Video Playback

Recently while running errands with my better half, we passed the remains of what used to be a Blockbuster Video store. Noting that there had been signs hung stating they were going out of business and had to sell off their inventory, we began to reminisce over a tradition that is no more. 

"Think of explaining all that to our kids someday," she said. "What a strange thing to have to do, like using a rotary phone." 

She was totally right. You don't think about it so much now, but it was a funny thing to have to do. Friday night, you and your friends would all pile into one car, drive to a store and wander around, arguing over what movie you wanted to see. If it was taken, you couldn't see that movie and had to pick something else. How strange does that seem now? We have wide spread systems called Watch Instantly and On Demand. There used to just be a single copy of a movie at the rental places and if it was gone - tough luck! On top of that, you usually only had one night to watch it. No planning ahead. You had to go get it, watch it and drop it off the next day. That seems like a weird pressure to have for enjoying a movie. However, being out and about did afford an opportunity (or, more likely, an excuse) to stop and grab snacks for the movie. This little benefit seems to be offset by the fact that if the weather was bad (as it could be in winter) then you had to weigh the risk/reward for venturing out. That is how people got sick of watching the movies they owned. 

As weird as this little ritual used to be, I am a bit sad to see it go away. I can recall a lot of good times from goofing around in the video store, as well as the unexpected surprise of my mom saying "Oh, I rented a movie for you while I was out." How nice was that? I wasn't always out doing things with friends, particularly before I had my license, so these unexpected movies were a great treat. My mom would randomly stop by the video rental place and grab something for me or my younger brother. That is something I'll never be able to do for my kids. Instead I'll have to sit them down and say "You're going to watch The Goonies and you're going to like it!" Who am I kidding? That will never happen. They won't be able to have an attention span long enough. Neither will I, really. 

Random surprise movies were fun. That was the only reason I saw (oof) The Phantom Menace when I was younger. Also, here's a confession - one time, the surprise movie was The Princess Diaries. Yes. You read that right. I'm not ashamed of it. I had some qualms about watching a girly Disney movie, but in my defense, I was severely grounded and it starred a little-known actress named Anne Hathaway. It wasn't bad, actually. Maybe my teenage sensibilities and a burgeoning crush were more forgiving than my current palate. Then again, I can cop to a spotty track record for hits and misses in pop culture. 

There was also the small joy of asking "Hey mom, if you're out and about today, could you pick up this movie for me?" Sitting in the basement and going through a mental queue of movies was my own precursor to Netflix. There was one snowy night I made a point of watching Reservoir Dogs and Chasing Amy, which felt at the time like the most independent and out there movies in the world. What an adorably sheltered life I led. 

I guess that's the way it goes, though. Time and technology march on. When I was a teenager I couldn't have possibly hoped for anything like I have now. Last night, when I couldn't sleep, I sat in bed watching an episode of The X Files on my iPad. Not only was I freed from the time and location restrictions of a TV, I had an overwhelming amount of choices of what to watch. We are absolutely spoiled when it comes to media and consumption. I'll keep that in mind the next time I feel nostalgic about the dearth of old habits or the prices of a movie ticket. 

Extinction

I had a revelation this morning. 

The past two nights have afforded me something quite rare and unusual - an uninterrupted hour, each night, with which I was able to indulge my fading passion for video games. That may not sound like such an occurrence, but it actually has given me quite a bit of insight into my behavior and tendencies as a gamer as I've gotten older. What I've realized, on further reflection, is that I am quite the outdated dinosaur when it comes to games. Allow me to explain. 

I'm not ready for the retirement home, but I'm no spring chicken, either. The closer I edge to the big 3-0, the more I realize (thanks to steady employment and scrupulous saving) that time, not money, is the commodity now. I could buy a game or console on launch day, sure, but when would I ever have time to play it? I'm up before six, not home from the office until six at night, and in bed by ten. If you account for cooking (yes, that is possible and actually necessary for good health) and running, let alone the things necessary for the next day like doing dishes and laundry and cleaning the cat box, there's so little time that I find it amazing I get anything done at all. I don't even have kids. I want to enjoy the evening with my better half. Sure, I could pull a late night marathon session, but at this point in my life I'd rather be well rested than at the next level, of which only I would care. 

Which brings me to my next point - I am absolutely of the old guard when it comes to gaming. I have taken my 360 (which I only purchased in 2010) online once. That single foray into online gaming wasn't even to play with others - it was to update the console and download a game. That game? An re-working of the decade old N64 choking Perfect Dark. It barely ran on that old system, now it looks fantastic when running at 1080p and 60 fps. I don't want to play with a bunch of people who are online incessantly, insanely better than me and more likely than not to spend the entire time belittling me with xenophobic slurs. Why should I put up with that? The games I play are completely solo endeavors, as is the nature of the experience. My preferred experience is a huge TV in a darkened room with some headphones, and maybe a glass of wine to steady the nerves. The games I'm playing hardly have any mutli-player of which to play. Other people would just take me out of the moment. 

