Jesse Thorn, America’s Radio Sweetheart, is the man behind Public Radio’s The Sound of Young America, where he interviews wonderful creative people such as Jonathan Katz (the man behind Dr. Katz, professional therapist), Swamp Dogg, Sa-Ra Creative Partners, Ira Glass, The Upright Citizen’s Brigade, the drummer from Deerhoof, Steve Albini, Brendan Small, They Might Be Giants, etc, etc, etc. Yet, as great as The Sound of Young America is, even better is Jordan Jesse Go, Jesse Thorn’s rambling, aimless podcast which basically functions solely as a vehicle for witty banter between Thorn and his former TSOYA co-host, Jordan Morris, boy detective. But don’t take my word for it!
Good evening, everyone! I would like to direct all of you to the following link: Soundike
Notice anything strange about that? If you don’t, go here: CLLCT
Now do you see anything strange? Oh my - they’re selling my CD! For money! When it’s obviously free right there!
I’m slightly honored, but mostly annoyed. What really bothers me the most is that they have the following quote on their website:
“Our music service is absolutely legal in all countries and all states.”
Like, woah. That’s a pretty bold statement! I would like to humbly disagree; just because it’s legal in Tijuana or Taiwan or wherever the hell Soundike (what the hell kind of name is that, anyway?) is located, doesn’t mean it’s legal in other places.
So, what do I do? I call piracy! Yeah, you heard me right. Soundike is reverse-pirating my free music and trying to make money off of it! I demand retribution!
So, Soundike, I’m giving you until 12 PM tomorrow night to compensate me, or I shall call the RIAA!
My demanded payment? I demand a hundred well-groomed kittens, delivered to my house promptly! Also, they must be carried to my home via fancy couch - any crates and heads will roll.
SOUNDIKE, BEWARE! YOUR TIME HAS COME, THE SECRET OWL HATH SPOKEN!
The Strangers! It’s out now! In theatres! If you have trouble sleeping, you need to see this, stat! I had a nice nap during this “terrifying” movie.
I’m not sure what’s wrong with people these days. Quite possibly, the ten million dollar budget for this movie went completely towards paying bloggers to write good reviews. Because I can’t really see anything else they could have used it for.
Basically, the plot is this: there isn’t one! Oh hey, it’s a couple at some house in some place! Lookie there! Oh, wow! They get killed by three people in masks, with no motive or anything! None at all! I assumed they were going to live in the house, or fucking something, but nope! They just felt like killing some people. For kicks, I guess.
Of course, though, because the movie is an hour long, they can’t have the people die too quickly! First we have boring, awkward scenes with the couple. Not talking, just sitting around and doing normal shit in an irritating way. And then! My god, a girl is knocking on the door! TERROR.
From there, the rest of the movie is nothing but blurry shots of absolutely nothing. Every character in this movie walks around at snail-speed, as if the director is standing behind them the entire time, motioning “NO! SLOWER! WE’RE ONLY TEN MINUTES INTO THE MOVIE!”
There’s very little dialogue between the characters, and the most noise you’re going to hear is Liv Tyler crying/screaming at absolutely nothing, or creepy noises (that will eventually give you a headache). There’s no action. There’s no artistic value in this movie, no interesting shots or panoramas or anything.
Everything about this movie is terrible. This is easily the worst movie I’ve ever seen. Just…damn. And shame on those bloggers that’ve given this a good review.
For the majority of 2008, I had been waiting to see a movie that makes me lose my shit. A couple of them came very close. I can fully acknowledge my absolute adoration for Michel Gondry’s 3rd masterpiece in a row, Be Kind Rewind, as well as David Gordon Green’s 2nd best film to date, Snow Angels. But there is serious bias there since those are two of my favorite directors working today and I expected their films to rock my socks off. Although I certainly enjoyed watching both Iron Man and Indiana Jones, neither will be re-watched or deconstructed upon further viewing. They sat well with me, I digested them just fine, but I do have a preference to the types of films that I call ‘favorites.’ I have no qualms with leaving my IQ at the door, and relishing in good old-fashioned summer escapist entertainment like the two titles mentioned previous, but I also wasn’t thinking about them after I walked out of the theater other than acknowledging the impeccable chase sequences and the otherworldly charisma of Robert Downey, Jr. This year’s been tough on me, or I’ve been tough on it when it comes to my 2nd love, the cinema.
