"A History Of Violence": Closet Mobster Dad

At one point in this movie, the son looks at Virgo Mortenson, or whatever his name is, whom I believe at one point played an elf in another movie, or, at least ran around with elves, and says, "What are you? Some kind of closet mobster dad?!" He then looks flustered and walks away, into the front yard. The first thing I thought, when I saw this scene, was "Closet mobster dad. That's funny." Then I thought this: "Why is he walking into the front yard? Where is he going to go?" This is after the scene where Virgo has sex with his wife, who is dressed up like a cheerleader, but before Virgo has sex with his wife on the steps, at which time she was no longer dressed up like a cheerleader. My brother swears that this is the worst movie he has ever seen. I'm not quite sure I would go that far, but considering a lot of people had it in thier top ten lists for 'O5, it is a bit disconcerting.
Knowing it was based after a cartoon, er, graphic novel, I can give the script writers the benefit of the doubt. I mean, why not name the mobster "Joey" and his brother "Richie"? Why not have him spend three years in the desert finding himself and his wife, have kids, and live the small town life of a diner owner with a 17-year old kid? Which puts him at least twenty years removed from his life as a gangster, which must have been an incredibly short career, considering he looks about 40 in the movie. Watching this movie was like reading one of the short stories I used to have to read when I took MFA classes at ODU: it was painful, but I felt sorry for everyone involved. Especially those who had to watch it. Ugh.

The State Of Indie Music: 1998-Present

When I was in junior high school, 8th grade, the age my students are now, I was beginning to plant the seeds for my life-long obsession with things that don't matter, specifically rock and roll. Between my sister's collection of late '60s hippy rock and my nerdy friends fascination with heavy metal, I had the ground pretty much covered for music that kids didn't listen to in Virginia Beach. While Ozzy Osbourne and Def Leppard may have forged a large fan-base in, say, middle Ohio, Virginia Beach, with it's waves and skate parks, was not as welcoming. Billy Idol was big. The Talking Heads and U2 were big. Liking Iron Maiden was not exactly a good move for a nerd. In fact, it was a defining nerd move. And I made it over and over. I was, in fact, a nerd uber alles.

But that is neither here nor there. What I liked about heavy metal had nothing to do with Satanic imagery or spiked leather collars. What I liked was the heavy part. What I didn't like was the associative stupidity. So, a middle ground, as I entered high school, was punk rock. When the guy who sat behind me in Algebra II/Trig loaned me "Never Mind the Bollocks", I was hooked. It was like metal without the lead guitars and the tight pants. But it did have one other thing in common with metal: it, too, was incredibly stupid. Sid Vicious was closer to Ozzy Osbourne than either "artist" was to, say, Bob Dylan. And this was, ultimately, disappointing. I was many things in high school- nerdy, self-conscious,lazy, virginal- but I wasn't stupid.

Enter the Minutemen and Husker Du and the Meat Puppets. The Butthole Surfers and Scratch Acid and Sonic Youth. Post- "Damaged" Black Flag. Joy Division, the Sisters of Mercy and the Cure. It was the late '80s, the advent of "indy" rock and a smart kid like myself who liked the intensity and heaviness of both metal and punk, was now offered a way out that was considerably less stupid than singing songs about "London Leatherboys" or "Surf Punks". It was life changing and eventually led to me dropping out of college to join the minions of kids in the late '80s, early '90s who started bands and, really, became part of something that saved popular music from complete and utter intellectual impotence. (Although you wouldn't know that by listening to the lyrics I wrote. Or by the pants I wore. Yikes.)

Which brings me to today. Should a 37-year old man still be listening to bands that consist of 21-year old college dropouts? Has my relationship with music, specifically new, independent rock and roll, changed because of my age? Does it have to? As I mentioned in the previous post, the best thing about indy music is that it represents the age it was produced, it is an expression of what is going on at that moment and time, with no real precedence given to the past, or, if it is, looks at that past as a kind of ironic touchstone- we'll take this guitar lick here and FUCK it up. It would be easy for me to list my five favorite "indy" rock albums of all time, and that would be a list common to a lot of people my age- "Zen Arcade", Meat Puppets "II", "Double Nickles On The Dime"- but that may say more about my relationship with the time period than it would my relationship with the album. The challenge is picking albums from post 1998, the year I turned thirty. And that's what I want to do. There is no criteria for picking these albums other than the fact that I listen to them often and consistently, from start to finish. They don't represent anything to me other than good independent rock and roll. Some are heavy and some are not. All of them have a melodic intensity that attracted me to my sister's album collection and my friend's metal albums back when I was 13. And all of them rock.

