The Mod Delusion

Grave Danger: A Critical Analysis

2011-05-15T17:56:00.000-07:00

Grave Danger: A Critical Analysis

What CSI’s sweet nothings say about everything

Intro: CSI Through a Critical Lens

CSI: Crime Scene Investigators is the most popular television program of the past ten years that doesn’t involve hometown heroes mangling classic rock hits in hopes of being voted into a recording contract. Its presence on television and in culture is ubiquitous, with three sister shows and countless imitators. Who is CSI for? As oft-impersonated CSI:Miami detective Horatio Caine might quip just before the theme song, “Who watches these watchmen?”[1]

Dubious scientific procedures, popular music, quirky supercops and a glitzy location indicate that it’s for non-educated, law-abiding and generally white-bread middle class viewers, and so do the statistics[2]. In his talk to McDaniel College, Ed Burns asserted that popular media largely concerns itself with the mythology of America. CSI, in playing to the most of the lower available denominators, has struck upon a formula that wins millions of viewers but unfortunately adds coating after coating of chocolate over the truth that inspired it. Real life forensic lab teams aren’t also homicide police, swat team and a bomb squad. It’s not for marginalized groups, since it has a tendency of skewing racial data and presenting different sexual orientations as a “Freak-of-the-week,” sensationalizing the headlines it claims to rip its stories from.

In truth, it’s hard to judge the artistic merit of network television. With few exceptions, executives tend to favor bad things that sell over good things that won’t because of the realities of advertising-supported programming. CBS (The network which ran 8 police procedurals at once, including 3 CSI shows) and Fox are two of the highest performing networks. CBS’s comedy lineup finds its highest performer in Two and a Half Men and Fox’s Marimow-esque talent for heaving away talent with great efficiency has been addressed best by the japes of its own animated programming. Instead, this paper aims to assess CSI in terms of what its aggressive lack of aspirations ends up accidentally saying. Showing people what you think they want tends to make them expect that, therefore forcing you to produce more of the same to placate an audience that asks for nothing by giving them with nothing.

For the purposes of this paper, the representative work chosen was the two-part finale for Season 5, entitled Grave Danger in which CSI Nick Stokes is kidnapped and buried alive, ransomed by the father of a girl the CSI’s recently used their evidence to convict. Season 5 was CSI’s highest rated season to date and this particular episode was plotted and directed by Quentin Tarantino and is a fan-favorite[3], despite the fact there’s recently been an episode where Justin Bieber meets his end in a hail of bullets.

Tarantino’s work is renowned for its stylized and homage-filled cinematography as well as its conversational dialogue. It’s possible that Tarantino’s direction and plotting made this episode a CSI outlier but after viewing several other season 5 episodes, it becomes clear that this episode is, if anything, indicative of CSI’s prevailing themes.

Genre: Your Average, Everyday Supercops

CSI is a genre all its own. The ensemble cast of quirky and unflappably moral police officers are confronted with a weird crime every week, then they stare at computer screens very intently while some music from a label owned by the same parent company as CBS makes everything look hip. Everybody’s got a morbid pun[4] prepared for the occasion and they’re so used to swooping in at the nick of time that their watches are perpetually set to the eleventh hour.

The strange conceit of the show is that while scientific evidence and not eyewitness testimony are what will make or break a case, the audience is left in the dark as far as being able to solve the case themselves. The audience’s reasoning skills are never challenged by a story that asks for nothing but attention to itself. The suspects are almost always introduced in the first 15 minutes and if there’s a twist at the end, it’s either telegraphed from the first moment or has nothing to do with anything else presented in the episode.

The biggest failing in this particular story isn’t the melodrama or the acting, but actually the plot. A taunting kidnapper drugs Detective Nick Stokes and buries him in an undisclosed location in a plexiglass coffin, demanding one million dollars or he will kill Stokes. At the end of part one, Detective Grissom delivers the money to the mystery man, who ends up detonating a suicide bomb (His motivation is never really explained) and kills himself, showering Grissom in viscera and leaving Stokes still trapped and counting down to his death.

While this subverts genre convention by denying the audience the release of seeing the criminal either apprehended or killed by the forces of justice (Poetic or otherwise), this story choice also deprives the second part of the story of any tension. The villain, who had never been seen before in any episode, was given a flimsy and ill-plotted motivation for his crime. The main drive of CSI is investigation. Using pubic hairs and impossible camera systems to pull a suspect out of thin air and make a big reveal about which previously introduced character in this episode is the murderer is kind of their M.O., and taking that element out leaves us with waiting for the CSI’s to find a character that we know won’t die because of the politics of television and the fact that he didn’t announce that he was “One day to retirement.”

As one expects, each member of the team contributes something according to their specialty and they make an incredible last-minute save. Post-rescue, Stokes goes to visit the kidnapper’s daughter (Imprisoned for a previous crime) and offers her ineffective words of advice, that “In a few years… When you get out of here… Don’t take it with you.” And while appearing unfazed by this advice, the epilogue shows her taking this into consideration in her cell. Good thing the mean, dumb criminal had advice from the smart, handsome CSI guy. Now that she knows not to take anger with her, I’m sure the world will be easier on her post-incarceration. Every employer and personal contact is willing to forgive and forget convictions.

Form: Montage, Montage, Slo Mo, Montage, Lensflare, Fade to Credits

While CSI’s many faults as a recreation of actual police work and crime have been made clear in the media since its premier, the Simpsons addressed its formatic failings. Chief Wiggum, in regards to a piece of evidence, asks that it be given “The full CSI Treatment.” The camera then spins around the soda can they had collected, swoops inside, cycles through several color filters and performs close ups on small parts of the soda can that carry no extra information. Satisfied, the chief hooks his thumbs in his belt loops and says: “Good work, boys. A lotta flash signifying nothing.”

The most well known part of CSI’s visual grammar is its extensive lab sequences, where non-diegetic music accompanies montages consisting of close-ups of whatever evidence is being investigated and occasional shots of the face of a concerned CSI technician. This episode splits time between CSI’s in the lab, enhancing video footage from traffic cameras and other unlikely sources and Nick Stokes, the unfortunate cop-in-a-coffin who is the focus of the investigation. These pieces dominate the episodes and relay the most important moral of CSI: That evidence is what is important, not people. In this episode, contact with actual suspects was limited to a brief pre-immolation speech from a criminal who didn’t realize that anybody with a team of geniuses and technology so advanced that it’s practically science fiction could solve his unsolvable riddle. A meeting with the kidnapper’s incarcerated daughter goes about as well as one can expect when she is expected to sympathize with the police who put her away instead of her dead father. At the end of the day the girl is only important to the police because she is able to give them a piece of information that breaks the case.

This preoccupation with evidence over personal relationships or characters is emphasized by the credit sequence, full of people looking concernedly at evidence and fingerprints and close-ups of guns. Even the theme echoes this focus on guilt and material, The Who’s “Who Are You?” begging to know who the murderer is with over-saturated shots of evidence designed to stick in the mind more than the faces of the people holding it.

The scenes in the police station that houses the lab are shot with a bluish tinge, which emanates from the high-tech equipment that the CSI’s are often parked in front of while saying things like “Enhance.” The blue indicates the safety and relative passivity of the lab, whereas “Outside” is presented in orange. This contrast, especially popular on movie posters[5] makes a highly visual distinction between the world of the lab (a set on a soundstage) and the world of the streets[6]. The orange/blue technique is used to great effect as Detective Grissom heads to the drop location for the ransom money. In a striking establishing shot, a cool blue sky clashes with a rusting orange shack that houses the kidnapper. The street/lab isn’t always the line for the effect, as the impressive one-take “All the pieces come together” scene uses orange lighting to highlight CSI members against the blue background of the lab.

Sound design includes the popular music used during investigation scenes, usually non-diegetic. In this specific episode most of the pop tunes are diegetic, with Bob Neuwirth playing in Detective Stokes’ car before his kidnapping and “Outside Chance” by The Turtles eerily playing in the background when the CSI team listens to the kidnapper’s taunting tape. Since we spend so little time on the streets of las vegas, there is no real sense of a world going on outside the crime scene investigated save for the foley snapping of polaroids and footsteps of police officers.

