Glen Hirshberg's Blog - Posts Tagged "true"
Last Tango with Last Tango
T.R.U.E. (Tuesday Round-up of Everything), Week of 7/29. Post #1:
"Last Tango in Halifax," Season Two
The concept was always a little thin, a little pandering, a little does-anyone-at-the-BBC-actually-WATCH-television-or-go-outside: November-December romance between two one-time teen lovers who find each other again, six decades later, on Facebook.
But watching Derek Jacobi and Ann Reid and especially Nicola Walker doing their understated things, getting trapped in rainstorms in haunted old inns, mucking out sheep stalls, making do, making love, getting through...like, "Downton," in the end, it was easy to excuse. Easy to fall into. Hard not to like.
I've now watched half of Season Two, and--sadly, predictably--find that it's no longer hard. Having married off Derek and Ann, creator/writer Sally Wainwright begins casting about for some other justification for continuing the show, and decides on the Anything I Can Think Of school of plot development. The first 150 minutes of this year have brought us, let's see: an unwanted teen pregnancy (with a previously unmentioned girflriend); financial crises at two separate houses; Caroline's lesbian lover deciding to move in; Caroline's lover announcing she wants a baby...by sperm donor...which she will have by making love with an old flame...who's going to drop by during the happy couple's forthcoming birthday weekend away; revelations of an abortion from 30 years ago that will poison a relationship now; the teen mom running away; Caroline's oily ex-husband (more on him and his oil below) getting dropped by his publisher, having nowhere to go, and so moving in on the Nicola Walker character, who, yeah, makes poor decisions with men, and who deserves better, fairer treatment than this show wants to give her. And then there's the resurrection of the useless suicide-or-murder plot that almost ruined Season One. Oh, and I forgot the anaphylactic shock bit. All without varying that essential, lightweight tone. There's no comedy, here. No release. No actual characters, just situations. It's soap-opera slurry, with absolutely nothing at stake.
And then there's Tony Gardner playing Rupert Graves playing one of Rupert's trademark sleazebags.
You know how, on "Chopped," every now and then a contestant will grab the truffle oil out of the pantry, and we'll all scream, "No, NO!" at the screen, because we know the judges HATE truffle oil, always feel it overpowers everything else? The Gardner-Rupert character has become the BBC drama equivalent of truffle oil. They keep reaching for it. They keep sprinkling liberally over their dramas. We keep screaming. "NO!"
Too late...
"Last Tango in Halifax," Season Two
The concept was always a little thin, a little pandering, a little does-anyone-at-the-BBC-actually-WATCH-television-or-go-outside: November-December romance between two one-time teen lovers who find each other again, six decades later, on Facebook.
But watching Derek Jacobi and Ann Reid and especially Nicola Walker doing their understated things, getting trapped in rainstorms in haunted old inns, mucking out sheep stalls, making do, making love, getting through...like, "Downton," in the end, it was easy to excuse. Easy to fall into. Hard not to like.
I've now watched half of Season Two, and--sadly, predictably--find that it's no longer hard. Having married off Derek and Ann, creator/writer Sally Wainwright begins casting about for some other justification for continuing the show, and decides on the Anything I Can Think Of school of plot development. The first 150 minutes of this year have brought us, let's see: an unwanted teen pregnancy (with a previously unmentioned girflriend); financial crises at two separate houses; Caroline's lesbian lover deciding to move in; Caroline's lover announcing she wants a baby...by sperm donor...which she will have by making love with an old flame...who's going to drop by during the happy couple's forthcoming birthday weekend away; revelations of an abortion from 30 years ago that will poison a relationship now; the teen mom running away; Caroline's oily ex-husband (more on him and his oil below) getting dropped by his publisher, having nowhere to go, and so moving in on the Nicola Walker character, who, yeah, makes poor decisions with men, and who deserves better, fairer treatment than this show wants to give her. And then there's the resurrection of the useless suicide-or-murder plot that almost ruined Season One. Oh, and I forgot the anaphylactic shock bit. All without varying that essential, lightweight tone. There's no comedy, here. No release. No actual characters, just situations. It's soap-opera slurry, with absolutely nothing at stake.
And then there's Tony Gardner playing Rupert Graves playing one of Rupert's trademark sleazebags.
You know how, on "Chopped," every now and then a contestant will grab the truffle oil out of the pantry, and we'll all scream, "No, NO!" at the screen, because we know the judges HATE truffle oil, always feel it overpowers everything else? The Gardner-Rupert character has become the BBC drama equivalent of truffle oil. They keep reaching for it. They keep sprinkling liberally over their dramas. We keep screaming. "NO!"
Too late...
