A Mensware Missive

Here come the only two firm, absolute statements I will ever make about clothes and/or fashion.

Dear American Males:

1. Stop Wearing Khaki Pants. Khaki pants seem to be the big thing for men these days. In fact, I'm convinced that one day, ugly-ass khakis will be as essential at '00s-themed costume parties as hot-pink sweatbands are at '80s-themed costume parties now. I know that khaki pants are part of an effort to bring a bright, breezy feel to otherwise formal attire. Problem is, I've never seen one person, ever, who looks good in khakis. And, as I'm known to leave my apartment once in a while, I have seen many, many men wearing khakis. I bet some other take on the light-brown scheme might work, but khakis just over-accentuate the legs and crotch. This is why jeans and blue and black pants are still better, even if one is perceived to be too informal and the others are perceived to be too stuffy.

2. Stop Wearing Pleated Pants. Especially pleated khaki pants, but pleated pants of any color ought to be burned. One can argue that pleats make pants more comfortable around the waist/crotch/hips, which means they are for people who are too lazy to find pants that fit them comfortably. In other words, pleats don't really need to be there. Why not add little frilly borders along with them. And all this pleated shit is invading the cheap-ass stores where I tend to shop, like Marshalls, Ross, etc. Stop it. Pleats are not for cheap people like me. I'm against clothes that generall have too much stuff that they don't need to have, and excess seems to be the trend in clothes today. It's hard enough to find a fucking pair of sneakers that aren't loaded down with logos, gel compartments, massage motors and whatnot. Pleats are for people who have too much money to spend. What's worse is when I see an otherwise good-looking, trim fellow wearing pleats. What is he thinking?

"I may be 35, in good shape, and in a fine, stable job, but you're never too young to look like you have one of those fatty crotch pouches."

Dressing badly is practically in my job description, but even I have standards.

Comedy Resurgence Now Official, Except for CoC

Far be it from me to criticize a trade publication for following the money, but this story in Variety smacks of "last-minute news analysis spun from the obvious." I really wanted to post something about it on the A.V. Club Newswire, but I got to it a few days late. The nut of the story is certainly something I'd like to hear more about: Stand-up comedy is on the rise. The story's main examples? Dane Fucking Cook, Dave Chappelle, Larry The Cable Guy, Comedy Central. Of course, Cook's sales are huge, but the point isn't that the entertainment world can support a few comedians of military-industrial popularity. The point is that the entertainment world can support tons of comedians at varying levels of popularity, and the story gets this, but it doesn't really delve into any of the more financially moderate success stories, or really many of the niches that comedy is starting to get into. Yes, it mentions the gay, Asian, and Latino comedy markets, but doesn't talk about, say, the people who come out to see tours like the Comedians Of Comedy, a group of comedians who for the most part are a hell of a lot funnier than Cook, and, for Christ's sake, got a documentary that aired on Showtime and Comedy Central.

Of course there's no way the CoC tour's making anywhere near what Cook is making, but they've stayed productive and they've reached picky people like me. Plus, CoC doesn't feel so goddamn cheap because it's well-rounded. A CoC date without Patton Oswalt? I could see it happening (maybe there've been a few of those; I'm honestly not sure). There'd still be Eugene Mirman, Brian Posehn, Zach Galifianakis, and/or Maria Bamford to choose from, and that would make for a pretty cool bill. A Tourgasm date without Dane Cook, but still billed as "Dane Cook's Tourgasm"? Oh, they're trying a whole bunch of those right now, and I honestly have no broad assessment of how that's going. However, I do know that a date scheduled here in Madison--a huge college town--got cancelled. (Ironically, this stop was planned for just four days after Cook's show at Madison Square Garden.) I'm also seeing cancellations in Baltimore and Portland. I really can't conclude anything from this because I don't know why. Maybe there are conflicts I don't know about, but then again it wouldn't surprise me if this ain't exactly selling out everywhere. Cook sold Tourgasm as his way of helping out other comedians who've been pounding the pavement for a long time, but let's see how long it takes any of those three guys to find the success and love that Mirman and Posehn have found independent of their tour's centerpiece. Smaller, weirder, better comedians who can succeed without piggybacking entirely on the big guy? That's news.

