Aliens is on AMC tonight. It came on and Chad started watching it. Although I am a huge fan of Sigourney Weaver, but I had never seen any of the Alien movies, so I stuck around.
It was all going great. Bill Paxton, Paul Reiser, and a slew of other interesting actors who never really did much of anything else. I had no idea what the movie was even about, but I know that Aliens is the sequel to Alien.
This movie did have some great effects, especially being made 25 years ago. Everything was going great, until they took a flamethrower to a colonist who dies as an alien baby comes out of her stomach. I quietly left the living room and took my laptop to my bedroom to watch Kathy Griffin on Larry King Live (via YouTube).
The over-arching purpose of the Alien cinematic franchise (other than the obvious, make a shitload of money) seems to be to freak people out and make them afraid.
That is where I part ways with Aliens, and most horror movies. I swear sometimes, I have the constitution of a 60 year-old woman. But more than that, I have enough tension and stress in my life that watching a person covered in goo have a disgusting creature bursting from their digestive system seems like my idea of horror, which thefreedictionary.com defines as "an intense, painful feeling of repugnance and fear." I couldn't agree more.
Why do we have to be entertained by such terrible and unpleasant things? Moreover, why do we let people profit from our most visceral and profound emotions? I'd rather enjoy the pleasant things in life. Red wine, Ben & Jerry's, cheese, a nice canoe trip at Chain O' Lakes, and Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl. There are a thousand things I would rather do than subject my brain to terror, especially terror that's censored for TV and interrupted by commercials.
(If you click on the link, you can go to the Wikipedia page.)
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Saturday, May 30, 2009
106
I have 106 friends on Facebook.
This is a strange world in which we live. This friend count is more or less accurate. Some of these people I haven't seen in years, perhaps decades, but I do know all of these people.
I guess where I run into problems is that word "Friend." I think that friends are something that are all too often taken for granted. I have a Facebook friend in San Francisco, a Facebook friend in Mexico, and other Facebook friends all over. I really don't think you can cultivate deep friendships with people across these massive expansive distances, even when connected electronically.
I have very few friends I hang out with on a regular basis, and that's kind of the way I prefer it. But at the same time, I lament the distance between many of the other friends who I only ever see on Facebook. I'd love to be in Istanbul with my friend Shay (totally heart you, girl) but I am willing to settle for browsing through her holiday snaps on her Facebook page.
Instead of the classic telephone call, I suppose Facebook really is the new way to Reach Out and Touch Someone.
This is a strange world in which we live. This friend count is more or less accurate. Some of these people I haven't seen in years, perhaps decades, but I do know all of these people.
I guess where I run into problems is that word "Friend." I think that friends are something that are all too often taken for granted. I have a Facebook friend in San Francisco, a Facebook friend in Mexico, and other Facebook friends all over. I really don't think you can cultivate deep friendships with people across these massive expansive distances, even when connected electronically.
I have very few friends I hang out with on a regular basis, and that's kind of the way I prefer it. But at the same time, I lament the distance between many of the other friends who I only ever see on Facebook. I'd love to be in Istanbul with my friend Shay (totally heart you, girl) but I am willing to settle for browsing through her holiday snaps on her Facebook page.
Instead of the classic telephone call, I suppose Facebook really is the new way to Reach Out and Touch Someone.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Charlie's Angels Aware
I loved singing and performing. I always have. I took singing lessons, I was in children's choir at church, performed in school plays and talent shows; I loved being in front of people. I think in some ways I've been very much a drama queen, hell, I've even thought about being a drag queen, but that moment has thankfully passed.
When I was a very young child, I would take the wooden spoon out of the drawer in the kitchen and pretend it was my microphone. The fireplace hearth was my stage. My parents are particularly fond of a song I made up about wanting to get a kiss from a jungle woman. Though I don't remember it myself very well, I guess it's probably a factual account, but I'm just old enough that we didn't have a camcorder yet to verify such an event. I guess in retrospect it would have made a much better story if I actually sang "Fire" by Jimi Hendrix.
