Completely Mute Acknowledgments- and then Lotsa Ranting!

"Thor"
"Made in Dagenham"
"Workaholics"
"Peep Show"
"Love and Other Drugs"
Orwell's "Why I Write"
Naoki Urasawa's "20th Century Boys" (halfway through) and "Monster"(halfway through)



AND since it IS the 70th Birthday of my man Bobby D, I just had to rant about Time Maqazine's "tribute" to Dylan's "10 best and worst songs of ALL TIME."

WARNING: Dear Imaginary Readers who aren't into Dylan will find the following incomprehensible, long and boring. (Although that's probably also true for DIR who ARE into Dylan.)

Any such list is tricky, specially when dealing with the only singer-songwriter I am aware of that could merit a "100 best songs" list. "Ten best" just means "ten most famous." My problem here is not the selection: it's that it seems written by Wikipedia-cribbing teenage interns, and not informed music writers. (Hey, people are mean to my reviews, I'm mean to other people's reviews! Just doing my best to keep Karma flowing in a balanced universe!)

The whole list had a really off-putting vibe: "This Dylan guy was some wonder hippie whose songs were, like, weird, man, about, like, revolution and tripping and stuff." That reached a point of inspired stupidity in the blurb about "Subterranean Homesick Blues," which goes something like:

The lyrics to "Subterranean Homesick Blues" don't make much sense! A 'man in a coonskin cap'? A 'girl by the whirlpool'?"

That's so craaaazy! WhatEVER could that Dylan KOOK be talking about?

Ok. First of all, this is what a man in a coonskin cap is:



Is it really that hard to get? The song context makes it pretty clear that the man in a coonskin cap is just some shady drug dealer waiting down an alley. Hold the magical decoder ring.

As for the bizarre, esoteric imagery of the words "girl by a whirlpool" (who's looking for a new fool, if you'll recall)... let me help elucidate the mystery for the no doubt highly paid, educated scribe working for Time Magazine.

First, this is a girl:



And this is a whirlpool:



You put them together using your mighty powerful ImAgeeeenaSHUN and you might get something like this:



Or, more to the point, like this:



Dylan's just warning us about a chick looking for a naive kid to sucker in. If you're really going to stop in admiring confusion at the overpowering weirdness of "a girl by a whirlpool," I just don't think you should be reviewing things for a national audience. Keep a crappy blog instead, like I do! SURE, some Dylan freak might tell you that the line is ACTUALLY about how Dylan screwed Suze Rotolo on top of a Whirlpool washing machine on May 12, 1962, but those people are really scary. Let's keep things simple.

Girl.

Whirlpool.

Easy. It's pretty much there just because "Whirl" rhymes with "Girl." The line could as easily have gone "Girl with the pearl ring/ is looking for a new thing" and we would have Internet arguments about Vermeer's influence on Dylan.



---

Other songs in this yawner of a list include:

'Not Dark Yet'
'I Want You'
'Desolation Row'
'Tangled Up in Blue'
'Don't Think Twice, It's All Right'
'Blind Willie McTell'
'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue'
'Subterranean Homesick Blues'
'The Times They Are A-Changin''
'Like a Rolling Stone'

It can't really be argued with, although I never felt much for "The Times They Are A-Changin'" and would gladly see it traded for "Blowin' in the Wind" or "All Along the Watchtower" or "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" which we can all safely assume were 11, 12 and 13 in order of predictability.

---

Now, the "10 Worst Songs" are where things get troublesome, because that's a potentially interesting conversation.

"Potentially."

This is the list:

'All the Tired Horses'
'Sarah Jane'
'Street Rock'
'Ninety Miles an Hour (Down a Dead End Street)'
'We Are the World'
'Tight Connection to My Heart'
'They Killed Him'
'Forever Young'
'Wiggle Wiggle'
'Rainy Day Women #12 & 35'

-First let's do the ones that don't count:

Did you know that "We Are the World" is one of Dylan's 10 worst songs? I guess I'd never though of it THAT way. It's also one of Paul Simon's, Latoya Jackson's, and Dan Aykroyd's 10 worst songs, I suppose. DOESN'T COUNT (Also, are critics really such incredibly monstrous snobs that they feel an artist has 'no excuse' for participating in a 'corny song' that raised a hell of a lot of money for people in need? If someone tells me that they want me to sing a song that will save lives, I don't give a fuck if it's called "Fart Across My Heart." I would do it! NOT doing it, THAT would have been inexcusable.)


