RC f/u #44: The Beaches, the Beths, Duke Deuce, and Margo Price

Sometimes it's nice to just stop and smell the roses. Four album that qualify for this column were released last weekend, and I was excited for all of them, so I figured I would just give them all quick reviews right away instead of sitting on them. Here ya go.

No Hard Feelings by the Beaches

Released: August 29, 2025

Follow-up to: Blame My Ex, Week 246

I think I'm over the "this is too young for me" thing. I don't feel it while listening to the Beaches' latest like I did for the first one. I suppose this could be the result of all of us growing a couple years older, but I'm choosing to view it as a mark of my ongoing maturation as a listener of fine music. So what if they are young, and hot, and queer, and Canadian? I'm not like the members of the Beaches in so many ways, but it's up to me as the listener to find the commonalities.

They make it easier on No Hard Feelings. The production is immaculate on this thing. So many bright sounds, high synths mixing with crystal-clear guitars, vocals that ring out while still somehow managing to stay cool. Listening to this album, it's hard to remember why I was so standoffish about that Record Club album. I think that's still just my problem with bands who "go viral." I hope nothing from No Hard Feelings goes viral, for my sake if not for theirs.

I wish all pop music sounded like this, like a badass '90s riot grrrl band was serving their probations by playing '80s music at a wedding. Even the Found Drama of it all is excusable when the shit is this polished and catchy. I don't know if I'm in a good mood today or what, but you can finally count me in on the Beaches.

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5 (+0.5 from original review)

Straight Line Was a Lie by the Beths

Released: August 29, 2025

Follow-up to: Future Me Hates Me, Week 33

I appreciated that the Beths explained it before I even had to. In this interview, they admitted that the first three Beths albums were very consciously of the same sound, simple and joyous and compact, but that LP4, Straight Line Was a Lie, was finally a purposeful effort from the band to mix it up a little bit. This is a bit of an alteration on the agreed-upon narrative that most rock bands adhere to (in which LP2 repeats the successes of LP1 but then it's LP3 that mixes it up). Maybe they do it different down under in New Zealand!

Obviously, the overall assessment here is: this album fucking rocks. That's how it's always been with this band, even before Record Club picked up on it. But the headline for Straight Line Was a Lie is that it rocks in slightly different, and ultimately very interesting new ways. Sure, "Metal" gets play on XPN because it's the most Beths song ever, but that's followed up with the acoustic ballad "Mother, Pray for Me"? "No Joy" is a legit hard-rocker, but then it has a bonkers breakdown with these like off-key flutes?? "Best Laid Plans" might be one of the best things they've ever done, and that's how they are gonna end the album??? There might be a temptation to say that songs are "slower" on this album than usual, but I don't think that's true. It's more like: deeper. Something like "Til My Heart Stops" just takes its time hitting that peak, ya know?

I've liked the Beths for a long time now, but I haven't been this excited for a Beths album since Future Me Hates Me. In my Jump Rope Glazers f/u review, I wondered if the Beths would ever wow us with the unexpected. Expert in a Dying Field wasn't that album, as good as it was. This, though? This is the album. They finally made something else that has floored me. One of the best of the year so far.

GRADE: 4.5 pukes out of 5 (+0.5 from original review)

Rebirth by Duke Deuce

Released: August 29, 2025

Follow-up to: Duke Nukem, Week 113

It takes OVER ONE MINUTE for us to get the first "WHAT THE FUUUUUU" of the album. This is insane, and sincerely unexpected. I would've put big money on a bet that Duke Deuce drops a "WHAT THE FUUUUU" in maybe the first five seconds. And that "WHAT THE FUUUUU" at the one-minute mark is kinda backgrounded! We don't get one in the foreground for another 30 seconds. Duke Deuce has changed, man.

In all seriousness, it seems like he's changed. More accurately, if feels like he's probably had a rough few years (it's been over three since we last heard from him on CRUNKSTAR). Compare REBIRTH to Duke Nukem, and Deuce seems... a little tired, a little angry, a little less willing to yell out his signature catchphrase as a means to catharsis. When he says "It's a rebirth / back from the dead," the implication is that he was "dead" for some rough reasons, and not just because he was taking a break.

I'm not saying its a joyless affair; it's all relative, and Duke Deuce has always seemed like a guy who was fucking around all the time, and now all of a sudden it seems like he's not. There's plenty of joy—plenty of "WHAT THE FUUUU"s, after all (also: "BLUES CLUES" is a fucking delight). Maybe Duke is going through it just like we all are. The world is a crazy place. What else can you do beyond look around and get confused and yell "WHAT THE FUUUUUU" as loud as you can?

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5 (+0.5 from original review)

Hard Headed Woman by Margo Price
Released: August 29, 2025

Follow-up to: Strays, Week 229

Oh, whoops, jinxed it. The road from Strays to Strays II showed that Margo Price was slowly moving away from that typical country music sound, and I was pretty impressed by it. I shouldn't have said anything. Hard Headed Woman is a country album. This is purposeful—Price said that, in response to everything that was going on in the world, she burned everything down and started to build it up again. It makes sense to turn to "getting back to your roots" as a self-defense mechanism.

For what it's worth, I don't have an issue with Price's brand of country. It's just never been at the top of my (short) list of favorite country music. Not sure why. She just doesn't hit the sweet spot, songwriting-wise, that someone like Waxahatchee might. Maybe Price is a little more of an insider, and I'm mostly working with outsiders? I have no fucking clue.

Honestly, the issue I take with Hard Headed Woman is the same basic shit it always is: Price's back-to-roots country involves a lot of slow tempos and sparse arrangements. "Close to You," for example, is a love song on the brink of the apocalypse. I can see how this fits into Price's stated intentions ("we waltzed across the room as democracy fell"), but it's just kind of boring to me. It felt like Strays had her rocking out, and that buoyed a lot of the weaker songwriting for me.

But what can ya do. I'm sticking with Margo, even when she makes music that's a bit of a bore.

GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5 (-0.5 from original review)

NEXT TIME: Let's go back to the original plan of one album from a while ago that I missed and one recent album that I'm familiar with. The former: year of the slug by Caroline Rose. The latter: Fancy That by PinkPantheress.

A Year of Blind Spots: Blind Faith

Joe is working through a list of albums that he considers "blind spots," i.e. albums that he's never heard but feels like he should.

Blind Faith

Blind Faith

1969

We don't talk about album cover art too much in this column, or possibly ever? I forget. It's been a long time now. Possible I'm just forgetting something. For better or worse, the cover art for Blind Faith is going to have to be part of the conversation today. The original cover art—which is not included above—is a photo that depicts an eleven-year-old girl topless. This is the work of photographer Bob Seidemann, who would later defend his decision with some high-minded nonsense about "innocence bearing forth new technology." You know what I typically call it, sitting here at my work desk? Child abuse. There's a little button on my computer for "taking explicit photographs of children" and "disseminating pornographic material depicting children" and everything.

But I can't hit the button now. The statute of limitations is up, Seidemann is dead, and we're here to discuss Blind Faith, who only subcontracted Seidemann, and only made the poor decision to allow some fucking creep to take a nude picture of a child and put it on the cover of their supergroup's one and only album. Plus, there are probably different laws in Britain. Those people are fucking crazy over there.

Like this Eric Clapton fella. I'm not accusing him of being a child pornographer, but there is a very large swath of the population that falls in between the poles of "decent person" and "child molester," and Clapton has found it (our president has not, for different e.g.). He's not a good dude. But I think I've already written about this. Yeah, for the Cream entry in this column, many years ago. I guess the antivaxxer Eric Clapton was in a lot of bands.

