Count me among the Wes Anderson acolytes who believe (excepting the man's opus, The Royal Tenenbaums) the divisive filmmaker's skills are only improving with age, each title improving upon the last and broadening the brushstrokes of the truly distinctive and imaginative cinematic storyteller of our generation.
"The Grand Budapest Hotel" is no exception.
In his latest work, Anderson again visits the well in terms of artistic design (the diorama sets return, this time vivid portrayals of European mountainscapes), acting talent (Schwartzman, Wilson, Brody, Swinton, Dafoe, Norton and Murray - all are here, and in top Andersonian form, with the last sporting a cheeky handlebar mustache that is just DAMN PERFECT) and whimsy.
What is new here is the exceptional talents of the leading men, established Ralph Fiennes as M. Gustave, the veteran concierge of the titular lodging, and newcomer Tony Revolori, 17, who plays Gustave's pupil and later valet, Zero. Anderson takes some time introducing us to these characters, choosing to couch his latest story through the conceit of a girl reading a novel, then an interview with that novelist (an inspired cameo from the great Tom Wilkinson), then Jude Law appearing as the young author drawing inspiration for the book from F. Murray Abraham as wealthy proprietor Mr. Mustafa, and finally the realization that Zero is a young version of Mustafa at the hotel in 1932.
The set-up here affords the perfect opportunity for a kind of metafiction, but all the other timelines are quickly subsumed by the exploits of Gustave and Zero. There is an attempt at the end of the film to tie together some points Anderson is trying to make about storytelling, but the problem remains that the central narrative is just too damn compelling. Only in the stylistic choice of shooting a final scene in black and white do we realize that the 1932 story is just that - a story we are receiving third or fourth hand. It's a missed opportunity for what I term an "Anderson moment" - a glimpse of grander meaning beyond the absurdity and beauty of what is unfolding onscreen.
Imagine, for example, that Alec Baldwin's narrator in "Tenenbaums" were introduced before the story even begins, and that he is tied in some tangential way to the family. You'd get a sense of what is set up in "The Grand Budapest Hotel" but never fully realized.
This is all nitpicking, however. Fiennes quickly shows he gets Anderson's dialogue and penchant for absurdity in the midst of a very serious story. Here, the threat is personified by the onset of war. An army, bearing a "ZZ" seal that in terms of iconography is a next-door neighbor of the Schutzstaffel in Nazi Germany, encroaches upon the story at key junctures that remind us the stakes of what is occurring onscreen. Like all Anderson villains, however, their presence is merely a contrivance that serves as backdrop for another more personal story, the father/son relationship that builds between Gustave and Zero.
It will surprise no fan of Anderson to learn both characters are fatherless males with very real personality quirks to kink out. You can blink and see in these characters Steve Zissou/Ned, Mr. Fox/Ash, Royal/Richie Tenenbaum, etc. It should also surprise no fan of Anderson's that this relationship ends almost as abruptly as it begins and never obtains the perfect loving, fatherly role we expect in conclusions to such stories.
Anderson takes us on a wild adventure that runs at a breakneck pace to a conventional, art heist conclusion. He does it with character actors that sparkle together onscreen with an oddball chemistry he seems to have a knack for creating. Though Mark Mothersbaugh is not present for this installment of Anderson's oeuvre, the precocious sound of Anderson still plays as backdrop for the story, and the shots are purely Andersonian - wide-angle pans of extremely elaborate sets that work perfect for the time period.
This is Wes Anderson and his players at perhaps their greatest synchronicity to this point, even though the story itself carries none of the personal weight we see in "Royal Tenenbaums." It is an adventure not to be missed by fans of the filmmaker.
Verdict: 4.5/5 stars
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
A Sticky Floors and Salty Popcorn Special: Women Superheroes, and Why We Don't See More of Them
I don't think it's a coincidence that this piece from IGN happened to appear the same day Gloria Steinem hit age 80.
We've yet to see a female superhero movie that resonates with both the hardcore comics crowd and the mainstream the way the recent Dark Knight trilogy, Marvel Phase 1 and 2 or even the great Richard Donner Superman movies of the late 1970s and early 1980s have.
Sure, we've seen strong female characters in modern superhero movies, even those with exceptional powers that factor in to the narrative. Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow is a prominent figure not only in The Avengers, but also the two Iron Man films in which she's appeared. Pepper Potts even dons the shell in the latest RDJ/Tony Stark adventure. And you'd be lying if you didn't say there wasn't a depth of character to Anne Hathaway's Selina Kyle in The Dark Knight Rises that surpassed even the sultry performance of Michelle Pfieffer in Batman Returns.
