Ross McElwee

Both the current issues of Cineaste and Film Comment have fascinating interviews/columns with/on “American’s foremost practitioners of the first-person documentary, Ross McElwee.

I’m intersted in a lot of what he has to say, especially as I’m hoping to make my own first-person documentary over the next year, but he's also clearly thought a lot about how video can effect our memories and the stories we tell. Here are some excerpts taken from the Cineaste interview.

I.
McElwee:…So in a way it’s a question that may not come up for most people. But for me, it’s important to experiment with the reuse of footage, because that reflects a very human experience: replaying scenes from your past in your mind and having a very different reaction to them as the years go on. Specific moments, interactions I have with people I’m close to, ripen in different ways as time goes on. They take on different meanings, and I’m interested in how film can explore and convey the process.

Cineaste: Film is kind of magical that way, isn’t it? Don’t we all feel like we might remember things right? And there, twenty years later, is the same strip of film.

McElwee: I think it’s going to be very interesting, by the way, to see what happens with this digital generation of parents who have recorded their kids’ every footstep. People were shooting a fair amount of super-8 film in the Sixties and Seventies. But it was expensive and difficult to load, and editing it was extremely time-consuming. Most people didn’t edit their footage; most footage was not viewed more than once. Digital video, or video in general enables parents to keep a constant record of a family as it grows up. So that very question you raised- “Am I remembering this correctly?”- needn’t be an issue. People can just go back to the data bank and see exactly how little Jimmy spooned his peas into his mouth at age four. There’ll be a record of it. And how strange is that?

II.
McElwee: That’s such an interesting question: what is it that gives certain people the kind of presence that justifies their being in a nonfiction film, in a documentary film? Passion. Charisma. That edge of eccentricity perhaps. Somehow they’re able to convey some depth of sincerity and soulfulness about themselves that I wouldn’t describe as star power.

III.
Cineaste: Speaking of the power that these films have over us, I wonder about people in your movies over whom that power has obviously been exerted to an extreme degree- Barry, the video collector in your new movie, and you yourself. You are constantly talking about being overtaken by the power that filming has.

McElwee: There’s a pathology there that is not just a joking matter. Yes, this notion of constantly wanting to capture reality as much as humanly possible is a kind of neurosis. It’s also one that’s perhaps more pervasive that it ever has been. We have a proliferation of readily available digital, and now computer-based and web-based, technology, where making movies has become much easier than writing a novel or a poem. Now, technically speaking, almost everybody can make a movie. It’s interesting to think about the pathological aspects of this addiction to filming, this desire to interact with reality by filming it. It’s also a theme that I’ve played up or exaggerated slightly with my own filmmaking.

IV.
McElwee: I’ve often said about Sherman’s March (McElwee’s 1986 documentary, which I just got from Netflix, but have yet to watch) that, even if you were able to hire actors and actresses who performed all of the parts perfectly and shot them on location in the same places and directed it as though it seemed exactly like Sherman’s March, it wouldn’t work as a movie. There’s something about the fact that it’s nonfiction that ends up making a difference. There’s something that happens in the back of the viewer’s mind as you watch Sherman’s March or as you watch Bright Leaves, that’s constantly registering the fact that, in some way, this is really happening. and that’s very hard to recast as fiction in a way that’s successful. There are films that have tried, like Spinal Tap. It’s a kind of ‘mockumentary.’ It’s a joke that you accept. You just go with it, and it’s entertainment, but it’s not the same thing. It doesn’t have the crunchy edginess that comes with nonfiction.

Cineaste: You seem to be saying a version of that when you find the super-8 film of your parents’ wedding in Time Indefinite. It’s sui generis and could not be recorded.

McElwee: Right. Technically you could, especially these days with digital effects. You could create grain and light structure that would make it look exactly like that wedding film of long ago. But it wouldn’t be the same. the fact that I say it’s a roll of film that I found has a lot to do with how your react to the scene. A switch has gone on in the mind of the viewer, I think this happens because of what I say about the film, but it still has a lot to do with the quality of the filmed image- its grain, its somewhat awkward framing, its occasional unsteadiness, and the slight edge of self-consciousness readable in the person being filmed. Still, I remember very distinctly the numerous times, during a question and answer session after Sherman’s March, someone would stand up in the audience and say, “I love this film. Who wrote the script? Has Charleen acted in other movies?” There is a part of the viewing public who just take these films as fiction. though a title card explains at the beginning of the film that these are real people, it just doesn’t seem to register sometimes.

Morning Becomes Computer

It’s past midnight, contrary to what the time stamp of this post reads. (All post times still
adhere to Pacific Time.) Its been a long day.

I originally woke up around 2:00 am and wanted very much for the day to begin. It’s rare to awake at such an early morning hour and want to do anything but numbly eye the clock, gage the time and gratefully zonk back into the deepest of slumbers. But last night I felt anxious with unidentifiable expectations, as if in the wide expanse of a summer Saturday I was bound to fulfill things long unrealized. The night felt too long. I managed 3 more hours of sleep before 5:00 am rolled around and scooped me out of bed, handing me a Diet Coke with lemon for my troubles and sending me down to the computer.

But why, I have to wonder- and not without a tinge of guilt- the computer first thing? There was the obligatory scan of Yahoo’s news headlines, the cursory scanning of the Tribune weather page and the momentary suspense of checking my e-mail- all done between groggy sips of cola without any pause to wonder if this was what got me out of bed at 5:00 am feeling so much expectation.

And this expectation, it should be noted, wasn’t the fretful tossing and turning variety- it was more of a gee-whiz Frank Capra/Jimmy Stewart meets Norman Rockwell kind of idiot glee- and it had me up and sitting dumbly in front of the computer so that it wasn’t until nearly 7:00 that I finally asked, “Is this all?”

Now, it’s 1:17 am, over 19 hours later and this very same expectation is running on fumes. What was it exactly and did I quench it? I think so. Tonight I intend on letting 5:00 am pass by unrecognized. I’m aiming for 7:00 am mixed with a couple heaping t-spoons of a mid-afternoon nap.

Weekend Round Up

The Farrelly Brother's Stuck On You is, if not their funniest work (that honor still belongs to There's Something About Mary), definitely their sweetest. If all of their previous films (which also include Dumb and Dumber and Shallow Hal) have demonstrated a nice knack for straining their gross-out, taboo-bursting brand of humor through a charming brand of sweetness, Stuck On You seems to me a kind of apotheosis of their work in this area. 

And we were on a bit of a Matt Damon kick this weekend.  The Bourne Supremacy seems to have forgotten to balance its bad-assness with the kind of gee-whiz goofiness the first one  managed so nicely.  This one isn't necessarily bad, and bringing Peter Greenway, fresh off Bloody Sunday, was an inspired choice even if he does go a little haywire with the edits in a couple of the action sequences. (Whose getting a fist to the jaw there?  Do I care?)  Booting Franka Potente in the opening 10 minutes seemed cheap and the ricketedy cogs of the vegence plot it puts into motion gets the thumbs twiddling in ho-hum expectation.  Still, there's an inspired, highly physical car chase to end the film where the right dude gets his necessary comeuppance, and we dug that.  And Cathy gets the high five for spotting the lovely Oksana Akinshina, who makes her first screen appearance since she was put through the ringer of Moodysson's devastating Lilja 4-Ever, in a silly little coda where she's given about 4 minutes to fear for her life and then cry.  

Moodymann's new one, Black Mahogani is his best since Silent Introduction.  Kenny Dixon (a.k.a. Moodymann) trims the fat off of his previous and oftentimes tedious immersion into lengthy sound collages in favor of a seemingly newfound focus on his sublimely dusted house grooves.  The album's first 4 songs make up a soulful sweet, led by the woozy vocals of Roberta Sweet (no pun intended) and culminating in the 12 minute track, Runaway, which builds up and winds down repeatedly.  On first listen, Black Mahogani already seems like a classic- highly distinct, unabashedly accessible and laying down slice after slice of genuinely soulful house.

Also watched Elephant, Gun Van San'ts not so loose adaptation of the Columbine high school massacre.  It's not entirely successful, but the first 40 or so minutes are near perfect, full of long, gliding tracking shots nipping at the shoulders of various students walking through high school.  It all feels suspended- haunted and dense with tension.  The sound design on the film is a marvel, as voices are constantly submerged only to come into sharp clarity and everywhere  deep, cavernous thuds  seem to ricochet off the hallways.  And  hallways haven't been this creepy, this infused with dread, since Lynch's Twin Peaks.  At the 40 minute mark, the student killers enter the building and it's barely possible to watch the screen after this.  We see the massacre, and it's horrific with a minimum of gore, though I'm not entirely convinced it was necessary for us to see.  Still, as a piece of agitprop, this is probably more successful then Bowling For Columbine.

We leave you with this: 

The Don Martin Dictionary! 

Bomba Pictures!

We give you fish!

Paul Simon, Among Other Things

A.

My crotch is still snug after all these years.

The Paul Simon reissues are welcome with big, open arms. I’ve owned his first two post-Garfunkel albums for a while now, and love them- so it was a nice surprise to discover a few weeks ago that his entire catalog had been remastered, with the first half on the shelves this past Tuesday. I headed over to the Virgan Superstore on the Magnificent Mile (where the in-store DJs are almost always entirely successful in pricking me out of my browsing trance with their hyped up in-between songs chatter) on Friday and picked up Still Crazy After All These Years and Hearts and Bones.

