Anyone who has ever watched even a few minutes of stand-up comedy knows that guys are different than girls. If I have learned anything from the shallow insights of the countless cut-rate comics I have seen on TV over the years, it is this: girls like talking about their feelings, romantic dinners by candle light and shopping for shoes. Guys like sex, football, and fart jokes. There are variations on this theme of course, but that basically sums it up.
By extension, we also know that guys and girls like different kinds of movies. Hollywood producers certainly know this, and their market research has shown them that this universal truth can also be a guiding principle for film making. Males in the coveted 18-34 age bracket need to see explosions, kung-fu and boobs in their movies if they are going to throw the full weight of their demographic behind a film on opening weekend. Girls, on the other hand, need something that falls into either the romantic comedy or sappy melodrama categories to get them into theaters.
Needless to say, this presents a problem when guys and girls go to see a movie together - a pretty common occurrence, not to mention a classic American dating ritual. Sure, every once in a while you get a movie that everyone can agree on, but how many times can you go see Slumdog Millionaire? With most movies skewing toward one sex or the other, a compromise inevitably happens at the box office; either a couple sees the movie he wants (Crank 2) or the movie she wants (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) or a movie that nobody really wants to see (Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail).
Since this is one of the greatest problems plaguing the world today, I decided to put my worn out, over-caffeinated brain to work on a solution. The result is a simple formula that can be applied to all date movies. If enough directors decide to incorporate it into their film making we might just eliminate the need for the romantic comedy genre all together.
The format basically works like a double bill compressed into one conventional length movie. One half of the movie would be for the guys, the other half for the girls. For an example of how this would work, I’ll apply the formula to the movie Felon starring Stephen Dorf and Val Kilmer. In the movie, Stephen Dorf plays a husband and father who is wrongfully sent to prison. He gets strong-armed into covering for the Aryan Brotherhood and ends up in the most hardcore part of the prison, where he shares a cell with a serial killer (Val Kilmer) by night and fights gangbangers in the yard by day.
For those of you keeping score at home, that’s prison + gangs + lots of fighting = guy movie. In order to turn that into one of our new unisex date movies, you would do two things. First, compress all of the fighting, prison gangs and weird Val Kilmer scenes into a trimmed down 45 minute section of the movie. This part is for all the dudes in the audience. Once they get their fill of blood and tattoos, you move onto the second half of the movie which is - you guessed it - for the ladies.
In this half of the movie, we find Stephen Dorf home from prison and working to put his life back in order. He is thrilled to spend time with his son and he finally buys his wife that dress she’s always wanted. He still carries the psychological scars of his time in prison, which initially makes him cold and distant. But eventually, he and his wife work through it, slowly rebuilding their life and their love together. They come through this ordeal exhausted, but happy to find that their relationship is even stronger for the effort. And then maybe Stephen Dorf gets in one last fist fight with a rude neighbor or whatever, just so everybody has something to cheer for right at the end.
In truth, I don’t usually go in for this sort of populism, but every now and then it works. Besides the afore mentioned unisex date movie, ice cream parlors and Jane’s Addiction, a good example of the something-for-everyone approach is Canadian band Beast. The duo has only been together for about a year, but they’ve locked in on a sound that works like a musical survey of the last 20 years. With touches of trip hop, hip hop, punk-funk and guitar rock, Beast plays what singer Betty Bonifassi calls “trip rock.” Bonifassi sing-raps her lyrical indictments of satan and other evil spirits over a booming drumscape that swells with gospel choirs and vicious synthesizers.
The end result may not represent a finely honed singular vision, but you can play it any party, club or biker BBQ and not piss anyone off. It stands to reason that both guys and girls will like the band as well. Pending any new advances in the date movie industry, you might just be better off taking your date to a Beast concert instead.
No, we were not captured by pirates. Hard to say what really happened, but something was not working in one of the dark corners of the internet which, in turn, caused all Tough Customer websites to go dead. For now we’re going to say that it probably had something to do with gremlins.
Anyhoo, we’re up and running again, so be on the look out for more of the strange and obtuse music writing that you know and love us for. We’ll have some new stuff posted for you shortly.
When I was studying Greek and Roman history in college I was frequently bothered by a nagging sensation that I had missed out on human civilization’s most outrageous party era. What could be better than the wine-soaked bacchanalia of ancient Rome or the ritual ecstasy of a Dionysian prayer meeting? Back then, people spent all their free time in a giant naked pile of sex, retsina, and roasted meat. The vomitoriums were always packed and you couldn’t walk 20 feet without stumbling onto an orgy. At least that’s how I understand it.
Then again, rumor has it that the Roaring ’20s were also pretty good, party-wise. America as fat with post-war optimism and a healthy economy. Jazz was booming out of every nightclub and people couldn’t stop doing the Charleston. Add to that short flapper skirts and a ready supply of opium, and you’ve got a decade-long party that begins to rival anything the ancient Greeks might have put together. However, even though it happened in the 20th century, I still missed that party by a good 80 years. The Roaring ’20s might as well have been the Roaring ’20s B.C. as far as I’m concerned.