So out of the blue comes this movie called The Fall. Now, once again, I don’t expect most peeps to get behind me on this one and declare it one of the year’s best films the way I am. It’s a pretentious arthouse film that doesn’t have peppy one-liners or CGI monkeys helping Shia LeBouf get that crystal skull. It’s flawed for certain, but no film this year intoxicated me and left me breathless the way this one did. It’s more of a visual experience rather than an emotional one, but that’s the beauty of watching movies. Directors like Cronenberg and Tarantino can hit on all levels, but more often than not, there are individual facets of a film that move me so much, that I forgive the glaring flaws. I am incredibly moved by the language of David Mamet movies, despite the fact that the acting is stilted (why does he keep casting his wife?) and the direction is unspectacular (the final scenes of Redbelt were horribly constructed). Sometimes I’ll see a movie that is so fiercely manipulative, but because the acting is stellar, I love it nonetheless. The Fall falls under a category where I fell in love with its imagination, rather than the story or screenplay.
Essentially, it plays almost like a twisted version of The Princess Bride crossbred with Pan’s Labyrinth, despite not quite being as memorable as either of those influences. The thing about The Fall is the backstory. The director, Tarsem, spent eight years making this thing, and filmed on location in obscured places all across the world. Also, he allowed the majority of the scenes featuring a child actor, to be improvised, allowing the story to unfold through the child’s perspective. (Robert Rodriguez failed miserably at doing something similar by letting his kids help compose a screenplay with The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava-Girl). The movie’s story revolves around Roy Walker, a bedridden stuntman in a hospital who befriends a fellow patient, a portly and curious young girl called Alexandria. To occupy the time and to manipulate her to his own advantage, he weaves a vivid, fantastical story of exotic lands. He conjures up a group of five heroes: an Indian, an ex-slave, an explosive expert, a masked bandit and, in a bit of revisionist history, famed evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin. They unite to fight a common enemy, Governor Odious, who has banished them all and caused them serious strife. Interspersed with the tale he tells, is the reality both of them face. Her traumatic childhood featuring a farmer father who dealt with opposing forces, and Roy’s own enemy, the man who took his true love away from him.
But there’s something that snuck up on me towards the end of this movie. I became emotionally involved in the characters, despite the characters themselves not becoming fully fleshed out. The story world and the real world don’t always interconnect flawlessly, but that’s due to the fact that neither of its creators are masterful at constructing a consistent narrative. Plus one of them is doped up most of the time on morphine. There’s a scene towards the end where Roy divulges to Alexandria, his reasons for befriending her, that tore me up inside. I think it was just the fact that both characters wanted to escape inside the fantasy they’d made together in storyland so badly, rather than deal with their pasts and the harsh reality they both continue to face. The ending itself mirrors Be Kind Rewind in a collective appreciation of artistic expression itself.