I had heard Still Crazy After All These Years in its entirety sometime back in the early 90’s via the Columbus Library. It didn’t do much to me, other then offering the surprise of seeing Tony Levin in the credits, his lovely bass playing anchoring many of the album’s songs, including its big hit, 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover. Almost a decade later, I’m far more receptive to the album’s charms, which are substantial. Besides the fun of hearing Levin’s playing, the album also features some great backing vocals by the likes of the Jersey Dixon Singers and the Chicago Community Choir, the sweet-tempered harmonizing of Simon and Garfunkel on My Little Town and the soulful bossa-nova of I Do It For Your Love, probably the track I’m currently enjoying most on the album. The song features an absolutely lilting accordion and vocal solo by someone credited only as Sivuca! Maybe more-so then any other pop star, Simon’s voice captivates me with a soulful kind of gentleness similar to Joao Gilbertos. The album, like his first two, is also streaked with southern soul, Dixieland and mellow mid-life assessments.

Hearts and Bones, with its grainy video cover of Simon looking fiercely New Romantic or an extra from the film adaptation of Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City, begins with a song titled Allergies. It was released in October of 1983. I’m pleased to say that Paul Simon is one of the rare artists to have successfully navigated unscathed through the otherwise ruinous threshold of the 70’s into the 80's, a journey that seems to have sapped a disproportionate number of artists who created classic albums throughout much of the 70’s, only to falter in the 80s with releases whose severe mediocrity glared against the backdrop of their previous efforts. I have, however, been thinking of late that maybe it's not necessarily the quality of the songs themselves that bothers me, so much as it might just be the way they were produced. Namely, that nearly everything sounds like it was recorded in modest sized rooms made entirely of porcelain.

Of course, I’m all for the clean sheen of the glistening reverb that seemed to coat so many of the tracks in the 80’s. When it’s done well it sounds great,and Simon, who’ve I’ve come to recognize as one of the great studio wizards, does it especially well-buffering all his tracks with the nicest feelin’ groovy kind of polish. It’s clean, but always soulful. On Train In The Distance, for example- one of the album’s stand-out cuts, Simon lays down one of his greatest vocal performances, a funky multi-layered doo-wop equal to any of Marvin Gaye’s sweetest, sexiest vocal beds. It practically shimmers.

The album’s last track, The Late Great Johnny Ace, nicely manages to eulogize both the 50’s R & B singer Johnny Ace and John Lennon, ending with a velvety and mournful Phillip Glass coda.

B

Our basement has come to, unfortunately, be known as “the TV room,” a title that, while definitely unfortunate (conjuring up, as it does, the prospects of Jay Leno, that sitcom starring Jim Belushi and repeats of Maude) is not entirely inappropriate given the size of the television that has only recently come to reside there. It’s a beast, rotund with screen and lush with surround sound.

We’re a little embarrassed about it, Cathy especially, it’s very size signaling a kind of consumption gluttony and presumably symbolic of our commitment to television. We fear others may conclude that we’re spending our leisure hours watching the boob tube. But hell no, my friends! We’re always quick to do our duty and offer assurances that it’s chief function is for movie viewing and its considerable girth and surround sound help to more closely approximate the film going experience. In Pauline Kaels’ old essay, Movies On Television, she talks about the diminishing effects of watching films on the TV:

Not only the size but the shape of the image is changed, and, indeed, almost all the specifically visual elements are so distorted as to be all but completely destroyed. On television, a cattle drive or a cavalry charge or a chase- the climax of so many a big movie- loses the dimensions of space and distance that made it exciting, that sometimes made it great. And since the structural elements- the rhythm, the buildup, the suspense- are also partly destroyed by deletions and commercial breaks and the interruptions incidental to home viewing, it’s amazing that the bare bones of performance, dialogue, story, good directing, and (especially important for close-range viewing) good editing can still make an old movie more entertaining than almost anything new on television.

So, you see, it’s all about giving all that space and distance its due.

Sadly, we haven’t watched too much that’s been worthwhile. Tom Cruise’s The Last Samurai, the first film we waded through, was thick with inflated grandeur and hackneyed heroics. You are never, not once, given the opportunity to cast Cruise in anything but the most noble of 25 million dollars a picture lights. You see, his character was witness to the killing of American Indians, one of Custer’s soldiers and it is only through the way of the Samurai, a kind of surrogate for the noble Indians, that he can immerse himself in their own particular nativism and come out cleansed! And you, dear viewers, can behold The Cruise go all Samurai on your ass and witness The Cruise as the humble savior of The Way of the Samurai!

Then there’s the case of In America and Love Actually, both of which I really wanted to like but ended up feeling let down by. If forced to chose between the two, I’d say I enjoyed Love Actually more if only because the chances it was taking and the blunt mechanics of achieving them were far less ambitious and overburdened with the kind of pathos In America was steeped in. Neither film is exactly subtle, easily giving away to an undertow of distrust in the viewer’s ability to gleam emotional nuance from the story it’s telling. But Love Actually, given its frothy romantic veneer, makes no bones about its desire to provide you with lazy entertainment gussied up with decent actors handsomely paid. Emma Thompson is given roughly 12 minutes (in one of the flims 8 or 9 different subplots) to play a woman scorned. Liam Neeson, on the other hand, radiates an entire seasons worth of sitcom dad wholesomeness by assisting a cute nubbin (orphaned no less!) in the ways of love.

In America reminded me of Michael Mann's Ali, where Mann seemed to struggle with how to best capture and present Ali’s over-sized personae on the big screen. In the end, the film was overly reliant on its use of montage to compress time and capture evocative moments. It was overkill, the story never being given time to stretch out and the characters never given the opportunity to become something other then a collection of poses.

Whereas Love Actually nonchalantly drifts into its ending and surprises by simply abandoning some of its subplots or casually leaving others unresolved, In America’s ending offers us heaping spoonfuls of the unsparingly hokey. Cathy gets props for hopping on board the hopelessly inevitable and calling from way way out that Mateo (who is all of these things: noble, African, tortured artist, lover of cute nubbins, dispenser of wisdom, victim of Aids and wealthy- and I think that if he were any more of a gentle-dying-wise and giant black man his goodness would probably burst open and reveal a core of healing sunshine) would die just as the baby was born (or, show signs of life) and my props come from having called that he’d foot the families hospital bill. Kur Thunk!

C.

Not just that, but license to get blindingly drunk and pee on trees.

D.

In addition to Sekou Bembeya Diabate “diamond fingers,” I was pleased to recently witness his fine guttural prowess.

E.

Giving character to a new place is vital. Cathy and I finally had the opportunity to hang up most of our old family photos last weekend. We lined both walls of our upstairs hallway with pictures of people, without whom, we wouldn’t be around to be hanging up pictures on a Sunday afternoon. Stepping back, we eyed with satisfaction our gallery of bloodlines, their eyes looking back at us from something both familiar and forever removed. There’s one of Cathy’s grandmother in her ballerina outfit, dramatically posed in front of her house as her mom and sister look on with approving smiles from its windows. There’s another of my great-grandmother standing next to a small piano with her sister, coyly looking down. Another features Cathy's great-great grandparents grimly staring out at the camera. Just when did smiling for the camera become the norm? My favorite is the glamorous close-up shot of my grandma, the lightest trace of a smile on her lips and a fur elegantly wrapped around her neck. She couldn’t be more then 20, and looking at it, I find myself wishing I knew more about when and why and where it was taken.

But I Do Like Coke Better, Don’t I?

I first became aware and interested in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) about half a year ago while reading some of the various literature describing how it’s currently being used to (hopefully) unlock some of the secrets of those with learning disabilities. But according to the June 12-18th issue of the Economist, marketers are also using it to unlock the equally daunting secrets of our consuming habits. Here are some of the highlights:

Marketing people are no longer prepared to take your word for it that you favor one product over another. They want to scan your brain to see which one you really prefer. Using the tools of neuroscientists, such as electro-encephalogram (EEG) mapping and functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI), they are trying to learn more about the mental processes behind purchasing decisions. The resulting fusion of neuroscience and marketing is, inevitably, being called “neuromarketing.”

Lieberman Research Worldwide, a marketing firm based in Los Angeles, is collaborating with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) to enable movie studios to market-test film trailers. More controversially, the New York Times recently reported that a political consultancy, FKF Research, has been studying the effectiveness of campaign commercials using neuromarketing techniques.

Most people say they prefer the taste of Coke to Pepsi, but cannot say why. An unpublished study carried out last summer at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, found that most subjects preferred Pepsi in a blind tasting- fMRI scanning showed that drinking Pepsi lit up a region called the ventral putamen, which is one of the brain’s “reward centers”, far more brightly than Coke, which suggests that its stronger brand outweighs Pepsi’s more pleasant taste.

45 Second Delay

Of course, others have recorded in giant, empty cisterns. This was the sound of Columbus circa 1994.

More Vapid Loveliness

Like a grand piano placed in a giant, empty cistern. It’s not The Pearl or The Plateaux of Mirror but it sustains just the same. The drift of ghost chords, empty rooms, big skies, streams after midnight, something suspended way up in the middle of the air…

I'd Dissolve Into Molecules

I’ve long been a fan of Eric Rohmer’s films: Claire’s Knee, Chloe In the Afternoon, Pauline At the Beach, Summer and especially his Tales of the Four Seasons. His work is infused with something so mellow, breezy and special that by the end of the aforementioned films I was almost always surprised and dazzled by how much they had affected me. They have the languorous quality of a summer day spent busily doing nothing. His characters always seem to be off on one of those 6 week vacations Europeans excel in taking, making use of a friends cottage in some sleepy resort town and they're either looking for love or running from it. And they talk. A lot. They gather around café tables, sit on beach towels, stroll dappled paths and rhapsodize on their longings, weaknesses, fears, triumphs and the general nature of things. Sometimes they even listen in on other conversations. (In one of my favorite Rohmer scenes, one Cathy tires of me repeatedly returning to, from Summer, Marie Riviere, a frequent cast member in Rohmer’s films, sits on a bench near the seaside and listens to an elderly man explain to his friends that sometimes, just as the sun sinks below the horizon, if you’re lucky enough you’ll see a flash of radiant green. In fact, the French title of the film is Le Rayon Vert, or The Green Ray. I mention this scene because it exemplifies the eminence Rohmer gives to the everyday, not by inflating such seemingly mundane scenes with unnecessary dramatic tension, but by happening upon them, as if by chance, and folding them delicately into his story so that they becomes necessary to the whole.) What’s important to note is that the talk is always delightful, full of insights and sly humor and how it always creeps up on me, its charms, perhaps dull at the beginning, taking on an accumulative power that almost always radiates by the end. In Rohmer's films, language is a floodlight, lighting out the territories of doubt and confusion in search of the sweetest, most luminescent of resolutions.

