TBT #98: The First Half of 2006 in Review

I was driving home today and a song came on the radio and I liked it and so I drove around the block four times until it was over. Only then did I pull into my driveway. It was the sort of thing that seemed like the perfect metaphor for a good year: driving, good music, not wanting it to end, satisfying feelings! But the metaphor was a failure as the song was Blue October’s “Hate Me”, a stirring and overtly — perhaps purposefully — bad song about a guy who messed up his relationship with a girl because of his deep rooted love for drugs.

I have to block out thoughts of you so I don’t lose my head
They crawl in like a cockroach leaving babies in my bed
Dropping little reels of tape to remind me that I’m alone
Playing movies in my head that make a porno feel like home
There’s a burning in my pride, a nervous bleeding in my brain
An ounce of peace is all I want for you. will you never call again?

Seriously, what the hell does any of that mean? I know it all sounds very dark and dreary and poetic but trying to follow the imagery results in headaches the size of Arizona. The first line is okay: he’s blocking out thoughts so he doesn’t lose his head. Thoughts are traditionally formed in the head so the image is cute. It’s like Baby’s First Poetic Image, all aww, look at you, you turned a phrase and then honey, get the camera, he turned his first phrase!

So far, so good. But then he brings in the cockroaches. The thoughts are like cockroaches. Cockroaches in his bed! And, okay, that’s cliché, banal and a little gross, but it works. What follows, however, is babies. The cockroaches leave babies in the bed. Are these baby cockroaches? I don’t get the impression that they are. I would never refer to a young cockroach as a baby. They’re, like, larvae or something, probably. So I have the image of cockroaches just swarming this guy in his bed, leaving a bunch of babies around, all crying and whining and smelling, probably. Which, admittedly, would suck but the whole situation is kind of hard to relate to, you know? It just seems implausible that cockroaches would have access to multiple babies.

And then, somehow, the babies drop little reels of tape. Or at least I think they do. It’s hard to figure out because before you know it there’s homestyle pornography entering the picture and this whole bug-and-baby-and-tape jamboree takes a dark turn. The rest of the song really doesn’t work, in light of this.

Still, though, it was an acoustic version on the radio today, and I wanted to hear all of it. It was nice and there were violins. And even though it doesn’t really work as a metaphor for my year thus far, it still got me thinking about where I am, and where I’ve been, and the best things along the way. And goddamn if that isn’t a great idea for a column.

Best Months of 2006 thus far, in descending order

1. May
2. April
3. January
4. February
5. June
6. March

Oh man, some tough and not-so-tough decisions on this list. May? The clear winner. I graduated. I drank a lot. I got my bank account so close to zero dollars that I instantly broke into a sweat anytime I had to use a debit machine. I was offered a job. I found out I had a car. But then, well, April was close, wasn’t it? Sure I had exams and assignments and the incorrect but still deeply plausible and haunting belief that I would not actually graduate for some reason hanging over my head, but it also had laughter. And good times. And numerous days where the season would turn from winter-to-spring for just a few hours in the afternoon and I’d sit with a girl making fun of the world.

The rest of the list, though? Mostly too close to call! January was like riding a dogsled across a long patch of thin ice — fun as hell as long as things keep moving fast, but scary whenever you slow down and think about it. And also there’s a strong feeling of guilt because the dogs don’t deserve this kind of treatment. February was a confusing blur of quiet moments, terrible mistakes and decisions I do not regret but still feel bad about it. June was lonely. March was about transitions, many of them painful but all of them good.

Top 5 Movies of 2006 so far

1. Thank You For Smoking
2. Friends with Money
3. An Inconvenient Truth
4. Superman Returns
5. Mission: Impossible: III

Not a bad six months for movies, all things considered. I wish I could get aboard the Pirates of the Caribbean bandwagon seeing as how it’s all the rage nowadays but I just can’t figure out the appeal of pirates, much less the Caribbean. Speaking of which, is there anyone out there who still doesn’t know that Johnny Depp based his Captain Jack Sparrow character on Keith Richards? Because to have people still pointing that out as if it’s a piece of arcane trivia on the same level as Bob Barker doing martial arts training with Chuck Norris or the mother of one of The Monkees being the inventor of liquid paper is really trying. I’m going to start responding to that revelation by pointing out that Johnny Depp also based his character in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on Hunter S. Thompson. And his character in The Astronaut’s Wife on an astronaut. And his character in Edward Scissorhands on a dimwit robot.

In any case, Thank You For Smoking was a delightful and comedic black comedy that didn’t entirely work but did so enough that I still enjoyed the hell out of it. Friends with Money is kind of girly but plays on my love for ensemble dramas and features the kind of non-ending that I really like these days for some reason. An Inconvenient Truth is hilarious and that scene where Al Gore talks about the picture of the earth and a bunch of gold bars on a scale should be awarded several thousand awards. I loved the movie even if I still don’t remember to turn all the lights off when I leave a room and love air conditioning more than, I guess, my children’s future.

Turning to the venerable superhero genre, Superman Returns was such a perfect Superman movie that it suffered in its own perfection. It’s paint-by-numbers in the best sense of the phrase: it all added up to a really fun, really cool, really well-made picture but the whole thing will be out of your head in a week and you won’t have an overwhelming desire to see it again ever. Maybe Superman is just a boring dude in general.

