The Best Songs?

I found an old sheet of paper with a genre break downs of songs - I guess an essentials list? - that I must have made. It comes out to 111, so I suppose it was finished. It also seems to be exclusively 20th century, and definitely all American. Anyway, here it is:

Hip Hop

Bring the Noise - Public Enemy
Walk This Way - Run DMC ft. Aerosmith
The Message - Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
Stan - Eminem
Straight Outta Compton - NWA
Gangsta's Paradise - Coolio ft. LV
Tell Mama - 2Pac
Juicy - Notorious B.I.G.
High Plains Drifter - Beastie Boys
Rapper's Delight - Sugarhill Gang
Doo Wop (That Thing) - Lauryn Hill
Planet Rock - Afrika Bambaataa

R&B and Soul

What'd I Say - Ray Charles
Respect - Aretha Franklin
A Change Is Gonna Come - Sam Cooke
Papa's Got a Brand New Bag - James Brown
P. Funk - Parliament
When Doves Cry - Prince
Superstition - Stevie Wonder
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes - The Platters
Let's Stay Together - Al Green
What's Going On - Marvin Gaye
Billie Jean - Michael Jackson (??? - Not R&B...)
I Will Always Love You - Whitney Houston

Rock

Jailhouse Rock - Elvis Presley
Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen
Like a Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan
Johnny B. Goode - Chuck Berry
Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
Blitzkrieg Bop - Ramones
Me and Bobby McGee - Janis Joplin
Hotel California - The Eagles
Purple Haze - The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Rock Around the Clock - Bill Haley and the Comets
Sweet Child O' Mine - Guns n' Roses
You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling - The Righteous Brothers

Popular

Take Me Out to the Ball Game - Edward Meeker
God Bless America - Kate Smith
Stardust - Hoagy Carmichael
Blue Skies - Irving Berlin
You Are My Sunshine - Jimmie Davis
This Land Is Your Land - Woody Guthrie
White Christmas - Bing Crosby
The Charleston - James P. Johnson
People Get Ready - The Impressions (This should be switched with MJ, above)
You Keep Me Hangin' On - The Supremes (Also hard to justify...) 
Stayin' Alive - The Bee Gees
Moon River - Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini
Ain't Misbehavin' - Fats Waller

Musicals

Somewhere Over the Rainbow - Judy Garland
There's No Business Like Show Business - Ethel Merman
Oklahoma! - Rodgers and Hammerstein
America - Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim
The Way You Look Tonight - Fred Astaire
People - Barbara Streisand
One - Marvin Hamlisch and Edward Kleban
When You Wish Upon a Star - Cliff Edwards
Luck Be a Lady Tonight - Frank Loesser
Ol' Man River - Paul Robeson
Singin' in the Rain - Gene Kelly
Toot Toot Tootsie - Al Jolson
Anything Goes - Cole Porter

Jazz

Sing Sing Sing - Benny Goodman
In the Mood - Glen Miller
Giant Steps - John Coltrane
Strange Fruit - Billie Holiday
Summertime - Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong
Mood Indigo - Duke Ellington
Milestones - Miles Davis
Yardbird Suite - Charlie Parker
The Entertainer - Scott Joplin
Lonely Woman - Ornette Coleman
Take Five - Dave Brubeck
Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong

Blues and Folk

Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground - Blind Willie Johnson
In the Pines - Leadbelly
Hoochie Coochie Man - Muddy Waters
Hellhound on My Trail - Robert Johnson
Everyday I Have the Blues - Memphis Slim
Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out - Bessie Smith
I've Got That Old Feeling - Alison Krauss
House of the Rising Sun - Clarence Ashley
We Shall Overcome - Pete Seeger
Foggy Mountain Breakdown - Flatt and Scruggs
The Thrill is Gone - BB King

Country

I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry - Hank Williams
Crazy - Patsy Cline
Blue Moon of Kentucky - Bill Monroe
In the Jailhouse Now - Jimmie Rodgers
Mama Tried - Merle Haggard
Pancho and Lefty - Townes van Zandt
Coat of Many Colors - Dolly Parton
Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain - Willie Nelson
Can the Circle Be Unbroken - The Carter Family
I Walk the Line - Johnny Cash
Man of Constant Sorrow - The Soggy Bottom Boys

Ethnic (Um...)

Mardi Gras in New Orleans - Professor Longhair
Volar a Puerto Rico - Willie Colon
El Cantante - Hector Lavoe
Ya Ya - Buckwheat Zydeco


All in all... Not a terrible list, really. Maybe even not bad.

2018 Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts

What an odd year. Not bad, but odd. First off - spoiler alert as I get into the plots of all of these.

Usually I would do these in order of screening, but for reasons soon to become apparent, I'm grouping them differently this time. So here goes.

