Pavement Brings 1990s Finest Rock Back to Central Park

Thirteen months after buying our concert tickets, the night finally arrived. Late Tuesday afternoon, we arrived in Manhattan on the Amtrak and proceeded to make our way to Central Park's Summer Stage for the indie-rock concert event of the year.

Rachel and I dropped our bags off at a friend of a friend's house. Then we grabbed Mexican food and margaritas with the friend of a friend (Dan) and his buddies Alex and Eric. Two of the three were from St. Louis, so I had lots to discuss with them.

Then we met fellow DCites Fran and Morgan at the show. Oh yeah, who was playing, you ask? Pavement, who routinely land in my top three bands of all-time (along with The Beatles and Guided by Voices).

They were in every bit as good a form as the handful of times I saw them before their breakup in 1999. Leader Steve Malkmus exuded confidence in his unusually quirky vocal stylings and played guitar behind his back and hit chops that were like a cooler and looser version of a college-rock Jimi Hendrix.

Several of the traditionally tight and concise Pavement classics were stretched into jammy territory, clearly influenced by Malkmus' post-Pavement band The Jicks. Where this probably worked best was with set closer "Stop Breathin'," which actually pulsated and sent waves of guitar dueling through the city reminiscent of the Pink Floyd concert I saw in 1987.

Pavement can do no wrong, because even when they ventured into psychedelic jams, you knew it was never long before pop perfection would return. Particular highlights of the first of four nights at the Central park venue included "Gold Soundz," recently deemed by Pitchfork as the best song of the 1990s, "Box Elder," Stereo," Silent Kit," "Shady Lane, "Rattled by the Rush," "We Dance," "Perfume-V," "Debris Slide," "Trigger Cut," "Range Life,"and "Cut Your Hair."

The only thing that could have been better would have been if the band played longer. For instance, the next night, they played several tunes that I would have loved to hear, including "Summer Babe," "Zurich is Stained," "Two States," "Lions (Linden)," Here," and "Father to a Sister of Thought."

Pavement is one of life's grand pleasures. It's good to have them back again.

***** out of ***** stars


Photo courtesy of Music Snobbery

The Runaways Forget to Leave a Good Story in Their Movie

One of the many interesting tidbits left out of the mildly stinky new rockumentary The Runaways is the fact that lead singer Cherie Currie (the blond at the bottom left) was briefly married in the 1990s to actor Robert Hays, the legendary lead in Airplane!

Lack of detail seems to be a specialty for this slow-paced movie, which tries to give us lots of rock 'n roll debauchery. And that's usually a good thing in a rock movie, but if there is no strong character development or back story, it's not enough.

People can learn as much about The Runaways by reading their Wikipedia entry and listening to their few great tunes here.

It's a shame. I was excited to see this. And I still like rhythm guitarist Joan Jett's later work, so it was good to at least get a little bit of that story at the end of the movie. And I should add that Kristen Stewart does an impressive job of looking and singing like Jett.

**1/2 out of ***** stars

Climate Science Needs Less Wonk, More Anecdotal Stories

Climate science is filled with great metaphors, anecdotes, and characters. After all, what issue wouldn’t kill to have a day like Earth Day or an icon like the polar bear serving as brand managers?

The problem is that journalists, climate scientists, and others need to tell these stories better, especially in a rapidly shifting media landscape. These were some of the highlights of a panel today hosted by the American Meteorological Society on “Media and Climate Change” at the U.S. House of Representatives’ Rayburn Building in D.C.

Bud Ward (pictured) of the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media recommended that scientists adopt some of the best practices of communications and that journalists, in turn, will fare better if they are allowed to specialize in topic areas such as environmental sciences.

He said universities and science academies fail to prepare their students to know how to communicate the important science they undertake, which is extremely pointless if the public and politicians don’t know about the science, can’t understand it, or fail to avoid the pitfalls of a highly politicized topic like global warming.

