BOOKS:

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels: I confess that I found the 298-year-old prose in this book rather off-putting and eggheaded; I wasn’t sure at first if the problem was that the book is just like that, or that the problem is me, all too eager to laugh at half-Irish clergyman Swift’s gross-out/body humor, which involves Gulliver taking a gigantic dump after not going for several days and Lilliputians having to haul it away in barrels, Gulliver putting out a fire by pissing on it, Gulliver staring at a giant woman’s breast, or....hell, the word “pudenda” even pops up at one point. I only vaguely understood the English mores and manners being satirized, or that various political subtexts involved Swift’s shots at the Whig party, or the way the English treated the Irish. Really, all the subtext was superseded and paid for by a single passage that appeared in the book with about four pages to go. Most people would end up marvelling at how Gulliver becomes a misanthrope who doesn’t want to come home or be around people anymore at the end of his travels, because he’s been around the Houhyhnhm horse people and decided they were better than humans (“Yahoos”) but the real stunner is a big paragraph where Swift/Gulliver describes human beings devolving into horror as a result of potential colonialism; it’s like he’s describing the worst of the British Empire ages before that worst actually happened. That singlehandedly saved the book for me; were it not for this paragraph or two, I think I might have just given the book (a tie-in copy from the 90s Ted Danson TV miniseries!) away.

MOVIES:

Lake Mungo: This 2008 Australian fake-documentary/found-footage film compelled me to view it solely because it kept popping up in various Reddit threads that I happened to be perusing, threads about “best horror movies that actually scare you” or “nastiest jump scares?” or “most overlooked scary movies?”, stuff like that. A teenage girl dies mysteriously in a remote Australian lake and her family has to figure out what was going on in her personal life…sound familiar? Hint: her last name is “Palmer”! The plot is a total mess of crappy revelations and the “scares” are mostly boringly handled “look closer in this photograph and you can see her!” type-shit. With every found footage film I watch, I become more and more convinced that Marble Hornets is the genre’s justification for existence. Overrated.

Song Of The South: Watched twice in “4K restoration” on Internet Archive. This was predictably disappointing too, made all the worse because after finishing it I read through lots of reviews and discussional online splorp-fuck which presented one of two opposing but more or less equally wrongheaded opinions on this Disney film: 1)the PC-crybaby take, which denounces it as one of the most embarrassingly racist films ever made (it doesn’t even come close) or 2)the anti-PC-crybaby take, which hates the PC-crybabies so much that they would have you believe that SOTS is a heartwarming and completely un-racist lost masterpiece that has been torn from our eyes by Political Correctness and the woke Stormtroopers who wield it (hardly). I agree that the “happy” depiction of ex-slaves being treated well is cringey, and I could easily do without the tar-baby or Bre’r Bear having a rotten potato for a brain while I’m at it, but nothing here made me want to throw up all over my boots; Vivien Leigh slapping Butterfly McQueen in Gone With The Wind is five times nastier than anything we see in this film, and I think that’s a GREAT movie. But the film is frankly mostly a terrible bore to sit through; I know Disney couldn’t really avoid mixing live action with animation in the 1940s because the war effort left them lacking the funds to do full animation, but the framing story with Bobby Driscoll and his white family is pure crap to the point where someone else I talk to about movies proposed that the film actually would be great if it were just Uncle Remus in the animated world, which might make some sense actually. If there’s anything else nice I can say about the film, it’s that James Baskett as Uncle Remus sure warms your heart; too bad the poor guy died of diabetes two years after the film came out. At least they gave him an Oscar…

Dune: Part Two: It’s too long and I was getting very tired of it as it limped to the end of its 165 minute run time. I thought Part One was okay in theaters but played like boring shit on small-screen/DVD, and Part Two only does things marginally better. A lot of name actors were brought in to play smaller characters missing from Part One, such as Florence Pugh, Christopher Walken, Lea Seydoux and Anya Taylor-Joy, but they’re all wasted in tiny roles. Timothee Chalamet has warmed up a bit, but I’m still not sure what to make of Zendaya, whose acting seems to have been engineered in a lab by some smart aleck looking to make male viewers sneer about how women in movies nowadays are soooo unappealing because they don’t smile enough. Finally, there’s Austin Butler, who does alright as a Billy Corgan-looking Feyd-Rautha (not that being a better actor than Sting is a high bar to clear), but you might remember that I complained about how the death of Pennywise at the end of It: Part Two, which involved name actors yelling at Pennywise to die until he actually does, pathetically failed to be any sort of real improvement over the same retarded scene in the 1990 miniseries, where actors yelled at a crappy looking spider puppet? The duel between Paul Atreides and Feyd Rautha at the end of this is like that: it’s boring and generic, with the two of them going at it so hard that both of them would have been dead in ten seconds, but they just smash each other until the screenplay dictates that Paul nails Feyd with his knife. I suppose that’s technically better than Sting yelling “I WILL KILL HIM!”, but if you put the two scenes side by side on two separate screens, I’d probably end up watching the 1984 version.

