World’s Greatest Dad is a funny movie. Perhaps more surprisingly, it is also a very good movie. You can’t say this is a total surprise, as the film’s director, Bobcat Goldthwait (yup, the Police Academy guy), already established a nice little foundation of indie/tv work: the profoundly messed-up Shakes the Clown, the great ruse Windy City Heat, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Chapelle’s Show, but most most of all his 2006 feature Stay, later retitled Sleeping Dogs Lie. Admittedly I have yet to see that last one, but all reports indicate it was surprisnigly nice little film about honesty and (in his words) “a tasteful amount of beastiality.” So WGD seems to be a nice little evolution in his career. (For example, it looks pretty good. Sleeping Dogs Lie was shot on some pretty low quality video, so Bobcat seems to make the leap to 35 with a surprising amount of guile. It’s not flashy or anything, but it’s got real steady feel to it).
Robin Williams gives easily my favorite performance of his since “The Genie” in Aladdin (yes this includes Good Will Hunting) . Even if the situation around him gets a little crazy, he plays it straight. His down to earth, good-natured-but-understandably-frustrated dad just rings very true. Even when things get very crazy and he takes his inner desires to some pretty extreme places. But it works.
But most of all Bobcat has crafted a wholly focused movie; all it’s trying to do is say one true thing (even hinting at this goal by quoting the famous Hemingway axiom of “one true sentance”). It’s an underrated and under-attempted quality in a movie and I found it admirable.
There’s actually a nice little moment that encapsulates this aforementioned one true thing. That moment is when Krist Novoselic shows up. The name Krist Novoselic is an intersting one, because he’s one of those unrecognized yet incredibly influential people. How do you know him? He’s “the other guy” from Nirvana. And his appearence in the movie is completely appropriate. He’s friends with Bobcat and when the director asked Krist to be in said scene, Krist asked “Just what is this movie about anyway?”
(WARNING THEMATIC/KINDA PLOT SPOILERS FOR THE REST OF THE BLURP SO TURN AWAY NOW) Bobcat answered: “You ever know that situation where someone dies and a bunch of people who didn’t know him talk about him, and turn him into something else that has to do with their own wants and needs, and push the people who actually knew him and cared about him off to the side?” Krist apparently smiled “Yeah I think know something about that.”
So yeah. The movie is basically about that. And it leads to Bobcat’s “one true sentance” (which is wonderfully enough the first sentance he wrote down and the starting point for a movie… thematically working backwards is also a wonderfully under-represented thing in movies). Here’s the paraphrased quote: [People think the most terrifying thing in the world is being alone, when really the most terrifying thing in the world is being only with people who make you feel alone.] And the movie earns the right to say it.
The reaction to Michael Jackson’s death has been just about perfect; just the right blend of shock, respect for his passing, respect for his great music, reflection over his effect on society, righteous indignation, funny jokes, obvious jokes, funny tasteless jokes, and tasteless jokes so bad as to enlighten you to who is truly an asshole.
But for me it did something different. It wholly clarified the fact that I unabashedly like Michael Jackson.
It’s amazing how many people forget that not only was this guy a megastar, he was the biggest personality on the planet. He simply dwarfed everyone. Madonna didn’t even have half is popularity. He wasn’t just talented. He wasn’t jus a great dancer. He was a great song writer. He was an innovator. He never settled for second rate. He worked harder then everyone else. He pushed the envelope. He was incredibly optimistic. I’ve spent the day watching all his old videos and that’s the thing I noticed the most. He was so, so optimistic about life, even when it was about dark subjects. He wanted people to have fun. He wanted them to conquer demons. He wanted people to be kind. He gave an absurd amount to charity. He embraced working for racial causes. Heck He was post-racial before anyone was post-racial. He popularized MTV. Fuck. Popularized doesn’t do it justice. He made MTV. He set every trend. He came up with entire worlds. He could move like no one else could move. He was shy. He loved involving other stars in his work. And he was a damn nice guy.
The fall of Michael Jackson can be associated with three things in my mind.
1) Them Daddy issues. The abuse he suffered is now well known, but there’s no doubt that these things, plus his becoming famous at such an absurdly young age laid the groundwork of a troubling adulthood. Matt Damon once said you stop aging at the moment you get famous. Michael Jackson was 3… It explains a lot.
