'Franz Ferdinand'

I started reading rock magazines in or around the sixth or seventh grade. At that time it was Rolling Stone.

The next six or so years, it was mostly guitar magazines, Hit Parader and Metal Mania.

In college, I "graduated" to SPIN and Alternative Press. Currently, I stick mainly to porn.

My point being that I've been looking at rock musicians for about 16 years and I think one of my all-time favorite rock musicians to look at of Franz Ferdinand drummer, Paul Thomson. This fascination was solidified a year and a half ago (about four years after I quit listening to Franz Ferdinand) when I saw them perform (on TV) on the PBS concert show, Austin City Limits.

Thomson and bassist Bob Hardy are the backbone of this group no doubt, but Thomson was phenomenal. Just beating the shit out of his kit. Playing like gonzo. From all indications, he's a pretty crazy party guy. He's the guy most likely to be shirtless in any given concert or for any given photo shoot.

What is it that draws us to musicians? What makes some look cool and others not?

Thomson is in a band with Alex Kapranos. A guy who I believe has been a model and dates models. He's a super suave, good-looking guy. Yet, I'm drawn to Thomson. Why has Brian Jones always seemed 100 times cooler despite sharing a band with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards? Even guys who listen to Franz Ferdinand get caught up in the cult of personality, but it's nothing the artist does or how a photographer captures their facial expressions or a shirtless drummer double fisting Budweisers.

Thomson would look cool even if he was plumber.

Are they cool because they're rock musicians? Or are they rock musicians because they're cool?

'Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs'

Country and western music hasn't always been a niche genre. "Gunfighter Ballads" peaked at No. 6 on the pop albums chart.

Marty Robbins is interesting. He won two straight Grammys, one for "Gunfighter Ballads" and the second for the appropriately titled "More Gunfighter Ballads." The story told in "El Paso" has sequels -- "Faleena" and "El Paso City."

Most fascinating about the man is that he was an avid race car driver and actually drove in a number of actual NASCAR races (back when NASCAR was totally uncool) and finished in the top 10 six times, including one in the Daytona 500.

Compared to today, that's literally like Garth Brooks breaking Spring Training as the San Diego Padres' left fielder and hitting .280.

'The Palm Beach Story'

My how times have changed.

No longer do leading men in award-winning, high-grossing films make $60,000.

No longer are comedies described as being "screwball."

No longer does the romantic comedies considered good.

I think the bigger change from 1942 (doesn't this film seem silly compared to, you know, shooting Nazis?) is that Palm Beach isn't nearly the destination it was back then.

On I Love Lucy, Palm Beach was the premier destination for getting a tan, enjoying the sun and being a major part of the California glitterati.

Does anyone go to Palm Beach anymore? Is Rock Hudson still lounging by the pool? Hell, Brad Pitt lives in New Orleans the opposite of Palm Beach.

'Hour of the Wolf'

Ingmar Bergman had quite the career, which is an understatement. But I'm referring to his longetivity as much as the quality.

Bergman directed films in seven decades starting in the 1940s. If you considering the four or so TV movies done in the 1990s, it was eight decades of creating.

Alfred Hitchcock, for example, created films in six different decades. Marty Scorsese just four decades. Stanley Kubrick's streak from the 1940s-2000s is the American equal.

Bergman's streak is pretty stinking impressive. Especially for a guy that was so screwy.

'Rubber Soul' & 'Revolver'

I'm re-watching The Beatles Anthology -- the nine-hour documentary about the band that ran on TV in 1993 -- and there's an interesting quote from guitarist George Harrison regarding Rubber Soul and Revolver.

The Quiet Beatle stated that he felt that the two albums were the same and that they were companion pieces -- as if the pair were an essential double album.

I could not disagree more.

I love Harrison and if he felt that way about those albums then I would defer to him because he worked on them, he's listened to them more than anyone. It's his opinion to hold.

But I think it sells both albums short. Yes, I consider both albums as being seminal for what the Beatles would do the next four years, they were bridges from the four mop tops to the bearded sages going single file on a crosswalk. Arguably, Rubber Soul and Revolver were the Beatles best albums.

To use a drug analogy, Rubber Soul is like weed. Revolver is acid. Both are illegal drugs. Both will do the trick. But one goes on a different plain, takes on a whole new conciousness.

Revolver is a jagged pill. The guitar riffs are angular and pointed. "I'm Only Sleeping" and "Here, There and Everywhere" could've been on Rubber Soul, but "And Your Bird Can Sing," "Dr. Robert," "Taxman," "Tomorrow Never Knows," "She Said She Said" and "Eleanor Rigby" are strictly Revolver and they would not have fit anywhere else including the follow-up, Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.