I hope this isn't an "other journalists should share my priorities/news judgment in their entirety" post. I just hate to see a good angle go to waste.

Dear Fellow Concert-Goers: Shut the Fuck Up Once In a While

Before I get into this: What I'm about to complain about didn't stop me from enjoying the two shows in this post. They were far more good than bad. But I still like to bitch. Contradictions onward!

My friend Julia and I went to see the Decemberists in Chicago this weekend, and, this being Chicago, which has awesome rock crowds, the show sold out and the Riviera Theatre was packed pretty damn tight. Not everyone there is going to be a Decemberists fanatic or a particularly big fan (I'd say I'm a moderate fan?), but when everyone has paid more than $30 for a ticket, it's a fair bet that their main point in coming is to hear the band's set. And drink beer and maybe talk a little (I'm not above making the occasional comment during a show or movie). Maybe it's just that I grew up so close to the Orlando Area Amusement-Industrial Gulag, but when I've bought a ticket to something, my attitude is always, "GOD DAMMIT, WE ARE GOING TO HAVE EVERY MEASLY DIME'S WORTH OF FUN, LIKE IT OR NOT!"

We're doing some mild calisthenics to shake off the soporific fog of the opening act, Alasdair Roberts (I don't just mean he was boring, I mean that his set was pretty much audio-induced naptime), and a guy and his girlfriend squeeze through, saying they need to find their friends. Being nice folks, we let them. And then they plant themselves in front of us, blocking our view. "The bitch is shorter than the asshole, so why don't we switch places?" I say to Julia, who's a bit shorter than me. I'm standing two or three inches behind these fucking people, almost yelling, and they don't hear me. This is more than the crowd noise should cover up, and my intention is that they'll hear us, but they don't, which makes it even funnier. Hard heads, is all I'm saying. So we manage to squeeze to the side of them, enough that the view of the stage is a bit better, and it seems to be resolved.

A few minutes later, the Decemberists come out and start into "Leslie Anne Levine," and damned if they even get through a verse before the girl turns around to the guy and starts yapping full-bore. Not just an "I'm so excited! Colin Meloy's so dreeeeeamy!" or anything, but deliberate, prolonged windbaggery of the highest order. So I do something that can really creep people out, which is to fake a tubercular coughing fit, and because we're packed so close, I can't be blamed for coughing right at the back of her head. This seems to bug them for a minute, but then they're right back at it. And they keeps it up, through about three songs, and then we decide to find another place to stand. As we're moving out, we run into a couple who say, "Hey, we'll totally back you up, those people are assholes!" But it was frankly just easier to move. Thank you for your solidarity, Tall-ish Guy and Woman. The four of us could have stomped those two nitwits, but the show itself was just too damn good to interrupt for a brawl.

From further back, we can't hear Bitch and Asshole, but Julia can see them, and she tells me they're still talking. Who in the fuck pays $30+ to stand and fucking talk the whole time? If you've got to talk at a show, there are always lobbies, bathrooms, or the sidewalk. Places where people aren't actively listening to music, places where people will soon start finding your severed, bashed-in heads. When did this talking shit become acceptable? I'm sure there's always been a loud jerk or two at a given show, but when I read about concerts in the 70s and 60s, or listen to live albums from that period, I get the impression that crowds were generous and attentive for good sets (and this was a great set; given the chance I'd pay $30+ to see it again). I'm not saying we should all sit there like obedient little doggies, but for fuck's sake, let other people at least fucking hear the music without your mindless contamination. I'm sure I've been to shows where it's worse; most of the people in our area and closer to the stage just seemed to be singing along, dancing, etc., all of which actually make the concert fun and show the audience's gratitude to the band.

