I've neglected my blog for a while now, due to some other things going on in my life. This will be another of my serious posts, where I talk about myself and my life. I've experienced some stagnation and I think I'm in the process of turning a corner.
I don't really want to go into details publicly, but I endured some fairly serious traumas when I was a child. The age of seven or eight is when my path first began to skew. Nothing was ever addressed and I tried to figure things out as best as I could. It's clear now that I began to suffer from real and clinical depression. I have been depressed for nearly as long as I can remember. Few who don't suffer from depression themselves, or have a close relationship with someone who does, understand exactly what that means.
It doesn't mean someone is sad all the time, and, while everyone goes through down periods, assuming that someone who is depressed can or should "snap out of it" or that there's something somehow selfish about it, or that they are weak, is basically making the dyslexic kid sit in the corner with a dunce cap.
I used drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism. One of my earlier blog posts discusses my substance abuse in detail, but even then, it never really stopped. I was always transitioning from one numbing agent to another, and even up to just recently, continued to smoke marijuana regularly, as most of you probably know. While pot is benign compared to most drugs, and has given me a lot of pleasure, it too, I'm afraid, is one more way for me to escape reality.
This pattern of substance abuse is sadly all too common among sufferers of depression, particularly men, who are culturally prohibited from admitting to emotional problems in many cases. I know from experience that in many of the circles I've been associated with, if I were to say even as much as I've so far admitted to, I would be laughed at, insulted and told to kill myself. I've managed to get past the point where something like that would bother me, but there were times when it would. So I buried my troubles deeper and deeper within myself, covering them with a steady diet of intoxicants and acting out in other, typical ways. Aggression, destructive sexual behavior, etc. I don't like the way this world is, and I don't like what it does to people, including me. I've tried for, like, decades now, to own this evil. To enter it, and understand it, and make it mine instead of me belonging to it. This, I realize, is inheriting the wind (and ice skating uphill).
I've you've read this blog before, particularly the older posts, which were written when I was experiencing a difficult transition in my life, you'll note some familiarity with what I'm saying. It's something I've been approaching for some time, but stumbling towards. "Okay, time to cut the shit and get real." says I. Great.
(but I'll just keep this corner of myself hidden away)
I've been like the alcoholic who decides to switch from liquor to beer. A step in the right direction, and it might even work, sort of, for a while, but it's not reality. This is an apt metaphor, because I am an alcoholic, and an extremely destructive alcoholic. Alcohol is such a chaotic poison to me that by doing no more than cutting it completely out of my life, I was able to form an echo of a healthy, productive life. Similarly to the way I was able to lose 60 pounds by doing nothing but cutting out soda. I was much thinner and healthier, but I'm no athlete. If I want to be truly healthy, there's a lot more involved. It was the same with alcohol.
And, after three years of abstinence from alcohol, I drank a couple of weeks ago. Not a little bit, and not in a remotely responsible way. Again, I don't really want to go into details, but it was bizarre and insane. In the aftermath, I was flailing to get some sort of meaning out of the experience, and struggling. The fact that I had completely blacked out didn't help. I had to assume that after three years, I must have thought I could handle it. Now, I don't think this is accurate. I know I can't handle any alcohol for any reason. I know that as well as I know anything. I'm just not wired that way.
So what was I doing? I think now it was probably more akin to a cry for help suicide attempt. Things seemed okay, but something in me was crying out that they were not, that I couldn't live this way anymore. While my life certainly did get better after I stopped drinking, my mistake was thinking that was all I had to do. I maintained total sobriety for something like a few months when I was married, but that was pretty much it since I was about fourteen. As anyone can tell you, addicts are liars. I don't know if I've ever been physically addicted to anything, but I can say for sure that I am emotionally addicted to everything. I have to be on something, because I just never learned how to live life any other way. Many people never do. And I guess I'm realizing that this can't go on. Whatever I was doing, even something as benign as marijuana (which, not for nothing, made me lazy and unproductive, probably reason enough to stop it), the root cause is escape. I can't keep running. And when you're an addict to cope, you lie about how much, how often, and when you use. You start to lie so much that everything about you becomes a lie. Even if you're honest about every other aspect of your life, you feel utterly alone, because no one knows the real you. You lie about using and then lies start to creep into other aspects of your life. The person you lie to the most is yourself. You start to lose track of what's real and what isn't. You get isolated because nobody knows you, really knows you. And without others, there's no self.
I am depressed, chronically. Every therapist or counselor I've ever seen has told me that I'm a textbook sufferer of depression. I was actually doing really well with one therapist I was seeing, I think I was making a lot of progress, but I couldn't afford to go anymore. I don't know. I guess one lesson is that while abstinence from alcohol is an essential component of mental and emotional health, it isn't going to solve my problems. It is, in the end, a symptom. A symptom powerful enough to destroy me and my life on its own, but a symptom nonetheless. All the drugs are symptoms. My life is better without them, but if I want to be the person I should be, I have to address why I did them in the first place.
This isn't something I'm going to figure out on my blog, much less in one post, so I guess I'm just writing this as another signpost on my journey. I am an addict, true, but I am also depressed, emotionally troubled, I have experienced trauma, I have done bad, hurtful things to others and had bad, hurtful things done to me. I have hurt and let down those who care about me and mean the most to me. I never wanted to, but I'm never going to get better unless I maintain absolute honesty and absolute sobriety, so I'm committing to those things. Like Lincoln, Honest Abe, who doubted religion and so committed to impeccable honesty in all his dealings as the means of a good, moral life without it. It's a start. This probably all seems pretty vague, so if you're reading this, know I was mostly trying to work something out with myself. I talked a lot about alcohol and drugs, but the point is that they aren't the issue. Emotional health doesn't end with stopping drinking. It starts there. I have to make the world a better place as best as I can, starting with the man in the mirror. Thank you to my friends and family.
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Monday, December 9, 2013
We are the music makers. And we are the dreamers of the dreams. (2004)
Did you know your Amazon account keeps track of everything you order forever? It's an odd kind of nostalgia, seeing what I felt was important enough to buy years ago. I'll be doing a series of posts about my Amazon purchases from when I was much younger. See what I learn about myself, if anything. My account goes back to October 2004, so let's start there. I was 21 years old. This post is all CDs, with one exception (it's porn), but there will be much more variety in years to come. Let's have a look...
The Residents - Third Reich & Roll (purchased October 18th)
The Residents! I was just getting into them. I believe this was the very first Residents album I ever heard, because how could it not be? If you haven't heard it, it's a a bizarre onslaught of 60s pop tunes all mashed together into one insane amalgam of pop culture inversion. Still one of my favorite Residents albums, and one of the most singular albums I've ever heard. The CD version comes with a bonus track: a cover of "Satisfaction" that is rendered almost unlistenable. I think that was the artistic intent behind it; to take one of the catchiest, most popular songs ever written, and render it as a nightmare. I think if you were to encapsulate rock and roll, save it for future/alien generations, look no further than "Satisfaction". Take the Stones version, the Residents version, the Devo version and the Britney Spears version. There you go. That's music.
The Residents - Meet the Residents (purchased October 30th)
One of the more avant-garde from that most avant-garde of groups. For a long time this was my favorite Residents album (it's now Not Available, which I mention because it will not be appearing here. I bought it in a record store.) It's still probably top ten. This period was my initial exposure to the band, but I get on Residents kicks every few years or so. I had one earlier this year, so these albums are more fresh in my mind than they might have been. It's weird, weird stuff. You can't dance to it. And while it's undeniably interesting, with a few exceptions, it's not exactly the kind of thing I want to throw on and listen to all that much.
Allan Holdsworth - Metal Fatigue (purchased November 7th)
Allan Holdsworth is a jazz guitarist, and I bought this album to be a snob. I can admit it. I'm also taken aback that I paid $37.96 for this... He's very skilled, but really a guitarist's guitarist, and while I would like to be a guitarist, I'm not really, yet, and certainly wasn't ten years ago. I never enjoyed this as much as I pretended to. It was just obscure jazz to make me feel like a big man. For jazz guitar, give me John McLaughlin any day.
Marilyn Manson - Portrait of an American Family, Marilyn Manson - Holy Wood
(Purchased November 11th)
An interesting aspect of this exercise is stuff I bought at the same time. This one makes perfect sense, but there are some weird combinations coming. I owned both of these albums before and had lost them somewhere. Loaned them out, sold them for drug money, whatever it was. I wanted to restock my Manson collection. Look, I love Marilyn Manson and always will. He meant a lot to me when I was in my mid teens, and I will defend him to this day. I really don't care what anything thinks, I think he's great. Portrait is fantastic. Nothing else sounds like early Manson, right after he had dropped the Spooky Kids part of the band name. To this day I can mentally press play and listen to that entire album.
Holy Wood is another great album, that, interestingly, was pretty shit upon when it came out. Basically, Antichrist Superstar was huge, and Mechanical Animals failed to live up to it commercially. Nobody really liked how he totally turned glam. So then came Holy Wood which basically sounded a lot like Antichrist Superstar, and he came up with this convoluted explanation about how the albums were supposed to go that way all along, it was a reverse triptych of concept albums, but I think most people didn't buy it. And maybe he did just make it up as he went along. With hindsight, though, most have recognized that Holy Wood, on its own merits, is one of his strongest albums. I think it might even be his best, musically, although it was never have as much personal significance to me as his earlier albums.
The Adventures of a Lesbian College School Girl (purchased November 15th)
Speaks for itself, I guess. I used the image from the cover as a message board avatar for a while. This is actually a really interesting comic book. Although I called it porn in the introduction, I don't really consider erotic comics as strictly porn, per se. I never masturbated to this, it was just a compelling comic. I find sex interesting. The art is striking, and the story is... strange. For one, although it's supposed to be lesbian erotica, and is, ostensibly, created by two women (who share the names of the two main characters), it's more phallocentric than a lot of gay porn. Make of that what you will. Also, despite the fact that they snuck "college" into the title, I guess to play it safe, the story is absolutely set at a Catholic high school. Since most of it is dreams (both day and the other kind) of the protagonist, who, as noted, has the same name as the author, this is probably just someone making a comic out of her sexual fantasies, like R. Crumb used to do. I find that interesting.
I spilled coffee on this, and ended up replacing it with a fresh one. I still have both copies.
Diamanda Galas - The Litanies of Satan, Throbbing Gristle - D.O.A. The Third and Final Report of Throbbing Gristle, Scraping Foetus Off the Wheel - Nail, The Residents - The King and Eye, Victoria Beckham - Self Titled, Melanie C - Northern Star
(purchased November 17th)
Made this purchase the day before my twenty-second birthday. This probably tells you all you need to know about me at that age, that this is what I spent my birthday money on.
Diamanda Galas, Throbbing Gristle and Foetus... what can I say? If you like that kind of music, you're with me, if not, what do you care? I will say that Nail is tied with Hole for my favorite JG Thirlwell as Foetus album. It's absolutely fantastic and I still listen to it regularly. I don't listen to Throbbing Gristle much anymore and when I do, it's usually not this album, but I still don't have a bad word to say about them conceptually. They're just more interesting as people and artists than musicians. Harder than hardcore, though. Litanies of Satan is one of Diamanda's most challenging albums (though not her most challenging, that would be Schrei X, which, believe it or not, was the first one I ever heard. I don't know how I persevered but I'm glad I did). I don't spin Litanies much, but as an artistic statement it's one of her best.
That Residents album is a collection of Elvis Presley covers. It's a middle ground Residents album for me, perhaps because I was a middle ground Elvis Presley fan. This album received a completely unnecessary and strange (so par for the course for the Residents) remix release, and I actually like that version better. It was remixed by someone called Paralyzer, who I think may be German but don't quote me. The remixed version of "Viva Las Vegas" remains one of my favorite Residents tracks.
Now as for those two Spice Girls solo albums, I was and am a die hard Spice Girls fan, and much like Marilyn Manson, I don't give a shit what anyone thinks. I was a completist, and that included all their solo records. Funnily enough, these two are my favorite (Mel C) and least favorite (Victoria) respectively. Although I dreamed of being Geri Halliwell, Mel C had my favorite voice of the girls, and I like this solo album about as much as the canon Spice Albums, and better than the one without Geri. The Victoria album is probably, no exaggeration, the worst album I've ever bought. It's bad. The cover looks so awesome, though. Still one of my favorite covers to this day.
Wayne County and the Electric Chairs - Rock n Roll Cleopatra, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult - I See Good Spirits and I See Bad Spirits, Nina Hagen - Nunsexmonkrock, Teenage Jesus & the Jerks - Everything
(Purchased November 24th)
Now this looks like a party! Wayne County, who became Jayne County, is a transexual, which I found to be pretty fuckin' punk. He was no Geri Halliwell, but I admired him a lot, and his music is actually really good. He was still Wayne at this point, so I used the male pronoun. I haven't listened to Wayne County in a long time, but I still have good feelings about him. Thrill Kill Kult are gods. Nina Hagen is a scary punk witch. And Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, besides having maybe my favorite band name of all time, were just damned impressive, although atonal and difficult to listen to. But it's no wave, what do you want? It's crazy that Lydia Lunch was only sixteen and could produce something like this.
