Saturday Night Drive: 1979

“To the lights and towns below

Faster than the speed of sound

Faster than we thought we'd go

Beneath the sound of hope”

-“1979” by Smashing Pumpkins

     This past week I turned in a paper for my rock radio course. I wrote a dozen pages on morning DJs and shows. At one point, I had written about the demise of commercial radio and how there is no future for anyone who is interested in entering radio professionally. I even griped about doing my radio show. (I love being a DJ more than anything but there are times when I wonder if it’s even worth waking up at 6am to host a morning drive show that doesn’t even have more than five listeners.)

     But then I wrote about how utterly fascinating radio could still be—at least occasionally. While cruising down I-55 earlier tonight with Pat, we had Q101 on. We only use the radio as background noise while we engage in our always entertaining and often ADD-style conversations. Then the song “1979” by Smashing Pumpkins came on. As soon as I noticed the intro to the song, my mind went into another gear. “Wait a minute, is that what I think it is?” I asked. “Whoa, its ‘1979’,” replied Pat. I turned up the volume and we began to rock.

     Well, I think it’s tough to rock out to a song as melancholic as “1979.” My description of rocking out while driving consists of thumping my feet on the ground and my hands on the wheel. Sometimes I shake my head, roll the window down a bit, and sing along. But “1979” is different. We sang along in a low and soft tone but there was no thumping or head banging. The song still gave us a natural high that only music can create.

     While “1979” may not groundbreaking or life-altering, it’s still a damn good song from a remarkable album by a great band. (I have mixed feeling about lead singer/songwriter Billy Corgan but that’s another story for another time.) The song reeks with nostalgia. Of course, Corgan was probably nostalgic when writing the song, which was released in 1996. I always think about the car rides I was in with friends or all the aimless driving I partook when I had my beautiful yet lousy car. I used to love to fill my car with twenty bucks of gas then drive around town and outside of it. Once I drove all to Joliet before realizing I had to turn around and pick up someone I had promised a ride home from work.

     Summer drives (and road trips) are the best. Last July, Pat and I drove up to Wisconsin to visit KJ. We left his house with a quarter tank of gas left. I decided to risk it and drive up there, thinking we could fill up with cheap Wisconsin gas. As soon as we crossed the border, the gas tank light turned on. I got off the highway and searched for a gas station. There wasn’t anything for miles. “What the hell do people here use for fuel?” I wondered. We saw houses around with cars but not a single gas station.

     I had never felt freer than when I’m driving. Millions of teenagers and others can relate to that incredible feeling being behind the wheel. You have no restrictions. You’re not in a hurry to get somewhere like work or school. You get on the road and go where your heart desires, whether it’s driving around town or the country. Voltaire once said that “man is free to at the moment he wishes to be.” “1979” reminds me of that freedom I enjoy when I hit the open road. #

And the winner (or loser) of the most disappointing awards show goes to...

     Roger Ebert pretty much summed up most people’s opinions on last week’s 83^rd Academy Awards. “This was the worst Oscar (show) I’ve ever endured, and I go back awhile,” wrote the 68 year-old critic. Several critics and thousands upon thousands of live-bloggers and comments all over the Internet agree with Ebert. “It's really a miracle that hundreds of millions of people still watch this stately parade,” quipped TIME’s Richard Corliss. This mostly lifeless parade was watched by 37.6 million viewers stateside. That’s over 4 million less than last year’s ceremony and almost 20 million less than when Titanic swept the Oscars in 1998.

     Let’s start off with the hosts, for they have received the majority of the criticism and blame for this year’s show. For weeks, they were in many (mostly funny) Oscar promos that seemed to promise a great time at the Kodak for all. It was like the anticipation of an upcoming date with a really attractive and outgoing woman or man or a trip to a hyped-up and glitzy amusement park. You’re excited for days or weeks on end. You wear your best clothes and make sure you say the right things to say and pay plenty of compliments. When you reach the date/park, your hopes of having an outstanding time have been slashed. You set the bar too high or you were intentionally deceived by the date/park. You begin to settle. You compromise like you never have before. By the end of the date/trip, all you want to do is leave running and never turn back.

