The Night That We... (played the victim)

PART XVI
Playing the Victim
November 30, 2008

Those involved in this story will, as always, remain anonymous here, but if you were friends with me at the end of the century's first decade, you've already heard the tale, and you already know the players. The point of my writing this blog post isn't to rehash old wounds. The main purpose is to try to reframe it from a different perspective, a decade later. Enough time has gone by that I started to understand the things that I did wrong here, and the ways in which I was immature and sulky and stupid.

Let's set the record straight.

The story itself is not that difficult to explain, so let's start there. I'll make it quick. Starting around March 2008, I started dating a girl who lived on my floor (almost immediately after breaking up with another girl on my floor, christ I'm an asshole). We more or less dated for the next eight months (the "more or less" part is not relevant to this story). In early November of that year, we broke up. I refuse to look at my secret diary right now for the exact timeline, because I don't want to log in on my work computer, too risky. But I know we were together during the Phillies parade (10/31/08), but we were absolutely kaput by Thanksgiving, so it was sometime during the early part of the month when things ended.

On November 30th, following a Power Hour to celebrate my birthday (read: I was pretty drunk at this point), my now ex-girlfriend revealed to me that, in the aftermath of our breakup, she had hooked up with my roommate.

I didn't take this well, needless to say. I was a young drunk mopey stupid asshole now-20-year-old. Ask me on 12/1/08 how to describe my feelings, and I probably would've said: "heartbroken." Or perhaps: "betrayed." Etc. I spent the rest of the semester in bed, more or less, getting drunk in the dark and crying and skipping class and forgoing term papers. Yes, that's an exaggeration, but not by much. I told my roommate I didn't want to talk to him for the rest of the semester, and that he should stay out of my fucking way until January at least (we still had another semester of living together). I told my ex-girlfriend that I didn't want to talk to her and I didn't want to see her, pending forever. And then a couple weeks later, I moved back home for winter break.

Okay, so it's been ten years, and so I think it's worth going back and examining my own actions during this time, and see if, with the wisdom of an additional decade, I can determine whether I acted appropriately as a human being, and what I did wrong, and what I can discover about myself in the process.

Clearly... I mean, c'mon, CLEARLY I was overreacting to this whole thing. By the time I'm done writing this, I'll probably even convince myself that it was ME who was wrong in this situation, not my ex-girlfriend, and not my roommate. But suffice it to say, at the VERY LEAST, I was overreacting. A few thoughts off the top of my head:

1) Me and ex-girlfriend were broken up at the time that she kissed roommate. It wasn't a Ross/Rachel "we were on a break!" bullshit, or anything like that. Completely broken up. Facebook statuses indicated "Single." There was nothing prohibiting ex-girlfriend from kissing whomever she wanted at the time. I had no right to dictate that.

2) I was the one who initiated the break-up, from what I recall. I swear to god I don't bring up this point to be petty or to "declare victory" or whatever bullshit people like to say when they break up with their significant others. I only bring it up to show that I wanted to be broken up at the time. I didn't have my heart broken. Break-ups are tough, and clearly it wasn't as clean as it theoretically could have been, but there's no evidence that ex-girlfriend hurt me on purpose during the break-up in any capacity, even though we both hurt in a general break-up way.

3) I had already hooked up with someone else during this period. This is the most damning piece of evidence that I was in the wrong. I had no fucking right to say that ex-girlfriend shouldn't have hooked up with someone else after our break-up if I myself had hooked up with someone else. I was a hypocrite to the highest degree.

These three points indicate one thing: I was playing the victim card through this whole debacle. I know for sure now that that's what I was doing. I was using this shit as an excuse to feel bad about myself. In addition, I was using it as an excuse to feel better about myself for breaking up with someone. Thinking about the women I had broken up with in the past, and the women I would be breaking up with in the future, I had always felt like the bad guy. Like it had been my fault. It was my fault, to be sure, but I'd still feel like shit about it. About being the bad guy. Having an ex-girlfriend do something ostensibly terrible was my GET OUT OF JAIL FREE card. If she did something that upset me, it meant that I was NO LONGER THE BAD GUY. These feelings were subconscious; it was only recently that I was able to articulate what exactly I was doing. But the evidence is clear. I was playing the victim, but subconsciously, it was all bullshit.

A brief FB message exchange on 12/11/08 adds to my shittiness. New evidence of my past bullshit. Ex-girlfriend writes (paraphrasing here): "I thought there was a chance, based on what we talked about that night, that we might be able to work this out. I know what I did was shitty, but I need to know where we stand." What this tells me is that, in the immediate aftermath of her dropping the "bomb," I didn't overreact like I would by the next morning. I allegedly, according to this message, even gave her the indication that we could still work it out.

Of course, my response blames it on the alcohol, basically. "I was drunk as shit when we talked on my birthday. It was pretty unfair that we had the talk to begin with. Disregard everything I said and just give me time to work it all out." And, even more damning: "It's the first time in my whole fucking life I feel like I have the right to be upset." C'mon! Clearly I was just playing the victim! I'm embarrassed for my past self that I was basically hiding from this girl and then blaming my cowardice on her.

And since we're talking about this, we should, um, probably talk about Lloyd Dobler too.

Lloyd Dobler is the somewhat off-putting protagonist of the 1989 film Say Anything... (yes, the ellipses are part of the film's title). In the movie, Dobler has the hots for the class valedictorian, Diane Court, and spends the movie falling in and out of love with her. There was a part of the movie that spoke to me greatly when I was a teenager. Dobler's friends, wisely acknowledging that he isn't quite Diane Court's type, say to him, "Lloyd, you're going to get hurt." To which he responds: "Maybe I WANT to get hurt!"

I held on to that quote for a long time, for reasons I already explained above. I was tired of feeling like the bad guy in all my failed relationships. I was ready to be the victim, to have my heart broken, to at least say I tried and that it wasn't my fault if it didn't work.

This was not a very healthy way to live. And it didn't apply to this situation, anyway. I had been the bad guy when it came to our break-up in November 2008. I wasn't the Lloyd Dobler. I was the Diane Court. That didn't stop me from taking the incident between ex-girlfriend and roommate and make it all about ME being the VICTIM (i.e. the one "getting hurt"). Here's a direct quote from a drunken yours truly, transcribed on Puke on Your Birthday from 03/08/2009:

Okay, so you ever see Say Anything...? About three years ago, it was a random Saturday morning, it was On Demand... I started drinking... and like, Lloyd Dobler said something that I've been thinking about for a while, his emo friends are saying like, "You're gonna get hurt, don't do it, don't do it!" and he's like, "I wanna get hurt!" and that's like... I have not understanded that for the longest fucking time. At first, my thought, "Wow, I've never been hurt. Maybe I should be hurt." And then I was hurt, no then I get hurt, ya know, my ex-girlfriend hooked up with my roommate or whatever, whatever, fuck that, it's not worth it. So was like, I don't want to get hurt. But then! But then, I thought, ya know, you try it out with a chick, and she hurts you, that's one more step closer you are to, ya know, the girl you were meant to be with. So, why not? Why not try? You might get hurt... you might get hurt.... So I'm saying, Lloyd Dobler is telling me to follow my instincts.

