The Factual Opinion

Music of the Weak: The 100 Greatest Songs of the Millennium (So Far) - #80-71

PREVIOUSLY: #100-91 - Introductions, yacht rock, epic narratives, Elvis tributes, and one-man Canadian supergroups.

#90-81 – Jazz revisionism, shady fact-checking, Muppetized gangsta rap, and the no pussy blues.

80. Britney Spears – “Toxic” (2003)

By the time Britney released “Toxic” as a single in 2004, pop music had legitimately evolved from a TRL-baiting scourge into a credible threat to your iPod. The acquiescence worked both ways. We, the humble listeners, recalibrated our brain chemistries, using “Crazy in Love” and “Cry Me a River” (see below) as gateway drugs, in order to accept—or at least be less suspicious of—decent singers flaunting crystalline melodies and moderately dance-worthy production tracks. They, the pop stars, worked their asses off with producers like Timbaland and The Neptunes, in order to turn their songs sophisticated and current enough to rub noses with OutKast, Daft Punk and other artists signifying this same progressive populism in other genres. In this campaign, “Toxic” was the final gauntlet. A mild acknowledgement of the apparent awesomeness of the Neptunes-produced “I’m a Slave 4 You” notwithstanding, if it was possible to like, even adore, a single by Britney Spears—the most vapid, least cool, big-time pop star of the era—then the dividing lines between cool and popular had been erased, and absolutely everything in music was fair game for your consideration.

For it to have succeeded, “Toxic” would have to have been the apotheosis of everything great about early 21st century pop music, combining the globetrotting wisdom of Timbaland with Madonna’s charisma and exceeding the sum. It would have to have figured out how to be a song that could appeal to everyone, including those who don’t like songs who appeal to everyone. Ultimately, “Toxic” did all of those things, and it did them by being one of the weirdest fucking pop songs in history, with Britney purring non-stop innuendo over a beat that sounds like a string section playing the sound of a cassette tape fast-forwarding and rewinding itself. Tons of avant-garde touches crowd the corners—at the end of the chorus, a fragment of Dick Dale-inspired guitar punctuates Britney’s falsetto; echoes and reverb abound; a vocoder colors Spears voice just before the break, and is never heard from again. As if all that’s not bizarre enough, in a poll of 700, 000 music fans in 66 countries by Sony Ericsson, “Toxic” was voted the second most popular song. In the world. Ever. It lost out to “We Are the Champions.”

79. Califone – “The Orchids” (2006)

Psychic TV’s “The Orchids” is a sweet, spacious song tucked into the beginning of Dreams Less Sweet—a dense, experimental, industrial album. Accompanied by vibes and oboe, Genesis P-Orridge sings in a nasal British accent about a series of traumatic sights that cause him to claw out his eyes, only to wake up the next morning and “fall in love with the light.” Rumor is, it’s about getting his genitals pierced—but, somehow, it comes across as hopeful and lovely. Psychic TV’s “The Orchids” is a perfect mixtape song, both because of its diamond-in-the-rough context on Dreams Less Sweet, and because of its gentle, heartwarming tug. It’s fitting then, that, according to an oft-told story surrounding the recording of Califone’s stunning 2006 album, Roots & Crowns, Tim Rutili stumbled upon “The Orchids” on an old mixtape, and it inspired the entire album’s creation, pulling him out of a stagnant musical funk. A cover version of the old Psychic TV song rests at the center of Roots & Crowns. Whereas P-Orridge’s version is airy and orchestral, Califone bend the sound of the song so that it actually evokes a sunrise after a rough night. Rutili turns in one of the most touching vocal performances of the decade, as he makes good on the subtle redemptive qualities of P-Orridge’s composition by connecting the emotional dots between “when doors forced open shut again” and having the will to force them open again the next day.

78. Röyksopp – “What Else is There? (Trentmøller Remix)” (2005)

Remixing should be a little like Iron Chef—the two producers use roughly the same ingredients, but come up with wildly differing dishes. Röyksopp’s original “What Else is There?” is exquisitely built out of vocalist Karin Dreijer Andersson’s greatest strength—as the singer for The Knife, Andersson can build tension in a song as expertly as David Fincher, or at least Beth Gibbons. After a spooky introduction, Röyksopp lets Andersson do the lion’s share of the song’s work, her voice calmly ratcheting up the pressure with each verse. Anders Trentmøller builds his remix around tension as well, but he has an entirely different take on it. Instead of a taut 3½ minutes where Andersson’s verses follow quickly on one another, he expands the spaces in between her phrases, composing an intricate acid house track around them. At one point, when Andersson sings “sudden explosion,” her voice fractures into a long-trailing echo. The beats drop out, and are replaced with a gently strummed electric guitar, so subtly indelible that it got sampled in a Girl Talk song. The whole thing conjures images of a woman floating along a moonlit road, which, incidentally, is what the video depicts.

77. Ryan Leslie – “Gibberish” (2009)

If he had simply played it straight, Ryan Leslie’s “Gibberish” would have been a delightful little confection of an album-ending ballad. Instead, it’s the rare satire that also works on a sincere level—in other words, satire as it was meant to be done before pesky concepts like sarcasm and irony got in the way. Ostensibly, “Gibberish” is about doing something romantic in the moonlight. We’ll never know, because Leslie mumbles his way through it. One sequence in the first verse sounds like, “Uss denami nusst/ Uss double o/ Uss denova uss ta/ Hiss tan doe.” Then, there’s the AutoTone—either the greatest musical innovation of the last few years, or the death knell of urban radio, depending on who you ask—which twists every word further out of shape. The percussion consists of canned finger snaps that flaunt their own artificiality and snare ticks that sound drum-machined, even though they were most likely performed by a consummate studio musician (Leslie’s debut features some heavy hitters like Tommy Mottola, David Sancious, and Tom ‘T-Bone’ Wolk.) Everything rings of such wily artifice—down to the synthesized horns that reference OutKast’s “Spottieottiedopaliscious,” a song that features the line, “The way she moved reminded me of a brown stallion horse with skates on you know,” which would probably fit in nicely here—that the song would be completely unbearable if it weren’t held together by a straight-faced piano melody and Leslie’s vocal, which walks a perfect line between parody and poignancy.

76. Killer Mike – “A.D.I.D.A.S. (Feat. Big Boi and Sleepy Brown)” (2003)

Possibly the best thing to ever come from rap-rock, on “A.D.I.D.A.S.,” Killer Mike snakes an anagram from KoRn, and spends 3½ minutes trading pussy jokes with Big Boi over a crunktastic beat that could have been composed by Ratatat. Big Boi bemoans camel toe, counts the number of times he fantasizes per minute, and catches a Blue Man Group show in Vegas. Killer Mike runs down a list of cultural names for vagina, repeatedly compares himself to Black & Decker, hits his granddad up for some Viagra, and throws in some safe-sex advice for good measure, all of which makes for one of the most hilariously censored videos ever.

75. Justin Timberlake – “Cry Me a River” (2002)

If “Toxic” was pop’s Yorktown in the war on rockism, then Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River” was its Boston Tea Party—a move so bold and charismatic that it forced you to root for the people behind it. Timbaland turns in one of his most bracing productions (though Scott Storch supposedly co-produced), cobbled together from some manic beatboxing and a synthetic string section. Justin phrases his lines like an opera singer, while a real opera singer shows up on a sample—one that begins the song intact, and finishes it chopped up and manipulated. Justin’s smartest move was in making the song overtly about his ex-girlfriend, Britney Spears, so that when he sings, “You don’t have to say what you did/ I already know/ I found out from HIIIM,” he’s directly answering tabloid questions with exactly what they want to hear, and building himself a wealth of publicity as well. The video depicts JT lurking around Spears’ house, videotaping himself making out with another girl in her bed, and waiting for her to get home so he can spy on her in the shower. Dude even makes stalking seem like something that all the sharp-looking motherfuckers do.

74. Le Le – “Breakfast” (2008)

Le Le’s “Breakfast” is sleazy with a capital Z. With a two-note groove that simply bounces back and forth as if it’s the product of an 11-year old playing with a sequencer (or possibly this), the French (or Dutch) beatmakers sound like they’re barely even trying. The song lives and dies on the vocal performance—a series of most-important-meal-of-the-day-related come-ons that begins at “You’re the cheese on my baguette, the jelly on my bread,” ends with “Hola hola hola, oatmeals and granola,” and surmises, “Bitch, you breakfast.” There’s even a surprise twist—dude loves him some breakfast, but not nearly as much as lunch, dinner, and midnight munchies. Those are some follow-up songs we need to hear.

73. 50 Cent – “I Get Money” (2007)

There are a disconcerting amount of writers that claim that 50 Cent has personality. Dude thinks that “personality” means smiling with half your face or showing off your bullet wounds. The most personality 50 Cent has ever shown happens at 0:25 of “I Get Money,” when he raps, “I took quarter-water/ Sold it in bottles for two bucks/ Coca-Cola came and bought it for millions/ What the fuck?” Dude is: 1) Like, flabbergasted by his own success; 2) Taking credit for the success of Vitamin Water; 3) Flaunting his wealth and hustle in a realer way than just about any rapper ever. When he immediately follows with “Have a baby by me baby/ Be a millionaire/ I’ll write the check before the baby comes/ Who the fuck cares?” it’s, case closed, the most earned arrogance on the books. Nothing else is as loud or pronounced after those first couple of lines. Tethered by not only the deathless sample from Audio 2’s “Top Billin’,” but the chorus from Naughty By Nature’s “Hip Hop Hooray” (which is probably overdue for a critical resurgence, incidentally), the rest of “I Get Money” is merely a victory lap. You could say something similar about 50’s career.

72. Death From Above 1979 – “Black History Month (Alan Braxe & Fred Falke Remix)” (2005)

When Death From Above 1979 broke up in 2006, bassist/synth player Jesse Keeler went on to form MSTRKRFT, a Daft Punk-infatuated skuzzy electronica outfit. This move, along with the band’s final release—a B-sides compilation of dance mixes of their only album, You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine—hinted at a deep affection for rhythm that rarely peeked through the band’s testosterone heavy rock of their debut. Secretly, Death From Above 1979’s “Black History Month” always had a dance mix in it—the ragged guitars that punctuate the song’s original version are only a couple of degrees removed from a Modest Mouse-style four-on-the-floor disco shuffle. What was unclear from the beginning was whether “Black History Month” had a masterpiece somewhere inside of it. In their remix, Alan Braxe and Fred Falke work miracles with their source material, kicking their remix off with an exact replica of the opening to “Billie Jean” and transforming a song that subverted pop ideals into one that embraced them. With a shimmering synth-line augmenting the chorus, sung from the point-of-view of a man nostalgic for segregation-era America, “Black History Month” makes the leap from mildly abrasive album track to monumentally subversive potential crowd-pleaser.

71. The Dirty Projectors – “Stillness is the Move” (2009)

After a concept album about Don Henley and an album length cover of Black Flag’s Damaged that was even more inscrutable than the original, odds that The Dirty Projectors would ever put together a song as pop-savvy as “Stillness is the Move” were slim. The internet rumor is that Dave Longstreth assembled the song’s lyrics from a large spreadsheet full of pop clichés. It’s definitely possible. “Stillness is the Move” is riddled with the type of romantic ambiguousness that dominates rock radio—“There is nothing we can’t do,” “I know we’ll make it,” and “I can’t imagine anything better” all make appearances, among others. Yet, there’s plenty of specificity in there too—contemplating getting a job as a waitress, “on top of every mountain there is a great longing for an even higher mountain.” Vocalist Angel Deradoorian is a revelation, careening to Mariah Carey-type heights with her voice. Longstreth’s guitar playing, which famously mimics Ali Farka Touré, operates like a sampled loop, both providing the melody and enhancing the rhythm. More importantly, Longstreth sets himself apart from his contemporaries by transforming a serious glut of ideas into a remarkably straightforward, accessible song. Indie rock ain’t dead yet.

