Drinking is Good for You

I found this article in Slate interesting. The test looked at 4 factors that might affect lifespan, smoking, fruit and vegetable consumption, and alcohol consumption. All other factors being equal, those who drank moderately, 1-2 drinks a day, had longer lifespans.

If I'm reading this passage correctly, "People who score in the one-, two-, and three-point range are at intermediate mortality risk, directly proportional to their scores," then moderate alcohol consumption is just as important a factor in determining lifespan as smoking, healthy eating, and exercise.

Of course, this study doesn't seem to include a measurement of quality of life. If you are a smoker and decide to take up casual drinking in order to counteract that you may live longer but be more uncomfortable in your old age. Still, it's interesting to see a study like this. Along with the recent reconsideration of the recommended low-fat high-carb diet that has been going on, this study seems to indicate that some of our societal assumptions about health may be unfounded. That extra piece of toast may be much worse for you than that glass of wine with dinner.

Head Like A...Businessman

Herr Zrbo sent me the link to a Trent Reznor interview in which Reznor seems to address many of the exact same issues I brought up in my post on the music industry back in June. Hell, I'll just post Zrbo's e-mail:

Here's an interesting interview with Trent Reznor on Cnet, I guess he tried pulling a Radiohead and offering a new Saul Williams album (titled: The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust) for virtually nothing and it ended up failing. He has some interesting thoughts:

http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9847788-1.html?tag=cnetfd.mt

Here's a couple interesting parts:

"It kind of gets into the bigger picture that you've had to face as a musician over the last few years, which in my mind was a bitter pill to swallow, but it's pretty far down the hatch with me now: the way things are, I think music should be looked at as free. It basically is. The toothpaste is out of the tube and a whole generation of people is accustomed to music being that way. There's a perception that you don't pay for music when you hear it on the radio or MySpace."

"For me, I choose the battles I can fight. In my mind, I think if there was an ISP tax of some sort, we can say to the consumer, 'All music is now available and able to be downloaded and put in your car and put in your iPod and put up your a-- if you want, and it's $5 on your cable bill or ISP bill.'"

Little Earl again. I said back in June that I liked the ISP idea best. If musicians are expecting to make any sort of money at all from their recorded work again, the ISP model is probably going to be their most reasonable shot. I think the Radiohead experiment is going to be a freak occurence rather than the start of a new trend. Fans probably felt so grateful for Radiohead's gesture that those who decided to pay might have felt a little guilty just downloading the album for free, so they paid some money. But when 20 other artists start doing that in a month? Forget it. Eventually fans will lose their charitable impulse. Trent says:

"What disappointed me is that I had thought--and this is just based on how I experience music--given the opportunity (his voice trails off). Why do I end up stealing music? Usually because I can't get it easily somewhere else or the version I can get is an inferior one with DRM, perhaps, or I have to drive across town to get it to then put it on my computer or it's already out on the Internet and I can't pay for it yet. If I think of it a month later walking through Amoeba (record store), hmm...do I want to just buy a piece of plastic and give most of the money to the record labels, who have to be thieves because my experience with them has always been that? And you have a lot of reasons why you didn't do it. So I thought if you take all those away and here's the record in as great a quality as you could ever want, it's available now and it's offered for an insulting low price, which I consider $5 to be, I thought that it would appeal to more people than it did."

First of all, I barely even know who Saul Williams is (I thought he was a poet). Just how strong is the appeal of this album? (I like the title though). Secondly, why would people pay $5 for something they can still get for free? You just can't count on public generosity in a situation like this. Even if I did really want to hear this album, I must disagree with Trent and say that $5 is still too expensive. To quote my old post: "But I'm not paying $18 for a Led Zeppelin CD. Even with the packaging. What would I pay for, you ask? Hmmm. I can conceive of paying for an artist's entire catalogue, on mp3, in high-quality sound, with no glitches, for maybe about 50 cents. Seriously. And maybe with some exclusive video clips, photos, and essays thrown in."

The reason I say that is because what I'd be paying for is basically a service, and not a product. Instead of downloading all the albums myself and making sure they're glitch-free and labeled correctly, and instead of going through all the trouble of rounding up the videos and the essays and such, I'd be paying someone else to do it for me. And yes, I'd pay for that, but I wouldn't pay very much. It would be like asking people to pay me for the mp3 mixes I make them. Gimme a break. Still, if it were legal, I'd go for it. However, I think the record industry will just have to suffer a little longer before it finally realizes that it's come to that.

