In My Place 289

October 16, 2026. 39.91906, -75.18857. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

this is a haiku

about a junior bacon

cheeseburger, alright

didn't crash car in the rain

didn't crash car in the rain

I didn't take this picture, but I was there. Full credit to the photographer, paid in jr. bacon cheeseburgers.

Discussion — Week 402: She's the Best by Troye Sivan

Sometimes I am surprised about what I find on the rear artwork for these albums. With such a vivid, striking, boob-filled front cover, I thought for sure that something even more outrageous was gonna be on the back. Maybe something to do with a penis to balance it out? But instead, it's the song titles written in fancy cursive letters. It's all good, because Blogger sent out a notification to all editors this week that they are tightening their standards for content warnings on blogs. No nudity! The album art isn't technically nudity, of course, but I'm always afraid that Blogger is going to unceremoniously shut us down because of a salacious album cover or something. I haven't been this worried since Go Go Diva!

For now, we are safe, and so for now, let's chat. What did you think of the album? Did any of the reviews sway your opinion? There are eighteen more weekly discussion posts after today. Are you going to miss them? If so, let me know, I'll include you in the group text or email or whatever the fuck we'll replace them with.

She's the Best, Sunny

Today the vagaries of life and work had me traveling to three mega-party cities: Vegas, NYC, Cleveland. When you go to a party city, you need party music. Sivan delivered literally and figuratively. The opening and title track is kind of sweet (kind of), rather than coded in full hardcore party-style. That gives you a range of what might be coming up. Then by track 2 the MDMA should be tickling the bottom of your brain stem, and you're really off from there. Mostly full UK-style club bangers with some softer stuff mixed in, but still with that same slant. Fun album; party at the pool, party at the show, party at the airbnb, party at the podhotel.

She's the Best, Rachel S.

In honor of Troye's succinct "Party," here's my short n' sweet review, song by song:

1. Thank you, women* really are the best. 

2. Am I too old for the clerb?

3. APPARENTLY NOT. LET'S FUCKING GOOOO. My favorite part is when he goes, "Party on the way to the party at the PARK." So plosive. 

4. Mid-'90s adult contemporary.

5. Perfume Genius-core meets everyone-wants-to-be-a-cowboy-these-days-core.

6. So satisfying when the Aussie accent comes out on "so."

7. Absolutely belongs in the 10 Things I Hate About You soundtrack. Kat Stratford downnnn.

8. Not the vibe you'd expect from the title!!! (Reminds me of his previous "One of Your Girls" 😭)

9. I see what you did there, you cheeky little rascal! Jazzy! 

10. Troye stays putting out the HORNIEST videos. Sometimes they're sad AND horny. As one YouTube commenter wrote, "what a glorious day to have eyes." And ears, for that matter!

11. If "No YOU hang up" was a song.

12. WHY LRD?

Closing thoughts: Some lovely and silly highs with some skippable lows. I'm glad Troye Sivan is making music for the masses. I'd take his version of cowboys over the slop on country-pop radio. Stay glittery, y'all.

*The world seems to be at an excessively high level of hating women right now. Sure, that's been the case for most of western/Christian civilization for all time; it's just feeling extra potent. I'll take all the diva worship I can get these days. The bar is in hell when it comes to men showing up for women. Y'all don't need to write a song for us, but maybe tell your friends/coworkers/gym pals/the guy next to you on the bus to shut the fuck up the next time they say something demeaning about the better sex. I promise you, the opportunities ABOUND. THANKS.

She's the Best, Joe

This album made me feel great in a few ways. ¶ First off, how it challenged me and my perception of what pop music is in the year 2026. I don't know how popular Troye Sivan is and I refuse to do any research on the subject, but I will estimate that he's popular and maybe popular enough for a stadium tour, but probably more so on the lower end of a high echelon. That's speaking quantitatively, but speaking qualitatively, I would imagine that there aren't many pop star peers who are trying the sounds that he's trying here. At least not right in this moment. ¶ Beyoncé's RC album comes to mind, with its focus on house music, so maybe you're thinking about that when you're hearing, e.g., "Canada Dry," but RENAISSANCE was almost a half-decade ago (hard to comprehend, I know), and the winds have shifted mightily in the pop arena. The forward-facing part of it, anyway. All those bloodsuckers are chasing country music now (even Beyoncé in her RENAISSANCE follow-up). Sivan isn't doing that here. ¶ He's doing his own thing, and I think "doing your own thing" is sincerely something that stands out, when you're a pop artist. A refusal to chase trends is tantamount to bravery. And it adds value to the art itself, because you know that there's a truth here, one not even Beyoncé could touch. Like, there's a difference between leading trends and being unconcerned with trends. That's the difference. ¶ And I don't even think "doing your own thing" necessarily means "doing something no one else has ever done." That's not true for anyone anymore, all the sounds have been done already. But you have artists combining those sounds in fresh ways, and you also have artists making those sounds for the first time in a while, in a slightly new context. I don't really hear anything that sounds like She's the Best today. ¶ The closest modern equivalent is probably the 1975, but I don't think it's an exact match, and it's possible that I'm thinking about that more because Sivan approaches "everything and the kitchen sink" in the same manner (but possibly not the same scale) as the 1975. But you don't need a modern equivalent. You say that Sivan is messing with similar sounds like, uhhhhh, the Stone Roses were messing with it? The genre tag "Baggy" is right there, listed among the rest, and if you click on it, you'll see that the highest-rated Baggy album of all time is The Stone Roses. I'm not saying the albums sounds alike, but I'm saying that Troye Sivan is messing with "jangly guitars, looping basslines, four-bar drum patterns, and a hypnotic, carefree feel" in the same way that the bands in the Madchester scene were messing with them. ¶ This isn't my overarching point, by the way, that Troye Sivan sounds like the Stone Roses. I don't even think that's true for most of the time. But the fact that I'm able to draw even the slightest connection at all says something about this modern-day pop artist. "Doing your own thing," as opposed to leading or following, gives me the ability to not feel like I'm "following trends" either, which is important to me, whether I like to admit it or not. ¶ Like if I said I like the new Taylor Swift bonus tracks, then that would be boring, but if I said I hate the new Taylor Swift bonus tracks, then that would be boring too. Shit that everyone has to have an opinion about and 90% of those opinions are based on preconceived notions, that's a fucking drag. I don't like it. There's no room for me. With something like Troye Sivan, he's popular in the outside world, but in my insular world, he was sort of an unknown, and I get to approach his music and feel like I am liking something because I like it, not because of the artist or who he is or what he's previously done or what he represents. I get to see just the music. ¶ It's helpful, of course, to think that it's good, that there's quality here, that it's catchy, but that's all expected from such a pop album. I think the point here is that it's easier for me to say that I like it because it feels like an honest assessment, untainted by outside forces. ¶ Possibly the only outside force that I might consider—but only because this is a safe space, and somewhat insular if we're being honest, and also this space has existed for so fucking long so there's history here—is the idea that our pal Rachel S. recommended it, her fourteenth album recommendation in this club, and I feel like the majority of her picks (not all, but a healthy majority) have been present-day pop, which is good, but perhaps have not always landed with me personally as they might with Rachel and others. Sam Smith? Perfume Genius? BTS? Adele? At best, I'm shrugging, and at worst, I'm callously dismissing those albums. ¶ And now here comes Troye Sivan, and I think we might have finally found an album we can share, me and Rachel. I think it's time to admit that in Record Club, after 400+ weeks, that it does actually affect my opinion about an album depending on who chooses it. When Rachel chose She's the Best, I wanted so hard to like it, and now here we are. I like it. A lot. ¶ And that feels good, to find something through a music club like this, and through someone who deigns to occasionally be part of it. I probably like She's the Best more because Rachel chose it and because this feels like a well-earned achievement in Record Club. We're finally sympatico. We can finally forget all about CANDIACE!!! ¶ If you put all that extra stuff aside, then it's really as easy as saying that this is a catchy album and that should be enough. But when you add all the extra stuff back in, then this experience becomes an important one. Yes, this is pop music. Yes, it's catchy. But yes, it's catchy in ways that other pop music from 2026 is not even trying. Yes, it's from a popular artist. Yes, this artist is not someone whom I was familiar with, or even wanted to be before this week. Yes, that adds to the experience too. ¶ And yes, Record Club afforded me the space to listen to it a bunch more times than I would have otherwise. Yes, I listened to it a lot. Yes, it sincerely got better every time. I'm wrong in that it sounds like nothing else, because there are so many things it sounds like. But I'm right when I say that the music is so consistently good that it feels new anyway. I've heard trip-hop beats like "I Do This for You" plenty of times, but somehow, it feels fresh and exciting here. I've heard staticky ballads like "FF," and arena-ready crescendos, but for whatever reason, "FF" feels like a high point here, for this particular artist on this particular album. ¶ What's the difference? I don't know. I've laid out a few theories in this review but it could ultimately just come down to it being good. Like, you hear those flutes during the "FF" climax? That's some good-ass shit. I don't often get excited for pop albums like this, but I am excited, here, with this pop album, in the year 2026, and that changes everything.

