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October 2005
The smartest Carlin comment yet…
OK OK OK comedy fans … the calls, emails and blog comments are still rolling in from last week’s George Carlin show, which yours truly HATED and bashed the crap out of in this very (cyber)space, which led to a billion or so of you crawling out from under your (cyber)desks to weigh in…
As is to be expected in this sort of matter, the commentary is about 50-50, split between calling me an idiot or Carlin a washed-up hack … no, wait, I may have that backwards…. ANYWAY, you know what I mean.
But THEN, here comes the best, smartest most wisest comment of all, sent to me Monday morning by a blog reader who called herself “The Dame.” Take it away, Your Dameness…
She sez:
“There seems to be two camps weighing in on this show - those who are disappointed it was so awful and those who think Daytonians just “didn’t get it.” I’ve been a Carlin fan since I was little, and the present of tickets to the show for my 30th was what I wanted to be the best gift ever. Carlin’s mastery has always been in being the bitter, old man who could put the New World Disorder into perspective - and make us laugh while doing it. Not even remotely close in this case. It’s true, the show was more of a sociopolitical/satirical rant against the stupidity of America. Carlin obviously sees himself above it all. Hey buddy, either stop billing yourself as a comedian or pick up another glass of wine (he supposedly recently quit drinking). You put me to sleep.”
All righty! That about hits the Carlin on the head better than I could, so thanks muchly. While we’re at it, here are a few more comments I’ve gottent that are still worth sharing….
• From Maradith Cope: I too was disappointed in Carlin, but not for the same reasons as the rest of this conservative ‘heartland’. I was looking forward to his typical and all too unique appraisal of the ‘holier than thou’ faction in this society. Unfortunately he strayed from that message. Still he managed to point out how wrong we are in ignoring, and to the point of arrogance, the horrible deeds that our human race continues to exercise. Was that message worthless? Carlin is right that bombing children’s hospitals is as unacceptable as beheadings. Do you and your selected responders disagree? Did you and your selected responders have a problem with the possibility that there is a corporate hold on this country? No question that he crossed the line of decency and that he was not on his game. Even so, it’s unfortunate that you and your selected responders missed the message that he has had from the beginning = think and be honest about it! By the way, if there were letters that disagreed with your view point, how is it that you decided that they were not “worth sharing…”?
• From Christopher Edwards: Your review is 100% dead-on the money! Carlin’s show was a rip-off at half the price while Jerry Seinfeld’s recent show at the Schuster Center was a bargain at twice the price. I guess this stupid husband and wife will just have to learn better the next time George is in town, a good time for the root canal.
• From Shelly Hulce: I’m a life long student of comedy. I gave up on Carlin years ago. He’s the grouchy old man on the block. I’m curious how many clueless ticket holders actually came to see him. He’s got just enough material to make it thru a late night interview and hook people into thinking he still has something to offer. Some people work harder at living on what they “had” instead of reinventing themselves. If you follow comedy at all- you will see this played out over and over again. “Hey-Dennis Miller- ah, yeah I liked you the first time- before you were George Carlin.” Here’s hoping Sinbad will pull the Schuster Center out of the comedy ditch.
Sooooooo… Keep them cards and letters comin’, kiddies!
Cheers, Ron
E.L. Doctorow’s magnificent ‘March’
E.L. Doctorow long ago proved himself to be our very best historical novelist, and not because he follows the usual mode in that genre of producing fat, dense, lavishly detailed sagas that sprawl epically across the landscape of truth and fiction. In fact, he does just the opposite — his books tend to be lean, spare and elegant, devoid of most of the aforementioned trappings, sticking to a relatively spartan, fast-paced storyline that unfolds as much on feeling, impression and sideways glance as upon hard narrative plotline.
The fact that he’s a strong literary stylist doesn’t keep him from being popular. Not at all. His newest, “The March,” has been on the NYTimes bestseller’s list for several weeks now, and deservedly so.
It’s his first war story. Doctorow tells the tale of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s infamous “march to the sea” in 1864-65, near the end of the Civil War. You may remember the history, at least vaguely: As Grant was chasing Lee around northern Virginia in a bloody, drawn-out game of cat and mouse, he sent his trusted lieutenant Sherman (a good Ohio boy, btw, as was Grant) in a violent, sweeping scythe’s arc through the middle of the lower South — across Georgia to the Atlantic, and then up through the Carolinas. Sherman’s mission wasn’t just to foxhunt the last of the Rebel armies, but to destroy everything in his path — vicious devastation and total war that was meant to demoralize the South and make it beg to stop fighting.
It pretty much worked, as history tells us. What Doctorow does with all this, as he’s done so well in previous novels, is to bring the grand architecture of historical movements down to a small, moment-to-moment personal level. By following an interesting cast of real and fictional characters, he manages to show what Sherman’s campaign meant to the people who ran it, lived through it and suffered from it — and there is very little he misses. Southern civilians male and female, young and old; slaves; soldiers on both sides; deserters and assassins; generals and officers; surgeons, patients and nurses — all get their stories told, as Doctorow pulls off the impressive achievement of playing his story both large and small at the very same time. Grandeur and intimacy each get their due, and at the end of the story we’re better off for it.
He’s done this before, of course, in books as diverse as the fabulous mosaic of “Ragtime,” the sleek gangster story “Billy Bathgate,” “World’s Fair” and the weirdly surreal “The Waterworks.” He throws a kaleidoscope to the reader’s eye but doesn’t do all the dot-connecting for you, choosing to grant his audience a measure of intelligence and intuition that not only compliments us, but reminds us that we’re in the presence of a storyteller whose confidence is unparalleled. His trust in us allows us to trust him all the more.
An important note: you do not need to be a big history fan to enjoy and admire “The March,” nor are Civil War buff’s credentials required. In fact, the tale is so much about people and personality than about tactics and strategy that CW buffs may not enjoy it as much as they hope to, going in. Sample the book if you are simply interested in the way people react to larger forces and tides of the times that wash around them and can carry them away. You know, like today — or at any time.
All that said, history fans should note that battle scenes are exceptionally well drawn (though fairly brief), and Doctorow’s character sketches of Sherman, Grant, Lincoln and other historical figures are first-rate. Lincoln is especially humanized, sadly so, even in the short time he’s on Doctorow’s stage.
And such a stage. Pick this one up.
The best U2 album…
The newest edition of Rolling Stone has a terrific interview with Bono, conducted by Jann Wenner, the owner and editor of the magazine. Marking the 25th anniversary of U2, it’s definitely worth a read … long and satisfying, it covers lots of bases as the leader of one of the best rock bands ever talks about everything from how the band got started and has stayed together all these years, to his personal crusades on behalf of such Third World issues as AIDS, debt relief, poverty and hunger. It’s must reading for anybody at all interested in the band.
In a sidebar story, Wenner got Bono to critique all the band’s albums, and his insights into his own work are, well, insightful. The U2 album he thinks is the band’s best work is 1991’s “Achtung Baby,” which he says is the first time everything really came together — lyrics, songwriting, attitude, tone, production, musicianship and performance.
I hadn’t really ever thought that, myself, favoring “The Joshua Tree” or “War,” but I’ve been listening to “Achtung” a lot since I read that. First off, I figure, who the hell am I to argue with Bono? But really, I do think he’s got it right.
The massive sonic landslide of the opening cut, “Zoo Station,” followed by the space-age love song “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” start things off terrifically. “One” hits the perfect note of sensitivity, and may be the band’s best ballad ever — not to mention that it’s a rock song that’s really about something important that doesn’t sound corny; no mean feat, that.
