On Gilbertology

Two months ago, I didn't know who Gilbert Arenas was. Today, I was hoping he would kick the shit out of Wil Wheaton.

There are a lot of reasons why I should want Wil Wheaton to win the 2007 Weblog Award for Best Celebrity Blog. I've been reading his blog on and off for a couple of years, he and I are both nerds, he's a talented writer with an interesting voice. But there I was, reading the repeated pleas from Gilbertology to vote for Agent Zero and hoping he pulled a Nixon in '72 style landslide on WWDN. Seriously, fuck Wesley Crusher. And fuck George McGovern.

So here I am, backing a blog that I don't really read, written by a basketball star that I only recently learned existed, over a cultural icon of my demographic. In part, I'll admit it was an urge to back the underdog in a way that completely recasts the definition of "under" -- where else but the blogosphere is a decades removed, moderately successful child actor cum cult hero the presumptive favorite over a star in a major professional sports league? Maybe WWDN has also been on a bit of a downswing lately as Wil focuses on his new book and a guest spot on Num3rs. Or maybe it's this: 20 grand on whether Gazo the Pranksta can shoot a better percentage of college range 3's one handed than DeShawn Stevenson can shoot from pro range two handed.

It isn't just the win, it's the challenge. And that's why I backed Arenas. Still, I was also glad to see him win, if only for comments like this:

That’s amazing that you can beat out 30 years of Star Trek followers in two days. They should be ashamed of themselves...

Wheaton fell apart in the competition worse than Britney Spears’ career has.

The other people didn’t have a chance. No one was close. Kanye ... 500 votes? Yeah, I got 10,000. You can’t tell me nothing.

Yeah, he deserved it.

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Modern Library Top 100: #98 - The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain (1934)

A while back, Nick Hornby wrote an entire essay dedicated to his alarming realization that he had forgotten nearly everything he'd ever read.

My own experience is a lot like that, which is mostly why I started up with these updates on my novel progress. With rare exceptions--essentially these four books of my childhood, which I can probably still recite if pressed--I can't for the life of me remember what I read last week, let alone last year, as is the case with The Postman Always Rings Twice, a novella consumed last Christmas. So while I remember finding the experience ultimately pleasant, and I can tell you the overall plot with little difficulty (hardscrabble Californian seduces his boss's wife before killing him before getting a face full of karma), if you want details on the intricacies, you're barking up the wrong tree, mister (or madam, for you feminine types).

Still, one would think I'd've had a more lasting experience with it--great novels really ought to leave a mark, y'know? Not just some evanescent frisson of pleasure, like eating a chocolate chip cookie or something. And up to this point, all on the Modern Library list had left me with some overriding, irrepressible impression that I still vividly recall, even if it was just a slight case of abject loathing.

That doesn't make The Postman Always Rings Twice an inferior book, necessarily, just an inferior experience, and I'm not sure which one is more damning.

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Welcome to the Rock Show

It got dicey there for a while, but the prophet’s words still ring true: Hey hey, my my, rock ’n’ roll can never die. Exhibit A? The Mezzanine in San Francisco this Tuesday, where, for the better part of three hours, Art Brut and the Hold Steady delivered one simple message: Welcome to the Rock Show.

For the full post, click here.

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11/5/2007 Potpourri

Taking a break from online scrabble (as magnificent a time waster as has been invented) to keep my post count higher than Darryl's until I can finish up a few long forms I've been crafting.

1) The Writer's Guild of America strike is seriously going to suck for all us fans of late night television (which unfortunately includes Messrs. Colbert and Stewart), and it's being covered pretty well by both Alan Sepinwall and Ken Levine (look to the sidebar) so I won't touch too much on it here, except to say that it's going to piss me off if the two new shows I've come to enjoy so much ("Chuck" and "Pushing Daisies") don't get picked up for 13 more episodes, leaving us poor shlubs stuck with more reality television.


2) Speaking of the Daily Show, has anyone else noticed how sluggish it's been lately? I want to blame the exodus of Steve Carrell, Stephen Colbert, Rob Corddry and Ed Helms as part of it, but I think John Oliver and Aasif Mandvi are two of the funniest guys the show's ever had (and I've been watching since the Craig Kilborn era, and no, I didn't have a life then, either).

