Death to Cardboard

Why I can't do dog movies

2009-01-02T00:50:00.005-06:00

You can head to the movies with your parents to see some film you've been anticipating, that your friends all think is great and you know has something to do with Indian poverty and game shows. The cinema lobby can be crowded with people, all of whom have come to see a certain movie with a dog in it. And after you buy your tickets, you can spend the whole walk to Theater 11 scoffing, "I can't believe so many people are paying to see a dog movie. Of course there are going to be hijinks, and of course the dog is going to die at the end. There's no suspense. The dog always dies." And you know the dog dies, because the chatterbox sitting next to you on a flight home from Lake Winnepasaukee, New Hampshire spoiled it, but also because dogs ALWAYS get hit by cars, or contract rabies, or attack the mayor's daughter and have to be put down, or get eaten by wolves. And you can scoff that so many people will pay $10 a head just to say awww for a couple of hours and eventually cry.

And you can go into Theater 11 and be shocked that the theater is full, and that so many parents brought their children to see a Rated R movie that has something to do with Indian poverty and game shows. You can sit through the credits and wonder why 20th Century Fox thinks that your fellow foreign-films fanatics would ever want to see "He's Just Not That Into You" and "Hotel for Dogs" and "Bridezillas." Or that 20th Century Fox chose to release such an obscure and good film that you are certain this Indian film will be.

And then, after the credits, you can hear the distinctly American voice-over of a familiar broken-nosed actor who became strangely more attractive after his recent suicide attempt. OH GOD. OH GOD. It's that dog movie.

You can turn to your father and whisper, "I really don't want to see this. I can't see this. I really don't want to see this right now, we can still leave and get into the movie that we were supposed to see before this horrible mistake occurred, we probably only missed five minutes, I really don't want to see this, please." But the theater is packed, and to get out you'd have to push past several families and cause a huge stir, so your parents stay put and so do you.

And the film will undoubtedly unreel exactly as you expect. You want to take drink every time your fellow audience members say "Awww" at a wide-eyed puppy face. (You'd be plastered by the end of the first act.) The strangely attractive blond guy and his irritating wife inevitably settle into domestic bliss, conceiving round-faced blond children. They move into dubiously photogenic home after dubiously photogenic home, and along the way, their dog devours their possessions. Every time a new set piece is introduced, you try to guess how the dog will find some way to break, tear apart, or somehow ruin whatever it is. The dog tears across the beach and terrorizes the babysitter. Awwww.

And the whole time, you're thinking, "This dog is going to die. How is this dog going to die. When is this dog going to die. I do not want to be here when this dog dies."

After a suitable number of bland situations and jokes about humping and neutering and familial tribulations that are supposed to be affecting but just aren't--and these things happen without an ounce of style or artistry, naturally--you know it's time for that dog to bite it. The dog is too old to last much longer. And the blond couple finds the dog lying there and take it to the vet and you think, "Those bastards. They didn't have to wait through endless surgeries and radiation sessions. They are getting off so easy."

And then the broken-nosed actor performs his soliloquy about how the dog is a fighter, how he's special. He ate an answering machine. He sat with one of the characters during a moment of sickness.

And all you can think is, "You think that's special! Ha! I've got a fully digested racquetball and a sixteenth of a Nerf football and a three-legged piano that proves that his dog isn't special. His dog never comforted anyone through a four-hour panic attack. That dog isn't special until he stays smiling and well-tempered through months of chemo and pain pills and hurting and STILL lays his head in your lap while you cry over the latest terrible break up. That dog has no personality. It's not afraid of snow and it probably doesn't even have its own neurotic way of navigating under the kitchen table. No one ever walked that dog along the beach at Christmas, experiencing moments of blinding clarity. FUCK that dog."

And they put the dog to sleep, and you still cry like a bitch because even though that dog isn't the best dog that ever lived, he sure looks like him, and that actor got to say everything to his dog that you wanted to say to yours except you couldn't because you were a thousand miles away comparing Kafka's protagonists to archetypes in Freud's "Civilization and its Discontents." And that you hate that beautiful music is swelling because in real life, it doesn't. And you realize that your dad is weeping, which to your knowledge he doesn't do, and your mom is weeping, which to your knowledge she only does sparingly. And the fat lady in front of you sitting so far back in her seat that your knees are squashed is weeping, but she can go to hell because she doesn't understand this like you do.

And finally the credits are rolling and all you can do is turn to your dad and exclaim tearfully, "I told you I didn't want to see that!" Because the movie SUCKED and you still gave the holiday box office the satisfaction of getting emotional over it.

Mountain Goats - Golden Boy (mediafire) (to apply this song to the post above, pretend it is about your beloved dead dog and not delicious snacks)

Momentary Greatness: The Walkmen - "In the New Year"

2008-11-28T17:40:00.005-06:00

Do you like your face? Do you wish it to remain in the front of your skull, presenting a somewhat more pleasant/less visceral view of your head? Would you view it a shame if this face were torn, ripped, torn, sawed, smoked, torn, blasted or - dare we say it? - rocked off? Then, simpleton, please move on. Remove yourself from this moment, forget we ever met. Blog? What Blog? What's a blog? Sounds like someone wrapped bacon around some summer sausage and lacked creativity!

Those who wish to part with said face, proceed.

AT YOU OWN RISK BITCHES.

Song Name: "In the new year"
Band Name: The Walkmen
Moment in Question: 0:40
File Under: Cardiac arrest

Today at the record store, I was choosing between three albums - The Hold Steady's Stay Positive, Okkervil River's The Stand Ins and You & Me by The Walkman. I picked the last one, even though I wasn't sure if I'd ever heard a song off it. I could be positive of only one Walkmen song in my life, "New Year's Eve" off of Bows and Arrows, and I know that because I was a lonely teenager and downloading songs after a blanket search of "New Year's Eve" seemed like the prudent thing to do. Conversely, I just paid over $50 to see The Hold Steady open for the Drive-By Truckers, and The Stage Names has made me ejaculate on myself numerous times. Then I previewed You & Me track four, "In the New Year." Based on the 20-second clip that was made up almost wholly with the tortured clangs from the intro, I bought the Walkman album. And then I didn't even KNOW man!

(If you suck and don't buy this album after reading this article, there's no good live video of it on youtube, but there are a few fan vids. Do NOT - NOT - watch any of these without reading the whole article! Because you might want to buy it, and the only true way to experience this song the first time is to have the biggest fucking can headphones on and just listen to it ABSOLUTELY MASSACRE EVERY BIT OF YOUR MIND.)

I'm a firm believer that art mediums can touch each other and get all hot and bothered, rolling up against some intersecting experiences. That said, that single organ riff tells a story with much more force than any novelist could ever hope for. It sounds the deeps of the human soul with more veracity than any poem and represents the gambit of human emotion with more stark vivid light than any film. It plunges from your ear drums down a long fucking tube, bursts through that bitch, sinks into your muscle tissue, your blood cells and your sinew, into the very essence of who the fuck you thought you were 40 seconds ago and it cleans you. You feel absolutely dazed. It has, in affect, sucked you dry but with music. Hamilton Leithauser wails like a lost banshee, like Grace Slick and Robert Plant got fucked shitfaced and did each other for a lark. The whole thing feels loose and gummy and like terrible doctors who dress up real nice for the funeral. It is a destructive force. It destroys you with its perfection.

Welcome, love. The canon hopes you enjoy your stay.

Review: Rachel Getting Married

2008-11-28T01:56:00.001-06:00

About halfway through watching Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married I couldn't remember how it began. Literally, I plunged into my mind and came up with nothing, nothing save the scene where recovering addict Kym (played by Anne Hathaway) departs from the mental institution and some tiny clips of the opening credits. This is absolutely 100% not a bad thing; RGM may be a non-stop blitz of emotional turmoil, awkward family situations and beautiful music, but that is not to say things did not blend. If anything, as exhibited by my momentary amnesia about the beginning of the film, the film could have used a little less blending.

