The Week That Was (2/4 - 2/8)

"Thank god the 'Zero Effect' week is over," - Anonymous, commenting on Monday's Chronological Snobbery post entitled "Dan Cortese as Burger King Spokesman (1992)," following a week's worth of posts on the tenth anniversary of the 1998 film, Zero Effect, (2/4/08). Tell me about it. Last week's series of posts on the tenth anniversary of that film was wearisome, although I thought it turned out rather well in the end (and it even merited a link on USA Today's Pop Candy blog). Fear not; it's ten years until the twentieth anniversary.

"I confess that, yes, a culturally jingoistic part of me pitied these folks for caring so much about Super Bowl hoopla instead of enthusing over the sorts of things that keep me riled up and entertained. Meandering through crowds, slurping syrupy margaritas and hogwash beer, cheering music so proletarian and awful that listening physically made me blush (including a Tom Petty cover band performing on a stage in the midway outside the stadium), greedily snatching up promotional trinkets, and devouring all the entertainments presented to them like famine refugees at a banquet . . . why was this fun? Hadn't they ever read a book so thought-provoking they could hardly stand not to tell someone about it or stared at a sculpture so beautiful it made them cry or . . . cared about what I care about? Didn't they know how much richer life could be than this? I wanted to lead them all off to see a Tarkovsky film, like some bleedingly self-righteous Pied Piper of Culture. I felt very adolescent for feeling this way, since I knew better," T.S.T., "(Another) Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: The Super Bowl Edition," Digest, (2/04/08). Who thought that winning free tickets to the Super Bowl would be such a moral and ethical dilemma?

The Week That Was (1/20 - 1/25)

Heath Ledger and Mary Kate Olsen: "Well, Heath Ledger died. That's something to post, but I'll be honest. I never saw the knight movie, or the cowboy movie, so . . . I'm honestly not sure I've ever seen anything the guy ever did. Mostly, I keep wondering how much the media is going to ghoulishly dwell on his death during the release of The Dark Knight," The League, "Nothing to post," The League of Melbotis, (1/22/08). And dwell the national press will when that film, destined to be a blockbuster even before the untimely death of the young star who would would play its villain and foil to Christian Bale's Batman. But the death of of Heath Ledger will haunt not only that film but also the life and career of Mary Kate Olsen who, by attempting to manage the crisis as it initially unfolded, became an unusual, and perhaps even suspicious, player in the events of that day. The Associated Press reported:

At 3:17 p.m., she made a call to the Olsen twin that lasted 49 seconds. At 3:20 p.m., she made another call, lasting 1 minute and 39 seconds. At 3:24 p.m., another call to Olsen. That one lasted 21 seconds.

Then, at 3:26 p.m., Wolozin called 911.

At some point during the frenzy, Olsen, who was in California, summoned her personal security guards to the apartment to help with the situation, the New York Police Department said.

Paramedics arrived at 3:33 p.m. and actually went up in the elevator to the apartment with Olsen's security guards. Paramedics did not allow the security guards into the bedroom where Ledger died, and they declared him dead at 3:36 p.m. — 19 minutes after the first call to Olsen.

The masseuse called Olsen a final time at 3:34 p.m. The duration of that call was unknown.

This series of events will no doubt become fodder in every interview the currently 21 year old Ms. Olsen gives for the duration of her (presumably) long life to come. Why she, and the masseuse who called her, did not immediately call 911 will no doubt remain a mystery. Why Olsen dispatched her "private security" to the scene (who arrived as quickly as the first responders) is also a curiousity; were they sent to dispose of something embarrassing (though unconnected to the events leading up to Ledger's death)? Or is Ms. Olsen, as a very wealthy young woman, so far removed from daily society that she felt it was her crisis to handle?

We will never know, and she will likely never, ever comment thereupon. But there was another party to that series of telephone calls, the masseuse, and one wonders if she will keep mum.

What November Will Bring: "Romney v. Clinton: if these are the nominees of the Janus-faced party in November, an interesting question presents itself: will more votes be cast for positive or negative reasons?" - Horus Kemwer, "Worst Case Scenario," Against the Modern World, (1/20/08) (emphasis in original). Taking that a step farther, if Mr. Romney and Mrs. Clinton are the nominees in November, will any votes be cast at all?

The Week That Was (1/13 - 1/18)

Above: Summer Glau as the new model Terminator.

"3 billion human lives ended on August 29th, 1997. The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war Judgment Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare: the war against the machines. The computer which controlled the machines, Skynet, sent two Terminators back through time. Their mission: to destroy the leader of the human resistance, John Connor, my son. The first Terminator was programmed to strike at me in the year 1984, before John was born. It failed. The second was set to strike at John himself when he was still a child. As before, the resistance was able to send a lone warrior, a protector for John. It was just a question of which one of them would reach him first," Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), narrating past and future events from her vantage point in 1991, in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).

This past week saw the airing of the first two episodes of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," a television reboot of the franchise which saw its first cinematic installment in 1984, its second in 1991, and its third in 2003. The title character and protagonist, Sarah Connor (Lena Headey), scowls her way through the first two episodes, all the while attempting to protect her son, John (Thomas Dekker), the purported future leader of an underground resistance movement. A new, younger model Terminator (Summer Glau, of "Firefly" and "The 4400" and apparently now doomed to second rate television science fiction) arrives to protect John Conner from the plethora of other Terminators pursuing various related and unrelated missions in the past. Predictably, there are inconsistencies between the new series and the films which came before, although they appear to arise mostly from the writers' laziness.

In Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), viewers learn that Sarah Connor died in 1997. In fact, according to Wikipedia, her fate is sealed as follows:

In Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Sarah Connor is already dead, having succumbed to leukemia in 1997, after the events of Terminator 2, following a three year battle with the disease. She lived long enough to see the original 1997 "judgment day" pass without incident. Her ashes were spread at sea while a casket containing a cache of weapons was placed for John to find at a false grave site. The epitaph on her mausoleum niche reads: No fate but what we make.