ABOVE: Dylan is somewhere in this picture, but it's aaaaaall his fault.

"Street Rock"? A 10-second cameo on a Kurtis Blow rap-song? Doesn't count.

"All The Tired Horses"? A deliberately hypnotic repetition of a couplet, and sung by a women's chorus even? Doesn't count- and it's actually an interesting piece of music.

-Now let's do the ones that are actually REALLY GOOD SONGS:

"Forever Young"? Hmmm, it's powerful, moving, feels like a timeless blessing, and it's so good that when Rod Stewart ripped it off shamelessly, it still came across as a decent song?

"Rainy Day Women #12 and 35"? Also kind of a classic hit? A groundbreaking, one of a kind subversive joke. Yes, it becomes slight with repetition (like many a Beatles "experiment" of the day) but the critic questions, of all things, its placing as the opener track, suggesting Dylan was "not sober" when choosing the listing. The song is PERFECT as the opener track, welcoming you into a druggy, visionary, irreverent carnival. Anywhere else (second, third)- THEN it would have been the song that angers you and stops things from flowing. Similarly, "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands"- which the critic pays lip service to- ONLY works as the ENDING track, after you're sufficiently prepared for it. If its 11 minutes and 23 seconds had opened "Blonde on Blonde"... well, the whole thing might have a few less fans. Again: what's galling about the critic's comments about drunken track listings is that "BoB" is THE perfectly sequenced album, one of the pioneers of the now imperiled idea that the order in which you heard a collection of songs actually mattered.

"Wiggle Wiggle"? This song isn't bad at all, it's just deliberately silly and humorous. One guesses the critic never took much pleasure on Mother Goose.

"Tight Connection to My Heart"? This one I actually like a lot. Yes, there's that '80s production, and Bob is almost always wrong in the idea that a women's choir helps his songs, but the song itself? Lyrics and structure? Perfectly good.

- That leaves us with three actual bad songs in this list: "Sarah Jane," "Ninety Miles an Hour," and "They Killed Him." But one has to quibble with the last choice. "They Killed Him" doesn't suck because it has a children's choir. That's a convenient evasion of the truth. There IS a cloying children's choir, but it's what the kids are saying that's a little problematic, and shows Bob's Christianity to be, well, childish. Things start well enough, but once it jumps from the secular to the gospel, it feels like we're being accosted by a preacher who totally plans to get around to reading the Bible one of these days. We hear the deeds of three great men, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jesus- And the bastards had to kill them. A secular connection makes absolute sense, but Bob is not secular here: he's property of Jesus, and he blends the three stories, to THIS unfortunate effect:

"There was a man called Mahatma Gandhi who was the only Son of Jesus Christ! And there was another one, Martin Luther King, Jr. but he wasn't as good as the son of the Almighty King, because that one was Jesus, and these three men are the same thing, but not the same, and my God, they killed him! Screw this song, I'll let a bunch of little kids finish it for me."

THAT said, if you have one of those bumper sticker that says "Real Men Love Jesus On Their Knees," this song might even make you cry, so I don't think it honestly belongs on this list either. (EDIT: AND I'm told it's actually a Kris Kristofferson song, so this one also DOESN'T COUNT. Kristofferson's take doesn't have the confusing, blending "MLK-is-Jesus-is-Ghandi" chorus. That doesn't really turn it into a good song, but at least it makes its pieties less accidentally blasphemous.)

Has Dylan REALLY only written two or three bad songs? Out of some alleged 500? That can't be right. Informed, alternative lists of Dylan's ten shit songs would be welcome!

Not-So-Mute Acknowledgments

Dear Imaginary Reader:
It will surprise no one that someone named Hansel was frequently called "Han Solo" in high school, (which is about the coolest thing you can be called in the way of an insult.) So to hear Alison Brie say that name (in the "Star Wars"-themed season 2 finale for "Community") makes me melt like cheese on a hot grill. Have I mentioned how much I love Brie and "Community"?