-Martin Brown, 2009

Television Of The Weak: It Can Rain All The Time, Brandon Lee Was Lying To You

This Week we've got Leverage, Entourage, Hung, The Mighty Boosh, True Blood and The Prisoner

Leverage - "The Tap Out Job" by David Brothers

There's a bit late in this episode where one character breathlessly tells another that he has "taken the safety off the gun!" The soundtrack swells, and almost sounds like a tiger growling, right before there is a very clear homage to the Hulk TV show. It was this bit when I decided that, after a solid, but unimpressive, pilot episode, Leverage is back.

This episode has all of the good bits. There's some goofy fun between the cast, a villain that's likeable without being cartoonish, a good swerve, and the Scooby Doo explanation at the end. It's all about MMA this time, which is fine. I'll spend hours on youtube looking at people getting knocked out. It's better when it's free. The villain this time is a sleazy promoter who isn't afraid to drug fighters before they get into the ring just to secure a win and a fat bonus from gambling. The team's hired, they go in, and they make the magic happen.

Part of the fun of Leverage is the seemingly impossible things they get down to doing. Hardison brags about being able to hack the NSA and uses a golfball that he controls with an '80s-era RC car joystick. Nate fast-talks his way into two thousand dollars. Sophie does the slightly naive, slightly immoral businesswoman she's done several times, and Parker is sadly underutilized.

It's the same formula as usual, but it works for a reason. The cast still has great chemistry and the heists are the perfect blend of melodrama and strikingly harmless crime.

Entourage – “One Car, Two Car, Red Car, Blue Car” by Martin Brown

Everybody hates Entourage these days—possibly because there’s, like, a recession, and Entourage is filthy, sexy, celebrity wealth-porn; escapist fantasy, right down to its very fiber, where at its most basic, it’s about a group of dudes who genuinely care about each other. Getting mad at a season of Entourage for lacking dramatic stakes is like getting mad at Three’s Company for running an episode where Jack misinterprets something he hears while hiding in Janet’s bedroom—it’s a show that’s only doing exactly what it was built to do. To that effect, Entourage doesn’t take place in Hollywood; it takes place in your idea of Hollywood, where every luxury is affordable, ladies are available and uncomplicated, and friends will drop everything to help one another. For example, in “One Car, Two Car, Red Car, Blue Car,” on his thirtieth birthday, Turtle gets harangued by his mother for appearing in People Magazine next to Jamie-Lynn Sigler, his girlfriend, wearing a tuxedo and patent leather tennis shoes; he receives a quarter-million dollar blue Ferrari as a gift from Vince, and another one from Jamie-Lynn; and he decides to go to business school. Of all of those things, only the last one is even vaguely realistic, because, in real life, a character like Turtle would actually be silly enough to believe that UCLA extension classes could teach him how to run a business.

However, if Entourage is predicated on giving you exactly what you’d expect from a show about four Queens-born kids trying to make it in the (other) big city, it also breaks that rule in one significant way. Part of the secret genius of Entourage is that Vince, the vacuous movie star at the center of the show, doesn’t get the hottest girls. Eric, his diminutive, awkward manager, does. This is partly because, Vince’s love interests are only day-players on the Entourage set, equally vapid models given a line or two in exchange for partial nudity. Eric’s love interests usually have multiple-episode arcs, and sometimes even dimension. Vince gets Eastern European extras, while E has Ewok-like Alexis Dziena making him coffee on his French press. The side-effect being that Eric plays the role of the audience’s surrogate. Last summer, I had a conversation with three friends about what characters we would be on Entourage (yes, this is exactly what girls do with Sex and the City, but bear with me), and every single one of us imagined himself as Eric (also, for the record, the conversation only lasted about four minutes.) Dudes don’t see themselves as the movie star, they see themselves as the everyman. If the everyman then pulls the hottest girls, as E unfailingly does, so can us all.

Hung – “The Pickle Jar” by Martin Brown

A well-told story can usually overcome even the gimmicky-est of premises. Four episodes into its first season, HBO’s Hung could still go either way. On the positive side, the show has managed to craft three dimensional characters out of its dual protagonists, Thomas Jane’s well-endowed wannabe man whore, Ray Drecker, and Jane Adams’ pimp, Tanya. “The Pickle Jar” opens with a high-school ceremony presenting Drecker, the school’s basketball coach, with a pickle jar full of dollar bills—they held a car wash to raise money to rebuild the house he lost in a fire. As the students talk through a photo slideshow, Jane ranges from apathy to self-aggrandizement (“They left out the best parts”) to almost seeming sincerely touched. That same ambiguity carries over into his habits as a ho. The writers are taking their time launching Drecker into the world of prostitution—it’s episode four, and he finally has his first real client—as well as with the meek and flighty Tanya finding her confidence as she steps up her pimp game. I look forward to the inevitable moment when she becomes violent.

On the other hand, Hung is also spinning its wheels trying to develop character subplots with its mostly uninteresting and sometimes tenuously connected supporting characters. Floyd, the teacher of a self-help business class Ray and Tanya connected through, meets Ray while jogging, and cautions him against working with Tanya, who he took out to dinner in the last episode. Ray’s twin children have some negligible drama. His son is a weepy goth. His daughter just got dumped. Drecker’s first trick, a bitchy scam artist Tanya knew from temping, shows up in a beauty salon sitting next to Ray’s ex-wife, Jessica. Played by Anne Heche, she is the most uninteresting and most tenuously connected of the supporting characters, a crudely drawn sketch of a Botox-shooting, New York-weekending housewife. Jessica’s arc mostly involves her trying to win the love of her children at present, but it’s her presence that points toward one of the series’ inevitable climaxes—when she discovers Ray’s new profession. But given time, and HBO’s track record, Hung could flesh out each of these characters into something compelling. If they do, Hung stands a chance of transcending its pat set-up.

The Mighty Boosh - "Fountain of Youth"/ Late Night w/ Jimmy Fallon 07-23-09 by Sean Witzke

Noel Fielding - "We still make love occasionally."
Julian Barrat - "Yeah, we surprise each other."
Noel Fielding - "I think it's called rape."

The Boosh were on Jimmy Fallon this week, part of their bi-coastal assault on the US which involved a free myspace show at the Bowery Ballroom in NY and an Adult Swim-sponsored trip to Comicon. Any 4th Wave British Invasion theories I have been nursing are dead, killed by their appearance on Jimmy Fallon's show. Remember Jimmy Fallon? He was the jackass who laughed during everyone's sketches on SNL except Tracy Morgan's, because Tracy Morgan threatened to kick his teeth in if he did. Jimmy's got Conan's old time slot, the Roots are his house band, and Morgan Murphy's on his writing staff, and yet? He's still Jimmy Fallon. Fuck him. But the Boosh were on, so I watched it, because Tucker will kick my teeth in if I don't give 110% on these columns. It was kind of brilliant at how much faster they are than Fallon, and how he really couldn't catch up. He even tried to crimp, and, as you would expect him to do, failed miserably. Jimmy played a clip of the show from a region 2 dvd and it didn't fit on the screen. Everybody looked kind of uncomfortable, to be honest. They were still on--they're the fucking Boosh, no questioning that--and I think at this point they've got the skill set to be funny in just about any context, but Fallon's weird sycophantic giggling just made it seem sad. This was their first US TV appearance. Their second was last night's episode of Chelsea Handler. 

I hate you for ruining this, America. I hate you so fucking much.

So yeah the episode. This is S204, where we get to see Naboo's home planet. The plot of this episode is simple - In 1974 Naboo is entrusted with a dangerous mystical artifact and forced to flee to earth, where he's spent the intervening time djing and selling drugs. Vince tells Howard his problem is that he doesn't know how to accessorize. Howard is lamenting how old he looks (even though, it's repeatedly said that Vince is the same age), and Bollo lets it slip that the artifact is the key to the Fountain of Youth. Vince's bit about accessorizing actually gives him a theme for the episode, because it saves him more than once. They go through all his shit (which includes "Zombie Sick"), get teleported to Xooberon where they wander around in circles. (Actual circles, because Howard has one leg shorter than the other.) Then they get captured by a blue midget (played by Rich goddamn Fulcher of course) and his tribe of musical blue dudes. Howard and Vince make fun of the short guy's combover, Howard gets beat with a club and Vince is marked as the chosen one, because he's got the amulet. Of course, the amulet doesn't work anymore because the AAs are dead. Vince goes mad with power for about ten minutes, uses that time to treat Howard like crap. Vince then has to use the power of Being Reasonable to fight a sandstorm. It's actually a monster made out of sandpaper, who he defeats by calling a bumbaclot and then giving him his gloves. (Not sure if it's the same "bumbaclot" term that David Chappelle used for his psychic hotline sketch.) Oh, and the gloves are put to use immediately: for vigorous masturbation. An entire episode of vigorous masturbation. Try and cut around that, you fucking Adult Swim pansies! A woman (the only one in the episode) with a german accent convinces Howard to steal Vince's amulet, which she then grabs and then morphs into the Hitcher - who wants to use it to get young again, screw a bunch of ladies and make an army of green guys who do his bidding. Howard and Vince wake up buried up to their necks in sand. Vince is wearing Edgar Winter brand sunscreen, so he doesn't even burn. (They test it on goths and albinos!) Howard's face looks like a burnt plate of duckskin. Naboo and Bollo dig them up, they go find the Fountain of Youth in the woods. It's been converted into a modern bathroom with checkered tile flooring, which I believe is a reference to the Treasure of Sierra Madre. The Hitcher raises an evil tree, which the jerk-happy sandpaper dude saves them from. They kill the Hitcher by flushing the toilet, melting his green ass mid-shower ("I'm a cockney flower, watch me shower"). The crew goes home, Howard and Vince drink the "yoof juice" and turn into babies with facial hair.

It's like an issue of Jim Starlin's Warlock, right? Kinda is! I don't know if the Boosh were taking fistfuls of pills and cranking Hunky Dory while writing this episode. I don't see any evidence that they haven't (Lesser men would have compared it to Douglas Adams. Too easy, I say!)

Music - I LOVE THE CHOSEN ONE! I love him with my heart! I love him with my body parts!

Speaking of deadeyed sycophants like Jimmy Fallon, Fulcher is on fire in this episode as Allan, the tribe leader. He goes into this new realm of felching toadyism that maybe even tops David Spade in Coneheads - actually Coneheads is an apt comparison because Allan is right out of Brendan McCarthy doodles. He's blue, he's horny, he has a two-foot forehead, and he sings off-key. McCarthy would be proud. Him cutting his hand off and giving it to Vince as a gift? That shouldn't be as funny as it is - oh wait, they cut out the bit where he hands him a severed hand in a box. Because they hate joy.

