The Ballad of Paulo and Nikki

For those looking for a jump-the-shark moment for Lost, the most likely candidate probably comes from an episode early in the current season in which two characters named Paulo and Nikki show up out of the blue and ask to join Locke and company on one of their usual jungle reconnaissance excursions. One might assume that these characters had some greater purpose or hidden agenda, but with no back-story, no narrative function, and no real personality to speak of, these characters became the embodiment of the fears among the fans that the writers were quickly running out of ideas.













Since the beginning, the show has made nods to the fact that there are a few dozen survivors on the island and that the characters we know are basically just the popular clique within that group. The writers occasionally bring them into the fray as a convenient plot device (like the comically disposable Dr. Artzt of the first season), but primarily they function as the butt of a running joke within the series regarding their own worthlessness and ineffectuality. Last night's episode was apparently an attempt on the part of the writers to extend this joke to fill an entire episode

So was last night's episode some kind of clever meta-narrative about disposable side characters or was it just bullshit Geoge Lucas-style history revisionism? Was this actually a good episode, or just a sorry attempt by the writers to atone for their past mistakes?

Let's start with the story itself: Nikki is a second-rate B-television actress that weasels her way into the heart of some sleazy television producer named Henry Zuckerman (really? Zuckerman? Did they think Weinstein sounded too Jewy?); then Nikki teams up with Paulo, her Brazilian chef boyfriend, to kill Zuckerman and take 8 million dollars of diamonds that he had hidden in a Russian nesting doll (oh, he's such a Jew); on their way to America, they crash on the island with everyone else; while on the island, they lose the diamonds; Paulo finds the diamonds and doesn't tell Nikki; Nikki catches him with the diamonds and attacks him with a spider that conveniently paralyzes its victim and makes them appear dead without actually killing them; then Nikki gets bitten by same type of spider, allowing for the tragicomic live burial scene at the end.

My first problem with this story is simply that, after being stranded on an island for two months, there's no way anybody still gives a shit about a bag of diamonds. Maybe if one of them was holding out with a Snickers bar or one of those coconut radios from Gilligan's Island, this plot might seem slightly plausible. Then there's the fact that not only has this plot been done better by numerous feature films, it's actually been done better on earlier episodes of the show (I'm pretty sure the island is already well above its quota for sympathetic con-men and women at this point).

It's a slight disappointment to see Rodrigo Santoro (Paulo) get written off the show, since he actually does seem like a pretty decent actor, but watching Kiele Sanchez try to deliver a self-righteous betrayal speech is a bit like watching a class of preschoolers do monologues from Richard III.

While I do like the idea of flushing out the stories of peripheral characters (especially on a show that's ostensibly based on the idea that there is a reason or purpose behind everyone being on this island), what most annoyed me about this episode was that they could have used the story of these two to fill in the numerous plot holes in the previous seasons, but instead squandered it by showing us pointless flashbacks that mostly gave us information we already knew or assumed. So basically this episode just left me with the feeling that the writers were bitter that everyone hated their crappy new characters, so they tried to give them some depth and have them meet tragically morbid end so that the fans might feel guilty for wishing that the characters were off the show in the first place (luckily I don't).

Psycho killer, qu'est que c'est

After weeks of having better things to do, I finally got around to seeing Zodiac this weekend. If you're expecting another Seven you'll be sorely disappointed, but Zodiac stands up as a pretty good film in it's own right. At over two and a half hours it's easy to criticize it for dragging and feeling too long, but, if anything, it feels incomplete (probably a result of the gaping holes in the facts of what actually happened). Though it starts out as a fairly standard police procedural, it digresses about halfway through the film into a Cold War paranoia picture a la The Conversation. And like The Conversation, the lack of actual resolution or fulfillment makes for a film that's ultimately more unsettling than it is affecting.

