Uh-oh, Part 2

I'm co-moderating an online discussion group on politics at The Washington Post's website. The group is called E.J.'s Precinct, named after the moderator, E.J. Dionne, a popular columnist for The Post. Check it out.

My first post at the Huffington Post

I'm going to be a semiregular contributor to the Huffington Post's Entertainment blogs. My first post is up: a spirited defense of pop culture. Regular readers of this blog probably won't be surprised by the conclusions I draw.

Jug of This

Song lyric series, part sixteen

"Ye Mariners All" (also known as "Ye Mourners All" or "Jug of This")
Traditional shanty/drinking song

Ye mariners all, as ye pass by
Come in and drink if ye are dry
Come spend my lads your money brisk
And pop your nose in a jug of this

Ye tipplers all, if ye've half a crown
You're welcome all, for to sit down
Just call your drinks, think not amiss
To pop your nose in a jug of this

When I am old and can scarcely crawl
With a long grey beard and a head that's bald
Crown my desire and grant my wish
A pretty young girl and a jug of this

When I am in my grave and dead
And all my sorrows are past and fled
Transform me then into a fish
And let me swim in a jug of this

Paul Verhoeven's Black Book

Movie review series, part six

Paul Verhoeven is one of my favorite directors because of a trio of sci-fi movies: Robocop, Total Recall, and Starship Troopers. All of these--but especially Robocop and Starship Troopers--contain healthy dashes of irony- and humor-heavy social criticism to go along with their normal portions of sex and explosions. His last movie was 2000's Hollow Man, which I never saw, but was pretty roundly criticized. He wasn't alone in making dreck: it was a bad era for American action films. Following its failure, he left the country and went home to Holland to make a movie there for the first time in decades. Good thing he did.

He was silent for six years, fell almost completely off the radar screen. Then it seemed like he went from mute to crazy: the movie he picked for his comeback was about a Jew in World War II, possibly the single worst, most cloying trope in modern movies. Holocaust movies have gone from a handful to a hailstorm, with every original idea or emotion casually strip-mined for maximum Oscar effect. While Life is Beautiful may be partially to blame for ushering in the ensuing flood (from Jakob the Liar to The Devil's Arithmetic--starring Kirsten Dunst!--to The Pianist to Fateless to Sunshine...), it was at least a genuinely new take on a nearly untouchable part of history, so audacious it worked. The movies that followed it are as safe as abstinence and boring as sin, and frequently little more than showcases for Oscar-hopeful mugging and emotional manipulation. On the other hand, Verhoeven may be many things, but an Oscar winner ain't one of them: none of his movies has ever been nominated in any category, and he won a Razzie for "Worst Director" for Showgirls. As it turns out, his background in peddling fun big-budget sleaze is actually a blessing. His movie Black Book matches Life is Beautiful's audacity because it is a Holocaust movie cast completely against type. However, while Life is Beautiful wrapped Auschwitz into a heartwarming family-friendly comedy, Black Book's version is a sex- and violence-drenched action flick. It's the sexiest Holocaust movie ever made.

A bit like Steven Spielberg's underrated Munich, Black Book is a cross between a simple message and a slick spy movie. The simple message: killing people is wrong, killing Jews is wrong. The rest of the movie is about the main character, Rachel Stein. She endures unimaginable trauma and hardship, of course--the death of those she loves, constant near-death escapes--but she's a great character. Beautiful, intelligent, resourceful, loyal, brave, and never once denies that she is Jewish, even when dyed blonde and queried by the S.S. officer she's sent to seduce. After she mentions to one character that she's working for the Dutch Resistance, that character brightens and says, "You're like Mata Hari! A real Greta Garbo!" That's the kind of movie it is.

I'm sure that part of the inspiration for the movie must have been to portray the Dutch resistance in World War II on the big screen; but really, beyond patriotism or philosemitism it's just a good action movie. And that's the spirit in which it should be taken.

Somebody's Been Sleeping

Song lyric series, part fifteen

Somebody's Been Sleeping
By 100 Proof Aged In Soul

Fee Fi Fo Fum
I can feel the presence of someone
Somebody's been sleeping in my bed
Somebody's been sitting in my chair

They ate up all my food
And I don't stand for such
Don't tell me it was a woman
Cause a woman don't eat that much
My brand new silk pajamas (what a shame!)
They were balled up in a chair
My mind ain't playing tricks on me (what a shame!)
Lord help me if he's still here

Somebody's been sleeping in my bed
Ooh, somebody's been sitting in my chair

Cigarettes in my ashtray
And I don't even smoke
Somebody's been in my best booze
I can tell cause the seal is broke
I left my bedroom slippers (what a shame!)
Last night at the foot of my bed
And now they're in my living room (what a shame, what a shame)
And my bed was left unmade

Somebody's been sleeping in my bed
Ooh, somebody's been sitting in my chair

Fee Fi Fo Fum
I can feel the presence of someone

Fee Fi Fo Fum
I can feel the presence of someone
Somebody's been sleeping in my bed
Somebody's been eating up my food
Somebody's been walking in my shoes
Somebody's been sitting in my chair

Farewell to a true defender of freedom

The flag flies lonely in the wind tonight. Captain America, a scrawny illustrator turned superhero who defended his country for 66 years, has gone to his reward.

