Crammit Hall

Foie Gras and the real world.

2009-05-09T16:24:00.002-04:00

As I've said before, I'm an atheist, and pretty firm about it. But something that bothers, even embarrasses me, is the spectacle of protests and legal challenges against the smallest display of religiosity - the use of the word "god" in public proceedings, etc. Part of what sticks in my craw is the meaninglessness of it - honestly, I don't see how anyone is put out or feels like they're getting their rights trampled - and how that triviality discredits opposition to serious instances of religious intrusion into public life. The other problem is that it's not honest. The sort of person who's going to pick a fight over a line in a national anthem making reference to a belief that 90% of the world holds to some degree or another is the sort of person who's mostly pissed about being part of that last tenth. And what they probably want is not just for that display to be taken down, or the words to not be sung, but for everybody else to start being atheist too. (Personally, I don't give a rat's ass what the rest of y'all think. I also don't care that everybody else seems to think AC/DC aren't the worst band in the world, so long as they don't force me to listen to their weak shit.)

And here's where we say hello to one of the most delicious foodstuffs I have ever consumed: foie gras*. If you don't know, it is goose (or sometimes duck) liver with an insane amount fat in it; the flavour is similar to sweetbread drowning in butter - it is an astonishing thing to eat. It is also, unsurprisingly, fantastically unhealthy and not at all cheap. In the four years since I first tried foie (as part of the incredible tasting menu at Beckta), I have had it about three or four more times, and even that feels a little excessive.

All that flavour does not come without another cost, of course. The process of creating the fat-riddled liver involves force-feeding the fowl for the last two weeks or so before slaughter. There is a natural gorging stage in the life of migratory geese, where the birds will voluntarily over-eat to similar (although less extreme) effect. (An 'ethical' version of foie gras is produced by slaughtering birds at this stage, although it is by necessity a seasonal thing.) Most production of foie is done by gavage, or deliberate force-feeding of corn and, naturally, this is considered by some to be unacceptably cruel.

A number of bans of foie gras production have been enacted - in parts of the EU, Turkey, Israel, and California (although it doesn't take effect for another three years) - although these have little effect, since the vast majority of it is produced in France, Hungary, other parts of the US and Quebec. The city of Chicago briefly outlawed its sale in 2006, but the ban was short-lived and widely ignored. We in Ottawa have had a charming group of protesters who have harassed two excellent restaurants so far (Domus, and then Stephen Beckta's Play) through picketing and abusive emails and telephone calls. Beckta capitulated recently, although I was pleased to see that the protesters can claim no moral victory - his opinion hasn't changed, he just wanted to stop getting screamed at. (Sincerely, to anyone responsible for troubling Mr. Beckta, who is a very nice man, or his staff: go fuck yourself.)

I would like to emphasise that I don't entirely disagree with the protesters' position, much in the way that I don't disagree with many things vegans say about the consumption of meat. I won't attempt to say that eating artificially enlarged goose liver (or beef, or cheese) is just fine and dandy. There are genuine ethical questions - or rather, there aren't - raised by the consumption of meat and dairy, and it's not hard to see why the protesters feel it's an issue worth getting worked up about. But it is difficult to understand why they feel that their tactics are an acceptable response, or why they feel a right to regulate what a small portion of the public chooses to eat when it goes out. Indeed, one wonders why they've chosen to pick on small, independent local businesses whose methods they would otherwise applaud, and who in turn support local, sustainable farms.

It's true, as the protesters breathlessly insist, that some foie gras is produced from geese kept in cages and treated poorly - crappy foie that no restaurant worth eating at would serve. In much the same way, one can get lousy meat of any kind from shitty, cut-rate producers who treat animals (and most likely their workers) poorly, or you can give a shit, pay a little more and get meat raised by people who care about what they're doing. Chefs - good chefs, at least - are well aware of the conditions under which their food is produced, and generally will buy locally from farms that they can visit (or even work at) whenever possible. The notion that the protests are about "informing" restauranteurs about what they're serving is laughable.

I’m reminded of what Ian at Mariposa farms was saying about it – foie gras is actually a canard (pardon the pun); the activists actually would like to ban the eating of meat entirely, but since that wouldn’t attract much support or produce results, they pick on something smaller. Which, tactically, makes some sense; but again it’s dishonest, and it’s picking on something that makes such a tiny difference that it distracts from a useful resistance to factory farms or the raising of battery hens (why not encourage people to support to restaurants that use sustainable and smaller-scale suppliers instead? Oh, right, those are the same places.)

It’s easy to pick on something that hardly anyone eats, and that has great photo ops and it’s easy to exaggerate about, because you’ll get some result you can point to and say, ‘we saved some ducks’ lives’ (that’s an actual quote from a protester’s comment to the Citizen.) But of course, they didn’t save any ducks’ (let alone geese's) lives. There were two possible results: those livers will be sold somewhere else, or the farm that provides Beckta with his foie will stop producing it (and/or possibly go out of business, since I would assume it’s a fairly profitable commodity.) But the ducks will still die, as all living things die, and if they’re out in the wild, they will most likely die more slowly and painfully than at the hands of a farmer. While it might be a comfort to squishy urban liberals that the duck died a ‘natural’ death in the jaws of a predator or under the wheels of a car, I can't imagine the duck sharing that rosy view.

*I'd like to emphasise that crispy, pan-seared foie is pretty much the only preparation I enjoy. I've had foie poutine, and was slightly repulsed by the texture.

The strike, and general political carping.

2009-01-25T12:34:00.002-05:00

It's day 47, now. Tomorrow, January 26th, is the day that Parliament resumes business after the pirogies or prorogation or whatever you want to call that nonsense they got up to back in November.

My analogy of choice was to a poker game, where both sides overplayed weak hands. Harper threw down a pair of twos (the pre-budget announcement) and said "ha!" Dion and Layton countered with their own pair of twos, but with an outside ace (the coalition), whereupon Harper called the cops (GG) to break up the game. And as miserably as things worked out - our government was AWOL at the moment that everyone else (he said smugly) worked out that our economy's fundamentals were, in fact, completely fucked - I think that the pirogieing was probably the least-bad option available.

Had Harper pushed his exceptionally dumb move - and had the coalition idea not come together, or if Duceppe had chosen not to support the Liberal/NDP partnership - we would have faced an election again almost immediately after one called, unnecessarily and unwanted by all except Harper. And it would have meant that in three years, we'd have voted federally three times, to effectively identical results. And Harper could claim - he'd almost certainly still be minority PM - that the political instability had led to the economic woes, and if he'd had a free hand, by gum, things would've been just peachy.

Alternatively, as would have been a tactically smart move, had Dion, Layton and Duceppe had kept mum about their plan until after they voted the mini-budget down and then announced their plan to avoid an election, the roars of umbrage from conservatives - and as much as I don't like it, there are a significant number of them - would have been louder and more unreasonable than they actually were. And that was just for announcing their intentions. When the next election came along - and it would come well before things stopped getting worse economically - the Conservatives would have the golden opportunity to point to the state of affairs and claim that things were just fine until their firm hands were wrenched away from the tiller.

Both scenarios would result in medium-term gains for the CPC, and the serious possibility of long-term damage to both Liberals and NDP. As events actually transpired, Harper now - I hope - faces a party disillusioned about his leadership and tactical skills, an array of provincial leaders demanding he start dealing with their woes, and an uphill climb to that majority status that seemed so close a few months ago. The fact is, he'll never get it. Another leader, one with skills and empathy and a willingness to work with the opposition - for no real reason, I'm thinking Peter McKay, although he's probably unpalatable to Western conservatives - could get there if things don't go quite as miserably as I'm fearful they will. But Harper has, I think, fluffed his last, best shot.

The Liberals, whom I don't support by the way, got a freebie; when Ms. Jean sent the MPs home early, it gave the Grits time to do the housecleaning they needed. While I have problems with Ignatieff on a small raft of issues, the fact that he's a smart, worldly guy and not ashamed of it is kind of refreshing. And I say 'refreshing' in contrast not only to the last few Conservative/Reform leaders (Day was dumb and provincial, Harper is smart but small-minded) but also those on the centre-left and left (Layton is smart but uninspired about it, Dion was smart but seemed apologetic about it, and Martin appeared to not be aware if he was smart or not.) I don't know if the Liberals will be able to recover in time for the next election - and I agree that this country needs one in February 'like a hole in the head' - but if we make it to the what-the-hell?-fixed-election date in 2010, I would hope that the Liberals will be looking at a clear improvement, and possibly even a win.

(Part of why I don't think the CPC will manage to get out of their doldrums - other than the economy tanking - is that their front bench is wafer-thin. What potential heirs to the throne exist? A few years ago I might have said Chuck Strahl, but like most of the others, he barely gets to utter a peep. Prentice or McKay might be decent, but the former's a Harper loyalist and the latter used to be Progressive Conservative, and I'm sure some hard-liners suspect him of Red Toryism. Outside of that: I don't see the next leader coming out of Ontario, now that they've made their breakthrough; and that leaves precious few names in Cabinet who aren't bumbling idiots [eg., Rona Ambrose, Jason Kenny] or total fuckwads [Vic Toews, Gary Lunn])

However, one thing that was exposed in that tumultuous week last year was the depths of petty, bitter feelings roiling under our boring surfaces. Sure, the pro-Harper protesters may have been party activists, but they were still there, and the letters to the editor and cranky phone calls to cranky radio shows might be from, well, cranks, but...these are, presumably, that large minority of the public that votes Conservative and doesn't mind Pierre Poilivre's immature assholitry (for example.) That unwillingness to accept that the other side might have a legitimate point used to be something I saw only when I looked at the politics south of the border, and I really need to stop thinking that we're special and different. We're not.

And here's where I get to the OC Transpo strike. When the strike started on December 10th, I wailed and gnashed my teeth that because of the pirogieing, the drivers couldn't be ordered back to work until January 26th at the earliest. And since our terrible, terrible Mayor had decided that he didn't give a crap about settling quickly - and in fact, seemed primarily concerned with getting his way and damn the torpedoes, er, public - it looked like things were going to run right up until Xmas. I never, in my worst imaginings, thought that an elected city council would be so stupid as to let a transit strike run more than a couple of weeks.

But our mayor, aided by a scurrilous local press, has painted the issue as one of greedy union vs. all that is good and great. And a large part of the public bought it, at least for a while. There's certainly still a good constituency of people who care about exactly one thing: their property taxes. The rest of the city, for them, can go to hell; they've got their car, they're still getting to work and they're still getting out to their local Wal-mart. The fact that city businesses are losing an estimated $8 million dollars a day doesn't seem to bother them, so long as the city holds the line on property taxes. (These people are also probably going to bitch if their federal taxes don't go down, even though the Feds are starving the provinces - particularly Ontario - and thanks to the GST cut, are now facing structural deficits on top of the need for massive infrastructure spending.) And to gauge from the rhetoric - which might, of course, just be hot air - there's some very deep anger that's not going to fade quickly once this gets resolved, and that is frighteningly personal. (My own theory is that people stuck in traffic are stewing and getting angry; those like me, who have to walk to work - an hour and change each way - are getting exercise and fresh cold air, which keeps us level-headed.*)

It's depressing, really, to realize that you live in a city, a province, and a country full of mean, petty, blinkered people. And of course, there are lots of great people around who are smart, generous, open-minded, considerate, and so on. But I do wonder if they're not the minority.

So it turns out that Rona "Unsafe At Any Ministry" Ambrose has announced that she doesn't intend to order our bus drivers back to work, and that the city and union need to work it out themselves. Which, if this were December 9th, might be an admirable stance, given the city's half-witted negotiating technique, and intransigence on the one issue that union had announced they'd go to the mat on. I suspect that Mayor O'Brien's lack of experience with unions - his old job was running a staffing agency - has left him with a bunch of right-wing bullshit about them in place of understanding, which would explain why he was willing to waste two weeks on a free vote that any idiot - except the one that mattered - could have predicted would be soundly rejected. I'm pleased that as of today, at 12:30, city council appears to have sidelined O'Brien and made an overture to the union that 'revises' their bargaining position. But it's ridiculous that it's taken a month and a half for us to get here.

*smug? moi?

Another Year End Round-Up, In Which I Am Surprisingly Nice About Nostalgia For The Goddamned Eighties.

2009-01-09T22:25:00.004-05:00

So, last year was pretty rotten for me personally, what with one of my favourite pair of socks wearing out. Oh, and the break-up. That was pretty bad too.

Movies: I saw about three new movies last year, so I'll just say: Wall-E was the best one; there were a couple of comic-book adaptations, and Planet B-Boy, which I think by default was the worst one I saw. But it was still pretty good.

Books: I read a Jane Austen book this year! I had no idea she wrote comedies. I'd probably have given her a chance much earlier if I'd known that.

The Other Arts: My friend Liz made me feel like a Philistine with her list of theatre- and gallery-going. It then occurred to me that I went to galleries in three provinces (Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba), attended a performance by the National Ballet in their fancy new home, and...well, okay, I didn't see any plays or operas or anything. But I did see the Yves St-Laurent retrospective and thought it lacked context. How's that for a trenchant criticism? BAM!

Music: On the other hand, I listened to a lot of new music in '08. And it was a very good year.
1. Torche, Meanderthal
You know, I miss new Superchunk records. This more than makes up for the lack. Thunderous and catchy at the same time; not unlike Chavez at their best.
2. Fucked Up, The Chemistry of Common Life
Like I said about their last record: this is hardcore living up to its potential. This is hardcore getting old gracefully.
3. Deerhunter, Microcastle/Weird Era Revisted
Not sure which one I like more, the glossy one or the cavernous one.
4. Oneida, Preteen Weaponry
Runs the gamut from space-rock to spacey Kraut-rock. Three songs, 40 minutes, bliss.
5. Cadence Weapon, Afterparty Babies
The best rapper in all of Alberta strikes again, and is witty and nerdy and samples Brian Eno.

The many, many runners-up:
Not-Really-An-Album Category
Girl Talk, Feed The Animals; Jay Reatard, Matador Singles '08.
The former is a mash-up (and the best and most shockingly vulgar dance party you'll have all year), the latter is the best singles comp I've heard since Tossing Seeds.

I-Wish-It-Was-1985-And-I-Was-Watching-Friday-Night-Videos Category
M83, Saturdays=Youth
To be honest, I kind of hate this record, but can't bring myself to stop listening to it. There's a lot of really stupid, embarrassing things on it - pretty much every time their female vocalist opens her mouth, for instance, and the whole thing is like the soundtrack to a John Hughes movie about goths - but it's got something. Or else I'm just stupid.

I-Wish-It-Was-1985-And-I-Was-Signed-To-Homestead Category
Parts & Labor, Receivers
Okay, there's a little too much technology here to sound that retro, but the sound of this record is very 80's Midwestern postpunk (yes, that's a thing.) And it's a kickass album, too.

