Don't Hate

The best part of Facebook, since you asked, is the “Like” feature. Do you like Like? I don’t know, I like liking. Maybe I would like Like. After you’ve “Liked” something, Facebook reminds you, “You like this.” Later, more assuringly, if you’re lucky, validation arrives: “You and 14 others like this.” The other day, a friend posted “Dill pickles!” and got 33 Likes. What if she’d said “Head lice!”? If I always told the truth, Facebook would have to include alerts like “No one likes that but you,” or “You’re the only person not currently hating that.”

I have a few. Anyone who’s spent any time with me has probably had to endure my passionate defenses of James Frey, or Courtney Love, or black jelly beans. Usually, believe it or not, I keep my opinions to myself when it comes to my unpopular tastes. I refuse to call them guilty pleasures; I think that’s a copout. Would I want to talk about many of these Likes outside of this environment? Not if I don’t have to. But that doesn’t mean we have to bring shame into it.

I like, guilt free:

Hannibal

The last time I visited my parents, I was up late watching TV, and stumbled upon Hannibal. I watched for about twenty minutes before I realized that Clarice Starling wasn’t undercover speaking Spanish, but that I was watching the Spanish language channel, and Hannibal had been dubbed. So the answer is: yes. Hannibal is so incomprehensible it makes equal sense in a language you don’t speak as in one you do. It’s also ludicrous, perverse, stupid and not scary. It’s probably officially a Bad Movie, but I can tell you unreservedly, with no qualifiers, that I think Hannibal is pretty amazing. It’s barely a sequel to The Silence of the Lambs. There are no callbacks to the Buffalo Bill killings, no Scott Glen, no references to the phobias that populate The Silence of the Lambs (watch that one again, and count how many popular fears you see illustrated throughout). But, Lecter and Clarice (Anthony Hopkins and Julianne Moore) reunite, which I suppose is what most viewers thought they wanted from a sequel anyway. Jodie Foster turned down Hannibal because it sullied the legacy of The Silence of the Lambs, and in doing so, she saved it. Because someone had already stood up for dignity and art, no one else had to. You should see the shit Gary Oldman does in this movie. He’s basically just a mouth and an eye (I can’t remember if he has two eyes or not), and he’s a trip. The climax—Clarice, paralyzed by drugs, witnesses Dr. Lecter making Ray Liotta EAT HIS OWN BRAINS—should be shown to every acting class in the country. It’s seemingly unplayable, unfilmable, but Hopkins, Moore and Liotta act the hell out of it. Ray Liotta, sir, not only did you make me believe you were eating your own brain, but I would watch that ridiculousness again right this second. I would be alone.

See also: In the Cut, Alien 3, Point of No Return

Monster

Automatic For The People is probably REM’s best album. It’s certainly the one that got them the most attention, hits, and love from MTV. It’s full of haunting lyrics, old string instruments, and in Michael Stipe, a lead-singer prototype for sensitive (or annoying, whatever) alternative and emo bands for the subsequent twenty years. I think Automatic For The People is great, and its loss of Album of the Year to the soundtrack to The Bodyguard was the last time I put any stock into the meaningfulness of the Grammys.

Their next album was Monster, which sounded unlike anything REM had ever done before (or would again). Monster was the first release from REM after they signed one of those crazy, bloated 1990s contracts for millions. It’s so easy to blame piracy on the decline of the recording industry, but you know what else you might consider? Someone gave REM $80 million dollars to record Monster, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Up and Reveal. And maybe the one after that. Was there one more? A super-boring one I’m forgetting?

When Monster came out, the buzz was instantly that REM had abandoned the lush, organic sounds of Automatic for the People (and much of what came before that) in exchange for the thudding drums and fuzzy guitars of the grunge era, along with accompanying stacks of cash (the last part is true). As song after song hit MTV and radio (remember those?), everyone said REM had sold out, trying to be Pearl Jam and Nirvana.