Diamanda Galas - Divine Punishment/Saint of the Pit, Christina Aguilera - Stripped
(Purchased November 26th)
Hell yeah. One of the best combos I've seen. This is my favorite Diamanda album. It's the soundtrack of hell. The whole thing is creepy recitations of old testament prophecy in Latin, except for "Sono L' Antichristo" - I am the Antichrist. I paid $46.93 for this album and I have to say it was worth every cent. Although I sold all my CDs and went totally digital some time ago, I hung onto this one. Incredible cover.
And, for something completely different, the Xtina album is also an all time favorite. She has one of the most incredible singing voices I've ever heard. I'm in awe of her, and I can probably count on less than one hand female singer who impress me more than her (perhaps fittingly, Diamanda Galas is one of them). This will always be my favorite of her albums. People hated this when it came out, thought she was losing her mind. Looking back, it's getting more credit for the masterpiece it is. She was an adult, could do what she wanted, and owed no one an explanation. "Beautiful" and "Soar" are capable of moving me to tears, and "Fighter" and "Dirrty" (which by the way, pretty memorable video) are favorites too.
Yellow Magic Orchestra - Solid State Survivor, Bertrand Burgalat - The SSSound of Music, Kraftwerk - Computer World
(Purchased December 6)
Fuckin' rock solid collection of electronic albums here. I'm almost impressed at my own taste. Yellow Magic Orchestra, I think, I first listened to because someone told me they sounded like the music from Sonic the Hedgehog. That's true. In fact, the Sonic programmers acknowledged their inspiration from YMO. They are absolute gods of electronic music, perhaps second only to Kraftwerk themselves. This was my first of their albums, still one of my favorites. They were also one of the first Japanese groups I got into, and I'm now a huge fan of Japanese music, so I guess that was an important step.
That Bertrand Burgalat album is so great, super chill French techno, the kind of thing you should be listening to while driving down a coastal highway at sunset in a convertible. I honestly never did find out much about Bertrand Burgalat, and never listened to anything of his besides that one album, much as I loved it. It may be time to change that.
Kraftwerk. The Beatles of electronic. Nothing really needs to be said, except that, although Autobahn is more well known Computer World is actually my favorite album of theirs.
K.M.D. - Black Bastards
You may not expect it, but I used to listen to a lot of rap. I don't really anymore, not nearly as much as I did, no particular reason, but I still love a lot of the stuff I used to listen to and will sometimes listen to nothing but rap for a couple weeks. Just get in the mood sometimes. This was kind of a legendary album before it came out. The record label shelved it because of the cover, then Subroc died in a car crash and K.M.D. was no more. It's a good album, but I haven't listened to it in years. KMD also featured Subroc's brother who would go on to become MF Doom, one of the most interesting hip hop artists in the world, for my money, which is why I got this. I was digging into MF Doom's roots. He's one of the rap artists I will still listen to semi-regularly, along with west coast gangsta shit. Gotta stay true to my roots.
And that was 2004. I'll probably do the following years in sections, since this was only three months out of the year, and if it gets boring, I'll edit it, but this was an interesting exercise. Coming soon: 2005, which will feature more than just music!
The Residents! I was just getting into them. I believe this was the very first Residents album I ever heard, because how could it not be? If you haven't heard it, it's a a bizarre onslaught of 60s pop tunes all mashed together into one insane amalgam of pop culture inversion. Still one of my favorite Residents albums, and one of the most singular albums I've ever heard. The CD version comes with a bonus track: a cover of "Satisfaction" that is rendered almost unlistenable. I think that was the artistic intent behind it; to take one of the catchiest, most popular songs ever written, and render it as a nightmare. I think if you were to encapsulate rock and roll, save it for future/alien generations, look no further than "Satisfaction". Take the Stones version, the Residents version, the Devo version and the Britney Spears version. There you go. That's music.
One of the more avant-garde from that most avant-garde of groups. For a long time this was my favorite Residents album (it's now Not Available, which I mention because it will not be appearing here. I bought it in a record store.) It's still probably top ten. This period was my initial exposure to the band, but I get on Residents kicks every few years or so. I had one earlier this year, so these albums are more fresh in my mind than they might have been. It's weird, weird stuff. You can't dance to it. And while it's undeniably interesting, with a few exceptions, it's not exactly the kind of thing I want to throw on and listen to all that much.
Allan Holdsworth - Metal Fatigue (purchased November 7th)
Allan Holdsworth is a jazz guitarist, and I bought this album to be a snob. I can admit it. I'm also taken aback that I paid $37.96 for this... He's very skilled, but really a guitarist's guitarist, and while I would like to be a guitarist, I'm not really, yet, and certainly wasn't ten years ago. I never enjoyed this as much as I pretended to. It was just obscure jazz to make me feel like a big man. For jazz guitar, give me John McLaughlin any day.
(Purchased November 11th)
An interesting aspect of this exercise is stuff I bought at the same time. This one makes perfect sense, but there are some weird combinations coming. I owned both of these albums before and had lost them somewhere. Loaned them out, sold them for drug money, whatever it was. I wanted to restock my Manson collection. Look, I love Marilyn Manson and always will. He meant a lot to me when I was in my mid teens, and I will defend him to this day. I really don't care what anything thinks, I think he's great. Portrait is fantastic. Nothing else sounds like early Manson, right after he had dropped the Spooky Kids part of the band name. To this day I can mentally press play and listen to that entire album.
Holy Wood is another great album, that, interestingly, was pretty shit upon when it came out. Basically, Antichrist Superstar was huge, and Mechanical Animals failed to live up to it commercially. Nobody really liked how he totally turned glam. So then came Holy Wood which basically sounded a lot like Antichrist Superstar, and he came up with this convoluted explanation about how the albums were supposed to go that way all along, it was a reverse triptych of concept albums, but I think most people didn't buy it. And maybe he did just make it up as he went along. With hindsight, though, most have recognized that Holy Wood, on its own merits, is one of his strongest albums. I think it might even be his best, musically, although it was never have as much personal significance to me as his earlier albums.
Speaks for itself, I guess. I used the image from the cover as a message board avatar for a while. This is actually a really interesting comic book. Although I called it porn in the introduction, I don't really consider erotic comics as strictly porn, per se. I never masturbated to this, it was just a compelling comic. I find sex interesting. The art is striking, and the story is... strange. For one, although it's supposed to be lesbian erotica, and is, ostensibly, created by two women (who share the names of the two main characters), it's more phallocentric than a lot of gay porn. Make of that what you will. Also, despite the fact that they snuck "college" into the title, I guess to play it safe, the story is absolutely set at a Catholic high school. Since most of it is dreams (both day and the other kind) of the protagonist, who, as noted, has the same name as the author, this is probably just someone making a comic out of her sexual fantasies, like R. Crumb used to do. I find that interesting.
I spilled coffee on this, and ended up replacing it with a fresh one. I still have both copies.
(purchased November 17th)
Made this purchase the day before my twenty-second birthday. This probably tells you all you need to know about me at that age, that this is what I spent my birthday money on.
Diamanda Galas, Throbbing Gristle and Foetus... what can I say? If you like that kind of music, you're with me, if not, what do you care? I will say that Nail is tied with Hole for my favorite JG Thirlwell as Foetus album. It's absolutely fantastic and I still listen to it regularly. I don't listen to Throbbing Gristle much anymore and when I do, it's usually not this album, but I still don't have a bad word to say about them conceptually. They're just more interesting as people and artists than musicians. Harder than hardcore, though. Litanies of Satan is one of Diamanda's most challenging albums (though not her most challenging, that would be Schrei X, which, believe it or not, was the first one I ever heard. I don't know how I persevered but I'm glad I did). I don't spin Litanies much, but as an artistic statement it's one of her best.
That Residents album is a collection of Elvis Presley covers. It's a middle ground Residents album for me, perhaps because I was a middle ground Elvis Presley fan. This album received a completely unnecessary and strange (so par for the course for the Residents) remix release, and I actually like that version better. It was remixed by someone called Paralyzer, who I think may be German but don't quote me. The remixed version of "Viva Las Vegas" remains one of my favorite Residents tracks.
Now as for those two Spice Girls solo albums, I was and am a die hard Spice Girls fan, and much like Marilyn Manson, I don't give a shit what anyone thinks. I was a completist, and that included all their solo records. Funnily enough, these two are my favorite (Mel C) and least favorite (Victoria) respectively. Although I dreamed of being Geri Halliwell, Mel C had my favorite voice of the girls, and I like this solo album about as much as the canon Spice Albums, and better than the one without Geri. The Victoria album is probably, no exaggeration, the worst album I've ever bought. It's bad. The cover looks so awesome, though. Still one of my favorite covers to this day.
Wayne County and the Electric Chairs - Rock n Roll Cleopatra, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult - I See Good Spirits and I See Bad Spirits, Nina Hagen - Nunsexmonkrock, Teenage Jesus & the Jerks - Everything
(Purchased November 24th)
Now this looks like a party! Wayne County, who became Jayne County, is a transexual, which I found to be pretty fuckin' punk. He was no Geri Halliwell, but I admired him a lot, and his music is actually really good. He was still Wayne at this point, so I used the male pronoun. I haven't listened to Wayne County in a long time, but I still have good feelings about him. Thrill Kill Kult are gods. Nina Hagen is a scary punk witch. And Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, besides having maybe my favorite band name of all time, were just damned impressive, although atonal and difficult to listen to. But it's no wave, what do you want? It's crazy that Lydia Lunch was only sixteen and could produce something like this.
(Purchased November 26th)
Hell yeah. One of the best combos I've seen. This is my favorite Diamanda album. It's the soundtrack of hell. The whole thing is creepy recitations of old testament prophecy in Latin, except for "Sono L' Antichristo" - I am the Antichrist. I paid $46.93 for this album and I have to say it was worth every cent. Although I sold all my CDs and went totally digital some time ago, I hung onto this one. Incredible cover.
And, for something completely different, the Xtina album is also an all time favorite. She has one of the most incredible singing voices I've ever heard. I'm in awe of her, and I can probably count on less than one hand female singer who impress me more than her (perhaps fittingly, Diamanda Galas is one of them). This will always be my favorite of her albums. People hated this when it came out, thought she was losing her mind. Looking back, it's getting more credit for the masterpiece it is. She was an adult, could do what she wanted, and owed no one an explanation. "Beautiful" and "Soar" are capable of moving me to tears, and "Fighter" and "Dirrty" (which by the way, pretty memorable video) are favorites too.
(Purchased December 6)
Fuckin' rock solid collection of electronic albums here. I'm almost impressed at my own taste. Yellow Magic Orchestra, I think, I first listened to because someone told me they sounded like the music from Sonic the Hedgehog. That's true. In fact, the Sonic programmers acknowledged their inspiration from YMO. They are absolute gods of electronic music, perhaps second only to Kraftwerk themselves. This was my first of their albums, still one of my favorites. They were also one of the first Japanese groups I got into, and I'm now a huge fan of Japanese music, so I guess that was an important step.
That Bertrand Burgalat album is so great, super chill French techno, the kind of thing you should be listening to while driving down a coastal highway at sunset in a convertible. I honestly never did find out much about Bertrand Burgalat, and never listened to anything of his besides that one album, much as I loved it. It may be time to change that.
Kraftwerk. The Beatles of electronic. Nothing really needs to be said, except that, although Autobahn is more well known Computer World is actually my favorite album of theirs.
You may not expect it, but I used to listen to a lot of rap. I don't really anymore, not nearly as much as I did, no particular reason, but I still love a lot of the stuff I used to listen to and will sometimes listen to nothing but rap for a couple weeks. Just get in the mood sometimes. This was kind of a legendary album before it came out. The record label shelved it because of the cover, then Subroc died in a car crash and K.M.D. was no more. It's a good album, but I haven't listened to it in years. KMD also featured Subroc's brother who would go on to become MF Doom, one of the most interesting hip hop artists in the world, for my money, which is why I got this. I was digging into MF Doom's roots. He's one of the rap artists I will still listen to semi-regularly, along with west coast gangsta shit. Gotta stay true to my roots.
And that was 2004. I'll probably do the following years in sections, since this was only three months out of the year, and if it gets boring, I'll edit it, but this was an interesting exercise. Coming soon: 2005, which will feature more than just music!
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Albums Listened to Today
When I started this blog, I wrote a full post every day. The blog itself was an exercise in keeping me busy. I was in a downturn and I needed to keep my mind occupied and my writing skills sharp. I'm much busier now, and update less frequently, to my sorrow. The thing is, my mind is no less active. Many times I think of things that, at one point, I would have written about. Now, they exist in my mind, and I call it good. "I know it. What more do I need?"
