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Best thing all week

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Most of you probably saw the Create Your Own Simpsons avatar activity on The Simpsons Movie website. The site allowed you to create a Simpsons character that supposedly looked like you. I came close, but it was never quite right.

Today my co-worker Margaret sent me a link to Simpsonizeme.com, which allows you to do essentially the same, but with a picture of yourself, thereby offering a more lifelike depiction of yourself as…er, a cartoon.

I ended up with this:


Seriously, how much does that look like me? The eyebrows aren’t quite right, and my normally lantern-jawed chin is given short shrift, but otherwise: damn. You probably have a picture of me (drunk) making that exact face.

And if you’re saying to yourself “Say, I don’t remember you looking quite that way,” then perhaps you ought to show up here:

It’ll be fun, I promise. If not, you’ll get a beer for your trouble.*

* Offer good only for Old Style

Early warning

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I’ll be reading at Quimby’s (1854 W. North Ave) on Friday July 20th at 7 p.m. The reading is part of MachineFest, which works to make local music and art accessible to everyone in Chicago. The ‘fest is put on by Machine Media, and include rock shows, DJ sets, and readings throughout July. You can get info on all the shows (prices are free to $6) at their site.

As for what I’ll be reading, it won’t be Corgan-related like last year, but most likely will be about music. If that sound vague, it’s because…well, I haven’t quite finished my piece. But it’ll be hilarious, I promise. If it isn’t, I’ll buy you a beer at the Double Door show afterwards.
– 30 –

Transformers: Significantly less than meets the eye

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Regular readers of this space may have noticed that this week’s installment of Oblivious Living was not posted in its regular Monday slot. The reason for this was, in part, because I was busy preparing for a guest co-host appearance on Filmspotting, the weekly film podcast and radio program, regularly hosted by Adam Kempenaar and Sam Van Hallgren. I’ve been a fan of the show ever since I interviewed them for Chicagoist a couple years back, and was honored to be asked back a fourth time. I understand that if I make it to five, I get a special badge.

You can hear this week’s show here. Adam and I discuss Sicko and Transformers. I gave Sicko a generally positive review, though I expressed reservations with Moore’s style. I maintain he’d be a better filmmaker if he dialed back some of the shtick. As for Transformers, I really disliked it, as did Adam. During one of the breaks, he predicted that the show would get a lot of mail from people claiming that we didn’t get it or that we expected more out of a film that features giant robots fighting each other before turning into cars. Yet I expected little more than that, and even with that relatively simple premise, Michael Bay still managed to fuck it up.


The biggest problem is that there isn’t a single memorable character in Transformers, though Bumblebee comes close to having a Herbie-The-Love-Bug-style personality thanks to the constant sound bites issuing forth from his radio. (Explain to me again how a car radio would be able to broadcast movie clips?) Of the Autobots, Optimus Prime’s a stiff, Jazz is a shuck-and-jive caricature, and Ironhide…likes guns. We’re also never given a decent villain since Megatron doesn’t show up until very late in the film along with most of the other Decepticons who all look the same in robot form. They might as well be wearing t-shirts with their names on them like the bad guys in the old Batman TV series.

But at least they’re consistently – if lamely – written. The human characters fare much worse since their dialogue serves only to move the plot ahead. So you end up with characters who act as if they’re suffering from multiple personality disorder or, at the very least, have forgotten to take their meds. I know I’m supposed to be happy that the characters played by Megan Fox and Rachel Taylor are the smartest people in the movie, but when I’m constantly reminded that they are Really Really Hot, how can I be expected to notice anything else? (Note to Michael Bay: it’s kind of overkill to have your actors AND THE CAMERA giving elevator eyes to your actresses.)

The plot’s flat-out confusing, which is really a depressing thing to admit for someone with a college education. I’m still not sure if The Cube/Allspark was supposed to bring life back to Cybertron, give ultimate power to whichever robot contingency captured it, or make julienne fries. Plus, Transformers seems to borrow elements from several other (better) movies: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Independence Day, Signs, Men In Black, and Terminator 2. (credit where credit is due: the alternate explanation for Hoover Dam was original and clever.)

But I could leave all my reservations aside if the action sequences rocked. And they didn’t.

