Neverwas Is a Film of Might Have Beens

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It rarely bodes well for a movie when the studio skips the theatres altogether in favor of a straight to DVD release. It’s even more perplexing when such a movie boasts a cast the likes of Aaron Eckhart, Ian McKellen, Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange, and William Hurt. With such a stellar ensemble, it stands to reason the project would garner at least attention, if not respect.

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Neverwas, by writer and first-time director Joshua Michael Stern, valiantly attempts to be a meaningful, uplifting film. Unfortunately, what emerges instead is a movie desperately trying to find its identity. Eckhart plays Zach Riley, a supposedly brilliant Yale researcher who convinces the director of Mill Wood psychiatric hospital (Hurt) to hire him as a staff psychiatrist, a position for which he’s vastly overqualified. Unbeknownst to the Hurt character (since background checks apparently aren’t done at this hospital), Zach’s deceased father (Nolte), an acclaimed novelist best known for the children’s fantasy “Neverwas,” had been a patient there shortly before his suicide. Conveniently enough, Zach encounters a delusional schizophrenic named Cedric (McKellen) during a group session. Cedric insists that Zach is the long-lost savior of Neverwas, which Cedric insists is a very real place, an enchanted land of which he is king.

The problem with Neverwas is everything falls far too neatly into place, without ever engaging the viewer in the story. Zach’s love interest (Britanny Murphy) is conveniently introduced as a childhood friend who’s been enamored of “Neverwas” all these years. Jessica Lange, as Zach’s alcoholic mother, serves only as a bridge between his past and his current state. Sadly, both characters are drawn so broadly that they serve as little more than buoys to keep the plodding story afloat. Only Nolte, seen only in gauzy black and white flashbacks, lends credibility to the premise as the tortured, drug-addled writer of “Neverwas.”

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Other movies have blurred the lines between fantasy and reality much more deftly — The Fisher King and Finding Neverland come to mind. But where those films coupled a sense of wonder with an empathy for the mentally ill, Neverwas skirts those facets in favor of sugar-coated melodrama. As a consequence, its potential metaphors are discarded, leaving only a shell of a story rife with obvious clichés. What we’re left with is a film that has the aura of a made for Lifetime TV movie. Even its climax is contrived so as to provide a happy, if ill-advised ending.

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Neverwas, with its tagline of “Every fairy tale needs its hero,” held the promise of allegory, and indeed, it could have been. Had Stern focused his story rather than let it slip into pandering, and had the actors involved not called in their performances, and had they perhaps not gone with light and airy cinematography against a droning Philip Glass soundtrack, it might have been a movie that spoke to the human condition. The opposite happened, though, leaving Neverwas as a film more about might have beens than it ever intended.

Miles Davis Revisited and Revamped

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Had Miles Davis not left us in 1991, he would have celebrated his 81st birthday this year. He was one of those talents, like Elvis or Johnny Cash, who left such a body of work that saying he died just doesn’t feel right somehow. You can feel his presence everywhere in modern music—more in avant hip hop and funk than anywhere else—but he’s groovin’ in the background of all things cool. He’s in the clubs, on the street, in the movies, setting the mood for urban groove. But he’s still so cool, you’re not even consciously aware of his presence. You just feel the molten flow of that trumpet when you least expect it, and remember how Miles is the pulse of jazz, even now.

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Evolution of the Groove brings Miles back to Earth for too short a time. At just a little over 15 minutes, it’s more like a postcard from the nether than an actual visitation. Even at that, it affords us a glimpse of where the next phase of jazz may be headed—and it’s not in the retrograde shadings prevalent in mainstream circles. While it’s billed as a remix, Evolution of the Groove is more a subtle reworking—bits and pieces of Miles through the decades, tidbits of revolution that still sound fresh and imposing today. The problem here (if it is a problem) is that the five tracks here are teases that flirt with us, but ultimately leave us wanting more.

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Title tracks are deceiving—the opening number, “Freddy Freeloader” (from the Kind of Blue sessions) is nothing more than a minute-long montage of intro outtakes, with Miles bantering with the producer. It never goes beyond that, but serves as a segue to introduce “Freedom Jazz Dance (Evolution of the Groove).” It’s here that the EP’s concept of imagining the direction Miles’ music might have gone takes flight. Featuring a vocal by rapper Nas that pays homage to the greats of cool jazz, and augmented by the original track and a live jam, it hints at the hip hop flavor that interested Miles in his latter days. At 2:56, it whets the appetite, leaving us salivating for further exploration. An edit of “It’s About That Time” follows, featuring some tasty guitar by Carlos Santana laid over the original. Clocking in at 4:53, it’s the longest track on the disc, and the only one really given a chance to breathe. Abbreviated versions of “Honky Tonk” and “Black Satin” make up the final six minutes of Evolution. And though they’re painfully short, they nonetheless showcase the nuances of Miles’ trumpet style.

