woodenrocketpress

fixed and fooled.

So a couple of people have tried to buy books, and the button is down. If we need a refresher on why I hate PayPal, this is the 5th time I’ve had to fix the button. But it’s fixed. Who knows when it’ll happen again, but I’m just waiting until book purchases reach a level where I can afford a better store system.

I’ve decided to gripe a bit about the oscars, mostly because its fashionable to do so, but also because I felt that this year the award show finally turned into what people said it has been all the years past. I was, needless to say, bummed.

Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that the Oscars used to be for our entertainment. It used to open with video segments, comedy routines, musical numbers, everything. It also used to get railed on for its ridiculous length and, in being so long, failing to do its main function: be a watchable TV event. However, last year’s Oscars had everything from a fast run-time, to punchy ways to present the awards (see Tina Fey and Steve Martin reading the Screenplays, former winners discussing the merits of current best actor nominees), and a hilarious opening sequence that was both entertaining and witty. And yet I couldn’t figure out why people, up to this year, were still giving Hugh Jackman a hard time about his hosting duties.

Thankfully, the 82nd Annual Academy Awards showed me why. I was foolish to believe that the show was for us. A few things stood out to me that made me understand the media circus a little better:

1. Several red-carpet interviews revealing that the Actors are there for one another.

Cameron Diaz said “Our community is so spread out… it’s the only time we really get to see one another,” and Meryl herself even replied that her fave part of the awards is “Seeing all her friends.”

2. The best actor/actress nominees opening the show by standing on stage and waving out to the applause of their colleagues.

Sure it looked awkward, but it put the people, the “stars” nominated for the acting awards at the forefront. As a symbolic gesture, this foregrounding makes the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences function seem to lean towards the actors’ achievements, and not the films.

3. That great throwback to old-vaudeville comedy duos.

Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are both so very funny… however I think that their attempt to call back to a time when jokes were more obvious and duos a little cheesier could have done well with an acknowledgment of how bad their jokes were, and did something different than follow the formula of “Look, its [point to attractive star, everybody claps, say something about them.]” Alec Baldwin said “what a performance,” so many times it sounded like he was on the Family Feud (good answer! good answer!).

4. The replacement of old winners with old friends.

Last year’s presentation of the best actor and actress nominees was lead by 5 former winners in the category, appreciating the performance of the current nominees in a way that still made it about the film. This year’s inclusion of former co-workers made it more about the intangible qualities of “good friend,” and “amazing person,” something that we at home have no connection to because we only know the people through the films.

And it’s good that these people should be appreciated by friends, through friends. But is it something TV worthy? We are only connected to them through the media they produce, so why would the Academy alienate us by making it even more transparent that the show is just about them? This is more upsetting than the time Mike Myers presented the best sound editing award with the tongue-in-cheek “The outcome of this award will send shockwaves through the industry!” The joke being, that it wouldn’t, and the underlying truth that the industry is shaped by and for the people in front of the camera. Were the best original song categories not sang for the same reason?

Colbert quipped at the Grammys that the celebrity’s favourite passtimes are congratulating one another and giving each other awards. I laughed, mostly because I thought it wasn’t entirely true.

dp

you’re welcome for this.

Tags: essay, non-fiction, tv

review of a moment: scream at the end of the Superbowl Halftime show (who are you to judge? who who, who who?)

I knew what songs they would play going in to it. I just waited for one specific moment to see if I should cling to or abandon all hope.

I have yet to read the multitude of messageboard hate-threads deriding the Superbowl’s only halftime attraction, The Who, as a bunch of decrepit rockers too old to be good at their game. It’s always the case that people complain about the lack of movement or entertaining performance from these “old guard” entertainment acts that are meant to bridge the gap between boomer armchair-quarterbacks and their kids. It happened with The Boss last year, and people laughed at the Heartbreakers the year before. Hell, they even complained that Prince didn’t play Purple Rain.

But before we get too ahead of ourselves complaining about Roger Daltry’s tired voice and Pete Townsends occasional missed notes and chord flubs, we have to remember that any disappointment we feel, we brought on ourselves.

