Smog, “Cold Blooded Old Times” (1999)

[listen up!]

Smog (not to be confused with Golden Smog) is basically one man named Bill Callahan, singer-songwriter resident of Austin, Texas, who has also recorded under his own name and, in some cases, such as this one, with a band. “Cold Blooded Old Times” hits first like an upbeat singalong, with a chorus large and in charge: “Cold blooded old times,” x3. The verses get down to the reality of things around here, which are not so upbeat. They seem to involve memories from childhood of an abusive and disintegrating marriage, memories that can “turn your bones to glass / ... And though you were / Just a little squirrel / You understood every word.” Some of the ways of expressing here are neither comforting nor very clear, notably the plaint: “How can I stand / And laugh with the man / Who redefined your body?” There’s a lot of things that could mean—the mind runs to all of them at once, the more you hear it, absorb it. None are good. But the song carries on over four minutes with its deceptive jaunty air, which includes submerged piano figures from Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” toward the end, absurdly calling things like “his hair was perfect!” to mind. The title phrase, “cold blooded old times,” cannot possibly mean anything good and the verses do what they need to tack that down. Yet the pleasure of singing with this song, learning its tricky small turns and getting them down, overcomes the dubious implications. Is there any right and wrong here? You can really belt this one with the singer if your voice is in good form and you have his key.

Sao Paulo Confessions (1999)

Suba was born in Serbia in 1961 and emigrated to Brazil in the 1990s, already a producer and purveyor of the downtempo, acid jazz, you-name-it style. Mellow and lulling, with lively and compelling strains and rhythms, I found I could go all day with the stuff. Sao Paulo Confessions, perhaps Suba’s best-known album, was released shortly before his death. He was working postproduction on the Bebel Gilberto album he produced, Tanto Tempo (reportedly the bestselling Brazilian album of all time outside Brazil), when the studio caught fire. He saved the Gilberto material but was overcome by smoke and died. I didn’t know any of this when I bought the CD from that little shop in Vancouver that used to be so good. At the time I was plunged into downtempo anthologies such as the Buddha Bar, Café del Mar, and Hotel Costes series, each of which ran to many albums. In fact, Sao Paulo Confessions now elicits nostalgia and a little sadness for those times, along with a constant buzzing sense of déjà vu—I feel sure I’ve heard many if not all of these tracks and/or guest artists on various anthology albums but I haven’t been able to track down any specifics. I’m not sure I can count that as a good thing but, well, “chill” is the first thing you would have to say about this concept album recounting Suba’s Sao Paulo adventures. Some might say soporific, but I’m into it. Maybe slow-burn? Does that sound right? Sao Paulo Confessions is one of those albums that get better for me as I go, establishing a mood and finding ways to elevate the intensity, rewarding multiple plays. Play it now and play it often. It wanders pleasantly afield for its first half and then goes up a notch with the seventh of 12 tracks, “Um Dia Comum (Em SP)” (in English, “A Normal Day [In Sao Paulo]”), which delivers a stirring, nicely done “portrait of a city” groove with musical effects and helpless forward momentum. With “Sereia” (“Mermaid”), featuring Cibelle, now we’re rockin’. “Samba Do Gringo Paulista” (“Paulista Gringo’s Samba”) has a nice sense of false live performance and the album finishes on “A Noite Sem Fim” (“The Endless Night”) at 7:02. You might prefer rounding off your Buddha Bar or Hotel Costes sets, but Suba’s last album is nonetheless a worthy addition to any downtempo collection. Available on streaming too.

The Straight Story (1999)

UK / France / USA, 112 minutes

Director: David Lynch

Writers: John Roach, Mary Sweeney

Photography: Freddie Francis

Music: Angelo Badalamenti

Editor: Mary Sweeney

Cast: Richard Farnsworth, Sissy Spacek, Everett McGill, Anastasia Webb, Barbara E. Robertson, Kevin P. Farley, John Farley, John Lordan, Harry Dean Stanton

Director David Lynch had a well-deserved reputation for making weird movies but it’s tempting to argue this is the weirdest of all. It’s also one of his best. The opening title credit is a good place to start: “Walt Disney Pictures Presents: A film by David Lynch.” It seems to pit opposites against each other in some ways, but it’s important to remember that Lynch always prized wholesome elements and details in his pictures, and contrary to popular opinion it was not ironic, cynical, or mocking. The Elephant Man is a good comparison point, but it’s there in his most famous work, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Mulholland Dr.—even Eraserhead, where the grotesque monster baby is treated with a good deal of tenderness. They all show moments of human decency. They can even make you cry when they catch you the right way.