10. Pavement's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (1994)

A bone I'm throwing to Yoggoth? Perhaps. But between the three or four albums that were essentially dueling it out for my 10th spot, I ultimately had to admit that, even against the better angels of my nature, I would simply be more likely to put this album on than any of the others.

Why, my friends? Because when it comes down to it, as questionable as Steven Malkmus' pitch can sometimes be, as irritating as his slacker pose can often seem, the bottom line is, when he feels like it, the man can compose a mean rock song. Twelve of them, in fact. And they don't all sound the same! (Take that Kurt). He's like the Tom Petty of the lo-fi generation. Almost every single one of these tracks is built like a truck - or like heaven (which is a truck, of course). Not only is there a tasty lick on every chorus, but, loathe as I am to say it, every tune is well-produced and, despite ragged appearances, actually well-played.

How would one describe the sound of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain? Let me suggest this: if a Grateful Dead jam session happened to be crashed by the Replacements, and everyone decided to take meth instead of acid, you might end up with an album that sounded like Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. Country-Jazz Rock for Pringles addicts. Lounge music for Tetris geeks. At times the botched chord changes and cringeworthy vocal acrobatics are, I will admit, not entirely to my taste, but I'll tell you what: I'd rather hear a band that can write songs as good as these play them sloppily than hear a band that writes terrible songs play them perfectly.

Yoggoth, of course, may not understand what I'm talking about, because Pavement's music sounds perfect to him. Maybe he's right. Maybe the rest of us are warped fools, and Yoggoth one of the blessed few tuned to the magic frequency where Pavement sounds like the Beatles. Only science can decide. All I can say is that my immediate impression of Pavement was of a band that was frustratingly insular and self-consciously obscure. But Yoggoth has repeatedly stressed, with utmost sincerity, that my impression is mistaken, and, you know, what the hell? After all this time I think I'll just give him the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes, though, I really haven't understood what kind of audience Pavement had been hoping to reach. I suppose the answer is...Yoggoth and pals.

What about the songs themselves? Moments of wonder abound: the opening track, "Silence Kit," screeching to a halt, Malkmus portentiously warning, "Ecstasy feels so warm, inside/till five hours later I'm...chewin'...screwin'...my...self with my...hand." The way "Stop Breathin'" twiddles on a guitar lick for two minutes, perfectly aware that it doesn't need to do anything else. The possibly cryptic attempt at suburban rap in "Unfair": "Walk with your credit card in the air!/Swingin' nachos like you just don't care!" My favorite stretch of the album probably begins around what I tend to think of as Side Two, where most albums usually hit the wall. But not Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, which serves up "5-4=Unity," their wobbly tribute to Dave Brubeck's "Take Five," "Heaven Is A Truck," a gracefully lugubrious ballad with a piano-based melody that Elliott Smith would have jumped off a cliff for, and "Range Life," the ultimate aging hippie anthem that never was. I mean, who can forget Malkmus' hilariously skewed take on his fellow '90s alt-rockers?:

Out on tour with the Smashing Pumpkins
Nature kids, I/they don't have no function
I don't understand what they mean
And I could really give a fuck
The Stone Temple Pilots,
They're elegant bachelors
They're foxy to me, are they foxy to you?
I will agree they deserve absolutely nothing
Nothing more than me

Lord, I could go on, but I'll leave "Fillmore Jive," and the rest, to our Pavement guru extraordinaire.

Say goodnight to the last psychedelic band, indeed.

Hey Don't Ask Me (What America Thinks)

One of the best political articles I've read on Slate in recent memory is called "Who's Afraid for Obama: What the claims that a black man is unelectable say about the rest of us." Written on Tuesday, before the author could have known that Obama would actually go on to lose the New Hampshire primary (d'oh!), the piece is nevertheless still quite intriguing. It takes as its target people such as myself, who feel that they themselves are perfectly fine voting a black man for president, but remain convinced that the rest of America wouldn't be. To summarize two pages of scholarly and rhetorically sound analysis, he concludes that people like myself don't really know what the hell we're talking about. And you know what? Based on my experiences in 2004, I would have to say that he is right. Don't ask me who America is willing to vote for and who America isn't. Hell, if people were willing to vote for George W. Bush right after he'd just done all that crap that he did, then clearly I understand the American electorate about as much as I understand the lyrics to "Tumblin' Dice." But personally, I don't care if a guy has three nipples, a lazy eye and a goiter. I'll vote for anybody.

