Moving in Stereo

12:03AM

There sure are some stupid people in the world.

1:28AM

This summer can't fucking end soon enough as far as I'm concerned.

5:08PM

Why aren't there any fancy, expensive restaurants that serve breakfast? I mean, really fancy breakfasts?

4:35AM

So for tonight's movie, I bit the bullet and dove into my least favorite genre: anime. Specifically, the granddaddy of it all, Akira. I'll say this about it: If it had made any sense at all, it would have been one of the greatest movies I'd ever seen. It has put me in the mood to play some Stinkoman 20X6 though.

4:00PM

Here is a list, of the 100 movies I have watched since school ended. An asterisk in front of the movie means I had seen it already, and a (ss) after it means that there is some sick shit going on in this movie.

2001: A Space Odyssey
Action in the North Atlantic
Ali
Army of Darkness
Audition (ss)
*The Aviator
Batman
Batman Begins
Blood Simple
Das Boot
Boyz N the Hood
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
Cabaret
The Caine Mutiny
Casablanca
Chariots of Fire
Cinderella Man
Citizen Kane
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
The Commitments
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (ss)
Cool Hand Luke
Crash (2004)
Creepshow
Cursed
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Death Becomes Her
Do the Right Thing
Dog Day Afternoon
Dogville
Double Indemnity
Eddie and the Cruisers
Eraserhead (ss)
Far From Heaven
First Blood
Flight of the Phoenix (2004)
For Your Eyes Only
Forbidden Planet
Glengarry Glen Ross
Goldfinger
Harold and Maude
Hide and Seek
Hostage
House of Flying Daggers
House of the Damned
House of the Dead
The Hustler
Ikiru
*Jackie Brown
Jaws
Key Largo
Kids (ss)
Kung Fu Hustle
Land of the Dead (ss)
Last House on the Left (ss)
The Last Seduction
Leaving Las Vegas
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Life of Brian
The Living Daylights
The Magnificent Seven
Midnight Express
Miller's Crossing
Moonraker
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
My Own Private Idaho
National Treasure
Near Dark
New Nightmare
Night of the Living Dead (ss)
Octopussy
Paths of Glory
Pay It Forward
Peter Pan (2003)
The Phantom of the Opera (2004)
The Piano
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Ran
The Replacement Killers
Risky Business
Rosemary's Baby
Secondhand Lions
*Sin City
Soldier
Spartacus
The Spy Who Loved Me
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
Storytelling
Sweet and Lowdown
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) (ss)
The Thing (ss)
Unforgiven
Unleashed
War of the Worlds (2005)
Wet Hot American Summer
What's Eating Gilbert Grape?
White Heat (1949)
The Wild Bunch
Wild Things
Y Tu Mama Tambien

3:24AM

Guys, I need help. Say you'll help.

11:50PM

I hate this job. I hate this job. I really fucking hate this job.

But not enough to quit this job. Which sucks in its own way.

3:29AM - Back to music

Thoughts on songs:

Good Charlotte - I Just Wanna Live

Yeah, this is the Good Charlotte song that sounds like a Backstreet Boys song. Just from that description, I would tell you that this song has no chance of being any good; I hold that no Backstreet Boys song has ever been worth half a shit, and I've never been really impressed with Good Charlotte. But "I Just Wanna Live"... my god, it's actually kind of brilliant. Before, Good Charlotte had pretensions of being actual punks in an actual punk band, rebelling against the system, taking on whiny celebrities in "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" and railing against some kind of authority in "The Anthem." Both those songs were terrible, partially because Good Charlotte were never punks like they pretend; they always wanted to be pop stars, and that's what they became. When faced with stardom, most punk bands try to record angrier, more hardcore shit to prove that they haven't sold out. Good Charlotte, however, didn't try to deny that they were sellouts (which is kind of hard when their lead singer is dating Hilary Duff); instead, they dove in so enthusiastically that they actually came out the other side. I can almost imagine the thought processes behind this song; they're pop stars now, so they might as well sound like ones. It's half-joking and half-serious. It's about how tough it is being a celebrity, because that's what a lot pop songs are about nowadays. And it's blatantly self-referential, also because most pop songs are nowadays. It's a spoof of boy bands recorded by the biggest boy band in the country. I love that they went there, but I love the song just on how it sounds too. When the guitars punch in on the chorus, I won't pretend that my soul doesn't go "fuck yeah!", and the second verse, the one about his different suits, is just fantastically written. This might also be just me, but I get a real Electric Six vibe from this song: tired cliches twisted into weird new shapes, on top of an awesome dance rock beat. I think this was my favorite song of last year.

