Posted in 2 Broke Girls, 30 Rock, America's Next Top Model, Animal Practice, Archer, Ben and Kate, Bob's Burgers, Comic Book Men, Don't Trust the B--- in Apartment 23, Elementary, Face Off, Glee, Go On, Grimm, Hot Set, How I Met Your Mother, Key and Peele, Modern Family, Neighbors, New Girl, Once Upon a Time, Parenthood, Parks and Recreation, Project Runway, Reaper, The Big Bang Theory, The Inbetweeners, The Mindy Project, The New Normal, The Office, The Simpsons, thirtysomething, Tosh.0, Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell, TV 2012, Underemployed, Up All Night on November 18, 2012| 1 Comment »
This season signals the end of a lot of shows, shows that have been with us for a long time. This season also promised a slew of new comedies that were going to be amazing (I know they promise that every year, but some of them got really strong praise from objective sources). And yet, here we are, half way through the season (Grimm is taking a Mid-Winter break or some such thing) and I didn’t really like anything new.
Next season is shaping up to be rather a wasteland. (more…)
Posted in Batman, Death, Evil Dead, Funny (ha ha), Graphic Novel, Helloween, Magic, Matt Groening, Queensrÿche, Rosemary's Baby, Short Story, Supernatural, The Bride, The Simpsons on October 31, 2012| 2 Comments »
SOUNDTRACK: HELLOWEEN-“Halloween” (1987).
Back in the late 80s, I loved Helloween–they played speed metal, they had intricate solos, and they were German–what’s not to love? Oh, and also, they were quite funny, with their little pumpkin mascot.
In 1987, they released The Keeper of the Seven Keys Part 1, a concept album (hooray), with this song as the 13 minute centerpiece. They also released a “radio friendly” version that’s about 3 minutes long. How do you eliminate ten minutes of a song? Take out some verses, some riffs, a whole middle section of vocals, a cool section that sounds like Queensrÿche, a little spoken word section and a whole lotta solos. Surprisingly you do get the essence of the song, just none of the theatricality.
So Helloween are still around, although I gave up on them after the sequel to this album (Part Two) which really didn’t live up to the majesty of Part One.
But this song is fun and whether you choose the 13 minute or the 3 minute version, Happy Halloween.
[READ: November 7, 2012] The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror #18
Yes, that’s right, I read this after Halloween! Hurricane Sandy means I can throw convention to the wind until I catch up. Sarah bought this for me before Halloween, but I didn’t really feel like reading it on Halloween, so here it is.
Unlike in the TV show, this Treehouse of Horror has four stories! The first thing you have to get used to in Simpsons comics is that the characters don’t look like the ones on TV. This is deliberate–they get different artists to draw the pages, so the artist’s own style comes in. The characters are obviously The Simpsons; it’s amazing how many liberties can be taken with icons and have them still be recognizable.
The first story is a parody of Evil Dead. Homer takes the family to a cabin in the woods where Henry K. Duff created the secret recipe for Duff beer. But when the recipe is read aloud…the spirit of the beer possesses the family. This story is actually kind of gruesome, although my five-year old enjoyed flipping through the pages. The twist at the end is completely unexpected and wonderful. (more…)
Posted in Consumerism, Death, Essays, Eulogy, Funny (ha ha), Gattaca, Gore Vidal, History, Igby Goes Down, LGBTQ, Military, Noam Chomsky, Play (Drama), Political Humor, Politicians, Religion, Sex, The Simpsons on August 1, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Gore Vidal [1925-2012]
Gore Vidal died last night at age 86 because of complications from pneumonia.
When I was younger, back in college, I loved Gore Vidal. I read almost all of his essays and I tried to read most of his novels (I didn’t succeed–he has published some 50 books). His book United States: Essays 1952–1992 is one of the best collection of political essays I have read.
People who know Vidal at all know him for different reasons. Some know him as a writer of historical novels known as the Narratives of Empire: Burr (covering 1775-1805 and 1833-1836), Lincoln (1861-1865) 1876 (1875-1877), Empire (1898-1907), Hollywood (1917-1923), Washington D.C. (1937-1952) and The Golden Age (1939-1954).