A sworn enemy of Nazis and Communists alike, he toed no party line and stood for what he believed to be right, even if it meant civil disobedience. He was slain by a sniper’s bullet on the steps of a courthouse where he was to stand trial for refusing to follow New York City’s superhero registration law. He followed his conscience even when his guardian angel fled.

Captain America’s creators always made clear that Super Soldier Serum hadn’t actually made Steve Rogers superhuman: it had simply allowed him to operate at the peak efficiency of the human body. He wasn’t better than us; he was us at our best, and he fought for all of us.

The outpouring of heartbreak after Marvel Comics announced Cap’s passing was immediate and genuine. No one said it better than Joe Simon, his 93-year old co-creator: “We really need him now.” We couldn’t agree more. We always did.

Stakeout

Movie review series, part five

The 1980's were the golden era of the buddy-cop comedy. 48 Hours, Lethal Weapon, even Beverly Hills Cop, all paired a Felix-and-Oscar styled odd couple with police work, heart-pounding action setpieces, and enough wisecracks to send everyone home happy. These films were so successful that the above three spawned six sequels between them, and obscured virtually all other entries into the genre, including the unjustly forgotten almost-classic Stakeout, which has held up over time better than it has any right to.

It's a simple plot. Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez are partners, and kind of screwups. Aidan Quinn is an evil escaped convict who busts loose. Dreyfuss and Estevez get assigned to stake out the house of Quinn's ex-girlfriend, played by Madeleine Stowe, just in case Quinn shows up. Dreyfuss falls in love with Stowe. Things get bad. Then everything works out. It makes for a great evening.

Plus, the cast is good. Academy Award winner Dryfuss gives perhaps his best and certainly his least effete performance ever. Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker plays one of the cops on the day shift--there ain't a lot for him to do, but it makes for star power nowadays. Emilio Estevez handles having to play the annoying younger partner with relative grace; Madeleine Stowe, long one of Hollywood's most underrated and underused brunettes, plays the hot object of interest with similar, um, grace. Aidan Quinn, fresh from playing Patricia Arquette's dangerous but sexy boyfriend in Desperately Seeking Susan, plays the sexy but dangerous escaped convict.

As I said, it all works better than it has any right to. The banter is comfortably enjoyable, as is the chemistry between the leads. Stowe looks great as the female lead and is generally more interesting--and has a much deeper voice--than the usual damsel in distress. It's a simply conceived, well executed action-comedy that manages neither to cloy nor to outthink itself. It just delivers. As I noted in my Sliding Doors review, "Some movies are ambitious and fail, and some movies are modest and succeed." This is most definitely the latter.

The greatest peril of buddy-cop movies is their tendency to spawn rather unimaginative sequels. 48 Hours and Stakeout were followed, excitingly, by Another 48 Hours and Another Stakeout. Lethal Weapon and Beverly Hills Cop, by comparison, gave way to Lethal Weapon 2, Lethal Weapon 3, Lethal Weapon 4, Beverly Hills Cop 2, and Beverly Hills Cop 3. The Lethal Weapon movies were mostly pretty good; still, the nomenclature tends to reveal the content, as in, more of the same, but not as good. All four of the series-starters are fantastic movies; the seven sequels range from fairly good to crushingly bad. But none of that can obscure the movie magic of the originals. They are simply brilliant, hearkening back to an age before CGI, before pop-postmodernist action epics, back when a good idea for a movie consisted simply of: "Let's take two cops and have them chase a really evil bad guy. And crack jokes to each other."

It was a simpler time, a golden age, when movies were fun and fun was movies. Maybe Reagan had it right after all. The 1980's really were Morning in America.

People who should be in

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame just held its induction ceremony. Since the best thing about Halls of Fame is being able to complain about who's not in them, I thought I'd post a list of some of my favorite artists who should be in the R&RHOF.; The eligibility requirements state that an artist is eligible for admission 25 years after the release of their first record, which essentially bars all hip-hop acts from admission for the next several years. I've ignored eligibility when compiling this list.