Roger Ebert calls The Fall, “a celebration of the imagination” and I couldn’t agree more. For a guy who loves equally the work of David Lynch and Terry Gilliam, this struck a happy balance between the worlds that those directors create in a way that is harmonious. If you take away the story, then at the very least, you have frame after frame of astonishing cinematography to the point where you go ‘how the fuck did they do that?’ Tarsem has made one other film, in which style suffocated the substance to the point where it became unbearable to watch. It was essentially The Silence of The Lambs meets a bad Freddy Krueger sequel, and that’s not a complement. The Cell, featured J-Lo running around in loose clothes as a psychiatrist (!) that infiltrates people’s dreams to help them deal with schizophrenia and/or post-traumatic stress. Low and behold, she must enter the mind of a serial killer (there’s the tagline right there). For those who have not seen the movie, Dreamscape, it’s safe to say that I’m shocked that Tarsem didn’t get sued for copyright infringement. Dreamscape, being the better film, albeit very dated. But let’s not dismiss Tarsem on the basis of his debut, because his follow-up is anything but a sophomore slump. It’s one of those rare experiences that makes the outside world seem new and fresh again, not unlike the time I walked out of seeing Terrence Malick’s The New World a couple years back. I know most folks won’t feel the same way, saying that once again, Tarsem is a director of style and very little substance. Personally, I think he’s made an incredible step-up from making a bland and repulsive serial killer movie to The Fall, which is uplifting, gorgeous, and makes you fall in love with the moviegoing experience all over again. What can you say about a movie that features swimming elephants, an island of pristine white sand in the middle of a sparkling ocean and a massive labyrinth of gold? This is the Land of Oz told through the eyes of a visionary, and it’s a little bit more accessible than David Lynch’s take on the fairytale (with his 2nd best film, Wild at Heart). Time will tell if Tarsem is going to shake the foundations with audiences, and I’m almost certain The Fall will not be a mainstream success, but that shouldn’t deter you from running to the nearest multiplex to seek it out. Who needs hallucinogens when there are movies like these? Did I mention that it’s produced / presented by David Fincher and Spike Jonze?
Justin Waddell is one of the hosts of the CHUD.com podcast as well as being a sometimes contributer to CHUD.com. He’s also written some of the funniest blog posts/short humorous essays ever. Recently, on his CHUD blog, he wrote an entry called “Turtle Rescue” that was so fucking funny I had to share it with you. Be sure to bookmark his blog, cuz you’re going to want to read everything this guy writes. So without further ado, Turtle Rescue:
Hey.
On my way to work the other day, I spotted a turtle in the middle of the road. That’s a weird, unexpected sight - like seeing a peacock on your way home from work, which also happened to me a while back. Maybe my car spits out some kind of Dr. Doolittle-vibe or something. If so, that’s some special feature that was included, care of dealer oversight. I bought my station wagon as bare bones as possible. My in-dash cassette deck stands as a rock-solid testament to this fact.
Anyway, I had basically made it to work when I saw the turtle. The shelled gentleman was smack in the middle of the second to last corporate road I navigate before leaping from my car and sprinting into work to quickly begin a glorious workday. The street the turtle was crossing typically isn’t very busy - but still, what is he? Crazy? I drove past him, instantly felt guilt settle in, and decided to turn my heap-on-wheels around. Now, it would have been pretty exciting to perform one of those screeching turns you see expertly executed in old 70s cop shows. Or even some kind of balletic turn, like the car was on a lazy Susan. I wish I could brag about accomplishing either kind, but my turnaround was pretty long-winded. Picture the blog you are currently reading as a car turning, and you should have some idea.
By the time I got back to the turtle, he had backtracked. He was at the side of the road, and his shell was up against this fairly tall curb that he had no possible way of climbing. And, I guess knowing this - that somehow his decision-making skills had let him down - he had emptied his bladder in terror. He looked like a tossed, green water balloon. This, of course, broke my heart. I mean, I was already gearing up to rescue him, but now it was imperative. The tiny pool of piss he was standing in underscored the fact that my instincts had indeed been correct on this one. This was not some devil-may-care critter crossing the road like some reptilian badass who couldn’t give a shit about what lay in wait for him beyond his comfy habitat. You know, like this guy:
This was a turtle that, like so many of us have done, simply made a bad life choice.
So, I got out of my car and headed towards the little guy who, as I got closer, didn’t look so little, really. He was mid-sized to kind of large. And he looked pretty weathered and old. Plus, he was cornered – not so much by any obstacles (aside from the curb), but by his galaxy-given slowness and his next to nothing reflexes. Surrounded by his own urine, all his faults in relief, I cautiously approached him. Yep. Cautiously. I mean, with all of these little details rolling around in my mind (old, cornered, large, alive), I’ll sadly admit that I started to get a little nervous. I thought, “Don’t some turtles bite? Snapping turtles, right? What does that snapping part mean?” “What if it attacked?” I’m thinking. “Do turtles hiss?” – hearing any animal hiss always gets to me. And then, a flash - what if someone saw me running from a hissing, pissing turtle? Cell phone video begets YouTube begets plastic surgery to change my face. In summary, this was not a proud moment for either of us.
