Guh

Now, I've never seen Glitter, so take this with a grain of salt, if you like: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which we wisely rented, is indeed one of the most awful movies ever. And I've seen AVP4, so I know from awful movies.

I'm just sayin'.

Top Ten Artists Suffering The Lindsey Buckingham Paradox

Fifteen minutes ago, I was explaining the Lindsey Buckingham Paradox to Malav.

Malav, like most people, furrowed his brow and asked what, exactly, this paradox might be.

The Lindsey Buckingham Paradox is what happens when otherwise brilliant musicians decide they're better than their bandmates (creative differences, natch), strike out on their own with solo "careers", and somewhat curiously never again manage to grasp his or her own genius in the way we all know is possible.

Lindsey is a goddamned genius. He strives for constant musical evolution, always pushing the creative envelope, and is unto himself an origination point on the great conceptual flowchart of musical evolution in the last 40 years. But, solo? Mania. I mean, oh dear god, concept albums. He's a one-man Plastic Ono Band, all by himself.

It is when Lindsey Buckingham's lunatic genius is tempered by Stevie Nicks (and even Christine McVie) that the magic happens, because the whole of Fleetwood Mac is so much greater than the sum of its parts.

Once this is explained, people grok the Paradox immediately and offer up their own suggestions for musicians who suffer from the same.

After numerous discussions with numerous people over the years, I thought to start making lists of artists with a terminal case of the LBP. Lindsey, of course, goes without mentioning, as he is the namesake. There are many many more, these are just today's starting point.

Today's Top Ten Artists Suffering The Lindsey Buckingham Paradox:

#10 Steve Perry (Journey)
Oh Sherry notwithstanding, just... what? Diva, untamed.



#9 Glenn Frey (The Eagles)
Where, oh where, has our Desperado gone?



#8 Tim Finn (Crowded House, or even Split Enz)
Crowded House undoubtedly achieved its great(er) success after Tim left the band, and while they were never the same, Tim... didn't. And wasn't. While Tim's brother Neil is a creative genius in his own right, somewhere in the collaboration? That's where the miracles live.



#7 Art Garfunkel (Simon & Garfunkel)
The haunting magic that Art brought to Paul Simon's artful mastery was like the unexplained awesometasticness that bursts out of, say, dipping french fries in chocolate milkshakes. There's no reason that these two things should be any good together, but they ARE. Unlike this example, however, both of those ingredients are better on their own. Not so with Mr. Garfunkel.



#6 Peter Cetera (Chicago)
Sorry, Matt. I know you're going to drive to South Carolina expressly to poke me with a very sharp stick over this one, but, man. I know even you will agree with me when I say: If You Leave Me Now? The apex. There was nowhere Cetera could go but down, down, Karate Kid down.



#5 Dennis DeYoung (Styx)
Remember when Styx was groundbreaking? Then remember how Dennis DeYoung put on the +20 Perm of Suck and went all concept album on our collective asses? Yeah. Me too.



#4 Paul McCartney (The Beatles)
Say you want a revolution? Well, you know.



#3 Jon Anderson (Yes)
The mere existence of that Jon Anderson lyrics generator is enough said.



#2 Sting (The Police)
Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers brought their own special flavors to the Police party, and without them, Sting is just a big bowl of goddamned puffy cheetos. Like Bono, maybe, without the passion or, you know, cred.



#1 Billy Corgan (The Smashing Pumpkins)
"My band is a bunch of mean-spirited drug addicts! H8erade! Solo Career! Wait, oh noes, where'd my career GO? Come back! I'll stop being an insufferable diva with a superiority complex, oh my god, I swear, just take me baaaaaack (wah)".



There are many (many) more, of course. Who do you think suffers from the Lindsey Buckingham Paradox? Let me know in the comments.

I always forget

...how much I love Natalie Dee. And then when I remember I'm all "yay!" because there's like a year's worth of new-to-me comics. It rules.

I know you're up there 'cuz I can smell your brain

We've been watching more movies than usual, lately.

It all started last weekend when I went to GameStop to pick up a copy of The Incredibles (Pixar, 2004, Collector's Edition) for Tim, and ended up buying two other movies along with it in order to take advantage of their "three for $19.99" sale.

With the exception of Cars, Pixar can be counted on to regularly crank out some pretty great entertainment. (Sidebar: Hello, Pixar? I'm going to assume that Cars was the trick you had to turn to keep pimp daddy Disney from roughing you up in an alley and taking all your crack; therefore I'm willing to overlook that one indiscretion. You had to do what you had to do... but now you'll never do it again. Right? RIGHT?) Even though I've seen The Incredibles approximately 823,742 times (thank you, children), it is indeed full of all kinds of geekgasm-inducing technology which makes owning it worthwhile for just that reason alone. But that wasn't the reason; it was because Tim made The Face, and The Face is how Tim gets whatever Tim wants... which here means "Tim and his Face wanted The Incredibles on DVD".

The other two purchases: Bourne Supremacy and The Aviator, neither of which I'd seen.

Bourne Supremacy: The second installation in the Bourne franchise (imdb tells me there is a third in production), was good and enthralling and mind-candy-esque and enjoyable. I liked it, and I don't regret spending $6.67 to own it. And just FYI, as I typed that just now I was all 'damn, dude, that's less than the cost of a movie ticket!'.

