"I Want My Phone Call"

RETURN OF THE DARK KNIGHT!








I am not a movie guy. Do not get me wrong. I love movies. There are movies I like to see over and over again. I like to tell people that all of life’s important lessons can be learned by watching The Godfather I and II very closely... and taking notes. So I see a lot of movies, especially on cable channels, sometimes years after they come out but i like movies, I just do not know shit about them. I understand enough to be pretentious about books and popular music (how limited is that in my quest to be a renaissance man?) but movies I cannot really hold up my end of a snotty conversation.


Soooo.... I snuck out of work the other day (DO NOT TELL MY PARTNERS) and saw “Batman, Return of The Dark Knight”. Now to be clear I have NEVER been a Batman fan. The TV series was an intentional bad joke and as gay as a picnic basket. The movies (and I have never even seen “Batman Begins” have been from my perspective awful. All of them. No matter who was playing Batman. Even the much revered comic book left me cold during my comics obsession phase (roughly 1974-1982 ending directly before my marriage) batman and indeed all of DC Comics left me cold. I was a Marvel Comics fan liking the brooding Thor, Silver Surfer and Conan The Barbarian. These were heroes with SERIOUS personality problems confused not only by the world as they new it but also by their own weaknesses. DC’s characters, at least their main ones, Superman and Batman were vacuous and gave me nothing.

Only later did I discover Will Eisners earlier Detective Comics versions of Batman. What a twisted guy he was, full of angst and rage and human weakness. Frank Miller took over the comic series at one point and there is a great discussion of the importance of “The Dark Knight” at:

http://www.sequart.com/articles/index.php?article=780

The Dark Knight franchise seems to bring that all home, at least in the newest movie. And lets get down to it. WHAT A MOVIE! This is the bets movie of the year and Heath Ledger will either win for Best Actor or Best Supporting Actor (how about both), whichever he gets nominated for. He is awesome. It is a tour de force of talent. I always like heath Ledger. My homophobia kept me out of Brokeback Mountain but that was supposed to be awesome but to be honest, he had me at “10 things I Hate About You”. He was just an incredibly gifted guy but this...

This “Joker” puts to shame every other incantation. I mean Caesar Romero was joke in the series but the whole series was a joke. You would have expected a more nuanced performance by Jack Nicholson but... nothing. But Ledger... ledger is a truly frightening, amoral, soul-less, frightening beast. He IS the Joker. Watching him you think the same thing in every scene which is OH SHIT he is here again! His performance, right from the start of the movie would be enough but the rest of the film is pretty excellent as well. Christian Baal (who allegedly beat up his wife and sister last night in London) is a little heavy with his scowling, tight lipped lines. Some of them are very hard to take but in almost every other way the movie is awesome. If I am going to be a jerk I also have to say that Maggie Gyllenhaal is not nearly hot enough to play the leading woman but Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent (and later an unneeded “Two Face”), Michael Caine as Alfred and Morgan Freeman as Lucien Fox make an impressively talented cast for a movie you would expect to be a special effect throw away. Even Gary Oldman, a great actor and a survivor from an earlier Batman movie gives us a great Comissioner Gordon. For an interesting discussion on who is a bigger problem, The Joker or Voldemort see:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=hoSCGb5fJRs

Lets be clear. the special effects are awesome. The chase scenes, the explosions (so many explosions) and every other effect are awesome. The movie is lovingly filmed and there is always something happening in the background. The plot is solid though it extends too long and adds some unneeded twists BUT, I come here not to bury the Dark Knight but to praise it.
best Movie of the year and Ledger is best actor of the year. Scary and believable but even more the movie, and his Joker, along with batman, Harvey Dent, Commissioner Gordon and all the rest (including Alfred) are always asking some very dark questions about what we are willing to sacrifice.... what trade offs are we willing to rationalize so we can wake up in the morning? And these questions are not just for us and the characters but for all of society. Really troubling questions about what we are willing to risk. What are we willing to lose... and how fickle all of us are in our thought process and yet how predictable we all act when the violence and/or the spotlight is turned on...US. And they return to that theme, over and over again and they do it really well.

Highlights:

1. The Joker in prison... “I want my phone call” should be the new catch phrase.
2. The Ferry Thing
3. The opening bank robbery all the dead Jokers.
4.Harvey Dent's Fundraiser... "You remind me of my father..."
5. Every crackling moment Ledger is on camera.