In kindergarten, I put together a band called the Hot Buns. I think this was actually a name of a band from an episode of the TV show "Gimmie a Break" so I don't really think I should have been credited for my originality. The punchline was later that year, my buns really were hot after a paddling. The Christian school I went to used a name on the board -> checkmark by name -> aggregation of checkmarks = paddling system of punishment. It was probably not a big deal. I talked a lot. I was very chatty along with my annoying precociousness.
When I grew up a little, my parents put me in Children's Choir at church. It was much better than listening to the pastor's 45 minute prayers or impossibly intellectual sermons, so I was okay with being there. Although I often wanted to stay home so I could watch reruns of Charlie's Angels.
I remember Pat, the lady in charge of the choir was very enthusiastic about teaching us music. But we never learned anything useful. She taught us the words using a gigantic poster sized easel with a mix of words and rebuses. It was all handwritten and must have taken weeks, but at the time, I despised the pictogram learning process, but it helped me learn with both sides of my brain, an incredible gift. For all the benefits of cross-brain learning, we were never taught how to read music. It was all learned by ear. Later I took piano lessons and learned music, but until I was 9 I didn't know middle c from my middle finger.
But the absolute best aspects of Children's Choir were putting on costumes and doing choreography. Once, our church did Angels Aware, a cornball musical about how God was going to come and save the earth. I will forever remember all of the Ten Commandments in order, as long as someone gives me enough time to sing them out in my head. With the sparkly gold Christmas garland halos, the dry ice cloud effects, and the choreography, I was quite literally in a form of prepubescent gay heaven. Too bad my brother and one of my sisters were also there.
It was around the time I was growing out of my family's K-Tel Dumb Ditties album and transitioning to popular music and 60s tunes my sister was into. I was also into Christian pop for a while, but I got over that when I turned 15 or 16.
As I grew up more and more, my taste in music evolved into what can only be described
as the quintessential gay boy trying to fit into the world around him. My favorite song until I was 15 was "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" by Starship. It came on the radio once in fifth grade. I was typically staying in from recess and helping the teacher clean the chalkboards with another student named Gabe. I started to dance and lip sync and Gabe just started laughing. I was unapologetic about my enthusiasm. The teacher was out of the room, and I probably wasn't supposed to be listening to a secular radio station anyway, so I just didn't care. Now I've realized that what I really loved was that the sexes of the singing voices were so indeterminate. Grace Slick's voice to an eleven year old may as well have been that of another man. Can you imagine the enthralling power this had on my sexually confused brain?
In high school, I got bolder. I was an avid fan of the B-52s, the notoriously gay party band from the Athens, Georgia music underground that billed itself as the "World's Greatest Party Band." To me, they were. I bought every CD I could get my hands on. Almost every Taco Bell paycheck went to a B-52s CD in one of those clunky, anachronistic CD long boxes.
The B-52s made me lose my young queer mind. I would dance and groove and sing along anywhere I heard their music. At the time I was puzzled why more of their songs didn't make it on the radio, but going back through their albums today, I realize, that they aren't that great. Fred Schneider, the lead singer can't carry a tune. He's got a kind of gravelly voice that makes me think of Suzanne Pleshette or Bea Arthur. Plus, their music was kind of subversive. It was positively dripping with lots of sexual innuendo. They have a song titled "Dirty Back Road." Incidentally, I didn't put that together with gay sex until a few weeks ago when I saw the CD case in my rack. I like to think I was progressive, but I was more naive than even I had imagined.
Sometime when I was about 15, I saw the movie Heathers for the first of what would prove to be an innumerable number of times. The movie was vividly absurdist and surreal, but funny as all hell. At the end, Sly and the Family Stone covered Que Sera Sera, and did an amazing job. It became my all-time favorite song. To this day it retains that title, in spite of 17 years of music inundating me from all conceivable media. The song was so utterly perfect because it sounded like an utter mess. In the slick world of the late 80s and early 90s music, the blues, funk and rhythm fused in my brain to turn me into a musical adult.
