Noises In The Vents

To make my first foray into the heading of Warm Fuzzy Viewings I'm focusing on a segment from a Treehouse of Horror episode that I could write about for page after page. The Segment, titled The Thing and I, from Treehouse of Horror VII, broadcast October 27, 1996, The piece is one of my favorite Simpsons Halloween segments ever written. In a plot that preys on our childhood fears of 'something in the attic', the essence of the story is that Bart's formerly conjoined twin brother Hugo has been chained in the attic and fed a bucket of fish heads for the last ten years. According to Dr. Hibbert he was "too crazy for Boy's Town, too much of a boy for Crazy Town," and was confirmed to be evil after a routine soul smear. Homer's decision to chain him up was, in his words, "the only humane thing to do." 

The segment starts off with the Simpson clan hearing noised in the attic and seeing fleeting images in the vents, a thoroughly creepy start to a scary story. When Marge and Homer deny their efforts to find out more, Bart, Lisa and Maggie use some unsupervised time to dig into the mystery. Here's why it qualifies for consideration: 

- most of the story takes place at night 
- Simpsons kids investigate during a rain storm (Homer: "See Marge? Who needs a car wash you can drive around in the rain?) 
- Kids hide in the closet to escape Hugo (with requisite fake-out gag involving vases 
- Air vents and Attic mysteries! 

Basically if it had started to snow halfway through this story it would have hit all the qualifiers for a Warm fuzzy Viewing. The Thing and I is an eerie, not alone in the house, the calls are coming from upstairs kind of story that cements exactly why this show excelled at Halloween specials. 

Mash Bros. Brawl

Continuing along the idea of referential culture and pop-mashing, I want to write a bit about something I've been more than a little in love with as of late. Kids & Explosions is a musician whose work is no doubt polarizing. Simple googling of his nom-de-pc will turn up more than a handful of articles making the inevitable comparisons to the massively popular Girl Talk. The main difference, I've been able to ascertain, is that while Girl Talk has masterfully crafted his mash-ups to become a giant party mix that makes revelers say "Aha!", Kids & Explosions' ouvre seems to suggest more of a deconstruction of cherished and personal selections. Instead of taking a hook or chorus or instantly placable piece of history, K&E takes fragments that are less identifiable, less obvious, but more meaningful and in an odd way, more personal. 

The resulting album, S*** Computer, available for whatever you wish to pay. somehow feels more cohesive, organic even, when listened to as a whole. Instead of one massive mega-mix for parties, separate songs are established and realized by a musical alchemy of sorts. As pointed out in this break down Josh Raskin observed several rules for his construction of this album. While it's admirable that rule one was "The songs have to mean something to him" I think the real essence or trick lies in two and three - no effects applied and no pitch shifting what so ever. By breaking down songs and piecing them back together via similarities the original artists never intended, the resulting product is both novel and familiar. It bridges that gap in our minds where we know something and yet are figuring it out. Its as if the entire album exists in that transitional moment of recognition, which is an astounding accomplishment in my mind. It's as though you were falling in love forever, or permanently tasting a new dish with every bite. Along these lines, the music created by adding say, two samples together, creates not just the one on top of the other, as is often the case with mash-ups, but actually touches on a third separate song that until now may have existed, albeit only potentially. The musical equivalent of potential energy, if you will. 


An interesting cheat or caveat to the aforementioned rules is that while there is no pitch shifting to be found, there are deconstructions, tweaks and clear rearrangements. In the first minute of the album it's apparent Eminem's vocals have been chopped up and reordered. What we hear is odd - it feels like you're hearing the song you know, yet because it's in a manner that flips your expectations, as well as over the piano chords of Bryan Adam's 'Everything I Do', your mind again construes it as having been previously experienced yet feeling entirely unfamiliar. The product is thoroughly uncanny. To reiterate what I stated earlier, the feeling of two or more preexisting pieces coming together to create a unique third piece is akin to procreation, which Raskin jokes about in the aforementioned interview with Laura Lanktree. He describes it as songs "having sex" and the results feel suitably organic despite the buzzes and twists. One could guess the title of the album refers to the idea of a hard drive crashing and we're hearing the neurons cross-firing, like HAL in 2001 as it sings 'Daisy' during shutdown.