Essentially, the title of the film says it all; the entire film revolves around a week's worth of festivities in preparation for the wedding of Rachel (Kym's sister, played delicately by Rosmarie DeWitt) to Sidney (featuring TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe bringing real warmth to the role). More to the point, however, is that Kym has just been released from a rehab clinic, bringing a couple of truckloads worth of emotional baggage to add to the already mounting stress of the event. The film represents that stress particularly in the supporting cast of Kym and Rachel's father, Paul (an absolutely defining performance by Bill Irwin); Sidney's best man, Kieran (Mather Zickle); Rachel's initial maid of honor, Emma (Anisa George); and the sister's single mother, Abby (hey everyone! It's Debra Winger!)

From the moment we see Kym and Rachel existing in the same space, with Kym quickly making a stab at a joke about (of all funny topics available) an old eating disorder, we are lead to understand that this is a train wreck just dying to happen. Hathaway does some truly provocative emotive contorting with Kym, bringing some of her latent Princess Diaries spunk to such an emotional meltdown. The effect, particularly when combined with Rachel's coexisting urges to be patient and stubborn, creates a toxic air around almost any situation where the two are seen together. It is in these scenes where the movie pulls out its heavy artillery, with so much shouting and pouting that it's a wonder the whole things comes off as anything but shrill. Rather than stir the pot, Demme's camera observes these events with an amount of intimacy that blurs the line between viewing this as a creation and as something much more real.

Whether it's real or not makes no difference, because Demme's sense of pacing and assumed urge to place these events on their stunted emotional timeline gives the audience just enough time for that to not matter. Not once in my viewing did I feel as though this break-neck speed was too fast for the film; the difficulty for each scene in succession ramps up so violently that the speed is the ultimate helper. After a truly excruciating wedding rehearsal toast, a scream-filled confrontation, an accidental reminder of Kym's particularly troubled past (it's a bit of a spoiler, but it comes up quite a bit) that knocks Paul for a loop, a car accident, etc., etc., the feeling of wanting to know the what the next mode for the film was shouted down by the sheer thrill of it all.

Speaking of thrill, this film is fucking filled with it. Outside of the truly meaty Kym and Rachel scenes is an essential weaving of the other aspects of preparing such a monumental event as a wedding. There are numerous scenes of the combination of the two families (particularly one involving a dish-washing contest) that illicit a true and saccarine form of joy. There are several scenes of people simply performing, simply dancing, simply existing in the excitement for these two people. In a scene where Rachel reveals that she's pregnant (a scene that is actually shoved right in the middle of a massive fight between Rachel and Kym), Paul reacts by dervishly prancing and screaming, succumbing to a jubilant atmosphere that tends to exude from the pictures' more hopeful moments.

For all the great side characters, for all the momentous moments of music, of movement, of worry and excitement and union, however, any talk of this film would be a mistake if it did not give special note to Hathaway's performance. Kym, who exists in essentially a one-dimensional void, is a character that deserves to be shrill and unlikable, and would have been so in the hands of almost anyone else. With her telling thrown glances, her perfected exasperation, just the simple pain that is visible in her eyes throughout, Hathaway decides to fuck with an understanding of what she's supposed to be almost right alongside those almost blatantly damning moments. When Kym complains to Paul that Rachel cheated by bringing up her pregnancy in the middle of a heated fight, hatred doesn't pour in. Kym is hateable, but she is never evil. Many other films and actresses have sorely missed that distinction.

Rachel Getting Married does not exist among a genre of slice-of-life films; it ascends immediately to the top of that genre's highest mountain. It is a film of dominating, relentless energy, of a human vitality far beyond most films trying to present true family strife. I don't remember the beginning, but I also have come to believe that I don't have to, because forcing my way back works against a current this film builds, a current that every character gets swept up in until the very end of the film. This film deserves endless praise and Hathaway deserves an Oscar nomination not for a performance, not for a representation, but for a display so nuanced that it seems exhaustingly alive.
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Yahoo! Headline Madness: More Election Silliness

2008-10-08T13:25:00.004-05:00

As someone who regularly "surfs" the "web" for extended periods of time only to run out of interesting websites to go to and end up back at Yahoo!, it is becoming more and more apparent that Yahoo! is the nadir for online headline writing. Relatively speaking - I'm sure there's some website with "OMG OBAMA IZ TERRORIZT" featured prominently, but Yahoo is one of the big boys, and they should know better. Some pained sticking up for McCain after the jump.

From today:

Now, sadly, unlike our in-house madame, I lack the technical capabilities to outline things with my mousepad thing. But take a look at the McCain headline. Looks pretty damning, right? Seems dangerous that a president would want that plan.

News flash, fuckos: that's Congress' plan as well. In last week's absolutely essential episode of This American Life, we learn that that bailout plans' main function is to completely based around buying all of these terrible mortgages. Everyone is using this plan. It's stupid and ridiculous, but it's stupid and ridiculous for everyone. There, I defended John McCain. I'm gonna throw up for about three days.

Piling on the big boys

2008-09-23T19:27:00.005-05:00

(INT. Backstage on the set of Death to Cardboard)

(KID COMBUSTIBLE is toweling off after a grueling...um...blogging set)

Well, we sure have had a lot of fun at the expense of Yahoo! in the past weeks. Obviously they are a little quick to flip headlines (not just in this specific incident - I can't count the number of times that they have flipped a headline to mean essentially the opposite of what it did, but sadly at these times I was not co-running an omniblog). Yahoo! is the popular kid of the internet, but for very little reason. Their "news" is nothing but AP wire pulls, and their mail service is good but very average. Yet it remains the most visited site (or something close to that. I'm not looking that shit up). But what makes this popularity even more baffling is the almost single-minded suckocity provided by their headlines. Such as:

Now, the article is pretty lackluster, but it shares its' main problem with the headline itself. What we're supposed to think of, according to this article/headline/Yahoo!'s first goddamn thing you see, is that the plane crash that didn't kill Travis Barker and DJ AM is similar to the plane crashes that killed Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, Richie Valens, Jim Croce, Otis Redding, Patsy Cline, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Glenn Miller, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Ray Rhodes, Aalyiah, Ricky Nelson, and John Denver. Which makes sense, of course. Stevie Ray Vaughan was arguably one of the most accomplished blues guitar players of all-time; DJ AM has been on TMZ a few times. Otis Redding had one of the most singular voices in the 60's soul scene; Travis Barker sometimes is in the Aquabats! I don't care if the relationship is tenuous - these people don't belong in the same lame Yahoo! article together, no matter how much steel and fire it took to kill them.

Creative design with Yahoo! News

2008-09-17T16:03:00.003-05:00

After Sarah Palin's speech to the Republican National Convention, I noticed that the front-page headline on Yahoo! News went from "Palin bashes community organizers, Obama campaign" to "Palin dubbed 'Rock Star' of RNC" in less than five minutes. I was willing to give Yahoo! the benefit of the doubt, write it off as a fluke, until the following image appeared on the page today (emphasis is my own.)

*slow clap*

Yahoo managed to turn a fluff piece on fashion sense into an (at first glance) expose on Fer "Notorious for Her Drug Abuse" Gie and Michelle "Not Tyra Banks" Obama shooting up in an alley on the south side of Chicago. Does anyone say "high marks" anymore? Wasn't there room for the word "marks" on the first line? No and yes, respectively.

Funny, since Michelle isn't the addict involved in this year's election.

Just sayin'.

Broke-ass hoes, broke-ass hoes, broke-ass hoes, broke-ass hoes

2008-09-06T00:57:00.008-05:00

Attending a private liberal arts college made me hate feminists for a while. That's the opposite of what's supposed to happen, isn't it? You're supposed to become deeply ensconced in women's issues, go vegetarian and develop an in intense love of short-haired indie rock chicks while protesting endlessly the use of the word "chick" to describe WOMEN because I am a WOMAN and I will not allow myself to be DENIGRATED by the heteronormative, chauvinistic corporate automaton and be told that I am a helpless baby bird that subsists on PREMASTICATED CORN NIBLETS and possesses no control over my UTERINE. CONTENTS.

