On Tom Petty

This one hurts. Tom Petty is one of my favorite musicians of all time. He's right up there with Nick Cave and David Bowie and Johnny Cash and a whole bunch of other people I don't even want to think about right now. Hearing that he’s gone, that there won’t be any new songs or concerts hurts. That’s it. Done. More than any other artist, it hurts, because Tom Petty was a part of my life in a way that nobody else ever was. More than anyone ever will be.

But, I’ll start with a lighter note: The first time I ever consciously heard Tom Petty was on The Simpsons. You know the episode. Homer’s waiting for his background check to clear so he can pick up his gun. Whatever it was about that song, it stuck with me. Eighth grade, I didn’t

There was something about this Tom Petty guy.

The first concert I ever went to was Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. I went with my friend and my older sister and it was amazing. And not amazing because, oh boy, a concert! Because I hate people and I hate concerts, but it was amazing, because holy shit, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers could play.

The real reason I love Tom Petty is that he probably saved my life.

It could be that I’m overstating that, but Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers is anchored to one of the worst times in my life. Looking back on it, I don’t think I was ever in any serious danger of going off of the deep end. I don’t think I would have killed myself or gotten into drugs or made any rash decisions and I don’t think I would have lost control of my life in any serious or irreversible way. But back then I didn’t know that. It was a bad time.

Tom Petty made that time manageable. It made sense of things and it managed to make them into four-minute stories about love and loss and Los Angeles and a lot of other things that I didn't quite get at the time. But Tom did. The Heartbreakers did. It made them real in a way that nobody else had taught me up to that point. I could deal with that. I could see it. Tom Petty knew what I was going through in a way that I don't know that anyone else did. And I don't mean that I related to his music. I mean that he understood what I was going through. I mean that literally. I don't know how or why or by what means, but I know it's true.

I got over it. I figured things out. I forgave some people. I forgave myself. I realized what I had done wrong and what I could do better. And day by day, I got over it. And I realized that it wasn’t so bad and I got back on my two feet and I moved forward.

Looking back on that time, I can’t imagine it without Tom Petty. Not “How could I have done it without him?” No. It could never have happened without him. It’s like looking back on a memory and wondering what it would be like without oxygen. Maybe Tom Petty didn’t save my life, I don't know. What I do know is that the person that I am now, the guy that got through all of that bullshit and came out the other side does not exist, cannot exist without Tom Petty.

There's a lot of stuff I can exist without. Tom Petty is not one of them.

An even lighter aside: I’ve only ever done two drugs. Weed and salvia. Weed is fine. Salvia is not. Salvia sucks. It’s like weed, but with a stronger kick up front and a longer headache out back. It’s bad. There’s a longer story here, but I’ll cut to the relevant point: Riding out a bad salvia high, I decided to go to bed early, walking from a friend’s apartment through rain that may or may not have been imagined and crashed on my bed. Instead of letting the bad vibes get me, I did the only thing I could think of doing: Listened to Tom Petty.

It’s what I’m going to do right now.

It’s what I was planning on doing anyways.

It’s what I’m still going to be doing in the future.

There’s a quote from RZA that I think of every once and a while, half as a joke, half as a way to get into a joke, and it goes like this “How can hip-hop be dead if Wu Tang is forever?”

How can Tom Petty be dead if his music is forever?

Ashes to Ashes

The concept of David Bowie dying, at its core, is total bullshit. It's literally incomprehensible to me.

I discovered David Bowie late in my life. I don't think I ever listened to him beyond the rare bits of "Rebel Rebel" that came on the radio. For a long time, he was one of these artists I had heard about that faded into the white noise that was the American classic rock catalog. Bowie was something dinosaurs and weirdos talked about. Now Zeppelin, there was a band. . .

That was wrong of me.

The Venture Bros. changed that. Wes Anderson helped, too.

Actually, now that I think about it, Zoolander might have been the first time I ever consciously thought "Oh, that's David Bowie."


Looking at how packed my iPod is, how many albums I've bought, how many references I've made in my writings, or the things I've been inspired by, it's hard for me to think that there was a world where David Bowie wasn't in my life. And now there is.

Calling the man a talent or an icon or whatever seems to sell short what he did. It packages up too neat for me, and besides, there are plenty of smarter people out there doing a better job of that than me. I just look at the man and his work, flaws and all, and I have to marvel at them. After all, how many world heroes are there running around that successfully went through a phase as a Nazi?

That's the power of Bowie. At least it is to me. 

