Jack Attack Tuesday – 8/12/14

Robin Williams, Sound City, Fallout New Vegas and Chef

There’s no getting around it, this is a difficult blog for me this week.  On the one hand, the death of Robin Williams is a tragedy that I shouldn’t feel too badly about.  Willliams was, after all, someone I didn’t personally know, and there’s nothing worse than the cavalcade of sympathy that gets thrown a celebrity’s way once they experience a bit of bad luck.  Especially in our digital age, social media makes it seem as though our voice needs to be heard in order to be validated with everyone around us, and I too struggle with this problem from time to time.  I just want to make it known that I never met him, but through his career he made me feel like I did.

My first introduction to his work was when I was a young kid watching Aladdin.  Aladdin was my favorite Disney movie for a long time, in large part due to the Genie.  Genie was hilarious, full of life and created an energy that I absolutely loved when I was younger.  Like any good artist, Williams’ career spanned many genres of entertainment, including family films, dramas, stand-up comedy, sitcoms and even satire.  Whether it was his brilliant turn as Mr. Keating, his earnestness in Hook or his horribly underrated turn in The Fisher King, Williams was a mammoth of my world, a guy who simultaneously could make you crack up and break your heart in the same film.  My heart is broken today as I feel like a piece of my childhood ceased to be today.  I’ll always love the guy and his immense talent but I’m absolutely torn up that I will never see the man do anything else.  The news said his death was ruled a suicide, which is altogether shocking, sad and surreal.  I simply can’t believe it.  While Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death earlier this year was tragic, he was a guy I discovered in my adult life.  Williams was with me from the beginning, and I can never thank him enough for that.

Earlier in the week, I got an opportunity to check out Sound City, a documentary directed and spearheaded by Dave Grohl.  Sound City is exactly what I want out of a documentary: informative and interesting content, an entertaining presentation and a desire for more once the credits roll.  Basically, any documentary that starts with a story about Neil Young evading the cops and I’m fucking in.  I was surprised when, looking through the list of albums, a lot of my favorites were recorded on the famous Neve board.  After The Gold Rush, Nevermind, Rage Against The Machine and Damn the Torpedoes are all formative albums for me, so learning they were all recorded on the same equipment made sense to me.  While the documentary did a great job making me interested in the story of the studio as well as the artists who recorded there, but there was a severe downside to this doc, and that downside was:

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Fleetwood Mac forever.  I’m one of those guys who loved the original incarnation of the band, before the Nicks/Buckingham addition for Rumours.  Simply put, Rumours has some great tunes, none of which get played on the radio.  I can’t fucking stand Don’t Stop, Go Your Own Way, The Chain, Gold Dust Woman Dreams, or You Make Lovin’ Fun.  They’re overplayed and all about the same fucking thing, someone breaking up with someone in the band, or someone who’s about to break up with someone in the band, or someone who just started dating someone who just broke up with someone in the band.  The whole thing feels ridiculously incestual and seems like a ton of unnecessary baggage that I can’t keep out of my head when giving the album a listen.  I don’t know why, but all I can think about when I hear these tunes is A) Who is singing and B) Who are they singing about.  I don’t get that feeling with Springsteen, The Who or The Beatles, so I think I’m officially tapping out of these assholes, even if I do jam the fuck out to Second Hand News like it’s my fucking job.

I’m learning a lesson about PC gaming with my replay of Fallout New Vegas: it’s better than consoles.  It’s incredible what mods can do to enhance an already stellar experience.  Ever wanted to fight Thomas The Tank Engine inside Skyrim?  There’s a mod for that.  No good Spider Man games on the horizon?  There’s a GTA mod for that.  New Vegas was already a kickass game, but adding new weaponry and difficulty to the game adds a ton of replay value that I’m loving the hell out of.  If anyone can find me a mod that turns my character into Batman, let me know.

Finally, I saw what might end up being my favorite movie of the year in Jon Favreau’s Chef.  This movie was an absolute delight and taps into the same sensibilities that The Blues Brothers does for me.  Chef is, when you boil it down to the bones, a film about a father passing on something great to his son, and that struck a chord with me.  Favreau uses all his favors to put together a solid cast, using ScarJo, Tony Stark, RainMan and John Leguizamo (how this guy gets work is beyond me) to tell a simple, positive story about a guy trying to make his life better by being a truer version of himself and a better father.  It has been a long time since I’ve seen a film so filled with positive vibes, and it goes without saying the food in this flick is insanely good looking.  For all I know this guy could have been deep frying rubber tires but I’d fucking eat it.  Amazing movie that is currently vying for my favorite film of the year.

That’s it people.  I would bore you with my C++ learnings but at the end of the day, who the fuck cares.  Check back for some Strain commentary up in your earholes and maybe a special review before the end of the week, as well as our daily blogs.  Binge on!