These guys are not in the "Best Music" list, but they swept the "Take A Shower" awards.

We do a lot of talking at Taintbrush. Sometimes we are wrong. Sometimes we are right. The latter is one of these times. These are some jams I liked a lot in 2009 and why. They are pretty typical and I am boring, but with respect blow me.

Best Absolutely Everything: Japandroids – self-titled

The No Age record of the year, which means it rocked really hard with two people. It’s loud and boisterous, has some great anthems, and is possessed with a fatalism in the songwriting that matches the intensity of the guitars, grabbing you and making you believe, Yes, who gives a fuck, because I’m in love with you tonight. You might also be thinking, Jeez, this record is a lot of romantic bullshit. Well, I am a romantic. I think it is the best record I heard all year, and there is not a song I disliked. It’s not better than Nouns, but who cares? I had 97 chances to see them in New York and didn’t go.

Best songs: “The Boys Are Leaving Town,” “Young Hearts Spark Fire,” “Sovreignty”

Best Black Music Dilemma: Dirty Projectors – Stillness Is The Move

Rough timeline: Dirty Projectors song and album, Bitte Orca, comes out. This album is either great because of its R&B leanings (because I’m a boring rockist who’s never listened to Mariah) or shitty because it shamelessly co-opts black music with an indie rock sheen for wussy Brooklyn crowds (because I am a pessimist). Then the Solange version of this song drops, and it’s either great because of its R&B leanings (because I am hip and Solange is urban enough to be without critical reproach) or it’s shitty because it’s boring and is too much R&B for my boring rockism (because I am a pessimist). Then I put both versions on a mix CD for a girl and either sleep with her (because I am hip) or don’t (because she sees my ruse and sleeps with the high school quarterback). Either way, I have lost.

Best Retro Outfit: The Raveonettes – In And Out of Control

Okay, so they haven’t really changed their sound since I started listening to them in high school: There was always lots of feedback, lots of hooks, lots of Jesus & Mary Chain ripping. I specifically wrote about their last album, Lust Lust Lust, that it was good but unoriginal, that all the shameless influence ripping was making me queasy. Well, this album did the same thing except by now I don’t care as much about innovation because I’m boring, so it was okay! Aside from the best rock song I heard all year in “Bang!”, an under-three minute garage stomper about dirty love, the Ravers also twirled into the abyss with the death-poetry of “Last Dance” and “D.R.U.G.S,” making it okay to still wish you were 15 and in love. Forget the awkward diatribes of “Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed),” because every album has embarrassing PSA songs.

Most Secretly Depressed: Matt & Kim – Grand

Somewhere in between becoming the soundtrack for every University of Illinois dorm party and headlining the 2009 MTV Woodie Awards, Matt & Kim gained the reputation for being a “cute” band. Then Matt gave an interview where he said he’d been seriously depressed for the last 4 years. I feel like this is a coincidence. It wasn’t until the robo-beat of “Lessons Learned” and synthesized whine of “I’ll Take You Home” that I realized that jeez, maybe he really was depressed, what with all the lyrics about being romantic in the face of mediocrity and waving goodbye to your dying friends in a city you love a lot (maybe that’s not what the songs were about, but it’s after midnight). Then they played Pitchfork 09 and proved that amazingly, hipsters could mosh to “Yea Yeah” but they could skip the Jesus Lizard for being “too boring.” Sigh. The requisite cute song in “Daylight” was also pretty good.

Bloggiest: The xx – self-titled

I saw these guys play at Goldsmiths College when I studied there in the fall of 2008, at a party for freshmen students. They were alright, but the music didn’t fit the club atmosphere and I spent most of the time wondering when the DJ would be playing Nelly songs. And then I got kicked out for disregarding a rule I didn’t know existed. It was a shitty night! However, one of my best friends liked the band so much that he kept following them back in America, even seeing them play a small club and listening to them on Myspace and Hype Machine when he could. It was how you used to follow a band before you read about them, seeing them randomly and deciding you liked them enough to keep going. Anyways, when I visited NYC over the summer, the hype had finally built up to a “Best New Music” label from Pitchfork and undulation from the music press and blogosphere, culminating in a #1 spot on Hype Machine for “most listened.” My friend was upset – not because they were popular, or because he was first, but the hype meant that thousands of people would download the album, listen to it once, then glibly dismiss it as something they didn’t like, when he had spent months following and enjoying this band. When you like something, seeing people snarkily reject it is painful. 12 hours later, a friend of mine IMed me to ask me if I had heard their album. The moral: Being the first on something almost never pays off.

Most Kate Bush: Bat For Lashes – Daniel

Somewhere along the line, Natasha from Bat for Lashes gained this mystique for being an indie rock goddess, someone who wore funny makeup and made cryptic press statements and danced around a lot like Ian Curtis. Add in the foxiness, and the quotient for indie rock fetishization was sky-high. Does the craziness sound similar to another pop starlet in the early 80s? Because we don’t have Kate Bush to make music anymore, we have a Bat for Lashes to fill her void. This songs was things like “ethereal” and “haunting,” making it a great song to put on mix CDs for girls to appear “thoughtful” and “egalitarian.” The lyrics may also be about the Karate Kid. Regardless, that chorus syntax – “When / I / first / saw / you / Daniel” – is perfectly propulsive, and it’s fun enough to be Kate Bushy.

Best Dad Rock : Yo La Tengo – Popular Songs

No Dad, you shut up! Another consistently good album from the best trio of indie rock dads and moms in the business, shaming all other parents with their guitar heroics and solid rhythm sections, even if the funk on “Periodically Triple Or Double” makes you wince. The experimental fog of “Here To Fall” wades you through a sonic swamp, and songs like “Nothing to Hide” speed along with pop delight. I hope I’m still this good at age 50.