And now that "Community" has redeemed Chevy Chase, it's probably cool to say how much I also love the "You Can Call Me Al" video with Chevy and Paul Simon. Feel what you must about little bald Simon, but I don't understand if that song- and pretty much all of "Graceland"- doesn't make you much happier, and slightly sadder, about life. Paul Simon has been much on replay 'round these parts.



Chevy Chase and Paul Simon were there for the few good seasons of "Saturday Night Live"- the ones that actually matched cultural importance with laughs. Simon was reunited with Art Garfunkel in the very second episode of "SNL" ("Are you done with the movie thing?" he wryly asks of his once-partner.) I've been watching these classic seasons, and the big surprise is that their jokes remain more approachable than the ones from the '90s SNL, which is a parade of befuddled groans and Buttafuoco jokes. I hope you needed to Google that reference.)








MOVIES:



My problem with Angelina Jolie is that she knows she's a fine, fine woman. So she's like a queenly wall of concrete. At least Julia Roberts (the only contemporary woman who's shared her cinematic strata) manages to show some vulnerability: "I'm such a goddess... I wonder if that alienates guys? Will someone dare to love me?" That's Julia. That's not Angelina. Brad Pitt is pretty much the only mortal made to be with her, and one can't even believe they love each other: It's more like they allow their respective coolnesses to co-exist happily. This is why Angelina has never once made a convincing love interest (what cocky asshole would think himself worthy?) and this is why her movies are best when she's some sort of cold superhero. Two recent throw-back spy flicks put her in just that role. "Salt" is successful because it plays to Angelina's automaton strength: we BELIEVE her as a relentlessly sexy killing machine. The other movie, "The Tourist," should have been just as successful- another spy thriller drawing from Ian Fleming cliches, and starring the great Johnny Depp- but it is a depressingly slow movie, a Hitchcock "wrong man" thriller on downers. Audiences from the '30s would have snapped their fingers and pleaded for the thing to speed up already.




BOOKS:

38-year old Joe Hill's novel, "Horns," is not as good as what his famous progenitor was engendering at that age, but it IS good enough that I shouldn't have to mention his famous progenitor at all. Darned reviewing trap. It's just come out on paperback, and it is a clever horror novel that features neither vampires nor zombies- and that should make any reader rejoice if they're sick of today's unimaginatively stale atmosphere.

About 1500 pages in I've given up on Proust, at least this go 'round. At some point I may take up from volume 3, and I will need no guiding recap, because, of course, not much has happened. Obviously "what happens" doesn't matter: Proust is not about what happens, but about how he experiences things that barely count as "happenings." Still, this far in one has absorbed the aesthetic fully, and not finding the substance all that imposing, the reader is left idle. Once you "get" how Proust observes things (and whatever winding length his sentences may be, his observations are not all that unusual) you don't know WHY you should continue. "In Search of Lost Time" reads doubly slow because one is redacting a parallel novel of one's own: "Is that how Marcel reacts to insomnia? Well, WE react like SO!" I might be more impressed if the work had felt more alien. It is, of course, a triumph in the sense that it makes the reader aware of his or her own life's seemingly unending novel. Alain de Botton's "How Proust Can Change Your Life" is a fun, fun breviary, but of all the self-help points it makes, I can't help but pick on one, as a warning, and it regards that helpless gap between an author's wisdom-
and an author's reality.



Replying to a newspaper's questionnaire about what one should do when notified of the world's imminent end, Proust makes an encouraging plea to carpe the damn diem: He exhorts the reader, so confronted with death

a)to visit the new galleries of the Louvre,
b)to visit India,
c)to throw himself at the feet of Miss X!

Inspiring stuff!
Live!

BUT
a) Although Proust liked painting well enough, he was never much of a museum goer himself. So this was bull.
b) Visit India?!? Eeew, with the mosquitoes and the dust? Proust was NOT an outdoorsman, he spent half his life gleefully in bed, having massive asthma attacks if he had to do anything more strenuous than lift a tea cup. A passage to India was NOT his idea of fun.
c) As everyone knows, and Alain de Botton subtly points out, Proust had never been particularly interested in Miss X. Or Miss A through Z, for that matter.

How big is the gap between the things an author espouses, and the truth the clay lives?

I am reminded of the less critically-favored writer of an equally influential, unreadably long novel: Ayn Rand.