I think it comes down to a couple things. One, outside of Oliver and Mandvi, the remaining correspondents (Jason Jones and Samantha Bee especially) don't really carry the razor-sharp political wit that the others do, or did. It seems like they're doing more of a stand-up routine rather than political satire. (Meanwhile, the other ridiculously talented correspondent, Dan Bakkedahl, has been shunted off to the writer's room, probably because his face isn't even radio friendly.) The other is that, more and more, Jon Stewart is just a Democratic shill. A few years ago, under the long shadow of the Bush administration and the concomitant media adoration, it was refreshing to see Stewart go after Bush. Now, though, with Bush essentially neutered, and Clinton basically enshrined as the next POTUS, Stewart's lost his edge. His assaults on the Bush administration have lost their acid, and he won't really go after Hillary (or any of the other Dems, save poor Dennis Kucinich) on any substantive issue. It's almost like he's deflated. Even the Larry Craig stuff wasn't that funny, and you couldn't ask for a better comedy mine.

3) Somewhere along the way the contrarian in me reacted against the mp3 generation, and as a consequence I scoffed at anyone who could think of proper music outside the context of an album. That's a long way of saying that the new Neil Young record, Chrome Dreams II, is just abysmally bad, but miraculously saved by two simply brilliant songs that are some of the best recordings Young has ever done. "Ordinary People" is 18 minutes but doesn't feel like it at all, with a loping piano/bass and a rocking, anthemic feel. And "My Way" is so hushed and pretty it's almost a Beethoven sonata, but for Young's scratchy voice superimposed against a children's choir.

So what should I do? I love these songs, but the completist in me is compelled to keep the rest of the detritus if I want to keep listening to these songs. When it comes time to pare down my music collection, there's gonna be a difficult choice to be made.

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Makes the Dream Work

Walking into a Man Man concert unprepared is like going to a carnival, equal parts disconcerting and beautiful, where the organ has been commandeered by the craziest mother fuckers you have ever met. Walking into a Man Man show is like taking a filter that steps up the crazy, the weird, and the loud and using it on Captain Beefheart and his Magic Pirate Band. Walking into a Man Man show might be one of the best decisions you make this holiday season. But I've written about walking into a Man Man concert before. And this isn't about seeing Man Man. This is about telling people about seeing Man Man.

Ever since that night in Austin, where I was converted by a chance wandering into a club show, I've been convincing friends that they need to see this band. Not even that they need to hear this band, which I wholly support and even enable, but seeing this band. I've used all kinds of words in the process of dancing about the utterly bizarre, angular, organic, Zombie-Frank Gehry-on-acid that is Man Man's sound, but it usually comes down to this: if you go, you will have one hell of a time. At the very least, you won't be bored.

As luck and scheduling would have it, I've only seen Man Man twice - both medium sized clubs, both ending in "-mo's." Seeing as they're set to be taken on tour with Modest Mouse, it's looking less likely that I'm going to get a repeat of that. Well, maybe the naming scheme. I'm not concerned with Man Man getting bigger, I'm glad they're getting this shot and I think they deserve it. I was similarly stoked on the role they played in Weeds, not just because it got them some more fans but because at least my students can get that cultural referece. Tom Waits hits blank stares. Don't ask about Captain Beefheart.

Like I said, I'm not sad about them getting bigger, well, maybe I am a little bit, but that's only because of a separate issue that's only partially related to every other music blogger losing "his band" post that I don't want this to be. Not just to bring Kevin Durant into my third of three posts, but I watched his NBA debut the same night I read this news, and I have to wonder: what's going to happen to Man Man when they step onto their over-stretched analogy of a pro court? Even if the tour is mostly taking them through Canada and states that Democrats habitually avoid in general elections, they're still playing venues large enough for Modest Mouse sized crowds in the post "Float On" era.

Man Man is a band with a lot of strengths. Their musicianship, their songwriting, a vocalist with swagger to his gravel, an affinity for kitchen appliance based percussion. But more than any of these, they're a live band in an era where there aren't many left. Dan Bejar, when performing as/with Destroyer, doesn't talk when he breaks between songs, but performs them all fantastically. I'd list more examples, but they'd be superfluous when even the best of the rest (Ted Leo) is a testament to one man's force of nature as an individual performer in a band of experiential footnotes. Man Man is a group effort. From the coordinated outfits to the non-verbal give-and-take through the continuous set, every move is purposeful, adding something more to not just the songs, the show. Where most bands would make this a gimmick, Man Man makes it work. In a set where they just. don't. stop., let alone banter with the audience, they build a connection with them. The music is chaos, but it's all orchestrated, and the audience becomes a part of it all.

