A blinged-out, hip-hop star for a president, hours of priceless fart jokes streaming over the boob-tube that never get old, and water replaced by energy drinks: This is the world presented in Mike Judge’s “Idiocracy” and it’s a world that, sadly enough, is a not-far-off exaggeration of our own. When I saw the movie some time ago I thought it was funny, but this little thought kept kicking me in the back of my head saying, “This is kind of scary. This is going to be us.”

The entertainment industry today is vast–too big for one person to ever hope to consume everything that’s put out. It’s impossible to watch every movie and television program and ingest every song that’s made. That’s okay–it’s perfectly healthy to choose what suits you best out of all the multitude of options. I like certain genres of music better than others, and I’d much rather watch a dark comedy than a romantic one.

My problem is that everyone seems to be plugged into this mass media stream, only able to intercept the very limited choices it floats their way. BEEPBEEPBEEP: NEW BIG-BUDGET CHICK FLICK STARRING HUNKY MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY WITH A PREDICTABLE, LAZILY WRITTEN STORYLINE!!! BEEPBEEPBEEP: MTV SAYS YOU SHOULD GO AND BUY THE NEW DANITY KANE ALBUM OF OVERPRODUCED POP FROM THE STARS OF THAT SHOW THAT WAS, OH YEAH, ON MTV.

Okay, I apologize–that was obnoxious. BUT, my point remains. It’s like people have been brainwashed by the media as to what they should enjoy and the mindset in which they should approach it. I know there’s a whole broader issue here (a more important one even) about what else the media does to us (whether it’s body image issues or matters of politics), but I just want to focus on the entertainment aspect.

I live in a city that gets its entire identity from being a college town. Granted, the University of Georgia is known more for being a party school than for its academics, but it’s still a good school. So why is it that I see so many carbon-copied frat guys and “sorostitutes” etc seeming to pride themselves on the fact that they’re not that bright. And maybe they are smart, (in fact, I’m sure that they are) but there’s this freaky role they slip into of acting like there’s nothing going on in their heads. They sneer at the idea of reading a good book, scrunch up their nose at something that makes them think too much, and label things that they don’t immediately understand as “weird” or “gay” or other wonderfully juvenile tags. Has the mass media made it so that it’s a shameful act to consume entertainment in a “smart” way? Because I see guys rolling their eyes at an art-flick, without giving it a chance, and then busting an artery over the latest installment of Rambo. Not saying Rambo’s a bad movie (I haven’t seen it), but why can’t there be MORE than just adrenaline-pumping, testosterone fests? And for the ladies: It’s OK to like intelligent movies or to read a book with challenging vocabulary. Is it a dumb act that’s put on for someone’s benefit (some HAWT guy)? Because I like to think–I really do–that the girls I run into so often aren’t REALLY as dumb as they come across. It just has to be an act, right? It’s just sort of disconcerting that in a town full of so many college-educated folk there’s not much depth, at least not displayed on the surface. Maybe in secret. Maybe everyone’s just ashamed to look too “smart”, though I have no clue why. These same people then look down on me for using my brain too much–like it’s a bad thing to think when I could just as easily be shutting my systems down and enjoying senseless entertainment.

Of course there are plenty of people like me–I’m no special case–but I just run into a lot of people who fall into that last paragraph. I’m not trying to stereotype here, and I realize that people have many different layers, but I’m just commenting on what comes across to me, from my stand point.

Let’s take a look at the “cycle” of brain-free entertainment: The abomination that was “Meet the Spartans” topped the box office the weekend it opened. It and hosts of other shoddily written, way-formulaic movies get shoved in our faces through obscene amounts of advertising. Next, people rush to see said movies and bring them big success. Then, the studios go, “Oh, we made an ass-ton of money on that movie. Let’s spend even LESS money this time on a good script and just pump out some more garbage. Because, hey, people may not like these movies very much, but they keep paying to see them, so why should we change?” Rinse, wash, repeat. So maybe I took some liberties there, but isn’t that the case? If we just continue to buy what the big entertainment studios out there sell us, they’re going to keep funneling crap into our brains. Meanwhile, the truly good art suffers. Like, for example, brilliant TV shows get canned while American Idol soars in the ratings, and it just doesn’t seem right.

To clarify: I’m not saying great art doesn’t become mainstream, because a lot of it does. Sometimes awesome stuff gets pushed to the forefront, and for good reason. But the ratio of crap to gold is off-kilter in my opinion.

