Special Agent Dale Cooper

I’ve never said this before, and I expect to never say it again, but: I can’t wait to see this goddamn awesome-looking stoner movie.  (Yeah I know this “news” is old as dirt.  fuckit.)

Aw, c’mon.

Diane,

I’m probably a day or two or a week or two or fuckit maybe a year late on this, but I just found the red band (naughty language!) trailer for the new Coen Bros. movie, “Burn After Reading.”  Here tis.  I’m very optimistic - a lot of the trailer is really funny even as a dead body makes an appearance, and nobody does pitch black humor better than those guys.  And the cast is outstanding: awesome bit players like Tilda Swinton and J.K. Simmons, Coen regular Francis McDormand, John Malkovich, George Clooney doing something even farther afield from whatever his usual role used to be… and Brad Pitt.  Brad Pitt is one of those guys who often fearlessly plays with his pretty boy image, but his performance here - judging from the trailer alone, of course - looks to be a special thing indeed. 

Diane and fellow Indianapolis residents,

I was more than a little disgruntled when the Landmark chain swung into town and knocked the well-loved Castleton Arts theater out of business.  Castleton Arts was something of a northside treasure.  They showed the usual assortment of documentaries and indie flicks, but they also sprinkled in some fun older movies like “Friday the 13th Part 3″ (WITH the 3-D glasses), the “Mystery Science Theater” movie, and week-long festivals devoted to Scorsese and Sergio Leone.  One of my fondest memories of the place was catching all three of the “Dollars” trilogy movies in one day.  I definitely didn’t want to see it go, replaced by an impersonal chain that seemed to just be running art movies as another way of sucking dollars out of the pockets of a niche customer base.

When Landmark opened up, though, I didn’t hate the place.  They have nice seats, they let you bring in alcohol from the bar next door or chocolates from the Godiva store down the way, and except for the fun stuff I mentioned before, their schedule wasn’t all that different from that of Castleton Arts.  The main thing that sucked about the place was its popcorn, which has yet to improve - how do they sell that stuff?  Ye gods.

But I haven’t been to Landmark in a couple months.  (Come to think of it, maybe that’s part of the problem that I am about to eviscerate the place over.)  Today I was reading about Werner Herzog’s new documentary, and since I love Herzog like my annoying cat loves biting me at six a.m., I thought I’d go see if it was playing here yet.  (Fat chance, but you gotta try.)  Of course, it turns out that Landmark isn’t showing it.  Here’s what they ARE showing:

- Get Smart (starts Friday)
- In Bruges
- Mongol (starts Friday)
- The Visitor
- The Fall
- The Happening
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
- Sex and the City
- You Don’t Mess With the Zohan

Yeah, uh, Landmark?  On what planet do many of these qualify as art movies?  “Indiana Jones”?  “Get Smart”?  “You Don’t Mess With the Goddamn Motherfuckin’ Zohan”?

I want my Castleton Arts back.  They probably wouldn’t be running the new Herzog doc yet either, but at least there wouldn’t be a 3000 screen blockbuster in its place.

…my job is merely sapping my will to live.

Diane,

Today I bring you a silly trifle of a post, but one with perhaps bottomless usefulness.  This is the Scale of Rock, a standard by which you can determine how much something does, or does not, rock.  Or rawk.  Or RAAWWWWK!

I will spoil the grand reveal here and tell you that the hardest-rocking song ever written is “Back in Black” by AC/DC.  It’s not the best song, or even the best AC/DC song - in fact, it falls in line behind about 15 others from the Bon Scott era - but it is three minutes or so of ass-moving, Jesus-punching, motherfucking rock ‘n roll like none other, with a guitar riff so fat and nasty that you can almost forgive the guy playing it for wearing ridiculous shorts and being named Angus.  Yes, “Back in Black” is our standard.  If you disagree, you may go fuck yourself.  I’ll wait here.

(Taps foot impatiently.)

(Hums a little tune.)

Done yet?  Done fucking yourself?  Good - let’s get to the rest of this list.  Everything here is rated on a scale of 0.00 to 1.00 Back in Blacks; only “Back in Black” can score a full 1.00 Back in Blacks, but it’s fun for everybody else to try.  Also note that we will not be judging anything that is not actual rock ‘n roll - sure, a lot of classical music and lawn ornaments score 0.00 Back in Blacks, but we won’t be larding this list with them.

1.00 BIBs: AC/DC, “Back in Black”   Simply the rockingest song there is.  If you don’t feel that guitar riff, you have no rock in your soul.  Or any of your other places.  (You may still have a little rock in your kidneys.)

0.99 BIBs: Metallica, “One” - just the “I cannot live, I cannot die” part   It’s hard to gauge a song like this as a whole; like “Stairway to Heaven,” too much of its running time is devoted to mournful guitar picking and mayqueens and such.  But if you were to cut “One” in half (in which case, it would be called “Zero Point Five”) and just listen to the thrash ending part, this song rocks out loud.  Even people who have never banged their heads against the stage in their lives would be throwing some hair around.

