In Mike Judge’s 1999 comedy Office Space, its protagonist Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) is described by the downsizing consultants as a “straight shooter with upper management written all over him.” It’s a gross misjudgment on the part of the consultants, as Peter’s casual demeanor charmed them much the way that George W. Bush was able to charm almost half the voters of the United States of America the following year. Peter’s boss, the endlessly imitated Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole), is a lousy manager himself, but he’s driven by enough of a sense of self-preservation to disagree with them, explaining that Peter isn’t the caliber of person they want in upper management, and that “he’s also been having some problems with his TPS reports.”
Satire is Mike Judge’s strongest suit, and the disintegration of American society into various facets of stupidity is a topic he confronted more broadly in his following film, Idiocracy (2006). But the focus in Office Space was much sharper, where work life in general was the target, but the workplace managers came under the heaviest fire. Playing a cameo as the manager of Chotchkie’s, Mike Judge himself is willing to step in as the target of ridicule, repeatedly castigating Peter’s girlfriend Joanna (Jennifer Aniston) for her insistence on wearing the minimum number of pieces of flair. It’s meaningless minutiae such as this that are clearly a source of such exasperation for Judge; cover sheets on TPS reports and pieces of flair are not important to how a business functions, and are a waste of time for management to concern themselves with.
Zack: It’s hard to argue that there’s anybody who has a better grasp of teen angst than Gordon Gano of the Violent Femmes. But Brian Molko of Placebo comes close. Growing up as a theater-obsessed, androgynous (and eventually bisexual) child in a family that rarely spent more than two years in a single location, I guarantee the only thing Molko dreaded more than having to interact with his dad, an international banker, was going to school. In an FHM interview, Molko claimed to have been forced to leave his school in Luxembourg due to excessive bullying, and given his nature and appearance, is it hard to doubt? And what does M83’s Anthony Gonzalez have to say about his life as an adolescent? “I loved being a teenager. That’s when I discovered music and started to take drugs and make parties [sic] with my friends. I really started to discover new things. Nowadays I would like to be a teenager again.” Wow. Someone get this poor guy a rag so he can wipe off all the angst.
Basketball owes its success as a spectator sport to the fact that a miraculous shot at the end of the game can change everything in a single instant.It’s a sense of drama that few sports can duplicate. It’s a safe bet that any basketball movie will feature a miracle shot at its climax, a desperation heave that is still in the air while the game clock crosses the threshold to absolute zero.But miraculous shots aren’t just limited to films like Hoosiers and Space Jam.In honor of the Redeem Team’s inevitable march to a gold medal, here are the top five miraculous shots in movies that aren’t primarily about basketball.
Mojo: “The exception that proves the rule” is a cliche whose meaning completely eludes me. It’s like saying just once, we can trust Rush Limbaugh to walk into an NFL pregame show and…well, you know what I mean. But if there was ever a band that fit the cliche, it’s Def Leppard. They fit a lot of cliches, but let’s focus on Mojo’s main rule: If it’s got a good hook, it’s gotta be good pop, period, and it doesn’t matter if it’s Miley Cyrus or Miles Davis is doing it. Def Leppard had dumptruck loads of good hooks, but no one would ever confuse them with good pop. “Rocket” is personally offensive to me, because they co-opt the very fabric of rock-n-roll and claim to be a part of the lineage that begat Major Tom, Dizzy Miss Lizzy, and even Lou Reed and his Satellite of Love–even though I think the gents in the last song-off did a good job of communicating the collective Popdose attitude toward Lou Reed. But even he’s a dozen steps up from this garbage.
A number of months ago, Darren Robbins posted a column discussing how brazen arrogance seemed to be the most valuable asset in a playboy’s pickup arsenal.If this is true, then how come neither Beavis nor Butt-Head has ever scored?
I don’t want to sound pretentious here, but the seduction approaches of this dramaturgical diad are actually diametrically opposed. Butt-Head takes the proactive approach of the alpha male, making demands under the expectation that his (imagined) status and audacity will ensure their fulfillment. Beavis, on the other hand, creates a totally outrageous paradigm by adopting the more relaxed stance of the beta, trusting that his good nature and casual self-deprecation will win sympathy, and thus boobs. Neither has ever worked, and in a magnificent outpouring of angst at the end of the film, after they had traveled “a hundred miles” across the country in a desperate attempt to score, Beavis insists that both of them are “just gonna get old,” but that “it’s just not gonna happen.”
Butt-Head epitomizes the arrogance envisioned by Darren, that severe narcissism bordering on the delusional. Of course, as is summarized brilliantly in Beavis’ final speech, neither of them is ever going to score, or else one of the major driving forces of the show would be destroyed. But how would things work out for Butt-Head if he existed within the real world? Would his supreme arrogance trump his braces, and lisp, and slouching posture? My own experience has taught me that absolutely nothing matters more than self-confidence. But self-confidence can’t be feigned - when it is, it becomes that which Butt-Head dispays - bravado. The difference between the two can sometimes boil down to a simple question: do you truly believe your own bullshit?