2) His skin condition, where the white splotches left him with the option of either leaving it as (probably the right choice. America would have just had to deal), constantly covering with quality black make up, or simply bleaching his skin to match the white spots. Which is what his bad doctors advised for him. It started his whole movement toward looking weird and white.
3) If he hadn’t fallen off stage and broke his nose, he never would have gotten that first botched nose job. Which he then tried to fix and fix and fix because “it didn’t look right.” Coupled with the bleachings to come later. It basically destroyed his face.
And those things affected him. They really did. It sent his introverted nature over the edge because he was terrified of being seen in that sort of light. He had to constantly monitor his appearance. It made him a shut in.
And then it got sad. He had odd sham marriages. The creepy stories about his behavior with children surfaced. He build that Graceland west called the Neverland ranch. He had children stay there. Then the lawsuits came. Look. I have no idea what happened. It sure as shit wasn’t proper. But I’m not sure as shit it was anything insidious either. As far as we really and truly know he was just kind of this weird asexual introvert with arrested development. His Peter Pan like personality (the Neverland ranch, ahem) suddenly became his real identity. And most people just assumed he was a pederast. Logically, there’s great merit to that, I’m not naïve or anything. It was basically impossible to like Michael Jackson in a true sense anymore. He hase made the divide. Whether it is truly legit we don’t really know… Maybe he could just be Peter Pan.
Either way, He stopped making music. He started relating to monkeys more than people. He never learned to be an adult. His public appearances became utterly bizarre. My favorite crazy story is when he went down to the local city hall and demanded they put more Taco Bells near his house… he did this in a spider-man mask by the way… yeah… He basically went crazy. It happens. People just go batshit insane sometimes.
And it kind of sucks it was this guy. But then again that’s possibly how it had to be. The 80s and early 90s were just so fucking weird there was no way what was considered cool then could really translate into the following generations. But still. Those great, great songs and performances will live on.
The thing I don’t get is people saying “what’s the big deal? He was a fucking pederast nutball. Just cause he’s dead doesn’t mean you have to be all nice now. You’ve been just as critical as anyone.” And to a degree that is correct, but how it is wrong is the fact that now that because he is dead we finally have the stopping point where we can sit down with body of work. Everything is on the table. The good. The bad. The ugly. It’s all there. And believe me. Another 20 years of crazy could have made a difference. But now he’s dead at 50, of a rather sad cause too. And when looking at it, all the negative stuff (what we know at least) just doesn’t outshine the truly good stuff he gave to the world.
And if you don’t really see that, that you’re just way too fucking cynical.
Let’s try an experiment:
Watch this video. Remove all negative feelings. Just sit there and think that this could entertain you. And it just might.
This monstrosity has been floating around the blogosphere lately and perhaps for good reason. I wasn’t going to say anything at first. Most of the commentary has been along the lines of “sign of the apocolypse” and “fall of western civilization… but over the last 24 hours I’ve become a little bit obsessed.
See this isn’t just your usually stupidity. This is special.
Strangely, the questions begin with the haircuts. How does someone get that haircut who isn’t a Japanese teen five years ago? They aren’t even fallout-boy-at-least-definable-by-physics-bad. What possesses someone to be that incredibly outrageous with their hair? It’s amazing. Who likes that?
Then there is, you know, the actual music. I mean, what? Apparently they have combined screamo and crunk. And appear to have done so by yelling intermittently at periods of their crunk song. For no apparent reason. Also the stunning acne. I imagine this is preventative to stardom, but what the hell do I know. I just know it illicits a gutteral response of “yick”. Then there’s the name “brokencyde” a weird mashup of a bunch of other band names that somehow make more active or relative sense than this one. It’s a kinda desperate name at that. I imagine some bad late 70’s high school band naming themselves “Led Sabbath” and that seems akin to this. But this is all the surface-y stuff. It’s like not liking frida because she has a unibrow. Actually it’s not like that all. You might not be able to judge a book by its cover, but in this case it would have been really, really helpful.
