For What? Birther Madness.

Sometimes I wonder why the Republicans (especially in the South) so often gets pegged as a bunch of backwards racists. Things like this help me remember.

Only 42% of Republicans think our President is an American citizen. Amazing. I guess these people can't believe their lying eyes.

Conspiracy theories are like plastic spiders: fake, scary, and essentially harmless - but also impossible to kill. This birther madness will never end. It is going to be their Bush v Gore, except infinitely less legitimate. It is a demonstrably false belief (with creepy xenophobic and racist undertones) that will give any Obama detractor a reason to invalidate not just his policies, but his entire presidency. Sigh.

Camera Obscura / My Maudlin Career

Two common knocks against Camera Obscura are that their music doesn’t reinvent the wheel and that the band itself is nothing more than a female-fronted Belle & Sebastian clone. Considering the former I must say that it is hardly a bad thing that there are more well-crafted and emotionally resonant songs in the world. The latter opinion, however, would only be salient if it were 1997.

The comparison is as unavoidable as it is lazy. Stuart Murdoch produced Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi, they are both from Glasgow, and they both have the same musical touchstones – of course they sound similar. Never mind that by now Camera Obscura have been a functioning band longer than Belle & Sebastian or that they have grown consistently more engaging with each successive album (something only fanatical B&S fans would claim about that band). My own pet theory as to why this comparison still exists is that Tracyanne Campbell seems like a character in one of Stuart Murdoch’s songs. How could she not be? She's a challenging, literate woman who writes poison-penned love songs. (‘So you want to be a writer – fantastic idea’ from “Swans” is particularly withering.) If her name fit better in to an AABB rhyme scheme she may have already joined Judy, Jane, Sukie, Mary Jo and the rest in the Belle & Sebastian back catalog. ‘French Navy’ even seems to bait that trap with it’s opening lyric, ‘Spent a week in a dusty library’.

My Maudlin Career finds the band in full bloom, capitalizing on the momentum they gained from Let’s Get Out Of This Country. The progress incremental though, since this is merely a refinement of the band’s sound rather than a reinvention of it. The lone exception is Campbell’s revelatory vocal performance. Expressive, complex, and almost impossibly pretty, her voice has becomes the band’s most potent instrument. Bathed in reverb and perfectly matched to her wry, melancholy lyrics it can be gossamer light as in the ethereal "Other Towns & Cities" and yet strong enough to anchor the candied "Careless Love".

And boy does "Careless Love" need it. By the time it reaches the climax the strings have become so effervescent that they threaten to lift the song into the troposphere. Camera Obscura have finally gone Technicolor with their arrangements, as practically every song on the record is bursting with Wall of Sound-like production. Personally I wished they had taken the plunge and made a stripped down country record as Let’s Get Out Of This Country threatened to do - but to each his own. They aren't done with the Nashville sound altogether, as demonstrated in the cow poking, palm muted "You Told A Lie", the pedal steel sorrow of "Forests & Sands" and the myriad of C&W filigrees that pop up from song to song. No mere affectation, Camera Obscura have internalized the country sensibility so it blends utterly with their pop pursuits (in other words, this is no "Not Fair"). But these are merely pieces of the whole since girl group harmonies and clean cut chords are the order of the day on My Maudlin Career. "Swans" in particular begins a rubber band riff so poppy that Mark Barkan would be proud of writing it. Tracks like "The Sweetest Thing" and "My Maudlin Career" show off a profound love for and deep understanding of the glossy sounds of The Crystals and the Ronettes but marry it to something more emotionally intricate. Again, it's Campbell's voice that connects the dots throughout - smooth and sharp as a knife and can cut just the same.

The connective quality of her voice is needed especially since the album deals with, and partakes in, wild mood swings. A young couple's romance hasn't even begun by the first verse of "French Navy" and is long over by the second. The suicidal "Away With Murder" leaps right into the bubblegummy "Swans". The rudderless "Other Towns & Cities" (which sees Campbell wandering around her memories with naught but a bottle of whiskey and a guitar) segues into the record's most jubilant cut, the horn-powered "Honey in the Sun". Though it must be said that the record's happiest moment has her nursing a broken heart by wishing that it "was as cold as the morning dew". The upside (!) is that her heart is not frozen, if only towards the person who broke it in the first place.