Others know him for his outspoken pro-homosexuality stance. His third novel 1948’s The City and the Pillar caused quite the controversy for presenting sympathetic gay characters. He also wrote Myra Breckenridge about a transsexual character. His published quote from about sexuality (from 1969) is:
We are all bisexual to begin with. That is a fact of our condition. And we are all responsive to sexual stimuli from our own as well as from the opposite sex. Certain societies at certain times, usually in the interest of maintaining the baby supply, have discouraged homosexuality. Other societies, particularly militaristic ones, have exalted it. But regardless of tribal taboos, homosexuality is a constant fact of the human condition and it is not a sickness, not a sin, not a crime … despite the best efforts of our puritan tribe to make it all three. Homosexuality is as natural as heterosexuality. Notice I use the word ‘natural,’ not normal.” (more…)
Posted in Canadian Content, Cars, Concert, Excerpt, Harper's, Phish, Richard Ford, Short Story, The Simpsons on June 1, 2012| 1 Comment »
SOUNDTRACK: PHISH-Live Bait Vol 6 (2011).
Yesterday was my coworker Jay’s last day here, so I’m writing about this Phish bootleg set in his honor.
So these Live Bootleg Series are fun in that they’re a free sample of live songs–warts and all–from various shows in the band’s touring history. These shows are primarily 1993-1996, with a 1988 song and two from 2003 thrown in for good measure. The opening of “The Curtain” into “Tweezer” is from Red Rocks. In fact, the first 8 songs are from Red Rocks at different times in their career (I like that they meld the shows together like this). From 1996, “The Curtain” sounds amazing, so it’s really surprising how badly Trey messes up the opening guitar riff of “Tweezer.” It’s so bad I would have thought he might have considered starting over! But after an ugly beginning the band settles in for a 17 minute version. “Split Open and Melt” also comes 1994. The band sounds great on this song. This is one of my favorite jam sections–it goes in a really weird direction. And, there’s great bass and a guitar solo. “It’s Ice” and “The Wedge” are from 1993 (touring their 4th official release!). They sound really on for these songs.
Next comes a trio of songs from 1995 that always go together: “Mike’s Song” (everybody’s favorite), “I am Hydrogen” and “Weekapaug Groove.” The middle of the “Mike’s Song” jam gets a little weird (some of their slow sections can sound very strange especially if people overhear them out of context), but they bring it back very nicely.
“The MOMA Dance’ and “Limb by Limb” are from 2003. And they are fantastic. “McGrupp and the Watchful Hosemasters” actually comes from the Colorado ’88 CD, but it’s a fun addition within this set. It certainly sounds older than the others, but not radically out of place. It’s followed by “Ghost” from 1997. “David Bowie” has a lot of fun in the intro–the begin playing several different songs, including “Mike’s Song” and several other intros before finally settling into “DB.” The jam also gets pretty dark, but I love at the end when the conventional shredding solo keeps getting interrupted by a strange minor key riff. Similarly, “Wilson” takes a really long time to get going, including a nice little nod to “The Simpsons” in the intro. And then there’s a really long pause before the “blap boom” part comes in. It’s a fun version of the song. The disc ends with a wild version of “Run Like an Antelope” from 1993.
It’s a pretty great set, and not bad for free. You can download it here.
[READ: May 25, 2012] “The Bank Robbery”
I’ve never read Richard Ford. I have a copy of Independence Day but I never read it. I hear it’s great.
So, here’s this excerpt from Ford’ new novel called Canada. As has been said before, you can’t really write a review of an excerpt. However, a excerpt can get you excited about a book.
And that’s what this did. It doesn’t make me want to pre-order Canada or anything, indeed, I’m not even sure how this excerpt can relate to the rest of the story as it’s pretty self-contained, but I loved the way it was written and the tone and pacing that Ford employs.