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5

In My Place 288

October 15, 2026. 39.95333, -75.1665. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

Remember when there were big plans to fix up Suburban Station, make it some sort of social hangout hub, with bars and restaurants? I don't think I'm making this up. I'm pretty sure it was deeply in the works before COVID happened and pulled the guts out of basically any plan like this. Some plans made a comeback. Others, like the alleged Suburban Station plan, were permanently buried and forgotten about. I think about it every time I walk into any isolated, desolate space down here. Imagine what this huge fucking space could look like, instead of empty floor and a nuts shop. Imagine if people actually hung out down here, instead of walking quickly through it and escaping as soon as possible.

Never Seen It #342: Planes, Trains and Automobiles

You wanna hurt me? Go right ahead if it makes you feel any better. I'm an easy target. Yeah, you're right, I talk too much. I also listen too much. I could be watching 500 movies I've never seen before... but I don't like to hurt people's feelings. Well, you think what you want about me; I'm not changing. I like... I like me. My wife likes me. My blog likes me. 'Cause I'm the real article. What you see is what you get.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

1987

John Hughes

If I were to draw a conclusion from my ambivalence (at best) regarding the actor Steve Martin, i.e. why I tend to not like art and entertainment that he appears in, or maybe just specifically his appearance and role in said art and entertainment, then I'd probably say that I don't like when characters are assholes for no reason. It's actually pretty easy to find a good reason, a motivation, for a character to be an asshole, so it annoys me when we're supposed to just accept when a character is an asshole for no reason. You'll recall where this all started—my confusion at Steve Martin's bit part in The Muppet Movie, one of the warmest and funniest movies of all time, in which Steve Martin appears as a random waiter with a stick up his ass for literally no reason other than the fact that it's supposed to be "funny" that he's an asshole. It makes total sense that, as it turns out, Steve Martin had that role and played it that way simply because he's good at playing the asshole-without-motivation. He filmed his small role in The Muppet Movie around the same time he was filming his starring role in The Jerk, and was probably just playing the same character. If you need a 90-minute explanation as to why I hate characters like this, subject yourself to The Jerk. The least funny movie of all time, and the lack of logic behind the titular Jerk's behavior is what I believe to be the reason why.

All that to say... Planes, Trains and Automobiles managed to find a thoroughly believable logic for Steve Martin's character's behavior, and because of this, it instantly becomes the best role I've ever seen him in. Low barrier to clear, but he does it. Martin's Neal Page is an asshole, but it makes sense that he acts in asshole-ish ways. He is established as a stickler for rules, and he lives in a world where everyone else is breaking those rules. He is drawn as an independent person, and he spends the entire movie tied to someone else and more or less responsible for them. He is a family man just trying to get home to his wife and kids, and no one else seems to give a fuck about this core value. I feel a kinship with many of Page's emotions throughout the film. The frustration is valid! I definitely understand the pain of having to take a hellish commute home and lose precious time with my kids! Neal Page is an asshole, but his asshole nature is acutely logical.

The logic behind a story is more important to me than whether that story is "funny" or not, just to warn you. I thought there were plenty of moments in Planes, Train and Automobiles that were funny, but nothing laugh-out-loud funny. I often feel this way about comedies that are 30 or 40 years old. It's like the jokes aren't as sharp or something. This is something the Never Seen It series has gone over probably too many times, my feelings on the subject, but my point now is to say that the number of times I laughed during this film isn't really connected to how much I appreciated the film. There's a reason that, when you ask people about Planes, Trains and Automobiles, the often start with the ending, which is designed to be heartwarming, and certifiably unfunny on purpose.

I have fewer original thoughts about John Candy as an actor than I do Steve Martin. I agree with basically everything that other people have already said about his performance here. It's lovable. It cuts against expectations—maybe a lesser movie would make Candy's Del Griffith sort of an asshole too, and have the two main characters butt heads because of competing interests, but it was a much better movie because Griffith is so kind and empathetic. And the performance rightfully makes people think that John Candy should've had more opportunities to show range. He shows depth here. Does he get to this place in any other movie? I can see it in his bit role in Home Alone. I can even see some sort of version of it in Cool Runnings. But then I watch other movies like the cruel and unfunny Uncle Buck, and think that he had a talent that was wasted.

It wasn't wasted here. The ending, in which Neal and Del officially become friends, is an ending that was more than earned. Because there is a logic behind Neal's and Del's respective behavior, then it consequently makes perfect sense that they would find friendship in each other, after all they've been through. Neal is an asshole but comes to realize that he's only an asshole because he's trying to face this cruel world alone, and that he might be less of an asshole if he just had a supportive presence in his life. Del is lonely and tries way too hard to become friends with people and realizes through Neal that sometimes people just come in and out of your life by happenstance, and that you don't have to force it, that you can just appreciate the people who are there, that even the assholes are there for the same reason as you, because ultimately, they need friendship and connection in their lives too.

It's real fucking nice to watch an '80s buddy comedy and be able to discuss this kind of shit at all, instead of "was it funny." I feel like so often for comedies I have to default to that line of reasoning, because that's what the focus is on, the laughs (or lack thereof, occasionally). Planes, Train and Automobiles had a lot more going for it, which was a real nice change of pace. Even if I wasn't rolling on the floor laughing, it was nice to watch a comedy that had something to say about human nature. If a movie is gonna hit only one of those targets, then I know now which target I prefer. Keep your typical Steve Martin out of here!!!

GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5

NEXT TIME: We're talking about Candyman on Wednesday night via Zoom! And then the blog post will be posted the following morning.

In My Place 287

October 14, 2026. 40.07296, -75.06945. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

We used to just walk right into the woods like it was nothing. Like we were invincible.

And I guess we were, in retrospect. Nothing fucked with us. Nothing was out to get us. We walked into the woods and that's where we existed, for a few hours, in the dark. Like nothing else existed. And maybe nothing else did.

Never Seen It #341: Driving Miss Daisy

Stop saying that, you're making me mad! If you know your letters you can blog. You just don't know you can blog. I watched 500 movies I'd never seen before with some of the stupidest children God ever put on the face of this earth, and all of them could blog well enough to find a name on a tombstone.

Driving Miss Daisy

1989

Bruce Beresford

I suppose the first time I became cognizant of the existence and reputation of Driving Miss Daisy was around the time Green Book won Best Picture at the Oscars. This was 29 years after Driving Miss Daisy won the same award. And I guess there were some people who were making comparisons between the two, since they both involved a central relationship that involved two people with different skin colors, one of whom was driving the other one around as a job. A little blog called Puke on Your Birthday did its best to sum up some of the controversies surrounding the way that Green Book presented the issue of race, slightly before the movie won the big award, so you can check that out if you're bored.

The phrase that sticks out for me in that summary (from a publication called The Root) is "palatable racism for white people." I'm reading that phrase now for the first time in a while, and I'm wondering whether it applies to Driving Miss Daisy too. It probably does. It does a better job explaining why these movies won Best Picture than it does explaining whether either movie is a good movie or not. I think that Driving Miss Daisy was a good movie, but I'll be the first to admit that this might have been because I am white. I don't think I'd say I like it more because the racism was "palatable," though. I mean, we literally just watched In the Heat of the Night. The racism portrayed in that film was deeply unpalatable, I'd argue, and that made it a more interesting film, and a better one overall. You could even tell that Driving Miss Daisy was aware of it, because there was one scene that felt like it was inserted for just this very purpose, where the small-town cops dropped the N-word... but, ya know, softly, as Hoke and Miss Daisy were driving away, to no threat toward either of them.

The film does not mean for us to question the portrayal of Hoke. I was not surprised to learn that many critics of the film consider it to be a racist portrayal. That theory would go that Hoke, a Black man, exists solely as "tool" for the white Miss Daisy, that he is never fleshed out as a character outside of that relationship, and that his subservience (his constant "yes'm" and all that) was a bad look. I won't say that it wasn't concerning, and I won't say I disagree with it. If I wanted to disagree with it, then that would be racist. I don't want to disagree with that theory, and I think it's an extremely valid takeaway, if that is indeed your takeaway.

Perhaps it would have been a better film—less palatable, more interesting, more in line with modern expectations—had Driving Miss Daisy gone out of its way to question the characterization of Hoke, had attempted to grapple with his subservient role in Daisy's life, had given him anything else to work with in his life beyond his job as a Black servant for a rich white lady. As with all movies, there's not much I can do beyond shrug and agree. It's easy to talk about what a movie is; it's harder to talk about what it should have been. (And for what it's worth, Green Book does actually go into the "questioning" of it all, so, for its still many flaws, I think that Green Book was at the very least slightly more responsible with its subject matter.)

Putting what the film should have been to the side, we can ask, well, what is this film? What is the intended point? I think its intentions are pure, even if the execution is flawed. I think that Driving Miss Daisy's point is to portray two people who are very different, and watch as the pressing weight of time drives them together, tangles their lives together, and ultimately exposes the goodness in humanity. Viewed through an anti-racist lens, Daisy is labeled a racist, despite her low-simmering questioning of racist beliefs. She says early in the film "I am not prejudiced!" She doesn't treat Hoke like shit because he's Black, she treats him like shit because she treats everyone like shit. You can see how 1989 audiences might find this enlightened, but it circles back around for 2026, who view this as just another form of racism.

Another key to unlocking what they were going for here is the conversation that Daisy and Hoke have about Daisy's upbringing. An underlying behavior trait for the rich Miss Daisy is that she is ashamed of her wealth. Not enough to give it away, but enough to bristle at any mention of how much money she has. She's quick to point out that she came up poor. This is intended, I think, to level the playing field between her and Hoke, like, they can relate if they both started from the same place. Again, I don't think that plays well with a 2026 audience (I know so many people who insist that their middle-class upbringing was closer to poverty than it actually way), because we know that Daisy and Hoke did not, in fact, start from the same place in life, and to claim as much would be to deny the structural racism that resulted in Daisy becoming rich and Hoke becoming a butler. But I'm just trying to see things from the filmmaker's point of view. Did Driving Miss Daisy achieve what it wanted to achieve? Maybe.

It's the attempt that counts, I'd argue. The film attempts to drive a line connecting Daisy and Hoke through their experiences in the lower class, economically speaking. It's not really the same thing, but in this world, it is. And I could see maybe this film being helpful—despite the argument's one great flaw, yes—to someone who is struggling to relate to someone who has a different color skin than they do, and realizing, through Daisy and Hoke, that it's not actually all about skin color. Maybe we can say the problem here is that they go too far in the other direction, and occasionally refuse to acknowledge the differences in skin color at all (the "colorblind" argument that is so antithetical to anti-racism). The true answer is that it's both.

Beyond economic class, the film also attempts to draw a line between the two characters in that Daisy experiences prejudice through her identity of being Jewish. There's the scene where she can't go to synagogue because the building has been bombed. In this way, I think there really is a connection between Daisy and Hoke. Is the film clumsy in the way that it goes about drawing that connection? Sure. The bombing feels like a convenience for the plot, in the opposite way that institutional racism is ignored for the convenience of the plot. Both forms of prejudice very much exist, both in this world and in the real world.

Maybe you are part of the audience of this film in 2026 and you have personally experienced antisemitism. I'm particular sensitive to this subject since it was implied, on this very blog, that I'm antisemitic (and then, in private, that my actions and beliefs would be antisemitic if I wasn't deemed an exception by the implying parties). You can take all that how you will, but I know that my beliefs—seeing the world through the lens of the oppressed—very much make me supportive of any parties that are prejudiced against, including Black people and Jewish people (and, of course, Palestinians who are currently being murdered by the Israeli government). At the end of the day, Driving Miss Daisy was connecting the two based on those prejudices that both characters experienced, and I think it was a worthwhile attempt.

I think what this all comes down to is how you take that scene toward the end when Daisy tells Hoke that he is her best friend, and Hoke shares the sentiment. To like this movie means that you feel that this moment is earned. To not like this movie means that you feel like it's sentimental hogwash attached to a film that has to bluster its way toward that conclusion by ignoring a whole bunch of heinous shit. I do think that Driving Miss Daisy did a lot of ignoring, but I think the most egregious was how long it kept these characters apart, emotionally speaking. I think that it built its case well that Daisy and Hoke would indeed eventually realize that they are best friends. But I think that enough happens that this realization occurs much sooner. There's no reason for Daisy and Hoke to be eating dinner in separate rooms, each very much alone, for as long as they did. There's no reason that Hoke should be left out of the Christmas celebration without either character acknowledging how sad it is, that a cold door is closed in his face.