I'm not interested in ever exploring his solo stuff, probably based on his political/conspiratorial views, but this is the fourth band on my iPod now that features Clapton. It might behoove us to write 'em out in paragraph form, especially if you're like me and was always curious as to the chronology but didn't actually care enough to look it up.

Clapton cut his teeth in the Yardbirds, then joined Cream. When Cream broke up, he and Ginger Baker joined Blind Faith (YOU ARE HERE says the figurative map of today's blog post), a supergroup with Traffic's Steve Winwood (Traffic broke up around the same time). They only last one album and one summer tour. Then Clapton did some solo work, and started to get momentum. He felt uncomfortable with the fame, so he formed Derek and the Dominos to prove that he could work just as well as a supporting player. Then he went out solo again, and slowly faded into the racist mist.

The Yardbirds is like Mick Foley—no gimmicks. Cream is Mankind—designed to be creepy but ends up being creepy in a campy, fun way (and also the most well-known). Derek and the Dominos is Dude Love—a purposeful flipping of the script, and one that sometimes feels like a façade. So Blind Faith is Cactus Jack—tough, uncompromising. 

These guys were greatly influenced by Jimi Hendrix, and you can hear it. The guitar solos are pulled off of Are You Experienced, and Ginger Baker goes toe-to-toe with Mitch Mitchell, especially on the wild, exquisite solo on "Do What You Like." Not sure what else to say about the music, though. "Supergroup" implies that these people are good at what they do, and they clearly are. If Blind Faith was trying to fashion a template for creating late-'60s and early-'70s psychedelic rock, then that's what they did, but that doesn't make it interesting for me. It just sounds like every other band that used the template.

I enjoy it. Even if I don't like Clapton, and even if I don't like child abuse. Those are easy work-arounds when it comes to an album like this—change the cover out for the American version, and close your eyes and focus on the fact that Clapton was a dumbass 24-year-old at the time, as opposed to the dumbass 80-year-old he is now.

Damn, I meant to make a joke about Blind Faith being the only true Blind Spot in this column, because, ya know, Blind Faith. You get it.

RC@5: Imploding the Mirage by the Killers

Record Club covered this album five years ago. I gave it another listen this week. So did Nate. Here are our thoughts.

Imploding the Mirage

The Killers

Week 84: September 6-12, 2020

Nate

What was said five years ago still feels correct. Time and distance make everything sweeter or smaller, and this record comes off as both upon revisit. "My Own Soul's Warning" still goes and is a textbook album opener. "Caution" is probably the best song the band has written since something off Day & Age. The band still has a charming—even anachronistic—tendency to swing big in its arrangement; anything that doesn't rise to an anthem in the first 45 seconds will eventually get there in the first 180. 

