The Nowies (Best of 2010)

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Thoughts on Vacation Part 2: The Christmas Mullets and the Great Hometown Stereotyping

I've spent a lot of time really stereotyping my hometown, and just a few days ago two of my closest friends from Bellingham came down for a birthday/welcome back party for another mutual friend, and I realized that the broad brush strokes I've painted over time might not accurately describe an outsider's perception.


...and with this thought in mind I went to the grocery store today and witnessed two, yes two, men with mullets.

and I'm not talking like "oh, I just haven't bothered cutting my hair and it kind of grows this way".  I mean like legitimate well groomed and articulated mullets.

I doubt it was coincidental that they just decided to mill around the Safeway in Battle Ground on Christmas Day.

But more than anything else I recognized the representation of their personalities that respectfully placed each into their magnificent and, dare I say, ballsy fashion statements.

Player #1 had the legitimate feathered mullet, the vanguard of the cliché mullet world.  Ironically he was also wearing a wife beater with a Hawaiian shirt.

example:

I should probably note that this a costume wig, and the dude definitely wasn't fucking around

Player #2 almost appeared to be a modern day version.  The phrase "Business in the front. Party in the back" seemed to be very much alive hear, as the top of his mullet was a very well groomed flat-top, which could either be interpreted as very post-modern or very registered sex offender.  But where he went left field here was his "back" was actually a groomed pony tail, which threw me for a loop because it actually almost legitimized his love for nostalgia.

Example:

Imagine this with a ponytail.  Yes, this is a picture of Billy Ray Cyrus.

As I drove home mildly confused and oddly frustrated, I realized that I am not exaggerating about any of the shit that I talked.  

That last thought hit me as I passed a deer-crossing sign that had a shotgun blast through it.

Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas.

"Remember, no man is a failure who has friends."

Thoughts on Vacation

My sister's new kitten plays fetch.  I feel I really don't need to elaborate this.

-Since my parents got divorced the two family dogs, Spock and Sanchez, have been separated.  After taking Sanchez with me back over to my mom's house for Christmas Eve, I realized that these two former housemates were separted quite abruptly from each other.  Then I imagined if this had happened to me what the reaction would be like, and then my side-tangent of a mind led me to imagine Spock and Sanchez reacting to seeing each other for the first time in months:

Sanchez: (walking into my mom's apartment) Spock?

Spock: (lifting his head up from his doggie cigarette) Sanchez?  Oh my god, dude, where the fuck have you been?!

(Sanchez and Spock go in for a handshake/one-arm dude hug)

Sanchez: So what the hell man?  What happened? You just up and took off one day?

Spock: Yeah man, I'm living with mom.  Apparently shit got real and I got evicted.

Sanchez: Oooooh. No shit man?

Spock: What about you?  Are you still living at Dad's?

Sanchez:  Yeah, it's alright, but this cat moved for the break.  She's alright, but she's kind of a pain in the ass.

Spock: Yeah I heard. Sorry to hear about that.

Sanchez: Meh. Can I get a drag off that? (Spock passes the doggie cigarette)

-I've been fascinated of what the culture of the "divorced kid" life would be like, especially during the holidays, which as it turns out,  has an emphasis on decent but ambiguous Christmas presents (movie tickets, and on one occasion, a hookah), which my sister and I now call "divorce kid presents".  It's kind of great.

-My sister loves the show Criminal Minds, which is total crap, but apparently has the creepiest role ever played by Jason Alexander:

Really Awesome Christmas Shit List

For over a decade I've been making a mental list of all of the material things that can subsidize the holiday season pretty damn well.  The criteria isn't really defined, although some of these things are just "aha" moments during the month of December that I discovered.


Vince Guaraldi's Charlie Brown Christmas Soundtrack


I've said it before, and I'll say it again; this is the Dark Side of the Moon of Christmas music. I say this because, for being a total a blatant attempt at a seasonal cash grab, this album older than my parents is still holding the test of time. The musicianship is so good that it has very much defined Vince Guaraldi's legacy, and it's easy to understand why.  His combination of children's vocals, delicately bold piano, and sashaying drums can really either put your heart at ease or put you in a holiday type of mood, real fucking quick.