Cut - They didn't cut the cold open! First time ever. Holy shitsauce. It's a little edited down, but it happens. They also cut the King saying "shit." even though it's 1 in the morning and standards and practices have proved not to give a fuck. The first Howard and Vince scene is chopped down as heavily as anything they've put up this season. - they left in the "This is a good look!" "Yeah, for Magnum P.I.!" exchange at least. Howard's Lament is still here in its full 30 seconds. Howard berating Allan the blue midget. The Hitcher and his cockney assistants haggling over how his computer works and what they should have with tea. Vince regaling his tribe with haircare tips. Allan crossing the hero worship of Vince into creepy sexual territory midsentence (he just suddenly jumps into "ooh my lovely lady lumps" which still works). Saying shit is not okay, but beating off is completely okay to leave in? I guess that's what we fought the War for. One of the two Moon clips is gone, though it was the more funny one between the two. An entire exchange between Vince and a blue tribesman who kills himself for disappointing the chosen one, is cut out. So the funniest joke, where the "I LOVE THE CHOSEN ONE" song comes back and the harikari'd tribesman busts out "not as much as me" with his dying breath. Howard and Vince crimping about soup before they die. Bollo not recognizing and then insulting a sun-damaged Howard (Howard and Bollo hate each other, and it's never resolved in any episode. There's really no other sitcom I can think of that does that). The King and Vince exchanging haircare tips.

The dialog is butchered up - nearly every scenes got a line or two cut, it might be the worst hatchet job on a Boosh ep yet. Of course it's airing on the week where they have the highest profile they might ever have. God fucking damn it.

True Blood - "Hard-Hearted Hannah" by Nina Stone

Finally! We're no longer treading whatever. This was one of those episodes that made me wish I was already watching the whole season on DVD, because that way I could have just gone right onto the next episode, and that's exactly what I want to do. I want more!!

I was sure that Sookie's infiltration of the church was going to get stretched out over the course of several episodes, and that we were going to have to endure a Three's Company-like clownish scenario when Sookie meets her brother there. But no! Big surprises! I'm still trying to figure out if Mr. Minister is telepathic or if he just knew who Sookie was. But who saw all that coming? Don't know what I'm talking about? Too bad! I'm not gonna tell you - you'll have to catch up!

Also on the "Finally" front: Daphne shows her true colors. I'm wondering if she's about to vaporize into Maryanne. Like Maryanne vibrated her into creation just to lure and hurt Sam. And oh! How about Tara's guy sort of getting his memory (that we didn't know he'd lost) back? Coming to find that spot where he'd felt he'd been before--a spot where some sort of sacrifice had clearly occurred?  Later on, we see the very same scenario taking place via Maryanne in Sookie's backyard (Sookie! Come home!) - and now we're left with a cliffhanger, wondering if Sam is about to be the next sacrifice! Poor Sam - he was just crushed realizing that Daphne's feelings for him weren't real. He really is a little lost puppy dog--Just Like He Is When He Shape Shifts. I mean, it's one thing to realize that you've been lied to and betrayed. It's another entirely when it you discover the betrayal in an attempt to kill you. Jeez!

Oh oh! Wait. I can't wrap up this review without mentioning the historic sequence between Bill and his Maker-chick. Holy evil. That was sexy, and gross, and evil. But it was great television. Really. Maybe it's time for me to read all of those Anne Rice books if that's the way I feel about it. Or watch hardcore pornography while reading Anne Rice books. And then later, when Sookie needs him bad, he's being held down, in Dallas, by her - his maker. Sookie needs him, but we learn right there that no vampire can overpower their maker. And she's struck some sort of arrangement with Eric. So Sookie might be in serious trouble. I'm sure she'll pull through. She won an Oscar when she was a little kid.

The Prisoner - "Arrival" by Tucker Stone

Stuck in a morass of disinterest for the new shows dropping out of the ass end of television's buttercream starfish, but not stuck so deeply that I'll make the mistake of committing to another Apprentice UK: that's the position. So why not continue to delve into the past of the cultish hit?

Of course, The Prisoner ain't no Sandbaggers, New Jersey conventions notwithstanding, as I was reminded when I found the 19 disc box set for the show on clearance by Johnny Hipster of the plastic rims, "The Prisoner! Oh, there's this great book where that got picked as the number one 'hippest' thing in pop culture!" I told him that's what I'd heard as well--not specifically that it had won a strange contest, but that it was much loved--to which he said that he'd never watched it. Not cool enough to watch, but cool enough to judge via competition, apparently. Anyway, there's certainly no lack for internet writing about The Prisoner--from what I've read of the Pop Culture Douchebag Snarkfest Blog Guidebook, one has to post something about the show eventually or you won't get invited to the cool parties, the ones where the B-52's let you shine their shoes--so here we go, que sera sera. 27 dvds to go!

The first thing I noticed about the Prisoner is how dense the whole experience is. There's a massive amount of information and scene-setting doled out in the same length with which Gregory House usually solves one problem, and it's made to feel even more expansive by the liberal use of cutting. I don't think there's a single take in the first 30 minutes that lasts longer than five seconds. It's dynamic stuff, and it helps to obscure the general problem television cinematography has, which is that nobody cares to make anything look good. Even when the takes get extended, the camera is a hyperactive fucker--zooming, panning, flitting around. It's an unusual way to film a show, made even more so by the content. I've been pretty lucky not to have any real knowledge about what's coming--as far as I know, the Prisoner is all about some dude who is totally not a fucking number--but it's already clear that the show is a fist-pumped dedication to the obsessive viewer, 1968's fan-fic writers yet to be born. It's a paean to individuality! To integrity! "To thine own self be true!" Uhhhh--trust no one? That probably helps as well--poor old Number Six gets fooled once, by his old pal Cobb, but other than that, he seems to have figured out pretty quickly that everybody he meets is suspect. My favorite moment of that variety in the whole episode would probably be the part where he stares at the weeping chambermaid, pointing out the ridiculousness of her "they'll let me leave if I get you to talk" argument. From the little I've heard, the Prisoner was more Patrick McGoohan's baby than anyone elses, and it shows--a better director probably could have convinced him to ease up on some of his corkscrew facial expressions--but the Prisoner also operates like the prototypical "autuer" television show; just like David Simon owns the Wire, Shawn Ryan the Shield, Aaron Sorkin Sportsnight, stuff like this--dynamic, frantic and endlessly creative--never escapes from the hivemind writer's room. (Except for the Simpsons.)

Plotwise, "Arrival" is a solid opener--man resigns from something, man is kidnapped, man wakes up in a resort costumed by Willy Wonka and designed by Walt Disney, man attempts to escape--and it's a pretty electrifying setup at that. I'd wager part of the reverence so many television writers have for this show is tangled up in the simplicity with which it deals out the odd--take, for example, what stood out to me as the best line of the episode, after the requisite "Not a number" stuff: "That would be telling." Said by the first Number Two after the giant balloon--seriously, yes, a fucking balloon--kills a shitty actor wearing a striped shirt, it's the same kind of "Trust us" heart that beats inside the creators of shows like Lost & The X-Files. Because, really: it's a balloon. A gigantic balloon. It rolls, and it bounces, and it apparently can kill you--but it's a Mother Fucking Balloon. And yet?

It's a scary goddamn balloon!

The thing is, that balloon can be shot well, and it can do something that looks creepy, but if Number Two had actually explained the balloon--if he'd said "Well, that's our security system" or he'd said "That is the face of ultimate justice", if he'd said anything at all beyond "That would be telling" while smiling like a drunken pixy--it wouldn't be scary at all. It's that commitment, that blinding sincerity that makes this show so unnerving, and it seeps into the entire episode, you can see it happening again and again--"Be seeing you", the words that come out of multiple character's mouths, each time becoming more unsettling, culminating in the moment when Number Six, his eyebrow cocked and his snarl at the ready, spits out the phrase himself, hatred and curiosity dripping off the very words. I have no idea what's coming up in the remainder of these 39 discs, and while I'm only halfway finished decoding the Special Features booklet, I have to say: I am down. Much like a clown.

-Sean Witzke, David Brothers, Martin Brown, Nina & Tucker Stone, 2009

The Virgin Read: Her New Selection Process Is Going To Be Expensive

Mouse Guard Winter 1152
By David Peterson
Published by Archaia

After perusing the shelf of this week’s new comic books, I took a gander at the various trade paperbacks and graphic novels that had come out as well. I'm glad I did, because that was where I found the beautiful Mouse Guard Winter 1152. No, I’ve not read the entire collection of Fall 1152 that preceded this. I didn't even know there was a previous collection until I batted my eyes at the comics shop employee I was making pay for this 25 dollar hardcover. In fact, my only experience with Mouse Guard was this particular story's fifth issue, which I loved. I won’t recap myself here for the sake of saving some time, but you can go back and take a look at all the reasons I enjoyed it. (Which would render the "save some time" thing moot, but there you go.)

Mouse Guard Winter 1152 tells the story of five "Guard" mice who have left their home of Lockhaven to get much needed supplies, especially medicine. They face many obstacles along the way, made worse when three of the group fall into a large hole. The separate groups are stuck dealing with multiple predators, as well as winter's threat of snow, freezing rain, and, of course, death.

Even if the story's protagonists weren't mice, this comic has the potential to be a great story, but something about it being depicted with mice makes it all the more charming. The art is excellent. Even though it’s all from the point of view of the mice, the reader can’t help but notice, at times, just how tiny they are and how big the rest of the world is. It's a really clever decision, and it appealed to me on a personal level--in my own life I often feel small and limited in the world, and watching a tiny mouse fight an owl that’s at least five times the mouse’s size, with a sword and with full gusto--it's practically inspirational in the way it gives a person pause to think about the power of faith and action. These mice never give up when facing danger, always choosing to meet it head on....okay, sure. Maybe it's just me, and maybe "inspirational" is too heavy a term to use. Maybe I'm just a dumb girl who can't separate the personal feelings that a comic brings about, but those personal feelings...I'm not making them up to prove a point, or because I'm desperate for people to read this comic. That's just how it made me feel--excited, a little in awe, and totally, yes, totally, inspired. It's a comic book about determined mice fighting for survival, and damn it, it made me so happy.

Like a billion other epic stories these days, Mouse Guard seems to include the old Hero’s Journey for at least one of our friends. My internet connection is down right now, so I can’t google Joseph Campbell or Star Wars to be sure I have all my information correct. But if I'm remembering that stuff correctly, it seems that our friend Lieam is on one. When he and Celanawe get separated from their friends, Lieam seems uneasy and worried--he's clearly unsure of himself. Yet along their journey he receives all sorts of “magical information” (a key part of the Hero’s Journey – “use The Force, Luke.”) like, “You have to make up your mind about what kind of Guard Mouse you want to be,” and “You should always aim to be your own mouse, Lieam. In fact, you already are.” And later, “Be complete within yourself young Redfur. You will never disappoint. Even in solitude.” And as he continues on his journey with Celanawe he learns more about the importance of serving the greater good, and he learns who Black Axe is. A life altering experience, and now that he has the information, the opportunity to use it all shows up after the death of a friend and the continuing appearances of the Owl. That’s just one of the main plots. Saxon, Kenzie and Sadie--the three mice who disappeared down the hole--also have definitive personalities as well as a little romantic drama. I'm not going to dive further into recapping than I already have, but I loved their story as well.

The thing that goes hand in hand with this clever story is the gorgeous and clever art. From scenery to action, facial expression to emotion, everything is very clearly drawn, and, while I wish I could describe it better for you, the coloring is gorgeous. I used to think that the reason I didn't notice color in comics was because it was usually done so well that I didn't notice it. Now, I'm starting to think the opposite is true, and that the reason I don't notice coloring is that it's rarely done well. Of course, I’m no artist and lack the vocabulary for dealing with art. But I like what I like, and it feels like there’s a lot of space in each frame. Each frame has it’s own little story to tell, and it tells that story simply. It’s art as direct storytelling--concise, but completely inviting. I could look at some of these pages over and over again and I’m even thinking of keeping this book out on the coffee table, which is high praise for a household that usually incinerates comics upstairs on the roof so that jerks will cry. 

