Girl in a Cage

The New Jonathan Safran Foer Book

I am reading the new Jonathan Safran Foer book.  I didn't read Everything is Illuminated because the whole "There's a character in this book with my name" has worked for exactly 3 authors:  Jorge Luis Borges, Philip K. Dick, and Tim O'Brien.  Also, really, I've read, heard, and seen enough about the Holocaust in my life and will never willingly read, view, or listen to any Holocaust-involved stories again.  Unless maybe there are zombies involved.  Because that would be cool.

I own but have not read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  I hear it's good and feel like I should read it but am worried that it might be one of those "Manhattan and/or Brooklyn is the center of the universe" books. And, I mean, I like New York. I might even say I heart it, even though it's where the Yankees play.  But sometimes New York-based fiction gets annoying in its insistence that the particulars of Manhattan (or, increasingly, Brooklyn) life are just inherently fascinating.

But I bought and am reading Eating Animals.  This is largely because I am a vegetarian, and despite the growing numbers of vegetarians, it's still a fringe phenomenon, a diet that most people in this country think is freakish and annoying.  Though I know no militant vegetarians (I mean, I know they're out there, but none of the vegetarians I know personally are militant like that) I know plenty of militant omnivores who think nothing of lecturing me about  protein intake or looking for hypocrisy in the way I live the rest of my life.  And vegetarians, when acknowledged in popular culture at all, are typically presented as either ridiculous hippies or hectoring killjoys. 

Writing this book in hopes of affecting how anyone eats is an act of tremendous and admirable optimism that I would never be able to undertake. I'm cynical enough to believe that humans will gleefully kill themselves for a few moments of convenience, so the idea that a large number of people would ever do anything that would be even slightly inconvenient  represents a positive outlook I just don't have. Many people won't even read this book because they kind of know that farming (not using factory farming here because that's pretty redundant) is a deeply screwed up process.  We (counting myself, as I continue to eat dairy and eggs, which involve horrific amounts of suffering, so I'm not exactly on my high horse here) willfully shut our eyes and minds to the horror behind what's on our plates, because if we really allowed ourselves to know what we're participating in, we would stop.  And then what would I have on top of my pizza? 

So, since most people won't read this book, I wanted to share a particularly gross tidbit that's got me thinking about chicken.  It's about how chickens are killed and processed, but the horror of this is unrelated to animal welfare and suffering.  Take it away, Jonathan!:

Contamination often occurs here, as the high-speed machines commonly rip open intestines, releasing feces into the birds' body cavitites...

Next the chickens go to a massive refrigerated tank of water, where thousands of birds are communally cooled.  Tom Devine, from the Government Accountability Project, has said that the "water in these tanks has been aptly named 'fecal soup' for all the filth and bacteria floating around.  By immersing clean, healthy birds in the same tank with dirty ones, you're practically assuring cross-contamination."

While a significant number of European and Canadian poultry processors employ air chilling systems, 99 percent of US poultry producers have stayed with water-immersion systems... It's not hard to figure out why. Air-chilling reduces the weight of a bird's carcass, but water-chilling causes a dead bird to soak up water (the same water known as "fecal soup"). One study has shown that simply placing the chicken carcasses in plastic bags during the chilling stage would eliminate cross-contamination.  But that would also eliminate an opportunity for the industry to turn wastewater into tens of millions of dollars' worth of additional weight in poultry products.

He goes on to reveal that chickens sold in the US can be up to 11% water by weight. 

Enjoy your lunch!

Pop Music Roundup

I have children who insist on listening to top 40 (though, really, it's more like top 20) radio, so periodically I vent my thoughts on the stuff I hear.  Here goes:

Taylor Swift, "You Belong With Me".  Despite Taylor Swift's winning performance on Saturday Night Live a couple of weeks ago, I loathe her bland pop country pap.  This one feels particularly cynical because it's a tale of unrequited love in which the rival is a total straw man.  "She wears high heels, I wear sneakers..." what girl can't identify with that?  Because nobody wears high heels to high school!  It's brilliant marketing, really.  And I'd rather tell kids pining after the wrong boys or girls, "Don't pine!  Move on!  Their bad boyfriend/girlfriend choices indicate issues you'd rather not deal with anyway!"  Or, in any case, that's what I'd like to tell my 16-year-old self.  And then again my 18-year-old self.  Sigh.

