Saturday Night, Den

Our hosts have digital cable.[1] And so on the first night there, we all end up in the den watching the very first episode of My So-Called Life on Nickelodeon's new teenager network. (Which has that DeGrassi High show, but which would be a lot better with a few key additions that you can probably guess at.)

Wow.

I used to watch it, of course, although admittedly on MTV, in high school. And I think I saw it once or twice in college. But for whatever reason--maybe because it's the first episode, maybe because of my viewing companion, maybe because of the distance I've achieved from my teenage self[2]--it really appeared to me as a New and Interesting thing this time, rather than as a particular good rerun of a particularly good TV series.

Honestly, I don't think my estimation of it at the time really rose above "good." Certainly it didn't have the same appeal to me as something like The Crow, or Pearl Jam (shh), or Sandman. But in retrospect, I think that was because MSCL was so friggin' accurate, a suspicion which my viewing certainly confirmed. It wasn't just that it was a realistic depiction of white middle-class American teenage life, it was actually presented wholly from the perspective of a white middle-class American teenager, and so I'm not sure how different it actually seemed from my actual life, although I'm sure I would have identified more if it wasn't told from a female perspective. But now, the way it really captured that precise feeling of being a confused teenager without tipping its hand that it was doing so is immensely appealing to me, and I think the female perspective is even a plus, since my college conversations sure make it seem like girls have much more interesting high school experiences than boys, at least among the broad "weird or slightly weird" subgroup.

That straight-faced, pseudo-realistic presentation of the teenage perspective is amazing, since unless you know what's going on it seems wholly real, less like the clearly structured reality of a sitcom and more like a newspaper story or a phone conversation with a friend, even as it's sort of mocking the overwrought drama and angst teenagers engage in. But again, that's fascinating because they can mock it without actually changing anything about it. So many great little touches are there. There's a scene early on in the episode where Angela (Claire Daines) and Brian Krakow (Devon Gummersall) keep sneaking glances at each other in science class, and when Sharon (Devon Odessa) joins in, it becomes this total conversation in code where no one actually entirely knows what the hell is going on, which we've all had. There, too, are a lot of great touches about the way groups function in high school, with the intrusion of Brian into the Rayanne-Rickie-Angela karass and the way all four semi-sequentially pick up saying "so" far more than necessary as a repeated nervous tic the night they're at Brian's, trying to hook Angela up with Jordan (Jared Leto). Rickie, who at the time seemed like a bit of a tokeny addition, now strikes me as a remarkably accurate portrayal of high school gaydom, although a) I could be wrong, and b) I see a wee bit of homoeroticism in the way he looks at Brian, although apparently I am totally mistaken about this.[3] And Miss Clap has pointed out how Jordan, who always seemed kind of sexily sleepy at the time, is now quite clearly stoned almost all the time; apparently he is even putting in eye drops at one point.

I have still not, however, entirely gotten over the way The Nerd, i.e. Brian, is presented. He just doesn't end up looking good; he has a clear crush on Angela that he deals with in the most annoyingly socially retarded, elementary school way, until it turns to sort of bitchy middle-school-girl-jealousy.[4] Plus, he engages in this kind of weird, awkward imitation of high school power-plays, and he's just irritatingly workaholicy and obsessed with good grades and a good college and like that, and he seemed annoying even in high school, and a really unfair representation of geekdom. The problem is, of course, he's a distressingly accurate portrait of a certain type of nerd, the overachiever, and I did know some. (In case he's googling himself, I'm talking about you, Mike Baldwin.) And, again, this is written from the female perspective, so we get a (very pretty) female semi-geek who is largely charming although sometimes frustrating, but I was simply not wise enough in the ways of the world at the time to realized that Angela was a total nerd-girl; the mere presence of vicarious-living-friend Rayanne is a tip-off. Angela's totally the kind of girl that would've ended up at Wesleyan or Haverford and would have ended up either becoming an academic or a hipster.[5]

