The Weak In Rock

I used to clutter up this space at the end of every year with a smart-allecky list of the top records of the year, followed by feeble attempts to find a witty way to say “I have no idea who any of these artists are, but they all suck.  Now get off my lawn ya darned kids before I fill yer britches with rock salt.”  I gave that up a couple of years ago, mainly because it was depressing me to feel so disconnected from youth culture and so obviously middle-aged and bitter about it.

Don’t get me wrong.  Being middle-aged and bitter can be very entertaining.  But I think I’d sort of shot my wad on that schtick.  Personally, I like Patton Oswalt’s approach - write a list of the best things you think are coming in the new year.  Here’s his list of music we can all look forward to in 2009:

ALBUMS

I Also Fingered a Girl in a Kiddie Pool of Wesson Oil
Katy Perry
In another collection of songs written for her by the editors of MAXIM Magazine, Katy Perry tries to stretch five minutes of titillation into a careers-worth of relevancy.

Night Grooves
Fugazi
Ian McKaye shocked his fans with this catchy, can’t-stay-in-your-seat collection of dance tunes.   Includes “Shimming the Beat”, “Dew-It Witchu” and “Positive Power Slide”

Gimme Dat
2-Fly
The Wyoming rap corridor finally found its Dr. Dre.

Go Get ‘Em, President Smokey
Toby Keith
Toby’s misguided tribute to our new incoming president effectively ended his career, but what a way to go!

A Very Metal Arbor Day
Mastodon, Anthrax and 13 other bands remind everyone to plant a tree and worship Satan.

Nice.

Patton, you’re an evil man.  Please come over to my house for dinner.  I’ll make steak.

I particularly like his skewering of Katy Perry.   Her hit from last year had all the depth of a latrine dug by a parapalegic Boy Scout.  The funny thing is there was a feature story on the wires last week about how *shock* Katy Perry’s new video featured her making out with a guy.  When she moves to Tijuana after she’s blown her royalties on hot pants and eyeliner she’ll make a new video about kissing an equus asinus.

Speaking of Jackasses - if only Toby Keith’s demise in the public eye could be so poetic and appropriate.

Seriously Patton.  Call me.  Steak’s on me.

Technorati Tags: Patton Oswalt, Katy Perry, Fugazi, Ian McKaye, Toby Keith, Mastodon, Anthrax, Boy Scout, Tijuana, equus asinus

We bought Ryan a Wii for Xmas.  That is to say, I visited pretty much every mall in the East Bay and eventually found a store that wasn’t sold out of them.  For a day, Ryan thought I ruled.  Then he went back to his usual pre-teen programming.

At first, we like the Wii as a family.  It came with a nifty game that featured simulated bowling.  Karen still rules the roost on that one.  And I am the all-time home run champ in the baseball game that is on the Wii Sports disk.  Fun.

Then darkness fell.  Or should I say, Ryan bought Guitar Hero.

I’d messed around with Guitar Hero before but never really tried to play it.  Suffice to say, I rule at virtual guitar slinging.

There’s one problem.

The consensus among my fellow musicians is that if you’re a halfway decent guitar player in meat-life then you’ll blow goats at Guitar Hero.  Oops.  I’ve beaten the game on the easy level and am 3/4 of the way through it on medium.  I even got a 300 note streak on Metallica’s “One”.  Crap.

I’m a hack.

Side note - pretty clever on the part of the makers of Guitar Hero to fill it with classic rock anthems.  Way to keep The Kids ™ on the straight and narrow musically.

Side side note - I unlocked the video of John Lydon and Steve Jones talking about rerecording “Anarchy In The U.K.” for Guitar Hero.  Advancing age has turned Johnny Rotten into a softy.  The man admits to his gaming addiction in the video and that he loves Guitar Hero.  I would pay real money to see John Lydon rocking out to “Slow Ride.”

Technorati Tags: Wii, Wii Sports, Guitar Hero, Metallica, John Lydon, Steve Jones, Anarchy In The U.K., Johnny Rotten, Slow Ride

I laughed so hard it hurt.  Enjoy…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InZNBcJTmWs 

Thanks to Tom “High Strung” Young for the link.

One does not typically expect to be bedridden with a 100 degree fever in early August, but this is precisely where I found myself this Saturday. Plans for yard work, long bike rides, trips to Home Depot to pick accent colors for my upcoming interior painting project - *poof* - all in a blaze of nasal congestion, a sore throat and the aforementioned fever.

I was not alone in my misery, mind you. Kid #2 brought the ick home with her from daycare. Kid #1 succumbed to said ick on Friday. So, come Saturday morning when Ryan should have been hatching plans to slay the Morlocks that apparently live in our southern side-lot and I should have been mowing lawns, spraying weeds and contemplating a leisurely ride on my trusty steed, we were both instead pretty much unable to do a lot more than moan and fart.

