The Playlist - WTITYB (Whatever, Tell It To Your Blog)

Around the world, Road Rage has been officially recognized by the Psychological community (I mean, I assume it has …), but to this day, I still wonder why Elevator Rage hasn’t received the psychological stamp of approval (or whatever those guys do in their lab coats once they’ve discovered some new social dysfunction by probing people with sticks).

Taking the elevators in the Viacom building where I work 9 out of 10 times is an excruciating experience. The lack of etiquette and practical thought and the superabundance of people compels me to hold back every instinct I have to murder everyone around me.

I can’t stab fast enough. First off, 5-6 people in an elevator maximum! What is wrong with you people, I don’t care if this is New York and you’re used to being invaded, anything more is intruding my personal space and is completely unacceptable and uncivilized.

I love it when there’s 9-10 people in an elevator car, yet instead of waiting for one of the 6 other cars that will shortly arrive with a little patience, a gaggle of Viacom employees will waddle aboard without any concern for those sardines already jammed inside.

The astounding lack of concern for personal space disturbs me to no end. I’m not a germaphobe or a hypochondriac in the least; I just don’t want your smelly ass so close to me, is that so hard to fucking grasp?

Still, no matter what, the mindless drones board the ship two by two like it’s the only ark in town. It drives me nuts. This is my subtle campaign for other Viacom employees taking the elevators. Have some respect for your fellow man and don’t stuff yourself into elevators. Your job is likely very lax and you’re likely not in a hurry and look, the cheese fries aren’t lgoing anywhere in the cafeteria.

Calm down, deep breath!

I should talk. When I’m somehow trapped in an elevator with a surplus of co-workers and co-people, I just want to snap. I have a physical reaction and sometimes I think I’m going to faint from being so annoyed and put-out.

It’s awful. I get off early if I have to, it’s just irrational behavior. WAIT FOR THE NEXT CAR FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!

*How the hell do you turn these stupid Friendster notices off that i SPECIFICALLY had unchecked when i started this thing? Desperate for hits, huh Friendster? Thanks for nothing.

I know I said i wouldn’t write about music here, but…

It’s in people’s nature to follow whatever supposedly represents their sub-culture in any given week, but sometimes you just need to clear the decks of posturing insular irony (Artic Foxes’ "I Know You Look Good On the Dance Floor" sounds like it was written at a Bloc Party show where the band formed 4 months ago) and meta indie rock topics and splash your face with sincerity. Now in our age of hyper-awareness, earnestness can be pretty awkward and conspicuous. We’re so used to some sort of pose, cheeky stance or form of aloofness that keeps a comfortable distance from feeling anything real, which makes my co-worker Benjamin Wagner pretty brave. I dig when anyone swims against the current of the trends and he does so via an acoustic, hopeful sound maybe somewhere between U2 and Ryan Adams. Beyond his artistic motivations of communicating something honest, I’m hoping a bit of his intentions are to convert the skeptical and make them feel the discomfort of guilelessness. This might make him and his new record, Heartland, a little out of step with the LES – where he played a driving and heartfelt set late last night to a devoted crowd – but better to be a face in the crowd than livestock in need of gruel and a clue, no? I should probably take this opportunity to link to Arye’s blog, bringbacksincerity.com since, it’s so appropos (oh the irony, he wrote about the Anarctic Polar Bears).

I thought this article about Spanish Telenovelas in the New York Times this weekend was interesting. Telenovelas are essentially just Spanish Soap Operas, but seemingly a thousand times more campy and unbearable. The utilize the most ludicrous and preposterous plot devices and yet, audiences seem to still buy the stories and moreover, continue to find them fascinating and utterly addictive. The reason I have an ounce of understanding about Telenovelas is because my mom has been obsessed with them for years.

My mother is the typically doting ethnic mother that would lie about any atrocities and murders her sons committed if it kept them out of trouble. She would slap the Pope, perjure herself in front of Jesus, tell my high school principal to go fuck himself if they dared claim I was a bad seed in any way (which I was, but no, not her angel).

Anyhow, the big annoyance/amusement for me is that my mother shuts down during Telenovela time. I could come in the room with my arm cut off, blood streaming everywhere and say, “Mom, savage dogs are attacking the neighborhood, they’ve killed Eric and brutally maimed me!,” and she’ll respond, “Shhhh! There’s soup in the fridge, heat it yourself.”