The film makes it abundantly clear why David Fincher has a reputation for being such a dick to work with (and why he's pretty much a god among filmmakers). There's no way this sort of clinical precision can possibly come from a reasonable person. The film opens with a tracking shot of a lively neighborhood street in San Francisco from the window of a passing car, and somehow Fincher manages to keep the camera completely stable and perfectly perpendicular with street, which, along with the snarling guitar lines of Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man" playing on the soundtrack, give it a surreal feeling, like some kind of obsessive-compulsive acid flashback. Instead of making the killer out to be some kind of immoral fiend that needs to be brought to justice, the identity and motives of the murderer become little more than a puzzle to be solved by the detectives and journalists working on the case, which is, of course, what makes the Zodiac killer such an interesting subject in the first place, while at the same time indicating a kind of cold indifference on the part of Fincher that puts him in a position that's eerily similar to that of the killer.

If nothing else, Zodiac is worth seeing just for the cast. Even though he only shows up for about half the film, Robert Downy Jr. is (of course) consistently entertaining as (surprise!) an eccentric, drug-addled journalist, and Mark Ruffalo adds some freshness to the usual veteran cop cliches. Between Donal Logue, Adam Goldberg, and Mr. Show's John Ennis, I count no less than three comedians playing completely serious characters and doing a pretty decent job at that.

Since this blog is ostensibly about music, I should also point out that the soundtrack to the film is also pretty awesome. Aside from "Hurdy Gurdy Man", which bookends the film and provides the perfect embodiment of the lost idealism theme that runs throughout, the snippets of other songs that crop up from the background are equally well-used. Lynn Anderson's "(I Never Promised You) A Rose Garden" seems almost comic in its foreshadowing of a woman (played by Say Anything's Ione Skye, for those that, like me, wonder what the hell ever happened to her) getting terrorized and kidnapped by the killer, and Miles Davis's cool jazz classic "Solar" has never sounded sleazier.

In case you see the movie and you're not creeped out enough, check out this spot that Fincher did for the American Cancer Society back in the eighties. . . ewwww.

Even Truthier in Person

I hope everyone watched the Colbert Report last night, because if you didn't, you missed an excellent crowd cutaway featuring yours truly.

I got tickets through my work, so Erin and I went to the taping. We had VIP tickets, which apparently just means that you get to go in first (along with the other 50 "VIP" ticket holders) and that you're actually guaranteed a seat, so the whole ordeal was fairly painless, and without the feeling of cattle being hearded that I got that time I saw Jerry Springer.

The set is a vast improvement on the old Daily Show set that once occupied that space, where I saw a taping 4 years ago. The best part is all of the souviers that they've collected from past episodes, which includes the painting above the fireplace of Stephen recursively standing in front of a fireplace with another painting of himself, as well as an official Saginaw Spirit hockey jersey, and, more recently, Captain America's Shield. Sadly, we were a week late for the episode with Ben & Jerry where they apparently gave out free samples of "Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream" to the audience, as well as the follow-up episode, two nights ago, when Willie Nelson came on as the guest to defend his Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor and is later joined by Stephen and former UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke for a rousing rendition of "On the Road Again". We were however lucky enough to be there on a day when the Daily Show was running late, so they let the audience watch Stephen do "the toss", in which Stephen links up with Jon Stewart at the end of the Daily Show (which is taped two blocks away) via sattelite, allowing us to see some humorous banter between them that doesn't go to air.

The comedian they had warming up the audience was actually really funny, and I would probably try to see him at the Comedy Cellar or something if I could remember his name (he accurately pointed out that he looks like a younger Mr. Burns, if anybody knows of any NYC comedians that fit that description, let me know). After he was done, Stephen came out to field questions from the audience, which he explained was his way of "humanizing" himself before he comes out as his "awful character". It was refreshing to see that, behind his character, he really is just an goofy, earnest guy having a good time pretending to be a preening narcissist. When they cut to the pre-taped "Better Know a District" segment (which was definitely one of the funiest of those segments I've seen) he was looking at the monitor the whole time, cracking up as hard as anyone in the audience.

The guest was a little disappointing (some unremarkable leftist author), though if you check out this clip of the interview, there's a crowd cutaway at the beginning where me and Erin are visible on the right side in the middle of the audience (if you look closely you can tell the exact moment where we're looking up at the monitors and figure out that they just cut to us - I look like a complete tool).

