Matchstick Men in Picture and Song

Matchstick men in fluid convergence

I was not quite 3 years old when Status Quo released their song "Pictures of Matchstick Men." Not quite 3 years into college (a time I refer to as my Second Sophomore Year), I heard the Camper Van Beethoven version. I love both, and not quite 3 decades later, it's about time to tackle the topic here.

In the usual google lead-up, I learned that there is a Nick Cage (not his real name) movie called "Matchstick Men," but I've never seen it, and cannot stand that guy. So much so that I will not succumb to the temptation to snark the hell out of him. Nick who? I forget, except for the withered appendix of my memory that still hates him for turning into such utter shit after getting my hopes up with Raising Arizona.

The other web-search surprise was learning about L. S. Lowry, the British artist whose paintings were chock full of angular people who came to be termed "matchstick men." I've not read art critics take him on, but wikipedia implies that quite a few of them wrote him off as a naive, not highly accomplished, artist of the ilk that insiders like to call Outsider (but without the allure of insanity or melanin-enriched ethnicity). Apparently he refused a knighthood and several other honors, so I'm inclined to admire his outsiderness.

What strikes me, though, about his paintings is not the angularity of the individuals, but the fluidity of the collective. Dozens or even hundreds of people walk through the frame, stiff in microscopic isolation, perhaps, but in the whole view of the painting, they illustrate the fluid dynamics of crowds. Converging on a football game as above, or streaming out of factories, weaving through plazas, eccentrically erasing grids.

Crowds of individuals, each maybe set on a line, collectively chaotic, but still expressing a Flow. Good paintings to squint at or view from across the room. Approach closer if you want, focus on an individual or a family (despite their simplicity of form, they are individuals, not a Waldo among them), but for me, the box of Matchstick Men scattered across the canvas of industrial Britain is more interesting.

I cannot really guess what Status Quo was aiming for with their song. Maybe just fame and money, maybe a message. What they hit was a psychedaelic nerve, and their song has been played and played again for decades. Not complex, "naive" perhaps, but an alluring and persistent flow.

Lowery with an "e" and Campany

Then there's these guys. Older than when they covered Pictures of Matchstick Men, and apparently much more sensitive to light, what with the sunglasses. The Camper Van Beethoven version of the song is one of those few covers that exceeds the original without being a radical departure. Faithful covers so often fall into the tepid soup of mediocrity, but not this one. Not that it's without original flourishes (especially live), but the simple power of the original riff cannot be abandoned and still be the same song. Alls I ever hear is it and you.

Front Man Capitalism: Precrastacriticizing Henry Rollins

The Magnificent Creature known as Henry Rollins, bottom (Artist's conception by Coop)

Henry Rollins is a comin' to town soon, which means I should review the show several years from now, but this time I'm going precrastacritic, because I ain't going to the show anyway. May as well pre-judge (as per childhood religious training).

The reason I won't go see this icon of American Hardcore punk, this spokesman for the outsiders, is that he's gonna charge more than I've ever paid to see anything in Olympia, and has the gall to call his tour "Capitalism," in which he goes to the capital of each state (get it!? Pure Henry Gold) and talks about the injustices of capitalism that he has seen in his world travels.

People my age came to know Henry as the singer of Blag Flag, a seminal band which became that way under Dez, but hit punk fame (translation, suburban demi-rebels like myself were able to buy the album) when Damaged hit the record stores, overwrought Henry photo on the cover (he's punching a mirror!). Then he had to have a band named for himself, showed up on a bunch of cable shows and the movie blockbuster Jackass, did whatever it took to make a living without ending up as the burger flipper he sometimes says he was set up to be. 

But instead, he's a "spoken word artist," a phrase that, when translated from it's native Capitalistian, means, "I don't like sharing the take with a band, and I'm more of a visionary/poet/raconteur than a musician."

And I am supposed to pay five times what I would pay for a Fugazi show to take in this one guy, no smarter than Ian for sure, and without the music. He did promise Capitalism, so I guess I shouldn't complain.What sucks is the "I'm with the proletariat" conceit. I watched the video linked to at the calendar that announces hi Olympia show, sitting through  11 excruciating minutes of him talking about how his free-spiritedness and tough upbringing made him qualified to work in the service industry at minimum wage, and thus is my brother.

Bullshit, Henry Garfield (yup, Rollins is a made-up name). Were you street-wise, or a student at the elite Bullis School? Were you earning your blue collar cred while working at a Haagen Dazs ice cream store back when the name meant luxury to the rich, and a complete blank to the rest of us? You like to talk about how close you are to the edge, but you say you've been on tour more than 100 days this year, each time a few hundred people paying 25 bucks a pop to hear you claim that you're just a poor working stiff. 

But you're not cleaning piss in a public nursing facility, and you are not flipping burgers or even slinging yuppie ice cream. You are, as you mostly have been, starring in the Henry Show. Appearing and voicing over, DJ-ing and blogging. Lots of it at henryrollins.com (not .org, .net, or even .us, but .com, just to be clear), where the rest of us can also buy t-shirts with the Henry birth-date emblazoned on them, again for the low low price of $25. Ignoring for the moment the creepy cult-of-personality vibe of selling stuff celebrating the Adored One's date of issue, I'm sure that the reason the shirts cost so much is that they are made in a unionized American factory. 