This is a woman who is doting to a fault. All I have to do is think about entertaining the idea of eating and there a gush of wind that blows past me, a blur I can’t make out and then a hot meal in front of my face. After I take a bite, she asks, “do you want seconds?”

But when a Telenovela is on, forget about it. Our family can’t get a crumb let alone a 911 emergency call if one of us accidentally fell and cracked our heads open.

Now I’m not implying in any way that I should get meals at the drop of the hat– far from it. I’m explicitly trying to convey the power of the Telenovela to the world of ‘Gringos’ that can’t possibly understand how a person will betray all of their basic human instincts all for the sake of some super-schmaltzy melodrama.

It’s basically like Crack for Spanish housewives (though my mom works and has 3 children to take care of: my two brothers and my dad).

Time for some more procrastination. I really should be transcribing.  Werner Herzog’s "Grizzly Man" is definitely one of the more engaging films I’ve seen this year and one of the reasons I love it is for its conflicting, but somehow seemless mixing of tones. Someone recently said to me that the narration of the film was "occasionally" ridiculous. I thought, "Occasionally???" Herzog’s narration is the dictionary definition of pretentious, overblown and laughably melodramatic and then all of a sudden it turns deep and profound, and i think that’s one of the amazing things about the movie. It just brings unexpected levels of absurdity in the oddest places. There’s moments where just pure ridiculousness is flush right up against totally illuminating moments and it’s so surreal that it just mindboggles. So strange and beautiful.

If you’ve been living under a rock, it’s a film about wannabee bearologist Timothy Treadwell, who stays each summer with Grizzly Bears in Alaska for about 15 years, if I recall correctly. For the last 6 years of his adventures Treadwell, documents his interactions with the bears with his hi-definition digital camera ostensibly making some docufilm about his role as protector of the Alaskan wilderness and these gigantic bears. Eventually the dumbass gets eaten. He’s sweet, naive, absurd, seemingly gay, painfully sincere and ridiculous. You can’t take your eyes off him though. His artless idealism about the bears and Alaska is amusing, pathetic and admirable, all at once. He’s this wonderful ball of contradictions and the films travels in all these kind of mixed emotions - unitentionally of course, but that’s besides the point.

Without giving away too much, the part where the coroner gets overexcited about re-telling the bear autopsy story to the camera while Herzog is zooming in comedically for some dramatic effect is so uncomfortable and so fucking ridiculous i was virtually on the edge of tears and thinking, "this is so wrong, this is so beautiful."

I love those uncomfortable moments in life and movies cause you just can’t really script them, they’re so priceless. It’s an odd, but great movie and you torn between pity and admiration for the filmmakers and main subject - i love that dichotomy. Although he might seem like an unsmiling German, I’m sure Herzog actually possesses a sense of humor and yes, i’m sure, at times, he’s subtley mocking Treadwell as much as he finds him loveable and estimable, but for the most part, I think Herzog is dead-serious.

i doubt this type of endorsement will compell anyone to see the film, but yeah, do it , it’s wonderfully ridic.

oI knew I said the movie was going to be disastrous, but I was secretly really hoping it wouldn’t be. I was hoping to have some closure to a story that meant a lot to me as a child and all I got was massive disappointment.
It was a colossal failure on almost every level.

It was literally laughable, the audience howled at moments that were supposed to be dead serious or have some sort of emotional gravitas. The actor that played Senator Palpatine, was just horrendous. Not that Star Wars has ever been known for it’s great acting, but he brought badness to new heights.

It’s much more than the bad dialogue and the bad acting, it’s the bad direction which is something that’s hard to qualify. Lucas doesn’t know where to put his camera to get the maximum emotion or effect from a scene. He’s fine with action sequences, but those are basically handed off to ILM.

How am I disappointed after extensively noting how it wouldn’t be redeeming? Knowing something will suck and being disappointed by a story that was important to you as a kid are not mutually exclusive.

There’s so many moments that you just don’t buy at all. The way Anakin turns to the dark side is pathetic, you don’t believe it for a second. It has all the ingredients of a an incredible tragedy, stock, but on par with any Greek tragedy, but it’s presented and executed in a cliché-riddled and insipid manner.

This is also being generous. Anakin is supposed to be "seduced" by the Dark Side. In the movie it comes off as if his arm was slightly twisted and he goes, "Ah hell, ok, I’ll betray my principals and my ideals, what the hell."