Best Album That I Ignored Out of Sexism: Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

My worst sexist trait is that I don’t trust anything that only women like. When this Phoenix album dropped, the only people I knew who were bumping “1901″ were girls who I didn’t like. This sounds pretty bad, but I figured the album couldn’t be that good and ignored it for a while. Then I picked it up and it was actually pretty good. I can’t always be right.

Second Most Kate Bushes: La Roux – self-titled

I saw Alexa Chung dancing along to “Bulletproof” in a NYC story, so La Roux must be doing something right, right? The angular rhythms of songs like “In For The Kill” and “I’m Not Your Toy” provided the best scoff faces to dance with in 2009, and I once referred to the lead singer’s hair as the “anti-Wavves” of music. Then I dove into a tar pit and swam until I couldn’t breathe.

Best Lyric Absolutely Ever: UGK – She Luv It

“Put my dick inside your mouth / Try and fit my whole dick and nuts inside your mouth” – RIP Pimp C

Worst Dad Rock: Dinosaur Jr. – Farm

Plodding and slow, and I couldn’t get through the album because I hated myself for it. Let’s just move on.

Best Reissues: R.E.M. – Murmur/Reckoning

If you haven’t downloaded these yet, please do so. They are the Rosetta Stones of indie rock. Hallelujah.

Favorite Songs:

The Raveonettes – Bang!
The Dirty Projectors & David Byrne – Knotty Pine
Neko Case – This Tornado Loves You
The xx – Islands
Matt & Kim – Lessons Learned
Chris Brown – I Can Transform Ya
Phoenix – Lisztomania
Weezer – (If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To

mfw, lookin' for some cutie Asher Roth fans

Acoustic hip-hop covers are the most unheralded genre in music, because music critics are afraid of the transformative power of a bro bleatin’ rhymes in a flat tenor over weakly strummed chords on a two-bit guitar. Do you want to listen to rap but you’re afraid of the loud beats and barked curse words? Is your mom not down with Nas, but totally twee for the Dave Matthews Band? Then head over to Youtube to find an array of awesome covers for any artist, all done by your favorite Sigma Rho members in backwards baseball caps.

This week, we’ve labored to bring you the best covers of Asher Roth’s “I Love College” that we could find. We won’t do the social analysis of white suburban kids aping a white suburban kid who apes black music, forming a multi-headed Hydra of cultural backwash that can’t be easily ignored – that is, if we choose to acknowledge it in the first place. Asher Roth’s schtick is that he’s the one white guy all the black people in the room are down with, which he demonstrates in almost all of his music videos. But we will let no pessimism enter the list – instead, close your eyes and let your emotions drift away on a sea of Jello shots.

There’s something in this guy’s flat delivery that’s just so charming, the way he reduces Roth’s swagger-jackin’ rhymes to humble offerings of his desires and aspirations. Yes, fill up his cup; yes, let’s get fucked up; no, no bouncin’ in his house; yes, Hakeem Olajuwon and Allen Iverson. The backwards baseball cap is standard, as is his chiseled Grecian jaw. Picture yourself on a hazy June day, sitting on a friend’s porch, watching his roommate play this song while trying to romance any number of girls who stare at him with fawning eyes, awash in his musical transcendence. You’ve just been date raped.

Listen, if the house band starts playing “I Love College” and there aren’t any girls around, don’t fret. You’re more mature than that; you don’t have to waste a good track just because there’s no biddies to get acquainted with. No, you muster up your courage, walk over to a bro, and grind on him. You touch that man’s penis. And you enjoy it. Eyyyyyyy.

So sad. So plaintive. So raw and emotional. If you’ve ever wanted to watch Asher Roth sung with the melodrama of Celine Dion with the sonic execution of a backing-track-less Ashlee Simpson, here you are. He is staring into your eyes because he wants you to love him. He is waiting for your response.

Black girl covering a white dude covering black music? Urrhgghh….my collegiate perceptions of race and class just got shattered… how to even properly snark on this? Oh well, back to watching anime “ironically.”

If the best thing you and three of your friends can do on a Saturday night is lay down a weak cover of this song, then I don’t think you get this whole “being a productive human being” thing. I mean, maybe it’s a fun way to spend a night, but I don’t know what’s being gained or lost when something like this is the culmination of human productivity and desire to act. I mean, maybe we’re irrational actors in an irrational world, flailing in the darkness to find whatever meager solitude we can, and that solitude is “I Love College.” I’m not sure man, I’m really not sure, I just know that if you’re doing this shit then you had better be ready to die for it. If not, then what’s the goddamn point.

You’ve made it through my favorite “I Love College” covers. Congratulations! Kill yourself.

(via Buzzfeed)

I didn’t watch the Michael Jackson memorial because I was being a working person doing work at the time of its bajillion-channel broadcast (I still love you, liveblogs.) Regardless of business hours, the strong-willed and sensible among us would agree that based on premise alone (put a coffin on a stage, have a clashy mix of celebrities sing and act sentimentally, involve the E! channel) there was no conceivable way to make it tasteful or even un-painful.

In a ceremony that looked more like an American Idol season finale than the commemoration of a really great-weird public figure, the only thing I can possibly call “good” is the resurfacing of this man, one Darryl Phinnessee. He is what would happen if the cast of Tim & Eric Awesome Show and maybe How Stella Got Her Groove Back and RAAAANDY cumswapped (um, apparently I know porn verbs) and backwardly surfed the waves of time to a whitewashed corporation in the ’90s. This person, with his heartbreaking typo of a name (would you guess it’s pronounced like ‘finesse’ or ‘Tennessee’? Both?) and hypnotizing dragon face (somebody take out the calipers and take measure of this person’s wacky skull) is also the lyrical genius behind THE FRASIER THEME SONG.

