The Contrarian

Bullseye on the Podium. . . By Jebson Interlandi

Not a cartoon depiction of the Prophet Mohammed.

It's heating up over here. The Netherlands, as I'm sure everyone knows by now, is dealing with a few sensitive conflicts regarding, what else? Religion. Big controversy over this anti-Islamic film produced by Geert Wilders, a right-wing MP. On top of that, there are the ongoing vehement protests against Danish and Dutch satirical cartoon depictions of Mohammed. I'm not sure I should go near this issue, to be honest. 

The Iranian government is pissed off.  Gholam Hossein Elham, the recently appointed Iranian Justice Minister, is pleading for an official ban of the film. Then there are several Dutch government reps wanting to prohibit burqas from being worn in public places. Turkish and Moroccan Muslims are adding significantly to the Dutch population and reactions to this are varied. How will things play out in the next ten years?  A famously liberal and tolerant country confronted with a belief-system (like most belief-systems) that is famously repressive and restrictive. My position is simple: I'm always on the side of satire, iconoclasm, and freedom of expression — and when I say freedom, I'm referring to more than the freedom to prostrate oneself in the wake of some "holy" mortal's worldview.

A cartoon, a movie?  The way I see it, if you're truly secure with your own faith and beliefs, it shouldn't matter what anybody says about them. Actions are another matter, of course. I hope Mr. Wilders takes necessary precautions — particularly in light of activist/director  Theo Van Gogh's 2004 tragic end, which was motivated in part by his films.

Spoken, written, or illustrated criticisms of morals and beliefs should have no damaging affect on a mind that is strong and secure in said opinions. That's the way I see it, anyway. But I suppose this outlook will inevitably hinder my own bid for longevity.

But enough of that. I just came up with a fun activity to get our collective blood pressures back to normal.

Check this out: I've hung around my fair share of universities and colleges, attending Middlebury College's prestigious "Essay Camp" and Dartmouth College's 2003 summer "Talent Seminar." I love to look at course catalogs. Education is the cat's ass, no doubt, but academia is yet another self-contained, self-validating structure with plenty to mock.  If I ever become Dean of my own university here are a few courses you'll see in my personally devised curriculum:

Vegetarian Ethics

Blue Collar Sympathies: Understanding Hidrosis

Feeling Roth: Van Halen and Postmodern Discourse Theory

Secondary Narcotic Knowledge

Modern Methodology in Blues and Suffering

Foucalt's Perineum: Tickling Suppressed Fancies in the Communication Age

Klezmer Bass Lines in a Global Economy

Eh? This could become a regular feature here at The Contrarian.  The Contrarian Curriculum?  Good lord, this is severely corny.  But it puts a smile on my face, at least. [Maybe it can put money in our pockets, too! -ED]

So, I just discovered this television show called "The Sopranos." It used to be on HBO and I guess it's about the Mafia or something rad like that. It's even got Steve Buscemi. Remember in Fargo when Buscemi gets put into that machine and it cuts him up? That was awesome.

Weird Beers Inside the Goldmine.

I've been drinking the bitter lately. I plan to stop soon. Lord knows, I've gained enough weight in the last six months. But there's nothing wrong with being a large mammal, as a certain someone playing a certain someone else once said.

In honor of fat bearded poets and other drunken creatures of the night, I present to you a pictorial overview of the malts inside my own ample gut.

Title pretty much says it all.

This shaman/ladies' man definitely deserves his own brand of suds.

And a befitting motto.

This incredibly expensive brew comes from Stonehenge — where the demons dwell. . . where the banshees live (and they do live well). Actually it comes from Quoyloo. Close enoof, lads. Close enoof.

Here be swill made from fermented dragon spittle! It, too, will cost ye a fine pence.

Drinking Liberally.

"Promoting Democracy, One Pint at a Time."

The Contrarian's Rockin' New Year

It feels like forever since I last posted, but it's really only been a couple of days. A couple of really busy work-filled days. But there's been a bit of end-o'-year cheer, too.

Saturday night was fun. We went to a DC house party for FMC's departing Executive Director Jenny Toomey. Drank a bit, engaged in interesting conversation with some very sharp people. Ian MacKaye was there. I so wanted to take a time machine back to 1991 or so and tell my teenage friends that I was at a intimate gathering with the leader of Minor Threat and Fugazi.

Unfortunately, I didn't really get to talk to Ian. Why not? Because I was engaged in heavy duty conversation with Sandy Pearlman. A huge deal for me. Pearlman is one of the original rock journos who got his start writing for the cardinal rock magazine, Crawdaddy. He's also credited with applying the term "heavy metal" to the harder edged sounds that emerged from the ass-end of the '60s. (This is a somewhat contentious claim, however.)

Perhaps more importantly (to me anyway), Pearlman is the mastermind behind Blue Öyster Cult. From the band's website:

"Sandy Pearlman's contributions to Blue Öyster Cult are innumerable. He was there from the beginning, groomed the formative band for label-readiness, became their manager, produced their records, supplied lyrical content and concept, and more."

Billboard once called Sandy the “Hunter Thompson of rock, a gonzo producer of searing intellect and vast vision.” Sounds about right to me. He also managed Black Sabbath and produced The Clash and The Dictators. Later, he was one of the first 25 employees of eMusic, and served as their vice president. These days, Sandy is an adjunct Professor of music theory at McGill University in Montreal, where he educates on subjects ranging from the remonetizing of digital music to the history of heavy metal.