But Kurt Cobain was already dead when Monster came out. So was River Phoenix. So was grunge. The aesthetic—less is more, flaws are benefits, ugly is pretty—had already played out. Pearl Jam survived because they rocked in ways that existed before grunge. REM, who was so minimalist prior to 1990 you couldn’t understand a word they were saying, leap-frogged over grunge, over their previous self, and into something so smart and fun very few of us considered it at the time: Glam Rock. Well, a more glam version of rock than they’d tried before, anyway.  We’re talking about a band that built their previous album around mandolins and cellos, so any added glitz probably seemed more extreme than it was. More eyeliner. More noise. Neon lights. Hunka-hunka vocal inflections. Fun times. When every other band of any cred was either avoiding style altogether or in a gang war over it, REM put out the most stylish, colorful, noisy album of the year. The songs are all about the usual REM stuff like death, religion and loneliness, but with the addition of drag queens, movie stars, technology and drugs. Much of it is static-filled and atmospheric, like Strange Currencies, and the Phoenix tribute Let Me In (or is it the Cobain tribute? Stipe’s friendships with both are all over the album), but then there are pop hooks throughout, something I’m thinking REM hadn’t avoided so much before as hadn’t mastered. Crush With Eyeliner is their big Bowie moment, and is either about Courtney Love, actual eyeliner, or Bowie himself.  Scott Weiland would kill for it. We all accused REM of ripping off In Utero, but they were aiming more for Field Trip to Studio 54. When Kurt Cobain died he had been writing with Michael Stipe. I like to think Monster is an approximation of what they might have settled upon, and maybe a look at where Nirvana might have been headed as well. Now THAT’s an album that would have pissed people off. And it’s one I’d like to hear.

See also: Kanye West, 808s and Heartbreaks; Ryan Adams, Rock n Roll

January Jones

Mad Men is the best. It’s one of those rare things, like The Dark Knight or chocolate milk, that’s exactly as good as everyone says. I wouldn’t change anything about it. Ask other viewers, though, and you’ll likely get, “Nothing. Well, except January Jones.” It’s the same thing every time. She’s emotionless. Wooden. Monotone. A bitch. Cold. Too unapproachably beautiful. I have a friend who uses “pretty” as a pejorative. To her, January Jones isn’t cute or beautiful or hot; she’s pretty, which comes with an implied façade of strained niceness. What’s the word? Brittle.

But there’s a problem. Everything in the above paragraph could also be said about the character played by January Jones: Betty Draper. Betty’s life is one of (decreasing) privilege, but she’s largely unhappy. Before marriage, Betty was a model, but she’s no dumb blonde. She’s educated and refined. Don, her first husband, often used Betty to charm dinner guests, especially if they were male potential clients. In Italy, she dressed like a movie star and impressed everyone by speaking Italian. Betty is a trophy wife now, but in her first marriage, she was a partner. And of course, the eyelashes and suits and white gloves are a mask. Betty smokes too much, and is judgmental, and has a quick temper. She slaps her kids. She’s rude to the housekeeper.

I’ve never seen January Jones play another character. I keep hearing that she sucked on Saturday Night Live, but shit, is that the criteria for who can act and who can’t? There are actual cast members of SNL who are terrible actors; calling out the hosts seems kind of harsh. The list of great, respected actors who biffed an appearance on SNL is long. I’m more surprised when someone really nails it than when they don’t.

I think the animosity towards Jones is really resentment about the kind of woman Betty represents in comparison to the other female characters on Mad Men. She’s the only major female character without a job, which automatically puts her in the “spoiled” category for some viewers. And she’s not warm and flirty like Joan, who’s so casually industrious while also being jaw-droppingly gorgeous it’s like her parents are MacGuyver and Jessica Rabbit. Betty isn’t struggling with getting her creativity recognized, and, you know, inventing feminism, like Peggy. Viewers see Betty and don’t sympathize, and end up blaming the actress who plays her.

Betty isn’t icy. She’s lonely. She’s bad with her kids because she resents the responsibility having them brought her, especially since the glamour and social life her marriage originally afforded her has vanished. Her second husband doesn’t cheat on her, not out of loyalty, but because he’s not smooth or rebellious enough to score like Don Draper. And Betty knows that this means that, ultimately, her new husband isn’t smooth or rebellious enough…to be married to her, and it’s too late to do anything about it. A woman in the 1960s, who isn’t Elizabeth Taylor, with two marriages under her belt, better choose that third husband carefully. January Jones plays all of this, in increasingly limited amounts of screen time. You can hear it in her voice, see it on her face, and interestingly, in her hands. Betty Draper’s way with props (cigarettes, drinks, telephones) is one of the tiny, fascinating things about Mad Men. January Jones makes me believe that Betty is real, and that her shallow, dismissive behavior is not a reason for her to go unloved. Without a doubt, this is in part because Mad Men, in general, is fucking awesome. Could it be that, maybe, just maybe, the same can be said about January Jones?

