#I have no reason for saying joe would hate that book other than the wikipedia summary gave me bad vibes

[cctinsleybaxter]

2020 in books

2020 was a year of changed reading habits; people reading more than ever or not at all, some changing their tastes and others turning to old comforts. While there weren’t any huge overhauls on my end, more free time did mean a total of 32 in a wider range of genres. In the past couple of years I found a lot of the things I read to be kind of middling and ranked them accordingly, but this year had some strong contenders in the mix. With college officially behind me I love nonfiction again, and I really need to stop being drawn in by novels with long titles that ‘sound interesting.’ A piece of advice to my future self: they will only make you angry.

The Good

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky I loved the BBC radio play when I first listened to it back in 2017, but didn’t know if I could stomach the idea of actually reading the 700-page book, especially since I already knew the plot (spoiler alert: this had no effect and I gasped multiple times despite knowing what was going to happen; Fyodor’s just that good at atmosphere.) The story follows Prince Lev Myshkin, a goodhearted but troubled man entering 1860s Petersburg high society and meeting all of the wretched people therein as he navigates life, laughs, love, unanswerable questions of faith, and human suffering. I care about it in the same way I think other people care about reality TV shows and soap operas. I’m so personally invested in the drama and feel so many different emotions directed at these clowns that it’s like being a fan of Invitation to Love (with an ending equally upsetting to that of the show ITL is from, Twin Peaks.)

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlanksy I adored this book. The first half reads a little like a Wikipedia article, and I was worried that it was leaning too clinical and would be disaffected with colonialism and indigenous peoples, but even that oversight is corrected for as the text goes on. It’s not going to be for everybody because it really is just the world’s longest encyclopedia entry on, well, salt, but it’s written with such excitement for the topic and is so well-researched and styled for commercial nonfiction that I think it deserves any and all praise it’s gotten. We have to talk about that time Cheshire was literally sinking into the ground, and companies who were over-pumping brine water to steal each other’s brine water said ‘no it’s okay it’s supposed to that’ so were legally dismissed as suspects.

Midnight Cowboy by James Leo Herlihy Cried. 10/10. The plot of Midnight Cowboy is very classic and actually has a lot in common with The Idiot, as 20-something Joe Buck moves from the American Southwest to NYC and meets myriad challenges as a sex worker. I’ve been obsessed with the movie for a few years now and the book made me appreciate it anew; I think it’s rare for an adaptation to take the risk of being so different from its source material while still capturing its spirit. The movie doesn’t include quieter moments like the full conversation with Towny or time spent in the X-flat, nor does it attempt to touch Joe’s internal monologue or his and Rico’s extensive backstories, but these things are essential to the book and are some of the best and most affecting writing I’ve ever read. Finally! The Great American Novel!

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones I would firmly like to say that this is probably the best horror novel ever written. The setup is very traditional in that it’s about a group of friends facing supernatural comeuppance for a past mistake, but delivery on that premise is anything but familiar. A story about personal and cultural trauma that raises questions about what we owe to each other and what it means to be Blackfeet, with a cast that’s unbelievably real and sympathetic even at their absolute worst. Creepypasta writers trying to cash in on the cultural mythos of lumped-together tribes wish they were capable of writing something a tenth as gruesome and good as this. It could very well be a movie the visuals and writing style were so arresting, and I can’t wait to read whatever Jones writes next.

Found Footage Horror Films: Fear and the Appearance of Reality by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas This is the least accessible title on the list since it’s a college textbook for people with background in film, but it was so nice to read a woman unpacking film theory with the expertise and confidence it deserves that I have to rank it among the best. I had an absolute blast reading it and am going to have to stop myself from bringing up the horror of 1960s safety films as a cocktail icebreaker.

Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy by Heather Ann Thompson

The year’s toughest read by far, but also its most rewarding. Thompson uses mountains of documents, government-buried intel, and personal interviews to explain what happened at Attica from beginning to end, and does a fantastic job of balancing hard facts and ‘unbiased journalism’ with much-needed emotion and critical analysis. It’s more important reading in the 2020s than any kind of ‘why/how to not be racist’ book club book is going to be, and the historical context it provides is as interesting as it is invaluable. The second half drags a bit in going through lengthy trial processes with some assumed baseline knowledge of legalese (which I did not have. All that criminal minds in 2015… meaningless), but aside from that editing and prose are some of the best I’ve seen in nonfiction. 

The Bad

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn A friend and I decided to read this together because I’m obsessed with how insane the author is and wanted to know if he can actually write.

He cannot.

The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All by Laird Barron Barron is an indie darling of the horror fiction scene, so I was excited to finally read one of his collections but can now attest that I hate him. If you’re going to do Lovecraft please deconstruct Lovecraft in an interesting way. I had actually written a lot about the issues I have with how he develops characters and plots, but one of the only shorthand notes I took was “he won’t stop saying ‘bole’ instead of tree trunk” and I feel like that’s the only review we need.

Bats of the Republic by Zach Dodson Look up a photo of this author because if I had bothered to glance at the jacket bio I honest-to-god wouldn’t have even tried reading this.

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone I went in with high expectations since this is an epistolary novella I’d seen praised on tumblr and youtube but oh my god was there a reason I was seeing it praised on tumblr and youtube. This is bad Steven Universe fanfiction. Both authors included ‘listening to the Steven Universe soundtrack throughout’ in the acknowledgements, and to add insult to injury there’s a plug from my nemesis Madeline Miller.

The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton The premise of this one plays with so many tropes I like that I should have been more suspicious. It’s a dinner party with stock characters one would expect of Clue, and rather than our protagonist being the detective he’s a man with amnesia stuck in a 24-hour time loop. Body-hopping between guests, he must gather evidence using the skillsets of each ‘host’ until he either solves Evelyn Hardcastle’s murder or the limit of eight hosts runs out. I read a lot of not-very-good books, and it’s so, so much worse when they have potential to be fun. This is how you lose the most points, and how I abandon decorum and end up writing a list of grievances: • Our protagonist can only inhabit male hosts, which I think is a stupid writing decision not because I’m ‘woke’ but because wouldn’t it make sense for him to also be working with the maids, cooks, and women close to the murder victim? • Complaining about the limitations of hosts makes some sense (e.g- there’s a section where he thinks that it’s hard to be an old man because it’s difficult to get to the places he needs to be quickly), but one of his hosts is a rapist and one of his hosts is fat. Guess which one gets complained about more. • One of the later hosts is just straight-up a cop with cop knowledge that singlehandedly solves the case. We spend some time being like ‘wow I couldn’t have done it without the info all eight hosts helped gather’ but it was 100% the detective and he solves the murder using information he got off-screen. • The mystery itself is actually well-paced and I didn’t have a lot of issues with it (e.g, there’s a twist that I guessed only shortly before the end), which makes it all the worse that the metanarrative of this book is INSANE. No spoilers but the reveal as to why our unnamed protagonist is even in this situation is stupid. I just know they’re going to make it into a movie and I’m preemptively going to aaaaaaaaa!!!

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi The fact that this was the worst book I read all year, worse even than the bad Steven Universe fanfiction, and it won multiple awards makes my blood boil. I could rant about it for hours but just know that it’s a former theater kid’s take on perception and memory, and deals with sexual abuse in a way that’s handled both very badly and with a level of fake deepness that’s laughable. Select fake-deep quotes I copied down because at one point I said ‘oh barf’ aloud: -I’m filled with melancholy that’s almost compassion. It’s sad the same way. -[On a friendship ending] We almost never know what we know until after we know it. -Because we’re none of us alone in this world. We injure each other.

There are also bad sex scenes that I can’t quite make fun of because I think (HOPE?) they’re supposed to be a melodramatic take on how teenagers view sex, but I very much wanted to die. Flowers were alluded to. Nipples were compared to diamonds.

Honorable/Dishonorable Mentions (categorized as the same thing because, well,)

The Life and Death of Sophie Stark by Anna North This book was frustrating because the first third of it is fantastic. It’s set up to be a takedown of the manic pixie dream girl trope, jumping from person to person discussing their relationship with the titular Sophie, and indirectly revealing that she was just some girl and not the difficult and mysterious genius they all believed her to be. Then in the third act, BAM! She was that difficult and mysterious genius and she’s now indirectly brought all the people from her past together. I wanted to scream the plot beefed it so bad, but the good news is I really liked this octopus description.

It was the size of a three-year-old child, and it seemed awful to me that something could be so far from human and obviously want something as badly as it wanted to get out of the tank.

Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore Cool new nightmare speedrun strat is to hear a 2-second anecdote from a documentary that people used to get radium poisoning from painting watch faces, be curious enough that you buy a book to learn more, and be met with medical and legal horror beyond anything you could have imagined. This was almost one of my favorite books of the year! Almost.

Radium Girls is very lovingly crafted and incredibly well-researched; one of those things that’s hard to get through but that you want to read sections of again as soon as you’ve finished. The umbrage I take with it is that it’s very Catholic. The author and many of her subjects are Irish and their religion is important to them, but it casts a martyr-y narrative over the whole thing that I found uncomfortable. Seventeen-year-old girls taking a factory job they didn’t know was dangerous are framed as brave, working-class heroes, but there’s not a set moral lesson to be gained from this story. Sarah Maillefer didn’t make “a sacrifice” when she agreed to the first radium tests, she agreed because she was terrified. She didn’t think she was helping she was begging for help.

The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Tsing Tsing is an incredibly skilled researcher and ethnographer; there are so many good ideas in this book that I’d almost consider it essential leftist text… if I could stand the way it was structured. Tsing posits that because nature is built on precariousness she will build her book the same way, allowing it to grow like a mushroom, and thus chapters don’t progress linearly and are written more like freeform poetry than a series of academic arguments. Some people are really going to love that, but I’m me and a mushroom is a mushroom and a book is a book. I don’t think in the way Tsing does, and while I tried to keep an open mind it’s hard to play along when something is this academically dense and makes so many ambitious claims. As if to prove how different our structuring methods are, I’ve made my own thoughts into a pros and cons list

Things I liked: • ‘Contamination’ as something inherent to diversity • ‘Scalability’ as a flawed way of thinking (Tsing has written whole essays about this that I find very compelling, but a main example here is that China and the US have come down on Japanese matsutake research for being too ‘site specific’ and not yielding enough empirical data) • Discussing how Americans were so invested in self-regulating systems in the 1950s we thought they could be applied to literally everything, including ecosystems • “The survivors of war remind us of the bodies they climbed over- or shot- to get to us. We don’t know whether to love or hate the survivors. Simple moral judgements don’t come to hand.” • Any and all fieldwork Tsing shares is amazing; I especially liked reading about the culture of mushroom pickers living in the Cascades and their contained market system

Things I didn’t like: • Statements that sound deep but aren’t, e.g- “help is always in the service of another.” (Yep. That’s what that means. Unless an organism is doing something to help itself which then nullifies your whole opening argument.) • A very debatable definition of utilitarianism • “Capitalism vs pre-capitalism,” which seems like an insanely black-and-white stance for a book all about finding hidden middle ground • A chapter I found really interesting about how intertwined Japanese and American economies are, but it tries to cover the entire history of US-Japan relations. Seriously, starting with Governor Perry and continuing through present day, this could have been a whole different book and it’s a good example of what I mean when I say arguments feel too scattered (the conclusion it reaches is that in the 80s the yen was finally able to hold its own against the dollar. Just explain that part.) • A chapter arguing that ‘true biological mutualism’ is rarely a focus of STEM and is a new sociological development/way of thinking which is just… flat-out not true

For all the comparisons art gets to ‘being on a drug trip’ this anthropology textbook has come the closest for me. Moments of profound human wisdom, intercut with things I had trouble understanding because I wasn’t on the same wavelength, intercut with even more things that felt false or irrelevant. I can’t put it on the nice list but I am glad I read it.

#2020 #books #long post #(in case the read more isn't working)

[betterdaysareatoenailaway]

Random Review #3: Sleepwalkers (1992) and “Sleep Walk” (1959)

I. Sleepwalkers (1992) I couldn’t sleep last night so I started watching a trashy B-movie penned by Stephen King specifically for the screen called Sleepwalkers (1992). Simply put, the film is an unmitigated disaster. A piece of shit. But it didn’t need to be. That’s what’s so annoying about it. By 1992 King was a grizzled veteran of the silver screen, with more adaptations under his belt than any other author of his cohort. Puzo had the Godfather films (1972 and 1974, respectively), sure, but nothing else. Leonard Gardner had Fat City (1972), a movie I love, but Gardner got sucked into the Hollywood scene of cocaine and hot tub parties and never published another novel, focusing instead on screenplays for shitty TV shows like NYPD Blue. After Demon Seed (1977), a movie I have seen and disliked, nobody would touch Dean Koontz’s stuff with a ten foot pole, which is too bad because The Voice of the Night, a 1980 novel about two young pals, one of whom is a psychopath trying to convince the other to help him commit murder, would make a terrific movie. But Koontz’s adaptations have been uniformly awful. The made-for-TV film starring John C McGinley, 1997′s Intensity, is especially bad. There are exceptions, but Stephen King has been lucky enough to avoid the fate of his peers. Big name directors have tackled his work, from Stanley Kubrick to Brian De Palma. King even does a decent job of acting in Pet Semetary (1989), in his own Maximum Overdrive (1986) and in George Romero’s Creepshow (1982), where he plays a yokel named Jordy Verril who gets infected by a meteorite that causes green weeds to grow all over his body. Many have criticized King’s over-the-top performance in that flick, but for me King perfectly nails the campy and comical tone that Romero was going for. The dissolves in Creepshow literally come right off the pages of comics, so people expecting a subtle Ordinary People-style turn from King had clearly walked into the wrong theatre. Undoubtedly Creepshow succeeds at what it set out to do. I’m not sure Sleepwalkers succeeds though, unless the film’s goal was to get me to like cats even more than I already do. But I already love cats a great deal. Here’s my cat Cookie watching me edit this very blog post. 

And here’s one of my other cats, Church, named after the cat that reanimates and creeps out Louis and Ellie in Pet Sematary. Photo by @ScareAlex.

SPOILER ALERT: Do not keep reading if you plan on watching Sleepwalkers and want to find out for yourself what happens.

Stephen King saw many of his novels get adapted in the late 1970s and 80s: Carrie, The Shining, Firestarter, Christine, Cujo, and the movie that spawned the 1950s nostalgia industrial complex, Stand By Me, but Sleepwalkers was the first time he wrote a script specifically for the screen rather than adapting a novel that already existed. Maybe that’s why it’s so fucking bad. Stephen King is a novelist, gifted with a novelist’s rich imagination. He’s prone to giving backstories to even the most peripheral characters - think of Joe Chamber’s alcoholic neighbour Gary Pervier in the novel Cujo, who King follows for an unbelievable number of pages as the man stumbles drunkenly around his house spouting his catch phrase “I don’t give a shit,” drills a hole through his phone book so he can hang it from a string beside his phone, complains about his hemorrhoids getting “as big as golfballs” (I’m not joking), and just generally acts like an asshole until a rabid Cujo bounds over, rips his throat out, and he bleeds to death. In the novel Pervier’s death takes more than a few pages, but it makes for fun reading. You hate the man so fucking much that watching him die feels oddly satisfying. In the movie, though, his death occurs pretty quickly, and in a darkened hallway, so it’s hard to see what’s going on aside from Gary’s foot trembling. And Pervier’s “I don’t give a shit” makes sense when he’s drilling a hole in the phone book, not when he’s about to be savagely attacked by a rabid St Bernard. There’s just less room for back story in movies. In a medium that demands pruning and chiseling and the “less is more” dictum, King’s writing takes a marked turn for the worse. King is a prose maximalist, who freely admits to “writing to outrageous lengths” in his novels, listing It, The Stand, and The Tommyknockers as particularly egregious examples of literary logorrhea. He is not especially equipped to write concisely. This weakness is most apparent in Sleepwalkers’ dialogue, which sounds like it was supposed to be snappy and smart, like something Aaron Sorkin would write, but instead comes off like an even worse Tango & Cash, all bad jokes and shitty puns. More on those bad jokes later. First, the plot.

Sleepwalkers is about a boy named Charles and his mother Mary who travel around the United States killing and feeding off the lifeforce of various unfortunate people (if this sounds a little like The True Knot in Doctor Sleep, you’re not wrong. But self-plagiarism is not a crime). Charles and Mary are shapeshifting werewolf-type creatures called werecats, a species with its very own Wikipedia page. Wikipedia confers legitimacy dont’cha know, so lets assume werecats are real beings. According to said page, a werecat, “also written in a hyphenated form as were-cat) is an analogy to ‘werewolf’ for a feline therianthropic creature.” I’m gonna spell it with the hyphen from now on because “werecats” just looks like a typo. Okay? Okay.

