List of the week, 7/30: Band names

(Listening to: Radiohead, OK Computer)

A new feature here: I take my obsession with lists to the next level and provide you with a new one every Saturday. How 'bout that. Not like my big mammoth lists, of course -- these will be just top fives or tens, depending on my mood.

I'm sure you'll disagree with my choices, but hey -- that's the point. To inspire discussion. Plus, you're wrong.

This week: the best and worst band names of all time. I'll try to divorce my opinion of the music of each of these acts to focus just on their names -- just because someone is on the best list here doesn't mean I don't hate them.

The best:

1. The Who. ("Who's playing tonight?" "Yeah!" "Who?" "Yeah!" "No, what band is playing tonight?" "Who!" "That's what I'm asking you!")
2. Soundgarden. (Apparently taken from an outdoor art installation in Seattle that makes noise when the wind blows through it. A perfect name -- dark, mysterious, and instantly memorable. Just like their music.)
3. Megadeth. (Fueled by alcohol and anger over his expulsion from Metallica, Dave Mustaine managed to come up with a name even more perfect for metal than his former mates [and Lars even stole theirs from someone else]. Unfortunately, the other guys blew him away musically, but hey: at least he got the cooler name.)
4. Public Enemy. (Chuck D couldn't have put his group's militant hip-hop anymore succinctly than that. Bonus points for the logo, depicting a black man trapped in a sniper's crosshairs. And honorable mention to Rage Against the Machine, who also chose a great political name.)
5. Ben Folds Five. (Sure, there's nothing original about a lead singer naming a band after himself. But the genius of the name lies in the fact that the Five only featured three members -- Folds had a knack for smirking, sarcastic songwriting, and the great name spelled that out flawlessly.)

And the worst:

1. Limp Bizkit. (Just about everything Fred Durst does pisses me off, and the idiotic band name is no exception. Dig the totally hip misspelling! And putting the word "limp" in your name is asking for your music to be described that way, isn't it? And a million extra bonus points for what a "limp biscuit" supposedly is. If you don't know, don't ask. It's gross.)
2. Hoobastank. (Yeah, a band name is supposed to be easy to remember, but not like this. "Hoobastank" -- which doesn't mean anything, if you were curious -- is like a rotted watermelon thrown against the wall, splattering out in all directions, creating a giant, disgusting mess that you will never get rid of no matter how hard you try. Just like their music.)
3. Jethro Tull. (The story is that Ian Anderson would come up with a new name every time his band got booed out of a club. The one time they happened to play well and get asked back, they'd called themselves "Jethro Tull," and so were stuck with it. Poor bastards.)
4. Jefferson Starship. (Jefferson Airplane wasn't so bad, I guess. But Jefferson Starship? Thanks, but no thanks.)
5. Yes. (No. No no no.)

My 100 Favorite Songs

1. "The Unforgiven," Metallica (1991)
   
2. "Warehouse," Dave Matthews Band (1994)
   
3. "Lounge Act," Nirvana (1991)
   
4. "Eulogy," Tool (1996)
   
5. "Stairway to Heaven," Led Zeppelin (1971)
   
6. "Hey Jude," The Beatles (1968)
   
7. "Kill You," Eminem (2000)
   
8. "Estranged," Guns N' Roses (1991)
   
9. "My Friend of Misery," Metallica (1991)
   
10. "Shock the Monkey," Peter Gabriel (1982)
    
    
11. "No Surprises," Radiohead (1997)
    
12. "Comfortably Numb," Pink Floyd (1979)
    
13. "Like a Rolling Stone," Bob Dylan (1965)
    
14. "A," Barenaked Ladies (1994)
    
15. "Criminal," Fiona Apple (1996)
    
16. "Granny," Dave Matthews Band (1994)
    
17. "Serve the Servants," Nirvana (1993)
    
18. "Free Bird," Lynyrd Skynyrd (1973)
    
19. "Rain King," Counting Crows (1993)
    
20. "Master of Puppets," Metallica (1985)
    
    
21. "Alice's Restaurant," Arlo Guthrie (1967)
    
22. "Father of Mine," Everclear (1997)
    
23. "Down in a Hole," Alice in Chains (1992)
    
24. "Let Me Drown," Soundgarden (1994)
    
25. "Taxman," The Beatles (1966)
    
26. "Jesus of Suburbia," Green Day (2004)
    
27. "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant," Billy Joel (1977)
    
28. "Turn the Page," Bob Seger (1973)
    
29. "The Wretched," Nine Inch Nails (1999)
    
30. "Vietnow," Rage Against the Machine (1996)
    
    
31. "One," U2 (1991)
    
32. "Welcome to the Jungle," Guns N' Roses (1987)
    
33. "Hook," Blues Traveler (1994)
    
34. "Alcohol," Barenaked Ladies (1998)
    
35. "Sympathy for the Devil," The Rolling Stones (1968)
    
36. "Best Imitation of Myself," Ben Folds Five (1995)
    
37. "Let Down," Radiohead (1997)
    
38. "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," The Beatles (1968)
    
39. "Mosh," Eminem (2004)
    
40. "The Call of Ktulu," Metallica (1984)
    
    
41. "I Grieve," Peter Gabriel (1997)
    