Thus, according to the official Terminator continuity, Sarah Connor dies of natural causes in 1997. In the new television series, this detail is overlooked and even ignored. The narrative begins in 1999 - two years after the supposed death of Sarah Connor - yet she still lives.

Steanso, writing over at The Adventures of Steanso, liked the series and wrote :

I thought that The Sarah Connor Chronicles did a decent job of maintaining the overall feel and flow of the Terminator movies (the small handful of clunky, dumb lines on the show were delivered by Terminators, sadly, but that's also kind of in keeping with the movies), and I was glad to see that the producers didn't try to "lighten up" the mood of the overall Terminator storyline. Some people will undoubtedly have problems with the casting of Summer Glau as a cute, young, female Terminator (I have my reservations about this as well), but the focus seems to be primarily upon Lena Headey as Sarah Connor, and I thought that she carried off the role of the paranoid warrior/mommy pretty well.

In the original two Terminator films, Connor is played by Linda Hamilton, far more intense and intimidating than Headey has revealed herself to be playing the same character. As aforementioned, the character does not appeared in the third film. Hamilton is 17 years older than Headey, and it shows. In fact, Headey was born in 1973, making her 11 years old at the time of the events of the first film and 18 years old and the time of the second. Hamilton, however, was born in 1956, meaning she was in her late twenties at the time of the release of the first film and approximately 35 at the time of the second film. Although the actor playing a character need not be the same age as that character, Headey looks young enough to call into question the timeline of the entire franchise, all the more parlous when a film is about time. (There is some question about when Terminator 2 takes place, in 1991, the year of its release, or sometime later in the mid-1990s, as John Connor, born in 1984 or 1985 as per the events of the first film, is ten years old at the time of Terminator 2: Judgment Day.).

Behold the evolution of the Sarah Connor character:

Above: Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) and Sarah Connor (Linda Hamiltion) in 1984's The Terminator.

Above: Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in 1991's Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Above: Sarah Connor (Lena Headey) in 2008's "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" (which is actually set in 1999 at first, then 2007 after a leap forward in time).

The Week That Was (1/6 - 1/11)

The Proletariat Houston: "On Feb. 4, Houston's hippest bar will close it's doors for good, a casualty of the new Richmond light rail project. . . . . Those of us with a long history with the prole will not only mourn its passing, but remember it and its owner, and the opportunities they have offered us for so long, with reverence and respect. God willing, may it rise like a phoenix from the ashes, and bless the Houston scene again one day," Horus Kemwer, "The Proletariat, RIP," (1/6/08). Mr. Kemwer laments the imminent passing of Houston's bar for the hip, The Proletariat, located at 903 Richmond in that metropolis. I am no stranger to such posts. Above is an image of a flier promoting a gig at the venue featuring The Donkeys, Southerly, and Casiotone for the Painfully Alone (which has, obviously, one of the greatest band names in recent memory). The venues we haunt come and go, and years from now, some future chronological snob will offer forth a nostalgic post featuring memories and remembrances from the then long dead Proletariat. But at that distance time in the future, the cool and the hip will have some as of yet unknown place to congregate which, when it passes, will be equally eulogized and missed. Such is the cycle of venue nostalgia.

Remembering Sean Young as Racheal the Replicant: "I dig Blade Runner. Depending on my mood, its easily one of my favorite movies. Sure, it's clunky in parts, and there are multiple cuts with different meanings, but this isn't a post about the arcane magic of Blade Runner. This is a post about a 13 year-old League raising an eyebrow in honor of Sean Young as a robotic noir love interest," The League, "Dames in the Media The League Once Dug: Sean Young as Rachael in Blade Runner," (1/6/08). There is not much to add to the League's nostalgic and fun post about the beautiful and crazy actress Sean Young and her role as the replicant of choice in 1982's Blade Runner. In June of 1982, when the noirish Ridley Scott science fiction picture was released, Young was, well, young. She was a 22 year old ingenue likely under the impression that her role as Racheal would lead her to some type of recognition, or perhaps, stardom of some kind. She would have been wrong.

After appearing in 1987's suspense thriller No Way Out, things went downhill. Says the Wikipedia of her exploits:

Young would start to have some problems while working on filming with James Woods in a film titled The Boost. Which would end up with James Woods filing a lawsuit against Young for claims of harassment. This would become a starting point for trouble in her career as Young would again experience a set back by getting fired from a role in 1990s Dick Tracy film.

She was set to cast as Vicki Vale in Tim Burton's Batman but she received an injury during horse riding in which she was replaced by Kim Basinger. She would attempt to pursue a role in the sequel Batman Returns as Catwoman but was unsuccessful. In that attempt she had made a home-made costume and attempted to confront director Tim Burton and actor Michael Keaton during production.

(Footnotes omitted).

Truly, Young implicates the Hot/Crazy scale as illustrated above by Barney on the sitcom, "How I Met Your Mother," in this episode from October of last year. By 1994, she would play a foil to Jim Carrey in the lowbrow comedy film, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and at the film's end, her character was revealed to be a pre-op transsexual, a far cry from Racheal the replicant twelve years earlier. What would have become of her had she kept it together?

Willie Nelson Covers Dave Matthews? On iTunes this past week, county maverick Willie Nelson released a new tune, "Gravedigger," which is a cover of the 2003 single by Dave Matthews (in his role as solo artist, mind you, not leader of the Dave Mathews Band). Matthews' version appeared on his 2003 album, Some Devil, while a scaled down acoustic version appears on both the album and its CD single. The song is a depressing departure from Matthews' upbeat folk; the lyrics are comprised of , essentially, a series of epitaphs. Who could ask for more?