I don't think these albums are companions, but one doesn't happen without the other.

'Psycho'

The censors came down pretty hard on Alfred Hitchcock for "Psycho."

Not necessarily for the violence, Janet Leigh in her bra and then Leigh in the shower getting stabbed (although there was some issue with the signature shower scene).

No, what hung up the censors was Leigh in the Bates Motel bathroom flushing the ripped piece of paper down the toilet. Furthermore, it was insane to put a toilet in a film, more or less the sound of it flushing. Hitchcock, again, breaking down barriers in filmmaking.

'The Hustler'

Another chapter in my attempt to "get" Paul Newman, to understand why everyone thinks he's so great.

And he is great, I guess. So far, he hasn't eclipsed his performance in "Hud," which is a million miles from his performance in "The Hustler." I do kind of think that everyone's affinity for "The Hustler" is due to the fact that it's about playing pool. If it was a soccer or curling movie, nobody would think it's as cool.

Playing pool -- the smoky bars, breaking a cue over someone's back, drinking, cussing -- is a very appealing idiom for many people. I think it's because it borders on shadiness and ill-repute, without having to necessarily join a gang or anything.

Despite Newman's physical attributes and his clear command on the camera as a badass, I find it very interesting that all of his characters abuse these characteristics and live and die as broken, lonely and lost. From Luke to Eddie to Hud, it's basically the same character.

'A Night at the Opera'

I do not back down from my summation that the Marx Brothers are very unfunny.

"A Night at the Opera" does not change that at all. It's not funny and the brothers are utterly obnoxious.

Although I did do some reading about the film and director Irving Thalberg changed the role of the brothers.

In previous films, the brothers were entirely too chaotic, it seems, and it drove audiences away. Particularly the females. They were too off-putting.

So, Thalberg changes things around. The brothers find sympathetic characters (the two singers, in need of a break), team up with them to "defeat" the "bad" guys. Apparently, some of the brothers were against the change, but the film made a whole assload of money and that shut them up.

Also, I read that the film's preview was a disaster as nobody thought it was funny. A sentiment I can understand. So the producers went back, re-edited some things and cut (cut!) nine minutes film. Then it became a classic. James Cameron could learn a lesson here.

'Gilded Palace of Sin'

An all-time, top 10 record for me. It has everything. The musicianship. The perfect balance between the swaying heartbreak of country and the driving energy of rock and roll.

It's basically a greatest hits for the Burritoes and Gram Parsons' shining moment. Yeah, he had other tunes, other albums. But "Gilded Palace" was the great bridge between The Byrds and Parsons' solo work.

I can listen to this over and over.

'How Green Was My Valley'

If you want a good lead, look into the history of Wales.

It's always interested me because I'm a bit of a Anglophile particularly the British Isles.

Somehow among the last several hundred years, the countries of Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales carved their own distinct cultures and languages in their part of the world, for better or for worse.

Wales is particularly perplexing because of their particular language. Trying to sift through the various facts and theories about the Welsh people and their origins. None of it really makes sense.

What doesn't change no matter the language barriers and cultures are the horrors of the mines. It's disheartening when Huw turns his back on education, the only way out, and enters the mines out of some blind loyalty to the long walk to the coal mine inhaling that blackness. It's sad beyond any death.

'The Best Years Of Our Lives'

One of the most sobering moments of the recent history is watching Ken Burns' "The War" and listening to veterans from World War II talking honestly and openly about the horrors of their experience in Europe and Asia and the frightening period after they got back.

It's not a story heavily publicized from the Great Generation after a justified war in which actual evil and genocide were defeated. What we learned was that war is a giant shit sandwich no matter if it's a faceless Vietcong or Al Qaeda, or jackbooted Nazis dumping remains of Jewish corpses to the incinerator. It doesn't matter. It all fucks you up.

"The Best Years of Our Lives" -- with a light, but poignant brush -- chronicles the change from combat to going back home where you just wish everything was the same (even though it isn't) and family and friends can not really handle that every thing has changed.

It's jingoistic to a fault. Although it doesn't throw darts at the idea of killing Nazis, but it takes a fair share of shots at the idea of war and how pointless it can be.

But as we'd probably like to paint a pretty picture of that time in this country, it's a stark portrait that a lot of lives were lost through a soul-breaking Depression and a country so unwilling to stick their nose into someone else's problems that it almost destroyed the world.

'M. Hulot's Holiday' & 'Mon Oncle'

I didn't think much of these two films, from French director Jacques Tati and featuring the bumbling exploits of Monseiur Hulot.

