No Weimar Reason

Posted on December 30, 2024 by stlcurmudgeon Standard

As the year changes and we face new challenges that try our beliefs and norms I can’t help but look back in history. I do this a lot. Maybe it’s because I am a relic or maybe it is because I read a lot of nonfiction. it could even be all the history classes I had.

Anyway, as I pondered this more, I realized how much time I’ve been spending reading about and soaking up the popular culture of the early 20th century Germany. I am referring to the crushing economic hardship of the time but more of the ambitious artistic and cultural stuff coming out then.

I had no real idea how much I had deep dived into Weimar Republic films and art until my friend mentioned this to me at the Hi-Pointe Theatre. For those who don’t know the era refers to the period from 1919 to 1933 when German was bustling with artistic expression. The Bauhaus, Expressionism, and booming film and theater scenes marked the era. Much like 1920s America, Germany at that time was roaring. However, it all came crashing down with the Great Depression and the rise of the Nazis.

This adventure started for me with The Man Who Laughs. I was browsing the library catalog of movies and remembered that The Joker from Batman was loosely based on Conrad Veidt’s appearance in the film.

Released in 1928, the film is filled with alienation and urban uneasiness. Just like 1920’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the film featured surreal sets and relied jeavily on atmosphere to set the tone. Veidt is the doomed Gwynplaine who has a permanent grin carved into his face at a young age by a Comprachico surgeon. Needless to say his life sucks. I had not seen it before so I checked it out.

The Man Who Laughs is a lot of things. It is a film about overcoming isolation, class and overcoming societal ridicule. Veidt is stunning the film. Released in 1928, It was based on the 1869 novel of the same by Victor Hugo.

Like other films of this time coming out of Weimar Germany, The Man Who Laughs has left a mark over century later. The movie’s legacy is its striking visual style, impact on horror films and comic book genres.

About a week later the Hi-Pointe featured a new print of Metropolis with a live score from the Silent Night. It was fantastic. The band’s score was not only atmospheric and sweepingly orchestral but alos klangly and metallic.

While this 1927 film remains incomplete, scholars have been able to piece a large chunk together with narrative cards. The missing footage was barely noticeable and was not a detractor in enjoying it.

Fritz Lang’s film remains a feast. His work at UFA helped usher in a golden age of cinemas for the German studio. Metropolis takes place in a futuristic dystopian city where the working class lives in grim conditions beneath the city, while the elite enjoy a lavish life above. It explores themes of class division, industrialization, and the relationship between workers and machines. Fritz Lang’s masterpiece also focuses on the rise of technology and its potential use for good and evil.

The St. Louis International Film Festival screened Nosferatu With Radiohead: A Silents Synced Film which matched up the German Expressionist film with Radiohead’s Kid A and Amnesiac as the movie’s score.

It was pretty jarring to see these two things put together. it didn’t make much sense, but hey, why the Hell not? There were times when the songs worked and a few times when the linking up didn’t work. But there were also times when it did, and those times were magnificent. Overall, it was an enjoyable experience. Although, I prefer the version I saw ages ago it with the Alloy Orchestra.

The idea came from a theater owner in Austin, Texas who has since mashed up other silent films with modern alternative albums.

Moving on into the real world…

I saw The Brutalist. It’s a very good film that could have been about 20 minutes shorter. The first half definitely dominates as the latter part of the movie drags a bit. The cinematography is outstanding. This film was basically architecture porn.

A Complete Unknown was pretty fantastic. I know everyone is a buzz about Chalamet as Dylan, but for me, Edward Norton turn as Pete Seeger made the film.

The entire ensemble was great. There’s not a loose bolt in the batch. Every performance is really good. This is also one of those rare times when the people playing musicians in the film actually perform the songs in a realistic manner.

What I mean is this – the actors play musicians as well as they act – this means you aren’t left feeling that the acting was good but the music sucked.

I thought the movie was also nicely paced as well. It begins in 1961 with Dylan coming to New York. This is a nice jumping off point since it helps frame the film in the audience’s mind without getting bogged down with useless montages or biographical prefaces.

I saw the 4k restoration of The Seven Samurai. It was fantastic. In case you missed it – it is coming to the Alamo Brewhouse on January 10th, 12th and 15th.

The movie still holds up. The sound is also fantastic. They really did a great job on this.

Next up on my 4K restoration lineup is Le Samourai. I got the Criterion blu-ray of this (yes I sill like physical media-so shoot me). This is a fantastic film and the restored print is gorgeous.

This 1967 French crime thriller, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, stars Alain Delon (who passed away this year) as a solitary hitman in Paris who is hired to kill a man. But, but things go sideways after the crime is committed.

I love how sleek and minimalist the movie is. I also love its themes of isolation play into a modern riff on the Samurai code. This is must see French noir.

The latest season of The Great British Bake Off (aka The Great British Baking Show) has ended. Although there is no way I could actually make any of this stuff I do enjoy the show. It’s kind of relaxing. This season had a really solid core of bakers that were likable. There was a doofus American guy who quit but that’s another story.

I started watching Fallout with no knowledge of the video game. But it was fine becuase the show has it’s own legs.

It’s not for the squeamish, but the style of it and retro ’50s kitsch it incorporates into the narrative is pretty impressive. It is every bit worth the hype.

Since people have been bugging me. Here’s my top 20 records of this year! I put them in alphabetical order.

1. Arab Strap– I’m Totally Fine With It Don’t Give a Fuck Anymore (Rock Action)

2. The Cure-Songs Of A Lost World (Fiction/Capitol)

3. Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds-Wild God (PIAS)

4. Erotic Secrets of Pompeii-Mondo Meleficum (Deaf Ending Collective)

5. Fontaines D.C.-Romance (XL Recordings)

6. Beth Gibbons-Lives Outgrown (Domino)

7. Kim Gordon-The Collective (Matador)

8. Hamish Hawk-A Firmer Hand (So Recordings)

9. Humdrum-Every Weather (Slumberland)

10. IDLES-Tangk (Partisan)

11. The Jesus And Mary Chain-Glasgow Eyes (Fuzzclub)

12. Khruangbin-A La Sala (Dead Oceans)

13. Pet Shop Boys-Nonetheless (Parlophone)

14. Jessica Pratt-Here In The Pitch (Mexican Summer)

15. The Reds, Pinks And Purples-Unwishing Well (Slumberland)

16. Ride-Interplay (Wichitaa)

17. SPRINTS-Letter To Self (City Slang)

18. The The-Ensoulment (EARmusic)

19. Yard Act-Where’s My Utopia? (Island)

20. Yea-Ming And The Rumours-I Can’t Have it All (Dandy Boy)

That new Cure album is fantastic!

Just a reminder that you can hear all these records and more on Juxtaposition on KDHX, The Free Design on The Face Radio and Antics on Louder Than War Radio.

Some Great Concerts I Saw This Year

Khruangbin (The Factory)

Black Pumas (Music at the Intersection)

Chaka Khan (Music at the Intersection)

Esperanza Spaulding (Music at the Intersection)

ABC (The Factory)

Iris Dement (City Winery)

Alvvays (The Pageant)

Squirrel Nut Zippers (City Winery)

Washed Out (Delmar Hall)

Franz Ferdinand (The Pageant)

Slowdive (The Pageant)

Buena Vista Social Orchestra (The Pageant)

Ladytron (Variety Playhouse Atlanta)

Jesus And Mary Chain (The Stifel)

The Cure (London – streaming)

Thievery Corporation (The Pageant)

The Talking Heads 77 reissue is pretty fantastic. The extra tracks are wonderful and the sound is amazing. There is also a full concert of included that sounds excellent.

I also really like the liner notes they included. The demos are also a nice inclusion as well.

The Federal Art Project exhibition at the St. Louis Art Museum is pretty great. It is there there through April.

I wish they would put the Modigliani back on display. It’s been touring for other exhibitions but it should be home by now.

One of my goals for this year was to read more each day. it has been terrific, especially late at night when I want to unwind. I am moving away from nonfiction since the world has gone bonkers and I cannot really handle more books on war, politics and totalitariani

Appliance News

There is not much going on in this department. However, there have been intermittent
issues with the pilot light on the stove. I’ve had to relight it several times over the last week or so.

I also have an air fryer. I look forward to doing some fun things with it in the coming weeks.

Home Improvement News

I got a nifty bankers lamp so now I can read in bed! There is also a new lamp in the living room since the old one was literally falling apart. I also threw out some crappy chairs that were literally on their last legs.

Every Damn Place I Like is Closing

The Fortune Teller, Frank And Helen’s, The London Tea Room, Pi Pizza and a lot of other great places closed this year. This is a reminder to support local businesses.

Is It Really Almost 2025?

As 2024 comes to a close I am still keeping my resolution to not deal with assclowns and stupid people. I am carrying a whole lot of angst about a lot of things into the new year but I have built a community of friends who I will focus on and I’ll do my best to make the world a better place.

I want to read more and get caught up on the hundreds of streaming tv shows that are out there. I also want to be optimistic but it’s hard when terrible people do terrible things each day.

I also need to get back out into the world and travel more. I have not t been to Chicago In ages.

There are loads of movies I need to see as well.

I am hoping that 2025 isn’t as dreadful as my foreboding intuition tells me it will be. I hope I am wrong.

Mope Springs Eternal

Posted on October 9, 2024 by stlcurmudgeon Standard

The dog days of summer have ended and autumn has hastily joined us. Sadly, the lazy, hazy days of summer included some pretty nasty storms. While the flooding in my neck of the woods was not awful, the high winds did knock some trees down. But what got to me was the humidity. I hate how cruddy you feel when it gets humid here in the big city.

But no matter the weather, I have spent time over the last few months mostly sequestered inside. This is mostly because I have had deadlines for outlets and radio shows to record for The Face Radio and Louder Than War Radio.

However, being mostly inside has made me mopey. It’s weird. I am a social person, but the stupidity of folks over the last few years has made me more secluded. There are a lot of dumb folks out there. So, rather than be around throngs of crowds, I am happy to stay in, have a sulk, some tea, and a book.

I have tried to remain upbeat. I have had an uptick in writing projects on my plate from Broadway World St. Louis, St. Louis Magazine, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I also had music and book stuff to write to. It’s been great getting some work from these outlets.

Theater season is in full swing. So, I am reviewing a lot of stuff as year winds down. St. Louis has so many independent theater companies doing amazing work. Please, go see a play!

I also wrote a bunch of opera reviews. I love writing those, but it sucks when the performances run exceedingly long. Mercifully, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis programmed a slate of productions this year that did not run over two and a half hours.