Oddly enough, the were-cats in Sleepwalkers are terrified of cats. Actual cats. For the were-cats, cute kittens = kryptonite. When they see a cat or cats plural, this happens to them:

^ That is literally a scene from the movie. Charles is speeding when a cop pulls alongside him and bellows at him to pull over. Ever the rebel, Charles flips the cop the finger. But the cop has a cat named Clovis in his car, and when the cat pops up to have a look at the kid (see below), Charles shapeshifts first into a younger boy, then into whatever the fuck that is in the above screenshot.

Now, the were-cats aversion to normal cats is confusing because one would assume a were-cat to be a more evolved (or perhaps devolved?) version of the typical house kitty. The fact that these were-cats are bipedal alone suggests an advantage over our furry four-legged friends, no? Kinda like if humans were afraid of fucking gorillas. Wait...we are scared of gorillas. And chimpanzees. And all apes really. Okay, maybe the conceit of the film isn’t so silly after all. The film itself, however, is about as silly as a bad horror movie can get. When the policeman gets back to precinct and describes the incident above (”his face turned into a blur”) he is roundly ridiculed because in movies involving the supernatural nobody believes in the supernatural until it confronts them. It’s the law, sorry. Things don’t end well for the cop. Or for the guy who gets murdered when the mom stabs him with...an ear of corn. Yes, an ear of corn. Somehow, the mother is able to jam corn on the cob through a man’s body, without crushing the vegetable or turning it into yellow mash. It’s pretty amazing. Here is a sample of dialog from that scene: Cop About To Die On The Phone to Precinct: There’s blood everywhere! *STAB* Murderous Mother: No vegetables, no dessert. That is actually a line in the movie. “No vegetables, no dessert.” It’s no “let off some steam, Bennett” but it’s close. Told ya I’d get back to the bad jokes. See, Mary and Charles are new in town and therefore seeking to ingratiate themselves by killing everyone who suspects them of being weird, all while avoiding cats as best they can. At one point Charles yanks a man’s hand off and tells him to "keep [his] hands to [him]self," giving the man back his severed bloody hand. Later on Charles starts dating a girl who will gradually - and I do mean gradually - come to realize her boyfriend is not a real person but in fact a were-cat. Eventually our spunky young protagonist - Madchen Amick, who fans of Twin Peaks will recognize as Shelly - and a team of cats led by the adorable Clovis- kill the were-cat shapeshifting things and the sleepy small town (which is named Travis for some reason) goes back to normal, albeit with a slightly diminished population. For those keeping score, that’s Human/Cat Alliance 1, Shapeshifting Were-cats 0. It is clear triumph for the felis catus/people team! Unless we’re going by kill count, in which case it is closer to Human/Cat Alliance 2, Were-cats 26. I arrived at this figure through my own notes but also through a helpful video that takes a comprehensive and complete “carnage count” of all kills in Sleepwalkers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmt-DroK6uA

II. Santo & Johnny “Sleep Walk” (1959) Because Sleepwalkers is decidedly not known for its good acting or its well-written screenplay, it is perhaps best known for its liberal and sometimes contrapuntal use of Santo & Johnny’s classic steel guitar song “Sleep Walk,” possibly the most famous (and therefore best) instrumental of the 20th century. Some might say “Sleep Walk” is tied for the #1 spot with “Green Onions” by Booker T & the M.G.’s and/or “Wipe Out” by The Surfaris, but I disagree. The Santo & Johnny song is #1 because of its incalculable influence on all subsequent popular music. 

I’m not saying “Wipe Out” didn't inspire a million imitators, both contemporaneously and even decades later…for example here’s a surf rock instrumental from 1999 called “Giant Cow" by a Toronto band called The Urban Surf Kings. The video was one of the first to be animated using Flash (and it shows):

So there are no shortage of surf rock bands, even now, decades after its emergence from the shores of California to the jukeboxes of Middle America. My old band Sleep for the Nightlife used to regularly play Rancho Relaxo with a surf rock band called the Dildonics, who I liked a great deal. There's even a Danish surf rock band called Baby Woodrose, whose debut album is a favourite of mine. They apparently compete for the title of Denmark’s biggest surf pop band with a group called The Setting Son. When a country that has no surfing culture and no beaches has multiple surf rock bands, it is safe to say the genre has attained international reach. As far as I can tell, there aren’t many bands out there playing Booker T & the M.G.’s inspired instrumental rock. Link Wray’s “Rumble” was released four years before “Green Onions.” But the influence of Santo and Johnny’s “Sleep Walk” is so ubiquitous as to be almost immeasurable. The reason for this is the sheer popularity of the song’s chord progression. If Santo and Johnny hadn’t written it first, somebody else would have, simply because the progression is so beautiful and easy on the ears and resolvable in a satisfying way. Have a listen to “Sleep Walk” first and then let’s check out some songs it directly inspired. 

The chords are C, A minor, F and G. Minor variations sometimes reverse the last two chords, but if it begins with C to A minor, you can bet it’s following the “Sleep Walk” formula, almost as if musicians influenced by the song are in the titular trance. When it comes to playing guitar, Tom Waits once said “your hands are like dogs, going to the same places they’ve been. You have to be careful when playing is no longer in the mind but in the fingers, going to happy places. You have to break them of their habits or you don’t explore; you only play what is confident and pleasing.” Not only is it comforting to play and/or hear what we already know, studies have shown that our brains actively resist new music, because it takes work to understand the new information and assimilate it into a pattern we are cogent of. It isn’t until the brain recognizes the pattern that it gives us a dopamine rush. I’m not much for Pitchfork anymore, but a recent article they posted does a fine job of discussing this phenomenon in greater detail.

Led Zeppelin’s “D’Yer Maker” uses the “Sleep Walk” riff prominently, anchored by John Bonham and John Paul Jones’ white-boy reggae beat: 

Here it is again with Del Shannon’s classic “Little Town Flirt.” I love Shannon’s falsetto at the end when he goes “you better run and hide now bo-o-oy.”

The Beatles “Happiness is a Warm Gun” uses the Sleep Walk progression, though not for the whole song. It goes into the progression at the bridge at 1:34: 

Tumblr won’t let me embed any more videos, so you’ll to travel to another tab to hear these songs, but Neil Young gets in on the act with his overlooked classic “Winterlong:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV6r66n3TFI On their 1996 EP Interstate 8 Modest Mouse pay direct homage by singing over their own rendition of the original Santo & Johnny version, right down to the weeping steel guitar part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT_PwXjCqqs The vocals are typical wispy whispered indie rock vocals, but I think they work, particularly the two different voices. They titled their version “Sleepwalking (Couples Only Dance Prom Night).”

Dwight Yoakam’s “Thousand Miles From Nowhere” makes cinematic use of it. This song plays over the credits of one of my all-time favourite movies, 1993′s Red Rock West feat. Nicolas Cage, Lara Flynn Boyle, Dennis Hopper, and J.T. Walsh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu3ypuKq8WE

“39″ is my favourite Queen song. I guess now I know why. It uses my fav chord progression: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE8kGMfXaFU 

Blink 182 scored their first hit “Dammit” with a minor variation on the Sleep Walk chord progression: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT0g16_LQaQ

Midwest beer drinkin bar rockers Connections scored a shoulda-been-a-hit with the fist-pumping “Beat the Sky:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSNRq0n_WYA You’d be hard pressed to find a weaker lead singer than this guy (save for me, natch), but they make it work. This one’s an anthem.

