inverse-recommending

t(.j.)hursdays again...

i must give hoorahs to my fellow recommendeers once again for really stretching the bounds of what is recommending.
i too am going to put a tiny spin on the scenario that is this blog.... last week at some point, we got into a good round of commenting where a few of us voiced or disdain for the Cormac McCarthy book ON THE ROAD. i didnt like it none... and neither did adam, chris or rickster...

so what i was thinking for this thursday, is perhaps we can continue with this crowd participation blogging (since adam isnt giving us a new list to write about and we can only talk about aronofsky's THE CELL so many times before it gets repetitive). I am proposing a Anti-Recommending day... or rather.... maybe thats innacurate... its the Inverse-Recommending day or the Bizarro-Recommending day... perhaps we can put some things on the list that we would suggest our fellows not to partake, observe, or participate in...

i'll start, and please add anything that you dislike onto the list (sorry this is so negative by the way, but it will be neat if people disagree here.. go ahead... offend a few):


BOOKS:
Cormac McCarthy - ON THE ROAD
David Gibbons / Alan Moore - WATCHMEN (i might stand alone on this one... though the movie wasnt so bad)

FILMS:
101 Dalmations re-make
Vicky Christina Barcelona (a bit trite and cliché if you ask me)

FOOD:
porcini flavored popcorn
fresh-out-of-the-microwave hot pockets
drinking 1/3 cup of olive oil after an apple cleanse

MUSIC:
cotton-eyed joe / electric slide / and that other song where people clap their hands 3 times

OTHER:
television during the daytime when you are near a window showing a nicely-weathered day
cigarettes in the AM in the summer
sliding down a metal slide in the summer before checking its temperature

hmm... i'll add some more... you should add some in the comments section.

More Recommends

Hey everyone,

It's Mike again with another Wednesday. Today I thought I would expand on something from last week and present a list of new recommends from my dad.

My dad happens to be one of Adam's favorite conversation topics of mine, because all of the stories that involve him have some sort of ridiculous scenario. The joke at the bar, the Tommy Hilfiger outlet, the Disneyworld birds (Adam might not know this one), but these are all classic stories that involve my dad getting impatient, or asking for a ridiculous request. Ask me about these one time and I will gladly spin you a yarn.

Anyway, I was talking to my dad last week and asked him what his favorite albums were. I was a little shocked by his answers because he doesn't own any real albums (which I will explain in a sec), and only listens to the radio. I also got his fave movies. Here's his list:

Music:

The Beatles - The White Album

The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper

Fleetwood Mac - s/t

Fleetwood Mac - Rumours

E.L.O. - Greatest Hits

Movies:

Gunga Din

The Outlaw Josey Wales

The Searchers

Red River

Lawrence of Arabia

My childhood experience with these albums is a little off balance. I was exposed to a fair amount of Fleetwood Mac and E.L.O., but it was my mom who used to play these all the time, and not my dad. He was always playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons on cassette, or the oldies station. And I really was not even exposed to much Beatles growing up. Probably 8 years ago, I rummaged through his old records and found all of these albums there, plus a slew of other classic stuff. It was surprising finding some of these here because he never previously expressed interest in the Beatles, and around the time I was getting into them, he always seemed like he was turned off by them. Also, he doesn't own any CDs, preferring songs to whole albums. Another thing I found amusing while searching through his records was when I came to the self titled Fleetwood Mac album. On the back of the album he had checked off in pencil the songs that he enjoyed the most. I guess he needed the reminder that "Rhiannon" is a good song. I will say that in the years since, he seems to have taken a liking to the Beatles again.

I will say that his movie picks are not for everyone. Three of the movies here are Westerns, and the most recent of these five is The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). However, I actually am a fan of all of these movies.

Lawrence of Arabia is actually on my Top 5 movie list as well. It has some of the best camera work in movie history, and is one of the most epic movies ever conceived. If you are a history buff, more specifically military history, this is required viewing. It takes during World War I, and when I think about it, I can't think of a better depiction of that era than this movie. The man's story it chronicles, T.E. Lawrence, had a pretty incredible life. The whole movie basically shows how he went from the lowly ranked soldier, to a commander of an army in a relatively short amount of time. Anyway, read more here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_of_Arabia_(film)

Anyway, that's it for me. More next week...

Live Blog!! Chris Q&A!! One Day Only!!!

