Closing The Circle, And About Time
Now Playing: Jim Roll--"Another Lover (I Never Had)"
I recently watched the first series of The Duchess of Duke Street (1976), a fictionalization of the life of Cockney chef and hotelier Rosa Lewis ("Louisa Trotter" on the show), and her amorous and commercial adventures (and those of her guests) in Edwardian England. It was created by John Hawkesworth, one of the people behind Upstairs, Downstairs, and starred the lovely, wonderful Gemma Jones (Oliver Reed's relatively virtuous girlfriend in The Devils, Mrs. Dashwood in Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility, and Renee Zellweger's mother in Bridget Jones' Diary), whose work I will now make a point of seeing--not only is she a terrific actress, but she reminds me of a girl at the Baton Rouge Barnes and Noble for whom I used to have a fondness. The series climaxes with Louisa's goofball on-and-off aristocratic love interest being married off to some colorless bourgeoise, and was really quite heartbreaking.

So thank heavens I watched the last episode right before Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005). I was in the mood for something mindless and consoling, and the movie for which some people waited twenty-five years sounded like just the ticket. Now that I've seen God knows how many other movies in the intervening years since Star Wars first came out, it's rather alarming how large the flaws in this whole mythology loom. After I discovered Doctor Who, I never really had the same interest in Star Wars--all the special effects money in the world won't compensate for the ability to write dialogue. I stopped caring about the whole thing, by and large, by the time I entered high school. While I, like most of the industrialized world, was curious about what the prequels would bring, I didn't fret over it.

The movie was a terribly lopsided bag, some genuinely good stuff swamped by the sheer weight of the thing. The special effects were glitzy and overwhelming, making one wish CGI had never been invented (almost, anyway--for a primer on how the technology should be used, watch Shaun of the Dead; some of the effects are revealed on the hilarious DVD commentary, the funniest bits courtesy of Dylan Moran). One of the things I always like when watching the original Star Wars is how natural many of the effects look in comparison to some of the other stuff done at the time (and since), Logan's Run and Battlestar: Galactica being good contemporary examples. In Revenge of the Sith, it's all very tinny and obviously fake, and detracts considerably from an already beleaguered story.

I was astonished anew at the wretchedness of the dialogue. The original Star Wars, with the continual wisecracks between the characters, had some great moments, but I think once Lucas decided to take the whole thing seriously on screen (I couldn't stop giggling at the initial prologue for Revenge of the Sith, which would look great on the back cover of the thirteenth volume of some roleplaying-game-derived novel series), he either shot himself in the foot or simply forgot how to write (providing fuel for the idea that he'd had himself hermetically sealed into Skywalker Ranch for fifteen years, only emerging for The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles--which, to do him justice, was a great idea). The jokes are tragically limp, reminding me of Nixon wielding a yo-yo. The expository dialogue is particularly brutal, sounding like notes taken for an eighth-grade history paper on "The Decline of the Galactic Republic": "Palpatine felt uneasy about the Jedi Council." "I feel... uneasy about the Council." Jan Morris suggested once that this might have been how G.A. Henty wrote his Victorian boys' thrillers, and it's fun to see how little things have changed, even when one's dealing with imaginary history. I know it's hard to sell political and economic chicanery in a movie like this, but at least try and dress it up, for heaven's sake. It's entirely possible that I've been spoiled by the ready availability of Deadwood at the local library, but that only explains so much.

It's unfortunate, too, because the dialogue obscures some surprisingly good moments and acting. The sight of the various Jedi commanders throughout the Republican armies cut down by budding stormtroopers is genuinely moving. Professional sourguts Christopher "Who is this 'Dracula' you speak of?" Lee shows up for a bit as Count Dooku, and... honestly, people, the fact that he can "do his thing" at all at eighty-three is pretty impressive. Samuel L. Jackson glowers as Mace Windu, and does what he can with little. Natalie Portman is rather wasted, mostly fidgeting and fretting for poor Anakin in a variety of costume-design travesties. Ewan MacGregor's good, but he's unexpectedly outpaced by Ian McDiarmid and Hayden Christensen. McDiarmid's Palpatine turns into a great reptilian villain in Sith, revealing himself as an enemy of the Jedi and then drawing Anakin into his diabilical clutches. I hear Christensen caught a lot of flak for his performance as Anakin, but given that he plays an already annoying teenager beset by mommy issues and given a ludicrous amount of power, I think he does awfully well.* I'm not being facetious--that's how I always read Anakin.

