Something 4 The Weekend # 218

Laurie Anderson: Homeland: "Another Day In America" [mp3]

We all know what this Sunday is all about, right?

I'm not a fan of nationalism, so my thoughts and feelings about the events of 9-11-01, and our rememberance of the day on this 10th anniversary, are not very deep or involved. Which means this Sunday I'll be drinking Kentucky bourbon, smoking SW Sconnie weed, watching football, monitoring my fantasy teams, and perhaps doing things like absent-mindedly drawing comic strip stuff, or finally getting around to reading Portnoy's Complaint. At some point I'll probably order a 16" Pestoral from Roman Candle Pizza, and if my fantasy teams do well, and if I actually start reading Portnoy's Complaint, I might masturbate sometime in the evening.

My biggest hope for Sunday is that I hear bits of Lee Greenwood's "Proud To Be An American" no more than three times that day. My plan is to mute the TV and crank Fucked Up, or some such loud and rollicking music combo of that sort.

So yeah, this is another solipsistic blog entry, making a national tragedy all about me...

But what would you have me write? That I'm not a fan of nationalism? That I believe our current financial problems can be partially tied to the events of 9-11? That I'm not a 9-11 truther but I still don't understand how the damage at the Pentagon was done by a passenger jet airliner and not a missile? That we retaliated in the wrong country for reasons other than retaliation?

You don't want or need my opinions about nationalism, fundamentalism, war, death, the Bush Administration, the Obama Administration, or the politics of oil. Of course, you didn't want or need to know I'm probably going to pleasure myself Sunday evening, but here we are.

Information is not knowledge, babycakes.

I suppose the blog post I should have written here and now would have posited the thought that when I think about New York City, I think of maybe eight people - Woody Allen, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, Gregory Corso, and the Talking Heads.

And then I could have gone on to write about how Anderson's song "O Superman" appeared to be a bit prescient in light of the events of 9-11, and somehow brought it around to this particular song you're hopefully listening to right now.

But I didn't do that, did I?

See, I've been hesitant to read Portnoy's Complaint because I think I'm too old to really truly enjoy it. It's like The Basketball Diaries, or Catcher In The Rye, which were scriptures to me when I was 17, but not so much with subsequent readings. From what I know of Roth's book, I fear the same might be true - that it's a book I probably should have read when I was 28. I guess I'll find out.

Hotcha! Hank

On The 4th Day Of Christmas...

I give to thee...FOUR KEY SONGS from the soundtrack to my screenplay, TRUE TALES OF WARLORD TODD...I've been writing and revising Warlord Todd for a bunch of years now, cuz I half-suck, and am half-perfectionist, which is a brutal combination for a creative type, innit? [see "Unsatisfied" below]

In a nutshell, the film takes place in the spring and summer of 1985, in an upper middle-class white suburban town, and concerns a dead body found on a golf course, mistaken identity, revenge, teenaged weed dealers, a biker gang, a Latino drug familia from the big city, unrequited love, teen angst, and New Coke, among others...

The songs I've envisioned being used in various scenes are obviously of the time period covering roughly 1979 to 1985, weighted heavily towards 84/85, and represent the songs and bands and styles of music the young people of that era would have been listening to on the radio or watching on MTV...Typically while working on the screenplay, I'm listening to an MP3 CDr containing approximately 200 songs from that general era, but the final working script will probably utilize 20-30 of those songs, with maybe 6 of those being absolutely crucial to the theme and plot...

Husker Du: "Divide And Conquer"

"Divide & Conquer" plays over the opening title sequence, wherein we zoom in from outer space, to the film's location in Manchester, Wisconsin, and follow a kid on a BMX bike (or possibly a skateboard, but that seems too trite) riding through the town...As the song ends, and the opening credits finish, the biker arrives at his destination, a group of other slacker kids hanging out on the edge of a bandshell in a park downtown, who proceed to talk about the events of the opening scene, which happened just prior to this opening title sequence...This song speaks directly to suburban living in that era, and makes broader statements about homogenized culture, people turning into cattle, etc, and as such makes for a very nice opening song volley...Another Husker Du song, "Turn On The News", also features prominently in a later scene...

Laurie Anderson: "O Superman! (For Massenet)"

At approximately the 10 minute mark there begins a montage which includes scenes of the protagonist Hank (hey, that's me!) doing his job as a golf course groundskeeper, finding a dead body in a sandtrap on that golf course, being questioned by the cops, the cops informing the deceased's family, the body being examined in the morgue, etc...This song plays during that montage, and if our protagonist has a theme song, I suppose this is it...

Devo: "Beautiful World"

The film's antagonist and titular character, Warlord Todd, is an unabashed DEVO fanatic, and so several Devo songs are used throughout the film...This Devo song, in particular though, fully captures the classism that underpins the reality of Manchester, WI in 1985, not to mention the heirarchy of the high school... "It's a beautiful world for you...Not me..."

The Replacements: "Unsatisfied"

In some ways, this song might represents one of the major ideas/themes running throughout this movie - the question of how or why these people, who have it pretty damn good in this life, are still not satisfied with what they have...They have money, health, possessions, love, sex, drugs, security...and yet they're empty, and feel cheated by life, the government, God. Some of these people retreat back into a very small corner, while others lash out violently at the world around them...

Hotcha! Hank