For the least two years, the area in front of the Staples Center has been the site of a massive construction project, the behemoth “LA Live” complex. Costing approximately $2.5 billion, the complex is home to the Nokia Theatre, a venue that is described as “mid-size” (though it seats 7,100 people) and is scheduled to host the Emmy awards for at least the next ten years.
Although I’ve got nothing against the music of Joe Cocker, aside from his seeming lack of original material, I wouldn’t consider myself a fan. Even so, I leapt at the chance to see him play at the Nokia; it’s been open for less than a year and I was very curious to see what it was like. I was suitably impressed. The design of the entire theater is very slick and modern, with translucent lobby walls that change color and concession menus that are featured on LCD television screens. On one hand, everything feels a bit corporate and seems like it will be dated in just a few short years, but on the other hand, it’s hard to inhale that new-car smell that permeates the theater and not feel a little bit intoxicated.
One of of the most overlooked films of 2006 (a terrible, terrible year for movies; with redemption only brought by the likes of The Departed, Borat, and Casino Royale) was the noir high school murder mystery Brick. The independently produced film took a story and characters that would normally belong in a Dashiell Hammett novel and deposited them in the setting of an Orange County high school. The movie features the familiar face of Joseph Gordon-Levitt filling the role of the hard-boiled detective unraveling the conspiracy that resulted in the murder of his dame, and he inhabits the role so brilliantly that his performance instantly erased all of the ill will I’d harbored towards him for all those years he spent on Third Rock from the Sun.
While occasional films will address the tense high-school relationships between children and their parents or other authority figures (Rebel Without a Cause, The Breakfast Club, Dead Poets Society) most teen films conveniently relegate adult characters to the periphery, only letting them occasionally affect the events of the film. A variety of techniques can be used to ensure that adults stay out of the picture; they can be on vacation (Risky Business), absent (Napoleon Dynamite), dead (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire*), or simply invisible (Lucas). In Brick, the only adult figure (aside from a brief glimpse of the Pin’s mom) who becomes involved in the narrative in any way is the Assistant Vice Principal Gary Trueman (Richard Roundtree). And even AVP Trueman doesn’t really affect how the story plays out; he inhabits the hard-boiled detective novel equivalent of the local police chief who reluctantly agrees to allow the private detective the freedom of movement he needs to solve his case. And despite a number of scenes taking place during the school day, the high school campus is virtually deserted.** It’s these aspects of Brick that are the most challenging to an audience in terms of willingly suspending their disbelief.
The Popdose staff was sitting around the other day, doing what we do best — namely, talking about records that most people wish they didn’t remember — when a discussion about the Moody Blues’ “Your Wildest Dreams” somehow led into some heavy-duty reminiscing about the records we all listened to when we were kids — and how those records were more or less culled from the Top 40 hits of the day, hits that our parents, as often as not, listened to along with us.
So, we wondered, who’s making music these days that impressionable preteens and their parents enjoy? Top 40 radio is pretty much dead, and the lines between Radio Disney, MTV, and whatever the hell it is that the over-30 crowd is listening to these days have been drawn depressingly deep. Look, it isn’t just that we think the Jonas Brothers and Lil Wayne aren’t all that great; it’s that some of us can remember enjoying the latest hits from the Spinners, the Bangles, or Cheap Trick right alongside our parents.
Current music is still a multigenerational thing, but not the way it used to be — so here, without further ado, is a list (with downloads, natch) of some of the stuff your faithful Popdosers were listening to in their formative preteen years. Pull up a chair and a set of headphones, and give in to Tweener Mixtape Madness! (more…)
Mainstream Rock: Mike + the Mechanics, “Silent Running” (1985)
David Medsker: I love Paul Carrack as much as the next guy, but is what I refer to as a non-song. Not a whole lot of meat on these bones.
Jeff Giles: An odd little hit from an odd little record. People remember Paul Carrack and Paul Young (no, the other Paul Young) as Mike +/& the Mechanics’ singers, but this album featured lead vocals from two other guys. I can’t remember either of their names, but I do remember that I like “Taken In” more than “Silent Running” or “All I Need Is a Miracle.”
Jon Cummings: If I remember correctly, M+M albums were packaged with drool cups. Or did I just dream that during the 48-hour nap that was induced by my one and only full hearing of this song? Even 23 years on, it’s extraordinary that a nuclear war/Terminator/whatever prog-rock “epic” could be so abysmally boring. (Compared to this oblique blather, Sting’s contemporaneous “Russians” was a Tolstoy novel.) It’s also extraordinary that Carrack’s voice could be so thoroughly wasted. His M+M work is so pulse-deadening that it calls into question everything he did before. (Was “How Long” really that good? Doesn’t Glenn Tilbrook sing “Tempted” just as well in concert as Carrack did on record?) God, I hated this band.