Howe Gelb-- "Vortexas"
T.R.U.E., Week of 7/29, Post #2:
Howe Gelb-- "Vortexas"
I've always filed Howe Gelb and Giant Sand way back in that deep, deep drawer full of artists I know I'm supposed to like, whom I've been assured I like, who share so many attributes with artists I DO like. If only there was one single memorable melody, one dazzling turn of phrase, preferably both, preferably together...
Listen here -->
I snapped up a promo copy of Howe's 2013 album, THE COINCIDENTALIST, in the 99-cent bins at Freakbeat (still among my favorite bins in Los Angeles). I only grabbed it, honestly, because it was 99 cents. But this opening track surprised me. Made me pull that drawer open wider. There's that Leonard Cohen old-guy groove, first of all, beautifully dusty and creaking, which gets funkier to me with each passing year. And those world-weary, Southwest-metanowhere lyrics: "It used to be much cheaper/to find a love and to keep her/to play guitar and reiterate/or embrace the heat and just hibernate." As wistful and wide-open, almost, as the Flatlanders' mythic, marvelous "Dallas," their farmers dogs that "only bark" and their cold north winds that bite. It really is like the Flatlanders, like Cohen, I thought--think--except, yeah, with no other people in it. Which isn't like Cohen, or the Flatlanders, either, but is like Tuscon, metaphorical Tuscon, "our universe center/used to live there like a renter." Hell, Vortexas could be a genre-name. Beats the hell out of Western Beat, or whatever Jimmie Dale Gilmore is calling it these days (though Gelb's Tuscon still isn't anywhere near as nowhere, or as alluring, as Gilmore's Dallas, his midnight trains).
Good stuff. The real, unreal stuff.
As for the rest of THE COINCIDENTALIST...it's almost as good. I think. That is, I remember it being good. That is, I'm pretty sure I played it all the way through, several times. I didn't MEAN to leave it in that drawer, it's just the drawer was open, and I was cleaning up. and I got distracted, and...
Howe Gelb-- "Vortexas"
I've always filed Howe Gelb and Giant Sand way back in that deep, deep drawer full of artists I know I'm supposed to like, whom I've been assured I like, who share so many attributes with artists I DO like. If only there was one single memorable melody, one dazzling turn of phrase, preferably both, preferably together...
Listen here -->
I snapped up a promo copy of Howe's 2013 album, THE COINCIDENTALIST, in the 99-cent bins at Freakbeat (still among my favorite bins in Los Angeles). I only grabbed it, honestly, because it was 99 cents. But this opening track surprised me. Made me pull that drawer open wider. There's that Leonard Cohen old-guy groove, first of all, beautifully dusty and creaking, which gets funkier to me with each passing year. And those world-weary, Southwest-metanowhere lyrics: "It used to be much cheaper/to find a love and to keep her/to play guitar and reiterate/or embrace the heat and just hibernate." As wistful and wide-open, almost, as the Flatlanders' mythic, marvelous "Dallas," their farmers dogs that "only bark" and their cold north winds that bite. It really is like the Flatlanders, like Cohen, I thought--think--except, yeah, with no other people in it. Which isn't like Cohen, or the Flatlanders, either, but is like Tuscon, metaphorical Tuscon, "our universe center/used to live there like a renter." Hell, Vortexas could be a genre-name. Beats the hell out of Western Beat, or whatever Jimmie Dale Gilmore is calling it these days (though Gelb's Tuscon still isn't anywhere near as nowhere, or as alluring, as Gilmore's Dallas, his midnight trains).
Good stuff. The real, unreal stuff.
As for the rest of THE COINCIDENTALIST...it's almost as good. I think. That is, I remember it being good. That is, I'm pretty sure I played it all the way through, several times. I didn't MEAN to leave it in that drawer, it's just the drawer was open, and I was cleaning up. and I got distracted, and...
Sam Lipsyte "The Rock" (in the journal Radio Silence, Issue #1)
Tuesday Round-up of Everything, Week of 8/5, Post #1:
Sam Lipsyte "The Rock" (in the journal Radio Silence, Issue #1)
Without doubt, the find of the week--month? year?--for me is the journal RADIO SILENCE, which celebrates and juxtaposes and recontextualizes literature and rock and roll in light of each other. And then lights both on fire. The only problem I see for this whole endeavor is that the first piece in the first issue may be the last word on this subject. The apotheosis.
Think I'm hyperbolizing? Smashing my keyboard-guitar before the song even starts? Suck on this:
"Rock. It's a dumb word...You could always ascertain what rocked and what didn't. Things rock in the context of what they promise to do and how they betray that. A band cannot hold anything back. It must give everything, and fall short. It's really only one moment, maybe two moments in a show, or a record, that seize you. The rest if procedure. 'That rocked,' you say, and people think you're half-kidding, grasping onto an adolescent, meaning-blasted phrase to express your admiration for a few seconds of electrical noise that vouched for your arrested adolescence. Bullshit. 'To rock,' as opposed to something as infantile as 'rocking out,' is the most severe and adult of enterprises. Most people are too childish to rock."