This excerpt opens with the narrator recollecting what he knows about the bank robbery. The one that his parents committed. His parents are pretty normal people, except for one thing—they actually thought they could pull of a bank robbery. I love this section:
Conceivably many of us think of robbing a bank the same way we lie in bed at night and delicately plot to murder our lifelong enemy…. [details excised]. After which we conclude that though it’s satisfying to think we could murder our enemy in ambush…only a deranged person would carry out such a plan. That is because the world is set against such acts…At which point we forget about our plan and go to sleep…. But for my parents this kind of thinking didn’t occur. (more…)
Posted in 2 Broke Girls, 30 Rock, America's Next Top Model, Archer, Are You There, Chelsea?, Bob's Burgers, Breaking In, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Community, Face Off, Glee, Grimm, How I Met Your Mother, I Hate My Teenage Daughter, Modern Family, New Girl, Parenthood, Parks and Recreation, Project Runway, Ringer, South Park, The Office, The Simpsons, TV 2012, Up All Night, Warehouse 13, Work of Art on May 13, 2012| 3 Comments »
I was planning to wait until the season finales before writing about our spring/summer TV watching. But then this week, NBC announced that they would be either not renewing or renewing in a very limited capacity 30 Rock, Community and Parks and Recreation. Wow, talk about throwing a bomb on your programming. Thursday night NBC has been a powerhouse for the last few years with 5 shows, (yes, five, with their crazy programming flip flops) that were strong. Interestingly, The Office, the only show not chopped, has been the weakest of the bunch. I wanted the season with Michael Scott to be good but it really wasn’t.
Since I first wrote that some more details have emerged and it seems that all three shows have been picked up for 13 episodes–with, as I gather, room to expand if the new shows that NBC tries to fill their shoes with suck. If you want a positive spin on this, read the A.V. Club dude’s take on it (at the bottom of the post, final bullet point, although the whole post will tell you why it is such a good show if you’re not watching it.).
When I posted about TV last, Karen left a comment that we watch a lot of TV and that has stuck with me. I still don’t feel like we do… We watch a lot of shows, but we don’t channel surf, we don’t just have the TV on. We have appointment TV, is how I like to think of it. And, of course, while there a lot of titles, many drop off the list (by us or the networks) and quite a few are only 13 episodes long. But man, there has been a serious drop off in numbers after this season.
So let’s see what has been removed from the last post: (more…)
Posted in The Simpsons, Thomas Pynchon on March 26, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Greetings faithful readers.
This weekend I went on a Cub Scout Overnight with my son. Between the camping and the preposterous lack of sleep, I didn’t have time to complete my usual Monday morning spiel. So until I finish it up, enjoy this:
Hmm, Thomas PynCHON?
Posted in 2 Broke Girls, 30 Rock, Allen Gregory, America's Next Top Model, Archer, Are You There, Chelsea?, Bob's Burgers, Breaking In, Chuck, Comic Book Men, Face Off, Glee, Grimm, How I Met Your Mother, I Hate My Teenage Daughter, Key and Peele, Modern Family, New Girl, Once Upon a Time, Parenthood, Parks and Recreation, Portlandia, Project Runway, Ringer, The Big Bang Theory, The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, The Office, The Simpsons, Tosh.0, TV 2012, Up All Night, Workaholics on March 10, 2012| 2 Comments »
The TV Season scheduling continues to confuse me. It’s February and two shows are done already. And new shows are starting this week. I actually appreciate this rolling schedule because it means new shows instead of repeats.
So hey, networks, why not go all the way and just let the shows run for twenty weeks and then end. Stop showing reruns (or better yet, rerun them at like 2 in the morning so we can watch them if we miss them) and the introduce a new show for the next half a year. We wouldn’t have this six weeks off nonsense of Community and Glee or three weeks of repeats of other shows.
I’m picking this week to write this simply because of the ending of the two shows. We haven’t had a look at the new ones yet, so it’s a clean slate.