Not only am I an isolated gamer, I can't play for very long anymore, these days. I remember a sleepless series of nights in college while I waited to have a root canal dealt with. I coped with insomnia by working my way through Resident Evil 2, front to back in all permutations of the plot. If that happened now, I'd be risking my job by coming in as a sleepwalker. The most I can sit and play is an hour. After that, my joints start to hurt and my eyes burn. I either have to take a break and walk around or just call it quits for the night. At this point in my life I feel like gaming is such an indulgence that more than an hour or two a week is time that could be better spent writing, reading, cooking, cleaning, running. Really, the guilt accumulates just as the saved games do. 

On top of this is the recent realization that I have moral quandaries about the games I play. I want nothing to do with pretending to be a soldier in the midst of a horrible war. I don't want to inflict pain or cruelty onto others unless the game requires it to progress. Life is hard and nasty enough, I don't want my downtime filled with unsettling moral choices and wanton destruction. Sounds pretentious, I know, but I prefer games that tell a story and have a reason for the madness, not mindless 'point and shoot'. Bioshock had an amazing story and surreal artwork to bolster the experience. Arkham Asylum let me indulge my childhood obsession with Batman delivering justice. Alan Wake was a spooky trip through a world quite similar to Twin Peaks. I recall playing Dead Rising and feeling kind of exhausted and wrung out after the despair and death in that game, just from the first hour or so. I love it, but more for the Romero-esque fantasy than seeing the imagery. Forget Call of Duty. Give me a story. 

Realizing I'm not a modern gamer has helped me reconcile my fading habit with my current life. I don't mind not being as culturally relevant as I used to. The industry is a juggernaut. It's more a realization that my tastes and habits are changing, ever so slightly, in ways that I only occasionally pick up on. I would have thought that this would make me sad to see, that not gaming as much meant I was getting old and stiff and boring. Instead, I love who I am more and more, I just appreciate my time and what I do with it more. Time is the commodity. I'm not going to make anyone watch me play a a game any more than I would make them watch a movie they can't stand. It's all much more personal for me, as a result. I get a personal, private adventure. The scarcity makes it all the more memorable. 

About (Jerk) Face

I really thought I was funny.


I hindsight I can say with confidence that it was not the case. In my last post I extolled the virtues of being genuine and kind, all while getting the sneaking suspicion the world at large wasn't such a kind place. Upon further reflection, I have concluded that while I may not have been one of the dudes, or bro if that suits you better, I definitely was a teenaged dick. At the time it may have been intentional, though not for the reasons I thought. Like many, if not all, teenaged males, I thought I could be the most hilarious person in the room. At least, I made an effort to be. While there was a fair amount of parroting SNL skits and quoting standup routines, there were a lot of times where I straight up bagged on people with little to no provocation.


That makes me cringe a bit. I don't really know where it stemmed from. I'm sure a fair amount of it sprang from adolescent insecurity and a desire to be accepted. There was also a subconscious desire to establish a personality and look cool to everyone. After all, doesn't everyone like the guy who makes everyone laugh? I thought so. The more I think about it as high school recedes farther in to the past, I get the sense I wasn't ever very funny, but just a dick.


On top of this, I probably was more popular than I realized. While that clearly smacks of Humblebrag, it only stands to further illustrate the disconnect between perception and reality. I think I had assumed, based on a couple rough years in junior high, that I was a social misfit. I'm sure I was as weird as anyone else could be, I just didn't hide it as well. What I convinced myself was shunning or social neglect was most likely my own low self esteem and self absorption manifesting in justification and ascribing intention to actions from others. In short, I probably made it all up. It's a clear cut case of Liz Lemon Syndrome.


So why all this? Why the post on trivialities of high school social burdens?


Simple.


I don't like who I was or how I acted, and there are too many people to apologize to individually. The more I think about how much I teased other kids, for what I thought was innocuous ribbing, I curse myself at the thought of my behavior. I was engaging in what I thought would make me more popular with the right kids. Instead, I was hurting feelings and probably embarrassing people. I'm not saying I was mercilessly tormenting defenseless kids, but I was definitely responsible for making people feel bad about themselves on more than a handful of occasions. Not some grand orchestrated prank, but more the kind of thing where you look back and think "Why would I do that? I would never do that now..."


Maybe that's what growing up is - realizing you were a jerk when you thought you were the victim. On top of that is the understanding that you can't take things back. I haven't seen almost any of my classmates in about ten years, so I doubt there's been little to change their minds about me. But there I go again - I'm vainly assuming that anyone from that time still is thinking about me in the slightest.

Face Paint

I remember the first time I really saw through male posturing. 

I was a freshman in high school, firmly rooted in my awkward phase of coming all-too-early into my adult body. I was a tall, gangly kid with long hair who had little to no athletic skills of any note. At that age, such a lack of skills, when coupled with unconventional tastes, make for poor socializing in a small Midwestern town. I didn't fit in, obviously. I had a few friends, but this was still at the age where they sprang more from geographical proximity rather than shared interest. Sure, we all dug video games and adolescent movies, but I still stood firmly apart from the group of dude's dudes who loved football and baseball more than anything else. I was the weird one, the bookish one, the nerdy one. 