I took all the following artists from my mixes. Here they are, in alphabetical order:

1. Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band
2. The Cure
3. Dead Kennedys
4. The Dictators
5. Brian Eno (as a producer)
6. Green Day
7. Richard Hell & the Voidoids
8. Jason & the Scorchers
9. Living Colour (eligible in 2013)
10. Lou Reed (solo)
11. Love
12. MC5
13. Metallica (eligible in 2008)
14. New York Dolls
15. Nirvana (eligible in 2014)
16. Oingo Boingo
17. Pere Ubu
18. Primus (eligible in 2015)
19. Roxy Music
20. Billie Joe Shaver
21. Television
22. The Zombies

More people who should be in, compiled hastily off the top of my head:
23. Hilly Krystal (founder of CBGB's)
24. The Klezmatics (eligible in 2013)
25. Outkast (eligible in 2018)
26. Public Enemy (eligible in 2012)
27. Run-D.M.C. (eligible in 2009)
28. XTC
29. John Zorn

It's worth mentioning that this list isn't comprehensive. Everyone on the list deserves to be in, however, and I'm willing to debate the point over a pint of beer with anyone who disagrees.

A mix about friendship

Music mix series, part eleven: Friendship mix

Friendship is an underrated topic in rock songs: as I've already discussed, most rock songs seem to be about drugs or love (or love of drugs) or otherwise altered mental states. Okay, a lot of punk music is about being pissed off. ("Fook off then!") And a lot of metal is about Satan.

But, you know, other than that, friends are usually somewhere in the background, the people you get stoned with, or hang out with when your heart's broken. However, as it turns out, there are a lot of songs with the word "friend" or some variation thereof in the title. So I threw a bunch of them together and called it a mix. Yes, I cheated and added a few songs with the word "girlfriend" or "boyfriend," but that's my prerogative. This is probably one of my more self-indulgent mixes, since the only thing that really ties all these songs together is their titles. That, and the songs are all pretty good, and sound good together. That's the important thing, anyway.

1. “War Buddies,” Harvey Danger, Little by Little...
    Fantastic track by an underrated '90s band, Harvey Danger. The album was released free over the web--an awfully nice gesture by the boys, I'd say. Kicks the mix off with a piano-driven bang, and the marketing strategy certainly marks the high end of what friendship can be.

2. “You're My Best Friend,” Queen, A Night at the Opera
    Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury's voice soars to describe exactly what your friendship means to him: "Ooh, you're making me live." Because Freddie's gay, singing a song written to a female significant other, there's an emotional component slightly behind the sunshine of the words--it's love, but it's not that kind of love.

3. “He's My Best Friend,” Jellyfish, Spilt Milk
    Again, upbeat lyrics and music mask loneliness underneath. But this song's lyrics are much less obscure: it's about masturbation. "My hand's a five leaf clover/It's palm Sunday over and over/I never had the luck of a swinger/Till I was wrapped around your finger." Beautiful.

4. “She's My Best Friend,” The Velvet Underground, VU
    As with many Lou Reed songs, the lyrics are unclear and vaguely sinister, but the most-repeated phrase is: "She's my best friend/Understands me when I'm falling down, down, down." A friend in need is a friend indeed.

5. “Best Friend,” Toy Box, Fantastic
    An unjustly forgotten Eurotrash pop group from the late '90s (back when the Vengaboys, Aqua, Eiffel 65, and even Mousse T. managed--somehow--to hit the American charts), Toy Box was made up of two singers, Anila Mirza and Amir El-Falaki, and they sang songs to each other in Danish-accented English. After the group broke up, Anila became a Bollywood actress, and Amir became a side dancer. But they'll always have that one magical moment back in '99, when the world was young, and their friendship was the stuff of stardom.

6. “My Best Friend's Girl,” The Cars, The Cars
    I've always found Cars lead singer Ric Ocasek's voice slightly creepy, but that works for this song. "She's my best friend's girl/But she used to be mine" sort of says it all--jilted, bitter, but slightly pleased that the next guy is going to get hurt just as badly.

7. “Girl Friend,” The Modern Lovers, The Modern Lovers
    Another Boston band, the Modern Lovers gave a drummer (David Robinson) to the Cars and a keyboardist (Jerry Harrison) to Talking Heads; the album was produced by Velvet Underground bassist John Cale. The first verse is breathtaking, and it is as follows:
       If I were to walk through the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston
       Well first I'd go to the room where they keep the Cezanne
       But if I had by my side a girlfriend
       Then I could look through the paintings
       I could look right through them
       Because I'd have found something that I understand
       I understand a girl friend
It's either poignant, hilarious, heartbreaking, or childish. I think it's all of the above.

8. “Girlfriend is Better,” Talking Heads, Speaking in Tongues
    This is the song that coined the phrase "Stop making sense." And David Byrne seems to have taken his own advice when writing the lyrics. But a close reading of the text seems to suggest that companionship is preferable to solitude--I think.