This is all to say nothing of the deathstroke Famke Janssen gave to the X-Men series as Phoenix in The Last Stand, obliterating two of the classic series' main draws in Cyclops and Dr. Charles Xavier.
But every movie that tries to make the female character the lead falls flat. I'm looking at you, Halle Berry and Jennifer Garner. Why?
We can't say it's because of a lack of great source material. The aforementioned Jean Grey and Selina Kyle have provided countless rich storylines over the years. This is to say nothing of the leaps and bounds made in other media around strong, nuanced female characters. As I'm writing, the second chapter of Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea is downloading to my Xbox 360. I can't wait to see how viewing Rapture through Elizabeth's eyes will change my experience.
On TV, we've had decades of strong female characters that form the basis of compelling, long-running narratives. Joss Whedon himself ushered in the era, arguably, with his brilliant Buffy the Vampire Slayer series on WGN, or UPN, or whatever the hell the network was calling itself in 2003.
This lends all the more credence to Johansson's request in the above piece for a superhero movie to be made where the female characters aren't running around in their skivvies, staring longingly at the men who will have to come save them (I'm looking at you, Amazing Spider-Man 2).
In a year that could arguably be the greatest showcase for the maturity and universal appeal of the superhero tale transcending its niche audience (if it hasn't already), it's unconscionable that we have to continue to watch our female characters in these films simply play the gams. Johansson's right. Comic book and movie fans deserve more.
We've yet to see a female superhero movie that resonates with both the hardcore comics crowd and the mainstream the way the recent Dark Knight trilogy, Marvel Phase 1 and 2 or even the great Richard Donner Superman movies of the late 1970s and early 1980s have.
Sure, we've seen strong female characters in modern superhero movies, even those with exceptional powers that factor in to the narrative. Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow is a prominent figure not only in The Avengers, but also the two Iron Man films in which she's appeared. Pepper Potts even dons the shell in the latest RDJ/Tony Stark adventure. And you'd be lying if you didn't say there wasn't a depth of character to Anne Hathaway's Selina Kyle in The Dark Knight Rises that surpassed even the sultry performance of Michelle Pfieffer in Batman Returns.
This is all to say nothing of the deathstroke Famke Janssen gave to the X-Men series as Phoenix in The Last Stand, obliterating two of the classic series' main draws in Cyclops and Dr. Charles Xavier.
But every movie that tries to make the female character the lead falls flat. I'm looking at you, Halle Berry and Jennifer Garner. Why?
We can't say it's because of a lack of great source material. The aforementioned Jean Grey and Selina Kyle have provided countless rich storylines over the years. This is to say nothing of the leaps and bounds made in other media around strong, nuanced female characters. As I'm writing, the second chapter of Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea is downloading to my Xbox 360. I can't wait to see how viewing Rapture through Elizabeth's eyes will change my experience.
On TV, we've had decades of strong female characters that form the basis of compelling, long-running narratives. Joss Whedon himself ushered in the era, arguably, with his brilliant Buffy the Vampire Slayer series on WGN, or UPN, or whatever the hell the network was calling itself in 2003.
This lends all the more credence to Johansson's request in the above piece for a superhero movie to be made where the female characters aren't running around in their skivvies, staring longingly at the men who will have to come save them (I'm looking at you, Amazing Spider-Man 2).
In a year that could arguably be the greatest showcase for the maturity and universal appeal of the superhero tale transcending its niche audience (if it hasn't already), it's unconscionable that we have to continue to watch our female characters in these films simply play the gams. Johansson's right. Comic book and movie fans deserve more.
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Virtual Dork: South Park Stick of Truth Review
There is a moment, after you've vanquished a member of a rival faction using an arsenal of farts, Cheesy Poofs and magic 8-ball-handed weapons, when you, as the "new kid" in South Park, witness a familiar cast of characters bickering over how to take down their greatest foe.
"Suck my e-e-e-elven dick, Butters," Jimmy Valmer says on the screen in front of you, perfectly framed as only the construction-paper inspired animation of Trey Parker and Matt Stone can be.
It is these moments that elevate South Park: Stick of Truth above a normal licensed game. The script was written by Parker and Stone. The game was made using resources from South Park Studios' animation team. All of the voice actors (including Isaac Hayes in a brief cameo) are here. This looks and sounds exactly like an episode of South Park should.
