Tuesday, February 21, 2017

COLUMN: Best of 2016 - TV

Some people say I waste my life in front of the TV. Poppycock, I say. I'm no couch potato. I'm simply a devoted journalist committed to his craft. If I didn't spend every night in a sedentary position, how else could I give you such accurate picks for the Best TV Shows of 2016?

Truth be told, when 2016 wasn't busy killing off all our heroes or turning a reality TV star into the leader of the free world, it really DID give us some amazing televised treats.  Here are my ten favorites of the year:

#10 - EXPEDITION UNKNOWN (Travel Channel) - Simply a retooled version of his former show "Destination Truth," but this time around, explorer and archaeologist Josh Gates hunts down evidence of legends and buried treasure in any number of exotic locales. Does he ever find anything of note? Nope. But the quests themselves take a backseat to the charm of Gates, whose charismatic everyman appeal makes him the ultimate travel buddy.

#9 - ROADIES (Showtime). Critics haaaaated this show. I haven't seen a "worst of the year" list that doesn't include it. Call me weird, but I thought it was great. Writer/director Cameron Crowe's unapologetic love affair with rock-n-roll energized this already-cancelled series that followed a team of rock's unsung heroes. Was it an overly sentimental, saccharine, and entirely unrealistic portrayal? Absolutely. But just as rock music thrives on myth, so too should have this show.

#8 - GILMORE GIRLS: A Year in the Life (Netflix). For six seasons, "Gilmore Girls" was among the smartest shows on TV. Then creator Amy Sherman-Palladino left, and the show's final season was a creative disaster. Palladino always wanted the chance to end things on her terms, so Netflix lured her back to Stars Hollow for a final arc of four movie-length episodes to conclude the series the way she wanted to. Based on the critical and commercial reaction to the new episodes, we may not have seen the last of Stars Hollow yet.

#7 - WESTWORLD (HBO). When I first heard that HBO was trying their hand at a remake of "Westworld," I'm sure I rolled my eyes. Few movies creeped me out like the campy 1973 original. But boy, did HBO get it right. It's still the same dystopian future where a wild-west theme park becomes overrun by sentient gun-slinging robots gone rogue, but HBO's reimagining focuses on the robots and their gradual awakening to the true perception of their existence. This "Westworld" takes a hard look at the morality of artificial intelligence and makes you wonder what the future of "Hey, Google" has in store for us all.

#6 - THE GOOD PLACE (NBC). "Parks and Recreation" set a new standard in sitcom writing, and its farewell in 2015 was a sad day. But "Parks" producer Michael Schur came right back with "The Good Place," a sitcom WAY too smart and quirky for its own good. Kristen Bell plays Eleanor, who dies and awakens in "The Good Place," an afterlife of stereotyped perfection. There's just one problem: she's a horrible person who made it to the Good Place on a clerical error. What follows is a captivating and amusing look at the nature of what makes a person "good" or "bad," as seen through a host of heavenly deranged residents. Whether its got more than one trick up its sleeve remains to be seen, but if anyone can do it, it's Schur.

#5 - THE FLASH (CW). Network television is needlessly overrun by superhero shows these days. The whole let's-defeat-a-bad-guy-of-the-week schtick gets old quick. Most are either too dark and heavy-handed (Daredevil, Gotham) or too soapy and breezy (I'm looking at you, Supergirl.) The one show that gets it right is The Flash. It's the perfect mix of action, morality, long story arcs AND monsters-of-the-week, and a healthy dose of fun with a cast that looks like they're having the time of their lives.

#4 - GAME OF THRONES (HBO). HBO says there aren't many episodes of GoT remaining, which I find hard to swallow, because I'm pretty sure winter is coming, and along with it an undead army of ghouls and a cadre of ill-tempered dragons. George RR Martin has created a world more complex and compelling than even Middle Earth, and "Game of Thrones" remains my only annual appointment viewing.

#3 - CRAZY EX-GIRLFRIEND (CW). This deserves to be the most talked-about show of the year. Instead, hardly anyone knows that its on, buried in the Friday night lineup of the CW. First off, how cool is it that there's a successful musical comedy on TV that performs original songs? But hiding behind the music is perhaps the most envelope-pushing comedy in network TV history. If you like your laughs a bit bawdy, you really need to get onboard.

