Album of the Week: Dreams of Being Dust

You know I like sharing articles with you about music criticism, and I read a good one the other day in the New Yorker, about how music criticism has gotten nicer over the years, and it supposes that we might have lost something when we as music critics decided to stop being cranky or mean. This is something that I believe we as a blog grapple with constantly. Is it okay to write a negative review? Of course. One might even say that it is occasionally essential. But then why does it feel like something is holding us back? This week in Record Club, think about being your truest self in your review, and commit to that, even if it comes out as "negative." Being negative is okay, as long as being open-minded is what got you there.

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WEEK 344 — August 31-September 6, 2025

Dreams of Being Dust

by the World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die

LISTEN:

Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp | Apple

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PICKED BY JOE

JOE'S COMMENTS: Nothing crazy this week. Just wanted a nice little album to transition into autumn with, after a spectacular summer of Record Club. I like this band, I'm excited about their new album, now let's see what a couple of Record Club regulars feel about it.

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ALBUM DETAILS

GENRE: Post-hardcore, alternative metal, emo, metalcore, alternative rock, progressive metal

RELEASED: August 22, 2025

LENGTH: 44:24

TRACKLIST:

1. Dimmed Sun
2. Se Sufre Pero Se Goza
3. No Pilgrim
4. Beware the Centrist
5. Oubliette
6. Captagon
7. Dissolving
8. Reject All and Submit
9. December 4, 2024
10. Auguries of Guilt
11. For Those Who Will Outlive Us

LYRICS: Genius.com

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ARTIST DETAILS

PRONOUNS: Bello is he/him/his, Cyr is he/him/his, Dvorak is she/her/hers, that's all I could find

ABOUT: The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die has a long name, which is often shortened in various ways, maybe World Is a Beautiful Place, or World Is, or tWIaBP&IANLAtD. Your choice. Anyways, this band formed in Willimantic, Connecticut, in 2009. Founding members are Tyler Bussey, Nicole Shanholtzer, Thomas Diaz, and Josh Cyr. Only Cyr remains a current member, on bass and backing vocals. Other current members (all of whom appear on today's album) are David Bello (lead vocals), Katie Dvorak (keyboard, vocals), Chris Teti (guitar and trumpet), Anthony Gesa (guitar), and Steven Buttery (drums). Interviews and lyrics make it seem like the history of who's in the band has been a messy one (for example, Shanholtzer and Dvorak are apparently ex-spouses now). But the sound—an experimental and atmospheric take on Midwest emo—has remained consistent throughout. I think the band is still based in Philly? Though I think more likely the six members are spread out along the east coast, and a few still live in Philly.

DISCOGRAPHY: This is the band's fifth album. The debut was 2013's Whenever, If Ever. This was followed by 2015's Hopelessness, and 2017's Always Foreign. The most recent album before this week was 2021's Illusory Walls. They also have seven EPs.

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ADDITIONAL INFO

READING SOME SHIT: interview from last week with New Noise Magazine

WATCHING SOME SHIT: a concert in Allentown in 2013

RECORD CLUB CONNECTIONS: Without even looking, I can tell you that "The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die" is the longest artist name that we have ever (and probably will ever) covered in Record Club. Scrolling through it, there's really no one that even comes close. It has 61 characters in it. Second place is Big Brother and the Holding Company at 35 characters, followed by the Arrogant Sons of Bitches and Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, both at 27 characters.

This is Record Club's fourth dream, after Broken Dreams Club, Teenage Dream, and Dream Fist. Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war)) has both "die" and "world" in common.

The band is on Epitaph Records with Descendents, Jamie T, Mannequin Pussy, and the Menzingers. Former bands on the label include A Day to Remember, Frank Turner, Green Day (kind of), Thursday, and Weezer.

MENTIONS ON THE BLOG: Illusory Walls made the Top 20 Albums of 2021, and one of its songs made the Top 20 Songs of 2021 as well. I came back around to Harmlessness in 2023. I chose a song from Harmlessness for SSC Day 23. Nate made mention of their video game habits in YSC Day 107.

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OTHER ALBUMS TO CHECK OUT

LAST WEEK'S ALBUM: I quit by HAIM, and make sure to check out the reviews if you wanna see what we thought of it!

RC@5: We're relistening to the Record Club album we featured exactly five years ago this week. The RC album for this week in 2020 was Sorry for the Delay by 340ml.

RC f/u: We're attempting to catch up on all the new albums from our esteemed Record Club alumni. Mini-reviews coming next Saturday, this week for SOPHIE by SOPHIE, And Then There Was... by Chubby and the Gang, and Slipping Away by Tim Heidecker.

SHADOW RECORD CLUB: Each week, we're exploring the genres of last week's album. If there is a genre that has a #1-rated album that I've never heard before, I'll download it. If not, I'll just give you my best recommendation. Last week's I quit was an alt-pop album. We're listening this week to Melodrama by Lorde. I've heard it before.

NEXT WEEK'S RC ALBUM: In case you need some extra time with an album to write a review for it, you can get a head start on Plowing into the Field of Love by Iceage!

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Happy listening, RC family!
Have a great week!

Song of the Day: "Smile Again"

A column about music, and about how the music informs our lives. Today's author is Joe. See the previous songs HERE.

"Smile Again"

advantage Lucy

from Fanfare

1999

Alright, that's enough of that for now. We've had a Song of the Day every day for the month of August. That's not sustainable, and I feel comfortable ending the experiment here.

I will call it a success, though. Honestly, it felt really good to blog about random bullshit again. I feel like Puke on Your Birthday gets too wrapped up in the weekly cycles sometimes—album review is due, ah shit now movie write-up is due, whoops I forgot about the mixtape—and maybe that becomes routine. I feel refreshed, having somewhere to write about whatever fucking nonsense popped into my head throughout the month. It felt cool to be like "oh damn, I should write about that" instead of "I wish I had time to write about that but instead I have like seven blog obligations in the queue." 

I know that that option is always available to me, like no one is forcing me to write or not write anything besides myself, but it's tough to get momentum sometimes. The "Song of the Day every day" thing was easy because it was a habit. Write about anything, but just do it every day. It worked.

So of course, now that it's worked out for me, my mind starts churning in the way that you can probably already guess it does, based on past behavior on this blog. How can I take this feeling that I have now, and expand it, both upward (do it more often) and outward (involve more people than just me)? A few ideas, not for the immediate future, but for some point down the line.

I mean, this could really just look the same as it did in August, but just do it for an entire year, right? 365 Songs of the Day in the year 2026. Or I guess multiple songs per day, if other people are interested in this. Maybe call it "Daily Song Challenge" and rope it in with the rest of the Song Challenges from our past.

If that's the direction we're moving, then I'd wonder if we needed prompts this time around. I could probably come up with 365 different prompts if pressed. 180 seemed like it was a lot for people during YSC, though, so I don't think doubling that number is going to move the needle of interest at all. I could say something like "you wouldn't have to do it every day!" but that would be the opposite of what made August 2025's Song of the Day project successful. It's tough to do something regularly without momentum, without that habit. You'll notice that whenever someone said "I can't do YSC every day anymore, I'll just do it sometimes," they never ended up doing it again.

Of course, I could always just keep it open-invite on a daily basis and just accept the fact that on the vast majority of days, it's gonna be just me. But I don't know, that seems less fun. Maybe I just miss Yearlong Song Challenge still.

Another variation I was mulling over was something like, I dunno what to call it, maybe "PoYB Scavenger Hunt." Instead of a prompt for certain days on the calendar, I could instead come up with 100-200 loose writing prompts, and say that any of them can be completed at any time, in any order, but you gotta write all of them by the end of the year.

