'Let's Stay Together'

Al Green was a spry 26 years old when his magnum opus, Let's Stay Together, in 1972. He looks 16.

Ironically, it was at age 16 when Green was kicked out of his gospel singing group in Grand Rapids. By his father. For listening to Jackie Wilson. Needless to say, Green would rebound.

He's one of the few singers that is signature and distinguished. I'd put James Brown, Otis Redding, Sam Cookie and Wilson Pickett in the same boat. That's some heady company.

In 1974, Green's girlfriend (a married woman) was apparently very upset about Green's hesistation in marrying her. So, she goes over, dumps a pan of boiling grits on him while in the shower and then kills herself.

It was a "come to Jesus" moment for Green. He'd then embrace the Lord and become an ordained priest.

Maybe his dad had a point. Jackie Wilson is bad business.

'Play'

Richard Melville Hall -- otherwise known as Moby -- had released four relatively unpopular and unnoteworthy albums before releasing his best-selling record, Play, in 1999.

Before that time, Moby was known to a very small percentage of people, most those that are into dance music and whatnot.

Naturally, he records a series of radio- and marketing-friendly songs and decides to fucking condescend to anyone who buys it.

In the liner notes for Play, he "publishes" a series of "essays" sharing his thoughts about certain socio-religious issues. Remember: Moby was a nobody at this point. He might as well been the man on the moon. But he thought it useful to share his thoughts.

My favorite is his "essay" on him being a vegan. Because we're all super fucking interested.

"Oftentimes when I meet someone they ask me why I'm a vegan (a vegan is someone who neither eats, wears, or uses animal products). Before I list the reasons why I've chosen to be a vegan let me say that I don't judge people who choose to eat meat. People make different choices for different reasons, and it is not my place to judge the choices that other people make. Just being alive is inevitably going to cause suffering. But anyway, here's why I'm a vegan."

Right after he informs us that people often ask him about his veganism, that he doesn't judge anyone and that our very existence causes suffering, he then notes just how fucking awesome he is that he's a vegan and then proceeds to judge anyone who is not a vegan.

The bottomline here is that Moby is a grandstanding piece of shit. A nobody with enough ego to think that everyone would really care what the author of "Southside" and countless songs for car commercials really feels about important social issues.

On top of that, his music sucks.

'The Sun Also Rises'

When I decided that reading books was a pretty good thing to spend my time doing, Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises was one of the first I took on as I delved into his vast bibliography.

It's still one of my favorites. Not unlike Jack Kerouac's On the Road, The Sun Also Rises made me want to hit the road more than any other piece of art. I wanted nothing more than to be swept away to Paris in 1925. Then take the train to Spain. Drink the wine, soak in the Spanish hospitality and a country that soon would be ripped apart by civil war. It's at this moment -- the second before the storm -- that is the sweetest.

To a certain point, Hemingway was exceedingly lucky. Granted, anyone could jaunt around the world -- big-game hunting in Africa, drunken sprees in Spain, fighting in wars that aren't yours, living the life in Paris. All on a journalist's salary, no less.

Yes, I could do this. However, there's something about the time. The freedom and the relative value of living abroad (folks didn't flock to Paris in the 1920s because they were rich ... the exchange rate was such that a dollar went a long way) was advantageous for this lifestyle. You could go anywhere without any real fear and just find a job doing something. It was a completely different time and place.

Add to the fact that Hemingway came about during a literary and artistic heyday of the world -- the writers, painters, artists, politics and activism. The world was changing. Art was changing. Everything was about to change.

Still, today, I'd give just about anything to be getting shitfaced in Pamplona this spring.

'Smoke'

I've probably stated this a dozen times since I started this dumb project that a big reason I took this on was because every year that we live thousands upon thousands of books, films and records are released and we ingest less than one percent of all of it.

I feel this is a shame. Tons of people doing something they feel is important and a vast, vast majority of it is ignored.

Smoke is a reason I'm doing this project.

In 1995, I was 15 years old. Living at home. A sophomore in high school. I went to countless films. Sometimes two visits to the theater every weekend. I had a gross and shallow knowledge of filmdom. I was dumb, into bands and guitars and stuff. I really didn't have any time or patience for girls.

