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December 28, 2004
Swayzak, Matthew Dear and somebody else, 12/13/04
This was a great night of electronic music over at the Rickshaw Stop. I forgot where it was at first. I got there and Roddy was already looking over the floor from that balcony there. We perched ourselves in some plastic chairs and talked. I wish I knew what the DJ's name was that started the evening because he was a good time. It sounded like he had recorded his own stuff for use that evening and his set was a little slower than danceable, but worked as atmosphere.
Matthew Dear was great fun too. I think he played a couple of tracks from his new album. It helped that he was cute too. His stuff was a bit faster, far more organized than the previous guy and he certainly knew how to play to the crowd. Speaking of which, there was quite a crowd by the time Swayzak played.
I got Swayzak's last record and it didn't remind me of what they turned out to be at all. It was New Order with updated beats. While it wasn't bad, it wasn't as interesting at Matthew Dear.
I'll definitely keep writing until I goddamn catch up with the present day. Events from last year are, well, so last year.
Posted by deaconmf at 02:03 PM | Comments (0)
The Mae-Shi, Battleship, Punks and The Cold War, 12/11/04
This show was a damned good time. I'm glad I went to see the Maeshi all those months ago because all of these bands were a very good time. I went with my friend Roddy, who happens to know the drummer in the Maeshi. This means that these guys are a lot older than I thought they were.
Anyhow, I got there and watched The Cold War which was an enjoyable sound. Roddy got there after his job and we watched the rather joyous musical breakdown that was the Punks. I didn't really like them much, thought it looked like they were having a great time. Roddy wanted to join them and I actually suspect they might not have minded much.
Now Battleship sounded great. Good name, great sound. It sounds very state of the art indie with some nice guitar solos.
Then the Maeshi went up. Roddy reminded me of something I totally forgot. "Maeshi" means "business card" in Japanese. Don't think I'll ever forgot that again. They were great fun. The quality of the sound there meant that their vocals weren't easy to hear, but they still looked like they were having a great time. At times, their power chords sure sounded like Heart or Boston. Great joke, guys. Goes very well with that silly sampled thing they did.
Posted by deaconmf at 01:57 PM | Comments (1)
Roddy Schrock and Life on Earth @ The Lab, 12/9/04
Ok, I'm way behind, but I'm going to start catching up on things I've been doing. This one is the oldest.
Ok, I know the artist in question and like what he does. So, let's just say that I enjoyed myself immensely. I got a glass of wine. My friend, Miss C came along too even though she had been very sick. I'd seen The Life on Earth before and really hadn't liked their arty-jazz schtick. It worked less well without the video accompaniment.
Roddy's work though seemed very subtle and even funny at times. He slivered samples of various spirituals from different cultures then transformed those sounds into a Morse code of electronic unease. Roddy wisely let his music continue when he began Remi's video accompanyment. What began as colored squares eventually turned out to be pixelated pictures of the war in Iraq.
Another thing that was interesting was watching Roddy do this. It's always interesting watching people do something they love. I like the way that his body language emphasized each part he added or subtracted. It was a kind of thrust dancing and it was fun.
I wish more people had been there to see it. And one day, there will be, dammit.
Posted by deaconmf at 01:53 PM | Comments (0)
Napoleon Dynamite on DVD, 12/27/04
Here's another movie that seemed very funny, yet wasn't very good. It did really seem like a reason to mock people that the director or screenwriter wanted us to feel sorry for them. I'm not sure why we should feel much when it's so unclear why any of this is going on. Why does Napoleon live with his much older brother? Why is his grandmother going on dates? Why does his uncle seem to be trying so hard to make money? And where did his brother get all this hiphop gear and attitude. It's not a bad movie, but the joke I loved the most is Napoleon's failure to get over a bike ramp. Wish they hadn't underplayed everything because it made these characters seem retarded. Wish Napoleon didn't seem so disconnected from reality. Really wish he didn't have the tetherball ending with that girl.
Posted by deaconmf at 01:52 PM | Comments (0)
The Life Aquatic, 12/27/04
What exactly do I say about a film that was funny, yet was still a huge disappointment? Wes Anderson's been making these strange, seemingly small films of his for quite some time. His characters seem bewildered by the lives they lead which means they always seem so tentative. They also seem so distant from the plot though almost all of his main characters seems intensely driven to make certain dreams of theirs come true. So now I'm pretty sure all his movies have this disconnect. We're now used to watching Mr. Anderson's actors underreact, especially Bill Murray, who seems to be making it a trademark of all his movies (watch Lost in Translation). His "clowns" are sad, but unlike Pagliacci, his clowns don't cry. They mope usually entertainingly.