Lastly, I think one of the things I love most about Mouse Guard is how David Peterson immerses himself in this world he's created, cleverly coming up with detail after detail. From acorn snow shoes for our Mouse Guards to the idea that mice use and ride hares like humans ride horses, the full appendix of territorial maps, all the facts about Sprucetuck and Darkheather, and my all time favorite: Mouse Pageantry & Attire. Mouse Pageantry and Attire is a section in the back of this hardcover dedicated to the various outfit that the mice wear, and I'm this close to cutting the drawings out and attaching them to popsicle sticks. And behind all this stuff, I feel like I can see Mr. Peterson enjoying every minute of this. Sure, Mouse Guard might end up as a movie, maybe it's on the way to join that terrible looking movie about guinea pigs, with merchandising out the wazoo – but I don’t get the feeling that's the intent. It just looks like an artist who fell in love with the creations his art and writing had brought forth. I’m totally a fan. I’ve got to get my hands on Fall 1152. I might even start keeping up on what’s current.

Oh, and if you are still trying to get your girlfriend or your mom or your wife to read comics and having no luck, give them this one. Trust me. They’ll be hooked. 

If not, you should leave/abandon her, because she sucks.

-Nina Stone, 2009

Comics Of The Weak: New Day Rising

Amazing Spider-Man # 600
Written by Dan Slott, Stan Lee, Mark Waid, Marc Guggenheim, Zeb Wells & Joe Kelly
Art by John Romita Jr., Klaus Janson, Dean White, Marcos Martin, Javier Rodriguez, Colleen Doran, Jose Villarrubia, Mario Alberti, Mitch Breitweiser, Elizabeth Breitweiser, Derec Donovan, Antonio Fabela, Fumara, Chuckry & Caramagna
Published by Marvel Comics

The opening story, or "actual reason for purchase" part of this comic is, at its core, a Peter Parker fights Dr. Octopus plot, and the only tangible difference between that fight and every other fight involving Doc Ock is the change in the villain's status quo that presents him as a larval cocoon instead of his normal appearance, which is that of a fat Beatle. It's illustrated by John Romita Jr, so except for the page where Peter Parker acts like a complete fucking moron and gets called on doing so by Daredevil, it's exactly what a good Spider-man story is supposed to read like. (Everything involving Aunt May is horrible, meandering "mommy has it tough" nonsense, but that's par for the course. That character seems to exist solely to teach comic readers why real life is preferable to a fantasy one, because in real life, old people will eventually fuck off and die.)

Now that Marvel publishes this series on a near constant basis, the number on the comic has made it to anniversary status, and as such, the reader gets the chance to read "extra" stories, all of which are terrible. One features Peter Parker crying at his own greatness, which must be included by law, another features a drawing of the Simpsons even worse than the ones from the old Tracy Ullman show, another features a bunch of characters whose clothes have been stuffed with diapers, there's one where some kids play on the playground and talk like they're six going on seventeen, and then there's a five page story about Aunt May that covers the exact same plot point that was covered in the main story, except the main story covered it in two panels and treated it like a speedbump, whereas here it takes five pages to reveal that, like a Care Bear, the dead will be will your pen pal if you just Give Your All hard enough. It also looks like shit. 

At the end of the comic, there's a preview for what's coming up in the next year of Amazing Spider-Man, and it's incredibly effective, but only in that it makes one realize that once every 100 issues is probably the preferred way to deal with something like a regular Spider-man comic. 

Herogasm # 3

Written by Garth Ennis

Art by John McCrea, Keith Burns & Tony Avina

Published by Dynamite Entertainment

A masked man goes into a sperm bank, points a gun at the woman behind the counter, and says, "Open the safe." She says, "This isn't a real bank, it's a sperm bank." He says, "Open the safe or I'll shoot." She opens the safe, and he says, "Now take one of the bottles and drink it." After she opens the bottle and drinks it, he takes off his mask and the woman realizes the robber is her husband. He says, "Now you see? It's not so difficult, is it?"

Time it took to find that one, using the google search engine: 2 minutes.

Offensive dick n' pussy jokes don't have to be this hard. Especially when you have the freedom to draw actual dicks and actual pussies.

Wednesday Comics # 3

By Azzarello, Risso, Gibbons, Sook, Arcuid, Bermejo, Baker, Bullock, Heuck, Busiek, Quinones, Gaiman, Allred, Berganza, Galloway, Pope, Palmiotti, Conner, Didio, Lopez, Newman, Caldwell, Kubert, Kubert, Kerschl, Fletcher, Simonson and Stelfreeze

Published by DC Comics

Batzarello: Some people might think that Batman is shaking his fist because he's angry at the nerd for slapping the lady. Other people might think that he's shaking his fist because he's silently saying "peeping on the crazy, that's why I wear the outfit". That's how Azzarello works. He gives you choices.

KamanGibbons: Boy, those rats can't shoot for nothing. What are they, 10 yards away, at most? Missing Kamandi makes sense, dude is skinny. But the tiger? They can't hit the fucking tiger?

Superjerkoff: So Superman gets in an argument with his boyfriend Batman and runs home to his fucking mommy. You know, putting this on the USA Today website probably isn't such a bad idea, since that's basically the same kind of story that DC has to offer in their regular comics anyway.

Deadman: Although a lot of the Deadman stuff so far has looked like a mash note to Darwyn Cooke, this one looks like a mash note to old Dr. Strange backgrounds, Kirby lava meltdowns, AND Darwyn Cooke, which means the comic has passed from "you like that guy" to "oh wait, you actually know what you're doing."

The Busiek Lantern: Even when Dean Martin was an active, going concern, nobody ever said "Who does he think he is, Dean Martin?" They didn't because America used to fucking mean something, and what it used to mean was that women who gave that kinda lip were immediately put on laudanum.

Metagaiman: When a comic can have its main characters replaced by the cast of Rent and still tell the exact same story, you probably want to treat that as an admonition to try harder.

Teen Titans: There's some kind of mathematical equation here that determines how close to the character one has to be before they are allowed to have a nose drawn onto their face. When the director's cut of this Teen Titans story gets published, they should include that rule alongside the explanation for why the soldiers are wearing those yellow foam earplugs you can get for free on plane trips if, like, you whine enough.

The Papal Strange: Somebody at DC must have felt bad for the not-as-trendy artists that are sharing space with Paul Pope's Adam Strange story, because that's the only sensible excuse for the limited color palette he's allowed to have.

Supergirl: Although it's obvious that this story isn't going to have some crazy "everybody die now" twist, it would be kind of genius if somebody shot the cat and the rest of the pages where just Supergirl out for revenge. It's totally not cool to shoot cats, but if that plane crashes--look, it's still a fucking cat. There's probably a baby on that plane. Baby > Cat.

Metal Men: It would be a lot more fun if this comic could just get a little worse. Maybe kill the kid? Or maybe kill the Doctor, and have the rest of the comic be a hyperrealistic comic about the Metal Men spiralling downwards into alcoholism.

Wonder Woman: The problem here is that DC has spent so long doing a shitty job of publishing female characters that one spends half the reading time wondering why, if Wonder Woman is dreaming, she isn't dreaming about helping a male character find his mojo by getting herself beat up in an alley somewhere. 

Sgt. Kubert: What are pictures of beating up a dude in a chair good for? Wouldn't taking notes be better if one has to "document the interrogation"?

Flash: If the next installment of Iris West comics is just Iris driving in silence for eight panels, they can just announce the 2010 Harvey's that evening.

Catdemon: Yeah, we got it. The Cadbury Hills smell of ozone. It's a one page comic, no need to say it twice. Needs more Demon. (In this case, "more" means "any".)

BaketheHawkMan: When they have Wednesday Comics parties in the future, are they going to have a grown-ups table and a kiddie table? Because they really should.

Dark Wolverine # 76

Written by Daniel Way & Marjorie Liu

Art by Giuseppe Camuncoli, Onofrio Catacchio & Marte Gracia

Published by Marvel Comics

This really shouldn't work, this whole Daken-as-Wolverine thing. There shouldn't be any pleasure to be found in a hackneyed faux Logan clone, a character whose defining features were probably pulled from a list of what 50 year olds consider "edgy"--a wallet chain, a mohawk, "tribal" tattoos. But work it does, and while the easy thing to do would be to attribute that to Giuseppe Camuncoli's ability to draw an acrobatic fight sequence so well it practically moves across the fucking page, or a two panel sequence involving Mr. Fantastic that points directly to how lazy most artists are when they have the opportunity to stretch logic, the truth is that Camuncoli didn't write this comic. Way and Liu did. Whether they've got more stories like this one in the bag or not, this is one worth being proud of.

Hellblazer # 257

Written by Peter Milligan

Art by Giuseppe Camuncoli, Stefano Landini & Jamie Grant

Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

Giuseppe Camuncoli drew this comic too, and Peter Milligan wrote it, and it actually has a nipple shot in it, which is a rarity in a Vertigo comic. (It's an old song you already know, but one more time: Mature Readers tags mean gore and language: sex is usually a no-no, and nipples even more so.) But if you remember anything about it, it's going to be Simon Bisley's hehhehehhahah hahahahah aaaaahaaaaha aaaaaa ahhhha AHAHHHAHAHAH aAAAGAH AAH AAAHH cover. Take a look at Bisley's happy trail. It looks like Abraham Lincoln's chin beard upside down. It might have something to do with the script, which is about how John is a pervert, and...perverts have the Devil in their pants where their junk should be? Or the Devil is their junk? And the Devil's head is upside down in place of their junk, so the goatee sticks out?

Dude, the Devil isn't fucking real.

Pluto # 4

By Naoki Urasawa

Published by Viz

Like something out of nerd fantasia, July 2009 probably stands as the strongest month of the year for comics worth giving a shit about--besides Asterios Polyp and Parker, Pluto 4 might just be the gnarliest entertainer of the bunch, a story that deals with death in a way that all the Black Lanterns couldn't dream of matching in terms of gravity. Delivered in the same kind of "what just happened" moment that McCarthy uses in his novels, the entire story leads directly up to the moment of sacrifice only to skip over the seconds in which it happens. Breaking after realization, it all leads up to a fuck-you-heroes sequence where the Gesicht character looks up at the flat image of a breaking news story and finally realizes how little his "life" remains his own. If it were just the story, it would just be good: but Naoki Urasawa is better at delivering the decision that precedes action than most of his peers, and in the fallout pages that follow, he delivers a rushed cacophony of images and dialog, all of it seeming to point that Gesicht has, somehow, joined Atom on the other side of evolution.

This book is better than you heard it was.

Immortal Weapons # 1

Written by Jason Aaron

Art by Mico Suayan, Stefano Gaudiano, Roberto De La Torre, Khari Evans, Victor Olazaba, Michael Lark, Arturo Lozzi, Edgar Delgado, Matt Hollingsworth, Jelena Kevic Djurdjevi & Jodi Wolff

Published by Marvel Comics

After successfully filling a couple of panels and serving as jazzy side characters in a kung fu story arc, Marvel has decided that it would be unfair for their "Immortal Weapon" creations to disappear into happy memory--after all, every other popular character gets slammed against the wall until everybody gets sick and fucking tired of it, why can't some of the new kids? Call it the Deadpool business plan: people like one thing for a short time, maybe they'll like another sixty issues of that one thing, especially if they all arrive at once. At the same time, you have to give Marvel a minor bit of credit for choosing to deal with Fat Cobra, the Bride of Nine Spiders and...the rest of them? in mini-series format. DC probably would have published six new ongoings, and they would have released them on the same day. Still, Jason Aaron's background story for Fat Cobra--the focus of this first issue--reads less like a triumph, and more like he's just dodged the "make up an origin for random character, pray it isn't boring" bullet. He chooses familicide, which is a spoiler, but hey: you don't pay your four dollars, you don't get to be surprised, trade waiter.

