Have Yourself a Merry Muthaphukkin XMas

Around this time of year it's pretty easy to get fed up and cynical about the suffocating prevalence of Christmas music in every house, business, church, mosque, synagogue, and public toilet you walk into, but even after all the years of having the same twenty or so Christmas songs drilled into my head, it's still impossible for me to deny that at least part of the reason for the enduring quality of this music is that some of them are just damn good songs. Plus, there's still something about the manipulative use of nostalgia and naive optimism in Christmas music that gets me every time. On the other hand, there's only so many times you can hear the dog barking version of "Jingle Bells" before you want to punch the Salvation Army Santa in the face. So I propose the following as new additions to the canon of Christmas standards.


Spinal Tap - Christmas With the Devil

While Twisted Sister's A Twisted Christmas might satisfy your desire for metal versions of earlier holiday classics, they really don't add anything original to the already saturated market of modern renditions of Christmas tunes (also, there's something more than a little bit disturbing about Dee Snider singing "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus"). Spinal Tap, on the other hand, half-ironically throw their hats into the ring with a totally original song that's not only truer to the spirit of heavy metal, but, given the amount of alcohol binging and and shameful hookups that happen at holiday parties around the country, it's probably closer to the actual experience of Christmas for most people than songs about virgin births and jovial sleigh rides.






The Ramones - Merry Christmas (I Don't Wanna Fight Tonight)

The Ramones made a 30-0year career out of writing the same song a couple hundred times with different lyrics, because, basically, that one song fucking rocks. So what could be better at Christmas than "Blitzkrieg Bop" with bells and holiday-themed lyrics. Also, the tongue-in-cheek portrayal of domestic violence in this video is awesome.




Eazy E - Merry Muthaphukkin XMas

Though significantly less popular than Run DMC's "Christmas In Hollis", Eazy E's holiday classic is by far the better Christmas-themed rap. The production by Dr. Dre and DJ Yella puts anything Jam Master Jay every did to shame, and really you can only sound so cool rapping about finding Santa's wallet at the park and returning it. I'll take E's Christmas traditions of getting high and having (presumably unprotected) sex over chicken and collard green's with DMC's family in Queens.




Eric Cartman - Swiss Colony Beef Log

I remember reading this slate.com article last year about how wasteful and inefficient gift-giving is for the economy, because when we get stuff for ourselves we generally get things we need or can use; whereas, when we get stuff for other people it's usually worthless crap. Christmas is the only time of year that you can see television commercials for the impulse-buy items in the checkout line at Walgreens, and it's the only time of year that smoked logs of meat and cheese seem like a viable meal option. This song, off South Park's Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics album, is perhaps the greatest tribute ever written to gluttony and excess of the holiday season.

Short Cuts vs. Crash: a Cinematic Smackdown in Three Parts

Last night I couldn't sleep, and ended up watching all 187 minutes of Robert Altman's indie actor wet-dream Short Cuts on HBO. This is a film I've been meaning to see for years now, but as with most of the Altman oeuvre, I can never find the time or the patience to sit through three and a half hours of long takes and wide shots of five conversations going on at the same fucking time. Though in this case I'm glad I did.

While it's a pretty typical Altman film for the most part (ensemble cast, interconnected multi-thread story, and characters that walk that fine line between neurotic and straight-up crazy), it's also possibly one of the best nuggets of pop-culture trivia I've ever seen. I mean, the whole thing plays out like a time capsule of bad taste in the early nineties, from the oversized t-shirts and short shorts (on dudes) to the pastel-colored art-deco fish tanks and white-trash kids watching marathons of Captain Planet (by the way, if anybody ever asks me why people of my generation are so fucked-up, I'll just show them this and remind them that this what I had to grew up with). Plus, the cast is like an off-beat character-actor cluster-fuck the likes of which has still never been seen. Altman should have gotten the Oscar just for having the insight to cast Lily Tomlin as Lili Taylor's mom. . . and Tom Waits as her dad. . . and Robert Downey Jr. as her boyfriend. Though the whole time I was watching this movie I just couldn't stop thinking to myself: my god, Crash is a terrible fucking movie.







































Of course, I know that Crash is a terrible fucking movie, but given that it won three Oscars (including best picture) and Short Cuts barely eked out the obligatory directing nod for Altman (one of the seven he didn't win), and that these are both ensemble films with byzantine narratives set in LA, I think it's worth doing a side-by side comparison three areas in which the films seem similar. . .