#2 - SEARCH PARTY (TBS) - A "dark hipster comedic mystery starring Alia Shawkat" must have been one tall order to pitch to a network, but I'm so glad that TBS bit at the chance. This sleeper of a show is about a group of self-absorbed, highly damaged millennials who decide to play detective when a classmate (who they didn't even know very well) vanishes. But what the show's really searching for is humanity admidst dysfunction. Do the characters know the difference between being selfless and being self-obsessed? Or can a person be BOTH? It's a fun ride trying to find out.

#1 - STRANGER THINGS (Netflix). It's not perfect. Sometimes it's TOO nostalgic, and if you stop and think, it's got plotholes big enough to drive a Buick through. But the virtually unknown Duffer Brothers behind Netflix's surprise hit of the year figured out a way to take everything we loved about vintage movies like "E.T." and "The Goonies" and translate it through modern storytelling that makes everything just a bit scarier and more amped-up. I sat down to watch the first episode out of curiosity and binged the whole series right then and there. It's THAT good. In a year that seemed like the whole world was going to heck in a handbasket, there was no better escapism than watching a ragtag group of kids trying to save the day against unspeakable evil. Throw in a much-missed Winona Ryder for good measure, and this is the show that 2016 desperately needed.

Monday, February 20, 2017

COLUMN: Best of 2016 - Music

You know what they say, right? Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes, and that one column you have to suffer through every year when I tell you my picks for the best records of the year:

#10 - David Bowie - Blackstar - When we first met "Blackstar" with its bleak jazz and troubling lyrics about alienation and separation, none of us realized we were listening to David Bowie performing his own epitaph. Leave it to the Thin White Duke to turn even death into art. Bowie might be dead, but "Blackstar" is very much alive and unwell. "I’m dying to push their backs against the grain and fool them all again and again," he sings. We loved the grand charade, sir.

#9 - Patrick Boutwell - Hi, Heaviness - The most under-appreciated band in all of music -- Providence, Rhode Island's The Brother Kite -- is on an extended hiatus. In the meantime, lead singer Patrick Boutwell took it upon himself to attempt the RPM Challenge: create and record an entire album in 28 days. Long nights and marathon recording sessions birthed "Hi, Heaviness," a quirky collection of would-be demos and power pop gems that prove yet again how badly the rest of the world needs to get clued in.  

#8 - Trashcan Sinatras - Wild Pendulum - My favorite Scottish band's sixth album is neither wild nor pendulous, but remains full of the refined romanticism, fragile harmonies, and layered understatements that have become the band's trademark sound. The Trashies take their sweet time between records, and I'm pretty sure the entire latter half of their career has been crowd-funded by their small yet ardent fanbase. But with this band, the results are always worth the effort.

#7 - ette - Homemade Lemonade - Maybe I'm just a sucker for Scottish indiepop, but this record soundtracked a majority of my summer. ette is the side project of Carla Easton, who fronts another great Scottish band called TeenCanteen. On her own, though, this is the clear sound of liberated, independent, lo-fi fun -- and it's contagious as all get out.

#6 - Viola Beach - Viola Beach - An aspiring UK band gaining ground on the back of their debut single, Viola Beach were on their first major tour back in February when their car plummeted through an open drawbridge in Sweden, instantly killing all four members and their manager. The tragedy made Viola Beach household names in the UK, and Coldplay even covered one of their songs at Glastonbury so the band could fulfill their dream of headlining a festival. All of their completed tracks were compiled posthumously into an album full of promise and exuberance that I wish we could've heard under different circumstances.

#5 - Lush - Blind Spot EP - When veteran British shoegazers Lush announced their 2016 reunion, it was exciting news. Sadly, it only lasted long enough for a quick tour, but they were still able to produce a 4-track EP that's among their best ever work. Towards the end of their original run, Lush abandoned their hazy shoegazer roots in favor of the more trendy Britpop sound at the time, but on this final EP, their gaze is again pointed directly shoeward. It's a mighty final gasp from a band it was an absolute pleasure to revisit.

#4 - A Tribe Called Quest - We Got It From Here... Thank You 4 Your Service - When ATCQ's first album showed up in 1990, it was the first time I realized that hip-hop could be SO much more than braggadocio and dance beats. When co-frontman Phife Dawg passed away earlier this year from diabetes complications, it was a sad end for the most groundbreaking group in hip-hop history. What no one knew, though, was that they had secretly recorded one final album before Phife's death -- and it's every bit as edgy, challenging, and empowering as you'd expect.