That’s The Straight Story too. Based on real events (barely noted until the very end of the picture), Alvin Straight, a man in Laurens, Iowa, learns that his estranged brother in Mount Zion, Wisconsin, has had a stroke and may not have long to live. At one point in the picture Alvin explains to another that he is a stubborn man. That’s the only thing that remotely explains these circumstances (which really happened, remember). His eyesight is too bad to drive. He won’t take a bus or accept rides from anyone else. As he keeps saying, he has to do this “my own way.” That way is to take his riding mower, halfway on and off the shoulder of the narrow highway and topping out at no more than 20 miles an hour. It is some 300 long flat Midwestern miles at the harvest time of year and it takes him weeks.

Summerteeth (1999)

Let’s start by clearing up the most pressing questions about Wilco’s third album. “Summerteeth,” first, is a colloquial expression for an incomplete set of permanent teeth (“some are teeth”). And, second, the black & white cover photo shows a young girl blowing a big bubblegum bubble. What either has to do with the musical set is not clear, but Summerteeth rocks righteously, tenderly, and shambolically, as Wilco does. At the same time, themes of opioid addiction and marital troubles float in the welter (honcho Jeff Tweedy was addicted to painkillers at the time and his marriage was on the rocks but survived). Some of the references are more blatant than others. Some are very blatant. They considered “A Shot in the Arm” such a winner they included two versions. Admittedly it’s a great song. But it’s clear what “Maybe all I need is a shot in the arm” means in this context, after all the reporting. “She’s a Jar” is more subtle about the relationship troubles, leading with the ambiguous but on balance affectionate stanza “She's a jar / With a heavy lid / My pop quiz kid / A sleepy kisser / A pretty war / With feelings hid / She begs me not to miss her.” The stanza is repeated at song’s end, but in the last line now she is begging him not to hit her. Before you can even grasp what he said it’s on to the next song, a neat, disquieting trick. “Via Chicago” starts “I dreamed about killing you again last night / And it felt all right to me,” going on to add details like blood to the idle fantasy. The song “Summer Teeth” may be trying to relieve our minds about any untoward intimations: “It’s just a dream he keeps having / And it doesn’t seem to mean anything.” Oh OK then! In many ways, though they make me uneasy too, I like the way Tweedy, Jay Bennett, and the band use these unsettling details to roil the waters. It’s more than 25 years later and I hope the survivors are doing well. I see Bennett died of a fentanyl overdose in 2009—details of the sad rupture between Tweedy and Bennett are covered in the essential documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. By my lights Summerteeth is essential too. But I’d like to register one tiny complaint about the CD, of which Wilco obviously is not the only guilty party. I’ve been listening to CDs in my living room lately along with a streaming service setup at my desk. It’s been a while since I’ve sat and listened to CDs this way, on the couch, one at a time, without even shuffle, and it has reminded me of some things I don’t like about CDs. Hidden tracks are one. You think an album is all finished and you go to change it and notice the counter is still measuring time. That’s when you know you’ve got a stinking hidden track on your hands. In the streaming version, track 15 of Summerteeth is titled “23 Seconds of Silence.” Ridiculous, followed by the two hidden tracks, one of which is the second version of “A Shot in the Arm” (I like both versions). At least 23 seconds is relatively merciful. Some hidden tracks make you wait for whole minutes or even parts of an hour, sometimes just for a stupid little throwaway. In summary, I like Summerteeth, but I HATE hidden tracks. Another thing I hate about CDs is skits, but that’s not relevant here.

Into the Pink (1999)

I’m not sure how many Nirvana knockoff bands were still around by 1999, but this trio out of Birmingham, Alabama, is a real dilly. And no, I don’t think it’s just because Dave Grohl is the producer on hand, though surely that couldn’t hurt if that’s what you’re going for. Verbena tend to be more into the stripped-down speedy roar of 1977 UK punk than the roaming woolly mammoths of grunge anyway, which makes the persistent influence, heard all through, more a matter of seasoning. Into the Pink is Verbena’s second album, first on a major, and, after a soporific opening interlude, rocks like a little machine set to never stop. All lucky 13 songs are credited to Scott Bondy and the band, Bondy being basically the head honcho and art director on guitar and vocals. The band’s makeup had some gyrations over the years—sometimes they were a quartet. Anne Marie Griffin, playing bass here, switched off with second guitar, depending on circumstances. Her vocal riffing with Bondy is a key element that sets Verbena apart. Les Nuby is the drummer on this session. Two singles were released from the album that should-have-done-better-than-they-did. “Baby Got Shot” rolls in moody on a terse drumkit and throbbing bass and quickly gets to the point: “I really don’t care, I really don’t mind, but my baby baby baby got shot.” My sense is that the singer does care and does mind but is having a hard time, for whatever reasons, owning it. (Note, because we must, that the song comes from when Columbine was still a freak show one-off.) Besides being a terrific raveup, “Baby Got Shot” is one of the best examples on the album of Griffin’s ability to track and underline Brody’s vocal like an angry cat that just fell in the water. The other single was “Pretty Please,” whose undertowing structure reminds me of a rocked-up Ultravoxx that hits notably hard. It’s mostly all good durable stuff on this album. In case you’re wondering why the Nirvana comparison comes up so quickly, refer to “Bang Bang,” which hits too eerily like an outcast from In Utero. At the same time, as the song develops, Bondy and Griffin getting to their repetitive uh-huhhs may be their single best vocal interplay on the whole album. You take what you get. The excellent comes with the other.

