science of sleep

the science of sleep

We finally got around to seeing Michel Gondry's latest film, The

Science of Sleep, last night. The film is obviously visually stunning,

and has been called a "sunny tragedy" and "a pop-up book of a film" by

some reviewers whose names we forget, and both phrases fairly

accurately describe the film's darkly whimsical feel. Plus, Charlotte

Gainsbourg is adorable. One of my favorite aspects of Gondry's films

is the music, and while I still don't get his apparent obsession with

The Willowz, the Jean Michel Bernard score complements the film

beautifully in the same way Jon Brion's did in Eternal Sunshine of the

Spotless Mind. Here's the brief song that opens the film:

Jean Michel Bernard Generique Stephane mp3

YANP has the track that Gael Garcia Bernal sang in the film. Go see

the The Science of Sleep, and buy the soundtrack here

**************************

elsewhere:

Our boy Austin LaRoche is back with the second installment in his For

the Love of the Sound series, on this week's edition of These Pretzels

Are Making Me Thirsty. Click the read more link to read Austin's

column...

For the Love of the Sound - Part Two: Pretty Boy Pangle

By: Austin LaRoche

Column Note: I'm doing really bad with the whole "finish editing

during the weekend when there's about 2,000 football games on," so

instead of expecting a Monday column each week, just know the column

will be either posted Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, depending on how

long it takes to make it perfect. Alright, onto this week...

Because my buddy, Pangle, is going through a little bit of a rough

patch, I figured it was time to bust out another "For the Love of the

Sound" column for him. However, before we get started, there's a few

things you need to know about Pretty Boy Pangle...

1. He is my favorite person to make fun of in the world. He takes it

better than anyone I know, always laughs things off and enjoys picking

on himself like no one I've ever seen.

2. He once bragged he was Gerber baby.

3. He is an actor, living in L.A. and will be a household name soon.

4. Sandy Cohen is jealous of his eyebrows, PBP has the thickest brows

west of the Mississippi.

5. After he becomes a household name, I will finally be able to write

the script I want and get it in the right hands, so look out for that

somewhere in the 2012 range.

6. I will only refer to him in this column as Pretty Boy Pangle or PBP

because of this conversation we once had...

PBP: I'd like to be in a horror movie.

Me: As the villain or as one of the guys trying not to get killed?

PBP: The guy trying not to get killed.

Me: It'll never happen, you're not pretty enough.

PBP (agitated): WHAT?

Me: Look, you're not ugly or a bad looking guy, I'm just saying,

pretty guys like Ryan Phillipe and Freddie Prinze Jr. get those roles,

and you're more of a masculine, handsome type. And I mean that as

heterosexually as possible.

PBP: Lots of people call me pretty.

Me: Name one person other than your family or girlfriend that thinks

you're "pretty"?

PBP: Ok, everyone in Crestview (his hometown). Everyone at my high

school.

Me: You grew up in a town with 600 people, and they ALL thought you

were "pretty?"

PBP: Yes, that was my nickname, everyone used to call me Pretty Boy

Pangle.

Me: Wait, did you say Pretty Boy Pangle?

PBP: Uh oh.

I wasn't kidding when I said he was my favorite person in the world to

pick on.

Anyway, when I told PBP that I was trying to write a few sentimental

pieces about my friends, I told him I was only going to refer to him

as Pretty Boy Pangle or PBP in his column, and instead of saying

something along the lines of "Oh God, are you really?" or "I knew I

never should have said that to you" he proclaimed, :my acting teacher

out here always calls me pretty. She's always like 'How is someone as

pretty as you not already discovered?'" Now do you understand why he's

my favorite person to make fun of?

Anyway, PBP and I met in college our freshmen year and remained great

friends throughout, and we were even roommates for a couple years. One

of our favorite activities in the world had been driving to new

destinations. During our freshmen year of college, Pretty Boy Pangle

and I used to find the roads that left Tallahassee and just get lost

down them. We realized there were about 7 main roads that left town,

and there wasn't one we didn't adventure down.

(Note: For those who read the first edition of the For the Love of the

Sound, you might remember that Dave and I used to drive around and

listen to music a lot as well. However, we used to drive and get lost

on city roads. We didn't usually go miles away, so it was kind of a

different experience. With Dave, it was an excuse to listen to music,

but with PBP, it was always about finding something new, seeing a town

we had never seen, etc.)

During the drives in the early days, PBP would educate me on classic

rock. You see, my parents aren't big music fans. In fact, I think my

mom listens solely to Christian contemporary and my dad listens to the

country stations or talk radio. I wasn't born a music phene. But

thanks to Napster, I became one (but that's an entirely different

story). However, Pangle was born a music phene. His dad was a classic

hippie, with amazing stories of hitchhiking across the country to

follow the Grateful Dead and watching Bruce Springsteen perform in a

little dive bar in a no-name New England town. So while I grew up on

Amazing Grace and Way Down Yonder on the Chattahoochee, Pretty Boy

Pangle was learning about the Dead, Crosby, Stills, Nash, Neil Young,

Bob Dylan, and all those guys. But being a man of the South, PBP's dad

made sure his son knew about southern rock.