Eventually, my heart won out. I swallowed my sad fear and I grabbed the old guy with two hands…like I was grabbing a big sandwich or a dictionary. Of course, I made sure to keep his possibly-dangerous head full of possibly-sharp turtle fangs pointed away from my body. As soon as I put my hands on the guy, he tucked in. Which, I’ll admit, was exactly what I was gambling on. He went indoors. He hermited up. I wanted to hug the guy.
As I carried the turtle away from the street and over the curb (which I managed in one step, thank you), I felt a bond form between us. Me and him, united inside this gaggle of boring corporate buildings, headed towards a man-made lake. And, I sympathized with him. Because, honestly, the lake didn’t look great. It looked small – to me, at least. Confining. And this turtle, maybe he was sick of the same old. Or maybe there were troubles at home or something. Maybe he was fleeing a bad relationship. Or maybe even some kind of predator or turtle bully was on the loose down there. And maybe this (currently) tucked-in reptile decided to pick up sticks and strike out on his lonesome. Take his chances on the new, the unknown. Maybe he pictured a world full of lakes - better lakes, bigger, cleaner lakes. A clean start. A starched shirt. A warm rock, baked to perfection by the sun’s rays, to lean his tired shell against. And then, I mean, it must have taken him a long time to get to the road on those little radish legs. Hours into the journey, exhausted, reality set in that he might as well be in fucking outer space. It must have been like living a waking nightmare. Sounds up close that he’d only ever heard at a distance while lounging on a pitiful micro-beach that surrounds the lake’s waters. Strange objects, way beyond his understanding, quickly attaching themselves to those sounds. The world like a fucking maze of regrets. Every single thing programmed to end his life. It must have been the single worst experience of his entire existence.
So, to cheer him up, since I was holding him like a sandwich, I pretended to take a bite. And he giggled. -Justin Waddell
I told you he was fucking funny. Now I’d like to leave you with a random song that you should love, Donovan’s “Young Girl Blues”. Donovan is a totally underrated British Invasion artist, best known for his 1966 singles “Mellow Yellow” and Sunshine Superman”, but he’s written a ton of amazing folk songs that rarely get the attention they deserve. So enjoy him.
For a while there TGIF was ruled under the iron fist of Thomas Miller and Robert Boyett. Miller-Boyett first hit it big with Happy Days, a show that I want to hate, but can’t because of how much it contributed to American culture. It contributed Ron Howard, who’d go on to narrate amazing television shows and direct utterly mediocre films. It gave us Weezer’s best music video. It gave us the term “Jump the shark”. Most of all, it gave us the Happy Days theme song, finally making the days of the week fun again.
After Happy Days, they had a couple more hits in the 80’s with Bosom Buddies and Perfect Strangers. But I was hardly alive in the 80’s, so fuck those shows. To me the golden age of Miller Boyett was in the early to mid 90’s with TGIF. They hit it big with Full House, a conservative television show about three men living together in San Fransisco. Oh irony. That show was super boring, but it was followed by Miller-Boyett’s masterpiece, Family Matters.
Family Matters is a spin-off of both Perfect Strangers and Die Hard. So shit was destined to be weird from the get go. It was groundbreaking from the start, setting a record for ugliest cast ever in an American sitcom. Harriet looked like Mrs. Huxtable, except a few steps to the left on the evolutionary charts. Not that Carl minded. I’m not saying Reginald Veljohnson is gay, but according to IMDB, he enjoys “singing and dancing in his spare time.” Imagine Carl Winslow singing and dancing through his house and tell me that wouldn’t be the gayest shit you’ve ever seen. But Family Matter’s greatest achievement was it’s spectacular descent into utter lunacy. From cloning to the Nutty Professor inspired “Stephan” to rocket packs to time machines to goddamned evil ventriloquist dummy versions of Carl and Steve, the show spun out of control in a completely glorious way. And don’t get me started on that theme song. Christ, that was a great theme song. I always tear up at “it’s the bigger love of the faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamily”, without fail.