Smoke was released in 1995. Although it was released by Miramax and starred Harvey Keitel and William Hurt, two guys I had no idea about then. It also made just $8 million in the box office, which tells me it was probably not given a full release (it was indeed an independent film).

Still, it took place. It was done, released and put out on video without me ever knowing about it. I watch it 16 years after the fact and I love it.

Rich storytelling is lost in films anymore. We rely too much on actors, CGI and boredom to keep us interested in films. Instead, why not have a really good story with good actors portraying people we care about? That's what Smoke is. Keitel is a tobacco store owner in Brooklyn. William Hurt's a heartbroken novelist, who likes baseball.

Mixed with some peripheral characters that invade their comfortable existence and shake things up for the uncomfortable for the better. It's a good film. And it only took me 16 years to find it.

'Meet The Parents'

It's a mystery to me as to why Meet the Parents is included on this list of the best films of all time.

It's poorly acted full of slapstick, predictable humor with a hodgepodge of funny jokes. It was highly successful and it spawned two sequels, neither of which I've seen, but I've only heard bad things about them.

It's not signficant. It's not the funniest movie. There's no breakthroughs in film making outside of insinuating that a cat can use a toilet.

The film does mark the downfall of Robert DeNiro's career. He's done stinkers the last decade, but this one might take the cake. You have to think he would've turned this down in 1979.

Two noteworthy items: The sister who is getting married and his smacked in the face with Ben Stiller's water volleyball spike, died five years after the film's release due to pneumonia. She was 30. Apparently, it was misdiagnosed until the point doctors couldn't do anything.

Also, the MPAA forced producers to prove there were actual people with the last name "Focker" before they would allow Stiller's character to have the perpetual zinger of a surname. Apparently, somewhere, there's at least one person with the last name "Focker."

'Carmen Jones'

So, Carmen Jones was just a slut, right?

Not that people should go around killing people, but this film further confirms my ascertation that guys will always succomb to and be ruined by the sexual aggressive woman. It's why we tip more if a girl flirts with us at a restaurant. We're single-minded animals. Sue me.

Significant for an all-black cast to be so popular in 1954. Quite remarkable actually. I doubt this film did well in Alabama.

'Elvis Is Back!'

Considering he's an icon and having worked in the industry for more than 20 years, it's shocking how few actual albums Elvis Presley released. By all accounts, he had three "significant" albums.
Much of his early career were a series of singles and loads of intimate concerts around the South. By the 1960s, the album became an art form. He released Elvis is Back! and then a decade's worth of soundtracks before doing From Elvis in Memphis. A hodgepodge of various albums ended his career.

Presley's musical career, actually, is quite forgettable. He did a lot of songs and a lot were bad. I think Elvis is Back! is pretty unlistenable. If you love the rock- and gospel-based Presley, then this album is not for you. It's pop and jazz. "Fever" is the worst song of all time. No matter who sings it. Otherwise, it's clean and neat. Low-tempoed love songs with little energy or raw sex.

It's Elvis as sex and Elvis as personality that drives him as a rock icon more than anything else. If you consider his stay in the army, the 1960s and his failed latter days, Elvis squandered a solid 15 years of his career. Elvis career wasn't a disappointment because he died so soon. Look at Jimi Hendrix or Kurt Cobain. Nobody says their careers were disappointing.

Elvis was disappointing because he didn't truly utilize his prime.

'Animal Farm'

The thing about leftists and socialists, no one is more critical of themselves and their comrades. Good ones care as much about their principles and carrying out those principles based on socialism in his purest, unadulterated form than anyone. They deserve credit.

George Orwell is the greatest of these types. Always critical and always questioning. He was never happy unless it was right.

With Animal Farm, Orwell achieved the greatest creation in the history of allegory. It's a clever and meaningful story especially poignant for the Russians. It's a scathing review of Joe Stalin's regime as he starved 12 million of his own people -- mostly peasants -- to death. It notes every pitfall with a sincere desire to make things right and to take Stalin and Co. to task.

