Flussy Ass Rides

Wow, it's been a while since I've listened to Da Lench Mob. Oddly enough I was reminded of them by a gay coworker whose musical range is at least as wide as mine. It's cool to find a gay guy who likes hardcore hip-hop. We traded iPods for half the day on Friday, and he had a lot of stuff I wasn't interested in, like Clay Aiken, but lots of good stuff, too. I like the idea of liking music that's not meant for you--it's rebellious in a way. I still will never really understand the hamhandedness of rap censorship. There's an interlude on Da Lench Mob's Planet of Da Apes cd where one of the Mob gets in a confrontation with a female cop, shoots her about 20 times, then calls her a "stanky lil' beeya--" So it's okay to imply a female cop is murdered by multiple gunshots, but to call her a bitch...no good?

What else? I got the Transformers game for PS3 and it's pretty fun so far. The graphics aren't mindblowing but good enough, and it's maybe a little odd that there's only one button for fighting--no special moves. You're either an Autobot or Decepticon and the missions vary accordingly--you're either fighting Decepticons or destroying stuff as a Decepticon, while trying to collect pieces of the "AllSpark," which is like the secret of life for the Transformers or something. It gets really repetitive shooting down endless helicopters and planes, and so far the environments aren't all that interesting. Pretty good so far.

I received my McSweeneys order, which was the dvd magazine Wholphin, #3. Haven't watched. Also finally bought Dave Eggers' You Shall Know Our Velocity, which has the lovely gimmick of the first few sentences of the novel making up the embossed cover and then going right along, with no pages for publisher info. I read most of the 826NYC catalog, which is a handsome diecut portfolio that fits 23 art plates inside from various artists, then on the back of each are art critiques by childrend aged 7-10, most amusing and some approaching profundity or at least a fresh perspective. Some of the art is pretty incredible--I loved the sculpture of a figure inserted into a giant kind of cupcake shape made up of lots of wax, with lots of candles stuck in it.

Even better was Nick Hornby's The Polysyllabic Spree, a collection of his first year or so of columns for The Believer. It's sort of a book review column from a respected, funny author, which would be good enough, but he's not so formal about it. It's as much about his life and all the things that get in the way of reading, and why he buys so many books even if he doesn't have time to read them (by his estimation, he's got 15 years of solid reading material). Very good book and I got a few recommendations from it. Actually, his column isn't a million miles from a blog like this one, though admittedly a lot better and even in his conversational style he finds a way to connect his threads that I don't generally put the work in to accomplish. Just ordered the second one as well as a book of his called Songbook, which is him writing essays about 31 of his favorite songs, with an accompanying cd of some of them. For better or worse, his book has basically legitimized my continuance of buying too many books.

Last week I watched the recent reissue dvd of Rio Bravo, which put me in a Howard Hawks mood I've successfully resisted acting on. It's such a good movie, though. Never mind if you think John Wayne is a Republican clod--he's never less than absolutely convincing as the sheriff here, and rather charming in his awkwardness with sex bomb Angie Dickinson in her first and probably best role. Dean Martin as his deputy Dude, who's trying to get on the wagon, is very good as well. It's one of the great Hollywood mysteries why Martin went solo from Jerry Lewis, did good jobs in three straight movies in a year with this, The Young Lions, and Some Came Running, and then promptly went downhill from Ocean's 11 onward through the other Rat Pack movies, Matt Helm and the rest. Walter Brennan is the most Walter Brennan ever as the maternal jail guard, especially since this was his first film after a bad accident that knocked out all his teeth. What's great about Hawks is how efficient he is. There are no show-off shots; everything is just composed to tell the story clearly. It's also pretty funny. Good alternating commentary by Richard Schickel and John Carpenter. There's another disc of bonus material I haven't watched--strangely the packaging doesn't tell you what's on it but it contains three documentaries (on the movie, on Old Tucson, and on Hawks), and there are also miniature lobby cards and a reproduction of a Dell comics adaptation of the movie by ALEX TOTH. The likenesses are good except that for whatever reason he gives Brennan's Stumpy a handlebar moustache.

I finished Haruki Murakami's After Dark, a novella about different people intersecting between midnight and dawn in Tokyo, including an estranged, second-favorite sister, a gregarious and odd trombone player, a "love hotel" proprietor and her second-in-command, a gangster, a prostitute, and the businessman who beats up the prostitute. Oh, and the first favorite sister, in a few very strange sections that could be science fiction or horror. Murakami is great at throwing you for a couple loops but he never gets too far out to lose your interest in the characters and their believable dialogue and interactions. Murakami could easily have made this a crime novel or a romance as well, and it's refreshing that he kind of bounces off the different genres like a pinball, never settling on one.

I've got a couple graphic novel reviews to get done this week. I'm currently reading Alice in Sunderland and about 2/3rds through the first FF Omnibus, which my kids like me to read to them. The only problem with that is that early Lee/Kirby stuff is pretty verbose and it takes a while to get through. I'm also itching to get to the Kirby style I really like, which is here in bits but often obscured by bad inking by Dick Ayers. And man, should Ditko never have inked Kirby, ever. Some issues you expect to be great aren't tht great, like some of the Doctor Doom ones, while the first Rama Tut is dynamite.

Good cds out now: The White Stripes - Icky Thump. Interpol - Our Love To Admire. Ryan Adams - Easy Tiger. The Beastie Boys - The Mix-Up. Von Sudenfed - Tromatic Reflexxions. Arctic Monkeys - Favourite Worst Nightmare. Patton Oswalt - Werewolves & Lollipops. Crowded House - Time On Earth. Tribute To Joni Mitchell (download Bjork, Costello, Sufjan Stevens). Loudon Wainwright III - Strange Weirdos: Music from and Inspired by the Film Knocked Up. Also download Fiona Apple singing Elvis Costello's stalker classic, "I Want You" with his band the Imposters. Fantastic.