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Evolution of the Groove is a solid imagining of what Miles might sound like in 2007. More importantly, it’s a reminder of his continued influence. The only complaint I have with this little EP is it’s far too short. Then again, Miles was always mercurial. By the time we thought we’d caught up to him, he was already in another plane. We’ll never know with certainty what he’d be doing now, but in a universe of infinite futures and parallel routes, Evolution of the Groove is a nice rest stop.

Zippo lighters Under Fire?

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I’m generally not one to place much stock in conspiracy theories, but when an American institution comes under senseless attack from within, it gives me pause to reconsider my cherished beliefs. Events I’ve encountered over the past several weeks have left me no choice but to conclude there’s a conspiracy of hydra-like proportions slithering unnoticed through our country. It’s so far-reaching, it’s almost impossible to unearth its roots. And so insidious, it goes largely unnoticed.

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One of the last testaments to American ingenuity, the venerable Zippo lighter, is systematically being dismantled by agents working under the auspices of homogenization. The network is vast, and so sublime that even its agents are unaware of its power. The average Joe — citizens like you and me — never sees the effects of homogenization — until it strikes us on an immediate level.

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At first, I had no reason to suspect there were forces working in concert to undermine the proud tradition of the Zippo lighter. Thinking that the corner convenience store might stock flints or lighter fluid was a shot in the dark at best, even though this particular location carried every brand of cigarette known to man. Not surprisingly, I fared no better at the liquor store across the street. But I couldn’t help but note both locations offered a variety of refillable butane lighters alongside the obligatory disposable Bics and Scriptos. Undaunted, I went to a nearby drug store where I had purchased flints before, only to be met with a vacant stare from the post-pubescent clerk. Finally, I visited the tobacco bar at my newly remodeled neighborhood grocery store. In the course of the store’s makeover, photo processing and DVD rentals had been eliminated, but the floral section had been expanded as a freestanding kiosk within the store. The tobacco bar had been redone, too. Flints and lighter fluid had fallen victim to the consolidation process, but the selection of butane lighters and disposable lighters had been expanded.

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Clearly, this was no mere coincidence. Only weeks before, I was able to purchase Zippo flints and lighter fluid with ease. Now, wherever I went, clerks extolled the virtues of disposables and butane. As tempting as it was to surrender to the inevitable, something I couldn’t explain — something innate, something American — spurred me to not forsake the Zippo. Bic lighters, and their imitators, lure unsuspecting consumers with promises of convenience. They neglect to mention how they’re actually little explosive devices. Only a few days ago here in Dallas, a disposable lighter was responsible for the decimation of an SUV. It had been left in the vehicle for hours in the Texas heat, and when the owner tried to use it, it exploded in his hand. Of course, he dropped the lighter immediately, but the little Chinese-assembled IED completely torched his vehicle.

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I would never suggest that French companies like Bic, or American-based novelty companies dealing in throwaways, are undermining our way of life by outsourcing the manufacturing of their little flamethrowers to China. However, it’s blatantly apparent that 79 cent lighters don’t really represent convenience, and actually are potential environmental hazards. They don’t last very long, and when they do work, it’s only haphazardly, particularly in the outdoors. As a result, they’re routinely tossed aside by frustrated users, presenting fire hazards — and if they don’t combust, their plastic casings languish forever by the roadside.

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Zippos, on the other hand, are an American engineering marvel, elegant in design, legendary for their reliability. This year marks the 75th anniversary of Zippo, and they’ve remained relatively unchanged since they first appeared. It’s impossible to improve on perfection, and for what it does, nothing has ever beat a Zippo. Assuming they’re fueled and the flint isn’t worn away, they will, as promised, light under the windiest conditions without fail. And if anything should ever go wrong with it, the company will replace it at absolutely no cost. After my father died, I came across one he owned, with the lid missing. I sent it to Zippo, and it came back from Zippo’s manufacturing plant in Bradford, Pennsylvania, good as new.

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Zippos have been lauded by presidents, generals and soldiers for decades, and not without good reason. During WWII, Zippo suspended commercial sales, and only made the lighter available to the military. Eisenhower and MacArthur, as well as countless grunts, lauded it as the only flame upon which they could depend. There are stories of its metal case stopping bullets during battle. And of course, as per the unconditional guarantee, such damaged lighters were replaced with no questions asked.

