let google define ugly

My message today is a simple one. Without coming directly out and declaring The Word, let me just put it this way...

This is "ugly" according to the ABC network:













From the new ABC show called Ugly Betty comes that hideous creature. Or maybe hideous is too strong a word, so let's call her not pretty. Or at least, badly dressed.

Because let's face it, this girl's not repulsive. Although the costume braces make her mouth huge and her clothes are over-the-top terrible, she has an otherwise pleasant face. Here are a few pictures of the real life actress:




































This girl is moments away from being very pretty in real life (yes, she's a little round-ish, but who isn't these days?). But with glasses, braces and frumpy clothes she's suddenly morphed into Ugliness.

(Allow me a quick rant about the glasses. This is an entirely out-of-touch idea from the brains behind this show. Lots of people wear glasses. Many of those people look better because of them. Adding glasses to illustrate ugliness is straight out of an elementary school playbook.)

Hollywood once tried to fool us into believing that this girl was also a lost cause:




















In the movie She's All That, this actress played a nerd who had to become pretty before the film ends.





(there they go with the glasses again)








Tons of sarcasm is flooding into my mind, but I'll take the high road instead and simply say that Hollywood is all wrong about what makes people ugly. Hollywood's preschool lesson is often that real ugliness is "on the inside," but that's just not true. If only Hollywood would employ actual ugly people they would find this out.

And in an attempt to research true ugliness, I went to the one thing that holds no bias: Google. I searched with the terms "ugly," and "ugly people."

Friends, I present you with...

The Gallery of Google Uglies

(my advanced apologies to these ugly people):




















i can't look at this one directly












the real Ugly Betty?











is this a photoshop job?













"I look like a warthog."





















I actually get angry looking at this one.















Her face is shaped like toast.












At least they have each other?













I don't even know what to say here.




















yep. even pets can be ugly.








All right, all right, I can't take it anymore....no more ugly people.

***

ABC is hoping the gimmick of having an "ugly" main character will be enough to draw viewers in. But as you can see, Ugly Betty isn't really that daring because Betty's just pretend ugly - it's enough to tell our imaginations that she's supposed to be ugly without literally being so ugly that we won't watch.

There's nothing much wrong with that, I guess. It's just that she's not really that ugly when compared to actual ugly people.

arguing for the soft bulletin

The Flaming Lips have been around for about 20 years now. They've built a reputation for being one of America's most outlandish and absurd rock 'n roll acts. They sometimes wear fury animal outfits and fake blood. Lead singer Wayne Coyne has been seen performing from inside a human-sized bubble ball. They write songs with unusual titles like "Pilot Can at the Queer of God" and "Rainin' Babies." They were best known throughout the '90's as "the band who sang that song about Vaseline." And yet somehow over the span of their last three releases, The Flaming Lips took the leap from "weird indie fringe act" to "essential rock band."

The band's most recent release, At War With The Mystics, carries on with the precedent set by the previous two records. It's a mishmash of electrosonic space rock, with a bit more straightforward rock than Yoshimi or The Soft Bulletin. Yet Mystics isn't quite the opus that both of those other records manage to be. The highs aren't as high, the lows aren't as low.

But neither At War With The Mystics nor Yoshimi accomplish what The Soft Bulletin does. This is The Flaming Lips' finest musical concoction, the album that took them into rock royalty and crowned them as darlings. This is where The Lips most clearly express their artistic vision. This is the album that saved them. It's the book that an author tries to write his whole career and finally does.
















Back in the mid '90's, The Lips released an album called Clouds Taste Metallic. It was a surprisingly creative collection of songs that went largely unnoticed by the public. So what do you do when creatively you're starting to actualize but nobody's listening? You've already been dismissed as "the Vaseline song" band? If you're Wayne Coyne & The Lips, you go back to the studio and record Zaireeka, a four-disc album intended to played all at once. Someone say gimmick, right? Maybe so. But Coyne says on the band's website that it was during the Zaireeka recordings that they gained the enlightenment they'd been searching for. They realized then that they weren't a live rock band who records albums; rather, The Flaming Lips were a studio band that loved to tinker and experiment behind closed doors. Understanding this helped them to cement their identity. And once the Zaireeka recordings were finished, their identity understood, they were left with a few songs that just didn't work with the four-disc concept. Those songs laid the foundation for their next release, 1999's The Soft Bulletin.

