Promisorry Notice

Life gallops on, with or without blog-worthy thoughts. Thoughts, I've had a few; but then again, too few to mention.

The most stellar of them gravitate, as they are so prone to do, around Star Trek. Every so often, in the midst of that gooey cheese fondue that passes for space opera, there are a few lines that really sing. Or maybe they just settle in my consciousness like grit inside an oyster.

Or maybe they beckon like pearls before a swine.

"I don't like where this is going..."

Alright, enough of the metaphors. The line I've been mulling over, from time to time these last few days, occurs late in the sixth Star Trek movie, The Undiscovered Country. Spock, discovering that his disciple (played by a pre-Sex Kim Cattrall) has, under the sway of a peculiar strain of logic, betrayed him, his ship and his beloved Federation, declares (rather angrily): "Logic is the beginning of wisdom — not the end of it."

Ah, but that makes the old heart goes pitter-pat. For one thing, any peek behind his impassive mien, and his devotion to Vulcan principles, is welcome. More than that, it's hard not to get goosed by the script-writer's ballsy, and very conscious tweaking of the Judeo-Christian code: "The fear of The Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (from Psalm 111:10 and Proverbs 9:10). It's also a very pointed tip of the hat to Gene Roddenberry, that Great, determinedly Humanist, Bird who got the whole (*cough*) enterprise going.

There are nuances and ironies aplenty to explore — but not tonight. Too much on my plate, my friend. Content yourself, if you can, on previous provocations. I'll be back.

Swinging The Bawdy Eclectic, With Sleigh Bells, Updike and DFW

What's an ambitious rock duet gotta do to distinguish itself from all the other riff-raff duets out there? Sleigh Bells surely know, but they ain't telling.



The prestige treatment they received in the glossies prior to the release of their sophomore album was something I hadn't seen since the Followill Boys groused their way to drunken stardom. Every glossy on the stand seemed to offer a blizzard of Photoshopped snaps of Derek E. Miller and Alexis Krauss in full-pout mode. A solid month of facing these two cutie-pies as they copped a surly 'tude made me want to bring them home and liquor them up with peach schnapps, just so I could watch them pee on the roses and puke on the cat.

I settled instead for buying the CD — Reign of Terror — at Walmart, and I've gotta say: I should have stocked up on the schnapps. Reign Of Terror is fine enough. It has its moments of sonic interest, even catchiness, and certainly suggests what must be a terrific stage show. But it's not going to get much repeat play in this household.

Another recent, impulsive CD purchase that won't be getting much repeat play: The Song Remains The Same. In Zep's case, though, I'm very fond of the music and the performances; it's just unlikely that I'll often be in the mood to indulge Jimmy Page's 28-minute attempts at tripping the light fantastic for his New York audience. Nor was he alone. All four of those dudes were ready and willing to unleash solos that ran as long as the average Sleigh Bells concert. I'll say this about that: whenever Zep took over a stage or studio or abandoned castle they made a point of hammering out music that they, at least, would never get bored playing.

A lofty ideal which, if Robert Plant's current attitude is any indication, ultimately failed them. It's also an ideal which the super-fragmented digital culture has lost all track of. Audiences and performers have changed, as they must, but I can't help nursing the codgery thought that today's music is just a wee bit (gasp!) disposable. But so it goes. Lofty expectations rarely serve anyone well in the mercurial world of rock 'n' roll.



I had lofty thoughts of my own, back when I was Sleigh Bells-aged. That was the early 80s, when I spent most weekday evenings penning Very Important Prose in Scribner notebooks. Like any young “artiste” I approached my chosen form the way Houdini approached a pair of handcuffs. Every short story was a brilliant reinvention of the wheel; every longer piece was . . . well, who knows what the hell they were? In the end they became a huge pile of paper in a box.

As I wrote I didn't mentally bother with any of my peers. If the cover of Esquire was any indication, they had yet to distinguish themselves. And while the generation of writers just ahead of me weren't without interest, I didn't pay much attention to them, either. My get-published strategy, such as it was, was to head directly for the king of the hill and push him off with the apparent immediacy of my own brilliant spin on their game. I figured there were three guys who routinely seized the title of America's Most Important Writer: Philip Roth, Norman Mailer and John Updike. Or, as my “peer” David Foster Wallace succinctly described them: the Great Male Narcissists.

My strategy (thankfully) didn't pan out. My peers, however, developed a unified strategy of their own that did indeed distinguish themselves from the GMNs, a protagonist they've shared in common: The Great American Loser. Elaine Blair surveys the field and admits it's a tactic that works, for her and a whole lot of other readers. But at what cost?