Miley Cyrus, "Party in the USA" Another cynical pop confection that plays on Miley's image--oh, she's just a small town girl, livin' in a lonely world, at sea in this world of celebrities!  So it appeals to middle america's smug sense of superiority to the superficial coasts (hey, I grew up there--I can say that.  The coasts have their own smug sense of superiority). Here's what I like, though--she name-checks Jay-Z.  This shows two things:  1.) that Jay-Z is really, officially, totally over, safe enough to be name checked by teen stars and 2.)that the cynics who write pop songs for Miley Cyrus recognize that even the Middle American white kids that "Party in the USA" is aimed at love hip hop.  I just love that a pop/country/dance singer is given a song that references a hip hop mogul. It's not using music to divide and balkanize--it is, in its own cynical, market-driven way, using music to bring people together.  Oh yeah, and the chorus is catchy as hell and I annoy the hell out of my coworkers with it.  So that's cool too.

Jay-Z with Kanye West and Rihanna "Run This Town."  Boy, there's really no song here at all, and Jay-Z's forgettable verses show he can barely be bothered to show up for his own song, which is dominated by Rihanna's singing the hook.  Kanye's verse is actually kind of good (and how humiliating is it to be outrapped by Kanye West in any setting, but especially on your own record?) and very revealing. "What you think I rap for? To push a fuckin' Rav 4?"  This is why commercial hip hop totally sucks right now.  I mean, yeah, good for you Kanye, glad you got a nice car out of the whole rap deal, but I know kids who rap because their freaking heads are going to explode if they don't.  We've all been to concerts where professional musicians went through the motions for the payday and concerts where musicians looked like they had to get the music out of them or it would harm them.  The latter kind are the good ones.  Seems odd but I guess admirably honest that Kanye admits that for him, it's all about the money.

Cleveland, Homer, and Cliff

So, yeah, I like The Cleveland Show.This surprises me because I don't much care for Family Guy, which The Cleveland Show is spun off of.  It's not that Family Guy is never funny--it's just that it's often too mean for my taste.  And, I mean, I'm a jerk, so that's saying something.

And the Cleveland Show also has its mean moments, but, unlike Family Guy, it also has a heart.

Also, since I live in a blended family, I like depictions of blended families on TV.  And unlike, say, Drake and Josh or The Brady Bunch, The Cleveland Show doesn't just set up "this is a blended family" and then pretend it isn't a blended family: at least so far, we've seen a bunch of acknowledgments that it's not a seamless transition to blended family life.

Having said all this, it's pretty much of a Simpsons ripoff.And so, like The Simpsons, Family Guy, and countless live-action sitcoms since 1989, we've got a well-intentioned (usually) but not especially competent dad at the center of the action.When The Simpsons dethroned the Cosbys as TV's first family, (not too tough, since Bill had already decided to move from funny to sanctimonious, where he's remained since, while adding crotchety and profoundly creepy to the mix) it was refreshing to see a dad who was human and screwed up.  It was a nice corrective to the My Three Sons, Leave it To Beaver, The Cosby Show model of the semi-divine patriarch. (or possibly just a throwback to Herman Munster and Fred Flintstone)

But, enough already.  Art both shapes and reflects culture, and I wonder if all these numbnuts dads reflect the anxiety that men felt upon finding that they were expected to do more in the domestic realm than come home from work, read the paper, and dish out the occasional beating. Or maybe it's just that The Simpsons was a runaway hit and people imitate success, and all these dumb dads are Homer's fault.In any case, can we please get a TV dad who's not a hapless boob?While we're waiting, here's a nice episode of The Cleveland Show!

Virtual Class Visit!

I was having a lovely class visit with some 8th graders in Georgia via Skype when we were rudely interrupted by a network failure that shockingly was not on my end.  They had great questions about Donorboy and writing, and so, after receiving them via email, I answered questions from students who didn't get to ask their questions.  And so, here are their questions and my answers!

Some Thoughts on Michael Jackson's Music

On the occasion of the release of This is It, some brief thoughts about Michael Jackson's music and not his personal freakishness and alleged pervitude.

1.Certainly he was a genius performer and singer.  Not a genius songwriter, though.  Why do all his most beloved solo songs come from the albums produced by Quincy Jones?   Possibly because after 1987 was when he really went off the rails on a crazy train.  Or possibly because there was a musical genius at work on Off The Wall, Thriller, and Bad, and his name was Quincy Jones. Post Q= mostly unlistenable crap.

2. Only a handful of former children will ever really know for sure whether MJ's incredible self-hatred was justified, but here's something I haven't seen anybody else say:  the surgeries showed such a reckless disregard for his gift that they could be seen as trying to destroy it. 