I recruited Erik to post with me, and that keeps me writing. To the same end, I will try writing some journalistic or diary like entries, like this one. In January 2013, I finally managed to do something I had meant to do for a long time. I started and have maintained a list of every book I read. At the end of the year, I should probably like to do a recap post. I will try to maintain this practice for the rest of my life. Next year I plan to expand it to films as well. I always do a top ten films of the year. I'll just expand the concept a little. See what comes of it.
Music should probably be involved too. Dreams and art. That's all that matters. I've been working pretty much nonstop these past few weeks, and will continue, so today, a day of rest, I spent mostly in bed. I watched Oliver Stone's JFK for the first time in I don't know how long. Many years. I liked it better this time around. I read 12 or 13 issues of Neil Gaiman's Sandman. And I listened to these albums.
Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats - Blood Lust
Uncle Acid is fantastic band conceptually, and they sound great too. All this sort of stuff is rooted in Sabbath, but Uncle Acid are a much more psychedelic band. They're kind of a mashup of 1970's drugs/cult/metal/biker culture. A little of everything, and it works like gangbusters. I'm a big fan of the vocals. They're high, not quite King Diamond falsetto, but sort of androgynous and unsettling. The lyrics are super sinister. Opening track "I'll Cut You Down", about lust murder, is probably my favorite.
The only critique I'd level at Uncle Acid is that they're a little more erratic than I usually like. I prefer my riffs a lot heavier, and, not unsurprisingly, this band is more LSD than pot. That's their prerogative, though, and this is still a great band.
Bongripper - Hippie Killer
Bongripper are a much more serious band than you might guess, based on the fact that they're called Bongripper. I never used to give much thought to explicitly marijuana based bands, but those days are over. Many years ago, something was opened up inside of me listening to Sleep and Electric Wizard (and yes, getting stoned), and now the weed thing is no different than any other motif a band might utilize. This isn't a blog to talk about the spiritual significance of weed, so I digress.
Hippie Killer is a good Bongripper album. I don't think it's on the level of their magnum opus, Satan Worshiping Doom, but it's a satisfying listen, anchored by the 16 and 17 minute instrumentals "Reefer Sutherland" and "Charlie, Burt Reynolds Has Got Shit On You". See, song titles like that from a band called Bongripper probably make you think this is a joke band, but they absolutely aren't. If you like doom or stoner metal at all, try Bongripper and I guarantee you'll be glad you did.
Cough - Sigillum Luciferi
Oh fuck yeah. Now this is a killer album. This is my favorite of all the albums I listened to today. Cough (I like to imagine their band name as the intro to "Sweet Leaf") only have two full lengths, of which this is the first, but they're shaping up to be one of the sickest stoner doom bands around. I haven't been this impressed by a stoner band since White Hills. I first heard cough on a split with Windhand, who are also a pretty great band in their own right, but overshadowed in this instance. I have nothing but praise. Check them out.
Cathedral - The Ethereal Mirror
A classic album from one of the founders of stoner doom. At this point they were more doom, less stoner; they would come to more fully embrace that style in the years to come. This is still a seminal album. I'm not a huge fan of the vocal style, but it's certainly nothing that ruins the album or anything. It's just a little too clean for my taste.
Candlemass - Nightfall
And speaking of classic albums from the founders of doom, here's another. Messiah Marcolin's first album for Candlemass. His vocals are truly operatic and take some getting used to (for me at least), but I think it works in the end. Candlemass, like all doom, are rooted in Sabbath, and really don't sound all that different from Sabbath Bloody Sabbath era Sabbath, so if you can dig on Sabbath style metal with operatic vocals, this is an epic album.
("Quit saying 'Sabbath' in there!")
Kyuss - Wretch
In their way, Kyuss are the Black Sabbath of the modern stoner metal movement. They were an amazing band and if you trace the roots of modern stoner bands, you always end up back here. Wretch is their first album. It's amazing. It's also frustrating. It should have been better produced. These songs are spectacular, but they should be louder, heavier and fuzzier. The true Kyuss sound isn't captured here, and it suffers as a result. Still, you can't hold back amazing tracks like "Son of a Bitch" and "Big Bikes" no matter how feeble the production is. Crucial.
Nachtmystium - Reign of the Malicious
Nachtmystium could be described as psychedelic black metal. A great, interesting combination. This first album (hm, I listened to a lot of debuts today), though, is just black metal. They fought against being called a black metal band, but I don't know what they expected, sounding like this. And look at that cover! Anyway, this is super lo-fi, grimy black metal. Think early Mayhem or Burzum (the reissue, which is what I listened to, has a cover of Burzum's "Lost Wisdom"). Despite being American, they sound Scandinavian, which is the best compliment I can give them.
This was the odd man out in today's listening, since it was all psychedelic/stoner/doom and this is straight black metal. I'd never heard this before, I'd only heard their later, more psychedelic albums. So this was good, just not what I was expecting.
Church of Misery - Thy Kingdom Scum
Back to heavy doom. Church of Misery is Japanese. If you don't listen to Japanese metal, you're missing out. They do some great work. I know of a few Japanese bands in most metal genres I listen to. For Japanese doom, I would say I prefer Corrupted, but Church of Misery adds a 70's biker rock aesthetic that I like, and they're obsessed with serial killers. Seriously, almost every song is about a real life serial killer, and they use tons of serial killer samples. Edgy? I dunno. It seems too thorough to be a gimmick. Church of Misery is into serial killers like Bongripper is into weed. Serial killer doom. Make of it what you will. This was a bittersweet listen because they're actually playing in San Francisco tonight. If I had heard about it, I probably would have gone.
Orchid - Capricorn
And speaking of San Francisco, that's where Orchid is from. It's a great city for bluesy doom, and that's what they do. Not to beat a dead horse, but they sound like a more folk influenced Black Sabbath. A good thing. This is good chill out music. It's heavy, but with a nice, folksy groove. This is a great album because it's very versatile. It's rewarding headphone listening and also great to have on in the background while you do something else. You don't always have to be way over the top to be awesome. Orchid isn't really that extreme of a band in any way, but I listen to them a lot. They're spiritual in that way. My favorite cover art of this crop of albums, too. I never get tired of goat imagery.
I recruited Erik to post with me, and that keeps me writing. To the same end, I will try writing some journalistic or diary like entries, like this one. In January 2013, I finally managed to do something I had meant to do for a long time. I started and have maintained a list of every book I read. At the end of the year, I should probably like to do a recap post. I will try to maintain this practice for the rest of my life. Next year I plan to expand it to films as well. I always do a top ten films of the year. I'll just expand the concept a little. See what comes of it.
Music should probably be involved too. Dreams and art. That's all that matters. I've been working pretty much nonstop these past few weeks, and will continue, so today, a day of rest, I spent mostly in bed. I watched Oliver Stone's JFK for the first time in I don't know how long. Many years. I liked it better this time around. I read 12 or 13 issues of Neil Gaiman's Sandman. And I listened to these albums.
Uncle Acid is fantastic band conceptually, and they sound great too. All this sort of stuff is rooted in Sabbath, but Uncle Acid are a much more psychedelic band. They're kind of a mashup of 1970's drugs/cult/metal/biker culture. A little of everything, and it works like gangbusters. I'm a big fan of the vocals. They're high, not quite King Diamond falsetto, but sort of androgynous and unsettling. The lyrics are super sinister. Opening track "I'll Cut You Down", about lust murder, is probably my favorite.
The only critique I'd level at Uncle Acid is that they're a little more erratic than I usually like. I prefer my riffs a lot heavier, and, not unsurprisingly, this band is more LSD than pot. That's their prerogative, though, and this is still a great band.
Bongripper are a much more serious band than you might guess, based on the fact that they're called Bongripper. I never used to give much thought to explicitly marijuana based bands, but those days are over. Many years ago, something was opened up inside of me listening to Sleep and Electric Wizard (and yes, getting stoned), and now the weed thing is no different than any other motif a band might utilize. This isn't a blog to talk about the spiritual significance of weed, so I digress.
Hippie Killer is a good Bongripper album. I don't think it's on the level of their magnum opus, Satan Worshiping Doom, but it's a satisfying listen, anchored by the 16 and 17 minute instrumentals "Reefer Sutherland" and "Charlie, Burt Reynolds Has Got Shit On You". See, song titles like that from a band called Bongripper probably make you think this is a joke band, but they absolutely aren't. If you like doom or stoner metal at all, try Bongripper and I guarantee you'll be glad you did.
Oh fuck yeah. Now this is a killer album. This is my favorite of all the albums I listened to today. Cough (I like to imagine their band name as the intro to "Sweet Leaf") only have two full lengths, of which this is the first, but they're shaping up to be one of the sickest stoner doom bands around. I haven't been this impressed by a stoner band since White Hills. I first heard cough on a split with Windhand, who are also a pretty great band in their own right, but overshadowed in this instance. I have nothing but praise. Check them out.
A classic album from one of the founders of stoner doom. At this point they were more doom, less stoner; they would come to more fully embrace that style in the years to come. This is still a seminal album. I'm not a huge fan of the vocal style, but it's certainly nothing that ruins the album or anything. It's just a little too clean for my taste.
And speaking of classic albums from the founders of doom, here's another. Messiah Marcolin's first album for Candlemass. His vocals are truly operatic and take some getting used to (for me at least), but I think it works in the end. Candlemass, like all doom, are rooted in Sabbath, and really don't sound all that different from Sabbath Bloody Sabbath era Sabbath, so if you can dig on Sabbath style metal with operatic vocals, this is an epic album.
("Quit saying 'Sabbath' in there!")
In their way, Kyuss are the Black Sabbath of the modern stoner metal movement. They were an amazing band and if you trace the roots of modern stoner bands, you always end up back here. Wretch is their first album. It's amazing. It's also frustrating. It should have been better produced. These songs are spectacular, but they should be louder, heavier and fuzzier. The true Kyuss sound isn't captured here, and it suffers as a result. Still, you can't hold back amazing tracks like "Son of a Bitch" and "Big Bikes" no matter how feeble the production is. Crucial.
Nachtmystium could be described as psychedelic black metal. A great, interesting combination. This first album (hm, I listened to a lot of debuts today), though, is just black metal. They fought against being called a black metal band, but I don't know what they expected, sounding like this. And look at that cover! Anyway, this is super lo-fi, grimy black metal. Think early Mayhem or Burzum (the reissue, which is what I listened to, has a cover of Burzum's "Lost Wisdom"). Despite being American, they sound Scandinavian, which is the best compliment I can give them.
This was the odd man out in today's listening, since it was all psychedelic/stoner/doom and this is straight black metal. I'd never heard this before, I'd only heard their later, more psychedelic albums. So this was good, just not what I was expecting.
Back to heavy doom. Church of Misery is Japanese. If you don't listen to Japanese metal, you're missing out. They do some great work. I know of a few Japanese bands in most metal genres I listen to. For Japanese doom, I would say I prefer Corrupted, but Church of Misery adds a 70's biker rock aesthetic that I like, and they're obsessed with serial killers. Seriously, almost every song is about a real life serial killer, and they use tons of serial killer samples. Edgy? I dunno. It seems too thorough to be a gimmick. Church of Misery is into serial killers like Bongripper is into weed. Serial killer doom. Make of it what you will. This was a bittersweet listen because they're actually playing in San Francisco tonight. If I had heard about it, I probably would have gone.
And speaking of San Francisco, that's where Orchid is from. It's a great city for bluesy doom, and that's what they do. Not to beat a dead horse, but they sound like a more folk influenced Black Sabbath. A good thing. This is good chill out music. It's heavy, but with a nice, folksy groove. This is a great album because it's very versatile. It's rewarding headphone listening and also great to have on in the background while you do something else. You don't always have to be way over the top to be awesome. Orchid isn't really that extreme of a band in any way, but I listen to them a lot. They're spiritual in that way. My favorite cover art of this crop of albums, too. I never get tired of goat imagery.
Monday, November 11, 2013
Meet the Residents
Getting to know your contributors.
Where did you grow up, and what was it like?
Dave: I spent my formative years in one of three places: Jacksonville, Illinois, various places in the San Fernando Valley, in Southern California, and finally in and around Tampa, Florida. Jacksonville is a small town. It's fairly bucolic, and as I look back on it now, I rather value my time there. I was experiencing an era of Americana that's largely gone. Four seasons; snowmen in the front yard during winter time, skipping stones in spring, climbing trees and lemonade in the summer, jumping in piles of leaves in the fall. Make of it what you will. This period was why I've always related so well to Calvin and Hobbes, Stephen King and the Simpsons. Two old school movie houses.