Dw. Dunphy: Mike + the Mechanics got off to a good start, didn’t they? Big hit, nice synth-y melody, Paul Carrack — but it’s all for naught. I don’t understand a whit of this song. It sounds like the theme to some really bad syndicated sci-fi show. If you don’t pay too much attention to it, perfectly pleasant.
Scott Malchus: I often wonder what songs from the ’80s, with all of the lame electronic drums and synths, would sound like with real instruments. This song holds up okay. I guess I always expected more from Mike Rutherford since he was the lead guitarist from Genesis (and, before that, the bassist). All of the Mike + the Mechanics songs sound very “lite rock” compared to what he did in the ’70s. Then again, look at Phil Collins’s solo output. Worse, look what Genesis had become by the end of the ’80s. How is it that only Peter Gabriel was able to maintain his artistic integrity after he quit the band?
A sizable crowd was already waiting outside the Echo when I arrived at 8:30. One can often forecast how good a show’s going to be based on the enthusiasm of the audience, and having 50 or so fans arrive prior to the doors opening (in the vicinity of Silver Lake, no less) is a very good omen. I spent the first part of my evening as a wallflower, inhaling the secondhand reefer smoke from a group of kids who were impressed that Billy Walsh from Entourage was outside, and gratefully borrowing a cellphone from an older couple who had gotten their tickets via KCRW after mine refused to work (another casualty of the earthquake).
The Echo is a fairly nondescript venue. The walls are black, there’s a few minimalist chandeliers with blue and green-filamented incandescent bulbs, seating is limited to a bench along the wall and stools at the bar. Shows at the Echo tend to be casual affairs, the space on stage is limited and there’s plenty of room for the crowd to spill out to one side, which prevents the area directly in front of the performers from ever getting too crowded.
The opening act was Robert Francis, an artist local to LA whose music seems to be grounded far beyond the boundaries of this metropolis. During his show there was a football perched on the edge of the stage, and the red lights hit one of the unused acoustic guitars standing on stage in a way that was reminiscent of a tequila sunrise. At first he seemed to be the perfect opening act, melodic but not particularly memorable, but after he had meandered through a few lengthy songs, I found myself becoming increasingly attentive, particularly during a performance of “Little Girl” that was just a bit more hard-edged than the version you’ll find on the MySpace page.
It’s pretty hard to come up with a description that does justice to the stage antics of Tim Fite. He plays with a single companion, the deejay Dr. Leisure, but the well-designed video projection that accompanies his show also includes a version of himself in triplicate singing together as accompaniment. When accompanied by magnificent crayon-drawn animations of sharp-toothed animals, Fite’s songs seem like children’s music — until a pair of cartoon animals named Jo-Jo and Bobby discuss their plans to “stab a motherfucker” while they share a sandwich. (more…)
Popdose represents the coming together of a veritable who's who of music bloggers and an ever-expanding roster of writers who've made it their mission to experience the best and worst in pop culture — from music to movies, TV, and books, with a dash of current events thrown in for good measure — so you don't have to. Popdose delivers coverage both in-depth (the all-encompassing Popdose Guides) and snarkily brief (the weekly Captain Video!), surveying releases both old and new. Visit often: the site publishes a minimum of twice a day.
In Mike Judge’s 1999 comedy Office Space, its protagonist Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) is described by the downsizing consultants as a “straight shooter with upper management written all over him.” It’s a gross misjudgment on the part of the consultants, as Peter’s casual demeanor charmed them much the way that George W. Bush was able to charm almost half the voters of the United States of America the following year. Peter’s boss, the endlessly imitated Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole), is a lousy manager himself, but he’s driven by enough of a sense of self-preservation to disagree with them, explaining that Peter isn’t the caliber of person they want in upper management, and that “he’s also been having some problems with his TPS reports.”
One of of the most overlooked films of 2006 (a 
The Popdose staff was sitting around the other day, doing what we do best — namely, talking about records that most people wish they didn’t remember — when a discussion about the Moody Blues’ “Your Wildest Dreams” somehow led into some heavy-duty reminiscing about the records we all listened to when we were kids — and how those records were more or less culled from the Top 40 hits of the day, hits that our parents, as often as not, listened to along with us.
Popdose represents the coming together of a veritable who's who of music bloggers and an ever-expanding roster of writers who've made it their mission to experience the best and worst in pop culture — from music to movies, TV, and books, with a dash of current events thrown in for good measure — so you don't have to. Popdose delivers coverage both in-depth (the all-encompassing 