1) Sexually Inappropriate Cop Character
























Matt Dillon has always had a knack for playing a slimeball that doesn't know how to keep his dick in his pants. His best performance as this type is probably in There's Something About Mary (where he ironically plays a private dick), though Crash fails to exploit this side of him by trying to make his character halfway sympathetic. He still likes to grope black chicks in front of their husbands, but he'll also pull them out of flaming wreckage to save their life if the situation calls for it. Tim Robbins aggressively adulterous motorcycle cop in Short Cuts, on the other hand, is sleazy to the core. As his political writings will attest, few people can play a self-absorbed douchebag as well as Tim Robbins. His character has no shame. He cheats on his wife and then unsuccessfully tries to cheat on the woman he's cheating on his wife with. He'll pull over a women in clown makeup on her way to a child's birthday party just to hit on her. The only redemption he gets in the end is when he decides that he actually wants to fuck his wife as well.

2) Popular Musicians cum Actors

























This category is perhaps a bit unevenly stacked. I mean, it's a bit like asking the kids from Little Giants to play '84 Chicago Bears. Ludacis's street-smart loudmouth character in Crash gets so far trumped by Short Cuts powerhouse trifecta of Tom Waits, Lyle Lovett, and Huey Lewis that I could probably just declare it a TKO without much argument. Granted, Tom Waits basically just plays up his established musical persona the same way Luda does in Crash, but Huey Lewis peeing in a river on a camping trip and realizing that there's a dead body in the water is pretty much the definition of perfect dark comedy.

3) Violent Catharsis




















While the car accident at the titular accident at the end of Crash is certainly well shot and acted, it still, like the rest of the film, just feels sort of manipulative. For all the dramatic weight that Paul Haggis thrusts onto Matt Dillon's character in this scene, you'd swear he was the second coming of Christ (if Jesus had a thing for ethnic girls). Paul Haggis wouldn't know understatement if it hit him in his bald, scientologist head. Altman, on the other hand, knows how to make a point without being completely patronizing to his audience, and knows not to linger on any one scene long enough that it feels like melodrama. Sort of like in Do The Right Thing when things get too tense and Samuel L. Jackson's radio DJ character pipes in, "I'm tired of these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane" (or something to that effect), the earthquake scene at the end of Short Cuts serves as a cold reminder to all the self-involved nut-jobs in the movie that they're not alone in the world. Never mind the fact the this film predicted the Northridge quake by at least a year.


I'm only disappointed that in 2006, when Crash was sweeping the Oscars and the Academy was giving him the "give it up old man" lifetime achievement award, Altman didn't get up on stage, bitch-slap Paul Haggis, and take his awards.

Pilot Season (Week 3)

Pretty much all of the networks blew their loads last week. Luckily ABC was still holding back it's most eagerly anticipated/dreaded shows.


Carpoolers












It would probably be sufficient to say that this show is just indescribably bad and leave it at that, but I don't think that would do justice to how awful this show truly is. With misframed shots all over the place, editing that seemed like it was done be a hyperactive child on meth, and comic timing that's pretty much nonexistent, it's safe to say that this show sucks on every conceivable level. The mere fact that this is given a half-hour of air time on national network television should make us all ashamed to be Americans (though, to be fair, it was actually created by a Canadian). It also illustrates a key flaw in the current trend of one-camera no-laugh-track sitcoms, which I inexplicably feel the need to expound upon. . . At one point in the history of TV, pretty much all shows were done live in front of a studio audience, so comedians like Milton Berle and George Burns had to be funny to get laughs from the audience and remind the viewers at home just how funny they were. Then when video tape came along and people realized it was cheaper and easier to just record the whole thing, networks added a laugh track to keep this sense of liveness (or at least queue the humorless viewers in on where the jokes are). Then jaded TV audiences got fed up with the fakeness of the whole thing (ironically The Simpsons was probably the watershed in this department) and demanded that sitcoms feel more like the shitty reality shows that were putting the nails in the coffin of the sitcom format. This resulted in many brilliant shows (that mostly went unwatched) and brings us to the current state of affairs. So even if none of them are actually funny (which is generally the case), a show like Two and a Half Men or King of Queens still has to have actual coherent jokes for the laugh track to punctuate. Carpoolers has none of these restrictions. The show opens with a bunch of middle-aged dudes singing Air Supply on their way to work and I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be funny, uncomfortable, or just sad. I'm still not sure that this is actually meant to be a comedy except for the fact that it's apparently created by Bruce McColloch, who at one point might have qualified as my favorite of the Kids in the Hall (and now ranks well below Mark McKinney). Oh, also, in case you're keeping score, Jerry O'Connell's role in this makes for the second awful show of the season to feature a veteran cast member of Kangaroo Jack.