And then there’s Mission: Impossible: III. What a dazzling display of colons. Philip Seymour Hoffman is evil; Tom Cruise is desperately trying to prove he’s still an everyman; Ving Rhames is all ‘Wassup, keep making more of these movies, I love being in them’; Billy Crudup is such a pussy. Everything else explodes again and again and again.

Top Five TV episodes of 2006 so far

1. The Office, Casino Night
2. Veronica Mars, Not Pictured
3. The Sopranos, Members Only
4. Entourage, One Day in the Valley
5. Smallville, Reckoning

Oh come on. All of these are obvious except for the ones that are not. The Office is the best thing on TV right now and the second season season finale was the best episode they have ever done, so long as you’re not one of those jerks who worries too much because of it. Veronica Mars had guns and suicide and fear and hope, packing about three hours of plot into 44 minutes and still coming out looking great. The Sopranos premiere featured what would be the only real plot progression of the season, as every episode after this one mostly dealt with gay mobsters in the countryside and A.J.’s inept murdering ability but damned if it wasn’t great plot progression.

Entourage has been really ridiculously great thus far this season, even if the Dom character seemed like filler. I love the way a bunch of episodes will take place over a few day’s time. One Day in the Valley, with it’s great Almost Famous homage, is just the best of five very strong episodes so far.

And the Smallville episode? I mean, c’mon, his dad died. Tom Welling had to try and look sad. Do you know how hard that is for him to do. As an actor he’s typically limited to a finite range of emotion, from ‘confused’ to ‘befuddled’. And those kinds of emotions only make sense for so long after your dad has a heart attack in the barn.

Top Five Books of 2006 so far

1. Scott Pilgrim, Volume 3
2. The Best American Non-required Reading, 2006
3. Entertainment Weekly
4. The Internet
5. The Da Vinci Code

Fuck I need to read more books. I have not actually read the last one but I saw the movie and I really liked the part where Jean Reno was pretending to be a French cop. That must be really hard for him to do as an actor. He has incredible range.

Top 5 Songs of 2006 so far

1. Johnny Cash, “If You Could Read My Mind”, American V: A Hundred Highways
2. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy & Tortoise, “Thunder Road”, The Brave and the Bold
3. Rick Springfield, “Jesse’s Girl (acoustic)”, ’80s Hits Stripped
4. The Mountain Goats, “Woke Up Now”, 2006 Pitchfork Music Sampler
5. Blue October, “Hate Me”, Foiled

Johnny Cash’s album is as awesome as it depressing. Which is to say that it is very awesome and very depressing. “If You Could Read My Mind” makes me feel bad for psychics. It’s that sad. The “Thunder Road” cover by the terribly-named Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy is so far from the original that it stands on its own, a great version of an even greater song. Rick Springfield’s acoustic version of “Jessie’s Girl” for some reason really makes me feel for the guy. Maybe it’s just that I’m older now and more experienced but I feel like I really understand his pain. He wants to tell her that he loves her but the point is probably moot.

The Mountain Goats are the best band, lyrically, that I have heard in forever. They make depression fun. I can’t wait for the new album. And, lastly, Hate Me? I guess I just really like drug addicts.

Top Five Songs That I Do Not Particularly Like but Have Listened to a Thousand Times or More Probably in the last six months

1. Rise Against, “Swing Life Away”
2. Eminem, “When I’m Gone”
3. Aaron Pritchett, “Hold My Beer”
4. Angels & Airwaves, “The Adventure”
5. Vanessa Carlton, “White Houses”

I will not attempt to justify any of these!

Five Terrible Things of 2006 thus far

1. X-Men 3
2. Canceling Arrested Development
3. The World Cup
4. The Canadian Olympic Hockey Team
5. Johnny Depp

X-Men 3 is like the friend who pretends to like everything you like in a vain and transparent attempt to win your favours. And in the end the friend just vomits all over you with a ridiculous bridge-moving scene and an end cameo call-back that implies a character flew across the fucking country in less than three hours. Also, this friend murders several of your other friends for no real reason. God do I hate him.

Arrested Development? You were awesome. I would have put one of your last episodes on my Top 5 but you have been gone so long I can barely remember them. Please come out on DVD already and I’ll be your buddy once more.

The World Cup was okay, I guess. It doesn’t really bother me as I do not watch soccer. I dislike any sport that features such terrible high-angle camera angles on television. Seriously, the players look like ants. I can’t take it. Still, though, I think as an event The World Cup has the potential to really inspire people. Provided an underdog country wins. A favoured country like goddamned Italy? They win all the time! No one is ever going to make a movie about fucking Italy winning the World Cup. Next time, let Ghana win. I’d watch that movie.

The Canadian Olympic Hockey Team’s performance has had lingering effects on all of Canada. Have you noticed noone is proud to be Canadian anymore? Except Quebec. They seem to like us now. Because we’re losers, I bet. It’s like an attractive girl sidling up to an unattractive girl in a bar, because it makes them look even better.

And Johnny Depp? I swear to god it’s time for a backlash. So he can play a pirate. That doesn’t make him god.

Five More Songs I’ve Listened to a lot over the last six months

1. Deana Carter, “Strawberry Wine”
2. Kanye West, “School Spirit”
3. Van Morrison, “A Whiter Shade of Pale”
4. Eve 6, “Inside Out”
5. Midnight Oil, “Beds are Burning”

Matt