I think I said everything I have to say about that Cass McCombs album–which, to be clear, is very pleasant. It’s a little unfair to judge something based on how amazing one small part of it is in relation to the whole. Just because I wish ALL of it had been that amazing–unfortunately I’m not Ruler of the Universe and everything I say isn’t law (yet). I still think of albums as albums I guess–I’m a little OCD, so my mind organizes these things into units. But we really don’t live in an album-unit world anymore, enough though Wit’s End does seem conceived as an album, not just a bunch of songs.

It’s just that none of the songs have that sense of direction and realization that “County Line” does. It being the very first track, it’s hard to avoid the sense that the rest of the album is somewhat anti-climactic. The nice thing is that it’s easy to imagine myself getting tired of the first song in a month, and suddenly “discovering” the “hidden treasure” of the rest of the album. We’ll see.

I don’t really have anything else to say about The Bachelor. It’s just not good enough on any level–except prurient bizarro-entertainment–to talk about. Examining what I think about the insane dreamworld the producers have set up, and which the “contestants” are willfully participating in, just robs the show of its fun. So I won’t be reviewing those episodes anymore.

So I should say up front and out loud that this isn’t a show for me, and I probably shouldn’t have watched it. Although I’m a fan of David Cross, Mr. Show, etc., I’m not generally into that kind of cynical, negative comedy. I’m not against it; it’s just not for me. Discomfort as an animating principle can work, but I think it needs a valve of some kind; maybe a sympathetic character, or something the audience can latch onto. It doesn’t even have to be a character–it could be a theme, or an overarching system of choices that elevates the whole piece into the blurrier world of “art.”

But The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret lacks all of these things, or at least the first two episodes of Season 1 lack those things. It’s all cynical; it’s shabby people exploiting other shabby people, with no real stakes, no need to worry about the welfare of any character.. nothing. Why care if a situation is uncomfortable if you don’t care about any of the people in that situation? It’s satisfying at first– “oh yeah, now this dummy is going to get what’s coming to him.” But as it’s repeated again and again, there’s no longer any drama. It’s just beating up on that dummy.

I’m fairly unsophisticated in preferring sympathetic characters, although I’ve been getting better at it. Dan Clowes said in an interview last year, talking about his book Wilson: “Who says you have to like the characters in a story?” [heavily paraphrased; I can't find the original quote] But in the case of Todd Margaret, I think you need someone to side with, for any of the discomfort and awkwardness to have any real punch. There’s a woman who owns a restaurant who seems like she should fill that role, but it’s such a “smart beautiful longsuffering small business owner just trying to achieve her dream” stereotype that she’s utterly uninteresting.

But the real crime is the guy who plays Todd Margaret’s employee, who for me undoes the whole show. The actor, Blake Harrison, plays it so straight and unbelievably that it destroys any chance of believing in the show. He’s flabbergastingly bad, and it’s a loud obnoxious kind of badness, considering that David Cross, who’s in nearly every scene with him, is so good. I can’t figure out why he was cast in the show to be honest–he’s as interesting to watch as someone posting punk’d videos on Youtube. Just terrible.

Anyway. Again, this isn’t for me, to be fair. For someone into this kind of thing, it might be more interesting, but for me, it was unpleasant and mildly confusing.

Watching The Bachelor with my girlfriend has changed how I interact with it a little bit. For some weird reason I really want her to like it too, which of course makes me embarassed about how unabashedly terrible it is. The fact that the second hour of each show is basically a long cocktail party– read: excuse for all the girls to get drunk and provide tons of material for the gleeful editors to work with — is less gross when you… well, when you don’t think about it.

I can handle it though, don’t worry. Because what I really love about The Bachelor is how slight it is. So much of my TV watching is about finding things that are not very distracting, so I can work while they’re on. The Bachelor is perfect for this: it’s a long show that’s wayyyyy drawn out — I think I read somewhere that they shoot the whole thing in like 3 weeks — and is essentially about.. nothing. There’s no value to the show, no real impact on the world (except perhaps on its psyche), nor any benefit at its end. Some dummy will or won’t propose marriage at the end, and what’s more meaningless than an American marriage in this day and age?

It’s a most American show I think, and the fact that it’s lasted this long, even spawning its weird sexier (and amazing) spinoff Bachelor Pad, is fascinating.

But don’t let me fool you, what’s really great about The Bachelor is how TRASHY it is. There I said it. Also how it encourages you to root against its own contestants — because regardless of all the lovey talk, of course they’re contestants, of course this is a game show. This episode featured the ascendancy of the contestant from Charlotte NC, which usually would ensure my faithful support, except that she’s awful. She’s got googly eyes and googly breasts and seems incredibly proud of both. During a group date where 12 — TWELVE! — of the girls audition with Ben in front of a bunch of cute kids, one of the boys ACTUALLY ASKED “can you run in slow motion?” which nearly made me choke to death. Later the woman, “Blakely” (they all have names like that; one of them’s named “Lindzi”, although I think maybe she got cut last week) drives the entire house insane, gets drunk, then squats in a corner next to some luggage, Terminator-style, until Ben comes in to see if she’s alright and leaves confused after her dry-eyed, still-squating assurance that everything was fine, she was tired of this, everything was fine.

Man I love it.