'The Gospel According to St. Matthew'

A verbatim filming of the book of Matthew from the Holy Bible. No dramatizations or amalgams from the other gospels.

Pier Paolo Pasolini quite literally filmed it as Matthew wrote it. He called John too mysitcal. Mark was vulgar. Luke was too sentimental. A strange attribute for a doctor.

It's a reverent film when there are many opportunities to not be reverent or to be artsy or to prove a point.

Pasolini could've done this easily. He had every reason. He was a homosexual athiest. Plus, he was a figure in Italian cinema's neorealism with Rossellini and Fellini.

Artsy gay athiest don't typically retell Bible stories with the same reverence. Pasolini did and I respect the hell out of him.

'Meat Puppets II'

Meat Puppets II is probably one of the most influential records in music history.

Consider without it, Nirvana might not have existed in the form and compacity (if at all) that we all knew and love about them.

Listen to this album. You quickly realize why the Kirkwood brothers guested on Nirvana's Unplugged album as Kurt Cobain warbled through "Lake of Fire," "Oh, Me" and "Plateau." If nothing else, Cobain actually gave the songs a bit of structure. Although neither Kirkwood or Cobain had the low register for "Plateau." Hell, Kirkwood had no register.

The Meat Puppets are important and that makes them influential and being influential is a level of musical grandiosity reserved for a priviledged few.

Meat Puppets II was released in 1984, a full seven years before Cobain and Co. would release their magnum opus, Nevermind, a distinct homage to what bands like the Puppets were doing by moving past punk and above the new wave popification of punk. They went to the opposite direction without going backyards.

They tip the scales measuring two parts punk with one part psychedelica and country. Curt Kirkwood's guitar playing might be some of the most important playing for the entire decade. It's wistful. Almost polite yet playing the good son to the violently dissonant vocals.

The Meat Puppets are also one of the few bands that peaked by backing another band. It's like if the Beatles never got any bigger than backing Tony Sheridan in Hamburg.

'John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band' & 'All Things Must Pass'

John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band was the former Beatles' first album since the break-up of the band.

McCartney's McCartney was released in April 1970. George Harrison's All Things Must Pass in November 1970. And Lennon's in December 1970.

Lennon's and Harrison's were produced by famed nut Phil Spector, the man who went in and added a shitload of strings to the Beatles' swansong, Let it Be. Spector, among other things, was a prime source of contention between McCartney and the other Beatles.

If you took all three albums and turned them into one, some monster quadruple album, you might have the best Beatles record of all time. Certainly, all three were fantastic efforts and showed a sense of freedom and liberation. All three are included on the 1,001 list.

My fandom of the Beatles is no secret. I feel like I know them, their songs, their records and legacy better than anyone. It's like when my parents separated when I was 13. After all the fighting and bullshit, you were just happy they were apart. I kind of feel the same way about the Beatles. It's weird. There's so much apparent animosity in those later albums. Listening to their first solo records, you realize how miserable they were.

All Things Must Pass holds a special place in my heart. I remember my junior or senior year of college and hearing that George Harrison passed away. A group of friends and I basically wore this record out, drinking and spewing the lyrics of "My Sweet Lord" over and over. It's was a magical and spiritual night. Probably something Harrison would've wanted. Probably without the liquor though.

'Live/Dead'

I'm not a big Grateful Dead fan, but I give those guys credit: They knew exactly the right buttons to push.

I don't think they were in it for the money as much for the drugs, girls and good times of never growing up and playing guitar with your friends for the rest of your life, non-stop.

I think their philosophy of rock music also defined them. They saw it as less art than oxygen. It was something that was all around. You breathed it. And like oxygen, if you lit a fire, that influx of air would let it burn brighter and with more heat.

Rock music, to the Dead, was the same way. Their instruments were the matchstick and kindling. This so-called rock music just burned.

Therefore, music was deconstructed. What they recorded in the studio was just a momentary burst of energy. It was a speck of light. It burned as bright as anything, as a supernova, for a brief second and then it went out and was never recreated again. It couldn't be. It was supremely unique.