9. “Girlfriend,” Matthew Sweet, Girlfriend
    Matthew Sweet's finest hour is a fantastic concept album devoted to the title subject--wanting one, getting one, having one, getting over one. This song's original title was "Good Friend," and the slightly sinister tone of the final line ("I'm never gonna set you free") is outweighed by his buoyant plea: "Don't you need to be back in the arms of a good friend?" (Oh, and that guitar? Yeah, it's Robert Quine, at one time Lou Reed's lead guitarist. God, he's good.)

10. “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend,” The Ramones, The Ramones
    Not many people other than P.J. Soles realized it, but the Ramones were leather-clad sweethearts. Here is the ENTIRE lyric to this song:
       Hey, little girl, I wanna be your boyfriend
       Sweet little girl, I wanna be your boyfriend
       Do you love me babe? What do you say?
       Do you love me babe? What can I say?
       Because I wanna be your boyfriend
How could you say no to that?

11. “Friends Like You,” You Am I, Convicts
    The title of the song kind of implies the second half of the saying, "...who needs enemies." A lovely, piss-soaked 2-minute punk rocker from a fine Australian rock band, You Am I. So this would be the low point of friendship, at the midpoint of the disc. The rest of the mix may be less uptempo, but maybe a little more upbeat.

12. “Friends,” Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin III
    Led Zeppelin at their most earnest, this is a song dedicated to the very simple notion that "The greatest thing you ever can do, now/Is trade a smile with someone who's blue, now," complete with a surprisingly restrained Robert Plant vocal. After all, sometimes you have to be the comforter, not just the comfortee.

13. “Thank You Friends,” Big Star, Third/Sister Lovers
    Like an acceptance speech, but probably more heartfelt: "Thank you, friends/Wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you."

14. “See My Friends,” The Kinks, Kinda Kinks
    Simple melody and simple lyrics: his woman's left him, but his friends are still by his side. He doesn't even need to say how he feels: it's perfectly understandable.

15. “Friends Of Mine,” The Zombies, Odessey and Oracle
    An absolutely ebullient song about acquaintances who got married: "It feels so good to know two people so in love." The names of eight different couples are chanted in the background of the chorus. Forty years after the album was recorded, one wonders whatever did happen to those happy newlyweds... here's hoping it worked out, wherever they are.

16. “How Many Friends,” The Who, The Who by Numbers
    The dark side of stardom is being unable to trust the people around you. The Who recorded this song over a decade into their career, at which point they were superstars, but were running ragged: drummer Keith Moon would die of a drug overdose the year after this album was released, and guitarist Pete Townshend continued to battle alcoholism (the second track on the album is called "However Much I Booze"). Amid all that, singer Roger Daltrey muses in this song, "How many friends do I really have? I can count 'em on one hand."

17. “Where Do All My Friends Go,” Oingo Boingo, Boi-ngo
    I think this song has something to do with death and the afterlife, or something. Of course, Oingo Boingo was always into the whole creepy death thing, not like goth so much as really, really into Halloween. So it's not so much about friendship, really... except insofar as, if you die, then I'm going to be left here without you. The lyric doesn't really pursue that so much as imply it.

18. “Your Racist Friend,” They Might Be Giants, Flood
    From They Might Be Giants' breakthrough album, Flood, a simple song about the limits of how far you ought to go for a friend: the awkward situation--one we've all been in--of not being able to tolerate a really obnoxious friend of a friend.

19. “My Friends,” Red Hot Chili Peppers, One Hot Minute
    A hit from the Red Hot Chili Peppers' first album without guitarist John Frusciante, who replaced OD'd founder Hillel Slovak but dropped out in the mid-'90s due to his own drug problems. This song's about being around a lot of people who aren't in a good place: "My friends are so depressed
I feel the question
Of your loneliness
Confide... `cause I'll be on your side
You know I will, you know I will"

20. “All the Right Friends,” R.E.M., In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988-2003
    A long-unreleased R.E.M. track, one of the earliest they wrote, and it's about the opposite: voluntary loneliness, the confidence that "I don't gotta hang out with the folks that just aren't mine." Friends are well and good, but not just any will do. You gotta have the right ones.

21. “My Pal Foot Foot,” The Shaggs, Philosophy Of The World
    Frank Zappa said they were "better than the Beatles," but really, they were just completely unlike anything ever commercially released, primitive, barely able to play their instruments, and way the hell out of left field. Basically the Howard Finsters of rock--they make Ani DiFranco sound like Yngwie Malmsteen. (No, I don't know what that means. But it sounds good.) This song is about their cat, who runs away a lot.

22. “Penpals,” Sloan, Twice Removed
    Sloan made their name as ace purveyors of power-pop, ironic, detached, hair ruffled. It's really quite winning stuff. This is a song reading imaginary letters from abroad in broken English--it could be offensive, of course, but it's actually rather sweet: "You're so cool but you know that/I hope your letters never stop/You are surely special, I like you"