Five Questions with Jake Kilroy

Books! Croquet! Death! Work asked me some radical questions, and I answered 'em radically. Scope it: 5 Questions with a C5er: Jake Kilroy

Five Music Videos You Should Watch Right Now

1. "Queen Of Hearts" by Fucked Up


2. "Four Winds" by Bright Eyes


3. "Lessons Learned" by Matt And Kim


4. "Good Time" by Brazilian Girls


5. "Swim Until You Can't See Land" by Frightened Rabbit

Five Things That Are Rad

1. TV SHOW: Boardwalk Empire
I, like many other kids raised on old movies, have a fondest for the 1920s. As a teenager, I found myself profoundly interested in everything from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Al Capone. Alcohol was a celebration and a secret, gangsters were ruthless and classy and the country went through its only decade of severe moral high ground, which of course led into low points and rock bottoms. But there was a reason they called it "The Roaring '20s." So, an entire television show about the whiskey trade at the base of Coney Island, that promise land of pinball machines and roller coasters, is like a homecoming for me. It hits every bit of me: the kid who wanted to see the sights, the teenager who discovered jazz and the adult who can't kick the habit. The actors are flawless, the writing is perfect and the story is mesmerizing. And it takes its sweet time to tell it, as if it's savoring the flavor and smiling at its taste.

2. BOOK: The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
I've never read anything so culturally involved while still being so out of genre. The noir mystery unravels against the backdrop of a fake Jewish history out in the umbrella top of America. Let's say that Berlin was nuked at the end of World War II and Jewish refugees were given a territory in Alaska. But, now, 60 years later, the deal the U.S. government struck up with the world and the chosen race is up. Jewish residents are facing reversion and the territory will be up for grabs. One down-on-his-luck Jewish detective finds a dead man in his hotel and it turns the murdered Jew might have been the partial divine, a once in a generation miracle when the equivalent of Jesus's second cousin comes about. Something's wrong in Sitka and the cold landscape shakes as the trail of blood heats up. It's the best noir I've ever read and it's slung together with swear words and Jewish slang. It's a serious read, but Jewish writers always have a sly grin tucked away somewhere.

3. BAND: Matt And Kim
I can't imagine a duo that would be more fun to hang out with. They skateboard, mosh and put on free concerts in Brooklyn parks with a tiny keyboard and a drum kit made from cardboard boxes and random metals. Somewhere in the archives of this blog, there's a post called "I Wish It Was Matt & Kim & Jake," written some years ago when I first heard the song "Daylight." Well, a few weeks ago, I bought their latest release, Sidewalks, and it's just as fun as ever and it hasn't strayed far from my car stereo. It's straight up indie pop for twenty-somethings and early thirty-somethings that want to ride bikes and hustle bars forever (and who have a fondness for peppy synth sounds poised against a modern interpretation of punk drums). There isn't any strange depths of lyrics or personal reproaches. They're the musical equivalent of meeting friends for lunch on a Saturday afternoon.

4. MOVIE: Singin' In The Rain
There are few films that continue to impress me. But Singin' In The Rain blows me away every time with its perfect grasp of joy. It handles love, friendship, work ethic and artistic integrity with as much silliness as it does earnestness. Nevermind the showmanship of tap dancers and sultry voices. This movie was made for every possible stunning glow a person can find radiating within themselves. Sure, that sounds like a lot, but, come on, this movie put me in the best mood as a kid (when all I wanted was anything and everything) and it still does as an adult (when I'm not ever truly sure what I want). I've watched this movie in all kinds of weather, including a tremendous Midwestern thunderstorm, and it's spectacular every single time, but it's perfect on a rainy night.

5. RANDOM: Heaven's Gate
Look how goddamn ominous this thing is. "Heaven's Gate" is the nickname given to the water-eroded cave with the highest elevation in the world. In 263, the massive cliff of China's Songliang Mountain (now Tianmen Mountain) broke open and gave the world what looked like a door to the heavens. And now it sits there...waiting.

