The Good News, #16
Hello True Believers!
Welcome back to The Good News!
We've got another show coming up! Tickets are here:
https://dice.fm/event/eorqry-zealottwin-archer-28th-mar-skylark-lounge-denver-tickets?pid=3b6c903d
A nice thing to listen to this week:
V/A - Roots of Narcocorrido (2004)
This recommendation sits somewhere between a "Something fun" and a "Nice thing to listen to", as it's a bit of a history lesson disguised as an album (this won't be the last time I recommend one of these; I've got one on Calypso in the pipeline). "Narcocorrido" is a style/genre of music that consists of "ballads about drugs and contraband and their illegal trafficking", but it's so much more than that. I remember hearing once that one of the things that add a bit of dramatic irony to the songs is that the instruments that the songs were played on were themselves stolen, but I can't in good faith find anything to corroborate that, so I'll leave that to you the reader to discover ;). If anything, you probably haven't heard anything quite like these songs, and they can give you a good atmosphere while you clean and do dishes this week.
Terrific thing to watch:
Fast 5 (2011)
When I was in college, my weekly raiding of the library's Criterion Collection section had me well versed in all things French New Wave, Italian Neo-Realism, and German Expressionism ("Second Cinema", to Solanas/Getino fans ;)), but by and large I had abandoned modern cinema. I saw Super Bad and Saw in theaters, at the behest of my friends, and that pretty much wrapped up any desire to understand modern popular culture. Giving a shot to Spider-Man 3 cemented that feeling. Now, my memories tell me that as I neared graduation, my good friend Josh, who was also getting a film studies minor, told me to get my head out of my ass and see the film that America is seeing. I recall being dragged to Fast 5, and subsequently having the most hootin-n-hollerin-est time I'd had in a an epoch. But, for the life of me, I cannot seem to square the fact that I graduated in 2009, and Fast 5 came out in 2011. But, as it turns out, Fast & Furious (#4 in the series) did come out in that exact sweet spot. So, consider me your unreliable narrator today when I say Fast 5 completely kicked this heady film student right in the teeth and I'm all the better for it. Fast 5 is a RIOT. The only reason there are things like it is because it set the standard. People look at this series like anyone could write/make them, but if that were the case, we would have alternatives. But try as I might, I look around I don't see a Gone in 60 Seconds cinematic universe, or Torque series, or a Need for Speed anthology. Now, popularity doesn't always map on to quality or something that might be worth your time. Let us consider the Avatar movies. But there is something uniquely specially about how particularly dumb these movies are, while providing some of the best, most inventive, out and out wild action sequences. People say a 5 year old could do what Jackson Pollock did, but I'd argue those folks have a fundamental misunderstanding of what is happening here. It's hard to write a good pop song.
A good read:
Reaper Man - Terry Pratchett (1991)
All right we've just gotta get this out of the way. This is my favorite book. With that said, it will almost certainly not be your new capital F Favorite book, but I think you'll like it. Let me open up with the bad: I think about half of this book is a little boring and is there to pad out the other half. It's broken up into an A and B plot, one following Death, the grim reaper, having an existential crisis, and one following the faculty of a wizard school dealing with the fallout of the dead not being ushered to the other side. The wizard stuff has become a little more bearable as I've gotten older, but I have to admit I'm in it for the Death stuff. It's a book that explores identity and meaning in the general ways that a book about someone having an existential crisis would generally do, but it does so from the perspective of a complete outsider; from the point of view of a fully formed person upon whom mortality has just recently been thrust upon. It doubles down on the trick that Science Fiction and Fantasy employ when they're utilized effectively: taking a mundane thing about human existence and obfuscating it in such a way that it allows us to view it from the outside.
And finally, our weekly pic of the pup, Apollo:
Be nice to each other, and we'll see you next week!
Best,
Luke