0.97 BIBs: The Rolling Stones, “Gimme Shelter”   I have argued many a time that “Gimme Shelter” is the definitive rock ‘n roll song - the essence of rock.  And I’m sure Martin Scorsese would agree with me, to judge by the entirely awesome opening to “The Departed.”  Interestingly, this song doesn’t rock as much as it is possible to rock, but it comes damn close.  I guess a little bit of rock has to be compromised to make a truly awesome song.

0.96 BIBs: Jimi Hendrix, “Voodoo Child”/”Purple Haze”/”Foxy Lady”   This slot could be occupied by any of about ten Hendrix numbers, but I chose three familiar and gigantic ones.  For me the one that slightly edges the others is “Voodoo Child” thanks to that guitar riff that sounds like the entire history of blues compressed into one wad and then swallowed by Satan.

0.94 BIBs: Led Zeppelin, “Kashmir”   Just a redonkulously huge riff.  However, it loses 0.03 BIBs because Zep allowed P Diddy to ruin the song with his excruciating “sampling” of it.  And Jimmy Fucking Page even helped him perform it live.  Ye gods.

0.90 BIBs: Soundgarden, “Outshined”   This is the biggest rock song the alterna-grunge generation of musicians ever spat out, but they still managed to slightly hobble the rock by putting it in such a weird meter.  C’mon, Soundgarden: 4/4 time is your friend.

0.86 BIBs: Guns ‘n Roses, “Welcome to the Jungle”   Kind of a weird test case for our scale, “Welcome to the Jungle” presents the GnR paradox in full.  Clearly the song rocks like an earthquake, but it also has a surprising amount of funk in its veins.  GnR was a bit of a dance band throughout “Appetite,” which compromises just how hard they can rock (see also: nu metal).  In the final analysis, it’s quite an accomplishment that a song as groovy as “Jungle” can also score so highly on a list like this one.

0.83 BIBs: Mahavishnu Orchestra, “Birds of Fire”   This one has the Outshined Conundrum, in that the time signature is just too damn weird for the song to really rock.  But - damn, just listen to it!  John McLaughlin is the only guy on the planet who could turn that groove into an almost Hendrixian experience.

0.80 BIBs: Link Wray, “Rumble”   a.k.a. that instrumental song from “Pulp Fiction” that everybody recognizes within three guitar strums.  This song almost single-handedly brought the nasty into rock ‘n roll, for which we all owe it a debt of gratitude.

0.75 BIBs: Black Sabbath, “Iron Man”   This song rocks somewhat less hard in practice than in memory, but it still rocks.  Re-watch that trailer for “Iron Man” and tell me you don’t get chills and the urge to smoke a bowl when the robo-voice comes on at the end.  “I… am… IRON MAN!”  Hell yes you are, robo-voice.

0.70 BIBs: Aerosmith, “Walk This Way”   Until Guns ‘n Roses came along, this was as rockin’ as a toe-tapping dance number could get.

0.68 BIBs: Ice Cube, “Wrong N***a to Fuck Wit”   Yes, Diane, I totally wussed out and starred out the N word.  Get over it.  Anyway, this song is one of the hardest rap songs ever laid to tape.  The beats sound like bombs going off and Cube sounds like he wants to kill everybody - the police, white people, the manager trying to get him to do “Are We There Yet?”  Which reminds me:

R.I.P. Ice Cube, 1969 - 2005.  He Used To Be Hard

.063 BIBs: The Clash, “London Calling”   After “Gimme Shelter” this is the best song on this list, so it pains me to rank it firmly in the middle of the pack, rock-wise.  But this is really about right.  The god’s-honest truth is that the Clash were an awesome band who rarely rocked very hard, certainly not as hard as the Ramones or the Pistols - and yes, punk purists, I have heard their first album.  A lot.  Anyway, this is one of their heaviest songs.  It’s not so much the actual riff or the rhythm section as the whole dark, apocalyptic vibe - a vibe, incidentally, which works so well in “Gimme Shelter” too.  (And now you know the secret to writing a song that Agent Dale Cooper will love.) 

.060 BIBs: Weezer, “Tired of Sex”   Weezer hit maximum rock ‘n roll (for Weezer) on this awesome lead-off track to “Pinkerton.”  “Pinkerton,” by the way, is their most rock and most spectacular album.  Naturally, it flopped and they started cranking out songs ready-made for inclusion in Kidz Bop CDs.  Sigh.

.050 BIBs: Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, “Refugee”   Just seems about right, doesn’t it?  Tom Petty makes a perfect halfway point on any scale measuring anything. 

