Outside? Who goes outside anymore? The woods? Who goes to the woods anymore? Tap water? Who drinks tap water anymore? Hand jobs? Who gets hand jobs anymore? CBS? Who watches CBS anymore?
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Here's a picture of a cat.
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I drove home crying after I lost my virginity. A couple of weeks later, she was scooping up this guy's semen off the seat of his truck and shoving it inside her, because she figured he wouldn't break it off with her if she got pregnant. Years later, I saw her sitting in the hatchback trunk of a Ford Escort in a Wal-Mart parking lot. We made eye contact as I drove away.
I was wearing 300 dollar jeans that a homosexual man gave to me. (He bought lots of clothes that he planned on wearing when he had lost enough weight to fit into them. Every few months, he would give the unworn clothes away and buy new ones.)
I remember thinking that was sort of fair, me in new clothes, her looking sad in a trunk, and then being surprised that I was still bitter.
That's when I knew that I could like Animal Collective a whole lot. Bunches, even.
It’s Blitz! is the album that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were always meant to make, without necessarily being the album that anyone ever expected to hear from them. On the one hand, it’s a major pop move—every song is like an iron-clad chart-monster, calibrated for maximum dramatic impact. The up-tempo numbers surge toward rallying choruses; the ballads ache in all the right places. Karen O strips her lyrics down to oblique poetics—a litany of repeatable metaphors and similes designed for you to project onto (On “Skeletons,” does she sing “love don’t cry” or “love, don’t cry”?)—while Chase and Nick Zinner frame her performances with compelling and simple arrangements. The band spent its entire last album tweaking the formula they established with “Maps,” to diminishing returns. On It’s Blitz!, they turn out a couple of songs that could compete with their establishing hit: “Skeletons,” on which Brian Chase’s drums march like they’re soundtracking Empire of the Sun; and “Hysteric,” one of the best songs of the year in any genre.
On the other hand, It’s Blitz! also trades out the assaultive guitars that helped define the first part of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ career for keyboards and synthetic sounds. This isn’t an entirely unprecedented move—Rilo Kiley made a similar shift with 2007’s Under the Blacklight, which transformed the alt-country-leaning indie rockers into a streamlined 80’s groove band. But, where Rilo Kiley’s effort didn’t have a whole lot of actual muscle behind its stylistic flourishes, It’s Blitz! is like a master yoga instructor—lean, but strong as fuck. The thorny guitar parts of old high points like Fever to Tell’s “Pin” and “Bang” from their debut EP translate into analogous brittle synthesizer riffs, and Zinner composes with such precision that most of the time you don’t even realize he’s there.
“Maps” either awakened or betrayed a secret desire within the Yeah Yeah Yeahs—a desire for arena rock—and It’s Blitz! makes good on that desire. In an age when music is only getting more and more insular, Yeah Yeah Yeahs are clearly swinging for a mass audience, regardless of whether or not that’s actually even achievable, given the state of the music industry. Thing is, the band has the tools and the musicianship to back up its ambition. It’s Blitz! may contain ten of the biggest songs of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ career, but it also contains ten of their most tightly wound.
There's another album on this list that's splashed with death, but we'll get to that one later. For now, we're on this:
A 31-year-old Louisiana-born musician -- missing from a Wicker Park residence since an argument with his girlfriend last week -- has been found dead in the Near Northwest Side neighborhood.
There isn't a hint of death or tragedy on Immolate Yourself. What happened after the album was released...it's worth acknowledging for factual purposes, worth knowing because it serves as a piece of information, but it's got nothing--absolutely nothing--whatsoever to do with the piece of music that Charles Cooper and Joshua Eustis created.
That's it for that. We're on this:
It's a physical piece of shit with silver oxide on it wrapped around an aluminum spool. - Joshua Eustis
The article that quote comes from is well written, but it's a well written article that anticipates a more than passing familiarity with the technology used in electronic music production. (That's not a criticism--EM isn't a general interest magazine, despite the pretty photography. It should read like inside baseball, and some of it does.) A lot of the specific information in the article is going to slip by most people, but the general thrust of the article--that Eustis and Cooper were tired of what they'd been doing, and wanted to try something different--isn't dissimilar to what a lot of people claimed to feel over the last few years. They wanted something different. They went about the creation of that difference by utilizing different techniques--analog, their own voices in place of samples, etc. The question that remains: did it work?