But anyway, of course a big reason my views on Brian are what they are, to say nothing of the whole audience's views on all the characters, is because the damn thing was canceled after one season, and as any teen-drama aficionado will tell you, generally after Freshman year everyone's unhappy. So it was with MSCL: Amanda was looking slutty without actually getting any, Brian was still a clueless, unhappy nerd, Rayanne was off the wagon, Rickie had at least found a place to live but was still getting beaten up, etc. (I'm mostly cribbing the specifics from FAQs as my plot memory is a lot hazy, but I think my general impression is sound.) As befitted the genre, things weren't great, but there was hope on the horizon. Presumably by graduation, at least 2/3 of the people would have achieved satisfaction over their various Issues. (Amanda presumably would have gotten over Jordan but would have never hooked up with Brian, if other shows in the genre like Smallville and Dawson's Creek are anything to go by.) But because it ended right then--and this is the only good thing about that--we're left with everyone unhappy, and that is, somehow, totally perfect for what the show was trying to do. Sure, if you'd been following it in real-time, maybe you would have gotten to Senior year when Angela did and appreciated her triumph over angst, but as a recurring thing that's there, like Nirvana, frozen in time for future teens, you really feel like your misery is going to last forever, like you're always going to be alone, or trapped in a small town, or a virgin, or a geek with no social skills, or whatever. And so, again, it's true to that perspective, because the characters' miseries are forever.

The biggest thing that struck me, though--and this is presumably clear by now--is how much this either served as a model for, or was a prescient precursor for, the huge (and largely great) crop of teen dramas that have sprung up in the last decade. It's unclear if it was really the first of its kind, just a down-market version of thirtysomething, or a sort of yang to 90210's yin, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a more direct source for a lot of the conventions in shows like Gilmore Girls, Dawson's Creek, Everwood, Buffy, etc., etc. Even the ones more on the 90210 side of the axis like The OC and One Tree Hill, have, like MSCL, largely told their stories from the perspectives of teenagers, rather than reverting back to the wow-those-teenagers-look-like-they're-28 90210ism that had much more in common with 60's beach movies than with overdramatic angst.

But as much as I like some of the above shows, none of them have really done the specific thing MSCL was doing anywhere near as well as that show did. Dawson's was good but often head-explodingly talky--it could have learned a lot about rhythm from MSCL, whose frequent silences and voice-overs really did a lot to draw you in. Buffy chose to make the interior melodrama of teenage life exterior, and while it created something wonderful in the process, I don't think anyone literally saw their own lives in there.[6] And Gilmore Girls, with its occasional dropping of face and touches of meta, has developed into something even better than MSCL, something smarter and more joyful, but it still can't touch it for first-person identification. I was a boy, but damnit, I was Angela. And I still have a crush on Claire Daines. (Shh.)[7]

[1] I heart digital cable big-time. Plus, they have music channels like "Classic Disco," and then there's a five-channel rock of "Metal," "Rock," "Power Rock" (i.e. pop-metal), "Alternative Rock," and "Progressive Rock." It's pretty killer, although I get a little freaked out the second night and keep flipping stations because I might be missing something good.
[2] Oh yeah, I've really gotten a long way from that juvenile nerd. Ahem.
[3] Although apparently Rickie "Once had a crush on Jordan"! The things you forget over time.
[4] Some girls knew the score at the time, though, and loved Brian over Jordan, but most have, it would seem, only recently come to realize what a jerk Jordan was and to love the nerd.
[5] And the actor who played Rickie, Wilson Cruz, is now playing a White House intern on The West Wing, which is not an unrealistic depiction of where his character would have ended up, as Miss Clap pointed out.
[6] Or, at least, not for very long. Sure, you identify with Willow in her geekdom or in her hesitant drift towards homosexuality, but then her girlfriend gets shot by a black-magic-using geek and she goes nuts and almost causes the end of the world, and sure, metaphorically it feels pretty familiar, but I don't think a lot of us have actually been through that, you know?
[7] Which was, somewhat embarassingly, one of the reasons I really wanted to go to Yale, although their excellent academics and the presence of like-minded geeks played a big part, too. I think she was at Yale at the same time Rivers Cuomo was at Harvard, and the fact that they might meet at some sort of mixer always played out in my mind as a vague indie-rock celebrity fantasy. I would say more about this, but I think I'll save it for a future post once I've completed my current task of close-reading the Weezer catalog.[8] But anyway, it's kind of funny that Daines-the-actor went to Yale and Rory-the-character also went to Yale. And that stupid Felicity girl went to NYU. Loser.
[8] (I am only half-kidding.)
posted by Mike B. at 6:13 PM 0 comments

Because I am lazy, I am herein going to do a virtual blog of the blog I should have done last week. Of course, I also could not have done it last week because I was not near a computer for three days, which was HORRIBLE. But I should have done it last week, later, anyway. Excuses, excuses. So herein, without much further delay, I present the Virtual Michiana Blog, entered sort of in real time.[1] In case I want to slip in something else, you can tell a VMB post by its italicized heading, which will contain both a rough idea of the time and possibly the location. Hope you enjoy, or at least tolerate. If not, eh, more stuff later.