Again, "playing the victim" wasn't really something that I was doing on purpose. On the surface, I honestly thought I had the right to be upset for as long as I was. It's only here in 2018 that I'm looking back and cringing, thinking about how I acted and all the stupid Dobler-esque things I said, and realizing what my actions really meant. It's fucking embarrassing. I don't like how 20-year-old Joe acted. I regret acting like a mopey fucking douchebag.

I'm not here to bury any kind of hatchet, because that already happened, almost as long ago.

I remember clearly, in late 2010, seeing ex-girlfriend at a Finnegan's happy hour, and briefly talking with her. It was a good talk. I was dating my future wife at the time, she was dating her future husband, and we reflected on how happy we both ended up. It felt good. Bygones were bygones, and all that.

As for the roommate, we lived together for three more semesters, remain good friends, and he ended up being the officiant at my and Pam's wedding. Bygones were long bygones, and all that.

I'm not here to bury the hatchet, but only because it's not necessary at this point. This shit happened so long ago, and everyone is cool about it, and we even laugh about it sometimes.

I'm not even here to say that I, like, obsess over my past actions, or regret them, or anything like that. There's no point in any of that.

I just need to take stock of my past actions sometimes. It's healthy to look at how I acted five, ten, 20 years ago, to examine those actions truly and to see if there's anything I can learn from them, good or bad.

From this stupid, all-around immature story, I can start to see that maybe I have issues with feeling that I'm "right" sometimes. I have issues with having to make it known when I have grievances, and making the people that caused my alleged grievances know it especially. As if every time I'm crucified I have to yell down from the cross "Look at me everyone! Look how shitty you guys are treating me!" This particular way of thinking and acting is not healthy, and it's not mature.

I had no right to be as upset as I was on 12/1/08. I was putting up a front. I was taking advantage of the situation. I see that now. I am trying to do better.

The Albums That Matter: American Beauty

Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE.

American Beauty

Grateful Dead

1970

"Dead Culture" is interesting to me. I've thought about this a lot in the past fifteen minutes, about people who obsessively follow Grateful Dead around the country and, like, share bootleg albums with each other and whatnot. I've been ruminating on what it means to be that type of person. My theory is that, to love something that much, to have it fill up that much of your life, there has to be a lot of room in your life to start with, i.e. a hole. The bigger the hole, the more room you have to fill with appreciation for the Dead, or whatever the fuck.

That is worded more harshly than I intended, probably. Maybe we all have holes in us that we need to fill. Maybe some people just choose to fill the holes with way more specific things like Grateful Dead concerts, instead of, say, listening to music in general, or obsessively watching movies, or collecting trinkets, or using heroin daily. (Or blogging.)

I'm not like Lindsey Weir from Freaks and Geeks. I'm not broken enough to want to fill the void with a lifetime of Grateful Dead tours. But I think we can all agree, Deadhead or no, that American Beauty is a pretty good album. It's the album that brings us all together, the stoner freaks in the front row and the loser office drone that is just trying to listen to some tunes to pass the time. American Beauty fills a wide variety of needs.

It's not a perfect album, and I'm not going to claim that it's even a GREAT album or that I LOVE it or anything like that. But I like it, and I don't really have a bad time listening to it under any circumstance. I've seen it described as a "warm blanket," and I think that description is accurate. Every song rambles on in a folky way, and every song features some nice, soft harmonies and some fingerpicking and just an overall pleasant atmosphere.

I'm not even going to claim many of these songs have a clear message or purpose. You can try to figure out what some of them mean. E.g. supposedly "Box of Rain" is about Phil Lesh's father dying, and I suppose there is some imagery about love and loss in there, but it really depends on your specific interpretation. But this isn't a bad thing. Sometimes songs are just pleasant songs. If you wanna believe they mean certain things, then go for it. Honestly, I feel like I talk about this corner of music listening theory too often in these columns, so I'll stop while I'm behind.

There's some shit songs on here, for sure. "Candyman" and "Brokedown Palace" and "Attics of My Life" are all pretty bad. Of course, that's my own preferences peeking through; these three songs are the slowest on the record, and so they just bore me. And the latter two especially are about death and dying and whatnot. For a band that seems like they've been around forever, they sure to sing about death a lot.

But on the other end of the spectrum: "Truckin'," a song that seems to encapsulate the overall experience of being a Deadhead, and even being HUMAN, so well that the song is in the National Library of Congress. Life is just a series of moments, life is a trip, keep on truckin'.

Good album.

~~~~~~~~~~~

If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "Sugar Magnolia"

~~~~~~~~~~~

Stray Observations

• "Ripple" wasn't mentioned above, which is unfortunate, because it's one of the all-time greats. It's probably better than "Truckin'" as far as giving you the lowdown on life's paths ahead. "There'll be some challenges in life" it says, "but you'll have help." My cousin's wedding song was "Ripple." They are separated now. I don't think that means anything for the staying power of "Ripple."
• I read from someone on Reddit that some jabronis think that the harmonies on American Beauty are "sloppy." Having an untrained ear, I don't pick that up at all. I'll have to ask Pam about it, she hears vocals on albums like a professional would.
• FRONT COVER: Quite literal, as it features a flower known as an "american beauty." Multiple websites also point out that the title on the cover features an "ambigram," and the word BEAUTY can also be read as REALITY. None of these sources point out the significance of this, which make me think the whole thing is just stoner logic.
• What does it mean to be "American" according to American Beauty? I think it more has to do with the beauty of life than anything specific about America. 
• There's a Paste article about the "Top Ten Patriotic Albums," on which this album comes in at #5. I don't pick up any patriotic themes on this album at all. The whole list kind of reminds me of Top Ten lists I used to make for my college newspaper. "It's the top ten Summer Songs!" I'd say, and then just search for songs with "summer" in the title. Silly.

NEXT TIME: american dream by LCD Soundsystem

Revisiting The O.C., Bitch

Almost a decade ago, I wrote on Puke on Your Birthday for the third time, and it was a "review" of the pilot episode of The O.C. I put "review" in quotes because, honestly, it's just a straight-up hit piece. I guess that was the whole point of me writing it. I tried more to be funny than to actually review the damn episode (titled "Premiere"). Which is fine. But also, it's cheap and it's easy to just slander something for laughs. It's harder to find the nuance in a piece of art, even if that art is an episode of a teenage soap opera television show.

I finally got my hands on a Hulu account password, and every fucking Buzzfeed-esque article about "Best Shows on Hulu" inevitably mentions The O.C. as a must-watch, so fuck it, I guess it's time to revisit this show, ten years later, with a fresh perspective (and far fewer readers, expecting a laugh).

I find it incredibly interesting that this show, which seemed so stupid when I was a teenager, has become somewhat critically acclaimed over time. This may be a matter of a show being deeper than its surface appearance, and it just took a decade for those depths to be discovered by critics and audiences. But honestly, it may have been good from the beginning, and I just didn't want to see it because of that embarrassing "need to look cool" or whatever. Like, it was easy to shit on The O.C. because it seemed corny and it featured a lot of elements of society that I thought I was "above" (fashion shows, preppy airheads, etc.).

With ten years of life experience under my belt, I'm happy to report that teenage Joe was, indeed, being a snobby teenager in hating this show for no reason. I mean, look, there are definitely parts of "Premiere" that made me laugh because they were so lame. But there are other parts that really stuck with me now that I'm 29 years old and in a completely different place in my life.