Number Ten: Nirvana's Nevermind (1991)

Why is Nevermind at the bottom of my list? It's a safe choice. I've seen it on lists in many publications. Half of these people haven't listened to it in 10 years, but it's the pick that gives you "cred." I come from the opposite angle. I didn't buy Nevermind when it came out. For me, Nevermind was the album that the assholes in high school listened to. I had my Velvet Underground, Smiths, and...Smashing Pumpkins.

I didn't give Nevermind a full listen to until sometime in '98. I was surprised by how catchy the songs were. Just like when I listened to London Calling and thought to myself, "this is punk?", I listened to Nevermind and thought, "this is grunge?" Of course, by now Grunge is next to meaningless. No other grunge band stood the test of time, or even the test of 5-years-later. The alternative-rock revolution is only the latest and weakest "Louder is Better" revolution that comes around every decade. Critics moan over it for a while and it ends up just sounding like rock has always sounded. It'll probably happen again. Or maybe rock is dead. Hard to tell.

Back to the album. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is a great punk single. Cobain claimed that he didn't know it was a brand of deodorant at the time he chose the title. Who knows if it's true - I certainly knew it was a brand of deodorant. The song was released at just the time my peers and myself were starting to worry about whether or not we should be wearing deodorant. Of course, no one wanted to wear a deodorant specifically marketed for teenagers. Thus the terrific "cool by being uncool" title resonated strongly inside this Reagan baby. (What happened to that cool/uncool spirit? Even rap had its Flava Flav. Did rock die the moment it couldn't laugh at itself?)

The rest of the songs are great. To be honest I'd have to listen to the album again to tell you more about them. "Drain You" is my second favorite, but the others tend to blend together and it's hard to tell if I'm humming along to the Unplugged versions instead when they run through my head. Hence the #10 spot for an album that everyone else either leaves off or puts at #1. It's a great album, but it wasn't my album when it came out, and it changed MTV a lot more than it changed the artistic direction of pop music. And we all know how MTV turned out...

Best Albums of the '90s -- aka Internet Killed the MTV Star

Originally we intended to follow the Best Movies of the '80s with the Best Albums of the '80s. But after dwelling for so long in that dank, fetid decade, we decided to crack open the skylight a little bit and give the Best Albums of the '90s a try (besides, the '80s aren't going anywhere; we can always work our way back, right?).

I'd say that artistically, the '90s were an improvement over the '80s. I have more enthusiasm for my ten best albums of the '90s list than I would over a ten best albums of the '80s list, just as I would have more enthusiasm for a ten best movies of the '90s list than I had for my ten best movies of the '80s list. Artists just seemed to be a little more into it in the '90s. Since the '80s had created a bit of a vacuum, musicians and filmmakers were able to reach back to the '70s, and even the '60s, for a re-kindling of that original passion. Ultimately it looks like that new fire hasn't burned quite as hotly and for quite as long, but in a way the '00s are still in the process of distinquishing themselves from the '90s. Well, at least cinematically. Musically, I feel that the '90s ultimately created a closed narrative of its own - one that probably ended in the final last gasp of popular music as we know it (or so I controversially propose).

However, a few words of warning. Our faithful readers might assume that, since you've all lived so recently through the '90s, you would find the entries in our Best Albums of the '90s list much more familiar. Although I hesitate to predict anyone's reaction, my hunch is that this will not be so. No grunge, for example, has made my list. Hip-hop will not be making an appearance. In some ways, the '90s represented the largest split between American and British tastes. Although I have never even visited England, my list will make it appear as though I have been raised in a flat in Chelsea. In short, keep an open mind and you might learn about some of Britpop's finest moments. Yoggoth, in turn, will be broadcasting his list "live from the bowels" of his old college radio station. Stay tuned and have fun.