Up until today I’d really completely forgotten about the song “Tossed Salads and Scrambled Eggs.” That one is deeply nestled into the nostalgia ball pit, buried under layers and layers of more easily recalled entertainment hallmarks of yore (haha Saved by the Bell haha) and far out of most people’s reach. So I extend a cold thank you to Mr. Phhhinnesse, both for having a last name that appears to be the sound cartoon characters make when they’re falling off a cliff and for composing that hilarious turd of corporatized lounge music. More like, Phinn-YES, right? Darryl’s the only Phin I See! Ha-cha-cha!

* * *
Hey baby I hear the blues a’callin’
Tossed Salads and Scrambled Eggs

And maybe I seem a bit confused
Well, maybe, but I got you pegged

But I don’t know what to do with those
Tossed Salads and Scrambled Eggs

They’re callin’ again

– Darryl Phinnessee, memorial star

In the vacuum of gangster drama, no one can hear you emote.

The above title is irony. Public Enemies will not make you shit yourself. It is also not a shitty movie. But, given the expectations of the summer action blockbuster that has permeated most of American mid-year film culture, you will leave the theater flushed out of over-CGI and girls in skimpy clothes, cagey one-liners spilled from actors’ mouths like burnt popcorn on the stove, perhaps disappointed in what you’ve seen after your high wears off and you realize that smoking weed actually made the movie worse. Then, perhaps, you will stop going to see shitty summer movies like Transformers 2 and maybe go to the alternative cinema, emboldened by PE’s promises of artistic transcendence. You will have had a filmic public enema while watching Public Enemies. Lol

Public Enemies is a 2 and a half hour experiment in mainstream gangster fiction because Michael Mann didn’t want to make a movie that would be compared to The Godfather, or worse, something like American Gangster. It looks murky, shot in digital format and not actual film. The cinematography is choppy, taking place behind trees and hidden by staircases. There’s star power – Johnny Depp acting as gasp, a jovial and wacky dude, and Christian Bale grunting a lot – but no one-liners or typical narrative build-up. The scenes swirl, lacking a clear thread or arc for the characters to grab ahold of – by the end, the sinking feeling is that there isn’t any higher meaning to the bank robberies committed by John Dillinger, or typical Hollywood platitudes. There’s just crime and violence.

As I was watching the movie, I hated it – I mean, really hated it. I fell asleep around 30 minutes in, completely bored by the formless bloff on screen as Johnny Depp strolled around with his Johnny Depp grin and some people were killed, although why they mattered I wasn’t sure. I woke up to the ugly ass digital format staining my eyes – an aesthetic choice akin to scrubbing your eyes with bleach – and kept checking the time to see if this 150-minute adventure into gangster minutiae would finally end. I scoffed at Bale’s incessant gruffness; I laughed at Marion Cotillard’s half-in-half-out American accent; I wondered if Billy Crudup’s bit role as J. Edgar Hoover would have been better if he was glowing blue and showing his dick. When I walked out of the theater, I was asked what I thought. “What a fucking waste,” I grunted, not in sarcastic snark but in the disappointment that I had just spent my afternoon watching “that bullshit.” Then I went to a burger joint and watched a fat man endlessly scoop peanuts out of a free box full of them into his palm. This did not seem like a 4th of July worth remembering.

The lesson of course is that I am an idiot. Public Enemies is not a bad movie because I fell asleep, nor is it a great one because I can read reviews bemoaning the lack of action and think, Well, it’s an art film! It’s a daring take on gangster formula, because Michael Mann was handed a huge budget, two of Hollywood’s biggest stars, a 4th of July opening weekend, and decided to use the time to troll any family intent on seeing a fun summer blockbuster in between bouts of grilling. I have to respect the obvious middle finger to convention. It’s also a major let down, because for all of Mann’s lyrical musings on the existential squalor of actually being a cop or a robber (or both, if you’re a Chicago cop), the movie doesn’t go anywhere. All of the characters are cold (except Cotillard’s weeping wife) and never learn anything; the robbers are slowly mowed down as the war on crime escalates, and the cops get more and more ruthless in their attempts to apprehend Dillinger. Is Dillinger aware of the ultimate mundanity of his life, how hollow his good living is? Maybe, but he will keep living anyways. He must have known he would be gunned down at the Biograph Theater (only 20 minutes from my house in Chicago!) when he went to the movies with his friends, but he didn’t give no fuck about it.

Cotillard is the only character worthy of audience empathy; it’s too bad Mann felt the need to drag it out from viewers by having her get beat up in a harsh interrogation scene (Those jerks! you say from your seat). If you feel bad for Dillinger, just an honest man trying to make a dishonest living, then keep your sympathy to yourself – Depp’s character, bereft of all emotions but love, doesn’t need your tears or your companionship. One gets the idea that he goes through life collecting acquaintances not because of the need for friendship but for routine. He goes to the movies because he needs something to do; he shoots a man responsible for his partner’s death ouf of principle; he works with criminals like Baby Face Nelson not because he likes them but because they’re good at what they do. General morality is no concern to Dillinger; just his own personal sense of right and wrong.

Seeing Public Enemy is more recommended than seeing Public Enemies.