The Santa Clause

There are two things supremely righteous about this film. The first is how funny overall Tim Allen is in this movie.  I've seen this movie waaaaay too many times, but I think people forget how hilarious Allen was when he wasn't doing a show as dumb as Home Improvement.  Of course, there's a lot of kid type of humor (as most children movies are), but some of the lines are just fantastic.

Example: skip ahead to the 4:39 mark on the video below.



The second great thing it does is emphasizes divorce at a very young age.  Charlie, the little boy, is sharing the holidays between his father and mother (and mother's new husband), and major point of conflict that hadn't really been faced in cliche Disney Christmas movies was the struggle of the child trying to decipher how to handle Christmas between two families.  This is odd because for Disney to do this in the mid 90s (yes, this movie makes me feel that old) is both a little unexpected and gutsy for a business structured around nuclear families.

Home Alone & Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

Despite the fact that these movies is incredibly old, it has remained shockingly stable.  I think this comes from the fact that everyone from ages 12-25 grew up with this movie.  and I mean, come on.  It's the ultimate fantasy.  You are 9 years old, your family is driving you crazy, and you have a giant house full of awesome shit.  The scene alone where Macaulay Culkin is eating a gigantic sundae consisting marshmellows and cereal AND watching a violent gangster movie really is the embodiment of independence to a child.  To this day I still want to scare the crap out of the pizza delivery boy, except now it's usually a guy in his late 30s looking like he already had that happen to him twice already.

The sequel is clearly an extension and a money maker, but being it that John Hughes (rest in peace) maintains a lot of integrity in his movies, he actually makes Lost in New York longer and more articulate, adding in the equation of not to fear old scary people to the homeless (in which the most heartwarming scene involving turtle doves) only trumped by even more tortuous felon traps.

It's a Wonderful Life

What's most amazing about this movie is the fact that it took 30 years for people to realize how amazing this movie is.  Perhaps Frank Capra's masterpiece (negating Mr. Smith Goest to Washington and It Happened One Night), the only reason it's "festive" is that the climax of the film takes place sometime around Christmas.  But to this day it's one of the most moving films I've ever seen.  It's become such a cliché to say "Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings", but if you invest into the first two hours of the movie, it'll cause you to sob like a child.  Every person can relate to Jimmy Stewart's character, especially if you grew up in a close community of people or a small town. The protaganist is a such a crazy combination of hilarity and concentrated evil, the cast of townspeople are wonderful, adn the lead pushes something that few movies have ever pulled off; a person who does not feel fulfilled despite being a dedicate architect of your friends of community, and then eventually realizing it the most real and tangible way that it really is a wonderful life.

Watch this:



A Christmas Story

There's a reason there's an entire channel dedicated to this movie for 24 hours.  It's a hedonistic Christmas movie articulated to a T.  It's nothing more than an attempt to define the joys of watching your parents bitch and moan while you sit around begging for gifts and fantasize about how you would use such gifts.

Elvis Presley Christmas Album

What separates this from the rest of this list is it's not necessarily oriented towards Christmas, but yet it is entirely oriented towards the holiday. Example: the very first song starts with several men singing the word "Chriiiiiiiiiiiistmaaaaaaaaaaaaas.  Chriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiistmaaaaaaaaaaaaas." And then, BAM, a very aggresive snare drum starts pounding and it turns into this weird mesh of very cliche music and great odd 50s style rock and roll ("Blue Christmas" is a perfect example).  But because it's the most schizophrenic album I've ever heard, it has to be mentioned.

C9 Bulb Christmas Lights

I will make this case right here and now: eco-friendly Christmas lights are ruining Christmas.  For those of you who don't know what C9 bulbs are, they are the old fashion giant really overheating style lights that could possibly burn your house down.  But they are just soooo pretty.  My household somewhere towards the late 90s decided to switch the mini icicles which just looked like a flacid penis in comparison..  And we all know that Christmas is not about limp dicks, it's about big giant American throbbing dicks of consumerism, and C9s just look so damn bright and professional.

Hot Chocolate w/Peppermint Schnapps

This is a how a grown ass child like myself and my friends celebrate a holiday.  Usually you would add some music mentioned from this post as you sip on this.

