Wilcox vox.

"Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" by Peter Biskind is pure raunchy awesomeness. This 439-page tabloid-esque chronicle of the emergence of "New Hollywood" in the late '60s contains some of the most hilarious and horrifying stories about key figures in American film, all while chugging forward with a gripping narrative of the downfall of the classic studio system and the fleeting power enjoyed by famed auteurs like Marty Scorcese, Robert Altman and Francis Ford Coppola. Get all this now.

Being straight-edge in college doomed me to a lot of lonely nights. I spent many of them parked in front of my television set watching “comfort movies,” which carry a much different definition for males than for females. I couldn’t take solace in maudlin romantic comedies or hopeful rags-to-riches stories. “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” doused me in sap and “Love, Actually” made me choke on it. Instead, light-hearted films that contained conspiring fun-loving friends trading incisive barbs - “buddy comedies,” basically - were where I hung my psyche’s hat. “The Big Lebowski” and “Bottle Rocket” were among my most gratifying films to watch.

So I spent my first night in college watching “Clerks,” notoriously potty-mouthed writer/director Kevin Smith’s 1993 film debut. I had seen it once before, but I wasn’t looking for any bold new viewing experiences. With the usual burdens of entering college pinning down my thoughts with the strength of industrial staples, I couldn’t afford to think. In fact, I needed something to help me pluck out those staples - something to alleviate my qualms over choosing the right major, trying out for the lacrosse team, and forging new friendships. “Clerks” - and its depiction of two convenience store clerks waging a mean-spirited war against their customers - was just the right tool.

Of course I was not the only “Clerks” fan on any college campus. A tour through any ten dorm rooms in America will likely produce at least one “Clerks” DVD or poster (or its more popular but cruder younger brother, “Mallrats”). The film’s resonance with college students is indeed massive, but not without reason.

Quick Stop cashier Dante Hicks (Brian O’Halloran) and RST Video clerk Randal Graves (Jeff Anderson) appeal so mightily to college students precisely because they didn’t go to college. They are the road not taken. They have, willfully or not, bypassed the lengthy commitment of a “proper” education. Instead, they slum it in the service sector, where they are subjected to the fury of America’s middle class. Every day for Dante and Randal is another brow-beating, another encounter with someone who tries to remind them of their inferiority.

Randal defensively burrows into the “I didn’t go to college because I already know everything I need to know” persona. He’s perfectly content lambasting customers who unwittingly amble into RST Video to rent a movie for their children. Randal’s store is like a war zone where he plays enough mind games to confuse a seasoned criminal psychologist. He’s rude as hell, but like any great athlete, you’d love to have him playing on your team.

Meanwhile, Dante grapples with the prospect of finishing school in order to please his girlfriend. His happiness is a bit more elusive. Unlike Randal, Dante has connections - people who lament his wasted potential and urge him to leave his minimum wage gulag. Dante, as the name implies, is journeying through Hell - but not one to which he is forever banished. He’d like to escape, but he can’t decide whether he should indulge the hollow perks of his job at the Quick Stop or flee the store for higher ground. The ambivalence causes Dante to alternate between bouts of misery and bursts of joy. Yet, to the viewer, his life doesn’t seem so terrible with a friend like Randal constantly around to amuse him.

Despite veering off the course to happiness and propriety prescribed by their elders, Dante and Randal are ostensibly happy - or at least well-adjusted enough to make light of their plights by filling their days with surliness and scorn toward their customers. They treat the stores that employ them like their homes - they come and go when they please, swipe drinks from the cooler like it was their personal refrigerator, and annex the roof like it was their backyard to host a roller-hockey game with their friends. They encounter eccentrics like gum representatives who incite small-scale riots within the store's smoking patronage and foul-mouthed drug dealers who are dying to be slapped with a sexual harassment lawsuit. All the while, Dante and Randal make convenience stores look like temples of serenity and mirth - relative to most other places of employment. Corporations be damned!

