I am thinking about making "Battle of the Bands" a monthly (or perhaps more often) battle between two bands whose albums I have recently acquired. It will be a sort of double-review segment. So far I consider myself decently on top of this years releases. I have been listening to Wincing the Night Away by the Shins and Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? from Of Montreal. The two bands have battled for my attention, and while the Shins have given me a few tracks that I love, Of Montreal has pulled away and right now I have listened to their album several times in full.
The Shins released Wincing the Night Away last week and it has received mixed reviews from various sources. Pitchfork left it with a 7.0, and reviewers certainly haven't been hailing it as the Shins' best work (although there are the die-hard fanboys out there). The album has some wonderfully memorable tracks like "Australia" and "Phantom Limb," and they end the album with two fresh tracks that reveal that the Shins are maturing as a band. The album itself seems schizophrenic, however, and the Shins really goofed themselves on a couple of tracks. The album seems to shift from classic Shins material towards experimental samples and sounds that sound, if anything, timid. As Brian Hawkins pointed out, there seems to be a lack of the passion on previous Shins recordings. Wincing the Night Away is definitely a strong and laudable effort from the Shins, but there are certain songs like "Red Rabbits" that causes the listener to do exactly what the album title discusses.
Initially, the poppy and fun tracks like "Australia" and "Phantom Limb" distracted me from my other album, Of Montreal's Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? I watched, even slightly embarrassed of myself, as those tracks rose to well over a dozen (in the case of "Phantom Limb," well over 20) plays. But I decided it was time for a break, and checked out my new Of Montreal recording. The album name is just a hint of the bizarre eclectica contained in the album. I am not familiar with OM's previous releases, which gives them a little bit of slack. After this album, however, I will defintely be listening to their earlier albums. As I listened to the album, I felt that OM is the new Queen. I loved the richly layered vocals, obviously reminiscent of A Night at the Opera. The album is definitely a pop album, although singer/guitarist Kevin Barnes invites us into his flawed world with lyrics that you would expect to find sung over a mournful acoustic guitar being played in D minor. The brave juxtaposition of incredibly poppy music with soul-searching music should leave you with several questions about how you approach your own problems, and how seriously you take yourself. No doubt there is some absurdity to the sounds on Hissing Fauna, but I hope you enjoy it.
To get a taste of the sound (and the absurdity of a married, heterosexual, and I've heard even Bush-supporting male doing things that have earned the video "omg, that's so gay" comments from the YouTube community) I invite you to watch the music video for "Heidmalsgate Like a Promethean Curse."
This isn't a shocker. Jack Bauer is the current ambassador of manliness to televisions sets all across the world. He is the diplomat of destruction, and the priest of pain. Bauer is just starting his sixth season of 24 and he already has over 130 confirmed kills (meaning the deaths were seen on screen). We could consider this an average count, considering that other TV action heros might waste just as many people over the course of a season, but we'd be fooling ourselves. See, those characters kill two or three people a day, while Jack kills upwards of 25. Let's consider what Jack's kill count might be if a day of 24 was equal to the day of other television shows. At Jack's rate of ~25 kills per day, multiplying that by 24 episodes, then we have an astonishing death count that no one could hope to match. Statistically speaking, Jack Bauer is the killingest man in television. This leads to his special man designation (each character will get a special name):
Jack Bauer is the Grim Reaper of the 21st Century.
Unfortunately, Jack is a torturing machine as well. While males typically should applaud anything done to achieve mission goals, 24-viewing Christians cannot seriously support Jack in doing this. Jack sets the mission goal as his personal god, and does anything he could to accomplish the mission. This often involves Jack torturing suspects to gain vital information.
Jack and I disagree at this point. I am ideal-driven while Jack is driven by fear of terrorist success. Jack is willing to violate the image of God imbued by the Creator in every human being. Jack's blatant disrespect for his enemies is prohibited by Scripture, and the fact that we identify with Jack's "I need a hacksaw!"/Shoot-someone's-wife-in-the-leg mentality is just another example of our own depravity.
We are left wondering what could be done to stop evil if we do not take those drastic measures. Indeed, CTU's success on a daily basis depends on Jack's ability to pry information out of suspects, usually through threats or torture. We completely exonerate Jack because it seems that humanity is more diminished by a nuclear bomb than by the gruesome death of one man.
