'Iron Maiden' & 'The Number Of The Beast'

My friend, Lorena, burned me these two albums because I thought there was a better than zero chance that she would actually have these albums (there's a 98 percent chance she stole them from online).

This is because she is a metalhead. She's my age. Graduated with her. Back then, she was still a metalhead and you sort of felt that she would have grown out of it by now.

She hasn't. I don't begrudge her her tastes. It is what it is. I like bands from the 1960s.

However, there's still something extremely juvenile about heavy metal and Iron Maiden is no exception. In fact, they might be the rule.

Maiden is mascoted by Eddie, a cartoon-y skeleton that is used on their album covers, videos and in concert. Their lead singer -- Bruce Dickinson ... although he was not with the band for Iron Maiden -- is a caricuture as he shrieks and warbles on these albums.

The music is primitive. It resembles a herd of woolly mammoths stampeding through the prehistoric Mongolian plains. It rumbles and soars and within a breath it plops down in the dirt and rips open the Earth with its metal claws.

It's metal. At 30, however, do you need metal? Isn't metal for the aggressive and young? Isn't it for the disillusioned and jaded?

I'd like think our tastes improve and evolve and I often feel that metal is a dinosaur that doesn't know it should be exinct.

'Sail Away' & 'Good Old Boys'

I can't decide whether Randy Newman's a genius songwriter with his finger on the pulse of progressive America. Or a smarmy smartass.

I suspect the truth is somewhere in between. I've listened to both of these albums a number of times and I can't quite figure out if I really like them at all. Yes, he's saying something (or trying to say something) but is this church or a political rally? Or is it a pop record? Does making something "important" preclude it from being good?

Newman's songs are poignant as they are slathered in a poor man's wisdom. I do not think they are well-written, however, and they written with message in mind and not necessarily for the sake of craftsmanship. Like building a beautiful ship that can't float.

I know that I'm blaspheming one of the greatest American songwriters in history. I am just calling it as I see it. It's no reflection on his place in this world or his value or whatever. What Newman did on these albums no one else was doing and no one has done since.

I just can't figure out in my own head what value it has for myself. Also, do I need a crummy, two-bit piano player telling me what is right or wrong? Do I need to know his philosophy on religion despite his opinion not meaning much unless he'd written a few good pop songs in the 1960s?

'Zero Kelvin'

A lifestyle that has always appealed to me in theory is that of the lone frontiersman, of sorts.

I was always inspired by Jack Kerouac's Desolation Angels, the ramblings, thoughts and religion of Kerouac's days as a forest fire lookout in North Cascades National Park. There, the lookout is forced to living in solitary atop a mountain in a cabin not only looking out for forest fires, but also caring for the area and attempting to survive with no one to talk to or anything for six months.

I would assume being a trapper in the 1920s in Greenland would be a lot like that. It's very appealing despite me being a semi-social person. I got to admit, being alone is something I look forward to. It's not that I just absolutely hate people, but I like the quiet. I like doing what I want to do with every second.

In Zero Kelvin, the characters are not on their own. Still, despite living in threes, there is still a giant chasm of lonelieness and desolation. This, despite this constant agitation between the characters and the woeful road the protagonist was starting down.

'Les Diaboliques'

Diabolique is the most fascinating story I've had the pleasure of watching in a film.

So good, that Alfred Hitchcock lost out in the bidding for the script, apparently just hours too late. It served as an inspiration for Psycho and it goes down, without a doubt, as one of the greatest thriller-horror films of all time.

That's quite the testimony.

Diabolique is set at a boys boarding school in the French countryside. It is run by Michel, who is married to Christina, the school's owner and a teacher. However, Michel openly flaunts an affair with the young Nicole (who we suspect is abusive to her), who has a good relationship with Christina in a kind of anti-Michel anti-fan club.

The pair conspire to kill Michel. They lure him outside the school, sedate him, drown him and put his body in a wicker chest and at the bottom of the school's swimming pool with the idea that it'll float to the top and look like an accident.

It doesn't and the pool is drained to find no body.

During a school photo, Michel is seen in the back of the shot. At another moment, a boy breaks a window with a slingshot that he claims he received from Michel. One dark evening, Christina is spooked by sounds in the school corridors. When she comes back to her room she finds ...