***

Once the music starts playing, right away you are drawn into the theater of this album. You can picture the stage curtains spread apart as the show begins, the loud echoing drum snares and the "ta da!" keyboards. And then, once the scene has been established, in comes Wayne with that fragile, lovable voice (or, if you're new to The Lips, it's the annoyingly shaky voice), singing the words to a story that starts, "Two scientists were racing for the good of all mankind / Both of them side-by-side / So determined." Like most of The Soft Bulletin, this first song is lush with keyboards and backing vocals singing ahhs and oohs set to a galloping rhythm. Best of all, the keyboards sound a little like they're gasping for breath on their deathbed, like they're being bent and stretched in unnatural sounding ways. The Soft Bulletin is loaded with similar sound experiments throughout, blurring the line between noise and music.

Like following the white rabbit down the rabbit hole into Wonderland, thus begins this odd journey.

***

Like any good story, The Soft Bulletin succeeds in creating a unique universe for the listener. That's not something I can quantify for you, it's just something a person feels. The Wizard of OZ, Willy Wonka, The Royal Tenenbaums, Pulp Fiction - these are all stories that accomplish this. Sgt. Pepper by The Beatles is an album that accomplishes this. Shoot, Super Mario Bros. is a video game that accomplishes this. And so too does The Soft Bulletin. You might just have to take a blind leap of faith with me on this point.













But The Soft Bulletin's greatest strength lies in its cohesive themes, the way it ebbs and flows with tension between victory and defeat. In this regard, it is more than a collection of songs. Rather, it is a lyrically and musically connected work, which lends to the album's sense of being like theater or literature.

A good portion of the album concerns itself with strange stories: talk over spider bites, gashes on your leg, and lifting up the sun. But there is something bigger at work. Like the scientists at the beginning, The Lips themselves seem to be chasing some great discovery. The Soft Bulletin is not sung from the shy diary of some shoegazer. It is a declaration in the form of a story, some vague message of hope (perhaps) to ALL MANKIND!!! (echo, echo, echo)

But these large themes are almost always intertwined with tragedy, failure and the loss of hope. You begin to realize that The Flaming Lips aren't just a fun band playing fun music. Often times they are downtrodden and defeated, pessimists posing as realists.

"Waitin' for a Superman" for example, says:

Tell everybody waiting for Superman
That they should try to hold on
Best they can.
He hasn't dropped them
Forgot them
Or anything.
It's just too heavy for Superman to lift.

In "The Gash (Battle Hymn for the Wounded Mathematician)"
is about quitting in the face of adversity:

Is that gash in your leg
Really why you have stopped?
'Cause I've noticed all the others
Though they're gashed, they're still going
'Cause I feel like the real reason
That you're quitting, that you're admitting
That you've lost all the will to battle on

The pain is more straightforward on "Feeling Yourself Disintegrate":

Love in our life is just too valuable
Oh, to feel for even a second without it
But life without death is just impossible
Oh, to realize something is ending within us...
Feeling yourself disintegrate

You sometimes find yourself asking, "Why so downcast, Flaming Lips? What's the matter?"















However, the conclusion of "The Gash" - the musical apex of the album - is halfway defiant.

Still the battle that we're in
Rages on till the end
With explosions, wounds are open
Sights and smells, eyes and noses
But the thought that went unspoken
Was understanding that you're broken.
Still the last volunteer battles on
Battles on
Battles on

As we journey through this music, we come to understand The Flaming Lips as complex and highly emotional creatures. And this is conveyed not only through words, but also through the music, naturally, which I've not spent enough time talking about. You could give three dumps about the greater themes of The Soft Bulletin and still love it for its sometimes wildly unpredictable and sometimes strangely sweet musical fantasias. Download "A Spoonful Weighs a Ton" and you'll find out what I'm talking about in a hurry. One second it's a bunch of high-pitched sugary notes, trickling piano keys and flutes, and the next a rumbling bit of madness between bass and drums.

Listen to "The Spark That Bled" and it's perfect circle form, from beginning to end, despite the crazy path it takes you in between: contemplation, then blues, then cheer, then almost country, always theatrical. And who can deny singing aloud with the line: "I stood up and I said 'Yeah!'"

