"Expelled" Exposed

Not a lot to say here.

Just making sure anyone who might be interested in this clearing house of information on rectifying the misconceptions perpetuated by the film 'Expelled' (Sub-titled 'No Intelligence Allowed' without a hint of irony.) had a chance to find it easily.

http://www.expelledexposed.com/

Gawd bless Eugenie Scott.

A Snack & A Half of Irony - Intelligent Design, Hypocrisy & Hilarity

Have you heard about 'Expelled'? The new film featuring Ben Stein (yes, he of the vast vats of trivial knowledge with which he defended his vast vats of money.)

It's a film pushing the Intelligent Design agenda.

A quick primer on Intelligent Design: It's the evolution of Creationism.
Essentially I.D. claims that life as we know it could not possibly be a random occurence thus it must have been designed by a greater intelligence. I'm not going to get into the details here it has been done elsewhere better than I can do. But I will state my opinion - which happens to align perfectly with the evidence. I.D. is a complete load of anti-scientific bullshit.
The most genuinely intelligent thing about I.D. is it's tactic. It IS creationsim. Do not be fooled. It claims to be science, but it's actual claims fail to adhere to the actual scientific method... let alone the facts. Creationists are using I.D. as a wedge into science education, and for the most part is is failing, but it is putting up a good fight.
You may recall a movement (which failed) to have creation taught in schools - PUBLIC schools - and presented in hte name of fairness as an alternate theory as to how we got here. The fairness argument went a LONG way. It appealed to a lot of people (myself included at one time) who don't believe in the bible's version of creation, but who do ultimately believe in a fair playing filed and letting people make up thier own minds. But here's the thing... it is NOT science. It is not falsifiable, it is not a self-correcting process, it does not make measurable predictions with any reliabilty. Therefore it CAN NOT be taught as science. Fine, offer a theology class in public schools, that's all dandy, I have little doubt that Evolution won't be allowed in the door. We don't teach math in drama classes, we don't allow french-horns from band into french classes, despite the common word. And thus, dressing creationism up and giving it a scientifically appealling name should not mean it is allowed in science classes.
That's the basic issue with I.D. It's a tactic, more than any kind of real movement. It is creationism - though they've tried very hard not to admit it (and again have failed, there were bound to be loose lips). It didn't have much of a chance really before people started to recognise it for what it was. But folks are cottoning on. And it's been happening quickly really. I don't mean that people are beginning to tear apart I.D.s claims - that happened almost the very second a the first scientist caught wind of it. What is happening is that the word is getting around.

I.D. lost a very important battle two years ago - the infamous Dover case. Kind of the monkey-trial of it's day... except that this time science won.

So the argument has come around that I.D. is not getting it's fair chance to be heard. It is being oppressed. It's voice is squelched by those mean and nasty rational thinkers. And THAT is what 'Expelled' is apparently about. How an apparently smart guy like Ben Stein ended up on the wrong side of this issue, I do not know. But it sure is disappointing. I suppose it was inevitable really. All the I.D. lobby had to do was search until they found themselves someone who has a reputation as being smart to be their champion. Too bad for Ben Stein they found him first - now he's losing cred as a smart guy. He's instantly regulated himself to the bargain bin of intellectuals. He is now little more than a game show host and 'that guy from Ferris Buehler.'

I need to take a moment to declare that I have yet to see 'Expelled.' I cannot really speak to it directly. But I don't have to in order to get to my final point. I have every intention of seeing 'Expelled' for the record. I want to know what I am talking about when I rant beyond the scope of this post. I want to make something known though... there is NO WAY IN (non-existent) HELL that I will pay to see this movie. They are not getting my money for their crappy bullshit cause. Buy I absolutely will bit-torrent it first chance I get. (Note: Bit-torrenting is wrong. Do not do it. It is stealing. I am in no way recommending the bit-torrenting of movies - except this one. And I would never bit-torrent a movie - except this one. Do not bit-torrent movies - expect this one... and only then if you, like me, have some kind of intellectual need to see it and an aversion to putting money in the producer's pockets.)

Okay...

So, believe it or not, that was all set up.

I recently found this blog post my PZ Myers. I recommend you read it yourself (and the post that followed it.) rather than take my summary, but that won't stop me from summarizing.

PZ - atheist blogger - was actually interviewed for 'Expelled.' Last night he went to a screening of it in Minneapolis with his family and friends. The producers noted this and had him removed from the premises... with the threat of arrest - presumably assuming he was there to make a stink of some sort with his posse. Now, that's kind of ironic - the movie they made to protest the oppression of their own voice, and called 'Expelled' - they prevented a vocal atheist from seeing for fear that he might voice his opinion... they expelled him. Just him. No one else in his group. His family and his friends all got into the movie without issue.

But wait! There's more!

Amongst PZ's friends who he came with.... the mac-daddy of modern atheistic philosophy and activism - RICHARD DAWKINS, author of 'The God Delusion.'
They let Richard Dawkins in without even realizing who he was. Fucking awesome. And utterly un-'Intelligent.'

Allies III - Anonymous

A short post this time.

Time to catch my number of declared Allies up with the Enemies... though I do have a few enemies ready to add when I feel a burning desire to post them. C'mon ya bastards! Push my buttons!

Meantime...

My last Enemy was Scientology largely for their actions of having the now infamous Tom Cruise video removed from the internet. Old news now, but I was not alone in my outrage.

The group Anonymous has led the charge. While I haven't participated in their actions, I am on their side and someday I expect I will be among the legion.

Worth adding... Jay Novella, co-host of the Skeptic's Guide (the podcast produced by the NESS, my last declared ally) has made no secret of the fact that Tom Cruise is his least favourite person on the planet... not that he (unlike Scientologists) knows anyone who hasn't spent the vast majority of his life on the planet.

The Dilution of the World's Knowledge Base By the Crassest Form of Commerce

The internet is being diluted by bottom-feeding commercial ventures known as ‘affiliate marketing.’

Perhaps you are aware of it. Perhaps this is the first you’ve heard of it.
For the past 18 months I’ve been surrounded by it.

I work in an office where people have time – even are encouraged – to pursue additional projects outside of our business in tandem with their daily paid work.
Eighteen months ago two brothers who work in my office began evangelizing about how they were going to make a bajillion dollars and retire by age thirty. They had by sheer luck stumbled upon affiliate marketing and were going to use it to make their fortune.