New Study: Monkeys Pay For Sex!

Study: Monkeys 'pay' for sex by grooming

Ladies and gentlemen! Is a new age upon us? Just think: what incredible array of possibilities does this information portend for the human race? Perhaps prostitution should now be called "human grooming"? Or perhaps we should develop some kind of "Biological Market Exchange," where economists rate the quality of the "mating market" of certain colleges and universities based on the favorability/unfavorability of each schools' male-to-female ratio?

The possibilities, people...the possibilities.

Quick Thought About Slate's Email Exchanges

Do they ask these guys to write like this?

"A digital meditation on the end of the analogue era, a procedural about process itself, Zodiac has less in common with Se7en or All the President's Men than with new-media masterworks like Inland Empire, Russian Ark, and Southland Tales, or the system-based storytelling of The Wire (aka the best narrative film of the decade)."

Now back to my paragraph-based meditation on presidential primary coverage accompanied by mug-based warm liquids consumption for the sake of warmth itself (aka the best food of the decade). PS. something about new-media and how blogging is like diary-keeping with benefits.

TV

I've been watching Season 2 of The Wire. Man, I love this show. There is some interesting discussion of David Simon, the creator, and his politics on the internet. (here and here) But these discussions often miss the main draw of show--the wonderfully interesting characters. Hell, the characters are so well done in The Wire I find myself wanting to read Bleak House just because others have used it as a basis for comparison.

I also recently watched a few episodes of 24, the first time I've seen the show. My first reaction is disappointment. What's so great about this show? It seems like a bad, interminable Tom Clancy movie. If every single episode has a 180 degree plot twist, 180 degree plot twists quickly lose their novelty. If the good guy acting as bad guy actually turned out to be a bad guy then I might be surprised. But in the world of 24 all good guys acting as bad guys always turn out to actually be good guys - and vise versa. As far as overly complex, yet mostly traditional television goes, give me Lost over 24 any day.

The most fun I've had watching live TV in the past month was the Giants-Patriots game. I was rooting for the Giants as much as anyone else but at the end of the game I changed my mind. Bill Belichick really is smarter than everyone else and I hope they win the Superbowl. Who else is there left to root for? The Cowboys just seem like a slightly less talented version of the Patriots. Indianapolis is good but doesn't play like they care all that much. The Redskins and The Chargers have been fun to watch recently but don't have a chance of winning it all and neither does Brett Favre. If this NFL season were a novel I was writing, Cleveland or Minnesota would have defeated The Patriots in the postseason. Thankfully we have the Presidential primaries to hold us over until Oakland's amazing 16-0 record-breaking performance next season.

Movies From 2007 I'm Interested In Seeing

Having just insulted everybody else's "Best Movies of 2007" lists, I eventually took a good look through them all and realized that, what do you know, there are a lot of movies from last year I'd probably like to go see! The end of the year (functioning as it does as a semi-official boundary for award show and critic's list purposes) is usually a good time to compose a list of "films I wanted to see but haven't yet." Of course, many of these films are essentially out "this year," some having not even entered wide release yet, but a few of these movies stretch back into last February. Mostly these are simply the movies that hit that particular combination of 1) appearing on so many critic's lists that I feel like I need to form an opinion of my own, and 2) actually seem interesting to me. There are some exceptions, of course. I'm not that interested in Ratatouille, having not been too amazed by The Incredibles, but so many critics said it was great that I figure I'd at least want to be able to argue with them about whether it is or isn't. Likewise, Control didn't appear on too many lists, but I like Joy Division and it sounds like it would at least illuminate my appreciation of that band. I feel like as long as I go out and see all the films below, I can feel pretty confident that I've caught at least the uppermost layer of the best cinema of 2007. We've got 15 titles in all, so it shouldn't be too hard:

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Dominik)
Away From Her (Polley)
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (Lumet)
Control (Corbijn)
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Schnabel)
4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (Mungiu)
Grindhouse (Rodriguez/Tarantino)
Into the Wild (Penn)
No Country for Old Men (Coen)
Once (Carney)
Persepolis (Paronnaud/Satrapi)
Ratatouille (Bird)
Sweeney Todd (Burton)
There Will Be Blood (Anderson)
Zodiac (Fincher)

Now...who wants to join me?