Why Tori Amos's 'Night of Hunters' Might Be the Best Album of 2011.

I was as excited as any average Tori Amos fan when I heard she had a new album coming out this year - well, to be fair, about as excited as i was to hear about new music this year from Bjork, Saul Williams, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Skinny Puppy, Junius, Radiohead and everyone else whose albums I awaited with bated breath in 2011.

I was, subsequently, so intrigued by the concept and composition of the new Tori Amos record as to say my intrigue was only matched this year by Bjork's Biophilia - which involved bespoke instruments and aural interpretations of natural phenomena (like using a Tesla Coil to make a bassline for a song about electricity). The structure of Tori's Night of Hunters, as I've come to understand it, is that it is a 14-track song cycle in the tradition of classical collections like Franz Schubert's Die Winterreise - a sort of allegorical mini-opera. The story behind this album finds the female narrator on the eve of the end of a relationship, suddenly whisked away by a spirit on a journey across 400 years to see herself and her partner's earlier incarnations throughout fantasy and history.

Surprisingly, your or my opinions on subjects like fire spirits, mythical goddesses and peyote rituals - all of which are explored on the album - or concept-based albums at all are rendered irrelevant by the next trick Tori had up her sleeve in Night of Hunters' composition. All 14 songs, without exception, are either based upon or at least inspired by classical pieces from the last 400 years. It's no coincidence that the history of music she explores matches in time with the journey on which the narrator travels - nor is it coincidence that such subject matter would find itself on Tori's first release under contract with the classical-based German record label Deutsche Grammophon - but it's the near-tribute to some of the world's most renowned classical composers that acts as adhesive bridging each track into a full-length quest to the 17th century and back.

My one complaint with Night of Hunters was that as truly classic (excuse the terminology) as it sounded, I didn't recognize any of the reference material as I listened - until I realized that was really a problem with my rudimentary experience with classical music, not Tori's selection. A quick YouTube search, the benefits of which you're about to reap, quickly revealed to me the intimate and respectful true nature of the album towards Tori's predecessors - who include Chopin, Schubert, Schumann and Bach, among others.

Consider Tori's new song "Battle of Trees." Here's a link to it on MySpace (just click the "Play" button, and try a couple times if it doesn't work the first time).

http://www.myspace.com/toriamos/music/songs/battle-of-trees-83864619

It's instantly memorable for several of its chord and singular note progressions. "Battle of Trees" is based on Erik Satie's "Gnossienne No. 1," written over a hundred years ago. Give it a listen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLFVGwGQcB0

Not only is "Battle of Trees" a faithful reproduction of "Gnossienne No. 1," but Tori adds her own style and flair to it as well - and the whole album follows suit! Not all songs are as similar as their inspirations, but listening to the reference material and the Tori Amos song back-to-back are a real treat.

The amount of work that's gone into the reinterpretation and production of these songs to bring them up to the 21st century is daunting enough without considering that it manages to flow as a unified whole, and not just 14 random songs sequenced together. If it's not the most impressive and ambitious endeavor in music this year, it's certainly near the top of a short list. Night of Hunters is an absolute odyssey from front to back, but one worth hearing again and again.

One final note - an Amazon.com reviewer known as T. Fisher, in critiquing the just-released instrumental version of Night of Hunters, tracked the entire album to its sources. For your enjoyment, I'll list them as follows, with thanks to him or her for the information.

1. Shattering Sea (Alkan: Song of the Madwoman on the Sea-Shore, Prelude op. 31 no. 8)
2. SnowBlind (Granados: Añoranza - from 6 Pieces on Spanish Folksongs)
3. Battle of Trees (Satie: Gnossienne no. 1)
4. Fearlessness (Granados: Orientale from 12 Spanish Dances)
5. Cactus Practice (Chopin: Nocturne op. 9 no. 1)
6. Star Whisperer (Schubert: Andantino from Piano Sonata in A major D 959)
7. Job's Coffin (Inspired by the next song, Nautical Twilight)
8. Nautical Twilight (Mendelssohn: Venetian Boat Song from Songs Without Words op. 30)
9. Your Ghost (Schumann: Theme and Variations in E flat major WoO 24 from Ghost Variations)
10. Edge of the Moon (Bach: Siciliano from Flute Sonata BWV 1031)
11. The Chase (Mussorgsky: The Old Castle from Pictures at an Exhibition)
12. Night of Hunters (Scarlatti: Sonata in F minor, K.466 and the Gregorian Chant "Salva Regina")
13. Seven Sisters (Bach: Prelude in C minor)
14. Carry (Debussy: The Girl with the Flaxen Hair, from Preludes I)

How iWish You Were Here.