Wishing to be free of feeling but unable to let go is a theme that is touched on repeatedly throughout the album ('If the blood pumping through my veins would freeze, like a river in Toronto I'd be pleased', 'This maudlin career has come to an end, I don't want to be sad again') and it serves as an interesting progression in Camera Obscura's work. This is a band that primarily writes love songs, but they are never songs about being in love, you know, supposedly best part of the whole cycle. No, they write songs concerning people who are about to fall in love, about to fall out of love, and dealing with the messy aftermath. They seem to be most at home with the slightly sickly feeling of anticipation for the good, the bad, and whatever is next. Before My Maudlin Career they were comfortable in that place, but here they want to leave it behind for better or worse. Previously Campbell was ready to be heartbroken but now maybe she is not so sure. That is progress.

A Serious Man

Why isn't 10/2/09 here yet?

The amazing, violent rhythm of this trailer is pure Coen Bros. Wish they had kept it going through the whole thing, but still - amazing! Seemingly gone are the big money cons of their last few movies (though there is still some shenanigans on display - it is a Coen Bros. movie after all) as well as the big ticket actors that have populated their films since Fargo. No, this is a character piece and it turns out, autobiographical. Its certainly looks like the most Jewish film they've made since Barton Fink - if ever. Are Joel and Ethan dropping the ironic detachment and getting sentimental on us. Errr, no. I don't know if they are capable of all that, but this is a left turn in a career full of them.

Swingannamiss - Dirty Projectors "Stillness is The Move" Video

I don't know what the Dirty Projectors were thinking with this one, but its not good. Shame too, since its one of the best songs off their new album. I guess it could be some elaborate put on, but somehow I don't think so. On record they have the ability to combine disparate elements into an appealingly oddball whole, but that skill fails them here. The elements don't cohere and the band just ends up coming off as precious and pretentious - something the high wire act of Bitte Orca managed to avoid. Besides, anyone flirting with this is fighting a battle that they can't win.

Fukui-san!

Who wants Mario Batali when you can have Chen Kenichi? Not me. I’ve been devouring the old Ironmen of Cooking show since I got it and, man, it is so much better than that flimsy imitator, Iron Chef America.

They have an Umeboshi Battle! I love umeboshi. And Udon! There were two Uni Battles! And three Natto Battles! Mochi too!

Apparently chef Makoto Osada invented the famous Shark Fin Soup with Crab Brains. I had no idea until I re-watched the 30 Year Old Lobster Battle. Also, in Western Japan they cut eel open from the belly but in the East they cut them open from the back because the samurai in the East wanted to avoid any references to seppuku. Picked that up from the Eel Battle. I had totally forgotten about Rokusaburo Michiba’s infamous rivalry with Toshiro Kandagawa. He sent four culinary hit men (4!) to defeat Michiba before signing a written oath to take him on himself in Battle Yellowtail.

I had forgotten how bizarre and beautiful this show is – the American version is so tepid that I had almost lost my enthusiasm for kitchen based competitive television.

Allez cuisine!

For What? Where have you been for the last generation Voinovich?

Being taken over by southerners? Being? BEING?! It's been done 'been' by now Voinovich. Where have you been? Enjoy that regional party status.

"They get on TV and go 'errrr, errrrr,'" he said. "People hear them and say, 'These people, they're southerners. The party's being taken over by southerners. What they hell they got to do with Ohio?"

Swingannamiss - Knowing

Why is the complete whiff - a piece of entertainment or art whose aspiration is inversely related its quality - so fascinating? Because when the gap between intended effect and actual reaction is so wide the analysis includes not just a re-evaluation of the attempt, but the goal as well. Why do we watch movies like this? And what defines an effective example of it? Stemming from the logic that you can learn as much from a bad movie as you can a good one, Knowing has a lot to teach us.

