I love that the Tiffany (UPDATED! 4/3/11)

Catalogue we receive in the mail four times a year is always addressed to me.  It is not for me.  It is for Renee.

At our fave cinema these daies, where we just saw Jane Eyre (more on that later), they play a sort-of indie rock xm radio dealie where the "dj" always tells you the artist right after the track.  A few weeks ago when we saw Of Gods and Men I coulda sworn I heard a new April March track but I was wrong.  It was some other artist.  I cannot remember now.  I was bummed.  But on Sunday last before we saw Jane Eyre (like I sed, more on this later) I guessed I was hearing a new Other Lives track.  This time I was right.  The album does not, uh, ... "drop" until May 10.  The album is called Tamer Animals.  (Fantastic title.  I like to think it is a pun on some old curmudgeon slurring, "Tame yer animals!" but I am prob wrong.  Who cares?) The video above is, gosh, like, nearly two yrs old.  But it is an amazing song and is a performance at the mighty Waterloo Records in boo-ti-ful Austim, Texas.

************

I am not going to say much aboot Todd Haynes' HBO Mildred Pierce.  Yet.   Someone taught me years ago (Michael Barnes.  Thanks, bruvver.) that you should not offer a criticism until you see the work in full.  I will say this, though:  The masterful Ed Lachman is the DP on this project and his palette and the way he gets those metal filings in the air like Double Indemnity (but in color this time) takes my breath away.  Man, Haynes has the best DP in the biz at his beck and call.  Sweet.

************

Uh, Something Wild comes oot on blu-ray Criterion dvd on May 10, as well.  I am psyched.

************

Jane Eyre is fantastic, so frickin' good.  Renee liked it even more than me.  I am at a loss for words to describe the camera style.  The best I can put forward is that the director, Cary Fukunaga, (born in Oakland!) lets the camera tell the story.  He uses sound/dialogue to fabulous effect, as well.  In just the teensiest, most subtle way it reminds me of Altman, the way that dialogue is truly related to the character's blocking/spacing in the camera frame.  Folks' voices further away from the camera are softer than those closer.  Fukunaga also uses v few, what I call, "bells and whistles", show-offy tricks.  There are two obv things he does like that.  One of them would be a spoiler, so I will not touch that.  But the other relates to sound in film again, so I will speak to it.  Fukunaga arranges the "spooky/ghosty" dialogue in a, for a lack of a better word, a "doublequadrophonic" way, like an action film does.  There are, I would guess, eight dialogue tracks running simultaneously, dispersed four each to a left/right "track", natch.

And Michael Fassbinder, born in Deutschland, of Irish and German heritage, is an absolute revelation here.  I dint see that Tarantino Nazi movie.  I gave up on Tarantino after Jackie Brown, his last, to me, great film.  I have heard great things about Fish Tank, tho (back to my boy, Fassbinder again) and it is second in my latest Netflix queue.  Second to Fukunaga's first film, Sin Nombre.

I understand.  I really do.  As much as I love this latest version of Jane Eyre I can understand why someone might not like it.  Perhaps they are attached to a past BBC version or the old Orson Welles as Rochester take.  That is okay.

It is like my Dad and Sherlock Holmes.  As much as I love the new BBC, updated, major bells and whistles version of Sherlock Holmes there is no way I would seriously recommend it to my Da.  He (and Renee's Da) love the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series.  My Da has told me in the past that he thinks the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series is the best television he has ever seen.

************

I read in David Thomson's video bible, Have You Seen? ... about Longford recently.  No big deal, right? I am just eating a sandwich and chips, passing the time exquisitely, learning about old movies until I notice the director of Longford.  It is Oscar-winning King's Speech director, Tom Hooper.  And, uh, the immortal post-Suez Canal English history screenwriter, Peter Morgan providing the script.

Longford is juicy and tough and rich.  It is an amazing topic to behold.  Do you believe in redemption? Do you believe Myra Hindley can be redeemed.  I know sooooo many of my readers have no idea who Myra Hindley is.  That is really really alright.  My readers would best know aboot the Moors Murders through the Smiths' moving track, Suffer Little Children.

This is a cable movie that is hung on the topical nature of its' subject, the absolute scary award-winning performance of Jim Broadbent, one of my all-time fave film actors ("A great big bushy beard"  Hot Fuzz, Topsy-Turvy, Life Is Sweet, etc, ... ) And Samantha Morton's amazing, yet thankless task of portraying Hindley.

************

SO, I am going to the dentist tomorrow.  I have not seen a dentist in years.  I have had a problem w/ an abcessed tooth for years I have learned just now.  My jaw has been popping oot, causing me uncomfort for ages.  My teeth suck.  I have known that.  That is why I hate the dentist, right? 


It is funny.  When I went to work on Monday my jaw popped oot, as it is wont to do.  Big deal, I thought.  It has done that before.  It will return to normal later in the day before I leave work.  No.  It will be better in the morning.  And it was.  Then I had dinner last night and it flared up again.  Renee is familiar w/ this dance.  She got on the horn and scheduled a session.  


