by Ben Kritikos

Let me start by saying that listing the top five of anything is completely arbitrary. There is no point. For every one thing I list as “top” there are thirty others you could reasonably argue are better. But whoa there! Go make your own list. This is creative solipsism here.

Everything about lists is dodgy; it brings to mind the sinister, the cold, the calculated. And what’s with “alternative”, eh? What the hell does “alternative” even mean? I think, when I was a teenager, it meant: an alternative to pop-rock. Of course, there’s no alternative to the corporate media anymore. Osama bin Laden probably uses facebook. Sarah Palin and Nick Griffin are the new “alternative” — but instead of killing themselves with drugs or guns, they kill children with their minds.

Not really. But they would, I imagine. Or they’d remove their human-like exteriors to reveal their true Slitheen identity, and eat children alive while drilling oil pits into baby polar bears’ faces, and shooting black people into space.

"1990" by Daniel Johnston, Eternal Yip Eye Music (1990)

1990 by Daniel Johnston

No, I didn’t choose this one because it’s the first Daniel Johnston album of that awful decade defined (for me, at least) by hormones and hair. While his earlier albums Hi, How Are You and Yip/Jump Music are better-known, and arguably better albums, 1990 has a unique charm — and the other two were made in the ’80’s.

This beauty is on here because Daniel Johnston found the wherewithal during a severe battle with mental illness to make some of the best music ever. Take a tune like “Devil Town”, in which Johnston gives us a retrospective glance at what may be Austin in the 80’s through his bipolar-tinted glasses. The result is a spine-tingling confessional, somewhere between Alcoholics Anonymous and Marvel Comics. If you’ve heard of Daniel Johnston, you’ve heard of his struggle with bipolar disorder. But despite the knowledge that he was heavily delusional when he wrote the song, the picture he paints of the time and place is totally sympathetic and believable. Maybe it’s that child-like voice singing about devils and vampires. Or maybe it takes one to know one.

“Some Things Last A Long Time” does the same thing. Johnston teamed up with Jad Phair (another musician, producer and all-round alt-hero) to write this song about a girl called Laura whom he hardly knew, who served unwittingly as the muse behind the majority of his oeuvre. Laura, as you probably know if you know who Daniel Johnston is, was his obsession. Taken out of its musical context, that’s creepy. But name me another song lamenting unrequited love in so touchingly a simple way. The few chords on the piano that make the riff are tattooed on my mind like the opening chords to “Imagine”, but more authentic because Daniel Johnston didn’t have a whole flat in the upper west side of Manhattan dedicated to his fur coats.

Sure, he’s not for everybody, and for that reason it feels like a privelege and an honour when his music hits you in that place you didn’t know music could hit you.

"MTV Unplugged in New York" by Nirvana, DGC (1994)

MTV Unplugged in New York by Nirvana

It may come as a surprise that I haven’t chosen, say, Nevermind or In Utero, considering they are the seminal Nirvana — and therefore seminal “grunge” — albums. I thought of that, and even though “Territorial Pissings” live on MTV in ‘91 was my introduction to Nirvana, an introduction resulting in terminal obsession throughout puberty, I think Unplugged holds a unique place in the band’s history.

Unplugged is not a proper Nirvana album, per se. It’s got that vibe about it, as if the band had broken up 20 years before, become caricatures of their former selves, and decided to do a reunion tour to scrape together a few million shekels (see “The Police” or “Simon & Garfunkel” for cases in point). That, or the End of Something, as Hemingway might put it. Either way, at the time, Nirvana doing Unplugged was my 14-year-old dream come true. The Pilate of a ruthless celebrity culture offering up a new Christ on the MTV crucifix never sounded so good.

The album is made up of only half Nirvana songs, the other half being admittedly more alternative than Nirvana in most cases, who at that time were hardly an “alternative” because they were the biggest fucking band in rock and roll. You could argue that this sort of invalidates them for top “alternative” albums — and you’d be partly right. Take your opinion and go write your own blog, damn it. But there’s something completely anti-pop about Kurt Cobain’s beautiful butchering of the Meat Puppets’ “Oh Me”; and “The Man Who Sold The World” minus the camp; and a rendering of the Vaselines’ “Jesus Doesn’t Want Me For A Sunbeam” that rivals the original; and the absolutely legendary, blood-curdling rendition of Leadbelly’s “In The Pines” (known here as “Where Did You Sleep Last Night”); and top it all with the fact that Cobain was dead by the time the album came out … I mean, this album pretty much sums up teenage angst, and how it burns itself out. But in a good way.

"Doolittle" by Pixies, Elektra (1989)

Doolittle by Pixies

Yes, it’s true: this album came out in 1989. But Doolittle, along with Surfer Rosa, did more than any single album to spawn that 90’s “alternative” sound — in America, at least. Maybe it’s the screaming.

I have to admit, the version of “Wave Of Mutilation” on this album is inferior, in my opinion, to the one on the Pump Up The Volume OST ["Wave Of Mutilation (UK Surf)"]; but the album version fits the whole thing better. I love albums with a sense of unity, when every song fits. I lost my copy of Doolittle once, and a friend burned me a copy as a temporary replacement. The first time I listened to his copy I realised that the last song, “Gouge Away” was missing. It fucked up the whole experience. Every time I listened to my stunted, runted step-child of a copy, I’d wander around distracted for hours after, like waking from a bad dream that you can’t quite remember. It’s not that “Gouge Away” is particularly one of my favourites — but it completes the entirety. I had to buy another copy. It may sound pedantic, but could you imagine Abbey Road without “Her Majesty”? Lopsided.

“Debaser” rings the album in, and within two seconds you’re back to ripped jeans and flannel shirts. “Tame” throbs with lust and headbanging. Incongruously, I used to hear “Here Comes Your Man” on the Musak station when I worked my first job in a corporate diner in Connecticut (see what I mean about “alternative”?). What I’m saying is, from beginning to end, Doolittle is a complete entity, to be savoured in all its warped, sensual glory.

"Knock Knock" by Smog, Drag City (1999)

Knock Knock by Smog

I’m aware that so far every band on this list is comprised primarily of men. No doubt, this is some form of tacit, unconscious sexism on my part. That said, alternative music from the ’90’s is forever linked in my mind with the suburbs, driving around aimlessly on windy roads in the middle of nowhere, drinking cheap beer in the dark in public parks, high school and its miseries, unbridled lust, snogging like your life depended on it, and drug binges. I wasn’t versed in the annals of gender relations yet.

Bill Callahan (a.k.a. Smog) basically sums up the suburban American male experience for me with Knock Knock. Well, the suburban American male with any shade of poetic faculty, or a sense of bitterly dark humour, at least. Smog’s early work is super lo-fi — like, lacking in any sort of recognisable song structure. It sounds like it was recorded on candle wax with a bloody stump. But as time went by, Callahan moved into ultra-condensed lyrical territory with songs like “Your Wedding” from 1993’s Julius Caesar, reproduced here in its entirety:

I remember

entering you.

I’m going to be drunk,

so drunk,

at your wedding.

By the time Knock Knock came out, Callahan’s tunes were charting more traditional songwriting territory.

It’s a nasty habit, reading into other people’s music to find elements of themselves in it. That said, I can’t help thinking songs like “Teenage Spaceship” are about that feeling I used to get looking out on my old familiar drab suburban landscape, full of dully glowing windows and yellowish streetlamps, the tops of trees and buildings laying moribund against the boring overcast sky, swallowing the sense of hopeless, helpless dread at my lack of prospects for the future (I was convinced at that age, like many others, that the whole world was like one giant American suburb, in one way or another.) I, too, “swore I’d never lay like a log, bark like a dog….”

Above and beyond the adolescent loneliness of suburban America, there is real poetry in Callahan’s songs. I mean the real deal. I’d go so far as to say he’s bearing the torch of the pioneering American tradition in poetry, like Whitman did, and Ginsberg, and Dylan. Not so many people read poetry these days, and so the thing that lives in a poem has swapped shells with the popular song format, like a hermit crab crawling into whatever shell will fit. Songs like “Held” and “River Guard” use language rooted in the commonplace to convey deeper meaning, and it resonates. These two tunes in particular use a fluidity and economy of words that is the very definition of good poetry to me. Callahan is famously restrained in his delivery, but using physical imagery with a unique intensity: you can feel the tall grass, feel the wind, smell the hot ground releasing its aromas under the beating sun, hear the sound of voices and animals, the background drone of the hum-drum inanities of workaday life intertwined with the magical, the poetical, the mysterious spark of being alive, here, now. Good poetry, like Callahan’s, expresses the reality of things in a way that reveals the magic disguised as the mundane.

"In The Aeroplane Over The Sea" by Neutral Milk Hotel, Merge (1998)

In The Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel

Forget for a moment the legendary status that this album has achieved amongst those in the indie-know. Forget the stuff about Jeff Mangum’s J.D. Salinger-style disappearance from music and the public eye. The real reason that this album is a winner with so many people, who all seem to feel about it the way they feel about their favourite cardigan or their favourite grandparent, is that it is so intensely personal. That may sound stupid, considering that it’s purportedly about Anne Frank, and the lyrics are oblique at the best of times, and surreal the rest. That, however, is just what I mean.

The language employed on Aeroplane is so personally stylised, so deeply unique and specific to the writer himself that the overall effect is one of seeing something through the lens of some one else’s subjective experience (which is the aim of so much art); so much so that it’s hard at first to realise what it is you’re looking at. Mangum’s lyrics are rooted in the physical sensations of his experience, it seems. The feelings of tongues against teeth, hearing the tapping of a jar in the dark, muscles moving, legs dancing, hands touching … each character is introduced bodily first, through a sort of musical brail. This form of listening is hands-on.