So why all the sound and fury? Simply put, it’s pretty to watch. It’s one of the highest rated television programs in the world, so it’s got to be doing something right for viewers if not for critics who have all the jaded sensibility of being middle class and taking film courses. CSI’s numerous Emmy awards are mostly for technical achievement and it’s a telling fact that its award for “Best Network Television Series” comes from the Saturn awards, a science fiction and fantasy award association.

Policy, Structures, People and Communities: Where are they?

Who are the cops of CSI protecting? In this episode, it’s other cops. The full resources of the department are flung toward retrieving detective Stokes. Admittedly, this episode is something of an outlier as far as story and while the personal hang-ups of the members of the team play into the plot of most episodes, this episode in particular turns the focus of the crime onto the police themselves.

Still, the rest of the narrative supports the idea that Police officers are the marginalized group being discriminated against. A pre-kidnapping conversation between Stokes and fellow CSI Warrick is about the difficulty of being a police officer in a world where people either don’t care about or actively antagonize them. We see only a handful of civilians who are all reluctant to interact with police in any way. Capping off this theme is the fact that Stokes is kidnapped expressly because he is a CSI.

The real focus of the episode to evoke an emotional response probably should have been Kelly, the incarcerated daughter of the kidnapper. What are the effects of a justice system that’s as focused on material evidence as the world of CSI? Kelly was convicted because of the presence of a Styrofoam cup that had her DNA on it. Her presence was interpreted as complicity in a murder and she was put away. CSI makes it its job to take the human element out of investigations. While this would make sense if the team were JUST a CSI team like in real life, the supercops of Las Vegas also interrogate witnesses and suspects. When nothing fruitful comes of the eyewitness account, they invariably return to the scene to find some new dandruff that turns over the truth. Her supposedly wrongful incarceration for accessory to murder was the basis of her father’s kidnapping, as he planted the Styrofoam cup at the scene to ensure that the police brought their attention back to Kelly’s case. Could this be perceived as a function of a system that’s looking for someone, anyone, to take the blame?

The effect of people on institutions finds its unlikely representative in Walter Gordon, the self-destructing dad and aerospace engineer who attempts to murder a CSI member to ensure that his daughter’s case is reassessed. While it’s hard to support Gordon’s methods and not everybody has access to plexiglass, ether and a complicated coffin life support system, he presents an important idea. Data, like eyewitness accounts, are often open to interpretation. Kelly purported that she had dropped the cup while fleeing in terror, which was clearly not enough for the jury.

The solution is probably something more mundane. Something like a civilian watchdog group devoted to looking for discrepancies in the investigations of criminal cases involving a certain level of sentencing. Functioning something like fellow CBS procedural Cold Case (Which takes place in the same universe as CSI), unaffiliated citizens with no political motivation such as juking the stats and no personal stake in the investigations would aspire to ensure that justice was truly served. The Internal Affairs department tends to catch the misconduct of officers, but there’s as yet no organization to ensure that officers aren’t sloppy. Obviously putting such an initiative inside the department would lead to bad blood and political friction, but making it federal or even part of a non-profit organization would mean that reassessing old cases could help free some of the wrongly accused.

Conclusion: What does this evidence about CSI tell us?

So at this point it has been demonstrated that the world of CSI is of brave officers obtaining instant results from computer programs to catch criminals who are targeting police. A woman is expected to sympathize with the police officers to put her away and assumes the guilt of her father, to the point that a piece of advice from Stokes to her is framed as though he was forgiving her for burying him, which she had absolutely no hand in.

CSI is pure entertainment. The story failings of this episode aside, an audience the size of several small European countries tunes in every week to three CSI shows so there must be a reason. And what is it telling them? Largely it’s mythologizing a completely inaccurate flow of police work as well as substituting black and white for very dark grey and very light grey in an attempt to seem socially relevant. As far as morality, consider this: the “Shades-of-grey” glimpse into Walter Gordon’s motivation says that he was just a guy, trying to save his daughter. And to do this, he murdered two dogs, buried a cop alive and then blew himself up. Is he a bad guy? Yes. Do we understand why he is bad? Yes. There is no question. The blackness of his selfish acts is lightened by his good intention, but nobody’s scratching their heads after this episode going “Wow, that was a real thinker.”

Ultimately, I think the form of CSI says more about the American people than it tells them. It’s a pretty, fast-paced and entertaining show that doesn’t take much thinking and almost aggressively rejects the notion of a shared humanity by placing fact and hard law above personal relationships. That’s what CSI says, and the American people have voted on this borderline sci-fi program with their Nielsen reports, placing it as a pop culture phenomenon. But is CSI too popular at this point to figure out if it influences people or if it’s the viewership that influences it? As Horatio Caine might say when confronted with a runaway motorbike that hit someone after the driver fell off, “It looks like the cycle… Continues.”[7]

[1] http://people.rit.edu/~bss6378/instantCSI/

[2] http://www.nij.gov/journals/259/csi-effect.htm

[3] http://www.tv.com/csi/show/19/top.html and http://www.csifanwiki.com/page/Top+10+CSI+Episodes

[4] “The victim was drowned in milk, just like the last three.” “Looks like we’re dealing with a cereal killer.”

[5] http://www.slashfilm.com/orangeblue-contrast-in-movie-posters/

[6] Which aren’t authentic either- like every other CSI show including “Miami” and “New York,” it’s filmed largely in California with occasional establishing shots and special set pieces on-location.

[7] http://people.rit.edu/~bss6378/instantCSI/

Another Chat Log

2010-08-15T08:17:00.001-07:00

A quick update and another chat log from the Me and Max Archives. The article on Cathy I'm referencing can be found Here.

[11:06] MikeCMercury: Oh no! Cathy is ending :( :( :( :(

[11:06] robomax: I hope it ends with a murder suicide
[11:06] robomax: ...BY CHOCOLATE

[11:07] MikeCMercury: ACK! Cathy's had a brain parasite for the past 25 years and is still a fat load in a hospital bed!
[11:08] MikeCMercury: Her husband and weight loss are imaginary constructs of her diseased mind!

[11:09] robomax: Cathy vomits up a satan fetus and the world ends
[11:09] robomax: ACK

[11:11] MikeCMercury: Cathy kills tila tequila and wears her skin, crying that now she is finally beautiful.
[11:11] MikeCMercury: MONDAYS, HUH?

[11:13] robomax: you know that scene in i love lucy?
[11:13] robomax: with the chocolate and the conveyor belt?

[11:13] MikeCMercury: Yes

[11:13] robomax: it's basically that
[11:13] robomax: but with infants

And, for extra hilarity- THESE ARTICLES about Tila Tequila getting pelted with rocks, shit and bricks at the Gathering of the Juggalos. Juggalos, like dogs and babies, can sense when something is evil and know to destroy it, despite their diminished mental capacity.

-\m/ike

What I Done Did Today

2010-07-30T07:43:00.001-07:00

So, I'd like to make a post but I haven't come up with something FUCK YEAH, IT'S FRIDAY worthy. So first, I will show you what I have been doing so far on this workday.

It started, innocuously enough, with me posting this picture of today's ensemble, because I am a fop. I noted that besides footwear, it was generally a Tennant-y look. Friend of the blog Max Robinson had this to say:

Velcrobinson If @moddelusion is dressed like David Tennant today, my black slacks/black&purple polo makes me a temp for COBRA.

Simultaneously, we shared our thoughts on the topic:

Velcrobinson We get to celebrate Tomax/Xamot's birthday today. Two cakes, but they're both coconut. Ugh #COBRAtemp

ModDelusion Inter-office volley ball vs. Hydra today. Hope it's less confusing than when we took on Kobra in the semi finals. #COBRAtemp

And just like that, it led to the following, slightly edited but presented For Your Edutainment.

