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Dead End Street The Kinks

I was going to share this video along with a some dumb, little joke, but then I found this quote, and I think it's rather nice:

"'Dead End Street' was the epitome, to me, of what the Kinks were all about. A song full of character, pathos, yet containing an underlying sense of hope. Reflecting a fondness for the past but at the same time expressing a determination and yearning for change. Anguished voices calling to a heartless world. A world where the plight of the ordinary person mattered little. It was interesting to note that more than ten years later, the Clash did a song called 'London Calling' that seemed to be inspired by 'Dead End Street'."

From Dave Davies' autobiography, Kink, by way of Wikipedia.

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Tegan Didn't Go to School Today

Sara Quin

I finished Tegan and Sara's memoir, High School, this afternoon. It's good! The TV show is good, too! Those kids sure loved dropping acid.

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Theme From C Bear and Jamal

Tone Loc

People think narcolepsy means you fall fast asleep without warning, and the boss gets furious that someone's snoring during his big speech at the important business meeting. Or you're checking your baggage at the airport, right, and clunk! Now your hands are folded neatly under your head as you zip across a series of conveyor belts, nestled between suitcases and boxes, and when you wake up in Timbuktu. I have not ever dropped to the floor and started snoring like a cartoon character. I didn't get an official diagnosis until just a few months ago, at age 34, because my experience with narcolepsy is so unlike anything I'd ever seen depicted in media that the possibility I might have it never even crossed my mind. When I was 28, I was working as a high school paraeducator. I was helping one of my kids on a health class assignment, a research project on narcolepsy. It was the fist time I'd seen any real information about the symptoms. Insomnia? That was a surprise. That's the opposite of what I thought narcolepsy was. Sleep paralysis? Weird, I have a long history of sleep paralysis, but it happens to everybody, right? And what is this word, cataplexy? Wait, that scary thing where my body goes limp and I lose all muscle tone has a name??? I called a doctor as soon as I could, begged for a sleep study, made the test's technicians laugh with how off-the-scales my results were, and returned to the doctor to be told... "Well, narcolepsy is really rare." I said, "Yes. It is rare. And some people have it. And I think I might be one of them." My current doctor, a specialist who was able to make a diagnosis from those same test results, says it's not common, but it's not that rare. My old doctor, like most people, just didn't know anything about narcolepsy. So let me contribute to public understanding in my small, anecdotal way. Narcolepsy is when I unconsciously take down all the little things that were stuck to the decorative shelf in my bedroom (I still haven't found all the pushpins I removed) before sleepwalking into someone else's room at 4:00 in the morning, all while dreaming about C Bear and Jamal. So when you bump into your shelf and it starts to fall - Narcolepsy, y'all! Pushpins in your hand and LEGO on the floor - Narcolepsy, y'all! When you sleepwalk down the hall and open up the door - Narcolepsy, y'all! It's the funky sleep disorder we don't fully understand

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Ticket to Ride

The Beatles

Good morning! It's 4:30, and this is playing on a loop on my mental radio station.

You know how when I something gets stuck in your head, it's not necessarily the song as it exists, start to finish? My subconscious mind is greatly overstating the role of that "My baby don't care" part.

I've never seen this video before. I know a little Japanese, and I wanted to know what was scribbled on the ticket at the beginning, but it's such a tight shot that I can't really make much sense of it. It did make me wonder when the video was shot in relation to The Beatles' famous Japan tour, which led me to Wikipedia, which led me to this short article about the time all four members sat in a hotel room for a few days and collaborated on an incredible painting. Is there more Ringo art somewhere? That dude has a gift!

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Mitwa

from the motion picture Lagaan

I adore David Byrne. I adore The Lady of Gaga. Their 2023 Oscar-nominations did not represent either artist at their best. Their live performances at last night's show were uncharacteristically bad. It was an underwhelming year for Best Original Song nominees, overall. I want to believe that the Academy's recognition of Naatu Naatu from RRR last night will usher in an age in which Indian music and movies can finally get the respect they deserve from American audiences, even if, realistically, I think it would have been overlooked if it had had any real competition. For today, though, let's enjoy the possibility of great movies and great music transcending national and cultural borders.

