Do You Have Something Against Dogs
Posted: 25 February 2021
Imported from substack so the formatting is messed up, it looks better on substack.
Listen to this (its 12 seconds long):
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Index
Everything I thought was incredible has a * in front of its name, everything else runs the gamut from stuff I like to stuff I don’t. Movie/book writing is spoiler-y. There are some looser, uncategorized post-scripts at the bottom of the newsletter.
I listened to a lot of music that I liked this week!
Movies
Marty (1955)
Romance/Comedy
Books
Zadie Smith - White Teeth (2010) (Addendum to last week’s commentary)
Fiction
* Haruki Murakami - A Wild Sheep Chase (1982)
Fiction
Music
Lincoln - A Constant State of Ohio (2017)
Indie Rock/Emo
* Pile - Dripping (2012)
Post-Hardcore/Pile
* Pile - A Hairshirt of Purpose (2017)
Post-Hardcore/Pile
Home Is Where - our mouths to smile (2019)
Post-Hardcore
* Sleep - Dopesmoker (2003)
Stoner Metal
* Moses Sumney - græ (2020)
Experimental/Soul
Mr.Kitty - Time (2014)
Synth pop
Billy Joe Shaver - Old Five And Dimers Like Me (1973)
Country
Books
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White Teeth
I like noting down passages that stick out to me while I’m reading books, I forgot to include these last week:
Arshad shrugged. “I shouted through the car window and told the guy to move on and he says, ‘I am gassing myself, leave me alone.’ Like that.”
”No one gasses himself on my property,” Mo snapped as he marched downstairs. “We are not licensed.”
Tonight, after just more than enough, Samad felt particularly lucid. Like his tongue was buttered and like the world was a polished marble egg.
What is it about this unlovable century that convinced us we were, despite everything, eminently lovable as a people, as a species? What made us think that anyone who fails to love us is damaged, lacking, malfunctioning in some way?
Plan B made Millat sick.
”And that’s it? You’re just going to read to him? That’s his punishment?”
What happened to revenge? What happened to just deserts, retribution, jihad?
A Wild Sheep Chase
For the past ten years or so I’ve considered this my favorite Murakami novel, so it was nice to have the chance to revisit it. Murakami’s work has a magical quality where it reads differently depending on who you are going in. Reading this same book years apart will teach you something totally new. The only constant in A Wild Sheep Chase is the ennui.
The book is split up into eight parts, but logically has roughly three sections: The first third is primarily exposition, the second third is a mystery/detective novel, and the final third becomes a fantastical, surreal mystery. The mystery is finally solved, the questions are all answered, but the “a-ha” moment we experience as readers has nothing to do with the mystery at hand. The “a-ha” moment comes to us in the light we shine on our protagonist as he finds out what happened to his friend, The Rat.
Murakami seamlessly weaves the surreal into the mundane in a masterful crescendo. We begin with our protagonist and others around him describing boring, everyday events in thoughtful and interesting ways. Everything feels light-hearted and fun, observations are comical in their absurdity. The surreal slowly encroaches on his life: he is blackmailed into searching for a peculiar sheep based on an unbelievable story. His search takes the form of a road trip with his girlfriend, her enthusiasm bubbles over and the danger of the situation seem distant, unbelievable. Eventually finding himself at the house that set the search afoot, the story detaches from reality and our hero begins to lose his grip on his sanity. He comes crashing back to earth: a mystery solved, an overwhelming price paid.
If you are planning on reading this book, the rest of my thoughts here are going to spoil a great deal of it, so I’d suggest skipping over them. The mystery itself isn’t that important, but I think the book is very sneaky in revealing what it’s actually about, and I think that makes the last 50 pages or so really really excellent. The book reads completely differently with the reframing you get later on. Just thought I’d throw some fair warning here.
The real beauty of A Wild Sheep Chase, to me, is how we find out just how unbelievably sad our protagonist is, and has been, the entire time. There is well-hidden depression and unprocessed grief. Maybe this was obvious to you when you read it! But I was deceived. Our narrator lulled me into his world of quips and observations, paved over his loss and suffering, hid his inability to face reality from me the same way he hid it from everyone else.
The Sheep Man chides the protagonist:
“Youconfusedthatwoman,” the Sheep Man said, this time more calmly. “Notaverynicethingatall.Youdontknowathing.Allyouthinkaboutisyourself.”
