I finally have mixes on 8tracks.com

Many months ago, friend, college media colleage and All That Howler Adam Perly linked me to 8tracks.com, a website for sharing mixes. I never got around to actually taking advantage of it until recently. Usually, I'd try and make a mix CD out of my favorite songs from the year, but the three of the four mixes I've posted pretty much sum up most of my favorites of 2008, old and new. If you click on the 8tracks link on the right, you can give them a listen.

Abby's High School Graduation Gift

1. "Rise Above" - Dirty Projectors
2. "Jodi" - The Dodos
3. "Freaked Flight (Alternate Version)" - High Places
4. "Badonka Donkey" - Born Ruffians
5. "This is Love" - PJ Harvey
6. "Melody Day" - Caribou
7. "Welfare Bread" - King Khan and His Shrines
8. "My First Lover" - Gillian Welch
9. "We Carry On" - Portishead
10. "I'm a Cuckoo (Avalanches Remix)" - Belle and Sebastian
11. "Shadow" - The Patience
12. "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!" - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
13. "It's Enough" - Sleater Kinney
14. "Skinny Love" - Bon Iver
15. "Cold Days from the Birdhouse" - The Twilight Sad
16. "So Much for the Afternoon" - Headlights
17. "Devastation" - The Besnard Lakes
18. "Old World" - The Modern Lovers

"Elyse, there's more to life than the Beatles"

1. "Fools" - The Dodos
2. "Second to None" - Phoenix
3. "Working to Work" - Field Music
4. "What Goes On" - Sufjan Stevens
5. "House of Cards" - Radiohead
6. "Graveyard Girl" - M83
7. "Oxford Comma" - Vampire Weekend
8. "Don't Make Me a Target" - Spoon
9. "Blind" - Hercules and Love Affair
10. "Marry Me" - St. Vincent
11. "We Tigers" - Animal Collective
12. "The Rat" - The Walkmen
13. "A Postcard to Nina" - Jens Lekman
14. "Gila" - Beach House
15. "All My Friends" - LCD Soundsystem
16. "Fake Empire" - The National

Elyse #2: More new songs. Some old songs too.

1. "Ole Rinka" - The Ruby Suns
2. "Nothing Ever Happened" - Deerhunter
3. "Saltwater" - Beach House
4. "Tell the World" - Vivian Girls
5. "No Excuses" - Air France
6. "Palmitos Park" - El Guincho
7. "Paranoid" - Kanye West
8. "For Reverend Green" - Animal Collective
9. "Androgynous" - The Replacements
10. "Teenagers" - Department of Eagles
11. "Helicopter" - XTC
12. "Sequestered in Memphis" - The Hold Steady
13. "The Tears and Music of Love" - Deerhoof
14. "You! Me! Dancing!" - Los Campesinos!
15. "Family Tree" - TV on the Radio
16. "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" - Antony and the Johnsons
17. "In the New Year" - The Walkmen
18. "Titus Andronicus" - Titus Andronicus

Gretchen's not a teenager anymore

1. "Teen Age Riot" - Sonic Youth
2. "Teenage Kicks" - The Undertones
3. "Teenagers" - Department of Eagles
4. "Teen Angst" - M83
5. "Teenage Lobotomy" - The Ramones
6. "Ballad of the Teenage Queen" - Johnny Cash
7. "Teen Creeps" - No Age
8. "That Teenage Feeling" - Neko Case
9. "A Perfect Teenhood" - ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead

Failures in Marketing: In Bruges

A warning for those who don't like spoilers ... there are SPOILERS below.

It's hard to imagine a duo of more affable and entertaining hit men than Jules and Vincent from Pulp Fiction. But that didn't stop critics from comparing to In Bruges guns-for-hire protagonists, Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson). From the looks of the trailer and the DVD box, the film looked like a - to steal the quote from Karen Drubin of Elle Magazine that's on the DVD cover - "A Hilarious, Twisted Pleasure." I'm not sure why they decided to capitalize each word of that, but still, hit men? In a medieval town no one knows? Where one of them likes it and the other so doesn't? With midgets? Hold onto your sides!