They tried to recruit me to the notion too, but I was up to my ears in making a movie – something which in theory could actually make me my fortune, but more importantly was something that I was actually interested in spending my time doing, to the degree that even if I NEVER make a fortune at it, I’ll be happy to keep at it and never retire. Admittedly, my contempt had already begun.

So, what is Affiliate Marketing?
It sounds kind of like multi-level marketing – which calls up specters of Pyramid Schemes doesn’t it?
To the best of my understanding it falls short of being that loathsome, but it’s social affects are at least as insidious.

In short, how A.M. works is that you, the Affiliate Marketer picks a product.
It could be something semi-specific like Barbecue Equipment; or it could be something very specific like Coleman Barbecues. In any case it seems that you need to pick fairly specific items in order to be successful. “Food” is simply too broad.
You build a website about your product and utilize various techniques to ‘optimize’ how various search engines (Google being the Holy Grail) perceive your website. The hope is to make sure that any time anyone does a search for any of a number of related words that your site comes up on the first page of results – preferably as the number one hit.
There are various techniques for accomplishing this goal, all of which essentially centre upon taking advantage of the algorithms Google (and others) use to rank their pages. With your site optimized, you then (in tandem actually, but for simplicity lets pretend that these things happen in sequence) add a Google AdSense account to your page with all the ads tailored to the product category in question. But the real kicker is, you also source out merchants who offer kickbacks to anyone who essentially recommends their product on the web. Essentially you put links to their websites on yours and anyone who ‘clicks through’ to their site from yours and buys a product (sometimes just getting people to their site is worth money to you) puts a portion of the money spent in your account. The amount of money varies and there are other factors which I am leaving out for simplicity.

Let me be clear. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. This is perfectly good commerce on the surface.

For the people who began this form of marketing in the first place it was practically free money. They were able to create sites about items that paid big money for referrals and click-through sales. (Credit Cards and Porn are VERY high on this list.) They were also able to corner the market on maximizing the relevant words. They made metric fuck-tons of money for very little work. I think they actually probably had to burn money ‘cause they ran out of places to put it. But there is a law of diminishing returns as all the best products and words get used up and competition rises for all search words. More than anything, the competition has made it so that the days of building a site and walking away from it while it makes you oodles of cash are over. You need to constantly be updating, always trying to stay ahead of the competition for your words and always adjusting to the tweaks in the Google ranking system.

For at least nine months the boys struggled, hoping that through sheer force of will they would soon ‘rank-up’ for their selected product. They did see gradual advances, and a trickle of money. But the amount of time they were investing was grossly out of proportion to the cash they made. They were (understandably) losing faith.
I honestly don’t know what they did that changed their fates – I just haven’t ever listened closely enough when it has come up. I’m not prone to deliberate eavesdropping, but we’re all in the same room and sometimes the conversations get… loud and unavoidable. In any case one day everything changed. They had been on the admitted verge of giving up. They had tried everything it seemed.
With only a few tricks left in the bag they came upon a tactic which worked.
Suddenly they were on the first page for Google and Yahoo. I think they were even the number one hit for many of their words – though I’m not certain.

Suddenly they were making enough money that it actually made sense to be putting time into the project. (Still not a job I could be bothered with as I, for one, have always felt like I had a higher calling in my art, money or no.) And in very short order it caught on in the office. There are now no less than five people in the office building their sites to make their millions. As friends I do wish them well, but all the discussion (apart from being painfully boring to me) has illuminated the uglier side of the business. I don’t know that there is anything that can be done, but if more people have it in mind, then more can be thinking in terms of opposition to it.

The competition in the A.M. industry is diluting the internet.

Here is what happens.

One of the best ways to get search engine ranking is to develop links from and to other sites… the search engines can’t distinguish between a site that is yours or a site that is someone else’s – so it doesn’t really matter whose site it is. Blogs – especially well read ones – get plenty of links to them.
People link to their articles on Digg or Delicious or Stumble Upon or their own blogs or whatever.

So, I want to boost the traffic to my affiliate site on Barbecues. I write an article in my blog. I link to my site. (Or perhaps the Blog IS my site.) I also Digg myself on Digg and the other social bookmarking sites. If things go well, other people do too. I may even PAY people to link to my article. This is all technically legit, but it is delving into the realm of morally dubious.

Tomorrow I write another article, and I link to the first article – as well as all the linking I did in the first case. The next day I do it again. But perhaps I’m not really a writer – perhaps I don’t even really care about Barbecues (they are just a means to an end for me) and can’t even put my heart into writing a lame article every day (or even every week or so). So I take an old article and ‘re-write it.’ In this case, by ‘re-writing’ I mean I do a find/replace command on the article and my article about broiling t-bone steaks is now about broiling chuck steaks. Sure there are differences in technique, but they’re going to be nominal right? They’re both steaks! But then a month down the road, I’m feeling lazy again (or, as this is human nature we are talking about here, “lazier.”) so I replace “Chuck steaks” with hamburger patties. (After all they are both cow. Right?) The next month the article is about cooking salmon steaks – they’re both steaks, right? The next month; chicken – it’s all meat, after all. And so on.
This is clearly just propagating bad information now. Reductio ad absurdum you can soon enough be “writing” articles about barbecuing play-doh patties.

But there’s another technique which can not only lead down the same road, but is actually bad bad bad form. These ‘writers’ (and if they really were writers they would understand the crime (literal or figurative) of this) will find articles related to their products elsewhere on line (possibly even from other A.M. sites) and ‘re-write’ them using the same techniques. If you have made money as a writer, you probably just gasped in horror. Not only have I been in the room to hear the planning of this kind of plagiarism, I actually know someone to whom it has happened. When it happened right in front of me I couldn’t believe my ears! I am patiently waiting for it to happen again so I will have a fresh example in front of me so I can verbally rake the perp across the coals in a polite and well-considered way, with his crime staring him back in the face from his computer screen.