Which I think is kind of the key to the whole thing. The protagonist is so self-centered that he psychically destroys everything around him. He doesn’t remember any names. Nothing that happens around him matters to him; everything may as well not exist. He resigns himself to the life of a casual bystander, but in doing so, turns everything in his life into a meaningless observation.
All of the observing that he does do avoids the subject at hand and turns into metaphysical musing. Reality is avoided at all costs. The only real contact he has with other people is with women, and he objectifies them beyond all recognition. All that we reliably learn about any of them is if/when they have sex with our protagonist and what his physical fixation with them is. The world around him means nothing to him.
This brings us back to the start the novel, where he tells us how boring he thinks he is. He meets a woman who tells him that he just wishes he was boring: she is probably right. Our protagonist wants to be boring so that he can continue to safely inhabit his gray world. Nothing concerns him, there is nothing he possesses or cares about. How did he get this way? What happened? We don’t know. But we see him reach a breaking point: his wife divorces him. His girlfriend leaves him. He learns that The Rat, his only real friend, has committed suicide. The muted world he has built for himself cannot stand. We end with him opening up a crack and entering a partnership with J at the bar. The dam breaks. He cries.
Passages (None of these are spoilers):
“The sun climbs high in the sky, then starts down. People come, then go. The time breezes by. That’s like a picnic, isn’t it?”
One was an announcement from a furniture store where everything was twenty percent off. The second was a letter from someone I didn’t want to think about, much less read from. I crumpled them up and tossed them into the wastebasket […]
Whether you take a doughnut hole as blank space or as an entity unto itself is a purely metaphysical question and does not affect the taste of the doughnut one bit.
“I quit smoking,” I said.
”Yeahthat’swise” the Sheep Man nodded in all seriousness. “They’rereallybadforyou.”
When I first opened my eyes, it was as if I was living someone else’s life. After an extremely long time, this began to match up with my own life.
Movies
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Marty
The moral of this movie is that if you are ugly and miserable, you will only ever find happiness in someone equally as ugly and miserable as you. Maybe it sounds nicer if you frame it as: You should pursue love beyond superficiality. Hearing our protagonist, Marty, tell a woman who was just crying, “So it doesn’t matter if you look like a gorilla,” does not exactly discourage the first reading.
It’s from 1955 though! It’s dated! Culture has changed, society has changed. We have the internet now. We think differently. What kind of universal truths does Marty speak to? What did it do to deserve both the Academy Award for Best Picture and the Palme d’Or? I’m not totally sure. Watching it in 2020, it seems very run-of-the-mill Hollywood romance. A nice, but ugly, guy, can’t find anyone who wants to date him, meets an ugly girl with the same problem, and they hit it off. He doubts whether to pursue the relationship further, decides to go for it, and that’s the end. There’s a lot of exposition, not a lot of substance, and we get a perfect happy ending.
I wrote a bunch more about this movie but I didn’t want to have a long essay about a movie I didn’t like right up at the top of the newsletter. If you’re interested in some more detailed thoughts about why I don’t like this movie, they’re right before the footnotes, in a section titled “Marty pt. 2”
Music
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Lincoln - A Constant State of Ohio
Indie Rock/Emo
What’s going on here
Sincerely happy for the musician but. How is this happening? Some googling suggests that this song was on TikTok at some point? Absolutely wild numbers. Is that what happens? People hear a 10 second clip of a song on TikTok, and start listening to artists???? Are they featured on some sort of playlist? They only have ~2000 followers on Instagram and Twitter. I want to know where all these listeners are coming from!!!!!
Internet virality aside, A Constant State of Ohio is a really good EP! It’s solid emo-ish indie rock, it’s incredible that it’s a one person band, and I’m excited for the (hopefully) upcoming album.
Pile - Dripping
Post-Hardcore/Pile
There are [a] [number] [of] [articles (this one is something else)] [online] about how beloved Pile are. A surprising amount! I could be wrong, but I don’t think most interviews start off by mentioning how much a band’s fans love the band. Maybe they do. Maybe I just want to believe that this is somehow different because I love Pile. They’re on their own little satellite floating around earth, picking up passengers here and there, taking them along for the ride.
I like this description of them from the Consequence of Sound article linked as [articles] above:
Part classic country and part atonal noise rock, Pile is like if Waylon Jennings stumbled into a Jesus Lizard show, grabbed the mic out of David Yow’s hands, then went on to finish the set.