As an artist, as a kook, as a fascist, as an actor, as a collection of all of these things. While he might be dead, David Bowie will stay with us. As we all mourn the man that was, we can mourn him together. We can remember the moments he enlightened, the parts where he inspired us. It's a cliche, but you don't know what you have until its gone and there was so very much David Bowie left for us. People like this don't come around very often and as terrible as it is for somebody, even somebody that we have never met, to leave us, they never truly go away. There's a piece of them inside of us that can't ever go away, that death can't ever take from us.

They have left us with so very much.

And without being glib, without being cute-- Let's end this on a high note. Glum is not what Bowie brought to the table.

In Which I Finally Crack

Or “Well, that got out of hand quick”

A Review AvP #4

Part Fourteen of "James Versus Fire and Stone"

The nightmare is over. We have reached the end of the tunnel and there is light. Alien Versus Predator did not bury us, but sometimes I wish it had.

In many ways AvP #4 is worse than I could have imagined. The one-liners seem to have been written by a child. The art is lazy and muddy in new and stupid ways. The story. . . well, it actually makes sense, so there's that. Yet, despite all of this it's also the funniest released so far. AvP #4 is the issue in which is has passed through the vortex and emerged on the other side as “So Bad It's Good,” as opposed to “So Bad It Should Be Sealed Away in a Vault Forever and Ever.” Congrats, Sebela and Olivetti. You did it.

All that said, don't buy this run of Aliens Versus Predator. Don't read it. Don't even think about it. Speak not its name. Know not its horrors. With all of that said, I have this horrible feeling in the back of my head that tells me that my life is going to be ironically saved by this final issue somehow, and, honestly,, I don't know if death is better.

“Consumer” is an ugly word, isn't it? I'm no communist, but it is certainly revealing of what the people in charge of production think of us, doesn't it? What do you do? Do you enjoy? Do you ruminate? Do you meditate? Do you absorb? No. You consume. It's a reduction of a human being to a medium that moves money.

It's part of a trend, or at least a change in our perception of what art is. It's a devaluing of what it is. You see it all over and, unlike being a consumer, you actually see

I guess it's probably always been this way. I mean, how old is that "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" essay? Gotta be pushing a hundred, right? The modern twist is that we seem to have accepted just how crappy things can be. This is a crappiness not thrust upon us, but a crappiness we have taken into our hearts.

You see this with how we watch TV. We don't watch it any more, we "binge watch." It's depressing. Besides it taking its terminology from one of the more decadent mental dysfunctions we've drummed up as human beings-- is that it has helped eliminate the idea that we should pause and take any time to think about anything. Want to think about what this means for Walt and Skyler's relationship? Maybe? Fuck it, put the next one on. There's no breathing room. There is no time for (Japanese word for “breathing room”). There's just non-stop noise. A wall to wall assault on the senses

What'd you do with Breaking Bad? I consumed it. Great. I'm sure that's what Vince Gilligan and everybody wanted you to do with their art. Then again, maybe they did. I'm sure the paycheck doesn't look any different.

It is as though, at some point, we all watched They Live, smiled, nodded, and then put on another episode of Friends (now on Instant Watch!). Sometimes, some of us need a Trashcan of Reason to the head. I paw through AvP, desperately trying to make sense of it, and I think that Trashcan has finally arrived at my head.And if you're not a consumer, it's not like you get upgraded. Instead, what are you? You're a fan. Great!

“Fan” is an equally ugly little word. It comes from fanatic. I supposed being a fanatic of Transformers is a vertical move away from the type of cave dweller that flies planes into buildings, but the connotation is there. I mean, nobody likes fanatics, do they?

I look at Aliens Versus Predator, and the trend our media is stuck in in general and I think “God. Can't we do better than this?” We're science fiction nerds. We supported Star Trek and Richard Matheson and Harlan Ellison and Kurt Vonnegut. We watched Twilight Zone when it was more than just a marathon on Thanksgiving Day. We believe in ideas. We like weird shit. Now what do we foam at the mouth at? A Jurassic Park sequel? Another Disney movie based on a ride (based on a retro-future)? Is this the future we were building for ourselves? Do we somehow deserve this?

The depressing capper on all of this is a realization I had about Steven Spielberg. Twenty-some years ago he made Jurassic Park. If he was an up and coming film maker today, he would be relegated to a Jurassic Park reboot. Or a fucking monkey movie reboot sequel and you fucks think you're going to break me? And, yeah, most of those movies are fine, some better than fine, but, really, what would you rather have? Jurassic Park or another Jurassic Park sequel?

