Oxford American DVD Premiere at the 40 Watt

ATHENS SET FOR PREMIERE SCREENING OF "OXFORD AMERICAN DVD NO. 1"

The Oxford American magazine--"the Southern magazine of good writing"--is proud to announce the premiere of its first ever "Oxford American DVD No. 1" on Wednesday, May 2, 2007 at The 40 Watt Club in Athens, GA.

Inspired by the popularity of the magazine's Southern CD sampler, the first OA film collection is a "visual mix tape" featuring scenes from independent Southern films, avant-garde experiments, early cartoons, musical documentaries, historic footage, and bizarro celluloid fantasies. Special highlights include works by such directors as Craig Brewer (Black Snake Moan, Hustle & Flow), Ross McElwee (Sherman's March), Joey Lauren Adams (Come Early Morning), Ray McKinnon (the Academy Award-winning The Accountant), Phil Chambliss (backwoods Arkansas folk auteur), and Hollywood legend Roger Corman (The Intruder, The Wild Angels).

Come out to an Athens landmark to enjoy all things Southern. Watch an over-sexed Christina Ricci wrap herself in chains, William Shatner ham it up as a Dixie demagogue, the incomparable Peg Leg Sam dance a mean jig, and Beelzebub himself demonstrate an abiding interest in deer hunters. Oh, and don't miss the piney woods Bigfoot!

The Oxford American is the only magazine in the nation whose entire focus is Southern culture. It has been called The New Yorker of the South and was praised most recently by The New York Times as "perhaps the liveliest literary magazine in American." It is also the winner of the ASME National Magazine Award for the 1999 and 2003 Southern Music issues.

The Oxford American magazine is published by The Oxford American Literary Project. Through its quarterly magazine, the nonprofit aspires to study, explore, and elucidate Southern Culture via the best writing, music, photography, and art. The Literary Project itself is intended to promote the literary arts and encourage young minds to pursue literature and literary journalism through fellowships, educational programs, and other unique projects.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m., program starts at 8:00. Tickets are $5.00 and serve as tax-deductible donations to the nonprofit OXFORD AMERICAN LITERARY PROJECT.

Old-fashioned Funk and Soul start early. "Southern" dress is recommended.

Today's song is "I Won't Cry": Johnny Adams from New Orleans, introduced to me by the Guest Editor of this OA issue, the incomparable Derek Jenkins.

A Football Interlude

More New Oleans stuff is on the way. First, I wanted to post this excerpt from a documentary on one Florida high school football team. I like to think, broadly-speaking, Florida is different than the rest of the South. Whether or not that idea pertains to football, I'm not sure. Watch the video. Too much to comment on.



Turean Charles, the "star" of the film, signed with the University of Florida and was eventually dismissed from the team. From fanblogs.com:

On June 13 in 2004, Charles was charged with punching a student in the head, throwing him off a deck and then tossing a beer keg at him during an off-campus party. Other players were present. The victim suffered a concussion and a broken nose that required surgery and stitches.

Charles previously pleaded no contest to simple assault charges after an incident in a female student's dormitory room. He was suspended for one game and received a year's probation for that charge.

He has now graduated from Bethune-Cookman.

Bad News

The New York Times has a story today about the rise of infant mortality rates in the South. Read the article.

Oxford American & New Orleans

In honor of my slight article in the latest Oxford American magazine, I'm declaring it New Orleans Week or Two. Other excuses: Jazz Fest.



Scroll down the OA page three-quarters. My piece is about Spike Lee's film on Katrina. This issue really is outstanding.

Fats Domino's "Walking to New Orleans."

Punctuating Prom Night

I ducked out during the intermission on Tuesday night to check out The Explorers Club, opening up for Kings of Prussia at Caledonia Lounge. There was an intimate gaggle of listeners shuffling on the empty floor. "Welcome to band practice," lead singer Jason Brewer proclaimed. The sparse attendance really was a shame, if just because folks missed the late Byrds and Richie Tenebaum outfits. More than that, the sound was pure pop harmony straight out of the Beach Boys' confectionary. Hopefully, after they finish up at SXSW and opening for Apples in Stereo, the band'll stop back in Athens. Next time as the cool kids.

My Morning Jacket Prom Redux

My Morning Jacket's bringing prom back in a big way. At least that was the sense after they concluded their two night extravaganza at the 40 Watt in Athens, Georgia. Entitled "Oh What a Night Under the Sea," the affair was replete with trappings that both celebrated and sent up the adolescent rite of passage. For five bucks you and your sweetheart could have your photo taken on one side of the room, afterward mozying over to the other side for free cake. Under the mirror ball, paper streamers, and balloons, prom-goers were decked to the nines in traditional satin and outrageous marine accoutrements. Two guys in front of me stuck a sartorial balance as Steve Zissou and his dapper band--in tuxes with crimson flannels caps. They were rather staid in a dry aquarium of snorkels, goggles, shrimpers' boots, Spongebob costumes, and vestigial fins.