Now, Rand maddens me on a personal level. There are few people who can disgust me so much while basically spousing my own ideas. When she quotes Pascal: "I would prefer an intelligent Hell to a Stupid Paradise," isn't that what I always say? So why does Rand bother me? She saw Communism, (like me), said "Hell, No," (like me)... and then went repulsively far in the OTHER direction. Hitler would have quivered before her: "But surely, there is SOME use for the unwashed masses? Knitting our uniforms, perhaps?" "They're parasites," Rand would have said sternly. "To the ovens with them!"
(The unwashed masses, of course, love her books, because when you are an unwashed mass the last thing you do is stop to smell your own rags.)
But the framer of rational, selfish, objective realism crashed against, of all things, reality. Her much-younger lover turned against her, falling instead for a younger girl. Selfish objectivity at its purest. The cute young girl won.
It turns out, a philosopher can light all sorts of candles to selfishness, and all they praise is their OWN selfishness. When OTHERS start practicing their own objective selfishness, that kind of SUCKS. Rand lost all her rational cool, and never really recovered from her emotional loss. "You selfish asshole," one can imagine her saying, to her own surprise.
I can't say that selfishness is not a fine policy; all I'm saying is that those on the bad end of that stick end up not liking it all that much, and that there's always a long distance between what we WRITE and what we actually LIVE.
The young do not always know that.

When I go like :-) I may actually be like :-(

Proust put it this way: "There may be writers who are better than their books, but only if those aren't REAL books."

Forget the feeble Flesh- there aren't many inspiring lessons there. Stick to the Word.

CRITERION MOVIES

Gus Van Sant's "Mala Noche"- I've said that I'm not a big Gus Van Sant fan. "Mala Noche," his debut, isn't helping. It is unapologetically GAY, so it left me thinking: Do gay viewers, watching a "straight" romance, feel as isolated as I did watching this movie? Because, wow, that sucks immensely for them! But then I realized: I don't feel disgusted by the romance between 30's Walt and the teenaged Mexican drifter he fixates on because Walt is GAY! I feel disgusted because Walt is like: "Hey, I've got 15 bucks! Can I buy your Mexican ass because I love you, comprende, esse?" "Mala Noche" wasn't gay! It was RACIST!

Pier Paolo Passolini's "Mamma Roma"- An amazing movie. "Mamma Roma" highlights how badly acted "La Commare Secca" was. It's the exact same milieu- thieves and prostitutes right outside Rome, sets could be shared- but this is a much more fascinating movie, centered on Anna Magnani and her unforgettable performance, and you should GO WATCH NOW, because this movie is tainted only by an unsubtly horrifying ending.



Remy Belvaux and Andre Bonzel's "Man Bites Dog"- You've probably seen this faux verite documentary, about a serial killer (Benoit Poelvoorde, who did a voice in "A Town Called Panic"). Like "Funny Games," it's about the complicity between the action in a movie, the filmmakers, and the audience. It is shocking. It is also very, very funny, which is not a nice thing to admit to. The serial killer, "Ben," is as likable as he is repulsive, charming and eloquent in his own way, and you will find yourself laughing right before the disturbing murder of a little boy and then right after.



Some of the questions "Man Bites Dog" raises are familiar: "are we tolerating murder by enjoying violent movies?" but some, about reality television, are very, very insidious indeed, and almost visionary. A film=maker is a participant, the movie makes THAT obvious. But is it his/her job to interfere? Do we all agree that they should stop a murder? How about a theft? A minor theft? Should the filmmaker stop Snooki from saying stupid things? Where exactly IS the moral line for the person behind the camera. Another GO WATCH NOW, if you've ever felt that Dexter put you weirdly close to the killing line.

CHAPTER 137: WHAT'S UP, DOC?

