And so that was Christmas, and what did I do?

Remember that quote from Fight Club comparing Christmas trees to sex crime victims?

This song is judging me.

"Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" by John Lennon and Yoko Ono is one of those songs that has always gotten on my bad side. When I was a kid, I was just annoyed by the fact that it was draggy and sanctimonious and not in that bouncy, upbeat Frosty/Rudolph sweet spot I preferred. I tend not to like slow, serious, or sad songs about Christmas. Not now, not then.

In  my younger days, I wasn't even that keen on "Silent Night," a song I associated with the temporary and unwanted cessation of Yuletide cheer. "Silent Night" was something I had to sing in church, looking serious while pretending I wasn't thinking about what Transformers and Masters of the Universe toys I was (hopefully) going to get. (And let's be honest: the "round yon virgin" part is uncomfortable, right?) Though it wasn't actually a hymn, "Happy Xmas" had that same effect on me. That song is basically a radio station's way of saying, "Okay, stop having fun for the next few minutes and start thinking about poverty and injustice instead of gingerbread."

Nowadays, the John Lennon song bothers me for another reason. It's those goddamned judgmental opening lines: "And so this is Christmas/And what have you done?/Another year over/And a new one just begun." At a certain point in your life, you hear those lines and think, "Oh, jesus, what have I actually done this year? Pretty much two things: jack and shit. That song hates me." I mean, I went to work and paid my bills and wrote many, many, many paragraphs about Ed Wood on this blog. That was pretty much it. Sorry, starving children of pretty much everywhere. Better luck next year, downtrodden and oppressed peoples of the world. If you were counting on Joe Blevins to come to your rescue this year... well, he didn't do it. Dang me, dang me, they oughta take a rope and hang me.

And John Lennon and his preachy little song are looking down on me right now, tsk-tsking my laziness and overall indifference. Pretty much the only fun I can have with "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" is substituting the lyrics from "On Top of Spaghetti." They fit perfectly with the melody. Try it yourself sometime.

Anyway, some other notes about the Christmas that was:

• Christmas may be over, but the holiday experience definitely is not. I've got another whole day with the fam, then the wondrous gauntlet of travel awaits me. One train, then another, then a cab. (And that's if everything goes according to plan.) It's a whole thing. I'm writing this post from a cheap, crummy motel somewhere in Indiana, far from anyplace I've ever called home. My furniture misses me.

• Yes, it is wonderful to see my father, my sister, my niece, and my nephews. I love them dearly. But it is also wonderful not to see these people for a few months at a time. I love my privacy and solitude dearly as well. Sometimes, I actually get caught up in the spirit of the holidays and think, "You know, I should've gotten married or something. Maybe had kids. Gotten a real job, bought a real house, and lived a real life, like a grown up instead of an eternal adolescent." It passes, usually around the middle of the second day with the aforementioned "fam." Then I realize that the life I'm living now is the life I was meant to live. This is the best I can do.

• What's there to do in this part of the world? Not much, my friends. Not much. My dad and I took in a movie, and it was exactly the film I wanted to see today: Big Eyes. I may write a review of it. Then again, I may not. I'm capricious. For now, let me say that I liked it and would recommend it. This is a story I've been waiting years to see on the big screen, and I'm pleased with the way it was handled. If you're worried that it might be too "Tim Burton-y," let me put your mind at ease. Even Danny Elfman's score -- lighter and jazzier than usual -- is not typical of the Burton canon.

• I checked in with the Christmas Story marathon a few times, catching a few minutes here and a few minutes there. My goal each year is to see the whole movie, just not in order. The timing didn't work out this year, though. I saw Ralphie go down the slide at Higbee's twice and beat up Scut Farkus at least once, but I never saw Flick stick his tongue to that flagpole. At least not this year.

• How was your Christmas? Good? That's super. Me, I'm just kind of relieved it's over. Aren't you? We survived, people. We made it out.

Why "Be My Baby" is probably my favorite song... and one of the saddest, too

Making up for his sins at home: Harvey Keitel in Mean Streets (1973)

"You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit, and you know it."