Disgrace (1999)

I bought a copy of this novel shortly after J.M. Coetzee won his Nobel in 2003, so once again everything takes a long time. It was actually my first by the white South African writer and it’s quite good, complicated, nervy, and tense. Our main guy is a pretentious 52-year-old English professor. At the start he is teaching as an adjunct. He is twice divorced and a creepy self-serving philanderer, which is where the trouble starts when he is dismissed from his job after an affair with a student. This guy’s sexual habits are compulsive and self-destructive and it is obvious he is learning nothing from even his increasing consequences. His pride and rationalizations are so transparently delusional you want to scream. He goes to live with his daughter in the country where she owns and operates a small farm in a small community. She is in her 20s, a lesbian, and something of a “back to the land” hippie, though the story takes place in the present time when the novel was published, not long after the end of apartheid. Then a terrible event takes place, a brutal home invasion, and the rest of the short novel is about attempting to put the shattered pieces back together. In a lot of ways the first half of Disgrace veers close to a thriller, and it’s quite effective. I thought of Elmore Leonard in terms of the compressed, direct language and extreme events reported with sparse, telling details. The second half has some scenes and plot points that felt more strained. I never really cared much for the main guy, David Lurie, even as he changes and a kind of redemption takes place. I’m very tired of bed-hopping main characters, but at least Lurie’s sexual compulsions are not really normalized. They have a definite edge. It’s pretty clear something is wrong with him. Animal deaths are a key part of the story but it’s a nuanced take with multiple levels. The worst is kept offstage and in many ways the novel turns on a heartbreaking euthanasia operation. I shouldn’t complain about the sex here because it’s such a huge part of Lurie’s personality, but his way of moving from partner to partner (woman to woman) is familiar from TV shows and I’m tired of it even when done well. Mostly I was impressed with Coetzee’s lean and powerful language, and also his ability to create scenes of great tension. I’d like to look into more of him, but first impression is that Coetzee warrants the hype and hoopla. He’s good.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

Wild Zero (1999)

File Wild Zero under classic midnight cult movie fare, which already seems as quaint in a way as drive-in movies, doesn't it? Imagine. But it all may come back yet one way or another. I like the Variety quote someone at the Wikipedia hivemind dug up on this one: "Pic has everything the midnight crowd could possibly want, although such items generally have a hard time hitting other parts of the theatrical clock." So file it for the time being under youtube find and catch it when you can (or buy the DVD). It's a Japanese punk-rock zombie movie with aliens from outer space, a trans romance, a zombie romance, and lots of random energy. I'm not even sure where the title comes from. I like it as a rock 'n' roll movie best, featuring the Japanese band Guitar Wolf, the devastating power trio with members Guitar Wolf, Bass Wolf, and Drum Wolf. They're so badass and they're for real too, coming up in the late '80s as self-styled "jet rock 'n' roll." The Wild Zero soundtrack, though often muffled in the mix because, well, there is just always so much going on, is jammed with garage and punk rockers like the Oblivians, the Phantom Surfers, and of course the mighty Guitar Wolf. There's a lot of devotion in general in Wild Zero to rock 'n' roll, with lines like "ACE! There are no boundaries in Rock 'n' Roll! Believe in Rock 'n' Roll!" and "I swear by my leather jacket and by Rock 'n' Roll ... I swear ... I love you." Even the person doing the subtitles always capitalizes Rock 'n' Roll. The zombie side is the usual—they move slow but relentless and have to be taken out by the head. As for the far out sci-fi bid, it pulls a few effective rabbits out of its hat from Liquid Sky and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but the storyline doesn't take up much of the screen time. Still, Wild Zero manages to put a few audacious twists on everything it touches and it is thrashing and grasping wildly. It really is a movie that hits like wut TF DID. I. just. see? Extremely low budget. Fast cars. Motorcycles. Gore among the undead. High-cuffed blue jeans and Elvis hair. Trans beauty. It weighs in refreshingly at the altar of rock 'n' roll and it never stops being weird, fun, and devotional.

See DoestheDogDie report.