The Week That Was (12/31 - 1/08)

With the coming of Michael Gondry's Be Kind Rewind, a new film in which characters portrayed by Jack Black and Mos Def make home versions of popular cinematic blockbusters, YouTubers have taken up the challenge and begun to create their own similar short epics based on popular films. The task of remaking a popular Hollywood film as a five to ten minute home movie is, apparently, called Sweding (or so Black and Def's characters call it, and the name has caught on). Above, you'll find the brand new Lord of the Rings: Sweded!, Parts 1 and 2, released this week by Silent City Productions in Los Angeles, California. They've put quite a bit of effort into their Sweding of the Peter Jackson trilogy (based on the novels of J.R.R. Tolkien). Directed by Daniel Loyd, Written by Michael Leffler and Michael W. Shaw, produced by Loyd, Leffler, and Brad Jones, the film stars Shannon Hall, Shaw, Leffler, Guy Branum, Carl DeGrazio, Derek Bledsone, and Jones, all taking multiple roles from the trilogy.

The Week That Was (12/17 - 12/21)

The Week That Was - Time Travel Edition: True chronological snobs can now pay $220 for a replica of the flux capacitor from Back to the Future, a device which might have come in handy earlier this month for Pretend to be a Time Traveler Day (more about which here, here, and here). On a similar note, Wednesday of this past week saw the airing of the thirteenth and final episode of NBC's "Journeyman," the time travel drama starring Kevin McKidd as a San Francisco newspaper reporter who inexplicably travels backwards in time to assist those in need. Although I voiced some initial concerns about the series at the time of its premiere, "Journeyman" actually improved over the course of its run and developed somewhat of an interesting mythology. Though the narrative took some early missteps, and its theory of time travel was hardly consistent, it had potential, and thus, it is a shame that it has now been forever consigned to the ether by the network. There are those that say the network would never have aired all thirteen episodes had they not been desperate for original programming during the Writers Guild Strike (which still continues as of this blog entry). That, coupled with the premature termination of the awful second second from "Heroes" from the airwaves, is perhaps one of the few good things to be prompted by the strike and its aftermath.

The Week That Was (12/1 - 12/7)

Thriller is Old: "[December 1] marks the 25th anniversary of the release of Michael Jackson's Thriller. These days Jackson is more of a court jester, but for those of you who have forgotten (or never knew) that he once wore the "King of Pop" crown, one look at the Thriller tracklist will set you straight . . . . That's a murderer's row: seven top-ten singles out of nine tracks, back in the days when such things had meaning, and not a cheap one in the bunch. 100 million copies later, the music still matters." - Stereogum, in his own exercise of chronological snobbery, in "The Funk of 40,025 Years," Stereogum, 11/30/07.

Does the modern listener of music, too young to remember 1982, understand how huge Michael Jackson's Thriller was at the time? That the record was both made for and made MTV as a network? For those too young, or too pre-existent to recall, the record is a historical artifact parodied a myriad times over and over again. But before it became one with the pop culture landscape, and before its author became known for more sordid pursuits, Thriller was, well, Thriller. There was no comparison. To think now that Thriller has existed longer than a current college senior is baffling. But it has, and in its vain and overproduced glory, it rocks. No word yet on whether the upcoming twenty-fifth anniversary of "Say Say Say" will be similarly recognized, but really, it should be, shouldn't it?

The Week That Was (11/26 - 11/30)

Bergman Rocks the Casbah II: Configuring an account on the YouTubes is not a self esteem boost. (See above). However, I endured the task in order to interview KingGidora, the wit behind the mash-up of Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal and The Clash's "Rock the Casbah" (about which I posted here last week). KingGidora was unable to reply to my inquiry by my initial self-imposed publication deadline, but I have updated the original post with his comments as to the origin of and labor behind his amusing and fun creation. Enjoy.

Quiet Riot: "I don't really have any special love for Quiet Riot . . . but their loud, angry sound marked the dark and dangerous end of . . . my musical spectrum as a grade school kid. . . . Quiet Riot burst onto the scene with 'Cum on Feel the Noize' and somehow helped to make me understand why bad was sometimes good and how angry sounds could somehow feel liberating. Quiet Riot played a pretty cheesey version of Top 40 style heavy metal, and I guess they stole some of their biggest hits from Slade, but they were just the band that was there in the 'scary, angry, heavy metal' slot at the moment that such things began to enter the constellation of my thoughts. . . . There's something absurd and yet still awesome about a bunch of middle class, white, elementary school kids rolling through our suburban neighborhood in our yellow school bus and singing at the top of our lungs about how we were going to get, 'Wild! Wild! Wild!' Ahhh, the 80's . . ." - Steanso, commenting upon the death this week of Quiet Riot's lead singer, Kevin DuBrow, in his post, "Untitled," The Adventures of Steanso, 11/26/07 (internal links omitted).

Quiet Riot represented an era and a trend in music but was destined to have but a song or two remain in the public memory. These days, if a music listener owns a Quiet Riot song, he or she likely does so by virtue of a compilation album featuring a dozen similar songs from wonders forgotten save for their one hit. Few trek to the record store to purchase a Quiet Riot album; but anyone familiar with the music of the 1980s knows this band. But not many could say much about the members of the band, until this week, when lead singer Kevin DuBrow died.

Quiet Riot's 1983 album, Metal Health.

We in the present have the benefit of knowing the legacy of a hard rock band like Quiet Riot and can rightly place them in the correct spot in the annals popular. For example, Steanso's post drew the following comment from one user calling himself The Pope, who noted:

In the grand scheme of things, Quiet Riot were never as dangerous or original as Diamond Dave era Van Halen or Jane's Addiction, but never as goofy as the Crue or Winger or Poison. And they were essentially a 2 or 3 hit wonder (depending on how you feel about "Metal Health"). But damn....when that song first kicks in. That, my friends, is RAWK and ROLL.