Oh man this game. Buy it wherever you like. It’s hard to drop sixty bucks for a game, but honestly for the amount of value you get, a hundred bucks would still be fair for this mother. On the other hand, Sword & Sworcery is like two or three bucks, so that’s a pretty amazing value too.

The Bachelor is definitely the best-worst show on television, for me. It’s way WAY below the line that smart-but-still-schlocky shows like Battlestar Galactica or Firefly, in terms of shows that once you’re invested in, you tend to ignore their, hm, excesses. In order to enjoy the Bachelor, you can’t ignore the excesses, you have to gorge on them. Actually the more I think about it, the more it’s making me hate it a little bit. A show like the Bachelor can’t stand a whole lot of examination, lest you end up realizing that you are no better than those terrible producers, making everyone look like fools.

I’m surely not the only person who feels his brain is his greatest asset and enemy at the same time.

Teeth falling out dreams is one thing, but teeth shooting out dreams is just too much. Come on, brain!

I can already tell that it’s hard to write these things by hand and still maintain some kind of control. Reading that above, you can’t quite tell that I‘m really enjoying the book–in fact, I haven’t finished it yet, because I’m enjoying it enough to take my time. The cover is so well-designed, beautiful colors, striking and warm and pleasant and inviting. And the care Julia Rothman took with the book is evident. My small complaints are more conceptual than anything else–book design is fascinating to me, not only for the graphic elements, but the idea of organizing information with an eye toward clarity and communication is one of those places where aesthetics and science meet.

You can find the book in bookstores or on Amazon. I highly recommend Julia’s blog Book By Its Cover.

[click on image for a big whopping readable version]

To add to what’s written above, two things:

1) Robert Downey Jr.’s accent in this movie is a crime. In the first movie, which was dumb but pleasant, his accent was just a little silly but serviceable. In this one it’s like he’s doing a Saturday Night Live sketch. Except that right there with him is someone with an actual regular British accent (Jude Law), which makes Robert Downey Jr. seem a little like that one theater-type at a party with a bunch of non theater-types.

2) In the positive column: by the end you’re so used to his accent that it somehow adds to that dumb-but-pleasant texture to the movie. In order to enjoy the movie at all, you have to just kind of surrender to Robert Downey Jr. and his cartoon mouth and eyes. If you don’t, this is a terrible terrible movie. If you do, it’s a fun movie to watch in a theater with big sound and things whooshing everywhere.

Well, not everything, but most things. Every book or comic I read, all the tv shows I watch, movies, video games, etc. The only exceptions will be the super non-distracting stuff I watch while I’m working–for instance, Star Trek: The Next Generation. Although if I feel like saying something, I suppose I still could.

I’m not a critic. I’m not even a high school graduate. So I don’t have a rigorous critical acumen; I’m not trained or highly educated. I’m not even particularly interested in writing criticism–but I am interested in how criticism works, not only within a creative community, but for the writer as well. Looking deeply at a piece of art, whether it’s “low” or “high” art, will probably teach me much more than anyone would get out of reading my dumb reviews of it. That’s my hope, anyway.

But most of the time, when dummies like me try to review things, they just end up looking for and pointing out whatever they think is wrong. Which I guess is appropriate once in a while maybe, but seems intellectually lazy somehow. The obverse is as bad, maybe worse: reviewing the work of friends or peers or people you’re afraid to offend, heaping it with praise, finding everything of value you ignored in similar work by strangers.

So to that end, I’ve made up some rules, to try and keep things interesting, both to me and to whomever may find themselves reading these things:

NO SPOILER WARNINGS. Should be self-explanatory. If you’re worried about spoilers for something, then don’t read a review of that something. Reviews should serve a purpose other than building suspense or advertising the work they’re reviewing.

RESPECT THE ATTEMPT. It’s hard to make even bad art. Most of us don’t make things, even bad things. It’s easier to throw bricks than to build houses, even bad houses.

RESPECT WHAT YOU MAY NOT KNOW. As I said earlier, I’m mostly self-educated. Which means I don’t know a lot of stuff, and thus miss a lot of stuff, especially “references” or “nuance.” Even the most well-prepared, delicately flavored dish will be wasted on someone who only eats hamburgers. It’s important to recognize that your palate is not trained to recognize all the flavors there are out there, for good or ill.

CONSIDER CONTEXT. Is a work timeless? Chained to a specific time? Is it episodic? Does it lack value on its own, but add to or expand the larger work it’s a part of? Or group of works? Or a movement, a school of thinking or ideas? Should we consider a thing from many angles at the same time? Should we consider it from many contexts? Should we end all sentences with ???

LOOK FOR VALUE. This is good advice both in reviews and in the real world; not to mention a huge challenge for me. Looking for value is a lot harder than looking for fault. Your eye will naturally find whatever’s wrong with something–the eye is drawn to inconsistency. But the fault in something is often what elevates it, what complicates it, and what makes us talk about it. And, in terms of art, that’s what I’m most interested in–the impact a thing has on people. Specifically, on me.

Okay! Reviews will go up as I do them, on no particular schedule. Some will be complete, others will be as I have ideas about something–for instance I’m not going to break down TV shows by episode, but would probably do them in clumps, etc. Or long books, or video games–I’ll write about them however I feel driven to. I hope you enjoy this project. I’m looking forward to it myself!

I’ve gone ahead and posted the very first review, of the new Sherlock Holmes movie, here. You can see all the review posts to date under the REVIEW PROJECT tag.