The good thing is that it's over. Nobody can be hurt by mistaken decisions or fruitless fifteen-year filming gaps taken by Lucasfilm ever again, right?

*It doesn't hurt that I have considerable goodwill towards Christensen. He took the flaming pile of shit that was Life as a House and, with Jena Malone, made it almost tolerable. I heard Shattered Glass was pretty good, too.

Feelin' Just As Faded As My Jeans
Now Playing: Lush--"Lit Up"
It was good to see the family again, although we all would have obviously preferred vastly different circumstances. The funeral was... well, a funeral. It was a nice service, anyway. My dad's holding up pretty well, and my two half-brothers, both under ten, seem to realize what's happened. It would have been weird being back in the first place, but I had the first consciousness of Baton Rouge being something of a foreign place (the weather wasn't really all that much different, which shouldn't have surprised me). Under the circumstances, I took a break from my dietary experiment of the past month (eschewing meat and poultry--curious to see how it affects my health). I spent most of my time with my dad's family, my brother, and my sister-in-law, but stayed with my mom and visited some with my grandparents. I don't know if Thomas Wolfe was right or not when he said "you can't go home again," but it doesn't make his writing any more intelligible.

As a result, the past week's been fairly low-key. I decided to go to the last Plastic Passion at Oz but didn't dance, simply having a couple of beers and staying in the metaphorical corner. It was still good to hear Josh's splendid final set list (under other circumstances, I certainly would have hit the floor for XTC's "Generals and Majors"). I felt more myself by the weekend, though. Work helped enormously (never thought I'd write that sentence in the recent past), even with the mysterious disappearance of my fun new co-worker. "A business decision," whatever the fuck that means. It can go in the corporate doublespeak pile with "quantify" and "assistance" and most goddamn particularly "utilize." I finished the WRAP library for check-out Friday evening, half an hour into the Jim Roll show at Crazy Wisdom and the day before the open house. That was good--I'd been going in there as often as I could, and it's taken a while. There are still a few kinks in the system, but for now I'm treating it as a fairly proud achievement. I dropped in on the Jimmer show, right amid his awesome Uriah Heep cover. Effin' sweet as usual, electric and all, with excellent guitar backup from Neil Cleary, and the oft-mentioned Matt Jones on drums. I had some good chats with people, decided I needed a beer, and went barhopping with Greg, Amy, Matt, and Carol, later joined by Neil. I got drunk (despite a clearly remembered declaration to Matt at Leopold's that I wasn't drunk--or at least didn't feel like it; sound familiar?), but it was a good time, much needed, and I didn't really have much of a hangover the next morning. The weather was rather windswept and cloud-staggered, encouraging me to take a walk along the Huron from Argo to the Arb. Sari Brown made a wonderful return to the stage Saturday night at Espresso Royale. Congratulations to Brandon and Erin (and anyone else reading who finished at U-M last weekend)! And last but not least, Darren, my online chum from Wales, is engaged, so congratulations once more.

All for now.

My dad's wife of fourteen years, Leah Hipple McKay, passed away last Thursday. I've been in Baton Rouge helping with the family for the past few days. Perhaps there'll be more later on that, but for right now, I just wanted to say requiescat in pace.

More here.

One of the Best of Its Kind, I Ever Heard
Now Playing: Yo La Tengo--"Stockholm Syndrome"
Things to say about Michael Winterbottom's film, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2005):

1. Weirdly enough, I, like Uncle Toby, am often given to whistling "Lilliburlero," the last time while using the facilities during the show at Betsy's Friday night.