      If only Franco and Hathaway had been as great as the promos. I have to give Hathaway credit for trying her best. She did overdo it at times, like cheering for every single category and presenter. No one is that excited for Best Live Action Short Feature…well except for the guy who won. Franco was not there at all. I know he has a million other things going on and probably has a bunch of papers due but c’mon! At least pretend to care. You are an actor after all (an Oscar-nominated one too, as everyone kept beating that one to the ground). “He’s definitely stoned,” said one friend at the Oscars party I attended. “His eyes are glazy and he has that dumb smirk that stoners get.”

     Hathaway did get some criticism over her constant wardrobe changes. “I think she focused more on her wardrobe and hair changes than the actual show,” said Jenny Lopez, another friend from the party. “It’s the Oscars, not a fashion show. That’s what the red carpet pre-show is for.”

     When Billy Crystal appeared on-stage, I had hoped that he was the show's "Get Out of Jail Free" card. He would thank Franco and Hathaway for their time and he would take over with plenty of one-liners to get the audience to laugh, if not at least get them out of their coma. “Billy Crystal's 3 minutes on stage ultimately trumped Franco and Hathaway's crappy job hosting throughout the night,” said Matt Gentile, host of Radio DePaul’s Saturday Sports Beat.

     I’m not a fan of the (not-really) red carpet but oh my Lord, Jennifer Lawrence was drop dead gorgeous! My jaw dropped when I saw her on the carpet. I didn’t recognize her from Winter’s Bone. She’s set to appear as Mystique in the upcoming X-Men: First Class. I would buy my ticket now for the midnight opening if I could. When everyone wasn’t drooling over Lawrence, we were in a sea of Barbie jokes over Reese Witherspoon. (“It moves!” “Where’s Ken?” “She should be in a Barbie musical!”) “He still has that gross thing on his face?!” said someone over Christian Bale’s beard. “Maybe Bruce Wayne is in disguise in the next Batman movie,” I replied. I wondered when Cate Blanchett said “That’s gross” on-stage, it was because she saw Bale’s beard (which has a different color than his hair for some odd reason).

     The only major upset (awards-wise) was Tom Hooper winning over David Fincher for Best Director. Everyone’s jaws dropped when his name was called. There were some boos. It wasn’t pretty. I did notice that the camera wasn’t present on Fincher during his speech. Unlike the next category which was Best Actress. When Natalie Portman began to speak, the camera briefly captured Annette Bening’s defeated face in the crowd. I had never seen someone so sad at an awards ceremony. If it makes you feel better Annette, Deborah Kerr (From Here to Eternity and The King and I) was up for Best Actress six times and never won.

     “How pissed do you think the other 9 Best Picture nominees were that their clips were introduced by Spielberg with The King's Speech playing in the background?” commented a reader for the AV Club. When that montage began to air, I knew that The King’s Speech was going to win. Some of my friends were praying that The Social Network would win but I knew better. Oscar plays it safe most of the time. He gave the Best Picture Oscar to Crash over Brokeback Mountain and Good Night and Good Luck, Gladiator over Traffic and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan. There are times when he decides to take a risk (Midnight Cowboy is the only X-rated film to win) but it’s unlikely.

     Maybe it’s the fact that the majority of the Academy are older and most likely out of touch with what’s going in modern cinema. This trend isn’t new: in the 1960s a majority of the Best Picture winners were outdated and over-the-top musicals from the dying studio systems headed by Jack Warner and others. My Fair Lady won over Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick’s dark and brilliant satire on the Cold War. The Sound of Music won over Darling, a British satire on an ambitious woman (Julie Christie) climbing the ladder to success; In the Heat of the Night, a police drama, won over Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, and Bonnie and Clyde, the crime drama that is often credited for the renaissance of American filmmaking. Oliver! won over Rachel, Rachel, a drama on a spinster and her disastrous love affair; and The Lion in Winter, a character piece on the darkest hour of King Henry and his queen. The Academy honored modern, “progressive” and controversial films in the 1970s such as The Godfather (Parts I and II), The French Connection, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Network, All the President’s Men, The Deer Hunter, and Kramer vs. Kramer. They regressed in the 80s when they chose to honor (often forgettable) films like Ordinary People, Chariots of Fire and Out of Africa.