I mean seriously... who cares about the Joker. I went to see this because i thought it would be a smile. I do not like Batman. I do not like the Joker but this movie and this performance make it an easy call for best Movie and best Actor. You heard it here first. “Word” says the Diner Review.

9.9 Slingers on a 10 scale.

Talented Crap

Gary Louris
Vagabonds






I listen to a lot of new music. perhaps by long established artist but new none the less in that most of it is previously unreleased. If you look at the Diner Review for these reviews you would see for the most part that the reviews are favorable.
This is for two reasons:

1. I tend to buy things from artists I already know and like; and
2. It is hard to review crap because i listen to it once and never again, filijng it in the rack of shame in my basement, never to see the light of day again. I do not even attempt to re-sell these CD’s used because it seems wrong to put them back into circulation. Someone else might buy them.

Gary Louris is an extremely talented guy. With Mark Olsen in the 90s they fronted one of my favorite all time bands “The Jayhawks” whose CD “Hollywood Town Hall” is likely on my desert island list of the the CD’s I would have with me under that ever increasingly likely circumstance brought about by global warming. Even after Olsen left the band to record awful, truly awful music by himself and to marry and divorce the open wound known as singer/songwriter Victoria Williams, Louris kept the Jayhawks going and put out some great pop and alt-country CD’s.

The Jayhawks were his band and it puzzled my why he would want to release solo. Was the band limiting him? Did he want the fame? The answers were all too obvious when I played the solo CD. It is pretentious, wan, smug, pretty, pretentious, effeminate, preachy, trite and pretentious. This si the worst CD of 2008. He put together a very competent little band highlighted by bassist/multi instrumentalist Jonathan Wilson and steel guitar guru Josh Grange and a band of his L.A. pals “The Laurel Canyon Family Choir” (me making gagging sound). A lot of people and recording artists have been ruined by California. Add him to the list.

I went to his website after listening to this piece of shit 10 times because I was so dumbfounded by how bad it is. And it is consistently bad. There is not one song on here that you would remember for anything other then utter insipdness. The website fortunately explains it all and I urge you to check it out.

www.garylourismusic.com. I did not have the heart or the stomach to look at his My Space page.
Seriously? This is a guy who has written a lot of fun music and been in a lot of fun situations with the Jayhawks and tghe alt country super band Golden Smog. And he gives us this Connor Oberst (without the talent) mope? My life is too short.

“Strip it down to what you can rescue.
Pass it on, what is right and true blue”.

Seriously? That line is from the cleverly named “True Blue” and is emblematic of the simple truths he so annoyingly conveys. We get it Gary. You reached middle life. You find life confusing but beautiful. You have absolutely nothing interesting to say about it but want to anyway.

Sample of annoying song titles:

“Meandering”
“We’ll Get By”
“To Die A Happhy Man”
From the epochal “Meandering”:
Laying Down Among The Dogwood
In The Corners of my mind
Seems the faster I’m running
The further I get behind”

I honestly started to make me angry to listen to this bad, recycled Dan Fogelberg album. If i were a moody, misguided, introspective, unhappy 13 year old boy I might be deluded enough to think that sensitive songs like this would make girls find me attractive and get me laid. I would be missing the point that they would also be vomiting and/or laughing at me and the music. It is at best a cyst upon the music scene and if he makes another solo album it could blossom into a cancer. Avoid it like you would a leper. You have been warned. lets hope he either records no more or goes back with the Jayhawks and views this as a learning experience. And for God’s sake, move back to Minneapolis Gary...SAVE YOURSELF!
0 Sliders (for the first time ever) on a ten scale.

Other Views:

Paste Magazine:

Former Jayhawks frontman releases first-ever solo album
Gary Louris is one of the unsung heroes of contemporary roots music. His band The Jayhawks made one of alt.country’s landmark albums, 1992’s stately Hollywood Town Hall, and since then he has collaborated with a range of artists including Jeff Tweedy, Rhett Miller, The Sadies and the Dixie Chicks. Strangely, Vagabonds is his first solo album, shuffling onto shelves some 20 years into his career and three years since the (permanent?) dissolution of The Jayhawks. All of the Louris hallmarks are present: the low-key choruses on “Omaha Nights” and “D.C. Blues”; the dusty harmonies of “True Blue” and “Meandering”; the country-rock hooks of “She Only Calls Me On Sundays” and the title track. Certainly, Vagabonds sounds warmly familiar, but over 10 tracks, the album settles into a genial lull that even the punchy “I Wanna Get High” can’t rouse. Too low-key to rival his best work, the album nevertheless serves as a reminder of Louris’ continued relevance.
See the Slant Review at:
http://www.slantmagazine.com/music/music_review.asp?ID=1295

Book Review: Psycho-Yawnography

Will Self
PsychoGeorgraphy
Illustarted By Ralph Steadman
Published by Bloomsbury
255 Pages







This... is unintentionally a coffee table book.

