I’ve been out for a round of vacuous movies to kick off the Summer season. It’s not like it was under duress, strapped into a chair with hooks holding my eyelids open. I just realized I didn’t have a higher cause to champion than to endure my failed suspension of disbelief, and I do it every May after a long, dreary Winter (still underway in Utah). Just so I won’t offend anyone who likes shameless merchandising and tastelessly showy CGI spectacles I won’t mention any names (it’s all of them anyway). I went to see one of these movies at Thanksgiving Point, the same place I saw Morrissey and the goat petting zoo. Once the movie got to be too much, and I couldn’t sneak out because I was with a friend, I began to focus on the sound system and on the quality of the projection on the screen. It was a remarkable revelation to me that the “cigarette burn” marks for celluloid reels were absent. The color white looked like it was projecting sharply from the screen instead of diffusely reflecting, and the sound was pristine and clean. Who knew a movie theater next to a barn would have made the leap to digital projection and sound? The next movie I went to was doubly unbearable because the picture and sound were as muddy as the story telling.

After my last entry it looks like I have a pattern of being a grouchy snob for the first paragraph then wedging in a pretentious a run-on entry where I drop names of bands. Maybe I can start another blog where I’m just a jerk the whole time. I’m still looking for a form that works for me, but I’ve learned that picking a topic and writing a tidy essay is just blah. It turns out 223870984570397 other magazines, blogs and cocktail party gas bags do the same, but much better than I do. People have clearer insight, more relevant facts, saucier anecdotes, and they wrote their own Wikipedia pages. I swear I’m intrigued by music and bands, but I’m not the one to wear the Tool t-shirt of authority to profess anything. This writing space is meant for me to portray the experiences through my perspective. I’ll have to live with the fact that I start with a bucket of ideas rattling in my mind but I’m going to roll out in free form. I came up with a brilliant segway into a premeditated one of those ideas. You’ll see it coming with this * mark in the upper right hand corner of the screen. Pretend you didn’t expect it. *

I’m coming to realize how much I don’t know about interesting bands and the most relevant performers from the last few decades. Even though I was there I didn’t notice them in passing. After watching the Vice Guide to North Korea I noticed another show that struck me at first as a scathing farce of washed up, has-been rock stars. The host dresses like an 80’s eyesore, he speaks with a droll lisp, and he abuses his thesaurus. Even the pretentious name Ian Svenonius has to be a part of the shtick, the hokey title “Soft Focus” and wispy theme song are tongue-in-cheek. I watched a couple of interviews feeling a little embarrassed for the guests, but over time I realize Ian is genuine, informed, and not an idiot. He usually has a little intro segment before each guest where he plays out the drama of a lottery selection. There’s a bin of numbered balls representing the sum of all people worth talking to (about 40), he draws, and he is elated to find the next legendary personality he will meet. Sure, he starts out a little weird, but the guests get past it and open up. It turns out all the people he interviews have quite a history and I’ve been turned on to some great bands, like Cat power, The Specials, Primal Scream, Altered Images, Blur, and the Shangrilas. At least I’d heard of these bands before, but I never made a connection. It turns out Ian was in the music scene before with a number of DC area underground projects, and he must have taken a few English Lit classes because he brings up very insightful relations that often catch the guests off-guard. Just like Garrison Keeler and Ali G, he’s great at acting an imbecile.