ModDelusion @velcrobinson now to figure out what Cobra Commander's order for C.O.F.F.E.E. means. Is it an acronym or is he autistic? #COBRAtemp

ModDelusion @velcrobinson "Cobra Officer's Favorite Fluid- Exluding Eggcremes" is probably what it stands for. Cobra Commander loves Egg Cremes. #COBRAtemp

Velcrobinson @ModDelusion They're REALLY big on acronyms. Destro showed off some new troop transport called "T.R.U.C.K.". Dude was so proud. #COBRAtemp

Velcrobinson @ModDelusion what the hell is an egg cream?! CC keeps asking for them and I'm running out of things to pretend to staple #COBRAtemp

ModDelusion @velcrobinson I usually stock his minifridge with them on mondays, but now I'm mailing out the invoices for Weather Dominator parts. #cobratemp

Velcrobinson The thing in the lobby is either a really nice coffee maker or the Weather Dominator. Either way, I'm not fucking touching it #COBRAtemp

Velcrobinson Zartan told me to stop making eyes at his sister(??). Then he told me to wash the Dreadnoks' bikes or he'd beat me up. #COBRAtemp

ModDelusion @velcrobinson You lucked out, bro. I had to wax destro's HEAD. Dude made noises that made me want to yell for HR. #COBRAtemp

ModDelusion Man, having The Countess teach the sexual harassment course is like having a grenade teach a course on workplace safety. #cobratemp

Velcrobinson @ModDelusion Bro, stop calling The Baroness "The Countess". That's her sister and they HATE each other like wet cats #COBRAtemp

ModDelusion Not as bad as when we were in that assembly and I was like "YES COBRA CAPTAIN" and destro just made that face like "STFU." #cobratemp

ModDelusion YES!!!! Snake Eyes garrote-wired my cubicle mate- now I have it all to myself! And we're getting chinese! #cobratemp #highlifebitches

ModDelusion So I just put the bagels and schmear in the conference room... I think Cobra Commander is having a meeting with @Kanyewest??? wtf #cobratemp

Velcrobinson @ModDelusion Who do you think pays for all this crap? Terrordome, Hovertanks, Cristal-powered killbots? All thanks to @Kanyewest #COBRAtemp

Velcrobinson Dr. Mindbender is straight-up wearing a cape with no shirt & leather pants. #casualfriday is a double-edged sword at this place. #COBRAtemp

ModDelusion Yeah dude, I forget The Baroness is foreign sometimes until she comes in with one of those velour tracksuits on, looking like a GTA IV character. #casualfriday #cobratemp

ModDelusion @velcrobinson I just checked our contract- we don't even get college credit for this, man. Joes and random murder for nothing. We should have just gone through with that Foot Clan Summer Karate Fantasy Camp thing. #cobratemp

Velcrobinson @ModDelusion MAN UP. $9 an hour and weekly Arby's coupons. You can't get a better deal in this economy. #COBRAtemp

-\m/ike
(Fuck yeah, it's Friday)

Awful Comic Book T-Shirts (Part One)

2010-06-09T18:50:00.001-07:00

Hive of Scum and The Mod Delusion Present:

The Worst of The Worst: Awful Comic Book T-Shirts

Max: Hi folks, I'm Max Robinson of Hive of Scum, with me is my good friend and fellow starchild, Mike Pfeiffer of The Mod Delusion (Which you're reading RIGHT NOW).

Mike: Max and I often go out to get comic books together (Surprise) and make movies (That totally rule) and we are real life bros. Peep this halloween style:

Awesome. Now, take a close look. I'm wearing a doctor who pin, max is wearing a flash shirt and a flight jacket that he actually chose because it said "Jordan" on it. Like... HAL JORDAN. We're nerds, we dress like nerds. We went out and bought shirts that salute both AC/DC and Iron Man 2 and wore them together while hanging out. On the other hand, not everybody does it right. It's no secret that there is a direct correlation between liking nerd shit and having clothes like, as baseball star Kenny Powers would say, a fuckin' dickhead. And for that reason, it's really important that somebody they can respect (Nerds like us) show them what is not suitable for hanging on their almost inevitably pasty frames, no matter how rusty its punisher logo is. So here we are, filling the gap left by the all-too-infrequent Fashion SWAT updates. All these shirts come from venerable website Stylin' Online which has cool stuff. But alas, for every simple classic, there is a fashborshion. Witness our critique technique in this MOD SCUM: A HIVE OF GREAT DELUSION special.

Max: What really strikes me about this shirt is Captain America's soulless, blank expression here. This Captain America clearly does not give a fuck anymore. Also, his eyes are totally the wrong color.

Mike: Is that wall keeping out immigrants? Only Captain America knows for sure.

Max: The combination of the shot-up urban landscape and Cap's terrifying terminator face seem to suggest that Cap's declared war on our nation's ethnic poor.

Mike: "DO YOU THINK THIS LETTER ON MY HEAD STANDS FOR RACIAL TOLERANCE?!"

-----

http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/stylin online_2108_559049301

Max: This may be the most boring comic book clothing item of all time. If it weren't for the Diamond logo on the sleeve, I would've assumed this was an Atlantis resort shirt. This is the kind of shirt my grandma would bring 5 year old me back when she went to Florida.

Mike: Keep in mind, this is the atlantean equivalent of track and field. There are vast shoals of merparents who shout deep sea obsceneties while their precious egglings throw shotputs 'n shit. On the other hand, consider this. My high school has a swim team: Does atlantis have a running team?

Max: I just don't get it, man. So Atlantis, the kingdom that Aquaman rules, is I guess supposed to have a gift shop? And in that gift shop, you can be souvineer t-shirts? I mean, that'd be cool if it was like "LATVERIA TRACK AND FIELD (screw Richards)" or even "LexCorp Company Retreat '97", but who honestly gives a shit about Atlantis?

Mike: I think this is a little racist. Oh, so JUST because I'm from atlantis, I'm supposed to be good at SWIMMING? What if they made a "WAKANDA TRACK AND FIELD" shirt? Huh? As many racial undertones as the white power t-shirt.
-----

http://www.stylinonline.com/punisher retro.html

Mike: Let me posit this: the terrifying idea of playing baseball against Frank Castle

Max: I'll say this..If Frank Castle was in Major League Baseball, Jim Joyce would be DEAD.

Max: For real, though, I hate these kind of shirts. You only ever see assholes wearing them. Just look at this dude. You don't want to be in line behind this dude.

Mike: There's some gene I was born with that automatically makes me afraid to carry books around this man for fear that he will dump them. Presumably, it's related to the gene that makes perfect chinstrap beards.

Max: Oh, he was totally a bully in high school, but he was like the kind of low-level bully that all the other bullies made fun of.

Mike: The probability his girlfriend has fake boobs or aspires to have fake boobs approach 100 as the probability that he has ever really read a punisher comic approach zero. However, if he came from a slightly higher income bracket and enhanced his hair gel regimen, he'd be ready for this next shirt. That probably won't happen until he truly taps the potential of being the swarthy version of the "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" guy, though.

Mike: Post script: Is that his hair or the top of an ill-put together hat? Send your answer to visorwatch@hotmail.com

-----

http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/stylinonline_2108_584914078

Mike: Batman + Ed Hardy = ??????

Max: The perfect shirt for any grateful dead fan, dragon fan, or batman grateful dead dragon fans.

Mike: Suitable for framing in your Led Zeppelin listening room of choice

: Makes your Punisher collectable plates look like shit. Pro: now you know what it's like when Robin drops acid. Con: Bats look like thumbs with wings.

Max: I think this shirt succeeds at looking exactly like what crackheads see when they fight Batman.

-----

http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/stylinonline_2108_939848918

Max: Zombie Spider-Man. Playing poker. I don't even know what to make of this.

Mike: From the "These are things douchebags like" collection

Max: I want to know the thought process behind this shirt. Was there some Diamond design meeting where they only had enough money in the budget to do either a zombie playing poker shirt or a Spider-Man playing poker shirt and Robert Kirkman came in and was like "Gentlemen, I may have a solution for you!"?

Mike: You gotta know when to hold 'em, and know when to continue with a tired cultural meme.

Max: Spider-Man looks pretty...rotund here. I don't know if this is as a result of his insatiable hunger for human flesh or if the designers just wanted to create a more relatable Spidey for the huge guys who would be wearing it.

Mike: Yeah, he's still carrying a little of that "Aunt May" weight.

