I’ve decided to no longer to be fans of bands, only albums. I’ve decided this after listening to Weezer’s latest record, “The Red Album,” where it’s become clear to me that bands do not change, and when they do change, they get worse. By the time you know a band, they have peaked - enjoy their masterpiece, and move on.
What’s clear about Weezer is that Rivers Cuomo has absolutely nothing interesting left to add to the music he’s put into the world already. It’s not that The Red Album is especially bad, or even that it’s absurdly derivative and exactly the same as every album Weezer’s put out previously. The real problem is that because Cuomo burst onto the scene being a self-consciously ironic scenester/dork, and being a self-consciously ironic scenester/dork is really only a game you can play for 2-3 albums because by the fifth album named for a color and with exactly 10 songs on it, you are just a scenester/dork. In fact, the only nakedly emotional album Cuomo has put out (Pinkerton) was largely shunned on its initial reception, which lead to eight more years of “Hash Pipe,” “Beverly Hills,” and now “Pork in Beans.” Of course, as everyone knows, Pinkerton is actually Weezer’s finest album.
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Tags: Editorials · bands
Well after a few weeks days here and there and plenty of plane travel, I’m back firmly on LA soil.
One of the joys of business travel is interacting with your colleagues (and bosses) in ways you never would around the office. Ever wonder if your co-worker is as terrible a driver as you imagined? Now you can find out. Like to see your bosses help you navigate through Google Maps and get extremely frustrated? Here’s the chance. Work relationships are usually very controlled by your work environment, and the joy of work travel is blowing that whole paradigm up and forcing you to chit chat for hours of car/plane/and security line time. It’s really a grand experiment.
There was a great moment in my former job when I was traveling with my boss at the time along with another colleague. I was pretty caught up on work, and didn’t have anything to do at the time. We get on the plane, all 3 of us in a row, and my boss immediately breaks out his computer and starts working. My colleague and I, hesitate, wondering what the protocol is, and then firmly settle and breakout a laptop and begin watching the pilot episode of “The OC.” It was really a glorious career moment. He ended up catching the episode out of the corner of his eye and was soon inquiring why Ryan had to go back to Chino after all. It really brought us together, as only “The OC” can.
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Tags: Editorials · Sport Report · Transportation
Not to get all serious on you folks, but this week we are going to talk about one of life’s greatest pleasures. This is a very serious matter and not one I take lightly, and were it not for the 2 million people or so that read this column (plus or minus 2 million) I would be hesitant at imparting this secret so openly on the Internet. But for you, loyal LA reader, I will pull back the curtain. Soon you too will be listing your top 5 high fidelity style favorite things about life, and they will be, in some order, sex, food, family, chumbawumba…and credit card roulette (CCR)
For those who have missed out on CCR thus far in their small, pathetic, sheltered lives, let me enlighten you. CCR is a game played at restaurants/bars/massage parlors after you and a group of your friends have received a ridiculously large bill. At this time, every one of you places one credit card on the bill, after which the server, at random, chooses one credit card of the group. The person whose credit card is chosen pays the entire bill; everyone else enjoys a free lunch/drink/massage/what have you.
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Tags: Editorials · Local LA
The Hoax is a strange little movie that made very little impact when it came out in April last year. Telling the true story of Clifford Irving (Richard Gere), The Hoax details how Irving convinced editors at McGraw Hill that he was writing the authorized biography of reclusive businessman Howard Hughes. The ruse works because Hughes, as detailed in the much less enjoyable The Aviator, had become reclusive by the end of his life, and hadn’t spoken to the press in years.
The plot summary of The Hoax sounds a bit dry, and I think that’s why very few people saw it and talked about it. After all, how much fun can a movie be about a fake book? One can imagine the type of publicity the film would have received had it been made shortly after Irving’s actual ruse, which at the time was a tremendous public event; years later, Irving’s hoax is just one of the many Stephen Glasses of the world.
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Tags: Film · Reviews
1) Post Strike Blues.
Your favorite shows are in reruns. Michael Johns just got unjustly booted from American Idol. Someone told you that the NHL Playoffs are on right now, but you think that’s just an unfounded rumor (does the NHL still actually exist? Can anyone confirm or deny?)
Sounds like the perfect time to go rent BBC’s 6-part miniseries “State of Play,” an absolute blast that is part thriller, part political intrigue, part melodrama, and a lot of journalistic fun. “State of Play” mostly represents everything U.S. television is not; smart, well-acted, significant, and a sense of when to call it quits.
2) It’s only 6 hours.
Unlike U.S. television, which milks series like “Prison Break” that should have ended in development but at most should have ended with season 1, those Brits know how to leave you wanting more. After “The Office” signed off after 12 episodes and one special, State of Play is a 6 hour miniseries and that’s it. No long-term commitment required, just don’t expect to stop watching after you’ve gobbled up episode 1.
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Tags: Reviews · TV
Paranoid Park may be the longest 85 minute film I’ve ever seen, which in this case strangely does not mean that I did not enjoy it. The movie stars unknown Gabe Nevins as an enigmatic youngster Alex, who may or may not have been involved with a deadly incident with a security guard near a fictional skateboarding park that gives the film its name.
The film is organized in the now-familiar fragmented time structure, which unsurprisingly reveals what happened with the security guard towards the end of the 85 minutes, despite most of the “action” of the film occurring after the incident. Despite the structure, however, the film ultimately doesn’t lead or climax to that event; it’s a classic example of how we got there being more important than the destination. Paranoid Park is ultimately a 15 minute short story told over a feature length; how director Gus Van Sant fills those extra 80 minutes is where the film makes its true intent clear.