But to some, in the foreign land we call the past, Quiet Riot was just a new band seeking to capitalize on a decade old hit by another band, Slade. On September 20, 1983, writing on net.records forum, Gene Spafford (now known as an Internet pioneer) noted:

The song by "Quiet Riot" which is entitled "Cum on feel the noiz" or some such misspelling was originally done by the British Rock group "Slade" in the early to mid 70s, I believe. Someone borrowed my Slade albums a few years back and never returned them due to a bizarre set of circumstances so I can't go check. In fact, does anyone know if members of Slade are in Quiet Riot? The vocals sound awfully familiar.

(Emphasis added).

Just a few hours later, John V. Smith replied to Spafford's post:

"Cum [on] Feel the Noize" by the group "Quiet Riot" was indeed done by a British group called "Slade" around 1974-75. Quiet Riot's version sounds very similar to the original except for some flashier guitar work. The first few times I heard this song I thought it actually was Slade. I thought, wow, Slade is finally going to make it in the states. No such luck. But the lead singers of both groups, at least in this song, have very similar voices. I had to go home and play my "Slade Smashes" (greatest hits) album a few times before I could tell the difference. The next time I heard the song on the radio I found out it was Quiet Riot and once again let Slade slide off into oblivion. Too Bad!

Reached last night via email, Spafford notes: "I never did get my albums back." And so it goes.

The Week That Was (11/19 - 11/23)

Bergman Rocks The Casbah: In 1957, Swedish director Ingmar Bergman released The Seventh Seal, which would become perhaps the most iconic foreign film ever to reach American shores. The film has all of the essential Bergman themes: the silence of God, the inevitability of death, and the struggle with faith; it would influence generations of film-makers to come. Viewers unfamiliar with Bergman's oeuvre will instantly recognize a very young Max Von Sydow (1980's Flash Gordon, 2002's Minority Report) as the knight who plays chess with the personification of death. The Seventh Seal is the Bergman film, indeed, the foreign film, to see.

In 1982, the English punk rock band The Clash released "Rock the Casbah," a single from its Combat Rock album and the band's only Top Ten hit. It would become of their most famous tracks; a video for the single was shot in Austin, Texas featuring, of all things, an armadillo. Combat Rock was to be the penultimate album by the band and the last to feature its classic line-up; Mick Jones would dismissed from the band in 1983 and went on to form General Public and then Big Audio Dynamite. Topper Headon, who had composed much of the music for "Rock the Casbah," left the band on the eve of its Combat Rock tour in 1982 due to drug addiction.

Finally, someone has put these two works of art together. Although initially placed onto the YouTubes in March of this year, I myself only discovered it this week (leading to its inclusion in this more frivolous Thanksgiving edition of The Week That Was). Swedish actors Nils Poppe and Bibi Andersson can now jam to the work of Jones, Joe Strummer, Joe Simonon, and Headon; could there be any more satisfying mash-up of pop culture images? The mash-up appears to be the work of YouTuber KingGidora, although one can never tell the true authorship of such a piece by the account which has uploaded it. Best comment by a YouTuber: "Bergman puts a lot of hot bitches in his movies." Could Bergman film historian Peter Cowie have said it any better?

UPDATE (11/30/07): After being contacted via the YouTubes, KingGidora explains the origin of the Bergman/Clash mash-up. Hailing from the greater Washington, DC metro area, KingGidora (real name Alex) created the mash-up after about four hours of work and uploaded it the same day. Bergman remains his favorite director, and he remembers his father playing The Clash's London Calling album "pretty much every other Saturday afternoon" during his youth. So putting the two things together seemed natural:

I had just watched Persona, and after seeing it I was in the mood for more Bergman, so I popped The Seventh Seal DVD into my computer that my father gave me for Christmas a couple years ago. Because I have a terrible habit of trying to multi-task way too many things at once, I also had Combat Rock playing in the background. I was really struck by the imagery of the lyrics of "Rock the Casbah." The line referring to the plan to "drop bombs between the minarets" to silence the music which didn't confirm to the theocracy's strict code. In other words, the bombing of a mosque to maintain religious purity. So, while I was marveling in my new-found respect for the song, I still had The Seventh Seal playing in the background, and I noticed that they sort of synched together well in many spots. So I opened iMovie HD . . . and started playing around with clips from the DVD combined with the song.

The initial response to the video, Alex says, was "extremely slow" when he posted it in March of 2007. However, following a flurry of searches upon Bergman's death, the video became a minor net event with features on various blogs and hits in the thousands.

The Week That Was (11/12 - 11/16)

Screen capture from 1964's The Last Man on Earth.

Thought for the day: "Sadness is an inevitable ubiquitous element of human life: we are beings who want to live in a world that constantly threatens us with death or that reminds us of death, if not literally then symbolically, through loss and aging and disappointment. And to me, a healthy life has to integrate sadness. Only by integrating sadness can we resist the temptations of fleeing from it in ways that are destructive to others or ourselves." - New York playwright Christopher Shinn, quoted by Cornel Bonca in "On A Clear Day: From Christopher Shinn's On the Mountain, Sophocles wavers in the distance," Orange County Weekly (1/13/05).

Reached via his MySpace profile this week, Shinn stands by his two year old statement:

I might not quite say it that way today but I think it's true. By denying life's inescapable sadness we do much more damage to ourselves and others than directly confronting and integrating that sadness could ever do.

He is correct that sadness is a very natural and human emotion. It can prompt art and resurrect buried memories far more powerfully than any madeleine. When mixed with elements of popular culture, it becomes a curious and wonderful melange of memory and nostalgia. As John Cusack, playing Rob Gordon in 2000's High Fidelity, asked: "Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?" As Shinn suggests, we ignore its presence in and effect on our lives at our peril.

