Tell Me That Ain’t Insecurr

Kayne West w/ Lauryn Hill “Self Concious” – With this song, Kayne West singlehandedly redeems Lauryn Hill’s dire soul music-by-way-of-Jandek Unplugged 2.0 record by sampling a line from one of its songs into a catchy hook for this fine tune. Actually, if you only knew about that record from hearing this song, you may be left with the impression that the record may actually be quite good, but trust me, if you go back and listen to it, you will be quickly disabused of that notion. I haven’t spent enough time with Kanye’s College Dropout record to form any solid opinions about, but it sounds pretty good to me so far. I would guess that this song will be the next big single, after “Through The Wire” finally runs its course.

Lizzy Mercier Descloux “Funky Stuff” – RIYL: The Slits, basically. I really lack the knowledge of African and Latin music to make any kind of informed remarks about her music’s roots in that milieu, so when I say that she basically sounds like a funkier, more disco version of The Slits, you just have to chalk that up as being the best I can do given somewhat limited cultural reference points. This is taken from Mambo Nasau, which along with Press Color has recently been reissued on Ze Records. Both records are excellent, I highly recommend them.

There’s A “Patriotic American Undertone” Here?

Reader mail!

Hi – I have enjoyed reading your blog and generally I agree with what you have

to say. However it would be nice if I didn’t feel that everything had

such a bloody American patriotic undertone. I know this is a blog and

therefore freedom of opinion etc is what its all about. I just wanted to

express my disappointment in what I thought was an excellent blog. Oh

well. As regards to ‘The Triplets of Belville’ your comments just expose

your lack of intellect, you obviously didn’t ‘get’ the film at all, yet

you like ‘American Wedding’, please. Oh have you seen ‘Stuck on you’ bet

you’d love that. Anyway all the best with your site.

I love the idea that one kind of lowbrow comedy film is the “intellectual” one, apparently by virtue of it being a foreign film, or specifically, a French film. If anything, The Triplets Of Belleville is a more lowbrow and sophmoric movie than American Wedding. I’m totally baffled by the implication that there’s some kind of insidious American patriotism at work in my writing at all – is this coming from the fact that I rate two films with the word “American” in the title a B and an A+ respectively, but disliked the lone French film? The Frenchness of The Triplets Of Belleville was not the problem, really – I have no issue with the French.

I seriously do not think there was anything to “get” about the film – it’s plotted on the same level of a children’s cartoon or a bad newspaper comic strip, and the wit is base and rather mindless. It’s just not funny, man. If your idea of a cutting satire is the image of an obese Statue Of Liberty with a cheeseburger, then hey, go and love this movie. But please, don’t try to sell it to me as a great work of comedy. More than anything else, the film struck me as being very dumb, which is why I find the insult of my intellect to be particularly amusing.

I have fair expectations for comedy – I don’t expect everything to be as perfect as say, The Office or Arrested Development, but I can appreciate a lot of flawed mainstream work on its own merits. I went in to the Triplets Of Belleville wanting to like it – I wouldn’t spend $10 on it otherwise – but it utterly failed to entertain me, stimulate me, or make me laugh. I can find some worth in the worst films, but with this one, the best I can say is that the animation was alright, if a bit on the busy side.

I’m sorry, reader, but I’m going to have to chalk up your opinions to being more indicative of an anti-American mainstream bias/snobbishness on your part than as any kind of realistic indictment of kneejerk patriotism in my writing.