I remember listening to stuff like the Marshall Tucker Band and

obviously Lynyrd Skynyrd back when we were freshmen. We'd listen to

all that stuff the Drive-By-Truckers are always singing about, and it

made sense at the time. Although Tallahassee is in Florida, it is in

the panhandle, which most people don't realize is very similar to

Alabama/Georgia not only in geography, but in culture. We'd be rocking

out to Seger while driving through some crappy, old Southern town that

PBP would always think of as "gothic" or "traditional" and I would

consider to be simply "crap," so this music wasn't just on in the

background, it seemed to soundtrack our trips through these little

towns. PBP was from a small town like most of these and I had grown up

in the suburbs of a large city, so I guess driving through those towns

was a way I was supposed to understand his life, and what it was like

to be somewhere where the air was fresh and the pace was slow.

It's funny going back on the history of our friendship, especially

musically, because it changed very drastically. But while the tunes

may have changed with age, our minds and the way they worked certainly

did not.

I realized Pretty Boy Pangle and I were supposed to be life long pals

the night we drove 5 hours to my house in Atlanta. We were listening

to music, making each other listen to songs we loved (I specifically

remember playing him the Pearl Jam song "Black," which is still one of

my favorite Pearl Jam songs). As we would listen to these songs, we'd

start describing a movie we were creating in our minds, and where each

song should fit inside that yet-to-be-made film. We did this with

every song the entire drive, and with every drive thereafter.

Sometimes, we'd put a song into a movie that had already been made

that would have worked better than the one used, but usually we would

just imagine a group of characters we had never met, and really didn't

know much about, however, we knew that in certain moments of their

lives, they needed these songs playing in the background.

(Let's pause for a humorous tidbit I always tell people. If I won the

lottery, and then invested well, I would hire a very well respected

music fan to follow me around with an iPod with speakers and when

certain moments in my life were happening, he would always play the

perfect song. Of course, this would be a tough decision because I

don't trust anyone's music taste but my own, so it would have to be

someone who really understood my taste. This is no easy feat.

Regardless, once the digits align properly, I'll start taking

applications, so I'll let you guys all know just as soon as I win,

alright?. Back to the story.)

Well after our freshmen year, when all the road in the panhandle of

Florida had been discovered, Pretty Boy Pangle and I didn't really

drive around as much. Where was the fun after the unknown was

identified? I mean, you may think Cairo, Georgia sounds like something

from a Flannery O'Connor story, but in reality, it's a gross town you

drive through on your way to somewhere more important. And now that we

had seen all the towns in the area, none of them seemed important

anymore. (Possible exception: Monroe, FL is a real pretty Southern

town and is actually a nice place, but everywhere else...Yuck.)

A couple years went by and I became a music junkie. PBP didn't really

talk after freshmen year because my musical journey headed different

places and for some stupid reason, I didn't trust his taste to evolve.

I mean, the guy loved classic rock, and while bands like the

Drive-by-Truckers and even some early My Morning Jacket may have

appeased freshmen PBP's taste, I just figured Pangle and I would

divorce, musically. We drove as many roads as we could on the same

wavelength, I believed.

But that's the coolest thing about music taste--it can always evolve

and it can always go places you never imagined. Think about all the

albums and artists you hated at first who you now love. Sometimes,

maybe you have to go somewhere, or experience a different time in your

life to get it, but sometimes, things click. Maybe you always hated

Bob Dylan, but after a night of drinking your sadness away, you heard

"If You See Her Say Hello" and thought to yourself, "damn, that really

makes sense." Or maybe you thought that southern rock was for

"rednecks" and "hicks" and you find yourself driving across Tennessee

and all of sudden, you look at "Tuesday's Gone" in a new light. Or

more specifically for the indie crowd, say you're not really an

electronica guy, and then the cool indie chick in your dorm convinces

you to go to some club and the two of you have a blast dancing to Hot

Chip and Herbert and all of a sudden, you're a huge electronica fan.

Our experiences and our friends totally dictate those shifts. Music

tastes aren't born, they're created and then they are evolved. Think

about what you listened to as a child. Wasn't that supposed to be the

most honest time of your life? Were you really telling people when you

were 7 years old that Pavement changed your life? I my case, I had a

Vanilla Ice tape, as well as an MC Hammer one.