Snotty Punks Still Rule OK Category
No Age, Nouns; Titus Andronicus, The Airing of Grievances; Born Ruffians, Red Yellow and Blue; Tokyo Police Club, Elephant Shell.
Very quickly - No Age are the arty Angelenos, Titus Andronicus swear a lot, Born Ruffians are punks the way Jonathan Richman was a punk, and Tokyo Police Club...well, they're just fun.

I-Wish-It-Was-1986-Or-Possibly-1994 Category
Vivian Girls, s/t; Los Campesinos!, Hold On Now, Youngster/We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed
I thought earlier this year how unusual that a band would release a full-on twee album in 2008, and then that band - who are Welsh, even - released a second one. And the Vivian Girls decided to channel either the Shop Assistants or Scrawl (both perfectly acceptable, but hardly au courant.)

I Do So Listen To Metal Category
Disfear, Live the Storm; Harvey Milk, Life...The Best Game In Town; Earth, Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull.
Disfear are for the kind of person who does yoga while blasting Motorhead. It's a shame that challenging, unpredictable bands like Harvey Milk get lumped into this 'genre' and ignored, because you (yes, you) would probably like them if you gave 'em a chance. To say nothing of Earth, which is what you should be listening to during yoga class. Really!

Worst thing I heard all year: Hercules & Love Affair. Antony (of the Johnsons) brings his horrific voice to some truly wretched dance twaddle. Avoid at all costs.

Looking forward to 2009: New albums from Neko Case, Andrew Bird, Belle Orchestre, Tim Hecker, Mastodon, Buried Inside, Dan Deacon, and Grizzly Bear; the Watchmen movie (fingers crossed), and an end to this frackin' bus strike. Happy January!

Rebounding (in oh so many ways)

2008-07-18T20:10:00.002-04:00

Things are in flux these days 'round the, well, let's call it the former Hall of Crammits*, in case you hadn't heard. We've called it quits as a couple, J and I; we're both a little heartbroken about it, but we're still on good terms so don't a) feel the need to give us that tilted-head-sotto-voce "how're you doing?", and b) worry about tiptoeing around us. We're doing fine. I think. (Booze helps.)

All of this came down as the new Death Cab for Cutie record, Narrow Stairs, was getting some heavy rotation around the house. As with most of their other albums, it's littered with breakup songs, like "You Can Do Better Than Me", and "Your New Twin Sized Bed" ("You look so defeated lying there...with a single pillow underneath your single head"). So needless to say, it's a tough one for either of us to listen to without getting upset. Thanks a lot, emo jerks.

Of course, it's also a pretty good record; I've liked most of theirs since my friend Cara introduced me to We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes back when. They've hit something of a plateau over the last couple - I doubt they'll ever improve on 2002's Transatlanticism - so this, like the last one, peters out really badly and contains a couple of outright duds. The single and heart of the record is the eight-minute "I Will Possess Your Heart", one of those creepy songs that will probably (like "Every Breath You Take" or "The One I Love") have the verse lyrics get ignored by thousands of dumbassed couples who prefer to latch on to a cursory reading of the refrain. (I guess it's good that they point themselves out like that.) The intro runs more than four and a half minutes before the first line is sung, and that's something I just adore; the way it feels like the song's nearly done before you realize that everything so far has just been preamble. (My old band Kepler had a song early on that did something similar, and it was long my favourite to play.)

~

I don't know why Band of Horses aren't gigantic. Their second LP, Cease to Begin is one of those summery, good-time rock records that can catapult an otherwise average band into the world of stadiums and beer endorsements. It's a decent improvement over their first record, Everything All The Time, which lacked that hard-to-define but essential rock element, 'oomf.' This time around, the group sound like they've toured out this batch of songs, and found a balance between the often-delicate arrangements and the desire to bring the (southern) rock. Admittedly, I still don't always follow what they're singing about, but again, that's not what's going to bring them the hordes of fans. No, what's going to pull 'em in are the partyable rockers ("The General Specific", "Islands on the Coast") and the sensitive songs ("No One's Going to Love You"), both of which they manage ably. Their singer's voice, too, has improved; it's now reminiscient of Carl Newman's (Zumpano/New Pornographers) reedy, high-but-not-falsetto tone, instead of Jon Anderson (the horrible elf-dweeb from Yes). So that's been a daily listen for me the past month.

I'm also kind of taken with Born Ruffians' Red Yellow and Blue, which had been on the long list for this year's Polaris prize but didn't make the cut (more on that in a minute.) It's an odd record - there's songs that wouldn't sound out of place in a Swell Maps set, and others that remind me of Jonathan Richman's rougher material - and I'm not sure exactly what to make of it. But I suspect that, not unlike their Warp labelmates Grizzly Bear, it's a record that'll reward persistence.

~

I like that the Polaris Prize exists. I have no idea if it's creating much of an effect on Canadian music, either in terms of sales or output, but at least for me it's an encouragement to look up homegrown groups that I might otherwise have never heard. (My friend JCarnie has clips from some of this year's nominees on her blog, for thems that want a sampling of Canada's newest hitmakers.)

The shortlist came out last week, and to win, I'm putting my theoretical money on Basia Bulat's staggeringly dull and charmless Oh! My Darling (given last years' winner, the equally uninteresting Patrick Watson). It's not a bad list, although a little predictable (it's all the hipster favourites!) but having seen the original pool of potential nominees, I'm disappointed with a couple of their omissions. As I said above, I think Born Ruffians should have been included, and I'd rather have Cadence Weapon and/or Thee Silver Mt. Zion instead of, for instance, Stars' unperforming In Our Bedroom After The War or Holy F*ck's good idea/lame execution dance machine. But I am pleased that the Wearkerthans' Reunion Tour and Black Mountain's In The Future are nominees; I'd be content with either of them, or even Caribou's Andorra taking the prize. But as I said above, I'm guessing I'll end up grumbling.

~

I recently saw David Fincher's Zodiac, which was awfully long and had Cloë Sevigny. To be fair, despite its significant length (nearly 3 hours) I only looked at my watch a couple of times; and Cloë's part was mercifully small. The film is based on the true story of the Zodiac killer, who apparently terrorized the San Francisco area in the late 60's and early 70's before disappearing (he was never caught, and his identity remains, officially, unknown.) The focus is on a homicide detective (Mark Ruffalo) following the case over the years, and a San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist (Jake Gyllenhall) who becomes increasingly obsessed with the killer. Given the subject matter, there's little gore - given the fact that he only actually killed a half-dozen people, I guess that makes sense - and it's all over well within the first hour. There's also an entertaining performance by Robert Downey Jr., as the Chronicle's crime reporter, who slowly dissolves into a fierce alcoholism. Which, I know, is a huge stretch for him. Here's the thing, though: I usually have a major hate-on for Downey, and not only did I enjoy watching him in Zodiac, I found him terribly engaging in Iron Man. (Maybe I just don't like him clean-shaven.) Actually, I think the main difference between his younger roles and where he's at now is that he looks like he's having fun, and it's an infectious kind of glee.

The other notable thing I saw recently was Pixar's latest release, WALL-E. My feelings about it are pretty similar to what Phil Nugent wrote, although I did only tear up a bit (what with my metal heart and all). This now brings the number of films that have made me cry to five (for the record: Dancer in the Dark, Hotel Rwanda, When The Levees Broke and Ratatouille, also a Pixar joint.) There's very little dialogue, and none at all for the first half hour or so; and like with other Pixar films, there's very little pandering. No cutesy pop-culture references (although there are homages to 2001, a couple of clips from Hello, Dolly! and there's an air of "we just recently watched Silent Running" to the who thing), minor celebrity voice-casting, and not a single character who would qualify as 'sassy'. If I had kids (shudder), I'd make 'em watch WALL-E and tell them, "This is why you're not allowed to watch that Shrek trash."

~

*So I guess that technically, this blog needs a new name. And anyone able to direct me to a one-bedroom in walking distance of downtown available for September 1st (under $950/mo.) is my new best friend.

Out of hibernation

2008-05-22T23:42:00.002-04:00

Sorry about the vanishing act there. So. Lots of new stuff...so I'll talk about old TV and old music.

In the "big disappointments" category: one arrived, as it often does, in a red Zip envelope. You probably haven't ever heard of the series Buffalo Bill, let alone ever seen it, because it didn't last terribly long, wasn't popular, and as far as I know, was never shown in syndication. It did get at least one good - heck, great - review when it first aired back in early '83, which I read at the time, and is why I looked it up.

Unfortunately, it's fucking awful.

The series starred Dabney Coleman as a misanthropic, self-centred, hapless talk-show host (not unlike a malicious Alan Partridge), which sounds like comedy gold waiting to happen. However, the scripts are weak and predictable, the surprisingly sturdy supporting cast are wasted, and there's a laugh track (which only highlights the fact that the preceding line wasn't funny.) The show also looks a lot older than it is - roughly about the vintage of The Bob Newhart Show, with the exception of the opening credits, which have that almost-handwritten typeface so popular on California-themed restaurants in the 80's. If it weren't for the women's haircuts (uniformly pouffy) and the lack of trouser flares, I'd have guessed that this show sat in the can, unaired until Coleman became bankable after Tootsie and/or series regular (and writer, apparently) Geena Davis attracted some notice for...um...also Tootsie.

More enjoyable was Chinatown (although I probably don't have to tell you that). If you haven't seen it, it's an excellent modern noir; as much a story of water rights and the development of Los Angeles as a story about a murder (like how Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, with its digression into the destruction of public transit in post-war L.A.) Jack Nicholson puts in a great performance of the kind he hasn't since, oh, The Shining, which can be startling if (like me) you're used to him being JACK™ in every role.

We also finally got the classic love triangle story Jules et Jim, which Jess surprised me by liking immensely (given her earlier disdain for the other nouvelle vague films we've seen). It's a difficult one, I've got to say; the mercurial Catherine (who loves both Jules and Jim, among others) is painful to watch, and Jules either needed to grow a pair or admit that he's out of his depth with her (a lesson that, ahem, certain other men could learn from). Also weird: Henri Serre (who plays Jim)'s startling resemblance to Chris Noth.

My favourite scene of the film - and it's the most new wavey moment in it - is where the three leads are walking down the street after having attended a play, and the men start criticising the direction, script and staging in such a way that it could easily apply to Jules et Jim as well. Which is what I've decided is my favourite thing about that school of filmmaking - their absolute refusal to let the audience 'lose' themselves in the artifice of it all. It takes some getting used to, but it is possible to love a film even when you're being reminded that yes, you are watching a construction.

- -

My recent musical fixation has been Roxy Music, particularly their early albums For Your Pleasure and Country Life (and no, I am not merely fixated on the cover art.) It's a little strange, to me at least, that this represents my first real stab at listening to the band, given that I've been a long-time fan of Bowie's glam phase and my total adoration of Brian Eno's pop records (which came out immediately after his split with the band). I've also always liked Bryan Ferry's voice - he had a trashy pop hit in '85 with "Slave to Love", which I enjoyed in the same sort of way I like Steely Dan (and wow, that's another story): it's sulty and mature and sounds like being quietly drunk in the afternoon. But, alas, my brother had only a copy of their 1980 album Flesh + Blood in his collection, and so my first impression was that I really didn't care for their weak shit.

Years passed, and every once in a while I'd hear somebody talk about Roxy Music's early, weird phase, and I'd think about checking them out; but then I'd forget, but then I'd buy a Sea and Cake record and my desire for languid, decadent pop would be sated for another couple of years. And then there was that scene in Lost in Translation, after which I knew I needed to get a copy of "More Than This". Unfortunately (again), it's from Avalon, which isn't a very good record - too eighties by half, and even that song is much glossier than I'm comfortable with - but I think I gave it a fair listen before discarding it.

Their first few, though - in the years 1971-74, man, that's some excellent stuff. The band, particularly on the self-titled debut, anticipate the jarring angularity of post-punk, while still the spectre of prog-rock (Ferry had auditioned to be vocalist for King Crimson prior to forming RM) hangs over the proceedings. The group's rough edges (aka Brian Eno) get smoothed out on Stranded (1973), and by 1975's Siren (with its hit single, "Love is the Drug") there's little remarkable about them.

It's interesting to see how the band hasn't been lionized as glam icons the way that, for instance, T. Rex were. A quick side-by-side comparison of their music (the former's "Out of the Blue" vs. Bolan's "Ride A White Swan"): one's sexy, noisy and overblown, while the other's a jangly but straightforward blues song with hippy-assed lyrics. Go figure. At their beginnings, of course, Roxy Music were thoroughly aligned with glam-rock (no doubt aided by their aggressively pan-sexual appearance) but perhaps they're one of those bands who started as out cool in a subculture but squandered it through bland MOR success (cf. The Police, the Bangles).

- -

And my last recent curiosity has been, apparently, women with the last name Deschanel. First off is Zoey, who appears on the slight but endlessly charming album Volume One, with singer/songwriter M. Ward (under the name She & Him.) Ward isn't someone I've had any real exposure to; he's on a couple of Merge Records compilations I own, and generally I skip his contributions. He's often touted as a brilliant songwriter by the same critical sources who rave about, for instance, Ron Sexsmith, which I take as evidence that I'm not missing anything I'd enjoy. But She & Him is quite a different beast: her voice, while far from perfect, has a winning sassyness, and the arrangements are sunny and twangy with an early-60's pop feel. It's not going to change the world, but "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?" ought to liven up more than a couple of parties. (She's also an actress, which I keep forgetting, even though I've seen her in like, five things, and look forward to seeing her in The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford.)

Then there's her sister Emily, who appears in the post-mortem-investigation-drama (and really, how did that become a whole genre?) Bones, which we've tuned into the last few weeks and found, to our surprise, a real gem. The show is based on the life and novels of Kathy Reichs, although to what degree I'm not sure (she gets writing credits on every episode, although that doesn't necessarily mean anything). The interplay between Deschanel and co-star David Boreanaz is stellar; when combined with their supporting cast of oddly sexy medical examiners, the effect is a little dizzying. (One treat is John Francis Daley, formerly of Freaks and Geeks, whose role as a smug, boyish FBI profiler teeters between love-to-hate and just-plain-love.) Individually the two are entertaining enough for their own programs - Deschanel plays up her complete social alienation without being Spock, while Boreanaz...heck, he could host a telethon and I'd watch for hours (shut up). Having just jumped in at the end of their third season, there's a good possibility that the show isn't usually this good, or that it's about to suck mightily. But for the moment, I'm still very intrigued.

Wait, what?

2008-01-01T14:52:00.000-05:00

2007 was the first year in a while that went past in such an even-keel blur that it took me a minute to realize, last night whilst polishing off a bottle of nice Argentinian Malbec, that it was a pretty damned good year for me. Sure, there's lots of miserable shit going on in the world, but here in the warmth of Hintonburg, life is pretty sweet. I didn't have to look for work, or move,

It has, however, been another of those years where I don't get to see all the films or hear half the records I wanted to, so my year-end list is going to be one of those ones like the CBC does, although I'm not going to claim that obnoxious 'reality' shows on MTV or drunken Bush-apologist Christopher Hitchens were anything but passing annoyances.