It is amazing what an ice pack and a phone call w/ a dentist will do to yor dental health.  Of course, it was much better this morning.  Still, it is something that must be done.  Perhaps, I will be like Martin Amis, w/ all brand-new amazing not-English choppers.  


Wish me well, bruvvers and sisters, ... 

One more for the kids:  (The greatest song ever aboot the young male sexual awakening, a topic ne'er discussed in any sensitive, constructive, illuminating manner before [or, really, since])


Love you all.  Got my ice pack.  Mwah, ... 


UPDATE (4/3/11):  


My evaluation at the endodontist revealed that I do not have an abcessed tooth as we feared and I do not need a root canal.  Hooray!


But my teeth and jaw are still a mess and I will be arranging an appointment with dentist Park, that's my buddy Nick C.'s dentist, on Monday.

xxxxxxxxx

mds

NEU! - Hallogallo

Fivetwentytwothousandeleven

I am doing the Graydon Carter (co-editor of the mighty, yet now defunct Spy Magazine and current editor-in-chief of the Marilyn, Kennedy loving not defunct Vanity Fair) hangover cure.  It is working a treat.

Us in front of City Hall with the marriage license.  Tank lives!

The cure is thus:  Take a scalding hot shower, a super super close shave, and dress very very smartly.  

Big day planned today and I am v excited.  Going to Macy's to get a shirt, belt, and tie.  Going to have lunch w/ my Sweetie.  Going to see Jane Eyre in The City.  Going to curl up on the couch and watch parts one and two of Todd Haynes' Mildred Pierce, starring Kate Winslett.  Woo-hoo!

The Dog Faced Hermans - Bella Ciao

So, it came about

Accidentally.

I wanted to make a super-fun Pink Floyd playlist that I could enjoy on my walks to and from work.  I already owned the necessary albums:  Piper (I prefer the original mono mix); Meddle (I think Saucerful, Atom Hart, and Ummagmma are all awful); Dark Side; Wish You Were Here; and Animals.  

Uh, you say, Where is The Wall? I have had a difficult relationship with The Wall over the years.  When I was younger and Another Brick in the Wall (Part Two) was a massive hit I loved it, natch.  I was in the 6th grade; the boys chorus, the anti-school sentiment was perfect for kids my age.  Plus, it was a disco song! Which was something I could throw back in the faces of those kids who hated my beloved Beatles.  Those disco kids, in love with the BeeGees, Michael Jackson, John Travolta, Grease, etc, ... always fought with me and my friend, Rick Minor, on Fridays in our music class.  Fridays we could bring records and play them.  Finally, here was a song that all of us could enjoy.  (And just how brilliant of the Floyd was it to make their first US hit single a disco song?) 


Anyhoo, I promptly forgot about the Floyd right after that and went right back to my steady diet of Beatles, solo Beatles, Supertramp, and other bands that sounded just like the Beatles.  


Then in junior high I got turned on to prog rock.  This kid, we called him Goat Roper, I do not remember his real name, loaned me his super-pricey Walkman with In The Court of the Crimson King in it for a long drive to San Antonio for a drama/Texas history contest Goat Roper and I were competing in.  (We lost.  Some of our friends were also competing with a "scene/piece/?" about what a great dude Ross Perot was.  1981! They lost, too, but did better than Goat Roper and I.  One of the kids in the Ross Perot lovefest is now a movie critic for the Dallas Observer, part of the Village Voice family of weeklies.)  I was hooked.  The next year became a prog rock wonderland for me.  I liked Yes and King Crimson the most but finally got Dark Side of the Moon for my birthday in 1982.  Pink Floyd ruled my life for the next year.  I got Wish You Were Here next and finally right before I started high school, The Wall.  


I loved The Wall.  I am sure I drove my parents crazy with it.  I loved the "sexy bits" of tracks like Young Lust and Run Like Hell ("picking her locks"), Comfortably Numb and Hey You were no brainers for a smart, sensitive fourteen year old like myself.  I loved learning what defecate meant from The Trial.  Both versions of In the Flesh were great, especially the "suurogate band" Part Two.  I lost myself in it.  In fact, I was so  besotted that when I heard about the "secret message" at the start of the second side (between Goodbye Blue Sky and Empty Spaces) I dutifully played the record backwards on my turntable, using my finger, to receive the Word From On High.  The secret message  truly does exist but it is really just a joke from the band. (I think to see who would be silly enough to do something like that at home.  Who would, anyway? Someone like me, obviously!)


In the spring of 1983 I kind of sort of went out with a girl from my high school who changed all that.  She turned me on to The Pyschedelic Furs, David Bowie, XTC, The Cure, and a little U2.  Pink Floyd, Yes, King Crimson were now thrown upon the dustbin.  Now, I was obsessed with David Bowie.  By the time I saw the movie of The Wall with my friend, Willy Bogie, at the Lakewood Theater, I thought the Floyd were overblown and ridiculous.  I hated The Wall.


