Negative Forty

Last Friday I went to go see WALL-E, the newest Pixar film. It is quite an awesome film. I would say that the film is the one film in the Pixar canon that shares the most with the Miyazaki aesthetic (environmental themes, emphasis on movement and flight). I highly recommend it.

I was looking online for other opinions on WALL-E, and saw quite a few lists of people ranking the Pixar films. What surprised me was that one of my favorite Pixar films, Cars, was often ranked near the bottom of the tallies. What made we even more stunned was the general reason for ranking it so low (and I paraphrase liberally here): “It was a lousy plot based on that stupid redneck pastime of stock car racing.”

For me, this couldn’t be further from the truth in regards to this film. I found it to be a movie with a main theme grounded in the western United States, where I live: Route 66, wide open spaces, and travel. I wonder if this focus on an ultimately small portion of the plot is due to many people not knowing much about this part of the country. Unfortunately, I don’t have many friends from such far away lands, so at the moment I have no idea how to test this theory. What do you think?

Last week my number one artist on last.fm briefly switched from the perennial champion Smashing Pumpkins to the somewhat more obscure shoegazing band Slowdive.  How did this happen, after over a decade of pure Pumpkins audio dominance?  Where did it start?

Two words: Kill Bill.  Thus starts a slightly convoluted trail… (With lots of links!)

As many might know, the opening song to Kill Bill, Vol. 1 was “Bang, Bang” by Nancy Sinatra. Not knowing much about her music beyond “These Books Are Made For Walking”, I looked for more of her works. This is when I stumbled upon the eerie “Some Velvet Morning” by Nancy and Lee Hazlewood. Being so floored by the song, I discovered that it had been covered from time to time, and thus found a copy of a cover performed by this band known as Slowdive. The cover was a bonus track on the US version of their album Souvlaki, which I liked enough to compel me to download the entire album. However, as it goes sometimes with the music I download, it gathered virtual dust at the bottom of my playlist queue.

Thus the album that would become one of my favorites of all time sat unlistened for about a year, until Pitchfork reviewed the new Slowdive compilation, Catch the Breeze. Compelled by the high rating and the interesting way the music was described, I went back and rediscovered Souvlaki. The love affair has now had this band, who were rather not-so-big in their day an entire ocean away, at the top of the charts and nearly above a band I thought would never be challenged in my favorite band pantheon. Why, even this year I went over to Amazon.uk and ordered the import remastered reissues of their three albums.

Of course, this ranking on my last.fm charts is buoyed by the song dominance of perhaps my favorite song ever, the heart-wrenching “Dagger”, but there are other great highlights. Take the appropriately titled “Souvlaki Space Station”, the dreamy heights of “Blue Skied an’ Clear”, or the pop awesomeness of “When the Sun Hits”. I love it all.

From there I explored other acts from a genre that didn’t really last very long, from MBV to Ride. It’s been quite a journey.

Now for my newest Bond film review in quite an age. I start by realizing that the point system I came up with is entirely trite and pointless, because everything was getting a mystical ‘3’ and number reviews really are subjective and without a true measuring stick. (I still love you though, P4K, you elitist devil, you.) Besides, I think nobody reads these unless they’re Random Internet People with an inability to give proofs to an argument. A review of my criteria with modifications:

1. Movies reviewed in the following categories: Plot, James Bond (review of the actor), Theme Song, Bond Girls, Villains, and Vehicles.
2. The movies are compared only to other Bond flicks.
3. Due to the fact that they are the actors most recognizable to me in the role, Daniel Craig and Pierce Brosnan flicks may be skewed favorably. That’s just the way it is.
4. If Shirley Bassey sings the theme song, the film gets an extra point nod to its awesomeness.

I will assign a point value to each category judge each category for its talents and flaws, but the films as a whole will only be scored judged on a ranking with the other Bond flicks. As such, a film may score high in all categories but may not be placed very high in the final tally judgement. I think I will give more credence to plot than anything, for that is ultimately why we watch a film. Since I am a music nut, I will also rank the theme songs as well.