The intimacy between the songs’ figures is expressed through the tactile animal contact between them. The point at which two bodies meet tells more about their relationship than any comment from a narrator. Jeff Mangum is like an oblique Checkhov, ever hidden behind the things and people and events he’s relating, even when it’s simply his own feelings or recollection. It’s this immediacy of the subject matter that makes for such intense feeling. It is the intimacy of the thing told that makes the teller so real, so living — seemingly so much like oneself. Sex, love, family, death, war, nature, furniture, history, dreams, cartoonish characters from some familiar nowhere in particular … In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is a masterpiece for so many reasons. But it’s my favourite album simply because it is a world unto itself, whole and complete. The mastery of Jeff Mangum lies in his ability to make it appear as though we created that world ourselves, that we’re invested in it, that its fate is our fate, and vice versa. The truth is — are you listening? — it is.

Afterword

What?! Is that it? No Is This Desire? or OK Computer? No Experimental Jet-Set, Trash and No Star? No Ten? (Well, that one didn’t age as well, in my opinion.) My God, no Repeater?, or any Ani DiFranco? I know, I know. Anna hasn’t let it go unmentioned that they’re almost all white, male American bands. But that’s the nature of “top” anything; it’s completely subjective and emotional. I make no claims to objectivity. And imagine how I felt trying to decide what even my top five were: I’ve pulled out nearly all my hair in exasperation, and not just on my head.

4 November 1999 Germany ( top and middle ) ‘Christmas’
16 April 1998 Germany ( bottom ) ‘Hildegard von Bingen’

A few friends of mine from Germany have similar taste about stamps – they often leave frame of a sheet uncut from the stamp itself.  I do  enjoy this bonus illustration and started to looke at German stamps together with the frame around it.

I thought the third stamp is also on Christmas, but I was wrong.  It is celebrating a Christian mystic Hildegard von Bingen, who lived form 1098 t0 1179.  The picture seems a tapestry and it depicts a garden, as she was known as herbalist, as well as author and composer – one of her music is on YouTube: from album ‘A Feather On the Breath of God’.

ドイツの友人たちはよく、切手シートのフチに描かれているイラストをつながったまま貼って送ってくれます。わたしはこのおまけが楽しみで、ドイツからクリスマスカードが届くのを心待ちにしているのでした。

3毎目の切手もクリスマスのものかな？と思ったらこれはキリスト教の女性聖人ヒルデガルト・フォン・ビンゲンを記念した切手でした。絵はタペストリーからとられているようで、薬草学に通じていた彼女がハーブ園で描かれています。作曲家でもあった彼女の音楽は再現され聴く事ができます。YouTubeで見つけたのは「A Feather On the Breath of God」からの一曲。

I feel like I’ve been watching a bit too much Van Sant.

Gus Van Sant’s indie hit hones in on the friendship between Mike (River Phoenix) and Scott (Keanu Reeves), two hustlers living on the streets of gritty Portland, whose relationship stumbles when they hit the road to find Mike’s mother, and Scott falls for a woman. Scott’s lifestyle is his way of embarrassing his rich, oppressive father, while Mike is a narcoleptic who’s in love with Scott but maintains he’s straight.

Gus Van Sant is known for making great portrait at how the human emotions all work. However, with this one he really digs into just the emotions of these two and how they feel, even when one is narcoleptic.

The gritty look is what makes this film legit. These are two hustlers living on the streets, and getting money from clients that are even dirtier. I found myself memorized by how this gritty look wasn’t just realistic, but actually made me feel like I was with them when filming was going on.

My Own Private Idaho is a lot of things, and one of them is a comedy. Van Sant has a sly off-beat sense of humor. They use this ability with its timing, in order to frame a dramatic scene so that its not only seen as serious but sometimes strangely funny and odd. There are little elements of dark humor, as with Phoenix’s’ character is always falling asleep throughout the whole film.

This film is also a lot more complicating than others of this nature. It moves at a very slow pace, and never really picks up steam with its character flow. They talk constantly, and also River whenever he does it is only for a short amount of time, cause then he falls right back asleep. I also felt like these characters needed more explanation as well as the decisions. I wanted to know these characters more and more, but was never really given that opportunity since we just find out that they are only hustlers.

The characters also have a willingness to live and be free with themselves. We can feel that not just every scene is divided into the points that had to be made, instead they are made as in a way that they feel like their living, and basically doing nothing. Most scenes went on longer than we expected, and I liked that cause really that’s what happens in life.

River Phoenix gives the greatest performance of his sad and short career. He plays this character with such more depth than what he was given and there are just a countless number of scenes that make me so upset knowing that he had such great talent, and sadly that is all thrown away. Keanu Reeves probably gives one of his greatest performances of all-time too, and builds that beautiful chemistry he and Phoenix build together on film so beautifully.

Consensus: Though it may be very challenging for some, My Own Private Idaho is well-directed, superbly acted, and gives us a realistic and look into the mind, body, and soul of these two characters.

8.5/10=Matinee!!!

Film: Karz Chukana Hai (1991)

Language: Hindi

Slide Show Link:

Click Here

Never have 105 minutes felt like 3 hours!

The Navy will never be the same after Captain McHale (Tom Arnold) and his ragtag band of bumbling misfits are called upon to defend the base of San Ysidro Island from an evil terrorist bent on world domination.

Honestly, there is nothing I can really write for this. I didn’t like it.

The regular TV classic show was funny, where as this was just a plain and simple really bad attempt at trying to be very funny.The differences between the show and this are just so obivous that I just didn’t really care what happened at all in this film.

The acting is not very good. Tom Arnold just puts these lines out and they seem so forced like he was almost bribed into doing this film. Tim Curry, and the rest of the supporting cast just doesn’t seem at all in touch with their comedic sides.

Basically this one of the worst spin-offs of any TV show ever, and really will just leave you bored all the way through.

0/10=BADDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dralion (pronounced Drah-lee-on) is a touring production by the Canadian entertainment company Cirque du Soleil. The show combines elements of traditional Chinese circus with Western contemporary circus, complementing the “East-meets-West” theme implied in the title — the name is a portmanteau of “dragon” (representing the East) and “lion” (representing the West). It is Cirque du Soleil’s 12th touring production and the first Cirque show since 1985 not to be directed by Franco Dragone.

Characters

* Azala (air): Azala is the goddess of Air, keeper of the sun and the guardian of immortality. She appears dressed in blue.
* Gaya (earth): Gaya is the goddess of Earth, dressed in ochre.
* Oceane (water): Oceane is the sensual goddess of Water, dressed in green.
* Yao (fire): Yao is the god of fire, both good and evil. He appears dressed in red.
* Âme Force: The vocalists of Dralion symbolize harmony between the four elements. The lyrics they sing are an invented language.
* Dralions: Dralions are mythical creatures inspired by the imagery of the Chinese lion dance and dragon dance.
* Clowns: The clowns manage to push this otherwise harmonious universe slightly off-kilter.
* Little Buddha: The Little Buddha is the chosen child. Although he possesses powers that will eventually allow him to become an Âme-Force, he dreams of being a regular child.

Director Guy Caron
Director of Creation Gilles Ste-Croix
Set Designer Stéphane Roy
Composer Violaine Corradi
Costume Designer François Barbeau
Clown Act Designer Michel Dallaire
Lighting Designer Luc Lafortune
Choreographer Julie Lachance
Sound Designer Guy Desrochers
General Artistic Director Sylvie Galarneau
Company Founder and CEO Guy Laliberté

Why I have decided to review this, I don’t even know.

After realizing that their beloved boob tube is gone, couch potatoes Beavis and Butt-head (both voiced by creator Mike Judge) set off on a cross-country expedition that takes them from Las Vegas to the nation’s capital. Along the way, they’re mistaken for hit men and get caught up in a weapons-smuggling conspiracy as a gaggle of mobsters and lawmen shadow the two morons.

So basically Do America, is an animated road movie, that shows these two in situations that you have never seen them before. I have already seen this movie like 20 times but that was when I was all young. Now that I’m older, I know a lot more of what the jokes are saying, and oh god did I laugh!!

A lot of people never understood Beavis and Butt-head even when it was on MTV. It was a brilliant satire of popular culture and the crudeness, insipidness, and stupidity of it. Beavis and Butt-head are the narcissistic anti-heroes; fourteen year old heavy metal heads who’s life is totally empty without television. The only thing they think about is television and “scoring.”

This is what I found out to be the funniest element of this whole movie. Yeah the jokes may be the same usual dirty jokes, but they are displayed in such a way that you can’t help but laugh. How these two take everything in a different way then it normally was, made me laugh a whole lot more.

I need to say that the satirical element in this film is what is very funny. Not just B&B, but other people like the government, police, and a lot of the politicians are viewed as stupid and sometimes ignorant, which made me laugh a whole lot more.

I just wish that this film had a lot more. It was only 1 hour and 20 minutes and when it was all over I felt like I just watched 3 episodes of B&B. The plot could have expanded into more places, but hey that’s just me.

Consensus: Do America is hilarious, satirical, and at the same time brainless. Though if it went on longer I think it would have been such a better movie.

8/10=Matinee!!!