It's been curious to me the collective sigh of relief we've breathed at the passing of the GMNs. Roth still stirs a few people because he's still alive and writing, but is either Mailer or Updike on anyone's required reading list? It's been years since I bothered with either of them, so I recently thought I'd try an Updike, to see if the contents retained any sort of potency. I reached for Couples, figuring the voluminous sexual activity would, if nothing else, retain my interest.

After 75 pages I resorted to speed reading. A few more tries at that, and I finally put the book down, unfinished. The sex is boring, chiefly because the women are pliant ciphers. A few hundred pages of that can leave the reader with an impression of a fantasist whose masturbatory goals are best accomplished to the sound of his own voice.

This was a tune the GMNs never got bored of singing. It may be true that in the passing of their voices, our culture has swung decidedly to the fragmentary and disposable. But who could blame us?

Current Curiosities

There's an old (2005) CD I dusted off, after hearing someone lament the unknown stature of the band that recorded it. I spun it while doing the housework, and thought, “Not bad.” I spun it again while taxiing the daughters to their various gigs, and thought, “Actually, this is pretty damn good.” Somewhere around the half-dozenth spin I was thinking, “Why aren't these guys a household name?”

Breaks Co-Op — originally from New Zealand, now residing London, UK — have a unique and entirely palatable sound. It's hard to pin down. Apple calls it “Electronica,” someone else qualified it as “House.” I'm catching traces of Peter Gabriel and Talking Heads, Paul Simon and Trap Door-era T Bone Burnett — “World Beat,” I suppose. But then I'm also catching Buffalo Springfield, so what are you going to do with that? Any way you want to cut and dry their sound, Breaks Co-Op is deeply infectious. You should retrieve your own copy of The Sound Inside and give a spin or two, just to see if you don't find yourself listening to it for the half-dozenth time and thinking . . . there's something happening here.


Speaking of infectious: Here We Go Magic has released their first single, “Make Up Your Mind,” from their forthcoming album, A Different Ship due out in early May. It's got a lot of what I like, particularly in its West African-style guitar riff. Stream it, or even download the mp3, over here. And if the spectre of young women in their skivvies contorting in a squeamish state of erotic despair is your thing, by all means watch the creepy video, too.

"Gasp! Is that ... Plotto?!"

The case for bricks-and-mortar bookstores: some books really should be bought on spec, and not in good faith. Philip K. Dick's Exegesis is chief among them. Having skimmed through In Pursuit Of VALIS, the earlier Reader's Digest version of the Exegesis, I'm inclined to trust Rob Latham's judgement: Dick's metaphysics are best absorbed in his fiction, which has the incalculable benefit of having being written with publication in mind. And yet, and yet . . . looking at the list of contributors adding annotation to Dick's tome, I am still sorely tempted. (Addendum: r. crumb gives you his summary.)

Also worth a glance, if not a purchase, Plotto by William Wallace Cook. Its press makes it sound a bit like the first “Choose Your Own Adventure” book. But I could also envision (vaguely, at this point) a novel in which this book attempts to enforce a plot on the central character, and even the reader. Did Plotto anticipate the meta-plot? If so, this book poses a threat to life as we know it — and belongs on my shelf. (Addendum: uh-oh: Lytle Shaw knows!)

Martinis: Shaken, Not Stirred. Galahads: Bloodied, Not Pampered.

I hadn't read Jeffrey Deaver prior to picking up Carte Blanche, the latest James Bond thriller commissioned by the Ian Fleming Estate. If this book is indicative of Deaver's craft, my ignorance was bliss.

Deaver takes a “Road Runner” approach to Ian Fleming's hero: the wily villain paints an elaborate and seemingly foolproof scheme to corner our hero, only to discover at the moment of execution that the tables have been utterly reversed. The appeal of this uniquely American variety of the thriller genre depends entirely on whether the reader's sympathies lie with the coyote or the bird. Those of us who want to see the bird roasting on a spit should steer clear of this book.

More grievous is Deaver's penchant for post-climax foreplay: explaining, after the fireworks have gone off, exactly how this impossible feat was accomplished. If this is how Deaver wrote his other books, then his appointment by the Ian Fleming Estate is absolutely baffling.

The front cover blurb for the paperback enthusiastically claims that Deaver, “brilliantly captures Fleming's style.” He does no such thing. Fleming restricts his narrative perspective to James Bond's POV, pitting Bond against the villain in an early and victorious face-off, before the villain gains the upper hand, and slowly feeds our hero through the shredder, feet-first. Oh, and some women get bedded. The main thing is, Bond gets the living shit kicked out of him, a scenario Fleming seemed to relish, as he excelled at repainting it with heartfelt variety.

That was Fleming's “style.” Deaver flits from brain to brain as he sets the mouse-trap. Through it all, Bond doesn't suffer so much as jet-lag.