Many years ago, when I was a bachelor living alone in San Francisco I invented a ritual of watching a favorite movie any time I was laid up by the ick. Back in those days I’d dust off my ill-gotten copy of Citizen Kane and watch it and wonder at how any movie could be so brilliant. Then I’d take twice the recommended dose of Nyguil (mind you, this was back in the day when Nyquil actually contained some semi-powerful pseudo narcotics) sleep until the following morning and be miraculously cured. After dozens of viewings of Citizen Kane I actually grew tired of watching it. I still think it’s the greatest film ever made and will debate this point until my lips fall off with anyone who cares to, but I’ve watched the damned thing now so many times that when I’m in a diminished capacity I can’t enjoy it. I think too damned much when I watch Kane now.

To resolve this predicament and still achieve my trusty miracle cure from my bouts with recurrent Ebola I switched to somewhat less weighty fare several years ago when I bought my first copy of the Star Wars Trilogy. Yes, that’s right. You read that correctly. I said my first copy of the Star Wars Trilogy. The first set I bought was a set of VHS tapes of the original theatrical cut of each Episodes IV, V and VI. Naturally the print used in these copies was inferior, so when Lucasfilm released the restored (and enhanced - as in the set with extra digitally re-done footage) I, being one of those 11 year old boys who saw Star Wars for the first time in a movie theater in 1977 and had my world well and truly rocked by it, had to buy the new set. Of course, this set was also on VHS tape, so when I got a DVD player and the enhanced version of the Trilogy was released on DVD in Widescreen it took me all of ten seconds to plop down my check card at Best Buy and gobble it up.

The next set of Star Wars DVDs I purchased were the second Trilogy - the prequel - Episodes I, II and III. Yes, I too was pained by Jar Jar Binks and the Hop Sing caricatures of the Trade Federation. But must I remind you that I’m a first generation Star Wars nerd. When I saw Episode I for the first time I was so stunned by the gross ethic stereotyping in some of the characters that I almost didn’t like the film. And my companion in the theater was vocal in her dislike of it. But since this was a Star Wars film I went back and saw it again. And without the shock I experienced the first time, I saw the underlying intelligence of the film, and was overwhelmed by the elegance of the fight scene with Darth Maul at the end. In the end I decided that not only did I like Episode I, I loved it. And I loved the other two films in the second trilogy even more, especially the final film whose ending actually made me cry the first time I saw it.

So, I had in my collection all six episodes of the greatest space opera ever told. But something was missing. The DVDs of the first Trilogy were not the films I’d experienced in the theater. Sure, the underlying plot and major characters were unchanged, but George Lucas had used these films to test out ideas and techniques he was going to use in the second Trilogy. Some bits were cool, but some parts were just dorky or downright stupid looking. Then, bless my soul - Lucasfilm released all three original films on DVD in their original theatrical cut with the prints restored. Do I own these? Does the Pope shit in the woods?

So, this past Saturday as Ryan and I suffered under the yoke of microbial terror I turned to Ryan and said, “so, which Star Wars movie do you want to watch?” We ended up watching all three of the prequel episodes in a row. In terms of treatment for our respective infections I’d say this dosage was pretty excessive. To be honest, once Episode III: Revenge of the Sith(damn that’s a cool title) was rolling the closing credits Ryan was antsy as a June bug on a hot frying pan and my brain genuinely hurt, but we both awoke this morning feeling quite a bit better than we had, and darned if I don’t still love all three films. Are they flawless? No, but neither were the original Star Wars films. I am honestly at a loss for why so many people who loved the original Star Wars Trilogy not only claim to dislike the prequels, but express utter hatred, violent hatred for them.

On his new album Patton Oswalt, a man whose work I thoroughly enjoy and a guy I’d love to have a beer with some day, devotes a segment to a bit about how he’s a rotten person because if he was suddenly given the power to travel back in time he wouldn’t stop Hitler or prevent JFK’s assassination. No, he’d go back to the early 1990s and kill George Lucas to prevent him from making the prequels. The bit is funny, but it’s funny mostly because I’ve heard similar sentiments from so many people.

Chuck Klosterman wrote a pretty fine article for Esquire a few years ago in which he talks about the absurdity of people feeling that something as basically abstract as “your country” or “culture” could betray you. And Klosterman rightly points out how ridiculous this is. Betrayal is a horrible thing. Possibly the most horrid thing one person can do to another. It is not, however, something a nation or culture can do to anyone. Star Wars fans, I’m afraid, take their attachment to those first three films way too seriously. They forget that they’re just movies. They signify nothing and are ultimately trivial. Similarly fans of the Sopranos got themselves absurdly into bunched-up-panty-mode when that series ended without any sort of meaningful conclusion. (Of course I can’t fail to mention that the concept of TV series having a conclusion of any sort is a relatively new fangled invention. Gunsmoke ran of a bazillion years and went off the air without anything being resolved. Likewise series like Hawaii-5-O and Marcus Welby, MD. The concept of a series having a conclusion really got traction with M*A*S*H, a show that shouldn’t have had any linear plot to it at all - unless the writers wanted to try to explain why the doctors and nurses of the 4077th had all managed to age 10 years while serving a single tour of duty in a war that only lasted four years. And this concept of TV series having meaningful narrative conclusions should have well and truly jumped the shark with either the premature conclusion of Star Trek: Enterprise, which was wrapped up so neat and tidy it lacked any dramatic interest at all; or the conclusion of Friends where we have to endure the ridiculousness of the breaking open of the damned foosball table to save Joey and Chandler’s pet duck and chick; or somebody should have gotten the point when Seinfeld, a show openly about nothing, was forced to have a concluding episode, which few people got and even fewer people liked. If a show has an actual narrative arc it makes sense for it to have an ending, if it’s just 7 seasons of episodes to fill up a later syndication run then it really can just not have any more episodes.)