Thankfully, the "Mon Oncle" DVD featured a short introduction by Monty Pythoner Terry Jones.

In it, he actually explained how "Mon Oncle" initiallyi disappointed him, too, until he watched it more and more and it eventually became his favorite.

Jones qualified Tati's satire of the post-war, modernity and consumerism that was taking the soul and flavor out of France, M. Hulot's France. Jones also highlighted the use of soundtrack. The clickety-clack of the secertary's shoes in the factory compared to the brilliant and pretty music used while Hulot walks around the market and streets.

Jones made such a good argument that I went back and watched "Mon Oncle" again. And I like it 75 percent more than I did four hours earlier.

What would it hurt to get studios to do a short interview with someone explaining why they like the film we're about to see?

'Reveries Of A Solitary Walker'

For all intents and purposes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Reveries of a Solitary Walker" was the first ever blog. God might have an argument for the Holy Bible. But I'll stick with the French philosopher.

Rousseau had little use for the narrative or storytelling element of the novel. He had ideas and the most direct, best way to get those ideas to the public or to those who read were through these short little essays.

These essays or "walks" were written near the end of Rousseau's life (he did not finish the final "walk, No. 10, before his death). I can just imagine a very bitter (he was ... it shows) and bored Rousseau probably stuck indoors or in a chair for a lot of the time wanting to get something done and wanting to speak his mind one final time.

What makes it a blog -- of sorts -- is that it's (we assume) completely bias, highly personal and written with no filter.

Hodgepodged throughout are anecdotes about these walks he takes through Paris and the surrounding areas documenting these incidents with individuals and the revelry in nature. Some stories border on the ridiculousness of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," while all support some idea or social standard that has captured Rousseau's fancy at the moment.

Chuck Klosterman has published five books and gotten gigs at SPIN, ESPN and Esquire doing essentially the same thing. Seems Rousseau battled just to have a couple of friends.

'Shoot The Piano Player'

What you often run into on the the 1,001 film list are films that are particularly good films (in terms of the ordinary requirements of a good story, decent acting, developed characters), but they're just singularly important.

"Shoot The Piano Player" isn't a particularly a good movie outside of Francois Truffaut's filmmaking and it being a seminal chronicle in the French new wave.

"Charlie" the piano player isn't particularly interesting -- kind of a schmuck -- until three-quarters through the film when you learn that he was a vaunted classical pianist, who went off the deep end when his wife committed suicide. The audience was not feed the good stuff until late in the film and then, when the revelation came down, there was nothing in the previous 45 minutes to make us think differently about Charlie.

Knowing what you know at 50 minutes doesn't make you think or change your thoughts about Charlie the previous 49. Even his kid -- not like single parenthood is altogether rare -- wasn't his kid, but his kid brother, brought into the city to escape the rabble-rousing prospects of his other brothers in the country.

Again, it's a film where you can't just watch it for the story, but for the production. A classic example from a very deep and inspirational era of films.

'Little Caesar'

What is the public's fascination with gangsters?

Whether it's "Little Caesar," "Scarface," "The Wire," "The Sopranos," "Godfather," "Goodfellas" or any of the other six dozen gangster-oriented films or TV shows that are generally popular.

There's a dozen possiblities for this phenomena. The simple answer is that, secretly, all of us straight people want nothing more than to live above the law. To wake up every morning doing something so dangerous that you might not live out the day. We probably also like the idea of doing the bare minimum of work to receive, in turn, the maximum amount of payment. Without paying taxes.

However, I think humans have a "Robin Hood" complex. Robin Hood is an OG. The first gangster in popular culture and we've since written books about his fake life and about four dozen movies and TV shows about his fake life. Robin Hood is the idea of the poor man getting his day.

We enjoy the fact that the uneducated, poor -- however, self-motivated -- immigrant or minority doing something for themselves other than going on welfare. As hard-working Americans, we abhor the Mexican immigrant coming into the United States just to get government handouts. But should that same Mexican immigrant run a heroin line, no matter how much we dislike the drugs, at least he wasn't looking for something easy. Like not breaking the law.

What aids this fascination with the gangster "underdog" is that the film or TV show has made these people inherently likable. Watch "The Wire" or "The Sopranos" and tell me you don't identify with or root for Omar, Avon Barksdale, Tony, Sylvio or Paulie Walnuts.

We forget that these are sociopaths -- they murder, intimidate, deal drugs, guns, kidnap and generally make the United States kinda worse for the wear.

We're closer to Edward G. Robinson than Jimmy Stewart a lot of the time.

