can we go ahead and give mainstream country a break, already? there are actually some really great artists and some really great songwriters still working in the genre and when they stick to a old school mold it works out just fine. clearly, there's lots of nightmare garbage too, but drop the preconceived notions and there's some great stuff to explore.
remember when everybody used to say "i like every kind of music but country and rap"? fuck people who said that.
but there is nothing to do with, say, the race and class issues that surround country music and country music fans.
but, but, but... you know darius rucker is a country star now, right?
i think the point isn't that this kid freaked out about books, 3 year olds can get fully unhinged at the craziest things. that is why they are children are children and we are all adults, something something emotional development. the point is that his family was filming it, and immediately thought "YOUTUBE GOLD" and not "opprotunity for lesson about life and the proper way to behave as a human being."
i don't play anything but check my profile. maybe you recognize/know some of the records/people we've released on our little money losing venture? and i probably know or at least have seen live whatever local band you could think up.
sounds like we must at least know some of the same folks. i know mr. lucas' brother from the forestry program at uc berkeley in the early 2000s. from there i've dumped around oakland smoking weed and collecting records. when'd you leave sf?
haha. well played, sir. to rephrase, i'm ok with the use of lot b, set 25, universal studios, as a stand-in for non-descript alabama town that 99% of the population would not know by sight. what i am not ok with is to have a movie take place in a city that millions and millions of people know about and recognize and then have it be so clearly not actually filmed there.
also, you messed up the plot of sweet home alabama, dude. come on, that is an american classic. get it right. she doesn't meet a guy, she falls back in love with her standoffish estranged backwoods husband with a heart of gold (whose brother i went to college with, NAMEDROP!).
grr. arrgh. that makes me so frustrated. can they please film movies where they set them? i'm ok with every movie being set in LA, new orleans, new york or vancouver if it means NO MORE LIES. i'm tired of the geographic lies. they make me abnormally upset.
i'll have to watch this just like heaven film because i love me some bay area place recognition in movies and i also love me some donal logue. donal logue, you guys! why haven't we talked about "terriers"? it is so good and it is so probably going to get cancelled.
also, as an aside, i drive from olivehurst to san anselmo (they're in california, look 'em up!) every xmas morning. it is so empty and quiet and awesome and you can drive so fast. i like to imagine that we're in some post-apocalyptic world where my wife and i will be forced to play unwilling heroes to some band of helpless humans roaming the landscape and then we'll all learn something about our own humanity in the end. it's the best.
guys, as a resident of the bay area, i have a very important question about this movie and the bay area; was it actually filmed here (unlike that terrible tv show "parenthood" that i can't stop watching because sometimes i am a really obsessive completist to the point where, like, i have to own every single album that a certain pedal steel player played on because i liked him on that one record and i also really like pedal steel guitar, and also because i maybe have an unhealthy crush on lauren graham even though she is infuriating in that show and everything else she's ever been in)? and, if yes, is it worth watching for those fun little "i know that street corner," or "hey you can't make a right turn there and then be there" moments?
i've been watching the first season of the OC (let he who is without nightmare garbage in their netflix queue cast the first stone) and it, along with this WMOAT post, have got me thinking about just how much film and television are predicated upon people doing shit that just absolutely, fundamentally, makes no sense. duh aficionado material, for sure, but i want to live in a world where that shit gets left on the cutting room floor. "nope. that would never happen. NEXT."
for the longest time i thought teacherman was alan rickman but now that you blew his shit up i can clearly see i was wrong. my bad donald, and teacherman.
the reason this movie upset me so much was not that it was the worst movie of all time (clearly, it's not), it was that it was marketed to be so much more than the shitty, cliched, rom-com (minus most of the the com) that it is. i went in expecting to have my little argyle socks charmed off, and left hating the same shallow, unlikeable characters you see in every fucking rom-com. arrgggh, this movie.
also, this ("also her name is Autumn because fuck you.") times a million billion.
alright, well, my 2 cents is a little jumbled and occasionally self-serving but here goes. i am a HUGE record nerd and i work in the record nerd business of reissuing music from back in the day (before i had status and before i had a pager). one thing i've learned in this business is that, unless you are/were a huge star, your chances of getting paid for a reissue are next to nothing. i've communicated with a lot of old, obscure artists whose titles are controlled by one of the majors (WEA, EMI/CAP, UMG, SONY BMG) and not one of them has seen a single dollar, or even accounting statements for that matter. if they're lucky they at least own their own publishing which means they get paid 9 cents per song per cd or lp or mp3 sold. the philosophy of the majors seems to be the same as kathy bates in fried green tomatoes, "we're older and we have better lawyers."
so, i will admit to downloading old records off blogs. but i have rules about it. if it's available as a reissue on a independent label (i.e. sundazed, light in the attic, etc.) i buy it because i want those labels to stay in business. if it's reissued on a major, on the other hand, i probably won't because i have read enough about the majors to hate everything about them. if it's not currently in print then i have very few qualms about dl'ing it because there's no chance of the artist getting paid anyhow, and at least i'm helping to carry on the legacy of some obscure artist and record.
all that said, anything i've ever downloaded, i'll purchase on vinyl if/when i find it. though, used cd/record sales opens up a whole other can of worms. yes, it's helping independent record sellers to stay in business but the money trail stops there. the labels aren't getting paid, and the artists certainly aren't getting paid. in theory they got paid once for it, initially, but what's to stop that one cd from becoming 100s of mp3s on 10s of computers through the continued resale of it?
anyways, every time i have this conversation my opinion alters slightly and there's always more questions than answers but one thing that will never change, i never steal new, independent music.
bay area monsters, who is gonna be seeing buffalo springfield playing for the first time in 42 years on sunday? i will be the tall white guy smoking weed on the lawn, very easy to spot.
it's not like a failsafe solution but if you microwave the jar of pb a little while it can make the whole business a little easier. lid off, of course, unless you want shit to get real, real fast.
i was going to make a gif of this with baby friday in the middle, and frank lloyd wrong, and teacherman on either side of her but then my work computer crashed cause it's a piece of shit and i lost steam so instead here it is on its own. with a link to that sweet ass song.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_FXKrtciY3dQ/S8IJ0HFTvyI/AAAAAAAABLc/mZ9nfPmHyF0/s400/millie+jackson+-+caught+up.jpg
yeah, i was sorta regretting writing that as i was doing it. clearly, people in california can have very strong ties to the south, from okies in the 30s (wait, does oklahoma count as the south, i dunno?), to shipbuilders in wwii, to lots of folks post-katrina, to thousands, if not millions, in between. so yeah, i guess if you bought a confederate flag at the flea market in marysville you could be making a misguided attempt at showing your love for the south. but, i guess my point is that, regardless of intent, in california it is more likely to be interpreted as flat out racism than it would in the south. maybe? i dunno, i've only ever been to austin for sxsw so my knowledge of the south is hella weak, maybe i should just shut up. if you wanna talk about the racial politics of the bay area though, hit me up.
Comments