A further distinction from his Mash-Up bretheren lies in the mood of the album, which instead of being a thumping club banger, is more wistful and even haunting at times. Josh Raskin has made choices and discoveries via his palate that have meshed incredably well. I feel like it serves better as music for a small gathering for cocktails than ripping up a houseparty. Maybe I'm just getting older. OR maybe I'm just playing favorites. To be perfectly honest I didn't even have my ear to the ground. Rather, I stumbles across the album via Popmatter's excellent year-end list of the best free music of 2010. Looking to broaden horizons without breaking any laws (which, given the legal grey area of sampling to this extent is more than a little bit ironic) I checked out their recommendations and was blown away by what I had found. Among the many awesome recommendations was Kids & Explosions.


While the list I linked above is filled with excellent new music, please give a listen to Kids & Explosions, if for no other reason than to hear the future of our modern culture twisting referentiality into a genre of music.

The Polar Opposite of Depresso

This post lies in sharp contrast to my writing about Depresso. Instead of pining about unreleased snippets, this will focus on the love of a guilty pleasure fully embraced.


The love I write about today is Zombies Ate My Neighbors, a magnificent send up/homage to the B-Movies of the 50's. Released for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis in 1993, the game was a modest, if only mildly popular, success. An underrated and under appreciated run-and-gun game, ZAMN had the player taking on the role of either Zeke or Julie in a quest to save the titular neighbors from the flesh craving un-dead.

It made a lasting impact on me, to put it mildly.


Considering I was ten years old when I bought this game, its a pretty safe bet that this is where my love of zombie movies, or B-movies in general, stems from. Not only was it a goofy play on Night of the Living Dead and other classics, it was a frantic and creepy game that had a deliciously evil soundtrack. The whole game was one big love note to the drive in movies of yesteryear, with levels labeled as movies I wish to this day were real. Such as:


"Zombie Panic"


"Evening of the Undead"


"Dr. Tongue's Castle of Terror"


"Mars Needs Cheerleaders"


and my personal favorite:


"Dinner On Monster Island"

While the game itself utilizes a fairly simplistic mechanic of run, shoot, save your friends and flee, the surprising depth and joy comes from it's subtle suggestions. Par example - the weapons you use to defend yourself and save the neighbors are generally household items, as though the player is thrust into the game and scrambling for any defense available - squirt guns, fire extinguishers, soda cans,plates, knives and other things found lying around. In a delightful display of appreciation for source material, the item's effectiveness against different monsters is dependent of pop culture touchstones. Werewolves are easily killed by the silverware, weed-whackers cut through the plant-based pod people and exploding cans of soda douse the flames of little hell spawn demons. It's these silly little touches that make the game's world so rich and amusing.

My ten year old self, though, could make little distinction between ironic pastiche and the genuine article. Stuff I found creepy and awesomely spooky was actually just supposed to be awesomely cheesy. Eerie background music helped establish a subconscious appreciation for trip hop and ambient music. The fact that I watch Night of the Living Dead every Halloween? Look no further. The game itself is very straightforward. It's the mood and scene that fascinated me as a kid. When I see things like mash-up artists like Girl Talk gain massive notoriety I think of how this game exists solely to combine disparate elements into one massive in-joke. Basically the entire point is to look as an audience and say "I get the reference!" A very modern notion for a game almost twenty years old, especially when you consider the appeal of Edgar Wright.


Zombies At My Neighbors is a guilty pleasure of mine. I am well aware of its limited appeal and niche game play. It has a minor legacy - a small following online, and it even warranted a re-release on Nintendo's Virtual Console for the Wii, a place to allow the public to play old games on new hardware. If you ever have the chance I'd highly recommend giving it five minutes of your time.