Jonathan Rosenbaum recently made a compelling connection between Rohmer's work and that of the American director, Richard Linklater, one of my favorite directors from the states. In his current review of Linklater’s masterpiece, Before Sunset, Rosenbaum writes:

And where Liklater’s cinematic models in Before Sunrise were Hollywood love stories such as Vincente Minelli’s The Clock (1945), they’re now more French New Wave, Eric Rohmer in particular.

Before Sunset, like Rohmer’s films, has that special languorous quality, at times almost dreamlike in its evanescence. (There are many exquisite moments of evanescence in the film, but none more so for me then when Jesse and Celine wind their way up the staircase to her room, a scene that radiates with the piquant luminescence of the present, of soaking it all in as it rushes by, of memory and longing becoming, magically and finally, manifest.) The characters talk in a café, while walking down leaf-strewn streets, through dappled gardens, on a boat ride down the Seine, in a car…an apartment. And it's the talk that captivates us, ripe as it is with hope and expectation and an undertow of bitterness and confusion that slowly rises up and threatens to overwhelm Jesse and Celine. In the years that have passed since the characters first met (the equally great Before Sunrise), their hopes and giddy expectations- the swooning romanticism they once so freely exhibited and acted on, have recoiled into a present world where fences have been built around such seemingly rash exhibitions of emotion. Linklater and his actor's do such a wonderful, nuanced job with casually displaying and stripping away those layers, through gestures (when Celine's hand reaches over to caress Jesse's hair when he's not looking, for example, only to pull away in doubt) and a conversation that moves from the rudimentary motions of reacquainting to the nearly desperate desire to "only connect." Shallows give way to depths in a conversation that feels so honest and truthful that one feels the desire the toss away any caution one may have about superlatives and heap them on. It's in that web of dialogue that we come to understand each character's vulnerabilities, regrets and and desires. It's in all that banter that we become aware of the subtle incredulity both feel toward their younger selves and it’s through their conversation that we witness the giddy reappearance of their mutual seduction- how they joke about sex and brush up against one another as they walk along or sit on a bench. Language is a floodlight and they're always on the cusp (sometimes it even brims over) of drowning or gloriously rising above the what could have beens and maybes.

If the movie has a theme, it's time and more essentially, time passing. It's the whiplash bitterness Celeine feels in reading Jesse's thinly disguised fictional account of their day in Vienna, how if stirs up and forces an introspection into who she was then and what she’s become. It's the regret Jesse feels in going through the motions of his loveless marriage all the while wondering "What if?" Time has caught up to both of them, its undercurrent taking them 9 years away from each other and suddenly, not entirely unexpectedly, they're given another chance. In each of the films 80 minutes you're aware of the delicious now of it all. Hawke's Jesse, who professes to Celeine that he's written his book to find her, practically radiates, not satisfaction, but gratefulness- he’s overwhelmed that his hopes have become flesh. Celine, perhaps the more confused of the two, must confront and reclaim the woman she once was if she too is going to take the chance given them. The things Jesse tells her about his loveless marriage, the dreams he's had of her, haunt and engulf her unexpectedly. It’s almost too much for her to recognize that both have continued to feel so much and so similarly. It’s a gift to any viewer, such as myself, who fell in love with these two characters a decade ago. It gives us hopeless romantics fodder. The day they spent in Vienna wasn't an idle fling- it was something far more profound, just as we hoped. It's become their hope and their desire and though they've each gone their own direction, its presence has haunted them. On Jesse's wedding day, he thinks he sees Celine in the streets of New York City (and, indeed, in a delicious aside, we learn that it may very well have been) and in the lovely waltz Celine sings in her apartment, the memory of their day in Vienna has lingered. (Note: Oh, my- is not every second in her room enchanted? It's romantic filigree, every nuance a garland and all of it given root and earth through the presence of Nina Simone! Oh, I tell you, it’s too much, this lovliness.)

Do you know (or even have) songs in your collection that are so short that the silence that follows their end practically aches? Songs that you wish would just go on forever but last, say, just under a couple minutes (The Smiths’ Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want is probably my template for what I’m getting at) before ending? Part of what makes them so special is their brevity- how they linger and reverberate in the tainted silence that follows. At 80 minutes, Before Sunset ends before you want it to, but it’s really just in time (which, by the way, is the name of the Nina Simone song playing in Celine’s apartment). I can’t possibly give words to just how special the ending is. Without much reservation I can say it’s the finest, most exquisite ending to any film I’ve seen. Territories aglow, it fades with the sweetest, most luminescent of resolutions.

Joe’s 33rd Birthday Data CD

I think I may have already mentioned how much I am loving the idea of MP3 Data CD mixes, what with all the time you have the luxuriate in stretching out and exploring certain genres and/or artists in addition to not having to fret about trying to fit all the music you want to share on a 90 minute tape, or as has been the case for the last several years, an 80 minute audio CD. (Note to self: Just what exactly is the difference between an MP3 and a Data CD- we’d look into this right now, but we’re feeling far too lazy.)

Of course, it’s also a ton of fun to wallow into all that music and spend, as I did, half a dozen hours grabbing CD’s off the shelf and ripping off songs that you think a good friend should hear.

I didn’t dwell on any particular order or go about creating a flow for the mix as I hoped Joe would just add the music to the random play of his current iTunes rotation. Here’s what made the cut, though I’m not entirely sure this is even the order they appeared on Joe’s copy:

001. Me and Giuliani Down by the School Yard (A True Story): !!!
002: But For You: Matthew Dear
003: Stay Hungry: Talking Heads
004: Bellona: Junior Boys
005: Pacific Theme: Broken Social Scene
006: Keeping Up: Arthur Russell
007: Cross Bones Style: Cat Power
008: Gentlemen Take Polaroids: Japan
009: Stick Around: Steve Burns
010: ILoveAcid: Luke Vibert
011: Have You Seen My Baby? Randy Newman
012: The Laws Have Changed: The New Pornographers
013: Your Silent Face: New Order
014: Pass In Time: Beth Orton
015: When Mac Was Swimming: The Innocence Mission
016: You Know More Than I Know: John Cale
017: Hard Life: Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
018: I Wish I Was The Moon: Neko Case
019: Romulus: Sufjan Stevens
020: The Body Breaks: Devendra Banhart
021: Whispering Pines: The Band
022: Andorra: Colin Blunstone
023: Psalm: M.Ward
024: April The 14th (Part 1): Gillian Welch
025: Slow Down Old World: Willie Nelson
026: Who Knows Where The Time Goes: Fairport Convention
027: Trying To Find A Home: Tindersticks
028: A Heart Needs A Home: Richard & Linda Thompson
029: Laughing: David Crosby
030: Ms. Fat Booty: Mos Def
031: Just Biz: Diverse 1
032: Flava In Ya Ear (Remix): Craig Mack Featuring, Biggie, Rampage, LL Cool J & Busta Rhymes Hip Hop/Rap
033: Hana: Jun Ray Song Chang
034: "Sounds From The Village" Morgan Geist-Rollerskate Mix: Phil Ranelin:
035: Do Dekor: Jan Jelinek
036: Tanzglätte: Sense Club
037: Because: Ulf Lohmann
038: So Weit Wie Noch Nie: Jürgen Paape
039: If She Wants Me: Belle & Sebastian
040: The World Is Against You: The Sea And Cake
041: You Got To Be A Man: Frank Williams And The Rocketeers
042: The 15th: Wire
043: I Love N.Y.E.: Badly Drawn Boy
044: Slow Life: Super Furry Animals
045: Your Heart On Your Sleeve: Colleen
046: I Want You To Know: Masha Qrella
047: Tälkn: Starfænn Häkon
048: Believer: Susanna And The Magical Band
049: Strange Power: The Magnetic Fields
050: You Don't Care: Terry Callier
051: Le Grand Dome: Biosphere
052: Time To Find Me (Afx Fast Mix): Aphex Twin
053: Everything You Do Is A Balloon: Boards Of Canada
054: Moistly: LFO
055: Rest: Isolée
056; To Berlin With Love: Deadbeat
057: Sann Sann: Clatterbox
058: NYC: Interpol
059: Best Drop: Spiritual Vibes
060: Future Tiger: Susumu Yokota
061: Souvenir: Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
062: Alvin's Theme: Angelo Badalamenti
063: Untitled: Supersilent
064: Slice Of Cheese: Plaid
065: Detektiv Plok: Brothomstates
066: Cardiology: Recloose
067: Folk Song For Cello: Savath & Savalas
068: To Know You Is To Love You: Syreeta
069: On And On: Aril Brikha
070: Leave Me Now: Herbert
071: Gone Forever: Ulrich Schnauss
072: Kleiner Ausschnitt: Barbara Morgenstern
073; In A Ditch: Scud Mountain Boys
074: No-One In The World: Locust
075: Shisheido: Fennesz
076: Curse of Ka’zar: Lemon Jelly
077: Wandering: Brooks
078: Nebula: Urban Tribe
079: Voodoo Ray: A Guy Called Gerald
080: Let's Push Things Forward: The Streets
081: The Plum Blossom: Yusef Lateef
082: I'm Just A Prisoner (Of Your Good Lovin'): Candi Staton
083: You Said You Want Me: The Other People Place
084: John Cassavetes (2): Ekkehard Ehlers
085: One Day: RJD2
086: Gravity Rides Everything: Modest Mouse
087: Mine's Not A High Horse: The Shins
088: Before We Begin: Broadcast
089: Sonia: Robert Wyatt
090: Let Me Down Easy: Rare Pleasure
091: Bonny: Prefab Sprout
092: I Blow You Kisses: The Aluminum Group
093: M Traxx: Moodymann
094: The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker: Prince
095: United: Music Makers
096: Pass the Hatchet: Roger & The Gypsies
097: You and Your Sister: Chris Bell
098: You And I (Vocé E Eu): Jon Hendricks
099: When You Wake Up Feeling Old: Wilco
100: Endlessly: Mercury Rev
101: Starlight No 1: Mojave 3
102: Kein Trink Wasser: Orbital
103: Dexter: Ricardo Villalobos
104: Tamagnocchi: Mouse On Mars
105: Happiness: Superpitcher
106: Disk Three: CiM
107: Reiseslått: Nils Okland
108: Sequoia: Fridge
109: Someday We'll All Be Free: Donny Hathaway
110: Double Dutch: Malcolm Mclaren
111: Come And Play In The Milky Night: Stereolab
112: Hello Walls: Faron Young
113: Dang Me: Roger Miller
114: Wolverton Mountain: Claude King
115: Naked, If I Want To
116: You Don't Know My Name (Reggae Remix): Alicia Keys
117: (This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan (Superpitcher Remix): Dntel
118: At The Waters Edge: Roger Eno
119: Flight Over Africa: John Barry
120: In The Reeds: Brokeback
121: Soft Pink Missy: Soft Pink Truth
122: Magpie (Morgan Geist Remix): Morgan Geist & Darshan Jesrani
123: Peer Pressure: Jon Brion
124: Care Of Cell 44: Zombies
125: I Don't Know What I Can Save You From (Royksopp remix): Kings of Convenience
126: Adidas: Killer Mike
127: I'm A Cuckoo (Avalanches Remix): Belle & Sebastian
128: Christine: Siouxsie and the Banshees