Category: Humorous* Short

Animal Behavior

*This wasn't very funny. I sort of hope it doesn't win, but it landed a few decent jokes, so it's not totally egregious if it does... The premise is that animals are in group therapy. It feels like an early 1990s nominee that somehow got lost and ended up here thirty years too late, after shorts like Bob's Birthday and Aardman's Creature Comforts (which is much better) already covered this ground.

Category: Parents with Dementia

Late Afternoon

And we're back to this theme. This theme, the aging parent who forgets your name or can't express their love, or what-have-you, has come up again and again in the past few years. Ever since I started watching these screenings it feels like there's one of these every year or two. Late Afternoon is good - it has nice visuals, and a nod to Proust. I won't mind if it wins, but it's relatively forgettable.

Category: Navigating Difficult Relationships with Your Asian Parents

The other three nominees are all in this category which is why I started this post by saying things were odd.

Two, I think, take place in San Francisco (one does explicitly, one is suggested). So lets start with those.

One Small Step

A young girl grows up in SF wanting to be an astronaut while her dad mends her shoes. It's got a typical Pixar-esque emotional punch. I think 70% of the sweetness is invoked from hearing a little girl laugh for half the film. This is my second-least-favorite. Interesting note: This was a joint US-China venture, in keeping with China's space exploration ambitions and trying to break into other American markets.

Bao

Bao is Pixar's fourth nominee in a row - and four nominees ago they had a short about an Indian boy trying to bond with his parents over their traditions. This time its a similar story from a Chinese mother's perspective. The usual plastic texture we've come to expect from Pixar accompanies a smallish twist. It is better than One Small Step, but not as good as Late Afternoon.

Weekends

And finally, the film I want to win: Weekends. This was poignant, visually stunning, funny but also moving and even frightening: capturing the wonder and experience of childhood through the wide eyes of our protagonist. Set in Toronto, and, while not most technically proficient, easily the best characters and story.

Ranking
Weekends
Late Afternoon
Bao
One Small Step
Animal Behavior

As always, with these shorts screenings, there was also a "Highly Commended" section at the end. The two selections, in brief:

Wishing Box

A forgettable little short about a pirate and a monkey in a 3D style that was trying to look like claymation. Predictable plot, and no character development - that said I actually chuckled once or twice.

Tweet Tweet

A Russian short about a bird with an inordinate lifespan walking along the tightrope of Russian tragedy with a young girl as she grows up and dies. If that sounds weird... yeah. Imagine Piper blended with the Russian-ness Peter and the Wolf  via the story of a life in La Maison en Petits Cubes.

So there you have it, this year's nominees, all wrapped up. I really hope Weekends wins.

The Rapid Death of American Cringe

There’s been an element of American society which is pretty cringe-inducing to the rest of the country: Vulgar, racist, faux-patriotic, proudly uninformed. What Obama described as the people who take pride in being ignorant, or Hillary’s ‘deplorables’. A significant portion of Trump’s base. And yet, the past two years have seen a rapid escalation of the destruction of their world.

Two years ago, a fella I’m going to stereotypically call ‘Bubba’, could pull into a store and get an NRA discount on his purchase while browsing a copy of the National Enquirer in line, calling the guy in front of him a ‘fag’ and then leaving for his rally at a Confederate monument.

But if there’s a (small) silver lining to the Trump administration, it is that such a scene is increasingly unlikely.

The Confederate statues are coming down in record numbers all over the country.

The NRA is on the ropes – weaker than it has been for ages, filing for bankruptcy with dropping enrollment.

The National Enquirer, after the latest felony-level scandal, may finally be disappearing from your supermarket checkout aisles.

The number of states that ban “gay conversion therapy” has gone from 5 to 15 since Trump took office. The largest demonstration in American history was the Women’s March.

The abominable practices that have been swept under the rug for too long – sexual harassment and continued racism like blackface – are being dealt with in the open with real repercussions.

The “lying media” is doing great (NYT has doubled readership in two years), as, meanwhile, in Fox world, Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes are finally gone, and InfoWars has been broken. MSNBC beat Fox News for the first time in viewership in 17 years.

Things are bad for Bubba. He’s worse off than he was before this Presidency.

America’s cringe avatar, Donald Trump, is seeing all of his scams be shut down, from his University to his “charitable” Foundation. The gross, unseemly part of our nation – the Michael Cohen grease slicks and Manafort mafioso wannabes – are getting their comeuppance.

Maybe, when all is said and done, and Trump is merely a nightmare of our memories, we can at least take some solace in the fact that he accelerated the decline and death of American cringe. It would be a small balm to the otherwise disgraceful and damaging legacy he has scorched into our nation’s historical record.