Is it going to take some time for Man Man to adjust to life on the big stage? Or playing as an opener again, instead of a destination point for a small but fanatic base? And now a new label, on top of it all? Sure, but Man Man is a band that hasn't stopped surprising me yet. After their live set, we thought they couldn't be captured in a studio. After I heard Six Demon Bag, I thought they'd found their niche and might not keep getting better. But between their cover of Etta James' "I'd Rather Go Blind" (available on their Myspace) which manages to feel true to the original and the band's sound at the same time, and the new live track circling the internet, "Zombies," that pairs the junk band pirate shanty rhythms of Six Demon Bag with free jazz horn parts, I can only believe that this band has more places to explore than most of us can even imagine. I'm hoping that Man Man brings their A game to these sets, and I hope the Modest Mouse fans listen through it bewildered, enraptured, and intrigued. Exactly like I was.

I believe this can happen, because I believe in Man Man.

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Kids Rock

Two things have been occupying my thoughts recently.

The first started when I saw The Black Kids on the front of the New York Times Arts Section. I didn’t have a chance to read the article then – I have to stay up on the times for my job, and unfortunately that job isn’t “being an insufferable hipster” – but it’s since turned into a minor hullabaloo. Idolator chimed in, arguing against taking absolutely positive stances in favor of bands. John Darnielle put in his two cents against being absolutely absolute in any direction. And while I still haven’t read the article that started it all, I’ve been visiting the band’s myspace every so often for the last month to hear “I’m Not Going To Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You.”

The other has been Kevin Durant, and I’m convinced that the two are deeply intertwined.. First off, I swear I’m not obsessed - it’s actually not Kevin Durant per se, but Andrew Bynum’s development, the phenom that is Lebron James, and what it means to have talent and develop it.

If you haven’t heard The Black Kids yet, you should. Not just because this conversation is meaningless without the context, but because they’re pretty good. They borrow liberally from the Factory Records playbook, throwing in some Robert Smith vocals over amateurish guitar strumming and shout along hooks that all get to the point, if not with subtlety, with a whole bunch of fun.

But this band is not ready for the NBA. When I started reading up on basketball, and Kevin Durant, it took me a little while to understand thing like “Kevin Durant’s body may not be NBA ready” and “Kobe is in the prime of his career,” but now I’m starting to see how the connections between sports and music may go deeper than blog posts like these and explaining “sophomore slump” records.

In the blog buzz era, where there really isn’t enough time to hear every band that crosses the internet radar, there really isn’t much room left for nuance. Bands get lumped into good and bad dichotomies because if you equivocate on good, people will move on to listen to the unequivocally good, and most writers enjoy writing hate pieces too much to leave the benefit of the doubt open for a band without swiftly shutting it behind them. So where does this leave bands like The Black Kids - band with a lot of potential that hasn’t quite gotten there yet?

In the NBA, they’d draft them high and develop them. In the old music industry, they’d have developed locally on their own, maybe reaching beyond by touring in the style made famous more by Our Band Could Be Your Life than Almost Famous. Or maybe gotten signed to a major and done the latter. Who knows? But in the new music industry, they’re pushed into the big leagues before they’re ready, exposed to the cold harsh light of standards they can’t and really shouldn’t be expected to meet, and we wait for their failure. There’s probably an NBA reference here that I could be making, (the restrictions that led to the 2007 Draft Class were instituted for a reason, I suppose) but my hoops knowledge isn’t there yet.

I’m not saying we should go backwards – there’s a lot I like about the state of music today, especially compared to the way it used to be – but I do think it’s time to rethink how we talk about bands, and the standards we hold artists to while they’re still developing their talent. While music history is littered with debut albums that shattered everything we thought we knew about the medium, we’re not even expecting bands to do that. We’re expecting them to do it with the first demo we here from them on Myspace.

