Centuries ago, Bull Shannon was banished from his homeland of Spain for committing sacrificial atrocities in honor of his Dark Lord, Satan. In 1981 Clint Howard summoned of all those Satanic powers to exact revenge on some harsh military school bullies. And that is the basic gist of Evilspeak. It's kind of like Carrie, only with Clint Howard instead of Sissy Spacek.
Clint Howard plays Stanley Coopersmith, an orphaned attendee of a military academy that is seemingly populated entirely by assholes and douche bags. He has two friends in this movie. And one of them is this guy . . .
He's actually a really nice guy . . .
Everyone seems to pick on poor Coopersmith for reasons ranging from his being a poor soccer player to his general Clint Howardy-ness. It's not just the bullies either. The chaplain's a prick. The German accented teacher is a prick. The secretary's a prick. But no one can touch Sarge the Janitor on the prick-scale. He's in his own league. This guy's in his own world. And that world is filled with grit, grime, alcohol, and the brimming desire to intimidate Clint Howard.
Coopersmith has been sent to help ol' Sarge clean out the basement of the ancient chapel as punishment for being Clint Howard. Sarge, the grizzled old misanthrope that he is, gets pissed immediately. I don't know if he's mad because he's being forced to hang out with Clint Howard against his will or he's just angry about everything all the time, but he comes to terms with the situation when he realizes he can lay down on his cot and drink while some ugly kid does all of his work. He kind of makes random appearances here and there throughout the course of the movie to interrogate Coopersmith about his missing crowbar. You, the viewers at home, and I know he took it. The Sarge, however, is burdened by lack of proof.
Eventually Sarge barges into Coopersmith's den of Devil worship and Satan summoning only to find . . . you guessed it . . . HIS CROWBAR! He barely questions why Clint Howard is hanging out in the basement and totally disregards the thousands of lit candles and the world's first computer, but by some divine power his attention is drawn right to that crowbar. He pushes Coopersmith aside and storms into the room and declares, "THERE'S MY FUCKIN' CROWBAR!" My words do his proclamation no justice. His delivery deserves accompanying strikes of lightning, organ music, and Oscar nominations.
"THERE'S MY FUCKIN' CROWBAR!"
Coopersmith said he didn't have it before. Now here it is. Clint Howard caught red handed with Sarge's effin' crowbar. But Sarge isn't all smiles and hugs now that he's been reunited with his precious prybar. He's crushed that Clint Howard wouldn't shoot straight with him. Clint broke the poor guy's heart. Look at the hurt on his face.
Well needless to say Sarge gets upset and attacks Coopersmith in what might have been an eventual rape attempt, though I would like to believe Sarge would never do such a thing. In my mind he was just going to rough Clint up a little bit as reprimand for pilfering his prybar. Either way, before any ill fate can befall Coopersmith, evil devil powers turn Sarge's head, literally. His neck was either horribly broken or the evil spirits just turned his shirt backwards. He comes back later as a zombie doing the evil will of the demonic tag team of Clint Howard and Richard Moll. And that's his story.
Kudos to you, Sarge. In a movie with Clint Howard on roller skates, a shirtless maternal mess hall cook, man eating pigs, a reanimated fetus, and a Satan worshipping Richard Moll, you still managed to be the weirdest thing in the movie. But it's ok. I like weird things.
Here it is, the big finale to our first ever two-part, cliffhanger episode of I LIKE THINGS! Previously I gushed of the glory that was the 1989 Punisher movie. This time I'll be skipping over 2004's The Punisher (which wasn't terrible, just kind of bland) and getting right into the nitty gritty of 2008's Punisher: War Zone.
Punisher: War Zone is the third attempt at bringing Frank Castle to the big screen. If the flaw of the 2004 movie was that the Punisher wasn't brutal or single minded enough, then this movie makes up for it in spades. Although this third incarnation of The Punisher isn't as naked-in-the-sewers-bonkers as Dolph Lundgren's from 1989, he does have a certain Jason Voorhees-like panache for creative and disgusting dispatchings of deadbeat dudes.
Something about this movie really worked for me. It was able to straddle the saddle on top of a horse made of ballistic action and dark humor (and horse meat) without letting one side overtake the other. This movie knows what it is. It doesn't take itself too seriously. And it has the feel of a late night grade school video rental, if that makes any sense or strikes a chord with anybody out there. It's prime for an edited-for-TV version that will be just as fun but for all the wrong reasons.
