AudioShocker

Only two weeks ago, I played the cry-like-a-baby-it's-the-last-week-of-my-semester card in order to put a band-aid on the hemorrhaging wound of the content-less culturology post for that week, so I must come clean now and state, for the record, that I am done with my semester (of Graduate school). In fact, I also recently lost my summer job, so writing this weekly column is the closest thing I even have to employment. Of course, Nick and Neal don't pay me to write this thing (well, they pay me in love and ice-pops, but that hardly pays the rent), so its not really like employment, so I don't really have to suddenly up the quality of my culturological investigations. But I think I set the bar pretty high for myself. At least I think I do, though objections are occasionally raised re: my generally pompous attitude, text-heavy, unnecessarily complicated ramblings on the various subjects tackled, and most recently, and absence of graphics or pictures, to assist the reader in understanding. This week, since I still don't have that much to say, I've at least tried to meet Neal's request for an added visual element, if for no other reason than to pad out an otherwise thin column.

(If this looks a bit off model, it's mostly because I just got a haircut, don't have a skinny, cartoon-style neck, nor any facial structures that are accurately represented there-above; there's a reason that Nick does the drawing and I do the writing in our collaborations.)

There! Now you can put a face, however shittily drawn, to the voice that has brought you these 25 or so deeply empirical studies into the machinations of the American Culture Industry. Though, as often discussed, as much as cultural neutrality seems possible, it never is. Like the movie I just saw over the weekend, Crank: High Voltage. I thought that this Crank was almost as awesome as the first Crank (which was completely awesome). The chart would look something like this:

Now, I realize that not everyone does or would think that Crank is awesome. Why? Because they are lame, and not ready for the future of action movies of this sort, which operate in the more-or-less linear fashion of "This is awesome. Now this. This is also awesome. Here's another awesome thing." etc. My appreciation of this movie was probably easy to predict, given my previous statements in favor of Jason Statham as pretty much the only true action start making movies right now. So it makes sense, that he's certainly a different type of action star, than say, Schwarzenegger (also completely awesome).

But I'm breaking one of my own rules, namely that I don't do reviews. So saying that the movie is awesome, but not awesome for everyone is not good enough. It's even hard to say that all action movies should be like these Crank movies, in fact, the opposite is probably the case. But there really is something to be said for movie-makers that adhere to this linked-awesome sequence model. What is impressive about Crank: High Voltage, then, is the fact that they managed to fit a lot more plot into this movie than the first one. That happens when you have a revenge movie, revenge always involves plot. I don't know that any of the techniques utilized (in terms of the scattered, wide-spread awesomeness) will ever leak back into more conventional action movies, though, not because of their frenetic pace, but because it requires a certain amount of meta-awareness on its viewers. It strikes me that (for lack of better terms) older and/or dumber viewers would be either a) put off or b) bored by the kind of we'll do anything if it seems cool kind of approach, since it might only be interesting to follow if you figure out that they're really only making the movie as a tongue-in-cheek affair, with the (already mentioned) mind towards awesomeness.

And it's box office showing, a paltry 11 million in two weeks, seems to back up my sense that, depsite its being way more entertaining than most other movies out there, Crank: High Voltage is too awesome for the average viewer. Bummer. Oh well, gotta cut this column short, in order to jump my motorcycle over a gorge.

SUMMER CULTUROLOGY SPECIAL!!!

Also, since its the summer, and the book-oriented section of AudioShocker seems to have fallen tragically by the wayside, I am going to implement a special Read-with-Pete Culturology Book Club to run for the next several months. Book Club commentaries will be seeded by myself in the post-space that used to be occupied by the Things That It Was or Wasn't Okay to Like. We will hope to avoid any general book-clubbing, like saying why or why not we liked given books or characters or plots, rather focusing instead on a more scientific appraisal of the various pieces of literature. Up first: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz. Totally appropriate for comics-readers as well. And it won a Pulitzer. Alright! Get Reading!