Spoon, who have made a career out of deconstructing rock n’ roll, so that their songs sometimes sound needlessly sparse (especially “The Ghost of You Lingers,” which takes minimalism to its most extreme...just a piano being bashed on staccato-style for four minutes), so it should surprise nobody that they re-arrange the Sleep Walk chords on their classic from Gimme Fiction, “I Summon You:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teXA8N3aF9M I love that opening line: remember the weight of the world was a sound that we used to buy? I think songwriter Britt Daniel is talking about buying albums from the likes of Pearl Jam or Smashing Pumpkins, any of those grunge bands with pessimistic worldviews. There are a million more examples. I remember seeing some YouTube video where a trio of gross douchebros keep playing the same progression while singing a bunch of hits over it. I don’t like the smarmy way they do it, making it seem like artists are lazy and deliberately stealing. I don’t think it’s plagiarism to use this progression. And furthermore, tempo and production make all the difference. Take “This Magic Moment” for example. There's a version by Jay & the Americans and one by Ben E King & the Drifters. I’ve never been a fan of those shrieking violins or fiddles that open the latter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bacBKKgc4Uo The Jay & the Americans version puts the guitar riff way in the forefront, which I like a lot more. The guitar plays the entire progression once before the singing starts and the band joins in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKfASw6qoag

Each version has its own distinctive feel. They are pretty much two different songs. Perhaps the most famous use of the Sleep Walk progression is “Unchained Melody” by the Righteous Brothers, which is one of my favourite songs ever. The guy who chose to let Bobby Hatfield sing this one by himself must have kicked himself afterwards when it became a hit, much bigger than "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling."https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiiyq2xrSI0

What can you say about “Unchained Melody” that hasn’t already been said? God, that miraculously strong vocal, the way the strings (and later on, brass horns) are panned way over to the furthest reaches the left speaker while the drums and guitar are way over in the right, with the singing smack dab in the middle creates a kind of distance and sharp clarity that has never been reproduced in popular music, like seeing the skyscrapers of some distant city after an endless stretch of highway. After listening to “Unchained Melody,” one has to wonder: can that progression ever be improved upon? Can any artist write something more haunting, more beautiful, more uplifting than that? The “need your love” crescendo hits so fucking hard, as both the emotional and the sonic climax of the song, which of course is no accident...the strings descending and crashing like a waterfall of sound, it gets me every fucking time. Legend has it that King George II was so moved by the “Hallelujah” section of Handel’s “Messiah” that he stood up, he couldn't help himself, couldn't believe what he was hearing. I get that feeling with all my favourite songs. "1979." "Unchained Melody." "In The Still of the Night." "Digital Bath." "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?" "Interstate." "Liar's Tale." “Gimme Shelter.” The list goes on and on. Music is supposed to move us.

King George II stood because he was moved to do so. Music may be our creation, but it isn't our subordinate. All those sci-fi stories warning about technology growing beyond our control aren’t that far-fetched. Music is our creation but its power lies beyond our control. We are subordinate to music, helpless against its power and might, its urgency and vitality and beauty. There have been many times in my life when I have been so obsessed with a particular song that I pretty much want to live inside of it forever. A house of sound. I remember detoxing from heroin and listening to Grimes “Realiti” on repeat for twelve hours. Detoxing from OxyContin and listening to The Beach Boys “Dont Worry Baby” over and over. Or just being young and listening to “Tonight Tonight” over and over and over, tears streaming from my eyes in that way you cry when you’re a kid because you just feel so much and you don’t know what to do with the intensity of those feelings. It is precisely because we are so moved by music that we keep creating it. And in the act of that creation we are free. There are no limits to that freedom, which is why bands time and time again return to the well-worn Sleep Walk chord progression and try to make something new from it. Back in 2006, soon after buying what was then the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album, I found myself playing the album’s closing track over and over. I loved the chorus and I loved the way it collapses into a lo-fi demo at the very end, stripping away the studio sheen and...not to be too punny, showing its bones (the album title is Show Your Bones). Later on I would realize that the song, called “Turn Into,” uses the Sleep Walk chord progression. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exqCFoPiwpk

It’s just like, what Waits said, our hands goes to where we are familiar. And so do our ears, which is why jazz often sounds so unpleasant to us upon first listen. Or Captain Beefheart. But it’s worth the effort to discover new stuff, just as it’s worth the effort to try and write it. I recently lamented on this blog that music to me now is more about remembrance than discovery, but I’m still only 35 years old. I’m middle-aged right now (I don’t expect to live past 70, not with the lifestyle I’ve been living). There’s still a whole other half life to find new music and love and leave it for still newer stuff. It’s worth the challenge, that moment of inner resistance we feel when confronted with something new and challenging and strange sounding. The austere demands of adult life, rent and routine, take so much of our time. I still make time for creative pursuits, but I don’t really have much time for discovery, for seeking out new music. But I’ve resolved to start making more time. A few years ago I tried to listen to and like Trout Mask Replica but I couldn’t. I just didn’t get what was going on. It sounded like a bunch of mistakes piled on top of each other. But then a few days ago I was writing while listening to music, as I always do, and YouTube somehow landed on Lick My Decals Off, Baby. I didn’t love what I was hearing but I was intrigued enough to keep going. And now I really like this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMnd9dvb3sA&pbjreload=101 Another example I’ll give is the rare Robert Pollard gem “Prom Is Coming.” The first time I heard this song, it sounded like someone who can’t play guitar messing around, but the more I heard it the more I realized there’s a song there. It’s weird and strange, but it’s there. The lyrics are classic Pollard: Disregard injury and race madly out of the universe by sundown. Pollard obviously has a special place in his heart for this track. He named one of his many record labels Prom Is Coming Records and he titled the Boston Spaceships best-of collection Out of the Universe By Sundown. I don’t know if I’ll ever become a Captain Beefheart megafan but I can hear that the man was doing something very strange and, at times, beautiful. And anyway, why should everything be easy? Aren’t some challenges worth meeting for the experience waiting on the other side of comprehension or acceptance? I try to remember this now whenever I’m first confronted with new music, instead of vetoing it right away. Most of my favourite bands I was initially resistant to when I first heard them. Queens of the Stone Age, Kyuss, Guided by Voices, Spoon, Heavy Times. All bands I didn’t like at first.  I don’t wanna sleepwalk through life, surrounding myself only with things I have already experienced. I need to stay awake. Because soon enough I’ll be asleep forever. We need to try everything we can before the Big Sleep comes to take us back to the great blankness, the terrible question mark that bookends our lives.

#sleep walk #santo & johnny #neil young #queen #dwight yoakam #led zeppelin #the beatles #betterdaysareatoenailaway

[xtradonaire1]

KILLING CHRIST

Jesus himself warns us: “Beware of false prophets who come disguised as harmless sheep but are really vicious wolves” (Matthew 7:15 NLT).

To compare great leaders to Christ is concerning, but to compare Donald Trump to Jesus Christ is downright blasphemy.

Conservative pundits get extremely defensive about their unyielding loyalty to Trump. Fox News and Conservative Talk Radio may not have compared Trump to Christ overtly, but they have created and given a platform to people who do.

Billy Graham, was once a household name, he was the largest religious figure in America. Although he’s no longer living, his name lives on. Graham’s son, The 700 Club, Paula White, Kenneth Copeland, and other widely known religious leaders, have given their support to Trump. These religious leaders preached that Trump was sent by and from God to save us, much like Christ.

Thirty pieces of silver was the price for which Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus, according to an account in the Gospel of Matthew 26:15

I often wonder, how much money did Trump pay these so-call religious leaders to support him and to trick their congregation to support him?

Major News networks would not give these religious zealots a platform, but they were always welcome on Fox News and Conservative Talk Radio without any push back or corrections.

Conservatives and most Southern Baptist preachers, teachers, and leaders have done a disservice to America and to millions of faith believing Christian, by shoving Trumpism as Christ-like.

Before he was crucified, Jesus was scourged. Romans would strip a man of his clothing, and flog his back, buttocks, and legs. A Roman soldier would have used a flagellum, a whip of several strands, perhaps 3 feet long, and each strand would have jagged pieces of lead and/or sheep bone in them to rip open the flesh. Romans were not limited by the Jewish law of 39 strokes. And the Roman soldiers didn’t just flog Jesus. They added a crown of thorns: they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” 3And they spit on him and took the reed and struck him on the head. Matthew 27:29-30

Some people will do almost anything for money, Judas Iscariot turned over Christ, today-some are doing the same thing for political expedient, and of course for money. It’s really sad and painful to watch. Must Christ be crucified again today for the same things he already died for yesterday?

New Living Translation He was despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. I don’t recall seeing this side of Trump. On the contrary, I have seen Biden suffer from grief and sorrows; Biden lost twice running for President.

Luke 6:35 Verse Concepts But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He, Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. Can anyone honestly say, these values resemble Donald Trump?

When I think of all the hateful words and things Trump has said and done, I find it irresponsible for anyone to possibly confuse and connect Trump’s values to that of Christ.

What are you willing to ignore about Trump? Hundreds and thousands of Americans dying from the Coronavirus? Children placed in cages separated from their families? Calling Africa and other Countries Shit-hole-countries? Promoting White Nationalists, “Good on both sides” …the list is endless, which is why I’m deeply disturbed by the Christ they see in Trump.

This Presidential election has revealed a great deal of information to us all. Conservatives are exceedingly happy to have received over 71 million American voters. The rest of us, 75 million and more, are happy and sad at the same time. We’re sad because racism is still too strong in our country-we’re happy because we have a new President and the first woman (woman of color) as vice president.

Unlike the Right, we do not see Joe Biden as a Christ, but we are hopeful that he will strive to be a character of principle and truthful.