This leaves us asking question about our own lives. Do the ends justify the means in complex situations? No, the necessity of the ends and the confusion over the means justify one thing: prayer and supplication to God for wisdom and guidance. In our daily trials we should not heed temptations to take the easy road, but should persevere in what we know is right, because we believe in a generous God, and while the night may seem long, the day is quickly coming.
I deleted my post about Manliest Rock Band because there are a lot of issues that would be hard to resolve. For example, James Hetfield of Metallica survived a 1500 degree pyrotechnic malfunction, but started writing like a little child. Guns N' Roses has Slash, which is a great manly boost, but then they've also got Axl Rose, who changed their style quickly to add strings. Slash, of course, got pissed, drunk, and left the band (proving that you can make smart decisions in drunken anger). Led Zeppelin set the bar for the manliness of early hard rock, but Robert Plant wore lots of jewelry. AC/DC and Black Sabbath are still some great bands, and their songs are certainly manly, but I'm sure I could do some research that would sink those ships too. For example, people think Ozzy is crazy for biting the heads off bats and birds, but Samson (virtually) ripped the head off of a lion. So Ozzy isn't anything big in the world of hand-to-hand (or hand-to-mouth) animal combat.. And AC/DC sung about sex a LOT, but Wilt Chamberlain (by his own profession) slept with over 20,000 women, so who looks stupid now? KISS was just stupid. They only have one halfway decent song and they wore make up. Oooh, make up makes them look like crazy people! No, it makes them looks stupid and wimpy. When I see Gene Simmons' tongue I want to cut it off.
So instead I will be doing a biopic of manly characters in television programs, and rating them according to manliness. As there is no secular/sacred dichotomy, I will be judging them according to several spheres of man-ethics (kills, stab wounds survived, etc.) which includes Christian living.
I will be looking at the lives of Jack Bauer (24), Horatio Caine (CSI:Miami), and Jim Halpert (the Office, who might seem to be an unlikely manly character, but I will prove my point).
Last semester I had a wonderful experience. I got my first (here's hoping to the last) wart ever. It's right below the first knuckle of my thumb, and it's really not in the way so I let the wart, we'll call him Jim, chill out there for a little while. But now it's time for Jim to leave.
A week or so ago I bought some wart removal stuff at Kroger, and I've been working on evicting Jim from my hand. Results so far are nice, but painful. Jim has shrunk, but now instead of his normal white complexion he is blackened and necrotic. It's pretty gross looking. The skin around Jim is raw from the removal applicant, and now when I apply more of the Jim-killing fluid my nerves give me a big "Dude, what the hell, stop!" sensation. My thumb-strength virtually disappears and I can't really grip things for a good ten minutes. I can see Jim shrinking, but it's not fast enough. I know I'll have to keep doing this stuff for a while until Jim is completely gone. Sometimes when I look at Jim, the grossness of it all makes me think that the problem isn't getting better, but worse.
Growing in grace is like wart removal. The Christian faith is centered on the Resurrection, which turned the world upside down. We have become so content with the warped, grossly distorted world that any challenge to our perceptions of the "natural" living conditions in which we find ourselves seems painful. The floor is on the ceiling and the ceiling is the floor. When we begin to apply the Gospel to our hearts and see that it does change our world, our fallen minds, hearts, and bodies don't like it one bit. Anyone who tells you otherwise has not yet been dragged through the muddy, rocky path of Sanctification.
Our hearts are exposed for what they really are. The scales are removed from our eyes and we see the blackened, necrotic state of our minds. The lasting effects of the fall become all too real. We try to do the right thing, the godly thing, but we fail again and again. The Valley of Vision records a prayer in which the writer laments that even in his holiest of prayers he would deserve nothing more than damnation.
The Gospel is the salve that not only reveals our disgusting nature, but begins to heal it. It reveals that we have every cause for hopelessness, and then provides that hope itself. As the Law of God shines on our imperfections, its searing light burns and tears away at our souls, and the Gospel renews the hope that one day, everything will be made right. Everything will be new. The flawed will be restored into its original glory. While we may believe that we aren't growing in grace, we are seeing the need for Christ even more.
When we experience the pain of everyday life, when we realize that we are so terribly flawed and unlovable, we need to turn to the empty tomb and remember what Christ has accomplished for us and hope yet again, and hope evermore.
I feel that if I'm going to credit Sorgenfrei with a little more blog inspiration than other individuals, I might as well cover a sports topic.