42. "(Don't Fear) The Reaper," Blue Oyster Cult (1976)
    
43. "Find the River," R.E.M. (1992)
    
44. "Albuquerque," Weird Al Yankovic (1999)
    
45. "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," Marvin Gaye (1968)
    
46. "Breed," Nirvana (1991)
    
47. "Since I've Been Loving You," Led Zeppelin (1970)
    
48. "Bartender," Dave Matthews Band (2000)
    
49. "Anna Begins," Counting Crows (1993)
    
50. "Time," Pink Floyd (1973)
    
    
51. "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay," Otis Redding (1968)
    
52. "Baba O'Riley," The Who (1971)
    
53. "Just Like You Imagined," Nine Inch Nails (1999)
    
54. "Exit Music (For a Film)," Radiohead (1997)
    
55. "Nautical Disaster," The Tragically Hip (1995)
    
56. "War Pigs," Black Sabbath (1971)
    
57. "Box Set," Barenaked Ladies (1992)
    
58. "Pushit," Tool (1996)
    
59. "Drive You Mild," The Verve Pipe (1996)
    
60. "Reach Out I'll Be There," The Four Tops (1966)
    
    
61. "Save Me," Aimee Mann (1999)
    
62. "The Voice," The Moody Blues (1981)
    
63. "The Unnamed Feeling," Metallica (2003)
    
64. "Dancing Nancies," Dave Matthews Band (1994)
    
65. "Prison Sex," Tool (1994)
    
66. "On the Bound," Fiona Apple (1999)
    
67. "A Long December," Counting Crows (1996)
    
68. "In Bloom," Nirvana (1991)
    
69. "Locomotive Breath," Jethro Tull (1971)
    
70. "Short Skirt/Long Jacket," Cake (2001)
    
    
71. "Haunted," Poe (2000)
    
72. "Across the Universe," The Beatles (1970)
    
73. "House of the Rising Sun," The Animals (1964)
    
74. "One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces," Ben Folds Five (1997)
    
75. "Jumpin' Jack Flash," The Rolling Stones (1968)
    
76. "You Oughta Know," Alanis Morissette (1996)
    
77. "The Stone," Dave Matthews Band (1998)
    
78. "Pyramid Song," Radiohead (2001)
    
79. "El Scorcho," Weezer (1996)
    
80. "Harvester of Sorrow," Metallica (1987)
    
    
81. "Kashmir," Led Zeppelin (1972)
    
82. "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap," AC/DC (1976)
    
83. "Don't Damn Me," Guns N' Roses (1991)
    
84. "Strawberry Fields Forever," The Beatles (1967)
    
85. "Lie in Our Graves," Dave Matthews Band (1996)
    
86. "Would?" Alice in Chains (1992)
    
87. "Digging in the Dirt," Peter Gabriel (1992)
    
88. "Bukowski," Modest Mouse (2004)
    
89. "Wake Up," Rage Against the Machine (1992)
    
90. "Rape Me," Nirvana (1993)
    
    
91. "Won't Get Fooled Again," The Who (1971)
    
92. "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" R.E.M. (1994)
    
93. "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," U2 (1987)
    
94. "The Best of What's Around," Dave Matthews Band (1994)
    
95. "Mad Season," Matchbox Twenty (2000)
    
96. "Limo Wreck," Soundgarden (1994)
    
97. "The Outlaw Torn," Metallica (1996)
    
98. "Hurt," Nine Inch Nails (1994)
    
99. "Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution," AC/DC (1980)
    
100. "Holiday," Green Day (2004)

You have got to be kidding me

(Listening to: Green Day, American Idiot)

Terrorist attacks around the globe. High-ranking White House officials revealing classified information to reporters. We're at war in Iraq. And what is our Congress spending their time (and money) worrying about? People having imaginary sex, obviously:

Just after 7 pm on Capitol Hill today, the House of Representatives voted 355 to 21 to support a Federal Trade Commission inquiry into Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The purpose of the probe will be to determine if take-Two Interactive and its publishing subsidiary Rockstar Games deceived the voluntary Entertainment Software Ratings Board when it submitted Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Today's vote advanced House Resolution 376, introduced by Congressman Fred Upton (R-MI). In Upton's words, he is "leading the Congressional effort to determine if a best selling video game maker intentionally deceived the industry’s ratings board to avoid an 'Adults-Only' rating."

In a statement, Upton recently said he was "outraged by the brazenness of Rockstar Games in their effort to do an end-run around the ratings system.... Rockstar Games’ deceit has severely undermined the integrity of the ratings system."

Remember that movie Teen Wolf? Sure you do. At the end, after the basketball game, if you look to the stands during the big celebration, you can see one of the extras expose himself to the camera. That's right: he pulls his wang out for the world to see. It's there, but you probably never noticed. The MPAA never noticed, either: Teen Wolf is rated PG.

Where's the Congressionally-backed FTC investigation of the producers of Teen Wolf? Where's the outrage at their brazenness in doing an end-run around the MPAA?

There isn't any, because it would be ridiculous. And so is this.

But Teen Wolf is rated PG -- it's suitable for kids. It a harmless teen comedy about a kid who turns into a werewolf and plays basketball. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, on the other hand, is a game about carjacking, organized crime, mowing down pedestrians in your stolen car, and shooting police officers. And it's the sex that's a problem?