About the time I discovered Sly and the Family Stone, I stopped listening to Christian pop. I loathed the concept of it, for one thing. Even now, perhaps especially now I don't think it is in any way beneficial to anyone to package the message of gospel in mass-market crap music.
I went away to college and started listening to college type music. I got into Ben Folds Five, the Indigo Girls, Cake, Guster and Jimmy Buffett, just about everything. I got into dance music a little bit also, being that I did start going to gay bars and getting my dance groove on for real.
Now I feel sometimes that I have lost that musical feeling. In a world dominated by personalized access to music, I feel that we need more people willing to go out there and perform music, rather than just consume it. I think I would like to learn how to play an instrument. I only ever learned how to play the snare drum. The piano didn't really stick for some reason. I think playing music, as well as singing and dancing connect us to something larger than ourselves. I think this larger art is something the world needs more of.
Maybe I can gather up the Kindergarten gang and reform the Hot Buns. The band name carries a lot more irony now than it did in 1983. I imagine that our first number one hit will be a cover of the B-52s classic "Dirty Back Road."
When I was a very young child, I would take the wooden spoon out of the drawer in the kitchen and pretend it was my microphone. The fireplace hearth was my stage. My parents are particularly fond of a song I made up about wanting to get a kiss from a jungle woman. Though I don't remember it myself very well, I guess it's probably a factual account, but I'm just old enough that we didn't have a camcorder yet to verify such an event. I guess in retrospect it would have made a much better story if I actually sang "Fire" by Jimi Hendrix.
In kindergarten, I put together a band called the Hot Buns. I think this was actually a name of a band from an episode of the TV show "Gimmie a Break" so I don't really think I should have been credited for my originality. The punchline was later that year, my buns really were hot after a paddling. The Christian school I went to used a name on the board -> checkmark by name -> aggregation of checkmarks = paddling system of punishment. It was probably not a big deal. I talked a lot. I was very chatty along with my annoying precociousness.
When I grew up a little, my parents put me in Children's Choir at church. It was much better than listening to the pastor's 45 minute prayers or impossibly intellectual sermons, so I was okay with being there. Although I often wanted to stay home so I could watch reruns of Charlie's Angels.
I remember Pat, the lady in charge of the choir was very enthusiastic about teaching us music. But we never learned anything useful. She taught us the words using a gigantic poster sized easel with a mix of words and rebuses. It was all handwritten and must have taken weeks, but at the time, I despised the pictogram learning process, but it helped me learn with both sides of my brain, an incredible gift. For all the benefits of cross-brain learning, we were never taught how to read music. It was all learned by ear. Later I took piano lessons and learned music, but until I was 9 I didn't know middle c from my middle finger.
But the absolute best aspects of Children's Choir were putting on costumes and doing choreography. Once, our church did Angels Aware, a cornball musical about how God was going to come and save the earth. I will forever remember all of the Ten Commandments in order, as long as someone gives me enough time to sing them out in my head. With the sparkly gold Christmas garland halos, the dry ice cloud effects, and the choreography, I was quite literally in a form of prepubescent gay heaven. Too bad my brother and one of my sisters were also there.
It was around the time I was growing out of my family's K-Tel Dumb Ditties album and transitioning to popular music and 60s tunes my sister was into. I was also into Christian pop for a while, but I got over that when I turned 15 or 16.
As I grew up more and more, my taste in music evolved into what can only be described
as the quintessential gay boy trying to fit into the world around him. My favorite song until I was 15 was "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" by Starship. It came on the radio once in fifth grade. I was typically staying in from recess and helping the teacher clean the chalkboards with another student named Gabe. I started to dance and lip sync and Gabe just started laughing. I was unapologetic about my enthusiasm. The teacher was out of the room, and I probably wasn't supposed to be listening to a secular radio station anyway, so I just didn't care. Now I've realized that what I really loved was that the sexes of the singing voices were so indeterminate. Grace Slick's voice to an eleven year old may as well have been that of another man. Can you imagine the enthralling power this had on my sexually confused brain?