Let it be said – there ARE sites out there that are A.M. based businesses which are regularly disseminating good information. But they are outnumbered by the ‘bad ones’ and the bad sites are growing in number. I see it all the time where simple Google searches bring me to pages filled with information which is at best written by someone who could care less, and often severely faulty.
More and more the bad sites are better optimized for their relevant search words – ‘cause THAT is what the operators are spending their time doing.
People publishing good information are spending their time researching and writing relevant material.

It makes me mad and I wish there was a good answer to this. I suspect there isn’t. Commerce will rule the day, and the good information on the internet will continue to be diluted by dollar-hungry scum-bags who in many cases don’t even realize that they are behaving like scum bags.

Defending the Music XIX: Disappointing you is getting me down.

Down to the last three.

This one is practically a given for a Canadian my age... though simply saying that is likely enough to elicit a tidal wave of denial. Certainly there is a significant segement of the population who is in denial about thier love of The Hip. Okay, that's not fair. What there is is a segment of the population who are either deliberately contrary, or whose taste is significantly out of whack with the popular taste of their countrymen. More power to them.

I've already done quite a discussion of my discovery of the Hip and how it affected my life, so this will be kinda short.

What is it about the Hip that makes them so enduring? Well, I do generally like their music - have since the very first listen. But it's the live experience that elevates them to a level of musical divinity. I've seen them five times in concert. Four of them rank amongst the best concerts I've ever seen. I don't know that it's something that traslates any way except in person.

Foremost in the live Hip experience is Gord Downie's stream of conscious rambling. I could recite word for word long strings of verbal effluvia that have excaped his mouth at concerts I've been to. The most famous example is the so called 'Killer Whale' monologue. Too bad it wasn't caught on video as well.

There is probably something perverse that bolsters the love of the Hip in that they are 'ours', by which I mean I'm kind of proud they never really broke in the U.S. They're more special as our secret. I've kind of made similar comments in other installments - how there is something less special in a way about the bands that have gone big. This one just happens to be additionally tied up in national pride. There is no doubt that the Tragically Hip's music is inextricably entwined with the Canadian experience. Gord Downie's poetic reference set is unapologetic in it's Canuck affiliation. We love him for it. Some day he ought to be our official poet laureate, not just the populist one.

The last line of Ahead by a Century stands as the single most affect lyric ever for me. I had experienced that feelsing, but never had the words by which to express it. The first time I heard the song, that last line cut me to my soul. I know I'm not the only one. It's that universal, and if there is no other example of genius in Gord Downie, he will always have 'Disappointing you is getting me down.'

On top of it all, I've got an amusing tale about flirting inadvertently with Paul Langois' wife at the Kingston Busker's festival. For the record, it was clear that she thought it was quaint - when I realised who she was with, it became apparent why... not to mention I was practically a kid.

An Open Letter to Ralph Nader

Dude! Please!

Are not the last eight years of history enough? Or have you completely forgotten that if you had not run in 2000 there would have been an entirely different president (and party) in the White House for no less than four of the past four years - arguably the most critical of those four years, no less.

"So?"

That type of question hardly warrants a response. Perhaps you haven't read a newspaper in the past 78 months, but the corrupt fuckwad who stole the office in 2000 has made a real hash of things since... you did read about the events of that sunny Tuesday in New York one September, right?

I challenge you to put together a list of positive gains that have come from a result of your act of diluting the votes of the Dem's in 2000. Here I'll even give you a bit of help: Al Gore won an Oscar last year. (C'mon, you ought to be able to come up with one more - I'll give you a hint, it also involves Al Gore having more time on his hands than he would have as President and thus winning an award of some significance.)
Okay, now does anything on that list come close to matching the other side of that coin?
That being: Throwing the world into further religious and political instability and putting your own country into financial ruin in the course?

"Oh yes, but this is different. Not even the Republicans would vote for a candidate as right-wing as GWB this time around. How do you think John McCain became the apparent nominee?"

You're missing the point. Even I agree that when it comes to Elephants, McCain is about as good as it gets - you are right that is how he managed to get to where he is and he has the current climate to thank... I guess you could say he has you to thank. I 'get' that you think that there is political value in a third candidate - an option. I totally believe in a 3+ party system. I think it works quite well for us in Canada... and our third party is WAY closer to having a snowball's chance than your independent ass.
But as 'decent' an option as McCain is, your country NEEDS to change. The Democrats are already hell bent on leveling the playing field. Perhaps no one has pointed this out to you, but they're taking advantage of the nearly sure-fire-win situation that they are in and are on the verge of nominating either a woman, or a black man (and it's really looking like it's the latter). The Republicans have fucked things up so much that the Dem's feel totally comfortable taking an apparent surefire win and making a bit of a race of it by putting a historically earth shattering candidate up for the big office.
So let's look at this...
The Republicans are putting up a guy so moderate he's practically a Democrat on some issues.
The Democrats are, one way or the other, going for the hail mary.
There might actually be a race going on here as a result.
What if that race is as close as 2000? What IF Ralph?

I've Never Wanted to See a Movie so Badly

This reviewer does the best job ever of making me want to see a film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBM854BTGL0

Defending the Music XVIII: Seems a Million Miles Away but it Gets a Little Closer Every Day

I had to miss the concert. It was the only reasonable course. I had tickets. It was the first stadium concert in twenty years. I had even did back-flips to arrange the best possible chance to be able to go... but when the time came I was too tired and had too far to go to complete my task and at too great stakes to risk the additional exhaustion of seeing one of my favourite bands of all time live... for possibly the only time in my life...

When I first saw the video for Every Breath You Take, I already recognised that The Police were an established band of note though I couldn't name any of their songs (though it would turn out I did know a few already.) I was taken in my the compellingly moody single instantly. It wasn't even the coolest video to come off the album.

I think I actually got Synchronicity through the Columbia House music club - which in those days was a 4-6 weeks 'til delievery kind of affair, a seeming enternity compared to the Amazon.com 4 business days of today.

I loved the album, but Demetri... I think it's safe to say that that album changed his life. Demetri became a lifelong Police fan, and as one of my best childhood friends, he brought the rest of the Police albums into my life.

