everyone's from sweden

raise your hand if you remember when glasgow was awesome. okay, i mean, not the town. the town is sort of ugly and depressing in a way that only an economically static factory town can be. but think back to like 2004... {{DREAM SEQUENCE}} ...franz ferdinand had just come out with their first album (and hadn't had time yet to rush their second album into cultural oblivion). you had finally heard a belle and sebastian song that made you want to fall in love (instead of just mock them mercilessly). you might have heard of camera obscura. travis had hit the mainstream (and by "the mainstream" i obviously mean "the overhead on the coaches in oxford"). maybe you hadn't heard of dogs die in hot cars, or orange juice (the post-punk band that broke up in the eighties but who could only influence the glasgow music scene more if edwyn collins was physically sitting on it). but, the point is, everyone was starting to realise: glasgow was a goldmine of good shit.

{{END DREAM SEQUENCE}}

so. that was fun for awhile. but then - as often happens with mines - it ran dry. there was no more goldshit to be found. belle and sebastian didn't release another album for a couple years. franz ferdinand unfortunately did. you went to see camera obscura in concert and they were good but you weren't absolutely certain that they weren't sleeping standing up. and i will always have a soft spot in my heart for travis, but i have the sinking suspicion that they may have inadvertently initiated the disillusionment with the glasgow music scene by releasing the politically-charged, musically-narcoleptic 12 memories, which sucked a lot of the cool out of their own reputation as well. (although maybe i should cut them some slack, as fran healy was wearing this hat at the time, which surely suggests some sort of psychotic episode in the offing.) all of the hipsters or the scenesters - or whatever kind of 'ster was popular at the time - turned their gazes from glasgow and went looking for a new undiscovered european town to devour.

this is when everyone realised, at the exact same moment, that sweden existed.

i'm not sure where this columbus-style discovery of stockholm and gothenburg began. but all of the sudden, every exciting new band or musician i heard about was hailing from sweden. (to the extent where i'm going to have to assume that some of them were lying about their country of origin, just to jump on the hey-i'm-from-sweden-please-give-me-a-record-deal-thanks bandwagon.) the hives. the soundtrack of our lives. jens lekman . the shout out louds. peter bjorn and john. the reincarnation of robyn. the knife. el perro del mar. pelle carlberg. irene. sambassadeur. (that's all i can think of right now. although, interestingly enough, i just found out that there's a swedish band called "wan light," named after an old orange juice song - which may cause some bending in the space-time-glasgow-sweden continuum.) this led people to think more fondly of the cardigans, remember the concretes, and conveniently forget about ace of base. it was a very good year to be an indie kid. (but only because "indster" never quite caught on.)

so now i'm wondering - when we've finished chowing down on sweden, who's going to be next? prague? kosovo? kyrkyzstan? the possibilities are endless. i'd be interested to see if anyone else has a hypothesis, vote, or prophetic dreams regarding what the next city might be.

but in the meantime, you can rest assured that any linked bands in this entry are most assuredly not hein. (they would have a "jls gives it a Not Hein" stamp on them if i had one... come to think of it, why don't i have a stamp like that?) so check them out, and enjoy those talented swedes before the talent faery takes off for greener pastures.

(hmm... iceland??)

if i ever get married, i'm gonna marry the sea

For starters... well, for starters, this is Jessy, not Courtney. Also, this is not a post about how the sea is Not Hein. Although, let's face it: the sea rules. But everybody knows that. What you may not know about is the extremely unhein web comic, "Married to the Sea." It is funny. It incorporates highbrow irony with poorly executed street slang. It is vaguely Victorian. It is very offensive. It is the current sunshine of my life.

But you don't have to take my word for it. Just preview these delightful examples:













Now do the-internet-equivalent-of-running-not-walking to www.marriedtothesea.com, and read all of them... if you're over the age of 18 and nobody in your family has recently suffered from Alzheimer's or rectal cancer.

Love,
Jessy

A Ph.D in Horribleness

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog

Seriously, there’s not too much to be said about this. Except that it is clearly one of the most amazing things in the history of the universe. My understanding is that it was written and produced by Joss Whedon (of Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel fame) during the writer’s strike, in part to scratch an itch, but also to prove to the big studios that they weren’t a necessary component to online content.

He proved his point. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is a sign that, despite impending economic disaster and other apocalyptic happenings, something is wonderfully, wonderfully right with the world.
It’s a forty-two minute webisode featuring Doogie Howser as a villainous wannabe who has an ongoing video blog chronicling his simultaneous quests to gain admittance to the Evil League of Evil (headed by Bad Horse, the Thoroughbred of Sin), defeat his arch-nemesis Captain Hammer, and win the heart of his true love, do-gooder Penny.