People at private liberal arts colleges actually talk like that (well, sort of.) Which raises the question, if you're not a bird, why are you so fucking shrill?

Don't get me wrong, the women who devoted most of their time to the campus feminist group tended to be nice, reasonable people on a regular basis. I just couldn't listen to them talk about feminist issues because after a while, my ears would start to bleed mysteriously. Which is not something I'm proud of. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to learn about the raping penis and modern ways to hate it. I wanted to give my vagina a big cuddly hug. Unfortunately, my arms just weren't long enough, and confusion gave way to resentment. I retreated to the frat house to shake shake shake it to the dulcet tones of "Ass 'n' Titties" by DJ Assault.

But in Spring Term 2008, something amazing happened. Our own Kid Combustible pointed me to the blog Jezebel, and I've been obsessively refreshing the page ever since. The magic of Jezebel is that the site sells itself as "Celebrity, Sex, Fashion For Women. Without Airbrushing." Essentially, it's a pop culture blog that happens to be pro-women. Even better, it's a pop culture blog that I consistently agree with (and that doesn't happen often.) And they're feminists, so I guess that makes me a feminist too.

So. What's the point of this diatribe? Mostly, I've been galvanized by Jezebel's recent coverage of the Sarah Palin debacle. (That's not a Jezebel article, but it should be read nonetheless for reference.) Anyway, they dared to ask the question that has been on my mind since we first heard of Tina Fey's horrible evil twin: why does Sarah Palin blind normal, reasonable women with rage? Personally, I think it's because her spokesman is named Tucker Bounds. What the hell is up with that. Also, I have a hard time enjoying the company of people who are cool with torturing wolves with helicopters and then shooting them to death. Doesn't anyone collect bottlecaps anymore?

And if you're badass enough to aggressively interrogate lupine beasts from the skies, do you need a guy named Tucker Bounds to man your spokes?

But seriously folks. The pros did a good job of explaining why exactly I react so violently to the mere thought of Sarah Palin. And by react violently, I mean I could get pretty into an episode of CSI wherein the team investigates charred remains found in a deserted Alaskan woodland near a business that rents helicopters and AK-47s to wolves and librarians who are fired for allowing people to take out banned books.

I'm just saying, that episode of CSI sounds rather engaging. Think about it, CBS!!

Enough hate, though. The point of this post is to declare my love for Jezebel. For the aforementioned reasons, and also because they introduced me to the video series Target: Women with Sarah Haskins, which in turn led me to one of my favorite shows (albeit one that I can only watch online) InfoMania. Thanks, guys!

I Will Follow You into the Blackness of My iTunes Library

2008-08-17T16:49:00.005-05:00

Sometimes I worry about how often I listen to a certain song. Or album. Or band. It's all very very worrisome. You have a piece of music that you like so much, you want to hear it over and over again. It happens all the time. However, at some point you have to worry if you are over-saturating yourself with just a single piece of music. You listen to a song fifty times in two weeks and fifty-one might not come for a long time after that, if ever. Thanks to all that there newfangled electronicky shit that I can use, I can teleport my thoughts straight through a CAT-5 cable into my ipod, telling it to pull back the high end juuuuust a little bit. The current battle is between me and the Los Campesinos! addicting song and awesome video "We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives":

It shouldn't be very hard to avoid that feeling of fatigue for this song, seeing as I don't have the EP that it comes on (makes it only available through Youtube or through totally legal insanely legal so legal I bought it from a pharmacy download). This takes the all-important iPod question out of the equation. Let's meet a few songs that were in for a worse fate.

"I Will Follow You into the Dark" - Death Cab for Cutie

Siiiigh. Remember, like, how awesome it is to be in love and shit and to play this song over and over again because you love that person SO MUCH and then it's like two summers' later and you haven't spoken to that person in like a year and all you can think of is the fact that LIFE is all DIFFERENT and it's more LAME and SHIT? Yeah, that totally sucks.

This song does not deserve that sort of stigma.

This song is sooo over-the-top sappy/sad/precious that it should live as a beacon for nothing. Not love or happiness or sadness or remorse. This song should only be admired in those most saccharine of moments. Adding this to any moment with your significant other is akin to pouring straight corn syrup onto your Frosted Flakes. Like, yeah it enhances something, but someone's gotta say when sometime.

The video also features animated rabbits. I (rabbit) DCFC!

Last Time Heard: Fairly recently, actually. Mid-June, it looks like. Although I think it was mostly for sleepin'.
Do I Still Like It?: Yeah, I guess. I mean, it's my most listen to song on iTunes, which has to mean something. No, wait, it doesn't. It means I used to love a song that I now hate because of all the crap associated with it. It has become an unpleasant song, which is difficult because it pretty much started off as an unpleasant song.

"Rebellion (Lies)" - The Arcade Fire

Last fall, I had the great fortune to see The Arcade Fire and LCD Soundsystem. It remains the best concert I've ever seen. However, it could have been even better had almost all of the songs they played off of Funeral weren't so overplayed in my personal library. You see, being a young and sudden lad of 18, my parents bought me my first MP3 player, which was a 256 MB one and held, like, 40 songs or something like that. It was akin to about four hours of music, and most of that was taken up by America: The Audiobook. Therefore, I really only had space for one album, which became my recently purchased copy of Funeral. This, compounded with the fact that I listened to my player pretty much every damn place I went in high school, lead to a lot of repetition. For probably a month I did nothing but listen to TAF (also stands for Ira Glass's new show This American Fire, which is mostly about Ira Glass committing random arson).

Also Win Butler has like the sharpest face in the world. Watch out Regine!

Last Time Heard: In an attempt to rekindle my love for the album, I listened to the whole thing in full a couple weeks ago. Didn't really succeed.
Do I Still LIke It?: Probably not, sad to say. Before, that song in particular was just so energetic, and now it's just like the seven-hundredth time I hear the band scream "LIIIIES LIIIIIIIES" and how it sounds like a bunch of muppets.

"Packing Blankets" - Eels

I have a TON of Eels in my top 30 most listened list on iTunes. In actuality, it's only three songs, but for a band that I don't even really like it seems insane to have even that many. I know for a fact that there was a period of time where I was regularly listening to them, in particular Daisies of the Galaxy, it's just that even then I don't think I really liked them all that much. They were...boring? Still are boring. Kinda just seriously totally boring.

Last Time Heard: Not since May.
Do I Still Like It?: As I said above, I'm still not completely convinced I ever did.

"Mary" - Langhorne Slim

the fuck is a langhorne slim is that some sort of maxi pad

Langhorne Slim is actually a very good country singer-songwriter, and this is very short tune is easily one of the catchiest on his debut record When the Sun's Gone Down.

Last Time Heard: Now this is messed up. At 34 plays, this song is currently at #19 on my most listened to playlist. However, I have not listened to it since December 2nd of 2006. Over a year and a half, I have probably at least doubled my albums count on my iTunes, yet this song somehow hangs around. Jesus Christ, he compares a the taste of a woman to corn on the cob!
Do I Still Like It?: That corn on the cob line might be one of the best lyrics ever. Still catchy. .

Content gone questionable

2008-08-01T23:46:00.007-05:00

I feel the need to expound on my previous assertion that Jeph Jacques is a douche. See, in high school, I used to worship the man. After all, he's from Maryland, and I'm from Maryland. He graduated from Hampshire College, and I got $3,000 in financial aid from Hampshire College before deciding it wasn't the right school for me. He's a self-important twit who erroneously believes he's funny and likes namedropping obscure indie bands, and I'm...wait a second.

Where, then, did the romance die? Somewhere during the five years that spanned my development from a fresh-faced Daria emulator to a wizened husk in a Gogol Bordello tour tee, something went horribly awry. And I'm pretty sure the problem wasn't entirely with me.