Well, it doesn't work this time. I might be getting tired of Mr. Murray's schtick. It's may also be that Mr. Anderson's sense of whimsy is just getting in the way. His special effects looks like so much Day-Glo Play-Do. His movies seems stilted enough with stilted special effects. It makes the movie look like a parody of a sealife documentary. What it particularly reminds me of the documentaries of Jean Painleve. There was this incredibly simple depiction of animals doing what they do (and the Yo La Tengo accompaniment helped too.) Here, the incidents that compose the plot seem so episodic. Each event occurs without much connection to one another, until we hit the pirates. Then it seems to turn into an action picture parody. After awhile, the movie seems like one parody too many and it keeps changing the tone of the movie. Too much whimsy with too many important events occuring in these characters' lives. I might be getting tired of Mr. Anderson's schtick too.
Posted by deaconmf at 01:50 PM | Comments (2)
The Lord of the Rings on DVD, 12/24 - 26
Ok, I think everybody I know has seen this movie, so I'm not going to describe the plot or anything. Just a couple of comments after spending the whole of the Christmas weekend watching all 11+ hours of DVD material.
1) While the storyline tends closely to the original, some things are expanded and most of those are the correct choices. Giving Gollum a split personality fleshed out Frodo and Sam's story line quite nicely. It reinforced the themes of (platonic) love and friendship and gave a storyline that otherwise lacked events after the hobbits meet up with Shelob.
2) Some of the expansion materials aren't so good. The haunted trail into the mountains looks a lot like the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. Sometimes, Legolas looks like he's flown in from some L.A. skateboard park/stunt convention during the Battle of Pelennor Fields and Gimli seems to be comic relief just because he's a dwarf.
3) I still miss the last part of the book. Saruman's conquest of the Shire keeps so many of the themes of the novel in motion. Part of what makes these books great is the horror of power. The hobbits are motivated by what might happen to the Shire if they fail to take the actions that Gandalf has forced upon them. The horror here is that the actions they take end up destroying the Shire as they knew it. Finally, left to act all alone, the 4 hobbits save the land they call home. I would have loved to see this in the movie, though it would have added another hour to the overall running time.
4) It occurs to me that so many American movies end with the characters in essentially the same position that they begin in, except slightly more hopeful for the future. The past tends not to change the physical surroundings of characters, just their mindsets. Probably the best example of this is "It's a Wonderful Life". (Hey, I like that one.) Without the razing of the Shire, we get a very circular motion that deposits hobbits exactly where they began. At least, Frodo goes to the West and Sam, who made it very clear how much he loved his home, gets to deliver the last line, "I'm home" as he does in the book. Is this what we think of in America when we think of closure? I hope not. History isn't just what happens in our heads.
5) Most of Middle Earth is drawn very smartly, but there seem to be problems dealing with the dimensions of the hobbits in the movies. There are some scenes where they seem to move like midgets (where Merry and Pippin charge after Aragorn at the Battle of Minas Morgul), then there are others where they seem to move like normal sized adults (most of the time Frodo and Sam alone).
Posted by deaconmf at 01:44 PM | Comments (0)
December 27, 2004
The Dream Life, J. Hoberman
I've always liked J. Hoberman's reviews in the Village Voice, so when I saw this at the library, I had to pick it up. Strangely, I was disappointed. Mr. Hoberman's reviews in the Voice are always so perceptive and surprising. He's still perceptive here, but not so surprising. His interpretation of how the movies of the 60s reflected the confused politics of the time seem obvious. Hell, by just watching The Lord of the Rings you can see both the times of its origin and the current world. I still think that it's a worthwhile read for one very important thing. It makes it clear how desperate, strange and immediate the 60s really were. The real possibility of change hung in the air as well as the fear that always accompanies that change. The description of the riots at the '68 Democratic Convention feel like he was there. (And maybe he was.) Also, pointing out the Dirty Harry is a right-wing film archetype may not be original, but it does have a lot of lasting value. Films well into the middle 80s had these avenging angel types. There's still a couple of them around today, though they seem to have retreated into fantasy and science fiction.
