Monthly Top Ten: April 2022

1. Tokyo Vice, "The Test"(Season 1, Episode 1, directed by Michael Mann) (HBO Max). This right here is why auteurism remains a vibrant force. The first episode was Mann's long-awaited return to directing and his trademark fluorescent-baked fractals ignited the living room. Why, oh why, was he not then tasked to direct the remaining episodes which are upholstered in designer ennui and point-and-shoot visuals?

2. Curtains. Lou Reed was right. I hate the sun. And the outdoors. I don't even want windows because that means people can look in on my saggy shapes. So it's curtains chez moi, thick, dark gray ones to maintain my Mac-cured skin tone. I view them as part of a continuum with two pinnacles of Western civilization that place curtains at their center: The Cobweb (Vincente Minnelli, 1955) and the curtain lady at Quality Curtain Outlet.

3. Adrian Bliss (@adrianbliss on Instagram and TikTok). Where America's anti-intellectuals want to burn books, Brit Bliss dryly and hilariously asks questions of our master narratives such as where exactly did Noah unload all the animals from the ark, how did the Hansel and Gretel witch get someone to build her a house of gingerbread and sweets, and was there a lobster in the manger when Jesus was born?

4. Louis Theroux: "My Money Don’t Jiggle, Jiggle, It Folds (Duke & Jones Extended Version)". I honestly thought this was some John Cooper Clarke or Sleaford Mods type. But no, it's Theroux, matter-of-factly recalling a rap he made up. Duke & Jones (?) slapped a beat under it and voilà - a TikTok sensation. I love the new radio!

5. Calvin Harris: "Feels feat. Pharrell Williams, Katy Perry & Big Sean" sped up. More TikTok radio! Many times now I've fallen in love with a song there only to discover that its BPMs have been tweaked. The original "Feels" is limp cod reggae. But the sped-up version feels like summertime.

6. NSFW! HotMovies.com. A porn VOD site to which I am eternally grateful because I found a copy of the ultra rare Take My Head (Robert Findlay, 1971) for sale as a digital file there! Terrible film. But check out the site for all your classic (and not-so-classic) porn needs.

7. Irina Ivanova, "Florida is the least affordable place to live in the U.S." CBS News, May 2, 2022. Helping a family member move to southwest Florida a few years ago, I kept hearing from people in neighboring towns that they moved to the area for cheaper living. So I'm stunned to learn how pricey living has gotten down there. "Miami's typical rent takes up a whopping 60% of a household's typical income. That figure is 45% in Tampa and 37% in Orlando. (Housing policy experts consider rents affordable at no more than 30% of pre-tax income.)" Yikes!

8. Jimmy McDonough, The Ghastly One: The 42nd Street Netherworld of Director Andy Milligan (FAB Press, 2022). The paperback edition of the glorious coffee table book on Milligan, the Fassbinder of 42nd Street, comes out in June. Preorder it now at the link above. I am proud to say that I had a hand in the canonization of this incredible director.

9. Loverboy: Get Lucky (Columbia, 1981). Odd-ass album. They were definitely trying to please Everyone. "It's Your Life" could pass for Talking Heads until the synth-prog middle eight. Trick your resident Stones fan into thinking that "Emotional" is a lost Jagger-Richards b-side. And my iTunes copy identifies some songs as "arena rock" and others as "dance-rock." Even odder, I somehow thought they went kaput after this. But freakin' "Working for the Weekend" went to only #29 on the Billboard Hot 100 AND THEN they scored their biggest hits with such seizable-at-customs items as "Lovin' Every Minute of It" (their biggest hit at #9), "This Could Be the Night" (#10), and "Heaven in Your Eyes" (#12). They were giving Diane Warren some serious competish at the jump of her career. How did this happen??

10. Loverboy: Loverboy (Columbia, 1980). Not sure why Chuck Eddy left this out of Stairway to Hell: The 500 Greatest Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe.* They rock most ersatzly, Xgau called them "pop metal," and they even had one foot in Hell, as per "Teenage Overdose"! It proceeds harmlessly enough until, like an idiot, you read the lyrics. The opener, "The Kid Is Hot Tonite," is bad enough. It rips on upcoming new wavers who are more concerned with image than career longevity. So defensive from the jump! Then, egads, I'm usually quick to give sexism a pass. But these loverboys write about little else beyond the perfidy of woman. In "Prissy Prissy" Mike Reno joins "twenty others" watching a gal who's "had too much abuse" and "running around being loose" (isn't that what Mikey wanted on "Turn Me Loose"?). He tells a "Little Girl" she's too little to fall in love but then wonders, "How can I make you love me?" And "D.O.A." is the pop-rock-metal-new-wave "Wild World." But the latter contains a genuinely great lyric that I assume warms the hearts of Canadians all over the diaspora: "You'll never find her in the U.S.A/All they got down here is liberty." Did Bruce Springsteen ever say it better? 

*The debut was included in the Afterthoughts section as one of several albums he wish he included in the book