big One", (ironically the lesser of his films) when he met that dude from Nike and the guy turned out to super reasonable, charming, and gave him blow for blow. But Moore went ahead with the footage, even if it doesn't work, because he was thinking in cinematic terms, and he needed that antagonist.

Moore IS one of like three people that actually gives a damn about "the common man"...
Unfortunately he cares a lot more about his movie, so he will bring the common man to tears so he can get a good shot.

He makes it really hard to just agree with him. Hell, I agree with his basic points: corporations are evil, guns are evil, HMOs are evil... and I STILL find myself resisting them, because his bias is too persistent and his "just one of the flannel guys" facade is bull.

Believe me, my fellow Republican, I get as frustrated as you... no, MORE frustrated than you... when he mockingly suggests that we've been brainwashed into thinking communism was evil.

Mr. Moore, speaking as someone who was brainwashed into thinking Fidel Castro was God: Fidel Castro sucks ass. Cuba is absolutely not what you show in "Sicko". You wisely didn't go out to Infanta and film the famelic skeletal Cuban man sweating on his bicycle on the way to figuring out what the hell he's going to eat that night. Free health care does no good when Cubans get aspirin for their cancer... Oh, that's right, haha, you went to the hospital for foreigners and Party members with dollars!!! Moron.

Much as he is a commie, he doesn't necessarily want YOU to be a commie. In "Sicko", he goes out of his way to explain how it is possible for health care to be free and STILL make doctors very wealthy. Now, if you're one of the people who feels like: "Why should *I* pay so that a lazy Negro can live off the fat of the land with his fancy welfare check, eating all those watermelons?"
Among many great reasons: so that God doesn't spit in your eye at the end of the day.

To conclude: Michael Moore is a necessary evil. A very good film maker. A funny guy. And an asshole. But I would still take him over any of the assholes at Fox News.

I also think universal Health Care is viable, that it's an embarrassment that the greatest nation in the world doesn't have it, and it's ridiculous to think that from being healthy there's a slippery slope to calling each other "Tovarich."
You know what? If all those billions we spend killing people overseas were spent in healing people here, we would have a stronger, happier, more terrorism-resistant country. 'Cause if you're worrying how the hell you'll come up with $80,000 to pay for your appendicitis, the terrorists have already won.

Turn, turn, turn...away...

"The Wheel of Darkness" by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. No one expects hi-lit from these two.

It's "Silence of the Lambs." Mixed in with Agatha Christie. Mixed in with Dan Brown. And onboard "The Poseidon Adventure". And as messy as that suggests, and way too long for these sort of things. Brevity is the essence of thrills.

And her name was Veronica...

Horse sense says that the third season of "Veronica Mars" marked a steady decline on quality as the show jumped networks, shed more of its tiny audience, lost the season-long arcs, the storylines got repetitive...
All I have to say is: America, are you on DRUGS?!?
Look at that pretty little face!!! How can you not want THIS on your TV week after week?!? The best-scripted girlfriend in the world.

I'm not going to say there wasn't some desperate "we're getting cancelled" vibe towards the end, some wear and tear, but realize that a bad Veronica Mars episode is still better than the best CSI episode ever, if there had ever been a good CSI episode. The good: While the plots were a little simplified, the wit was not. Veronica? Hotter and hotter! The bad: The whole Piz-Logan thing was a little ill-considered. Wallace was even more useless than usual, but when they practically shipped him off to do who knows what in Uganda (apparently, get killed), it was random. Keith had more of his weird-face situations, (botox? drugs?), but he had nothing on Weevil. What the hell hapenned to Weevil? His face is, like, all messed up. It looks like what would happen to a respected PCH gang member if he was caught coming out of a midnight screening of "Trans-porners: No Nuts in These Guys."
But none of this was anywhere near the frustration I felt when Disc 5 of the DVD ended, and I was like: "Oh, shit! Keith is in trouble! Next!" Only to turn to Disc 6 and realize it was Bonus Features! No NEXT! How I cried!

How could this happen? You people are butchers! Meanwhile, "Seventh Heaven" is in its 17th year.