#3 - Weezer - Weezer (The White Album) - Who'd have thought that America's favorite nerd rock band of the 90s would still be showing up on Top Ten lists some twenty years later? Weezer arrived in the 90s with the incredible one-two punch of the Blue Album and "Pinkerton," but since then, their output has been maddeningly uneven. For the fans that stuck with, though, 2016 was a big payday. Weezer's tenth album ranks among their best, an epic boy-meets-girl song cycle set to a Californian summer of love, loss, and the amazing hooks that have always kept me a fan. It's a brilliant return to form.

#2 - Frank Ocean - Blonde - Even in a year when Beyonce dropped the groundbreaking "Lemonade," no artist pushed the boundaries of R&B in 2016 quite like Frank Ocean. On "Blonde," Ocean veers into abstract experimental territory more than ever before, and the resulting tracks wash over you with sonic dreamscapes that drift into muted textures and an almost-maddening introversion. If you want pop choruses you can sing along to or beats to make you juju across dancefloors, keep looking. This is a record that owes more to Brian Eno and the Beatles than Usher or Drake. If Marvin Gaye had come up in this era, I guarantee he'd be making records that sound like this.

#1 - Let's Eat Grandma - I, Gemini - Finally an album that answers the age-old question: What would happen if the murdered ghost twins from The Shining hit puberty and dropped a record? Let's Eat Grandma is the British duo of Rosa Walton & Jenny Hollingworth. Best friends since they were four years old, the girls starting dabbling in music as a teenage lark and recorded most of "I, Gemini" when they were 15. Listening to it is like getting a ticket to a haunted playroom. It's a world where child-like handclaps and innocent vocals share space with submerged synths and foreboding walls of gloom. Just when you think you have it figured out, a saxophone wails or a recorder shrieks or someone starts rapping. It's as if someone gave them a dictionary definition of the word "music" and then turned them loose in a recording studio with no instructions as to how music SHOULD sound. It's THAT weird. But it's also achingly beautiful, life-affirmingly impulsive, and the most exciting thing to come out of 2016's speakers.

Next week: The Best of TV in 2016, or, Justification As To Why I Spent A Year On My Couch.

COLUMN: Christmas Lights

I will never give up on Christmas magic.

It really IS the most wonderful time of the year. You can't tell me otherwise. I will fight you on this.

Last month, I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out why I've never been a big fan of Thanksgiving. I should LOVE Thanksgiving. I mean, what's not to like about a big meal and a free Thursday off work? Then it hit me. The adult me has always been blah about Thanksgiving because the kid me was too busy pining for Christmas.

Think about it - what kid doesn't love summer? Months of no school, playing outside, and doing whatever you fancy within parental reason. Then fall comes along, and that's fun because leaves are crunchy, the air gets tingly, and when your parents aren't looking, you might just be able to sneak a SUPER scary movie or two on cable. Then Halloween hits and there's pumpkins to carve, tricks to be pulled, and treats to devour. Halloween is a kid's dream!

And then it happens. The very minute we round the corner past Halloween, the radio stations switch to holiday music, TV ads start to fill with Christmas cheer, and you know that the greatest holiday of the year is just -- it's just -- oh MAN, it's still TWO MONTHS AWAY? And I have to deal with stupid Thanksgiving first? For an impatient kid like me, November was torture. How can you possibly care about pilgrims and turkey when visions of sugar plums were already dancing in my head?

When I was a kid, Christmastime felt electric like it could set the whole world aglow. I wanted it all then, and I want it all now. Pine and poinsettia, sleigh bells and stockings. Cocoa on the stove and Claymation on the TV. I want dazzling lights and yuletide delights. Snow on the ground and presents all around. I want the perfect Christmases I remember from my childhood.

But this is 2016, and holiday perfection's a pretty tall order in a year this awful. Let us not forget, this is the year that's stolen away every beloved hero from David Bowie to Carol Brady. At this point, we should probably just be thankful to pick up the paper and NOT read that Santa Claus has met with some grisly tragic end (that InfoWars would somehow accuse Hillary Clinton of orchestrating.) In 2016, I should be grateful that Santa hasn't been voted out of office by supporters of a Grinch promising to build a wall around the North Pole while replacing the elves with a Christmas cabinet of the Heatmiser, the Snowmiser, Hans Gruber, Ebeneezer Scrooge, and, oddly, Iowa Governor Terry Branstad.