Obviously, the music sucks. Not even enjoyable on some ironic level. It’s harsh and loopy and not in a pleasing way. The lyrics spare no subtext like mongol hordes spared no village. It’s audacious in some ways really. “Let’s fuck on the dance floor! Right now!” is the effective gist. Sure, it’s juvenile to a fault, but the members of this seem so inandated with their own awesomeness and not in a “our subculture actually values this” kind of way that allows me to put a lot of rap video’s excesses off the hook. There’s nothing “awesome” really happening. The range rover, the benz, the pathetic red plastic cups, the tiny party of 7 girls obviously conned into this somehow. It’s all longing to be something it terribly isn’t.
But the truly amazing part comes at around 1:50 where there is a sudden, dramatic 180 switch and the boys proceed to yell “LIAR!” at the girls and pantomime choking a Jamie-Lynn Spears lookalike. The juvenile behavior at this point reaches absurdity. Little are they aware, but the action profiles the insane, deeply rooted problem of young boys trying to “get chicks”. They espouse their sexual prowess (in reality, obviously lacking) and regard women as nothing more than vacant fuck puppets (that’s the nicest way I could put it), but their fragility is SOOOOOOOO transparent that they scream LIAR! WHORE! at a moments notice. You hurt their feelings you see!
It’s all so wonderfully poetic. They completely emasculate their own amazing bullshit.
And look. I’m not someone who gets up on a soap box and bitches about every little indignation (well. actually that’s exactly do in this blog. but not in real life… or… um LOOK OVER THERE! [runs away]). Most of the time you watch a bad late 90s rap video and kinda laugh it off. There’s kind of an aloof charm, or slickness to that stuff and a lot of other music videos in general that make it all at least OK.
“Freaxxx” is fallout and effect of all that I guess; a couple of lame ass tards’s interpretation of the baser ends of pop-culture, complete with the more transparent evidence of about 14 different aspects of arrested maturation and development. They are WELL within date-rapist territory. In short, these fuckers have problems… and I’m guessing they’re not alone.
My friend Ken had some nice input too after I sent it to him: “Way to loop and lip-synch to your own emo scream while filming against a backdrop of a McMansion development. I like how the lead “vocalist” is the only one who appears to be having a good time. The actively-disinterested blonde dancer is perhaps my favorite element of the video. The strained novelty of the dancing pig-suit gentleman is another excellent touch. It is really and truly a tragedy that the Midwest has been dragged kicking and screaming into popular culture by the internet.”
So here’s what metacritic is if you don’t know: It’s a website that takes reviews (including ones that don’t give any kind of “rating”) and finds the average scores of those ratings and positive/negative sentiments to give the most average and fair score to that film/album/dvd/show/what have you.
Sounds perfectly fair, right?
Except the system has a lot of problems. I don’t know how they put it all together but many of the results are… suspect. I think it may have to do with how each medium approaches its criticism but let’s get specific.
The chief offender is easily, easily, easily music.
Now I like music. A lot. I like a lot of weird shit. I went to metafilter to specifically see if there was anything I didn’t know about which was pretty good. I do this about every 6 months or so. And this time I was like “that’s it, I’ve had it.” The top twelve on this list are pure balls. Seriously I in depth listened to all of them and there wasn’t anything good. The only things I kind of liked were stuff after that and things I already had like Portishead, The Hold Steady. Look, music is ultra super subjective. Moreso than the other mainstream artforms. It just is. And trying to critically rate it all just doesn’t work in the metacritic system. Look across the board, everything gets the “green light” rating of being good. Unlike the other mediums where getting something in the green is rare. Plus it tends to overskew bad metal bands that get big love from metal magazines. Don’t get me wrong, I likes me some metals but damn Protest the Hero sucks. Bah, it makes me too angry.
Their movie scores are much less offensive, but often your favorite movie can get lost in the shuffle. Strongly mixed critical reactions are often a symbol of brave filmmaking. My favorite film so far this year “Towelhead” rated a 57. Why? Because I imagine it was so hard/uncomfortable for some critics to watch. And that becomes a huge detriment for this intensely brave and well-made movie which is tackling societal taboos and the mixed messages we send young girls. Show me a “universally adored” movie and I’ll show you a Titanic. Yeah, you go back and watch that piece of poop recently? God that was bad.