It was Halloween night, which fell on a Saturday. Being in that awkward time of too old to trick or treat and too young to drive, we had nothing better to do than go over to Beef's house and play video games and eat junk food. Yes, if you're wondering - Beef was his known name. It was a bit of unfortunate nick-naming from a baseball coach who assigned everyone of his favorite players food themed monikers (Fries, Shake, who knows what else). None of the other ones stuck, of course, but this kid was known as Beef by all, even teachers, well past his teens. So we're at Beef's house, being freshman with nothing better to do, when his older brother and his friends stop in on their rounds of mysterious and tantalizing mischief. They were smoking on the back deck, regaling us with tales of paintball related antics when one of the friends, a short, stout, run of the mill bro, decided to toilet paper a neighbor's house. They all slinked off together to do the deed while we waited in awe on the back deck, the lot of us jealous of their hijinx and attitudes. 

Shortly after they left, a few came sprinting back to the deck. The excitedly told us of how local law enforcement had spotted them in the act and had tried to track them down. Rolling my eyes at the bravado, I stepped inside to get a soda. That's when the other older kids opened fire with their paintball guns. Sounding like a series of popping balloons, my friends were pelted by a hail of shots that left bruises and the occasional blood blister. When the good natured assault ended and the upperclassmen emerged from the shrubs, everyone had a good laugh about it, to my surprise. It looked like it hurt. Having been paintballing years later, I can attest it would definitely hurt on a cold night much more than it would during the summer days I tried it. When the upper classmen saw me emerge from the house, unscathed, they were upset. 

"Aw man," they complained. "We were gunning for Toycen!" 

I have no idea what, if anything, I had done to incur their wrath. I probably just looked like a dork and a great big, goony target. I get it. You want to pelt the awkward kid. The Bill Haverchuck. It's the natural way of the world. Nothing bad happened after that, they just had really wanted to nail me in particular. 

That wasn't the moment, though. As much of a revelation that it was for the upper classmen to arbitrarily open fire on us, it was almost par for the course. I was an outsider and I had an older brother with whom I would scrap. Again, big fish eats the little one, I get it. The watershed moment for me was hearing the same dude who started the prank regale his buddies with his concocted anecdote about the police chasing after him. I forget the start of it, but the words that I locked onto centered around his description of what the cop did when he saw him. 

He said "...and the cop flicked on his blueberries and cherries and peeled off after me. That's when I ran back here to wait it out." 

It still stands out to me, over a decade later, as complete bullshit. 

Look at it - 'blueberries and cherries'. That's how he referred to the lights. The unspoken assumption that he, and all of his friends, had dealt so much with the police that there was not only a short hand phrase for the lights on top of the car, but one that was actually five syllables longer than the word 'lights'. To give better context and more fully explain why this bothers me, here is the full scene: a bunch of middle class white kids in a small town in Wisconsin, none of whom had ever been accosted by the police. Two of whom were the sons of an actual officer. No girls were present. No prize was on the line. Just dudes being dudes. Despite all of this, there was still the subconscious desire for a few of them to put on airs and act tough. 

It drove me crazy then and it still does now. 

I remember throwing a sideways glance at the phrase, seeing if anyone else took note of the high bullshit quotient. No one skipped a beat. Others nodded along, because of course they spent all of their free time running from the police. They were bad ass, man. Hardcore. Not sheltered and posturing at all. That's when it clicked in my head - I didn't have to feel nerdy and nebbish. They were just as unsure about life as I was, they just made a big show of why they were big men. That's why I stood out - I wasn't pretending. I was just being nice, because I thought other people were trying to be nice too. "Oh," I realized, "even though they're all friends, these dudes are still insecure."


To this day, this memory stands out as a clear example of why I don't fit in with dudes and bros. I always thought you could just be nice to people and they would, by nature, be nice back. It hadn't occurred to me that people would just make stuff up and pretend to be something they weren't. I still try to be nice. I still don't see the harm in being genuine. 

Anniversaire

This has nothing to do with resolutions.


A year ago, today, this all started.


My better half and I were entertaining another couple, having spent the day skating and then drinking. Now, due to poor ice conditions, we would have to just drink. Anyway, as the evening wound down someone asked about a book I had been in the process of writing. I began to talk about how I had been growing frustrated by the times in which I wanted to write but found myself unable to advance the plot sufficiently. I had the desire and wherewithal to write, just not the architecture in my head. I had no platform, I whined. I needed to kick myself in the butt. 


This patient soul shrugged and looked at me, simply stating "So start a blog."


"About what?" I asked. "What could I have to contribute to the world at large, that hasn't already been said?" 


"I dunno, write about what you like," he offered.


So I did. 


