From Under the Cork Tree, Nate

At this point in their existence, Fall Out Boy did not get the credit they deserved as songmakers and performers. That this sparked a rise and peak is not a surprise. What is a surprise is how sophomoric this all seems now in the cold light of the second decade of the 2000s. This ain't a scene, and so forth.

From Under the Cork Tree, Melissa

This album is truly a time traveling experience. I'm wearing three layers of tank tops and too much lip gloss. I'm very Pop. I'm so Pop, I'd seen the Backstreet Boys in concert four times at this point. 

I would've listened to this album, because some emo goofus with a bowl cut, plaid shirt, and khaki cargo pants was into Fall Out Boy. He's pretty cool for a Catholic school kid, but this album makes him worldly to me, because I am all Destiny's Child with a splash of Travis here and there. 

Anyway, his name is Brian or Ryan or Michael... I don't remember, but he is so cool to me even as I wonder "Is this punk?" If it is, I kind of like punk, but I'm also not sure this group defines punk. I'm annoyed that "Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Wouldn't Get Sued" wasn't a big song, because maybe I would've listened more to Fall Out Boy. "Of All the Gin Joints in All the World" feels like classic punky fun. This is fun! But, should punk be fun? Is it too fun for emo Brian, or Ryan, or Michael?  

We get to the songs I know like "Dance, Dance" and others that I don't know that come off so angry and frantic. The frantic nature of most songs on this album makes me anxious. Is punk too fast? It reminds me of how Brian, or Ryan, or Michael from school would've danced. It's a little too hyper, a little offbeat, and a great way to keep ladies at a Holy Ghost’s distance (if not more). When I hear a song with the title "Dance, Dance" I want it to actually make me want to dance dance. Some of these songs make me want to do a very fast, very angry, Charleston.

It's 2005 again and I have to think of a really great AOL Instant Messenger away message. I need something that shows I'm maybe edgy and mysterious. I put on some more lip gloss (which matches my shirt, my eye shadow and a tiny under-the-armpit purse that will really make this outfit scream "cool") and I come up with the greatest line of all time. "Am I more than you bargained for yet?" I feel very sage at this point in my life with my punky away message secured. "Sugar, We’re Goin Down" still works for me like a tiny under-the-armpit purse; it is functional and stylish. I will admit, I still make up lyrics for this song. "Trabajar / se llama" is not a lyric, but 2005 me thought that was funny ("Drop a heart / say a name" is the actual line). "I'm just a notch in your bedpost / But you're just a line in a song," is so well played and angsty. This song is still catchy, softer, less anxiety-inducing. I think lyrically, this album is doing a lot, so much more than I realized. 

As we continue to move down 2005 lane, "I've Got a Dark Alley and a Bad Idea That Says You Should Shut Your Mouth (Summer Song)" feels like different band. A flavor I like... like Guster in their prime. "I Slept with Someone in Fall Out Boy and All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me" has a great title and potentially the most punky feel that I got behind. Whiny? Yes, but it felt more earned somehow. 

I enjoyed this album for the parts of me it made me giggle about—the parts we still hang onto from a time we thought we looked cool and didn't. Is that punk? I hope somewhere Brian, or Ryan, or Michael has un-popped his collar, put away his puka shell necklace, and is sporting a dad bod and sensible jeans. It's all good when, in his heart, he is still punk and that's nice.

From Under the Cork Tree, Maeve

I was ecstatic when Joe told me a few weeks ago that this album was going to be featured as the Album of the Week. This album was truly pivotal to my high school days. Prior to this, I was a tried and true Top 40 girl. I remember hearing "Sugar, We're Goin Down" on the radio, being obsessed, and then delving into everything I could get my hands on. I immediately went on Limewire and burned a copy of this album and Take This to Your Grave. I learned everything about FOB and the other bands they were touring with. I went to see them at the small venue in Hartford and then later when they would play the outdoor arena. This FOB album was like a gateway drug for me, discovering a whole world of music I didn't know existed. Granted, I still discovered it on the radio... my cooler and more emo/alternative friends took this as an opportunity to show me similar Warped Tour-style, tight jeans-wearing, insane swoopy-haired music. I was all in. 

To me, this album feels like finding an old sweater that you haven't worn in years. It's cozy, nostalgic, yet outdated, and there's probably a reason I haven't worn in a while. Yet, it brought me right back to a time and a place. 10/10.

From Under the Cork Tree, Bridget

I love this album and was so excited to revisit it. It truly brings me back to freshman year of high school and Maeve telling me "you probably won't like this band, they're intense." We blasted this album front-to-back in our Volvo wagon for the rest of the year...

As far as the relisten goes, I do still remember most of the words, which is pretty impressive. Strong standout songs for me are "Of All the Gin Joints in the World," "Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner," and "Sophomore Slump or Comeback of the Year." You know it's old school FOB because they were still letting Pete Wentz do screamo at the end of songs! What a dang treat.

Obviously the song of the album is "Sugar, We're Goin Down," which everyone knows all the words to and will sing when a cover band plays it. Just an absolute banger.

I will say, sixteen years later, that this album is still the perfect album to blast in the car alone when you're mad at your parents. 4.78 stars out of 5.

From Under the Cork Tree, Sunny

I considered not even listening to the album this time around. Didn't seem necessary—Cork Tree, for better or worse, has worn deep grooves in my memory. Kinda elucidates how different fifteen years ago was to today—this was mega popular on the radio and in conversation, and it was emo pop punk?

Popular enough to be unavoidable so you'd have to take some stance—love it or hate it. Popular enough to remember various facets of the discussion: the songs are great, the songs suck, the cover art is bizarre, the question of reference to The Simpsons or Fallout, the overly elaborate titles (also in vogue at the time). The curious appearance of an oddly similar band with Panic! at the Disco. Minor debates on whether it is a "god complex" or "gun complex" which you are cocking and pulling. The proliferation of "Sugar, We're Goin Down" as one of those tracks that gets overplayed on both 104.5 and Q102 and some other Third station, and had enough heat behind it that "Dance, Dance" could backfill the space when it got old. How easy it was and is to make fun of "Dance, Dance"'s music and lyrics.

It felt like FOB had mounted a new arrangement of what youth like me were swimming in already, a vanguard of Emo Punk Pop. All this to say that in a memory space that is mostly patchy, FallOutBoy has oversized purchase, and despite the varied nature of said memories, my impression of From Under the Cork Tree is probably better with nostalgia glasses than it would be relistening to it. It fits as background music to that time of feeling energy and fervor and possibility, compared to the current day of feeling stuck in quagmire, and so I'd rather have this memory colored more rose-tinted than in verisimilitude.

P.S. We've tapped a bit into mid-naughts fun with Shania, Tilly, O.A.R., but FOB for some reason feels the deepest of them. That's likely just my personal upbringing/bent, and which is why I feel no shame just writing unconnected stream of consciousness about memories, and then this tag to justify why I would do that in this space. But I've never been good at doing the right actions in the right space, Or, What is this space for anyway?

P.P.S. So I listened to it again. The choruses and hooks are familiar through the whole thing, but I forgot a lot of the chaff in the back half. Song titles seem to get more complex the less you have to say with the music. "Sugar" and "Dance", however, are memories encased in carbonite (with that putative look-of-horror that goes along with being frozen in carbonite). It's heavier than I recall (perhaps 2014's "Centuriiiiiiies" was an influence?), but ultimately it's not so good or so bad that I won't go back to just thinking of it as an artifact from fifteen years ago.

P.P.P.S I really thought I knew that phrase "Champagne for my real friends..." from a rap song, but I can't for my life think of which. There's this Wikipedia article, but it feels woefully underpopulated.

From Under the Cork Tree, Joe

The idea that there is certain music I listened to at age sixteen and certain music I didn't listen to at age sixteen isn't necessarily unique to music listeners in general, and it's an idea that I've hashed and rehashed on this blog too many times already, including these hallowed Record Club halls specifically. So let's not do that again. We get it, brah—you were a fucking anti-emo snob, you are older now, you are freed from the burden of what "being cool" means, if it ever meant anything at all. Go forth and listen to Fall Out Boy like the rest of us.