The answer is hard to come by. From this point of view, Immolate Yourself sounds like a collection of electronic songs, most of which loop and careen into one another, forming a non-danceable collage of atmosphere and sound. Occasional vocals--"I know that you are the worst thing in the world/for me"--often delivered with an absence of emotional direction, neither complaining nor authoritative, merely detached and observational. It's not bleak or drone-y, and despite a bit of post-punk blips of squalor, hiding amongst new wave synth samples, the album isn't particularly excited about anything. (For the hell of it, I threw it on while driving a pick-up truck down a dirt road, and despite the luxurious freedom of blast-capable woofers, the songs sounded less alive than they do playing through the privacy of headphones. No matter how open the landscape of "Mostly Translucent" becomes in the final minute, it's a timid song, it's shy, it doesn't crave the street.) This isn't dance music, no matter what the lyrics and beats of "Helen of Troy" might imply. Ecstasy would help, but good ecstasy has been a pain in the ass to find lately.
But if the only notable differences that went into the creation of Immolate Yourself require the discerning ear of the fanatic or fellow practitioner to find, if the fact that the album's alpha "we will change our methods" philosophy is one that requires a late stage reading of an article from March of this year to learn--how much does the intent matter?
Not much, as it were. Before anybody found out that Charles Cooper died, Immolate Yourself was one of the most addictive pieces of music that came out this year. Before the explanations were read into record, the end result had escaped: this, the best piece of work the duo had ever created. Devoid of arrogance, almost irritating in its pursuit of wide-eyed exploration, completely satisfied with what was sure to be--and remains--a small audience of loyalists, this was one of those experiences nobody could have sold you on. It's one that you ended up finding on your own.
Dan Deacon’s music has always been defined by the pull between his classical training and the palate of wacky noises he uses in his composition. Dude clearly wants to be the Steve Reich of Nintendo music and Woody Woodpecker noises. With Bromst, he’s well on his way. On his breakthrough album, 2007’s Spiderman of the Rings, Deacon used his compositional chops for pure party-igniting purposes. In that album’s best moments—the way “Wham City” culminated in an animal party sing-along, say, or hyperactive game-day self-motivation of “The Crystal Cat”—the songs eclipsed the aesthetic. But, mostly, Spiderman of the Rings coasted on its novel sound—a heady wall of 8-bit shoegaze, helium-infused vocals, and white noise.
Now, he’s clearly searching for something deeper. Right off the bat, opening track “Build Voice” takes some of its cues from the Animal Collective strain of indie rock. The nearly chanted passages recall some of the lyrical progressions from Merriweather Post Pavilion, or TV on the Radio’s Dear Science. More than an indicator of influence, it’s a sign that Deacon is an artist in conversation with critical discourse. Consciously or unconsciously, part of Bromst bends toward an audience Deacon knows is in place.
The second track on Bromst is “Red F,” an inscrutable well of noise that recalls the manic intensity of Deacon’s prior album. Most of the hallmarks that established Deacon’s aesthetic are present: 8-bit melodies, peals of feedback, modulated vocals. Then, toward the end, “Red F” opens up into one of Bromst’s more simple and gorgeous passages, built from nothing more than a couple of drum (machine) rolls and some of the same electro-twiddling that appeared in the first 90% of the song, stripped down to nothing more than its melody. It’s the kind of moment that occurs frequently, but not constantly, on Bromst—where Deacon, knowing he’s using sounds not usually associated with austere beauty, lets the music speak for itself, without trying to shoehorn a massive amount of energy or noise behind it.
