'Trainspotting'

One of my absolute favorite films. I'm going back and watching some old favorites as I'm taking a break on never-seen films and focusing on TV and watching the stupid DVDs I already own.

There are so many great performances and scenes. Ewan McGregor is phenomenal and probably should not have been in another film in his life to preserve his greatness as Mark Renton.

Robert Carlyle is simply breathtakingly tense and awe inspiring. It's hard to see him in other films or TV shows and not see him break a pint glass and stab a guy in the face.

Sick Boy and Renton at the park is great. The scene when Rent runs off with the cash is super cool. Spud singing the dirge after Tommy's funeral is beautiful.

Plus, it ain't bad at all seeing super sexy Kelly Macdonald naked.

'Wuthering Heights' & 'Wuthering Heights'

I've not read a book and the film version with such varying versions.

Basically, the film ends with Catherine dying. The same scene is the first third of the actual book.

I guess once the producers get the rights to do a film version they're at liberty to do pretty much whatever they please with it. No wonder J.D. Salinger didn't want to deal with movie rights.

It is shocking that director William Wyler read Emily Bronte's novel and decided to gut it, do about 1/3 of the total book and leave out a large, large chunk out of the film.

Developing the film's screenplay like they did and leaving out a large chunk of the book, it rewrites the characters quite a bit.

In the film, Catherine comes off like a total bitch going from Heathcliff to Linton and then never really giving up Heathcliff. I mean, give yourself to someone or no one.

In the book, with another 2/3 of the story in place, you learn what a sadistic piece of shit. In the film, he's a sympathetic character. In the book, he's an asshole and Catherine couldn't have played a smaller role.

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Oddly, you can not get this film nor any other Russ Meyer film on Netflix other than the Roger Ebert-penned "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls."

This is odd to me because "Faster Pussycat" is considering a classic film of some artistic or camp value. In addition, it's a fringe fav capturing big cars, big tits, fighting, cussing, boozing and surviving.

It's also Meyer's tamest film as there's no nudity, language, overt violence or anything explicit. There's suggestion and that's about it.

This is a fun movie. I'm not going to pan it because it's not worth it. This is meant to be a bad film, yet the strong female characters give it a totally different vibe that still resonates today, 40 years after the popularity of the go-go dancer.

'Rope'

I really can't imagine there being an even more different movie for Alfred Hitchcock to make. It's basically a play. Put to film.

And it captures the frantic and nervous energy set forth by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in "Crime and Punishment" all stemming from the idea of murdering someone and kinda getting away with it from the authorities but also from one's own mind.

Except Raskolnikov didn't have Jimmy Stewart unravelling his crime. He was better off.

Anyway, it's crazy that he tried to sneak in a theater production to the big screem to try and make it work. The camera work alone is phenomenal and worth the price of admission.

'Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer'

How many times have we seen Michael Rooker in a film or TV? A billion times. A trillion times.

He's a familiar face. A face that is so familiar that it's easy to forget. You've seen him, and yet you could never pinpoint what show or film you've seen him on.

However, his seminal role was in his first ever film in 1986. The role that finds Rooker at his best that 90 percent of all Americans have never, ever seen. More people have seen him in "Mallrats" than they have his greatest performance. A violent film and harsh film about the realities of death and the frivolousness of life and the desperation of people that can not quite put things together in a civilized society.

'Siamese Dream'

Looking back now, I realize that just about every local band I knew of or saw when I was in high school in the mid- or late-1990s were more Smashing Pumpkins influenced than any other band of that era like Soundgarden, Pearl Jam or Soundgarden.

Mostly, this is due musicianship. Those bands are so complex and talented way more so than the Smashing Pumpkins.

This is a clusterfuck of an album. It's OK in the end, but I can find at least 10 other albums that are better than from that era.

However, it's the drama behind that makes it interesting. Jimmy Chamberlin is a fanastic drummer and "Siamese Dream" is as good as he ever was. But he was neck deep in heroin, leaving sessions for days at a time on benders.

James Iha and D' arcy Wretzky had just broken up. Tensions ran high during sessions with manic depressive Billy Corgan going nuts re-doing parts and just being a nut like he was and always is.

It was a nutcase of a production and I couldn't imagine working in that environment.

'Olympia'

For those of you who've seen Quentin Tarantino's brilliant "Inglourious Basterds," the name "Leni Riefenstahl" is bandied about quite a bit.

