Reason #351 Why The Pet Shop Boys Rule

It's found in the (out of print, alas) Chris Heath-authored Pet Shop Boys, Literally. Neil Tennant recalls an unrecorded song from their early days called "Oh Dear."

CHRIS: It was dead funny. What were the lyrics?

NEIL: The tune sounded like the Specials and it went:

I was walking down the high street in the middle of the night
Someone caught my eye and I nearly died of fright
Crossed the road to whisper something secret in my ear
And now I know I'll never be the same again
Oh dear

(They both collapse into hysterics)

Sensuality withheld

I'm miffed at Jane Dark for noticing details in Clean that I'd jotted down but failed to remark on in my post. Olivier Assayas's dispassionate camera, for example, simply observes Maggie Cheung devouring a cheeseburger and onion rings. We note quietly that it's probably the first junk food she's eaten after six months in the clink. We note also that Assayas doesn't linger on the scene, almost out of tact; she takes two or three bites at a time, stuffs the o-rings in her mouth, and we cut quickly to Nick Nolte, whose own gaze appraises but won't commit to a judgment -- yet.

Staring into space and calculating, figuring things out, waiting for the recoil he uncertainly expects from Cheung after each of his polite, hopeful rhetorical brutalities. They never come.

If I may permit myself a splendid generalization, Nolte's performance is the truest representation of goodness I've seen in recent cinema. His is a generosity of spirit leavened by the awareness that he courts humiliation at each juncture.

"Gone and blown it all..."

After months of ignominious banishment to the nether regions of my hard drive's music folder, I unearthed the Wire remix of Erasure's "Fingers & Thumbs (Cold Summer's Day," renamed "Fingers & Crumbs" – appropriate, since this isn't so much a revision as a reinvention. Colin Newman casts Andy Bell's wounded tenor adrift on a sea of arctic-blue electric guitar strums, worthy of Wire's It's Beginning to & Back Again; it's 9:30 of lovelorn trance, and much the most powerful music Bell's put his name on. "Gone and blown it all" he repeats, growing more desolate with each gradation, until – in a neat reversal of Newman's own vocal at the beginning of Wire's "Heartbeat" – he disappears into the ether.

If anyone wants a copy, let me know.

Modern life is not rubbish

Forget Antonioni: Jacques Tati had the right attitude towards the trendiest trope in early sixties cinema: the soullessness of Modern Life. In Playtime, newly restored in a Criterion edition which can only be described as incandescent, Tati is more bemused than sad by modernity; he catches people who love the chic new toys but stumble when they try to make them work, but instead of laughing at them his 70 mm compositions reminds us that they're part of something larger even if they're oblivious to it, or -- in the case of Monsieur Hulot -- can't understand it. Plate-glass windows never looked tastier; you can almost chew on their gleaming surfaces. The soundtrack captures a city hip to its own trendiness. The buzz of a drugstore's electric sign has a soothing effect, as does the emerald glare the sign casts on Hulot and the patrons. For the American tourists stepping out of tour buses, Paris is the place to be because it's just like America; and wasn't this the idyll that post-modern advertising promised to realize? Every city is just like your city. Playtime argues that the sterility of Cold War architecture is a palliative against the corrosive effects of the job for which you're working in that building in the first place; that architecture and noise pollution can be part of the "experience" of modern life*, which is what I infer from studying Walt Disney World's Contemporary Resort Hotel and Tomorrowland in their seventies incarnations.

The familiar Hulot is peripheral to his own film, a wraith in a trenchcoat. This fact and the recurring sight gag of the restaurant valet imitating a door by holding a massive knob is perhaps the closest Playtime approaches didacticism: if we love our things we become things. But in this tinkerbox world, is that so bad?

The worthiest compliment I can pay to the restaurant sequence which dominates the second half is that it summons the gleeful grownups-playing-naughty air of Viridiana's Last Supper scene, or, better, L'Age D'Or. Where the creator of L'Avventura and La Notte would have tut-tutted watching his revelers carouse as a restaurant (literally) collapses on and around them, Tati can't begrudge them their fun. The fat American who gets mistakenly bumped from table to table, rather than losing his temper, is cheerful when the waiter switches a footlight on with an abrupt kick. Again, the compositions' expansiveness implicate the viewer too. Try to resist this, Tati seems to say.