Limp Bizkit - Nookie

Rivers Cuomo, lead singer of Weezer, is a dork. So are They Might Be Giants, Jimmy Eat World, Taking Back Sunday, and the Barenaked Ladies. They're dorks and they play dork-rock for dorks and other people who weren't popular in high school. If you like any of these groups, you probably don't like Limp Bizkit, but Fred Durst probably wasn't any more popular than Rivers in high school either. He calls allegiance to other losers of the world in the first line of the song, where he labels himself a reject. I, being a good dork, used to despise "Nookie"; after going through my own ugly breakup, I gave it a second listen. I can't deny that it has a killer bassline. Listening to it, I realize that it's basically an angry, misogynist song about being humiliated and hurt by a girl, which makes it not that much different from a lot of emo songs. Yet "Nookie" seems to have nothing in common with, say, Dashboard Confessional; Dashboard Confessional is whiny and angst-ridden, and "Nookie" turns a song about being cheated on into macho celebration. Let me see if I can put the lyrics into more straightforward terms:

My girl cheated on me several times
I'm a loser and an idiot for letting it happen
I was utterly destroyed and humiliated
BUT I GOT LAID!
BUT I GOT LAID!
HOLY FUCKING SHIT I GOT LAID!

Christ, that's embarrasing. Most dork bands embrace their dorkiness, but Fred Durst commits the unforgivable sin: He's a dork trying to look like he's cool, trying to look like a winner in the face of obvious loserdom, and too dumb to realize that it only makes him look lamer than before. Also, rhyming "nookie" with "cookie" is just crappy songwriting.

Jimmy Buffett - Margaritaville

Everything about Jimmy Buffett rubs me the wrong way. Everything. I didn't use to be able to explain why, but I think I've got it now. A good deal of Buffett's songs are about drinking, and it would be a rare Parrothead indeed who didn't enjoy their alcohol. But Parrotheads, or at least the image of Parrotheads I get from Jimmy Buffett songs, don't drink to party, they don't drink to kill the pain, they don't drink to escape. Basically, they drink so that they can lie around drunk in a beach chair. I don't know about you, but that just doesn't seem like worthy subject matter to me. The basis of the Parrothead lifestyle seems to revolve around lazy, bloated hedonism. (Jimmy Buffett is the only artist I can think of who had a hit song about eating a good meal.) "Margaritaville"'s subject matter is surprisingly dark, it's about a guy who's slowly losing his life to booze. But Buffett doesn't make any attempt to play up the subtle horror of this; the song, like the song's narrator, is mellow to the point of deadness, content to lie down and chill with a glass in hand and a big stupid grin on its face. I can think of good songs about relaxing, but this isn't it.

Jason Mraz - Wordplay

Oh. MAN. Disasters like this don't come around every day, people. I don't know what you thought Jason Mraz's breakthrough hit "The Remedy," but "Wordplay" is bad in all the ways that song was, and more. Mraz has written an entire song about how well he rhymes. His misguided belief that he's a rapper has gotten dangerously out of hand. I mean, yes, he does have flow, certainly more so than your average white boy with an acoustic guitar; but his four-syllable rhymes usually make no goddamn sense (for example in "The Remedy," where he rhymes "dangerous liaison" with "strange enough new play on... words"). Another problem is that he's mostly got very little to actually write about, and that reaches critical level here, where the song is basically about itself. "The sophomore slump is an uphill battle," he sings/raps. Also, "For the people write me off like I'm a one-hit wonder, got to find another way to keep from goin' under." And in the chorus: "Yeah the Mr. A-Z, they say I'm all about the wordplay." The vast majority of rappers have written songs about their rhymes and flow, true, but they were always aggressive and intimidating; they were saying that they could rhyme better than you, and by implication fight and fuck better than you too. "Wordplay," on the other hand, is soft-edged and simpering; and for all the bragging he does on this track, Mraz never once actually says he's BETTER than anyone, because honestly, the thought of anyone being intimidated by a runty spaz like this guy is just hilarious. So what we've got in the end is this gonads-less folksinger singing about how clever he is. The only comparison I can think of is Martin, the nerd from the Simpsons, proclaiming in a dream sequence, "I am the wondrous wizard of Latin! I am a dervish of declension and a conjurer of conjugation, with a million hit points and maximum charisma!" I find myself laughing hysterically right now. When you're being outdone on manliness by the Barenaked Ladies (who, for the record, never had to call attention to their clever wordplay), it's time to hang it up.

7:59PM

I got an idea for anti-Hot Topic T-shirts, and I thought they were going to be really cool, but then I realized that they'd probably sell them at Hot Topic. ... I think I'm going to dress as an emo for Halloween.

4:28PM

Who wants to meet me in Lynchburg on Friday?

7:54PM

I confess: I think everyone in the world should be more like me. Is that so wrong?

12:55AM - Done done done with all the fuck fuck fucking around

Just got back from the Hottest House concert. I'd heard they'd had a reputation for being drunken assholes in concert, but they kicked some finely tuned ass tonight. WHOOOO!

Here's something odd; for being a weird, alternative/indie band, they attracted an entirely different crowd than I expected them to. When I went to see Rilo Kiley, I was surrounded by indie chicks and emo fags. And I thought, wow, I'm easily the coolest guy here. This concert, on the other hand, was considerably preppier (and that includes the girl I was with). The dyed-hair-and-glasses crowd was there, too, but they were significantly outnumbered. You'd think I had showed up at a Coldplay concert.

