The Automatik

From NOLA Against Crime.com—

Death Rattle © Allison Harvard

June 3, 2007: “The New Orleans Police Department was investigating two murders Sunday.”

June 4, 2007: “Police said a man was shot to death by his wife Monday evening in the Central City neighborhood, the fourth slaying in New Orleans in three days and the second Monday, police said.”

June 5, 2007: “A man was shot to death Tuesday night in the Central City neighborhood, New Orleans police said.”

June 9, 2007: “New Orleans police were investigating two shooting deaths Saturday night, one in the 7th Ward and one in the 8th Ward.”

June 11, 2007: “A local man and neighbor, Robin Malta, was found dead in his home Monday afternoon. NOPD are presently treating this as a homicide while they continue their investigation. New Orleans police were looking into the shooting death of a 19-year-old male Monday.”

June 17, 2007: “Two people were fatally shot Sunday evening in separate incidents, one just blocks from the scene of a quintuple killing a year before, and one on Esplanade Avenue in the 7th Ward, New Orleans police said. Another was found dead with gunshot wound to head in lower 9th Ward Sunday morning at 4am.”

June 22, 2007: “A 22-year-old man was fatally shot early this morning in eastern New Orleans, police said.”

Read more

Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses at Night” was a huge hit when I was a teenager, peaking at number seven on Billboard’s Top Ten chart in 1984.

The song is utter crap. Inexplicably, I adore it and have for over twenty years.

It’s got a spooky keyboard groove and dark guitar noodling, both elements that are completely typical of the time period. The lyrics are ridiculous: I wear my sunglasses at night/So I can, so I can/Watch you weave then breathe your story lines. Yeah, I have no idea what that means, either.

The video is equally wretched and baffling. Let’s watch, shall we?
Read more

I read Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust a few years ago after finding J.G. Ballard’s description of it intriguing. In A User’s Guide to the Millennium, Ballard called the novel a “nightmare vision” of Hollywood, and after reading it myself, I found his analysis to be an accurate one.
Read more

Everyone knows about Beverly Hills Cop, Top Gun, and Ghostbusters. But what of all the other great movies released during that decade? Here are eight movies that I consider mandatory viewing. (Besides, I never liked Top Gun anyway.)
Read more

Any discussion of 80s music will undoubtedly include names like Madonna, Duran Duran, Michael Jackson, Prince, U2, Public Enemy, and Guns ‘n’ Roses, as well as one hit wonders and less mainstream bands; the decade was, after all, the genesis of “alternative music.” One band not frequently mentioned, however, is the Cocteau Twins, probably because they don’t sound stereotypically 80s. Although the 80s were the decade of the music video and the Cocteau Twins did make them, they were never a true “video band.” Nor were videos even necessary to appreciate their music; it is impossible not to be inundated with fantastical mental images when listening to them. The incredible album art, designed by 23 Envelope, certainly helped in that capacity. Read more

I feel like I should say something about the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, but what can I say that hasn’t already been said, thought, or felt by everyone who has suffered or been damaged by it in some way?
Read more

Before my trip to New Orleans earlier this month, I was nervous and anxious. I was scared to see the real-life version of the destruction that I had only previously viewed in photographic and video form. The closest analogy to what it felt like to finally witness the devastation of the city from the failed levee floodwalls is the feeling I got the first time I boarded a plane and I exclaimed, “It looks just like it does in the movies!” Read more

Yesterday, I returned to Canada from New Orleans. I had gone to New Orleans for my grandmother’s (aka Maw Maw) funeral. I had not been back to the area since June of 2005, two months before Hurricane Katrina struck. I knew that as difficult as it was going to be to bury my Maw Maw that I had to also visit my old neighbourhood of Lakeview to see what had changed in the eight months since the hurricane.

Read more

How easy things would be if we could all exist within the insular worlds of our fandoms, where everything is puppies and chocolate and we are gleefully oblivious to anything but gushing admiration for our dearly beloved.

Unfortunately, “media” outlets like Pitchfork do tend to pierce through these blissful bubbles, and I can’t help but think their name choice is more than coincidental. Yes, yes, I’m well aware that you can’t keep picking at the scab or it won’t heal, but I never said I wasn’t a masochist.
Read more

Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of music from the 80s and, as I am wont to do, reflecting upon my formative years in that decade. I’ve also been thinking about a current trend that has reached back in time to transform those years.

It’s about access to pop culture.

I frequently marvel at the ability that people have now for accessing pop culture in a way that I never did in the 80s and even the early 90s, before the complete takeover of Internet life.
Read more