Cruising through the rest of the disc, one realizes it includes enough other high points, one right after the other, for two or three other albums. Bono’s voice soars like a hawk, as the band plays with philharmonic crispness. The music is magisterial. The words brim with intelligence. The production team of Daniel Lanois, Brian Eno, Steve Lillywhite and Flood were as good a team at the boards as one could have assembled at that time.
It’s so good, I wonder why I hadn’t realized it before? Glad I figured it out.
I’m not the only one who hated Carlin…
I’m not the only one who disliked George Carlin’s evil rantings Thursday nite at the Schu. Lots of you have weighed in, in agreement and disagreement, with my views on the blog…
Here are some emailed comments I also got that seemed worth sharing….
• Just a quick note of appreciation for your review today. I concur. I’ll be curious to see how his HBO show is reviewed. I suspect you’ll see nostalgia replace an objective review. Connie Gardner
• I’ve been a huge George Carlin fan for years but I’ve never seen anything so awful as that crap we endured last night. He was completely out of fresh ideas and resorted to shock (the necrophilia bit, for example) when he couldn’t think of anything funny.
Hmm, do we get a vote as to who should be first up on the “All Suicide Channel� especially since he seems so “interested� in it? As we were heading back to the car after this travesty I said almost the same thing about him being a bitter old man. I left out shriveled and substituted “misanthropic� though.
I can only hope, based on the screw-ups in his rap - “Excuse me I meant the judges in their back pocket� – and the fact that he didn’t come back out after the end of the world nonsense, that Carlin knew he sucked. But then given the rest his diatribe he probably just figured we didn’t get it because we were fat, white, and stupid. Heck, I have to agree, I’m white, carry a few pounds too many, and spent $80 to put my wife and me through that garbage.
Thanks, Jim McCool
• You nailed it. Carlin has been a mess for years and I was amazed he even got a date at the Schuster. Dayton, Ohio ought not be a place to appreciate the likes of him. I respect you for stepping up and telling it like it is. Thanks for finally saying “the emperor has no clothes.” Most sincerely, LML
• Mr. Rollins: Have you ever heard the saying that “what you will find at the junk yard is…junk?” Carlin is a worn-out, bitter old man who is upset that only suckers like you will pay 37.50 to go see a bunch of trashy talk. His worn-out trash is no longer enjoyed by his dwindling audience, and frankly, that is all he had to offer. Perhaps you and the other marginally intelligent people who paid money for this trash have learned your lesson. If you go see him again and pay your hard-earned money for his trash, then Mr. Rollins, it is you with the problem, not Carlin. I will save my money for genuine entertainment.
Tom Vogel Dayton
So, there ya go, kiddies!!! Keep them nutty cards and letters comin!
George Carlin’s show was horrible.
Somewhere along the line, George Carlin went from being a funny guy with a quirky outlook on life’s foibles to being a shriveled, mean, bitter old man.
It didn’t seem that way, initially. For the first few minutes of his Thursday night show at the Schuster Center, it seemed the veteran comedian and writer had cleverly updated himself. At the Carlin paraphernalia table in the lobby, where CDs, T-shirts and books were for sale, the best bargain was the poster labeled, “An Incomplete List of Impolite Words: 2,443 Filthy Words and Phrases Compiled by George Carlin.� In other words, the man who launched to fame with the Seven Dirty Words You Can’t Say on Television had seemed to have hurdled into the anything-goes cable era by keeping up the count.
In fact, Carlin’s opening routine was a fast-paced, syncopated rundown of labels, brand names, catch phrases and advertising slogans (“I eat fast food in the slow lane,� etc., etc.) that he spun into a dead-on parody of modern life. It’ll be the opening bit in his 13th HBO special, he said, which airs Nov. 5.
Alas, I won’t be tuning in. I’d advise you not to, either, based on what we heard next. Or rather, what we endured next.
The next hour became a dire, sociopathic rant about how horrible and despicable people are — which, while containing certain undeniable elements of truth, quickly became little more than a grim, gruesome rundown of hatred and spite in which Carlin came off just as badly as the rest of the humans he was picking on. Torture, genocide, suicide, cannibalism, murder — Carlin ran through them all, only occasionally getting much of a laugh off it all. He even tossed in necrophilia, just for grins, and by that time he just seemed a little desperate.
While he occasionally hit the mark, prodding Americans for being overweight and willfully ignorant of politics and the way the world runs, Carlin kept squandering points nearly as fast as he made them. By the time he got around to wishing that a natural disaster destroy the entire United States, noting that “he loves it when nature just shows off and has fun,� he had lost a lot of the crowd. Sustained laughter was long gone, and the hour was growing late.
At the end, the gnarled little troll turned and crawled back into his hole, while his fat, stupid and lazy audience found our way back home — wondering how else we might’ve spent our $37.50.
Maybe a donation to the local food pantry? Sure, why not?
Love her or hate her, Ashlee Simpson rocks
Ashlee Simpson’s new disc, “I Am Me” is out, and we’re here to report that she’s gone from dark-haired and lightly punky to blonde (hasn’t everyone?) and elegant, adopting a gowned and gothic look. Image change or not, her second disc is a bit more than the usual sophomore arrival by a pop-chart ingenue.
Why’s that, you ask?
Come on, you know: young Ashlee isn’t just your typical pop-chart ingenue; she’s become the one that people love to hate — the poster, um, child for the shallow studio pap that fills top-40 radio and teen-mag covers these days. She’s just a tool of her svengali daddy, the critics say. She just got a record deal cuz of her big sister, they insist. She doesn’t really write her songs. She … shudder! … got caught lip-synching on TV!
Gasp!
Oh, whatever. Quit carping till you listen to the discs. “Autobiography,� the debut from 2004, defied expectations (mine, anyway) by sounding like early-career Joan Jett, not a bad thing at all. I mean, don’t you miss the Runaways, too?
Speaking of whom, if you don’t hear “Ch-ch-ch-ch-Cherrrrry bomb….â€? floating in the background of “Boyfriend,â€? the opening song on “I Am Me,â€? then you just don’t know your greasy kid stuff. Like it or not, somebody’s got little, raspy-voiced Ashlee pretty darn well snapped into some solid, listenable hard pop that plays with equal measures of bite, bounce and brawn.
Does it matter that she’s borrowing what she knows of all three from other singers? You don’t just hear Jett in there, but dashes of Gwen Stefani’s funk, Avril Lavigne’s sensitive pout, JLo’s swagger, Pink’s tattooed brashness, Madonna’s early fempolitik dance stance. Simpson’s paid heed and learned well — and since when is it fair to trash a popster for posing along with her influences? In Simpson’s case, she slips past the criticism by producing well-done albums that are, at the end of the day, lots of fun to listen to and more than stack up against her competition.
And we bet she’s smart enough not to get caught lip-synching again.
Ten Tepid Tenors…
We caught the much-ballyhoo’d Ten Tenors at the Victoria last weekend near the tail end of their long run here, and I must say I was most disappointed.
You’ve heard of this group of young Aussies who mix up pop songs, folk tunes and a bit of light classical into a Lawrence Welkish, Pops-type program. It’s pretty popular right now, and the Dayton audience seemed to love what they heard and saw.
Whatever they were offering, though, I wasn’t buying. Frankly, I didn’t think their voices were all that good, in several cases, and I was surprised that the group really hadn’t made much effort to arrange harmonies on even a basic level. They pretty much just come on out and belt away, letting the musical chips fall where they may. That’s risky, if you want to be taken seriously … which I’m not sure the Tenors have in their business plan, anyway.
This is OK for some songs, such as a funny run-through of “Figaro,” which begged to be sung by 10 guys having a good time (and yes, to their credit, the Tenors do indeed give the impression of having a good time; laughing all the way to the bank, perhaps?). But it didn’t work at all on a song like Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Boxer,” which the Tenors painfully mangled by turning a song about deep personal anguish into a chirpy, upbeat singalong. Guys, come on … interpretation counts; it’s not just a bunch of notes, OK?