So Dark Horse pumps out bullshit like Aliens Versus Predator and it sells. And it has for decades. To quote a film executive in the early 90's, “I could piss on a wall for two hours and call it Alien 3 and it would make sixty million dollars.” Names sell. Divorced of even its source, we still lap it up and, why? Because we're consumers. We're fans. It's what they expect of us because it's the easy thing to do. And, fuck that. It's a marketing strategy that takes us for saps.

But there's hope. There are people doing right by us, people that aren't looking for another inch of flesh to fuck us in. In comics we have Jonathan Hickman, for one. Between East of West and Manhattan Projects, he's making some of the craziest, most interesting sci-fi out there (and that isn't to mention his work for Marvel, of which I have only read Agents of SHIELD, which was, well, a book of questionable quality and purpose). He's a man who is swings for the fences and connects most of the time. He's a writer who is worth spending some time with.

Then there's Matt Fraction, Fionna Staples, Grant Morrison, Ales Kot, Kelly Sue DeConnick, and Brian K. Vaughn. John Arcudi, Guy Davis, and Mike Mignola are still doing their crazy apocalytic stuff with Hellboy and the BPRD with the same publisher that shoveled AvP out into the street. There's also Brandon Graham and his legion of artist and writer collaborators, who are playing DM with the Prophet license (proving that you can take a terrible license and make it into something wonderful). Hell, if we want to let Brian Wood back out of the cold, he's doing some solid work with The Massive. Then there's the legion of small publishers and indie artists doing their thing under the radar. It's not all gloom.

Now that I think about it, if you're into that sort of thing, even licensed comics seem to be pretty good nowadays. So, I don't know. There's hope. We just have to accept it. As consumers, as fans, as binge watchers, it's up to us to us to determine what the marketplace looks like. Or, god forbid, a gallery space. What's the Against Me lyric? "Be the bands you want to hear."

Overall, I look at the way we look at art and the way it's presented to us is done so in the most crass, disposable fashion. We aren't aficionados. We're consumers. Or we're fans. We don't appreciate thing. We binge on it. And we are expected to move on to the next thing. I don't think that's the way to look at good art and I don't think that it's the way we should be looking at art. Like I said, we're better than that.

Life is short and miserable enough without going out of your way to fill it with bad stuff. It's an exhausting way to live. That's the only lesson I think I can impart to you: Seek out the things you love and go love them. Try to make sure that the things you fill your life with and spend your money on aren't crass and disposable. You're better than that. Unless you just want to live in garbage, because the universe will always find a place for simple people with too much money in their hands.

What does AvP #4 get? ONE OUT OF FIVE CHESTBURSTERS. It's barely a book. It's barely a story. It's terrible. Read anything else, because the odds are good that even if it sucks, it'll be better than this piece of shit. The only pleasure I got from the book was when it was done. And even that was tinged with annoyance.

Ack. I need a musical break.




You can read the previous installments of "James Versus Fire and Stone" below:
Predator #3
Aliens #4
Prometheus #4
Alien Versus Predator #3
Aliens #3
Predator #2
Prometheus #3
Alien Versus Predator #2
Aliens #2
Predator #1

Prometheus #2

Alien Versus Predator #1

Alien #1 and Prometheus #1

James Kislingbury is a writer and a podcaster and a big game hunter. If you like what you read, you can support his podcasting endeavors by going to his Patreon. Or don't. Whatever. Be that way.

Friends that have more talent than I do Part LXVII of MMLVIII

My friend Anthony directed this. You should watch it. For your own good, I mean.

Here Come Some Bold Statements Straight Up From Abbey Road

So, apparently Adele is doing work for the latest Bond film which, as Pajiba has stated is "exactly who you think" would do work on a Bond album (I then guessed correctly).

But this article (also found via Pajiba) fell into my lap. It's about the Beatles' so called "butcher album." I own that album and it feels pretty good to do so. The reason I am bragging, though, is because of the mythology and the history behind it.

It's the history of something stupid like a piece of stamped vinyl that make it important and that make it interesting. It is what makes film more interesting than DVDs and it is what makes all historical artifacts more interesting and more valuable than imitations. There's no mystery to me about art in the age of mechanical reproduction, because there will always be collectors. What I'm saying is that suckers are not the only things ever born.

Speaking of which, I saw a graphic novel about the history of the members of The Beatles. I forgot the title (because of how mundane it was) and now I can't find it. It seemed like a pretty solid piece of graphic history.

I'll try to hunt that one down. . . and I don't mean the weird Vertigo series about the super-powered non-Beatles. I will never mean that.

AMERICA.

This shit? This shit right here? This is what this place is about.

Let this be a place holder

I want to talk about the death fo MCA and how much the Beastie Boys mean to me, but, currently, I don't have the energy for it (I am writing other things).