----

http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/stylinonline_2110_108562801

Max: I remember this issue. Wolverine and Wolverine got stuck on a chaingang and then they escape, but they hate each other! And then there was some stuff about friendship or something.

Mike: This summer, Wolverine and Wolverine are "My two wolverines". "Bub bub I'm gonna bub bub snikt bub".

Max: Fun fact: My intelligent, liberal girlfriend point blank called this "The gayest thing I've ever seen".

Mike: This is, in fact, more homoerotic than Wolverine's son Daken who takes every single possible opportunity to tongue kiss Hawkeye/Bullseye. I'd actually really like to see somebody overanalyze this shirt in the same way that this preposterous fanwank approached Lady GaGa's latest indulgent eight minute clockwork orange-style futurerape hatesong epic. Like, if you get that from a leather nun suit, what the fuck do you read from a 100 year old minority member chaining himself up while covered in spandex and leather?

Mike: It's really nice of them to finally release MC Escher's "Wolverine within a wolverine" drawings.

----

Mike: So now, if you are man enough, get your booty over to Max's Blorg and read the rest of it... If you're Man Enough.

NIGHT FIGHT: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Edition

2010-05-17T00:18:00.001-07:00

First, the required watching for this post. Presented for your approval, the video for reigning pop queen Lady Gaga's first single, Just Dance:

And here, the lead single and video from Pop Skanksation© Ke$ha:

So, I don't know if you guys know this Lady Gaga broad but she's pretty really popular- when they write the pop culture books in the future, they're gonna be all "Britney who? Christina what?" I think she's neat and all, but all this obsessive wanking over the "Smartness" of her music and her videos needs to stop. She's a great performer, an able songwriter (With some shitty, lazy producers) and she's got a sweet voice. She's a smart BUSINESSWOMAN I'd say, even.

But man, some of her music sucks and is stupid and I hate it. I dare anybody who takes up Gaga's "Self-aware" pop flag to listen to "Just Dance" and try to tell me there's something deep there. There's nothing wrong with writing a dumb pop song. I love AC/DC, for god's, sake. The guys who did the soundtrack to Maximum Overdrive. It's this irritating veneer of depth that is really fucking irritating, though, lemme tell you. But then people spit on Ke$ha like she is the worst thing in the world. And you know what? That's wrong and you're dumb. Seriously, if you did this right then you listened to both songs. Did you maybe notice that they're... the same? That there's no mystical analysis of Fame and Celebrity in there that redefines modern music? They're dumb party songs?

You know what? Do yourself a favor and listen to "Tik Tok," but then sing the chorus to "Just Dance" over it.

"OMG" you're saying, ripping the crayon sunglasses off your face, "Ke$ha is jackin' shit from The GaGa!"

Slow your roll, champion. There's a simple explanation: They're both dumb party songs. We've covered how incredibly derivative Gaga is, I've done it myself at least twice. So she ain't exactly innocent herself. Somebody's gonna come along and be the bigger and weirder Gaga in twenty years just like Gaga's the bigger weirder Madonna and I'm going to be yelling this same thing over some future brain interface or something.

I'm tired. This is taxing. I'm going to bed. But let me put it to you this way: The biggest difference between Gaga and Ke$ha is that one of them has a team of schizophrenics sewing dresses to make her look fashion forward, and the other one has the most irritating voice in the world and loves partying. As usual, I just want everyone to admit one thing: What you like is just as retarded as what I like.

Hey! Turns out I go to school

2010-05-06T00:16:00.000-07:00

So in reality, I'm a college student who writes things sometimes. Here's a 2000 word treatise on how we're being treated like idiots.

EDIT: You know what, here. Here's a playlist to listen to while you read this.

Beat on Repeat:

Why we're still partying like it's 1959

In 1957, Miles Davis released an album called "The Birth of the Cool," a compilation of tracks from 1949 and 1950. And brother, when it comes to prescient album titles "The Birth of the Cool" cannot be beat. The title ostensibly refers to the "Cool Jazz" style of the record, but I could care less about Jazz. The fifties are where Cool was born. Cool, the essential teenage life-fluid that every single advertising agency in the world has been trying to bottle and sell back to the young. The difference between owning a leather blazer (ugh) and a leather jacket (rad). The 50's were when all the swirling influences from history coagulated and the first miners of its ideals like Brando, Dean, and the early Rock 'n Rollers came together to make up the trends that cool people are still following today. With the help of smash hit movies, the standards were set. But once the floodgates of teenagers with disposable income were open, they were hard to close and studios played have played to the same exploitative styles for decades since, with varying degrees of success.

Understand first where the idea of cool comes from. This, Miles Davis and his contemporaries definitely had a hand in. The idea of "Cool" is actually far older than the 1950's. African tribes at least as far back as the 1500's have revered the characteristic that they called "Itutu," which closely resembles the basis of coolness, namely an almost otherworldly detachment from reality. While western cultures valued sang-froid, or a "coolness of blood," the african concept embraces a more creative nonchalance¹, as opposed to aristocratic demeanor and composure. And that's where Miles Davis and the rest of Jazz crew come in. Black bebop musicians jump-started the bohemian beatnik revolution of the fifties and, like Rock 'n Roll, it filtered down through until white postwar suburban teens. Clearly, the longstanding ideal of making people like you by not caring if they like you has its roots further back than anybody who used the phrase "Daddy-o."

Rebranding the Man

It has been done to death, but Brando and Dean's continuation of this ideal and they way they have been continually imitated cannot be overstated. In a time when a huge portion of the population was young, they became the defining faces of rebellion and messy, cocksure attractiveness. The prototype they created can be found in every corner of media, from blatant imitators like Robert Pattinson to spiritual successors like 15 year old androgyne Justin Bieber. In the same way that every blonde from Madonna to Gaga has a little bit of Norma Jean and Mansfield in her, anybody who's ever put on a leather jacket and taken a moment to admire himself owes a little to these two pioneers.

Brando's tumultuous post-50's career when he turned into a mean, pretentious pile unfortunately mars some of this status, so instead let's focus on James Dean, who unfortunately ended up burning out rather than fading away. The most important film to analyze when it comes to Dean is obviously Rebel Without a Cause², one of his three major film roles and the one that cemented him in place as the standard by which all other prematurely world-weary badasses would be measured. It's almost eery how influential this movie and Dean's performance is. Consider this: James Dean was in three movies before his death fifty years ago and on this campus alone, half the girls' dormitory rooms have a picture of James Dean in them. On the other hand Robert Pattinson, despite his place in women's hearts as mentally abusive undead statutory rapist Edward Cullen, was cast aside as soon as Taylor Lautner took off his shirt in New Moon. The influence even pops up in places one wouldn’t expect- Philip Fry, the hero of Futurama spent the entire show wearing the same outfit that Dean wore in the movie.

The power in Rebel comes from the distinctly teenage point of vew that it favors and. Consider the differences between John Wayne and James Dean. Wayne constantly played characters of irrefutable morals, (though he received the most acclaim for playing the complex character of Ethan in The Searchers³) and was personally known to reject movie roles on grounds of the roles being "Too Un-American." He was a staunch republican and as such a perfect representative of the old guard. He had lines on his face and he was proud of them. Compare that to James Dean, the soft-faced classically-trained actore who dabbled in car racing and bullfighting while wearing the same half-puckered expression of sensitivity and depth that you can still see at wal-mart on every Michael Bublé album cover⁴.

Even comparing their seminal roles yields interesting results. Consider Ethan Edwards, the grizzled civil war vet who ostracizes himself from the people around him due to crimes that only he truly knows. On the far side of the scale is titular causeless rebel Jim Stark, who is ostracized by his peers for doing nothing in particular. To the children of war vets, Stark is a perfect character to relate to. The parents of 50's youths lived through the depression and WWII, two of the toughest times in American history, but bore children who were afforded every benefit society could give them. As a result, adults have no idea what to do with these privileged youths and they end up in chickie races or reading comic books or making crystal meth. Heck, the gap between traditional manliness and the new, cool anti-hero is summed up perfectly when Jim asks his father "What do you do when you have to be a man?" Ethan has returned to a world he doesn't know, Jim is in a world that doesn't understand him.

