Sunday, August 28, 2005

Our only friend is chaos.


Upright Citizens Brigade: Season One DVD

Cast (L -R):

Matt Besser (Adair)

Amy Poehler (Colby)

Matt Walsh (Trotter)

Ian Roberts (Antoine)

Distributed by Comedy Central



You might not recognize any of the names above. Except Comedy Central, jerk. I mean the people's names.

You'd know Amy Poehler, though, since she's appeared on Saturday Night Live for, I don't know, like three years. Matt Walsh followed UCB with a couple years on the Daily Show as a reporter.

Okay, I admit Roberts and Besser have disappeared.

But I submit to you: these four no-names are, ten times out of ten, funnier than fucking Will Farrell and Vince Vaughn. Jimmy Kimmell in his wildest dreams has nothing on these people.

The idea behind UCB is pretty simple. Like Monty Python and Kids in the Hall before them, they pretty much create insane characters in insane situations and make asses of themselves.

Like these shows--and the infinitely inferior SNL and MadTV--UCB episodes are composed of several brief sketches, usually involving all four actors. More than any of these, UCB sketches are somewhat related, each revolving to some degree around the title of the episode.

Also unlike the rest, UCB has a vague sort of plot to the entire show, summarized at the start of every episode:

The Upright Citizens Brigade is a super-secret organization, not affiliated with any government, that aims to promote chaos and disrupt order throughout the world.

This is probably the least important part of every UCB episode. The UCB characters appear briefly in every episode between skits. During the skits, the same actors portray the craziest characters imaginable. It doesn't matter what the backstory is. Just get to the comedy.

And they do. It's often said in reviews that the first season is the best, so you're in luck.

But before we get to the good stuff, let me open with the negatives.

UCB is not for everyone. At all. It can be pretty offensive (ass pennies), it can be pretty absurd, and, sometimes, it can be simply not funny. The interactions between UCB characters when they are in UCB character, especially, just don't work sometimes.

Even with only ten episodes to work with, I started to get a little tired of some of the acting. Each actor is very good at a few characters, but after a while they begin to grate a little. Ian Roberts' Antoine is pissed at everybody. I get it.

Let me get specific about the problems for a minute. I loved the episode "Lady of the Lake." It was hilarious. Chumbawumba.

But the episode took an absolute nosedive about two-thirds of the way through. The assassination sequence--during which Amy Poehler's wonderful "I ain't no girl!" character tries to kill frat boy Blaine by throwing her knife--was, quite frankly, boring. It nearly sank the episode. Such is sketch comedy, I guess, and all comedy generally.

Now, the positives. As I said, each performer can pretty much nail a couple of characters wonderfully, and you'll see a typical Poehler or typical Walsh appear at some point in each episode. Matt Besser's poo stick salesman in the second episode is a perfect example. I think Ian Roberts is at his best as a self-important CEO in a "Cyborgs" skit.

It's also great to watch the DVD version of the season because you can easily see the running jokes throughout the episodes. The Titte Brothers band is a perfect example. I think this facet alone puts UCB head and shoulders above the random silliness of SNL and displays the writing talent of the members of the group.

I believe at this point in the review I would mention something about the special features found on the DVD. Okay. Truth time. I didn't view any of these. I just watched the episodes.

Whatever.

Grade: B+

Summary:Probably in the top five sketch comedy shows available on DVD. Its absurdity, brilliant characters, hilarious delivery, and in-episode and across-episode references put it way beyond SNL. It's a cult hit--not for everyone, but absolutely hilarious to some and the best example of absurd sketch comedy America has produced. I would recommend it to anyone who finds the following things funny: Robot Chicken, Stella, Dave Chappelle's Show, Kids in the Hall, the Daily Show.

Episode list:

1. Bucket of Truth
2. Poo Stick
3. Saigon Suicide Show
4. Power Marketing
5. Children's Revolution
6. Story of the Toad
7. Lady of the Lake
8. Time Machine
9. Cyborgs
10. The Little Donny Foundation

UCB Homepage

Buy Season 1 here

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

I am in love with Jason Matthew Kramb

Hahahahahaha I have a friend named Jason.

He is my roommate.

He and I have a new joke. It is this: we decided the word "no" can be taken to mean "I reject everything about your being." "You are terrible and wrong and I resist you." "We shall never be anything but enemies, and you are worthless."

It's best used in conjunction with someone's name. For example: "Rick Santorum. No."

This indicates that I reject everything that "Rick Santorum" means.

We use it on each other all the time.

Jason: Can I turn off the light?
Me: Jason? No.
Jason: Oh, fuck.

And there you have it, really.