I picked up Carte Blanche because the Fleming Estate's earlier choice — Sebastian Faulks — was spot-on, and did, in fact, “brilliantly capture Fleming's style.” Here's hoping there is a return to form with their next appointment.

Those of us who prefer our Galahads well-bloodied can't do much better than Philip Kerr's Nazi-era Berlin gumshoe, Bernie Gunther. I've read all the books, but the litany of torment is so extensive I've lost track of what happened when. Has Gunther survived the deaths of two wives, or only one? Certainly a veritable harem of girlfriends awaits him in Purgatory. Not that he's troubled by such a prospect. Surviving the rise and fall of Nazi Germany, including a short stay in Dachau and the sordid indignities of Russian and American occupation, has been Hell enough for our Bernie. Somewhere in this Grand Guignol he also lost a finger — painful at the time, but quite trifling in the larger scheme of things.

That Gunther made it to his 60s is nearly miraculous, never mind that he's retained his ability to walk, and a willingness to do so directly into yet another stinking cesspool of corruption and carnage. After bearing witness to variegated German collusion with government atrocities, first at home and then abroad in South America, in this latest adventure Bernie is nearly done in by the collusion between the Jewish Mafia and the Cuban regime. And Kerr, ever the resourceful psych-thrill-meister, has teasingly unveiled new motivations for the reader to buy into.

But then I easily surrender my disbelief around Bernie Gunther. His happiness is never that happy. At best, it's fleeting; at worst, it turns around to deliver a lifelong hang-over of regret. Through it all, the poor bastard retains a moral equilibrium of sorts, even as he gets battered into near-submission. It's enough to keep me hoping he'll live into his 80s, to absorb the outrages of the Nixon-Brezhnev era.

Carnivàle vs. The "Kill 'em Young" Manifesto

"Golly, but I miss those 'Bottle Episodes'!"

I took my time getting around to watching Carnivàle. There were so many ways I could experience disappointment. The DVD packaging was fabulously evocative, suggesting the creative love-child of Flannery O'Connor and Stephen King. What if the show didn't live up to my expectations? Worse still, what if it did?

When I finally sat down to watch, the show hit a happy middle note. The episodic development of characters and narrative had a charmingly primal roughness. Season 1 was all ennui and suggestion, fostering expectations that the series might fold itself into a Lynchean sort of Fabulist Mobius Strip.

Instead, shortly after the midway point in Season 2, questions began to be answered. For a show as grievously truncated as Carnivàle, there are some very clear pluses and minuses to this particular tack. On the plus side, once certain pieces fall into place it's fun to go back to the early episodes and see where surprise conclusions were pointedly alluded to. On the minus side, it becomes crystal clear exactly where this television series was pointed and, frankly, the trip doesn't look worth the ride. Which brings me back to the plus side: I'm as grateful for what I've been spared as I am for what I've seen.

If you're among the legions of disappointed viewers who still want to know what was going to happen next, I can tell you. The carnival was going to split into factions pitted against each other by shady manipulative types. The guys you thought were good were going to cross the line with their behaviour, until the fateful confrontation between Brother Justin and Ben Hawkens is mired in profound ambivalence. Both camps would experience defections, and confusion of identity. There were going to be surprise resurrections, as well as prophecies that were either beacons of hope, or cunning deceits. And finally, by the end of Season Six, there would be an apocalyptic sloughing off of . . . .

Ah, but you've already seen this show. That's because the guy whose hand was heaviest on the till at the end of Carnivàle's first season bolted to another network, where he saw the thing to its proper completion. I'm talking about Ron Moore. And, yes: I'm talking about Battlestar Galactica, which managed to slip directly into its Decadent Phase at the very end of Season Two, and stay there to its conclusion in Season Four. And which, coincidentally enough, has a narrative arc that bears a striking resemblance to the Carnivàle “bible” laid out by creator Daniel Knauf at the beginning of that series (viewable here, at the HBOCarnivale Discussion Group, as The Gospel of Knaufius).

Another trait Galactica has in common with Carnivàle is its “bottle” episodes, where the epic comes to a screeching halt and the characters get to interact with each other and set up scenarios for subsequent episodes. These episodes are usually given over to the junior writers in the stable, while the seniors figure out how to plant teasers that lead to the big surprises that keep viewers hooked. Those are the episodes that get me looking at my watch and wondering if I couldn't just skip ahead to the next barn-burner (the answer is usually, “no” because I will have missed five minutes, or even 30 seconds, of crucial “reveal” planted by the Story Chief).

Even a show as brilliantly executed as The Wire couldn't escape these occasional doldrums, which is as it must be, I suppose. It does keep me wondering, though, if there is any creative team that has the wherewithal to keep generating narrative momentum for more than three seasons. I'll let you know if I ever find one that does. In fact, stay tuned: our family has just discovered this wacky six-season show that looks like it might have some potential. It's called Lost.