Southern California in the early 90s was fun, in its way. It's a much more media rich environment, but much more homogenized. I don't really like LA. I like going to the beach, and I like Disneyland and Universal and Magic Mountain. I like the museums and the restaurants and the book stores. I like a lot of things about LA, but I don't really like it. I wouldn't want to live there again.
Tampa was pretty hellish. Florida's a special kind of sickness. Sex and drugs, but I did watch a lot of movies. I raided the local video stores and attended the theater regularly, often alone, a practice to which I attach no stigma.
Erik: My family lived in Hayward, CA until I was 11 before moving to nearby San Lorenzo. Neither town did much to inform my taste in film or anything else. I'll get to that stuff later. The Hayward house concludes a dead end road, surrounded by junipers and sentried by a slate gray wall. To quote Daniel Plainview, "I think if I saw that house now it'd make me sick." The San Lorenzo house sits just off the main drag of nothing much in particular. At least in my lifetime, that town has never offered even the illusion of culture. Its only saving grace was the local multiplex, Festival Cinemas, being walking distance from my house. It's a Target now. I say "in my lifetime" because San Lorenzo's old movie palace, now a protected ruin roughly the same distance from the house going the other direction, closed the year I was born. From everything I've seen, read and heard, it was a beautiful building that served as a cultural, economic and physical center for the whole town. I'll die having never been inside it.
Was anyone else in your family into movies? If so, what effect did they have on your moviegoing tastes?
Dave: Not really, no. My mom watches a lot of movies, but I honestly think to this day that she has some of the worst taste of anyone I've ever met. I think her favorite movie of all time - legit - is The Great Outdoors with John Candy and Dan Akroyd. Now, granted, I do like that one, so I guess my mom had some influence on me. I watched all sorts of stuff, but I really broke into movies on megadoses of 80s comedy and horror. Probably the most influential thing my mom did was taking me to the video store and letting me get anything I wanted. We went to movies in the cinema fairly often, but in my recollection, I always picked them. I have some really fond memories of those early theatrical experiences. My first movie house experience was Tim Burton's Batman, which, honestly, is just too perfect.
My dad, on the other hand, is not into movies. He's very particular about content (for example, he walked out of Lord of the Rings, because it was "too dark"), but he'll watch one once in great while. We went to see Jurassic Park, because that's just what kind of hype that movie had, and he will talk to this day about how stupid it was. It was his go-to example of why he's not into movies for a long time, but I tried to explain, "Look", I said "everybody thinks Jurassic Park is stupid. It's an unusually bad movie. That's not what movies are." It's like watching an episode of The Monkees and deciding that music isn't for you. Still, if he sees a good movie, he can still appreciate it. He let me rent movies from the library, if they were clean, so for that reason, I got to watch a lot of classics when I lived with him. That was valuable. Most ten year olds would rather watch, I don't know, Three Ninjas than Inherit the Wind, but I didn't have a choice. In the end, I'm grateful.
Erik: My family likes movies about as much as the average family would. Nothing too complex or extreme. If my parents had any effect on my own tastes, it would have been through letting me rent almost anything I wanted from the video store conveniently located across the street from the house in San Lorenzo, The Warehouse. It's an Auto Zone now. Honestly, most of my formative psychogeography is a collection of things that are not there anymore. As for their own tastes, my dad likes action, adventure and war stuff and my mom likes romantic comedies, because of course they do. I didn't get a sense of what my sister liked until a couple years ago. To my surprise, she loves classic film, in particular anything with Bogart. She had paid me to write her paper for a film class she had no time for. "She" got an A on it. I gained a new appreciation not just for her, but for Bogart and Chaplin. Winners all around.
What's the first movie you remember seeing, and what impression did it make on you?
Dave: I don't remember it, but the first movie I ever watched was Commando. My grandfather showed it to when I was three. Even though I don't have a memory of it, I'm certain the influence is still felt. I love those kind of over the top action films, and Arnie is one of my favorite actors. I love almost everything he does.
The first movie I have a memory of watching is The Wizard of Oz, on TV in a trailer in Decatur, Georgia. It's one of the greatest films ever made, as most anyone will agree, so I guess there was no looking back. I've loved movies from my first experiences with them. It doesn't necessarily mesh with some aspects of my personality, but I still unabashedly love kids' and family movies (when they're good), so maybe it had some lasting impact that way as well.
Erik: I don't remember the very first movie I ever saw, whether it was a VHS, something playing on TV or whatever, but the first moviegoing experience I had was my parents taking me to Festival Cinemas to see Honey, I Shrunk the Kids in 1989 when I was 6 years old. Just to orient you, this was the same summer as Batman, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Do the Right Thing, UHF and many, many other, better movies than Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Thankfully, my second moviegoing experience soon after was Batman, because my father is not a toilet person. He was aware six year old me would love that movie. I did, and that experience probably shaped my taste in movies, certainly protagonists, more than Rick Moranis ever could.
My first movie rental experience was probably around the same time, if not earlier, but it wasn't quite as formative. My dad rented Big Trouble in Little China because he was a fan of Kurt Russell, as everyone should be, and I loved it. Consequently, I ended up renting it over and over as a kid. It's still one of my favorites. To this day, if you hum a few bars of dialogue, I can probably finish the scene it's from.
What's the first movie that made you think, "Hey, some people made this. It didn't just exist. There's a human personality behind it."
Dave: Interesting question. An answer wasn't immediately apparent, but on reflection, I think it must be Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. It was a very early one for me (I still remember it starting and my saying "I don't want to watch a movie about a bicycle race!"), and in the climactic chase through the Warner Bros. lot, I remember Pee-Wee passing through both a Godzilla movie and a Twisted Sister video, both things I was a big fan of. That put the idea in my head that there was a kind of back drop to these things. The image of a hallway behind the food court at the mall. You go in one door and it's Panda Express, and the next door is Hot Dog on a Stick. That sort of thing. These worlds didn't exist autonomously. They were all connected to our world. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? would have been another one like that.
Erik: That didn't happen probably until Pulp Fiction, which might sound like a stock answer, but whatever. Tarantino was the first director I'd known as an auteur before finding out about all the others that came before him. Then you realize how many directors have their own singular vision of the world and how many do not. It's a good shorthand for finding great movies: Who directed it? Oh, okay, cool, I know what that guy does.
What's the first movie you ever walked out of?
Dave: I've never done this. I've tried to watch Hatchet twice at home, though, and couldn't make it.
Erik: My girlfriend at the time and I ended up walking out of The Fellowship of the Ring because I had a nagging headache and she was too tired from work and school to pay attention, so really it had nothing to do with the movie itself. By all accounts, LotR is a fine movie (that I still haven't watched all the way through), we just weren't up to sitting there for possibly the rest of our born days watching this thing, so we left. We actually did this again the following year with another movie, but because we actively disliked it: My Big Fat Greek Wedding, because I guess there was nothing else going on anywhere in America. Not even halfway in, we sort of turned and looked at each other as if to say, "This should've been called Four Holocausts and a Bunch More Genocides," and we left.
What's the funniest film you've ever seen?
Dave: There's a short list of my funniest films: Kingpin, Wet Hot American Summer, Billy Madison, Spaceballs, Vacation and Christmas Vacation. I have a fairly low brow sense of humor. I think the hardest I've ever laughed at a movie was seeing Hot Rod in the theater. I couldn't breath. I was dying. It was one of the most unique experiences I've ever had. It's still a hilarious movie, but it doesn't have quite the same impact on multiple viewings.
If you force me to pick one movie as the funniest... it's either Kingpin or Vacation. I honestly can't choose between those two.
Erik: Either Brain Donors, a total Marx Brothers rip starring John Turturro or Hot Rod starring Andy Samberg. The former had me on the floor in front of the TV holding my 11-year-old stomach. The latter had me literally in the aisles laughing so hard my sides and face hurt. Dave will tell you the same thing, because he and I were the only ones in the theater.
What's the saddest film you've ever seen?
Dave: Oslo, August 31st. Movies about addiction hit close to home for me, and this is the most devastating and realistic depiction I've ever seen. Even with the emotional barrier of this being Norwegian, it just crushes me. Leaving Las Vegas is also incredibly powerful, but I think I'm a little too aware that it's a film (I had a similar experience with 12 Years a Slave, also monstrously sad). I'm not including documentaries in considering this question, but Oslo, August 31st may as well have been.
And hey, say what you will, but I say Jessie's song in Toy Story 2 is one of the saddest things I've ever experienced anywhere.
Erik: Schindler's List, probably. Or Blue Valentine. Or Edward Scissorhands. What? Nothing. There's something in my eye. Don't look at me. I'm differentiating this between "most depressing", of which the answer would be Michael Haneke's "The Seventh Continent". You don't cry at that movie. You're dismantled by it systematically.
What's the scariest film you've ever seen?
Dave: Three films have gotten under my skin like no other, and terrified me on a deep, psychological level. The Shining, Candyman, and Wes Craven's New Nightmare. All great films. The Shining is many people's scariest film, so I don't really need to justify it, but I think there must be some central thread that connects these three, because I really don't get scared by much of anything and they all hit some magic button in me.
Besides just being well made (and all three having excellent, scary scores, particularly Philip Glass' Candyman score and the justifiably famous Shining score), all three contain imminent harm to young children. The other, and I think more significant connection, is that all three films could be reasonably interpreted to be occurring entirely within the characters minds. In my opinion, there is truly nothing more terrifying than losing your mind, and this may be what these films were tapping into that got to me so thoroughly.
Erik: Jesus Camp. But seriously, I'd have to say Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, because it can and did happen. That is, if you believe Henry Lee Lucas, the man the film's, er, protagonist is based on. The home invasion scene alone cements this movie as some of the sickest shit ever, and it's seen as video camera footage after the fact. Fun Fact: Ottis Toole, played by the great Tom Towles, was later found to be Adam Walsh's killer. Honorable Mentions: Audition, The Shining, The Vanishing, and, you may be surprised to hear, The Strangers. As middling as that movie is remembered to be, the premise is still scary, and the trailer has maybe the best last line I've ever heard. "...Why are you doing this to us?" "...Because you were home."
What's the most romantic film you've ever seen?
Dave: Fight Club. Not a joke answer. Fight Club can be viewed as a love story between two extremely damaged individuals: Tyler/Jack and Marla. It's the fact that they find each other in spit of everything else that happens in that story, and that they are there for each other when probably no one else in the world would put up with either of them, is why it affects me that way. I've been there! I've always liked Tyler and Marla as a couple. Damaged love, if you look at the right way, is the truest love. Those are the relationships that touch me the most. It genuinely makes me happy that they're together at the end, after all they've been though.
Erik: I don't watch a lot of romantic movies, but I've seen the classics. City Lights is probably the answer, even just for the ending. It's devastatingly sad, but holy shit is that the most romantic thing I've ever seen. Leave it to Chaplin.
What's the first television show you ever saw that made you think television could be more than entertainment?
Dave: I would have to say it's The Simpsons. The Simpsons during it's peak (in my estimation, seasons three to nine) was so good it transcended television and entertainment, and became sublime art. I would hold nearly any work of visual arts up to that period of the Simpsons, I really would. It worked on more levels than Frogger.
The first dramatic show I got really into was Oz, and then by the time I watched The Wire, there was no turning back. TV could be every bit as good as film.
Erik: Excluding educational shows I watched as a little kid and early reality shows like COPS, I guess The Simpsons was the first show I remember having really smart humor that wasn't necessarily for kids and opened up my intellectual curiosity about former presidents and old timey remedies. As far as a fictional show I could point out as holding up a mirror to reality or at least elevating its genre, probably Oz, because I never watched The Sopranos. If I had watched it when it was on, I would have told you The Wire. I'd say the latest example of how goddamn good TV can be is Breaking Bad. Honorable mentions: Star Trek: The Next Generation and Futurama.
What book do you think about or revisit the most?
Dave: Daniel Quinn's Ishmael trilogy changed my life, and I honestly interpret everything differently after reading it. The principals contained are daily considerations, really.
I read Stephen King's IT maybe once a year or so. I often revisit David Foster Wallace's non-fiction; it seems like the more I learn, the better I appreciate it. On that note, I've read American Psycho three times and interpreted it radically differently each time. Hogg is never far from me.
Erik: Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. If you've never read it, it's basically Moby Dick meets Paradise Lost in the Old West. It's an epic nightmare about humanity that a lot of people have a hard time getting through, due either to the extreme violence or the endless descriptions of the landscape. I happened to take to it and was able to just eat the language. Read it before McCarthy dies and everyone else lies about having read it.
What album or recording artist have you listened to the most, and why?
Dave: It's a toss up between Black Sabbath and Guns 'n' Roses. Why? There's just no better band, in my opinion. They're both my favorite band, I can't hold one over the other. Aphex Twin would probably come in second. If you factor in the various projects he's worked with, Trent Reznor would be on the list as well.
Brian Eno is getting up there too, although I haven't been listening to him for as long.