Looking back on the first comics in the Questionable Content archive, I realized that the early comics are nearly indistinguishable from the recent ones. (Recent here meaning "published after the release of the Jennifer Lopez/Jane Fonda vehicle Monster-in-Law.) The tone is different, the art is different, the subject matter is even different. At its inception, the strip was about the hardships of growing into young manhood, suffering at a crappy job in a state of involuntary celibacy. The art consisted mainly of angular lines and a neutral blue/brown palette; simple, but visually interesting. When the character of Faye was introduced, she played the confident, tough-talking broad to Marten's simpering and wishy-washy sad sack. But as the comic progressed, the two switched roles. Jacques retcons his capable and admirable female lead into a whiny and neurotic idiot who can't make the simplest decision for herself. Later, the supporting character Hannelore is "developed" in the same way.

But that's just the tip of the douche iceberg. As the comic became more popular, Jacques forsook the angular style in order to give Faye a perceived weight problem, thus rendering her more relatable. (Which would work if Faye had the appearance of a weight problem, or even if any of the comic's characters had a single unappealing physical trait. Clearly Jacques has never seen a fat chick outside of badly doctored BBW porn, considering how he gave Faye a visible collarbone. jesus christ.) At present, the art has the look of a badly animated CGI cartoon: spatially round, but dimensionally flat. I wonder what that sounds like? Oh yeah, all of the characters.

The shift in tone is perhaps the most off-putting. Jacques's protagonist once worried about his job, his relationships, and keeping his adorable robot out of trouble. Today, Marten has a fun job at a college library (and no trouble paying his bills! or buying outrageously rocking guitars!), shtups his perfect (but irrational, like all women. amirite?) girlfriend at every conceivable moment, and Pintsize seems to have gone the way of the original iPhone. Why do people keep reading? Is it to see what masturbatory fantasy will manifest next for ol' Marten? To anticipate the day that the art style at last evolves into neo-Impressionism with shapelier tits? Or do people return to Questionable Content for the same reason I do: because I've been reading it since Broken Social Scene and the Arcade Fire seemed obscure, and typing the URL is little more than a habit.

Or could it be the tiny specks of lovingly-drawn ass cracks?

Yeah. Definitely the ass cracks thing.

((art found at http://aod-shadowjester.deviantart.com/art/Questionable-Content-52914830))

The internet done me wrong again

2008-07-29T01:26:00.003-05:00

So Sony is making a game called "Fat Princess", where your chance of winning is increased by locking a princess in a room, force-feeding her cake to make her weigh more, thus making her hard to carry around. Take a minute to digest thLOL. Okay, sorry.

There is a ton of shit that sounds really damn offensive about this. You have to lock her in (as described by Yahoo!) a "dungeon". You have to force-feed her. So she gets fat. It portrays women as being unable to defend themselves. It portrays women as being objects to behold or be sought after for capturing. IT IS CALLED "FAT PRINCESS". It's hard to separate the offensive from the downright stupid, because both seem to be feasting on each other like fucking piranas here.

However, the real majesty of the Yahoo! article about this is the last three paragraphs. Seriously, it is fucking majestic:

Sony has yet to issue an official response, although Joystiq did receive a particularly informative update from James Green, Fat Princess' lead art director, who clued gamers in on the origins of the game:

"Does it make it better or worse that the concept artist (who designed the look, characters, everything) is a girl?"

Hmmm...hope the game's detractors don't mind eating a bit of crow.

HAHAHAHAHAH FUUUUUUCK YOU YAHOO! GAMER WRITING PERSON!

Holy shit, seriously, this is, like, the basic element of someone being offended. Intent is irrelevant. It doesn't matter what you were trying to do, all that matters is that people found it offensive and wished to tell you about it. Building on that, it also doesn't really matter who was trying to do anything. Women can offend other women. You know Ann Coulter? She offends everyone, women too! Of course she designed the look and the characters and what not - that was her job. She probably didn't find it offensive. That's fine. However, other people really really do. These feminists aren't trying to speak for all women - they're trying to speak for the type of women who sees a video game that children will probably play that revolves around kidnapping and force-feeding princesses. Just because one woman doesn't find it offensive and draws all the art and designs it means absolutely nothing. This crow will not be eaten. This crow shall fly, motherfuckers.

This article (and the linked Joystiq article and its comments) lead to the heart of this problem: people assume that there is pleasure in getting outraged at these things. They assume that we enjoy getting ourselves riled up and writing angry screeds over and over again. At least, I assume that's what they assume. I can see no other reason why people seem to get so mad at people for getting offended. It should be considered a rule of thumb on the internet that the faster and louder people are willing to shoot down any allegation, the more obvious it becomes that they aren't willing to confront the issue themselves. Perhaps if these people would stop talking about how much they hate femi-nazis for twelve seconds and think that maybe they aren't fairly portraying women in this and other forms of media, maybe there could be a dialogue. Maybe there could be something, some sort of evolution. But no. Never. No one wants evolution. People want the internet to remain a funtime happyplace where anyone can say whatever the hell they want and not have to worry about being offensive or whatever. So enjoy it, kids. Enjoy a culture that completely belittles women almost as a god damn bylaw and completely decimates any criticism on the fact. Enjoy your childish jokes and your hate-fueled stupidity. Enjoy yourselves, fuckos.

Ultimate List: Unrequited Love

2008-07-25T02:17:00.009-05:00

So many media blogs, so many of them do lists, right? Of course they do, they're fucking vultures who couldn't be creative with a stack of playdough and three hits of acid. So we here at DTC have had a hard time figuring out the list problem. Namely, how do we do lists that don't seem like everyone else's lists. New lists. Controversial lists. Listless lists that come on Listmas and live in Listbon. Here is one of undoubtedly at least three attempts to make the list as glorious as it once was.

First off: The ULTIMATE BEST!!!!
AHAHAHAHAH
WOOOOOOO
*73 minute guitar solo that would make Yngwie Malmsteen shit his chain mail underdrawers*

What is the ULTIMATE BEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! you may ask? It is simply a list of various types of media that represent a certain theme. This week, since it's Friday, the theme is Unrequited Love. This is most often experienced when MM goes out drinking on a Friday night, smears her makeup all over her face in a bathroom stall after doing too much X and cries her way back home when the bartender that seemed SO nice wouldn't go home with her. Also, Jena Malone won't return my god damn phone calls I BOUGHT STEPMOM ON DVD FOR NOTHING.

BEST ALBUM:

Black Sheep Boy, Okkervil River

The temptation, of course, is to put In The Aeroplane Over the Sea here simply to forward the argument. However, I really don't want to be one of those people who attempts to elevate interest by lying and making ridiculous statements (btw FUCK THE DARK NIGHT MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL = TEH FAT). As much as I love the Anne Frank mythology behind Neutral Milk Hotel's final album, everyone has to be able to recognize the wealth of other material in there.

Plainly put, Black Sheep Boy deserves this because unrequited love is all the album has going. This is not a negative, and also not a universal opinion, I'm sure (there is a lot of father daughter imagery to support such a theory). Rather, Will Sheff and crew does what the band does best: completely nail a story and its narrative over an album. The tale of the presumed Black SHeep Boy in love with a woman who constantly tells him no such love is possible. From the heartbreaking "A King and QUeen" through the final death knell in "A Glow", the album exists solely to tell the story of someone in love with what is not there, and all the efforts involved in extricating oneself from

BEST MOVIE, or film. Does film sound too pretentious? I'm gonna go with film.

BEST FILM

The Science of Sleep

Michel Gondry is my favorite director simply because he accomplishes my most pressing issue with film: how to make the love story interesting again. Other directors do a fine job with such a task, but few with the vigor and sweet tenacity of Gondry. The terrifyingly tender story of Science, where the chronically childish Cael Garcia Bernal attempts to open up to the discreetly beautiful Charlotte Gainsbourg while coping with his dream-obsessed mind, might as well be shaped and referred to as a dagger when presented to awkward males. Simply put, this movie hurts to watch; it creates a sort of mythical Catch-22 where the woman might be interested, but the man doesn't see it as such, so he blames her, he blames himself, and generally acts the fool all over the place until everything is ruined. The films' final scene states the final tragic idea in the most blatant way: life is so much better in dreams.