In high school, I got bolder. I was an avid fan of the B-52s, the notoriously gay party band from the Athens, Georgia music underground that billed itself as the "World's Greatest Party Band." To me, they were. I bought every CD I could get my hands on. Almost every Taco Bell paycheck went to a B-52s CD in one of those clunky, anachronistic CD long boxes.
The B-52s made me lose my young queer mind. I would dance and groove and sing along anywhere I heard their music. At the time I was puzzled why more of their songs didn't make it on the radio, but going back through their albums today, I realize, that they aren't that great. Fred Schneider, the lead singer can't carry a tune. He's got a kind of gravelly voice that makes me think of Suzanne Pleshette or Bea Arthur. Plus, their music was kind of subversive. It was positively dripping with lots of sexual innuendo. They have a song titled "Dirty Back Road." Incidentally, I didn't put that together with gay sex until a few weeks ago when I saw the CD case in my rack. I like to think I was progressive, but I was more naive than even I had imagined.
Sometime when I was about 15, I saw the movie Heathers for the first of what would prove to be an innumerable number of times. The movie was vividly absurdist and surreal, but funny as all hell. At the end, Sly and the Family Stone covered Que Sera Sera, and did an amazing job. It became my all-time favorite song. To this day it retains that title, in spite of 17 years of music inundating me from all conceivable media. The song was so utterly perfect because it sounded like an utter mess. In the slick world of the late 80s and early 90s music, the blues, funk and rhythm fused in my brain to turn me into a musical adult.
About the time I discovered Sly and the Family Stone, I stopped listening to Christian pop. I loathed the concept of it, for one thing. Even now, perhaps especially now I don't think it is in any way beneficial to anyone to package the message of gospel in mass-market crap music.
I went away to college and started listening to college type music. I got into Ben Folds Five, the Indigo Girls, Cake, Guster and Jimmy Buffett, just about everything. I got into dance music a little bit also, being that I did start going to gay bars and getting my dance groove on for real.
Now I feel sometimes that I have lost that musical feeling. In a world dominated by personalized access to music, I feel that we need more people willing to go out there and perform music, rather than just consume it. I think I would like to learn how to play an instrument. I only ever learned how to play the snare drum. The piano didn't really stick for some reason. I think playing music, as well as singing and dancing connect us to something larger than ourselves. I think this larger art is something the world needs more of.
Maybe I can gather up the Kindergarten gang and reform the Hot Buns. The band name carries a lot more irony now than it did in 1983. I imagine that our first number one hit will be a cover of the B-52s classic "Dirty Back Road."
Monday, February 23, 2009
Get Your Bags Together...
I've been in a musical funk lately, but this song is one of my favorites. I'm so glad I found the video.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Some Kind of Creative Drought
To put it mildly, I have been neglectful of this blog, through a myriad of circumstances and distractions. I have been working on a few writing projects to keep me somewhat sane during the long harsh Hoosier winter. I have also been a perpetual bad mood, caused in part by my chronic sinus pain and sleepless nights.
Tonight, after I finished taking random facebook quizzes and reading a story or two on a blog or two, I just started grooving on my iTunes party shuffle mode.
Music usually puts me in a better mood, but I haven't even listened to music much lately. I've purchased four albums (two in stores, two online) since January, but I have hardly taken the time necessary to truly appreciate them. What follows are a few of my first impressions on my latest musical acquisitions.
Pink, Funhouse
I have been a fan of Pink for many years, and this latest album seems much more angry and introspective than any of her other work. I like the songs, but they deserve more attention and analysis than I have given them, so I can't say much more. I wouldn't know whether to recommend this or not, but the single, "So What" is a fun anthem for self acceptance.