Gilbert runs off...
...to find help for Andree.
He finds it nearby in the shape of two convenient assistant gardeners, who, following Monsieur Jussieu's orders, lift the young woman's body between them and aim toward her room. Gilbert follows at a distance with a hang-dog look of guilt. Once in the room, this mournful party is greeted by the Baron de Taverney, who had anticipated Andree's eventual return, although not with this much of an entourage.
"Tarnation and fizzlesticks! What's she got now?"
"It's nothing," Andree herself answers, opening her eyes as the assistant gardeners deposit her in her bed.
Jussieu bows before Taverney: "This is your daughter, I presume? Then I leave her in good hands, but get her to a doctor soon."
Taverney snorts: "A doctor? I'm a Baron, not a millionaire!"
"I'll be fine, father," Andree says from the bed, waving Jussieu and the gardeners away- Gilbert hasn't dared enter the lodging, but since there is an open window here, he's bound to be listening under it from the outside.
Oh, never mind: As soon as the helpers are gone, the Baron de Taverney slams the window shut.
Andree makes an attempt to stand up: "Father, please, open the window, this room is stuffy enough as it is."
"I'm closing the window because we're going to be talking business and I don't want anyone to spy on us. This place is like a giant ear."
Andree slams one hand down on the bed: "We won't be talking about anything unless you open the window."
The Baron opens the window with much cussing. There! Anyone can spy under it, if they feel so inclined.
The Baron recommences: "Anyway, the business at hand concerns the stuffiness of this room. Why haven't you moved on to a better place? Why is it that the King, who not too long ago seemed extremely interested in helping us- helping you- is letting you rot here? I mean, I understand this is fine for servants, but you..."
"What am I? If not a servant?"
"You could have been more! That's what I'm getting at! Isn't the King your friend?"
Andree closes her eyes, as if her pain had been renewed: "Why would the King be my friend? He's barely noticed me."
"Barely noticed you! And whose fault would that be, if not yours? You dress like a nun, one of the shy nuns that all the other nuns make fun of."
Andree groans: "That's not really true, is it, father? Besides, what more could you want from the King?"
The Baron looms over his daughter's bed-ridden shape: "I want... I want for you to try HARDER to get the King to notice you. I want you to do... whatever you need to do... to help our family. That's your brother and me. Am I being clear with 'whatever you need to do'? Should I provide you with instruction manuals?"
If Andree wasn't feeling sick, the Baron might have gotten mightily slapped there; instead she dedicates him a look of sheer disgust, and he in turn snaps:
"This game is galling and it has gone too far! Don't you think I know everything that happened between you and the King?"
"Absolutely nothing has happened between the King and I, so I don't understand your meaning."
"Stop it with the good girl act! Is that your plan, leaving your family in the dark? I am only saying that, when one grabs a tiger by the tail, one jerks that tail until the tiger changes its stripes!"
"Now I understand your meaning even less."
"I'm trying to advice you, you little dimwit. Next time you're with the King, you have to mention that your brother Philip still hasn't gotten his commission, that you need to move to a much better place, and that your dear father could use a little bit of walking around money. That is all."
"Next time I'm with the King? When would I be with the King?"
"Next time he comes to be with you, like that night when..!"
But the Baron's exclamation, which would have clarified much for Andree, will have to wait, because none other than Marie Antoinette is peeking through the door: "May I come in?"
Her Highness enters, followed by a tall man dressed in a most doctorial manner and tapping a cane against the floor.



"May I introduce Doctor Louis?" says Marie Antoinette to the astonished Taverneys. "I simply couldn't let my favorite reader die from smallpox or elephantiasis or whatever it is you have, so I brought my own doctor!"
"Your Highness, this is such an immense honor," Andree means it, she's practically sniffling. "That you would care so much as to come here... But I promise you, it's just a headache."
Doctor Louis rolls his eyes: "Why don't we let the diagnosis to people who actually went to medical school?" He uses his cane to move the Baron into a corner and his gaze quickly covers the small apartment: "I'm surprised you haven't simply turned into a giant spore! Your maid must have deserted you, leaving you prey to animalcules!"
"Animal what? Where?" Andree quickly looks under her bed, and the effort makes her head swim.
Doctor Louis sighs: "Never mind, they're visible only under Leeuwenhoek's microscope. But I can sense them. This place is crawling with the lot. Clean this soon!"
Marie Antoinette, used to the doctor's dictatorial manner manner, smiles shyly: "More to my shame, who keep my dear Andree in these conditions."
To her father's dismay, Andree hurriedly says: "Oh no, this room is lovely!"
Doctor Louis says: "I suppose it's a fine room," he points with his cane to the door and asks of Marie Antoinette: "Shall we go now?"
"But doctor, what about the sick girl?"
Doctor Louis rolls his eyes again: "What about her? Let me waste everyone's time by listing the symptoms: dizziness; occasional fainting; the sudden need to throw up; disgust and/or obsession with food."
Andree gasps: "That's it! That's exactly it, how did you know?"
"I have been blessed by the Lord with two functional eyes on my face," says Doctor Louis. "And now, if you'll excuse me, there are animalcules I'll rather spend my time with."
Marie Antoinette stands in his way: "Then you already know the sickness?"
"Oh, yes, it is a tragic, grotesque, unfortunate disease. It will be as if a hideous monster possesses her body and begins to eat her from the inside out, a ravenous creature that will make her swell up in an unsightly manner, until she's barely recognizable."
Marie Antoinette gasps: "Poor thing!"
Andree begins to weep in horror: "Why, why, why me?"
"That's not the bad part," the doctor goes on. "The really disgusting part is when the creature pretty much explodes out of her body through her most private of body parts."
Andree faints.
Marie Antoinette wrings her hands: "This is terrifying! And can nothing be done?"
The doctor shrugs: "Not a thing. I give her seven months."
"Until she dies?"
"Dies? NO! Until she's perfectly fine again."
Marie Antoinette is like: "Oh? Oh. OH!!!"
Doctor Louis: "Exactly. And now that my evening was wasted on the obvious, can I actually go contribute to medicine?"