I learned a couple of things about singing when I took lessons with the most excellent Pam Wolfe, and here's one:  your voice resonates in your nose.  This is why Barbra Streisand maintained her famous honker despite the fact that a nose job might have led to more movie roles.  And this is why Michael Jackson's voice, one of the best in modern popular music, was nearly destroyed by his desire to erase all traces of his blackness. 

Don't believe me?  Listen to the vocal tone in these two hits, only four years, but at least one rhinoplasty apart.  Michael's voice in "She's Out of My Life" is incredibly rich, and his singing is unadorned--except for the fake crying, there aren't a lot of gimmicks--the beauty of his voice sells the beauty of the song.

And now, from Thriller, "Human Nature"--notice how he's already relying on the whispering, the grunting, and all the other vocal gimmicks that would make his singing a parody of itself in the 90's and beyond.  He comes up with all these tricks to sell songs because his best trick--that amazing voice--is gone by 1983. 

It's really striking to listen to these songs back to back and compare the thin, reedy 1983 voice with the rich, buttery 1979 voice.  Especially considering these are studio recordings, so we have to assume that the best studio trickery of the day was used to make his voice sound better.

I think you know my thoughts on what kind of human being Michael Jackson was, but as this movie causes people to lament yet again what a great talent we've lost, let's remember that he destroyed it ages ago.

Best Albums of the Oughts, Part 3!

The Mooney Suzuki-- Alive and Amplified, Have Mercy

Alive and Amplified--an awesome garage band goes into the studio with the guys who produced Avril Lavigne's album and Liz Phair's big sellout.  Recipe for disaster, or recipe for complete balls-out hard rockin' awesomeness?  The latter! The title track alone has not one, not two, but three fake endings!  The subject matter varies from sex to the awesome power of rock and back to sex.  Subtlety is not the order of the day--"Loose and Juicy," "Messin' in the Dressin' Room" and "Naked Lady" are three of the songs--but it's all tremendous fun.

The Mooney Suzuki - Loose N' Juicy

Have Mercy is also a great record-- a little quieter, a lot more musically diverse, and packed with great songs from start to finish.

10 - Down But Not Out

The Raveonettes--Pretty In Black

The mutant offspring of Phil Spector, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and The Everly Brothers, the Raveonettes here produce a bunch of gorgeous, slightly twisted, and somewhat haunting pop songs.

The Strokes--First Impressions of Earth--The album where the Strokes really came into their own.  That Casablancas guy stopped hiding behind annoying vocal effects, and the lyrics, especially in "On the Other Side," turned out to be really good.

Ted Leo & The Pharmacists-- Shake the Sheets-- If Billy Bragg were American and fronted The Minutemen, it might sound something like Ted Leo's music.  There's a lot to love here, but here's what I love best--Ted Leo sounds like he's doing this not because he wants to, but because he has to.  Like if he didn't get to perform this music, it might just kill him.  That's a prety rare kind of passion...

11 Walking To Do

U2--All That You Can't Leave Behind.  Hipsters love to hate on U2.  I understand the logic.  It goes like this: most people are idiots with horrible taste.  Therefore, if a band is popular, it proves that they suck.    Like I said, I get the logic, but I don't agree with it. Not everything that's popular is crap, and this band is still a viable, interesting band after 30 years. Compare that to any other band--Most flame out before 10 years have elapsed, while others, like the Stones and Van Halen, stagger on for years or even decades after they've lost their mojo.

People also hate on Bono because he thinks about stuff and has the temerity to talk about stuff, and we like our rock stars brain dead, drug-addled, and dead.

Well, the hell with all that, I say.  This is an album for adults that happens to rock, and Bono's lyrics have just gotten better and more interesting as the years have gone by.

Joey Ramone was listening to "In a Little While" when he died.  You think you're cooler than Joey Ramone?  Well I don't.

The White Stripes-- Elephant.  The White Stripes put out 4 great records in the oughts.  Jack White does his best work with Meg, and his songs are smart, funny, and often rock your socks off.  I give the nod to Elephant because I think it's the most consistently good, but you could make the argument for Red Blood Cells, Get Behind Me Satan or Icky Thump too.

Wilco--Yankee Hotel Foxtrot--Yeah, the radio transmissions and noise interludes are self indulgent and incredibly annoying, but this album is every bit the masterpiece people say it is. (My theory--Jeff Tweedy makes fantastic music as long as there's a guy named Jay in the band.) 

