Saturday Random Ten in progress

Yes, I finally got down to Random Ten business.

Right now am working on another story.  It's at the point where it's all down, basically, but a sprawling mess.  So begins the work of hewing it down.  Which is fun, once you get into it.  Was sort of interrupted today, but expect to get back into it tomorrow.

1. Amy Winehouse - (There Is) No Greater Love
2. Arcade Fire - Supersymmetry
3. Brian Eno - Spirits Drifting
4. Fats Domino - The Fat Man
5. Dirty Projectors - The Bride
6. The Band - Tears of Rage
7. Fairport Convention - Fotheringay
8. The Velvet Underground - The Gift
9. R.E.M. - Can't Get There from Here
10. Diana Krall - You're My Thrill

La dame

Take a look at this for a moment.

This is a painting by Leonora Carrington, called La Dame Ovale ("the oval lady")

Carrington came from a somewhat upper crust English background, which she threw away when she ran away with Max Ernst. She's considered one of the surrealists. Over her long artistic career - started in the 1930s and continued until her dedath in the 2ooos - she went back and forth on that.

This painting could certainly be called surreal, being filled with inversions of the natural order. The chained dog has five human breasts. (An odd number, even!) Birds and bats nest underground. Many of the trees have bizarre shapes: fox heads, chess pieces.

What I noticed after looking at it for a few minutes was that nothing could quite be taken at face value. Most of the trees are, when you take the nature of painting into account, natural. So are most of the clouds. But you're forced to keep examining them because of their proximity to the other things. Meaning that art can show you not just new things, but train you in new ways to look.

The 4th

Which brings us to the impossible unity of the Ramones. They all had the same last name. They all wore the same outfit and haircut. All the songs started with “1 2 3 4.” The monolithic, unified roar. And, most importantly, all the songs seem to come from a musical universe that they were the sole inhabitants of. Although their eagle logo and leather-clad image invited dopey imitation in the way all of rock music’s orthodox rebellion does, the Ramones’ original iconography not only illustrated they were tough, but that they were one. For an earlier music generation, the Beatles’ idea of the band as a gang, jumping over hilltops together, was part of their initial appeal. The Ramones were a gang as a band. A few years before his passing, Dee Dee Ramone complained about when he was starting with the band being forced to get a “Ramone” haircut. Having that small part of their image dismantled that way broke down more of the image of the band for me than I anticipated.

It is preposterous to call the Ramones performance art, but is there a more intentional, self-contained creative performance? The Ramones weren’t a band “about something.” While there were other high-concept bands that rival their singularity of statement—like Kraftwerk, the Residents, or Devo—those bands revolved around technology and enigma. The Ramones were self-reflexive: a rock band that was about the idea of a rock band. They took comic book violence and the deadest tropes of Beach Boys lyrics and placed them alongside tales of New York hustling as if it all was one piece. Authenticity wasn’t an issue. Authenticity was a joke.

From John Flansburgh's post-Tommy in memoriam on The Ramones. They Might Be Giants, Flansburgh's own band, occupies a different niche than the boyz from Queens, but he seems to get them.

After only a couple of years, Tommy decided that having been in the Ramones was great, but that he didn't want to keep doing it. Understandable, given the personalities involved. Still, he'll be remembered with them.

Harsh realm

Oh before I go - which in this case is short for "go the whole weekend without blogging" - I did see another movie on Friday night.  This was Winter's Bone, directed by Debra Granik.  I don't hesitate to recommend it.

There's been a disconnect in American movies in terms of class for some time.  America has been wavering between recession and weak recovery for about six years.  Our social safety net has been getting shredded for over thirty.  That's led to a lot of people in desperate straits, and a lot more at least in the doldrums.

Movies and TV, in general, have wanted no part of this.  This goes for both large studio films and the more high profile indie projects.  Celebrated pictures like Ruby Sparks, Young Adult and Her may have their virtues, but they won't visit you where you live.  They limn a kind of depressed affluenza that may reflect the makers' lives, but doesn't really resonate outside that circle.

Winter's Bone's grubbiness is a relief in that context.  And it is grubby.  Characters look unwashed, and brace themselves against the Missouri winter by seemingly wearing all their clothes at once.  Jennifer Lawrence, who plays heroine Ree Dolly, might never have become a movie star if her subsequent Academy Award nomination hadn't given her an excuse to be seen in public with her nair done and a nice dress. 

Beyond that there's the subject of living in a tiny house and being threatened with losing that house over a bail bond that would, to some, be trivial.  It's a grim situation, but one many can identify with.  It also has the virtue of raising stakes.

Shady Friday Random Ten

Someone I work with told me today that my sunglasses reminded them of "Three Blind Mice", possibly the cartoon version.  This is based on a misconception, of course.  Blind mice don't wear dark glasses.  They just wander around the room, doing their best not to trip over anything, and unless you know them you have no idea what their problem is.

1. Neil Young - Welfare Mothers
2. Broadcast - Arc of a Journey
3. Nancy Wilson & Cannonball Adderley - The Masquerade is Over
4. Paul Simon - Outrageous
5. Ladytron - Destroy Everything You Touch
6. St. Vincent - Regret
7. Neko Case - The Needle Has Landed
8. The Velvet Underground - The Gift
9. The Beastie Boys - The Brouhaha
10. Pink Martini - Je Ne t'Aime Plus

Acting out for attention

Tonight I went with a friend of mine and his kids and a couple of other friends to see a RiffTrax live-by-satellite show.  That is, a movie was snarked in a theatre in hteir native Minneapolis, but the whole ting, incluiding a short, was beamed via satellite to a bunch of movie theaatres.

Mike, Kevin and Bill - the second Crow - are pros, and I perceive them as nice guys.  There's a reason why MST3K is MST3K and its successors aren't, despite a higher initial profile.  But they put together a pretty good show.

Sharknado.  I'm sure I could put a video clip of Sharknado up here but... I won't.  I get the feeling that the movie was explicitly made for this purpose, that they knew parody would be as much of an afterlife as the movie would get.

Big Bird redux

When I was a kid I was convinced that emus were called "ostriches." Because come on! "Australia" sounds like OSS-trail-ya, so how could they not have the birds whose name sounds the same. I guess ratite branding was a big thing to my younger self.

It's not clear how closely related ostriches, emus, rheas, cassowaries etc are, and whether they had a common ancestor on the superncontinent of Gondwana. As you can see here, ostrichese and emus don't look that much alike. Emu necks are much fluffier. They do dance/play together well, considering both birds are somewhat volatile to begin with