Posted by deaconmf at 11:23 PM | Comments (0)
December 16, 2004
"History, like any other verdict, is not a matter of fact but a point of view." The Hamilton Case, Michelle de Kretser
I've never read a book about Sri Lanka, which saw part of the reason I picked this up. The other was a review in Salon which saw this as a complex novel about colonialism, mystery novels and miserable families. It definitely resembles these recent post modern books about colonial times in South Asia, like The Piano Tuner and the Death of Vishnu. Its immediate concerns are a bit different though, partly because this also uses Agatha Christie as a touchstone of English colonial thought. Sam Obeysekere ia half-Sri Lankan growing up in the late colonial period finds himself in love with the colonial culture. In the first part, he writes his autobiography and keeps referring to himself as the man who solved the Hamilton Case, though the narrative ends strangely ends before we get to his description of the case. The narrative continues in the third person in the second part where we hear about the Hamilton case and the crucial part Sam plays in its solution. then the third part continues with the slow decline of both the Sam Obey and his aging mother. In the last part, we finally find out what the true story of the Hamilton case was. Worse, we find out how wrong Sam had been about it all. I figure there's no sense concealing that's Sam's been wrong all along. This damned entry is rambling. I'm going to just end it here. LOL.
Posted by deaconmf at 10:51 AM | Comments (0)
December 14, 2004
Strange But True, John Searles
So let's say your brother died the night of his prom 5 years ago. Then, let's say his girlfriend comes to your home. She looks nothing like what she used to look like. She's gained weight, has this horrid scar from the accident that killed your brother and is missing her front teeth. She's obviously pregnant and confides that the child must be your brother's.
Most of us would throw the damned woman right out of the house. Well, in this novel, they do. Yet the plot continues anyway. The initial premise is ridiculous, but it is intriguing. The plotting works well, considering that certain events feel forced to create a satisfying ending. Also, very little seems to happen. It's still a decent book. It delves into the lives of people not just marked by tragedy, but horribly brutalized by these events. It also tells this story from individual points of view with nice details about each person's loss. The story ends relatively happily, in case you need to know. So, it's likeable but don't buy it. You can always borrow the book from the library.
Based on the pic on the back, I can't tell if I'd sleep with the author. Probably not though, since he's an editor at Cosmo. LOL.
Posted by deaconmf at 12:49 PM | Comments (0)
December 12, 2004
Does theft count as drama?
File this one under life sucks sometimes. I was robbed on Friday. Someone broke into my apartment through the window and stole my new laptop, a couple of old iPods and a bunch of CDs. I'm mentally ok, though I feel very angry about all this. The police were polite, but not really helpful and they never came back to give me that form to report serial numbers they were talking about. The landlord came by and seemed to be covering his ass. There was a worker cleaning the light wells when this happened who apparently went walking through our apartment without permission. I'm glad my housemate, who was home most of the day, hadn't walked in on whoever it was, but I wish I'd stayed home.
The worst part is that they stole a friend's birthday present that was something I knew she really wanted. Sorry Miss C. I'll try again.
The scary part is I suspect one of my neighbors did this. There's not much I can do to prevent them for breaking the glass on my windows. This may be the last entry on my desktop.
The weirdest part is going to bed and thinking "I'm sleeping in a crime scene."
I'm not going to obsess over this, but I will be outraged for awhile. Thanks for bearing with me.
Posted by deaconmf at 04:20 PM | Comments (0)
December 03, 2004
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Jean-Dominique Bauby
Does anyone remember "One", that old Metallica video where the soldier can't move any muscle in his body? I always wondered if this situation could actually exist. Turns out it can. Jean-Dominique Bauby was an editor for French Vogue when he suffered a stroke that took out his voluntary muscle movement. The only thing he could manage beside twisting his head around was blinking. He dictated this book by blinking and compared his captivity in his body to a diving bell. It's a horrific situation, but he manages to keep going. A good portion of the book is about his hallucinations. Apparently, people in bed for long periods of time suffer ICU psychosis. A good friend of mine imagined going all sorts of places and doing all sorts of things but always dreamed about the bed surrounding him. It actually sounded entertaining. My friend decided to call it "Magic Hospital Bed". When Jean was aware of the world, he discovered that his sense of hearing was greatly magnified. He could now hear butterfly's wings outside. The poor man died 2 days before the book was published in France. For the most part, the book is amazing because the peculiarity of details in this strangest of horrible situations is always striking. I wasn't crazy about him describing his last day of normalcy. There's something about it that lacked the urgency of his situation. Of course, that may be the point.
(And no, I'm not speculating if I'd sleep with a man in this condition. LOL.)
Posted by deaconmf at 12:48 PM | Comments (0)