Seamus Blogs!

My freeloading misanthrope friend, Seamus Cooper, author of The Mall of Cthulhu, now has a blog of his very own. Well, sort of.  He doesn't have his own Typepad account or domain name yet, so he's sponging off of me.  What are friends for? You can find his horror-related musings here, in the Food Court of Fear!

Given the fact that he's freeloading on my domain and Typepad account, I may using Seamus for cheap labor and outsourcing my horror posts to him, so make sure to bookmark him.  You can follow him on twitter, too:  twitter.com/seamuscooper.

And, of course, you should buy his book, The Mall of Cthulhu.

Best Albums of the Oughts, Part Two!

Nada Surf--Lucky-- Here's what I wrote about this record after I first got it.  Can't much disagree now: it's rare that a record is as beautiful as this one. We value a lot of things in popular music: "catchy," "rockin'" "funky" "danceable"; but "beautiful" seldom makes the list. The sound is lush and complex, and the album is crammed to the edges with beauty: melodies, harmonies, backing vocals, cello parts - many tracks are so pretty it almost hurts to listen to them. Even now, as I make swoony goo-goo eyes at my computer while I type this and "See These Bones" plays, I'm getting some very strange looks from my fellow coffee shop patrons. But this is what love does: it makes you ridiculous. (When I reread this in six months, I'm sure I'll be cringing at my earnestness; but, for now, I'm going irony free.)Of course, the music is only half the story; the lyrics hit me where I live--in that strange bittersweet zone where joy and sadness meet. The album is packed with images of death, loss, and sadness: "just like we are, you'll be dust," "ice is growing on the wings," "everyone's got to leave their love sometime." But this is no mopefest; it's catchy, it rocks, and it proves, in an unassuming, unpretentious way that popular art and great art can be the same thing.

01 See These Bones

Frank Black and the Catholics:  Black Letter Days/Devil's Workshop

Everybody went crazy when the Pixies reunited, and well they might, but what most folks missed is that Frank Black has been busy growing as both a musician and a songwriter.  I mean, look, I love "Wave of Mutilation" as much as the next guy, if not more, but Frank on his own is writing songs that are more personal, less gnomic, and still pretty rockin'.  He put these two out simultaneously, and except for one horrific dud on "Black Letter Days", they are both top-notch.  Devil's Workshop has a more Pixies-ish sound, so that's probably a good place for folks unfamiliar with Frank's solo work to start.  Here's my favorite from that one:  a dark, spooky tale of a visit to Graceland.

03 His Kingly Cave

Hank Williams III-- Lovesick, Broke, and Drifting. If you like country music even the slightest bit, you need this record. Period.  This is old school country music about booze and heartbreak, and Hank has been gifted with his grandfather's voice. It's actually kinda eerie in places.  Sadly, Hank seems to have gone off the rails a bit after this--while there's one song ("Trashville" featuring ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons on guitar) on this one about how commercial country music sucks, that's become a bit of an obsession with him, to the point where there's an anti-Kid Rock song on his latest album.  Which just seems kinda like shooting fish in a barrel to me.  But this album is fantastic from start to finish, and the highlight for me is "Five Shots of Whiskey" which I believe is one of the finest country songs ever recorded.  Have a listen:

10 5 Shots of Whiskey

Len Price 3-- Rentacrowd  Yes, it sounds like it should be an accounting firm.  But really it's a British band rocking that early Who, early Kinks sound in a quite authoritative fashion.  This is a bigger achievement than it might initially sound when you figure that nobody else is really doing it, and even Pete Townsend forgot how to write a good Who song around 1969.  (Yeah, I said it--best garage band in the world became bloated arena rockers.  Feh.)  A fantastic album start to finish, and that sound just makes me smile.

Download 01 Rentacrowd

Lordi-- The Arockalypse--I've written about this band a lot over the last few years, but let me just say this bunch of Finns in latex monster suits makes fantastically awesome and melodic 80's-style metal, and this album is their most consistently awesome.  I really like "The Kids Who Want To Play With The Dead" as well as "The Deadite Girls Gone Wild," though the Eurovision-winning "Hard Rock Hallelujah" is probably the standout, and the video conveys the spirit of the band perfectly.  The dark humor!  The costumes!  The pyro!  The zombie cheerleaders!  Throw up those horns and rock out.

Best Albums of the Oughts, Part One!

