Posts tagged as Matt Ealer
Comic Hero Fanboys Make Terrible Comic Hero Movies
Once a refuge for the maladjusted and the childish—and a cool dip in the pop art pool for the rest of our tired masses trudging through another summer—the comic book movie has shed its pulp trappings. It now strives for middlebrow respectability as a box office tactic. The new pitch is: After a hard day of tooling around in your Prius listening to "This American Life," why not come to the theater and spend some time with your pal Iron Man (played by Less Than Zero star Robert Downey Jr., so don’t forget to get a head start on your 80s party!) instead of curling up in front of the DVR full of "Men of a Certain Age" and "True Blood" with a Trader Joe’s meal-ready-to-eat? READ MORE
Of Montreal, On Tour: Darkness Falls Across the Land
Of Montreal is wending its way up the seaboard, to Philly and Boston and New York this weekend-and yes, the exquisite Janelle Monae is opening, so get there on time. The band is doing a looparound of Michigan and Wisconsin and Chicago and Minneapolis, until they pop off to Dublin and Glasgow and London and Paris and the rest of Europe next month. In late October and early November, they'll finish America off and arrive on the west coast. Herewith, an early report. READ MORE
The Problem of Conveying Punk Rock in Washington, DC
In the 90s music history We Never Learn, Eric Davidson (of the late scuzz-thrash combo New Bomb Turks) makes the case for what he calls "gunk punk." The term is as tossed-off and derelict as it sounds. A group of punk drifters from the late-80s took a heady mélange of horror comics and sci-fi b-movies, a fuck-all approach to recording, Cramps-worship (or -hate), Russ Meyer and Bettie Page, the Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs classic "Woolly Bully," and mixed them into an amphetamine and beer gumbo under the tutelage of figureheads like Billy Childish and Tim Warren. (The latter's "Back From The Grave" compilations-a Nuggets for forgotten weirdo rock curios from the 60s-were touchstones.) READ MORE
In Praise of 'Batman Forever'
The first time I heard Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds was on the soundtrack for Joel Schumacher's 1995 Warner Brothers superhero blockbuster and subsequent cultural whipping-boy Batman Forever. Ol' Nick the Stripper has famously donned the hair shirt for his involvement in the album, calling it a cynical cash-grab. I think that's pretty stupid, given that the song he contributed to the record encapsulates, in just a few minutes, all the things I think are important about Batman. This is far better than director Christopher Nolan would later do with six whole hours. READ MORE
Sex Offender Week: Feminism for Young Dudes
This week, we'll be running an essay a day about the state of being men and women. Welcome to Sex Offender Week-it's just like Shark Week, but without sharks and with angry blog comments! READ MORE
Drink Only When Drunken To: The Indie Totems, Mission of Burma
I have this problem with not wearing earplugs at shows. I can't get a bead on exactly what it is; some long-held childishness about needing to "authentically experience the music," which is probably just a cover for not wanting to look like "that guy" ("that guy who wears earplugs"?), or maybe just a willful and teenage-defiant attitude about the glories or total bodily desecration? READ MORE
No, I Didn't Mean That At All! This Is Why I Don't Care About Your Band
Last weekend, I didn't watch the Super Bowl either. But it was neither political nor an aesthetic preference for the alternate programming made available by the NFL's hydra-like presence and counter-presence in our broader culture. I had just come off the crippling debilitation of an internet-fast brought on by some malware thing, and I really just plum forgot! Reveling in the ability to stream things off the Internet, trolling YouTube, burning Camels with Teddy Pendergrass, I was bathing in the life that had felt so neglected lo those many (couple of) days. READ MORE
The End of the 00s: Everybody in His or Her Own Life Needs a Hobby, by Matt Ealer
This 2000s-giving I am most grateful for Brooklyn by way of Australia by way of California art school and transplanted to Berlin but then eventually returned to America in some pitch-shifted, flame-scarred Polaroid memento of Southern Californian dreamy excess band Liars. Let me tell you why. READ MORE