Beau travail (1999)

France, 92 minutes

Director: Claire Denis

Writers: Claire Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau, Herman Melville

Photography: Agnes Godard

Music: Charles Henri de Pierrefeu, Eran Zur, Tarkan, Neil Young, Corona

Editor: Nelly Quettier

Cast: Denis Lavant, Michel Subor, Gregoire Colin, Richard Courcet

It occurred to me, puzzling once again over this strange little picture and conventional critical wisdom, that Beau travail is likely a key exhibit by those arguing for 1999 as the greatest single year in film history. A Washington Post piece from a few years ago assessed the case for 2018 and listed other candidates as 1939, 1946, 1955, 1974, 1982, 1999, and 2007. There has to be one for every decade, see, yet somehow, breaking the self-evident rule (I want to put 1948 in the mix), they skipped the 1959-1962 period, possibly splitting votes across 1959, 1960, and 1962. For my part, I know I wouldn't put 1999 anywhere near the top of that list. I would probably go with 1946 or maybe 2007 myself and the only reason I flatly don't think 1999 is the weakest is because 1955 somehow found its way in and I don't know.

I also don't know about director and cowriter Claire Denis, frankly. I loved White Material (2009), had a pretty good time with 35 Shots of Rum (2008), and still want to look again at Chocolat (1988) as I remember liking it quite well at the time it came out (note: it is absolutely not to be confused with the 2000 Chocolat, an entirely different movie). More often Denis's physically liquid yet emotionally brittle style is something I have to fight against. I left High Life (2018) early because I just wasn't in the mood. I was indifferent to Friday Night (2002) and Nenette and Boni (1996). And I thought her vampire movie, Trouble Every Day (2001), was wrongheaded and ineffective (which is also where I thought High Life was headed). That brings us finally to Beau travail, at #115 her highest-ranked picture on the big list at They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? (her only other picture presently on that list is The Intruder from 2004, at #823, which I haven't seen).

The Pyramid (1999)

Here's a small problem with series of novels, or maybe we should call them franchises because TV, movies, and even short stories can suffer the problem too. The Wikipedia article on Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander series notes that this collection of long stories comes first in terms of a chronological order. But that's only by the settings of these stories (so-called), which are "early cases" ranging from as far back as 1969 to just before the action of Faceless Killers, the first Wallander novel. This collection is a reasonably big book and there are only five stories; they're not exactly short stories in any conventional sense. The shortest run around 30 pages and the longest goes some 160. They are more like episodes from novels, with blunted climaxes. So The Pyramid may be the first one to read in terms of a strict timeline. I jumped it ahead of the rest after I learned that. But I don't think it's the way to go. These stories presume more previous knowledge of the series than I had, such as Wallander's relationships with his father, wife, and daughter. They often display what I call Revenge of the Sith syndrome, by which I mean a prequel too concerned by far with continuities, crossing the t's and dotting the i's of known details. The last story here, the title story and longest, actually takes us to the morning of the first day in Faceless Killers. That's way too cute for me. While these stories open some interesting windows into Wallander's character, more often they feel padded out and just a little wearied of the project. "The Pyramid," the long story, is built around an unnecessary scene with his father, which adds little to our understanding of either character and bogs down a crime investigation right in the middle. Not that there is much to these investigations, which are pro forma at best, and uninspired. I admit, at this point, I have reached a certain level of comfort or familiarity with Wallander and Mankell. I like the police detective Wallander, a gruff and impatient investigator with a moral compass and good instincts, a taste for opera, and all the frustrations of modern Western life. In this era when short stories have become virtually antiquated, perhaps Mankell was simply better as a novelist. I would say this should be read in publication order, and it's probably for completists only.

In case it's not at the library.

The Soft Bulletin (1999)

If Wikipedia is to be believed, this ninth album from the Flaming Lips is their masterpiece. Dig a little deeper and you find the people making the claim are Amazon verified purchasers, but whatever. That's Wikipedia for you! The Soft Bulletin and the album that followed were also the high point of the trio's fame, for those inclined to embrace or reject on that basis. That puts them basically on the rise here. But I wish someone would make a case for this album, which always seems to come up short for me. Actually, I'll say that one song at a time listened to closely can be rewarding—that makes it workable anyway in a multi-CD shuffle type of mode. (Maybe in that regard it merits the comparisons to Pet Sounds, which I sometimes suspect have more to do with the theremin.) The moody brood of "What Is the Light?" and the soothing swamp of "The Observer." The plangent tender sadness of "The Spiderbite Song." The screaming glories of "The Gash." The aching throb of "Race for the Prize," the album opener and one of the two singles. The Peter Mokran mix of the other single, "Waitin' for a Superman," which hums with a bracing natural sweetness. Natural sweetness, in fact, is one of the band's enduring and greatest strengths. All this points to what I love most about the album that came next and my favorite by them, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, a one-of-a-kind that proceeds out of children's fantasies but remarkably with almost no cloying sentimentalities. Just the weirdness and the goodness—and so beautiful. I think my problem with the Flaming Lips might be that they're good at things which don't naturally coexist. They have a penchant for psychedelicized studio wonkery, with harsh edges that scrape at your head, which famously produced Zaireeka, a 4-CD album in which all four discs are intended to be played simultaneously. They have a reputation as a great live act—I'm sorry I never saw them in the '90s. They're not afraid of noise. And yet they can write the sweetest pop confections. In the songwriting they appear to act as a unit as all songs are credited equally to the band's three principles, Wayne Coyne, Steven Drozd, and Michael Ivins. Or maybe my problem is that drummer Drozd's playing is so intrusive, too loud and ornate and too often into the middle of everything. Obviously this is as intended—a feature not a bug. So I'll take my bad with my good. Maybe it bolsters the rock bona fides to have all that random booming and stamping going on, or something, but it's wearying. I'm sticking with Yoshimi.