Phonogram The Singles Club # 4

Written by Kieron Gillen

Art by Jamie McKelvie, Julia Scheele, Matthew Wilson, David Lafuente, Christina Strain & Charity Larrison

Published by Image Comics

The conceit of this series is that its story all takes place in one night, and each issue will deliver sixteen pages of that one night, focusing specifically on one portion of the cast. This chapter focuses on Seth Bingo (who, according to the cover, hates you) and Silent Girl, the two of whom happen to be controlling the music on the night in question. Seth is a motormouth ninny, the sort of person more people are probably like than they realize, which is why there's a sense that he's an insufferable prick that slowly gets smothered by the fuzzy realization that he's the reader's mirror reflection. Silent Girl is...well, perfect, basically, a fantasy version of the coolest girl in the room. There's probably other characters in the series that are depicted as being more physically attractive, but it seems likely that Silent Girl tops everyone around her in the intelligence, taste and class department, which is something that becomes apparent not through Gillen's dialog, but through McKelvie's depiction of a raised eyebrow as the ultimate trump card. Overall, it's a pleasant comic, but it's acclaim seems tangled up in the fact that there just aren't any great comics about music right now (unless you want to jack off about ragtime) so a relatively good one will do.

Grotesque # 3

By Sergio Ponchione

Published by Fantagraphics

The sort of ridiculously imaginative goof around that few publishers seem interested in producing, so beholden they must be to ideas of legacy reprints, the name-making serial, or the movie deal, Grotesque is a comic book that might sound the "more of these" alarm. It shouldn't, because while that might be true, who, exactly, is going to create work like this? An inhalation and reformatting of a classic trope here and there, that's not something the shelves are lacking, what's lacking is the skill with which Ponchione ejects them, creating something wholly his own. Popeye as a nun using shoes as banana peels, Nino Brown's dialog from New Jack City repurposed in a Keebler village shoved into the wilds of a Baltic-seeming country, Dick Tracy villains on steroids, and a Build A Friend Kirby 'bot standing in as a travel-ready oracle: this, that which they do not make, this, that which they should.

-Tucker Stone, 2009

Fuck You Film Fridays: All Joe's Fault

Day late, dollar short.

The Kingdom

Peter Berg made one good movie, it's called Friday Night Lights. I cry like a fucking 9 year old whose parents are getting divorced every time I watch that movie. The Kingdom is a movie he made that expected the audience to believe that Jamie Foxx is a badass, that Chris Cooper is a real American, that Jennifer Garner has something going for her besides her lips, and that Jason Bateman is the sort of person that normal people might risk their lives to rescue. Not true, all of those things are totally false, although Jamie Foxx was somewhat interesting when he made fun of Muhammad Ali in Bait, which is a movie about how Antoine Fuqua wishes he was David Fincher. The most interesting part of the Kingdom is the opening section, and the least interesting part is every part of the film that occurs right after a couple of spree killers get shot in the face. This movie is about as surprising as a busted knee when you've been thrown down a flight of stairs, and the final lines of the film are jaw-dropping in the distance they put between the filmmakers intentions and the film's audience, because that's when you realize that a sleazy action movie with no "cool shots" was actually supposed to be some kind of moral lesson about why murder is wrong.

Dead Man's Shoes

Paddy Considine wrote some or all of this movie, and that's why his character has all the best lines and gets to chew up the scenery saying those lines. He does a fine job of saying those lines, and Shane Meadows does a fine job making sure that the Will Oldham songs sync up with the landscape shots, but Dead Man's Shoes is pretty much the art house version of I Know What You Did Last Summer, And Now I'm Going To Punish You For It. If there was a prison term associated with stretching out the Shocking Reveal scene that all movies like this are required to have, then some other British actor would have played Paddy's role in The Bourne Ultimatum.

Definitely, Maybe

Ryan Reynolds has built an entire career around his abdominal muscles, so it's not that much of a stretch to watch him play a role where he fucks his way through Elizabeth Banks, that lady from the Mummy movies, and Isla Fisher. It is a bit of stretch to believe that he's a smoker though. Other than that, this is yet another film that appears to have been shot in the same apartments that they use when they make any interminable New York sitcom about how hard it is to not be dead, and it commits the unforgivable sin of casting Abigail Breslin, who is one of those child actors who delivers every line as if she's frightened of being hit with a rolled up newspaper. (Considering how the parents of child actors often behave, her fear is probably accurate.)

Bruno

Whereas Borat was a movie that used an anti-Semitic moron to point out how fucked up anti-Semitic morons are, Bruno is a movie that uses a prancing, ridiculous parody of a homosexual to point out...something, maybe it's about tolerance or whatever. It's less funny than it is a chamber of the uncomfortable, and it seems like a waste of Sacha Baron Cohen's time considering that any of the reactions he got out of his dopey victims could have been just as easily achieved by running up to them and screaming "fuck you stupid asshole fuck you fuck you" while somebody else pointed a camera out them. Then again, god knows if there is anything else in the Cohen catalog behind being the micro-brew version of Johnny Knoxville's Budweiser, as the only evidence freely available is his screeching fool from Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd. Having a better cameraman than Ashton Kutcher and being able to stay "in character" don't necessarily make something art. Hating homophobia: it doesn't have to be this shrill.

Music of the Weak: The 100 Greatest Songs of the Millennium (So Far) - #90-81

PREVIOUSLY: #100-91 - Introductions, yacht rock, epic narratives, Elvis tributes, and one-man Canadian supergroups.

90. The Juan MacLean – “Give Me Every Little Thing” (2003)

DFA Records is a bit like 3rd grade drama club—everybody gets a moment to shine. The Juan MacLean, one of the label’s original signees, has had to wait more than half a decade for its time at the front of the stage, but 2009 could legitimately be called the group’s breakthrough year. After releasing the gargantuan “Happy House” single last spring, John MacLean followed up with a series of dope remixes and a killer second album, The Future Will Come, currently cementing him as the label’s most ubiquitous artist by far. Of course, it was only a matter of time. Early single “Give Me Every Little Thing,” which was tucked onto the back-end of The Rapture’s follow-up to “House of Jealous Lovers,” reveals The Juan MacLean’s long-standing ability to add ambient squelch to house music and somehow make it equal pop. Half of the song’s success can be attributed to its bottomless classic rock riff of a synth line; the other half to the deadpan male/female party chanting of the titular phrase—but it’s MacLean’s unwavering confidence in making such a straightforward pop move, especially in contrast to fellow early-DFA-ers LCD Soundsystem’s sarcasm and The Rapture’s abrasiveness, that marked him as an emerging star simply waiting for his share of the spotlight.

89. The Tallest Man on Earth – “The Gardener” (2008)

In film and literature, a work of art usually leaps from “good” to “great” when it aspires to a level of archetype. Obviously, something like Pan’s Labyrinth gets there by employing mythological devices and a fairy tale’s knack for metaphor. But the resolutely mundane work of, say, Horton Foote reaches that same level of universality by digging deep into his characters’ fragile psychology. In music, it’s no different. Songs that “stand the test of time” tend to be the ones that dig deeper, that go bigger, that possess an uncommon ambition—whether or not we consciously acknowledge it while we listen.

On paper, The Tallest Man on Earth’s Shallow Grave comes off as an overtly Bob Dylan-aping album, lost amongst the glut of folk-indebted singer/songwriter music of the last half-decade. But Swedish musician Kristian Matsson is operating at that same level of archetype from which “great” music is born. “The Gardener,” Shallow Grave’s standout track, jangles with such ferociousness that you could imagine Matsson’s fingers chewing through the wood on his acoustic guitar. The lyrics aim for a certain level of absurdity—Matsson’s gardener “built a steamboat in a meadow/ Cos [he’s] forgotten how to sail”—but that rhythmic propulsion frames the song with an undying urgency, one that adds to the mythology of Matsson’s chosen moniker. Everything is done to “stay the tallest man in your eyes, babe.”

88. Madlib – “Please Set Me at Ease (Feat. M.E.D.)” (2003)

When the record books close for the decade, the smart money is on Madlib as the most prolific artist of the aughts. Madlib or, like, John Frusciante. More impressively, as enormous as his body of work is, there are few artists who can fuck with Madlib on a level of consistency—so much so that his catalogue runs so deep and so rich that even the Oxnard-born producer’s biggest fans are constantly stumbling upon undiscovered gems of his. Shades of Blue, released juuust before Madlib reached his pop cultural tipping point with Madvillain and his J Dilla collab, Champion Sound, quietly arrived during a summer notable for its music’s exuberance—“Crazy in Love,” Dizzee Rascal, and D-D-Don’t Stop the Beat all loomed large at the time. Shades of Blue, on the other hand, found Madlib creating a chill counterpoint by playfully reworking numbers from Blue Note Records’ catalogue. With “Please Set Me at Ease,” he spots the hidden groove in a languid Bobbie Humphry tune, and turns it into a funk-dappled platform for frequent cohort M.E.D.’s lovelorn rhyming. Listening to Madlib’s version of “Please Set Me at Ease” next to Humphrey’s, it’s immediately evident how much reinvention went into the remix, and what a genius the dude is. By the time he hits the coda, which turns the song uptempo with a breakbeat not unlike the one at the end of The Roots’ “You Got Me,” he’s made a case for himself as a jazz musician as much as a rap producer.

87. Bran Van 3000 – “Astounded (Feat. Curtis Mayfield)” (2001)

Bran Van 3000 recorded Curtis Mayfield’s vocals for “Astounded” shortly before the singer’s death in 1999. The resulting song could have turned out to be a rote exercise, if the Quebec-based collective had been religiously beholden to the legend’s legacy of socially-conscious funk.

Instead, they lovingly constructed a backdrop of lush dance music around Mayfield’s vocal performance, using Mayfield’s early 70’s work as inspiration for an orchestral, post-disco composition—a warm, organic sound that stood in contrast to the heavy electronics that dominated the dance music of the early 2000s, in the hands of groups like Basement Jaxx and Daft Punk. The music had to be light enough to showcase Mayfield’s tremulous vocals, and flexible enough to set up for the explosive two minutes of pure salsa music that close the song. Bran Van 3000 miraculously pull it off, and, in doing so, turn Mayfield’s final recording into a fitting eulogy for one of the greatest artists of the previous millennium—playful, surprising, and, as Mayfield sings, “I just want to love you/ I just want to cry,” deeply moving.

86. Theophilus London – “Cold Pillow” (2009)

With extremely varying levels of success and seriousness, MCs the likes of Kanye West and Ghostface Killah keep jumping ship from rap to R&B. In the wake of this somewhat unsettling phase, Theophilus London’s This Charming Mixtape is something of a revelation, as he skirts frequently and seamlessly between the two. The production by Jesse Boykins III takes its musical inspiration from early synth pop and Italo disco along the lines of Kano’s “I’m Ready”, but with a deliberate increase in space and low end, “Cold Pillow” creates a momentum that belies its tepid BPMs. For his part, London alternates between rapping that isn’t quite rapping on the verses, and singing that wouldn’t sound out of place in a TV on the Radio song on the choruses. Much more Ghostface than Kanye, London isn’t exactly tuneful, and he doesn’t enlist any machinations to help him get more so, but his performance on “Cold Pillow” is simple, straightforward, and riveting. London spends most of This Charming Mixtape reworking touchstones like Amadou & Miriam’s “Sabali” or reclaiming bits of pop culture detritus like Sister Act II, and all that makes it one of the best albums of the year, but when he rocks a strictly original creation like “Cold Pillow,” London could take the Pepsi challenge with just about any hip-hop soul of the decade.