BEST TELEVISION DUO/TRIO

This has got to be Pam and Jim right i mean it basically dominated television for about two years and

Charlie, Dennis and The Waitress, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

OOOOOOOOH SNAP.

Charlie might be the best character on television right now. His actions are, of course, morally reprehensible for the most part, but unlike Dennis or Dee or Mac his poor actions come from ignorance. He can't read. He can't write. He has an excessively childlike mind. He huffs glue and paint. He lives in an efficiency with Danny DeVito. His life is so sad on so many levels, and it is only compounded by his love for The Waitress. From the first episode on, The Waitress rebuffs any and all of Charlie's advances with a mixture of scorn, disgust, and outright vitriol. She, however contains the same amount of unadulterated love for Dennis, who at various times turns her away or (more often) takes advantage of her emotions to gain something over the rest of his friends. In the midst of a terribly funny television show, this is easily one of the saddest love dynamics on television today.

Case in point: The episode "Mac Bangs Dennis' Mom". Charlie, suddenly given an amount of power over the rest of the crew thanks to Frank, uses his power to (of course) stop Dennis from having sex with the Waitress by having Dee show him attempt to hit on the various mothers of the other friends, who all are not interested. Charlie's desired effect, of course, is to influence The Waitress to lose her attraction to Dennis. Instead, she responds by having sex with Frank, thus turning Charlie's arguably one true win in the series into the shows' most poignant and tragic moment. Making it all the more heartbreaking for Charlie is his unwillingness to to stop: unlike The Waitress and her infatuation with Dennis, Charlie doesn't understand this is a losing game. Charlie, hopelessly, believe he can win her heart, no matter how off-putting or foul-smelling he may be.

BEST PLAY

The Glass Menagerie

In a play absolutely filled with both old and new unrequited love, the extent that it plays out with the two minor characters, Laura and Jim, is the strongest and most immediate. Laura, a young woman crippled more in mindset than body (though she acts oppositely), has spent her life since high school listening to old records, playing with her imaginary jungle of glass figurines, and nursing a love for the high school hero, Jim. Through stupid chance, the two are reunited in an attempt to find Laura a man. The minimal relationship between the two is rekindled ten-fold, she gains her change into the world of humans, they kiss...and he chooses this moment to reveal he is engaged to be married, never to return to the apartment and all its bizarre glory. It is the fragile edge the play walks along, and the moment it falls off is the end for all involved.

I no rite. I post video.

2008-07-24T21:07:00.004-05:00

Despite the fact that my life overflows with free time to the point where I'm experiencing the soul equivalent of central Iowa, writing just hurts too much. But I don't want to abandon my role in the blog completely, so here's a post.

One of the few things that KC and I agree on is the fact that Jeph Jacques is a douche. And while he doesn't write a gaming comic, nearly everything in this video applies to him. NSFW. (Also, there's an irritating commercial after the credits, so don't be afraid to hit "stop" when the British guy stops speed-talking.

The Redemption of Amy Poehler

2008-07-20T09:18:00.005-05:00

I dislike Amy Poehler. I can't think of any movie where she elevates the humor. On SNL, she's a detriment more than enjoyable. She's responsible for staring in one of the worst skits that show has had in year, the insufferable "Kaitlin". She took attention away from Tina Fey on Weekend Update, instead of being a deferent wax statue like Jimmy Fallon. She also does skits while also doing the Update, which just seems wrong. I hate her. Hate her baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

Buuut...

this news that she will be involved in a spinoff of 'The Office'...I'm optimistic. No, I did not get a pep talk from Miss Mordant (who gives Poehler way too much credit on a daily basis). I can't think of how many arguments we've had about things like sub-prime mortgages, cancer medication and whether calling chicks 'babes' is sexist or not that have devolved into a discussion of the general tolerability of Poehler. It generally looks something like this.

MM: She's funny
KC:Nu uh
MM:FUCK YOU
KC: AHHHHH

and out come the fungo bats.

However, that lady can deadpan and sound awkward, which are the two things you need to be successful on The Office unless your name is Jenna Fischer and you somehow were created by a focus group out of wholesale images taken from my head, and even she has to deadpan once in a while. The problem with Poehler is that she can't try to be funny. When she does she becomes a tiny blond ball of energy and shrieks until my TV tube explodes. If she plays a character like Steve Carrell, I'll probably like it.

Or she could just do this some more

Momentary Greatness: Rilo Kiley

2008-07-11T23:04:00.007-05:00

There is a danger in dissecting the single moments in songmost pregnant with beauty and meaning, particularly in stating the obvious. The purpose of this study is to isolate the unknown moments that help take a good song and make it extraordinary, not simply fellate an artist by pointing out the obvious.

For instance, one example that doesn't necessarily warrant an entire post is the Smashing Pumpkins' song "Day Dream" which is filled with novelty for the band's first album: it is sung by bassist D'arcy Wretzky, it features lush strings and an acoustic guitar riff. These all work to make the song so much more intimate and delicate than any others on the album, and there is a tiny moment that assists in the ultimate sonic landscape; near the end of the song, the cellist knocks the tip of the bow against the cello, making just a hollow wooden knack of a sound. Coming from a band so adored (hehe) for its penchant to perfectly polish in production, that very moment juts through to remind us that these are not robotic monsters performing these songs of 28 guitar tracks. These are people, one and all.

In general, the goal of this little feature is to document as many of these moments as possible; these little itty bitty things. However, that simply is not comprehensive enough. There are so many great moments in song that contain the full capacity to uplift, to sink, to destroy and to grow that we must be accepting of every single one, even if they do involve a level of stating the obvious. This very well could become somewhat tedious, evolving (or devolving) into the feature's equivalent of filing taxes. 'Could' is the gem of that sentence, because the inaugural such "duh" moment is true, pure magic.

Artist: Rilo Kiley
Album: The Execution of All Things
Song: "A Better Son/Daughter"
Time:1:35
Type:Seismic

Greatness: Here's another fault of picking the 16-inch Chicago-style softball moments: there is not much to say once you've heard the song. The moment doesn't affect the song as much as it decimates it, completely dynamiting the soft, old-tyme radio stylings of Jenny Lewis' vocals into a massive, expansive Hollywood epic of a song. The slow waltz beat of the song matched with the steady beat of snare transports the song from the stylings of an indie rock group into a melancholy march of the dead. The lyrical sentiment being put forth agrees for the most part, more or less stating that life is nothing but a struggle to make everyone you know love and care for you and for you to appear as such. The second-person perspective adds to this misery, particularly because Lewis sings the beginning lyrics from the first person; the "you" never sounds convincing enough to be anyone but Lewis herself. She is striving to make these problems something of a universal history for the modern American human, yet no one is fooled enough to believe that she is singing to another person save her own reflection.

What is remarkable about this moment is that it is satisfying in two ways: 1) the simple bombast is pleasurable enough and 2)from the moment the song begins you know it's coming. The album this song is featured, the erratic The Execution of All Things, has so many rough and odd moments that it is almost welcome for such a thing to be telegraphed, much like the also-wonderful title track.

Overreacting or, Guys, Seriously Fuck You

2008-07-10T11:05:00.004-05:00

Let's look at the anatomy of a bald-faced lie. First off, Jesse Jackson made an inconsequential comment about Barack Obama, saying he "wanted to cut his nuts off" with a smirk on his face and a crude gesture. Why is this inconsequential? Because it was obvious that 1) HE WAS FUCKING JOKING and 2) HOLY SHIT IT WAS A JOKE and 3) OH MY GOD ARE YOU THAT STUPID IT WAS A JOKE and 4) he said it when he thought he was not being filmed, which I'm positive unlocks all sorts of Pandora's Boxes (which sounds like a kick-awesome moving company) for all media personalities. One of those people is Bill O'Reilly, who I would bet has called Hillary Clinton a cunt in private. Seriously, I'd bet like $5,000 on that.

