Obligatory Oscar-Night Blog
I'll make it quick, but I'd be remiss not to include at least a little something about the Oscars. They're over now, and I must ask -- Is the outro music not the theme from Terminator 2? Wow.
Firstly, I think that
Million Dollar Baby deserved every Oscar it won, but Clint Eastwood did not deserve best actor, which he didn't win. Jamie Foxx had way too much hype to be vulnerable to defeat. Sadly, I haven't seen Ray, so I have to go by hype, not his actual performance.
Now, a couple of problems I had:
1.)
Adam Duritz looks like Sideshow Bob from the Simpsons. Period.
I can't believe the guys in the band let that slide. I would have shaved him in his sleep the night before. Problem with that is that they all seemed to have very little taste themselves. Makes sense, they haven't put out a consistent album in 5 years, and they're writing ready-to-order songs for Animated Features, which I think is the music biz equivalent of selling your children into slavery.
2.)
Beyonce. Who made that programming snafu? She was this close to trying to take the best actress award away from Hillary Swank in a boxing match, she was on the show so much.
3.) Was anyone not getting up and going to the bathroom during the
Antonio Banderas/Santana butchering of that Spanish song? I don't even like that song, and I felt bad for the songwriter. Did Beyonce's vocal coach not have the time to teach her a Spanish accent?
High Points?
1.) Charlie Kaufman looked exactly like I imagined him, and he's only slightly less neurotic than Nic Cage played him in
Adaptation. And, I must say that he had a little Cohen moment when he started counting down the time on the teleprompter. Brilliant.
2.) Was it just me, or did you lose it when Chris Rock went into the Theater and interviewed regular people? It's easy to forget that there are people out there that think that
Alien vs. Predator or
Chronicles of Riddick (!) were the greatest films of the year. (Although I almost lost it when the guy who lacked the decency to keep from gushing about Riddick seemed to be able to muster enough refinement to specify between liking Vin Diesel's
work and liking Vin Diesel as a
person. Thanks for the clarification, guy - I wouldn't want to get that one mixed up either. What would my friends think?) [
side note, my roommate Matt just informed me that he thought Riddick was good, and he "enjoyed it thoroughly". 'Nuff said.]
I guess that, all-in-all,, this Oscar night was really pretty good. Leo went home empty-handed again, so we may not see him again for five more years, for whatever that's worth. Chris Rock brought the goods, complete with a "Yo!" to Brooklyn at the end. And more than anything else, the whole thing was over pretty quickly. It helps to get a play-by-play from
Amy, via text message all night long.
Let me know your Oscar thoughts! Any funny moments I forgot to mention? Any disappointments? Lemme know.
Something Different from This State Comes
Listen here people, because something big is starting to happen in Texas. And, no, I'm not just saying this because I'm so lucky as to be a Texan.
There is a movement of music coming from such thriving metropoli as Denton, Tyler, and Texarkana, and believe it or not, each of the bands from these respective towns are quite unlike anything else out there.
This last weekend [as referenced by
Brett's post], I went to Dallas with my roommates
Dan and
Brett to see Midlake, Eisley and Pilotdrift (respectively from Denton, Tyler and Texarkana) for the
Good Records 5th Birthday Party.
Contrary to what you may be thinking, I am not lumping these bands together because I saw them all in the same weekend. Each of these bands happen to be friends with one another, but they have so much more in common than friends, a Birthday Party and origins in 3rd-tier Texas towns.
What I would characterize as distinctives of each of these bands are as follows:
1.) Their musical sounds are both melodic
and unique.
2.) Each band uses varying degrees of electronic and organic instruments to make their sounds.
3.) The subject matter of their songs include lots of fantasy or imaginary imagery and drama. (e.g. songs about people escaping evil monocle Men in home-made balloons [Midlake's "He Tried to Escape in a balloon"], horses growing out of the ground in the front lawn [Eisley's "Marvelous Things"], and Sir Ernest Shackleton's voyage to Antarctica [Pilotdrift's "Elephant Island"])
4.) As far as I know, each band has at least a few members who would consider themselves professing Christians.
5.) As far as I know, none of these bands would claim in any respect to be a
Christian band.
This last three points are of interest to me for several reasons, including the fact that I too am a Christian. Beyond that, though, it makes me question a few things. Why is it that these three bands have independently found expression for their faith in forms that are so fantastical and bizarre? What is it about the bizarre and mythical that leads these three groups to employ these means to express themselves lyrically?
Having seen Midlake's live show, complete with video footage illustrating the narratives of the songs visually, I can see a definite correlation between the themes of their album
Bamnan and Slivercork and the gospel narrative. In "Elephant Island" by Pilotdrift, I read into the story of Sir Shackleton and the Endurance an allegory of the experience of hoping in and waiting on the return of Christ.