Their lives performances were no different, which is what makes any live recordings so valuable. They had zero intention of covering their own songs, note for note. Again, they lit the match and it burned unique with a once-in-a-lifetime spark. It's the exact reason thousands of individuals followed them like some messianic mob.

Also, this was Tom Constanten's last album with the band. He was a piano prodigy, who roomed with bassist Phil Lesh at UC-Berkeley. Both studied classical music and were roped into minimalist compositions and performances. Constanten later quit after the band was busted for drugs in New Orleans. He refused to take LSD due to his religion: Scientology. Interesting rock tidbit.

'Green River'

I run hot or cold on Creedence Clearwater Revival. When their songs sound like The Band or something out of Gram Parsons' catalog, it's as good as it gets. When it's that 1960s Bayou, jamboree stuff, it sucks.

Green River has two of their better songs, "Lodi" and "Wrote a Song for Everyone," the latter being my favorite CCR song in their entire catalog.

Basically, at this moment, much of the world is in upheaval. For about four weeks, a number of countries in North Africa and the Middle East have held revolts protesting and overthrowing detestable, despotic governments that strangled its peoples and withheld certain human rights.

Naturally, it's a scary time (terrifying for these people, of course), but a fascinating one. The world remakes itself constantly. This is the snake molting, leaving its old skin behind. Soon, we'll run upon the remains and hold up that old skin and wonder just how big that snake was.

Listening to "Wrote a Song for Everyone," I thought of those people fighting for their rights as human beings:

Met myself a comin' county welfare line.
I was feelin' strung out, Hung out on the line.
Saw myself a goin', down to war in June.
All I want, All I want is to write myself a tune.

Wrote a song for everyone,
Wrote a song for truth.
Wrote a song for everyone,
And I couldn't even talk to you.

Got myself arrested,
Wound me up in jail.
Richmond 'bout to blow up, communication failed.
If you see the answer, now's the time to say.
All I want, All I want is to get you down to pray.

Saw the people standin' thousand years in chains.
Somebody said it's diff'rent now, look, it's just the same.
Pharoahs spin the message, round and round the truth.
They could have saved a million people, How can I tell you?

Pretty poignant, even if its from John Fogerty.

'This Year's Model'

It's a tough call, but this is probably my favorite Elvis Costello record and by a million miles my favorite album cover for Costello.

It is Costello's second album and his first with the so-called Attractions, including the Clash's Mick Jones on guitar.

It's a brilliantly melodic album with all the charm and whimsy of The Beatles and the hard, brashness of late-1970s mod and punk, which would spur any good music from the 1980s. It also spurred Costello's records. His first three made it on the 1,001 list.

Costello's a special artist and I'll probably start collecting his entire catalog in digital or compact disc form because he's offically crept into my top 10 artists of all time.

This list is changing everything!

'Deserter's Songs'

Odd pairing: Levon Helm and Garth Hudson of The Band guest starring on Mercury Rev's seminal album Deserter's Songs. I would not have guessed that Helm and Hudson would be into the spacy, 1990s arena rock.

Mercury Rev fits into the mold of bands that I should have been listening to in the 1990s but wasn't because I was a total douchebag in the 1990s that listened to ska, Nirvana and Fat Wreck Chords punk.

Better late than never, right?

This is a really good album and I sincerely regret not listening to it back in the day. It's a studious and very polished dreamy rock album that just grooves it's brains out.

'Abraxas'

I am principally against Santana because its a band that is named after the guitarist, who is also not the lead singer.

I don't mind the guitar player generally being included in the band's name; however, it should never be the sole name nor should it just be like the guy's last name.

It's like Led Zeppelin being called "Page" or The Yardbirds being named "Clapton." In fact, Eric Clapton always had it figured out as every band he was ever in never included his name or even a hint that he's in the band: The Yardbirds, Blind Faith, Derek and the Dominoes, Cream, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers.

And it's not like Santana has some other meaning. Like like Ritchie Blackmore. A band called "Blackmore" would actually be really cool.

Van Halen does not count because it's also the name of the drummer brother and "Van Halen" is a lot better than "Lee Roth." It's fucking 10 times better.

Abraxas is a so-so classic rock album that appeals to absolutely no one and I can't believe people actually bought this album at around the same time that Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin existed.