It's only a pity that, under the hood, Stick of Truth is an exceptionally easy title with little reason for multiple playthroughs. While the South Park fan in you will squeal with joy as you battle Al Gore and try to beat back the flaming farts of Wizard Cartman, the nonsensical ending and shallow gameplay keep Stick of Truth from being a truly great video game, although it's undoubtedly a wonderful narrative experience (with some caveats).
You begin the game as the "new kid," moving in to a home on the same block as series regulars Eric Cartman, Stan Marsh, Kenny McCormack and Kyle Broflovski. You quickly join forces with Butters Stotch, who informs you of the game du jour in the neighborhood. The conceit, a mystical RPG quest with fantastical elements, is drop dead similar to the narrative sheen that ran through last fall's "Black Friday" trilogy on the show. Cartman and Butters are members of the human guild, while Stan and Kyle do battle as knights of the elven faction.
After creating your character, you learn from parents (who share your physical traits) that there is something just not right about you. Unfortunately, what is one of the most interesting and novel story quirks in the game gets dismissed in a trivial and surprisingly uninteresting and unfunny cutscene toward the end of the game featuring an eye-patched, shadowy government figure.
Your journey will take you to all the staple locations in South Park: Skeeter's Bar, Jimbo's Gun shop, City Wok, Tom's Rhinoplasty and the abortion clinic. Throughout the game's roughly 15-hour playtime, you'll run into all the classic characters, who you can "friend" through the game's Facebook system. As you gain friends and experience points, you'll be able to add perks and abilities that increase your powers in turn-based combat that hearkens back to the old days of Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy.
Unfortunately, that combat is relatively uninspired. While there are some fun elemental quirks to the game that you can use to turn the tide in your favor when the combat screen does appear, most of the fights are winnable using a simple pattern of actions, and because there is no limitation on the amount of items you can carry and stockpiling combat potions is merely an exercise in searching for cash, strategy goes out the window in the second half of the game.
As a thief, I was granted a basically game-breaking ability early on to stun the most powerful enemies while I picked off minions. Using Butters' "Healing Touch" ability, I was able to win almost all fights in the game following a relatively simple pattern once I had a level 10 weapon. Combat becomes a slog to get to the next brilliantly written cutscene.
That is, until the end of the game, when you're forced into a series of battles that increasingly make little sense and the difficulty factor is artificially inflated. Without spoiling the ending, I can say that the final climactic scene can be seen coming from a mile away, something that is relatively unconscionable for a series and writers known to toy with the absurd in pursuit of satire.
Despite my poo-poohing, Stick of Truth is an extremely fun romp through America's finest source of scatological satire. Fans of Matt and Trey's work should not miss the opportunity to visit this quiet little redneck mountain town and relive some of their favorite experiences from the long-running series. However, I would advise against paying the full price. Wait for a discount for your trip to Colorado.
Verdict: 3/5 stars
"Suck my e-e-e-elven dick, Butters," Jimmy Valmer says on the screen in front of you, perfectly framed as only the construction-paper inspired animation of Trey Parker and Matt Stone can be.
It is these moments that elevate South Park: Stick of Truth above a normal licensed game. The script was written by Parker and Stone. The game was made using resources from South Park Studios' animation team. All of the voice actors (including Isaac Hayes in a brief cameo) are here. This looks and sounds exactly like an episode of South Park should.
It's only a pity that, under the hood, Stick of Truth is an exceptionally easy title with little reason for multiple playthroughs. While the South Park fan in you will squeal with joy as you battle Al Gore and try to beat back the flaming farts of Wizard Cartman, the nonsensical ending and shallow gameplay keep Stick of Truth from being a truly great video game, although it's undoubtedly a wonderful narrative experience (with some caveats).
You begin the game as the "new kid," moving in to a home on the same block as series regulars Eric Cartman, Stan Marsh, Kenny McCormack and Kyle Broflovski. You quickly join forces with Butters Stotch, who informs you of the game du jour in the neighborhood. The conceit, a mystical RPG quest with fantastical elements, is drop dead similar to the narrative sheen that ran through last fall's "Black Friday" trilogy on the show. Cartman and Butters are members of the human guild, while Stan and Kyle do battle as knights of the elven faction.
After creating your character, you learn from parents (who share your physical traits) that there is something just not right about you. Unfortunately, what is one of the most interesting and novel story quirks in the game gets dismissed in a trivial and surprisingly uninteresting and unfunny cutscene toward the end of the game featuring an eye-patched, shadowy government figure.