Anyway, here's Mr. O'Reilly

It is pretty telling that he spends the first half of the segment attempting to explain that he's not going to use conjecture about why Jackson might have said that, only to go on and do nothing but assume he knows why Jackson said it. If you don't know the circumstances, you probably shouldn't run with it. If you do know the circumstances, and the circumstances were "assumed privacy", again, probably shouldn't go with it. Oh my, the discourse of our fair nation.

My Governor, the Lezbo

2008-07-06T11:47:00.000-05:00

There is a chance that, even if you don't live in Minnesota, you know who Tim Pawlenty is. You might not know him as the Governor of this state; you may know him as that skeezy slightly-too-slick man on the television that speaks with an easy, flat tone. You may know him as ex-top cheerleader for the 2004 Bush Campaign, where his pom-pons waved so hard it has been said that the wind they generated was able to power all of Minnesota's wind energy supply from September-November 2004 (this is Minnesota, after all, where weird shit like a large man creating all our lakes and the amazing collapso-bridge happen). Or you may know him simply as a prime yet unsung candidate for Men who Look Like old Lesbians.

Yeah, that's right. The last two governors we've had have either resembled lesbians or been pro wrestlers. We're on the verge of possibly electing a professional comedian as Senator (something I am terribly in favor of). This is all old news. What isn't old news is the possibility of Tim Pawlenty being named the Veep candidate on the McCain ticket. He might have cut his trademark mullet, but there is a chance that this will suddenly become the face of Minnesota on a national level:

Fuck close enough.

Stuff Hipsters Like: Redux

2008-07-03T14:38:00.000-05:00

Posting a video that makes fun of blogging on a blog? Isn't that, like, meta, or something? Whoa. Commence noncommittal dancing.

Stuff Hipsters Like: How To Fake Having Read The Infinite Jest

2008-07-01T19:52:00.000-05:00

It could be argued that David Foster Wallace's The Infinite Jest is the new Ulysses--at least, in terms of its idolization by cool literary types. At its publication in 1996, the novel met with ecstatic praise of its postmodern structure and language. Today, even the basest literature minor can reference The Infinite Jest off the cuff. If you can't, don't feel bad. Just know that this is why you can't get dates with girls who like Vampire Weekend.

You could read The Infinite Jest. However, it's 1078 indecipherable pages long (including almost a hundred pages of equally unreadable footnotes) and you probably have stuff to do. But don't despair! Here's a list of things you can do to pretend you actually tried.

1. Do your research. There are dozens of reviews of the book online, and the first thing you'll realize is that not even the intellectual bigwigs have any idea what it's about. (This will prove useful later on.) However, reading the reviews will help you get a feel for some basic plot points and the names of the characters. Hint: the main character is called Hal Incandenza.

2. Page through a copy at the local bookstore. No need to buy the thing. Just open it up if you get the chance. Only then will you truly understand what a horrendous slog it is. Also, how the book is structured. Taking a quick look at the structure will give you a few good talking points. Hints: it's separated into mini-chapters, some of which are labeled with a year to suggest time changes.

3. Read or Sparknotes Henry IV instead. When somebody mentions Infinite Jest, launch into a discussion of one of its influences, no matter how obscure. In fact, link it to something completely unrelated that you know about and discuss that. This got me into Hampshire College.

4. Drop some catchphrases. Find a way to work the following into everyday conversation: "howling fantods", "Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar", "I believe Hobbes is just Rousseau in a dark mirror." Don't understand what those phrases mean? Neither does anyone else.

5. Make shit up. The Infinite Jest is too long for anyone to memorize. Not even David Foster Wallace knows everything that happens in it. Therefore, if you come up with your own subplot, nobody will know. This step is a lot easier if you know the characters' names, but there are so many digressions that any random composite of names will probably produce a character from the novel. If you follow the simple formula: character name + dismal situation in a preapocalyptic future + drug use, you're golden. Mention a word with the suffix "textuality", i.e., intertextuality, metatextuality, for even more points.

Pop Culture Face Off Extreme Firefight Time: Arrested Development v. 30 Rock

2008-06-29T00:10:00.001-05:00

As writers of a pop culture blog, Kid Combustible and I assume that you care about our petty arguments regarding poorly-rated television shows. With that, we present Pop Culture Face Off Extreme Firefight Time: in which we stage an extremely disorganized debate in the most pretentious way possible. Tonight? Arrested Development versus 30 Rock. Which show better deserves a place in the KoK (Kanon of Komedy)? The answer? AFTER THE JUMP.

Kid Combustible (11:36:39 PM): This is sort of going to be a mountain for us to climb in two ways. Firstly this argument cuts to the very soul of both of our senses of taste. Secondly this is probably going to be the best topic we debate

Miss Mordant (11:37:09 PM): We're creative kids. I'm sure we'll come up with a few more excellent topics.

Miss Mordant (11:37:18 PM): Besides, we could just wait until we have readers to post it.

Kid Combustible (11:37:32 PM): Hey, our one reader is offended by that

Miss Mordant (11:37:39 PM): We have a reader?

Kid Combustible (11:37:56 PM): His name is Geodore. He lives in my head

Miss Mordant (11:38:04 PM): *waves* Hi, Geodore!

Kid Combustible (11:38:25 PM): He has no arms, but trust me - he's psyched

Kid Combustible (11:39:44 PM): Now, let me start off by asking you someone who is a lover of the standard 3 cam sitcom - are 30 Rock and Arrested Development the most influential sitcoms in the last ten years? Should they be?

Kid Combustible (11:40:01 PM): dead

Kid Combustible (11:40:07 PM): oops

Kid Combustible (11:40:09 PM): sorry

Kid Combustible (11:40:11 PM): wrong window

Miss Mordant (11:40:19 PM): Yes, they should be dead

Kid Combustible (11:40:22 PM): WE'RE DOING SO WELL

Miss Mordant (11:40:30 PM): Don't worry, we can edit that out in post-production

Kid Combustible (11:40:49 PM): I almost think we should keep it for funz

Miss Mordant (11:40:56 PM): I'm a supporter of funz.

Kid Combustible (11:40:57 PM): it shows our fuckupability

Miss Mordant (11:41:18 PM): We can't show weakness! Now we can never earn Geodore's trust

Kid Combustible (11:41:35 PM): answer the question

Kid Combustible (11:41:37 PM): foool

Miss Mordant (11:42:27 PM): Okay. Well in terms of influence, I would say that it's difficult to determine in the case of 30 Rock, considering that there have only been two seasons and it hasn't been canceled.

Miss Mordant (11:42:57 PM): I would say that Arrested Development has an enormous influence over 30 Rock and some other sitcoms.

Miss Mordant (11:43:31 PM): The general future of the sitcom, I think, is in postmodern formatting. Even the three-camera sitcoms have been experimenting with this.

Kid Combustible (11:43:48 PM): You better not go where I think you are...

Miss Mordant (11:43:58 PM): HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, BITCH

Kid Combustible (11:44:02 PM): ahhhhhhhhh

Kid Combustible (11:44:16 PM): KILL IT

Kid Combustible (11:44:32 PM): eh, it's better than My Name is Earl

Kid Combustible (11:44:41 PM): which you also like

Miss Mordant (11:44:52 PM): Which doesn't have a laugh track, by the way

Kid Combustible (11:44:59 PM): or a 3 cam set

Kid Combustible (11:45:13 PM): It pretty much as situations and comedy.

Miss Mordant (11:45:37 PM): Besides, you've only seen the episode of HIMYM where they go to Atlantic City, which isn't even indicative.

Kid Combustible (11:46:06 PM): You've never seen Rocky 3

Kid Combustible (11:46:08 PM): I rest my case

Kid Combustible (11:46:18 PM): Now, onto brass tacks

Kid Combustible (11:46:23 PM): or tax?