Before moving on I will say some good things about Knowing. The score by Marco Beltrami is eerily effective in a Twilight Zone kind of way and the title sequence contained an interesting transition from space to Nicholas Cage's back yard. Incidentally, I will be referring to this character as Nicholas Cage for the duration. In my mind all of his movies are about him, the actor, at various stages of his life. Gone in Sixty Seconds, Ghost Rider, Garding Tess, et al...

Science fiction thrillers like Knowing tend to make use of the “Only Sane Man” writing trope. To be effective in this regard the protagonist must have discovered some applicable principle or theory that, although seemingly insane, is key to understanding the plot’s central nature and most of the time, the nature of the universe and/or humanity itself. The sane man of the plot must be believable and sympathetic and the central mystery must be obscure at first but clearly and cleverly revealed by the climax of the story. Knowing is none of these things.

The first blow against Knowing's credibility is the Nicholas Cage factor. I put it at Con Air when he stopped giving a shit about the quality of his projects and his suitability to play the lead character. Why do casting agents keep putting him in the "Only Sane Man" role? From his twitchy scene chewing in center lane Disney stuff (National Treasure: The Search for Curly's Gold) to weirdo sci-fi hackery (Next) to extra weirdo misogynistic bear suiting wearing craziness (Wicker Man) most audiences expect nothing but barely bottled mayhem from Mr. Cage. So strike one against Knowing for casting Nicholas Cage as the sane one.

The next strike against Knowing is its general aura of stilted weirdness because although the movie tries for a feeling of unsettling weirdness it barely achieves humorous weirdness. Half–hearted attempts at creating a disturbing atmosphere include a spooky child holding a solitary balloon, the obligatory insane scribbling under the crazy person’s bed (shades of Cage’s Wicker Man here too), and of course, the obligatory shadowy outsiders who drive around in their shadowy Mercury Grand Marquis giving shadowy rocks to easily manipulated children.

But all the spooky little girls and balloons and Mercury Marquis in the world pale against the film’s true strangeness. Consider an early scene where Prof. Cage teaches Exposition 101 to a bunch of underwear models and admits that he believes there is no order to the universe and that, "shit just happens" (these kids are certainly getting their money's worth from MIT). Then he stares at them like a mental patient until a female student becomes intimidated. Okay.

Or what about when, after a traumatic episode, Cage’s kid stands up for himself only to receive a look typically reserved for someone who has been eyeing an old lady’s lemon drink. Then the kid says, “I’m not a kid anymore”. He’s ten. Though it must be said that his son rarely acts like a kid, but more like a childless screenwriter’s approximation of one. At one point he asks his dad why he seems so awkward, apparently unaware that his father is Nicholas Cage. Also, Cage has a staring contest with a box.

The third strike against Knowing is that it's little mystery (the numbers) and its big mystery (the fate of the world) have almost nothing to do with one another and make even less sense on their own. The numbers are the dates of disasters on the planet since the 1950s? How many people have to die to make it a disaster? What numeric convention would the code makers use? Why are they communicating this way if their mission is of dire importance? Why do they bother with the numbers at all since in the end they just take what they want (and are not resisted)? Are we really supposed to take this seriously? When Cage says, "come on" as a reaction to finding the first number sequence he is speaking for the audience. It’s funny rather than scary when he gets so worked up over the numbers and the hot google search action that he drops his glass of whiskey. Also, they did an extra nice job working in not only Hurricane Katrina and but 9-11 too. Classy.

So it turns out the numbers reveal all the major disasters that occur from 1950 to the present. Why? Not as a warning to help ward off future disasters. Nope, there is nothing you can do since its all determined anyways by a bunch of aliens that apparently started the human race eons ago and are at the beginning of a new cycle of re-birth. We thought they were angels but they were actually rip-offs of Close Encounters. The alien angels apparently planted the disaster predicting numbers to prepare the way for Cage’s son and Rose Byrne’s daughter to restart the human race. I’m not sure how predicting major disasters of the last 50 years was supposed to help them (especially since the alien angels just take them in the end anyway) but undoubtedly it did the job. It’s this aspect that makes Knowing's big reveal so ludicrous since the numbers don't have much to do at all with the aliens restarting the human race. They didn’t need to send them to enact their plan, but even if they did, why send a message in such an inscrutable way? Got to do something in Act One, I guess.