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Racist, Sexist Boy

The Linda Lindas

I have no love for racism and/or sexism, but gosh, it is nice to hear some rad teens respond to boys who "say mean stuff" by calling them "blockhead" and "jerkface" in a perfect punk-rock bop.

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Do you like reviews of bad video games? Do you like reviews of good video games? Do you love a bunch of games? Me, too!

Check out I Love a Bunch of Games, where I am playing through my distressingly massive collection of games from Itch.io and posting a short review every danged day, along with broader reflections on my week in games every Sunday.

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Brewster's Millions

Brewster Brewsterson has inherited more rules than he can comprehend. The Brew Boys spend millions of minutes explaining the rules, but they still don't make any sense. Brewster is obviously going to win, and he does. An engaged woman who works for him, and who doesn't like him, is suddenly in love with him at the end because it's a movie. Nothing matters. John Candy is there when the movie remembers that he's part of the cast, even though he doesn't really play a character and he doesn't have anything to do. Richard Pryor looks like a man who is doing his best not to think about how difficult Richard Pryor's life was in the mid-'80s. I didn't laugh a single time, but there a lot of these people are likeable and there's a frenetic energy to everything that's pretty fun.

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I’m ranking every movie I watch between my 33rd and 34th birthdays right here on Tumblr dot com because I am some kind of idiot person, I guess.

Spider-Man

Moonrise Kingdom

Fatty Drives the Bus

50 First Dates

Alien

I Feel Pretty

TMNT

The Darjeeling Limited

The Orange Years: The Nickelodeon Story

Legally Blonde

Stargate

The Mitchells vs. the Machines

Brewster's Millions

Pork Pie

Incredibles 2

Election

My Fair Lady

Thunder Force

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Well, great. I was just reminded of this list. I turned 33 a few days ago. I haven’t watched any movies since then. I could start a new ranking. There’s nothing stopping me. Now is the time. That would be dumb, though. Right?

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Crud.

That was supposed to go on my movie page; not my music page. Whatever. Now it’s on both.

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This week has brought us new trailers for both The LEGO Movie Part Two-vie and Another Rickets Ralph. These are sequels to movies from 2014 and 2012, respectively. They've both been in development for a long time, so I'm sure it must have been at least a bit disappointing for everyone involved that both trailers hang their hats on the same joke.

The first movie's cool, capable female character with a lot of personality was overshadowed by a comically bland and inept man who saved the day because the script said he should be the special one. It's a common pattern that both movies replicated, but now it's okay because they've hung a lampshade on it. Mea culpa! All is forgiven.

Let's compare and contrast. If you haven't already seen both trailers, I'd recommend beginning there. Here's Ralph Breaks the Internet (yuck, bad name):

And here's The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part (ooh, great name!):

If anyone wants to get into a deeper breakdown of these two, you bet I'm down to participate. (That's Dance Dance Revolution X2 in the opening shot!) For now, I'm going to stay focused on the feminist meta-joke.

Vanellope gets her moment in a sea of doe-eyed caricatures of Disney Princesses, which is quite a feat considering they were already cartoon characters with impossibly large peepers, but, folks, these new models look like Diva Starz.

This would be a good time to remember that classic quote from Frozen head animator, Lino Disalvo:

"Historically speaking, animating female characters are really, really difficult, ’cause they have to go through these range of emotions, but they’re very, very — you have to keep them pretty and they’re very sensitive to — you can get them off a model very quickly. So, having a film with two hero female characters was really tough, and having them both in the scene and look very different if they’re echoing the same expression; that Elsa looking angry looks different from Anna being angry.”

Hoooo, boy, there's a lot to unpack there.

Girls have to stay pretty and poised. They all look the same. Putting TWO of them in one movie? A Herculean feat.