To quote some girl I overheard while leaving: "I was expecting a bunch of grungy, pretentious people slamming into each other, but it was all... tasteful preppies." (I take offense at this; preppies are just as pretentious as the hipsters.)

1:19AM

Okay, building on my horrible nightmare where I (gasp) had a kid, I also had to proofread a review today of Very Bad Things, which also argued that parenthood was terrifying. Then I watched another movie which I think said the same thing, Eraserhead, which for the record is a movie TOO FUCKED UP FOR WORDS.

You know, I happen to like kids. But I'm a little freaked out right now by them.

12:46PM

I had a dream last night that I had a son. His name was Michael.

Christ, it was a scary dream.

4:11AM

I've watched a great many films I've watched since school ended (35 movies in 45 days), and a lot of them have been horror films. Looking back at my notes, I see The Thing, the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Night of the Living Dead, House of the Dead, House of the Damned, Last House on the Left, Near Dark and Rosemary's Baby. Some of these movies have been pretty lame (House of the Damned couldn't stop finding ways to cheaply rip off Poltergeist, and House of the Dead is every kind of awful, from traditional awfulness to distinctly unique kinds of awful). Of the films I listed, I'd say Wes Craven's Last House on the Left is the scariest; there's some depraved shit in that movie (I'm not talking about movie monster shit or anything, this is more realistic, true-to-life type horror) and it's intercut with some incredibly lame comic relief that only makes the other scenes more horrifying. I won't explain what the horror is, but the comic relief are these two bumbling cops trying to get to the scene of the action. We get all these soul-scarringly hideous scenes, and then we get these bumbling cops, with this dorky hyuk-hyuk Smokey and the Bandit-type country music in the background, and we're expected to LAUGH at this, after the other horrifying things we've seen. On one hand, this is terrible filmmaking, because the scenes just DON'T WORK. But on the other hand, the fact that they actually expect you to laugh enhances the effect of the other scenes. It's a jarring reminder that some truly sickening and horrifying things are happening in the world, and somewhere some diseased fuck thinks it's funny. Last House on the Left really makes you feel like shit for every dead baby joke you've ever told.

However, none of the films I listed, not even Last House on the Left, holds a candle to the movie I saw tonight, a Japanese film called Audition. I can only say: HO. LEE. FUCK. It's difficult to explain; Audition doesn't feel like a horror film most of the time, because most of the time it isn't. This is nothing at all like The Ring or The Grudge or anything like that; there's a lot more going on here than just killings and such, and there are no creepy little kids. But Jesus Christ, when the shit's going down... oh man. I don't know if I can sleep tonight. This is the kind of movie where you actively hope the movie will cop out and tell you that it was only a dream. I'm not going to spoil it for you, but I easily could. I doubt any of you will watch it, 'cause this is a hard movie to find. If any of you can get it though, and have a high tolerance for this kind of movie, I highly suggest you watch it.

10:56PM

So we were sitting and talking, and she told me she had terminal cancer. I barely know her, but she was very open about it. And she wasn't at all sad or down or anything. And she talked about it for a while, and she explained all her thoughts about it, and why she wasn't crying and miserable, and stuff like that. It was like a scene straight out of a movie, where the dying older person imparts all their collected wisdom to the troubled youngster and straightens him out. Like Scent of a Woman, for example. Or "The Gambler" by Kenny Rogers, really. Except that I don't particularly think that I need straightening out; I feel like the experience was wasted on me. I was just sort of stunned by it. Things like that don't happen to you every day.

10:03PM

THE NEW STRONG BAD EMAIL DEFINES MY LIFE.

6:42PM

Christ, I am the shittiest waiter in history.

By the way, I'm a waiter now. And I really suck at it. I am far, far too scatter-brained for deal with the needs of four separate groups of patrons. This comes from my mom. My dad has a mind like a steel trap, and he's one of the most focused people I've ever met. My mom, on the other hand, tells my little brother to do the dishes five seconds after she watched him finish doing them.

I also have another job, one that doesn't pay anything but looks good on my resume. I'm now copy editor for I Viddied It on the Screen (http://cc.usu.edu/~alexjack/viddied.html), a wonderful movie review site by this one really great writer. He writes these long, masturbatory essays on various films. He's not much of a reviewer, and he spoils movies like crazy, but he goes places most other writers don't. He managed to find parallels between '30s movie musical 42nd Street and '90s Japanese horror film Audition, argued that The Ewok Adventure was racist against Ewoks, and made the case for Gremlins as an attack on Western cultural values. I don't agree with the guy all that often, but I like his work a great deal; I've passed off a lot of his insights and comments as my own. Read him!

4:48AM

Gonna be in Lynchburg for my birthday, this Friday. If you at all can possibly, possibly be there, please do so.

2:43PM

http://lukecollison.com/mos/mp3/15_Ice_Ice-Bacon.mp3