The Banshees Of Inisherin: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Martin McDonagh reunite in 2021 for a film that only mildly improves on In Bruges if only because it contains fewer scenes than other McDonagh movies that play to the cheap seats (in this case, a stupid fight with a cop is as dumb as the movie gets.) Farrell does some of his best work ever as a guy who wonders what many of us likely have, which is how people could possibly dislike us even though we haven’t done anything particularly wrong (that’s the plot setup: Gleeson arbitrarily tells Farrell he doesn’t want to talk to him anymore because he’s dull.) The problem with the movie is where all it goes, which is to say, downhill from its admittedly nice, universal premise. There are a couple of deaths towards the end of the film which seemed one notch above “perfunctory” (kinda like when Wes Anderson does it, eh?) and the ending could be read so many ways that it felt kind of arbitrary. Oh, and I watched the whole movie while repeatedly forgetting that it was supposed to be taking place during the Irish Civil War in 1923–it seemed a bit modern for that!

ALBUMS:

Tortoise, Millions Now Living Will Never Die (RELISTEN): Full disclosure: my purchase of this on CD is the first time I’ve listened to “Djed,” let alone the rest of it, in something like 16 years. I’m a huge longtime fan of Tortoise’s TNT, and made it a point to hear this album soon after picking up that album on CD after years of mp3 listening. “Djed” is still pretty damn cool for most of its 20 minute running time–kind of a spacey postmodern bastard child of Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn,” with its gently motoring, repetitive grooves travelling along and calmly shifting into one another to create something of relatively hypnotic power. So yay for that, but the rest of this??…well, there’s a reason I’d completely forgotten it. It’s the weakest “comedown” from a sidelong track I’ve ever seen, eerily mirroring Rush’s 2112 in terms of its obvious split between the strong suite and the weak tracks that fill out the rest of the album (they even both have six songs total.) “Dear Grandma And Grandpa” has these cool barely-audible, sublimely-spacey keyboard notes that seem to be emanating from a nebula a zillion miles away, but “A Survey” and “The Taut And Tame” are both eggheaded and nerdish, “Along The Banks Of Rivers” does this sad twanging-spaghetti-noir guitar thing that was better on Blur’s “Mirror Ball,” Yo La Tengo’s “Green Arrow” or for that matter, Tortoise’s own “I Set My Face To The Hillside.” The biggest offender is “Glass Museum”–I heard this album years before ever hearing Bark Psychosis’ seminal Hex, so I wouldn’t have known that “Glass Museum” is either a really lame homage to that album or more likely, a pathetic ripoff of its first two or three tracks. Worst still, I can’t find any reviews or anything to corroborate this, but it’s pretty obvious as hell to my 41-year-old ears. If not for the fact that “Djed” plays well on long car trips I’d regret having bought this CD.

Pink Floyd, Ummagumma: This is probably the biggest remaining discography gap in the oeuvre of any band I care for deeply, and I’m getting around to hearing it far too late, a good 20-25 years after hearing most of the band’s catalogue and ten since I tried The Final Cut and their soundtrack albums. Looks like I didn’t miss much–if it weren’t for the two Gilmour-led ass-piles, this would be the worst Pink Floyd album. “Careful With That Axe, Eugene” is by far the biggest highlight, and I’m saying that knowing that I’d pick the Live At Pompeii or 1972 Brighton Dome versions over this one in a heartbeat. The other live stuff differs from its studio counterparts enough to be of mild interest, but it doesn’t really improve on it. Then there’s the solo material, of which I maybe enjoyed the first and third parts of “The Narrow Way” and MAYBE the part of “Sysyphus” that has Rick Wright noodling over Mellotron. (Other parts of these suites feature fat leaden riffs and even a giant jump scare from Wright, but this mostly produces a pallid, dated-horror-movie like effect.) The rest, pbbhthth. “Grantchester Meadows” catches on maybe a little bit, but pales in comparison to, say, Nick Drake’s best stuff, or hey, how about Roger Waters’ own “Green Is The Colour” and “Cymbaline”? “Several Species Of Small Furry Animals…” is a dumbass annoying tape loop and someone doing a bad unfunny Scottish accent. That’d be the worst Pink Floyd song (yes, worse than the morose crap on Momentary Lapse Of Reason) if not for Nick Mason’s (LOL) “composition,” “Grand Vizier’s Garden Party,” which made me think of that time Roger Waters said Neil Young’s Dead Man score sounded like a guy repeatedly dropping his guitar, except in Mason’s case it’d be drums. All four members of Pink Floyd have basically trashed this album, so I can’t feel bad about dumping on it myself and I can see no argument that it’s a lost classic.