What's new: nothing here really sucks, even if only a few moments are really worth revisiting for anyone but the hardcore or the unintelligibly casual. It's fine, but it achieves its fineness with such aplomb and charm that you can forgive yourself for thinking there's a lot more there. There is, at least, a little more there, and who are you in times like these to scorn even a little more?

~~~~~~~~~~

Joe

The idea, I think, is that legacy bands can and should still put out new music. That's the understanding I've come to over the past five years, and, relistening now, I'm realizing that the Killers are a natural fit for that category of bands. Imploding the Mirage is both excellent and also pales in comparison to Sam's Town (comparable to Hot Fuss in quality, in the same way that apples and oranges are both tasty fruits). Nate nailed it when he said that the best songs on here are good mid-concert staples. That's how it works. The band thanks the fans for coming out to hear all the old hits, and thanks them again for listening to some of the newer stuff that they are pretty proud of. 

Not that I could afford such concert tickets myself. I'm just saying, I'm glad the Killers are here still. I'm glad they are still trying new stuff. Pressure Machine wasn't as good as Imploding the Mirage, but that's only because Pressure Machine didn't attempt to continue the Springsteen lineage (or maybe it did and it was just more focused on being the Killers' version of Nebraska? I forget, it's been a hot minute since I've listened to Pressure Machine). This is the Killers returning to what secured their legacy—an '80s-tinged heartland rock band from Sam's Town. Good stuff.

It's tough to see that in the moment, maybe, that this both a product of the established legacy and also adding to it. The comment from Sunny in the Sunday write-up of "The Killers in 2020? What could go wrong??" was totally warranted. Unless you are 100% plugged into the blogosphere, who the fuck would know that the Killers aren't just cashing in, but instead are still fucking GOING FOR IT? In this way, I think a Hold Steady comparison is justified. Is the Hold Steady ever going to make an album that is comparable to that mid-'00s run? Almost assuredly not. But they are out there making pretty great music every once in a while anyway, and they remain relevant, and have a good excuse to play the hits in concert.

Anything else to say about this week of Record Club? Erin dropped our first COVID reference in a while, which is a good reminder that we were still dealing with that shit as the 2020 summer turned to 2020 autumn. Nolan wrote his first of four reviews for RC (so far), and did something interesting with the review. I guess it's also cool how many Springsteen and War on Drugs mentions we got, and that Record Club would eventually cover both of those bands. We're coming for every artist eventually.

Okay, time to relisten to Pressure Machine to see if that thing holds up as well as this one does.

Discussion — Week 345: Plowing into the Field of Love by Iceage

I mean, this was an obvious picture choice for this discussion thread, right? Was anyone expecting me to pick something besides the 2002 kids' film? We don't have to talk about it in the comments, though. Ice Age is a thoroughly average movie. How about Iceage? Good band? Good reviews? Holler at me in the comments.

Plowing into the Field of Love, Sunny

Turns out this wasn't a Norse heavy metal band, no, actually the style's much more in the central curve of my wheelhouse. Moody bass, downer chords on guitars of various amplitudes, absolutely breathless singer, and flitting around with plenty of religious imagery. Yeah, with "On My Fingers," I'm thinking this could work out alright.

Ah, but we continue. I don't care for lead single "The Lord's Favorite." The rest of this album sort of takes the above elements and then mixes 'em up a little bit. Think your favorite salad base with different toppers and dressings. That's cool, but what's this jamboree bouncing-esque tune accompanying this? Does it not feel out of tenor a bit? And then "breathless" slowly becomes more "wail-ey," and I'm confused, and somehow alienated. What are we doing here Ice?

I do believe in heaven, I do believe it’s real. Do you, Iceage? Heaven's just a place on earth.

And still that track gets hooks in my brain! Ain't that some shit? It lays some credit for sure; I like this album overall. I like the cloistered depression of "Stay," the sort of industrial varnish of "Let It Vanish," the western aesthetic in "Forever," the particularly breathless "Cimmerian," the late night lounge of "Against the Moon," or, of course, the title track, tucked in at the end there, which I really like on here. This is how I want my salad composed.

Such cleaving within an album suggests I may be missing something of this band's offering, but it is only a week and time is short. The half I can really groove with makes the whole album worthwhile, though clearly I'm judicious with my skip button listening N-times through.

An aside, between last week's RC and this week's, I did listen to the record of Beyondless I bought, and quite liked it, but with only one listen through before now, a solid "which album is better?" answer will need to wait.

Plowing into the Field of Love, Gloria

I love being part of Record Club, but I hate the weeks when I feel like I'm giving a sort of half-assed review. I'm so sorry, this is another one of those weeks. I'm traveling for work this week, and that makes it a little easier to listen to the albums, but much harder to write about them. These are my thoughts on Plowing into the Field of Love in list form: 

1. I loved the piano parts throughout—they were moody and driving. 
2. A lot of the musicality stood out to me, particularly in small details like the trumpet coming through on "Glassy Eyed." Just beautiful. 
3. I was shocked when the album ended and Spotify played other songs by this band: I wasn't familiar with Iceage, and it seems like this album was a departure from their typical sound.
4. It captures a volatile sort of strength through both the lyrics and sound. 
5. I really liked this album. It worked really well as an album and kept my attention, but some parts sounded repetitive; they probably could have cut a song or two to make it hit harder.

Plowing into the Field of Love, Nate

Context matters. When one is a ripshit punk band, throwing a mess of atonal guitar squeal at a song gives it teeth. When one is fronting what is probably best understood as a Nick Cave cover outfit, atonal noise and superfluous instrumentation can take on a more ponderous, less immediately driven or clear purpose. So it goes when one makes that mess leap from "punk" and into "post-punk"—the world becomes your oyster, but you've still gotta catch and shuck the fucker. 

One might not need to know Iceage's past to recognize this album as a band in transition. Like all changes, it's messy and unclear at times, but there are some obvious and boyuant peaks. "The Lord's Favorite" is wine-soaked cow-punk that finds a sweet spot between "being in on the joke" and "not realizing the joke is in fact on the person telling it." "Let It Vanish" is a dissonant piece of indie-rock that would have well pleased the Lord if the Lord were Issac Brock. "Abundant Living" is a jumpy punkwork that finds a few smiles in what is an otherwise pretty dour experience. "Against the Moon" is the sour little heartbreaker that confirms this transformation from howling teens to long-haired blazer-wearers is not only worth it, but a true elevation. 

Final though: Critic Ian Cohen once described Iceage from this point forward as a band with a better record collection and wardrobe than actual songs. There are symptoms of that on Plowing into the Field of Love, but there's enough bite here to make the clothes more outfit, less costume.

Plowing into the Field of Love, Joe

You can get used to anything. When I think about this maxim, I think about back when I was sixteen. I used to worry a lot about not being able to drink, which is a funny worry, in retrospect. I just didn't like the taste of alcohol, which was a problem if I wanted to drink it. Shit was nasty. But I wanted to be cool. I wanted to drink, to get drunk. In the midst of these ongoing anxieties, I happened to get sick, like physically, the chills and coughing and all that stuff. I was on vacation in the Poconos when I came down with the illness, so my parents bought some liquid medicine, I dunno, robitussin or something. Tasted awful. But I dutifully drank my fill every four-to-six hours the whole weekend, so that vacation wasn't completely ruined. By Monday morning, after downing another shot of that red syrup, I had a revelation. I had drank enough of it that I didn't dislike it anymore. And if that were the case with this particular liquid, then why couldn't it be the case for all liquids? It was with a fresh determination that I returned from vacation, physically well and ready to drink some more beers, in an attempt to like drinking them eventually.

You can get used to anything. Literally anything. My middle child has been crying every day before school, but eventually she'll stop, because eventually she'll get used to going to school. I've been walking around with plantar fasciitis that I'm doing everything to heal and nothing is working and there are some days that I forget that this pain isn't normal, because it feels normal to be now, because I'm used to it. Philly's dictator took away my WFH abilities for no good reason fourteen months ago and now I live in a cubicle and it's become frighteningly normal—depressing as hell, but I'm used to it. I feel like I'm using life-altering examples here but you can apply it to anything. Fourteen years ago, Pam would get upset because I wouldn't close the shower curtain after I showered, and now we've been married for eleven years and muscle memory closes the curtain for me every single time. Anything.

You can apply it to music, too, if you want. If you have the stamina, the motivation, the time during the day. I had a lot of time to listen to Plowing into the Field of Love this week, and I listened to it on repeat. I entered the week being familiar with it, and my thoughts were: this is an okay album with one excellent song, and the rest is trending toward filler material. But I listened to it for the first time in years, and then listened to it again and again and again, and... I got used to it. Here at the end of the Record Club week, I can no longer taste the bitterness of the red syrupy medicine. It tastes fine to me. Good, even. I'm so used to it that now I'm having thoughts that maybe Iceage are underrated geniuses, that Plowing into the Field of Love is a work of mad, sloppy brilliance.

The limitations of Record Club prevent this from happening most of the time. You can fit ten listens into the week and that's not enough to get the whole picture. You can fit 20 listens in, even, and maybe you're still not used to it. My situation this week was more like, I've listened to it 50 times in the past eleven years, and now I'm going to listen to 20 additional times, which moved the ball from the red zone to the endzone. It was already close though, I just needed to get a little more used to it. 

I needed to get used to the vocals, and the way that Rønnenfelt doesn't necessarily sing with the music so much as stumbles over on top of it. And the inflections, I mean, speaking of robitussin. I had to get used to the weird, manic energy that such a vocal performance brings, and how it interlocks with the rhythms through each song, like a key that gets stuck and you gotta wiggle it and turn it this way and that but you always eventually get through the door. There are so many little decisions all over this album that sounded originally like cacophony and noise, until, that is, I got used to it. The high-pitched bursts of violin, the trumpet out of the ether, guitar that sounds jarringly like static, cascading drums that forget to keep the beat for whole verses at a time. "How Many" has a someone keeping tempo by banging the drum stick on a piece of metal, possibly the cymbal stand? But then when the stick stops tapping, the tempo immediately slows down. I don't necessarily understand much of what is done here, but I listened and listened and now it all makes sense. Every discordant noise in its place. I am used to it.

You can get used to anything, and it doesn't always have to be pain. You can get used to hearing about child abuse every day, but that just means you're numb. You can get used to flipping the breaker on the outlet for your dishwasher if that's the only thing that works because you can't afford another trip by the electrician, even though you should probably get it looked it, for safety reasons. That's not really what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about getting used to something that might seem strange. You can hear something like "The Lord's Prayer" right away, because you're used to, I dunno, rockabilly already. But it takes a little longer to get used to something like "Simony." The guitars sound alien, the drums are out of control, the frontman is yelling about selling spiritual goods, it's all a lot. But you get used to it. And it changes at that point, for the better.

When you get used to something that you're not initially familiar with, then that's giving yourself more room to find joy. You can't hear the joy in Iceage's music if you're not used to it. Once you get used to it, though, the joy is there to stay. 

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5

Never Seen It #250: Mac and Me

"I can't believe it, the blog looks perfect. You watched these 400 movies I've never seen before for me?" "It wasn't us. I mean, think about it mom, is this something we would do?" "Good point."

Mac and Me

1988

Stewart Raffill

Group E chose to watch Mac and Me. It was... something. More thoughts below, and then meet us in the comments for the most intellectual discussion that's ever occurred on Puke on Your Birthday.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Allison

The range of emotions I experienced while watching Mac and Me could be compared to the five stages of grief. We start the film in denial. How bad could it be? Surely it's not as bad as everyone says. Then we move swiftly to anger as the film's eponymous protagonist, and his grotesque family is introduced. Didn't this movie have Coke and McDonald's money, so why does it look so cheap?! I hate everything about these aliens and their bug-eyed, jowly faces! Whoever designed them should be thrown in prison! Why do they walk like that?! Do they not have kneecaps on the moon?!

Then we replace bargaining with bewilderment, and we'll spend considerable time there. How did this movie get made? Why does this minimum security space center (somewhere between Chicago and LA) not have an alien containment protocol? Why is Mac drilling holes in the wall and cutting up the door? To what end, Mac? Are these aliens related to humans? A missing link we didn't know was missing and would prefer to un-know? They're human-shaped, after all, but graciously evolved without external genitalia; however, very unfortunately, with quivering butthole mouths with which to slurp up moon juice. And moon juice, we later learn, is equivalent to Earth Coke. Am I following this? The questions don't stop. Despite watching this film with what felt like laser focus, I missed the initial naming of Mac. Suddenly, everyone this naked whistling abomination has a name. When the fuck did that happen? It wasn't until the second viewing (yes, we watched it TWICE, the second time by way of the MST3K reboot) that we caught Eric describing him to his mom as "The MAC! Mysterious Alien Creature." Blink and you'll miss it. This movie demands your full attention.

From there, we'll skip over depression, it's a kids' movie after all, and transition suddenly and inexplicably to acceptance. It's a shocking shift, from revulsion to revelry, and it happens where all '80s dreams come true, McDonald's. In what I can only describe as the hyjinxiest of hyjinx, Eric stuffs Mac into a gutted teddy bear to bring him along to a stranger's birthday party (because he has to!), and at the McDonald's party, a full-fledged dance number breaks out. Stirred by the music and infectious energy, Mac shuffles and shambles across the counter, backed up by the most enthusiastic Micky D's cashiers ever recorded. It's a baffling, chaotic, incredible scene. From here on, I'm locked in. Whatever absurdist farce this film wants to throw at me, I'm game. A frenetic wheelchair chase scene, great. A whimsical road trip, let's go. A cave full of dying aliens, why not! A tense police stand off, wow! A dead kid, okay, this was a choice. A kid brought back from the dead with the power of alien magic and maybe friendship, fuck yeah! So confident were the filmmakers that this film would merit a sequel that, in the final shot, as Mac blows a big pink bubble with his puckered face rectum, it reads, "We'll be back!" Unfortunately not. Ah, there's the depression.

A confession, I've been stalling. How do you rate a movie like Mac and Me? Should I base it on the quality of the film? The script, the acting, the grotesque puppetry/animatronics? It's a bad movie, sure, but it's not unwatchable. Or do I go against my better judgment (and film studies minor) and base it on the experience and the lasting impression? I had a blast watching it (both times). I haven't stopped thinking about it. I've been using photomoji of Mac to respond to all my husband's texts. And if I'm being honest, I'd probably watch it again.

5 out of 5 cans of Coke, which, as we all know, mimics the liquid inside the moon.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pat

There is only one commandment in filmmaking: Thou shall not be boring. A movie must make the audience feel something, be it joy, sorrow, disgust, arousal, whatever. Measures of whether a film is "good" or "bad" are ultimately less important than whether it provoked a reaction—any reaction—in its viewers. The fastest way for art to find itself in the dustbin of history is to be unengaging and therefore forgettable.

By virtually all measures, Mac and Me is a bad, bad, bad movie. The story is plagiarized, the special effects are subpar, and the shameless product placement siphons out any goodwill the characters create. But holy shit, this is not a boring movie. It responds to the maxim "Fiction has to make sense" by boldly asking "But what if it didn't?" I'm going to be thinking about Mac and Me forever. I've already rewatched the McDonald's dance scene since I've started writing this. 

What was the emotion I felt most while watching Mac and Me? You guessed it: fear! I've seen horror movies accidentally turn out as comedies, but this is the first time I've ever seen a family comedy come out as a horror. R.J. Louis seems to have assembled a team of horror auteurs while trying to make an E.T. knockoff for McDonald's. Imagine Hereditary if it was shot like The Goonies. That's Mac and Me. And Roland Emmerich owes somebody money, because Mac escaping from the lab is indistinguishable from the alien autopsy sequence in Independence Day. 

The driving force behind this unceasing horror? The aliens. The aliens. The goddamn aliens! 

I could not look away any time they were on screen. My eyes were glued to TV, from the acid trip version of 2001: A Space Odyssey opening, to the final scene where they're dressed like a mutant family from Fallout. These aliens are the visions I would see if I was doing a Jacob's Ladder. Everything about them is wrong, from the off-putting hip swivel when they walk, to the lifeless eyes, to the aneurysm-inducing whistle language. 

Mac and Me doesn't just fall into the Uncanny Valley. It tries to jump it on a motorcycle Evel Knievel-style, crashes into the cliff on the far side, and plummets to the bottom like Homer into Springfield Gorge, hitting every unsettling nook and cranny on the way. All the dogs in the neighborhood chase Mac because they instinctively know that he stands in defiance of God's creation and must die. When I see the Mac family, two million years of evolution tells me that danger is afoot. It's thrilling. 

The hideousness of the puppets is the Rosetta stone for understanding every other creative decision in this film. The team behind Mac and Me apparently escalated from "There are no bad ideas in brainstorming" to "The first idea we brainstorm is what we're doing, no take-backsies." 

"What if the aliens look like the Christian devil, but with buttholes for mouths?" Done. 

"What if we stage an elaborate dance sequence that both advertises our corporate sponsor and emphasizes how much the main character can't walk?" Absolutely.

"What if Coca-Cola brings aliens back to life?" Totally. Eat my ass, power of love! 

"What if we kill the boy with a fucking shotgun?" Only if it leads to a massive explosion, which the Mac family can emerge from in one of the most chilling visuals ever committed to film. 

"We've come to take his soul to Hell."

The movie ends with the promise/threat "We'll be back." This is wrong on two counts. First, no sequel was ever made. But in a greater sense, the Macs can never return because they never left. They will always be with me. Mac and me are bound forever. 

Pat's Rating: 👽👽👽👽👽

5 out of 5 alien faces burned onto the inside of my eyelids