By now, I take it you’ve listened to The Black Kids, and you’ve probably got your thoughts on the songs, but put those aside for a minute. Now think about what this band could sound like on their first full length. Think about what it could sound like when they tighten up the beats and make the arrangements go somewhere, but keep the fun and the energy. Think about what it will sound like when you’re pushing those nifty bass lines through something other than your computer speakers. And think what will happen when that bass player realizes he can play half the notes and be twice as awesome. Pretty sweet, right?

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My Name Is

While there might be a couple good reasons to bring me onto a group blog, one of them isn’t my sports knowledge. When the weekly pub trivia night comes around, our team draft can usually count on me to produce solidly in the culture and current events categories, with a couple clutch saves in science and whatever random nonsense the quizmaster tosses into the mix. Usually the discussion on a sports question where we’ve hit a roadblock goes something like this:

Darryl: Couldn’t it be the Giants?
Team: You just picked the Giants because that could work as a baseball or football answer, didn’t you?
Darryl: Maybe…
Team: Well, that’s a good effort, but it really doesn’t help us figure out who won the Masters in 1986, now does it.
Darryl: That’s the one with the hoop, right?

Then, at the beginning of this summer, something strange happened. My friend Brendan decided to try talking me into becoming an NBA fan. Seeing as I was returning to the Pacific Northwest, and the draft was about to happen, what followed was a two hour long dissertation on Greg Oden, Kevin Durant, and how Kevin Garnett might be the second coming of Christ. I was intrigued and wished to subscribe to his newsletter. Which I did. In the form of YouTube-ing the beejeesus out of Kevin Durant hilight reels.

I was sold.

But this isn’t about how I got so hooked on the game that I had a minor freakout when Durant came down badly on his ankle against the Warriors, putting his regular season opener in jeopardy. I’ve come to terms with the fact that basketball is fucking cool. No, this is about how I’m this close to getting conned into caring about professional football by blogs like Kissing Suzy Kolber. And about how perhaps in a few months, I’ll be able to make a joke comparing the change in my trivia squad to the players on my fantasy basketball team. Because now I have a fantasy basketball team.

Hi, I’m Darryl and I’m a recovering sports anti-fan and I promise my next post will be more indie than this.

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Pushing Daisies Episodes 1 and 2

I'm on record as saying that, for the past few years, maybe longer, TV has been a better bet than movies. You can argue the reasons why that is till you're blue in the face--necessity of invention in the face of more competition, more room to breathe for creative people--but the cheery fact is that shows like Deadwood and The Wire routinely reach heights that even the best of movies never quite reach.

Just judging by its first two episodes, you can probably add Pushing Daisies to that list. If ever there was an example of the obsolescence of cinema in the face of television, this is it. For one, Pushing Daisies looks like a movie, with vivid colors and glitzy, surreal effects that call to mind Edward Scissorhands or The Life Aquatic. Part of this is no doubt courtesy of director Barry Sonnenfeld (the cinematographer for the Coen Brothers, as well as the director for the Men in Black franchise), but it also has a lot to do with creator Bryan Fuller's vision.

Fuller's vision is realized in the forensic fairy tale Pushing Daisies actually is. Ned (Lee Pace), a pie-maker, possesses the ability to bring people and things back to life with a touch, but if he touches them again, they die permanently. And there are consequences. If Ned lets the erstwhile corpse live longer than a minute, someone else in the vicinity has to die. Ned's not a saint, but he's not a bad guy, either, so he uses his power to solve crimes and collect reward money with his partner, Emerson Cod (Chi McBride) and his resurrected childhood sweetheart, Chuck (Anna Friel).

Still, however much I rhapsodize about the state of television today, there's still a lot of bad things about it. The glut of procedural dramas is certainly one of them, and however quirky the trappings of Pushing Daisies are, it's still yet another procedural, which means that it's got to have interesting and likable characters to survive. And goodness, it does. Friel and Pace have fabulous chemistry, and they're the main reason for the only criticism people can find in the first two episodes: it's twee, it's precious, it's like freebasing the essence of sweet. And yeah, in a show where people drive a dandelion-powered car, that may be legitimate. But when Ned erects a plexiglass partition in his car with a dishwashing glove so he and Chuck can hold hands when driving, or when Ned and Chuck stand next to each other and hold their own hands, leaving the rest to their imagination (all of which is narrated by Jim Dale, one of two people, along with Jon Miller, who could read the phone book to me and keep me enthralled), it's impossible not to be charmed.