Did I mention that it’s a musical?


Other Things That Are Not Hein:

~Starbucks’ new Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate
~Firefly
~central heating
~pear pie with gruyere baked into the crust (hopefully. we’ll see how it turns out, but so far, so good)

In Defense of Prison Break

Okay, so yes, the show involves a lot, a lot of disbelief-suspension. Season One kicks us off with a guy getting himself thrown into prison, covered in blueprint-concealing tattoos, so that he can break his innocent and yet condemned-to-death brother out of prison. The guy just happens to be a structural engineer who works for the firm that did the latest retrofit on the prison. And he just happens to have a weird psychological condition that helps him see the minutia of things so that, when things go horribly, horribly awry (as they inevitably do), his improvisational skills are off the hook. And he just happens to end up with the only cell mate in the Illinois state penal system who is a)not dangerous, b)friendly without being, you know, friendly, c)besotted enough with his flighty girlfriend to risk getting caught in an escape attempt, rather than serving out the last year of his sentence. And this is all in the first three episodes. Needless to say, the show continues with improbably dense authority figures, hair-raising last-instant saves, and the introduction of a shadowy, omnipresent Company that secretly runs the world. Oh, and the guy’s long-lost father (which kinda shrieks melodrama all by itself) just happens to be all entangled with said Company, leading to the brother’s incarceration in the first place.

Seasons 2,3, and, thus far, 4 are more of the same. Season 2: Fugitives simultaneously trying to evade each other and recapture by either legitimate law enforcement or the Company, acquire a duffel bag of—yes—buried treasure, reunite with long-lost fathers, sons, and soul mates, blackmail the—wait for it—President of the United States, and sneak across the border into extradition-free Panama. Season 3: Back in prison again. This time in Panama. Along with not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR other season 1 & 2 gringos. What’s on the agenda? Breaking out of course. Only this time, they’re trying to break out an enigmatic fellow already in residence. At the behest of the Company. Which is holding some of the previously mentioned sons and soul mates hostage. And which has set an impossibly short deadline for the escape. More shifting alliances and backstabbing and lying and running around and, if you’re Michael (the guy) staring broodingly into the middle distance. There is also an inordinate amount of digging. And a little too much decapitation. And, eventually, escape. Which brings us to season 4, full, thus far, of touching reunions and thinly-veiled blackmail. The goal of this season? To bring down the Company. With a crew of seven convicts. From a warehouse in LA. In about a month. Yeah. Sure.

Yet, acknowledging all the gaping plot holes and the wild improbabilities and the crazy coincidences, the show is fundamentally fascinating. And not just because Michael Scofield manages to be simultaneously beautiful and masculine. And not just because it includes a wealth of touching familial moments or the story of two haunted, isolated, prematurely-aged souls finding security in each other. But because, underneath all the trappings--the riots and the digging and the scheming and the shouting--the true conflict of the story occurs within the main character. The real long-term question of the show is this: How far can you push a good man before he ceases to be a good man?

It’s not like the creators are trying to be very subtle about dancing on this line between moral and legal either. In the first five minutes of the show, Michael robs a bank, discharging a gun in the process, leaving people cowering in abject terror on the floor. And he does it with this cute, smug little smirk on his face. He doesn’t hurt anyone, but none of those people on the floor have any way of knowing that he’s just doing it to get himself thrown into jail with his victimized brother. They don’t know it’s a strike in favor of the preservation of life. As far as they can tell—especially with the smirk—he’s a psychopath intent on taking their money and possibly leaving them bleeding on the marble. From their perspective he’s the bad guy.

But it’s okay. Cuz he doesn’t hurt anyone. And cuz he obviously didn’t intend to hurt anyone. Because he’s the hero and he’s hot and he’s trying to help his brother.

But then he’s in prison. And he’s got to rid himself of a too-curious inmate. So he bashes his own head in and blames the guy. But that’s okay. Cuz he’s the only one who gets hurt. Cuz the inmate was crazy and a bad guy who killed his own parents. Cuz he’s the hero. And he’s hot. And he’s trying to help his brother.

And then he needs to dig behind his cell. But the guards are annoying in the regularity of the rounds. So he’s got to get the prison locked down. So he’s got to start a riot. So he cranks up the heat. And the entire prison goes nuts. For a whole two-episode arc. And people get hurt. And people die. And not all of them are crazy and patricidal. But it’s okay, right? Because he managed to save the doctor from a fate worse than death. And he didn’t actually hurt anyone himself. And he’s hot. And he’s trying to help his brother.

Do you see where I’m going here? And this is only in the first half of the first season. As the series progresses, Michael does more lying and cheating and law-breaking and both direct and indirect death-causing. And he’s a very introspective character. So you get to see the impact when he decides not to help the helpless or when he wrestles with the choice between rescuing an ally or completing the job. When he makes deals with devils. When he lies to the people he loves. And he’s not the same Michael Scofield who smirked while he robbed that bank.