As far as I can tell, Disalvo isn't directly involved with Ralph (he's currently wrapped up in an untitled Playmobil movie, of all things). His work on Frozen and Tangled, however, provides the visual foundation for this Princess scene. These character designs are mired in sexism. To be clear, I'm not saying the look is informed by intentional malice of any kind. That's possible, but I believe it's more likely to be an accidental result of uncorrected ignorance. Still, it's sexist.

Moreover, did you notice Mulan and Jasmine? I couldn't take my eyes off of them. All the Princesses look bad, but, wow, they really could not figure out what to do with non-Caucasian facial features in this style, huh?

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Let's zip over to The LEGO Movie for a moment.

In this scene alone, I spy the edgy-but-insecure-but-amazing-and-not-a-DJ Wyldstyle in her post-apoc desert get-up, Unikitty, endearingly boring ol' Emmet, a glowing A.I. orb, an angel-winged anime cyborg woman, Benny the damaged spaceman, MetalBeard the pirate robot, a crowd of freaks on their way to the nearest Thunderdome, and Batman. Pretty white and male, but the visual diversity is a real feat considering the movie's unified style.

- - -

I want to throw it over to Raphael "Raizin" Bob-Waksberg of BoJack Horseman fame. Please read this Tumblr post he wrote about casual, unintended sexism.

Raphael was brought in a few years ago to rewrite The LEGO Movie 2. The post linked above reflects his constant, if imperfect, dedication to feminism. No one ever would have known he wanted the dog to be male if he hadn't publicly volunteered that information. He called out his own stupidity because Lisa knew better than him, and he wanted to pass that message along to others. I wonder if he would have gotten the LEGO job if his praise hadn't been tempered with criticism of the first movie's ignorant gender politics. (It probably helps that there's significant overlap in the BoJack and LEGO casts. Incidentally, his comments on the very white cast of BoJack deserve a few minutes of your time.)

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Aaaaaand, back to Disney:

Disney Weighs Return of Pixar Co-Founder John Lasseter After Concerns on Behavior

Please note that the complaints against Lasseter go beyond unwanted hugs. #LoseLasseter

- - -

I won't pretend I'm looking at these movies without bias. Ralph Breaks the Internet (ugh, joking about your bad name doesn't make it good) is a sequel to a disappointing stinker. It looks like Foodfight! meets The Emoticon Movie. The first LEGO Movie, meanwhile, kept me grinning like a dope from beginning to end, even while I saw the unfortunate flaws.

I expect to like one of these and not the other.

The Ralph joke isn't all bad. They quick-fade the music and really hammer the joke to sell the bit. Cinderella with that glass slipper is a great subversion. They go hard, hyper-actively bouncing from Princess to Princess, letting Snow White underline the gag with her little trill before slamming the slider back to Daft Punk. Sarah Silverman brings it.

I love Elizabeth Banks. She isn't given as much assistance in her LEGO scene. The music drops out, some dry banter is exchanged, and then we kick it back to the Beastie Boys. We're in and out for this joke. It asks a little more from the audience and provides a little less. I'm not sure it's going for the big laugh.

The difference is that I trust one of these movies more than the other. There's no such thing as a feminist joke in isolation. It is based on our culture. The first LEGO dipped onto the wrong side. Disney, meanwhile, spent the last century on the ground level. Disney is the establishment. They've given us some tremendous female role models, but even at their best, those movies are at least as questionable as The LEGO Movie.

Ultimately, that Princess joke, set in a "super-intense and really nuts" manifestation of Oh My Disney feels to me like a reflection of fan discourse. It's saying something in the same way a parrot does. It's mimicking the sounds, but what is that actually worth? We'll see in November. Or when Disney announces a decision regarding John Lasseter. (#LoseLasseter)

The LEGO Movie 2 trailer ends with an introduction to the an intergalactic locale called the Sis-Star System. That sounds to me like this doesn't start and end with a silly meta-goof. It’s going to revel in silly meta-goofs, no doubt, but it will go there with a purpose. Feminism isn't a way to cash in on the zeitgeist.