Oh, my life, is changing everyday…
in every possible way,
And oh, my dreams,
it’s never quite as it seems…
Never quite as it seems…

Do you remember where you were in March 1993? That is when this song came out. So, if (like me) you remember, you might be old. Regardless, today, I like the sentiment. I have been having absolutely maniacal dreams. Totally. Freaking. Crazy. And then this morning, this song came out of no where on my iPod. Therefore, I share it with you.

You are welcome.

Fight Club – 1999

Director – David Fincher

Starring – Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, and Helena Bonham Carter

Firstly, I’d like to mention that this review was a special request from a friend of mine.  Normally all it would get would be a little bullet review simply because I had already seen it, although I do confess it deserves quite a bit more attention.  So, here we go.

Back in 1999, before I had read the book, learned the rules, and become swept up in the fervor that was Fight Club, I was blissfully unaware of what lay before me.  At the time, I was living in an apartment with 3 other guys, all of which lifted weights, and were at least partially if not completely into the pathos of the film.  All of us were in our twenties, none of us were in solid relationships and each of us was steeped in the malaise of the 90’s.  Everything about Fight Club not only seemed fresh, it was fresh.  Released the same year as the other major 1999 film with a genre defining plot twist, The Sixth Sense, I had no clue as to where Chuck Palahniuk’s tale of hard-won maturity was taking me. 

Whether or not you like the film, Fight Club grabs away your attention, and doesn’t let you have it back until finished.  As the very definition of slick and flashy, but with the added bonus of subtext, the film sets forth with a social commentary unique to its place in time.  Equal parts special effects display, close examination of the modern-male condition, romance, and suspense film, Fight Club is unapologetically brazen and wonderful.

For those lucky enough to not know what it’s all about, here’s a brief rundown of the plot (don’t worry, I won’t spoil it).  The narrator, sometimes referred to as Jack (although we never actually learn his name), is stuck.  He finds himself constantly running the treadmill of the daily working-grind.  Business trips, catalog shopping, and time spent avoiding everything of substance in his life is taking its toll, and he finds himself unable to sleep.  In an attempt to turn his life right side up, Jack meets a girl (Marla), makes new friends (Tyler), and goes through the process of systematically dismantling his life in an attempt to put it back together again.  From nameless worker bee, to co-founding an underground street fighting ring, to working to bring down the system all in the name finding cure for the omnipresent male aggression that he suffers from, Jack walks a very long path to find himself in very familiar territory.

Despite its somewhat fractured method of telling it’s story, Fight Club is a fairly straightforward film.  Using a very visual, and interactive method of walking us through the narrative, we are placed directly into the character’s nerve center.  We see first hand, from Jack’s point of view, his plain, drab apartment being populated with equally plain, drab furniture.  We watch as his work-life gets drowned out by his new passion for fighting, and we feel the same panic when the boundaries of his comfort zone are reached.

Fincher utilizes the same grimy chic aesthetic that he used in Seven, and would later use in Panic Room.  Going along with the themes of the source material, everything is worn, threadbare, and ultimately falling apart.  From the house that Jack and Tyler move into on Paper St. to the tenuous relationships that hold our main character to his old life, we watch as the very fabric of his life is torn apart.  Aside from dressing the set accordingly, Fincher utilizes destructive imagery, achieved through the combination of CGI and simple practical effects.  Lighting, post-production coloration of the film, as well as on and off-screen narration provide a glimpse into the inner workings of the distressed mind of our main character.

What to say about the acting…I’ve never liked Brad Pitt better than I do in his role of Tyler Durden, and Edward Norton, coming off of his fantastic run of Primal Fear, and American History X, achieved a level in his career that he hasn’t before, or since.  Helena Bonham Carter provides the perfect foil to the Pitt/Norton duo, by playing crazy with issues in a really grounded sort of way, and numerous wonderful supporting roles are filled out by familiar faces, such as Meatloaf, Zach Grenier, Jared Leto, and a whole host of others that you’ve seen even if you don’t know their names yet.

Since my initial viewing, I’ve come to watch the film time and again on DVD, and I find that the story has changed a bit.  Coming out of the theater the first time, I felt empowered as a film student, a movie goer, and as a young man who didn’t quite know what he wanted out of life.  The macho posturing and gratuitous justification of the character’s extreme measures seemed completely justified to me.  Damn right I wanted to take something back from the world that had taken so much from me!  I too, wanted to punch my way into a happier life, have my anger and discontent work for me instead of against me, and find that dysfunctional, messed up girl who “got” me. (What!?  I said I was in my 20’s.)  Needless to say, I grew up.  My selfish view of the world changed, and I stopped being so focused on my own problems.  As I grew, and watched the film again, I realized there was a satirical bent to the film that I didn’t see when I was steeped in selfishness.  Now that I had a changed view of the world, and myself in it, I could understand the fact that the film wasn’t preaching anarchy, or violence.  Instead it was illustrating the nature of youth, and the power of experience, and acceptance as a means of learning and growing out of it. 

Fight Club is a near perfect film, right up there with The Royal Tenebaums, The Big Lebowski, and Children of Men.  A true 10!

I hate to admit this in an MJ fan blog, but I never paid much attention attention to “HIStory” because when it came out I had fallen into the rock music scene more than pop and initially thought the album was purely a “greatest hits” type + with “Scream” and “You are not alone” included, so now I’m going back and really giving the other songs a listen. Don’t get me wrong, I always liked Michael and listened to the albums I already had in my collection, but as I got caught up in an underground rock scene, I unfortunately lost interested in purchasing any more pop albums for years and I stopped paying attention to a lot of mainstream pop-culture. I’m a terrible fan, I know, and listening to the lyrics in the “HIStory” songs really depresses me because I feel like he’s calling me out for abandoning him.

I was listening to this song tonight. I do vaguely remember the controversy surrounding it and I remember thinking that if people were REALLY as confused as they were acting as to whether Michael was being anti semitic in his lyrics, then they were complete idiots. I didn’t understand what the confusion was about because the message in the lyrics didn’t seem vague at all to me. The media definitely was trying their hardest to destroy him at this point and radio stations were hesitant to even play the song here in the US. However the song made the top ten in all the European countries.

For more about the controversy surrounding the song, you can check out the Wiki page.

“They Don’t Care About Us”

Skin head, dead head
Everybody gone bad
Situation, aggravation
Everybody allegation
In the suite, on the news
Everybody dog food
Bang bang, shot dead
Everybody’s gone mad

All I wanna say is that
They don’t really care about us
All I wanna say is that
They don’t really care about us

Beat me, hate me
You can never break me
Will me, thrill me
You can never kill me
Jew me, sue me
Everybody do me
Kick me, kike me
Don’t you black or white me

All I wanna say is that
They don’t really care about us
All I wanna say is that
They don’t really care about us

Tell me what has become of my life
I have a wife and two children who love me
I am the victim of police brutality, now
I’m tired of bein’ the victim of hate
You’re rapin’ me of my pride
Oh, for God’s sake
I look to heaven to fulfill its prophecy…
Set me free

Skin head, dead head
Everybody gone bad
trepidation, speculation
Everybody allegation
In the suite, on the news
Everybody dog food
black man, black male
Throw your brother in jail

All I wanna say is that
They don’t really care about us
All I wanna say is that
They don’t really care about us

Tell me what has become of my rights
Am I invisible because you ignore me?
Your proclamation promised me free liberty, now
I’m tired of bein’ the victim of shame
They’re throwing me in a class with a bad name
I can’t believe this is the land from which I came
You know I do really hate to say it
The government don’t wanna see
But if Roosevelt was livin’
He wouldn’t let this be, no, no

Skin head, dead head
Everybody gone bad
Situation, speculation
Everybody litigation
Beat me, bash me
You can never trash me
Hit me, kick me
You can never get me

All I wanna say is that
They don’t really care about us
All I wanna say is that
They don’t really care about us

Some things in life they just don’t wanna see
But if Martin Luther was livin’
He wouldn’t let this be

Skin head, dead head
Everybody gone bad
Situation, segregation
Everybody allegation
In the suite, on the news
Everybody dog food
Kick me, strike me
Don’t you wrong or right me

All I wanna say is that
They don’t really care about us
All I wanna say is that
They don’t really care about us

All I wanna say is that
They don’t really care about us
All I wanna say is that
They don’t really care about us

All I wanna say is that
They don’t really care about us
All I wanna say is that
They don’t really care about us

Tony of Tony’s Book World said Amelie Nothomb is a “Must Read Author”. He said: “If you start to read her books, you will continue to read her books.” Apparently, The Complete Review gave him the scoop. Well, Tony is right.

This book warrants every point of the B that The Complete Review gives it. I think it just missed out on a B+. But, her other grades being what they were, Amelie threatened to be a one-woman grade-inflation-machine. The Complete Review got this one right which makes me eager for her higher scoring submissions.

The Stranger Next Door is a very odd book, though the premise is simple. A retired school teacher and his wife decide to move out to the country for the peace and solitude. They find their dream house, “the House”, and settle into their golden years. Their life is ideal.
Emile Hazel narrates his and Juliette’s experiences that first year in the country.

After one week in the House, we were convinced we had never lived anywhere else.

One morning, we took the car to the village to buy groceries. The store in Mauves was a delight to us: it didn’t sell much, and this absence of choice made us inexplicably joyful.

This is not a novel about planning a dinner party or a story about strolling through Kew Gardens, however. The same afternoon they return from the charming grocer, their neighbor comes to visit:

[A]t about four o’clock, someone knocked on the door.

I went to open it. It was a fat man who seemed older than I was.

“I’m Mr. Bernardin. Your neighbor.”

