I walk face first through the sex, drugs, and church with Wild Things that make Maurice Sendak question his early works.
Aesop Rock - Babies With Guns

In my continuing effort to see some films from the "edge of culture", I wrote down a list of specific director's movies that I constantly hear about, but never get a chance to see in the theater, or movies that always intrigued me in the videostore, but I wasn't sure if they were any good. I went through a short phase in college where I saw numerous David Lynch movies, but after that I returned to watching fairly mainstream films. A few weeks ago I watched A History of Violence, a David Cronenberg film, which seemed like a nice, gentle re-introduction back into the more seedy areas of film. Next, I wanted to see a Terry Gilliam movie because I had already seen Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Lost in La Mancha, and Twelve Monkeys.

The movie I ended up renting was Tideland, which I had seen on the shelves for some time and it always looked intriguing. However, the rating on the back mentioned something about "gruesome situations involving a child" -- not something I am particularly excited about viewing. Add onto that the always supurb commentary at IMDB (uh, right) about how disturbing the movie is, and it made me think twice about actually picking it up.

Note that the following paragraph has spoilers, so skip a paragraph if you want. Well, I am glad I did pick the movie up. It is defiantly not a mainstream movie, but it was not as over the top as expected. It seems that the most disturbing part of the movie is that the main character (a nine year-old child) goes through a series of events which would leave most adults hysterical (her mother and father die of a drug overdose, she moves to a new place and basically fends for herself, her neighbors are somewhat disturbed), and the child uses her imagination to get through this troubling time in her life. The overall theme of the movie, "child are a lot more resilient than adults realize or give them credit for", reminded me of my college graduation commemcement talk given by Maurice Sendak, where at one point or another, he related the following story:

A child was talking to her parents about the 9/11 bombings the day or so after they happened and the parents said, "Don't worry honey, those were just birds flying out of of the building as it was falling so they could escape." To which the child replied, "I know those weren't birds."

Not only does the child have greater perception than adults might assume, they can also handle more "disturbing" events aptly (and maybe better so than adults).

Along with the trip to the orchard last weekend, Lynn and I participated in the first ever, annual, Guy Pearce Saturday double-header movie extravaganza. Which is all just a long way to say that we watched Memento, followed directly by Factory Girl. Both movies gave me a greater appreciation for his acting ability, which is a rare comment because I pretty much think that all actors are equally okay. Plus, Memento is always fun to watch the movie puzzles fall into place.

Then, I was looking through his filmography and I noticed that he was also in Ravenous, a delightful movie with a skippy 8/12 orchestral score (I mean, really, the soundtrack makes the movie).

The first thing I usually do once I get inside a concert venue is take a quick look around to make sure the place won't fill up too fast and I will be stuck squished in between a frat boy and his drunk girlfriend. Nope, it looked good. I was surprised that there wasn't a longer line to enter when doors opened, but it is a Monday night, I guess. Then, I scope out the merchandise table and see what is being peddled for the night. Usually, it's some mediocre t-shirts and a CD or two. Def Jux must have brought a whole van to store all the gear they were selling: a poster, vinyls, numerous nice looking shirts, Aes' whole back catalog as far as I could tell (except Float), plus a few nice surprises. He was selling legit copies of Appleseed, which I had thought was out of print, and the limited edition Jeremy Fish collaboration. The crappy part about the shirts was that they were sold out of all men's sizes for everyone's shirt (Cage, Cardboard City, Aes), except for XXL.

Next came the waiting game where you have about an hour before the openers come on. I was positioned nicely in the middle about two rows of people back. This is always a gamble because inevitably there will be some punk who weasels his way up in front of me by the time the headliner is on. So, I normally just position myself the best I can and then hope for the best. Apparently it was not to be.

By the time Blockhead came on with DJ Signify, some already-drunk LA-poseur came with his girlfriend and stood in front of me. I moved to keep out of his way and to keep a line of sight to the stage, trying to avoid his sweaty bald head from entering my line of sight. But, even without the distractions of the meathead yelling at his girl to "go get me a drink", Blockhead was a let down. After seeing RJD2 and DJ Shadow, maybe that was to be expected, but I still hoped for the best. I like his production on None Shall Pass, but his set had no structure to it at all. It was basically a couple looped beats (which got old) and his DJ on top scratching once in a while. No ebb and flow, no build up and release like I was hoping for. There were a few nice moments, like his interweaving both Queen's We Will Rock You and Another Bites the Dust in, plus the not-very-original-but-still-enjoyable-each-time mix of Michael Jackson's Billie Jean that seems to be a DJ staple.

Next up, the unfortunately-named Yak Ballz came on to do the pre-hypeman set for Cage. I haven't heard any of Yak's solo stuff at all, so I was totally unprepared, but the Weatherman songs never did much for me (yet, I love Cage and Aes now, go figure). He was good enough that I am now curious and will probably try to download a few of his tracks. After his 2 or 3 songs, the stage goes dark with red stage lights and I knew Cage's Good Morning was coming. My first thought when I saw him was, "wow, he looks like a wild-eyed, slightly demented, chubby Leonardo DiCaprio". After I got over that shock, I just listened to him blast out a ton of Hell's Winter tracks. He just straight-up ripped them. It was immense. People in the section I was in were going crazy, moshing to the psychotic rants of this slightly Daniel Johnson-esque individual (he even wore a Johnson t-shirt, as if the similarities weren't patentedly obvious).

Apparently, sometime during the Cage's set bald fratboy's girlfriend shimmied her way to the front by trying to physically touch any performer on stage and then wedging herself wherever she could. She also kept hanging on some guy who I am pretty sure the only reason she was touching/hugging/fondling was because he had prime viewing position.

Aesop Rock comes out to the call-and-response hook of "How alive/Too alive" from Keep Off of the Lawn and he kept most of the momentum from there, cherry-picking tracks from his newest CD seemingly at will to keep the crowd the most hype. And hype they were. Baldy had a few more shots and then after waving his arms around with a full cup of beer, he took a sip, and dropped it on the floor covering everyone's shoes in the vicinity. He didn't seem to mind (alcohol does that to you, I suppose). However, it was the crowd-surfers that really got to me. At one point during 39 Thieves there were at least 3 crowd-surfers in my immediate vicinity. One with a bottle of beer in his hand. Which he proceeded to pour all over the front of my shirt and on a few others as he sailed over top of us. At that point I decided the great vantage point wasn't really worth it and I pushed myself out of the front section.

Standing in the back for the last half of the show worked out much better. I still could see everything on stage, plus I had a better view of the visuals on the projection screen. Aes whipped out some classics including a sped-up version of No Regrets and his half of We're Famous, which he killed. But, it also just reminded me that I missed El-P when he came through DC for his last tour...

DJ Big Whiz did a brief intermission, Rob Sonic did some songs and then Aes closed with Coffee, which was expected, but still good. Aes came back up for a one-song encore: Daylight, which he can't seem to get away from. He did it straight-up, classic-style which was nice, although I am sure it gets old for him.

My second-guessed decision to wear flip-flops (standing for 3 hours in flip-flops is a terrible idea) actually turned out to be quite serendipitous because there was a summer-storm when I was leaving the club. Unfortunately for myself I had to get on the metro, otherwise I would miss the last train and be forced to take a taxi home, so I ran through the pelting rain to the station. Once I got there, the rain was already petering out...