Five albums seems like such a rip-off. We only got five from one of the best trios ever put together.
Sting: This guy started his career as one of the greatest song-writers in rock history... and there is only one direction to go from there. His time with the Police produced several dozen of the most perfectly crafted songs ever. Paul McCartney personally thanked him for writing a perfect bass-line for Walking on the Moon. Sting's solo career however fell victim to the law of diminishing returns. Dream of the Blue Turtles is a masterwork. Nothing Like the Sun has masterworks on it. Soul Cages has a masterwork on it. After that his career becomes a scattering of moderate accomplishments floating amongst a sea of noodling pretentious mediocre MoR.
Stewart Copeland: Watching Live in Atlanta more than a decade after it had been released, I found myself entranced by Stewart Copeland's performance. His rhythmic texturing made the Police what they were - not to detract from either of his compatriots prowess. He's fucking brilliant. After watching that video I wrote an email to Demetri expressing my appreciation for Stewart Copeland in a way I have never managed to recapture the effectiveness of.
Andy Summers: When they formed the Police, Andy Summers was already a London Club Act legend. He was the guy who lost out to Ron Wood as Mick Taylor's replacement (Oh how different music history would have been!) in The Rolling Stones - but clearly Keith Richards wasn't going to allow himself to be upstaged by the gargantuan talent of Summers. (Yeah, bring it on Stones fans, I have nothing but contempt for the three chords your boys have never wavered from at tedium.) Put it this way, when Summers agreed to be the senior member of the police, Sting and Stewart, went all fanboy.

When a year ago a reunion tour was announced, I went all fanboy. Demetri went all fanboy. We went and paid the extra cost necessary to get advance tickets through Best Buy with our other friend David. Demetri made plans to fly from London England to Vancouver in order to see the first Police concert in what might have well have been ever in our lives.

Then life started to interfere.

My film, Beast of Bottomless Lake was necessarily scheduled to overlap with the concert. Our schedule quivered back and forth right up until the end, and in the end I arrived back from the Okanagan the day before the concert, exhausted and already on the verge of an exhaustion triggered illness I would have been borderline... but something had also come up for Demetri. He couldn't make it either. That pretty much did it for me. Being there without him seemed to me like it would have been awkwardly hollow. I felt like I would have been betraying him.

I admit I really wish I could have seen the Police, and the fact that technically I could have made it makes it a real question, but given the same choice under the same circumstances I would take the same option - regretfully missing one of the most anticipated concerts of my life. The additional stakes were simply too high.

Demetri did eventually get to see the Police. If I get a second chance, I figure I'll take it.

Greatest SNL Sketch Ever

To be fair, there are a LOT of potential best-SNL-sketches-ever. This is merely one of my favourites. I wish I could find it somewhere on line. It's at least as remarkable as it stands out in an episode chock-full of unusually funny sketches with a guest who by all rights ought to be totally tepid - Chris Evert Lloyd.

I think this is a case where the script itself carries most of the hilarity... or perhaps it's just that I have the benefit of carrying a fairly crystal clear image of the sketch in my mind's eye. The basic conceit is Mike Meyers is an executive for Columbia Picutres which has just been acquired by a Japanese media conglomerate and he is very excited to tell us about their new programming....







[Tatsuo sits at desk. behind him are posters of Columbia Pictures films]

Tatsuo Nosaka: Hello, my name is Tatsuo Nosaka, I am new president of Columbia Pictures. I want to take opportunity to tell American people, we understand what you like! We are working hard to make many new films and television shows for you to consume. In fact, we have just finished new situation comedy for American TV audience. It is crazy and out to lunch! It is called "The Nude House Of Wacky People." Here are some scenes:

[Stock footage of a car wiping out and hurtling down a cliff. Inset circle of Tatsuo narrating]

Here is the father coming home from work with many American hamburgers for the family. He is driving so crazy it makes me laugh! Oh, no! He is crashing so much I have to laugh again! This is too much for me to look at and yet somehow I want to watch more!

[Sitcom living room. The father carries an armload of hamburgers through the front door]

Here is the father again, trying to carry the hamburgers home. Maybe he should carry the car it is so small by now!

[doorbell rings]

Oh, no! How much more insane can it get, I am wondering also.

[Father opens door. Bear enters & immediately attacks Father.]

A bear? How did he get there? There is no time for wondering, because the father is already fighting the bear! Then the bear leaves.

[The bear does indeed stop fighting and walks calmly out the door.]

Whew! Could we please stop now because it is so insane? No, we cannot!

[Wacky mother descends staircase]

Uh-oh, here comes the mother! She is asking the father why the hamburgers smell like a car that has crashed. He tries to think of a falsehood, but he cannot! So he throws fudge at her!

[Father throws a handful of fudge at mother. Bear enters from front door]

Then the bear comes back for more fighting!

[Fight continues]

This is so unusual, I might have to lose my mind! This family is too eccentric!

[Bear calmly leaves again]

I am glad it's over.

[The two children come down the stairs]

Hey! Here are the children of the wacky family! "Thank you for so many hamburgers," they say! "Ohhhh," says the father, "you cannot have hamburgers or candy canes until you do your homework!" "But we have no homework," say the children. "No homework?" Says the wacky father, "Then you will have to fight the bear!"

[Father opens the door for the Bear, who now fights with all four family members.]

I hope you have enjoyed these scenes from "The Nude House of Wacky People," Coming in January on CBS! If these pictures have not already convinced you how insane it is, then how about this?

[a green, dollar-sign-festooned show ribbon appears with Ronald Reagan's face inside]

That is right, it is the Ron Reagan United States presidential seal of approval!

Ronald Reagan: The Nude House Of Wacky People is just the kind of wholesome family entertainment that Japan is known for. Nancy loves it too!

Tatsuo Nosaka: And, don't forget our other new shows, such as:

[Appropriate title card appears for each show]

"You Can't Stop Him, He's Too Insane!"

"Good Hitting Police,"

and, "Who Can Figure Out Such Devices?"

If I am not mistaken, they will all drive you into a gourd! Later, dudes!

[fade to black]

Defending the Music XVII: I don't have a gun...

Kind of got knocked off the flow for a bit there. But I'm in the home stretch.

I've got to say that I've actually said plenty about each of the remaining artists at some time or another and part of the stall has been me struggling against the probability of repeating myself - not to mention the heaps of other writing that has been done about each of them.

I've already written about the quite powerful musical moment in my life where Nirvana screamed onto the scene and I realized that 'every thing has changed' and I won't retread that here.