I think my currently most played albums are Brian Eno's Thursday Afternoon, Sleep's Dopesmoker and The Social Network soundtrack.
Erik: Black Flag, probably. Having played in punk bands for ten or so years, they've informed a lot of what kind of person I am. When I was 15 I watched The Decline of Western Civilization and later read Get in the Van by Henry Rollins and was blown away by the amount of hard work, range of musical output, levels of hostility and depths of poverty they dealt with the entire way through. They did what they did and took no shit from anyone
Is there a movie that you think is great, or powerful, or perfect, but that you never especially want to see again, and why?
Dave: Honestly no. I'm not wired that way. Maybe if it were really, really long, like Bela Tarr's Satantango, but I haven't seen that one yet, and I haven't had this experience yet.
Erik: 12 Years a Slave. I saw it with an almost full, almost entirely white audience. One black woman in attendance. The movie was extremely well-made and is an important film that will probably win a lot of awards. Watching it felt like penance.
What movie have you seen more times than any other?
Dave: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I've seen it well over two hundred times. There were long periods where I would watch it every day, sometimes more than once in a day. Sometimes more than once in a row.
For theatrical viewing, the record is Con Air with six.
Erik: John Carpenter's The Thing. No question. It's a perfect horror film with airtight storytelling logic and incredible special effects, not to mention the most nihilistic ending you could invent. I did a list post last time where I said the film's protagonist, R.J. MacReady, was the one character in that list I was closest to in personality. Make of that what you will.
What was your first R-rated movie, and did you like it?
Dave: It was the aforementioned Commando. One that I have a memory of, I'm not sure. I was allowed to watch R rated movies as a kid, so I didn't have a rite of passage experience in that way. The first movie I can remember watching and thinking "Wow, this is really not for kids, I can't believe I'm allowed to watch this." was probably either Toxic Avenger or RoboCop. Both favorites to this day. The first movie that kind of disturbed me was, believe it or not, Maximum Overdrive. I like that one too.
Erik: My first was on TV. Friday the 13th part III. I liked it enough to keep watching the marathon, but I was young enough to where I had trouble sleeping after I watched them. Theatrical: Terminator 2. Of course I liked it, I was eight years old. I can still watch it and enjoy it, despite the story's flaws and huge gaps in logic.
What's the most visually beautiful film you've ever seen?
Dave: Speed Racer. Fuck the haters. I think Speed Racer is a legit good movie, but there's a couple other movies that aren't so great that come to mind here: The Cell. It's ok, not great, but man... what a visual feast. Incredible. Nearly as good (and much better as a film) is Tarsem Singh's follow up The Fall. Also, the saccharine schmaltz fest What Dreams May Come. Atrocious film, really, but holy shit.
Everybody says Days of Heaven and why not? Days of Heaven is beautiful. There's like ten movies I could mention and surprise no one, but I will say, since I love black and white, that my vote for most visually beautiful black and white movie is The Night of the Hunter. One of my favorite films, period.
Erik: Blade Runner. I should probably say Avatar, but I'm not gonna. Blade Runner premiered in 1982 when all effects were still practical. It's 31 years later, and it still looks incredible. The film is shot with such detail and such care that most anything else today, no matter how advanced the CGI might be, rings hollow.
Who are your favorite leading men, past and present?
Dave: Robert Mitchum, Klaus Kinski, Dennis Hopper, Toshiro Mifune, Vincent Price, Matthew McConaughey, Willem Dafoe, Michael Keaton, Brad Pitt, Ryan Gosling, Jeff Goldblum, Woody Harrelson
Erik: Charlie Chaplin, Robert Mitchum, Jack Nicholson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Idris Elba.
Who are your favorite leading ladies, past and present?
Dave: Natalie Wood, Kim Novak, Vivien Leigh, Barbara Stanwyck, Mae West, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Jodie Foster, Cate Blanchett, Kate Winslet, Natalie Portman, Charlize Theron, Tilda Swinton
Erik: Audrey Hepburn, Susan Sarandon, Helena Bonham-Carter, Michelle Williams, Charlize Theron
Who's your favorite modern filmmaker?
Dave: Werner Herzog, hands down. I also see anything from Errol Morris, David Lynch, Michael Haneke. Of the younger generation, I'm a big fan of Jeff Nichols, Nicolas Winding Refn, Gaspar Noe, Steve McQueen and Harmony Korine. Hm... Wes Anderson, Takashi Miike, the Coens and the Wachowskis are all also great.
Erik: The Coens, but Paul Thomas Anderson and Nicholas Winding Refn are right up there.
Who's your least favorite modern filmmaker?
Dave: Zack Snyder, hands down.
Erik: Michael Bay. I mean as a person. He's my least favorite person, but he happens to make movies, so.
What film do you love that most people seem to hate?
Dave: Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween. It doesn't get much more blasphemous among horror fans, but I prefer his version to Carpenter's. I can't really explain it beyond just saying that it's... more true to life? My own life, anyway. I do love Donald Pleasance, but it's got a bigger crop of actors I like. Brad Dourif, Sid Haig, Malcolm McDowell, William Forsythe, Ken Foree, Udo Kier, Clint Howard, Danny Trejo, Bill Moseley... that's a veritable Who's Who of cult actors. And "I'm Joe Grizzly, bitch!" has to be one of the greatest one liners of all time. I have nothing bad to say about it.
There's actually quite a few of these. The aforementioned Speed Racer. A couple I just watched recently were Lee Daniels' The Paperboy and The Informers. This probably isn't that unusual among people my age, but, despite the fact that I acknowledge Wizard of Oz as one of the greatest films ever made, I prefer Return to Oz with Fairuza Balk. Lots and lots of "bad" action movies.
Erik: Drive. It got shit on by people who thought it was poorly written or acted or whatever, which isn't the case.
What film do you hate that most people love?
Dave: I honestly can't think of any movies I hate, but I think The Hangover is okay at best, and I won't watch the sequels.
Erik: Titanic.
Tell me about a moviegoing experience you will never forget—not just because of the movie, but because of the circumstances in which you saw it.
Dave: The Dark Knight. I won't go into details because I covered it in depth in my ten favorite films blog, but just back up a few posts and you can read it. I've been to a drive in once, and saw a double bill of Beavis and Butthead Do America and Scream. Excellent one two punch. Uh... I once fingered a girl to orgasm during Casper.
Erik: I went with some friends to the midnight premier of Snakes on a Plane, and the line wrapped around the room. We saw some other friends of ours there and ended up all sitting together, taking up almost an entire row, right in the middle. The vibe of the room was great, because everyone there new exactly what they were getting into, and we couldn't wait for it to happen. While waiting, Jack took it upon himself to get up, stand in the center aisle and lead the room in a chant of "SNAKES ON A PLANE! SNAKES ON A PLANE!" The entire room joined in as if on cue. We were fucking STOKED. The movie was amazing from start to finish. The title card came up and everyone went nuts. Pretty much nonstop cheering and yelling for the rest of it. It was like the liberation of France. If that ever happened again for a movie I went to, I'd be very surprised.
What aspect of modern theatrical moviegoing do you like least?
Dave: Obviously the price, but also the theatrical homogeneity. It's all AMC or Regal. I'm fortunate to live in a part of the country with many, many local and independent theaters, so this isn't really an issue for me personally, but on principle. 3D is a blight, but when done right, it can be a good thing. Tangled and Coraline are two examples that come to mind.
Erik: Bad 3-D. It's the worst, because it's expensive AND shoddy. You can tell the difference between a movie made specifically for 3-D and one that was converted after the fact. Thankfully, those movies usually tank.
What aspect of moviegoing during your childhood do you miss the most?
Dave: I guess it's the way that movies seemed like "events" even though we went at least once a month or more. I'm still doing well. There's all those great theaters here, as I mentioned, and I go about once a week. It's still great. The sense of wonder may have diminished a little bit, but that's just part of growing up.
Erik: Not having to pay for them.
Have you ever damaged a friendship, or thought twice about a relationship, because you disagreed about whether a movie was good or bad?
Dave: Once I was on the phone with a girl I was dating. She: "Spider-man is stupid." Me: "Fuckin' you're stupid." She hung up. Fin.
Erik: Come to think of it, not yet. That's a boring answer, but yeah. It's not like we have to keep watching that movie every day.
What movies have you dreamed about?
Dave: Debbie Does Dallas and Wild Wild West.
Erik: Friday the 13th part III, 28 Days Later and Memento, that I can remember.
What concession stand item can you not live without?
Dave: I smuggle them in, but I love Trolli Sour Brite Crawlers. Even better is the harder to find Sour Brite Octopus.
Erik: I don't buy any.
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| Dave |
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| Erik |
Where did you grow up, and what was it like?
Dave: I spent my formative years in one of three places: Jacksonville, Illinois, various places in the San Fernando Valley, in Southern California, and finally in and around Tampa, Florida. Jacksonville is a small town. It's fairly bucolic, and as I look back on it now, I rather value my time there. I was experiencing an era of Americana that's largely gone. Four seasons; snowmen in the front yard during winter time, skipping stones in spring, climbing trees and lemonade in the summer, jumping in piles of leaves in the fall. Make of it what you will. This period was why I've always related so well to Calvin and Hobbes, Stephen King and the Simpsons. Two old school movie houses.
Southern California in the early 90s was fun, in its way. It's a much more media rich environment, but much more homogenized. I don't really like LA. I like going to the beach, and I like Disneyland and Universal and Magic Mountain. I like the museums and the restaurants and the book stores. I like a lot of things about LA, but I don't really like it. I wouldn't want to live there again.
Tampa was pretty hellish. Florida's a special kind of sickness. Sex and drugs, but I did watch a lot of movies. I raided the local video stores and attended the theater regularly, often alone, a practice to which I attach no stigma.
Erik: My family lived in Hayward, CA until I was 11 before moving to nearby San Lorenzo. Neither town did much to inform my taste in film or anything else. I'll get to that stuff later. The Hayward house concludes a dead end road, surrounded by junipers and sentried by a slate gray wall. To quote Daniel Plainview, "I think if I saw that house now it'd make me sick." The San Lorenzo house sits just off the main drag of nothing much in particular. At least in my lifetime, that town has never offered even the illusion of culture. Its only saving grace was the local multiplex, Festival Cinemas, being walking distance from my house. It's a Target now. I say "in my lifetime" because San Lorenzo's old movie palace, now a protected ruin roughly the same distance from the house going the other direction, closed the year I was born. From everything I've seen, read and heard, it was a beautiful building that served as a cultural, economic and physical center for the whole town. I'll die having never been inside it.
Was anyone else in your family into movies? If so, what effect did they have on your moviegoing tastes?
Dave: Not really, no. My mom watches a lot of movies, but I honestly think to this day that she has some of the worst taste of anyone I've ever met. I think her favorite movie of all time - legit - is The Great Outdoors with John Candy and Dan Akroyd. Now, granted, I do like that one, so I guess my mom had some influence on me. I watched all sorts of stuff, but I really broke into movies on megadoses of 80s comedy and horror. Probably the most influential thing my mom did was taking me to the video store and letting me get anything I wanted. We went to movies in the cinema fairly often, but in my recollection, I always picked them. I have some really fond memories of those early theatrical experiences. My first movie house experience was Tim Burton's Batman, which, honestly, is just too perfect.
My dad, on the other hand, is not into movies. He's very particular about content (for example, he walked out of Lord of the Rings, because it was "too dark"), but he'll watch one once in great while. We went to see Jurassic Park, because that's just what kind of hype that movie had, and he will talk to this day about how stupid it was. It was his go-to example of why he's not into movies for a long time, but I tried to explain, "Look", I said "everybody thinks Jurassic Park is stupid. It's an unusually bad movie. That's not what movies are." It's like watching an episode of The Monkees and deciding that music isn't for you. Still, if he sees a good movie, he can still appreciate it. He let me rent movies from the library, if they were clean, so for that reason, I got to watch a lot of classics when I lived with him. That was valuable. Most ten year olds would rather watch, I don't know, Three Ninjas than Inherit the Wind, but I didn't have a choice. In the end, I'm grateful.
Erik: My family likes movies about as much as the average family would. Nothing too complex or extreme. If my parents had any effect on my own tastes, it would have been through letting me rent almost anything I wanted from the video store conveniently located across the street from the house in San Lorenzo, The Warehouse. It's an Auto Zone now. Honestly, most of my formative psychogeography is a collection of things that are not there anymore. As for their own tastes, my dad likes action, adventure and war stuff and my mom likes romantic comedies, because of course they do. I didn't get a sense of what my sister liked until a couple years ago. To my surprise, she loves classic film, in particular anything with Bogart. She had paid me to write her paper for a film class she had no time for. "She" got an A on it. I gained a new appreciation not just for her, but for Bogart and Chaplin. Winners all around.
What's the first movie you remember seeing, and what impression did it make on you?