I was reading a book about Radiohead's Kid A this week, and it happened to quote a particularly scathing Nick Hornby (the High Fidelity guy) review of the album, and it coincidentally attacked this idea of "being sixteen" from a different angle. Here is the except (originally from The New Yorker, October 2000; emphasis mine):

You have to work at albums like Kid A. You have to sit at home night after night and give yourself over to the paranoid millennial atmosphere as you try to decipher elliptical snatches of lyrics and puzzle out how the titles might refer to the songs. In other words, you have to be sixteen. Anyone old enough to vote may find that he has competing demands for his time—a relationship, say, or a job, or buying food, or listening to another CD he picked up on the same day. He may also find himself shouting at the CD player, "Shut up! You’re supposed to be a pop group!" (The music critics who love Kid A, one suspects, love it because their job forces them to consume music as a sixteen-year-old would. Don't trust any of them.) I suspect that people who have been listening to rock music for decades will have exhausted the fund of trust they once might have had for "challenging" albums. Kid A demands the patience of the devoted; both patience and devotion become scarcer commodities once you start picking up a paycheck.

Aside from being a shitty take on Kid A (which is not the greatest album of the aughts but is certainly much better than Hornby gave it credit for), and a pretty lazy take at that (and also, probably accidentally touching on the true reason why an average of 2.5 people participate in Record Club on any given week), I think this might, in a rather oblique way, touch on the general truth that there are certain albums that you can only truly appreciate at age sixteen, and if you try to get in on the fun after that age, you might find it impossible. I wonder if From Under the Cork Tree is one of those albums.

Okay, so the first like twelve times I listened to this album, it did absolutely nothing for me. I connected more with Pete Wentz via an Us Magazine article, in which he talks about that weird sense of losing your identity when you have a kid, than anything from this album. Eventually, I came to appreciate the pop/punk/emo hybrid that was prevalent in the mid-aughts ("Sugar, We're Goin Down Swinging" peaked at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100), because, I dunno, it's fun? A truth I could only learn in my 30s, apparently, that this type of music fucking slaps. But it still wasn't really hitting me deep down, ya know?

As Nick Hornby snarkily states, maybe I needed to get in touch with my sixteen-year-old self in order to become a true music critic. And so I listened to From Under the Cork Tree as a sixteen-year-old. It's harder than it sounds! It's tough to remember that sense of passion, the type that would inspire empathy with such lines as "I swear I'd burn this city down to show you the light," the type that you can only feel at age sixteen. It's kind of uncomfortable! It would be like going back and reading old Xanga posts. No one wants to do that shit. No album is worth that.

Because Nick Hornby was ultimately wrong when it comes to sixteen-year-olds—there's much more to being sixteen than a willingness to participate in the art of the album. There is also a potent mix of being inexperienced and a burning desire to be anything but. You get older, you gain more life experience, and you can't really unring the bell. You can't go back to being inexperienced. It doesn't fit well.

That's not to say that everyone is going to approach Fall Out Boy in the same way. There are plenty of people who are going to listen to From Under the Cork Tree and instantly be transported back to 2005, with Discmans on school buses, sitting next to your unspoken crush. This album, then, can be used as a bridge back to that time, if you want it to. If there are more than two Record Club reviews this week (unknown as of this writing), then this is why—From Under the Cork Tree was an album that people listened to back then, and sincerely enjoy listening to it now specifically because of that. And that's possibly the only reason.

(Look, we're about to wrap up here, so let's take one quick break and say that this week's deep listen of Fall Out Boy finally got me to look up what the fuck they meant by "I'll be your number one with a bullet." I assumed "with a bullet" was a widely used idiom, but apparently it's actually pretty specific. Billboard used to indicate "quickly rising songs" on the chart by putting a little picture of a bullet next to the song's title. So when Patrick Stump sings "I'll be your number one with a bullet," he's saying that he's going to be the most important person in your life, and it's going to happen really quickly. The idiom was popularized when whiny protagonist Rob says it in High Fidelity, because apparently everything is coming back to Nick Hornby this week.)

I'm usually pretty jealous when I listen to an album now that was very popular when I was sixteen but that I refused to listen to or enjoy when I was sixteen. I feel like I'm missing out on at least one layer of any potential enjoyment in the album. Because it's a very good album, very solid, lots of fun, catchy songs, and I wouldn't mind enjoying it even more. But then again, do I really want that? Do I really want the songs of Fall Out Boy soundtracking memories from when I was sixteen? Do I want to even remember age sixteen?

The very best I can do is try to be a sixteen-year-old as old man Nick Hornby imagines them—as someone who cares deeply about the music (even though we all know that music isn't the only thing that sixteen-year-olds have way too much time to think about). Just know that I can't possibly recommend this album to anyone; if you're the type of person who would actually benefit from the recommendation, then you know about the album already, and probably already unabashedly love it.

GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5

Some Books I've Read Recently

I'll go years without reading a single non-Book-Club book, and then go a single month reading four books total. It's tough to get in that groove, but once I get in it, I try to ride it as long as possible. Either to motivate myself to keep reading whatever the Parkway Central Library has to offer or to just fill some made-up daily content quota on Puke on Your Birthday, I'm gonna type my main thoughts about the last four books I've read, and see what comes out.

Alright, Alright, Alright by Melissa Maerz

The interesting thing about this book, which is an oral history from cast and crew about the best movie of all time, is that I already posted about 15,000 words about the subject in a similar format, right here on PoYB. So I mainly went into Alright, Alright, Alright wondering if there was anything else I could learn about Dazed and Confused. Of course there was! Like, Pam discussed with me about some of the IMDB trivia, and I generally expressed my indifference toward those bullet points at the time of the interview, but it's a whole different fucking thing when the people who were actually involved in the creation of the film are giving you that trivia.

 

I remember Pam asking me whether I was aware that the kids (teens, young adults, whatever) were actually partying on the set of Dazed and Confused. It seemed right, and it was, but it was an infinitely more enjoyable experience reading first-hand experience from those (former) kids, ya know? The thing I love about Dazed and Confused is how strongly it reflects my general experiences as a teenager, and it was a goddamn joy to understand in what ways the film mirrors the process of actually making the film. If that makes sense.

It also provided some satisfaction in knowing that this film is as important to other people as it is to me. To hear Ben Affleck say that it was the most inspiring and important movie-making experience of his life spoke volumes, and if I'm being honest, made me like Ben Affleck and understand Ben Affleck as a person / Hollywood legend for the first time in my life.

Anyways, it should go without saying that an oral history of my favorite movie of all time is gonna get top marks, but here ya go regardless.

GRADE: 4.5 pukes out of 5

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Speaking of Book Club books, we read a George Saunders book (Tenth of December) last summer, and I really liked it (we'll leave my more nuanced thoughts back in July 2020). I liked it enough that I figured I should try another book by Saunders (also didn't hurt that the other blogger in America seems to like a whole bunch of Saunders). Also also, this book ended up on some old Free Library list I made in like 2018 for reasons lost in the sands of time, and also also also I remember the cover from one of my favorite episodes of High Maintenance, when The Guy starts reading it but is distracted by a solar eclipse party...

Digression aside, this was a pretty decent book. The premise is that it is also an oral history, which I considered somewhat kismet after reading an oral history prior to this. But the catch is that it is historical fiction, so one can assume that either most or maybe all of the sources and quotes are made up. The story is about President Lincoln and the death of his son, twelve-year-old Willie Lincoln. Oh, and another catch is that much of the fictional oral history is provided by ghosts in the graveyard where Willie is laid to rest.

I separate the structure and the story because only one was truly effective. I felt like the "fake oral history" design was hit-or-miss. I enjoyed many of the tangents by real-life party guests and tertiary ghosts, but I don't know if it necessarily added anything to the novel besides forgettable joy. For the most part, the very best parts of the novel were the reflections on Willie's death by Lincoln himself, as well as those surrounding him (supernatural or earthly). Regardless of whether you buy into the premise of this novel, there is no doubt that reflections on death re: a young child are going to feel like a fucking sucker punch (especially if you are a father to young ones yourself).