Yesterday I read an article in Side-Line stating that by 2012, all major record labels will stop supporting cd's. An hour after this, I was reading an issue of Sound + Vision featuring interviews with and features on Pink Floyd, in respect to their series of box sets called Immersion, which feature 5- or 6-disc deluxe reissues of Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall. And it got me thinking.

I think giving up on cd's is a misstep - and yes, I've heard of iTunes. My problem with digital distribution for music - which includes Amazon, iTunes, 7digital, p2p sharing, torrents, whatever - is twofold. First, it ruins the experience of an album as being larger than life, with the artwork, the liner notes, the whole visual experience. But that's besides the point.

Just as importantly, I'm one of those "weirdos" who still thinks an album is an album, and should be listened to at least a few times through from start to finish as a whole. Even though only a small percentage of released albums qualify as "concept albums" - in which every song relates to and helps explain a specific concept, point or theme - most songs still sound different when taken in the context in which they're recorded and released as part of a series by an artist. I don't read individual chapters of books when I'm bored, or watch individual scenes in movies. I don't watch just one play from the middle of a game either. I don't go so far as to plan car trips to be long enough that I know which albums to listen to and which ones "not to bother starting," but if I've got an hour to kill, an album's going on and it's likely not leaving until it's finished. Sometimes I do listen to one or two songs from an album and change it out for something else, and I do love making mixtapes - which is where my single-song buying comes into play - but not only do I want to hear an album in its entirety, I'm not the only one.

German prog-metal outfit The Ocean have released five full-length albums. They encourage their fans to listen to them straight through to the point that their liner notes request that you do the same. Their third major release, Precambrian, is the clearest example of this reasoning. Each song is named after a period of the Precambrian age - yeah, that's right; there are songs called Rhyacian and Neoarchean - and are written to represent this, and sequenced chronologically. A double-disc, Precambrian boasts a 25-minute EP-style disc ('Hadean/Archean') and an hour-long album-style disc ('Proterozoic'). Hadean/Archean is five blasting metal tracks, meant to aurally represent a chaotic and fiery time in geology; Proterozoic is more tempered, with some classical instruments peppered throughout, to simulate a time when life began on earth and there was some tranquility.

Strange as it sounds, listening to it straight through just makes sense. Much the same as when you hear Radiohead's 1997 OK Computer and the first crunchy guitar and supporting cello and tambourine on "Airbag" start an adventure that doesn't end until the triangle fades at the end of "The Tourist," each of The Ocean's albums are clearly planned to be front-to-back journeys.

So what if digital distribution and all its necessary technology - iPods, computers, etc - had existed 50 years ago?

Let's look at Pink Floyd again, upon whom I'm focusing for today in light of the Immersion sets and the fact that they're a perfect example for this point. If iTunes existed 50 years ago, you'd have kids across the nation in high schools saying "Pink Floyd sucks. I heard Dark Side of the Moon was supposed to be like the best album ever, and I bought a song from it on iTunes and it was just like clocks going off or something. Why would people buy that shit?" ...which they do now, but their parents smack them on the back of the head and tell them they're morons. Instead of The Wall being an 85-minute descent into madness, and one of the greatest concept albums ever made, it would just be one entry on 20 million iPods - "Another Brick in the Wall (Pt. 2)," or as my generation knows it as, "We Don't Need No Education." It's poppy, short, has a nice guitar solo, and teenagers like it because they think it's all about skipping school.

