I’ve seen The Thing probably 30 times. Just watched it again the other night as a matter of fact, and it never occurred to me before that Childs-Thing tips his hand at the very end when MacReady offers him a drink AND HE TAKES IT. Carpenter even telegraphs this early in the film by having MacReady pour his J&B into the computer for cheating. My mind is blown.
Shit
Ok, maybe none of you bastards care about this, but you may find it interesting anyway. Leon Fleisher died of cancer two days ago at age 83. By age 30, maybe earlier, he was arguably the best pianist the U.S. has ever produced if you consider overall musicianship as well as technical perfection (he had both, but others have equaled or come close in the latter). As a pupil of Artur Schnabel, he was in a direct student/teacher line to Beethoven.
Unfortunately the 1950’s, when he came of age, was a real pressure cooker for a group of young American pianists who were given the acronym, OYAPS (Outstaning Young American Pianists). This was the height of the cold war, and there was huge pressure on them to be cultural ambassadors. They were expected to be powerful and precise, like Vladimir Horowitz, and to show uppity Europeans and especially Russia, a land of super-human pianists, that the U.S. was artistically on par with anyone (never mind we’d already proved that with jazz and emerging rock & roll, but those were treated as an embarrassent). As a result, Fleisher and the other OYAPS pushed themselves to the point of serious physical injury or emotional distress. By his mid-thirties, Fleisher’s right hand was useless for the piano due to an insane practice and performance schedule. After recovering from serious depression, he had a second career as a conductor, a much idolized teacher and an occasional performer of the limited one-handed repertoire. Miraculously, in the 90’s he underwent experimental botox injections which returned his hand to service. By the early 2000’s he was back in action, maybe not as much of a techincal powerhouse, but as good or maybe better artistically.
I was lucky to see him in a stunning recital in ’09. I also got to meet him briefly and get an autograph. For someone so lionized, he was very approachable and seemed down-to-earth. Resquiescat in pace.
The Lincoln Project
These guys are crushing it right now.
Happy Happy Joy Joy
Coming August 14, a documentary about the creation and influence of Ren & Stimpy! SPOILER ALERT: Here’s another one of those instances where you must appreciate the art but hate the artist. From Gizmodo …
Directors Ron Cicero and Kimo Easterwood promise an honest and direct look at what Kricfalusi brought to the world of animation as well as what he took away from it, with reports of failing to deliver episodes on time and fostering a hostile work environment. According to the documentary description, it will also address the allegations of sexual misconduct. They were first brought to light in 2018 by Buzzfeed, and included an admission that Kricfalusi had engaged in a relationship with a 16-year-old girl. It’s clear from the trailer that the folks who worked on Ren & Stimpy have great respect for the show and how it’s influenced the world of animation, but that it’s hard to rectify that with the knowledge that the person who created it was responsible for so much pain and suffering.
This Game Is Crazy Good
The Last of Us Part 2. Just finished it a couple of days ago, and man, it was worth the wait.
The song at the end is Pearl Jam’s “Future Days.” I’m guessing Eddie Vedder is a Bloater by this point in the game’s timeline …
Shipping In Late July
In a just world, this guy should have been huge. I’ll be pre-ordering this shortly, the package which includes a 45 of the demo versions of “There She Goes” and “Walking Out On Love.”
After two long years of painstaking research and development, we present to you, the first major memoir covering the birth of DIY Power Pop, from Paul Collins. From it’s initial conception as a film script to it’s re-birth as a full-bore rock & roll revelation, this is one crazy story from beginning to end. Outlining the first National DIY cross-country tour by an unsigned band in 1977, and by default, creating the pathway for the true indie underground network of the 80s to take as a template. It wasn’t even a second thought for Collins and bandmates Peter Case and Jack Lee, but the underground rock & roll world is a better place for it. But until now, the real details of the origins of The Nerves, Breakaways, and The BEAT have eluded most of us, so with this tome of incredible survival stories from the trenches, Paul Collins opens up and reveals all the drama, victories and defeats with such an impassioned voice, you won’t be able to put it down. The coverage of the pre-Punk 1975 landscape of both LA and San Francisco is unmatched, and your mind will be BLOWN.
Featuring TONS of previously unseen photos, flyers and ephemera from the earliest days of The Nerves lineup as a FOUR PIECE, to the legal documents challenging The Paul Collins BEAT vs The English Beat, to the ill-fated Nerves reunion, and so much in between. Truly a smorgasbord of juicy details and revelatory discoveries await, balancing the failures with triumphs from the mid 1970s to the mid 2000s, when Paul returned to the touring circuit. From literally renting out a space for the first documented Punk show in Los Angeles in March of 1977, to The Screamers story about buying a copy of The Nerves EP at the Capitol Records swap meet and smashing it to pieces- it’s all in there, along with so many more soon-to-be-legendary tales from the real trenches you don’t usually rise out from unscathed….
And here he is more recently. Fuck yeah!
She’s Got A New One Coming
In the meantime, here’s the song Bridgers wrote about professional shithead Ryan Adams.
Gismo!
Because everyone should hear this song at least once.