For that reason alone, it was a worthy read. Even though I spent a few hours on the train annoyed at how I had to read this book, I also spent a few minutes on the train shedding tears because of what I was reading.

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

I don't even know that many people who could seriously recommend a book to me, but when a recommendation comes through on our very own goddamn blog, I'm more than likely gonna take the author up on it.

Sam's description was on point—this was seriously fun book about a lovable character. Not much to say otherwise. I will mainly say that this is the type of book that is so fun and so well-written that I can't help but be jealous of it. "Why can't I write like this?" is my constant refrain throughout every chapter. (The answer probably being "because you waste your fucking time writing inconsequential bullshit on your blog instead of honing this menial skill otherwise.")

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5

This Isn't Happening by Steven Hyden

I always say that I'll watch any movie that has to do with music, no matter how critically reviled it, because music in general interests me, and so why wouldn't any form of medium that concentrates on music interest me too? (This is how I ended up giving the 2018 film Bohemian Rhapsody 1 puke out of 5 instead of 0.) The same applies to books.

The best part about this nonfiction novel all about Kid A is how it took my opinions about Kid A (that it is middling at best), and laid down like 87 reasons as to why this isn't as unique an opinion as I like to pretend it is. Talking shit on Kid A is fucking BORING, argues Steven Hyden, and he truly did a good job proving that.

The second-best part about This Isn't Happening is how aware it is that writing an entire book, and also reading that book, about an album that came out twenty years ago by a band that is mid-tier at best, is laughably unimportant. Hyden knows he isn't rewriting the 95 Theses, and the self-awareness is admirable and enjoyable.

 

Like, there's a part where he references Chuck Klausterman's 2005 essay about Kid A (featured in his book / essay collection Killing Yourself to Live). Hyden starts explaining what the essay is about, and then stops cold and says something like, "I feel like I don't need to explain what this essay is about—if you consciously chose to read an entire book about Kid A, then you know which fucking essay I'm talking about."

 

It's so important to be this way when you're talking about music, because if you start getting too serious about it, then it stops being fun. And why spend half your life committed to this stupid ass hobby if it's not going to be fun?

GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5

(KID A's GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5)

Top Five Tuesday: Sleepy

Top Five Weirdest Things I've Ever Done Because I Was Really Sleepy (and Sober—Mostly)

5. Forgot What I Was Talking About on a Pretty Important Phone Call

I've mentioned this before, but I spent a year of my life working for the local police department, splitting my time between working the radio and taking 911 calls from citizens. I was not very good at my job (if only everyone who worked at the police department could admit this when it's true!), but I still did a lot of it. Tons of overtime, and some of it was ill-advised. Mainly, I'm talking about whenever I'd be scheduled till 11 PM, and then add on another four hours of OT, taking me till 3 AM. Even in my early 20s, I have always had trouble staying up late, and so a lot of the time I would fall asleep, even while on the hook for dealing with true emergencies. I got a call at like 2:20 AM one night, the loud incoming-call alert startling me from my slumber. Someone needed medical assistance. What we are supposed to do in that situation is transfer to Fire/Medic, stay on the line, and explain to that operator what the issue is on the call before the actual caller gives more info. But by the time we got through to the other line, I had fallen asleep again and totally forgot what the caller had even told me in the first place. I guess this is less weird and more fucked up than anything—and it's not like the caller wasn't still there and couldn't fill in the details, so no harm and no foul—but it's just weird in retrospect, that I lived a year of my life hearing so many gruesome details about people's lives that I could literally fall asleep while listening to them.

4. Selected Premium Plus Gas Instead of Regular

#5 is probably gonna be the only one on this list that is that involved, all these other ones are weirder and simpler. For instance—one time I was 90% asleep in my car (should NOT have been driving) and realized I needed gas. When I pulled out the nozzle and placed it in the gas tank, I somehow accidentally chose the premium option instead of regular, which cost me an extra $.25 per gallon. How does one "accidentally" choose the wrong gas option? It's something I think about literally every time I have gotten a gas fill-up in the seven years since. Just some weird, tired shit.

3. Misheard at an Inopportune Moment

I took great pains to choose mostly sober events for this dumb list. While drinking and sleepiness have been intertwined throughout my years of alcohol consumption, I think we can safely blame most of the dumb hijinks on the drinking part of that equation. E.g. pissing the bed wouldn't have happened if I was awake, but c'mon, it really wouldn't have happened if I was sober. Still, I included this particular incident because it's slight and equal parts laughable/regrettable and, while I was definitely drunk during, I blame it mostly on the fact that I was pretty sleepy too. I was in bed with a very kind stranger at the tail-end of a random college night, and after doing whatever young strangers do together on a typical night like this, I started to fall asleep. For some reason, when half-asleep, I had one of those semi-dreams, and the woman whom I was sleeping next to in real life was also in the dream, and she was asking me, in this dream, to guess what her middle name was. I guessed in the dream, but also said my guess out loud, to a very real person who had most certainly not asked me to guess her middle name. So she interprets this as me trying to guess her first name—which, for the record, I knew quite well, I'm not THAT much of a shitbag—and she rightfully flips out. Pushes me out of bed, says "what the FUCK how do you not know my NAME what is this a goddamn CLICHÉ I'm living in right now" and so on. Took a while to explain that I'm just a little sleepy boy who can't distinguish dreams from reality sometimes.

2. Pissed on a Textbook

This has nothing to do with alcohol, and it's probably only weird because it has nothing to do with alcohol. In fact, if I recall correctly, after this very short anecdote made the rounds throughout my A.P. Biology class, somehow it had morphed into a Drunk Joe K*** story, as if I could only do something so weird if I was as blackout drunk as everyone assumed I got every weekend (half-truths are king in high school). But I swore then, and I swear to you now, that when that random Tuesday night rolled around, and I found myself standing naked in my bedroom, dick out, peeing all over an open biology textbook, that I was completely and utterly sober. Just tired. (Yes, of course I still had to use the same textbook for the rest of the year.)

1. Wrote "10"

This one happened around the same time as #5. Our shifts alternated bi-weekly between 7A-3P and 3P-11P, so I pretty much just spent that entire year in a sleepy haze. I also had a decent amount of time to kill at work. When it was busy, it was busy enough that I literally still have nightmares about it; when it wasn't busy, I did Sudoku. And one time, as I sat there, one eye half-open, trying to stay awake and attempting it by keeping my brain "fresh" with a numbers game, I looked down at the page, only to see that I had written the number 10 in one of the boxes. Maybe it says more about me than anything else, that I consider an egregious mishap regarding the rules of a simple numbers puzzle to be the weirdest thing that I've ever did, I dunno. But I will never forget how tired I was on this day.

Honorable Mention: I didn't include this in the list because it was less something weird that I did and more something weird that happened to me. But one time, I was three-quarters-asleep on the 15 bus, headed toward Front and Girard, when I had a very weird dream about a homeless lady coming over to me on the bus and tickling my chin. Kinda spooked me, to be honest, so it woke me up. I discovered quickly that the tickling was real, and it was being performed by a cockroach that was crawling across my face. Not the best bus ride I ever took.

Never Seen It, #45 of 200: Despicable Me

I made a dumb little fucking list of movies I've never seen, and now I'm forcing myself to go through the list, one movie at a time.

Despicable Me

2010

I am not interested whatsoever in considering whether this or that kids' movie is good or entertaining for kids. Because that's the comeback received by all adults who critique children's media, right? "Well of course you didn't like it, it wasn't meant for you!" But I am not a kid, and no kids are reading these words on this blog currently. So what, are we just supposed to ignore children's media altogether? Pretend it's not there? Pretend that these annoying, gibberish-speaking turds haven't pervaded our pop culture and our very way of life?

And plus, like, kids will watch fucking anything. It's a real treat when W or M happen upon entertainment that is both meant for them and of actual sincere quality to all involved (most recently, this was Netflix's Go, Dog. Go!, but it's since fallen out of favor in our household—R.I.P.), but they also fall madly in love with some absolute dogshit TV and movies—the noose is fastened, and Pinkfong makes me swing. So don't talk to me about what is "entertaining" for children, because fucking anything is entertaining to children. It's not even a question worth considering.