When Your Heartstrings Break (1999)

Standing tall in the shadows of Neutral Milk Hotel and Guided by Voices, Beulah was built from the inside out, starting with the two principals, Miles Kurosky and Bill Swan, who by reputation never liked each other much, once again suggesting that shared musical taste does not always make for good friends. Guitarist, singer, and chief songwriter Kurosky met guitarist, singer, and trumpeter Swan when they worked together in a San Francisco office. Temps, I presume. Keyboardists, bass players, and drummers came and went. The band's association with the Elephant 6 collective came and went. Some good reviews, a little bit of fame, and road life came and went. Four albums and some singles—they never charted. They fought a lot. It didn't really work out. But I love this second album and like a lot of the rest. There is something pop-timeless and pop-ancient about When Your Heartstrings Break: it could almost be an album by icons such as the Beatles, Big Star, Squeeze, or the dBs, or certainly the aforementioned lo-fi paragons. Though Kurosky has all the songwriting credit, Swan is listed with Steve LaFollette as producer, which in some ways feels like the same kind of ruse the Coen brothers have been running for years, trading off directing, writing, and producing honors. Beulah has the feel of another unusual collaboration, like the aforementioned pop paragons, which is borne out by at least one anecdote at Wikipedia, where Kurosky is seen mailing demos from Japan (for a different album) to each of the band members and asking for their individual input, apparently collating it all later. That's not what happened with this album, but even so each song here feels like an individualized insulated little suite, embracing in a way Phil Spector's old idea about the tiny kingdoms of pop, tarted up ingeniously with inspired bridges, sudden attacks of breathless horns and strings, canny use of their trumpet, guitars, keyboards, and whatnot, plus all kinds of shifts in tonal texture and of course those lonesome boy vocals and harmonies, which ache. True to the indie ethos, they play it ironic and distanced, and to tell you the truth I'm not even sure what most of these songs are about. But there is such a beautiful sweet sadness in these oblique articulations. Later we found out Kurosky was diagnosed bipolar and everything made more sense—certainly the strife and maybe some of the music's oddness. But When Your Heartstrings Break is way more than that. It's made of many parts we already know and it's almost 20 years old. But it's still new.

"The Barber's Unhappiness" (1999)

Read story by George Saunders online.

George Saunders's story is overwhelmed by a voice, which in turn has been overwhelmed by life and circumstances. The voice belongs to the barber of the title, who believes he should be married and living a conventional life. But it doesn't appear to be something he actually wants. He is like a character from Seinfeld, absurdly criticizing his prospects, which are mostly fantasies anyway that play through his head, apparently unceasingly. He sees a woman, spins a fantasy of wooing and winning her, and then spins further fantasies of the fights and troubles they would have, and from there flies into brief rages about women, and life, and circumstances. The barber is practically the only real person in the whole story. That's not entirely true. He meets people in a remedial driving course he has been required to attend for legal reasons. Details are not necessary in a mind so full of itself. Solipsism, thy name is this barber. Yet, again like those characters from Seinfeld, it's hard not to like this guy—or, at least, the rolling energies of his voice: "He ogled old women and pregnant women and women whose photographs were passing on the sides of buses and, this morning, a woman with close-cropped black hair and tear-stained cheeks, who wouldn't be half bad if she'd just make an effort, clean up a little and invest in some decent clothes, some white tights and a short skirt maybe, knee boots and a cowboy hat and a cigarillo, say, and he pictured her kneeling on a crude Mexican sofa, in a little mud hut, daring him to take her, and soon they'd screwed themselves into some sort of beanfield while some gaucho guys played soft guitars, although actually he'd better put the gaucho guys behind some trees or a rock wall so they wouldn't get all hot and bothered from watching the screwing and swoop down and stab him and have their way with Miss Hacienda as he bled to death, and come to think of it, forget the gauchos altogether, he'd just put some soft guitars on the stereo in the hut and leave the door open, although actually what was a stereo doing in a Mexican hut? Were there outlets?" That's from the first paragraph. It goes on like that awhile—a jumble of unpacked Freudian impulses that veer in all directions, with little to no evident self-consciousness. It's often very funny, sometimes a little poignant, and just a little exhausting. But I wouldn't miss it for anything.

