You can spend a while digging through Auris Apothecary and find yourself constantly amused at the creativity (if not insanity) in what they’re selling. They are a micro-label who sell limited edition records in very elaborate packaging, to the point where the packaging is the product. Release AAX-007, for example, is an “unspooled ¼” reel tape” packaged in “recycled brown-paper grocery bag scroll with silver silk-screened skeleton print”. Release AAX-012 is “Black opium-scented cassette with vertically-aligned full color artwork labelling, housed inside of a black/clear hardshell norelco case with high-resolution, full color plotter-printed artwork. Serial information printed on white adhesive paper with hand-stamped numbering in sky blue ink”. But the most interesting one is AAX-013, which consists of “a maelstrom of wood, glass and metal mastered through the process of octillion grains of sand malevolently grinding across tape-heads, producing an immediate and relentless destruction of the listener’s equipment, eardrums and rational thinking”. In other words, a tape full of sand that completely wrecks the tape player you choose to use to “listen” to “it”. In terms of noise, this seems less like a surreal and offensive gimmick and more like the only logical extension of the music.

The nice thing about these recordings is they’re not expensive; most of the tapes are around six dollars; only the unspooled tape gets pricey at twenty-five, though with the amount of effort the idea took, it’s probably a fair price.

I find the whole idea of people returning to outdated forms of media distribution as response to modern advances to be fascinating. The whole vinyl movement is similar, though that’s already well-established and it’s hardly controversial for people to buy LPs. I’m amused by that, since the impression I get from my parents and other older people is that vinyl was horrible and unwieldy, and they never looked back after cassettes and especially CDs.

Digital has changed things because, within it, music is nothing. There is no physicality to it, no ownership. Digital songs files are worthless. You can download them, delete them, download them again, delete them again, and so on with no particular effect. I’ve ‘lost’ my digital music collection a few times already, and it never really feels like a loss. I can simply recover what I want and let the rest be lost to time. Often I lose memory of what the artist or album was even called, and even if I do remember, sometimes they are so obscure as to be unretrievable.

On the other hand, I can open my closet and find a battered (probably unplayable) copy of To The Faithful Departed, a copy that’s survived a few moves, has had plenty of time to disappear, and yet stays there, resillient. I can sit down and listen to these songs, which I haven’t really paid much attention to since around 1997, but they are not lost to me, and neither is the object itself. I’m not sure if it was my first CD; probably. It doesn’t have a booklet, but some sort of giant poster that you open up. The cover shows the band in a yellow room, but if you open the whole poster up the yellow room is in the middle of a forest. I would have to open this thing to get a peak at the lyrics, since my english listening wasn’t good enough to understand them properly.

There used to be an effort associated with finding music. Not that there isn’t anymore, but it’s considerably simpler. As a child, you didn’t really have disposable income. You didn’t really have access to many record stores. You didn’t really have options. You had to navigate through racks of shit records and see if something decent had been imported. If you had access to music communities, it wasn’t necessarily easy to enter them. Your ten-year-old self had to ask some quasi-cool record store clerk if he could get you a copy of X album, which no matter the album, was likely out of your league. The music itself could be less than great, but the process had a certain excitement.

With real independent music, these are real problems, issues that arise from the way the scenes work/worked. You have kids starting record labels run out of their bedroom, bands that barely lasted a few months releasing recordings done in 24 hours in someone’s basement, budgets that could allow a tour with incredible difficulty. These type of things became a badge of honor, partly because they merit some praise, partly because when you’re in shit conditions, you may as well convince yourself they’re actually good. The whole thing becomes a dare. You, as a listener, are dared to seek these bands, they are not going to be fed to you or come to you, you have to put some effort into getting involved, and then it becomes a little club.

Now, you may argue that  insular music communities have their problems, but is it worse than no community? I would think not, for as much as music itself is meaningful, everything that surrounds it has its own worth too. Your memories of music are often the memory of who you were listening with, who introduced you to, who you went to a concert with. You may also argue that these increasingly gimmicky tapes, or floppy discs, or whatever delivery method is used, don’t really build any meaningful sense of discovery or inclusion. But what I’d say is, in 5 years, you could find one of those hidden in a box you left on your basement, and even if you might not be able to play it immediately, it will bring back memories.

So I guess the question is, what will music communities and the industry evolve into? There is a spirit against simple digital consumption, so what shape will it take? Is it an actual phenomenon, or is it just the nostalgia of a bunch of twentysomethings who managed to buy CDs and tapes before the whole thing collapsed? It could just be that I’m getting old.

So healthcare reform is finally a reality.

Say what you will about Obama, but now it would be hard to argue he hasn’t done anything.

The substance of what he’s done? That’s a bit more complicated. It always is, isn’t it?

The thing about being a troll is that, in order to actually elicit a real, lasting response, parts of your argument need to have some sort of truth to them, even if the whole argument makes little sense. Simply being contrarian for no apparent reason and with no logic behind it wears thin.

Armond White’s become more and more notorious over the past year or so as his increasingly outrageous reviews raise the fury of regular filmgoers. Beyond the simple act of being a contrarian, however, there’s really very little in them, and the arguments are non-existent.

There’s been some fuss recently over his non-invite to a screening of Greenberg, Noah Baumbach’s new film. He’s criticized Baumbach’s previous film on weird, personal terms (holding a very evident grudge towards Baumbach’s mother, Georgia Brown; suggesting retroactive abortion towards Baumbach; saying his films show that he is “an asshole”), and it’s fairly obvious to anyone that he couldn’t possibly have anything interesting to say about them since he’s predisposed to hating them and making outrageous remarks about their quality.