Justice is Served! OR Would Anybody Care For Some Just Desserts?
Aesthetically, War Zone is really cool. Every scene has a particular and limited color scheme. The emphasis is on the visuals and the action plays out very well before our eyes. Bullets, knives, and even the occasional fist break through skin and bone with sprays of blood. This version of the Punisher is a real A-hole and he systematically takes out the trash. And the trash in this particular case happens to be a bunch of random bad guys who very easily burst or explode! What would movies like this be without warehouses full of faceless bullet magnets? It is 1980s one-man-army logic and I will always accept it with open arms. In the first scene he kills a middle aged woman sitting at a dinner table. Granted she was in the mafia and pulls a gun and he also kills about three thousand other people in next twenty seconds, but still. Way to go, movie!
The main villain is Jigsaw, a horribly scarred mob boss. He wasn't always this way though. In fact he was quite obsessively vain about his looks in the early scenes, prior to his deformation at the hands of the Punisher. Therefore his hideous visage is all the more tragic! Cruel irony! The character is cartoonishly gangstery and hammy. But in a good way. He has a crazy brother, Loony Bin Jim, and together they play bad action movie bad guys. When the time comes to "raise their armies" for the big finale with Mr. P, they practically have a two man parade as they strut and saunter from turf to turf to recruit gangs. It's pretty funny. The movie knows it and it doesn't care. It's ham with a side of bacon. And don't forget the cheese.
If over the top action with a bloody tongue tucked in its cheek is your thing, then you should probably check out Punisher: War Zone. If I can't convince you, then maybe this clip can:
And if that didn't convince you then I'm pretty sure you're not going to like it. So watch something else.
Before I go, I really wanted to point out how much I like one particular part in this movie. It happens during the shootout in the house. Jigsaw is on the stairs and bullets are flying everywhere. You see his mouth move. He clearly yells, "SHIT!" but there is no sound. Slightly delayed behind the lip movement you hear, "FUCK!" It's way too weird to be unintentional, right? They couldn't have been that sloppy by accident. Right? Obviously someone making this movie knew I was going to laugh and press rewind and laugh again. I hope.
I'm not a comic book guy. My only real exposure to the character of The Punisher in the world of comics came from my cousin who would show me the occasional panel of bloody brutality from one of the issues he was reading. He also showed me a great story that had The Punisher, Wolverine, and Ghost Rider fighting the devil. I knew these guys from cartoons and toys, but not from the source, not from the comic books. In other words, I knew who they were, but some guy at New England comics would most likely ridicule my preteen, non-canonical assessments of the characters. To me Ghost Rider was a rad biker skeleton who was always on fire, Wolverine was the most popular and coolest super hero at the time because he had knives on his hands, and The Punisher was the vigilante whose comics were deemed "mature" and had to be hidden from my cousin's parents. That was the extent of my comic book knowledge.
My only other knowledge of The Punisher came one Friday night at 8pm. I was probably ten or eleven years old and I remember repeatedly asking my mom what time it was while we were picking up Chinese food from Ocean Kai. I really wanted to be home before 8 o'clock because I saw a commercial for The Punisher movie the day before. Those were the days before fancy pants cable, DVRs, or even programmable VCRs as far as my family was concerned. Anyway, my mom had previously balked at renting the R rated movie for me because on the back of the box someone had a gun crammed in his mouth. This is the lady who let me watch Jaws everyday as a kid. No amount of televised gunplay will ever change the fact that I will forever be far more afraid of sharks than guns. But now The Punisher was going to be on regular TV. And if TV said it was ok for me to watch then she no longer had any recourse!
Needless to say the movie delivers everything a little action hungry kid would want: gun fights, Ivan Drago, an abandoned amusement park hideout, ninjas, Louis Gossett Jr . . . it had it all! I remember that my main complaint as a kid was that he didn't wear his skull shirt and that he lived in the sewer and never came across the Ninja Turtles. I pined for that crossover movie for the ensuing weeks after seeing this.