Hopefully you'll find it as charming as I do.

Late Night

Bon Soir!


It is currently 20 minutes to midnight as I type this and I have had a rather long day, so in the interest of appeasing the God of Sleep I'll keep this brief.


To clarify the establishment of tabs at the top o' the blog, Warm Fuzzy Viewings will detail my obsession with very particular settings in visual fiction. In particular, things that are set in:

• Rainstorms
• Blizzards
• Night Time
• Secret Passages

I can't put my finger on why these things fascinate my brain, but whenever I'm watching a show or a movie at night and it utilizes these elements, preferably together, there is some strange part of my brain that is firing at an increased rate. It's not unlike the rush of imagination a child gets when being handed a cardboard box.

Stay tuned for updates. Anything from Simpsons episodes, Batman comics, Dickens novels or Halloween specials. Probably mostly Simpsons episodes...

Depresso

This is not a weepy, teenage-angst diatribe.


It's a story of a small and personal treasure.


A little victory that I hold very dear.


When I was a teenager, actually even earlier if I'm totally honest, I was a depressed little monkey. No particular reason, most likely a chemical imbalance that eventually was righted, either through change in perspective or a subtle growth. In my early teens, though, alt-rock of the mid 90's was a life saver. Those melodramatic lyrics and self-involved perspectives were exactly the thing my egocentric mind needed to fuel itself and survive the day. Chief among my love of guitar music were the Smashing Pumpkins. Say what you will about them, but when you're 14 years old Billy Corgan's nasal whine and bleating melodies spoke volumes. Even as I edge closer and closer to 30 I still hold a special place in my heart for their over-the-top theatrics. In fact, Siamese Dream still holds the number one spot in my secret list of lists, my favorite album of all time, hipster irony and all.

But I digress.


The real tale that I want to impart involves little secrets. A hidden thing. Their magnum opus and career high-water mark, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, was a sprawling, 14 track, 2 CD affair. Not only was that THE release of 1995, but they immediately followed it with a massive compilation of B-sides, The Aeroplane Flies High. I remember how rad it was when I opened it Xmas morning, 45-style case and all. In the box set was the Zero Ep, on which the last track was a whopping 23 minute compilation of just about every idea Billy Corgan put to tape between Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie.

So to break that down: during the Mellon Collie period of output we had 14 official tracks, 28 more on b-sides and to top it off the 23 minute long Pastichio Medley. Either complete and total self indulgence or a band at it's creative zenith. I still believe its the latter.


In the Medley, between 8:46 and 9:03, not even a span of twenty consecutive seconds, was a song that absolutely broke my heart. I still can't place exactly what it is to this day, but it was a small snippet of a song simply labeled 'Depresso', just a bit of melody over a repeated new wavy riff that spoke to some part of me deep down inside. I loved this song and it broke my heart to know that I would never hear it in its entirety. It was to forever be a fragment, a half-completed thing that would never matter to anyone else like it did to me. Nineteen completely obscure seconds of time that, as far as I was concerned, Billy recorded for me and only me. As much as it frustrated me I had to accept that I would never hear the entire piece. It was beautiful! And it wasn't even deemed B-side worthy in their eyes. So I accepted it and went on with my life.


10 years go by.


I'm surfing the internet, this very same internet that brought you here today! I remember that song and the feeling it created.


I start doing a little digging on Smashing Pumpkins fan-sites and bootleg listings. Lo and behold, the Mellon Collie demos were hosted online. Not just official things, EVERYTHING. It took a bit of research to break down times and match titles, but I did it.


I found it.


The whole song.


It was, as much as I can gather, never really completed. There are no vocals. But 10 years after I accepted the loss of something wonderful, I was able to download it and fill in the missing pieces. Thank you, internet.


Thank you, Billy.