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A Zippo isn’t just a lighter — it’s an accoutrement that you selfishly guard. You might own several, with each one having its own backstory, but you never throw one away. Each one reminds the owner of a particular point in his or her life — a bittersweet romance, an affair with a fast car, a little social victory — all sealed with that distinctive click as the Zippo is closed. There’s a little piece of American history in every Zippo.

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You don’t get that with a Bic lighter, and you don’t get it with a novelty butane lighter emblazoned with skull-and-crossbones or crude feminine silhouettes. All those give you are frustrations and bad memories of misplaced adolescence. In our throwaway culture, that’s how we mark time. We paste over our past with fiberboard facades and call it progress. It’s not evolution, though — it’s surrender to homogenization.

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Trust me — the Homogenization Conspiracy is not a figment of my fevered imagination. It’s not relegated to the Zippo, either. The perfect little lighter is just a pawn in this. If the dark forces that dictate our tastes can covertly take out an American icon like the Zippo by denying us its fuel source, what’s next? Rise up, America! If you don’t do it now, future generations will be consigned to a world ruled by overlords whose only allegiance is to disposability. And the world will end with the telltale click of a Zippo slamming shut...

Dancing with the Night

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Those of us who write about music are often reputed to be nerdish elitists, cloistered in dingy lofts surrounded by well-worn albums and old issues of Creem, pining for the halcyon days of relevant music and praying for the next rock messiah to descend from the heavens. And yeah, I can almost see where the body public might get that impression. We’re sometimes so absorbed with justifying pop music as art that we skirt past the minutiae roaming along the fringes of the form. As self-proclaimed arbiters of what defines the state of music, we disavow dance music as a bad memory we’ve long since outgrown.

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But once the horizon has swallowed the sun, and the darkness is illuminated by neon, life takes on a different complexion. Skies shift into a liquid pale against the moon, and something wells up inside us. On such nights, coffeehouses and acoustic guitars are too familiar for our alien impulses. We want to imbibe blue drinks and give ourselves over to the sensually primal beast within us.

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We want to dance, damn it!

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And once we’ve made our way through the invariably cavernous entrance of the club to find ourselves bathed in bass and shards of broken light, we’re transformed. There’s something wolfen in our eyes we ease into a symbiotic relationship with the music pulsing through the walls. It’s stentorian, seeping into our systems so subtly we’re barely aware that it punctuates our attempts at conversation, all the while prodding us to the dance floor. Our souls are no longer our own—we are willing servants to the whims of the DJ’s ever-shifting incantations. You’re about 10,000 light years from disco home, and all your preconceptions about music, relevance, culture and society have evaporated—at least for this moment.

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Make no mistake—club culture is a world unto itself—vibrant, often dark, pulsing with a life timed by beats from all over the world. And as much as critics, iconoclasts and old school aficionados of varying ilks would like to deny it, club music, with all its mixes and variations, is an integral idiom of the larger vocabulary of music as a whole.It’s not that club culture sprang into life full grown—it’s the lineal descendant of disco—which may explain why it’s rarely held up for review in the mainstream—but through the years, it’s mutated, evolved and spawned so many variations it’s nigh impossible to define it precisely. And really, there’s even less reason to attempt to do so. It’s the music of immediacy, stripped naked of any pretense and existing to remind us that at our most technological, we remain feral once the sun sets. From Berlin to Miami to London to New York and points in between, dance remains a universal language. It’s in the beats that the dialects make the language take shape.

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The London club Fabric not only speaks the language, but is fluent in almost all the dialects. Widely regarded as one of the best venues in the world, it’s renowned for Room One’s bass-driven vibrating dance floor, which sends the beats from the floor and feeds them directly into the body. More than a club, Fabric is also a label that regularly releases CDs designed to promote the musical diversity of the club. Released on alternating months as Fabric and FabricLive, they showcase the work of some of the club’s DJ’s, and represent any number of genres within the larger club texture.

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There are almost 80 titles in the series at this point, all with utilitarian numerals to identify them. Each one is unique in its approach to the mixtape. Fabric 33: Ralph Lawson is downtempo, almost a paean to acid jazz in its loopy instrumental renderings. In a completely different take, FabricLive.32: Tayo skillfully fuses breakbeats and bass with hip hop, dub and funk into something that stands beyond definition. Ewan Pearson, on Fabric 35, goes a bit more mainstream, drenching his pop sensibilities with a healthy dose of bass and percussion. FabricLive 33 finds Baltimore-based trio Spank Rock mixing East Coast mashups with unlikely dubs and sound effects, even finding slots for Yes and the Romantics in their seamless remixes.