Whole piece here, for free, if you sign in.
Sign in. This rocks.
Sam Lipsyte "The Rock" (in the journal Radio Silence, Issue #1)
Without doubt, the find of the week--month? year?--for me is the journal RADIO SILENCE, which celebrates and juxtaposes and recontextualizes literature and rock and roll in light of each other. And then lights both on fire. The only problem I see for this whole endeavor is that the first piece in the first issue may be the last word on this subject. The apotheosis.
Think I'm hyperbolizing? Smashing my keyboard-guitar before the song even starts? Suck on this:
"Rock. It's a dumb word...You could always ascertain what rocked and what didn't. Things rock in the context of what they promise to do and how they betray that. A band cannot hold anything back. It must give everything, and fall short. It's really only one moment, maybe two moments in a show, or a record, that seize you. The rest if procedure. 'That rocked,' you say, and people think you're half-kidding, grasping onto an adolescent, meaning-blasted phrase to express your admiration for a few seconds of electrical noise that vouched for your arrested adolescence. Bullshit. 'To rock,' as opposed to something as infantile as 'rocking out,' is the most severe and adult of enterprises. Most people are too childish to rock."
Whole piece here, for free, if you sign in.
Sign in. This rocks.
The Jaws Drop
Tuesday Round-up of Everything, Week of 8/5, Post #2:
The Jaws Drop
Spurred by the trailers for--and even more, by the subtitle of-- "Sharknado 2: The Second One" (surely the most enticing subtitle since "Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia"), and cajoled by the pleadings of my family ('cause I have that sort of proper family, and it was that sort of summer night), I finally sat down and watched "Sharknado," which had lurked at the bottom of my DVR list for a year.
Jaw-dropper #1: It kinda delivered for us. That is, we were howling from the first five seconds, and we never stopped. Lots of Syfy movies are dumb. Most of them ignore science, or actual human behavior. But THIS! Floods that fill a house--so that, you know, the water can BURST OUT THE WINDOWS (WITH SHARKS IN IT)--onto dry lawn outside, which was somehow NOT flooded at that point...the (amateur) bombing of a tornado...which works...the chainsaw...I mean...
Jaw-dropper #2: "Sharknado" was not the least scientifically accurate movie I saw that day.
Because that's the day my pal--the scientist-screenwriter Neil Ruttenberg --and I took in the Natural Wonder that is "Lucy." In which brain capacity gets broken down into percentages, and treated like levels for a D&D character. "At 20%, you can control your body. At 30%, you can control other people's bodies. At 40%..."
I've already got dibs on "Sharknado 3." I'm already writing it. I've already subtitled it. "The Lucy One."
The Jaws Drop
Spurred by the trailers for--and even more, by the subtitle of-- "Sharknado 2: The Second One" (surely the most enticing subtitle since "Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia"), and cajoled by the pleadings of my family ('cause I have that sort of proper family, and it was that sort of summer night), I finally sat down and watched "Sharknado," which had lurked at the bottom of my DVR list for a year.
Jaw-dropper #1: It kinda delivered for us. That is, we were howling from the first five seconds, and we never stopped. Lots of Syfy movies are dumb. Most of them ignore science, or actual human behavior. But THIS! Floods that fill a house--so that, you know, the water can BURST OUT THE WINDOWS (WITH SHARKS IN IT)--onto dry lawn outside, which was somehow NOT flooded at that point...the (amateur) bombing of a tornado...which works...the chainsaw...I mean...
Jaw-dropper #2: "Sharknado" was not the least scientifically accurate movie I saw that day.
Because that's the day my pal--the scientist-screenwriter Neil Ruttenberg --and I took in the Natural Wonder that is "Lucy." In which brain capacity gets broken down into percentages, and treated like levels for a D&D character. "At 20%, you can control your body. At 30%, you can control other people's bodies. At 40%..."
I've already got dibs on "Sharknado 3." I'm already writing it. I've already subtitled it. "The Lucy One."
Otis Taylor-- "Look to the Side"
Tuesday Round-up of Everything, Week of 8/5, Post #3:
Otis Taylor-- "Look to the Side"
Listen to it here >>
The blues, for me--like most of the art I love most, in one way or another--has always been about mesmerism, about witching our way free of whatever's behind or coming for or already inside us. Strangely, then, I've gone back and forth on Otis Taylor, who hammers and smooths and slow-boils the blues down to its grooving, mesmeric essence, but sometimes seems to lose the essence in the process. Not this time.