Your journey will take you to all the staple locations in South Park: Skeeter's Bar, Jimbo's Gun shop, City Wok, Tom's Rhinoplasty and the abortion clinic. Throughout the game's roughly 15-hour playtime, you'll run into all the classic characters, who you can "friend" through the game's Facebook system. As you gain friends and experience points, you'll be able to add perks and abilities that increase your powers in turn-based combat that hearkens back to the old days of Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy.
Unfortunately, that combat is relatively uninspired. While there are some fun elemental quirks to the game that you can use to turn the tide in your favor when the combat screen does appear, most of the fights are winnable using a simple pattern of actions, and because there is no limitation on the amount of items you can carry and stockpiling combat potions is merely an exercise in searching for cash, strategy goes out the window in the second half of the game.
As a thief, I was granted a basically game-breaking ability early on to stun the most powerful enemies while I picked off minions. Using Butters' "Healing Touch" ability, I was able to win almost all fights in the game following a relatively simple pattern once I had a level 10 weapon. Combat becomes a slog to get to the next brilliantly written cutscene.
That is, until the end of the game, when you're forced into a series of battles that increasingly make little sense and the difficulty factor is artificially inflated. Without spoiling the ending, I can say that the final climactic scene can be seen coming from a mile away, something that is relatively unconscionable for a series and writers known to toy with the absurd in pursuit of satire.
Despite my poo-poohing, Stick of Truth is an extremely fun romp through America's finest source of scatological satire. Fans of Matt and Trey's work should not miss the opportunity to visit this quiet little redneck mountain town and relive some of their favorite experiences from the long-running series. However, I would advise against paying the full price. Wait for a discount for your trip to Colorado.
Verdict: 3/5 stars
Sunday, January 12, 2014
An Inexplicably Close Look at an Incredibly Obscure Song: "10 Days Late" Third Eye Blind
Third Eye Blind burst onto the scene in the late '90s displaying an uncanny ability - like Matchbox Twenty, Semisonic, the Goo Goo Dolls and their ilk - to pen hits that blended complicated, sometimes soul-crushing things with sugary delicious pop rock licks. Whether it be the depths of crystal methamphetamine, suicide, or an incredibly painful break-up, Stephen Jenkins and the boys seemed to be able to tackle it with a riff that made the crowds feel like dancing anyway.
Perhaps the one strength that set the 'Frisco rockers apart from their mainstream contemporaries was their very real, very raw way of talking about sex - its passion, its complications, its fundamentals. This is a band that wrote about wasting days in bed, Cunnilingus that would make Colonel Angus blush and orgasms that last ages of summer afternoons.
Which makes "10 Days Late," the third single off the band's 1999 album "Blue," a bit of an anomaly.
In a way, the song is vintage 3EB. It's got a bass line followed by a riff that will tingle your spine. The chorus does not shy away from the, ahem, practical side of sexuality, making the ditty perhaps the highest-profile song about a missed period in pop music history. Jenkins croons and delivers punchy soundbites throughout.
But much like Ben Folds Five's "Brick," released a year prior to "10 Days," the song is almost hopelessly wrapped up in how the man's life is affected by the early pregnancy of a woman. Our dramatic voice in "10 Days" shows his juvenile perspective by saying, "I'm in trouble now, and it cannot wait." Never mind the fact that this young girl he's impregnated is faced with a decision that has moral, legal and life-altering ramifications.
Also, for some reason, there's a need for a choir and a cowbell in this one.
In an effort to continue its track record of writing about complicated themes, 3EB may have bit off more than they could chew with "10 Days Late." It's little wonder why the band's popularity faded considerably after the release of the single (OK, hardcore fans, I know the inner turmoil with Kevin Cadogan probably didn't help much).
Where "Brick" succeeded by emphasizing the limited perspective of its dramatic voice and adopting a sufficiently somber tone, elevating Ben Folds to a level of popularity that lingers today and causes Folds himself to question the message his song about abortion is leaving with folks, "10 Days Late" comes off as something Jenkins insisted it wasn't - just a modern pop/rock song about menstruation. It had the potential to be so much more.
Or maybe I'm just looking at it too closely.
Perhaps the one strength that set the 'Frisco rockers apart from their mainstream contemporaries was their very real, very raw way of talking about sex - its passion, its complications, its fundamentals. This is a band that wrote about wasting days in bed, Cunnilingus that would make Colonel Angus blush and orgasms that last ages of summer afternoons.