But it's not just the 25-and-under crowd. I was talking to a middle-aged friend about new albums this fall and how I was falling short on picking them up, and she said "Well you just need to get over the whole 'album' thing; you should only get one or two songs." I can't imagine any piece of Dark Side missing (nor of a specifically defined concept-based album) let alone the majority of it. Plenty of albums tell a story and every song is like a chapter in a book. To discard any one piece of The Wall is to lose a legitimate facet of Pink (the main character)'s personality and tragedy. For example, f you were to only take out "Mother" and "Another Brick in the Wall (Pt. 1)," Pink almost seems like a bratty, anti-military asshole rocker who just can't stand his own fame. You lose the roots about his father dying in the war (an unnecessary victim of Operation Cinder, we found out in the song "When the Tygers Broke Free"), his overbearing and traumatizing mother and how these influences on him shape his inability to have fully-functioning relationships with women, trust his local authorities and finally have a nervous breakdown - only to be cast aside with disdain by the world that sent him there. It's a tragic story, and one that would be sorely missed without the entire album.

The Dark Side of the Moon Immersion Box Set is a real beast. Disc 1 is the original album, digitally remastered this year. Disc 2 is the entirety of the album performed live. Disc 3, a DVD, contains a 5.1 surround version of the album from 2003 and the original Alan Parsons quad sound version, each with standard- or high-resolution options. Disc 4, a visual dvd, includes live performances, a documentary and some other press stuff. Disc 5 is a blu-ray of Disc 3 (the surround/quad disc) and Disc 4 (the live/visual stuff), and Disc 6 is an early stereo mix of Dark Side by Alan Parsons along with some bonus/live/alternate/etc tracks. The set also comes with two booklets, an art print, a replica tour ticket, replica backstage pass (so you can your friends can play "I'm Meeting Pink Floyd" in your basement), a scarf, collectors' cards...and nine coasters and three marbles, because hey, fuck it, why not? (Thanks for the item description, Amazon!) So it's $120 for seven mixes of the album, some live stuff and a bunch of ridiculous crap. It actually sounds pretty awesome; it's what I'll end up using to get my kids into Pink Floyd when they're old enough. A similar package for Wish You Were Here was released this past Tuesday and next year, The Wall will follow suit.

Now, there are a lot of other avenues worth discussing in this topic.

1. How is one song on an album affected by its neighbors.

2. What tone does the artwork set for the album.

3. Is the outsourcing of physical album production (by bands to indie presses like TuneCore) as democratizing as it sounds.

4. Why is the job market doing the exact opposite.

And this is setting aside the issues of

1. Sound quality, which has been in decline for the last four musical formats (we piqued at vinyl, kids; even Beats headphones can't save crappy frequency cutoff points on mp3's).

2. What positive and negative effects the collapse of the music industry is having on bands.

3. What will be the next billion-dollar idea that introduces up-and-coming bands to the world.

and so on. But those are topics for another day and other people much smarter than myself. I'm just a kid who loves some Floyd and "the album experience."

Milagres - Glowing Mouth review.

Just prior to kicking off their fall 2011 East Coast tour, Milagres released their full-length LP Glowing Mouth this month. By the time the listener is two minutes into the first track, "Halfway," it's clear this is a band who knows how to write a song.

The title track "Glowing Mouth" is as laid back as it comes, evoking shades of darker Blur throughout its six-minute journey, along with a falsetto croon that would make Bono blush. Some earlier tracks, like "Here to Stay" and "Gentle Beast," would be comfortably at home on a Danger Mouse project or Adult Swim compilation. Throughout the vast majority of the album I found myself hearing an undeniable fun factor and earnest humility in the music and lyrics.

With big drums and tambourines and clean, echoing guitars - and swimming in reverb - it would be easy at first listen to label Milagres as a more energetic Sparklehorse, or The XX's older, cooler brother - they've earned comparisons to Grizzly Bear in the past as well - but anyone insisting Milagres is 'just that' would be committing a crime against a five-man act of beautiful spacepop and thoughtful 21st-century songwriting.

Glowing Mouth is available now on Kill Rock Stars directly from their site as a CD, vinyl and digital download, or from iTunes. Punch that shit!

5a7 review.

Matthew Thomas (alias 5a7 - five alpha seven) is a fellow Valdosta State University alumnus and a graphic designer and visual artist. He set up a shop on zazzle.com - which, as far as I can tell, is like a print-on-demand version of Etsy - and I bought one of his t-shirts this month.

The interesting thing is, you can customize the shirts how you see fit - I could've added an image to be printed onto the original design, or text. Different brands of actual shirts with the same design on them differ in price according to what you want. In fact, another product - a pair of low-top Keds with the same basic logo printed overall on it - goes so far as to allow the customer to choose the color of the base, the sole, the eyelets, the shoelaces, etc. But I stuck with Matthew's original design on a normal American Apparel shirt.