I don't know much about sports. This little fact about me probably results from the fact that as a child I started walking some time later than my peers, leading to a similar delay in the development of hand/foot/hockeystick-eye coordination. The net effect, when coupled with my desire to excel in knowing a lot about a particular thing, led to my interest in soccer, or as my former-SEC athlete friend Pete would say, football. Last year's World Cup broadcasts (thanks, ESPN!) set it off, and I would watch Sportscenter to hear scores and commentaries from matches I missed, and I followed the harrowing experiences of that stupid horse Barbaro for a whole month.
I've kept up this interest in soccer, and you can usually find me watching soccer on Saturday mornings on Fox Soccer Channel. I am in my first fantasy league, and while I went into it without an idea of who the players were (but for the select few that play for their national teams), but for the most part I've done well, with my major players being Edwin Van der Sar from Manchester United, Frank Lampard from Chelsea, and Nkwanko Kanu from Portsmouth. I also purchased FIFA 06 for PS2 and have played through almost seven seasons (mind you that a soccer season is 40 league games, not to mention the various possibilities for tournament play), first championing the Chicago Fire, then the Premiership, and finally tackling taking Oxford United from Football 2 to the Champion's League. If I get time, I will aim for a promotion, which, if you're unfamiliar with foreign soccer divisions and you're reading this blog, you should research so you can be amazed by the sheer brilliance of the sport's setup across the pond.
So I feel I can intelligently comment on David Beckham's newsmaking signings and comments of late, more than typical "Soccer will never be big in America" fare. In case you've been living under a sports news rock lately, Beckham has signed a five-year contract with L.A. Galaxy for $250 million. Most of this money has to come from endorsements, because I'm pretty sure Major League Soccer doesn't have that kind of budget.
To see some of the sports hype which surrounds Becks, take a look at this video. You'll see some of his goal-scoring potential, and, to be fair, "bend it like Beckham" is still a tall order. His freekicks can be as lethal as penalty kicks, and his crosses provide great opportunties for strikers to head a goal. But the problem is what happens between the goals, and Beckham has forgotten how to play a great portion of the game. It seems his fame has made him lazy, and he fails to play defense as much as he should, especially as a midfielder. It was precisely this issue that found him removed from England's national men's team, then Real Madrid's starting line-up, then Madrid's bench (a manager may make 3 substitutions per game, and usually only five players can be marked as substitutes), and finally Madrid's roster.
David Beckham is known as one of the Galácticos, super-expensive contract signers that play for the best teams. Fittingly, these players are picked as much for marketing purposes as form and skill, and I'd like to think that this is what L.A. Galaxy's managers were thinking when they made the bid. The alternative is too sad.
There are three ways we can consider this move. The first option, and possibly most accurate, is to consider this a marketing move. Beckham himself has said that he wants to expand the soccer market in the United States. However, if ESPN buys the broadcasting rights for more MLS games (they made history when they purchased rights for 40 games for the coming 2007 season), I am afraid that people will tune in to see the magnificent David Beckham and be turned off by the sport. That is, unless Beckham reforms his lazy ways and starts playing with the form that made him famous, a captain for both his club and nation, and the most marketable man in international sports history.
The second option is for his skills. While he is lethal on free kicks and corner kicks, he needs to play the other 90% of the game. Already Galaxy midfielders are upset by the huge disparity between Beckham's meteoric salary (partially supplemented with sponsorship and image rights).
The third possibilty is the development of youth clubs. Becks grew up in Manchester United's youth club, and has experience with effective programs for training young soccer players. Arsene Wenger, Arsenal F.C.'s manager, relies almost exclusively on developing quality players in youth programs and that team is one of the top contenders for the Premiership title every year. I am excited about Beckham being close to his L.A.-based youth club and I think that might be the best part about the move.
In closing, Beckham's current form and post-game interview voice won't lend any credit to the soccer fan's assertion that soccer is indeed a manly sport. If the MLS wanted to show off the manliness of the beautiful game, they should sign John Terry or Didier Drogba from Chelsea. And to show you the manliness of these men, I leave you with two videos of glory:
Season Five was the most disappointing season of 24 that I have seen yet. I was ready to stop watching the show because of the horrendous lack of imagination that the writers exhibited for that season. I had lost faith in their ability to produce 24 episodes that matched up to those of the previous season. Day 6, so far anyways, has proved to be a return to the character-driven plot that made 24 such a great show to watch in the first place. I just wish it could have happened sooner.
