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I always find the weeks leading up to the Academy Awards amusing. It's now that all the "prestige" pictures - each studio's grope for an Oscar - are released nationwide (although they had brief runs in November and December in NYC in order to qualify for the 2001 awards), each replete with a full dose of over-the-top, sentimental pathos. So we have "Beautiful Mind," "The Majestic," and, lest I forget, "I am Sam" making the rounds of the local cineplexes right now. And geez, such crap! It's so bad, it's almost funny. Almost.
What keeps it from being truly funny is that there are talented filmmakers out there whose projects aren't being produced because these prestige pictures are draining studio resources away. That's really sad. Actually, it's immoral, too. I don't know whether to feel angry or sorrowful about this state of affairs - or if I should just write it off as an absurist nightmare occuring in that parallel comedic universe that occasionally intersects with ours. That's how this time can "almost" be funny. Most of the time, I have to take the laughter route; otherwise, the suffering is just too much to bear.
So when I was sitting through the previews right before my second viewing of Wes Anderson's wonderful "The Royal Tennenbaums" last week and the "I am Sam" trailer came on, I couldn't tell at first whether the film advertised was supposed to be drama or satirical comedy. I started laughing uncontrollably when a painfully stupified Sean Penn yells "Lucy!" repeatedly at the top of his lungs and my friend Marius had to jab me in the ribs. I thought it was a parody on the Oscar-grubbing "mentally retarded" schtick. Oops - I guess this one's for real.
These films pretend to be good by showing off all the trappings of a modern Citizen Kane or Lawrence of Arabia: fine cinematography, immaculate sets, period costumes, lush orchestral scoring, and tradgic dramatic plots. Spare me. And why exclusively drama? Why not action, comedy, mystery? My theory is that Hollywood sees their prestige pictures as an annual catharsis for all of the fun, raucous entertainment they've made and we've enjoyed earlier in the year. But, it never works because the productions that Hollywood stages are so self-righteous, labored "productions" as to be insulting to an intelligent (or at least awake) audience. Instead of experiencing a moral cleansing we just plain suffer.
For some reason, the Academy has got it into their heads that Really Fine Acting is when some wonderfully gritty actor pretends he's retarded or a sultry actress plays a prostitute. Maybe its an actor-specific component of the catharsis theory. Some people think it's profound stuff to see a glittering screen star exploring his or her alter-ego, to watch media royalty walk in the virtual shoes of the downtrodden as the ultimate recognition of their great fortune. Whatever. I'm really surprised no one has combined the two together and made a movie about a prostitute who falls in love with a mentally retarded man. That'd be some fine viewing. Now I'd better watch what I say ... it may be misunderstood as a serious movie idea.
Which reminds me: a friend and I went to see "Gosford Park" last week, and in the opening credits, where the titles usually say something like "Based on a novel by ....." it said "Based on an idea by Robert Altman." Geez. Spalding Gray must be right. I guess ideas must be in such short supply in Smog City that you can get a screen credit now just for coming up with one over lunch. I can just see it now: Me schmoozing with Jerry Bruckheimer at a West Hollywood restaurant. "Wouldn't it be cool if we did a movie about a prostitute and a crazy man," I'd say. Man, I could get rich off of this. Must look into that.
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Album Review: Mink Car by They Might Be Giants (Released September 11, 2001)
Two Johns + Three Daves = Pop Mastery
Yesterday, I bought They Might be Giants' latest CD, Mink Car. I think it's their best album to date, but I'm sure that many of TMBG's most ardent fans will disagree. That's because I'm the kind of person who puts music first and considers lyrics secondary. For many TMBG fans, that order is reversed and, I'm sorry to report on their behalf that the complex, fast-talking vocals of "Anna Ng" have been largely edged out with much simpler and repetitive material. That said, Mink Car is a goldmine of poppy, catchy tunes that are amazingly well-produced and are gauranteed to summon up reflexive gasps of "this is damn near perfect" at random moments from any listener - no matter how skeptical or faux-sophisticate. And, TMBG faithfuls shouldn't despair: while about half of the album's tracks are pop masterworks as described above, the other half retain the original, quirkier mix of surreal lyrics with mediocre tunes.
In fact, listening to Mink Car, you get the feeling that there were two people writing distinctly different songs for this album. It's enough to make me wonder if the two John's (John Linnell and John Flansburgh, the band's brains) are finding their musical tastes diverging as they mature as artists. Maybe I've just never noticed it before, but here the songs sung by Linnell are almost always of the poppy variety, while those sung by Flansburgh are more traditional TMBG material. On the CD, the songs alternate according to their style, making for a refreshing play-through from beginning to end and providing an easy-to-remember programming algorithm:either pick the odd tracks for pop or the evens for more classic TMBG.
But it's not like the intelligence (which has always been TMBG's strong suit) is gone in the pop songs - just that it's been focused differently on this half of the disc. Lincoln and Apollo 18 shocked with quirky, wordy lyrics that often seemed self-consciously clever and were sometimes downright irritating to the uninitiated or impatient. Most people were too distracted trying to follow the auctioneer at the mic to pay much attention to the accompanying quick-riffed pop loops, so it didn't matter that the tunes wore thin after a couple of listenings. It was the surreal storytelling that captivated; the notes were there for mere scaffolding.
