57th Street

During another agonizingly monotonous Thanksgiving dinner I asked my grandfather, a geneticist and professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, about the recent Stem Cell breakthrough. The story is that a couple of scientists at the University of Wisconsin and Kyoto University have found a way to turn regular cells in mice into a stem cell equivalent. Stories have spanned major media outlets in the last week or so on this. In perfect character, my grandfather skipped all the exciting and beneficial aspects of the new discovery and went straight to the problem, fortunately for him it’s a rather big problem. He went over to his study and came back with a manila folder. Inside the folder was a collection of stories in different publications. He pointed to a few of the articles about the finding which mentioned ever so briefly that “the new method includes potentially risky steps, like introducing a cancer gene,” according to one article in The New York Times. Some other articles didn’t even mention this rather large caveat. The discovery is being spun as a complete era-changing breakthrough. I doubt everyone would receive this stem cell news so warmly if the headline read “New Stem Cell Breakthrough May Also Cause Cancer.”

Of interest to that curmudgeonly old guy who lives alone and scowls at all the kids who walk by but loves his community newspaper:

Come Sunday, the Daily Southtown and Star Newspapers will be no more. For those who don’t know (which is almost everyone), these are two small, excellent, Chicago newspapers. The Daily Southtown is the more renowned of the two. It has a reputation for strong reporting, clever columnists, and general activism in the kind of public service role newspapers are meant to have. It’s won a number of major awards, such as Newspaper of the Year by a suburban newspaper judging committee, the George Polk Award, and the Studs Terkel Award. Pulitzer Prize winners have worked there.
The Southtown also keeps an bureau at Chicago’s city hall. Perhaps if the newspaper industry was in a better state, the Southtown could and definitely would surpass the Sun-Times and rival the Chicago Tribune.
The Star is a different kind of beast. It’s a twice a week paper tending to a number of suburban middle class and blue collar regions of the Chicagoland area. Like the Southtown, the Star carries excellent journalists, and awards, who are familiar with the area -most have lived in Chicago or Illinois their entire lives. The Star’s greatest success as a newspaper is its clear contribution to uniting the outlying suburban communities into one larger one.
Both the Southtown and the Star are historic newspapers that have seen major events in Chicago of the twentieth century. To save money, the two papers will unite into one this Sunday to be named the SouthtownStar. The reasoning is money and nothing else. The name change is to keep aspects of both brands alive and therefore avoid detracting complete change with people familiar with either newspaper. Part of its merging also means newsroom job cuts on both sides, a not so unusual event in the newspaper business these days.
Budget constraints are the worst part, no question about it. To a much lesser extent so is the death of both papers. So now two papers must die but did they have to merge? Could the Southtown have not kept its more prominent name and simply “acquired” -as it’s called in the business- its sister paper? That might at least keep an appearance of strength. This is all secondary in importance to the real problem behind the merger though. The papers’ parent company, the Sun-Times Media Group, would definitely rather just cut as many costs in its minor papers than keep entities that are going through tough times but clearly uphold the honorable jobs that newspapers were always meant for. Well, for the moment at least, it’s good that some kind of south suburban community newspaper is around. The longer it lasts, the better.

Of interest to the electronica/noise-lover and retro video game fanatic:

Suburban parents everywhere fear that their precious pipsqueaks’ corruption by video games will lead them to discover the bullets aisle at the local Wal-Mart. Crystal Castles, whose members are known only as Ethin and Alice, is the 8-bit sound track to their love affair with violence and technology. In songs with titles such as “Crimewave”, this duo matches innocently bloopy electronic loops with eerie, often nonsensical lyrics.

In “Alice Practice,” so named because it was recorded accidentally while lead singer Alice was practicing, their professed influences such as murder and knives are a bit more evident. Rough ripples and harsh, not-quite-screaming vocals add a layer of distress.

The track “xxzxczx me” (pronounced “Excuse Me”), while not my favorite track, is in my opinion their best. Its pace is faster than their usual dreamy adventures, reminiscent of a slightly coked-up version of the last level on your old favorite game, or the time the strobe lights and booze lowered your seizure threshold a little too far during that rave at the anime convention.