I confess the following: I was disappointed enough that I left at the half. It may have gotten better, and if so post a comment to let me know. But the last time I ducked out of a show on the Victoria card was for the dreadful version of “The Odd Couple” last season (or maybe the season before that … I’ve tried to repress the memory), and that turned out to be a good decision. Especially with friendly bartenders right next door, ready to help us drown our dramatic sorrows.
This time, we just came home.
What’s the last CD you bought?
Sure, here on our hard-working, inter-continental DDN Arts Desk, we do get to listen to the occasional CD sent our way for consideration and review by the record labels. But that doesn’t mean we don’t LOVE to browse the racks at our favorite CD store (mine is Gem City Records in the Oregon District for everything except country, which they don’t stock much of) and buy stuff just for the sake of getting new music.
And there’s nuthin’ better than new music…. Well, almost nuthin’. But this is a family blog.
The disc I bought most recently, last week, that I like wonderfully well is “Collisions” by a trio called Calla. It’s on the small indie label Beggers Banquet — which, frankly, I’d never heard of before — and I like it a lot. I’d heard the band once or twice on woxy.com, and was happy to find the disc on one of Gem City’s listening posts — always the best, fastest, cheapest way to sample a lot of new music if you don’t happen to be sitting at a computer. Which at the moment, I wasn’t.
If you like Interpol and their ilk of broody, somber, gray-sky bands (seems to be mostly what’s coming outta NYC these days) with big, chimey guitars and sighing lyrics, Calla is probably for you. There’s a bit too much shoe-gazing near the end, but I’m still giving it a B+.
So, enough about what I’m listening to…. What’s the last CD that YOU bought? Post a comment and give us a review. Let me know what I should be thinking about next time I head to the record store. Help me and your fellow listeners out, willya?
What did you think of the DAI’s Egypt show?
Have you been to see the big exhibition of ancient Egyptian art at the Dayton Art Institute yet? Lots of you have — and judging from advance ticket sales, plenty more of you have it in your datebooks.
Here’s the latest on attendance, according to the museum: 34,000 people have gone through the show, which opened the first week in September and runs through Jan. 3. Renee Roberts, the DAI’s deputy director of external affairs and the person in charge of marketing the exhibition, says another 24,000 advance tickets have been sold to “The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt.”
That makes 58,000 tickets sold so far, about halfway through the big show. Roberts said about half of those are school kids, and that most mornings at the DAI are full of field-tripping young students. “It’s pretty crazy, most mornings,” she said.
The DAI had hoped for ticket sales of 125,000 for Quest, and is counting on a strong show to help make the bottom-line budget numbers needed for year’s end. Roberts said that if attendance trends for most big exhibitions hold true this time, the museum will get up to a third of the attendance for the entire show in the last two weeks — which means big crowds and long lines, potentially.
She also said the museum is planning on extending its hours around Thanksgiving weekend and the last couple of weeks of the show, to get those folks through Quest. Stay tuned for more on that.
By the way — you’ve heard me say it before, but I’ll say it again: It’s worth a visit. Quest is a very good show, and a fun crash course in a big chunk of ancient Egyptian art and history.
But more importantly … what did YOU think? Did the Quest for Immortality exhibition meet your expectations? Did you like it? Hate it? Learn from it? Would you go back? Did you tell your friends about it? Bring your family from Cleveland?
Post a comment and let us know what you thought.
Meanwhile, for hours, admission prices and other museum info, head over to www.daytonartinstitute.org.
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Top icons? Well, OF COURSE it’s the Beatles… Sheesh!
You may have heard or seen on Saturday’s Page 1 of the DDN (cheerful reminder to our loyal, happy blog readers: You can subscribe by calling 222-5700! give it a try!) that the bible of the entertainment-industrial complex, Variety, marked its 100th anniversary with a list this week of what it called the top 100 entertainment icons of the last 100 years.
Not surprisingly, the Beatles (remember them?) topped the list, followed by Louis Armstrong, Lucille Ball, Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando, Charlie Chaplin, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Mickey Mouse and Elvis Presley.
Not a bad list, I suppose, but also a pretty boring one, all things considered. I mean, given the stated mission of such a list, would anybody bother to bet more than 10 cents that the list would be topped by the Fab Four? Actually, I think centuries from now they’ll do a study on how the Beatles managed to end up on every list ever compiled by any magazine on any subject for the next several hundred years…. It’s a conspiracy, I tell you!
But really: Borrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring. And not entirely on the mark, either, I don’t think. Isn’t the question more what constitutes iconhood?
The standard definition, I think, would be an image that is adored, worshipped and idolized? In this case, the modern-culture equivalent of the old saints who used to decorate church ceilings, right?
OK, then … I guess you got me, previous carping aside, with the Beatles. After that, the list gets squishy right away (note: Variety also named 90 other bigwigs, in no particular order, and it’s the standard list of big entertainment names one would expect, from John Wayne to Kurt Cobain). Is Dean on there because he flamed out and died young, and so never stuck around to get old and fat? Like, say, Elvis and Brando, both of whom one could argue did their best to busily undo their early-career brilliance later on during their old, fat slides into mediocrity?
Louis Armstrong? Um, OK… He’s great and all, but … really? Is he even the greatest jazz guy? That would be Miles Davis — whose mug is just as well known as Armstrong’s, I’d say. Miles would’ve gotten my vote on influence, as well.
Monroe is the only person on the list who’s a shoe-in, other than the Beatles. She managed to define female sexuality, for good or ill, for the next 50 years — and even the waves that have come along since have been forced to react to the image she created. Talk about a legacy, even if a weird one.
Lucille Ball is a curious entry. Sure, she was as big a star in the 1950s and ’60s, maybe the biggest of that time (sorry Desi), and did a lot to usher TV into our collective consciousness. But that was gonna happen anyway, and really — the No. 3 icon of the century? No way. Even though she was a gifted comedienne, nobody would say she created a style that lasted — as did, say, Chaplin. In fact, her style only lasted a few years, until Lenny Bruce and his ilk came along and torched it.
And why Mickey Mouse, when Walt Disney’s mug is just as famous? And if they’re gonna toss in a cartoon drawing and count it as an icon, I’d have voted to include a Jackson Pollock painting on the list. I mean, if you want iconography…
Frankly, I think the one guy who should be on the list who isn’t is Albert Einstein. What, you say? He wasn’t an entertainer or a cultural icon? Um, how many T-shirts have you seen his face on, then? More than Marlon Brando’s, for darn sure. T-shirts, after all, are the modern-day equivalent of Byzantine church ceilings, if you ask me. They just don’t last as long — a bit of a problem, now that you mention it, when you get around to talking about “icons” from a period that only spans 10 decades… Call me back in two or three millenia, OK? If they’re still playing “Yesterday” in 4005, then we can talk.
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still groovin’ on green day…
GREEN DAY PARTING THOUGHTS….
I’m still getting mail and blog hits on our coverage this of Green Day, which is nice …. A few leftover thoughts before the week turns….
While there were plenty of serious moments to Green Day’s hyper-political, ultra-Blue-State concert Monday at the Nuthouse, the punks were, of course, very sure to lace the show with lots of humor. There was the giant pink (?!?!?) rabbit who came out to open the show, staggering and dancing drunkenly at the edge of the stage to get folks laughing before the trio came out (we suspect it was drummer Tre Cool in the suit, if we had to guess).
Later, after the band had torn through their amazing new album “American Idiot,” end to end, they did a hilarious old-school medley that included Shout and Stand by Me, which Billie Joe Armstrong sang (well!) and led the audience through in a singalong, as he and the band lay gatored on the stage.