Rainbow, Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow: Not bad, but it’s only partially what I thought it would be; only “Man On The Silver Mountain,” “Temple Of The King” and “Catch The Rainbow” are really “dragon-rock,” the rest of it is just good-time 1970s hard rock’n’roll, like Deep Purple but with less organ and Dio singing. Oh, and “Sixteenth Century Greensleeves,” which I forgot to list just now because I honestly don’t think it’s a terribly good song, unlike the three I listed (it seems really, really “flat-footed,” wasn’t that a term Starostin used all the time?) “Still I’m Sad” is an interesting cover and a solid album closer, bringing this album up to “passable” status; maybe a couple extra ballads could’ve made it a little better? I dunno; it’s like I wanted it to be TOTAL “dragon-rock,” or something, albeit better than Uriah Heep. Old Man Dio is strong vocally, but I’m not surprised to learn that, like Deep Purple, a lot of people just prefer the band live. We’ll get to that soon, I s’pose....

Black Sabbath, Dehumanizer: Speaking of Dio, here he is as the world’s first 50-year-old heavy metal frontman doing his best to save Black Sabbath, resulting in a mediocre album that nonetheless at least manages to have sort of a face to it and beats the living tar out of the band’s four terrible previous LPs. He does well! As for the material, there’s no HUGE standouts, but there are a few small ones: I knew the driving “Time Machine” from Wayne’s World, and that one’s still alright; there’s also “Master Of Insanity,” which has been laughed off the face of the Earth for both having one guitar riff that rips off Zeppelin’s “The Wanton Song” and a title that rips off a well known album by famous heavy rock band Black Sabbatical, but Dio’s chorus is really good. I like “After All (The Dead),” “TV Crimes” and maybe “I” too, so we’ll consider this salvageable; I don’t think the production has dated that badly, either.

Frank Zappa, Lumpy Gravy: Sadly, this is exactly what I feared it was going to be: an immediately-forgettable late-60s avant-garde novelty-collage hyphenated-word waste of a half hour that provokes little to no emotional reaction at all and which I predictably have no use for. Thank God it’s only half an hour. In fact, it isn’t even that–take out the parts that I already knew from We’re Only In It For The Money, and it’s more like 22 minutes. I certainly hope the other classic-era Zappa albums that I previously missed (but plan on hearing in the near future) are better!!

Aerosmith, Done With Mirrors: Let’s start with what is easily the best thing I, or anyone else, could ever say about this forgotten album: IT DOESN’T SOUND LIKE IT’S FROM 1985!!!!!!! They just did a mild production update of their 70s sound–no Godawful gated drums, Casio synths, or really ANYTHING else lame like every other veteran rock act was doing during this era. I’m stupefied!!! Good job, boys!! Too bad the songs are painlessly forgettable for the most part, with “Shela,” “Gypsy Boots” and maybe the bonus track “Darkness” sticking out somewhat, but there’s no classics. It’s going to be weird thinking that I’ll probably like some of the comeback/sellout albums more than this, but given that we all know that Aerosmith are only rivalled by KISS as the biggest sellouts in rock history, I’d like to give them a big fat Taylor Swift Super Bowl kiss on the mouth for showing restraint in 1985, surely one of the worst years for any old band.

Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan: I’m trying to do all the classic-era Dylan albums that I hadn’t heard by the end of 2024, probably everything up through when he converted to Christianity or so, and then we’ll see if I feel like continuing. This album is no great shakes obviously, I don’t think anyone thinks it’s a classic, but I liked the young Bob’s youthful enthusiasm, obviously happy to be a 19 year old kid in the studio and playing these simple tunes with enough personality and care to make the experience bearable. His “House Of The Rising Sun” isn’t going to beat the Animals’, obviously, but I suppose I’d rather hear his “In My Time Of Dyin’” than Dead Zeppelin’s. I recall liking “Man Of Constant Sorrow,” “Fixin’ To Die,” “You’re No Good,” and maybe a couple of others. Who knows. It seems like “Song To Woody” and “Talkin’ New York” get the most attention, but that’s probably mostly due to lyrics. Oh, and when he hits the goofy high note in “Freight Train Blues” and holds it. I know some dumb 90s alt rock song that does the same thing, but don’t ask me to look it up.

The National, The National: I’ve grown to really love High Violet as an album for long car drives so I vowed to do the band’s whole discography, starting with their 2001 debut, which not many people seem to have heard or talked about. Apparently they weren’t performing with their full lineup yet and they “did it just to do it,” which probably explains why the album cover is just the band’s name in this retarded 1970s/European road-sign font over a picture of the drummer in a swimming pool. “Beautiful Head,” “The Perfect Song” and “American Mary” are pretty good songs; there are no bad songs, but the band hasn’t really “arrived” yet, and the lead singer’s voice wasn’t really a Michael Gira impression in the beginning. Bearable, but not great; here’s hoping they get better as they go along.