One of Ward’s great tips falls in line with a blog I’m helping redesign and relaunch this month for The Nature Conservancy (more about that soon). He said when someone starts a conversation with, “I don’t believe in global warming,” ask them what their interests are. If they say, “I love my Hummer,” engage them on military and national security issues. Stop framing these kinds of discussions in terms of global warming. This is so important because climate relates to just about everything we care about.

Most people just don’t make the connections, and why would they? Climate is something way up in the atmosphere (unlike our daily weather) and seemingly generations away (even though it's already very much here). As co-panelist Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism added, “It’s harder to know what to think than what to believe.”

Ward also touched on the poor framing used by environmentalists and journalists. They don’t know whether to call it global warming or climate change. They don’t know whether to call them climate skeptics or deniers. No wonder so many people are left struggling with what to believe or think.

Vampire Weekend Bites Merriweather Crowd with Exuberant Worldbeat Indie Pop

Vampire Weekend put on an exuberant late-summer pop show at Merriweather Post Pavilion on Saturday night. For the uninitiated, they are indie rock's answer to Paul Simon's worldbeat Graceland. They also reconfirmed their place as one of my favorite bands of the 2010s, right up there with Wilco and a reunited Pavement.

Baltimore's Beach House opened and was enjoyable, despite their songs being mellow and samey (and their lead-singing chick looking like one of The Really Rottens from Hanna-Barbera's Laff-A-Lympics).

My friend Francis Chung put it best in his review for DCist (and, even better yet, check out his great photos):

"Thousands screamed along to the infectiously rudimentary chorus of 'A-Punk,' and at the end of the main set, [Vampire Weekend lead singer Ezra] Koenig’s diction did not drip with disdain during the vibrant 'Oxford Comma.' The three-song encore began somewhat dubiously with 'Horchata,' before Rostam Batmanglij’s keyboards signaled the start of 'Mansard Roof,' an almost absurdly catchy song highlighted by Chris Tomson’s propulsive drumming. The evening concluded with a rousing rendition of 'Walcott,' as the audience collectively thrust its hands skyward in a euphoric response even Bruce Springsteen would probably be proud to get."

****1/2 out of ***** stars

The Young Victoria Needs a Little Maturing

The great thing about period pieces is that you usually get to educate yourself about an interesting part of human history.

The problem with The Young Victoria is that there is hardly any learning curve. Sure, before seeing the movie, we already knew that she took the throne in the 1830s when she was still a young woman. And we knew there was some sort of minor power struggle to work through in the early days of Victoria's marriage to Prince Albert. And we knew that there was an assassination attempt on the queen, but that she was unharmed and ruled until ripe old age.

Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend are both likable and steady in the lead roles, but the story seems to breeze along before it's suddenly gone and done. The movie simply leaves you wanting more, but not in a good way. It's more like it leaves you wanting.

The art design, makeup, and costumes were each nominated for 2010 Academy Awards and truly go a long way towards making the movie better than the sum of the script.

**1/2 out of ***** stars

Punched in the Face By Brutal Realism

It's great to see my friend Tim Getman getting better and better parts. He is firmly entrenched as a leading light in the formidable DC theater scene.

The production of Cherry Smoke at Silver Spring's Roundhouse Theater, of which he both stars and co-produces with Jessica Burgess (who helped produce my own Wiener Sausage: The Musical!), is a powerful exploration of the small-town psyche that accompanies extreme poverty and hopelessness.

Getman plays Fish, a miscreant boxer who can't get anything right other than beating other people senseless. Tangled amidst the sparse setting of ropes hanging from the ceiling, he does a pretty good job of abusing the minds of those closest to him as well.

Cherry is played with Huck Finn-like goodness by Julia Procter. A country tomboy, she loves Fish with all her heart, waits for months at a time for him to return from his frequent stints in lockup, and seems to turn to smoke without the hot breath and embrace of her soulmate.