It could just be because I'm anti-social, and a lot of the social conversations I try to have end at awkward small talk. Then again, I've enjoyed of long, rambling conversations about a lot of dorky, silly stuff. I just don't believe in having them all the time, and I don't believe that running your jaw is inherently valuable. No one's above yammering about the stupid little details of his/her life or anything else, but there are times not to do it. One time: When you're watching a solo acoustic concert in a space where sound carries pretty well. Today, Chris Smither played a free concert here in Madison, and all the stray chatter in the audience reeally distracted me at times. Look, people, just can it once in a while. You probably won't miss anything important in your stream of verbal barf, and you'll actually fucking hear the music. Again: Sometimes you can't help talking a little, and that's one thing, but when you just keep talking incessantly, you're an asshole. I could almost understand if this were some crappy act, because this is one of those events people just kind of go to because it's there--like a couple of zoo concerts I wrote about this summer. But this is a guy who still writes fantastic songs, with a guitar style to match. Maybe I just happened to be near the few people who were talking. If it was important to them to have their conversations right then and there, why'd the come to a damn concert?

Alright, this is turning into a one-person PTA meeting.

I'm far too picky about some things, I know. There's just nothing worse to me than the din of dozens of people having dozens of useless conversations all at once. It's like listening to zombies feed.

Mis-trope

Brain Lab 5

"Shove 'Em Up There Again, Dennehy!"

Patton Oswalt and the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company CD EP

I was browsing about a couple weeks ago and discovered that Chunklet is selling this limited-edition CD, which captures the last 18.5 minutes of the Comedians of Comedy tour's stop in Chicago this spring (I was there). This is the only time I've paid $18 or so for something so short. Hell, I usually won't spend that on a full-length album 'cause it's a rip. This catches three bits after Patton Oswalt's set, when Eugene Mirman, Brian Posehn, and Maria Bamford joined him onstage. At this point in the evening, all four have done pretty damn good sets on their own and people are having a good time but are exhausted.

"If you guys are wondering, 'Oh, my God, I wish I could travel in a van with these great, funny, awesome people!' No you don't," Patton says, and the group recreates some of its road-spawned in-jokes, which turn out to be funnier than most of the road stuff in the Comedians Of Comedy documentary. These jokes are ways for the comedians to torture each other and/or themselves on the road, so at this point they're perversely dragging things out for the audience. It's like having a prank played on you and enjoying and admiring it from setup to finish.

The title joke gets more and more convoluted as it goes on. Patton's tourmates force him to make up songs, in the style of Leon Redbone, about the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company, which he spotted on the road near Pittsburgh. The subjects of the songs keep getting trickier to improvise around: Does the company have any specials today? Do you have any health-code violations we should know of? Can you tell us something about the founders? And what he says keeps getting more ridiculous. He refers to the last of those as a "fucking Cormac McaCarthy novel." Then Eugene asks him to list the company's pastas in alphabetical order, and he does that pretty well, and remember, he still has to answer in the form of a Leon Redbone-style song. I don't think I'd enjoy this as much if I hadn't been there, though--it just makes it better to know that the show had already been building for a couple of hours, with Patton drinking a lot of Scotch throughout. It's great to see four comedians just riffing off each other without any of them having to, say, take a shit in a bucket.

Brain Lab 4: Here is Your Throat Back, Thanks for the Loan

The Yes Man

Have you seen the Yes Man? The Yes Man is that guy at the show who believes he enjoys it more thoroughly and more actively than everyone else. Sure, you see people at shows who get drunk and yell a lot and make metal fingers at the band and all that shit, but the Yes Man is up to something else entirely. He is the audience member who thinks that overdoing it is essential to enjoying music, and, I bet, life in general. I could just be making this up, but I see a guy (yes, it's almost always a male) fitting this description at most of the shows I go to. He's not just there to have a good time; he's there to enjoy and appreciate the show as doggedly and thoroughly as possible, all while projecting how proud he is to be so good at appreciating.