And the sweet is nicely counterbalanced by Chi McBride's acerbic, bitter Emerson (and who would have thought that McBride was a pretty funny guy after the stale-bean soup of a show that was Boston Public?). He's got some fantastic zingers, like his "Bitch, I was in the vicinity!" after finding out that Ned resurrected Chuck for good in the pilot episode, or his wishing Ned would finally just touch Chuck because the status quo was better for business.

So yeah, get these first two episodes, not only because they're certainly of a unique, satisfying feather, but because they may be the show's best. It's rare for a show to peak in its pilot episodes, but because ABC canned Sonnenfeld for going consistently over budget after the first two episodes, that's a distinct possibility. But I wouldn't mind so much, if only because Pushing Daisies is, for its first two episodes at least, one of the best things I've ever seen.

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Modern Library Top 100: #99 - The Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy (1955)

What a foul, loathsome, pretentious novel this one was. Sebastian Dangerfield is an American expat carousing about the streets of Dublin in the aftermath of World War 2, doing the usual things people do in picaresque novels: smoke, drink, and fuck, and to hell with the consequences.

Now, I don't have a real problem with the ribald anti-hero per se, but Dangerfield is something beyond that. He beats his wife, threatens infanticide, spends all his family's food money and screws over his friends. All of this is done without the barest hint of redemption--Dangerfield doesn't really change over the course of the "plot," if such a thing could be said to exist here--it's mostly just a series of loosely connected moments. Clearly we're meant to sympathize with the Ginger Man a bit, because he often falls into some sort of reflection about how sensitive he is (ginger can be both sharp and sweet, you see), but his sensitivity is more about questioning why people loathe him and why he doesn't get everything he wants, right away.

Donleavy's prose is undeniably beautiful, and he ends many chapters with frequently affecting doggerel ("All I want / Is just one break / Which is not / My Neck"), but beautiful wrapping can't contain the rottenness within.

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Modern Library Top 100: #100 - The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington (1918)

A few years ago I was on an Orson Welles kick, which started with a chance viewing of Citizen Kane at an old girlfriend's house. Like anyone with a pulse, I was aware of the film's existence but had always brushed it off as something not worth my modern sensibilities.

Obviously I was wrong, because the film is probably the best thing ever to be committed to film. I don't feel sheepish for having doubts, though, since part of the fun of growing up in the 90s and Aughts is that there's always going to be a vast expanse of the unexplored arts to surprise and delight.

So I went through Welles' oeuvre, finding equal parts wheat and chaff until stumbling on to The Magnificent Ambersons, which was actually Welles' next effort.

(Parenthetically, Welles was obviously a colossally talented guy, but he peaked pretty early on (he was only 23 when he broadcast War of the Worlds, and only 26 when he made Citizen Kane) before becoming a minstrel for the talk show circuit.)

Anyway, to bring a long story to its point, I liked the movie enough to buy the book, and liked the book enough to read every other novel on Modern Library's list, starting from the bottom and working up.

By all rights, I should have hated The Magnificent Ambersons. It's got everything I find distasteful in a novel: highfalutin dialogue, aristocratic intrigue, long descriptions of cotillions in excrutiating detail.

But I loved it. Tarkington somehow managed to cobble together a great, compelling story about redemption and the acceptance of responsibility while simultaneously weaving in an elegy for the death of small town America by the cold hand of industrialization.

If that sounds like one serious novel, it is, but it's also quite a fun jaunt over a few hundred pages. The Magnificent Ambersons tells the story of a once proud family, whose patriarch was also the city's main powerbroker, as it struggles to keep its dignity and fortune intact against time and obsolescence. The protagonist, George Amberson Minifer, is a loathsome, entitled young punk who even the Hilton sisters would find overprivileged. Yet he's showered love by all, and Tarkington has a way of detailing it in such a way that it never feels false.

It helps that the book's other protagonist, Eugene Morgan, is the most empathetic and understanding character this side of Atticus Finch. Morgan is the erstwhile lover of George's mother and the father of George's paramour. He's also one of the captains of industry encroaching on the Amberson fortune, and he's one of the few characters in the book who's genuinely likable.

And when George loses everything, submerged in the expanding city his family once ruled, his rebirth is unexpected and appropriate. It's a good journey, an epic one, even, and I can see why Orson Welles chose to follow up Citizen Kane with it.

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