Sonically, the show was about longevity and amperage. A speaker was blown the first night, and my PBR tallboy was humming with reverb. The attraction of an MMJ show is the joy the band feels in its music. They clearly love their own catalogue, as well as just bonafide rock 'n' roll, and it becomes kinetic in the room. What they're doing on stage looks like it might be the only that feels better than sex. Music avalanches through the soundscape, orbited by tangential notes and stray sounds not the least of which is Jim James' paranormal wailing. Until half a dozen song deep when he welcomed us to Prom 2007, you couldn't be sure James even spoke English.

Both nights' sets consisted mainly of the Z album and the jam-friendly backsides of songs from It Still Moves. "Off the Record" crushed the building. Other highlights were dilated versions of "Mahgeetah," "One Big Holiday," "Wordless Chorus," and "What a Wonderful Man." Anouncing it was time for an "all skate," James slowed it down and surrendered the focus to Carl Broemel's mournful pedal steel. A Prom king and queen were picked out of a hat and invited on stage to dance as the band played Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight," skewing the lyrics toward transvestism. Noticing the "backdoor" theme of the gut-wrenching "Phone Went West," they guy next to me asserted that it was about tertiary sexual entryways.

(Mp3 on the other side)

The individual encores made the shows. The band returned to the stage Tuesday night with King Harvest's "Dancing in the Moonlight," roundly agreed upon as the best two and a half minutes of 2007. Rumors about MMJ's epic Bonnaroo shows circulated, and there was a growing sense in the crowd that they might play anything--launch into, say, a psyched-out Moody Blues cover at any moment--and play all night long. The second show's encore emphasized the classic subtheme of the engagement. Those silver plastic pompadours the band was wearing the previous night were evoked as James vaulted into a pitch-perfect cover of The Four Seasons' late hit "December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)." Following it was a blistering rendition of "Johnny B. Goode" the likes of which Chuck Berry hasn't touched in thirty years. The bumpious hipsters in the audience immediately drew the connecting line to Michael J. Fox's mythical prom, when in a bit of postmodern new historicism Marty McFly's cover becomes the source for Berry's genius. They may not have understood the second line, the one less about ludicrousness and fun and more about pure rock homage. To close Wednesday night's show, MMJ brought up the opening band and fellow denizens of Louisville, Follow the Train, and together they opened up Tommy James and the Shondells' "Crimson and Clover" wide enough to let their roaring guitars in.

Personally, I found the first act of the first night and the second of the second most satisfying. The first night, for one, had the novelty of spectacle built in. The encore of the second night, aka "The Revenge," speaks for itself. There were mitigating factors with the opening half of that show, like regularly being hit in the head with beach balls, balloons, and blow-up sex dolls in bikinis. Irrelative the night, you left with that hyper, emboldened feeling of a special kind of art. Miraculously, now you might just know kung fu. The world might be ready to yield. And music like this might be the only thing that matters.

From Z:

Ugh: Taxes

More My Morning Jacket reviews to come. Plus a song. Here's a picture of our surrogate, Al, shoveling chicken shit.

Yep, we're paying taxes on that.


P.S. Is this editorial/royal we-thing creeping anybody else out?

My Morning Jacket's Prom at the 40 Watt

From Paste:

For the first night of its March 6-7 “Prom” at Athens, Ga.’s 40 Watt Club, My Morning Jacket donned some new evening jackets—pastel-colored ones, with matching pants, ruffled shirts and, in keyboardist Bo Koster’s case, a top hat. Oh, and at least for the first few songs, silver plastic pompadour wigs. Opening with a note-perfect cover of The Dells’ 1956 doo-wop hit “Oh, What A Night”—basically the title track for the two-night stand, dubbed “Oh What A Night Under The Sea”—the Jacket performed a set heavy on tracks from their latest studio recording Z before a tightly packed room, most dressed in either prom kitsch (poofy-shouldered dresses, ’70s-style tux T-shirts) or nautical attire (two spot-on Captains sans Tennilles, one behind the bar).

Everything about the unusual show screamed “event,” from the boisterous, capacity weeknight crowd to the faces in it: Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers, Boston band Apollo Sunshine, which had just visited Paste’s offices earlier in the day, and R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, Peter Buck and touring member/Minus 5 frontman Scott McCaughey. (McCaughey explained that R.E.M. had convened in Athens to rehearse for the upcoming Rock Hall of Fame induction.)

At the encore, Jacket frontman Jim James crowned a prom king and queen and had them dance onstage to a deadpan reading of Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight,” with lyrics altered to sound more like a high school backseat fumble. Then the band uncorked King Harvest’s obscure (but spot-on) 1973 hit “Dancing In The Moonlight” before powering through three more originals and calling it a night just past 1:30 a.m.

If only our actual prom night had been this wonderful, we might actually have signed up for a Classmates.com account.

Thanks, Girls

Hope y'all had fun in Boston without me. Any quasi-boyfriend stories?

Because We Just Can't Get Enough James Dickey

Fast and loose and esoteric. Watch out! The language gets wonky halfway in. For calqued imago read distorted image. Calque comes from decalcomania--of course (HT Bernard DeVoto).