See also: Meg White on drums, Evangeline Lily on Lost

Terry Richardson

This one is dicey. Sorry you guys. If you Google “Terry Richardson”, make sure you turn the safe search on. Otherwise, you will see something you cannot unsee. (His peen. A lot.). Richardson is a photographer. He does many of the modern Rolling Stone covers, album artwork, fashion spreads, and his own photo collections of friends and landmarks around his studio in New York. He’s not a nice guy, apparently. Inappropriate with models. Lecherous. I only mention his name to certain friends, lest I get a lecture about sexual harassment and the patriarchy of the fashion industry. Yes, I have friends like that, don’t you? You should get some, they’re great, and I agree with them 99% of the time. Listen, I get it, but I don’t want to be Terry Richardson’s friend. I just like to look at his work. I can’t help it: I like Terry Richardson’s photos.

My introduction to Terry Richardson came with his book, Terryworld. It’s full of voyeuristic shots of celebrities and real people in varying states of undress. The “real people” pictures are the most explicit. We’re all adults here, so I don’t see any reason to mince words: it’s basically porn. One guy bought it at the bookstore and was never called anything else, for years, besides Terry World. For a long time, most of my interest in Richardson was as the butt of a joke. I’d see a sleazy magazine cover (the Gossip Girls sharing an ice cream, or spraying themselves with milk from a cow’s udder), and take pride in knowing it was a Terry Richardson creation, showing friends that I knew cheesy and tacky when I saw it. And then something else began to happen: I realized that all the other magazine covers were nondescript, owing more to computer tricks than the work of any particular photographer’s vision. Terry Richardson having any eye at all, even if it was the eye of a perv, gave him a tiny bit of credibility.

He did the disco-ball stomping Justin Timberlake album cover, the machine-gun-bra Lady Gaga Rolling Stone cover, and the cover of N.E.R.D.’s new album, which is one of my favorite photos of the past year.

On his blog, his photos are mainly test-shots of models he’s photographing for magazines, but also friends of his like Justin Theroux and Jared Leto, making dumb faces. He makes his subjects pose for at least one picture wearing his trademark eighties giant-framed glasses and giving thumbs-up. It’s his version of the Warhol sitting. A few decades back, Richardson would have fit nicely into the Warhol Factory. Warhol would have found Richardson repulsive and annoying, and would have loved doing so, and would have made him a star.

Richardson’s style is so straightforward it’s like he doesn’t have a style at all, which of course is a style, and isn’t, which is even more of one (and isn’t one at all, but is, in a big way, and of course, isn’t.). It’s rare for one of his subjects not to be standing against a plain white wall, facing forward. There’s never any Photoshop or retouching, rarely any special lighting, no bullshit. If I saw Richardson walking towards me, I’d cross the street. I’d do the opposite for one of his pictures.

Neckties

Wears a necktie every day: Elvis Costello, Billy Joe Armstrong, Stephen Colbert, badass dudes going to court because they broke up a fight outside their tattoo parlor, and me. Okay, I don’t wear one every day. I don’t have enough shirts for that. Most people I know have a dozen shirts and a couple ties. For me it’s the opposite (but more than a dozen). I never had to wear one as a kid. (Also never had a curfew, watched what I wanted on TV, and learned to play cards before I could read. Hate me yet?) Maybe not having the private school/Sunday best necktie requirement gave me a more relaxed attitude about it. Or maybe I just wanna look like I’m in the Hives or Blondie. A little secret: If you wear a tie to work, when you’re home, you get to take it off. If you don’t wear a tie to work, when you get home, nothing happens. You never feel like you’re not at work. And if you’re not wearing a tie at work, you might not ever feel like you’re at work, either. Work is killing you? That choking tie is a metaphor. Get home and loosen up, literally. The only thing better than wearing a tie is taking one off.

Hot Weather

It’s irrational, I know. And I know you all think I have that disorder that makes me depressed in winter. I probably do. But there is nothing I’d like more than to get into my car this afternoon and burn my arm on the seatbelt latch. When the weather heats up so much your local news warns you to give your dogs cold treats and make sure elderly relatives have working fans? That’s my dream.

