MMM

"Nostalgia is a powerful feeling; it can drown out anything."

-Terrence Malick on filming Badlands, which is set in the oft over-romanticized 1950s.

K, sorry to gloat when I'm right, but GUH-DUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

This is hypnotic...

Are you're a unabashed fan of Christmas/Holiday music, but you are sick and tired of hearing the same versions of the same songs over and over and over - especially when they're suddenly interrupted 2 bars before the end with one of those annoying "K-Earth 101!! Holiday Favorites on the Radio!!!!!" shockers?

Yeah. Me too.

Well, that's all over.

Tune into my favorite internet radio station, The 1920s Radio Network.

Every holiday season they play the best in little-known Christmas gems and obscure versions of holiday classics from the early part of the 20th century. You are always sure to hear stuff you've never heard before, and it's all wonderful.

Create a nice holiday environment in your place without having to hear that damn Wham song 19 times.

I'm in Cali now visiting my family for the first time in a year (!). It's beautiful outside, but Long Beach isn't exactly a Winter Wonderland, so I need all the old-timey Christmasin' I can get!

Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times has listed the JACK Quartet's Xenakis show at Le Poisson Rouge as one of "the most memorable classical music presentations of 2008":

The Jack Quartet, an ensemble of young string players devoted to contemporary music, played the club in October. I would never have expected to see a young crowd at a downtown nightclub erupting with whoops after performances of the four hypercomplex, cutting-edge string quartets by Iannis Xenakis. But in this setting these dense and kinetic works came across to this open-minded audience as just more hip, wild, out-there contemporary music.

Awesome, boys! Unfortunately, I missed this particular show. But I, and you, can catch them at their next NYC concert on March 1st at Tenri.

Click here to hear JACK killin' some Xenakis.

Here's a nice story (with video) about a doctor who is climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro to increase awareness and funding for my medical condition, HHT.

There's more on HHT.org:

Scott is a part of a family of five generations of HHT patients, including his three children. Scott’s hope is that his climb up Mt. Kilimanjaro will help to increase the awareness of HHT. Currently, 9 out of 10 of the HHT population (68,000 US citizens) are not yet diagnosed due to widespread lack of knowledge by medical professionals and, therefore, are at risk of stroke, hemorrhage, and death.

Given Scott’s history of anemia and the presence of a pulmonary AVM, he debated whether or not to attempt this climb. “It seemed worth a try” states Scott. “The HHT Foundation and the doctors interested in this disease have done great things for people with HHT, including most of the people in my immediate family. Studies that have been performed have taught us a great deal about the natural course of the disease as well as treatment options for it.” Scott further commented.

Cool story. I definitely would not have the balls to rock Kilimanjaro, probably even if I didn't have da HHTizzle. Special Osler-Weber-Rendu props the the good doctor!

It's a snowy day in New York City, so I'm staying in for most of today. In honor of my voluntary convalescence, here's the original trailer for one of my new favorite films of all time. The Sergio Leone masterpiece Once Upon a Time in the West:



I cannot recommend this film highly enough, especially for those skeptical of the "western" genre. Leone infuses the tradition with a heavy dose of classic Italian neorealism and good old late-60s grit and grime. I love it. It is the perfect example of an anti-western, so perfect in fact that it redefined the genre (in a way voiding the "anti" aspect!).

Finally. I have an RSS feed of their latest additions and having to watch films that literally noone knows (seriously, not even the directors) be added daily to the list was starting to, ya know, grind my gears or something.

But this snowy morning's list made me smile a bit. All the Back to the Futures plus Swingers. Nice.

Oh yeah, and Encino Man. Any, uh, Pauly Shore fans left out there? Brendan Fraser? Encino Man is available. Just putting that out there in case anyone wants to watch Encino Man. It's online. Netflix. Encino man is. Check it.

Now, y'all may know that I'm pretty deep in the Obama camp. I voted for him, I've written a lot about him, and I think he'll generally be a great president. But one of the major differences I have with him is the issue of gay marriage. He's against it. Let's not do the whole he's for civil unions bullshit, he's against gay marriage and that's all that matters. Well, in one of his recent hands-across-the-aisle gestures, he's invited Orange Country megachurch Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration. Aside from being a pastor at a megachurch - which I think is evil enough - Rick Warren is of course super anti-gay and rallied hard against Prop 8, comparing being gay to incest, polygamy, and pedophilia:



Look, I get that he's reaching out, that he's not only going to be the president of the blue half of America. I get that, I encourage it. But this is frankly a slap in the face to gay people, straight up. Picking this douche at a time during which gays are feeling increasingly persecuted across the country should be pretty insulting. One thing I'm getting the sense of with Obama: he is not afraid to take advantage of those with whom he is in good favor. Gay people by and large love Obama. He can afford to smack them around a bit to woo the fundamentalists. When it all comes down to it, he's a politician.