And as for destroying the integrity of the ratings system -- too late. Much like the idiotic MPAA, the ESRB finds nudity and sex far more offensive than graphic violence, which is why a Hot Coffee-less GTA will get an M. The message: having sex is worse than killing a cop.

I cannot understand where these people are coming from with this controversy. And don't give me that "But the children!" crap either, because if a parent is allowing his/her child to play GTA games, they have no one to blame but themselves. There was a great big M rating on the box. Fuck, the game is called Grand Theft Auto, what did you think?

Did Rockstar deceive the ESRB? It's possible. But considering that the ESRB's job -- in fact, their reason for existence -- is to determine the content of these games, how they can they really be claiming they were misled? If they did their jobs properly, they would have found this stuff. After all, players found it. Why couldn't they?

Also: the game God of War features a sex mini-game. Along with gratuitous nudity everywhere. It was given an M. I've heard nothing from anyone.

And finally: I would like someone to explain to me the difference between the Mature rating and the Adults Only rating. Well, more specifically: explain the need for two different ratings at all. One is for 17 and up; the other is for 18 and up. Huh?

Heh

You're Watership Down!

by Richard Adams

Though many think of you as a bit young, even childish, you're actually incredibly deep and complex. You show people the need to rethink their assumptions, and confront them on everything from how they think to where they build their houses. You might be one of the greatest people of all time. You'd be recognized as such if you weren't always talking about talking rabbits.


Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

Sounds good to me.

Remember Tim? My Pizza Inn Padawan? Misread that prophecy was -- he's likely to be fired by the time I get to work on Tuesday.

I am chugging through an episode of Revolver at the moment. I'm the middle of scene two. I know it's been a while, but I'm making up for it -- this episode feels hugely long. (Probably because it is: the first scene is 11 pages; the first episode was only 14.)

I have written my 100 Favorite Songs list, as I promised I would. I'll post it in a few days.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is fucking dark, yeah? Very Empire Strikes Back there at the end.

After finishing Revolver and posting my list, I'll get to the task of revising "The Outlet," something I should have done long ago.

And it turns out the Astros were only mostly dead back in April and May. Very cool.

That is all.

...Hmm? What was that?

"Take Two"?

Um...

*waves hand*

These are not the droids you're looking for.

A parable

(Listening to: Poe, Haunted)

(The second half of "Take Two" is coming tomorrow.)

While driving through town, a man happens to glance at a restaurant. Through the window, he sees one of the employees -- a waitress. He's taken aback, because -- from a distance -- she looks like a girl he used to know, a long time ago.

Over the course of several months, he often drives past this place, and usually spots the same waitress. He thinks about that Girl From the Old Days -- he feels sad. That situation ended badly for the man.

But he sees this waitress, who looks like her. He wonders what she's like. If she's like the Old Girl.

He keeps driving by. He sees the New Girl. He thinks about stopping by the restaurant. To talk to her. He knows it's a shitty way to start a conversation -- "Hey, you know, you look just like someone I used to know..." -- but it could work.

Then, one day, he decides -- "To hell with it." During the afternoon, when he's often seen the waitress working, he arrives at the restaurant, ready to find out everything he can about this New Girl, who looks like the Old Girl from a distance.

But when he walks inside, he sees that there's a very good reason that the New Girl looks -- from a distance -- like the Old Girl.

She is the Old Girl.

The resulting conversation is awkward.

Moral: The world is too fucking small.

And your past clings to you like your shadow. Good luck getting it off.

Take Two

Part 1 of 2.

"You get one shot at this, junior," the old man said. He shook a crooked finger at my nose. "One."

I crossed my arms and angled an eyebrow, fixing him with an indignant glare. "Why? I mean, technically, you could give me as many as I needed, couldn't you?"

His shoulders sank a little then, and he brought his fingers up to massage the bridge of his nose. "Always with this. Yeah, I could, but I'm not going to. I'll give you one. More than most people get."

"I'm not most people," I said. "You do remember that I'm paying you quite a lot of money?"

He laughed. "Oh, yeah. Your money. Yeah, sonny, I remember."

"That doesn't change anything, I take it."

"Not a damn thing." He reached over and picked up his cane -- it was a thin little stick, dark wood finish, a simple black ball on the top. "Let's get this over with. It's close to supper time."

"Um...okay." I uncrossed my arms. My hands twitched nervously. "So...should I sit down, or what? What do you need me to do?"

"Just shut up and don't move." He closed his eyes and took several long, deep breaths. His lungs rattled like they were filled with lead pellets. I heard him suppress a cough. He just kept breathing, though -- in, out. In, out.

This went on for about fifteen minutes.

"Is something supposed to be happening?" I said, and the old man's eyes snapped open.

"Goddammit. What did I tell you to do? I said shut up. Really shouldn't be that hard, 'specially for a smart guy like you."

"Hey, look, old man--"

"Yeah yeah yeah." He waved a hand at me. "You ready?"

"Of course I'm ready, I've been standing here for--"

"You remember it?"

My eyebrow arched again. "Remember what?"

He sighed. "That day. Jeez."