Rebel stands out as a movie about teenagers that isn't dumb, doesn't pull any punches and has lasting value cinematically. In Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause⁵, authors Weisel and Frascella go as far to suggest that Rebel invented the modern teenager, and that the sales of blue jeans, white shirts and ace combs after its release tell the story. Film critic Chris Fujiwara says that its success comes from its contradiction, it’s two-sided portrayal of conformity and rebellion-

“The film is neither a pure paean to youth's unbridled self-expression nor a conservative tract on the need to shore up the patriarchal nuclear family. Instead, it's a film in which the urge to rebel and the longing to conform coexist in a state of peak tension.”⁶

The same obviously can't be said for Dean-alike Robert Pattinson's portrayal of a troubled but creative youth with neglectful parents in this year's positively dreadfulRemember Me- but that hasn't stopped hollywood from trying to shove him down our throats as a serious actor.

The Monster Inside

Though itself something of a more sympathetic take on The Wild Ones (Which dean loved enough to buy a replica of Brando's bike from the movie), Rebel spawned imitators like The Cool and the Crazy, and as far as blatant rip-offs with a horror twist, you can't get much better than I Was a Teenage Werewolf⁷.

Or worse, actually. IWaTW is a loud, stupid romp in the grand tradition of movies that weren't made so much to be watched as to be made out during. The whole thing stinks of teensploitation, with Michael Landon playing an aggressive young man with no real purpose- You could almost call him a rebel without a cause or something- who seeks corrective hypnotherapy and finds himself turning into a murderous wolf-man. Simultaneously grabbing youth attention with a loud title, the promise of horror and the ability to live vicariously through a teen who has completely cut loose, Werewolf made money hand over fist. It's a camp classic for certain, and the out-of-sync musical number slapped in the middle of a party scene echos throughout the halls of time to today, when we're subjected to six tracks of Green Day in Transformers 2. And here we thought we'd made it so far.

If I can make a brief aside, the hollywood game when it comes to new, hip trends often means that one sleeper hit makes a mold (Rebel Without a Cause, Juno) and then it is filled more and more sloppily (Teenage Werewolf, Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist) until you're left with something vaguely resembling the first hit, but without any of the heart (The Blob, Youth in Revolt). There really is a pretty direct correlation from movies about handsome juvenile delinquents of the 50's to movies about quirky outsiders with cutesie "Hand-drawn" logos of today. This is a result of one of the most basic ideas about cool: If you think you've captured it, you're automatically uncool and the trend moves on. Talk about a catch 22.

Anyway, Teenage Werewolf achieves brief, if accidental, brilliance for making the werewolf a great metaphor for puberty. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to make the connection. A boy starts feeling more sensitive, gets more aggressive, growing hair in places where it wasn't before, gaining strange new appetites all at once- Mind you, these appetites are for the eating of human flesh, but I think the connection stands pretty well. Think of it as a hairier version of Carrie. It's a connection that's been done since and done better- Funnier in 1985's Teen Wolf, and with more emotional depth in 2000's Ginger Snaps. It's a facile bit of symbolism, but certainly a step in the right direction. Teenage Werewolf does end up a lot like a horror version of Rebel, and film critic Jason Jones notes “You didn't get Jimmy Dean feeling like "You're tearing me APART," you got Michael Landon tearing someone else apart - with his bare hands.”⁸ As usual, horror is a way to make an idea literal.

Once again, it's easy to dismiss a movie like Werewolf as a simple, kitschy, campy romp. A product of the times, it couldn't get more 50's than that, huh? But Hollywood has continued to make the same mistakes when pandering to teen demographics. As much as it hurts to bring up Twilight again, it's a contemporary example of a great-selling movie with terrible acting and plot that managed to pander to teen demographics very successfully. Just as we're seeing a million vampires invade every facet of media, after Teenage Werewolf's success, the market was flooded with teen scare films like I was a Teenage Frankenstein and Blood of Dracula, which is basically "I was a teenage vampire."

Worse Than Zits

I Was a Teenage Frankenstein⁹ on the other hand treads slightly different water casting actor Whit Bissell, who played the wolf-obsessed hypnotist in I Was a Teenage Werewolf, as a maniacal doctor who accidentally recreates the origin of a famous public domain monster. This time, Bissell uses the body of a teenager who was in a horrific car wreck- who I imagined was Buzz from Rebel Without a Cause- to blah blah blah bodies back to life. Monster escapes, society misunderstands him, he murders, the mad doctor has crocodiles, etc. There’s a reason why all the old clichés are clichés, if you know what I mean.

In another feat of symbolism that I’m inclined to believe was purely accidental, the monster/doctor relationship in the movie portrays what sounds almost like the duality inside an adolescent. The monster’s first face is hideously scarred but his body is incredibly strong and his mind is making progress in assembling a moral code in leaps and bounds. Still, the Doctor won’t let him leave the laboratory, citing his hideous face and the fact that nobody in the outside world will like him. As a result, the monster compromises his own loose moral code and murders another young teenager to use his face as his own. Grim? Yes. But actually a great parable for the way that we sacrifice bits of ourselves to be satisfying to others. Again, I’d be pretty surprised if that parallel was made on purpose.

Always Crashing in the Same Car

Hollywood loves sequels, remakes, reboots, reimaginings and any other trendy euphemism for not really producing anything new that they can still make money off of. And make no mistake, they make money, almost no matter how dumb and exploitative they are. To quote the creepy old guy from behind the thrift ‘n sip, “You know what the best thing is about teenagers? I keep getting older and they stay the same age.”¹⁰ In Hollywood’s case, it means there are always going to be young, hormonal kids with disposable income who are just looking for a dark room to do gross teenage things in like watch Wayans brothers movies. How many Scary Movies (the film that dared to parody a parody) is it going to take before we realize that the age of teensploitation kitsch and camp isn’t over? We’re living in it.

Whether it’s the timeless value of Itutu or the media constantly recycling old trends to keep the idea of “Cool” the same for over half a century, the values and production techniques of these movies must have done something right because they keep popping up. So the next time you wonder why half of America tunes into stupid shows that are just contrived musical revues with paper thin characters,¹¹ keep in mind: If it ain’t broke, they won’t fix it until it stops making money.

(I'll post things that actually rock sometime soon)

SON OF FUCK YEAH FRIDAYS (Shit yeah Saturday?)

2010-01-22T17:03:00.000-08:00

EDITOR'S NOTE: Sorry this has turned into a Fuck Yeah Saturday post, but I got caught up in Friday night stuff. Hope it still applies to your weekend!

Lookit that! It's Friday, and If I weren't sick at home on the emergency laptop and about to settle down and kick this cold in the ass, I'd be partying. Everybody loves to party. Everybody:

(I SAID GQ CASUAL, NOT DOUCHEBAG FORMAL, RICHARDS. PARTY FOUL.)

In Latveria, failure to party on designated party days results in immediate execution. (PS, that picture is by Paul Pope- and is it not the raddest thing you've ever seen?)

Before going any further, let me say this: partying is an art. If you are listening to Party In the USA, you are lazy. There are a million better songs to listen to while partying that have the word "Party" in them. Here are five:

Party and Bullshit-Biggie
Ain't Nothin' But A House Party-J. Geils Band
Partyman-Prince
Party All Day (Fuck All Night)-Steel Panther
Party Time- 45 Grave

You know what? Here's all of those songs on a playlist, just so you have no excuse not to rule your party zone.

That said, I'm actually not the hardest partier in the world. I do, however, live next door to a certified Party House. It glows and shakes as the eldritch gods on the other side of some portal reach through to its living room with crepe paper tentacles, spitting confetti and vodka. The men who live there are champions, and I adore them. No matter who shows up, no matter what music is playing- the party goes on. I helped a friend base a movie off of them called Monster Frat, a love letter to their devotion to partying and basically being radical.

I'm there for many reasons on any given day. Sometimes just because it's Thursday, one time to celebrate Life Day, the wookiee holiday from the Star Wars Christmas Special. One time I came in and found every housemate in black hoods with knives in the air over a prone figure with stark lighting higlighting the lines in their face like it was the Party City of Dr. Caligari. Once they saw I was there, they put down their knives and turned to look at me. "Dude. We're filming a tribute to Alfred Hitchcock- Do you know any blondes?" They rule hard. Their music taste is eclectic, they never fail to have smiles and high fives and rarely, if ever, turn people away.