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These examples barely scratch the surface of the Fabric and FabricLive CDs, which, depending on one’s proclivities, range from the somewhat safe to the truly mind-bending. What makes the series most noteworthy is that it always presents the unexpected. The CDs are, without fail, crystal reproductions that convey at least a sense of the excitement that the club Fabric generates. They may not be the sort of thing that inspire rock critics to pontificate hither and yon, but they nonetheless sample sources from around the globe.

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You can’t talk about club culture without acknowledging Berlin as the city that’s known for first embracing it wholeheartedly. The reunification of Germany after the fall of the Wall opened up a myriad of possibilities, and with that came a freedom to push the boundaries of dance music. The early attempts formed the basis for techno, and while it was often cited as cold and devoid of emotion, it remains the roots music of club culture. Nobody embodies the freewheeling spirit of contemporary Berlin more than Ellen Allien. She’s noted as a DJ, vocalist, music producer, and founder of her own label, BPitch Control.

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On the TimeOut release The Other Side: Berlin, Allien pays tribute to her beloved city via a video tour that focuses on its sights, sounds and smells. It’s saved from being another tourist guide by being narrated more by the music of the night than a simple voice-over. With sections devoted to shopping, nightlife, food and sights, it’s a two-plus hour tour that presents Berlin as maybe the coolest place in Europe.The accompanying CD is best described as a techno sampler that never quite conveys the aura of the Berlin scene. Allien’s Fabric 34 underscores her talents as a DJ much more effectively, evoking as it does an aura that’s both heavily dark and unbearably light. She’s a mistress of experimentation, the sort of which finds its way into the popular consciousness.

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Granted, the music of club culture doesn’t easily lend itself to quiet introspection. It’s too mercurial for that. When you’re talking about a pulse, you quickly realize as soon as you attach a definition to it, it’s jumped into a new realm. It leaves you with a beat you can’t get out of your head, at least until the moon rises again, and a new rhythm possesses you. In that regard, it personifies the meaning of pop culture—meaningful in its meaninglessness, and seared into our synapses for reasons we’ll never acknowledge—or define.

Writer's Block As a Way of Life

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For some unfathomable reason, writers are usually portrayed as angst-ridden, tortured souls, riddled by guilt and bearing the weight of the world’s sorrows on their shoulders. Of course, such depictions of writers are invariably written by writers, so it’s not that surprising. After all, self-loathing sells, assuming it’s packaged correctly.

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Californication (premiered Monday on Showtime, 10:30 PM EST) manages to take that iconic cliché and update it into a fully realized, contemporary character. Hank Moody (David Duchovny) is the author of a critically acclaimed first novel. ”God Hates Us All” has been optioned as a movie, a romantic comedy re-titled “A Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” That in itself would be enough to chaff any writer, what with the requisite move from NYC to LA, and the attendant realizations that writers rank rather low on the tinsel town food chain. In Moody’s case, it results in severe writer’s block, alleviated by sports sex and heavy drinking. That alone would make for a situation with which writers at any level could relate, but Californication complicates matters by making Moody a sympathetic character.

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For reasons unexplained, Moody’s ex-girlfriend and love of his life, Karen (Natascha McElhone) and his precocious twelve-year-old daughter Becca (Madeleine Martin) also live in LA, making visitation much more convenient for all involved. But it’s the relationship between these three characters that cements the series in reality. At its heart, Californication is really a show about the extreme routes our quests for purpose take us. As distanced from each other as Hank and Karen would like to think they are, neither can escape the fact that Becca bonds them together.

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It’s hardly maudlin, though. That underlying dynamic serves as a springboard for many of the episode’s gags, most of which revolve around Hank’s covert sexual escapades. And there are several of those here, recounted playfully, if somewhat explicitly. You can’t call it gratuitous, though — the dalliances are integral to Hank’s character. He’s a man slowly disintegrating from within, clinging to reality by moments, wherever he finds them. The pilot hints that some of those moments may come back to haunt him, particularly in the case of one dalliance who he thought was a college student.

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With Californication, Showtime further positions itself as the prime source of original programming on premium cable. Airing after Weeds, it’s another series that illustrates the network’s commitment to provocative drama and comedy. Like Weeds and Dexter, Californication expands the boundaries of episodic television. It’s not a series designed for the lowest common denominator. But for those yearning for a comedic series that can speak to universal themes, Californication is a beacon of hope for the future.

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Oh, yeah — it’s pretty freakin’ funny, too.