This film is the best evidence that Franco-American aesthetic policy is fruitful in a way that foreign policy never will.

* Isn't this what Pere Ubu's The Modern Dance and Dub Housing suggest too? The difference is in the privileging of senses. Playtime emphasizes aural and audio stimuli while the Ubu stuff emphasizes aural and olfactory, in an imaginative sense; you can practically smell the exhaust fumes from the Rustbelt factory backdrops.

Two books

I wanted to hate Marisha Pessl's "Special Topics in Calamity Physics." You can tell right away she has pedigree and her idea of hard work is lifting her Norton Anthology from the Louis Quatorze desk. But I ended up liking it all, even when she was scrubbing my face on how smart she was. It's a good gimmicky book. Read it.
I'm also recommending Scott Smith's "The Ruins" Yes, I know Stephen King did it, and, no, the novel doesn't deliver anything more than very taut thrills, but... well, how often are you thrilled?

So fresh, so Clean

What makes Maggie Cheung's performance in Clean so marvelous is her understanding of how her ex-junkie's impatience and hauteur are proxies for heroin. They're defenses against seemingly hostile forces: relatives who get you a menial job so that they can, in part, remind you of their generosity; former friends who won't tell you if they ever really liked you or merely tolerated you; and even the genuine compassion of a father-in-law (Nick Nolte, finding new cracks in that gravelly voice). The Parisian babel in which writer-director Olivier Assayas, who divorced Cheung shortly before filming, places Cheung looks wonderful in the grey light. Cheung, lighting endless cigarettes, looks great despite hair that looks like it was mauled by hedge clippers. His talent for marrying music with images remains intact, though: here it's Brian Eno's swirling, murky Apollo soundtrack, the title track to Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) and "Spider & I."

Most of the reviews didn't do justice to this film's quiet power. The dialogue is unremarkable and honest (as when an acquaintance, visiting Cheung in prison, responds to her question about whether methadone truly makes you feel better: "Depends on the person. Not for me"). If no images sear themselves in the brain as indelibly as Cheung's imitation of a cat burglar, scored to Sonic Youth's "Tunic (Song for Karen Carpenter)" in Irma Vep, maybe there's more at stake for Assayas' characters. There's only one (early) scene showing Cheung shooting up. Clean deals with the aftermath. Just "getting by" is painful: crossing a street corner, driving a scooter, concentrating on a game of pool while a friend listens to demos which represent the last attempt at forging a career.

It's out on DVD.

Hard work and songcraft mitigate assholism

I'm very fond of Sting's The Soul Cages, the only solo album on which his poetic pretensions find appropriate, pretty settings. Since this is Sting he's incapable of considering that ponderous subjects may be more interesting if treated with levity. The endless closer "When The Angels Fall" falls and falls, searching for a melody, anything to justify itself and its employment of worn tropes (and yet a feisty deejay played this at my junior prom, to my delight if not my date's). Elsewhere his crack band injects a tricky time signature on "Jeremiah Blues (Part 1)" as predictable as their paymaster's wit and even stoops to power chords on the epic (there's three songs which qualify as such; remember this is Sting), broken-kneed shuffle of the title track.

Yet there's a sense in which Sting's commitment to the myth of his upbringing (destitute Newcastle shipbuilder dies to give birth to the once and future King of Pain) frees him from sullying his genius on the creation of hits and such. At least half of TSC's tracks allude to his childhood, and each improves on its predecessor, as if he was a writer discarding incomplete drafts. He works damn hard here, and while the strain shows the results are often impressive. The album's lone hit, "All This Time" is one of the oddest Top Fivers ever: a striking mandolin hook ("Losing My Religion," the year's other mandolin hit, was three months away) and Sting's mastery of conversational cadences; he unfurls those polysyllabic sentences ("Fussin' and flappin' in priestly black like a murder of crows") as if Paul Simon had never existed. "Why Should I Cry For You?" should get more publicity as his most ambiguous ballad since "Every Breath You Take." Sounding a little like Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" and studded with unexpected filigrees, it shows a rueful, gentler Sting, whose dusky croon weighs each word like he can't understand why he should feel conflicted. The sailor-far-from-home metaphor mitigates the assholism he's surprisingly eager to accept (""I loved you in my fashion"). It's a touching performance, justifying the song's inclusion in a couple of C-90's I've compiled over the years.