What could be more normal than a neighbor coming to make the acquaintance of new arrivals, particularly in a clearing consisting of two houses? His face, moreover, could not have been more ordinary. I remember, nonetheless, standing there frozen, confused, like Robinson upon his first encounter with Friday.

Emile is onto something. This is not just a neighbor, this is a stranger. Mr. Bernardin’s opening salvo is longer than any of his other utterances on that first visit, or the second, which occurs at precisely four o’clock the following day. The pattern is set.

The stranger, only made more strange by their knowing his name, continues his routine of arriving at four every afternoon. Emile and Juliette soon realize that he intends to continue visiting at that hour daily in perpetuity. This would not seem to be a major problem, only Mr. Bernardin rarely speaks and, when he does, is very concise. Emile and Juliette find this disconcerting, plus, they have no desire to be held captive to the punctual stranger next door.

Their first attempts to dissuade Mr. Bernardin’s neighborliness consist of attempted murder by kindness. When Mr. Bernardin perseveres, they try mocking him. Nothing seems to work and they cannot decide whether he is an imbecile or diabolical.

The question becomes more urgent and more difficult to answer when they finally meet Mrs. Bernardin. Mrs. Berardin and her situation become the impetus that sets in motion a series of startling plot developments, all of which serve Amelie Nothomb’s philosophical and moral purposes.

This novella is packed with delights which are humorous, grotesque, philosophical, and moral. Despite being so slight, the book is not an easy read. The prose is crisp, but the mood is unsettling for everyone, including the reader. Emile and Juliette and the reader have time to consider whether lack of choice really is “inexplicably joyful”, and the answer is driven home with the force and speed of thumb screws. The payoff is worth the wait, however, when deeper questions regarding manners and morals begin to demand answers.

Emile and Juliette are reactive characters, but circumstances eventually force them to choose. Husband and wife each answer in their own way, with serious consequences for both of them and for the Bernardins.

While this is not one of my favorite reads of the year, the originality of the story, the sprinkling throughout of literary, philosophical, and mythological references, the prose, the humor, and the weight all guarantee that I will try others of Ms. Nothomb’s works. If this is her worst, I am in for some treats.

Wait, some of you might be thinking. Who is Robin Tunney?

Robin Tunney; image courtesy of tvdramas.about.com

I think Tunney was slated to be a star when she started cropping up in movies in the 1990s. While stardom didn’t happen for her, she’s had steady work, currently starring on The Mentalist, a CBS procedural. She was supposed to co-write a book on feminism with her friend Liz Phair, with whom she worked on the movie Cherish. I’m still waiting for that last one.

For many in my age group, we know her from back-to-back appearances in Empire Records and The Craft. As both movies were slumber party staples in my friend group, featured teen girl characters, and were accompanied by popular soundtracks, I knew I’d need to revisit them.

Empire Records came out in 1995 and developed a bit of a cult following, despite poor reviews and a dismal box office performance. It also instilled a personal desire to work at a record store, particularly an indie fighting to stay that way. At 13, it looked so cool and fun to “work” all day at such a place with hip teens and twentysomethings.

Well, maybe not them specifically, as the characters in Empire Records aren’t believeable as people so much as underwritten Generation X versions of cool kids dreamt up by a team of movie executives: there’s Joe, the anti-establishment boomer-era owner (Anthony LaPaglia); Lucas, the Zen-like hipster (Rory Cochrane); A.J., the sensitive artist in love with the unattainable Corey (Johnny Whitworth); Corey, the wholesome speed freak perfectionist (Liv Tyler); Gina, Corey’s slutty best friend who wants to be in a band (Renée Zellweger); Mark, the stoner (Ethan Embry); Berko, the rocker who clocks in between gigs (Coyote Shivers, who was married to Tyler’s legendary mother Bebe Buell at the time); and Debra, the rebel girl accountant who shaves her head after attempting suicide (Tunney).

Oh, they are so selling out; image courtesy of chartrigger.blogspot.com

The writing is the movie’s biggest problem, though I’ll never understand why casting directors thought someone as boring as Tyler would ever be a huge star (I’d ask this question again later in the decade when Katie Holmes started landing movie roles). The motivations of the characters, though meant to be read as young and madcap, are childish and inconsistent. The boys pine after girls, eat pizza, get high, and glue quarters to the floor. The girls pine after has-been teen idols doing in-stores, alternate between loving and hating each other, and get together with the boys who pine after them. Both sexes deliver such profound lines like “If I can love her in that skirt, than this must really be it” and “I went to rock and roll heaven, and I wasn’t on the guest list.”

That second line is the answer given to a question about bandaged wrists. It’s delivered to withering effect by Debra, potentially the movie’s most interesting character. She’s not glamourous like her female co-workers or sophomoric like her male colleagues. She also seems to have gone through real pain, deeper than the surface angst used to promote OK Soda and perhaps closer to the actual pain brought on by parental neglect and low self-esteem. In the early 1990s, these and other issues were particularly relevant to young girls, some of whom would form or discover riot grrl and queercore and develop their own queer and/or feminist identities. We only get a sense of Debra’s absent mother, resistent intellect, boredom with men, feelings of inadequacy, and the hope for something better.

Note: I’d recommend watching director Allan Moyle’s far-superior Times Square. Rest assured that the tale of two girl runaways falling in love amidst downtown New York’s early-80s squalor will get its due on this blog.   

It’s weird that slashed wrists bridge Tunney’s two major performances to date. Clearly suicide, perhaps most unfortunately personified by Kurt Cobain, was on young people’s minds at the time. I’d hedge that this has more to do with class frustration, racial injustice, conflicted feelings about sexual orientation, coming out to unsupportive families and communities, dysfunctional home lives, and a lack of any real support system. I’d also add that it’s an on-going problem.

Absent mothers also connect Debra and Sarah, the latter of whom lost her mother during childbirth. As The Craft was originally pitched as “Carrie meets Clueless,” it seems necessary to point out that these movies feature girls with compromised mother-daughter relationships. Carrie’s mother is a crazed witch. Cher Horowitz, like so many other fairytale heroines before her, lost her mother at an early age and has only an idealized memory of her. Sarah has similar baggage, along with the additional burden of being responsible for her mother’s death. Oh, and carrying on the ability to perform witchcraft. That’s a hell of a lot for any teenage girl to shoulder, especially when she’s moving to Los Angeles with her family.     

A heartening aspect of The Craft , no doubt motivated by how successful Clueless was, is the presence of girlfriends. Sarah meets shy Bonnie (played by Neve Campbell) and becomes friends with a trio of Goth girls. Two other movies came out in 1996 that focused on girl gangs – Girls Town and Foxfire. For a more nuanced analysis of these two movies and their depictions of homosociality and developing feminist politics, I highly recommend checking out my friend Kristen’s thesis Revenge, Girl Style. 

The Craft entertains the progressive potential of girl friendship, particularly for outcasts. There are also hints at the queer possibilities of homosocial bonding and witchcraft. It even contains racially charged moments, particularly when Rochelle (played by Rachel True), the coven’s lone African American member, casts a spell on Laura Lizzie (Christine Taylor), a popular blonde who is on the swim team with her. After enduring Lizzie’s racist comments about her hair, Rochelle turns her bald, thus rebelling against normative, white-centric notions of feminine beauty. 

But these suggestions are sidelined. Because what the movie is really about is the battle between Tunney’s kind-hearted Sarah and Fairuza Balk’s destructive ringleader Nancy, who is jealous of her frenemy’s natural aptitude for witchcraft. It should also be noted that Nancy is working-class and coded as queer. The movie makes a considerable effort to undo her queerness, putting men in between her and Sarah, whether they be ex-boyfriends or Manon, the supernatural male figure that the girls worship. The movie ends with Nancy trying to kill Sarah, resulting in a showdown that tears the group apart, causes Sarah to move, and leads to Nancy being institutionalized. The final shot is of Nancy in a straight-jacket trying to fly out of a padded cell. The movie’s message: we are the weirdos, mister. Just don’t expect us to stay friends or keep a hold of our sanity. So much for sisterhood.

Nancy's farewell; image courtesy of channel4.com

Sisterhood is often lacking in movies, but is emphasized to market teen movies, if only to tap in to the girl market. But much of this was eclipsed in story development to make way for more lucrative prospects, none more pronounced at the time than the soundtrack. A considerable number of American teen movies in the 1990s featured a soundtrack, many boasting songs by alternative rock artists. Unlike The Craft and Empire Records, and more in line with All Over Me, Girls Town and Foxfire paid particular attention toward showcasing female artists, particularly those closely associated with hip hop and the then-waning riot grrrl movement. Scholars like Jeff Smith and Mary Celeste Kearney have addressed this in their work, theorizing that the soundtrack served as a way to cultivate potential audience markets and a source of textual identification for fans.

While female artists are present on the soundtracks to Empire Records and The Craft, they’re not the focus, perhaps out of fear of alienating a broader audience. This might further explain why The Craft soundtrack features covers of popular songs from lesser-known acts. Our Lady Peace contributes a version of The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows,” Heather Nova covers Peter Gabriel’s “I Have the Touch,” and Letters To Cleo take on The Cars’ “Dangerous Type,” a tactic they’d repeat when covering Cheap Trick’s “I Want You To Want Me” for 10 Things I Hate About You at the end of the decade. And let’s not forget the double-nostalgia of former Psychelic Furs’ front man Richard Butler covering The Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now” with his post-Furs project Love Spit Love. 