Miss Mordant (11:46:36 PM): It's tacks.

Miss Mordant (11:46:44 PM): I don't think there's a brass tax.

Kid Combustible (11:46:53 PM): Not since Dickety-3

Kid Combustible (11:47:36 PM): Now, we can agree that these two shows are pardoxically similar and almost completely opposite, right?

Miss Mordant (11:47:51 PM): Arrested Development and 30 Rock?

Miss Mordant (11:48:03 PM): They're formatted similarly but the plots are entirely different

Miss Mordant (11:48:18 PM): My Name is Earl and How I Met Your Mother have nothing in common except the fact that I like them.

Kid Combustible (11:48:30 PM): alright, let's stop talking about the lesser sitcoms

Kid Combustible (11:48:41 PM): We're talking about canon here

Kid Combustible (11:49:11 PM): Which I believe AD is firmly a part of, while 30 Rock isn't.

Miss Mordant (11:49:20 PM): What?

Kid Combustible (11:49:29 PM): The Canon

Kid Combustible (11:49:33 PM): The Canon of Comedy

Kid Combustible (11:49:45 PM): or, seeing as this is comedy, The Kanon of Komedy

Miss Mordant (11:50:36 PM): Why don't you think 30 Rock is part of that?

Kid Combustible (11:51:10 PM): Well, let me preface that remark posthumously:

Kid Combustible (11:51:33 PM): It certainly has the opportunity to be a part of that upper eschelon

Kid Combustible (11:53:09 PM): It's quick, it's well written, and I don't think you can ever count out a Tina Fey project. (I had to watch Mean Girls 3 times before I figured that out). However, I cannot escape this sort of jabbing sensation that 30 Rock is sort of the zazzed-up version of AD to some extent.

Miss Mordant (11:53:46 PM): But you admit it's zazzed.

Kid Combustible (11:54:46 PM): It relies too heavily on comedy troupes that are well worn (crazy black guy, crazy wild woman, smooth talking Alec Baldwin). It certainly does a lot to switch up the normal pitch that those are played at, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're blowing down any boundaries.

Kid Combustible (11:59:17 PM): Seeing as you aren't chomping at the bit to answer, I'll continue: 30 Rock has the ability to be truly boring at times. I think of all the instances where Liz Lemon simply gives up on morales or ideas and falls in line. Sure, it's realistic, but who gives a shit? It's a sell-out for a cheap laugh. In another high-profile incident on that show, I would have killed to see the purported Tracy-Toofer skit about race relations, rather than Star Jones Cooking Show or whatever that was

Kid Combustible (11:59:56 PM): AD, on the other hand, went over the line so many times it's hard to count. They went to Iraq, for god's sake

Miss Mordant (12:00:09 AM): For the record, I was in fact chomping. Chomping slowly is chomping nonetheless.

Miss Mordant (12:01:39 AM): The problem with cheap laughs is that people who aren't urban sophisticates like yourself enjoy them. In the business aspect of creating a comedy show, relatability is key

Miss Mordant (12:02:44 AM): And in the case of the 30 Rock episode you mentioned, seeing the Tracy-Toofer skit would have defeated the whole purpose of the episode.

Miss Mordant (12:02:57 AM): That's something Studio 60 would have done.

Miss Mordant (12:03:38 AM): If they'd shown the skit, it would have to have been god-awful.

Kid Combustible (12:03:53 AM): I agree, and I think that would have been how they could have played it

Kid Combustible (12:04:07 AM): Also, let us never speak of Studio 60 again

Miss Mordant (12:04:28 AM): Aaron Sorkin? I have no Aaron Sorkin.

Kid Combustible (12:04:49 AM): I just confused him with Alan Arkin. Color me embarrassed

Miss Mordant (12:05:07 AM): Somebody didn't grow up on Sports Night reruns.

Kid Combustible (12:05:39 AM): That says something distinct about us - you grew up on a show that parodied a show that I grew up on.

Kid Combustible (12:06:07 AM): Anyway, were you still going before this deviation?

Miss Mordant (12:06:11 AM): This could be another topic, see? Sports Night isn't a parody.

Kid Combustible (12:06:20 AM): AHH KILL IT

Miss Mordant (12:06:55 AM): This isn't debate club!

Miss Mordant (12:07:15 AM): and you're not Tim Russert

Kid Combustible (12:07:37 AM): I do like the Buffalo Bills.

Miss Mordant (12:07:42 AM): Anyway, 30 Rock doesn't have to be Arrested Development. Arrested Development already happened.

Miss Mordant (12:07:59 AM): It can't blow down barriers that Arrested Development blew down.

Miss Mordant (12:08:34 AM): I think that its place in canon will be its longevity. Proof that a postmodern sitcom can exist in a one-camera world.

Kid Combustible (12:11:30 AM): I would agree, but that doesn't mean that they equate each other in quality. 30 Rock will be around for at least as long as shows like The Office because they lack the same balls-to-the-wallity as AD, but I'm not ready to give "staying power" as one of its positive attributes, particularly in this comparison

Kid Combustible (12:14:14 AM): As for the idea of cheap jokes, I nearly dropped my snifter of brandy when I read that. AD was incredibly gag-laden, and I don't think I got the idea that I loved that about AD across strong enough. I think 30 Rock's mass appeal is based on it's universally understood subject manner more than its simplicity (which is weird, because somehow a family dynamic is less universal nowadays)/

Miss Mordant (12:15:56 AM): That doesn't seem weird to me at all. In today's society, there's no such thing as a universal family dynamic.

Kid Combustible (12:16:47 AM): particularly when that family dynamic centers around a bunch of lupen rich eccentrics (something the show had the insanely prudent sense to point out repeatedly).

Miss Mordant (12:17:15 AM): Especially after it was canceled.

Miss Mordant (12:18:05 AM): Anyway, it's unfair to expect me to argue that 30 Rock is somehow a superior show to Arrested Development, because it isn't.

Miss Mordant (12:18:29 AM): Its format is derivative of AD and its content is derivative of pop culture at large.

Miss Mordant (12:18:53 AM): but dammit, the jokes are funny.

Kid Combustible (12:19:56 AM): I agree. I would almost say that 30 Rock is a much more accessable show in a momentary sense. Watching an episode of AD out of a seasonal episodic format is jarring.

Miss Mordant (12:21:40 AM): One might say that Arrested Development is to Waiting for Guffman as 30 Rock is to Best in Show

Kid Combustible (12:22:01 AM): Everyone I know hates Best in Show

Kid Combustible (12:22:21 AM): I love the comparison, FWIW

Miss Mordant (12:22:22 AM): Maybe you should get out more.

Miss Mordant (12:23:54 AM): Thanks. Anyway, I think a major difference between sitcom format and the kind of comedy program that Arrested Development popularized is an adherence to continuity.

Miss Mordant (12:24:14 AM): In the old format, a conflict would arise in an episode and be resolved within the episode.

Miss Mordant (12:24:46 AM): In the new format, conflicts resolve on a season-to-season basis or as part of an arc.

Kid Combustible (12:26:48 AM): There's also an in-between space with those two set ups of which 30 Rock has an almost otherworldly understanding. It is able to carry on arcs and fulfill them while keeping the variety high.

Miss Mordant (12:27:26 AM): And I know The Office isn't part of this discussion, but it finds another way to fall between the formats.

Miss Mordant (12:27:39 AM): And that's not to say that Arrested Development isn't episodic.

Kid Combustible (12:28:48 AM): The problem with the The Office in that respect is that you never ever are let to forget what the arcs are. At the end of each episode you once again get a thick reminder of everything happening in the background. 30 Rock has a much more lassiez-faire relationship with it's viewers, which translates into more trust in my opinion.

Miss Mordant (12:29:37 AM): Both shows have changed since their pilots in that aspect, though.

Miss Mordant (12:30:11 AM): 30 Rock seems to deal with continuity only when it needs to. Instead of inventing a new love interest for Liz, they bring back Dennis or Floyd.