~~~~~~~~~~

Joe

I was primarily familiar with the decades-long inside joke on Conan O'Brien's various talk shows. It is probably other people will mention this in their write-ups, but I'll continue just in case. Whenever Paul Rudd came on to promote whatever project he had worked on, he would tell Conan he wanted to show a clip, and then, instead of showing the promised clip, would show a clip from Mac and Me. The same clip, every time. I don't remember why I know about this running joke, because I've never sat down and watched Conan's show(s) on purpose. It was probably some reddit TIL whatever. I'm no fan of late-night talk shows, but I am a fan of the running joke, and I appreciate a good one when I see one. Maybe you've noticed a few on this blog. I don't know if any of them are as funny as Ant-Man showing Conan a clip of a kid in a wheelchair falling off a cliff, but they still make me laugh, and that's why I attempt to keep them going. So anyways, that's why I had Mac and Me on the list originally.

But as I watched it, a thought occurred to me that maybe I had read about this film before. Certain film moments that rang a bell in the deep recesses of my mind, e.g. when the alien family pulls a gun in the grocery store. I don't know if I've written about this anywhere before, but in the early days of the internet, I was a fan of a website that wrote these long elaborate essays on bad movies. They made me laugh. The website, if I recall correctly, was Something Awful. I don't know if the website exists anymore. I think I tried to look it up at some point (I remember, even more vaguely than the Mac and Me piece, that there was something about some background character in the CLASSIC 1993 film Super Mario Bros., and you can understand why that would interest me now, since it's a RUNNING JOKE on PoYB, that movie), and it was maybe a little more maga than I was comfortable with? Don't quote me on that.

