Seven From 2011

JOHN HANLON, Brooklyn NY
Not a great year for culture, pop or otherwise, nor even a particularly coherent year. The event of 2011 was Occupy Wall Street, which addressed the tough problems of how we now live in a way that no art seemed capable of doing. As the internet continues to erode even the concept of mainstream entertainment, we may be in for more years like 2011, in which everything seems deeply personal but still marginal.

This in addition to the fact that I am perpetually catching up (favorite thing I watched this year? Mad Men. Finally.) makes it difficult for me to judge the best of any given year. Despite all that, here is a list of seven things from 2011 I liked:

1. The Book of Mormon
As great as everyone says. It has so many awesome parts.

2. Congress of Animals by Jim Woodring

3. Louie
Both the man and the show.

4. Moebius Trans Forme
I traveled all the way to Paris to see this career retrospective of one of my favorite artists. I suspect it was a once in a lifetime exhibit, but here's hoping that I'm wrong.

5. Paying for It by Chester Brown
Brown’s essay in the form of a memoir is either a study in denial or a provocative argument for a new way of living.

6. Portlandia
Marginal by design, almost to the point of being a mission statement, but every episode features something that makes me laugh out loud and there’s no show I look forward to watching more.

7. Tree of Life

Favorite Works By Performers That People Have Told Me I Remind Them Of

JOHN HANLON, Brooklyn NY

1. Castaways and Cutouts / Colin Melloy (of The Decemberists)
2. Superman II / Christopher Reeve
3. “Daniel Faraday” on Lost seasons 4 – 6 / Jeremy Davies
4. Twin Peaks / David Lynch
(or Lost Highway or Mulholland Dr)
5. Curious George / Curious George
6. Robert Wagner imitation in Austin Powers:The Spy Who Shagged Me / Rob Lowe
7. Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire / Harry Potter

Slipped My Mind

JOHN HANLON, Brooklyn NY

7 Promises I've Yet to Follow Through On
By The King of Empty Promises

1. To burn the five episodes of the BBC's The Story of Ireland I download to dvd for my mother.
Promise made this past spring.

2. To burn the vhs of XTC videos lovingly collected by my friend Ben to a dvd for my friend Dave.
Promise made in January, 2011.

3. To loan my friend Bob the audiobook of David Cross' I Drink For A Reason that I had borrowed from the library.
Promise unfulfilled: I had to return the audiobook to the library.

4. To copy my dvd of Los Angeles Plays Itself for my friend Steve.
Promise made May 2011.


5. To burn some Betty Hutton movies to dvd for my friend Stacey.
Promise made November 1, 2010. Burned three movies to disc, have yet to give them to Stacey.

6. To loan my friend Kenny my copy of The Saragossa Manuscript.
Promise made in 2010, along with open-ended promise to get together for "movie night."

7. To post a list of 7 of 7Now! on a regular basis.
Promise made to my friend Karl in 2007. 2007? Good Lord!

The Cat's Away

JOHN HANLON, Brooklyn NY
What I've Been Looking at Online While Work is Slow


1. Color Photos from Russia Taken Over a Century Ago

2. Damn You, Autocorrect!



3. Stop motion animation of a doll trapped in a world of Barbies set to Radiohead's "Creep"

4. BibliOdyssey

5. Lester Bangs Writes About Captain Beefheart

6. SPY magazine on Google Books

7. Moebius on ebay

This is just yesterday and today's list.

Let's Get Together...Yeah Yeah Yeah!

7 Great Movies About The Private Worlds Of Female Friends
JOHN HANLON, Brooklyn NY

1. Celine and Julie Go Boating


2. Daises


3. Ghost World


4. Heavenly Creatures


5. Mulholland Drive


6. The Parent Trap


7. The World of Henry Orient

Recent Pleasures

JOHN HANLON, Brooklyn NY

1. Enter The Void, directed by Gasper Noe
A barrage of visionary excess, induced by both drugs and a postmortem journey. Now that computers have advanced so that we can make incredible otherworldly movies, why does everything look so drab?

2. Henry Grimes at the Stone
Grimes is celebrating his 75th birthday by playing a series of shows at The Stone and has agility and chops that men half his age would kill for.

3. Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang, restored version
Well, sort of restored. I know that the recently discovered footage only exists in a scratchy 16mm print, but was no effort made to clean it up? This doesn’t distract from how great, how contemporary Lang’s 1927 film is.

4. Mad Men season one on demand for free
Finally I can see, from the beginning, a series I’m getting sick of hearing about.