Mike Kraus, I owe you a copy as well.

8 Years of What the World Needs Now

Much to write about (like, did you know I saw a squirrel attempt to leap through the wheel of a quckly moving bike only to bounce off in a terrific back flip?) but so little time at present. Tonight Cathy and I are celebrating 8 years.

Bush/Cheney Unveil New Campaign Slogan: “Go Fuck Yourself Kerry!”

From Today’s Washington Post:


Cheney said he "probably" used an obscenity in an argument Tuesday on the Senate floor with Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and added that he had no regrets. "I expressed myself rather forcefully, felt better after I had done it," Cheney told Neil Cavuto of Fox News. The vice president said those who heard the putdown agreed with him. "I think that a lot of my colleagues felt that what I had said badly needed to be said, that it was long overdue."

I adore this line of reasoning, I really do. It’s okay because everybody else said it was. And it felt good. Ahh, there’s such sweet satisfaction in the vulgarity expressed of necessity! Next time I hope he sucker punches Leahy.

And now let’s turn our attention to Mr. Go Fuck Yourself’s continued assertions of an al Qaeda-Iraq connection. The Administration has quietly confessed that there was no al Qaeda-Iraq connection in regards to 9/11 because to make any bigger deal of it, to have unequivocally confessed that they’ve been conflating things, would run the risk of bringing untimely truths to those 69 percent of the public (according to a recent Harris poll) who believe Saddam Hussein was supporting the terrorist organization al Qaeda, which attacked the United States on September 11, 2001.

The administration is now making a new and desperate attempt to show a “collaborative relationship” between the two. Not directly related to 9/11, of course, but a relationship to that great and all ecompassing amorphous: terror. Al Qaeda and Iraq were, no doubt, planning other (9/11) things, other (9/11) acts of terror. And should you choose to believe otherwise, even after Cheney mentions 9/11 in sentences both before and after making such assertions, then you've misunderstood him. Unfortunately, those pesky bastards over at the 9/11 Commission recently released a report, after reviewing all the information given to them, and were unable to find any evidence of a "collaborative relationship." So Mr. Go Fuck Yourself and his 'lil buddy had this to say:

This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and Al Qaeda. We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. For example, Iraqi intelligence officers met with bin Laden, the head of Al Qaeda, in the Sudan. There's numerous contacts between the two.

Ah, yes, "contacts." They’ve met. They had tea. But what about the actual levels of coooperation? Meeting is one thing. Meeting and then actually cooperating is yet another. But for Bush and Cheney, the validity of their pre-emptive war against Iraq (Iraq=the central front of the war against terror) now hinges on this "collaborative relationship." Saddam Hussein was, we're to believe, busy contacting al Qaeda and the two were planning horrific acts that would have eventually, had we not intervened with overwhelming force, led to acts of terror against us the likes of which not even 9/11 would compare.

Here’s Cheney on Fox from the other night:

CAVUTO: So, in your eyes, as well there is an unmistakable link between Al Qaeda and Iraq?
CHENEY: Absolutely.
CAVUTO: That seems to be — the vice president (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and John Kerry has been saying that has not been proven.
CHENEY: Well, they're wrong. And the fact is, if you go look at George Tenet's testimony before the Senate intel committee in the fall of '02, he talks about a relationship going back 10 years, to the early '90s.
There's a story on the front page of The New York Times this morning that talks about a link between Iraq and al Qaeda when Saddam Hussein was operating in the Sudan, which he did for many years before and moved to Afghanistan. We have the whole case of Zarqawi, who is today probably the biggest terrorist operating in Iraq, and the ongoing conflict there.
He originally was Jordanian. He was an associate, an al Qaeda associate. He was operating training camps in Afghanistan. He fled to Baghdad after we took Afghanistan.
Saddam Hussein knew he was in Baghdad because we arranged to have that information passed to — to a third country intelligence service. In Baghdad, he ran the poisons facility, largest poisons facility we've ever found that al Qaeda was operating up in northeastern Iraq. He had about two dozen associates with him in Baghdad from an outfit called Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which had merged with al Qaeda.

First, let’s take a look at that New York Times article Cheney mentions and draws from. He’s using the Times and its status as “the paper of record” to continue to bolster the Administration’s conflation/distortion campaign of an al-Qaeda-Iraq-9/11 collusion- hey, if the Times says this, its gotta be true! But the information source Cheney is really drawing from (and the Times article is reporting on) actually comes from a document obtained by the Iraqi National Congress, the organization led by neo-conservative favorite Ahmad Chalabi and "part of a trove that the group gathered after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government last year." It’s important to note here that much of the information passed on to us by the Iraqi National Congress has since been discredited and that the organization, with all its links to the Administration’s neo-conservative wing, has dramatically fallen from favor and was recently raided with the help of US forces. Cheney wants this information to seem like its a revelation, something the 9/11 commission, for whatever reason, wasn’t privy to. But the Times article goes on to say that the IRC document Cheney is drawing from seems to have already been reviewed by the 9/11 Commission and their conclusion, in regards to the al Qaeda-Iraqi meeting, was that no collaborative relationship resulted. Tom Shanker, the author of the Times article, writes:

The document provides evidence of communications between Mr. bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence, similar to that described in the Sept. 11 staff report released last week.
"Bin Laden also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime," the Sept. 11 commission report stated.
The Sudanese government, the commission report added, "arranged for contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda."
"A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan," it said, "finally meeting bin Laden in 1994. Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded."
The Sept. 11 commission statement said there were reports of further contacts with Iraqi intelligence in Afghanistan after Mr. bin Laden's departure from Sudan, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship," it added.
It is not clear whether the commission knew of this document. After its report was released, Mr. Cheney said he might have been privy to more information than the commission had; it is not known whether any further information has changed hands.


Cheney, in the Fox interview quoted above, then breathlessly moves on to Zarqawi, who now seems to be the Administration’s new number one evil guy. Hell, with over 100,000 troops operating in Iraq, there’s even a good chance we’re going to kill him soon, so it’s wonderfully expedient to inflate him into “probably the biggest terrorist operating in Iraq,” and make sure everybody knows it. But as Peter Bergan points out in an editorial in today’s Times:

The central question the administration has failed to answer is: Was there guidance or direction from the Al Qaeda leadership to Zarqawi?" Mr. Cressey, the former counterterrorism official, told me. "The evidence presented so far is there was not." At a briefing on June 17, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld seemed to agree with that assessment, saying of Mr. Zarqawi that "someone could legitimately say he's not Al Qaeda."

And what about that poisons factory Cheney mentions?

What Mr. Cheney described as the "poisons factory"Mr. Zarqawi ran was actually in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq, an area protected by American jets since 1991. Mr. Rumsfeld had more control than Saddam Hussein over that part of Iraq.

And when Zarqawi was in Baghdad?

As for the medical treatment Mr. Zarqawi supposedly received in Baghdad, for some time American officials thought it was a leg amputation. However, the footage of Mr. Zarqawi in the video of Mr. Berg's execution seems to show a man in possession of both limbs. And last week Mr. Zarqawi released an audiotape on a jihadist Web site containing a blistering critique of Saddam Hussein, whom he described as a "devil" who "killed the innocent."

If all else fails, you can always shroud your sources in secrecy.

Asked if he knows information that the 9/11 commission does not know, Cheney replied, "Probably."

And so it goes.

Seven of Nine Assimilates Ryan

Could there be other, more fantastical reasons why Ryan had to step down yesterday? By this I mean a certain cybernetic life-form originating in the Delta Quadrant. The man was previously and disastrously married to a Borg! He’s clearly been assimilated. Long live Obama!