But even these titans of good-spirited hedonism can't compare to one man: Andrew WK (Pictured at right). Andrew WK is the pastor of the church of partying. He parties so hard, as a matter of fact, that there are actually theories that he is a fabrication of the flagging music industry- No one man could party so hard. No mortal could party so hard that he would open a club called "Santos Party House" as a venue for these massive events. No man could make half his living as an inspirational speaker on the part of his partying. No man could, in this day and age, be so interested in unironic fun that his debut album included three songs with the word "Party" right in the title.

Regardless of these rumors- I believe in the legend. I've read at least ten interviews with him, and every time he comes off as not only intelligent, but funny and secure in a philosophy of feeling good- not a drugged-out condescending asshole who thinks he's the messiah. He's like the Bizarro Nathan Explosion from Metalocalypse. As a matter of fact, the more I think about it- the better the comparison is. Check them out in a patented Mod Delusion Side-By-Side©.
Long, unkempt hair, monochromatic dress, killer metal voice, songs that rock so hard you break a wrist moshing with your mirror, and a goal for the world. But while Dethklok aims to make the entire world blacker than the blackest black times infinity, Andrew aims to see the earth consumed in a feelgood dance party. And that is a goal I can get behind.

And you know what? It is inspirational. Andrew WK's music is uplifting as shit. It is music that makes you want to dance. I actually can't do it justice, here's a playlist of his first album, I Get Wet, along with "Party Party Party," a song he wrote and performed on Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Take this and use it at all future parties.

One of my closest friends lives there in the corner penthouse of the Party Central. He and I have developed a solution that is now essential to all our partying: It is called The Omega Solution, and this is how you make it. There are very few hard and fast rules, this is mostly just guidelines.

You're going to need some supplies. The essentials are Whiskey (Cheap), Dr. Pepper (cold), MD 20/20 (Lime), Ice (7 cubes per cup), Pop Rocks (Your choice of flavor), and a nice classy collector's cup from 7/11. We here at Mod Delusion headquarters usually use a matching set of Transformers 2 Collectors cup. Are they essential? No. Does cheap whiskey mysteriously taste better in them? Yes.
First, the ice. Seven cubes usually does it, as long as they're cubes and not those pussy ice crescents.
Then, the whiskey. Decide how blasted you're going to get. Dan ny Devito on the View? Or full-on Guns 'n Roses? Pour accordingly.
Add the MD 20/20. This is hobo wine, if you're not acquainted- your mouth WILL turn colors.
Dr. Pepper is one of the last steps. Use the ole' Dr. Pepper to fill the cup almost all the way to the top, hopefully with the ice floating up near the top. After all, the ice is the scaffolding for the next step.
POP ROCKS. This is the true signature of The Omega Solution. Tear open your package of pop rocks. Give thanks to mother earth, for it is her grace that has given you these magic rocks. Then, in synchronization with your partner (Never drink the omega solution alone! It's just not fun.) pour the pop rocks on top of the ice, after securing your protective goggles. If you've done it right, the pop rocks should rest on top of the ice and spark all over the place like some kind of God-Drink.
Apply your Keith Richards Mask.
Party.

That's that. You've just made the most delicious drink in history. People won't believe you when you tell them the ingredients, but make sure to let them sample and prove them wrong.

This post got sedate in between steps one and two because I'm watching the last episode of Conan O'Brien's Tonight Show run. So since nobody' reading anyway, I'll take a second to talk about why it matters to me. Conan's been an inspiration to me since I watched my first episode of the Late Show in 2003. The way he worked the crowd and the way he was so gracious and enthusiastic and spontaneous inspired me instantaneously. For one reason or another I look at Conan as a kindred spirit, and everything that he does makes me think that my dreams are possible. Seeing him take over The Tonight Show was like an affirmation of everything I could hope for and it's crushing that he had to give it all up so soon. I know he'll bounce back, but this is pretty heavy for me.

Sorry for the wall of text, but that's the most melancholy this blog will ever get. This one is dedicated to everyone I get to party with at school and everywhere else but especially a close friend and Gaga Enthusiast whose birthday is this auspicious Fuck Yeah Saturday. She is also a champion of merriment. Oh, and if you're partying any time soon, make sure you look this good:PS, I used the word "Party" 34 times in the course of this article.

Things that are Fucking Insane

2010-01-20T16:15:00.000-08:00

So you're probably aware that Batman and Robin is not a very good movie. Scientists actually theorize that its release in 1997 actually resonated back in time and murdered the last unicorn through sheer clusterfucking awfulness. One level deeper, you might now that a U2 song was prominently included on the soundtrack (Coincidence? I think not). But did you know that R. Kelly composed a song for Joel Schumacher's most homosexual movie featuring bats since The Lost Boys? It's called Gotham City. Have a watch, and then come back.

So where did that video lose you, huh? Was it when R. Kelly drove the Batmobile through the ghetto? Was it the fact that he repeatedly describes Gotham as a city of Justice and a city of Peace, betraying the fact that he has probably never read a comic book? Or is it the fact that when you put it together- none of it makes any fucking sense? It's very clearly a song that R. Kelly wrote about Chicago and then realized he needed two more gold toilets to really complete his mansion so he decided to get in on that sweet Batman and Robin Money. Before you know it, he's balls deep in Batmobile leather and pissing like Midas himself. This song was a NUMBER 9 HIT. NUMBER FUCKING NINE. Between this and grunge fasion, is there any way we can go back in time and bomb the nineties?

Wash the taste out of your mouth with the equally batshit but much less self important video for Prince's Batdance, also a hit when it was released in conjunction with 1989's Batman.

Prince - Batdance - Watch more Music Videos at Vodpod.

(Get the funk up)

Out-Of-Commission Quick Ones

2010-01-18T23:37:00.000-08:00

So the other night, my computer decided that it was quite done with life and would just rest its eyes and let the arsenic take hold. It's in intensive care with some very nice nerds in Princeton right now, while I'm using the Emergency Backup Laptop to squeak out blog entries just to keep up the habit. Gosh, life sure is hard. Okay, here's what's up:

The picture above is Debbie Harry, Blondie frontwoman, side by side with Lady Gaga, current world ruler. Now, Her Gaganess has been up front about who she loves and where she gets her influences from. But, the similarity in these two pictures makes me wonder if she had seen this photo of Debbie and it hid somewhere in her subconscious until she needed an idea. I love them both, but the similarity is real funny.
You're on the internet, right? You're a champ? So why are you not looking at Mitch Ansara's fucking fantastic I Can Read Movies series? You are, right? Okay, good. because if you're not, you're missing out to the max. The basic idea, in case you're completely pop culture illiterate, is to introduce a little graphic design to movie posters instead of making them ill-photoshopped star's faces fading all over the place. I mean, take a look at the original poster for Mean Girls:

I'm a mostly skinny man, but I know I won't be staying that way for long. I know that if I don't take care of myself, I'll be sweating whole chicken nuggets by the time I'm 25. Same goes for my hair- It's falling out with disturbing rapidity, so I have got to keep that shit on lock. So what can a man do to try and cheat mortality? I'm going to start by taking care of myself and exercising, which is a very out-of-character thing to say. However, I've found inspiration in this video starring the man I just wrote over a thousand words about.

Well look at that. I want that stomach, if not the teeth. That video is apparently the original version of the AWESOME space one that i posted before. You can see a lot of the stuff that's in the final version in this early draft, and I'm very fond of the lightning bolts. I may have to pilfer that in a future video.
Oh hey, Big Damn Heroes. Looks like you got something, there. What is it boy? Is it you guys playing your NUMBER ONE SUMMER JAM and theme song, Big Damn Heroes? With lyrics mumbled by Mike Pfeiffer and Dylan Roth, and rhythm affairs pounded down by Jammin' Julian Ames and David "The Mavid" Fruhling? Golly, it sure is.
NOTE: Big Damn Heroes was only a number one summer jam on the "Music I've written and also enjoy listening to" charts. It was also the only item to chart, pretty much ever. The recording's a little shitty, but we had fun.
Are you following the Tumblr yet?
Rock.