1. No Country For Old Men. A stunningly dark, almost completely humourless Coen brothers masterpiece. Bloodier than Miller's Crossing and with a moral centre that's almost a perfect opposite to Fargo's Marge Gunderson.

2. Nina Nastasia & Jim White, You Follow Me. My favourite songwriter and my favourite drummer ditch the other players and make up the volume and then some. Interestingly, it frequently sounds like the guitar is holding the song together while Jim goes about his merry, thundering and meandering way.

3. 30 Rock and The Office. It took us a while to recognize just how brilliant the former show is - which, given our embarrassingly pathetic love of Tina Fey, is surprising - but sometime earlier this year, Jess and I realized that this one-two punch of blink-and-you'll-miss-it humour was nearly flawless, and yeah, if you ask us to do something with you on a Thursday night, we'll probably bail on you to watch TV and we won't even feel bad about it.

4. The Dirty Projectors/Grizzly Bear at Barrymore's, January somethingth. At the time, I'd enjoyed Grizzly Bear's Yellow House LP fairly well, although I was a little anxious about how it would translate into a live show, and I'd never heard of these Dirty Projectors. There were two local openers, the first of whom flat-out sucked, and the second, the appallingly-named As The Poets Affirm, were merely very, very disappointing (I'd kind of expected them to be more of an A Silver Mt Zion/Set Fire to Flames thing, instead of just a rock band with a cello.) So, the Dirty Projectors took the stage, and their singer's got a faux-hawk, and the collar on his polo shirt is turned up, and he's got a fucking scarf on indoors, and I'm right away ready to hate this band with a special new kind of loathing I've been saving for a big occasion. And yet after three songs, I was pretty sure that they were the best band I'd ever seen (or at least in the running.) They played an inscrutable kind of new-wave take on contemporary R&B, but rather than playing songs, they seemed to be hinting at things and playing around the music. Quite something. Oh, and Grizzly Bear were also very good.

5. Knocked Up. Yes yes, it's got its share of problems with realism; on the other hand, shut up, it's really damn funny.

6. LCD Soundsystem, The Sound of Silver. I didn't mind the first LCD album, although I have no idea why it was a double CD when there's barely an EP's worth of good songs on it. This, on the other hand, is solidly great; the music is infectiously energetic and hooky, and the lyrics (particularly "North American Scum" and "New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down") are like what Mark E. Smith might write if he was American.

7. The Walrus. Canada's best magazine had a stellar year; the special issue on the Arctic and the most recent, "Cities" issue stand out, but there hasn't been a dud since...sheesh, I can't even remember. Essential reading for Canadians interested in where we're at and where we're going.

8. Battles, Mirrored. Robotic elves make an scary/funny album. I really can't describe it any other way. If robotic elves made a record, this is exactly what it would sound like.

9. Kingdom Shore. Mark Molnar has made a lot of music - with Seppuku, Buried Inside, and in my favourite incarnation until now, with improv trio Higney/Mulnar/Gulikson - but this is far and away the most impressive and best-executed of the lot. Strings and laptops, together at last.

10. Miracle Fortress, Five Roses/Panda Bear, Person Pitch. I call this one a tie, because I kept hearing Miracle Fortress songs and thinking, "man, I love this Panda Bear record!", and vice versa. By now I can tell them apart, of course, and it turns out they actually don't sound much alike - Miracle Fortress are relentlessly sunny and poppy (not unlike the Wondermints) and Panda Bear is like remembering a sunny day a long time ago when your heart was broken and it was actually kind of cold out (not unlike the weirder ends of the Beach Boys, only with a lot less structure).

There were a lot of older things I picked up on this year - Lost, Joanna Newsom, Jesu, The Children of Men - and other things that continued to go over my head - grime and/or dubstep (huh?), J.K. Rowling's writing, the idea that Michael Rappaport is funny - but that's not the point of these lists, is it?

Anyhow, I hope that this New Year's Day finds y'all well and warm and regretting, even if only a little, something fun you did last night, and looking forward to doing again next year, only louder.

Another rant against the 80's...

2007-10-01T23:51:00.000-04:00

I've been trying to work out how to sum up a lot of the stuff that's been going on in my life, and a big ol' gripe seems as good as anything (maybe a list or two...)

Viewing:
First on the block, one of the more recent things we've seen was part of the first season of Moonlighting. For the first two or three years it aired, there simply wasn't anything else on television that compared; and as anyone who watched it knows, it stands as the single best cautionary example of how not to handle romantic tension in a TV show. And I sure loved it, as a teenager, partly because it was funny and clever, and partly because it had Cybill Sheppard.

Well, it didn't hold up terribly well. Granted, we watched the pilot and then the first regular episode, and very few shows are at their best right out of the gate. (Newsradio, for example, which hit its stride faster than most, still had to have a couple of clunkers in order to get the expository nonsense out of the way.) So maybe I'm not being fair when I say that the dialogue sounds corny and slow and the plots predictable. But it's interesting to see how Willis' character looks after twenty years. At the time, sure, he didn't seem like a smug, obnoxious fratboy - but that was mostly because there were so many other, more smug, much more obnoxious fratboys being fÍted in the public eye that he seemed funny and tolerable by comparison. Nowadays, that persona is best represented on the tube by Steve Carrell's Michael Scott on The Office - a man whose attempts to be funny and likeable are pitiable, when they don't make us laugh uncomfortably (or callously). Who says there's no such thing as progress?

Going back a ways in our viewing was Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish; I'd heard some good things about it, and some of that may have to do with the fondness people have for S.E. Hinton novels. The film also has a pretty good cast: Nicholas Cage, Lawrence Fishburn, Matt Dillon, Tom Waits, and, if you like that kind of thing, Mickey Rourke (I don't.) But it aims for a theatricality, with a muddled setting (half-big city, half-small town, and a bizarrely 1950's kind of 80's) and it just didn't work for me, in part because Dillon, in particular, wasn't up to what should have been the demands of the script (see also: Keanu Reeves in My Own Private Idaho and Much Ado About Nothing). The appearance of the film, however, was clearly influencial on a generation of commercial and music-video directors; seeing it now means having to remind yourself that the visual clichés you keep seeing weren't clichés at the time. It doesn't make it more fun to watch, though.

What would have made better fodder for directors to rip off: I Am Cuba, an early-60's Soviet propaganda film about the Cuban Revolution, shot in a lustrous grain of black and white. The story isn't great, of course, but as I said, it's agitprop and it does what it's supposed to in that regard. What it also does, though, is look beautiful, and take full advantage of the limitations of the medium in capturing the vibrant colours of the foliage, the burning villages, or the Havana nightlife.

Less beautiful was Superbad. It passed the basic test of a comedy film with flying colours - Jess and I laughed long and loud, and were giggling at it for a couple of days afterwards. It's got problems, though, starting with an astonishing crassness (even compared to other Apatow-related projects like Knocked Up) and, most troublingly, a sexist (hell, misogynist) streak a mile wide. There's the usual fat-ugly-guy-dating-skinny-hot-girl ugliness, but that's nothing compared to the way the boys talk about the girls, or how the object of Evan (Michael Cera)'s awkward affections Becca (Martha MacIsaac) has internalized that attitude. The film is on firmer ground where the friendship between Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan. Ultimately, it's a weaker movie than either The 40-Year Old Virgin or Knocked Up; you'll probably laugh a lot, but you might not like yourself for it later.

There's also an exchange in Superbad, where one of the girls asks her friend to bring her "80's dance mix" to a party. My initial reaction ("you kids weren't even born until, what, '89?") has since been tempered with the recollection that there were people I knew, born in the early 70's, who spent their teenage years convinced that the zenith of human culture had passed shortly before their birth. And I'm more than willing to admit a lingering fascination with the pre-disco 1970's, a period widely seen as unredeemably loathesome little more than a decage ago.

But my real complaint is, as always, with the part of the past that's the subject of the misplaced nostalgia. The 1980's produced a lot of interesting things: hilarious cynicism (e.g, Spy magazine); a truly amazing age of hip-hop (that would be the late 80's); great, abrasive post-punk; a wealth of independently produced movies; and the infrastructure, like film fests, distribution companies, and record labels that have produced and made available most of the best in either medium for the last two decades. What it didn't produce, however, was much good television, or good dance pop, or fashion that anyone should even look at again. And if you're ever looking to counter the notion that there isn't a lot to hate about the Reagan decade, try this phrase: "The episode of the Super Mario Brothers show guest-starring Milli Vanilli."

Listening:

I normally talk mostly about what I've liked, but recently I got to hear something really, really bad, and wanted to make mention of that. It's a band called Maximo Park; their latest record (Our Earthly Pleasures) was one of a batch of albums that we recently decided to give a trial listen to. And hoo, it's awful - glossy and vacuous. What's slightly funny is that I just read an interview with their singer, and he claims to be listening to a lot of different things (Johanna Newsom, Clipse, the Shins), and yet his band ends sounding like fucking James. Only worse, if that's possible.

At the other end of the spectrum are the Dirty Projectors, with a truly odd album, Rise Above. The album consists of Black Flag's Damaged LP, re-written with only the lyrics left intact; musically, the covers resemble the sort of art-punk that Ginn & Co. probably despised - Talking Heads, DNA, Wire's post-154 output - when they don't resemble east African guitar pop. And then there's lead singer Dave Longstreth's jagged falsetto to contend with. It's not an easy listen, even (or especially) if you like hardcore punk, but it's rewarding.

Conversely, the Toronto band Fucked Up's Hidden World does a great deal within the HC style. It helps that the shortest song on the record is two and half minutes (the longest is over nine), and that the instrumentation extends beyond guitars and drums (although there's certainly a lot of guitar). But there's more - the songs are powerful, lively and...well, not exactly catchy, but they're tuneful. And that's not something that happens often in hardcore, and I'd hope it'll open more than a couple of ears.

2007-08-20T07:12:00.000-04:00

We also started into the first season of 24, which both of us missed (or avoided) at the time, and...well, lots of people like it, so it's probably worth at least checking out, right? Eh. Anyway, the show kept our interest enough that we felt the need to see it through to the end. But there's very clunky, expository dialogue, technology fails only in convenient ways, and I hate just about every major character on the show - they're either whiny and helpless (we started calling the Bauer family "the Stupids"), or morally cartoonish. Or, in the case of Dennis Hopper, actually cartoonish - I'm pretty sure I've only heard worse accents when people are trying to be funny.

Needless to say, we won't be checking out season two.

On the other hand, there's an article in the New York Times today about chapters 13-22 of R.Kelly's Trapped In The Closet, and the headline, "Outrageous Farce From R. Kelly: He’s In on the Joke, Right?", makes me want to go back and watch the first chapters again. No, really - the idea that this insane, fucked-up work isn't an attempt to create something serious makes me love it all the more. Oh, and Will Oldham has a brief cameo, which perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised by.

The good TV recently was the first disc of Simon Schama's The Power of Art, a BBC art history program. We'd been rabid fans of his History of Britain when it aired on TVO last summer, mostly for his obvious relish of the more lurid stories; one of our favourites was the one about Mary, Queen of Scots' head falling to the ground when, after her beheading, someone picked it by the hair (not realizing it was a wig). The Brits may not be able to cook, but they sure know how to throw a regicide.

Anyhoo - art. The first three programs deal with Caravaggio (painter, boozer, murderer, Knight Templar), Bernini (sculptor, architect, womanizer, buddy of the Pope) and Rembrandt (painter, spendthrift, Dutchman); and in each case, Schama weaves together the artists' life story, major works and some historical and æsthetic context into a reasonably compelling whole. It's not as juicy - not often, at least - as his earlier series, and perhaps as a consequence it relies rather heavily on dubious re-enactments (I'm pretty sure Caravaggio didn't sound like a small-time London thug). Still, the subject matter is interesting enough, and there's enough time spent looking at the art itself to make the program well worth checking out. (Some later episodes cover Mark Rothko, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent Van Gogh, the last of which provided JCrammit the thrill of hearing Schama say "fucking".)

~

The magazine Stylus recently ran a list of the 50 Greatest Rock Drummers, and needless to say, I've got a problem with it. First off, you've got Billy Cobham (pretty clearly a jazz drummer) and Tony Allen (who played with Fela Kuti); and if we're going to start opening things up like that, then the number one position had better be Ronald Shannon Jackson or Elvin Jones, not the tit from Led Zepplin.

Secondly, the tit from Led Zepplin shouldn't be number one anyway, because he, like the band, was and is grossly overrated. I'll grant that he's a good drummer - not as talented as Ginger Baker (Cream) or Jaki Leibezeit (Can) or, for that matter, Zach Hill (Hella) - but better than competent, and inventive enough to deserve a place, oh, somewhere in the twenties, maybe between the guy from the Jesus Lizard and the guy from Khanate.

But he does show up at number one, and Keith Moon - a notoriously sloppy drummer - gets to be first runner-up. One of the sad facts of life for drummers (in rock, at least) is that how well you play is less important than who you play with. When you look at the Stylus top ten, this becomes violently apparent. The inclusion of Leibzeit I'll grant might be because he's a very good player (again, I'm not sure he's better than Zach Hill) or it might be because of Can's enduring hip cachet. Stephen Morris' placement at #5 absolutely is due to Joy Division's hallowed place in alt-rock history, and Charlie Watts? He gets the kind of compliments that the dumb but earnest kids got in school - 'well, he's certainly steady!' But, actually, he's not; listen to "Honky Tonk Women", where he speeds up like crazy. No, Watts is a decent drummer, but like Moon, Bonham, and at least another third off Stylus' list, his greatest achievement was joining the right band.

There are a couple of other stupid inclusions on the list. Grant Hart (Husker Du, #44) sticks in my craw because of their reasons for including him: he can sing and play drums at the same time! Hey, you know who else can do that? The guy from Triumph. And Phil Collins. Both of whom are better, chops-wise, than Hart is, was, or will ever be. Unfortunately for them, they didn't play in cool bands.

Bill Berry from REM (#20) is pretty good, too. But that's it. He's just pretty good. I wouldn't even imagine he was a terribly influential drummer for college rock bands at the time - the Feelies had more of a reputation for their rhythm section; the guy from Camper Van Beethoven played with a smaller kit and did more with it, and Larry Mullen Jr of U2, who's placed at #21, is not only a better player, he's also much better-looking.

Who do I like? The most egregious omission, in my opinion, was Jim White, who plays like a motherfucker for the Dirty Three, on Cat Power's Moon Pix and with Nina Nastasia (particularly on the just-released You Follow Me). Also very good: Rey Washam (Scratch Acid/Rapeman), Mac McNeilly (the Jesus Lizard), Brit Walford (Slint, The For Carnation), and Scott Plouf (Spinanes, Built to Spill). But quibbles like this is what inane lists are for, and why nerds like me enjoy them so much.