So, without further ado:

Saturday Afternoon, Detroit Airport

Exchange, presented without context:

"I appreciate it, but in a totally ironic way."
"I sincerely like it. I mean, I was rubbing my head against it!"

I like this--head-rubbing as a non-verbal sign of non-ironic appreciation. You know, because ironic appreciation is supposedly bad because it's distanced, once you get right up to something and really get it all over you (or you all over it), that distance is removed. You're putting yourself at risk by rubbing your head against, say, a state fair, or a muscle-t, or Kristie Yamaguchi. This is why you'll see me rubbing my head against a member of the Scissor Sisters sometime--not as a gesture of attraction, but as a sign of sincerity. Or so I will attempt to claim.

But anyway, from now on, say things like this: "I liked The Punisher. In a head-rubbing way."

[1] Which means "not in real time at all, but at least in chronological order, unless it's easier not to."

posted by Mike B. at 4:54 PM 0 comments

Me and some other folk were going to do a "Nirvana day" on the anniversary of Kurt's death, but we sort of never got around to it, and in retrospect I'm kinda disappointed, but mostly glad. Almost everything I've read about the occasion has made me depressed, with the notable exception of Klosterman's article in Spin, which was a smart, smart envisioning of Kurt's life if he hadn't died (which goes a long way toward soothing some of the disappointment).

But other than that, blech. For one thing, Kurt's pretty much only presented as a sort of unattainable ideal. And not just musical, which wouldn't be so bad, since we've gotten over that sort of thing before ("No one will ever be as good as the Beatles, man."). But, grossly enough, it's the parts of Kurt's life that he seemed to want to be emphasized that are being most fully lionized--his moral stances, his purity of essence, his cultural impact. You're a good musician and songwriter who's enjoying some success and making people happy? So what? Did you spend years touring relentlessly in a van, playing in small clubs? Do you have a naturally incendiary voice? Are you a wellspring of deepness? Did you write a single that changed the cultural preferences and values of an entire generation or two? Of course, a lot of this isn't true, and I know that, but the fact remains that, partially because of his death, Kurt has now become The Annoyingly Perfect Sibling in the rock world, the one who's an authority's wet dream, did everything perfect, and can never be matched. Maybe the standards by which he's being judged are fucked up, but that doesn't make one feel any better about one's self if, by those same standards, one hovers somewhere are Kajagoogoo.

But even more depressing is the fact that apparently people still haven't learned the fucking lesson of Nirvana, or at least a big part of the lesson. They still want to see it as a story about the value of authenticity and "darkness" and the way the bourgeois mainstream just doesn't get it, man. Take, as a somewhat random example, this bit from a USA Today article:

On Seattle alternative station KNDD, Cobain's music has a nightly showcase as well as a fixed position in the playlist.

"Nirvana, in Seattle and the rest of America, is still a cornerstone of this format," station manager Phil Manning says. "When Nirvana was a young band, rock music was glam-metal, very slick and overproduced party music that lacked sincerity. Kurt's music and lyrics and entire persona were the antithesis of that. Nirvana had a rawness and honesty that spoke to Kurt's generation. The music was the star, period. The band was the anti-star."

Blargh. Phil, didn't you get the memo? It's OK to admit in public that we like(d) Motley Crue now. (Although maybe not in Seattle, I dunno.) Are we honestly still peddling this discredited line? I mean, obviously we are (Matthew's April Fool's Day post consisted of Nirvana and Pearl Jam writeups culled solely from Amazon reviews, and are both hilarious and prime examples of this attitude) but sheesh, it's just shocking to see it being presented with a straight face. I mean, who's included in that "overproduced party music" category? Prince? Pet Shop Boys? New Order? Do I need to go on? Or is it just that old, weird anti-dance music bias thing again? And sweet Jesus, can we get over the glam-metal thing already? If you liked Nevermind you liked glam-metal. I'm sorry, but it's true. And yes, I'll also grant you the oft-mentioned significance that Nevermind kicked Michael Jackson off the top of the charts, but not because it signaled a new age where people woke up and realized how empty and meaningless Michael Jackson and his ilk was (because a) Thriller is better than a whole lot of alt-rock albums and b) indie-rock has always been less effective than multiple pedophilia charges at ruining an artist's public image); it was significant because it showed that indie rock could be pop, just as pop as Michael Jackson, and that this was OK, that this could really work. But people still don't get that. Look at what else the radio dude has to say:

"It's great that Kurt influenced so many young musicians. The flip side is that the ones who lacked originality tried to follow a template. Right there, it loses its honesty and reason for existence."