But my taste evolved, and for some stupid reason, I didn't let PBP's

evolve with me at first. Instead of bringing PBP along for the ride

during my music evolution, I left him in the dust with his Almost

Famous Soundtrack and some homemade yams. I set out on a great

adventure, listening to thousands of amazing tunes, and slowly but

surely becoming a respectable music fan. I was going on this crazy

journey, listening to things I never even had a clue about, and I

never went across the hall to say, "Hey, PBP, come check out this

Bright Eyes guy." It was strange.

At the beginning of our Junior year, I got a job at a golf course

about 45 minutes out of Tallahassee, down on the Gulf Coast. My buddy,

Dave, who you met in a previous article, worked there with me for the

Fall 2003 semester, and when he could no longer work because of

school, I needed someone to car pool with, and Pretty Boy Pangle

adjusted his schedule so we could work together Monday, Wednesday, and

Friday each week. We ended up working together for almost 2 years.

But I couldn't make a 45 minute drive six times a week without my good

music. So I started turning ole' PBP onto some stuff, and he was

digging it. I'd play him new songs, burn him CDs, and he seemed to

like EVERYTHING. I turned him onto bands such as Modest Mouse, The

Shins, Ryan Adams, and Wilco, and I was starting to see where PBP's

taste COULD go. It could follow mine easily, because these songs may

have just been a few chords and lyrics to everyone else, but for

Pretty Boy Pangle and I, they were the fuel we needed to accelerate

our dreams of creating people and stories and moments that would

hopefully one day matter to people other than the two guys driving

around in the white Saturn 4-door.

If I had been up the road in this metaphor of a musical journey, than

PBP put the pedal to the metal on that piece of shit Saturn and

wouldn't let me run away anymore. He couldn't go on the journey alone,

and I didn't want him to. I wanted him to ditch the Saturn and hop in

to my Jeep Cherokee where the music was always loud and the mind was

never sleeping. It made the journey so much better. Because after all,

we can all think of these things in our mind--what songs will play at

certain characters/real people's weddings and/or funerals. But how

much better is it when your musical twin suggests something even

better than you imagined and leads your mind on one of those crazy

creative roads you didn't even think of?

Once we got to that point of synchronicity, Spring Semester of 2005

came around. Pretty Boy Pangle's last semester, and easily his

toughest. He didn't have time to find new music, in fact, he even

joked on an online profile under the category "Favorite Music" that he

was into "music that his friends gave him." Which was fine. Hell, I

don't mind slinging like Avon and Stringer, ya know? (And that Ladies

and Gentlemen was the weekly "throw in a subtle joke about The Wire to

gain more buzz about it" moment. We'll be sure to make sure Omar or

Bunk get a line next week.)

It had to be the second week of January and I was in one of those

"damn, I've downloaded a ton of albums recently, and I've listened to

all of them about once a piece and gone to the next, so I need to play

'catch up'" phases and finally got back around to the classic Neutral

Milk Hotel album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. And to be honest, the

vocals were a little tough for me to get into at first, and because

throwing a song about The King of Carrot Flowers into a movie in my

head was a little difficult, I was about to register it under the

"give it another chance when you're in a weird mood and are really

looking to expand your tastes in a more eclectic way" file, when the

title track came on.

Now, it's hard for me to write about the logistics of music. I don't

play instruments, I couldn't really tell you the difference between

melody and harmony (although I think I could answer it right on a

multiple choice test), and anytime I like the way the background music

sounds, I say a song has good "instrumentation." So I can't tell you

the way a music professor can why "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" is

amazing, I can only tell you why I love it, and why it has become the

most important song in my life.

The second I heard "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea", I could garner a

couple things about it. One, the song had to do with a moment. The

moment is a little strange and I don't know exactly what is happening

in that moment, but I know that moment is incredibly important. Two, I

could place this song in a thousand movie scenes, but wouldn't because

somehow I couldn't get to that imaginative part of my head with the

song--somehow the song made me selfish. And three, Pretty Boy Pangle

would LOVE this tune.

But the importance of the song lies in the selfishness the song took

over in me. I don't mean selfish in terms of "nobody else can ever

like this song more than me," but rather, "fuck characters, this is

it, this moment is the next 4 months of my life." You see, that

January began what was the last semester for about 90% of my best

friends. I elected to take less classes and stay for another football

season, but everyone else was ready to go. Here we were, our last few

months in our euphoric bubble. Or as Jeff Mangum was telling me...

And one day we will die and our ashes will fly from an aeroplane over

the sea, but for now we are young, let us lay in the sun, and count

every beautiful thing we can see.

This is probably my favorite music lyric ever. I KNOW its PBP's. We

lived those 4-5 months with that philosophy, going out, making

mistakes and laughing about 'em the next morning. PBP wasn't as crazy

as everyone else, remember, he had the tough schedule, but he was just

as committed, which made his performance that semester all the better.