2007-08-05T15:48:00.000-04:00

Normally, I don't think we're really summer blockbuster people. But for Harry Potter, we made an exception (opening weekend, no less!) Earlier this year, Jess borrowed the first four DVD's, and watched them all over a couple of days (I stuck through all of the first and third films, most of the second and not a great deal of the fourth). In brief: number one is fine, number two is too long, number three is terrific, and I'm going to guess that number four is pretty good.

Jess has now finished all seven books (and cried at the end of the last); I stopped reading the second one about a chapter and a half in (Rowling's prose, at least what I've read, does nothing for me, and I don't find Potter terribly sympathetic.) I may give the rest of them a try at some point, but I also just picked up Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy in anticipation of the upcoming Golden Compass movie, and I think that'll fill my kidlit quota for the year. (Incidentally: in an article on the Potter books, Pullman's books are described as having a "killjoy, Santa-Claus-is-dead socialism". Dude. Write a book just for me, why dontcha?)

So anyway (yes, I'm getting back to my original point here) we saw The Order of the Phoenix, and it's pretty good. Jess pointed out that several significant sections of the book were left out, including, I think, a couple of characters. I countered this by asking if she seriously thought what the movie needed was more plot. At a lean (cough) 2 hours and 20 minutes, it's the shortest film of the series; and while my ass appreciated the (relatively) brief running time, it results in some blink-and-you-missed-it moments. For the most part, though, it's not difficult to follow without having read the books, or even having paid much attention during the previous films. The large battle scene between the titular group of good wizards and Voldemort's followers at the end of the film is quite smartly done - visually impressive, but clearly beyond the ken of Potter et al. - and maintains the students' perspective. It makes the battle difficult to understand, but it shows plainly how far out of their league the students were.

There are a couple of things I'd complain about, if I could find someone who'd listen: there's not nearly enough of Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy), who's slimy and evil in a way that, unfortunately, can only be called 'delicious'. The scene during the 'O-level' exam doesn't make a lick of sense - I would gather that the students all got zeroes for running out on the test, and yet were cheering about it? - and there are a couple of story threads that get dropped rather suddenly (Harry kisses a girl who is never seen again, for instance.)

But it's a good, dark story, balancing its tripartite foci on Harry's adolescent angst, the fight against Voldemort and the Ministry of Magic's paranoid authoritarianism (and Imelda Staunton does a wonderful, evil impersonation of my high school guidance councillor - or maybe she's trying to be Margaret Thatcher as a PTA member, it's hard to say).

Next blockbuster to grit our teeth over: The Simpsons. Will it suck as much as the show has lately? Yeah, probably.

~

Some recent music acquisitions:
Bjork's Volta is nuts. Of course it is, I can hear you thinking, she's batshit crazy and makes videos where she's married to a cat. But despite the Timbaland production, the Lightning Bolt drumming and weird aggressiveness, it's not half as strange - and far more listenable - than her last one, Medúlla. My biggest complaint is with the presence of guest vocalist Antony (of Antony and the Johnsons) whose voice is horrific - like a really, desperately bad Nina Simone impersonator (or the woman from Coco Rosie who sounds like a guy). As he's only on two tracks, it's not so bad; still, that's two write-offs.

Menomena's Friend and Foe is hit and miss. The opener, "Muscle'n Flo", is a strange, fractured tune, catchy and angular; the rest of the best songs on the record ("Air Aid", "The Pelican", "Ghostship") could be described in similar terms but don't sound much alike (one of the band's great strengths). The worst ("My My", "Running") sound like art school kids channelling Supertramp. Luckily, the dreck is outweighed by the good stuff, and it's a record I'd heartily recommend.

Feist's second (or third) solo record, The Reminder, is solid. I loved portions of Let it Die - the title track, "Lonely Lonely", even "Mushaboom" and the Bee Gees cover - but there were nearly as many duds - "Gatekeeper", "Leisure Suite" - and it felt, I dunno, padded, maybe. (I saw her performance at Babylon on that tour, btw, and it was phenomenal, despite the weaker portions of the record.) I haven't found this to be the case with the new album. The first two singles, "My Moon My Man" and "1234" are smooth, sexy pop, upbeat without being schmaltzy; and the rest of it has an eclectic, mature feel. Serve with unoaked chardonnay and seafood canapes.

If you've missed My Bloody Valentine, lo these last 16 years since Loveless came out, you might want to investigate Jesu's Conqueror. Sure, it's "technically" a metal record, is by Justin Broaderick (ex-Godflesh, Final, Head of David), and it's on Hydra Head (home to Botch, Cattle Press, Pelican), but just listen to those washed-out, blurry guitars - it's like 1991 all over again.

Other fun things I've heard lately: Battles' Mirrored (best described as 'robot elf music'); El-P's I'll Sleep When You're Dead; Murs' 3:16 the 9th Edition; Oxbow's The Narcotic Story and Stars' In Our Bedroom After the War (less overtly sexual than their last couple of records, but still pretty hot.)

~

In Crammit news, um, there's not really any news. I'm growing a beard, in preparation for having a 'stache as part of a Halloween costume. I also went to the dentist for the first in over 15 years, and not surprisingly, discoverd that my fillings are (over-)due to be replaced, and both of us need root canals. Gah!

There's a shitload of good shows coming up in September & October; the ones I'm most excited about:
- Animal Collective & Eric Copeland (of Black Dice), Sept 7th
- Great Lake Swimmers, Sept 12th
- Ruins, Sept 16th
- Grizzly Bear, Sept 22nd
- Bloc Party (meh) w/ Deerhoof (!), Sept 30th
- Caribou w/ Born Ruffians, Oct 2nd
- Magnolia Electric Co., Oct 4th
- Eric's Trip, Oct 5th
- Torngat, Oct 12th

And, of course, the Rizdales w/ Casey Comeau et al. this Friday, the 10th at the Black Sheep.

Screaming, screaming, screaming for creemees*

2007-07-03T19:10:00.000-04:00

Three years ago or so, I went to see 28 Days Later, a zombie-esque horror film, as part of a double bill at the Mayfair. For whatever reason, they'd put it with the true crime flick Owning Mahowny (a pleasant little number starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, John Hurt and Maury Chaykin, who didn't play the token American this time), so I was sort of half-calm, half-keyed-up going in to the second half of the bill. As Jess has since joked, 28 minutes later, I left the theatre shitting bricks; I nearly screamed at an older couple who popped out around a corner on my walk home, and I had to stop at the Aloha Room for a drink to settle my nerves. Running, screaming zombies, people.

So today I checked out the sequel, 28 Weeks Later, in what I'm going to say was aversion therapy or something. The opening scenes, in a claustrophobic boarded-up cottage that gets overrun by the infected, are about as bad as anything in the original; we can tell from the get-go that things are going to go horrifically wrong for this disaster-movie group of corpses in-waiting (a elderly couple, a somber young man, [half of] a newlywed couple, and our protagonist and his wife) and wow, do they ever. Blood goes flying, and cowardice saves our man who dooms his wife to a bitey death.

The story moves on to cover the recovery and reconstruction after the infected have all died of starvation and, presumably, the virus has run its course. The American military have set up their Green Zone perimeters and sniper positions on the Isle of Dogs, and...yeah, can you guess where this is going? Things go very badly, there's a lot more running and screaming, and London gets napalmed. (Idris Elba, aka Stringer Bell from The Wire, shows yet again that he can play a cold and brutal killer like nobody's business.) In any case, this time I made it through the whole thing with only a few flinches. The absolute terror of the first one - particularly the opening scene, and the part where they have to hack up one of their friends with a machete - is somewhat blunted by familiarity, and by the distraction of the political subtext.

~

We've also been watching a few of John Waters' later movies. Hairspray was the first of his I'd ever seen, and, okay, it's really campy, but I still enjoyed it an awful lot more back in '91. And no, I have no intention (I mean it, Jess, I'm not kidding) of seeing the musical version. Pecker was terrific - a poke at artsy po-facedness, at the condescension of the cogniscenti, at tourism - and terribly funny. Serial Mom is also a scream - it's easy to forget how funny Kathleen Turner can be (or that Matthew Lillard can be funny at all) but her over-the-top version of Martha Stewart (because come on, that's totally what it is) is enough to make you forget those awful films she made with Michael Douglas. Lastly, Cecil B. Demented - again, what the hell, Melanie Griffith? Just when I think you suck like Meg Ryan, you do something like this. The movie - about a underground director-turned-kidnapper and his band of film thugs - isn't as good as the previous two, but again, it's funny and throws lots of film references. I can imagine that it's just the kind of thing a younger me would love the crap out of. (It also co-stars Alicia Witt, who looked really familiar but whom I couldn't place. She did play Cybill Sheppard's daughter in the short-lived Cybill, which I really liked, but after a while I realized that she mostly reminded me of my friend Liz, particularly in voice.)

~

In our real, unmediated lives, the big news was our trip to Vermont. Originally, it was to be an all-out shopping/seafood/whatever trip to New Hampshire and Montreal as well, but owing to bad (probable layoffs) news at work, we cut it back to a couple of days in VT, the cheap state. No, I'm kidding, it's lovely there. The scenery's all gorgeous, the weather cooperated with us almost the entire weekend, and the city of Burlington is probably the nicest I've visited in the entire US.

Some things we did:
• ate at a great, local-food restaurant with the unfortunate name of Smokejack's, and at a BBQ place called Big Fatty's.
• Got sunburned and blistered feet walking around the amazing Shelbourne Museum
• Saw a terrific Low/Wilco show, and many, many hippies
• Shopped at a K-Mart and a Macy's (the latter of which is almost exactly like the Bay).

Some things we didn't do:
• take the Lake Champlain ferry, because it was really expensive and would have meant a two-hour delay in getting home
• try Steven Colbert's Americone Dream ice cream, because we're forgetful
• go into Hot Topic, because we remembered we're not twelve.

I also bought a couple of metal CD's: Neurosis' Given to the Rising (which is heavier and more rock than The Eye of Every Storm and just plain better than A Sun That Never Sets) and Pig Destroyer's Phantom Limb, which is insane.

For a long time, the most nuts, thrash-metal thing I'd heard was Napalm Death. And okay, it probably still is - the entire thing, particularly the drums, sound so fast as to be blurry, and the lyrics are still indecipherable fifteen years on - but there were other things that pushed my envelope of noise incrementally: Maximillian Colby's excellent (and tragically only) album; various singles by both 400 Years and the Sleepytime Trio (who, interestingly enough, both featured Max Colby alumni); Botch's We Are the Romans, and Converge's staggering Jane Doe. Each one, on first listen, made no sense at all to me, except that I knew it had something powerful, and that I liked all that crashing and screaming and noise. And each one was faster, more complicated and begged for adjectives like "brutal" and "punishing". Pig Destroyer are like that. I've read a review here and there, suggesting that this is one of those landmarks in the evolution of a genre (in this case, grindcore) but I'm in no way able to judge either that claim or even the album on its own terms. It's just really, really loud and scary, and it doesn't sound dumb for trying, which is quite the accomplishment.

*we were told, in Burlington, that a fun thing to do was walk down the boardwalk and get a "creamie". It turns out that this a) just means a soft serve ice cream, and not a bizarre sexual thing, and b) it's spelled "creemee". I don't think I'm easily squicked out, but this rivals "slurpachino" for revolting food names.

Grab Bag o' Updates

2007-06-05T20:31:00.000-04:00

April and May weren't terribly exciting around here: we took turns getting sick, we watched some unimpressive movies, and we ventured out to a couple of Lynx games. But things are more interesting (see photo, below) with our new addition. I've got fascinating new scratches in all sorts of surprising places, for example. (I've also now realized that it's just as well that I'll never have kids, because I would totally be one of those parents who thinks everyone wants to hear all about the supposedly cute things the pisher does.) We're also planning an outlet mall shopstravaganza in New Hampshire and Kittery, ME for the Canada Day long weekend, which grew out of our plan to catch up with the Wilco/Low tour in Shelbourne, VT. It's a lovely thing to get the hell away from this town on July 1st, and being in the US for it should be interesting - I'm curious to see if I'll feel homesick, or even (gasp!) patriotic. Yeeg, let's hope not.

Films:
Is there some reason The Host hasn't played in Ottawa yet? Am I going to have rent Gorgo or something to get my monster-movie fix?

I'll try to keep our movie wrap-up manageable. First off, GO SEE Knocked Up, NOW. I really can't over-emphasise how funny, smart and sweet a film it is. Go. Now.
(Amusingly, Judd Apatow & co. are being sued by Asshole Report columnist Rebecca Eckler for having plagarized her book, Knocked Up. Two reasons I could tell the film wasn't based on anything she'd written: it was funny, and it was coherent.)
Zip's been pretty good to us recently; the best among them was Wong Kar-Wai's In The Mood For Love; I'd seen it before and loved it, and was quite chuffed that Jess was smit with it as well. It's romantic, it's heartbreaking, and so very little actually happens that you can concentrate on how nice everything looks. Also good was Finding Neverland, and as always, Johnny Depp's on-screen charisma is quite something. It's a charming story, of course, and there's lots of heartwarming and carpe diems and so on; as schmaltz goes it could have been a great deal worse. The children are mostly inoffensive and Kate Winslet is decent (although most of her role involves looking brave suffering through some mysterious ailment) but Depp really dove headfirst into his part. It was also nice to see MacKenzie Crook (Gareth from the UK version of The Office) not playing Gareth.

Talladega Nights was another comedy we were eagerly waiting for, and it's pretty excellent in much the same way that Anchorman was. Which is to say, there's some really terrific stuff early on, but the film loses steam when the plot becomes important. It's also worth noting that both Talladega Nights and Knocked Up have Kristin Wiig, who is fast becoming our favourite of the current cast of SNL, and who needs a starring vehicle very badly.

Hotel Rwanda - which has the distinction of being the second film that's ever made me cry (the first being Dancer in the Dark) - was one I had to watch alone. Given the subject matter, there's a lot less blood than I'd expected (less, for instance, than in Children of Men) but the film does a great job of capturing how the situation deteriorated so quickly and the dread and horror of the families trapped at the hotel. The performances are terrific; Don Cheadle (as real-life hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina) maintains, as best he can, the calm disposition of a high-end service professional until nearly the end of the film, when his arsenal of favour-earning scotch bottles runs out. (A more callous person could suggest this as a customer service training film.)

Book:
I recently finished Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, a surprisingly thoughtful argument (some would say polemic) in defence of atheism. I say 'surprisingly' because I'd heard and read a lot of people describe the book as if it was a gibbering, sophmoric rant. (I will concede that it does focus primarily on the three Abrahamic monotheisms, which I don't think weakens its argument so much as shows the author's awareness of his audience. Still, I would have liked to have seen a little more breadth in his examples.) Admittedly, he doesn't give any quarter to believers - or rather, to their beliefs, particularly where they intrude in the public realm - but he's not a dick about it, and he doesn't counsel others to be, either.