I can't spoil the movie. Why? Because it was one of the first (if not the first) films in history to issue an anti-spoiler alert at the end of the movie. Trust me, it's worth it.

'1900'

Was there a good film made in the last 40 years that didn't have Robert De Niro in it? No one has a resume quite like De Niro and no one ever will. He's the greatest actor ever.

This talking about a film co-starring Donald Sutherland, who had his own stretch of films in the 1970s that absolutely killed form year to year.

1900 is quite the expansive and fascinating epic film. Although Bernardo Bertolucci would get known for The Last Tango in Paris and blow up for The Last Emperor, 1900 was probably more of a benchmark film for him.

It was a killer cast (De Niro, Sutherland, Burt Lancaster, Sterling Hayden, Gérard Depardieu) set in Bertolucci's home province of northern italy, Emilia Romagna, the film starts with the fall of the fascists during World War II. We are flashbacked to January 1901 when Alfredo (De Niro) and Olmo (Derpardieu) are born on the same day -- Alfredo to the rich landowner and Olmo to one of the landowner's serfs.

The pair prove to be friends despite their different outlooks on life and different opinions politically as the scene changed in Italy. It's five hours long and chronicles the 40 years between the day they were born and when the workers revolt and chase out of the landowner and fascists. What makes it great is that it doesn't feel as long as it actually is. That's hard to do in five hours.

'The Blair Witch Project'

Nothing rocked the socks off us kids more than The Blair Witch Project. Everyone now would like to pretend it wasn't creepy as shit or that it was terribly overrated.

Instead, it was a miracle in filmmaking, guerrilla in nature and a marvel in marketing.

First, the marketing. Before the film even came out, the studio unveiled a multi-pronged multi-media marketing campaign, probably one of the most extensive that almost primarily utilized the Internet to create a deafening buzz about their film. There was a website along with fake news stories and reports concerning the disappearance of three university filmmakers in the Maryland woods while making a documentary about a witch legend.

The rumors that it was a hoax was a mere whisper, a passing breeze.

The film came and it rocked us to the core. The pace was frightening. The minimal build-up dashes directly into this unforgiving, desperate situation involving these three people, almost strangers tied together in this shocking turn of events.

The "cast" were given directions in milk cartons and each individual were given direction in their attitudes and behaviors. They were harrassed at night and deprived of food and sleep. If they looked like shit, it's because they no doubt felt like it. If they look terrified, it's probably because they were a little.

It ended as every horror film -- everyone dying.

Those who deem it overrated are too chicken to admit it was pretty scary, and to deny that it wasn't a brilliant move in marketing and creating a film is insane.

'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'

I'm willing to call Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as the greatest American novel.
Published in the mid-1880s, it details the jaunt of Huckleberry Finn and the slave Jim down the Mississippi River during the antebellum days of the old South. For much of the narrative, Jim and Huck are mere players in someone else's arc, with Jim spending much of his time on the raft as Huckelberry finds himself on shore in the midst of a feud or pretending he's a girl.

Huck himself becomes a sort of a secondary character as the King and the Duke undertake their grifting ways from town to town, hoodwinking the trusting public.

The story is about freedom in a number of ways. Huck's opportunistic and freewheeling ways present America at its inception -- the land of pilgrims and frontiersmen. Huck is America, escaping his tryannical and drunk father to make his own way down the Mississippi River, the lazy river that starts in Minnesota and spits out in the Gulf of Mexico.

It also is a comment on racism and prejudice. Jim is a caring and loving character. Dumb, but he's not naive. He knows his place at that time. No one knows the score quite like Jim. Twice, Huck has the directly opportunity to lighten his load and turn Jim in, possibly for a reward. And twice he doesn't do it. This despite that Huck believes he's "sinning" by not turning in someon's slave, as if he were really taking off with someone's property.

Huck's attitudes on slavery and race isn't politically correct based on how we feel about things now. That would be ridiculous. Mark Twain in the 1880s would have had no concept of race in the 1980s or the 2000s. However, for the time, it was probably pretty radical.

Two, Huck's relationship and actions in regards to Jim have nothing to do with the color of one's skin, but it has everything to do with freedom. It's pure. Huck doesn't spare Jim's freedom nor do him and Tom Sawyer attempt to break Jim out from captivity because they think he's as equal no matter his skin color. Huck and Tom wouldn't understand our current views on race. It's not about African Americans or Asians or Middle Easterns or Hispanics. If a man is any kind of man, they would have their freedom. Freedom was everything. Not race.