That betrays the real goal I'm shooting for here: I want to come up with a good writing challenge. Writing specifically, like geared toward writing and not music. That's really what these Songs of the Day have been about. Yeah, sure, I attached a song to each one, but those were loosely related at best, and mostly then just through the coincidence of their title. I was writing whatever I wanted, and I was forcing myself to write. I wanted so badly for the Song Challenges to be viewed in this way, for it to be a writing exercise disguised under the veil of a music activity. We got there enough that I was satisfied, but there was still so much "I chose this song because" even at the end that I know the writing was mostly an obligation instead of a joy. What can I do to get people to write more?

When I reach this point in my wild idea-gathering phase, I always crash back into one universal truth: not many people like writing. I don't think there is ANY idea that I could possibly come up with that would change this fact. In fact, all these ideas aren't going to work because they are all based on the premise that other people would enjoy the excuse to write more, and I just really don't think that's the reality of the situation at this time.

Obviously there are a handful of friends who are freaks like me, and I find so much joy in reading their words on this blog regularly or semi-regularly. But then the other part of this harsh reality is that we're all fucking busy. Everyone has real life that impedes on their blogging time. I totally get it. Somehow, I've found myself in a position for the past eight years or so that allows me to write a little bit in the spaces in-between work obligations. I'm thankful for that, and understand that it's not the norm.

But the summer is almost over, the third summer in a row come and gone with no work promotions on the horizon. I was so fucking stupid, so wide-eyed and naive, back there at the start of the summer of 2023, thinking that new employment horizons were imminent. Now I'm stuck in this rut, and the fucked-up part is that I'm comfortable here, I'm all cozy in my rut, going through the motions and using the downtime to write on a stupid blog. I need a promotion like a caterpillar needs to molt—it's the next step in the process, but I know it's gonna be so fucking painful, I just know it.

Especially the part where I have no fucking clue what space will remain in my life for writing for fun. I've written about this fear before, and like most fears, I will continue to be afraid until my fears actually come to pass. It's possible that I'll get a new job and it'll be busy and I'll have to significantly cut down the time I spend on Puke on Your Birthday.

I'll say "possible" and not "probable," because I'm so fucking burnt out over the question about where the fuck I am at in my career and where I am going and what the fuck is even going on this fucking department in this fucking city. It's possible that I'll get promoted just in the same way it's possible that I'll be sitting in this same fucking cubicle in this same fucking position on the chain of command for 20 more years.

Do I want to have time to write an additional blog post every single day for a whole year? The answer has to be no, because I need something else in my life, and I'm willing to partially (partially, not fully) sacrifice my time on this blog in order for that something else to happen. But I'm so down on myself and my lot here that I can't help but imagine that I will indeed have time to blog to my little heart's content this year and next year and every year until they pour my dead body into a mass grave. 

Clearly, this has not been the summer of my dreams. I'm just waiting. Waiting for something to happen. And in the meantime, I'm writing. Writing feels good. Other people should try it. Maybe you'll have another chance to write for fun sometime. Let me know if you're interested, or if you have any ideas. I'm all ears. I have all the fucking time in the world.

RC f/u #42: Halsey, Cordae, Ethel Cain, Cheekface

We're back with some more albums I wasn't really looking forward to listening to. 2024 was rough for RC alumni, wasn't it? Did anyone release any music that I was excited about? Let's see, I'm looking over the list, and I see that I was excited for: Ducks Ltd., Mannequin Pussy, Fontaines D.C., Tierra Whack, Adeem the Artist... that's probably it. Oh well. I'm still here. Let's see if any of these jabronis can surprise me.

The Great Impersonator by Halsey

Released: October 25, 2024

Follow-up to: Manic, Week 52

The fact that Halsey's most memorable performance in the past five years has been as a furry porno cartoon thing is bizarre to me. The apparatus that we as a society have built is: pop stars, they are always on our mind. And yet I barely think about Halsey at all. I wouldn't purposefully follow anyone, but what I'm saying is that most pop stars are forced upon me, and not too many people are forcing Halsey upon me, which is weird and unsettling. They are a pop star. Why am I not annoyed by this person via overexposure yet?

Manic was a good beginner-level pop album for Record Club to explore, but there are very few songs on that album that I cared about. Their next one was the Nine Inch Nails-produced and -indebted If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power, which I reviewed and then completely forgot about. I would have had no idea that The Great Impersonator existed, were it not for RC. I am impressed with how much The Great Impersonator simply does not give a fuck about standing out.

There are a wild number of slow, lifeless acoustic tracks on this thing. I have no idea what they are even doing with this. Is this an attempt at Billie Eilish? Because Billie backs up her downtempo shit with sinister Gen Z vibes, which weirdly works. Halsey's attempt is more boring than anything. Maybe there would be more if I gave it repeat listens; nothing here inspires me to give it repeat listens.

Standout tracks—for mostly not-good reasons—are: 1) "Ego," which I've heard, and hated, at the gym so many times, and I had no idea this was a new Halsey song, I just assumed it was a terrible old one; 2) "Lucky," which I guess I was familiar with prior to this, but man, even being warned beforehand does nothing to smooth out how rough a full-song interpolation of a mid-tier Britney Spears lands. Woof. 

Like most pop albums, this one is firmly "not for me." Unlike most pop albums, it doesn't even inspire too much of a negative reaction. I just don't care. Shoutout to Alex G for collecting that paycheck, though.

GRADE: 2 pukes out of 5 (-1.5 from original review)

The Crossroads by Cordae

Released: November 15, 2024

Follow-up to: The Lost Boy, Week 27

I am lightyears away from my "what even is hip hop" days, so now that we can shed that context surrounding my experiences with Cordae, I can examine the artist in earnest. And what I hear kinda rubs me the wrong way. Sure, the production is a little basic still, and nothing about the production on The Crossroads excites me in any tangible way. But I'm starting to see how generic the lyrics are too. This is the type of album that features a lot of words and I feel like I've heard every single one of those words before. Struggle, success, self-worth, been there and done that. Maybe Cordae is just catching me on a bad day, but c'mon man... try something new. I saw a YouTube comment that was like "these oldhead rappers aren't moving aside for the new blood like Cordae," and my question would be, why would they move aside if they are going to be replaced by someone who sounds exactly the same?

If we're somehow finding it in ourselves to forgive two Lil Wayne appearances (despite the fact that he's a rabid MAGA supporter, so, like, in order to excuse that, maybe we tell ourselves that Lil Wayne is simply the dumbest person alive), then how can we possibly excuse the Kanye West appearance, on an album that dropped one week after Election Day? We cannot. We cannot forgive. Politics aside, this is really just bad music-making. Cordae is playing by the old playbook. I do not like it.

One thing I've long appreciated about Cordae is that he's pretty gracious with the nostalgia aspects of his story. A lot of the music is about his childhood, an innocence lost. Cordae really leans into it on the first (non-intro) song on the album, "06 Dreamin," which apparently samples his musician mom, and tells her (and their) story. I like the concept. I like the idea of Cordae attempting to bring some of his family lore full circle. But you see what I'm saying about the clichés on this hip hop album, right? Does any of this push boundaries? Is Cordae interested in doing so? Or is he content to coast for the next 60 years?

In "What Really Matters," Cordae claims that nothing is more important than rapping. After listening to The Crossroads, I want to tell him: dude, take a day off. (Or at least double down and finally make a full-album collab with Anderson .Paak, since it seems to be the only thing that really works for y'all.)

GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5 (-1.0 from original review)

Perverts by Ethel Cain
Released: January 8, 2025

Follow-up to: Preacher's Daughter, Week 232

I did something that I so rarely do, mostly because I disagree that it should be done at all, but then again, I'm listening to 90 minutes of punishing noise from Ethel Cain, so what the fuck, who cares, might as well lean into it—I read a book while listening to music. It only worked because this is barely music to begin with.

I get the joke, and I appreciate it. Ethel Cain is young and life has been hard and she is a provocateur at heart and so, in the wake of a certain level of fame achieved despite all odds, she digs her heels in and releases music that is borderline unlistenable. Those critics wanna heap praises on me? How fucking dare they? Let's see 'em grapple with this.

As someone who believed that her mainstream music was already borderline unlistenable, I will say that Perverts is probably going to be the album that makes me permanently love Ethel Cain. I hate the music, don't get me wrong. I wouldn't play this shit for my worst enemy. But I love her as an artist. She knew she was never gonna be able to write something that appealed to someone like me, and so she swerved hard in the other direction. She swerved so hard she cut across three lanes and through the barrier and off a cliff into the ocean. This is fucking ballsy shit, and I appreciate its existence.

Perfect to read Ulysses to. Because it's noise but it's adjacent to white noise. Its existence makes me pay attention, but its sounds make it easy to ignore. I heard all 90 minutes but I didn't really need to hear it. I heard it the same way I hear the Rockledge Fire Hall's siren—I can hear it blare out, I understand that it's important that other people hear it, but it's not for me to do anything about it.

I will relisten to Perverts only to celebrate any CEO who is killed. I'll listen twice if Ethel Cain does the killing.

GRADE: 2 pukes out of 5 (+0.5 from original review)

Middle Spoon by Cheekface

Released: February 25, 2025

Follow-up to: Emphatically No., Week 104

These fuckers are determined to make me suffer by releasing an album every year for the rest of my life. Just out here surprise-releasing some lame-ass snarky meme bullshit and making sure that at least 45 minutes to an hour of my life every year is going to involve intense physical harm (since rolling my eyes this much hurts, man, it hurts).

I feel the way about Cheekface that I do about most of the alt-comedy-music that passes through our crosshairs in Record Club, in that I am distracted by how difficult it is to be actually funny in the context of music. Cheekface is not funny, but neither is, like, They Might Be Giants, or Tim Heidecker. Weird Al, I suppose, gets a pass.

But Cheekface particularly irks me because they, out of anyone in their class of Not Funny bands, are actually really competent in the music. I am fascinated with how catchy and propulsive these songs are. If only the vocalist would SHUT THE FUCK UP for a second, then I'd actually like a Cheekface album. That's not how it works, though. These are catchy post-punk songs with the most annoying person you know attempting to reference a meme he saw on the internet on top of it. Every song is basically the Velvet Underground's "The Gift" except John Cale is telling punchlines about r/me_irl reddit posts.

On literally any other post-punk album, I would be enthralled about a McKinley Dixon feature. I mean, this shit comes out of NOWHERE, and the dude does a really good job with his verse. But this is Cheekface. Their reputation precedes them. And now I can't get it out of my head that they hired Dixon just for the LOLs online. Fuck these losers.

GRADE: 1 pukes out of 5 (-2.0 from original review)

NEXT TIME: Unless I'm forgetting anything, we're gonna finish up the 2024 backlog next week by reviewing albums from SOPHIE, Chubby and the Gang, and Tim Heidecker.

A Year of Blind Spots: Amor Prohibido

Joe is working through a list of albums that he considers "blind spots," i.e. albums that he's never heard but feels like he should.

Amor Prohibido

Selena

1994

I hate America, but I am so America-centric sometimes. It's tough to imagine a world outside of this country. I would say that I wasn't raised to be "cultured" in a way that I would consider popular arts and entertainment outside of white Northwestern culture. Just recently, I (for reasons I now forget) found myself looking at a list of the most popular movies of 2025 so far, and saw that some children's movie in China made two billion dollars this year? I was perplexed, mostly because I did not know of its existence till seeing this list, and that's because I'm stuck here in America. 

I was familiar enough with Selena to know that I should probably check out her music at some point (via aYoBS), and I knew that there was some tragedy, and a movie starring Jennifer Lopez, but that's it. The bare-bone details. I had no idea what the music sounded like. I have probably heard some of her songs at some point, but I would have had no idea it was Selena singing. And yet this album is 41x platinum. Selena is one of the most popular and successful Latin musicians of all time, but in what sphere would I have explored her music, if not here?

I should've watched the movie too. Film Club has really boxed me out in terms of what movies I'm watching for fun these days; I just didn't have time for Selena. I have to imagine that it follows the same beats as your typical biopic—the struggle, the stardom, etc.—except with an extra-tragic conclusion of a child's murder. As is the case with a lot of premature deaths of important artists, the music became more popular because of the death. There was no downward trajectory for the artist, as she went out on top, known as the "Queen of Tejano Music" by her early 20s.

But the interesting thing about the music is that there is no added heft as a result of Selena's murder. This isn't like Biggie being murdered right before releasing an album called Life After Death three weeks later, ya know? Amor Prohibido is a breezy, catchy, kitschy little album. It's pop music in a subgenre that I wasn't familiar with, but very much still pop music. Nothing about it is sad, and so nothing about it could be made sadder after the artist was killed. It's just a nice album.

I really like it for that. Sometimes it's nice for an artist's best work to just be solid pop music, nothing deeper than that. It's a great starter pack into the world of Tejana music, which is just something I was not aware of at all before this. Tejana is like: music rooted in Mexican tradition, but from those who resided in Texas before Texas became a state, and so there are strong influences of rock 'n' roll and also polka music and then later pop via synthesizers.

So what you have in Amor Prohibido is a young woman with a great voice singing over what sounds like preprogrammed keyboard loops. I kind of love it? If I hadn't known any better, I would have never guessed that this is the music that became ultra-popular in certain parts of the Americas in the early '90s. I love it for that too. That this is just goofy-ass pop music taken very seriously, and it sounds great. It sounds otherworldly, if I'm being honest, but as I've already said, that's my fault. What I mean by that is, like, this kind of music, in my world, wouldn't have flown. If I had heard Selena's Tejana cover of the Pretenders' "Back on the Chain Gang" when I was fourteen, I would've been like, what the fuck is this?

I think I'm trying to illustrate the idea that I am much more open to the wonders of the world at this point, and hearing something that feels extremely '90s and almost parodically Latin American then feels ironically fresh and original to me. A billion people have loved this weird-ass little pop music shit over the years and I wasn't one of them, but now to finally listen to it, and hear what I'm hearing, I mean, I'm fucking enthralled. It feels good because it's fun music, but it also feels good because it's all new to me, which is a cool emotion to experience at this point. Not too much North American music that feels new to me these days.

I have no idea if I'm just high off my own shit, or if this album is legitimately great. Only one way to find out. Have a listen. Bummer that this story ended the way it did, but I'm glad that I was able to escape my country for a hot second and find my way to that story eventually anyway.

RC@5: SUGAREGG by Bully

Record Club covered this album five years ago. I gave it another listen this week. Here are some thoughts.