"Oh. Yeah. Course I do." I could recall it perfectly in every detail. I remembered the weather. I remembered the clothes I wore. I remembered the smell of fresh paint wafting down the hallway from the new kitchen. And I remembered the look on the kid's face. That I remembered especially.

"You thinking about it?" He had his eyes closed again, and his left hand was working on the black ball on his cane.

"Yeah." Honestly, I hadn't thought of much else over the last few weeks.

"Good -- close your eyes." I did so. "Keep your mind focused. Remember. Just remember..."

Feeling somewhat silly, I kept my eyes shut. He was sucking back long pulls of air again; his phlegmy exhales sounded like helicopter blades underwater.

I tried to keep my mind focused, like he said. It wasn't hard to do -- I could see that old house with eidetic recollection. Every inch. Every piece of furniture.

And every person.

"You'll have about forty-five minutes to do your thing," he said. "If you don't pull it off, you'll come back here."

"What if I do?"

I heard the rustle of his clothes, and even my eyes closed, I knew he'd shrugged. "Beats me. Nobody's ever succeeded before."

"What?" I snapped, and my eyelids flew open.

But he wasn't there.

Neither was I.

I was back then.

"Holy shit."

It was my parents' old house -- the one they bought after my brothers and I left home. A cozy little place for just the two of them, rather than the cavernous barn we needed to house our rambunctious family.

I was standing in the living room. My bare feet sank into the white carpet -- a deep, soft plush carpet, kept pure as snow by my mother's fanatical care. It stretched out across the room, the coffee table and sofa mere islands in its ivory sea.

Of course, none of this was here anymore -- it was all swallowed up in flames four years ago; an electrical fire swept through the house and turned it all to cinders while firemen uselessly slashed it with water. My mother got lost in the smoke and never found her way out. The wreckage was torn down and a playground for the neighborhood children erected in its place.

And yet there I stood. Not in a sandbox, but in my parents' living room, and my mother's perfect carpet.

"Holy shit."

I heard the sound of gravel under tires, and I turned to the window in time to see my father's car pulling into the driveway.

The movies -- my mother had taken my sons to the movies. I had been sick that morning, and she volunteered to keep the kids out of my hair while I recovered. Now they'd come back.

The old clock on the wall -- the one next to the soft-focus photo of my father, who had passed a few years earlier -- chimed its musical number. Six o'clock. I had until six forty-five.

And all I had to do was not screw up.

My family was stomping up to the front door.

"This time," I whispered, "no mistakes. Not again."

The door opened.

Here we go.


To be continued...

Meat and potatoes

(Listening to: The Beatles, With the Beatles)

My mother told me a story once, about my father. When the incident took place I can't recall, but I'm pretty certain it was prior to my birth.

Mom made dinner -- a roast. She marinated this hunk of meat for days in various spices and such. It cooked for hours while she watched over it, adding more spices and flavorings as they occurred to her. (While she had plenty of cookbooks, she shunned them for this exercise -- she was flying solely on intuition.) For most of the day she did this, lovingly turning a lopsided hunk of cow flesh into a fine meal, fit for a king. As she described to me, in such glowing terms, it must have been the greatest roast ever seen on this planet, if not the Milky Way galaxy.

Ten minutes before it finished cooking, Mom tossed some chunks of potatoes into the pan with the roast, giving them enough time to soak up the flavor but not enough to turn them into mush. She tossed some salt on them, I think.

Proud of her accomplishment, she served the meal: her gorgeous roast, sliced into single-serving pieces, covering most of the plate she placed before my father. Appropriately, the afterthought potatoes were clumped on the side.

My parents-to-be began eating. A few minutes into the meal, my mother -- anxious for feedback, like any artist -- asked, "How's the roast?"

My father looked up from his plate and, his face the picture of innocence, said, "Oh, it's fine -- but are there any more potatoes?"

Writing is like that.

When I write something, there's always one part in particular that's special to me. The place where the personal things are hidden. Where the soul is, if that doesn't sound too cheesy. And after I let the story simmer in itself, slowly building in flavor until it's ready, I place it before my audience (whoever will read the damn thing) with expectant eyes. And though I'm looking for any response at all, I'm always hoping that it's the personal stuff they'll comment on. That the hard work -- and that stuff is almost always the hardest part -- will be rewarded. When I ask them, "What did you like best about it?" I'm always hoping the special part will be the answer.

It almost never is.

I wrote "Jack Renfield Opens His Eyes" about three years ago. Now, for those who've read that story, don't panic -- there's not a lot of really personal stuff in there. (No need to call the police.) I wrote it for the writer's group I was part of at College of the Mainland, and I did it largely for shock value -- I was always the quiet guy who sat in class and kept to himself, his nose in a book, and (after being given the assignment of writing something supernatural) I dumped this on them in an attempt to be memorable. But there were still little touches that meant a lot to me: the events in the story are certainly horrifying, but was my depiction of them horrifying? If you read the story, you'll notice (hopefully) the detached, unsympathetic way in which it's told -- this was highly intentional. I was hoping a flat, dry, almost clinical discussion of such disturbing actions, people, and situations would add to the horror. I was eager to know if I'd succeeded.