     The Academy needs to do what it does best (slightly bore audiences rather than alienate them) and shape up for 2012. They also need to finally realize that they should continue to take risks in what to award and nominate. Last year’s winner, the Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker, is a 180 degree turn from this year’s winner. And for the love of God, stay away from the Auto-Tune effects! #

CNN, Where's the Intergity? Failures of the Media, Case File #101

This afternoon when I went on the homepage of CNN, I noticed the top story headline was "Oscars: Where's the Diversity". I clicked on it and read about how there were no black actors nominated this year and how there was no female director amongst the five Best Director nominees.

To understand how ridiculous this story is, all you have to do is read some of the comments provided at the end of the article. Here are a few of them:

Wonderful! Another race-baiting story making headlines on CNN's website.

Another race baiting article from CNN. Shocking. Say, if we now have a quota for Oscars, can we also have one for the NBA All-Stars as well? Nobody's complaining about that one... 

I didn't know that a woman winning for Best Director last year meant that another woman had to be nominated this year. I guess we should be happy a one-armed Filipino with a speech impediment didn't win last year - where would we have come up with another one of those?

Shame on CNN and its author for writing this article. The movies nominated deserve to be nominated. And the races of the crew are more coincidence than a sign of bias. Shame of CNN for trying to fabricate and contentious story that's not even there.

Here's an idea: Maybe the best movies of the year weren't made by women/African Americans? Last year Kathryn Bigelow won best director for "The Hurt Locker", and rightfully so. Mo'Nique won for her role in "Precious", and rightfully so. They didn't win because of their gender or their skin color.

The line that pisses me off the most? "Javier Bardem, who is up for best actor for his role in "Biutiful,' is a Spaniard and therefore European".
So Bardem is denied his heritage because it's on a particular continent? If that's the case, why isn't CNN crapping their pants because "There's only one European nominated"? They aren't. Because there's no "story" to it.
Idiots.

So all Europeans are white? Now who's racist, Lisa (the writer of the CNN article)?

When are you going to get it that no one F*%#ing cares what color, race or gender the actors are. If they are the best, they deserve it and those 5 actors were the best of last year without a doubt. Should Denzel get nominated for his "stellar" performance in Unstoppable? Don't you realize that you are adding to the racism. When I saw those nominees. I didn't see color. I saw 5 great performances. When you saw it you saw 5 white males. Who's the bigot? I think it's you!

I'm a person of color and I feel really insulted that this writer is suggesting minorities should get special look or treatment. We do not need affirmative action on Oscar nominations, so if this year doesn't have too many films of diversity to consider so be it. There's NO special category for film made or starred by People of Color!! 

It's pretty intense stuff there, and those are the tamer comments from the site.

There's another article online (I think it's from moviefone) that blatantly asks "Why Are There No Black Actors Nominated?" or somewhere along those lines. I agree with the commenters and believe that the media is trying to enforce prejudice amongst its readers. I don't see anyone complaining about the lack of Latinos or Asians in the acting categories. The writer of the CNN article believed that last year's Oscars set a "high bar" on diversity that the Academy should force themselves to reach that bar.


It also pisses me off that "diversity" is only seen by this writer as racial diversity. Has seen even seem this fucking list of nominees?! You have a movie based on the founders of Facebook, something that wasn't a part of millions of people's lives 5 years ago going by against a historical drama about a King of England, a sci-fi blockbuster with an original story(an original story! Hollywood doesn't even bother doing that anyone. Look at the nominees and winners of the Best Original Screenplay Oscar over the past decade. Almost all of them are scripts from independent films, Pixar, or films made outside the United States) that made people think, and a comedy about a lesbian couple and their family.

I understand that opportunities for minorities in Hollywood are still slim but it's better than it was twenty, thirty years ago. Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey own their own TV studios. One of the most popular late-night hosts is of Mexican descent (George Lopez) and another one is a female (Chelsea Handler). That wasn't around five years ago.


