I Knew Something Was Incredible About Harry Potter

This is kind of a weird thought, even by my standards, but...

Okay, so I kind of have Harry Potter on the mind. I'm re-reading book 4 at the moment, and I'm kind of half-watching the second movie on television. It's the quidditch match between Slytherin and Gryffindor, and I notice that in the movie, the quidditch players have these kind of gauntlets/arm protectors on. Which makes me wonder, if you're going to wear one piece of protective equipment while you're playing a sport on broomsticks fifty feet in the air, wouldn't you choose a helmet? Or is that just me?


You can all go back to reality now.

Oh, and I'm quite put out by the new "7 Wonders" list. This is what happens when you let the unwashed masses decide things. I won't dignify this travesty with any further comment. (Although that would help my eternal mental quest for content...)

It Was Fifty Years Ago Today

I don't know if anyone else knows this, but today is the fiftieth anniversary of one of the most important days in the twentieth century. Fifty years ago, July 6 1957, John Winston Lennon met James Paul McCartney at a fete in Liverpool. The most important musical partnership ever (sorry Gilbert and Sullivan) was born. If you ask me, we set off the fireworks two days too early.

So, in honor of the auspicious moment, here are the ten greatest Beatles songs. I wholly reserve the right to change the list based on any sudden, violent mood swings that might arise between now and the next time I make such a list.

1. A Day in the Life.
2. Hey Jude
3. Strawberry Fields Forever
4. A Hard Day's Night
5. Penny Lane
6. Yesterday
7. Something
8. In My Life
9. Tomorrow Never Knows
10. Eleanor Rigby

Looking at the list, it is obvious to me that creating such a list for the Fab Four is simply not possible. The Beatles have about twenty-five songs that belong in the ten greatest. My desire to try and balance the Lennon and McCartney numbers, and to throw in at least one George song doesn't help.

Find Those Detonators

Sorry to disapear for a few days. It's not as if I've been busy or anything. I've just not had much of anything to say. I mean, I could bitch about Scooter Libby, or Edgar Renteria being left off the all-star team, but who really cares?

Part of what's distracted me from hammering out the usual drivel was my birthday yesterday (I'm old now- a quarter of a century), or rather, the unexpected bounty of wholly undeserved but expected gifts. In the past few days, I've gotten a hold of seasons 3-5 of 24, which turns out to have been a very good show that I seem to have latched onto too late, season 8 of Seinfeld (the first non Larry David season, which has more great moments than great episodes), the "new" "Stephen King" novel (published under the name of Richard Bachman, and written about thirty years ago, apparently), a fantastic book about the 1984 NBA draft (that would be the Olajuwon/Jordan/Barkley/Stockton/Sam Bowie draft) called "Tip-Off" which I've already finished, a fantastic, if eclectic, collection of songs from iTunes (highlights include Bryan Ferry's new album of Dylan covers, three tracks by the Zombies, a couple of Toots & the Maytalls tracks, Sam and Dave's "Hold On, I'm Coming", which is among the most perfect singles anyone has ever recorded, and what might be the two best tracks the Ramones recorded during their extended decline- "Pet Semetary" and "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg" also called "My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down"), plus John Updike and Philip Roth novels (old ones). Like I said, a collection as wonderful as it is undeserved.

Right now I'm in the middle of the second Harry Potter novel, which is slightly better than I remember it being, as part of the big re-read of the entire series in anticipation of the new novel. I'm curious as to how Rowling will possibly meet expectations here- if the last episode of Sopranos was a cultural event, this is much bigger in a lot of ways. And while I adored the ending of the Sopranos, I know a lot of people hated it. Think about it- if Harry dies, a lot of people will be pissed off, but you could probably make a good case for Harry's death being the best ending from Rowling's point of view (the same way that Cervantes needed to kill Don Quixote at the end of part two, so no one can write another one, leaving aside artistic reasons altogether.)

Anyway, just wanted all of my loyal readers (both of my loyal readers) to know I hadn't forgotten them.