SUGAREGG

Bully

Week 82: August 23-29, 2020

In the five years since we listened to this (great) album, Bully has released her SUGAREGG follow-up, 2023's Lucky for You. The reception that that album received really drives home the point that music criticism is subjective and arbitrary. I loved Lucky for You, just as I love SUGAREGG. To my ears, Lucky for You was a "more of the same great stuff" release. To everyone else, it was labeled as a level-up. I'll mark Lucky for You as better than SUGAREGG by an extremely small margin, which made me confused as to why Lucky for You seemed to be the one to finally stick.

I'm not complaining. I'm really happy for Bully, a.k.a. Alicia Bognanno. She's definitely hit that sweet spot of "reliable indie rock act" without any of the "too ubiquitous so as to be annoying" distraction. Bully's always been good, and who the fuck am I to eschew humility to say that I was there the whole fucking time, ya know? Who cares? I don't care. I care about the music. It's good shit.

But isn't it interesting that this album here, the one we covered in RC, is also very good, in my opinion, but apparently didn't have any sticking power? Examine the three reviews. For Nate, it was "not really for me" (Lucky for You would bring him around). For Sunny, it was "probably not for me in some alternate universe, except that in this universe we have Record Club," which is well and good, but probably not indicative of any staying power for this album in Sunny's rotation. And then for me, high praises, but note that it's one of my shortest reviews ever. Not much to say, I suppose. Talk about subjective!

I've been thinking about Nate's Qs from last week regarding why certain albums are chosen for RC, and I am still thinking about it as I relitigate Bully's SUGAREGG. Was this a good RC pick? Probably not. It's real good but it's hard to write about because it's not good in interesting or unique ways. It's just a solid product, and maybe without another hook, it's forgotten as a Record Club album, even though the quality is undeniably there. But at the same time, I need to choose albums like this every once in a while. Can't all be novelty bullshit failures. Sometimes, we gotta explore something that doesn't really need all that much exploring.

Song of the Day: "Tanacara"

A column about music, and about how the music informs our lives. Today's author is Joe. See the previous songs HERE.

"Tanacara"

Gonzaguinha

from Corações Marginais

1988

This car we're renting while our car is in the shop doesn't have an auxiliary jack, at least not one that I can find, which means two things. One, I would never buy this car, even if I could afford it, I mean, c'mon, you're a fucking LOSER car company if you're bailing on the aux cord. And two, I've been listening to XPN just a hair more than usual. 

There was one point when I turned the key in the ignition (sorry... pushed the button to turn on the car, this stupid fucking car) and XPN was in the middle of playing a song that I recognized. Kind of. Those flutes were oddly familiar. It was stuck in my head for a couple of hours until I could get some WiFi, and scrolled through the helpful ongoing playlist that they keep on the website to find what song it was. Listen above, if you'd like.

Have you ever tried to figure out where you know a song from? You have a few different options. One, you can trust Google to put in the work, search for the title and maybe throw in a "where from" and hope that other people had the same inquiry as you and that someone took the time to answer it. There's a specific website if you think it's from a movie or TV show that groups by samples and by visual media. I think that there's also an app that I would never use because of technological limitations, but it'll hear a song and tell you what the song is? But I don't think that's helpful in what I'm talking about, because it doesn't tell you about where you know it from, just what it is.

"Tanacara" had no imprint on the search engines of the internet, so where do I turn? There's really nowhere else to go, beyond into the depths of your own mind. So I listened to "Tanacara" a few more times, and suddenly, it came to me—the answer is WXPN itself. There was a regular announcement for a radio show that featured a piece of this song. Was it an old World Café ad or something? Maybe whoever used to host the program would briefly announce who that day's guest was going to be while "Tanacara" played in the background.

That's gotta be it. I wonder if I had heard the lead-in to the song that day, I would've heard the DJ mention why listeners might recognize the song. But I missed that part, so I'll never know. And the part about it that rankles me the most is that I still can't find any answers on google, even with this large clue. No one thought to record Radio Host talking over "Tanacara" back in the day and post it on YouTube? I thought everything was on YouTube?

Oh well. I'm going to trust my own brain on this subject, and just assume that the flutes in this song would show up daily on WXPN, once upon a time. Maybe someone on this blog can confirm it for me. If not, I'm satisfied just enough that this isn't going to bother me.

I've always liked the idea of arbitrarily choosing a song, and attaching that song to something, and, through repetition of that thing, you give the song new meaning. You always hear people say "When I hear X song, I always think of Y," which is legit, and what I'm saying here is that this phenomenon can be manufactured. That's what TV shows do all the time. Songs exist but then are chosen as the song for the opening credits, and now that TV show is all you can think of if you hear the song out in the wild. 

At some point, some radio host heard this song and its sweet flute riffs and was like, "I'm going to use that." And they did, and now, years later, I hear those same flutes and am able to, after a little digging, uncover a memory that I haven't thought about in years. Music is fucking wild, how it sticks with you like that. One of the many reasons I spend so much time listening.

Discussion — Week 343: I quit by HAIM

I googled "hame" since this is how many people mispronounce the name of the band HAIM, and I learned that a hame is a "piece of iron or wood forming or attached to the collar of a draft horse, to which the traces are attached." So you'd attach two hames to a horse's neck, and then attach the reins to the hames. In any case, a hame is definitely not an indie rock-pop group from the San Fernando Valley comprised of three sisters. Let's talk about pronunciations and today's reviews and life in the comment section below. Happy Friday, friends!

I quit, Maeve

This is my Album of Summer™. All hits, no misses. My Haim girls are done caring? Good, me too. Let go over overthinking and be free of what doesn't serve you! I quit is exactly what I want out of an honest to god rock album—there's the bluesy "Blood in the streets," the Sheryl Crow-adjacent "Now it's time," the 2010s indie rock-sounding "Take me back" and "Relationships," which is the XPN song of the summer (a title given by yours truly). 

Of course, my favorite song on the album is "Gone" because of fucking course it is. A little choir George Michael remixed with heavy drums, a fun guitar solo, and beltable lyrics. 

HAIM is really doing it like no one else. Their promo involves them creating iconic paparazzi shots from the '90s/'00s. They're doing fun bits all over their social media. They're casting the "internet boyfriends" in their videos for this album. I mean, I've been begging for someone to cast Logan Lerman in something besides my mental image of every Emily Henry main male character and BAM there he is in the "Down to Be Wrong" video. Their finger is on the pulse and the content is extremely "for me." 

I won't quit (see what I did there?) listening to this album. The biggest sin of it all is that they're playing The Mann on the day I start a fun night class, as well as the first Eagles game of the season. A damn shame.

I quit, Sunny

Despite listening to HAIM songs for years, this is my first album cover to cover. How much to say about an album I enjoy from artists in my wheelhouse? I appreciate the homage and pastiche to many of my favorite indie darlings of 20 years ago, right off track 1. I appreciate all the themes of giving up, leaving, quitting, screwing off, getting nostalgic, getting frustrated, shirking relationships, shirking responsibility, etc. It fits pretty well with the modern but nostalgic aural tone, but and also probably excuses the lack of cohesion. That's ok, it's all pleasant enough. The sun is 4.5 billion years old.

I quit, Nate

I hear the hooks. I hear the writing. I hear the instrumentation. I hear the progression. But it's all so far away, so faint, none of it quite as sticky or as evocative as the band's reputation would suggest it should be. I wish everyone well.

I quit, Gloria

I bought Days Are Gone on CD when it came out in 2013, at that time having not heard much of HAIM aside from "Forever." The music magazines and blogs I followed at that time rated them as some of the best new music. I was intrigued by the fact that it was a three-sister band; I felt an affinity for them because I am one of three daughters. But I just couldn't get into them. I listened to the album, and it was good; it was a solid pop-rock album. But they didn't become a band that I followed, and I rarely picked up that CD after the initial listen.

