Sidebar Update!

Time for the coveted Sidebar Update! And barely a month after the last one! Who says I'm not on the ball around here? You? Well, you're a dirty, dirty liar.

The current Object of My Affection is Elizabeth Banks, whom I can't believe I've never mentioned before on this blog. I've been infatuated with her since her appearance as Betty Brant in the first Spider-Man, but where I really fell head over heels for her was when I discovered what a fantastic comedic actress she was in films like Wet Hot American Summer and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and her guest appearances on Scrubs. (She still wasn't enough to get me to see Fred Claus, though.) She, and Kevin Smith, are currently getting some of the best reviews of their careers for the upcoming Zack and Miri Make a Porno, which is a must-see for me. Smith will actually be here in Austin showing a sneak preview of the film on Thursday, though sadly I'll be at a concert and have to miss it. Dang it! Too much fun stuff at once in this crazy town! By the way, have you seen the movie poster which has been banned in the U.S.? I warn you, it will make your eyes bleed and destroy your moral values:


Shocking! Scandalous! By which I mean: whoop-de-fucking-doo. Canada has no problem with this poster. Canada! Jeez, get some balls, America.

Reading: like I said yesterday, I'm tackling David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. I plan on keeping record of my current page count over on the sidebar, to help humiliate myself into getting through it in a timely fashion. And really, it's not an especially difficult book, or unpleasant to read; it's just the sheer immensity of it which is intimidating.

Watching: nothing is holding my attention quite like the final season of The Shield. Absolutely riveting, brilliant TV. Not to malign Mad Men, which is very fine, but how the hell does that show get a million Emmy nominations while The Shield doesn't get shit? For Michael Chiklis, Walton Goggins, Forest Whitaker and CCH Pounder to be overlooked in the acting categories is criminal. Seriously, what the hell does Pounder have to do to get the recognition she deserves? As I always seem to say this time of year: if you're nominating Mariska Hargitay for an acting award, you ain't looking hard enough.

Listening: Neil Young's On the Beach, which was recently released for the first time on CD. What a lovely, fantastic album, one I had never before been able to listen to. I was missing out. And the Lyric of the Moment comes from this album as well, from the song "Vampire Blues," which is about the oil industry and rampant gasoline consumerism raping the world. That song is 34 years old. Man, the more things change....

Hating: same jackass, different photo.

An Album For Every Year

Yep, I'm really going to do it! Following up on my two lists of my favorite movies for each year I've been alive, here is my stab at the same kind of list, but for albums instead.

I'm keeping this list much briefer: just my #1 pick and one runner-up, and that's it. Arbitrary rules: no reissues, no greatest hits compilations. Original albums in the original years they were released only.

Source: mostly here. It's not perfect. There are a couple of omissions I noticed here and there. Such as: no mention of Hoyt Axton. What do you got against Hoyt Axton, the Internet??? Anyhoo, hopefully I can cobble together a genuinely representative list of my musical tastes from this and a couple other resources, along with the meager assistance of my memory.

1970: Neil Young, After the Gold Rush
Runner-up: The Beatles, Let It Be

1971: The Who, Who's Next
Runner-up: The Doors, L.A. Woman

1972: Neil Young, Harvest
Runner-up: George Carlin, Class Clown

1973: Elton John, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Runner-up: The Who, Quadrophenia

1974: Hoyt Axton, Life Machine
Runner-up: Joni Mitchell, Court and Spark

1975: Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here
Runner-up: Bruce Springsteen, Born To Run

1976: Hoyt Axton, Fearless
Runner-up: Billy Joel, Turnstiles

1977: Pink Floyd, Animals
Runner-up: Fleetwood Mac, Rumours

1978: The Who, Who Are You
Runner-up: Van Halen, Van Halen

1979: AC/DC, Highway To Hell
Runner-up: The Clash, London Calling

1980: AC/DC, Back in Black
Runner-up: Pete Townshend, Empty Glass

1981: Billy Joel, Songs in the Attic
Runner-up: Rush, Moving Pictures

1982: Pete Townshend, All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes
Runner-up: Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska

1983: Huey Lewis & the News, Sports
Runner-up: Def Leppard, Pyromania
Man, we are really into the '80s now!

