Welcome to a new monthly feature on brainworm. I suspect it may go through a handful of titles before I settle into a comfy little brand-ravine. For now I’m going to refer to it as “Showing My Cards.” Given my recent flirtations with cultural criticism, I feel the need to do precisely that: lay my cards on the table and disclose my own tastes. In the interest of transparency, it makes sense to divulge which of the various firehoses of art, culture, and content I have been drinking from most deeply. Furthermore, in the spirit of the brainworm name, I’ll be focusing on the passing fixations we all find as cultural consumers, rather than any sort of illusion of objectivity. Finally, I’d also like this to be a regular status report for interested readers. In short; recommendations, ruminations, and some suggestions as to the shape of things to come. Let’s dig in.
MUSIC
Chart Courtesy of tapmusic dot net.
Earworm of the Month: MILLION DOLLAR BABY - Tommy Richman
How exactly do you follow modern music anymore? I have no idea. Pitchfork is so declawed and corporatized as to be a nonentity. The Soundcloud and Bandcamp gold rushes never really grabbed me. I don’t care about Anthony Fantano. Spotify’s release radar is clogged with B-sides and demos from decaying rock stars. I never get notified in any expedient way about new releases, save for new projects from the entrenched plutocracy atop the Billboard Hot 100.
In light of these circumstances, I’ve really come to depend on my friend Casual-T. His comprehensive yearly rankings of the year’s top albums and EP’s have become a welcome sight on my Instagram stories around Christmastime each year. As such I experience “new” music on a one year delay but that’s a whole hell of a lot better than never hearing it at all.
Tommy Richman’s THE RUSH topped Casual-T’s EP rankings last year and I certainly couldn’t dispute its quality. Richman is the kind of talent that seems to thrive in the modern era of digitally distributed music. An ingenious studio-dwelling production gremlin who always seems to have something new dropping. A guy without a traditionally great singing voice who excels at using the voice he has as an instrument. It was inevitable that he’d produce something as catchy, bouncy, and instantly iconic as MILLION DOLLAR BABY. It’s been in heavy rotation since I heard it for the first time and I suspect I’ll be riding its swaggering waves well into the summer.
MISC. THOUGHTS:
Other Projects from my April Chart Which Featured on Casual-T’s 2023 Rankings Include:
Free Sex - Chris Crack
Pairing Mode - Ray Lozano
Faith is a Rock - MIKE
MID-AIR - Paris Texas
Playing Robots into Heaven - James Blake
GLOW - Wesley Joseph
Battery Operated Simps - Chris Crack
They put the Katamari Damacy soundtrack on Spotify just in time for Summer. Massive W for those in the know.
FILM
Eyeworm of the Month: Freddy Got Fingered, directed by Tom Green
Cinema has been winning this month, to say the very least. Multiple first time viewings of long sought-after films from directors I count among my personal favorites (Friedkin, Ferrara, Bong). Taking in Lawrence of Arabia on 70mm film particularly feels like a statement piece in terms of cinephile street cred. And in terms of new releases I’d be remiss to not mention Rose Glass’ Love Lies Bleeding, which inspired a recent essay on this blog and made me all the more certain that we are in the middle of the K-Stew Renaissance.
So naturally I’m gonna talk about the legendary critical and commercial bomb that was Freddy Got Fingered. Don’t make that face at me. I told you right at the beginning here, this is about what I’ve been thinking about. Not what I thought was best. And I still occasionally hear Tom Greene screaming “Forty! Million! Deutsch! Marks! Bob!” into his fake cellphone in the middle of the “fancy restaurant!”
Freddy Got Fingered is a jagged, off-putting, disgusting needle in the eye wrapped in the worst visual and cultural trends of 90s comedy. It rules. They didn’t hate this because “there was nothing else like it,” they hated it because it’s too much like the sort of mean spirited manchild gross-out comedies doing gangbusters at the box office in the late 90s. Everyone likes a sugar candy, now try eating a mixing bowl full of them. Before long you’ll only taste your thickening, vomitous saliva and the cold sores on your tongue. It’s a personal principle of mine that you can’t make great art for an audience you hate but I’ll be damned if Tom Green doesn’t give it a try. I don’t think the result can’t be called “great” without being patronizing towards it. But it’s memorable, quotable, and above all, audacious. If it had been like 10% coherent it would have sucked.
