The Best/Worst Moments of last night's show

[fonpr]

Now Tom Waits ... I dunno. I don't think I hate him necessarily, more like I'm not interested in him. Even when I liked him a long time ago, I don't think I loved him.

What's really strange is that I'd never really heard of anyone NOT liking Tom Waits until I started listening, and now I appear to be in the minority for liking him.

He's the kinda guy I like but I can see why others wouldn't like him, although Tom's argument that his voice is fake seems kinda weird and immaterial. I thought changing your appearance in order to make yourself more entertaining/compelling/whatever was the point of art or entertainment. For Tom to complain about a musician changing his appearance from "real life" in light of the recent Bowie obsession seems REALLY strange and ironic to me, but whatever. I'm not trying to change anyone's mind, I just like arguing about stuff like this because I'm a nerd.

Iggy Pop isn't always Iggy.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6342304713959879408#

[ham bone]

"Am I or am I not speaking to wallflowersman98?"

i could hardly contain my happiness when i heard this sentence!

[dave from knoxville]

Now Tom Waits ... I dunno. I don't think I hate him necessarily, more like I'm not interested in him. Even when I liked him a long time ago, I don't think I loved him.

What's really strange is that I'd never really heard of anyone NOT liking Tom Waits until I started listening, and now I appear to be in the minority for liking him.

He's the kinda guy I like but I can see why others wouldn't like him, although Tom's argument that his voice is fake seems kinda weird and immaterial. I thought changing your appearance in order to make yourself more entertaining/compelling/whatever was the point of art or entertainment. For Tom to complain about a musician changing his appearance from "real life" in light of the recent Bowie obsession seems REALLY strange and ironic to me, but whatever. I'm not trying to change anyone's mind, I just like arguing about stuff like this because I'm a nerd.

I am with you on the Waits train.

[TwoSheds]

The Ballad of El Gouda

[Christina]

What's really strange is that I'd never really heard of anyone NOT liking Tom Waits until I started listening, and now I appear to be in the minority for liking him.

He's the kinda guy I like but I can see why others wouldn't like him, although Tom's argument that his voice is fake seems kinda weird and immaterial. I thought changing your appearance in order to make yourself more entertaining/compelling/whatever was the point of art or entertainment. For Tom to complain about a musician changing his appearance from "real life" in light of the recent Bowie obsession seems REALLY strange and ironic to me, but whatever. I'm not trying to change anyone's mind, I just like arguing about stuff like this because I'm a nerd.

I really like the way you've explained this & I think I see this in myself more with movies - like, if I bitch about movie A, saying it's not enough of this and too much of that, I'll think about movie B, which has a lot of the same things in it but I love it. I think it's like umami a little bit, and maybe what I was trying to reach for when I said "you're way on board" with something!

Oddly enough this came up recently when I saw Tom at the record fair. Since his Bowie fixation has kicked into overdrive, I brought up Velvet Goldmine and did he like that movie. He said something to the effect that yeah, it's been a while, I don't remember if I really loved it. I was describing things about it, and Tom goes, "I thought you liked it." I realized I was saying critical things. I do like it, but it's so over the top ridiculous I shouldn't. I mean, the movie posits that Oscar Wilde came from another planet and somewhere along the way he drops a weird green space brooch in some dank London alley that the (not) Bowie character picks up 75 years later or something. It is just crazy. However, I cannot stand Moulin Rouge. I can't make it past the first line of the first song. Know what I mean?

[thom]

VERY IMPORTANT to me:
A handful of months ago, Tom discussed attending a show for a band that hadn't played for a very long time. Tom played the album track and mimicked the WOOOO! yelling over it. WHAT WAS THAT BAND?

Unrest - "I Do Believe You Are Blushing"

THANKS!
Hey. Thanks.

[masterofsparks]

I really like the way you've explained this & I think I see this in myself more with movies - like, if I bitch about movie A, saying it's not enough of this and too much of that, I'll think about movie B, which has a lot of the same things in it but I love it.

I do this same thing all the time. For instance, I'll complain that I hate the self-consciously quirky weirdness of Wes Anderson's movies and then find myself talking about how much I like Lost Highway a short time later.

[Christina]

*Tom playing a record from the Vee-Chay Record Co.
*talking to the former tour guide from Philadelphia: "I have so many WaWa stories!"
*the thing with the Clark bar - a look into Mike's thought process (also later in the show speculating on what's in Mike's Netflix queue)
*"It's called 'anything'!" Tom's suggested alternate to the crabby old guy complaining about no free bookmarks (as a former bookstore employee this used to drive me crazy -- if we were out of the free ones, god would people have a fit. Also, when we had them people would take an inch high stack if you put too many out at once. Animals.)
*Georgio The Human Carpet - I'd never heard of this guy. Is there some kind of Smug Style Guide that all NYT reporters use? "Human carpeting is still a fairly wide-open market: Georgio knows of only one other person in New York doing a similar thing, a guy who calls himself Kevin Carpet."
*Audrey from brooklyn and her plans to take her architecture degree and go work on a farm: "why do we need all this money?"
*Wurster - "He's like the white Al Di Meola"
*Djurnin - not just "I made mayonnaise", but also the Heave ho bait line - "I thought maybe you and I would have a nice talk"
*referring to "Song #2" as "Woo Hoo"
*How do they depict the "a" word in 127 Hours? "I'm halfway there! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Also Jon from Maplewood - what was the Bronson movie where he says "I thought it was pie!"? I didn't catch that ...

[JonFromMaplewood]

Also Jon from Maplewood - what was the Bronson movie where he says "I thought it was pie!"? I didn't catch that ...