I ended up sitting near a table of three Yes Men when I saw Rory Block last week. Block is a pretty good songwriter in her own right and a fine keeper of the acoustic blues—which of course is full of esoteric technique and lore, or, as one of the YM referred to it during a conversation I overheard, "mythos." (The YM doesn't have to be outright pedantic, but these fellows were.) So if a YM knows anything about Robert Johnson (which in this case would be important, because Block's latest album, The Lady And Mr. Johnson, consists entirely of Johnson covers), he's got a head start. He'll catch the in-jokes, the lyrics regarded as especially poignant or significant in blues-nerd circles, and all the soulfullest guitar licks and whatnot. And, in the case of this circle's ringleader (kinda overweight, ponytail), he'll smile and let it linger a little too long, wag his head back and forth as if to say "mm-mm-mm-mm-GOOD!" and even tap his foot for a measure two after a song is over. When I first noticed this YM's behavior, I wrote in my notebook that this is the kind of guy who plays air guitar with accurate chord fingerings. And a few minutes later, he started doing just that.

See, at this show, the artist was providing everything you could reasonably ask for (she's good live!)—a fine performance with a little necessary banter and self-promotion. But for the YM, that's not the whole picture. His experience isn't complete unless he reacts just-so.

Why do I mind? It's not as if these people were keeping me from seeing or hearing or enjoying anything. I think it's because, as Matt's told me, I have a tendency to project the audience onto the performer. Which is just his fancy way of saying this: If one guy's overreacting the whole mood of the show can seem forced to me. Which gets trickier when I'm seeing a band that's always going to have an "emo" label stuck on its ass, like The Appleseed Cast. OK, that's a stupid label, but it's part of the language now, so I try to deal with it. I know they have some whiny numbers, but a lot of the whining gets covered up a lot on their latest album, Peregrine. (I think they kinda make up for it with song titles like "Ceremony," "Woodland Hunter (Part I) ," and "Woodland Hunter (Part II)," if you're into that sort of thing.) In fact, if you want to mope out, you can still enjoy it on that level, and if you don't want to mope out, you can enjoy it as the layered, well-textured, mature (maturing, maybe?) rock it is. I think it's the drums that tie it all together for me. Well, a lot of things tie it together, but hear me out. TAC's drummer kicks ass on a purely musical level, but in every measure he hits a few really emphatic beats that basically sound like headbanging instructions for emo kids: "Hey kid, do it here, and put your back into it!"

The YM at TAC's show here on Saturday followed those instructions impeccably for a solid hour. Sometimes people see a guy acting like that and figure he's just messing with the band, but after seeing him deliberately keep it up for the whole show, you realize that nobody expends that much physical energy for irony. At least not without pay. Does some powerful figure in the record industry have voodoo dolls of these people?

Then again, I'm the guy at the show fussing with my notebook so I can remember all this stuff just-so for my blog. Where does that put me?

At the World's Fair

Never had he felt so close to nature—nor so far apart.

Brain Lab 3

Brain Lab 2

Transforming the status quo.

Brain Lab

True brilliance is interminable.

Obie Trice vs. ODB

(Not that I really think there's any comparison.)

Obie Trice: "I'll be damned if I let a nigger lay his hands on me,/ I'll lay his ass out and park a Grand Am on 'im..." ("Cry Now," from Second Round's On Me)

Ol' Dirty Bastard: "...I drop an ambulance on a nigga." ("You Don't Want To Fuck With Me," from Nigga Please)

So, Obie, does that Grand Am have flashing lights and a trunk full of medical supplies? Is it much heavier than your average Grand Am? I'm just saying: It appears Ol' Dirty had a little more resolve (and flair!) in the vehicular homicide department. Though you're ahead in the Cheers-inspired album art category. (Yes, I'm aware that was also the title of your first album, but in this context I do mean that TV show that went on entirely too long.)

Another show review rescued from the Stygian cache!