From its doctor's-office cover art to Ottmar Liebert homage/pastiche, The Soul Cages is estimable middlebrow art. It's the sort of album your cousin Ralph will zealously defend at a Christmas party, provoking from you a condescending smirk but no rebuttal.

Comfort in stasis.

Yo La Tengo's latest is good-not-great.

Plush kitsch is still kitsch

Sure, I grant Joseph Von Sternberg his due -- as a creator of grand, exquisitely lit recreations of fantasy worlds in which Marlene Dietrich scabrously glowered. As much as I adore The Blue Angel, Morocco, and The Scarlet Empress, I can't quite endorse Graham Fuller's claim that Sternberg reveals "cold, cruel truths about love," especially when the cold cruel truth is that, with the exceptions of Gary Cooper and Emil Jannings, her leading men were sticky wickets like Clive Brook (and, sadly, the young Cary Grant) for whom love was as irritating as a warm gin and tonic. Of course, as if to compensate, the cocoons in which Sternberg encased Dietrich became increasingly elaborate. I'm reminded of Orson Welles' demurral in that book of interviews he composed with Peter Bogdanovich: "He had a perfect, really an immense visual command, over what is finally kitsch" (Bogdanovich's ascot wrinkled defensively, no doubt). I'm uncomfortable with granting kitsch a value beyond itself, even when it's as plush and intoxicating as Sternberg's.

Yes, Eric Stolz and Dan Aykroyd are rather good

Terence Davies' adaptation of The House of Mirth is simply one of the most underrated films of the new millenium. Rent it.

Call it Emmylou Harris Syndrome

A backup singer known for sterling anonymity courts obliquity when she becomes a lead vocalist. Every other featured player on Jennifer Warnes' version of Leonard Cohen's "First We Take Manhattan" sears: Stevie Ray Vaughan, the vulgar gleam of the synthesizers, Cohen's vampiric lyrics. Meanwhile, I didn't buy a note of Warnes' vocal; she sounds like Pat Nixon imitating Dennis Hopper. Why is she more convincing on her big hit, released the same year as her modest selling Famous Blue Raincoat -- "(I've Had) The Time of My Life", her schlockarama duet with Bill Medley for the Dirty Dancing soundtrack? Guess the L.A.-approved euphoria of the song's melody and words jived with Warnes' own aesthetic.

Crestfallen, I replayed my second-favorite Cohen album Various Positions. Well, I was floored all over again by the heartbreaking manner in which she cushions Cohen's croak on "If It Be Your Will." I'm wary of angel metaphors, but Warnes does sound like a some kind of celestial guardian offering the peace Cohen demands (her trills at the 3:19 mark are goosepimply perfection).

"It's September in Iraq..."

This chilling story slated to run in tomorrow's Washington Post chronicles the unfathomable layers of cronyism that went into the rebuilding of Iraq. This is how political appointee Jim O'Beirne (whose wife Kate is an editor of National Review and a frequent guest on "Meet the Press") selected the best and brightest were selected:

O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .

Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.

But don't worry. Those hired worked tirelessly:

But many CPA staff members were more interested in other things: in instituting a flat tax, in selling off government assets, in ending food rations and otherwise fashioning a new nation that looked a lot like the United States. Many of them spent their days cloistered in the Green Zone, a walled-off enclave in central Baghdad with towering palms, posh villas, well-stocked bars and resort-size swimming pools.

(This is not a) dance song

What do my fellow critics hear in the Junior Boys and Hot Chip? With their polite beats and the vocal-as-embarrassed-afterthought mouthing sentimental vagaries, this is dance music for people who don't like to dance very often (I don't go so far as to claim -- as one buddy said -- that it's music for people who don't like dance music). I'm rather fond of Hot Chip's The Warning, a tuneful minor success that mines two veins of disco: the absurdist ("Over & Over") and the obsessive "([Just Like We] Breakdown"); but, jeez, I didn't shudder as its world-historic importance sat on my head. Meanwhile So This is Goodbye really skimps on the melodies in favor of "textures" or something -- or, in the words of a contemporary, creators of moments that "refuse to be architected." (I didn't know that was a verb either). It says a lot that the album's most memorable tune is a Frank Sinatra song -- and a lugubrious one too. I couldn't listen to Frankie Knuckles for more than 10 minutes at a time myself.