Back to back, “Build Voice” and “Red F” establish a clear trajectory for the rest of the album: Deacon spends the hour-and-change run filtering indie rock influences and other big new ideas into his old framework. Subsequently, it splits between moments of incomparable gorgeousness and moments that are absolute train wrecks. In some ways, it feels like a collection of B-sides; yet, Bromst works precisely because it’s a sketchbook, capturing Deacon’s progress as he expands his range. The payoff comes in songs like “Snookered” and “Surprise Stefani,” which fit a rich complexity of thought into a simple framework, and resonate with both ample quirkiness and stunning beauty. The high points leave the impression that Deacon in on his way toward something truly unique, which makes Bromst, more than anything, an opportunity to hear a burgeoning artist’s experiments as he's well on his way toward becoming a master.
There's no ranking here. Instead, David Brothersdug up sixteen mixtapes from this year that you should listen to. It's real rap, no gimmicks, across a variety of styles and from cities all over the country.
Common didn't have a new release this year, though Universal Mind Control dropped late last year. He's had a long career, though, with a number of full blown bangers in his catalogue. Beatnick and K. Salaam took ten of his best and went back to basics on them. Completely new beats laid over the original lyrics. It's an ambitious move, but they manage to pull it off. The 6th Sense was a classic Primo beat, but the remix version actually works. STORY stands in the shadow of some very, very beloved songs, but this is straight.
Drake's So Far Gone is the elephant in the room. It was basically the tape of the year, catapulted Drake into rap stardom, and got him tons of radio play. While Drake isn't blazing any new ground, So Far Gone was dope. What's better is this chopped and screwed version of it. Turns out if you slow the tunes down, the album gains something. It's still clearly Drake, but his deeper voice and the repetition makes for a great listening experience. It's a warped mirror of the album, perfect for bumping in the car, and November 18th v2, a joint that was already screw inspired, turns into something magical. I've listened to this more than I have the actual So Far Gone. It's music to chill out to.
Remember Big L? A super dope lyricist who kicked street tales with insane punchlines? "Ask Beavis, I get nothing but head?" "Honey had me harder than a Spanish test?" He's who Freddie Gibbs reminds me of the most. Freddie isn't rhyming about rhyming, like a lot of lyrical cats do. Instead, he's talking about Gary, Indiana, pushing drugs, and, you know, how sometimes you just gotta put a bullet in somebody's head. Murda On My Mind has a disgusting beat and Gibbs's slow flow makes it sound extra sinister.
Psyche. That title is hard body, though. And how has OJ da Juiceman not sampled Andre 3000's "White man, black man, Jew man ain't no joke" line from Spaghetti Junction yet? Dude is slipping. Or I dunno, maybe he isn't?
Thirty-eight tracks, just under an hour and a half of music, and a full career represented. At this point, Ice Cube is an elder statesman of hip-hop. He's been around forever, people who are on top now grew up on him, and several rappers hijacked his blueprint. No Sleep Til Compton is like watching his life in fast forward, from a young nigga with attitude into the guy who made "Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It." It's good music, but it's interesting music, too.
Joe Budden, after scoring a big hit with Pump-pu-pump It Up! forever ago, flipped styles entirely, going into full-on introspection and an exhibitionist's sense of honesty in his rhymes. This collection puts Joey on display, from his angel dust habit to his depression to his crap luck with women. He's heavy on the pop culture, heavier on the personal issues, and eager to go in on a song. As far as I'm concerned, All of Me is a certified classic.
Forty minutes of spitting. Joell goes in on thirty-four of your favorite rap joints, from Know the Ledge to Renee to Ebonics, and does his thing. Most of the tracks are just a verse or two long (though Renee's Revenge is a full three minutes), giving Joell just enough time to get in and demolish it before moving on the to next. It's ill to hear a talented emcee on classic beats. Ortiz is funny, more than willing to poke fun at himself, and that makes this joint fun.
For a long while, when OutKast was on hiatus, Goodie MOb had broken up, and it looked like the Dungeon Family was going through a trial separation, Killer Mike kept that Dungeon mix of ill lyrics, conscious thought, Dirty South flavor, and ignant content visible. OutKast was always the Pimp and the Poet. Killer Mike is a blend of both, though heavy on the Pimp side. With Bobby Ray being heavy on the Poet side, Grand Hustle may have inadvertently signed OutKast 2.0. TI is fond of shouting "UGK alumni!" on his songs, showing respect to the people who inspired and sired him. Killer Mike is OutKast alumni, and you can hear it on this career retrospective.