Dave: I don't remember it, but the first movie I ever watched was Commando. My grandfather showed it to when I was three. Even though I don't have a memory of it, I'm certain the influence is still felt. I love those kind of over the top action films, and Arnie is one of my favorite actors. I love almost everything he does.
The first movie I have a memory of watching is The Wizard of Oz, on TV in a trailer in Decatur, Georgia. It's one of the greatest films ever made, as most anyone will agree, so I guess there was no looking back. I've loved movies from my first experiences with them. It doesn't necessarily mesh with some aspects of my personality, but I still unabashedly love kids' and family movies (when they're good), so maybe it had some lasting impact that way as well.
Erik: I don't remember the very first movie I ever saw, whether it was a VHS, something playing on TV or whatever, but the first moviegoing experience I had was my parents taking me to Festival Cinemas to see Honey, I Shrunk the Kids in 1989 when I was 6 years old. Just to orient you, this was the same summer as Batman, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Do the Right Thing, UHF and many, many other, better movies than Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Thankfully, my second moviegoing experience soon after was Batman, because my father is not a toilet person. He was aware six year old me would love that movie. I did, and that experience probably shaped my taste in movies, certainly protagonists, more than Rick Moranis ever could.
My first movie rental experience was probably around the same time, if not earlier, but it wasn't quite as formative. My dad rented Big Trouble in Little China because he was a fan of Kurt Russell, as everyone should be, and I loved it. Consequently, I ended up renting it over and over as a kid. It's still one of my favorites. To this day, if you hum a few bars of dialogue, I can probably finish the scene it's from.
What's the first movie that made you think, "Hey, some people made this. It didn't just exist. There's a human personality behind it."
Dave: Interesting question. An answer wasn't immediately apparent, but on reflection, I think it must be Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. It was a very early one for me (I still remember it starting and my saying "I don't want to watch a movie about a bicycle race!"), and in the climactic chase through the Warner Bros. lot, I remember Pee-Wee passing through both a Godzilla movie and a Twisted Sister video, both things I was a big fan of. That put the idea in my head that there was a kind of back drop to these things. The image of a hallway behind the food court at the mall. You go in one door and it's Panda Express, and the next door is Hot Dog on a Stick. That sort of thing. These worlds didn't exist autonomously. They were all connected to our world. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? would have been another one like that.
Erik: That didn't happen probably until Pulp Fiction, which might sound like a stock answer, but whatever. Tarantino was the first director I'd known as an auteur before finding out about all the others that came before him. Then you realize how many directors have their own singular vision of the world and how many do not. It's a good shorthand for finding great movies: Who directed it? Oh, okay, cool, I know what that guy does.
What's the first movie you ever walked out of?
Dave: I've never done this. I've tried to watch Hatchet twice at home, though, and couldn't make it.
Erik: My girlfriend at the time and I ended up walking out of The Fellowship of the Ring because I had a nagging headache and she was too tired from work and school to pay attention, so really it had nothing to do with the movie itself. By all accounts, LotR is a fine movie (that I still haven't watched all the way through), we just weren't up to sitting there for possibly the rest of our born days watching this thing, so we left. We actually did this again the following year with another movie, but because we actively disliked it: My Big Fat Greek Wedding, because I guess there was nothing else going on anywhere in America. Not even halfway in, we sort of turned and looked at each other as if to say, "This should've been called Four Holocausts and a Bunch More Genocides," and we left.
What's the funniest film you've ever seen?
Dave: There's a short list of my funniest films: Kingpin, Wet Hot American Summer, Billy Madison, Spaceballs, Vacation and Christmas Vacation. I have a fairly low brow sense of humor. I think the hardest I've ever laughed at a movie was seeing Hot Rod in the theater. I couldn't breath. I was dying. It was one of the most unique experiences I've ever had. It's still a hilarious movie, but it doesn't have quite the same impact on multiple viewings.
If you force me to pick one movie as the funniest... it's either Kingpin or Vacation. I honestly can't choose between those two.
Erik: Either Brain Donors, a total Marx Brothers rip starring John Turturro or Hot Rod starring Andy Samberg. The former had me on the floor in front of the TV holding my 11-year-old stomach. The latter had me literally in the aisles laughing so hard my sides and face hurt. Dave will tell you the same thing, because he and I were the only ones in the theater.
What's the saddest film you've ever seen?
Dave: Oslo, August 31st. Movies about addiction hit close to home for me, and this is the most devastating and realistic depiction I've ever seen. Even with the emotional barrier of this being Norwegian, it just crushes me. Leaving Las Vegas is also incredibly powerful, but I think I'm a little too aware that it's a film (I had a similar experience with 12 Years a Slave, also monstrously sad). I'm not including documentaries in considering this question, but Oslo, August 31st may as well have been.
And hey, say what you will, but I say Jessie's song in Toy Story 2 is one of the saddest things I've ever experienced anywhere.
Erik: Schindler's List, probably. Or Blue Valentine. Or Edward Scissorhands. What? Nothing. There's something in my eye. Don't look at me. I'm differentiating this between "most depressing", of which the answer would be Michael Haneke's "The Seventh Continent". You don't cry at that movie. You're dismantled by it systematically.
What's the scariest film you've ever seen?
Dave: Three films have gotten under my skin like no other, and terrified me on a deep, psychological level. The Shining, Candyman, and Wes Craven's New Nightmare. All great films. The Shining is many people's scariest film, so I don't really need to justify it, but I think there must be some central thread that connects these three, because I really don't get scared by much of anything and they all hit some magic button in me.
Besides just being well made (and all three having excellent, scary scores, particularly Philip Glass' Candyman score and the justifiably famous Shining score), all three contain imminent harm to young children. The other, and I think more significant connection, is that all three films could be reasonably interpreted to be occurring entirely within the characters minds. In my opinion, there is truly nothing more terrifying than losing your mind, and this may be what these films were tapping into that got to me so thoroughly.
Erik: Jesus Camp. But seriously, I'd have to say Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, because it can and did happen. That is, if you believe Henry Lee Lucas, the man the film's, er, protagonist is based on. The home invasion scene alone cements this movie as some of the sickest shit ever, and it's seen as video camera footage after the fact. Fun Fact: Ottis Toole, played by the great Tom Towles, was later found to be Adam Walsh's killer. Honorable Mentions: Audition, The Shining, The Vanishing, and, you may be surprised to hear, The Strangers. As middling as that movie is remembered to be, the premise is still scary, and the trailer has maybe the best last line I've ever heard. "...Why are you doing this to us?" "...Because you were home."
What's the most romantic film you've ever seen?
Dave: Fight Club. Not a joke answer. Fight Club can be viewed as a love story between two extremely damaged individuals: Tyler/Jack and Marla. It's the fact that they find each other in spit of everything else that happens in that story, and that they are there for each other when probably no one else in the world would put up with either of them, is why it affects me that way. I've been there! I've always liked Tyler and Marla as a couple. Damaged love, if you look at the right way, is the truest love. Those are the relationships that touch me the most. It genuinely makes me happy that they're together at the end, after all they've been though.
Erik: I don't watch a lot of romantic movies, but I've seen the classics. City Lights is probably the answer, even just for the ending. It's devastatingly sad, but holy shit is that the most romantic thing I've ever seen. Leave it to Chaplin.
What's the first television show you ever saw that made you think television could be more than entertainment?
Dave: I would have to say it's The Simpsons. The Simpsons during it's peak (in my estimation, seasons three to nine) was so good it transcended television and entertainment, and became sublime art. I would hold nearly any work of visual arts up to that period of the Simpsons, I really would. It worked on more levels than Frogger.
The first dramatic show I got really into was Oz, and then by the time I watched The Wire, there was no turning back. TV could be every bit as good as film.
Erik: Excluding educational shows I watched as a little kid and early reality shows like COPS, I guess The Simpsons was the first show I remember having really smart humor that wasn't necessarily for kids and opened up my intellectual curiosity about former presidents and old timey remedies. As far as a fictional show I could point out as holding up a mirror to reality or at least elevating its genre, probably Oz, because I never watched The Sopranos. If I had watched it when it was on, I would have told you The Wire. I'd say the latest example of how goddamn good TV can be is Breaking Bad. Honorable mentions: Star Trek: The Next Generation and Futurama.
What book do you think about or revisit the most?
Dave: Daniel Quinn's Ishmael trilogy changed my life, and I honestly interpret everything differently after reading it. The principals contained are daily considerations, really.
I read Stephen King's IT maybe once a year or so. I often revisit David Foster Wallace's non-fiction; it seems like the more I learn, the better I appreciate it. On that note, I've read American Psycho three times and interpreted it radically differently each time. Hogg is never far from me.
Erik: Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. If you've never read it, it's basically Moby Dick meets Paradise Lost in the Old West. It's an epic nightmare about humanity that a lot of people have a hard time getting through, due either to the extreme violence or the endless descriptions of the landscape. I happened to take to it and was able to just eat the language. Read it before McCarthy dies and everyone else lies about having read it.
What album or recording artist have you listened to the most, and why?
Dave: It's a toss up between Black Sabbath and Guns 'n' Roses. Why? There's just no better band, in my opinion. They're both my favorite band, I can't hold one over the other. Aphex Twin would probably come in second. If you factor in the various projects he's worked with, Trent Reznor would be on the list as well.
Brian Eno is getting up there too, although I haven't been listening to him for as long.
I think my currently most played albums are Brian Eno's Thursday Afternoon, Sleep's Dopesmoker and The Social Network soundtrack.
Erik: Black Flag, probably. Having played in punk bands for ten or so years, they've informed a lot of what kind of person I am. When I was 15 I watched The Decline of Western Civilization and later read Get in the Van by Henry Rollins and was blown away by the amount of hard work, range of musical output, levels of hostility and depths of poverty they dealt with the entire way through. They did what they did and took no shit from anyone
Is there a movie that you think is great, or powerful, or perfect, but that you never especially want to see again, and why?
Dave: Honestly no. I'm not wired that way. Maybe if it were really, really long, like Bela Tarr's Satantango, but I haven't seen that one yet, and I haven't had this experience yet.
Erik: 12 Years a Slave. I saw it with an almost full, almost entirely white audience. One black woman in attendance. The movie was extremely well-made and is an important film that will probably win a lot of awards. Watching it felt like penance.
What movie have you seen more times than any other?
Dave: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I've seen it well over two hundred times. There were long periods where I would watch it every day, sometimes more than once in a day. Sometimes more than once in a row.
For theatrical viewing, the record is Con Air with six.
Erik: John Carpenter's The Thing. No question. It's a perfect horror film with airtight storytelling logic and incredible special effects, not to mention the most nihilistic ending you could invent. I did a list post last time where I said the film's protagonist, R.J. MacReady, was the one character in that list I was closest to in personality. Make of that what you will.
What was your first R-rated movie, and did you like it?
Dave: It was the aforementioned Commando. One that I have a memory of, I'm not sure. I was allowed to watch R rated movies as a kid, so I didn't have a rite of passage experience in that way. The first movie I can remember watching and thinking "Wow, this is really not for kids, I can't believe I'm allowed to watch this." was probably either Toxic Avenger or RoboCop. Both favorites to this day. The first movie that kind of disturbed me was, believe it or not, Maximum Overdrive. I like that one too.
Erik: My first was on TV. Friday the 13th part III. I liked it enough to keep watching the marathon, but I was young enough to where I had trouble sleeping after I watched them. Theatrical: Terminator 2. Of course I liked it, I was eight years old. I can still watch it and enjoy it, despite the story's flaws and huge gaps in logic.
What's the most visually beautiful film you've ever seen?
Dave: Speed Racer. Fuck the haters. I think Speed Racer is a legit good movie, but there's a couple other movies that aren't so great that come to mind here: The Cell. It's ok, not great, but man... what a visual feast. Incredible. Nearly as good (and much better as a film) is Tarsem Singh's follow up The Fall. Also, the saccharine schmaltz fest What Dreams May Come. Atrocious film, really, but holy shit.
Everybody says Days of Heaven and why not? Days of Heaven is beautiful. There's like ten movies I could mention and surprise no one, but I will say, since I love black and white, that my vote for most visually beautiful black and white movie is The Night of the Hunter. One of my favorite films, period.
Erik: Blade Runner. I should probably say Avatar, but I'm not gonna. Blade Runner premiered in 1982 when all effects were still practical. It's 31 years later, and it still looks incredible. The film is shot with such detail and such care that most anything else today, no matter how advanced the CGI might be, rings hollow.
Who are your favorite leading men, past and present?
Dave: Robert Mitchum, Klaus Kinski, Dennis Hopper, Toshiro Mifune, Vincent Price, Matthew McConaughey, Willem Dafoe, Michael Keaton, Brad Pitt, Ryan Gosling, Jeff Goldblum, Woody Harrelson
Erik: Charlie Chaplin, Robert Mitchum, Jack Nicholson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Idris Elba.