The biggest offender of all is probably reality television. I should preface this by admitting to my own self-indulgence in a good helping of reality smut now and then. It’s addictive, and I won’t deny that. Useless and trashy, but wildly entertaining. I try and justify watching it by balancing it with a healthy dose of other media, though–I read books (not just the latest paperbacks on display on the local supermarket), I watch quality scripted TV, and movies that don’t always have many or, gasp, any A-list actors in them at all (not that that alone by any means makes a movie good or bad). So I think it’s perfectly alright to sit back and enjoy a little mindless reality TV, just so long as I keep my mind turned on the majority of the time.

It’s sad to me when people seem fine without well-written films or TV and perfectly OK to substitute them with reality shows with premises that could have been thought up by a horny, pre-pubescent middle schooler. As a writer, I want people to appreciate good art, and yet the really good stuff gets lost in the cracks of being a cult success or just a flop altogether, pushed aside with all the truly awful crap. And then a lot of what I consider to be utter garbage gets glazed in glitter, pumped with neon light and paraded around for the world to admire and go ga-ga over…but only because it was bigger and brighter and flashier than the rest, not better.

Too much of the media that people take in is just zombie-like escapism. Reading a thought provoking book is a far different experience than breezing through some page-turning mystery novel by one of those household names or a softcore-porn romance novel. Listening to intricately layered music that sounds like nothing you’ve ever heard before and takes listen upon listen to fully wrap your head around and appreciate is not the same as popping in the latest “trendy” cd, which is basically a slight variation of the same thing you’ve been hearing for years. I’m not saying the same is bad or that different = good, but since when did we have to close our minds off to everything save for a small pool of media influences?

The world is more open and connected than ever now, and I can easily read online about small press books or self-published music. I actually really enjoy seeking out new stuff that promises a breath of fresh air from the majority of stale, overdone media that everyone else is drooling over. I know it sounds snobbish or elitist, but I swear I’m not one of those people who thinks their taste in everything is better than everyone else’s. I understand that everyone likes different stuff–I even touched on it earlier. I’m not asking for a fan of classical music to PLEASE try out some heavy metal, screamo band. This isn’t an issue of taste, it’s an issue of being so plugged-into such a dumbed down handful of choices and being totally okay with being spoon fed our daily doses of entertainment.

I want to be able to like smart media without being labeled a nerd. I obviously don’t mind being a nerd (thus the title of my blog), but i’ve simply grown to accept and embrace it, I suppose. It still bothers me that the so-called “cool” crowd gets to look down on me as they talk about their tan lines, last night’s American Idol, and how they haven’t done ANY reading for their English class all semester (teehee). Because, you know, it’s so awesome that you were too lazy and want to impress your friends by showing them you’re not a “dork” that actually enjoys some 18th century British Drama. I just don’t know when these lines were drawn and when the Shadowy Execs of the Entertainment World realized they could capitalize on this mindset by insuring everyone continues to dumb themselves down on what they send down the tube. Or maybe they started the trend in the first place. Just because I like a healthy variety of different stuff, the MTV generation declares I’m a nerd, which is a few notches below most other categories of people, though they don’t outright say that. So, what, if I dumb myself down a little I’ll be more accepted and liked and will have more friends? Hmn, interesting. I’m not going to apologize for refusing to turn my brain off and neither should anyone else because, in fact, it should be everyone else who is ashamed for turning theirs off. I don’t want to be a zombie by choice, and neither should you. Eating flesh is gross, and so is “The Moment of Truth” (that lie detector show on FOX)–so just say no.

The second video I found today is for Foals “Red Socks Pugie” from their recently released album Antidotes. A lot of their songs sound similar–loud, rebellious anthems about who-knows-what–but this song along with several others have been cycling on my ipod for a few weeks now. This video isn’t anything special. In fact, I think maybe it tries to hard to mean something, but I mostly wanted to share the tune that goes with it.

This wasn’t supposed to be a music blog, but it sure seems that way recently. Music has just been at the forefront of my mind lately, I guess. And it’s easy to write about quick-like, as is posting up youtube clips. Hope you enjoy, anyway.

The video for the song “I’m Good, I’m Gone” is below and after that is the one for “Little Bit,” which is just as good. They’re both pretty odd, but I enjoyed ‘em. Prepare to be sucked in by her smoky eyes and sizzling energy.

In the summer of ’96, some friends and I got deliriously drunk on chika-cherry-cola and cavity-inducing pop after discovering Savage Garden’s debut album. For a while I could even (almost) sing “I Want You” without tripping over my own tongue. It was a good time, but Savage Garden faded out quick as they’d come. However, Apparently Darren Hayes kept to his own philosophy and carried on dancing, because his latest solo release, titled “This Delicate Thing We’ve Made” has him returning to form, better than ever.

