My Favorite Mosque

I've brought this point up in my blog before, and maybe it's been the theme of my life ages 18-22, but you've gotta love your hometown. I know too many people that hate where they came from. And yes, maybe when you we're 18 you went off to college and found someplace better. And maybe you've calculated it all out and you can't ever feasibly sustain yourself in your hometown as an adult, you'll have to live elsewhere. If that's true, that's cool. But I get angry whenever I see people dissing their hometowns. That place, no matter where it is, was the backdrop for your childhood. It was around for and probably helped in the formative process. Your town made you the warrior you are today! Embrace it!

That being said, I love Toledo, and hate people who hate Toledo.

Toledo Ohio. Yes, it has it's faults. Like any non-Chicago great lakes city, the industry is drying up. And downtown Toledo, compared to similar sized down towns, is lacking...on the surface.

The series of bars on Adams St. are as good as any for a pub crawl that I've been. The food gives you Tony Packos chili, Calvino's Meat Beasty, and kielbasa, kielbasa and kielbasa. You've got the Old West End, The Toledo Museum of Art, and the World Famous Toledo Mud Hens. No matter where I go in America, people of heard of the Toledo Mud Hens- the quintessential minor league baseball team.

                                                    thank you M*A*S*H*

And we've also got what time magazine once called the best Mosque in America, the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo.

Picturesque and symbolic of Islam in America, the glittering dome and minarets stands off the side of the highway in a cornfield. When I lived in Cincinnati, my road home to Toledo was a straight shot north on I-75 until I merged on the outer loop of 475. This mosque stands at the split of the highways; every time I'd come home, the mosque welcomed me. Every time I left, the mosque waved goodbye. It's as much a sign telling me to change lanes as it is a smile telling me we missed you. Sure, I've never been inside the mosque and I'm not a Muslim, but this building is an irreplaceable piece of my hometown.

It caught fire on Sunday afternoon. It was ruled an arson, and currently there's no concrete word on when it will be inhabitable.

If you attack that mosque, a Toledo landmark, you've got a problem with Toledo, and you have a problem with me. Here is the person of interest. I'm putting this on the blog because I don't want him getting away with this.


I have a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that when they catch the man who did it, he'll say he did it for Jesus. Now, it's either pathetic or brilliant thing that I'm about the cite the movie Dogma as a theological source, but i think at this time, we all need to see this:


If you love Jesus, you don't burn things down in  his name. He's disappointed right now. I'm disappointed to boot. But no matter what, I love Toledo, I hope the arsonist is brought to justice, and I can't wait to come home and be greeted by a mosque.

RIP Steve Sabol

Dreams. We all to live the dream. We strive to hold dream jobs. Who actually gets to live a dream? Who actually gets to see their desires and ambitions and their subconscious play out in front of them?

I can think of one man who lived out his dream, and we just lost him- Steve Sabol.

Steve Sabol was the co-founder of NFL films. NFL Films is the reason why The National Football League stopped being a sport and became a national obsession.

Steve and his dad Ed Sabol created NFL films because they just wanted to document their favorite sport. So the Sabol boys filmed the big games. The real magic started on a -16 degree day in January in Wisconsin. Two football teams simply played a game on a frozen field.

Or at least, that's what the game would have been to lesser filmmakers. They turned it into a historical event.


Lambeau Field in Green Bay became a hallowed shrine: the mythical Frozen Tundra, as bleak and barren as the icy fields of Jotunheim. I can't watch the footage of that game without grabbing a blanket. Hell, I can't hear the phrase Ice Bowl without sneering and thinking Bart Starr is a warrior. An actual warrior; in reality, he's a man who played football in the 60s. That's what Steve Sabol did.

As the 60s progressed, the NFL gave the rights to its old broadcasts to the Sabols, as a posterity measure. But what it became was a guarantee that no game would go unforgotten or un-embellished. 