It’s a fairly common theme in media both ancient and extant. Look at the most recent Batman movies. You’ve got Batman’s last words to Raz Al-Ghul in Batman Begins: “I won’t kill you…but I don’t have to save you.” A fine line. And in The Dark Knight that fine line is toed by more than Batman. You’ve got Gordon who works with cops who used to be bent because there’s no one else to work with. You’ve got Harvey Dent whose hubris gets him pushed into a series of events that turn him from a do-gooding district attorney to, well, Two-Face. You’ve got the populace of Gotham, who have their humanity pushed the brink by the Joker. And you’ve got Bruce Wayne, slowing losing himself inside his vigilante persona. Struggling to toe the line, to remain a good man. Making Hobb’s choices left and right, in service of the greater good. Using unethical means to defeat the bad guys. Having to choose between the life of the woman he loves and the man he wants to believe can save his beloved Gotham. Having to choose between the life of Bruce Wayne and his beloved Gotham. And in end, agreeing to be the scapegoat for an angry city in order to preserve its hope. Who knows how far that sacrifice will take him in the next movie?

I was reading the story of Moses recently. Yes. That Moses. The one from the Bible. I warned you there would be references from things less than current. And before baby Moses gets put in the bulrushes, you have two midwives refusing to kill Hebrew babies and then lying to the Pharoah who ordered it. And then God—the same God who will later hand down a commandment against lying—rewards them for their actions. And I was talking to my mom (who is awesome, by the way. Get used to references to her.) about their decision to lie and whether that was supposed to bother the audience at all or whether we were supposed to be rooting for them. Whether God was contradicting himself. And I said it didn’t bother me at all. I gave her this eloquent and detailed justification which, in essence, boils down to “the lesser of two evils” with a dash of “in service to the greater good” and just a dollop of “lying and bearing false witness aren’t exactly the same thing anyway”. (How’s that for splitting hairs? You can take the girl out of law school but you can’t entirely take the law school out of the girl).

Anyway, it turned into this whole long conversation about how far you would go to save a life. A stranger’s life. A friend’s life. A whole group of lives. Innocent lives. Not-so-innocent lives. Would you lie? Would you die? Would you sacrifice someone else? Would you deny God? Would you kill? (In case you were wondering, we came to the same conclusion: let’s hope we never have to find out).

That conversation reminded me, though, of a surprisingly good teen series I recently read. It centering on the daughter of the first female president. It’s really intelligently and accessibly written with realistic and engaging characters, a light-fingered sense of humor, and plenty of heart-rending moments both touching and traumatic. It’s kind of like the West Wing for bright teens. Only from the first daughter’s point of view (But not any of the West Wing first daughters. Cuz they were all annoying). And with less discussion of policy. Okay, so not really that much like The West Wing. But you get my drift.

Anyway, Meg, the first daughter, deals with all kinds of friend and family and adjustment and security and publicity issues in the first two books. Then, in the third, she gets kidnapped by terrorists. (Yeah, so, the series demonstrates more than merely thematic similarities to Prison Break. Ellen Emerson White can bring the melodrama like nobody’s business. She does it with grace and panache. So leave it alone, k?) The third and fourth books deal with the fallout of that event. And some of that fallout comes from the president’s blatant and chilling refusal to deal with the terrorists who have her daughter. And the piece of her soul that decision costs her.

So, yeah. As I was saying. Prison Break. It rocks. Check it out.

Things That Are Not Hein:

~Prison Break

~the Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale Batman

~Moses

~my mom

~Ellen Emerson White’s Meg Powers series (The President’s Daughter, White House Autumn, Long Live the Queen, Long May She Reign)

~also, The West Wing (the early seasons anyway…5-7 and, arguably, parts of 4 are…sometimes hein. ish.)

~pie…which I am going to go make now. Yummy.

(PS: Just so you know and can congratulate me on my perspicacity, I started writing this entry before I saw the October 6 episode of Prison Break. That episode actually has a character directly asking, “How far gone is Michael Scofield?”. Whoops. Still. Good to know I’m right. And that they’re doing it deliberately. But, not so promising in terms of the ongoing quality of the show. When they start pointing that stuff out to you, it frequently indicates a downturn in the general subtlety of the show and its philosophy. Sad day. Still…it’s interesting to watch. Even if they did tell you what to watch for.)

PPS: I forgot to mention The Dresden Files, the books not the TV show (which was okay). That series is another great example of watching a man toe that line. And it's wildly entertaining, if a little dark. Check it out. It is most extremely NOT HEIN.