brainsplotch

We went to see A Complete Unknown (aka, "that Bob Dylan movie") today and I liked it. Not quite a "love," but a definite "like." Timothee Chalamet captures the spirit and look of a young Bob Dylan about as well as could possibly be hoped for. The movie also has good performances from Monica Barbaro as a feisty, take-no-shit Joan Baez, Edward Norton as a fatherly, kind, patient, and philosophical Pete Seeger, Boyd Holbrook as a wild and crazy but totally badass Johnny Cash, and Scoot McNairy as a hospital-bound Woody Guthrie slowly dying of Huntington's. If the dramatic scenes adhered a bit much to the typical biopic cliches, the musical scenes were excellent. Chalamet's guitar playing and singing were totally believable and demonstrated how committed to the role he was. Barbaro's singing voice sounded extremely close to the real Joan Baez, which could not have been an easy feat. I give her kudos for that. Despite how I ...

For as much as I love the Kinks, I have not written about them enough in here.  When I say "love," I mean it. It is not an empty platitude.  I adore this band. They are among my very favorite musicians of all time. Certainly, they are in my top five. Depending on the day, they are my number one. As it turns out, the Kinks released an album in 1984: Word of Mouth . Now, Word of Mouth would probably not be considered by many to be among the best of 1984. It wouldn't make any top ten lists, top twenty lists, or even top fifty lists.... but I like the album. I wouldn't quite say I love the album, but it's highly underappreciated and it's an enjoyable listening experience. Allow me an attempt to place this album in historical context, off the top of my head for the most part. So this is a "Cliff's Notes" history of the band and if any super nerdy Kinks fans are reading this and I got any facts wrong, I apologize. I know how some of you can be. The Ki...

A dreary rainy day today. All of our Christmas snow has melted and it's now just wet, brown muck. Now, rewatching season one of Squid Game because season two has started and it's been three years since the first season. Plus, A. has never seen all of season one. This is one bloody, brutal, violent show. It's exciting and intense, but not for the faint of heart.  I'll briefly describe the premise: hundreds of destitute, desperate, and/or financially strapped South Koreans sign their lives away to play a series of "win or be killed" games at a mysterious island compound. These games are masterminded by a presumably wealthy but psychotic man in a scary black geometrically-shaped mask. Think Hunger Games crossed with Survivor (if the losers in Survivor were shot in the head. No, definitely not for the squeamish.

This is gonna be another post of me improvising and may be of questionable entertainment value. It's a night of funny and/or weird YouTube videos. This after watching the last hour or so of The Disaster Artist , the James Franco movie about the making of The Room , regarded by many was the worst movie ever made. Speaking of Tommy Wiseau's The Room , it was actually our older son who tipped me off to its existence. He must have only been in middle school. I have no idea how he found out about The Room . For anyone who's unfamiliar with this film, it has to be seen to be believed. It's as if a space alien landed on Earth and wrote a screenplay based on 24 hours (or less) of observing humans. One might be better off skipping The Room entirely and just watching The Disaster Artist . It's a funny behind-the-scenes look at who Tommy Wiseau is and how The Room came to be, and unlike The Room , it's a coherent and well-made film with good acting. It also fait...

I followed through with my plan to play Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home on the way to work--another Bob album I hadn't listened to in a long time. I just hadn't been in a Dylan mood for a while. I can't explain it--it's just the way it goes with my music listening habits. Outside of Blonde On Blonde and Self Portrait (I picked it up cheap and had to see if it is as bad as its reputation--I don't think it is, but it's still not that good), my Dylan albums have been idle. That said, Bob Dylan is and will always be an artist I enjoy, for the most part. (There are some albums and periods of his career that don't interest me much, such as the "born again" phase, most of the '80s (except Infidels , Empire Burlesque , and Oh Mercy ) and the stuff he's done since Love and Theft . (I think the post- Love and Theft era indifference has more to do with me than it does Bob. It sounds like some of that stuff might be worth...