Look, I’m 32 years old now. But I own an Xbox that gets regular use. On my desk is a Flash action figure along with several plastic miniature ninjas. To my right is a James Bond calendar. On my DVD shelf, along with some high-brow picks, are genre movies and shows like Raiders, Buffy, Star Wars, Goonies, The Incredibles, Superman and many Dude Classics like Old School, Tombstone, Swingers, and almost every Kevin Smith film. In short, though I’ve grown up, I still enjoy things that are the province of people half my age. I want – nay, I long – to see giant robots fight each other, turn into very fast cars and then turn back into robots again before throwing each other into buildings throughout downtown Los Angeles. But Michael Bay couldn’t even give us a final well-staged action sequence that brought the dreams of every 14 year-old in the 1980s to life. Instead, he gave us muddled set pieces with characters so badly drawn that when one of the Autobots dies, we don’t even care (I’m still not entirely sure who bites it and neither does Optimus Prime as he intones “We lost a comrade today, but gained many others.” Way to shed a tear, bro. I know he’s a robot but damn, that’s some cold shit.)

So I don’t need to be told that I’m too old to appreciate this film or that my expectations were way too high. My expectations were pretty low, and Bay managed to subvert them by flubbing the basics. I’m all for explosions, as long as I know and care about what’s exploding.

Saturday in the park, a man selling ice cream

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I’ve been doing some writing in Time Out Chicago recently. This week, I contributed to an article in TOC‘s ice cream issue, now on-sale at local newsstands, but also available on the Interwebs. The piece is here (last item), complete with a stunningly handsome picture of yours truly. I walked around Rogers Park, Edgewater and Andersonville selling paletas and other ice cream treats. How did I do? Well, you’ll just have to click on the link.

Also in this week’s issue, we have a Web-only feature that lets our readers choose their favorite ice cream treat from the places we reviewed in this issue. Definitely worth checking out because it’s very pretty. Keep up with the results on the TOC blog.

And finally, I wrote the third item for this article on the history of Chicago’s parks. If you haven’t had a chance to check out these nifty TOC Google maps detailing everything there is to do in the city parks, or the many attractions of Milwaukee, you really should.

I do hope you’ve made the TOC blog a regular part of your day. I write occasional posts there, and you also get insightful pieces like this one on the whole “crush on Obama” phenomenon from our sex and relationships writer, Debby Herbenick.

Finally – and this is completely free of all self-promotion – I’ve got my money on Wes Craven in this fight.

Oblivious Living Part 1.10 "Guilty" by Classix Noveaux

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MP3 – “Guilty” by Classix Nouveaux
Lyrics – “Guilty” by Classix Nouveaux

Though most of the songs I’ve reviewed so far have their roots in Euro 80s pop, and we’re at the tail end of a rip-off renaissance of this time period, “Guilty” is the best candidate for “Song Most Likely To Make People Think It Was Recorded In The Last Few Years.” If the Editors covered this, I might start liking them again.

Classix Noveaux has a story that’s become a bit rote for me at this point, and I’m only ten songs into this little project: Band forms, band records song that becomes hit, band releases album, band’s album sells moderately well and band follows it up with second single that does the same, band tours various European countries that don’t have a whole lot else going for it in the early 1980s except for touring English synth bands, band ekes out two more albums that are hits in countries that aren’t the U.S. or the U.K, band breaks up.

But Classix Noveaux did have a few other things going for it. Though they formed via an ad in Melody Maker, like many other bands of their time, they boasted two members of X-Ray Spex (“Oh Bondage! Up Yours”). Also, unlike most of the other bands on this comp, their first single was not their highest-charting. That honor goes to “Is It A Dream.” Yeah, I didn’t know it either, but YouTube has it here. Between the scary looking lead singer, the weird guys following him around, the castle and the fencing, this is one of those videos that isn’t actually scary, but if you see it at a young age, it totally gives you the willies and will cause you to proclaim that it still freaks you out way into your 20s. Kinda like “Somebody’s Watching Me” by Rockwell. Seriously, what is with his dog? Even without the pig mask on, it’s weird. And that bathroom? The mailman in the diaper? Yeagh, I need to call my mother.

Not to belabor a point here, but someone in the comments of the video mentions Richard O’Brien, who played Riff in the film version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and the resemblance can’t be coincidence. Especially since they’re performing in and around a castle that bears a remarkable similarity to the one in the film. Sans Transylvanians, of course. Although the Transylvanians seem to make an appearance in the video for “Guilty,” in which the lead singer looks like what happens if you cross Marilyn Manson with Judas Priest’s Rob Halford (post-gay revelation).