2. Winterbottom does it again. Shortly after I moved to Ann Arbor, alone and relatively friendless in a strange town, his 24 Hour Party People (2002) began playing at the Michigan Theater and then at the State, where I saw it a total of four times. The movie chronicled, in a breezily postmodern and self-referential fashion (at times too much so), the experiences of British TV personality Tony Wilson (Steve Coogan) in creating and running Manchester-based Factory Records (home of influential groups such as Joy Division and New Order) from 1976 to 1992. I'd become acquainted with some of the music while in Akron, and the movie became a favorite of mine, largely at first as a welcome celebration of the familiar.

Tristram Shandy uses the same fractured, irreverent approach (and several of the same actors) in telling the tale of the filming of Laurence Sterne's 1767 novel of the same name. I read it in college, and wasn't nearly as entertained as I was while reading it over the past couple of weeks. Allegedly the story of "Tristram Shandy, Gent.," its multitudinous digressions result in Tristram's own life occupying a relatively small portion of the novel. Much of the rest concerns the wacky exploits of Tristram's relatives, especially the garrulous Uncle Toby, a distinguished (and obsessive) veteran of the War of the League of Augsburg (1689-97), who recreates a large-scale model of the Battle of Namur (1695)--in which he was wounded and invalided out of the service--in the grounds of the family estate at Shandy Hall. How does one film a non-story like that?

Director "Mark" (a sidesplittingly haggard Jeremy Northam, every one of whose closeups scream "what the fuck did I get myself into?") and his intrepid band give it a try. Steve Coogan plays himself playing Tristram and Tristram's father (it's that kind of movie). Much of the film's humor and drama (all right, mostly humor) come from Coogan balancing his feelings for his girlfriend and for the Fassbinder-crazed production assistant (both named Jenny, both gorgeous, and played by Kelly MacDonald and Naomie Harris, respectively), as well as struggling to defend his leading-man status in the film from Rob Brydon (playing himself playing Uncle Toby). Brydon's something of a revelation; in Party People, he played an annoying, cartoonishly square journalist whose sole function seemed to be making Tony Wilson look cool by comparison. Here, he's a very likeable actor whose relative lack of ego makes Coogan a bit of a prat (or more of a prat than already portrayed in the film). Other Party People vets include Shirley Henderson (who played Wilson's girlfriend) as housekeeper Susannah, and Raymond Waring (who played Vini Reilly of the Durutti Column) as Uncle Toby's loyal servant and former comrade, Corporal Trim. The actors are great, including Gillian Anderson, who finds herself called in to play Uncle Toby's love interest in an excised scene re-included in the movie and then cut again after the honchos decide it isn't funny. James Fleet and one of my favorite actors, Ian Hart, are great at getting down the constant frustrations of the producer and writer. There are a whole host of historical reenactors for the battle of Namur sequence who discover that their costumes are nearly a century out of date. Beautiful.

What of the movie itself? It's a little more difficult to dig in some ways than Party People simply due to its messy, chaotic nature. Party People was a historical narrative, however wacked, wheareas this one, though it has narrative cohesion, seems to leap all over the place and lack a point. Of course, maybe that is the point. The novel seemed to lack one, too. In the end, it holds together, but only just. There's a great moment when one of the production staff asks something like "why did we even decide to do this?" which is an excellent question to ask when you're three-quarters of the way through filming a movie that could turn out a total catastrophe. I must say that Winterbottom's great at traipsing along the edge. Party People came close to foundering in the frequently idolatrous treatment of Tony Wilson earlier in the film--"He doesn't care what people say about him, so long as they're talking about him." Such devil-may-care, secondhand greatness is hilariously defused later, as Tony lies in bed with his new partner and observes, "I think [Happy Mondays frontman] Shaun Ryder is on a par with W.B. Yeats," to which his partner replies, "that's interesting, because everyone else thinks he's a fucking idiot." Perfectly said and handled, although not as decisively or spectacularly as Peter Sarsgaard saved Garden State. It all comes close to tumbling but never quite does, all the way down to the very end, with Brydon and Coogan doing their Pacino impressions after the final screening.

