Gossip Girl 3x20

On Gossip Girl there’s another one of those comfy and cozy breakfasts at the van der Woodsens with Lily and Rufus, Serena and Eric, as well as Jenny and long-lost father William – no matter how good those waffles are, that must be pretty awkward! In fact, I find the whole situation excruciatingly tedious... It’s obvious William is up to something and Lily is acting agonizingly ignorant. After last week’s Tisch fiasco, Dan and Vanessa remain painfully uncomfortable in their relationship, skirting around, oh, I don’t know, her internship in Haiti... For Blair things seem to have hit rock bottom: she never liked being an NYU student, and now she’s pretending to attend Columbia, just to regain some measure of credibility as the Queen B. And whaddayaknow she finds herself admitted even if she never applied to Columbia herself – but Chuck did months ago on the spur of the moment. Yeah, that’s life for the Upper East Side elite, dammit. Wish I were so lucky.

Progessive Metal

Last week progressive rock, this time progressive metal! Recently your Music Cricket made a new discovery: the early-nineties progressive death metal band Nocturnus. If, like me, you enjoy your Atheist, Cynic, mid-career Death and mid-career Carcass, you will certainly appreciate Nocturnus, too. I can’t believe no one ever mentioned them before. They hail from the same Florida scene as Atheist, Cynic and Death, as well as Deicide, Morbid Angel, Obituary, and countless others. With their raging whirlwinds of blistering guitar riffs, lightening fast thunderous blasts of drum beats, virtuoso solos, odd time signatures, and complex song structures, Nocturnus have also been instrumental in the development of technical and progressive metal. What’s more, they had a keyboard player who added spacey atmospheres, and their lyrics uncharacteristically do not deal with the ghoulish and macabre, screaming bloody gore, death-dealing Armageddon, or hell-raising Satanism, but rather with occult science fiction themes, reminiscent of H. P. Lovecraft. What an amazing find! Please get yourself a copy of The Key!

A friend of mine first mentioned Opeth to me already five years ago now, knowing better than I did then how much I would appreciate their music. Opeth’s sound is a unique blend of progressive rock and (melodic) death metal with hints of gothic rock, folk, classical, jazz and some blues, taking cues from Yes, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Celtic Frost, Mercyful Faith/King Diamond, Slayer, Death and Morbid Angel, as well as fellow Scandinavians Arch Enemy, In Flames, and At the Gates. I guess it’s hard to top their classic masterpiece Blackwater Park (2001), even if Ghost Reveries (2005) comes close. Lately, I have been listening to their most recent album Watershed (2008). On this outing, Opeth treats us on songs averaging seven-and-a-half minutes, meandering compositions, shifting time signatures, beautiful melodic acoustic passages alternating with heavy riffing, thumping bass lines, thunderous drum blasts, mysterious keyboard swaths, and deft guitar solos. I’m particularly fond of “Heir Apparent,” but can recommend the album to any fan of heavy metal.

I’m not sure why I never picked up a CD of Liquid Tension Experiment. It’s not like I never once had one in my hands. Three-fourth of the project consists of (current) members of Dream Theater, Mike Portnoy, John Petrucci and Jordan Rudess, plus longtime King Crimson bass player Tony Levin (who’s also Peter Gabriel’s favorite bassist). How can you go wrong? How about never? At least, not in my book. Well, some tunes are a little tacky, like “State of Grace” and “Hoursglass.” But mostly, we’re talking about hard hitting instrumental rock, mixed with a dose of heavy metal and hints of jazz fusion. All musicians involved are incredibly proficient – not only in the vein of the virtuoso metal of Steve Vai and Joe Satriani, but also like jazz fusion masters John McLaughlin and Al di Meola. The guys feast us on dramatic mood shifts and dynamic tempo changes. We get the overly self-indulgent noodling, otherwise known as musical improvisation, or extemporized group jams – a prime example of which is the near-half hour of “Three Minute Warning” in five parts! Favorites are “Paradigm Shift” and “Universal Mind” from the first album, and “Acid Rain” and “Chewbacca” from the second. I don’t think I need to say more, you already know whether you’re going to like the LTE. So, go ahead, and find ‘em!

Horizon: The Universe

In the Beginning there was Nothing and Nothing was in the Beginning. Then, in one Cosmic Explosion Everything was Created and in a Big Bang the Universe came into Existence. Energy became Matter and out of Darkness came Light. And when Darkness was Night and Light was Day, so there was Time. Then Stars moved across the Universe, and so there was Space. This is the Creation Myth of Modern Science. Is it wrong? Doesn’t it sound frightfully familiar? Is Everything We Know About the Universe Wrong? That’s the question the most recent installment of my favorite program BBC Horizon asks. First of all, this Creation Myth cannot explain the origin of Time and Space; it leaves open the question what came Before and what is Beyond. A while ago we spoke about the Inflation Theory of the Universe, which implies that there are an infinite number of universes infinitely expanding. This theory helps to explain why temperature remains constant throughout the universe, which shouldn’t be the result of a giant explosion, but could be due to inflation.

Another problem is that galaxies do not behave according to the laws of gravity: they move like a disc, with all the stars within a galaxy going at the same speed, rather than going faster the closer they get to the gravitational center. So another theory was proposed to account for this behavior. Can you guess what they called the theory? “Dark Matter”! Ooh, how sinister! Recent observations, moreover, appear to have discovered a motion of galactic clusters in the same direction (i.e., rather than outward), which has been dubbed “Dark Flow.” Evil, dark flow! Even more recent observations have lead to the conclusion that the universe isn’t just expanding infinitely, but is in fact expanding at an accelerated rate. This can only mean that there is some mysterious increase of cosmic energy, which – as you can guess by now – has been dubbed “Dark Energy”... A cosmic big bang, invisible dark matter, evil dark flow, omnipresent dark energy... It does make you wonder... we must be missing something, because this can’t be how the universe operates. There are too many exceptions and additional explanations required to make the theory work. Perhaps one day our children or our children’s children will learn an entirely new Creation Myth in school!

