Why Fiona Apple's "The Idler Wheel..." was the Best Thing in 2012 and Other Stuff that Doesn't Suck

1. The Idler Wheel is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do - Fiona Apple

In an age where every statement is clouded with layers upon layers of irony and meta-text, where the very notion of social media masks every action with pretense, forcing even the most bland of us into a life of performance art, the existence of Fiona Apple comforts me. In her, we have an artist who disappeared from the public eye for almost a decade and returned with a record so earnest and revealing that it forces us to remember what real emotions feel like. My Fiona Apple fandom is well-documented, so perhaps I'm exaggerating or gushing or whatever you want to call it. Still, the jittery, stripped down music presented to us on The Idler Wheel... coincides perfectly with the persona on the stage, and I can 't help but believe (maybe I need to believe) that in Apple is not only a genuine artist but a genuine person as well.

Every Single Night, Left Alone, Werewolf


2. The Master - Paul Thomas Anderson

Pretty much everything that can be said about PTA's The Master comes out in the film's first "processing" scene. As a movie that deals with Scientology through obfuscation, The Master seems almost elusive in its aim, a cult in and of itself. Yet in that first "processing" scene, we see a disheveled, alcoholic veteran in Joaquin Phoenix's Freddie Quell find something in Lancaster Dodd's (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) "Cause" that seems to speak to the inner turmoil within hi,. Freddie is erratic, prone to outbursts, and highly susceptible to suggest--the perfect candidate for a disciple--and the procession of  Dodd's "processing" technique and the repetition of simple questions ("What's your name?") into more probing questions about Quell's "past failures" leads the two into an emotional crescendo before dissipating into the lull of post-baptism. The films builds in much the same manner and washes out into the silence and emptiness of a cult's many promises.

Theatrical Trailer

Note: The next two entries actually do suck, but I want to right about them anyway. So here we go...

To Fish

sean enfield is an asshole

who has taught three people

how to fish. one of them died

two years ago of starvation

while the other two live

impoverished in the slums

of houston waiting for fish

to hook themselves on the end

of one of their lines so that they

Mark Twain and a Kitten: An Ode

When this image was first brought to my attention, it seemed me that metaphorical stars were metaphorically aligning, and my documentative instincts immediately led to a trance of reflection. It's a horrible way to live, but we make due, don't we?

Anyway, I couldn't help but feel as though Twain was reaching out to me from beyond the grave via the medium of another literature enthusiast's blog. “Some people scorn a cat and think it not essential; but the Clemens tribe are not of these.” We, Enfields, are with you, Sam--undoubtedly, we are with you.

I was in Junior High when a teacher first introduced me to Mr. Clemens, the same year a balding football coach, through a class dubbed "Health Class," introduced me to intricacies of my then-changing body. In fifth period, we read Huck Finn aloud, several timid white children tip-toeing around the word "nigger" as though it were poison ivy or a land mine or something of that sort whilst looking in my direction to make sure the ethnic half of me hadn't taken offense, and in sixth, we watched a fifteen minute illustrating both the birds and the bees in unwanted detail, which was I how I saw the first vagina I'd ever see, crowning head and all. I had already developed a self-consciousness about my weight and my plump, perpetually-dry lips and my clammy, perpetually-moist palms. I tried to hold hands with the girl who had asked for my help on the Huck Finn paper, but she was not a fan of the nervous sweat dripping from our shared grasp.

The Always Inevitable and Untimely Demise of the Bond Girl

For the first ten years of my life, I was convinced that my father was Sean Connery, though that was not the name by which I knew him. My real father (depending on what unit you use to measure authenticity) was present, affectionate even--offered encouraging words in times of emotional distress, watched basketball games with me, cheering when I cheered and shouting angrily when I shouted angrily, was concerned about my grades, about my future, about my general well-being--but he was tangible, thereby lacking the mystique of my real real father. I had his nose, his tendency to stand with arms hidden behind the back and to sit leaning backward, crossing legs, his gut, protruding but not too much so, his passive-aggressive manners, but that, to me, meant as much as it might mean to you if I were to tell you that that man, any man, strange in just how normal they seemed, was your father too. As a child who watched his VCR copy of The Lion King into oblivion, I expected a father to be the wise sage in the clouds, James Earl Jones, someone suave who could in one breath offer wisdom and in the next disappear. I grew up watching my mother swoon over Mr. Bond as well and so the two entities blurred in my mind. There was a brief period where her affections switched to Roger Moore’s incarnation of the character that confused me, but she found her way back to the true father and all was made well.

Brief Moments of Honesty from Otherwise Dishonest People

            Your band sucks. Even through cell phone speakers, barely audible in a crowded bar, she realizes this truth, but her mouth is bound by courtesy. Your band is fucking terrible. It’s all she can think, anticipating the moment when the timer on his iPhone playlist reaches 0:00. She no longer notices the smell of sweat, the distressing and dank atmosphere of her surroundings, the heat, the discomfort of the wooden stool beneath her. All other senses are overridden by the noise, the clamor of countless other conversations around her and the I-IV-V chord progression playing faintly underneath them. Is he bobbing his head to his own song? He can’t be …
            “What do you think”

            “What do I think?”

            “Of the song?”

            “I can’t really hear it.”

            “Do you like it?”

            “It’s good.”       

How Thoreau Might Have Behaved on ChatRoulette

Reading your own work as writer is like masturbating, though for him it was a little less messy, a little less fulfilling, a little more obvious. He wondered if this was how the greats might have felt, if there was some sort of singularity between the writing experiences of all writers. Then, he drifted through them, inhabiting their flesh, reading their words, metaphysical sticking his hands down their (and his) metaphysical pants and underpants.

It was all very odd, strange indeed.

I'd Like to Run A Food Truck

I'd like to run a food truck, though I cannot cook. My greatest culinary achievement to this date is an omelet that I managed to flip with only a slight crack in its structural integrity. It was a damn good omelet too. Still, I'd like to run a food truck. I'd like to drive through each and every major city, watch as the people there get fat off my delicious cuisine, smile and come back for more, then move on so that I can experience it all again. Now, I don't know what I'd serve, but I know the local papers would rave about it. I know the reviews on Yelp would be too flattering to even read. I know my truck would become a national sensation. Cities would desperately anticipate its arrival. The McRib. My truck would be the McRib of food trucks.

I'd like to have a family too. An average family--a wife, a daughter, a son, two dogs, a cat and three fish. We would try not to travel when the kids were in school. They would make friends. They would lead normal lives. They would have a home base. Then, come winter or summer break, they would set sail onto the metaphorical seven seas. They would see parts of America most kids only read about in Geography courses. They would be contributing members of the best damn food truck in the world. And I would be there father.

I'd like to ride horses into the sunset. I'd like to be the hero. Like in the movies. I call myself The Man with No Name; I snarl like Clint Eastwood. It's sad, yes, but in the funniest way possible.

I sing songs to myself. I pretend I'm on the stage. There are audiences everywhere I go. You are in the crowd ... and you and you and you and, yes, even you. I interview myself. Ask the most intuitive of questions and respond with the wittiest of retorts. There are people, imaginary people, who kill for my autographs. You can have one. At the moment, they are free.

I'd like to run a food truck. I'd like to drive into the sea.