There is a lot of great music out right now, The The, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The The, Bug Club, Pixies and Cold Cave have all dropped new music. Here are some samplings.

I am beyond excited to hear the new album from The Cure.

On March 16th I saw The Dandy Warhols at Delmar Hall. They loved strobe lights. They were everywhere in their set. Dropping textured layers of feedback and psychedelia their set was tight. The band’s first stop here in seven years featured Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth, Godless, along with new jams like Summer of Hate and I’d Like To Help You With Your Problem. It was a good show.

The Slowdive concert at The Pageant on May 4th was a highlight of the spring. The band didn’t say much to the audience but didn’t need to.

They opened with Shanty and moved deeper into their catalog. Catch The Breeze was incredible as was Kisses, my favorite cut from their latest album. They closed with a textured and spacious cover of Syd Barrett’s Golden Hair that blew everyone away.

The band had never played here before and were clearly moved by the response they received. I last saw them in 1991 when they played a CMJ showcase with Blur.

Khruangbin played here on October 2nd and 3rd. I didn’t see them on the second night, but they were fantastic on the first one. From start to finish their set mesmerized.

Staged on a minimalist stage with video projections, they ripped through a tight set that featured a wide range of songs from their catalog, including Pon Pon, Les Petis Gris, A Love International, Shida, and May Ninth.

I expected them to be great, but they were astounding. It is a bummer that they played way the heck out in Chesterfield though. It would have been nice if they played closer to the city.

The return of Thievery Corporation on October 3rd was also a mesmeric night of music. The last time they played The Pageant was a fantastic night of music and this one also did not disappoint. They did a cool acoustic set featuring songs from Saudade. Lebanese Blonde was a personal highlight.

They adeptly mixed reggae, Brazilian, soul, and electronic vibes throughout the evening, creating a musical tapestry that had everyone energized.

Air streamed their Royal Albert Hall show. They played all of Moon Safari and a few other tracks. It was incredible.

Visually it was stunning. The modular set design really fit their musical aesthetic. They also did a great job of incorporating lights and projections. La Femme d’ argent, Remember and Ce matin-la were my favorites.

I hate Iron & Wine. They are boring.

More people need to use the word “gizmo.” It covers so many things.

I have started watching Zang Yimou’s films again. Most of them are not easily available on streaming services. Thankfully, the libraries here have a few of them. I saw 1991’s Raise the Red Lantern recently.

It had been over a decade since I saw it last. I knew Gong Li was terrific in it, but I forgot how great the entire ensemble was. Like his Fifth Generation compatriots, his films are gorgeous. The cinematography is fantastic. Zimou was a pretty big deal in the 1990s and early 2000s. There should be a proper remaster of his films, but the rights are in limbo.

I also saw The Outrun which stars Saoirse Ronan as Rona, a young woman who lived a rowdy life life on the edge in London. She’s a mess.

An alcoholic with a messed up family life, she returns to the wild beauty of Scotland’s Orkney Islands, where she grew up, hoping to heal. There she takes up a job working in isolated places. This allows her to reflect and heal.

It is a very intense film with beautiful shots of bleak and cold places, in the Orkneys. It’s a good vehicle for Ronan, whom I had not seen recently on film.

The 4K restoration of Seven Samurai screened at the Hi-Pointe. The new restoration is fantastic. They also cleaned up the score, so the music sounds incredible now.

The new print makes the battle sequences even more impressive. It feels more immersive than it has before. After 70 years this film is still great!

Farewell Uncle Bill’s Pancake House. I had so many late nights there. Each and everyone was a freak show. They served everyone. It was cool because when you went you had an amazing cross section of St. Louis. Punks, club kids, truckers, drag queens, drunks, burnouts, sports fans, any combination of which could show up for a meal. It was communal and awesome.

The food was not always the best, but the atmosphere was out of this world. Their pancakes were always fluffy and the bacon was never too crispy or bendy. They also had the best straight-up black coffee in town.

The attitude of folks there was also hilarious. The front-of-house staff just didn’t care. They were grumpy and took no flack from everyone. They hated split checks.

Until m y last visit I was not aware that it used to be a steak house and lounge run by the Cheshire in folks. Also, four of its owners were named Bill.

If you want some outside-of-the-box Halloween reading, try Ghosts, Monsters, and Demons of India by Rakesh Khanna and professional exorcist J. Furcifer Bhairav.

The illustrated book is packed with stories, folktales, and real-life tales of the underworld from all over India, including Ladakh, Kerala, Lakshadweep, Nagaland, Naraka , Tuchenkwaka, and more!

New Yorker cartoonist Ken Krimstein has authored a nifty new graphic novel about Albert Einstein’s time in Prague. Einstein in Kafkaland is set in 1911 as Einstein travels to the city to take up his new job as a professor of theoretical physics.

Teaching in the German section of what is now Charles University, Einstein has a lot going on. He has money issues, his family hates it there, and he must prove his theory of relativity. While in Prague, he crosses paths with a broad range of characters, including a young Franz Kafka.

Combining Krimstein’s unique illustrations with a clever narrative style, the book is a quick and informative read. You also don’t need to know much about physics to enjoy it.

The last season of The Bear was a nail biter. I did not like it as much as previous seasons, but I think it is still an amazing show.

I also watched Manhunt which is about John Wilkes Booth and his flight after he shoots Lincoln. The book was really good, the series is kind of meh. Tobias Menzies is good as Edwin Stanton, but he looks nothing like him in real life. The Secretary of War who hunted Booth had a serious beard and glasses. None of which we see onscreen. They also changed some things about Booth’s demise which bugged me.

Appliance News

A washer and dryer have mysteriously arrived in the basement. There is no clue as to whom they belong to, but so far, we have been able to do laundry without having to use any coins, which saves some money. Everyone has been chill about sharing it, and the landlord has not wigged out about using it. This is fantastic news, of course, because the coin-operated ones break all the bloody time.

An air fryer has arrived. It is an older model but it still works perfectly.

The biggest excitement however is the arrival of the ceiling fan. There has been a need for one forever, but it wasn’t until the centuries-old chandelier in the living room broke off from the ceiling that one game. Again, the property manager just said it was time to get one. Really, after a decade you decide this now? Anyway, the fan is pretty rad and it made a difference when it was super hot in the summer.

Fixture and Furniture News

The bathroom window was in sad shape. It had a hole in the frame and the wood was rotting. To repair it they built up around it. So now we can’t open the window. Plus, there have been issues with the new paint they put on it. The new pane is peeling off because they were stupid and didn’t use sealant. It has been two weeks since they came back again to work on it and so far everything is dry and not peeling.

A hinge on the vanity cabinet broke off and for a few days, the door was loose and wonky. The property overlord decided it was just better to get a new sink and vanity. This is a welcome relief. The only hassle is that they got a smaller one (24 inches instead of 30) so now there is some rearranging that is happening. While this experience has been a pain, the new facet is amazing.

The last bit of repairs (for now) was a step on the back stairwell. The stairs have been in sad shape for a while now. The black iron steps have had some rust eating away at them and subsequently, have been bolstered and reinforced over the last few years. But about two weeks ago the inevitable happened. One of the steps broke free from the foundation. Thus, the last rung of stairs is unusable. Luckily, the property manager had a contractor around who could fix it rather quickly.

I apologize for the long wait between posts. There is just so much out to see, hear and listen to. It is maddening. I cannot keep up.

When I set this up I was hoping to do it more frequently, but things keep popping up that keep me busy. I will endeavor to do better next time.

The Summer’s Is Gone The Winter’s Tuning Up

Posted on October 16, 2023 by stlcurmudgeon Standard

I totally borrowed the title from a Leonard Cohen song. Everyone should read and hear Leonard Cohen.

As the miserable heat of summer gives way to a brief autumn, people are beginning to go outside again. I am a little bit, but cautiously, because of… people.

I have been pretty busy. The blog has taken a back seat as I look for a steady gig and take on things to write about for more income. Plus, there is so much stuff to stream. The long and short of it is I am sorry to be so tardy with this.

This summer had a hot few months. Originally I was fine with that. After all, it is not snow or ice. The weird, colder spell in the middle is kind of weird, but also super nice. But now, there has been a break and it is not as muggy and nasty and crappy out. Hallelujah. That stretch of a week to ten days with the super high heat index was really a beast.

I am worried that our rather brief spring and summer means we may have a long winter. I do not want to see snow or sleet in the coming months. So, the seasons are a trade-off of sorts. All I know is I hate winter. And this year’s is supposed to be miserable. According to the Farmer’s Almanac, we are supposed to have a rough winter. Great.

Spring turned into summer and with those seasons came a sudden uptick in stuff I needed to do. I have had more articles to turn in and a few other projects have come down the pipeline. I am glad to be busy, but I am not thrilled with the arrival of the fall allergy season.

In addition to some articles for Broadway World, FEAST, and ReviewSTL I have been hosting a second radio show. It is called Antics and it airs on Louder Than War Radio on Mondays from 6-8 pm GMT or 12-2 pm Central time. Click here to listen to archived shows.

It differs from my other radio gig in that I do not need to run promo spots or reviews. It is more or less, a full two-hour slot of music. Plus, I can play longer music and make deeper dives into the songs I like. And there are less shenanigans to deal with. If you need a break from the station I also broadcast from, this is a nice reprive.

I also continue to co-host the Modern Musicology podcast. You should check it out, we’ve had some great guests on it.

Speaking of radio…Thirty years ago I was told by The Point that I didn’t know enough about music to be a DJ on their station. Well, looking back, most commercial alternative stations now are completely craptacular.

There has been so much music. I saw Sparks in Kansas City. They were terrific. This concert was fun and euphoric. However, I still think I liked their concert in Chicago last year more. it was more energetic.

In a weird chance of fate, I got an opportunity to review the Taylor Swift concert the night before. I was joined by over 80,000 other people. it was kind of surreal. I was only marginally familiar with her music, but I was really interested in the production itself. There were three connected stages, a massive video screen, lots of cool projections, elaborate sets, costume changes, and rising and lowering stages. It was a massive technical undertaking.

One takeaway from the show was how polite and nice her fanbase was. Another was the fact that she played for nearly four hours and showed no signs of fatigue.

A band that is buddies with T. Swift is The National. They dropped an album called, First Two Pages of Frankenstein. Now, they just dropped another album called Laugh Track.

First Two Pages of Frankenstein is solid, but Tropic Morning News is my favorite.

The album is pretty minimalist and it sounds just as intense as their previous records. Phoebe Bridgers and someone named Taylor Swift are on the album.

Laugh Track is more or less the same in texture and sound. The first batch of songs from it dropped a few weeks ago.