Sure, it’s a Faustian pact he’s making to save his wife, but even then you don’t feel like there’s a lot of emotional investment. On paper, selling your soul to the devil to save your most beloved person in the world is so tragically romantic, but it has zero depth and zero emotional impact. You don’t feel sorry for him, you don’t buy that this was a tough gut-wrenching decision, again — it’s actors fufilling the obligations of a story in a totally anemic manner.

Also, the universe is apparently made up of 6 people. Of course Chewbacca is one of the Wookies in the Wookie army. Does Yoda really need to say his name when he looks exactly the same and dresses exactly the same as the original series? The answer, is apparently yes. How uncreative can you get? Things like this happen throughout. Apparently in a huge galaxy with thousands of planets, it’s still all six degrees of separation.

Is it the best one? I suppose if you took 3 pieces of dog shit and judged them by which turd smelt the least offensive, EPIII might win, but a dogshit is still dogshit.

I got interviewed by ABC news after I excited the theater and railed into it. The guy who interviewed me was shocked. He was like, "Wow, do you need a smoke?"

Abbey brought in lilacs today and god, they smell wonderful. She suggested I blog about it per our conversation. They’re the the color of lilac (duh, a light purple), a flower that only blooms in spring and they have sentimental value for me. The smell reminds my childhood, where i grew up and my mother, because she was/is fanatical for lilacs.

Oh god, How gay. I just threw up all over myself.

I invite you to witness why I am fucking lame.

For one, i think about retarded things like this entry. I was reading this article in the New York Times (find it yourself) about these whiny fucking science-fiction writers bitching about how George Lucas had cheapened Star Wars and chiefly, how Star Wars wasn’t “true science fiction,” and I thought, “duh, of course it’s not, get the fuck over it and go back to jacking off to your self-important ideas about the future.” Ok, not quite, i like many dysutopian novels, but i’ve never read Asimov for example and would never claim to be a Sci-fi person.

ANYHOW. Of course, Star Wars isn’t true science fiction, it was never meant to be and the science fiction writers are probably secretly lamenting the fact they’re not uber-rich like no-neck Lucas. It’s not science fiction. It’s using the future as a setting, a backdrop. But that’s not my point.

Star Wars is a basic fable about good vs. evil. It’s not rocket science or Shakespeare, just a stock archetype of age-old storytelling paradigms. Sure, fine, we all agree, cool. My problem is that, as much as Star Wars’ story is stock, flat, cliche, etc., the last episode of Star Wars should, in theory, be fantastic.

But the main problem is, I just think Lucas can’t tell a fucking story to save his life. The story is obvious, but it’s has at its feet a treasure trove of material to work with. A goldmine of epic proportions with such classic arcs. The biblical idea is obvious and in some cases overt; it’s the story and rise of fall of the chosen one - a Jesus-like figure essentially who is seduced by Satan.

It’s almost a futuristic version of, ‘What if Jesus had actually been seduced by Lucifer?’ How is that not fucking totally tragic and sad? You should be crying at the end of "Revenge of the Sith," but Lucas hasn’t made the audience ever invest or care in his characters since the prequels began. They’re just serving a wooden and hollow plot, robotically acting out a backstory that’s amazing on paper and empty in execution.

Think about it. In Episode I, the characters are living in the golden age - a veritable Garden of Eden. The ships are elegant, almost overwrought and shine like gold, cause everything is awesome! Culture at the time is prosperous and is reflected in the gowns, and extravagance of everything that appears on screen (think later in Star Wars with the beat-to-shit Millenium Falcon and the ragged clothes and shithole spaceports everyone has to suffer). I know this sounds gay, but bare with. But this Garden of Eden has a snake: Senator Palpatine (in english, this means the Emperor, the big evil daddy).

The “You were the chosen one” line that Obi Wan yells in the Ep III trailer seems melodramatic, but when you think about it, it is so fucking tragic! This guy (Anakin) had everything, he would have one day been Yoda, been God, and had all the power of the universe at his command. But his fucking petty emo-bullshit got the best of him. And of course it did. If anyone with all the power in the world destined to be the most powerful figure in the universe would fuck it up, it’d would be a teenager whose naivety and arrogance would get the best of him. (Of course shitty things happened to him growing up that cause his fall from grace — see Ep II when his mom dies — but fuck if Lucas makes you feel like these events really scarred the child at all). He’s misguided, angry at the world and full of angst; the classically petulant teenager.