I started Boxing Day by popping in The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan in the car CD player. As a follow-up, I finished listening to the album on the way home from work, and took a little detour through the neighborhood near our house just to get the whole 50+ minute album in before pulling in the garage. (With the exception of his debut album, Dylan's records from 1963-1966 are all quite long).  Back to Freewheelin ', I hadn't listened to it in quite some time. I'm not that into Dylan's acoustic era. I prefer when he went electric and rock in early 1965 and beyond. That said, I was pleasantly surprised at how varied Freewheelin ' is. Sure, it has the deep protest songs like "Blowin' in the Wind," "Masters of War," "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall," and "Oxford Town," but it also has love (or love-adjacent) songs like "Girl From the North Country," the gentle yet bitter "Don't Think Twice, It...

Christmas Day. We did the usual "family stuff" and then went to a movie, which has become sort of a tradition in recent years. Even though a few interesting movies were released for Christmas, none of them are "Christmas-y" or ones that an entire family can agree upon. Nosferatu is a horror movie from the mind of Robert Eggers, A Complete Unknown requires the viewer to have interest in Bob Dylan, and Sonic 3: the Hedgehog is sort of a kids' movie, or at least a movie for Sonic the Hedgehog fans, few of whom are older than, say, 30. Now, I want to see Nosferatu and   Complete Unknown but neither one were gonna work for today, so we compromised and saw younger son's choice, Sonic 3. It was fine, I only almost fell asleep a few times.

We are in Frankenmuth for our annual Christmas Eve dinner at the Bavarian Inn. We have been coming here since I was a kid in the 1970s. Though Frankenmuth and the Bavarian Inn have changed (and grown) considerably over the years, the food never changes, and that's reassuring. It's nothing special, but it's comfort food. In a world in which many aspects of life are in tumult and have changed in disturbing ways, it's comforting to have at least some things that remain the same. My feelings about the Frankenmuth experience have evolved and/or morphed over time. When I was a kid, it was an exciting treat to eat at the Bavarian Inn. However, by the time I was a teenager and young adult, the entire Frankenmuth experience seemed absurdly hokey. I was revolted by the ersatz German architecture and ridiculous lederhosen and dirndl dresses that the wait staff wore (and still wear). As I've reached middle age, I've made my peace with it all and embrace the corniness of it ...

Day 23 of the "post-a-day" marathon. I'll give everyone a temporary respite from 1984 albums. Just spent an hour or so watching the show Better Call Saul (the prequel to Breaking Bad , discussed over a decade ago in this blog), as older son is making his way through the series. Damn, I almost forgot how intense the show is: in particular the episode arc I which Saul Goodman collects a drop of seven million dollars in the New Mexico desert to bail Lalo Salamanca out of jail, and nearly dies in the process. (Lalo is one of the scariest television villains I've ever seen. He is both charming and terrifying at the same time. Actor Tony Dalton should have been nominated for an Emmy or two). Lalo Salamanca (portrayed by Tony Dalton) Now we are on the episode in which Lalo, having threatened Saul and Saul's wife Kim (in a super tense scene), splits from Albuquerque and Saul and Kim sequester themselves in a hotel to avoid Lalo's associates. Okay, back to...

I am currently reading Alex Van Halen's memoir Brothers , so I have VAN HALEN on the brain right now. And guess who released an album in the year of our lord 1984? And not only released an album that year, but actually named it 1984 ? Yep, that would be Van Halen. How do I approach writing about an album that sold over ten million copies, peaked at #2 on the Billboard charts, and produced a massive #1 single in "Jump"? I'll just start off with a personal approach. It's impossible to over estimate what a big deal Van Halen was in the early and mid 1980s, especially if one attended a small town Midwestern high school like I did. VH was voted favorite band by my 1986 senior class. (I voted for U2). If all or most of the kids in my school liked something, I was naturally skeptical, and Van Halen seemed a bit dim and dumb. A lot of flash with no substance. I mean, U2 was an "important" and "serious" band. They'd played at Live Aid an...