So I came into this very curious, having totally forgotten about HAIM except for the few times they've shown up on the Monday Morning Mixtape. And honestly, I just couldn't get into them again. I don't know what it is. And I'm probably more critical because of the hype about them, and maybe a little bit because they are a band of sisters? 

It's polished, and even if it's a little disjointed stylistically, it's very easy to listen to, but it is not memorable. This morning, I'm thinking about the Shaggs, another all-sister band that blew my mind the first time I heard them with their weird tunes. As an aside, the Shaggs backstory is nuts. The abridged version is that their father forced them to form a band, completely (and abusively) isolating them from everything after a palm reader predicted that his daughters would become famous. Wild. They didn't become well-known until after he died, which is kind of karma.

Back to I quit. "Take Me Back" was my favorite song on the album. I'm neutral-positive about this album, which is exactly how I felt when I first heard a HAIM album. Maybe it's an album I need to spend more time with, but maybe it's just not that exciting, even if it's good.

I quit, Zach

I wrote about "Relationships" a while back, when I started my HAIM renaissance of 2025. I always liked them, but didn't know a lot about them, even though I watched Licorice Pizza and enjoyed Days Are Gone. "Relationships" took my feelings about them to a whole new level (aside from any crush I developed on Danielle Haim, who is very crushable).

To me "Relationships" is a near perfect song. The lyrics are ones that I wish I had written myself. Just so simple and true. The song itself is both catchy and musically advanced—a rare combo, I think. I don't know how you get to be creative enough to think of the "goes like, goes like" part, and I can't say I even fully understand it, or what it's doing there, but it just works. That, to me, is, dare I say it, brilliance.

And I do like the rest of this album. I really do. I feel like they are making lots of statements: about female empowerment, nostalgia, existential concerns, all under the rough cover of Danielle Haim's vocals and beautiful musical numbers. I just (and this is a problem I've had with other albums) find myself wanting to listen to "Relationships" over and over. It's like reading Rumi poetry—it just hits you in such a deep way, in a way that you don't even understand is possible, almost godly in the way it communicates reality. Part of the problem might be that I haven't been able to listen to this album and focus on it the ten times I think I quit requires. It is what it is. We live our lives, and we try our hardest. 

"I think I'm in love, but I can't stand fuckin' relationships." I met someone here on Monday for a date who lives in New York. I don't know why I agree to these things sometimes. I wonder if I am too open-minded, as my friend has theorized about me. But I'll also meet anyone. We went out for drinks. It was really fun. One drink turned into two, and I found myself, four hours later, still walking around the streets with her. I don't generally go on four-hour first dates, but this one was amazing. I felt attracted to her, even though it was obvious that she was very different from me. Where I'm emotional, she's closed; where she's efficient, I float. I've never believed in "opposites attract," but in this case, there is truth to it. I can't explain it. I just really, really like her, really just want to spend more and more time with her, getting myself deeper and deeper into the hole.

Now we've spent nearly every day together since then. It's been really great. I feel relaxed around her, like I can be myself. She feels the same. That's rare. That doesn't come along every day. But she doesn't live in the same country as me. I flew to India on Monday (writing this on Sunday, so yeah) and who knows if/when we will see each other again. The thought of that makes me sad. I am tired of being alone. It's so nice to have someone else in my life. I really believe that. 

And YET. "Fuckin' relationships." Don't they suck? I love them, and I hate them. 

On second thought, "Relationships" isn't the only song that speaks to my heart here. "Lucky stars" is pretty poignant.

You werе down to change your plans

You found me in a foreign land

Pickеd me up when I was down

Yeah, honey, I was stranded

The thing I like about you most

You always make me feel at home

You fill the empty space I hold

And it's nothing like I imagined.

That is exactly why I like this song and this album. Even though "Relationships" is the focal point, the whole album speaks directly to things happening in my life. Danielle Haim is in her mid-30s, newly single. She definitely wants a partner. She knows how to write about it, how to sing about it. The foreign country she is talking about might not be mind here, but it's somewhere, close to where I am.

So it's not all about "Relationships." I'm not afraid to make this whole album mine, for me and me alone. I cherish it. I eat it up with a dollop of whipped cream in my darkest hours. I feel the pain. I feel the hope, the desire to express, to break out. I feel it in the whole album, everywhere. I feel it in my whole life.

It hurts right now. I will miss my weeklong girlfriend, whatever you want to call her. She's special and it's hard to explain why, exactly. She's just so wonderful, and so different from anyone I've ever dated. I don't know. I've been through this so many times. I hope this time is different. I really hope this time is different.

HAIM will be next to me through it all. I just have a lot in common with them. The right age, the right emotional state, a whole bunch of other things I don't need to get into. I'm not from LA, I'm not a rock star. But I love them, and I love what they talk about, what they express. I always will, I think. 

And when I have time to listen to this album endlessly, I think it will be one of my favorites.

I quit, Joe

I don't need to be sold on HAIM, I'm good there. They've been playing the rock-as-pop-and-pop-as-rock game for as long as I've considered myself an amateur music critic, and there hasn't really been a point that I've considered turning on them. No dips, all hits. That's not gonna end now. LP4 is a good collection of music. It fits into the classic discography narrative, in that: your first album is all hits because you had your whole life up until now to make it; your second album repeats what the first album did because it worked so well that first time; the third album goes long and makes a statement and is presented as the artist's thesis; the fourth album takes risks in mixing up the sound and throwing in the kitchen sink. We're firmly at the fourth album—George Michael samples to a harmonica-v.-saxophone duel in the span of four songs. I like it a lot. There was very little chance that I was going to dislike it.

At this point in my life, just liking something is boring to me. Maybe this is a symptom of falling into the trap of taking everything that I experience (but especially music) in my life and synthesizing it through my own words on a blog. If there's no interesting "why" then I quickly forget about the thing that I like. Without RC's intervention, I suppose I quit was fated to suffer such a demise. Very Good, Forgotten. With an extra week of scrutiny, I was able to make the leap, find something to latch onto. I just want to be very clear that when I say that the album has "changed" for me, I'm not talking about quality, since it was great in June and remains great here at the end of August. I'm instead talking about the thematic hook. I'm talking about cracking this album open and figuring out in what ways it could change me, for better or worse.

I've never been a fan of the phrase "I quit," because, as the saying unfortunately goes, momma didn't raise no quitter. At first glance, the album is supposed to be about quitting in the "giving up" sense, and that makes me uncomfortable. Don't give up, HAIM! How can I relate to such a sentiment, when I myself refuse to quit, etc. etc. Quitting means giving in to your worst impulses. You are stronger than that! Don't quit!

Paging through some promotional material, the Haim girls make it pretty clear that they intended "I quit" to be more of a spiritual thing, quitting as a restorative measure. E.g. I hate what is happening and so for the betterment of my mental health I am quitting. This relationship is toxic and so I am "quitting" the relationship. They are attempting to say that you don't have to let the "I'm not a quitter" mindset suck you down into a black hole. Sometimes, you need to quit. This is what I quit is about. It's more "I quit" in a That Thing You Do! sense. This isn't working out, and so to protect myself, I quit.

I understand the mindset, and I am happy for those who are able to find stability through quitting. But I also resent it, to a certain extent. Quitting comes from privilege. Which is totally okay too. I am privileged in so many ways, and the times in my life when I've quit, I knew it was going to be okay, because of my privilege. But there are so many other times that I want to quit. So many ways that I want to quit, but don't have the privilege of doing so. I want to quit my job but that would only cause more trouble in my life. It would be a catastrophe. It's been a rough summer because I have credit card debt for the first time in my life and in response I find myself in my cubicle more than ever, working extra to pay back the debt, and here are these great musicians chirping in my ear that life would be better if I quit?! No fucking shit!