The writer's group liked the story. But all their comments -- aside from one person noting that it was "chilling" -- seemed focused on the story's structure. See, I started in present tense, then flipped to past tense for a flashback, then came back to present tense for the conclusion. This was the only way I could think of to tell the story, really -- it was plainly obvious and not at all impressive to me. So I was praised for the part that required zero thought, and the rest of it -- the personal stuff -- was left to starve with, "Oh, yeah, I liked that, too."

Is this a bad thing? I really don't know. After all, the writer's group liked my story, just as my not-yet-father certainly enjoyed the dinner my mother prepared. But it's a confusing mix of disappointment and elation that arises when I get these responses.

You're probably wondering what brought this on. This afternoon I started editing and revising "The Outlet," a short story I wrote last year but was never entirely satisfied with. And when I passed it around to friends and acquaintances, I certainly got "I liked it!" in return from most people...but nobody said anything about what it was I really want them to like. (And no, I won't tell you what it is.)

Perhaps I'm just whining. I recall another anecdote, this one from Stephen King. He was driving with his wife -- he behind the wheel, she in the passenger seat looking over a fresh-from-the-printer copy of his novella Hearts in Atlantis. He thought the story was hilarious, and waited for her gales of laughter...but they never came. He kept glancing at her during the drive, hoping for her smile to crack and the giggling to start, until she turned to him and said, "Will you keep your eyes on the road before you get us all killed! Stop being so damn needy!"

'Cause after all, as my mom told me -- he really loved those potatoes.

Soon he will be ready to face the Trials

"Remember, young padawan, extra cheese is $1.50 more."

(Listening to: The Mars Volta, De-Loused in the Comatorium)

We had a new driver begin work today.

The story behind the departure of our previous two drivers is both irrelevant and boring, so we won't get into that. Suffice it to say, this is a new guy. There are those who call him...Tim.

While the managers gave him vague pointers -- "This is the oven," and other such helpful tips -- his on-the-job training was left to me. Though I started to protest, citing that these things really should be the responsibility of the managers -- they're the ones who get paid for it, after all -- I realized logic was futile in this situation, as it is most of the time at the Inn. So, begrudgingly, I took him on as my padawan learner.

There wasn't much to it -- frankly, my job isn't that complicated. When dirty dishes are brought to the back, wash them. ("How do I run the dishwasher?" "See that button, padawan?" "Yes, master." "Push it.") When an order is ready, take it to the address on the ticket. When the phone rings, answer it. Since the majority of our duties are self-explanatory, I spent much of the time fielding idle questions from my young apprentice. The first one -- as it always is, with anyone who starts working there -- was "Do we get free pizza?" and I, of course, was forced to reply in the negative. He was slightly disappointed, but I think he'll feel better after he actually tastes our pizza for the first time.

One of the managers came up with the idea of sending the youngling along with me on a few deliveries -- he'd ride along in the car beside me and watch the Pizza Master in action. This idea was quickly and decisively shot down on account of it being incredibly stupid. ("You see, padawan, you take the pizza to the door, and ring the doorbell." "Oh, that's how it works. I was going to throw rocks at their windows until they came outside. Thank you, master." "And make sure you get their money." "Oh, so I can't trade the pizza for baseball cards or bottle caps, then?")

I spent the evening holding his hand (metaphorically speaking) and answering his innocent queries ("How much do you make a week?" etc.). Things would have been smoother without the plumbing emergency that prevented our use of the dishwasher for the last hour of the night. ("I have a very bad feeling about this." "Calm yourself, padawan. Fear is the path to the dark side.") But all things told, it was an uneventful experience. And he is now certainly better equipped than I was after my first day -- I didn't have the fortune to be trained by someone who spoke fluent English, so it took a while to get my feet beneath me.

Tomorrow, there will be more training -- he must be schooled on the technique of cutting the pizzas, and he must pass the ordeals of answering the telephone, taking orders, and not screaming at the customers who ask if there is pepperoni on the Veggie Max pizza.

After that, he will be ready to face the Trials alone. And then he will be a Pizza Man. The Force is strong with him -- I forsee him becoming the greatest of all the Pizza Men.

Or, more likely, quitting in disgust after his first few paychecks. Either/or.

Revenge of the Sith -- first impressions

So I saw the 12:01 showing of Episode III last night. It's still digesting, and I'm going to have to see it again, really, before I come up with anything close to a review. In the meantime, my first impressions:

Holy SHIT.

Wow.

Wow: we are not fit to share oxygen with Ian McDiarmid.

But somehow all of Natalie Portman's outtakes were used in the finished film on accident.

But wow.

...Yeah. Like I said, a second viewing will be required prior to making any kind of objective assessment.

I'll probably do that tomorrow.