Anyways, I found the thing that I'm 90% certain is what I read at the age of fifteen. I had a tough time reading it, because it's not as funny as I remember. If you're gonna go down the road of "explaining the movie while making fun of the flaws of that movie," then you gotta bring your A game. Why waste time on some bullshit that a stranger wrote about this film in 2002 when clearly our very own D. Pat is going to do the same exact thing, possibly in this very blog post below my words, here in 2025? I don't know for sure that Pat was a reader of Something Awful in the mid-'00s, but I'd put money on yes. There's a certain way of writing that is spawned from internet snark culture that Pat and this other writer both exhibit. I think it's hit or miss. I think that Pat is all hits. Shame Mac and Me isn't a meme.

ALL THAT TO SAY that I am typically a bit squeamish when it comes to the idea of "bad movies for fun." I think there are plenty of bad movies out there, and I think Mac and Me is one of them, but I just take pause at the idea of a critical dogpile, that's all. No offense to anyone who is relishing the opportunity to take a dump on this thing today, because I'm sure whatever you write is going to make me laugh. And who knows, on another day, maybe I'd be joining you. But for whatever reason, I can't bring myself to do it today. I instead feel this innate desire to defend the thing. Even though there's no defending this piece of shit.

It feels more interesting to me to name the positives of a movie, and it's frustrating when there aren't any. That's why, for moments such as these, I typically find myself saying that the reaction itself is the positive part of the experience. The fact that we can laugh at this movie means that we were happy, at least for a minute or so, right? When Mac came out of that house in a teddy bear costume, I almost fucking died. Just absolutely stunning plot workaround right there. Get this fucking alien into the McDonald's dance sequence, no matter what! We can agree that this is bad. The agreement, and the ensuing comradery, is something that I will argue is a POSITIVE about this film itself. Allow the context to prop up the text. There's no need to insist it sucks. That can't be true, because we're all having a good time watching it. And if you are huffing and puffing about how much you HATED it, then you gotta talk to your therapist.

Still, yeah, okay, sure, very bad. I most recently noted my feelings on this particular subject during the Jacob's Ladder discussion, but probably my most hated movie trope of all time is when a character sees something fantastical, and everyone around him thinks that he's CRAZY. Jacob's Ladder subverted my expectations in that regard, but boy, Mac and Me does no subverting of any kind. Just your classic story of a kid who sees an alien and spends 2/3rds of the movie being told that he DIDN'T see an alien. I hate it. There are so many fucking reasons that this mother should have believed her child, but she didn't; there are so many fucking ways to get the people around you to believe you, but the child attempted none of them. That's because the plot REQUIRED everyone to be an idiot. I hate it! I hate it!

See? That's not as fun, talking shit. Let's now play a little game of "pull thematic value out of my ass," which is the game I love playing with movies that most likely have no actual thematic value. Let's say a bowlegged alien held a gun to your head in the canned goods aisle of the local Shoprite, and made you say what the MESSAGE of Mac and Me was. What would you say? Besides yelling "he's not going to hurt anyone!!" over and over even though he's probably going to hurt someone, I would probably say something like: "this is the story of outsiders who form a bond."

Actually, here's something that's impressively underplayed in this film. Eric's physical handicap is treated very normally. This isn't a story about POOR WHEELCHAIR KID FEELS SAD JUST LIKE THE ALIEN BABY. But I do think that the implication here is that Eric feels some sort of empathy for the alien, because he too feels alien sometimes, surrounded by the able-legged individuals of his world. And maybe it hurts him, for his mother to consider him crazy, since that same mother has probably spent the vast majority of this kid's life impressing upon him that he is NORMAL even though he is in a wheelchair, don't you DARE think differently, son, you are normal, the world is your oyster, you can do anything that your peers can do.

But of course, none of this is made even remotely clear in the film, which makes me think that the filmmakers didn't consider it to be all that important, this particular theme. Which is a shame. Total missed opportunity, I think. So it goes with bad films. They are bad because they piss away any potential they had. There was potential here. Instead, we have to make up our own joy, by watching Conan compilations, and playing make believe with the cinemaspeak. 

I can't go the full nine yards and stand up to defend this movie as misunderstood. It's not. It's bad. The misunderstanding comes from the idea that the ONLY reaction to watching this shit should be "wow, this is bad." This isn't Something Awful. This is Puke on Your Birthday. There's more to watching movies than that. Go out and find it.

GRADE: 2 pukes out of 5

I did it, ma! I got to the end of my write-up without mentioning any Spielberg film, any product placement, or the fact that this movie's wide-released edit tried to pretend that Eric wasn't killed by police officers, who no doubt faced ZERO repercussions for shooting an unarmed kid!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

GROUP AVERAGE GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5

See you in the comments. Comment five times and I'll send you a free and delicious Big Mac®.

(NEXT TIME: Inglourious Basterds, which is purposefully misspelled, which means that the Film Club list has had the incorrect spelling this whole time—it is now fixed)

A Year of Blind Spots: Bongo Rock

Joe is working through a list of albums that he considers "blind spots," i.e. albums that he's never heard but feels like he should.

Bongo Rock

Michael Viner's Incredible Bongo Band

1973

What 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die has to say about Bongo Rock by Michael Viner's Incredible Bongo Band:

The Incredible Bongo Band was assembled from a variety of unknown session musicians to provide chase music for the 1972 MGM B-movie The Thing with Two Heads. Michael Viner, head of the short-lived MGM subsidiary label Pride, gathered the musicians together and recorded two tracks—"Bongo Rock" and "Bongolia." MGM decided to release these tracks as a double-sided 45, which went on to sell more than one million copies. An LP was hurriedly recorded to follow up on its success.

Once again, Viner rounded up the session players (whose names have been lost to time—Viner himself cannot recall the lineup), and they recorded the album over a few days in Canada, with a variety of players, Viner included, dropping into the sessions.

The album sold in reasonable quantities at the time, but has since grown to legendary status due to its appropriation by subsequent generations. It was the drum breakdowns in the band's cover of the Shadows' hit "Apache" that, when extended with the use of two vinyl copies by New York's DJ Kool Herc, heralded the birth of hip hop. And since then, the track has been sampled by hundreds of artists (beginning with the Sugarhill Gang's track of the same name), as has the LP's title track "Bongo Rock," the result being that the album has become a cult classic and a collector's item.

A follow-up, The Return of the Incredible Bongo Band, appeared in 1974, but failed to capture the energy or success of the debut, despite guest appearances from the likes of Ringo Starr.

What Joe has to say about Bongo Rock by Michael Viner's Incredible Bongo Band:

You know what makes me fucking giddy as hell? Finally bringing into focus a song that had hitherto been ubiquitous like nitrogen, unseen and unnamed but always seeming to be there, for no better and no worse. "Apache" was that song for me. Both versions, apparently. The version here brought sudden clarity to so many small moments in my life. Celebratory moments, at block parties and in fire halls and on dance floors everywhere, that incessant, party rap thing that I didn't really like but didn't hate either, always fucking there, just playing.

When I heard the Incredible Bongo Band play "Apache," so many things snapped into place at once. Mainly: one, that the bongo breakdown was sampled on whatever old-school hip hop song I knew so well had been sampled from this song, right here; two, that this was without a motherfucking doubt the reason why 1001 Albums took me down a side path toward a fucking bongo album, that it was "important" due to the sampling. The blurb, when I finally read it, took me home—"Apache," as I knew it from so many First Holy Communion parties, was performed by the Sugarhill Gang.

The rest of this album is exactly what you'd expect from a group of anonymous musicians who got together to record chase scene music. I like it, but I'm not writing home about it. Instrumental music can be fun, but there's a ceiling to that fun. I'll always remember Bongo Rock, but mostly as a curio. I don't think I'll ever hear any of these songs beyond the context of this blog post and the album I listened to in order to write it. Except in sample form, of course.