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

A movie I have been meaning to see for twenty years, but never got ‘round to, because I always forgot and didn’t really know what it was about ... is Peter Greenaway’s 1989 film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (resp. played by Richard Bohringer, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren and Alan Howard). Visually, the movie is a lavish and grand spectacle: the cinematography, the sets, the décor, the food displays, and the costumes designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier. (Every set has its own color, and costumes change in color along with the sets: blue outside, green in the kitchen, red in the restaurant, white in the restroom, brown in the bookshop.) I cannot say I’m a big fan of the score composed by Michael Nyman... It’s all very theatrical and formalist, but tedious as a result. Most annoying is the titular thief who has a violent oral fixation of Freudian proportions and who just keeps jabbering on and on about how brilliant he is, and how stupid everybody else is. It’s already terribly annoying after five minutes, but alas we have to endure his boorish bawls throughout ... practically on end... You can essentially guess the plot just from the title: the wife of a thief is having an affair in the cook’s restaurant, and then the thief finds out... Food, sex, and violence; life, love, and death... Hmmm... what was all the fuss about? Pray tell.

Tudors 4x03

In the Tudor England of Henry VIII and his fifth wife Catherine Howard nothing much is happening it would seem... While Henry is indisposed due to the ulcerating boil on his leg, his tweeting queen, this neighing foal, caves in to the seductive charms of that cunning Culpeper and takes him as her lover. On his part, Henry grows a liking to his former queen, Anne, and visits her bedchamber. Moaning and groaning apart, the King stirs up some dirt by touring the North, forgiving the populace for the recent uprising (the Pilgrimage of Grace which he had suppressed ruthlessly), gaining much needed popularity in preparation for a confrontation with James, King of Scots. In this endeavor, Henry has brought his eldest daughter, Lady Mary, who displays true regal composure – despite her resentment for the new queen – in striking contrast to her royal majesty’s lowly demeanor. Meanwhile, Lord Surrey is brewing up a storm against the Seymour family. To be honest, I cannot say I particularly enjoyed this rather tedious episode.

Dexter 2x10

The second season of Dexter is shaping up nicely for the season finale, so plots need to start twisting, curve balls need to be thrown. The two pressing questions we’re dealing with, that Dexter is dealing with, are: How to avoid getting caught as the Bay Harbor Butcher, and what to do with Sgt. Doakes who’s locked up in the remote cabin on the Miami Everglades? Honestly, the suspense is killing me! It’s a good thing the homicide department is suspecting Doakes and not Dexter! The remarkable thing about this show is how compelling the narrative is: imagine the conversation Dex and Doakes are having in that secret cabin! Who’s going to live, who’s going to jail? Dexter has been raised by his foster father Harry to believe in two primary guidelines: never to get caught and only to kill deserving victims. Doakes doesn’t fall in the latter category, but setting him free goes against the first and more important rule... Oh, the dilemma!

Meanwhile Dex’ sis Deb is forced to think of her future with special agent Lundy, as he won’t be around after the Bay Harbor Butcher’s case is settled... Rita approaches Dex again, but she doesn’t want to rush things ... she just wants to hang ... not date. That psychopathic pyromaniac, Lila with the luscious lips, is hooking up with Sgt. Batista (Dex’ buddy) ... in a twisted way to get back at Dex ... and sets Batista up for date-raping her! Through his conversation with Doakes and some further research, Dex learns that his father Harry (who he thought died of a heart attack) committed suicide when he found out his son had murdered his first victim. Even though he had trained his son all his life for this, when it finally became a reality, he couldn’t face the monster he had created. Now Dex finally knows what it means to have a guilty conscious: he feels he killed his father. You see, this is why this is such an incredible show. It snuck up on me, but I’m liking it more and more.

Gossip Girl 3x19

So, the big shocker on Gossip Girl last time was that Serena caught her mother, Lily, in a Palm Beach hotel room with her long-lost father William van der Woodsen (Billy Baldwin). In Serena’s absence, of course sly little Jenny is scheming to get with Nate. (Remember, this is the boy tramp who has been with all the girls – Blair, Vanessa, Serena, you name it!) Now that Blair and Chuck broke up, they can go back to their old lives! She’s inviting about a dozen eligible bachelors for a luncheon, a rebound reception, and he’s, well, having a busy few days, getting wasted and bringing cheap girls home. But the bachelors never show up, and Chuck knows he’s merely filling up the emptiness left by Blair. Rufus sure isn’t ready for meeting his wife’s ex, but Lily confesses she has been ill and only her ex could give her the medical treatment she needs... The kind of warped logic only an Upper East Sider can follow: even Rufus is confused, since they live in the epicenter of medical expertise... Dan and Vanessa both applied for NYU’s highly selective Tisch School of Arts, but only she got in... Then there’s some Bushwick art party, oh, Bushwisk, where everything comes to a head. Seems like all our couples are on ice again. And of course, we all knew there’s something odd when Lily’s illness relapses: William’s been messing with her prescription. Ah, the scandalous lives of the Manhattan elite. I’ll admit, it’s getting a tad tedious, even for me.