Many people crap on this movie, but it is borderline perfect for what it is. It's just that the sentiment of that previous sentence hinges entirely on what one is expecting this movie to be. I'm sure comic book purists have their gripes with it, but as I said before, I know next to nothing about the comics so I can't really make those arguments. But folks who grabbed a video cassette with Dolph Lundgren strapped to the gills with firearms in front of a motorcycle from a video store shelf in 1989 probably weren't disappointed. They knew what they were getting into.
I honestly feel that this movie can stand toe to toe and possibly head and shoulders above most direct to video action titles of the late 80s. That surge of low budget action that came from the eighties into the early nineties had so much going for it: video stores were abundant and had shelf space, there was no internet to speak of so there was the thrill of the hunt to find a good movie to rent, and bullets, body counts, ninjas and samurai swords were all in vogue. There is a certain feel to this kind of movie that I have trouble classifying. I always wonder how these types of movies play to different age groups and how much of my fondness is rooted in childhood nostalgia. There will always be something about wet asphalt and rusty garbage cans under the street lights at night that makes me want to see denim-clad thugs meet their well deserved demise at the hands of some vigilante or renegade cop.
Ok, you might say, at present we have three different versions of The Punisher in movies. What makes the two you like so special, Tommy?And what's wrong with the one you didn't like, you picky asshole? In the end it's all going to be a matter of personal tastes. People like what they like. In the 1989 Punisher, I like the previously mentioned 80s-action atmosphere, I like the cheesy multi-colored shattering glass opening credits, I like the frayed friendship with Louis Gossett Jr, and I like that they didn't try to make you feel too bad for The Punisher. In this movie The Punisher spends his spare time in the sewer sitting naked while debating with God about justice. He's clearly off his rocker. I think that is something a character like this needs. Someone who murders hundreds of people, for whatever reason, should usually be portrayed as crazy.
The Punisher has been waging war on organized crime for a few years and getting his personal bodycount into the triple digits while his old friend, from his old life, Louis Gossett Jr is tracking him down. Gossett plays Jake, Frank's old partner. All he wants is to help his friend, to somehow pull him from the murky depths of vengeful insanity. Unfortunately for him, vengeful insanity is the deepest and murkiest of all insanities!
The Punisher isn't completely without morals though. When the Yakuza decide to kidnap all of the mafia bosses' kids, it's up to The Punisher to get them back! No more innocents are going to get hurt on his watch! And to prove he's still crazy, The Punisher has to be slightly coaxed into this quest by a bum who rhymes everything he says. I don't know if this Shakespearean wino is a character from the comics or not, but he kind of sticks out like sore thumb in this movie. And I wouldn't have it any other way. He trades criminal underworld secrets to disturbed vigilantes for RC cars carrying payloads of brown-bagged hooch. Trust me, that sentence makes sense.
This movie delivers in the action department. Bullet shells fly, things blow up, bad guys drop dead left and right. There are cool locations for this carnage to take place like the empty fun house and the Japanese style Yakuza lair. But what ties it all together is Dolph Lundgren. He's pale and greasy and mumbly and you can believe he's been in the sewers for years talking to himself and only coming out when it's time to murder bad dudes. And I'm not sure if it was intentional, but the combination of Dolph's sickly pale face, sunken sleepless eyes, and black greasepaint facial stubble occasionally creates the iconic Punisher skull that was missing from his shirt. I think they knew what they were doing.
Not that these kinds of movies need or strive to be emotional roller coasters, but I want to give "mad props", as the kids say, to Louis Gossett Jr. I know there are deleted scenes on youtube and elsewhere that you can watch to see the background story develop between Frank and Jake. But those are deleted scenes and therefore not in the movie. So Gossett only has limited screen time to get his character across and he does a really good job. For every hour Frank Castle has spent fighting his one man war, Jake has been searching for him so he could save him, help him, and redeem him. When the Punisher is finally apprehended, the two men meet again in a jail cell. Jake tries pouring his heart out and all he gets is a stone faced stare and smart ass answers. So he flips his shit. Louis Gossett Jr does a stellar job in this scene. You can see it here at about three and a half minutes into this clip. And check out how Dolph Lundgren doesn't even flich when Gossett jumps out of his chair and grabs his shirt. He's a pro.
Excellent Stunt at 0:29 Excellent Scene at 3:15
This clip also features my favorite stunt from the movie. The Punisher crashes a bus into a van. Standard action movie shenanigans. But there just so happened to be a guy on the hood of that van firing his machine gun into that bus full of kids. He goes flying into the bus through the windshield. It's awesome. Then he gets right up and attacks again, only to be launched off the bus like that mugger in the "pinkie toe" story Kramer told on an episode of Seinfeld.