And I'm not fucking exaggerating either. Listen to this true story from ten minutes ago. It was a Tuesday afternoon. I had a flat bike tire fixed near my work, and so I was riding it back to the office from the shop. I had left my computer after typing out the blurb from the book that you see above, and I handled the bike business before I planned to write "Joe's thoughts" on this thing. So I'm riding back to the office, and I'm beating a yellow light at 16th and Walnut, and what song do you think I heard blasting out of a truck at the red light in the other direction? That's fucking right: motherfucking "Apache" by the Sugarhill Gang.

What are the odds? Not as slim as you think, if you know this song at all. A true "oh shit!" moment for ol' Joey here, though, and I'll remember it always. That's music. Even the weird-ass goofy-ass instrumental albums can do that to you sometimes.

'Tillll Death #08: "Death Sex"

JASON: I'm so fucking burnt out, man. Sometimes it feels like I don't have the willpower to wake up and start another day. I just want to lie in bed and do nothing. Oh christ, this is terribly cliché, isn't it? As a therapist, I feel like I hear this shit all the time, and now I'm spouting it.

JASON'S THERAPIST, WHO'S NAME IS, I DUNNO, LET'S CALL HIM FRED: But this is what you truly believe.

JASON: I do! It's just tough to have to deal with... all of this. You know what I'm trying to say.

FRED IS NOT HIS REAL NAME, THAT'S BEING WITHHELD: It's not really important what I think.

JASON: It is, though, sorta. You're a therapist too. Doesn't it get tiring, having to live our damn lives and then have to sit in a room and listen to other people complain to you about their lives, as if mine is any different, as if I have any of the answers, as if I would be sitting in that chair if I did. You know what I'm trying to say, right?

"FRED": As you just said, I wouldn't be able to say.

JASON: Right. Duh. Okay. I don't know. How much time do we have?

NOT SURE WHY I'M WITHHOLDING THE NAME YET, LET'S STAY WITH "FRED" AND SEE WHERE THIS ALL GOES: As always, I'll give you a five minute warning.

JASON: Okay, thanks, okay, um. What else should I talk about?

ALL I KNOW AT THIS POINT IS IT'S DEFINITELY NOT HIS REAL NAME, "FRED": Last session, you spoke of a teen client who was a cause of concern.

JASON: I mean, I wouldn't say a concern. It's not a concern. But yeah, uh, this client is... well, he's like, advanced for his age, I guess you would say? I don't know. He says things that freak me out because maybe I'm thinking no normal sixteen-year-old would say that thing. Yeah, okay, sure, "normal" is a construct, I know. But you should hear how he talks about life. It's like he's like this wizened quackpot philosophy professor stuck in a kid's body. I think there were some neglect issues at home, a nutso father, that sort of thing, we haven't really dug into it yet, we're getting there.

NOT "FREDERICK" EITHER, OF COURSE: Tell me about your recent interactions with him.

JASON: Well, okay, he was telling me at length about a girl in his class, I forget her name, but it sounded really sweet, ya know, the way that she liked him, and he just completely shut down. Wasn't interested. Didn't even seem capable of being interested. More concerned about... all the, ya know.

AND LET'S NOT DEBASE OURSELVES WITH ANY "FREDDY" SPECULATION: Did you find what he had to say familiar?

JASON: Yeah, okay, you're saying that he sounds like me. I get it. I figured you'd say that. You're not wrong. Maybe the feeling I'm feeling is the feeling of looking into a mirror after a long day and seeing that you've had a boogey hanging out of the left nostril the entire time. Seeing yourself in all your flawed glory. Okay, I'll grant you this. I too feel the struggle of having to care. But that's not what he was trying to say.

FRED: What was he trying to say then?

JASON: I don't know! That's what I'm saying. I couldn't grasp it. I couldn't understand. It was above my head. I have a goddamn Ph.D., man. And I am perplexed.

I DON'T EVEN THINK WE'RE GONNA LEARN THIS GUY'S NAME IN THIS BLOG POST: So what help were you able to give him?

JASON: I... haha, it's funny. I told him to keep a dream journal.

IS THAT OKAY?: I see.

JASON: And I know what you're gonna say. That this isn't approved therapy. But listen, I have friends who've tried it. It works. I think H— I mean the client, I think he's going to get some real insight through the process. I really do.

IS THAT ANNOYING?: I see.

JASON: Yeah, okay, I can tell what you're thinking. Spare me, ——. I get how it works. I'm not proud of using non-peer-reviewed methods, okay? But I was frazzled. I needed to do something. Or say something rather. Because the other thing that we talked about was the fact that we're both currently watching the same American TV sitcome.

CLEARLY I'M JUST MAKING ALL THIS SHIT UP AS I GO: Let me guess... 'Til Death?

JASON: How did you know?

BUT I FEEL IN MY GUT THAT EVENTUALLY, MAYBE LIKE FOURTEEN OR FIFTEEN EPISODE REVIEWS FROM NOW, I'LL BE READY TO REVEAL THE ANSWER, AND WHY I WITHHELD IT: Everyone watches it, Jason. It's not that surprising.

JASON: How the fuck was I supposed to know that a goddamn sixteen-year-old kid was watching it too? I don't even know how it came up. Something about the main guy, what's his name, voicing a character in the direct-to-video Pocahontas II, and we were talking about that because... eh, don't press me on this. Oh! Something about feeling ostracized from the culture that you were born into, I don't know. And something about how we need to preserve the things we love, both figuratively and literally. Ya know, like tape special moments and archive them, like in a computer database or something, you know what I'm trying to say.

FOR NOW, LET'S JUST SAY "FRED": I'm not asking you to recount every moment of your session, don't worry.

JASON: But yeah, he watches it. Wait, do you watch it?

HE'S NOT GETTING MUCH CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, BUT THEN, WHEN DOES THE THERAPIST EVER? IF THEY ARE GETTING TOO MUCH SHADING IN THE HERO'S JOURNEY, THEN THEY AREN'T A GOOD THERAPIST: Of course. We're not here to talk about my TV viewing habits, though. You can tell me about yours, though, if that's how you want to spend your time. I'm okay with that. Especially if it's relevant in some way to what we've been talking through.

JASON: Wildly, it is. Did you see the episode last night? Pocahontas guy thinks he's going to die.

THERAPISTS, LIKE "FRED" HERE, ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE IN THE HABIT OF REVEALING TOO MANY PERSONAL THOUGHTS OR FEELINGS, THEY ARE THERE TO LISTEN, TO REFLECT, TO HOLD SPACE FOR UNDERSTANDING AND HEALING: And you are connecting this to the idea of what we're talking about today in terms of you being worn out. Do you feel close to death, Jason?

JASON: Not literally. Figuratively... sometimes. Helps my metaphor that Pocahontas guy wasn't actually dying. He turned it into a ruse to extend sexy time with his hot wife. 

I WOULD BE LYING IF I SAID THAT I WASN'T THINKING ABOUT THE EXCEPTION TO THIS RULE, DR. MELFI, WHEN WRITING THIS BLOG POST, AND HOW WE REALLY DO GET TO KNOW HER, ESPECIALLY IN THOSE FEW EPISODES WHEN SHE HERSELF IS SEEING HER OWN THERAPIST, ELLIOT: But there was more to it than that.

JASON: Of course, there always is with this show. It wasn't just that they were having more sex, right? Hot wife thought that her Pocahontas husband was gonna die, so she was... nice to him? Like, they were nicer to each other than they have been for the entire series up to this point.