Michael Jackson is undeniable. The 2000s were not kind to him, but before then, he'd already released more hits than most people do in their entire career. After his death, DJ Jazzy Jeff took tracks from the Jackson 5-era and on and created this long blend. It's the kind of album you put on and play in a row, properly sequenced, because it's a trip. It has songs you loved, songs you forgot about, and some remixes you never heard. I can guarantee that this is a better tribute than whatever BET did that time.
Killer Mike co-signing Pill got me to check him out, and Trap Goin' Ham delivered, big time. In a word, Pill is dope. He's putting out trap star music that's catchy, clever, and authentic. It's not just about pitching rocks, either. Pill talks about life, love, and everything in between. 4075 has some jacking for beats, too, and hearing Pill go rapid fire on Nas's Got Yourself a Gun is a highlight, not to mention the tributes to Pac and Biggie.
Want to know the moment I started to believe that Cuban Linx II might actually be a good record? It was when the last song on this mixtape played and I immediately started it over again. After a dry spell, Rae came out with the classic and relentless style that we've all come to expect from him. I doubted, and then I believed, and I enjoyed Cuban Linx II even more because of this one. It's very complementary, feeling almost like a prelude to Cuban Linx II instead of just a free mixtape. Plus, the title- remember on Hellz Wind Staff when Ghostface Killah said "Next album, Blood on Chef's Apron?" This was prophesied, son.
Trackstar is running this year with these retrospective joints, yeah? This time around, Royce da 5'9", one of the few cats who can hang with Eminem at his own level, gets the treatment. It goes back to Scary Movies, the song that introduced me to both Royce and Em years upon years ago, and follows his career up to now. Listen to Been Shot Down or Shake This or Renegades or Beef or 52 Bars and tell me that Royce isn't nicer than the next man. The only thing this tape is missing is the song that Royce and DJ Premier made about his dick.
Wale's Mixtape About Nothing was 2008's So Far Gone. Back to the Feature doesn't quite rise to those heights, but Wale has a lot of friends and they all showed up to play. Peedi Crakk, Black Thought, Royce da 5'9", K'Naan Jean Grae, Memphis Bleek, Talib Kweli, Joell Ortiz, Skyzoo... Lady Gaga. There's somebody here you like, I'm pretty sure.
Hey, this one? This one's essentially an album. There are 21 songs here, and I think that all of them are pretty good. Fall Out The Sky and Mirror's Edge are easily the best, but Star A War is fairly swift. XV is working in that kinda nerdy lane that's become the in thing, but his talent shines through. This tape jumps from style to style, showing off a surprising range of content and flows.
Things Young Dro does well: comedy, punchlines, hilarious comparisons, insane similies. Things Young Dro does poorly (on occasion): enunciate. Despite that, RIP Mixtape is insane. It's a classic, almost entirely jacking for beats, and Dro puts his best foot forward on amost all of them. He spends a lot of time talking and laughing, but that's Dro. He's known for being a fool on the mic and dressing like an old rich white guy, and it works. He's entertaining, and his version of Kid Cudi's Day and Night is like classic, distilled, vitamin-enhanced Dro.
Take everything I said about Dro's RIP record and double it. Adding Yung LA into the mix takes Dro's fashion-oriented swagger talk and throws in a healthy dose of space age rap. The Black Boy White Boy in the title refers to Dro and LA's black boy swag and white boy tags-- enforcing stereotypes, sure, but listen to this thing and tell me it won't make you smile. They go in over Soulja Boy's She Got A Donk, turning it into Who Got Strong, and their Ralph Lauren meets Elroy Jetson style is amazingly appealing. It's rap for people who take rap seriously, but not so seriously that they can't have some fun with it. Plus, Take Off is something serious, not to mention last year's Ain't I remix. So yeah, you might find yourself going blackboywhiteboy, blackboywhiteboy, BOW along with these cats.