I think about Office Space a lot, and even more so when considering what the Haim sisters are telling me about quitting. The initial hook of that movie is that life is going to be so much better when you quit. The protagonist quits caring about his job, and begins to move up in life because of that. The temptation for all office drones is to take a lesson from this movie, and break free of the chains of droll employment in order to find peace. The only problem is, everyone forgets about the second half of the movie, in which the protagonist's troubles return tenfold, and a new kind of anxiety manifests, as a direct result of that initial quitting. 

Quitting too often feels like not caring. I struggle to not care. I think that's the gist of it. I do care. I care too much, probably. Caring hurts. Caring about the world and humans who live in it, right now, that hurts like hell. Caring about my family is easy but it still hurts when I have to make sacrifices for my family, and I feel compelled to use that caring as a fuel to not quit, not ever quit, but it hurts, both in the short-term and long-term, it hurts like hell. I'm careful not to let resentment grow for those who don't care, but it's active work to beat that resentment back. It's easier to forgo the resentment when the three people who actively don't care and are proposing that you also don't care just like them even though you lack the privileges that they have are the same three people who are making really catchy music. 

You are taking this too seriously, says Danielle Haim.

I respond, yeah, I know.

She's like, dude, it's just a thematic hook. We're not actually implying that you should quit your job and tank your family's financial future. That's all in your head, brah.

I'm nodding along like, yeah, I get it. It's just been a rough summer.

But see, this is the true genius of the name of the album, she says, patting herself on the back a little bit. It can apply to anything. Quit the summer of 2025. Go ahead, man. Quit.

I suppose I could.

Yeah, and, like, all the songs about "quitting" a toxic relationship, like, dude, that should've been your key right there. I broke up with my boyfriend, but the songs about breaking up are, like, metaphorical. Saying "I quit" is just a way of taking agency in the decisions that better your life. We're not saying to be reckless, brah.

But I can't actually quit summer, you know that.

Of fucking course. But summer's gonna end anyway, and autumn is gonna look a little better, because you're trying. You're not quitting the hard work, but you can still say "I quit!" to feel better about it. You see what I'm tryin' to say.

Quitting as a way of marking the passage of time.

Sure. You think I actually wanna go back to the time in my life when some little sixteen-year-old prick is trying to feel me up in an empty parking lot while my asshole friend is taking a shit in the truckbed? It's fun to reminisce but at a certain point, you quit. You, Joe, you've quit so many times and you don't even fucking know it. We're just saying to, like, embrace that shit, brah. It's turning a phrase on its head. Fuck out of here with that "quitting is for losers" bullshit. You quit all the time. Flip that shit, use quitting as a way of embracing the positive in your life. Quit the negative.

I am going to quit this summer.

Do it.

I am quitting.

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5

Song of the Day: "1000 Stars"

A column about music, and about how the music informs our lives. Today's author is Joe. See the previous songs HERE.

"1000 Stars"

Big Country

from The Crossing

1983

I use "pukes" instead of "stars" when reviewing something and giving it a grade. This has been bit long enough (and has been lampshaded enough times) that it's ceased to be noticed. It's normal. We're on Puke on Your Birthday. The grades I give are out of five pukes. Just a normal day.

I don't and have never forced anyone to use the "x pukes out of 5" system. The vast majority of reviews that come across my desk, mainly Record Club, don't feature any grade at all. And that's cool too. Maybe music shouldn't be graded. Maybe you get more of a sense of how the author feels without the grade. That's a valid argument.

My argument of pro-grading is twofold. One, having a grade at the bottom of the review actually relieves some of the pressure of having to make your feelings crystal clear within the review itself. If you really want to know where on the negative-to-positive scale I feel about this album, please feel free to see the grade; otherwise, enjoy this creative writing assignment. It gives me more freedom to write what I want, and have even the dumbest bullshit function as a "review," being anchored by that grade at the bottom.

Two, it gives me a really good sense about my tastes in music over a long period of time. Grades give me something quantitative to track. I can say that certain albums I liked better than others, but I can also say that certain time periods of my life had better music than others. I can say that certain years treated me better than others. I can get an average of every single RC grade that I've ever given, and then compare it to, say, the average of every movie I've ever reviewed, and wonder why the movie grade average is so much higher. It's cool to have the data available, if I ever wanted to explore it. 

With this in mind, I recently started to force people to give a grade for the movies they watch in Film Club. Just because I wanted that sense of satisfaction for other people too. It's fun to write creatively; it's also fun to have a shorthand in order to say "wow, I liked Mommie Dearest more than Love & Basketball" or some shit like that. Eventually, the grades Film Club members are forced to give will unshackle them from the chains of "I have to write a movie review" that so many members still feel. Let loose, write whatever you want, however you wanna write it, and let that grade do a lot of the talking.

Even then, there is so much variation between people with the numbers. A 3/5 means something different to everyone. Getting a sense of each person's own scale can only come with time and patience. The more grades a person gives, the clearer a person's tastes come into focus. It eventually gets to the point where you're like "oh wow, John is pretty grumpy when it comes to movies but he gave this FOUR pukes out of five, holy shit," or "yeah, Greg gave out another five pukes, but he does that for so many albums, it's tough to tell whether this is gonna be great or just good," that kind of thing. The more times you grade something, the more power you have to use shorthand and take the pressure off yourself to say everything you need to say in so many words.

I don't know if I could explain my own scale, and what that looks like. Mostly because it varies across the different grades. I.e. a 2.5 pukes out of 5 grade could mean three different things, even though, yeah, they are all roughly the same in terms of quality. I wonder if I tried to explain my scale, if I would be able to? Let me spend another couple hundred words attempting it, and then you can rest until my graded HAIM review is published at 7 AM.

0 pukes = really fucking bad, the worst of the worst, but also artistically bankrupt in some way, like I hate engaging with it but also wish it didn't exist so I didn't have to think about it

0.5 pukes = really fucking bad, the worst of the worst, but also maybe bad in a fun way, or bad in a way that is interesting to me (way more common than 0 pukes, since I just love talking about music, no matter the quality, and it's tough for me to imagine too many scenarios in which that would change)

1 puke = really fucking bad, but a couple redeeming qualities, a broken-watch-right-twice-per-day kind of situation, maybe one good song or one actor who is killing it or something like that

1.5 pukes = kinda bad, mostly boring, not much to talk about, disappointed that the artist couldn't make something better, but yeah, I do think the artist had it in them to make this better, it just didn't happen

2 pukes = I didn't like it but something about it suggests that this is my fault, not the artist's, but still, yeah, I didn't like it

2.5 pukes = it was fine, I didn't hate it, but I was kinda bored with it, even though it's easy to acknowledge the things that went well, and the disparate parts that I enjoyed

3 pukes = pretty good but in average ways, I enjoyed it but something is holding me back from saying that I really liked it

3.5 pukes = really good, I enjoyed it a lot, but it didn't make me feel anything special, it was more of a low-simmer love, with noticeable flaws that can be explained away but still clearly exists

4 pukes = loved it, thought there was a couple of misfires but they don't really matter in the grand scheme of things, this was really good and I'd recommend it, but I didn't feel butterflies in my stomach about it

4.5 pukes = really special, I really enjoyed it, maybe made me feel incredible but had one flaw that is easily explained away, or maybe I didn't feel that explosion of wonder and amazement when it ended, which either way means it wasn't perfect

5 pukes = more or less perfect, something that is made incredibly well back-to-front and also leaves me feeling elated, like I know I'm witnessing greatness as it's happening in real time, and that feeling is sustained throughout, and it excites me and makes me feel differently about the world almost immediately, and yeah is just enjoyable throughout

These descriptions don't apply to every single album or movie that has received such a mark, they are more just general examples. It also varies depending on the medium, as evidenced by the fact that there are a maybe a dozen movies that I've given 5 pukes to, and yet I've never given 5 pukes to any Record Club album (yet!). Probably because films can have an immediate impact on me, whereas the best albums usually need more than a week to grow into a 5-puker (and plus, any album that has grown into a 5-puker for me has probably already been written about enough on this blog that it would be ineligible for RC selection anyway).