"The Spiderbite Song" is great interplay between piano & drums, twinkling chimes and random beeps, and Wayne. "'Cause if it destroyed you, it would destroy me."

And I love "What is The Light?" It changes the mood of the album with that thump-thump heartbeat rhythm and those deep, brooding thrusts on the piano, building a real sense of suspense. And the way it goes straight into "The Observer" - the epic instrumental - is brilliantly executed. Really, what a theatrical album.

***

Finally, you might be wondering, "Great, but what about the two scientists? What cure are they racing to find?" The answer, ladies & gentlemen, is they are trying to figure out how to capture love into some scientific form and use it to heal all sickness in the world. At least, that's my theory. Look at the subtitle of "What is The Light?"

"What is The Light?: An Untested Hypothesis Suggesting That The Chemical [In Our Brains] By Which We Are Able To Experience The Sensation Of Being In Love Is The Same Chemical That Caused The "Big Bang" That Was The Birth Of The Accelerating Universe."




















Ultimately, I can't say enough good about The Soft Bulletin. It's just an innovative and challenging piece of work through and through. It raised the bar for anything the band would record afterwards, making The Soft Bulletin their gold standard of achievement, the record that pushed The Flaming Lips into the realm of the elite.

Of course, the immense reception to The Soft Bulletin would go on to put great pressure on their follow-up release. People wanted to know if it was a fluke, or rather, if it was a sign of great things to come. Under this scrutiny, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots was released three years later, in 2002.

Will we carry this discussion onward, next to examine the brilliance of Yoshimi, and to eventually contrast it against The Soft Bulletin.

america's best kept joke

For those of you who are unaware, Boston is home to one of our country's greatest jokes. Why this isn't something we all know about and laugh about on a regular basis really baffles me. It's time to bring awareness to this national treasure.

While visiting Boston late in August, I ventured with some friends to a rather famous cemetery. It's called the Granary, and it's home to several dead patriots, such as Sam Adams, Paul Revere and so on. And it's loaded with awesome headstones, like the one below.














Pretty awesome, right?

Okay. So while we ventured through this historic place, I noticed one of my friends was all laughs. Laughter? I thought. In a cemetery?

"See that one over there?" she said, almost excited enough to explode.

We turned our heads slowly, full well knowing we were about to experience something crude and childish and wonderful. Our eyes connected with the object. It didn't take long to understand.

"Can you guess who's grave that is?" she gushed.

We shook our heads, slightly embarrassed, slightly proud to be American.

It was John Hancock's grave. It had to be.

***

Without further ado...

Ladies & gentlemen...I present you with...

John Hancock's grave:















I'm not kidding you. This is the real thing. Seriously. Nothing has been doctored. This is John Hancock's actual tombstone.

And actually, it gets better. Take a look at the inscription on the front:






Do you see it?

Scroll down for a zoom in.
























Yep, that's real too. It's all real. Someone with a real brain actually gave us these things.

Is it possible that this is all a coincidence? Or did John Hancock (or a member of his family) have a great sense of humor, demanding a cock-shaped headstone over his grave? Or was the tombstone maker just someone who was especially susceptible to the power of suggestion?

Whatever the answer, the fact remains that this is the best free attraction in the country and everyone should know about it.

Incidentally, I can't wait to see what either of the George Bush tombstones end up looking like.

burger king wins

In the movie Boyz in the Hood, Lawrence Fishburn tells his son that "there are leaders and there are followers. Which one you gonna be?" (NOTE: I'm not positive Lawrence Fishburn is actually in "Boyz" and I'm not positive that I'm even quoting the right film, and I'm definitely not quoting verbatim. Otherwise...).

Well, along those same lines, ladies & gentlemen, standing tall amidst all the sheep is a fast-food restaurant that has long been searching for identity and purpose, and I'm happy to report, it has found it. Ladies & gentlemen, Burger King has self-actualized before our very eyes.

There are leaders and there are followers.














In a world where fast-food retailers have been guilted into adding salads and other low-fat options to their menus, Burger King has gleefully decided to become the most bad-for-you restaurant on the planet and possibly in the history of the universe. The BK menu boasts the food equivalent of WMD, featuring such items as the triple whopper, something called "chicken fries," and a few other doozies.