All this to say three things: one, yes, of fucking course my kids would love Despicable Me if I put it on for them; two, it is for this reason that I watched Despicable Me in my cubicle, alone, rather than put it up on the big screen during the allotted pre-bedtime hour of TV, because; three, Despicable Me was fucking awful, and I don't want to fall into the trap where I am forced to watch it every night for a month straight.

I've written about this before, and I won't harp on it too much, because I don't want the ultimate purpose of Never Seen It to warp into the dismantlement of Never Seen It itself, but, like, if I knew I wasn't going to like Despicable Me, then why even include the goddamn thing on the list in the first place? Other than saying that I am just a complete fucking sucker for punishment, the best answer I can give you is that I looked at it more like a sociological obligation than a cinematic or critical one.

Even if you've never heard of Despicable Me, you know what a Minion is. I mostly associate the characters with the cheap plush toys up and down the Wildwood Boardwalk for the past decade, able to be won if you shoot your water gun at a target longer than other competitors. "Annoying" would probably be the most basic and most correct descriptor here. But it's also a descriptor that needs to be earned, and even though I have fucking HATED the Minions for a decade now, it felt disingenuous to feel that way without having seen the film from which they originated.

So here we are. We are watching Despicable Me. We are confirming that, yes, Despicable Me is a paint-by-numbers kiddie flick about cute children and Big Meanies with Soft Hearts and coming together to achieve a goal. We are confirming too that, yes, the Minions specifically are annoying as fuck, and the thought that these little rapscallions were the breakout characters of this already shitty movie is practically unbearable.

I need you to know this, because I am also about to qualify my feelings about the Minions vis-à-vis their role in Despicable Me, but I don't want you to think I had a "change of heart" or anything like that. Coming away from Despicable Me loving the Minions would be about as unlikely as Gru's own change of heart throughout the film. It would have been lacking any sort of logical motivation. We are not living in a children's movie. I'm not going to change who I am as a person for something this insignificant.

The qualification: I was surprised how well Gru treated his Minions, and I think it added an interesting little wrinkle to the whole idea of "minions" in the first place. There's the whole trope about these villainous leaders inspiring loyalty in their underlings, while at the same time considering those same underlings to be entirely dispensable. Think about other relationships in this lineage—do you think Darth Vader gave a fuck about each individual Storm Trooper? Do you think Lord Zedd invited any Putties over for dinner? Do you think Dr. Doom knew any of the Doombots' actual names?! (Sidenote: this idea was wonderfully parodied throughout The Venture Bros. series.)

But so here's Gru, walking through a throng of his adoring Minions, addressing many of them by name, asking about their families, actually exhibiting behavior that would suggest that he does care about these Minions, and is worthy of their adoration. And then here's the Minions, doing Gru's dirty work, but doing so with actual motivation behind it, as opposed to following orders because question mark.

Look, I'm not trying to say that Despicable Me did anything with this idea at all, because it didn't. This is just an interesting idea that I thought it brought to the table, and only an adult man with blog is going to focus on because he needs at least one positive aspect of the film to harp on and so why not this. It's even possible that the two sequels and the two prequels to Despicable Me have expounded on this idea more so than the original, and if so, great—but you gotta be crazy if you think I'm ever gonna find out for myself.

I guess all I'm saying is that I have something that softens my beliefs about the Minions just enough that I feel no longer compelled to rip every Minion plush toy in half. They are as annoying as you'd expect from any pill-shaped, made-up-language-speaking bozo performing rip-off and watered-down Bugs Bunny antics to be. But there's at least something behind the stupidity. They don't exist in a vacuum.

Again: I'm just writing all this to write something. If we didn't have this, then what? You want me to talk about how the Minions are really about monetizing creative property? Because that's just as important, but also requires me to be cynical, and it's already tough enough to write blog posts while being optimistic (though, isn't it interesting that grappling with the truth often requires a certain amount of cynicism?—no, no, no, we're not doing this in an essay about the goddamn Minions). Do kids buy toys shaped like the Minions because they like the Minions, or do kids like the Minions because they were specifically created to be liked and thus, to be bought with their parents' money? The latter, almost assuredly, but why depress myself even more than I have to? I just watched Despicable Me, so give me a fucking break.

I think if you're coming to this blog and reading this column to see whether a particular movie is worth watching, then you already have your answer. If you are reading this column to see how my personal opinion compares to movie critics in general and society in general, then I can tell you that I think there is at least one positive aspect of this movie worth considering, but even after considering it, I am then forced to consider the fact that society in general is hopelessly populated with morons. If you are reading this column to see Joe K*** contort himself into strange and uncomfortable positions, then I hope this is enough, because I cannot write anything else about Despicable Me.

GRADE: 1.5 pukes out of 5

NEXT TIME: This is such a 2012 take, but man, I am probably going to be over-effusive in my praise for Anne Hathaway when me and Frank discuss The Devil Wears Prada.

Album of the Week: From Under the Cork Tree

It probably seems like, in terms of choosing the weekly albums at least, there hasn't been a whole lot of input from Record Club recently. I (Joe) have picked a couple albums, there was a "random" album, there was an album picked by a Record Club artist, and there was Dwyer, whose may or may not text his other friends to get help with selecting whenever he is tasked with the job.

However, I am now committing to the next eight weeks being Albums of the Week selected by you, the members of Record Club. As always, the more reviews you write, the closer you will be moved to the front of the line, but I am now accepting all suggestions for albums. Let me know if you want to choose the music for this summer!

If you want to refresh your memory regarding the music we've already listened to, you can always check out the archives or the playlist. For Joe's final pick until the end of June, continue below.

 

WEEK 117 — April 25-May 1, 2021

 

What we're listening to this week (Joe's pick):

 

ALBUM: From Under the Cork Tree

ARTIST: Fall Out Boy

 

RELEASED: May 3, 2005

 

WHAT GENRE IS THIS: Emo / Pop-punk

 

WHY JOE PICKED IT: I've been talking to Dave about emo a lot recently, and promised him that I would pick an emo album for Record Club soon to give him an excuse to get off the M-F grind of Excel spreadsheets and dip his toe into some creative writing (though it didn't work last time, so we'll see if it works this time).

 

TRACKLIST:

1. Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Wouldn't Get Sued
2. Of All the Gin Joints in All the World
3. Dance, Dance
4. Sugar, We're Goin Down
5. Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner
6. I've Got a Dark Alley and a Bad Idea That Says You Should Shut Your Mouth (Summer Song)
7. 7 Minutes in Heaven (Atavan Halen)
8. Sophomore Slump or Comeback of the Year
9. Champagne for My Real Friends, Real Pain for My Sham Friends
10. I Slept with Someone in Fall Out Boy and All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me
11. A Little Less Sixteen Candles, a Little More "Touch Me"
12. Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying (Do Your Part to Save the Scene and Stop Going to Shows)
13. XO

LENGTH: 43:00

WHERE TO LISTEN FOR FREE: YouTube

READING SOME SHIT: Here's a random blog post, and I'm not really sure whether to take this author seriously or not.

Happy listening, fam! Have a great week!

A Year of Blind Spots: Reveal

When you're trying to explore an artist's double-digit-sized discography, is there a correct order in which to do so? I've never figured out the answer to this question, but that's not for lack of trying. Do you start with the albums with the most critical acclaim? You could, but then maybe the other albums would seem lacking when you get around to them. Do you go in chronological order? You could, but then maybe you're starting with albums from before an artist's talents really flourished, and that will sap your motivation to continue.

Do you just hop haphazardly around, listening to whatever random album seems like a good one to try next? That's what I've been doing with R.E.M., and it seems to be working okay, I guess. I think maybe trying to consume an entire discography is a daunting task no matter which angle you attack it from, and is always going to involve internal comparisons—this album is better than that album—and, like, there has to be some albums that are worse than others. That's just the nature of ranking, ya know?