This would be true if it weren't for, you know, the Pixies, Black Flag, the Melvins, etc., etc., etc. This is all pretty well documented and agreed upon: Nirvana took a lot from its influences, and they were following just as much of a template as, say, Silverchair. But the conclusion we should draw isn't that Nirvana is a lame bunch of poseurs who are just ripping off bands that never had a shred of their success and should be thusly ignored, it's that templates are good. There are a lot of templates out there that we can learn from and try and implement, and one of those templates is pop, which is a whole genre of templates mixed with weirdness these days. It's just shocking to me that people are still on this search for pure originality when it neither exists nor is desirable. It's not like there's no music out there right now that we enjoy. Wouldn't you want someone to at least learn the lessons of those successful acts? And aren't a lot of the acts we love pop in one way or another?

The other thing besides the originality shibboleth is the sincerity thing, which seems synonymous with sadness. Sure, Kurt's life was ultimately pretty sad, and a lot of his songs are certainly mopey. But there's also a whole lot of goofiness and silliness and just general fun in there. I mean, "Floyd the Barber"? "About a Girl"? Krist doing pudding Twister on TV? The bits from The Year Punk Broke with Kim putting makeup on Kurt? Nirvana's style stole a lot of the good elements from the whole Olympia scene, being cute without going wholly twee, certainly much more so than some of the more metalheady, macho grunge groups. And then, of course, there's the beauty of "Sliver," but that's probably a post to itself.

Ack, sincerity. Why can't people see the pop in Nirvana? Why can't they then think about how much of pop is deeply sincere? (Indeed, it's that "cheesy" sincerity that turns some people off pop music!) Nirvana did a great service by taking the localist and community (i.e. social) based indie music to a broad audience, showing how it was done. It's not that they showed dumb record execs that there was this wholly different thing that was even better than, say, New Edition, it was that they showed dumb record execs how many similarities there were between indie bands and pop groups, how once you got past the prickliness there was a lot there to appeal to teenagers, deep ones or otherwise.

If there's a lesson to be learned from Nirvana that I think is often missed, it lies in another well-documented fact: Kurt wasn't actually much of an indie kid. He was a clueless small-towner trying to look cool. But the fact that he succeeded should tell us something. Don't get me wrong--I recognize that some of the indie posturing he engaged in had a really positive effect. Certainly you can't underestimate the good done by his championing of obscure bands to a wide audience, even if the way he did it smacked of name-dropping. But a pretty big function of his cred-maintenance was to allow a certain group of people to like his music. In a way, this is simply evidence again of his almost unconscious pop instincts, trying to get everyone in under the tent, and maybe by making the model he promoted a wholly legitimate one, he's done some good for future musicians. But we also see that people have missed the point. So I think it's time to be honest here. The fact that Kurt could basically fake indie cred should show us just how bullshit that is, that it's not honest and pure, that it's something you can make up if you've got the skills and hang out with riot girrls for a while. He hit a shocking number of points on the indie moral code, but he was also a total sell-out. So why do we cling to this? Why do we continue to limit ourselves?

This was a complaint. Nirvana deserves a celebration, and maybe we'll work one up for another anniversary, or just for no reason at all. But for now, I think this needed to be said.

posted by Mike B. at 3:19 PM 0 comments

Brief housekeeping note (followed, I hope, by a bunch of posts): I'm about to record an EP with th' band. Would there be any interest in something like a recording diary that's more of a step-by-step, here's-how-you-get-this-done sort of thing? Leave a note in the comments if so; ignore if not. I can never tell when I'm being too self-indulgent.

Well, OK, sometimes I can tell.

posted by Mike B. at 12:52 PM 0 comments

ROCK 'N' ROLL BON MOTS, #005

Last week I had one of those days where I couldn't stop listening to the first Weezer album and couldn't help but feel like all I wanted to listen to for the rest of my life was that and stuff as good as that (mid-period Blur, Fountains of Wayne, about a third of the first Cars album, Talking Heads '77, the first Sex Pistols album, half of the last Liz Phair album, half of Back in Black, Flood, I Get Wet, Nevermind, etc.), and then couldn't help but feel sad that there was so little of this. But now I feel better.

posted by Mike B. at 12:50 PM 0 comments