I'm disappointed that CNN felt the need to feature a story that has a writer shouting that minorities are being neglected by the Academy. Don't they know that President Obama is in Wisconsin today or that the ousted dictator of Tunisia is a wanted criminal?

Broadcast song

Broadcast "Come On Let's Go"

R.I.P. Trish Keenan (1968-2011) of the electro indie group Broadcast.

Markley Discusses Mind-bender[1] “Publish This Book”

Note reader: This was originally written and submitted for The DePaulia. 

    On November 12, Stephen Markley stopped by Radio DePaul for the DePaul Authors Series[2], a radio series in which writers discuss their work.  Markley, 27, is known best to Red Eye readers for his humorous column “Off the Markley” and subsequent blog on the paper’s website.  This past spring, his first book Publish This Book: A Premature Memoir (Amazon.com, $10.19 at the time of this writing) was released from Sourcebooks, an independent publisher based in Naperville.

    Publish This Book is about Markley trying to get his book published.  The book in question is Publish This Book.  “My idea was to write a book on how hard it is to publish a book,” said Markley during the live broadcast[3].  “What came out of it was very different from what I thought it would be.”

    When I was trying to explain the book to friends, some were intrigued but nearly all of them received headaches[4].  I can’t imagine how Markley must have done this for three years without going crazy, from the time he began working on this book to the publication and release and the following book tour and interviews.

    “I’ve been writing (fiction) on and off since I was seventeen,” said Markley.  He was soon frustrated by trying to get literary agents and publishers to get his more conventional writing published.  “How do I break into this world of being a published author?” said Markley.

    “I had no plan (for Publish This Book),” Markley stated when asked on how he wrote his book.  “I had to live my life and then reflect on it two months later and figure out a way to write about in a way that was concrete and real.”

    He sought the advice of a couple of former professors from his days at Miami University in Ohio.  One of them, Steven, would guide him throughout the process, offering praise and advice as well as criticism.  Markley uses a bit of artistic license.  Instead of simply quoting emails they exchanged, Stephen and Steven meet in various locales, from a restaurant in Spain to singer Jewel’s retreat, to discuss Publish.

    “I recommend for young people to find someone who is smart and old,” said Markley, in reference to Professor Steven.

    No one has ever written a book exclusively on getting published.  Markley doesn’t leave out any details, no matter how depressing or repetitive, during the gruesome process of getting published.  At times it made me question my decision to enter into writing.  Maybe it’s not too late to fully dedicate myself to this or that, I thought.  I could still be a journalist or be a teacher.

    Professor Steven mentioned in one of the meetings between him and Markley in their exotic locales that there was way too many stories of sex, drugs, and other things that fit the stereotype of a hard-partying college student.  A couple of agents, including the one who he ends up with for the book, ask him about his experiences in a fraternity.  He has never been in a fraternity.

    For a premature memoir that has mostly humor, there are an awful lot of footnotes.  Markley mentioned that the footnotes were a way to poke fun of the way books are created.  There are a total of 214 footnotes in the novel, which I thought was a bit too much.  Four of those footnotes comprise an entire chapter which is nothing but footnotes[5].

    There are going to be people who will compare him to lesser-talented writers, such as Tucker Max, a writer both Markley and I are not fond of.  But Markley is more than chronicling the sexual and drunken escapades of himself and his friends.  He writes about the absurdities and difficulties our generation is experiencing.  “We are college graduates of an uncertain generation,” he writes in chapter nine, “and the world we live in is not the one we expected from our childhoods.”  He writes about his doubts of being pigeon-holed in light of this book’s release.  “You’re a snarky chronicler of politics and pop culture without any depth beyond.”

    Publish This Book is about more than publishing.  It goes inside the mind of a writer and how he tries to get his life going after college.  But it’s not exclusively on young writers and the impending quarter-life crisis that arrives when they enter the real world.  A recurring character, Justin (who is one of Markley’s closest friends), who is fresh out of college and is ready to work on his master’s and enjoy his twenties, has found out that he is going to become a father.  At first, he accepted that he had to fast-forward to becoming a responsible adult.  But shortly after the baby is born, he isn’t sure on whether he is ready to enter this next stage of life.  “I used to think I was a pretty strong person,” Justin says to Markley.  “Thought I could take whatever came along…That I could handle more or less anything…I think I f—ed up my life.”