THIS THERAPIST'S THERAPIST'S NAME IS NOT ELLIOT, BY THE WAY, THAT WOULD BE TOO ON THE NOSE: Don't you think that's kinda sad?

JASON: Yeah! Duh! That's what I'm trying to say. Listen, I don't need to be therapized on this. I'm a therapist too. I have my Ph.D. I'm not a school counselor, psh, have you SEEN the cars they drive? I'm a clinically trained therapist. I know what's going on here. The episode touched me because these two people who clearly hate each other found a way to like each other, but only under trying circumstances.

SO WE'VE RULED OUT "FRED" AND "ELLIOT": Yes. And how maybe they could stop and view that as a blessing instead of a curse. To use the burden as a motivation to live one's best life, to be kind, to care.

JASON: And I should do that in my life. During these present times. And all the stress. And all the feeling like I'm going to die... figuratively.

NOT FRED, BUT FRED IS GOOD ENOUGH FOR NOW, FOR OUR PURPOSES TODAY: I think that's what we're both saying, yes.

JASON: That's not how it works on American sitcomes, though.

FRED (YEAH THAT'S FINE, I CAN HANDLE THAT): I see.

JASON: Everything resets next time. Lessons are forgotten.

ALL QUESTIONS WILL BE ANSWERED IN TIME, LIKE THIS THERAPIST'S OTHER LIFE, HIS SECRET PURPOSE, THEMATICALLY AND OTHERWISE, IN THE WEEKS AND MONTHS AHEAD: I see.

JASON: I wonder if we'll forget what we talked about. Next time we talk, I mean. If we'll forget what I learned this time around.

STAY TUNED: Well, we'll have to find out together, won't we?

JASON: I'd give this episode 5 pukes out of 5.

MORE EXCITING BLOG CONTENT ABOUT THE AMERICAN SITCOME 'TIL DEATH COMING YOUR WAY VERY SOON, AND REGULARLY: I see.

JASON: You don't take issue with that?

MAYBE WE CAN DO A GRANNIES GONE WILD CROSSOVER AT SOME POINT: Jason, I'm your therapist, it's not my place to take issue with anything you say.

Never Seen It #249: Catch Me If You Can

Two little mice fell in a blog. The first mouse quickly gave up and drowned. The second mouse wouldn't quit. He struggled so hard that eventually he watched 400 movies he'd never seen before and crawled out. Gentlemen, as of this moment, I am that second mouse.

Catch Me If You Can

2002

Steven Spielberg

I attempted to explain this in my Bridge of Spies write-up, but I remain unsatisfied. I have this overarching feeling about Steven Spielberg that I find that I have a tough time describing without sounding like a snob, or sounding like I hate Spielberg movies. It's quite the opposite. I've now seen thirteen films that he's directed, and I either really like or straight-up love all of them. There is a "but," but it's a soft "but." I just... I never get the sense that Spielberg is operating on any level under the surface. The surface, as he constructs it, is beautiful, and occasionally awe-inspiring. There is no one better at creating movie magic based purely on the visuals on the screen and the lines of dialogue being performed.

I was thinking Spielberg when I was watching the Billy Joel documentary (you can find other thoughts about this rock doc elsewhere on the blog, I won't pull your chain too much in this Catch Me If You Can blog post). Someone in the doc said, as neither a compliment nor as a criticism, that Billy Joel always writes lyrics exactly how he means them. It might have been Joel himself, now that I think about it. He said that he doesn't write in symbolism, he writes the story exactly how it is. That's bang on. Listen to something like "Allentown." There's nothing working below the surface there. The themes are obvious. It's a story. It's not symbolism. There are rich descriptions of the characters and time/place, but nothing has a figurative meaning. It's all literal.

I think Spielberg works in the same way. The story doesn't show something but refer to something else, or mean something else. The story is the damn story. I'm not saying that it's completely devoid of symbolism, of images that mean something deeper. "Allentown" had a line that goes "Filling out forms, standing in line." The line isn't about standing in line, it's about the willingness to sign up to enter a World War as a soldier, so restless is life in a small town. But you don't have to work for that shit, you know what I mean?

You can compare this to any number of things in a Spielberg film, but since we're supposed to be talking about Catch Me If You Can here, then, I dunno, let's use the Christmas phone calls as an example. DiCaprio's Frank Abagnale Jr. is half clear and half shady when he's mumbling to Tom Hanks's Carl Hanratty on the phone, talking about his crimes on an "anonymous" call. Clearly, the scene is meant to show that Abagnale is lonely, that he subconsciously feels bad about what he's doing, that he's searching for something and all those fraudulent checks aren't scratching the itch. It's not a phone call literally about the New York Yankees, ya know? But then here's the thing: the deeper meaning isn't for the audience to figure out. Hanratty himself immediately figures out the deeper meaning. "He wants to be caught!" Hanratty announces to the viewers of the film. It's all right there on the surface, all the answers, thrillingly delivered to you.

And like Billy Joel and his self-assessment of his own lyrics, I am saying all this about Spielberg as neither a compliment nor a criticism. It's just an observation. And it something that allows me to radically adjust how I have recently been watching movies, and put myself into a lower gear. I really like when I watch a deep, dense film, and get to parse through it and figure out for myself what the fuck it all means, and then take what I think it means and apply it to how I feel and I how I view the world. That's a cool process and I like it and I get the most satisfaction from movies when that happens. There are other times when I can adjust that gear and coast along watching Leo and Tom chew scenery. Both ways of viewing film make me happy. I liked Catch Me If You Can, maybe even loved it. It was so goddamn fun! But at the end of the day, I feel like Spielberg movies are by and large out of step with the type of films that I have been trying to watch in this project, Never Seen It, where I attempt to teach myself how to get the most out of the Film Watching Experience.

Or... maybe Steven Spielberg is just so goddamn good at what he does that he's simultaneously making these entertaining popcorn flicks that appeal to the widest possible audience while ALSO leaving lots of room to dig deeper than I normally would have to to find that emotional meaning, if I really wanted to do it. Pam said she listened to a podcast the other day for the 50th anniversary of Spielberg's first blockbuster, Jaws, and on it (she tells me, since I would sooner get bitten by a real shark than listen to a podcast), they tried to discuss anything that they believed had never been discussed before (Jaws, being a classic, has had a lot said about it already). I appreciated that. I appreciate the effort that the audience is allowed to make to pull meaning from a film. We saw that in the Zoom meeting about the thoroughly average Wise Guys, in which we eventually turned to having a deep discussion about friendship and luck and achieving the American dream, even though I'm not really sure that the film itself intended those subjects to be in the text of the thing.

And I could do it here, if I wanted to. And I definitely want to. I want to get to the point where I can have these sorts of thoughts (and, later, discussions) about any fucking movie that passes through the PoYB film ecosystem, regardless of quality, and regardless of intention of the filmmaker. I think if this were a Zoom, and we finally got through the weeds in terms of "was the acting good" and "here is some interesting IMDB trivia" and "#3 on the Hanks Ranks is pretty accurate here, maybe a little high," I'd probably want to talk about...

...how this is a movie about trying to find your place in the world. There's the obvious example of Abagnale, who is clearly pretty brilliant, but learned all the wrong lessons from his father about how to apply his brilliance in the real world, and who eventually stumbles into a good career path anyway. But this also applies to Hanratty, maybe even more so, since he's good at what he does but seems adrift in the world, and his relationship with Abagnale (first antagonistic, then eventually grudging respect, and finally comradery / mentorship) pulls his life back into focus, and gives him purpose. I liked how this was not a romantic film at all, but that it painted the picture of two people who were clearly meant to be together in some (non-romantic) way.