The obvious connection I can make is the recent The Assassination of the Outlaw Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford Who Totally Shot Him In The Back, Isn’t That Fuckin’ Wack? starring Brad “I Can Act” Pitt and Casey “I Want to Act Soooo Badly” Affleck, a film with similar musings on the harshness of criminality, buoyed by idyllic cinematography on the frontiers of America and way more connectable characters than this one. I mean, even if you hated Affleck’s sniveling Ford or Pitt’s brash, rude James, they at least make you feel; the biggest crime about Public Enemies is that too many of the characters don’t even seem to matter. Why invest an opinion in any character that doesn’t even seem important in the context of their own film? The success at empathy, aided by a not-so-subtle narration track and of course, that beeyooooooootiful photography, is what made TAOFOJJBYCRFWTSHITBITFW? a minor success in the Oscar-bloated field of 2007. The lack of empathy in such a plot & character-driven movie (cause Mann sure ain’t showing you the beautiful scenery with the washed out shitty digital filming) is what sinks Public Enemies just a bit.

One thing is totally awesome about the movie, no questions asked: The sound. Mann’s the guy who directed Heat and that show about the gay cops in Miami, so you better believe he knows how to make gunshots pop out from the theater sound system like they’re right behind you. A friend of mine once told me about how the audio for the gun fights in Heat had been recorded in a vacuum using actual firearms, so that the ring and slug of every bullet could be perfectly called up in film for chilling effect and maybe he did the same thing for PE,  for these are not a typical shoot-happy scenes. In the theater, you feel like you are being shot at, at least, like a nearby spectator in the mayhem.

Eventually, the feeling seeps in that you are just a spectator to everything; there’s no understanding any of the characters, their motivations, or why anything in the movie happens. It simply happens in a perpetual state of in medias res. Even when the movie ends, the final emotion is of an unfinished story, a promise never delivered to the character in it, and just the same, the audience. Public Enemies is as worthwhile of a movie you’ll see in a big theater this summer; just don’t expect to fall in love with it. In the movie, all love leads to is death.

Gwyneth loves Spanish tradition! Especially a hearty vegan, gluten-free, macrobiotic paella.

In light of Gwyneth Paltrow’s outpouring of adoration for Spanish culture, I ventured into my local video store (HAHA local video stores) to peruse the Spanish film section. Feeling dwarfed by the multitude of titles and words with accents, I didn’t even know where to begin! It seems she hasn’t done much in the way of making such high culture accessible to the masses, as Gwyneth is wont to do. Oh, Gwyneth, democratic principles needn’t be a bother to you.

Though we can’t possibly possess her level of sophistication when it comes to foreign language, that shouldn’t mean we’re left out of the loop on her tastes. We can do more to include ourselves in her world than just purchasing her favorite Japanese socks for $16 a pair. Accordingly, I’ve created a helpful Guide To Spanish Film by providing the titles first in Spanish and then translated into English. Enrich your minds!

* * *

AMORES PERROS

English Translation: Must Love Dogs

* * *

Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN

English Translation: Your Mother, Trebek

* * *

LA ESPINOZA DEL DIABLO

English Translation: Spinach Devils

* * *

AMOR DE HOMBRE

English Translation: Gay Dudes

* * *

VOLVER

English Translation: The Volver Report with Stephen Volver

* * *

NO TE FALLARE

English Translation: I Won’t Fellate You

* * *

GUERRERO

English Translation: Gwar (Live Tour DVD)

* * *

LOS ANOS BARBAROS

English Translation: The Anus Barbers

* * *

Hopefully this list will make your first foray into Spanish film a more palatable experience and lend us all the means through which to “nourish the inner aspect.” Yes, consider this the first step on the path of knowledgeability that leads to the sacred land of Gwyneth. Three cheers, mates.

The realest dude, gold lamé and all.

Michael Jackson is dead but I am not. This should be enough to make me happy about life, and I am. But plenty of people are not happy about life in the week following the King of Pop’s death, and analyzing the cultural impact of his passing is more interesting to me than being torn up about the death of a man I didn’t know who hadn’t put out any artistic material in almost a decade. It’s certainly sad that Michael Jackson the Man died, as sad as it is when any father of three passes because of unfortunate circumstances, but more uniquely profound is the death of Michael Jackson the Idea, the Cultural Entity, because he was wholly singular – you could argue that he’s the most notable pop culture death of all-time, depending on how strongly you feel about Elvis and John Lennon’s reach in non-English-speaking countries. At the very least he’s the most significant death since Lennon 1980, and there we find profundity: It’s the biggest event in twenty-eight years. (Addendum: It’s gauche to compare deaths, but it’s a quick measure of scale of impact, because I think this will be one of Those Days that everyone refers to in the future, whether or not recounting their own personal history ["I remember where I was when MJ passed..."] or featured on VH1’s I Love the New Millennium Again).

I know a lot of people who profess to be genuinely torn about his death, and watching the news coverage of bystanders milling around his Los Angeles hospital or mourners decorating the outside of his Gary, IN, childhood home, it’s clear that real tears are being shed. On the other hand, a lot of people I know find this stupid: One friend was cracking jokes about the situation the day after he died, bemoaning that anyone would take offense to them or even care about his passing, and another friend took the moral high road and excoriated those moved (or at least, those who appeared to be moved) by his death, saying that he hadn’t done anything creative in years and that crying over the death of someone you’ve never met is idiotic.

It’s very easy to be glib about stuff like this, to say that being a fan doesn’t entitle you to any real empathy or sadness over your idol’s death, and that any shed tears are excessive. But I don’t think this is true, because it minimizes the personal connection that can be forged in relation to a work of art, especially something as awesome as Thriller. For many people, an album like Thriller or a song like “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” is related to a moment of their childhood, or their teenhood, or their adulthood, even; that Jackson was a pop star means millions of people had this experience. It’s not a unique experience, but a personally worthwhile one–while many people may in fact be overreacting to Jackson’s death, his material provided an important component of their lives. It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that many of the people I know nay-saying any reaction to his death are the emotionally detached alternative milieu, who scoff at pop pablum designed for “the mob”; of course, if Stephen Malkmus or Connor Oberst were to die tomorrow, they would be aghast. The death of an artist matters depending on your relation to the artist; for people who never grew up loving Jackson’s songs, or never had any experience with his music outside of just listening to it, the reaction isn’t as intense. This doesn’t mean more serious reactions aren’t worth having, if you believe in celebrating the artists as much as the art.