It was tentative, at first, a series of cautious recommendations of things I wanted to expound upon during happy hours and over dinner. The benefit of the writing, in this case, was that I would no longer divert dinner conversations. I could ramble on and extol the virtues of any thing I pleased. So I kept writing and slowly an audience grew. It was really fun and it provided a way to exercise my mental muscle when I couldn't push my plot forward and make the story evolve. I had an outlet. It became an everyday thing after I realized I hadn't missed a daily update after the first two months. So many blogs and sites start with high hopes, only to peter out after interest wanes. I wanted to defy the stereotype of the start-and-stop newb. 


So I kept at it, posting consistently and without fail. Some posts were better than others, but traffic kept increasing. There was a short reprieve when I got married and went on the honeymoon, but every day I had a fresh post on fantastic things that I felt didn't get the recognition they deserved. After a year of that kind of regular writing, I'm calling an audible.


It's not the end, I promise. 


All I'm saying is that I need to step back for a moment. To reflect. To reevaluate. I know it may not seem like a lot from the other side, but posting fresh content every day does take time and energy, and I want to make sure what I'm offering you is only the best. There have been times where I'm just shambling to the finish line. I don't want that. I want to be able to have time to edit and refine - doing this all while starting a new job, getting married and moving has been hard, but fun. I just need to take a moment to assess where I am and what's happening. 


So here's what's going to happen. I'm not going to post for a bit. Maybe just a week. Maybe longer. Maybe I find myself chomping at the bit to get back to it. I'm going to take time to figure out how to proceed from here and how to refocus my efforts. Maybe it's more personal in the future, and less review-centric. I'm hoping my fiction endeavors resurface. Hopefully I can start to share with you what I've been working on. 


Maybe you're bummed about this. Don't be. I'll be back, soon enough. Probably to edit this post. BUT! Know that things will change for the better. I promise. Thanks for reading. If you want updates, follow me on Twitter @jdtoycen. I'll let you know what's up. Thanks for your patience. See you on the other side.

Deep Thoughts

So here we find ourselves, back at the weekend.


This week was incredibly busy. It was one of those weeks where you glance at the clock and resign yourself to the simple fact that there aren't enough hours in the day. I'm okay with that,, though. It just means the days pass quickly and I have productive time at the office. Still, most nights this eek I came home with eye strain from staring at my monitor and a sore, cramped back from hunching as I crunch spreadsheets down. Fun stuff. I need to unwind, get out of my head for just a bit. To do so, I want to indulge in a secret, somewhat nerdy obsession of mine.

I love the ocean. Not just any ocean. All of them. It's the monumental concept of such a strange, alien place that fascinates my mind so. There's this completely and inherently different world that exists just beyond ours, beneath the waves. A place that makes no sense to our bipedal form, a place that was simply not made for us. We are not meant to be there. There are monsters there. How can you have any interest in the world around you and not be fascinated by this beautifully obtuse realm? Don't buy it? Fine. Watch Oceans, produced by Disneynature and tell me I'm wrong.

I saw the trailer for this doc back in 2009, just before it was released. Sitting in the dark of the theater, grinning in childlike glee, I tapped on my better half's arm excitedly, whispering "I have to see that!" While I may have missed it in the theaters due to schedule conflicts, it was one of the first Blu Rays I ever bought. Holy Hannah am I glad I did.

Oceans plays straight to my inner geek while soothing my overstimulated mind. Narrated by Pierce Brosnan, the documentary shows the beauty and allure of a place we simply cannot inhabit. Massive, sweeping vistas show the enormity of the world around us to create a sense of scale, only for the camera to plunge deeper and deeper into the abyss. Overwhelming schools of fish swirl around like tornadoes. Birds dive bomb the upper layers. An endless sea of crustaceans make the mind reel at the enormity of the fauna beneath the waves. We think of big blue sea, but its teeming with life where we least expect it. Scariest, or perhaps most majestic, of all are the whales. My mind simply cannot fathom sharing the planet with such gargantuan, intelligent creatures. The thought that there are things like that in the briny depths keeps me wary about boarding ocean liners, to be perfectly honest. They are smart, gentle and mammals, somehow. None of that makes any sense to my primitive mind. Seeing it all in high definition in the privacy of my own home, wine in hand, made it all the more engaging and captivating.

Disney's Oceans is a serene, cerebral look at a world that absolutely mystifies me. It's the perfect kind of documentary to help me blow off the steam of the week. I'd you haven't seen it, I highly recommend at least streaming it on Netflix. Go HD if you really want to see the depths from the comfort of your couch. I'll unwind. You go diving.

Fur Is Murder

Evening, all. 