Kingdom of Heaven

The pieces all seem to be in place here, so it's hard to determine why exactly Kingdom of Heaven falls so squarely on its face. Is it in Orlando Bloom's (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl) decent-but-unremarkable lead performance? William Monahan's overly by-the-numbers script? It's tempting to lay the blame at the feet of director Ridley Scott, but it's not his fault we've seen so many of these movies lately -- the Noble Epic Motion Picture, with massive battles and thunderous music and blood splattering on the camera. And the film has a noble message, one that needs to be heard in these times of religious fervor: Kingdom finds the idea of warring over faith -- any faith -- ridiculous, concluding that wars are only fought for "land and wealth," despite any other trappings we might drape upon them. Soldiers on both sides of the Crusades here firmly believe God stands on their side; "God wills it!" becomes an oft-repeated catchphrase. When Tiberius (Jeremy Irons, made-up with a scar that is sure to remind you of, well, Scar) voices that they might lose a battle, it's shouted down as "Blasphemy!" The only one impervious to this spiritual grandstanding is Bloom's Balian, and he states as such in the mandatory Hero's Monologue before the final battle. It's an important statement, and maybe that's the film's real shortcoming -- it's far too wrapped up in its own importance to distinguish itself from the hundred other movies of which it's an exact duplicate. Extra shame, Ridley, for that last big battle sequence, which looks like it was storyboarded directly out of The Lord of the Rings. But bonus points for casting Alexander Siddig as a Muslim soldier -- Dr. Julian Bashir as a sword-swinging badass. Who would have thought?

Rating: **

CD/DVD hunting

I've mentioned it here before, but I once bought an excellent-condition hardcover copy of Stephen King's It at Half-Price Books for $1. That was a good day.

I generally find myself gravitating toward the CD section whenever I go in there. Now, any store's used-CD section presents an interesting dilemma: the music is clearly cheaper, yes (especially at Half-Price Books, where everything is -- obviously -- half-price), but the chances of finding anything truly good there are small. I mean, if it's really good, the person who bought it wouldn't have sold it back in the first place. So what you're left with are obscure discs you've never heard of (probably someone's birthday presents), the back catalog of one-hit wonders and pop-culture detritus (I saw eight different copies of the same Backstreet Boys CD, no kidding), and weaker releases from quality artists. (You can also find the occasional diamond lost in there -- I saw two, not one but two, copies of Crash from the Dave Matthews Band and couldn't believe it.) The odds of finding, say, Sgt. Pepper's or Nevermind or OK Computer or The Joshua Tree are beyond remote.

Since I had a few bucks to burn (and the DVD section was an enormous disappointment), I picked up three CDs. One of the three I actually own on cassette (do our younger readers remember cassettes?), one of them I used to have but lost, and a third was just really cheap.

Cake, Fashion Nugget
I've waxed poetic about Cake before, but they are really one of the most original-sounding bands out there. Rock + pop + country + a trumpet + background vocals like a 30s-style Big Band + a lead vocalist that occasionally sounds like a drunken karaoke singer = Cake. If that's a genre, I'm not sure which it is. Their first album, Motorcade of Generosity, is largely forgettable; crappy production values mar the few good songs available, and the only track that gets out alive is the too-cool "Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle," which somehow still gets airplay once a year or so. Fashion Nugget was the follow-up, and it's a success on all levels. The inebriated cover of "I Will Survive" got them airplay as a novelty act, but it was the next single, the awesomely awesome "The Distance," that blew the doors off and hit big. The rest of the record follows along the same lines -- quirky, but never self-consciously so, with a crystal-clear sound that parodoxically sounds as if it were recorded in someone's basement (the band is credited as producing the record, but I have to imagine leader/vocalist John McCrea is primarily responsible, as he's listed as producer for their later albums). If you haven't yet picked up a Cake album, you should first slap yourself, then buy this one.

Dust for Life, Dust for Life
You may remember these guys. You probably don't. They were popular for about five minutes in 2000, on the back of their one hit single, "Step Into the Light." And the only reason anyone heard that song at all was because they shared a label (and perhaps a tour) with Creed, who were still on the upward arc of their meteoric rise. And like Creed, Dust for Life is clearly a graduate of the Grunge School of Music (Alice in Chains campus), but there's a marked difference between them -- Dust for Life is the nerdy kid who sat in the back and paid attention and aced all the tests but missed all the frat parties, while Creed is the annoying fratboy jock asshole that is still somehow popular, the one who beats up the nerdy kid and steals his answers to pass the big exam. Dust for Life, therefore, comes across as a poor man's Alice in Chains, a band with the right sound and style, but without a singer the caliber of Layne Staley or a songwriter the caliber of Jerry Cantrell. (Or, if you prefer, you can think of them as an improved version of Creed, a band with the same sound and style, but without the cloying pretentions of singer-lyricist Scott Stapp or the smug, narcissistic guitar of Mark Tremonti. It's up to you.) If you're a big AiC fan, then you'll probably get a charge out of Dust for Life; otherwise, you probably won't want to bother.

Collective Soul, Disciplined Breakdown
Okay, let's talk about the problem with Collective Soul. They're clearly a very good band. Ed Roland is extremely talented, both as a singer and a producer (my favorite aspect of Collective Soul has always been the sound they get in the studio). The, uh, other guys (can't say I remember any other names) are capable fellows, the guitarists especially. But the songwriting -- it's like they pile up five or six good songs for prospective singles, then say, "That's good enough," and the rest of the disc is occupied by lackluster filler. Now, lots of acts do this, sure...but the good Collective Soul songs are so good that the mediocre tracks drive me nuts. (Of course, then there's Blender, which features one good song, then goes straight into the toilet with ten godawful tracks in a row. So it could be worse.) Disciplined Breakdown is no exception to this rule: there are five excellent tracks, all of them with hefty radio potential -- and at least two of them were indeed hits -- but the rest are not worth the time it takes to listen to them. It's hard not to recommend the album, though, when it boasts a song as good as "Blame," which is as glorious as modern arena rock can get. (The title track is crazy awesome, too.) If you can find this one really cheap, like I did, then pick it up. That said, I'm not surprised to find that someone sold this.