Jeezy is good at one thing: being a trap star. Last year's The Recession was dope, and had an edge of conscious thought, but Jeezy Hamilton's at his best when he's kicking raspy rhymes about dealing that stuff. Trappin' Ain't Dead is ignorant from jump, but crazy listenable. He stays on subject throughout, delivering something that's straight out of an obsolete era, but still sounding something like 2009. You won't find anything uplifting here, just raw rhymes and a lot of ad-libs (ha haaaaaaaaaa).
"I think son was trying to break new ground in the same way Andre 3000 did with The Love Below, but see, Andre 3000 is actually a musical genius. Theophilus London seems more like a nutcase. The electronic sounds, rapid beats, taking 64 bars just to start his verse on “Late Night Operation.” What’s really hood with dude? Law & Order: SVU can base a character off this man’s work."
"It’s not all seriousness with this four-eyed prick though, there’s laughs-aplenty too, including a skit where he phones up a girl to propose, possibly as a practical joke. Unfortunately, it’s been recorded with a “down the line” vocal effect, giving the whole endeavour serious “this phonecall is coming from inside your house” overtones, which are only amplified by London’s heavy breathing. And as you’ve drifted off from the boredom of the entire album, the moment when he starts singing, possibly without irony, Joe Cocker’s “You Are So Beautiful”, the alternating effects of tedium and awkward jarring make you feel like you’ve just woken up after dozing off in front of the television, only to find your flatmate’s hand on your crotch."
From the standpoint of whether or not this is a good hip-hop album:
Hahahah, no of course not, you're making shit up. Why you keep making shit up? Not at all. This is about as hip-hoppy as the term "hip-hoppy", this shit is about as street as Matisyahoo, or whatever that freak calls himself. It's a terrible hip-hop album. That XXL review? It's brutal, kind of true. If London was trying to drop a mixtape that would get five bullets or six fried eggs or the Kingpin Ham Sandwich, he failed. But was he?
The album art, the title, the Joe Cocker singing, the dumb skits, the Clockwork Orange song title--okay, maybe the Clockwork Orange title and the dumb skits are kind of stock rap choices--are indications that there might be another goal in mind. That's the thing: they might be. This Charming Mixtape seems to crave some kind of analysis as to its purpose, mostly because it's all over the place, and it's hard to tell whether the bad parts are meant to be funny because they're so bad, or whether they're just bad because--well, dude can't sing, can't make his mind up, can't press pause when he's pulling his samples. His lyrics have a tendency to go off into tangential references, neither bizarre enough to be Kool Keith-y nor immersive enough to be Ghostface-y. He says shit, lots of it, and while most of it makes sense, little of it is continuous, it's just a combination of bits-and-pieces phrasing--a transcription of brainstorms, edited down to possible ideas. That could be rap, sure. At times, some of the tracks sound like rap, yes.
But This Charming Mixtape also sounds like remixed techno, and sometimes it sounds like a bad comedy album, and sometimes it sounds like a great hardcore album. All the time, it doesn't sound like anything specific, except maybe as an iPod on shuffle, a prove-your-catalogs-depth mixtape, a collection of songs put together to showcase that there's something other than soul cuts and kung fu movies to make music out of. And..well, that's not a surprise, it's not even a new thing, it's not like using random shit that nobody else did wasn't a part of hip-hop from the very beginning. Being different from the pack, using different samples, sounding, being, behaving--that still matters in rap music, and when defiant uniqueness shows up, it can still make a difference. In London's case, he's so all over the place that the work can take on the appearance of a blank slate. (If everything is brought into the tent, Whitney & slow-your-roll vocals & fart noises alike, it's hard to figure out what it all means.)