Oh, that new Pope, he kills me...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060915/ap_on_re_mi_ea/pope_muslims_14
There's a lot of hilarious things about the new controversy and this article. If I may resort to broad strokes, let me point out the obvious funny highlights:
-The Pope commenting on the war-like ways of Islam by quoting a text from the Middle Ages. And we all know how peaceful the Catholic Church was during the Middle Ages.
-"How dare the Pope say we're violent?!?" say Muslims caught in a "a torrent of rage that many fear could burst into violent protests."
- The Pope quoted a text on how Islam allows for jihads. "He's ignorant about Islam!" Hmmm, no, he's right. Islam DOES allow for jihads. And that's a problem. See, when a "Christian" president starts a war, he's EXPRESSLY going against Christian doctrine. But Muslim doctrine does encourage war as a way of spreading the faith. And yes, I've read the Q'ran, as I'm sure the Pope has.
-Muslim officials all agree that Pope's comments are "derogatory". What no Muslim official has been able to say is that the Pope's comments are FALSE. Food for thought.
-This paragraph is awesome:
"The pope and Vatican proved to be Zionists and that they are far from Christianity, which does not differ from Islam. Both religions call for forgiveness, love and brotherhood," Shiite cleric Sheik Abdul-Kareem al-Ghazi said during a sermon in Iraq's second-largest city, Basra.
Translation: "Christianity and Islam maaay be able to get along. The ones we need to kill are the Jews."

My verdict- my humble, unlearned opinion:
The Pope's dumb for saying this. But he's not quite LYING, is he?
Fanaticism sucks.
And Jihads are deadly.

I need not touch on my own religious views, except to remind you that Islam forbids the use of alcohol. FORBIDS. I'm gonna stick with party animal Jesus.

In your eyes...

Check out the photography of George Steinmetz. His photos have appeared in National Geographic and various science and travel magazines. The camel photo on the front page is incredible.

I'm also partial to the Armani billboard. Look under "Identities", then at the photo on the bottom right; it's one of the light-haired man wearing sunglasses.

Jane Eyre: insights and revelations

Andy's brother forwarded this information. It's coarser than what we usually post around here, but I chuckled lightly:

Two notes found on the top and bottom of page 212 of the Senate House Library's copy of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre:

Let's not forget that the wonderful Mr. R[ochester] is the first and only man that our heroine has had the pleasure to meet. She's 18, a virgin, and no doubt bursting with hormones. Would it not be foolhardy to wed and bed Mr. R, thereby relinquishing all hopes of seeing what life and love lie beyond the sheltering confines of Thornfield and the surrounding hills?

and:

Let us not also forget that in a pre-AIDS society, a stiff British upper lip was as good a deterrent for sex as any coupled with conventional sexual attitudes and strict conformations to female coquetry. Having said that however, and being a red-blooded male, I masturbate fervently in the hope that Jane swallows gallons of Mr. R's spunk.

It just gets sadder and sadder.

In other tremendously horrific news, two people have been charged in the case of an eleven-year-old girl who authorities say had sex with as many as twenty people while a sixteen-year-old girl coached her.

On top of all of that, it was recently discovered that the eleven-year-old's mother had died of AIDS, and that the girl herself has been HIV-positive since birth.

I have to wonder why an eleven-year-old and a sixteen-year-old were even involved in something like this, period. Where were the parents/caretakers? Where'd all the other people come from, and how did two kids end up alone in a house with them? What oversight led to two young kids coming to know detailed information about sex acts?

What really disturbs me is that the one adult in the situation, who could have done something about it, had sex with the girl. There are no words for how messed up that is.