Hi Everyone!!!

Today, we're doing something very special and very interactive. I didn't have time to look into any of your old recommendations, so tell me about some new stuff and I'll riff on it ON THE SPOT.

Leave a comment and let me know about something that I can easily look into here at work. A song, a youtube clip, a piece or art, a poem, a weirdo on Facebook...anything. I'll look into and give you my thoughts on it ON THE SPOT.

Unadulterated, unedited and totally off the wall!

Okay, hit me up with some stuff.

And check back often, because this thing is getting updated up until 4:45PM EST.

At 11:10AM, Baltimore City Department of Public Works Bureau of Solid Waste recommends:

We recommend that you place your solid waste into trash cans with tight fitting lids and to never to leave your trash outside in just a plastic bag. Only cans with lids keep trash contained, prevent litter and discourage rodents, stray animals and other pests.

Chris responds:

Seriously, BCDOPWBOSW?? You mean I've been putting bags of garbage on my sidewalk for 8 months, and NOW you're telling me its not cool? Now you're telling me [albeit through a mass glossy postcard junk mailing that I'm paranoidly thinking was your way of talking directly to me since you were too scared to say it directly to my face] you're going to fine me $50? Get out of here with your rodent talk. You're the pest in this scenario, dawgs. Scram!

Next!

At 11:14AM, Chris Laun recommends:

How about that Tracy Morgan interview I sent you yesterday.

Chris responds:

I agree 100% with the notion that I didn't care for Tracy Morgan before 30 Rock and his subsequent talk show appearances. I feel bad that I didn't realized that he was always a lunatic. This interview is pure insanity. Its a 20-minute run-on sentence, only disrupted periodically by radio station identification. Its truly a work of art. I can only hope that this is how Adam acts on WJZ on Friday.

At 11:36AM, Michael Ward recommends:

I recommend the hot dog from Five Guys. How about giving it a try for lunch?

Chris responds:

Sorry Mike...If I were to prioritize [or even meet] your request, it might be seen as a conflict of interest, since you're a fellow scribe. On a purely personal level, I might consider this recommendation. But I will NOT be writing about my enjoyment of it on this blog.

At 11:41AM: Heather Vandenburg of Ithaca, NY recommends:

[I recommend a reaction to] how.. .you feel about all this crazy quiz taking going on on facebook? huh? huh?

Chris responds:

I don't like it, Heather. Its old-hat to complain about the new Facebook homepage layout, but it bears repeating...its HORRIBLE. I have no idea what's going on anymore. There is nothing even remotely highlighty about the "Highlights" column. And these crazy quizzes that you mention? These things are for the birds. The myspacing of Facebook is upon us and there's no turning back. Start sailing to the New World, Heather.

At 12:09PM, Adamhop recommends:

why don't you talk about how to make a mockery of a perfectly nice blog!?

Chris responds:

Adam, I know you still think of this as your blog, but its not anymore. Its OURS. We can do what we want. We have free reign. Live-blogging is a perfectly respectable way of blogging. It toes the line between chatting and blogging. Its really free and liberating. And thusfar, my grammar has been spot-on. Granted I haven't responded to any substantial recommendations yet, but I'm getting there. You built it, and now I'm coming. Deal with it.

At 12:40PM, Jeska recommends:

Also, I finally realized a week or so ago what was going on with Rick's bizarre closings. I think he could really take this a long way as an interactive performance art, by posting comments on strangers blogs merely containing the closing. [I recommend that you post your] Thoughts?

Chris responds:
I must have been upgraded to a Plus Membership, because I know no longer have to decipher what these crazy words say, so I'm afraid I can't relate. I have nothing to say on the matter, except for that I wish Ricky B the best in this or any other future endeavors. If he builds it, I will go.


At 12:46PM, T.J. recommends:

hmm... yes - perhaps my idea was a bit too broad... how about... blueberry muffins or big trampolines... whats your thoughts on those?

Chris responds:

Tough choice. As a kid, there were many foods that I decided that I didn't like. Pickles, beets, onions, chocolate, blueberries and muffins. As I grew older I came to a philosophical understanding that it's ridiculous for a human being to be disgusted by the taste of anything. All things taste good. The world is imperfect yet perfect. So, I've slowly been teaching my taste buds to enjoy the tastes that the childhood me had jeered. I've come around on muffins in the biggest of ways... but blueberries, I'm still trying to fully appreciate those. So, while I'm decidedly indifferent to trampolines of ANY size, the big trampoline still wins this battle hands down, as of this moment. You might want to resubmit this question for my next Q&A.