We also have been using "of the ____ persuasion" in our sentences a lot. "This person is of the American persuasion," for example. It doesn't make a lot of sense, I guess.

I know I promised a review soon. I've been sick. Plus school started. 19 hours this time around.

Whatever. I'm also tutoring a Filipino nun on her thesis. She has already determined that I am an agnostic. Should be an interesting semester.

Anyway, UCB is in the works. Then I think another music review.

We shall see.

Okay bye.

Saturday, August 20, 2005

Hey, freshmen: moo.

Okay, my blog is still reeling from Mikey's brutal hijacking. But life goes on.

I feel sick. I fell asleep for hours today, and it was wonderful. Then I had free ice cream at the freshman social, and now here I am. Teresa, Annveig (her mother) and I are probably going to hang out tonight.

Aaron Gray arrived today. I haven't seen him yet, but I'm going to make a prediction: still unbearably cute.

Storti's truck died. Jumping attempt failed. Our house is now down to one car for six people.

By the way, that's the truck he put $1100 into about a week ago. He got tricked good.

Today at the freshman social I was approached by a guy handing out flyers for Catholic Life and Campus Ministry. It was the guy who played frisbee with us that one time, the one who rode his skateboard down Stuart hill a lot. It's hard to convince someone you're being open-minded when you're thinking to yourself, man, I'm more open-minded than you are.

But I took his flyers. This was the dramatic conclusion.

Okay I'm going to eat.

Expect a UCB review soon.

Bye.

Friday, August 19, 2005

Here's to the atom bomb

Okay finally that River Stewardship thing is over. Or ova, as Jason would say.

I'm really really happy. It was a waste of time. Toward the end they started talking about everybody attending some meetings during the school year. Yeah, I've got news, that's not going to happen.

Trust me.

You don't want me at your meetings.

So now I'm happy because that trip is over, and Teresa arrived today, and school starts soon.

Coming soon will be a review of the first season of Upright Citizens Brigade, a comedy television show in which four actors--three male and one female--dress up all crazy and do little sketches. It is the source of many of the dumb phrases I and my friends--especially Brett--say, and it's pretty funny every time we say them. I think it ran in about 2000 to 2003, or something, and cast members went on to Saturday Night Live (Amy Poehler) and the Daily Show (Matt Walsh).

Also I might pull out some unexpected topics to review. Examples would be my wallet, the concept of "lunch," my professors, or one of my roommates. Look out, Beard.

Hey, wait, listen. Before I go: Thunderbirds Are Now! are playing in Newport, Kentucky (over the Ohio from Cincinnati) August 22nd, 2005. That's the night after the first day of school for UD students. They're playing with some opener I can't remember, as well as Rahim, another French Kiss Records band who Tony Storti assures me are like TAN! but somewhat slower. I loved TAN! the first time I saw them, and I would recommend everyone get to the show however they can.

Okay time for me to run along.

Love,

Steve

Monday, August 15, 2005

I cannot get excited about rivers.

All right, listen. I'm not some kind of crazy anti-water jerk, here, but I have a problem.

I can't get pumped about old H2O.

It's just not happening.

For some reason, the Berry Scholars Program requires every member to participate in a five-day seminar about watersheds, rivers, water resources, and wasting time. The wasting time part seems pretty important to them.

I'm not going to bitch and moan, though. I'm just going to say I cannot fucking wait for the school year.

Jesus Christ I can't wait.

Tomorrow is the first of two days of canoeing. At least I have Anne as my canoe partner.

Hope she loves treading water in the Great Miami, wondering how I flipped a canoe in the first four seconds of being in it.

These days I've been watching old Upright Citizens Brigade seasons. That's a show that was on Comedy Central a few years ago, and, like all good shows, was quickly cancelled. It's really funny and I'll bet you'll hear more about it in the near future.

Okay time for river watershed resources wastewater runoff aquifer stewardship bullshit.

Steve

Friday, August 12, 2005

Eat this album: music review

Album: Justamustache

Artist: Thunderbirds Are Now!

Label: French Kiss Records


"T-h-u-n-d-e-r, b-i-r-d-s are now!"

That's how the album opens. It's a couple of women chanting it like cheerleaders, with handclaps and everything. It's pretty funny.

And it lets the listener know just how much insane energy they're about to experience.

Listening to Thunderbirds Are Now! is a little bit like riding a rollercoaster, or taking off on a jet. It's a wonderful time, but things feel like they're just barely under control.

Actually, a better comparison for the album is a really intense circus. The simple flat-out energy and attack of the music is crazy enough to bring that image to mind.