'Get Shorty'

At what point did Elmore Leonard figure out that whatever he wrote was going to be turned into a movie?

Actually, it wasn't until Hombre was adapted for the screen starring Paul Newman in 1967 that he probably first saw the lucrative aspect to his writing, much of it starting in the western genre. Once that happened, it all started snowballing and he started bathing in Spanish doubloons.

Get Shorty was published in 1990 and five years later John Travolta and Rene Russo starred in the film adaptation. It's beyond his western days focusing on his crime novels and the character of Chilli Palmer, a rather low-life loan shark, who is sent to Los Angeles to "collect" on a guy that faked his death in a airplane crash and ran off to Las Vegas to gamble it all.

Instead, he puts the focus on his future in the film industry. He goes to collect on a gambling debt on a C-movie director and falls in love with his ex-wife, who is oddly attracted to Palmer the entire time. Like, lust at first sight.

Anyway, Palmer outsmarts everyone and winds up with the money, everyone else dead or in jail, the girl and a career in film. It's how life goes.

'The Castle Of Otranto'

Considered the start of the gothic novel thing that would actually get popular about 60 years after Horace Walpole published The Castle of Otranto. Bunch of johnny-come-latelys.

Anyway, reading this story and all I could think about was Shakespeare. This story is several hundred years after the Bard, but there is a clear set of plot devices and characters that resemble Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear and basically any tragedy Shakespeare got down on paper. Which makes you wonder whether Shakespeare was truly the progenitor of the gothic novel.

Walpole, himself, was the fourth Earl of Orford. He went to college and dabbled a little in politics. Frankly, he had no real career. He was known just for writing this book and building Strawberry Hill near London. It was built in a gothic style, again, years before others made it cool.

Walpole never married. There were rumors that he was dallying around with a bunch of unmarriable women. Some say he was gay. At the very least he was asexual. Sometimes to know the story, you have to know the author.

'Zero For Conduct' & 'L'Atalante'

Zero for Conduct and L'Atalante were both directed by Jean Vigo.

The latter is considered one of the greatest films of all time and both are direct influences on the French New Wave that came to pass in the 1950s. I've got to admit, L'Atalante seemed remarkably fresh as if it were actually not made in 1934, but instead in 1964.

Vigo is an interesting character. He is the son of a prominent militant anarchist in Spain. Thus, much of Vigo's early days saw him on the run with his parents. His father was murdered in prison in 1917. Afterwards, Vigo was sent to a boarding school under an assumed name. Much of his experiences there resulted in Zero for Conduct, a 400 Blows and If ... before either were even a remote idea.

Vigo never witnessed his influence nor was he able to make any more films. He died in 1934, the same year L'Atalante was released, due to tuberculosis. He was only 29 years old.

'The Silence Of The Lambs' & 'Manhunter'

When you read about The Silence of the Lambs -- winner of the big four Academy Awards -- you never, ever hear about Michael Mann's Manhunter despite the fact that it was made just five years before. This is especially odd since Manhunter is the prequel to The Silence of the Lambs.

Manhunter was based on the novel Red Dragon and stars the guy from CSI was a seemingly-retired FBI agent Will Graham brought back into the game by our friend Jack Crawford to investigate the murders of two families by a serial killer, The Tooth Fairy. He asks the incarcerated Hannibal Lecter (portrayed by Brian Cox ... who is not given nearly enough time on camera) for help to catch him. Pretty much, we're inundated with the guy from CSI attempting to act. In addition to a pretty dumb ending.

The Silence of the Lambs famously stars Anthony Hopkins as Lecter, who helps Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling, a FBI recruit, to catch another serial killer. This film is substantially better. Better acted, better done and clearly one of the best crime-dramas ever made.

In 2002, they would remake Manhunter calling it by its original name, Red Dragon. It stars Ralph Fiennes as the serial killer, Ed Norton as the FBI agent and Hopkins, again, as Lecter.

I've never seen it, but to get the bitter taste of of Manhunter out of my system, I might have to check it out.