This knowledge kept me depressed for a little while until I started listening to music and watching movies from the late ’70s and early ’80s. Holy shit! If the movies 54 and Boogie Nights are any indication, those halcyon days were filled with strong drugs and tight pants. The whole thing was set to a funky beat and all it took was some chest hair and a casual understanding of astrology to get even the homeliest guys laid. Sadly, I was born at the end of the ’70s, which makes me a product of the wanton disco era and therefore way too young to have enjoyed any of its perks.
Sigh. Yet another era of decadent, unbridled partying that cruel fate has willed me to miss.
My thinking about my own youthful epoch has gone on like this until recently when I came to a sudden realization. It’s not as though I”m living in an historically conservative or boring time. It would be one thing if I was trying to get buck wild in the Victorian Era or declare my unbridled individualism in the middle of the 1950s. But really, there’s nothing stopping me from busting loose right now - or jumping on MySpace to find 20 or 30 loose women to do it with me. We are in the middle of Spring Break after all; I could leave for Daytona Beach tomorrow morning and be doing body shots with a group of co-eds before sundown.
The fact of the matter is that’s just not my bag. The thought of partying all day on a Florida beach with a bunch of topless frat boys sounds awful. Add in the bad seafood and the inevitable Limp Bizkit CD stuck on repeat and you’re actually pretty close to describing my own personal hell. Don’t get me wrong - I’m all for nudity, loud music and wanton inebriation, but I have to do it on my terms. I would much rather drink my way through a rooftop party or bonfire on a warm beach somewhere. I would be happy to have people taking off their clothes and canoodling in the dark corners, just as long as I get to pick the music.
Assuming that’s the case, one of the things I would probably put on to set the mood is Brooklyn’s Sean Bones. Sean Bones is actually Sean Sullivan, the guitar player for Sam Champion, another fave here at TC//Wire. Under the Sean Bones moniker, Sullivan has created a laid back EP of Specials-esque ska funk. The tunes vibrate with a tropical lo-fi rhythm that works perfectly as the soundtrack to the first beer at the end of a summer day. Chances are you’ll find yourself drunk on the sound before you get drunk from the booze.
A drunken bacchanal it is not, but still a damn fine way to spend an afternoon. Perhaps future generations will look back on these casual springtime romps and envy our leisurely enjoyment of drink and sound. Who knows? Only history can judge us now.
Unless you’re an accomplished chef or alchemist, chances are you would not be able to walk into your home kitchen, take out some basic ingredients and create (re-create?) many of the processed foods we often eat. Like, I defy you to name one ingredient in a bag of Sour Patch Kids or a can of Mountain Dew Voltage (hint: calcium disodium EDTA ). And while I’m sure plenty of you do all your shopping at the local farmer’s market and only use sustainably raised grass fed beef in your cheeseburgers, most of the country doesn’t eat like that. On the contrary, most of the country eats fast food and processed snacks that are so far removed from conventional farm products they came from that people from a few hundred years ago wouldn’t even recognize them as food.
Actually, this could be be a funny Saturday Night Live skit. Somebody from, say, 1709 is transported via the magic of sketch comedy to the year 2009. Once here, they are presented with things like a pile of chicken nuggets or a can of Full Throttle Frozen Fury energy drink and then they have to figure out what to do with them. Of course, they might recognize the chicken-esque smell of the nuggets, but they would have never seen a perfectly formed, breaded and deep fried piece of all white “meat” like that before. They would probably assume that you could do any number of things with it - except eat it. Maybe they would take the can of Full Throttle and use it like a weapon, bludgeoning their futuristic hosts and stealing their mysterious chicken-scented nuggets. Seriously SNL, I know you’re struggling these days. Tell Lorne Michaels he can call me any time.
Oddly enough, one old-timey libation that has made it through the centuries relatively unscathed is root beer. Pour some into a frosty mug and it would appear exactly has it was back in the cowboy days. Even now you could easily make root beer in your backyard. All you need is some tree bark and a little yeast. What’s more, you can add a scoop of vanilla ice cream and just like that you have a root beer float, one of the most delicious desserts known to man. Or, if you want to take the whole thing into the 20th century, just throw it all in a blender and bam! - root beer freeze.
I would imagine that the idea of root beer as a symbol of versatility and lasting quality was not lost on Pigeon John and Flyn Adam. The LA emcee and producer have come together to create a new super group, er, duo in the vein of Gnarls Barkley or The Neptunes. They’ve squeezed the words together and are calling themselves Rootbeer. Rocking this tasty moniker, John and Adam have kicked their way into a decidedly modern hybrid genre that incorporates the ear candy of Brooklyn electro-pop, the laid back funk of West Coast hip hop and the corrupt revivalist disco of the so-called French bloghouse movement.
Like many elements of our futuristic diet, the Rootbeer sound would not be identifiable to anybody who happened to be magically transplanted from a pre-internet time period. But like their delicious namesake beverage, Rootbeer works with some pretty simple ingredients. The lyrics are ebullient and catchy, the bass lines roll out of the speakers like warm syrup and the drums cannot be denied. All that’s left to do is throw a scoop of vanilla ice cream in there and make that shit float.
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