Caveat: sadness can, under certain circumstances, become far more serious and worthy of intervention. In Newsweek's recent cover story "Men and Depression," Julie Scelfo observed:

Six million American men will be diagnosed with depression this year. But millions more suffer silently, unaware that their problem has a name or unwilling to seek treatment. In a confessional culture in which Americans are increasingly obsessed with their health, it may seem clichéd—men are from Mars, women from Venus, and all that—to say that men tend not to take care of themselves and are reluctant to own up to mental illness. But the facts suggest that, well, men tend not to take care of themselves and are reluctant to own up to mental illness. Although depression is emotionally crippling and has numerous medical implications—some of them deadly—many men fail to recognize the symptoms. Instead of talking about their feelings, men may mask them with alcohol, drug abuse, gambling, anger or by becoming workaholics. And even when they do realize they have a problem, men often view asking for help as an admission of weakness, a betrayal of their male identities.

(Emphasis added).

But Shinn speaks not of the crippling and intrusive clinical depression of which Scelfo wrote. Rather, he writes of melancholy, the antonym of happiness. It is healthy to explore that facet of our lives, provided, of course that we eschew the sort of "woe is me" fashionable self-pity that became so popular (and hackneyed) in 1990s-era independent film and sitcoms (or, put another way, just the type of relics discussed and reviewed on this website).

Site Updates: I have updated this site's sidebar to include a link to the Chronological Snobbery Mission Statement. Also, in "The Cultural Legacy of Ratt," I originally quoted from Steven C. Salaris's 1990 Usenet review of Ratt's Detonator album. I have updated that post to include a recent email from Salaris, now a Missouri parish priest, who offers his reflections on that 17 year old review. You might also investigate some of the comments to last week's post on Philip Hwang and Larry Nadolsky's 1986 Bruce Springsteen parody comic, Hey, Boss! The post appears to have drawn some comments from some artists associated with the late Todd Loren's Rock N' Roll Comics (which was influenced by Hwang and Nadolsky's work).

The Week That Was (11/5 - 11/9)

Title card from Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 film, Strike (which can be seen here).

The Writers Strike - The Studios: "Isn't it kind of hypocritical that on one hand the studios and networks say that unauthorized downloading or copying of content is 'stealing,' because you're taking something of value -- but on the other hand, they say the writers don't deserve residuals, because the content is valueless? Or now they're even saying that downloads are 'promotional' -- in which case they should be paying hackers to copy DVDs and redistribute content on the Net." - BigTed, commenting on "Even more things you wanted to know about the WGA strike but were afraid to ask," a post by TV critic Alan Sepinwall at his blog, What's Alan Watching?, 11/05/07. The commenter identifies the chief hypocrisy of the producers who, on the one hand, refuse to compensate writers for such content but on the other, hire front groups to sue their customers for downloading Internet content without paying them. Pick a theory. Of course, the producers may simply be exploiting the strike to rid themselves of commitments, deals, and contracts they otherwise could not absent a work stoppage.

The Writers Strike - The Writers: "We write the story-a, Eva Longoria!" and "We've got Julia, yes we do! Hey now, Eva, what about you?," Members of the Writers Guild of America, protesting near filming for the ABC program "Desperate Housewives" over actress Eva Longoria's decision to film scenes that day, quoted in "TV writers slam Eva Longoria for working while they strike," by Nancy Dillon, Stephanie Gaskell, and Bill Hutchinson of the New York Daily News, 10/7/07. Protest chants are never entirely clever, but these are being offered by those who are on strike for their abilities as wordsmiths. They really are on strike from writing, aren't they? The idea of writers striking is an odd one, for in popular culture, writers depict themselves not as laborers but as creative sorts who cannot separate their own identities from their craft. They write, therefore they are. They strike, therefore they are not?

Best Editing in Exploitation Movies: Not on strike is the intrepid Horus Kemwer, who recently completed his series of posts on the six films he deems worthy of his "Best Editing in an Exploitation Movie" awards, those being, in reverse order from sixth to first, Schramm, Hard Boiled, Peking Opera Blues, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, DOA (Dead Or Alive), Cannibal Holocaust. Clicking on one of the forgoing film titles will take you to Mr. Kemwer's analysis of the film and his reasons for bestowing his award upon it. Of particular interest is his write up of Cannibal Holocaust, the gruesome film upon which he bestows first prize. The history of that production, and of the film to which it pays homages, is, quite frankly, frightful.

Special Recognition: Special thanks to Emily for assisting me in the formatting of some images for posting this week.

The Week That Was (10/29 - 11/2)

Truer Words: "I know there are some people in this world who give Wes Anderson an absolute carte blanche, can do no wrong. I think that’s malarkey. The man can do wrong, and does so often, but because the films have the earnestness of a thrift store cardigan worn by the ingenue in your freshman English literature survey class but whose number, alas, you never succeeded in getting, he gets away with cinematic sloppiness." - Steven G. Harms, "The Darjeeling Mumbledy," stevengharms.com, 10/30/07. If I ever ever write a line this artful and amusing in one of my film reviews, please be kind enough to alert me. Mr. Harms, in his review of Wes Anderson's new film The Darjeeling Limited, expresses the very non-hipster viewer that Anderson isn't always a genius. I tend to agree, and quite frankly, I haven't meaningfully enjoyed a film of his since 1998's Rushmore and it's wonderful predecessor, 1996's Bottle Rocket. This makes me not hip, because people who like offbeat modern comedies are supposed to lavish praise on Anderson. Of late, I just can't find the inclination to do so. Having seen the trailer for The Darjeeling Limited, it appears to be just another film I'll add to my Netflix queue; there is nothing about it that would compel me to trek to the multiplex (which, with all the hassles, inconveniences, and distractions, is quite a journey these days). The real question: How did Mr. Harms know that girl in the freshman literature class would never give me her number?