More Polemical Slops, Please!

Cathy scored some free tickets for showing of Fahrenheit 9/11 last night. Working for Ritchie has its perks! The film has the big buzz right now, with all sorts of press being generated from a variety of angles. The best review of Moore’s documentary I’ve read over the past few days is Ray Pride’s. I also enjoyed, as I usually do, Jonathan Rosenbaum’s review. He writes:

Of course, objectivity in a documentary (or a film review) is not only impossible but undesirable. The merit of Fahrenheit 9/11 lies in its ability to enrage you- or conversely, to clarify some of the rage you already feel- without abandoning the capacity to entertain that has always been Moore’s trump card. As a popular entertainment, it provides the kind of emotional and conceptual counter-myth we sorely need to replace the Bush administration’s crumbling version of reality.

Right on, my man.

Does Moore undermine himself? Yes, a number of times. Do you take it with a grain of salt? Of course you do. The opening half hour and its inquiry into Bush family/House of Saud relations is a sprawling mess. There's truth there, no doubt, but the manipulative mechanisms of Moore's bias are never more transparent then here. Does his sense of righteousness grate? Yeah, but I figure that’s mostly ‘cause it’s such a reflection of my own. We/I, and it seems large swaths of the rest of the world, know we’re right. This administration is a creepy as fuck disaster. Does the film have more then a few poignant moments? Sure does. Do we get to see things our mainstream media have all but refused to show, write or talk about? Yes, and it’s heartbreaking. Is it a masterpiece? Not even close, Moore is still a sloppy documentary maker. Is the outrage valid? Damn straight. It’s the best piece of agitprop Moore has accomplished yet. Why not go see it and judge for yourself.

Turns Summers In My Mind

There has been an embarrassment of musical riches of late, not the least of which was my first MP3 CD, put together by my Akwaabian brother, Joe, and including an incredible batch of new and interesting musical biscuits, much of which happens to be crumbly and delicious. It includes the stunning track I’m currently listening to, Usman Achmad and Diswansoni’s Strambul Naturil from the compilation Indoesian Gutars (Music of Indonesia). Based on this track alone, Usman Achmad & Diswansoni are the Sea and Cake of Indonesia. More importantly for our dancing shoes, this song is practically begging for housification!

The mix also includes Johnny Dyani’s album, Afrika off of which I’m particularly enjoying the track, Grandmother’s Teaching Take 1. What immediately demands attention here is the marvelously assertive bass riff and earthenware groove that lay down a nice introductory groove for the first couple of minutes. Around the 2:10 mark things suddenly cool off. There’s a brief pause before the bass reasserts itself, even bolder and more opinioned this time. The groove really begins to sway now, with more swagger and discipline, but still loose. There are saxophones that come on like an angry Grandma Greek chorus. Steel drums keep popping up and doing nice Steve Reich like pirouettes and it’s eventually what piques my interest most. Around 10:39 everything else recedes except the steel drums and the bass. Perfect. The bass comes back ‘round again to its opening riff. The horns return for one more finger shaking and I figure they simply gotta be Grandma’s Teachings, whatever they be, if only due to the authority of their command and the discipline with which they oversee the closing proceedings. The whole thing ends with an obligatory cacophonous sigh.

In other news:

The new Harry Potter film is 10 times more fun then the first two combined. It’s the difference between Home Alone and Y Tu Mama Tambien, isn’t it? More grit in all the fairytale dust. More poetry, too. Chris Columbus took the first couple books and carefully, ploddingly replicated them on the big screen using the burger flipping franchise techniques he picked up crafting all those John Hughes scripts into proven systems of operation. There was so little that was wide-eyed in those films because every aspect, every detail was chipped and worn down into something numbingly safe and within the market tested boundaries of audiences expectations. Cuaron, however, dishes up both product and delight. He sidesteps plastic charm and revels in something far more mature and fulfilling. It goes down well with popcorn and Cherry Coke.


It is now Summer. We have our soundtrack.

Stately, Plump Buck Mulligan...

Happy Bloomsday! It was 100 years ago today that Joyce met Nora and Leopold Bloom took his everyman walk through the streets of Dublin.

Indulge Us

Could it be? Could the rain be on hiatus? Are my knees, encircled with an inscrutable pain my doctor can only raise her eyebrow at and suggest yet another doctor whose phone rings and rings and nobody ever picks up, be ready for the ride? I fear not but let’s see.

Should I take a moment to glow and gloat in the fact that we’ve come into 55 inches of surround sound television? That’s how fortuitous things have been of late. Once I was in a long tunnel that was, like most tunnels, dark and musty and seemingly without exit and suddenly I’m manic with contingencies despite dragging my heels around the outskirts of even more options. Like- do I want to return to the syllabus and if so, what in the world do I want to chew on? How long will this question be around? It’s in my back pocket- little notes that Cathy takes out before doing the laundry. It’s scattered and congealed and melted down and poured and weighed on scales and offers this then that. It’s on the burner then it’s off. My friends in the rarified world of grad school are remiss to offer definitives as to just what exactly they’ll be doing with their public policy degrees when they’re done. They’re just hungry to have a better grasp on how to mop up what the fuck up and his crew are currently sloshing about. They want to pick up the baton that somebody fumbled years ago, if ever. I kick that one around. I kick around teaching those kids whose struggles with their paralyzing bundles of hyper self-awareness and academic “deficiencies” reflect too brightly in my eyes. I mix in a lot of pragmatism ‘cause I don’t want to spend 2 years immersed in the amorphous. Nope. I Gotta have tangibles at this point. Something that travels well and ages gracefully. How long can I get away with a sigh and a “We’ll see?” If the window is currently open, I’m not entirely sure how or if I even want to go through it.

For now, however, there’s my bike and the lake trail and the sun. For now there is the interstice. I’ve unpacked most of the rocks and sand and I feel sweetness and light returning and I need more time to explore the rooms I had to seal off. Did you know (because I had forgotten) that there are all sorts of ways to recover and share the prospects? I’m always conjuring and hoping. I tell myself the most brilliant stories. I keep the grandeur of it all to myself but I want to share. I’m the most extroverted introvert I know.

But is it me or is just the caffeine? Is it me or is it just the Bill Evans Trio? Silly. It’s all of that and then some. My bike beckons. I hope to see you on the trail. Come on knees!

Jazz By Citrinella Light

Everything else may slow down, but the octogenarian fingers on display last night at Ravinia were in fine form.

Dave Brubeck is 83 and Marian McPartland (to whom the adjective saucy can be applied liberally) is 86 but when they played they cast off the mortal coil. Ramsey Lewis was the youthful upstart of the evening at 69. After the sun had set and the wine filled my glass the third or fourth time, I happily reclined in my collapsible chair and savored the buzz. The weathermen had been overzealous in their predictions for evening thunderstorms as not a cloud was in the sky to obscure the dusting of stars introduced throughout the evening.

Your Silent Face

One of my all-time favorite songs, New Order’s sublimely evocitive Your Silent Face still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up each time I hear it. Hundreds of butterflies beat their wings against my stomach and the world seems to slow down. It’s terribly dramatic and coolly elegant, this song, and it along with so much of New Order’s catalog has had a huge and entirely positive influence on me.

Recently I have been absolutely overwhelmed by their 1991 (or is it 2001?) Radio One version of the song. It’s a couple things. First there’s the big new sub-bass that comes in at 1:03 and ads a gloriously funky propulsion to the track. More importantly is what happens at 4:04, when Morris’s drums suddenly crash the song and OH MY GOD! Sumner and Hook weave their garlands and for two minutes I am completely lost in June, July and August’s past and present and to come. I feel the blood coursing through my veins and the wind through my hair and the drama of it all makes me ache and swoon and it’s almost bursting with too muchness.

I want to cry.

More Sugar With Your Ending?

Have you seen Nancy Meyers’s Somethings Gotta Give? It’s a decent enough little romantic film, certainly an improvement over her last one, What Women Want, where Mel Gibson got to prance around in stockings and listen to women’s thoughts before he moved on to his good works and made his snuf film for the faithful.

What was nice about the film was seeing Diane Keaton acting her ass off. She’s superbly multifarious. She’s loopy, sexy, wary, bitter, hopeful, sad, haunted- there’s even a scene where she encompasses all of this in a matter of seconds and it practically knocks the wind out of you. And she looks fantastic. She and Nicholson spar with loose aplomb and they’re amusing as hell to watch together. And not surprisingly, they take even the daftest of Meyers dialogue, polish it, and offer something that sparkles. It’s the gift of supremely talented actors- the intuitive alchemy of turning shit into gold.

But what I would have given had the movie ended with Nicholson’s Harry on the Pont-Neuf just after his run in with Keaton and her younger man (a muted Keanu Reeves) saying, “Look who gets to be the girl.” Oh, if the only the screen had faded out and that tidal wave of high fructose hadn’t arrived so perfectly on cue. Oh, well.

Lost In Sudan

This is my new wife for President Bush. May God grant him many fertile women with firm bodies and an election victory without problems in Florida.

-As quoted in a recent Economist by a young warrior (only his first name, Thuapon, is given) in southern Sudan, where George Bush is seen, according to The Economist, as the primary architect of peace between the battling factions of the north and the south . I’m humbled by how little I know about Sudan, Africa’s largest country. Even more distressing is what little I do now know about the country has come by way of the current humanitarian crisis (see Samantha Powers’ excellent New York Times op-ed piece here) currently ravaging the country, where over a million black Africans have been displaced or trapped (without basic resources) and over 30,000 slaughtered in the region of Dafar. It’s pretty complex and, as the Economist article points out, little understood given the countries inaccessibility and intense poverty. And the current slaughter in Sudan is one of “two separate but related civil wars” pitting Arabs against Christians (hence America’s interest) and pagans in one war and Muslim against Muslim in the other.