I moved to Austin the summer of '83 and devoured every single Bowie record I could get my hands on.  But eventually, even that kind of devotion to Pop starts to fade.  Right before I discovered REM in 1984 I recall I had started listening to a lot of King Crimson and Yes again.  


I did not really rediscover Pink Floyd though until I had moved to the Bay Area.  In the late 90s (I do not remember why) I became infatuated with Floyd's record, Meddle.  I was familiar with two of the tracks before this infatuation:  One of These Days (which I liked okay back then but love now) and Echoes.  The first two times I heard Echoes I was on drugs.  The hearings were years apart and the drugs were different, too.  (LSD the first time, Ecstacy the second.)  I still think Echoes is one of the Floyd's finest moments.  For a very long period of time Meddle was the only Floyd record I would listen to.  I particularly like San Tropez (maybe the only Floyd song Renee likes) and Fearless.  Still, a few years ago I bought Dark Side, Wish You Were Here, and Animals again.  I think all three records are great, especially Dark Side and Animals.  Animals is prob my fave Floyd record right now.  


Anyhoo, (and is this not the longest fucking introduction evah for an album review? I'm channeling the mighty Lester Bangs!) in order to finish off my playlist I just needed a few tracks from The Wall.  I wanted Another Brick in the Wall Part Two, Run Like Hell, and The Trial but I accidentally hit the wrong button on iTunes and bought the whole album.  UGH.  I decided to make lemons from lemonade and give The Wall another chance.  I listened to it non-stop on a trip to and from work.  


Here is what I think:  The Wall, though ambitious, is, when you look at the whole sweep of it, pretty awful.   It is a self-indulgent, overblown, pompous, way too long, soundtrack to a rock movie opera.   Plus, it is depressing.  And not good depressing like Billie Holliday, Todd Solondz or Other Lives, but instead, self-indulgent soul killing depressing.  We are asked to endure Roger Waters' pain that is in no way enriching or illuminating to us.  Roger Waters ruined The Pink Floyd.  He took over all the songwriting, relegated his "mates" to sidemen, incl David Gilmour, a fantastic guitar player and pretty good singer.  Waters' egomania and obsession with his dead soldier father destroyed the group.  One member of the group was sacked during the sessions, Richard Wright.  Wright did the "tour", though, strictly as a sideman.  Wright, a founding member of the group, did not even receive any credit for his work on the album.  


Let me issue a disclaimer:  I think "rock operas" for the most part are awful.  I believe that The Who's A Quick One While He's Away (as wonderful as it is as a song) was an awful trendsetter.  Tommy sucks.  Do not even get me started on Quadrophenia.  I hate to get all Lester Bangs on you again but Rock(Pop) is a fucking wham-o toy, a bonusburger.  Do not get all wrapped up in to it too intellectually because when you do you spoil all the fabulous (American) disposable, transient, ephemeral magic of it.  


The best Rock(Pop) is Be My Baby on the radio in the car, mind-blowingly loud and everyone's all dressed and made up on their way to the bar or club. The best Rock(Pop) is Tom Courtnay by Yo La Tengo on headphones, alone in the near-dark, after smoking a j or drinking red wine.  


There are tracks on The Wall that approach or fulfill this sensibility but they are so few and far between.  In the Flesh? starts the album off quite well.  It announces the albums' pomposity straight out the gate but the regal, anthemic rock symphony that follows at least reminds you that Rock is a force to be reckoned with.  In the Flesh? also seems to me slightly ironic.  It is a shame that irony dies right after this.  Nope, we are now full-bored in to telling a disjointed, half-assed "Rock Opera" story complete with a dead soldier father, manipulating Mum, crazed Rock star protagonist, fascism, and whathaveyou.  By the time we get to Mother I am wondering that old question, "Is this someone I can care about for the next two hours?" 

These hoods are in the all-time Top Five album sales.

The best sides of this double are the first and the last.  In the Flesh?, The Thin Ice, Another Brick in the Wall Parts One and Two are all fine tracks.  The Thin Ice keeps up the foreboding pomposity, Another Brick Part Two is still a great punkish disco track.  


Mother is a travesty, though.  The only good thing about this track is having Waters and Gilmour "play/sing" the child and Mother parts, respectively.  The song itself is completely forgettable.  The "sexy" rock bits on side two are hackneyed and painful to listen to today.  One of My Turns is absolutely cringe-worthy, a misogynistic rock star tantrum set to music, complete with Waters' hammy vocal stylings.  Goodbye Blue Sky is much more scary than I thought of it back in the day, despite its' Beach Boy harmonies and the bathetic Goodbye Cruel World and Don't Leave Me Now are laughable.  Why on earth do we give a shit about this cruel, wretched, spoiled, abusive rock star, Pink? (Get it? And how long did the group intend on extending this joke?)