O5R vs. the AFI

Last week, the American Film Institute issued their second "100 years...100 movies" list. As I mentioned, they made several mistakes. I decided to try and correct most of them. So, here is the actual 100 greatest American films, which probably only has a dozen major mistakes that I haven't realized yet. If you notice any of them, let me know. I'm fairly certain there's something embarassingly important I've left off. The numbering, once you get out of the top five, is fairly arbitrary. You should also know that I decided to limit the list to actual American films. The AFI included English films and one New Zealand film, but left off a bunch of other worthy British films. Which was kind of bullshit.

Anyway, here's the list:

1- Citizen Kane- Orson Welles-1941
2- The Godfather- Francis Ford Coppola- 1972
3- Casablanca- Michael Curtiz- 1942
4- The Searchers- John Ford- 1956
5- Vertigo- Alfred Hitchcock- 1958
6- The General- Buster Keaton- 1927
7- Singin’ In The Rain- Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly- 1952
8- Schindler’s List- Steven Spielberg- 1993
9- Sunset Boulevard- Billy Wilder- 1950
10- Taxi Driver- Martin Scorsese- 1976
11- Dr. Strangelove- Stanley Kubrick- 1964
12- Gone With the Wind- Victor Fleming- 1939
13- The Godfather Part II- Francis Ford Coppola- 1974
14- The Wizard of Oz- Victor Fleming- 1939
15- Nashville- Robert Altman- 1975
16- Psycho- Alfred Hitchcock- 1960
17- Bonnie and Clyde- Arthur Penn- 1967
18- Some Like It Hot- Billy Wilder- 1959
19- Raging Bull- Martin Scorsese- 1980
20- Chinatown- Roman Polanski- 1974
21- Double Indemnity- Billy Wilder- 1944
22- The Wild Bunch- Sam Peckinpah- 1969
23- Apocalypse Now- Francis Ford Coppola- 1979
24- 2001: A Space Odyssey- Stanley Kubrick- 1968
25- Do The Right Thing- Spike Lee- 1989
26- On the Waterfront- Elia Kazan- 1954
27- Red River- Howard Hawks- 1948
28- Star Wars- George Lucas- 1977
29- The Maltese Falcon- John Huston- 1941
30- The Graduate- Mike Nichols- 1967
31- Night of the Hunter- Charles Laughton- 1955
32- Annie Hall- Woody Allen- 1977
33- Duck Soup- Leo McCarey- 1933
34- Unforgiven- Clint Eastwood- 1992
35- The Manchurian Candidate- John Frankenhemier- 1962
36- Rear Window- Alfred Hitchcock- 1954
37- My Darling Clementine- John Ford- 1946
38- City Lights- Charlie Chaplin- 1931
39- Notorious- Alfred Hitchcock- 1946
40- The Magnificent Ambersons- Orson Welles- 1942
41- Pulp Fiction- Quentin Tarantino- 1994
42- Sullivan’s Travels- Preston Sturges- 1941
43- McCabe & Mrs. Miller- Robert Altman- 1971
44- Network- Sidney Lumet- 1976
45- Goodfellas- Martin Scorsese- 1990
46- All About Eve- Joseph L. Mankiewicz- 1950
47- Touch of Evil- Orson Welles- 1958
48- Bringing Up Baby- Howard Hawks- 1938
49- Jaws- Steven Spielberg- 1975
50- The Birth of a Nation- D.W. Griffith- 1915
51- Modern Times- Charlie Chaplin- 1936
52- One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest- Milos Forman- 1975
53- North By Northwest- Alfred Hitchcock- 1959
54- The Treasure of the Sierra Madre- John Huston- 1948
55- High Noon- Fred Zinneman- 1952
56- The African Queen- John Huston- 1951
57- It’s A Wonderful Life- Frank Capra- 1946
58- The Big Sleep- Howard Hawks- 1946
59- Stagecoach- John Ford- 1939
60- King Kong- Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack- 1933
61- Close Encounters of the Third Kind- Steven Spielberg- 1977
62- Rebel Without A Cause- Nicholas Ray- 1955
63- Paths of Glory- Stanley Kubrick- 1957
64- To Kill A Mockingbird- Robert Mulligan- 1962
65- The Gold Rush- Charlie Chaplin- 1925
66- Mean Streets- Martin Scorsese- 1973
67- Manhattan- Woody Allen- 1979
68- White Heat- Raoul Walsh- 1949
69- Saving Private Ryan- Steven Spielberg- 1998
70- Mr. Smith Goes to Washington- Frank Capra- 1939
71- Fargo- Joel and Ethan Coen- 1996
72- The Shawshank Redemption- Frank Darabont- 1994
73- The Grapes of Wrath- John Ford- 1940
74- The Best Years of Our Lives- William Wyler- 1946
75- The Lady Eve- Preston Sturges- 1941
76- A Clockwork Orange- Stanley Kubrick- 1971
77- West Side Story- Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins- 1961
78- Strangers On A Train- Alfred Hitchcock- 1951
79- It Happened One Night- Frank Capra- 1934
80- A Streetcar Named Desire- Elia Kazan- 1951
81- The Silence of the Lambs- Jonathan Demme- 1991
82- His Girl Friday- Howard Hawks- 1940
83- Patton- Franklin J. Schaffner- 1970
84- Days of Heaven- Terrence Malick- 1978
85- The Philadelphia Story- George Cukor- 1940
86- Blade Runner- Ridley Scott- 1982
87- Sweet Smell of Success- Alexander Mackendrick- 1957
88- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid- George Roy Hill- 1969
89- JFK- Oliver Stone- 1991
90- The Exorcist- William Friedkin- 1973
91- The Producers- Mel Brooks- 1968
92- L.A. Confidential- Curtis Hanson- 1997
93- This Is Spinal Tap- Rob Reiner- 1984
94- The Bride of Frankenstein- James Whale- 1935
95- M*A*S*H- Robert Altman- 1970
96- Laura- Otto Preminger- 1944
97- House of Games- David Mamet- 1987
98- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre- Tobe Hooper- 1974
99- Rushmore- Wes Alexander- 1998
100- American Graffiti- George Lucas- 1973