But the real question is this: What does it mean now that I am informed with this information? The simple answer, though one that leaves me feeling somewhat helpless, is to write my representatives and echo some of the things Powers offers in her piece. Seems like as good as place as any to start.

May God grant George Bush an election landslide defeat the likes of which this country has never seen. May CNN gain access to that list of 47,000 felons who are to be purged from voter roles in Florida, too.

Lyrics Like Crickets and Elis Regina

So Dennis and I brainstormed over a bottle of some wine Cathy picked up from Sams while out on her “12 Bottles Under $10 Tour.” Equally revelatory,Dennis decided that slow motion could potentially be used to depict Taylor smiling. I had asked him something like, “If you were going to make a video essay about your life and wanted it to be like 45 minutes or so and thought that using slow motion a couple times during that time had the potential to really be, well, you know, moving…what scene would you choose?” Taylor smiling, he had responded.

The wine, we both decided, was excellent.

I thank Dennis’s patient ears for listening to so much tonight. Fresh ears for my corn and fountains of crazy-ass ideas are welcome. We occasionally broke out into song this evening.

My album is tentatively titled Cool It On the Boom Booms. There must be singing in abundance and we won't exactly be rejoicing except on the rarest of occasions. Or maybe not. A lyric tonight involved the woes of George Tenet, but we both walked away feeling feeling like it was probably too creepy. There is no rejoicing in the woes of George Tenet.

Lyrics have yet to make sense. I’d rather it the other way, though. I’d like to come into some finely tuned lyrics that evoke thunderstorms and the cool wet feel of a Grape Shasta just pulled from a Styrofoam cooler after a Cub Scout softball game. I want lyrics that conjure up waking up to the smell of freshly cut grass from some weekday July afternoon from long ago when the day awaiting me involved, for the most part, the building of violent spaceships out of oversized Tinker Toys, numerous and tremendously satisfying games of Uno and exploratory sleepovers where me and a buddy challenged the earth’s early morning hours hopped up on candy bar nougat and 2 liters of Cola that we attempted to drink in their entireties.

Cathy is in Boston. We give thanks to Kevin for his tremendous efforts over the years in the often times late night nether zones of family airport retrieval.

Tomorrow I clean. There are boxes to be broken down and horribly neglected miscellaneous crap to be sorted, filed and pushed to the side. For one, I'll be cleaning out the muffin tins Cathy used to bake her astounding feats of zucchiniliciousness.

That being said, we bid you goodnight.

Bike

Me and my trusty old bike are so incredibly happy of late to be spending so many of our mornings, afternoons and evenings gliding along the lakefront path. We’re happy to share it with mom’s (or are they Gold Coast nannies?) and their strollers, walkers, joggers (some of their expressions are priceless!), rollerbladers, police cars, tourists (in those damn bike “cars” they rent from somewhere at Navy Pier, where four people can peddle at once and always get me to imagining that they must be fun for roughly 10 minutes or so before over 75% of the renters think, “Gee, this isn’t as fun as I imagined it would be”), vendors, lollygaggers, sunbathers, etc. Cathy’s heard it’s the most used bike path in the US. I doubt Burnhamwas thinking, “Bike paths, yes, we must have bike paths!” but sir, I bless your crazy ass audacity and grand success!

As I made my exit from the path this afternoon (there’s a pedestrian exit just past Foster ) a man was out walking his buddy, a fat ‘ol wiener dog that quivered out of some path lining underbrush- and I’ll tell you what, it was a Gary Larson-like scene of joyous proportions! We even share the lake front path with fat ‘ol wiener dogs.

It’s my knees that suck. Grrrr, knees. Where exactly did these bad knees come from? I thought this only happened to football players, you know? What did my last doctor call it? Sunburn of the knee? Of course there was a more formal name for it and whatever that was- it’s hampering my style! How am I ever going to be able to cut loose when that testosterone really hits and pace myself with all those Lance Armstrong bike short ‘n shirt wearin’ wannabees?

And look, I’ve positively got to keep riding my bike. It’s so great. This morning a nerdy woman (and I mean that in the most endearing and non-condescending of ways) passed by me with a smile and a hearty “Good morning!” Oh, if you could have seen how her legs were pumping! Like an extra in one of those old Keystone Cop shorts, moving at 16 frames per second. “Good morning!,” I called back. Thank you for being so kind and weird!

It’s the heady fusion of movement, sweat and those magical endorphins that cause my senses to burn like flares. It’s the Annie Dillard effect- where you’re overwhelmed by the poetic grandeur of minutia. The waddle of that wiener dog.

In other news, why didn’t anybody tell me just how good Modest Mouse could be? Kinda reminds me at times of XTC, the Pixies, Mercury Rev and Wilco run through the blender and nicely cracked in all the right places. Not bad at all.

There Will Come Soft Rains

Or really angry ones! The past couple weeks of weather here in Chicago have been ferocious reminders of just how atmospherically volatile this time of year can be in the Midwest. Numerous tornado touchdowns, wind gusts of over 50 mph, hail (on Friday, chiclet-sized tidbits of hail battered my work window). The kind of volatile where one day it’s 55 with a cold north-eastern wind blowing across Lake Michigan and the next day it’s 85 and humid. I forgot about that humidity and its murkiness. And thunderstorms. We experienced one, maybe two a year in the Bay area and the next day everybody was talking about it, excitedly asking, "Hear that thunder last night?" These past two weeks have been all about thunder and lightning, the ensuing deluge that we’ve all agreed to call “buckets of rain,” the fallen tree limbs and twigs- the violent quickness of it all. We’ve enjoyed all of this tempestuousness and more over these past couple of weeks.

Weather aside, I plan on launching my Summer video project sometime today. Still not entirely sure what the end result is going to be, but I’m leaning toward making some kind of video essay. I’m hoping to explore a few things- community, home, nostalgia and, most importantly, Summer. All in roughly 30 to 45 minutes. It's all terribly hazy, but I'm excited nevertheless. Mostly I’m just looking for a way to have fun with a video camera and iMovie. Back in high school and early college we created a fairly hefty collection of goofy video skits. Our running joke was that someday we’d edit these together into something cleaner, less sprawling and more thematic then the unwieldy collage we then had. But we never did seeing as for a long time the only editing tools we had to work with would have been a couple VHS players. But now over a decade has passed and suddenly there’s this easy to use technology on our computer and it can make all these half-assed ideas I’ve harbored into something tangible. I like the idea of incorporating other media into this project too- clips of those goofy high school skits, for example, and old family super 8 footage, scanned photographs, interviews with family and friends. I don’t know, it’s pretty wide open right now and I’m a little giddy with the possibility. The trick with this sort of thing is to make sure and keep the reigns pulled tight so as to only do what I can realistically hope to accomplish. A big step in the right direction is to begin using the tripod we own to steady most of the shots.

Massachusetts Wedding Bells On My Birthday

It’s a great day. Not because it’s my birthday, though that’s undoubtedly cause for greatness (33 years old and all!) but because of what is taking place in Massachusetts today. There's no overstatement in saying that it's simply barbaric that it took this country until now (and it's still only a single state) to welcome the gay community into what is fundamentally an egalitarian institution. I was literally moved to tears this afternoon as I listened to couples exchanging their vows on NPR. It's about time.

When Cathy and I married a few years back, we made it abundantly clear just how much we were upset by the fact that we were entering into a club, one endowed with over 1200 special rights, that was egregiously exclusive, barring as it did an entire population of stable, loving people access to the instituion because of cruel and misguided prejudices.

There is obviously a long way to go and anti-gay marriage groups are highly organized, well funded and incredibly threatened by these events. They're working each day to smear the gay community as harbingers of the destruction of the family (hell, they can't bring children into the world, and surely even those children they are raising are worse off then children raised by all those hetero couples and their 50% divorce rates, right?)and man on dog couplings. They're mobilizing to pass amendments banning gay marriage in those states that haven't already passed such legislation and George Bush is tossing them red meat by calling for ammending the Constituion to ban it across the nation. Take that, fags! ("Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.")But according to a New York Times article in yesterday's paper, attempts to organize congregations against the threat of gay marriage has been met, for the most part, with indifference. Folks, it seems, are more concerned about finding or keeping their jobs, raising their kids, the increasingly grim situation in Iraq and simply putting food on the table instead of imagining the Sodom and Gomorrah of gay marriage. I hope this inertia only continues to build up steam!

In any case, let the wedding bells ring! Welcome to the club! There's plenty of room for all.

Almost Home

I’m looking forward to having more time to write and post very soon. As it stands, I’ve begun a new (old) job at Northwestern, moved into a new place and been busy with all the extra-curricular consuming activities being a new homeowner obligates one to.

We’re incredibly happy with where we are. Yesterday Cathy and I walked up to Clark Street to marvel at Taste of Heaven’s new and dangerously close location. We ended up at Charlie’s Ale House, deliriously happy to be enjoying a couple Bells Amber’s next to open windows and warm, soft breezes.

It’s good to be back.

The moving truck comes tomorrow!

John Adams in the 21st Century

I can’t recommend David McCullough’s John Adams enough. Really a wonderful vindication of popular sentiment what with 1.6 millions copies of it being sold in hardback. (This according to an article I recently read in The Wall Street Journal.) This bodes well, even if such exemplary reading on such a wide scale is an aberration. It’s a rare merging of fiercely intelligent writing that combines an understanding of its subjects particular place in the giddy history of the United States along with ample illustrations of the subjects particularities (of all the founding fathers, Adams seems the most human), familiar attachments (Abigail Adams, it should be noted, is the subtitle to any biography on John Adams, and McCullough brings her vividly to life) and friendships.