When Steve took over in the 70s, he had the brilliant idea to implement slow motion when filming games. Moments occurring in seconds of real time were minutes of glory when Steve got his hands on them:



 In the 90s, the NFL wanted to improve its appeal on TV, so it took a page from NFL Films and added slow motion replays to telecasts. This was the first step in making the NFL America's favorite TV show. It's the only sport I know that is more fun to watch on TV than it is live. And Steve opened the flood gates, and his vision for how the sport should look became the norm.

I would spend my summers as a boy watching Steve's work, dreaming of becoming an NFL player. If you've ever met me, I have neither the mentality nor the fast-twitch muscle to be a professional athlete. But, Steve made these people my heroes. And not just role model heroes, my warriors from epic poetry. The way Steve and the NFL Films crew captured these men captured not only my imagination, but their greatest moments.
Moments of joy:

Determination:

And the six thousand different emotions present in this still of Kellen Winslow:

I bet Greek children remembered Odysseus the way I remembered Joe Montana.


As an adult I think back and realize that Joe Montana was probably nothing more than another imbecilic jock that went to Notre Dame. But I just can think these thoughts, as true as they are. I could barely even type them just now; I dare I badmouth Montana, he threw the pass that became THE CATCH. And I know there was one man who made me believe the myths about these men, who made me a fan.

And I loved and respected Steve because that's all he was, a fan. He was a huge football fan that got to watch football all day. Need proof?


Steve wrote a hugely nerdy poem about the Oakland Raiders. If you know anything about the Oakland Raiders, they're the most sociopathic meatheads in a sport composed of sociopathic meatheads. He wrote a poem about them.
And then matched it to his footage of the Raiders.

And the Raiders adopted it as their team poem. Yes, Steve got the football team into poetry. By just being a nerd.

I was moved to hear that Steve Sabol died this week. But NFL Films will live on. The moments on film will live on. The struggles, the emotions, the myths, they live on. The men he made gods will live on. The sport will live on, and the love of the sport will live on. So in a way, he never leaves us. Rest in Peace Sabol.

Television National Convention

Maybe it's living most of my life in a swing-state, maybe it's growing up in a "Fox News is actually both fair and balanced" household, maybe it's just my paradoxical enthusiasm for apathy, but I get so bored in election years. The Conventions, now that they no longer serve the purpose of nominating anyone, they are now a TV special. I guess that works, because I love event TV. And no one in the recent years has been better at huge TV moments than Breaking Bad.

As much as I have been known to publicly declare my love for the direwolves and the ponies, when it comes to the summer season, I'm all about the rise and (mostly) fall of Walter White.

And that is why, as long as politics are TV, TV should be politics; and I'm nominating Walter White and Jesse Pinkman for President and Vice President. Bitch.

Now that would be a convention for the ages!

The TV party nominates Walter White and Jesse Pinkman. All the other fictional characters show up to watch the speeches. The crowd goes wild with their chant, "I AM THE ONE WHO KNOCKS", which is a better slogan than "WE BUILT IT".

See, I'd be more comfortable with Mitt Romney if he told me he was the danger.

The wife of the candidate is one of the first keynote speakers; Skyler White had a speech planned, but it became a spontaneous freakout:



Theon Greyjoy, delegate from the Iron Islands, will come through out of nowhere on why this election is do or die:



Will MacAvoy's speech was supposed to be inspiring, but quickly goes off the rails. However, it becomes profound very quickly, and we're all the better for it:



The first huge speech is Vice President nominee Pinkman, who, as always, gives a scene stealer of a speech,this time, about whats next for America

 ...and proceeds to get his mic cut due to profanity


Abed Nadir from Community is the Ron Paul of TV; huge grassroots (cult) following, but too weird to speak at the convention. So of course, they pic the Rand Paul of TV, Jeff Winger, who always gives a rousing speech:



...but eventually just gets weird himself, and he just makes you want Abed/Ron.