The Bible teaches that Christ was crucified for our sins, that we may live. This powerful teaching gets harder to preach and teach when others keep bringing Christ down to become equal to men like Trump. The thought is despicable and is driven by greed. Nonetheless, prosperity preachers did their best to manipulate not only Americans, but Christ, his Angels, and the weather to reelect Trump.

Trump’s so-call spiritual advisor (Paula White), tried to send Angels from Africa to help Trump win the Presidency. Apparently Minister White is suffering from amnesia because the Bible clearly states that God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship him in spirit and truth (John 4:24). Place the word truth next to Donald Trump and let that soak in for a moment.

Paula Michelle White-Cain; April 20, 1966) is an American preacher, author, televangelist and exponent of prosperity theology, a controversial religious belief which claims that material prosperity is a sign of God’s grace.

When the death and resurrection of Christ is reduced to Prosperity theology, it opens the door for some to promote Trump as God’s chosen one. This kind of teaching is sacrilegious, but fake preachers are getting rich from this kind of teaching. The thought of Killing Christ’s teaching is irrelevant to these prosperity preachers. These types of preachers are more similar to Trump than they are to God. They pretend to care for the poor, while they live in mansion, their real love is money and power which is why they love Trump. Their teaching is perverted, it’s impossible for them to save the lost, when they are lost.

Trump has done a lot of bad things to this country, the hatred between the two parties has escalated to the verge of eruption- we need healing.

Manipulating the gospel of Christ for one’s wealth is not only diabolical, it’s dangerous. If we allow these types of teachers to continue, normalcy will become abnormal, and our democracy will fail, because a house divided cannot stand.

The Paula White’s of this world will lie to you to get your money. Had she read the good book, she would have learned that money cannot save you or buy love. Paula’s teaching is powerless and destructive, we don’t need a spiritual advisor Killing a Christ, rather, resurrecting a Christ, for democracy’s sake. Since the election is over, hope is renewed. The possibilities of coming together as Americans again, finding a cure to the virus, dealing with systemic racism, all this and more are now possible since Donald Trump is no longer President.

The election is now over and Trump is refusing to accept the fact that he lost. Perhaps he believed Paula White, when she said, “I hear the sound of rain” (the only sound she heard was money falling in her bank account) perhaps he believed she could bully God to save his presidency- or maybe he had forgotten Paula is much like him, places greed over humanity. To take advantage of the most vulnerable is like Killing Christ’s reasons for existing. Many of these prosperity preacher’s congregation are made-up of poor people and people of color. It’s clearly understandable why so many Americans are skeptical about religion and Christ.

Televangelist Kenneth Copeland laughs off media report of Joe Biden as U.S. President

On January 20, 2021, Donald Trump will no longer be Commander-in-Chief and Paula “crooked” White (with all the rest of those so-call religious leaders supporting Trump) will longer be the nation’s spiritual advisors, the resurrection of a better America will rise, thus, it is written.

No more Killing Christ, from lying “Spiritual advisors” Preachers, no more…Killing Christ

The Blazing Center by, Mark Altrogge, April 16, 2019

Wikipedia on Paula White

We all like to save a dime or two when we purchase, I think Rakuten is a great way to do both. https://bit.ly/3mkRdXS

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[42inchtv]

Some Thoughts On The Best Movies Of 2018

Honorable Mentions: “Aquaman” (dir. James Wan), “Avengers: Infinity War” (dirs. Anthony and Joe Russo), “BlacKkKlansman” (dir. Spike Lee), “Blockers” (dir. Kay Cannon), “Eighth Grade” (dir. Bo Burnham), “First Reformed” (dir. Paul Schrader), “Isle of Dogs” (dir. Wes Anderson), “Mary Poppins Returns” (dir. Rob Marshall), “mid90s” (dir. Jonah Hill), “Ocean’s Eight” (dir. Gary Ross), “On the Basis of Sex” (dir. Mimi Leder), “A Quiet Place” (dir. John Krasinski), “Roma” (dir. Alfonso Cuarón), “A Simple Favor” (dir. Paul Feig), “Venom” (dir. Ruben Fleischer)

10. “Vice” (dir. Adam McKay) A thing about “Vice” is Shea Whigham (49) plays Amy Adams’ (44) dad and Christian Bale’s (44) father-in-law — and the movie makes no attempt to hide the fact that they all look the same. It's a weird and imperfect film, but I'm oddly drawn to it -- despite the fact that many of the negative things people have said about this movie are very true. Perhaps that's why I keep coming back to Boots Riley's tweet-review: "Adam McKay makes movies that get me mad because he does several things that I wish I did first. In 'Vice,' he doesn't just break the 4th wall -- he breaks it and comes and sits in the seat next to you with popcorn and hot sauce. I don't think he makes film, he makes theater." There is something transfixing about "Vice." It's a trainwreck, a complete blank-check movie, the work of an auteur who was not told "no" once during the process. So this thing rattles off the rails early and often and features performances and tones so wildly divergent that it feels like something entirely different than regular movies. But put it this way: I'd rather watch a movie like “Vice” than “good” movies like “First Man.” McKay goes for it here in a way that seems reckless and irresponsible -- as if he'll never get the chance to make another movie so why not throw every idea he's ever had at the screen. There's something laudable to that kind of ego and arrogance. “Vice” condemns everyone, including the audience. After what we’ve done, it’s the movie we deserve.

9. “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before” (dir. Susan Johnson) Did everyone who bought high on “Set It Up” watch “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” and feel slightly awkward? A winning coming-of-age romcom that should stand proudly next to “10 Things I Hate About You” on the list of awesome teen movies that people watch forever.

8. “If Beale Street Could Talk” (dir. Barry Jenkins) If there was a better scene this year than Brian Tyree Henry’s section of Barry Jenkins’ lush, wondrous, absolutely stunning “Moonlight” follow-up, "If Beale Street Could Talk,” I didn’t get around to seeing it.

7. “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” (dirs. Ethan and Joel Coen) The James Franco section feels incomplete and hurried — why wasn’t it axed completely after Franco’s sexual misconduct allegations? — and the Liam Neeson section is dark and slow. But the other four parts? Instant, rewatchable classics, some of the best things the Coen brothers have ever done. My fave at the moment is the Tom Waits one, but the Zoe Kazan segment is also not without its pleasures. For a movie exclusively about death and dying and the relative fleeting nature of life, “Buster Scruggs” is a delight. It’s an exception to the premise of the film: how could life be meaningless when this exists?

6. “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” (dirs. Peter Ramsey, Robert Persichetti Jr., Rodney Rothman) As we've gotten further away from 2018, it feels like few movies from that calendar year will stand the cultural test of time. In five years, will people still talk about even the year's best gems, "The Favourite" and "Widows"? Maybe? At this rate, "A Star Is Born" will live in infamy, an Oscar front-runner that was basically shut out in the final calculus; even a film like "Roma," a wonderful movie that deserves its many awards, feels somewhat diffuse. Alfonso Cuarón's intimate epic has barely made a dent now, at a time when even the worst Netflix movie becomes meme fodder for weeks on end. All of which is to say, if one movie from last year winds up being *the* movie from last year, allow me to submit for consideration "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse." Its message is more powerful than the pablum of "Green Book" and it just seems so damn modern? Transformative? There's a reason "Spider-Verse" caught the attention of the zeitgeist. It's a now movie -- a dazzling, scattered, boisterous affair that's super funny and legitimately sweet. I slept on a lot of this the first time I saw "Spider-Verse" (literally, being a parent is tough sometimes!), but with clear eyes and full hearts, I watched it again and fell super in love. Time to re-do the 2018 top-10 list.

5. “Widows” (dir. Steve McQueen) How would “Heat” look if it were all about systemic white supremacy? A lot like “Widows,” apparently. What a blast of pulp fiction, with a stacked cast just knocking the crackling dialogue out of the park at every turn. Viola Davis was the headline story here, putting in a complex turn that feels comparable to Robert De Niro in “Ronin.” But the real star is Daniel Kaluuya, who delivers the best villain performance since Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh. Build a statue for him in lieu of his guaranteed Oscar snub.

4. Black Panther (dir. Ryan Coogler) Marvel's own version of “The Dark Knight,” “Black Panther” is the best MCU movie yet, a legitimate epic in league Christopher Nolan’s superhero classic but with a central conflict that feels like an extension of “Do the Right Thing.” Months later, Michael B. Jordan’s towering performance still rules: he’s every bit as impressive as Heath Ledger was as the Joker.