I also found myself at Wal*Mart yesterday. A few weeks ago, I went there looking for Casablanca. They didn't have it. This time, I went in search of the first season of The Sopranos...which they, of course, did not have. But they did have Casablanca this time, because Wal*Mart is a tool of the devil that enjoys my suffering. So I picked up the Bogey flick, along with the largely-forgotten-about The Way of the Gun from the discount rack.

Now, tonight, I stopped in at Barnes & Noble, not to actually buy anything, but to see how much I would have to drop on said Sopranos DVD...and the bastards wanted $99 for it. The West Wing: The Complete Fourth Season, sitting right next to it on the shelf, was forty dollars cheaper. The Sopranos has 13 episodes. The West Wing set has 22. Yet the former is forty dollars more? The hell? (Of course, I already have the fourth season of West Wing, purchased at Wal*Mart for twenty dollars cheaper than B&N. So.)

And this blog entry has gone on waaaaaaaay longer than I originally thought it would.

A weight from my shoulders...

...has been lifted. My entry in the White Wolf contest has been finished and sent in. So now I can stop worrying about finishing it, and start worrying about whether I'll get to the next round or not.

The Holy Trinity of my life: Fear, Anxiety, and Tension.

247...248...249...

So I'm writing...well, 'kay, attempting to write...a plot synopsis as per the requirements of the White Wolf Novel Writing Contest. (The fact that I'm writing this instead of the synopsis should be your first clue as to how it's going.) And I've once again reminded of something I've known of myself for quite some time: I find it difficult to work with word count limits.

See, if I'm just allowed to write as much or as little as I want, then I'm fine (more or less). I write until I have nothing more to say. And it usually works out.

But when the person/group/faceless corporation I'm writing for demands my work be of a certain length, or under a certain length, then suddenly the word count is all I can think about. I'm counting the words of every sentence, deleting adjectives and adverbs, wiping out prepositional phrases, until every sentence sounds like, "Bob is angry. He goes home. Then he kills someone." And I go into so far into Editorial Headhunter mode while I'm writing that the finished product will end up way, way short of the limit. (Right now, I'm at 142 words and running out of things to say.) So this small writing assignment, which should be so simple, turns into something akin to playing Jenga, and I'm desperately shifting blocks of words around, petrified the whole thing will tumble over and crash.

I have until April 15th to strangle this thing into working shape. You may pray for my success, if that's your thing.

(And this post, not counting this parenthetical, featured 259 words, and was written in about five minutes. See what I mean?)

Umm...

So this AOL news update I saw when I signed on yesterday...something's kinda odd about it, wouldn't you agree?



So which headline does that picture go with? The quake? Or the Big-Ass Sandwich, which is apparently some kind of hugely unhealthy breakfast thing coming to Burger King? And since when does a fucking sandwich warrant a headline in anything other than Sandwich Enthusiast Monthly?

Find the crackhead who decided to put a glorified Burger King commerical underneath a story about the deaths of hundreds of people, and shoot him before he can do it again.

That is all.

The Ring Two

Oh, how the jokes just practically write themselves -- a movie so horrifying, so horrible, that watching it kills you! "Haha, just like this movie! Haha!" The Ring Two isn't that bad -- but I'm almost certain (meaning I very much hope) you won't see another film this year with a script this brazenly illogical, this stupefyingly nonsensical, this maddeningly incoherent.

That script comes to you from Ehren Kruger, the talentless scribe who forced Reindeer Games on us. Of course, he also wrote The Ring, and it's worth pointing out that everything good about that film was present in the original Japanese film, and everything bad (medical equipment in strange places, horses going crazy on ferries) came from Kruger's adaptation. Illogic, preposterousness, total incoherence -- these are the trademarks of Kruger's work, and all are on display here in large quantities.

Previously on The Ring, Rachel (Naomi Watts) and her son, Aidan (David Dorfman), did battle with the ghost of Samara, who was drowned in a well by her stepmother. Samara's spirit infected a videotape: watch the tape and you get a phone call from an ominous voice saying, "Seven days..."; seven days later, Samara crawls out of the television and kills you. Sure, that doesn't really make a lot of sense, and leaves a number of plot holes wide open (what happens if you don't answer the phone when she calls? what if you stay away from the TV?), but The Ring (in both the Japanese and American versions) coasted along with good performances and impressive visuals.

Now, an undetermined time later, another copy of the tape has surfaced and is once again tormenting high schoolers...and by coincidence (or is it?), it happens to be in the small Washington town Rachel and Aidan have fled to from Seattle. Somehow, though, these kids know how to break the curse: make a copy of the evil tape and show it to someone else. But one kid screws up, and he winds up dead and deformed ("plague-style," as my friends have dubbed it), drowned in his living room. Rachel finds out, naturally, and is horrified: how could there be another tape? "We only made one copy," she whispers to herself. Where did this new tape come from?