Don Draper is the Chris Christie of this convention: the dude the overwhelming majority of the convention wants to be the nominee but won't run for "personal reasons", gives a classic.



Clint Eastwood may have spoken to an empty chair...

But Ron Swanson points a sawed-off shotgun to it:



and we all listen as he demands more bacon and eggs on the platform:



And because we need a former President to speak, deep into the convention, former President Jed Bartlet, gives an impassioned speech

Before the big dog steps up to bat: Walter White.

As his speech starts, he stumbles a bit:



But then he recovers, assuring us we have nothing to fear...


but fear itself. And Walter White is fear. Walter White is the Danger. Walter White...is the one who knocks




Now that's a ticket I can get behind.

Somebody that I Used to Cover

Gotye.

He's that guy.

Early in 2012 we all became acquainted with "Somebody that I Used to Know". It was really weird, and totally not pop radio sounding, yet it was all over pop radio. It's the most unlikely number 1 hit of the past ten years- or at least since Hollaback Girl.

(This is here to remind you we all listened to a song who's bridge was nothing but "This shit is bananas". )

Gotye, as is status quo in New Artist-Modelville, rose to popularity with his YouTube video going viral- then funneling that into the real world. It's a classic video- paint, nudity, Kimbra

And I'm not gonna embed that video; I'm sure you've seen it. But I'm also sure you saw that other video that went viral at about the same time.




The Walk of the Earth "Somebody"was so popular, there were people who thought they were the original. N00bs, of course, but still people believed- that's how big it got.

At that point, the floodgates didn't just open; the dam broke like Jean Grey was stuck in the lake.

"Somebody that I Used to Know"got the YouTube treatment.
A PS22 cover



An a Capella group cover

A shredding metal guitar cover

Another pop artist's cover

An angry nerd version


Candyrat records one dude and a guitar I study to this shit...cover


Even a professional European choir tearing it up in epic style cover

The song occupies a unique shared stance in our pop sensibility: not every pop song becomes a meme, and not every viral video becomes a bonafide pop hit. Gotye is in the center of the Venn Diagram, between fun. and Bed Intruder.

There are so many videos out there. It's impossible to watch them all.

WAIT.

Gotye has watched them all?
And compiled them into a supercut?



Holy shit, Gotye.

Apart from the obvious labor of love, this is an unprecedented event for YouTube. Sure, you put out a pop hit and there will be covers on the internet, but Gotye, like a proud father, watches these videos of his own song. And he spent what had to be hours making his own video of our videos.

This is the creator marveling at his creation. This is an artist saying that he likes it when the little people from the peanut gallery tweak his work. This is Gotye being so honored by the masses that he made them a giant thank you letter.

He is officially, the nicest man in pop music.

And by the way, here's the list:
http://gotye.com/reader/items/original-videos-used-in-somebodies-a-youtube-orchestra.html#blog.html

Frankly That Ocean so Mothaf*****g Good

I have been in Florida for about a week. There, I connected with two Oceans, the first of which was the Atlantic Ocean. I was right on the Gulf of Mexico the entire time, and I even had a day in the Gulf by myself. Yeah, apparently summer is "off-season" in Florida, which is backwards to me, because the weather is great all the time. So anyway, I had the Ocean to myself.

I reflected upon the nature of the Ocean. The first thing that strikes me is the sheer vastness.

There's no real segregation between the oceans of the Earth; it's not like the continents truly surround any ocean at all sides. Here I was, a spec off the coast of Florida, but I was still in the same body of water as a girl off the coast of South Africa, or a piece of trash in the pacific, or a fish in India. I never feel more like a part of something grand then when I stand in the ocean.

But the other thing that struck me about the ocean are the waves. I found myself splashing and kicking only so that I could examine the waves; at first, my splashes kick back against the ocean, but the then the current sweeps them back the way the ocean was going anyway. It was almost as if that huge force of nature had been reminding me of its power, and that in something so big, the struggles of a human were ultimately moot.