When it comes to Christmas, I like to think of myself as somewhat an expert. I've seen every holiday special, watched every frame of stop-motion animation, and have even landed on the Hallmark Channel's unending barrage of Christmas movies more times than I care to admit. I'm pretty sure I know what perfect Christmas is supposed to look and feel like. But on all those movies and TV shows, the perfect Christmas seems to involve no prep. It just... happens. Except that it doesn't -- at least not without a LOT of work.

I just finished decking my halls. Well, decking my porch. I grew up in the country, in a house you can't even see from the road. We had no need to decorate the outside of our house for Christmas. So when I bought my own home here in Rock Island, I wasted no time buying some Christmas lights for the porch, because, y'know, how cool is that? Answer: Not very.

Here's the funny thing about Christmas lights: As is turns out, they do NOT hang themselves. In the movies, people just walk down the streets and beautiful lights are just everywhere. You don't often see the chubby, freezing guy whose job it is to hang those lights. It wasn't an especially fun task, and all I have are a few measly strings of lights.

Have you guys seen the house in Moline where it looks like Santa just drove by and vomited Christmas all over the front of the thing? It's pretty much tacky as all get out, but I absolutely love it and detour by it as often as possible. I can't imagine the effort it took to create that monstrosity. All I have is something like ten strands of lights that I ran around the porch pillars and handrails, and that was about enough to do me in for one afternoon.

In past years, friends always helped me put up my meager holiday display. This year, I did it on my own. I expected to just drape some lights around some posts real quick, plug 'em in, and go "Aww, pretty!" But fifteen minutes after I started, I realized I was already turning into a micro-manager, cautiously wrapping lights around two rungs of handrail before running out to the yard and studying the scene like an OCD-stricken Ansel Adams.

"No! No!" my brain kept yelling at myself. "There are 37 lights on THIS railing compared to 35 on the other railing. This simply won't do!" Where this previously unknown perfectionist part of my psyche leapt from I may NEVER know. Here's one thing I DID quickly learn, though: If there really is such a thing as a "perfect Christmas," it should NEVER involve math.

Yet there I was, standing in my front yard, counting bulbs and quite possibly employing algebra for the first time since 8th grade. I carried on like this for nearly three hours before finally giving up and heading inside, though i still find myself resisting the urge to go back out there and perfect it even more. If you go driving down my street and suddenly feel livid and nauseous upon discovering that the left column of my house has 3 more twinkly lights than the right, all I can do is humbly beg forgiveness for my shameful and shocking asymmetry.

Some people say that Christmas magic only happens when you're a kid. I think that's poppycock, and clearly so do my friends at the Hallmark Channel. Christmas magic is real, you just have to work for it sometimes. I don't need a perfect Christmas this year. I'll settle for some twinkly lights, the laughter of friends and family, the cocoa I just put on the stove, and the knowledge that I can try for another perfect Christmas in just... in only... THIRTEEN MONTHS?!?! Oh man...

COLUMN: Fictional Towns

Being a pop culture junkie is fun -- until it interrupts my sleep.

Last night, I had a shockingly realistic dream that I had woken up in the breathtaking and entirely fictional land of Westeros. Anyone who's ever watched the HBO series "Game of Thrones" knows that this is NOT an ideal place to call home. Westeros is a scenic and beautiful land of Seven Kingdoms, none of whom are especially fond of one another. This displeasure is most commonly expressed through swordfights, frequent invasions, and more beheadings than you can shake a stick at, mostly because it's tough to shake sticks when you have no head.

My odds of surviving Westeros would be nil. This is a show where even major characters integral to plotlines are lucky to make it through a full episode with their heads still attached to their necks. In my role as an ancillary character at best, I'd be dragon food the first time I even looked at someone sideways. I can't ride a horse, I have no Earthly idea how to wield a sword, and it appears Westeros has little need for newspaper columnists and/or nightclub DJs. Plus there's a horde of undead warriors fixing to invade, and none of them seem to be big fans of hip-hop.