Cover to "The Craft" soundtrack (Sony, 1996); image courtesy of thesoundtracktoyourlife.co.uk

A major problem both of these movies share, and is evident in other titles of this period and in the Brat Pack movies of the 1980s, is the need to broadly define its characters as members of a generation, rather than as complex young people with particular problems oftentimes informed by their identities. And while ennui and an ironic fluency in popular culture were markers for Gen X, these young adults were more than just sneering (white) kids in flannel, combat boots, and barettes. At least off-camera.

Oftentimes, they were frustrated by how little high school and a liberal arts education could get them in a job market, particularly during the late 1980s and early 1990s when the economy had yet to recover from the 1987 market crash. They were annoyed at the shrine their parents built to the 1960s, as it was clear just how empty and hollow their promises of revolution were. In some ways, they were no different than people my age or boomer hipster Paul Kinsey on Mad Men, turning to interesting records, movies, books, and TV shows, but knowing they wouldn’t make them any happier, politically mobile, or economically viable.

Michael Gladis as Paul Kinsey, proving the every generation has its hipster; image courtesy of readingunderthecovers.blogspot.com

Some of these people formed bands, often annointed with glossy but unremarkable one-word monikers: Sponge, Drill, Lustre, Cracker, Elastica, Spacehog, Dig, Hole, Belly, Hum, Bush, Toadies, Oasis . . . In a particularly cruel example of market imperative, many of these bands broke up or were without major label record deals by the end of the decade.

I still have Elastica's debut album!; image courtesy of forgottenfavorite.com

But it’s hard to convey all of this in a 90-minute movie, especially one that hopes to cash in on the wages of the very demographic these popcorn flicks were hoping to represent. Some did a decent job of conveying this generation’s ambivalence, particularly indies like Kicking and Screaming. I’d also add that Reality Bites highlights these problems, even pointing out the crass ways in which corporate America capitalizes on the very market its created. While I wish Winona Ryder’s filmmaker character Lalaina didn’t end up with Ethan Hawke’s slacker Troy, I understand why she can’t be with Michael (played by director Ben Stiller), who works for an MTV-type network that makes worm’s meat out of her documentary about her friends. 

Richard Linklater’s second feature, Dazed and Confused, did a considerable job at suggesting that Generation X inherited their sense of slacker frustration (and detached nostalgia for Schoolhouse Rock and The Brady Bunch) from their parents. That Linklater cast a bunch of twentysomething unknowns like Joey Lauren Adams, Ben Affleck, Rory Cochrane, Adam Goldberg, Jason London, Matthew McConaughey, Parker Posey, and Marisa Ribisi to essentially play the teenagers and young adults who would become their parents may strengthen Robin Wood’s argument that Dazed is a horror film. 

Some television shows also did a good job articulating the nuances of the slacker era. I’d offer up British programs like Spaced, along with MTV’s Daria and ABC’s My So-Called Life. The latter featured an angsty girl protagonist, complex teenage characters, depicted boomer parents being just as clueless and angsty as their brood, and created an immortal stoner heartthrob named Jordan Catalano (played by Jared Leto), whose band Frozen Embryos changed their name at the end of the series to perhaps the most perfect of Gen X band names: Residue.

Angela Chase (Claire Danes) with the object of her affection; image courtesy of thefbomb.org

But it’s always different for girls, and unfortunate that Tunney and many of the actresses of her generation were not given the consideration they deserved (though I love that Austin Chronicle writer Margaret Moser fancies herself as being like Balk’s character in Almost Famous). Some may attribute this to their flat delivery or lack of believability, but I’d wager that this has more to do with poor character development on the part of screenwriters and the industrial emphasis on youth than it does on the actresses. At 19, Kristen Stewart is playing the slouched-shoulder ingenue of a multi-million-dollar film franchise, its latest installment complete with a soundtrack featuring of-the-moment, indie and indie-friendly artists like Bon Iver, St. Vincent, Lykke Li, Grizzly Bear, and Thom Yorke. I only hope she has that sort of star power at 25.

Kristen Stewart at the "New Moon" premiere in Los Angeles; image courtesy of justjared.buzznet.com

Finally, I get to see these two work together!!

After seeing British soldiers gun down his father as a child, Frankie McGuire (Brad Pitt) joins the Irish Republican Army, determined to avenge his father’s death, and sails to America to buy weapons from an underground arms dealer. Going by the alias of Rory Devaney, Frankie moves into the home of cop Tom O’Meara (Harrison Ford), who, when he learns of Rory’s agenda, must choose between his sympathy for a troubled man and his desire for justice.

The film is directed by Alan J. Pakula, and with his other films like The Pelican Brief and Presumed Innocent, you can pretty much tell he loves creating these type of political-violent thrillers. With this one though, I don’t think it was one of his strongest.

The beginning shows how Pitts father is gunned down in front of him. But what is never explained is why he was gunned down in the first place. So instead of further elaborating on this, the film takes a flash-forward to Pitt as an adult. This bothered me cause I never really understood why this happened at all.

But how could you make a movie about the violence in Northern Ireland, and never ever even bring up the words Catholic and Protestant, or even for that matter British? Honestly, if you are going to have a film about this subject then there must be some at least reasoning of what religion is which and why they are fighting.

The one thing that saves this film is its performances from its leaders. Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt, both play two superb characters that at first you don’t really know or care about yet. But, by the end you start to really be able to relate to these characters and you start to like them as it goes along. Pitt, if you can get past his really funny Irish accent, actually has a scene or two where shows his abilities as an actor early in his career. They both have good chemistry from start to finish and that is what makes me like this film a lot more than the other ones.

The ending for this film is what is really bad though. I felt like with this ending they wrote it over 4,000 times, and just ended with this final play because they had nothing else better.

Consensus: The Devil’s Own has powerful performances from Pitt and Ford, but feels a lot more jumbled together, and isn’t too clear about certain parts of the story, if just leaving some out.

5/10=Rentall!!!!

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Usually I’m the one going on about cars– here’s your chance to show your stuff.  Name all 18 autos and – you tha man.

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1. 1962 Chevrolet Corvair Monza GT

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2. 1968 Bertone Alfa Romeo Carabo

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3. 1970 Porsche Tapiro by Guigaro

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4. 1970 Lancia Bertone Stratos Concept Car

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5. 1970 Pininfarina Ferrari 512 S Modulo

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6. 1970 Bertone Lancia Stratos Zero

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7. Adams Probe 15

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8. 1970 Chevrolet Corvette XP-882

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9. Straker Car

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18.

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Selections from: Warhol, Robyn R., and Diane Price Herndl. Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1997.

“Infection in the Sentence: The Woman Writer and the Anxiety of Authorship” (1979) by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar

• Interested in Harold Bloom’s concept of “the anxiety of influence” (derived from psychoanalysis applied to male authors as Oedipal boys and the precursors who represent fathers), Gilbert and Gubar extend this concept to female writers who must necessarily experience their male precursors differently.
• Because male writers have defined women as crude stereotypes, female writers must engage in “revision” (ala Adrienne Rich – “the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction…an act of survival”) to define themselves as women against those definitions and seek out female precursors in order to engage the female writerly subculture, which is so different from its male counterpart.
• Males engage in their own kind of revision, but Gilbert and Gubar make this distinction: “Her battle, however, is not against her (male) precursor’s reading of the world but against his reading of her” (24).
• The authors find that the anxiety of authorship is profoundly debilitating, and they explain illnesses such as anorexia, agoraphobia, claustrophobia, or others like hysteria, faintness, delicateness, etc as being caused by patriarchal society not only because they were byproducts of societal training for women, but because they were themselves the goals.
• Reading short excerpts from Emily Dickinson, Anne Sexton, Margaret Atwood, the authors find that “whether she is a passive angel or an active monster…the woman writer feels herself to be literally or figuratively crippled by the debilitating alternatives her culture offers her, and the crippling effects of her conditioning” sometimes appears to be passed on from other literary foremothers (29).
• The authors claim that concern with disease as a subject appears to occupy much of 19^th-century women’s writing, and they cite Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson, Charlotte Bronte, and Elisabeth Barrett Browning.

“Dancing Through the Minefield: Some Observations on the Theory, Practice, and Politics of a Feminist Literary Criticism” (1980) by Annette Kolodny

• Kolodny introduces her essay as a response to the variety of dissonant voices among what may be called feminist literary critics ten years after its loose formation.  She concludes that though the lack of coherence may be an outsider’s most substantial criticism, it is in fact evidence of a type of coherence because feminist literary critics value a kind of pluralism that uses interpretive methods without being bound by one.
• “Our task is to initiate nothing less than a playful pluralism responsive to the possibilities of multiple critical schools and methods, but captive of none, recognizing that the many tools needed for our analysis will necessarily be largely inherited and only partly of our own making” (184).
• “The fact of differences among us proves only that, despite our shared commitments, we have nonetheless refused to shy away from complexity, preferring rather to openly disagree than to give up either intellectual honesty or hard-won insights” (184).
• “If feminist criticism calls anything into question, it must be that dog-eared myth of intellectual neutrality” (186).
• Previous to this conclusion, Kolodny organizes her essay into two other sections.  The introductory section summarizes the past ten years of criticism and its focus on studying previously ignored texts by women and making them more generally available as well as the feminist critique of male authors both of which reveal a view of literature as a social institution shaped by patriarchy and able to be shaped by feminist ideals.
• The second section introduces and explains 3 propositions she marks as the theoretical core of most current (1980) feminist literary criticism: 1) Literary history (i.e. the canon and how we read it as canon) is a fiction.  We read the past based on the choices we make today.  2) The way we’ve been taught to read engages paradigms—not texts.  Men are not knowledgeable about women’s worlds and therefore may not be able to appreciate women’s texts.  3) We must reexamine our aesthetics as well as inherent biases and assumptions which inform the critical methods we have used to read (and make aesthetic judgments).  There is no right way to read, and we have to challenge what we’ve accepted and acknowledge what value there is in each way of reading.