Then — and we seem to recall this from past GD shows — they pulled three audience members onstage to take over their instruments. Two women took up Armstrong’s Les Paul and Mike Dirnt’s bass, while a guy stepped in for Tre Cool on the skins. They did so well that Armstrong gave the guitar to his new friend and made the band’s newest drummer take a dive back from the stage into the audience. And it was a good stage dive, too!!!
Still got a bit of ringin’ in the ears … but hey.
Rock on!
New Alicia Keys CD? Save your money.
The matter at hand is Alicia Keys’ new live CD, “Unplugged.”
I’ve been listening since I like Keys and like her quite a lot… But now I’ve got me all these durn questions:
Question: How is it unplugged if you have a whole eight-member band (including horns) behind you, along with a string section and four backing vocalists?
Another question: Who did the arrangements for all of them? They’re among the worst, most annoying live arrangements I’ve heard from a major artist in years. Can’t somebody please shut the singers up? They’re dreadful.
All right, while we’re in an asking mood: Who told Alicia Keys that it would be a great idea to talk so much between songs? She must not have learned from Lauren Hill’s faux pas on that one.
Here’s a stumper: What happened to the restraint, subtlety and precocious maturity Keys showed on her studio discs? Did it get checked at the theater door?
Has anybody ever mangled their best song as horribly as Keys eviscerates Fallin’ on this CD?
Who invited Mos Def and Common to rap on the last song, “Love It or Leave it Alone?” I like Mos Def and Common, a lot — but I wanted to hear an Alicia Keys album, and they sound awkwardly tacked on here.
Final question: Alicia, why not just sing? You do it so well on a couple of these songs — “If I Ain’t Got You,” “A Woman’s Worth,” “Diary” and a few others showcase your voice rather nicely (minus the backup quartet, as noted before). Not enough songs like them here.
OK, you get the point. A live album we had been looking forward to quite a lot arrived in our ears as an almost unlistenable, cluttered, ill-considered, poorly performed piece of dross. I’d say serious fans might kinda like it, but I even doubt that.
Dang it.
Someone must stop Sylvester Stallone, and stop him NOW.
Just as I was starting to enjoy my newpaper this morning (IMPORTANT NOTE FOR SOME READERS: A newspaper is a daily news report that is published on sheets of newsprint paper, actual paper, with ink. This paper, which can be informative and fun, is rolled up and conveniently delivered to your home by a newspaper carrier for a small and reasonable fee by the company that also produces this website. Just FYI. Try it!) I stumbled across something truly horrifying…
No, not that. My dogs had already been outside. It was an Associated Press story about Sylvester Stallone’s plans to make a SIXTH ROCKY MOVIE.
I am NOT KIDDING.
It’s going to be called “Rocky Balboa” (catchy!) and will be about the aging ex-boxer trying to come back into the ring … oddly paralleling the life of his creator, an aging ex-actor who is trying to get back on the screen.
Now, look: The first time, this was charming and even a little sweet in a brutish, lo-fi sort of way. “Rocky” certainly was one of the least-deserving Best Picture winners of all time, but it was still a fun little movie that deserved to be seen.
After that? Can you say “regurgitation?”
Please. Make it stop. Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez make it stop. Isn’t the world an awful enough place already without another Rocky movie?
See you for “Rocky 15: The Hemorrhoidectomy.” Fortunately, by then, movies tickets will only cost $50 apiece.
My lord, but Green Day was smashing.
Just in case, by some offbeat chance, somebody in Monday night’s Nutter Center crowd had missed the point of Green Day’s bestselling CD, “American Idiot,” singer Billie Joe Armstrong took a moment to make sure it was very, very clear:
“This next song is a great big (fill in a well-known, lewd Anglo-Saxon expletive here) to George W. Bush!� he cried, launching into Holiday, one of the more politically potent songs on the album.
Potent would be the word of the evening, in fact — along with pungent, and powerful — as Green Day arrived to make it up to us poor, pitiful Dayton fans who missed them earlier this year. The California punk trio, as most of you have heard by now (if you haven’t, you’ve stumbled into the wrong blog; welcome, anyway!!!), bagged its Aug. 14 Nuthouse concert a few minutes before showtime, blaming an undescribed Billie Joe’s illness, and then bumped back its first resked date. Ouch!
To make it up to us, Armstrong said, the band did something special — “Tonight only, we’re going to play American Idiot from the top all the way to the end.� As any concertgoer knows, bands almost never try that — and this case, it turned out to be more than special. Green Day turned in a truly rare performance treat as extraordinary as anything I’ve seen or heard in years.
Sure, the album is great — really, it’s a new rock classic — but getting it all in a single slam-bam, as live as possible, was something that rock ‘n’ roll shows, even good ones, almost never are: Transcendent.
It took Green Day an hour and 10 minutes to get through all 13 songs, adding pyrotechnics galore (I mean, GALORE; still gotta appeal to the groundlings, right?) and plenty of chant-alongs, with fans right there for all the anti-Bush rants and broken ballads about media lies and youth-culture alienation. It all worked — far better than expected, even. The band — rounded out by bassist Mike Dirnt, drummer Tre Cool and several concert sidemen — ended the night after finishing American Idiot with a fast rundown of earlier hits —- “Longview,” “Minority,” “Welcome to Paradise,” and a buncha others, plus a nifty, unexpected cover of Queen’s “We Are the Champions.”
And while all that stuff was a lot of fun — including an old Green Day gig in which they pull audience members up on stage to play their instruments for them — it was mostly just regular rock-show stuff that served primarily to reinforce how strong the new album really is.
After more than two loud, sweaty, profane hours that actually began some two months before, fans could finally say they’d gotten their money’s worth. I know I got mine.
At the end of it all, Armstrong said, “Thank you for being patient with us, and we will be coming back — that’s a promise.” OK, then. We’ll be here.
Is it OK to like the new Bon Jovi album?
Now, I have to be very careful about what I say here, since my wife checks in to see what I’m blogging about from time to time (Hi, honey! I walked the dogs before I came to work!) and she will find out if I say anything mean about the new Bon Jovi album….
And if I want her speak to me for the next week or so, I really do need to watch what I say. You see, she REALLY REALLY likes Bon Jovi (or BJ, as I like to call him…) and so in the interest of maintaining a delightful home life, I will remind myself to be moderate in my assessment of the album.
It’s called “Have A Nice Day,” and it’s the first new CD BJ, I mean, Bon Jovially has produced in a bunch of years. It sold more than 200,000 copies in its first week a couple of weeks ago and has been charting very well, and having heard it I can tell you why: The guy is a genius at knowing exactly what his fans want and giving it to them in a nice, tidy, perfect package.
They want big, grand-sounding arena-type rock with paint-by-numbers hooks, rousing singalong choruses and sharp, steady beats. They want the occasional ballad. They want Jon lookin’ good for a guy his age in his leather jacket, shaggy haircut and torn jeans (and the guy is cute, you gotta grant him that).
They don’t mind uncomplicated, straight-forward lyrics that frequently lapse over into cliche — Bon Jovi’s legion of fans would remind you, correctly, that BJ’s lyrics are probably no better or worse than those of the average rocker. And they’ll remind you, also correctly, that the guy manages to write a pretty punchy melody and knows how to get you to hum right along.
Even if you’re one of those grumpy music critics who goes into a Bon Jovi disc assuming the worst, mostly because the guy doesn’t conform to the punky, trashy, raw, new-kids stuff most grumpy music critics like best….
OK, there, I said it! I hummed along! I even looked forward to hearing it again! I even tapped the steering wheel while I was listening in the car!!! I even pumped my fist in the air!
I made that last one up. But hey, honey, I really did walk the dogs.