Piece by piece, there is really nothing fantastic about Thunderbirds Are Now!. To start, drummer Mike Durgan is not great. That is, if he has massive talent, the band never needs him to show it. He can keep the song together, but he doesn't stand out.

Bassist Howard Chang is really responsible for the melody of almost every song. This is not completely remarkable--as the name of this blog indicates, the bass is the most important instrument when rocking--but Thunderbirds bass is really, really good. It's catchy, powerful, and never irritating or boring.

The guitarwork on Justamustache is the sort of crazy stuff you hear in the best At the Drive-In. Some of the more popular bands I could compare Allen's guitar parts to are Franz Ferdinand or Sparta. Really, just think "the opposite of Tool" and you'll have a good idea.

Vocally, TAN! boasts incredibly catchy lyrics and melodies. Every song has a refrain or lyric that I can't get out of my head. On the other hand, for a while I was convinced the singer was female. Allen has a sort of nervous urgency to his voice, which is also naturally somewhat high-pitched, that made me think "woman singer." But the vocals are a key part of the circus, crazy and intense.

Lastly, keyboardist/tambourinist Scott Allen (who I assume is the singer's brother) is really hard to describe. Now that I've seen TAN! live, I realize he's the energy man, responsible for keeping up the energy at the show--pretty much running around, throwing his tambourine, falling down, and generally flipping out. Think mic tricks. On the album, the keyboard parts are cool and everything, but not exactly necessary (despite what the French Kiss Records website says). Nothing against Scott, but the album rocks enough without him.

So there are the members. Now here are the songs.

"Better Safe Than Safari": A preview of the craziness to come. The song mysteriously starts with twenty seconds of holding one note (immediately after the cheer, that is). Then they're off and running, and in the first lines of the album you see why I really like TAN!:

You've got
A big mouth
With big words
Spilling out

Come here
Give me a kiss
With vocabulary lips

He said "vocabulary lips." And it didn't sound dumb as shit.

The defining moment of "Better Safe Than Safari," however, is the bridge. After a little guitar interlude, everybody jumps in, and Ryan Allen freaks out on the vocals. More than the rest of the song, the bridge is an indication of the intensity the listener is about to experience in the rest of the album. A line that always sticks in my head is "Who wants to be real?/It's more fun to pretend."

"Eat This City": Guitar and bass play the catchiest TAN! riff together at the start of this song. In fact, this whole song will be permanently lodged in your brain if you ever hear it--but not in a "Hollaback Girl" way; more of a "Blister in the Sun" sort of thing. A good thing.

This song is basically perfect. My only complaint is that, at 2:47, it's far too short. It even contains as close as TAN! comes to a guitar solo. If I had to pick a defining moment, it's probably the chorus, which is just "Eat this city" over and over. I have never heard a funnier command.

"198090 (Aquatic Cupid's)": Everybody dance!! While I've never heard TAN!'s previous release, Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief, I've heard this song is a throwback to that album. It's pretty dancey, and has the quarter-note guitar that requires.

I actually like the use of keyboards and samples in this song. At 1:50 the song rocks out with some racing bass, then launches into a second section separate from the rest of the song, much like the Franz Ferdinand hit "Take Me Out." It's an extremely catchy little part.

They talk slow
Repeating words that they already know
We talk fast
Steal from the future and not from the past

Anyway this song is dance punk and it's really cool.

"Harpoons of Love": A thundering (I mean cute) two-note keyboard part kicks off this pounding song. The lyrics in this one again reflect the devil theme. The chorus to this one makes me again think of the circus image. It's rough and rocking and hard to contain. The vocals are definitely what I've seen described as "sassy." The bridge on this one ("There's one thing (one thing) I do well/The first is buy and the second is sell") is again the most powerful part of the song.

Following the bridge Ryan Allen's guitar takes over, and for about half a minute you could be listening to any uptempo alternative rock song produced in the last twenty years. It's cool.

"Enough About Me, Let's Talk About Me": This song, probably fast by most bands' standards, is a little slow on this album. The structure of the verses--"Talked to a ___/Who thinks ____"--is a little irritating, and the chorus is nothing special either, in my opinion. However, after a guitar-driven interlude, the band plays a modified version of the chorus that is pretty cool.

Overall, however, this is one song that, in my opinion, just doesn't hold up compared to the rest of the album.

"To: Skulls": Tambourine galore! At least, in the intro of the song. This one is a little slower too, but contains some rocking guitar in both the verses and chorus. Scott Allen makes a triumphant appearance on vocals, and he and his brother trade during the chorus. It's a great success.

At 1:51, the drums and bass start a little syncopated rhythm while the Allen brothers do what they want. Then the drums do something besides keep the beat, and the song nearly falls apart. Fortunately, they pull it together in an almost Mars Volta-like moment.