This Delicate Thing is a sprawling, double-disc record with 25 songs, complete with soaring ballads, nonsensical, pseudo-deep lyrics, and a lot of sugary sweet hooks that suck you in on first listen. If I had to label the genre of this album it might be “futuristic eighties pop”. It’s like if a pop star during the eighties took a time machine (which, by the way, is present in one of Hayes songs) to the future and then made a record. Or something. Either way, songs like “The Future Holds a Lions Heart,” “On The Verge of Something Wonderful “, “A Conversation with God” and “How to Build a Time Machine” are some immediate highlights and definitely capture this vibe and make you feel like saying goodbye to your chair and hello to the dance floor. “Casey” and “Setting Sun” find him tripping into ballad territory, but it wouldn’t be complete without a good does of sap. Then there’s the just plain funky, like”Bombs up in My Face” and “Me Myself and I”. Littered amidst these songs are a whole lot of others, most of which are good, but some of them do fall into the unmemorable category. Hayes was obviously approaching this as a big musical experiment, and he often hits the mark, but with so many tracks not all of them work.

If you enjoyed the strange, often unintelligible lyrics of Savage Garden…you’ll probably dig these. Hayes seems to want to tell an epic story over the course of his record, but it’s really just pretty odd. But his over-the-top writing is part of the fun. There’s nothing very deep in these songs narratives, but if you pick up anything Hayes touches and expect that, you’re probably in it for the wrong reasons. If his aim was to give something deep and thought provoking, well then he failed, but my guess is that he just wanted to give fans what they wanted: infectious pop music that you won’t be cured of for some time after listening. If you’re looking for something that’s just pure fun, pick this up.

On The Verge of Something Wonderful

The Future Holds a Lions heart (Song w/ pictures)

Me Myself and I

I urge you to check it out in glorious Quicktime HERE.

UPDATE: Here it is on YouTube as well, for faster (but lower quality) viewing.

In other news: My back hurts like crazy after an 8 1/2 hour cashier shift at work. I knew I didn’t cashier all these years for a reason. They make the counter too low for a tall guy like me, thus I’m bending over in an awkward way all day, which equals much pain. I can’t fathom how people do that job for years and years.

So I was happy when I stumbled across this article, about a proposed commission to investigate just what went on during that time (similar to the 9/11 Commission).

You can read it here. 

So anime is a genre of entertainment that is chock full of garbage, much of which appeals to very, VERY niche crowds (yuri anyone?)…but there are also some examples of anime series that easily match any other form of art out there and stand far apart from most all the rest. Each anime season I look and sigh at all the sub-par, generic looking shows set to air, and I usually find several that are truly good. But it’s not often that I find one that’s great…and I found one recently in Planetes.

Planetes is a sci-fi show, set almost entirely in space, but it doesn’t feel like any other sci-fi I’ve ever seen. There’s not many explosions, not a mecha in sight, and very few of the cliche trademarks of an anime series. Instead this is a character driven, slice-of-life, sci-fi, romance-comedy, with a little bit of political intrigue thrown in for good measure.

The premise of the show revolves around a group of “debris haulers”, whose job is to collect the space debris that is floating around and posing a danger to spaceships, satellites, etc. It sounds kind of boring–and the job is, as pretty much everyone refers to the debris haulers as “the half section”, since they don’t believe they’re as valuable as the rest of the jobs in space.

The story kicks off when Ai Tanabe, a young girl from earth, is stationed with the debris team–who immediately prove to be an eccentric and eclectic bunch, including a nicotine craving, strong-willed woman (Fee), a man whose come to space in search of a memento of his deceased wife (Yuri), and a quiet, workaholic secretary. Hachimaki, a young, energetic man who dreams of owning his own spaceship, and Tanabe are probably the main characters of this show, for their growth and their personal stories sort of take center for the majority, but every single character in Planates (and there’s quite a cast) gets a  good deal of development. I ended up caring about everyone by the end–inclding the smaller players who only appeared in several episodes. Even characters that popped up in some of the one-shot episodes surface again later to play a larger role, and most of them seem to stand apart from many of the anime stereotypes, or at least have enough dimensions that they aren’t just “the quiet one” or “the pervert”.  Everyone has a chance to show different sides and I really liked that.

That carries into the story itself. The first half of the show is made up mostly of one or two part storylines, each feeling very self-contained, except with character relationships building as they progress. However, about halfway through a more central storyline kicks in–one of galactic terrorists, first-world countries vs third-world, and the question of who owns space. But even as the story gets more serious, there is no clear good guy or bad guy. Sure, terrorism is bad, but the show still makes you kind of understand their motives (though not their actions) and you kind of feel for some of them. At the same time, the government has some shady people in it, but their actions aren’t clearly good or bad. It’s these tapes of shades of gray story lines that I like most, where nothing is simply white or black. I like it much more than a sinister villain with a maniacal laugh trying to destroy the world or something.