Yay! Green Day! (Or so we HOPE)
At last, Green Day fans, your sobbing is about to cease. Your sadness is near an end. Your hand-wringing can come to a close. Yes indeedy boys and girls, Monday Oct. 17th approacheth, just one day away… And to all you ticket-holders out there, that means Dayton finally gets to see Green Day.
You know the story: How the first concert was cancelled at the very last minute as fans stood in line outside the Nutter Center, and how the next announced date got kicked back yet again to fit the tour schedule. You all heard the horrifying rumors that Billie Jo Armstrong had choked to death backstage on a pretzel or something, and then later that the show would be cancelled yet again….
But the Nutter folks assured us on Friday that all was well and that yes, the show was on (there are still tickets available, in fact … the new date must not have worked for some of you, because the show was initially a sell-out, or very close to one).
I’ve seen the band before, back when the trio played at Hara Arena about five years ago, around the time that “Warning” came out. It was a pretty sloppy show, perfectly in keeping with what I’d expected from a group that made no pretense to art or craft, but was mainly out there to have fun and say lots of naughty words in public, just to hear the giggles.
Little could I have known, along with all the rest of you, that this was the same combo that would come to rescue rock ‘n’ roll from its long, sad decline with the creation of “American Idiot,” the best rock album anybody’s put out … well, I’d say since Nirvana coughed up “Nevermind.”
And I’ve been counting the days till I can see Green Day again … because this time, it won’t be to have a few grins with a silly bunch of punks; it’ll be to pay homage to three guys who grew up fast, without our noticing it, and decided that with a little work, finding something to say and applying some brain power, they could make art after all from something that’s usually just garbage.
See you at the show, kiddies.
Cool downtown times coming for DVAC
Folks who came downtown Friday night, Oct. 14, for the “Urban Nights” event that showed off art galleries and new loft housing got a sneek peak at something that promises to soon be one of Dayton’s coolest spots.
That was the new gallery and office space for DVAC, the Dayton Visual Arts Center.
DVAC for the last decade or so has been housed in a tiny corner gallery space at Fourth and Ludlow streets, across the street from the Dayton Daily News offices. The local artists’ cooperative — the only one of its kind in the area in terms of membership size, diversity and outreach — long ago outgrew that space and is making the transition to a vast new gallery on Jefferson Street near Second, closer to the heart of downtown. Kudos on the fast and successful fundraising campaign DVAC ran over the last few months, which raised more than half a million bucks in pretty short order at a time when other non-profits are struggling to raise what they need; good organization, a smart board and a solid vision seem to have done the trick.
What did visitors see Friday? A long, wide front gallery space with street frontage that will have room for two exhibitions at a time, or one gigantic show — even one that includes large sculpture. Loading-docks in the back of the gallery will help make art moving easier; there will be room for spacious offices, meeting rooms for artists — and possibly, according to executive director Jane Black, a small area for member artists to use for framing and matting.
If all goes according to plan, DVAC will move to Jefferson Street by January. The new space is framed, but has yet to get its walls or finishing. While there is still a lot of work to be done, it was easy to get a sense of the new place and share the organization’s ideas for the future Friday night. This time next year, the Urban Nights events will be a lot cooler.
(A note about the show that DVAC is still running at its current, soon-to-be vacated space on Fourth Street: It’s a terrific exhibition of new work by local artist John Emery, who combines watercolor with cut paper assemblages to create unsually realistic 3-D images that are truly eye-popping. They’re worth checking out.)
Upstairs in the same building, known as the Bindery Building, 118 N. Jefferson, is a new space in which the Human Race Theatre Co. is creating classroom spaces for kids, and a new prop and costume storage shop. Director Kevin Moore was proudly showing it off Friday, and it’s good to see Dayton’s resident professional theater troupe expanding its horizons, as well.
It’s kinda interesting that in terms of reviving downtown, it yet again comes down to good work by local arts organizations and non-profits — remember, the new Dayton Peace Museum also opened this weekend in a restored house on Monument Avenue — delivering the goods and getting things done. Meanwhile, city and county government and a number of local developers who promise much, yet do little, seem to be mostly just spinning their wheels.
The very stoopid “Sin City”
Like most of you, I catch most movies on DVD … and the one I most recently caught was “Sin City.”
Now, I fully expect all the geekboys and comic freaks to beat the hell out of me for saying this, but I thought it was the most infantile, wretched, poorly conceived piece of crap I’ve seen in quite a while…
Before I go any further, anybody else care to help me out with what it was I may have been missing? And don’t tell me it was true to Frank Miller’s vision … I got that. And don’t tell me it was well-made. I got that, too.
I’m talking about the juvenile, ridiculous tone and attitude of the entire affair, aside from the violence, which I expected and which didn’t bother me that much — aside from its outrageous gratuitousness. But as I said, violence doesn’t bother me.
Watching grown men (Miller, Rodriguez, Tarantino, et al) unable to get past their adolescent delusions, though, and be congralated for it? That’s too darn bad.
Like I asked before… what was I missing?
Fiona Apple’s fine new CD aims for the wounded heart
Ahhhhhh, sweet Fiona, back amongst the almost-living, returned from the land of the romantic walking wounded, the tortured artist and the perpetually heartbroken….
What exactly did we expect? Sorta this…
Here’s a boffo, sure-fire way to hype a new album that might otherwise have been a toughish sell: Cook up a story for the fans and the press about how the making of the record turned into a titanic struggle between artist and label, in which the white-hatted singer strikes out against the evils of the corporate bottom line.
Yawn. We’ve heard it all before, and the fact that there may actually be some truth to it in the latest telling doesn’t mean we really buy it this time.
The short version on the story with Fiona Apple’s remarkable new disc, “Extraodinary Machine,” for the record, is this: after a several-year hiatus after her second album, which was critically appreciated but didn’t sell as well as the surprising, sultry first, 26-year-old Apple was supposedly told by Epic that the first version of “Extraordinary Machine” didn’t make the commercial cut, and was shelved. Grassroots protests by Fiona Fans got the money flowing again with a new producer, the smart Mike Elizondo, and voila! Sweat, success, serendipity and synchronicity all blend into a perfect combo. The perfect album results.
Welllllllll…. Entertainment Weekly tells it one way, Rolling Stone tells it another, and the blathering fan sites are all over the map — adding up to the sort of humongous buzz you normally couldn’t buy for CD like this.
By that, we mean an intelligent and introspective downer full of melancholy ballads, no clear singles, defiant of current trends and reliant on nothing, six years after the last album, but sheer talent and force of personality. And nobody cares about those anymore … right?
Good thing for us, and for her, that Apple delivers in a big way.
“Extraordinary Machine” is a brooding, let-down lover’s lament — a suite of 12 songs that sketch in more shadings of heartbreak than most of us might have known existed. Apple, however, has been through it all. She puts on the brave game face to keep from seeming hurt; she goes to pieces; she fights back; she denies she’s in love; she confesses she is; she admits falling for the disappointing guy; she wrings her hands with the delicious pain of romance. Ahhhh.
Her tremulous alto, a singular instrument, is perfect for this kind of stuff, and Apple writes around it with little more, usually, than her piano, drums and some light guitar. She and Elizondo have crafted an album that actually sounds like a series of showtunes minus the visuals — broken-hearted ballroom without the dancing, drama and angst and disgust and hatred, the detritus that follows the affair and leaves all of us feeling, at one point or another in our lives, as though we may well deserve a Purple Heart.
Uh-huh.
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Time for a new James Bond already????
We were shaken and stirred (sorry, couldn’t help myself) to find that they’re cranking out the 7th 007 with the next movie, and that this time instead of casting somebody who we’ve all heard of already, they’ve gone with a relative no-name.