'Gunfight At The OK Corral' & 'My Darling Clementine'

Got to give Americans credit. They know how to mythologize.

One-hundred and thirty years ago the police force of Tombstone, Ariz. got into a 30-second gunfight against a group of local ne'er-do-well cowboys.

The fight was relatively insignificant. Not until a biography of Wyatt Earp was released in 1931 did the gunfight gain noteriaty and then John Ford directed My Darling Clementine about 15 years later, 11 years before John Sturges directed Gunfight at the OK Corral, the film that gave the incident it's well-known name.

I highly suggest going into the history and background of the actual fight. Both films are not very factual. My Darling Clementine is probably the least factual of either one. Frankly, unless you wanted the films to be six hours long, you couldn't completely go into what was going on at the time and what led up to the gunfight.

Most notably, Doc Holliday was a pretty disreputable character and he and the Earp brothers were charged with the murder of Ike Clanton. They were exonerated, but in the Arizona territory in the 1880s, that didn't matter much. The gunfight happened. Then, in retaliation, Morgan Earp was murdered. Virgil Earp was seriously hurt. This led to the Earp Vendetta Ride, a 26-day manhunt by Wyatt and Co. a year after the gunfight.

There's a ton of information about all sorts of different aspects and cultural perspectives of the time. It's hard to imagine the United States being so lawless until until the 1900s, even after. Justice is like a fine wine. It takes time to perfect.

'Daydream Nation'

Last year, I got the opportunity to see Sonic Youth in concert. It was an honor. I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I've been a Huge fan for 20 years and I own or have listened to all their albums.

I haven't, and that's a semi-travesty. The truth is, Sonic Youth put out some of the most challenging and progressive rock music in the 1980s and 1990s. They're uncompromising and mesmerizing.

However, they're also rock music's jagged little pill -- it doesn't always go down easy.

Sonic Youth were peaking right when my interest in rock music peaked. Due to their being an extremely indie rock band, they were not always the most accessible band, although 1988's Daydream Nation was a relatively popular album. In that noise-garage-rock kind of way.

Still, stylistically, they're not very consumable for a young rock fan. I would say that most people that say they were into Sonic Youth at 14 are lying.

It's said that young children have an dislike for meat. They eat hot dogs and that's about it. It's something about the texture of meat that we generally have to grow into. Sonic Youth is an example of rock meat. It takes a little time for the taste buds to mature. Then it can be enjoyed.

'Rust In Peace' & 'Peace Sells ... But Who's Buying?)'

True story:

I was in high school -- had to be 14 or 15 -- and I was standing in the lunch line. It's vivid as all get out. In front of me is a kid named Mark. He was in my grade.

I knew he was a sort of a metalhead (altough he played sports) and he knew I played guitar.

He turns to me.

"Want to see what God looks like?"

"Sure."

He opens his wallet, and inside one of the photo sleeves was a shot of Dave Mustaine. I look at it, speechless. He closes his wallet and walks on. We never speak of it again.

I'll never forget that as long as I live. The day I saw God.

'Three Colors: Red' & 'Three Colors: Blue'

A collection of actually three films -- red, white, blue -- creating these very vivid characters whose lives are all kind of interconnected in a hodgepodge of circumstance and heartbreak.

The three films were directed by the Pole Krzysztof Kieślowski, who went to the same film school as Roman Polanski.

After Red was released, Kieślowski announced his retirement. In 1996, at the age of 55, he died after a heart attack and open-heart surgery. He certainly kept his promise of a long retirement.

'Talking Book' & 'Innervisions' & 'Fulfillingness' First Finale' & 'Songs In The Key Of Life'

These four albums were all recorded and released during Steve Wonder's so-called "classic period."

It should be noted that an album was released per year for three straight years from 1972-1974 and the final came about in 1976. That's a lot of songs written and developed in such a short amount of time. Talking Book and Innervisions are long-time favorites of mine. Both are succinct and beautiful albums. They reach from comments on social issues or just simple love songs.

Songs In the Key of Life has a fantastic first part of the record. The first 10 songs are great, a triumphant that caps off his "class period." Then the second disc comes on and ruins everything. Five of the songs on the second disc are over six minutes long, some going into the eight-minute mark. It's a ridiculous collection of music. Disc one continues the greatness of Wonder in this period. The second disc is the most self-serving piece of crap.