Miller-Boyett hit it’s peak with Family Matters, but as quickly as they rose, they fell even faster with the abysmal Step-by-Step. I imagine the pitch for Step-by-Step went something like “what if all the characters in The Brady Bunch were trashy and unlikable?” I feel sorry for those kids. They had Patrick Duffy and Suzanne Somers as parents. JT, Dana, Al, Karen, Mark and the ever personality-deficient Brendan had no choice but to end up awful people. That shit’s genetic, my friend. But the worst offense the show committed was trying to stuff it’s own brand of Urkel down viewers throats: Cody. Code-man. Dude! Ch-yeah! Danaburger! He combined annoying catchphrase-ism with an annoying voice and a uncontrollable lust for his cousin, Dana. Dude could kickbox though, I’ll grant him that.
As Step-By-Step destroyed Miller-Boyett productions (not to mention Lorimar productions), another show took the proud torch of TGIF and held it high. That show was Boy Meets World. Boy Meets World is the greatest television show in the history of televison shows. What makes it particularly special to me is that it was one of the first shows to allow it’s characters to age. Hell, that was the focal point of the show. Shawn and Cory are now in high school! Cory is now dating Topanga! They’re going to college! Cory and Topanga are getting married and making everyone uncomfortable by constantly making jokes about fucking! That shit was groundbreaking.
Speaking of groundbreaking, Boy Meets World featured a casual interracial relationship between the characters of Shawn and Angela. The best part about it was that it was never the focus of a show, never a big deal to anyone, and they never tried to play it up, even for an easy “you so white!” joke. It was just a pretty white guy and pretty black girl getting together. And that’s beautiful! Angela wasn’t the stereotypical African-American woman you normally see on television. She never snapped her fingers and said “no you di-in’t!”. As far as I know, she hates Koolaid. In fact, now that I think about it, she was a pretty boring character. No real personality at all. Is that more or less progressive than a stereotypical sassy black woman? If she was a teenaged Jackée, would that be better or worse? These are questions I’m not qualified to answer, but I am fully-qualified to say I’d tap that. I’d tap Topanga too, though, cuz I like a little meat on the bones. My father always said that an hourglass was better than an egg timer. Then he’d beat me. But above all I’d tap Jack and Eric’s roommate Rachel.
Goddamn, Rachel was a dream. That redheaded Goddess may have been a thinly veiled excuse for eye-candy, but boy was she FUN! Did you see how bright red her hair is? That’s really bright! How FUN! What a perfect counterpart to the wackiness that is latter-day Eric Matthews. Eric’s transformation was much like Family Matters, going more and more bizarre til it began to bend the very reality of the show. I think at one point he was a caveman who talked to squirrels. Thank God they had William Daniels to lend the show his gravitas. Mention Mr. Feeny to anyone age 16 to 21, and they will at least smile. They may even hug you. It’s like a 90’s youth fraternity. The same way previous generations were linked by their experiences in Vietnam, kids of the 90’s are united by their common love of watching Shawn yell “it’s because I LIVE IN A TRAILER, isn’t it?”, run his fingers through his hair, and storm out the Mathew’s kitchen while Mrs. Matthews covers her mouth and looks at her husband, who just frowns and shakes his head. What will he do about that boy?
Boy Meets World ran out of steam towards the end, mostly because they unable to accurately portray the decadence of college life under the watchful eye of TGIF, but we grew up with these guys. We were there when Shawn learned the truth about his real mother. When Shawn’s dad died. When Shawn joined a cult. When Shawn got caught up in the Philadelphia’s illegal undergound street fighting tournaments. Jesus, Shawn was fucked up. If tragedy visited me as frequently as it visited Mr. Hunter, I too would run my fingers through my hair at every possible opportunity. I too would grow a goatee. I too woul-UNDERPANTS! Wow. That came out of nowhere. Now I can’t stop watching it. Hypnotizing.