It arrived in a timely fashion. Zazzle under-promises and over-delivers, leading to positive mental feedback. The shirt material was sturdy but comfortable, and the design wasn't a cheap silkscreen by any means. It's tagless, which I love, and fits perfectly. Not only did Matthew's masterful graphic design shine through on this zombie-slaying "battle tee" (his words), but the quality of the print is really up to snuff.

The 5a7 store features a wide variety of goodies all based on the same motif: Zombie Suppression - 147th Task Force, with a skull and crossbones logo - but the crossbones have been replaced by assault rifles and a large blood spatter adorns the top left corner of the logo. There are t-shirts, hoodies, shoes, fridge magnets, buttons, bumper stickers and more. The design and quality are about as good as it gets; I highly recommend stopping by for a visit at zazzle.com/5a7design.

Zuckonit - FaceBook's Ten Deadly Sins.

I was never as interested in FaceBook as I could've been until I saw The Social Network, which was amazing. I hate that some people didn't go see it because it was "a movie about FaceBook" and must therefore be as intellectually stimulating as John Tucker Must Die or I Love You Beth Cooper. Instead it was a mature story of greed, betrayal, friendship and business. Since then, I've held a strong respect for FaceBook, Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin.


So I love FaceBook. I love what it took for it to be made - all the insanity, the backstabbing, the three-day stretches in front of computers without sleep and the verbal contracts. God bless 'em. Having said that, besides nearly taking the place of casual e-mail and reuniting me with some favorite long-lost buddies, FaceBook is not without its unfortunate by-products.

What killed the Yahoo! chatrooms for me was the gradual and overwhelming rise of sexbots. In high school I'd get in a room to see if anyone wanted to talk about music and get barraged with "hi im a lonely 18yo in your area wanna cyber?" Of course the same thing happened to Yahoo! Messenger. MySpace soon followed suit, with fake profiles hosting spyware. FaceBook hasn't been completely aped yet, but the real viruses are spreading amongst its users, not malware.

1) Life: You're Doing it Wrong. I find myself fighting the urge to block my profile from old college buddies as I'm told more and more often, through their reposting of various links to opinion articles, how much of an awful person I am. In the last six months alone, no fewer than three of my friends have indirectly told me what a terrible mother my wife is because we had to switch to formula, and because we believe that the baby should sleep in a crib in her own room instead of in our bed with us...and that no father in America is a stay-at-home dad, nor do they spend time with their children.

This last one raises my point. A close family friend and excellent mother posted an article the day before Father's Day called "A Father's Day Wish: Dads, Wake the Hell Up!" which detailed, for no fewer than 1,500 words, the columnist's experience being the only father he knew who did more with his kids than the occasional ride to school. As a stay-at-home father who is frequently insulted for "making my wife work" and "doing nothing at home all day," since evidently raising a baby requires no effort, patience or time, I found "Wake the Hell Up" hard to ignore.

2) Hashtagging and Using Unfamiliar Acronyms. It used to be people could express their short opinions on FaceBook without rerouting them through Twitter and categorizing them with the pound sign at the end. My friend Jasen is worse than anyone about this. "Wow, nice fumble, Favre. #NFL #footballfail #superbowl" I don't know if hashtagging is like that fitness program where you earn points by walking and work towards rewards, or if it's just to make certain popular topics "trend" on Twitter, but I wish it could be kept off my news feed.

The other one in the same category is this regression in internet acronyms. I was sad that L died out for "Laugh," and that only "LOL" remained for "Laugh Out Loud," because now I worry my friends are really laughing that much. Greg Giraldo (rip) had a bit where he was making fun of Tweets and how insane people are if they're really laughing out loud that much. "It's like, 'in line at the supermarket HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!' What the fuck?!"