Kid Combustible (12:30:57 AM): One point I think we wouldn't agree on between AD and 30 is which has the better characters. However, I'm not positive where you lay on this, so I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Miss Mordant (12:34:06 AM): Okay. My honest opinion is that I prefer the tertiary characters on Arrested Development and the primary characters on 30 Rock.

Kid Combustible (12:34:30 AM): YES, we are direct opposites

Miss Mordant (12:34:45 AM): Come on. Bob Loblaw? That's genius.

Miss Mordant (12:36:12 AM): One of Arrested Development's strengths was its stunt casting.

Miss Mordant (12:36:48 AM): Whereas who did 30 Rock get? Jerry Seinfeld? That may be the worst episode.

Kid Combustible (12:38:32 AM): I mean, I agree that AD knows their chess pieces better than maybe any show before it, but are you joking? I counter your Bob Loblaw with Dr. Spaceman, Donny the evil page and Matthew Broderick's absolutely delicious turn in last season's finale.

Kid Combustible (12:40:02 AM): That's not even counting the fact that 30 Rock's set up allows Liz/Tracy/Jenna/Donaghy to be featured while the rest of the mammoth cast falls in and out, while AD requires almost a complete stop switch upon showing every new character

Miss Mordant (12:40:25 AM): The question here is whether or not Franklin counts as a tertiary character.

Kid Combustible (12:41:05 AM): "I GOT CHILDRENS ALL OVER TOOOOWN"

Kid Combustible (12:42:35 AM): Also, Devon Banks might be better than GOB

Kid Combustible (12:42:36 AM): there

Kid Combustible (12:42:38 AM): I said it

Miss Mordant (12:43:21 AM): He certainly has more tumors.

Kid Combustible (12:43:36 AM): But he's less of a poof

Nathan Rabin, slipping up

2008-06-25T21:34:00.000-05:00

There is one universal truth between the authors of this merry blog - The A.V. Club is, without a doubt, one of the funniest and most perfect websites in all of webdom. Most internet sites would be lucky to glance the precipice of the edge of the same neighborhood of humor and insight that the A.V. Club brings to the table daily. It is the one website that we love completely and unequivocally (except for Sean O'Neal. His South Park reviews are shit). Usually love for Nathan Rabin, one of the main writers at the A.V. Club, is free-flowing and robust, blooming with praise and joy.

Apparently it's also a lot like a delicious red wine.

However, even the mighty must slip up sometime. In his most recent entry into the absolutely necessary My Year of Flops series, he starts out with a great deal of praise for Judd Apatow - the end result being to defend the commercial failure Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. After this string of kind words, he turns on the somewhat growing movement of anti-Apatow fans as a reaction to Apatow's success, that he and his current ubiquitous has been "engendering resentment". Rabin then goes on to point out the major failing of Apatow's films, which his inability to portray women in any sort of non-subordinate manner.

While I cannot speak for Miss Mordant, as we have not yet breached this subject in a conversation, my hardline stance is that the problem with most Apatow films is that they are stupid. Yes, they absolutely do not treat their female characters with anything more than a hamfisted stereotyping brush, but that is only part of the problem for me. The dialogue in his movies (save the classic Anchorman) is filled with childish and profane humor that only works under this somewhat hilarity-inducing guise of "reality". Almost all of the movies turn at the end so they may show some sort of heart or sentimentality that (in my viewing) feels more forced and glossed-over than anything. You can't give me Big Macs worth of dick jokes and misogyny for 2 hours and the switch to fillet mignon in the last half hour (also, his movies are generally too long. Just sayin').

The reason I decided to post this was not to completely spill my opinion on Mr. Apatow (which I may have done albeit accidentally). The reason was that after Rabin defended Apatow for a good three paragraphs, he started to talk about how one of the major reasons Walk Hard didn't sell was the possibly off-putting title. He follows this argument up with this:

As longtime readers know, I find nothing more deplorable than dick jokes.

Nothing more deplorable. Nothing remotely more deplorable than dick jokes. Either Rabin is being sarcastic (which I would doubt) or he somehow missed a great deal of all of Apatow's films. Which could be plausible, I guess. He could very well simply go up for popcorn at the same time when the nearly-guaranteed litany of dick jokes come spewing from the surround sound theater, and return just in time to see heartwarming faux-comedy. this is the assumption I'm going to make to keep a smile on my face.

Irony is...

2008-06-25T21:27:00.000-05:00

watching an excellent episode of 30 Days where a hunter goes and lives with a family of vegan activists and having the commercial breaks be

Oh Hulu, you magnificent bastard.

Momentary Greatness: The Pipettes

2008-06-23T21:16:00.000-05:00

I like music. It's probably the most bland and impotent thing you could tell someone, but it's also one of the most true. It's akin to telling someone you like breathing, or candy. It's a trait that will be shared by most reasonable people (also, if they dont happen to like one of those things, it's an instant blaring siren telling you to evade). I would like to be as honest with the good people of the internet as possible. So, to clarify: I like music.

I also like minutiae. Details are very important in art for me. This is also not something terribly localized to myself, but it is also an important part of me. I love to stop movies at specific moments and rewatch them, just to catch the way certain lines are said or how a facial expression foreshadows an event. This is, by no means, to brag; watching a movie with me is generally not recommended, and I often lose some of the greater message forest through the trees of camera angles. However, i yam what I yam, and music is no different for me.

So, in a reoccurring feature on music (which I've been told by my mother is totally hip and edgy to do on the internet), I'm going to brush by artists, albums, and even songs. I'm going to talk about moments - those little sparks of sound that completely and utterly transcend the song itself. In a way, it's a much more universal way to look at music - though a song may be unbearable, it may still have some tiny moment of excellence. Here, we latch on to those. Although the first entry is not particularly bad, it is exceedingly small.

Artist: The Pipettes
Album: We are the Pipettes
Song: Your kisses are wasted on me
Time: 1:53
Type: Vocal
Moment: "You still don't know it!"

The Greatness: This is, in a way, the quintessential moment to start with, if not one of the more radical. It is subtle, swift, and executed with such surgical precision that it is the musical equivalent to a floating Johns Hopkins doctor performing a kidney transplant on a deaf and dumb person who has that disorder where they cannot feel pain. It's hard to notice, but it's noticeable enough.

What makes The Pipettes so wonderful is the falsity at work behind it. We aren't supposed to know the people singing, the musicians, the writers, anything. We're just supposed to listen and have fun. Because of that anonymity, the amount of bravado and callousness displayed in "Your kisses are wasted on me" comes off as fun and spunky, rather than a character fault. There is no connection to the characters, so it's just a fun song.

But fuck that, let's analyze the hell out of this bitch.

This song, like most of the faire on We Are The Pipettes, is repetition heavy, from the toy piano hook and the shout-along chorus to the first word of every verse being "Boy" said with an equal mix weariness, disaffection and disdain. The most effective example is during the pre-chrous, when the song drops from being bouncy pop to somewhat choral and melodramatic (helped along by the formally jaunty organ going into full-on Catholic church mode). The call-and-response during these sections offers a sort of voice of reason to the song; while the main lyrics seem to point to how hurt the male in this situation would be, the further-back response seems to say something more about the true nature of the speaker. (It helps if you imagine the voices of The Pipettes to be the various voices inside the head of one woman - I call her Phobe).

The very very very very last response is where this idea gets driven home. The response throughout the song is "and you don't know it" or "no, you don't know it." What this does is puts us in the present with this sort of relationship, the moment when the bond is being snapped. The entirety of the song has this feeling where the boy is just pathetic for his inability to recognize an ending. The effect of the final callback is excessively jarring to this understanding - by saying "you still don't know it", we now can assume that this is something that has happened in the past. Helped along by the increased octave by the main vocalist during that final pre-chorus, there is just a tinge of desperation from the woman that rings through, as though she has been trying to make herself believe that this is what the young man has been thinking/doing, yet there's no hint of that. She is left punching air.

In other news, hobbits use pipettes to get stoned and for plumbing.