85. Res – “Golden Boys” (2001)

Santi White’s debut album as Santogold was, in fact, 7 years removed from her first big artistic success, as the writer and executive producer behind How I Do, the debut (and only) album by Philadelphian chanteuse Res. One of the most underrated albums of the decade, it’s easy to understand why How I Do wasn’t a bigger hit, despite lead single “Golden Boys” hitting heavy rotation on VH1. White was way ahead of her time; her songwriting needed the current musical landscape in order to thrive. How I Do sounds eerily prescient today, a genre-hopping exploration of contemporary soul that takes its melodic cues more from indie rock than pop. The opening syncopated drum beat of “Golden Boys” fits in resolutely with the UK Garage that was coming up at the time, while the twangy, vaguely Eastern instrumentation has an eye toward Timbaland’s pop influence. But White’s most profound impact comes with her effect on Res’s vocal inflections, which tend to bend downward at the exact moment most other wannabe divas would attempt to soar. The effect gives Res a certain iciness, which allows her to dismantle the “prince of all the magazines” in her sites as the target of the song (who may or may not have been an actual famous dude), declaring, “We know the truth about you,” with a detached cool.

84. The Whitest Boy Alive – “Golden Cage (Fred Falke Remix)” (2008)

There are a handful of songwriting tricks that can almost always be relied upon to juice up a song’s emotional impact (and Bruce Springsteen knows every one of them)—the long slow/soft intro followed by a blistering, heavy guitar riff; the moment where all of the instruments drop away except for the drums, and after a moment the vocals kick in; the a cappella harmonizing. For Fred Falke, on his remix of The Whitest Boy Alive’s “Golden Cage,” it’s the meltdown in the middle of the song, where everything slows down and the lyrics are extended and emphasized—and, good god, is it masterful in his hands. Erland Øye’s original is lovely—if tepid—skeletal indie disco. Falke cranks the tempo, doubles the running time, and composes a bonkers synth arrangement that manages to be understated and overstated at the same time. He turns “Golden Cage” into actual, full-blown disco—none of this “indie” shit about it. Øye sings, “Yes, of course I miss you and I miss you bad,” and, when the music drops away at the halfway mark, you can almost hear the “wait for iiiiitt” before he follows up with “But I also felt this way when I was still with you.” Then the beat drops back in, and it’s a knockout. Springsteen would be proud.

83. Dizzee Rascal – “Fix Up, Look Sharp” (2003)

Dizzee Rascal doesn’t do a whole hell of a lot to Billy Squier’s “Big Beat” on “Fix Up, Look Sharp,” but his use of the song speaks volumes. “Big Beat” was an early hip-hop sampling staple, notably used in Big Daddy Kane’s “Ain’t No Half Steppin’” and UTFO’s “Roxanne, Roxanne,” among others, and included on the 9th volume of Ultimate Breaks and Beats. “Fix Up, Look Sharp” draws a ton of parallels between the then nascent genre of UK Grime and the golden age of rap music (which may have been a little bit of overkill, since those parallels were pretty self-evident). Yet Dizzee’s flow is full-on 21st century, like Ludacris with a thick East London dialect to replace his Southern lilt. Especially for an 18-year-old kid with an album named Boy in Da Corner that featured a bunch of introspective songs cobbled together from scraps of Nintendo game soundtracks, “Fix Up, Look Sharp” arrived completely stadium-ready—a trick Dizzee might have learned by observing Run-DMC, if they hadn’t peaked only a year after he was born. If anything, “Fix Up, Look Sharp” taught some of our rap luminaries a thing or two—Jay-Z dropped the “Big Beat”-sampling “99 Problems” a couple of months after its release.

82. M.O.P. – “Ante Up” (2000)

Not only is “Ante Up” one of the most resolutely terrifying songs of recent years, it also has the strange distinction of inspiring one of the cuddliest viral videos of the decade, in which Bert and Ernie replace Lil’ Fame and Billy Danze as the ones advocating stifling, yapping, and kidnapping fools. (Jesus, that clip never gets old.) M.O.P. is so ripe for muppetization because “Ante Up” is so far over the top. Practically every line is a call to violence, and most of the lines are only three or four lines long—“Hand over the ring,” “Gimme the fuckin’ watch,” “Fuck you your honor.” Do you know how many four word lines you can pack into a four minute song? Yet, Fame and Danze transcend the typical gangster steez based on sheer enthusiasm—these guys are repping for petty theft with the squealy joy of an 11-year-old girl repping for My Little Pony—which makes their horrific intentions ridiculously endearing.

81. Grinderman – “No Pussy Blues” (2007)

What do you make of “No Pussy Blues” beginning with the sound of a typewriter? According to perhaps the greatest Wikipedia factoid ever, “When asked during an interview whether the song had a deeper meaning, Nick Cave replied, ‘No, it's just about not getting any pussy.’” But, then, what’s that typewriter about? Is the song a flashback? Is it an allusion to Nick Cave’s antiquated mating habits? Is Grinderman subtly creating a dystopian alternate universe like David Fincher did in Se7en by decorating the police station with phonographs? Are they blogging? Whatever the case, that typewriter makes the song, as Cave, Warren Ellis, and company, escalate from that acoustic key-punching to the peals of feedback-ridden electric guitar representing a 50-year-old’s angst. Cave narrates with a short story writer’s clarity and specificity. As he goes about trying to bed the girl he spots in the crowd, every attempt to seduce turns into a punch line. Yet, the mantra he repeats in the song’s opening seconds is, “I must above all things love myself.” So he charges into each attempt with unwavering brio. In real life, he’d be sleazy as hell. In “No Pussy Blues,” he’s our unflappable hero. It’s complicated.

-Martin Brown, 2009

Economist Versus Idiot: Strike Zones

Shit, almost forgot.

The World Last Week

-Canada recently discovered that a whole lot of Gypsies were seeking asylum there after the various problems--otherwise known as racist harrassment--sent them running from the Czech Republic. So Canada responded by making it more difficult for people from the Czech Republic to get into Canada. And for the hell of it, they threw Mexicans on the "get a visa to come here" club.

-12 federal police were found dead in Mexico, apparently killed after a drug boss was arrested. They were tortured first. How you like your drug war, America?

-As if things in Iran weren't already difficult enough, a plane crashed right after taking off from Tehran, and everyone on board died.

-Those Nigerian rebels did the same crazy thing again! Sometime last year, can't remember when, Nigerian rebels attacked and killed some guards and blew up some oil tanks, and then they called a cease fire. Obviously, you see why that's weird--there's something inherently fucked up about killing some people and then saying "just kidding just kidding, cease fire!" But last week, they did it again! The exact same thing! I realize life ain't fair, but c'mon Nigerian rebels. You're cheating.

-A couple of French security officials--and yes, that probably means spies--were kidnapped in Somalia. They were there to advise the only remaining government in the country, but the only remaining government in a failed state controlled by warring jihadist and extremists gangs doesn't ensure much security. They'll go on trial soon, in some kind of kangaroo sharia court.

-South Korean television claims that Kim Jong Il has pancreatic cancer. As always, any hopes of more information on Kim's Eric Clapton worshipping son have gone unrewarded. Come on, journalism. Give me the fatty meat that I crave.

-Now that the United Nations monitors are completely out of the occupied territories in Georgia after accomplishing a sum total of nothing, you can officially say "Russia totally got what it wanted" and nobody can argue with you. (Note: no one is going to talk about this with you.)

-Goldman Sachs turned a crazy huge profit in June, and a whole lot of people with flaming torches met in basements across the world and said "Now?" 

-Hey, the deficit cleared a trillion in the US! Hope that "deficits don't matter" guy was right. Because if he was wrong...well, holy shit. I know how to kill my own food. Do you?

-I don't really know how to kill my own food i am so fucked

-General Motors is going to get rid of roughly 30,000 of its American workforce, bail out of about 3000 dealers, but hey, it is out of bankruptcy. Cheering, I'm sure.

-Microsoft is going to give you free Microsoft Office, so now you'll never have an excuse when someone requests a PowerPoint presentation. Oh, well you can still use the "fucking PowerPoint? You want a Counting Crows album with that as well?"

Leaders

-A variation on an article from a few months ago--that one was a defense of capitalism--this week's cover and major op/ed is an extensive defense/apology for modern economic theory. Due to the Economist's weird position--they were pretty hostile towards the housing bubble, and they've always pushed for smarter financial regulation, but the magazine is still a strong supporter for free markets--the article is a strange hodgepodge of a lot of different ideas, all based around the same general stance one has to take when you talk about Two Live Crew while defending free speech. (You don't like Two Live Crew, but they have to be defended or else you're siding with prissy fascists.)

-Japan will have a general election on August 30th, which gives the Liberal Democratic Party--who have run the contry for years, with only a short break--a scant few weeks to right the ship that may finally go down. The Economist isn't that in love with the party most likely to win, but they, like most of us, are sick and tired of one party running a country for decades.

-Rudyard Kipling once said that if you were wounded in Afghanistan, you should "jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains." The Russians bled and died there for years, thanks in part to America's neverending supply of arms to the local warlords. Now, the Brits are beginning to question whether their commitment should continue. The Economist, who have always liked the Afghan conflict, thinks they should, and as this is an op/ed, don't expect too many strong arguments to the contrary. It's hard to read stuff, and the multiple page briefing doesn't help. Hell, these last four sentences have been hard to read, and I fucking wrote 'em.

-There's a lot of arguments about online gambling this week, and the general argument of the Economist is that the arguments for prohibiting it are based on a government's desire to force its citizens to gamble where they say, when they say--which is not the reason they've given, a science fiction explanation involving being a gambling junkie and having a computer. There's also a background piece on one of the major online gambling sites.

-Because I live in New York, I forget that there are people who believe that the terminally ill should not be allowed to commit suicide. The Economist is a magazine published worldwide, so they have to write for everybody, including people who think cancer patients should be kept alive by all possible means, even when the cancer patient completely disagrees. I think I'd be fired up to debate the subject if I was still in college, but I'm not, and I don't. People's lives are their own, and having seen firsthand the savagery of incurable terminal illness, my contempt for those who believe "in the sanctity of life" has long passed the point where I give a fucking shit about hearing the tired arguments. It's a competition of loathing over here, because I can't stand people who use personal history as a trump card in debates either.

Letters

-Yury Fedotov--he's the Russian ambassador stationed in Britain--wrote in to criticize the Economist's tone of contempt in their consistent criticism towards his country. He wants the Economist to treat his country with "goodwill, mutual respect and an honest understanding of each other's interest." He failed to mention whether or not Russia would meet halfway by doing simple things like not shooting journalists and human rights lawyers down in the fucking streets.

United States

-The Economist never liked Dick Cheney, but they hid it pretty well--if I had the old issues from the last couple of years, I'd quote the moments where it bled out, but they're long gone--and now that he's out of the office, they don't like talking about him at all. He's briefly mentioned in this article about the Democratic scalp-hunt (in the form of a torture inquiry), and his face is the art, but even then, you can just feel the sneer in the lines. Not bad, although the fantasy prosecution of high level officials remains a pipe dream.