And that’s, I think, the real issue. Being a devil’s advocate, or being known as the “contrarian”, or just generally having strange opinions is just the same as havng “typical” opinions and going along with the consensus: it’s only credible if the beliefs seem legitimate. Where’s the legitimacy in a review that, not only because the film being reviewed was directed by Baumbach, but because of the non-invite pseudo-scandal, was never going to be anything but extremely negative (or alternatively, extremely positive in order to subvert everyone’s expectations)?

Someone else found these excerpts which show exactly what’s wrong with this guy:

Bigelow shrewdly distills several genres, yet it’s all metaphor for personal involvement in policy. (The “hurt locker” is where James keeps souvenir detonators: “It’s fascinating to hold something that almost kills you.”) So far, the best fiction films about the Iraq War are Nick Bloomfield’s Battle for Haditha, Irwin Winkler’s Home of the Brave and John Moore’s allegorical Flight of the Phoenix remake, which Bigelow evokes in a stand-off scene between Bravo company, a group of British contractors and distant insurgent snipers. It’s sufficient praise to say The Hurt Locker joins that short list.

That’s from June 24th, 2009, his review of The Hurt Locker. When that film came out, it wasn’t really an Oscar contender. It had been out for a while internationally, if I’m not mistaken, and had been online for ages. It was just an action movie, a decently-made one. There weren’t any real expectations that this could be considered a great, acclaimed movie, and so it gets called one of the best Iraq war movies, along with two blatantly contrarian choices, Home Of The Brave, a movie widely laughed at, and Flight of the Phoenix, which has nothing to do with the war in Iraq, and was widely laughed at too.

But then,

Critics ridiculed Point Break when it was first released but, since then, Bigelow’s visual splendor and genre proficiency has won enough regard that she now receives retroactive esteem for The Hurt Locker, the Iraq War action film that critic Gregory Solman nailed as “totally unexceptional.” It is worst than inexact when critics call it “One of the best war films ever made.”

That’s one year later, in his piece about the Oscars, from March 2010. It is worse than inexact when critics call it what he just called it less than nine months ago when it wasn’t an Oscar movie, but rather a small action film in limited release.

So where’s the value in this review, or in these opinions? Even though they can both be legitimate, it seems fairly obvious that the only reason the opinions exist is to contradict whatever the current consensus is or will be. So what’s the point of reading it? If I wanted to read the opposite of the consensus, I’d grab a Peter Travers review and edit “…. NOT” at the end of the last sentence, not read this dumb garbage about Norbit being funny.

So, healthcare reform vote on Sunday, apparently.

At various points during this process, individual Democrats, as well as groups of ‘progressives’, suggested that they would not vote for the bill unless it had various provisions that would actually make this bill a decent step towards fixing the problems inherent in America’s healthcare.

The overwhelming majority of these people have completely changed their tune, even though the bill hasn’t improved. Serious healthcare reform hasn’t really been tried this time, but now, desperate for scraps, people are clinging to anything they can get (even if it’s arguably worse than the status quo) and berating everyone who disagrees.

Bernie Sanders caved, because he got some funding for clinics. Russ Feingold… I don’t even know what he got. Probably nothing. Dennis Kucinich held out for the longest, and now he’s given up. Not because the bill is better, or because it’s even worth passing. His reason is simply that failure to pass the bill would damage Obama’s presidency.

You would think that what’s damaged Obama’s presidency is trying to pass this thing. But no. Apparently what’s damaging to Obama is people opposing it. I’m not really sure why anyone wouldn’t want Obama’s presidency to be damaged at this point, anyway. All he’s done with it is to legitimize torture and murder, give more money and impunity to rich bankers, and further establish the Democratic Party as a corporate whorehouse.

Whenever a liberal talks about conservatives “voting against their own interests”, remember this bill. I have the feeling this is going to be the new ‘voting for the war in Iraq’. Everyone is assured that it is the responsible thing to do, the only serious option. In a few years, everyone will be trying to come up with excuses for why they voted for this bill. “I was for it before I was against it”, etc.

The entire episode is important to show that when they are actually needed, those ‘heroes’ in Congress and the Senate who supposedly hold real values are useless.

I saw Fantastic Mr. Fox. If it had been any other director, I would have thought the idea of making an animated stop-motion film was a terrible gimmick, but in the case of Wes Anderson, it’s really the logical extension of his past three movies, which often seemed like very lifelike toy sets placed onscreen. It’s a beautiful art project; the amount of detail makes every scene a treat to watch. The models look strange at first, but acquire a certain lifelike quality after a few scenes. I’m interested in how pausing any given scene and looking at a still frame makes it clear that these are elaborate miniature sets, whereas the film in motion seems full of life and natural.

Plotwise, it’s similar to most of Anderson’s movies, except it has a better climax (though it’s nothing spectacular). For better or worse, it’s a typical Anderson film, except with furry animals instead of confused urbanites. It helps that he has George Clooney playing Mr. Fox, an actor with the charisma that Anderson’s characters often lack (the last one was Gene Hackman’s Royal Tenenbaum).

The most interesting thing about a project like this is the fact that animated film directors and live-action film directors are usually two wholly separate groups, and a film like this one is the rare cross between animation and a more traditional director. The style fits Anderson well not just because of the elaborate art design of his films, but also because he tends towards framing and angles that are easier to reproduce in animation.

One can only hope for a Paul Thomas Anderson sunday cartoon.