Cavemen









It's a show based on a car insurance ad about neanderthals living in modern times that get treated like black people. On paper, this is possibly the worst show ever created (give or take the one about the family of animatronic dinosaurs, or the one with the family that lives with Sasquatch, or the one where we're supposed to take Charlie Sheen seriously as a comic actor). In practice it's a pretty mediocre sitcom about about a bunch of fratty post-collegiate dudes wearing 15 pounds of makeup and hanging out in San Diego. The central joke of the commercials about the cavemen being constantly discriminated against is just as tired and lame in the show, but the characters and dialog are certainly no worse than an average episode of Entourage. The execs at ABC were smart to program it next to Carpoolers, which makes it seem like Seinfeld by comparison, but just let this be a lesson to you that the next time you think an ad campaign is really clever and witty its probably best to keep it to yourself.


Pushing Daisies








Hey, do you remember that show Wonderfalls? . . . No? . . . How bout Dead Like Me? . . . No? . . . Well, this was apparently created by the same guy who wrote those shows, and for all the money that ABC has spent plastering the entire City of New York with these posters, it should be the fucking Citizen Kane of quirky dark-comedic network dramas. It's also directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, whose work as a cinematographer (Big, Raising Arizona, When Harry Met Sally) includes some of the most memorable films of the 1980s, but whose latter work as a director (RV, Big Trouble, Wild Wild West) might be best described as unforgivable. The show isn't bad, per se. It's just trying too hard, and I'm too fucking old for fairy tales and candy-colored dream worlds. It's the sort of show that'll probably get canceled after half a season and pretentious college girls will buy the DVD to throw it on their dormroom shelves in between their copies of Amelie and The Life Aquatic and when people notice it they can say, "Oh my god, that show was so amazing - I can't believe nobody watched it."

Pilot Season (week 2)

This is ostensibly the week when the networks pull out the "big guns." Prepare to be underwhelmed.


Journeyman









The premise for this show seems a bit confusing, so let's see if we can sum up what's going on. As far as I can tell the main character is the victim of some sort of bizarre cosmic prank, wherein he is sporadically flung back and forth through time and forced to listen to otherwise forgettable pop music of the era while trying to piece together a mystery that will allow him to do some sort of good deed (sort of like Quantum Leap without the sexual ambiguity). At one point his family and friends try to give him an intervention because they believe his sporadic absences and disheveled appearance is the result of a substance abuse problem (as any sane person would), and I half-expect Jesus to show up with a camera crew and inform him that he just got punk'd. Sadly, this does not happen.


Big Bang Theory










It's important for television executives to understand that geeks and nerds are not inherently likable or sympathetic characters. In the hands of a Josh Schwartz or Judd Apatow, they might be made to seem endearing or even kind of cool. Unfortunately, in the hands of Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady (who were previously responsible for two of the greatest atrocities perpetrated on primetime network TV) we're left with two characters that make even the nerdiest among us want to give them pink belly while hanging them from the flagpole by their underwear and stealing their lunch money.


Chuck











Hey, speaking of Josh Schwartz, he's got a second show out this season (which thankfully is nothing like the first). Much like Journeyman, the actual story here is just shy of coherent. Following in the vein of Hitchcock's Man Who Knew Too Much (though probably closer to Bill Murray's Man Who Knew Too Little) Chuck is a geeky slacker that works in the tech support department at a faux-Best Buy, and his old roommate from college (working as a spy) managed to steal all the data from some computer that has all of the nation's secrets just before getting killed and e-mailing all of this to Chuck. Through some kind of file encoding system that uses glitchy Tony Scott-style montages to transmit data directly to the user's brain, Chuck manages to get all of this in his head. When the government figures figures this out, the NSA and CIA, who are feuding/working together (?), send their most capable/emotionally vulnerable (?) female secret agent to capture/kill/enlist (?) him. If you can get past the ridiculous premise (which is something akin trying to convince yourself that Maggie Gyllenhaal is hot) it's actually kind of entertaining. Oh, and it has the guy from Candyman in it, which is a plus.


Bionic Woman










With a combination of hack writing, b-movie special effects, and a premise that seemed hokey in 1976, this is pretty much like a perfect storm of awful television. Not to mention the fact that all the actors sound like they're rehearsing for a second-rate community theater (with the exception of Miguel Ferrer, who should know better). I was considering writing a joke about Shazam! until I realized that the movie remake is already in the works, and God hates me.