5. Odessa by the Bee Gees
The Brothers Gibb tried moving from romantic, catchy singles to a double album statement. Sometimes self-important, but often an intriguing combination of lush and quirky.

6. Tequila + karaoke = John singing Gorillaz’ Feel Good Inc.

7. 40 Part Motet by Janet Cardiff
Revisited one of my favorite artworks of recent years. A room with 40 speakers arranged in a circle, with each speaker playing a separate singer in a choir as they perform Thomas Tallis’ Spem In Alium. You can do your own mix of the song by moving around the room or sit in one location and just experience the incredible sound.

7 Things I Remember That Place Me Firmly in Middle Age

(Though Not Nearly as Old as Karl, Thank God!)
JOHN HANLON, Brooklyn NY
1. Some paperbacks had a one page glossy ad inside. It was usually for cigarettes.
2. Sometimes when you heard the national anthem, it meant no more tv for the night. Our local PBS station eventually used the Beatles’ "Goodnight" instead. I’m sure they received complaints.
3. Folk Mass.
4. Most Time and Newsweek articles had lots of text with maybe a couple of black and white photos.
5. Soap was controversial because it was considered so racy.
6. You were supposed to let a phone ring ten times before hanging up if no one answered.
7. Major league sports teams weren’t basically interchangeable. Teams that had a working-class aura about them, like the Baltimore Colts, were actually made up of players who were working-class.

7 Recent Autumnal Pleasures

JOHN HANLON, Brooklyn NY

1. Taking the air conditioners out of the windows
This might depress some, but I see it as a sign I've survived another hot summer. Welcome cooler weather and (hopefully) less street noise.

2. Seasons by Blex Bolex
The linked video doesn't do the book justice, but it gives you a taste of the pleasures found within this beautiful and evocative book. Here's hoping that more of Bolex's work will find its way to these shores.

3. Hammer Horror Films Every Friday Night on TCM This Month

4. Boys Outside by Steve Mason
More polished than The Beta Band's potheads-playing-around-in-the-studio aesthetic, but addicting to the point that it's one of the few recent albums I wish was longer. 40 minutes isn't enough.

5. Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia: Film Culture in Transition by Jonathan Rosenbaum
One of my favorite film critics writes a book that cautiously optimistic about the changes in film culture brought about by dvds and downloading.

6. Penguin 75: Designers, Authors, Commentary (the Good, the Bad . . .) edited by Paul Buckley
75 recent Penguin book covers annotated by their designers and the books' authors, whose comments range from "the cover made it a bestseller" to "I hate it." Penguin 75 seems like a blog in book form, but I find flipping through its pages much more enjoyable than staring at a computer screen.

7. A Journey Round My Skull
Speaking of blogs, I know I've sung the praises of the image collection A Journey Round My Skull before on my own blog, but in just the last two weeks he's featured abstracts based on vegetation, medical drawings, foreign children's books and pictures of robots.

7 Recent Pleasures

JOHN HANLON, Brooklyn NY
1. The Paris Review has posted all of their author interviews, 55 years worth, online for free. Hooray!

2. The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross
Ross’ overview of 20th Century classical music combines cultural history, music theory and composer biographies but still reads like a novel.

3. Rat Girl: A Memoir by Kristin Hersh
Normally I read only one book at a time. But The Rest Is Noise is too big to carry in my bag every day, so Hersh’s memoir has been my subway reading. It covers just one year of her life, a time when she was a college student and Throwing Muses was just starting out.

4. Fission by Film School
Still not sure how I feel about the poppiness – I preferred it when they built beautiful monuments of sound and noise – but I like it.

5. “Back Up Plan” by Big Boi
I know there are other tracks on this album, but this is the only one I seem to listen to, perhaps because part of it reminds me of Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman.”

6. Caribou at Webster Hall, September 22, 2010
The new album doesn’t really translate live but the old stuff is still incredible to experience with a room full of other people.

7. Trying to explain the appeal of going to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show to my seventeen year old nephew
An exercise in futility, but it made me happy I was the right age to appreciate it.

20th Century Boy: 7 Really Good Albums John Recently Bought on CD (Yes! CD!) Rather Than Downloading For Free Or Otherwise

JOHN HANLON, Brooklyn, NY
1. The Madcap Laughs - Syd Barrett
2. Places - Georgie James
3. Un Dia - Juana Molina
4. Criss Cross - Thelonious Monk
5. Original Pirate Material - The Streets
6. Dear Science - TV On The Radio
7. Alopecia - Why?