These cold, dreary days that linger between the fall and winter, but existing completely in neither, get me to thinking about what I was listening to when dealing with some of the worst I can recall. There was a particular time frame spanning a late fall/winter/early spring that was brutal. It was really hard for me to persevere. The strange thing was that it didn't really stem from any particular factors - instead it sprang seemingly from the depths of my mind, some horrible monster clawing its way up the walls of my head and having reign of the place while I waited it out. I think in hindsight I was just terribly unhappy with who I was. It seems (from the comfort of a distant mindset) that I just wasn't realized as the person I suspected I could be or was going to be. Even in my darkest days now, I can acknowledge that not only am I kind of really awesome, but that in general I am happy with the person I've turned out to be. Similar to what I'm experiencing now, being in an office during all daylight hours and almost never seeing the sun, I vividly recall what little social activity I partook in to involve a great deal of darkness, both real and imagined. My mind was a reeling, loopy thing that was reaching out for any kind of cathartic comfort, something to exorcise the demon from inside. In my darkest hours I reached out to a band I didn't understand - the Deftones. 

Sporting what is possibly my favorite band name ever, the Deftones were (and still sort of are) an alt-metal band that flourished right around the time of the dreaded Nu-Metal that brought us all sorts of terrible music I shamefully enjoyed. The Deftones always seemed a bit removed from that unfortunate label, though. They had an unusual (forgive the word choice, please) deftness about their musicianship and presentation that gave off a slightly more nuanced air. Sure, it was still scream-till-your-throat-is-raw metal at times, but there were also moments lighter, more subdued sounds that suggested a more artistic flair. As I said, their cathartic music was a release for my frustrated adolescent mind. A large portion of that unhappy time was spent driving around listening to their end of the millennium album 'Around the Fur'. 

'Around the Fur' is an album that is both sharp and slick, a sonic blade delivered from the CA-born band. Vocalist Chino Moreno vacillates between tense, anguished whispering to open-throated howling, never quite technically singing yet creating oddly unique melodies nonetheless. The first track, the blistering single 'My Own Summer (Shove It)' uses a twisting, descending riff coupled with a driving bassline to make one hammer of a track, especially when the chorus blasts out and Moreno's screaming takes center stage. The title track thumps away with heavy, propelling kick drums and guitars that grind and slice your ears. 'Headup' still makes appearances in my workout mixes due to its sheer frenzy and near-indecipherable rapping, but to be honest most of this album appears in workout and running mixes. If you want to read a longer breakdown of my love for the spacey metal of 'Be Quiet and Drive', follow the link to an older post. 

I leaned heavily on this album when in a bad space, which I suppose is odd, considering the abrasive and unsettling sounds it contains. What does that say about me? I don't know, maybe I was just a cliched angst-ridden teenager venting through alt-metal that my own band at the time couldn't produce. Whatever the case is, I still get a lot of sneaking satisfaction out of listening to this album on a cold, dark day like this, knowing that everything seems to have turned out alright. I like me, and I like the me that can listen to this and shake my head at the distant memory of the troubled teenager. 

Subterranean Dwellings

Yo.


So it's another late Sunday night as I write this. It's been another fun and productive, but ultimately busy weekend. Moving is a real thing now. Packing boxes and making trips with a stuff-to-the-gills car is a non-stop duty. The amount of thought-out, pre-planned elaborate meals has gone down significantly, so now the better half and I regularly resort to quick fixes and simple foods like oatmeal, rice and eggs. Not all at once. Although, maybe that could...nah, never mind. Anyway, point is...while stopping in at our preferred grocer's  on the way home from another round of life assessment and storage evaluation I heard a song on the honest to goodness FM radio that brought me back. It wasn't some massively famous, touchstone thing like Nirvana or the Stones or anything like that. Just a song that made me instantly relax as I thought about how I used to listen to it quite frequently. 

Like anyone, I was stressed out about going off to college. My youthful indiscretions had resulted in me spending the lead-up to my collegiate endeavors out in Seattle, living and working in the suburbs with my uncle. I loved the Northwest but the absence of a normal social routine threw me for a loop, especially when considering I was about to embark on a huge new chapter in my life. The dorms were frequently trouble - both mine and other students. Communal living is fun for only a microscopic handful of people, I think. I made my way, though. I found friends and enjoyed my classes. Going home for Thanksgiving, though, brought back a fair amount of stress. I hadn't been the best graduate - I put my parents through a lot. My friends and antagonists hadn't seen me for a very long time (more so than they'd seen each other, anyway). I wondered what had become of them.

So while all this was going on, I had a fresh musical Linus blanket I turned to, to sooth the mental inflammation, so to speak. I used to play No Doubt's 'Underneath It All' really, really loudly in the car when I went anywhere in those days. Say what you will about the emergent fashion focus and impending end of the ska/punk SoCal band during the dawn of the millennium - I still love this overlooked single. It has this smooth, rounded pillowing affect on my mind when I listen to it. All the stress I was dealing with melted away when I heard the humming and throbbing bass of the reggae posturing the band adopted. Gwen Stefani's poppy, crystal clear voice layered over the booming bass and ultra slow dub tune just turned my anxieties to molasses, an effect usually accomplished with a case of beer and a bad movie. Instead of that, I would play this song really loudly as I went somewhere anxiety-inducing and try to slow down my worries. It usually worked.

