Mac DeMarco – This Old Dog

I wrote this piece about Mac DeMarco’s most recent album.

I’ve been writing about myself, my experiences… my father, well, seemingly forever on this blog. But some of the ways I’m coming to express those moments, or the details I’m sharing for the first time, are starting to really feel like I’m making traction. I never expected to feel so close to Mac DeMarco, but that’s another beautiful part of music.

PWR BTTM: Exit Stage Left

Here’s an essay I wrote on the horrendous PWR BTTM situation.

Writing this wasn’t easy, and with a lot of anxiety I chose to address the issue. The older I get, the more I realize the role which sexual violence has played in shaping the person I am today.

I’m still here: The Mountain Goats // Goths (2017)

I keep meaning to come back and make writing here a regular thing. But a lot of time has passed, you know?

Anyway, I’m still here. And still writing. I hiked the AT, by the way.

 

For now, anyway, here’s an essay I wrote on the new album by The Mountain Goats. It’s also about the movie Moonrise Kingdom, and I hope to start writing about movies regularly. I started this music review website thing called Eat Your Owner, so I’m always writing somewhere.

The Mountain Goats – Goths

Bathtub, 2/11/13 – Bed, 2/11/15

Packing up everything
two years later
I realize grief
is a black hole
unconsciously
devouring all the
hours of weight
left delicately,
carelessly behind.

Kitchen, 11:02 PM

While packing
food for four
month trip
I remember the
strange sadness
of fourteen, the
open mouth of
moving, moving
divorce how
like a
stubbled scar
to pinprick
every seven
year cycle
saying here
here here
is some
weight you
left behind

As Big as the Moon

And bigger
bigger
bigger.

Remember the Mountain Bed / Wilco + Billy Bragg [2000]

“There in the shade and hid from the sun we freed our minds and learned.
Our greatest reason for being here, our bodies moved and burned
There on our mountain bed of leaves we learned life’s reason why
The People laugh and love and dream, they fight, they hate to die.”

– Woody Guthrie

Today

I realized,
maybe for the
first time,

this walk
will be
so long.

2015

Next year I’ll
climb the mountain
while my brother
walks through
the door.
Who would have
thought in
Vietnam in
America we
would find
each other?
Who would have
thought we
would find
ourselves
here still
climbing
still
here.

Film Review: Liberal Arts (2012)

“I was English, with a minor in history, just to make sure I was fully unemployable.” – Jesse Fisher

I vaguely remember the first time I heard rumblings about Josh Radnor, star of the hugely popular sitcom How I Met Your Mother, acting as a director and writer on dramatic projects outside of the TV realm. A quick bit of research back in the day also revealed that his earlier project Happythankyoumoreplease had met with more than a few charges of annoyingly humble-braggy tendencies. Being that Radnor’s follow-up film, Liberal Arts, earned slightly less caustic criticism and a good deal and is available on Netflix, I decided to give it a whirl.

Hmm. What to do with a film like this? On the one hand it has some charming performances but is utterly waylaid by predictable plot turns and an annoyingly insular premise. While the whole thing is filmed in an acceptably indie style with plenty of shifting focus shots and some nice natural cinematography, the whole thing frequently stalls as a result of scatter-shot plotting and an overall sense that the aimless nature of the main character leaves the film itself with a frustratingly nostalgic wanderlust.

Manhattan and Garden State are stylistically checked in this maudlin story of revisiting the salad days of youth, irresponsibility, and the sense of freedom that comes so quickly and with aplomb in college years. Radnor’s character, Jesse, finds his inspiration in a typically MPDG young woman (look, she does improv! And says yes to EVERYTHING!) he meets through some mutual friends of a professor (Richard Jenkins) he happens to be visiting on the occasion of a retirement professor. You can see, perhaps, the various layers of leaving/reminiscing/idealizing at play. Still, it’s all so half-baked and the focus is so minimally on minor characters like Jesse’s former Brit Lit teacher (Allison Janney) or even his newfound friend in a young, troubled student (John Magaro) that the audience never quite knows where to fix its gaze.

There are some troubling gender and sexuality themes beyond the youth of the central relationship explored. Perhaps most troubling is the bizarre attitude towards “virginity” displayed in the fact that Jesse seems mainly not sleep with 19 year old conquest because he finds out just before he does the deed with her that she’s never had sex before. His whole character feels like a microcosm of the worst traits of the annoyingly sententious OTHER character Radnor is famous for, Ted Mosby. Here the literary references feel overwrought, the plot is a sparse 97 minutes but feels at least 120, and the whole thing resolves weirdly, and uncomfortably neatly. I’ll give it points for attempting a good-natured refusal of nostalgia as cure-all, but there’s absolutely nothing about this film which distinguishes it as anything more than junk-food cinema to get you through the week.

(6.5/10)