That's a damn good question, but you won't find an answer in this movie. How did these new victims know that making a copy frees you from the curse? Another good question, and another one the script isn't interested in. (My guess: they all saw The Ring.) In fact, the whole videotape concept is abandoned twenty minutes into the movie, as Samara decides she doesn't need it anymore -- I suppose all those people she killed before gave her enough experience points to advance to the next level, because now she's got a bunch of new powers.

She starts terrorizing Rachel and Aidan, though it isn't clear how she found them to begin with. We get more insane animal attacks (this time it's a fleet of rampaging deer instead of a horse), we get mysterious bruises, we get creepy images on the TV. Not only does none of it cohere to the predecessor, none of it gels together with itself -- the narrative practically starts over every twenty minutes, with the plot jerking suddenly in a completely new direction and forgetting everything that came before it. And in between, director Hideo Nakata (director of Ringu and Ringu 2) gives us endless scenes of creepy imagery in which absolutely nothing happens.

Case in point: the aforementioned deer attack. It comes out of nowhere -- Aidan exchanges a funny look with a deer, and two scenes later, there are fifty of them banging holes in Rachel's car. Aidan knows it's coming before it happens; just before the first strike, he whispers, "Don't stop." The deer force her to...they break the windows...and then they stop. They look at Rachel. She looks at them. She drives away. They watch her go. And it's never mentioned again. No explanation, no nothing. (Oh, Nakata's camera, late in the film, lingers on a big pile of antlers in the house where Samara grew up -- if that explains anything, it's clearly over my head.)

Samara tries, over and over again, to kill Aidan and Rachel...which doesn't make any sense, considering why she's after them in the first place. (I won't say why, even though it's in the trailer; suffice to say, it's really, really stupid.) In the meantime, both Rachel and Aidan slither like Solid Snake through places they shouldn't be able to sneak through -- police stations, coroner's vans, homicide crime scenes, hospitals, other people's homes, entire towns. Bit characters show up to provide a nuisance during these scenes, then vanish abruptly into thin air, because if they hung around the scene wouldn't work.

Forty-five minutes in, I realized that I had absolutely no idea what was going on; thirty minutes later, I stopped caring. And once the climax kicked into high gear, I literally gave up trying and just looked at the pretty pictures. It isn't scary, it isn't disturbing, and it's barely even unintentionally funny -- it's just boring.

Can there be a Ring Three? Maybe -- I honestly don't know if any threads are left open for an additional film. I know this, though -- one of the trailers that ran before this movie was for The Skeleton Key, a horror film based on the novel by the guy who also wrote Ringu. The screenwriter? Ehren Kruger.

Be afraid.

Rating: *1/2

Another quiz

...and again, you kinda gotta see this coming.

20 Questions to a Better Personality

Wackiness: 44/100
Rationality: 50/100
Constructiveness: 38/100
Leadership: 20/100

You are a SEDF--Sober Emotional Destructive Follower. This makes you an Evil Genius.

You are extremely focused and difficult to distract from your tasks. With luck, you have learned to channel your energies into improving your intellect, rather than destroying the weak and unsuspecting.

Your friends may find you remote and a hard nut to crack. Few of your peers know you very well--even those you have known a long time--because you have expert control of the face you put forth to the world. You prefer to observe, calculate, discern and decide. Your decisions are final, and your desire to be right is impenetrable.

You are not to be messed with. You may explode.

Of the 104552 people who have taken this quiz since tracking began (8/17/2004), 14.3 % are this type.

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...Yeah. Not entirely sure how accurate some of that is, but obviously the computer knows me better than I know myself.

Feed me, Sara! Feed me, Sara!

I suspected that Blogger might have something with which I could easily create an RSS or XML feed -- seemed likely they would have an automated system by which such a feed would be created for me.

As it turns out, I was correct. In fact, Blogger has been automatically creating this feed for me the whole time without my knowledge.

So, yeah. Now jwalkernet leaps (blindly) into this new wave of...uh, whatever it is.

If you're new to this whole XML party, lemme educate ya -- or, better yet, lemme let someone else educate ya...

RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. But it's not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS: the "recent changes" page of a wiki, a changelog of CVS checkins, even the revision history of a book. Once information about each item is in RSS format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes and react to the changes in an appropriate way.

RSS-aware programs called news aggregators are popular in the weblogging community. Many weblogs make content available in RSS. A news aggregator can help you keep up with all your favorite weblogs by checking their RSS feeds and displaying new items from each of them.

So. All you need now is an XML reader (like, oh, I don't know, the totally free Feedreader), plug in the feed address (http://jwalkernet.topcities.com/feed.xml), and you're in business. Whenever I update, you get a message. It's that simple.

A fair warning, however. The feed doesn't exactly look perfect. Nothing I can do about it -- Blogger's the one making the feed. According to this, I never use a paragraph break. But in any event, Feedreader's interface comes complete with a link to the actual post, so you can read my embarrassing drivel witty writings as they were meant to be read. And look upon Andy Pettitte's contorted visage over there.

I should probably note that I got the quote on RSS from this place. And bonus points if you get the movie reference in the title.