I like Space Invader a lot. I think it sounds like their older stuff. The guitars on it are also pretty good.

Louise Post used to be in Veruca Salt. Now, she has released an album called Sleepwalker.

I saw Veruca Salt open for that terrible band called Live once. I saw their set and then PJ Harvey’s and then left before Live went on stage. Recently, Louise toured for the record but it was a super short run.

Yard Act dropped The Trench Coat Museum a few months ago. It is simply epic.

Sounding like LCD Soundsystem and Gang of Four had a baby, this cut is deep. It’s got some really searing guitars, some bells, snazzy percussion, and a really sharp vocal delivery. I look forward to hearing what these guys do next.

In June I Saw Love and Rockets in Chicago. They were fantastic. They crushed it. I was really surprised by how tight their set was. They did play the hits but they also did some cool deep tracks and b-sides. At a time when everyone was doing a reunion tour, this one was really good.

The Theater Section

Opera Theatre St. Louis has come and gone for this year. I enjoyed the season immensely. I am looking forward to the upcoming season.

If you ever go to an Opera Theatre show make sure to people watch. The amount of 1970s polyester suits still in the wild is frightening.

I am seeing plays again. I am lucky that I get to review them, so if they are ghastly, I am not out any money. Nothing is worse than spending lots of money on rubbish theater. One of the best things about St. Louis that goes undervalued is our terrific theater scene. We have a lot of great companies doing terrific productions.

The best thing I saw in the Spring was the touring production of To Kill A Mockingbird with Richard Thomas. He was outstanding and the entire ensemble was terrific. I was pleased that it kept the spirit of the book. it is coming back to town next year.

I really enjoyed seeing Beetlejuice at the Fox. The show had a kinetic energy to it and the musical numbers were very good. It was a great opener for the Fox’s new season.

I am thrilled that The Phantom of the Opera has ended its run on Broadway. I know people love it, but I think it’s overhyped and tedious. It needed to be about a half-hour shorter. It just never did much for me.

I am thrilled that people are going to movies and live theater again. However, I wish they would remember that the time that is printed on that ticket they have is when things start. It is not an estimate or a five-minute alert. It’s the go time. But, somehow, there are always assclowns who come later. It is especially annoying when you have gotten all settled in your seat and then have to get up to accommodate some moron who has no time management skills. Oh, by the way, it’s really rude to come late.

Also when you come late and have to make everyone in the aisle move to accommodate you, don’t bring like 6000 things to carry with you. Especially snacks. And another thing…don’t talk during the show.

Let’s All Go To The Lobby

Party Girl is out on Blu-ray. This 1995 comedy starring Parker Posey and Liev Schreiber takes the spirit of comedies of the 1930s and puts it in 1990s New York club culture.

All these years later this is still a fine indie film. Ironically, it was filmed in Austin.

Trainspotting is getting a 4K restoration for a 2024 Criterion release!

This edition has a few new extras as well as stuff that was on the original Blu-ray release. There is also some sort of spinoff series with Robert Carlyle coming soon as well.

The new restoration of Stop Making Sense is fantastic. I had not seen the movie for maybe twenty years or so and was thrilled to see it has held up well as a concert film.

The restoration is fantastic. it looks and sounds amazing. Hearing it now in a theater with great audio really makes it a richer experience.

Seeing it now, I am reminded of just how great this band was. I saw them near the end when the were close to breaking up. They were good then, but nothing like this.

There is appliance news!

The black lining inside of the dishwasher was starting to come apart. I was going to buy some waterproof sealant and just that hold somebitch back into place. But, when I mentioned the issue to the property manager. She decided to get a new dishwasher instead. I was surprised because she is generally useless.

It should have been an easier process. But it wasn’t. The new one, probably bought from a second-hand place, was dropped off. The guy bringing it didn’t want to bring it inside. He wanted to leave it on the stoop and let me and my arthritic knee move it. But, eventually, he brought it in and I pushed the box into a corner. I had to do this because the person installing the dishwasher was coming the next day.

So, to make all of this work I had to move a bunch of appointments around. I wanted to be here when it got installed and not have the person alone in my apartment with it. Plus, I wanted to make sure the old one got removed and not left in my kitchen or outside somewhere where it would sit and rust.

The stupid thing is that the dishwasher we got doesn’t fill the entire space. So now there is a small cap between where the counter ends and the dishwasher starts. I am not quite sure how to fill it but it is a giant hassle.

Books!

First off, support your local library! help them fight the banning of books and be nice to their staff.

Probably the best music book I have read all year is Listening To The Music The Machines Make by Richard Evans.

It is a thorough examination of electronic music of the late 1970s and early 1980s. I am so glad someone else likes Telex as much as I do!

Nick Hornby is a fantastic writer. His latest book is a quick read.

In Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius, he finds parallels between the two artists and how they executed their craft. He doesn’t directly connect them to each other, which is fine, but he does fanboy about each and why their work continues to resonate and why it is vital.

His books are always well paced and this one is no exception. Told as a collection of essays, he touches on how common themes of social status, race, and education affected each artist.

Finally, people found a lot of things to blame the Cardinals’ crappy season on. I think it is the flurry of “He Gets Us” Jesus commercials. I will say this, these things are slick. They really try to draw folks in some seriously unsuspecting ways.

I think the commercials are really annoying and I think that they should not be on TV or radio. I mean, people of other faiths listen and watch baseball games.

But overall, this campaign is insipid, stupid and diabolical.

Vaxxed and (Not Quite) Relaxed

Posted on May 12, 2021 by stlcurmudgeon Standard

It has been awhile. I’ve been pretty slammed. I started a remote job and it involves a ton of writing and editing, which has kept me busy. I also wrote a piece for Sophisticated Living magazine and have another freelance thing that I am working on now.

Before I started the remote job, I finished two freelance gigs. One is with this woman who is a bit nuts. She has a foundation, and, to be honest, I am not really sure what it does. She means well, but I think she’s a bored rich person looking for an excuse to feel better. I’ve turned in all my stuff for her but am living vicariously by reading the insane emails she has been sending to the graphics team. All I can say is that if I ever get a lot of money I won’t be nuts.

On top of this, I kept my piddly retail gig. It’s only 15 hours a week and it gives me a little income in case the temp writing thing ends abruptly. The downside is that I have 3 coworkers who think COVID is nothing and won’t get vaccinated. It’s pretty infuriating.

Getting vaccinated is not supposed to be this hard. I had to work my ass off to get it scheduled and it was amazingly comforting to get it. There is an emotional release of anxiety that dissipates after you get jabbed. It’s a sense of relief, a feeling of security, and a renewed sense of hope that maybe, just maybe, you won’t die after all.

I am thankful to be fully vaccinated. Normally, I would not say I am not a joiner, but in this instance, sure, why the Hell not? I know I will probably need another booster or even a shot annually, but at this point, I am fine with that. This thing is bad news and it’s real.

On a positive note, it is good to see St. Louis begin to rally a little bit and become a community around getting vaccinated. I only wish the city would come together more, across aisle, boundaries, and classes. It would be so great if we were not so divided.

Having said that, the arts are doing some amazing thing right now and artists are not resting, they are doing some cool stuff right now. So are our local musicians!

It feels weird to go out into the world. I have taken a little ‘toes in the water’ dip and not a full dive with it. I went to a movie. Everyone was wearing a mask and there were only abut 8 people there. I also went to dinner with some friends, which was kind of surreal. The restaurant did a good job of spacing people out and the staff wore masks and weren’t messing around. Despite this, I am still not doing a lot of dining in.

I did go to see the St. Louis Symphony. I got assigned to review a concert and I must say, they were not playing around. No intermission, only 100 people, chairs marked for attendees and at least 7 feet apart. The ushers were on the prowl like circling vultures to make sure everyone was wearing masks.

I didn’t feel agitated or nervous there, but I did take more than one cursory look around Powell Hall to make sure I was really there, out in the waking world.

Overall, it is odd being vaccinated. I think there will be an adjustment phase for everyone and it will change depending on each person. But for most folks, there is a huge mixed sense of relief and frustration when you get your shots.

Being in a bubble has definitely changed me. First, I don’t care about stuff the same way. I mean, specifically, about the way I treat the physical. I can get books at the library or online, and I can listen to music online too. I love album art and book jackets, but somehow, the desire to have a bunch of stuff has been crushed. Mostly because I’ve been living in a finite space for such a long time and still want some room. Thus, the pandemic has led to a constant state of decluttering in these parts.

Decluttering has led to an ongoing excursion through the weird and interesting. There is stuff I forgot I had, or have not needed, or music I got from labels that I just do not care about, or, the loads of advanced reader copies of books I got from working in bookstores and libraries.

At this juncture, I think it is important to note that I am not a hoarder.

But back to my point….This idea though that we can just switch everything back on and get on with it is just silly. For me, it is all measured steps. I will go to the movies and eat inside more frequently, but only after I feel like the rest of the world, or a chunk of it, is not stupid and moronic. I realize this means I’ll be waiting for 65 years.

As a side note, there is nothing really good at movie theaters right now. I am glad I like art house stuff. There literally is nothing interesting to see in the multiple joints right now. Unless the screen an older film or something.

I’ve been doing a bit more reading over the last month. A lot of different stuff actually. I started with The Zealot and the Emancipator. It took a bit since it’s got some heavy subject matter. Sadly, I wish this book wasn’t so timely.

H.W. Brands writes really good history books in a way that is not dry or sterile. He’s been on a bunch of PBS documentaries and he teaches at the University of Texas. His books on Ben Franklin and FDR are both really interesting.

I have read a lot about Lincoln but I have not read much on John Brown. I knew about Harper’s Ferry and his dedication to ending slavery. I also knew he advocated violence as a means to an end. However, I had no idea how deeply committed to armed conflict he was and how determined he was to achieve his goals.

This is a study in contrasts between two men who eventually will share the same common idea of ending slavery. Brown is all in and in any way possible, while Lincoln takes a while to get there. As a result, it is interesting to chart Lincoln’s course to the presidency and his determination to abolish slavery.

There is also some intriguing stuff on Stephen A. Douglas. He was a Wiley little bastard. I knew about the debates and his avarice for power, but here, Brands really goes into detail about his meticulous plans for Kansas statehood and how shrewdly he played the North versus South angle.

Simon Heffer’s The Age of Decadence has finally been published here. It has been out in the UK for a bit now. Anyway, I have started it and it’s pretty compelling. My knowledge of Edwardian England is not as deep as some other parts of their history, but it is interesting stuff and he is certainly detailed.