3. “A Star Is Born” (dir. Bradley Cooper) The closest thing to "Hamilton" released this year, Bradley Cooper's meme factory focuses on who lives, who dies, who tells their story. There’s a lot of Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical in “A Star Is Born" and the film is structured as such, up to a literal heart-clutch final moment that makes me cry just thinking about it (and rivals Eliza’s last gasp in “Hamilton”). Enough has been written about "A Star Is Born" that more isn't necessary, but let's just pause here to praise Cooper, the Actor, for a performance so great that it's easy to take him for granted.

2. “Mission: Impossible - Fallout” (dir. Christopher McQuarrie) What if “The Dark Knight” but Tom Cruise? What if “Skyfall” but “Mission Impossible”? That’s “Fallout,” the best action movie since “Mad Max: Fury Road” and the best blockbuster in a great year for blockbusters. To use overdone online parlance, this movie fucks. From the jump too, with a prologue that combines elements of the first “Mission: Impossible” with a hilarious cameo and the Wikipedia entry to “Rogue Nation” to set the tone for what’s to come. “Fallout” is a masterpiece of action cinema – to wit: the second act is basically one giant action sequence segmented into separate movements – and a tightly wound spy game that does just enough with Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt and his IMF team (Rebecca Ferguson remains a highlight) to make the characters worth caring about. A relentless, special movie – the best Cruise has done since “Edge of Tomorrow” – “Fallout” feels like the end of this beloved franchise. And why not? How do you top perfection? Why would you even bother to try?

1. “The Favourite” (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos) The funniest movie of the year, “Mean Girls” in corsets with Rachel Weisz absolutely effing owning in the Regina George role, “The Favourite” is maybe the only perfect movie of 2018. Weisz, Emma Stone, and Olivia Colman are all incredible, a trio of co-leads in the tradition of “Goodfellas,” “Zodiac,” or “The Social Network.” Yorgos Lanthimos’ film belongs in the same zip code as those classics from a quality standpoint as well, with a sharp-edged script that powers the proceedings to its downbeat, darkly comic conclusion. And while this is a movie all about those aforementioned women, don’t sleep on at least one man: Nicholas Hoult, who hams it up with an abandon reserved for Ryan Phillippe in “Cruel Intentions.” A true classic.

#some thoughts

[closetofanxiety]

Nitromare: Three men make a terrible decision

I haven’t been posting here much because Hakujinjoe is visiting from Japan and we’re roaming around New England. For some reason, we decided to watch every episode of Monday Nitro during the Vince Russo-Ed Ferrara Era, starting with the very first one on October 18, 1999. Mark has joined us on this terrible journey, as he is not afraid to endure the worst 1990s TV wrestling had to offer. Let’s dive in, shall we?

The episode, airing from Philadelphia, starts with a limo arriving, a Vince Russo favorite. A bunch of suits get out, followed by Sid Vicious. They walk toward the arena with expressions of grim purpose.

Inside, we get a good cruiserweight match between Juventud Guerrera and Evan Karagias that is interrupted by Bret Hart, who comes out to complain that “politics in the back” have kept him from wrestling Hulk Hogan. This promo is interrupted by Sting, who comes out and offers Bret a world title shot, but not before saying, “I got your legacy right here” and doing a crotch chop. 

There’s a two-minute match between Disco Inferno and Vampire that ends with Disco getting a clean pin, then getting attacked by Lash Laroux. Heenan and Schiavone are on commentary and this is still definitively a wrestling show, but cracks are starting to show.

In the ring, there’s some kind of Nitro Girls competition happening, in which a new Nitro Girl will be chosen. The contestants are Chiquita and Stacy Keibler, and we see b-roll of them dancing suggestively. I think both ended up as Nitro Girls, but this segment is interrupted by Buff Bagwell, who comes out in a pair of overalls painted like a Kriss Kross video in 1990. He cuts a promo in which he repeats “Buff is the stuff” half a dozen times, dances awkwardly, and leaves. 

The Vince Russo Era has truly begun.

Some crowd signs: “No One Gives a Damn What the Rock Says”; “WWF = Wrestling White Trash Federation”; “Rey Misterio Bronco Buster ME”; “Rap is Crap!”; “Nash is God”; “Sid Fears the Spear”; “Sid Sucks”; “Velcro Despencers” [sic]; “Sid Your Next” [sic]; “Goldberg Philly is Next”; “Sting Rules”; “The Outsiders Are the Real Deal”; “Drunk 24:7″; “I See Dead People”; “Stone Cold Smokes the Pole”; “Hogan = Homo”; “Jebroni” [sic]; “Austin Sleeps With Sheep”; “Goldberg the Last True Hero”

Tag team championship match: Konnan and an unmasked Rey Misterio Jr. vs champs Harlem Heat. There’s decent wrestling, with Rey in particular hitting a beeyootiful  springboard moonsault, but Vince and Ed cannot abide a mere wrestling match, so Eddie Guerrero, Billy Kidman, and Torrie Wilson come out to talk on commentary for some reason. No one is calling the match, but it’s good. Rey looks like a child without his mask. Actually, with the dyed blonde hair, he looks exactly like his son, Dominic, whose custody he would later battle for in a ladder match. Stevie Ray hits the slowest, sloppiest power slam I have ever seen in a professional wrestling match. Eddie and Kidman interfere, then Rey and Konnan cheat to win the titles. NEW TAG TEAM CHAMPS. This is fine. The Filthy Animals were supposed to be cheating heels.

Kimberly Page is looking for someone backstage and is talking flirtatiously to David Flair, a man who does not want to be on television. It’s incredible how poorly suited he was for this. “David Flair looks like some guy they pulled out of the audience, like he’s shocked to be there,” Joe notes. “Like some college guy who just got out of a party.” Not since Mike Von Erich has a member of a wrestling family been so visibly unsuited for wrestling.

HELL YES. IT’S MENG TIME. Meng is wrestling Bill DeMott, who is still in his Hugh Morrus persona, but now he’s SERIOUS and Jimmy Hart is his manager. Morrus headbutts Meng, which is a bad choice. As the match proceeds, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash walk down the arena steps, so the entire crowd stops paying attention to what’s happening the ring. This is a hallmark of Vince Russo’s philosophy: just constantly have things interrupted by other things. Meng wins with the Tongan Death Grip, but the crowd doesn’t care. Hall and Nash are sitting ringside with two women Heenan describes as “beautiful dolls.”

Sid comes out to the ring and then calls his “attorneys” to join him. The crowd boos the attorneys. The crowd chants “Goldberg” while Sid uncorks a Vintage. Halting. Promo. With. Lots. Of. Jumbled. Shouting. “I. Am. A. Man. Of. My. Word. I. Am. A. Man. Of. Integrity” Sid says, a sentiment that many 21st century indie promoters will have reason to dispute. Goldberg runs out and absolutely flattens one of the actors playing a lawyer. Just fucking kills the guy. Sid lays Goldberg out with a kick and then power bombs him. The crowd is livid. This is a good setup for Halloween Havoc, because people are booing the heel and want to see him get his ass kicked. This is good wrestling booking. I can give credit where it’s due.

At ringside, Hall and Nash are laughing at Goldberg, who mushes them both. There’s a pull apart. Someone in the crowd throws a roll of toilet paper, because hey, Philadelphia. The Outsiders are led from the arena by security. A fresh-faced kid of perhaps 13 runs down to try and get Hall and Nash to Too Sweet him; a 1999 Internet fan. We watch a long tracking shot of Hall and Nash being led through the Spectrum, or whatever the Philly arena was called at this point. It’s almost artistic it’s so tedious. JJ Dillon appears for a split second, looking like a man who is rethinking the last 18 months of his decisions.

Backstage, Mike Tenay interviews Bret Hart, who cuts a good, standard wrestling promo, although he keeps calling the company “the WCW.” The interview is interrupted by Sting jumping Hart in the locker room, which is badly out of character. 

Now Berlyn comes out with his bodyguard, The Wall. Get it? Beryln and the Wall? God, was anyone in WCW more ill-served by the writers than Alex Wright? He was a good wrestler with a good look, who was given absolutely nothing to work with. Come to think of it, that also describes Brad Armstrong. Tonight, Berlyn will be wrestling the Dogface Gremlin himself, Rick Steiner, who looks as excited to be here as someone attending family court. It’s weirdly compelling how little Rick Steiner cares about this match. Why should he care? This match is going to be interrupted, and it is, by Brad Armstrong! Speak of the devil. Jesus, poor Brad Armstrong. He hates Berlyn, but his interference accidentally costs Steiner the match, and Steiner beats up Armstrong with a lazy, unhurried disinterest. 