The current tally is:

Movies
1. Casino Royale
2. Goldfinger
3. The Living Daylights
4. The Man With the Golden Gun
5. Diamonds Are Forever

Songs
1. Shirley Bassey - Goldfinger
2. Chris Cornell - You Know My Name (from Casino Royale)
3. Shirley Bassey - Diamonds Are Forever
4. A-ha – The Living Daylights
5. Lulu – The Man With the Golden Gun

And without even further delay than I have already placed on this review, I present my thoughts on the second Pierce Brosnan-led Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies.
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This month I have had three graduations on three consecutive weekends, culminating earlier tonight with my brother’s graduation from high school. Here are some thoughts I have looking back on these things:

I wonder how my life would have been different if I went to a larger college. I wandered around my sister’s campus a bit before her graduation, and I could see myself in those halls with a lot more opportunities for diversity than I had in my small tech school. Then again, I valued the friendships and experiences I had at my small tech school as well. I guess I can’t have it all, but I still wonder if I made the best choice. Of course, I cannot prove or disprove this hypothesis at all, so it will have to stay in the land of wonder. This line of thought also is related to my thoughts on what would have happened if I went to a legitimate high school with more than just the science club as an academic extracurricular….

That same day I decided with some finality that I would one day go to back to school for studies in a field I’ve had my eyes on for a while. In a cruel twist of fate (as if I have any other) the next day I happened to read three articles from three different places that all basically said that rising prices and debts may lead most of the members of my generation to be generally screwed. Looking at my rather manageable school debts, I cringe at adding such a ball and chain…

I found that I was happy in my tour of graduations to not run into certain souls that I have, shall we say, bitterness towards. Of course, fate hates me enough to make me run into these things secondhand through physical reminders that I wasn’t even looking for in the first place.

High school graduation further proves to me that I hated high school and that I don’t remember much of it with fondness. That said, I will probably still show up for my ten year reunion coming up soon because it’s still a part of who I was.

Finally, I think I realize that the one thing I really learned in college was the ability to argue effectively. I’m always stating my thesis and giving reasons and proofs for my statements, whether it’s a post on my fantasy baseball league or a random blog comment. I really think this comes from the many papers I wrote in my humanities classes, and from things like my somewhat infamous devil’s advocate rants in my Chem E seminar gatherings. (Example: The ‘Plagiarism is not necessarily a bad thing!’ joke argument that nearly started a war with the overachievers in my class due to their inability to out reason us rabble-rousers.)  Alas, that I had to learn this in college again was my crappy high school for you, and one of the reasons that getting more attention in my small tech college benefited me a lot.

I was listening to ‘Heat of the Moment’ by Asia on the radio on the way to work this morning, humming along and thinking that I should suggest my friend B give this song a whirl the next time we go karaoke, when I realized in a fit of insight that I’m probably tragically uncool because I know way too much about 80s music for somebody not over the age of 40 or even 30.

Evidence? My slightly crazy friend J shook his head when I explained my fetish with playing ‘Shock the Monkey’ on jukeboxes. I thought attempting ‘Shadows of the Night’ on karaoke was funnier than it really was, and later that same night I made a Frankie Goes To Hollywood joke.

Maybe I should just quote Pavement songs from now on and at least be slightly more current.

I can’t sleep again tonight. I knew I should have dug up the old help.

Pictures make me happy. Pictures make me sad. I have no pictures of you… any of any of all of the ‘you’s.

P.S.: I always thought that thing about that thing I don’t believe in was stupid. Come to think of it, it makes no sense.

I laugh dryly, for it always seems that I want what I can’t have and I can have what I don’t want.

I will remember that Soylent Green is something you should pass on at the dinner table, blowing up the world is bad because the monkeys will take over (though it makes for one of my favorite stick figure drawings), the Egyptians should know that they just can’t keep the Hebrews down, and that Ben-Hur is REALLY wide.

I have decided that my favorite pair of jeans are my Calvin Klein-branded pair. I choose to dub them my ‘Marty McFly’s.’ Kudos to all that understand.

However, there is still quite a distance between me and early 80s Brooke Shields. More time travel kudos for grabs there…

Bowling out of sync
Long time, no see! Uhhh… Num—ber?
Awkward… But… Success…?

It has been a long, pretty much pointless couple of weeks at work. I know I should be looking for something else, but the combination of not knowing what to do and the many hours ahead of all the things I’m obligated to do… Sigh. It’s difficult to explain how mixed-up I’m feeling. It seems lately like I’m always in a strange place… and isolated from too many things.

Of course, I probably just have had too much time to my hands to think. I’ve been listening to a bunch of Sleater-Kinney lately, partially because Dig Me Out won’t get out of my head and partially because of a certain Single Female Lawyer (”The Baaaaad One…” /purring drawl). The song ‘Good Things’ off of Call The Doctor comes on and I’m lost in thought.
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