Older son is home and we just spend about an hour this morning watching a YouTube video about comically bad AI depictions of Jesus. This is the type of content I'd never see if he wasn't home. This post will just be a potpourri of different subjects. On a whim, I checked out of the library Alex Van Halen's new memoir Brothers , which is primarily about his relationship with his kid brother Eddie Van Halen. Perhaps you've heard of him. I am only about 1/4 of the way through the book, but am enjoying it so far. Alex, along with bassist Michael Anthony, always seemed like the quiet guys in Van Halen (the band), so I didn't know what to expect from this book (though I had heard Alex Van Halen interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air and I found him pretty engaging. He comes across as thoughtful and conversational in the book, and clearly loved his little brother. Expect a "1984 albums in review" about Van Halen's appropriately titled 1984. I will try to get that...

Former Replacements guitarist Bob "Slim" Dunlap died on December 18 after many years of ill health. Though Slim didn't join the Replacements (aka the 'Mats) until 1987, this seems the perfect time to write about the band's 1984 album Let It Be , and thus continue with this little series on 1984 long players. Let's rewind to that magical year of 1986, the year I have rhapsodized about so often in this blog. I don't remember exactly how this happened, but sometime in autumn '86, Ron P.--an older guy who lived on my dorm floor--let me borrow his vinyl copy of Let It Be . I assume this has to do with the R.E.M. factor. Ron may have thought that Let It Be was similar enough to R.E.M. that I'd like it, and maybe it also had to do with R.E.M.'s Peter Buck being guest guitarist on the opening track, "I Will Dare." (All roads lead back to R.E.M.). Allow me to digress for a moment and say a retrospective "thank you" to all the peop...

From San Pedro, California, we now travel across the continental United States, fly over the Atlantic Ocean, and make a stop in Basildon, England. The next album in my yearlong looks at '84 releases is from the pride of Basildon: Depeche Mode, and their 1984 LP, Some Great Reward . Depeche Mode were among a crop of "synthesizer bands" that emerged, mainly from the UK, in the early '80s. This includes Human League, Tears For Fears, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), Talk Talk, and Yazoo (to name a few). I'm sure scholarly works have been wriiten discussing this phenomenon, so I won't delve into that here, and in any case, I'm not educated enough in the subject to take a stab at it. Of all the so-called "synth bands" of the '80s, Depeche Mode is the one that has evolved, thrived, and soldiered on to the present day. They have released consistently good-to-great material every other year or so since 1981, and have not taken decade-long bre...

I'm steadily working on something that I hope will be entertaining, but I won't have it finished tonight. I am so close, though. In the meantime, I"ll shoot off this missive for the obligatory daily post. 

The worst part of this "31 posts in 31 days blog-as-advent-calendar" approach is that some days, I got nothin'. Well, I don't have anything too interesting, anyway. It was just a bland day at work, followed by a trip to Home Depot (or "Home Despot," as I like to call it) to pick up patching caulk and mollies for some home fix-it. Then I was home to bring in the trash and recycling bins, cursing that it's pitch black outside by 5:30 PM. I watched college basketball from 7-9 PM, and then worked on another 1984 album revisitation that I hope to post  in the next few days. No spoilers, but they are nice British lads. And now, I have to check and see if my FitBit is recharged because I have to get my 10,000 steps in.

I saw the movies Wicked and Blitz  over the weekend, so it was quite a few days of one-word movie titles. I went in to Wicked with no expectations. I have not read the 1995 book or seen the musical. About all I knew about it is that it's about the Wicked Witch of the West (aka Elphaba) and her complicated relationship with Glinda the Good Witch. (Apologies to any and all Wicked fans if I screw up any of the details). The bottom line is that I enjoyed it. Both of the co-leads (Cynthia Erivo/Elphaba) and Ariana Grande/Glinda) are good. I especially enjoyed the humor that Grande brought to her performance. It's crazy to think I've been aware of her since 2010, when she was an 18-year-old on the Nickelodeon kids' show VicTORIous and played Cat Valentine, the airheaded friend of the show's main character Tori Vega (Victoria Justice). The show was apparently a star vehicle for Victoria Justice, but it is Ariana Grande--who was just a small part of the ensemble cast--w...