"From: Skulls": Yes, this is a completely different song. A song driven by KEYBOARDS. At least partly. You can't ignore the bass. Vocals are at their sassiest, and they deliver the most intelligible chorus on the album:

Here's a message to the crowd:
It won't rain, not a single cloud
But tomorrow,
Tomorrow it's gonna pour.
If we waste all this precious time,
Then we'll commit the perfect crime
And scream "Murder!" (Murder!) when we find you dead on the floor.

See? Intelligible.

The song seems almost tame starting at 2:05 and nearly disappears at 3:15, drums knocking quietly along. Then at 3:35 it explodes and it is wonderful. Don't waste any precious time, I believe the message is. A classic emo scream from Scott Allen and this song signs off a winner.

"Bodies Adjust": I can't say the same for "Bodies Adjust." The keyboard is on piano voice, the drums are electronic, the vocals are doubled, the bass isn't doing shit. It's a softer dance song, and I wish it wasn't on this album. It's basically TAN! for anyone who wouldn't like the rest of the album.

That being said, I can enjoy this song. It gets stuck in my head just like any other TAN! song, and it's not bad at all. It just doesn't belong with "Eat This City" and the upcoming "Cobra Feet."

At 1:45 Ryan Allen's guitar almost convinces me to dance, and the repeated "Somebody adjust to the temperature" toward the end of the song is pretty cool. But the drums are too electronic, the vocals too precise and reserved, the bass too absent, for this song to rock in any sense of the word.

"This World Is Made of Paper": Guitar takes over at the outset of this song, along with quarter-note cowbell. Yes, I've seen the SNL skit with Christopher Walken. No, it's no longer funny.

The verses of this song dance, but the chorus features almost military snare drumming and syncopation that just rock. It also contains a completely average keyboard solo and breakdown, but the chorus is solid enough to balance this. Ryan Allen almost sounds pretty toward the end, in fact.

"Cobra Feet": Sweet, sweet bass dominates the verses in this song, which I think is a great closer. Catchy singalong chorus, not too much keyboard, it's really cool.

The bridge is worth sharing:

Who picks up the roadkill when it's dead?
Who reads a book they can't understand?
Why is blood blue, when we see red?
Who understands a thing I just said?

Moving on, the chantlike chorus leads to a guitar solo followed by a bass breakdown that allows the album to sort of peter out rather than crash. It ends with another peppy cheer: "A-w-e, s-o-m-e: Awesome! Totally!" It's cute.

Grade: B

Summary: Crazy, high-energy rock without being silly or painfully hardcore. Perhaps a little simplistic as far as keyboards and drums go, but this is covered by vocals that are constantly catchy and interesting. Misses on only a few tracks, and hits hard on the others.

Sounds like: At the Drive-In's Acrobatic Tenement with a real singer; Of Montreal's fastest songs with double the bass; Franz Ferdinand if they were ever excited about anything; Q and not U dances while Saves the Day lets the bass play (and stops being so emo).

Track listing:

1. Better Safe Than Safari
2. Eat This City
3. 198090 (Aquatic Cupid's)
4. Harpoons of Love
5. Enough About Me, Let's Talk About Me
6. To: Skulls
7. From: Skulls
8. Bodies Adjust
9. This World Is Made of Paper
10. Cobra Feet

Thunderbirds Are Now! page at French Kiss Records website

Thunderbirds Are Now! homepage

Buy Justamustache here

Every week it's something new

The proper time to update is obviously 2:20 AM.

When I say "Every week it's something new" I refer to the music I listen to.

For those who don't know, my music these days is almost always directly taken from Mr. Anthony Ray Storti. He's one of my roommates--my only one, right now, since nobody else has moved in yet.

Anyway, tomorrow you'll get a review of an album. Odds are, I took it via AIM file sharing either from Tony or on his recommendation.

I think it's going to be some indie shit. Perfect from Now On by Built to Spill or Emergency & I by the Dismemberment Plan. Who knows.

Tomorrow is my last day at Stuart Housekeeping. If there is a God, that is the last time the words "Stuart Housekeeping" will appear on this page. Fuck that waste of time.

Okay good night.

Steve

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Dave Eggers: can't write titles for shit

Dave Eggers is the author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. He is also the protagonist, a twentysomething college graduate dealing with the usual issues--you know, the direction of his life, the unbelievable youth and power he feels, the urge to express himself and reject the past, and raising his brother, eight-year-old Toph. Because his parents fucking died.