Ravenous appetites can often be used as a shorthand for genius. That's not the case with London--he's too much of a comedian, too willing to use extended samples in place of actual beat construction, too young to have even made a case for much beyond interesting. Still, there's something here, something that's analogous to the way in which Girl Talk's Night Ripper indicated much of what the opening of digital mash-up construction had to say about music's new vogue for homebase composition. More than anything else on this list, he's a purely contemporary musician--too frank, too open about his interest in everything, scattered, hated, nerdy as hell. This Charming Mixtape was his liveblog. That doesn't make it the best-est of the rest-est--but it did make for one hell of a thermometer.
One thing I have not gotten used to, even though I'm no longer totally new to this comic book world, is how there can be multiple story lines and multiple books about one character. And that although they are loosely connected by the obvious fact that they have a main character in common, they have nothing to do with each other otherwise. If one comes in off the street and says, or thinks to themselves, "Hey, I finally wanna read Spider-Man," they get faced with the question, "Which one?"
"Ummm...I dunno. Is there more than one?" (Clerk nods head and points in the directions of multiple versions of Spider-Man stories.) "Okay. Well, I wanna read the real one. The definitive one."
It's sort of hard to pick out by name alone. I mean, The Amazing Spider-Man rings a bell. Is that because of The Electric Company? But then I see the title "Ultimate Spider-Man", and I think, "Ah, YES. This is IT. The ULTIMATE one."
But then you have variations on a theme. There's all these different stories that have branched off from the original. One of the longest ones I saw was called "The Amazing Spider-Man Presents Anti-Venom New Ways To Live", and no, I didn't memorize it. I wrote it down on a piece of scrap paper so I could find out what it meant later.
It meant a lot of things. I didn't write any of them down on a piece of scrap paper.
Why all this talk about Spider-Man? Because this week, I decided to go out on as many dates with as many different Spider-Men as I could. "As many" turned out to be six. But don't give me any lip! Six is A LOT of Spidey.
Let me be frank: I don't know if I want to commit fully to a superhero comic, but it was my idea to read a bunch of comics featuring one character to find out which version I liked best. The idea enchanted me. (Which means I enchanted myself, and that's kind of self-centered, but still, an enchantment occured.) So even if I come to the conclusion not to follow any one of these particular comics, at least I can know which one I like best. I'll have learned something about myself, and that's always a good thing. Besides, this is supposed to be fun, right?!?
So without further ado, six dates, one Spider-Man. Go!
Date # 1: A train ride with The Amazing Spider-Man
My first date was with The Amazing Spiderman. We met on the train, and rode together from Brooklyn to 28th Street in Manhattan. My first thoughts? Hello Gorgeous! I mean, seriously, the art in this comic is pretty striking. It's so picturesque - especially any sequence with snow in it. And let me tell you something, this book truly lured me in. I was so into this Spidey that I totally forgot I was on the train and lost track of the stops. I didn't miss mine, but nevertheless, that rarely happens to me. Even when I've got a great book or I'm listening to my iPod, I'm distracted by so many other things on the train, be it the public urination or the sight of hot boyz. Anytime I get so immersed in something that I forget the real world, it's worth looking into.
Plotwise, it's an enjoyable story. And I might feel that way partially because I've been marathoning old episodes of Law & Order, as well as finishing up this season of Dexter and there seems to be a little bit of homicide/serial-killer stuff going on in a mysterious and intriguing sort of way.
I was honestly surprised to like this one so much. But I did. I mean, I might not go as far as to say it was AMAZING, but it was certainly good. Sadly, all good things come to an end. And so this issue did. As well as my train ride. Let's see how date #2 fares.
Date # 2: Coffee with Ultimate Comics Spider-Man
I had high hopes for this one. I mean, we'd met before. First through a mutual friend who liked to read portions to me; and then we'd hung out by ourselves once before. I remember really enjoying the way this comic combined the angst and awkwardness of being a teenager with becoming a superhero. In the issue I read a while ago, the dialogue and situation was absolutely charming. So, I sat down at Birch to join Ultimate Spider-Man for coffee and a croissant.
It still has some of its charm. The whole portion with the girl waiting in his room, them making out, and then eating together in his kitchen was full of teen culture. It took a while to get to that, though.