'Rushmore' & 'The Royal Tenenbaums'

Wes Anderson's "Rushmore" was the film I saw that, afterwards, I first knew that movies could be really, really well done.

They could be clever, well written, witty, special featuring interesting, well-developed characters and a story that would wilt like a flower in a Texas summer without the appropriate direction and attention to nuance of Anderson.

I remember I rented it as a senior (or just graduated) high schooler from Video Vision in Kaufman, Texas.

It blew me away.

Once "The Royal Tenenbaums" was in the works and released, I made a very stated point to watch it in the theaters and I've seen every Anderson film in the theaters since.

Both films have changed the way I've thought about Bill Murray and Gene Hackman, both of whom are otherworldly in their starring roles.

It's thoughtful film done right. Makes both rewatchable over and over.

'I Am A Fugitive From The Chain Gang' & 'The Life Of Emile Zola'

Paul Muni is quite the Hollywood hunk.

He made a total of 25 films and was nominated for Best Actor in five of them, including "I Am A Fugitive ..." and "Emile Zola." Ironically, he won portraying Louis Pasteur in between the two films. Muni was also one of six to receive a nomination in their first film, but the only one of the six to eventually win.

Muni, other than being ruggedly good looking, was quite the eccentric. Later in his life, his wife, Bella, took control of his career often making directors reshoot scenes that did not meet to her approval.

He also apparently went into rages if someone wore red, but would relax on set playing violin.

'A Hard Day's Night' & 'A Hard Day's Night'

Once upon a time, I was a gigantic Beatles fan. The oddity is that I was born in 1980, five months before John Lennon was murdered in New York City and 16 years before the Beatles flew to the United States after "I Want To Hold Your Hand" went No. 1.

It was only semi-unhealthy. Maybe I should've been fascinated and fanatical about a band that was releasing albums in the mid-1990s. However, I felt no real shame back then and not much has changed now that I'm a bit less concerned with being cool.

Back then, I wanted to be John Lennon. I wanted my hair like his, clothes like his, guitars like his, to talk like him, sing like him and write songs like him.

It wasn't just the music; I was like a 14-year-old in 1965. I was as obsessed with the personality and celebrity as I was the music. And I really loved the music.

That's why "A Hard Day's Night" the film was as important to me as "A Hard Day's Night" the album.

Funny thing, the songs I liked back then on this album aren't the songs I like now. In fact, it's the exact opposite. The songs I loved back then I skip now. Mostly because they're not overly sophisticated whereas the vocal harmonies on "If I Fell" are so completely impossible that I could never, ever imagine coming up with and then recording them without going crazy. "I Should Have Known Better" and "You Can't Do That" are two the Beatles' finest.

What's interesting listening to their early albums is that "Please, Please Me" and "With The Beatles" are faux R&B records, "A Hard Day's Night" is their first true rock record. "Can't Buy Me Love" is part Elvis Presley and part Little Richard. "Things We Said Today" is Roy Orbison. "I'll Cry Instead" is Carl Perkins.

For the first time, the Beatles were writing and making their own rock songs.

'Star Wars' & 'The Empire Strikes Back'

The Star Wars franchise has made, I'd assume, billions of dollars over the past 30 years off of merchandising, box office, DVD sales, re-releasing the original three films and then creating the three prequel episodes.

There are probably a billion reasons for this success.

I'd contend the major reason is the story.

People (myself included, obviously) watched thousands of hours of film and TV throughout their whole lives. For any number of reasons, they love film and TV for the action, romance, special effects, acting, writing, comedy, our obsession with celebrity, because we're bored or because watching movies is just fun.

Over the past 110 years, there's been millions of films released. The reason Star Wars is so phenomenally more popular than the rest is the story.

Say what you will about the writing, acting, editing and direction of George Lucas, but he is one hell of a storyteller and that, above all, makes Star Wars utterly and undeniably compelling.

The six films capture so much we love about life: good, evil, rebellion, the thrill of victory, agony of defeat, friendships, love, family, father/son, brother/sister, heroism, ego, underdogs, favorites.

And most of all, mythology and history. When Lucas released Star Wars in 1977, he already knew (or so we're told) the story 30 years in the past of these characters. When Luke Skywalker is asking about his father and Obi-Wan Kenobi is referencing the Clone Wars, that all meant something. It wasn't just filler to provide the illusion of a past, but it was an actual past not put onto the big screen until the 1990s.

It's a good story. Bratty teenager living among the flatlands of farming country on a God-forsaken planet yearns to leave in order to fight in the rebellion. He by some twisted and crazy destiny meets up with the father-figure he never had (Kenobi), two robots that'd change his life, his sister and a hilarious pilot/swashbuckler/smuggler with borderline ethics, who'd become like a brother.