Who Doesn't Love Mitosis?
Now Playing: Prince--"Take Me With U"
"I could watch people fed to animals pretty much 24 hours a day. Someone ought to start a channel with that."

--David Milch, in his salty, profane, wonderfully thought-provoking commentary on the DVD of Deadwood (Episode 1, "Deadwood")

Holy Week passed in a blur. I saw some movies and shows, words which probably sound familiar by now...

Que Le Fete Commence (Let Joy Reign Supreme) (1974): It's a pity we didn't see this Bertrand Tavernier flick in my eighth grade Louisiana history class, as it deals tangentially with John Law and the "Mississippi Bubble" of early eighteenth-century France, which had... implications. I suspect all the casual nudity might have nixed that one. Louis XIV has recently died, and young Louis XV grows under the watchful eye of his regent, the Duc d'Orleans (the great Philippe Noiret). While a good deal happens in the movie--rebellions, intrigue, etc.--there's not really much of an actual plot, more of a collection of closely-linked vignettes, mixing comedy and drama with the appealingly grainy and realistic cinematography one sees in many movies of the period on both sides of the Atlantic. The best thing about it is Jean Rochefort, playing Orleans' slippery toady the Abbe Dubois, suverting the sinister aspects of his role with bursts of inappropriate laughter, at one point jumping up and down on the furniture like an excited toddler in the belief that he's about to be made Archbishop of Cambrai. Good stuff.

The "Folkoustastic" show at 328 Catherine Street: An alarming array of acts towards the folk end of the indie spectrum gathered at Betsy's house Friday evening--Kelly Caldwell, the Victrolas, Misty Lyn, Actual Birds, Chris Bathgate, and best of all, Jim Roll, who I hadn't seen play in a while. Everyone was their usual excellent selves, the Great Big Tatters being a pleasant surprise (everything's better with an accordion). There were weird but pleasant treats, particularly discussing free-range poultry and kosher wine with new acquaintances Ben and Karen, and hanging with Colette as she accompanied Actual Birds on cello through the front windows of the house. The Jimmer portion of the show was the highlight, songs like "Old Love," "Ready To Hang," and "Bonnie and Clyde" putting a warm glow into the intimate audience crowding Betsy's living room. Sara actually accompanied him on tambourine, and I... did something. What the fuck did I do? Body percussion, I think. I assumed it wasn't going to get any better and left at some point.

I Walked With A Zombie (1943): The cheesy title lends a perverse frisson to one of the classiest and most intelligent horror movies (hell, movies period) ever made anywhere (in my admittedly limited opinion and experience), under the sure hands of producing-directing team Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur. A nurse (Frances Dee) travels to a Caribbean island to look after the invalid wife of a local sugar planter (Tom Conway) and discovers that the sickness is much more than it looks. Unbeatable visuals, thought-provoking dialogue, and a cracking good story make this an unforgettable experience (it's also about one of, I don't know, three or four mainstream pre-60s Hollywood movies to treat black characters with any sort of dignity and respect). The DVD commentary, by Kim Newman and Steve Jones, is fantastic--it sounds as if they'd just finished guzzling a barrel of coffee, but they cover so many bases and ideas that it's impossible for me to fault them. Between them and David Milch, I'm falling in love with the commentary option--DVD rules!!