Breakdown by decade:
1910s- 1 film
1920s- 2 films
1930s- 11 films
1940s- 19 films
1950s- 18 films
1960s- 11 films
1970s- 22 films
1980s- 5 films
1990s- 11 films

Directors with multiple films:
Alfred Hitchcock- 6 films
John Ford- 4 films
Steven Spielberg- 4 films
Martin Scorsese- 4 films
Stanley Kubrick- 4 films
Howard Hawks- 4 films
Orson Welles- 3 films
Francis Ford Coppola- 3 films
Billy Wilder- 3 films
Robert Altman- 3 films
John Huston- 3 films
Charlie Chaplin- 3 films
Frank Capra- 3 films
Elia Kazan- 2 films
George Lucas- 2 films
Woody Allen- 2 films
Preston Sturges- 2 films
Victor Fleming- 2 films (But... Fleming didn't direct Gone With The Wind or Wizard of Oz in the way that the other auteurs directed their films. Both classics of 1939 were pure products of the studio system at its zenith, and Fleming was more or less the last guy standing after directors like King Vidor (Oz) and George Cukor (GWTW) were fired after doing uncredited work. The real driving force behind GWTW was David O. Selznick, and the film was his vision more than Fleming's. So although it seems, at first glance, that Fleming should be considered one of the greatest filmmakers produced by any country solely on the strengths of these two films, he's essentially a film note in American film history.)

Live From An Undisclosed Location

So, I'm house / dog / chicken / fish sitting this weekend. Thus far, it has consisted of taking an unusually sedate poodle for a walk and watching the first season of 24 (only twenty bucks at Target. I know they're probably another part of the evil corporate oligarchy that I should be raging against, but in all likelihood they would just be the ones' profiting on the revolution, selling molotov cocktail kits at deep discount as a loss leader).


It's great to see that the incorrigible Stacey has finally found her way to our (by which I mean my) little corner of the interwebs. Gentlemen, be on your best behaviour, because she won't hesitate to shove the broken end of a bottle in your eye. I've seen her do it when discussion of Bronte turns ugly.