Al Rose + Doug Hoesktra, 9/2: I write about music for the satisfaction of finding good stuff (well, and to see my bullshit in print, but I could do that in other fields, I guess), and here are two songwriters who make the search worthwhile. Rose's latest album, Gravity Of Crow, begins with a few muted guitar chords and gentle verses, then explodes into an hour of playful fascination. It must be good because it was about 1:30 am when I first put on and I stayed up for the whole thing. At Mother Fool's, Rose was accompanied by Madison songwriter/guitarist Maury Smith, yielding a crazy hour of improvised acoustic-guitar interplay. I realize a lot of guitarists can run up and down blues scales all day, but Rose and Smith play together in ecstatic bursts that technical ability alone can't produce—Rose happily bashing out the chords, Smith's guitar lines sprawling on with a surprising mix of grit and finesse. You can stream some of Al's songs here, but you won't get the full effect unless you see him live sometime. I don't think there's anyone who writes songs quite like him, or anyone who could pull off his hybrid of sturdy country/folk and shamelessly weird lyrics.

Hoekstra played a solo set and read a short story from his new book, Bothering The Coffee Drinkers. The songs I've heard from his recent Six Songs EP show his catchy acoustic-pop side (I especially recommend "The Bottomless Pit"), and during the show he focused on quieter folk numbers. For the most part it was as if he was singing to himself, displaying a confidence and restraint that seems ever more rare in today's singers. Anyone who's talked to me about music knows how picky I am about this. If the melody and lyrics are good, a singer can get his point across without whining and moaning, and that's what Hoekstra does. Instead of clubbing an audience over the head with emotion, he draws 'em in with witty narratives and imagery. I'm not at the top of my describing game today. Just give both of these guys a listen. Pleasures await those who do.

Infocalypse

As I predicted, the new American remake of Pulse is a disaster. In short: Too much explanation, too much forced empathy for lousy characters, too few visual surprises. As I said, I don't think remakes have to be faithful to originals, but they should at least live up to the promise of originals. Here's why the new Pulse does not:

Original: Set in Tokyo. The unwitting protagonists get to the Tenement of Doom via bus.
Remake: Set in Columbus, Ohio, but apparently not filmed there. The unwitting protagonists get to the Tenement of Doom via a subway system, which Columbus doesn't have.

Original: What exactly the cyber-ghosties do to a person is completely vague throughout the film.
Remake: Within the first five minutes, we learn exactly what the cyber-ghosties do: Suck out your fuckin' soul! Yet these soul-suckers aren't half as cool as the one in Bubba Ho-Tep. Hey, Bubba tried to suck out JFK's soul through his asshole. Pulse's soul-suckers aren't hardcore enough for that--they just grip people's heads and suck from a distance.

Original: Clear enough on the theme of ambivalence toward technology. Computer and cell-phone use is incidental to the characters' jobs and personal lives; some characters struggle to get used to it.
Remake: The protagonists are all college students, and apparently they don't have jobs. Apart from partying and attending classes, they seem to do nothing but text-message, instant-message, make cell calls and browse the Internet. And the credit sequence is a dopey montage showing computer use, including a shot of someone typing in the URL "chatroom.com," which doesn't seem to be getting much use lately. In all, its intention seems to be to provoke this discussion among college students: "Wow, we use the Internet and cell phones so much." "Yeah. And how 'bout them chocolate-flavored condoms?" In a way the clumsy emphasis on theme reminds me of this year's Slither. It begins with a bunch of scenes in which various characters blather about evolution, not knowing that a hyper-evolved space creature is heading down to fuck them up. But that was funny and effective. This is just dumb.

Original: Not all the protagonists are tech wizards. One has to ask a woman for computer help! GASP!
Remake:All the kiddies seem to get it, and they IM in complete, grammatically impeccable sentences. LMAO at the timing.

Original: The scary parts are shocking and abrupt. Nobody ever seems to understand entirely what's happening or why.
Remake: The filmmakers douse the film in artificial dread. By the time something bad happens, the audience has been alerted about a jillion times over, with jarring music, gloom-drenched cinematography, and the characters' own explanations of events. Even so, it relies on shock. Once we've seen, several times over, just what happens when the soul-suckers approach, is it supposed to surprise us.