The "Across the Universe" Soundtrack, or Why Most Music Criticism Makes Me Laugh

T-Bone produced about half the tracks on the soundtrack to "Across the Universe", sharing credits with Elliot Goldenthal. If you hapenned to be in the vicinity at the time, you heard me bitch and moan about buying the 1-CD version, taking it home, and discovering that it missed ALL THE GOOD SONGS FROM THE MOVIE, or the ones I wanted to hear at that particular time. (No "With a Little Help from my Friends"? No "I Want You/She's So Heavy"? No excuses!) Anyway...

"Why Most Music Criticism Makes Me Laugh"
Which of the statements below is accurate?

ACTU is a vigorous reinvention of the Beatles legacy...
ACTU filters the cornerstone of rock music through the hysterical sensibilities of a drama queen...
Evan Rachel Wood's voice comes across as even thinner and more risible in the intimacy of your CD player...
Evan Rachel Wood's voice is even more touching and human in the intimacy of your CD player...
All Beatles covers ever should be punishable by law and make Baby John Lennon cry. Except Joe Cocker's. Boy, I miss the Wonder Years... (Courtesy of Megh)
The covers in ACTU all have a wonderful consistence as they seem to co-exist in the same universe, except for Joe Cocker's cover, which is too eccentric and seems to come out of nowhere...
The covers in ACTU while uniformly competent never truly acquire a life of their own, except for Joe Cocker's powerful reimagining of "Come Together"...
Is there any kind of possible audience for this drivel? Who isn't overly familiar with the Beatles?
Now here is music that never grows old or familiar, and through the ACTU soundtrack will reach a whole new audience...
The Beatles wrote the definitive Beatles songs, and only hubris would make anyone want to expand upon them...
The Beatles catalogue is endlessly inviting, ripe for reimaigining and exploration...
The Beatles were gods. Even Ringo.
And of course:

Paul Rudd, trying to get a rise out of Keith Mars in the best murdered show ever:
"The Beatles? Pbbt. They suck. That's not rock and roll."
Keith (blowing a gasket): "What?! Revolution. Helter Skelter. Blackbird. How is this not rock and roll?"
Paul: "Please, they were maybe 'tunesmiths'"
Keith (about to commit murder)
Paul: "Oh, wait, the Beatles? John, Paul, George and that drummer? Oh, them I like. I thought you were talking about some other Beatles."

T-Bone!

Go to your CD stash, pick something at random, and there's a healthy chance T-Bone Burnett gave it some magic at some point. He's always producing this and that, popping up to work with Dylan, Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen, The White Stripes, Ms. Krauss, whomever. If Jesus put out a twangy record, you know T-Bone would produce. But I hadn't actually HEARD much from the dude himself, which is why "Twenty-Twenty: The Essential T-Bone Burnett" is a sublime instant collection of classics which I've been mining for riches for a month or two, and still haven't exhausted.

The production is varied and always exciting, but it's clear why Mr. Burnett never made the charts on his own: his voice, while adequate, is not all that exciting, he's Roy Orbison with a three-pack-a-day habit, or a less soulful Shawn Mullins, (eeww- I'll never hear the mid-90s hit "Lullaby" again without being very aware that it rips off "Fatally Beautiful"). Sometimes T-Bone lacks inflection when it's needed, and it's a little maddening. Take the otherwise amazing "Primitives", with its lapidary admonition:
"The frightening thing is not dying/
The frightening thing is not living."
Now, you know what he means, and I know what he means, but the way it's sung, a pattern-seeking brain can't help but react like:
"So what IS the frightening thing? Oh, RIGHT." This is sloppy in such a talented writer, and it could be fixed in one of two super-simple ways. Thus:
"The frightening thing is not dying/
The frightening thing is (micro-pause) not living."
OR:
"The frightening thing isn't dying/
The frightening thing is not living."
The parallelism has to be broken subtly for the song to hit hard. I would think he was being obscure or difficult, except that the sentiment is too familiar for that.
Ok, "Songwriting 101" is over, get the hell out of my classroom.

Ratatouille

Pixar does no wrong. If Pixar came in with big Nazi boots and kicked me in the groin, I would be like: "You are so right, Pixar, I don't need no children. Oh, and what beautifully rendered boots!"

Ah, "Ratatouille". Leave it to someone like Brad Bird to turn a funny story about rats in the kitchen into a meditation on a) art, b) the senses, c) the nature and origin of inspiration and d) most touchingly, a real explanation of why all those snobby critics that you hate actually serve a very necessary role- for every Uwe Boll they bury in sarcasm, there's someone else they champion against popular opinion, someone the world is not quite ready for... but will be in a few. They are "the defenders of the new."
Yeah, I bet you didn't get an essay about criticism from "Shrek the 3rd."