A year ago they told us that the first ten minutes of the four hour premierathon would change our world. Well, they did, and for the better. Unfortunately, the writers' bloodlust was not slaked by killing David Palmer, Michelle Dessler, and quite nearly, Mr. Almeida. They followed up their assassinations with the mid-season deaths of Edgar Stiles and Tony Almeida.
If they had stopped in the beginning, I could have forgiven them. I loved David Palmer's character, but he had become too monolithic. The writers couldn't do that much with him and still have his character intact, so it was best to get rid of him and see brother Wayne come to the fore. I can't speak too much for Michelle Dessler, since I haven't seen too much of her beyond season 4 (I still haven't seen season 3).
I was quite aggravated, however, when Edgar and Tony met their ends. Edgar, while sometimes annoying, was a wonderful character. Stiles represented a great conflict of loyalties; one to his family and friends, one to his career, and the other one towards the utilitarian "right-thing-to-do." He was doggedly loyal to Chloe in almost a romantic way, and most people I know were hoping that Chloe would ditch the jerks she associated with for the loving bundle of goodness that was Edgar Stiles. Visit IMDb to see just what the writers were going for in the season when they offed one of the best characters they had written. An awful excuse, if you ask me.
Tony's death was even more shocking. Henderson's poorly-written revival showed just the depths that the writers were willing to dive to in order make the audience feel vulnerable. Tony may have been the most believable character on 24. Tony returned to CTU in season 4 from what was obviously a hard time, and the viewer watched as Tony poured beer in his trademark Chicago Cubs mug at 1 or so in the afternoon. Tony also juggled personal convctions and job responsibilities even more than Edgar, and had so much potential. But the authors killed him anyway.
So why did I decide to drag everyone through sludge of Day 5 all over again? To show how far the writers have come since that abysmal season.
Jack is a real character again. Earlier he was the monolithic defender of the mission, who would stop at nothing to achieve it. Now Jack is broken, physically and emotionally. The viewer is informed quite quickly that Jack hasn't spoken a single word in two years. His hands are covered with acid burns, and his back reveals a host of gruesome scars. One of my favorite scenes was when Jack was interrogating a terrorist and declares that he knows nothing. Al-Assad walks up, plunges a knife in the knee of the terrorist and gets the information. Jack stands there, painfully reminded of his own torture, and realizes that he's lost his knack for counter-terrorism and must rely on a former terrorist more than ever before. Instances like this dotted the landscape of the premier. Jack's reaction to his own (probably fatal) shooting of Curtis showed his lack of control. Jack's constant struggle with his experiences in China will provide a nice counterpoint to his usual "get the mission done" attitude.
Wayne Palmer will also make a great presidential character. Already he's expressed doubt in his own abilities. Whereas David Palmer followed the "We don't negotiate terrorists" typical America jargon, Wayne has negotiated with one and pardoned another. Wayne is split between listening to the rational Karen Hayes while the Chief of Staff fights for the president's attention as well. With all of this character conflicts surrounding him, we can hope for a real character sitting in the Oval Office after that loser Logan.
This season of 24 began in the costliest failure that Jack, Wayne, and CTU have ever made. This will hopefully be a good season.
The Hold Steady have garnered a lot of attention for their recent release, Boys and Girls in America They have been placed in more 2006 top ten lists than I care to find, but when I listed my top 5 songs for 2006, they didn't make the list, although I might live to regret that. I freely admit that I haven't listened to them as much as I should have, but I have my reasons.
Craig Finn's voice will strike you as thick and fluent, which fits his bar band the Hold Steady quite well. You might imagine that beer guzzling antics might have affected his vocal chords to that exact result. The instruments often seem to call to each other and respond, and you imagine that the band could fit perfectly in any dive on any seemingly forsaken street in any seemingly forsaken city in our seemingly forsaken nation. The Hold Steady sound like a bar singer set against a musical backdrop of every rockabilly group in music history. Big instruments, well placed splashes, and a heavy dose of drug and alcohol refences made this album one of the top albums of 2006 in terms of critical reviews.
Finn's first line is the thesis for the album when he says "Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together," which he pulled from Jack Kerouac's On the Road (which was cleverly critiqued by Kim Kelly and Lindsay Weir in the one-season hit Freaks and Geeks). Finn goes on to explain the nuances of the pain of developing a higher drug tolerance, the difficulty of girls having to deal with rough and tumble dealers to get high alone, and not to mention the pain of seeing someone special at the bar and knowing they're already taken. On of Finn's most expressive lines is "I've had kisses that make Judas seem sincere."