I'd heard the name two dozen times, but I'd never connected to her true historical significance. Frankly, there may not be a more significant filmmaker in the 20th century and there certainly has never been a female that influenced film and directing as much as she did.

She was the Nazi behind "Triumph of the Will" and "Olympia," the end product of shooting the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

Of course, we know the story of Jesse Owens, the black track athlete who won four gold medals at Adolf Hitler's big Aryan shindig. Like the overly drunk, belligerent guy that shows up three hours late, Owens ruined Hitler's party.

I'd always been told that both films were Nazi propaganda in an attempt (in terms of "Olympia") to showcase the Aryan race's physical superiority over non-Aryans.

I do not think this was the case. Don't get me wrong, I think Riefenstahl made a big mistake getting mixed up with the Nazis. She claims she knew nothing of the Final Solution despite hiring concentration camp tenants as extras in films. Even if she did find out, Riefenstahl was not unlike millions of other Germans that simple did nothing and claimed ignorance.

"Olympia," I think, is a pretty straight forward film about the Olympics. No matter her political or biological leanings, she was simply in love with the athletic, human form. If nothing else, she was kind of a perv.

For one, there's very little attention paid to the German excellence in the Olympics. If anything it's overly American although there's plenty of footage of other countries competing and winning. There's more footage of Jesse Owens than Hitler.

If German athletes were given a bit more time than other countries, it's because the home nation won 89 medals outlasting second-place United States by 33 total medals. Germans were bound to be shown a lot because they won a lot.

Furthermore, not many non-European countries medaled. Only four nations from Asia, two from Africa and two from South America won a medal. Only a handful of others showed up to compete. The fact is, in 1936, the world was almost a totally different place. It's brought up that Owens could ride in whatever part of a bus in Berlin but at home he was relegated to the back.

Countries too were in turmoil with change and colonialism that didn't change until World War II 11 years later. India wouldn't see independence until several years after World War II. The Nazis were certainly assholes, but a bunch of other developed countries were sons of bitches.

The only part that I think could be deemed "propaganda" in terms of the Aryan superiority is the very beginning when Riefenstahl shows the white athletes (Germans, I can only assume) in slow motion performing Olympic exercises like the javelin, sprint and whatnot. However, again, I think this is purely incidental and proves only the point that Riefenstahl loved the human form more than anything.

I may be a Nazi apologist and I apologize for that. But I simply don't feel this film is anything other than a recording of the 1936 Olympics (note: it was commissioned by the IOC ... not Hitler).

'Man With A Movie Camera'

The premise is simple: Mother Russia is the character. Life is its plot.

I don't know if this is the first ever documentary, but it has to be close. Silent, "Man With a Movie Camera" is purely people walking about and doing whatever they do on a regular day.

It's filled with a ton of innovative film techniques like slow motion, freeze frames, fast motion, double exposure and split screens. All sound like campy comedy titles. "This summer. Tim Allen in Fast Motion!"

I think about life and death a lot nowadays and all I could really think about while watching this film is that a vast majority of these people are dead. Then I wonder how many died in World War II on the eastern front or how many perished in Stalin's gulags or starved to death in the country.

It's a portrait into a civilization that had no fucking clue the number of figurative atom bombs about to be dropped on them. Just smiling, hamming it up going to work and drinking beer and coffee. Clueless.

'Un Chien Andalou'

What's so wrong with a 16-minute film? It's perfect actually. How many hour-and-a-half films did you wish were just 20 minutes long and with all the good jokes and good scenes left in and all the fluff taken out.

An 80-minute movie in the 1930s was not out of the ordinary. Salvador Dali's 16-minute piece of surrealist, avant garde bullshit is good only because you invested just 16 minutes and got to see an eye sliced open by a straight razor.

Hate it? That's OK. You spent just 16 minutes of your life digesting it.

Frankly, you could probably only handle 16 minutes of it. It's as fucked up as you'll ever see in your life.

'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'

With little doubt, this is the creepiest movie I've ever seen. I remember watching it as a kid and being freaked out and 24 years later it still effects me the same.

The creepiest part is when the hot girl goes into Leatherhead's house and goes into a room only to fall into about three inches of bird feathers with skeletons and bones scattered all about. Then ol' Leatherhead gets her and puts her on a meat hook by the base of her skull. Creepy.