Ouch. This is gonna hurt:

If the authority does not receive new sources of revenue, it seems likely that the base subway fare could rise to at least $2.50, from $2, starting in June. A monthly unlimited-ride MetroCard could rise to more than $100, from $81.

There is also talk of reducing service, making express trains local, and increase tolls over the bridges. Personally, I think that drivers should bear the brunt of the costs. There are way too many cars in the city as it is, if they have to discourage a group of commuters, discourage the group that we need less of, not the group we need more of. Tolls baby. (Sorry driving friends!)

In my endless research (read: internet dickaround time) I've come across another, albeit significantly darker, Augie Rios Christmas song called Ol' Fatso.

Yeah... here's the song:

Augie Rios - Ol' Fatso.mp3

Check the lyrics, yo:

CHORUS:
Don’t care who you are Ol’ Fatso
Get those reindeer off the roof
Don’t care who you are Ol’ Fatso
Get those reindeer off the roof
No you can’t fool me because
There ain’t no Santa Claus
There ain’t no Santa Claus And I got proof.

There was a little fellow
Who just wouldn’t believe
There really was a Santa Claus
Even on Christmas Eve
And when one Christmas Eve he heard
A clatter overhead
He opened up his window wide
And this what he said:

[CHORUS]

Though Santa Claus had brought him
A big bag full of toys
Enough of Christmas presents
For a dozen little boys
Some choo choo trains and cowboys
And a whole Apache tribe
The boy looked up and said,
Oh no! I ain’t taking no bribes

[CHORUS]

Well next year Santa came around
And brought a favourite toy
To everybody but a certain
Unbelieving boy
The moral of this story
Is very sad but true
If you don’t believe in Santa Claus
He won’t believe in you

Don’t care who you are young fellow
Keep those reindeer on the roof
Don’t care who you are young fellow
Keep those reindeer on the roof
Oh you fool no-one because
There is a Santa Claus
There is a Santa Claus
And I got proof.

Yes, there is a Santa Claus
And I got proof.

Surprised this wasn't quite the hit that Donde Esta Santa Claus was?

(Found via PopArchives)

Dear friends, two years ago I lost the fight against Christmas music. I realized that resistance is futile and began collecting weird and unique versions of classic Christmas songs. Well, now I've created my own.

I just completed a cover of the classic mexploitation hit Donde Esta Santa Claus?, made famous by Augie Rios. Not to be a genre whore or anything, but the cover has elements of Yé-yé, lounge, dancehall reggae, punk, hip hop, and death metal. But yet, I try and stay true to Augie's vision.

It's a free download, so click this link to listen or right/ctrl-click to save:

Donde Esta Santa Claus?

Here's the original if you are unfortunate enough not to know this classic:



Hope you enjoy it and Snappy Holidays!

P.S. extra points to anyone who spots the Herbie Goes Bananas reference!

As long as I'm in rant-mode, I might as well rant about a pro-environmental subject, just to, ya know, be fair and balanced and everything.

The Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. named " Wall-E," Disney/Pixar's animated film about a little robot who falls in love, the best film of 2008 on Tuesday afternoon.

Yay.

You notice I didn't say "Yay!". I'm not exactly gunning for Wall-E for the Best Picture Oscar or anything, but it's just so nice to see it win a major award, and I do hope it gets nominated in the Best Picture category in the Oscars. I know it probably won't win the top award, but here are my thoughts on why it should be considered:

Ok, so it's probably going to go to Milk, for a couple reasons. One, the Academy loves Sean Penn. Two, the Academy loves biopics. Three, the Academy wants to make up for its egregious snub of Brokeback Mountain in 2006, which was obviously politically motivated and, frankly, homophobic. (Btw, Crash? Really??) I haven't seen Milk (The Times of Harvey Milk was good though), but word around the campfire is that it is very well-made, and very Oscary. Milk FTW.