MY SEPTEMBER 11 POST

It's been 5 years. My September 11 reaction was very immature, how could it not be? It was on The Beacon, Florida International'University's newspaper. I told a very simple story about how my brother and I sat down to play chess and we weren't playing by the same rules, so there was chaos. Then I appended that if you wanted to win over the terrorists, all you had to do was kidnap Osama, give him a sex change operation, and trip their wires, because they can never respect a woman.
THAT stupid little comment was turned into an Internet forward and much merriment was had from it. I had people coming up to me telling me how funny my article was, and how they'd sent it to their friends. I had people come to me saying: "I just read the funniest thing, blah blah blah." "Yes, I know, I wrote it." Michiko quoted it in the New York Times saying something blindingly obvious like: "See? Humor isn't dead!" Bill Maher quoted it on Politically Incorrect. I never got credited for it. It didn't matter to me.
Guess what?
It's not funny.
Nothing's changed.
It's five years later and no one got the point. The point wasn't Osama in drag. The point was the chessboard.
There are no good guys and bad guys.
There are two teams playing two very different games.
I was playing chess and my brother was playing checkers.
Chaos.
Dear Mr. President: You can't peacefully win against your enemy until you UNDERTAND how your enemy thinks. And when you understand how your enemy thinks, you will be shocked to realize that your enemy is not the bad guy. He just THINKS DIFFERENT. To him YOU are the killer invading his land. Why is this hard to understand?

When there's a fight you have four basic choices: you can kill kill kill until the last man's left standing.
You can allow yourself to be hurt until your enemy is satiated.
You can run away.

Or you can talk and try to understand and try to create PEACE.

What do you think is the best choice?

I realize my political comments can seem naive and simplistic, but- darn it, what's simple tends to be very true.
If I, who am just some guy, can understand this, and the president can't, then there's a problem.

Enough already

No banal generalizations about how 9-11 "impacted" me. I'll leave the first and last word to Hitchens, who's been wrong plenty of times since then but nails it now:

One must have a blunt answer to the banal chat-show and op-ed question: What have we learned? (The answer ought not to be that we have learned how to bully and harass citizens who try to take shampoo on flights on which they have lawfully booked passage. Yet incompetent collective punishment of the innocent, and absurd color-coding of the "threat level," is the way in which most Americans actually experience the "war on terror.") Anyone who lost their "innocence" on September 11 was too naïve by far, or too stupid to begin with. On that day, we learned what we ought to have known already, which is that clerical fanaticism means to fight a war which can only have one victor. Afghans, Kurds, Kashmiris, Timorese and many others could have told us this from experience, and for nothing (and did warn us, especially in the person of Ahmad Shah Massoud, leader of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance). Does anyone suppose that an ideology that slaughters and enslaves them will ever be amenable to "us"?

OK...

The Path to 9-11 is as dull as a Madeleine Albright speech and as tendentious as one by John Ashcroft. Where is Donald Sutherland mouthing measured paranoid nonsense when you need him? Where is the New Orleans connection?

Of arpeggios and synth sparkles

I'd like to add Icehouse's "Electric Blue" to Scott Woods' list of great arpeggiated guitar ballads of the eighties (inspired by Jane Dark's initial post) *. This Australian band's only American Top Ten hit was cowritten by John Oates (yes, that John Oates), who surely had everything to do with the excellent falsetto call-and-response harmonies -- and little to do with Ira Davies' adenoidal wailing, unfortunately. The 12-inch remix extends said arpeggios and the indelible chorus into a seven-minute wonder that has no low points. I've been listening to it fairly obsessively for the last six weeks, to what end only God knows.

* There's a notable subcategory awaiting development: Great Hits With Synth Sparkles. "Electric Blue" and Eric Carmen's "Hungry Eyes" are examples. So are ABC's "Be Near Me" and Siouxsie & The Banshees' "Cities in Dust." Any others?

"Betrayed by the one who said she needs you..."