- Martin Scorsese, Mean Streets

Martin Scorsese himself speaks those words, from off-screen, at the very beginning of Mean Streets, his grungy, heartfelt drama about small-time gangsters in a deeply Catholic Italian-American milieu. I quoted that speech last week during my stay at the behavioral health center while talking to a female patient (not the aforementioned Helen). She said she didn't feel like she could "fix" her problems from inside the hospital, and I told her about those opening words from the Scorsese film because I felt they were appropriate for the occasion. The entire opening sequence of Mean Streets is remarkable, and I want you to see it. Here, take a look:

In his book Ebert's Bigger Little Movie Glossary, critic Roger Ebert cites his own so-called "8MM Omen": "Films that start with old home movies are never about happy lives." And true to form, Mean Streets is not a cheerful, upbeat film. There are moments of humor and humanity in it, but in the larger sense, it is a tragedy. And what music does Scorsese use to set the tone for this downbeat film? "Be My Baby" by the Ronettes, a #2 hit from 1963. The song was co-written and produced by Phil Spector, who created the record along with the songwriting team of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, while the record's powerful lead vocal is supplied by Ronnie Bennett, who later married and divorced Phil Spector and is more commonly known today as Ronnie Spector. In short, there were a lot of talented people behind this record, but it somehow manages to be even greater than the sum of its parts.

"Be My Baby" is often used in romantic comedies, and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys has called it one of the happiest records ever made, but I feel that there is a crushing sadness at the core of this song. Let's examine the lyrics of the first verse:

The night we met, I knew I needed you so.
And if I had the chance I'd never let you go.
So won't you say you love me? I'll make you so proud of me
We'll make 'em turn their heads every place we go.

You will note immediately that there is no indication that the man Ronnie is addressing even likes her, let alone loves her. She just met him and suddenly decided that she "needed" him. They're clearly not in a relationship. She wants "the chance" to grab onto him and never release him. She hasn't been given that opportunity yet. "So won't you say you love me?" is a particularly needy inquiry, and "I'll make you so proud of me" is like a child promising her parents that she'll be on her best behavior. "We'll make 'em turn their heads every place we go" indicates that the singer cares what other people think of her and may be using this relationship to get attention from passersby.

The oft-repeated chorus is simplicity itself. It's just variations on "be my baby," "be my little baby," and "be my baby now," with a "please" or a "darling" thrown in now and again. This is as emotionally direct as singing or songwriting gets. The woman is asking, in no uncertain terms, for a man to love her. She's not playing coy or hard to get. She's just letting herself be vulnerable and open to rejection.

There really is only one other verse. The rest of the song consists of repetitions of the chorus. But the lyrics of that second verse are worth examining, too:

I'll make you happy, baby. Just wait and see.
For every kiss you give me, I'll give you three.
Oh, since the day I saw you, I have been waiting for you.
You know I will adore you 'til eternity.

There is more than a hint of desperation here. The woman is promising the man everything. She is granting him the keys to the kingdom, so to speak. This is the kind of thing you might say to a photograph of someone you love when you're alone in your room, but if you actually spoke these words aloud to that person, he or she might think you were mentally disturbed. I think Ronnie is one step away from kidnapping this guy and chaining him up in her basement. Either that, or she'll buy one of those Japanese body pillows and fashion it into a facsimile of her dream man. 

It's interesting to note that in another Scorsese film, The King of Comedy, Sandra Bernhard's character does participate in the kidnapping of a talk show host played by Jerry Lewis and uses the opportunity to "seduce" him and serenade him. In all seriousness, "Be My Baby" is a song that hits me hard every time I hear it. And that's why it's probably my favorite recording of all time.

Dealing with my inner Jenna Maroney (Or: Do I have to be hospitalized again to get my readership numbers back up?)

Yes, Jenna Maroney is part of my psyche. Not that I'm proud of it.

 
One of things I'll miss most about 30 Rock when it goes off the air after this final season is the opportunity to watch Jane Krakowski portray Jenna Maroney, the staggeringly mercurial actress, singer, and comedienne whose life is a constant, desperate quest for fame, money, and (above all) attention. These tendencies lead Jenna to make all kinds of terrible decisions, and the unfortunate people in her life have to adjust their own lives to accommodate her. In a weird way, though, I can identify with this woman's problems. You see, readers, I sort of am Jenna Maroney.

Not the complete picture.

Yes, yes, I'm also a scared little turtle hiding in his cozy turtle shell. Let's say that's 70% of me. The other 30% craves the spotlight and demands attention and praise. The 70% and the 30% do not get along well, let me tell you. You may have gotten the impression from this blog that I am this meek, passive guy who's been trampled on by the rhinoceros of life. To an extent, that's true. 

But there's also an egotistical, spotlight-hogging side of me, too. As relatives and coworkers can tell you, I can be a real terror. I have a swift temper (or at least I did have one before the meds), and I've had to fight the frequent urge to lash out verbally at people or make withering critical comments to them, especially when they don't acknowledge my supposed "genius." Meanwhile, one part of me wants to hide away from the world, but the other part can't tolerate being anonymous and ignored. That's a regular issue for me at work. We're a busy, often hectic, deadline-centric place, and people don't always have time to give me the attention I want. I hope I'm learning to deal with that a little better day by day.