“Recycling: Race, Gender, and the Practice of Theory” (1992) by Deborah E. McDowell

• McDowell argues for a way of reading that restructures knowledge rather than merely annexing it.  Her general argument is that “theory” (e.g. poststructuralism) has been historically defined and determined by men and co-opted by white women.
• Though many theorists have paternalistically encouraged African American feminist criticism to learn to become fluent in theoretical academic discourse in order to come out of marginality, McDowell claims that marginalization is “often structured into the very theories” that black women are encouraged to master.
• We need to understand “how theory has been made into an exclusively Western phenomenon inextricably attached to the view that it does not and cannot exist outside a Western orbit” (244).
• McDowell critiques white women’s use of Sojourner Truth as an example in their theoretical claims.  She later critiques Michael Awkward for pressuring black feminists to adopt theoretical discourse and looks to Rey Chow and Edward Said when discussing how theory has been created as Western and ought to be seen in that context.

“The ‘Wild Zone’ Thesis as Gloss in Chicana Literary Study” (1993) by Cordelia Chávez Candelaria

• Candelaria doesn’t put forth much of an argument but instead defines and contextualizes the “wild zone” thesis originally put forth by anthropologists Edwin and Shirley Ardener in 1975.  She then demonstrates its use for contemporary women of color—specifically Chicanas then does a light reading of this “wild zone” in works by Estela Portillo-Tranbley, Denize Chávez and Sandra Cisneros.
• “Zone” denotes both physiologically-derived space (women are bound by the social structures caused by biological difference) and stereotype-derived space (women are weak and not as smart as men).  “Zone” is used in other fields to mark space defined by both physical and social phenomena (i.e. climate and parking zones).
• The “wild zone” identifies a paradox of female identity: “a distinct female experiential, cultural space” unmediated by imposed definitions of identity (as in women are living in some organic women’s culture) yet this space is defined by and located in a patriarchal system that is oppressive (249).
• “The ‘wild zone’ schema acknowledges the legitimacy of questions regarding the idea of an essential woman-ness and the critique that dismantles such an idea, but it simultaneously recognizes that a crucial consequence of patriarchy is the persistent and empowered ‘perceiving’ of ‘women’ in essential(ist) terms” (250).
• Because the dominated class (women above but can refer to people groups) is policed by the dominating class, they must learn the dominating discourse.  Yet there is an unmediated discourse among the dominated class which is inaccessible to the dominating class.  This inability to access the dominated discourse is spoken of briefly in Kolodny’s essay as gender inflections outside canonized norms.

“The Madwoman and Her Languages: Why I Don’t Do Feminist Literary Theory” (1984) by Nina Baym

• Baym takes issue with French feminists and those who buy into their theory that women’s language is fundamentally different in men’s and out to appropriately separate from the common language (dominated by men).  Proponents she names of this theory are: Cixous, Iragaray, Christiane Makward, and Domna C. Stanton.
• After mentioning deconstruction as a tool utilized by these theorists, she says, “More often the theory is an agenda for the way women might or should write in future; to me it seems a guarantee of continued oppression” (282).
• “When you start with a theory of difference, you can’t see anything but” (284) in reference to sexual difference shaping how we view language.
• Baym particularly takes issue with the image of the madwoman by Gilbert and Gubar for insisting on a reading of Bertha that happens to fit in their suggestive mold relying heavily on psychoanalytic principles that are based on outright misogyny.
• “To my perception…this attachment to Freud…manifests precisely that masochism that Freud and his followers identified with the female.  We are most ‘daddy’s girl’ when we seek…to seduce him.  Our attempt to seduce him, or our compliance with his attempt to seduce us, guarantees his authority.  If Freud is right, there is no feminism” (285).
• Baym and Kolodny’s call for pluralism.  Both are uneasy about using the old tools for a new structure.

“Feminist Politics: What’s Home Got to Do with It?” (1986) by Biddy Martin and Chandra Talpade Mohanty

• This article reacts to the critique offered by come feminists of color against Western feminism because of an assumption that Western feminism as it has become known is only useful for white women in the west.  The authors argue that this assumption because “the reproduction of such polarities only serves to concede; feminism; to the ‘West’ all over again.  The potential consequence is the repeated failure to contest the feigned homogeneity of the West and what seems to be a discursive and political stability of the hierarchical West/East divide” (294-295).
• The authors choose to read an essay be Minnie Bruce Pratt because it explores the exclusions and repressions supporting a seeming homogeneity in white identity.  Pratt positions herself as narrator and reader by acknowledging her situatedness and resituating herself in material situations.
• The authors are not very clear about what they are arguing for in the essay, but it seems that they read Pratt as an exemplar (though they note an imperfect one) of one enacting the kind of self-referentiality as well as theoretically-rich questions needed for feminist inquiry.
• Being home refers to being in a safe, familiar space with protected boundaries, and not being home is a matter of realizing that home was an illusion.
• Regarding the opposition between victims and perpetrators: “The exposure of the arbitrariness and the instability of positions within systems of oppression evidences a conception of power that refuses totalization, and can therefore account for the possibility of resistance” (307).

“Upping the Anti (sic) in Feminist Theory” (1990) by Teresa de Lauretis

• The author responds to the presumptuous attitude of poststructuralist feminists who see cultural feminism/essentialism/feminist practice as the outcome of poststructuralist feminism/anti-essentialism/feminist theory.  Rather the second came out of the first, and essentialism is not as simplistic as one might imagine.  We ought to see the essence of women as similar to the essence of triangles—both essences are complex and defined by specific historical moments.
• The author examines essays by Chris Weedon and Linda Alcoff, the first which she criticizes severely.  She brings many questions to the second and concludes that we must examine the history that brought about these oppositions between cultural feminism and poststructuralist feminist theory.
• She finds that an account of the history of feminism reveals two concurrent drives: an erotic drive that values images of difference and subversion and rejects images of victimization or passivity and an ethical drive that values community and accountability.  These two drives fuel polarizations and the construction of oppositions, and it is the negotiation between and challenging of these two drives that is characteristic of the kind of discourse that moves beyond internal opposition and into more complex analysis.
• “upping the anti” means “by analyzing the undecidability…of the alternative as given, such critical works release its term from the fixity of meaning into which polarization has locked them, and reintroduce them into a larger contextual and conceptual frame of reference” (336).

“The Laugh of the Medusa” (1975) by Hélene Cixous

• This essay is addressed to women (though the impossibility of a homogeneous group called “women” is acknowledged) and calls them to write.  The essay criticizes the cultural and masculine “economy” that has placed value on men’s writing and women’s writing has been repressed.
• Women are valued in this essay for their potential for subversive thought and therefore social transformation.  Women are encouraged to write to other women to affirm them and bring them out of silence.
• The author opposes a conception of bisexuality which annuls sexual difference but values one that stirs up sexual differences, pursues them, and increases their number.  This bisexuality seems more apparent in women, and its men who suffer the result of phallocentric monosexuality in which they repress femininity (354).
• “I want all of me with all of him.  Why should I deprive myself of a part of us?  I wasn’t all of us” (360).
• The author compares women’s writing to “The Dark Continent” which has been called dark and made scary by phallocentric thinking.  She also uses the image of Medusa, who has been told that she will turn people to stone, but who in fact is beautiful and laughing.
• The author focuses on the need for writing about the female body.  The language she encourages women to adopt is unlike the masculine language women are encouraged to overturn and explode.  This language appears to be highly embodied, but this may be a metaphor.  It’s difficult to tell what kind of language she envisions women adopting.

“This Sex Which Is Not One” (1977) from This Sex Which Is Not One by Luce Irigaray

• Responding to traditional psychoanalysis, Irigaray critiques the representation female genitalia only in relation to male genitalia.  She instead offers the image of female genitalia as two lips in constant erotic contact and claims that when engaged in sexual penetration with a male, this erotic contact (and therefore the woman’s sexual pleasure) is disrupted and violated (the logic appears to be that during heterosexual intercourse, the vagina replaces the masturbating boy’s hand, and this results in pleasure.  But there is supposedly no corresponding replacement for the woman).  The pleasure a woman receives during this type of sex is only a “masochistic prostitution” of her body that she has been trained to take pleasure in.
• Irigaray notes that women have a separate language that evades reason and coherence.  This separateness from men is related to her biological difference—specifically her touching genitalia.  Women are often misinterpreted because they operate under a different “economy.”
• Women have been forced to hide their sexual desire, speech, and imaginary but ought to be let free to develop them.  She considers homosexuality a possible tactic but determines it will only reverse the order of things.
• “Woman is never anything but the locus of a more or less competitive exchange between two men” (368).