I would like to think that the album would be 25 percent better if Santana were actually called "Blackmore."

'Blonde on Blonde'

Blonde on Blonde's signficance has many talking points.

First and foremost, there's Barry from High Fidelity, the film, talking with a record-store patron, who apparently needs help buying records including Echo and the Bunnymen and Dylan's 1966 opus:

"Don't tell anyone you don't own Blonde on Blonde. It's gonna be okay."

Dylan's career is not one I've ever had a good grasp on. Blindly, I would've placed Blonde on Blonde around 1968 or so. Instead, it was 1966 and his sixth overall record. He not only started really early and he recorded. A lot.

It also came at a critical time in Dylan's career. Blonde on Blonde was highly ambitious and surreal. The lyrics almost insane. The music a ton more bluesy than any other record to date.

It came on the brink of Dylan going electric under great scrutiny. It came just before Dylan would be injured in a serious motorcycle accident. He was also tagging his future wife, Joan Baez and Edie Sedgwick.

Blonde on Blonde also was done around the time Dylan hired what would become The Band as his backing group including Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm. They'd shortly after split off (using the momentum of their experience with Dylan) and do their thing

'July's People'

I think a key theme of Nadine Gordimer's July's People was that of the children.

A lot is made of July and the white couple, but the children play these ancilliary, unseen roles in allowing the plot and story move along. In fact, I don't remember the children's names and only small bits of information are revealed through the narrative.

The book is set during a fictional civil war between whites and blacks in South Africa. July, a black servant, helps his employers and their children to the countryside where they can shelter until they can find a way to get out of the country.

All the while, there are these stories of the whites learning to live in the wild and the blacks trying not to hate their guts for what they've done the last hundred years of hate and power.

The children just adapt in the background. First they are attached to their old lifestyle and things, unable to easily leave these articles behind.

As time passes, Gordimer gives us hints that the children are borderline feral. They go and play on their own, the parents realizing they can not take care of themselves. They are dirty and wearing sparse clothing as they adapt to not only the country, but the black children that they have befriended.

It reminds me a lot of Walkabout, the story of the white children stuck in the Australian countryside where a Aborigine boy helps them and they, too, adapt and learn to live on their own.

'Axis: Bold As Love' & 'Are You Experienced?' & 'Electric Ladyland'

The Jimi Hendrix Experience recorded and release three albums in two years -- all three of which completely rewrote how we view rock music and the guitar. It also created a mighty legacy that resonates 50 years after the fact.

That's quite a two years of work.

The Experience would break up after the release of Electric Ladyland and Hendrix would live some noteworthy live performances and record Band of Gypsys before dying in 1970.

It's almost shocking to listen to these records back-to-back-to-back. Axis and Are You...? are extemely sophomoric when you compare them to Electric Ladyland. It's almost impossible to believe that they were recorded with the same producer, players and all within a span of a year.

Electric Ladyland is far more mature and aggressive. I think it pushes Hendrix' playing and the production capabilities to the limit much more than the previous two. The songs are beyond just pop standards of the verse-chorus-verse-chorus variety. It puts far more focus on the playing and song craftmanship than his earlier work.

'The Thin Red Line'

The Thin Red Line was released just five months after Saving Private Ryan in 1998.

They were both very similar. Both set during World War II as the United States was entering very important stages of the two fronts (D-Day on the European campaign and the fight for Guadalcanal in the Pacific). Both were done by high profile directors: Steven Spielberg and Terrence Malick, who chose The Thin Red Line to make his return to directing since Days of Heaven in 1978.

Also, they were loaded with all-star casts, in hindsight. In 1998, I don't think we thought of Matt Damon, John C. Reilly, Jim Caviezel and Adrien Brody as we do today. Still, Tom Hanks, Nick Nolte, Sean Penn, Ed Burns, John Cusack and John Travolta are nothing to sneeze at.

These things happen in Hollywood, it appears quite a bit. Somehow, someway, competing studios start on similar -- if not identical -- film projects. Apparently, there were two Malcolm X biopics (the Denzel Washington one getting finished), two Truman Capote/In Cold Blood biopics (both getting made) and various others through the years. In fact, Malick had talked with a screenwriter about The Elephant Man Joe Merrick until David Lynch released The Elephant Man.