Which makes "10 Days Late," the third single off the band's 1999 album "Blue," a bit of an anomaly.
In a way, the song is vintage 3EB. It's got a bass line followed by a riff that will tingle your spine. The chorus does not shy away from the, ahem, practical side of sexuality, making the ditty perhaps the highest-profile song about a missed period in pop music history. Jenkins croons and delivers punchy soundbites throughout.
But much like Ben Folds Five's "Brick," released a year prior to "10 Days," the song is almost hopelessly wrapped up in how the man's life is affected by the early pregnancy of a woman. Our dramatic voice in "10 Days" shows his juvenile perspective by saying, "I'm in trouble now, and it cannot wait." Never mind the fact that this young girl he's impregnated is faced with a decision that has moral, legal and life-altering ramifications.
Also, for some reason, there's a need for a choir and a cowbell in this one.
In an effort to continue its track record of writing about complicated themes, 3EB may have bit off more than they could chew with "10 Days Late." It's little wonder why the band's popularity faded considerably after the release of the single (OK, hardcore fans, I know the inner turmoil with Kevin Cadogan probably didn't help much).
Where "Brick" succeeded by emphasizing the limited perspective of its dramatic voice and adopting a sufficiently somber tone, elevating Ben Folds to a level of popularity that lingers today and causes Folds himself to question the message his song about abortion is leaving with folks, "10 Days Late" comes off as something Jenkins insisted it wasn't - just a modern pop/rock song about menstruation. It had the potential to be so much more.
Or maybe I'm just looking at it too closely.
Saturday, December 7, 2013
Why I'm anti-Mizzou. In one half.
I get funny looks every where I go after telling folks I attended the University of Missouri, but Kansas Jayhawks garb fills my closet and bedclothes cocoon me in the frigid Spokane evenings.
Today's SEC matchup, and specifically the response to the televised championship, have given me further ammunition.
I don't hate Mizzou. I don't hate their fans. In fact, because of my time there, when they're playing an opponent I don't particularly care for (like Auburn), I tend to throw my weight behind them. But it's impossible to continue to support a fan base that can find any possible excuse to say they're disrespected, when the simple fact is they're disrespected because they've never stepped up on the biggest stage.
In the past, it's been the BCS. Or referees. Today, it was the media. In the Tigers' fan mind, they are the greatest, and any possible adversity is evidence of an unjust deity pulling strings in someone else's favor.
Exhibit A: A tweet that gained traction sometime around halftime Saturday:
What the "Average Missouri Fan" doesn't want to admit is that Auburn's running game is completely decimating the Missouri defense. Once again, Missouri fans refused to look themselves in the mirror, evaluate themselves and their weaknesses, and admit that maybe they're not the unblemished image of football perfection they think they are.
I don't mean to say every Missouri fan is like this. And I certainly don't mean to imply they're the only fan base that engages in this kind of "wahmbulance" chicanery that afflicts all entitled enthusiasts.
But it's certainly an epidemic I see particularly among those I grew up with and with whom I attended classes in Columbia. You can write me off as a jaded Jayhawker if you must. I'll admit, part of me is dying watching the Tigers on such a big stage the day Kansas basketball lost a heartbreaker in Colorado.
But ask yourselves - if another Missouri meltdown is on the way, whose fault is it?
Today's SEC matchup, and specifically the response to the televised championship, have given me further ammunition.
I don't hate Mizzou. I don't hate their fans. In fact, because of my time there, when they're playing an opponent I don't particularly care for (like Auburn), I tend to throw my weight behind them. But it's impossible to continue to support a fan base that can find any possible excuse to say they're disrespected, when the simple fact is they're disrespected because they've never stepped up on the biggest stage.
In the past, it's been the BCS. Or referees. Today, it was the media. In the Tigers' fan mind, they are the greatest, and any possible adversity is evidence of an unjust deity pulling strings in someone else's favor.
Exhibit A: A tweet that gained traction sometime around halftime Saturday:
Drinking game: take a shot every time the commentators say something anti-Mizzou. Die in approximately two minutes.I'll be the first to admit that Gary Danielson is a giant douche, and Verne Lundquist is a human dollop of sour cream. I've done it in the past, and I'll continue to do so.