DirtySexyMoney










While this show is actually halfway watchable, I've decided to boycott it for it's unspeakably awkward title, a fact that I will illustrate with the following hypothetical exchange:

"Hey, did you watch DirtySexyMoney last night."
"Yeah, I really liked Peter Krause is Six Feet Under, but he's way better in DirtySexyMoney."
"Totally. I mean, I never knew Billy Baldwin could act, but he's so awesome in DirtySexyMoney."
"Dude, can I borrow your TLC CD?"


Big Shots










Chalk up another show about rich people on the East Coast, and hand over some more licensing royalties to Peter, Bjorn, and John. The title of this show is apparently supposed to have some double-meaning involving golf swings, but aside from the obligatory montages of the lead actors playing the game I'm at a loss for what. As far as I can tell, it's pretty much just Entourage with corporate CEOs, which would be an interesting premise were it not for the fact that corporate CEOs are actually some of the least interesting people on the planet. Also, it's probably a bad sign that Christopher Titus plays the only character that's even halfway plausible as the head of a company.


Cane













In much the same way The Sopranos shows that guido Italians from North Jersey can be intelligent and emotionally complex, Cane shows that hard-assed Cuban immigrants can be boring and lame.


Reaper










I don't know why TV execs need to give shows titles that don't match their premise in the slightest (FYI, the show Moonlight is actually about Vampires, not Werewolves), because I had a joke all prepared about how Family Guy as well as the nascent Showtime series Dead Like Me had already used the premise of a schlub that has to take on the grim reaper's job and face the existential quandaries of life and death, and then I watch the show and it's pretty much just an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer directed by Kevin Smith. But aside from it's horribly misleading title, this is actually kind of an entertaining show. I am a little depressed by the fact that working retail at some nameless big-box store is the closest thing to a unifying American experience for people of my generation, but I guess TV writers can only write so many shows about dysfunctional rich people.

Pilot Season (Week 1)

Thanks to the miracle of DVR and some sort of masochistic need for pop cultural inclusion I've taken it upon myself to watch as many network pilots as I can before they all get canceled to make way for this seasons new crop of talent search programs. These are the unfortunate results. . .


Kid Nation









I'm not sure how, but CBS has somehow managed to take elements of Children of the Corn, Lord of the Flies, and the Zimbardo Prison Experiment and turn it into one of the lamest shows on TV. I could not be more disappointed in this show. And more than anything, I just feel embarrassed for these children. I mean, the ability for consenting adults to make complete asses of themselves on national television is well within our rights as American citizens, but the girl dancing for nickels to buy a bicycle has to qualify as a human rights violation under some UN treaty. I did, however, appreciate that the show proves, once and for all, that children are every bit as dumb and gullible as they're given credit for (oh, take that, J.K. Rowling).


K*Ville










Remember episode of the Simpsons where they have the mock spinoff where Chief Wiggum becomes a P.I. in an absurdly characaturized version of New Orleans. This is pretty much the same show, only with a slightly less plausible story and more shaky, hand-held camera-work. As far as I can tell from this show, the only affect that the hurricane had on the people of New Orleans (oh, sorry - N'awlins) is that they now have to drink bourbon, eat gumbo, listen to jazz, and practice voodoo in slightly more run-down buildings. Seriously, it's as though a TV writer from LA walked into a Popeye's after watching something about Katrina on CNN and decided to make a show based on his experiences (and yes, that is the guy from Kangaroo Jack).


Gossip Girl











Snobby rich kids that attend elite prep schools and get straight-A's while doing nothing but shopping and going to parties. Check. Twentysomething actors playing high school-aged characters that drink, smoke, and have sex like people in their twenties. Check. And of course, it wouldn't be a Josh Schwartz show without the hottest indie music of eight months ago providing the soundtrack. But lest you think this is just the OC set in the Upper East Side, they've decided to give it a hip/edgy/cloying twist and use an anonymous gossip blogger (disappointingly voiced by Kristen Bell) as a narrator and plot crutch. I should probably appreciate that they're trying to make blogging hip, though the way they portray it is a little more like some oBnoXioUS TwELve-yEAr-olD-gIrL's mYSpAcE PagE than it is Wonkette, not to mention the less-than subtle "big brother" overtone to the whole show. The only halfway compelling character is the poor-man's-Joaquin-Phoenix date-rapist, who's brief speech on entitlement is both the most honest thing I've ever heard in a teen soap opera and the best reason I can think of to not watch this show.