Anyway, why “Is It A Dream” charted higher is a mystery to me because “Guilty” rules.
Classix Noveaux’s sound is probably best described as goth-punk and you’d have trouble convincing me that there’s a better example of it here. This is another somebody done somebody wrong song, and the singer’s clearly to blame. Yet there’s still defiant whining to be done (“I wonder why you haven’t the time for/The reasons why”). Bring aggro hasn’t seemed to work for angry-boy bands so most of them have turned to being pissy over loud guitars. So it’s refreshing to remember pomposity used to have a nice beat you could dance to. Also, if the writer of “Betty Davis Eyes” didn’t steal its shimmering guitar/keyboard sound from this song, I will eat a gym sock.

But what’s with the name? It is supposed to mean the band was destined to be a new classic, like those really lame movies they show on TNT that we’re all supposed to think are really good, even though many of them star Kevin Costner? See, this why no 80s bands are around anymore: hubris.

New piece

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My first feature story in TOC was published this week (I’ve written a couple reviews and sidebars for them in the past). It’s about The Police, and you can find it in the Summer Music Preview issue on newsstands now, or online here (note: it stretches across five pages).

Lots of people have been asking me about the tree frog story. I swear that’s true. I remember when that was announced, so I thought it was something that a lot of people knew. I mentioned in during a features meeting, and no one had any idea. So clearly I’m a huge geek.

Seriously, am I the only one who heard that story?

Thoughts on the 24 season finale

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Actually, that ought to read “Thoughts on 24‘s next season premiere” because this post is all about the future.

Almost every season since the first one, 24 fans have grumbled that this season wasn’t as good as some of the others, and inevitably the show turns around after the usual slow setup.

This season didn’t.

There was a definite build in the first half of the season, but things went off the rails a bit in episode 12 when Jack raided the Russian consulate. After that, things became too rote. You can only threaten the country with nuclear attacks or bombings or germs so many times before that happens. Or invade a sovereign nation’s consulate. Or cut off body parts, or…well, you get the idea.

Spoilers ahead, so you’ve been warned.

The last 15 minutes of tonight’s episode were better than most of the last half of this season. The great thing about Sec. Heller’s character is that he had an ability to strip things to the bone. So when Jack started the pissing contest, Sec. Heller whipped out a mirror, instead of a ruled. Jack knew his presence near Audrey would only bring her pain, and his goodbye speech to her – while not the emotional gut punch that his speech to Kim was while in the plane over the California desert in Season 2 – gave the show a weight it lacked (kudos to the writers for not having her wake up with a teary “Oh Jack…”).

The problem with this season is that the character of Jack Bauer has to have something to lose in order for there to be any dramatic tension. If he doesn’t then it’s all gun-pointing and “I’m commandeering your helicopter so get out or I’ll shoot you” any time he’s taken into custody. Throughout the show, the question that’s always lingered is whether Jack will lose his humanity. In earlier seasons, his humanity was symbolized by Terri, Kim, Blonde Girl Whose Sister Was A Terrorist, David Palmer and then Audrey. He formed loyalties with his co-workers and this kept him grouded, too, but in the past two seasons (since Tony and Michelle died), the scenes of Jack interacting with CTU have rang false since he’s now lost that as well (I’m not sure what happened to the Jack/Chloe dynamic, but I think it got lost somewhere in the love pentagon between Chloe, Morris, Milo, Nadia and Doyle).

The last scene felt tense because there was a sense that Jack had something left to lose. Now, he doesn’t. In other shows, the next season could utilize this as a device and say “Watch what happens when the gloves are off,” but 24’s all about the gloves being off. It is a gloveless universe.

So better to put the gloves back on. Remove Jack Bauer from the 24 universe, so the writers don’t have any crutches to lean on when things get boring (cough*PresidentLogan*cough). Take CTU out of the equation, and construct a new world around him. Sec. Heller said it: Jack will always find a way back into the game. He’s a man who lives for crisis, but the series has exploited the macro-level crises to their breaking points. Better to create micro-crises again that aren’t shoehorned in. (Exactly what was his prior relationship with Marilyn, and was I supposed to care?)

Also, why was it always “Ricky Schroeder” in the opening credits? Aren’t we supposed to call him “Rick” now? I couldn’t ever figure that out.