Thanks Penguin. I figured nobody would get that.

Yeah, it was real weird. I mean, to be fair, he wasn't all hubba-hubba or anything and took pains to specify that some (most?) sexual encounters involving kids were monstrous (his word, or maybe the interviewer's).

Alan Ball like the baby in towelhead
Ball was on NPR yesterday talking about how he had a sexual encounter — he refused to call it "molestation" — with a man when he (Ball) was younger than the character in the film. It was totally disturbing, somehow, to learn that he made this movie because he identifies with the…

It's worth a download, er, spin. The best track is "Alphabets," which is the rare hip-hop track that manages to be genuinely _lovely_. (It was produced by True Master.)

I might be getting it wrong, but I think someone (Glenn Close?) made a killer joke at the Oscars one year about how they say that roles for actresses aren't improving, but hey, in _Pretty Woman_ Richard Gere bought Julia Roberts for three thousand dollars; in _Mad Dog & Glory_ Bill Murray bought Uma Thurman for a…

Oh, I already have the album, silly. It's not the review I'm eager for, per se, but the ensuing discussion on the comments board.

fyi, and fwiw…
Jackie Robinson was a notorious trash-talker. I mean, yes, he was a brilliant ballplayer, a brave pioneer in a hostile environment, and a deserving role model for generations to come. But it wasn't like he was a polite, soft-spoken Bernie Williams type! He was an aggressively nasty competitor on the…

Popcorn, thanks for making me laugh out loud — great last paragraph. And I love that you brought up Pound because I was thinking about this debate while walking to the store (out of salsa) and I was like, "damn, someone's gonna be like 'but Pound was a modernist and a fascist'… nah, I doubt it." To talk about the…

"However I think it's way more unfair to try and equate the Ramones musical aesthetic, however reactionary it certain aspects of it may have been, to actual fascism."

gogiggs — I hear you, but as I view this debate the _overt_ fascist trappings of the Ramones are important only as a signpost pointing to what was musically conservative about them. In other words, I see more fascism in their musical aesthetic than I do in their occasional (and unfortunate) dips into Nazi imagery. …

I said:

Wow, lexi. So which is it? The Ramones' essentialism democratized rock, or the Ramones' essentialism was figuratively fascistic and literally quasi-fascistic? Funny, huh… certainly fascist governments have put themselves forth as peoples' governments, after all. As you may or may not know, the association of the…

I agree.

OK, one more. Miller, your post is particularly well constructed: the first paragraph is "historical," the second "theoretical," and the third "critical." I agree with the first two and not the third, but that's better than any other combination, right? In my defense (w/r/t your third graph), I didn't start out…

gogiggs, we cross-posted and i'm really tired and bourboned right now. i like your post, and duly granted vis-a-vis "reactionary" versus "bourgeois." i should have chosen my words more carefully. I guess i would say that if i could cast myself back to the late 70s I would agree with you: taken in isolation,…

hi lexicon devil! i was hoping you would take this bait. your second paragraph i do not quite understand… i certainly agree that the bands you name are accomplished musicians. my point was not to equate punk with bad musicianship across the board. your first paragraph is a trickier issue, in part because in some…

barefoot jim:

And to clarify, before the accusations of snobbery show up: I TOTALLY agree that it is beautiful "that you don't need to be a trained musician to express yourself musically." I mean, absolutely, yes, w0rd.

barefoot jim, my comment was cross-posted w/ yours; it was meant to reply to (ahem) "popcorn crabula." i don't know if i would have been quite as aggressive in response to yours, but who can tell.

I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but punk really did _not_ produce "a lot of great, exciting music." It didn't really produce _any_ great music, qua music. But it did have some long-term beneficial musical consequences.