So, what was it about Nirvana that spoke so directly to such a huge swath of people? And my HUGE I mean that they were one of the last bands (none after it spring to mind, though I'd be interested in hearing nominations for challengers) to ever manage to reach the vast majority of an entire generation. They were the first triple platinum punk band.

It had been a long time since music had so completely tapped into the emotional zeitgeist of the youth culture when it was in a volatile state. Which is not to say that there wasn't a voice for the disenfranchised between the summer of love and 1992. It's not to say that there wasn't music that stood up and demanded that it's point be heard. It's not to say that there was no cathartic vent for generational anger fuelled by three chords. But no one quite brought it together the way Kurt Cobain did on Nevermind.
And yet, what was he ever saying? No, I don't mean in a Weird 'Al' Smells like Nirvana way. I mean that even when you looked at the lyrics you often got the feeling that they most likely only ever made sense to Kurt. And THAT meant something. We were a generation without meaning and we knew it - the tiresome analysis by the Boomers of our place, threw it in our face (is it any wonder I have such contempt for the Beatles?). And the irony was that instead of making us pointless it wound us up to a fever pitch. "Fuck you. We're going to matter." We cried. Now, with the youngest of us on the back end of our thirties, I'd like to think we managed it, and I'd also like to think that our greatest days are still ahead.

It was so incredibly visceral, and in their brief heyday they proved that they were not a one trick pony. The Nirvana Unplugged album is one of the better and best selling Unplugged albums MTV ever released.

When Kurt died, (Leaving us one of music's most ironic lyrics behind in Come as You Are. Other contenders being the Who for My Generation and Amy Winehouse for Rehab. (Wow, I just ruined a sober point with a leavening paranthetical.)) it truly felt like something was lost. We lost a voice and we lost a future of music which would have been fascinating to watch unfold - even, if like so many artists all he could manage to do was to disappoint us (Sting, I'm looking at YOU!) But then again... perhaps Dave Grohl might have taken more of a part in the writing, and gawd knows he's proven himself.

Defending the Music XVI: We are Widening the Corridors and Adding More Lanes

There seems to be two very distinct camps on this band (discounting the third whose response is 'who?') there are those who rabidly love them and those who seem to think "Really? They're the most personality-less band ever." I generally pitch my tent in the first camp - but, like the Pixies, seeing them in concert was a big let-down.

John McRea has precisely four bits of stage business. And as he uses an average of two of them in the course of each song, they get old real quick-like. It was the first and only time I ever had front row tickets, and as much as that was cool, it wasn't enough to elevate the rather tepid performance to anything remotely approximating inspiring.

So how, in the light of that, does Cake rise above the chaff to earn a place amongst my all-time favourite bands? Pure quirk. What some see as a lack of personality comes across as entirely the opposite to those of us who are true believers? It seems so. Their sound is so distinctive. John McRea's detached sounding vocals, Vincent DiFiore's trumpet... even the revolving door of lead guitarists (actually there aren't anywhere the number of lead guitarists that there have been either bassists or drummers) find a unified sound somewhere in the middle of their audio palette. Cake songs sound like Cake songs, but they breadth of their style extends from country to disco to hard rock. It may be that Cake are too cool for their own good and their sense of hip comes across as smug aloofness... and I suppose I can see how that might be off-putting.

I'll admit that it's tough to defend Cake on any specific basis. I figure you either love 'em or you don't. If they've accomplished nothing else in this world, their irony dripping cover version made it acceptable for straight guys to sing "I Will Survive." The fact that their song "Short Skirt/Long Jacket" is the theme song for the hit geek-chic spy-comedy-adventure "Chuck" is testament to their arrival in the eschelons of the eternally cool.

Defending the Music XV: Save the Shame for Me

Marquetta didn’t turn me on to R.E.M. but she played me more R.E.M. albums than I had previously heard. At that time I had pretty much only heard the ‘Document’ album, with its muscular-sounding iconic ode to using and discarding lover after lover (or at least loved one after loved one), “The One I Love,” and luckily some other boob had made an ass of himself by calling them “Rem” in my presence before I said it out loud myself – to the mockery of other college rock fans in the room. Boy did HE look dumb. (To be fair, at some other point I declared my appreciation for a band I referred to once and once only out-loud as ‘Inks.’)

Pete Buck’s unique guitar style – he is one of the few guitarists in popular music in the latter half of the 20th C. to finger-pick as a habit – made the simple repeated riff that drives the song snag into my brain. It was catchier than any lyric that had ever come before it. The plaintive one-word chorus was wrought with guilty self-hating angst… Fuck, how could an 18 year old not love this? At first, the repeated verse seemed unimaginative. But I forgave it long enough to understand it. The repetition, it turns out was a little bit of genius. This abuse – getting what one needs and moving on, is a serial habit, to the point where one victim is no different from the last.

Here is the true magic of R.E.M. Michael Stipe’s lyrics are not merely art. They often rise to the level of high-art, being structurally sound in support of their meaning and imagery.

Douglas Coupland spawned a Gen-X trend by declaring in his seminal (and frankly rather boring) novel that countless numbers of us had memorized the lyrics to “It’s the End of the World as We Know it.” (Which is no mean feat. Just try and get them all straight!) But here’s the thing… he didn’t make it up out of whole cloth. He was merely acknowledging a genuine trend. I don’t believe it was a fad until he mentioned it. I memorized them before I had read the book because of the combined challenge and the compelling nature of the screed of stream of consciousness that it represented.

And this was all before they put it out of the park.

The Juanabees used “Losing My Religion” as the theme-song to our first show ‘We Juanabee Bigger than Jesus’ (of which religion was a major theme). By the end of that summer I would have been happy if I never heard that song again. I’ve gotten over than feeling in the intervening 16 years. It’s that good a song.

In the years that I was making beer-money busking in ‘The Wookie Co.’ with Matthew we made liberal use of R.E.M. songs. Once, pretty much as a joke, we played “Superman” (Which to be fair was a cover.) for an entire set at the Kingston Buskers’ Festival. We didn’t make much money in that set, but damn did we amuse ourselves. We had a lousy location with mediocre walk-by traffic, and from a previous set in the same place we’d found that no-one seemed compelled to stop and listen to our ‘witty banter’ at that location (honest to god, they did in other locations) due largely to a lack of decent seating for a ‘starter crowd’ to begin forming. (Funny. People will happily stand once others have started watching and listening, but try and get the first person to stay without somewhere to sit.) We figured that if people were only going to be listening for the 90 seconds it took to walk past that we may as well only play one song. Later we were told by someone who had been listening across the street that they were at first confused that we just kept on playing the same thing, then they got tired of it and bored, then a bit annoyed and eventually came to find it funny. Looooong way to go for such a high-concept joke.