Somehow we don’t even have time to watch movies anymore, so the TV shows must be very good. (more…)
Posted in Clash of the Gods, Craig Ferguson, David Foster Wallace, Futurama, James Joyce, Jonathan Franzen, Paul Debraski, Pearl Jam, Pierdomenico Baccalario, Roberto Bolaño, Terry Moore, The Simpsons, Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job! on January 22, 2012| 4 Comments »
I’ve more or less stopped counting milestones on this site. But today I hit a quarter of a million views. Sure, some site get that traffic in a day, but it’s not bad for a site that’s all about the books I’ve read.
And since I’m at 250,000, here’s a snapshot of my most popular posts: (more…)
Posted in 2 Broke Girls, Allen Gregory, American Horror Story, Archer, Arrested Development, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Chuck, Community, Flight of the Conchords, Free Agents, Gilmore Girls, Glee, Grimm, Hart of Dixie, How I Met Your Mother, How To Be a Gentleman, Kal Penn, Mike and Molly, Modern Family, Mr Show, New Girl, Once Upon a Time, Pan Am, Parenthood, Parks and Recreation, Project Runway, Ringer, Suburgatory, Terra Nova, The Big Bang Theory, The Office, The Simpsons, The Walking Dead, Tosh.0, TV 2011, Up All Night, Work of Art on November 20, 2011| 1 Comment »
I was planning to write this post early in the TV Season. I found out that the TiVo website rather helpfully includes a page of all the premiere dates of shows, which in addition to telling us when shows started, has also turned out to be a good way to keep track of the shows that were cancelled already. Our goal is basically to get every good show cancelled so that we can watch our poor Netflix DVDs (which now that we had to change our policy we have mercifully fewer discs that we are not watching). Um, thanks for the hike Netflix?
Anyhow, it’s now about seven weeks into the season and we’ve already lost a number of shows–some as quickly as two weeks in…which, really? I mean why bother. Surprisingly, none of the FOX shows were cancelled yet. That’s probably because FOX didn’t pick anything cool or interesting enough for me to want to watch–that’s actually not true, they have some good new shows this season, but nothing like Arrested Development.
So, this time I’m breaking it down by day of the week (which is silly since we TiVo everything and watch it whenever). And this time red shows are shows we have given up on and Green ones are ones that we’re still enjoying. (more…)
Posted in Advice, Alain de Botton, Alexandra Styron, Arthur Bradford, Books about writers, Cars, Christoph Niemann, Consumerism, Craig Taylor, Culture Shock, Darin Strauss, Diedre Dolan, Essays, Excerpt, Fears, Five Dials, Fretful Mother, Funny (ha ha), Heidi Julavits, Hugh Gallagher, Humiliation, Jim Windolf, John Kenney, Katha Pollitt, Kevin Baker, Kraftwerk, Manuals, Marriage (Happy), Marriage Trouble, Neil Young, Peter Melhman, Piers Paul Read, Religion, Rush, Sarah Miller, Short Story, The Simpsons, Tucker Nichols, William Berlind, William Styron on August 27, 2011| 1 Comment »
SOUNDTRACK: NEIL YOUNG-Trans (1982).
By most standards this Neil Young album is a disaster. It’s so bad that despite updating his entire catalog and releasing all kinds of bootleg concerts, he has never issued this disc on CD in the States. So, just what’s so awful about this disc?
Well, mostly it’s awful as a Neil Young disc. Meaning, if you like Neil Young (either flavor: country/folk or hard rock/grunge) this disc is a big fat HUH?? Neil Young has gone all synthy? And not just synth but computerized synthy–sometimes his voice is utterly like a computer. It’s a travesty, it’s a shame, it’s an incredible surprise. Unless you listen to it without thinking of it as a Neil Young record.
But after all that introduction, the biggest surprise is the first song. You’ve been prepped for this weird album full of computer nonsense and you get the fairly standard (if a little dull) rockabilly type music of “A Little Thing Called Love.” It’s a pretty standard Neil Young song for the time. Hmm, maybe the album isn’t that weird.