However, I don't think this was a case of different studios making the same film. Adapting The Thin Red Line began almost nine years before its release in 1989. Saving Private Ryan was allegedly developed in 1994. I'm not saying that either director was copycatting the other, but it's beyond coincidence that these two films (169 and 170 minutes each) were released within several months of each other.

Saving Private Ryan gets the headlines, but The Thin Red Line is by far the better film. It doesn't necessarily make you cry or have these big Spielbergian jingoistic, flag-waving scenes. Still, it's better. The battle scenes are way better and more realistic (the first five minutes of Saving Private Ryan, notwithstanding). It's more brutal (and Saving Private Ryan is no picnic).

It's a war film unlike all others. It's battle where inches and feet were maybe all you get in a day. If that. Saving Private Ryan depicted a noble war. The Thin Red Line depicted an unnecessary and inhuman series of acts where neither party are that into participating.

Private Ryan fought to stay with his platoon on that bridge. In The Thin Red Line, Captain Staros disobeys an order, almost courtmarshaled only to be sent to Washington for a desk job and he tells his men that he's happy to be leaving and never coming back.

Which is the real war?

'Tarkus' & 'The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway'

My record player is broken. I fear it's a component problem and I might not be able to play vinyl for a long while.

I've listened to both these albums -- stalwarts of the 1970s British prog-rock movement -- several times and I never found a really good anecdote or discussion point to bring them to the blog.

Now, I probably won't get another listen and things will build up until then.

Honestly, I don't like the British and I can live without prog-rock for the rest of my days. The best fate for these albums are for them to go back into the cabinet.

But I can give you Peter Gabriel dressed like a fucking fox. A rock fox, I guess.

'Kind Of Blue' & 'Bitches Brew'

Listening to all this jazz, I've learned that there is no edgier genre of music in the history of mankind. No singular group of musicians lived harder and died younger.

So, every time I listen to a jazz record, I research the players and learn more and find out just what caused their end. Because they all lived hard. And they all died young.

Wynton Kelly played piano on Miles Davis' Kind of Blue. He died at age 40 of an epileptic fit.

Jimmy Cobb, Davis' drummer, is actually still alive.

Pianist Bill Evans, as noted previously on this blog, had a lifetime addiction to heroin and other assorted hard drugs. It's noted that his heroin addiction began during his time with Davis.

Paul Chambers was a heroin addict and alcoholic. He died at age 33, four years after Kind of Blue was released.

John Coltrane died at 40 due to liver cancer, although some think it was hepatitus. He was a heroin addict.

"Cannonball" Adderley died at the ripe ol' age of 75. Thanks to a good ol' fashioned stroke.

Davis himself started his heroin addicted years before recording Kind of Blue in 1959. By the time he did Bitches Brew in 1970, jazz wasn't as associated with 1950s New York City bop and beatnik scene that purported the heroin and hard drug use.

I realize all of this destruction was a result of the time and place. Had all these musicians come about in the 1970s, they might have done some cocaine or whatever. Who knows? And don't let the guys that lived long lives fool you: There were no saints. Just the lucky.

However, so many other musical genres get labeled and associated with all kinds of ancillary things like drugs or alcohol or even women. Yet, jazz just kind of gets ignored and no one really knows the seedy underbelly of its roots. It's fascinating if nothing else.

'Clueless'

I'm happy that Clueless made the 1,001 list because I think it's a highly underrated film and one that was unfairly pigeonholed as a film about spoiled teenagers in Beverly Hills that grow souls.

This is not right.

Clueless is intelligently written and done. It's directed by Amy Heckerling, who also directed Fast Times at Ridgemont High. If anyone knows about the attitudes of teenagers, it's her.

The fact is, the main characters of Clueless -- Cher and Dionne -- are not completely ignorant, shallow and spoiled children, unaware of their environment and how they impact it. In fact, these two are incredibly aware, giving and unselfish.