The book spans the years from Queen Victoria’s jubilee to the outbreak of the Great War. That was a much more interesting time in England than I expected. I knew there was a lot of social change happening then, but I hadn’t really thought of the drama and literature of the era and how prolific it was.

There also was a deep divide in economic equality that mimics some of the struggles of working people today. The basic gist of it is that the years covered saw the Empire with an awful lot of wealth. it was unsightly and vulgar how much they plundered and pillaged from their colonies.

There is great care to mention this and also describe how the Empire influenced its colonies and how the political, economic, social, and technological changes they caused shaped the world. It’s a pretty nasty hypocrisy and, so far, it is the spine of the book.

The Oscars seemed sort of hollow this year. I’ve managed to see most of the nominated films or performances, however, it all seems kind of distant in that I saw none of them in the darkness of a movie house.

After a year of this, I still really did miss going to the movies. Especially after the particular strong year we had in 2019.

The pandemic has made everyone want to travel again. There have been loads of books, documentaries and webinars on travel, but none of them really worked on the same level as Stanley Tucci’s Searching for Italy.

Filming episodes before, during and after the country’s COVID nightmare, his quest to understand Italian food through the country’s culture and people is just what we all needed.

While his episodes on Rome and Tuscany were predictably good, his adventures in Bologna, Naples and Milan were really engaging in that they brought the culinary delights of these regions to life.

Funny, inquisitive and noninvasive, Tucci is a delightful host. For him the food and culture is the real star and he is more than willing to take a backseat to Italy’s cuisine and culture. CNN has renewed it for a second season which is great news. I am curious to see where he will be off to next.

I did see Tina, the documentary on HBO Max about Tina Turner. It is very compelling and it pulls no punches with discussing her relationship with Ike Turner.

Now a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Inductee, Turner has an incredible rags to riches story that is done proper justice in the film. Hearing her tell her story, in her own words is powerful. She was one hell of a performer and it is good to see her get her due.

There’s also some great live concert footage as well. I wish there was more about her early life in St. Louis, but I understand they cannot cover everything.

If you have not checked out Staged, you are missing something. Filmed in quarantine, David Tennant and Michael Sheen are magical together. Using digital technology they have managed to do a show that is better because of it. I am not sure this would work with a set and proper staging like a sitcom.

Another great thing about Staged is the cameos. Judi Dench has the best one, but there is also Michael Palin, Jim Parsons, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in there too.

Although there have only been two seasons so far, this ‘Zoom miniseries’ is amazingly fun!

I know it is weird but I finally saw West Side Story. Screening as part of the 2021 TCM Classic Film Festival, it really does hold up well. It’s big. The sets are big, the color is big, the darkness is also big. It is also a film that uses setting and lighting to set up its emotional resonance.

The cast is great, especially Rita Moreno, Richard Beymer and fellow Twin Peaks alum Russ Tamblyn. However, it is weird seeing Natalie Wood playing a Puerto Rican woman. She is not awful in it, but she simply is outdone by Moreno in all of their scenes.

The score remains timeless and the songs are now a part of the fabric of American popular culture. Overall, the passage of the has done nothing to tarnish the film’s velocity, vivacity, ferocity and social relevence.

In addition to a great documentary on Powell and Pressburger, TCM screened a restored version of T-Men and The Méliès Mystery, a new documentary about the work of Georges Méliès and the quest to save his work from destruction.

A pioneer of early film, Georges Méliès started his career just before the start of the 20th century. Beginning as a magician, he was captivated by the movies, which resulted in an astounding body of work that is part animation, part science fiction, and part slight of hand.

This informative doc was accompanied by several of his restored films. Collectively, they are vital reminders of Méliès genius.

Filmic in scope and textured in sound. Godspeed You Black Emperor are back with their seventh album, G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END!

Ironically, the record is available to buy at Wal Mart. But that really makes no difference, because they are still brilliant. For the last 25 years, this multimember Montreal outfit has weaved layered soundscapes to perfection.

On this album, the songs are varied in length but powerful sonically as sound collages meet chamber music seamlessly. Job’s Lament, Fire at Static Valley and OUR SIDE HAS TO WIN (for D.H.) are all highlights of a concept album whose themes of alienation, government intervention, and paranoia delve deep into your psyche.

The band is going on tour which is great news. I saw them at the Side door ages ago and it was absolutely incredible.

Finally, things are indeed opening up and our lives are falling into old routines. But despite this, it is important to not let our guards down. The pandemic is by no means over, and the idiots who don’t wear masks still are doing nothing to help their fellow man.

At least the weather is getting better.

One Year

Posted on March 17, 2021 by stlcurmudgeon Standard

It has been a year. While no one can really comprehend all that has been last during our pandemic year, there is some optimism that the world will at least partially reset. If only it were that simple.

But what kind of world will it be? Will it be a world where social injustice is met with with activism? Will the fast world of McDonald’s be replaced by home cooking? Will the interest in home gardening sustain itself? Will positive change really happen? Will the movies ever be the same again? How will we interact as people? How will work at our jobs? Will we have jobs?Will people finally give up listening to REO Speedwagon?

I cannot answer those questions, but bringing them up helps our society face them and built something better. Sadly, I fear we will all just forget everything we learned and struggled through and go back to what was. That would be disappointing. I want to believe that a better world will emerge, but I have doubts.

As someone who is social by nature I find it odd that I don’t miss gathering in large groups. I miss concerts to an extent and going to the pictures. Man I miss going to the movies. But overall, I am fine just staying in and reading my books, listening to music or watching tv.

This “time off” has made me enjoy taking long walks, sitting on my pack porch and doing more and more cooking. I also am less concerned about having stuff. This has resulting in a massive decluttering which has been therapeutic in that it has made more open space for the apartment.

The cooking has been interesting. I’ve learned t make a lot more Indian, Thai, Korean and Mediterranean dishes that I like. I’ve spent a lot more time in international grocery stores which has bene interesting in that there is often a discovery in every aisle. Like kimchee, which will sit in the fridge forever and it is always filling, or various Indian sauces which will always give things a spicy edge and provide flavor. Oh, and cauliflower rice is the bomb.

On the flip side, I’ve had to learn a lot about cleaning products, hand sanitizers and applications for bleach.

While I never injected myself with bleach, I did do some floor mopping and surface cleaning with it to such an extent that the smell never got on my nerves. Looking back, that crazy scramble for hand sanitizer, latex gloves and Clorox Wipes was a theater of the absurd. Everyone became obsessed with it. It got a little out of hand.

Separation Nation remains in full effect. Over the last year I have seen a few of my friends here and there as they stopped by to visit social distantly and say hello. But, generally, I haven’t seen many of them for over a year. That’s weird. It also is kind of freeing though in that this distance and isolation really has helped a lot of people discover who their real friends are.

Having been vaccinated now I feel obligated to help others get their appointments. I’ve been doing this for a few weeks now and it has been very rewarding. It has underscored my hope that all of this makes people care abut their neighbors and fellow human beings. I suspect it will not since Americans are, by nature, stupid and selfish.

So the best advice. can offer is to pay it forward, any way you can. We need more empathy in our world right now and even more in the future. Empathy and giving up REO Speedwagon will lead the way.

I still plan on doing social distancing and masking up. I don’t really think I am going to change my routine up all that much.

For me, I really have enjoyed the weekly Zoom get togethers I have with friends in other places. it’s been nice to have social interaction and a sense of camaraderie. It also has introduced me to lots of crazy things like Korean TV shows, new recipes and an appreciation for new authors and bands.

I also have made it through the year by doing a weekly online board gaming night and that has been a lot of fun. It keeps the brain working and I get to some friends! It is interesting how board gaming was able to pivot to new formats during all of this. I also am doing word search puzzles which keeps the noggin’ sharp.

Had the pandemic not come I doubt I would have discovered so much new music. Thankfully, The Wants, The Reds, Pinks & Purples, The 1981, Phoebe Bridgers and Swansea Sound have been around to keep me company. I also have really enjoyed rediscovering Telex, Felt, The Jazz Butcher and The Close Lobsters.

I also have listened to more jazz than I used to and watched more streaming symphony concerts than I had previously. I still hate Phil Collins.

There also is a cool app called Radio Garden that lets you hear radio from around the world. I have listened to stations in Madagascar, Liechtenstein and places like that. It is interesting to hear what Western music is played where. For example there’s a lot of contemporary country getting played in Triesen, Liechtenstein.

I also have written more. I have had a lot of time. Two of the outlets I contributed to regularly folded and I had to scramble for fresh freelance work Luckily, I was able to interview John Doe, Tim Burgess (The Charlatans), Kathy Valentine (The Go-Go’s) and Chris Frantz of Talking Heads. Those were all fun! I also did a few reviews of streaming theater events and films.

Not being able to travel sucks. I don’t miss flying, airports or packing. But, I do miss seeing people I normally see when I travel. Even though I have gotten my jabs I still am in no rush to get on a plane. I can wait.

I mentioned before that I missed movies. That may have been off base in that I did still watch them at home. However, because streaming was insanely off the hook this year, I found a lot of good TV and films. I also got media credentials for the Vienna Shorts Film Festival and Slamdance which allowed me to see some really different, cool stuff.

Slamdance was pretty great. they had a really good selection of short films and they had some feature stuff that was really evocative. Trammel was my favorite short film. It’s about a guy whose only real communication with the outside world is through visits with his local pharmacy technician. It is sweet funny and has a lovely melancholy to it.

CODE NAME: Nagasaki is an emotional documentary about family, self-discovery and alienation. Marius and Fredrik are two friends who live in Norway and pretty much hang 24/7. Driven by a passion for movies and filmmaking they decide make a film about Marius’ quest to find and meet his long lost Japanese mother.

Seeking out a mom who left him decades earlier does not come without some intense drama and the film has that in spades as Marius weighs his every move with careful deliberation. The emotional distance between the two is heartbreaking and as the movie plays out these feeling of solitude and separation become further amplified.

It looks fantastic. Mixing black and white and animation, this powerful piece of cinema was named the fest’s best documentary film.

I also enjoyed the gritty minimalism of No Trace (Null Trace), another example of the exciting things filmmakers are doing in Quebec right now. shot in black and white it looks amazing.

Set in a dystopian future, the plot is sparse but centers on a callous smuggler whose hardened by life attitude shows cracks after she guides a young woman and her child across the border to safety. Unaware that their lives are inescapably linked their journey and struggle for survival is emotionally tense and compelling.

Director Simon Lavoie is a master of visual storytelling and I really liked how the narrative evolved with barely a spoken word. This will probably go into wide release.