Well, then comes “Computer Age” and the keyboards kick in. Interestingly, to me anyhow, this is the year that Rush released Signals. Signals was the album where Rush fans said Woah, what’s with the keyboards guys. Similarly, “Computer Age” makes you say, geez, was there a sale on keyboards in Canada? The keyboards are kind of thin and wheedly, but the real surprise comes in the processed vocals (Rush never went that far). The vocals are basically the 1980s equivalent of auto-tune (no idea how they did this back then). Because the song is all about the computer age it kind of makes sense that he would use this weird robotic voice. Sometimes it’s the only voice, although he also uses the computer voice as a high-pitched harmony over his normal singing voice.
“We R in Control” sounds like it might be a heavy rocker (anemic production notwithstanding) until we get more computer vocals. Again, conceptually it works (its all about the dominance of CCTV), but it is pretty weird as a Neil Young song.
And then comes yet another shock, “Transformer Man.” Yes, THAT “Transformer Man,” except not. This original version of the song is sung entirely in a processed super high pitched computer voice that is almost hard to understand). The only “normal’ part of the song is the occasional chorus and the “do do do dos.” It sounds like a weird cover. Sarah, who loves Neil Young, practically ran out of the room when she heard this version.
“Computer Cowboy (aka Syscrusher)” continues in that same vein. Musically it’s a bit more experimental (and the computer vocals are in a much lower register). Although I think it’s probably the least interesting of these songs.
Just to confuse the listener further, “Hold On to Your Love” is a conventional poppy song–no computer anything (aside from occasional keyboard notes). Then comes the 8 minute “Sample and Hold” the most computerized song of the bunch and one of the weirder, cooler songs on the disc. It really feels like a complete song–all vocodered out with multiple layers of vocals, not thin and lacking substance like some of the tracks. It opens with personal stats (hair: blonde, eyes: blue) and proceeds through a litany of repeated “new design, new design” motifs.
This is followed by a remake of “Mr Soul” previously only on Decade. This is a new vocodered-harmonies version of the song.
The biggest failure of the disc to me is “Like an Inca” it’s nine minutes of virtually the same guitar riff. The chorus is pretty wonderful, but it’s a very minor part of the song itself. It is fairly traditional Neil song, I just wish it were much shorter.
So, this travesty of a disc is actually pretty interesting and, for me, pretty enjoyable. Most of these synthy songs sound kind of weak but I think that has more to do with the production of the time. I’d love to hear newly recorded versions of these songs (with or without the vocoder) to see what he could do with a great production team behind him.
Trans is not a Neil Young disc in any conventional sense, but as an experiment, as a document of early 80s synth music, it not only holds up, it actually pushes a lot of envelopes. I’m not saying he was trying to out Kraftwerk Kraftwerk or anything like that, but for a folk/rock singer to take chances like this was pretty admirable. Shame everybody hated it.
[READ: July 5, 2011] Five Dials 19
Five Dials 19 is the Parenting Issue. But rather than offering parenting advice, the writers simply talk about what it’s like to be a parent, or to have a parent. It was one of the most enjoyable Five Dials issues I have read so far.
CRAIG TAYLOR & DIEDRE DOLAN-On Foreign Bureuas and Parenting Issues
I enjoyed Taylor’s introduction, in which he explains that he is not very useful for a parenting issue That most of the duties will be taken on by Diedre Dolan in NYC. They are currently in her house working while her daughter plays in the next room. His ending comment was hilarious:
Also, as is traditional at most newsweeklies, someone just put a plastic tiara on my head and then ran away laughing at me.
I resist Parenting magazines, from Parents to Parenting to Fretful Mother, they all offer some sound advice but only after they offer heaps and heaps of guilt and impossible standards. So I was delighted to see that Five Dials would take an approach to parenting that I fully approve of. Dolan writes:
Nobody knows what works. Most people just make some choices and defend them for the next 18 to 50 years – claiming nurture (good manners) or nature (crippling shyness) when it suits them best.
And indeed, the magazine made me feel a lot better about my skills (or lack) as a parent. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 