Let's go through the overall plot again first, like I did in 2008, except this time without the sarcasm. The basic premise here is that Ryan is a kid living in rough circumstances—deadbeat mom, abusive stepdad, a brother who is a terrible influence—and when the law finally catches up with him, he is hooked up with a public defender (Sandy) who sees something special in the kid. And so Sandy takes Ryan home, where we meet the rest of the cast: Seth, Sandy's teenage son who feels the same way about the O.C. (the town) as teenage Joe felt about The O.C. (the TV show); Sandy's wife, who is overall good but a little uptight and may have a mysterious past, who knows; Marissa, the girl next door who immediately make puppy dog eyes at the bad boy who is now living next to her; etc., etc.

Yes, of course, there are plenty of comical stereotypes here. Marissa's outwardly scummy boyfriend picks her up in an oversized truck with loud white boy rap playing, and he cheats on Marissa, and eventually beats up Ryan, because he's just another California dickweed who thinks he's better than everyone. Marissa is, of course, planning a fashion show, where overbearing mothers question why their daughters are wearing Klein and not Wang. The climactic party set piece borders on the fantastical, with teenagers (played by adults, clearly) blowing coke, dancing all scantily clad, nary an adult anywhere along the beach. These are parts that I rolled my eyes at.

And yet, something that I missed ten years ago is that (I think?!) the show itself is rolling its eyes at all these ridiculous moments too. There are parts, definitely, when the show says: "This is how this town operates, deal with it." There are other parts when the show says: "This is how this town operates, and yo, it's fucked up."

In that way, I still relate to Seth as strongly as I did in 2008. Except this time, it's because I see where the show is going with all this. Seth, during his very first scene, bitches about how shitty his town is, and how he doesn't fit in. It's not hard to read the writing on the wall here: Seth will eventually learn to appreciate the O.C., his town, even for all its faults. It's meta commentary on the fact that eventually, we, the audience, will grow to appreciate this show, even though we can't quite relate to its hot, rich, preppy characters quite just yet.

And there are faults in this episode of television, to be sure, but after watching about 10,000 hours of TV between 2008 and now, I can appreciate that the faults of this episode are the faults of ALL television pilots. It's usually unavoidable. When "Premiere" paints the overall world of The O.C., it has to use broad strokes, because it's trying to hook the audience as quickly as possible. Only then can we dive into the nuance. I assume the next 91 episodes will achieve this better than the pilot could. You can't really hold it against the show at this point.

So when tension is contrived through a misunderstanding (Seth thinks Ryan is hitting on Summer, the love of his life, and starts a drunken fight) or when past histories of drama are glossed over quickly (why is Marissa's dad crying in a bathroom stall, what's up with Marissa's mom being a passive-aggressive cunt to her, etc.), it doesn't really seem like something that I should be bitching about just yet, ya know?

And there's plenty of shit to really enjoy and relate to here too. First, something that I missed last time that really struck me this go around was the scene post-party, when Ryan and Seth get back to the house, and Seth is talking drunkenly about what a wild fucking night they just had. Hit me just right in the nostalgia bone, remember all those nights when I too couldn't believe how the night turned out.

Another part was the sympathy I had for Ryan's whole situation now that I didn't back then. Maybe it's the social work aspect, seeing in Ryan's Mom and Stepdad many and many of my past clients. When I was a nineteen-year-old shitbird, all I saw in Ryan was a sixteen-year-old punk ass kid who was running away to the better side of town. As a 29-year-old social worker, I see a sixteen-year-old kid who is in dire straits and needed rescuing from an awful home life. I felt for the kid, ya know? I can now relate to Sandy, an adult caretaker, way more than I ever thought possible when I was a kid who naturally mistrusted adult caretakers.

What I'm excited about with The O.C.—and yes, I do plan on continuing to watch this show—is that there's room for enjoyment here both sincerely and ironically. In that way, I'll probably keep comparing it to Degrassi, even though I can't imagine the The O.C. will be as bad at, well, everything in the way Degrassi was. But there's a comfort in watching a TV show and seriously enjoying the growth that the characters partake in, and the stakes that there are in certain plot scenarios, and celebrating when those characters overcome obstacles. And there's a comfort in watching certain things occur on screen and rolling your eyes and laughing at the absurdity of it all. Laughing at a show and laughing with a show are technically two different things, but at the end of the day, it's all laughter, and laughing is fun.

So, yeah, it's still horribly over-the-top, the way the aforementioned douchebag preppy bro announces, post-ass kicking, to Ryan: "Welcome to the O.C., bitch!" I laughed out loud at how stupid and silly that was. But goddamn if I don't want to keep watching and see what the O.C. really is all about, and why Ryan may or may not be welcome there. Bitch.

The Pizza Slices of My Life

This isn't just a ranking of the BEST pizza. That would be too easy (and for the record, the ranking would probably go Tacconelli's white with spinach and crushed tomato, then Vince's plain, then a whole slew of pizzas tied for third (some featured below)). Instead, I'm here to turn a simple discussion about pizza into a classic Emo Joe post. Turn away while you can!

Here are the best slices of pizza I've ever eaten in my life, and what extraneous circumstances made them so good. (Listed in an approximately chronological order.)

Pizza Hut's Free Personal Pan Pizza

I know, I know, my first great pizza love is the same goddamn pizza that tops every groan-worthy Buzzfeed masturbatory #90sKids nostalgia list. I am a living, breathing cliché. I also happened to grow up in the '90s, and I also happened to read books, and I also happened to have parents who didn't mind getting free pizza for their kids, so fucking sue me. You know the deal. You read some books. You list those books on a sheet. You bring that sheet to Pizza Hut once you read ten books, and you get your own little greasy slice of heaven. Pam scoffs when I list Pizza Hut as one of my hands-down favorite pizzas to exist, and I get why she would not take that seriously, but then again, I can't help it. I was conditioned to like this shit. This is Marketing for Kids 101. It's in my fucking blood.

Knockoff Ellio's at a Friend's House

Okay, so, yes, Ellio's itself didn't make this list, because, while I enjoyed the shit out of Ellio's in my youth, there was nothing special about it. It was a normal teenage lunch for me. However, I remember fondly a knockoff Ellio's at a friend's house in our pre-teen years. I just spent about five minutes trying to find a brand name. I could not. It might've been Pathmark store-brand, but I don't know for sure. I just remember that my friend's Mom used to make it for us whenever I was over their house. It was the same rectangular shape at Ellio's, but this, unlike Ellio's, had a thin crust around three of the four edges. And it was...more buttery? I dunno, I might be making some of this up. My point is that it was good.

And it was different. I don't want to overstate my experiences at my buddy's house, but I had some pivotal childhood experiences there, I think probably because his parents were a little less strict about what was going on down in the basement when we were hanging out. I watched my first R-rated movie there (Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back), played my first really violent video games (no idea), saw my first porn there (c'mon, we were like ten years old, it mainly consisted of doing some creative Ask Jeeves image searches). This is no reflection on my friend or his parents at all, but my experiences there tended a little wilder than I could have at home. And my memories of that specific unknown pizza brand are tied up with it.

(Practically) Free Rising Sun Pizza

At my Catholic grade school, we had "Pizza Thursdays." For $1 a slice, you could purchase pizza (from Rising Sun) for lunch instead of bringing something from home. Fuck it, I'll go to bat for Rising Sun Pizza; it's possibly the third best pizza in America, and DEFINITELY Top Five. Me and Pam fight about this all the time (all in good fun, our marriage isn't crumbling over pizza preferences). She thinks Rising Sun is generic bullshit. I think it's special, probably because, like Pizza Hut, I grew up on that shit.