So here we are with Reveal, and I'm trying to avoid all that, the comparisons, even if they are warranted, because that just does this pretty swell album a sincere disservice. A while ago, I argued that R.E.M. doesn't do "filler" tracks, and Reveal puts that theory to its most challenging test yet. Sure, I mean, it's not Automatic for the People, but Automatic for the People is pretty clearly a "peak" R.E.M. album. Reveal, released nine years later, is pretty clearly a "past their peak but still good" R.E.M. album. It's slower, more content to sit back and reveal itself over time.

And it really did take the entirety of this week, but I think as of today I am officially at the point where I can say that I like Reveal. I don't love it, but it was a grower, and it has grown. It almost feels like it's an album that is aware that the band's time is almost through. It's a last-gasps album, but not a postmortem-gas album.

Another thing to consider is why this was the next R.E.M. album I wanted to listen to, as opposed to, say, Murmur, or Monster, or Green. The answer, like many of these Blind Spot albums, is that I loved a song on the album already, and figured that the rest of the album might be just as good. A covers compilation from Stereogum last year featuring Strand of Oaks doing "Imitation of Life" reminded me how goddamn much I fucking love "Imitation of Life." And, as is the case with many of these Blind Spot albums, the rest of the album simply could not contend with the big hit. I know I'm doing a disservice to these albums, by grouping them all together and then saying something like "the album is fine but this song is wonderful!" It's not fair.

Nothing is fair, though. It's not fair to R.E.M. that I have this desire to consume all their work after the fact. It's like a boa constrictor trying to eat a dead deer—it's taking a really long time to digest, and my jaw is hurting from opening my mouth so wide. But I can't help it. I gotta eat. Doesn't matter the order.

Be Thankful for What You Got, Sunny

The feel of this album lends it more to "lounge" music as opposed to the "pop" music found on the radio. The difference, for me, is a lack of pull. On Monday morning, head full of worry, one would not go to the lounge. DeVaughn's long grooves of love and gratitude can be quite grating in a Monday-morning state of mind. This is opposed to a pop song with tuned vocals, engineered beats, dialed-in tempos whose purpose, in part, is to be a distraction from worry, for three to four minutes at least. 

But perhaps on Thursday, during a halcyon moment, the magic of DeVaughn can reveal itself. The deep grooves he carves allow room to really sink into his weave. In this place, even the more hokey lyrics (Blood is thicker than Water; Love is thicker than Blood) are fun and heartening. "Be Thankful" is likely the strongest track, showing the full range of talent which seven minutes allows. The track (and album generally) has some of the best xylophone around. It's one of those tracks where you may find yourself, hours later and out of nowhere, thinking about "Diamond in the back..."

How's this album compared to the Real Estate album we did for RC? Worse when it's worse, better when it's better. An odd deep cut, but what do you expect from an indie artist AMA?

Be Thankful for What You Got, Joe

Have I done a review yet in which the premise is that I enjoy thinking about the music a lot more than actually listening to it? Probably. I dunno, it's hard to keep track of these things. I guess I kind of hinted at it at the end of the Howlin Mercy review, though that was more of a tossed-off aside than the review's main point. In any case, let's try it out for size in this current review, Joe K***'s review of William DeVaughn's 1974 Philly Soul classic Be Thankful for What You Got. (Have I done a review yet in which the opening paragraph basically amounts to me vamping while I try to get my thoughts in order? Almost assuredly.)

In this review, I will write hundreds of words (maybe even thousands, depending on how busy work gets) about William DeVaughn, but this is mostly because I find him pretty fascinating as an artist. This should not indicate any sort of adoration for the music itself. These eight tracks have their moments, but if I had to sum it all up in one single word, that word would unfortunately be "boring." Maybe written in all-caps too, like imagine Be Thankful for What You Got is delivered to your door wrapped in brown paper and it's stamped with a big red stamp by a surly FedEx guy that reads like this: "BORING." Let's not confuse anything here.

The story of William DeVaughn is anything but. I mean, as far as I know, anyway. I'm not gonna pretend I'm some DeVaughn expert. I'm just a man who can read a Wikipedia page. And what I found was that William DeVaughn was a government worker—just like me!—who had a part-time passion for singing. This dude was working for the gov't in D.C. when he saw an ad in a magazine that told him he could drop $900 in Philly to spend time in a real, professional studio and record a song with an actual, functioning studio session band. The song this civil servant records goes all the way up to #4 on the Billboard Hot 100, sells two million copies, and becomes known as one of the most important and influential soul records in history.

There are two aspects to that story that I find endlessly fascinating. The first is that DeVaughn was able to just drop x-amount of money and sit in with some pretty famous musicians in their own right (MFSB, who would have their own Billboard #1 song that same spring of 1974 with "TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)"). Just imagine something like that happening today! Like, imagine seeing an ad in Rolling Stone magazine that for two grand, you—or anyone!—could drive to New Jersey and record with members of the E Street Band. And, on top of that, the song climbs into the Billboard Top Five. I mean, it just couldn't happen these days like it did in the 1970s. Shit's different.

For the most part, anyway. This whole thing kind of made me think about Rebeccca Black's "Friday," which only recently celebrated its tenth anniversary. C'mon, y'all know this song. Well, okay, less a song, and more a meme, but still! Rebecca Black was just following in William DeVaughn's footsteps! She saw an ad for an opportunity to record a song, and she took it, her parents paying an undisclosed amount of money to make it happen. Now, "Friday" only hit #58 on the Billboard Hot 100, but as far as I'm concerned, it was just as ubiquitous in pop culture as "Be Thankful for What You Got" was. And that is so interesting to me, how these seemingly unassuming opportunities can result in fame, or some approximation of it.

The second thing I find fascinating about William DeVaughn's story is the fact that he was just a goddamn government worker when he recorded the song. He was a fucking drafting technician (whatever the fuck that is)! And this man saw an ad in a magazine and knew he had a talent and somehow left his government desk for long enough to turn that talent into something special and lasting. This idea and my fascination with it has to be tied up in the whole reason why I cry every time I watch Ratatouille: "Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere." I'm looking around at my city government job, wondering who has a hidden talent, wondering who has that inner ability to get the fuck out of here and show the world that talent. William DeVaughn had it. That's pretty cool.

Well, he had it in the title track, at least. "Be Thankful for What You Got" is an aggressively cool song, and deserves all the accolades it has ever received. So goddamn smooth, with the bongos, the bedrock church organ, the walking basslines, those shimmering guitar sounds, and then here comes William DeVaughn, the man himself, cool as a motherfucking cucumber, one hand out the driver's side window, sunglasses on, smoky voice, practically cooing in the way he tells you that you can be cool like him, as long as you understand the real truth here, the ultimate truth of the universe being that possessions mean nothing, it's all about personality, just lean back in whatever car you got, and just dig, man. Dig it. There's no way you can listen to this song and not think it's the coolest motherfucking song on the planet.

And what's really fascinating about Be Thankful for What You Got (the album) is how aggressively uncool the other seven songs are. Though "Kiss and Make Up" and "Sing a Love Song" are the two songs where the MFSB influence is crystal clear, it still doesn't make up for the fact that both are schmaltzy, generic ballads. "We Are His Children" somehow manages to be slower than that, and is about a love that I rarely want to consider (God's love for us) in this context (reviewing an album). Boo! Now, I can get behind the socialist overtones of "Give a Big Hand for the Little Man" and "Something's Being Done," but that doesn't make those songs cool. Imagine some hip cat pulling up in his Cadillac, rolling down the window, lowering his shades, and... handing you a flyer for the next DC-47 Workers Union meeting. I back it, but yo: so uncool.

It's boring as fuck but still pretty interesting, the more you think about it. Not only did this dude come out of nowhere, pluck himself from a desk job in a federal building, and record an all-timer of a soul song, but also, whatever magic he somehow found to make all that happen only lasted for one single song. The poor guy saw the success of "Be Thankful for What You Got" and thought he could stretch the success for as long as he wanted. He quit his government job! And made an entire album around his hit song! What a painful process that must turn into, to become a one-hit wonder and not even know it until it's too late.

Thankfully, our protagonist eventually found his way back to government work, recording only a smattering of tracks here and there over the decades (and as recently as 2017). Though it took a while, William DeVaughn eventually chose a pension over a passion, which seems like a rough choice, but, at least from where I'm sitting, also seems like a prudent one. There is just a fraction of a tenth of a percentage of the population who truly have the skillset to make it big as an artist, musical or otherwise. For the rest of us, there is government work, with a hobby on the side.