McCullough is near pitch-perfect throughout, but he really soars in the last 100 or so pages, where he details Adams’s long life after his Presidency, when he lived into his 90’s, dying on the same day as one of his closest friends, Thomas Jefferson- July 4, 1826, exactly 50 years after the founding of the country they both played such central roles in.

Thump the Box

Unless somebody else has been flying way under my radar, the best and most interesting producer of house music over the last 5 or so years has been Matthew Herbert, whose been releasing a steady stream of some of most sensually constructed house music I’ve ever heard. He’s a master of texture, with an understanding of house music drama that rivals any of the so-called giants of house. I can’t think of anybody working today who uses samples with more creativity and success. He builds most of his rhythms out of borrowed or personally made field recordings. A bass drum might be the thumping of a large delivery box or the hood of his father’s old MG Midget, while the whirr of assorted kitchen cutlery acts in place of cymbals.

His partner Dani Siciliano has sung on every release since 1998’s Around the House. I find her voice tremendously appealing, relaxed and smoky as any torch singer. Herbert often deftly rearranges snippets of her vocals, taking everything from Siciliano inhaling to the popping and wooshing sounds of a melodic fragment she’s previously sung. Atop all that delivery box thumping and kitchen cutlery whirring there’s usually a lovely weave of Siciliano’s voice accompanying it. She also plays a mean clarinet.

Swamp the Glurp: Villalobos’s Boggy Sound

The Villalobos sound is swampy. His rhythms are wet with detritus- they glurp and build and constantly shift. There are always surprises, too. Grooves appear out of the mist and quiver with intensity- but it’s always surprisingly loose and smooth like David Byrne in that oversized suit. Rhythms are continuously being submerged into something murky. Bubbles of swamp gas constantly ooze up and pop into the mix.

It’s also crisp. The snare in Easy Lee is all snap and treble riding over a gently smudged bass drum. Beats that begin without edges suddenly come into spiky focus. At the 2:15 mark some watery percussion arrives and firmly establishes a groove. There are
always those surprises- splashes of rhythm, smudges of groove that seem to teeter between the randomized and the deliberate. Seemingly random sounds sputter, spit up and unobtrusively clang and twang. At times it sounds as though Villalobos actually sampled or carefully cut and pasted fragments of percussive elements created by using some brand of randomizing software and deliberately scattered them throughout the master mix.

There are subtle moments of dub.

His debut, Alcachofa, is by no means instantaneously gratifying. It reminds me of the first time I heard LFO’s Frequencies and was, at first, hugely disappointed that the remainder of the album wasn’t as immediately catchy as its title song, a huge club hit jacked up on the king of all bleep grooves and a devastating sub-bass. It’s what known as “a grower.” Despite those initial negative reactions you keep finding yourself drawn back to the album for another listen, another assessment. Eventually it becomes a classic.

Lo-Fi Wistfullness

One of my favorite batches of music this year is Jon Brion’s score for Michel Gondry’s lovely Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Like suspended fragments of ache- and best of all is a reoccurring theme of plucked acoustic guitars swathed in lo-fi vinyl hiss and pop (capitalizing on the seemingly inherent nostalgia and authenticity of vinyl culture and outdated media) and a soulful piano fragment that wistfully surges up into an anthem for the film’s lovers. (I’m thinking in particular of one of the films last scenes, where Joel and Clem briefly walk down the beach, just prior to entering the beach house- one of the most romantic, touching and triumphant to hit the mainstream screens in some time.) Brion’s score is the powerful undercurrent to Gondry’s gracefully phantasmal montage. The whole thing packs quite a wallop.

Wait, Where Was I Again?

When GPS implants become available I’d like to be first in line. I say this after making a series of disastrous directional miscalculations the other evening when I walked to the Music Box for a showing of Jacques Demy’s The Umbrella’s of Cherbourg. Cathy and I had made plans to meet in front of the Music Box on Southport at 6:15, but due to my highly erratic path I didn’t arrive until about 6:50.

Here is what’s great about Umbrellas:

The colors
The soundtrack
Its sly moments of humor
Catherine Deneuve's lovely embodiment of the swooning histrionics of first love
Every line is sung!
Sugar and Spice, Boy Meets Girl mixed with The Algerian war, premarital sex and ensuing child out of wedlock, an ambiguous marriage to a wealthy jeweler, a dying aunt and an ending that crushes the absolutes of the aforementioned first love in the gentlest snow to ever fall on an Esso station in France.

Here Comes A Tenor

Cathy and I stood around a piano a few weeks ago and sang Down to the River and Pray, the old spiritual made famous from the Oh, Brother Where Art Thou? Soundtrack. They’re called The Singing Bullfrogs and their a nice group of mostly 40 and 50 and 60-somethings who get together a couple times a month and sing songs. For the fun of it! There are sopranos, altos and a highly unified posse of basses. They lacked only tenors, those brave and often male adventurers undeterred by the oftentimes fearfully feminized heights they’re so frequently asked to scale.

“I guess I can sing tenor,” I replied to the woman who was taking us through our parts and had asked, “Are there any tenors in the room?” I was the only one.

Nobody likes to be the single tenor in a room of strangers. Cathy, my heroic wife, bravely stepped forward and announced, “I can sing tenor!” So did her former boss. And then so did the dude playing the piano! We clustered together, a swelling of tenors, suddenly 4 strong and ready to play our role in the song’s harmony.

At the end of the night Cathy’s former boss said, “Let’s sing something we’ve already learned so those who here for the first time can hear.” It was a song that seemed vaguely, naggingly familiar, 3 or 4 overlapping parts singing, “Yes we do marvelous….marvelous….we do marvelous things.” Something along those lines. It began in a ramshackle sort of way, with folks casually sipping from their drinks or grabbing some cheese and crackers from the table as they nonchalantly sung their parts before it suddenly began to congeal and soar. For a couple minutes it all came brilliantly and irresistibly together. Everything felt briefly and giddily transformed.

“Oh,” I thought, “that was really great.”

Oh, But I Could Never Live Somewhere That Didn’t Have A Change
of Seasons

Never really gave much thought to the weather when we were living in Berkeley other then the intermittent outburst occasioned by its magnificence. Friends of our living in Los Angeles wryly described the weather down there as being “relentlessly pleasant,” a description that could just as easily be applied to Berkeley and the Bay Area in general. There was a heartening consistency to the weather there, a contenting guarantee of wind, rain, sun, fog, warmth and cold in near perfect degrees of moderation.

Just the other night Cathy and I were having dinner with some old friends, one of whom remarked that she didn’t care for such meteorological consistency, that she rather enjoyed the change of the seasons, especially now, as the long Midwestern winter slowly gave itself up to the hard fought blooms of crocus’s and daffodils. And I’ve gotta admit, I share those sentiments as well, but not unequivocally. After living in Berkeley and enjoying its winters for 3 years, I came to view the much-heralded “But I love the change of the seasons” mantra as bunk. Because while the sight of those first crocus’s popping their psychedelically purple little heads up from wooly gardens on the cusp of bursting back onto the scene is always worthy of my attention and applause, it’s also not worth wading through nearly 6 months of winter just to magnify the intensity of their beauty.

I like the romance of the “I love the change of seasons,” camp. I don’t begrudge the sentiment either- it’s a hard fought one, made up of tolerance, grit and tough love. For 6 months of every year Chicago is a near tundra. Most of the Midwest is like this. A settlement of grey, the boney brittle of trees, windy malice and the continual irony of freshly fallen snow inevitably debased into the sleaziest of gingerbread slush’s. And the cold! The tripartite comedic attack of January through March topped off with the punch-line of April. Cold hands, the sting in the cheeks, the unrelenting pierce of the wind. I’ll muster whatever it takes to tolerate it, but I don’t know that I’m ever going to appreciate it with the same kind of ardor and skill that others manage.

Tom Skilling commands and disperses daily regiments of Chicago based meteorological gossip from the back page of the Chicago Tribune’s Metro section. Over the last month he’s been reminding readers that what we’re really seeing is a great battle for supremacy. Skilling is my daily porthole into the great and enduring mythological drama of the weather. With the entire back page of the Metro section as his canvas, Skilling has, with great assurance and zest, demonstrated the tactics of those sworn enemies, the Canadian Arctic and Gulf Stream winds. It’s a fight the Arctic can’t win (for now), but the fierceness of its resistance makes a mockery out of a seemingly disproportionate percentage of our Aprils.

April in the Midwest is a risk. Sometimes it’s the perfect balm, while in others it acts as winter’s cruel addendum. It’s here in April that you’ll sometimes find winter lingering in Skilling’s statistical announcements of “15 to 20 degrees below the average for this time of year!” and “unseasonably cold!” Each morning I lean forward over a spoonful of my current favorite cereal, Barbara’s Peanut Butter Puffins, and brace myself for what might be revealed, what stratagems uncovered.