My own experiences with MJ: Singing along to “I Want You Back” and “Billie Jean” with my friends in London nightclubs, laughing at Chris Tucker singing “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” in a Japanese Yazuba bar in Rush Hour 2 as a grade-schooler, doing a freshman-year high school health class presentation on vitiligo (the condition that discolors your skin’s pigmentation) and using Jackson’s photo as an example in at least three slides (my teacher was amused), bumping Thriller while studying for exams in my sophomore year of college even though it prevented me from concentrating, rediscovering the over-dramatic video to “Black or White” last year after seeing it as a kid and thinking, “Ha ha ha, this video is hilarious, hey wait a minute, this song is kind of great.” Experiences that millions of other people had in some way or another, more muted or more serious than my own. That these experiences aren’t singular doesn’t bother me; what I find profound is that (deep breath, eulogy time) his music served as a common cultural tether for millions across the world. He may have been better at this than any other entertainer in history, especially that his music has translated so well to modern audiences.

Above all this, I think comments like “I can finally listen to Jackson’s music without the stigma” are totally worthless, and I know people who have said things like this, which is just beyond me. If someone’s death and subsequent eulogizing enables you to enjoy something, then grow up and learn to separate an artist’s output from his personal life. Just about every creative mind in the world has been into some fucked up shit at one point or another; Kurt Cobain was a gun enthusiast, Jason Kidd beat his wife (if you don’t think he’s creative, how do you explain this?), Craig Finn is a huge Springsteen fan, etc., etc., etc. That O.J. Simpson killed his wife doesn’t mean he wasn’t one of the best college running backs ever, you know? And while one’s artistic contributions don’t cover up their personal life, they have to be viewed in separate lights, unless you believe in extreme authorial intent where the artist’s life always crosses over in the work (if so, how do you explain “Bad”?). A similar reaction to scoff at is, “He was weird and I made fun of him, but I still loved him!” Puh-lease. Own up to your own shameless bashing of a man you had never met for entertainment’s sake. I mean, I’m not going to cry when Scott Stapp kicks the bucket, but I’m definitely not going to pretend I haven’t spent hours and hours making fun of Creed (because I have!).

So what does all of this mean? Well, something has happened, and the myriad ways in which Jackson influenced culture (whether through the bold synthesis of pop, rock, R&B, and funk in his music, breaking racial lines on MTV, making a studded glove look good, etc.) will take a while to parse through because he was the King of Pop and now the King is dead, boys. It was so lonely on a limb out there, and now he’ll be buried or burned, away from all the naysayers and leeches who poked at him in the latter days of his life, draining him until the world’s once-best dancer was confined to a wheelchair, unable to move. Pop music may never see a similar titan of culture ever again.

They can't believe they were just in this movie.

In Chicago’s Lincoln Park, where I live, there’s an athletic center with a fake rock climbing wall located on the outside wall of the building that goes up maybe four or five stories. Whenever I pass it, I imagine myself dropping the anime and doing any physical activity other than biking for once. How would I feel upon scaling this replica of nature, throwing my all into climbing something arduous and challenging but plastic and unreal? Instead of the cold rock and moss of the outdoors, all I would feel is warm plastic; instead of fresh air and a view of the wilderness at the top of the mountain, all I would get is a breath of Chicago smog and a truncated view of the skyline. This would be no man vs. wild, man vs. nature, man vs. beauty; this would be man vs. shit, man vs. artifice.

This is more or less how I feel about the new Transformers movie. Writing about Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is like discussing Proust or trying to make sense of the Coheed and Cambria storyline: There’s just too much going on and you know it means something but articulating it is a headache. I got an A in a Proust class and I once read the Coheed comic book, but I can’t try to understand Transformers because every element adds to this feces quiche. Is it the 2 and a half hours of overwhelming CGI robot beatdowns rendered so joyless and hectic that you might as well go to sleep rather than follow who’s fighting who? Is it the fetishization of military culture that justifies the wanton destruction of environment and over-abundance of unnecessary technology as required for salvation of the human race? Is it Megan Fox’s mechanical sex body swinging and swaying in every scene like a Fembot-1000, her skin an orangey bleach on the hi-definition screen, not a character or a pinup but a walking teenage hormone trigger? Or is it the two jive-talking robots who reinvent the blackface caricature for modern audiences?

The morning after seeing the movie, I felt like a zombie. It might be the most lethargic theater experience I’ve had this year, passing Terminator: Salvation because the process of going to the theater, getting tickets, waiting for the movie to start, sitting through trailers and then the film itself will take you over three hours. It will suck the momentum from your day and stick out like a bald spot on a yak. It’s so long and poorly paced that even if you get super drunk, you’ll still be in the theater as your booze wears off and leaves you with a pounding headache. This movie sobers you up in an ugly way. It makes you realize how much you are wasting your life if you see movies like this.

Instead, I recommend reading Transformers fanfiction on the Internet: It’s cheaper, more entertaining, and has a better story. Here’s an except from my new favorite piece, an opus called “My Jazzy Life” – it’s a love story between Jazz the Transformer and a human. It’s riveting!