Sometimes we can win.

What I should have said was nothing...

Last night I finished reading Sleepwalk with Me. It's a charmingly disarming collection of personal anecdotes from Mike Birbiglia which incorporates elements of both his one man show of the same title, and longer, more intricate versions of some of his bits from his comedy career.

I first found out about Monsieur Birbiglia from the strange and wonderful stand-up compilation Invite Them Up, wherein he has ten minutes of very witty material. Mike is the kind of comedian that makes you think "Maybe there are some very funny people in my life that just haven't been given the proper forum..." I say this because he makes me think of quiet coworkers that one day say something in just the right manner that you realize "Oh my God, this guy is hysterical, how is he not harnessing this untapped ability?" The good thing is that Mike was also aware of this and has made a varied and prolific career out of being charming and funny. His albums are fantastic, not a bit of filler on them. He's also contributed pieces to This American Life on a semi-consistent basis, as well as The Moth Podcast, each time displaying his seemingly innate ability to make the incredibly personal quite relatable.


In his book Sleepwalk with Me he jumps around in roughly autobiographic order, sharing stories that both explain who he is and where his jokes and perspectives originate. For a comedy fan like myself it was astoundingly enjoyable to see in greater detail where his bits had their roots. It was refreshingly honest, especially for today's world of unending irony and hipper-than thou self awareness. Reading Mike's book, you feel like it's just a friend of yours telling you about his life as though you'd known someone a long time but had never really learned about their history. He has a very unique way of telling a story, with an amusingly drawling diction that, when read in that same voice, is very much like he's in the room with you. I just can't say enough positive things about this book. Hey, it's even a quick read, which is a nice change of pace from some of the more esoteric door-stops I've tackled lately.


The book itself is derived from his one man show that centers around a particularly traumatic incident. It stems from a sleep disorder in which his body still moves and acts out his dreams even though it should be still (Sleepwalking, duh). On my initial read-through I was uncertain how he chose the structure and framing device for all of the isolated anecdotes, until I reached the final chapter. It then dawned on me that the entire book is an incredibly detailed preamble/back-story for this one bad incident. Upon realizing this, my head exploded.


That's why he's a great story teller - you don't realize you've been led down a prim-rose path until you're in the thick of it and suddenly it becomes apparent that everything has been set in particular places on purpose and there was little, if any, wasted space. His ability to share the devastatingly honest and painful parts of his childhood, all the way to his professional endeavors (and failures) makes you appreciate the fact that he has found success on his terms. Birbiglia knows his strengths and his weaknesses and has made both work for his life's purpose.


In particular, there is a story from the latter half of the book he shared on the Moth podcast, in which he details the painful and difficult (as though there's any other kind) end to a long and meaningful relationship. It's an experience that reminds the reader how breakups are hard on us not just for the loss of a relationship, but that we may be holding someone back from being a better person. Thankfully I've been in a wonderful and committed relationship for years, but it's a reminder that you should always strive to be the best person you can, not just for yourself but to allow those you love to grow to be the people they want to be as well. Reading it (and hearing him tell it, which made it even more funny and uncomfortable, simultaneously) made me appreciate the better half that I'd found, and I am thankful every day that I have someone so wonderful to share my life with.


It's a good thing when you pick up a book looking for a fun and quick read, only to put it down in the end with the realization that you've learned something about yourself through another person's experience.

Le Noir

Good evening.


Continuing in the vein of gushing over things that may have already had their moments in the sun, I wanted to spill my guts a bit about Brick, one of the best films I've stumbled across in a while. A friend recommended it after we realized we shared an admiration for the talents of Joseph Gordon-Levitt in (500) Days of Summer and Inception. He's an ensemble dark horse in Nolan's much-lauded film, and in this directorial debut for Rian Johnson he takes the lead as a high-school gum shoe.