Dawkins' argument against the existence of god(s) starts with the essential point that the burden of proof shouldn't and doesn't rest with atheists - that may seem obvious, but the debate is rarely framed that way. He doesn't work especially hard after this on proving the absence of a deity (he does make the point that such a being is so staggeringly unlikely that it's not worth serious consideration.) The arguments made in favour of god's existence are disposed of quickly and effectively, and he does write a couple of chapters on the negative aspects of religion - he acknowledges that bad people will do horrible things for many reasons, but religion (like nationalism) allows good people to do evil deeds. He also turns his attention to the associated issues brought up against the atheistic worldview - that 'godless' morality is arbitrary and relativistic, that it ignores the beauty of nature, that it's nihilistic. What makes the book such a good read - and why I can imagine it would wipe the floor with professional grouch Christopher Hitchens' similar God is not Great - is Dawkin's humanism, his appreciation of the wonders of the universe, and his humour. Anyone expecting a frothing rant should be pleasantly disappointed.

Music:
I've had a copy of the Joanna Newsom record, Ys, for some time now, having heard that it was an improvement over The Milk-Eyed Mender (her creepy, Melanie-at-the-SCA debut). And, okay, maybe it was, but given that the shortest song clocks in at 7:19 (and the longest is almost 17 minutes) it was a tough one to even start listening to, let alone hear enough times to have an opinion on. So after some patient listening at work, I'm firmly now of the opinion that Ys is, indeed, much better than her first one, and even goddamn amazing. Her voice is still an acquired taste, and her lyrics are much weirder than I could possibly explain.

I don't often read reviews in Pitchfork, mostly because they're so incredibly annoying. Last week, I found Rob Mitchum's review of the new Stars remix/covers album Do You Trust Your Friends?, a song-for-song recreation/reinterpretation of their 2005 record Set Yourself On Fire by various bands they'd toured or recorded with. His take on the record seemed to have more to do with his dislike of the trend towards remix and/or cover albums; he does gripe about most of the tracks' weaknesses, and then gives the thing 1.8 out of ten.

It is a pretty self-indulgent collection; Mitchum overstates the case only slightly when he says Stars have "commissioned their own tribute album." Fair enough, although I'd be willing to bet he didn't bitch about Tortoise, Microstoria, Six Parts Seven, or Björk doing the same thing (to say nothing of Van Morrison). And I've got more of a problem with Amy Millan's boring, self-indulgent solo album. It's worth pointing out that Stars write very good songs - arguably better than any of the contributors to Do You Trust Your Friends? - that do lend themselves well to reinterpretation.

The ideas here are often good - "Ageless Beauty" reimagined as a bouncy, acoustic number, or Apostle of Hustle's faintly latin take on "One More Night" - but are foiled by poor execution. The best tracks - The Dears, Metric, and Final Fantasy - know where to leave well enough alone; the remainder, mostly straightforward dance-y remixes, manage to be both cluttered and boring. While I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who doesn't already like Stars quite a bit, c'mon, one point eight? It's not like it's an Andrew Ridgely record.

FTT

2007-06-05T20:59:00.000-04:00

I'm just about fed up with the Harper Tories. I felt some trepidation when they were first elected, tempered with the knowledge that they weren't going to be able to pass the worst parts of their agenda without serious compromise. And in a lot of ways, that's been borne out. In some instances, changes in the political landscape - like the rising importance of environmental issues to conservative voters - have prompted them to take positive steps despite themselves. So while I don't agree with most of their policies, they haven't been a disaster, and I'm sure somewhere in their record I'd find something I could support.

No, the problems I have with them are to do with style. Let's start with the first thing they did: "Canada's New Government". Apart from being an obnoxious phrase, the implication that they've replaced the structure of our government is misleading (and worrying) - but I guess that's what rebranding is all about. If they were being honest, why bother changing the phrase "government of Canada"?

Then there's the fact that they're hanging on to it well past the point it could reasonably be considered accurate. A "new" government, I think it's fair to say, wouldn't have introduced a budget or had time for (multiple) cabinet shuffles; nor should it have had time to have had all the stationary changed. A couple of suggestions for words to replaced "new": "current", "present", "temporary", "provisional", or "soon-to-be-replaced."

It's not surprising that they're clinging to the phrase, though, when you listen to anything Harper (or the couple of cabinet members he allows off their leash) has to say. Phrases like "when we came to office", "the previous government" and "after 13 years of foot-dragging" appear like flies on sherbert. Sure, after every change of government you can expect a flurry of finger-pointing and blame-laying - and that's fair. The Liberals could have done a lot more on the environment, on native issues, on federal-provincial relations, etc., and I didn't have a problem with the first couple of months of chastisement. After that, though, things quickly got to a 'put up or shut up' point, which was at least a year ago. Once you're established in power, complaining about what the last guys didn't do is either whining or campaigning.

The latter is fine, if you're in an election campaign. Which, as you may have noticed, we're not. We also don't yet run our campaigns outside the country; the Tories haven't seemed to have realized this yet. In fact, just today, Harper used his meeting with incoming French President Sarkozy to point out, yet again, the Liberals' poor record of restraining carbon emissions. As was said the time Rona Ambrose fit a year's worth of piss in a 3 minute summit speech, no-one else is talking about their predecessors (and given that the French guy has been in office for what, two weeks now? - he's the only one who could be forgiven it). So rather than do something constructive (and no, intensity-based guidelines are not something), the Tories are choosing to talk about how the other guys just talked but didn't do anything.

So that leaves us with whining. And it fits with the other thing the Tories are good at: being some testy-assed, thin-skinned little bitches. Harper's shit-fit last Thursday ("When the leader of the Opposition is able to stand in uniform...then I'll care about his opinion...") was probably his most fascistic moment so far, but he's always shown himself to be a humourless prick.

He's also shown himself to be the political equivalent of a grade-grubber. There's rarely been a major policy announcement that hasn't had Harper as the sole speaker; despite having run on promises of political reform, the only things he's done have been to make the Supreme Court confirmation process awkward, add an extra couple of days of voting, and set fixed election dates. (Gosh, thanks! Token steps are just as good as real ones!) The Tories have also been playing to their base - their knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing base - from the moment they came to power; their petulant unwillingness to speak to the press, their offensive statements about opposition politicians' loyalties (seriously, fuck right off with that shit) and their running childish attack ads with no sign of an election anywhere in sight are of a piece with Harper's lack of humour or pleasantness. He tried very hard to be presented as 'boring' in the 2006 campaign, as if this might make him look like less of a robot. What it did was highlight the fact that he IS boring - I'm half asleep the second he opens his mouth - and that all he's got going for him is the ruthless, uninteresting drive of the control freak.

Of course, it's not really getting him the power he wants. He's still ending up Prime Minister of this country, which stubbornly refuses to be the place he's pushing it to be.

The title of Linda McQuaig's new book, Holding The Bully's Coat (which I'm more tempted to buy with each passing day of cringing and eye-rolling) sums up where this all gets us. Harper today bloviated about how committed 'we' were to action on climate change even as it was clear that he'd be backing Bush's non-action plan (his line about being a "bridge" between the EU and US is, of course, horseshit). He also commented on the peabrained American plan to place anti-missile defense installations in eastern Europe and Putin's sabre-rattling reaction (which is understandable, if not helpful). Harper's statement: Russia has nothing to fear. Well, one can imagine Putin thinking, that's a fucking relief.

Bush isn't helping, of course - how could he? He's plainly incapable of seeing another's point of view, and so he's prattling that "The Cold War is over," while blithely taking near-precise steps to bring it back. It's almost as if, I dunno, he's drunk or something.

I've read Americans say it's taken Bush the Younger's reign to make them miss Reagan; it's taken Harper's to make me miss Mulroney.

The li'lest Crammit

2007-05-13T22:34:00.000-04:00

Meet The Commish. (We're hoping it's a name she grows into.)

Actual updates later, when we're not busy gushing over how cute it is when our kitten falls over.

The sunshine puts me in a good mood. It'll pass.

2007-04-20T22:17:00.000-04:00

I think there's a lesson for horror movie directors in Jonathan Glazer's Birth: that little kids can be highly disconcerting, but no matter how Midwich Cuckoo'ed up the tykes are, they're not scary.

It (Birth, I mean) is a mildly interesting film, about a woman who is visited (harrassed, really) by a 10-year old boy (played by Cameron Bright, who we'd also seen as the kid in Thank You For Smoking; on the negative side, he was also in X3 and Ultraviolet) who claims to be her dead husband. While she seems to be laughing off his claims early on, she's obviously fascinated and is quickly seduced by the idea that he could be the man she lost a decade earlier. For his part, the boy seems obsessed solely by his love for her and doesn't appear entirely comfortable in (or entirely aware of) his pre-adult status. A good part of this is due to Bright's powerful stare; for a little kid, he can put on a self-possessed look that'll serve him well in the underage drinking department. Thankfully, it doesn't get into any of the how's or if's of the possible reincarnation (there was a scene that led me to think that it was all a scheme to gaslight the poor woman, but alas, no.) And the realization from my first paragraph came near the end, when this creepy little kid faces off against an adult woman (I'm not spoiling it!) and loses, easily. Oh yeah, I thought, he's just a little twerp!

Nicole Kidman, who stars in Birth, is an actress I like, although there's a couple of weird things about that. For one thing, I'm pretty sure I'd never seen her in anything before this; the only thing of hers that I'm sure I'd want to see is Eyes Wide Shut* (no, I'm not kidding - what, you thought I was going to say Bewitched?) and in a lot of other cases I get her confused with Naomi Watts (whom she doesn't resemble, and can't hold a candle to). The other problem is that she's had, it appears, a fair amount of Botoxing, which leaves her with an unfortunately limited range of facial expressions. Jess & I had a good chuckle doing impressions of her "concerned", "angry" and "happy" face - all of which involve a blank stare (Jess has also expanded this to making fun of Julianne Moore and Andie McDowell; the former I like, the latter is one of many reasons I'm embarrassed for having liked sex, lies and videotape.) She still did a fairly good job in the role, and her Jean Seberg-esque 'do is quite flattering; I just wish it hadn't exposed how paralyzed her forehead muscles were.

Speaking of embarrassment, I'm semi-ashamed to admit that I've started following the re-made Battlestar Galactica. Not as ashamed as if it led me to watch the original again, or if I'd used this space to write STARBUCK IS A MAN (shit!). It's not as great as a lot of its boosters claim - the writing is frequently melodramatic and many of the characters are about as deep as a puddle - but it's well set-up to explore some reasonably weighty issues: what it means to be human, the moral limits of self-defence, that sort of thing. This is in stark contrast to the late-70's version, which seemed focused on using up mass quantities of excess gold lamé - like the sewage system, a valuable service but not fun to watch in action.

I probably haven't mentioned how much I've come to adore The Walrus magazine, which is a big oversight. I've got about 2/3rds of their issues so far (it started in '04) and it's been good to see it develop. It would have been pretty easy to call it the poor man's Harper's for the first year or so, but two things have conspired to fix that. First, obviously, the magazine is starting to find its focus, and is attracting better and bigger articles and writers. Secondly, and maybe this is just me losing interest, but Harper's has taken a steep decline in quality - perhaps since the takeover of new editor Roger D. Hodge (never trust a man with alliterative names) - but maybe I just wasn't paying close enough attention. I don't remember the last issue I was excited about, in contrast to the latest Walrus, which is chock full of goodness. (The other thing I've come to love from them is the cover art - the recent Bruce Mau-designed cover was just one highlight of their steady rise from 'like a cover of The Atlantic, only with Trudeau' to 'can I get this framed?')

*Kidman will, it turns out, appear in the upcoming Golden Compass, which I do desperately want to see, and also will be in The Invasion with Daniel Craig later this year. Bright will be in Juno, which I'd never heard of until this evening, but it's loaded with Crammit Hall favourites: Michael Cera and Jason Bateman, Rainn Wilson, and Allison Janney. And Juno, whew, is Jason Reitman's follow-up to Thank You For Smoking. Damn!

Oh yeah: some good things happening in the real world, apart from baseball season:
Kelp Records will be having a bunch of events at various locations (Sounds Unlikely, the Carleton Tavern, the Navy Club) the weekend of April 27th, with their excellent line-up of bands (The Flaps, the Acorn, Andrew Vincent & the Pirates, Greenfield Main, Rhume, Camp Radio, etc) and the ever-more elusive Two-Minute Miracles. Several of these events are free.
Acid Mothers Temple play Babylon on April 30th. Sure, it's a Monday, but how often do you get to see Japanese psych-noise bands? Not enough, that's for sure.
And the Wilderness Club will play in Toronto, finally, on May 19th, at Mitzi's Sister on Queen West. Then we will take a lengthy rest while various members buy houses, visit Norway, and write songs.

How I wasted March

2007-04-09T09:27:00.000-04:00

Back in 1985 or so, P.J.O'Rourke had a piece in Rolling Stone called "Trite Lights, Pig City", that followed his meanderings around various hot New York clubs. I'm not sure exactly why a) I owned an issue of Rolling Stone, or b) I remembered it so clearly; in any case, it was in my mind as I was reading Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City last week.

The O'Rourke story was mostly about the sort of scene I'd assumed was described in lurid detail in the novel - he and two friends go bar hopping over a few nights of increasingly exclusivity, until they reach a place with exactly six other people (none interesting, most from New Jersey). They end up escaping to a tavern and declaring the entire scene dead. It's an entertaining piece, given O'Rourke's average - I'd call him the funniest right-winger I've read, if I'd read another right-winger who was funny.

The novel does have a fair amount of boozing, cocaine abuse and so on; it's mostly about a young would-be-writer hitting bottom following a nasty breakup. But other than a passing picture of NYC in the early 80's, in the start of the recovery from its own collapse in the 70's, it's not a terribly exciting read. (Part of that is because of the degree to which the book has been borrowed from since, by writers like Irvine Welsh and David Gates, and in any number of films about the young and ambitious in New York. For example, The Last Days of Disco.)

Which leads me to: we saw Whit Stilman's debut feature, Metropolitan the weekend before last (and have Last Days of Disco taped and waiting for us). I'd wanted to see this for some time, since it'd had good reviews at the time, and LDoD was a film I'd enjoyed (despite the presence of Cloë Sevigny). It's pretty good, too; the performances are weird, either stilted or theatrical, and the dialogue is very mannered, appropriately for a film that references Jane Austin so often. It follows a young man who almost accidentally falls in with a group of his former classmates, and his weirdly sudden adoption of and by this upper-crust clique. He's a weird guy, the protagonist - initially proclaiming himself a socialist and morally (morally!) opposed to elaborate social outings, and spouting strong opinions on books he unapologetically admits he's never read (quiet, you). Within the space of a week (the film takes place over the Christmas holidays "not so long ago"), our hero has become dependent on his newfound group for entertainment and taken the most outspoken elitist among them as his mentor. It's worth a warning that the last 20-30 minutes are just painful, but there's a passable conclusion to the story in the last few minutes.