The Aviator: I expected to dislike this film strenuously, or at the very least, fall asleep while it was on. Neither happened, actually, and in fact I enjoyed it quite a lot. Listen, I have to say that it annoys the crap out of me when I am forced to go against my natural loathing of certain celebrities, and that's what happened as I watched this film. Screw you, Scorsese, you bastage. This is the second time in as many months I've seen a film in which you've managed to pull a beautiful performance out of DiCaprio, totally ruining my perfectly comfortable sense of contentment with being unable to tolerate him whatsoever. Feh.

Anyway. The Aviator? Great movie. What a great character Hughes was in life, as if he lived so that he would be immortalized in film. Really, I've always been fascinated by brilliant, odd, bizarre people (have you met my husband?), and Howard Hughes took those characteristics to the extreme and then kept right on going until it ultimately killed him. Killed him dead.

After watching the film, I began noodling around the web for more information and then yesterday ended up at Books-a-Million to purchase _Citizen Hughes: The Power, The Money, and The Madness_. It isn't very often that a film will motivate me to go out and obtain more information on the topic/characters/etc., but I totally love it when that kind of thing occurs. It's just so rare for me, to have something new come along and catch my jaded, old, uninterested eye. When it all clicks, though... oh how sweet it is. When something sparks my serious interest, I want to get right down and wallow in it. Roll around, writhe, get it all over me, soak it all in, learn as much as I can about every little last bit on the topic. Mmph. It's times like this that I remember just how dearly I love to learn. Thanks, Howard.

And so, bringing our week of movie gluttony and this behemoth of a post to a close, I move on to talking about how we went to see Apocalypto after Friday's bomb of a dining experience. Otherwise known as "I am Jaguar Paw. You killed my father. Prepare to die.", Apocalypto is the movie I was referring to when I said I just don't think I'm old enough for R rated movies, anymore.

Maybe it's age. Maybe it's motherhood. Maybe it's hormonal. I don't know what it is; it seems to have come on suddenly, and now it's standard me-ness: I can barely tolerate movie violence.

Used to be, I could take in whatever violent media came my way. Horror movies? Alrightie. Scary books? Bring 'em on! And here I am, still ultra-interested in the psychology of serial killing and everything that goes along with that; you'd think that with the amount of media I consume on said topic I'd have built up a tolerance. Or something.

Apparently, not so much.

I spent the majority of this ultra-violent movie with a) my eyes closed, b) my face buried in Tim's shoulder, c) a lump in my throat, and/or d) the urge to make this the first movie I've ever walked out of. It was gut-wrenching... and it made an impression, that's for sure. I won't be forgetting it any time soon. Is that the earmark, the benchmark, the somethingsomethingmark, the magical special flobotsam of a worthwhile film?

I just don't know.

Fire Mountain

Yesterday evening Tim and I were deeply and passionately engaged in a fantastically implemented course of lazing. That which one might call loafing, or perhaps even lollygagging. Lounging. We were just really lethargic, and.. ok, wait a second...

Sidebar: Why do so many words for doin' nuthin' start with L? This is going to bother me for awhile, and you should know that.

Right, so we were deeply and passionately engaged in the lackadaisical (again with the L!), as is our wont, and we were attempting to gather ourselves up to go take in a show (more on that in another post). We distracted ourselves for awhile (there's this one word Tim can say which sends me into utter fits of uncontrollable laughter - it's one of his super powers, and he doesn't wield it lightly. Having time to kill, though, he trotted it out.), and then circled around to the inevitable "so what do you want to do for dinner?" topic. We go through this a lot. Often. Daily, even. And whenever anybody asks that question, the answer is typically one of two things: 1) Donkeys 2) Donkey toes.

Shut up. You knew what you were getting into.

So we went through this litany and then ended up with an "I don't know", even though I was formulating a plan to suggest a particular restaurant. That's when he did that goddamned thing he does; that thing where he looks at me and tells me precisely what I'm thinking (Seriously? Why can't he manage this about important things? It would save me so much of the wanting to kill him). Which here means he stated the name of a restaurant where we'd never been, which we often mock, and months ago decided we'd eventually try just because the name entertains us so.

We're kind of odd, you see. The 'restaurant' in question happens to be called "Fire Mountain", and every time we pass it, one or both of will find ourselves incapable of resisting the urge to shake a fist in the air while bellowing"FIIIIIIIIRE MOOOOOOUNTAAAAIN!"

What? Remember "we're kind of odd", from a few seconds ago? Right.

So as he goes to hop into the shower, he says "Fiiiiiiire Moooountaaaaain!" to which I reply "oh, fuck you" (which, in point of fact, is what I had said to him after he trotted out that made up word. Only after ten minutes of guffaws.), and therefore we were in mutual agreement: dinner plans were now set.

The place was awful. Really bloody terrible. So bad that I do believe I stated "I never ever want to set foot in this place ever again. Ever!" after my first look at the buffet options. It wasn't a total failure, however, as the people-watching was plentiful (the helmet hair! The mullets! The gold dog tags!), and at least the honey yeast rolls (which comprised the majority of my dinner) were tasty.

After a smidge of time-killing (I really thought dinner would take us longer than the 30 minutes it ended up consuming), it was on to the theatre.

As it turns out, I'm not old enough for R-rated movies, and that's the forthcoming, not now, not this one, later on post.