While we're talking about LOL, let's talk about LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!! What in the hell happened here? I'm assuming the idea is to replicate laughing, like when people say "hahahahaha" and actually intend that they're saying "ha ha ha ha ha," with individual "ha"s, but if LOL is supposed to mean "laugh out loud," the only thing LOLOLOL means is "laugh out loud out loud out loud" or "laugh out laugh out laugh out loud," which sounds more like a sample in a drum and bass song than anything else. It's like "LMFAO," which meant "Laugh My Fucking Ass Off," devolving into "LMFAOOOOOOOO" which I can only assume means "Laugh My Fucking Ass Off Off Off Off Off..." Nor do I understand all these new acronyms that are popping up. It took me forever to realize that "TBH" meant "To Be Honest," and I was sad that /facepalm replaced BHIH (or "Buries Head in Hands"), but what can you do? I just gave up when I started seeing SMH and SMDH. I have no clue what they mean, and I hope I never do. Also WTAF.

3) Farm/Fish/Cafe/Mafiaville. Holy shit do I wish I'd invented Farmville. Games with no ending, with the exception of classics like Asteroids, remind me of soap operas. In the Farm/Fish/Cafe worlds, you just keep leveling up your little virtual zen garden of middle-class wage earning, and it just keeps going. I'm very glad that my family members' notifications have stopped showing up on my FaceBook, and in turn I've synced my account to my PlayStation Network account so I can return the favor and spam my friends and family with the fact that I just Platinumed Heavy Rain.

4) Dartboard Photo Tagging. I started to notice a year or two ago that people were downloading pictures on the internet of little 4x5 sets of text blocks. They'd say things like "Nerdy" and "Cute" and "Ambitious" and "Crazy" and the person would upload them to his/her profile and then tag 20 people, one per block, as they felt applicable. So I'd log into my account and see "____ ______ tagged you in a photo!" and I'd click the link and have to hover my mouse over 15 tags before finding out that one of my cousins thinks I'm smart. Then I'd get notified every time one of these 20 people commented on the photo, which (to return to an Office reference) is like being Wuphf'ed. Every 30 seconds I'd get a hit on my notifications that some teen I didn't know had commented on a photo I was in, and continually see a barrage of "LOL" and "WTF, you're so crazy! LOL!"

5) Fishbait Drama Club. You know this one. "God. Fuck My Life. I swear, I just can't take it anymore, that stupid people have to talk shit." Then there is at least one comment. "Oh, sweetie, what's wrong? Don't worry about the drama; you're amazing and you know it!" Yeah. I don't understand the circumlocution of making a vague distressed statement just so one's friends will ask one what's wrong, then you say what. I'd like it if my friends - mostly younger friends - would just update with, "Work sucks today; catching lots of attitude from co-workers" or something as direct instead of saying "Screw this," so some poor bastard has to ask what happened, then get in a whole big hullabaloo of feigned sympathy for someone because they stubbed their toe. It's the social networking equivalent of Marilyn Manson posting videos on his website promoting Eat Me Drink Me of people blaming him for Columbine around the release of Holy Wood, or Lady Gaga performing in a wheelchair. If you need attention so badly, just say so.

6) The Fake One. Every list of things I've ever read akin to this article has to have at least one bullshit fake thing I've never heard of. So this is that one thing - and originally, this was "The Seven Evils of FaceBook," but I thought of two more, so don't think I've run out of points. Man, screw that thing. Screw that one thing that's so ridiculous it makes me mad. Since this is fake, I'd like to direct it at my Best Man, Frodo, since he never does anything irritating on FaceBook.

7) Idiotic Likes/Reposts. I could've split this into two, but I'm going to keep them as one so I can make up some length I squandered on #2. When I see a "Repost this if you or someone you know has suffered from cancer/rape/abuse/poverty/deportation/etc, because 97% of people won't repost this and if you believe that cancer/rape/abuse/poverty/deportation/etc is terrible, you'll repost this." It reminds me of Andrew Dice Clay's thoughts about the red ribbon for AIDS. "Wearing the red ribbon for AIDS don't help nobody except the guy who owns the red ribbon factory." This applies the same for "Repost this if you're a true Christian" or "if you've never beaten your spouse" or whatever. The little parodies of it, like "Repost if you know someone who's ever been eaten by dragons," were cute the first month but now chap my caboose as much as the originals.

Neighboring this are all the terrible pages that people "Like." My list of likes on FaceBook is about 6 things long, and are devoted to people I really think need/deserve my free advertising: 12 Rounds (band, not movie), Eli's Dirty Jokes, Jhonen Vasquez, E.G. Gauger, Milagres, ACT, Defective Geeks, The Ocean Collective and jonny Lupsha (my writing page, not me). I own about 3,000 albums and 100 blu-rays (and 300 dvd's), but are people really not going to be aware of The Dark Knight without my support?