Little Brother is doing a free show at the Cradle on Tuesday. If you don't go, shame on you- you'll be stuck (not) reading my review of the show. In anticipation of the show, I finally bought a copy of their Chitlin Circuit album, in no small part because the albums of theirs I do have won't show the autographs from Phonte and Big Pooh that I'm hoping to get.

I had to work in the proper FOL office on Friday, and at one point I had to stand in front of a copy machine for an hour, listening to the first half of Green Day's American Idiot album over and over again (well, I didn't strictly HAVE to do that part, but it seemed like the appropriate response) It got way too much like a real job, so I had to run to Schoolkids and buy music to make myself feel more like myself again. Besides the Little Brother cd, I also picked up an old Sonic Youth album (Sister, mainly because I've been listening to Daydream Nation a lot lately, and that's the preceding album) and the new White Stripes album.

Right.

Update:

Okay, I was checking to see how badly the Braves lost (My pessimism was well-founded- Detroit dropped us again, although only 2-1 this time.) I saw an odd on the front page of Yahoo! that said "Be a Better Music Lover". Underneath this are pictures and captions of Justin Timberlake, April Lavigne (I don't care how she spells her name, she is incorrect), Kelly Clarkson and someone named Rihianna, who I'm not entirely sure who she is. I hate everyone and everything, and I am now once again actively praying for Nuclear holocaust.

That is all.

Not Dark Yet, But It's Getting There

You ever decide that, since you can't sleep that the best thing you could possibly do is listen to Elvis Costello and catch up on a blog you quit reading by a girl you used to think about most of the time? As it turns out, it's not as great an idea as it might seem when it first occurs to you. Just a word of advice. So I switched to Dylan, which is the kind of "in for a penny, in for a pound" thinking that led to the whole situation in the first place, if you look at things from a kind of large picture, kind of slanted and slightly abstract point of view. Kind of like how I keep typing sentences in this paragraph, despite the obvious fact being that it would be smarter to move on and just bitch about the American Film Institute, like I do so naturally. Blame it on the music. I would guess that a lot of my hang-ups, mental blocks and several planks of my idiosyncratic belief systems can be directly attributed to the music. Hers too, now that I think about it.

Anyway.

The AFI put out their new 100 greatest American films list tonight. I only watched the top 60 or so films, and then glanced at the complete list. Thank the maker that Nashville and The General made it this time. List is still horribly flawed. Titanic, for example, should not be on the list. Nor should Midnight Cowboy, The Sound of Music or... Holy Hell, did The Third Man fall off the list entirely? I mean, I'm glad Do The Right Thing made it on, but who the hell thinks Easy Rider or Sixth Sense is better than the fucking Third Man? Why do people still think that Shane and High Noon are better westerns than Red River or Good,Bad and the Ugly? Who thinks Tootsie is better than, say, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, or Night of The Hunter? If they were going to add a Kubrick film, who the hell chose fucking Sparatcus over Paths of Glory or Barry Lyndon or any other movie he made after Killer's Kiss for that matter? Why did L.A. Confidential get screwed over? And if they were picking a Lord of the Rings film, why did they choose Fellowship over Return of the King?

Shit, there's a reason why I meant to not watch...

Listening to Time Out of Mind might not have been the best idea I ever had, at least, listening to it at this moment. I really should have put on something less...thought inducing. It's like being in love with a woman who don't even appeal to me.

I'm twenty miles out of town, and Cold Irons Bound

Um...Guys?

Progessiveboink.com, in a list of the worst song lyrics, has this to say about Aesop Rock:

"This is a fairly accurate representation of a lot of backpack rap. Their strategy is to talk really quickly and rhyme words that make no goddamn sense at all. This works well when your audience is a bunch of college hipsters who are eager to excuse your lack of intellectual qualities because you’re black. What?!? No, that’s not racist! You’re racist! For bringing race into the issue!"

They do know that Aesop isn't black.... right?

Link. It's number 14 in the first list.

I've Made a Huge Mistake

I just spent a couple of hours (or maybe just one hour...or maybe half an hour) looking at job websites, and it's increasingly clear that English might not have been the most...farsighted field I could have chosen.

Hoom.