Hackneyed

Lacking significance through having been overused; unoriginal and trite.
Hackneyed

Hackneyed

Lacking significance through having been overused; unoriginal and trite.

TV Watched, 2024

…or at least the rest of it.

Barry (Seasons 3-4): I’ve always admired Hader, but now I really can’t wait to see where his career takes him. He seems capable of anything.

The Bear (Season 3): Liked it more than most, but would at least agree it wasn’t nearly as strong as previous seasons. Loved Marcus’ answer to what he wants his legacy to be. “I kept my chin up. Listened and learned. Did honest work. [Was] fun to be around, and an excellent emergency contact.”

Frasier (Season 2): First season was a fun novelty, this was at best a decent distraction.

Hacks (Seasons 2-3): Even though I liked the first season, wasn’t sure this would hold my interest. I was wrong.

Nobody Wants This (Season 1): This year’s “probably should have been a movie,” but I enjoyed it. Admittedly got a bit too gitty when I realized this was in the Party Down Extended Universe.

The Penguin (miniseries): Shoehorning a connection would only point out that it isn’t the gritty crime drama/character examination it wants to be. As someone long-obsessed with the Bat-Man, where this succeeds and Joker failed is in divorcing the Caped Crusader from the proceedings.

The Righteous Gemstones (Season 3): Its best season? Funnier, dark and smarter than ever.

Ripley (miniseries, hopefully): A talentless Ripley in a sluggish adaptation. If I think it’s prettier looking than its otherwise incomparably better 1999 counterpart, that’s only because Michelangelo Antonioni has conditioned me to prefer Italy in black and white.

Spotify Wrapped and 15 Years of Listening

Down a bit from last year, mostly due to vinyl consumption. Apparently in my jazz era. Still a punk at heart, though.

Also, as of today, Last.fm has been tracking music I’ve listened to on my computer and phone for fifteen years. Looking at the top artists, I’d say not necissarily the right order, but yeah, that’s probably my top 50. Or at least close enough.

A “Brief Respite from a Harsh Reality”

A “chess set made from paper in the Buchenwald camp by political prisoner Hermann Rautenberg, a Jew from Berlin.”

“On an old fishing boat, posing as a group of innocent boating enthusiasts, Herman Rautenberg from Berlin met with other youths involved in anti-Nazi activities. In spite of being arrested a number of times, Rautenberg was undeterred. In 1937, after he was betrayed by an informant, he was arrested again and sentenced immediately. He was sent to Dachau and a year later to Buchenwald where he was imprisoned for over two years. During his incarceration, Rautenberg made a chess game from bits of paper that he found in the camp.”

From the collection of Yad Vashem’s Museum, “approximately twenty chess sets that were used by Jews during the Holocaust. Some were crafted during the war, others were made before the war and taken with Jews who were deported from their homes. Playing chess helped to alleviate the suffering of Jews and allowed them a few brief moments of relief from the hunger, the cold and the fear, temporarily easing their loneliness and sense of isolation.”

Charles Schulz on Democracy

“In 1970, students in a fifth-grade class at Hawthorne School in Beverly Hills were assigned to write a letter to someone they admired, asking them ‘What makes a good citizen?’ Joel Lipton, 10 years old at the time, wrote to Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz.”

“I think it is more difficult these days to define what makes a good citizen then it has ever been before. Certainly all any of us can do is follow our own conscience and retain faith in our democracy. Sometimes it is the very people who cry out the loudest in favor of getting back to what they call ‘American Virtues’ who lack this faith in our country. I believe that our greatest strength lies always in the protection of our smallest minorities.”

“If you can’t be a good example, at least try to become an interesting cautionary tale.”

Not sure what is exactly that Merlin Mann is up to, but he’s been posting words of wisdom on Github. Lots of gems.

  • People think about you much less than you either hope or fear.
  • Whenever you’re not sure what to say, either say nothing, or ask a question.
  • Never argue on the internet. No one will remember whether you won or lost the argument; they’ll just remember that you are the sort of person who argues on the internet.
  • Be sparing in how often you tell someone their negative feelings are wrong; it rarely helps a sad person to be told that they are also a liar.
  • Whatever your problem is, remember that before you can get better, you have to stop getting worse. Try first to stop getting worse.
  • Just because you know something doesn’t mean everybody knows it. Every day, somebody’s born who’s never seen The Flintstones.
  • Archive any email that’s older than 30 days. If it kills you to archive a given email, immediately turn it into a task, and then archive it.
  • Avoid any children’s movie whose theatrical trailer includes more than one fart or butt joke. That’s their idea of the best parts of the movie.
  • If you have cool stickers, use them. Put them on things. Be carelessly joyful about using your stickers. If you die with a collection of dozens of cool stickers that you never used, you did it wrong.
  • Related: food is for eating, heirlooms are for using, champagne is for drinking, and fancy clothes are for wearing. You are not a fucking docent, and the Pope is not coming to your house.
  • When you die, your family will be charged $100 for every time you’ve ever honked your car horn. I cannot tell you how I know this, but please just understand with all sober certainty how very important it is that you never again honk your car horn.