Anyway, nobody needs to be as restrictive as I do, because if you really aim to voice your support for the music, movies, tv, books you love (and the people who make them), God bless. What I don't get is when I log in and see "___ _____ likes 'That Moment When You See Someone and Go 'Uhhhh...' LOL!'" or "___ _____ likes ''Why Are You Staring At Me?' 'Because ur ugly LOL'' and 314 other pages." I imagine these people's news feeds are just incessant tickers of bullshit from their random pages. This is the real reason kids are social networking 6 hours a day; they're just trying to get caught up and sort through their own mess.

8) Checking In with Foursquare. Even if my wife had Foursquare, I'd make fun of her about it. Loudly. My friend Patrick works in Tysons Corner, so it's fun that he checks in at La Sandia and Gordon Biersch and I get to tell him how much I hate him since they're 130 miles from here. Failing that, I see no reason on Earth for Foursquare. No matter how much I love you, I don't care that you just got to Friendly's, or are grocery shopping at Wal-Mart, and I can only assume it's leading to a hike in local burglaries. "Oh, Kayla's at the movies seeing the 2.5-hour Harry Potter finale? Time to steal that XBox."

9) Ambiguously Song Lyrics. I regularly find myself halfway through a status update that is otherwise terrifying, only to realize it's some kind of song quote. "I killed my mother with a gun." Sweet Jesus! "...Now me and my Smith and Wesson are on the run." ...Oh. Please stop scaring me. Just put 'em in quotes.

10) The Open Letter to Random People or Organizations. Ah, the kicker. I have to end with this because it's the worst - and most frequently recurring - of all my FaceBook Pet Peeves. Nothing drives me up a wall more than "Dear Guy in Line in Front of Me at Wal-Mart: Please get off your cell phone. kthxbi." There are so many things wrong with that status update, I don't know where to start. From top to bottom: a) The Guy in Line in Front of You at Wal-Mart is not your friend on FaceBook, so he'll never read your little rant-and-rave column Tweet-length horse puckey. b) Just start a page with that status update and have people "like" it since you obviously learned the "Dear Random Person" trick from someone. c) You're updating (via FB for Android or FB for iPhone) for someone to get off his/her phone? Really? d) If you had the brass to ask the guy to get off his phone in real life (or IRL if you prefer the acronyms), you may end up on ABC's What Would You Do? and get some of that attention you're looking for. But you don't. e) Nothing says "I think I'm better than you" than "kthxbi," which - for those lucky enough not to have heard it - loosely translates to "Ok, thanks, buh-bye." Sadly, if one's main form of stress ventilation is rooted in mobile FaceBooking, which is essentially the new version of pushing a pen real hard in a diary (Composition Book wuuut? LOLOLOLOL), one mustn't believe in his/her own superiority.

Of course there are a lot of variations. "Dear Republicans - You're insane." "Dear life - please stop sucking." My wife and I laughed halfway to buying our Harry Potter tickets tonight (seeing HP & The Deathly Hallows pt. 2 at Regal Cinemas 20, Commonwealth Center Pkwy Midlothian VA with 239 others) when we were talking about the angsty anonymous letter and she came up with "Dear Upstairs Neighbors - You don't need to stomp around on the floor so hard at 3 a.m.."

If Mark Zuckerberg can find a way to stop these 10 (well, 9) flies from getting in my ointment, I'd probably vote for him for #president. Of course he'd have to supplement my friends list to compensate for my buds who will be offended by this and defriend me immediately, but I have faith in the guy - he invented FaceBook, for Christ's sake.

Spoiler Alert.

This longform thought contains plot details that could dampen your experience with The Sixth Sense, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. If you haven't seen any of those (or read the latter two books), stop here.

My first encounter with "spoilers" - or details that could ruin someone's enjoyment of a book, film, video game and so on - was in 2002. I'd read on a film website that The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers would open with Gandalf the Grey fighting the Balrog he encountered in the mines in Fellowship of the Ring. Excited, I started my next shift at Starbucks and told my shift manager about it.

And he looked at me like he wanted to punch me in the face.