MISC. THOUGHTS:
There’s a non-zero percent chance that one day I’ll try to lowball someone on Facebook marketplace selling a pre-owned late 90s Chrysler LeBaron just so I can drive around with the top down, blasting the Dead Kennedys version of “I Fought the Law” and screaming “where’s your LeBaron, Freddy?” Bonus points for being the car mentioned in Cake’s “Short Skirt/Long Jacket.”
LITERATURE
Wordworm of the Month - The Human Factor by Graham Greene
Awarded by default here, though not undeservingly. I gotta read more. Maybe this will pressure me to do it.
Something in the British character really does lend itself to dour, slow burn spy fiction. Gray, rainy weather, overcoats, emotional restraint, brown liquor and port wine, too much of each. I feel like Greene would call Ian Fleming a poser directly to his face. Where Fleming broke free of the shackles of foreign office tedium by sending his imperialist superman James Bond to seduce exotic women in exotic places, Greene’s aging, depressive Maurice Castle remains anchored to his routine, facing his obsolescence, quietly accepting that his best days are behind him. He’s not out to save the world or even change it. Merely to protect the scant good he’s found within it by any means necessary. He hates apartheid and loves his black wife and adopted son. He’s so cool.
VIDEO GAMES
Pixelworm of the Month - Persona 4 Golden, ATLUS
I can actually remember a five-star review of the original PS2 release of Persona 4 headlining the review section of the first issue of GamePro I ever hustled my parents into buying for me. Only took me sixteen years to get around to playing the damn thing. Back when P4 first made its way to US shores, Atlus’ venerable Shin Megami Tensei series of modern fantasy role-playing games had long been the territory of weird older siblings and cousins. The kind of thing you’d have recommended to you for when you were ready to put baby stuff like the latest Pokemon off to the side and play a real RPG. The Persona games have served as a kind of on-ramp for new players reluctant to grapple with SMT’s notorious difficulty spikes, and their attempts to broaden the tent have really paid off. P4 and its subsequent Golden expanded edition laid the groundwork for Persona 5 to become a crossover hit.
I bought P5 on release, though it took an embarrassing amount of time thereafter for me to actually beat the thing. My run through the Nintendo Switch release of Persona 3: Portable had a similar stop-start quality, though in a much-abridged timeframe. I didn’t experience that problem with P4, which I attribute to a kind of Goldilocks quality in setting, tone, and character writing. For the uninitiated: the Persona games are basically one half dungeon crawler and one half life simulator. You attend high school, make friends, and deepen your relationships with them. That social element then translates into benefits in combat as you and your pals unravel each game’s unique paranormal mystery plot. P4’s story centers around the mysterious serial murders stalking the quaint country hamlet of Inaba. Don’t let that brief description fool you, this is likely the happiest, most life affirming game about a serial killer ever made.
In addition to its original plots, each Persona title tends to have a dominant theme which shapes its world. P3 blankets the player in a moody, death-drive melancholy, P5 rages against societal injustice and corrupt authority. While both of these are quality titles that I’d recommend to interested parties, I find P4’s general tone so much comfier and easier to inhabit. Its themes of living authentically and forging one’s own path to truth and fulfillment really resonated with me. Inaba has this wonderful Twin Peaks salt of the earth quality, and feels like a character in its own right. The actual human cast impresses too, with a lineup of rural weirdos and a core friend group that hits on a comfortable sitcom chemistry. Where P3’s SEES felt like work buddies and P5’s Phantom Thieves bickered as much as they cooperated, P4’s Investigation Team feel natural as a unit.
It’s not perfect. The Persona series has a consistent problem of making great 70 hour games trapped in 90 hour bodies. P4’s third act is hamstrung by at least three separate false endings. I found myself frustrated by the act of beating the game, but find it difficult to summon that same negativity now that I’ve actually beaten it. I’ve even had the soundtrack in rotation, also the series best in my opinion.
BLOG BIZ
I may write about politics. I may write about Taylor Swift. I’m unsure which potential subject scares me more.