Post-hardcore is certainly not enough of a label to really describe Pile. They rock! Listening to them might change your life.
Pile - A Hairshirt of Purpose
Post-Hardcore/Pile
I love this freaking band!!!! If the explanation above of them being like Waylong Jennings and Jesus Lizard wasn’t enough for you, they’re also a bit desert-rock-y. Like if Queens of the Stone Age slammed on the Noise Rock pedal when they rocked out. Pile singer and songwriter Rick Maguire, in one of the interviews linked above, said that their song Special Snowflakes is probably the best at capturing what Pile is about, and I’m inclined to agree.
Intermission
I’m listening to Mannequin Pussy, who are really really good, and have a little theory that I’m working on. The theory looks like this:
Reddit dot com frontpage, here I come.
Home Is Where - our mouths to smile
Post-Hardcore
Our mouths to smile grew on me. Home Is Where have a very distinct vocal style and they are maybe the only screamo band I’ve heard featuring so much harmonica. The final track ends with cicadas chirping for 30 seconds. It takes some adjusting to: I don’t think the first track, “alabama,” is a good representation of the rest of the EP. That aside, our mouths to smile reveals a lot of really strong musical decisions that come together in a unique and interesting way. The music is engaging, it pushes and it pulls, it swells and it cascades. I really love how every instrument sounds. There’s a lot of good stuff here.
They have an album coming out in March, [this] promo song came out earlier this week, and they have [another promo single] that came out last year. I don’t like the new singles as much as anything on our mouths to smile, but I am looking forward to hearing the rest of the album.
Sleep - Dopesmoker
Stoner Metal
A tweet from a now-protected twitter account:
folk punk: some whiny loser singing about dnd trying to be hip and alternative and get in your pants or some shit
stoner metal: ohoho its the fucken wizard.
If any song can truly be called a landmark of the genre, Dopesmoker is it. It’s an hour of drop C chugging guitars and a guy growling about weed (I think? I have no idea what he’s actually singing about). It’s hypnotic! It’s an hour long!!! I listen to it every couple of months.
But also, think about this for a minute: there’s an entire genre of music for bands to play the sludgiest, grimiest power chords and sing about wizards, weed, and demons. An entire genre of music! I made this quiz a little while ago, to emphasize how absurd this is:
Which of these is not a real band:
a) bongthrower
b) undertoker
c) belzebong
d) stoned jesus
e) bongzilla
f) mammoth weed wizard bastard
g) bongripper
h) weedeater
One, and only one, of these is not a real band. The answer is in the footnotes at the bottom of this newsletter.
Moses Sumney - græ
Experimental/Soul
FFO: Baths
Brittle, delicate, soulful songs exploring sexuality, identity, and society. Sumney draws you in and covers you in honey. His voice always sounds like he is teetering on the edge of total collapse, like he is baring his soul. Really beautiful.
Mr. Kitty - Time
Synth Pop
This music kind of needs visuals to go along with it. Or you need to be driving a car. It’s really good for setting a mood, but it needs something to set the mood for. “After Dark,” for example, is such a cool song. I just wish it had a home! Chasing after somebody outside of a bar, wandering through neon city streets. Basically just picture Bladerunner 2049 as you listen to this.
Billy Joe Shaver - Old Five And Dimers Like Me
Country
I like this a lot. Old Five And Dimers Like Me is honest and self aware — flaws are confidently admitted, there is no shame or ironically detached self-flagellation. It’s proud, but not delusional. Shaver speaks for himself.
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Marty Pt. 2
I would really like to take a moment to emphasize that this movie does not stop mentioning how ugly people are. Every other line is somebody being called a dog or ugly. Our beautiful ending, has Marty saying, “I don’t care if she’s ugly.” Everyone calls him and Clara ugly. It’s relentless.
If anything, the most interesting thing about this movie is how it focuses on what Marty’s bachelordom means to everyone else in his life. He lives with his widowed mother who constantly pesters him about getting married. He spends his Saturday nights hanging out with his best friend, Angie (who is also an involuntary bachelor).
As soon as he meets Clara (his love interest), everything changes. His mother fears being abandoned and kicked out of the house once her son marries, which happens to her sister as the movie progresses. Angie is worried that without his bachelor buddy, he will be left completely alone, left to wander the city streets by himself. The people who were pushing Marty to look for a wife pull back and do a 180. They want to keep Marty for themselves.
