My Quiet Life

So, Nashvilleistalking.com (NiT for short) is shutting its doors. Kleinheider asked me if I had any comment on its demise, and I responded that I was actually rather surprised to learn it was even still around. That's not to disparage the stuff that Christian was doing over there.. But when Brittney left, the format changed enough that it left my radar. And now it's gone. Not with a bang, but a whimper.

I found some of the old posts from when I was guestblogging one weekend -- right prior to Katrina, as it happens. Kinda sad to see me yammering on and making casual mention of the hurricane forming, unaware of the destruction that would unfold..

Meeeeemories.. like the cooorners of my miiind. Someone proposed the idea of a reunion/tweetup, which could be fun. or boring. if there's beer I'm pretty sure it'd be fun either way. And I think we all know who should organize such a thing.

I thought I'd share some idle thoughts I had this weekend -- about one of my favorite books and favorite scores and how they are incongruent in a weird way. Nabakov's Lolita is one of my favorite novels for so many reasons -- key among them being the subtlety of Nabakov's accomplishment in the ultimate unreliable narrator. (Uh, don't read this, I guess, if you haven't read Lolita). You want to sympathize with Humbert in various ways here and there, but by the end of the book, you just have this really bad taste in your mouth. It's not a love story, and it's not supposed to be romantic. You suspect you've been misled. This is why the more recent movie with Jeremy Irons and Dominique Swain bugged me (I've actually never seen the Kubrick version). This version of the story does a very poor job of communicating that distaste and distrust of the narrator (if it can be argued they made any attempt at all). Dominique Swain, being 17 when this movie was filmed, was hot in a very womanly way (in the book, Lolita was 12 at the start) and we're presented with a much less subtle taboo/forbidden love story. Anyways, I'm sure film and novel critics better than me have dissected this at length. That said, it's not a bad movie. And it's all the more pleasant to watch because of Ennio Morricone's absolutely gorgeous score, which is easily one of my favorites of his. And it's his score that really drives home the wistful sadness and romantic beauty of the movie -- elements which I didn't think really belonged. You can listen to some excerpts here:

... or elsewhere on youtube.

I just find it amusing that one of my favorite musical scores is, paradoxically, partially to blame for why I disliked a movie.

So, I've seen Weezer taking a lot of shit lately. Suddenly it's not cool to like them anymore. SOME PEOPLE have even gone as far as to postulate that they've done nothing good since 1996. Ignoring the fact that Pinkerton came out in 1996, making the assertion questionable already (since Pinkerton is a masterpiece that doesn't need defending), this is still provably false. Okay, so.. I'll admit it's been a while since Weezer had an album that was really, really good from start to finish. But there have still been a lot of really, really good songs on their albums post-Pinkerton. These are some of them:

See? Rivers still has it. I win. Bonus: Weezer with the Muppets

Bonus bonus: Weezer with Alf.

And yes, I included Island in the Sun, because it's a really good song, despite being used as the themesong to a Mary Kate and Ashley movie.