Consider this, they're only 15. The fact that Dionne in real life is like 30 and Alicia Silverstone pulls off a 21 vibe, they are both trying to get their licenses so that makes them 15 years old.

Tell me, what were you like at 15? I would generally argue that the base attitudes of a 15 year old in Beverly Hills or the hills of the Appalachian Mountains are generally the same: They know everything, don't try to tell them otherwise and get them what they want, now.

However, Cher and Dionne are not like this. Yes, they are ditsy, spoiled only because they've known one way of life -- but this can be explained by the fact that they are 15. Their world purviews are short and distorted.

Both are good people. Cher is a virgin, waiting for the perfect man to have sex with. Both try to expand their vocabulary by working in one new word everyday.

Cher works to keep her father healthy and takes on a motherly role, especially due to her own mother being deceased. It seems stereotypical and shallow, but the fact that they take the new kid, Tai. They call her a project. However, they're actually doing her more good by making her a "project" in the hyper-critical world of a Beverly Hills high school.

For 15 year olds, Cher and Dionne are actually very good people.

The soundtrack is fucking awesome (Radiohead, Supergrass, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, David Bowie, Luscious Jackson).

I also want to comment on Alicia Silverstone. At the time of the release of this film, she was my all-time, No. 1 babe in the history of females. I've moved on, but I stand by my obsession of the time. Some of those dresses she wears in Clueless make her a total knockout. I can't believe my pants stayed on the whole time. This was also during the time she was on the Aerosmith videos.

I would have never thought she'd have the least successful career out of Donald Faison, Brittany Murphy, Paul Rudd, Jeremy Sisto and Breckin Meyer.

'The Passion' & 'Sexing The Cherry'

I read Sexing the Cherry my senior year of college in a writing class that I've probably talked about a dozen times on this blog.

It was assigned to me, one of three that I had to read during the semester. I forget the third, but the other was James Joyce's Ulysses. We had to pick one of the three to present a class discussion on. I avoided Ulysses and stuck with the rather short Sexing the Cherry.

I liked it a lot and it fueled my affinity for Jeanette Winterson ever since. In fact, the copy that I read recently still had my red sticky tabs from my presentation.

Both books were written back to back published within two years of each other in the late 1980s.

And both are really similar. Sexing the Cherry is a historical exaggeration and time loop. It chronicles the lives of the adventurer Jordan and his mother, the Dog Woman. Set in 17th century London, it follows the unruly rule of Charles I, dogged with civil war and religious intolerance.

Jordan and his mother are tolerant and fight against the "puritans" torturing and killing (with the stain of hypocrisy) those that don't have the same belief system.

The Passion is set in 19th century France as Napoleon Bonaparte grabs power and starts his assult on the continent of Europe. He's captured the energy of the people of France, including the farmboy Henri, who joins the army and becomes Napoleon's personal chef.

Meanwhile, Villanelle is a boyish Venetian, who deals cards at the local casino. She is married and is wound up sold for prostitution. Henri trudges to Moscow with the French army, where many die due to the cold. He deserts with his ex-Irish priest friend Patrick and Villanelle. Patrick dies. Henri and Villanelle become lovers and make it to her hometown of Venice.

The Passion isn't near the time loop that Sexing the Cherry is (the latter goes back and forth from modern times to Elizabethan England), but it captures similar attitudes about love, rage, sex and tolerance. Along with time, how it ebbs and flows and we are these little specks getting caught up in the tide, swept out to see and back aground.

'Pickup On South Street' & 'Out Of The Past' & 'The Asphalt Jungle'

With each film, I'm getting closer to watching all the film noir I need to watch. I can't wait.

It's not that it's all necessarily bad. Pickup on South Street is actually pretty good and I enjoyed it a lot. But I don't understand how you can include so much of one genre from one time period as the 1,001 films I need to see.

There's not a ton of differentiation. It's not like The Asphalt Jungle is just 100 times better than any other film noir and vice versa.

It's all kind of there. Taking up space.

'The Muppet Movie'

It's hard to put into words how good a film this is, mainly because it stars a bunch of puppets.