All the smaller story lines were entertaining and some pretty touching and the main narrative that kicks in later is definitely pretty intense, but all that aside, and like I mentioned before, this is a show about the characters. If I had to boil it down even further, I’d say it’s a story about Tanabe and Hachimaki: About their dreams, about their growth as people, and about the bond they form. Watching them start as coworkers, bickering nonstop, and then seeing where they end up (which I definitely won;t spoil) was really amazing. I’ve simply never run across another anime that delivered such fully realized, human characters, with so many fascinating dimensions. The last I saw to even come close to matching it was Honey and Clover (another good show), but I still think Planetes has the better cast, and positively my favorite ensemble from any anime series I’ve ever seen.

On a final note, the music in the series is great as well. Though not always memorable, certain key scenes stand out as having fantastic scores that really added to the moment. The opening and ending (very big things in Japanese series) are also catchy. It’s not Planetes strongest point, but it’s still a nice addition to the package as a whole.

I can’t recommend Planetes enough. Even if you’re not a big anime fan–if you like television and you like character driven dramas that are well written, you should check it out. The full boxed set (with 26 episodes) is only about $30 bucks most places–which is not bad at all.

Note: I saw this with Japanese audio and English subs. The Japanese voice cast was excellent and the translation of the subs was equally good. I’m not sure if the English voice cast is any good, but I will say I saw a trailer in English and cringed a little. It might just be because I’m used to the other voices…but I would say if you don’t mind reading subtitles to stick with that.

If you like that one at all, check out their Youtube channel. The Grand Central Station video is great, but they’re all pretty good.

So I thought since lately I seem to be stumbling across several new artists (or more) a month, I might spotlight a few of my favorites here on this blog.

The first artist I want to spotlight is Bon Iver and the brilliant debut album, For Emma, Forever Ago.

Justin Vernon, who is the sole force behind Bon Iver, apparently sequestered himself in a cabin for several months after his previous brand broke up, and he wrote the album while there.  He must of been feeling all kinds of melancholy because For Emma is drenched in a sort of lonely, sad feeling. You can almost feel him searching for whatever answers he was seeking, all alone, holed up in a little cabin in the middle of nowhere. The raw emotion in his voice conveys a sense of nostalgia. These feelings are tangible in the lyrics and the acoustic strums of his guitar. With his guitar and his haunting voice, Vernon delivers what has quickly become my favorite album of the year, and I can’t see anything taking its spot anytime soon.

Some highlights are “Re:Stacks”, “Lump Sum”, “Flume” and “Skinny Love”. But, for me, this record really doesn’t have any low points. My least favorite track is probably “Creature Fear”, but it’s still a good song.

Bon Iver isn’t instantly catchy perhaps, but like a lot of the best music it slowly sets in and grows better with each listen. While overproduced pop can blow you away on a first listen and then make you groan by the tenth, I like every one of Bon Iver’s songs more and more every time I come back.

You can check out a few of his songs at his MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/boniver

So my eyes are feeling slightly bloodshot after I had a mini-marathon of the first 6 episodes of this season of Lost. Lost has been a show I’ve liked from day one, but to wildly varying degrees. Sometimes I loved it while others times the endless mysteries wore me out and I simply stopped watching (only to get sucked back in later, which I’ve done just now). I remember I got pretty miffed with the whole thing after reading an interview with the creators (Can’t remember which one exactly now) where they pretty much admitted that they didn’t have an answer to some of the bigger mysteries in the Lost mythology. I couldn’t stand the fact that they could come up with such great ideas, but not see them all the way through. But the news that they would set an end date for the show and not just let it go on and on and on until ratings dried up (X-Files) gave me some hope.

So what I’m trying to say is that I watched the first six episodes of season four and was blown away. The flashbacks/forwards so far have all been especially compelling and the acting is top-notch as usual, but that’s pretty much always been a constant. Speaking of constant, “The Constant” took the subject of time travel and dealt with it extremely well…because we all know how that subject can end up and what it can do for a show. They even handled a mini-amnesia story arc with a finesse that didn’t make me want to groan, as the dreaded a-word usually does. Oh and I officially love the character of Daniel Faraday and I hope he sticks around for a while. I always root for the nerds…I wonder why *scratches head*

The many and increasingly growing number of mysteries of Lost still leave me with a headache, but I think that’s okay…I like shows that make me think. I just hope in the end they tie everything together in a satisfying way. But I think I’m going to be sticking with the whole season this time, as long as it continues to deliver as it has thus far.

In other news I have a full, one-week PAID vacation coming up from work…and boy do I need it.

I’m gonna post something else in the next few days…I promise! (Ahah, i’ve said that before…haven’t I?)