Released in 2007 and written by the director, Brick is the story of Brendan (Levitt) as he investigates the death of a former love Emily, played by Emilie de Ravin (notorious for losing her baby in Lost). The tale centers around the titular brick of heroin and how its tainted nature may have brought about the death of Emily in the seedy underbelly of High School drug wars. As Brendan digs farther and farther into the murky depths of villainy he unravels the mystery one connection at a time. Allegiances are made, morals are compromised, dames are questioned and shots are fired.

To say the movie moved me would be an understatement. In the end...a peace is found, but it's not a happy one. Morality is grey. A superb little film. I wince at my own use of the word 'little' but I mean it only in the sense that this film is a beautiful, small and undiscovered (by mass audience) piece of modern noir storytelling.

Part of my adoration for Brick may stem from its nature of being quiet and personal, both in my relation to it and its

ability to be close, or human. Johnson created a world with living, breathing characters whose motivations, while not always clear, are certainly organic. When watched in the dark, alone, one is able to pay explicit attention to the wonderfully odd dialogue, a mix of teenagers being verbose and ridiculously hep slang terminology lifted from the noir classics. The vibe? Slick and dark, another primo example of my love of quiet art in the dark.

What can I say? I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff...

01/10

Bonjour.

The subject of this post may very well be past the expiration date in regards to pop culture relativity but I still find myself fascinated by it. One of those secret things I would gush over during a happy hour and monopolize conversations and warrant a smiling shake of your head. As a result I sit here typing this in the hopes you might be as amused by the idea as me. Although now that I think about it, if you knew, you'd already have known, and then there's causality and preternatural....you know what? I'm just gonna cut right to the meat of my zeal here.

Many, many, many nerds on the internet (and music snobs, and hipsters, et cetera) have generally agreed that one of, if not the best, albums of the 90's was Radiohead's opus OK Computer. Personally, I do agree that it is a fantastic piece of guitar driven popmusic, albeit a bit gloomy. BUT! That very same gloom appeals to me. I have become aware that I appreaciate the album more on days of melancholy, or during time spent reflecting (as opposed to road trips or when I'm cleaning my condo). There's a joy in melancholy, a peace through sadness that I know I have felt before and it rears its head when I listen to the album on a crisp fall day.

Ten years later, digital distribution has finally become the norm and CD sales in the traditional, literal sense have fallen off. Thom Yorke, frontman extraordinaire has gone increasingly schizo and detests his own reputaiton for alternative music, going so far as to release the (denied to be but still totally is) double album Kid A/Amnesiac. Hail to the Thief, the next album, saw a return, ever so slightly, to their renowned milleu. Going off the deep end into electric noises and distorted, atonal jazz pieces had anyone still listening (millions of people) wondering what they would do next.

The answer was the pay what you want In Rainbows, which when held in the same light as their previous work, was still genius but more traditional. An absolutely beautiful album, but no huge genre shift or breakage of pre-established paradigms. Critically hailed, embraced by all, why are you typing this, you ask? If I'm no music critic, why the inspection and rehashing?

Paranoia, that's why.

A conspiracy of sorts!

If you know me at all (my condolences), you may know I'm just a little bit into the idea.

Covered in another blog by Puddlegum a couple years back, the basic idea put forth is that In Rainbows is not just another album in their discography but in fact an expansion of OK Computer, an insertion of table leaves, if you will. Insane premise or not, I LOVE this idea.

The concept apparently originates in a bit of numerology and binary, that OK Computer serves as the 01 and In Rainbows as 10, the two pieces complimenting each other. Fun supporting evidence: a working title for OK Computer was Zeros and Ones. The track list starts with Computer's 'Airbag' (which has a deeply moving opening riff that feels like the guitar channeling a cello) alternates from there on out with Rainbows going back and forth, switching in the middle, and then the reverse back and forth for the latter half of both albums. Made as a playlist in iTunes with the cross-fade set to about five seconds, the effect is rather unnerving. Some segues don't work as well, but there are a few transitions that one would think "Oh my lord, this could have been intentional." In particular the transition from 'Bodysnatchers' to 'Subterranean Homesick Alien' is eerie, mostly due to (most likely coincidental) corresponding key signatures.