1984: Bruce Springsteen, Born in the U.S.A.
Runner-up: Van Halen, 1984

1985: John Cougar Mellencamp, Scarecrow
Runner-up: The Pogues, Rum, Sodomy & the Lash

1986: They Might Be Giants, They Might Be Giants
Runner-up: Peter Gabriel, So

1987: Guns N' Roses, Appetite For Destruction
Runner-up: John Cougar Mellencamp, The Lonesome Jubilee

1988: Metallica, ...And Justice For All
Runner-up: They Might Be Giants, Lincoln

1989: Tom Petty, Full Moon Fever
Runner-up: Don Henley, The End of the Innocence

1990: They Might Be Giants, Flood
Runner-up: Sinead O'Connor, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got

1991: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blood Sugar Sex Magik
Runner-up: Matthew Sweet, Girlfriend

1992: Barenaked Ladies, Gordon
Runner-up: Lemonheads, It's a Shame About Ray

1993: Liz Phair, Exile in Guyville
Runner-up: Sheryl Crow, Tuesday Night Music Club

1994: Green Day, Dookie
Runner-up: Bad Religion, Stranger Than Fiction

1995: Smashing Pumpkins, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
Runner-up: Alanis Morissette, Jagged Little Pill

1996: The Refreshments, Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy
Runner-up: Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, She's the One

1997: Foo Fighters, The Colour and the Shape
Runner-up: Green Day, Nimrod

1998: The Offspring, Americana
Runner-up: Barenaked Ladies, Stunt

1999: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Californication
Runner-up: The Pretenders, ¡Viva El Amor!

2000: Barenaked Ladies, Maroon
Runner-up: O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack
I think I may actually not own a single other album released in 2000.

2001: Dropkick Murphys, Sing Loud, Sing Proud!
Runner-up: Tenacious D, Tenacious D

2002: Foo Fighters, One By One
Runner-up: Bad Religion, The Process of Belief

2003: Fountains of Wayne, Welcome Interstate Managers
Runner-up: Therapy?, High Anxiety

2004: Green Day, American Idiot
Runner-up: The Donnas, Gold Medal

2005: Foo Fighters, In Your Honor
Runner-up: Kathleen Edwards, Back To Me

2006: Tom Petty, Highway Companion
Runner-up: Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Love Their Country

2007: Foo Fighters, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace
Runner-up: Fountains of Wayne, Traffic and Weather

2008: Kathleen Edwards, Asking For Flowers
Runner-up: Foxboro Hot Tubs, Stop Drop and Roll!!!

---

I'm probably overlooking a few of my faves by mistake. But that looks pretty good as is. I'd listen to that jukebox!

Some years were very difficult to narrow down -- I hated to have to leave out Sugar's brilliant Copper Blue and Tori Amos's Little Earthquakes for 1992, or Therapy?'s Troublegum and They Might Be Giants' John Henry for 1994. Some years, I had trouble finding a runner-up at all. Mostly 2000 and on. My music-buying dropped way off around that point.

And there are obviously a lot of names which kept popping up. A lot. What can I say? I find what I like and I stick with it. Nothing wrong with that, dang it, so lay off. If you think you're so darn smart, why don't you go and make your own list?? Smart guy.

MUSIC: I Get A Kick Out Of...

...the original, acoustic version of "Revolution" on the White Album, when John Lennon sings, "But when you talk about destruction, don't you know that you can count me out... in." That one last word, not in the single version, suggesting (ironically? Hard to say) that he was of two minds.

---

...when, on "Won't Get Fooled Again", a few seconds after the line, "For I know that the hypnotized never lie," almost drowned out by Pete Townshend's roaring guitar, Roger Daltrey faintly adds, "Do ya?" Meaning: you, the audience, the listener at home, the general public -- you're the hypnotized, suckers. Wake up!

---

...the new version of "Break On Through" that I've been hearing recently on the classic rock stations, exactly the same as the old version but for Jim Morrison now completing a previously censored line. "She gets... she gets... she gets..." he used to sing. Now it goes, "She gets high, she gets high, she gets high..." That version isn't on the album -- not the album I've got, anyway. When did that word get added back in? Morrison uncensored, only 30 years after his death.