This will be a "stuff I did today" post. My BiL M. had an extra ticket for today's Michigan State women's basketball game, so I went. I think this was my first time back at Breslin Center since the Covid pandemic started in March 2020, but I could be wrong. Maybe I'm misremembering. In any case, the game was exciting and the Spartans did just enough to win, 68-66, over Iowa. (This is an Iowa program that played in the national championship game last year, but is now without all-world superstar player Caitlin Clark). This is probably something more for my MSU sports-related blog (which I have largely abandoned because I simply have not felt motivated to write in it for about six years), but this MSU women's team is relentless and hustles on every play. The future looks bright. After the game, we had beers at Harrison Roadhouse, and that was great fun sitting at the bar and just shooting the shit for a few hours. I got home in time to see the Detroit Lions/Buffa...

Last night, I finally got around to watching Yacht Rock: a Dockumentary (and, yes, the misspelling in documentary was intentional. Pretty punny, eh!). I'd heard good buzz about the documentary, so I had it on the short list of movies to watch. However, I don't have a lot of love or nostalgia for yacht rock. It was like musical wallpaper when I was a kid. It was everywhere. It was ubiquitous. I can hear Christopher Cross's "Sailing" or the Doobie Brothers' "What a Fool Believes" without picturing myself driving with my mom in our 1975 Plymouth Valiant, on our way to a dentist appointment or a shopping excursion (or both on the same day). So, though I don't necessarily hate this music, I don't particularly enjoy it, either.  It's perfectly pleasant if bland aural wallpaper. That said, I enjoyed watching this film and hearing the perspectives of the musicians who created what we now call yacht rock (but was simply "top 40 radio" ba...

This post a day thing is sort of kicking my ass, but I'm determined to do it. This post is a potpourri or grab bag of random thoughts. Something I didn't mention yesterday in my Redd Kross post is their appearance in the cheap indie 1984 movie  Desperate Teenage Lovedolls . I wonder now how it's possible I didn't even know this existed until about a month ago. I started watching it on YouTube and it's entertaining so far. It's about an all-girl teenage rock band. I'll have more about  this later. I was listening to a podcast ( The Press Box ) and the subject of old magazines came up, specifically National Lampoon. The host of the pod talked about ordering a 1980 National Lampoon issue with John Hughes' short story Christmas ' 59 , which was the inspiration for the movie Christmas Vacation. The podcast was more about the experience of reading and flipping through the vintage mag more than the Hughes story. It took me back to being a kid in the earl...

 Last night, I finally finished reading Now You're One of Us: The Incredible Story of Redd Kross. A few days ago, in my Minutemen post, I talked about how that band had its own world. I'd say it's a similar situation with Redd Kross (coincidentally, another Los Angeles-based band). Just as the Minutemen were primarily the vision of two extremely close friends (who could be classified as "brothers from another mother") in D. Boon and Mike Watt, Redd Kross are the vision of two actual brothers (Jeff and Steven McDonald). Jeff and Steven were obsessed with music from an early age. In 1970, When Jeff was seven years old and Steven only three years old, they pooled their money to buy a copy of the Beatles' "White Album." Their musical precociousness was off the charts throughout their youth. While other kids in the '70s were obsessed with say, Star Wars , baseball cards, or comic books, Jeff and Steven were obsessed with the Beatles, David Bowie, T. ...