That would be Daniel Craig, a 37-year-old Brit whose most prominent role to date has been playing the batty, homicidal, wimpy son of Paul Newman’s mob boss in “Road to Perdition.” In other words, he’s the very LAST person anybody on the face of the earth would have picked to take Hollywood’s longest-running franchise into the future.
But hey — they’ve made weird choices in the past, right? Face it … the Sean Connery-Roger Moore debate is still one of those cultural debates that sets children of the 1960s against those of us who came of age in the ’70s (I think they were both awful, in their own way). And the whole George Lazenby one-movie blip on the screen is still the stuff of movie geek jokes (but hey, that one at least had Diana Rigg… woohoo!).
And Timothy Dalton … anybody even remember that guy? He was supposed to lend some acting cachet to the role because he’d done some Shakespeare or something high-falutin’ at some point, but of course once he got the tux and the martini and the Walther PPK involved, it was obvious that they were really interested in cranking out the same-old same-old Bond stuff as before.
Personally, I thought Pierce Brosnan was the best Bond of the lot. He filled the role pretty well, he had the looks and cool demeanor down, and he was smart enough to act as though he wasn’t taking any of this stuff very seriously … which was something that even Connery got around to, by the end. Brosnan entered the role with tongue in cheek, and nobody could say that it was his fault for approaching it that way…
Because fans, let’s face it: The Bond movies started to suck long about “From Russia With Love,” and even probably before that, regardless of the face on the screen. The whole franchise has been worn out, outmoded and pretty darn stupid nearly from the get-go … which is surprising, because Ian Fleming’s books were actually good. But then, the producers of the films never followed the books beyond a few vague suggestions and personality traits. Fleming’s tightly constructed plots and reasonably serious storylines (“Moonraker” was about an ex-Nazi who planned to nuke London with a leftover V2 rocket, as opposed to the space-bombs garbage the movie hacked up; remember Jaws? Eck.) were ditched in favor of special FX and dumb puns. Too bad.
I’ve stopped being terribly interested in them over the years, even enjoying Brosnan in the role once or twice. Does anybody really think a new face, even an unknown one, will do much to help anything?
Personally, I doubt it. Stir that.
The Greatest Novels of ALL TIME!
A friend and fellow bloggerhead, Susan, chimed in yesterday when I was wishing Elmore Leonard a happy 80th birthday (hey, Elmore! happy day after your birthday!) and she talked about how one of his books from the 90s, “Killshot,” remains one of her Top 10 fave novels.
And she asked: What was MY Top list of best books? I thought about it overnite, and confess that while a list of personal favorites fell quickly to mind, I’m not able to whittle it down to just 10. I’m also not really able to place them in a rated order … I find they’re all in the brainpan someplace holding a special niche or shelf, and that one feels more favorite than the others at a given time, based on whatever happens to recall it from memory. But then, that’s what we read good books for, right? To have them up there when we need them.
So here’s my list of RON’S FAVORITE FICTION EVER, or THE BEST NOVELS I THINK I HAVE EVER READ, or THE ONES I THINK ABOUT A LOT YEARS LATER AND WOULD UNHESITATINGLY RECOMMEND TO A FRIEND. Remember, though, I’ve read a lot of books. This could change. In fact, it went from 20 to 25 while I was typing…
And more importantly, What’s on YOUR list? Please weigh in and let us all know!
Mine…
- Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Read as a kid and go back to it about once every year or two. Love it love it. Made me feel I finally understood.
- Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry. The perfect modern epic, and amazing characters. Plus, McM can really WRITE.
- Libra, Don DeLillo. Turns out JFK’s assassination was an Abstract Expressionist work of art all along… who knew?
- The Color Purple, Alice Walker. Nuff said
- The Sweet Hereafter, Russell Banks. Grief on a community level and how healing can, and can’t happen. Great movie, too.
- Beloved, Toni Morrison. Tough sledding but worth it.
- Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier. Made me cry my damn eyes out, and even I even saw it coming.
- An Instance of the Finger-post, Ian Pears. The most amazing historical fiction detective story ever.
- Atonement, Ian McEwan. Brilliant. Scorching. Maybe the best book on this list.
- Macbeth, Wm Shakespeare. OK, it’s a play, but it’s fiction. Revenge and the troubles of the soul were never done better.
- Get Shorty, Elmore Leonard. Everything you ever wanted to know about Hollywood and the mob, in one great read.
- The Plot Against America, Philip Roth. The newest book here, and utterly brilliant: Lindbergh beats FDR in 1940, keeps us out of the war and ruins the world. Amazingly reflective of our own times.
- Interview With the Vampire, Anne Rice. Mmmmmmmmmmm. Deeeelicious.
- Possession, A.S. Byatt. Dunno why I liked this one so much, but I love it. The elegaic pace and the literary whodunnit were fab.
- After the War, Richard Marius. Few people know this one; a Belgian soldier hides out in rural Tennessee after WWI, haunted by his dead comrades. Extraordinary.
- A Soldier of the Great War, Mark Helprin. A ripsnortin classic yarn of WWI.
- The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien. Vietnam told through one company’s eyes, fact and fiction mixed together.
- The Iliad, Homer. Again, not a novel. But still love it.
- The Yearling, Marjorie K. Rawlings. My fourth-grade teacher asked me to read it. I have been thanking her ever since. The best coming of age story ever.
- Black Cherry Blues, James Lee Burke. Brilliant crime fiction. Grim and fascinating.
- Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden. A man writes from the POV of a woman in this amazing tale. Can’t wait for the film.
- Outerbridge Reach, Robert Stone. Surreal.
- The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway. His best, and he needs to be on every list. Best line ever is the last: “Yes, isn’t it pretty to think so?”
- Shogun, James Clavell. Took me two summers in high school to get thru it, and I still remember most of the scenes. A terrific adventure.
- Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell. My daughter read it in HS and said, “You mean, you haven’t read this yet, and you call yourself well read?” “I don’t call myself that,” I said. “Daddy, read it anyway!” She was right. I tore thru it. You don’t have to sympathize with the Rebel cause to get carried away with the sweep and scope and tragedy of it all. The classic pulp page turner.
Argue! Debate! Read! Contribute!!! What’s on your list, kids?
Happy birthday, Elmore Leonard!
Blow out 80 … yes, crime lovers and smart readers … 80 candles today for the esteemed Mr. Elmore Leonard. If you already know the guy, then you share in my delight that he’s still around with his mind, voice, imagination and writing skills as deft and sharp as ever … evidenced by his newest novel, the terrific “The Hot Kid,” which came out this summer and provided one of the season’s best reads in any genre… not that old Dutch can’t still defy and bend genre, which he did once again with this dazzling adventure.
If you don’t know Leonard, lucky you … for that means you have miles and miles of wonderful reading ahead. I strongly advise, as any other EL reader and fan would, to get yer butt in gear and get started ASAP.
He’s mostly a crime writer in that he chooses the lives and weird misdeeds of crooks and the men and woman who chase them as the basic material for his stories. But he basically is a spinner of yarns and a wry observer of humanity, personality and the split-second decisions that people make that can alter their lives, and others’ lives, forever.
“The Hot Kid” was about gunrunnin’ outlaws and bankrobbers in 1930s Oklahoma, the hotshot crime reporter who covered them and the cool, even-tempered US marshal who was on their trail… Paths cross, plots enmesh and the fun never lets up. It’s a smashing book.
And it’s typical Elmore. Where to begin if you are a neophyte? I’d stay “Get Shorty,” which is even better than the very good movie that was made from it. “Rum Punch,” “Glitz” and “Killshot” all work well, too. They move from the neon streets of Miami and LA to the nasty back alleys of Detroit (Leonard’s hometown), Atlantic City and points in between… gangsters, shylocks, killers, cops, feds, judges, bail bondsmen, bounty hunters, Mafiasi… all there.