If we're talking about "conveniences in the plot," then this is the biggest one. It was convenient for the two characters to ignore the truth about each other for so long. It was convenient for Daisy to take such baby steps when everything was there to allow her to take leaps. It was convenient that those baby steps were portrayed as larger than they actually were, to underline the point that she was "not prejudiced" in her mind. Ultimately, I think the fact that Driving Miss Daisy was so fucking obvious with the point it was trying to make saves the film from being a complete racist mess, but also dooms it to being lesser than, a film that has good intentions but doesn't hold up to the scrutiny of time and social progress. If we're talking about "whether I enjoyed it" or not, then sure, yeah, I enjoyed watching it, but Film Club is about what happens afterwards, when you think about it some more. I've thought about it some more, and I don't know if it can hold the weight.

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5

NEXT TIME: A conclusion to our planes, trains, and automobiles week with Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

In My Place 286

October 13, 2026. 40.07308, -75.06953. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

Not sure what to tell ya. After a few days of pictures from far-off lands (i.e. 100 miles from my house), we're back to where I always default to after a monotonous day with no interesting Places visited. I leave my house, I get to work, I come home, here I stay. Such a picture requires boring details to color in the margins, like how tall this bush has gotten, how I need to call a roofer to fix that corner of the roof, that kind of thing. Not every day can be full of ferris wheels and fried pickles and Kreeper. Work is going well, I feel nauseous, we started a rewatch of The Sopranos, tomorrow is another fucking day.

Never Seen It #340: Strangers on a Train

You know, I read of a blog once. I think it would be a wonderful idea! I can take him out in the car, and when we get to a very lonely spot, knock him on the head with a hammer, watch 500 movies we've never seen before, pour gasoline over him and over the car, and set the whole thing ablaze!

Strangers on a Train

1951

Alfred Hitchcock

This was selected for Film Club this week due to the ostensible presence of a train within the premise of the movie (along with a film about a plane, and a film about an automobile, and then a film about all three... we have fun here, don't we?!), but I'll be the first to admit that Strangers on a Train puts more of the weight of the plot on the "strangers" part than the "train" part. That's okay. That's not actually the point of this week's gambit. But I think the misunderstanding about one of the week's films is indicative of how I always tend to misinterpret those movies that are heavy on themes and light on story. Something about Hitchcock that often betrays how weak I am at interpreting heavy films on my own, still, after all this time. Expecting Strangers on a Train to be about a goddamn train is pretty pathetic, in retrospect. There's so much more!

I like this film, I thought it was fun, but I also thought that the premise was stronger than the execution. This is me talking about the story, the plot, the simple stuff, ya know. Very surface-level, too surface-level for a Hitchcock film, but that's where I gotta start. I'll start by saying that I loved the hook of "I'll kill for you, and you can kill for me." No matter what happens after that, let's admit that it's an intriguing premise for a film. It almost made me half wish that the two titular strangers were both completely bought into the idea, instead of just one of them. I think this would have been a tighter film if Guy was just as bloodthirsty as Bruno. He's not, though. He's not even aware that he's embroiled in the plot until it's too late. We get a bunch of cat-and-mouse games after that, which is fine. A little too much "extra" that strained the plot, like the necessity of Guy's girlfriend's sister looking just like Guy's dead wife (in a triggering way, see), or a carousel gone wild that is silly but only notable because Hitchcock was basically okay sending a stuntman to his death.

There's another level. This is a film club. Basically anything I said in the preceding paragraph (besides the carnie stuntman) could apply to the novel that this movie is based on too. It's an adaptation. When I say that the plot stretches the realm of believability, then that's not really a filmmaking flaw. That comes from the plot's basis in text. The next level, and what should be happening here in Film Club, is that we should be looking at the interesting ways in which the plot is portrayed, and how the images within this film (images being something that you don't usually get in novels) speak to the theme. What I'm explaining is not that deep. It's quite rudimentary to expect to talk about images and scenes and cinematography and themes and motifs in a movie club. Harder for us dummies to actually interpret that stuff without help.

For example, it might make sense to talk about the theme of "doubles" and "opposites" in Strangers on a Train. The beginning of the film introduces Guy and Bruno in similar fashion—just the lower parts of their bodies. They end up in the same train car, and are both experiencing issues with one specific person in their lives (ex-wife, father). They are dressed similarly. Editing underlines the point, often cutting from one character to the other as if they are extensions of each other. But also making it clear that they are mirror opposites, the same but reversed. I don't think it would be a stretch to say that Bruno feels at times like the worst version of Guy's impulses, and the reason Bruno makes Guy so uncomfortable (thematically, not literally, since literally it's because Bruno is a murderer) is because Guy knows Buddy's actions reflect some deep dark part of Guy's psyche, the part that Guy (like any normal being) knows he has but wishes he didn't.

It makes me a terrible de facto leader of a film club, but I'll admit it now—this kind of stuff does very little for me. At least on the first go-around. Maybe if I watched Strangers on a Train a few more times, I'd get into the symbolism, start exploring the camerawork and lighting and discovery how often Hitchcock uses the dichotomy of light and dark to achieve thematic relevance. I think I'd just prefer to trust that other people (both in this film club and in general writing on the internet) are going to fill me in about the stuff I missed. I like learning that kind of stuff, but I just doubt that I'm ever going to be at the point where I'm noticing it myself on the first watch. I'm more likely to be drawn toward the basic stuff, a compelling story and interesting ways in which that story is told. As one example of many from this movie, I liked when Guy was in the car and he looked over to the steps of the capitol and sees the distant figure of Bruno, staring at him. That felt menacing. It felt like great filmmaking, how such an image was able to stick with you, kinda creep you out a little. That's what I'm looking for, at least on that first viewing.

Maybe I'm struggling because I didn't take many notes. It's hard to take notes while watching a movie, especially one that draws you in. I wasn't completely sold on the entirety of this film, but there was enough here that I didn't feel the need to distract myself by writing notes in my phone. The only one I wrote was from early in the film, a note about how Bruno says something like "I have a theory that you have to experience everything before you die." That felt like it was going to prove to be an important line eventually, but I don't think it actually was, in retrospect. I think it was just designed to give Bruno a bit of a malicious edge to him (e.g. "everything? even the bad stuff?"). Perhaps my note says more about me than the movie, that I would mark such a line as "potentially important," being the type of person who probably tends to agree with the sentiment of "you must try everything" more often than not.

If you're trusting me with this Film Club, though, then it is in turn my responsibility to play out this thread to its end. Okay, so let's say, hypothetically, the "experience everything" line is important, i.e. that it says something important about the character who utters the line. What does it say about Bruno? It says that he's open to all of life's possibilities. It might typically be a line that a Jimmy Stewart type would say, a young and ambitious George Bailey who wants to see the world and do it all and live life to the fullest. So maybe putting these words into the mouth of Bruno Antony is meant to flip the usual intention, hold the mirror up to audience members like me in a sense, because, yeah, if you're gonna experience everything, then you're gonna have a lot of worthwhile memories, but it also could mean, like Bruno, you're going to be committing some heinous crimes too. 