The Halfass Season Finale--The Casionauts, Nomo, and Charlie Slick: For various reasons, I felt a little down Saturday night and so wasn't looking forward to the Casionauts' return to Ann Arbor as much as I thought. The cloud totally dissipated on seeing Ryan Balderas again and getting into the groove of the evening. The first time I'd seen Charlie Slick play (at Arbourfest), I wasn't all that enthused, and I still find the bubbles and confetti more of an annoying gimmick than anything else. Still, it was hard to resist the infectious enthusiasm of the neo-New Wave keyboard sound, and sure enough, I wound up jumping a little by the end. The Casionauts reminded me once more of how awesome they are; especially after Friday evening, I could have done with something a little harder. Ryan was great as usual, but I got a better sense this time of the other players, in particular Jon Cendrowski on lead guitar--impeccable showmanship--and the drummer (on whose name I'm blanking; somebody help me)--the percussion was intense and shook the building. I probably hurt people while dancing, but whatever. "Inject It Or Eat It, RNA Will Make You Smarter" is a particularly joyous closing song (and apparently it's true), and "Or How I Learned To Love Mitosis" ("This one's for Wendell"--are you fucking kidding me?) still rocks. Well done, lads. I was curious about Nomo; I greatly enjoy Afrobeat and remembered liking them a lot when seeing them at the Blind Pig some time back. Frontman Elliot Bergman did a great job on sax at many Saturday Looks Good To Me shows, and so (along with Jamie Register and several others) there was certainly talent to burn. The Halfass was their first show in a new U.S. tour, and the place was probably crowded more on their account than for the other two bands, awesome though they were. The Afrobeat mixed with a jammy, more American sound which resembled that kind of inchoate Grateful Dead/Phish style, only not annoying. I'd planned to sit for it, as I'd worn myself out a little to the Casionauts. My initial inactivity meant that I caught a bizarre little sideshow ytowards the back: a sprightly young couple performing this ludicrously elaborate dance, complete with "beckoning to your partner" and "mock-quickies-against-the-wall." Now, when I say "ludicrously," I mean no disparagement--it just wasn't the kind of thing I'd been expecting. The fact that the girl didn't have one of those Spanish flamenco skirts to flounce around was just wrong. Towards the end, I managed to rise for the penultimate song and, sure enough, was leaping around like an incompetent Cossack for the end of the night. A beautiful show and a classy finish. Thanks, Brandon, and all the people I don't know who put it all together.

Viy (1967): Speaking of Cossacks... The latest in the U-M Cinema Guild Aleksandr Ptushko series was a remarkably faithful and unexpectedly realistic adaptation of the 1830s Nikolai Gogol horror story of the same name (also the basis for Mario Bava's 1960 classic Black Sunday). Novice monk Khoma runs afoul of a witch on his way home from the seminary one night, only to discover later that she has a double identity that proves fateful for him. A far cry from Ptushko's more fanciful productions, Viy actually proved a relevant Easter Sunday movie, as it dealt with faith and self-sacrifice. Last year's equally unintentional Easter movie (another from Mario Bava), the magnificent Five Dolls For An August Moon (1970), dealt with death, and lots of it, so that made a sort of sense too. The special effects and makeup were in almost another world from the other movies--probably the best Ptushko yet.

Hell, pretty sweet weekend, eh?

I Died Alone... A Long, Long Time Ago
Now Playing: Toots and the Maytals--"54-46 Was My Number"
Spring's springing slowly, very slowly.

I pledged $25 to WEMU, and am very glad I did, as it's saving my life at work. Fresh Air (Seymour Hersh and Mary Harron today) rules and Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me is a great Saturday morning treat. Work itself is actually becoming somewhat tolerable thanks to one of my new co-workers.

Things in general aren't all that bad right now. I feel a little stupid for missing financial aid deadlines for fall library schools over concern for my outstanding Akron library fine, as it turns out that I don't have one. The silver lining? The money I don't have to pay them. So it looks like I'll be trying to insinuate myself into the system for winter. Speaking of Akron, an old friend contacted me, leading to conact with another old friend (who works with another old friend), bringing back more memories of that city I can't help but view with rose-tinted specs. The WRAP library is almost finished; I put in two early evenings cataloging the non-fiction section and can soon begin entering them into the database. Saturday, I felt less alone in the world vis-a-vis my socioeconomic situation, visiting my friend and former coworker Jenee, the day chef at the Earle Uptown, and later that night my friend and former coworker Phill and his boyfriend Lee. Phill was pretty much my best friend in Ann Arbor for some time until he moved to San Francisco (before moving back several months ago), and hanging out with him is always a pleasure. We all chatted, drank wine, and had a convivial and low-key evening of the kind I haven't had in a damn long time. He capped off the evening by giving me his old DVD player, which was a tremendously nice thing to do and launches me into the 21st century, but also poses the threat of chaining me to the TV room for what could be the rest of my life. Last but not least, one of my stories received some very nice compliments in the British Horror Films Forum.