I think it is and was doubly creepy because I grew up in an extremely rural part of Texas and I've seen places where there isn't an ounce of civilization with a bunch of wildlands and abandoned houses owned and possibly lived. I've seen shacks that housed kids where we had to pick them up on a bus route.

As teenagers, we'd load up six in a pick-up truck and drive out to the most desolate and dark areas of the country, turn off the ignition and sit in the quiet in stillness until it just became too much. It was too much silence. Too much dark. Like were invading and armies were surrounding us. Creepy.

'The Cranes Are Flying'

A chillingly and hearbreakingly fantastic war movie. Arguably the best war movie I've ever seen.

Set in Moscow at the onset of World War II, it features our lovers, Veronica and Boris. Boris and his brother Mark are trained musicians. Mark receives an exemption from the war. Boris doesn't and is sent to the front in front of an oncoming Nazi army.

Later, during a bombing, Veronica's parents are killed and she's taken in by Boris' family and eventually "forced" to marry Mark after several coercions on his part.

Later, the family retreats to Siberia with no news of Boris' time in the war. We watch him eventually die in some woods.

One of my other favorite war movies is "A Very Long Engagement," set in France during World War I when young lovers, too, are torn apart without any real knowledge (or true, factual knowledge) of the man's whereabouts.

Although both films vary greatly, one of the best similarities, which is very subtle and awesome, is in both the females create these arbitrary scenarios where if an innocuous thing happens or if they can do a certain innocuous duty in a certain time, then they make deals in their own brain, with themselves somehow guaranteeing their lover's safety, at least in their own brain.

For example, Veronica, seeing the mail coming, stats that if she can count to 50, then she will get a letter.

In "A Very Long Engagment," Audrey Tautau's character makes several of these "deals" throughout. It's precious and just overly romantic.

'Shane'

I begged silently for Shane to turn around with his six-shooter and just blow that annoying kid's brains out all over the Wyoming countryside. O how I begged and pleaded. "Shaaaaaannnnnneeeeee!!! Pleeeeeeaaaassssseeee Shaaaaaaannnnnneeeeeee! Bloooooowwwwww Hiisssssssss Braiiiiinnnnnnsssssss Ouuuuuuttttttt!!"

But it didn't happen. I was subjugated to that kid's obnoxious, whiney twang of a fake country accident and insanely ridiculous facial expressions.

I don't like "Shane." For one, the kid. Two, Jean Arthur was a dog. Three, Alan Ladd was largely unconvincing of anything involving guns, cowboys, the west or anything in this movie. It surprise me not to hear that he later had big personal issues and tried to kill himself. Watching this film, it's clear he was the unstable one.

Finally, we never learn Shane's past. What is he running from? Where is he going? Is he good or bad? Why stop and help these retarded farmers? It doesn't make any sense and it's not explained.

I had a friend through elementary, junior high and high school named "Shane." His uncles would also go through the final five lines from the kid screaming at Shane to "cooooommmmmmeeeeee baacccccckkkkkkk!!!"

'The Ox-Bow Incident'

There's a sentiment nowadays that people don't know how to handle life. Circumstances, bad luck, stupidity, maybe upbringing and a shitload of other factors disallow people from living a normal life.

People try to make money without working. People win the lottery only to wind up in the news for something totally unrelated, eventually letting those funds escape through the cracks of their lives.

I generally feel this way. It came in college. It was a political science class, junior year, and the professor was lecturing on Thomas Hobbes, the author of "Leviathan," who believed in a strong central government because, for lack of a better term, people were batshit crazy and couldn't handle living life on their own terms and rules.

Thus, a government was needed to create and enforce rules because people were inherently bad and the only way to battle their carnal instincts was to govern and govern some more. This goes from the child pornographer to the airline that can save a billion dollars if it discontinues certain maintenance or regulatory actions. The child pornographer is just bad and the airline exec is always trying to boost the bottomline.

If you need a lesson in liberalism or Hobbesian theory of social contract, watch "The Ox-Bow Incident." It's a sickening story of two-bit law enforcers wrongly lynching three men obviously innocent of murdering a rancher. People need guidance, boundaries and authority or else we'd rip each other to shreds. Animals.

'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie'

I was reading this book at my in-laws house on Christmas Day. My father-in-law, whose favorite author if Clive Cussler, walks by and asks what I'm reading.

I reply.

I know he's never read it and will never read it. So what do you say in reply if you're him about me reading a book he knows nothing about?

"Ooh. That's a classic."

Thanks, dad. Can I call you dad?