But Wall-E deserves to be in the running. The other likely Best Pic nods - Milk, Frost/Nixon, possibly The Dark Knight - are all based on nonfiction or preexisting stories. Wall-E is a genuinely original story - despite the fact that he really looks like Johnny 5 - which is something sorely lacking in film today (see my recent post on film remakes). Pixar - who I'm not usually a fan of, for the record - came up with a completely original story, not based on tired Hollywood stereotypical plot-lines (see Finding Nemo and Cars), and set it against a sharply socially-critical background. Wall-E wasn't afraid to piss some people off, and it wasn't afraid to be overtly sentimental. To me, that is the essence of courage in art. The story was built around environmental themes, they weren't added into the mix during production, and these themes were unspoken but apparent. The humans in the story were both hero and villain and - much like Hayao Miyazaki's anti-villains - they contained the capacity for good and evil inside them, Wall-E was just the unwitting catalyst of this internal struggle.

Above all, the film lacked a sense of regret. There was never a sense that the humans in the story deserved punishment for their past digressions. They came to the realization that they had fucked themselves over, and they began to build their world anew, with the added knowledge of what the consequences of said digressions are. I think it is one of the best environmental films of all time, and a great example of social activism and art in a successful fusion.

Don't you miss that golden age of film when all movies had a heaping helping of thinly-veiled upper-middle class guilt? Of course you do. Well, it looks like those days are back:

When the alien Klaatu stepped off his spaceship the first time, in 1951's The Day the Earth Stood Still, he had come to warn us that man's constant warring against itself had become a threat to other civilizations and we had better stop it -- or else.

In director Scott Derrickson's respectful, perfunctory remake, Klaatu once again comes to visit us with a warning, although he's apparently been hanging out with Al Gore, since it's what we're doing to the environment that now has the extra-terrestrials wringing their hands (tentacles? pods? suction cups?)

Guh... Do we really want the days of this to come back?



(Btw, am I the only one who had a thing for Linka?)

This kinda shit ruined the ending of The Abyss, it probably ruined this (although probably already dead in the water) remake, and it will ruin countless more works of art by promoting the mandatory fusion of social responsibility and art. Fuck that. Social activism and art can coexist, but forcing your art to be activist or forcing your activism to be artsy usually creates sucky art and ineffective activism.

And PS, has anyone else noticed that this guilt-in-art trend always tends to coincide with economic recession? Interesting.

From Imeem.com:

Travis Barker's "Jockin' Jay-Z" remix is rumored to be the last project he worked on before surviving a tragic plane crash back in September. The end result is a monster remix with huge drums and grungy electric guitars. Put this on your playlist today.

Wait, what? "The last project he worked on before surviving a tragic plane crash"?? Who in the world gives a fuck about that? I mean, I get that they are milking his near-death experience, but is this gonna be a thing now? Shia Lebouf acted out this scene from his latest John Grisham adaption just before he almost drank a glassful of spoiled milk? Tina Yuthers did this infomercial just before almost opening the driver door of her Geo Prism to oncoming traffic?

Senate Abandons Auto Bailout. Sigh. Ok, I get why we wouldn't want to bail them out. They absolutely do not deserve it. But, where in the holy Jesus was this level of scrutiny when we were deciding to bail out the financial industry, for nearly a trillion dollars?? They denied the auto industry 14 billion! What in the holy hell is going on here? I will never really understand it, I guess, it's all so complicated, but does this make any sense to anyone? It doesn't even really seem like the "experts" in charge understand what in the world is going on? Guh. Fuck it. This scene is dead anyway.

Newsflash! Mafoo's blog official Stupidest Website of 2007, Blackle, is in fact full of shit:

LCD screens ... are lit via fluorescent tube lights located above or behind the LCD screen. The screen scatters the light, creating the picture. When an LCD screen is on, the lights are also on. "Black is not created by the absence of electricity or by turning off the light," explains Gray. "In a lot of cases, a black screen looks purple because the colors are created by mixing the right pixel elements in the LCD together at the same time

Look, I may be somewhat of a nihilist, but I don't really wish the planet any ill. I think protecting the environment is a wonderful thing. But the recent "green" trend nauseates me, to be honest. It is just such a fad. People get caught up in the vanity of making themselves appear as "green" as possible by using Blackle and talking about their "carbon footprint" and shit. Fuck that. You know how I save the earth? I turn off my lights when I'm not using them, because I'm poor as shit and I don't want a large electric bill. There is simply no way Americans are going to willingly inconvenience themselves on a mass scale to save anything. There will have to be some profit in it. Let's hope Obama's plan to invest in environmental jobs does something for the environment and the economy. Who knows though, because there seems to be a very large appetite for bullshit environmental solutions - maybe he'll just give the public what it wants and appoint Ty Pennington the head of the National Greenwash Department.

Meow.

Why excessively, of course.