Oddly enough there is one form of media where metacritic system excels.
Video games?!?!?! Yup. Their culminations of reviews are surprisingly spot on. Universal adortation of video game is easily possible because gamers are such a specific audience. Everyone who goes to a movie doesn’t understand mise en scene. But everyone who plays video games frequently gets the subtleties of game play. So metacritic works so well for my gaming purchases purpose. Just fantastic stuff.
*shit, sorry all. I like TV on the Radio a lot. I should have mentioned that but forgot. I stand by the rest.
**double shit, I like Nick Cave and the bad seeds too.
***i more though the bug, plush, robyn, hercules and the love affair, protest the hero, and shearwater really, really, REALLY sucked.
-She’s a dumb pop star with dumb pop star songs instead of being a smart pop star with good pop star songs
-Despite her insistence she comes off as pretty homophobic
-She spells her name “katy”
-Her production team is the people who brought you Avril Lavigne, Korn’s post-adidas sell-out phase, Britney Spears, and the awful Liz Phair mainstream makeover phase.
For not so obvious reasons:
-she’s let her fame get to her head.
-for example, she demands her assistants track down old bottles of crystal pepsi so she can both drink and bathe in it.
-When asked if there was anyone she would want to play with in concert she said “Jimi Hendrix”
-she doesn’t like Airedale terriers
-she once ran over a homeless man and didn’t stop
-and she is TOTALLY encroaching on Zooey Deschanel’s look (who is awesome):
It’s something ingrained in me. My brother is an obsessive blues guitarist and he’s been listening to them since I was about five years old. For a long time I had a mild dis-interest. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t listening and enjoying.
Sometime in late college. It finally all clicked.
Thelonious Monk. BB King. Muddy Waters, Big Maceo, Freddie King, T-Bone Walker, Johnny Shines, Ma Rainey, John Lee Hooker, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Professor Longhair, Albert King, Robert Nighthawk, Big Mama Thorton, Willie Dixon, Albert Collins, Roosevelt Skyes, Otis Rush, Julia Lee, and especially… my personal favorite…
Bobby “Blue” Bland
His blues stuff is incredible. Just incredible. I love his voice. All at once it’s both gentle, yet aching. It’s honest, yet serene. They even called him “the lion of the blues”.
And one of the things I like about him in particular is his voice and style had sooooo much range. One reason why most people can’t get into the blues is “it all sounds the same”. It’s not that dumb a comment cause it kind of does and all pretty much operates within the same note scales, but that never seems to be a problem with Bobby.
Nothing showed this off more when half way through his career he kind of adopted R&B and soul into his music.
Never was the soul experiment as successful as it was with “Ain’t No Love In The Heart of the City”. It’s literally the best soul song I’ve ever heard (of the non-gospel-influenced-school) It was only a minor hit when it was released, but actually has gained an incredible amount of popularity do to a cover from WHITESNAKE and a JAY-Z sampling.
Anywho, in your infinite abilities, y’all should have no problem finding this amazing song.
Really I do… but it’s not like I ESPECIALLY like bad raggae. I happen to love good reggae. It’s just that bad reggae is still totally fine to listen to. It’s not like a stupid irony thing where people listen to bad music because it’s “awesome”. It’s just a testment to an amazing genre of music that totally has the ability to coast on its own generic-ness.
Also, I have no idea whether or not the above band (8o6 crew) is any good. It was just the first image that came up for “bad reggae”.
A bunch of video game designers were sitting around in their awesomeness and went:
“Hey let’s invent the greatest party game ever!”
“Okay, how about a game where you play simplified musical instruments collectively as a rock band”
“And we can use popular/totally awesome songs!”
“Cool, and we’ll make different difficulties so you can totally show off or if you’ve never played you’d be okay after two tries!”
“Or even play when you’re drunk!”
“Especially if you’re drunk!”
“And we could actually make the drums give you some of the same skills needed to drum”
“Not the guitar though”
“No, not the guitar”
“And you wouldn’t even really have to know the words! Just the basic tune!”
“And we’ll have the vocals real low so people’s awful, awful voices don’t ruin it!”