Like every other idea in this movie, however, this doesn’t go anywhere. Everything builds up to a critical moment where it seems like the pressure is getting to Marty: will he call Clara for their follow-up date, like he promised? Or will his mother and friends, all saying she’s not that great, that they don’t like Clara, grind him down? Our hero falters and almost ghosts Clara (which would have been an insane ending, and maybe made the movie worthwhile), but corrects himself. A moment of clarity occurs while at the bar with the fellas, disaster is averted:
What am I, crazy or something?! I got something good here! What am I hanging around with you guys for?!
He rushes to a phone to call Clara, and we cut to credits. If this were any other rom-com, I think this would be fine. The power of love prevails over all: Marty likes Clara, and he won’t let other people’s opinions stop him from being happy. Very nice.
But this isn’t just any rom-com! This won TWO prestigious awards for best film! Of the year! This is what really gets me, here. I wouldn’t have so much to write if it wasn’t, bafflingly, considered the best movie of the year both domestically and internationally. Surely, there is some substance here, somewhere. Surely, this film gets to some deeper human truths.
Nope. That’s it! Every interesting idea that was built up is left as just that: build up. Nothing resolves. “Why should I be miserable with you, the way I have been my entire life, when I have the chance at happiness?” is a fine premise. But that’s not what this movie is about. His mother and best friend are not the reason Marty is miserable: they support him and are there for him in his misery. They only start acting selfish and manipulative towards the end, when they realize they might lose him. This is interesting! This could have gone somewhere! And then the movie abruptly ends. It’s like if The Matrix ended right after Neo picked a pill.
Also, for a nice guy, Marty is pretty self-centered! He does not stop talking at Clara, barely letting her get a word in edge-wise. We learn her name, how old she is, that she’s a teacher, and that she’s not sure if she should move for work or not. You learn more about people when they do “what’s a fun fact about yourself” ice breakers. She is a non-character. Marty likes her because she is the only woman (apparently ever) who expresses interest in him. She is attractive to him because she validates him.
She is a saint, willing to look past all of his flaws and admire his supposedly beautiful soul. They find themselves at his house and she is clearly uncomfortable: he is disappointed but offers to get her things and escort her home. Very unexpectedly, he forces himself onto her, attempting to kiss her, and, rebuffed, literally goes to mope in another room, having the NERVE to complain that “all I wanted was a kiss.” And she is somehow okay with this!!!!
They share a tender moment where she says that she would really like to see him again, but does not feel ready to kiss. It’s somehow supposed to be understandable and acceptable, it’s okay that he felt like he deserved a kiss, for, I don’t even know. For his lifetime of being a “nice guy”? Any goodwill the audience might have had towards Marty evaporates instantly. He is not a nice person. He is selfish, he’s full of rage, and he presents a front of niceness to hide that.
Marty is a superficial movie. Our protagonist’s virtues are, ironically, skin-deep. None of the conflicts go anywhere meaningful. It’s a melodrama with a fairy tale ending.
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[1] Ernest Borgnine is really excellent in Marty, to give it some credit. It’s a really snappy movie and the pacing is great, it never drags the way some older movies do. I laughed out loud a few times: sometimes at jokes, sometimes in utter disbelief at what I was seeing. I also really like seeing movies where people are just walking around New York late at night. Everyone’s taking the bus at 2 am and it’s no big deal.
My initial reaction was mixed but slowly built to this overwhelming negativity the more I thought about the movie.
[2] QUIZ ANSWER: It’s Undertoker. Undertoker is not a band.
The first time I sent that quiz to someone, it was a trick question, because I did not include Undertoker as an option. I did not realize that Bongthrower was a real band. I thought it was just a song by Belzebong. I proved my own point, whatever it might be, to myself, by accident. Incidentally, “Undertoker” is also a song by Belzebong.
[3] Mr.Kitty’s “After Dark” starts with the lyric “I see you, you see me” and my mind immediately jumps to “at a movie, sneak preview.” I am going to record a mashup of “After Dark” and “Dammit”.
[4] I think it’s really wild just how much of an impact Billy Joe Shaver has had. According to [this] npr interview, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley have all, in one way or another, publicly stated that he is one of their favorite songwriters. How he isn’t more of a household name, I don’t really know.
That’s all! Have a great day.