Have fun. Happy birthday, once again, to Mr. L.
And what the hell are you still doing sitting there? Get to the library or bookstore NOW! Haven’t you been listening???????
Sex and evil in the south suburbs: New novel will tell the tale
Suburban life is frequently used as artistic subject matter, and it’s usually played for satire or laughs, often in the “Desperate Housewives” vein… Folks who live along tree-shaded streets and who work hard enough for a bit of disposable income are usually portrayed as shallow, venal, corrupt and more than a little banal. You’ve seen it all before.
Dayton author Katrina Kittle is about to step rather messily into suburban life in her forthcoming third novel. “The Kindness of Strangers” is due in February from William Morrow, but she takes life in the ‘burbs seriously enough to mine its traumas, dramas and personalities for the rich literary possibilities that lots of other writers have passed on, or missed.
Her novel is likely to make a stir for a number of reasons. First off, it will establish the author of “Traveling Light” and “Two Truths and A Lie” as the Dayton area’s foremost national literary talent, setting her up to possibly break out into the big time; yes, the book is that good.
Secondly, its dark and disturbing subject matter will raise more than a few eyebrows.
Kittle’s subject is child prostitution and sexual abuse — but she doesn’t play it for cheap or gratuitous thrills or chills, even though the novel does indeed get pretty graphic at times. Her aim, and it’s one she achieves quite well, is to show how a deep trauma can be survived on several levels: personal, family and community. In some ways, the book reminded me of Russell Banks’ “The Sweet Hereafter,” though Kittle confines her story more intimately to one family’s point of view.
Her hero is a widowed mother of two sons who lives in the Dayton suburbs — the wealthy, quiet town of Oakhaven; you can figure it out — who learns that two people very close to her have been sexually abusing their young son for years, to the point of using him as a child prostitute for their friends.
Once this horrifying discovery is made, she and her sons are quickly drawn into helping the boy with his long, difficult recovery.
The story works on several levels, as hospital treatment, media scrutiny, criminal charges and social work all come into play in the plot. Kittle burrows deeply into how people react to a terrible thing in their midst, and makes the case that people have to proactively involve themselves in the well-being of others, even when they are afraid to take on the burden of doing so.
Kittle shared galley proofs of her novel with me a few weeks ago, and I can report that the story is a brisk, lively, intelligent page-turner that gives the proper payoff and never lets the reader doubt that they’re in capable storytelling hands.
Look for it in February, and stay tuned here and elsewhere to learn more about it.
Brilliant work in Springfield at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Westcott House
I’m not smart enough on the subject to comment very often in this space about architecture, but this one’s a no-brainer.
Today’s Dayton Daily News features a good story by my colleague, Ben Kline, about the reconstruction and renovation of an original Frank Lloyd Wright house located near downtown Springfield that is worth checking out. In fact, the house itself is worth checking out, as soon as you can make it over there.
It’s known locally as the Westcott House, after the rich industrialist for whom Wright designed and built it around 1910. It’s a wonderful example of Wright’s famous “Prairie Style” architecture … full of natural light, large windows, low-slung horizontal lines, lots of dark natural woodwork. Its stucco and red-tile roof work with the easy placement on the landscape to make the house seem perfectly fitted into its otherwise awkward urban space. Inside, Wright played with ways to meld inside and outside into a single liveable space.
The house had fallen into disrepair after the Westcotts moved out, running down and being divided into apartments. But the basic shell survived and was rescued a few years ago when a local foundation of arts lovers and civic activists all got togehher to save the place. They raised several million dollars and hired a crack team of architects and restorers to do the work, and set up an endowment to take the new, restored Westcott House safely into the future.
It opens to the public for tours next weekend, and I strongly suggest that you make the trip. I had a chance to see the house a few months ago as it neared completion, and I was blown away by the structure itself, by the painstaking love and attention paid to it, and anew by Wright’s genius.
For more on all this, visit www.westcotthouse.org. And then make the trip. You’ll be glad, and you’ll have learned something.
ZOUNDS! Dirty pictures at the DAI!
Oooooooh…. naughty bits!
Considering that we’re surrounded by sex, from bare-bellied teen fashions to the skirt-hiked plots of movies, books and TV shows, yadda yadda yadda, we really don’t seem to think about it all that much. Sure, we THINK about doing it — but we really don’t, as a culture, devote much consideration or conversation to what sex means: How it can affect and alter our relationships; how it can define who we are; how not having it can be as important as having it. In other words, the grown-up, difficult part of dealing with it. The stuff they mean when they say that the most important sex organ is the brain.
Kevin T. Kelly doesn’t have any problems with these questions or concerns, btw. The Cincinnati artist boldly takes sex and its various issues as his subject matter in a series of new and recent paintings on display through Dec. 11 at the Dayton Art Institute’s Regional Artists Gallery. There’s no wandering in by mistake … the gallery is located in a lower-level corrider that currently is marked with signs warning visitors that Kelly’s art contains graphic sexual material — and they’re right about that (the DAI reports no complaints about the show thus far, which opened on Sept. 17).
But Kelly’s work is also hilariously funny. Typical is 2005’s “Club Lust,” in which hubbie lovingly caresses his golf club while his negligeed wife sits in bed with a disgusted, chopped-liver look. Nearby is “Grandma’s Cookin’, in which an older couple sit together with beatific smiles. He’s thinking of her pancakes. She’s thinking of a vividly painted act between adults that is, well, very adult.
The notion of women’s desires being frustrated by men dully not getting it runs through a lot of Kelly’s work, often aggressively so. In “The Minotaur’s Comeuppance,” a man who’s been unable to perform in bed retreats to a corner, while a football ref calls a penalty on — who else? — his partner, who doesn’t know what she did wrong.
As with nearly all of Kelly’s paintings, there’s a lot going on in the frame to react to, none of it subtle — the nudity, the comic addition of the ref (who reminds one of those Miller Lite beer ads currently all over the tube), the lively background (a space Kelly usually fills with some sort of related imagery that propels the storyline) and the style. Ah, yes, the style.
Kelly employs a vivid, almost fluorescent palette of screaming colors, which he combines with a comic-book style strongly reminscent of Roy Leichtenstein’s famous Pop Art. He blends 1950s fashions, commercial art, old television shows, World War II bombers and old-fashioned visual slapstick — usually all in the same painting — to make his many points.
Other paintings poke fun at gender roles, suburban life, cultural perceptions of what’s right, wrong and appropriate — in some cases, mixing all those topics together in bizarre and amusing ways. A business-suited husband runs out the door to work, Dagwood-like, as his sexy, nearly nude wife looks on in boredom; across the hedge, a plane crashes and explodes. A man proudly presents his wife with a keen new present: A new handgun of your very own, honey! A couple thrash and grapple on a desktop surrounded by paintings on the office walls. The title? Art Lovers. Bad pun? Sure, but so what?
Kelly may be out to provoke, but he does so with a wry grin and a wink-nudge elbow in the ribs. Check your inhibitions at the gallery door and let yourself be nudged. We’re all adults here, right?
To have a look at Kelly’s stuff, visit www.daytonartinstitute.org.
If you stop by, lemme know what you think!
Sleeping through the new Neil Young album, alas
I always look forward to a new disc from Neil Young, and when I heard that his new one, “Prairie Wind,” was an acoustic return to the same form he followed with “Harvest” and “Harvest Moon,” I was pleased by the news. Those are great records … quiet, thoughtful and insightful, perfectly suited to his brittle voice and easy manner with a guitar. I return to them both from time to time, and they never stray far from the listening pile.