What interests me is this: it seems to me that real-life stories of the daily experiences of "believers" and their struggles with faith, sin, love, hope, failure, etc. are not necessarily best communicated on a literal level. When Kelly from Pilotdrift sings "Hey, Hey, Hey/Hold Tight/To the Captain's Words/Of Shackleton's Return!" I
feel my soul groan for Christ's return much more than when Rich Mullins might sing of the same thing literally (and I'm a closet Rich Mullins fan, even!). Maybe the deeper things of the faith have as great of an expression in art as they do in worship. Maybe, all of a sudden, there are Christians out there that are trying to make good
music as well as lyrics that point people to something deeper in their souls.
Maybe I
am reading too much into this. But maybe things are starting to change in
"Christian" art.
You guys really need to be reading Musings. Will posted a great think-piece on what we call "quiet times."
Give it a read.
It's 12:06 am, February 15th officially, but for me it's the epilogue to a great Valentine's evening. Those don't come easily with a long-distance relationship.
I'm linking stereogum's valentine playlist, and I'm listing one of my own. Now any playlist/mix CD maker worth his salt knows a little something about themes. They're
everything. This theme is
Distance. Here it is.
1. La Cienga Just Smiled - Ryan Adams - Gold
2. My Lovely - Eisley - Room Noises
3. Via Chicago - Wilco - Summer Teeth
4. Golden Hour - Midlake - Milkmaid Grand Army EP
5. Hey That's No Way to Say Goodbye - Leonard Cohen - Songs
6. Northern Sky - Nick Drake - Bryter Later
7. Transatlanticism - Death Cab for Cutie - Transatlanticism
8. Maps - Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever to Tell
9. Always See Your Face - Love - High Fidelity Soundtrack
10. Rocket Man - Elton John - Greatest Hits [ed 2-15 "Honky Chateau"=album name, sorry Brett for not keeping it real]
11. Half a World Away - R.E.M. - Out of Time
12. Everything Will Be Alright - The Killers - Hot Fuss
13. Radio Cure - Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
14. Lover, You Should Have Come Over - Jeff Buckley - Grace
15. If You See Her, Say Hello - Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks
16. Rosemary's Song - Adam Carroll - Lookin' Out the Screen Door
17. Rock N Roll - Ryan Adams - Rock N Roll
18. The Long and Winding Road - The Beatles - 1967-1970Couple of things I noticed: Some long songs (6 over 5 min., 2 over 6 min.). I was forced to break my rule of not putting two songs from the same artist not once, but twice! (Ryan Adams, Wilco)
If you can, you should give these songs a listen. If you know me and run into me and think about it, you can give me a CD, and I'll burn it for you. Or you could just post your own in the comments section. Just tell us the theme, keep it about Valentines (I don't care if it's over), and have fun.
My buddy Will runs this blog, and I've posted a few articles on it over the last several months. I just posted another one, but either way, there are a lot of great posts from other people on there, so check it out.
The OC, Take Two
Okay, I have some 'splaining to do, as Desi Arnaz often said on "I Love Lucy."
I spoke too soon about the OC. I was coming off of a weekend-long OC bender, and all of a sudden, like a young lover expressing my affection prematurely, I was ready to drop down on one knee for my beloved OC.
However, as time has passed (read: season 2), the honeymoon is over before it began. Can we go on a break?
What I am trying to say is this: Season 2 of the OC may be the biggest disappointment of my spring. Oh how quickly I have turned! Just one week ago I simply said, "I am dissatisfied with the more formulaic writing in season 2," but now I know my
true feelings. Clarity feels good.
Don't get me wrong - I still love season 1, and I haven't given up hope on McG and Josh Schwartz putting their heads together and coming up with some compelling story lines. My complaint is just that season 2 seems to have sacrificed the central formula of, as Seth put it once, "traveling in packs, then peeling off to hook up once in a while." Season 1 had a "gang," a group of kids whose sum was better than their parts. I can identify with a gang. I want to be a part of a gang like that. It's community, and we
need community. Community changes lives.
For example, Seth was practically
nobody until Ryan came by, and Ryan was "on his way to Chino, rollin' on the grey goose," as Snoop Dogg puts it. Once together, these guys helped one another become what the other one wasn't. Ryan became a member of OC society, able to socially interact without swinging his fists. Seth cooled off on the neurotic chatter and was able to engineer a set of a few episodes where he had girls fighting over him.