We’re back in the bowels of the Spectrum, where Hall and Nash have sneaked back in. They wander around looking for Goldberg. They’re good at sneaking, what with this camera crew following them.

Now we’re at a hotel, and Kimberly page comes inside and then disrobes to a one-piece lingerie set. Instead of DDP, though, Ric Flair jumps out of the bathroom and tells Kimberly, “Tonight you gonna get the 14-time spanking your daddy shoulda given you a long time ago.” 

Now we’re backstage, and Goldberg, prowling the Spectrum, lays out Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope from Insane Clown Posse, which, as Joe notes, gets the biggest pop of the night. 

Now we’re at a different part of the backstage area, and Lex Luger and Miss Elizabeth are being interviewed, the knowledge we have now making this hard to watch. Lex cuts a halting, awkward promo about how he is, indeed, the total package. 

David Flair comes out in his father’s robe, to his father’s music, with all the pomp and circumstance of an unemployed guy walking outside to get the mail. He’ll be wrestling Billy Kidman, who comes out with Torrie Wilson. Four years after this, they would be married. The crowd hates David Flair’s awkward offense so much. Flair sucks so bad at this. Flair does sell the Shooting Star Press convincingly, probably because he was legitimately terrified and hurt by it. Kidman wins, and the Filthy animals come out to beat on Flair. Wikipedia tells me David Flair never wanted to be a wrestler, which sounds about right. 

Now we’re backstage for the Hall and Nash Snoop Hour. They run into Gene Okerlund, who looks bored and disgusted. 

Now we’re backstage, but in a different part, and Ric Flair is here, presumably having had sex with Kimberly Page despite her original desire to have sex with her husband. When I was growing up I had an issue of Playboy with Kimberly Page in it, which was a revelation for a WWF fan like myself. 

Now we’ve got an evening gown match featuring Mona - better known as Molly Holly - and Madusa, who is disgusted by the stipulation AND THAT’S PROBABLY A SHOOT BROTHER. This starts off fast, with some actual wrestling and some crisp suplexes from both women. “The last time I saw two women in dresses fighting like that was at Bloomingdale’s at the end of the month sale,” Brain says, beaming in from 1964. Madusa takes out the ref with a missed kick and then hits a beautiful suplex on Mona. Mona sneaks up from behind and pulls Madusa’s dress off. The crowd boos. None of us wanted this. Madusa gets the mic to cut a promo, saying everyone can kiss her ass. 

Backstage. Sting is pacing back and forth. Bret is heading out to the ring. Hart, maybe the best pure wrestler of his generation, was so badly misused by WCW. It’s really a phenomenal story. How could you screw something like this up? But they did. Oh, boy, did they. 

People love Sting, and at this point they still love Bret, so this match is a dumb idea. In retrospect it seems insane that they had this match, with no buildup, on an episode of free TV, but that was kind of common in this era, in both companies. The match begins as a leisurely paced brawl until Bret gets the upper hand by getting the knees up to stuff the Vader Bomb, or whatever it was called when Sting did it. Bret takes over for a while, then Sting reverses an Irish whip and gets a Stinger Splash to get the upper hand. Nick Patrick is the referee, and is not wearing a belt. Is that common? It looks weird. How are you holding up your sensible black trousers, Nick Patrick? The crowd is firmly behind Sting, who hits the elbow drop and does that thing where he cups his hands over his mouth and yells. I would describe this match as Perfectly Fine. It’s a rung or three below what these guys are capable of, but it’s not bad. Bret hits an absolutely filthy piledriver, but Sting kicks out. Hart teases the Sharpshooter but doesn’t give the crowd what they want. After some futzing around, he finally locks it in, but Sting grabs the rope. Sting is selling the effect of the Sharpshooter very well, trying to get Hart up for a bodyslam but having his leg give out under him. Oh boy, an interruption: Miss Elizabeth comes out to the ring for some reason, followed shortly by a bat-wielding Lex Luger. Hart is forced to fight Luger and Hart. Luger hits Hart in the shin with a bat, enabling Sting to lock in the Scorpion Deathlock, to which Hart immediately taps out. That finish was not Perfectly Fine. 

Wait, that wasn’t the main event? We’re backstage. Ric is yelling at David Flair, who repeatedly mumbles “Billy Kidman beat me up.” It’s hard to believe these two men are related.

Backstage in a different part of the Spectrum. Hall and Nash are putting on lucha masks for some reason. They are still looking for Goldberg. 

We’re back to the ring, for La Parka. Have you heard that he’s having a career year in 2018? Well, in 1999, he was having the kind of year where he had to follow a 15-minute Bret Hart-Sting match by wrestling Buff Bagwell. The crowd is predictably dead. What would these men say if you told them that in less than 20 years, one would be a gigolo and the other would be having a career year in pro wrestling? They would probably correctly guess which one would be the gigolo. La Parka beats a visibly disinterested Buff with a roll-up. Then Buff gets on the headset and says, “Hey, Russo, did I do a good job for you? Who else is going to beat me? Why don’t you come out and beat me?” Then Jeff Jarrett, in a surprise arrival from WWF, runs out and kabongs Buff with a guitar shot. The crowd reacts at least. This was kind of a famous jump from WWF to WCW, after Jarrett held Vince up for a huge sum of money to drop the belt to Chyna after his contract expired. Jarrett grabs his dick, says, “You wanna talk about stroke, bitch?” and then walks to the back. This is painfully Russovian. 

After another painful Hall-Nash segment backstage, we’ve got Eddie Guerrero vs. Chavo Jr. vs. Perry Saturn in a three-way elimination match. Shane Douglas joins the commentary team and says he is “the guy that built Philadelphia and kept wrestling alive in this godforsaken city.” The crowd is oddly silent for a match featuring Perry Saturn. Saturn throws a beautiful array of suplays while the Guerreros bicker. Eddie suplexes Chavo outside the damn ring, a crazy bump. This is a good match. The crowd is totally bored, or maybe exhausted. On the hard camera side, two guys dressed like Hulk Hogan who been doing wacky dances all night sit down immediately when a leathery Philadelphia Guido comes over and visibly motherfucks them, jabbing his finger and yelling. Good for you, Guy Who Makes Me Think of Frank Rizzo, those guys were awful. We need an interruption, so the Filthy Animals come down for some reason. They beat up Saturn while Douglas, who has an arm in a cast, rages. “It’s a damn conspiracy here!” he yells. Eddie hits the frog splash on Saturn for the pin, and then Chavo Jr. hits a tornado DDT on his uncle to win. The crowd is confused and angry. The Filthy Animals storm the ring and beat up Chavo. No one cares. 

God, is there more to this episode? We are exhausted. It feels like we started watching this five hours ago. 

Oh God, Horace Hogan in a hardcore match? A WCW hardcore match in Philadelphia when ECW was still a living proposition. It’s going to be Horace vs. Norman Smiley. One of the Hogan impersonators is dancing again. Where is Frank Rizzo Guy when we need him? This match is boring and bad. Horace sets up a table and goes through it. Norman wins. No one cares.

WHEN IS THIS GOING TO END? Flair comes down to the ring. Ric, not David. Who cares where David is. Flair makes a somewhat tortuous analogy between himself and Bobby Clarke, the great thuggish Philadelphia Flyer from the 1970s. He talks about having sex with Kimberly Page earlier in the night. He compares his son, David, to Eric Lindros. A lot of hockey talk tonight. Flair says he drank the Guerrero Brothers under the table in every bar from Mexico to Philadelphia, a plausible claim. The Filthy Animals come out and beat on Flair, which the crowd hates. David runs out to help his dad, and also gets beat on. Rey Misterio hits the bronco buster on Ric Flair. Konnan rips off Flair’s shirt and takes his wallet. The Filthy Animals take Flair’s jewelry. “Well, it’s Philadelphia,” Heenan notes. 

Lex Luger stumbles on Miss Elizabeth, laid out in the women’s locker room, a broken guitar laying near her head. ELIAS? WAS THAT YOU, YOU SON OF A BITCH??

Goldberg comes to the ring, accompanied by security guards, while the crowd chants for him. One of the all-time greatest entrances in wrestling history. Somehow, this - Goldberg vs. Lex - is the main event, rather than Sting vs. Bret Hart. Goldberg runs outside the ring to start the match on the entrance ramp. Big “Goldberg” chants. This match is already way too long for a Goldberg match. Waaaaay too long. The Outsiders wander out from the back. “The fight goes on and on,” Tony says, summing up this whole ordeal. Now Sting runs out of the back for some reason and hits Goldberg with a baseball bat. The crowd boos. Now Bret Hart runs out of the back and starts beating up Sting. This is such a disaster. The crowd is pelting the ring with cups of soda. Goldberg spears Lex Luger and wins. 