Former major league baseball great Rocky Colavito died yesterday at the age of 91. Along with Norm Cash, he was my dad's favorite baseball player as a kid. The Rock was a little before my time (he played from 1955-1968), but I grew up hearing about him and his exploits, and I poured over my dad's 1961 Detroit Tigers yearbook which featured a two-page spread dedicated to Colavito and his famous pre-batting ritual of dramatic stretching and calisthenics with the bat, followed by him entering the batter's box and menacingly pointing the bat directly at the pitcher. He seemed liked a total badass then (before that term was in my vocabulary). It didn't hurt that he had matinee idol good looks and that his wife--also pictured in the yearbook--was quite stunning. He seemed like just about the coolest baseball player ever and I wished that I could go back in time to see him play. Needless to say, as a young baseball/softball player, I attempted to emulate Colavito's warm-up...

In trying to get a post in every day this month, which at this point has become a Brainsplotch yearly tradition since, uh, 2022, inevitably there'll be some days in which the content kinda sucks. Today might be one of those days. When I say, "suck," I don't mean "sad," I just mean "inconsequential," "mundane," "dull as fuck," "exciting as watching paint dry." So, here's the deal. It's a little past 11 o'clock and I'd like to get some reading in before I go to bed. I am almost done with the Redd Kross book, Now You're One of Us . I am enjoying it quite a bit and maybe will write about it a bit in here. On a whim, we started watching an old British sitcom from the early aughts called Black Books. It's about a rundown, disorganized bookshop in London called...you guessed it...Black Books. The store is run by a misanthrope named...you guessed it again...Black (Bernard Black, to be precise). The ...

"We don't write songs, we write rivers"--Mike Watt Minutemen bassist Watt nails it with this quote, and who--outside of his bandmate/soulmate D. Boon--would know better. This band from San Pedro, California never wrote conventional songs. Their songs are like brief journal entries put to music. Sometimes they are more like disjointed thoughts put to music. And sometimes, the instrumental interplay between Mike Watt's active and bouncing bass, D. Boon's jagged guitar stabs and beat poet-like vocals, and George Hurley's jazzy, syncopated drumming are enough to make the lyrics inconsequential. As Watt said in the above quote, the Minutemen's songs are best described as rivers: they start from a little trickle, twist and turn in unexpected directions before spilling out into a larger body of water. Then they start all over again, only to take a completely different direction. The Minutemen created their own little world with their own private language, and the...

I have two minutes to get a post out. Had no time to write today. I'm sorry. It was a relaxed day. The big highlight: Hot Frosty on Netflix. This is a movie about a ridiculously handsome and chiseled (more than one meaning in that word) ice sculpture who magically comes to live. Zaniness ensues. Yes, it's as dumb as it sounds...but pretty damned enjoyable.

We just got home from seeing the Jeff Daniels play (with the long, ungainly title of) Office Christmas Party : Grinch in Fight With Rudolph , Police Called . It was at the Purple Rose Theatre in Chelsea, a venue I'd never been to before. It only took me 34 years to see a performance here, which is how long it's been in operation. I should make it clear that though Jeff Daniels wrote the play, he doesn't act in it or direct. I'll cut to the chase by saying the play is quite funny. It would take too long to explain the zany plot. I'll leave that to you.  The Purple Rose Theatre is much smaller and more intimate than I expected. It only seats about 168 and there are only about five rows on three sides that surround the performance area. When we arrived in Chelsea, unbeknownst to us, it was just as their Holiday parade was starting and we were terrified we wouldn't find a place to park or eat (but amazingly, we grabbed a spot in the public parking lot next to...

I am plopped on my couch with a cat and am seriously concerned I might fall asleep before I can do a blog entry. I stayed up too late last night, which is a real hazard when the Lions play a night game. It's a few hours later and somehow, I'm still awake, but probably not for long. We got a second wind and watched the new episodes of Abbott Elementary and Silo, but now I'm back to being exhausted and ready for bed.