So look—this is all pretty fucking compelling, considering all this. Just the fact that we are sitting here, discussing this '70s soul album in 2021, is somewhat of a minor miracle (thanks, bassist from Real Estate...?). If we're here to discuss what's interesting about William DeVaughn—and after writing all that, I guess we can say we clearly are here to do just that—then there's plenty to discuss. But if Record Club is designed to ultimately judge the album on merits alone, and not the wonderful complex machinations on how it all came to be, then I have no choice but to again affix it with a single, damning adjective: BORING.

GRADE: 2 pukes out of 5

Song of the Day: "Built by Nations"

"Built by Nations"

Greta Van Fleet

from The Battle at Garden's Gate

2021

I think the first thing you need to do is ask yourself: Why do you listen to music? There are many legitimate answers to this question. If your personal answer is anything other than "Because it makes me feel good," then I can probably understand why you don't like Greta Van Fleet. I suppose there are plenty of legitimate answers to that question too. And let's be real—music criticism, and thus Puke on Your Birthday, would not fucking exist if everything collapsed into the answer of "doesn't matter / feels good." If music is a "high art," then there has to be more to it than that, right?

 

But let's, for the purposes of this exercise, cut the shit. If we're getting to the root of it, the main purpose of pursuing this perpetual consumption of arts and entertainment is to feel good, and factors such as band reputation, or public perception, or discussions regarding pretentiousness v. legitimacy, or perceptions vis-à-vis age/knowledge, or any type of snowflake-level boomer discouragement, or whatever the fuck, have nothing to do with it.

Greta Van Fleet makes me feel good. Period. I don't give a fuck how this particular piece of art came to be, or if it's a xerox of a xerox or however you want to describe a band that has so thoroughly plundered the halls of Led Zeppelin—as long as that certified "classic rock sound" is the only thing that the members of Greta Van Fleet are raping (and not, say, a groupie, with a mudshark, etc.)—then count me in for the ride.

I've written about this before, so let's not travel too far down this road. Sure, Greta Van Fleet sounds kinda like Led Zeppelin. Can't deny that. I guess the interesting thing (if the purpose of this particular blog post is to determine what is "interesting" about it, though I'm not quite sure what the purpose is just yet) is that this close resemblance to Led Zeppelin has led to two extreme and opposite reactions from the general music-listening public. There are those who think that a bunch of young kids are gonna "save rock 'n' roll" by aiming their arrows so goddamn close to the Led Zeppelin bullseye, and then there are those who think that attempting to do the copycat Zep thing is parallel to pissing on John Bonham's literal grave.

These two paths are connected, as far as I'm concerned; the latter wouldn't exist without the former. It's the very notion of "saving rock 'n' roll" that pisses people off. It's like when you go visit your octogenarian father in the assisted living facility and find out that the bedside nurse threw out his favorite sweater. No one needs to "save" anything! He's just as healthy as when I last left him! Buzz off!

But the important thing to remember here is that, even if people really are dumb enough to believe that rock 'n' roll can be "saved," and even dumber in believing that Greta goddamn Van Fleet could be the band to do it, the band members themselves did not ask for this. They are just playing a frighteningly competent approximation to a globally popular rock band, and nothing more. There is a large contingent of boomers that have a hard time accepting that certifiably good music was released after 1989, and if they want to have a midlife crisis by claiming that Josh Kiszka sounds like Robert Plant and could eventually supersede Robert Plant, well, then, that's not Great Van Fleet's motherfucking fault, is it?!

 

(Listen to songs like "Built by Nations," though, and hear a vocal sound that—ugh, sacrilege!—not even Robert Plant could pull off.)

I think it's probably best if we all just calmed the fuck down and understood that no one is trying to take your precious rock god's place on the pedestal, and that even if GVF sounds perilously close to anything that Led Zeppelin ever did, that doesn't mean they are consciously gunning for the crown, or even believe that they would be in contention. My main takeaway is that I really like the sound of Led Zeppelin, and so if someone is going to sound similar to that classic sound—whether it's a goddamn Led Zeppelin cover band playing in Pennypack Park or if it's a bunch of teenagers playing their own, quasi-original version of that sound—I'm going to dig it, more often than not.

It's helpful, I think, if you try not to imagine what the Kiszka brothers (plus drummer Danny Wagner) think about all this. I fell into that trapped, and googled "greta van fleet interview 2021" during a particularly boozy lunch today, and came across an interview with The Guardian from like ten days ago, and man, did this shoot me off in an entirely different directions, as far as my thoughts about Greta Van Fleet were going.

 

As crazy as it will seem after I type it, this is honestly what I was thinking after I read the interview: jesus fucking christ, I need to be better parents than Mr. and Mrs. Kiszka were. Josh goes off about how his parents were "the opposite of helicopter parents... they taught us to do things independently," which probably explains a lot. Like, apparently the Kiszka boys were reading Nietzsche and Sartre as preteens, and that made it "harder to talk to kids my age in school." Basically, they are exactly like this Onion article.

Which of course got me on a whole different train of thought, as far as my own parenting goes (if you'll allow me this wide tangent). Mainly, I'm thinking about the dozen or so CDs that I saved for my own children to hopefully someday discover—Sgt. Pepper, Dark Side of the Moon, Tommy, and yes, Led Zeppelin IV, et al—with the accompanying fear that forcing any of these "classic" albums on them is going to be somehow detrimental. I don't want W. or M. to be like Josh Kiszka and feel "apart" from their classmates because of the pop culture they consume. At the same time, I also believe that a steady diet of Post Malone (or whatever the 2030 equivalent of Post Malone is) will also be detrimental to one's upbringing too.

The hope, I guess, is that they listen to both, right? That Willow is going to be as well versed in Led Zeppelin III as she is Beer Bongs & Bentleys III. And on top of that, the expectation being that her father, a.k.a. PoYB's editor-in-chief, is going to be generous in his knowledge of music that matters to him, as well as possessing at least baseline knowledgeable regarding music that may not matter as much, to him, specifically, but that is clearly important to our society at large.

In general, you hope that your kids are gonna to split the difference, even though I don't necessarily know how feasible that is. You hope that Martha is going to love the music that her dad loves, but only to the point where she isn't a fucking outcast in grade school, right?

Because then it might turn out that she is creating her own art based on what she likes, and that art is respectful toward the art that her parental figures forced upon her, but then it turns out that this particular brand of art is passé, and all her peers, i.e. music critics writ large, are going to mercilessly shit on the art that she is creating.

In other words, because I am getting old, and thus getting to the point that I don't give a FUCK where the music is coming from, as long as I can roll my windows down on a warm spring evening and blast that shit out the windows and feel like a motherfucking boss, that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone else has reached that point of not caring, especially kids, and so people are going to judge the art, made by the kids whose parents wanted to force their own pop culture needs upon their children, instead of even attempting to split the different between appreciation for good art and being a social outcast, they are going to judge that art hard, so hard that some asshole on some blog is going to have to strip everything down and try to understand the reason we are here—the music, which, yeah, sounds like something he already liked, but then again, why wouldn't that also appeal to him?

Here is the bottom line (and it's split into two equally important points): I kind of understand why people dislike Greta Van Fleet, but only because I understand the many reasons why society at large is fractured and irreparable; also, I kind of understand why Greta Van Fleet is creating this music in the first place. What I'll never understand, though, is why people consider it their fucking business to mercilessly shit on this pretty unassuming sound. Let 'em do their thing, let suckers like me enjoy it for what it is, and be on your goddamn way.

Rules for Choosing a Record Club Album

[Editor's note: This blog post about rules was in 2023 incorporated into a larger post about choosing albums for Record Club, and the rules have since been updated. Check it out HERE.]

These rules have already been discussed in a previous blog post, but I figure that it might be nice to hammer them out and publish them in an official capacity. I want to make a concentrated effort to get more people involved in this process, and it would be convenient to have an official list to be able to point to for clarification.