Above: The trailer for 2007's The Darjeeling Limited.


Above: The trailer for 1996's Bottle Rocket.


Above: The trailer for 1998's Rushmore.

The Week That Was (10/21 - 10/26)

Nanostalgia? "Whether we've been doing the same things for ten years, or whether we occasionally manage to pull it together and catch a glimpse of good days, I don't know. The days in Austin have been good again. We talked over that while we were eating at Chuy's this evening with Jason. It's been a strange 15 months or so. Lots of good days and bad, as I guess it goes, life is evening itself out. 24 months ago, going to Chuy's for an early dinner was something we would have talked about wishing we could do." - The League, "Return of Robb," The League of Melbotis, 10/21/07. Truly, then, as they say, the past is prologue. To find one's self in a familiar setting, a former home, once again, after the passage of years, is a relief at the end of a long journey. The challenge: to balance the savoring and revisiting of old memories with the creation of new ones. I myself tend to err on the side of the former. Oh, well.

No Friday Night Lights Here: "Sport as an activity of the masses is not just a modern phenomenon, it’s a phenomenon of modernism. The idea that exercise can produce a new kind of man, can act as a balance to our everyday activities, can change who we are, that’s all very modernist. It is driven by the idea that it is possible to reinvent man, it is possible because of the rediscovery of the body after it had been hostage to Christianity for centuries. Unsurprisingly, all the ideology-driven movements of the 20th century promoted exercise and used sport as a recruitment tool. The Olympics, reinvented at the dawn of modernity, are only the most prominent example." - Madamechauchat, "Sports," Atoms to Zeppelins, (10/23/07). Something tells me Madame Chauchat won't be watching NBC's "Friday Night Lights" tonight or the Texas/Nebraska game tomorrow (although, certainly, Texas's offense could benefit from a bit of modernism, now couldn't it?).

Special Recognition: Many, many thanks to domain management czar Digital Boy of Ramblings of a 21st Century Digital Boy for securing both chronlogicalsnobbery.com and chronoogicalsnobbery.org for usage by yours truly. Those two addresses now redirect to, and have been engrafted upon, this site's blogspot address, so update your bookmarks accordingly (assuming, fo course, that you bookmarked this site to begin with).

The Week That Was (10/14 - 10/19)

HOMERIC? Behold, an epic poem by Horus Kemwer on last week's news that former Vice President and Oscar winner Al Gore had won the Nobel Peace Prize:

And he raised conflict and strife across 7 continents and 7 seas,
And he called upon the Third World to suffer for the sins of the First,
And he aggrandized himself at the expense of accuracy,
And he demonstrated the most profound hypocrisy,
. . . himself committing the sins for which he faulted others,
And he cried "Wolf!" - and then he cried again,
And Hollywood finally heard him, and its cretinous denizens,
Uneducated, Ignorant, and Gullible, but endowed by fame with Supernatural Power,
Called upon their Dark Gods, and themselves followed his hypocritical path,
Themselves they flew in private jets to lecture their betters on the sin of Emissions,
And there was confusion and delusion and panic across the land,
And each man was weighed heavy by his guilt,
But only the Rich were exonerated, paying for the privilege to pollute with free conscience,
And class differences grew as a new mark of status arose,
And He, in his majesty, was rewarded for spreading ignorance and fear,
And crowned as all great conmen eventually are crowned:
The Prince of Peace.

- horus kemwer, "the ' peace prize'," Against the Modern World, 10/14/07.

FUTURE MUSIC: "Unlike the average college student or high school student, I firmly believe in continuing to pay for music despite the proliferation of locations where you can get pirated music. It boils down less to a healthy respect for the law and RIAA than a faint hope that musicians will actually get some cut from their label." - The League, "In Rainbows - What do you think?," The League of Melbotis, 10/18/07. We are, I believe, well past the dichotomy of legal versus illegal music. iTunes has been in business for a number of years and its record successes (no pun intended) illustrate that consumers will purchase music legally when it is offered in an easy and convenient way. What the lingering debate over these issues reveals, however, is that the record industry and its sycophants will go out of their way to defend what is wholly and fully an outdated business model. Rather than leap into the era of digital music and boldly experiment with new marketing techniques, the record industry, and its thugs at the RIAA, continue to employ last century thinking to justify their way of life. What Radiohead, and its experiment with In Rainbows, prove is that an artist, particularly a successful one, no longer needs a record label or its distribution and publicity arms. This realization is frightful to executives who have made themselves and their employers fortunes over the years by deducting such expenses and taking percentages from album sales from artists. Certainly, if a record label provides publicity and resources to an artist, particularly a struggling new artist who does not otherwise have them, it should be reimbursed for its troubles. However, the model has become so ingrained that record companies must sell many millions of copies of popular soulless drek in order to sustain its operations and support of less popular, but far more creative, acts. It's a vicious cycle, and at the end of the day, the company cares not whether the albums it sells are of any redeeming social merit so long as they sell. I question not the capitalist component of that arrangement but the quality of music released thereunder. Hopefully, with In Rainbows and the inevitable copycats, we will begin to see artists take their careers into their own hands and rely less on the traditional model of music distribution which has prevailed for the past six decades. It may be naive to believe that in the face of such trends the record companies will rely less on suing its fans and more on providing them with good product at reasonable prices, but time will tell.

The Week That Was (10/8 - 10/12)

Publicity: Due to its tangential connection to the Axiom reunion (which takes place tonight and tomorrow night), my October 1 post regarding the 1992 Infected: The Twelve from Texas Houston local music scene compilation has drawn some additional attention, including links here, here, here, and even at the Houston Chronicle's music scene blog here. How about that?