No Wonder I'm Addicted to Weeds

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When last we left our hapless heroes, at the close of season two, things weren’t exactly going swimmingly. In fact, it was a standoff of Tarantino proportions. By all accounts, Nancy’s DEA husband of convenience, Peter, had been offed by the Armenian mob. Silas, in a fit of teenage rebellion, had disappeared to points unknown, and Shane had taken it upon himself to scout out Pittsburgh as a new home for the family.

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Meanwhile, Nancy and Conrad, not knowing any of this, but realizing that their crop has become a hot commodity for all the wrong reasons, were all set to sell out to up and coming gangsta U-Turn when the Armenians burst in demanding the pot. Guns were drawn in every direction, forcing Nancy to open the safe, only to find the pot was no longer there.

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As I said, just about everybody involved had seen better days.

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Don’t expect a cookie-cutter resolution to these dire events in the season premiere of Weeds. As this Showtime series embarks on its third season, Weeds continues down its serpentine route satirizing the dualities of suburban middle class life. In fact, with this opener, Weeds further entrenches itself as the most fully realized comedy series ever aired on American television.

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The genius of Weeds has always been in its ability to hold our frailties and hypocrisies to the light. “Doing the Backstroke,” this season’s debut episode, continues that tradition, and kicks it up a notch. Without giving too much away, everybody survives the Mexican standoff — for now, anyway. After all, it was never really about a drug deal gone bad, any more than the series has ever really been about dealing pot in the suburbs. That’s all metaphor to explore larger issues of corruption at every level of life.

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Weeds doesn’t bat you about the head to deliver that message — it tickles you into submission instead. Running jokes are woven subtly into the thread of the plot, pointing to our dependence on cell phones as lifelines, our tenuous relationships with friends and relatives, and our day to day struggles to make ends meet. That it’s all delivered with a wicked wink and an impish grin makes it all the more enticing.

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If this episode is any indication, the third season of Weeds looks to be its finest yet, striking a balance between the melancholy whimsy of the first season and the darker tones of the second. In thirty minutes, it’s set the stage for a multitude of subplots, any of which could veer off in an infinite variety of directions. One thing is certain, though. Wherever you think the plot may be headed, you’re wrong. And that is precisely why you’ll come back for another hit.

Weeds season premiere airs tonight on Showtime, 10PM, EST, and will be available on Showtime On Demand any time. You can also see the debut online with a Showtime VIP Insider pass.

The Unbearable Lightness of Lisa Germano

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Lisa Germano views life from its ragged edges, and sends back her dispatches as gossamer whispers wrapped in wine-soaked irony. Startling by virtue of its simplicity, her music wafts dreamily through dimly lit corridors inhabited by demons we’d rather not face. She’s so beguiling, speaking like a waif, her voice punctuated by an almost random piano or discordant calliope, it takes a moment to realize these are cautionary tales born of confession.

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The beauty of Germano’s work doesn’t lie in lyrics couched in regret or redemption — it’s in her almost whimsical resignation to whatever particular hell she may be observing. Her last CD, In the Maybe World, was one of the best (and one of the more obscure) albums of 2006. It masterfully dealt with finality, or more exactly, that transcendent area between the dimensions of life and death. Quiet and haunting, it was an oddly optimistic work that was never intended to broach the top forty. Critics, myself included, largely praised it, but it found only a limited audience.

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The reissue of 2003’s Lullaby for Liquid Pig represents something of a prologue to In the Maybe World, as well as explaining what could have been perceived as a nearly eight year gap between Germano’s recordings. Originally released on the ARTISTdirect imprint, it received glowing reviews at the time. However, the label shut down shortly after, and the album went out of print and into obscurity. Fortunately, Young God, Germano’s current label, has re-released it in a handsome 2-disc package that includes home recordings and live performances.

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Lullaby for Liquid Pig, like the later In the Maybe World, is a themed album. But where the latter dealt with finality, Pig explores obsession and addiction in its various incarnations. It’s not that she’s seeking redemption — it’s more like she’s inviting guests into her parlor to share a drink and reminisce about mutual frailties. It’s my favorite feeling/not there .what a good place to be/too bad it’s still raining inside, she quietly giggles against a wash of little girl music boxes on “Candy,” celebrating her relationship with alcohol, but lamenting at the close, “too bad I got nowhere today.” She shrugs it off, leaving us feeling a bit awkward, but fascinated by her candor.

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If she’s angry, it’s only at her own shortcomings, and she usually buries them so deeply in her whispered whimsies that when they do surface, they elicit empathy rather than sympathy. In Germano’s corner of the universe, demons cavort with angels, with neither faction wrestling for the upper hand. Neither can exist without the other, so they resort to using the psyche as their playground. In “Liquid Pig,” the demon is “a freak magnet,” attracting enabling partiers, but in “Lullaby for Liquid Pig,” the pig has attained angel status. Without you here/without your love/the world is just there/it doesn’t move me.