Side three contains two of the Floyd's biggest "hits":  Hey You and Comfortably Numb.  Both songs have their virtues and they are decent (if significantly over-rated) tracks.  Comfortably Numb has its' moments lyrically, though Waters' cod-Dylan singing style nearly obliterates any finer moments of the song, but is soporific to say the least and goes on far too long.  Gilmour's solos on this track are rock holy writ today.  I do not think they come even close to his earlier work, particularly on tracks like Money or his work on Animals.  Hey You, if a little hammy, and um, dramatic is just fine until Waters takes over the lead singing duties.  The old-school Dark Side-era panning organ swell leading in to the first guitar solo is a precious jewel on this gaudy trinket of riches.  


My vote for the best song on side three is Nobody Home, Roger waters mock-woeful version of I Got from the musical, Hair.  His voice is the least affected, most "real" than it will be on the entire album.  His lyrics are down to earth, honest, lacking pretension, and the song contains my favorite bit of rock poetry on the entire album, the ironic, self-deprecating line, "I've got/The obligatory Hendrix perm".  


But in between Nobody Home and Comfortably Numb are two of the most gawdawful "rock" tracks in history, tracks that were only included due to the Rock Opera conceit and that Pink Floyd, one of the biggest selling acts of all-time, put their name on them.  Those would be Vera Lynn and Bring the Boys Back Home.  If I played those tracks to my sweetie, Renee, she would say something v rude and insist I stop playing the album.  


(Side note:  I finished listening to The Wall on my walk home, climbing up The Hill.  I was so depressed and wrung-out I had to listen to some ELO to make it the rest of the way.)  


Honestly, Vera Lynn and Bring the Boys Back Home pretty much ruin the whole third side of this record for this listener.  


Side four gets off to a very good start with The Show Must Go On.  They bring back the Beach Boy harmonies and add some v odd yet pleasing doo-wop singing to the next track, In The Flesh.  The "surrogate band" (I learned what the word surrogate meant from listening to The Wall when I was a teenager) version of this song is still excellent to me today.  The fascist roll-call, though so frickin' corny, still works for me.  The whole fascist angle in this "opera" is decidedly facile and severely lacking in depth but for this one track I am not terribly bothered enough to hate it.  Run Like Hell with its' disco beat is still a fantastic track, also.  Despite its' awful title, Waiting for the Worms holds up fine for me, as well.  There's more military/fascist gobbledygook but musically it is a brilliant blend of 50s rhythm and blues and Animals period stadium rock.  


Honestly, I think I love The Trial despite itself, for purely camp reasons.  It is still fun to sing along with and just about ridiculous enough to enjoy on a purely surface, artifice level.  Finally this much too long record ends with a nearly moving decent Outside the Wall.  It reminds me of the Pigs on the Wing tracks from Animals.


Overall, this is an album that I doubt I will ever pull off the shelf again.  And I certainly will not ever listen to it all the way through again in one sitting.  I might pull certain tracks for playlists or cds, or to show off to friends what the mighty Pink Floyd actually became in the end.  It is not a pleasant album to listen to and there are just too many cringing, eye-rolling moments to absorb that overwhelm the better tracks on the record.  


And I would like to add that there was another album that came out that same year that dealt with the fascism theme in a much more local in-depth fashion than The Wall.  That would be Armed Forces by Elvis Costello and the Attractions.  Costello pointed out to splendid effect that fascism is not just a political system but can infuse every single facet of your life and actions, including relationships and the bedroom.  Armed Forces is a cramped, claustrophobic masterpiece of an album about those who wield power in their relationships and how they use that power.  And Elvis Costello and the Attractions achieved that goal in about half the tracks and thirty-five minutes total.  What is it they say about brevity? (He sed, closing this extremely long review.  Ha bloody ha.)  


Love you all, mwah, ... 

She was so pretty

That they thought she could not act, of course.

But I think she learned a great deal, growing up in the Industry, if you will.  And I bet you she learned a great deal from Spencer Tracy (certainly, to me, one of the greatest film-actors of all-time) on the set of Father of the Bride.

Her performance in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is still startling and sterling to me.  And she practically had to beg them to include her husband in the picture.  He is marvelous, too.

But she had such a good soul, too.  (Anyone who could unconditionally love Michael Jackson and know that much about him is a saint.)  Her work and charity to fight AIDS were exemplary, as well.

Godbless, you, sister.

WOW! Are you frickin' kidding me? Now THAT'S a picnic I wanta go to.

I'll watch you tonight.

Brenton Wood - the oogum boogum song

My review of Pink Floyd's

The Wall is becoming a troublesome thing.  I need to give it some time and look at it tomorrow w/ fresh eyes.