...or how deep the bullshit goes, even past the cement floor that the film constructs with its opening message of "inspired by a true story." This is a movie based on a book written by a man named Frank Abagnale Jr., who committed many frauds in his lifetime, and who then wrote a book about it. And we're supposed to take the movie at their words that it was inspired by true events, but then say that the author who is stating that these events are true spent the first twenty years of his life lying out of his teeth? There are, of course, allegations that the story of Frank Abagnale Jr. is completely bullshit, and why wouldn't there be? Honestly, I would love if this guy came out and said that none of it happened, that he completely fabricated the book. That would be incredible! Making bank off lies about making bank off lies! Now all we'd have to do is make a Catch Me If You Can 2 in which Tom Hanks is trying to catch a man who wrote a completely fictional book and stole all Steven Spielberg's money with it.

...or how this was so popular with audiences (itself possibly not true, and only based on the fact that there was a billboard with this movie poster on it in my neighborhood from 2002 until like 2006 at least, and I always just assumed it was because audiences loved it), and what that says about our bottomless interest in clever criminals and the various ways in which they get away with their crimes. Subconsciously, perhaps we're all jealous of Abagnale, in that we want to escape the droll humdrum of our lives and act out fantasies of being a jet pilot and a doctor and a lawyer with practically zero consequences.

In other words, how it doesn't really matter how "deep" it gets with Steven Spielberg, and how maybe just making a fun as hell movie to distract us from our daily lives and woes is really all we ever fucking need out of a movie, and nothing more.

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5

NEXT TIME: Group E has acted like Abagnale and flimflammed us into watching Mac and Me.

Monday Morning Mixtape 036: The TouchTunes at Bardot

Welcome to Monday Morning Mixtape, a PoYB Contributor-curated playlist of songs, made just for you at the start of each week.

HBD MD, may Mike Scott punch an Eagles fan in your honor.

"The TouchTunes at Bardot"

Maeve is turning 36 on Wednesday, and she's requesting a mixtape comprised of specific recommendations for her. Here's what she's into: "female singer-songwriters that are sad-girl anthems, anything on XPN, folksy jam bands, songs with loud brash drums that hype you up, current girlie pop music, the cover of Addison Rae's 'Diet Pepsi' by Ben Platt (I mean, duh), country music that doesn't talk about trucks, guns, or America, rap songs that make me laugh, and power ballads"

chosen by Maeve

Album of the Week: Plowing in the Field of Love

We're finally starting back up with album choices from YOU, the contributors of Record Club / Puke on Your Birthday. We'll be carrying this all the way to Thanksgiving, when we begin our end of year / holiday traditions. But look at me, talking about Thanksgiving and Christmas, psh, it's not even close to Halloween yet! So many 2025 albums to get to still!

Record Club:

archives | supplemental

spotify playlist | youtube playlist

choose | writing

WEEK 345 — September 7-13, 2025

Plowing into the Field of Love

by Iceage

LISTEN:

Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp | Apple

~~~~~~~~~~

PICKED BY SUNNY

SUNNY'S COMMENTS: "I explored one of my local record stores looking for something this week. In the bargain bin was Iceage's Beyondless, which I was attracted to because of the album art and price. However, that album has been covered on PoYB already, but I'm not going to lose the thread, so we're listening to this Iceage album instead. I'm writing this before listening to anything—based on name and art alone, I assume this is some kind of norse metal. Let's see."

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ALBUM DETAILS

GENRE: Post-punk, punk blues, art punk, gothic rock

RELEASED: October 7, 2014

LENGTH: 47:54

TRACKLIST:

1. On My Fingers
2. The Lord's Favorite
3. How Many
4. Glassy Eyed, Dormant and Veiled
5. Stay
6. Let It Vanish
7. Abundant Living
8. Forever
9. Cimmerian Shade
10. Against the Moon
11. Simony
12. Plowing into the Field of Love

LYRICS: Genius.com

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ARTIST DETAILS

PRONOUNS: Rønnenfelt is he/him/his

ABOUT: Iceage (one word, not two) formed in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2008. The four founding members were all teenagers at the time, and they are all still in the band. Elias Bender Rønnenfelt is lead vocals, and plays guitar. Johan Surrballe Wieth does backing vocals, and also plays guitar. Jakob Tvilling Pless is the bassist, and Dan Kjær Nielsen is the drummer. In 2019, they added guitarist Casper Morilla. Their sound started as hardcore punk, but gradually turned toward a more gothic sound. Rønnenfelt also has a side project called Marching Church that has released two albums. Again, there is no space in their name, it's one word.

DISCOGRAPHY: This is the band's third of five albums. There was New Brigade (2011) and You're Nothing (2013) before it, and Beyondless (2018) and Seek Shelter (2021) after it. Iceage also has three EPs to their name.

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ADDITIONAL INFO

READING SOME SHIT: 2021 interview with Pitchfork

WATCHING SOME SHIT: "The Lord's Favorite" live at Pitchfork Fest in 2015

RECORD CLUB CONNECTIONS: Our second RC artist from Denmark! The first was Erika de Casier. That's a span of 308 weeks in between Danish artists!

Please don't get "The Lord's Favorite" mixed up with previous RC tune "The Lord's Prayer" by Mahalia Jackson! Different songs!

Iceage is not, of course, the classic 2002 film Ice Age. If it was, I would say that that film ends with the classic RC tune "Send Me on My Way" by Rusted Root. I would also say that Sid is voiced by John Leguizamo, who also stars in the CLASSIC 1993 film Super Mario Bros. with Mojo Nixon. And if this were another corner of the blog, I'd say that Manny is voice by Ray Romano, who stars in Everybody Love Raymond with Brad Garrett... but that's got nothing to do with Record Club, sorry, sorry.

MENTIONS ON THE BLOG: "The Lord's Favorite" was my 26th-favorite song of 2014, which seems a little low, and also is without blurb, which is a mortal sin these days. "Pain Killer," off a different album, got some love on the 2018 Best Songs list and the 2010s Best Songs list. That different album, Beyondless, got the Albums That Matter treatment (the reason why Sunny couldn't pick that album for today, see above). "The Lord's Favorite" was again considered for the YSC prompt "best song of 2014." Finally, an Iceage song was randomly featured as a Song of the Day a few weeks ago.

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OTHER ALBUMS TO CHECK OUT

LAST WEEK'S ALBUM: Dreams of Being Dust by the World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, and make sure to check out the reviews if you wanna see what we thought of it!

RC@5: We're relistening to the Record Club album we featured exactly five years ago this week. The RC album for this week in 2020 was Imploding the Mirage by the Killers.

RC f/u: We're attempting to catch up on all the new albums from our esteemed Record Club alumni. Mini-reviews coming next Saturday, this week for No Hard Feelings by the Beaches, Hard Headed Woman by Margo Price, Straight Line Was a Lie by the Beths, and Rebirth by Duke Deuce.

SHADOW RECORD CLUB: Each week, we're exploring the genres of last week's album. If there is a genre that has a #1-rated album that I've never heard before, I'll download it. If not, I'll just give you my best recommendation. Last week's Dreams of Being Dust was a post-hardcore album. We're listening this week to Spiderland by Slint. I've never heard it before!

NEXT WEEK'S RC ALBUM: In case you need some extra time with an album to write a review for it, you can get a head start on CREAM by Kassa Overall! (Technically, it doesn't come out until Friday, so you'll have to wait till then!)

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Happy listening, RC family!
Have a great week!