I have about fifteen minutes to get in this post. I have spent the last 3 1/2 hours watching the Detroit Lions beat the hated Green Bay Packers in a huge game.  The Lions' depleted but still tough defense holds the Packers to a game-tying field goal, but the Lions have plenty of time to march down field on the ensuing possession and kick the game-winning field goal on the final play of the game. 34-31 win for Detroit.  As for me, I turned the sound down on the TV and spent most of the second half standing, pacing, or sprawled on the floor in front of the television. I managed not to yell so as not to wake up any people or animals. Onward and upward, Lions!

Happy Spotify Wrapped Day for all who celebrate. 'Tis the day when we irritate the fuck out of all our friends and acquaintances with the results of the Spotify overlords tabulations of our year-long listening habits. Who am I kidding? I actually kinda look forward to this, and with the country descending into the inevitable chaos of another Trump administration, I look for any entertaining distraction I can find. Unsurprisingly, Redd Kross is my top Spotify musical listen of 2024. With a new album, tour, documentary, and book out this year, it has been a big year for them and I have been right on board.

L. and I just got home from Wharton Center, where we saw the multi-talented Ana Gasteyer perform, along with her excellent jazz combo, a selection of Holiday songs. They were mainly Christmas songs of the secular variety, as Ana pointed out--with one Hanukkah song in the mix.  The show was much more than just music, because Ana Gasteyer is hilarious. She has a long career on stage, film, and television. She was a cast member of Saturday Night Live  and has starred in television shows such as Suburgatory, The Goldbergs, and American Auto to name just a few. Go to her IMDb page or Wikipedia to see everything she's done. She acts, she does comedy, and she has an incredible singing voice. In this evening's show, she riffed on subjects ranging from making Christmas cards, Black Friday frenzy, post-election self-care purchases, wanting to get her song "Sugar & Booze" in a commercial--preferably a pharmaceutical commercial, and that led into a hilarious d...

I finally got around to firing up Disney+ and watching the recently released Beatles ' 64 documentary. It's always fun to see footage of the Beatles, and there is plenty of this Maysles brothers stuff (which comprises a bulk of this new film) that I had never seen before. I fact, I've never seen the Maysles' 1964 documentary, What's Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A .  This 2024 documentary includes talking heads discussing their Beatles memories and attempts to contextualize the band's arrival in the U.S. Did the Beatles help America heal after the JFK assassination? Perhaps? They certainly created a much needed distraction--for both kids AND many adults. The kids fell in love with the Fab Four while the adults seemed to be--by and large--bemused by the phenomenon. For me, the highlight of the "talking heads" portion of the film was music producer Jack Douglas telling his story of traveling to Liverpool with a buddy during the height of Beatlemani...

It's December, which means it's my last month of the year "post a day" effort. It's my own "advent calendar," in blog form, in which I crawl up my own butt every day for your entertainment. Well, "entertainment" might be a stretch. I still have several 1984 albums I want to write about, so expect more of those. Some of them will be "quick hits," in which I just offer short observations. Maybe I'll finally talk about how despondent I am about the election and the feeling that everything I've tried to stand for in my life doesn't seem to matter to most Americans.  I'm currently reading the book Now You're One of Us about the band Redd Kross, so I can guarantee there'll be something about that in this blog. And that's all I have for now. See you tomorrow.

"Oy, Wanker, Bloke, Telly"  This is a descriptive term, for a certain strand of Britpop, that I recently heard podcaster Yasi Salek use on the most recent episode of Bandsplain (about the band Blur--who, coincidentally, I love). It made me laugh out loud, because this is just the sort of British pop music I tend to gravitate towards. It's the sort of music that wears its Britishness proudly on its Union Jacked sleeve. While the subject of this post, The Smiths, aren't of the 1990s Britpop movement, the music they made in the 1980s certainly helped pave the way. Now, let's take the time machine back to that magical year of 1986 that I have discussed so much in this blog: Sometime during the first week of college freshman year, a particularly outgoing floormate--I can't remember exactly who this was--knocked on my door and introduced himself. (The irony of me forgetting who this kid was is not lost on me. I think it might have been Bob D., but I'm just guess...