In the meantime, here are just a couple of little nuggets to tide my lovelies over:

• As we all know, Spring Training (mostly) does not mean much in terms of predictive value for MLB clubs.  Even so, Beltre is playing now (he had been hurt); Feliz has had his moments as a starter! (e'en tho most folks are convinced he will stay our closer); Michael "The Face" Young has shut up and is "just playing baseball" (like our Manager, Wash, likes to say); our CEO resigned! (the Ryan Express is now CEO); we still always lose to the Giants; we handle the A's w/ ease; and frickin' Jonathon Sanchez beaned our kid, Mitch Moreland, who had the Rangers' only shining moment in the World Serious last year, a homer off him.  Still, the Rangers should be the favorite to win the AL West.  The A's are improved (have fun w/ Rich Harden, guys!) and their rotation is plenty good but I like the Rangers at this point.  The real team to beat in the AL is Boston, though.  Ugh.  I hate the Red Sox.
• Splendid little witty article in the NYT yesterday about a hot young politician in Germany who got busted for plagiarizing his thesis.  (Apparently, in Deutschland that is a big big no-no, plagiarism in academia.)  
• Some of you might remember this post about Caitlin Flanagan's article in The Atlantic about Karen Owen's Duke "fuck-list" PowerPoint.  Ms Flanagan took an unholy shellacking for it, in the blogosphere and on The Atlantic's own comment boards but Flanagan finally got to respond in this months issue.  She responded to two letters and gosh, did she respond.  Her response is so delicious that I must share a paragraph with you:  "If Danielle Barry has read Owen's PowerPoint as carefully and sympathetically as she claims, then I assume she approves of the racism in which Owen and her white consorts took such comedic delight.  When the group joke among a bunch of privileged white kids is that a young woman had sex with a black athlete for the sole purpose of giving birth to a linebacker, then-in my book, anyway-we are in the territory of something ugly.  If Barry wants to cling to the protocol and rhetoric of the kind of clapped-out feminist theory that seems to reach its highest moments of passion and purpose in the production of poorly researched letters to editors, she might at least stay true to her colors and refrain from referring to me (perhaps her sworn enemy, but nobody's minor child) as a girl."  Obv,  Flanagan can defend herself but let me just put my two cents in here:  Ms Owen can do whatever the hell she pleases.  If she wants to get drunk and sleep with athletes and make PowerPoints about them, fine.  I do not think Ms Flanagan was betraying the sisterhood by perhaps suggesting that Ms Owen's actions might be unseemly, or, heck, even unhealthy for Ms Owen, herself, and for college women and the culture at large.  One of the biggest arguments (of course) against Flanagan's article was the false equivalency one, i.e. "Boys have been making fuck lists forever, no one complains about that."  For me, personally, Yeah, I have got a real problem with Boy Fuck Lists.  In fact, I have a real problem with Fuck Lists in general, especially those shared on the net or on social networks.  Call me old-fashioned, that is the way I am.  
• My beloved Sandra Tsing Loh had an article in the latest Atlantic.  It is in defense of the latest recent "outrage", Amy Chua's parenting book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.  The article is fine but it is not as marvelous as many of Ms Tsing Loh's past Atlantic articles have been.  I love her.  I save them all.  
• Saw Inside Job.  I was expecting to be infuriated like when I saw Casino Jack (the doc, not the Spacey film) but I was not.  I was depressed.  I expect I will be depressed for a while.  Basically, it is thus:  It is over.  The US is fucked.  The bad guys won and are winning still.  Inside Job won the Oscar, of course, and rightly so.  It is AAA recommended from me (but it is depressing as all get-out.)  
• Also saw The Adjustment Bureau which was great.  Maybe it was the fedoras but it really had a 1940s popcorn movie feel to it that charmed me.  Ms Blunt (normally not one of my favorites) was wonderful in it.  In fact, all the "cute" falling-in-love scenes were fantastically written and performed.  "Chemistry" between stars in movies is such an over-used term but Damon and Blunt (in this film, at least) had it in spades.  Also highly recommended.

And that is it for me.

Sandra Tsing Loh, you rule my world!

Bye bye bye.

OMG!

This is the coolest news evah! All Spy magazines ever on Google.  Wow!

(And yeah, I'll eventually talk aboot the end-run in Madison & the Ranger CEO stepping down, and the tsunami and Peter King, and on and on and on, ... UGH!)

h/t to Driftglass for pointing this out to me!

XTC Generals And Majors (Live) Holland 1980

XTC "Respectable Street" live from Urgh! a Music War

This is a post,

Strictly, pretty much for my Food Hole friend-ies:

I forgot to mention in my Tre Biccheiri post that I bumped in to David Gish there.  He got my name wrong, of course, and still thought I was cutting cheese.  (To non Foodholies, That is not a joke.)  He was w/ a gray haired older man.  Gish was plumper in the face but kept the same frame and he was still wearing clogs.

The next thing of note is for the lovely Zann:  Sammy, the crazy deaf guy w/ a dog; he shops at my Walnut Creek store now! And he is still a pain in the arse.

It is a massive generalization,

I know, but it is one I like to use anyhow:  Women are from Burgundy.  Men are from Bordeaux.  Women prefer Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Barolo.  Men prefer Cabernet, Sauvignon Blanc, Sangiovese.  Like I said it is a massive generalization and it ain't perfect by any stretch.  The biggest flaw to me being that many women love Merlot, a Bordeaux variety.