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It’s not as bleak as it sounds at first glance. Germano is a brilliant tour guide, pointing out little cracks of joy nestled here and there in her sometimes neurotic meanderings. In fact, it all has a bit of a carnival atmosphere, dominated by Neil Finn’s eerie optigon renderings playing off Germano’s fractured piano runs. Johnny Mar and Craig Ross add guitar nuances, and Wendy Melvoin, along with Butch and Joey Waronker, keep the percussion effective but subdued. Sebastian Steinberg’s flowing bass imbues the entire affair with an otherworldly spirit.At its core, Lullaby for Liquid Pig, like In the Maybe World, is a paean to the future. Even at its darkest moments, it finds a sense of balance in the absurdities of life. What results is an album that at scarcely thirty minutes, speaks volumes about coping with the pitfalls and pratfalls of addictions and obsessions. In the end, it’s a fluffy pillow to comfort you in your darkest thoughts. And that’s not such a bad way to fall asleep.

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The bonus disc on this reissue is far from filler. The live performances offer a more intimate portrait of Lisa Germano, affording us a glimpse of he self-deprecating sense of humor, and the home recordings and alternate takes sometimes outshine the final version. The most odd aspect of the bonus disc, however, is that it’s almost twice as long as the album itself. No matter. Lisa Germano is a voice who beckons you into recesses of the soul. And once you’ve explored them, you emerge a little bit better for the journey.

Walking Through Weeds

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Weeds has never really been about a widowed suburbanite who deals pot to her friends and neighbors to make ends meet. That’s merely a metaphor. In fact, almost every aspect of Weeds works as metaphor. First, there’s the name of the LA suburb “Agrestic”, which is an Old English word meaning “characteristic of the fields”, but also means “crude and lacking in sophistication.” The characters in the series all represent some degree of disenfranchisement within their political and social strata. Marijuana is actually the most minor component of Weeds, serving as a crude capitalist icon from which everything else emanates. Or maybe I get high just watching Weeds. It’s addictive that way.

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Season one was an enjoyable romp through some of suburbia’s darker boulevards. While Mary-Louise Parker’s portrayal of small time suburban pot dealer Nancy Botwin was the force that kept it cohesive, the interplay between her and the characters surrounding her made the show pop. Kevin Nealon, as Doug Hunter, and Elizabeth Perkins, as Celia Hodes, in particular, were outstanding symbols of middle class extremes. Both pointed to the dirty little secrets that lurked beneath the veneer of the pristine gated community. Doug was the city councilman who was perpetually stoned, but maintained his CPA business, and Celia was the PTA president whose obsession with image didn’t preclude her extramarital activities. And, of course, both were close to Nancy.

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With season two, Weeds expands on its suburban satire, and wisely takes the storyline into more logical, often darker realms. What we get as a result is a series that weaves seamlessly between broad comedy and scalpel sharp drama, and never misses a beat between transitions. Plot points introduced in the first season flow effortlessly into the second, progressing in a way that unfolds much like life does. Alliances have shifted. Nancy and Conrad have decided to expand their operation, and grow their own. Heylia, Conrad’s aunt and Nancy’s supplier, isn’t happy about this, for obvious reasons. When Nancy’s bakery burns down (perhaps aided by Sanjay), it presents a perfect opportunity for Nancy and Conrad to eliminate the middle man, however.

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As rosy as all that may sound, the growing business is not without complications. After all, Nancy is trying to raise her two sons, Silas and Shane, who are in separate stages of pubescent male hormone pinball. Silas is exerting his male dominance factor, usually not very well. And Shane is torn between the newfound joys of masturbation and realizing that joining the debate team is a good way to make certain chicks notice him. Uncle Andy isn’t the best role model for them, but there may be hope in the Israeli ex-commando who teaches him that she can be more man than he’ll ever be (long story, that one). As if that weren’t complicated enough, Nancy has entered into a marriage of convenience with DEA agent Peter—the mutual reasoning being that he can’t ever testify against her. And after Celia defeats Doug in the city council election, they enter into a torrid affair. There’s more, but this should be enough to make your head spin.

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Of course, it could all lapse into silly comedy, but series creator Jenji Kohan and her team of writers hone each episode with such surgical precision that you barely notice the precise instants when the storyline veers into darkly dramatic territory. The characters don’t seem to realize it, either. By and large, they go blithely through their day to day routine, mostly oblivious to all but their most immediate concerns. In fact, only the characters most involved with pot, from dealers to users to Feds, are even remotely aware of the forces transpiring around them. Even then, the principals in Weeds amplify the mundane aspects of their lives to the point that the larger issues don’t register with them until they’re potentially beyond their control.