But the new disc is so far a bit of a disappointment — or at least, it’s a slow starter. Some of the songs, such as “This Old Guitar” and the lead-off “The Painter” are good, solid Young tunes in the tradition he’s set on his better acoustic work. Others, though, simple wander and amble about rather pointlessly, lyrical shuffling in search of a hook. This is especially true of “No Wonder,” which tries to be a post-9/11 song about confusion and modern angst, but which sorta just wanders in circles and goes no place… Which may be the point, to be fair, but if so that doesn’t come through. The construction is simply too loose.
Now of course, loose has always been a strong Young hallmark, and one of the things we love about the guy. And we do love him. But “Prairie Wind” feels more like a C+ than I wanted it to, and it’s definitely the weak link in its triptych.
All too often, I simplly found myself bored with this album … which was never the case with Young. Seems it’s been that way on his last few discs, and that’s unfortunate.
Note to Neil: Next time, can you return to big noise and feedback? We miss that stuff, and nobody does it like you. Nobody.
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Yippee!!! A baby for Tom and Katie!
Sorry, I was away for a coupla days … needed a bit of a break for a while, but I can’t think of ANYTHING BETTER to drag your faithful Brain Dropper back from the beyond than the HAPPY HAPPY news that our good friends Tom and Katie are expecting.
Wooohoooo! This is the best news since… welllll…. since news that Gwyneth and Chris were expecting! Or that Britney and Kevin were expecting! Or that Jennifer and Brad were … wait, never mind. Sob.
Seriously, though, now we can put all those NASTY rumors to um, well, to bed about Tom being a Scientologist and all. As everybody knows, Scientology doesn’t allow people to actually procreate, but forces its members to reproduce by placing a cone of tin foil on their heads and chanting passages from L. Ron Hubbard’s books until … well, actually, what happens next can’t be shared in a family website, which is clearly what we consider this to be….
But really seriously this time, I know all this to be true because I think I read it in People, or US Weekly or one of those other high-quality publications…. Or maybe it was the Weekly World News… is that that one that had the werewolf on the cover last week?
Anyway, I’m happy happy happy. First of all, I like Tom and Katie a lot. They are, no lie, my favorite celebrity couple. The fact that they’re now my favorite celebrity coupling is even better! I’ve been following Tom’s career ever since “Risky Business” and some of his other high-quality films, and I’ve always thought that he’s a much much better actor than he usually gets credit for. If you don’t believe me, just think back to all the weird antics he was pulling a few months ago… Surely, no self-respecting grown man who expected to have to soon to go meet Mr. and Mrs. Holmes in Toledo and ask for their daughter’s hand in matrimony would actually be loony enough to make a scene on such a normally dignified place as Oprah’s set… No way! He was acting. Trust me!
And speaking of Mr. and Mrs. Holmes, it is indeed worth noting that the fair and lovely Katie is … yes! … an OHIO GIRL! Nuff said.
So break out the bubbly, put on your tinfoil hat and raise a toast… By the time this baby is born, you’re gonna wish you never had to walk through a supermarket check-out lane again!
Delving back into history with WWII … almost
What if America had never gotten into World War II? How would the world be a different place if the Nazis really had overrun Europe?
What would America be like today? What would it have taken to keep the USA out of the war? What would have happened if history had taken that course? How would everyday life in our country have been different?
Questions like that are intriguing, given how much our society has immersed itself into WWII in the last few years. But in the post-Saving Pvt Ryan era, in which we (rightfully) congratulate ourselves for having thrown in and gotten involved, it’s also worth pondering the opposite. What if we hadn’t?
Phillip Roth asks that very question in a great novel that is recently into paperback. “The Plot Against America” is a neat bit of revitionist history, pretending that Charles Lindbergh, the American hero who flew the first solo flight across the Atlantic, beat FDR in the 1940 election…
The results, in Roth’s brilliant reimaging, are catastrophic… and also, in his wonderfully assured writer’s hands, somehow imaginable…
Tune in tomw and we’ll talk about it some more….
The lost solution to “Lost” … They’re all dead. Really.
All right, I confess going into this little rant that I haven’t become one of the Lostheads out there who hang onto every single episode of the show… but on the other hand, I also recognize that it’s a good show, well-paced, well-acted, well-written and nicely tense, especially compared to the average TV dreck…
But it strikes me as funny that everybody seems to think there’s a huge mystery involved here… I mean is it just me, or isn’t it obvious that everybody on the show is already dead?
Right… they died in the plane crash, or at least most of them did. And over the course of the show, they’re all in various stages of traveling toward the light….
I don’t mean that the island is actually Limbo, in the traditional sense… I really think that the writers’ concept is that what we’re watching is the timeless, drawn-out few seconds between the plane crash and everybody being killed in it…
That would explain a lot… lives passing before peoples’ eyes; the chance to relive past mistakes and correct them; the endowment of powers and abilities that didn’t exist in real life; the endless bright-light imagery; the circular plotting; the things that happen to characters that seem to be wish-fulfillment; the appearance of non-sequitor oddities and nonsensical apparitions… and on and on. What about all the weird stuff that popped up on the last episode? Well, it looked to me as though somebody has memories of “Lost in Space” and its spaceship, old 70s music and stuff that’s rolling around the brainpan, just waiting to come out in their last frantic few seconds on earth.
Yep, those clever writers have done this: They’ve got about 100 or so people all dying at once and the energy of their final, desperate, horrifying last few seconds of life all blending together into a single massive, shared, dream-like burst of imagination and hope, intertwined as they die together, and intermingled psychically in a way that allows them to see and affect each other’s death-dreamscape… What, you say that coudn’t happen? Well, have you ever died in a plane with 100 other people all at once? How do you know what it’s like? I say this is pretty inspired of them, if not brilliant…
Sure, the writers have already said in interviews that it isn’t limbo and the characters aren’t dead… but what the hell would you expect them to say???
Stay with me on this… I’ll bet 5 bucks the show’s finale is the crash, killing ‘em all or most of ‘em, and wrapping it all up nice and tidy and gory and sad. If you doubt, go hunt down the old Jeff Bridges movie “Fearless,” which seems to me where they got the idea for “Lost.” It’s a great film, and not a bad inspirational source….
The German-Egyptian Connection…
Few of you may know this, but there is a little-understood and rarely discussed cultural connection between the peoples of Germany and Egypt that goes back centuries, if not millennia, or at least a couple of months… Historians and archaeologists have argued for the last, um, 50 years about the meanings and dynamics of this complex and only partly explored relationship between two cultures that on the face of it seem to have fairly little to do with one another…
The earliest realizations of what is known in academica as Acute EgyptoGermania occurred on the campus of Rumpole University in 1952, when brothers of the fraternity Nauga Wacka Hyde held a contest to see which pledges could make the tallest pile of beer bottles during Hell Week actitivities… Using bottles of fine German beer, one team of pledges found that by employing a pyramidal structure, up to several hundred bottles could successfully be stacked. This led to an annual revival of this celebration, which came to be known as “Putting the German Beer Bottles into the Pyramid.”
After several years of study, it was determined in a philosophy class on the Rumpole campus that such a complex construction of beer bottles could not have been created at random, but must have been affected by the involvement of an intelligent designer.
Later explorations revealed a long-buried but undeniable connection between the skin-wearing barbarians of ancient Germania and the engineering geniuses of ancient Egypt, both of whom were known to have drunk copious quantities of beer. The Egyptians, in fact, are credited with inventing beer, for which Germans have been thanking them ever since.
Today you can celebrate and explore this rich, fascinating cultural relationship by visiting the Dayton Art Institute … you can drink a real German beer on the lawn at Oktoberfest, and then you can go inside and look at ancient Egyptian artifacts. Drink a real German beer, look at Egyptian artifacts. Beer, artifacts. Artifacts, beer. Repeat as needed, or until the guards ask you to stop.
Just be certain not to try to drink from the artifacts. Thank you, and good night.