The scent of Grand Fir Christmas trees

I consider myself to be a little bit of connoisseur on this topic. One thing that makes the strongest argument for a natural Christmas tree is the overwhelming scent of evergreen in your living room.  I often find myself during the non-holiday months looking for the smell in candle form.  It feels like sap and warmth.

Bing Crosby's "Silent Night"

To define the old fashion 60s Christmas archetype that is still equated to the holiday, there is only ONE SONG that perpetuates properly.

Sufjan Stevens

'Nuf said.

Honorable Mentions of 2010

I really did love this year in music.  I'm not sure why.  It might be because I paid more attention this year than most to music, or it could have just been resonated after months and months of legitimate LPs (and EPs for that matter).

At any rate, I was so in love with this music that I couldn't simply compile a 20 list set this year.  THEREFORE I'm opening up an honorable mentions section (essentially, whatever I couldn't cram into the 20).  I felt really obligated to do this because there was just. so. much. good. stuff. It felt like a shame to not nod everything great.

With that, very HONORABLE MENTIONS time:


Darker My Love Alive as You Are

I loved this band because they are really honing on the simplicity of beauty, and the beauty is really being taken out of psychedelic rock this year.  It's so fucking summery and breezy, but it still has a little kick to it.



The Corin Tucker Band 1000 Years

This was a peppy little attempt to make some post-Sleater Kinney music.  Not the worst, but not the best.  It was however a very nice reminder of where a lot of credit due wasn't delivered.



The Gaslight Anthem American Slang

GAHHH!!! I really really wanted to make this to the top this year, but I just couldn't do it.  I just couldn't.  While they have a great thing going for them, something deeply subconscious makes me hate them because they sound like Tom Petty.  The beauty of this, dude, is in its simplicity.


Joanna Newsom Have One on Me

Joanna Newsom made the most expansive track set yet, and what's better is it's very solid throughout.  I honestly can't see much wrong with it at all.  The problem: a friend of mine pointed out to me recently that the album seems as if it's three separate albums, and I think to me this might be why I feel funny about this album.  I think because it's so expansive that it becomes a little too overwhelming for me, even if it is 2 HOURS of really really great soothing coffee-on-a-saturday-morning music.




Mountain Man Mountain Man

Mountain Man is great but not refined.  I recognize they're pulling an Old Crow Medicine Show here doing the old-timey schtick, and for the most part they're definitely pulling it off.  But I just wished this was polished a little bit more.  People like Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes have a done a great job crossing over, but I think that's because it sounds a little more mature.


Surfer Blood Astro Coast

Surfer Blood was the band I wanted to like more.  Very catchy jingly shit that gets me like a cat getting a tassel waved at it (and trust me, I usually pounce for the mother fucker).  But this was just too much of a garage pop whoop-dee-do than a real mature or proper crack.  That's not to say it didn't have high points, I just feel they need to get more comfortable with themselves.  They still sound pretty fresh off the boat.




Spoon Transference

Spoon is making me feel old.  This is like when Bob Dylan did his later 70s work where he was kind of random and particular with stuff that not a lot of people got (partially because he lost his direction).  This is the same thing I feel about this.  It's not that it wasn't good, it's that they feel a little stale.  In this musical orgy of new shit we live in today, I can imagine how daunting it might be to maintain relevance, but I think what they don't get is that we will love them anyways.  I mean come on, they've given us so much to be thankful for in the last decade that they don't need to "progress" their sound.  It's okay to pull a Wilco now.  Trust us, Spoon.




Warpaint The Fool

Warpaint is what Vivian Girls are trying to be, but like Vivian Girls, I feel they need a little more time to work out their kinks.  Great femme lo-fi with a dark creamy center that pulls you into a dirge.  Also, it's got Shannyn Sossamon (who?), which would immediately take away, but for some reason this recipe for disaster makes you think "huh... okay this is actually decent" and then goes to "oohhhhh, wait this is really good."




Jamie Lidell Compass

Jamie is too German to function.  This time around he tried to break his funk and soul down 90s style, which Jamie still didn't fuck up (this is ironic because I always get nervous that whatever he does has great potential to fuck up).  This gives me great hapiness, but as always is his problem is he doesn't build something cohesive.  His albums always has some great GREAT jems but never a whole treasure box.  Trust me, his greatest hits is going to see like James Taylor's one day, but until then, he's kind of stuck until he makes 11 legitimate tracks in a role.