Lou Reed should remaster Legendary Hearts already. Out of print domestically for years, it's the second chapter in the unofficial trilogy he recorded in the early eighties: when he renounced alcohol and transsexual paramours for the straight life. If The Blue Mask's awful Warholian parody of the Transformer album sleeve hinted that his commitment to normality was as much a chimera his 1972's walk-on-the-wild-side, the helmet on Legendary Heart's reminded us that the most unforgettable line on 1982's "Our House" was "I've really got a lucky life/My writing, my motorcycle, and my wife." In that order. *

Legendary Hearts doesn't sound like any other Reed album. Reed-the-producer mixes Robert Quine's guitar so low that it sounds like someone buried underneath the floorboards scraping with a butter knife (one more fruitful relationship Reed's ego couldn't tolerate). Reed-the-singer is laconic if not silent. The rhythm section shines: Fred Maher stays on the one while Fernando Saunders' magnificent bass moans and burbles with all the yearning that Reed won't permit himself. The songs are about as ruthless a deconstruction of happiness as Reed has ever written (I don't count Berlin's goon-show yuks). Banal arguments interfere with lovemaking on the title track; the arguments are themselves dramatized in "Don't Talk To Me About Work," the album's sprightliest number, as if these days only fighting got Reed off. "Betrayed" is like $60,000 worth of psychotherapy gone awry, and not even Reed escapes:

Three of us lie in this bed
night of infamy
one of us lies on our back
her father's in her head
And quick she turns and slaps my face and with her eyes open wide she screams
I hate you, I hate you, I hate you
but she's looking right past me

The band achieves a luminous parity on "Home of the Brave," in which Quine's guitar summons the aqueous-crystalline quality of the Velvet Underground's "I'm Set Free," Maher imitates a metronome, and Saunders unleashes a wondrous call-and-response bass solo. Recriminations fade in "Rooftop Garden"'s weary denouement. David Fricke, in one of the few contemporary reviews which didn't treat Legendary Hearts like a skeletal Blue Mask sequel, rightly observes that love songs will always provide inspiration (here it's "Up On the Roof") when the legendary love between man and woman fizzles. The 1984 followup New Sensations (my favorite Reed solo, bar none) took this advice seriously enough to lead with the sort of infectious throwaway that Reed's indentured servitude in Pickwick Records hackdom was supposed to have taught him to churn out by the square foot. The joy of "I Love You, Suzanne" may have a lot more to say, finally, than Legendary Heart's finely calibrated observations.

*I've been telling friends for years not to waste time with Transformer and New York. Go straight to The Blue Mask (and New Sensations if you can find it, although on used vinyl it's easy).

Diamonds are forever.

I think we have a new world wonder - people in Japan can now purchase diamonds made from baby hair. Who'd like to place bets on how long it'll take a celebrity to find one of these and popularize them on our shores?

Now, I think babies are great. They're precious. They're little miracles. However, I don't know a single mother who would blow thousands of dollars on a diamond made out of hair when they could, you know, save their child's first curls or something. FOR FREE.

Supposedly, these things are a way to "bestow gratitude" on "blessed offspring". Really, are people becoming so materialistic that they need things like diamonds to show how much they love their kids/pets/whatever?

Oh, wait. I guess we already know the answer.

My review of the Larry Levan comp Journey Into Paradise. At present it's quite close to being my album of the year.

Oh, that Beyoncé...

While absorbing Beyoncé's B'day, my ears settled on one standout: "Suga Mama." Producer Rich Harrison's specialty for creating tracks with this really dense polyrhythmic percussion (here it's what sounds like real-live drums, subtle bongos, and that woodblock effect which anchored Amerie's "1 Thing") finds a match in Beyonce's vocal. She's never sounded more feral, more there (the lyrics get mucho points: "I’ma be like a jolly rancher that you get from the corner store" – mm, tell it girl). The guitar hook, reminiscent of the one gracing Marvin Gaye's "I'll Be Doggone," stinks of sex.

The Obligatory Introduction

What shall I write here?

Hello, I'm Amanda. I'm a writer, a translator, and a lover of all things odd or ancient. When I post here, you'll likely be hearing from me in verse, as I work my way through some of the written wonders of the ancient world. On my off days, prepare to be linked to some of the biggest oddities on the Internet, courtesy of my morbid curiosity...or a sampling of the musings that run through my head on a daily basis.

Please take a seat and enjoy the show.