Sorry, everybody.

________ Sundays

This one is going to be a little bit of a recommends stretch for me. Since some of my fellow bloggers have gone a little bit outside of the box, I decided to do so for this Monday post because it is something that I feel strongly about.

This is the concept of _______ Sundays. It should be read like Richard Lewis' "The ______ from Hell." For the purpose of this post, ________ should just be read as "blank." The idea of ______ Sundays was suggested to me by our Thursday poster TJ Huff back when we were in our undergrad. However his ________ always takes the very specific format of Coltrane Sundays. There are no set rules for Coltrane Sundays, other than you try to make it a point to listen to some music by John Coltrane every Sunday. To me this is a great idea, and I try to do this religiously, like most people who go to church on Sundays. Sometimes I get way into this idea and listen to a whole lot of Coltrane, and some Sundays I just listen to a song or two. As I type this I realize that I haven't gotten my Sunday dose of any Coltrane today, but with a half hour remaining I can't think of a better way to close the weekend. Currently listening to "Chasin' the Trane (Live)" from Disc One of The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings. We'll see where we go from there. I hope TJ chimes in to enlighten us more as to his reasoning for the invention of Coltrane Sundays, and exactly when that happened. He is truly the biggest fan of John Coltrane's music that I know (and I know a lot of people who love him) and I suspect that he just wanted to make sure that he always makes time to appreciate his music.


So, my recommendation to you isn't necessarily to participate in Coltrane Sundays, because you might hate the music of John Coltrane. My recommendation is to find something that you love to do, or a musician that you love more than the rest and dedicate just a little bit of time one day a week (Sunday IS the perfect day) to make sure you appreciate that thing. You owe yourself. It is really easy to get caught up in the day-to-day of things we NEED to do, that sometimes we don't allow ourselves the luxery of listening to our favorite jazz saxophonist even for just one song that takes up five (or fifteen) minutes. That is a shame.
So, I urge you to find your own ______ and make sure you appreciate that thing at least one a week. Please let the Friends Recommends readers know if you have chosen a ______ for your ______ Sundays. It might catch on big like TJ's Coltrane Sundays.

My second pick was "Impressions (Live)" (Eric Dolphy!) from the same disc and album as "Chasin' the Trane" and my third will be "Everytime We Say Goodbye" from My Favorite Things.

Tom Waits

This post is actually specifically about Rain Dogs. The reason for the title just being Tom Waits is because a number of people have recommended him as a general artist (George mentioned Tom Waits, and Jessica Tom Waits early(ier) years, whatever time period that means). Chris Laun recommended Rain Dogs specifically, so I am going to chalk this up as an 80% Laun recommends with 10% George and 10% JeskA thrown in. OK?

I've been meaning to post about Rain Dogs for some time now. My problem was that even though a number of people have told me how great of an album it is, it never really hit me as a Tom Waits favorite. Before two weeks ago my favorite Tom Waits album was without question Mule Variations. I would have nothing of anyone ever telling me that there was a better Tom Waits album, because Mule Variations is near perfect. It has goofy tracks, painful heart-wrenching ballads, Primusy tracks, creepy tracks about creepy neighbors, and everything in between. I was pretty much set with my favorite Tom Waits album for the rest of my life. About two weeks ago I decided to do a post on the Chris Laun Rain Dogs recommendation. After listening to Rain Dogs a couple times through I can now only say that Mule Variations is probably my favorite Tom Waits album, it is no longer definite. P.S. before I completely move on from Mule Variations. I recommend the whole album, that is for sure. It works well in it's entirety, and I think from start to finish it is extremely well crafted. A lot of variety from song to song, but that gives the album a great overall arch. Also, there are some top notch musicians on it, including bassist Greg Cohen (Masada, Ornette Coleman), Les Claypool (Primus), Marc Ribot (to be discussed further), and others. While I love all the tracks, some standouts for me are Big In Japan, Hold On, House Where Nobody Lives, Black Markey Baby, Chocolate Jesus, and maybe you should just buy the album.