Grade: Pot Roast That Has Been Left In The Sun For Days.

#Nitromare #WCW #1990s wrestling

[equallyreal]

You might’ve noticed there’s been a bit of radio silence on here. The honest reason for that is that I fell off the productivity bus. First it was just procrastination, then I got sick, and now I have to sum up the tail end of this season of the Flash despite my brain having dumped half the episodes from my mind.

That’s not a hit against the show the show, by the way. I stand by the fact that the Flash is up with the better-written CW shows, and it’s the only one I’ve been able to stick with. If I can’t remember portions of the show, that’s on my terrible memory, not the writers. But I can’t deny that this season had a few issues. I’m going to do a retrospective on the past season as a whole, rather than trying to pick apart the individual episodes based on my terrible memory and the wikipedia synopses. Strap yourself in. This got kind of long.

Honestly, there were a lot of things about this season that kept it from being perfect. There was a lot of good, too. For instance, the first chunk of the finale was excellent. The amnesia episode was also excellent. I got to see Barry and Kara hang out twice, Cisco is becoming Vibe more and more every day, and Wally West is actually a speedster now. Westallen really spread its wings as a ship (finally!!!) and they were super cute together. Joe is happy, which is nice. And finally, I actually ended up liking Julian as a character. His plot arc wasn’t perfect, no, but it’s great to see Tom Felton having a career outside of Harry Potter, and I liked some of the moments he had together with Caitlin. But there were a lot of problems that made this season the weakest one of the show so far for me. Let’s talk about those, shall we?

1. The show got a bit too dark. This is a tricky one to cover, because a lot of the darkness and conflict in the show came about as a result of the consequences of Flashpoint. Barry Allen should be, on some level, held accountable for the consequences of Flashpoint because time travelling was a dumb (if understandable) thing to do and negatively affected the lives of people close to him. Even if that wasn’t his intent, it happened, and it was nice to see a male protagonist actually held responsible for his mistakes. I’m not saying Barry should’ve been easily forgiven for what he did. I am saying that the narrative constantly hammering home that BARRY DID A BAD THING! for the first chunk of the season got really, really exhausting (and baffling, in places, because why in the hell do the Legends of Tomorrow think they can call Barry out on that? Seriously, why? Someone explain that to me, because I still don’t know). 

Add to this that the second half of the season was overshadowed by this hanging cloud of dread about Iris dying, with very little real optimism that wasn’t tainted by an underlying sense of panic and dread, and this season was...tough. I’m not saying I don’t want conflict in the Flash. The Flash needs conflict, obviously. But I also should have fun while watching it. I should be engrossed and enjoying myself, not wincing constantly because the characters are in so much emotional distress. The show had been pretty good at walking the thin line between too much drama and not enough drama until this season. They erred on the wrong side this time around.

2. Glossing over really concerning character moments. Did anyone else notice that Barry and Cisco seemed really okay with dying this season? Because I did, but no one else in-show seemed to. I get that they’re trying to sell these characters as heroic and willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for the greater good, but the fact that both these characters have been through huge emotional upheavals in-show made it seem less like them making the sacrifice call and more like they were potentially suicidal. But this is never, at any point addressed, and it bothers me immensely. It doesn’t help that the past season tried to sell Barry’s suffering as inherently heroic, when suffering is no such thing and it’s frankly all starting to become a bit concerning.

3. Really irrational treatment of others. I’m just gonna say this now: Caitlin’s entire arc could’ve been avoided if someone had just given her the you’re not Vader talk that Cisco got in season 2. I mean, I think it could’ve. Part of the problem with Caitlin’s arc is that it was so ill-planned that I still don’t know what they were going for with it. That said, all the early signs pointed to her power issues being linked to her fear--fear of herself, fear of her abilities, fear turns to anger, anger turns to hate, hate turns to Killer Frost. But did anyone sit down and try to tell her that she wasn’t inherently monstrous for her powers and that they can figure out how to help her live with them rather than living in fear her entire life? No, they didn’t.* It was all “Let’s fix Cailtin!” and then it was a mess of a plot arc that couldn’t be salvaged by anything. But more on that later.

Similarly, the entire concept behind Savitar’s creation is that he was rejected and spurned by Team Flash after he was created as a time remnant, because he wasn’t “the real Barry.” On the one hand, this is more logical than Caitlin’s nonsense because at that point in the timeline, everyone was going through some shit. I can see how throwing a time remnant into the mix would exacerbate the situation. But I also have a really hard time believing that Team Flash--the heroes of the story--would isolate someone who hadn’t done anything wrong, and had in fact been maimed while trying to help them, to the point where he’d go insane from the pain and loneliness, become a god, and create a time loop just so he could create himself and eventually kill Iris. It felt really contrived when they could’ve gone with another explanation for how he ended up like this. Hell, if you wanted him to really go mad, the whole split identity of being Barry Allen and having all his memories while at the same time being his own person with unique memories, being both same and other, could drive him to resent Barry and go insane without people arbitrarily being a dick to him.** It would’ve worked better, in my opinion.

4. Caitlin’s plot was terrible. If anyone can give me a definitive answer on what they were going for with this season and Caitlin’s plot, please do. I still don’t know what the deal was. Is Killer Frost a separate personality or not? The beginning and end of Caitlin’s plot seemed to imply not (again, her power overload seemed more based on fear overwhelming her than a split personality, and in the finale she’s able to overcome Killer Frost far too easily for her to have been someone else entirely), but everything in the middle says that Killer Frost is an evil personality inherently tied to her powers that needs to be cut out of her. Which is it? Again, why did no one just sit down and try to talk her through her powers instead of jumping onto the “CURE CAITLIN” bus? Were they trying to have Caitlin do evil things without having to assume the consequences because they wanted Killer Frost but then backtracked on it to make Caitlin Frost because they didn’t actually want to shake up the status quo too much? Why couldn’t they have just stuck to her being a villain or, hell, had her just have her powers but have her be a good guy? I seriously need a flow chart to figure out what was going on there. I really do.

5. The no-killing thing. This is a minor quibble in the grand scheme of things, but I honestly don’t get why this was a plot element in a few episodes. I’ll admit, I’m very much in the no kill camp in these things, so it wasn’t necessarily the argument that confused me. It was the fact that Barry has already killed people. I don’t even mean in a “if we apply real world logic to this situation, that man would be dead” way like in most other comic book shows. I mean he has actively killed people in his rogues gallery. He freezes Tar Pit solid to the point where he shatters, which kills people; uses Griffin Grey’s rapid aging against him, which also kills people; zapped King Shark with an electricity gun while in the water and didn’t seem too broken up when ARGUS said he was dead; overloaded Atom Smasher with radiation to the point where it killed him; and fried Sand Demon with his lightning, which turned him into glass and shattered him, which kills people. Joe has also shot a shockingly large portion of Flash’s early rogues and people haven’t commented on it at all. I’m not saying any of these killings were wrong, per say; I am saying that having Barry not kill anyone this season is really arbitrary in light of the fact that several characters are all very, very dead as a result of Barry’s deliberate actions. If they wanted to show that Barry was going in too deep and needed to remember his humanity and goodness (which I don’t think is a plot we need for the Flash, but whatever, they wanted to write that), they could’ve done it in a way that doesn’t directly defy things that have happened in-show.

tl;dr: This season of the Flash was ultimately watchable and had a lot of good moments, as my individual episode reviews can attest to. It’s still the best CW show that I’ve seen, and is still the only one of their DC lineup that I’m willing to watch***. But there were a lot of bumps in the road that made this arguably the weakest season so far. I’m interested to see where they’ll go with things in light of the season finale, but I’m also really hoping that they’ll dial back the angst for the next season. Remember: Barry Allen was such an embodiment of hope that the comics made him a Blue Lantern. There’s no reason why his show should be actively painful to watch.

*This actually ties into a wider problem with the show where there are very few “good” metas outside of Team Flash and everyone else is generally seen as a criminal and not just a person, but that’s another discussion for another time.

**I do acknowledge that we never actually see anyone being cruel to Savitar back then, so this could be unreliable narrator. But we also don’t see anything to disprove him, so if that’s what they were going for, they kind of botched it. 

***Though I’ll admit that I might give Supergirl another try, because I’m a fool.

#a review #the flash #this is a very long post and I apologize #I had a lot of things to say