That about wraps it up for the 1989 Dolph Lundgren version of The Punisher. If you like low budget 80s action, it's right up your alley. I want to give honorable mention ribbons to Kim Miyori who played a very good villain as Lady Tanaka and to Jeroen Krabbe for rocking that denim jacket during the final shootout and for pronouncing "Thomas" phonetically.
Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of "I LIKE 2 OUT OF 3 PUNISHER MOVIES!"
It's no secret that I love the Phantasm movies. It's one of the best series out there, regardless of genre. If you are unfamiliar with the Phantasm story, allow me to give you the short version of what is going on throughout the four movies. As a young boy, Michael learns of the secret evil plans of the Tall Man. These plans, of course, revolve around snatching all of our recently deceased friends and relatives from the cemetery and squashing them into dwarfs filled with goo in order to be shipped off to an alternate dimension so they can be used as slave labor. They need to be squashed on account of the "gravity" and the "heat." It's science. You wouldn't understand.
Michael enlists the help of his good buddy Reggie the ice cream vendor to fight the forces of evil. For four movies Mike and Reggie go toe to toe with the Tall Man and his minions while the line between nightmare and reality is constantly crossed and blurred. Will the Tall Man succeed in harvesting all of our world's dead or will a whiny kid grow up to be a saviour with a middle-aged, ponytailed warrior by his side? That's the basic gist. Very little gets explained directly. The ambiguity of what is "real" in the context of the movies and what is some nightmarish hallucination of Michael's is part of what makes these movies so fun. That and flying Christmas tree ornaments that plunk into your forehead and bore through your skull to suck out your blood. Trust me, these movies are great.
In the first movie, when we aren't witnessing strange sights through the eyes of Michael, like the Tall Man lifting the coffin of a family friend from the ground and into his hearse or cloaked midgets rustling in the cemetery at night, we catch interesting glimpses of a tranquility that we know is going to be destroyed when the Tall Man's plans are put into action. We get to learn little bits and pieces about the lives of these people. We get to see what they are going to be fighting for. Michael and Jody's parents are dead and potentially at the mercy of the Tall Man at the mausoleum. Michael is constantly worried about Jody taking off. And with good reason. He's probably taking off. We get a brief conversation with a friend (who, judging by his sweater, wasn't the closest of friends with cool 70s leather jacket Jody) that implies Jody was "on the road" seeing lots of action with his band. It's a little hazy, but I think with the scant evidence at hand we can assume that Jody, Reggie, and Tommy the mustachioed corpse from scene 1 who got stolen by the Tall Man were in a band together. Then Tommy had to go and get himself squashed into a midget full of nuclear custard. What a way to end a trio, indeed.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. The point I was trying to make was that even though there are so many cool things to like in these movies, you need to appreciate the little things too. I'm sure everybody loves seeing that random evil caretaker guy take a flying sphere to the cranium and then piss all over the floor after his brains have been liquefied. Who wouldn't? It's awesome. But I also really like those calm before the storm moments like when Reggie swings by the house to jam.
Reggie pulls up to the house in his ice cream truck with his guitar holstered on the side like a Smith & Wesson. He's wearing his uniform, sure. But he hops out of the truck, grabs his six string, and saunters up to the porch with music on his mind. He simultaneously says, "I mean business," but, "I also like to rock," without uttering a word. And I wonder how long Jody had been sitting there singing, "do do do doo" before Reggie showed up? This is part of what Mike and Reggie are fighting for throughout these movies: The freedom to just hang out on the porch jamming and wearing bad hats. This is reinforced in OblIVion when there is a dreamlike vision of another possible reality where Jody never had a car wreck. Mike, Reggie, and Jody are hanging out at the beach as the sun sets along with their hairlines and they are rocking out in slow motion. And more importantly, they're happy. In this brief glimpse we see a world where the Tall Man never was. A world much like the one this scene on the porch shows us. The scene of Reggie and Jody on the porch sums up what is best in life: freedom, friends, good music, good weather . . . and bow ties and ice cream.