But I am sticking with it regardless.

My sweetie loves Pinot Noir.  It is her favorite red variety.  I would much rather have Cab, Merlot or a Bordeaux blend.  She loves sparkling wine, and I do, too, but I have no palate for it.  She is much better at expressing what she is tasting than I am when it comes to bubbles.

2007 Radio Coteau Nebblina

My problem with Pinot Noir is that for the most part I only really like Burgundies.  And then the problem with that problem is that it is hard to find really good red Burgundy for under twenty dollars.  The "budget" Burgundies that I like the most start at around twenty-five dollars retail.  Meanwhile, it is very easy to find rocking bordeaux-style blends, or Bordeaux itself, or regular Cali Cab and Merlot at around twelve dollars and up.

With the exception of Kent Rasmussen's Ramsay North Coast Pinot Noir ($16-17) I have yet to find a reliable vintage in and vintage out under twenty dollar California Pinot Noir.

And then there is the other problem:  California Pinot Noir at the over twenty dollar range is invariably way too hot and way way way too over-oaked, tasting burnt.

My customers love LaCrema ($19) but I cannot stand it.  All you taste is barrel.  There is no fruit, at all.

More Spring Mountain fruit, my fave Norcal appellation.  This is Keenan 2006 Mernet, the wine we enjoyed on Oscar night.

No wonder I am always bringing home Cab and Merlot or blends of the same.  (I love Chinon and Cabernet Franc, too.  Renee likes the York Creek Spring Mountain Cuvee One ($16, a Cab Franc/Cabernet blend.  York Creek is one of my mostest favoritist wineries.  It is Fritz Maytag's winery.  He is the guy who saved Anchor Brewing and made it in to one of the best breweries in America whilst the rest of his Maytag family are either making appliances or the fab Maytag blue cheese.)  But if I bring home Chinon she frowns, too vegetal.

So, it was wonderful to see her bring home more Radio Coteau last night, a 2007! It was a wonderful present.  Thanks, sweetie! It was gone rather too quickly (but we have a 2008, warming up in the bullpen.)  I have discussed Radio Coteau in this space before but let me remind you that although not really Burgundian in style (frick, everyone here in Cali claims that they are Burgundian in style and none of them are.  They do not have the soil, damnitt.  Ugh.)  Radio Coteau is one of the finest Cali Pinot Noirs evah!

Guess how much it costs? Fifty frickin dollars! (and worth every penny, honestly, it is a magical wine) and the one we've been drinking, the Nebblina, is Radio Coteau's entry-level wine!

That is what it is like drinking Pinot Noir in California.  Ugh.  Get me a glass of Stephen Vincent Merlot, please ($11.)

Of course if you live in France it is a whole different story.  Those amazing Burgundies are dirt cheap there.

(Even accounting for the dock strikes.  I love France.  All of the US, waiting patiently for the 2010 Roses to sell.  They are all on hold due to a strike in France.  Hang in there Wisconsin 14!)

All my love, Mwah!, ... 

I have seen Harold and Maude

A gabillion times but I watched it tonight just to see what it looks like now and, more importantly, to see all the ways Rushmore stole from it.

What really makes this sequence golden is Cort's sheepish glance at his Mum after this direct look at the camera.

And, boie, does Rushmore owe a serious debt to it.  The cemetery scenes, the leather chair psychiatrist shots, the massive tree shots (in Rushmore Bill Murray pulls a branch off and the tree falls down), the Cat Stevens music, the "different" young man in love with an older woman, and of course, Wes Anderson stole Bud Cort's furtive glance in to the camera in The Life Aquatic straight from Harold, as well, etc, ...

But Harold and Maude has been an inverted bell curve with me.  I was knocked out with the film years ago but started to hate it after that.  (Perhaps that was just an idiosyncratic thing, a woman I loved was besotted with the film which made me hate it all the more, espec after we broke up.)

I watched Rushmore with a friend, really expecting him to love the film as I do.  I thought it was right up his alley.  He shrugged it off, did not get it, and that is okay.  Meanwhile, it was then I started to notice all the Harold and Maude allusions.  I watched Harold and Maude soon after that (this was around 2001) and enjoyed it but not nearly as much as I enjoyed it tonight.

I think Harold and Maude is aging v well, silently, alone in the cellar whilst everyone has written it off.  Harold and Maude's anachronistic ways, it's most certainly set in the US and there are clues to spell that out, yet, that is no United States that I know (and what is up w/ Mum having an English accent?) This anachronistic style of writing, designing, and shooting is a tool in Wes Anderson's box, i.e. Rushmore's ambiguous time-setting.

There are serious flaws in Harold and Maude, though.  The "falling in love" montage of scenes is poorly edited (Hal Ashby's strong point!) and v stilted to say the least.