We've got only a few months left before 2010, and so I think it's probably not too premature to compile my "Best of the Oughts" album list. I was gonna do this as one big post, but it's taking me forever, and I know my legions of fans are anxious for my next post, so I'm splittin' this into two three parts.

Of course, these are just the albums I liked best.  There may be others that are better that I haven't heard.  But these are the best ones I bought. In alphabetical order:

Apples in Stereo--Velocity of Sound

Just about thirty minutes of loud, fast, melodic guitar pop perfection.  

The Apples in Stereo - Rainfall

Belle & Sebastian--Dear Catastrophe Waitress, Push Barman to Open Old Wounds

Okay, Push Barman doesn't really count, since it's a compilation of singles and b-sides that were mostly originally released before the oughts, but it's still a hell of a record with a bunch of their best songs on it.  It kinda killed the thrill of finding the singles that weren't included on any album, though.  And Dear Catastrophe Waitress, the album that got me into this band in the first place, is Belle and Sebastian's most wide-ranging album.  I'd rank "Piazza New York Catcher," "I'm a Cuckoo", "Books" and "Stay Loose" among their best. 

Belle And Sebastian - I'm A Cuckoo

Dimmu Borgir-- Death Cult Armageddon

What's that you say?  Norwegian Satanic Symphonic Black Metal isn't your thing?  Well, that's what I thought, till I heard this record, which features the symphonic stylings of the Prague Symphony Orchestra over Dimmu Borgir's black metal growlings and guitar pummelings.  It sounds like the soundtrack of the apocalypse, and it's cool as hell.  Lyrics are incomprehensible, delivered in that self-parodying cookie monster style common to most metal bands, but they're all about Satan and stuff, which is a bunch of hooey as far as I'm concerned, but if that bugs you, avoid this record.

02 - Progenies of the great apocalypse

Hawaii Mud Bombers--Mondo Primo

People of the United States!  The Swedes are eating our lunch, garage-pop wise.  This is a high-energy guitar pop record such as we haven't heard here in...well, a long time.  Maybe since the Go-Go's.  A bunch of songs about girls, cars, and the beach, it's kinda hard to believe this was produced by Swedes.  Not that they don't have girls, cars and beaches in Sweden, but my image of Sweden is Let the Right One In, and the image of this record is more Beach Blanket Bingo.  Every song is a catchy, infectious delight.

The Hold Steady--Boys and Girls in America

Singer, uh, Neil Finn?  Nah, that's the Crowded House guy. Or his brother, the Split Enz guy.  Or were they both in Split Enz?  Well, whatever the hell his name is decided singing his lyrics was preferable to declaiming them.  Good call resulting in an amazing album, one of those once in a decade masterpieces that they'll probably be living up to for the rest of their careers.  You know how people think Springsteen is some kind of bard of Americana whose songs provide keen insights into American life?  Well, I like Bruce, but I never quite bought that--but I buy it about this album.  It's a window into a stylized world of drug-addled losers that manages to feel both artful and authentic.  Oh yeah, and it rocks.

When He's On The Scene

Captain Lou Albano died yesterday.  What can you say about a guy who wore a rubber band in his beard?  Who fearlessly showed his colossal gut and man boobs on TV for years?  Who appeared in the "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" video?  Who turned against Cyndi Lauper, managing The Fabulous Moolah in her career-ending attempt to unseat Wendy Richter?  And who was, on national TV, said by Cyndi Lauper to have "a calcium deposit in the medulla of his oblongata"?  And who, let's not forget, is both the subject of and guest vocalist on one of NRBQ's greatest songs?

All I can say is this:  Captain Lou was larger than life in every sense of the word, and life seems smaller without him.

I will be wearing a black rubber band in my beard all day in memory of the great man, but if you're female, beardless, or sporting one of those horrible chinstrap beards, you can listen to NRBQ sing his praises right now:

I think my favorite part is the way Lou just gets completely unhinged at the end, babbling incoherently about his achievements.

And if you're feeling particularly adventurous, check out 90's cult classic Complex World. Captain Lou plays a small role, but it's a really good movie about hapless terrorists trying to blow up a club full of hapless employees and a Beatles clone band. Pretty much nobody has any hap in the movie. And it's funny as hell. Here's the title sequence, featuring the title song performed by the inappropriately-named The Young Adults. This has never been released on DVD, so you'll have to hunt down a VHS copy. Or, if anything good can come out of Captain Lou's jumping off the top rope of life and body slamming eternity, maybe it's that his appearance in this movie will lead to a DVD release.