Goldfrapp, Seventh Tree
I inflicted this on a couple of friends who like dance and electronica, but it's not at all a dance or electronica album in the traditional sense. The beats are somber and drift from cheery to melancholy. Overall, it's a beautiful collection, a virtual symphony of electonic music with lots of texture and understated beauty. I would recommend this and it's probably my favorite album of the set. It's also the one I've listened to most.
Adele, 19
This singer was recommended by a friend and I checked it out online, before she won the Grammy for best new artist. The music is soulful and solid. I'm also a sucker for great taste, especially when they cover good Bob Dylan songs. Adele covers "Make You Feel My Love," which has been recorded oodles of times, each time sounding progressively more pleasant than Dylan's original. Adele's was amazing and it was that 30-second sample alone that made me buy the disc at the store. The rest of the album does not disappoint at all.
Matt Alber, Hide Nothing
Of course, you all are thinking "Who?" and you aren't wrong. I found out about this singer on a blog post of all things. He has a great video for the song "The End of the World." I posted a link on facebook and added the YouTube video to my favorites and I bought the album. There are maybe one or two other songs on it that I like, but most of the time when a track of his comes up on the iPod or iTunes, I kind of regret the $12.99 download price.
So that's what I've been listening to. My advice for any readers is to just take a break every now and then and listen to the beauty of the sounds all around you.
By the way, the title of this post is a lyric from the Barenaked Ladies song "Brian Wilson."
Tonight, after I finished taking random facebook quizzes and reading a story or two on a blog or two, I just started grooving on my iTunes party shuffle mode.
Music usually puts me in a better mood, but I haven't even listened to music much lately. I've purchased four albums (two in stores, two online) since January, but I have hardly taken the time necessary to truly appreciate them. What follows are a few of my first impressions on my latest musical acquisitions.
Pink, Funhouse
I have been a fan of Pink for many years, and this latest album seems much more angry and introspective than any of her other work. I like the songs, but they deserve more attention and analysis than I have given them, so I can't say much more. I wouldn't know whether to recommend this or not, but the single, "So What" is a fun anthem for self acceptance.
Goldfrapp, Seventh Tree
I inflicted this on a couple of friends who like dance and electronica, but it's not at all a dance or electronica album in the traditional sense. The beats are somber and drift from cheery to melancholy. Overall, it's a beautiful collection, a virtual symphony of electonic music with lots of texture and understated beauty. I would recommend this and it's probably my favorite album of the set. It's also the one I've listened to most.
Adele, 19
This singer was recommended by a friend and I checked it out online, before she won the Grammy for best new artist. The music is soulful and solid. I'm also a sucker for great taste, especially when they cover good Bob Dylan songs. Adele covers "Make You Feel My Love," which has been recorded oodles of times, each time sounding progressively more pleasant than Dylan's original. Adele's was amazing and it was that 30-second sample alone that made me buy the disc at the store. The rest of the album does not disappoint at all.
Matt Alber, Hide Nothing
Of course, you all are thinking "Who?" and you aren't wrong. I found out about this singer on a blog post of all things. He has a great video for the song "The End of the World." I posted a link on facebook and added the YouTube video to my favorites and I bought the album. There are maybe one or two other songs on it that I like, but most of the time when a track of his comes up on the iPod or iTunes, I kind of regret the $12.99 download price.
So that's what I've been listening to. My advice for any readers is to just take a break every now and then and listen to the beauty of the sounds all around you.
By the way, the title of this post is a lyric from the Barenaked Ladies song "Brian Wilson."
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Rachel Getting Married
[CONTAINS SPOILERS]
Weddings are purported to be when people are at their best. The reality is that weddings are pretty intense events. Anyone who has ever been part of a wedding party knows that all of the preparation and stress got to be a little too much at times.
I just saw Rachel Getting Married at Cinema Center, my local art house theater. This was a truly engaging film, mainly with all of the entrancingly claustrophobic hand held cameras capturing the action. I was transported into the fray as a guest at the wedding, privy to what happens backstage as well as at the altar.