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It all culminates as the season unfolds, with the Armenian mafia in a Mexican standoff with a couple of gangsta hustlers. Both sides want Nancy’s and Conrad’s stash. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have it, since her son Silas has already jacked it. It’s a cliffhanger that surpasses Tarantino in terms of tension. Season three debuts on Showtime 13 August. I have a feeling that life in the suburbs is going to get a lot more complicated.

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In the meantime, season one (ten episodes) and season two (twelve episodes) are available on DVD, and as downloads directly from Showtime. This is groundbreaking comedy that balances outrageous humor with provocative social commentary. The beauty of it is that it never gets heavy-handed on either end of the spectrum. And even though it has moments of taut drama, Weeds never strays far from being, well... mellow.

The Very Inconvenient Truths About How We Fucked Up In Iraq

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I was watching the news the other day — MSNBC, CNN, it doesn’t matter — when I saw a video clip that was almost surreal. The Prez was jogging with two double amputees. Apparently, they were Iraq War veterans who had been outfitted with the latest in prosthetics, proving that they can run with the best of them. Now, while it’s great that technology in that area has progressed to the point that people can function regardless of disabilities, it’s distasteful as hell that Bush would use the jog as another photo op and a plug for his latest half-assed assurance that veterans will be afforded the very best in medical care. It caused me to flashback to the first of May 2003, when Bush, resplendent in fighter pilot gear, stood astride an aircraft carrier and proclaimed that the Coalition had emerged victorious in the Iraqi War.

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Over four years later, over 4000 American soldiers have died in Iraq, and more than 20,000 have been wounded. Some estimates put the Iraqi civilian death toll at well over 600,000. Clearly, in the summer of 2003, the battle to secure Iraq was just beginning.

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No End in Sight is a film that coldly details the crucial missteps by the Bush administration in the days following the fall of Baghdad. First-time director Charles Ferguson’s film cannot be described as a left wing diatribe — there are no Michael Moore-style bombastics here. Rather, this is a film that raises emotional temperature by virtue of its objective approach. Ferguson, a former senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, with a solid background in political science, steers away from obvious ideology, allowing the chronology of events to speak for themselves.

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Putting those events into perspective are a number of administration officials, including former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, General Jay Garner (who was initially in charge of the Iraqi occupation) and Ambassador Barbara Bodine, who was in charge of Baghdad in 2003. Many of the people interviewed were on the ground in Iraq, and those who weren’t, were directly involved in the planning stages of Iraqi reconstruction. The most impassioned of the interviewees is Col. Paul Hughes, former officer of strategic policy in Iraq. He pulls no punches as he recounts how his efforts, and those of other advisors, were trivialized, and in many cases outright ignored, by administration officials at home.

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No End in Sight takes no position on our justifications for going to war with Iraq. It does look at how we fucked up the aftermath by allowing career politicians with no military experience to oversee the rebuilding of the country. As a result, we were left with insufficient troop levels to maintain the unsteady peace. Donald Rumsfeld and others in the Bush administration labored under the fallacious premise that the Coalition forces would be greeted as liberators. As a result, they paid scant attention to the realities of what was happening on the ground, and essentially turned a deaf ear to military officials working there. In effect, there was no plan to rebuild Iraq. Consequently, the military, with no police authority, did nothing to stop the widespread looting following the fall of Baghdad. That early looting also included robbing weapons caches of the Hussein regime.That was only the beginning.

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Under the auspices of Paul Bremer, the Iraqi military was dismantled, and all Ba’athists were purged from the government. This left thousands of highly trained professional and military personnel unemployed and disgruntled. That move was largely instrumental in the origins of the current insurgency. By 2006, Americans were hardly seen as liberators, but rather as an occupying force.

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This film doesn’t delve into the current troop surge, or any of the current debates surrounding the war. It doesn’t need to. It graphically illustrates how we got into this mess. From the outset, the Bush administration mishandled the reconstruction of Iraq with recklessness, arrogance, and incompetence. The beauty of No End in Sight is the way in which it deftly pursues that history relentlessly, but with chilling objectivity.

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No End in Sight won the Special Jury prize for Best Documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Expect it to be in the running for an Oscar this year. It is, without doubt, the most relevant documentary about the Iraq War thus far. No End in Sight is now playing in select theatres in New York and Washington, DC, and will be playing across the country later in August. A DVD release is tentatively scheduled for 30 October.