I won't go so far as to say that the "themes and motifs" for this film and films like it, as listed on Wikipedia as certifiable truth in connection with this film, are the makings of bored film scholars in the decades since the movie dropped into theaters. I do think that Hitchcock intended for mirror opposites and light/dark to be verifiable themes, and I do think that the intentionality behind them are what makes the film worth watching, worth talking about. What I struggle with is seeing where to go from there. Okay, so Guy and Bruno are mirror opposites, and that's made clear in the framing and lighting and characterizations. What next? I get as far as "that's cool," and then get stuck. Should we move onto, like, the duality of man? How there are "two beasts within us," that sort of thing? I guess I'm more so saying that I need to work on my own shit. It's not Hitchcock's responsibility to hold my hand. I get it.

None of that it any sort of takeaway from the movie, though. That's more of a takeaway from my experiences with the solo film club outings, how I feel like I get stuck in a rut sometimes, either writing about too-basic shit or else pulling wild bullshit out of thin air. There's always so much that I can't get it. God, don't it just make me wanna STRANGLE somebody!!!

GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5

NEXT TIME: Tomorrow we get the aforementioned "automobile" movie, with Driving Miss Daisy.

In My Place 285

October 12, 2026. 40.6396, -76.19471. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

Whenever we drive through a small town, on the way to a smaller town or a bigger town (you know the small towns I'm talking about, the ones with one main road and that road is a tributary of a highway and that road is marked with banners of black-and-white pictures of all the veterans of war that grew up in that town), Pam says something like "I wish we could live in a small town," which is true, and also true that I feel similar feelings, when we drive through small towns. But the reality quickly crashes down by the time we make it through that small town, realities both large and small. How uprooting your life is hard; how we'd have outsider status in that town; how, even if it was a welcoming town, I'd still feel like an outsider; how my making assumptions about people in small towns would be the thing that would mark me as an outsider, ultimately. Thoughts about small towns are tied to more general feelings of escape, which are nice, but ultimately unrealistic. If I had a gun to my head, I'd eventually admit that I don't want to live in a town whose tallest point is a grain elevator.

Never Seen It #339: Snakes on a Plane

Enough is enough! I have had it with these 500 motherfucking movies I've never seen before on this motherfucking blog! Everybody strap in!

Snakes on a Plane

2006

David R. Ellis

Whether this is a good movie is probably besides the point. That means that this blog post turns more into an explainer than a subjective opinion piece, which is fine. I don't mind. I'm just saying that I'm a bit hamstrung here, because if I try to tell you that this is a bad movie, than that means that I'm missing the point. We'll get to the point. Just know right here at the beginning that it's a bad movie, okay? It's not worth watching, especially not approximately 20 years after the lame-o internet hubbub has died down.

There's a huge fucking difference between a movie having a fun premise and a movie doing something interesting with its premise. I could see someone making a compelling case for "a bunch of venomous snakes are released on a commercial plane and the passengers band together to survive" being a fun and interesting premise. The problem is when you take the premise and fill out the rest of the movie with the most generic tropes in the book. You know what's going to happen every step of the way. Something like, ya know, a specific snake popping up out of nowhere and killing a passenger, something like that is of course surprising on a literal level, but what I'm saying is that the idea of snakes jump-scaring you is itself very predictable. Which made for, in my opinion, a bad movie.

Again, that's besides the point. The point here is why this, a certified B movie, was elevated in the pop culture consciousness, to the point that some fucking idiot decides to watch it 20 years later as part of a "watching films he should have seen already but hasn't" blog project. I did not watch it when it came out (too busy getting drunk in the woods with the other seventeen-year-olds), but I was certainly aware that it was happening at the time. And I think... I think I have empathy for all those early too-online mopes who got roped up into the Snakes on a Plane mania.

Look, it's all about having the temerity to give yourself away to something. Something stupid, I mean. Something in pop culture that seems stupid but something that you can adopt as your own. I understand this impulse. I've collected so many dumb little pop culture curios over the years, just because they are silly and innocent and fun to think about. Think about my devotion to "Grannies Gone Wild," Trolls World Tour references, a faux obsession with the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, that kind of thing. So I understand, pretty intimately in fact, why there might be a type of person who would see an early trailer for a STUPID as FUCK movie called Snakes on a Plane and think, boy oh boy, wouldn't it be fun to become obsessed with this dumb little fucking thing?

The problem with this specific example of the phenomenon is twofold. The first is that the balance was all out of whack between the creator and the consumer. How it should work is that the consumer should heap attention (undeserved, sure, but that's the joke!) on something, and the creator should either be flummoxed or completely unaware of it. That's not how it was with Snakes on a Plane. The filmmakers were very much aware of the weirdly large amount of hype that this thing was getting, and they made changes within the film, at the last minute, to kowtow to the unhinged imaginations of its future audience. "I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!" is a fun line, but that shit wasn't in the movie originally! Samuel L. Jackson added it in after becoming aware of its origins in a fan fiction script! I feel uncomfortable with this, and I think it's because it's the filmmakers attempt to take back the reigns from an audience who has every right to make of this art what the want to make of it. It would be like Reba McEntire reshooting "Grannies Gone Wild" to include speaking lines for all the jurors. I wouldn't like that at all. This is my shit now, not yours, Reba!!!!

And the second part is that, when the overly willing audience eventually did see this movie that they chose to be preemptively obsessed with, I have to imagine that the overall feeling was disappointment. This kind of thing is never as good as you build it up in your head. Even with reasonable expectations about its status as a modern-day B movie, the level of hype surrounding this stupid fucking movie no doubt excited many of its contemporaneous audience members past what was feasible. Imagine going to the opening night premiere of Snakes on a Plane, dressed in your snake outfit, and having to sit through two hours of this dumb shit. YIKES.

However, that temerity I spoke about earlier is real, and I know that at least a few people survived the ordeal, and came out the other side still glad that the hype happened. I'm sure there were others who were disappointed by the movie and maybe wished that it never saw release, since the lead-up to the event was so much more fun than the actual film itself. All legitimate responses. Sometimes the excitement for a party is way better than the actual party. Plus, that excitement actually ends up justifying the existence of the party, even if the party itself is a little lame. Snakes on a Plane is a bad movie. I don't have stakes in it, but I have infinite empathy for those that consciously chose to have stakes in it. The excitement is worth it, always.

GRADE: 2 pukes out of 5

NEXT TIME: It's Transportation Film Week! Strangers on a Train is up tomorrow!

In My Place 284

October 11, 2026. 40.87913, -76.50323. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

An ode to optimism, to making the best of it. Not the best day at Knoebels Amusement Park. Maybe even the worst? Optimism means accepting the worst and making the best of it.

Family lore: in 2023, probably exactly three years ago, the five of us took a trip to Knoebels. We had a great day, in the rain. It wasn't raining as thickly as it was today, but it was still a wet day. And we had a fucking blast. "Pride" is something that I feel pretty often about my little family unit, but that mostly stems from, like, one or two people, e.g. "we did really well with the kids today," or "she was so brave dealing with that in school," etc. That day at Knoebels 2023 was the first time that I looked at all five of us, together, and was proud at what we had done, and who we were, together.

So I know we can do it. It was almost preferable, this time around. Knoebels 2024 saw sunny, hot weather, and it was a nice time, but the lines were fucking nuts. Yesterday, lines were just as long, though the sun didn't beat down as roughly as it did last time, so that made it doable at worst (terrible lines though, still). Today... I mean, it's been pouring in Elysburg all fucking day. To the point that the rides aren't even open. Impossible to walk around without getting drenched.