'No Sleep 'Til Hammersmith'

Motorhead are generally considered forerunners of the metal scene. In actuality, they probably have more in common with ZZ Top than they do with Metallica or Megadeth. Motorhead is basically just sped up a little more but the difference is really negligble.

The song "Ace of Spades," Motorhead's penultimate song, is probably best known by young men and women under the age of 22 as a featured tune on "Guitar Hero 2," a video game that simulates playing the guitar and in some kind of larger set of circumstances where success is had allows the player to become a "guitar hero."

"Guitar Hero" gets permission to use real songs performed by very unreal bands. How does Motorhead really feel about this? How punk or metal is selling out to a stupid video game no matter how fun the video game actual is? What is it like to have your songs appreciated within the idiom of a video game (played by a non-real band) instead of being played by you within the vehicle of your album? So much for keepin' it real.

'The Gilded Palace of Sin'

A scintillatingly awesome album. Definitely in my top 10 of all time and so good that I could probably listen to it over and over and over no matter what mood I'm in.

It captures everything that I love about music collectively over 29 years and thousands of hours listening to all genres of music since I was a kid getting my first Beach Boys cassette as a seven year old dork.

The fusion of soul with crisp, West Coast rock country. As salty and warm like the desert with the sweet dripping syrup of layered harmonies, master display of songmanship and the fantastic genius of Chris Hillman and Gram Parsons.

"The Gilded Palace of Sin" was created by a bunch of drugged-out, wine-swilling hippies from California for consumption by music fans and music fans alone. A glorious accomplishment.

'Winchester '73'

I think this is a very interesting concept for a film. And it's quite a good film. It runs about 90 minutes and takes little or no time to introduce our heroes, our villains, shooting of guns and obvious contention (although, unknown) between good and bad.

Fascinating because it follows the life and times of a rifle, a Winchester won by Jimmy Stewart's character during a July 4 shooting competition in Dodge City with Wyatt Earp (a chunky Earp at that) on hand.

It's stolen by the bad guy, who sells it to an arms trader, who has it stolen by Native Americans. He's then shot down in an attack and is given to some boring guy, it's stolen (or taken) again and winds up back in the hands of the big bad dude, who is, as it turns out, is Stewart's brother. Call it delayed satisfaction because we learn nothing of the brother's fight until the very end when everything is revealed.

'The Shining'

I've read two Stephen King novels (in addition to some short stories) and the two I've read have had very similar themes. So similar I wonder now what his other books are really about.

In "It" and "The Shining," King's characters find themselves blindly battling a series of mystical or otherworldly powers some we assume are bad and others good.

All the while, the true demons in each novel are the characters' pasts. While our attentions are placed on evil clowns or ghosts, what drives and haunts these people are their horrific and angst-filled childhoods. These scars the characters just can't shake and they swell and pulsate until they break the skin, irritate and then infect.

It's the battle in the heart and head that King is most worried about. Fight as they may, Wendy was never, ever going to kill "Jack," or the man formerly known as "Jack" who by the end of the book is possessed by the spirit or demon within the hotel. However, it took young Danny to realize what Wendy and the hotel itself couldn't think of because they were so interested in killing the flesh. It wasn't brawn, but brains that won the day.

What I loved most about this book is the end when Jack is possessed by the hotel demon and he's searching the building for his son, Danny, who has some unexplained power of foresight, telepathy and ability to see the unseen, I guess. While roaming the halls of the hotel searching for the boy with a roque mallet, Danny confronts the demon inside his father saying that the "hotel" will never win and that the man holding the mallet wasn't his father, but the demon.

In a small slip, Jack takes control of his body again to tell his son to run and to remember that his father loved him. Both realized they'd never see each other again. It was a really sweet, human moment during a series of chapters were humaness and goodness were gone.

'Groundhog Day'

Although I love all of Bill Murray's work, I consider his 1990s films ("Groundhog Day," "What About Bob?") to be his peak work. Murray was great on Saturday Night Live but I don't know if film really captured his true dry wit and genius until the 1990s, especially "Groundhog Day."

The film is superbly written and executed. Incredibly funny yet sincere and heartfelt. There's growth and maturation of the characters without losing the funny or having to insert some dumb, out-of-place love interest. Granted, there's love interest with the very unattractive Andie McDowell, but it doesn't get in the way of the truly important things in the film: Murray's performance, the writing and the phenomenal passage of time where Murray's Phil goes through the stages of grieving for his predicament, which he would assume would go forever. In fact, we know he assumes this because he wouldn't run from cops and do all the bad stuff unless he was certain there'd be no Feb. 3.