1. The album must be classified as an LP; no EPs. Two exceptions: what the artist calls an "EP" is still over 30 minutes; it's the end of December.
2. The album must be a studio album, meaning that it was recorded in a studio, i.e. not a live album.
3. The album must be considered a complete work of art, i.e. not a compilation or Greatest Hits.
4. No soundtracks.
5. The album must be shorter than 80 minutes.
6. The album cannot have been written about on PoYB before. This includes:
   A. Record Club (obviously)
   B. The Albums That Matter
   C. A Year of Blind Spots
   D. Some of the Songs of the Day/Week
   E. Non-Record Club reviews for albums (e.g. this one)
   F. Any other miscellaneous blog post that focuses on any particular album
7. The album cannot be from an artist that we already covered in Record Club.
8. The album can't be a "delux edition" or anything similar, i.e. we don't do bonus tracks in Record Club.
9. No "partial albums," e.g. only Disc 2 of a double LP or something like that. 
10. The album must be widely available to listen to, i.e. on at least one major streaming service (even YouTube).
    
11. "Mixtapes" are fine, as long as they adhere to the other rules. 
12. No Christmas albums except for the last full week before Christmas.
13. No Beatles albums until Week 500.

Exceptions can be (and have been) made to any of these rules, and will be determined on a case-by-case basis.

PoYB's 4th Annual Guide to the Oscars

Welcome back for the fourth year in a row, as Puke on Your Birthday picks through the Academy's choices for Best Picture nominations, and briefly discusses which of these films are actually great movies. Like last year, watching every Best Picture nom is more of a detour in my film-watching for the year, as opposed to what it used to be: basically constituting 90% of the movies I'd watch in any given year total. Not that I am an "expert" by any means, just that I'm farther away from considering myself a "novice" than I have been in quite some time. Call it "intermediate," maybe.

Also in years past, I've gone by the following criteria to determine if any given film was "GREAT": 1) Does the film keep me interested throughout its entire length? and 2) Does the film give me something to chew on after the credits roll? It's not a perfect methodology, mainly in that it ignores a pretty important third factor that I see as separate from these two: Does the film appear "well-made," as in, all the "moviemaking" aspects of it—directing, acting, editing, score, cinematography, and so on—are they expertly done? It's the aspect I'm least learned in, but I'm trying my best here!

So, I dunno, out of regard for this added factor and the subsequent complications (as well as, let's admit it, sheer laziness), this year's PoYB Oscar Guide will be a little looser. I'm just going to write whatever take on each movie comes to mind, instead of rigidly trying to determine if it meets a subjective set of criteria. (Helpful in determining this new format was the fact that there really weren't any movies this year that I'd consider "bad" in any sense of the word.)

As always, I add two caveats here. The first is that I am writing this to determine which movie, in my opinion, should win the Oscar for Best Picture. This, and not what other publications might attempt to do, i.e. determine what film will win the Oscar for Best Picture. I think it mostly has to do with what studio wants to stuff voters' pockets with the most money? It all seems pretty silly, and I refuse to partake in that game. Bunch of rich fucking snobs trying to tell us what is worthy of an award and what isn't. Pass.

The second caveat should be obvious: there are many spoilers here. Only read this if you have no intention of seeing some or all of these movies, but you still want to partake in the Oscar hangout on Zoom that your friends are planning. If you don't want to be spoiled, just watch the fucking movies. Half of them are streaming legally, and the other half are pretty easy to stream illegally for free.

Alright, let's get to this. The sooner I get this done, the sooner I can start writing about Despicable Me for Never Seen It (no, Despicable Me was not nominated for any awards in 2011—Toy Story 3 won for Best Animated Picture, which, fucking duh).