My admiration for Will Self is:

1. Long Standing
2. Well Deserved
3. Well Documented

He is one of the great writers of our time and has written some of the darkest, funniest and most brilliant things which have been scribed in the last ten years. Find him, read him, enjoy him. Start with something like “The Quantity Theory Of Insanity” and then “My Idea of Fun” or even his recent book “Dorian”.

So I was excited to find and buy this book. Steadman has been one of my favorite illustrators since the master wrote Fear and Loathing. There is something stark and upsetting about even his simplest and most pastoral images. I figure you marry him to Self and instead of darkness squared you get darkness cubed. Win/Win.
Wrong/Wrong it turns out.

Instead, I didn’t get much at all, dark or otherwise. It is a cute book and a clever book. Self is like a less self impressed David Foster Wallace. He does not have to write three page paragraph describing the type of “dust” he is trying to define. He is succinct. it helps that he is British and American and Jewish and Gentile and smart. But this muttness of his seems to have screwed him up and he is constantly coming up with theories about why he and the world are so fucked up. The key thing about his theories and his observations are that they tend be salient and wickedly funny, and sometimes very cruel. I mean this is a guy who was kicked of British Prime Minister John Major’s plane for snorting heroin in the bathroom.

In “The Quantity Theory Of Insanity” for example, he opined on the theory that there was only so much sanity to go around and thus you could put insanity and sanity where it was needed by moving groups of crazy people (or sane people) to certain locations and thus you would effect the balance of sanity as needed.

PsychoGeography also has to do with location as his theory is generally that the place makes the person. the place where you are from... the place you are going... the place you once took a dump. They all form and shape you and make you who you are now and more importantly make you how you are now. He got off drugs and started to walk on long sujourns following this theory that we all have become deconnected with “place”. It makes sense but he does not do much to flesh out why we should care.

The most (and perhaps only) worthwhile part of the book is the first chapter which is him walking from London to New York. He does it by leaving his home, walking to Heathrow, getting on a plane, Flying to JFK and them walking the 26 miles into downtown Manhattan. It is an introspective story with typical problems you would not consider such as modern airports are not meant for people to walk in and out of. It simply does not work. This story like amny of the others turns on his observations and the people he meets and it reads like a travelogue.

But... it never gets any better then the first story and his twenty mile romps around London, Iowa etc... do not reveal a lot and you kind of get a sense that he is mailing it in. Steadman’s illustrations are great but ultimately the book tells us very little, reveals very little out us to ourselves and... god forbid, gets kind of boring.

So. Though I love Self and love Steadman. Miss this one, unless you just like to have cool looking books for people to look at laying around like a pretentious prick... like me. then buy it.
6 Slingers on the 10 scale.

Eat Rite (Eat Somewhere Else)

The Eat Rite Diner
Cheateau and 8th
Downtown








Soooooo.... I have waited a long time to review the Eat Rite downtown. There are many, many reasons for this but they can be summarized in one phrase:

“I wanted to like it”.

Other then the Courtesy on Kingshighway there is no other diner in town that has the same authentic feel. It looks from the outside like a White Castle, or like an old White Castle, one of the little ones, cut in half, or maybe quarters. It is tiny.
It is also incredibly convenient for me as it is on my way to work and I pass it every day. There were years when I thought of it as being in a “bad” neighborhood until I realized that it is really in no neighborhood at all. Other then Ralston Purina (Nestle) or our Lebanese friends at St. Raymonds there really is not a whole lot going on down in that neighborhood, unless there is a baseball game and then people often park around it.