The rebellion of “Clerks” thus lies in its evisceration of “established” people as a witless and bored social stratum. It not only subverts their doctrine of “go to college, get a job, be happy” but also pokes fun at them for being inept and utterly dependent on social servants to meet their menial, everyday needs. Because I had just entered college - when I felt pressured by its “necessity” more than ever - “Clerks’” message hit me like a hammer in my spine. Suddenly college didn’t seem so “do or die.” After all, I could just work at a convenience store for the rest of my life, meet some wacky dude like Randal, and savor the happiness that comes with our hijinks.

The triviality of Dante and Randal’s discussions about popular culture is another hook in the gut of the college audience. These two were clearly reared on a steady diet of Spielberg and Lucas. Yet they don’t have traditionally “nerdy” discussions. They aren’t fan boys who argue that Batman would kick Superman’s ass because he’s that much cooler. Their argument about the explosion of the second Death Star as an injustice against independent contractors mirrors the type of mindless chatter that my suitemates and I would ease into after classes. It’s foolish and moot, but fun to ponder nonetheless.

Not long after seeing “Clerks” for the second time, my suitemates and I would watch it ad infinitum, to the point where endless quotations and even a Halloween masquerade as the cast would define the first few months of our freshman year. We didn’t tire of it. Some of my friends unsuccessfully tried to argue away the movie’s appeal. They just didn’t understand why I loved watching “Clerks” repeatedly. If they did, maybe they would have been able to predict that my obsession would subside once my confidence in “the college life” strengthened. Even I didn’t realize until years later that for those first few months of college, “Clerks” wasn’t just fun, it was comfort.

(photo courtesy of www.affichescinema.com)

Sordid tales of stalking and gawking on myspace.com are all over the local and national news. Parents everywhere are concerned that the online friend network is going to pluck their adolescent children from their protection and send them tumbling into the arms of weirdos waiting in the wings.

But I don't have kids and I think myspace is a bore, so I don't pay the matter much mind. Instead I'm becoming more interested in the way bands are using myspace more than their regular websites. Nine Inch Nails, for instance, posts videos of live performances regularly on their myspace site, while updating nin.com perhaps once a week. Further, people searching for new music are becoming accustomed to the myspace format, which makes browsing and listening all the easier and more accessible. The value of band websites evaporates every time one makes a new myspace page. It's not far-fetched to suggest that band websites may become obsolete entirely.

It seems myspace is on its way to becoming a microcosm of the entire web. Soon everyone - every commercial entity, every non-profit organization, and every religious institution (yes I'm stretching) - will have their own myspace site. And then we can stalk them too.

(photo courtesy of www.myspace.com)

There's a scene in Stephen Frears' 2000 romantic comedy for music snobs, High Fidelity, in which self-effacing record store clerk and Moby look-alike Dick (Todd Luiso) enters his boss Rob's (John Cusack) apartment to discover Rob's gargantuan vinyl record collection scattered across the floor. Agape and intrigued, Dick tries to decode the madness.
"It looks as if you're reorganizing your records, what is this...chronological?"
"Nope."
"It's not alphabetical."
"Nope."
"What?"
"Autobiographical."
"No fucking way."
"Yup...I can tell you how I got from Deep Purple to Howling Wolf in just 25 moves. And if I want to find the song 'Landslide' by Fleetwood Mac, I have to remember that I bought it for someone in the Fall of 1983 pile, but didn't give it to them for personal reasons."
"That sounds..."
"Comforting. It is."

This scene absolutely nails my feelings towards music. When I listen to a song - "Siberian Kiss" by Glassjaw, for instance - the first thing that comes to mind is not its pummeling guitars, the Tazmanian Devil-like unintelligibility of the lyrics, or its debt to New York City hardcore and the vocal style of Faith No More‘s Mike Patton. Instead I am immediately reminded of the time I first heard it - at a poker party in the basement of a high school friend. The imagery is indelible - the card table was here, two couches there, while so-and-so was sitting in front of the TV playing Nintendo 64 and "that guy" was laying down on the floor because he had taken too many Sudafed. In cognitive psychology this phenomenon is known as spreading activation - one bit of information (song) reaches associated bits (when I heard it, who I heard it with, etc.) through the neural network, bringing to conscious awareness a plethora of associated memories.