The "Wayne Kotke" persona I played on Mail Order Zombie has been a great way for me to be both an ostrich and a peacock at the same time. He exists in podcast and blog form only (under a fake name, no less), but he still allows me the opportunity to show off what a creative and talented guy I think I am. I sometimes wonder if this whole "depression/anxiety" thing has been a sick, elaborate scheme to get attention. Last Tuesday, the first hospital I visited parked me in an observation room wearing only a paper-thin gown for many hours, and I had lots of time to think about my situation. "Am I faking this whole thing?" I wondered. I mean, I've known about the anxiety-filled nights, the terrible waves of fear and sadness which have taken possession of my body, and the relatively empty life of underachieving and isolation. But still, the whole "faking it for attention" theory had some credibility.

Let me confess that I am fixated on the readership numbers for this very blog. If you've explored the front page at all, you've seen that little counter which lists the number of total pageviews. That's a quick way for me to see how D2R is doing, but I also spend an unhealthy amount of time obsessively going over the stats for individual days and individual articles, even though nobody but me even remotely cares about them. One weird side effect of my decision to blog about my depression and recovery is that it temporarily drove traffic to this blog. But over the past few days, I've seen the numbers drop back down to their usual level and I've seriously asked myself, "Do I have to be effing hospitalized again to get people to pay attention?"

Jenna Maroney just might do such a thing.

Revisiting the Beatles "Anthology" project, two decades later

The surviving Beatles and George Martin at Abbey Road studios.

"As far as I'm concerned, there won't be a Beatles reunion as long as John remains dead."

-George Harrison (1989)

The late George Harrison spoke those words a mere five years before his participation in The Beatles Anthology, a multi-media project that was essentially sold to the public as the next best thing to a Beatles reunion.

No mere TV special, the Anthology would encompass an eight-part documentary series on ABC (which would temporarily rechristen itself A-Beatles-C for the occasion), three double albums of musical outtakes and rarities, and finally a mammoth coffee table book. This material trickled out over the course of several years. The TV show aired in 1995. The albums were released in 1995 and 1996. The coffee table book, for whatever reason, didn't come out until 2000. All, of course, were tremendous financial successes and conquered their respective charts (the Nielsen ratings, the Billboard charts, and the New York Times best-seller list).

But the Anthology project concluded over a decade ago, and I thought it was high time we reexamined it to see how it has held up over the years.

First of all, it's important to remember that for many years, there really wasn't that much "new" Beatle material on the market for fans to collect and obsess over. The group as we know it, i.e. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, only existed for about seven tumultuous years. During that time, the group released roughly a baker's dozen LPs, some non-album singles and B-sides (enough to fill up an additional double LP), and a few feature films.

When you come right down to the numbers, the Beatles canon (and their legacy) consists of about 212 songs: 187 originals and 25 covers. That's it. You could easily get through their entire catalog in about half a day and have plenty of time for meals, breaks, siestas, whatever. Following the group's demise in 1969 or 1970 (depending which timeline you're following), those same 212 songs were mixed and matched in endless combinations and resold to the public again and again. Apart from the Live at the Hollywood Bowl LP (recorded in 1964 and '65 but not released until 1977), it was mainly just recycled bits from the now-very-familiar canon.

But the Anthology project opened the floodgates, and since its time there have been a number of "official" new releases of archival Beatle material, such as Let It Be (Naked), Live at the BBC, and Love, a soundtrack album which weaves together parts of various Beatle songs into a sort of audio collage. So now, instead of having 212 Beatles songs on my iPod, I have well over 500 (closer to 600). The rarities and outtakes the Beatles have released after the demise of the band now outnumber the tracks they actually released during their time together! Is this a good thing, or does it somehow make the canonical 212 Beatle songs a little less special? That is ultimately a question for rock historians to decide. As for the various elements of The Beatles Anthology, here are my thoughts:

The television series (1995)

John is back from the grave in this group shot.

Before we talk about the TV show, I want to talk briefly about a radio show.

The syndicated 1980s radio series The Lost Lennon Tapes offers its listeners an unusually intimate portrait of John Lennon both as an artist and as a man during all phases of his life, from his childhood in Liverpool to his final years in New York. Listen to a few episodes, and you'll feel like you've really gotten to know John on a personal level.

After an experience like that, The Beatles Anthology feels weirdly impersonal. The Anthology series focuses almost entirely on the group's professional life and tries its best to record the basic facts of the group's career: essentially, what they did and when they did it. But the series offers very little insight into the group members' private lives or their interpersonal dynamics.