Who are your favorite leading ladies, past and present?
Dave: Natalie Wood, Kim Novak, Vivien Leigh, Barbara Stanwyck, Mae West, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Jodie Foster, Cate Blanchett, Kate Winslet, Natalie Portman, Charlize Theron, Tilda Swinton
Erik: Audrey Hepburn, Susan Sarandon, Helena Bonham-Carter, Michelle Williams, Charlize Theron
Who's your favorite modern filmmaker?
Dave: Werner Herzog, hands down. I also see anything from Errol Morris, David Lynch, Michael Haneke. Of the younger generation, I'm a big fan of Jeff Nichols, Nicolas Winding Refn, Gaspar Noe, Steve McQueen and Harmony Korine. Hm... Wes Anderson, Takashi Miike, the Coens and the Wachowskis are all also great.
Erik: The Coens, but Paul Thomas Anderson and Nicholas Winding Refn are right up there.
Who's your least favorite modern filmmaker?
Dave: Zack Snyder, hands down.
Erik: Michael Bay. I mean as a person. He's my least favorite person, but he happens to make movies, so.
What film do you love that most people seem to hate?
Dave: Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween. It doesn't get much more blasphemous among horror fans, but I prefer his version to Carpenter's. I can't really explain it beyond just saying that it's... more true to life? My own life, anyway. I do love Donald Pleasance, but it's got a bigger crop of actors I like. Brad Dourif, Sid Haig, Malcolm McDowell, William Forsythe, Ken Foree, Udo Kier, Clint Howard, Danny Trejo, Bill Moseley... that's a veritable Who's Who of cult actors. And "I'm Joe Grizzly, bitch!" has to be one of the greatest one liners of all time. I have nothing bad to say about it.
There's actually quite a few of these. The aforementioned Speed Racer. A couple I just watched recently were Lee Daniels' The Paperboy and The Informers. This probably isn't that unusual among people my age, but, despite the fact that I acknowledge Wizard of Oz as one of the greatest films ever made, I prefer Return to Oz with Fairuza Balk. Lots and lots of "bad" action movies.
Erik: Drive. It got shit on by people who thought it was poorly written or acted or whatever, which isn't the case.
What film do you hate that most people love?
Dave: I honestly can't think of any movies I hate, but I think The Hangover is okay at best, and I won't watch the sequels.
Erik: Titanic.
Tell me about a moviegoing experience you will never forget—not just because of the movie, but because of the circumstances in which you saw it.
Dave: The Dark Knight. I won't go into details because I covered it in depth in my ten favorite films blog, but just back up a few posts and you can read it. I've been to a drive in once, and saw a double bill of Beavis and Butthead Do America and Scream. Excellent one two punch. Uh... I once fingered a girl to orgasm during Casper.
Erik: I went with some friends to the midnight premier of Snakes on a Plane, and the line wrapped around the room. We saw some other friends of ours there and ended up all sitting together, taking up almost an entire row, right in the middle. The vibe of the room was great, because everyone there new exactly what they were getting into, and we couldn't wait for it to happen. While waiting, Jack took it upon himself to get up, stand in the center aisle and lead the room in a chant of "SNAKES ON A PLANE! SNAKES ON A PLANE!" The entire room joined in as if on cue. We were fucking STOKED. The movie was amazing from start to finish. The title card came up and everyone went nuts. Pretty much nonstop cheering and yelling for the rest of it. It was like the liberation of France. If that ever happened again for a movie I went to, I'd be very surprised.
What aspect of modern theatrical moviegoing do you like least?
Dave: Obviously the price, but also the theatrical homogeneity. It's all AMC or Regal. I'm fortunate to live in a part of the country with many, many local and independent theaters, so this isn't really an issue for me personally, but on principle. 3D is a blight, but when done right, it can be a good thing. Tangled and Coraline are two examples that come to mind.
Erik: Bad 3-D. It's the worst, because it's expensive AND shoddy. You can tell the difference between a movie made specifically for 3-D and one that was converted after the fact. Thankfully, those movies usually tank.
What aspect of moviegoing during your childhood do you miss the most?
Dave: I guess it's the way that movies seemed like "events" even though we went at least once a month or more. I'm still doing well. There's all those great theaters here, as I mentioned, and I go about once a week. It's still great. The sense of wonder may have diminished a little bit, but that's just part of growing up.
Erik: Not having to pay for them.
Have you ever damaged a friendship, or thought twice about a relationship, because you disagreed about whether a movie was good or bad?
Dave: Once I was on the phone with a girl I was dating. She: "Spider-man is stupid." Me: "Fuckin' you're stupid." She hung up. Fin.
Erik: Come to think of it, not yet. That's a boring answer, but yeah. It's not like we have to keep watching that movie every day.
What movies have you dreamed about?
Dave: Debbie Does Dallas and Wild Wild West.
Erik: Friday the 13th part III, 28 Days Later and Memento, that I can remember.
What concession stand item can you not live without?
Dave: I smuggle them in, but I love Trolli Sour Brite Crawlers. Even better is the harder to find Sour Brite Octopus.
Erik: I don't buy any.
Sunday, October 13, 2013
Because life is precious, and God, and the Bible.
Mr. Show was a mid 90s sketch comedy show on HBO, starring Bob Odenkirk and David Cross. It had four seasons. I think it was one of the most original, creative, funniest works of comedy I've ever seen, and was one of three shows that shaped my sense of humor to this day. Here are my ten favorite Mr. Show sketches, in ascending order.
Spite Marriage
Mr. Show highlights the absurdity of everyday life, and turns it into comedy gold.
Mayostard/ Mustardaoynnaise
All too true. This one is similar in tone to a lot of David Cross' standup.
Philouza
One of Mr. Show's more elaborately produced pieces, which only underlines how ridiculous the idea is. Jay Johnston as the spirit of mediocrity is classic.
Commercials of the Future (Globo-Chem)
This sketch shows the difference between expecting vulgarity to be funny in and of itself, and the proper use of vulgarity for comedy.
Wyckyd Sceptre
Tom Kenny passing the tape behind his back puts this one over the top.
Monster Mash
A perfect satire of pseudodocumentary style trash TV, which has only become more relevant in the fifteen years since this sketch aired.
Lie Detector
A comedy setup we've seen a thousand times before, filtered through the Mr. Show sensibility.
The Audition
A simple idea mined for all its potential, something Mr. Show did a lot.
Mafia Mathematicians
The root of why I find Mr. Show such a seminal show is the absurdist humor. This sketch may be the single most absurd thing they did.
The Story of Everest
The Story of Everest sketch may be the hardest I've ever laughed at anything. This is high concept comedy.
Spite Marriage
Mr. Show highlights the absurdity of everyday life, and turns it into comedy gold.
Mayostard/ Mustardaoynnaise
All too true. This one is similar in tone to a lot of David Cross' standup.
Philouza
One of Mr. Show's more elaborately produced pieces, which only underlines how ridiculous the idea is. Jay Johnston as the spirit of mediocrity is classic.
Commercials of the Future (Globo-Chem)
This sketch shows the difference between expecting vulgarity to be funny in and of itself, and the proper use of vulgarity for comedy.
Wyckyd Sceptre
Tom Kenny passing the tape behind his back puts this one over the top.
Monster Mash
A perfect satire of pseudodocumentary style trash TV, which has only become more relevant in the fifteen years since this sketch aired.
Lie Detector
A comedy setup we've seen a thousand times before, filtered through the Mr. Show sensibility.
The Audition
A simple idea mined for all its potential, something Mr. Show did a lot.
Mafia Mathematicians
The root of why I find Mr. Show such a seminal show is the absurdist humor. This sketch may be the single most absurd thing they did.
The Story of Everest
The Story of Everest sketch may be the hardest I've ever laughed at anything. This is high concept comedy.
Sunday, September 22, 2013
"I have to return some videotapes." - Patrick Bateman
This post is inspired/ripped off from a similar couple of posts on the excellent site Dinosaur Dracula. The dude that writes that site is more or less me in a different body. It's kind of freaky how similar our taste and experience are, so it's only fitting that I steal his idea. And I'm punk as fuck, so that's OK. This post is...
Exterminator 2 (1984)
Look at that shit. That's one of the most iconic images of my childhood. So much so, that I didn't actually rent this movie until close to a decade later, and even then it was a case of "I should watch the movie that went along with that cover I loved so much." Even at eight years old, I somehow knew that the movie could never live up to the cover, unless it was just an hour and a half of that guy standing there spraying fire over anything that moved. I knew if I rented the tape that there would be scenes of people talking and stuff, and I was not interested. I drew this cover over and over in school, sometimes adding speech bubbles that said "DIE, SCUM!" and so forth.
You can see an influence on some of the wonderful Doom cover art that would so overshadow those games. (Much of the reason I never got huge into first person shooters is that the games weren't as awesome as the box). The fact that this is Exterminator 2 is also a good way to mention the fact that I was often introduced to film series with the sequels, and the box art is a lot of the reason. Sequels often went more over the top with their cover art, because the films were usually inferior and they had to sucker you in. Clearly it worked, too. Everything from Toxic Avenger to Revenge of the Nerds, I saw part two first.
Monster High (1989)
Really inappropriate movie for a child, and there's no way my mom would have rented this for me if she knew what it was like. The cover looks fairly innocuous, and that's why I wanted to see it. I thought the idea of some demon slam dunking the planet was amazing. I wasn't a basketball fan, but I did have a fascination with monster hands. Is that strange? I was enamored with the Amityville 3D cover because of the giant monster hand sticking out of the house. Remember the scene in Ghostbusters where the hands come out of Dana's chair and hold her down as she's sucked into... the realm of Zuul, I guess? I used to rewind that and watch it over and over. I used to try to imagine the monsters who those hands were attached to, gave them back stories. I guess I was an odd kid. I particularly liked the one with two fingers and a thumb, just like the one of the Amityville 3D cover.
Anyway, that's why I was drawn to Monster High. I liked high school movies, both horror and comedy. I used to fantasize about growing up to be a cool high school guy (my idea of this was basically the scene in Billy Madison where he pulls up in the Firebird Trans Am blasting "The Stroke"). I also had a vague idea that there would be a monster in this who was big enough to palm the Earth. I suspected that it might not be true, but the "final boss is huge" trope was legit from enough video games (as well as Killer Klown from Outer Space, and Ghoulies 2) to give the idea some legs.
No. This movie is just tits, tits and more tits. It's actually really degrading and disrespectful to women, even by monster titty movie standards, too. The fact that "Monster High" went on to become the name of a line of dolls beloved by me and preteen girls everywhere is perhaps the final insult. I imagine some innocent child stumbling across this in a video store and being traumatized, but then I remember that there aren't video stores anymore.
I Spit on Your Grave (1978)
Oh man. This movie. I was definitely not allowed to watch this as a kid. I did rent it from Video View much later, but the box was an iconic image of my youth. It was on a high shelf, probably due to the content, but also because it was in an oversized box for some reason. To address the film itself, this is sort of the reverse of Monster High. You see this box and you're struck by two things: the title (had to be my first exposure to "death metal song titles". Just words strung together in that way to form that kind of sentiment. You know what I mean, I hope. I had never seen anything like before), and "Nice ass." You might think it's a sexy times movies, but it's so not. You watch this and there's a rape scene that, for my money, is the most harrowing and difficult to watch from any movie, worse than Irreversible or The Accused, and then just the most brutal, cringe inducing savage violence and death. And then it's over. I honestly can't think of many fictional films that have this kind of visceral impact. Maybe Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, and even that is somewhat diminished by the fact that Michael Rooker went on to become a well known actor.
Some say the film is feminist, and this argument is supported by the fact that the rape in this movie is not sexualized at all. If you're titillated by I Spit on Your Grave, you're dangerous. So why the cover art? It's so misleading. And, as a standalone, it is a great shot. People remember it. For evidence of this, there were quite a few rip offs of this film made (I Piss on Your Grave, I Spit on Your Naked Corpse, etc., as well as the utterly tasteless 2010 remake), and every single one of them has a sexy girl's ass on the cover. So, sex and violence, unforgettable title... looks like one of the most memorable, best designed covers of all time. I'd hang the poster on my wall. So why is it attached to one of the most soul eviscerating films ever made? Because God is dead and we're alone.
Faces of Death IV (1990)
Speaking of heavy metal, I'm using part 4 here, but this could really be any of the Faces of Death series. I could only find the DVD cover, but the VHS box art looked the same. I wanted to rent Faces of Death because of it's amazing death metal artwork, but I was told I couldn't because it contained real footage of people dying, and was a sick movie. Of course, this skyrocketed it to the top of my list of things I had to see. Matt in the previously mentioned Dinosaur Dracula article makes a point that's very applicable here, so I'm just going to quote him:
"As a kid, I never realized that movies like this only appealed to a certain segment of adults. I just assumed that all adults watched this stuff, and that there was nothing “weird” about it. It almost seemed like a rite of passage, and I guess it was, but certainly not in the way that I imagined.