'Braveheart'

I can't believe this film is 16 years old. 1995. Wow. I was 15 when it came out and I didn't see it in the theatre for some odd reason. Or maybe I did see it. It's highly probable because those were my halcyon days of movie watching. Still I don't remember it.

And I'm not impressed now.

Braveheart was known for its violence. The battle scenes are fierce and violent. It was the one thing Mel Gibson apparently got right. The history is bunk. However, you can't have the barbarian weaponry, mindsets and tactics without people getting seriously maimed.

Again, that's all this film got right. The thing is, after watching Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto, Gibson made this film at the wrong time. I mean, had he made this film later in his career, around the time of those other two films, it would probably be 25 percent better. No hokey lines, he would not have hooked William Wallace up with the princess of Wales (singularly the dumbest plot development in 1990s cinema). That would not have happened in Passion of the Christ.

A case of bad timing.

'Kill Bill'

Quentin Tarantino is one of the most remarkable filmmakers of our time.

No one has more style, yet, all his style is just an homage to a spaghetti western or an old kung fu movie. However, it's different. What Tarantino does with a camera and a group of actors is not derivative or boring. It's interesting. These characters simply burst off the screen and even though you are supposed to root for the good guy and against the bad guy, you end up loving both equally.

It's violent and bloody. It's carnal and real. You'd be grossed out and want to look away only if your eyes weren't completely transfixed on what was going to happen next. If you blink, you'll miss something.

Tarantino, it seems, does not see boundaries. If wants to throw some animation in there, he does. He wants tell you these back stories and weave all this into one tight, fascinating narrative. Sure. Why not? Because he can. Because he wants to.

Tarantino is one of the true auteurs of our generation. Not watching his films is a modern-day crime.

'Apocalypto'

I watched Mel Gibson's Apocalypto one night. The next night, I watched another film and it had a trailer for the Mesoamerican action-adventure flick.

I could have sworn that the trailer and the film had different actors portraying the main protagonist, Jaguar Paw. I watched it again to make sure. Just sure seems like a different-looking guy. I've searched long and hard to find some mention of this. Couldn't. So maybe I'm crazy.

In perfect Gibson fashion, he found a way to ruffle a bunch of feathers in this film much like in The Passion of the Christ. Most of it is based on his depiction of the Mayan people being bloodthirsty, human-sacrificing degenerates.

Reading arguments, they go both ways. I can only assume that Gibson, as far as we actually know, got it pretty right, or more right than wrong.

Gibson is apparently a fan of language. In both Apocalypto and The Passion of the Christ, he opts for the actual language the characters would have used for their actual culture and timeframe. In the latter, it was Aramaic, Hebrew and Latin. In the former, they used the Yucatec Maya dialogue. If nothing else, Gibson wants to be genuine.

This is an interesting film. Tons of action. It's not a feel-good film in the least. It's dark and brooding. Tons of blood with the good guys largely not surviving. Then the Spanish come at the end and all the blood leaves your brain for a minute when you realize what's coming next.

'Grease'

Grease -- maybe unlike any other piece of gobbledygook in history -- is the most polarizing piece of art in history.

People don't like Grease. They either love it or absolutely hate it. There's no in between and the line can typically be drawn down gender lines. Chicks dig it, dudes don't.

Until right now, I had not seen Grease in its entirety. There are some scenes and songs that I'd never, ever seen. I think I see some very simple issues with the film that turn guys off.

Time
The film begins at the beginning of the school year. Sandy is the new girl, an Australian import, and she is befriended by the Pink Ladies, who are associated by reputation and attitude to the T-Birds. Their leader is Danny Zuko, Sandy's love interest over the summer. All of the Pink Ladies and T-Birds are seniors. Over the next 100 minutes things happen. None of what happens is school. There is a night at the drive-in. The dance. Danny trying out sports. A date night. The T-Birds in the big drag race. At the end of the movie, the school year is over. It's the end-of-the-year carnival and the gang's all together.

Problem is, guys need some semblance of time. Guys need Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas break, New Years Day, Valentines and Spring Break. Basically, Grease fits seven months of school into 100 minutes. There is no autumn, winter or spring. The summer heat never dissipated. A get an acceleration of time, but what happens on all the other days? Surely there are other adventures taking place. There is school. There are romances. There are break-ups and hook-ups. There is a lot more we're missing than what we're getting ...