I just want to post this because I like it



And for the record I do love the Beastie Boys more than you. So don't fuck with me on this one, pal.

Life is too precious and wondrous and the work of the Beastie Boys don't deserve any sort pause for qualifications. They were great. Any and all tributes are welcome. If you don't like it, then move on. But, anyways, an American treasure died on Friday, let's try and act like human beings about it.

They lived and died to party, so let's go do that.

Happy Bowerthday!

Hey, that almost works!

Let's celebrate David Bowie turning 65 years young with these photos of him just being a normal human being. . . which is kind of weird when you stop to think about it.

This Hits All the Right Buttons

The Good The Bad And The Queen - Official Promo 2009 from Stephen Pook on Vimeo.

When you wonder who knows how to rock, don't ever doubt the Sufists.

The Beastie Boys Appreciate the Finer Things

HOROVITZ: We picture ourselves as being in France, recording in mansions and castles with truffle dogs sniffing around outside. Really, though, we’re just schlepping on the train in New York. I am going to be an affineur one day and make cheese, though. I’m just throwing that out there, so when it happens you’ll have had the scoop on that.

DIAMOND: Adam took a course at Murray’s Cheese Shop in the West Village.

HOROVITZ: It was Cheese 101. It was this cheese class, and they teach about the cheeses, but they put out different wines and champagne and stuff, and then me and my wife just drank all the booze first. I don’t remember what happened after that, but it was good.

You heard it here first.

An Excercise in Music Choice

I don't care much in particular for the Assassin's Creed series, but I'll be damned if this video doesn't get me psyched to wreck Templar ass.

And all of this is more or less a result of the "300 Syndrome." That, of course, is the principle that a trailer, especially when backed with a killer song, can not only sell you the unsellable but supersede the work it is advertising as an enjoyable piece of art. You see this with Watchmen and Terminator: Salvation in particular. You simply cannot have in your heart no desire to see films sold this well to you. You want to see it. You want to fulfil the prophecy of this amazing song against these amazing visuals.

The problem is that cinema tends to come in at 90 minutes a pop, which is sixty minutes longer than even the most ambitious or indulgent music videos out there. A movie isn't a 90 minute long (or a three hour long) music video, much to the chagrin of morons like Zack Snider.

But it isn't quite because this game will probably be pretty good. At the very least they'll understand that slow motion doesn't a film make.

God I hate Zack Snyder.

Point of Order

This Sure Takes Me Back

I was just reminiscing about how shitty Kiss is when I remembered that the guitarist of Limp Bizkit had his own stupid make-up gimmick and it reminded me of this sketch. And now you have some idea of the labyrinthine weirdness that makes my mind creak along.

What the fuck was wrong with me in junior high?

Worth Re-Posting

The 38th Chamber from Douglas Haddow on Vimeo.

I just bought my first Wu Tang Clan album. I feel energized suddenly. Like an eighth grader. This is what it feels like to discover something millions of people have discovered before me. It's like entering into a club.

What I've Got Stuck in My Head Today

I guess this blog is just becoming a link dump. Sorry. I've been pretty busy for the past couple of weeks (I've gone and got myself a job). It's really eating into my leisure time. So, unfortunately, my blog isn't exactly my priority right now.

Hopefully I'll have some writing and a few other things up soon. It should be a good year, I figure.

This is Me Phoning It In

God, that's a great movie.

Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Witch to Live

As human beings we're naturally inclined to start seeing patterns in chaos. We're natural, born classifiers. We do it with just about everything. You can see it in how we order animals, how we list celestial bodies, and even the basic atomic structures. Hell, I doubt there's a single one of you reading this that doesn't have their CD collection organized in some way (mine is sorted autobiographically).

As a film major, I've been indoctrinated into doing this same exact thing, but in a much more annoying and much less useful manner. There's a whole theory about this kind of a thing-- the Auteur Theory is one of them, but I really don't want to get into that. Even though the Auteur Theory has been more or less debunked, I doubt there's a film dork around who doesn't start making connections between actors, directors, composers, film stock, or whatever as soon as he hears about a movie. It's what we do. It's a fault, I admit, but to err is to be human.

I just finished watching Kiki's Delivery Service about an hour ago and it got me thinking about something very specifically filmy. I watched another movie directed by Hayao Miyazaki, Ponyo (on the Cliff by the Sea) about a month or so ago and I guess that combined with this got me thinking about Miyazaki's female protagonists (I also have the Ponyo theme song stuck in my head again, but that's a whole other blog entry). I didn't plan on making a whole thesis on this idea, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I'm on to something.