I blame Brian Sorgenfrei, really. I think Brian Sorgenfrei is the reason that I can't listen to this album completely without becoming as sad as the characters the Hold Steady describes. This could be one of my faults, but because of Sorgenfrei's Findley's Challenge, or the SFC as I regularly call it, I can't help but watch helplessly as my worldview steamrolls anything in its way, submitting art and film and music and culture to the Gospel.
When we think of images of the alcoholic, who can ignore the tortured despair of Shooter? The town drunk of Hoosiers is living in the despair of a wife and son who have all but abandoned him. He takes refuge in the bottle and discovers that it is not a refuge at all. He finds no relief, and the pain he experiences devastates him even more. We spend our lives hoping to escape the pain we feel and the despair that it naturally entails.
God is not willing that human beings live in despair, however. Adam and Eve arguably had more cause for despair than any other human beings alive. They had sinned, and in their despair they fled from God and hid. If we look at Genesis 3 we might be tempted to think that God was angry, and to be sure he was, but he was also incredibly loving. He approached his fallen creation and instead of instantly (and justly!) destroying them, he promised that everything done would one day be undone. He promised a Savior (as it turns out, Jesus), and restored hope to his creation.
The Hold Steady talk about drugs as much as they talk about alcohol. Drugs like alcohol send you down. Other drugs get you high. They launch you into a realm of unreality in which pain is no longer existent, and the despair of life can be temporarily ignored.
So what's the problem with that? Everything that goes up must come down. When the high ends, the pain is still standing there, demanding that you deal with it or continue your flight. These escapes are only temporary.
We do not need to numb our pain or escape it. God has provided us with the means of addressing our pain. The promised Savior heals our pain, and does not bear the praising name of the Great Physician without living up to it. John saw in his vision that God had wiped away our many causes for pain and suffering, so much so that mourning and tears would be no more. Yet this vision is not confined to Revelation 21. God has been doing this all along. Since his first covenant with Adam, God has come into increasing contact with his people, and he daily offers us hope and peace. With the great and loving God that we have, why should we seek to escape pain? We should know our pain, and furthermore know the Savior that takes it on himself at the cross.
I am not asking everyone to be happy; I don't want that. I looked on iTunes once and found that someone had made a playlist called "Sad is the new happy." That is all fine with me, and that might be one of the main points of my generation. I am not alway happy, nor I want to be. I am however asking that we look to God and find hope and joy, that our real resting place be far above the definitions of sadnes or happiness. I suppose then, that I am asking that we believe the Gospel a little more.
I've been thinking for a while about moving most of my writing over to a new blog, because I feel that a lot of what I have to say might not be appropriate for the mass audiences of Facebook. The problem is that I couldn't think of a name for the blog, and while I tried to think of one, couldn't. Today I was thinking about writing an article on the Hold Steady, a major rock group from this year, and it hit me.
I should call my new blog "Boring Conversation Anyway." Well, obviously, that was taken, as most good names are. I thought about a bunch of other quotations from Star Wars and "Easy, baby, hold together," sounded good (not to mention a Solo line), but as far as blogging goes I thought "Cut the chatter, Red 2" might make more sense in an ironic sort of way. No one starts a blog to cut the chatter, which is why I suppose that until 3 minutes ago, the title was open. Anyway, if you're wondering who Red 2 is, it's Wedge Antilles played by Dennis Lawson.
I hope you enjoy. Thoughts on this season's opening 4-hour premier of 24 and the Hold Steady's album are coming soon.
The Shins released Wincing the Night Away last week and it has received mixed reviews from various sources. Pitchfork left it with a 7.0, and reviewers certainly haven't been hailing it as the Shins' best work (although there are the die-hard fanboys out there). The album has some wonderfully memorable tracks like "Australia" and "Phantom Limb," and they end the album with two fresh tracks that reveal that the Shins are maturing as a band. The album itself seems schizophrenic, however, and the Shins really goofed themselves on a couple of tracks. The album seems to shift from classic Shins material towards experimental samples and sounds that sound, if anything, timid. As Brian Hawkins pointed out, there seems to be a lack of the passion on previous Shins recordings. Wincing the Night Away is definitely a strong and laudable effort from the Shins, but there are certain songs like "Red Rabbits" that causes the listener to do exactly what the album title discusses.