Or, like, there was at least one movie that got 2.5 pukes, but only because half of it was absolutely perfect, and the other half was embarrassing racist dogshit. Shit like that is why I'll never be able to explain my personal 0-5 scale in one blog post even if I tried. It's only able to be explained over the course of years, and by stacking up hundreds of grades and writing about each piece of art and giving a general sense over time what grade means what and why.

My hope was that eventually, I'd get to the point where the grades actually mean something. But that could just be me taking myself too seriously. Ain't that usually the case.

Never Seen It #246: Wise Guys

"Hey Harry, what happened to your blog?" "What, this? This happens to be 400 movies I've never seen before." "Oh really? I thought it was hepatitis."

Wise Guys

1986

Brian De Palma

Zoom: August 26, 2025, 9 PM to 10 PM

Participants: Batts, Gloria, Joe, Sunny

So the primary purpose of this thing is to watch movies, which I believe we are doing. The secondary purpose is to discuss those movies—their quality, their value, their themes. But then the tertiary purpose, in my opinion, is to work on getting better at being open to the idea that all movies are worthy of this practice. E.g. there might be this notion that a movie like Wise Guys is a dumb movie and that it's not worth talking about like you would a Fellini classic. I'd like to fight against that notion. I think that it's cool to treat every movie like there's something worth talking about.

Not that every movie is good, per se. In fact, it would probably be more damaging to pretend otherwise. I liked Wise Guys but I would understand if you didn't like it. What I'm saying is more that, regardless of your subjective opinion about whether Wise Guys was "good" or "bad," I hope we can all agree—or at least eventually come to agree, in the context of Film Club—that it's cool to pick apart this kind of movie, to examine it critically, and to attempt to see how it fits into our lives and our emotions and what makes us human.

Here are some more thoughts that we discussed during the Zoom:

• But okay, so was it a good movie? The four-person Zoom was split down the middle, with Batts and Sunny saying it wasn't good, and Gloria and Joe defending it.
• How can a movie with Danny DeVito be bad? We discussed some of his filmography, and how this fit into it. Find a weak link, I dare ya.
• Was it funny? Frank the Fixer a.k.a. Captain Lou Albano a.k.a. Super Mario was pretty damn funny, but maybe that's just because he was a bad actor and said the dialogue in a very funny way.
• How about Joe Piscopo? Did he do a good job here? He's said in the past that he felt like he did not do a good job, but that's up for interpretation. On the one hand, he cut his teeth on SNL, so he's obviously not funny. On the other hand, the character called for naïveté, so who can blame the actor for leaning into that?
• We talked about the idea of Wise Guys being a "parody" of mob entertainment, pre-Sopranos. How maybe this was intended to be a send-up of the mob being a serious, shadowy organization, as opposed to what it really is, just a bunch of hilarious idiots bumbling their way through crime.
• Brian De Palma has stated that he regrets making this movie because the studio changed their minds and did not want the movie made, which was a challenge when you are, ya know, trying to make the movie anyway. If there are flaws, or it doesn't feel coherent, maybe it spawns from that.
• The idea of vulgar auteurism, and how, as already stated above these bullet points, movies like Wise Guys and the popcorn flicks that Brian De Palma might be inclined to make are still worthy of critical discussion.
• In that vein, we attempted to pull some themes from this light comedy and have serious discussion about them.
• The first was that Wise Guys was a depiction of the American Dream, how all these mopes wanna do is open up a delicatessen, and they eventually achieve their goal.
• AND YET, how much of this was through bootstrap-pulling, and how much was through luck? It felt like luck was a through line in this film, literally being cheers'd by Harry in the one scene. It seems like every time they try to force their luck, it blows up in their faces, but every time they let luck take its course, they succeed. Gloria proposed that maybe the film is making the case for going with the flow.
• (Unmentioned in the Zoom, but something I just thought of—this film is a the flipside of Magic Mike, in that both sets of characters are attempting to achieve their dream, but unlike Harry and Moe, Mike does not have luck on his side.)
• Another theme that we discussed is friendship, and how interesting it was that these two characters, despite the circumstances, stuck with each other, and seemed to genuinely love each other, which was refreshing, that this wasn't a "backstabbing, double-crossing" type of movie.
• And then to take that further, maybe Wise Guys is attempting to say that to love each other is to be human, and that is what sets Harry and Moe apart from their peers in the Mob, that they are trusting of each other, and refuse to backstab each other, and this is why they succeed while the rest of their Mob pals meet their doom.
• Is Wise Guys an INDICTMENT of the Mob?! Are Harry and Moe truly the WISE guys, wise beyond their years?!
• What would YOU do if your boss forced you to kill your friend? Would you tell them immediately?!?!

So you see, there is plenty to discuss here. All this and more! Speaking of, I got a text from my sister Brianna, who couldn't make the Zoom, but had this to say about the movie: "I was going to share that I specifically liked the visual gags (finding out they live next door, the scene where DeVito almost gets kicked in front of a bus, or when he has to start the car). Also, the fact that De Palma directed this and Scarface is awesome!"

That last part definitely folds into the vulgar auteurism thing as well. Brian De Palma directed Scarface, Carrie... Wise Guys seems like an outlier in this filmography. Why? And what says that this is definitively a Brian De Palma film, assuming that he is an auteur of the 21st Century.

Anything else? Wanna rank DeVito films? Go for it. I'll be down in the comments. Oh yeah, and the grade. What would you give it? I'm giving Wise Guys 3.5 pukes out of 5. I just really enjoyed the idea of relaxing with a 90-minute low-stakes comedy. It felt refreshing to me. We won't always discuss these types of films, but I liked shedding some of the pressure of attempting to understand HIGH ART. You gotta have a balance of the high and the low art. 

Thank you if you were at the Zoom! Thank you if you watched the movie! For all those people I just thanked, I can meet you in the comments for further discussion.

(NEXT TIME: We got Babe, and that'll do, blog, that'll do.)

Song of the Day: "Laughing Song"

A column about music, and about how the music informs our lives. Today's author is Joe. See the previous songs HERE.

"Laughing Song"

Black Country, New Road

from Live at Bush Hall

2023

***trigger warning for, I dunno, general unfortunate circumstances and violence in the real and hypothetical, some child abuse, that sorta thing***

I'm finding recently that I have a tougher time taking things seriously, even when the context surrounding the situation calls for seriousness. I noticed it recently when I first heard about the hoax at Villanova's opening weekend. It's possible that there's been an update to the story that I didn't care enough to read about, but from what I gathered at the story's breaking, someone made a false claim that there was an active shooter situation at Nova, which caused mass panic and probably some trauma for the freshman who were orienting themselves to college life. I saw a headline about this, saw that no one was hurt, kinda forgot about it for a little bit, until Pam mentioned it, and I giggled.