Strangely enough, Stilman has only made three features so far (the two mentioned and Barcelona; according to a year-old interview, he's working on something "soon"), which are related through a number of characters, and (the two I've seen, at least) deal with social decay among awful rich kids. Honestly, his films should be torture - his characters are largely unsympathetic to start and usually get worse with time - but he's got a way with dialogue that makes it easy to overlook their self-important declarations. I wouldn't say he's a brilliant filmmaker, but he's worth watching.

I caught another nebbishy film after calling in sick (ahem) the other day, the in-hindsight overhyped Sideways. I'd loved it at the time, but there's more than a couple of wine-tasting (and -guzzling) montages, several scenes that go on much longer than neccessary, and a soundtrack that is fucking awful. Really, though, the film sums itself up very early on with an amazing exchange, ostensibly about wine, between Paul Giamatta and Virginia Madsden:

PG: "...[I]t's a hard grape to grow, as you know...It's uh, it's thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens early. It's not a survivor like Cabernet, which can just grow anywhere and uh, thrive even when it's neglected. No, Pinot needs constant care and attention...And in fact it can only grow in these really specific, little, tucked away corners of the world. And, and only the most patient and nurturing of growers can do it, really. Only somebody who really takes the time to understand Pinot's potential can then coax it into its fullest expression. Then, I mean, oh its flavors, they're just the most haunting and brilliant and thrilling and subtle and... ancient on the planet."
...
VM: "No, I- I like to think about the life of wine. How it's a living thing. I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing; how the sun was shining; if it rained. I like to think about all the people who tended and picked the grapes. And if it's an old wine, how many of them must be dead by now. I like how wine continues to evolve, like if I opened a bottle of wine today it would taste different than if I'd opened it on any other day, because a bottle of wine is actually alive. And it's constantly evolving and gaining complexity. That is, until it peaks, like your '61. And then it begins its steady, inevitable decline."

The scene takes place less than half-way through the film, but nearly everything else in Sideways is like an aside to it. Okay, that, and then the final 15 minutes or so, when Giamatta drinks his '61 Cheval Blanc in a fast food joint while noshing on fried chicken. I like to think that as long as I'm not doing that, things in my life can't be all that bad.

We're also now working through the first season-and-a-half of NewsRadio. What's most surprising is how quickly the show finds its footing; after two middling episodes (including the pilot) it feels lived-in and relaxed in a way that very few programs do. The characters have their stock elements, but even Phil Hartman's Bill McNeill (presumably modelled on The Mary Tyler Moore Show's Ted Knight) has a level of un-self-conscious weirdness and such an utter lack of likeability that it's difficult to imagine his existence on a pre-Seinfeld television landscape. The show didn't go for depth, complexity or even particularly highbrow humour, but it wasn't dumb and it recognized that its audience wasn't either. We're not going to follow it into its Jon Lovitz-fed decline, but for 4 seasons at least it's a damn fine laugh.

Shows coming up? My word yes. The Wilderness Club plays Irene's on the 13th, with the Jupiter Ray Project, and I think that's actually our last show for a while, as we've some record stuff to get cracking on (and some new damn songs to write, Casey*). The 14th and 21st of April are crazy - Jim Bryson at the Black Sheep, Do Make Say Think at Barrymore's and the intriguing-but-I-haven't-heard-yet Jetplanes of Abraham at Zaphod's on the former, and Muffler Crunch w/ Mississippi Grover at Irene's and the Wooden Stars w/ Tusks at Babylon on the latter. The 27th of April brings Pawa Up First to the Black Sheep - we saw them a couple of years ago and were both impressed by their krautrock-esque stylings - and we're horrified to see that the opening act are the inexplicably lauded My Dad vs. Yours, who are just awful.

*I'm fired, aren't I?

Spring and stress

2007-03-14T20:59:00.000-04:00

The snow's melting and the big project at work's wrapping up, so finally I'm able to squeeze a few words out again.

First off: I can't remember if I'd posted this up last time, but there's a new-ish High Hat up, and as always it's a tremendous read (I'm particularly partial to Matt Rossi's ode to Providence, RI, myself, but as always, there's plenty to enjoy).

we, by which I mean I, have been pretty slack about getting through my zip disks the last couple of months. Akira Kurosawa's 1980 samurai epic Kagemusha sat, partially watched and radiating waves of guilt, from late December until about two weeks ago (it's probably an enjoyable movie if you're in the mood for 3 hours' worth of court intrigue, marching, and battle sequences where the action takes place mostly off-camera. I'm pretty sure I've never been in that mood, but who knows.) We also made it part way through Guy Maddin's Cowards Bend The Knee before Jess bailed (no jerk-off motion this time, though); personally, I didn't like it as much as any of his other films I've seen (Saddest Music in the World, Careful, and the short Sombra dolorosa which appeared on a DVD that came with an issue of The Believer.)

The Squid and The Whale was a film I'd heard a great many good things about, although I think I must have missed or blocked out the description of how staggeringly painful it is. Written & directed by Noah Baumbach, a Wes Anderson collaborator (a writer for The Life Aquatic), it follows the separation of a married couple, played by Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney; it shares something of the look of The Royal Tennenbaums (the large house on a leafy street in Brooklyn, the rumpled collegiate way everyone dresses, the tennis), but in tone the films couldn't be much farther apart. From the opening scene, where the family (the couple has two boys, 16 and 12) play quite possibly the most passive-aggressive game of tennis in the history of sport, there is so much selfish loathesomeness on display it's a wonder the movie isn't harder to watch. And yet the story is greatly compelling, and the characters - while not the kind of people we might want to hang out with - are difficult not to hope for. It also impressed me a great deal that Jeff Daniels, who I've always considered to be a bland, generic nice-guy kind of actor, is able to pull off being so incredibly unlikeable (by the third time he says "Don't be difficult" I was ready to knee-cap the guy.)

Things you can learn from our experience about this movie: it's not a good hangover film. I'm sure you could figure that out yourselves, but, just in case.

I also watched Sud Pralad (aka, Tropical Malady), a surrealistic Thai film from a couple of years back that I'd heard good things about. It's certainly a beautiful thing - the first half just glows as it follows the love between a soldier and a country youth (and considering that the two men don't so much as kiss, the passion between them comes through pretty clearly); they travel around a bit, they listen to music, and then the youth wanders off into the forest. And almost exactly half-way through, the film changes gears, and now the young man has possibly become a tiger. The second half has narration but almost no dialogue (I believe the character with the most lines in the second hour is a monkey). It's a perplexing film, but it's unpretentious, rewarding and sweet, and I hope it - or Apichatpong Weerasethakul's next feature, Sang sattawat (Syndromes and a Century) - gets wider attention.

It's not just been the, ah, esoteric selection of films that have been keeping us from getting our money's worth out of zip recently; we've also sprung for digital cable, so we're more distracted than ever now. I should point out that the process of switching to digital was just about the most confusing and poorly-explained bureaucratic clusterfuck I've ever had to deal with (well, Jess actually dealt with it for the most part, bless her heart), and that given the choice, I'd never deal with Rogers again. But, alas, with the alternative being Bell, we're stuck with Uncle Ted.

Anyway, one of the better channels we've got now is the CBC/NFB Documentary Channel; although I missed Jandek on Corwood last weekend (I was busy painting my teeth), last night they showed loudQUIETloud, which followed the Pixies reunion tour of 2004. As much as I loved the Pixies (and it's quite a bit), the film was just depressing - the years have not been kind to them, and while the concert footage made the shows looked like more fun than the one I saw in 1991 ('92?) in Toronto - when they clearly hated being anywhere near each other - it still seemed very lacking. Sigh.

~

There's also been a fair amount of music acquisition here, too. I'm a little disappointed with Ohbijou's Swift Feet for Troubled Times - I'd heard very good things about the band (including that they'd played as Mike Feuerstack's backing band at some Snailhouse shows in Toronto), and while they're clearly good arrangers, the songs didn't grab me, and at times...oh, sometimes indie rock just sticks in my craw really, really badly. I know, I love it most of the time (I've got a fucking Henry's Dress 10" single, and more than one Cub single), but my tolerance for preciousness just isn't what it used to be. (Hence, I'm not as smitten with the seemingly infinite number of Of Montreal songs I've gotten off eMusic in the last few months.)

Lily Allen's Alright, Still has been my favourite of late, and I'm a little embarrassed about that. It's terrific, don't get me wrong - frequently hilarious, catchy and upbeat. But, like when I first got into the Magnetic Fields (ca. Holiday), this is the anti-soundtrack to my life. Seriously, what could be less me than dancey songs about life in London, from the perspective of a devilishly smart, 20-ish clubby girl? Incidentally, if you've only heard the single ("Smile"), I'd recommend giving the rest a listen before you judge (particularly "LDN", "Everything's Just Wonderful" and "Alfie").

The new Arcade Fire album...well, my view of the band is biased and I'm really, really happy for their success. And I do like the new record, quite a bit more than Funeral - they spent their recording budget wisely, bringing their sound up to the level of their ambitions. But my problems with their songwriting haven't gone away: a lot of Win's lyrics are just rubbish, and a lot of their songs are decent, simple tunes with over-elaborate window dressing. Still, it's an enjoyable record, and I would recommend it even to people who didn't like the first one.

Wincing the Night Away, the latest Shins release, is also an improvement over their last (Chutes Too Narrow), but I don't feel the need to qualify my praise so much here. Again, the production budget clearly has gone up somewhat, but the main improvement is simply that they're written better songs here. Their sound is still very much in the 80's 'college rock' mould - any one of the Shins' records wouldn't sound out of place in the Frontier, Homestead or DB records catalogue - but this one's a lot softer, which, old crank I am, sits well on these ears.

Oh, and there's the new Low record, Drums and Guns. It's weird. Lots of drum machines, loops and samples. I'm pretty sure I like (most of) it, but it takes some getting used to.

~

Other than that, we're doing okay. Jobs are good, the wine rack is full, and we have things pencilled on our calendar as far away as September. It's finally warm enough that we're opening the windows, and eyeing the balcony as a place to enjoy again; and I've got to say that having daylight savings time this early in the year is disorienting. It's supposed to be warm out when you spring forward, damn it. It's also supposed to feel completely overdue when it happens, not something that sneaks up on you. (Speaking of sneaking up, 37 is an age to put a fellow on edge. It's not one of those years you'd expect to make you feel ancient, but there's something about the sound of the numbers that makes it seem like it might as well be 45.)

And a correction: the Wilderness Club will be playing Babylon on the 23rd, not the 30th. We're also playing sometime in April, I think, and there's rumours we'll be playing Toronto in May. Fingers (mine at least) are crossed.

K-Tel

2007-02-04T11:48:00.000-05:00

First off: Yes, if you have a mixtape I gave you, please, email the tracklist or post it in the comments; I'm sure some of them will be embarrassing (I think there's an OMD song on one of the tapes I made for Cara) but isn't that the whole point of this? Cringing?

Second: The only 70-second long song I have is by Howe Gelb, and I suspect it's more likely to make you feel like having a little lie down than any sort of invincibility. Better places to look: Napalm Death, Converge, or Agoraphobic Nosebleed (although for them, 70 seconds would be an epic - even 17 seconds is a little on the long side).

We were out shopping today, for curtain material (didn't get any), records at the fabulous new record store, Sounds Unlikely (5 Arlington St. - spent over $150 without really trying) and clothes at the Village des Valeur in Gatineau (a $20 3-piece suit for me, a $4 cashmere sweater for Jess). There was also a brief foray into the record section, where I found a K-Tel compilation from 1983 (Hit Express or something like that), but I didn't get it.

Here's the thing: K-Tel Records' compilations slavishly followed the top 40 of the day, and so when, in the late 70's and early 80's commercial radio became rigidly formatted, the top 40 became utterly bland. Here's a simple comparison, between the first sides of 1972's 22 Explosive Hits, 1977's Right On and 1982's Radio Active (all three of which we own.)

22 Explosive Hits
The Candy Man – Sammy Davis, Jr.
Nice To Be With You – Gallery
A Simple Man – Lobo
Don’t Pull Your Love – Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds
Layla – Derek & The Dominoes
Guilty – Al Green
Vaya Con Dios – Dawn
If Not For You – Olivia Newton-John
Wild Eyes – Stampeders
Day By Day – Godspell
Popcorn – Hot Butter

So, there's at least one really great song here (I meant the Al Green, by the way), and some schlock (Sammy Davis Jr), a weird novelty hit ("Popcorn") and pre-Grease Olivia Newton-John covering Bob fucking Dylan. (If you haven't heard Olivia's early work, particularly "I Honestly Love You", consider yourself lucky. Dan Hill's "Sometimes When We Touch" is only marginally more treacly.) But the sounds are all over the map: hard rockin' shit sits next to soul and wuss-pop, capped off with quasi-experimental electronica (well, in much the same way that Underworld were "experimental"). It's pretty amazing at how bright and sunny this music is - I mean, all of it. One wonders what depressed teenagers listened to in 1972 (I mean, if they hadn't discovered the Velvet Underground or the Stooges. Rod McKuen?)

Right On
Shake Your Booty – K. C. & The Sunshine Band
I’d Really Love To See You Tonight – England Dan & John Ford Coley
You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine – Lou Rawls
Strange Magic – Electric Light Orchestra
Getaway – Earth, Wind & Fire
The Cisco Kid – War
I Got To Know – Starbuck
Take It Or Leave It – Moxy
Magic Man – Heart
The Best Disco In Town – Ritchie Family

Again, a little bit of everything (although no novelty hits this time - side two does include the theme song from "The Young & the Restless", which apparently charted*). Two flat-out disco songs, two wussy pop-rock numbers, two hard rock songs and slow, groovy one suitable for stoners or people who drive enormous cars very slowly (uh, that's the one by War. They also did "Low Rider".) There's also Lou Rawls, filling in for Barry White as the make-out song singer, and Earth, Wind & Fire's overly slick funk (side two features the Ohio Players, who are much better). The mood is a little less pollyana-ish (nobody's talking about any fucking Candy Man) but it's still largely fun. I don't suppose I need to point out that there's not a hint on this record of the existence of punk rock.

*mind you, so did a prog-rock version of "The Lord's Prayer", so you see how fucked-up the seventies must have been.

Radio Active
Who's Crying Now - Journey
Take it on the Run - REO Speedwagon
Morning Train (Nine to Five) - Sheena Easton
Don't Want to Wait Anymore - Tubes
Falling in Love Again - Michael Stanley Band
Feels So Right - Alabama
I've Done Everything for You - Rick Springfield
Private Eyes - Hall & Oates

Everyone who thinks 80's nights are fun: you suck. The first two songs here are enough to indict the entire fucking decade; it's hard to imagine music less enjoyable. Sheena Easton's saccarine pop, sort of a low-rent Sandy Denny/Petula Clark thing, seems weirdly appropriate for an age whose best songs all seemed to be about bored office workers. Well, except that it's cynically free of angst or depth. Nevermind. Tubes sound just like Foreigner or Journey or Toto, and the Michael Stanley Band somehow manage to have less personality than that. So far, we've heard 5 songs and exactly one production style. There's the odd hint in Alabama's gluey ballad that they used to be a country band, but it's not like it makes the song any more distintive. I'm slightly amazed that the closest thing to an acknowledgement of New Wave comes from Rick Springfield - considering, for one thing, that he'd been on the charts for 10 years at this point (his "Speak to the Sky" appears on 1972's Believe in Music, another K-Tel comp we've got). Which makes his teen idol status in the early 80's more than a little creepy. But lo and behold, he's got the best, most distinctive and only listenable song on the whole side. And Hall & Oates wrap things up with their mindless, Gary-Numan-esque ode to stalking.