"Ten To Midnight."  A spectacular heap of garbage with some preposterous dialogue. 

There's another line in that movie that is a classic, but I could not mention it on the Best Show because it is serious terlet talk (It involves Bronson sweating the killer down at the precinct and confronting him with a "Montgomery Davies"-type device found in the killer's apartment).

[Rhymes with Don Draper]

I really like the way you've explained this & I think I see this in myself more with movies - like, if I bitch about movie A, saying it's not enough of this and too much of that, I'll think about movie B, which has a lot of the same things in it but I love it. I think it's like umami a little bit, and maybe what I was trying to reach for when I said "you're way on board" with something!

Oddly enough this came up recently when I saw Tom at the record fair. Since his Bowie fixation has kicked into overdrive, I brought up Velvet Goldmine and did he like that movie. He said something to the effect that yeah, it's been a while, I don't remember if I really loved it. I was describing things about it, and Tom goes, "I thought you liked it." I realized I was saying critical things. I do like it, but it's so over the top ridiculous I shouldn't. I mean, the movie posits that Oscar Wilde came from another planet and somewhere along the way he drops a weird green space brooch in some dank London alley that the (not) Bowie character picks up 75 years later or something. It is just crazy. However, I cannot stand Moulin Rouge. I can't make it past the first line of the first song. Know what I mean?

Speaking of Velvet Goldmine, I actually like Todd Hayne's other musical biopic I'm Not There more, which, after listening to the archives, I learned that Mr. Scharpling hated.  My main complaint with Velvet Goldmine?  Although the main character isn't technically him, I still think that he's an unfair representation of David Bowie.  Sure, Bowie might've been a diva who scorched or left behind some people, but he was a rock star and name a rock star of Bowie's caliber who hasn't.  Also--  sure, what he did in the 80s wasn't as artistically sound as what he did in the 70s, but representing Bowie's commercial turn in the 80s as something akin to a shape-shifted Orwellian nightmare is over-the-top.  It's as if Todd Haynes was dramatizing his own feelings about Bowie "selling out" more than anything else.  (But that negative criticism of mine could certainly be seen as something interesting about the film.)

[Christina]

It's as if Todd Haynes was dramatizing his own feelings about Bowie "selling out" more than anything else.  (But that negative criticism of mine could certainly be seen as something interesting about the film.)

I think you got pretty much what the whole movie is ... basically it's Todd Haynes' swoonie loonie toonie MASH note to Bowie and Glam, which is why the thing kinda works and doesn't work at the very same time. He actually glams up the history of glam. It's like Glam^Glam.  It's sort of ridiculous.

Now I want to see it again.

Still haven't seen I'm Not There. Never been a big Bob Dylan fan, really - I dutifully bought a few of the 5 star albums and all, but I don't really dig it.

[JonFromMaplewood]

It's as if Todd Haynes was dramatizing his own feelings about Bowie "selling out" more than anything else.  (But that negative criticism of mine could certainly be seen as something interesting about the film.)

I think you got pretty much what the whole movie is ... basically it's Todd Haynes' swoonie loonie toonie MASH note to Bowie and Glam, which is why the thing kinda works and doesn't work at the very same time. He actually glams up the history of glam. It's like Glam^Glam.  It's sort of ridiculous.

I love Velvet Goldmine, possibly because it is so crazy.  I think starting a film with an infant Oscar Wilde dropping out of a spaceship is probably the best possible way a film can start.

It is my wife's favorite movie of all time.

[gravy boat]

It's as if Todd Haynes was dramatizing his own feelings about Bowie "selling out" more than anything else.  (But that negative criticism of mine could certainly be seen as something interesting about the film.)

I think you got pretty much what the whole movie is ... basically it's Todd Haynes' swoonie loonie toonie MASH note to Bowie and Glam, which is why the thing kinda works and doesn't work at the very same time. He actually glams up the history of glam. It's like Glam^Glam.  It's sort of ridiculous.

I love Velvet Goldmine, possibly because it is so crazy.  I think starting a film with an infant Oscar Wilde dropping out of a spaceship is probably the best possible way a film can start.

It is my wife's favorite movie of all time.

My wife likes the parts where Ewen McGregor is nekkid. No fooling.

[Riley]

"I made mayonnaise."

[Rhymes with Don Draper]

It's as if Todd Haynes was dramatizing his own feelings about Bowie "selling out" more than anything else.  (But that negative criticism of mine could certainly be seen as something interesting about the film.)

I think you got pretty much what the whole movie is ... basically it's Todd Haynes' swoonie loonie toonie MASH note to Bowie and Glam, which is why the thing kinda works and doesn't work at the very same time. He actually glams up the history of glam. It's like Glam^Glam.  It's sort of ridiculous.

Now I want to see it again.

Still haven't seen I'm Not There. Never been a big Bob Dylan fan, really - I dutifully bought a few of the 5 star albums and all, but I don't really dig it.

That's how I feel about I'm Not There:  like Ken Russell made movies about classical composers that lacked fidelity and had a whole lot of invention, IMT is Haynes's filtering of the Dylan mythos.  I think that's one of the key reasons why the movie is polarizing:  it's not really a movie about Bob Dylan.  It's a movie about Todd Haynes's feelings about Bob Dylan.  And I give credit to him for doing his own interpretation of a huge figure like Dylan;  that takes some pretentious balls for one to do.  And the movie probably works better for a Todd Haynes fan than for a Bob Dylan fan.

For instance:  I have a film-buff friend who dislikes Dylan but loved I'm Not There because of its filmmaking.  And I'm more of an admirer of Bowie than Dylan but again I like IMT more than VG.