---

...Neil Young's version of "Imagine" on the 9/11 charity album America: A Tribute to Heroes; when he gets to, "Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can," he changes it to, "I wonder if I can." Tougher question. I'll bet even John wondered if he could.

---

..."Is She Really Going Out With Him?", when Joe Jackson says, "Look over there!", how you can't help but answer along with the song: "Where?"

---

...when radio stations play the very, very end of "Start Me Up," where Mick Jagger switches from "You make a grown man cry" to "You make a dead man come." Naughty!

---

...that driving guitar in the chorus of Boston's "More Than a Feeling," especially towards the end, when it kicks in hard a couple bars before the lyrics.

---

...The Daily Show theme song, "Dog on Fire," written by Bob Mould, with the current version performed by They Might Be Giants.

---

..."Gimme Shelter," when it goes from that woman's soaring, hair-raising vocals on "Rape and murder, it's just a shot away," to Mick's silky "I said love, sister, it's just a kiss away."

---

Hate:

--All the radio stations that are afraid to play the uncut versions of songs they've been playing for 20, 25, 30 years or more, because of the insane fines the newly reactionary FCC is raining down left and right. So in Steve Miller's "Jet Airliner," we have to hear the watered-down "funky kicks goin' down in the city" rather than "funky shit," and Roger Daltrey asking "Who the fuck are you?" on the uncut version of "Who Are You" is right out.

--The revised version of the Clash's "Rock the Casbah," where the "jive" in "that crazy Casbah jive" is electronically stretched and echoed for an extra five seconds. Why just that one word? Why change any of it to begin with?

--Same with AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap." If you know the album version, you can tell where a couple of bars of guitar have been added in at a couple of pieces right near the end. It seems like this version is the only one that gets played on the radio anymore. Who did this? And when?

MOVIES: Fahrenheit 9/11

I've never had a movie-going experience like Fahrenheit 9/11.

I can't write an objective and analytical review of this film. I'm not hyper-informed enough to pick out the alleged inaccuracies of the film, nor to counter the inaccuracies of those who listed Michael Moore's inaccuracies in the first place. I don't doubt that some of the film has been exaggerated, taken out of context, skewed to support Moore's beliefs. And those beliefs mirror mine, that Bush and his administration are deeply corrupt, deceitful, and dangerous, so I'm more inclined to take Moore's side in any case.

All I can tell you is how I felt, and what I'm still feeling, 24 hours later.

It was an incredibly emotional two hours. I cycled through any number of powerful feelings -- I was furious, I was appalled, I was horrified, I was laughing out loud, I was ashamed, I was sickened, I was guilt-ridden, I was deeply mournful. I was devastated. I literally had tears running down my cheeks at one point: when, in the film's centerpiece, Moore talks to a woman from his hometown of Flint, Michigan, a conservative military booster who lost a son in Iraq -- her world has been destroyed, and she doesn't even know why -- it's overwhelming, just overwhelming. Thinking about it even now, I feel my throat tightening and my eyes watering. You can't watch that segment and be unmoved. You simply can't. Unless you're a robot. In which case you totally deserve to have your ass kicked by Will Smith.

She reads her son's last letter home, and he asks her what he's doing there, why Bush has sent him and so many others to Iraq, and she doesn't have any more idea than he did. But Moore has an idea or two, most of them involving the vast amounts of money the Saudis invest in America. Fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, the Bin Laden family are Saudis, but Bush can't afford to alienate a country with that much money -- especially when they're spending it on companies closely related to him and his family. So instead he picks a scapegoat, trumps up some WMD charges, and off to war we go.

That's what Moore believes to be true, and that's what he sets out to prove. Whether he succeeds or not is up to the individual filmgoer.

But there are things in this film that can not be countered or spun. The human cost, on both sides of this war, is immeasurable. Try to hate the Iraqis, when you see a pickup truck full of dead Iraqi children. Try blaming the U.S. soldiers, when you see a double amputee describe the crushing pain he still feels in his missing hands, or a mother's grief at losing her firstborn son.