He would study and work on papers until 4-5am just so he could go out

the next night. The guy got a total of 27 hours a sleep each month, I'

convinced. And why? Because time was running out, real life was on the

horizon, and if he didn't go out and be a dumb kid with all of us,

he'd never get to do it again.

That theme of "time running out before we're too old" doesn't seem to

be going anywhere. It seems like we wanted to establish those last few

months as the last time we were "young," but now that we're a few

years removed, that desire to be considered "young" hasn't gone

anywhere. We've just made new excuses to be young. "We're freshmen in

the real world," Rachael always says. After all, we all have bosses,

and most of them are older, right? Those are the old guys.

This is how we all live. We live by this desire to feel young. Even

when I have kids, I'll probably take them to Little League practice

and look at the older parents and say to myself, "geez, I'm pretty

young compared to these guys." When I enter my first retirement home,

I'll walk by a 97 year-old man and call him a "geezer." Somehow, I'm

always going to find that excuse to consider myself "young" in some

capacity, because old almost seems like giving up, and Jeff Mangum

wasn't about giving up, and neither were we. I'm

sorry...correction--neither ARE we.

With PBP and I, our conversations and life situations have been

significantly different since we were freshmen, and even more since

college graduation. But somehow, that song is still implanted in our

brains, more specifically, that lyric, on how we want to live life.

Pretty Boy Pangle and I may never become huge successful actors or

screenwriters or masters of the universe. We may continue to travel

down the "one step at a time" lifestyle we embark on right now. But we

make sure we enjoy it. We have to. It's as if that lyric in the song

bonds our friendship to the point where we have to live and love every

minute, otherwise we're letting the other guy down, and that's not

something either of us really care to do.

Last year, Rachael and I created a slide show with all of our pictures

from the past year. We finished it off with "In the Aeroplane Over the

Sea". It's the perfect slide show song. I can hear that song, picture

a friend, and as the song plays, envision hundreds of great memories

and pictures and moments I've shared with them. I've tried to do this

with PBP, however, the 3 minutes, 22 seconds just isn't enough time.

I think back on the beer pouring incident(s), the back deck tears, a

couple fun road trips, and about a thousand late night memories we

don't really remember at all. But somehow, the song always ends, and

there's too much left off the table. I'll forget late night

conversations in Doak Campbell Stadium or the time he threw me out of

the way when a drunk driver swerved my way (don't worry, he was only

going like 18 MPH, but it was still a little scary). I always try to

make a mental picture out of every memory and stick it into my mind

while listening to our heterosexual love song. And somehow, the song

always ends, and I can't get all the memories in there.

I guess with the best friendships, it's hard to keep count of all the

beautiful things you have seen.

Random TV Thought of the Week

Last night, I was enjoying yet another lovely episode of Studio 60 on

the Sunset Strip, when it occurred to me that every show idea they

presented in their sketches seemed 2000 times funnier than every SNL

sketch since Ferrell left the show. Do you think Lorne Michels has the

stones to just fire the whole cast and all the writers and start from

scratch with a young, hungry group of people looking to create funny

TV? Something tells me there's a lot of politics in the writing staff

and some young, funny writers can't be heard because some old guy who

still swears by the More Cowbell sketch is still in charge. Did anyone

see Studio 60's idea for "The Nicolas Cage Show?" That could be

hilarious. Maybe SNL should just regurgitate old ideas with new actors

and this newer society. I would watch Wally's World or something that

mocked the old Chris Farley Show. I don't care if it's been done

already, it was funny, and currently sketch comedy shows really suck,

and I'm not happy about it. PS--Does anyone watch Mad TV? I know it's

on, but I've never actually met anyone who watches it.

Random Sports Thought of the Week

It's time for the baseball playoffs! Woohoo. Actually, this year

really doesn't excite me much. I grew up in Atlanta and am a diehard

Braves fan, so let's just say this year is a little weird for me.

Regardless, I can still take the fabulous "Anybody but the Yankees"

approach to the postseason, even if there's a great chance the Bronx

Bombers will win. I thought if the Twins played the Yankees in the 5

game series, the Twins would have a chance, but now, I don't see

anyone stopping them, unfortunately. I can't wait for Mets fans to

find out about how good Tom Glavine is in October, that should be fun.

I guess I'm pulling for the A's, because I think Moneyball is a cool

strategy, but with football going as great as it is now, there's a

good chance I'll lose interest in baseball until April. Hope whoever

you guys are pulling for (I know Chris is hoping his boys knock off

the Yanks this week, and I really hope so, too) make a good run, and

let's hope we don't see the guys in pinstripes celebrating at the end

of the month. Weird Yankee tidbit to scare you: Looking down their

roster, every player has been selected to an All-Star game in the last

3 years except one--Robinson Cano. But don't feel bad for Mr. Cano, he