We also used “Me in Honey” & “You are the Everything” to great end. …Though we never played either of them for forty five minutes straight. “You are the Everything” was one of the few songs we never made light of and actually played quite straight. It was always one of our favourites. “Me in Honey” remains one of the most heartbreaking songs ever for me.

I gotta admit that from “Monster” onwards I felt like R.E.M. was only firing on half its cylinders. But even a half-functional R.E.M. was better than most bands ever were. They remain capable of creating songs that are pure art, and stringing five of the best albums of my lifetime back to back is more than enough to earn my unflinching trust in their abilities. I’m looking forward to their first album in four years sometime in April. I’m harbouring hopes that they’ll have had a good port-polish and that engine will be putting out a full horse-power.


Oh, and in the off chance J. David ever reads this… Yes, your version of ‘Stand’ remains one of the funniest Karaoke incidents ever.

Defending the Music XIV: The Bombs Never Hit You When You're Down So Low

Hitting the home stretch now, the last eight of twenty-one. I've saved my two all-time favourites for the back-end, and I've already done all the artists that I'd consider to be the least of the best. I did a few bands early on that sit amongst the absolute cream, but from here on out that's all there is. Stuff I really really love.

I figure that of the eight artists left I'll start with the two that I fell the least responsible for my own appreciation of. Two bands that friends pestered me into liking. And obviously they were right. I love both these groups. I'll tackle them chronologically.

The first one I have Jason and Paul to blame for, but it my first experience with the band was with a girl.

I hadn't even heard of Midnight Oil before Marquetta had a crush on me. Back in first year university, my only year in residence, a girl from a building across the quad had a big crush on me. It was kind of unfortunate really. She was cute and I'm betting that a few more years of maturing would have made her gorgeous in a sexy-librarian kind of way. She was cool and I really enjoyed hanging out with her - good thing as she knocked on my door practically every day. But she just wasn't 'my type.' One thing she was really great at was identifying music that I would like. She turned me towards a number of bands - one other of which is yet to come on this list - which were 'alternative' when that still meant something which have gone on to major mainstream success. One related thing that connected us (and this is going to date me) is that we were the only two people we knew with those new-fangled CD players.
One day Marquetta brought over 'Diesel & Dust.' "Listen to this. You'll like it." Damned if she wasn't right.
I didn't really pay a lot of attention to Midnight Oil for the next few years. I owned "Diesel & Dust" and listened to it, but it wasn't in high rotation.

Eventually I found myself playing music with other guys. Jason pushed for us to play "The Dead Heart." That 'de doo doo doo - doo de doo' intro and extro was a LOT of fun to play. We learned a lot about dynamics playing our way out of that song. It was one of our better numbers and we also worked on some other Midnight Oil songs. It soon became apparent to us just how good these guys were as musicians. They had a remarkable ability to make quite complex songs sound much simpler than they were.

By this time "Blue Sky Mining" had been released and I had added it to my regular playlist.

During one of the summers I spent house painting Paul was bound and determined to convert everyone who he painted with into rabid Oil fans. He owned all their albums and played them on the company ghetto-blaster every chance he had. His plan worked. By the end of the summer I too owned all the most significant Oil albums - as did several of my other co-workers. I'd also found a new favourite Midnight Oil song, which holds the title to this day. (For the record, the video almost comically fails to capture the power of the song.)

I was the right age to be easily inflamed by the politics of their music. I was in my activistic stage and they were the soundtrack to the injustices of the day.

I missed Another Roadside Attraction in '93 because I was on tour. In fact, I missed the A.R.A. tour all three times because I was on tour. Without fail I'd be in Winnipeg and they'd be in Saskatoon. Two nights later we'd be in Saskatoon and Winnipeg would be rocking out. Grrrr.

That tour was politically linked to the logging issues in the Clayoquot though the band was also touring in support of "Earth and Sun and Moon" which was for practical purposes their last big album. They already had a political issue that was killing them as a band...

They didn't have much to complain about during the Clinton administration. Or rather they thought it diluted their message to start picking at the minor indiscretions of the world's remaining super-power. Think what you like about that. I don't know that it's as righteous as I'd like to think Midnight Oil as being, but that was what they claimed eight years later when I did finally have a chance to see them live.

Midnight Oil in the Commodore Ballroom was the most awesome show I ever saw in that spectacular venue. Imagine the Lurch-like six and a half foot bald-headed Peter Garrett whirling and spastically dancing (There's plenty of examples for your imagination in the linked videos.) mere feet above your head.

They declared that night that there was something wrong in the world again (Hmmm... I wonder what?) and that they has something to say and thus they were back. Sadly it wouldn't last long. Six months later Peter Garrett finally did something he had threatened to do before their breakout "Diesel & Dust" - he quit the band and went into politics. Apparently he figured he could accomplish more in the Australian Parlaiment. He is now the Minister of Enviroment, Heritage and the Arts.

While I do wish for another chance to see them live, or a new album, I respect Peter Garrett's committment to walk the talk. There are a number of bands on this list with strong politics. Few were ever as strident and none put their money where their mouth is with this much fervence.

How to Start Lecture

A heads up...

This Wednesday Jan 30th I'll be doing one of Biz Books' "How to Start" lectures. All the details (stolen from their site) follow below, so I won't get more redundant than I already have been.


HOW TO START:

How to Start… Getting Off the Couch and Making that Independent Film You’ve Been Saying You’re Going to Make with Kennedy Goodkey

A thoroughly non-technical look at how to get the ball-rolling towards the ultimate goal of Making a Feature Film. From the importance of an initiating idea, to basic self-organization, through the value of a good partner in crime to how to manage your life partner while you have a two year affair with a film. Also covering the realities of finances and just how much work it takes to make a movie; and the importance of good publicity, an un-flinching faith in yourself, and a voracious capacity to learn and learn and learn.