Maybe this all ends with Raphael Bob-Waksberg writing another apology for getting it wrong again. I doubt it, but maybe. And if that is how it goes, it won't forgive they mistake, but at least it we'll have seen someone try to do something real.

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Talkin’ Bout a Revolution (Tracy Chapman Cover) Brontë Loves Kafka

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I'm caught up on Ash Vs. Evil Dead. I have thoughts.

The first Evil Dead is good, but I'd recommend skipping it unless you're really hungry for all series has to offer. Evil Dead II falls somewhere in the top ten movies I've ever seen. It's a cartoonishly silly take on the horror genre, with whole swimming pools of cherry Kool-Aid splashing out of individuals, physical comedy straight that would make the Stooges proud, distinct and clever cinematography, and all the puppets and miniatures you can handle. I wouldn't say it's for everyone, but there's no question that it is exactly for me. The sequel, Army of Darkness, isn't quite tailored to my precise tastes, but it's still excellent. It abandons the vestiges of horror almost entirely, opting instead for fantasy and adventure, while embracing comedy even more overtly. I'd say it's more appealing to a wider audience.

Army of Darkness came out in '93, and, outside of some truly awful video games, that looked like it was basically it for Ash and tbe Deadites until this series debuted in 2015. I hadn't seen a minute of it until recently, when the first two seasons were added to Netflix, and I'm glad that was my introduction. If I had to wait a week between episodes, I'm not sure I would have made it. The writing, the CG (CG! In Evil Dead! I mean, really!), the whole supporting cast - they're just rotten. And then there's Bruce Campbell, back in the role he was born to play. I'd be stuck with a bunch of terrible side characters who couldn't decide if they knew they were in a comedy or not, wondering why I was even wasting my time with this misguided nostalgia grab that was happy to make a travesty of one of cinema's greatest worlds, and then, hail to the king, baby! Here comes the chainsaw-armed, boomstick-toting, catchphrase-spouting Deadite slayer himself, killing every single line reading and cracking me up with every last facial expression. He can even look believeable fighting against bland CGI monsters.

So the first season was something of a chore with just enough payoff from that one performance to keep me tapping on the next episode. Now, the second season... That's where it gets good.

I still wouldn't quite put it at the same level as Evil Dead II, but considering there are only a handful of movies among its ranks, that's hardly criticism. The first season was unsure and even dangerously generic at times. The second Ash started losing a fight with a sentient, toothy large-intestines puppet snaking its way out of a naked, bisected cadaver in a dingy morgue was the second I knew this series, with its outrageously goofy gore, was back for good. It finds its creativity, tone, and craftsmanship, and I am so happy. Over the course of one little production break, it went from a show I could barely justify watching to one I don't want to miss. I was questioning whether Evil Dead even made sense as a TV series, but they addressed all of my complaints. This is real, proper Evil Dead. They did it.

Don't take that as a blanket recommendation. It's still very much a cult thing. If you like Evil Dead II, stick with Ash Vs. Evil Dead. And if you don't, you might want to give Army of Darkness a shot, anyway. It has stop-motion skeleton hordes. Everyone loves stop-motion skeletons.

Groovy.

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Tra La Laa! Extra Life

Do you like video games? Do you like the life-changing magic of healthcare? Tune in to our 24-hour video game stream this weekend and help us raise some coin for Seattle Children’s Hospital.

We go live at 9:00 A.M. PST on Saturday, November 4, 2017, and we won’t stop for a full day. Watch us on Twitch, and don’t forget to throw a couple bucks toward our Extra Life page.

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Jake’s Guide to Being a Robot

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This is me singing and playing a very straightforward cover of one of the best songs I know, Summer’s the Worst by Michael Leviton. The guitar and vocals are on one track, and I recorded it in a single take. I think I might like to return to this song one day and do something a bit more creative with it, but the truth is there’s not much you can do to improve on the original.

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Trap Me Up, Buttercup

(Cover of Build Me Up, Buttercup by The Foundations) Brontë Loves Kafka From an upcoming podcast on the Tra La Laa! Radio Network.