With the odd-numbered tracks of Mink Car, TMBG have succeeded admirably at making the music take on a life of its own. If the hyper-surrealism of the early days is in less abundance here, there's still enough of it to go around. Any chorus that starts with "I got hit by a mink car driven by a guitar," is clearly not of the waking world, after all. But, on the whole, the lyrics cover more down-to-earth topics, such as haircuts, the nightclub scene of the 80's, and misguided rock stars, albiet with biting sarcasm and a bit of postmodern reference. What is ingenious is how that sarcasm now extends to the musical material, reinforcing the authenticity of the overall package. Take "Man, It's Loud in Here" for example. In addition to biting lyrics, it features a perfect parody of New Order sound, complete with electro-drum/bass and overlaid electric guitar riffs:
They fixed up the corner store like it was a nightclub
It's permanently disco
Everyone is dressed so oddly I can't recognize them
I can't tell the staff from the customers
Chorus:
Baby, check this out, I've got something to say
Man, it's so loud in here
When they stop the drum machine and I can think again
I'll remember what it was.
Oh, and did I mention this song has almost perfect pop construction? Even if you love the deafening loudness of night clubs, the persuasiveness of the music will make you think you've been a fool all this time as you crank the volume louder to better absorb the tunes. It's that good.
A lot of what makes it sound so good is that the band is now actually, well, a true band. Starting with their last studio album, Factory Showroom, and continuing in Mink Car, the two Johns of TMBG have been joined by a bassist, guitarist, and drummer, lending songs a much fuller and tighter sound than ever before. The three-piece add-on ensemble has gone through different incarnations in the past few years, and on the present album they are referred to in the liner notes as "the three Daves." Now, quick,
what do two Johns plus three Daves equal?
The other half of Mink Car is more of the same TMBG wordsmithing that fans have grown to love, along with the rough and angular musical content that people like me have learned to tolerate in small doses. Here, a few of the song titles should sum things up: "I've Got a Fang," "Cyclops Rock," and "Wicked Little Critta." They've got the quirky, surreal lyrics that attracted many of the band's first fans and feel right at home next to the material of Lincoln. Except for the fact that they're better played and produced than in the early days, you'd never know the difference.
But, for me, a music-first listener, the cause for rejoice in Mink Car is the brilliance of its pop tracks. With a real band now backing them up on amazingly catchy tunes that still carry meaningful, if somewhat simplified lyrics, TMBG have forged a breakthrough album. If you pass me on the highway in the next couple weeks, you're likely to hear the tunes of this album wafting out my window - well, at least those resident on the odd-numbered tracks. And, if you can't stand the happy-pappy pop turn the band has taken ever since the success of Flood, rest assured you'll be well served on the even tracks with the classic, clever-clever surrealism that got TMBG started in the first place. Mink Car, in that way, keeps everyone happy most of the time. Or, at least half the time.
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People have always been encouraging me to write from the time I was about eight, after I wrote that short story about the red hot air balloon in the third grade one dreamy afternoon. Later, in junior high school, I wrote stories about the long backpacking and canoeing trips my dad and I would go on with the Boy Scouts, most of which went unpublished and have since been lost on a stack of 3.5" DSDD Mac-formatted floppies that disappeared not long after the now-ancient family Mac SE was donated to Goodwill in the mid-90's.
In high school, I fed the writer's disease by indulging in intensely analytical literary essays and a cheap play that now seems woefully derrivative. And college found me tapping away under the pressure of deadline in the drippy, dark basement of the University of Texas communications building, where the Daily Texan's offices were located.
When I went to graduate school, I tried writing essays and e-mailing them to some of my trusted friends, but was systematically rejected by people who neither had the time or the desire to wade through an analysis of the crisis in classical music or an existential examination of religion. I reduced the e-mailing to simple quotes, which incited quite a ruckuss now and then and made me the focal point of much angry disagreement. So that stopped.
A few months ago, a friend of mine from grad. school agreed to publish a magazine with me, so urbaniamagazine was born. We published 2 issues before it became clear that neither of us was ready to run any kind of real publication with deadlines and paid writers. As I write this, I am looking at two screenplays on my virtual desktop that have been started, neither of them finished, mostly because I feel paralyzed by a lack of a coherant message in them.
So here I sit, embarking on yet another mode of written expression, the online version of the long-venerated journal. Why a journal? Why not write a novel, finish the screenplays, or submit some stuff to The New Yorker or The Atlantic Monthly? Because at this point I need the instant gratification of completion on a daily basis, every time I hit the "publish" button. Because I need a live audience, even if only theoretically attendant, to summon up my highest muse and most earnest efforts, to literally keep me honest. And becuase, quite frankly, I need the intellectual companionship that will hopefully develop as my discourse connects with others.
Writing helps order the mind, to make sense out of the apparent chaos that confronts us in hopes that some odd epiphanies may percolate up from the day-to-day minutia and steer our long lives into peace and happiness. As peace descends on us, we become, in a sense, more sane. It is this promise that has driven all of my written efforts since I became conscious of a need for a personal philosophy - the root cause of the writer's midnight disease. Here's to yet another journey in that vein, one that is hopefully long and well worth the ride.
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