The Aluminum Group "Happyness"
The Dismemberment Plan "Emergency and I"
Broken Social Scene "You Forgot It In People"
Interpol "Turn On The Bright Lights"
The Stills "Logic Will Break Your Heart"
The Notwist "Neon Golden"
Built to Spill "You In Reverse"

There is still a space in my heart for Ozzy and Iron Maiden. And I still listen to my sister's record albums. I am happy, however, that at 37 I can still get excited about new music. While the reasons may change, the music, ultimately, is still heavy.

"Match Point", American Princes and "The Kingdom".

I have a friend who spent 4 years at NYU studying film, worked for a year in the industry and left to go to culinary school. He left the film industry because, quite frankly, he got tired of working on shit. On my first trip ever to New York, the same time I met this friend of mine, I was invited to a screening of a film he and another friend of mine worked on. It was a packed Loew's theater in Time's Square, a rainy Thursday evening, the first after 9/11. Bush's mug was all over the 42nd street Jumbotron. People were stopped in the sidewalks, looking up, mesmerized by the closed-captioning. You're either with us or against us. He continually referred to the terrorists as "folks". Inside the theater, the filmmakers were handing out padded underwear as a promotional gimmick. The movie was, ostensibly, about the fashion world. And it was a veritable train wreck. All this money, all this time, all this unnecessary hoopla, all to kill off a first-person narrator because there was, apparently, no other way to get out of this mess of a script. It's this kind of abuse of the creative process that chased my friend into the kitchen. My friend and I constantly remark how there really are no good movies anymore. And it's partially true.

Case in point. I fell asleep during "Capote". I thought "Crash" was narratively all over the place. And so on. It's not that these are bad movies, per se, they just aren't great. And I mean great in the sense that flicks like "M" or "Papillon" or "Cool Hand Luke" are great. They lack the cohesiveness in the writing, the whole believability factor, which, ultimately should be the goal of any great film. It's what separates the theater from film, I think. When you're in the theater- and this is why the theater gives me the willies- you know you are watching a bunch of adults playing pretend. Film tricks us into thinking what we are watching is unfolding before our eyes as each and every day does- in real time, in a real way, palpable and painful.

Which is why I loved "Match Point" so much. Forget the fact that it was Woody Allen. As bizarre and outlandish as the plot ultimately got, the behavior of the characters was entirely believable. And the narrative links- the foreshadowing of the tennis ball- during the opening scene- precariously perched at the top of the net and, later in the movie, a wedding ring slowly careening off a fence rail, gave the movie an emotional punch, a reason for believing the preposterous plot line. I had no idea where Woody was going with this and, at one point, I stopped the movie and looked over at my wife and asked, quite seriously , how anyone could put themselves in such a shitty position. And when the guns got pulled out, I was floored and hooked. "Match Point" is a great one.

As for the American Princes, a rock band from Little Rock, Arkansas, via NYC, their third album "Less and Less" is a slab of schizophrenic rock and roll, wearing their influences on their many sleeves, it goes from inspired post-punk bombast to gently meandering acoustic self-reflection in the span of one song. Like Built to Spill's new one, "You In Reverse", "Less and Less" is great summer music, rock and roll to barbecue and get drunk to. It's not perfect, by far, and probably won't age very well. But it captures the moment quite well, and that's what good indy rock seems to do.

"The Kingdom" is a Dutch mini-series written and produced by Lars Van Triers about a haunted hospital. I can't seem to get through an episode without falling asleep, but it is pretty interesting and I like to hear all the garbled, hard-edged consonants as I read the captions.

Well. That's it for the first installment of Man Star's Guide to The World. If you read this, because I have a funny feeling no one will ever read this in the first place, leave me a comment.