Something is all out of whack when millions of people care more about having a conventional conclusion to a TV series than they do about what their country’s monetary policy is, or when our soldiers are going to come home and stop being paid to murder brown people in some third rate banana republic in the middle east. It doesn’t bother me that Patton Oswalt made a joke about wanting to travel back in time to kill George Lucas and stop him from making the prequels. It does bother me that when he says that line in his show it gets the biggest and heartiest laugh of the night.

Maybe it’s me. About once every six months I find myself arguing with someone who wants to convince me that I shouldn’t think Back In Black is the greatest hard rock record of all time because Bon Scott was too dead to sing on it. I don’t make excuses for what I like. I didn’t spend hours a few weekends ago seeking out mp3s of Pat Travers’ records from the late 1970s out of some desire to be weird or overt. I really like Pat Travers. I really like the Star Wars prequels. If someone gave me the power to travel back in time and change one thing, I’d honestly leave it all exactly the way it is.

Technorati Tags: Citizen Kane, Nyguil, Ebola, Star Wars Trilogy, Lucasfilm, Jar Jar Binks, Darth Maul, George Lucas, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Patton Oswalt, Chuck Klosterman, Esquire, the Sopranos, Gunsmoke, Hawaii-5-O, Marcus Welby, MD, M*A*S*H, Star Trek: Enterprise, Friends, Seinfeld, Back In Black, Bon Scott, Pat Travers

For the most part I think Senator James Inhofe is a jackass. His kneejerk, reactionary stance on global climate change is little more than an ostrich sticking his head in the sand. But, as the headline says, when you’re right you’re right.

Inhofe’s latest rant is dead on the money. He’s challenged publicity-hunting, self-absorbed media celebrities like Sheryl Crow to put their proverbial money where their mouths are regarding their own carbon footprints. I agree. If you’re going to spout off about a political or social cause you’ve got to be willing to go along with what you’re suggesting, nay demanding of others. So, Sheryl, time to pack up the tour buses, stop hopping on airplanes to jet around the globe for personal appearances and junkets to celebrity vacation paradises. Time to do what you’re insisting everyone else in the US do - make a much smaller personal carbon footprint.

I’ve been down this road before many times in my professional life. I’ve been volunteered on to so many so-called “green” committees at work it makes me gag just thinking about it. In each and every instance all that was ever discussed was how to most efficiently collect and sort our office waste (primarily white paper and aluminum beverage cans) and redirect it out of the waste stream into the recycling stream. Now don’t get me wrong, recycling is a fine thing, but it pales as a waste reduction method in comparison to simply reducing overall consumption. Want to produce less waste? Consume less stuff. Likewise, want to put less carbon into the air? Then burn less hydrocarbon fuel.

Actually, the single dumbest group of enviro-hypocrites I’ve yet met were a contingent of punk rock musicians and fans I used to interact with online and in person on a regular basis. They were quick to preach to and harass their peers about the evils of oil companies while each and every one of them was actively contributing to the success of the petrochemicals industry by either amassing gigantic record/CD collections or producing piles of records/CDs for sale. I’d say Sheryl Crow is the mainstream pop culture equivalent of my former punk rock pals. She’s a very public example of the nitwittery that afflicts Hollywood and the music business.

As I’ve said many times - any time you find yourself being preached at by a pop musician about a social or political cause you really need to take a step back and consider the source for a moment. Musicians are not renowned for their thoughtfulness or vast intellectual capacity for reason or logic. There are exceptions, of course, but for the most part rock stars are not a good source of balanced, reasoned analysis of the troubles of the day. Their business is entertainment and appealing to broad, rather unrefined emotions.

Look at it this way - the smartest guy in the Ramones was Joey, but he generally wasn’t responsible for writing their most memorable songs. That task was undertaken by Dee Dee, who was if not mentally retarded surely very mentally dysfunctional, and Johnny, who was an outright and unabashed fascist. Or, if you want a more mainstream example - The smartest guy in U2 is quite obviously Adam Clayton, who keeps his mouth shut, does business under a normal name, wears sensible clothing and is married to a supermodel, not Bono, who has his heart in the right place but who I am almost positive is about as bright as a small appliance bulb but who insists in weighing in loudly on a new cause every decade.

Maybe this is a non-issue. Senator Inhofe is a moron. Sheryl Crow is a moron. Maybe they cancel each other out. But even a broken clock is right once a day, as they say.

Technorati Tags: Senator James Inhofe, Sheryl Crow, personal carbon footprint, the Ramones, U2, Adam Clayton, Bono