Everything Hits At Once

* Ted Leo. Live. I saw him last Friday night at the Granada Theater in Dallas. I can't think of a much better way to spend $12.

It wasn't a large crowd, and there was nary a hipster to be seen. This might be because Leo has been around for a while and the fans tend to be a bit older than the fashion victim 19 year olds (although not nearly as old as the crowd at Wilco last fall). Or this could mean that Leo and his Pharmacists are not hip enough to draw this hipsters out, who are always looking for the next unknown thing, which will either involved a lonely guy with a guitar or a large group of people with organs, tambourines, accordions, and clarinets. It's hard to maintain your indie cred these days with an electric guitar, an enthusiastic live show, and intelligent, intelligible, incisive lyrics. (Or, maybe the hipsters WERE out and they've just wised up and realized that their faux-retro blazer from JC Penney is NOT cool and it never was.)

In any case, there were many happy people and there was much of Leo getting his Thin Lizzy on by wailing on his axe as if the world depended upon it. Plus, there was witty banter with would-be hecklers and a base player who looked like Bolan, minus the feather boa.




* Kurt Vonnegut. Dead. I typically don't like to comment on this sort of thing here because it's very, very cliché. Somewhat forgotten famous person dies and everyone is quick to write a post about it. See: Ronald Reagan, James Brown, etc. Of course this reached an all time high when everyone felt the need to wax nostalgic about Hunter Thompson and how much he meant to them and the world, though I suspect that less than a tenth of the people who claim to respect Hunter have actually read something by him.

But Vonnegut. Wow. That's one that actually deserves some reverence. Given, he was an old man, it's not as if he was taken from early by his own hand--not that he hadn't attempted that at least once. There will be plenty of articles talking about his legacy and plenty of people talking about what he meant to them and so forth, and 99% of it will be total crap. He wasn't a genius. He probably was an iconoclast. But the real thing to say about Vonnegut is not that he shaped a generation or he had noble goals or he had a dramatic influence on society, because I'm not sure any of those things are true. What was special about him is that he had a unique, uncompromising voice, perhaps most similar to Mark Twain, though not quite as folksy. He didn't really copy anyone else, and nobody can ever really duplicate him because there seems to be very little method to his madness. He just writes what he wants to say in his own fashion without the postmodern pretentiousness that effects way too many authors.

* Woody Allen. Genius. On some level I think that many of the serious issues that are buried even in many of Woody Allen's comedies leave me petrified. It's funny that some people have always accused him of trying to suppress his inner clown when he makes a serious film, because I see it as the opposite--his lightest comedies are just an attempt to please others and hide the cynic within.

While a movie like "Crimes and Misdemeanors" is certainly as pointed and cynical as it gets, it's the films that look at relationships and personal problems that usually get me (as opposed to those that look at the shortcomings of society). Last night I saw "Another Woman" for the first time, and it's one of the most serious films he ever attempted. He explored the same basic premise in "Deconstructing Harry," which was a comedy, and that premise is this: imagine looking back at your life and suddenly realizing all your own shortcomings that you've somehow been blind to all along. Rather than cast himself in the lead role, Gena Rowlands plays the main character, who is affluent, married, and successful in her career. And yet she's not happy--she just hasn't realized it yet. As things fall apart it's hard not to think "I hope this isn't the path I'm on, maybe I better make some changes."