Still, I loved it tonight.  It is still not up there with my all-time cult films.  Those would be This is Spinal Tap, Withnail and I, and In the Loop.  But it is still v good and deserves a second look if you have not seen it in a while.

************

Saw Of Gods and Men yesterday.  I loved it, loved it, but it is hard to recommend a movie that is two hours long and feels twice that.  Of course it is glacially paced, it is a film about monks.  Still, it was v moving and absolutely pitch perfect to its' real-life subject matter.  It looks like old religious paintings, the compositions are meticulous and spot-on.  The birthday scene with the Muslims is ebullient, the "Swan Lake" scene is earthquakingly moving and the way each monk has their own character perfectly spelled out and shown is quite beautiful.

I guess I am recommending it, after all.

Love you all, Mwah!, ... 

This should be a giant free-for-all,

Bullet-pointed, mish mash.

First, Bonnie:  thanks for your v kind comments recently.  I love your blog, too, and have added it to my blogroll.  And friends of fauxluxe should check out Ms McClellan's excellent poetry blog, as well.

This is the crap lackey that the Koch Bros have sent to make you think that Unions ruin our world

• Renee's parents are from Wisconsin.  Da from Oshkosh, Mum from Appleton.  I talked to them recently about what is going on in Madison.  Renee's Dad, Bob, seems to think that Walker, having got the budget through the state Assembly has the upper hand.  He thinks the Dem Senators will cave and I was not exactly sure if he was joking or not but he indicated that he believed the GOP rumor that some of the Senators were coming back home in the dead of night on occasion.  I do not believe that for a second.  I think the Senators are firmly ensconced in Illinois.  I also do not think that Walker and the Koch's have the upper hand at all.  In fact, I see Walker in a world of hurt.  Each passing day seems to bring a fresh new offense or idiocy to the fore.  The big "ace" Walker holds now is the threat of thousands of layoffs.  But does he really think that once the pink slips are issued that everyone will just pack up and go home? Or that the Wisconsin 14 will just give up and slink back towards Madison? That is stupid.  If Walker goes through with his blackmail that will only inflame the workers' passion more; stiffen their resolve, not crush it.  
• "Yeah, well, you know, we considered that." That Walker even considered planting troublemakers at the Madison rallies (which, considering these are Wisconsin folks, natch, have been some of the most polite political rallies in recent history) is reprehensible yet par for the course with Teabagging "public servants" like Governor Walker.  
• Can we please stop with the "liberal media" canard.  This past Sunday, there was one, count 'em, one member from the unions re this issue.  It was a tea-party, John McCain love-fest, non-stop Ayn Rand-asshole celebration.  "If we just let bidness do its' own bidness" (market solves all) thing, everything will be just fine.  
• Natch, the Teabaggers' Astroturfing Overlords sent out their zit-wracked junior lackey to wail about the "lamestream media" and, fuck, I do not even remember whatever else that asshole said, ... 
• Walker's Pink Slip Parade Party changes every day.  It was last Friday.  Then it was yesterday.  Then today.  Walker is in such a world of hurt.  Yesterday a major Wisconsin GOP Senator met with a couple of the Wisconsin 14.  This was portrayed by the TradMedia (and elite liberal blogs) as a concession, fail by the Dems.  Wrong again! There was one of the Wisconsin 14 on Rachel Maddow.  They are holding their ground, damnitt.  
• You know the bastards are losing when they set unnecessary " rules" for behavior and time regulations at a state building like the capitol in Madison.
• Other ways you know we are winning:  the Wisconsin state house and senate passed a bill outlawing prank calls like the one that bit Walker on his ass.  (But not like Lila Rose's crapshit "pimp and hooker" stunts.) Plus, now the GOP reps are fining the Wisconsin 14 $100 a day that they do not show up for quorum.  Sounds like a major fund raising event to me!
• Fox News last night used old aggro Sactown footage to spell out its' (lame and wrong) "Union folks are head busters" storyline.  Oops.  That got caught quick! 
• I will close with a couple of quotes from Molly Ivins:    "Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts." and:  Another major [Bob] Dole backer is Koch Industries ($245,000), now the country's second-largest family-owned industry, and the Koch brothers are among the wealthiest men in the world (estimated worth: $4.7 billion). Among other right-wing groups, the Koches support the libertarian Cato Institute and Citizens for a Sound Economy, which should be called Rich Guys for Big Bidness. CSE wants to phase out Medicare completely, and Dole's regulatory reform bill---the one that would effectively repeal most of our health, safety and environmental regulations---is straight out of the CSE playbook.
• Do not you get it, America? They want it all.  All the wealth.  All your pension, 401k, all of it.  That is their MO.  

Renee and I really want to see

The documentary, We Were Here.  The only place it is playing, though, is the Castro Theater.  I do not know if we are man enough to do that.  I will not mind the anger and indignation.  I will join the queens and hoot and holler and boo Reagan, Falwell, Robertson, and the rest of those fucking enemies of love.  With relish.  It is the tears I am wary of.  The entire theater will be infused with such pain, loss, and sorrow.  Still, it is a pain I feel I must confront and absorb.  And I will.