It turns out he was the type to run out of the movie theater when a preview for a movie he wanted to see came on. He told me never to talk to him again about movies.

Later that year, my friend Walt told me he never saw Fight Club because someone had ruined the ending for him. This astonished me. It's not as though someone had told him "Oh, in the end of (insert romantic comedy here), the guy gets the girl and they live happily ever after." It was a real shocker. Fight Club, Fincher's finale of hat-trick 1990's surprise-ending movies, had one of the craziest climaxes of any film I'd seen up until that point. His previous dark mysteries, The Game and Seven, were just as jaw-dropping when their end credits rolled, and at the top of a short list of movies I wish I could see again for the first time - along with The Usual Suspects and The Prestige, Christopher Nolan's 1900s-based suspense drama about rivaling magicians.

I remember in 2005 going with an ex-girlfriend to the midnight release of the sixth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Information had leaked the day before that a main character would be killed in the book. Further, what page the murder would appear. Even further, this information had been broadcast across major news networks the entire day. So we get to the bookstore hours early and I'm with a girl in her mid-20s and we're surrounded by teenagers dressed as residents of Gryffindor and Slytherin, a head shorter than us. Midnight rolls around and everyone gets their copies of the book. Half the readers, ex included, sit down on the floor to start reading, while I look around pretending to admire the front window setups in various stores in the mall. Then I notice that out of the camped bookworms, many of them - again, ex included - have decided to turn to the page where _______ is killed by _______ and just read that page repeatedly...which seemed strange.

There was an episode of The Office in which Steve Carell referenced The Sixth Sense, and Dwight (Rainn Wilson) nods knowingly and says "I see dead people," one of the most recognizable movie quotes of the 1990s. As soon as he says it, Steve Carell scoffs and says "Thanks spoiler alert!" and tries to divert the cameraman's attention away from Dwight, who then blurts out "He was dead the whole time!" What makes it funny is that probably everyone watching The Office has seen The Sixth Sense, especially considering it came out 10 years before the episode in question.

With next July's release of the third Christopher Nolan / Christian Bale Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, the anticipation has reached a fever pitch. I thought long and hard about what to look at and avoid and came to the decision that the details and media released on purpose will suit me just fine, so I've already downloaded the teaser poster (which is amazing) and looked at the picture of Tom Hardy as Bane that was released a month or two ago. When we go see the last Harry Potter movie this weekend, I won't run out of the theater when the teaser comes on. However, I'm avoiding the frequent headlines on movie sites like "How Badly Will Bane Hurt Batman? Info Leak!" I shouldn't have watched the fan-filmed youtube clip of one take being filmed of one shot outside a building with Christian Bale and another actor.

Ok, that's enough. Now for The Seven Evils of FaceBook.

jonny Lupsha Cookbook Entry Four - Orange Ninja Teriyaki Pork Roast.

I hate to get too fancy for some of you men out there, but this recipe requires a crock pot.

Foods:

for marinade

15 oz. teriyaki sauce

12 oz. ginger ale

10 oz. soy sauce

8 tsp. orange marmalade

1.25 cups white wine or sake

2 tsp. wasabi

for pork

~ 3 lbs. pork tenderloin, trimmed

4 tsp. wasabi

for rice

2 cups long grain white rice

1 tsp. ground mustard

Pour all liquids into crock pot for marinade, add marmalade and wasabi and stir until liquified. Filet, rinse and trim pork into two long tenderloins, rub with wasabi and put into marinade. Cook on low for about 3 and a half to four hours - flip pork over at halfway point.

About 45 minutes from the end, get that rice going. Pour 4 cups water into medium pot, add mustard, add rice, heat on medium. When the water starts to boil, turn to lowest setting and cover for about 30 to 35 minutes. You'll know the rice is done when you can spoon up some from the bottom and there's no more water and the rice is starting to stick to the bottom.

When pork is done, remove from crock pot, shred, ladle sauce over and serve in bowls over rice or on plates next to it. For color, add some parsley or broccoli to the side. Easily serves 4 with sauce and rice leftovers.

Note: If you don't have a crock pot, you can probably slow cook the pork in the oven at something like 250 for an hour or two, or let the pork marinate in tupperware with the sauce overnight then grill it, but I've never tried that so make sure you play around with it before breaking it out in front of company.