Grimy Brit films were represented at Slamdance with A Brixton Tale, a film that takes on a lot of issues in a compact amount of time. Class status, exploitation, love and the art world collide in a movie filled with unsavory characters who just want to survive.

Speaking of gritty…. I watched Trainspotting again. The film has just turned 20 and it is still really enjoyable. Well as enjoyable as a film about heroin addiction can be.

Two decades on, the acting still stands out and the soundtrack perfectly frames everything. It doesn’t sound dated at all. In fact, I had forgotten about how good the Blur song in it was.

Upon seeing it, it made me miss Edinburgh. It’s an interesting flick too in that it calls out a lot of striking societal issues which have been careful been woven into the film. Robert Carlyle is a force of energy, Jonny Lee Miller is cool as a cucumber and Ewan MacGregor shines in his breakout film. I am curious to see how Ewen Bremmer plays Alan McGee in that biopic he is doing.

It is pretty cool that Perseverance is on Mars. JPL did some amazing things to get that project going and their efforts did a lot to lift the nation’s spirits.

It was amazing to watch the landing and see all the data come in over the last few weeks. Isn’t it amazing what science can do?

Here’s one last thing! There is furniture news! I have some new DVD shelves and bookshelves. It’s helped with the massive declutter in terms or organization and storage.

Anyway the adjustment into a person who is going back out into the world is Underway. Hopefully when it happens in a few weeks things won’t seem as desolate or sad or weird. I am not holding out hope. But it will be nice to not have as much of the worrying.

Entropy

Posted on March 13, 2021 by stlcurmudgeon Standard

Note: I wrote this abut a month ago when it was really, really, cold out. I had forgotten that I had this as a draft.

Everything is falling apart. I just finished spending 45 minutes getting the internet back online. I am not sure if it was a network outage or some weird thing on my end. But I do know that I trouble shooted the daylights out of my modem and router and finally got it working. It was incredibly frustrating.

I hate talking to service companies and (f)utility companies. They never really help and you always end up either shouting at them or trying to bang your head against the wall getting them to understand you.

If that wasn’t bad enough there was about a two week stretch last month (February) of really, really bad cold weather. There was ice and snow and subzero cold. St. Louis in winter is no fun anyway, but this was a particularly nasty stretch of weather. in fact, it was the longest cold spell with single digits temperatures since the 1940s.

For about 16 days it was in the teens at its warmest with wind chills between -15 and -25. It was no fun. Early , I toughed it out and planned things out to minimize exposure. After the first snow stopped, however, I went ahead and shoveled the back steps, driveway and front entryway. Thankfully, it was the kind of snow where you could just sweep it away.

It was like sweeping inside a meat cooler. I set my phone alarm for 30 minutes so I would not be out very long. It was 1 degree out and a -8 windchill. Ick!

It was like seriously Jack London and Ernest Shackleton cold. It was not a time to play around. I didn’t even have a Tauntaun. However, I did wear layers and paced myself. I got a lot of it cleared off in pretty decent time. Having finished that, I threw down some salt because it was supposed to snow two more times over the coming days and all the smart people from the weather bureau said it would help keep freezing down when the next snow hit.

It did snow again and boy were they right about throwing salt of gritty stuff on the ground.

Next, I moved the trashcan and recycle bin next to the back stairs, so it was right outside the back stairs so all I would need to do is open the back door and go a few steps to unload recycling and trash. My motivation for this was to avoid going outside again for a long period of time. I am glad I did this because I didn’t leave home for six days. I bundled up and dropped stuff in bins twice but I was only outside for, at most, maybe a minute or two.

The entire time this was happening I was worried about the pipes freezing. There is no-one living on the second floor which meant that no one was running a tap lightly at night to keep things from freezing. Luckily everything held.

It was Pushkin novel cold outside.

With regards to warmth, plugging in heaters and using every available blanket to bundle up was fun. Not really. Although things were not too cold inside, it got a bit rough when the winds picked up. But there was whiskey, hot tea and hot chocolate for that.

Having weathered that fiasco the drama of the water heater unfolded. There was no warm water for nearly a week. The pilot light just would not stay lit. A guy game to fix it and installed a new thermometer in it and things got warm for a few hours. But then it was cold again. This was the saga. Light pilot light, have warm water for a short duration and then it was cold again. Repeat, repeat, repeat. It went on forever, almost as long as the Battle of Iwo Jima. There also was water leaking for the tank into the drain in the basement.

So the back and forth of getting my property manager to fix this went on and then they fixed it. When they sorted it out it was if the Red Sea had parted or something. It was insanely frustrating.

Then there was the entropy in the outside world. People were losing their goddamn minds. They couldn’t get vaccinated. They chose not to get vaccinated. They didn’t eat the red M&M’s. They insisted on going out maskless. They watched Friends. Civilization was ending.

If that wasn’t enough my freelance client spent a lot of time explaining to me that the Pope was a robot. Normally I would have cut my losses and run but she was paying me and the money was a nice supplement to the work income I was losing because the store was closed.

These kind of failures are emblematic of modern times. Things break, fall apart or need to be disassembled and then reassembled until they are in working order. In the end it all get sorted. Unless you need a vaccine in Missouri, then you are just screwed.

To call the ineptitude and disorganization around Missouri’s distribution of Covid vaccines Stalinist would be a compliment. This kind of total bureaucracy mixed with an unwavering sense of malice is utterly vile. The lack of compassion and disinterest in planning is simply inexcusable in our world. It is all infuriating.

On the plus side, I did get finally get my first shot. I only had to register at 20 (yes 20!) places before getting lucky. I even dug out the map of the state so I could find all these hick towns in the region that got more vials of vaccine than they had residents.

Gobble Gobble Hey

Posted on November 26, 2020 by stlcurmudgeon Standard

It has been a crazy month. I’ve been quarantined and tested and poked and prodded. I had some kind of bug that fortunately didn’t blow up into something worse. but the stress of all that has been a nightmare. Adding to that are the chuckleheads who still don’t follow any sort of common sense and continue to make things worse. Sigh.

The holiday season means this stupid GMC add is back. Who the Hell gives another person a truck anyway? There are some serious economic headaches happening right now and it is crass to encourage people people to spend their cash or go deep into debt for something like this. Plus who lives like this? Certainly no one I know.

Who needs a truck that big? I know there are people who haul and build and move things but these things look like tanks. These are stupid vacuous people.

A few quick points about Thanksgiving

-Miles Standish was a jerk

-The Pilgrims were religious zealots.

-The last piece of turkey is the most important piece of turkey!

-The Native Americans saved the Pilgrims ass that winter!

-Be thankful and be kind

One of my recent discoveries is the New York Adventure Club. They have been doing these online webinars about different topics related to New York.

So far I have watched ones on Mary Pickford, The New York Subway and NYC in the 70s and 80s. All were excellent. They have pivoted to an online format really well and as someone who used to live in the big city, it is a way to reconnect it at a time when I miss it terribly. For info and a list of tours visit: https://www.nyadventureclub.com

There is a new season of The Crown. I have to say that Olivia Colman is just stunning in it. Gillian Anderson’s Thatcher is macabre and terrifying.

The last thing I want to see right now is Thatcher, yet her macabre performance is simply incredible.

The Mandalorian also continues to make me happy. It is so well written and executed within the Star Wars universe. I am curious to see where all of this is going. They are artfully laying little breadcrumbs lying around to tempt us all.

I think I need to watch The Expanse.

The St. Louis International Film Festival is over for 2020. I saw about 19-21 things over the fest and the programming was varied, informative, daring and compelling. There are some amazing filmmakers out there doing great stuff.

I will probably post of other films stuff later as well, but here are three which I think will eventually come out in theaters or streaming.

I really liked The Bare Necessity. It’s an odd and quirky debut film from Erwan Le Duc that really emphasizes living life to the fullest.

A big hit at Cannes, it is a well acted light romp that makes you feel good during all of this mess we are in.

Citizens of the World was another favorite. Directed by Gianni Di Gregorio and starring Ennio Fantastichini, Giorgio Colangeli and the aforementioned Gianni Di Gregorio, it is a calm film about a trio of pensioners who think about bailing on their lives in Rome for better pastures like Bulgaria and the Azores.

Motivated by the high cost of living in Rome and a nagging sense of needing to find fulfillment in their lives they set out on a journey of self discovery. It is warm, funny and I cannot wait to see it again.

Undine is the new film by German auteur Christian Petzold. I loved his previous film, Transit and this one brings some of that cast together into new territories. His films Phoenix and Barbara are also worth investigating.

Franz Rogowski is great in everything and this film is no exception. He’s a master and emoting emotion nonverbally while still being able to be remain intense onscreen.

I have started Scott Eyman’s biography of Cary Grant. I wanted to read something that had politics or heavy history. I have seen a bunch of his movies and after reading a few reviews decided to get this from my library.

His body of work on film is pretty solid and I especially love his stuff with Hitchcock. This has been informative and fun without being over gossipy. As a complete aside, I loved how they had a character on The Flinstones named Cary Granite.

I got asked to do one of these year-end best of music things. It’s been annoying to work on. But it is done.

Here are my favorite 15 records of the year.

Fiona Apple-Fetch the Bolt Cutters-Epic
The Beths-Jump Rope Gazers
Phoebe Bridgers-Punisher-Dead Cceans
Tim Burgess-I Love the New Sky-PIAS
Fontaines D.C,-A Hero’s Death-partisan
I Like Trains-Kompromat-Atlantic Curve
IDLES-Ultra Mon-Partisan
Pet Shop Boys-Hotspot-X2
Porridge Radio-Every Bad-Dead Oceans
Psychedelic Furs-Made of Rain Cooking Vinyl
The Reds, Pinks & Purples-You Might Be happy Someday-Touch Love
Rolling Blackouts coastal Fever-Sideways to New Italy
Run the Jewels RTJ 4-BMG
The Wants-Container-Council Records
X-Alphabetland-Fat Possum

I recently watched a streaming concert by Fontaine’s D.C. It was pretty good. Even without a live audience to interact with they still have a raw and exuberant energy about them. Their new album, A Hero’s Death, dropped in July.

Tom yum soup needs to be more of a thing. It is so good on a cold day.

Well that is a wrap! Wear a mask! Stay safe!

November Spawned A Monster

Posted on November 12, 2020 by stlcurmudgeon Standard

Sitting down to write this I have been thinking about a lot of things. You know, besides that thing and the other thing. Stuff like, my damn phone was acting up until I got lint out of the charging port and why is the garbage disposal suddenly making noises that sound like crushing bones?

What all of this proves is that it is interesting to discover just how much the mundane of now can become a big deal with these “unprecedented times.” The combined anxiety of so many things right now accentuates everything and send folks into a dither.