— Average MU Student (@AverageMizzou) December 7, 2013
What the "Average Missouri Fan" doesn't want to admit is that Auburn's running game is completely decimating the Missouri defense. Once again, Missouri fans refused to look themselves in the mirror, evaluate themselves and their weaknesses, and admit that maybe they're not the unblemished image of football perfection they think they are.
I don't mean to say every Missouri fan is like this. And I certainly don't mean to imply they're the only fan base that engages in this kind of "wahmbulance" chicanery that afflicts all entitled enthusiasts.
But it's certainly an epidemic I see particularly among those I grew up with and with whom I attended classes in Columbia. You can write me off as a jaded Jayhawker if you must. I'll admit, part of me is dying watching the Tigers on such a big stage the day Kansas basketball lost a heartbreaker in Colorado.
But ask yourselves - if another Missouri meltdown is on the way, whose fault is it?
Sunday, November 3, 2013
Page-turning: My thoughts on David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest"
After more than a thousand pages of signature prose from one of America's most distinctive literary voices during the past two decades, I'm left with two prevailing emotions setting up permanent shop in my gut: jealousy and despair.
These feelings have nothing to do with the brilliantly constructed dystopic future David Foster Wallace brings to life in "Infinite Jest," his epic novel published to nearly universal acclaim back in 1996. They have everything to do with witnessing a depressingly intimate look at substance addiction, narrative brilliance and synaptic hyperactivity from a writer, in his early 30s, who showed limitless promise and was taken far too early from this world.
To the uninitiated Wallace reader, Infinite Jest will sound in summation like the ramblings of a madman. The plot, so convoluted it prompted drawings of story maps resembling unpopped blackheads (warning: spoilers), centers geographically around a substance-abuse halfway house and academy for precocious and talented tennis-playing preteens in central Boston following the consolidation of North America into one nation-state. People remain glued to their entertainment screens (in a kind of cultural foresight that could only come from a writer so in-tune with social strata he turned an essay about cruise ships into a discussion of the loneliness of human existence) and the accumulation of garbage along the former U.S./Canadian border has turned the area into an exotic wasteland, where plants tower over humans and giant feral hamsters (yes) roam the countryside.
What keeps Wallace from dwelling in the absurd (that is to say, when he doesn't want to dwell in the absurd - as readers of DFW have come to expect, there are moments of comic hilarity where the absurd is precisely the initiating agent, but only when the author has a point to make) is the development of his characters. The Incandenza family is perhaps the most wildly realized nuclear unit in modern literature, but the pathos does not end there. Every character in the Enfield Tennis Academy (one of the novel's settings, where tennis prodigies - like DFW himself - go to hone their skills as they foster dreams of making 'the show') is fully realized. Michael Pemulus, a substance fiend and mathematical wunderkind, could flesh out his own novel in this fully realized world. This is to say nothing of Donald Gately, the square-headed football player who's reached his "rock bottom" on oral narcotics and serves as house manager at Ennet House, the nearby halfway facility for other substance abusers on the mend.
There is a scene in roughly the final 2/3 of the novel that perfectly encapsulates Wallace's brilliant fiction. The tennis youngsters are assembled on one of the academy's courts playing a game with tube socks, tennis rackets and balls that is essentially a play version of the kind of thermonuclear warfare that haunts Wallace's world on the brink, where the U.S. president is a lounge singer and Canadian officials are falling like flies to a band of wheelchair assassins asserting Quebec independence. Pemulus is the star of the show, developing a mathematical program that determines the payload of each nation and where their weapons caches are stored. Each team selects a "lobber" to send cruise missiles (tennis balls) at the other nations.
It's a tradition that marks every Interdependence Day in the novel, the day when American/Canadian unity is observed and the normal frenzied pace of the academy grinds to a halt. Wallace describes the game, "Eschaton," with a level of horrifying detail, that shifts effortlessly into comic relief as we're reminded these are 12-year-olds playing this game signifying mutually assured destruction. The game crescendos into a schoolyard brawl, hastening the drug testing that brings the novel's to its quasi-conclusion.
I say quasi because Wallace pulls a Tarantino on the reader, leading with details in the first few pages that become of utter importance in the novel's final moments. I read the hefty novel over a period of two months (I blame Grand Theft Auto and the arrival of a certain new feline companion) and was puzzled by the novel's seeming lack of resolution. I had to recrack the first few pages after finishing last night, reminding myself of the puzzles solved (or seeming to be solved) in the novel's opening scenes. A word of warning, then: Infinite Jest will command your full attention. Grant it the respect it deserves.