Den of Geeks lists the 55 movie remakes currently in the works, including:


The Karate Kid

They Live

The Incredible Shrinking Man (with Eddie Murphy attached, shudder...)

Meatballs

Metropolis

The Dirty Dozen

Conan

Clash of the Titans

Akira

Death Wish

Footloose

The Taking of Pelham 123 (which recently filmed in my neighborhood!)

The Last House on the Left

Oldboy

Poltergeist

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Short Circuit (!)

The Birds

Logan's Run

The Thing

Westworld

Barbarella

My Fair Lady


and a whole bunch more...


I used to think that film remakes were a relatively recent thing - a facet of Hollywood's depleted imagination, but apparently they've been around since pretty much the dawn of film. Still, it seems it used to be done much more tastefully. For example, Howard Hawks' classic His Girl Friday is a remake of The Front Page from '31, but it is done so originally and tastefully. It's hard to think of recent remakes that actually do something new and unique.

Here are a few successful remakes IMO:

Rintaro's anime version of Metropolis (2001): a beautifully unique departure from Fritz Lang's original masterpiece. It creates a wonderful new world that's based more on the shadow of the original than the actual story. Contains the best apocalyptic scene in film, set to the music of Ray Charles.



The Fly (1986): I mean, I'm of the opinion that Cronenberg can really do no wrong. He embeds this mediocre classic with his own themes of transmogrification, bodily intrusion, moral decay and somehow makes it very entertaining to watch. All hail DC!



Scarface (1983): DePalma imbibes the early Hawks classic with the rampant greed of the 80s, while retaining the grittiness of the 70s contemporary gangster classics. I've always thought this was more of an homage to Scorsese than Hawks, just as The Untouchables was his homage to Coppola. He severed any connection to the original's Al Capone references, as well as its grace, favoring a lowbrow Cuban immigrant as its antihero over the legendary gangster.
(Not the trailer, but just as good)


Ocean's Eleven (2001): I don't want to like this one, if only to discourage Soderbergh from doing anymore remakes (Solaris? Really??), but it's very entertaining. He placed himself comfortably within the mainstream by making a tight, clean, beautiful big-budget Hollywood film. And it works. The scene at the end with the fountains and Clair de Lune is legendary, providing a nice antithesis to the Hollywood trend of the thin fleeting gratification of a crime well done. It's one of the best heist films period.




So, what do y'all think? Any additions to my very small list of successful remakes? I can probably think of a few more, once I've had a few more cups of coffee...

Josh Martinez - Rainy Day

It's a fan-made video, but actually not bad, just a bunch of stock-footage of rain.

Jon Stewart is smokin' in this interview. I must say though, despite the wrong-headedness and subtle facism of his viewpoint, I still have to give it up to Huckabee for being one of the few calm, reasonable socially-conservative voices out there. The man knows how to have a respectful debate. Watching these two men talk makes me wish all left/right debates had this much class.

Some more love from NY Magazine:

8. Alarm Will Sound
The energetic ensemble Alarm Will Sound, conducted by Alan Pierson, doesn’t hop from program to program but develops its shows over months. Its last undertaking culminated in an evening called “a/rhythmia,” where they played an orchestration of a player-piano piece by Conlon Nancarrow— one that couldn’t be performed by human hands.

Word up NY Mag, we love you too!

Finally, 7 years after the fact, we hear of some good that came out of the tragedy of 9/11:

[Eric Roth] whipped up a [Forrest Gump] sequel back in 2001, one that would continue with the story just two minutes after the original ended, and handed it in on September 10, 2001. Then came 9/11, and it was decided that the sequel was no longer relevant. "The world had changed. Now time has obviously passed, but maybe some things should just be one thing and left as they are."

God bless the cigar-chomping executive who made that fear-based, but exalted, decision.

Yay no more bad John Lennon overdubbing!



(disgusted shiver...)

I think this pop-up banner, over the music player, of classmates.com (what is this, 2001??), really highlights what Myspace is secretly trying to say to people: "We're the new Friendster. We're at the point where we've begun losing money and we will make your experience progressively more sucky until we consist only of teens from Indonesia. Thanks for playing. Enjoy Facebook for the year or so until it too joins the social networking purgatory.

Gurf points to conservative criticism of Obama's cabinet appointments as being 'too elitist':

The Ivy-laced network taking hold in Washington is drawing scorn from many conservatives, who have in recent decades decried the leftward drift of academia and cast themselves as defenders of regular Americans against highbrow snobbery. Joseph Epstein wrote in the latest Weekly Standard -- before noting that former president Ronald Reagan went to Eureka College -- that "some of the worst people in the United States have gone to the Harvard or Yale Law Schools . . . since these institutions serve as the grandest receptacles in the land for our good students: those clever, sometimes brilliant, but rarely deep young men and women who, joining furious drive to burning if ultimately empty ambition, will do anything to get ahead."

