Playlists: Sarah 3

I don't remember exactly when I made this, the third playlist for Sarah, but it was somewhere in the middle of things, while we were living in Excelsior. The music is also perhaps the most rounded, rocking, and generally conducive to a good time and it's the one I've most frequently used to provide people with an introduction to my musical taste, partly because the lyrical content is less explicitly romantic.

Of course, elements still recall that relationship, with the immortal song title "What Do You Want Me To Say?" (Mad Men, anyone?) and the gentle sincerity of "Balancing Act" and "He's My Star". "Nod Scene" and "Rebel Girl" were both homages to the sense of "fuck you" hipsterism that Sarah can evoke and the sense of cool that the two of us constructed together.

Sarah particularly enjoyed the tempered idealism of the original Mommyheads track that unfortunately had to be substituted on the Grooveshark listing, "Tension", which can be sampled here and whose lyrics I hope capture the spirit that pervades this very blog:  "I believe in cream puffs and apple pies/ I believe in nectarines and tangerines/ I believe in peace and love and understanding/ I believe in loving you eternally/ I believe in everything that you believe in/ but I also believe in tension/ I also believe in tension."

If you only have time to listen to one song, I encourage you to listen to the epic closer, "Tales of Endurance", because it is just incredible. Whatever the case, please enjoy this small slice of my musical world.

Playable playlist
http://grooveshark.com/playlist/For+Sarah+3/81911208

Original tracklist
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ycpxxix6vxllgkp/Sarah3playlist.xls

On Feminism and Misandry

The following is an adaptation of a post to a heated facebook thread that was started with the uncharitable question, (not mine) "By default, do feminists hate ducks?"

The discussion turned to whether the kind of hostile, misandrous feminism that we commonly run across on the internets represents the majority of feminists or the minority and whether it is really feminism at all. The Santa Barbara shooter was mentioned in the context of men's rights, as was the "PATRIARCHY", and generally a good time was had by all. Enter yours truly:

I think the question of how a movement should deal with their radical fringe is a really interesting one. Should we hold moderate Muslims accountable to those who do terrible things in the name of Islam? Is murderous hostility toward non-Muslims the "true" Islam? I think not.

That said, what do we think of the Occupy movement? Personally, I fault them for allowing their message to be hijacked by crazy hobos and black block anarchists. The "true" Occupy was well-intentioned and had good ideas, they just failed to get the right message to the top of the heap. That's kind of on them.

So there does seem to be a degree of culpability. I'd take issue with a Muslim who refused to emphatically condemn religious terrorism, after all.

By the same turn, the feminist movement has a duty (if not to anyone else, then) to itself to keep its message on point. You can write off misandry as "oh but men have it so great", but misandry is extremely toxic, and not just to men. Misandry is toxic to individual women and it is toxic to feminism. It is the very antithesis of feminism, lurking right under feminism's protective wing.

This toxic, misandrist brand of "feminism" is worthy of attention because it has hit the mainstream. It is all over Jezebel, XoJane, Slate, Salon, Daily Kos, etc. It is not some "fringe" thing that can be dismissed with a wave. Much of what is said passes for honest feminism. The biggest danger is that the two things, feminism and misandry, become so inextricable from one another that they cannot be thought of as separate animals, as the increasingly common refrain of "feminists hate men" illustrates is already happening.

Men will inevitably bring this issue up more than women. That is because we are understandably more sensitive to it, because it affects us directly. Misandry, for men, is an emotional thing. It gets us riled up the way misogyny used to only get women riled up.

I don't see a reason to dismiss that sensitivity as "too early". The pendulum is swinging right now, and misandry will increasingly affect men in real ways (like in the workplace). When we discuss the power dynamic between women and men we are not talking slaves and slave owners here. We are talking men and women, hand in hand, and on our darkest days, icy dagger met with icy dagger. "The Patriarchy" is such an outmoded, myopic, intrinsically sexist (in both directions) way of thinking of gender relations it makes me blanch. Do you need to read about Hera torturing the ill-fated sons of Zeus's mistresses to realize that power has never been held entirely in the hands of one sex?

It is for this reason that the true feminism, the always feminism, is the pursuit of equal rights for both sexes and the fighting of prejudice in its many forms. To take on misandry masquerading as feminism is just as central to the ideology as taking on misogyny masquerading as paternalism, and just as crucial to its success.

End Note: Sorry, I got a little carried away there at the end. Please indulge me.

Back on the Airwaves

Well, that was my longest absence from this blog by far (eight months!). I apologize for the lapse. It got out from under me. I will return with some riveting content shortly, but for now I would just like to say: hello friends, I am back.