I've been a fan of Wallace's nonfiction ever since I read the opening lines to "Consider the Lobster" many years ago. I've been telling myself I'm making a grand error not cracking his fiction until now. "Infinite Jest" is a monster accomplishment that will leave you questioning what the role of entertainment is in your life and what constitutes an addiction in this new world of constant media dependence. It is darkly hilarious, deeply insightful, and simply a stunning masterwork of American fiction. Read it now.
Verdict: 5/5 stars
These feelings have nothing to do with the brilliantly constructed dystopic future David Foster Wallace brings to life in "Infinite Jest," his epic novel published to nearly universal acclaim back in 1996. They have everything to do with witnessing a depressingly intimate look at substance addiction, narrative brilliance and synaptic hyperactivity from a writer, in his early 30s, who showed limitless promise and was taken far too early from this world.
To the uninitiated Wallace reader, Infinite Jest will sound in summation like the ramblings of a madman. The plot, so convoluted it prompted drawings of story maps resembling unpopped blackheads (warning: spoilers), centers geographically around a substance-abuse halfway house and academy for precocious and talented tennis-playing preteens in central Boston following the consolidation of North America into one nation-state. People remain glued to their entertainment screens (in a kind of cultural foresight that could only come from a writer so in-tune with social strata he turned an essay about cruise ships into a discussion of the loneliness of human existence) and the accumulation of garbage along the former U.S./Canadian border has turned the area into an exotic wasteland, where plants tower over humans and giant feral hamsters (yes) roam the countryside.
What keeps Wallace from dwelling in the absurd (that is to say, when he doesn't want to dwell in the absurd - as readers of DFW have come to expect, there are moments of comic hilarity where the absurd is precisely the initiating agent, but only when the author has a point to make) is the development of his characters. The Incandenza family is perhaps the most wildly realized nuclear unit in modern literature, but the pathos does not end there. Every character in the Enfield Tennis Academy (one of the novel's settings, where tennis prodigies - like DFW himself - go to hone their skills as they foster dreams of making 'the show') is fully realized. Michael Pemulus, a substance fiend and mathematical wunderkind, could flesh out his own novel in this fully realized world. This is to say nothing of Donald Gately, the square-headed football player who's reached his "rock bottom" on oral narcotics and serves as house manager at Ennet House, the nearby halfway facility for other substance abusers on the mend.
There is a scene in roughly the final 2/3 of the novel that perfectly encapsulates Wallace's brilliant fiction. The tennis youngsters are assembled on one of the academy's courts playing a game with tube socks, tennis rackets and balls that is essentially a play version of the kind of thermonuclear warfare that haunts Wallace's world on the brink, where the U.S. president is a lounge singer and Canadian officials are falling like flies to a band of wheelchair assassins asserting Quebec independence. Pemulus is the star of the show, developing a mathematical program that determines the payload of each nation and where their weapons caches are stored. Each team selects a "lobber" to send cruise missiles (tennis balls) at the other nations.
It's a tradition that marks every Interdependence Day in the novel, the day when American/Canadian unity is observed and the normal frenzied pace of the academy grinds to a halt. Wallace describes the game, "Eschaton," with a level of horrifying detail, that shifts effortlessly into comic relief as we're reminded these are 12-year-olds playing this game signifying mutually assured destruction. The game crescendos into a schoolyard brawl, hastening the drug testing that brings the novel's to its quasi-conclusion.
I say quasi because Wallace pulls a Tarantino on the reader, leading with details in the first few pages that become of utter importance in the novel's final moments. I read the hefty novel over a period of two months (I blame Grand Theft Auto and the arrival of a certain new feline companion) and was puzzled by the novel's seeming lack of resolution. I had to recrack the first few pages after finishing last night, reminding myself of the puzzles solved (or seeming to be solved) in the novel's opening scenes. A word of warning, then: Infinite Jest will command your full attention. Grant it the respect it deserves.
I've been a fan of Wallace's nonfiction ever since I read the opening lines to "Consider the Lobster" many years ago. I've been telling myself I'm making a grand error not cracking his fiction until now. "Infinite Jest" is a monster accomplishment that will leave you questioning what the role of entertainment is in your life and what constitutes an addiction in this new world of constant media dependence. It is darkly hilarious, deeply insightful, and simply a stunning masterwork of American fiction. Read it now.