-The Economist's prelim coverage of Sotomayor is about as predictable as the subject itself: these are motions, and we are going through them. Unless she has a couple of bodies buried in the flower garden, here's your new Supreme Court justice.

-The "fuck you Senate" regarding the health-care reform bill is pretty funny. They refer to the Pelosi version--which will never pass--as being "so far to the left of American political discourse that even moderate Democrats in the Senate held their noses."

-Educational developments in Alabama--the same state that once put a budget increase to the public so that they could refuse it, which resulted in the firings of entire police and fire departments--usually live somewhere between horrible and mind-bendingly horribly, but this online initiative is fantastic stuff. Hope it catches on.

-As more Latinos go evangelical, so goes American Christianity. It's funny how other parts of the world use America as the example of a degraded, decadent society, when the truth is that it remains the number one most unfriendly place to secular thought in post-industrial civiliazation. No other economic power is as religious as Americans. Is that "50% believe in active guardian angels" number still true?

-Lexington's replacement hasn't really introduced her/himself yet, but if this week's column is any indication, it's going to be an uphill climb. Do you want to hear thinly veiled personal anecdotes about sending the kids to a summer camp for atheists? Sure, it's funny to hear about the pathetic "go prove unicorns don't wander the forests" exercises, but it's not that funny. This is the sort of humor that goes better represented when you know there's a dwarf with a hook in the wings.

The Americas

-Ahh, it must be the water or something, but this slight human-interest piece regarding the successful program started at the Mexico City airport that has hired around 60 disabled workers and put them in meet-the-public type employment put a smile on my face. Besides how good all the employees are at their job--which should come as a shock to no one--it's nice to have a story where a corporation was able to successfully initiate and follow through on a program like this without any government interference or needling whatsoever. This is good works, done correctly.

-Sometimes I get the feeling that the Economist just wants to get all juvenile and point out that Evo Morales looks like a fat chipmunk with a bad haircut--like, 1970's porn haircut. I guess I just did it for them.

Asia

-The Uighur crackdown doesn't get leader status, nor does it get top billing in the Asia section. It also doesn't even get its own article. No, it gets mixed with one about Turkish support for the Uighur cause, and while it's somewhat understandable--there's very little news coming out of that area that isn't suspicious--it's still depressing.

-After you've rescued a child soldier, what next? This article, focusing specifically on Sri Lankan Tigers, can't provide an answer beyond "hard work, own reward, holy shit this is fucking sad". This has to be one of the hardest, most soul-eating jobs on the planet.

Middle East and Africa

-The Economist continues their attempt to acknowledge one of the things that George W. Bush did right by pointing out how little Barack Obama has done to change the current Let-Africa-Fix-Itself policy. It's an interesting gesture, but one that continues the inexcusable policy of consistently dealing with the continent in depth through the lens of how the world's super-powers relate to it. The Economist isn't anywhere near as bad as some, and they write more Africa-focused articles than any American news outlet--but still. By consistently talking about Africa in relation to what other countries have to say about Africa, it undercuts the very notion that Africa is capable of handling itself, as if stories about the various countries are only applicable when a Western voice has chimed in.

-One of America's, China's and former critic Spain's most reliable dictators, Obiang Nguema of Equtorial Guinea looks to have another landslide "victory" on the way. After years of work, the country finally hit the top ten of most-corrupt-countries in the world. He's a charmer, this one.

-Here's your "That's wonderful" article for the week: there will now be a minimum sentence of two years when a man is convicted of "honor" killing in Syria. That term is used when a guy murders a woman who cheated on her husband, or might have cheated on her husband, or hell, just given him lip when he told her not to shred the lettuce. So yeah, two year minimum, if convicted. Which will be hard, since it was a Presidential decree that the judicial system probably won't like, and these crimes barely get reported anyway, much less investigated. Oh, and I saved this for last: the maximum sentence used to be one year.

-Iran: Mir Hosein Mousavi has found a sack of courage that no one expected him to have, and he seems to have decided that, Michael Jackson Distraction or no, he ain't giving up on this election thing yet. On his side, suprisingly, awesomely, are some of the clerics who--you know--actually RUN the country, as well as two former presidents. This may not end well, but the fact that it hasn't ended yet is worth some attention.

-How do other Arab nations feel about Iran, by the way? According to this tiny article that points to a disappointing lack of research, they've stuck to making fun of Ahmadinejad while keeping silent on the serious side of criticism. (As in they aren't about to criticize vote-stealing or theocratic rule, especially since few Arab nations can point to serious relationships with pure democracy.) Still, this article is so incredibly brief, and Middle East affairs are so incredibly complex that the whole piece comes across as a missed opportunity.

Europe

-The first three paragraphs of this article on the violence in Chechnya detail two murders, and both of them are about as bad as you can imagine. After that, the article continues to ratchet up the horrible, and by the end, I doubt there's anybody who won't find the whole thing extremely upsetting. It's the most hopeless story this week, because you'll realize before you finish reading it that absolutely nothing is going to change.

-So if Silvio Berlusconi is such a scumbag, why does Italy keep standing by his side? Simple answer, according to the Econ: because he makes it easy to cheat on your taxes. Cheat like a bandit.

Britain

-The unemployment rate in Britain is pretty nasty, and while it seems to be getting better (maybe), it still looks horrible for the young. That's a pretty standard story, but the Economist finds a way to blame Gordon Brown for it. Surprise!

-Although the swine flu is starting to look a bit scary in Briain, the death count may only top out the way a regular winter flu does, "perhaps a bit worse". That's interesting, but what if there's also a regular winter flu on top of swine flu? Wouldn't that make it double? Also, since it's "regular", why wasn't this question addressed by the people who write the Economist? I should write a smug letter.

I guess these blog entries are just smug letters. Fie on me.

International

-It's another not-bad piece from the International squadron, this one focusing on the rarest of stories: something good happening for the indigenous population of the Arctic. Besides Greenland's successful move into independent territory, the Inuit people have what looks like a bold future ahead of them. Despite being beholden to Denmark's tolerant welfare system, the Inuit have plans to go ahead with exporting the estimated 90 billion gallons of oil (and 47 trillion cubic meters of gas) buried within the ice. Considering that the Inuit have a relatively decent policy of looking after the Earth, their claims of working to take care of the land ring truer than most.

Business

-Face Value, the "look at this person" feature, takes a gander at Faisal Al Suwaidi, a forward thinking type who helped create the raging liquid natural gas market only to face the always dramatic construction problems inherent in doing major Middle East business. This seems a good a time as any to plug a book I haven't mentioned in a while: Steve Coll's The Bin Ladens, which is a tremendously informative book detailing the history of that oh-so-famous family. While the back half of the book is (obviously) dedicated to the study of a certain terrorist, the first half deals with one of the most fascinating aspects of Mid East history: how you go about building massive shit in the desert when you have no roads or construction equipment. It's an excellent piece of work, and a book that I'd dare say would interest just about anyone.

-The changing Japanese corporate culture has been a notable story as of late, making this article, which details the proposed merger between two major drinking firms that much more interesting. Armchair viewers--and yes, I consider myself one--often make the mistake of thinking of major Japanese firms in the same language they think of Westernized "national champions." It's an inaccurate assumption--as the magazine has pointed out before, Japan's corporate culture is built around non-compete nationals who fight all foreigners for the right to share the homeland pie. This merger could begin a race to change that, and it's a welcome change that's been long needed.

-After years of being one of the more irritating arguments to be had, some drug companies have finally broken down and made it possible for expensive diarrhea medication to be released generically in poor countries. (Diarrhea is the leading killer of children in poor countries.)

-Want to do steel business in China? Like, with foreign companies? China has a better idea. How about you just go to jail instead.

-This article about how hospital operators are offering the Obama administration a massive $155 billion in cuts prior to the request is a pretty worthwhile article when it comes to reviewing the discussion that was had, but there's something iffy about it. It just seems a little MSNBC for my taste.

Finance and Economics

-Hey, the Big Mac Index is back. If you've never seen it, it's a chart that lists how much a Big Mac goes for in multiple countries. Theoretically, exchange rates should equalize the price of a Big Mac. Here's a chart that examines how the price fluctuates around the world, with a couple of loose answers as to why that isn't happening.

-While few people want to read articles about accounting standards, they always want to know how something like Enron happens: easy answer to that one was mark-to-market accounting gone insane. (And considering the insanity of honest mark-to-market, you can imagine how fucked up it gets when you're dealing with corrupt sociopaths.) The latest financial crisis wasn't as definitive in its root causes, but accouting standards help (or obscure) the valuation of debt and assets, making articles about them valuable, despite the obtuse boredom they often cause.

Shit, I didn't really sell that very well.

-Buttonwood writes about investors the way some people write about packing their fucking laundry for an extended weekend trip. When's this guy gonna quit?

-Here's your populist fight talk this week: "Are investment banks run for employees or shareholders?" You'll pardon me while I bow out of the discussion, as I can't be bothered to hear why the former have a leg to stand on.

Science and Technology

-Another ball-shriveling criticism of NASA, courtesy of the Economist: Born out of the review requested by Obama's administration earlier this year, America's humiliation at having to depend on Russian spaceships when traveling to the International Space Station, and the growing prospects of independent spaceflight by way of start-up business, this article isn't one likely to please children. Thankfully, children don't read the Economist. They should, though. I fucking hate children. The sadder they get, the fatter my pockets.

-Exxon Mobil hung back when other oil companies started clamoring for "green" energy, but they've finally laid their cards on the table: they're going for the algae dollar. They have some crazy smart scientist, the same dude who led the team that "produced the first genetic sequence of a living organism", and that dude may have come up with a way to deliver reliable energy by way of algae. Usually the science articles are a bit of a snore to read, except for when they make fun of that Tipping Point dude, but this one is pure gravy. (Which might mean it's lacking in reliability.)

-I read this entire article about the search for dark matter, and you can too.

Books and Arts

-Is it a surprise that a lawyer who once dug up his dead wife in the middle of the night so that a sculptor--who he'd brought with him to the graveyard--could immortalize her visage also happened to be one of the architects of the 1789 French Revolution? Naah, not really. The French are completely insane.

-Former Economist writer and current editor of Wired published a book called Free. Unlike the Long Tail, which he also wrote, the Economist is less impressed with this one. It lacks "an elegant underlying explanation", which is interesting to me, because I thought The Long Tail was a fundamentally childish book. At the same time, it's Wired, which is a magazine on the same intellectual level as fucking Rolling Stone most of the time.

-You'd think that being able to compare and contrast ancient Biblical texts through the internet would bring the day where large groups of people vocalized how incredibly fucking weird the discrepancies are, but apparently that day is so long away as to not be coming. Oh well: we'll always have Xenu.

Obituary: John Bachar

-Maybe it's the fallout from doing these Economist round-ups on an intermittent basis, but I don't have anything thoughtlessly sarcastic to say about Bachar, a free climber who met the end while in the midst of his incredibly dangerous (and hard-to-fathom) hobby. It takes a certain breed of human being to live life the way John did, constantly putting himself in mortal danger for no gain beyond a personal one, and while I can't, and won't, pretend to understand it, I'm glad that the world has people like this. "Marched to a different drummer" comes to mind, but it's not accurate enough. This guy was another type of species entirely: not better, not stronger, not smarter--Just different. And no matter what snowflakes tell us, people are rarely as unique as they think. He was.

Television Of The Weak: Say Hi To The New Guy

This week we've got Leverage, The Mighty Boosh, Entourage, True Blood and The Sandbaggers. We've also got an addition to the team: the 4th Letter's own David Fucking Brothers.