I’d spy on the gory horror movies, and the purely adult movies, and the ones (like Slashdance) that mixed the two, and be simultaneously horrified and exhilarated by the thought that, someday, my time would come. As sure as I’d have to get my driver’s license, I’d have to watch movies about demons ripping naked people in half and eating whatever spilled out. It was a strange feeling that’s hard to put into words. Hopefully, many of you get it."
I so get it. I felt exactly that same way. I used to imagine growing up and renting porno tapes when I didn't even know what porno tapes were. I just knew they had something to do with sex (I also didn't know what that was), but it was something that adults did, so it was something I was going to do. Faces of Death was that exact same way. I used to watch tons of horror movies, but this was where I got the idea that there were scary movies for kids, and there were also scary movies for teens (which is what I watched, and many of my classmates weren't allowed to see these), but that there were also really bad movies that you had to be a grown ass adult to watch. And I couldn't wait. I had no idea what they were, but I wanted to be first in line.
Of course, when I actually saw Faces of Death, it was the corniest, fakest thing you can imagine. I actually purchased Faces of Death IV from Video View on the dark day they went out of business (the space became a fucking nail salon), and it's probably the funniest entry in the series. The original host, Dr. Gross (haw haw) is gone and a new bug eyed doctor has taken his place. He's a terrible actor, and he has a lava lamp in his office. The film closes with a song (!) which I have embedded below. Just let this wash over you, and be sure to take note of some of those names.
Return of the Living Dead (1985)
I don't need to say much about Return of the Living Dead because anyone who's even slightly interested in this sort of stuff has seen it. I just have to say that it may well be the coolest box cover of all time. At my local, they actually had a poster up in the horror section, giving me an even better look at the most amazing artwork in the whole store. Remember back at the beginning of this post, I said almost without fail, the films failed to live up to the artwork? Return of the Living Dead is the film that made me have to include that "almost".
It's truly a miraculous film. It hits you with an untouchable cover, a cover that's impossible to live up to, and then it fucking lives up to it. I can only compare the experience to the first time I heard of GG Allin. "You won't believe it. This guy comes out naked, takes a shit on stage, beats up the audience and rolls around in broken glass." and I'm like "Okay, I'm sure this guy's out there, but there's no way he can live up to hype like that." and then you see him and he's even better than the impossible hype. Return of the Living Dead is like that. It has everything. It's funny, gross, sexy and punk as fuck. I didn't really realize it until writing this blog, but if I had to sum up my personality in one movie, Return of the Living Dead is a damn good choice.
I suppose it's only fitting that they changed the godlike cover art for the special edition DVD. Return is a product of its time, and if you didn't come to it in a mom and pop video store (or a grindhouse theater), you can enjoy it, but it's not really your thing. I think I've just talked myself into a RotLD tattoo.
VIDEO STORE MEMORIES
I grew up loving video stores. When I 5/6/7/8 years old, I lived in a small town in Illinois (Jacksonville, birthplace of the Ferris Wheel and Ken Norton, and immortalized on Sufjan Stevens' Come On Feel the Illinoise album). There was no Blockbuster, but we had two mom and pop video stores. They each carried both VHS and Beta, to give you an idea of what an old man I am. There was Stars and Stripes Video, and I can't remember the name of the other one. The nameless one had a hook hanging below each box cover, and there was a red and a yellow tag hanging on it, red for VHS, yellow for Beta.
It was an in store play in Stars and Stripes Video that first made me fall in love with The Little Mermaid, but other than that, I didn't spend too much time in the kids section. I rented every wrestling tape in the store, tons of comedy of varying quality (my holy trinity were Chevy Chase, Bill Murray and John Candy), and horror. I'm a horror nerd, and a lot of it is due to these video store experiences. I'd stare at the crazy box art and imagine what kind of insanity these movies contained. I was allowed to rent horror tapes, even R rated ones, but there was some limit. To me it seems like an arbitrary limit (I was allowed to watch Hellraiser but not Nightmare on Elm St.), but that only lent some of the forbidden titles more of a mystique. Almost without fail, the film failed to live up to its amazing box art when I actually ended up seeing it.
When I was a little older, 13/14/15, I lived in Land O' Lakes, Florida. Mash up Bully and Gummo and that was Land O' Lakes. Land O' Lakes had Video View, the kind of video store nerds dream of. It had all the pop culture obscura you could wish for. It had a coin op vending machine with holographic WWF stickers that were at least 10 years out of date. They even had a video there which I can't even find referenced on the internet. It was called Faces of Torture and consisted of really bad special effects of stuff like guys with their eyes bugging out and dams breaking and flooding towns and nails driven through hands. There was footage of Marilyn Monroe doing some tame nude modeling while a devil voiced narrator talks over it: "Oh Norma Jean, what have you let them turn you into?" and some interview footage with James Dean talking about racing cars with weird echo and effects laid over it.
It also had a legit porn section. I never actually went it there, but it is a transition to mention the somewhat erotic element of these movies. Like a lot of people my age (ie, those who came of age pre-internet) a lot of my sexual awakening was by way of gore movies (so of course I'm very well adjusted today). Sex and violence go together like beans and weenies. And again, a lot of it was just the cover art. They don't make 'em like this anymore. Here's five VHS covers I have a special relationship with:
Look at that shit. That's one of the most iconic images of my childhood. So much so, that I didn't actually rent this movie until close to a decade later, and even then it was a case of "I should watch the movie that went along with that cover I loved so much." Even at eight years old, I somehow knew that the movie could never live up to the cover, unless it was just an hour and a half of that guy standing there spraying fire over anything that moved. I knew if I rented the tape that there would be scenes of people talking and stuff, and I was not interested. I drew this cover over and over in school, sometimes adding speech bubbles that said "DIE, SCUM!" and so forth.
You can see an influence on some of the wonderful Doom cover art that would so overshadow those games. (Much of the reason I never got huge into first person shooters is that the games weren't as awesome as the box). The fact that this is Exterminator 2 is also a good way to mention the fact that I was often introduced to film series with the sequels, and the box art is a lot of the reason. Sequels often went more over the top with their cover art, because the films were usually inferior and they had to sucker you in. Clearly it worked, too. Everything from Toxic Avenger to Revenge of the Nerds, I saw part two first.
Really inappropriate movie for a child, and there's no way my mom would have rented this for me if she knew what it was like. The cover looks fairly innocuous, and that's why I wanted to see it. I thought the idea of some demon slam dunking the planet was amazing. I wasn't a basketball fan, but I did have a fascination with monster hands. Is that strange? I was enamored with the Amityville 3D cover because of the giant monster hand sticking out of the house. Remember the scene in Ghostbusters where the hands come out of Dana's chair and hold her down as she's sucked into... the realm of Zuul, I guess? I used to rewind that and watch it over and over. I used to try to imagine the monsters who those hands were attached to, gave them back stories. I guess I was an odd kid. I particularly liked the one with two fingers and a thumb, just like the one of the Amityville 3D cover.
Anyway, that's why I was drawn to Monster High. I liked high school movies, both horror and comedy. I used to fantasize about growing up to be a cool high school guy (my idea of this was basically the scene in Billy Madison where he pulls up in the Firebird Trans Am blasting "The Stroke"). I also had a vague idea that there would be a monster in this who was big enough to palm the Earth. I suspected that it might not be true, but the "final boss is huge" trope was legit from enough video games (as well as Killer Klown from Outer Space, and Ghoulies 2) to give the idea some legs.
No. This movie is just tits, tits and more tits. It's actually really degrading and disrespectful to women, even by monster titty movie standards, too. The fact that "Monster High" went on to become the name of a line of dolls beloved by me and preteen girls everywhere is perhaps the final insult. I imagine some innocent child stumbling across this in a video store and being traumatized, but then I remember that there aren't video stores anymore.
Oh man. This movie. I was definitely not allowed to watch this as a kid. I did rent it from Video View much later, but the box was an iconic image of my youth. It was on a high shelf, probably due to the content, but also because it was in an oversized box for some reason. To address the film itself, this is sort of the reverse of Monster High. You see this box and you're struck by two things: the title (had to be my first exposure to "death metal song titles". Just words strung together in that way to form that kind of sentiment. You know what I mean, I hope. I had never seen anything like before), and "Nice ass." You might think it's a sexy times movies, but it's so not. You watch this and there's a rape scene that, for my money, is the most harrowing and difficult to watch from any movie, worse than Irreversible or The Accused, and then just the most brutal, cringe inducing savage violence and death. And then it's over. I honestly can't think of many fictional films that have this kind of visceral impact. Maybe Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, and even that is somewhat diminished by the fact that Michael Rooker went on to become a well known actor.
Some say the film is feminist, and this argument is supported by the fact that the rape in this movie is not sexualized at all. If you're titillated by I Spit on Your Grave, you're dangerous. So why the cover art? It's so misleading. And, as a standalone, it is a great shot. People remember it. For evidence of this, there were quite a few rip offs of this film made (I Piss on Your Grave, I Spit on Your Naked Corpse, etc., as well as the utterly tasteless 2010 remake), and every single one of them has a sexy girl's ass on the cover. So, sex and violence, unforgettable title... looks like one of the most memorable, best designed covers of all time. I'd hang the poster on my wall. So why is it attached to one of the most soul eviscerating films ever made? Because God is dead and we're alone.
Faces of Death IV (1990)
Speaking of heavy metal, I'm using part 4 here, but this could really be any of the Faces of Death series. I could only find the DVD cover, but the VHS box art looked the same. I wanted to rent Faces of Death because of it's amazing death metal artwork, but I was told I couldn't because it contained real footage of people dying, and was a sick movie. Of course, this skyrocketed it to the top of my list of things I had to see. Matt in the previously mentioned Dinosaur Dracula article makes a point that's very applicable here, so I'm just going to quote him:
"As a kid, I never realized that movies like this only appealed to a certain segment of adults. I just assumed that all adults watched this stuff, and that there was nothing “weird” about it. It almost seemed like a rite of passage, and I guess it was, but certainly not in the way that I imagined.
I’d spy on the gory horror movies, and the purely adult movies, and the ones (like Slashdance) that mixed the two, and be simultaneously horrified and exhilarated by the thought that, someday, my time would come. As sure as I’d have to get my driver’s license, I’d have to watch movies about demons ripping naked people in half and eating whatever spilled out. It was a strange feeling that’s hard to put into words. Hopefully, many of you get it."
I so get it. I felt exactly that same way. I used to imagine growing up and renting porno tapes when I didn't even know what porno tapes were. I just knew they had something to do with sex (I also didn't know what that was), but it was something that adults did, so it was something I was going to do. Faces of Death was that exact same way. I used to watch tons of horror movies, but this was where I got the idea that there were scary movies for kids, and there were also scary movies for teens (which is what I watched, and many of my classmates weren't allowed to see these), but that there were also really bad movies that you had to be a grown ass adult to watch. And I couldn't wait. I had no idea what they were, but I wanted to be first in line.
Of course, when I actually saw Faces of Death, it was the corniest, fakest thing you can imagine. I actually purchased Faces of Death IV from Video View on the dark day they went out of business (the space became a fucking nail salon), and it's probably the funniest entry in the series. The original host, Dr. Gross (haw haw) is gone and a new bug eyed doctor has taken his place. He's a terrible actor, and he has a lava lamp in his office. The film closes with a song (!) which I have embedded below. Just let this wash over you, and be sure to take note of some of those names.
I don't need to say much about Return of the Living Dead because anyone who's even slightly interested in this sort of stuff has seen it. I just have to say that it may well be the coolest box cover of all time. At my local, they actually had a poster up in the horror section, giving me an even better look at the most amazing artwork in the whole store. Remember back at the beginning of this post, I said almost without fail, the films failed to live up to the artwork? Return of the Living Dead is the film that made me have to include that "almost".
It's truly a miraculous film. It hits you with an untouchable cover, a cover that's impossible to live up to, and then it fucking lives up to it. I can only compare the experience to the first time I heard of GG Allin. "You won't believe it. This guy comes out naked, takes a shit on stage, beats up the audience and rolls around in broken glass." and I'm like "Okay, I'm sure this guy's out there, but there's no way he can live up to hype like that." and then you see him and he's even better than the impossible hype. Return of the Living Dead is like that. It has everything. It's funny, gross, sexy and punk as fuck. I didn't really realize it until writing this blog, but if I had to sum up my personality in one movie, Return of the Living Dead is a damn good choice.
I suppose it's only fitting that they changed the godlike cover art for the special edition DVD. Return is a product of its time, and if you didn't come to it in a mom and pop video store (or a grindhouse theater), you can enjoy it, but it's not really your thing. I think I've just talked myself into a RotLD tattoo.
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