Verdict: 5/5 stars
Sunday, October 20, 2013
An Inexplicably Close Look at an Obscure Song: Jimmie's Chicken Shack "Trash"
I remember my early encounters with pop-ska-rockers "Jimmie's Chicken Shack" with a fondness that came from two sources.
The first being my excitement that I had another group of counter-culture dudes to look up to with which I could ignore the drivel that dominated Total Request Live. The second, much-earlier bout of happiness came the first time I heard the group announced on the radio and hopes sprung that we had a new restaurant in town that could compete with the dry-heave-inducing Popeye's (Louisiana Fast...all the way to the john).
Those first hopes were sustained through the band's first effort I was aware of, 1999's "Do Right" off the group's second-major release, "Bring Your Own Stereo." It was the perfect blend of angst-y, drunken fantasy mixed with power chords that mixed well with the Blink-182's and Sum 41's of the era.
Then came "Trash," the second single off the album.
It's not that the sophomore effort is worse than "Do Right" in any way, it's simply that, at its core, "Trash" is the exact same song. For a band with "chicken" in its name, Jimmie's Chicken Shack's music is surprisingly more like pancakes - as the great Mitch Hedberg once told us, great at first, but by the end, you're fuckin' sick of 'em.
In "Trash," we're introduced to a dramatic voice that, for all intents and purposes, is likely the same manic-depressive mess of a lead singer who's regaling us in "Do Right." Indeed, lead singer Jimi Haha (I wish I was making that up) has said the entire album is about his ex-girlfriend from New Jersey. In other words, this pony's doing the same trick over and over.
While "Trash" attempts to do a few things its predecessor did not, including a foray into the trilingual ("Auf Wiedersehen, yeah my mon ami"), the basic premise is the same: I'm more than you're making me out to be. And, predictably, the final few lines of the song unravel into a nonsensical rant about "jumping right in," presumably to attacking the "mom" in the song that keeps calling our sweet Jimi trash.
By the end, we've learned that the judgmental matriarch enjoys purchasing drugs from our sweet Jimi and ignores personal hygiene.
The first being my excitement that I had another group of counter-culture dudes to look up to with which I could ignore the drivel that dominated Total Request Live. The second, much-earlier bout of happiness came the first time I heard the group announced on the radio and hopes sprung that we had a new restaurant in town that could compete with the dry-heave-inducing Popeye's (Louisiana Fast...all the way to the john).
Those first hopes were sustained through the band's first effort I was aware of, 1999's "Do Right" off the group's second-major release, "Bring Your Own Stereo." It was the perfect blend of angst-y, drunken fantasy mixed with power chords that mixed well with the Blink-182's and Sum 41's of the era.
Then came "Trash," the second single off the album.
It's not that the sophomore effort is worse than "Do Right" in any way, it's simply that, at its core, "Trash" is the exact same song. For a band with "chicken" in its name, Jimmie's Chicken Shack's music is surprisingly more like pancakes - as the great Mitch Hedberg once told us, great at first, but by the end, you're fuckin' sick of 'em.
In "Trash," we're introduced to a dramatic voice that, for all intents and purposes, is likely the same manic-depressive mess of a lead singer who's regaling us in "Do Right." Indeed, lead singer Jimi Haha (I wish I was making that up) has said the entire album is about his ex-girlfriend from New Jersey. In other words, this pony's doing the same trick over and over.
While "Trash" attempts to do a few things its predecessor did not, including a foray into the trilingual ("Auf Wiedersehen, yeah my mon ami"), the basic premise is the same: I'm more than you're making me out to be. And, predictably, the final few lines of the song unravel into a nonsensical rant about "jumping right in," presumably to attacking the "mom" in the song that keeps calling our sweet Jimi trash.
By the end, we've learned that the judgmental matriarch enjoys purchasing drugs from our sweet Jimi and ignores personal hygiene.
Not included in the liner notes: Whether it would be a reasonable expectation for a Baby Boomer to label those pictured above as filthy.
The final line of the song gets in the ultimate dig for a musician clawing his way up the modern rock charts: "Tell your mom, I'm on the radio." Yes, Jimi, yes you were. For about 14 minutes and 59 seconds in an era jam-packed with post-grunge talent, some extremely gifted and others not so much.
Jimmie's Chicken Shack may have cornered the market on angst-ridden young men heaving spite at past lovers. One wonders if this band, which had a unique sound and a hook unlike many of their contemporaries, could have clung to a little more fame had they branched out, song-writing-wise.
But perhaps I'm reading into it a little too much.
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