All I ever really want to listen to is Fleetwood Mac, and I am NOT talking about the Peter Green years.  I'm talking the full-on 70s, shawl wearing, twirling, super chemistry, exposed chest hair with gold chains, cokehead Buckingham/Nicks era. There is no comparison.


Sitting here all day, I have had the self titled Fleetwood Mac CD on repeat. I have heard these songs since my birth. I bet my mom listened to this record while she was pregnant with me. These songs are ingrained in me. There is not a bad track on this record, but my favorites on  this and all their records are always the Stevie Nicks tunes. Some of the earliest memories of my life are these songs, trying to sing along, trying to understand the words, thinking how weird it is that "children grow older" as sung in "Landslide" and how I was gonna grow up soon (this was when I was about 5 maybe?). Yikes!

"Crystal" is one of the best songs Miss Stevie ever wrote, in my opinion. First of all, the name of the song, "Crystal," is just so damn classic for a song by Stevie. You know it's her right away. Then there are the beautiful lyrics about a multidimensional, all encompassing and almost scarily polarizing love. I love how the song starts so quietly and goes on forever, fading and fading.

Four gold stars for Notes On A Scandal!


I watched the film last night and was blown away by Judi Dench's performance.  It's unusual that a jaded ex film theory student like myself is blown away like that, and although I do truly always love Dame Judi, this was the penultimate character for her I thought. 

Breathtakingly vicious and manipulative, her Barbara is as layered as any real live human being, unusual for a film script these days.  In fact, the layers of each main character in the film, Barbara, Sheba and Steven, are peeled away like the skin of an onion-- as the film progresses we get deeper and deeper into their psyches and man, are they all twisted!


The are also all twisted up in the affair that art teacher Sheba (Cate Blanchett) is carrying on with her seemingly abused 15 year old student, Steven.  Lonely and intense fellow teacher Barbara befriends Sheba, who she alternatively loves and hates for her beauty and bourgeois sensibilities, and she uses their closeness to pull Sheba further and further into her web of neediness when she discovers the affair.

I hate to say this since the film shows the more pathetic sides of humanity, but this movie and its characters reminded me more of real life than most films.  The secretiveness, the two-faced-ness, the desperation, the complication, the cat....it was all so dense and realistic!  I loved that Barbara narrates the film and that we get to  hear her innermost thoughts, which she carefully journals every night-- it's the ultimate gournol.  She convinces herself that she knows all about Sheba's life and marriage and thoughts and feelings because she is so absorbed with wanting things her own way, seeing things her own way.

Each character completely justifies his or her actions to themselves, and it is incredible to watch.  Judi already has an Oscar, but still, someone should have given her an honorary award this year for her insanely believable ferociousness and vulnerability in this film.  She scares me now. 

Brent James
7.5 years employment
Information Control

Q: What was playing in your house when you were a kid?

BJ: Janis Joplin, "Mercedes Benz" and lots of  Willie Nelson, lots of The Doors, Fleetwood Mac.  Basic 70's things that are very important to my formative years.

What was your first show?

The Shirelles at a classic car show in Turlock, California.  No lies, my dad was the president of the Cam Twisters USA! He still is.  That was it!

That's crazy. ...yet fabulous. What was the first band that you were really into?

Ratt.  They made me want to be a musician.  It's true!  Why lie, you know?


What is your favorite venue here in the city?

Cafe du Nord.

Yes, I love it.  That's one of my favorites too.  What is your favorite band right now?

I just gotta say I listen to a lot of old things right now.  Ruth Etting and vocalists of the 30s and 40s is what I am listening to a lot at home, besides the usual.

So I went to see Old Joy back when it was at the Red Vic.  It's out on DVD now and it's really different from any movie I can think of at the (tired) moment.  In a good way.


I'd like to stress again here on my blog (strongly) that I am not a Yoga Mat Person, but I will say this movie has a meditational feeling to it.  By that, I mean while you watch it there is so much silence and there are so many moments of a quiet kind of reflection that when you finish watching it you really do feel like you went somewhere else on a journey.

The journey of the film takes place in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon.  Old friends from way back Mark and Kurt meet up and go camping.  They haven't seen each other in a long time and it's obvious that their lives have branched far away from one another in those years apart.  What's great about this film is that the issues that  this growing apart have caused are never directly addressed.  Instead, the filmmaker Kelly Reichardt allows the viewer to use those gorgeous silent moments to absorb thoughts and scenery and to reflect, bring about one's own ideas, and draw one's own conclusions.  I love it when movies don't preach their message to you,slam you over the head with whatever it is they are trying to get you to feel,  and this one is brilliant in that regard.


The film definitely sparked my own memories about similar experiences.  It got the awkward silences right for sure. Mark is the Reformed And Now Responsible Guy and Kurt is the Wild Dude That Never Grew Up Totally.  Kurt is still flying by the seat of his pants and Mark is uncomfortably wearing his like Urkel.  I read a review a few weeks ago that said how the viewer sees both Mark and Kurt by the end of the film will say a lot about how that viewer sees life in general and I think that is a fair and interesting comment. 

Oh, what a week.

The View is self destructing right there on live tv for everyone to see.




































What else is there?

Well, there's a new video for the White Stripes first single from their forthcoming album, Icky Thump.  You can watch it here: Icky Thump Video Hottness