Fish's little brother, Duffy (Cliff Williams III), and Duffy's wife Bug (Jjana Valentiner, a veteran of one staged reading of Wiener Sausage), help move Fish's story along. As Duffy narrates, he and his wife's ultimate normalness is an excellent contrast to Fish and Cherry's more passionate, but ultimately less sustainable, relationship.

The performances are top-notch and Burgess has done a lot with a fairly minimalist script. The story is eventually tragic, and by the end, the audience cares greatly about and sympathizes with four characters whom urban theatergoers likely have little in the way of commonalities.

**** out of ***** stars

When Mad Men Days Ruled the Advertising World

The smash success of the TV show Mad Men has really opened up the nation's romanticism of the good old days of office life that included daily doses of martinis, cigarettes, and sex.

While it all sounds fun, it also sounds pretty exhausting. But somehow advertising legend Jerry Della Femina survived the 50s, 60s, and every decade since, and is still working and telling us about how the TV show looks like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm compared to those days when he was starting his own firm.

Della Femina begins his memoir, From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor, remembering how agencies in the 1950s "were broken down among ethnic lines. The Mad Men flourished in large Protestant ad agencies [and] monopolized all the large advertising accounts (cars, food, cigarettes, soft drinks, beer). The other, small accounts (dress manufacturers, shoes, underwear, small retail stores) were regulated to tiny, 'Jewish' ad agencies."

By the late 60s, the ethnic agencies, of which Della Femina had always been a part, had turned the tables and captured most of the primo accounts. The chairman of the Protestant Mad Men, David Ogilvy, even declared at a conference in 1968 that "the lunatics have taken over the asylum."

One example of the debauchery in the advertising golden age: "Thousands of people took part in the Agency Sex Contest. Everyone in the agency voted anonymously on ballots for the three people they most wanted to go to bed with. They were also asked to vote on the person of the same sex they would consider going to bed with. And, of course, there was the menage a trois category, in which they selected the two other people they wanted to go to bed with. Sometimes as many as 300 votes were cast.

"For one week [each year], the walls of the agency were covered with [sometimes nude] posters made by people who were campaigning for themselves." Winners shared hotel room suites for a weekend or a night and also were allowed to have sex on Della Femina's couch during a work afternoon.

Inception Plants a Pretty Good Story in My Head

Inception is a good story that gets bloated with action-adventure on its way to a suspenseful ending.

Leonardo DiCaprio is his usual wonderful self, in a young Jack Nicholson, rich man's Christian Slater kind of way.

He plays a guy who can get into other people's dreams, but when he gets the final assignment of his career (which will supposedly allow him to go back to his children in America), he risks dragging down the "dream" team he assembles.

Ellen Page of Juno fame is the right actor to play the architectural designer of the dreams. She also slowly unfolds the complicated, creepy, and fascinating back story of Leo and his dead (or not?) wife, played by Marilon Cotillard. Leo's wavering commitment between his wife and his team, including good performances from Tom Hardy and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, threatens their mission to successfully perform "inception," which means to place an idea in someone's head that could change their entire thinking and life course.

Director Christopher Nolan can't repeat the majesty of 2000's Memento, not that anyone could reasonably ask for such a feat. However, he assembles a formidable team to try. The problem is that he gets a little too big for his britches. I seriously almost fell asleep in the middle as Leo and crew went Bond with shootouts in the rain, high-risk mountain skiing, and a very long fall off a bridge in a van. Luckily there was enough meat in the story to make this worth seeing in the theater.

*** out of ***** stars (This would come in #10 on my list of the 14 best DiCaprio movies.)

White House Tour Follows Steps of First Ladies

Eleven years living in DC and today I finally took my first tour of the East Wing of the White House.

Although I consider myself an eager student of U.S. presidential history, I hate to admit that the tour is just an OK experience. Probably the best things about the short walk are the historical photos in the entryway (including one of John Travolta dancing with Princess Diana and lots of White House pets), the inspiring glimpses of the backyard and the Jackie Kennedy Garden that frequently appear on the news, and the often recognizable furniture sprinkled throughout the half-dozen or so rooms on the tour.