After all of this praise for Mule Variations I can honestly say that I highly recommend Rain Dogs as well. Where the mood of Mule Variations is overall that of a rainy day and leans towards the depressing side, Rain Dogs sounds like a circus of pirates and muppets overall. It is pretty far to the outer edges of pop music in terms of accessibility, and actually took me a couple listens before I even decided that I liked it. And now I am listening as I type this post and realize that I love this album. Clap Hands just came on and I feel myself almost singing along. Anyway, one of my favorite parts of Rain Dogs is the wide range of instruments Waits used to get the sound. A quick visit to the Rain Dogs Wikipedia entry and a quick scroll down to personell will give you the rundown of exactly which instruments are on the album, but some strange highlights are the use of percussion instruments (most standout being marimba), organ, accordian, banjo, and a variety of horn, string and woodwind instruments. This wide scope of instruments paired with Waits' voice gives us an album that is completely unlike any other. It is also notable for being the first time that Waits hired jazz-based guitar wizard Marc Ribot, and Keith Richards of some famous rock band contributes additional guitar. Check out this one for sure. If you don't like it at first, I suggest you keep listening and it might grow. It did for me.

I have to make a special note of the sequence of the last three songs on the album, Downtown Train, Bride of Rain Dog, and Anywhere I Lay My Head. This might be the best concluding sequence of any album I've ever heard. It really ties the whole thing together. I don't have a link to Bride of Rain Dog, but here is a great video for Downtown Train followed by a live recording of Anywhere I Lay My Head from 2008. It is really great to listen to the Rain Dogs version and then listen to the 2008 version and hear how much lower his voice is now. Amazing! Enjoy. Also, I am too tired to go back and edit this post (which I normally do). You can just deal with it!

gateway posting

this recommendeering is going to use cory's recommendations as a catalyst for the theme. Cory Palmer gave us his list a long time ago... looong looooong time ago back when this blog was still in its infantile state... just learning to walk and spitting up cute things... ok...enough of that... (ireally overuse the "..." don't i?) anyway, i noticed a good theme in the arts section. Cory mentioned liking Dali and MC Escher.

I like to call these two artists "GATEWAY ARTISTS". And let me start off by saying that this in no way diminishes the role of these artists or the appreciation therein. But I find that there are some pretty universal artists that are responsible for getting people into a certain, albeit, harder-to-immediately-appreciate genre. Much in the same way that police officers who come to middle school assembly's and talk about the dangers of marijuana being a gateway drug, here we have two artists that are introduced to burgeoning middle schoolers at a pinnacle moment of their coming into art appreciation.. and later are responsible for leading them down the path of augmented and expanded appreciations. MC Escher and Dali, I feel, are specifically responsible for me becoming an artist as well as a majority of people who started their artmaking at that impressionable middle school age. the two were able to combine thought provoking and easily-engageable content with a superior craft.. and do so in a somewhat comical way. So as middle schoolers we mimicked their style and probably tried to draw hyper-realistic eyeballs and drippy telephones on trapper keepers and such. We watched cartoons such as ren and stimpy, and in some of the weirder close-up shots in the show, we saw the craft and detail in the weird illustrations and all of the sudden that craft, detail and weirdness extended into the fine art world. After a year or two of exploring these artists and their respective ouevres, we then stumbled across'd other artists who employ a similar quality in craft, but now the content is in a higher echelon... and so on and so forth down the road until we come to a macroscopic, well-versed appreciation on all levels.

For instance, I now love the work of pierre puvis de chavannes, a french romantic scene painter, But I could never get to an appreciation of him if it didn't follow a certain path laid out... in fact, i bet i can trace it almost like the 6 degrees of kevin bacon.

mc escher > pablo picasso > vincent van gogh > honore daumier > eduard manet > pierre puvis de chavannes

similarly, i could add jean-michel basquiat and picasso to these gateway artists. people can easily get obsessed with these two outspoken gents and later find themselves moving along the evolutionary path of a blossoming spectrum of appreciation to later possibly include george condo or cy twombly.