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72

“How many more of these stinking, double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote FOR something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?”

Oh, Mr. Thompson, If only you were still alive and kicking. If we really are going down in a ball of flames, there’s no one I’d rather have covering it.

Jim Henson: Idea Man, Ron Howard

Had the pleasure to see the Muppets in a wonderful exhibit in Grand Rapids last year and this film served as an excellent reminder of that inspirational day.

In his own words:

“Life’s like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending.”

I will likely always be more of a George Carlin or Kurt Vonnegut, but I will forever strive to be a Jim Henson.

Joey Ramone would have been 73 today.

(Photo by Howard Barlow)

As heard on Little Steven’s Underground Garage:

The renaissance had come and gone. It ended with either Who’s Next in August, ’71, or The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St., May of ’72. You can argue all night about which record began the renaissance, but nobody’s going to argue that starting somewhere around Jackie Brenston’s Rocket 88, 1951, the next twenty years would be the most inspiring, explore the most innovations, and have the most significant cultural impact in musical history. The level of greatness achieved in virtually every musical genre (blues, jazz, gospel, country, rhythm and blues, rockabilly, soul, and rock ‘n roll) was so extraordinary that it will never be equaled. Not until new instruments are invented, new scales used, and new technological means of communication are plugged directly into your cerebral cortex… Beginning somewhere in the early ’70s, musicianship and singer-songwriter craft replaced visceral, passionate, accessible, danceable rock ‘n roll as intellect and sophistication became the mainstream… So what do you do in the face of this rather harsh reality? A reality that says the ’50s are over, the ’60s are over, fun is over, and you missed it? It’s a secondhand culture for you? Hand-me-down riffs, used emotions and theatrical jive.

Fortunately, you have the one thing going for you that transcends eras, fashion and time. You have the one thing that all truly great rock ‘n roll bands have in common: you’re gonna play in a band because you have no other choice. You don’t fit in anywhere in society and you can’t do anything else. You might as well ignore everything that is going on, and invent your own style. You might as well be the most important influence on the next 30 or 40 years of rock ‘n roll. You might as well be the Ramones.

The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“All that matters is that you are making something you love, to the best of your ability, here and now.”

Was hoping for a few real world examples from Rubin’s illustrious music career, but this is still an inspiring book on the creative process.

Here is something I need to remember:

“Living life as an artist is a practice.
You are either engaging in the practice
or you’re not.

It makes no sense to say you’re not good at it.
It’s like saying, “I’m not good at being a monk.”
You are either living as a monk or you’re not.

We tend to think of the artist’s work as the output.

The real work of the artist
is a way of being in the world.”

Also love this:

“Beware of the assumption
that the way you work
is the best way
simply because
it’s the way you’ve done it before.”

Later, he writes of the Ramones:

“Innocence brings forth innovation. A lack of knowledge can create more openings to break new ground. The Ramones thought they were making mainstream bubblegum pop. To most others, the lyrical content alone- about lobotomies, sniffing glue, and pinheads- was enough to challenge this assumption.

While the band saw themselves as the next Bay City Rollers, they unwittingly invented punk rock and started a countercultural revolution. While the music of the Bay City Rollers had great success in its time, the Ramones’ singular take on rock and roll became more popular and influential. Of all the explanations of the Ramones, the most may be: innovation through ignorance.”

Hey, ho, let’s go.

Rest in Peace, Steve Albini

I know there’s “cooler” albums to talk about, but In Utero and Surfer Rosa were profoundly important to my teens, and I haven’t stopped listening to Mclusky Do Dallas since seeing them in San Francisco this past March.

My friend Tom had the good fortune of studying under Albini in the early 2000s and had this to say:

“Steve is one of a literal handful of people that I would consider a role model. In addition to opening my ears to what a good record should sound like, he showed me what a good person should act like. As an impressionable teenager and into my early 20s, he taught me how and why to treat people ethically and how to give absolutely zero fucks about the opinion of people who don’t.”

Some recommended reading:

Steve Albini Shows That Punk Rock Ethics Are Good Business: “If you start from the premise of refusing to be an asshole, then a lot of other decisions kind of make themselves.”

And of course his famous letter to Kurt Cobain:

“I explained this to Kurt but I thought I’d better reiterate it here. I do not want and will not take a royalty on any record I record. No points. Period. I think paying a royalty to a producer or engineer is ethically indefensible. The band write the songs. The band play the music. It’s the band’s fans who buy the records. The band is responsible for whether it’s a great record or a horrible record. Royalties belong to the band.

I would like to be paid like a plumber: I do the job and you pay me what it’s worth. The record company will expect me to ask for a point or a point and a half. If we assume three million sales, that works out to 400,000 dollars or so. There’s no fucking way I would ever take that much money. I wouldn’t be able to sleep.”

We’ll always have the music. I suggest you crank it up to 11.

20 Years Ago I Was At Coachella

So were the then recently-reunited Pixies, whom I interviewed.

And Air, also interviewed.

And Tommy Lee, whom I had a drink with in the VIP lounge.