The East Wing is essentially the president's living quarters while the West Wing consists of working offices. The current East Wing was added to the White House in 1942 primarily to cover the construction of an underground bunker, now the Presidential Emergency Operations Center. Around the same time, Theodore Roosevelt's coatroom became the movie theater.

Rosalynn Carter, in 1977, was the first to place her personal office in the East Wing and to formally call it the "Office of the First Lady." The first ladies have continued to similarly use the East Wing ever since.

Weird, Wild Weather: A Preview of Global Warming’s Effects

Nice article that appears at The Nature Conservancy's blog and in The National Journal. It is based on talking points that I drafted so that when all these crazy weather events like in Russia and Pakistan happen, our experts are always ready to talk about how weather relates to global warming. Enviros have not always spoken so convincingly on this in the past, at least not as convincingly as Big Oil lobbyists.

Have you been paying attention to the weather lately? How could you not?

After two months of record-breaking heat and withering drought, Russia is finally getting some relief. But not before extreme weather stoked wildfires that blanketed Moscow in choking smog, contributed to thousands of heat-related deaths and drownings, and shriveled one-quarter of the country’s wheat harvest.

Torrential monsoonal floods are still ravaging Pakistan, forcing as many as 20 million people from their homes and provoking concerns about political instability in an already unstable region.

Right here in the United States this summer, we have suffered heat waves and witnessed downpours — as much as 10 inches in just 12 hours — that flooded towns and took lives in Massachusetts, Tennessee, Arkansas, Iowa, and Oklahoma.

Coincidence? Probably not. Weird weather is giving us a preview of what climate change means for people.

All around the world, we are seeing hotter hots, wetter wets and drier dries. These extremes, in turn, are resulting in destructive wild fires, choking air pollution, ravaging floods, lost crops, lost homes and lost lives.

Data released from the U.S.’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Climatic Data Center shows that June 2010 was the warmest month of June globally since record-taking began in 1880.

It was also the 304th month in a row in which average worldwide temperatures have been above the 20th century average. There is no question that our world is warming.

We are just left to wonder when, where and how the consequences will be felt. Warmer air makes for wilder weather because it holds more moisture. As warmer air masses move across the landscape, they can pick up more water from the ocean, from lakes and from the soil, creating drier conditions for crops and evaporating water supplies.

Eventually, what goes up must come down, as moisture-laden air unleashes deluges of precipitation – such as the torrential snows the East Coast experienced this past winter.

This is probably the point where I am supposed to remind you that any single weather event cannot be definitively linked to climate change. But that’s not the point. If climate is what we expect and weather is what we get, we need to start changing our expectations.

Record high temperatures are being broken twice as often as record lows; you would expect them to be equal if climate were steady. According the U.S. Global Change Research Program, over the last 50 years, heavy rainfalls in the Northeastern United States have increased 67 percent, and snowpacks in the Western United States are melting up to three weeks earlier.

These sorts of climate changes are serious business. Heat waves hurt air quality and threaten people’s health. Droughts shrivel crops and dry up water supplies. Floods wash away communities. As the news of the last few weeks has made so vivid, extreme weather costs money and costs lives. Climate change increases the odds that we will experience more wild weather and then suffer the consequences.

With so much at risk, we need to act now to stabilize the climate and safeguard our communities:
- We need policies that immediately reduce greenhouse gas emissions and wean us off heat-trapping fossil fuels and onto clean, low-carbon energy sources.
- We need to invest in protecting the world’s remaining forests that absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and provide clean water and other valuable benefits.
- We need to help make nature more resilient to change so that people can keep counting on it for food, water, jobs, and protection from storms and floods.

We may not be able to control the weather, but, by strengthening nature, we can help reduce the odds that it will get more extreme.