Another thing that made it weirdly special was that it eventually became something that I felt like I EARNED instead of just getting it from my parents. My parents would, indeed, give me a buck every other week for the pizza. But I wanted more. So what I started doing was hawking lunch items around the cafeteria, and making pocket change to buy more pizza.

It would go like this, e.g.: Mike C., who was at my lunch table, didn't want the pretzel sticks his Mom packed for him, so he would give them to me for free. I would take the pretzel sticks around and see if anyone wanted to give me like a dime or a nickel for them. Higher ticket items, I would even maybe buy from people. Kristin S. from the table next to us brought Lunchables from home that she despised, so I'd give her a dime, and then turn around and go to another table and sell that shit for a quarter. Eventually I had a fabric pencil case full of loose change, which would be then converted into those sweet, salty Rising Sun slices.

Seriously, I was proud of those Thursdays when I could buy three slices of pizza... with my OWN MONEY.

Cafeteria Pizza at My First LSCHS Visit

If I thought peddling bullshit in my grade school cafeteria was serious business, then imagine how I felt when I visited my future high school cafeteria! Dude, my visit to La Salle College High School was so cool. We played video game emulators in the computer lab during my shadower's free period! Everyone was so nice! And the pizza in the caf was fucking BANGIN'. I had to go to this school. And I did, eventually, a year later. And sure, the pizza never really lived up to that day. But on the day I visited La Salle College High School as an eighth grade student, I saw my future, and it was as good as that fucking thick greasy bullshit pizza I had for lunch.

Drunk Vince's

Vince's in the "Great" Northeast is the second-best pizza in history, but that shit was NEVER as good as it was reheated after a night drinking in the woods. When you're hungry after a night of sucking on Lionshead bottles and you come home and there it is, three plain slices from Vince's, sauce on top / cheese on bottom, wrapped in plastic wrap, ready to slip into that (quiet enough) microwave and become a drunken fourthmeal. Nothing better capped off an epic teenage summer night than this treat.

Mack and Manco's on Senior Week

If we're ranking Shore Town Pizzas, I don't need a gun to my head to decide. It's Sam's all day. Mack and Manco's in Ocean City was always, to me, some wannabe shoobie pizza. But I'll admit, it holds a special place in my heart anyway. After I graduated from high school, me and every fellow private school kid I knew spent a week in Ocean City, NJ, and, um, I'm not going to go into too many specifics here, because I was intoxicated for most of it, and you don't wanna know that shit more than you have to.

But, okay, so the point I'm trying to make here is that I knew pretty much everyone in town that week, and so while I lived with some of my best high school friends, when we left the house, there were acquaintances everywhere. And one day, pretty much my whole high school graduating class was right there on the beach, drinking warm shit beer out of solo cups. And a few random people and me went up after a few beers, up to the boardwalk, and split a Mack and Manco's pie.

If I had to rank every member of the '07 Class on how well I knew him, from 1 to 250, the kids I went up to Mack and Manco's would probably be sub-175. It wasn't like they knew each other better than they knew me; it was literally whoever the four hungriest guys on the beach were, deciding to go to the boards and get some pizza. We split a couple pies, laughed about all the bullshit that had happened that week already, took a few sips from a clandestine flask, etc. It was a cool lunch with three dudes who I knew but didn't really know, ya know?

And I'm trying to think of another time in my life where a situation like this would occur. I feel like, as I get older, we're getting more insular. We're paring away friends, not adding them. You feel like you start to know fewer and fewer people. Certainly there are fewer and fewer people with whom you'd feel comfortable randomly sharing a Mack and Manco's pizza with on a sloppy Tuesday afternoon. In some regards, it was the most comfortable I ever was in my own skin, that week. The booze helped, sure, but there's a reckless abandon that comes with being eighteen and having your whole fucking life ahead of you. It was pretty nice.

Little Caesar's in Kev's Truck

Say what you will about Little Caesar's pizza, but you cannot deny one thing. It's fucking CHEAP. So cheap, that two kids working minimum wage jobs can afford to feast on any given night and still have money left over for beer afterward. The night wasn't important—some fucking New Year's Eve, an off year, we drank some beers and talked to some girls and in general had a mediocre time (I was going to meet Pam in exactly four months, so it was an "off" time in my life in general, those months prior to meeting my wife)—but what was important was that we were chilling with friends, and we were on our own, together. Sitting in Kev's truck. Eating GREAT (shitty) pizza. Ready for a GREAT (shitty) party. Life was pretty okay.

The Infamous Chicken Bacon Ranch

A lot of these pizzas are from times in my life when I was growing as a person. This excellent pie is all about becoming comfortable with stasis. The past couple years have been full of great times, but mainly it's been about a steady job, a fulfilling marriage, some wild weekends, and otherwise marking time till a third member joins us. I'm okay with all this. The fact that I'm okay with that has been well-documented here.

I'm okay with it, even though each week has become that cliche "grind" that we always thought as teens we could always outrun. I work hard during the week. I clock in and clock out. The whole notion of needing to kick one's feet up after a long work week? That shit is a cliché because it's true, man. My week ends Thursday nights, and when I kick back and relax, it's at Maeve's apartment, and it's with a beer, and it's with a Chicken Bacon Ranch Pizza from Liberty.

Typical corner store pizza type place. There is crust, and there is cheese. There are chicken bites. There are bacon shavings. There is ranch dressing crisscrossed right on top of the finished product. There is no fucking better way to end a grueling week at the office.

Sam's for St. Valentine's Day

I don't say it enough here at PoYB: I fucking love Pam. She's the best. Wife. Friend. Future Mother. Etc. St. Valentine's Day is a day when you're supposed to make those feelings loud and clear to your beloved partner. I'll admit, I'm at about at a 50% success rate as far as treating her right on St. Valentine's Day goes. I've had some off years. But peak K*** St. V's was when we decided to say fuck it and drive down the shore for lunch. There was no traffic on the way to Wildwood (it was the dead of winter). We pulled up to Sam's, and split a pie. And yo, that place, for a February weekday, was fucking CROWDED. Can't blame the crowd. The pizza is really that good.

This is the permutation of my and Pam's relationship that I enjoy the best: going on an adventure, something a little weird, probably life-fulfilling in small subtle ways, always together. That was a nice day. That was a nice fucking pizza. I love Pam, I love pizza, I love life.

The Albums That Matter: American Band

Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE.

American Band

Drive-by Truckers

2016

Over the next couple weeks, we'll be running through a bunch of albums that have the word "American" right there at the start of the title. I may find out differently doing a deep dive of each, but it seems to me that American Band is the only album on the list to directly address what it means to be "American" (Green Day's opus more or less does the same, but a little more indirectly... we'll get to it).

Clearly, Drive-by Truckers made a political album. At least half of the eleven songs deal with gun violence in America. E.g. "Guns of Umpqua," about a school shooting at a college in Oregon. E.g. "Ramon Casiano," about a Mexican teenager murdered by the future head of the NRA. E.g. "What It Means," where Drive-by Truckers directly address their audience, holding up a mirror and asking why so many black Americans are gunned down and why no one is fucking doing anything.