Original: Stunning suicide scene.
Remake: All the actual suicides happen off-screen; a news show helpfully announces a suicide epidemic.

And don't even get me started on the characters. The tedious, hackneyed, obnoxious characters...

"I'm Down Here in the Office with the Little Starving Kids": Bono as David Brent

Ooh, what's more important: you, Neil, with your report, or some starving children? Oh, I dunno. Oh, what would Lenny Henry say? I think we know. Imagine him going out of the door on Comic Relief day and Dawn French is going 'Where you going, you haven't done the washing up. You haven't put the rubbish out. 'DO IT YOURSELF, I'VE GOTTA SAVE SOME AFRICANS!' (Ricky Gervais as David Brent, The Office (UK), season 2, episode 5)

I just saw Leonard Cohen — I'm Your Man and enjoyed it very much, but I can't help but feel that Bono's and Edge's commentaries in the film are superfluous. They seems, as usual, enraptured by their own voices as they find a bunch of ways to say, "Gee, Leonard Cohen's really good!" and "Wow, Leonard Cohen kinda has this spiritual quality."

David Brent and his buddy Chris Finch, on the other hand, take excessive pride in being trivia champions.

Possible rebuke: "You can't compare Bono with David Brent! One's a well-established musician, the other's a fictitious idiot!"

My reply: Yes I can, and thanks to the magic of YouTube, so can you!

The main thing they have in common: Supreme confidence, even when they're deep in their own vapidity. I must say that it's nice to see Edge without that stupid hat. I'd scalp him just to get rid of it. If you are a lawyer who's willing to help me cook up an alibi, please email me.

That said, Brent isn't quite so good at turning boring, socially conscious talk into magnificent songs.

What Shall We Do, What Shall We Do, With All this Useless Marking?

I have been reading very slowly lately, which is frustrating when you're reading a long book--namely, Neal Stephenson's 900-plus-page whopper Cryptonomicon. The prologue is quintessential, kick-in-the-ass, hysterical, street-smart Stephenson, but as his plots thicken, Stephenson is bound to get into technical detail (or something like it--the entire middle of Snow Crash is pretty intricate but not what I'd strictly call technical). His explanations of the finer points of cryptology are worth reading, just not when I'm about to fall asleep. I digress!

Last night I just wanted to read some entertaining junk, so I tried Complicated Shadows: The Life and Music of Elvis Costello by Graeme Thomson, which I bought used at Amaranth Books in Evanston. For the most part it bored me (I went back to the brick-o'-Neal for a while), but the one who came before me must have been fascinated. I noticed the first few pages had been carpet-bombed in pencil--underlines and parentheses everywhere. Then I flipped around and found that EVERY FUCKING PAGE had been marked up, so much that it got difficult for me to concentrate. Example: Page 105, which I did not read to. I think I quit around page 10. You'll probably have to click on the pic and look at the large version to make all the marks out.

I'm a cheap fiend who buys a lot of used books, so I'm used to reading around college students' dutiful highlighting and margin notes, because those usually serve to emphasize a manageable number of quotes, facts, and/or ideas. But this person started marking stuff--"OK, I want to come back to this, and this, and this, and this"--until he/she ended up deciding to try and remember the whole damn thing. These aren't just the random marks of someone following the words with a pencil--notice how the underlines and parentheses always seem to cleanly mark a coherent fragment, or just one word.

I bet this dutiful Elvis tracker managed to win free tickets for tomorrow's Ravinia performance. I just now remembered to order a lawn ticket. More on that Monday. Or maybe this person brought the book to Amaranth completely embarrased by his/her obsessive actions, forgot the whole affair, went home and put on King of America and let the memory fizzle out.

Nummers!

Comedians of Comedy Tour, Logan Square Auditorium 4/28/06

Well, up there's my one-word review of Patton Oswalt's mighty, Scotch-fueled set last night. I got out of bartending school at 10 and hauled ass up to Logan Square. Apparently I missed a short opening bit by Patton. I got there about 10 minutes before Maria Bamford's set ended. She makes me laugh a little, but I don't like her constantly-nervous act. I guess it brings a little variety, what with Patton, Eugene Mirman and Brian Posehn being the most casual comedians I've ever seen. I like this tour because I think a good stand-up set should resemble a conversation with my friend Matt, only with more comic refinement and less Denny's.