Anakin (Hayden Christiansen - sic) was born with the greatest power in the world, but not the wisdom and maturity to fucking handle it and at that crucial point in his life he was met with an illusion. An illusion of greatness that was a corruption he was too stupid, too young, too blind to see. It’s a sad and tragic fucking story. Imagine if Jesus wasn’t pure of heart. He was given the apple and seduced (of course the parallel, doesn’t quite work, there is no Eve, Jesus is not Adam obviously, but the principle of it is in place. Sure some shades of Faust as well, but principally we are working within a biblical context, Anakin was born from an immaculate conception if you can bare to remember Episode I).

Though it inherently might be a superior film to Episode’s II and II cause it’s a tragedy it won’t surprise me if Lucas somehow botches it. But it’s almost impossible for him to do it. It’s hard not to empathize with those that blew it (Anakin and to some extent the Jedi council) for not recognizing what was going on and those who suffer the consequences (Padme, Anakin, the entire galaxy). As an audience, one would believe it would be hard not to empathize with the story.

But I don’t think Lucas approaches the material this way. Maybe he does, but it never fucking comes across on screen cause he’s so fucking concerned with CGI and awesome light saber duels. Obviously, he’s not Shakespeare, but it’s a no brainer. It’s a goldmine of classic storytelling just waiting to be exploited. If Lucas is smart, which he isn’t, he’ll at least use a lot of the original music in this last episode to exploit people’s sense of nostalgia and by doing so, give the tale the weight and gravitas its been clearly missing. $100 bucks says he prolly just uses the emperor’s theme (menace), but c’mon there’s so much stronger material to convey tragedy. I could make a better film.

I can’t believe I just barfed up all this garbage.

Why am i creating a blog on Friendster? Good lord, i have no clue. However, this is categorically untrue. While blogs are mostly reprehensible to me, i must admit I’m somewhat fascinated by them in a train-car pile-up sort of way.

Reasons I am creating a blog:

1) Procrastination from other pressing matters. Multi-tiered; also a delusional exercise. "If I write in a blog, soon I will be inspired to recommence with the project i started before I became preoccupied with excuses not to do real work!" A flagrant lie.

2) Masturbation. Everyone loves the sound of their own voice. Mine is particularily bel canto.

3) Minor-Key Shitdisturbing - I refuse to link everytime i make mention of Johnny Awesome’s blog. The fact that people get upset over non-links or whatever the jargon or ettiquette is in the *Cough* blogosphere, is all the more reason not to link to someone and or create a blog for that sole specific purpose.

4) Laziness. A blog is bad enough, but a blog on Friendster. Jesus. If i had the patience with blogspot, i would take my half-hearted blog there and intially i did, but it broke or something… I couldn’t figure it out and since i’m a product of instant gratification, when it failed, i bailed. One would assume and hope that once I use my brain for more than 2 seconds, i will have a blog elsewhere, but as of right now, this is easy as pie. Oh, btw, did I mention i work on the web as a producer for a living?

5) Exhibitionism. Such a loathsome trait and the main reason i detest blogs in theory, but i assume the main reason i am writing one and an not writing a personal journal is because i am secretly hoping somone will read it and think i am brilliant or something. I mean, i can only imagine that’s the only reason any person who claimed they hated blogs (like myself), would create a blog.

It’s definitely a quandry, an ugly paradox. Almost every time i read a blog, the smugness overwhelms me and i would love the capability to instantly punch the writer in the face. To qualify, most of the blogs i’m talking about have an audience, Stereogum, etc. music/culture blogs that feel self-important and carry a vague sense of authority about them (i.e. "tune in and i will let you in on some variant of hipness you weren’t aware of!") I probably will/would do the same, but the idea is vomitous. You can also make up words which is kind of fun.

i hate blogs. I do. Let’s face it. I wrote a thing called the Playlist from 2000-03. It was pre-blog and smug as fuck. I think part of my hatred of blogs is perhaps the fact that what i was doing was too far ahead of it’s time. (hahaah, did i just write that? Sad…) Then again, i started to hate myself and what me and my partner Angelo were writing. I think it really got some venom and frustration out of me that I’m not sure i possess anymore. Perhaps that was the point.

Either way, there’s definitely mixed feelings on the matter. I don’t want to write about music here, that’s for sure. Anyhow, what is the point of blogs that just point to funny stories? I wrote one sentence and the punch line is my link! Oh that’s clever "writing," huh? I hate blogs.