5 Crisises I Can Help You With

I'm a pretty nice guy. It may not always seem like that because I'm disguised like a son of a bitch. That was an old-timey phrase. I'm not actually a son of a bitch. Want me to prove it? Here, I took five complaints of the modern world as if they were submitted to me and answered them for you. What a nice guy, right? Right. I ain't no goddamn son of a bitch. You better listen to me, baby. That was a line from my favorite Misfits song for those of you who didn't know. Anyway, enjoy.

"Every time I wash my car, it rains."

Holy shit. You're clearly some sort of supernatural being here in our pathetic and dismal dimension. Sorry we didn't make cupcakes for your arrival. Please wait for your well-deserved hand jobs from the concubines of yore. We here on Earth aren't used to beings from another realm. How are you controlling the weather? Every time you wash you car, you say? Fascinating. When I think it's going to rain, I usually read a few reports by men and women who studied it like an actual science until they tell me that it's not an actual science when they get it wrong, which, I have to say, is quite often. Some of us here, you know, the mere mortals, just look at the sky and say, "Oh, looks like it's going to rain." We say this shit to everybody. We don't care who's even standing near us. I'd say it a strange bum-hag, just as I'd say it to my grandfather, just as I'd say it to Dallas Raines, just as I'd say it to Olivia Wilde. Well, no, I guess I'd say more to Miss Wilde. I might ask to touch her face. I don't know. I haven't really thought it through yet. But she's seen rain. I've seen rain. Apparently, Dallas Raines hasn't seen rain because he always tells me to wear a jacket on days that I end up having to explain to everyone at work why I'm wearing a jacket. But then everyone else shows me their jacket and it turns out that we've all been swindled by that goddamn con artist, Dallas Raines. But back to what you said about it raining after every time you wash your car. NO, IT FUCKING DOESN'T.

"I farted in class."

Stand up, immediately tell your fellow students that it was someone else and then run away forever. Don't even bother going home. Everyone is dead to you for the time being. Change your name. If a woman, try out "Starla B. Koosakoff. If a man, start your new life as "Chuck E. Chuckerton." Let them call you "Chunkers" for short. The nickname for your fake name will really throw people from your old life off your trail. Maybe open up a candy shop and be friends with all the local kids. Make them love you. Now, start committing gruesome murders. Wait for a copycat to take over. Come back to your old life as whoever you once were and start things off with, "Nevermind where I've been! How about those murders a few counties over? Pretty gruesome, if you ask me. A candy shop owner no less! Just grotesque." FARTING CRISIS AVERTED.

"The barber gave me a bad haircut."

Wear a fucking beanie. JESUS.

"Ryan Gosling won't bang me."

I hear this one all the time. Who do you think are? Listen up, every lady in America, that dude only has so much time in his day. And guess what? I've heard interviews with him. Dude never starts sentences off with "hey girl." It's usually all about him. Sure, you've seen pictures of him saying, "hey girl, I really like your backstage" or "hey girl, that's some nice falafel you made, my dirty Persian princess," but, to be honest, it'd probably be more like, "Hey girl, how the fuck did you get in here? I'm calling security." Also, let's be honest, if you were that adored by women universally, there is no way that normal sex would satisfy. Just as a default, you would have to start getting weird. You would just be too powerful. Do you think Zeus was thrilled with missionary? Do you think Ra was all about beds? No. Gods want things like "backdoor brimstone" and "leather mania window throws." Oh, I'm sorry, did you think that Ryan Gosling planned to spend his time on Earth taking a bath with you in rose petals and telling you how good of a restaurant manager you are and how he felt sorry for all the side work you had to do? No, of course not, because he is here to ravage. Consider yourselves lucky, ladies, that he's with Eva Mendes. Because guys want her like a gorgeously sloppy and heated New Year's Eve kiss too. She grows more and more powerful with every passing semi-nude scene she does on film. You're straight up lucky she's with him. Let's look at this scientifically. Ryan Gosling is like the black smoke from Lost and Eva Mendes is like that forcefield that nobody understood. If Ryan Gosling was single, and every girl had her way, then every girl with a Facebook would be pregnant by his seed, overpopulation would become an imminent threat to the world and all that we all hold dear would ultimately be destroyed within a generation. Oh, and this was all because you wanted him to say, "hey girl, you don't need a calculator to do those quarterly reports, because you can push my buttons?" STOP THINKING OF YOURSELF FOR ONCE.