The Muppets were so extremely poular in the 1970s that they could pull in some of the foremost actors of the time to cameo in their film. They could pull off a weekly variety show on primetime network television.

Puppets!

Yet, they were a throwback. A nod to the heyday of entertainment and vaudeville. The bad comic. The frog of song and dance. The prima donna female lead. The guy that throws fish. The wise-cracking old men. The Muppets themselves had more in common with Milton Berle, Edgar Bergen and Bob Hope than Elliott Gould, James Coburn or Richard Pryor. The Muppets actually had more in common with our grandparents than they did with a 6-year-old in 1979.

At the same time, the Muppets were progressive enough to address modern art and music (as seen with the incredibly awesome Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem). They also take multiple shots at breaking down the fourth wall -- the invisible divide between the audience the the film itself.

For example, when Kermit and Fozzie encounter the Electric Mayhem in the church and the band asks the strangers what they are doing and why. When Fozzie begins to go through the whole story, Kermit instead suggests they let the band read the screenplay of the film, not unlike Lord Helmet and Colonel Sanders rent a copy of Spaceballs to find out where the protoganists have escaped to.

The Electric Mayhem do read the entire screenplay up until that moment. They later use it to find Kermit and his crew in the desert with the broke-down car.

The Muppets worked on various levels among different generations in different ways. It just didn't work. It wasn't popular in the way that a lot of things are popular. They were a true phenomenon and the fact that they're still relevant and interesting (and funny) is fascinating and a tribute to Jim Henson's vision.

Also, the music is really, really good.

'Destroyer'

KISS holds two interesting distinctions with me personally.

Firstly, they're one of few bands whose greatest hits is way worse than the rest of their actual catalog. Meaning, they're hits suck, but if you get into their deeper cuts off their albums, you'll find some really good songs. Destroyer is a perfect example. It has their hits -- including the atrocious "Beth" -- and it has some of their better songs that weren't necessarily hits.

Finally, KISS is an odd band because they are so very popular and, yet, they don't have many marquee studio albums. Not in the way The Beatles or The Rolling Stones (two other popular bands) have albums that are famous and serve as benchmarks for each band's career. KISS' most popular albums are their three live albums. Destroyer is really their only studio album that you closely relate to the band. KISS is actually not unlike The Grateful Dead in that they're cultish as a live band.

'Platoon'

I've seen some awful movies in my day, but this one takes the cake.

It also took home a Best Picture Academy Award and all kinds of acclaim.

For the time, it was probably pretty awesome. Watching it today, in fact, right now, you won't find a more stereotypical, poorly written, poorly acted and highly transparent piece of shit in all of filmdom.

Notes:
1. So, Oliver Stone was pouring all of this time and money into this harrowing and jaw-dropping Vietnam War film and we couldn't at least give our main actors haircuts from the actual 1970s? Charlie Sheen looked like someone off the set of "Family Ties."

2. Speaking of, Sheen, Tom Berenger and about 95 percent of the rest of the cast couldn't act themselves out of a wet paper bag. Sheen with the super-fake agony as he's being lifted out of Vietnam in the helicopter after the big fight ... it's breathtakingly bad.

3. Stone crammed all of the archetypes, stereotypes and canned Marine talk as he could in this film. It's dumb. The "deep" narration from Sheen's character, the wide-eyed college kid that signed up for the Marines because he didn't think it right that only the poor should be fighting the war. Bullshit. Then, suddenly, he smokes a little pot (like he wasn't already in college ... in the 1960s!), puts on a red bandana and suddenly he's the biggest badass in the world? Seriously?

4. Willem Dafoe's character is a bit of a cartoon character, too. The guy with the conscience that goes toe to toe with Beranger's hellraising sociopathic nutcase. He doesn't wear a helmet. Just goes around the jungle on his own basically killing every member of the Vietcong. Hell, why not just send him out there to win the war? Meanwhile, the rest of the platoon could spend 2,00 rounds of ammo and fail to hit the broadside of a barn.

5. The writing. Cripes. "Tag 'em and bag 'em!" Let me put it this way, when one of Max Fischer's plays in Rushmore have better writing, you're in trouble.

An idiotic waste of my time. Never again.