 

~~~~~~~~~~

The Father

A drama film that "follows an aging man who must deal with his progressing memory loss."

It's a conceit I should've seen coming, but definitely did not—this film about a man losing his memory (probably Alzheimer's?) follows the story from his perspective. Look, we've all dealt with aging family members who go through this type of thing. I've never (yet) dealt with it directly, but there have been grandparents on both sides of our family who have shown various degrees of symptoms, and it takes a toll on the family members who are tasked with that emotional burden. But the fact that the film puts you in the actual victim's shoes is completely jarring, and it's something I never really even sat down to think about before, what it must be like to be the person losing your memory. If The Father is even partially accurate, then it promises to be a scary ordeal.

Yes, absolutely, this was a disjointed and confusing film-watching experience, but that was by design. So while I came away from watching The Father with absolutely no joy whatsoever, I am forced to admit that I certainly felt something—horror—and that absolutely means that this film achieved what it wanted to, perhaps even stunningly so.

Judas and the Black Messiah

A "biographical drama film about the betrayal of Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party in late-1960s Chicago, at the hands of William O'Neal, an FBI informant."

It's cheap and easy to walk away from a movie saying "And this is still happening today!" as if that is supposed to make a film "deeper" or whatever. I'm saying that more as an indictment of myself than any film that I watched for the Oscars this year. Yes, Judas and the Black Messiah—among other nominated films—was definitely an easy one from which to draw a line to present day. Take a gander at any given day's headlines to see if the police officer's wanton disregard for the lives of people of color has changed at all since Fred Hampton was executed by cops in 1969.

Like I said, though—too easy. That doesn't necessarily make a good movie. As far as the plot goes—undercover agent getting in too deep—it wasn't really anything I haven't seen before. What interested me is how Judas actually pulls the audience in "too deep" as well. You start to question your allegiances: well, Fred Hampton seems to be pretty gung-ho about killing people too, so why do I still feel myself rooting for him? Is this a man we should support? I don't really have answers, but I think the point was that the film was making you ask the questions.

Mank

A "biographical drama film about screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz and his development of the screenplay for Citizen Kane."

Out of the eight films nominated, I was looking forward to Mank the least. Having watched it, I can confirm that it is definitely my least favorite out of the eight, but that's really only because of how much I enjoyed the other seven. Mank was, thankfully, much better than what I expected/feared.

I think I'm just tired of the masturbatory tendencies of the film industry, that they seem to love films about the film industry. To be fair, Mank did go the extra mile, in that it was a film about "Old Hollywood" that was actually filmed like an Old Hollywood movie. I appreciated the commitment to the bit, honestly. For that alone, I am pretty comfortable with its nominations (even if there were other films more worthy).

Still, it ended up being a film that I felt was really, really well-made, and really, really struggled to hold my attention. It just never convinced me that I should care about these people, ya know? I mean, I get why the film industry wants me to care: this is about them and their own people! "One of us"! But as someone who is definitively on the outside looking in, I couldn't really care that much less than I do now, regardless of the Mank of it all.

Minari

A "drama film and semi-autobiographical take on writer/director Lee Isaac Chung's upbringing, following a family of South Korean immigrants who try to make it in the rural United States during the 1980s."

I think that if you decide to look at Minari in the general—a classic story about a family that needs to find a way to come together to achieve a goal—then you're not going to find too much here that seems fresh or innovative. Minari succeeds only when you consider the details; I've never seen a story about this specific type of family in this specific context. In those details, I found joy.

I think what I liked most about Minari was the slow reveal that there really was no villain in this story. I guess one might expect a family of immigrants in the Midwest to come up against some external force of conflict, like a racist neighbor or whatever. But those never really materialized—everyone seemed pretty nice and helpful, more or less. No, it emerges that the true villain was those internal demons of doubt, the ones that creeped around, whispering in the family's ears that they cannot achieve what they want to achieve.

Which, if that sounds cliché, then it is, but this is just another way of me explaining that I was less enthralled with the point of Minari, and more enchanted by the details of the story as it unraveled. If I were still charting the films on the "how I felt during vs. how I felt afterward" graph, then the "felt during" part would be the clear winner here. Doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the fuck out of it during, and doesn't mean that this disqualifies it from being a good movie.

Nomadland

A "drama film following a woman who leaves her hometown of Empire, Nevada, after her husband dies and the sole industry closes down, to be 'houseless' and travel around the United States."

My first thought after watching Nomadland was "wow, that seemed almost post-apocalyptic." But that's not quite right, is it? Because what it really did is depict the apocalypse that we are currently living. The whole thing where someone is trying to make ends meet by putting together paychecks in a piecemeal manner and living out of a van? That's happening right now, all over the country! And it's been normalized!

Yes, I said above that making the argument that "it's just like real life right now!" is damning praise for a film, but I think Nomadland does a good job of taking this kind niche societal pain and put it up front and center. It's not easy to ignore, say, systematic racism, but it's pretty easy to ignore the oppressive weight of late-stage capitalism, so cheers to Nomadland for making it very clear in what amounted to a beautifully expressive piece of art.

Promising Young Woman

A "comedy thriller film following a woman who seeks to avenge the death of her best friend, who was a victim of rape."

It's kind of nice seeing the word "comedy" in at least one of these movie descriptors. At the same time, it's pretty wild that Promising Young Woman is the one that gets that adjective, seeing as it might be the darkest of all the films on the list here. Not that it isn't funny—it is—but more so that it is deftly able to find the dark humor between the cracks of some pretty grim subject material (sexual abuse, rape, murder).

Probably the most alarming aspect of this film, at least for viewers like me, is the mirror that it holds up to my face. In Promising Young Woman, you have an endless parade of likeable character actors playing young men who truly believe that they are "good guys," and are eventually revealed to be monsters. The knee-jerk reaction is for someone like me to say "I'm not like that," but then that line of reasoning leads me to think that I am a "good guy" too, and Promising Young Woman shows us what that really means, ya feel me?

The talent here—writer/director Emerald Fennell's whip-smart work, Carey Mulligan's virtuoso performance—is incredibly bright, but like the sun, I'm almost afraid to stare too long.

Sound of Metal

A "drama film following a metal drummer who loses his hearing."

Like Minari, Sound of Metal basically comes down to an interesting and unique story told through incredible performances. That's enough to make me love a film. What Sound of Metal has over a lot most of these other movies (give or take The Father) is the unique manner in which the story is told. Mainly, I'm talking about (and have already talked about) the great use of silence throughout the film. Being as it's a story about a deaf community, the silence makes sense logically. We live in world, however, where it seems like the bigger and louder a movie is, the better it is. So it was great to experience a movie that went in the opposite direction, content to get smaller and quieter, and still succeed.

The Trial of the Chicago 7

A "historical legal drama following the 'Chicago Seven,' a group of anti–Vietnam War protesters charged with conspiracy and crossing state lines with the intention of inciting riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago."

Oh gosh, I'm trying to be smart about this, but I don't know if I can. The Trial of the Chicago 7 was my favorite Best Picture Nom this year, but I am not sure I will be able to build an argument much past "it was the most fun." Such an argument would not even be consistent with other arguments that I've made for movies being "great" in the past. I tend to argue that a film is truly "great" if it makes you feel something. E.g. Roma is still my favorite movie of the past four years of doing this Oscar exercise, and there was nothing "fun" about it.

Maybe it just varies year to year, and this year happened to be a year in which I valued fun over heavier emotions. Maybe a movie can be so much fun that it supersedes any other emotion that could come up against it. Maybe I'm over-exaggerating the fun found in The Trial of the Chicago 7, that the "fun" featured in this film was all a distraction, built that way to cover up some intense moments of pain and injustice (e.g. how even the over-the-top comedic performance grind to a sudden and shocking halt during the gagging scene). Maybe I'm just a fucking sucker for endings so corny that they could reasonably be compared to the climax of Dead Poets Society.

Ultimately, it probably doesn't matter. We like what we like. This year, I really fucking liked The Trial of the Chicago 7.

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PoYB's Official Ranking

8. Mank

7. Judas and the Black Messiah

6. Nomadland

5. Minari

4. Promising Young Woman

3. The Father

2. Sound of Metal

1. The Trial of the Chicago 7

 

I also usually try to draw a line in between two of these movies every year, that line dividing which movies I'd be glad won the Best Picture award, and which movies I'd have a problem with winning. This is the definitely the lowest that line has ever been, and I was even tempted to just say I'd be okay with all eight winning the award. But let's draw it between Judas and Mank, not because I disliked Mank (I didn't), but because it would probably be a little groan-worthy if the film industry picks the movie about the film industry to win the award. Still, this is the first year I cannot point to a single film on this list and say "I hated that." I like liking things, so that's great.

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Pam and I also made somewhat of a concentrated effort to see some of the other movies that were nominated for the "Big Eight" awards, but not Best Picture. We didn't quite get there in time for this writing (plus, I'm just not interested in seeing Hillbilly Elegy), but we've definitely seen enough that I can give some quick thoughts on who should win the other categories.

Other films seen:

• Another Round
• Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
• Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
• One Night in Miami...
• Pieces of a Woman

Best Director: The first reaction is to get Another Round any award it can, because it was my favorite movie of the Oscar year, but I don't know if I would necessarily say it was the best directing of the year. I'll probably say Chloé Zhao for Nomadland, just because she was able to get all those great performances from all those non-actors (to say nothing of the beauty captured in the film itself).

Best Actor: Maybe it's just because this is a rare year that I've witnessed all five performances in the category, but is the slate of Best Actor nominees usually this strong? Goddamn. I can think of great arguments for Anthony Hopkins and Riz Ahmed, but I gotta stick with the argument that I made in January and go with Chadwick Boseman.

Best Actress: I have not seen The United States vs. Billie Holiday, so I cannot speak to Andra Day's performance (though it seems like the Oscars usually award good performances from less-than-good movies—remember last year's Judy?—so I would bet on a win here). But out of the four other performances, I think for me it comes down to Carey Mulligan and Vanessa Kirby. Though the first half hour of Pieces of a Woman were absolutely nuts and would make Kirby absolutely deserving of this, I'll defer to Mulligan, who was able to walk a thinner tightrope.

Best Supporting Actor: Jeez, another tough one. Leslie Odom Jr. gave a pretty fiery performance, but I feel like if I said it was my favorite, it would be for the same reason as I said Boseman was my favorite lead actor, so let's not repeat. Let's say it's between Paul Raci and Daniel Kaluuya, who both gave incredibly lived-in performances, even though their respective performances also couldn't have been more different. I think it would be really cool if Raci, a relative unknown, won it, but I don't think I can deny Kaluuya something he clearly deserves. It comes down to both actors earning empathy for their characters, but considering which actor had a more difficult task in doing so.

Best Supporting Actress: As mentioned above, I have no interest in seeing Glenn Close's performance, which was also nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award, which is pretty funny and says a lot about Hillbilly Elegy in general. Colman, Seyfried, and Yuh-jung were all excellent in their own ways, but I'm gonna choose the wild card and say that Maria Bakalova's ability to so thoroughly bury Giuliani deserves this and many other awards.

Best Original Screenplay: I liked Mandy's theory that this is the most important award, because it touches on the fact that there is one thing that she and many other creative minds believe to be the most important aspect of creating art: the story. Who tells the best story here? Even though I will argue the answer is The Trial of the Chicago 7, I think that we should also consider here what is the most "original" story told. I loved the Chicago 7 story, but it was based on a true story. Sound of Metal was a wholly original story, and a great one to boot, so let's say that it deserves this award.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Less pressure for a story to be "original" in this one, even though "adapted" could mean that it was from source material that is original and from the same author? If that makes sense. Like, Borat is on here, which is a fairly ridiculous nomination, but no one can deny that it is an original idea from some demented minds. I like all the stories here (besides The White Tiger, which we just never got around to), but I probably liked the idea of One Night in Miami the best—let's put four legendary, real-life characters on stage together, and see what happens.

A quick word about Best Animated Feature: Only saw two films on here, so I can't say which of the five is "best." I will say that I think the widespread theory that Soul is "too complicated" is completely bunk. Doesn't matter how many layers something has if they all collapse into the same crushing conclusion. However, Onward does suck ass.

Ranking of Every Oscar-Nominated Film I Saw This Year

15. Onward

14. Mank

13. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

12. Judas and the Black Messiah

11. Nomadland

10. Minari

9. One Night in Miami...

8. Promising Young Woman

7. Soul

6. Pieces of a Woman

5. The Father

4. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

3. Sound of Metal

2. The Trial of the Chicago 7

1. Another Round