FUCK YEAH FRIDAYS

2010-01-15T11:44:00.000-08:00

It's friday afternoon here at Mod Delusion headquarters, but get ready for super party time with The Darkness. I personally cannot listen to this song without busting out into dance moves. There's not a night in recent memory that I haven't jumped and flipped my way home from a party with this in my ears.

Or, if you're throwing a party, let J. Geils inspire you with this BANGING hit that I was just made aware of, House Party.

Fuck yeah.

Some quick ones

2010-01-15T02:40:00.001-08:00

So there's a movie coming out about The Runaways, where my favorite lady in rock, Joan Jett, got her start. I'm excited to have a movie about the Runaways, but supremely worried that it's starring Kristen Stewart whose acting career so far has proven that a cucumber has enough charisma to make it in Hollywood. Also, Dakota Fanning is in it and the way she looks is making me feel confused in my pants.
Oh, and by the way- if you like all this, you'd more than likely be a fan of Young Liars. The design of this cover (on the left) should be enough to make you curious. It's an insane comic about young people being awful. Like It's Always Sunny, but with more genital mutilation and cool listening suggestions at the beginning of each issue.

If you're enjoying the blog but want to see me fag out about rock fashion and old bands more often, I invite you to follow my tumblr, which is updated often enough that you'll soon be insisting that I either get a job or see a doctor.

Additionally,if you somehow found your way to this blog but don't know me personally- welcome! That's me, over on the right. I like to rock. I think this is mainly a blog about music, but I could see it becoming a pop culture blog just as quickly.
I am never going to stop hating the word "blog," or stop being embarassed that I have to use that word to describe what I like to write in.
I have a band, and we are Big Damn Heroes. I play with three of my best friends and we make music that is fun. If you're wondering what we sound like, I'm going to try to post a file every once in a while on the tumblr. Dylan, who you should bug to start writing again at his blog Top 5 Everything. If you're lucky, he'll come here and do an entry because he is also a bangarang writer, musician and source of trivia for all things popcultural.
Oh yeah, this is the band.
ROCK.

Number Three: Justin Hawkins

2010-01-13T21:04:00.001-08:00

Pertinent information about Justin Hawkins:

His Ebay username is "Turbogunhawk"
He wears jumpsuits, like that gorgeous number above.
He's the former frontman of dearly departed favorite The Darkness and current frontman of Mod Delusion MUST LISTEN band Hot Leg.

Those are the major reasons for elevating this lovely, lovely man to the ever-coveted status of Crush Object©. Or does it have something to do with this incredible mustache he grew for charity?
Oh, I'll never tell.

But really. Hawkins is a wonder. A genuine wonder. Not only a fucking incredible guitarist (I dare you to listen to ANY of his guitar solos and not have to collect dripping bits of your face afterward) but he's got a great story. Why don't I tell you what Wikipedia and other internet trawling told me:

Justin Hawkins and The Darkness started playing together in 2000. You probably know them best for their Glam Rock classic, I Believe in a Thing Called Love. It's not exactly hard to understand why I love them, especially when you watch this video.

God, look at that. Sci-fi. Pagaentry. Glam rock. Look at those fucking glorious men. Just when you think Radiohead and Coldplay and Nickelback can't make Rock any less fun, this fucking song busted up the charts. I mean honestly, if the climax of that video didn't make you stand up and put the horns in the air, you are a terminator. The Darkness's premier album, Permission to Land, shot to number one and went quintuple platinum. That album had a MEEELYUN hits on it, I work hard to get them in rotation at parties because nobody ever dances to rock anymore, despite the fact that a lot of it is preposterously danceable.

Okay, so after fucking conquering the world with Permission to Land, they released a christmas single called Christmas Time (Don't Let the Bells End). If you've ever wondered what it would be like if Queen recorded the greatest christmas song in history, it sounds like this.

It almost made number one until it was overtaken by something else that was not as awesome.

So yeah, they were pretty good band.

"WERE?" You're saying, spitting out 20 year scotch onto the arm of your manservant, Ruprecht. "You mean I can no longer have my brain fucked out by those blazing guitars and completely inescapable choruses which leave one singing in falsetto for the rest of the day?" You signal for Ruprecht to fetch you some aspirin. "But... why?"

The Darkness were on top of the world, and that's when the trouble started. Hawkins' cocaine habit reached new highs as they went into the studio for their second album, One Way Ticket to Hell... And Back. The new album featured more synths, a bigger sound... and a new bass player, since the last one (Frankie Poullain) was forced out of the band/left due to "Musical Differences." Even before its release, it had all the characteristics of a troubled production. It came two and a half years after the release of Permission to Land, there were personnel changes, Hawkins' addiction had reached a fever pitch- things looked a little rough. The album was released to mixed reviews and during the supporting tour, Justin went into rehab in august of 06. The Darkness tried to stay together but instead reformed as Stone Gods, a hard rock band helmed by Justin's brother Dan Hawkins.

Justin came out clean and has stayed that way to this day (Bless his cheeky face. Look at him up there. We're with you, big guy.).

The healing done and feeling all squeaky clean, hawkins came back to the music that he loved. He did a duets with beverlei brown, sang backup for def leppard, wrote a BALLER pro-green song called Do It In the Dark that has just rocketed to the top of the "Music to bone to" charts- He is a man who TRULY loves making music. And he's very very good at it. Even after he made it all the way to the top and fell all the way to the bottom, he is still making classics. He didn't miss a beat.

His newest project is Hot Leg, and I'm just bonkers for them. They're the same sort of glammy bluesy metal that The Darkness was, and I sure hope they're around for longer than one album. Their debut, Red Light Fever is BANGARANG. I played this album until everyone but me hated it. Jeeeezus, the man knows how to write a song. Here's Hot Leg in all their glory. This was their CHRISTMAS SINGLE, and it rocks ass.

But why do I love Justin Hawkins? Clearly, he's a stone-cold Hit Machine who oils his gears with the blood of lesser men. But my personal affinity for him comes from some very special places. First and foremost his voice- The "Truth Larynx"- Is inspiring. It's the sort of voice the entire world has been waiting for since freddy mercury died. I would literally roll a baby in a pita and eat it to have a voice like his. Second, and this goes with the first, the man has MOVES. Watch the video for Girlfriend again, which I posted in the first Front Men post. Watch some live videos. Come back, I'll wait.

That man is like some incredible MI6 experiment to breed all the best traits of David Lee Roth (Jumpsuits, acrobatics) with all the best parts of Freddy Mercury (Wailing voice, fist pumping songs, sometimes mustache) and then mixed glitter in the vat just to make sure that the glorious tub-child would never stop shining. He's a wonder. Definitely in my top five of dudes I'd like to see playing live, because he is just THE BEST.

By the way, the video for Panama has just come on the TV, and it is only reinforcing my stance on Hawkins both owing a lot to and being better than David Lee Roth. Yes, David's on a wire and swinging from the ceiling and it's all quite well and good. But in concert, Justin would fly through the air on a fucking white tiger while squealing out solos.

And that's why there's no room for David lee Fucking Roth on the Crush Object© list.

Everybody fucks up

2010-01-13T05:50:00.000-08:00

Even Crush Object© David Bowie fucks up. In this version of Life On Mars? (one of my favorite songs of all time) The LET'S DANCE era Thin White Duke is accompanied by Stevie Ray Vaughan. It's from a bootleg collection called "Dallas Moonlight." Vice Magazine ripped it apart the other day but the idea of a two-disc 29 song bootleg alum like this existing is like something I scrawled on my way out of a wet dream. So I decided I neeeeded to have it.

It is a fascinating fuck-up. There are some spots where it's really cool and interesting. I've always wondered what the world would be like if SRV and Bowie kept collaborating after Let's Dance. Would David have stayed straight Rock/Roll for a while, or at least the sort of pop that he had with Let's Dance?