Wednesday, January 30th; 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
To ensure we have a space set aside for you, either call: 604.669.6431 or e-mail: info@bizbooks.net

Kennedy’s passion for film-making is evident in the scripts he produces. He writes from the heart, but uses his head to make sure it comes out right. He is an asset to every film he produces.
— David Nykl

Kennedy is unstoppable… ’cause the road to The Beast of Bottomless Lake was an impossible one, but he travelled it.
— Mark Leiren-Young

Kennedy Goodkey is the host of the podcast "Micro Film: A Close Look at Making Big Films on a Small Budget."
He is also the winner of the First National Sketch Writing Competition, and a well known British Columbia writer/actor who is currently one of the principals in Vancouver production company Provost Pictures.
While he's perhaps best known for his work as both an actor and writer in the independent Vancouver theatre world (as well as many years spent on the Fringe-Festival Theatre circuit), Kennedy's writing credits include the animated films A David Lynch Family Christmas and The Gnome Who Knew Too Much (winner of the 'Special Achievement Award', 2003 ReelFast 48HR Filmmaking Competition). Additionally, Kennedy has written the live action short Rewind, as well as the shorts Godot and Straight Flush, both of which he also directed.
Kennedy is a Jessie Richardson Award-nominated actor, with appearances on The L Word and a lead role in the feature Sons of Cohen for which he also wrote the screenplay. He was the first recipient of the Provost Writer's Award for his play Sarcophagus, which is about the Chernobyl disaster.
Kennedy is currently involved in post-production for the feature-length film The Beast of Bottomless Lake, an interpretation of Moby Dick filmed primarily in the Okanagan region of British Columbia.

Cloverfield vs. Jaws & The Art of Missing the Point

WARNING! SPOILERS!

So I went and saw Cloverfield last night.

It was a wild ride. I totally loved it. When I left the theatre I mentioned to the friends I went with that I expected that most of the criticism that would be lobbed at it would be how it failed to explain the initiating circumstances or the implied victory over the monster. I also had heard people couldn't handle the 'handy-cam cinematography' a la Blair Witch Project.

So this morning I took a look at what was available on-line.

Sure enough.

Other criticisms: Lame witless dialogue. Exploitative 9/11 imagery.

Every single one of these criticisms are complete and utter bullshit.

For starters I can name a dozen film (easily) that feature an enormous creature rampaging through a city. Most of them include the word 'Godzilla' in them, but it's hardly limited to that franchise. I highly recommend The Host. Despite The Host's rather refreshing look at the genre, it needs to be said about the genre as a whole - "Been there, done that."
We've all seen the tale of how the plucky team of scientists, intrepid military men and the token civilian pulled into the thick of things band together to vanquish the building-sized monster.
What hasn't been seen is the story of the guy who we see get crushed under it's foot before the final reel. THAT is this story. Uncompromisingly so. J.J. Abrams & Director Matt Reeves are never tempted to swerve to a place where our heroes become instrumental in the creature's demise. They come close, witnessing the inital bombing runs on it, but then they become the victims of the obligatory swipe at a pesky helicopter. As our beaten heroes lay in the rubble at the end of the film waiting for it to all end, their hideout becomes collateral damage to the final all-out attack on the creature.

We can assume that the creature is defeated - it is strongly implied by the nature of the faux government tag applied to the start of the film, one which indicates an inquiry into the incident. Did Rob and Beth survive? Probably not, but we don't know. Did we hear the creature's demise? We don't know. (There are reports that if you play the final radio transmission backwards that it say's "It's still alive." Even if true, frankly 'backwards masking' doesn't really exist in the world of this film. But the concept of the film directly prevents us from knowing based on the internal context, and that is how it should be. Anything else would be a cheat.

And the same applies to the cinematography and the dialogue. Both were slavishly realistic. Real people aren't capable of tossing out witty one-liners in response to their strife every two minutes for 90 minutes (or seven hours - the time the film plays out in). The film even subtly comments on it - "Why don't you ask me if I've ever heard of... Garfield." A line so witless, commenting on another character's lack of wit... it's genius.

And nothing can better put us in the situation than to see it all first person... though naming the character with the camera 'Hud' (Hudson/Heads Up Display) walks the line of self-reference. This does mean that we don't see much of the monster, 'cause naturally the protagonists are usually running in the opposite direction, but refer back to my first point - WE'VE SEEN THIS MOVIE BEFORE! Not only do we not need to see the monster, it's a refreshing and more realistic to show it to us this way.

Which leads me tot he complaints of exploitation of 9/11 imagery. Exploitation? Go to hell. If anything it's the greatest of respect. I've got this theory - stay with me here - that if we were all to be exposed to the horror of being in the chaos of the hot zone it owuld happen a hell of a alot less. And the hot zone could be anything from Ground Zero at the World Trade Centre or downtown Baghdad in April of 2003 or Guernica in 1937, or Dresden 1945... I can go on of course. In all these cases a common trait is that the civilian victims (and survivors) at the centre of the storm have little notion of what is actually happening. They might know 'we are being bombed' but even that may be obscured (note that many people thought 9/11 was a bombing while it was happening - despite the jet-liners flying into buildings overhead.) Cloverfield presents this reality clearly (in it's obscurity) from start to finish. In his final address to the camera, Rob says "If you are watching this you know more about what's happening than I do." This is thematically a very important moment. What is the name of the film? "Cloverfield." A military slang term referencing the appearance from above of an area which has just been carpet-bombed, as the dust is still settling. Could this be any more clear? What is it like to be in the horrific heat of that moment? Cloverfield attempts to capture that. Again, the first-person view is an unrelenting choice which hammers this point home and never breaks it's own rule. Having the attack in question be a movie monster rather than a military power is almost irrelevant. Part of the point is that our protagonists only know a tiny sliver of the story, so it might as well be Godzilla - or whatever.
Let's face it, being a giant monster gets more people through the doors. Just look at the record breaking box-office figures of the first week. In that sense it's more exploitative, but if it had been an attack by a military power (which in New York would be even more absurd than a movie monster in today's day and age, the supernatural allows the leap of willful suspension of disbelief) half the people would come out to watch the movie... and the political subtext would be far too on the nose and less powerful.
My ultimate point here - if you've missed it - is that Cloverfield actually honours the victims of 9/11 (and more importantly, more horrific events - some people (cough, cough, New Yorkers, cough) really need to get over themselves) by bringing us inside the horror of such events so that we can all understand what it might be like, how confusing and terrifying it can be, and hopefully steel a little more resolve in each of us to prevent it from happening again.