The Week That Was (10/1 - 10/5)

My Answer is Eight: "Or how many renditions of Pearl Jam’s 'Alive' can one person own [the answer is never too many. Each performance is unique and wonderful in its own way. Those songs stay.]" - Digital Boy, "Touch Me, I’m an iPod," Ramblings of a 21st Century Digital Boy, 10/2/07. I have eight versions of the song, including the original studio version from Ten, the slightly remixed version from Rearviewmirror (the greatest hits compilation), live versions from the officially released bootleg concerts from Buffalo (May 2, 2003), Seattle (November 6, 2000), Katowice (June 15, 2000), and Paris (June 8, 2000) shows, a version from the actual 1992 bootleg Black & White, and the version from the 1991 Stanley, Son of Theodore alt-rock compilation (which I believe, actually, was the first commercially available PJ live song).

Francis Bacon Definitely Manipulates Me: "Art always aims at manipulation. An artwork that fails to manipulate you fails as a work of art. Unlike an argument, art tries to get you to believe or do something without making explicit this purpose. Manipulation can be straightforward: skillfully generated perspectives, natural colors and light effects helped to make the painted look real. True manipulation, of course, wants more. You are not just to mistake the painted for the real thing, you are supposed to believe certain things, feel certain things, do certain things about it." - Madamechauchat, "Art as Manipulation," Atoms to Zeppelins, 10/2/07. Art, and its creation, is a fascinating topic. However, this post prompts me to ask whether a purported artist must have an intent to manipulate separate and apart from his initial intent to create in order to bring true art into the world? I do not believe the writer is using "manipulate" and "create" as synonyms in this context, at least not fully. Certainly, there is some manipulation in the task of filtering an image or concept from the mind's eye to the canvass, the printed page, or celluloid. But must the purported artist seek to manipulate subsequent viewers of the work and must that intent be conscious? Does the Impressionist, or the video documentarian for that matter, truly desire to manipulate those who will see the work at a later date - at least beyond the act of committing a scene or series of event to the medium of choice? (The writer quoted suggests the use of light and shadow "to make the painted look real" as examples of such manipulation, but if that is manipulation, then is not every thing the artist does some act of conscious or unconscious manipulation, rendering the word "manipulation" meaningless in the context?) These are interesting questions, and it leads me back to a discussion I used to have in the 1990s: Who, or what, is an artist? Is it anyone who creates something that said creator dubs art? Is it anyone who claims to perpetrate some form of aesthetic manipulation? Surely not. There must be some objective component, in addition to the subjective one, in the inquiry. Caveat: I doubt there can be a totally satisfying objective definition of "art" or "artist" but surely it cannot be as easy as saying that a puported work of art or artist is one because the creator says it or he is one.

Site Maintenance and Updates: Monday's post on the 1992 Housto local music compilation album, Infected: The Twelve From Texas, prompted many an email to me, as its author, from members of the bands that appeared thereupon and other Houston music scenesters of the day. I have made a number of revisions and posted several addenda to include information I had not yet obtained at the time of the original posting. The post now boasts new interviews with band members and images (including scans of the original 1992 Public News reviews of the album and the February 1992 record release party). Someone also sent me the 1992 Vatican night club advertisement for the record release party, as well. Speaking of music posts, I also updated my September 10 post on The Morgans to include an email I received from British radio personality Nigel Barker, another one of the band's members.

The Week That Was (9/24 - 9/28)

Let us sink into its depths again, forevermore. "Sea and sky . . . . and who are we to determine where the one shall cease and the other begin?." - horus kemwer, "Sea and Sky," Against the Modern World, 9/24/07. Who are we? We are those who rose from the sea and mastered the sky. We are those who will sink back into the oceans upon the return of the destructor. We are those whose fate is the ether. We are the only ones who can say where the one shall cease and the other begin, because we are the only ones who can say anything. So far.

Solitude: "What would you do if there were no witnesses--no parents, no friends, no lovers, no bosses, no teachers, no audience of any kind except for yourself?" - T.S.T., "What Are You Like When No One Else is Looking?", Digest, 9/27/07. Is this so uncommon a situation that one must force one's self to think of what one would do under the circumstances?

The Week That Was (9/17 - 9/21)

Dylanology: "I have a major musical and cultural blindspot when it comes to Dylan. He's a legend, surely, but as he's important to musicians and music nuts, and less so as a pop culture figure (a la Elvis) a lot of Dylan has passed me by. No question it was great to see and hear him, but it didn't mean as much to me as other music nuts. I only knew half the songs, but I appreciated the show maybe more than really loving it." - The League, "ACL Fest Day 3," The League of Melbotis, 9/17/07. For some time, to me, listening to Bob Dylan was not unlike eating vegetables: I knew it was good for you, but I couldn't really garner any interest in the task. I could hear only so many accolades about the supposed spokesman of my parents' generation before I utterly lost interest in his body of work. Until about a decade ago, I knew the various singles and anthems, but I couldn't say I was familiar with his discography. But then, I discovered 1966's Blonde on Blonde and 1975's Blood on the Tracks, and well, I understood. For today's listeners, though, it probably doesn't help that today's Dylan is a parody of himself (and perhaps, over four and a half decades after his appearance on the scene, he is a parody of a former parody of himself.). But good things, and good records, lurk in the past, and Dylan's best efforts are among them. The League would do well to find them anon.