What else? I liked the introduction. A nice recap, along with a funny set-up to see our hero cast as a fast food employee. But when it comes to the nuts and bolts of the actual story here? Um, I'm not really sure what was going on. Just as I was beginning to get my mind around this red caped villainous hero, we skip to the aforementioned girlie scene, and then in the last four pages we suddenly have the appearance of Storm from the X-Men, the Kingpin from....well, he's from something. And then a whole other villain!? It's a little much, you know?
It's as if my date and I had been having a nice chat, exchanging stories about our schooling and background which initially seemed similar, and then as he's leaving and asking to see me again he mentions that he's also pre-op for a sex change and is bi-polar, hates the color orange. It's too much all at once. Or maybe it's just too much. eesh. Did I find this Spiderman to be the Ultimate? Ultimately disappointing!
(I'm the only one who thinks that joke is funny.)
Date # 3: More coffee with Spider-Man 1602
I know it's not really cool to set-up dates back to back like job interviews, but time is money here in the Big Apple and one often has to "consolidate their moves" to use an old waitressing term. So Date #3, Spiderman 1602, also met me for coffee. At Birch.
The cover of this makes me laugh a bit. I mean, chuckle really. When you line all these comics up side by side and look at Spider-Man on each one, and on this one he's suddenly dressed like a colonial soldier, but still has the mask...it's cute. Yeah, I said it. It's cute.
If you don't know already, I love me some historical fiction. But would I love historically fictional fiction? I wondered.
Well, I was immediately charmed by the clever name spelling. Peter Parquagh? I love it. But I watched myself get charmed by this and thought it was a red flag. Sometimes I get so enamored with cleverness, I get completely snowed and never realize - until it's too late -- that there's no substance under all those pithy statements. So, I proceeded with caution.
And I'm here to report that I really dug this one. I'm actually a little embarrassed to admit it, considering that it's a pretty goofy looking comic where Spider-Man dresses like a colonial soldier. What I liked about it is probably the very same things that a long time fan would not like--it's pretty straightforward back-to-basics Spider-Man stuff. Peter's spider powers are still new to him and the story of him becoming conscious of his powers is pretty fascinating. I like that he's fallen in love with a shape-shifter (although her end is very sad), and I like the idea of dropping Spider-Man into the world of the 1600s and seeing what happens. It worked for me. So what if it's goofy?
(There was a part in the middle that is still sort of vague to me -- a guy who needed blood and then was about to send hornets to attack a miniaturized woman. I couldn't totally follow what was happening there. It did seem mean.)
It's the second time in my reading of these that they were alluding to mutants (unless I was reading into something that is not being said.) Is this odd? Or a new thing? Does Spider-Man crossover with mutants all the time?
Anyhow, on the whole, I had a pretty good time with this one. I experienced a full range of emotion while reading it, and am in a little bit of suspense to see what happens next. Do you like apples? Well, I liked Spider-Man 1602. How do you like them apples?
(I saw that in a movie about snobs.)
Date # 4: The Pedicure with Spider-Man Noir.
Spiderman Noir joined me for a Citrus Hot Cream Pedicure. Ooh la la! What a lovely date. And let's talk about that outfit, Spidey. I am LOVING it. It's fighter pilot goggles over the old Land Of The Lost masks. And while that might not really sound like a compliment, I actually mean this to be a compliment. It's a very creative way to dress up our Spider friend.
I did enjoy this comic. I ended up getting totally immersed, especially in the end. Oy, what an ending! But overall I felt it had a strange structure. There seems to be three distinct story lines going on in this issue. Whoever put it together decided to forego the idea of weaving the stories together. You know, like a soap opera? So that you've got a cliff hanger, a to-be-continued, nearly every other page as one subplot gets paused to focus on a different subplot.
But rather, in this case, they seemed to first focus on some Boss guy. Next, Peter sleeps with a Madame. And third, the entire plot line about the new scientist who experiments on monkeys AND, much to our surprise, black people. It's intense stuff.