Okay, I'm off my soap box for the moment. But that doesn't mean I'm finished!

A few more thoughts...

Titanic was a love story set against the backdrop of the world's most famous passnger liner sinking. Cloverfield does the same by putting a story against the backdrop of a Godzilla-like attack. The attack isn't the story. Surviving in the heaping rubble is.

I went home and rather randomly put Jaws in the DVD player. Watching the infamous first opening scene I had a revelation. Spielberg knew exactly what was going on underneath the water as Susan Backlinie was attacked by the shark. None of what happens is random. I know that making a reality of what is unseen is an important creative tool, but suddenly with outrageous clarity I saw what was going on beneath the surface. A taste... a bite and tearing a piece (leg or legs) off. A moment's respite as she clings to the buoy, legless, in shock as the first morsels go down and the shark circles for a second attack.... I imagined it all in greater clarity than this. (In a side note - I got to see our Jaws tribute scene edited last weekend. Made me very happy. It was always one of my pet scenes in the "Beast..." script.)

It occurred to me that Abrams and Reeves similarly knew at any given moment in Cloverfield what was going on in the bigger picture. What stage of any pedestrian creature feature would be going on in the world of the film.

Okay, I'm done.

Wikipedia

I meant to blog about this already.

A few weeks back I made a facetious comment about not having a Wikipedia entry. Well, someone was listening. (Thanks Lisa!)

So now I DO have my own Wikipedia entry.

While it is almost entirely plagarized from the Provost Pictures website, it has since been formatted (which I believe is called 'wikifying') and looks like a real-ish Wiki entry.

It still needs some work as far as Wikipedia is concerned - there's notices at the top about how it's incomplete. Officially I can't do it myself - though I don't know what is actually stopping me.

I'm figuring it won't last long though. Someone mentioned a newspaper article written by a New York Times (possibly the most famous newspaper on the planet, almost certainly the most read) reporter who was surprised to find that the entry on himself had been removed because he 'was not famous enough.' The New York frikken Times! Like I've got cigarette's chance at an A.A. meeting. So if you feel inspired to 'fix' the article - don't!

Pilots Go the Way of the Dodo

This came up in this morning's Cynopsis and I thought it might be interesting to people outside of the industry.

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So much for "pilot" season at NBC. Jeff Zucker announced yesterday the network would no longer order up pilots as a matter of course each year leading into the upfront season, thereby saving the network tens of millions of dollars, reports The NY Times. Typically each year, NBC and the other broadcast networks order up a series of pilots for shows in development, choose a handful of them as potential primetime series in the upcoming season, and show the pilots to advertisers during the upfront season. No more, says Zucker. Rather, the network would order perhaps one or two pilots each season. Zucker says the reason for this decision is pure economics in light of the current WGA strike and due to the current US economy.
-----

It certainly implies that the change is permanent, but I haven't gone straight to the source (not that that would definitively clear it up) so it could just be a 'this season' thing courtesy of the writer's strike.

Future Facebook Ghosts

I recently came across a friend who has someone friended on Facebook who I know had been dead for about a year.

At first my reaction was THAT'S MORBID! But within a few seconds I have moved on to No, that's respectful and honouring of their memory.

I then started thinking about how that might carry on into the future.

Imagine Facebook remains the social networking utility of choice well into the future - well after you and I are all gone. What will happen to our accounts? As we each pass away and our friends honour us by leaving links to us as friends... what will happen?

We can't check out profiles of people more than one person removed (and few of us have our privacy settings set low enough to even allow one person removed viewing)... and of course we'll all take the passwords to our profiles with us to the grave. (Right?)

So eventually there could be this web of interconnected Facebook ghosts who no-one can actually access.

Actually that's probably not realistic at all. IF Facebook were to actually last that long I suspect that there would either be some sort of protocol put in place to either delete dormant accounts, or possibly to 'de-classify' the archive of dormant accounts after 'X' amount of time. Say 120 years after an account was created, or 30 years after it's last use? Or a certain amount of time after the declared birthdate of a user's profile - say 150 years (to allow for both the death of the user and any immediate descendant)?

I don't know.

Just musing on our digital immortality.

Defending the Music XIII: I Want You (In a Vinyl Suit)

I've been plugging away at other endeavours. Including taking a massive blow to the face. Got hit by a planet (you can probably deduce which one) and my head is still ringingBut I'm back now... at least for the moment. No doubt I'll get distracted again.

The first time I heard The Offspring, I thought to myself, Wow. We've dated the same girl. "Self-Esteem" from the biggest selling independent album of all time (pretty good for a bunch of kids who though their high-school janitor might make a good guitar player), appropriately titled 'Smash' cut to the quick. Music never seemed more promising than it did at that time.

While they never put another album together that was as awe inspiring as 'Smash' and they definitely gave in to the power of pop success, but there were many bright moments to come - even if they were more fun than inspiring. But they were consistently fun. Mixing equal parts, humour, politics and personal revelation their songs build irresistable hooks around anthemic punk cores. But wait, there's more! Offspring songs always sound like Offspring songs, but they've gone to great lengths to explore a variety of ethnic rhythms in their music as well, from the punk-ubiquitous ska, to Latin varieties & banghra to calypso.

I'll be the first to admit that I haven't had a lot in the way of personal insight since I first heard 'Self-Esteem' driving up Mt. Tolmie in Colin's car on our way to class, but I still get plenty of catharsis from chanting "Nah-na why don't you get a job?" from the song of the same name years after the fact.

And it's worth mentioning that the look of the character I play in 'Beast of Bottomless Lake' was based on Offspring lead singer, Dexter Holland.

Okay, this has been short but I gotta go contend with the concussion...

Tom Cruise: Got off the Train One Stop Past Wacko.

A follow up to my latest Enemies post.

Here's a new link to the Tom Cruise video.

I'm not going to walk you through it. I think it pretty much speaks for itself.