I was playing this track back to back with the Isleys' "Ohio/Machine Gun" medley on my drive home through the baking mid-California cattlenowhere this weekend, and suddenly, 200 miles had evaporated--had winked out of existence--and I wasn't anywhere I knew, just floating, just driving, my work done, my book gone, my summer over, my family and friends far, so far, my life a flickering filament in the asphalt shimmer, a sidelong glance in a rearview mirror.
"If I follow the ocean..." "Look to the side..." I'm not sure, in the end, if listening to this keeps my blues at bay or drives them so deep down in me that I'll never get them out. I just know I don't seem to mind, either way.
Otis Taylor-- "Look to the Side"
Listen to it here >>
The blues, for me--like most of the art I love most, in one way or another--has always been about mesmerism, about witching our way free of whatever's behind or coming for or already inside us. Strangely, then, I've gone back and forth on Otis Taylor, who hammers and smooths and slow-boils the blues down to its grooving, mesmeric essence, but sometimes seems to lose the essence in the process. Not this time.
I was playing this track back to back with the Isleys' "Ohio/Machine Gun" medley on my drive home through the baking mid-California cattlenowhere this weekend, and suddenly, 200 miles had evaporated--had winked out of existence--and I wasn't anywhere I knew, just floating, just driving, my work done, my book gone, my summer over, my family and friends far, so far, my life a flickering filament in the asphalt shimmer, a sidelong glance in a rearview mirror.
"If I follow the ocean..." "Look to the side..." I'm not sure, in the end, if listening to this keeps my blues at bay or drives them so deep down in me that I'll never get them out. I just know I don't seem to mind, either way.
Joyce Carol Oates ??
T.R.U.E., Week of 8/5, Post #4:
This week's final Round-up post is less a review or a recommendation than a call for conversation:
Someone, please, help me with Joyce Carol Oates.
The thing is, I've tried. For years. Often, and across at least a few of the vast continents of material in that catalog. Always, always, I admire the barely-controlled--but always controlled--splatters of imagery and wild color. I not only concede but applaud the icy insights into deceptively comfortable moments between people who think they know each other. Once or twice (Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
springs immediately to mind, but even then, I have to admit, I liked the movie more; it was kinder, and therefore MORE menacing), I've hit things I came close to loving.
But for me, there's still something missing. Sometimes, yeah, it's the pleasures her plots promise. Sometimes it's anyone I can care about, or just a sense that there's someone in the narrative that Oates cares about. Sometimes, her work really does read, to me, like the writing of someone who needs to come away from the desk, just every now and then. Have a glass of o.j., watch the sunset. Check out "Sharknado," maybe.
Most recently, I tackled Bellefleur, and it is suffused, swamped with sexually repressed and desperate characters, dark hallways, raging storms, a crumbling upstate New York castle, family secrets, a possibly clairvoyant cat. And yet...nothing happens. No one matters, even to each other, in the end, and so they don't to the reader, either. The book stays a 700-page fugue, a blizzard of post-Gothic imagery, beautiful, remote, startling, boring.
Am I wrong? Am I on the wrong Oates continent? Is there a slightly warmer one?
I'm so, so willing to be wrong.
Have at it...
This week's final Round-up post is less a review or a recommendation than a call for conversation:
Someone, please, help me with Joyce Carol Oates.
The thing is, I've tried. For years. Often, and across at least a few of the vast continents of material in that catalog. Always, always, I admire the barely-controlled--but always controlled--splatters of imagery and wild color. I not only concede but applaud the icy insights into deceptively comfortable moments between people who think they know each other. Once or twice (Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
springs immediately to mind, but even then, I have to admit, I liked the movie more; it was kinder, and therefore MORE menacing), I've hit things I came close to loving.
But for me, there's still something missing. Sometimes, yeah, it's the pleasures her plots promise. Sometimes it's anyone I can care about, or just a sense that there's someone in the narrative that Oates cares about. Sometimes, her work really does read, to me, like the writing of someone who needs to come away from the desk, just every now and then. Have a glass of o.j., watch the sunset. Check out "Sharknado," maybe.
Most recently, I tackled Bellefleur, and it is suffused, swamped with sexually repressed and desperate characters, dark hallways, raging storms, a crumbling upstate New York castle, family secrets, a possibly clairvoyant cat. And yet...nothing happens. No one matters, even to each other, in the end, and so they don't to the reader, either. The book stays a 700-page fugue, a blizzard of post-Gothic imagery, beautiful, remote, startling, boring.
Am I wrong? Am I on the wrong Oates continent? Is there a slightly warmer one?
I'm so, so willing to be wrong.
Have at it...