Semi-Mute Acknoledgments

Dear Imaginary Reader:
Personal reasons have made posting spotty, (a situation which may last through May). But here are the many many bird-like items that have been winging against the clean windows of our offices since the last post.

---MOVIES

From the CRITERION COLLECTION:
"Le Plaisir," "La Ronde," and "Lola Montes": Three amazing films by Max Ophuls that have turned him into a favorite director of mine, and which have turned Danielle Darrieux into a "MY GOD THIS WOMAN" inductee:



Those arched eyebrows painted into bemusement! She was always more of a starlet than a star, but she still acts, well into her 90s. The French Betty White?






"Madadayo"- Akira Kurosawa's last film, reminiscent of "Ikiru." Slow and meditative but very moving.





Jacques Tati's "M. Hulot's Holiday"- Few movies are as relaxing or re-watchable as this one.






--- MORE MOVIES

"Fair Game"- Doug Liman's important, tense movie, with great acting by Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. Some people will feel they've heard all they want to hear about Valerie Plame, other people didn't even want to think about it in the first place, but they should show this along with "All the President's Men" in civic classes.

"Somewhere"- Sofia Coppola is once again observing those annoyed and bored by their own privilege, this time in Hollywood. This movie has some rewards for the patient, and people willing to sympathize with "poor me" celebrities. Too many scenes do go from: "this is an interestingly long take" to "this is kinda artistic" to "ok, we get it, it's a loooong take and you're being artsy" to "I'm walking out, this is bullshit."






---MUSIC

Radiohead's "King of Limbs": No giant leap forward, but they're in a good place to trot statically.

The Kinks' "Picture Book": Forget how the saying goes. The most blissful thing about ignorance is that it allows for discovery. I knew practically nothing about the Kinks aside from the obvious hits, so this box set was a giant joy for me, like getting six brand new CDs from the Beatles or the Stones.



The Pains of Being Pure at Heart (eponymous and "Belong"): They're just like a honeyed Jesus and Mary Chain, but the Jesus and Mary Chain would probably kick their candy asses.










---BOOKS
"The White Wolf"- Paul Feval
"An Object of Beauty"- Steve Martin
"The Naked Face"- Sidney Sheldon
"Collected Poems"- W.H. Auden
"The Autobiography of Mark Twain"- (Attempted only, unfinished, and likely to remain that way. This is the kind of book people buy to bludgeon intruders. Sorry, purported Volumes 2 and 3.)





---TV

Heavily re-watching "Arrested Development," enjoying the unjustly underrated "Raising Hope," working on "Fringe" season 2, and finished the magnificence that is "BOARDWALK EMPIRE." The pilot alone was Martin Scorcese's best movie since "Goodfellas," and it just kept getting better and better from there. Added goodness: I finally understand what "Monopoly" was all about. Go Jimmy! Go Nucky!


Boardwalk Empire



... And I'm sure there's other stuff I've forgotten since. Also, I have no idea why this post came out all avant-garde and funky- but I kinda like it!