    After reading Publish This Book, I still can’t figure who the actual demographic is for this work.  My previous book review, EARTH (The Book)[6], states that people who watch The Daily Show and young people with a sense of humor were the demographic target for that book.  Borders place copies under their literary criticism section while an independent bookstore nearby has it under the humor section.  One publisher cited that doesn’t agree that this book would “automatically reel in the Chuck Klosterman audience[7].”

    As the reviewer, I will describe the potential target audience for Publish This Book.  This book’s primary audience is writers, college students and others who are breaking into writing for the first time outside a class environment.  Another audience would be anyone who enjoys the occasional crude joke, likes humorous memoirs, and hates Fox News.  The bottom line is, if you are a frustrated reader who believes that major publishers churn out nothing but Twilight knockoffs, Dan Brown, and trashy celebrity “tell-alls”, then start your rebellion by picking up a copy of this book and/or check out what the independent bookstores and publishers have to offer[8].

    Markley is already working on his next book.  “It’s way weirder than Publish This Book.  It’s pretty out there but I’ve had a lot of fun writing it.”  Hopefully his next book is a lot of fun to read. #

---

[1] This is not originally how I described this book but due to the Laws of Catholic College Newspaper Decency (thank you Nick Lang for referencing them in your Conan review) I will use this word as a proper substitute.

[2] This episode of the series was hosted by yours truly.

[3] An edited version of the interview is available on radio.depaul.edu under the DePaul Authors Series page.

[4] Half of them asked to borrow my copy, which I refuse to do, especially since it’s signed by Markley.

[5] For a guy who seemed to make fun of this tactic of using footnotes, he seemed to be very defensive on his choice of excessive footnote writing.

[6] From the October 4^th, 2010 edition of The DePaulia

[7] I disagree with this guy.  I am an avid reader of Chuck Klosterman and believe that at least half his fanbase would enjoy this book.

[8] I recommend Book Cellar in Lincoln Square, Myopic Books in Wicker Park, DePaul’s libraries and your local library.

Winter Break Reading

I have one more final to go. It's not til next Tuesday.  It's so far away.  That's the only thing that stands in the way from officially starting my 6-week long winter break. (Yeah I know, boo-hoo-hoo.)

Since I haven't gotten a job yet (and I am trying. I sent a dozen resumes and applications over the past week and no one has replied back.), I decided to catch up on some non-required reading.  I went to pick up a couple of books I had on hold from the school library and Chicago Public Library.

1) 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

This collection of letters between the writer, who was based in New York, and Frank Noel, a bookseller who lived and worked in London, is humorous and poignant.  Hanff wants second-hand and cheap editions of works by mostly obscure English writers and begins to order her books at a bookstore located on Charing Cross Road.  Frank Doel, along with the store's staff and Miss Hanff write to each other for two decades while both of became a part of each other's lives despite the fact that they have never met.
Reading the book and watching the brilliant movie adaptation, starring Anne Bancroft as Helene Hanff and Anthony Hopkins as Frank Doel, portrays how the world communicated with one another before the arrival of email, Facebook, and other impersonal devices and methods replaced the beautiful and lost art of letter writing.  Imagine, people waited for days on end at their mailbox, waiting to hear from a loved one or a friend.  You open the mailbox, tear open the envelop and read the handwritten inked words that transported you to another world, the lives of others from either across town or across the sea.  Today many buy and sell handwritten letters from yesteryear or have heavy historical weight for thousands of dollars.  The worth of the letters between Hanff and Doel cannot be measured in monetary amounts.