Back To You













I'm not sure if I'm suffering from some form of premature dementia or if my standards have just been lowered by years of substandard CBS sitcoms, but I actually found this show funny. Don't get me wrong, everything about it is completely formulaic and predictable, but the jokes are generally pretty clever and sort of risque (even for an NBC show). It's no Newsradio, but it's about as good as we're gonna get without bringing Phil Hartman back from the grave. So, until science develops such technology, I guess I'll have to settle for it.

Karaoke a Go-Go

This past Saturday, while bar-crawling the nonstop frat party that that is the Upper East Side, I managed to stumble into what looked something like a biker dive bar, but for some reason was doing karaoke (which is bizarre for several reasons, not least of which is the fact that karaoke never seems to take place on nights that people would otherwise want to be at a bar). But after seeing too many people try and fail with a machine that's designed to make even the most inept singers into pop stars, I've decided to write this helpful guide to maximize your karaoke experience (grouped by appropriate stereotype).

The MC
Aspires to be. . . Carson Daly.
Your coolness level probably ranks somewhere between a second-rate club DJ and a bad Jethro Tull tribute band. You should probably at least pretend like you're excited to be there just so I won't feel like a complete loser for enjoying myself, but the less exposition you give, the better. And remember that just because you can sing better than anyone else in the bar doesn't mean anyone actually wants to hear you. You're allowed to sing something to kick off the night and maybe if there's nobody else in the bar who wants to sing, but remember that the only thing more pathetic than somebody who thinks that singing into a suped-up VCR at a sparsely populated sports bar on a Tuesday night makes them a rock star is someone who denies them that joy for the sake of petty one-upsmanship. In fact, pretty much your only job is to make sure that the douchebag who sings all Dave Matthews b-sides isn't allowed to go up more than once.
Suggested singing. . . nothing, if you can avoid it.
Avoid. . . anything downbeat.

The Noob
Aspires to be. . . Bill Murray/Scarlett Johanson in Lost In Translation.
After spending most of the night mocking nearly everyone else who's gone up, you've finally achieved the necessary blood-alcohol level to come to the conclusion that you can do better. However, once you actually get the mic in your hand, you realize that there are at least two verses of this song that you're pretty sure you've never heard before in your life. Remember, just because you've heard the song a million times doesn't mean you actually know the lyrics, and don't assume that the monitor is gonna help you out.
Suggested singing. . . Billy Joel.
Avoid. . . Foreigner (seriously, that shit is hard - look up the lyrics to "Hot Blooded" if you don't believe me).

The Venerated Barfly
Aspires to be. . . Dean Martin.
You're probably the only person in the bar that would still be there on a Monday night even if they weren't having karaoke, so somehow you feel like it's your duty as a regular to at least go up and sing one song, and that song might be the same one you sang last week, but nobody seems to care.
Suggested singing. . . Frank Sinatra.
Avoid. . . anything recorded in the last 30 years.

Fat Middle-Aged Man In Hawaiian Shirt
Aspires to be. . . Neil Diamond
Your encyclopedic knowledge of pop lyrics along with a blissful lack of self awareness make you pretty much the ideal karaoke singer, and your unwavering conviction gives you a Meatloaf-esque charm that will overcome any and all shortcomings of your actual singing. Just don't hold back.
Suggested Singing. . . Huey Lewis.
Avoid. . . understatement.

Single White Female
Aspires to be. . . Kelly Clarkson
Like all things in life, karaoke poses an unfair double-standard to women - but really, you girls bring it on yourself. Those that do have genuine vocal talent seem to think I should be impressed by your pitch-perfect rendition of some obscure country ballad that bores me to tears and only serves to remind me of just how sad and pathetic this whole scene really is, and those of you who can't sing seem intent on subjecting the rest of us to your butchering of the shrillest, most high-pitched pop hits of the 80s. Just remember that there are other people in the bar besides that obnoxious little hen party you call your friends.
Suggested singing. . . something by a gay white man.
Avoid. . . anything I haven't heard of.

Black Guy
Aspires to be. . . R. Kelly minus the sexual indiscretion.
Unfortunately I've spent my life watching talented white pop singers getting shamefully upstaged by even more talented black pop singers, so my expectations are perhaps a bit unreasonable, but anything short greatness will be scoffed at. Lest you think this is unfair, just remember that you have the advantage of being able to show off your vocal abilities without anybody assuming you're gay, so why not take advantage of it.
Suggested singing. . . Lionel Richie.
Avoid. . . Marvin Gaye (some of us have girlfriends we'd like to keep)

Black Girl
Aspires to be. . . Lauren Hill
Since the expectations for your performance are pretty much impossibly high, you should probably sit down unless you can sing on par with Patti Labelle (or, at the very least, Chaka Khan). Though, if you can pull it off, there's nothing more I'd rather see than all the annoying white girls in the bar get owned.
Suggested Singing. . . Whitney Houston.
Avoid. . . being too smug about it.