“And we could actually teach people the value of pitch since it’s the only thing the mic could measure!”
“BAD ASS! LET’S DO IT”
“Dude, be sure Gimme Shelter is one of the songs!”
***
Sure there were 2 versions of guitar hero as the progenitor to this so it was really just the next logical step in the evolution, but I still like this version of the events.
Jim Morrison. Kurt Cobain. Freddy Mercury. Scott Wieland. Lou Reed. Axl Rose. John Lennon or Paul McCartney. Layne Staley. Nick Drake. Michael Clarke. Chet Baker. Sonny Clark. Winston Churchill.
If there’s anything that these men have taught me. It’s that drugs can make you a better singer-songwriter-musician-type-guy. Just look at their body of work. If these people weren’t on drugs they would have been off going something lame with their lives instead of exploding minds with thought bombs. So suck on that g.
The modern world contains many inconveniences and annoyances. Between grand-standing politicians, annoying TV personalities, and rising gas prices, it seems like there’s no shortage of ways in which society can bring me down. That being said, nothing quite sticks in my craw like the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.
For instance, it was recently reported that Steven Spielberg has withdrawn as an artistic adviser to the 2008 Olympics, due to China’s inaction in regards to Darfur. Way to go genocide! Now he’ll probably be replaced with Michael Bay or something, and the Opening Ceremonies will culminate in the torch being lit by an RPG fired by Josh Hartnett.
Unfortunately, genocide is nothing new, and although historians have debated about when exactly the first genocide occurred, it is generally agreed upon that the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1917 was the first genocide of modern times. The genocide began when the Ottoman Empire was defeated by Russian forces in the early days of World War I, and the Ottoman military blamed the loss on Armenians who collaborated with Russian forces. Now right now you’re all probably thinking: “They were collaborating with the enemy. They had to be destroyed. What else could they have done?”. Now normally I’d agree with you, but here’s the thing: THEY WEREN’T REALLY TO BLAME FOR THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE’S LOSSES. THEY WERE JUST BEING SCAPEGOATED BY THE MILITARY TO DEFLECT BLAME FROM THEMSELVES. All of a sudden genocide doesn’t sound like such a good idea, huh? Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed just because the Turkish military didn’t want to accept responsibility for their failures. Talk about an overreaction!
Another annoying thing about genocide is that it’s so awful that other atrocities get overlooked. People may suspect that the days before genocide were a simple, peaceful time. However, this simply isn’t the case. Society was replete with all sorts of terrible crimes that struck horror in the heart of men. Things such as stagecoach robbery, pretty girls being tied to railroad tracks, and muttonchopicide (the forcible removal of mutton chops). However, nowadays, you don’t hear as much about these things because the public can only process so much horror before it grows indifferent. But does that make a man being ambushed by a band of Comanches any less tragic?
Now don’t get me wrong, we’ve all had times where we wanted to commit genocide (I’ve wanted to get rid of “Lord of The Rings” fans for years now), but history has shown that it never really works out. Much like suicide, it’s a permanent solution to a temporary problem. If instead of flipping out and killing everyone, the Turks had sat down with the Armenians and had a frank & open exchange of views, things might have turned out a lot better for everyone. It may be tempting to think that genocide only affects small groups of social undesirables, but history has shown us otherwise. Genocide is something that truly affects us all, by forcing us to wear ugly ribbons and/or wristbands.
Helpful Hint: To find the nearest genocide, go to a local college campus and find a liberal arts major. He/she can give you a long-winded spiel about the nature of the conflict, and make you feel guilty about not donating money to help.
Fun Fact: Everyone knows about the Holocaust, but did you know that there have been plenty of other not-nearly-as-interesting genocides? For example, in Rwanda in the 90’s, tensions between the Hutu majority and Tutsi minority escalated to the point where…oh fuck it, it’s too boring.
Silver lining: The ending to “Future Legend” off of Diamond Dogs, where David Bowie goes “This ain’t rock n’ roll! THIS IS GENOCIDE!!” is pretty sweet.
Author’s Note: Although Kate Nash has no known ties to genocide, I found the picture irresistibly adorable.
Posted by mgss 
Posted by mgss 
Posted by mgss 
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