First, arguing the band’s current relevance is like getting mad at all the garbage in all the landfills in all the world. We built them, we keep them going. Their setlist can be read like this: “Song from Rock Band 2,” “Intro to CSI New York,” “Intro to CSI,” then “Go to the Mirror,” and finally “Intro to CSI Miami.” We can’t argue why these bands are getting asked to play, when their greatest hits catalogue has been co-opted by so many different buyers over the years that most iPod owners have the songs tagged as “TV Theme – CSI Miami,” or “Teenage Wasteland.*”

But second, and more saliently, the Superbowl demands a band that is just relevant enough to be “interesting,” like wallpaper that’s really badass but eventually becomes part of the room. The game is an example of pure spectacle; a guaranteed packed house and millions of viewers each year keep ad revenues high and tune in to watch the eleven minute game.** The remaining elements of the show, by necessity and self-preservation, must be engaging enough to keep viewers, but not so self-aware that they detract from the football itself. The moment the event becomes transparently not about football, the jig is up. That’s why we need the bands that will keep people tuned in for just enough catchy songs to fill a four-tune, 8-minute mashup.

This brings us to the scream. Me waiting with baited breath to hear that high-pitched wail that I knew would be coming. The ear-shattering scream that finishes off the pinacle record*** by the kings of the British mod scene is such a powerful and iconic moment. It is still unparalleled in terms of its epic use and it is quite possibly the reason why CSI: Miami is the most popular of the series.**** It gives me chills each time I hear it and I know I’m not alone.

As I listened to Daltry’s voice struggle to maintain some dignity at his now lower register, I realized there was no way he could possibly hit the note. He had been a little off pitch, missing some cues, and singing in a lower key in each song. My heart was already let down… then the synths began plunking.

He checked his ear monitor, the lights went out, and exploded in a burst of white as Daltry bent over at the waist and gave’r into the mic. He screamed. Loud. He did it. But he did it differently. He did it lower.

He changed the note to match his range. He gave the scream a deeper growl instead of his former high-pitched wail. Sure, it’s because he can’t hit those same notes, but he didn’t just half-ass it. He didn’t try to hit the old note and fail, and his voice didn’t crack. He made the sound less “Chris Cornell” and more “Tim McIlrath.” He made it relevant to his own register.

Those that were disappointed by the old rockers trying their best would do well to realize (as I did) that they lived up to our ludicrously impossible expectations in their own way. They can not be as youthful and energetic as we have kept them, porting their iconic memories into every truck commercial and videogame as if the actual performers were hermetically sealed from history. You ask a band to be kept alive on a few hit records and are surprised when their live show is less than it used to be; you ask them to be interesting enough to keep viewers tuned in and are shocked when they do something different with confidence and ease.

Tell me, who the fuck are you?

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*For the last time, It’s called “Baba O’Riley,” God. Damnit.

**According to recent study, a one hour game is in no way one hour long.

***Arguable, yes, but Who’s Next is a fantastic departure from their earlier sound.

****It can’t be David Caruso. It MIGHT be the bikinis.

Tags: music, non-fiction, pop culture, review

On Reviewing III (and the way things are going, they’re gonna crucify me)

You meet neat people in the blogodome. Friend of the press Sarah Pinder over at Bits of String has recently uploaded a brief essay on reviewing which stemmed from reading this earlier dialogue on reviewing done over at Lemon Hound and has brought me to  a point where I felt I wanted to weigh in, as both someone without reviewing experience, and someone who has a lot of ideas about why and if reviews are important.

I remember sitting in my intro to film tutorial, surrounded by the stuffed shirts that leaned back in their chairs and gave sideways comments to the teacher about the nature of light and dark in Citizen Kane, or the lack of heart in Woody Allen’s later films.* We were discussing I am Cuba, a joint production by the Cuban and Russian governments to both showcase the expansive landscape and the extreme poverty / bangin’ social nightlife of Cuban citizens. One of the sideways-sitting, longhaired, Cassavetes-nuts started off a sentence with, “I mean, it’s a beautiful film…” And I felt shocked. Betrayed. Surrounded by a room of people my own age that were raised on Hollywood comedies, action films and severe oscarbation, I felt alone in not really enjoying this swooping look at the Cuban mountainsides. I thought we were in this together.

I admit that I am Cuba was unlike anything I’ve ever seen, and I was younger. I’d probably appreciate it differently now. I know that. But my brain, (which I’m told is still probably the same physical size) did not have the mechanisms to appreciate it. And this guy did. His experience with cinema was fundamentally** different from mine. And of course, he was wrong.

The classroom setting of my INI115 Intro to Film Tutorial is a petrie dish example of the problem of the review in all of its microcosmic splendor (you’ve probably had a similar class and can substitute your own experience): Fresh out of high school, a room of embattled post-teens fight to dig their foothold in the great wide real world. These are people that no longer have to answer to anyone, and are willing to challenge even the established educational system at the very first opportunity. Each one hears their own voice floundering in the din of other voices. Each is hell-bent on getting their point across not because it is right, or because necessarily it offers something important to the dialogue, but at its very heart, it relates personal experience. Reviewing for a publication is no different. Offering a review of something, anything, relates your personal experience toward the genre, album, author, etc. That’s it. That’s all it can do.

