I'm Not There

"Who's going to mind the zoo?"

Whenever someone asks me: "What is your favorite movie?" I have no real answer. I love many different films for several different reasons. It's like picking your favorite kid at the orphanage, or your favorite sunset; it's all subjective. So picking my "favorite" from a lifetime of appreciation has always been an impossible task. Until now....

Say hello to Bob Dylan. Say hello to the outlaw, the poet and the fake. Say goodbye to conventional film making. Goodbye and good riddance. Now here we have a movie that requires some effort on the part of the viewer. Here we have a movie that you MUST watch more than once. You just want to watch stuff get blowed up? You want a moron rubbing pate on his balls and wrestling a pit bull? Keep going. This is a film for people who not only love films. This is a film for people who want to be challenged, uplifted, emotionally shaken and intellectually sucker-punched. This is a direction sign on the road to self-awareness. This is MY FAVORITE MOVIE. There, I told you. Now stop asking me.

I think we can all agree that Bob Dylan is a pretty interesting guy. We watch him perform, listen to his music, dive deeper and deeper into the layers of meaning contained in his songs. We get the impression of a brilliant, often troubled rebel. What we can never get with another human being, however, is an all-access backstage pass to gaze at their most intimate mechanisms. Those things that make us tick, sing, cry, laugh, and get out of bed every day to do something that half the world thinks is useless and the other half doesn't know enough about to care.

If you watch closely, you will see all of this and more. All of the facets of the man's personae take human form, frolic, fuck and fight in the waking dream of his subconscious. Subtle metaphors are around every corner; The perversion of art for corporate gain, the selling off of a country's soul, the reconciliation of what makes us "old" and what makes us "young"....

I could go on about this movie forever, but I won't. I've already wasted enough of your time. Time you could have spent watching one of the best movies to come along in my -and probably your- lifetime.

Some of The Best Music You`ve (Probably) Never Heard

If you don't like spaghetti and have nightmares about forty-story tall fast food mascots chasing you through crowded carnivals while praying for Spiderman to save you....That's okay.

If you've ever had a long, deep conversations with yourself about the nature of DARK MATTER turn into a screaming match while stopped at a red light....You're normal.

If the monsters that live under your bed and in your closet re-arrange your living room furniture while you're putting in a double shift at the meat packing plant according to your specifications...No one is judging you. Even if they break your favorite lamp.

If you watch CNN, Fox News or The Home Shopping Network....We're willing to look the other way.

If, however, you happen to listen to Indie music....That's just not normal. It makes me sick just thinking about it. I mean, COME ON! We're trying to have a society here. You are a worthless animal, sir, and I shall immediately report you to the authorities.

This seems to be the prevailing wisdom when it comes to the consumption of modern music. Well, I'm here to tell you that these well-established nuggets of folk wisdom are not always right. Particularly about music. And Fox News. I think the other three are pretty accurate (I hope).

The holiday season is the perfect time for the uninitiated and veteran fan alike to dig into the fertile grounds of Indie music. End-of-the-year "Top 10-100" lists are popping up everywhere making it fun and easy to discover a new artist. While these retrospectives are often just a chance for media sites like Pitchfork and Rolling Stone to prove that they are edgy and smarter than you by naming obscure, unlistenable albums as the greatest musical achievements of the year, they do a great service for bands that often don't get the attention they deserve.

Here are a few of my personal favorites. No particular order or ranking system here (I don't like the implication that one album is "better" than another. It's a matter of individual taste, after all). Stick one of these in a music lovers stocking this Christmas and then sit back smugly as they praise you for your well-informed taste...

We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank

Modest Mouse

"The first track screams jarring french-sounding curses, the tenth in a heart wrenching ballad with one of the most tear-inducing videos I've EVER seen. These guys do everything right."

Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

Spoon

"This album is growing on me like a strange, soft, sweet-smelling fungus."

Reunion Tour

The Weakerthans

"Tongue-in-cheek, double entendre-laden lyrics rattled perfectly from a vocalist who sounds a lot like Greig Nori from Treble Charger...Great stuff!"

The Meanest of Times

Dropkick Murphys

"Their reworking of the traditional 'Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya' into a punk-rock masterpiece is reason enough to buy this album."

Cassadaga

Bright Eyes

"One of my all-time favorites...Folk lightly blended with blues and dashed with country."

Neon Bible

Arcade Fire

"After listening to this album for the first time, I found it inconceivable that this Montreal-based band wasn't ruling the world and printing their own money...It's fricking TRANSCENDENT."

Sawdust

The Killers

"Any band that features Lou Reed on an albums first track is a band worth paying attention to."

Trinity Revisited

Cowboy Junkies

"A reworking of the iconic 'Trinity Sessions', Margo Timmons proves she still has one of the most hauntingly beautiful voices around and these songs are just as relevant today as they were twenty years ago."

Begin To Hope

Regina Spektor

"This was actually released in 2006, but I stumbled across her this year, so she's new to ME. Fun, thoughtful lyrics from a refreshing voice that doesn't take itself too seriously."

Icky Thump

The White Stripes

"Jack and Meg continue to blur all the lines and re-write all the rules for post-modern rock. And they have a hell of a good time doing it."

Oh, Seven

We came to Bali to wash the oil from our hands
Absolve ourselves, resolve ourselves. That soft, consoling sound.
Haunted by Kyoto's ghost
With his corpse not yet in the ground.
With the shamelessness of little boys whose dying mother, in all her selfishness
Can no longer afford their toys.

I see Christmas greetings from the troops
These snowstorms are knocking out power
Warnings of lead paint from China
Walmart open for its twenty-fifth hour.....
Great gift ideas under twenty dollars!
Please won't you sponsor a child?
A new Rambo movie in theatres soon!?!
Lines are open for the first three hundred callers.

I've often thought about shutting it off,
Strapping on my shoes and leaving my home
But I'd rather sit in this warm electric light
And witness the Fall of Rome.

Don't lose your temper in a foreign airport
Or march for democracy in Myanmar
Don't violate digital copyright laws
Or smoke with a child inside your car.
Because it's better to be safe than it is to be free
In two thousand and nineteen-eighty four.
While the anatomy of our apathy has born a psychotic dichotomy:
Peace is only possible if we fight an endless, unwinnable war.

Give me more corrupt politicians
And insurgents with improvised explosive devices
More PlayStation threes
Ex-boxes and Wii's
In the back of Humvees
That we can drive to a friend
And tell him we don't comprehend
These ridiculous gasoline prices.

Let's celebrate mediocrity and dance with the stars!
Watch them check out of rehab or thrown behind bars.
Let's open up Facebook
Or Google 'Sudan'
Let's check out that video on YouTube
Of the beheading in Afghanistan.

Because it's 1933 and they're burning books again
Throw a coin in the well and follow it down
The inmates are running things around here, my friend
And the circus never left town.