I guess it says something positive about my life that I never have to resort to blasting this song to crumble away my anxious nature. I feel better about who I am. My friends and family love me for who I am, and are always happy to see me when I come home for the holidays. When Thanksgiving comes this year, instead of sweating the possible outcomes of strange social situations, I'll gladly embrace my family for a big meal and tons of laughs, no audio pacifiers needed. I just need to finish packing boxes, first.

Warm Feelings

Sometimes these posts are just as much about taking something back from the ether as they are about spreading love.

Allow me to clarify. 

So many of these posts are about things that have been swept under the rug by our collective hyperactivity and perpetual distraction. The world is so full of amazing things that it's easy to forget that we should appreciate what's there rather than denouncing emergent media or hailing the next big thing as 'BEST EVAR'. I get it. Hyperbole is what runs the internet. If it's not an opinion that polarizes, it's lost in the din. Life doesn't work that way, however. Sometimes we're lukewarm to things, or just not moved to passionate reaction. A nuanced life in this world we've created is a rare thing. I like to think, though, that minds change. People grow and reflect. I can embrace that which used to put me off. 

For example - when I was younger I hated fall with a passion that matched any miscreant on Xbox Live. I hated the days growing shorter, the cold, the inevitable winter that followed. I also hated the things I associated with it, retroactively. Albums I had listened to the previous fall were tainted. Things I had said or done were looked upon with regret or disdain, simply because of the intangible feeling associated with this time of year. At some point the tide in my head shifted. Maybe it was getting older and mellowing out just a bit. Maybe I started to understand to a greater extent my insignificant place in the universe. Maybe it was realizing someone loved me and wanted to spend the rest of their life with me as much as I did with them. That takes away a lot of your distemper, I've found. So when fall approaches now, I find myself picking through the mental detritus of my life, overturning stone and marveling at the things underneath, like ephemeral silverfish. I enjoy poking through my own neglected memories, things I hadn't thought about in years.

There was an album by Bush that I so strongly associated with this time of year (and admittedly, my own poor mental state at the time) that I simply refused to listen to it. There was something about it that was like biting on tinfoil when I heard the opening track. So strongly did I associate The Science of Things with these darkening days that I convinced myself that it was the music that was bad and not my listening experience or frame of reference. Through self indulgent curiosity I've found I had fooled myself. While it's not the greatest record EVAR (per common online parlance) there are some interesting and worthwhile moments to come back to. 

In particular, the opening track (and second single) 'Warm Machine' is beautiful in its crashing waves of sound. The discordant riff that dominates the song pulls so strongly at my heart and causes such a physical reaction in my chest that I can see now why I put it away for so long. There is such a melancholic, saudade-summoning essence to the ambiance that I must not have been able to handle the tones as a younger person. My own depression and unhappiness at the time tied in too closely with the feelings stirred up by the change in season and hearing this song as the sun set on an overcast, Midwestern skyline. Hearing it now makes me remember with vivid clarity just where I was and who I was with every time I heard it. The intensity of my rejection of the song is somehow proportional to my emergent appreciation for it a decade later. 

Funny how that works. Sometimes you're not in the right place or time or frame of mind to get something. A lot of art blew right past me as a young man, much as some things do now. I'm sure when another decade has passed I'll kick myself for not enjoying something simple and obvious like tomato soup. But you know what? My better half has already started me down the soup loving path. That's how life works. You learn to love the world, one piece at a time.

Northwest Passage

Let's go for a walk in the woods, shall we?


As I've made it abundantly clear in past posts, there is a great deal of culture from the 90s that I adore. While I have shown great admiration for music and cartoons from my formative years, there are occasionally cultural blank spots that need to be filled in. There have also been a fair number of posts here about Lost and Silent Hill. The common influence both of my long-standing favorites share is rooted back at the beginning of the 90s, in today's Spooky Month subject matter - Twin Peaks.

I was too young to have experienced the pop culture zeitgeist of Twin Peaks when it first aired. David Lynch's groundbreaking multi-genre show was notorious for quite a few good reasons, among them the surreal imagery and whodunit that ran central to the short lived series. From what my history books and parents have told me, it was one of the first water-cooler shows, something everyone was discussing the next day. It was popular and remarkable enough that I was able to pick up hints and shadows of the bizarre series in other forms. As it permeated the pop-culture lexicon, it laid the groundwork for some of my most-loved things, like the previously mentioned cult show Lost and the extremely Twin Peaks influenced Silent Hill series. It was only fitting then, that I trace the roots of these things back to the source. So when I was unable to sleep in the weeks approaching my wedding this past summer, I passed the nights by devouring the TV legend.

Immediately I was struck by the atmosphere and distinct personality of the series, the clearly identifiable Lynch hallmarks of surreal images, whipsaw mood changes and the undercurrent of the strange and abnormal. It was also immediately apparent that I was hooked on the series, chewing through the episodes as fast as I could, but savoring them in the understanding that it would only be two short seasons of this weird and wonderful show. I confess, I loved everything about it, even when the quality dipped (as the common reputation holds) in the second season. The first season, though - unparalleled. 