Even when I last posted, I hadn't caught you up on the juicy contours of my dating life or the state of American politics, and I certainly hadn't finished annotating and posting backlog playlists made for friends and lovers. I promise this and more if you stay tuned.

Scary Movie Month, Years Five and Six

For newcomers, please read this post for an explanation of Scary Movie Month, which also includes the movies from the first three years. Those interested can find the fourth year's post here.

I'd like to play a little Scary Movie Month catchup today, sharing the last two years of scary movies to get you revved up for this, the spooky seventh annual month of terror.


October 2011:

Godzilla
The original Godzilla turned out to be an unexpected pleasure. I'd never thought of the Godzilla franchise as anything but B movies, but it turns out that the original is as reputable of a franchise kick-off as the best of them. By modern standards it may favor story too much over terror, but it's a good story and a fascinating peek into the post-nuclear Japanese zeitgeist.

The Dead Zone
Christopher Walken stars in this psychological thriller about a school teacher with psychic powers that allow him to foresee the future of the people he touches. It's a solid movie, and the election theme that wraps it up makes it particularly seasonally-appropriate.

Creepshow
From the first few minutes it is clear that this movie is absolutely essential-- four scary Halloween stories told well. What more could you ask for? This is a perfect movie for October.

Fright Night
This is a solid 80's family horror movie. It's fun and charming and interesting. In a way, it's a send-up of classic Halloween season television programming just like Creepshow.

The Return to Oz
This is a remarkably dark Disney fable. It isn't going to give you nightmares quite the way Alice in Wonderland did, but it succeeds in feeling like the cracked, corrupted successor of The Wizard of Oz. The fact that this Dorothy is so much younger makes it more real. I found myself wondering at the fucked-up-ness of the very premise-- that a little girl keeps being transported to this alternate world to solve its problems. This doesn't strike the rich chords that the first movie did, but it's an imaginative, symbolically rich children's coming of age story that will go toe-to-toe with anything this side of Disney's golden age or Miazaki.

The Blair Witch Project
This was not an especially pleasant movie to watch, though that could be said of many excellent horror films. Unfortunately, this is also one of those movies whose influence dwarfed the movie itself. It's a good movie to be sure, but what made it revolutionary is no longer revolutionary and that takes something important away. Yet, it is a good movie and worth watching for the enormous influence it had on American film-- big and small screen both.

The Night of the Hunter
This is one of those movies that doesn't fit into any set of expectations, but which would blow any expectations I could have had. It was made in the 50's and is set during the Great Depression. The story is about a preacher who marries a woman with kids for her money, kills her and hunts the children. The themes of good and evil are black and white, but delivered with delicacy and thought.

Labyrinth
A classic coming-of-age fable, complete with puzzles, faith trials, new friends and being whisked back to real life at the end, this movie is of course enhanced by Jim Henson and David Bowie's presence. Honestly, the only thing I found genuinely exciting was all the goblins in the movie. Too few movies feature goblins.

Dracula
Like most dramatic movies of the era, the original Dracula has the feel of a play-- there is a sense of dramatic staging. The movie is excellent, and I can't find much to say about it that hasn't already been said, including that it suffers slightly when compared against the first two Frankensteins.

October 2012:

Gremlins
Gremlins is a perverse premise for a horror film perversely set amidst the backdrop of a classic down-and-out Christmas tale. They start out so cute! There's some goofy filler sequences with the gremlins trashing a bar, but this is undeniably a classic.

Army of Darkness
It may have been watching this with Sarah, who "gets" camp and B movie appeal, but this final installment was the most fun I had with the Evil Dead trilogy. Bruce Campbell is a pip as always, delivering some profoundly stupid lines with enough earnest enthusiasm to make you double take-- was that actually a cool thing to say? I think I should probably re-watch the first two of the trilogy, as I may appreciate what I didn't the first time in.

The Devil's Backbone
This Guillermo del Toro bears a strong resemblance to his Pan's Labyrinth. It's a ghost story, and an investigation of what a ghost is. Like Labyrinth, it's set during the Spanish Civil War and also strikes the theme of an adolescent-- this time a boy-- first encountering the harsh realities of the adult world. Unlike it, there is none of the fairy tale imagery or tones of familial love. This is a darker, more desolate movie. As with Pan's Labyrinth, it was a movie I more respected than enjoyed.

Hellboy
I chose this partly because Guillermo del Toro directed it, even though it wasn't a perfect fit for Scary Movie Month. The script was pretty terrible-- any "serious" dialogue or monologue was pure nonsense and there's no explanation why they're eventually able to kill the resurrecting hellhound. Ironically, this is the only movie that gave me a nightmare. Karl Ruprecht Kroenen was fantastically creepy in conception (a conception entirely of del Toro's by the way) and the ineffable Jeffrey Tambor's brief presence added a lot.