It's important that Drive-by Truckers are the ones making these points, because of their southern roots and their southern fanbase. I have not listened to the previous ten studio albums from this band, but a cursory scan of the wiki page indicates that they sing a lot about what it means to be Southern. A previous (and, by the looks of it, their most famous album) is called Southern Rock Opera. On this album, even, there is song called "Ever South," about being judged by one's southern accent as a hick or a dumbass.

A few takeaways here.

One. I'll admit, I am guilty of unfair judgement when it comes to our southern neighbors. Just look at what I wrote about the only country album on The Albums That Matter so far. Assumptions and biases all day. It probably took me this long to listen to Drive-by Truckers because I assumed that they were a redneck rock band in the same vein as (modern day) Lynyrd Skynyrd. For all these things, here is a promise to do better. I promise to work on it. I promise to never take seriously someone who supports trump, but I promise to never assume that someone supports trump just based on where they come from or what they sound like.

Two. This is undoubtedly a political album, but when you really think about it... how? How is this actually a political album? How did the issue of whether American citizens deserve to be murdered become a political one? It really speaks to the warped, frustrating state of mind that some of our people live in, that you could listen to a fucking blazing anthem like "What It Means" and think, "This song gets it wrong." The fuck? A kid gets murdered on his way to buy a pack of Skittles, and this is a political issue that deserves to be argued about? Who could argue in favor of a young boy being murdered? I don't fucking get it. (I mean, I get it—it's racism—but c'mon, America!)

Three. That being said, I think Drive-by Truckers are pretty brilliant in the way the make their points here on American Band. The subject matter is heavy, but the band's points are not heavy-handed. At no point does co-frontman Patterson Hood say anything like "fuck you if you don't care about these murders" or anything like that. Basically, he says "Here's how it is, please figure out for yourself what exactly this means." It's encouragement to examine the self, as opposed to shitting on the ignorant.

Four. Still, I have to imagine that there are Drive-by Trucker fans that burned their copies of this album (or, less exaggeratedly, were disappointed by the liberal-leaning tones). People by and large don't accept art that doesn't confirm their worldview. I get that. I am fortunate that I happened to like music by musicians who, for the most part, agree with me politically. I almost feel a tinge of sympathy for folks who woke up a year ago to the fact that the musicians they admire hate everything they (the listener) believe. Imagine being ignorant enough to believe in trump, and then having your favorite southern band tear down everything you believe in with one knockout punch of an album. I almost feel bad for people who have to choose between their entertainment and what they believe in.

Almost. This subject is actually worth exploring a lot more than what I'll give it here, but I don't want to stray too far from American Band. Let's say this: I'm fucking glad that the people I believe in, the artists, that they believe in the same America that I do.

Drive-by Truckers do. It's clear from American Band that they believe being an "American" means the same thing that I believe it does. Being an American means that we want the best for ourselves and for our neighbors. The best lyric on this album is: "We're living in an age / Where limitations are forgotten / The outer edges move and dazzle us / But the core is something rotten." Here, the Drive-by Truckers draw the line in the sand. The "rotten" part is those people who lack empathy for their fellow man, who don't say shit when their neighbor says something racist, who look down and don't speak up when American citizens are murdered by the thousands.

Drive-by Truckers ask us to try to understand what it means. Why these things happen, and why no one fucking does anything about it. What does it mean?

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If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "Surrender Under Protest"

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Stray Observations

• I usually read, in preparation for writing this column, some interviews from the band around the time the album came out. Man, reading interviews with Drive-by Truckers from October 2016 is fucking bizarre. They feel muted, because maybe even then, they and we thought that trump was a temporary threat. Ugh.
• Honestly, when we're looking at the best political albums of '10s, this has to be near the top. It hits hard.
• FRONT COVER: A photo of an American flag, half-mast. Flags are flown at half-mast during times of sadness or mourning, which makes sense for this album, given the subject nature. Co-frontman Mike Cooley discusses: "One of the songs I wanted to write, but I never could, was about how long the flags stay at half-mast these days. I noticed that at one point—buildings have flags, and they are always at half-mast, and from one day to the next, I couldn’t remember why. It’s almost like some guy goes out to raise the flag in the morning and he knows he’ll be moving it halfway down at lunchtime, he just doesn’t know why yet. That was an idea I was kicking around in my head, and I may still figure out how to write it."
• A constant refrain of this column: I feel like I need more context. I need to understand more of why Drive-by Truckers doing a political album is important. Southern Rock Opera is moved to near the top of my to-listen list. 

NEXT TIME: American Beauty by Grateful Dead

The Albums That Matter: America

Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE.

America

Dan Deacon

2012

I think for America, I'd like to talk about a broader subject then just what music is on this album. The music is great, but it gave me a thought that's deeper than "this is great."

Around the release of the record in 2012, Dan Deacon told NPR: "The record is political in nature. It's subtle [...]." He went on to argue that people would not respond to overtly political themes, so they are not overt, but they are still there.

Which leads me to ask: Where? Where on this record are the politics? I'm not asking this sarcastically to make a point, I'm seriously asking.

I can maybe see it in the title, but by Deacon's own admission, "'America' is a word with an infinite range of connotations, both positive and negative."

I can maybe see it in the lyrics if I squint really hard (and have the help of a lyric sheet). Like: "Feel like we've been here before / without a choice and insecure / of where we'd be without this net around / yet we've always hated it" from "Lots." If you really contort this shit, maybe you could say that this is Deacon speaking to the nature of politics and the hollowness of it all? Deacon did describe his choice between Obama and Romney as between wanting "to get hit in the face with a bat or run over by a truck" (which, man, that quote looks outdated in 2018, doesn't it?).

But let's be real. There isn't much political about this music. America is fun, technically advanced and fascinating, vivid and colorful. It's all these things, but politics ain't got shit to do with it.

And yet, it does, because Dan Deacon says it does, and he created the motherfucker.

I've contemplated often in these pieces what it means to impose my own meaning upon albums, when the album probably has nothing to do with what I felt. My question here is: Do artists impose their own meanings in the same way? To their own work? To be clear, this isn't necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, it's just something that's been on my mind. It affects how I hear an album or a song.

For the opposite, let's look at "USA III: Rail," which is the third section of four total in the big album-ending suite. Deacon says that this song was inspired a cross-country trip he took on the train one time. And that makes sense! The constant rhythm that chugs along at a steady pace, the sense of wonder it invokes, I can totally picture looking out the window at the mountains and trees from the interior seat of the train. The title and the explanation and music all work in tandem to elicit a particular response in my mind.

Deacon says that the music was inspired in general by the geography of America itself. And again, I can totally see that. The lyrics are descriptive, and very of-the-moment type imagery. Consider "Crash Jam": "Dark desert sky / one million years old, / The moon appears / no one can ignore / The plants know why / we've come to explore." It's like I'm there. I get it.

But Deacon ultimately says that the two dueling themes are geography and politics. One I get, and one I do not. But those are literally the themes, simply because Dan Deacon says they are the themes. Which is his right.

If this is true, though, and an artist can just impose his themes that are seemingly completely disjointed from what the music actually says, then what value does that leave the music? If Deacon says that America is about politics, but there's no way any sane person could pull political themes out of it, then does that mean Deacon failed as an artist? That can't be true, because I enjoy this album thoroughly, and I don't think I would enjoy it any more or any less if Deacon had never talked about its alleged subtle politics.