Post-it note: over at the Onion AV Club, Todd VanDerWerff is giving Carnivàle some frame-by-frame analysis. His attentiveness more than makes up for my crass generalisations.

The 84th Academy Awards: Trenchant Analysis From A Non-Viewer

It's been years since I last bothered to watch the Academy Awards, but why should that stop me from reading and contributing my own day-after commentary?

If there was a common note struck by viewers of this year's awards, it was how dismal and shabby it all was. I'll take their word for it. Two appended observations struck me rather forcefully, though. The first was that this year's Best Picture award embodied the “Least Objectionable Viewing” theory that television execs typically run with: i.e., the fella holding the remote control will settle on the program that bothers the fewest people in the room. So in the Academy's case, if the choice boils down to an arty kid's movie and a pleasant but toothless French movie marketed to adults, the French movie gets the vote.

It's a shame, really. I enjoyed the kid's movie — twice — but was rooting for Tree Of Life, a movie I've only seen 10 minutes of. I haven't finished it (yet) because in a house with two teenage daughters Mallick's movie qualifies as the most objectionable viewing. In a sane world, that alone would place it head and shoulders above would-be contenders.

Another commentator said the Academy Awards Show was Hollywood's equivalent of the State Of The Union Address. If this analogy holds true (and I think it does) then the American film industry's fixation on two nostalgic movies about movies suggests a collective mood that swings from denial to depression, and back again.

This theory would also explain why awards shows that include television series have been so much jollier in tone. It's difficult to recoup the blockbuster budgets for series like Boardwalk Empire and Mad Men, but a gazillion PVR hits can't be wrong: this stuff is the destination viewing (more TV-speak) of today's maturing aesthete. When series writers are doing their job right, we get complex story-lines and subtle character development over considerably more hours than we'll ever spend in a theatre. And, as a special bonus, the seats are comfortable, the bathrooms clean, and we don't get bombarded with sound bleed-over from the action flick in the adjoining theatre. Movie critics who pointedly ignore these shows are doing themselves a double disservice: not only do they miss out on some supremely satisfying viewing, they actively pursue their own irrelevancy.

And speaking of arty television series, I finally deliver a few irrelevant critical thoughts pertaining to Carnivàle — tomorrow!

The Del Fuegos, Reunited And Back On The Road

I haven't found anything on the web to support this, but I've been told Dan and Warren Zanes spotted the name for their future band on a road atlas. They traced the Number 5 highway as far south as it went, to its final destination. You couldn't get any lower than Tierra del Fuego: ergo, the Del Fuegos.

Here's another early band story, with attribution: in the band's first year or two on the road, the budget for alcohol exceeded the Del Fuegos' budget for gas. No small feat, considering this was the 80s, when beer was cheaper than gas and gas was cheaper than water. Close observers knew the band's days were numbered.

Actually, close listeners knew it, too. When Smoking In The Fields was released, it became obvious that, as Gordon Lightfoot put it, “the alcohol was no longer helping.” Smoking is a sturdy enough album, but there are lyrical indications that at least one band member was slipping lower than Tierra del Fuego, into a place no-one really wants to hear about. If they were going to survive — as human beings, never mind as a band — the Del Fuegos had to hit the reset button.

Two decades after the reset button was hit, the Del Fuegos are back, delighting fans and I daresay themselves with energetic and focused performances that are the exclusive domain of the clean and sober. I'll try not to be bitter in my envy of the good folks in the remaining seven (of 11) US northeastern cities, but if you count yourself among these lucky citizens you should avail yourself of the chance to catch these well-seasoned rockers.

For those of us who can't make the drive, there is a collection of new Del Fuegos songs to be heard: Silver Star (A, e, i). Fans who gratefully partook of Dan Zanes' family-oriented rock 'n' roll pretty much know what's on tap. The Del Fuegos are in a celebratory mood, as the (for now) free track “Friday Night” indicates. For my money, the collection closer “Raw Honey” is the stand-out track, hearkening back to the erotic slow-hand contemplations of yore.

While I'm certainly digging the new material, I do kind of miss the low notes the younger band hit. The demons of a narcissistic youth have been shackled and banished, as is right, but surely other dark shadows loom. Maybe instead of looking south, the Del Fuegos could glance northward: hell, up here in Canada we're gutting the Alberta/Saskatchewan landscape until the place looks like Mordor. That's not just our grandchildren we're throwing onto the pyre of cheap fossil fuel — we're throwing yours, too!

But I digress. Concert-goers get the full range of low and high notes, which is the way it oughtta be. See 'em if they show up in a town near you. The rest of us will wait in hope that the Del Fuegos reunion tour might just expand to include us, too.



Photo from here.