The reason he knows little about his father is because he's part-robot, part-human known as Darth Vader, the great evil lord of space, who is dead set on conquering any and all free galaxies for this Emperor fellow. Upon learning his father is everything he's not and everything he hates, our hero fully adopts this religion/genetic condition known as the Force because it's A) his destiny and B) he's more like his father than he realizes.

We explore a thousand different planets, meet millions of odd and unusual characters amid a seemingly never-ending barrage of back-and-forth banter and biting remarks between a set of characters with their backs continually against the wall with death always at their door. Throw in cyrogenics, Yoda, walking carpets, Bobba Fett, the Millenium Falcon, Billy Dee, Leia's bikini, Porkins and swamp rats, and you've got a billion things that 99 percent of all filmdom don't have.

In the end, it's about redemption. And that's only the final three installments. In the first three, we battle awful acting and writing to learn how all that aforementioned stuff happened.

'Splendor in the Grass'

I would assume there's millions of dollars and millions of man hours discussing, planning and executing how a record, film or book is perceived by the public at large.

From advertising to reviews and trailers, those of us digesting all this shit are inundated with information and pretty pictures, which help form our opinions out art, good or bad.

I've assumed over the last 30 years that Splendor in the Grass was a sappy, boring love story, with the only redeeming quality being looking at the gorgeous Natalie Wood for two hours.

Alas, I was proven wrong. If the film was marketed to me (30 years after it was released ... so I'm sure the studio does not care about my opinion) as an antiestablishment commentary on provincial values, small-town ethos and the pre-Depression landscape of innocence, I would've watched it 10 years ago.

Which brings up the point of how much does the studio or producers get for me putting this on my Netflix and watching it? Surely they get something. Somebody gets that money. I would assume it's not particularly worth their time and money to put any effort in marketing movies to audiences whose parents were barely born when the movie came out.

I sincerely believe a lot of today's teenagers would dig Splendor in the Grass if they gave it a chance. Chances are, they won't.

'Live At Leeds'

I think the live album is an interesting concept especially when the live album is considered, arguably, one of a band's or performer's best albums. This is probably different in the early days of recording as some jazz and R&B artists may have only had live albums to go on or not many studio albums to even it out.

But The Who are a different animal. I don't particularly like them, but many consider them a great band responsible for some of the greatest rock and roll songs and albums in the history of the genre.
Yet, one of their best is an unevenly recorded live album with the bare minimum of hits released on the heels of their magnum opus, Tommy.

Live albums, generally, are for fans of the band. If you want the general gist of Paul McCartney, buy his greatest hits. If you're a fan, get Tripping the Live Fantastic. Marginal fans have little use for live albums.

Why do live albums have appeal? I think you get a sense of how they sound outside of the studio without the crutches of producers, multiple takes and multi-tracking. It's raw.

The Who are an interesting band to see this side of. Keith Moon is always excellent and brings it no matter what. But I find that doing these songs live is tougher for Pete Townshend who is responsible for all of the melodic contents of the band as there's no other guitarists, keyboards or anything outside of a bass guitar and drums.

His guitars on Live at Leeds are uneven and hurried. He's trying to do everything to paste together these riffs he constructed in the studio. Seems forced. That's probably why "Substitute" is the best track off the album.

Thumbs down for butchering "Summertime Blues."

'Woodstock'

I've never, ever been a fan of the general ethos, attitude and art of the hippie era that exploded on the United States in the late 1960s.

I personally consider this odd. I do love art. I generally like the 1960s. And I love music from the 1960s.

But as an avid fan of the greatest band in the history of music, The Beatles, I know as well as anyone that the Fab Four were not particularly involved in the hippie scene despite the fact that they were vegan, drug users, highly spiritual, long-haired tastemakers in the late-1960s, who held bed-ins for peace and wrote "All You Need Is Love."

However, they were so divorced from the whole scene. When Woodstock was organized, they were offered a spot but turned it down.

In fact, a lot of bands turned it down. In fact, other than Sly and the Family Stone, I have zero interest in the bands that played Woodstock.

However, I do not think it's a total coincidence that the Beatles, Stones, Bob Dylan, most R&B groups of the era and other big band of the day didn't play.

I'd like to think those bands/artists felt the same way I do about the hippie scene: That it's a bunch of spoiled, white, suburban college kids, who would've embraced fascism if it was antiestablishmentarian and involved ingesting copious amounts of drugs.

The hippie scene was bankrupt and I can't enjoy a documentary celebrating the vacancy of these people.