This almost gets to be religious in nature (though perhaps this is a stretch). I like Dan Deacon, I enjoy his work, I follow him musically. But if he says something that doesn't make any sense, can it still be true? Like the Pope, does Dan Deacon's infallible comment about his work's themes mean that these have to be the themes, or is he, in fact, fallible?

Alright, I've blathered on enough about this. You get my point. I hope I didn't ruin your experience with America by nauseatingly over-explaining what MY thoughts were about it. Listen to the album, think about what you want. It's all relative.

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If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "Crash Jam"

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Stray Observations

• Okay, so I guess we can address the fact that there's a good chance that the supposed "political themes" of this album just went over my head. If that's the case, then forget all of this. It's also possible that Dan Deacon was just talking out of his ass on NPR, and it wasn't meant to be taken seriously. If that's the case, no apology from me, I will always take this shit way too seriously.
• Here's that NPR interview that I quoted liberally.
• I almost even regret at this point writing about what I wrote about, because it really sells short how great and how fucking fun this album is.
• The lyrics, as alluded to above, are somewhat indecipherable at face value. I followed along to the non-instrumentals on genius.com, as always, but these particularly seemed like just really good guesses. I wonder how the lyrics were chosen on this site, and whether they were taken directly from the CD booklet, perhaps. In any case, I didn't harp on it too much, since I spent a paragraph or two literally just yesterday discussing it with regards to Ambulance.
• FRONT COVER: It's simply a picture of Lake Placid. He wasn't kidding when he said this album has a lot to do with America's geography.
• This was pretty cool: Adult Swim set the music of this album to psychedelic videos and clips of nature and wild animals and whatnot.
• I also didn't speak much about Dan Deacon's recording techniques, his unique mixing of acoustic and electronic sounds, his academic background, etc. It's important here, but it's arguable more important for the previous album, Bromst, which we'll get to later in the year.

NEXT TIME: American Band by Drive-by Truckers

The Albums That Matter: Ambulance

Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE.

Ambulance

The Amazing

2016

I feel like, in some ways, this (infinitely) ongoing project is a way for me to course-correct my faults from the last couple of years. There are albums that I acquired that I never really gave the proper time of day, for whatever reason. They didn't instantly grab me, maybe, and I didn't work toward an understanding. But going through every album is forcing me to reevaluate albums that I still have on my iPod but I don't really know, ya know?

This goes for today's album, Ambulance, by a Swedish band called the Amazing. I'm sure it sounded appealing when I read about it on Stereogum, but I just never connected. I thought about even maybe deleting it from my iPod instead of writing this up, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. There's a difference between not liking an album and not really knowing an album. I needed to give it a chance.

And I'm so glad I did.

My best guess as to why it didn't really land back in 2016 was that the lyrics are, for the most part, imperceptible. I've never seen so many question marks and unfinished lines on genius.com. I wouldn't say I'm a lyrics-first guy in general, but having identifiable lyrics can help stake an album to the ground. Not having that can be a strike against an album.

But so be it. I stopped worrying about the lyrics on this listen, and just let the music wash over me. It was pretty good, and more varied than I had originally heard on previous listens. The title track starts us off with a nice drumbeat that kind of reminds me of something the National would do, gently pulsating, and then adding a cool little piano lick as we go along. "Divide" is practically heartland rock, but with haunting vocals. I can almost picture driving down a wide-open road listening to this track. "Tracks" is sleepy at first, tricking you, only waking up halfway through with some drum fills and then a soaring guitar solo.

This is what I'd probably call "Driving to Work Music," for those mornings when me and Pam are going to the city together for work and driving south on 95 and it's still dark and the roads are mostly empty. I think about mornings like that, and I hear Ambulance.

It's never boring. The drums sneakily keep the tempo up until near the end, which keeps the shimmering guitars grounded. Do some of the songs drag a little bit? Sure. "Through City Lights" is guilty. But "Moments like These" and "Perfect Day for Shrimp," even though they offer no assists from the drums, still find ways to pique your interest in the slow moments. Not sure if this is only because I listened to Steve Gunn right before listening to Ambulance, but I hear a little Steve Gunn in some of these songs, especially the fingerpicking in "Moments like These," etc.

I'm kind of upset that I slept on this record a couple years ago. I'm not saying I discovered, like, a new BEST RECORD OF 2016 or anything. It's just solidly good. Ambulance is the type of record that deserves a blog project like this. The quiet and forgotten albums, sitting there, waiting for another listen, waiting to be rediscovered and pleasantly enjoyed.

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If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "Divide"

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Stray Observations

• All that being said, it took me a while to write this entry. Like, probably a week of putting it off. I'm sorry. When I opened up Stereogum today I saw that the Amazing are putting out another album in a month, and I took that as a sign that I better finish this shit and move on. 
• The 2016 'Gum article about this album streaming offers that the Amazing are affiliated with the Swedish band Dungen, who I've only heard about recently in relation to their collaboration with one of my low-key favorite bands, Woods. I guess Dungen is a band I should check out?
• FRONT COVER: A black-and-white scene of stairs, and what I think is a long exposure shot of commuters rushing up and down the stairs? Either that, or Lost's Smoke Monster finally made it off the island.
• Sincerely surprised that I haven't heard "Ambulance" in a TV show, seems like the perfect song for a critical scene in a prestige drama.

NEXT TIME: America by Dan Deacon

A Complete Fucking Novice's Guide to the 2018 Oscars

I am not a "movie buff." I'm probably the opposite of a movie buff, truth be told. Before this year, there was exactly one time that I had seen more than one Best Picture nom before the award ceremony (2010). Other than that, I usually only watch like maybe one, possibly zero, of the nominees. Why? Well, we could get into that whole thing, arguing about superior mediums and shit like that, but that's not why I'm here.

I'm here to tell you that, for the first (and possibly only) time ever, I (along with my beautiful wife Pam) have watched ALL NINE Best Picture Nominees for the 2018 Oscars. So for once in my life, I actually am qualified to give an opinion on who should win the big award this year.

(However, I am still not qualified to make a guess on what WILL win, as that requires a working knowledge of how the Academy typically operates and how they typically pick a winner, knowledge I don't have even after watching nine movies in a year.)

So, I am here to give my opinion on all nine movies. Take it with a grain of salt. I warned you at the beginning I am a novice when it comes to movies.

To begin: What, in my opinion, makes a GREAT movie, as opposed to just a good movie? The assumption being that only GREAT movies are Oscar-worthy. What do I think makes a movie great?

Well, after thinking long and hard about it for the past fifteen minutes, I've narrowed it down to TWO criteria that need to be true in order for a movie to be great.

1) The movie gives you something to think about or ponder after it is over. It stays with you for reasons either tangible or ineffable, or both.

2) The movie keeps you interested throughout its entire length.

Now, clearly it's incredibly subjective how you apply each movie to these metrics. An exciting movie to me might be boring as fuck to you. A movie that means a lot to me might mean shit to you. I'm not trying to argue that you have to have the same opinion as I do. But when I argue about what movies are great and what movies suck and what movies are merely good, this is how I am measuring. And argue I shall. And the arguing, man... isn't that kind of the best part about consuming entertainment in the first place?

Anyways, let's get started. Here are the nine Best Picture Nominees, presented in alphabetical order, and complete with ***SOME SPOILERS*** First, I'll go through each movie, and give my opinion. Final ranking is at the end.