Hot Fun In the Summertime

Faced with the realization that the summer will be over in a couple of weeks and I might actually have to start paying for concerts, I decided to let my Netflix go unwatched for another week and see the two free concerts happening this weekend that seemed promising.




















On Saturday afternoon I wandered over to East River Park, a quiet, out-of-the way strip of grass next to a bunch of Lower-East Side project towers at the base of the Williamsburg Bridge, to see Vampire Weekend. Though their name might suggest otherwise, Vampire Weekend is actually not a second-rate industrial goth band. They are, in fact, made up of four prepped-out Columbia grads playing afro-beat inspired indie pop, who currently seem to have a lot more hype than they do actual fans. Despite having not more than a three-song EP available only on vinyl and the iTunes store, they've already been written up in the Times and plugged on pretty much every major music blog, and I can certainly see why (and they're apparently hip enough for this show to warrant an appearance by former Pavement bassist Mark Ibold). They play what essentially amounts to a lo-fi version of Graceland-era Paul Simon, which is to say they're playing saccharine pop melodies to the same African rhythms and harmonies that your parents thought were cool for a couple of years in the mid-80s. This might seem sort of lame, and it is, but it's also refreshing to see a band of upper-middle class white kids from the Northeast that aren't afraid to shy away from the fact that they're upper-middle class white kids from the Northeast. They have a kind of wide-eyed earnestness that's really kind of charming, without the cloying preciousness that seems to plague the majority of indie pop bands. I also enjoyed seeing a band that was so obviously young and unseasoned. They botched a few notes here and there, and I'm pretty sure the bassist was playing out of the same 100-watt amp that I owned in high school, but I'll be damned if they weren't loving every minute of it. They even managed to amass a fairly sizable dancing section near the front of the stage (and I mean real dancing, not that fake head nodding crap that hipsters in this town seem to think passes for self-expression. . . What?. . . No. . . I mean, I wasn't dancing. . . I'm too cool for that).














The following day, after a night of heavy drinking at the world's-largest-frat-party-meets-Oktoberfest known as the Bohemian beer garden in Astoria, I managed to drag myself out to Brooklyn for the Ted Leo/Thermals show at McCarren Park Pool. I met up with my friend EJ, who lives around the block and is apparently a regular at these events. The first thing I noticed was the fact that most of the people there didn't really seem very interested in the music. There was definitely a sizable group crowded around the stage with their attention on the bands, but they were outnumbered by the hordes on either side of the pool, intent on finding every way possible to turn this dilapidated slab of concrete into a hipster Neverland. Flanking the stage on the right was the dodgeball tournament (I had apparently arrived too late for kickball) and on the left was a slip-n- slide as well as some sort of oversize water volleyball game. I wasn't feeling ballsy enough to have a go at any of the competitive sports, but I did take a trip down the slip-n-slide, which was infinitely better designed than the crappy yellow tarps of my youth, and felt pretty good after standing in the 90-degree heat for a few hours.













































The Thermals had just got on when I got there, who I'm not a huge fan of, but seemed to put on a decent show. With most of their songs lasting no more than 2 minutes, I was surprised they managed to fill up an hour set, but somehow they did it. Though, as much as I love 2-minute punk rock songs, they seemed a bit repetitive after a while, and there's only so much of the whiny Ben Gibbard-style vocals that I can stand. They saved their best songs for the end of the set (along with a spot-on cover of "Big Dipper" - the whiniest of all Built to Spill songs), and managed to somewhat redeem themselves.
















When Ted Leo came out, he opened with "Sons of Cain", a fist-pumper from his most recent LP that got the crowd pretty well energized. He played a few other songs from his new album, which I haven't really listened to but sounded pretty good. I luckily managed to hear most of my favorite songs off Shake the Sheets and The Tyranny of Distance. Sadly there was no "Since U Been Gone/Maps", but we were treated to a bizarre mashup of "Little Dawn" and "One More Time" (which was entertaining, but also a painful reminder of the insane Daft Punk show I missed last week). If nothing else, I have to give Ted Leo credit for being one hard working motherfucker. For a guy thats now well into his thirties, he still knows how to rock better than the majority of acts ten years his junior (also, his performance on the Human Giant marathon is possibly the best handling of an equipment malfunction that I've ever seen).

