This dream DID, however, leave me with a pretty good idea for a column. Just this morning, I posed this question to Facebook:

"If you could live in any fictional town, city, or place, where would you go?" My geeky friends were eager to answer.

A popular response was Hogwarts, the alma mater of one Harry Potter. Me, I think the only way to fully enjoy Hogwarts is to be a legit witch or wizard. For Muggles like us, Hogwarts is pretty much just a creepy castle full of people who are WAY cooler than you or I. If you're at Hogwarts without magic, you're basically the janitor. You're Filch. Everyone hates Filch. No way.

Others said Mayberry, and I could see that -- but not in the modern age. Let's be real: the Mayberry police force is inept. Sure, Andy's good at spouting some sage wisdom and locking up Otis, but how is he with DNA analysis? How would Barney Fife respond to his first criminal sexual assault? Plus, I'm not letting Gomer anywhere near my Hyundai.

The suggestions kept rolling in.

Destination: Hobbiton
Pros: Hobbits make a mean dinner. Fireworks are superb.
Con: I prefer my vacation locales free of all-seeing evil eyes on the horizon, thanks. Pass.

Destination: The Overlook Hotel (you know, from "The Shining." My friends are weird.)
Pros: Fantastic interior design. Good hallways to ride my Big Wheel down. Potential to meet new friends.
Con: Those new friends are all dead, and 'blood-filled elevators' not my first choice in amenities. Hard pass.

Destination: The Wonka factory
Pros: Two words - chocolate river.
Con: Constant fear of eating wrong thing and turning into blueberry. Any rule violation subject to song-and-dance lecture from overly-moral orange slaves who only know one tune. VERY hard pass.

I've sat long and hard today, though, and I'm pretty sure I know the five fictional locales I wish I WOULD dream about visiting:

#5 - Pawnee, Indiana - The setting for "Parks & Recreation" is the only place you could visit Paunchburger and take home a child-sized soda (which is literally the size of a small child.) I could party with Tom & Jean-Ralphio and then have Ron Swanson scold me about it the next day. Plus give me enough time and I'm pretty sure I could woo April away from Andy. Sign me up.

#4 - The mystery island from "Lost" - I probably wouldn't survive a week on an island filled with smoke monsters and polar bears. That said, SOMEONE needs to explain all the stuff that the writers failed to. Plus, I like cushy jobs, and I think I'd be fairly suited to living in the hatch and pressing a button every 108 minutes to stop the world from ending.

#3 - Twin Peaks, Washington. I love a town with a good air of mystery, and Twin Peaks is pretty much the most mysterious place ever dreamt up. Just give the owls a wide berth and stay away from the woods at night, and I think I'd manage just fine. Coffee and cherry pie are already staples in my diet, so I'm pretty sure I'd fit in just fine.

#2 - Rosewood, Pennsylvania. It's a quaint town where not EVERYone is murdered, just a select few. Ideal for independent high schoolers, since parents seem to leave for months at a time without explanation. Few citizens appear to work, but everyone looks to have unlimited amounts of money, including the sinister villains intent on torturing Pretty Little Liars for no discerable reason. Oh, and if you hang out in town long enough, you WILL end up dating one of them, so there's a plus.

#1 - Stars Hollow, Connecticut. No greater fictional town has ever existed than that which the Gilmore Girls call home. If you've ever idealized small-town living, Stars Hollow is basically your mecca. The town is so picture-perfect that you almost forget how poorly you're treated when you visit. Browse for antiques? Mrs. Kim yells at you. Pull out your cell phone in the diner? Luke yells at you. Stay at the Dragonfly? Michel yells at you. Still, it's all worth it for Sookie's cooking and the town square, which is in a constant state of festival. "Gilmore Girls" is the only TV show to make me feel jealous for not being a fictional character. Thanks, Netflix, for letting us visit again this month. Stars Hollow also easily won the straw poll of my Facebook friends, and I'm queueing up for a cup of joe at Luke's right behind them.

Interestingly enough, my #1 and #2 picks are actually the same place. "Pretty Little Liars" and "Gilmore Girls" are both filmed on the same backlot at Warner Bros., mostly on a set they call Anytown, USA. It's the same place they filmed "The Goonies" and dozens of other movies and TV shows. The only magic in Stars Hollow is that which Hollywood has painstakingly created. So maybe it's time to stop day- (and night-) dreaming about fictional paradise, step outside, and try to make our own.