Call Me by Your Name

Wikipedia description: A "coming-of-age drama" that "chronicles the romantic relationship between... a seventeen-year-old living in Italy, and his father's American assistant."

You will like it if you like: will-they-won't-theys, they-definitely-wills; riding your bike in short shorts; silences in place of dialogue; when you wanna jerk off but you don't have any lube but there's a bucket of fruit nearby.

Is it GREAT: This movie is almost possibly great, but maybe not quite. Yes, it gave me something to ponder for days afterward. Mainly, I'm talking about the final monologue by the kid's dad, the one about your heart wearing out so appreciate the joy you are feeling now, don't take it for granted, etc., you know, THAT monologue. Fucking great. The whole credit sequence might as well have been a mirror, my reaction to the movie mirroring Chalamet's, both of us pondering what exactly that meant, and how much it still hurts.

Was it interesting for the entire 132 minutes? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, nothing "exciting" truly happens throughout the entire film, but I'm not the type of person that needs fireworks and explosions to be excited about a particular scene or whatever. There were plenty of moments when I truly enjoyed watching these characters just go about their day in France, and the dance of "forbidden" love that the two leads performed was interesting and at times thrilling.

But there were certainly moments that could have been pared down. It was almost TOO many simple hangs outs and stolen glances between book chapters by the pool. Fuck it, maybe I am being nitpicky here. Let's just say it: Call Me by Your Name is a great movie.

Darkest Hour

Wikipedia description: A "British war drama" of Winston Churchill's "early days as Prime Minister, as Nazi Germany swept across Western Europe, threatening to defeat the United Kingdom during World War II, leading to friction at the highest levels of government between those who would make a peace treaty with Hitler and Churchill who refused."

You will like it if you like: Fat Bastard from Austin Powers as an integral part of the start of World War II; movies made, not from love, but from cold, hard Oscar formulas; flabbergasted Brits; some asshole American conservative playing the most famous British liberal.

Is it GREAT: I went into watching Darkest Hour expecting the worst, and... well, it was better than that, I'll admit. Let's be clear: this movie does nothing to challenge you. It's exactly what you think it would be. I mean, ya know, besides the fact that it's a true story. But as a functioning movie, it's so eye-rollingly obvious sometimes that it hurts.

But yeah, it won me over eventually. I guess by the time Churchill was adorably riding the subway through London, I was all in. This movie fucking SCREAMS Oscar bait, but, like, there's a reason that certain types of movies attract awards. BAD movies don't attract awards. This wasn't a bad movie. This was a good movie.

It wasn't a GREAT movie, though. I enjoyed it, and then that was it. We get it, yo. World War II had some brave folks behind the scenes. On the other hand...

Dunkirk

Wikipedia description: A "war film... that depicts the Dunkirk evacuation of World War II."

You will like it if you like: shepard tones; um... war movies?; the climactic scene of any given war movie; that tense moment right before someone is shot in the face; Bane as the hard-to-understand hero this time; boat drama.

Is it GREAT: Yeah man, it is. Darkest Hour was tell-don't-show. Dunkirk was show-don't-tell. Seriously, they didn't tell anything. This movie was all silence and gunfire and tension and mild confusion. And FUCK it was great.

Let's start with the "was it interesting" part. Unequivocally, this movie is exciting from beginning to end. It's pretty much the climax of a war movie stretched to 106 minutes. The ways in which the three competing timelines collapse on each other is heart-stopping, to say the least. It's all a rescue mission, basically, and that kind of shit keeps my interest.

And it gave me a decent amount to chew on too, post-movie. There's the fact that we are celebrating soldiers, despite the fact that they lost the battle, which is different than your typical war movie. There's the focus on the courage of regular civilians—fuck, I choked up when George gets his picture in the paper. There's all the other stuff, "cost of war" and all that. Dunkirk, for a few reasons, stayed with me after the film was complete.

Get Out

Wikipedia description: A "horror film" featuring "a black man who uncovers a disturbing secret when he meets the family of his white girlfriend."

You will like it if you like: any other fucking horror movie ever made; ignorant white people; feeling "woke"; Darius from Atlanta; the idea of Marnie from Girls getting fucking MURDERED.

Is it GREAT: No, but let me explain. There's a difference between being GREAT and being IMPORTANT. I get why this movie is important, and I agree. It's important to challenge white people who perhaps "consider themselves to be allies of movements against racism yet do more harm than good." It's important that this is a horror movie that is racially aware, created and directed by a black man. These are all good things.

But when people fawn over Get Out they are awarding a movie that is at best IMPORTANT. But not necessarily GREAT. I don't think Get Out is great.

I enjoyed watching it, for sure. But I don't necessarily find horror movies all that interesting in general. Get Out starts out flipping horror movie scripts at first, and presents some really interesting ideas, but I got somewhat bored when it devolved into typical horror movie shock scares, and ended up just being a "gotta kill everyone to survive" flick by the finish.

Sure, Get Out gave me a decent amount to think about, regarding certain aspects of the movie (e.g., do I, as a white male, ever inadvertently act like the villains in this movie?). But it left no lasting effect on me. What starts as fresh and thoughtful ends up being forgettable.

Lady Bird

Wikipedia description: A "coming-of-age story of a high-school senior and her turbulent relationship with her mother."

You will like it if you like: how silly Catholic school is; true-to-life teenage drama; that short period in your life when you move to college and everything fucking changes; jumping out of a car to avoid hearing bullshit from your parents; absolutely terrible high school plays.

Is it GREAT: Fuck yes. It's been said probably by everyone who's seen it already, but this movie is so true to life. It just gets so many of the little details correct about the final years of high school. Every single character was painted in shades of gray. Didn't hurt that they went to Catholic grade school, which gave me violent flashbacks. It was also a sincerely funny movie.

And it gave me a lot to think about. How strained the relationship with your parents can be, even when it is born out of love. How only when we transition to life's next stage can we appreciate how frivolous parts of the previous stage were. How teenagers are so smart and yet so dumb. How people come in and out of your life seemingly at random. How the process of finding yourself never ends. Mainly I thought about all these things because I was already thinking about them, but Lady Bird just put them on screen and made me laugh while doing so. GREAT movie.

Phantom Thread

Wikipedia description: A "romantic period drama" depicting a couturier who "falls in love with a young waitress," and "the couple's relationship vacillates between affection and distance as they struggle to live with each other's differences."

You will like it if you like: jerking off over method acting; the dulcet drone of Radiohead's guitarist; every other antihero in history; disagreeing with my father-in-law; taking a break from laughing.

Is it GREAT: No, it's not, but kind of for the opposite reason than a lot of the movies on here? I did have a decent amount to think about by the end of the movie. I contemplated the lengths we go to to make relationships work, how some people are just made for each other, whether sadistic man-children are worthy of love, etc. I'm not saying that this is a really meaty premise, but there was some substance there. It didn't ring hollow.

But HOLY SHIT was it boring. There wasn't really anything in Phantom Thread to enjoy at all. It was so dry, so frustrating, rarely amusing, and, c'mon, super boring. This is a subjective take, for sure. But I don't find characters like Reynolds Woodcock all that interesting. Day-Lewis is a good actor, but it's not that hard playing an emotionless cardboard cutout. This was the only movie on this list during which I had to actively fight sleep.

The Post

Wikipedia description: A "historical drama political thriller" depicting "the true story of attempts by journalists at The Washington Post to publish the Pentagon Papers, classified documents regarding the 30-year involvement of the United States government in the Vietnam War."