.046 BIBs: Phil Collins, “In the Air Tonight”   This song spends 2/3 of its length noodling around atmospherically, which only makes it all the more fantastic when that enormous drum fill comes in and announces, “Ladies and gentleman - this song will NOW START TO ROCK!”  The entire rest of Phil’s solo career added together only comes to about .042, but this one song is a pretty solid entry in the pantheon of rock.

0.40 BIBs: Dead Kennedys, “Nazi Punks Fuck Off!”   This song is a little too frantic and ridiculous to qualify as pure rock, which is true of hardcore in general.  So let this be the standard: hardcore can rock to about 40% of maximum AC/DC capacity.  The punk community won’t be happy to hear this news, but fuck ‘em - they never liked Angus anyway.  You can also throw “Filler” by Minor Threat into this bracket.

0.35 BIBs: The Monkees, “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone”   No Monkee outing can venture higher up this list, but in truth, this is a high accolade for anything Monkee-affiliated.  And really, within “Steppin’ Stone” lurks a truly nasty rock song that just requires less delicate hands to bring it out.  This point has been proven repeatedly by the many cover versions that cascaded forth over the years.

0.30 BIBs: U2, “Vertigo”   There it is, Bono: the hardest you’ll ever rock.  Hope you sold a lot of iPods.

0.27 BIBs: Radiohead, whole career

0.22 BIBs: Guided by Voices, “Hot Freaks”   See, indie rock snobs: this is why classic rock people think you’re a bunch of pasty, fey goobers.  This is as hard as your favorite band ever rocks!  And it’s not very hard at all.  I give ‘em credit for that weird, druggy vibe though - that’s pretty rock ‘n roll.

0.20 BIBs: Rick Derringer, “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo”   I don’t know what rocks the least about this alleged classic rock song: the hoochie koo part, the “rock AND roll” part, the comma between those two parts, or the total white guy groove it has going throughout.  I hate this song.

0.11 BIBs: Lenny Kravitz   No matter how hard he tries, Lenny’s idea of rock sounds utterly plastic and fake, like someone trying to pass off a Twinkie as a fine pastry.  “Are You Gonna Go My Way,” in isolation, would rank about .33 on this scale, but when considering the man in toto, this is as good as he’s gonna get.  Which reminds me:

0.10 BIBs: Toto, “Africa”   The very essence of soft, adult contempo rock.  It preserves exactly 10% of the essense of the pure stuff. 

0.06 BIBs: Billy Joel, “We Didn’t Start the Fire”   You can feel Joel trying to work up some rock lather throughout this “It’s the End of the World As We Know It” ripoff, but he never quite gets there.  This song is the equivalent of a fifteen minute bad handjob that ends with the guy waving the girl off due to boredom/chafing.

0.04 BIBs: The Cardigans, “Lovefool”   Great, tremendously sexy song.  Despite that, and the fact that it is ostensibly a “pop/rock” tune, ”Lovefool” does not rock… not at all.  No one has ever been motivated to throw horns when that adorable Swedish chick sings, “I can’t care ’bout anything but yooouuuu.”  In fact, despite their affinity for Black Sabbath, the Cardigans almost never rock.

0.01 BIBs: Soul Asylum, “Runaway Train”   It pains me to recall that this band used to be good.  It also pains me to recall that the lead single off this same album was “Somebody to Shove,” which was a great song and totally rocked, and yet “Runaway Septic Disaster” was their most enduring hit and completely overshadowed its predecessor.  If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be sitting here with my eyes closed listening to “Cartoon” and “Sometime to Return” on infinite loop.

0.00 BIBs: Don Henley any time he does his tough guy voice   This ball started rolling when the Eagles did a fairly convincing piece of work in “Life in the Fast Lane,” which is the only exception to this rule (”Life in the Fast Lane” scores 0.2 BIBs).  Forever thereafter, Henley was strangely convinced that he could inject a little grain, a little sneer into his voice, and it would sell whatever song he was singing as a kickass, rockin’ good time.  Henley was very wrong, as proved repeatedly by the likes of “All She Wants to Do is Dance” and “Dirty Laundry.”  But the worst came recently with the Eagles song “Get Over It,” featuring totally rockin’ lyrics like: “You bitch about the present and blame it on the past/I’d like to find your inner child and kick its little ass!”  Yeah Don: it turns out that “bitch” and “ass” are not very tough-guy curse words any more, and bragging about beating up children doesn’t make you dangerous.  (Except to children.)

Diane,

Why is it that everything sucks?

Let’s see:

- The Colts lost a game they really, REALLY should have won.  En route to the upset, the Chargers suffered injuries to every one of their best players, including P. Rivers, L. Tomlinson, and Y. Mom.  (Oh yes, I bring the funny, even when I’m depressed.)  So this weekend, if you can stand to watch any of the AFC Championship game, you will see the Patriots running over the Chargers’ second-stringers and Norv making The Norv Face for about three hours.  Colts fans have suffered here, but more importantly, football fans are going to suffer.  Damn you, Harrison and Clark and Wayne and Keith - hang on to the FUCKING BALL.  Ahem.