Everything about the show was amazing to my tastes - it felt like the series had been made just for me, only to lie in wait while the stars slowly aligned to bring me to Twin Peaks. I love the dreary, cool atmosphere of the Northwestern setting, having lived there in my late teens. Angelo Badalamenti's noir and jazz based score added to the ambiance in an undeniable way. The absolutely quirky and uniquely drawn characters in their soap-opera parodies and grim circumstances. It was all a strange and enthralling mix that I immediately was hooked on. The iconic images of Lynch's dreamworlds only drew me deeper to the odd, short lived tale. It was exhilarating to see things that had made such impressions on culture for the first time, the scenes feeling at once alive and alien yet somehow familiar, a sense of "Oh, this is what that meant" coming over me more than once.

It's no wonder this amazing series is such a legend in popular culture - it set the bar higher than its imitators could hope to clear. Others have come close, but watching this show at night in the quiet dark while waiting to fall asleep...man, what a memorable week. The common thread running through some of my favorite things suddenly stood much clearer to me, having been lain bare by tracing it back to the source. If you want to relive an exciting time in TV history it's available on Netflix or from kind friends on DVD. It's eerie, spooky stuff that's perfect drama for this time of year. Makes me want a cup of dark coffee and a slice of pie, too, come to think of it. 

Darker, Donnie

Maybe I'm full of it.


I wrote, in yesterday's post about White Zombie, that sometimes the Spooky Month music posts wouldn't all be about solitary, creeping experiences and ambient soundtracks. Today's post is absolutely that. Maybe not quite as solitary, but it definitely touches on the idea. But I'm stalling. On to business! Tonight - the soundtrack to Donnie Darko.


I, like many people, discovered Donnie Darko after the fact. Not quite as late as some, but I am pretty confident I was in that first or second wave of viewers, along with my college roommate Phil, who were tipped off about the movie. My friend Jimmy, an avid cinephile, made emphatic recommendations about it in late 2003, when it was finding its audience on DVD. We were part of the crowd that would have seen it in theaters were it not for the shelving of the film due to September 11th. When I was visiting my parents, I rented it and watched it in the dark of their quiet house, off in the woods of Wisconsin. It may have been the setting or my state of mind at the time, but I was deeply moved by the quiet little movie of mysteries. So I went back to my college apartment and made Phil watch the trailer. He was cautiously curious, having dealt with the brunt of my science-fiction and B-movie obsessions. 

Being the good sport he was, he watched it when in the right frame of mind. And again. And again. We were hooked. We discussed the movie and its many layers, the deleted scenes, the hidden meanings and unintended messages in the movie. Being fall and in a very contemplative mood, I also procured the soundtrack whilst dinking around on the internet. Thus began a long series of autumn nighttime drives up and down the Mississippi River Boulevard, debating college-y concepts while listening to the spooky sounds of the Donnie Darko Soundtrack. These cool, rainy nights approaching Halloween are just a bit spookier and more mystical when listening to the haunting chords and piano melodies that scored the other-worldly film.

Written and arranged by Michael Andrews, the soundtrack is a minimalist, ambient affair (of course) that creates an ethereal air by eschewing typical instrumental dramatics by taking a few unusual routes. No guitars, no drums. Lots of piano and organ, some mellotron. Long, drawn out ideas that create musical landscapes to play inside instead of simply echoing what happens on the screen. Little snippets of electronic sounds and bells add a scare here or there. It's serene and unnerving at once, lulling you into a bizarre dream you find yourself questioning. I love having a big old pair of headphones on and letting this soundtrack shape my thoughts while I write or take a walk through the leaves. Of course, that was less of a risk for getting mugged when I lived in residential St. Paul than the middle of Uptown. 

This soundtrack, while not specifically written with Halloween in mind, is definitely spooky in the best way possible. In my defense, the movie itself is set around Halloween and the climax occurs during a costume party. These quiet, sneaky songs give off an air of the strange and uncanny. If you're up late reading a scary book or going for a walk tonight, put on this album and see what unusual things jump out at you. 

Citizen Suspicions

Evening, all.


I write this with a bit of trepidation, as I feel it warrants a fair bit of justification in order to include it under the umbrella of Spooky Month Music. You know, though? I'm going for it. Why should I have to apologize for a track in a playlist? I'm not trying to offend, just throwing mental spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. So it is with mixed levels of confidence and wariness that I make today's Spooky Month recommendation. I'm Afraid of Americans.


Who wouldn't be? We're huge. We are the elephant in the room. We barge in at any social (global) event and make it about us. We're teenagers on a global scale, why wouldn't we? That's what we do, and for better or worse we do it well. By and large we've been responsible for some amazing things in the last 200+ years we've existed. We've also been present for, and caused, some of the most horrible things you could fathom. Being an American, at least in my own short existence in the post-modern age, has been a dichotomous one - pride in being a powerful, prosperous nation (at least five years ago, anyway) yet shame in our heavy handed, ego-centric approach to some of the more nuanced issues. Lest I delve any further into the issue and start actively and irreparably shoving my foot into my mouth, I will say that this understanding of American citizenship helps shape my context of David Bowie's killer single, remixed by Trent Reznor.