Songs
... because all we do is listen to songs. Good God Almighty! There are a ton of songs in this movie. I thought it was a handful. It feels there are a ton more songs in Grease than there are in other musicals. On top of that, most songs have no relevance. Summer Lovin' is the best in terms of being an actual song and serving as a plot device: We learn what Sandy and Danny did over the summer, how they feel about each other and their perceptions versus how they want to look in front of their friends. "Hopelessly Devoted To You" is also important. We learn how Sandy feels. Otherwise, the other songs are fodder. They focus on unimportant characters or conflicts that never come to a head.

Conflict
Speaking of, there is no conflict. I get that this film is fun and that its a musical, but all musicals have conflict. Some heavier than others, but there's conflict. Grease fails in this department. It did try. Frenchie quitting high school to then fail at beauty school was a huge issue. However, they failed to develop the conflict and the character herself. Instead, they opted for a campy guest star by Frankie Avalon. The second conflict was Rizzo's near-pregnancy. It turned out to be a false alarm, but why? Being pregnant in high school out of wedlock is no laughing, easy matter. However, the film was not made in 1959; it's just set in 1959. It was a perfect opportunity to take the crystal vase and smash it into the wall. The director and writers decided to not rock the boat.

The Actuality Of Badness
At their worst, the protagonists in the film are good kids. The T-Birds are not violent. None of them do drugs. Most just like to have sex. That doesn't make you bad, edgy or antiestablishment. It makes you dumb. There is no fights, death or some overriding despair. The students of Rydell High School are spoiled suburbanites, many of whom will go to college or enter a career. They will not be strung out on heroin on Skid Row. They will not be prostitutes or in jail. Instead, they'll be normal. I'm not saying The Westside Story is a benchmark for male film enjoyment, but it was edgy, I don't care how those boys dance. The Sharks and Jets are racists. They want to kill each other and run each other out of the neighborhood. They wind up actually killing each other. None of those kids have much of a future. They do drugs and fight. The T-Birds would have been killed by the Sharks.

'The Stranger'

The ratio of record : record cover is way off. The Stranger is a great album. The cover art sucks. Billy Joel awkwardly sitting on a bed staring at a mask placed on a pillow. Then there's boxing gloves hanging on the wall. Ridiculous.

Yes, this is an extremely good album. It has two of my favorite all-time Joel songs, "Movin' Out" and "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant." The latter wasn't even a single from the album despite it being the best song on the album. I assume it was like "Piano Man" and not editable to three minutes.

What I like about "Scenes ..." is that its about former lovers meeting back up again at their favorite Italian restaurant. It's a highly sentimental song at this point. The narrator -- Joel -- tells the woman to get a "table by the street"

The narrator then goes into an upbeat chorus thing -- there are three stages to the song, which is what makes it good -- when he quickly updates the girl on his life -- a new job, a new office, a new wife and the family, well, is fine.

Then he seemingly updates his girl about what happened to Brenda and Eddie, the king and the queen of the prom, who got married out of high school and wound up breaking up because Brenda lived beyond Eddie's means, although, the break-up seemed pretty amicable.

The song reverts back to the scene at the Italian restaurant. The narrator tells us that there's nothing more to say about Brenda and Eddie because he's told us already.

I've wondered one thing: What if the couple meeting at the restaurant were actually Brenda and Eddie. I know, this doesn't make sense. Why would the narrator -- as the song goes back to the restaurant -- mention Brenda and Eddie in third person? Still, it's good to think about.

What I like best about Joel is no one is more jaded than him. I complained about George Lucas' film American Graffiti as being sentimental, shortsighted and painted with a pair of rose-colored glasses on. Joel told the same stories, but he was no where near as rosy and kind.

He admits that people in his generation -- that of American Graffiti -- where naive and dumb. He knew that it was all going to blow up in their faces with time and it did just that with Vietnam and the 1960s and drugs. Joel saw all of these as game changers and they broke the spirit of the youth of the United States for good.

Joel's love songs -- "She's Always A Woman" and "Just The Way You Are" -- are dark and brooding. Not exactly the glowing ballads from Lennon-McCartney. You almost coming away wondering if the women in these songs aren't total bitches.