"One of my car speakers blew out, so now I can only hear music on one side."

You're in luck. I went through that once for a few years. It turns out all those times I thought, you know, Los Lobos should really put in a guitar solo here, well, they actually did put a guitar solo there. But, alas, I couldn't hear it through the important speaker. And they threw in some bongo drums too! Los Lobos knows what they're doing. Let's just agree on that right now and move on. Do you have tape? If you have tape, you might be lucky enough to tape the cassette eject button down so that, due to faulty wiring, the music comes out the busted side here and there. Maybe use some chewing gum. But don't drop the foil wrapper into the lighter socket, if your vehicle is an older model, as this will of course, due to faulty wiring, fry your dashboard. Don't worry. This will actually impress several chicks when you have to Fonzie the dashboard with a rap of your fist, but don't make a joke about that, as girls who are that easily impressed typically didn't grow up watching Happy Days. No, they were too busy smoking cigarettes and sneaking out at night. That's all well and good at a certain age, but sixth grade isn't the recommended time for your parents to start questioning your morals. Wait until your mom cries at back to school night and accusing you of being a pothead instead. You really have to choose those special moments with your parents. Pretty soon, those moments will be gone and all you'll be left with is your parents telling you to not get (somebody) knocked up until one day they just start demanding that you get (somebody) knocked up. The world's a funny place. HEY, FIX YOUR FUCKING SPEAKERS ALREADY.

You're welcome, America.

Five Things That Are Awesome

1. BAND: The Horrible Crowes
You know who's rad? The Gaslight Anthem. You know what's rad? The Gaslight Anthem's Brian Fallon doing a side project that he describes as "The Gaslight Anthem : Bruce Springsteen :: The Horrible Crowes : Tom Waits." It's Fallon and his guitar tech, Ian Perkins, and their debut album Elsie is so damn legit with the right amount of everything. Like the Gaslight Anthem, it's broken hearts alongside brass knuckles, churning honest nostalgia into earnest swagger. Check out these songs: I Witnessed A Crime, Crush, Behold The Hurricane, Ladykiller. Black Betty & The Moon.
2. MOVIE: My Dinner With Andre
I rented My Dinner With Andre from my local library because of a spoof episode on Community. Also, I like Wallace Shawn a whole lot. Plus, an entire movie that's just a dinner conversation with four stars from Roger Ebert? What I thought would be an extended conversation about art and friendship turned out to be one of the most diligently philosophically and easily engaging movies I've ever seen. The two of them discuss the whimsical big picture (musical theater in a European forest) versus the appreciated small things (morning coffee and crossword puzzles) in such a poetic and amusing sense, you feel as if you're eavesdropping on old friends at a fancy restaurant.
3. TV SHOW: Community
I can't believe they might cancel Community. That's goddamn insane. The show feeds my love for pop culture, meta-humor, wit, deadpan, real world observations and spoofs. I don't have to describe it because you should already be watching it. I mean, we're going to cancel Community and just let NCIS have another fucking season? Great, world. That's just great.
4. BOOK: The Girl Who Played With Fire
With years of investigative journalism behind him, Stieg Larsson understood an important thing about storytelling: people make events, events don't make people. You'd think this would be obvious to novelists everywhere, but, year after year, one lazily written book comes out after another and it's due to authors wanting scenes and outcomes more than motives and movements. The thriller genre of fiction lets that shit slide like crazy. But Larsson's crafted a tightly wound trilogy and I'm in the middle of the second book. The Girl Who Played With Fire changes up the story better than almost any other sequel I've ever read. Larsson has created exciting characters that have realistic feelings and function with deep purpose in a world of horrendous violence.
5. RANDOM: Derweze (or Darvaza)
There's a Gate to Hell in Turkmenistan. Soviet geologists were drilling there in the '70s and the ground collapsed. Underneath the rig was a gas pocket. Thinking it would burn off in a few days, they waited. Well, now it's 40 years later and the pit is still burning. It hasn't stopped since. Hell yes.