And still, optimism. I'm still proud of this crew. We're having a good weekend. It's all good. Making the best of it.

Album of the Week: She's the Best

Damn, when was the last time we listened to an album the week it came out? I feel like it's been a while. I like it. I'm actually in Knoebels right now, but I hopefully had enough time on Friday morning before leaving to download the album and fill out some last-minute details in this Sunday write-up. If you see anything that's accidentally blank on here, no judgment please!!! Enjoy the tunes.

Record Club:

archives | supplemental

spotify playlist | youtube playlist

choose | writing

WEEK 402 — October 11-17, 2026

She's the Best

by Troye Sivan

LISTEN:

Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp | Apple

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PICKED BY RACHEL S.

RACHEL'S PITCH: "I just think that everyone deserves a little party in their ears and bodies from time to time. If you're unfamiliar with Troye Sivan, he's an Aussie electropop it-boy who started his career on YouTube and has since become an international darling. His music ranges from sweaty dance bops to bedroom heavy-breathers to meditative yearning. And it's all wrapped up in the shiniest packaging. I encourage you to let go and let Troye here, folks."

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ALBUM DETAILS

GENRE: Neo-psychedelia, bedroom pop, baggy, trip hop

RELEASED: October 9, 2026

LENGTH: 41:55

TRACKLIST:

1. She's the Best
2. Canada Dry
3. Party
4. I Do This for You
5. Cowboy
6. Embarrassingly
7. Le Boy
8. Sex Star
9. Troye Meets World
10. FF
11. Love So Big It Hurts
12. Lost Time (ft. Lily-Rose Depp)

LYRICS: Genius.com

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ARTIST DETAILS

PRONOUNS: he/him/his

ABOUT: Troye Sivan Mellet was born on June 5, 1995, in Johannesburg, South Africa. He grew up in Perth, Australia, and got his start in music mostly through YouTube (but also was in the finals on StarSearch). He signed with EMI Australia on his eighteenth birthday. Besides music, he also acts, most notably as young Wolverine in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and a role on the Weeknd's HBO series The Idol (which probably explains why his co-star, Lily-Rose Depp, is featured on this album). He has a "lifestyle brand" called Tsu Lange Yor. He was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family, though he does not consider himself to be religious. Sivan has a mild form of Marfan syndrome.

DISCOGRAPHY: This is his fourth and most recent album. He released his debut album, Blue Neighborhoods, in 2015. This was followed by Bloom in 2018 and Something to Give Each Other in 2023. He has five EPs under his name as well.

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ADDITIONAL INFO

READING SOME SHIT: interview with Billboard from five days ago

WATCHING SOME SHIT: from Rachel—"OH and please watch the music video to 'Party.'"

RECORD CLUB CONNECTIONS: Troye Sivan has collaborated with Charli XCX, including on the brat remix album (for "Talk Talk," which also featured a voice note from Dua Lipa). Like Lana Del Rey from a couple weeks ago, Sivan was featured on The Kacey Musgraves Christmas Show in 2019. Since he played Wolverine, we can say that he is the third Marvel superhero in RC (I think?), after Jeremy Renner (Hawkwhatever) and Harry Styles (Thor's brother or some shit, in a post-credits thing, I think, I don't know, I'm not looking it up, I don't care). We can probably say that Sufjan Stevens' song "Wolverine" is NOT about Troye Sivan, or about Marvel at all.

Troye Sivan was NOT featured on Trolls World Tour, which is the only Trolls movie that is acknowledged on this internet website (though if we did hypothetically acknowledge other Trolls movies, we might say that he did voice acting on Trolls Band Together, alongside RuPaul).

Sivan took part in "We Are the World." NOT the original (which included ten RC alumni, if you include the Ghostbuster Dan Aykroyd, which I very much do), and NOT "We Are the World 25 for Haiti" (which included Miley Cyrus, T-Pain, the bourgeoisie Good Charlotte brothers, and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys), but instead "We Are the World 25 for Haiti (YouTube edition)." There are 56 other musical artists on that YouTube version, and ALL of them will be covered in Record Club eventually.

MENTIONS ON THE BLOG: Not mentioned above is the Troye Sivan song "Easy" that features RC alumna Kacey Musgraves, but it was only not mentioned there because it's being mentioned here—Rachel S. wrote about "Easy" for our Song of the Day column.

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RECORD CLUB ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

This week's discography dive album: Harry and the Potters by Harry and the Potters

This week's follow-up album: The Time of Dragons by Tori Amos; Wild at Heart by Neil Diamond; maybe Hum of Hurt by Converge

This week's keeping up album (probably): notes from inside by Adeem the Artist (came out earlier in the year, but I just found out it existed)

Listen with us! Keep your favorite Record Club artists in the rotation!

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COUNTDOWN:

69 Weeks Until Week 420

eighteen more weeks until RC implodes

We are tracking and counting down every week from here on out till Record Club Week 420. We started this countdown 69 weeks out. During Record Club Week 420, we will be covering Donny Most by the esteemed Happy Days virgin Donny Most. The goal for Week 420 of Record Club is that it will feature 69 reviews from 69 different people. 

THIS WEEK: We are 18 weeks away from Week 420.

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Happy listening, RC family!
Have a great week!

In My Place 283

October 10, 2026. 40.8511, -76.58477. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

Thinking about the idea of living "somewhere else." Like, even temporarily. Or stretch the idea even further and say "sleeping somewhere else" (since the idea of "sleeping somewhere" is often attached to "where you live"). There was a time in my life when "sleeping somewhere else" was a regular occurrence. I don't really do that anymore. 99% of my nights spent in my own bed (or, like, one of the kids' beds after I get kicked out of my own because she's "afraid of the dark and wants to sleep with mommy" or whatever, or sometimes on the couch because the kid bed that I'm banished too is hurting my back). That's a symptom of getting older, I know. The other 1% of my nights are vacation nights, like last night, and tonight, here at this bed and breakfast. It's healthy to live somewhere else, even for a weekend. Healthy to get a sense of other ways of life. Healthy to break the routine, step outside yourself. I don't know if I could live in a place like this full time, but it's interesting to think about it, to experience, for just a little bit.

Record Club Alumni Association — Minutes from Meeting #18: The Stone Roses, Kneecap, MUNA, Willie Nelson

The Record Club Alumni Association meets every week to discuss the larger body of work that our RC alumni have put together, outside of the specific albums that were covered in the main section of our club. You can follow along with everything that the RCAA has covered so far HERE.