Band Madness

As my NCAA bracket slowly disintegrates into a huge waste of ten dollars, it's recently come to my attention that single-elimination tournament-style bracketing is no longer just the province of athletes and sports fans. In the recently published book The Enlightened Bracketologist experts gives a single-elimination breakdown to subjects as diverse as game show catch phrases and conspiracy theories. I've even found that I can use the system as a way of simplifying otherwise impossible decisions in my life. For instance, if I want to decide what brand of breakfast cereal I want to buy, instead of just looking at the shelf at the store and making an ill-conceived snap-judgement, I can just put together a system of brackets, like so:






















. . . and, after a mere 20 minutes of tabulation, I have insured that Cracklin Oat Bran is indeed the champion of all processed grain products. . . Oh fuck, I kind of do want some Lucky Charms. . . Damn.

This past week, the lovely people at Stereogum have alerted me to a parallel tournament to the NCAA that's a bit closer to my areas of interest. The Band Madness tournament pits pop musicians against one another (and possibly against themselves - i.e. the Beatles vs. Paul McCartney or Lou Reed vs. VU) and users log onto the site to vote for who they think should win in each matchup, allowing people to rack their brain over such troubling decisions as, which you find least irritating, Chicago or Ani DiFranco (duh, it's obviously Chicago). Of course, this hardly stands as any kind of authoritative survey of anything other than the tastes of (white, male) music geeks with an overabundance of free time. And just like all the retards that picked Notre Dame to win over Winthrop last week (myself included) this generally tends to prove that people will go for what they know over what's best (which is the only way I can rationalize My Chemical Romance beating out Ween). While I assume that the Beatles will win this just like they do every other arbitrary pop music poll, Nine Inch Nails apparently won this last year, so who knows? I'll obviously be pushing for Foreigner.

Bad Cover Version

This week, Cracked.com put out their list of the 20 worst cover songs of all time, which is a fairly accurate, as those guys generally are.

20. "You Shook Me All Night Long" — Celine Dion and Anastasia
19. "Downtown Train" — Rod Stewart
18. "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" — Guns N Roses
17. "Demolition Man" — Manfred Mann
16. "American Pie" — Madonna
15. "My Generation" — Hilary Duff
14. "It's My Life" — No Doubt
13. "Video Killed The Radio Star" — The Presidents of the United States of America
12. "Walk this Way" — Macy Gray
11. "Another Brick in the Wall" — Korn
10. "I'm A Believer" — Smash Mouth
09. "Satisfaction" — Britney Spears
08. "Sweet Child O Mine" — Sheryl Crowe
07. "Big Yellow Taxi" — Counting Crows
06. "911 Is a Joke" — Duran Duran
05. "Anarchy in the UK" — Motley Crue
04. "Behind Blue Eyes" — Limp Bizkit
03. "Feel Like Making Love" — Kid Rock
02. "Dock of the Bay" — Michael Bolton
01. "And It Stoned Me" — Bob Dylan

I thought 311's cover of the Cure's "Lovesong" was a fairly obvious omission, though they cover most of the obvious choices pretty well. I had the good fortune not to have heard a lot of these songs before reading this list, but thanks to the wonder of the internet, I can now hear the Who get butchered by two different singers of different genders, each singing in their own crappy genre. Celine Dion doing AC/DC is every bit as shrill and painful as I imagined, and if they didn't have the streaming audio of it, I probably wouldn't beleive that Duran Duran actually did a Public Enemy cover (do they even have 911 in the UK?). Conversely, Kid Rock covering "Feel Like Making Love" doesn't really seem like much of a travesty considering the original song sounds like it was written by a middle-aged forklift driver as a tribute to his adolescent niece. I would probably put Aerosmith's cover of "Come Together" on the list if for no other reason than it sounds so redundantly similar to the original that I go into a mild rage every time I hear it on the radio and I'm struck with the shrill screeching of Steven Tyler instead of John Lennon. Or how about Lou Reed doing his solo version of "Sweet Jane" (sans VU) and turning it into a bad arena rock song. Although probably the cover song I most despise is Van Halen's cock rock bastardization of "You Really Got Me". With more autoerotic guitar fills than there are extraneous pieces of white tape on his dumb-ass guitar, Eddie Van Halen singlehandedly turns the jerky mod minimalism of the Kinks into a giant, flaming, overwrought sonic turd.

