Just watched The Promise, a new documentary about Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town. I have mixed feelings. I’ll be writing about it for Fancast.com this week.
Category: Watching
I Want to Like Kenny Powers
But I can’t help but feel like it’s a baseball-centric Entourage, with Johnny Drama in the lead role.
Having said that, I enjoyed Eastbound and Down this morning. Stayed up way too late watching TV last night. Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire and Eastbound and Down in one night? How am I supposed to catch up on Bored to Death? Do people still watch that? Or is that borne of an Anderson guilt complex in me, whereby I really want to like anything that reads as an homage to Truffaut?
Also, can someone explain to me why the Boardwalk Empire intro is like Deadliest Catch, but with bottles instead of crabs?
In Praise of Boardwalk Empire
If this show is the closest we ever get to an actual conclusion to Deadwood, I’ll take it. I’ve watched the pilot episode three times!
One knock: could they at least pretend to know how a Philadelphian talks? Buscemi will do Buscemi, but no one in the cast sounds like they’re from Philly at all. Didn’t “The Wire” teach anyone the importance of local dialect?
So Pavement Sucked
Once upon a time, Pavement were a special band to me. That rabid fandom petered out since they called it quits in ’99, and ever since I’ve felt like Malkmus’ solo career was just him navel gazing.
The reunion disappoints mainly because they haven’t learned anything about showmanship since their started. Maybe that’s good for folks who were accustomed to them being one of the most boring live acts on the indie circuit, but I really expected it to feel momentous, like I’d finally witnessed a piece of history I missed the first time around.
Doesn’t help that my friend got assaulted, or that the words “I could kill you” were directed at me, entirely unprovoked. What they said about Pavement fans changing over their course definitely holds. I’ll stick to those records and cherish the memories I made listening to them.
Also worth noting: the Mann Music Center wasn’t nearly as great a venue as I thought, at least not for rock music. I know that I’m nostalgic for my high school days when I saw classic rock fogies like Emerson, Lake and Palmer and the Moody Blues sitting on the lawn, but the pavilion sounds really noisy, especially toward the back. I hate to say it, but I’ve had better concert experiences at the back of the Susquehanna Bank Center pavilion.
My Top 20 Embarrassing ’90s Videos
Man, were the ’90s really 20 years ago already? Yup, they sure were! Now, I’ve been paying special attention to Pitchfork’s nostalgia trip, but I get the keen sense that they’ve obliterated the true gems from this list. What do I mean? I’m talking about the sappy nonsense that all children of the ’90s got sucked into in the days before the O.C. You know, the songs they ask people about in that 5–10-15–20 feature they do from time to time. Where’s the embarrassing stuff that we know you all loved as kids? You weren’t listening to Olivia Tremor Control during puberty, were you?
I’ve compiled the twenty songs I was most likely to belt out when they came on the radio, whether I was doing farm chores or I was feeling sorry for myself somewhere else. There were a few from the late ’80s that nearly made the list; wish I could’ve put the B‑52s on here, as I feel like they’re disjoint from history at this point and I loved them so very much.
Please bear in mind that I don’t mean that these songs are embarrassing in and of themselves. Rather, I think these songs are emblematic of what’s likely the most vulnerable ten years of my life, a decade that covers my junior high years, my year abroad, and college. It was a rough ten years!
Watch the videos after the jump.