It has a small yet disasterous parking lot with steep grades and spots that are too small. The place, well, to be pleasant... lit looks like shit. It is formerly a white building but is now caked in dirt. The windows are...dirty. There has been a sign in the window for years saying that they sell 4 Hamburgers for $4.80 dollars. There is rarely more then one or two cars in the lot. There are normally people in there then cars and you get the feeling that some of them walked... and that some of them might have no other place to go. They are open 24 hours which explains some of the patron as they have probably been drinking coffee there since the 3 A.M. bars closed but it is still a little icky. Don’t get me wrong, I like characters but these characters are of the trite, uninteresting (even to themselves) variety. If you are a person who is afraid of dirty, surly people (and I am talking about the staff as well as the patrons) don’t go there.

When you go in you will be impressed (apalled) by what you see inside. There is one excellent griddle, a fridge, a back room with a fan and either one or two nasty looking, women of indeterminate age. These women must live under a bridge near the place. They are not rude, so much as they clearly do not give a shit. Inquiries such as “do you have iced tea” are at first met with silence followed by “only in summer”. She will then look away without inquiring if you want anything else. They will of couse serve you hot coffee without even asking. On the plus side the food is cheap. The food is served quick. The food is greasy. The hash browns are shredded. The food is cheap. They have a pin ball machine that is older then me. They have a juke box that is even older.

But... it is dirty. it feels dirty and worst of all for me...iced tea is seasonal. How can that be. If you are downtown and need the experience, go there. If you need a nice breakfast, served by nice women... go to Bog Ed’s Chili Mac Diner on Pine.
AOL’s City Guide has some nice comments, even compliments:

http://cityguide.aol.com/stlouis/restaurants/eat-rite-diner/v-111714489

The Eat Rite has the slinger... they have cheap greasy food. It is “authentic” but authentic in a sad way. There is very little joy at the Eat Rite.

Erata: Bad Music Update

Sooooo like I said I listen to a lot of music and I try to read a lot and I rarely get to listen to enough or read enough but it strikes me that... well... you do not believe me. I guess what it comes down to it, I do not believe me either. So in a follow up I want to give you a heads up and brief diatribe about some things I have consumed which... did not merit the Diner Reviews rather exacting specifications.

****
Sun Kil Moon: April
Great name for a band and all the people like I like and respect have told me that I “have to” love them... or love him as it were. What I did not know was that the “band” was merely a vehicle for Mark Kozelak who used to head up the Red House Painters (another great band name. In a gust of indie rock arrogance i had purchased two Red House Painters CD’s which were labeled as “genius” only to find them lethargic, pretentious and overly arty. Not surprisingly so is Sun Kil Moon. The CD April comes with a highly prized bonus CD and they both will be solidly parked in my basement until I die and my children sell my CD collection, or pawn it, or throw it away. In any case that will be the next time it sees the light of day unless my pretentious indie rock snob sun decides he is interested. This is like Jay Farrar on quaaludes and if you know Farrar’s music (some of which I like) that is a particularly unattractive reference. I picture this guy staring at his shoes while a cellist noodles and he mumbles. Miss it.
http://www.sunkilmoon.com/welcome.html

****
Elvis Costello: Momofuku
I love Elvis Costello. I have a predisposition to like everything he puts out. This must be one where he is ahead of me because it just seems banal, unnecessary and not breaking of any new or interesting ground. He is another guy I could listen to as he sang the phone book but.... that does not make it rock and roll. He plays with The Impostors (his long time band which includes 2 of his original band The Attractions) and it is tight and can be sweet but it is unremarkable and you wonder what motivated this effort. Pitchfork did not even review it. released on Lost Highway, miss it unless you are a completist.

*****
Patty Hurst Shifter: Coma La Grava (EP)
The Patty Hurst Shifter (aside from having the coolest name ever) is an excellent rocking band. They have put out some excellent CD’s including the classic “Too crowded On The Losing End”. They kind of have a Stones vibe with some good garage guitars. This E.P. Non essential. Sadly.

****
Murray Hammond: “I Dont Know Where I Am Going But I Am On My Way”
Murray Hammond. Very talented. Bass player for the Old 97’s who I have an admitted affinity. Hammond has been contributing a song or two on each 97’s album for years and in the context of those albums his songs are a nice break. He has a true love for “real” country music and reaches back all the time to Merle Haggard and other classic country artists. there are few cuts on this CD (such as his cover of the classic “Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down”. He covers a couple of Carter Family classics but does not do much more then establish authentic cred. Over all, it tries to hard and takes you no where. Miss it...too.

*****
So there is a little sample of how i regularly suffer for this blog. 75 bucks worth of music... for nothing. I have suffered in silence too long.