The libertarian University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein, who is not related to Joseph Epstein, worries that the team's exceptionalism could lead to overly complex policies. "They are really smart people, but they will never take an obvious solution if they can think of an ingenious one. They're all too clever by half," he said. "These degrees confer knowledge but not judgment. Their heads are on grander themes . . . and they'll trip on obstacles on the ground."

If you'll excuse my zeal:

Fuck. Off.

If there is one dumbass notion in America that needs to die a painful fucking death it's that the people in charge of our country should be expected to have a healthy amount of 'street smarts' or 'small town cred'.

No.

No, they don't.

They could have handlebar moustaches, monocles, and a glass of cognac worth more than your family surgically grafted onto their fucking jewel-encrusted hands for all I care. If they are the most qualified to lead the country then they should lead. I don't want a White House Chief of Staff I could have a beer with. I want a White House Chief of Staff that will pour a fucking beer on my head, tell me I'm an insignificant nobody, and then go help fix our messed-up-ass country, get it?

Maybe I've been listening to too much Webern recently but look, populism has its place. Sometimes I want a greasy meal at the Waffle House, sometimes I want to listen to bad radio pop, but down-to-earth populism has little relevance past communication for matters involving the governing of our massive country. I want geniuses running this country, straight up.

We tried the average Joes.

Didn't work out so well, did it?

Keeping the same theme as my last post. Hey, it's Saturday. You don't want anything serious, do you?

-via TheBrownDump

I suppose I should feel excited about the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, and perhaps it is just my overbearing cynicism that overshadows any true optimism about this, but there's just something vaguely unsettling about it. It's hard to place a finger on, but I'll give it a shot.

It's kinda like Grandma making a YouTube video. It's cute, you appreciate she figured out how to work the thing, but there's something faintly depressing about it. Yes, it's nice to see Grandma up on the internets, but does she belong there? Wouldn't you rather see her just making cookies or something? Ya know, something Grandma-ey?

Ok, my analogy is stretching a bit, but here's the deal. I'm often wary of sensationalist actions and events that seek to thrust classical music into the mainstream, even though many of them are made with the sincerest best of intentions. Similar attempts were made with The Disney Orchestra (which many of my friends were in) and Mr. Holland's Opus. What did they do? They made a bunch of people feel warm and fuzzy, but their actual effect is questionable. These projects seem aimed more at stirring the guilt of the public for its glaring lack of support than they do at attempting to produce great art or creating a lasting effect on the consciousness of our society, a consciousness that - perhaps unconsciously - views classical music as something arcane and elitist.

Still, I felt kinda warm and fuzzy reading about Tan Dun's and MTT's efforts, two genuine forces for good in the classical music world. But you know what else made me feel warm and fuzzy? Charlie Bit My Finger.

My optimistic side tells me that the culture of YouTube is the perfect thing to encourage art and music in young people. As kids, my generation (and all before mine) grew up relatively isolated with our artistic endeavors. Young people now have endless avenues to explore, share, and learn about theirs; it's the kind of encouragement we could only have dreamt of. Whereas I grew up hiding my classical music side from my friends, young musicians can now seek friends and support in their musical lives with YouTube as their primary tool.

So is it a movement or a Google P.R. move? Or both? Can the classical world be saved by a serious of stunts? I mean, we can pretty much rule out any great art coming from this project, yes? Something tells me Tan Dun's "Internet Symphony No. 1 — Eroica" (yes, that's the real title) ain't exactly gonna be something for the music history books.

What I'd rather see is a long-term investment. A site connecting students and teachers via video, or live-streaming. The creation of an online infrastructure connecting young musicians who could support and collaborate with each other. Something that would benefit many as opposed to the few.

My worry: thousands of young musicians are going to make videos of themselves for this project. 99% of them are going to be assed-out. About a hundred people are going to have a badass time playing a big show at Stern. How does this help the classical world as a whole, aside from publicity? Wouldn't a better project be something that would help the culture - the musicians, not just the winners of an audition?

Maybe it's just the classical music world's first shot at finally doing something with this crazy internet thing. Yes, at its core the whole idea is very old-fashioned. But maybe it'll be good for Grandma. Maybe just what Grandma needs is to get herself up on her feet to dance around for a bunch of people. Maybe that will get her confidence up so she can actually do something worthwhile. :)