In this manner music serves as a sort of index of various scenes in my life. I always associate Foo Fighters' "The Colour and the Shape" and Blur’s self-titled album with my 8th grade trip to Washington, D.C., during which I bought the first album and listened to both non-stop on the Birnie Bus. The Flaming Lips' "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" conjures memories of leaving New York City in the wintry nighttime on a similar bus, while "Psychocandy" by the Jesus and Mary Chain will forever be associated with mowing greens at Monroe Golf Club at 6 a.m. But perhaps my strongest song associations are intertwined with the first album I ever listened to completely through, over and over, until I had memorized every lyric and could anticipate every note.

In 1994, my older cousins lent me a copy of "Check Your Head" by the Beastie Boys to go with my first CD player. Their gift was prompted by my remarking to them how much I loved watching the Spike Jonze-directed video for "Sabotage," and even though "Sabotage" wasn’t on "Check Your Head," I was overflowing with glee when they handed me the album.

At the time, I enjoyed rehearsing the comedic elements of "Check Your Head" almost more than listening to the songs. "Professor Booty’s" opening - "Professor, what’s another word for pirate treasure? Why I think it’s booty!" - was a riot to recite with friends. The fatigued off-key crooning of keyboardist Money Mark in "Mark on the Bus" and the opening dialogue to "The Maestro," set over an upper-crust party ambience, were our other favorites. These humorous portions of "Check Your Head" immediately bring to mind the faces of my childhood friends, crowded together with me around a CD player and laughing hysterically as we endlessly rewound the tracks to hear them again.

The standout songs on "Check Your Head," such as "Pass the Mic" and "So Whatcha Want?", were what ultimately stapled the album to my brain. The opening track, "Jimmy James," which samples Hendrix’s opening feedback to "Foxy Lady," provided me with a fun soundtrack to playing video games like "TIE Fighter" and "Sonic the Hedgehog." The feedback sample warps from the familiar cacophony into a scratching passage that sounds like a schizoid dentist’s drill before Ad Rock, MCA and Mike D storm in to take control.

I could recite every word of "Pass the Mic" with the shortest notice. From the trumpets-blaring, dawn-is-arising-so-take-heed! opening, this third song on "Check Your Head" flows seamlessly, amalgamating threatening guitars with titanic drums and an indecipherable sample of some guy’s panicky voice. Even though the Beastie Boys are not commonly considered the most prolific rappers - their flow falls far below that of the Jay-Zs and MF Dooms of the world, even Eminem - their verses on "Pass the Mic" are gorgeous and intimidating. They sound like gangly white Jewish monsters standing atop the highest perches in their native Brooklyn who should be filmed from menacing low angles as they spit boastful rhymes about rocking block parties and exploding on sight like Jimmy Walker ("Dyn-o-mite!"). It’s the type of song I’d listen to before stepping on the field for a lacrosse game - one that made me feel that I, like the Beastie Boys, was purely untouchable.

Although I also enjoyed "So Whatcha Want," its one of those songs whose personal value has depreciated in light of its hijacking at the hands of the masses. Though the sentiment is silly, it’s one few music fans can deny experiencing. We just don’t like to share. "So Whatcha Want’s" hammer-on-the-anvil rhythm and fragmented vocal filters (a Beastie Boys tradition) are tied together by an organ sample that sounds like it should play between batters at an afternoon baseball game. It’s another song I recall listening to prior to lacrosse games, but for a different reason - it’s aggressive, but the music just makes you want to enjoy yourself.

My undying love of the Beastie Boys‘ "Check Your Head" and its irreplaceable connection to my late childhood can best be illustrated by one fact: I still haven’t given the CD back to my cousins.

(photo courtesy of http://home.antdickens.com)

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