You will like it if you like: when journalists make trump look like an asshole; looking at old copies of your college newspaper; movies filmed specifically for the purposes of the Academy Awards; Tom Hanks, non-mentally challenged.

Is it GREAT: It's a lot better than many people are saying, but no, I don't think this can qualify as great. The part that everyone was wrong on is that The Post is somehow boring or lame or whatever. This is incorrect. I was legitimately thrilled at how the movie moved along and reached a climax. Was the climax predictable from minute one? Absolutely. But that didn't take anything away for me. Maybe this is just me, but the minutiae of how a newspaper operates always fucking fascinates me. Enjoyed this from beginning to end.

(This was predictable in the same way Darkest Hour was predictable. Why is The Post more enjoyable? In my opinion, it was the exploration of the nuance in The Post that made it enjoyable for me. Darkest Hour was all broad strokes. The Post had small twists and turns that kept me enthralled. YMMV.)

However, I'll admit, the overall "message" of the movie rang hollow, thinking about it afterward. It felt like, who exactly is this movie for? Liberals like me, you're preaching to the choir. I understand that the press is important in the fight against trumpian fascism. There's really nothing to ponder for me. And conservatives? You really think they are watching this shit?

The Post was a really good movie, but it made no lasting impression on me. Like a Wendy's Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger, that shit was good going down, but it has no substance.

The Shape of Water

Wikipedia description: A "fantasy film" that "follows a mute custodian at a high-security government laboratory who falls in love with a captured humanoid-amphibian creature."

You will like it if you like: some kinky shit; people coming together from all walks of like to pull off the big heist; Sally Hawkins' bare ass; period piece/fantasy amalgams; living above a movie theater.

Is it GREAT: Nah. I hate to be dismissive of the movie, because I truly did enjoy watching it. There was a fish man! A naked woman! Decent acting! A caper! An unstoppable villain! A bit of a twist ending! All these things I liked. But when the credits rolled, my response was, "Hm, that was neat." There was a romance between a woman and a sea creature. It was a romance movie, and followed the typical beats of a romance movie, ignoring, of course, the fact that a sea creature was involved. What else is there to say?

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Wikipedia description: A "crime dark comedy drama" with "a mother who rents three billboards to call attention to her daughter's unsolved murder."

You will like it if you like: redeemed racism; endings that might as well featuring a big question mark on the screen: when villains are heroes and heroes are villains; Tyrion as comic relief; lowercase prepositions.

Is it GREAT: Honestly, no. It was one of those movies that actually got worse the more I thought about it. Which is a fucking shame, because watching it for the first time was one the most enjoyable movie experiences I had in a while. There's a LOT of flash and swagger in this film. From the surprise bloody spit take, to beatdown that ends in getting thrown out a second story window, from a racist jumping through another window (this time on fire), to that racist ultimately getting some type of questionable redemption. It was horrifying, it was hilarious.

But it ultimately left me feeling hollow. Look, I know I'm setting the bar high here. I realize that I don't need lasting substance to enjoy a movie. But we're talking about Oscar films here, there's a higher standard. And Three Billboards just didn't really reach that standard for me. What was the point of all this? Was it just to show how sad and sadistic human beings can be? Because I get it. I get that point, there's no need to elaborate. The movie seems to agree with me, ending on a cliffhanger, as if to say, "alright, that's enough for one day, pack it up folks." I left the theater feeling high, but once I came down from that high, there wasn't much left.

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Final Ranking

1) Lady Bird
2) Dunkirk
3) Call Me by Your Name
4) Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
5) The Post
6) The Shape of Water
7) Darkest Hour
8) Get Out
9) Phantom Thread

The Albums That Matter: AM

Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE.

AM

Arctic Monkeys

2013

Listening to AM is like when you meet up with an old friend from college at the bar, a guy you haven't seen in a while. And this dude lost some weight, got fit, actually started caring about hygiene, got a stylish haircut. He orders a seltzer with lemon at the bar. He's nearly unrecognizable. And, like, good for him, ya know? Clearly he is healthier and in a better place than he was in college. But at the end of the day, you kinda miss that shaggy fat drunk idiot that you used to know. The one you had so much fun with back in college. That stupid lovable dumbass. He's gone. And you have a couple drinks and catch up, and the night was pleasant enough, but it wasn't the same.

This is a dumb comparison, but it's honestly how I feel listening to this album. Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not was a seminal album of my high school years. It was fun and chaotic. It was youthful, I guess is the word I would use. But seven years (and three more LPs) went by before I caught up with Arctic Monkeys again, and man, AM is not what I had expected.

It's not bad, I won't go that far, but it's definitely different. The sounds here are slinky and sexy. There's a song called "No. 1 Party Anthem," but nothing here could be played at a party (trust me, I've tried). The songs we get here take their time (the intro to "A Certain Romance" feels like it was a million years ago).

The lyrics are obsessed with women: does this girl like me? ("RU Mine?"); does she only like in certain scenarios? ("Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High?"); how can I possibly recover from this heartache? ("Mad Sounds"); should I fuck this woman from space? ("Arabella").

This is an Arctic Monkeys album, for sure. Their signature cocky British sound is still there. But AM strains to be something different, something more adult perhaps. The strain shows; it's a little boring and same-y throughout. All the reviews at the time indicated that Arctic Monkeys were "growing up." What happens when I don't want a band to grow up? We get AM.

You know what the weird part is? To me, this sounds like a tepid, somewhat forgettable album, but to the rest of the world—Europe especially—this album is FUCKING INCREDIBLE. It debuted at #1 on the UK charts, and in the Top Ten in plenty of other countries. At least seven major publications, by my count, put AM in their top five for albums of the year. NME went so far as to rank it in the Top 500 Albums OF ALL TIME. I mean, just look at how many plays this bad boy has on Spotify. It's fucking wild. People love this album.

And, hey, good for them. I'm happy for them. Not that Arctic Monkeys were ever unpopular, but I'm proud of them for evolving their sound and keeping the accolades rolling in. To me, though, AM is always going to be that friend who found success by being the opposite of everything you loved about the friend in the first place.

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If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "One for the Road"

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Stray Observations

• Alternate theory: All this album needs are some classical string arrangements, and it would be great. At least, that's the sense I get from Alex Turner's side project, the Last Shadow Puppets. Their album Everything You've Come to Expect is basically Arctic Monkeys with a heap of violin slathered on top. I'm a big fan.
• The fact that this album was named the #449 best album ever by NME is truly stupid. Though I guess if you're gonna have to fill up a list of 500 albums, there's gonna be some bullshit on there.
• Another factoid regarding this album's popularity: As of 2015, AM was the highest selling vinyl record of the decade so far. It beat The King of Limbs and Dark Side of the Moon. The fuck?
• FRONT COVER: Per wiki, the album cover depicts a waveform typical of AM radio signals. Not mentioned by wiki is that the waveform looks suspiciously like a bra. More obsession with sex hidden in plain sight right there on the cover.
• I didn't mention the cameos by Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme, primarily on the song "Knee Socks." It's mostly a background appearance. I would not have known it was Homme if the AM wiki page didn't carve out a whole section explaining his appearance.
• FUCK I love Whatever People Say..., I cannot WAIT to write about that shit in 2022.

NEXT TIME: Ambulance by the Amazing