(Kiki's Delivery Service is a perfectly fine film, with more than a few delightful moments. It isn't my favorite Hayao Miyazaki movie, but that's a bit like A Serious Man not being your favorite Coen Brother's movie, right?)

I'm right, damnit, and you're going to listen to me.

In a move rare to film, most of Miyazaki's movies are crammed full of strong, female characters and, what's more, they're often the main characters. Sure, they fall in love more often that a pure feminist outlook would enjoy, but, unlike most films with females as the leads, in his movies, finding love isn't their main goal in life and they're saving the day more often than men save them. Those are important and that's why I'm pointing this whole thing out.

In Kiki's case, there's a big fat pregnant woman that takes care of Kiki. She's unusual for a couple of reasons (being fat and being pregnant not withstanding), in that she A) Seems to run the bakery she works at without it ever been explicitly stated (and there's a lot of explicit statements going on in the American script for Miyazaki movies, for some damn reason) and B) Not only does her husband lack a name, but he never actually says a single word in the film.

(Of course, Kiki is the hero of the film, as well as the title character, but I figure that's a bit obvious. Though, as I'm going over this entry, I realize that while Kiki's Delivery Service doesn't have a bad guy in it, the most unlikable people in the film are also girl her age.)

The examples go on. Just off the top of my head, there's Spirited Away where the main character is a bratty little girl trapped in a holiday spa for spirits (which is run by a woman-- a bad witch, in this case). There's Ponyo (on the Cliff By the Sea), where, even though the main hero is a young boy, his adventure is caused by the titular little girl (who has an idiot for a dad and a goddess for a mother), and the parent that's most present and caring in the film is his mother. Then there's Nausicaa, which is another titular female character, who is a princess and the real hero of the film. Princess Mononoke, like Ponyo, is split between two characters-- Prince Ashitaka and Sai-- and while Ashitaka is the real protagonist of the film, Sai incites most of the film's conflict, along with the morally grey antagonist, Lady Eboshi, who runs an iron works where all of the employees are women (in fact the biggest badasses in the film are Sai, Eboshi, and Sai's adopted mother, everyone else is either in the way or tagging along).

I could go on, but I think I might have run out of movies where the female being the most important-- or strongest-- character. That's enough, isn't it?

It's not all of his movies, but it's enough to take notice and to start to imagine a pattern. And, let me ruminate on what I said higher up, how many other director's-- male or female, Japanese or whatever- where that is true? How many directors make movies where a little girl is the hero and its directed towards a general audience?

I'd reckon not very many.

I guess if you wanted to be some sour-grapes feminist you could argue that Miyazaki's film are inherently sexist because they're scripted and directed by a man and there's nothing a man can do, even when he's trying not to be--ESPECIALLY when he's trying not to be-- to not be a mysogynist in some way, because that is simply the structure of the phallocentric cockocracy. And, I don't even need to get started on the fact that Studio Ghibli's films feel the need to stick their female characters into fantastic scenarios like being a monster princess or married to a sailor instead of putting them in real situations like coaching Portia de Rossi on how to give birth while submerged in a tub. Real issues.

Of course, that bitch can go pound sand.

Miyazaki's films aren't exactly bell hooks essays, but they're amazing pieces of animation and unlike a piece by hooks, his movies actually have a chance at being seen and appreciated. Children need to see these kinds of movies and to let them know, even in the most gentle, hackneyed way sometimes, that, yes, as a girl you can go and do some amazing things. Now, could you please suck some blood out of your magic, wolf-mother's neck, she's been shot by a samurai and the shot is working its way to her heart.



SIDE NOTE: For the record, my Studio Ghibli films are in this order-- Princess Mononoke > Porco Rosso > Spirited Away > Ponyo> Kiki's Delivery Service > Nausicaa.

SUB-SIDE NOTE: Oh man, if I ever got to teach a class, I'm totally doing a lesson on feminist theory and Hayao Miyazaki.

SUB-SUBE SIDE NOTE: I posted the Japanese trailer because, at the expense of looking like a fucking weeaboo, it is an order less annoying than the American trailer. Upon looking up other clips from the movie I noticed that Disney ruined, RUINED the songs in the film. Instead of this cool, little, 1960's rhythm and blues song, it's been replaced by this slick, poppy dreck that doesn't fit into the movie at all. And it isn't as though it's a bad song! It's a really fun one! Leave it alone! I can understand adding dialogue for the dumb babies, but don't make them suffer through shitty music. That's too far, mate.

You Only Live Twice

Bowie Makes it Better

The Long Good Friday

I just watched this today. It was pretty damn good. And both Helen Mirren and Bob Hoskins haven't aged a fucking day.

Well, maybe a couple of rough days.