So in the end what is their plan? A bunch of all-powerful albino alien angels stalk the kid, give him rocks, show him visions of hell (including a glorious flaming moose), and kidnap him from a gas station. No, I'm not kidding. It's hilarious. But it still doesn't make much sense. I have to hand it to Proyas, as demonstrated by Dark City he's willing to go big, but here its all just a joke since it a) makes no sense, b) is completely ridiculous looking, and c) feels completely tacked on to the rest of the movie. I've heard this movie praised for being willing to combine religion and science fiction, but what it really marries is a bunch of terrible ideas with some very poor execution.

And what of the religious aspect of the movie? Nicholas Cage’s character is an avowed atheist at the beginning (his internal struggle with religion after the death of his wife is externalized as a conflict with his pastor father – bleh) but by the end is a firm believer. But in what exactly? The movie makes it clear that it is non-denominational in its faith since all religions apparently misinterpreted our alien overlords as divine spirits. There is no mention of morality or judgment when the entire earth (save for what looks like maybe a few dozen kids and bunnies) is burnt to a cinder by solar radiation at the end of Act Three. Did everyone else deserve to die? Was belief in any creator god enough to save humanity’s miserable soul? The movie isn’t saying, and that is a cop out. It wants to be vague enough to suggest that all religions come from the same ill-defined extra-terrestrial source, but also make the point that faith is vital and empowering. Sorry, but you can’t have it both ways.

The film's science is just as shaky as it's religion, too. At one point Nicholas Cage just walks into his friend's office at MIT and says something to the effect of, "remember when I wrote that badass paper about solar flares" and the friend says, "of course". Huh? What the fuck do you mean, "of course"? Wasn't this guy teaching determinism vs randomness at the beginning of the movie? Nope. Now he is a solar flare expert, and the film lurches from second to fifth gear as Act Three is out of the gate.

The whole movie is like that, and the sum effect is that of a bunch of poorly staged scenes all butted up against each other with no connection or meaning. In one scene after trying to prevent a disaster by calling to warn the cops Cage walks up to a patrolman and asks why the area hasn’t been cordoned off and the cops immediately start chasing him. Why? Who knows? Look over there!

Rose Byrne co-stars as the emaciated corpse of Jennifer Connelly and she does pretty well in the scenes where she is not screaming like an infant or making a face that give one the sense that her face may rip in half. She some classics lines about "thinking of the children" and "going to the caves" before she sees a stone and freaks out for no reason (though the audience knows these are omens of 'the whisper people' her character would have no idea). But hey, whatever, it's a freaky black stone... what would you have done? After all her neglectful stone looking at, the guys in Spike cosplay outfits kidnap her daughter and Cage’s son and after a short blue screen car chase a train flattens her poorly rendered jeep. Then her daughter asks, "where did she go". I nearly died laughing.

I could go one about the see-through special effects (one potentially effective plane crash scene is ruined by poorly rendered CGI flames), the horrendous child actors (the kid playing Cage’s son gives a performance that even Jake Lloyd would have trouble living down), the moronic plot twists (33 is actually EE, which means *gasp* everyone!), or the maudlin touches like Cage’s sign language good bye to his son but what's the point? Shit happens.

I’ll just list my favorite moments from the movie (in no particular order):

Flashlight Face!




I'm an astrophysicist ma'am.




The caves won't save us!




We have to think of the children!




Alien Eden.




The numbers are the key!




Sorry sinners, you should have worshiped alien angels.




Group hug before the apocalypse.




Hell is a flaming moose.

For What? Megan Fox's Waist

Um, what the fuck? I could care less about Jonah Hex, but what is going on with Megan Fox's waist in this poster? She's got the full Photoshop make over going on. Was the waist on her 95 lb body just too hefty for discerning fan boys? Fat ass. She looks more like a broken blow up doll than ever.