J. J. Grey & Mofro Georgia Warhorse

This is something that I didn't even know existed as a genre before I discovered J.J. Grey (and his Mofro); Floridian Country Rock. It's a simplistic beat and stomp twang album, but it is so fun and interesting because nothing sounds like this currently.




Four Tet There is Love in You

I know very little about this genre, and for the most part, ambient electronic trip-hop is something I just don't seem to "get".  But I heard this mildly sleep depraved and driving through I-5 in the middle of the night, and it clicked, and I'm lucky because this really is some of the best music to cascade out of the many different DIY music shits that seem to just ease out of people's laptops.  It also took them forever to actually get a second album since their last LP in 2006, but that time was apparently what he needed to come up with something new.

I probably should mention this...

Sometime over the course of this month I'm going to be changing the name of the blog to:

NOWAK ATTACK.

Kind of in an effort to streamline this thing, and partially because I feel like it's time for a little change.

How about a Black Keys music video?

How about yeah.

I've spent a long time thinking about this: Why I think Jackie Brown might be the greatest movie.

I think, on every single capacity Jackie Brown is a flawless movie, and it is also one of my favorites (we're talking top 5)

First off, the realism of lower income Los Angeles in the 1990s.  Much of the movie just emphasizes the environments of Compton, LA County jails, and the rest of the corruption and poverty of the time period.

Every actor is on their toes, and this was Tarantino at his best with his technique:

-He loved to utilize "has been" actors and actresses (given the pop culture of the time).  Harvey Keitel hadn't been in anything serious for 10 years when he did Resevoir Dogs.  John Travolta as well was a shadow before Pulp Fiction.  Tarantino in this film chose several.  First he uses Pam Grier, who up to that point was last known in the 1970s Blaxploitation films like Foxy Brown and Coffy, embodied as the archetypical black female badass.  Then there's Robert Forester, who was well established in the 1960s and 1970s in films like The Great Escape.

-But what he does is he develops their characters so much more than he does in Kill Bill.  Jackie Brown (Pam Greir) is a badass now, but such a vulnerable hardened badass.  She portrays a woman who is very hardened because she's had to do things for people who have taken advantage of her.  She asks Forester's character (Max Cherry) at one point "Max, how do you feel about getting old?" that leads to a discussion where she very abruptly summs her character up so well.  Even better, they expose both sides, the vulnerable AND the confidence of a sassy ass woman.  It's so great because in the beginning of the film when she's sent to prison and harshly interrogated by ATF agents, it's simultaneously comical but tragic.  She, in many ways, is a feminist streak throughout the entire plot.

But hot off of Pulp Fiction this floundered in the perfection laid before it.  However, this was the role that I've always loved more for Samuel L. Jackson.  He takes the absurd over-the-top badass and delegitimizes him.  He's not a man of integrity.  He's a man pushed to success (however illegal it may be) to the point that he will not stop to take what is his, but he does with a hysterical consistence of great lines throughout the movie.

Why I love this movie more than most though is that the scene is so slick.  It's very rooted in a soul and pulse, which is supplemented with a great soundtrack of fantastic funk and soul that flew out of the obscurity that was the 1970s.  The first scene is a title card track simply flowing of a side profile of the main character, Jackie Brown, walking through an airport as a stewardess to the tune of "Across 110th Street"  Just watch:



Tarantino definitely tries to quote a different genre of film everytime he makes another one (Resevoir Dogs was his crime sleuth drama, Inglorious Basterds was his historic drama, Kill Bill was his spaghetti-western/action film/ninja flic).

This was his film noir AND his blaxploitation film.  Everything is built is suspense between very few characters and focuses nearly all attention on directing a few people.  All with a lot of 70s r&b, and yet this movie is so fucking built around 90s L.A., as there's a very memorable scene with Samuel L. Jackson listening to a very 90s Johnny Cash song ("The Tennessee Stud" from American Recordings).

Finally my two favorite things put very simply:

-This movie has almost no violence, and absolutely no gore or blood, which is a huge shock.

-Robert De Niro is in this movie, and he plays almost no real part except an incompetent stoolie.  Best tertiary character I've ever seen, except for the butler from Boardwalk Empire.