With regard to the title of this post, it’s from a Morrissey song and seems appropriate. I remember those halcyon days when Morrissey was just weird and not a complete jerkface. So far, November has been a crappy month with lots of ugly people trying to do ugly things. Whatever happened to that Pope of Mope that was so odd and kooky that we bought all of his singles and 2000 best of compilations?

There’s the one thing that started parties in the streets and celebrations but I am reserving judgement until it is all over. So, with that in mind it is kind of a crappy month. Seriously, enough with storms, hurricanes, COVID and idiots who didn’t take civics class.

I am mostly holding up okay. Entropy seems to have permeated everything, causing frustration and insanity. I am really tired of people freaking out about masks and meeting in large groups and being stupid. It is all so frustrating.

But let us turn to other more interesting things……

The International Space Station is now 20 years old. It must have been cool to be around for those early space missions in the late 1960s where each trip to space was a real big event. It must have been a real thrill ride since the public had a pretty cool idea of what was happening with NASA and its missions. Now it is more of a curiosity for the public, unless you have an interest in science of space stuff.

Still, the fact that people of all kinds of nationalities and backgrounds have lived in space for two decades, in relative harmony, is kind of cool. It would be nice, in this time of division, if something like this was more widely celebrated.

The last week or so has seen some really great night sky viewing. The Full Moon on Halloween was pretty cool.

With the exception of a week or so, we’ve been pretty lucky in these parts to have mostly clear skies at night. It has allowed for some terrific autumnal evenings.

A quick note on Halloween. I got a rock and I hate Kandy Korn.

It is still to early to play Christmas music or put up a tree. However, if that gets someone through all of this emotionally I can’t really argue. This is a big step for me.

I also have no qualms with not doing large gatherings for the holidays. I wish everyone stayed the Hell home.

Maybe it was a pang from not being able to go to a movie theater or I was just nuts, but, I recently got a box of Milk Duds. That was a mistake. Sadly, they all glopped together in the box making it impossible to eat just one without chopping each piece up. That’s a lot of work for mediocre candy.

Nancy Noisemaker, the girl on the 2nd floor, still likes to talk loudly into her cell phone. But at least the loud bowling like sounds have stopped. She is really very nice, but for a person living on her own she sure makes a ton of noise.

One of the happy frustrations of the last few months is that there’s been some good television to watch. A lot of it is streaming stuff, but nonetheless, there is some great stuff out there.

I am far behind with what I want to see. It’s gotten so weird I’ve had to go old school and start making lists. My friend has been recommending a lot of Korean dramas and there is always a plethora of British stuff to watch as well. Then, there’s also PBS stuff and sports and great old shows too. It’s maddening to try and keep it all sorted.

The Crown is starting up again. Olivia Colman is a force of nature in anything. I am fascinated by how good the casting always is.

The last season of Schitt’s Creek has been a nice remedy for when I was sad. It runs the board on emotions and never fails to deliver on giving audiences some laughs when they need them.

Matt Lucas has been a breath of fresh air for The Great British Baking Show (aka The Great British Bake Off in the UK). I still think the original lineup for the show was the best but I am making do.

Lucas’ sense of humor works really well and his interaction with the bakers is a perfect blend of curiosity and sympathy. He has been a real hoot to watch.

The format makes it pretty watchable and the bakers always seem properly British in that they never loosen their reserve. But, the biggest problem I still have with the show is that Paul Hollywood just seems like a big jerk.

I found out he races cars. Of course he does, I am guessing that goes along with the chasing young girls part of his persona.

The Mandalorian is back. Despite some really subpar films, you can always count on some part of the Star Wars universe to come through and cheer you up in dark times. I am hoping Season 2 is just as awesome as Season 1.

It is early in Season 2, but so far we’ve I’ve been pretty happy with things. It’s cool to have the Tuscan Raiders back and Timothy Olyphant was great in the season opener. Boba Fett is maybe back, or its a clone. This makes me happy. I heard he is getting his own series. That is swell.

I finally saw The Go-Gos documentary. Overall, I thought it lived up to the hype. Each one of them has their own issues and problems. they each are kind go a mess. But musically, each of them brought something to the band that made it unique and fun and awesome.

I also really liked seeing the old footage of them when they started out. There is a lot to process but the big takeaway is that Gina Shock is probably the most ground of them all. She has a great laugh too.

Basically, the band got worn out after they became popular and it really accelerated a breakup. Plus there was a to of blow and craziness. Despite this though, it was cool to hear about their chart success and their tours with Madness, The Police and The Specials.

Overall, I would say the film is something that their fans will love as well as anyone who loves ’80s music or is interested in the music business. It’s a very realistic and compelling view about life in rock music.

I have not watched Barnaby Jones or Cannon lately but I love me some Columbo. It is still great. Each of these shows are great in their own way. Cannon has that wavy side hair that needs to be trimmed, Jones is just a guy who you guess smells like a good aftershave and Columbo is a frumpy mess covering a very perceptive mind.

I have been taking advantage of streaming stuff as much as possible. Lately there has been some great live theater to watch from a wide range of sources.

I have enjoyed the The Seattle Shakespeare Company’s production of Richard III. It resonates emotionally and maintains all of its momentum from start to finish.

Presented in an audio format, it does not lose any of the performance’s emotion. It is riveting, well acted and nothing short of amazing.

Playbill presented an encore of the Goodman Theatre’s 1999 production of Death of a Salesman. Starring an unstoppable Brian Dennehy, it eventually went on to Broadway and won four Tony awards. It that was not enough, it also nabbed a slew of Drama Desk awards for acting and directing.

Just as intense now as it was when it got a Pulitzer Prize in 1949, it remains the quintessential American drama. I saw it live in 1999 and was mesmerized by it. Seeing it all these years later that feeling remains unchanged as the production delivers some potent rage, raw angst and tension. Dennehy is a force of nature.

Every year around halloween I watch Ed Wood again. It remains one of my favorite Tim Burton films and I love the ensemble and the soundtrack and the way it looks.

Beneath the schlock and goofiness however, there is great tragedy and sadness with Bela Lugosi. This is because Martin Landau completely inhabits the role and takes over the film. While Johnny Depp is quirky and odd and somewhat affable despite his finer jerk qualities, he simply is outmatched by Landau. Bill Murray is terrifically sublime as well. It is one of his more under appreciated performances.

I love the wacky stupidity of it. I love how it is creepy and spooky while still having no problems at all with mirroring Wood’s own ineptitude. Burton also did a great job of giving some heart to a rogues’ gallery of oddballs, charlatans and misfits. The result is a fun film made by a wonderful ensemble.

With science under such ferocious attack I feel compelled to read more science books. The problem is, I am not a brainiac in these areas but am fairly inquisitive. Sadly, my Catholic education did give me a broad understanding of several concepts and theories which means that I have an appreciation for science and a desire to learn more about it, even though I am not really proficient in any one area.

Usually, I get into some archaeology books that I can dovetail into my love for history and nonfiction. I also love astronomy but the math gets me all the time. Nonetheless, I love reading about it.

Everyone should have a physicist friend to ask questions to. It is so helpful in understanding what is going on.

I read a review of The End of Everything and am pretty curious to check it out. It seems like it won’t overwhelm me too much.

I may also try my hand at the new Brian Greene book, Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe. I have seen Greene on PBS and the way he breaks things down is pretty terrific. His books also don’t lose me with lots of smarty pants fiddle faddle.

At a time when everyone is looking for finite numbers and final counts, reading a book that explores infinite possibilities is a welcome sight.

As my city slogs along through a weak economy it is important to support as many of our local restaurants, stores, venues and independent businesses as we can. Most of these are run by really nice, hardworking people who have built something out of their sweat and passion. They deserve your love.

Please buy local and give back to your city. I would not preach about it if I didn’t know so many chefs, bartenders, booksellers, stage crews and business owners who were up late at night trying to plan their next steps.

I wrote about the plight of local bookstores for Sophisticated Living. But don’t just take my word for it, go out and read the blogs, social media and press releases of local entrepreneurs and then see for yourself.

As 2020 winds down I am determined to make it work on my own terms. I will probably fail, but I am determined to get some more reading in and make a dent in all the pop culture I am waiting to consume. From a practical standpoint, I am hoping to make cabbage in a cornfield and find some decent work where I am not an underling getting barked at by a burned out boss whose spirit has been nibbled away by an aching resentment of almost everything.

If that dense;t work then there’s always Vonnegut and Vicodin.

My October Symphony

Posted on October 20, 2020 by stlcurmudgeon Standard

Welcome to autumn. The leaves have changed and the weather is getting cooler. It has been lovely to take boring walks in this brisk weather. As the temperature drops I will miss reading outside and feeling the sunshine on my face.

It is boots and long jacket weather. I would enjoy the autumn much more however, if I didn’t know that winter was, literally, coming. This would not normally bother me, however, with now so many more allergies, bugs and icky maladies going around one doesn’t want to go out very much.

Everyone with half a brain is on edge, a little worried and kind of frustrated. This could all lead to a really annoying and tough winter. My fear is that the cold weather, fear of a flu outbreak and the continuation of Covid will not be enough to keep the ignorant from wanting to tear down all the precautions and get back to the world that was.

In summary: I am really fed up with these halfwits who don’t understand that the old way of doing things is not coming back anytime soon, if at all. Why are people so reckless and apathetic?

I voted.

I got my flu shot.

I got my pneumonia shot.

I am staying hydrated.

I am not fighting with the stupid.

I went to the DMV on my birthday. It was scary it was Hell. You might as well just pull out a kidney and plop down on the clerk’s desk at this point. DMV offices are some of the drabbest places on Earth.

Tom Yum soup is the best.

It is great for a cold day and for cleaning out congested sinuses. I like mine form Thai 202 in the Central West End.

As a way to not get throttled by the madness of today I have been listening to more jazz and classical music. Lately it has been a lot of Shostakovich, particularly his Symphony No 2 ‘To October’ in B major op 14. The strings in it are exquisite. I also like how it is big and grandiose.

Listening to this made to a bit of thinking about the work and how it fits within the context of the current mood of the world in relation to the October Revolution that Shostakovich’s textured work celebrates.

With that in mind, I decided to dig back into Sheila Fitzpatrick’s seminal The Russian Revolution. Diving back in seemed appropriate. Particularly at a time when the separation of haves and have nots widens and the public discourse over issues of the day is filled with more and more shouting.

Fitzpatrick’s quick and concise narrative takes no sides and presents the complicated story of how those nasty Bolsheviks led Russia down a path to totalitarianism.