Which is where I also Mike Watt. And Fred Schneider. And Wayne Coyne, who would debut the Space Bubble the next evening.

And Kraftwerk, who I managed to get into a packed tent to see and have my mind blown.

And Radiohead. If you were there, ya know.

And also Belle & Sebastian, Broken Social Scene, The Cure, Erase Errata and a lot of bands I can’t remember or may have missed because I was working and drinking and loving life and completely caught up in the magic.

You Don’t Know How to Drive

If I never share a pixelated meme again, it will be too soon.

But this one is important. Otherwise, it’s gonna be a looong summer.

It’s quite simple, really:

“When most drivers see the first “lane closed ahead” sign in a work zone, they slow too quickly and move to the lane that will continue through the construction area. This driving behavior can lead to unexpected and dangerous lane switching, serious crashes and road rage.

Zipper merging, however, benefits individual drivers as well as the public at large. Research shows that these dangers decrease when motorists use both lanes until reaching the defined merge area and then alternate in “zipper” fashion into the open lane.”

Most well-meaning motorists succumb to “motive misattribution,” “assuming someone’s intentions are evil or misguided while your own are virtuous,” thinking if one zips they they are “a selfish, reckless cheater who cuts in line, when actually, if we all merged one at a time as he had, everyone might get where they were going faster.”

Tell the others.

Brain Scans of Jazz Musicians Reveal Secrets to Creative Flow

As reported in The Conversation:

“Flow, or being ‘in the zone,’ is a state of amped-up creativity, enhanced productivity and blissful consciousness that, some psychologists believe, is also the secret to happiness. It’s considered the brain’s fast track to success in business, the arts or any other field.

But in order to achieve flow, a person must first develop a strong foundation of expertise in their craft. That’s according to a new neuroimaging study from Drexel University’s Creativity Research Lab, which recruited Philly-area jazz guitarists to better understand the key brain processes that underlie flow. Once expertise is attained, the study found, this knowledge must be unleashed and not overthought in order for flow to be reached.

Previous neuroimaging studies suggested that ideas are usually produced by the default-mode network, a group of brain areas involved in introspection, daydreaming and imagining the future. The default-mode network spews ideas like an unattended garden hose spouts water, without direction. The aim is provided by the executive-control network, residing primarily in the brain’s frontal lobe, which acts like a gardener who points the hose to direct the water where it is needed.

Creative flow is different: no hose, no gardener. The default-mode and executive-control networks are tamped down so that they cannot interfere with the separate brain network that highly experienced people have built up for producing ideas in their field of expertise.“

Charles Schulz Drawing Peanuts

“I wish I had a better education but I think that my entire background made me well-suited for what I do. If I could write better than I can, perhaps I would have tried to become a novelist and I might have become a failure. If I could draw better than I can, I might have tried to become an illustrator or an artist and would have failed there. But my entire being seems to be just right for being a cartoonist

Recently Read

Two massive tomes I finally conquered: The Stand and The Pale King. Wouldn’t necessarily recommend either but I am glad I read both.

Of course I love reading about movies. After making a list of my favorite (read: not the ones I think are the best) films, I realized two filmmakers had four films on my list: PT Anderson, and one that surprised, Sidney Lumet. I immediately sought out his book Making Movies. It was a bit dated in describing how the sausage is made, but it had a lot of great stories and even better advice, bits that carry over to the creation in any art form.

Shea Serrano’s Movies and Other Things was fun, and made me laugh several times.

After re-watching The Godfather and its first sequel, I picked up the novel, which was fun, pulpier than the films and had an iconic inside cover. After I read Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli, which was even better.

Recently finished Mrs. Maisel and wanted to keep living in that world as well, so I finished my copy of Lenny Bruce’s How to Talk Dirty and Influence People and have come to the conclusion that I prefer the fictional portrayal.

And of course I love reading about music. More specifically The Beatles. Read Revolution in the Head, Dreaming The Beatles and 150 Glimpses and loved the different styles and tones of all three, especially the latter.

I did also read, as well as listened to, the Beastie Boys Book and would recommend both. The book’s art and photos are great, but the audiobook elevates the material, and is read by the most absurd cast ever, including Steve Buscemi, Elvis Costello, Chuck D, Snoop Dogg, Will Ferrell, Kim Gordon, LL Cool J, Spike Jonze, Rachel Maddow, Tim Meadows, Better Middler, Rosie Perez, Amy Poehler, Kelly Reichardt, John C. Reilly, Maya Rudolph, Jon Stewart and Ben Stiller.

A book I read about film and music and television and pop culture junk and how it all ties together was Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties: A Book.

On Loving God had some great passages and advice, not just for Catholics.

The Swallowed Man was a fun read, the story of Pinocchio from Geppetto’s point of view (from inside the belly of the whale, no less).

“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” didn’t offer as much insight as I was hoping for, but it was a curious glimpse at an incredibly interesting man.

I don’t really know much about poetry but I enjoyed Rotten Perfect Mouth by Eva HD, whom I discovered after watching a film I did not care for, but the poem hasn’t left me.