But I don’t think this is a dark and cynical take on the printed review. This is the length to which its capabilities stretch–to offer another brain to the discourse, that is all. And yet we take these reviews as bible, as passable fact, as empirical evidence of a book’s worth or shit-ness. I’m not saying that people won’t go out and still form their own opinion, but we often appreciate the review for more than what it is: one person’s varied experience towards something. This is lunacy, and incredibly dangerous, because we run the risk of keeping anyone from really contributing to the discourse. As Pinder says, too truthfully, it’s easy “to be concerned about your interpretations not being correct,” and why should anyone’s interpretations of a material be wrong? Because the other people know more? We should be appreciating not what was said about a work, but how many people have spoken.

In the Lemon Hound interview, Jennifer Scappettone verbosely describes the ideal function of reviewing as, “to engage in a more profound dialogue with another writer than can be had in pre- and post-reading moments, across distance and time.”*** The review is meant to build community, but far too often is it held to an standard of exclusivity, of right and wrong. This ongoing fight for everyone’s opinion to be heard is important, and not in the “everyone is a precious snowflake” way. It is important we are still sitting, wavering, on the fence that is protecting us from a new era of experience and criticism brought on by the internet and the hideous act of blogging.

I’m the first to argue that books will not survive on the internet. Like, at all. We will never be a post-print culture because our means of understanding the things put out in the real world are better understood in that real world. But the way that we become informed, that we start to know things, is so different from person to person. There is a vast wealth of experience available from the library to the movie store to YouTube that people can access at whim, and there isn’t a reviewer alive that can argue that the way in which they access these things or the chronology in which they access them shapes how they appreciate them.

When I first saw the montage sequence in Rocky, I laughed.

We take the review as bible because it stems from a tradition of criticism that is slow: printed words coming out to attack older printed words, printed word being the only vestige of logic against printed words. The printed review these days is part of a canon of literary knowledge that is understood to be inviolable. But now criticism happens on a whim, in the form of a half-assed YouTube comment or angry e-mail, and we have no tools in our canon for this. The montage sequence in Rocky is hilarious because it had been parodied a thousand times before I had seen the original. People tell me I shouldn’t laugh when I see it because of how groundbreaking it was, but my experience towards this film cannot be made worthless simply because I didn’t see it in 1977.

I don’t know what to do with this information. We have a way of reviewing things that is treated with such reverence, but in reality, reviews should be given constantly. The reasons the internet is shifting to so synaptic a connection system is because of the vast and unfiltered experience each person has to offer each other person, and how important it is to aid that relation.**** Scappettone says that blogging helps allow for a “more fluid conversation to take place.” And yet we still cling to the idea that our ideas and reviews may be wrong; we still cling to a chronological canon that absolutely needs to be unloaded.

I’ve started going through the complete discography of the Beatles. Growing up I never appreciated them 1) because they were a pop band and very wussy to my ears, and 2) because every single person on earth told me that they were the greatest band who ever lived. Not only did I want to rebel against their quiet music, but also against the authority that deemed them to be so great. That I had to fall into that appreciation without question, and that I would just listen to them like everyone else did, humming along to “I feel Fine” and “Hey Jude” without context. Growing up long after the Beatles ended, my context was weaker than those that were raised in the era, those that pass down the fact that they were the greatest band ever.

Well now I have context. I wasn’t part of the Beatlemania generation, but I am part of the Nintendo generation, and Beatles RockBand has legitimately given me a starting point, a purpose from my perspective to explore something from the past.***** So I’m going album by album, song by song. “Within You / Without You,” is the most interesting to me so far, because it’s the first of their songs (chronologically) to cross the four minute mark, and the drums are really fun on hard.

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Rocky 1 – Awesome video clips here

*Caveat: Not everyone I met in film was this pretentious. Some of them are still good friends.

**Boringly.

***She argues the real reason (self-promotion and getting the word out), but this still wouldn’t change her reaction to any piece she reads.

****Whether this is actually possible is the subject of another essay.

*****I genuinely believe this. Argue me if you will but this is my reasoning. I am enjoying the Beatles discography, but literally after having played “Boys” with my parents on Beatles RockBand and hearing them say “I don’t even think I know this song,” I discovered it to be one of my favourite tracks on Please Please Me

Tags: blog, essay, non-fiction, post-print, review