Jazz stalked over to me and said, “Vi, you need to get the hell up outta here!” I shook my head. I said, “Jazz, you’ve always been there for me, even when I didn’t know about yawl. I wanna be there for you!” He shook his head, and said, “Vi, I did that cause I’m your guardian, like Bee’s Sam’s guardian. It would be weird if I caused you to not be safe.” I sighed and said, “You can keep me safe, I just know it. I wanna help, Jazz!” “Why??” I sighed; it would have to come out sometime. “Because I freaking LOVE YOU!” Within a few moments, before he could say anything, we heard a “bam” and I blacked out, while Jazz fell to the floor.

Compare that to a scene where Shia LeBeouf almost has sex with a Deceptacon disguising as a hot girl and Megan Fox accidentally walks in on them. Does this scene not give you more emotion? Here’s a passage from “Axel’s Mistake“:

“I love you so much…” Starscream reached for her hand, but Axel, being already in love with Optimus, pulled her hand away. She shook her head.

“Well, I don’t love you back. I love Optimus, and we already have three beautiful children. And Siren, well, wasn’t ever supposed to exist. I don’t know what’s gonna happen to her, but I know she’s not going to ever know that she wasn’t supposed to be alive. I’m sorry.”

Give me your poor, your tired, your robot/human love. This is almost certainly better than the Transformers movie, CGI robots be damned.

This man is selling shit you will never be able to afford, like Grey Goose vodka and love.

Orson Welles once said that movies are canned because they come in cans, which means they aren’t fresh. He was making a point about how stale the cinema can seem, and why we need to break from the complaisant urge to stick to what we know when we’re scared to do anything new. For actors and musicians in the “entertainment” business, I wonder if they feel that creative dearth from time to time and try to switch up their horizons accordingly. Does the guy from Nickelback sigh when he realizes he’s just written the hundredth variation of “Photograph”? Does that inspire him to invest all his time in a jazz fusion side project, or perhaps a gallery installation on barbershop still life? Probably not, because Nickelback keeps releasing variations of “Photograph.” But for the restless man, there is something more.

That something more is the questionnaire ad, where celebrities get to answer a bunch of totally personal and unique questions about some product they wouldn’t use to line their cat’s shit box. They’re usually found in magazines opposite front of the book sections that distract you enough where you might accept Chamillionaire hawking Castrol motor oil as a typical thing. “Really, so that’s what I can do to freshen my shubbery in the springtime?” the house mom says as she puts down her copy of Better Home and Garden. “Now, what does this rapper have to say about car maintenance?” You get to know a lot by reading the ad: 1) Castrol motor oil lasta a long time and doesn’t need to be replaced often and 2) Chamillionaire will do anything for money.

Lo, I popped open a copy of this month’s GQ to find the primest example of this phenomenom: Indie actor starlet Gael Garcia Bernal putting the GGB stamp on Grey Goose vodka. Gael is just bursting with things to tell us about this overpriced alcohol and how you can best use it. For example:

What you’re listening to sets the mood. For a fun, sophisticated gathering, create a playlist that gets your guests moving. Gael often likes to put together a mix of Latin music and old-school recordings, or anything that’s fun and has a good beat. Gael knows his party is a success when everyone ends up dancing. “That’s a sign that it was good for their souls.”

Words of wisdom: When people are having fun, it means that having fun is good. I understand it’s not about the money with the GGB, but rather, the advice he’s imparting in all of us with his love of Grey Goose, because Pouring GREY GOOSE (TM) always makes the night feel special. As I peeled my eyes down the rest of the ad, I saw further streams of juice from GGB’s mind jugs.

Gael knows his hair is wet when he lies down on his pillow and when he sits up it’s wet. “That’s a sign I didn’t go for a long enough jog to get the wet out.”

Gael knows a lady is good in bed when he finishes and doesn’t even want a cigarette. “That’s a sign she’s been around the block before.”

Gael knows it’s time to buy new shoes when he can stick his big toe through a hole in the front and accidentally steps on a nail. “That’s a sign I might have gangrene.”

Gael knows he’s seen Star Wars enough times when he dreams about naked Ewoks. “That’s a sign I need to meet some non-furry girls.”

Gael knows he’s tripping when he looks over in the corner and there’s a dog made of gold just staring at him, panting diamonds that evaporate when he tries to touch them. “That’s a sign I got wet as hell – and not in a water way!”

Gael knows his car is out of gas when he turns the engine on and pushes his foot down on the pedal and it doesn’t go and he keeps fucking pushing but the car isn’t fucking going so he has to call his agent to send a car to pick him up because how do you expect me to get to auditions without a car a cab will be so expensive are you kidding me Bruce do you think I’m made of money? “That’s a sign my car needs to get better mileage.”

Next month: Jon Voight advertises deodorant.

This Native American/Werewolf knows what youth culture is about in 2009.

On the first night of summer break, I was overcome with a wave of nausea from some noxious tobacco that had found its way into a night of typical college rituals and libations. My stomach, churning like the whirlpool of Charbydis, forced me to lie down on my couch and clutch a pillow until the wave of sickness passed by. In the background, my TV was playing and had settled on the 2009 MTV Movie Awards. In the next hour, I could only overhear the audio as I tried not to vomit on my mother’s newly-washed couch linens, and felt as though I was in some surreal dimension. What are kids today watching?, I thought to myself. Am I no longer a kid? But I am a kid! But I don’t know any of this! Eventually I gave up and worked the will to climb up the stairs and collapse into my bed (first world problems are the worst!).

So this is a post about Twilight just as much as it’s about youth culture in the year 2009, and whether or not youth media only appears stupid to adults because we’re not living in the moment. The idea is this: Are things today really worse than things were yesterday? It’s a shockingly precise question, I know, one that will clearly find its way onto every junior-level communications class final about pop culture, but shake off the cobwebs of nostalgia and consider this: Is it not possible that all kids are just into stupid bullshit, no matter what generation they grow up in?