The tour-de-force in Burger King's arsenal, though, must be the breakfast sandwich called the "Meatnormous." The name alone evokes images of greasy sausage, ham and bacon layered upon scrambled eggs, all naturally smothered in cheese. And maybe - just maybe - the Meatnormous comes with a side of sausage gravy to dip your sandwich into. It weighs, I imagine, a full pound, and upon digestion of the Meatnormous, I imagine you are overcome with a feeling of immense lethargy as your body uses all its resources to process such a fatty, cholesterol-laden meal (don't forget about the little hashbrown poppers that come on the side; it is your duty to eat those also).



* actual Meatnormous next to a Ho Ho, compliments of someone's MySpace page. Thanks to you.









Science tells us that every action brings forth a reaction. In the case of the fast food industry, the first action came in the form of a movie. "Super Size Me" - the pseudo-documentary / cultural commentary / science project where a man eats only McDonald's for 30 days - created enough short-term embarrassment about how susceptible Americans are to the fatty charms of fast food that retailers like Wendy's, Arby's and McDonald's decided to diversify their portfolios, so to speak. Suddenly yogurt and side-salads were all the rage. Who needed french fries anymore in a post-Super-Size Me world?

"Pshaw. I spit on such cowardice," said Burger King, triumphant.

While the nancy corporations out there mimicked the "Subway Approach," Burger King did the unthinkable. It laughed in Morgan Spurlock's face and said, "Your movie will only make us stronger. We will market food abominations that will make John Candy roll in his grave." And they have.

You might be wondering why I'm so proud of Burger King, a company on the verge of making Phillip Morris seem saintly. It's not that I appreciate destructive food at all. In fact, I never eat at Burger King, not ever. The food is not really the point. I understand that obesity is still rising in our country, and in two years 1-in-5 children will be considered obese, blah blah blahhh. Yes, that's terrible.

What I like is that Burger King has finally become free to be itself. No longer standing in McDonald's shadow, Burger King has distinguished itself as the food destination for men's-men. The King character himself is often seen in commercials either playing in NFL games or hanging out around construction sites or with lumberjacks. And there is nary a woman to be found in any of the commercials. There was even a musical commercial where men just sang and danced about the grandeur of BK's deliciously unhealthy food. They are not ashamed of what they've become. No no. Much to the contrary. Burger King celebrates its new found lunacy with infectious enthusiasm! with joy! with moxie! like Carnival! Seriously, it's like the majority stockholder died and bequeathed his fortune to his 17-year-old son, who now runs BK with all of his buddies.
















You see, Burger King's entire identity used to hang on its flame-broiled method of cooking hamburgers. However, that was never quite enough to distinguish them from McDonald's. It was a boring restaurant with boring food choices. McDonald's, alternately, owned the market on fun, what with Ronald, Grimace, Mayor McCheese, Playhouses, Happy Meals, etc. I guess Burger King wanted to be McDonald's for adults. The result was boredom.

But now they find themselves rebelling against the social norm in such a blatant way that Burger King almost comes off looking like a punk rock hero. And that's what's really important here. Call it a new marketing strategy if you want, but I think it's less contrived than that. Burger King discovered that, at its heart, its not a grumpy old curmudgeon meant for grumpy adults after all. It is, in fact, a Fat Man's Paradise. Nothing more, nothing less. That's what it always has been. It just took some time to figure it out. And now...freedom. The freedom to be what they are, like coming out of the closet.

There are leaders and there are followers. And Burger King has finally gone from the latter to the former, even though at the end of the day they might stand alone, left simply to make the world fatter and more pathetic with all their many chicken fries and Meatnormouses. Or their new philosophy may backfire, leading to Chapter 11. No matter the consequences, The King can rest soundly at night knowing it discovered a distinct personality for itself - finally - which is all any of us could hope for in life.

state of the union

friends, oh dear friends, how i've missed you. let's never be apart this long ever again, agreed?

what can i say? i've neglected my blog. i've opened up cans of worms only to leave them squirming about the floor. quite simply, i've failed you. and i'm sorry.

apollo 13 vs. open water...this was never resolved. the flaming lips battle never occurred. and i've been meaning to say something about Burger King forever.

well friends, i haven't forgotten. Napkin Sketches will be flowing with two or three new essays a week, just like in the good ol' days. now you have one more place to surf while killing time at work.

and in honor of my recommitment to Napkin Sketches, i've changed the look of the place. i hope you like it.

your humble servant,

the glide