So Reggie sits down and immediately starts riffing on the grooves Jody's laying down. They sound good, man. "Sittin' Here At Midnight" is pleasant and smooth. That is to say it's pleasant and smooth until about 54 seconds into the video when they both let out an, "UGH!" and the song gets a little edge to it. Man, Reggie seems to love this part. I get the feeling this was the part he came up with. If you pick up Phantasm on DVD it has a studio recording of this great song by Bill Thornbury, who played Jody. The rocking, edgy section of the song that made Reggie so happy is absent. I like to make up my own backstories to things like this so I just assume Reggie did indeed write that rocking, edgy part. And Thornbury secretly felt threatened. Could it be? Could Reggie rock harder than Jody? It's a good thing Tommy got wasted in the first scene because a few years down the line, right as their band was about to reach the pinnacle of their success, there probably would have been some internal power struggle and the band would have exploded, much to the chagrin of their female following.
Anyway, after they finish rocking out Reggie seems pretty satisfied and says, "We're hot as love." There are two ways to take this. Either that was some complimentary phrase from the seventies that never became popular enough to enter the common lexicon or, more likely, it was the name of their band. "We're Hot As Love." Can you imagine the festival crowds that would have turned out to see Reggie in his white suit and bow tie, Jody in his hat, and Tommy with his mustache playing in front of a huge banner the read: HOT AS LOVE? Damn you, the Tall Man, for robbing us all of this possible and probable sight.
Another reason this scene is cool, aside from the rocking, is that it isn't as random or pointless as it might seem on the surface. I've watched Phantasm with people countless times and most of those times, right as this scene ends, they say, "Tommy, what the Hell just happened and why are you making me watch this?" They usually say it with their eyes, but they say it nonetheless. As otherworldly and strange as the movie's soundtrack is, this song by two schmoes on the porch roots the story back into some kind of reality we can relate to. As I said before this scene lets us see part of what's at stake if the Tall Man wins but it also serves another purpose by giving us a piece to the Phantasm puzzle. At the end of the song a cocky and self-assure Reggie grabs his tuning fork. And we all know, or at least will know by the final few minutes of the movie, that the tuning fork is in some way the key to stopping the Tall Man. It's just as scientific as the "heat" and "gravity" so get off my case.
So bottom line, America: Don't let anybody take away your right to jam on the porch. Especially not some interdimensional asshole who wants to harvest our dead. Sadly, this probably isn't the last you'll hear from me on this subject. Sue me. I like to overanalyze things. And if there was ever a series of movies that was perfect for overanalysis, it was Phantasm. And I like Phantasm. Particularly when Reggie and Jody rock out on the porch.
I very rarely remember my dreams. There are only a select few that have made it out of my subconscious to be remembered in my waking life. Two of them were nightmares and the rest were just really weird. I like the weird ones better.
Last night I was dreaming that I was on a cross country road trip with Terry Funk. In the middle of the night we stopped at an isolated old motel. We sat in the dark with the gaunt and creepy motel manager while Terry Funk told sad old man stories. That's all I really remember.
Terry Funk - sad old man
The weirdest dream that I remember having slipped its way out of my sleeping brain as a kid. I was pretty young, probably in the first grade. My brothers and I were being chased through an old castle by Freddy Krueger. It wasn't an ordinary castle though. The stones of the walls were drawn in black crayon. We were basically running through a child's doodle. It was like an episode of Muppet Babies on acid.
There was a a big floating crate that was spinning through the halls of this mysterious castle. My brothers and I had to get to it. Inside this rotating wooden box was apparently the only place that Freddy Krueger wasn't allowed to disembowel us. We were running towards the box with Freddy close behind us. We jumped into the wooden cube at the last possible second. My brothers got in safely but my foot was hanging out of the box. Freddy grabbed me by the ankle and yanked me out of the crate. I did what any wise monster fighter would do in this situation. I spit a mouthful of chewed macaroni in Freddy Krueger's face. I was pretty satisfied with myself, knowing that I had vanquished my foe. Freddy didn't see it that way unfortunately. He reeled back with his bladed hand and swiped at my gut. Then I woke up.
Freddy Krueger's Worst Nightmare!
I guess I should have been scared but the complete absurdity of it made it hard to be frightened. I was so sure that macaroni was going to work! I wonder what all of this says about my mind. I also wonder how many awesomely weird dreams I've forgotten by opening my eyes to the light of morning. I bet there were some doozies!