It's two great flavors that taste great together. Bowie, with his British style and refinement, writing a biting, insightful track about our omnipresence in the world with the help of genius Brian Eno. Reznor, all American dramatics and angst, deconstructing and re-contextualizing the established order to create a fresh, biting sound. These two, working on the song from Bowie's 1997 album Earthling, crafted tune that not only forces the listener to question assumptions but also makes a Hell of an ominous, funky little ditty to have throbbing in the background while entertaining. It's the kind of song that I like to include as part of my Halloween/cocktail-hour playlists in iTunes because not only is it a killer song with a killer vibe but those who hear it and get Bowie's message might think about how the world is a dangerous place, even here in America. It's spooky music, not in the ghouls and goblins sense, but in the mood established through tone and message, a song full of paranoia and malice. 


The track, with its Reznor-requisite beeps, buzzes and fuzz, is also bolstered by the crazy video produced for it. One must bear in mind, though, that it was created back in a pre-9/11 world wherein criticizing the U.S. was a much different thing than it is today. Seeing Bowie chased through New York by a menacing Reznor and kids with finger-guns was both odd and amusing. It was cool to see the two, a pairing of kindred artists, making a bit of a statement about our gun-obsessed culture and our lack of tact. Now it seems even more odd and somehow more provocative in light of our political landscape. 

See how I get off on tangents when I get going on geo-political topics? It's not a Halloween song like the Addams Family theme or the Monster Mash, but it's a track with teeth, a darkly toned grind of a song that Bowie delivers with unflappable cool. Reznor's influence is just icing on the cake. Sneak it into a mix and see if anyone picks up on it. It's like a musical Rorschach test for Halloween.

Hello Self

This is not unlike my internal conflict regarding U2.

I have, in general terms, no concern for Madonna. Why would I, really? Her music was never targeted to me and I never connected with what she was saying. Her impact on music - pop, dance, club and electro - is undeniable, though. Just because I didn't care for it didn't mean I didn't appreciate her legacy and influence. She changed the cultural landscape with her hyper-sexualized image and dace-centered tunes. She's had tons of hit songs and sold millions of albums. We just were never on the same plane, musically. I'm fine with that; there are plenty of artists whom I respect but don't bother with. I won't name names but legendary status doesn't necessitate patronage. In other words, I wasn't into what she was putting out. There was one single, though, that broke through the malaise.

It was fall of 1998. I think it was my freshman year of high school, which was also kind of a weird year in music. There was kind of a lull in music I dug - I had run the gamut of 90s alt rockers, draining the well of anything I found pleasure in. There was nothing to be passionate about. I remember feeling this terrible pall wash over me as I began to realize high school was going to be a worse, older version of middle school, at least for the foreseeable future. Same kids. Same town. Same teasing. I was unhappy but struggled to express or resolve the issues I was facing. I kind of wanted something melancholy to help see me through the fog affecting me. Had I known about Portishead and Bjork at the time, I would have been all about it, their albums of the time being longtime favorites of mine once I discovered them. I recall listening to Adore a lot, curiously exploring the subtle electronic undertones. The world was slowly growing colder and my mood dampened each day. I was your typical py teenager, all awkward skinny limbs and poor temperament. 

Madonna had seen a big success in her album Ray of Light, which was only on my radar due to the high volume of MTV I consumed at the time. Not of any interest to me, it didn't even register beyond its pervasive singles on pop radio. That changed, though, with the single 'The Power of Goodbye'. Unlike the many times I've been unable to cite an attraction to a song, this time I could break it down on a scientific level. I loved the ambient sounds, the electronic burbling the production. The chord progression was one of absolute satisfaction and resolution - I got such a sense of peace from the way the softly played tones shifted from one chord to the next. Madonna's self-aggrandizing nature and (mediocre) singing had been toned down, making it much more palatable to my fickle taste. Even the video for the song, which by that point in MTV's life span was receiving little play, was all mournful blues and agony over the ending of a relationship. Basically I loved everything about the song.

Except for what it was. 

As much as I loved 'The Power of Goodbye' it was (at least in my mind) totally unacceptable that I enjoyed it, especially among my peers. I already took enough abuse at school about looking and acting different than the standard high school, small town dude - blasting some sentimental Madonna tune would have brought on more torment than it would have been worth. So I never really got to enjoy it, as I always felt guilty for liking something so feminine and graceful. Now, of course, I know better. Forget all that noise - I love the things I love for exactly the reasons they're awesome. I've certainly shown in my posts here that I make no bones about my adoration for atypical pieces. I embrace my quirks and the ensuing results. Including this song. 

Now, as fall rolls in again, I find myself wanting to hear the song and remember what growing up was like. The feeling in the air at the time, the memories of where I was at that point in my life. I'm glad I've come to a point in my life where I have the confidence to be who I want, even if that gets the occasional eye-roll from my better half.