And what is up with her lips? Do they even meet? What is she straining for krill or something?

I'm Going Away / The Fiery Furnaces

With the release of I’m Going Away the Friedbergers seem set to mollify everyone who has been clamoring for them to stop with the cacophony and chaos and just settle down to play some straightforward pop music.

These people will still probably hate it.

Because the thing that makes The Fiery Furnaces music willful, pretentious and difficult is not the composition or instrumentation of their songs - it's that Matt and Eleanor Friedberger are willful, pretentious and difficult. And it is precisely those qualities that so enrage their detractors and endear them to their supporters. Nobody else makes music like they do, which the stripped down I'm Going Away makes abundantly clear since next to no one could change their modus operandi so radically and still sound so much the same.

First, let’s dispense with some timely retcon that’s been making the rounds: Gallowsbird’s Bark is not their best record. After their long sojourn into the musical wilderness (album length oral-historical familial fictions, two hour single song live records and more mini-suites that Pete Townshend can shake a stick at) Gallowsbird’s Bark may seem attractive in it’s simplicity but ultimately that is red herring. The Fiery Furnaces have grown so much since their debut that it seems more like an inspired sketch than an accomplished piece of work.

Not that I’m Going Away has much in common with Gallowsbird’s Bark anyway. The holistic nature of the record, exemplified by the live sound and limited palette, is in direct contradiction to that record’s cut and paste studio compositions. In fact, I’m Going Away resembles nothing so much as some of their longer song suites stretched out to album length.

On previous tracks like “Quay Cur”, "Chief Inspector Blancheflower" and “The Philadelphia Grand Jury” the Furnaces seemed to pack in a half dozen different songs into their run time and the tracks on I’m Going Away feel like those slices stretched to the shape of a song. The line between a piece of a larger composition repeated at length and a fully formed smaller composition may be small but it is distinct. And though these songs all have clearly demarcated beginnings and endings it doesn’t make them any less dissimilar than their musical counterpoints from previous albums - or any less a part of this one.

Tracks like "I'm Going Away", "Drive to Dallas”, “Cut the Cake” and “Keep Me in the Dark” all rely heavily on repetition and simplicity to make their mark. This replication extends to lyrics that are heavy with reiteration and alliteration (another Friedberger trademark), but also to the vocal melodies which more often than not mimic the primary instrumental melody. These elements combined with the unified production give the record the type of consistency that has never been present in their work before. This is an experimentation with a new type of epic song writing - rather than composing longer songs with multiple parts, each song is an entity unto itself but also part of a larger monochromatic whole. The lyrics here too seem to bear this out with their repeated references to catastrophic heartache, unexplained departings and final resolutions - not to mention that several songs that explicitly reference each other in the lyrics and melodies ("Charmagne Champagne", "Cups & Punches"). The outlier seems to be "Take Me Round Again" which is the closest to an honest to God pop song as they've ever come, but good as it is, it seems to be riff on (or rewrite of) Dylan's "You Ain't Going Nowhere" more than anything else.

So despite all the talk about The Fiery Furances "getting back to form" (whatever that means) or detouring to write pop songs, I’m Going Away is in actuality an evolution of their sound rather than a withdrawl to a less complicated one. It is more immediately accessible than anything they've release previously but that does not detract from the depth of creativity on display.

For What? As if you needed another reason to love Andrew WK.

I feel the same way when I watch FOX News.

For What? Unfortunate tattoos.

You can almost see the process from wild idea to poor decision to shameful regret.

Happy Independence Day!! Thank you Sarah Palin!

Sarah Palin has decided to celebrate the 4th of July a bit early (in addition to violating the U.S. flag display etiquette as shown to the left) by giving America a wonderful birthday present!

She is resigning as Governor of Alaska!

Now the people of Alaska may finally have a competent executive and America will never have to face the consequence of her achieving national office. Her blind ambition and misplaced arrogance will doom her to become a political footnote. She said that she came to this decision after prayer the same week that Samuel Wurzelbacher (aka Joe the Plumber) said that God told him not to run for office. I may have to start believing in this "god" after all...