Van Sant, who achieved unexpected mainstream success with Good Will Hunting, has recently returned to small-time fare after losing his touch with his Psycho re-make, and feel good schlock like Finding Forrester. With Paranoid Park, Van Sant seems re-invigorated with more artistic freedom and smaller stories and .
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Tags: Film · Reviews
If you’re a Dodgers or an Angels fan, I’m sure you know the experience. You’re attending a HOME game, but your seat is surrounded by drunken males wearing Varitek jerseys or cute females in Ramirez jerseys with pink Boston hats. They’re louder than Los Angeles fans. You hate them. Most of the country hates them. This weekend, they will descend upon Los Angeles for the Dodgers exhibition series. Where do they come from? Five things to know.
1) Deep inside, we know we’re not THAT dis-similar from the Yankees. BUT, our payroll is still smaller than theirs. And yes, I know it’s ridiculous relative to the rest of the league.
2) We will never admit 1).
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Tags: Editorials · Games
Much is made over the loss of productivity from the NCAA Tournament on two glorious Thursday and Fridays in March.
I’ve seen the billion dollar estimates, and I can’t say I don’t believe them walking by every computer screen this morning seeing 10 charts of most popular foods (CBS’s choice for the “boss button” on their live NCAA streaming application).
Truly though, corporations should be thanking the NCAA. Nothing brings together disparate office-mates like simultaneously watching teams they have not seen all season and rooting for arbitrary upsets they picked in their office pool. Seriously! When Western Kentucky beat Drake today (Who is DRAKE by the way?), the entire office came together, from their cubicles, excited, wondering how the upset impacted their brackets, and who they could make fun of that had Drake winning.
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Tags: Editorials · Sport Report
I think it’s clear that the craziest, absolutely stark raving mad, insane, inexplicable thing about the world is the fact that we are allowed to drive cars. Name the craziest thing you did this week. OK, that’s pretty creepy, reader, but nothing comes close to the concept of driving a 2000+ pound piece of metal at speeds 10 times faster than we are able to run. To add to the madness, being in the car also means trying to simultaneously distract yourself using all 5 of your senses - if you are an expert car driver, like me, you’ve got your air freshener giving you some good smells, the radio blasting some good hearing distractions, your cell phone on your other ear for some good conversation, you are touching the wheel with one hand and have one hand out the window to feel the wind, and you are drinking a neapolitan shake from In-N-Out Burger (I mean, why would you not order this whenever you had the chance).
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Tags: Transportation
Growing up in smaller towns, there’s a natural fascination with the larger cities - it’s where it all “happens,” where all the celebrities gather, where the important people of the world live. Most importantly, movies take place there, and who doesn’t want to be where movies take place? No one I want to be friends with, clearly.
I remember the experience of watching “Spider Man 2″ in New York and in many ways, it was exactly as I imagined. First of all, LA movie audiences are tame. NY audiences are loud, communal, farting, singing opera, anything but quietly watching the movie. For certain movies, that’s obviously terrible, but for other movies - “Spider Man 2,” anything with Will Smith, - it’s fantastic. I’m not sure people oohing and ahing at Will Smith’s gratuitous shower scene (perfect example by the way of unnecessary male nudity for those keeping score) in “iRobot” was what Durkheim had in mind when he imagined collective effervescence, but that’s exactly what watching a movie in NY is like. It’s a community for better or worse. And when, in the case of “Spider Man 2,” the set is the city, it makes it all the more fun. Walking back from Times Square afterwards, I kept expecting Spidey to fly by through one of the neighboring skyscrapers. I had to settle for asking a Kirsten Dunst look-a-like on the street for her number instead, but that’s another story entirely, and one I’d refer to my lawyer.
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Tags: Editorials · LA Backdrop
It’s already happening. I remember sitting around in high school, remarking how it would never happen to me - I loved music too much. I could never be one of those people who didn’t care about new music, who had their era, their bands, and that was it. My father had his classical music, his classic rock, and that was it - attempting to give him new music was like trying to sell Green Day’s American Idiot to real punkers (I hate that crap about what is real “punk”, “rock”, “selling out”, et.al. Music is music. Good music is good music).
So year later I find myself, driving around L.A, mostly listening to music that’s already on my iPod and buying records from bands I already know. There is so much great new music in L.A, but sometimes I think that is the problem, the volume. There is just so much good new music, that one can’t possibly follow all of it and have a normal life. Especially when most of the good stuff is hard to identify and is often a “grower” (requiring multiple in-depth listens to truly grasp and appreciate - see every Radiohead album post OK Computer).
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Tags: Music
As pretty much all of you know because you’ve all been watching, blogging, and obsessing over it (how could you not), the latest season of television juggernaut American Idol is again underway, eating up 5 hours a week of post-strike air time for Fox. Idol, no matter what you think of the actual show, is simply a stunning institution - artful in the simplicity of its idea but also impressively diverse in its innovations and extensions.
For one, Idol is unique in that it is the rare television show that drastically changes its content midway through the season. The midseason shift from the show’s auditions to the top 24 performances (bridged by the now criminally short “Hollywood week”) is quite significant. Watching the auditions is essentially an exercise in making fun of the delusional and often strange fringes of American society. It’s a bit of a cruel exercise but it is undoubtedly a fascinating one, and it’s also a world away from the 2nd half of the season, where the show is almost entirely made up of performances by those who can (supposedly) sing. This is the equivalent of 30 Rock halfway through the season morphing into a docu-drama about inner city drugs.
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Tags: Entertainment · TV