Oh, and not that it matters, but here's why the Emmy's don't matter:

The Shield.

Shelve it next to The Wire. Good job, Emmy voters. You've failed once again.

Leverage - "The Beantown Bailout Job" by David Brothers

Leverage has never shied away from wish fulfillment. The first season featured corrupt businessmen, slimy policemen, slave traders, and (not)Blackwater. Season two gets right into ripping villains from the headlines, as the big bad guy this time around is... a stand-in for the banks that were giving out poorly-planned loans and taking advantage of people.

It's practically gleeful in its condemnation of what led to the crap economy. The bank director isn't just a bad guy-- he's a bad guy who bosses around the mob, who are no longer evil enough to be the Villain du Jour. He crows about subprime loans and jerking people around like a Bond villain. And the bailouts? He's almost in paroxysms of orgasmic glee. Suck it, Madoff.

Of course, the strength of Leverage isn't in its villains. It's in the main cast, the thieves who make the show go. Nate is an angry recovering alcoholic who is already sick of corporate life, and the other four are pretty bored. They did their biggest jobs with Nate, and now life feels empty. They need that rush again. Bam, the gang's back together, after the usual amount of back and forth.

Hardison and Parker still have my favorite relationship, with two introverted people dancing around romance while trying to pretend that they aren't. There's some tension between Sophie and Elliot, dating back to a bit of betrayal on Sophie's behalf, which does a good job of altering the dynamic of the crew.

Basically, though, "The Beantown Bailout Job" is about getting the gang back together after they "left forever" at the end of the last season. It's a little below average for an episode of Leverage, and the CG car flipping was almost definitely a mistake. But, it does its job. It's likeable, but not great, not yet. After this one, new viewers know the gist and old viewers know how the gang got back together. Now, John Rogers and the rest of the gang can get down to giving us funny interactions, fantastic heists, and Parker's lust for fancy infiltrations. You know-- the good stuff.

The Mighty Boosh - "Nannageddon" by Sean Witzke

"Kirk is not to be trusted in these manners, Kirk is a very violent and sexually deranged being from the fourth dimension."

This week's plot is simple: Vince and Howard try to impress some goth girls named Anthrax and Ebola. They are in fact the same girls who played the electro girls in "Electro" (It seems that Howard and Vince are doomed to run into the same shrill and hateful girls over and over until they meet Diva Zappa in season 3). In order to do this, they steal Naboo's ancient book of black magic while Naboo and Bollo are out dj-ing. By accident they let loose a class-5 demon onto the earth, who then steals the book. Because of this, Naboo is summoned by the Shaman Council (in their first appearance on the show). They imprison Bollo, take Naboo's powers, and give him 24 hours to get the book back. The Shaman Council were never used to their full extent, and would probably work as a spinoff. Noel Fielding and Richard Ayoade play off each other amazingly well, it's a shame we only get them bouncing off each other for four episodes total. The whole council is pretty great - Kirk doesn't get used enough, but the rest of them are. Saboo's a total dick, obsessing over "the cruch" and this appears to be Tony Harrison's first day on the job. Depowered, Naboo gets hammered. Howard and Vince go out looking for Nanatoo, the demon in the form of an old lady. We get cutaway scenes of an old lady killing a bunch of teenagers, which is alway a plus. (Including the guy in the Bollo costume getting stabbed in the throat.) Saboo and Tony Harrison go looking for the book, as do Howard and Vince. Howard and Vince do it dressed as old ladies, and Howard punches an old lady in the face. The moon is actually in this episode for a reason, because the other characters refer to him specifically ("I didn't know he was an alabaster retard!"). Bob Fossil is not in this episode, but we do get Rich Fulcher as a saucy old man who's saying awful things as he calls out bingo numbers. Howard and Saboo get into a fight over the book while both dressed as old ladies. Vince gets caught up in the bingo game, and wins a pair of boots. Nanatoo knits Saboo into a mummy, then kills him with gigantic knitting needles. She and her army of pensioner old ladies chasing them through the flaming streets (which of course is the episodes musical number). They end up back at their house, Naboo saves them (also Vince's hairspray). The girls end up dating Naboo and Bollo, who end the episode all dressed in leather. Bollo looks like a Mignola monkey.

Cut - Howard giving Bollo dj-ing tips ("Throw in some weather report, blow their minds."). Some ranty bits of Vince insulting Howard's hair. Howard's continual attempts to be goth by talking about getting naked and shitting on things. A fantastic "Hitler couldn't draw to save his life" joke. Vince running back to grab his boots. Half of the self-titled song "Nannageddon" is cut, particularly some of Rich Fulcher's old man humping things. The song "Nannageddon" is fun, it's the Boosh tackling psychobilly, and it's shot a lot like a 90's rock promo (i.e.: digital city on fire in the background like the Atari Teenage Riot "Speed" video). A long period of Howard and Vince trying to revive a hung over Naboo. Not much but the pacing is really shot in this one, a lot of comedy beats are sacrificed for coherence. And who the hell wants that? If there was ever a show that would benefit from a complete collapse of plot, it's the Boosh. It'd be great to see these guy just let loose on a sketch show with these same character - like a UCB format or something. I was listening to the Mr. Show season 4 commentaries and they were talking about how much better the shows got when they abandoned any concept of theme or any throughline whatsoever. To see the Boosh cast let loose on something more freeform, it'd be interesting.

It's great to watch a Boosh episode without rape, isn't it? (No, not really but it was a long stretch there where it kept coming up. Still funny). Actually rape doesn't pop up again all season if i remember correctly, though there's still some really screwed up sex stuff going on. Not here though, it's just Howard and Vince failing ,miserably at picking up goth chicks. Which is sweet if you think about it.

Hard, I mean. Think about it hard.

Entourage – “Among Friends” by Martin Brown

While last week’s non-starter of a season opener may have been somewhat dissatisfying in its upending of just about everything Entourage stands for—as our faithfully youthful protagonists all showed signs of, gasp, maturing—it did serve to set a ton of plotlines in motion, both for the long-term and short-term. Of the five main characters, only Johnny Drama doesn’t have a potential story arc brewing. After starring as Nick Carraway in Martin Scorsese’s version of The Great Gatsby, Vince is dealing with a second meteoric rise in fame, and coping with the fact that his best friends’ lives seem to be revolving less and less around him. Turtle is making a go of a relationship with Jamie Lynn Sigler, and trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life. Eric is juggling some lingering feelings for his ex-girlfriend, Sloan, with a new actively single lifestyle, as well as continuing to work to get his career as a manager off the ground. And Ari is trying to hold his Agency together as his assistant is angling for a promotion and his newest agent and good friend Andrew Lang is threatening to blow up his spot by messing around with a 26 year old in the office.

In the short term, last week’s “Drive” was necessary to build up to this week’s “Among Friends,” which revolves around The Great Gatsby’s premiere. Event episodes like this one tend to be one of Entourage’s strengths, as the writers manage to work a ton of little snags into one of our boys’ thousand Best Night Evers. “Among Friends” is a sterling example of just how much conflict Entourage can pack into an episode, and how quickly they can turn things back and forth for the characters, and still end the episode with just about everyone on top. For example, as E moves into his new home, to which Sloan introduced him, he asks Sloan to the premiere. She turns him down, but later agrees as long as they go “as buddies.” Later that afternoon, another girl E’s been seeing shows up with a housewarming present, and awkwardly tries to get E to invite her to the premiere. He doesn’t, but she shows up anyway, causing tension between E and Sloan. Eric brushes her off, and, on advice from Vince, admits to Sloan he still has feelings for her. She doesn’t reciprocate. He goes home alone, gets a call from the other girl, and decides to head over to her house, deleting an apology text message from Sloan along the way. Typical shows would stretch this out over a season, but Entourage, with all the various other subplots which contain just as many ups and downs, packs it all into about ten minutes’ worth of screen time, working at such an accelerated pace BECAUSE IT’S A SHOW FOR MEN (besides, you know, all that soap opera type stuff.)

True Blood - "Never Let Me Go" by Nina Stone

Everyone's meeting their match. Shape Shifter meets Shape Shifter. Telepath meets Telepath.

Jason kicks ass as a Soldier of God and gets a bath tub hand job from the preacher's wife as a "reward". Vampire guy asks Sookie questions and gets a recliner hand job from Sookie as an "answer."

Nice.

Oh, and then Maryanne begins to blow her own cover and her creepiness is oozing out all over the place so much that even Tara can't ignore it, and Tara can ignore a lot. (Because she's stupid.) Still, they've seemed to decelerate in the forward momentum of who Maryanne is and what Maryanne wants. Now she's just around a little too much. And there's still no mention of the crazy animal thing that tore up Sookie and clearly has had it's way with Daphne! And why won't Sam mention the scars on her back? Seriously? They can't be ignored! It's almost impolite to NOT mention them. A simple, "what happened to you?" would suffice. Oh, but maybe that got left on the cutting room floor so we could have a pair of hand jobs.

Sookie and Bill are in Dallas,but it feels like Vegas by the looks of their hotel room. Some serious shit is about to go down, but Sookie is horny as a bullfrog in July (what? that's a phrase?), and the whole episode was her constantly trying to get him into bed.

Yeah, I guess I'm just recapping this week. If I try and look too deeply into this I fear I'll ruin it for myself. So, I'm keeping it nice and light. Nice, light, Vampire Drama. Yeeeeeeaaaaaaaahhhhhh. 

The Sandbaggers - Season Two by Tucker Stone

Here's the trivia: the second season of Season Two had an episode vetoed by censors due to "sensitive" content. It adds to the mystique of the show, a show whose creator and head writer had a bit of a mysterious background and ended up disappearing during the creation of the third season. But when you see the second season, and you see what's been left in--the mystique is almost overpowering. What could that episode have included that the censors found so objectionable? It wasn't lines like "It's not as good as a triple rape, but it'll do." It isn't an entire episode centered around the British security services being concerned that they don't end up end like the American FBI, who they squarely blame for the murders of JFK and Martin Luther King. It isn't a high-stakes shoot out on a hijacked plane that results in the death of multiple civilians--including an innocent child.

Did it involve cannibalism? The Brits always have a problem with cannibalism.

At the same time that the second season vaults itself through controversy, it also stumbles a bit. The first season had ended with the gut-wrenching death of Laura Dickens and her death, at the hands of a CIA agent, haunts the entirety of these six episodes--not always in a good way. Neil Burnside--Laura's boss, prissy boyfriend, and anguished architect of her necessary death--can brood with the best of them, but watching him struggle through scenes where a grossly aggressive CIA agent attempts to bed him is a chore. As with the first season, little of the show's exterior "action" sequences are able to hide what must have been an incredibly low budget, and the confusing decision to start many of the show's classic "men talking in one room" scenes with a cheap zoom effect is unwelcome.

Still, the second season has a lot to offer--besides the savagery of Sandbagger Two's suicide in the terrifying season opener, watching Burnside desperate back-room attempts to rescue Willie Caine in the aforementioned hijack episode serve as some of the most compelling moments of the show thus far. Over and over, the second season hammers the same point home: without Burnside, Britain is lost. It's a selfish fantasy, but it's far more attractive a dream than the reality probably is--a world where we are protected by the likes of the CIA's Jeff Ross (a goof of a character who spends the entirety of some of his scenes with food stuck to his mouth) or Matthew Peele, Burnside's clueless prig of a boss.

-Sean Witzke, David Brothers, Martin Brown, Nina & Tucker Stone, 2009