Just the idea that musicians would be so inclined (or perhaps bored is more on target) to create art that is supposed to be inserted into existing works is absolutely enthralling to me. Even more so that it would be a weirdly hush-hush thing, not widely known and only found by people extremely curious about it. In my mind it's like if in American Gothic we suddenly realize there is an entire painting of the interior of the house in the background that is hidden under the frame.

While definitely one of the nerdier/paranoid things I've fallen in love with, it's just something that I find enthralling as a concept. One I wish more artists would embrace. Maybe I'll hide a secret blog inside this one, and inside that blog would be a link to my psychiatrist's home page, because that's where my neurosis would lead to, right?

Winter

In the interest of shooting myself in the foot as fast as possible I'm gonna cover a couple things at once.To boot, one thing is already massively unpopular and the other gets little-to-no recognition. It's really the combo of the two that I'm in love with.These two great tastes that I love together?


Dark winter mornings and Akira Yamaoka.





Wait, why are you running away? Hear me out.



I know it sounds nuts, especially in the midst of the darkest part of the winter. The stretch after the holidays is, as my fiance points out, is nothing but endless winter.

No fun days off. No big party holidays. No reprieve. Just endless dark and cold.

Thing is, I love waking up in the morning and making the (brief) walk to the bus station in the dark while listening to Akria Yamaoka.

"Who is that?" you ask, quite rightfully so.

"An awesome musician" I answer gushingly. A composer whose long and varied career has wrapped around another of my loves, Silent Hill.

Silent Hill is a series of freaky deeky video games that elicit most of their renowned disturbing moments and scary reputation from the mood and ambience they present. I won't delve into detail in this post, I'll ramble on about my long love affair with those particular games another time. The music, though...

As I said, the series is heavily reliant on mood and ambience, a significant portion of which stems from Yamaoka's contribution. His soundtracks to these games go one of two ways - either industrial and machine-like grinding beats and crunching guitars, or trip hop and down-tempo subdued pieces that amplify the effect of introspection and solitude on the listener. Admittedly I am far more in love with the softer aspects of his writing. I find them absolutely haunting and eerie in the best way possible. Slow and soft drums and loops, melodies from a weeping guitar.

Here's my small cheat: I make a playlist in itunes of just the more ambient atmospheric pieces. Keeps me from the shock of NIN-style blasts of noise as I'm still waking up. Mix this with the quiet contemplation that presents itself from walking to work in the dark and you've got a serene way to start the day. The sky is still dark, almost purple. Streetlights glow that odd orange tone that reflects off the snow. It's quiet around, no noise but the occasional car passing. Haunting, really.

Granted it may be my love of horror movies, a long-fostered love of solitude and personal reflection or just a skewed sense of musical appreciation, but I am in love with starting my day as though I'm in the peaceful opening to a very peculiar movie. Long before any unpleasant plot twists.



Makes me sound like a monk, perhaps.



Point is I love this composer's work and the je-ne-sais quoi air of a quiet January morning.

Raison d'etre

In my life I have felt myself sway back and forth from proselytizing everything I love or refusing to make recommendations out of the knowledge that someone won't follow up on them. No fault of anyone else, but how are you going to remember to read that book when we're at a restaurant and you get full and sleepy and what was that book he said I would like? It was about a man in a well and he had a mark on his face?




Point is I'm going to fix this issue. 




From here on out I'm gonna use this space to do this. 




The things I love, the things that I think more people need to know about. Be it a movie, a book, a song, a band, a drink, a place or a time of night. Instead of boring my friends and family by droning on and on over what I'm currently enthralled with at the moment, this space will be the vent. The pressure valve for my excited brain.




Here's hoping it's fun.




Stay tuned.