"It's not funny!" she said. And she was right. It's not funny. It's fucked up and it caused undue mental stress and harm and it was careless and it does damage by sanding down a very real danger of gun violence in the U.S. and it might've caused panic enough that stampede injuries might have occurred, and how would I have liked it if my first weekend at La Salle I was told that someone was trying to shoot me, and so on and so on. But I still laughed a little bit.

I dunno, man, it's not like anyone was hurt. It was Villanova, right? Fuck that school! It was a suburbs, the place where people go because they are too afraid of Philadelphia. It felt like a cosmic joke of sorts, at least to me, a guy who defends my city's reputation and gets pissed when people imply that the suburbs are somewhere you can go to be "safe" from the so-called "danger" of the city, that people who actually believe that shit might run to Nova with their tails tucked between their legs and then are immediately faced with an active shooter hypothetical. And no one was hurt! This blog post wouldn't exist if there actually was an active shooter, because it wouldn't be funny!

The way I articulated my explanation about the giggling over the news headline was that, ya know, look at the world around us. Too much outrageous injustice that we gotta swallow every fucking day, too much class warfare that's resulting in untold deaths, and who knows, maybe we're next. And so I'm consciously choosing to laugh in the face of the danger that feels safe to laugh at. If I don't choose some headlines to laugh at, then I'm going to go fucking insane. "Hoax directed toward Villanova students" feels like a good one to laugh at, so I'm going to laugh.

That's what I told her, and I think it's mostly the truth, but there is also the possibility that I am leaving out a crucial piece of the explanation. The other piece being that I'm damaged in some way. Either damaged at birth or gradually worn down and made numb by the constant reminder of the shittiness of the world that we live in. Possible that it's not a choice, but rather a lack of choice, that I cannot help but be the way that I am because of nature and nurture. Something is wrong with me, that I would see this particular headline and laugh. 

I think about this a lot when it comes to my job. The nature of my job involves me hearing about some gruesome shit, and I've been doing this for eleven years now, so I feel like I'm at the point where I've heard it all already, and will hear it all again tomorrow morning. This is fine. I can deal with it. I'm not "scarred" or anything. Far from it. Maybe the way I am, the nature and the nurture, actually make me perversely fit for this job.

The problem is when other people ask me about my job, and I forget that other people are not already worn down about this kind of thing, and I say some casual detail about my work and the person I tell recoils in horror. You saw what? they might say, and then my mind clicks back into place and I realize like, oh shit, this might actually be traumatizing for someone else. I try to play it cool, but the cat's already out of the bag. They already think I'm a monster for having no strong feelings about the thing that I said happened.

I forget if I've written about this particular incident on the blog before—probably in passing—but it's my go-to example when I'm talking about this phenomenon, this idea that social workers get their perspective all twisted in both harmful and self-protective ways, just through constant exposure. It was the morning of Super Bowl LII. I work on Sundays, and my specific role on Sunday mornings is to investigate reports of child abuse that need to be handled in a timely manner (i.e. before the intake department returns on Monday morning). This shit doesn't stop because the Eagles are hours away from winning their first Super Bowl in history.

One of my reports was: child is a Patriots fan, and mother is an Eagles fan, and child stated that he asked to wear his Patriots jersey to school on previous Friday, and mother responded by punching child in the face.

Now, I've told people about this report, and the only time I've been greeted with giggles is from other social workers. Anyone else I've told has been aghast that I'd be telling them such an anecdote with a smirk on my face. I get it. Child abuse isn't funny. An eleven-year-old getting punched by his mother is not funny. I agree!

It's not even funny when I try to explain the context surrounding it. First, that most of the reports I get are bullshit, and of fucking course I went out to that house and talked to the kid and of course the punch never even happened, and he looked at me all sad because his teachers at his school misinterpreted what he had said and took it too far and made a dumb child abuse report. Second, that this plays into the infamous Philadelphia reputation of being violent, and that there's irony in me fighting back against that reputation so incessantly but then also having to investigate whether a Philly mom punched her Patriots fan son. Third, that everyone in Philadelphia, every single person who frowns when I tell them about this report, was also out there on the fucking streets that very same night hollering about how we should punch Patriots quarterback (and name on the back of that kid's jersey) Tom Brady in the motherfucking face.

None of that makes it funny, but witness me typing it all out in that paragraph and laughing under my breath about it all, still. I suppose I'm still laughing about it because no one was actually hurt, but on my darkest days, I wonder if I'd still be laughing a little bit even if the kid was actually punched in the face. Probably not. Maybe a little. Maybe more in a "the world is absolutely fucked and I'm turning into the Joker" sort of way.

Out of the thousands of reports that I've dealt with over the last decade-plus, exactly one of them has actually caused some tangible trauma. Like more in a "I think about this report all the time and it makes me sad" sort of way, which is different than the non-traumatic reports that I immediately forget about. I'm not saying that it keeps me up at night or gives me panic attacks or anything. It's just on my mind sometimes, and it hurts whenever it pops up.

The report that I'm talking about involved a kid who traveled to Wildwood, NJ with his family, and arrived at the hotel they were staying at, and was really excited to see his cousins, and him and his cousins were all happy and jumping around and running around while the adults unpacked, and this kid slipped and hit his head and drowned in the hotel pool. 

Obviously, I'm not laughing as I write that one out. I actually got a little choked up as I typed it, which means the (mild) trauma is still there. Child mortality is about the most unfunny thing I could possibly think of. Tie in the fact that this is the sort of situation that could easily, easily happen to my own family. The situation in which the kids are excited to see cousins and get a little wild and the parents lose sight of the supervision during their own greetings? I'm in that situation constantly. That's probably why this report is constantly on my mind. 

The humor (if you can even call it that, and if you can, it's a dark twisted humor) that I could possibly mine from this is the humor directed inward, the self-deprecating kind, the same kind of humor that one might find in your third car crash, a sort of situational irony. How many kids are traveling from Philadelphia to Wildwood and dying in a way that would require Philadelphia child welfare's involvement? How many reports specifically like this could there possibly be in one lifetime? What are the chances that the one single asshole who constantly visits Wildwood with his own children and constantly writes about Wildwood on his stupid-ass blog is the guy who is assigned that one single report? Also, do you understand how hungover I was on that Sunday morning when I investigated this report? A cosmic punishment for every time I abused substances in Wildwood, pressing down upon me as I sat there in a deathly silent living room with a mother who was living through the worst tragedy she'll ever face and now has to exist in the same room as this sick asshole who is sweating gin out of every pore. None of this is funny, but it kind of is, if you think I deserve to feel this way. Maybe I do.

But now I'm just getting off-track, because my original point was that I need to laugh at incidents in which no one gets hurt, and obviously this Wildwood child abuse report doesn't fall into that category. Maybe the fact that I felt the need to bring up that report means that I'm not over it, and that a lot of the laughter that I discover coming out of my mouth is a defense mechanism, that I have trouble dealing with how terrible the world seems sometimes, and I think subconsciously that if I laugh, it'll heal me in some way.

Most headlines that I see are depressing as well. I feel hopeless and helpless most of the time. Let me just laugh at the Villanova kids a little bit. I'm not making a big deal about it. I don't revel in their suffering. I just think that a shooter hoax is like the least worst thing that I've heard in a while, and I don't have the capacity to get all that upset for these Nova kids, or else I'm gonna fucking snap. Let me giggle. It's a little funny.