Pastoralia by George Saunders

Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic (1999)

I still wasn't playing CDs on computers when I bought this album new, when Prince was still going by the glyph symbol. So it took me a while to catch up with what a multimedia clusterfuck it can be. Pro tip: when prompted, choose "play audio CD" on the simplest platform available. Do not attempt to rip. Do not attempt to engage the enhanced features. Even this early in the internet era (no doubt symptomatic of his battles with Warner Bros.), Prince was asserting his copyright privileges with unrelenting aggression. The enhanced features here create a computer environment I could only get rid of via complete reboot. I suppose that could be Windows 10. But Prince never really changed that stance, which was the main reason there were so few videos to share on social media on the occasion of his death. For me, the ritual sharing of individual song videos is one of the few things I like about the internet's response to celebrity death. At any rate, there are certainly other caveats to make about this album—it rarely rises an inch or two above the absolute floor of Prince product. Recall, however, that even Prince product reliably delivers various points of pleasure, not just mere professionalism. If he is barely capable of partying like it's 1999, whose fault is that anyway? You can always go back to 1982. This is more smooth and slick, attempting (unsuccessfully, as it turned out) to be radio-friendly, and with the usual interesting motley of guest appearances: Chuck D, Eve, Gwen Stefani, Sheryl Crow, Ani DiFranco, and Maceo Parker. There's also a nice cover of a great Sheryl Crow song, "Everyday Is a Winding Road," which is not the track on which Crow appears. There are a couple of hidden tracks too, though one is an ad, and generally they are problematic as well in terms of functionality. Predictably, the one that is not an ad, "Prettyman," is worth the bullshit to get to. It's just a matter of waiting. From the cover art, Prince appears to be signaling a willingness to embrace the color purple again, after The Gold Experience of four years earlier; I consider that a neutral factor overall. This may be the first Prince album I know yet with no standout tracks whatsoever (well, maybe "The Sun, the Moon and Stars" makes me go a little weak), yet I played it often when it was new and have never minded running it one more time in recent days—except for the functionality issues. And meanwhile commanding prices that start at $32 for this crappy multimedia product, Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic (wonderful title, by the way) really can't get to streaming venues and/or a thoroughly rethought remastering soon enough. Come on, lawyers. Get on it.

The Big Bad City (1999)

One argument against reading the novels in the 87th Precinct series out of order might be that the later ones seem weaker read in isolation, the inconsistencies more nagging. I mean, here it is nearly the 21st century and Steve Carella, who was married in a 1959 novel, is worrying over his imminent 40th birthday. How does that work? It's possible after all this time that I'm just getting a little tired of McBain. But the characters in this one struck me as notably vacant. Nobody home, except the pro forma: Steve Carella loves his deaf wife Teddy, Hal Willis is short, and Meyer Meyer's father had a strange sense of humor. Cotton Hawes was so absent I thought he might have been knocked off in one of the books I haven't read yet. Matthew Hope, private detective star of a concurrent McBain series, shows up at one point. First time I've seen that. Apparently he and Carella came to be friends. The mystery story is a little better. It's 20 years after Calypso and McBain still hasn't figured out anything convincing about the worlds of rock music, let alone hip-hop. Here it's a nun who takes a year off from her vows to sing for a rock band, during which time she gets a boob job. Interesting array of facts for a nun. Then she goes back to her order. Then, a few years later, she is murdered in a park in the 87th Precinct. The Big Bad City might have the conclusion to the '90s thread about the murder of Carella's father, which I haven't found interesting yet. The enduring Fat Ollie Weeks has a prominent role here and as always is repulsive but entertaining but repulsive. Andy Parker's here too. There's some pointless time spent attempting to distinguish the bigotries of Fat Ollie and Parker. Since reading this one and going on to others, I've noticed how often McBain injects the term "the big bad city" into his narratives. It's one of his favorite phrases. Conveniently enough, simply reading that phrase has the virtue of covering most of the main points here.

In case it's not at the library.

"Interpreter of Maladies" (1999)

Read story by Jhumpa Lahiri online.