We spent the majority of our conversation talking about the aesthetics of sound recording in rock, and I got to hear all the arcane details of BOC's studio process. Sadly, I'm not at liberty to reveal anything, lest the Agents of Fortune take me away.

How's your holiday action going?

Random and Useless — By James P. Caldwell

   

I took the above photo out of a 50th floor hotel room window at The Tropicana in Atlantic City on a Saturday morning when the whole town was enveloped in fog. It's the best photo I've ever taken, so if you don't like it you're a jerk. 

Anyway, do you ever just kick back with a glass of OJ or Ruby Red and consider how great Ween are? I see that the editorial desk has La Cucaracha over in Current Listening to the left, so I won't harp on how cool this record is except to say that it's pretty cool. Definitely their best of the past handful of years. Check out "With My Own Bare Hands" for the lyric: "She'll be my cock professor, studying my dick." Ween makes the world a pretty OK place to be.

Also Ween-related, I've been enjoying Deaner's fishing/tour blog. In particular "Deaner's Field Guide to the Shit Fish of Southern Long Beach Island," in which he eviscerates the Skate, along with a number of other fish that, if you're into surf casting, apparently suck. It's a good read.

Politics-wise, did anyone catch that Democratic debate at Drexel University earlier in the week? Wow. It was the first good prize-fight of the Democratic primary. It was nice to see the second-tier candidates working in harmony to smear Hillary Clinton. Tim Russert even stuck it to her. In my humble opinion, she needs to be taken down a notch and then have the remaining 50 notches below that yanked out from under her Ann Taylor pumps. She is doing wonders for the pant-suit industry though. She's definitely got that vote in the bag.

In international-relations news, the headline on a New York Sun that had blown into the steps of my building caught my eye the other day. Through the dog urine I could make out something like "Iraq Report Re-Shuffles Presidential Race" or some shit like that, refering to the suspiciously-timed cheery Iraq assessment that just came out. Anyway, it just reminded me of the barrage of suspiciously-timed reports and events that will be arriving on our doorsteps in the coming year as the White House tries to manipulate the presidential election: "Level Of Cotton Candy in Sadr City Reaches Year-Long High," "Anbar Kitten Population Booming," etc., etc.

Now, surprisingly it went wholly unreported in the mainstream media that The Contrarian Media Group had its first official meeting when I traveled down to D.C. a few weekends ago. The main agenda was drinking booze and walking around in the beautiful weather. Casey and Brooke were great hosts and I got to see a lot of the D.C. sights. On Saturday we walked a good part of the Mall, but yours truly was a complete idiot and forgot his digital video camera back at the apartment. Otherwise this useless post would instead be a video post called "Casey's Walking Tour of The National Mall," which consisted mainly of outright lies and veiled threats. You're welcome.

After that we went to the International Spy Museum where I crawled through an air vent with a bunch of kids, which is a pretty rad thing to do after a couple of mid-afternoon cocktails.

Food-wise, the weekend was a full success. Casey and Brooke turned me on to the joys of Tappas dining. Everyone probably knows this, but for around $20 you can get 3 different mini-meals that are like appetizers on steroids. It's great because you don't get bored with your meal like you do at those dumbass Italian restaurants where they dump a 3-foot long oval plate of cheesy bullshit in front of you and walk away. The only snag we had was on Friday night when our waitress blatently implied that Casey was ordering too much food. Now, I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure that if you're a waitress the last thing you want to be doing is telling your clients they're ordering too much food. Other than that, all the dining went off without a hitch.

Lastly, for someone without kids, a suspicious number of children's toy catalogues come in the mail to my apartment. So, I'm compiling a list of the most stupid and fucked-up kids toys I come across. A field guide of my own, you could say. Hopefully it'll turn out pretty good.   

Weird.

I just updated to Flash 9, so I could see some kinda crap on some kinda website.

Immediately after installation, my browser automatically took me to Caduceus.org, which, as a nerdy music guy, I quickly reckognized as the wine making company of one Maynard James Keenan — front person for Tool.

The page does make extensive use of Flash.

And props to him for having a wine called Chupacabra. That'll be your Christmas present, Molly.

Read a feisty interview with MJK at the Onion AV Club.

Mad TV.

If you have cable, set aside an hour on Wednesday at 10 p.m. to watch the pilot episode of "Mad Men" on AMC. Or at least fire up your DVR.

The introductory episode of this period piece about Madison Avenue ad execs in the '50s is dazzling. It's rare for a show to posess such poise and confidence in its debut.

The tone is perfect. As it began, I felt like I'd stumbled into a program that had already hit its stride. The cinematography undoubtedly has a lot to do with the crisp look, which is like a page out of Life magazine. [Editor's note: the music is incredible, too!] AMC snuck its "Mad Men" crew from the HBO talent closet, stacking the deck with producers, writers, directors and others boasting "Sopranos" and "Big Love" credits.

I wonder — did HBO pass on this program in favor of dreck like "John From Cincinnati?" If so, they should be ashamed.

The actors on MM all do a fine job, and many of them may seem vaguely familiar to viewers. A peek at the IMDB cast list reveals a smattering of smaller roles on network shows I personally haven't seen.

Attitudes towards women and minorities were very different a half-century ago, and "Mad Men" casts a harsh light on the era's often reprehensible status quo. It's refereshing to see a retro show that doesn't gloss these biases over with a sheen of supposed innocence.

And the characters drink. A lot.

I can only hope that the next episode is as good as the first.