If you have 10 minutes, I would encourage you to sit and watch these two scenes in this clip:

Biggest Disappointments of 2010

The problem with 2010 (besides the numerous non-music related ones) was that everybody who returned to the scene did not dig it with a gangster lean.  In reality it was not that anyone was trying too hard (except for maybe The National), but just fading.

Fading like your favorite pair of jeans that you have always loved because, well, it make your ass look good.  You've loved them, despite the fact they have faded from their nice polished dark wash and slim cut.  But now the holes in the crotch and knees are getting too big to hold back with safety pins, and it might be time to toss them, because unless you're doing homework on a Saturday afternoon, they're really not appropriate for any occasion.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the shitty old jeans of 2010:

Belle & Sebastian Belle & Sebastian Write About Love

It seems to appear that Belle & Sebastian need to go into Bruce Springsteen mode and start reissuing their better moments and then do 3-hour live sets.

Eels Tomorrow Morning

Eels are something my blues-rock enthusiast turned me on to when I was slightly dehydrated a little buzzed midday on a Saturday, which is exactly where brilliance like Hombre Lobo belongs.  HOWEVER, what's manipulating Mark Everett's sound is his drive to progress in sounds.  Some people pull it off, but Everett doesn't have enough clout to move out of his progressions to make something that "concludes" a supposed trilogoy like Tomorrow Morning.  


It's like when Conor Oberst came out with Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. Everyone hated it because it was too electronic, but everyone loved I'm Wide Awake, it's Morning because it was more confident in itself.  It's like that except the difference would be between this and Lobo.


The Hold Steady Heaven is Whenever

The Hold Steady dropped the baton (which is was thankfully picked up by another few bands), and they dropped it hard.  The wavering undefinability that made them so succesful in the last decade got a little too defined.  It seemed noticable with their last LP in 2008, and it eventually took down another giant.  Listening to it shows that their lyrical content, very shoddily, still exists, often talking about the glories of teenage coitus and the filth that is associated when your head starts bubbling the morning after drinking too hard.  But where it goes south is with their music, which seemed like something that wasn't easy to fuck up, but they apparently did it.  I suspect it has something to do with their organist leaving, but it's pretty inexcusable shit when they essentially created their own genre in the midst of numerous indie bands that came out during the 2000s.

The Magnetic Fields Realism

This album was just shit.  Just pure shit.



The National High Violet

Last winter I got my greasy mitts on a copy of this album and sat in my kitchen with great anticipation that this would be the first move in a long line of excellent deliveries of the vanguard, and I got supremely sad.  Not in the good sad way that The National usually does it (the kind that makes you think whoever has just recently broken your heart come into focus as you smoke a cigarette and ponder why you are as lonely as The National makes you feel oddly stoic).  My problem with this (and just about everybody else in 2010) was that they grew up.  Sometimes growing up is good, but sophomoric is what The National did.  They gave snotty boys with English majors something to subsidize they're lack of emotion.  But what makes this really bad was it took SOOO LOOONNNGGG to return after Boxer only for them to get slightly "completed".


Sleigh Bells Treats

I knew this album was going to suck.  Something this year that everyone seemed to agree on was Noise does not equal Rock.  Sleigh Bells was like Best Coast without the intellect to the lyrics (that was a joke) and replaced with a lot of fucking feedback.

She & Him Volume Two

M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel had a really really good thing going for them.  M. Ward knew he was moderately talented and popular, and Deschanel knew she looked good, sounded good, and (I would assume) smelled good.  So you take the two, stick them in a jar, shake for about 40 minutes, and you got Volume One.  It was great!  It was simple catchy pop songs that didn't really go anywhere, and they knew it!  It was so fun!  But I think that the combination has a quick expiration date because by the time they got around to finally recording a second LP, it went sour.  I mean, Volume One was half-assed, but that was the point.  "Theives" was a great track, but that was about it on this album.

-One night a buddy of mine came over and I got caught up in a phone call with my dad.  As I'm laying on my bed in the other room, I could suddenly hear Volume Two being played at a gentle volume (as most She & Him tracks should be played), and I got so angry and distracted I seriously considered taking my shoe off and throwing it at my friend.