Among other things, Jhumpa Lahiri's story explores what it means to be American. It takes places in India. Mr. and Mrs. Das, a young Indian-American couple born and raised in New Jersey, are there to visit their parents, who have moved back. They are taking a day to sightsee with their three children. The story is told mostly from the point of view of the tour bus driver. He is a middle-aged man and this is his second job. His main job is that he works for a doctor translating for patients who speak Gujarati, an Indian language. Mrs. Das pretends to be fascinated by this, and it's also the source of the title. Or perhaps she really is fascinated by it. The couple and their three children are traveling together, making a family vacation of it, but Mrs. Das is distant from them, and vaguely scornful of her husband, who pores over tour books. The driver, Mr. Kapesi, takes a fanciful interest in her. He is a lonely man, with an unhappy marriage. When he ends up in a picture someone takes, Mrs. Das wants his address to send him a copy. He begins to spin a fantasy in his mind of correspondence and romance. Kind of sad stuff, but it only makes Mr. Kapesi more likable. The Das family is familiar with India—all except the youngest child have been there before. But they are American. They do not consider themselves Indian. They sightsee and look at their heritage, but it has no more meaning than boxes to tick off on a checklist. Everything about them—the way they dress and talk and what they want to do—proclaims their Americanness. They are above all this. But they are not happy, and it's the unhappiness of narcissists. Thus, perhaps, Mrs. Das picks up somehow on Mr. Kapesi's fantasies and his little hopes, and she kind of starts playing with him, maybe testing him, all unconsciously no doubt. But she reels him in, whispers a terrible personal secret to him, and figuratively smirks at his shock and horror. Maybe it's another Tom and Daisy Buchanan, an American story of smashing things and leaving them behind, blotting out the past relentlessly. An odd incident with monkeys finishes out this strange and moving story, which almost feels like a parable on one level, at the same time it's fundamentally great story writing, a Chekhovian meditation on random devastating moments in life. Very nice one.

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

USA, 81 minutes
Directors/writers/editors: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sanchez
Photography: Neal Fredericks
Music: Tony Cora
Cast: Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, Michael C. Williams

In its brief moment, The Blair Witch Project was such a many-tentacled phenomenon that even up front it requires a little sorting and unpacking. For your consideration: the over-the-top guerrilla marketing campaign, the extraordinary profit generated (nearly $250 million in revenue on a $25,000 production for a staggering return of 1,000,000%), its use of the so-called "found footage" narrative, the strategies of the filmmakers to elicit performances and create a unique look and feel, and last but not least the episodes of vertigo reported by viewers sickened by the shaky handheld style of shooting. There's also of course the question of whether it's even scary at all.

That last is an easy one for me. Yes, it's scary, not in the manner of outright shock and mayhem, but rather in exploiting an insidious, irresistible dread and hopelessness that feel like the last stop before complete despair, whether the sources are supernatural or it's just banal old death from exposure. The Blair Witch Project is loud, loose, messy, clumsy, aimless, and obvious. It's a stunt, with all manner of low-budget gaffes, no sense of tonal consistency, and numbing repetitions. Yet somehow it never fails to get inside my head and make my skin crawl. Likely spoilers ahead.

The Insider (1999)

USA, 157 minutes
Director: Michael Mann
Writers: Marie Brenner, Eric Roth, Michael Mann
Photography: Dante Spinotti
Music: Pieter Bourke, Lisa Gerrard
Editors: William Goldenberg, David Rosenbloom, Paul Rubell
Cast: Al Pacino, Russell Crowe, Christopher Plummer, Diane Venora, Philip Baker Hall, Lindsay Crouse, Debi Mazar, Stephen Tobolowsky, Colm Feore, Bruce McGill, Gina Gershon, Michael Gambon, Rip Torn, Wings Hauser, Nestor Serrano

At some point I think I might have to face up to a certain middlebrow orientation. With movies, my focus tends to be on narrative. Imagery, music, performance, and all the trappings are fine and good, but I tend to start with certain demands of a story—organization, clarity, and purpose at the very least; stakes I can connect with and tension with that would be nice too. Most problematically, particularly in these fictional ripped-from-the-headlines exercises "based on reality" and/or the message picture bald, I further expect that it comport with my own sense of reality and values. When it doesn't, I start to have problems. I think, in fact, this may stand in as a reasonably good definition of the middlebrow.

I say this by way of introduction to my favorite picture by director Michael Mann, which is so comically right on target in its messaginess—who, even in 1999, was left to defend the enormity of Big Tobacco?—that I can even laugh at it myself. Michael Mann likes to do things big and he's very good at it. He's also an aesthete, practically an abstract artist in the way he uses the big-screen canvas to paint glossy photorealist portraits of cityscapes, cars, long freeway lanes, beautiful women, and powerful men. It occurred to me when I was revisiting The Insider recently that it is also the only Mann I have seen on the big screen. It could be that's the reason it's my favorite. But there are actually many reasons to like The Insider.