There are a couple of things worth noting about this collection as a whole: for one thing, it's remarkably uniform. Not just stylistically - most of the songs do fall into that same non-genre, the not-rocking rock song - but also sonically. The drums all sound basically the same, the vocals are mixed at the same spot, there's compression up the fucking wazoo. But also, it's very very white. Every 70's collection had as much funk and soul as rock; the closest Radio Active gets is Blondie's "Rapture" (there is a song by the Police on side 2 as well, but it's not one of the ones that's reggae-ish.)

Somewhere at the end of the 70's, there clearly was a major cultural shift, and it's tough for someone like me (born in '70) to figure out from here where it started. I'd love to pin it on the election of Ronald Reagan, or maybe the release of The Big Chill - but it just seems that somewhere between 1978 and 1981 North America got collectively freaked out by disco and decided that it was time to start being more uptight about everything. I suppose that this must also have been a time when radio program directors started clamping down on their dj's - the Andy Travis effect, perhaps - and ensured that nothing weird or off-style made it on air.

Come to think of it, the economy's lack of growth for several years probably caught up with a lot more people as the decade went on, and when times are tight, people don't feel so liberal about, say, music, or dress, or behaviour (there was serious talk of marijuana decriminalization on both sides of the border in the late 70's, but that turned into "just say no" and the War on Drugs soon enough...)

Next week: who sucks more, The Eagles or Billy Joel?

90 minutes, high bias, tabs in.

2007-01-18T12:49:00.000-05:00

I've been reading this book that Jen gave me, Mix Tape, which has little essays and quips about the cassettes they've given or received, from various musicians, writers, filmmakers, and so on, as well as a lot of cassette covers (and some actual cassettes). It's a heartwarming little book, particularly for an inveterate mix-tape-maker like myself. [It turns out there's a new memoir by Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield called Love is a Mix-Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time, which I now must buy]. I haven't made one for anybody in a long while - I think the last one was in '99 for woman in Toronto named Beth, and I missed my opportunity to include the song "Charles" by Scrawl (which is a distaff version of the Kiss song that has, I'm sure, plagued the life of every woman with that name since) but she did say "thanks for the crazy devil-music", and didn't immediately lose interest in me. (I'm not sure what the 'devil-music' in question was. I only remember two songs from the tape, Cornershop's "My Dancing Days Are Done" and Wilco's "Via Chicago", neither of which strike me as particularly good woo-ing songs.)

The first tapes I made for a girl were for one Carla Slover, back in tenth grade. I don't remember how it came about, since we weren't friends and I didn't have a crush on her or anything. I think what happened was, she asked to borrow a tape that my brother had made me, and she hated all of it (particularly Jonathan Richman, and in my books if you hate Jonathan Richman you are a bad person) except for Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels' "Devil With A Blue Dress". So she asked me to make a tape with stuff like that on it, and I promptly made her a tape with the things I liked, which at the time included Tom Waits' "Frank's Wild Years", a song that I included on just about every mix I made until my brother moved out and took his copy of Swordfishtrombones with him. She hated it, although I recall her asking for another one. I never really talked with her after that year, so I don't know if she kept the tapes or even listened to them much.

Generally, I've only gotten mix-tapes of the "here, you need this music" variety (quite distinct from the love-letter tape, aka "the good kind"); most of them came from my brother (and about half of them included "Shake Some Action" by the Flaming Groovies). Jen gave me a tape once with Perry & Kingsley's The In Sound From Way Out, a Boss Hogg EP and some assorted tracks (including the Hawaiian Pups) which I've since lost (or maybe it broke?); and my newly re-found friend George sent me a tape of Game Theory's Big Shot Chronicles, rounded out with most of Mo Tucker's solo recordings (I'm pretty sure I've lost that too.) The one exception was the break-up tape that Meredith made for me, which was pretty good, but which I smashed into many, many pieces and left strewn around her vacated room. I don't regret smashing the tape; I deeply regret not taking a picture of the room. Even she said that it looked really cool.

I used to keep lists of the tapes I made, for a few years in the mid-nineties, but I appear to have thrown them out*. It kept me from repeating myself, and allowed me to keep track of curious little patterns that emerged. For example: nearly every tape had 13 songs per side. It didn't matter if I started off with a ten-minute Brian Eno track ("Fullness of Wind", from Discreet Music, on a tape I made for Ao) or if I tried to include only two-minute punk songs, at forty-five minutes a side, it always added up to 13 songs (as it turns out, 45 divided by 13 is 3.46, as close to the perfect pop-song length as doesn't make a difference.)

I've always felt that there's a definite pattern that a mix should have (with examples included)

• An intro song (ideally it should be song one, side one of the record it's on, and should take a long time getting started (eg., "Exercise One", by Joy Division)
• Five or six tracks of up-tempo, bouncy songs. You can change styles of music here, but try not to bounce around too much. And if you're going to include songs that say "baby I'm a-want you", this is the place to put them. Personally, I never felt they were all that good an idea.
• A longer, slightly slower song, followed something short and weird ("Tokyo Storm Warning" by Elvis Costello, then "I Just Wanna See His Face", by the Rolling Stones)
• the tail end of side one, which should be down-beat but not specifically slow; something with a long coda works nicely ("23 Beats Off", by Fugazi) You may also wish to include a short (< 2 min.) song to fill up that last little bit of tape; fast songs are good here. Resist the urge to put in something by They Might Be Giants.
• Song one, side two, should be short, wistful and winsome, and have no drums. The best song one, side two song ever written is "Sunday" by Helium; "Fill Your Heart" by David Bowie works nicely as well. The worst? I once included selections from Nurse With Wound's Gyllenskold/Brained in this position, on a mix for Marcia. I have no idea what I was thinking.
• The next few songs should be album tracks, not singles - longer, more serious - and if you're planning to include things you're not sure your listener will like (but you're hoping to convert them) put 'em here. Avoid getting maudlin - it's easy (for me, at least) to turn side two into a mope-rock vortex that can't be broken out of.
• Once you reach the mid-point on side two, things should start building up - either louder, or faster, or both (I like to put Chavez or Eleventh Dream Day around here; similarly, late-period Superchunk, eg. "Here's Where The Strings Come In" works well)
• There should be something of a conclusion to the second side, a longer powerhouse of a track followed by a shorter denuement. For a good sense of what I mean, think of the end of side two of Abbey Road.

In High Fidelity, Nick Hornby suggested a whole lot of rules exist for mix-tapes, but there's only one I hold to, which is only one song by an artist per tape (unless your tape is all pairs of songs.) For me, the guiding principle was always the flow of the thing, and I never understood people who planned out exactly what was going to go on their tapes ahead of time; the next song was always suggested by the last few seconds of the one I was recording.

Despite all the user-friendly interfaces, this is harder to do with a computer playlist, and in particular the shuffle function on iTunes has made me a lazy, lazy man. It doesn't produce good mixes, at least not often, and since it can run all day without attention, makes it easier to disengage from the music. When I switched over to making mixed cd's (sometime around 2001), I found it difficult to cope with the lack of a side two, and the quasi-narrative structure that provides. I've tried to approximate that by including a track that breaks the flow (on the first mix-cd I made for Jess, it was an Empress song that she hated, and skips every time) followed by a 'song one, side two' song (in that case, "What Good Is Love" by Mark Eitzel). I don't think it works all that well, and now that we're moving past the mercifully brief mix-cd era, I don't feel all that strong an urge to come up with an approach for a longer, single-sided set.

And charmless as the playlist can be - which is to say, entirely - it does still present the opportunity to offer up a snapshot of yourself; rather than the posed, intentional image you give with the mix-tape, a few shuffled tracks from one's library (see the Onion AV Club's Random Rules) is, well, like letting someone hear the things you left off the mix.

There was an asinine Rogers commercial running recently, in which a girl tries to woo a guy with a cellphone and a thousand songs. First off, a thousand songs isn't a love letter, it's a tiresome book. [Currently, my iTunes has 864 songs, with a total playing time of two and a half days.] What's more, she's shown getting songs from the guy's friends - which defeats the whole purpose of the mix, since it's supposed to be personal, not just a lot of songs. Of course, it's just a commercial, and I doubt that love-struck boys and girls are handing each other gigantic collections of songs they had help putting together as tokens of affection, but you never know; kids do miss the point a lot of the time (see: 80's night. Better yet, don't.) Still, I wonder if there will be an analogous symbol of hip love years from now, that the teenagers of today will look back on with half-embarrassed smiles.

*if I've made a mix-tape for anyone reading this, and you've still got it/them, I'd love to see even a partial track listing, 'cause I'm just that kind of vain.

Catching up with last year.

2007-01-17T23:50:00.000-05:00

I've already now caught three of my most-wanted-to-see films of '06 this month, Stranger Than Fiction, Borat and Children of Men. There's also a bunch of new records I've acquired, some of which appeared on a great many best-of lists, although only one that'd fit on mine...

Stranger than Fiction has the moderately clever premise that a man (Will Ferrell, here showing that he can turn his intensity down almost far enough) in the real world begins to hear the voice of a narrator, who, it turns out, is the writer of a book in which he is the protagonist. It's handled lightly, and with more attention paid to the romantic subplot - like Nora Ephron adapting an Italo Calvino story - so you get the feeling something intellectually interesting could have been done with it in abler hands. Oh, and Ferrell sings "Whole Wide World" late in the film, and it's hard not to love him for it.

Borat...well, Borat was very funny, particularly in the parts that weren't in the trailer. But that's the problem: I wouldn't watch this a second time, because a great deal of the character's hilarity comes from not knowing how far he will push his unwitting subjects. On the plus side, I think it's pretty safe to imagine that Cohen is now done with the character of Borat, and is free to just be regular funny.

Finally, Children of Men is just incredible. I'm actually having a hard time thinking of a better science-fiction film, one that actually lives up to the quality of sf writing. There's not a lot of time-wasting exposition or credulity-straining explanation of why people around the world became infertile in the late 00's or how society became so completely shredded. We're simply thrown into it, and follow the story of this guy (Clive Owen, whose acting here is just jaw-dropping) attempting to smuggle a mysteriously pregnant woman out of totalitarian England. As a warning, it's quite incredibly violent, starting very shortly into the opening scene, and interrupted by a number of very tranquil, even happy scenes, which is probably why it's not easy to inure yourself to the bloodshed.

~

We did check out a few movies on disc recently as well - Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho, which Jess did not hate nearly as much as Last Days (and so has agreed to give Drugstore Cowboy a chance) and Closer, which was surprising in a couple of ways: Julia Roberts wasn't bad, and who knew Natalie Portman could act? No-one whose sole exposure to her had been those Star Wars atrocities, I'd bet.

And lord, gobs of music: if you haven't heard Jenny Lewis' Rabbit Fur Coat, damn, you are missing out. Ditto her (ex?) band Rilo Kiley's More Adventurous. I also found another Ryoji Ikeda album, Matrix - like the other of his I've got, +/-, it's based on the interplay of sounds between the speakers (for this one, the sound of the record changes as you walk around the room or tilt your head.) If you're not looking for something quite so out, I'm also fairly happy with Gruff Rhys' Candylion; it's not very different from recent Super Furry Animals albums, so if they're your bag...um...there you are. Similarly: Built to Spill's You In Reverse, which is very much like some of their last record mixed with some of the one before that. Less impressed: Broken Social Scene's self-titled record (as Richard said, it sounds like two records playing at once*); Sonic Youth's Rather Ripped (which I'm sad to say is the best thing I've heard them do in about a decade, but still is only middling); and Band of Horses, who get raves from Pitchfork, which shows that perhaps I'm on to something when I take their good ratings as red flags. Yechh, they're boring.

In other, things...um, not much. It's a couple of weeks old now, but you (especially if you are Kira-Lynn) should read Phil Nugent's article Helen Hill and the Death of New Orleans, which is excellent, and more than a little heartbreaking. There are a few good shows coming up (Priestess on the 18th; my bandmate Marie-Josee on the 19th, the Essex Green on the 30th, Ghislain Poirier & Vitaminsforyou on the 1st of February, and Slayer in there somewhere too); I'm hoping to actually leave the house a little more often this year, rather than my play-more-shows-than-watch plan from last year (which was not fun.) Oh, and speaking of which: the Centretown Wilderness Club will be headlining at Babylon on the 30th of March. We will have new songs, in case you're wondering.

*My iTunes went all screwy the other day, as I was listening to Amon Amarth's With Odin on Our Side, and it started playing two tracks at once. And what do you know, it sounded terrific. I'm not suggesting you go buy two copies of it to try out at home, but...

Listy, listy.

2006-12-23T11:28:00.000-05:00

Okay, I'm pretty sure I've bought all the records and seen most of the films I'm going to this year. So I might as well put 'em all in pointless, annotated lists.

5 Albums:

Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
I had been lukewarm on this when I first heard it, but mercy me, it's spectacular. Easily her best work, and trounces everything else I heard this year.

Bobby Bare Jr. - The Longest Meow
This is what Paul Westerberg's solo career should have sounded like. Hell, this is what the Replacements (post-Bob) should have sounded like.

Nina Nastasia - On Leaving
Califone - Roots & Crowns
Centro-Matic - Fort Recovery
Sure, it's kind of plain late-90's guitar alt-rock - not unlike the Grifters, or Girls Can Tell-era Spoon - but goddamn, I still really like that sound.

5 Excellent Songs:

Comets on Fire, "Lucifer's Memory"
The Mountain Goats, "Woke up New"
Grizzly Bear, "Marla"
Cat Power, "The Moon"
Malajube, "Montreal -40" (What? They can't all be depressing)

5 Disappointing Records:

Amy Millan, Honey From the Tombs
When I heard Ms. Millan was doing a solo record of country music, I was sort of hoping it'd be a big-arrangement, countrypolitan thing. Alas, it's an attempt to be 'rootsy', and her voice isn't suited for that. And, alas again, the songs are fucking boring.

Yo La Tengo, I Am Not Afraid of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
When this record is on - which about a third of it is - it's very good, and given that it's their eleventh record (not counting compilations), the fact that it's not immediately dismissable is pretty impressive. But it's badly in need of an editor.

TV On the Radio, Return to Cookie Mountain
I think, if I hadn't expected so much more out of this record, I'd be pretty impressed with it; damn you, critics!