 The second Ocean I became in touch with in Florida, was Frank

 I remember when I first heard of Frank Ocean. Tyler the Creator had just started advertising Frank Ocean on Odd Future's blog. He caught my attention immediately caught my attention with his first single, "Novacane". On the surface it was just another vulgar R&B romp. Upon a close listening to the lyrics, it was actual one of the most haunting ballads I had ever heard.



Ok Frank you have my attention. Then I learned how he became the newest Odd Future member (wolf?): his mixtape wasn't catching the attention of the execs at DefJam, he was in danger of getting dropped, he saw Tyler the Creator becoming an online sensation whilst releasing albums on tumblr. Hey, he said, it's that easy. So he sent Tyler his mixtape and said that he wanted to be in Odd Future. Tyler was won over, Frank got free promotion. DefJam started taking him seriously, and he became a budding R&B star. But still there was something different about Frank.

He's there on the left, sitting as Odd Future grandstands. Now, I know, 99 percent of the world's population aren't as outgoing as Odd Future, but still Frank stood out. He wasn't seen in public very often, when he was, he would sit down at the red carpet. There was something on his mind.

And a few weeks ago, he let it out.
Amid rumors of  non heteronormal pronouns on his forthcoming album, "channel ORANGE", he released, in a letter on his tumblr, what was supposed to be his "thank yous" section.

It turned out to be something more momentous.


Frank Ocean came out as a bisexual man.

This wasn't a publicity stunt. This wasn't a push of any sort of envelope. It was honesty. Yes, there were some hims where you'd except hers and boys where you would expect girls in the lyrics of the songs. I guess that's the point of being a bisexual songwriter- sometimes you write about women, sometimes you write about men.

The indecent Frank describes in his letter is featured heavily on the album; not only does the last song feature a recording of someone stepping inside from the rain (as the letter described- this would be the POV of the other man) but the incident is extrapolated on in detail in the song "Bad Religion".





Good songwriters will write from the heart; great ones will let you into to their hearts. Frank wrote a very personal song about a personal moment, and by the way, it hits with all the gravitas of Otis Redding with a pain in his heart. Coming out wasn't an agenda, or a message. Frank just wanted to be on the same page with everyone. This song is about being heartbroken because of a man, and he's comfortable enough to say that out loud so you can not misinterpret anything. It's a move to connect the songwriter to his audience. We can all be connected to Frank Ocean, like we all are when standing shoulder deep in the real Ocean.
 
As much as "Bad Religion" is a milestone, it's not the only track on the album. For all of the press his sexuality is getting, Frank Ocean released a very vaginal album: there's all these reffrences to women and their "fruits", and even just a song about the Brahman nature of vaginas.




At their best, his songs for women make me want to fall in love with a brown skinned beauty on a foreign island.



And honestly, I would have blogged about this album one way or another, because it contains a ten minute epic, "Pyramids", which blends seamlessly from an eyewitness account of the Battle of Actium, to a pimp in Las Vegas, to a John Mayer guitar solo. Holy shit, was this song made explicitly for me?




Sure, Frank Ocean is not the first pop artist to come out, but what makes this different is the timing; his star is rising a year into his career, and he has chosen this moment to let his audience get to know him. Elton John didn't come out until the 80s. Freddie Mercury didn't come out until he was nearly dead. And even they were rockers, we haven't seen this high profile of an event in hip-hop and R&B yet.

Hip-hop's long standing struggle with homophobia and hyper-masculinity is well documented, and usually swept under the rug by the hip-hop community itself. Popular music often acts like a "megaphone for the culture" as the linked video said. Just as the current can sweep you away in the Ocean, there's been a homophobic backlash to Frank Ocean's revelation. It's impossible to detail everything that bigots on twitter have lobbed to Frank, but it became a big enough deal that there is a backlash to the backlash.