The Inverse Ecstasy of James Dickey and Deliverance

His intimates and apologists liked to talk about the real James Dickey–fortunate son of Buckhead, mollycoddled introvert, intuitive teacher, and sensitive genius. Most people, instead, witnessed the evil doppelganger Jimbo. A creature of carnal appetites disproportionate even to his 6'3" frame, he reveled in shock and scandal, in sauntering over to the dean’s wife and asserting his droit d’ ecrivian right to a quickie. As a character Jimbo had limited range, lettered redneck or great, countrified Id. For both sexes the latter was a harrowing encounter on the reading circuit, a drawling and crapulent incubus that, outside of groupie meets fish, could put Led Zeppelin to shame.

Jimbo’s supersized persona compensated for James’s self-consciousness and public discomfort. Dickey submerged what he felt were connotations of effeminacy inherent to being a poet by playing a calqued imago of his father, a modernized Rooney Lee, new and improved with co-eds and amphetamines. His bombast and manufactured egotism grew out of another professional insecurity as well. Being an unacknowledged legislator of the world was hardly reward for an American poet in the second half of the twentieth century. Shelley’s term “unacknowledged” didn’t sit well, especially in America, where success means fame. Through his boorish antics Dickey, in part, was trying to cement his spot on Mount Parnassus, albeit per the ignominious route of celebrity.

Naturally, he seized the opportunity to play the sheriff in Deliverance. Celluloid would transmit him to a popular market untouched by any contemporary poet. Robert Lowell wasn’t about to take Life Studies to Hollywood. Plus, Dickey could reprise his easy role of Jimbo, this time in law enforcement uniform. But there was a hiccup on that second point. The sheriff’s not Buford T. Pusser, just some dude with the biggest stick in the room. By his second and final scene, it’s evident that weltschmerz is an active agent in his psyche. Either he understands the complex and perverse nature of backwoods justice, or he’s just exhausted, an impotent satrap: tired of overseeing the civil erasure of Aintry, defeated by the unstoppable hand of Progress. “I’d kinda like to see this town die peaceful,” he tells the Atlantans. There will be utter quietude once his bailiwick rests at the bottom of the power company’s reservoir.

Dickey’s performance is credible, not because it’s good but because it’s true. On the one hand, the sheriff is staring down a possible homicide sans a corpse; on the other, with the damming of the river, he faces a situation that’s literally overwhelming. The sum of it leaves him presiding over the total affair with little more than shuffling and awkwardness. And awkwardness is exactly what Dickey as an actor brings to the table. He’s clearly not comfortable with the mechanics of filming, with knowing how much to modulate his voice, pause for effect, or “act.” You can see the stiffness in his shoulders and back and Jon Voight waiting patiently for him to finish his heavy-breathing at the riverside. More than that, by playing a character the very opposite of Jimbo, Dickey is thrown from his chosen macho persona and returned to his private, diffident real self. It’s something like inverse ecstasy–an out-of-body, out-of-body experience for a bonafide headcase–from the retiring poet to the domineering faux hick and back to the native spirit again. When John Boorman comments that Dickey brings a certain veracity to the screen, it seems the director hits an unintended mark, one far more personal than he could have imagined. For that sense of fumbling and vulnerability embodied by the sheriff is precisely James Dickey’s.

Postscript: That's a good-looking jacket.

Fifty Foods To Try

We once had blood pudding in Manchester, England. Eh, not so good. We also grew up being fed banana and mayonnaise sandwiches from the old ladies in Chestnut Mountain. You'd be suprised.

NPR's fifty foods to eat before you die.

We were going to post a picture, but unfortunately it also included peanut butter under the hood. Praise be to serendipity! The blogger who owns the pic just happens to demonstrate that "a woman from Mississippi [can] meet and marry a German quadriplegic, move there without first knowing the language, leave behind all she's known and loved and be forced to live without Hellmann's mayonnaise, stores open on Sundays, southern accents, magnolias, and her beloved family and friends nearby." Dixie Peach, surprisingly not about Georgia.

Sixty Second Movie Review

Film: The Lookout.

The Good: Jeff "Come to Michigan" Daniels.

The Bad: When the hero of your movie has brain damage, inevitably he's going to bore the audience. There's only so much repetition we can take, especially when it comes to the dismal routine of waking, showering, and eating spaghetti. It'd be better, too, if there were a murder involved or if the hero were enigmatic--you know tattooed with mnemonic clues so he could work his way backwards--and not just some rich high school hockey star suffering the repercussions of a cocky teenage lifestyle.

The Ugly: The film would be umteen times more interesting if when Luvlee finds the guns in the car and begins to realize the sinister things her boyfriend's up to, he embraces her and shows his own confusion. As it is, Matthew Goode's character becomes just unrefined evil. And Bones? A mute Swede with a trenchcoat and a penchant for firing sawed-off shotguns? C'mon. The indubitably cool image of a black figure standing over the flat snow fields of Kansas is not reason enough for such an empty creation.

Our Take: Two snobby fingers down.