Bob Dylan: popular riverboat swain

It's not that important, but Bob Dylan does score his first number-one album in 30 years. Thank Starbucks, iTunes, and the American public's genuine infatuation with Dylan-as-Jack-Frost. Must be the hat.

Wire's 154: Kabuki and The Method

When I listen to Wire these days it's either to The A List, a compilation of their eighties experiments in electro; or a one-disc collection made by yours truly. 154 has always struck me as one of those albums most critics think is great yet without a single interesting defense of its most trying songs. Until I read one, my demurral will make things harder.

In praise of: Alan Arkin

Speaking of Alan Arkin, who's been a treasure since he scared the shit out of the eleven-year-old me in the 1967 Audrey Hepburn thriller Wait Until Dark (wearing his wit as cannily as the black turtleneck that was Hollywood's preferred way of telegraphing "Beatnik," you wondered why the hell he was wasting time terrorizing Hepburn's shrill horror of a blind woman), David Thomson wrote a superb career overview of this "sad face in the madhouse." Consider his acerbic gravity in countless movies, duds and classics: Hearts of the West, The In-Laws, The Rocketeer, Havana, Glengarry Glen Ross, Mother Night, Grosse Pointe Blank, Gattaca, and Slums of Beverly Hills. There's an narrative here: the non-entities for which he garnered two consecutive Best Actor nominations (The Russians Are Coming! and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter -- his Peter Sellers movie and proto-Forrest Gump, respectively), together with the failure of Mike Nichols' graphic-novel rendering of Catch-22, aged him almost ten years, the better for him to play the wizened vizier who's seen better days or has no idea what a good day looks like. In any case, Arkin's gallant irony should be a tonic and instead it's a placebo, often convincing the makers of the films in which he co-stars that their satirical skewers are as pointed as Arkin's.

Of sunshine and sundance

Oh, for an American film, comedy or drama, which didn't resort to self-congratulatory irony (it's smugness really; blame the Brothers Coen) or tag characters with one or two quirks in place of actually developing them. If National Lampoon's Vacation is your idea of a great comedy worth ripping off, then Little Miss Sunshine is for you.

The latest littlefoot spanked on its pert bottom before being sent on its way by the chiefs of the Land of Sundance has the advantage of a superlative cast whose rhythms mimic a Hollywoodized rendering of how a Wacky Family would interact. No one plays dim, chirpy WASPs on the verge of collapse like Greg Kinnear; Toni Collette has her desperate groundedness (she seems to be looking for a film that can support her verisimilitude); a bearded and rather handsome Steve Carrell deftly underplays an offensive character; and Alan Arkin savors every "fuck" he utters as if, seventy years later, he's still appreciating the word's nuances. (I should note a lovely little performance by Paula Newsome as a wearily empathetic "grief facilitator").

But here's the problem: one look at the cast and you know exactly what stereotypes they're supposed to embody. Carrell plays a Proust expert, but so what? Oh, right, Carrell and Proust are both gay and they suffered and wore facial hair -- that takes care of that. The only payoff is a tete-a-tete with a nephew that betrays an acquaintance with Wayne E. Dyer rather than the novelist of A la recherche des temps perdues (had Preston Sturges created this character he'd have found innumerable ways to plumb his lunacy).

Finally, anyone with at least a passing acquaintance with me knows my intolerance of the proselytizers of optimism; but, Christ on a crutch, aren't self-help seminars the world's easiest targets? If you're thinking Donnie Darko, then brace yourself for the gentle mockery of those breeding grounds of future JonBenet Ramseys: child talent shows. I cannot blame Little Miss Sunshine for overlooking the bizarre twists the Ramsey case has taken recently, but it's a measure of how gormless its satire is that the film doesn't even suggest the perversity of talent-porn.

The Headline is Priceless

Pentagon Gives Gloomy Iraq Report

I thought things were going great in Iraq, but looks like I was wrong, and there's trouble in paradise! According to the Pentagon, "conditions that could lead to civil war exist in Iraq." Luckily, we know what the problem is! A "vocal minority of religious extremists" are opposing "the idea of a Democratic Iraq." I wonder what the silent majority of content, non-religious, democracy-loving Iraqis are up to in the meantime.

I'm terrible at sarcasm, but you get my point.