August 2009 Mix CD

Garrett Jones has to start sucking at some point, right?  Players don’t suddenly become better moving from the minors to the majors.  Anyway…

1. Coal Chamber – Big Truck >> If I was still 9 years old, I, too, would write a song about a big truck.  There’s something you have to admire about a band who screams “big truck” and makes that a song.  I love it.
2. White Zombie – Creature of the Wheel >> One of the few non-singles from Astro Creep: 2000, but it very well could have been.  People forget just how good this album was, with over half of the album being singles.  There will be a metal post in the relatively near future discussing such matters.
3. The Presets – Down Down Down
4. The Rapture – House of Jealous Lovers >> Even though I know the title of the song, it still sounds like “Hot souls!  Chinese lovers!” to me.
5. Franz Ferdinand – No You Girls
6. Beck – Mixed Bizness >> Beck is the funk.  He wants to be it, and he is it.  No part of this song is not the funk.  This cannot be denied.
7. Muse – Starlight >> I’ve never been a Muse fan.  I don’t have anything against them.  I remember thoroughly enjoying (and still enjoying) “Muscle Museum” in 1999.  But, really, I only like this one for the nice keyboardy bits.  Does that make me a bad person?
8. Giant Drag – Kevin is Gay >> Actually found this one via Bill Simmons’ tweet.  Simple lyrics, simple melodies, gorgeous post-grunge sounds.  I wish there were more “meows” here, though.  Also, the first sounds in the song are apparently lead singer Annie Hardy imitating the “shoryuken” sound from Street Fighter.
9. Blonde Redhead – 23
10. Shout Out Louds – Impossible (Possible Version by Studio) >> Swedish indie pop transformed into Balearic house.  It works so incredibly well, you wouldn’t know it’s a remix.  Sunny and warm enough that it works even in the dead of winter.
11. Stereolab – Good is Me >> Not just an experiment in music, but in logic.  “I am good therefore good is me,” “He’s not me therefore he is not good.”  While not logically sound (maybe that’s the point?), it is hella hypnotic.  “Good is Me” plays out in a bizarre ABAC featuring twangy guitar sounds and Americana organ before shifting to a ’70s prog rock outro.  I will need to investigate further Stereolab material…
12. Mute Math – Typical >> I’m a sucker for big crunchy distortion and “Typical” delivers.
13. Interpol – Roland >> I’ve explained before why Turn on the Bright Lights is a great album and Interpol’s other albums are not, so I don’t think we need to do that again.
14. Joy Division – Dead Souls >> The first lyrics don’t appear until almost 2 minutes in.  Of all Joy Division songs, I can see this one being most ferociously performed live.  Joy Division was supposedly a lot more aggressive live and this would have been a great window.
15. Bloc Party – I Still Remember >> The main guitar riff is a brilliant post-punk revival take on new wave.
16. The Shins – Sea Legs >> One of the more distinctive Shins songs.  It could have only been off of Wincing the Night Away.
17. Beck – Sunday Sun
18. Nick Drake – Fly >> The interplay of all the plucked, strummed, and bowed strings is dreamy.  Drake as always brings otherwordly qualities to simple lyrics.
19. The Smashing Pumpkins – Zeitgeist >> I hadn’t really listened to this song ever.  It was just kind of “that acoustic track at the end of Zeitgeist.”  It really is a special acoustic work by Billy Corgan on par with anything from the Mellon Collie demos.

Arbitrary song of the day: Tears for Fears – Head Over Heels

Most British TV shows suck

Most British TV shows suck.  This shouldn’t be a revelation.  Not everything can be Monty Python or The Office.  Most American television sucks, too, but I think that’s easier to realize for American viewers like me.  We generally don’t see most terrible foreign shows; the ones we get have been vetted by the local critics and audiences.  Because of this, I think greater leeway is given to foreign shows from critics.  Stuff like Dr. Who and The Black Adder are respected critically and have sizable fan bases, though the former is at best campy with Sci-Fi Channel made-for-tv-level special effects and the latter is, well, not funny (or maybe it used to be and hasn’t held up in the slightest).

This is closer to the state of British television than I'm comfortable with.

In this biased, prejudiced mindset, I set out to see a few episodes of a couple shows I knew I wouldn’t like: The IT Crowd and Coupling.  I went into The IT Crowd expecting The Big Bang Theory, the biggest television abomination.*  It wasn’t that bad.  Now, it was still bad, just not eye-stabbingly terrible.  Richard Ayoade is decent, but his intentionally bad presentation isn’t nearly as effective here as in the fun romp that is Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace.

I must concede that it does have a pretty slick title sequence.  However, most everything else about the show is bad, standard sitcom fair.  It’s close to When the Whistle Blows, the show within a show from Extras.  With all of the geeky tech stuff around, you can tell it’s written by passionate geeks.  Unfortunately, they are passionate geeks with terrible taste in television.

*The Big Bang Theory offends me not so much as a geek, but as a television viewer.  Really, CBS’s entire Monday night lineup is an affront to humanity. How I Met Your Mother, Rules of Engagement (I haven’t seen it, but it’s at an impressively terrible “28″ on Metacritic), Two and Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, CSI: Miami – that is an All-Star team of terrible television.  My god.  CBS in general has terrible programming though.  The only thing I ever watch from CBS are AFC football games.  That is it.  I can’t say enough about how bad CBS’s programming is.

Coupling seems to be a sexed-up version of Friends.  The jokes are juvenile (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and predictable with storylines and hijinks that were stale fifteen years ago.  The laugh track is horribly out of place, as it always is in single-camera sitcoms.  The inappropriateness is somewhere in between The Flintstones and the first season of Sports Night.

Also, I’d like to point out that my suggestion for Aaron Sorkin’s next show wasn’t too far off from this.

Arbitrary song of the day: Shout Out Louds – Impossible (Possible Version by Studio)

JCVD

Upon hearing of JCVD, I thought my plot for a film called "Jason Statham Will Shoot You" had been taken. But no.

Never trust Netflix “At A Glance” descriptions.  I thought I had learned that, but I guess I didn’t.  Netflix described JCVD thusly: “Jean-Claude Van Damme plays himself in this comic action film.”  Because of this, I went in with expectations of seeing something similar to Shoot ‘Em Up, which I can’t recommend enough.  This was reinforced before the film even started as the production company’s intro sequence and logo (which is normally a silhoutted boy pulling a daisy from the ground) featured Van Damme attempting to take a flower from a child and subsequently performing a roundhouse kick on him.

The opening sequence is an impressive single take of Van Damme beating the crap out of a couple platoons of soldiers.  While the scene is full of awesome, its primary purpose is to provide contrast to Van Damme’s down-and-out persona.  As the film unfolds, we learn in a non-linear manner that he’s losing his daughter in a custody battle, is short on cash, and has wound up as a key figure in a post office robbery.

The directorial techniques are a mixed bag in terms of success.  The washed-up tone and washed-out colors of JCVD are similar to that of The Wrestler and add a gloominess.  We are essentially presented with the first events of the film twice: once from outside of the post office and once from Van Damme’s view inside the post office.  The second run through of the plot quickly becomes tiring though, as its pretty easy to figure out what has happened only a few minutes into it.  Some of the more effective devices include a dramatic (and well-acted!) fourth-wall breaking monologue and a fake “rewound” ending.  Not what I was expecting going in, but there’s some interesting stuff here nonetheless.

Arbitrary song of the day: Giant Drag – Kevin is Gay