All intriguing storylines, but not put together so well. Maybe it's just a preference things? As a date, this is the equivalent of a really smart guy who graduated in the top 2% of his high school class, but just dropped out of college because his parents are getting divorced. Like, everything is all out-of-order and wonky. Do you keep dating this guy to see if things change? Or do you move on and figure that if it's meant to be, you'll come into each other's lives again some day?
As much as I like the mood and the vibe and the art in this one, I'm going to have to pass on a second date.
Date # 5: The post-dinner hang out with Spider-Man Clone Saga
I didn't really have a desire to read this one, but since i'm trying to discern if there is one true Spider-Man for me, I figured I should read this.
I absolutely LOVE the recap page. It's my favorite recap page of all time. Basically it tells you that, although this series was done before, it was done WRONG. And these people, the original writers are going to write what should have been written all along. That's really weird and funny and different. I can't think of anything else like that. It's like watching the Charlie's Angels movie and having it start by saying that the original Charlie's Angels television show was completely screwed up, so screwed up that the true story of Charlie and his Angels has never been told...until NOW.
It's hard to dig on Clone stories. They're this millennium's version of Freaky Friday and all those movies where people "switch places." Who's who and what's really going on? Call me when Kirk Cameron gets involved.
On second thought, no thanks.
This story was somewhat interesting, but just took a long time to get to the point. A lot of extra time with clone jokes, and a lot of time to illustrate how in earnest Peter Parker is. Oh, and Mary Jane is pregnant. Awesome. (She looks pretty horrible in these drawings. Is that intentional?)
This one is fine. After a day of so many comics about the same character I honestly didn't care anymore. If it didn't grab me right away, then why go any further. I almost gave up reading this one in the middle. But who leaves in the middle of a date? So, I finished the story. But I'm really not intersted in pursuing anything serious. Clone Sagas just aren't my thing.
Date # 6: Web of Spider-Man - NO!
No no no! I just can't. Can't do this anymore. I mean I would have if it were just me and Spider-Man. But he wanted to bring two friends along! Three stories and me? That's just not cool. That's not a date. That's a "hang." The only way to get anything date-wise out of three guys and me is...well. Gross! It seemed sort of unfair. So, although we were set to meet....I decided not to show. I stood up Web of Spider-Man.
I'm not sorry.
Conclusion:
Looks like Amazing Spider-Man and Spider-Man 1602 will be getting second dates. Now I just have to decide if I want to go on second date this week, or date....I don't know, Wolverine or somebody. Batman? I guess Nightwing isn't around anymore.
While not receiving the near universal acclaim that greeted 2006's Harmony In Ultraviolet, An Imaginary Country has ratcheted up consistent praise since its release back in March. It's not hard to see why. Following the standard get-ready-for-ambience opener "100 Years Ago", the album makes its intentions plain in the blips of bass and loops that populate "Sea of Pulses"--this one? It's a crowd pleaser, or as much a crowd pleaser as this sort of music can be. Shucking off the music-as-wallpaper definition that ambient music has carried since the groundbreaking work of Brian Eno, Imaginary Country is a soundscape that anticipates an audience. Made almost completely of tracks that last less than five minutes, it's infested with a sense of movement and memory--the expansive sense of skyborn travel of "The Inner Shore" giving way to the dark, wormy holes of "Pond Life"--as if Hecker felt the best way to experience the album's title was to take an HD excursion by way of audio documentary. "Borderlands", one of the more loop and piano driven tracks, follows those first four pieces with the album's first taste of a pause, even going so far as to end in a fade out.
Those first five pieces seem to make the case: this isn't an introspective work, or at least, it isn't intended to be one for the listener. Imaginary Country behaves as if the exploration has been finished already, and Hecker's goal is one of accuracy in documentation--he wants you to see what he saw, and hear what he thought. Using ambient sound and a comprehensive understanding of the place he's created, Hecker's latest accidently creates a new experience altogether. It's all imagined, but by the time that the eight minute "Where Shadows Make Shadows" reaches conclusion, one has all but forgotten the artistic origin. The trip is too immersive, the mirage too tangible--call it journalism, if you have to. It's nonfiction either way.
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