First of all, Twilight. I watched it last night with some friends and holy cow is it a cinematic tour-de-crap. But of course, you knew this, and of course, I knew this; what could I have expected, the Citizen Kane of vampire fanfiction? But Twlight isn’t conventionally worse than any other mainstream blockbuster film, as far as plot/character/dialogue/pacing/editing goes, because really, what else do you expect from something that’s made to make money? It was a lot more enjoyable than Terminator: Salvation (NO HOMO NO HOMO NO HOMO) and even though it’s insanely vapid it will teach you things; I hit the Stop button with a new understanding of what it means to be 13 in the Obama Age, which is a lot different than being 13 in the Bush Age.

A gust of wind has just blown through the room, giving him an epic NARB.

This is Edward Cullen, played by Robert Pattinson. He’s 17 going on 100+. His hair is gelled in a direction that human hair is not meant to gel in. He’s tall, brooding, and so pale that my friend thought he was animated when he first appears. When he stands in the sunlight, he glitters. He listens to Debussy and the Arcade Fire. His bedroom is so chic and hip he makes Karl Lagerfeld look like Kanye West, Kanye West like Billy Joe Armstrong, and Billy Joe Armstrong like Kim Jong Il. He’s always dressed like he’s vacationing in the Swiss Alps, even though he lives in impossibly dreary Washington. He can play the piano beautifully. He doesn’t care about sex; he only wants to talk about your feelings. He can also read minds and fly.

Basically, he’s going to make getting pussy a lot harder for every tween male from here on out. Edward Cullen is not a character as much as he is an escapist fantasy; the looks of the high school quarterback combined with the personality of the sensitive art kid enabled by the bank account of an Enron executive. Whatever advances Woody Allen made for the nebbish, kind-of-cute intellectual, Robert Pattinson is enacting in reverse. You don’t need to settle for the funny, smart, kind of cute kid in class! There’s a funny, smart, gorgeous male model right next to him. This is the kid you want to hold hands with and whisper secrets to in the middle of the night. You don’t have to settle for personality over looks or vice versa; you can have it all. And he’ll also buy you lots of gifts, if you want them.

I believe I can soar.

On the other hand is Bella Swan, played by the ever-disappearing Kristen Stewart. She’s also pale, cute, and impossibly moody. She’s not into dressing up like the other girls, and doesn’t like to surf or partake in physical activity. She has friends, but doesn’t really fit in. She’s always thinking she’s being noticed by the cute, broody boy in the corner (and she actually is). Everyone thinks she’s funny, but no one notices she’s laughing at them. Attractive, smart, funny, and an outsider, Bella is Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club wrapped into one: The coolest girl in school who doesn’t belong.

This is the nut graf of Twilight and what it says to fans: Are you an outsider in school? (Of course you are!) Well, you’re not alone; you can still be really cool and on the bottom of the high school totem pole (well, obviously). All you need is an impossibly shiny knight in armor to rescue you from the tedium of regular life, and you will be okay. You will barely kiss or go past first base. But you will talk about your feelings, become a part of his family in a week, and love him forever. Potentially, you will also become a vampire.

The most amazing thing about how Edward and Bella suspposedly fall in love is that the movie never shows in. We get wordless montages of them talking on hillsides and tree tops, but never hear any dialogue, never get any reason why they’re really into each other besides the fact that Edward is creepy as fuck. He follows her around, eavesdrops on her conversations, and breaks into her room to watch her sleep every night (SERIOUSLY). So, not only is this impossibly romantic courtship non-existent on screen, but it’s marked by some serious stalker tendencies. The love between them is not love; it is obsession, and most dangerously, the movie recognizes this. It just doesn’t give a fuck. It’s this puritanical idea of love, framed through the Myspace generation.

He's so heroic.

Chuck Klosterman once wrote about how movies like Say Anything were giving women of his generation an idealized version of love, one that was impossible to live up to in real life. Lloyd Dobler was a sensitive, sweet, popular, good-looking guy who taught kick-boxing to little kids and didn’t aspire to go to college or do anything other than love Ione Skye. However, he was basically just an idealized version of the guys we could be like, if we weren’t awkward assholes who had career goals. But Edward Cullen is dangerous. No one can be like him, and yet, Twilight tells its audience that the ultimate form of love is a partership with this dude. Bella loves him; she wants to be with him forever, wants to die with him, wants to become a vampire for his love. She just wants him to suck her! And this idea of love is impossible; I’m not being pessimistic, I’m being a realist. There is no goddamn way. This is what 15-year olds are getting in their head; that it’s perfectly okay to idealize someone and want to live with them forever, even if you barely know them. That guy is also a vampire.

Which brings up another question: Hasn’t all media just been doing this forever? What’s the difference between Twilight and Say Anything – won’t the former be eulogized on VH1 recap shows in 20 years like the latter is? I got into this discussion the other day when we were talking about Brokencyde, who are the musical equivalent of the Twlight novels in terms of their appeal, and I think the answer is that there’s a world of difference. This is mostly because of the Internet and the Myspace era, which has mobilized youth culture in a way that was impossible 10 years ago, when message boards and social networking sites were mostly for tech nerds. Modern social networking gives kids a way to battle out their obsessions over the nation. No longer can you be the #1 Twilight fan of your class; you have to be the #1 fan in the world. If this means showing you’re deadly obsessed with Edward, why not? If this means publicly wishing to be a vampire, so what? If this means funneling all your hopes into these ridiculous characters, who cares?