The sound flips to the other end of the spectrum on “Magic Spells”, an empty lullaby. Lack of direction or content makes this lazy near-melody one repetitive, though not otherwise offensive, never-ending loop. Magic Spells is certainly a weak point for Crystal Castles, showcasing one of their biggest flaws: their lack of structure and movement. They create wonderful, hypnotizing beats and add adorably bizarre flourishes to a foundation of dark yet gentle noise, but their foundation isn’t very firm. They need content. Drive. Their songs need a thesis, a raison d’etre. The tradition of hiding their faces in official photos mirrors the facelessness of their music. It’s a delightful distraction that’s at it’s best in their skillful remixes, in which their 8-bit tweaks transform the originals into entirely new characters. Perhaps Crystal Castles can be best thought of as skillful future producers. That would certainly be an interesting role for them. But for the time being, they are an interesting sound that’s different enough to justify its existence, even if it is still in its amateur stages.

Downloads (from Pitchfork Media):
Goodbooks – Leni (Crystal Castles Remix)
Crystal Castles – Air War
Crystal Castles vs. The Little Ones – Lovers Who Uncover
Crystal Castles – xxzxczx me
DJ Howlemonkey: “Crystal Castles Omnibus Mix”

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/crystalcastles

Of interest to the Wes Anderson fanatic:

Wes Anderson is all about consistency. His movies are always masterfully filmed, draped in cheerful scenery and bright props, heavy on the sarcasm, and partially about death. His latest film, The Darjeeling Limited doesn’t miss any of these elements. And it goes further. There’s a glorious montage epitomizing Anderson’s skill as a director on the train where the camera compartmentalizes minor characters in locomotive cars. The film also allows for major visible character development, a rare trait among his movies. A major theme of the film is growth, which Anderson may have experienced since his last work.
It starts out…well, actually it starts out with a welcome cameo of Bill Murray chasing a train. Murray misses the train but a lankier and faster Adrian Brody catches it and reunites with his two brothers who haven’t spoken in years. The eldest is Francis Whitman (Owen Wilson) who’s head is bandaged like those old leather football player helmets. Francis has organized a “spiritual” journey through India. He’s organized it so well that every morning each brother receives a laminated itinerary detailing what at each minute the brothers will be doing. Francis has commissioned an assistant to shadow the brothers and plan the next day’s events. It’s clear early on that Francis feels a sense of responsibility to care for his younger brothers, who are both grown. Peter (Adrian Brody), the middle child, of course must rebel against authority, while the youngest Jack (Jason Schwartzman) tries to stay out of the quarreling brothers way. Jack’s efforts prove fruitless as at one point he has to mace his siblings with a gigantic can he bought at a break-stop early on. There’s a lot of pent up emotion among the three brothers, in addition to the jarring recent death of their father. The two oldest brothers are coping with their father’s death in different ways. Francis it turns out, is micromanaging in the same way that his mother and probably his father did. Peter has begun wearing his father’s glasses and shaving with his razor, and probably more. Jack may have taken on another symbolic trait but none is clearly revealed. His character is somewhat underdeveloped, ironically because he helped write the script along with Anderson. We know that Jack is at the very end of a disastrous relationship (with the ever annoyingly googlie eyed Natalie Portman) and is a writer whose stories are obviously just recounts of actual events. “The characters are all fictional,” he presses, pathetically. Even Jack knows that Jack’s writing is about Jack.
For the planned India trip, mostly bickering occurs between Francis and Peter as Francis struggles to keep to his unbearably strict schedule in the darkly humorous world of Anderson. Life’s curve balls triumph in the end and the adventure really kicks into gear. As the Whitman brother’s train goes further and further off the track (by then, the train they were actually riding on abandons the trio) we learn more about each sibling. It turns out Peter is going to be a father and has no idea what to do, Jack is really continuing his relationship of meaningless sex with Portman’s character while trying to find love elsewhere, and Francis was more torn up -literally- about his father’s death than it seemed. Perhaps the coming together of the three brothers combined with the various potholes in the road pushes them to come to terms with mortality and each other’s unique problems. Whatever it is, by the end of the movie they mature and realize adulthood has finally arrived, and been there for some time.
You can’t live life in chaos though so after confronting what each brother had worked hard to suppress they regain a semblance of control. Francis grew the most, even though he’s the oldest, and the maturing shows in his contributions in the world. Thanks to his change, the trip is a bit more comfortable. It’s a welcome advance, a lot like the progression of maturity in Anderson’s movies, maybe he did some growing also. Maybe.
He meant for the characters to be fictional.