I'll leave you with an important lesson that I learned from another weird dream I had as a kid. When pirate ships are attacking Massachusetts and only you and your friends can stop them, you are going to be tempted to use the elevator. Be careful. There is a lady in a long tan coat with long blonde hair waiting by the elevator. She is going to turn around and reveal that she has a skeleton face. Don't worry. The door to the stairwell can fly and you and your friends can ride it.
Chinese Democracy is finally here. It's legally available for you and I to listen to without fear of Axl on a sleigh pulled by federal agents crashing through the wall. Liner notes, artwork, the whole shebang. It exists in a finalized form.
People who wouldn't care about a Guns n Roses album in 2008 scoff at it as an exercise in self indulgence, and those of us who have waited forever to actually witness this thing have spent a decade-plus building up unmeetable expectations. But I think once you can admit to yourself that this isn't a Guns n Roses album but a cd with Axl singing some "new" material you can actually listen somewhat objectively. It took me about three listens to get there. It actually feels more like a Faith No More album with 5 guitarists hired to make Jim Martin feel like shit.
I'm glad it's here. It's not Guns n Roses. It could never deliver on its "Second coming," "going to save the record industry," "be the greatest event in Rock n Roll history." And I'm still listening to it.
Of course, according to Axl's good buddy Sebastian Bach there is enough material for 3 or 4 cds. Perhaps we will have Chinese Democracy sequels over the next few months or years and Axl can exorcise this fourteen year demon-monkey from his back. As long as we don't have to wait decades for it, I'll be in line to give it a listen. Who am I kidding? If the next album comes out 2038 I'll still get it, unless, of course, I've died from a burger related heart attack by then. I like burgers.
As for the songs, here are my thoughts on a select few:
-"Shackler's Revenge," aside from the chorus, sounds entirely like a Buckethead song. It could have been on Monsters and Robots and not sounded out of place. But after I have amputated my connection to this "needing" to sound like classic GnR, it isn't a bad song especially in the sub chorus with those upbeat hi-hat hits.
-"Better" and "Street of Dreams" are currently what I feel are the best songs on the cd. The latter particularly because it comes the closest to having the ability to pass for what I once knew as Guns n Roses, albeit the post-dangerous-gritty-barroom Guns n Roses. When the bass comes in, I can see Duff standing there for a second. Even after that amputation I haven't been able to fully not want a real GnR album in my cd player.
-If the song "If the World" had Mike Patton singing it, it could have been on Album of the Year, an album which came out around the same time this album began it's journey in the 90s.
-"Catcher in the Rye," is good for the some of the same reasons as "Street of Dreams." The "nana-nas" actually make me smile but I'm pretty sure it's for the wrong reasons. That is some enthusiastic "nana na"-ing. And maybe I read too deeply into things but when Axl sings, "makes me wish I had a gun," I assume he knows where that leads my brain. A reunion isn't what he means but after this long you know he's thought and rethought his choices of words and decided to use such an iconic word in this scenario. It helps me believe there is more to this whole Chinese Democracy thing then just an album that took forever. I'll leave it to the conspiracy theorists to deconstruct the potential meanings of everything in his words.
-And how about that Kenny Loggins-from-Caddyshack intro to "Scraped?" I haven't decided if I love it for the right reasons yet.
-About 36 seconds into "Sorry" I crack up at how Axl says, "but I don't want to do it." Go listen to it. I love it. Otherwise it's a pretty good song that feels a little Alice in Chains-y.
-I'm honestly surprised that Axl didn't get Pavarotti to duet on "This I Love." It would have worked and not made it anymore pompous than it already sounds. But I've found that song to be a guilty pleasure that I might not yet admit that I like. Don't tell anyone.
Another potential positive of Chinese Democracy is that it features both Buckethead and Brain which puts Axl and Les Claypool a red, corn-rowed hair away from collaborating.
People are going to shit on it for not being GnR, but even GnR themselves could never replicate the sound from Appetite. Steven Adler is often overlooked but he deserves as much credit for that original sound as the rest.
I'll end here, knowing I will have countless new thoughts and feelings on the album as time goes by. Since I have finally been able to hear this album, I can go back to waiting to hear what Slash puts out next. Velvet Revolver, Snake Pit, a solo album, whatever it is, it will sound like Slash. And Slash sounds more like Guns n Roses than Guns n Roses does.