Now, as the clock slowly ticks off till the end of the month, the historian in me pauses with an anxious breath. Like the madness of 1917, we are seeing angry masses of people who are fed up and looking for change. Then, the old world was going away and a new one was coming. It wasn’t pleasant or fair or even remotely peaceful. This has not changed much.

As you may have guessed I read books that are dull to most folks. However, recently I have been reading more fiction, mainly the new books by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby with intentions of getting to Steinbeck again.

Over the last few weeks, before I got all brooding and serious, I plunged back into some graphic novels. I got caught up with the most recent batch of Moon Knight comics and a return to the Infinity Gauntlet series. I also am revisiting Warren Ellis’ excellent Transmetropolitan series, which also is incredibly timely right now.

With Halloween nearly here, I also returned to Batman: The Long Halloween, a 13 part epic that I like a lot.

In addition to restoring some noir oomph to the series, the story manages to collect all the usual suspects in Batman’s pantheon of baddies into a compelling arc.

There is a lot of bullying and emotional abuse in It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. Just sayin.’

Despite the fact that it has retained its charm, humor and melancholy, when you peel back the layers there’s a lot wrong with those kids. Charlie Brown is depressed, Lucy is a psychopath, Sally needs to become more liberated and Linus has a whole mess of tings going on with him. Plus, Snoopy is a classic narcissist. I also love how it celebrates bucking the system and finding your own path on your own terms. Linus may be nuts he’s his own man and sticks to his guns.

But maybe the most overlooked aspect of the special is Vince Guaraldi’s score. People tend to think that his work in A Charlie Brown Christmas is his best but I will argue that the music in this special does much more for setting the tone of the piece. It also creates more ambiance that breathes life into the characters.

Covering the five boroughs, art galleries, bars, parks and restaurants it’s a book that explores every facet of the city, from its founding until now.

Knowing all the ins and outs of the city is hard work and this book serves as a nice guide to stuff you don’t get in tourbooks. New York is best when you avoid the beaten path and explore on your own.

The Big Apple has so many things about to learn and now that it is daunting. it is nice t have a concise thing that breaks it down. My other NYC encyclopedia is his mammoth thing that weighs a ton.

The sections on the city’s musical history are particular tight and there’s some neat stuff on the birth of the fountain pen and stuff like that too. There’s a lot to chew on.

I have started Dylan Jones mammoth book on the New Romantic movement. Covering 1975-1985, Sweet Dreams documents the New Romantic movement with a broad palate that includes ska, goth and electronic music.

Jones argues that the movement helped spawn electronic music and I am not sure I agree since there was also house music and Kraftwerk. Ditto for goth which could be argued as a bi-product of punk happening. Again, Jones offers an interesting premise that I had not thought of.

Jones is bold in navigating this time in British pop history. there was a lot happening. Growing out of post-punk (which is still happening concurrently) Jones chronicles the movement’s history from sleazy and glammy clubs o the shores of North America where many artists of this period found success on MTV, leading the so-called “New British Invasion.”

Fortunately, he’s got some big personalities in here, Bowie, Visage, Sade, Ultravox, Adam Ant, Culture Club, Duran Duran and loads more. It is well researched and there’s some great stuff in it. My only problem is that I think he’s overreaching in places.

As we get nearer to the election I have found Lou Reed’s New York to be very prescient.

Released in 1989 and recently reissued in an expanded edition, Reed’s 15th album is full of references to Oliver North, the NRA, Rudy Giuliani, Jesse Jackson and more.

Political but still entrenched in rock n’ roll, Reed’s album is filmic as it sprawls out for nearly a full hour. There’s some harsh criticism of corporate greed, poverty, corrupt politicians and poverty, all things that still resonate today.

Halloween Parade remains one of the most important songs about the AIDS crisis ever recorded. Sick of You name checks the great villains of the city during that period, many of which are still kicking around today.

Taken as a rock album, it fires on every cylinder. It’s a basic rock record with some nice nods ot should and blues in the mix. Even as a concept project it retains the grit that makes Reed’s records so intriguing.

Why are they playing sports? I get it, there’s a lot of scholarships and boredom to appease and TV money to make, but really, to me, it seems insane to even try to put people at risk.

I know that many other cities have a Greekfest and that writing about the one in St. Louis isn’t necessarily a big deal, but I wold be remiss if I did not. I went to the one held in St. Louis County at Assumption Greek Orthodox Church.

Lasting full weekend, it normally is filled with dancing, crafts and music. However, this year’s feta fête, was in the same boat as almost everything else as it pivoted to no entertainment programming but plenty of curbside food.

In the past I have loved to hear the different musicians playing as I wandered the stalls with stuff was being sold. But as good as all of that was, the food was the thing everyone wants.

Pandemic be damned this years festival didn’t disappoint. I could literally eat the dolmades for months. The grape leaves are tightly wrapped nothing inside gets out. The rice was not bland and they didn’t go cheap on giving put taziki sauce. I had a beef and lamb gyro and it was not overcooked. The pita bread was not too try or doughy. The Baklava was also pretty damn good.

As I wind this down I want to send a final note out to support your local indie bookshops. I did a story on this last month and it was really interesting to see everything they are going through right now. Literally every dollar matters. So even if you buy a gift certificate you are helping.

I am trying to keep this shorter than last time. hope that is okay.

The Autumn of My Discontent

Posted on October 2, 2020 by stlcurmudgeon Standard

I apologize for the long delay in posting. I have been making a list of things to mention and write about but life got in the way. I had a freelance project to do and that pays, so that took priority. I am now getting ready to do another one where I interview a golfer. That should be interesting. I also have been working both jobs and picking up some extra shifts. I realize this is not an excuse for writing but, alas, it is what it is.

A lot of really sad and infuriating stuff has been going down over the last few weeks and I do not want to dwell on it and bring everyone down. But, all I can say is this… be active, participate in the process and make a difference. Also, the stupid can be frustrating. That is what alcohol is for.

My two pre pandemic planned trips in September didn’t happen. I miss travel. Although I have done a lot of traveling from the living room to the back porch recently.

Shifting gears……It takes a special kind of jerk to come into a restaurant or place of business 10 minutes before they close. It is kind of rude. People are winding down and trying to finish things up and go the hell home! Now, with the pandemic, people are even more anxious to get the Hell out of there and get home and clean up, decompress and get on with it. Please do not be that person! When in doubt ask or call first.

Also, where the Hell is all the Lysol disinfect spray?

It is insane. Especially since most everything else is coming back.

I also hate how long it takes after I get home to change, clean up, sanitize stuff and then, maybe get onto other things. It gets tedious. So does the whole wiping everything down a few times a day and making sure the ventilation is happening correctly. But I do it and persevere on.

As much as I love baseball, it is a miracle they are getting the season in. There really shouldn’t be sports and this whole ‘let the kids play’ business is moronic when you consider the bigger picture.

It is kind of sad to see all these schools in Missouri rush with excitement about playing sports. I know there are scholarships and titles to win and all of that, but really, nobody is going anywhere and people can slow down and be safe.

One of the best things about St. Louis is that, as a community, most folks are trying to support local businesses, restaurants and when possible, music venues. This is really, really important! Keep it up.

I love how the St. Louis Symphony are doing all these pop up concerts around town. it is a great way to get people engaged at a time when they need a pick me up.

The only appliance news this time is that there is a new garbage disposal unit and new handles for the sink since there was leaking going on under the sink.

I am thinking of getting a fire pit for when it gets cold. A small one so I can still enjoy some time on my back porch and get some fresh air. It has been a welcome relief to get fresh air in a space free of other people.

I wonder if Pushkin ever owned a fire pit? Probably not because he was born into nobility. Maybe a small makeshift one. But one has to wonder if Pushkin strolled into an ACE hardware store would he be moved to prose? I suspect not.

The holidays are coming. Hide! Again, shop local, shop indie and don’t be an assclown to workers. They are trying to not die. I have no qualms at all with not being with family for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Peace and quiet for the holidays on my own terms sounds great.

A coworker of mine cannot believe I do not watch The Masked Singer. This is because if the apocalypse is coming I want to watch better television. Plus, I tend to hate all of the judges on all of those shows.

Speaking of TV judges, the new season of The Great British Bake Off is on Netflix. It has been terrific. I have not liked the last few seasons but this year, adding Matt Lucas has been great. He is funny, empathetic and a nice counterbalance to Paul Hollywood, who is still kind of a smug git.

The bakers all seem like nice people. I like Rowan, he’s a music teacher and he likes Bowie. He’s also hilariously funny.

I will never be able to make any of this stuff but I totally appreciate the work that goes into it. I also could never handle that much stress crammed into such a short period of time.

Having interviewed the cast of Cobra Kai, I am a bit partial to the show. They are all terribly nice. Ralph Macchio is very gracious and modest and William Zabka is not pretentious at all. In fact, I was kind of caught off guard by his overall niceness. The kid who plays Joey’s son seems like he’s kind of a doofus, but that’s the only complaint I have.

As for the show, yes it is sappy, over the top drama filled with teenage angst and eldercare regret, but it is sure a lot of fun.

It also is great to see everyone completely flip characters that seemed so one dimensional in the 1980s. I also love how it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

I also started watching a Korean drama called Chicago Typewriter. It ran there in 2017 and has been making the rounds globally ever since. Despite being popular it will not have a second series. Most Korean dramas only run one season, however, there have been recent exceptions.

Robustly tense and spanning eighty years, it tells the story of three friends who helped resist the Japanese during their occupation of Korea in the 1930s. Today, they live as reincarnated versions of themselves. Adrift in the modern world, there is a snobbish and arrogant writer named Han Se-joo, whom, after experience a serious case of writers block, hires a ghost writer (with a penchant for jazz and antiques) named Yoo Jin-oh to get hm out of his funk. Their partnership is problematic. Loving fame but resentful of his adoring public, his life is upended when he meets Jeon Seol, an obsessively kooky fan.

It is here, in contemporary times, where the trio must discover themselves again before they seek out elusive answers from their past. Their journey is not easy, but it certainly compelling.

Spanning 16 episodes, Chicago Typewriter is a race against time filled with the usual tropes of redemption, betrayal, loss and love. The series begins as a slow boil before percolating into a compelling story. Jou have to stick with it and it is pretty worth it at the end.

I first saw Chungking Express in 1994 and remember really loving it. The balance of pathos and comedy work well and the acting is great, especially Tony Leung who says volumes with just his castaway glances. Takeshi Kaneshiro and Faye Wong are also both charming in it.