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

UK/USA, 159 minutes
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Writers: Stanley Kubrick, Frederic Raphael, Arthur Schnitzler
Photography: Larry Smith
Music: Jocelyn Pook
Editor: Nigel Galt
Cast: Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Sydney Pollack, Julienne Davis, Rade Serbedzija, Vinessa Shaw, Todd Field, Sky du Mont, Marie Richardson, Leelee Sobiesko, Leon Vitali, Alan Cumming, Fay Masterson

A telling fact about Eyes Wide Shut: Ultimately it earned $55.7 million in the U.S. on its release in July 1999, four months after director Stanley Kubrick's death, but $31 million of that (or nearly 57%) came just in the first week of its release. A simple but transparent story of high expectations thwarted. One contingent had been excited to see the first Kubrick film in some 12 years, and the last ever, while others were excited about the "it couple" of the moment who star in it, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Still others knew it was supposed to be sexy and naughty. What little they otherwise had in common came to include reviling the movie. I took them at their word and, on that basis (and also Full Metal Jacket, his previous movie and weakest by far), decided to skip it.

When I finally sat down with a copy of it on DVD years later my expectations were as low as everyone else's had once been high. My primary concern was how I was going to get through the two and a half hours I knew it lasted. But two and a half hours later I was barely aware any time had passed, and I started it up again. It is that kind of movie for me. Even when it is at its most ridiculous—and it gets very ridiculous—it gives me shivers constantly, shivers of fear, pleasure, recognition, panged confusion. I consider it now as among Kubrick's best, one whose mystery just seems to open up wider and take me deeper every time.

...Baby One More Time (1999)

Oh man, I had some low expectations coming back to this—well, "coming back." I liked the songs when they were on the radio. But when I finally got a cheap used copy of the album a couple years later it didn't seem to me to amount to much more than the hits, and the hits didn't sound so good anymore. So I filed it. I had always felt a little like someone claiming to enjoy "Playboy" for the thoughtful and hard-hitting articles anyway whenever I tried to talk about the various virtues of Britney Spears's music—her good fortune of a sweet and sultry voice which she can play like an instrument, the infectious layers of glittering production, and some basic understanding of the principles of pop music and hooks and so forth, not to mention an erratic but unmistakable sense on her part for soul singing. As her public persona developed into chronic celebrity problems it got too tiresome and I thought I had put it all behind me. In fact, I'm not even sure why I included it on the list of albums I am still working from, at the time intended for much shorter write-ups and download availability. I think I wondered how my audience of the time would respond to something so blatantly mainstream. Anyway, holy buckets, it sounds way better than I remember. It's still the hits I tend to favor; the stellar track this time is definitely "Sometimes" (#21 in 1999), which might be the most obvious Spice Girls knockoff here, now that I think of it. It's sweet and hot and all kind of sad and uncertain about a love relationship, and swells up big on the chorus, lush and full of presence. The kind of thing you can't always put in words, you know? So I usually turn it up a little for that one. Then a song called "Soda Pop" follows, so winsomely sweet as to be nauseating. It's part of what chased me away from the album in the first place. But then that's followed by "Born to Make You Happy," which is not a hit but good, with her bruised vocals playing nicely off a chanting background line. In a certain mood, which the album is at pains to set by that point, it's tolerable enough—if you feel mired in by saccharine dreck, hang on. There's bound to be better, or maybe the dreck will clarify into the more and more pleasing passages I seem to hear in this every time now. To be sure, there are silly exercises here, such as "E-Mail My Heart," which pains me just to see the title. But then there's a decent Sonny & Cher cover (and I like the pick). There are at least four or five good to great songs here.

Beulah, "If We Can Land a Man on the Moon, Surely I Can Win Your Heart" (1999)

(listen)

I was briefly infatuated at about the turn of the century by Beulah, a San Francisco-based band that specialized in pop tunesmithery, swimming the waters of a nearly twee alt/indie sound. They had some kind of connection to Olivia Tremor Control and the Apples in Stereo and some others. I was drawn to this song in the first place for its silly, wordy title, which I found on a CMJ anthology. It's not surprising that more than a decade on this would find a place in the movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (which I loved, for those keeping score at home). For better or worse, I have found Beulah to be a bit of an acquired taste, reason for suspicion as always. When I hear this song again after a while my first reaction is surprise and concern at how unfocused and dithering and precious it seems, and then I wonder if I really like it after all. But listening more rewards the effort. If I persevere and make a habit of it I find all kinds of clever surprises and pleasing little musical/production stunts disclosing themselves as it insinuates itself. It roams at will through musical ambience, like the backgrounds of running scenes in cartoons, rotating rapidly from one to the next, picking up the tempo and building out the arrangement with tiny flourishes: sawing fiddle, wukka-wukka guitar, French horn, feints at power chords (it's guitar-driven after all), a rinky-dinky tinkly piano hamming it up, and that clarion vocal of Miles Kurosky, who sounds long steeped in all the white-boyish traditions from Paul McCartney to Pete Ham to Ira Kaplan. Suddenly it's the loveliest thing you ever heard.