So next was Posehn, who talked about being married and owning a house and dogs, pretending to be a retard when telemarketers call, and the secret emotions of his stomach. Mirman did a lot of stuff I've already heard on his album, but I actually enjoyed him more live. For some reason his mannerisms just make it funnier. I'm unfortunately going to neglect these two because I don't know their stuff very well. I was on the fence about what little I'd seen and heard of them, but now I'm willing and glad to give them my money.

Nice thing about comedy shows--the acts come on one right after the other and you don't have to spend a bunch of awkward 30-minute intervals staring at show kids and sweating your ass off. So right after Mirman, Patton got up, slammed down some "funny potion" and plowed right into it.

Great Mother Fuck, I love that man. He doesn't really have a schtick--just a few trademark mannerisms--so he's always exactly as good as his writing, which is consistently awesome. He ran through some familiar bits from Feelin' Kinda Patton--patchouli oil, serial killers, the morning-after pill--but instead of pulling out bulldozer sessions like "easter eggs" and "Black Angus," he tried a bunch of what he said were new bits. He started with a tirade against the "three shittiest songs in the world," first noting his #2 song, Chicago's "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" The narrator of the song is wearing a watch, so, Patton said, "Does anybody really know what time it is? Fuckin' YOU DO!"

Several bits built on his hatred of the "safe Hollywood version of crazy." The third shittiest song in the world, for example, was Train's "Meet Virginia." I haven't heard this song and wouldn't want to, because I've heard two or three of Train's radio singles, and, well, if that's what people buy those albums for, I don't even want to hear the stuff that isn't a strong selling point. In fact, I haven't heard any of Patton's three shittiest songs. Patton said (paraphrasing all thru this post, too lazy to take notes when I'm exhausted) that "Meet Virginia" has the kind of lyrics the sorta-clever but mostly just annoying guy at the Jiffy Lube would write:

She only drinks coffee at midnight, when the moment is not/
Right, her timing is quite-unusual/
You see her confidence is tragic, but her intuition magic/
And the shape of her body - unusual/
Meet virginia-i can’t wait to/
Meet virginia-yea

He finished his set with a bit about the irony of old right-wingers who enjoy Cirque du Soleil--"what a tired gay French guy sees in his head," I think, was his description"--concluding with this:

"Do you mind if my partner and I wear tuxedos and kiss and pledge eternal love?"

"Fuck you, faggot!"

"Do you mind if I blow my partner on a tightrope?"

"AWESOME!"

However, my favorite of the evening was "Death Bed," which I think is going to become an epic audience favorite, right up there with "Stella d'Oro Breakfast Treats" and "Robert Evans." Studios have bought and permanently shelved four of Patton's screenplays, he says, yet somehow Death Bed: The Bed That Eats managed to get made. He imagines the life of the film, from the writer's moments of doubt to a carpenter who injures his hand making the bed--which, way back when, absorbed some demon blood and now eats people after they have sex on it--and can't play catch with his son, spoiling their relationship forever. It sounds like such a simple rant about Hollywood, but the way Patton imagines and delivers it turns it into something else altogether.

After his set, Patton got the other three up on stage to do some in-jokes the group has developed on the tour bus. These take too much explanation for me to make them even remotely funny in writing, but Jesus, they could keep this shit going forever.

In the little interlude before everybody came up, Patton recited, on a "nerd honor" bet with Posehn, Rutger Hauer's final speech from Blade Runner:

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

See, coming from anyone else, this would have just been dumb. Maybe what makes that funny is the same mysterious force that draws a thousand people to stand up for two hours just to watch a crazy little Hobbit-man and his friends.