(Deeper Dive)

The Stone Roses

The Stone Roses — RC Week 379 — 4.5 pukes out of 5

Second Coming

December 5, 1994

There is a saying—I've heard it at least once, though it's possible that this "saying" was only said once and becomes a "saying" only in apocrypha through this very blog and my repetition of it—that the last song that you write for an album is a great indication of what your next album is going to sound like. I think this is the problem with Second Coming, the second and final Stone Roses album that notoriously falls short of the expectations that that first album built. The final song on the debut self-titled (at least on my version, but it depends on what you consider "bonus tracks" or not), "Fools Gold," was by all accounts written last, and it is in my opinion a pretty stark departure from the rest of the album. It leans into the Madchester / Baggy / alt-dance shit that this late-'80s/early-'90s British music scene was developing. But after like four years of waiting, Second Coming leans back into the neo-psych alt-rock that made up the bulk of The Stone Roses. I think this is the album's true failure, despite the fact that I'm choosing at least six songs over "Fools Gold" on that self-titled every single time. It's just that Second Coming is a watered-down version of what they already perfected. That's it. It was always gonna be this way for me, though. An album as important as The Stone Roses cannot possibly have a follow-up that is going to feel in any way satisfying. There are decent songs on here, e.g. I like "Good Times." But even something like "Good Times" lacks the magic of that first album. I can't explain it better than any other Stone Roses fan already has a million times.

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5

(Follow-up)

Kneecap

Fine Art — RC Week 289 — 3.5 pukes out of 5

FENIAN

May 1, 2026

As we learned with Macklemore recently, the music doesn't have to even be "good" for the message to resonate. I would say that I'm on the fence about Kneecap's music. A lot of hip-house and grime / acid house that I'm tolerant of but not totally enthralled by. The message, though, is something that I totally buy into, almost 100% (with the occasional misstep that their opponents, both here and abroad, have surely tried to press in bad faith). It's the oppressed vs. the oppressor. Same shit that we talked about with Fine Art. It's just that they became involved in the global conversation about the Israeli government murdering Palestinians in the meantime, and that means that there's more at stake with the music. The message remains the same, but now the music itself feels... more serious? Which I think I would argue is to their detriment. I'm not saying it affects the message, I'm saying that it makes me less likely to engage with the music. I agree with Kneecap, but I don't need Kneecap's music to influence me re: my beliefs about the world. So if I'm writing this review in order to review Kneecap's moral stance, then I'd be dropping like 4.999 pukes out of 5. But I'm actually reviewing the music, and with the music, it's just okay. Remember this, though: Kneecap doesn't have to play great music for them to be essential. This is an important band, and I appreciate what they're doing. I just don't need to be enveloped in their music, that's all.

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5

MUNA

Saves the World — RC Week 41 — 2.5 pukes out of 5

MUNA — RC f/u #7 — 4 pukes out of 5

Dancing on the Wall

May 8, 2026

My new thoughts last time (oh gosh, over four years ago!) was that I had been wrong about MUNA, that this is fun pop music, that maybe it just requires the tiniest bit of effort to break through the wall of "this is music for people younger or queerer than me" and simply appreciate the universality of such catchy music. Those thoughts remain the same here, to the point that I am again convinced that I should immediately download the newest MUNA album, so satisfied was I after listening to it once. My new thoughts this time around, with Dancing on the Wall, was that gap between MUNA and one of my favorite non-male ("non-male" used here to account for non-binary identities in MUNA) four-letter-all-caps trios, HAIM, is not that wide, and that the gap is really only formed at all because MUNA approaches the sound from a pop perspective, and HAIM approaches the same sound from a rock (folk-, indie-, whatever) perspective. Beyond simple comparison purposes, I think we can say that the similarity in sound means that there is an intentionality behind the artistry in both cases. MUNA isn't a pop group who's making music to be commercially successful. This feels real and true, what they are doing here. Real and true and catchy. Okay, yeah, so I'll go ahead and download it, and I promise, from here on out, never to doubt MUNA again.

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5

Willie Nelson

Red Headed Stranger — RC Week 318 — 3 pukes out of 5

Oh What a Beautiful World — RC f/u #50 — 3 pukes out of 5
Workin' Man: Willie Sings Merle — RCAA #7 — 3.5 pukes out of 5

Dream Chaser

May 29, 2026

In listening to Willie Nelson's 104th studio album, we must consider the definition of "insanity," and wonder whether the application of the word "insane" to Nelson's discography (i.e. that he is doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting different results) is going to be detrimental at some point. It's not like I'm listening to Willie Nelson all day every day, so I can't say that I dislike this, despite the fact that it basically sounds exactly like the other three Willie Nelson albums I'm familiar with. It's not notable in any way, beyond the triple-digit quantity of the discography at this point, and maybe the Bob Dylan co-writing credit on "I Can't Read Your Mind"? Otherwise, chalk it up to our yearly exercise in listening to a nonagenarian do his thing and somehow never go insane. At this point, I'm just hoping he manages to make it to 100 years of age. I'm interested to hear what that sounds like. Though maybe it'll be the same stuff then too. I'll be tracking it here, and not really having all that hard a time withstanding it. (Okay, alright, try this: "After All." Maybe he'll make a whole album of songs that sound like this! Gosh, he sounds positively young in this song, like he's in his 70s or something!!)

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5

(Random RCAA News)

• CMAT feels bad for, and has an extremely reasonable take on, Ed "Not Complicit" Sheeran.
• Ed "Not Complicit" Sheeran, meanwhile, was finally able to find an opening act willing to be as Not Complicit as he is—the Fray's Isaac Slade, who was brave enough to say that we should try to see "both sides" of the issue, try to see that, maybe, just maybe, there are TWO sides to the Israeli government murdering Palestinian children? That we should meet in the middle, between those committing genocide and those being genocided? Has anyone even CONSIDERED the idea of, hmmm, half a genocide?! Very brave. I'm very proud of our RC alumnus Ed "Not Complicit" Sheeran for choosing such a brave opener for his tour!
• Fontaines D.C. and Iceage are touring North America next year, and hopefully not taking the Fray with them.
• Alright, more political news. A round-up of RC alumni on politics, if you will. Hayley Williams of Paramore beefs with ICE. Three-time RC alum Phil Collins calls the U.S. President "nasty" and is trying to write a song about America called "Fat People with Guns." Olivia Rodrigo condemns Cornell and the rapists that go there. Oh, were Ed "Not Complicit" Sheeran and the Fray's Isaac Slade only able to be brave enough to comment on these as well! WHY can't Olivia Rodrigo understand that there are good people on BOTH SIDES?? Why can't she be BRAVE enough to meet in the peaceful middle space here? Between the college women who are being raped and the rapists who are raping them?! Surely we can all get along here?!?!
• Might be too late at this point in the blog post (sorry), but I forgot to say a couple weeks ago that Frank Turner is retiring.

In My Place 282

October 9, 2026. 40.87979, -76.50269. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

Totally lame, because I never do this, but I sorta choked up a little bit, watching the two older kids on this ride by themselves, way up high, me standing below looking up, I can't say for certain why I felt that way, it was mostly just a strange chemical reaction within the mysterious human body, just random circumstance, the lights and sounds or something, I don't know, but if I had to ascribe it meaning, it was something about them appearing so... grown up, or something, up there chatting, clearly they are gonna be best friends forever, and they have lives separate from their dad, lives together, inside jokes, that kind of thing, it made me real proud... is proud the word? I guess. I'm just lying here in a bed and breakfast trying to write something on a blog post while these rascals watch Sing 2, I don't even know what I'm saying.

Discussion — Week 401: Train Does Led Zeppelin II by Train

Well, there ya go. That's a wrap on our week with Train. Not the week I always imagined it'd be with the drop of Jupiter mopes, but it was the week we got. I hope you had fun. I did. I think I did, anyway.