Unfortunately, I had to leave the show a little early to head back into the city to catch Theremin, a play at the NY Fringe Festival that Erin's friend Anna was in the original cast for and used to date the writer/lead actor of. The play tells the semi-true story of Leon Theremin, the Russian inventor responsible for the first electronic musical instrument that bares his name. To give the story a little twist, it's all told through the eyes of post-Beach Boys Brian Wilson, who is in an insane asylum trying to piece together the life of the instrument and its creator. Hats off to Ben Lewis and Duke Doyle (who you may remember for his two-second role as Kevin Bannister in High Fidelity), the co-writers and lead actors in the play, for successfully weaving together science, music, and history, and not making it seem at all boring or contrived. The play gets a little muddled at points (Brian Wilson was a nut-job, what do you expect), but the writing and acting are pretty amazing for a play that these guys initially put on when they were still at BU. Plus the live theremin playing kicks ass.

P4K 2K7

This weekend I went to Chicago to visit my sister and bring some good old-fashioned East Coast elitism for the second annual hipster geek-off known as the Pitchfork Music Festival. If I were a true music snob and a better amateur journalist, I would have gone to all three days and given a more complete report, but with my current work schedule, all I could manage was the last day.














Here's the rundown. . .

2:15 (Menomena)

We make it in slightly later than I had hoped, and we all realize that we forgot to pull any cash out, so we hit up the mile-long ATM line. I hear Menomena in the distance, so I ditch Claire, Evan, and Joe (who seem strangely less concerned than I am to hear this band) to get in on some of the action. The band is in full form and it doesn't seem like I've missed much. They play through most of the tracks and Friend & Foe with surprising ease, rapidly jumping from one instrument to another and occasionally falling back on their laptop to reproduce the bands brand of densely-layered sound collage.














3:00 (Junior Boys)

I rejoin my party, who have finally made it to the front of the line at the ATM. We then proceed to wade into the crowd for Canadian electro-pop minimalists, Junior Boys. The band takes the stage with singer/guitarist/bass player Jeremy Greenspan taking point as his partner-in-crime Johnny Black takes the side of the stage, hiding behind a beard, sunglasses, and a full array of drum machines and keyboards that all indicate that he's much too fucking cool to be here. They also bring in some jobber on the drums to give a greater sense of "liveness" to the set and give Black's drum machines a break. Claire remarks that Greenspan, who is clad in a white polo shirt and jeans, and looks like he's probably going to try and catch a Cubs game after the set, seems much too pedestrian to be on this stage. I concur. The group effortlessly glides through their set, maintaining a hypnotic beat with gentle washes of noise and cold, distant vocals that recall Low-Life era New Order or a slightly less homoerotic Pet Shop Boys, and make me wish I was sipping martinis in a poorly lit Soho lounge now instead of having the sun beat down on me in a beer-soaked park in Central Chicago.






























4:00 (Sea and Cake)

We head over to the other main stage to see The Sea and Cake, who I've only vaguely listened to, but who are from Chicago, so I feel obligated to see. After the cool, laid-back vibe of the Junior Boys, I need something with some energy. The Sea and Cake, sadly, do not come through. The band is generally classified as post-rock, which, as a genre, is really the kind of music that you can only listen to in college, when you're still stoned or naive enough to think that music should be more intelligent that it is affecting. So as much as I appreciate the band's experimental rhythm and chord structures, I can't help but being a little bored. So, after a few songs, we all head to the other side of the park for a breather and some shade.














4:30 (Four-Square)

In the portion of the street that has been sectioned off to contain the festival, some hipster kids are throwing down on a pickup game of four-square, so we sit down on a shady patch of grass and watch on with equal parts amusement and nostalgia. The game amasses a sizable following and the kids put down some tape, pull out a second ball, and expand their operation to allow for two games at once. If it hasn't happened already, I fully expect to see a four-square tournament at the next McCarren Pool event alongside the usual half-ironic hipster past-times of slip-n-slide and dodgeball. Evan's hangover from the previous night's drinking seems to be kicking in now and he passes out on the grass, so, like the good friend I am, I leave it to Claire and Joe to make sure he wakes up for Stephen Malkmus, while I head off to see some of Jamie Lidell's set, which I can hear starting in the distance.

























































5:15 (Jaime Lidell)

I've listened to the Canadian faux-soul singer/beatmaker's most recent album and found it quite enjoyable, but it definitely doesn't do justice to Lidell's live show. I expect him to bring at least some kind of band, but am happy to see him flying solo, clad in some sort of East-Asian robe, a head-dress made of metallic gold streamers, and thick, black-rimmed glasses. So I watch on, as he whips up some insane beats and loops vocal harmonies live on stage, while singing with the soul of a man of many more years and a considerably darker complexion.