Smugness: Nothing a Terrible Haircut Can't Solve

I have complained, when reminded of her existence, about Natalie Portman and her characters in Closer and Garden State, who were basically the same character--perky American hometown girls trying to charm us out of our skulls with endless burts of artificial quirkiness, one more of a streetwalker than the other. I really don't even care about either of those films. I just wonder if they would have been better with a more subtle actress in Portman's role, or if they were just too weak to withstand one flawed performance.

Thank You For Smoking survives Katie Holmes' overbearing smugness because all its other performances are well-rounded. Holmes just has that mischievous smirk frozen on her face the whole time, her ears like a couple of SETI satellites searching for male victims. But luckily she doesn't have that much screen time. Christopher Buckley's characters are wild caricatures but for the most part are also vulnerable and realistic; it's innocent, subdued Cameron Bright who holds the credibility together.

That's the only cure for smugness: Overwhelm it with context and better performances. How specifically to overcome Portman's particular kind of spry smug? Subjugate her to a totalitarian government and a poetry-spewing vigilante who—holy shit!—has a mischievous smirk frozen on his face for literally the entire fucking movie! And shave her head and clothe her in burlap sacks. Stick her between the comic-book hysterics of V and the dour plodding of Stephen Rea, and she basically becomes a neutral factor.

Thank You For Smoking and V for Vendetta are both insane and entertaining at the core. That's why on the whole they don't suffer from performances by actresses who usually make me cringe.

Instro-Fetishism!: The Joggers

(The Joggers, Schubas, 3/31/06)

To me, bands like Bloc Party are a good example of where indie rock gets impaled on its own stainless-steel blade of misery. Silent Alarm is basically an enjoyable album, but it has this mood of urgency and these tense arrangements that tend to kill the fun. Everything is wound together very tightly and constricted by a few simple patterns. The Joggers unravel that whole model along a loose, insanely technical tangent, and the threads all snap off and wriggle away on their own delirious adventures.

I really think bands like Interpol and Bloc Party want you to clench your ass and feel their paranoia and self-loathing and whatnot. The Joggers just have a fetish for strange melodies. The emotion you get from the music is just whatever emotion you happen to bring to it. It might remind you of something you've already sensed, but you don't have to come into it wanting it to make you feel a certain way. To enjoy most Interpol songs, even the really good ones, you almost have to make a conscious decision to mope along and let the band inflict all that austere emotion on you. I didn't see the Joggers do any of that earnest cringing that bad bands do when they're trying to get feelings across. I saw them watching their hands crawl up the fretboard, immersed in instrumental foreplay.

Sample Joggers stage banter/announcement: "Somebody's Super Shifter pedal wasn't on 'octave' setting. Can you guess which setting it was on?"

This makes them sound like technical show-offs, I'm sure, and they are. What redeems them is that they memorize their elaborate riffs until they become reflexes, then make them sound freshly improvised live. "Wicked Light Sleeper" leads with the staccato chords and syncopated high-hats you'd expect to hear on any number of Bloc Party songs, then follows it up with a hook that's both infectious and too long to memorize after one hearing.

I also like this band because they don't mind looking like slobs/rapists. Murphy Kasiewicz, the lead singer/guitarist, is going bald and apparently not fighting it. Darrell Bourque, the bass player, isn't bad-looking, and he doesn't wear holsters or a custom-tailored suit, for Christ's sake. I've never been to an Interpol show, but I imagine it's a bit like having four well-dressed thugs pistol-whipping you into admiring their good taste and genuine distress. Sure, they're a good band with some awesome songs. It's just silly to get seduced by them.

The Joggers just let their music spill all over the place, into metal and roots-rock and slightly past the limit of the pop-hook attention span. It's not about how many notes they can squeeze into a measure; it's about how many peoples' sensibilities they can tickle at once--the pop purist, the guitar nerd, the experimentalist, etc.--and that's the ony kind of virtuosity that's worth admiring. You can enjoy their music and not remeber all the reasons why. That's why they're worth listening to more than once or twice, and seeing their show on top of that.

Joggers MySpace page w/2 streaming songs