Found Sound

In case you were distracted at the record store by the flashy cover art on the new Arcade Fire album (and why wouldn't you be) there were actually some other new releases worth noting last week. Air released a new album last week featuring tracks with Jarvis Cocker and Neil Hannon from the Divine Comedy, which would be worth noting if it weren't just a watered-down version of their previous albums (though, to be fair, I haven't really been on the Air bandwagon since Moon Safari). More impressive is the new album from Brazillian/British beatmeister Amon Tobin. The album is called The Foley Room and, as such, relies primarily on sound effects and ambient noise rather than synthesizers or music samples (like John Cage if he didn't hate his audience). Despite all the lofty conceits, he manages to keep it from sounding gimicky or forced. It actually feels surpsisingly similar to his previous albums, with sounds as distinctive as water dripping or an engine revving blending seamlessly into his usual mix of jazz-inspired jungle beats, which, like all of his music, maintains the sinister quality of a David Fincher movie. Definitely worth picking up.

In other recent musical acquisitions, I've been on an Of Montreal kick since I downloaded their new album, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, which thankfully is every bit as weird, but not near as pretentious as its title suggests. Pitchfork says it's their "darkest and most experimental record to date," which is to say that it's still got sugary pop vocals - they're just putting them over noisy synth lines and drum-machine beats instead of the usual psychadelic guitar and piano (this is still definitely the same band that recorded The Gay Parade). I would say it's more melancholy than their previous work, but now that I go back and listen to some of their older twee-pop material, it's pretty apparent that Kevin Barnes has always been writing songs about how lonely and depressed he is. On this album he's just stopped trying to compensate for it.

Tank Johnson, eat your heart out.

In case you haven't heard the story, apparently John Popper (that's the lead singer of Blues Traveler for those of you who didn't watched their Behind the Music like eight times) was pulled over in his SUV in Washington, where he (or his driver rather) was clocked going 111 mph down the interstate. Along with the predictable stash of weed, the police also discovered a hidden compartment containing a "modest" arsenal of small arms as well as sirens, emergency lights, night vision goggles, and a PA system.































According to him he was keeping all of this in his car in the event of some kind of catastrophic natural disaster. So if a tsunami hits eastern Washington state, food and water aren't necessary, but a pump-action shotgun is? Apparently one of the side-effects of stomach-stapling that they don't tell you is that it makes you a paranoid nut-job. Also is it just me or does the post-fat John Popper bare a striking resemblance to Dwight from The Office?

Neon Bible

Today the Arcade Fire finally released their follow-up to the debut album and my favorite album since Radiohead was putting out music that mattered, Funeral, which is to say I've been listening to the album for the last three weeks and have just today had the ability to actually purchase it. Despite the fact that the band is far and away the most hyped band in the world right now, it's difficult to fault them for much. As a follow-up to my last post, the band recently became my heroes after they refused to license "Rebellion (Lies)" to douchebag extrordinaire (and scientologist, did I mention he's a scientologist) Paul Haggis for the pilot of The Black Donnelys. And, as much as I've come to expect luke-warm follow-ups to promising debut albums as of recently (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah anyone?), the new Arcade Fire record doesn't disappoint. There's perhaps no band that can match this degree of grandiosity with equal parts good taste (give or take the tendency of Win Butler's lyrics to err on the side of melodrama). For any other group, the idea of an album recorded almost entirely in a church, using a full-scale pipe organ, Hungarian orchestras, and military choirs might seem like pompous rock star bullshit, but luckily the members of the Arcade Fire are far too earnest (and unattractive) to qualify as rock stars. I just hope that this time around I can actually get a ticket to see them.