That might seem crass, but it's similar to the way Eggers himself approaches the deaths of his parents. Both were victims of cancer (as I said in the previous post, I don't have the book with me, so I might not be perfectly accurate here) within a few months of each other. Suddenly, the heads of the Eggers family are cut off, and Dave, his sister Beth, his somewhat distant and removed older brother Bill, and young Toph are on their own.

Dave and Beth take Toph from Chicago to their new home, Berkeley, California, where the two older siblings share the burden--and joy--of raising Toph. To Dave, this is a perfect opportunity to act as a sort of fake parent to Toph. He will not become his parents--whom he both reveres and hates, or maybe just exploits (more on that later)--he will be a model for a new world, a new parenthood. He will wrestle with Toph. He will play frisbee. He will don socks and slide on hardwood floors, even if his girlfriend and sister disapprove.

But Eggers' feelings toward Toph are not that simple at all. He describes the sort of out-of-place half-pity and half-distrust he feels when he is around parents of children Toph's age--a twenty-three-year-old among soccer moms. He describes his irrational fears that someone will contact child services and alert them that he and Toph eat off paper plates because no dishes are clean, or his fears that when he leaves Toph with a babysitter so he can go out for a night, the babysitter--a harmless Berkeley grad student--will brutally murder the boy, Eggers' fault for being negligent.

The novel is essentially divided into two parts (split, by the way, by a mostly but not totally fictional interview for a spot on San Francisco's Real World season). In the first part, Eggers employs the sort of back-and-forth dialogue that made me love his more recent book, You Shall Know Our Velocity! Lines of dialogue are presented without any "he said" or "she said" to stand in the way. Several times characters just stop being characters and start speaking directly to the reader, or addressing Eggers not as themselves but as other parts of his mind--pointing out to him, for example, that he is doing his parents a disservice every time he exploits their deaths for pity.

And Eggers definitely does this. Not only are there a few scenes in the book that this occurs--such as the "free haircut" scene--but Eggers readily recognizes the entire book is an exploitation. The title, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, is an admission of this. The question Eggers wants to resolve, it seems, is whether exploiting his parents--and recognizing and admitting that he is--in any way detracts from the tragedy itself. At one point, for example, as he is reflecting on his mother's death near Lake Superior, he upsets himself by realizing that he is later going to record his thoughts in order to write the book. Not only is he going to do this, he is already debating what to put, and is in fact carrying a tape recorder for this purpose. Does this detract from the thoughts on his mother's death?

The second half of the book gets a little crazy. This isn't Harry Potter--be ready for full-page paragraphs. Here Eggers deals with the meaning of his parents' deaths--years after their passing, he finally returns to Chicago--and faces the reality of his relationship to Toph and his major expression of his youth: a magazine he and his friends produced called Might Magazine. In several instances, Eggers' relationship to his growing brother is illustrated; while it would be telling too much to describe them, I'll admit that at first their significance was not apparent to me. As for Might, Eggers must recognize the failure of the youth he believed in so strongly.

That's not to say that at the end of the book (I called it a novel before, and I'm not going to delete that, but I'm not sure it's a novel since it's mostly non-fiction) Eggers is a wise old man. Not exactly. As I recall, the book doesn't exactly fade away comfortingly, accepting the responsibility of old age. Eggers is still on fire. The world is still a terrible sweet violent place.

The second half of the book contains some of the most beautiful writing I can remember reading. Of all things, Dave Eggers makes the throw of a frisbee beautiful and glorious and uplifting. Seriously, his description of a frisbee flying is really a great thing. So if he can move me with talk about a frisbee, imagine when he's describing his mother's ascension. Eggers is absolutely staggering.

I would recommend this book wholeheartedly to anyone--well, except for the language, I suppose. I would recommend this book wholeheartedly to anyone who can handle reading the word "dickfuck" and who doesn't mind a little grotesque rumination about the contents of a cancer. AHWOSG stands as one of the strongest, most daring, most darkly beautiful books I have recently read--self-conscious but unapologetically meaningful.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers, Vintage Publishing.

Grade: A-

Positives: it really is heartbreaking and genius; Eggers' messages about youth, parenthood, and death are beautifully delivered and dead-on; Eggers' writing is unparalleled.

Negatives: Eggers himself called the later part of the book "uneven" for its ruminations; Eggers' self-consciousness--aware he is writing the book, aware the book is self-pitying, etc., could be too much for some readers.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Good morning citizens

I've decided you have the right and responsibility to read my thoughts. So I started this. Here we are.

In my next post, I'll do my first review--a book I just read called A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. It was written in 2000 or 2001 and I think it's pretty badass. You'll hear about it tomorrow. I don't have the book with me, so it might be a little sketchy. So what.

Nighty.