I think blog bands get so much hype because the listeners want to be a part of something, some cultural experience, and it doesn’t matter if their aesthetic tastes miss the boat 10 times if they can hitch a ride at least once. But tweens, who often aren’t trained in any real aesthetic appreciation (and I was just a teen, so I can say this!), never get that self-awareness that they’ve made too much out of nothing until they’ve grown up – if at all. Their tastes never develop – they keep listening to Third Eye Blind in the year 2009, they go to Backstreet Boys reunion concerts, they go see Scary Movie 18 in theaters.

Of course you can.

For the current generation, Twilight is going to be this experience for them, and it will fuck them up. They will grow up expecting mythological love and be upset when it doesn’t come; not idealized love, but flat out impossible made-of-legends romance novel love, and it will ruin everyone’s expectations. I know a girl my age who listens to the Jonas Brothers because she can’t imagine anything better, and cries whenever she doesn’t have a boyfriend who doesn’t want to devote his entire existence to her. I think she’s an anomaly among my peers. In 10 years, I think there’ll be a lot of girls like her.

This werewolf is keeping it real.

But I don’t think I’m being pessimistic; more than ever, this is why you have to support culture you don’t hate and talk about these things with the people who are consuming it. My little cousin is 13, and she hates the Jonas Brothers but she’s really into Twilight. Of course, her mom hates the books, and with good reason. The next time I see her, I am making it a mission to ruin her world about this shit, because it needs to happen. Aesthetically, Twilight is no shittier than any other movie; culturally, it may ruin us all. I’m glad I got out when girls my age were being influenced by The Office and Spider-Man 2 to think this is what love could be, not when glittering vampires were telling them how to find eternity. And don’t call me a hater, man.

So hip, Kristen.

Word.

Also, Radiohead’s “15 Step” plays over the end credits. It’s then followed by a Paramore cut. I don’t have to say why this owns.

Stop covering Kate Bush's songs. She will pounce you.

Big Star’s first two records are about to be reissued on vinyl and CD in a month, which makes me giddier than a pig rolling in dollar bills. Big Star’s legacy might be that they were one of the first obscure bands to get super name-dropped by record collectors long, long after their music came out, paving the way for Slint, the Vaselines and many others. Their legacy could also be the sweet, affected tone of songs like “Thirteen,” a tune that stands tall and bares its chest waiting for you to hug it, put it on mix CDs, play it while staring deeply into the eyes of that girl or guy you love, wind breezing through your hair, your exorable spirit twinged with that fey remember of innocence. The legacy might also be that Cheap Trick cover of “In the Street.”

I like Cheap Trick, I mean, “Surrender” is as accessible a pop jaunt to shake your hair to, but the cover of “In the Street” that was played on That ’70s Show basically guaranteed no one would never give a shit about the Big Star version except college DJs – which might have been true even had the show not existed, because the Big Star version is kind of cheesy in that ’70s stutter-step disco shoes, Friday night joint way. I don’t know if it’s on the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever or Dazed and Confused. Still, that Cheap Trick got a little more recognized/popular at Big Star’s expensesucks if the people who listen to them never give the original band a shot – not that Big Star is objectively better than Cheap Trick (although I like them more), but the cover might rob the original of its potency. For example, I think just about anything would be ruined if I heard a Green Day cover of it before hearing the originals.

Some other examples:

The Futureheads – Hounds of Love (600,000 Youtube hits) vs. Kate Bush – Hounds of Love (20,000 Youtube hits)

The Futureheads version of this song is pretty great – those layered four-part harmonies climaxing at the end like the most enthusiastic orgasm you’ve ever had – and that it remains the only song of theirs anyone listens to five years after their first album is what happens when you make its performance a gimmick at every concert. The band would do this call-and-response at their shows of the recurring vocal parts – “Oh, oh oh, Oh, oh oh,” one guy would go, and “OH OH OH! OH OH OH!” the other would coo after him, both like a pair of Brit-pop album. But if you’re an indie kid, did you know it’s a cover of a Kate Bush song? Bush’s version is less up-tempo, to describe it in a totally generic way, but it has this hand-in-your-face, mug-for-the-stage dramatic mysticism to it that no one has been able to replicate since, no matter how hard Lady Gaga might be subconsciously trying.

M.I.A. – Paper Planes (35,000,000 Youtube hits) vs. The Clash – Straight to Hell (450,000 Youtube hits)

I guess this isn’t a cover at all, but that M.I.A. stole the most memorable musical phrase of her song from the one of the last good Clashs song ever written may have escaped a few – as my sophomore year roommate told me, “No, Jeremy, M.I.A. did that shit first. The Clash ripped her off.” He might have been joking (well, probably, unless he was actually retarded), but I feel you need to know this because the Clash song is one of the best anti-war songs I’ve ever heard, a solemn vigil for the thousands dead in Vietnam that filmmakers surely would have co-opted for their Vietnam movies had it not been buried underneath the top 40 appeal of “Should I Stay Or Should I Go Now” and “Rock the Casbah” on Combat Rock. The closest Joe Strummer could have gotten to becoming a working-class hero was by death, and on this song he got closer to becoming a ghost than any of the other righteous Clash songs. That said, you’re not going to get laid to this song unless your significant other is really cool.

Placebo – Running Up That Hill (3,000,000 Youtube hits) vs. Kate Bush – Running Up That Hill (100,000 Youtube hits)

I wonder why it comes back to Kate Bush, as it seems to these days, or why these Placebo cover seems to be so popular at her expense; unlike the Futureheads’ cover, I think it robs energy from the original, not gives it more. I actually don’t have that much to say about this; I just can’t believe people aren’t listening to more Kate. Harumph.