And this is very much an officially-sanctioned Beatles product, so the series downplays a lot of the negative aspects of their story such as the petty financial squabbling of the group's final years. Where Anthology excels is in assembling lots and lots of vintage Beatle audio and video into an exciting, well-paced compilation. There are television appearances, press interviews, live concerts, and promotional films galore here for your viewing enjoyment. It's a mother lode of Sixties nostalgia, and the sound mix is absolutely magnificent.

As for the much-vaunted new interviews with the surviving Beatles, it's interesting how much the musicians inadvertently reveal about themselves.

Paul remains the consummate show-off, the teacher's pet who has to constantly remind himself to appear humble. (One of the series' oddest touches is the decision to film a distracted Paul while he's steering a yacht.)

George, recently described by Rolling Stone as "the first to sour" on any project, is the one who is obviously the least impressed by the Beatles legacy.

And good old Ringo seems like the nicest, least pretentious chap in the world. He can be quite funny, too, as when he very candidly discusses John's decision to pose nude on an album cover.

The series occasionally gathers the three surviving Beatles for roundtable discussions, and it's remarkable how much they've changed since their heyday. It's hard to believe that these guys were once at the center of a maelstrom. They all resemble slightly dilapidated old hippies who should really cut their hair and start wearing suits at this point in their lives. Ringo's scruffy beard and ballcap actually make him look a bit like a panhandler at times.

Sometimes, you really can't go home again.

The most intelligent and well-spoken commentator is not any of the Beatles themselves but rather their producer, George Martin, who brings an insider's knowledge of the Beatles recordings to his interviews. I think the emotional high point of the entire series is the scene in which Martin listens to a take of John singing "A Day in the Life" and simply reacts to it.

The albums (1995-1996)

The three album covers formed a triptych.

Divest yourself of the notion that these three double LPs are going to be a treasure trove of unreleased Beatle songs. Such a trove does not exist. There are only a handful of tracks that the Beatles recorded but did not use, and these were already very familiar to Beatle fans due to their inclusion on bootleg albums.

So what will you find on the Anthology LPs?

Well, live recordings for one, though these of course taper off during Anthology 2 since the Beatles stopped touring in mid-career. The rest of the tracks are alternate versions of songs you already know very well: demo recordings and unused takes from their recording sessions. Your interest in this material will largely depend on your interest in the Beatles' creative process. If you want to enter the restaurant through the kitchen, so to speak, this is your opportunity.

There are a couple of revelatory moments along the way, such as the evolution of John's "Strawberry Fields Forever," the isolated backing tracks for "Eleanor Rigby" and "Within You, Without You," and an a cappella mix of "Because." The Anthology albums are not really designed for straight-through listening sessions, but these tracks can be quite entertaining in small doses. You can skip around them freely, stopping here and there depending on your interest level.

I suppose this is also the place to talk about the most controversial and highly-publicized aspect of the entire Anthology project: the two "new" Beatles songs which were created by taking unfinished demos that John recorded in the 1970s and adding new vocals and instrumental backing to them.

Some observers were put off by the "ghoulish," grave-robbing aspect of these recordings, and others griped that producer Jeff Lynne made the two new songs sound less like the Beatles and more like his own band, ELO. Personally, I had no real moral qualms over tampering with John's demo recordings, and I kind of like ELO.

That said, it should be noted that "Free as a Bird" comes from a very shaky, nowhere-near-finished demo recording, so the audio quality of John's lead vocal is quite poor. "Real Love" was much closer to completion, so its transformation into a post-mortem Beatles song is less dramatic. But by the same token, I think "Real Love" is a stronger song than "Free as a Bird." Either way, these songs are pleasant curiosities. Nothing to get hung about.

The coffee table book (2000)

Try taking this bad boy to the beach.

And now we arrive at the most lavish and unnecessary aspect of the Anthology project.

A ridiculously oversized and hefty tome, this is a book that all but defies you to actually sit down and read it. An oral history pieced together from quotes from the four Beatles, this book also contains many hundreds of photos and archival documents and should be a vital resource to the earnest Beatlemaniac.

Unfortunately, its sheer weight and size prevent it from being portable, and its very busy and cluttered layout (an attempt, I guess, to recapture the chaotic visual aesthetic of the Swinging Sixties) basically prevent it from being readable. The Anthology coffee table book is perfect for casual browsing, but I wish it had been released as a nice, sensible, B&W paperback.

At long last... ZOMBY!!! minus that annoying zombie character

Here's a special song for our lonely bank teller:



John Lennon took a swipe at this song in "How Do You Sleep," but I've always liked the simple story it tells and how it manages to be sad without being mawkish or maudlin. The Simpsons put this song to good use a couple of seasons back in an episode about Mrs. Krabappel.