In the patriarchal world of hip-hop, what the established figureheads say becomes law. Jay-Z, who lest you forget featured Frank quite heavily on Watch the Throne, and praised him for his courage. New York's Hot97 is playing his tracks. But the best seal of approval for Frank thus far was from hip-hop god Russel Simmons, CEO of the world, pretty much.

Yes, that old guy. He's the reason you know Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys. Back to what he said about Frank Ocean.


"It took a lot of courage for him as a man to write (his tumblr confession)...He made a sacrifice for the community at large, that's what's inspiring. I heard one person say, 'who cares?' And I said, 'People who are gay and don't have role models'".

Frank Ocean's coming out is brilliant move as a songwriter, sure, but it's a brave move as a man.

Super Louie

Breaking news everyone! I have a new hero! And he looks like this:

And he is using the internet to save art.

Of course, that's Louis C.K., star of one of the best shows on television, "Louie". "Louie" is time magazine's show of the year for 2011- it skates in a wonderful edge between the classic 90s "comedian is a regular guy type  sitcom"like Sienfeld, Rosanne, Jeff Foxworthy Show, etc, but it's not afraid to do or say anything he wants. Topics of episodes range from masturbation to the humor inherent in apathy to the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ to how slap-stick can be a means to World Peace.

Louie is a also folk hero in the world of comedy, by doing nothing when everyone accused Dane Cook of plagiarizing his material (killing Dane's street cred in the comedy world), and then inviting Dane on his show to work out their beef in front of America.

And, you know that trend where comedians are releasing specials direct on their websites? Yeah, he's the pioneer at that.

Sooo, Louie has decided that all of his tickets for his Fall Tour are $45 flat rate for every single seat. And you can only get them on his website.

No taxes, no fees, no bullshit, just Louie, new material, and you.

He has successfully stuck it to the man. You know who's proud right now? This guy.

Pearl Jam was on top of the world in the early 90s. They were the biggest band of the 90s.


--------------------------------------SOAPBOX BREAK-------------------------
And no, I'm not trivializing or downplaying Kurt Cobain's suicide, but Nirvana didn't have that reputation as the band of the 90s until Kurt died, and everyone looked back and said, "wow, what an intriguing story". Pearl sold more records and those records were critically esteemed; and yes, the point of Nirvana's "In Utero" was to be an unlistenable dud/ middle finger tot the world, but just give Pearl Jam credit.

Certainly a big part of Pearl Jam's popularity retcon is that they didn't play shows in the late 90s. They had a righteous crusade on their hands.




With the same motives as Louie C.K., Pearl Jam tried to rebel against Ticketmaster, and claim it was a monopoly. In reality, the bands aren't making the money from their tours, the middleman is- and we're the one's left with empty pockets.

Pearl Jam ended up failing at stopping Ticketmaster, to the point where they didn't/couldn't tour for a while, simply because there was no way to give the people a satisfactory tour while cutting the middleman. Eventually, these young rebels had to bit the bullet and follow along.

The rub here is, Louie has the internet. Louie has the power to cut the middleman with a grassroots movement. And now Louie is revolutionizing the entertainment. My greatest hope concerning the legacy of this experiment is that this catches on in the world of music; I'd think Pearl Jam may try this themselves, even. I hope this gets to a point where every entertainer does this, as a badge of modesty. And Louis C.K. is officially the benchmark for modesty.

Louie is bringing art to the people in a way no one considered. Louie, you are a hero.

When You Wish Upon a Star, Prepare to Lawyer Up

No one stays innocent for real; everyone finds out (SPOILERS) Santa Claus isn't real. But no one should feel the shame that I feel now: I have realized the first movie I ever saw in theaters was both a rip-off and a cover up.

What's the movie? Ugh, it's a good one too.

Yes, I ruined Aladdin for myself.

I watched this.

"The Thief and the Cobbler: The Recobbled Cut"- the great unfinished masterpiece by Richard Williams. This movie ought to have been the greatest animated feature of all time. But it was in production from 1964-1992, and it never got made.