To harp on the website a moment longer: why is Capitalism so much more evident than that there Freedom you claim to love and defend? The "Dispatch" blog allows no comment, no democratic feedback, and when I get to the "Contact" page, most of the addresses are for money stuff. The approach seems to be, "I am Henry. Now shut up and listen. Or buy something." I wonder too, how far your internet power extends, since I posted an abbreviated rant of this sort at the Olympia Film Society's page announcing your show, only to have it never appear.(Maybe there will be something tomorrow...I tried again.)

However, I do get to see this poster, featuring you as Uncle Sam, co-opting our nation's most scoldy icon to sell tickets. Clever, very clever. And better than that "I copied it from Johnny Rotten" crazy-eyed stare you do; the Uncle Sam pose demonsrates your versatility. Also, it's a welcome relief from the muscle guy stances you seem to favor, looking like Napoleon's Uncle Rico, only meaner. 

Meanwhile, you are making your way here as I pre-criticize. Honolulu to Anchorage to Olympia, and you've traveled all over in months and years preceding. Ergo the "Dispatches" trope on your .com website. We imagine tuning in to read your tales of exotic travel, global humanity, and regional complexities. But mostly there are plugs for your radio show and appearances. Since I know something about Honolulu, I was happy to see you posting from there, but was disappointed to see you only plug away and write boringly about the logistics of traveling shows. There was no there there. Not even any Henry there. If you just wanna phone it in, give up the blog and tweet.

The people who do go see you will enjoy it, probably ($25 is a powerful inducement to feign satisfaction for most of us, Henry). Hell, I enjoyed Black Flag (most recently a half hour ago, on the original vinyl), and actually would rather abide a show-boating, only slightly ripping-me-off guy who speaks out against corporate corruption than most of the alternatives. 

But your being a disingenius is bothersome. Why not admit you were born weller-off than many, that your service-working years were spent in an upscale establishment, or that maybe you got the gig with Black Flag because you had the resources and the parental indulgence to goto NY city to be at their shows for nights on end? People with publicists and booking agents are not your garden variety proles. It's OK, I'm too old and too employed by a state government to call you a Sellout. And if you priced your shows a bit more like Fugazi, I'd probably be among the appreciative crowd.

Kid Rock's Comeuppance: Joe Dirt

Mostly, my posts tend to be mean and sarcastic, or at best something akin to a hipster's glee in irony or camp. I pick on targets like Heston and Jack Lord (both incapable of doing any more than haunting me), movies that are unintentionally funny, not what I'd consider to be great entertainment or art.

So now, it's time for one that I consider a cinematic masterpiece. A movie released in the first year of the millenium: Joe Dirt. David Spade, casting aside his sarcastic schtick and small-guy side-kickery to play a pure and humble (and so temptingly mockable) hero on an epic quest, a zen master never cowed by life's indignities. A working man abused but never downtrodden, he is the cream of the 99%.

He is, of course, imaginary. The real Joe Dirts are locked up, burned out, or beaten down, but this guy comes straight out of the halcyon days of his ilk, keeps on keepin' on, crankin some tunes, and ultimately triumphing with his hemi. The exalted hemi, his favorite bands, the Auto Trader obsession, and all that shit was not intended as documentary, but captures a reality that does exist, or did anyway. While not forgetting to be hilarious. Not high-brow, understand (although some lines would work as New Yorker cartoons), but not overly dependent on farts either and above the crowd in terms of literalizing the "he's being shit on" theme. Seems like everything Joe says is something I heard in high school. Anyway, thanks Spade and Wolf for a kick-ass script.

Whoever cast this was right on. His small-town girl-next-door-friend is sweet and genuine (and extra authenticity points for casting a Brittany as a Brandy), and having Dennis Miller portray a self-adoring douchebag mock-jock inspired by Dirt's story to a patronizing dullness is pretty dead-on. One of my favorites among the human(ish) cast is Kid Rock playing grown "man" still going by Robby (another authentic name, and this time the "actor's" actual name, as opposed to his clever trade name). It is incredibly satisfying to see Kid Rock get his comeuppance in the movie, and also to realize that this was probably the acme of his career. Finding a dog with such elasticity is a coup, as well.

Speaking of which, this movie has the funniest dog-ball scene ever, tender in every sense of the word. [Not really, it is not at all like these tenders: boats, caretakers, or those weird little strips of chicken meat with a big tendon at one end.]

So I was watching this with my older kid, up til just before the sex (maybe sibling incest) scene, when she was shooed out. As some of you know from an early procrastacritique of mine, I am home-schooling her in sarcasm, and wanted to show her the particularly mean (and in my opinion, unworthy) brand of snarkasm Dennis Miller delivers so oilily. When he's playing Zander Kelly, I mean.

But because I'm a censorous old man, my daughter missed the best pose sequence this side of the collected stretches of Nacho Libre. Joe takes off his shirt and strikes every attitude of bad-ass nonchalance he can, in slow-mo, while a white trash hottie takes it in. He's the carny sex god, and for some reason his stances and expressions just crack me up to no end. [I swear it is a coincidence that I just happened to watch Zoolander, and I am not really obsessed with model-style sequences].

One of the first things people comment on with Joe Dirt (OK, maybe the only thing) is his mullet, so of course for me it will be last. The hair is cool and all, but it is a wig, whereas his facial hair is natural; he doesn't even have to shave. This trigger's Miller's best line, "Now, you're telling me you were so ingrained with white trash DNA, your facial hair actually grows in on its own all white trashy like that?"

So. Joe Dirt. Ridiculous realism. The losers' winner. A story arc more than the sum of it's tangents. A movie here un-mocked.