“Writing the Body: Toward an Understanding of l’écriture feminine” (1981) by Ann Rosalind Jones

• Jones focuses on three French feminist theorists (Kristeva, Irigaray, Cixous, and Wittig) and notes that they share an interest in shared female nature that resists phallogocentrism.
• Kristeva does not think that a coherent women’s language is desirable.  Rather “woman” represents not so much sex as an attitude, “any resistance to conventional culture and language; men, too, have access to the jouissance that opposes phallogocentrism” (372).  She focuses on women’s difference as mothers.
• Jones calls Cixous’s “Laugh of the Medusa” her manifesto for l’écriture feminine.  Jones also notes that Cixous insists on the libidinal differences between men and women as evidence of their distinctly different unconsciousnesses.  While Irigaray focuses on differences of genitalia.
• Jones argues that gender and sexuality (not talking about sexual orientation) is not a biological given but rather a social phenomenon (375) and argues that femininité (a bundle of Everywoman’s psychosexual characteristics) is insufficient because it fails to recognize the diversity of women and culture (378).
• Jones notes the importance of femininité as an alternative idea and lens used to asked important questions
• Wittig recognizes that “women” is a category produced by social relationships (377).

“Introduction” from Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1985) by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

• Sedgwick argues that changes in the structure of the continuum of male homosocial desire were bound up with more visible changes, that “the emerging pattern of male friendship, mentorship, entitlement, rivalry, and hetero- and homosexuality was an intimate and shifting relation to class,” and that all elements of that pattern are related to women and the gender system (507).
• ”The historically differential shapes of male and female homosociality…will always be articulations and mechanisms of the enduring inequality of power between women and men” (510).
• When examining the relationship between sexual desire and political power requires an investigation along two axes: forms of analysis that historically describe asymmetrical power relations (race, class, gender) and the analysis of representation, which reveals the “range of ways in which sexuality functions as a signifier for power relations” (511).
• She notes the value of Marxist feminism in investigating gender difference diachronically through historical and economic analysis, but she also admits its inability to deal with the question of sexuality.  She then looks to radical feminist theory and its strength of synchronically interrogating sexuality, yet she acknowledges that it has failed to adequately address how sexuality has changed or can change.  Sedgwick therefore proposes to utilize both theoretical bases and the category of ideology as she investigates the subject of sexuality.
• Her study discusses a continuum and a shifting relation of meaning between male homosexual relationships and the male patriarchal relations by which women are oppressed: homophobia directed by men against men is transhistorically misogynistic (521).

“Introduction: On the Politics of Literature” (1978) by Judith Fetterley

• Fetterley claims that American literature is by and large male, and the politics of literature involves the issue of power—power/powerlessness experienced by readers who feel included or excluded from literary narratives.
• Through consciousness, power can be gained.  “To create a new understanding of our literature is to make possible a new effect of that literature on us” which requires asking questions of the ways we read and opening up the systems of power embodied in literature to questions and to change (569).
• “Clearly, then, the first act of the feminist critic must be to become a resisting rather than an assenting reader and, by this refusal to assent, to begin the process of exorcising the male mind that has been implanted in us” (570).

“Women’s Time” (1981) by Julia Kristeva

• Kristeva comes from a Marxist perspective and looks to psychoanalysis for some limited inspiration.
• Kristeva defines two kinds of temporality (she gets some help from Nietzsche): cyclical (related to cursive time or linear history), which constitutes identities via historical sedimentation, and monumental (another history, another time that contextualizes supranational, sociocultural ensembles within even larger entities), which causes loss of identity through its connection of memories escaping from history “only to encounter anthropology” (861).
• Both temporalities are traditionally associated with female subjectivity, yet the second is thought of as necessarily maternal and the first is inherent in the logical and ontological values of every civilization and is related to language (grammar is linear?) (862-3).
• Although she recognizes the political usefulness of the term ‘woman,’ she sees its assumed intelligibility as negative because of its homogenizing effect and argues that it is perhaps time to reveal the “real fundamental difference “ between the sexes, which she does not as such define (perhaps the future perfect she hopes to have been true?) (863).
• Kristeva elsewhere argues against the notion that women have been excluded from the linguistic system and thereby rejects what she calls “fetishistic reification” of the feminine (others might call it cultural feminism).  In this essay, she refers to the problematic search for a “woman’s language” and its relationship to social marginality rather than any kind of sexual difference.  She says that the interest in phenomena such as this is a mark of the second generation of women whose main social concern is “the sociosymbolic contract as a sacrificial contract” (869).
• The first generation focuses on universal equality and has been incredibly useful, but it homogenizes women’s experience.
• One of the translators of this essay writes in the introduction to its first English publication in Signs writes “For Kristeva, the moments when women deny culture, reject theory, exalt the body, and so forth are moments when they risk crossing over the cultural borderline into hysteria” (though hysteria is potentially liberating).
• Kristeva uses Freud’s notion of penis envy to investigate how sexual difference and language may interact.  She finds that both sexes are subject to the same forces and, “That certain biofamilial conditions and relationships cause women (and notably hysterics) to deny this separation [of language from a presumed state of nature] and the language which ensues from it, whereas men (notably obsessionals) magnify both, and terrified, attempt to master them” (867).
• The third generation she advocates: “The very dichotomy man/woman as an opposition between two rival entities may be understood as belonging to metaphysics.  What can ‘identity,’ even ‘sexual identity,’ mean in a new theoretical and scientific space where the very notion of identity is challenged?  I am not simply suggesting a very hypothetical bisexuality which, even if it existed, would only, in fact, be the aspiration toward the totality of one of the sexes and thus an effacing of difference.  What I mean is, first of all, the demassification of the problematic difference, which would imply, in a first phase, an apparent de-dramatization of the ‘fight to the death’ between rival groups and thus between the sexes” (875).
• Kristeva places particular importance on the biological ability of females to give birth: “Pregnancy seems to be experienced as the radical ordeal of the splitting of the subject: redoubling up the body, separation and coexistence of the self and of an other, of nature and consciousness, of physiology and speech” (873).

“Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism” (1985) by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

• Spivak reads three works as a way of explaining how literary works reflect the imperialist narrativization of history.
• In Jane Eyre, Bertha Mason is cast with an animalistic exoticism of the Other, and Jane’s salvation comes from the winds of Europe.  St. John Rivers, the missionary in the novel who goes to India, is a vision of the subject-constituting project Imperialism created.
• She defines discursive fields such as ‘imperialism as social mission’ as having a system of signs based on a specific axiomatics.
• Spivak also does readings of Wide Sargasso Sea (Christophine is marked as Other) and Frankenstein (a text that does not deploy the axiomatics of imperialism).
• “No perspective critical of imperialism can turn the Other into a self, because the project of imperialism has always already historically refracted what might have been the absolutely Other into a domesticated Other that consolidates the imperialist self” (904).
• “Attempts to construct the ‘Third-World Woman’ as a signifier remind us that the hegemonic definition of the literature is itself caught within the history of imperialism” (905).

I haven’t looked at this book in sixteen years. Last night was the first time and this was the drawing I remembered the most.

Artist: Soundgarden
Album: Superunknown
Release Date: March 8, 1994

My affection for Chris Cornell is fairly well documented, I would think. If nothing else, the fact that I was one of the six people on Earth who liked Scream should be evidence enough. But I’ve barely touched on how I feel about Soundgarden. I really like them when I hear them. Problem is, I’ve gotten so turned off to the whole idea of “grunge” once I figured out that it, like most other musical genres, were basically a construct to make bands more marketable, so I tend to tune them out. Whereas a few years ago I worshiped at the altars of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, now they’re just other faces in a crowd. Very talented faces, but faces, not gods.

Superunknown, and specifically “Spoonman”, was my first taste of Soundgarden. At the time, my knowledge of grunge was Nirvana’s Nevermind and Pearl Jam’s Ten, so the abrasive, comparatively complex nature of Superunknown was jarring and off-putting to my uneducated ears. In fact, I’m pretty sure I traded my first copy of it in, only to get another one years later. But listening to it today the little things make sense and actually make the record more enjoyable. Mind you, it’s not nearly as accessible as other albums, but it also didn’t need to be. Just by nature of being the “in” thing, it was going to sell and be remembered. The fact that it was good was just gravy.

Soundgarden – Spoonman [iTunes] (YSI)

==TJ==

Who needs vintage/retro shops when you have a wonderful hoarding, eccentric, dancehall queen mother like mine. On my recent trip back home i managed to get my paws on her stash…my mother and aunty used to rock these back in the day (1992) when they were my age, if i close my eyes real tight i can still see them practising the butterfly and bogle before going out.

90’s dancehall vintage

I used to put my Boney, child butt into these hoping that they would fit me the way they did my mother, i’ve waited a long time to wear these dammit! it’s finally my time to shine… and sparkle.

(needs to be dyed)

There were a few more pieces (dresses and catsuits) but my poor little suitcase couldn’t handle them all, i’ll have to retrieve the rest at a later date.

A star right on the donky!!

‘TING A LING A LING, SCHOOL BELL RING, KNIFE AND FORK FI FIGHT DI DUMPLIN…’

Thanks mommy!!

X

Signed to MCA at the height of the Madchester movement, Intastella – much like fellow-South Mancunians World of Twist – never really fitted in with that scene, and once the world had moved on, found themselves dropped. A few more indie releases followed, but the band never really found an audience. A pity, as their dance-pop-rock hybrid was pretty infectious and, as Goldfrapp would later prove, potentially commercial if given the right exposure. sadly, the band more often than not found themselves on shows like this, playing to indifferent audiences.

Here’s the first Bootsy cover.

I was lucky enough to attend this concert. IIRC it was my first Bootsy concert ever. Unfortunately the recording is incomplete – much props to the taper Funkateer Genius anyway. The picture used for the cover was taken by myself that very night.

Funk on,
FF Gap

Film: Zamaana Deewana (1995)

Language: Hindi

Slide Show Link:

Click Here

Please read this entry first because the following post is a continuation of that.