2) My Year of Flops by Nathan Rabin

In 2007, AV Club head writer Nathan Rabin had a strange idea.  He wanted to watch some of cinema's greatest failures to see how and why these movies had failed.  He wrote his reviews on the movies and posted them on avclub.com.  The project was supposed to have lasted a year; by the end of '07 he had a devoted following (including yours truly) that he couldn't stop working on this project, which had become bigger than anyone anticipated.  The book is mostly a collection of some from the site though there are new additions, illustrations, and several interviews from those directly involved with the movies chronicled.  This is a highly recommended read for all movie lovers.
I bought this at Book Cellar.  It was autographed and I couldn't resist.  The inscription reads:

Thank you for looking at this book.  It's super-god.  I recommend it highly.   -Nathan Rabin (signature)

3) The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig

I discovered this book at the bookstore in the basement at Macy's on State Street.  I began reading it in a corner so no one would bother me.  I didn't buy it at the time and regretted it soon after.  A couple of weeks later, I began searching for it everything.  Amazon didn't have it at the time and no bookstore had any new or used copies.  The copy I have is from the public library, which I had to place on hold.  I waited a few weeks for them to find it and to arrive.
It turns that no used copies of The Post-Office Girl exist in English.  This novel is written by Stefan Zweig, one of the most acclaimed writers in of the 1920s and 1930s.  His work has been sadly ignored in the States since his suicide in 1942.  The Post-Office Girl and several works went unpublished until 1982 in German and 2008 in English.
The Post-Office Girl tells the story about a young woman, Christine, who is bored with her life in a small town.  She is invited to a fantasy world provided by a distant aunt where she indulges in some much-needed excitement, only temporarily though.  After her high on the good life, she is back but she meets Ferdinand, a young war veteran (this story places in the 1920s) who are drawn together but it seems that they might not make it.  It doesn't matter, there is more to this than meets the eye.

4) Road Trip by Patrick Carthay

This is not a published work...yet.  This is a novella my friend Pat recently finished and email me.  I haven't had much time to read it due to finals and life.  I plan to finish this before Christmas, or least read enough to make some notes on it (i.e. what needs work, what should be omitted).
Road Trip focuses on a group of young twenty-somethings (who sound and act like high school seniors) who are spending the weekend at a secluded cabin miles from civilization.  From what I read so far (which is the first three chapters), it sounds a lot like Scream or Cabin Fever.
I kinda know where this story is going which is partially why I have been avoiding reading it.  There are a few characters I like and it would be better to focus the novel, or maybe write a whole new novel, around them.  There are a couple of secondary characters that should be omitted simply because there's too many people around and not enough to do for all of them.

Those are three books (and one unpublished manuscript) I plan to read for break so far.  Hopefully I can find more stuff to read over the next six or seven weeks that is not a blog, TIME or Entertainment Weekly.  Though funny blogs are welcomed to my reading curriculum.

You are looking at the new host of the DePaul Authors' Series 2.0

No, the title of this note/blog/awesome timewaster wasn't written to lure you in.  Though if that was the case, then thank you for reading.  I know your life is very hectic, especially if you're a college student who is trying to finish up final papers, projects and getting ready for finals.

Good luck on finals btw!

That is why I shall be brief. This Friday at 11:30am, I will host a series called the DePaul Authors' Series. The series is a interview/conversation with an author from the Chicagoland area in which the host and author discuss a book the author recently wrote as well as venture into other topics that may arise.
The revived series' first episode will include Stephen Markley. He wrote a book called "Publish This Book: A Premature Memoir" in which he decided to write a book about trying to write a book and have it published. The book he wants to publish is "Publish This Book."
"Wait a sec---what?!" you might be saying.
Yeah, I know. I'm still a bit confused by this, and I am 2/3 through the book.
But this book is much more than its title.  It goes into Markley's attempts to hit it big as a writer as well as his move from his native Ohio to Chicago and his time freelancing for various publications, including the Red Eye. I can't really describe it but my friend Blythe was able to:  it's a mindfuck.
But it's a mindfuck in a good way, like 'Being John Malkovich' or 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' (basically anything Charlie Kaufman has ever written)
I invite you to tune in if you are near a computer at 11:30am this Friday. You will be entertained and support the arts at the same time.

-Eddie Sayago
Newly Minted Host of DePaul Authors Series 2.0