Superman Returns

I would not have cast Kate Bosworth. (I had to look up her name. I typed “Kate” and then just sat there. Holmes? No, that’s not it. Hudson? Hm.) And there should probably have been a villain for Superman to fight, or at least interact with directly, besides that spiky island. And under no circumstances should “Superman and Lois have an asthmatic kid” have survived the first draft of the script. Yes, there are problems.

But even with those problems, Superman Returns absolutely swings, man. It adds an Art Deco visual scheme that wasn’t present in the previous Superman movies. It’s like Tim Burton drank half a Vitamin Water. And the scenes of Clark Kent in the Daily Planet offices are effortless and charming. Witty banter, double-takes, rat-a-tat. Say what you will about the probably-superior Christopher Reeve Superman movies: they don’t bounce along like Superman Returns, and they have no design point-of-view worth mentioning. Pair it with The Hudsucker Proxy, instead of other superhero movies, and you’ll see what I mean. This one even has a funny Jimmy Olsen. It’s a charming screwball adventure comedy…with a guy whose eyes are bulletproof. And Superman’s flying scenes in Superman Returns are the best of their kind. I know Brandon Routh was geared up into some kind of contraption, but he flies horizontally, vertically, diagonally, you name it. Parallel to the street, on his back, shooting heat-vision at falling glass?  You got it. Straight up and down, rising into the yellow sun’s powerful heat? Check. Little kid throwing a piano because he’s secretly Superman’s son?

Shut up.

See also: Hulk, X3: X-Men United

Second Hand Smoke

Light up. I don’t mind a bit. I think it smells good, like something tasty in the oven. Yum, who’s baking a pie? Oh, it’s just you, smoking a Camel! A few years back, I was surrounded by people who smoked Marlboro Reds (I have an intense two-second memory of my hand out the window of a car, the wind not strong enough to knock the butt of the cigarette I was not strong enough to finish). If I’m in a bar, or at a concert, or in a parking lot, and I smell one (yep, know them by smell), I stop in my tracks, having the feeling you have when you hear that song from your prom, or the summer that changed your life through beach-fucking, or the birth of your child. Second hand smoke is special to me, is what I’m saying. Oh, and the next day, when my shirt and pillow smell like your cigarettes, even though I only saw you for a second, and you only had like one drag left? That is different. It’s repellant, and you and your habit are disgusting.

Assholes

What was it Russell Crowe did again? Got drunk and threw a phone? Was he even drunk? I think officially he lost his temper and threw a phone. Oh, and the whole Meg Ryan’s marriage business. He did that too, I suppose. But also: is The Insider. Is Gladiator. Is awesome. I am okay with Russell Crowe not being a nice guy. I just need him to be a good actor, and possibly, in a perfect world, a high-fiveable badass. Whenever he has a new movie, I hear a new round of “He’s an asshole with a false sense of entitlement.” I don’t think Russell Crowe’s problem is a false sense of entitlement. Paris Hilton, expecting adoration and compensation without achievement; that’s a false sense of entitlement. Russell Crowe? He’s entitled. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart. That guy who got the phone thrown at him? I’m not saying he deserved it, but I am saying that a. He survived, and b. “The lead in Cinderella Man chucked a phone at me” is a pretty good work story. The second lead from Virtuosity wanted something and didn’t get it. You’d throw a phone too. Hell, some of you have thrown shit at me, and you weren’t even the fourth lead in The Quick and the Dead. Am I saying famous people are better than me? Of course not*. I’m a generally nice guy, and I like to think that if I’m ever accomplished and famous, that I’ll continue to be. But if I’m not? And I’m not like, abusing my wife** or dodging my tax responsibilities, and once in a while I man the phones at a George Clooney benefit, and I was in goddamn L.A. Confidential, but also maybe I’m a dick to paparazzi? Eh, I’m guessing you’ll get over it.

*Of course they are.

**That’s the distinction. It’s a fine line, but Kiefer Sutherland is on one side of it, and Charlie Sheen is on the other.

See also: Sean Penn, Kiefer Sutherland

Cookies

You guys don’t like chocolate chip cookies. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard. Seriously, try them again. Remember puppies? When I said you guys would like puppies and you were so stubborn to even look at one? Come on, give delicious cookies a second chance!