Kym (Anne Hathaway) is a troubled woman damaged by a lifetime of drug abuse who has come home from rehab for her sister's wedding. She is deeply flawed and manipulates every situation she is in because she is desperate for attention. She seems to be suffering from loneliness and isolation even though she's with the people who know her and love her best. She twists her sister's metaphorical arm (almost to the point of metaphorical amputation) into making her maid of honor, even though she clearly has little honor left.
But something strange has happened. Rachel (Rosemary DeWitt) is grown up and is getting her PhD in Psychology. (I can't imagine why she would have an interest in helping troubled people.) Rachel is no longer willing to put up with her sister's personality flaws, and with the major exception of making her maid of honor, Rachel calls Kym's bullshit for what it is. Through several events, it's revealed that Kym is directly responsible for the death of her toddler brother when she was a teenager. It's hardly a spoiler to say this, as it's mentioned fairly early into the film. This is quite obviously the reason everyone around her secretly loathes Kym. Their visceral disgust with her is almost palpable as she makes an awkward toast slash twelve-step amend to her sister in front of everyone at the rehearsal dinner.
The fights ensue following a post-rehearsal recap of Kym's manipulations back at the family house of their father and stepmother, played brilliantly by Bill Irwin and Anna Deavere Smith. Rachel preempts Kym's further attempts to manipulate the situation by announcing her pregnancy to everyone in the room. Everyone moves on to Rachel and leaves Kym in the cold.
The film's prime example of cold is Debra Winger, playing Kym and Rachel's mother, Abby. She is noticeably absent at the wedding rehearsal and arrived very late at the rehearsal dinner with her husband Andrew. As the film progresses, it becomes clear that although she loves her daughters, the loss of their little brother was something she never quite got over and has transformed into a cold and quiet housewife. She seems to be bothered by the hassle of Rachel's wedding and is positively, yet quietly, unnerved by Kym's reemergence at the festivities.
Kym meets a former fellow rehab patient at a salon when she and Rachel go to get their hair done for the wedding. He retells his inspiration he got from Kym's story in a rehab exercise about overcoming what Rachel knows is nonexistent child molestation and anorexia. Rachel is set off and tears out of the salon, leaving Kym to bask in the adoration of her former friend at rehab.
Another fight breaks out back at home when Kym calls out the family for not really forgiving her and she takes the station wagon to her mother's house to get away from the wedding madness. She finally asks her mother why she left the brother (Ethan) in Kym's care when everyone knew Kym was high all the time. Abby tells her that Ethan made Kym better and that Kym was the best she ever was when she was playing with Ethan. The two become hysterical with grief and rage and hit each other with fists instead of words.
Kym runs out to the car sobbing and bleery-eyed runs off the road and crashes on a boulder in a small glade of trees. She crashes emotionally and physically and we next see her in the fetal position in the driver's seat the next morning as a police officer knocks on the window.
Kym makes it home and has a very intimate moment with Rachel who bathes her and tends to her black eye as they prepare for the wedding. The next twenty or so minutes are finally uplifting as Rachel puts the getting married into the movie with a beautifully schizophrenic ceremony and party with everything from samba drums to african signing and belly dancers straight from Carnivale in Brazil. Kym finally is at her best and is content to skulk on the outer reaches of the party throng and looks desperately for her mother, trying to make amends for the fight and Ethan's death.
Rachel and Kym are dancing on the home's porch when Abby and Andrew try to make a quiet exit. Rachel laments her mother's departure and trip out of town that will make her miss the "post-wedding gossip reconnaissance" they planned to share. Rachel presumably knows about the fight and brings mom and Kym together in a three-person hug in a desperate attempt to get some closure for all three of them. But at the same time she knows her family will always be psychically fractured on an epic scale.
The film is simply a brilliant study of people who are at their worst when they are striving with all possible strength to be better. Where the film goes right is at the end when all three women finally admit to themselves that their best may not be possible.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
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