So life's to enjoy right now.

Making Hard Men Humble
Now Playing: Earth, Wind, and Fire--"After The Love Is Gone"
I recently had occasion to listen to all of my Kinks CDs, The Kink Kontroversy (1965) through Preservation, Act 1 (1974). I still count the Kinks and Sleater-Kinney as my two favorite bands, and my occasional absorption in local music makes it a pleasure to revisit the two from time to time. This won't seem of any great moment to most of y'all, but it evoked profoundly affecting memories of my life directly before I moved to Ann Arbor in August 2002: life spent in a charmingly dilapidated, condemned house in Akron, Ohio, off the Perkins St. exit of State Route 8. The house is now sadly gone, not a timber left to attest its former life. I spent many a fond hour preparing lectures and syllabi, reading and writing, while lying in the bathtub with the window open and listening to the aforementioned bands, Television, the Flamin' Groovies, or St. Etienne, spring smells and the sound of birdsong all around. It all had to end, of course, and however overrated I sometimes find The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it was a kick to have to leave a house that was being demolished to remedy the sometimes lethal freeway exit system immediately north of I-76. Some of my fondest non-academic memories of Akron are of that. And Piatto. And Country Diner (God help me).

Speaking of old music, I found through a chance library CD that Henry Purcell's music for the funeral of England's Queen Mary II in 1695 formed the basis for the creepy yet compelling synthesizer score that opens A Clockwork Orange. I found that pretty cool (even if A Clockwork Orange is overrated, too).

Wednesday night I finally (and needlessly, it turned out) swallowed my pride and went to downtown Ann Arbor's Oz nightclub for DJ Josh Burge's "Plastic Passion," a night of primo 80s and early 90s dance music. I'd often wondered about Oz, which opened a couple of years ago as a Middle Eastern-flavored place, with hookahs and belly dancing. It's expanded since to include acts like Plastic Passion and the ubiquitous DJ Billy the Kid spinning reggae and soca.* I was impressed at the interior--dark reds and greys with lots of candles (the way the second floor of Crazy Wisdom ought to look) and space so my (or, in fairness, anyone's) dancing wouldn't cause injury. It reminded me of the red damask bedroom at the Count of Monte Cristo's place in Auteuil writ large. I ran into Sara and Marie (come to think of it, they literally ran into me), met their friends Chris and Guy, and we all filled out request cards and danced to an impressive array of tunes from everyone's new favorite decade. The usual suspects were there, but there were some pleasant surprises, like not quite canon stuff from Slowdive and Lush that painfully (in a good way) reminded me of my undergrad days at Roanoke. Of my dancing, I'll only say that it was a damn good thing the place was roomy.

* Billy used to work the second floor at Don Carlos late Thursday nights, when the not-all-that-strong rafters shook with Cosmos, bass lines, and the population density of Bangladesh. I had no problem with him, but he pissed off the doorstaff with some prima donna behavior. He wasn't nearly as amusing as a guy with (I've since discovered) the same name as a fairly well-known figure on the Ann Arbor music scene. After being challenged for ID and then barred for its absence, he squawked, "Hey, come on, man! All of Ann Arbor knows me! I'm--" We didn't care, but we laughed anyway.

A Danceable Solution
Now Playing: The Kinks--"Two Sisters"
Nary nothing of note...

The Saturday Actual Birds show at the Halfass was pretty good; Dustin was backed by a great assemblage of musicians including Annie, Scott DeRoche, and Aleise Barnett. There was a fun vibe to the show that was tragically wasted on me; I think I need to take serious naps before those shows so I won't be too tired. I stayed through part of Liz Janes' set, which was pretty good, although long, slow, and sad for my current taste. Bed never looked so great.

More to my speed was the Mike Waite show at the Old Town Sunday night. Waite, it turns out, is linked to two sets of friends, which goes to illuminate Ann Arbor's relative smallness. Unlike Misty's show earlier, the audience seemed oddly segmented and segregated, although that may have been due to my position at the bar rather than a table or booth. Mike Waite ripped through a set of boisterous folk that occasionally featured John Churchville on drums or my illustrious Planned Parenthood volunteer boss, Jessica Ross (who told me about the show), on those sticks that one occasionally "clicks" together and whose name escapes me. I spent most of the evening commiserating with Matt, Jess' husband who's generally tremendous fun. That night wasn't all that much different, except that I think we both had a little too much. Even so, it was a lot of fun; I ran into Greg, chatted with Jess and Matt's friend Eric, and re-met Nora, Mike Waite's sister and a friend of Jess' that I've met several times in several different places... "re-met"'s a weird concept, but very useful for somewhere like Ann Arbor.

Cougar Opaque
Now Playing: The Durutti Column--"Otis"
I got into a conversation at Planned Parenthood Volunteer Night concerning the local Clear Channel station, 107.1 FM. "More music to pique your interest." 107.1 is actually the only radio station we reliably receive at work, presumably since its faceless parent corporation can shell out for superior broadcast capacity and crowd out the ability of almost anyone else to beam their signal into the priceless architectural treasures of downtown Ann Arbor. It may seem petty to go on about this, but WQKL (I think) forms an ominously large part of my life, as we listen to it all the time while working. While marginally better than the techno crap that one of the newbies plays, it's still a trial. The format's gone through at least one major tectonic shift since I've formed part of the captive audience. No more easy-listening late 60s through early 80s dreck; now, instead of hearing Edison Lighthouse once a day, we can hear a Dave Matthews song every fucking hour!! I wonder about WQKL; the responses of the "random listeners" who spout crap like "I love the variety," etc. sound suspiciously uniform and similar to the pronouncements of the station owners. "Say this," they'd say to random passersby at the mall, shoving a notecard in their face and receiving bovine obedience. Then there's that "pique your interest" line. One of the DJs started going on about some lame band one morning--the Fray, maybe--and said, "you know, that band really piqued my interest," simply parroting the station's idiotic catchphrase. Sundays aren't too bad, with all the specialty shows, but I don't work Sundays, and every other time it's pretty much a write-off. While baking Saturday at work, I tuned into WEMU, the local NPR station out of Ypsilanti. As it was pledge drive time, they played a lot of unusually entertaining stuff--Bob Edwards interviewing Peter Guralnick (for the new Sam Cooke biography; for another review go here) and George Clooney and David Strathairn (for Good Night and Good Luck); David Sedaris reading a fairy tale on This American Life; and Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, which I should really listen to more often. So grateful was I that I'm actually considering pledging.

Come back, radio.

Untitled Weekend
Now Playing: Mirah--"Special Death"
I bit the bullet Saturday and went to the Ann Arbor Film Festival, one of the oldest and most vital in the United States. Held at the Michigan Theater, the Festival ran for nearly a week, with the briefest digital shorts standing shoulder to shoulder with prestigious, high-minded documentaries. Buying a day pass, I saw two programs of shorts and one full-length film. It was a pretty odd experience, sitting in the theater for nearly eight hours (with a dinner break) and soaking in so many cinematic visions. The effect was all the more powerful for my recent lack of attendance in theaters.

"The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello": This visually stunning little horror-adventure animated gem out of Melbourne was nominated for an Oscar earlier this month, and manages to pack all sorts of grim themes--plague, vampirism, insanity--into the half-hour story of a navigator in a weird parallel nineteenth-century world who feels he has something to prove because of a pastt tragedy. Reminiscent of Edward Gorey and 1920s animated flicks such as The Adventures of Prince Achmed in its seeming use of silhouettes (I won't even pretend to understand the technique used), it was probably the best fictional film I saw there.

"The Bread Squeezer": Twisted, Day-Glo family fare from Atlanta about an orphan who grows up with a bread fetish, yet manages to find love at the local grocery. A plot rundown really wouldn't do it justice. Tal Harris is terrific as Andrew, the blond-bobbed, emotionally stunted protagonist.

"La Vie d'Un Chien": Hilarious John Wyndham-style sci-fi story (with "apologies to Chris Marker" in the credits) presented in a photo-montage about a scientist in 1962 Paris who develops a serum replacing human chromosomes with those of dogs. Mildly ribald chaos ensues, leading to a fateful decision.

"Ride of the Mergansers": Light and silly account of hooded merganser ducklings in northern Minnesota learning to make it on their own. Music by Richard Wagner and Percy Faith. Fluffy as hell, but I love ducks; what can I say?

"Ikuma Siku": Painting in motion, creating a lyrical, haunting picture of life and dreams in icebound 1849 Labrador. Between this and Hatching, Matching and Dispatching, Newfoundland and Labrador's rapidly becoming a prime tourist destination (for me, anyway).

"A Long Struggle": Harrowing documentary by Lea Rekow (who risked her life to make it) about the Karen ethnic struggles against Burma's druglord dictatorship. I did my master's thesis on Burma's eastern frontier during the nineteenth century, and while my area of study was some distance north to "Struggle"'s setting, it was a jolt to see the scenery I'd imagined long ago while writing it, and even more so to see the disturbing footage of Karen casualties, dead and enslaved.

B.I.K.E.: The description led me to believe that this documentary, looking at the gritty interstate phenomenon of the "Black Label Bicycle Club," would be some standard left-wing rabble-rouser to get the Ann Arbor audience all fired up, like Fahrenheit 9/11 (of which I wasn't a fan). The BLBC is a loosely organized and theoretically apolitical group of bicycle enthusiasts, often operating on the margins of society, who espouse a renewable, DIY ethos that some chapters try to convert into more concrete political action (the New York chapter joined, for example, the yearly Critical Mass bike demonstrations, as well as the protests at the Republican National Convention in 2004). I was pleasantly surprised to find B.I.K.E. a gripping mix of stories--the larger tale of the BLBC subculture and the more intimate one of filmmaker Tony Howard trying to break into the club and out of the downward emotional and psychological spiral of his own life. The fondness Tony's Black Label friends in New York feel isn't shared by the national leadership in Minneapolis, and Tony, after a number of futile attempts to prove himself, forms the upstart "Happy Fuck Clown Club" even as his girlfriend dumps him after finishing rehab and he starts with the dope again. Real-life drama galore and a progressive political ethos made for a real crowd-pleaser, but it's not to be missed if you get the chance.

I seriously considered skipping Sunday night at the Old Town--I begin toiling around seven, Monday morning, and going to bed early works very well for me. Fortunately, I changed my mind, and it was an awesome show. Dabenport opened for its lead singer Misty Lyn at the Old Town Sunday night, with the same lineup for Misty's band that played at Arbor Brewing Company a couple of weeks ago. The Old Town's acoustics have been a bone of contention in the past; allegedly the oldest bar in Ann Arbor (dating in one way or another since the end of the Civil War), it hosts bands and artists in the middle of the restaurant, itself shaped like an unusually plump dumbbell tenement. The music is generally either too loud or not enough, but I didn't really notice, and it increasingly didn't matter as the night went on. Misty actually works at the Old Town, and there was a warm homefield feel to the evening. Most of the music was straight-up alt-country, with some psychedelic underpinnings courtesy of Dabenport, just the thing for a Sunday night hanging halfway between winter and spring. Misty's voice amazes me each time I hear it. Pretty solid applause all round--it got so intense at my table that the vibrations, made from our elbows while clapping, knocked my water glass onto my leg and thence onto the floor. Feeling bad about it, I picked up most of the shards, piled them into what was left of the glass, and gave it to our server, who I'm pretty sure thought I was a little "slow." Afterwards, nearly everyone went to Leopold's and had a high old time until as wee the hours could get between Sunday and Monday. After four and a half hours of sleep, I proved surprisingly active at the cafe Monday.

Not that anyone would have really been able to tell the difference.