7 Things I Overheard When I Went To See SPRING AWAKENING

JOHN HANLON, Brooklyn NY

1. "A lot of people produced this."
2. "AMADEUS: it's one of the greatest movies ever made."
3. "Are we close to Times Square?"
4. "Are you allowed to sit on stage?"
5. "I guess there's no sets or anything."
6. "Is this supposed to be good?"
7. Nervous giggling when two gay characters kissed.

7 Things That Did Corrupt John As A Child

JOHN HANLON, Brooklyn NY

1. Nudity in movies
2. National Lampoon
3. Learning about LSD
4. Monty Python’s Flying Circus
5. Comix: A History of Comic Books in America by Les Daniels
6. Catwoman tying up Batman in the old tv series
7. Learning about symbolism and metaphors: that you were saying one thing, but you really meant something else, but it was all in code. In some respects, it still blows my mind.

7 Things John Can Only Half Remember From His Childhood

JOHN HANLON, Brooklyn NY

1. Toy ghosts that glowed in the dark and held protest signs
2. Sweet Sweet Rachel, a tv movie about warring psychics starring Stephanie Powers
3. The Mad Baker, a cartoon short in which the title character created a Frankenstein-like cake
4. Mr. Rossi cartoons, particularly Mr. Rossi Buys A Car
5. Why Man Creates by Saul Bass ("I'm a bug, I'm a germ. I'm a bug, I'm a germ. Huh! Louis Pasteur! I'm not a bug, I'm not a germ...")
6. Scary tv movie about an evil child, their caretaker and a pair of scissors. It freaked me out so much I made my babysitter turn it off
7. A murder mystery with Dick Clark that took place at a glam rock club

7 Action Figures John Would Buy

JOHN HANLON, Brooklyn NY
1. Calvin & Hobbes
2. anything by Jim Woodring
3. more Yellow Submarine characters
4. anything by Moebius, provided they used the original bright psychedelic colors and not the new ugly metallic colors
5. National Lampoon comics characters (Nuts, Trots & Bonnie, Timberland Tales)
6. Al Hirschfeld Caricatures
7. The Venture Bros.

 

7 Things John Likes That He Didn't Think He Would

JOHN HANLON, Brooklyn NY
1. Amy Winehouse's Music
2. Camille Paglia's Books
3. SOUTH PARK
4. GILMORE GIRLS
5. Hockey
6. Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
7. DODGEBALL: A TRUE UNDERDOG STORY

John's 2007 Sevens

JOHN HANLON, Brooklyn NY
7 Good Things I Saw In A Movie Theater In 2007
1. The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward
Robert Ford
2. Brand Upon The Brain! (Guy Maddin’s latest, performed with a sound effects crew, a small orchestra and a guest narrator. The night I attended it was Crispin Glover.)
3. No Country For Old Men
4. Out 1 (Jacques Rivette’s legendary 12 hour film about acting, conspiracies, love affairs, the death of the 60’s, and silliness as a way of life. I never thought I would get to see it, and now that I have, I want to see it again.)
5. Raiders of the Lost Ark – The Adaptation
6. The Swing Dance Sequence in Hellzapoppin!
(Most of the movie is self-referential Marx Brothers/Tex Avery-style anarchy. Then one of the most astonishing dance sequences I’ve ever unreels, and time seemed to stop as I experience something truly transcendent.)
7. What Is It?
(Crispin Glover’s first film. Unlike most experimental films, it’s never boring though it is incomprehensible.)

(I’m not sure what it means that every movie choice this year – apart from What Is It? – is either from, or concerned with, the past. Guess I’m getting old.)

7 Good Things Outside A Movie Theater in 2007
1. Battlestar Galactica
(It’s as good as everyone says.)
2. Endless Things by John Crowley
(Final volume in a series that’s among the best things I’ve ever read. In the previous books, Crowley wrote himself into a corner and in this one, he nimbly writes himself out, without it seeming like a cop-out or disappointment.)
3. Peter Evans Quartet
4. The Sopranos
(Obviously the end of the last episode, but the entire season was great.)
5. The “Tab” episode of The Sarah Silverman Show
(It’s as if I couldn’t laugh hard enough to express how funny this was.)
6. “Videotape” by Radiohead
(These lines, sung by Thom Yorke in that soaring voice of his, get me every time: “No matter what happens now/ I won't be afraid / Because I know today has been the most perfect day I've ever seen.”
7. White Chalk by PJ Harvey

Good Songs to Hear or Sing at a Karaoke Bar

JOHN HANLON, Brooklyn NY
(based on experience)
1. Delilah
2. Enter Sandman
3. Green Green Grass of Home
4. Moon River
5. People = Shit
6. Sexbomb
7. The End