5:45 (Flatstock Poster Convention)

I reconnect with my party, but before we get going, I make it a point to check out the area where they have the Flatstock poster convention going on, where I get to check out a ton of amazing posters to a bunch of great shows that I didn't attend. I really wished I wasn't broke, so I could have bought more, but I was quite satisfied with the kick-ass Lily Allen poster I bought.














6:00 (Stephen Malkmus)

Slacker-troubadour Stephen Malkmus (sans Jicks) takes the stage, and, in true slacker form, he seems a bit underprepared. Claire and Joe find his meandering song structures and lack of accompaniment boring, and head to the other stage to see old-school hip-hop revivalists the Cool Kids (who were, reportedly, very cool). Me and Evan find Malkmus's laid back demeanor and occasional slip-ups amusing and endearing, so we continue watching. He plays mostly what I assume is his solo material, since I don't recognize it, but as soon he kicks into the guitar intro to "Spit on a Stranger" I become giddy like a school girl. He's eventually joined by former Pavement pseudo-member Bob Nastanovich on drums, who does a lot to fill out the songs (despite the fact that they ostensibly didn't rehearse beforehand). The acoustic version of "Trigger Cut/Wounded Kite" is quite enjoyable, and Malkmus singing both the call and response parts on "In the Mouth of a Desert" has to be one of my personal highlights of the day.





























7:00 (Of Montreal)

Of Montreal takes the stage, in what seems to be the most eagerly anticipated performance of the day. Since I saw them two months back, I pretty much know what to expect. Kevin Barnes is decked out in full glam regalia. Guitarist A.C. Forrester is wearing his usual ensemble of a silver robe, frayed pink angel wings, and 3D glasses, and might be my personal hero. The on-stage theatrics are (as always) indescribably weird, but pretty amazing as such, and the guys in wearing helmets and shoulder pads, throwing golden footballs into the audience are pleasant surprise. The audience, who seem to be mostly unfamiliar with Barnes's onstage antics, appear a bit shocked when he leaves the stage for a moment and comes out in a leather hat/bustier combo that would make the members of the Village People blush (showing considerable restraint, he does manage to leave his thong on for the duration of the show). They try out some new material that's decent, but essentially sounds like b-sides off Heimdalsgate, and the audience is treated to an unexpected encore of the band doing the Kinks' "All Day and All of the Night".



































































8:00 (New Pornographers)

In case it isn't obvious at this point, the nation of Canada is extremely well-represented today by bands that either come from north of the border or want to pretend that they do (since I apparently only see shows of Cannuck bands anymore). Closing out the festival's Canadian bloc, the New Pornographers take the stage and represent for good, old-fashioned, saccharine pop music, providing some comfort, and an anchor in this sea of eccentric art rockers. The band keeps it upbeat and anthemic, playing primarily tunes off Twin Cinema, as well as a few from the heretofore unreleased Challengers. The band sounds excellent, though I'm a bit disappointed to find that Neko Case couldn't make it. The girl they have bringing up the female vocals is quite adorable and sings well, but "Mass Romantic" just isn't the same without that signature Neko twang. Predictably, they close with "The Bleeding Heart Show" and send chills down the collective spine of the audience (and gives me the inexplicable urge to go back to school).














9:00 (Klaxons)

We are now faced with a bit of a conundrum. De La Soul or Klaxons? I suppose De La Soul are technically the headliners, but since Claire and Evan both have strong anglophile musical leanings, and me and Evan have both seen De La Soul before, we decide that the Klaxons is the better bet, and I do not regret that decision. They open with a few weak songs, but after they warm up (and down a few beers), these Urban Outfitters poster-boys rock the house. Following a day of intellectually-stimulating, excessively-tasteful art music, it felt good to see a group of bratty, drunken kids from across the pond bringing some loud, hissing dance punk with obnoxious rock-star posturing to match (even if most of their lyrics seem to involve one or more inane references to a postmodern literary figure). The chain-link fences on either side and Chicago street lights in the background only added to the ambiance, and provided an excellent conclusion to the day's festivities.















Cheers to the folks at Pitchfork for keeping it cheap, putting on a great show, and making music geekdom enjoyable and accessible for the masses. I just hope I can go for the full weekend next year.