What's missing now is that each character is their own story line, with nary an intersection between them. Marissa is lost in a hopelessly unbelievable lesbian-exploration story line, while Ryan is following Lindsey into boringsville. Also, can anyone hold back the yawns when we watch Sandy Cohen mirror Kiersten's story line with Jimmy Cooper from last season with his own old flame? Seriously! The chick's dad dies of a stroke, and she decides to go back into hiding from the FBI within the course of 5 minutes of screen time, and I'm popping No-Doz like they're candy the whole time!
The only real bright spot is the way that they have continued to keep the Seth-Summer tension watchable. I honestly think that Adam Brody should be up for an Emmy for his performance of an over-caffeinated/insomniac/love-sick aspiring comic book artist. I actually
felt his coffee-addled neurosis! I can
identify with performances like
that.
The point here is this: People need people. We need a place to belong. Seth needs Ryan; Marissa needs Summer; they need each other, and Lindsey needs to have her contract revoked. In our lives, though, we need to be around people who encourage us, who tell us when we're wrong, who lock arms with us when we have a cause to fight for.
So, join with me in fighting against bad writing. Amy suggested a letter-writing campaign. I'm thinking that we need to go grassroots with this: start a "gang" of your own. Find your own "kid from Chino." Befriend your own witty Indy kid. Get in each others' worlds, and don't let go.
Use It Wisely
I feel honored that sweet Paul wanted to include me in his blog team. He warned me to use this privilege wisely. I think that's funny since I have my own blog. Why share a blogspot? Because we're a couple and we like to share things. Like desserts and cell phone minutes (edited for content). Is that disgusting? I didn't think so either and that's why I went ahead and wrote it and because we're that kind of couple. We like to make fun of things that typical couples do and then do those things ourselves. We're a great match because we like to analyze things to the point of nonexistence (that's a quote from
My So-Called Life. I still love Jordan Catalano.) Another reason Paul and I are a good fit is because we're both the type of people who are dorks in our natural states but have tried all our lives to be cool and now we make self-deprecating jokes and say things like, "No, I'm really a dork. I am so not cool." (I always secretly wanted Angela to end up with Brian Crackow.) But the fact is, we really do think we are cool, otherwise we wouldn't have a blog to celebrate our wit and social aptitude.
Yoga-lates
I feel pretty sheepish to have my first
real post here be about television, which many consider to be a lesser form of entertainment than books, films or even music. I'm not about pride, so I'm going to let it slide. None of us are as cool as we like to think we are. Now that I got the apologies out of the way, I'm just going to say it:
I love the OC.
It may be the the best show for the ever-important 14-28 demographic to come out in the last decade.
(I can say this because Seinfeld came out in 1989, narrowly escaping the cutoff point.)
Each of the characters experiences some dysfunction or another that they run around having a good time trying heal. In roughly 1.25 seasons, this show has tackled such bleeding edge issues as: Homosexuality (both this season, with Alex, the bisexual club manager, and season one with Luke's gay father), Abandonment (Ryan's mother), dysfuntional parent-child relationships (Marissa and Julie Cooper, and Kiersten "Kiki" Cohen and Caleb, her father), as well as flawed-but-functional parent-child relationships (Seth, Ryan & the Cohen parents).
Beyond this, there is the over-arching theme of forgiveness and grace that the Cohens show to Ryan in accepting them into their home during the first quarter of season 1 (which, by the way, I am addicted to, thanks to
my girlfriend and my roommate). The Cohen family dynamic is a great example of a loving family, in a very post-modern context. Sandy and Kiersten face some sort of challenge to the fidelity of their relationship on an average of about once every four episodes, without compromising their faithfulness to one another. They are honest with one another and are gracious and trusting with one another in the face of these challenges. Plus Sandy gets to surf and be a high-powered attorney - the ultimate
one-two power punch character dichotomy.
Don't even get me started on Seth Cohen. He's the ultimate post-modern narrator - leading us from scene to scene with a disoriented, sarcastic, cynical outlook as he tries to navigate a world that makes no sense to him,
i.e. family, friends, Newport Beach girls [especially Summer], etc.)
Although I am dissatisfied with the more formulaic writing in season 2 (
welcome to the bait shop, where [insert name of flavor-of-the-month-band (and Sandy Cohen - puke)] bring you the soundtrack to this week's exciting episode of the OC... brought to you by Columbia Records, Inc.), I feel like the OC has been brave enough to tread important emotional ground without selling out to total sentimentality, a la
One Tree Hill and
Seventh Heaven, but not teetering over into the total smut of a
Melrose Place sex-fest.
I get the feeling that there will be important life-issue dialogue springing from discussions of each week's OC episode as the weeks press on. Here's to that, and here's to Deathcab!