'Beggars Banquet'

I strongly suggest queueing up Jean-Luc Godard's Sympathy for the Devil. It's part documentary, part oddball film.

It follows the Rolling Stones in the studio working on the song "Sympathy for the Devil," which was on their album Beggars Banquet. The other half of the film are disjointed vignettes showcasing the artistic and culture underground.

It's still good because you get to see the Rolling Stones in their absolute prime working a song over and over until it finally becomes the finished the product.

In it, we see Charlie Watts play it cool, Mick Jagger taking over, Brian Jones high and disinterested and Keith Richards desperately trying to be cool. I can only assume it got him loads of pussy, but I'd almost opt to be celibate.

Jones is integral here. It was his last full effort with the Stones before he was kicked out for Mick Taylor and he (Jones) drowned in the pool. Jones provided back-up vocals, mellotron, slide guitar, harmonica, sitar and tambura. The dude was useful.

It should also be noted that this album art was censored and the Stones were eventually forced to print a basic white cover art due to the depiction of a graffiti-filled bathroom wall in addition to the top part of a commode. Remember, the Mamas and the Papas were forced to hide their toilet. The 1960s were a tumultuous time, for sure.

'Mama's Gun'

Took me forever to find this album. Strange because I live in Erykah Badu's hometown, so you'd think there'd be plenty of copies hanging about.

Badu's been a person I've wanted to get into for a long time. Mostly because she has style. I often comment on the cover art on a book and what a difference my perception of that book compared to how I would actually enjoy that book.

Same with musicians. I'm addicted to the style and mystique as much as anyone. Badu has it. She's cooler than the other side of the pillow and the scary thing is, she knows it. It's not beauty that scares men shitless. It's confidence. Only someone as brash as Andre 3000 could make Badu swoon.

Anyway, it's a really good album and it whets the appetite to go out and find more. She's a beautiful, talented woman and if she needs someone to dissatisfy her physically and emotionally, I'm free.

Call me.

'Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots'

I never gave The Flaming Lips a chance. All this despite them peaking artistically as I was peaking aesthetically.

I remember this album coming out and the reason I have never listened to it before now is because Wayne Coyne -- lead singer, lead man -- seems like a smug prick. He's like 50 with that curly, unkempt hair and the vests and whatnot. I figured anyone as desperate to be cool like that can't possibly make good music. Then I've seen them live and they're surely obnoxious in person. All the people in costumes. Coynce in the big ball. Artsy-fartsy bullshit. Just play the songs.

I also always got The Flaming Lips mixed up with The Screaming Trees, a band I liked quite a bit as a teenager.

I've been wrong before. This is one of those times.

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is the Lips' 10th album, which seems remarkable considering I can only name two. And its good. So, no hard feelings.

By a million miles, The Flaming Lips are the best band from Oklahoma, right? ("Do You Realize??" is the official state rock song.) I guess it's them, Hanson or Color Me Badd.

'Say Anything ...'

Isn't it weird how timelines get mish mashed as you lose perspective.

I could have swore Say Anything ... was closer to the mid-1980s, related more to his earlier films. It was actually released in 1989, after John Cusack portrayed Buck Weaver in Eight Men Out. In one he's a 25-year-old scrappy third baseman and in another he's an 18-year-old kickboxer.

I have a bit of a man crush on Cusack. I latched on in high school when I watched his early work like The Sure Thing and Better Off Dead then The Road to Wellville and Grosse Point Blank, which had this rad soundtrack with The Clash and Violent Femmes on it. By college, he'd done A Thin Red Line, High Fidelity, Pushing Tin, The Cradle Will Rock and Being John Malkovich. Really, not a bad slate of films.

I would put his top 10 films against anybody elses. At least for me.

Say Anthing ... is a super odd film. It's not necessarily funny, something Cusack was known for. The characters are quite obnoxious. Lloyd Dobler and Lili Taylor should have just gotten married. The dad's crime situation is really weird. It distracts from the love story and yet I couldn't imagine the film without it. He's a passive-aggressive prick, who seems like the greatest father in the world for 40 minutes. However, it was a plot development that nobody in the 1980s making a teenage flick would ever try.

I still don't know why Ione Skye looked like a heroin addict at the end of the film.