I am very glad that it has finally arrived and am ready to hear what comes next from Axl's name brand band. I'm also ready to hear what comes next from the guys who helped make GnR what it was. I like Chinese food, Chinese action movies and, of course, Chinese Democracy.
It all started when I woke up at the crack of mid afternoon one day in late May. There was a text message on my phone from Alicia saying something along the lines of, "I just got fourth row seats to Tom Waits. Want to go to Ohio?" I'm very glad I said yes. It was one of, if not the, best shows I've ever been to. But in addition to the concert itself, the occasion called for a random adventure to Ohio and a meandering journey home with extra time for diversions like Grandpa's Cheese Barn.
For those of you who know me, you'll note that I generally sleep somewhere between the hours of 6 AM and 1 PM. So when the time of departure was set at 4 in the morning on the Saturday of the show I had grand plans of getting out of work Friday night and cramming a few hours of sleep into my night before we left. But alas, I failed at sleep. I was too pumped about the show and the trip so I made some more CDs for the road.
We hit the road and soon enough it was time for breakfast. In my world, if you are at McDonalds during breakfast hours then you are probably up too late. No matter what you select off of a McDonalds breakfast menu after a night of not sleeping, it is going to kill you. Trying to prevent future horrible illness I passed on the McGriddles and went with the gold standard McMuffin, the lesser of the two diuretic evils. Follow that up in a few hours with car-warmed cookies and you have a potential recipe for disaster. But luckily I'm fueled by stupidity and I'm utterly hardcore so I made it to Ohio A-OK! I thrive on Bad Idea Fuel.
Speaking of "udderly hardcore" (which we weren't) we saw a crap ton of cows, which informed part of the road trip rules. Alicia needed to "moo" at every cow sighting or suffer some sort of undefined, self-imposed penalty. I'm not really sure why she had to moo or what the consequence would be if she didn't, but I'm glad we didn't need to find out. A missed moo could have ended in decapitation for all we know. She was right on top of those moos, though. We were also able to find out what kind of noise Pennsylvania farmers make while they drive their tractors. They say, "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH."
On the way to and from Ohio, every cow was "mooed" at, every horse was "nayed" at, every farmer in a tractor was "AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHed" at, and every EZ pass toll was met with a two-person round of cheers and a The Face into the nearest surveillance camera. As the journey continued and we passed across the PA line we saw one of the greatest signs ever constructed by mankind:
This picture isn't of the first actual sign we saw for this Heaven on Earth for those inclined to destroy something, but you get the point. I believe the first sign we saw was all the same font and merely said without any punctuation, "FIREWORKS KARATE SUPPLY." We made a mental footnote to return to this explosively dangerous place on our homeward journey. Right now we were on our way to see Tom Waits. And we didn't want to keep . . . Tom . . . Wait . . ing . . . (I'm so sorry).
I have to admit by the time we arrived in Ohio, I was dead. And I wasn't even driving so I can only imagine how Alicia was feeling. We checked into the motel which was located next to a really seedy looking Mexican restaurant and across the road from Arby's. I think both places served the same horse meat. We needed to eat and opted for the Arby's since I was suspicious of the not-quite-midget taking his cigarette break outside of the Mexican place. He was up to no good if you ask me.
I was still feeling rough from the cocktail of no sleep, McMuffins, and cookies so I figured what could Arby's possibly do to alter the equation at this point? Barely an Arby's meal later, I was asleep in the motel room for an hour or two to recharge my batteries next to a night stand littered with uneaten seasoned curlies and ketchup packets. That little bit of sleep was all I needed. I was completely ready for the show and to fend off any attacks from the murderous elderly couple residing in the room next door. I think they may have been in cahoots with the not-so-midgety-guy from the Mexican eatery.
Onward to Columbus!
What a classy marquee to greet the many concert goers who were already lined up for a block when we arrived. We nabbed our spot in line amidst the multi-generational crowd of mostly hipster folks. Everybody seemed pretty excited and they should have been. I didn't know it at the time, but the show had sold out in about three minutes. We were all lucky to have tickets.