The other day, walking through the Loop around 2:00 p.m., a bank thermometer read 34 degrees Fahrenheit and I felt winter’s stubbornness for the first time in 3 years and thought, “Oh, this is an unfortunate familiar!” It was, as I heard a woman remark to her husband on the Metra platform out in Naperville earlier in the day, “more like early March weather then early April weather.” But my 29 years of Midwestern winters are now factored into 3 years of Berkeley’s, and while I find that the condidtions we’re currently experiencing in Chicago to be ultimately tolerable (and offset by the many truly wonderful things this city has to offer) I don’t know if I can fully adhere to the claim of it all being worth it due solely to the idea that somehow it offers more by way of variety via its particular changes of season then another place might. There are, for example, just as many things “happening” in Berkeley by way of seasonal change then there are in Chicago. I mean, isn’t the argument that more diversity between the seasons offers more by way of natural beauty (and that’s what we’re really getting down to, isn’t it- how our environments effect our sense of well-being?) really just one of extremes? If you find more by way of natural splendor through having weathered the extremes of highs over a hundred and lows in the negatives, more power to you. If you’re afraid that you’ll grow to take relentlessly pleasant days for granted, or not fully appreciate the majesty of Spring and Summer and Fall without the knowledge that their sweet-spots will be fleeting, then go for it! I don’t buy it anymore. I didn’t need those extremes or fleeting beauty to feel fully compelled and overjoyed when I experience Magnolias blooming in January, the teeming green glow of rolling hills in March, plucking tomatoes from the garden until December or hiking Mt. Tam in a t-shirt on a February afternoon. What’s not to appreciate about that? What’s to be taken for granted? I’d argue that there’s just as much variety and splendor in the change of seasons in Berkeley, coupled with the benefit that it and the surrounding area are far more geographically diverse. All that consistency in the weather is necessary to fully appreciate it. Cathy and I managed to take a great many hikes, year-round, through some of the most idyllic landscapes (and what constitutes an “idyllic landscape” is quite an interesting can of worms) we’d ever experienced.

There are no nagging regrets about returning here to Chicago except for having left Berkeley’s weather behind.

When Glass Meets Shoe

I’ve had a great track record with my glasses. Since I first owned a pair, going back 8 years now, I’ve never lost or broken any of them. Until today.

Of course I was surprised to find them under my shoe. Don’t ask how they got there. Is there any moment more heartbreaking then when you first register that- yes, uh-huh, no doubt about it- that soft squish and snap was indeed your glasses giving way to the pressure of your size 12 shoe.

And the shock wasn’t, “Oh, shit, I just destroyed my glasses!” Instead the shock was, “Oh, that really didn’t have to happen!” And yet.

But look. It was time for a new pair anyway. I gathered up the ruins, mended them as best I could, and wondered about how I’d frame my eyes anew.

Abigail's Serious Can of Whip-Ass

According to Joe Ellis, not many people tried to bite Thomas Jefferson’s head off. But Abigail Adams sure as hell tried, swallowing it whole before spitting it out. See, when Adams and Jefferson were running against each other for president, (this is, after Washington decided two terms was enough and any more ran the risk of appearing as monarchial) Jefferson had commissioned the scandalmonger James Callender to, in Ellis’s words, “write libelous attacks on Adams.” While they didn’t help Jefferson to win the presidency they did help to precipitate the fouling of his friendship with Abigail and John. (Interestingly enough, Callender was later to discover and first report on Jefferson’s sexual liaisons with Sally Hemmings.)

In any case, juicy snippets of Abigail’s smack upside Jefferson’s head are copiously quoted from in Ellis’s crisp and rewarding book, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. Definitely recommended for those looking for something more substantial then the trivializing myths that make up the bulk (at least my own) of our understanding of these folks.

When David McCullough’s biography of Adams, John Adams, first came out, much was made of the fact that Adams had long been lost to us, his own presidency squished between those of Washington and Jefferson. In fact, poor Adams knew he was doomed to suffer the “dramatic distortions” of Washington’s chopping of the cherry tree and Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Ellis writes:

Adams realized that the act of transforming the American Revolution into history placed a premium on selecting events and heroes hat fit neatly into a dramatic formula, thereby distorting the more tangled and incoherent experience that participants actually making the history felt at the time.

I don’t know enough about current historical trends, but it would seem that there is a popular (both Ellis and McCullough’s books won Pulitzers) Adams rehabilitation afoot. Ellis does a remarkable job in persuading the reader of Adam’s historical vivaciousness. It accomplished what I want out of any good history- a desire to know more. I’ve only just begun McCullough’s bio, but I’ve enjoyed the first 100 pages quite a bit.

Notes From the Underground

I’ve spent more time in this basement then anybody else! And it’s not a bad basement by any means- not the dank root cellar variety smelling of something musty and vaguely ominous- no, not that at all. This particular basement is new, completely done up with a pool table, large screen television, fully stocked bar, a jukebox, our G5, a bathroom w/shower and adjoining bedroom with a queen size bed. Oh, and there’s an exercise room down here, too. I just got off the treadmill where I was dancing (you should see me shake it!) and walking at the same time. I am this basements overseer. Should a pillow stray from off the couch, I’ll pick it up and refold the afghans while I’m at it.

Down here I’m mourning the losses of Spalding Gray (he seemed too avuncular to ever even contemplate suicide) and Spain, reading Joseph J. Ellis’s eloquently succinct Founding Brothers, thinking about country music and spending way too much time on LimeWire hoping to score Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer B-Side, Don’t Break This Rhythm. There are occasional trips upstairs to eat oranges.

It’s cold down here because despite the many amenities there’s only one heating duct in the large room where I spend most of my waking hours. That is, when I’m not in the city searching through over priced properties for hints of home or browsing the local Barnes and Noble while narcissistically admiring my fancy for both graphic novels and the complete short fiction works of Nabokov.

What I want is a job. I want a copy of Iron and Wine’s forthcoming sophomore release Our Endless Numbered Days, for gays to have the right to marry, for George Bush to take a flying leap, to talk to my Dad again about old movies and pragmatism, to sing vapid lyrics with complete conviction, to eat turkey-loaf by candlelight with my wife, to go back in a time machine and see Marvin Gaye in concert, to read faster and more and retain multitudes and lastly, to remove my presence from this basement. We’ve had enough each other.

So it goes.

Belated Best Of’s: 2003

Best Films (in no particular order, with a few from 2002 that I missed at the theater)

-The 25th Hour: Spike Lee
-Mostly Martha: Sandra Nettelbeck
-The Son: Jean Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne
-The Russian Ark: Alexander Sokurov
-Divine Intervention: Elia Soleimon
-Lilya 4-Ever: Lukas Moodyson
-Bend It Like Beckam: Gurinder Chadha
-The Good Thief: Neil Jordan
-8 Women: Francois Ozon
-Femme Fatal: Brian De Palma
-Bloody Sunday: Paul Greengrass
-Raising Victor Vargas: Peter Sollett
-Master and Commander: Peter Weir
-Lost In Translation: Sofia Coppola
-The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: Peter Jackson

Best Old Films (i.e., films I saw for the first time in 2003 and were released before 2002)

-Ordet: Carl Theodore Dryer (1955)
-Sweet Smell of Success: Alexader Machendrick (1957)
-The Piano Teacher: Michael Haneke (2001)
-Les Bonnes Femmes: Claude Chabrol (1960)
-Les Cousins: Claude Chabrol (1959)
-Close Up: Abbas Kiarostami (1990)
-Where Is the Friends House: Abbas Kiarostami (1987)
-Bob Le Flambeur: Jean-Pierre Melville (1955)
-Cleo From 5 to 7: Agnes Varda (1962
-Vagabond: Agnes Varda (1985)
-The Gleaners and I: Agnes Varda (2001)
-Hearts and Minds: Stephen Whittaker (1974)
-L’Aventura: Michelangelo Antonioni (1960)
-The Golden Coach: Jean Renoir (1952)
-Funny Games: Michael Haneke (1997)
-The Puppetmaster: Hou Hsiao-Hsien (1993)
-Les Enfantes Du Paradis: Marcel Carne (1945)
-Claire’s Knee: Eric Rohmer (1970)
-Meet Me In St. Louis: Vincente Minelli (1944)
-The Singing Detective: Dennis Potter/John Amiel (1986)

Best Books (any year, because books take time and the really good ones are rare)

-Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley: Peter Guralnick
-Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World: Ruy Castro
-Atonement: A Novel: Ian McEwan
-Angle of Repose: Wallace Stegner
-American Tabloid: James Elroy
-Ghost Light: Frank Rich
-Theodore Rex: Edmund Morris

Best Music to come…

The Basement Tapes Presents: Prom '89!

Back in May of 1989 (May 10th, as a matter of fact) we made a mix tape (Maxell UR90) to be played at our senior prom whenever the hire-a-band took a break. I remember that I left before we started the second side so I could hurry on home to watch an episode of the bloated mini-series War and Remembrance (a sequel to Winds of War). I am, however, pleased to see the inclusion of Big Audio Dynamite’s Just Play Music! on the second side. Of course, we only got through 7 or 8 of the songs on side I. I remember all of them going over quite well, especially Melt With You, which cleared the chairs. I remember Greg Dostal (with whom, I recall, I shared the bond of the Jan Michael Vincent/Earnest Borgnine vehicle, Airwolf ) being particularly peevish about Blue Monday ’88: “You can’t dance to this,” he yelled at me as we all jumped about in our ridiculous tuxes and dresses.

Here’s the mix:

Prom Weekend: DANCE!

Side I:

Melt With You: Modern English
Rock The Casbah: The Clash
Blue Monday ’88: New Order
Can’t Hardly Wait: The Replacements
Linus and Lucy: Vince Guaraldi
Burning Down The House: Talking Heads
Face The Face: Pete Townshend
Charlie Dance: James
Whisper To A Scream: Icicle Works
Mr. Moto: Agent Orange
Boys Don’t Cry: The Cure
Tainted Love: Soft Cell
Bike: Love And Rockets

Side II:

Let’s Dance: David Bowie
Sultans Of Swing: Dire Straits
Could You Be Loved: Bob Marley
Ain’t Too Proud To Beg: The Temptations
Ask: The Smiths
Love Will Tear Us Apart: Joy Division
Dreamworld: Midnight Oil
Shock The Monkey: Peter Gabriel
Black Light Trap: Shriekback
Just Play Music: Big Audio Dynamite

Liner Notes: Prom Weekend: DANCE!” was carefully contrived and concocted one rainy May night (5/10/89) in order to leave No Excuse For Not Dancing at Prom!