The Mountain Goats, Get Lonely
The Sunset Tree was going to be a tough act to follow; adding on to that, the fact that the strongest song on the album ("Woke Up New") was released some months before the record on a Pitchfork/eMusic free MP3 comp, so I probably should have lowered my hopes accordingly. It's not a bad record, again, just...I wish it could have been a little more.

5 Films:

The Science of Sleep
Tristram Shandy
Little Miss Sunshine
Thank You for Smoking
Casino Royale

In case you're wondering, no, I didn't see a lot of current movies this year. Hey:

5 I Missed, And In So Doing Made An Error I Must Correct With All Haste:

Bon Cop, Bad Cop
Borat
The Fountain
Stranger Than Fiction
When The Levees Broke

~ ~

So, in case you weren't aware, we're having an informal, drop-by Christmas day brunch here, which will run from whenever we're up and have picked up the bagels (probably 11ish) into the afternoon. Mimosas and Caesars will be served.

Couldn't have said it better myself

2006-11-28T19:03:00.000-05:00

Quote from Ken Dryden on the 'Nation' resolution:

"This feels wrong because it doesn't feel as serious as it must be.

It feels like games - bad, manipulative, opportunistic games. Political games. Box somebody into a corner so they say or do something they don't want to say or do just to get out of the corner. Just to save face. For them to box the other guy into saying and doing the same. So we all save face, and all get into a bigger box - a bigger box called "the future." Except that box is somebody else's.

And all of these games, these manipulations aren't really about now. They are about creating the slippery slope for later."

For the next couple of days, at least, you can sign a petition against it. (from Winky)

Drink and rock, a dull film, and four new records.

2006-11-27T23:16:00.000-05:00

November, as Morrissey said, spawned a monster, and I call this monster Sobrietor. Yep, we've been off the sauce for the past month, in an ill-fated attempt to save money and maybe cut some calories (which might have worked better if we hadn't replaced wine with snacks) We're looking forward to a sensible, mature reacquaintance with a bottle of red wine (probably a Shiraz) with dinner on Friday, and probably a dram of that $100 scotch (18 year-old Caol Ila) I bought in a moment of weakness. So yeah, if we've seemed like the boring old fogies recently, it's almost over, and, finally, we should start stumbling out into the world again.

December 2nd, in particular, is a night crowded with excellent options, and we're thinking we might take in different parts of it - there's Evil Farm Children, Four'n Giv'r, and Mississippi Grover (who I completely forgot to see on the 22nd, like a jerk) at Irene's, the Acorn's CD release with Ohbijou at Babylon, and the Hilotrons with Animal Collective's Avey Tare and Múm's Kria Brekken at Maverick's.

The last of these gets my immediate vote - I've never not enjoyed the Hilotrons, and both Animal Collective and Múm are bands I've liked in a half-hearted way, the sort of fence-sitting like that usually gets cured either way by a live show. There's also the consideration that there's next to no chance that either group will be passing this way again anytime soon, if ever. But it's going to come down to how much I feel like watching what could be a desperately precious bit of freak-folk. I went as twee as I can stomach in the 90's, and I'm not going back now. I hope. Oh, and then there's the fact that I really, deeply hate going to shows at Maverick's*.

Ohbijou interest me primarily because I'd heard they're a sometimes-backing band for Snailhouse (still one of my favourite musicians and songwriters), but I haven't looked them up online or anything, so have no idea what to expect (which is, for me, enticing). The Acorn, on the other hand, I've seen a couple of times recently, and while I really, really like them, it's not like they won't be playing more shows here soon.

And the Four'n Giv'r et al show would be good for the rawk, which I've been neglecting, I'm afraid (Jess is certainly going to this one, if you're wondering.) Prime example: we skipped the Muffler Crunch/Blackball show at the Dominion this past weekend, which (I'm told by my bandmates) completely kicked ass. But see, this is where Sobrietor bears his fangs: it'd be just wrong to go to the Dominion and not have a pint. And doubly so when there's a band.

~

We haven't been dipping into movies so much recently, partly because of an on-going Alias obsession - having finished season 2, I can confirm that Lena Olin is still spectacularly hot, particularly while brandishing an automatic weapon - and partly because The Last Picture Show is a daunting thing to tackle. Sure, it's got a young, lithe Cybill Sheppard, and it's in black and white, and it's slow and depressing as all hell and over 2 hours long...huh. Yeah, that's been holding us up.

The thing we did watch, and by "watch" in my case I mean "gave half an hour before stalking off in boredom", was Napoleon Dynamite. The portion of it that I saw seemed like perfunctory button-pushing, aimed squarely at the sort of person who laughs at Wes Anderson films but wishes they weren't so eggheaded. I stand by my suspicion going in that it's not much more than the Sundance Festival version of Revenge of the Nerds✝.

~

That I like the Blood Brothers' Young Machetes surprises me. Although the music is Drive Like Jehu-ish math/spazz (which I dig), the singer's voice(s?) should drive me up the wall - he's got that bratty-scream/whine that usually makes me reach for the eject, and then the matches. But, for whatever reason, I'm really liking it so far. It's a toss-up, though, whether in ten years it'll be something I listen to sporadically but rarely make through end-to-end (like Soundgarden) or something I bought once, and now wonder what the fuck I was thinking (like Daisy Chainsaw - seriously, was I drunk? Daisy fucking Chainsaw.)

Malajube's 2nd album, Trompe-L'Oeil, is a joy and a half. I'd bitched earlier about that list of 'hot' Canadian bands - well, this is one of the four that struck me as worth investigating, and damn. The group's sound - which I'd call neo-glam, if I felt like inventing genres - is glossy, largely up-beat pop with one foot firmly on the dancefloor, and even when the music gets proggish or downtempo, it doesn't feel unduly sombre or pretentious (quite a feat for a rock record with this much flute.)

Tin Fists, the new Acorn EP, is quite similar to their previous, the excellent Blankets! There's the plucky guitar work, the almost-but-not fractured drumming, and the unobtrusive production flourishes; the songwriting hasn't changed noticeably, although it's nice to hear them do more pop and less of the downer-folk (and on that: the last song, "Maplebees", is a lovely little waltz, pretty and tender without being maudlin.)

Red Sparrowes is an Isis-related band (project?) on Neurot Recordings, who'd been described to me as post-rock, although it's closer to Pelican, or the Texas school of post-rock (Explosions in the Sky, Paul Newman) than Chicago's (Tortoise, The Mercury Program). But like most of the genre, it's hard to get excited about; yes, it works and it holds your attention when neccessary, and this brings the rock a lot more than most, but it's still 8 minute-long noodly guitar instrumentals. Oh, and their new album (Every Red Heart Shines Towards the Red Sun) is a concept record about the Great Leap Forward. Enjoy!

*Don't forget: Casey Comeau & CWC opening for the Kruger Brothers, December 13th at lovely Maverick's! Gritted teeth!

✝Speaking of which, Garden State is on deck. Hi-yoh! No, I'm kidding - we just finished watching it, and it's very cute. Zach Braff is adorable. So is Natalie Portman.

You've got to take the crunchy with the smooth, I suppose

2006-11-15T00:07:00.000-05:00

Well, I guess expecting two elections in a week to go the way I wanted them to was a little unrealistic. At least now, to quote Ottawonk, now we've got our very own Mel Lastman. Does this make us world-class too?

You can, however, cheer yourself up by grooving to the Solid Senders this Friday at Zaphod's, opening for Pas Chic Chic (ex-GY!BE/Fly Pan Am/etc., although you wouldn't guess it to hear 'em). I know I will be (very, very gently) rocking out.

Or you could read the brand-new issue #7 of The High Hat, which this time around is mostly about Robert Altman. There are also excellent articles on The Wire's Jimmy McNulty and the fistfight in Deadwood, as well as an interview with rock-critic/author Joe Carducci.

Politics, music I don't like, and music I do.

2006-11-11T14:21:00.000-05:00

It's probably not a shocking revelation that I'm quite happy about the results of the US mid-term elections. If you read Matt Taibbi's cover story in Rolling Stone's last issue, it's pretty easy to why it's not even about ideology, and more about keeping this particular batch of especially corrupt, lazy and authoritarian Republicans from retaining control of the legislative agenda (and the committees, and the responsibility of overseeing the executive, and...) The departure of Rumsfeld was a nice little bonus, and kudos to defeated Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-Rhode Island) for being an honourable fellow even after he's been shown the door, in opposing the (re-)nomination of loudmouthed asshole John Bolton for UN ambassador.

It also looks like the mayoral election in Ottawa is still all over the place; surveys released in the same week show either Munter ahead of O'Brien or vice versa. Chiarelli doesn't appear to be a likely winner, which is also fine with me (I've got nothing particular against him, but that's hardly enough when there's a perfectly decent alternative). I've also realized that I spoke a little soon on my ward - Ms. Smallman has said that she supports the city's current LRT plan, which I don't care for (and sure, it's selfish of me, but I really don't want my commute time to double, which it will if or when the O-train gets shut down next April. OC Transpo has proposed a replacement bus route, which, to be blunt, they can stick up their asses.)

~

When I was younger, by which I mean the years 1982 to 1985, I was a Doors fan. (Sometimes I flatter myself that I got over them the second I discovered the Clash in late '83, but, sadly, I wasn't that bright a teen.) Since then, I've viewed them with the sort of contempt and loathing ex-smokers have for their old habit, even past the point of fairness. This is a pretty fair (and entertaining) review of their new box set, which compiles their 6 studio albums and some outtakes; I'd agree, grudgingly, with the assessment that they weren't all that bad if you ignore their fans and try to ignore the lead singer.

One thing I've noticed, though, even when I still liked the band, is that every cover of a Doors song is crap (and seriously, I challenge anyone to give an example that's not). And I have two possibly complementary theories as to why this is: 1. They weren't actually very good songwriters, but were excellent musicians, and so it's quite difficult to improve on their performances and arrangements of those songs, and/or 2. Bands that choose to cover the Doors do so primarily because they've got lead singers with Morrison complexes - and so end up picking the worst, most cringe-inducing crud the group produced, rather than, as Mr. Freeman there might have suggested, something from mid-way through Morrison Hotel that's less tied up with the sort of moronic baggage that causes people to hang out in a Paris graveyard when they could be doing something productive, like heroin.

~

Two other bands I liked a great deal as a teenager, and which I didn't so much grow out of as stop following, were REM and U2. The former I gave up on immediately upon the release of Monster, and I haven't bought a single thing of theirs since - I did listen to New Adventures in Hi-Fi a couple of months ago, but it just reinforced the rightness of my decision. U2 lost my interest somewhere between The Joshua Tree and Rattle & Hum (the latter of which I've been told isn't quite so bad, although I doubt that's true.) But for a time (by which I mean roughly 1984 through the spring of '88) both bands were, in very separate ways, tremendously important to me and my still-developing tastes in music. So I was intrigued to read this REM vs. U2 article in Slate, although it's pretty slight, and up until The Joshua Tree hit, U2 were still a pretty obscure group. Not REM-obscure, but more like Smiths-obscure, or Depeche Mode-obscure: the kind of thing a person who looked perfectly normal might listen to, even obsessively, but it'd still be a bit of a surprise. Whereas a normal-appearing person would not have any idea what you were talking about if you asked them about REM, at least up until Document (1987).

What I'm getting at, in a ham-fisted way, is that while I understand the author's putting the two bands' music in opposition to each other, up until I read the article, I didn't think of them as even existing in the same universe - one might as well compare the careers of Van Halen and the Kronos Quartet. But there are parallels - REM's first three records (if you count the EP) were recorded with Mitch Easter (of jangle-pop band Let's Active), before starting a lengthy partnership with Scott Litt, who replaced their softly burbling early sound with radio-friendly rock crunch and a wider spectrum of styles (and perhaps not coincidentally, was at the boards for their crucial late-80's/early 90's career zenith). U2, on the other hand, started out with Steve Lillywhite, whose production style is almost cartoonishly loud and unsubtle, and then moved on to working with Eno and Lanois, who toned everything down (and let's face it, U2 is a group in desperate need of toning down at all times) to great commercial success.

Also: both bands appeared on The Simpsons, although U2 were in a much funnier episode. And isn't that really how success is judged?

Talkin' about other people talkin' about music.

2006-11-04T22:06:00.000-05:00

I've mentioned before that I hadn't been buying a lot of records recently, and it was starting to bother me. Or if I hadn't, I'm sure saying it now. I have taken some steps to rectify this - taking care to check out new stuff on eMusic regularly, stopping by Birdman Sound and listening to some local bands' MySpace pages. I suspect that by the end of the year, I'll probably be able to come up with a semi-respectable top 5 (or even 10) list of records, because we all love a list.

Which drew me to this, the list of the "Hottest Bands in Canada" (2006), as chosen by a bunch of music bloggers (I was lead to it from Dial 6-1-3_). And, okay, so there are some reasonable choices on the list - The Arcade Fire, Junior Boys and Broken Social Scene (#'s 26, 18 and 6, respectively) make sense, and people who get on the cover of Exclaim (Jon-Rae and the River, #13) or sign to big-assed foreign record labels like Sub Pop (Wolf Parade, tied for #9) and Warp (Born Ruffians, #11) are likely to be the groups people are excited about.

But holy crap, am I ever finished with indie rock.

I duly checked out the linked songs from the bands I didn't know on the list, and some of them I can imagine being moderately interesting to see live (Henri Faberge, Jon-Rae & the River) or maybe even worth buying if it's not too expensive (Tokyo Police Club, Malajube). But the overall trends - the wimpiness, the dance-punk aesthetic, the not-good singing - are just perplexing to me. I don't begrudge the youngsters moving on to, well, sounding like parts of 1981 and about a third of 1987, but why bother?

Anyway, I have found some stuff that I'm very happy with, and goodness, some of it is even current. My two main recommendations are Bobby Bare Jr's The Longest Meow and Nina Nastasia's On Leaving. The former lists in the liner notes, "11 songs - 11 people - 11 hours", and indeed it was recorded in half a day, with his usual band plus members of My Morning Jacket (and, IIRC, Lambchop), and it sounds like, and I'm just going to go ahead and be immodest, the Golden Famile on a really good day. Nina Nastasia's new one had me worried, or at least the reviews did - I loved, loved her last two records, particularly Run to Ruin, which veers from gorgeous to terrifying in seconds. So when I read that the new album was a more straightforward folkie affair, and didn't have Dirty Three drummer Jim White, I put off buying it or even giving it a listen. But, it's really good - not Run to Ruin good, but very good nonetheless.

Also picked a copy of Mastodon's Blood Mountain (on vinyl!), and sure, it's not for everyone, but if you're ready to try some prog metal, you probably can't do better than this. I know there's already a bit of a backlash against the tokenization of metal, with Mastodon standing in the role Public Enemy used to hold in hip-hop (ie., that one group that indie-rock-loving critics and fans decided was acceptable to like and include on year-end lists, which allowed them to ignore the rest of the genre with a clear conscience because hey, I said I liked It Takes a Nation of Millions), but goddamn, Blood Mountain is really fucking good - considerably better than Leviathan, their last one.