The first time I heard “Who is it” was when Michael sang it a cappella during the Oprah interview. I’ve mentioned in this blog before that I wasn’t allowed to buy the “Dangerous” album because my mother thought it was too sexual. However, she did allow me to record most of the songs off the radio or buy the cassingles, which is what I ended up doing with “Who is it”. The tape not only featured the original song, but also the a version with the Oprah intro added.

So, why is “Who is it” in my top 5 Michael Jackson songs? There are several reasons, actually. “Who is it” is one of those songs that is layered with musical depth. You can listen to it countless times and each time, pull something different from it that you hadn’t heard before, or perhaps even hear the song in a different way.

However, the reason I fell in love with it in the first place wasn’t because of the musical dynamics but more because of the emotional drive that I felt Michael put into it. The driving beat at the beginning could have made the song steer in any path that Michael chose. Dark sexuality was my first impression of it until the keyboards and strings kicked in giving the song more of a hollow and lonely tone.

Before “Human Nature” and “Will You Be There”, “Who is it” was my #1. I couldn’t really relate to the story line of the song, I was only thirteen after all, but it was the angst and beautiful lonliness that came through quite clearly in his voice that I was drawn to. The song’s tone and atmosphere fit my spirits during those times and it was nice to have an emotional outlet of a jam such as “Who is it” to blast in my headphones.

The actual video of the song wasn’t released on MTV in the US. Instead, the video was replaced with footage of Michael’s various music videos as well as performances of the Bad tour and Motown 25. I didn’t have MTV anyway, so I didn’t know any better. I rented “Dangerous: The Short Films” from Blockbuster Video, however, and was able to see the video then and did it ever give me a surprise after being a fan of the song for so many months!

I’m an incredibly private person, so I hate to go into too much detail about who I am, but I’m going to make an exception for this entry this time –By the way, I realize and I apologize that most of my personal stories most of the time are so pathetic and depressing. It’s just that I discovered Michael and his music during one of the darkest periods of my life and I just always go back to those times because his music and messages helped pull me through them.– ANYWAY, what I was saying.. a little bit of personal info in the next paragraph.

My first name is rather uncommon. It’s not hideously strange, but I’ve really only met one other person in my life who has shared the same name. It bothered me a bit when I was a kid that everybody would always mispronounce or misspell my name. Don’t get me wrong, I like my name, but sometimes I have to say I felt a little left out that I was never able to find anything personalized in stores. Not a huge deal, but sometimes I wished I could decorate my room with personalized stickers and such.

There was one other thing that bothered me about my name. A bit before Michael was accused of child molestation, a cruel boy in my grade discovered that my name rhymed with “Molest” and he would call me by that word instead of my actual name and get others to do the same. What made is worse is that they discovered my best friend’s first name actually rhymed with “Molester”, so we were called “Molest and Molester”. I had no idea what the word meant prior to the name calling, but what a way to find out, right?

A short time later, Michael was accused of molesting a child and although I could only relate to being called such a thing and not actually ACCUSED of it, I really felt for him for having that word attached to his name. Of course, I was tortured a bit more at school after Michael was accused of molesting the kid because I was a fan of Michael and “Oh, how funny that your name is ‘Molest’! Hohoho!”

The time frame in which I first saw “Who is it” off of “Dangerous: The Short Films” was closely after he was accused of the charges. When I watched it, my jaw dropped to the floor.

For the first time I saw my name elsewhere besides my own handwriting! I wondered if Michael personally chose all the names on those cards. The total dork in me fantasized about him researching names for the video in the weeks prior to the shoot by looking through baby-naming books Maybe he stumbled across mine and thought, “That name is really beautiful and unique!” then wrote it down on a piece of paper and stuffed it into his wallet. While making the video, perhaps he pulled out the paper and instructed, “Make sure this name is on one of the cards”.

lolol! Oh me!

Well, this is my “Who is it” entry FINALLY

Awesomely, I’m trying to continue writing at the rate of 1 blog post per day. Will I keep it up? Or will I succumb to the forces of entropy that make me go slower because I’m sleepy and want to lie down? Only one way to find out! In any case, today I intend to write about a subject Ashley and I have been indulging in a lot recently: the Nostalgia Critic. It’s one of the personas of Doug Walker, aka That Guy with the Glasses, an Internet-based performer who posts videos about movies, TV, video games, and other aspects of pop culture.

While in the guise of the Nostalgia Critic, however, Walker takes aim specifically at media produced during the ’80s-’90s – the period during which he and most of his audience grew up. Sometimes, this involves highlighting what he considers triumphs, as in his “Top 11 Nostalgic [Whatever]” series. More often, however, he addresses the irredeemably bad; hence his catchphrase, “I remember it so you don’t have to!”

It’s these clip-laden, 15-20 minute reviews of wretchedly awful movies that keep Ashley and I going back to watch over and over again. With them, the Nostalgia Critic fulfills a function similar to our beloved MST3K: sorting through the mass-produced junk of those two decades – decades which seemed to be on perpetual sugar highs, decades where pop culture was reeling amidst its own self-cannibalism and self-prostitution – and applying his own humorous critiques, satirizing and judging the hours and hours of material churned out by the entertainment industry.

So let’s try to sort out, to some extent, just what the Nostalgia Critic does, and why it’s so enjoyable. On one level, he’s serving as a sort of pop cultural historian, a keeper of memories – memories which are piling up all too quickly all over the Internet, and getting buried underneath other, louder memories. And in keeping with Sturgeon’s Law, about 90% of what he’s remembering is pure crap. Unlike Ashley, I haven’t watched every single one of his videos, but I’ve seen a fair few, and these are the impressions I’ve gathered.

As with MST3K, or the wonderful Golden Raspberries, or any other format that involves reappropriating bad movies, the Nostalgia Critic approaches his quarry with a kind of aesthetic masochism: the willingness to be subjected to insulting, poorly made shit, and yet derive ironic humor from it and its sheer badness. Of course, like Mike and the Bots, he hardly revels in what he’s watching, but goes on watching it nonetheless, even while reiterating how few potentially redeeming qualities a movie like Good Burger or North has. While in character, he treats his reviews like a sworn duty, to watch and record the existence of these atrocious misfires so the audience doesn’t have to.

I think this attitude reveals an interesting connection between these cultural products and we who consumed them. It’s as if the Nostalgia Critic is committed to historical honesty: as much as he’d like to deny that Good Burger ever existed, he can’t, because a whole generation of children saw this worthlessly unfunny movie, meaning it left an impact on our collective consciousness, however minute – like a tiny meteor striking the face of the earth. It’s like he’s writing down mankind’s cinematic sins, to be used as evidence against us on Judgment Day – except, well, with a less grim metaphor.

I’m always curious about nostalgia, and how it alters our perceptions. I believe it comes from the Greek for “our pain” – the pain of being away from home, whether spacially or, in most cases, temporally. Nostalgia is often wistful, longing for a time in the past. E.g., we’re collectively nostalgic about, say, the cozy peace & domesticity of the ’50s, or the free-wheeling “anything goes” mentality of the ’60s, despite the facts that these are stupid, meaningless generalizations that have very little to do with what life in this decades was actually like. That’s how nostalgia can color our vision: since we don’t remember “then” that well, and we’re acutely aware of everything that’s wrong with “now,” then clearly “then” must have been so much better.

And it’s these kinds of hazy recollections that the Nostalgia Critic skewers so effectively. In an age when we actually have shows called “I Love the ’80s” and “I Love the ’90s,” when we have an entire subsection of the entertainment industry fueled purely by nostalgia, he dares to step forward and point out that this time period, about which morons on VH1 are gushing to lovingly, really did produce a lot of tedious, embarrassing trash. Trash so inane it pains the human mind to comprehend it. And as video after video demonstrates, he’s fucking right.

Granted, not everything marketed toward children in the ’90s was as deeply bad as Kazaam or the zillion movies starring Macaulay Culkin, but these were there, they were visible, they were watched. I can say from first-hand experience, filtered through a decade (and more) of distance, that these movies were the ones we joked about in the schoolyard or on the bus, spotted on the shelves in video stores, watched on TV, or on VHS, or in theaters. They were utter junk, yes, but we watched them for years, as dutifully and eagerly as a 19th century Englishman reading Dickens, or as a German citizen in the ’30s browsing over a pamphlet on Nazism. Where and when we are has such an effect on who we are – and in the end, these “nostalgic movies,” what do they say about us? What about the fact that almost every other review starts with a look of intense displeasure on the Nostalgia Critic’s face?

So the Nostalgia Critic’s videos are both a slap in the face to every time we’ve said, “Ahh, I remember growing up in the ’90s…”, and a compulsive archiving of the endless folly (with occasional exceptions) that filled theaters and TV screens during our formative years. That, and they’re funny as hell. The character of the Nostalgia Critic is adorably grumpy, perpetually on the edge of hysteria, yet so inured to the shit the past pelts him with that he’s come to expect very little.

Being more or less a fan of bad movies myself, I can very much sympathize. The ’80s and ’90s were fascinating periods for soullessly conceived, often corporate-driven entertainment, especially for children – a trend that’s only accelerated since. Good thing there’s someone who’s willing to dissect and analyze this enormous pile of movies and TV shows, reminding us that, as the Nostalgia Critic’s brother-in-arms Jay Sherman would say, “It stinks, it stinks, it stinks.”

Finally, I leave you with one more video showing just how talented and humorous Doug Walker can be in his neverending task of reconstructing our cultural history. Expect to watch this short video over and over again; it’s an impressively compact encyclopedia of allusions.