This is Richard Williams, and his life story is the story of the production of "The Thief and the Cobbler". Williams was an animator who saw the potential for animation, but it wasn't what anyone was doing. Because seriously, every animated film for years was a Disney. Even if it wasn't strictly made by Walt Disney Studios Inc., almost every animated movie from the 30s to the 90s had songs and talking animals.

Williams dared to challenge these norms. So he worked animating commercials to fund the movie he always wanted to make. It was going to be high concept, based on Arabian Folklore and using visual cues from Arabian Art. The film was to look like if somebody animated a Persian painting.


It Thief and the Cobbler themselves were silent; it's not even a distraction, because Williams' animation itself tells the story. He was basically making an animated movie starring Charlie Chaplin as the Tramp in both lead roles, but with a budget as big as he can draw. Animation ought to be like this, only limited to the animator's imagination. Take this, for example- one of the greatest chase scenes in all of cinema:


Of course, he didn't have Disney money. So this is why it took him years and years and years.

By the 80s, every great animator had worked on this movie in some capacity with Williams, and the film was becoming a Hollywood Urban Legend. So Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas needed an animator, and they wanted to see how much of Thief and the Cobbler was done.
Williams had one like 10 minutes of footage. Fortunately, it was this:




Seeing as that scene had more frames per second that any other hand drawn animation ever (Disney needs computers to make frames look that smooth), Stephen and George hired him on the spot to do this:




Who Framed Roger Rabbit is the greatest animated film ever made (and actually completed), not just because it was an absolute labor of love for the golden age of animation, not just because it brought on the animation renaissance, which gave us Little Mermaid, Lion King, Anamaniacs, Tiny Toons, and Batman the Animated Series, but totally because its the only movie ever where Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse are friends.




So now that Williams is on good terms with Warner Brothers, he can finally finish Thief and the Cobbler.

Except he doesn't; he doesn't meet his deadline, and the rights leave Williams' control and enter the Completion Bond Company, aka, shut up and let's finish this movie.

So now it's the early 90s. And every animator in Hollywood has worked on Cobbler. And now Disney is churning out animated musicals again. So they have an idea for a new movie, in a fictional golden Arabian city where a good hearted thief woos a generous Princess and fights an evil grand vizier who has control of an absent minded ruler. They called it, "Aladdin". It's almost the same plot to Thief and the Cobbler.

And this comes out before Cobbler can come out, and kills Cobbler's chance of ever being a success, because, Disney money.

So Miramax finally "cobbles" together the footage of Thief and the Cobbler, but because Disney owns the 90s, Miramax decides that that 1) the main characters have to talk (because their mouths don't move, its all voice over by Matthew Broderick and Jonathan Winters- and really fucking annoying) and 2) we need this to be a musical now because this has to be like a Disney movie. Yes, the impetus to this movie was that animation didn't have to be like Disney, but anyway...




So they write the shittest songs ever. But also, DISNEY OWNS MIRAMAX! THIS WAS DISNEY'S EVIL PLAN. They turned a masterpiece into a hack job so their hack job looks like a masterpiece.

More proof:
Zig Zag, the evil grand Vizier-

vs
Jafar, the evil grand Vizier-

But that's a Middle Eastern folklore staple! And, Jaffar's not blue, thats...

oh ok, so they ripped off Zig Zag TWICE.

But this is Disney- after Walt died they ripped off everyone, even themselves.





Don't even get me started on "Kimba the White Lion" from Japan.
I'd say more about it, but I don't want to ruin your childhood further.

And why didn't Kimba's creators sue Simba's company? Because Disney has the greatest lawyers that a billion dollar corporation can buy. You can't beat them in court.
So what's the moral of the story?

When you wish upon a star,
 makes no difference who you are,
unless you're an indie animator who's spending his whole life into telling one story that will shake up the norms of his field and do something, you know, really different, and not like the soulless conglomerate who says everything should be their way,
your dreams come true.