Knock Knock.
Who’s there?
Aunty.
Aunty who?
Aunty-climatic ending to this blog post
If you own a computer and you own an internet vehicle device, and you watch movies, and you’re interested in movies, and you want to hear news and rumors about upcoming movies and you also want to hear movie people’s opinion on movies that are currently at the movies, then you should look no further than www.CHUD.com, which, IMDB and Netflix aside, is the most wonderful place for cinema on the internet machine. It’s got writers who are either intelligent, funny, assholes, a combination of all three, or Phil Owen. To be fair to Phil Owen, he’s got a more impressive head of hair than any of ‘em.
Devin, the Editor-in-Chief/Self-loathing nerd/Kubrick lookalike of CHUD.com has started a column entitled
“Chudsploitation” that I’m really really excited about, all about exploitation films. Exploitation films are films that exploit shocking or sensational content to attract audiences. They range from Shaft to Faces of Death to Meet the Spartans (which exploits the fact that Americans aren’t really picky about what movies they watch, as long as it’s not too long to make them late for something). Famous balding fugly awesome fugly director Quentin Tarantino has been a champion of them for sometime, culminating in his box-office failure/artistically dubious/undisputably awesome collaboration with Robert Rodriguez Grindhouse, in which his testicles melted off. Since then, the interest in these “grindhouse films” has boomed into an all-time slightly higher.
According to Devin, the column’s goal will be to “write about the sickest, strangest movies ever made, films with almost no redeeming value.” And when he means sick and strange, he doesn’t mean something simple like The Truth About Cats and Dogs or I Spit on Your Grave. Too easy. His first entry was on a film entitled Goodbye Uncle Tom about “An Italian documentary crew [that] goes back in time to the pre-Civil War American South to document the excesses and horrors of slavery, intercut with modern riot footage and pro-violence black power musings. In Italian.” According to Devin the film is “racist in every possible direction, brutally misogynistic and leeringly cruel”. I don’t know about you, but my ears perk up anytime the phrases “racist” and “leeringly cruel”. Must have been all those years I grew up in Texas*.
Even though Devin is a hell of a writer and entertaining as a chimp having sex with another chimp and them both having a cigarette afterwards, you don’t even have to take his word for it. Apparently the American edit** is apparently up on Youtube, in parts. I don’t know how long it will be up for, but I have a feeling that filmmakers Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi aren’t the type to troll Youtube to make sure their work aren’t being pirated. I know I say this all the time, but I wish NBC was more like Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi. Anyway, here are some links to offend you. Even if you don’t plan on watching the whole film, I’d reccomend skipping around various scenes just to learn how awful it can feel to be a member of the human race. I’d note that they aren’t safe for work, but really, they aren’t safe for anything. Shit is vile.
*Texas is in close proximity to Alabama, which is where racism comes from.
**The American edit is dubbed and may have some cuts from the original Italian version. Not that it isn’t already utterly depraved, but if you’re a completist, I thought you should know.
I know this fellow over in England. He’s a complete bastard. Almost as much as I am. His name is Spike. Do you like brief sentences? I like them. Spike has a blog. See blog run. Run blog, run.
Sorry about that, I haven’t been myself since I quit smoking. Anyway, Spike’s blog is called What Spike Likes and it contains meditations on everything from Vampire Weekend to the Hiroki Yamaguchi 2004 masterpiece”Hellevator”. I wish he’d refrain from other content, since the internet needs a good blog that is exclusively about Vampire Weekend and Hellevator, but I wish a lot of things, none of them ever ever come true. Pity.
Anyway, check his shit out because despite being an absolute cunt the brother can write, and he knows shit. And there ain’t nothing wrong with a brother sharing shit with his fellow brothers. Even if he’s white.
I’d like to conclude with my favorite knock-knock joke:
