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theworstbob · 7 years

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the thing journal: 30 july 2017 - 12 august 2017

the pop culture things i took in over the last two weeks (because i was busy last week). in this post: faces and sounds, catch me, superstore, me. i am mariah... the elusive chanteuse, crazy heart, platinum, cocksure, the obsessives, okja, golden, if you wait, nervous system, moana, right thoughts right words right action, who told you to think??!!?!?!?!, the incredible jessica james, moonrise kingdom, and unbreakable kimmy schmidt

1) Faces and Sounds, by Pete Holmes: Faces and Sounds is such a good name for a Pete Holmes album. Like, if you were to read a transcript of a Pete Holmes set, it would obviously still be very funny, but it wouldn't seem like one of the best things in the world. But when the material is paired with Pete Holmes' boundless exuberance, it's one of the most distinct comic experiences of all time, like Pete Holmes is one of maybe three people I could imagine both wanting and being able to pull off a joke about Enrique Iglesias in 2017 because he can sell you on the idea that he's a man who is enjoying the fuck outta some Enrique Iglesias in 2017. Pete Holmes is a nice boy who likes to say fun words!

2) Catch Me, by Maggie Baugh: So I was sick last week, so I missed a Thing Journal, and now I'm here, and I'm looking at this pop/country album I listened to, at this point, exactly two weeks ago, and I'm trying to figure out something I remember about it, but all I can remember from this album is thinking, "This is an acceptable way to background 38 minutes." It's a fun time, but it's not particularly memorable, there's no strong character to any of the songs, nothing that suggests any strong desire to rise above the level of "#16 country radio airplay single."

3) Superstore (s2), cr. Justin Spitzer: And it's kind of the same thing with this sitcom! This is significantly more memorable than Catch Me -- the romance between Wheels and Lauren Ash is one of the single-greatest romances in history, every interaction those two shared made me happy forever, and it's worth noting that the show knows the perfect amount of usage it can squeeze from the teen mom's husband's character, but it is very much A Sitcom, something that's gonna be really fun for the seven hours it'll take to watch it (slash have it on in the background during Zelda times) but isn't going to make an effort to rise out of the B+ range. It's a good show, recommended if you're looking for something to enjoy, but not if you're looking for something to sink into, if that makes any sense.

4) Me. I Am Mariah... The Elusive Chanteuse, by Mariah Carey: Her. She is Mariah... The elusive chanteuse.

5) Crazy Heart, dir. Scott Cooper: I'm not sure how long I would've made it into this movie were it not for Jeff Bridges and the promise of more T. Bone Burnett. It makes me angry that T. Bone Burnett's wastebasket is filled with songs a million times better than anything I could ever write, and Jeff Bridges adds layers of depth to a character that doesn't really deserve his performance. Like, here's my main gripe: this movie is about a self-destructive person, right? But this movie chooses to depict the dad he destroyed, you see him interacting with Buddy and Maggie Gyllenhaal and think he could've been a wonderful husband if it weren't for that damn ALCOHOL, when a much more unique movie would've been the movie just at the edges, about how he destroyed Bad Blake. Like, imagine Bad Blake watching Scoggin' Billiam or Walker Wheeler or whatever ponytail's name wasperform the best song he ever written and knowing that Scoggin' Billiam could never do it justice, that Bad Blake kept Bad Blake from enjoying a career-defining hit and has to settle for royalty checks, that's a way cooler movie about what art means and the things we do to chase dreams and how we get in our own ways, it's a way cooler movie than "man loses woman and decides it's time he gets right." Like, it's a movie about a musician that doesn't have any music after the forty-five minute mark. That's dumb.

6) Platinum, by Miranda Lambert: So with this album, Project 2014 was completed, I caught up on all the 2014 releases I think I want to listen to (though I'm sure we'll find more at some point), and I am free to move on to 2013. This is one of the better Miranda Lambert albums, and it hit all the Miranda Lambert buttons, songs about being a pissed-off ex, songs about people understimating attractive women, standard country songs about being proud of small-town upbringings, it's all there. I feel like there's five album reviews from last week and all of them are some variation on "it was good," and I'd like to say I tried my best but I'm not sure that I did? Like you can probably tell that this was the last capsule I wrote, there's gotta be some air of "if I can say three sentences about this album I will be at last free."

7) Cocksure, by Laura Stevenson: Of all the female singer/songwriters I've heard about from checking Dan Campbell's Twitter feed, I think I like this one the most, simply because she's plugged in as hell. This album just rocks. I wish I hadn't gotten sick over the weekend and had written this capsule after listening to it twice in one day, when all the songs were fresh in my mind and I could have called out some specific lyrics, but bad as I am at listening, I still remember that this album is a joy, and I'm very much looking forward to hearing more from this person.

8) The Obsessives: THIS WAS A GOOD ALBUM BY A PUNK-LEANING BAND AND I ENJOYED IT AND GODDAMNIT WHY DON'T I EVER REMEMBER ANYTHING, I SAID I WAS GONNA WRITE STUFF DOWN AND I DIDN'T AND NOW I'M HERE YET AGAIN, WAY TO GO ME like I've been at this post for three hours and I can come up with things but i just, ugh, i'm bad at listening

9) Okja, dir. Bong Joon-ho: One of the things about Netflix as a production entity is that it seems to be staying out of the creators' way as they try to make their thing. It's giving people creative and financial freedom, provided they can make something lucrative for Netflix. And if the upshot is more movies like this, where high production values are being paired with thematic complexity and brutal endings, I'm for it. Like, this is a bold, devastating ending. (Turning spoilers on!) The corporation is the winner. The girl gets her pig back, but she's also going back to the farm knowing the horrors that occur behind the scenes, having seen the grotesqueries the corporation deemed not good enough for the cameras. The environmentalists get arrested, and the corporation gets a gold pig that's probably worth more than they were going to make off the meat the pig was going to produce, as well as continue to kill pigs. The machine keeps churning, and all a regular person can hope for is the chance to be afforded a small, personal victory. Not a lot of filmmakers would have been willing to go there, and not a lot of studios would have been willing to let them explore that place.

10) Golden, by Romeo Santos: I don't speak Spanish, so I'm not gonna pretend I have anything truly substantive to say, but one thing I'd like to point out is, the instrumentation on this record is something I never hear. Like, because I don't listen to Spanish-language stuff, I don't hear guitars played the way they are on this record, so even if I have no idea what this album is about (I'm assuming it's about how good Romeo Santos is at horny), I can still get some value out of hearing a new way to play music. Like, I can't remember if I brought this up when I watched the Finnish film The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki, but in that film, there's a scene where a bunch of the boxers have a naked splash fight in the locker room. That scene either doesn't happen in American film, or happens as a joke, like, "Look at these silly boys having an effeminate fun time!" But with the Finnish movie, they're just like, "Yeah. Sometimes men have naked locker room splash parties. It's fun to have fun," and they move on, and it's cool to see how other cultures treat that sort of thing.

11a) If You Wait, by London Grammar: This isn't a full album, or at least I wouldn't consider an album featuring a live performance from The X Factor to be a complete artistic vision, so I'm not counting it as a full thing. I did enjoy hearing the undeveloped version of the ban I so enjoyed on Truth Is a Beautiful Thing, hearing some of the ideas they had for their sound, hearing things that they would eventually drop, I dunno, this might just be because I like introductions, but it's fun to revisit debut albums well after the fact. ...Except The Wonder Years' Get Stoked On It! The Wonder Years is my favorite band, but I don't know if I'll ever be ready to hear what Get Stoked On It! sounds like. Anyway, London Grammar, they're really dope. I'm not gonna go back and see if I compared them to the Parks & Rec scene where Tom is confused at how the shapes make him feel things, but that's how London Grammar makes me feel. I have to figure out these shapes!

11b) Nervous System, by Julia Michaels: So let's also bring this up, because Julia Michaels is an awesome songwriter and most of these seven songs are good and I can't wait for a full album, true YAS hero Julia Michaels, but also, "There's no innuendo/It's exactly what you think/Believe me when I tell you/He loves the color pink." I mean. You can? I would never tell you you can't. I'm just not. You can! I'm not.

12) Moana, dir. John Musker & Ron Clements: This would be one of the best Disney movies if they had cast an actual actor instead of The Rock. He gives a very enthusiastic performance, it's clear The Rock is trying his best, but it is equally clear that The Rock is not a voice actor, nor should he have been asked to be a voice actor. Like, there's probably a cooler movie here where Moana ends up having to fight both the volcano monster and Maui at the same time, where Maui reveals he was never more than a selfish jerk and Moana has to push herself to overcome Maui's selfishness to restore order and go as far as she can, but because The Rock isn't capable of nuanced vocal performance, it's kind of a standard buddy comedy with a few highlights ("Shiny" best song, I can't believe Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote a top-tier Flight of the Conchords joint) and Alan Tudyk giving an Oscar-worthy performance (I can't tell if it's funnier if they just used real chicken noises and gave Alan Tudyk a credit for the chicken or if Alan Tudyk was actually in a recording studio making chicken noises for thirty minutes) but not enough meat for this 28-year-old man to be satisfied with a children's movie. Um, know your audience, maybe?

13) Right Thouhgts, Right Words, Right Action, by Franz Ferdinand: Franz Ferdinand could make this exact album a thousand more times and I would love it a thousand more times. This music is my happy place, which means Franz Ferdinand has achieved their goal.

14) Who Told You to Think??!!?!?!?!, by Milo: I had to look up whether or not whether or not the Link to the Past boss Arrghus was named after some mythical figure or another because I heard some line like "Argus with a hundred eyes" and needed to confirm if I was giving this guy a shout-out for the first Link to the Past reference in a rap song I've ever heard. Truns out: it is! So that's one special thing about this album, how it's so densely laden with references that you sort of need to have a reference guide handy just to keep up, to catch everything this dude is saying, something which warrants multiple, attentive listens, which, pffft, who the fuck got time for that? So I probably haven't explored this record fully with one bus listen, but I'm excited to get in there again at some point.

15) The Incredible Jessica James, dir. James C. Strouse: There's a way to make a thing about what it's like to be an Artist in New York City that's its own thing and doesn't feel like the other billions of things about being an artist in New York City. I know this because I read literally show me a healthy person this year. This was... This was not an example of how to tell a story about being an artist in New York City, or being single and looking for love in New York City, or looking for love in 2017 with all these apps and social media the kids use these days. Jessica Robinson does her best to make it unique, and man, this film did not deserve the work she put in making this film watchable. But yeesh, this movie doesn't need to exist.

16) Moonrise Kingdom, dir. Wes Anderson: So first off, let's all agree we are giving Wes Anderson side-eye for the copious shots of 12-year-olds in their underwear. I know it's for art! But remember last Thing Journal, when we watched Jackie Brown, and there was a long, long close-up of the one girl's feet? I do not trust Wes Anderson! But I do enjoy his films, as I am a pretentious white boy with a sense of whimsy, and can I tell you guys about the funniest line I've seen in a movie all year? The boy and the girl are mourning the dead dog. "Was he a good dog?" "Who's to say? But he didn't deserve to die." That is the most Wes Anderson shit of all time and I loved it. It was a charming film about young love and broken people finding each other, especially resonant since it is two kids. We only hear the stories about how they act out their emotional damage, but when they're with each other, they're calm, at peace, because they found a kindred spirit, and I thought that was touching.

17) Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt s2, cr. Tina Fey & Robert Carlock: Maybe it's because I spent the first 25 years or so of my life accepting the 22-minute sitcom, but every single episode of this season, I would ay, "Hey, this was a fine episode! I bet we're ready to wrap up soon!" and then I'd see there were eight more minutes of sitcom left. And that's not specifically a critique of this show, I think everyone making TV shows in a commercial-free environment needs to look into their hearts and ask themselves if they really need to take advantage of lax time limits, but especially in a show as zany as this one, you run the risk of running out of gas for minutes at a time, or needing to explore unnecessary subplots, like Jane Krakowski crusading against the Washington Redskins, which, why? Why would th -- no! You don't need that to be a plot point! You didn’t need to bring up the Native American thing again! Why would you lean into that? No! This is me being exceedingly negative about a season of television I truly enjoyed, Ellie Kemper is a national treasure and when this show is on it is unlike any other, just that unfortunate tendency we all have to focus on misses instead of hits.

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