Maybe no, it seems. This little version of LOM? is deese, but I like it better than some others for some retarded reasons:

Bowie forgets the lyrics. He dee dee dees it. I forget lyrics a lot. Points.
Then they disrupt the recording to "fix" it. No points.
SRV's guitar flourishes make the song rock a little hard, a little more Queen-y. Points.
But sometimes it's indulgent booshit. No points.

It's mostly just goofy and adorable. This is the equivalent of that time that David and I sang dental hygiene-related lyrics to Bang a Gong.

Steal the rest from the internet if you're that curious, but I'm not twisting your arm on this one.

Number Two: Marc Bolan

2010-01-13T05:00:00.000-08:00

Not as big an influence on me as I had previously thought he was, Marc Bolan still occupies a place in my mental pantheon that's not to be ignored. There's nothing in any of his songs I can really relate to, with the possible exception of 20th Century Boy. He knows how to put together words that don't make any fucking sense ("The President's weird- he's got a burgundy beard").But despite his shortcomings of being completely unable to write a bridge and adding so much echo it sounds like Batman was his producer, the music is so completely infectious that I am still taking antibiotics to stop it. He layers his fascinatingly inane rhymes and lyrics over a crunchy groove so tasty that the phrase "Mince pie dog-eye Eagle on the wind" seems profound. He's just this wild-haired elven god of dandyish pomp. I'm watching a video of him performing Get It On on VH1 classic right now and he makes me want to put on a satin tunic and frolic in the woods.

I learned about Marc Bolan in 10th grade while talking to my friend Dylan (A constant companion and wellspring of musical information due to the fact that his dad owns the largest independent record store on the east coast) about a new sensation I had just learned about from a girl that I was desperately trying to wife. The sensation was not Marc or his band T.Rex but was actually fiery androgyne David Bowie. Obviously I started talking about both the girl and David Bowie almost nonstop to Dylan. As usual, he knew more about music than me and as usual he gave me some other directions to branch out in. It was a momentous conversation that I still remember today, for a number of reasons. It went something like this:

"And she was like 'I'll put on a little space oddity.' and I pretended to know what she was talking about because she was really excited about it- and then the song started and it was SO COOL. So I said 'who is this' and she said 'HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW DAVID BOWIE?' (Extensive/boring recap of the rest of the quasi-date here, and then...) ...So anyway, it was real cool, I think I have to hang out with her again if only to listen to more Bowie."

"Yeah, Bowie's real good. But it was really T. Rex that started Glam Rock, they were the originals."

Key words have been emphasized, comic book style, to show you how momentous a conversation was. (If life were a comic book, this issue would be fetching high dollar amounts as the first appearance of several things that would become my trademark obsessions much later.) I sort of pushed T.Rex out of mind as I had no money and this was before I knew how to steal from the internet to get what I wanted- so purchasing music was not the most important thing on my shopping list (That spot continues to be occupied by "Ghostbusters Memoribilia").

Flash forward another year or so and I have been told by the cool people I know (At the time it is likely older women or the consistently hip/unhip fluxing Dylan Roth) that proper music listening is conducted using Vinyl Records- which my father has a proper stock of. So I head upstairs and sticking out of the record box like the sword in the stone (Or like the Lady of the Lake was holding it, if you prefer) is The Slider, T. Rex's second glam-era album and one of their top three, if not THE top. I remember looking at Marc being some confused Mad Hatter and deciding that nobody else has ever worn a top hat to rock and not looked like a tool. I still hold that opinion, actually. I listened to it and fell in love. I had been missing out. Again, though- didn't know how to steal from the internet. Wasn't using wikipedia for any/everything to find out which T.Rex albums I should be looking for. My parents bought me the album on CD for christmas my freshman year of college (Along with Hunky Dory, what a glammy christmas) and the tearing, echoing blues sound of it kept me going for months until I finally figured out how to steal from the internet and got the discography. That's when the obsession truly began.

I watched Born to Boogie at least five times (Along with Velvet Goldmine, of course) that summer and brought the gospel of Bolan back with me to my sophomore year of school. He was inspiring onstage. Bowie was a laser on stage, not doing one thing that he didn't intend. Marc was another story. He had a sloppy, churlish magnetism that was completely entrancing. Here's him performing Jeepster, from Born to Boogie.

I brought that churlish magnetism with me back to school and in the fall, T. Rex was the soundtrack to me being a proper twit. It fit the mood magnificently.

His style's a classic, of course. The top hat hasn't been done as well since. His first splashes of glitter on Top of the Pops are eternal. I love that he wore ballet shoes all the time. All of the glitter blazers with the huge lapels make him look like some woodland nymph devoted to rock and roll and making everybody feel cool.

That was longer than I intended it to be. here is my favorite picture of him.
The guitar is his boner.

Oh crazy!

2010-01-08T11:44:00.000-08:00

It's David Bowie's birthday- 63 and still doing okay. Enjoy one of my favorite pictures of the man who made me the intolerable man I am today. Always imitated but never duplicated. This particular picture featuring David and Mod Delusion Crush Object© Marc Bolan was taken while they were both on Marc Bolan's television show in 1977, a week or so before Bolan's unfortunate death. If I remember correctly, there's a recording of them playing some song at the end of the show and Bolan falls off the stage and David just sort of laughs. Fun stuff.

I'm celebrating by listening to all my favorites, and maybe persuading my lady to watch a Bowie-centric movie with me like Velvet Goldmine. Labyrinth, The Hunger and The Prestige are also all good, but those only HAVE Bowie- they're not really about him, you know?

A far as his birth, Bowie's probably been born six or seven times, really. Physically just once, but Ziggy, Aladdin, The Thin White Duke, The DJ, The... Dancer(?) are all really new people that share awesome, awesome music.

So as you go about your business on this the day of our Bowie, please also enjoy one of my favorite music videos of him, also featuring Mod Delusion Crush Object© Mick Jagger.

Seriously. Watch that and try and tell me they never fucked.

Number One: Bowie

2010-01-07T02:35:00.000-08:00

If you found this blog because you actually know me, you've heard me talk about David Bowie. It's just a fact. And even though I'm off the kick that I was around a year ago, I'm still all about Bowie. Let's get the basics out of the way:

blah blah chameleon blah blah glam rock blah blah fashion trendsetter.

Good, we're clear. I love all of that. I love everything from the laughing gnome to hang onto yourself and alllll the way through kraftwerkian Low and up to New Killer Star. The unimpeachable fashion. The totally obvious re-invention and self creation. Nobody figured out until way later that Bob Dylan was a big ole' mumbley fakey fake. But anybody who was anybody could see that Ziggy Stardust was a glittery plastic mask. The faux-bisexuality. The history of well-fitted suits.

And then there's the stage persona. It's surprising, you expect something crazy and explosive when you listen to the music but onstage it's less straightforward. He's doing all this complicated Mime and working with stage lighting before people knew how to make rock shows look good and at the end of the day he's just as alien today as he was in 73.

I can't say enough about this man to clarify exactly how much I love him. Every time I bend genders or write about space all i can think about is how badly I want to make an album that makes me as happy and speaks to me as much as Ziggy Stardust.

Here's a quick, handy guide to figure out if you're watching a video of David before or after he "sold out"(Even though I think he's as subversive as ever): If his teeth look like a pile of french fries, you are watching coke-addicted kabbalist pre-1980's bowie. You know, like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueUOTImKp0k

But if they're as straight as tombstones, you are watching the David Bowie that even middle aged moms love.

You know, this guy. But you know what? I love him, too. Mullet to platform boots.

Front Man Icons

2010-01-07T02:28:00.000-08:00

These are the guys I can't stop loving (In no particular order:)

David Bowie
Marc Bolan
Justin Hawkins
Rob Halford
Mick Jagger
Joan Jett
Howlin' Pelle Almqvist
Paul Stanley
(The Artist formerly Known as the Artist Formerly Known as) Prince (Sorry this isn't embedded, but The Purple One is fanatical about keeping his videos off of the internet.)
Bruce Springsteen
Iggy Pop

And if you're reading this, you're going to find out why.

The Internet Needed One More Blog

2009-12-04T15:44:00.001-08:00

So I provided.

This blog isn't really for anybody in particular. Mostly just in case I get inspired for some reason. But now that you're reading this, that means that there are at least two of us.