The moral argument made is also fascinating being that the film represents an interesting hypothetical. What if you relived the same day over and over providing you the opportunity to live dangerously, to kill yourself, to commit crimes, helps others or to help yourself. You're free to do what you want within the confines that the same day will take place once the alarm clock goes off the next morning.

We see Murray's Phil break down under the virtual insanity of literally living the same day over and over. From confusion to grief and despair to the realization that he can improve himself and then help others. It's a very mature film for being such a silly 1990s comedy. But that's part of what makes it great.

'The Adventures of Robin Hood' & 'Captain Blood'

Errol Flynn was quite the swashbuckler. In fact, was the term "swashbuckler" even coined before Flynn was in the Hollywood? Even as a dumb kid growing up in the 1980s, I associated the term with Flynn, who I had never seen in a film. It was just common knowledge.

That's probably why Flynn is so good. Or the perception, thereof. Take any other actor or actress and associate them with a noun or adjective. "Grace" and Grace Kelly, maybe. But that's probably due to the name.

Flynn is more swashbuckling than Audrey Hepburn is precocious, Humphrey Bogart is grumpy or Cary Grant is smarmy.

Flynn is also synonymous with the ladies. As it turns out, probably the younger ladies. He was tried once for allegedly sexing up two teenagers. He was acquitted. He later allegedly bedded two other teenagers. This on top of the hundreds and hundreds of other women he screwed his entirely life because he was A) rich, B) incredibly handsome) and C) in the position (ha!) to do just about anything that walks.

Other rumors about the guy was that he was bisexual (probable) and a Nazi sympathiser (yeah, because zee Germans were the only people to dislike Jews).

'Sullivan's Travels' & 'The Lady Eve'

Two films directed by Preston Sturges, in probably what is considered the man's heyday.

Some fun facts about Sturges:

1. Married four times -- two divorces, an annullment and a death (his).

2. His mother, Mary, was a bit of a bohemian. She, too, married four times and allegedly had a fling with noted occultist Alester Crowley, who called young Preston "a most god-forsaken lout."

3. One of the first men in Hollywood to get rights to direct his own screenplays.

4. Actually won the first ever Oscar for original screenplay in 1944. He was nominated three times.

5. Both "The Lady Eve" and "Sullivan's Travels" were released in 1941, Sturges' peak period where four of his films (including the aforementioned) were named as part of the 100 funniest according to the AFI.

6. Sturges also pissed off studio execs by basically having a roving cast of bit players in essentially of his films. The list runs to about 20 with bigger names starring in three or more of his films, including "Sullivan's" Joel McCrea. This is not unlike what Wes Anderson and Judd Apatow do today.

7. Williams Demarest was one of Sturges' regulars. Yes, Uncle Charlie.

'The Virgin Suicides'

A brilliant book. Particularly due to the style that it is written, the first-person plural.

It's told from the point of view of a group of boys in this neighborhood of the Lisbon sisters, who all commit suicide. The boys, however, don't play some undetached character, but wind up collecting artifacts of the Lisbon girls and the family, keeping them over time and separating them between themselves and keeping them as reminders ... of these girls. Possibly they were in love. But never do they state their real attraction to the girls other than as sideshow circus freaks. But even that is too harsh because the boys did seem to have some sort of an affinity for the girls. But it was more asexual than anything else.

Also, it's told in part eye-witness accounts and part hearsay, rumor and conjecture, with just a bare amount of actual fact. It's almost like real life in how we construct image and reputations. Just turns out this was about five dead girls. It's also a comment about suburban values and its gross kinda horny underbelly.

'The Awful Truth'

Here's some cinematic, film history tidbits: "The Awful Truth" is an example of "comedies of remarriage," in which two people on the verge or divorced find that they are still in love.

High jinks ensue and they get back together. Ironically or not, Cary Grant was involved in three of the four most visible examples of the "comedies of remarriage": "The Awful Truth," "The Philadelphia Story" and "His Girl Friday." In each, Grant was the man reconnecting with the ex.

This film also propelled Grant to superstardom becoming the king of the comedic film. He almost left the filming because the director's disorganization.

The director, Leo McCarey, won the Oscar for best director. It was nominated for best film, best actress (Irene Dunne), best supporting actor (Ralph Bellamy) and best adapted screenplay.