To be honest, I love Wong Kai-wai. For me his nonlinear narratives are not difficult to follow and his films generally translate well to a Western audience. He also has incredibly solid music in his movies which really punctuate the emotional tones he is going for.

I discovered his films in the early and mid-1990s when I dove head first into Hong Kong cinema. Although, most of the films coming to the States in wide, art house releases were solid, I was drawn to the fact that he has interesting characters and is not afraid to surprise his audiences. His cinematography is also magical.

In the Mood for Love and Ashes of Time are two other films of his that impressed me. it also is hard to not like Happy Together, even if it is a be redundant.

Do we need another Lion King movie? No!

I also have no interest in a live action Mulan film. Remaking animated classics is dumb.

In addition to the 2000 other things I’ve told myself I was going to do and because we can’t have nice things or go anywhere now, I have decided to rewatch some Wes Anderson films. My motivation for this is that I want to laugh and appreciate nuanced moments of tenderness and beauty.

I don’t remember seeing The Darjeeling Limited in theaters. In fact, I had very limited memory of any of it. So I got it for my local library and got to it.

I am not the biggest fan of Owen Wilson but he’s okay in this. The triad of him, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman really work wells and they collectively create a very real sense of dysfunction.

Anderson again is visually stunning as he mixes terrifically shot scenes onboard the train with vibrant images of India. It’s beauty, poverty and spiritual resonance seep into every pore of the movie as Anderson skillfully uses the country itself as a character.

I was surprised at how much the zen-like empathy of the film came into sharper clarity amongst the backdrop of contemporary times. Despite the overwhelming sense of melancholy and loss, there is a tenderness lurking beneath the surface. It is perfectly nuanced. The movie’s themes of familial disunity and personal reflection also provide a nice counterbalance to the cinematography and dry humor.

I also loved the music. Anderson always uses interesting sounds in his films and I argue his use of music is as good or better than Tarantino’s when it comes to framing the drama onscreen. Besides, any flick with three Kinks songs in it cannot be all that bad. Plus the Joe Dassin cut he uses is terrific.

On September 29th, 1986 New Order released their 4th studio album, Brotherhood. Having really loved Lowlife, I was looking forward to hearing it. I remember picking it up at West End Wax and then listening to it on the steps across the street from Metro High School where I was waiting to hang out with some friends.

While Bizarre Love Triangle is one of the most heralded and beloved tracks from the ’80s I think some of the album’s other tracks, Paradise, All Day Long and Every Little Counts exemplify that tis was a band really finding their footing.

I remember that Brotherhood was interesting in that a lot of people were expecting a more dance oriented album. Pardon the pun, but it has some real substance to it in the songwriting and production. Peter Hook’s bass really shines here in what is the last record of theirs to really let him do his thing. His bass playing really gives the tracks some texture and helps ease us into all the synths and beats. Weirdo has a vibe to it the makes it an ideal mid album surge of energy.

Looking back, I can’t help but think of it more as an album of a time in my life more than anything else. I do enjoy it, but I cannot hear it without being taken back to an easier time when discovering music was more organic and, in many ways, satisfying.

The band has a new single out called Be a Rebel and a shoe deal with Adidas. Weird.

They also have reissued Power, Corruption and Lies in a new ‘definitive’ edition. I wish they would stop putting out greatest hits albums and reissues and get down to the business of sorting things out with Peter Hook. They sound a bit hollow without him.

Stephen Morris’ new memoir is finally coming out over here in paperback. Released last year in the UK, Record Play Pause finds the New Order percussionist giving his side of the story of events that have been covered in both Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook’s books.

The problem those two are bickering aunts right now so finding out what really went down requires a voice probably somewhere in the middle. This is where Morris comes in.

From his stories of growing up around Manchester to his discovery of music and involvement in Joy Division it is a one of those great memoirs that is also a bit of a snapshot of time and a scrapbook of memories.

However, unlike those two, Morris seems a bit more grounded. With a second volume coming, Morris clearly knows he has a lot of things to say, and he’s pretty good at it. His prose is more casual than his constituents and he’s also more astute in describing the inner workings of both bands.

IDLES!

In a year where everyone wants to scream, yell, stomp around and break things, the arrival of Ultra Mono, the new record from IDLES is well timed.Loud, angry, aggro and fuel injected it’s a record that minces no words. It’s abrasive, catchy and cathartic.

It’s also distorted, disturbing and raucous. Utterly magnificent, it distills the anxiety of Joy Division anxiety with the jitters of Gang of Four, creating songs that are intriguingly blemished yet beautiful. But perhaps the best testament to its greatness is the fact that I cannot stop listening to it.

Mac Davis died this week. He was the man. He acted, he sang and he wrote some of the best songs of the last half century.

Helen Reddy died too. Her career is greatly under appreciated by casual listeners. This is a shame.

We also lost Frederick Hibbert of Toots and the Maytals. Even if you are not a person who is deep into reggae you have probably heard Pressure Drop. I have never really dug as deeply into that genre as I should, I do know that Toots’ voice was golden and smooth.

A pioneer in music for sixty years, his Do the Reggay is considered to be the source for coining ‘reggae’ as a name for an entire genre of music. He also worked with both Willie Nelson and Public Enemy which is pretty cool.

The part where the protagonist comments on the rubbish music he hears at work!

Everyone has to cope with hearing music they dislike while on the job. Whether it is a coworker playing stuff in their office or just bad songs at an office party, suffering through bad tunes is (or was) a part of the American workplace.

Look, I get it, I worked in a record store for six years and heard a lot of music I didn’t necessarily love. But, I can at least say that it was selected by people who had some taste or a sane rationale for what they threw on.

With this context I must say that the music I hear currently at one of my jobs is dreadful. And, even though my hours have been sliced to a laughable four hours a week at that gig (hence needing more than one job) because of Coronavirus, the piped in music I hear there is excrement.

It’s like they took all the worst music featured on the soundtrack for Felicity and dragged it out for eternity. I am not screwing around, this is some seriously bad music. I understand the folks at corporate want to connect with the kids, but doing it by playing the blandest, most mediocre music ever is not the way to go.

I get that I work in a corporate culture that wants to have a pleasant environment for customers, in this case college students. It is the belief that need to hear upbeat pop songs as they look for textbooks that drives their musical selections.

However, it all is played on a programmed cycle where the same tracks are regularly repeated. This, of course, leads to having my ears beaten down during each shift by some awful music.

Here are some examples…..

Weezer’s Beverly Hills gets played every damn day at work. Don’t get me started on how miserable they make me feel. They are so bad that I am glad I have fewer hours so I don’t have to hear it four times a shift. This song is so terrible they had to reuse the hooks of Undone (The Sweater Song) to make it even remotely listenable. In the annals of Western Civilization this record is a low point. To make it worse, they slogged deeper to rock bottom by releasing an annoying cover of Toto.

In addition to some pop from Lady Gaga, Madonna and Katy Perry there is a lot of Coldplay going on. I get it, they are safe and appeal to a wide audience. But my point is that the music I hear while working is so bad that it makes the polishy sounds of that band sound like punk rock.

The other band they abuse my hearing with is The Killers. Why do people like The Killers? They sound like New Order with all the trauma, struggling and hardscrabble of working class Manchester sucked out. Every record they make sounds formulaic and trite.

This brings me to Matchbox Twenty. If You’re Gone is a song I hear every time I work and I hate it. It’s like spending eternity walking around an empty mall. They are terrible. Period. End of story.

Sometimes while I am doing mundane tasks on the job I am interrupted by The All-American Rejects’ Move Along, an utterly useless piece of garbage that causes agony for the ears and dying cells for the brain. Can we trade them for hostages somewhere?

There is not a Turkish prison big enough to hold the sheer craptitude of Blink-182’s All the Small Things. Seriously, they need to do time for their years long con of making American youth think they were cool. They could donate every cent they made to fight hunger and then hang themselves and I would still find them repugnant.

Have you ever had kimchee? If so, then you know it has more flavor than anything by Plain White T’s. Every single time this gets played at work my boss bobs her head and hums along. Kill me. Please make it stop. Oh, and they have the stupidest band name ever. It reeks of suburban uncreativity and parents buying instruments for their entitled kids. Ironically, when I hear Hey There Delilah while folding sweatshirts or stacking coffee mugs I can’t help but feel like this is a band that embodies everything that is wrong with being in a band when you really should think about going to trade school.

Jimmy Eat World. I don’t get it. I have now heard The Middle at least a hundred times and I just cannot fathom how this is appealing. It’s got no soul, no heart and the lyrics are fecal. Call The Hague and try them for crimes against humanity.

Sometimes, you get a hamburger and want to put ketchup on it only to find you have one packet for the whole thing. If this feeling of exasperation could have a musical form it would be Suddenly I See. To her credit K T Tunstall has made a catchy as all giddy record.I can’t say anything bad about it other than it is not my thing. Hearing it so often I cannot help but feel like I am trapped on a show on the CW Network or sitting in a store that sells fancy soap. It is not the best songwriter either. She’s Scottish. Where’s the fierce sense of independence? she sounds like watered down whisky served at Denny’s.

This brings me to Fergie, an artist who, despite understanding how pop music is crafted for the masses, takes the easy road to hitsville by sampling Little Richard’s The Girl Can’t Help It. Another excuse for my boss to bop around, Clumsy is a cheap sham. Because she has enough talent to know better and instead opted to do this, she needs to be held accountable for her misappropriation of someone else’s talent.

I could go on, but you get the gist. The long and short of it is that I take it on the chin each week by exposing my eardrums to nonsense as I work around college kids who have no clue about the pandemic.

Sadly, I don’t think I am going into a movie theater any time soon. In addition to health concerns there just aren’t that many films I want to see right now.

This brings me to Lindy West’s new book. It’s a cracker.

In the book she takes on the popular films of the last few decades and offers sage criticism of why they do and do not work. Her humor is writing and her critiques are spot on. She demystifies classics like Top Gun and Forrest Gump with great fervor and it is a hoot.

Nicky Hornby also has a new book out. Just Like You is another of his works to examine the nature of adult relationships, but this one has a few more twists.

Despite having all the usual ingredient of his previous novels; clever dialogue, references to music and film and rich characters, this one sees Hornby switching things up a bit as he slyly comments on post-Brexit England, love and race. I am curious to see where this one goes.

I also am reading more graphic novels these days. More on that later I guess.

Until then I am just another sad bastard carrying on and doing what I can each day. One thing is certain, living in a ‘challenging’ world filled with insipidly cruel and stupid people is incredibly hard.

STLCurmudgeon

Music, Movies, TV, Film, Books & Other Popular Culture Ramblings

Category Archives: food