- The writers’ strike shows no signs of concluding any time soon.  We’re nearing the premiere date for Lost season 4, and only half of it has been written and filmed.  Listen up, greedy studio honchos: don’t make me get Sayid and show up at your homes with a reasonable new contract for the WGA and a bag full of pliers and needles.  OK? 

- Monday is MLK Day and yet if I want to sit at home playing Halo and eating tacos all day, I have to use up a personal day or my “floating holiday.”  Why does my company hate black people?*

- Real statistics from the city of Indianapolis:

# of Moe’s Southwest Grill locations: 0 (there are one each in Carmel and Fishers, 15-20 minutes from my house)

# of boring old Qdobas: 8

# of quality, independent pizza places: 3

# of Domino’s locations: 17

*shakes fist angrily at city*

OK Diane, I’m done griping.  I’ll return to you in a couple days with some real content.  Just gotta work my way out of this funk first.

–

* Disclaimer: My company does not hate black people.

Diane,

I begin a much-needed vacation in the middle of this week, so this will be my last communication for a while.  No breaks in the Palmer case, but I hope that with all the sleeping I will be doing over the next couple of weeks, I might have some very startling and illuminating dreams.

Have yourself a backward-dancing little Christmas, Diane.

The internet gives us very much.  It is a veritable Santa’s sleigh, bloated with sacks of gifts, and the gifts are increasingly wrapped in shiny paper and big frilly bows.  It’s only when you bludgeon Santa in his head and pull the sleigh into your garage and start opening all the gifts that you realize a lot of kids were going to get dog crap and jagged pieces of metal for Christmas.  Lousy kids.  Lousy Santa.

But you must carry on, Diane, and open all the gifts no matter what, because you are very bored at your office job and there’s really nothing else to do to waste the endless hours.  And occasionally, at the bottom of a sack, you’ll find a gem.

I preserve here, uncommented, the work of one “Gams in Glass,” who is apparently a paying subscriber to Salon.com.  He has remarked on six articles there.  These two caught my attention.

I. In Response to an Article About Coming Out as an Atheist

To the Churchery! And then the Morgue

You’re a grown ass man. I told my highly religious mother I was an atheist in front of my CCD teacher. Hilariously this lead [sic] her to cry at my subsequent doctor’s appointment. Good times and better memories.

Now, as I said, you are a grown ass man (man?) and being such means you need make your targets cry in grown ass man ways. You MUST MURDER one of your classmates. It is the only way to make clear your intentions to retain your atheistic rights. Did not our Founding Fathers, having hoisted the BS ‘deist’ flag, a fugazi if there ever was one, then make sure to pitchfork the ominous John Bull? A syringe to the neck should incapacitate the godly loon. Then back you your [sic] place to store the body in a trunk behind the wall. Ira Einhorn wasn’t a PhD boy for nothing. The man knew what to do. MURDER one, and be done with it. Although, remember to learn from Ira’s mistakes…. you ought not leave the corpse rotting behind the walls for too long. Tends to attract rats… and Pigs!

II. In Response to an Entry in an Advice Column to a Man Whose Wife Always Thinks He’s Cheating on Her

Dial M

I am appalled at the lack of attention Gary Tennis has paid to mention of physical abuse. While single interactions of that type should not be immediate cause for separation or divorce, it must certainly be made clear that continuance of such behavior will be… and the writer must be willing to follow through. This lack of attention to this fact of physical abuse is rather indicative to me of Mr Tennis’ own problems; he repeatedly seem [sic] unable to take male writers at face value and in such cases as this, devalues the worth of the individual.

Now, that said, it is clear the time is nigh for the writer to MURDER his wife. This is the only solution. MURDER has solved any number of worldly problems and we can surely see how the situation would be dramatically improved should this wife be disappeared, or get hit-and-runned down. Rather than a psychotic, loony women jabbering on endlessly about romances the author surely now wishes he HAD pursued, and waiting for the moment to shiv him in the ribs with a plastic fork, he could be footloose and fancy free, dining on herbavore kidneys at a steak-house in Kenya — bill footed by insurance money dutifully paid out by the guv-ment.

Diane,

I owe you one “House on the Rock”-oriented blog.  Remind me in a few days when I’m finally able to sleep through the night, and my brain is relatively free of disturbing images of naked women with animal parts suspended just below the ceiling against a blanket of Christmas lights.  Only then will I have attained what the Tibetans call enlightenment.

Also, I am pleased to report that the NFL is prohibiting Michael Vick from attending training camp, and a suspension may follow.  It would have been better if the Falcons had taken action first, but absent that, at least the league itself is doing something.