After Hours: "Because of my current bouts with melancholy, I’ve been listening to a lot - I mean a lot - of [Rilo Kiley's new album] Under the Blacklight lately (although the album isn’t necessarily a downer. I think it is because Jenny Lewis’s voice is so sad) . . . ." - Digital Boy, "Lyrical Nonsense XVII," Ramblings of a 21st Century Digital Boy, 9/20/07. As far as sad voices are concerned, I'm not certain Ms. Lewis can compete with the likes of Portishead's Beth Gibbons, the Cowboy Junkies' Margo Timmins, or Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval. Heck, Norah Jones' vocals on "Wurlitzer Prize (I Don't Want to Get over You)", which appears on Lonesome, On'ry and Mean: A Tribute to Waylon Jennings, are far, far more somber than anything Lewis has ever committed to a recording. Rilo Kiley, and its lead singer, Lewis, seem to me, rather underwhelming. They earned no points with me when, in 2002, the band covered the Velvet Underground's "After Hours." (How can a light and poppy trendy-indie hipster band perform an upbeat version of that tune, especially when the original vocal performance, done by the sad, wistful, and wonderfully naive sounding Maureen Tucker, was just so darn perfect? That I know not.). I'm not certain I understand the appeal of Rilo Kiley and Ms. Lewis, other than they are, purportedly, the type of band and frontwoman I am supposed to like as a discerning listener of modern rock music in 2007. Perhaps the fact that she hangs out with the insufferably pretentious Conor Oberst infuses her with indie street cred. Really, I can describe Rilo Kiley's singles as mostly pleasant, slightly catchy, but almost always forgettable. Alas.

Really? "Dreams in which inanimate objects talk to one, urging one into nefarious exploits, are unsettling in the extreme." - horus kemwer, "dreams in which . . ." Against the Modern World, 9/17/07. Unsettling or no, I withhold judgment. After all, isn't the nefariousness of the exploit dependent upon the nature of the inanimate object making the recommendation? Doesn't motive matter? Intent? If I am the agent to the inanimate object's principal, then is not my duty of loyalty to it, and its grand scheme my purpose? Who am I to question?

The Week That Was (9/10 - 9/14)

'Rescue Me' Season Finale: "And so the most disjointed season of the already disjointed series ends on . . . a disjointed episode. I suppose if you're going to be wildly inconsistent, you may as well be consistent about that. Or something." - Alan Sepinwall, "Rescue Me: Take me out to the ballgame," What's Alan Watching, 9/13/07. Like many of the commenters to Mr. Sepinwall's post, I too forsook Denis Leary's fireman drama several weeks ago, as it became especially apparent this season that it was nothing but a vanity project for Leary. There are only so many episodes he can produce in which he inexplicably falls into the arms of inexplicably beautiful women at the expense of plot and character development before a viewer flees. "Rescue Me" began as a gritty series about firemen coping with loss and love in the wake of September 11. It has become a parody of itself as Leary has centered the show solely around his character's kooky and out of character hijinks. Alas.

Iron Man Trailer: "Great moments are achieved by subtlety not by the TOTAL RUINATION OF THE AD BY INCLUDING THE OPENING DISTORTED VOICE EFFECT 'I AM IRON MAN' FROM BLACK SABBATH’S 'IRON MAN' SONG AS THE MOVIE TITLE IRON MAN IS PRINTED IN A BLADE OF IRON. Wait did you miss it? He’s IRON MAN." - Steven G. Harms, "Dorky or Awesome? Iron man and 'Iron Man'," stevengharms.com, 9/12/07. (emphasis in original). 'Nuff said on that horrid aesthetic choice, although Mr. Harms takes an unnecessary jab at another superhero actor, Tobey Maguire, who has adequately played the role of Peter Parker in at least two Spider-Man films.

Disputation of The League on the Power and Efficacy of Comic Contrivances: "There are just some odd conceits of comics that make me roll my eyes. " - The League, "Things I Could Do Without Seeing In Comics Ever Again," The League of Melbotis, 9/10/07. Damn right. The League, issuing 14 theses proscribing certain cliches in comic books, should become an editor in that industry. So tiresome are the contrivances he identifies that it is a shock - a shock! - that they were not eliminated ages ago. But writers, particularly hack writers, are creatures of habit, and comic auteurs return again and again to familiar devices which have worked in the past. He is particularly correct in his assessment that such writers should abandon time travel as a plot mechanism, as it is "too complicated" and "rarely handled well." To that I would add only that too many writers, when using that as a device, are internally inconsistent in their usage of time travel, i.e. they begin with the premise that events and actions are fated and temporally immutable and then waffle into the opposite belief that timelines are fluid and may be changed with ease and aplomb. (The writers and producers of NBC's "Heroes" committed this cardinal sin last season when they abandoned a world of fate for a fateless reality in which the future, any future, is unwritten.). Pick a theory, writers.

What is truth? "I do not expect to ever discover the 'truth' of the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Furthermore, such a goal is unnecessarily ambitious. Nevertheless, pragmatic considerations alone prove our current understanding of these events inadequate." - horus kemwer, "9/11," Against the Modern World, 9/11/07. In an interesting and thoughtful post on rival conspiracy theories, horus kemwer pauses on the sixth anniversary of September 11 to reflect upon our current understanding of what took place that fateful Tuesday in 2001. In sum, he concludes that there are enough issues and inconsistencies to merit additional governmental review of the events of, and the response to, that day. I'm not certain I agree, although based on this post, I'm not certain I would include horus kemwer in the fringe on this issue. As with the JFK assassination, there are those who believe that the absence of any evidence, direct or circumstantial, is itself proof of a successful conspiracy. Kemwer rightly points out that 9/11 is, in any analysis, a "conspiracy." (There was no lone gunman on 9/11, and thus, whatever you believe about that day, it was by definition a conspiracy.). But for those who (wrongly, foolishly, angrily) argue that the U.S. government permitted 9/11 to occur or acted with malice aforethought (and kenwer does not appear to be among those ranks), no reasonable re-analysis of evidence will dissuade them of such beliefs. So why bother to put for another study for those who unreasonably cling to such beliefs?