i think this analogy of gateway artists extends to other fields of expression as well. For instance (and again i am speaking from my own perspective as well as those who i watched grow up around me) Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix were gateway artists for those of us who later decided to be guitar players, and while I dont listen to them that often anymore, I could never get to appreciating people such as Nels Cline and Michio Kurihara without them. As for classical music, my gateway artists probably were both Frank Zappa and Mozart. Mozart being the obvious one... wrote some pretty influential works that people hear peripherally from a very young age. Be it at a doctors office, or a wedding/funeral... or in the Amadeus movie you have to watch in 7th grade music class.... anyway, the guy wrote great stuff... and without him i would've never even heard of brahms or bartok. The Frank Zappa is a more lateral approach... but coming from a 6th grader who liked guitars and rock music, my guitar teacher handed me frank zappa albums every so often and it was there that i first saw the appreciation of an orchestral approach to some non-orchestral music. i started to appreciate all sorts of instrumentations which i might've otherwise lept categorized to classical or soundtrack music at that age.

and on that same music front... as much as i hate to admit this... i used to like that band phish in high school... and while i am a bit ashamed of that fact, i do hold them responsible along with herbie hancock to get me into jazz and for that i am grateful. most directly, listening to those two got me coltrane's blue train for christmas one year (maybe 11th grade) and that album in turn led me to the appreciation i have for improvised music i now hold. those roots go back to phish and that makes me feel sheepish. but also... to comment on adam's seasonal albums... getting blue train for christmas has embedded that album as a christmas time album for the rest of my life.

lets seee... what else... i think kurt vonnegut is a great gateway author to remind you that reading can be enjoyable and weird... and it can open you up to a whole bunch of other novelists and short story folk.... hmm... that angle of the list is a bit limited (please feel free to expand it for me).

gateway films: (note here i am saying films as opposed to movies to assume a higher art factor than solely entertainment and boobs) i think amelie could be a good gateway film for people. It was entertaining, but the precision and nuance in the camera-work, reoccuring themes, post-production/ manipulation... all turne this movie into a cinematic art piece. i think wes andersons stuff also bridges that gap of entertainment and high art and gets people into liking fellini or seymour cassel's earlier films. im sure there's got to be other good examples i am not thinking of.

lastly, i am not saying that everyone will fall inline with the same steps of appreciation as i had in my formative / manipulative state... but it is nice to see that there are certain artists, who hold a special place in our hearts and are a vehicle for the apprecaition of other artists.... even if their limelight it sometimes short lived.... thanks cory for reminding me of this notion.... that being said... cory's selections also sat on the other end of the see-saw with respect to his Bartok String Quartets, Bach Cello Suites and Shostakovich Cello Concertos which have broadened my novice apprecation already.

no wait.... that wasn't lastly actually... it was preemptive to the reeeeal LASTLY... which is... if you adhere to this idea, i'd love to get a scope of what some of your gateway people might've been. or even if you think this ideas dumb... you can also comment and make some remark about how i smell funny or something.

A Classic

It's Wednesday, I'm back. It's Mike here with my second post.

OK, so since recommendations are what this blog is all about, I thought I would start off with a quick and important recommend from my dad. Please listen. It's an invaluable piece of information.



As stated last week, I thought I would comment on something previously mentioned here in this blog. Going through all of these lists, I came to Jessica's, which lists a lot of good stuff, but It's a Wonderful Life stood out to me. I love this movie. My dad loves this movie.



He introduced it to me when I was a kid and I've watched it probably a hundred times. If you are one of the few who haven't seen this, it's an amazing movie. If you are at all interested in the movie's story, or want to read some really interesting facts about the movie, I suggest you go here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_a_wonderful_life

From the article:
The full extent of Mr. Potter's deviousness is never revealed to the other characters in the film, and he is never brought to account for sequestering the $8,000, although Capra filmed an alternate ending that was subsequently cut wherein Potter receives a "comeuppance".

They actually did this scene on a classic SNL sketch. I absolutely love this. Mr. Potter is arguably one of the biggest bastards in movie history, and this would have made the movie so much sweeter.



Another thing I like about this movie are the ways that George Bailey changed the lives of his friends and family by not being born. Uncle Billy ends up in an insane asylum because George wasn't there to keep him together mentally. Mary ends up unmarried (despite that she was the hottest chick in Bedford Falls when George was alive), old, and unattractive because George wasn't there. Harry dies during a sledding accident because George wasn't there to save him. The whole sequence of him not being born ends up being a little over the top (Bert the cop firing a gun into a crowd of people at George?), but I like this. It's part of the movie's charm. Besides these sparse moments, I still am moved by this movie every time I see it. I don't know of any other movie that I can say that about.

Anyway, more next week with a tidbit on something else.