Two Spheres of Rock

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Books about rock music, and especially about the sordid histories of rock musicians, tend to leave me cold. Books, no matter how hard they try, can’t capture the primal urgency of the music. Recently, I’ve come across a couple of books, however, that make me think that perhaps I’ve been reading the wrong books. That being said, I still suggest you crank up the respective music described to achieve maximum impact.

Part graphic novel, part biography, part shooting script and part fanzine tribute, Gorillaz: Rise of the Ogre is a lavish book detailing the origins of the world’s first virtual rock band. Depending on your point of view, Gorillaz are either the animated creation of Damon Albarn of the band Blur and Tank Girl illustrator Jamie Hewlett, or an actual band from the backstreets of cyberspace. Rise of the Ogre makes a convincing case for the latter theory.

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It’s not even a matter of suspending disbelief. All one need do is allow the premise that cyberspace is another dimension of reality with which we’re only recently communicating, due to our tinkering with computers. If we accept that idea, then the entire Gorillaz phenomenon takes on an entirely new complexion. Through their music, we get glimpses of the slightly different plane in which they dwell. And since they do exist in a reality that’s a tiny bit out of synch with our limited perceptions, we see them almost as cartoon characters, and hear their music as something comfortingly familiar, yet ominously alien. It may sound far-fetched at first, but consider this: cartoon characters don’t produce debut albums that skyrocket to #1 in record time, as Gorillaz did in 2001 (about the time the Internet changed the face of communication.) Coincidence?—I don’t think so.

Rise of the Ogre traces the origins of Gorillaz, beginning with the birth of bassist/mastermind Murdoc Niccals, and following him through his formative years of low-paying jobs and failed bands. It chronicles his fateful first encounters with Stuart Pot, who would become known as 2D, the band’s singer and sometime keyboardist. Guitarist Noodle had herself shipped FedEx from Japan to join the band, after answering an ad in NME. She was voted one of Teen People’s “25 Hottest Stars Under 25” in 2006 - no small feat for a “cartoon” character. Drummer Russell Hobbs, a native of Brooklyn, New York, was a veteran of street wars when he joined Gorillaz, and has been known on more than one occasion to serve as the group’s unofficial protector.

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The book can’t be dismissed as a promotional tool for another self-serving rock group. Rise of the Ogre pulls no punches as it chronicles the numerous rises, falls and resurrections of Gorillaz, all brilliantly illustrated with archival “photos” that show the band at their best - and worst. Interviews with such notables as Neneh Cherry, Dennis Hopper and Ike Turner add a dimension of credibility to the proceedings.

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While Rise of the Ogre may be best taken with several grains of salt, it is no more audacious than Strange Brew: Eric Clapton & the British Blues Invasion 1965-1970. In order to fully appreciate this 350 page tome, you have to first accept its core premise that British Blues can be traced to Eric Clapton’s stint with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. That’s certainly debatable, but author Christopher Hjort is undaunted in his pursuit of that thesis. What results is an exhaustive, and often exhausting chronology of British Blues as it played out on a daily basis between 1965-1970.

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Eric Clapton, as the title would suggest, is the central player here, but he is by no means the only character. It begins with Clapton leaving the Yardbirds at the age of 20, and joining Mayall’s struggling Bluesbreakers, wherein he became the darling of the burgeoning blues scene. But it goes beyond Clapton as catalyst, and illustrates the parallels between his career and those of Peter Green (who would co-found Fleetwood Mac) and Mick Taylor (who would go on to transform the sound of the Rolling Stones). Other parallel careers spring from there, as the degrees of separation narrow to include the early days of Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page.

Strange Brew utilizes every newspaper clipping, every magazine notice, every handbill, in fact, any and everything it can pull out of the hat to give a sense of urgency to the British blues boom. It succeeds largely because it literally takes those five years and breaks them down to a daily chronology. That’s also its shortcoming.

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It’s not a book to read cover-to-cover, unless you’re obsessive-compulsive, or a rabid rock historian. There’s a lot of information here, and finding analogies between Jethro Tull and the Bluesbreakers is certainly admirable, but the wealth of info can become tiresome. On the other hand, Strange Brew is a great book to merely pick up and open to any given page. Either way, you’ll know more than you ever thought you wanted to know about the British Blues Invasion.

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It gets down to this: Rock and roll is a sentient being, constantly evolving and living with its own heartbeat. Its histories are woven of legend, and cannot be tied to a singular version of reality. Whether we’re detailing the history of British blues, as in Strange Brew, or whether we’re glimpsing into an alternate universe, as with Rise of the Ogre, is largely irrelevant. What’s important is that the music is so integral to our self-image that we feel compelled to archive it.

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And that's where the reality really sets in forever.