On somewhat the same topic, last night I saw Stonewall Uprising and I have two things to discuss:  first, I did not think the film was v good.  I thought the filmmakers spent too much time setting the "riots" up.  I understand that this was a film that spent some time on The American Experience and had to really really really spell out how awful and suicidal our culture made gays feel prior to Stonewall.  Most straight society in this country even in 2011 have no clue what our gay/lesbian godparents went through.  (Even now, many straights do not get it, still.)  But for the filmmakers to make such an effort to describe the uprising in numerous details, incl using animation, and yet cram all of that in to the last twenty minutes was confusing and frustrating to this viewer.

The other thing I would like to talk about re Stonewall Uprising relates to Gus van Sant's, Milk.  The reason that Milk is ultimately a failure to me, despite its' many virtues, is the opening title sequence.  Van Sant opens his film with documentary footage of gays, hiding their faces, being turned out of gay clubs, arrested, etc, ... And that, for me, was by far, the most moving part of the picture.

Maurice Conchis from Fowles' novel, The Magus, states flatly that he stopped reading fiction ages ago. As awful as Conchis is, I am on the same boat re fiction and non-fiction.  How can van Sant expect us to seriously consider his "story" (based on someone's real life) after submitting us to that kind of poignant, sorrowful, infuriating prologue? Sure, as a Major Hollywood Entertainment it satisfies (and the Oscar for Sean Penn was a swooning plum) but in terms of being a moving, serious statement about an unsung, great American's life it fails.

I am sticking to the Oscar winning documentary, The Times of Harvey Milk (1984).  Seeing the real Diane Fienstein confront the press after the horror is much better than any Hollywood slow motion death scene.

And the good news is that The Times of Harvey Milk will be coming out on blu-ray from Criterion very soon.

************

(I know, I know) but I finally saw Grand Illusion.  Jean Renoir may be the finest filmmaker ever.  No one gets at the subtleties and nuances of real human life better than him.  No one else understands how complicated life is and expresses that complexity better on film.  Philosophers are constantly wrestling with paradoxes.  It is their life.  It is what we expect from them and pay them for.  Renoir is the master of negative capability.  (And I am using Keats' definition of the term, which I feel best defines this esoteric, pretentious sensibility.)   He is able to show every side of the story in a refreshing, honest humanistic way that constantly uplifts the spirit and makes one thrilled to be alive.  The most obvious tool he uses to achieve this is his revolutionary use of deep-focus.  But it is those scripts and stories that constantly challenge me politically, make me walk in my enemies' shoes.  And Renoir does it as if I am enjoying a meal at a three star Michelin restaurant.  Genius.  Yet nearly artless.  The true master of panache by Ardent Henry's standard.

************

I had the delicious pleasure of enjoying Grand Illusion as part of TCMs 31 Days of Oscar.  I also had the supreme treat of watching Amadeus on the day Renee got the job.  So, even though she thinks Amadeus is an overwrought rococo creation, she was so busy celebrating real-time on her cell that I had the film at my leisure.

I have seen Amadeus innumerable times.  I have always loved it.  I loved it a week ago, too.  The music is first rate, natch.  F Murray Abraham deserved his Oscar.  Tom Hulce is brill.  (What is he doing now?) Cynthia Nixon is so young, so vulnerable.  Simon Callow was such a good sport and is still so good.  The vaudeville scenes are treasures, making an olde theatre boie (like myself) hurt.

But the reason I love this film so much is that like the seminal Masterpiece Theater series, I, Claudius, Amadeus makes you feel as if you were there, that life really has not changed that fucking much in all the years that have passed.  You can take your iPads, iPods, MacMinis, Kabletown, teevees, and all the rest, and really we are all still the same.  We are still hearts beating, arms reaching, theater-going, book-reading, elated, (sometimes) sorrowful souls walking the pavements which have not much changed.  


As wonderful as Amadeus is, my favorite Forman film will always be Loves of a Blonde.  Amadeus was a prodigal son story.  Forman returns to Czechoslovakia and turns Prague in to Vienna.  Loves of a Blonde was shot by the same man as Amadeus.  Loves of a Blonde captures the mittel-european sense of humor better than any film I have seen. (Still fucking waiting for the US release of Cristian Mungiu's, Tales of the Golden Age.) And the  scene where the kids flood the dance hall will live with me forever.  


Loves of a Blonde is like the Stones' song, Factory Girl. But a lot better.  

City boy meets factory girl in Loves of a Blonde

But right around the time I was born (and MLK was assassinated) the Soviet tanks rolled in to Prague and the Czech New Wave was dead.  Forman ran off to New York (good for him) and made films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Hair, and Amadeus.  His return to Prague was seen as a major triumph and this was before  Havel's Velvet Revolution.

************

There is more to come:  discussions on The Pink Floyd, Giant Sand, and the Wisconsin situation.  I love you all, Mwah!, ...