Less Bots, More Boobs

You don't judge books by their covers, but sometimes the covers are so pretty that you can endure mind-strangling conversations about fluctuating weight, Brazilian waxes, and the extremely important juxtaposition of Capricorn on Venus, and just when tears come to your eyes, you notice her cleavage and you blink and try to pay attention to her. Wait, what was I talking about? Books, covers, cleavage.
Actually, I was talking about fantasy/ sci fi artwork, and how those thrilling images usually beat the pants out of the arid, samey interior descriptions of life in some place called Piddle Earth where everyone appreciates their Celtic/Elven heritage and no name is complete without an apostrophe.

The annual Spectrum collections are always treats to the eyes, but in so far as I can distinguish a pattern in artistic trends this year, it seems to be bare breasts. Fantasy art has always had a lot of Royos and Vallejos selling "erotica" to Heavy Metal, but this year there was almost an excess of nippleage. The nude is the bread and butter of most artists, and I don't complain, but... I miss the fighting robots sometimes.
For instance:

Sweeeeet

So Sweet are, like, these totally forgotten teenybopper glam-rockers who had a bunch of hits (you'll recall "Ballroom Blitz", which for ages I thought was a T-Rex song, or "Love is Like Oxygen"). Horrible bandname, custom made for a stoner-Abbot-and-Costello routine:
"This band is sweet! What's their name?"
"Sweet."
"Yeah, dude, yeah, but what's their name?"
"Sweet."
"I know they're sweet, but what's their name?"
"That's their name."
"The That's?"
"No, swee- look, dude, you're ruining my buzz."
Their Greatest Hits is a solid collection of Queen-hysterics, "Jean Genie"-ish riffs, and a load of "Wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am" triumphant anthems. Also, it's on heavy rotation in my head. Also, Google Images' idea of "sweet" is radically different from mine. Yeah, I give up on the quest, let's pretend this is an image of the band "Sweet".

Oooh, a Find!

You go to Blockbuster and some movie cases defy you with their shittiness. "Murder Party" certainly does.

But what a surprising Halloween horror gem! Quirky, intriguing, with a gorehound humor that still respects pace and character development, and with all sorts of Broolyn references that made me nostalgic. G-Train 4evah, beeatches!

The Mythical Jackie-C, or Hong Kong meets Bollywood.

Jackie Chan and I have had a well-documented love affair. Long before he was a semi-household name I was jabberin' on about how he turned action set-pieces into balletic works of art. The difference between Hong Kong action films and American ones is one of intense physicality, and Jackie managed to be the world's most lovable ass-kicking machine. Jackie works because there's no faking: he's a genuinely sweet guy that could cave your skull in within 2 seconds of meeting you.
There is another difference in Hong Kong movies, one that separates the uninitiated from the fans. Hong Kong movies aren't about THINKING or about DIALOGUE or about PLOTS. If you're not willing to accept that, you'll be baffled. When Jackie Chan comes up with a movie, it works like this:
JACKIE: "I had this dream. We should have this stunt where I jump from an elephant to a helicopter. Also, I want a fight where I am dressed as a milkman, and I am throwing milk bottles around. Also, I want to fly a speedboat from one skyscraper to another."
WRITER: "But Jackie, we need a REASON for all these things to be happening!"
JACKIE: "inspired* SMUGGLERS!

The global successful movie hierarchy pretty much goes: Hollywood, Bollywood, Hong Kong, Japanese Anime, French movies, Mexican, then assorted crap. Jackie Chan's "The Myth" gives a nod to Bollywood with the appearance of Mallika Sherawat, who some of you remember from... Oh, let's face it, people who read my blog probably feel as inclined to watch Hindu musicals in the same way they follow Sudanese drag racing. But she's a big deal, and when Jackie Chan's character, conveniently called Jackie AGAIN, shows up in Indian shores in the middle of a big historical epic about Chinese armies, it makes no sense whatsoever, but again, if you were looking for sense you were misguided. Instead, check out the brilliant action scenes. At his age, Jackie is telephoning his role, but you know, how many people can telephone throwing themselves off a cliff? "The Myth" is a good "Crouching Tiger"-like movie with ten times the budget that the American DVD cover suggests.