Did you hear that the current (as of this writing) Train guitarist Butch Walker—more widely known as a prolific producer for a lot of music that you know, including a ton of RC alumni, but yes, an official member of Train since last year—was credibly accused of sexual misconduct this week? Of course you didn't. You come to Puke on Your Birthday for such news. You might have heard about Butch Walker dating a fifteen-year-old girl, but there's no way you saw the headline and thought "wow, that's the current lead guitarist of Train." I got your back, though, don't worry. PoYB is here for you.

Butch Walker has nothing to do with Train Does Led Zeppelin II, of course, so we don't need to get into it if you don't want to. We can just talk about the music we listened to, the wonderful music. All positive reviews, I'm sure. Let's hear it. What did you think? Any minds changed by strong words in the reviews?

Happy Friday, friends.

Train Does Led Zeppelin II, Sunny

Never remind someone of a better album while you're making your album, that's an easy rule to follow; at least keep it to yourself.

I think about that movie Kingsmen: blah blah subtitle sometimes, a movie the right mix of dumb and showy to be fun, out at the right time. In that movie (and I guess others, like the Nic Cage parents one and the kids one coming out soon) some "event" causes people to go full ass kill mode riot. In kinsmen in particular it's like a brain chip plus a song Samuel Jackson plays that makes people go murder-zone. Anyway, I don't think this Train album is bad in some technical sense, but the more I listen to it, the more irrationally upset I get. If the magic or tech was available to make the Kingsguys movie plot happen, my situation would be backdropped by Train, not Lynyrd (oh god, train doing freebird, oh dear god).

Train Does Led Zeppelin II, Joe

When he asked me to meet him at Flip Flopz I figured something was up. Dude never calls me about anything unless it's some urgent self-effacing thing that's going wrong in his life or whatever. Maybe his fiancée was about to break up with him for the umpteenth time, who knows. I consider him my friend but he's a little much sometimes. I don't like this bar and regretted saying yes to this almost as soon as I stood in line to pay the cover charge. $10 instead of $5 tonight because of yet another fucking cover band playing. Good lord.

I'm sitting at the neon-lit bar in the corner, waiting for him, and side-eyeing the band of middle-aged, tan-faced jabronis setting up their equipment on the small front stage. Drinking my $8 Miller Lite out of an aluminum can, I spot Tony and wave him over. He barely says hi before he launches into it: he's not sure if he can handle things at home, she's nice but a little condescending, lately she's not been as touchy-feely as she was in the past, and so on. I'm rolling my eyes and raising my hand toward the bartender for another pint when the band hits the first notes of their first song.

"It's like, I'll get home after a long day, and she act like she's pissed, ya know? I know she's upset about something but she won't talk to me about it, she'll just be all passive aggressive, saying that I didn't do a good job cleaning my breakfast dishes, something like that, and I'll give her a hug and it's ice cold, she doesn't return the hug, she just stands there, which gets me worried, and I'll say something about it but she'll make some oblique comment that I don't even understand, and—" but I'm barely listening to a word. Finally, around the time of my third Miller, it hits me: "I'm sorry, are these fucking guys just playing every song from Led Zeppelin II?"

The word "contextual" floats through my brain as I'm actively not listening to Tony, how I don't mind hearing one of the best albums of all time played by a bunch of fucking scrubs if I'm just sitting at the bar, ya know? It's about context. It's a forgiving context, is what it is. Which is funny because the very same context is unforgiving when considering the interrelational turmoil of my friend and the way he always feels the need to dump his trauma in loud environments like this. If he had met me on a park bench, I'd be more willing to listen. If these fucking mopes on the stages decided to, god forbid, record the music they were playing right now, and try to sell it, like for money, then I'd be MUCH less willing to listen. But I'm sitting here, having moved onto whiskey neat, slowly sipping and listening to music that I know well, performed by strangers I don't know at all, and it's fine. It's almost relaxing.

Tony's going on about how his fiancée treats the dog better than she treats him, but I don't really care to know even the gist of it. I distract myself with finding little differences between what the too-tan Gen Xers (Boomers?) are making of these Led Zeppelin songs from their sophomore album, and what the music actually sounds like when I choose this album on my iPod, which, truth be told, has been pretty often over the 20 years since I first hear it. I guess I never thought about it before tonight, but Led Zeppelin II is one of those albums that I've heard enough times that I know every single guitar note of Page's wizardry, every inflection in Robert Plant's voice, every snare hit from Bonzo. Not that I could recreate it, but that I could easily pick out any slight variations when someone else plays it. Especially if someone is playing it on a stage in a shitty shore-town bar while your best bud rips his heart out and you're not trying to hear all that again. Distractions are good, in other words.

Like, hmm, I'm pretty sure the dude screws up a lyric on "Ramble On." Not a big deal. It's just a bar band. I don't expect this fucking dude to have a voice like Plant in his prime. He sounds bad on "What Is and What Should Never Be," but what the fuck am I gonna do about it? Complain? This guy probably works in a cubicle during the day. He probably has a wife and kids at home. He probably does this to feel alive for a couple hours each week. What the fuck, I'm gonna deprive him of that? Even if he sounds like dogshit? Like a drowning rat is singing lead vocals on a Led Zeppelin song? I can't even blast the drummer for his attempt at "Moby Dick." It's soulless but so is the corpse of John Bonham. It's just something we're all doing to pass the time, here, at this bar. I'd rather listen to some dum-dums play a close-enough approximation of some classic rock than listen to my buddy spin yarn about his own dumb bullshit. My patience for friends who should just DTMFA wears thin, but my patience for cover bands runs deep.

But the thing of it is... I think it only works here. Here, in this bar or something like it, with these drinks or some adjacent to them, with this band or millions of other dudes like them, with the balls to try something that they'll never actually be able to replicate accurately, trying it here in a live setting, here in this place, just for kicks. Something that Tony's wife will never be able to understand (and it's driving Tony crazy—see, I do listen sometimes!) is that not everything is all that serious. It's not all about you all the damn time. Sometimes it's just nice to kick back and have some fun and not worry about it. The stakes at Flip Flopz with the cover band are almost nonexistent. This can be fun, under these correct circumstances. Or at the very least, a nice pleasant distraction. Nice to think about how the guitars seem off on the breakdown in "Whole Lotta Love" instead of having to hear Tony whine about shit that, yeah, is ultimately his fault, easily fixable with better communication habits.

It works here and that's why these bands play it here, in this space. It wouldn't make any fucking sense to try to play Led Zeppelin II in its entirety and then record it and then press the recording to wax. Not fucking lick of sense to try such a thing. No. It would piss me off, honestly. Because if I'm listening to an album on my iPod, in my ears, in private, like in the car or in my own cubicle, then why the fuck wouldn't I just listen to Led Zeppelin II again? Why would I listen to I-don't-even-know-this-band's-name-I'm-just-realizing playing that music instead? An inferior version of it? No, no, it only makes sense at Flip Flopz, while I'm six drinks deep, trying to avoid hearing about how limited my friend Tony's sex life is. It would make literally no sense in any other context.

I went a little too hard on the drinking. Ended up in a ditch, who knows how I got there. Regrets were made last night. But at least I know where I stand on the cover band, and how they should operate. When it comes to that, well, I know full well what is and what should never be.

GRADE: 1 puke out of 5