I certainly wasn't alone in the audience. When I got emotional, I could hear others around me in the same state: gasping, sniffling, snorting at Bush's clownish pandering to the rich while the poor on both sides were dying. There were even some who, like me, sat through the end credits to hear all of Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World," which was a decompression period, a cathartic release, at the end of such a roller coaster of emotions. There was little else I could think of for hours after I left the theater. This is a film that stays with you.

I couldn't recommend this film more highly. Everyone needs to see it. Even those who hate Michael Moore, who support the president without question (as Britney Spears is shown professing in one hilarious interview segment) -- if only to come out of it saying, "I still support the war, but now I'm fully aware of the human cost involved."

MUSIC: There's one more kid that'll never go to school, never get to fall in love, never get to be cool

Occasionally, a piece of familiar music takes on entirely new significance due to the way it is used in a film or TV show. Quentin Tarantino is a master of this kind of recontextualizing (if I may use a $10 word) of music, the prime example probably being the innocuous lite FM hit "Stuck in the Middle with You" playing during the torture scene in Reservoir Dogs. Here are a couple of other examples in my life:

An obvious and corny one is Foo Fighters' "Next Year," which was used as the theme song on the TV show Ed. It was more a coincidence of timing than anything else which changed my perception of that song -- just as the title character returns to his hometown after a long absence, so did I return to my hometown around the time of the show's debut. I didn't buy a bowling alley or anything, but still, it was hard to listen to the line, "I'll be coming home next year," and not feel that the song was speaking to me in a new and personal way.

Blind Faith's "Can't Find My Way Home" (which I've mentioned before) was always a sweet and enjoyable tune to me. Steve Winwood's soulful voice over Eric Clapton's haunting acoustic guitar... good stuff. In college, it became a personal favorite, especially after one inebriated evening when a friend and I decided to do some exploration of the Berkeley Hills and literally couldn't find our way home. I kept wondering how long it would take the search crews to recover our rotting corpses, and thinking of that line from the chorus, "I'm wasted and I can't find my way home."

Then I watched the movie Fandango, and the song took on a new meaning for me. The film ends with the loss and heartbreak that come with growing up: A close knit group of college friends, at the conclusion of their last adventure together after graduation, have all gone their separate ways, probably never to see each other again. And Kevin Costner, still pining for the love of his life, has just swallowed his emotions and served as the best man in her wedding to his best friend. After everyone has gone, and he stands alone in the dark on a desert hill, the credits roll, and "Can't Find My Way Home" plays. And now, I can't hear that song without experiencing similar feelings of isolation and heartache. All because of a movie.

A song which became much more enjoyable to me after its onscreen use is Kid Rock's "Bawitaba." No, I'm not kidding. And if you've ever seen the first episode of The Shield, you know what I'm talking about. (If you haven't, go rent the DVD. Now.) I liked the song just fine to begin with, but it becomes a brutal, powerful anthem when coupled with The Shield's compelling anti-hero, Vic Mackey. In the pilot episode, we've seen that Mackey and his cadre of corrupt cops have drawn the suspicions of precinct Captain Aceveda, who arranges for a new cop, an informant, to join Mackey's crew. The crew's big assignment is to take down a major drug dealer. In the final four minutes of the episode, Mackey's crew carries out their raid on the dealer's house in near silence -- with "Bawitaba" blaring on the soundtrack. Mackey guns down the drug dealer, and then -- in the very last seconds of the song, and of the episode, Mackey pulls the gun from the drug dealer's dead hand and shoots the informant cop right between the eyes. Said up jump the boogie.

God damn if that wasn't the most shocking, powerful moment in all of television that year. And ever since watching it, I can't help but invest "Bawitaba" with equal power.

And earlier today, I finally watched Fahrenheit 9/11, which closes with Neil Young's soaring, scathing indictment of the first Bush's presidency, "Rockin' in the Free World." Didn't take much to repurpose it for Bush, the sequel:

There's a warning sign on the road ahead
There's a lot of people saying we'd be better off dead
Don't feel like Satan but I am to them
So I try to forget it any way I can
Keep on rockin' in the free world

I instantly knew I would never hear that song the same way again. Nor, I think, will anyone who sees that film.