Sarcasm aside, I was actually looking forward to seeing this kind of movie since I am a big fan of Pulp Fiction and films of that ilk. Plus, like any shut-in American, hearing Colin Farrell use his natural Irish accent made him all the more appealing, since we all know that Europeans who speak English all tend to sound better at it than we Americans do for some reason.

What I didn't expect was how dark the movie actually was. OK, in a movie about hit men, there's bound to be some some blood and violence with politically incorrect humor found therein. And there definitely is some of it In Bruges. But the film's actual primary dilemma, Ray's guilt over accidentally shooting a little boy dead while on the job, is the polar opposite of twisted entertainment. I mean, they actually show the boy with his head wound before he falls over. And Ray, at one point in the movie, almost commits suicide over his crushing guilt, pondering whether or not he's going to hell over his accidental homicide. It's a difficult and daring subject that the marketing seems to completely undermine.

But you know what is funny? The back of the DVD box's plot synopsis says that the two hit men, "soon find themselves in a life-and-death struggle of comic proportions against one very angry crime boss (Ralph Fiennes.)" Of comic proportions? It's not like there's a bunch of random midgets and fat people buggering up the shootout. The film has a small and intimate feeling - much like the setting - from the beginning to the end. And like most of the movie - it is primarily a heavy affair interlaced with some odd and yet oddly natural comedic elements. (Like Fiennes and Farrell's negotiation of how they'll exit the hotel without harming the pregnant owner caught in the crosshairs.) But even as the film ends, with the blood that's spilled, In Bruges keeps its head in the realistic consequences, both emotional and physical, of violence, as opposed to a gleeful romp through bullets and bodies.

Fleet Foxes rule the audio and the visual (sometimes)

I know Fleet Foxes don't need their egos stroked any more since Pitchfork just placed their debut album and E.P. on top of their year-end album list. But I'm a bit surprised I haven't seen their video for "White Winter Hymnal" (#2 on Pitchfork's top Tracks list) on more lists. I know videos don't exactly get critiqued like albums or even singles. Heck, I'll even level with and say there are plenty of things to like about Fleet Foxes aside from their videos (like, you know, the songwriting and the harmonies and the live show blah blah blah...). But still, what a gorgeous piece of claymation...

That being said, the boys are only one-for-two in the video dept. The best I can say for "He Doesn't Know Why" is that all the band close-ups and, uh, goats make it sort of funny. Absurdly so. Sort of.

Late to the Game: Women

In a year where I only half-heartedly kept up with music, it should be no surprise that the onslaught of year-end lists will find one suddenly "seeing the light." 

This year's Pitchfork singles list highlighted a song by Canadian quartet and false advertisers, Women, called "Black Rice." I've heard their self-titled album a couple of times this year and it was a bit too ramshackle for me to get attached to. But now, I can't get "Black Rice" out of my head, specifically the part of the chorus where Patrick Flegel jumps into his falsetto.

Alternative Christmas: MST3k style

There's plenty to debate this holiday season; turkey or ham? fake plastic tree or flammable real tree? A Charlie Brown Christmas or How the Grinch Stole Christmas? But for the Mystery Science Theater 3000 enthusiast, one debate rises above - the Christmas episode with Mike or the one with Joel?

In one corner, we've got Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, in which aliens kidnap Santa and two American kids in order to bring some joy to depressed Martian kids and possibly kill him. There's also "Dropo" the beer-gutted silly Martian who brings the fake laughter in every character... except the ones trying to shoot Santa out of the air lock.

In the other corner, we've got plan old Santa Clause. This badly dubbed Mexican film attests that Santa lives in space, children stereotypes from all over the world "volunteer" to work for him and that his reindeer are wind-up toys. Oh, and he fights Satan!

Personally, I'm a bigger fan of Mike Nelson and the hilarious Christian values shoe-horned into Santa Clause. But Martians does have "A Patrick Swayze Christmas," and Servo's great speech about what would happen if Santa and the reindeer could fly in space. The latter is on DVD, but both are on Youtube.