When we got into the theater, which had the most polite ushers I have ever encountered in my life, we were brought to our seats. "Fourth row" as a concept hadn't fully sunk into my brain until I was sitting there. We were so unbelievably close to the stage. We were the first ones in our section so it was really fun to see each new audience member get to his or her seat and go through the same series of reactions:
1) holy bananas, these seats are great 2) wow, what a great theater 3) I'm even a little more excited now than I was a few minutes ago 4) congratulatory nods and handshakes all around
The theater (or "theatre") seemed like the perfect place to stage this show. The stage setup consisted of a wall of old rusty looking megaphone and phonograph speakers with a littered display of instruments strewn about the stage. In the middle was a raised platform where Tom Waits would soon be. It looked like something from a 1920s traveling side show or a carnival's junkyard. But the theater itself seemed like it should host vaudeville acts that very rarely get ribald enough to offend anybody's delicate sensibilities. So the combination of those two elements, the classy and the trashy, made for a great environment and a perfect fit for something called "Glitter and Doom."
There was no opening act, so when the lights lowered everyone got excited. People applauded at the dark shapes walking onto the stage. When the music started and the lights came on I was immediately struck by Tom Waits' incredible stage presence. I don't think it was just me, either. He exuded something intangible as he hunched over his microphone. He seemed larger than life as he stomped his Frankenstein-ish boots into his little stage, kicking up clouds of dust in the yellow lights. It all felt surreal, both by design and by his naturally unsettling demeanor. I didn't even recognize the first song (Lucinda) at the time but I already knew the whole show was going to be special. That's one of the elements that made the show so good. They did different arrangements of most of the songs. You are experiencing something unfamiliar no matter how many times you have listened to the albums.
For two and a half hours Tom Waits shouted and yelled and crowed with all his energy. He played the part of preacher, comedian, carnival barker, and general weird old man. In the past few years he has really turned into the weird old guy he's been wanting to be for decades. He sang the hell out of each and every song. The band was really good too. They were all multi-instrumentalists, as far as I could tell, with the most versatile being the brass/wind player.
It's hard to pick out highlights. The whole show was pretty great. And that's not a cop out or excuse to not write more (since I obviously enjoy a good ramble). It was a really, really good show. I wouldn't have minded hearing some more stuff from Rain Dogs but that is only a minor qualm. It's like wishing there were more leftovers after an awesome Thanksgiving dinner. You enjoyed it thoroughly but still wish there was even more. A little greedy, I guess.
It's interesting how much a performer's personality adds to a stage show. There weren't many props, just the stage setting and his wild gesticulating and contorting while he belted out the songs. He would occasionally use a megaphone to shout into the microphone which contributed both audibly and visually to the whole scenario. During "Eyeball kid" he used a sequined bowler hat to great effect, turning his head into a disco ball, reflecting beams of light into the crowd. It's hard to describe. Just take my word for it that it was awesome.
The best review I can give is that he could have kept playing indefinitely and I still would have sat there, contentedly. But I think the timer on which they based the duration of the show was Tom Waits' sweat stain trajectory. If the tour dates were dictated by the constellation Hydra, then obviously the show length was dictated by his jacket's saturation point. Epic pit stains eventually connected to epic back stains until, by the end of the second encore, his entire coat was a new, darker shade. He put a lot into the show.
I'm leaving out a ton of details, I'm sure, but eff you, man. You should've been there.
The way home was cool because we had disposable time. We could indulge in excursions off the non-existent itinerary. We could have followed PEHDTSCKJMBA if we had chosen. We briefly considered heading to Knoxville and finding tickets for the next show but instead went north towards Cleveland and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We got distracted by the previously mentioned Cheese Barn and a hundred signs for Niagara Falls. Since neither of us had seen the American side of the falls, that was the new destination. It was pretty awesome. The actual views of the falls are more scenic than the Canadian side, but the town didn't seem to hold a candle to its genius Canadian counterpart. Then again we didn't explore too much of the town. But I sure didn't see a giant Frankenstein on top of a Burger King like I did in Canada. That whole street might very well be the best place on the planet.
Happiest Place On Earth?
The rest of the trip home was spent avoiding murder hotels like "The Red Carpet Inn" (I wonder why the carpets are so red? Murder?), trying to find Castleton from Time Chasers (which turned out to be in Vermont) so that we could get that sweet shirt, and mooing at cows.
It was an excellent adventure. And I like excellent adventures, so it all worked out.