Could you imagine a romantic comedy today even getting one nomination for an Oscar? No way. Grant did not get a nomination and never got one because he was independent of the studio system that ruled Hollywood in the early part of the 20th century. Fun facts.

'The Sound of Music'

I dated a girl in college and she had an aunt Melody, or Mel as she was informally called.

She called me "the lil' goatherd boy" from "The Sound of Music" when the children and fraulein Maria do the puppet show for herr Von Trapp, the Baroness and Max Detweiler.

That may be my favorite part of the entire film. I've always liked it though. I thought Julie Andrews was super cute along with Liesl. In fact, Liesl was my No. 1 all-time, first-time babe. I thought she was gorgeous and I was pretty upset to learn that when I first watched the film, she was probably 35 or 40 years old. I was just happy that asshole Nazi Youth Rolf didn't get her.

'Babette's Feast'

Ssssssssssssnnnnnnnnnnnnnoooooooooooo
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
oooozzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeefest.

One of the most boring films I'd seen in this lil' project.

'On The Road'

First read Jack Kerouac's greatest when I was 16. At that moment, I wanted to be Sal Paradise. I could never be a Dean Moriarty, so uncaring.
My favorite parts of "On the Road" are when they're driving around San Fran, Denver or Chicago going to jazz clubs and just tripping out on the music. The book isn't so much about hitching and seeing America as it is about experiencing America. Any yahoo could get a credit card and fly around the country or even drive, but until you stain your shoes on the sooty floor of America's clubs, streets, cafes, buildings, bus stations and restrooms, you haven't seen Her in Her greatest majesty.

'Crumb'

In the documentary, Robert Crumb talks about his father being disappointed that his three sons didn't turn out to be tough, manly Marines and were instead comic book and art geeks.

This is supposed to be some kind of criticism of his strict, former Marine father, who, according to the film and Crumb himself, worked with corporations on how to motivate salesmen.

I don't know why the Crumb father would be disappointed:

One son, Robert, is a sexist, racist comic book artist, who is an anti-social neurotic, who is self-admittedly unable to love.

The youngest, Maxon, is a neurotic artist, who lives in a San Francisco hotel.

The oldest son, Charles, committed suicide at age 50 after dealing with deep and scarring psychological problems and living with his mother in awful physical conditions.

I don't know why their father would be disappointed. Seems like they're upstanding citizens.

'Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles'

This is three hours of a housemom shopping, cooking, cleaning, eating, reading letters, running errands and caring for her son. Even her hosting johns in a tidily-run prostitution ring is mundane has hell.

It's three hours, but it's good film watching. It's directed for Chantal Akerman, a Belgian filmmaker, who 25 yeras later would make one of the most boring films I'd ever seen, "The Captive."

"Jeanne Dielman" doesn't have near the dialogue or actual movement and yet it's 100 times more watchable and intriguing.

At the end of three hours, the major action takes place, a swift plunge of scissors into the carotid artery. Although there'd been 199 minutes of nothing, you feel the intensity leading up to the murder and you just knew something was going to happen.

'Guitar Town'

I initially got interested in Steve Earle in college after reading about his dealings with hard drugs and his many redemptions. "Guitar Town" was always the seminal record for the guy.

Then I watched "The Wire," where he plays a reformed drug addict who mentors one of the show's main characters, a struggling drug addict.

At that point, I decided to search for "Guitar Town" and I found it, ironically, not in my home state of Texas, but in a too cool for school Manhattan record shop.

Like Joe Ely's "Honky Tonk Masquerade," I was underwhelmed with the first listen and decided to give the record time to breath, like a good wine. Or any wine.

Five or six listens and two months later and it still hasn't done anything for me. It's bland and cliche for a guy trying to make a country record in the 1980s without sounding like everything coming out of Nashville.

I don't know when Earle started doing drugs. If I had to judge by his art, I would assume it was after the 1986 release of "Guitar Town" because if that album was made on drugs, Earle needed a new dealer.

'Morrison Hotel'

Simply put, The Doors are one of the worst bands in the history of music and Jim Morrison is the biggest fraud perpetrated upon humanity.

I am speechless imagining people listening to "Morrison Hotel" or any other Doors recording and getting behind the idea that they are good to listen to.

I'm angry.

'Felt Mountain'

Goldfrapp is Quentin Tarantino's house band. Nailed it.