'Orpheus'

I never realized the breadth of Jean Cocteau's artistic output.

I knew he was a writer. His literary output was well known to me in addition to his criticism, poetry, screenwriting and plays.

He directed 11 films, including Orpheus in 1949. He even wrote ballets. He is listed as a designer and a boxing promoter on his Wikipedia page.

Cocteau was simply born at the right time in the right country. If nothing else, he was lucky and, yet, incredibly talented to put all of this together.

He was born in 1889 near Paris. By the time he was 20, he was living in the cultural epicenter of the world where art, literature, thought, creativity and everything in between was absolutely bursting at the seams. He collaborated with or simply hung out with Andre Gide, Pablo Picasso, Edith Piaf, Erik Satie, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Marcel Proust and dozens of other artists.

It's one thing to be talented. It's a completely different thing to be hobnobbing with some of the greatest artists that ever lived when boundaries were being demolished. What a time to live and work.

'The Sea' & 'Wide Sargasso Sea'

I plugged these two novels together mostly because they both have "sea" in the title despite "sea" not necessarily being a big player in either.

They were written by different people in different times. Jean Rhys was born in 1890 as a white Dominican. John Banville was born 55 years later in Ireland.

Wide Sargasso Sea was a prequel to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, which was written 90 years earlier by a woman born in Yorkshire, England. I really need to read Jane Eyre now.

I also combine these two novels because they were really hard to understand and keep up with. The Sea jumps from the narrator's youth, the death of his wife and his currrent situation. Wide Sargasso Sea goes from the narrator's youth to her time at being married and introducing new characters left and right. It's good thing it's a prequal to Jane Eyre because it's as confusing as a 19th century novel.

'Youth' & 'The Life And Times Of Michael K.'

J.M. Coetzee has eight dozen books on the 1,001 list and this is just two. Granted, none of his books are extremely long, but I think it says something about the man's massive need to tell a story.

Youth is a volume of Coetzee's fictionalized autobiography retelling the author's departure from his native South Africa to England, where he worked as a computer programmer for IBM. The character in the story is wayward and without any real vision, which is the case for a vast majority of us, but it's a symptom that we think evades creative stalwarts like Coetzee. The need to fit in and shadow someone else's rise and fall, ins and outs and lifestyle. To read the right books, live in the right city, have sex with the right women, do the right drugs and so on and so forth. Not everyone can be Hunter S. Thompson.

The Life and Times of Michael K. is an earlier work of Coetzee from 1983 while still in South Africa. It's a dystopian novel much like Nadine Gordimer's July's People, published two years before (both Gordimer and Coetzee are the only two South Africans to win the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature, both were openly anti-apartheid and both are white).

The Life and Times ... chronicles the nitwitted Michael K. a disfigured gardener in Capetown, who is forced to take his sick mother to Prince Albert after a civil war breaks out in the capital. Much like Cormac McCarthy's The Road, the pair are tried as they slowly make their way to her birthplace. She eventually dies and Michael K. is forced to roam aimlessly with just a bare notion of survival.

Both novels are actually quite similiar: Two lonely young men attempting to fix something within themselves. A common theme. Now, to read those other eight dozen Coetzee novels.

'American Graffiti'

An extremely sentimental and unrealistic of the United States in the early 1960s. I have no problems with sock hops, waitresses on roller skates and hot rods. However, that's like saying Huckleberry Finn was about a raft.

The 1960s -- the so-called good ol' days -- were no different than the present nor where they probably much different from the 1890s. You had teenagers doing dumbass shit and older people not understanding why teenagers are dumbasses. Trade drag racing for texting. Swap out the hamburger joint for Facebook. It's all the same. ]

We want to believe that decades past were "better." George Lucas, I think, surely wants us all to think this after watching American Graffiti. It's sentimental bullshit. The calvacade of early rock and roll, the outfits, obsession with sex and cars. How inane. How dumb.

Meanwhile, all these poor shits would soon be shipped to Southeast Asia and have their guts blown all over the map, the counterculture was already in full swing and it would only grow as the 1960s rolled along. American Graffiti is not a time capsule or a homage to a "better time" as much as its lipstick on a pig.

Plus, it's slow, poorly written and monstrously directed. But it is George Lucas.