Something Wicked This Way Comes
This was based on a Ray Bradbury novel, and it bears certain similarities to the one Bradbury novel I've read through-- Dandelion Wine. It's a story set in a small town about strange things happening. It ends up being a reflection on life and on hope's dark side-- how it can eat people from the inside out and the only way to confront this danger is to come to terms with who we are. The movie is just as windswept and wonderful as the October imagery that pervades it.

Re-Animator
I guess I wasn't sure whether to expect more Frankenstein or Night of the Living Dead, but this movie is absolutely original. A med student has developed a "reagent" that can bring the dead back to life-- imperfectly. The only thing more disturbing than the evident agony of the newly-undead is the magnetic temptation to use the reagent. The movie is tempered by plenty of dry, pitch-perfect humor that leavens the mood but only intensifies the philosophical themes lurking beneath.

An American Werewolf in London
In a similar vein of fun, kind of bizarre 80's horror movies to Re-Animator, this one is more explicitly colorful and goofy. The black humor is great, the American-in-England angle is done tastefully and you genuinely care about the characters.

The Bird With the Crystal Plumage
This Dario Argento film is supposedly a quintessential Italian Giallo-- a mix of film noir-style detectives and stalking, bloody horror, with some European sexiness to top it off. The movie was all of those things and gorgeously, flawlessly executed.

Jaws
This classic has been in my scary movie month queue for a while now, and it more than lived up to the hype. The first half of the movie is thoughtful, subtly creative and genuinely scary. Without every coming across as "artsy" or "serious" there are reflections on responsibility, parenthood, and insider/outsider mentalities. The second half is more balls-to-the-walls terror, but the entire movie is remarkably well crafted and executed. I'm sure the shark they used looks ridiculous in person, but the movie's special effects were well-done. This is my pick of the month.

Playlists: Jack 1

Jack is a person of discerning tastes, but for reasons that he will happily explain to you, he mostly just listens to radio pop and neoclassical shred metal. For all of Jack's intimate understanding of SciFi, he has no schooling in punk. This has put me in the strange position of explaining punk to him. This series tackles punk in the very broadest sense-- one sure to ruffle the feathers of any "actual" punks out there.

The "punk vs. metal" dichotomy dates to the 80's, when the two camps were at each other's throats, no matter how similar thrash and hardcore began to sound. That false dichotomy died its final death with Pearl Jam, but I've resurrected it as a lense through which to view rock. Metal and punk represent two illustrious rock traditions-- the former grounded in virtuosity and artistic ambition and the latter grounded in anti-beauty and self-conscious simplicity. Much of the rock canon can be casually divided down these lines. For this reason I've subtitled the Jack series "Phooey on your Metal... let's listen to some Punk!"

The Jack series was composed as a single five hour ride through various manifestations of "punk" that was subsequently cut into four CD-length playlists, each with their own distinctive character. This the first of these is the most abrasive, most coherent, and the least representative. It tackles the complex between noise rock, math rock and emo that forms the core of post-hardcore (punk), with an emphasis on emo. Emo deserves a post and a playlist of its own a la my old radio show The Odyssey, but for now please rest assured that this playlist hardly constitutes what most people think of as "emo". This is a playlist of intricate, furious, guitar rock.

Playable playlist
http://grooveshark.com/playlist/Jack+Punk+1/81909679

Official tracklist
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ye5seas58jtk0on/Jack1playlist.xls

Playlists: Sarah 2

In the intervening couple of months between when I gave her the first playlist and when, with her encouragement, I presented her with the second, Sarah had listened to the first playlist all of once-- and even that time only incompletely. She said the feelings were too strong and when she got to the "sad song" (Sweet Avenue) she had to stop listening to keep from being overcome.

This second playlist is more relaxed than the first, as heralded by the opening salvo, "Congratulations". Gone is the anguish of Jill's presence in the tracklisting and the wistfulness of the previous has solidified into a sort of hypnotic romanticism, perhaps best embodied by "Back To Your Heart". Sure, there is a consciousness of vulnerability, as with "When the Levee Breaks", and there is the poignancy of "Across the Sea", but at its core this playlist is about reveling in that surreal moment of love, without expectation or fear.

Playable playlist
http://grooveshark.com/playlist/For+Sarah+2/81911055

I'd like to note that the Grooveshark playlists have some minor differences with the original, because not quite every song is available on Grooveshark. You can find the official tracklist here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yhdqadjt4bag6ht/Sarah2playlist.xls