Top 5 Mountain Goats Love Songs

I promised several lists about Mountain Goats songs, and I make good on promises, albeit days later and dollars shorter. (What?) Also, Rami, you are absolutely right about "Sax Rohmer #1". That song is a million bloody fists of fury hurling themselves at the door of heaven itself.

Anyway.

5. "Going to Queens" (from the album Sweden)

Going To Queens - The Mountain...

John Darnielle is just plain, damn-good at writing all the possible kinds of love songs. One of his real strengths is the "new love" love song, and for me, this song is the perfect example of that. This song captures that moment when everything speeds up and you realize, goddamn, I really do love this person. And it's never when you expect it--and it's never why or how, either. For this narrator, it's his lady coming out of a shower, dripping wet, while kids outside on the street are jumping rope and singing songs. Something singularly beautiful happens in that moment and the lover becomes "all [he] ever wanted", "all [he'd] ever need".

4. "Broom People" (from the album The Sunset Tree)

Going To Georgia - The Mountai...

Another kind of love song that John can really knock the hell out of is the "Oh God, there is nothing in this ridiculous world that makes any sense, except for you" variety. This song always reminded me of my aunt and uncle, mainly because of the '36 Hudson he references in the first line. According to the man himself though, it's about a kid who gets terrorized in school, but falls in love with this life-changing girl--so even though he still gets the hell beat out of him by the jocks, he can handle it, 'cause he's got his girl. (That's nice, too.) I just love how triumphant it is... despite all the shit and mess and pet hair and "good reasons to freeze to death", this guy knows that when his woman comes over and they close the door, they get to share something that no one else has or understands. If that ain't love, well... I'd say "then I dunno what is", but come on, there's no question here--that's friggin' love, man.

3. "Going to Georgia" (from the album Zopilote Machine)

Going To Georgia - The Mountai...

OH MAN. Then, there is the I-am-an-unpredictable-explosive-force-but-I-know-that-you-will-keep-me-safe love song. "Going to Georgia" is basically a perfect song. It's also the first Mountain Goats song a lot of people here. There is such raw, desperate power in this song--both the lyrics and the vocals--that you cannot help but give it your full attention; it commands you to listen, frankly. "Two big hands and a heart pumping blood and a 1967 Colt .45 with a busted safety catch" is one of the most terrifying-yet-gleeful images I can think of. Fun fact time: Pitr and I have a sweet Mountain Goats faux-cover band called Wolves in the Walls, in which we introduce ourselves as "Two Big Hands" and "A Heart Pumping Blood", respectively. (Was that fact not fun? Oh well, sorry. No refunds.)

2. "International Small Arms Traffic Blues" (from Tallahassee)

International Small Arms Traff...

Honestly, I could have put on all of Tallahassee, an album so earth-shatteringly, mind-bogglingly, noun-adverbially good, that it should be a required course in all US high schools. This is not pretty love. This is not sweet love. This is not lovely love. This is a painful, destructive, watch-the-hell-out, I-will-take-you-down-with-me love that has no respect or regard for anything but its own consummatory force. The cutesy-at-first-glance similes are the hook of this song ("our love is like the border between Greece and Albania", obv), but is there anything that sums this album up better than the bitter-and-yet-disarming admission "the way I feel about you, baby, can't explain it / you've got the best of my love"? Spoiler alert: Fuck, no!

1. "There Will Be No Divorce" (from the album The Coroner's Gambit)

There Will Be No Divorce - The...

This is... this is just... gah. I can't even say anything. I am gushing, I know. This is why I don't write about the Goats that often, I get to this place where I want to jump up and down on people's faces, screaming "Why don't you love this the way I love it!" (Also, pause for a moment and notice that all these songs are less than three minutes long. The sheer amount of poetry-per-second is baffling.) Anyway. This is a simple song. There were hard times, the end was in sight, but at five in the morning, the narrator watches her sleeping and knows it's going to be okay, it's going to work out. Perfect.

The Top 10 Things That I Think Smell Good, But That Are In Some Way Hazardous

Paul Newman Watch = RIP... :( Twins Watch = you gotta believe! Obama Watch = +8 in the Gallup AND I got a Duane Reade cashier to PROMISE to vote for him.

10. Woodshops

This is a total childhood thing. I used to hang out with my dad in the woodshop, watching him work while toiling away on my own little "special projects". (NB: Most of my special projects were stray pieces of wood that happened to look like ducks or something. Oh, also, I ran a business for a while in the 4th grade where I sold little wooden cars. FOR A HEFTY PROFIT!)

9. Spray paint

Looking at the rest of this list, one might get the impression that I have an inhalant addiction. I assure you that I do not. (Although I have seen the movie Love Liza in its entirety and I think it is not too bad?) Also, looking at the list so far, one might get the impression that I have a home-improvements affinity. Again, I assure you that I do not. In my one year tenure as a resident of my current apartment, I have do absolutely nothing to improve my home. However, I've built several tables for my lab. (For one of them, I was just like, "LOOKIT. Here is a large, wooden rectangle. Here are metal poles that I will use as legs. I WILL MAKE THIS WORK," and I did. Because that is totes in my job-descripsh.)

8. Spent matches

You would think it's just for their power as a masking agents, but no, I really just like the smell of burnt sulfur, totally independent of other nasty smells. I dunno, man. Sometimes I just sit around lighting matches, letting them go out, and smelling the results. Years from now, I will be arrested for stealing the complimentary matches they give out at some nice (and, frankly, some not-so-nice) restaurants. I will be imprisoned for this crime for 10 years, but I'll be let out after 2, after an intrepid law student stumbles on a flaw in the case: the matches are, in fact, complimentary. A TV movie will be produced, starring Devon Sawa as me, but never broadcast. 

7. Turpentine

This just gross, I'm sorry. I used to do a lot of oil-based painting, okay? Is that so weird? NO. It isn't. Is it weird that I enjoy the smell of turpentine? Yeah, kinda. Is it weird that I kept at painting even while I obviously had no skill and no desire to be taught? Yes, definitely. Is it weird that in my later periods, I spent FAR more time cleaning my brushes than I did actually putting paint on canvas. Sure. Does this speak to some sort of compulsion or addiction? Get out of my house!

6. Rubbing alcohol

Um. Yeah. What can I say, it has a bracingly pleasant odor. You guys think I'm weird, don't you? You can admit it... Well, fine, tomorrow I'll just do the Top 12 Indiest Indies Of All (Indie) Time so I can get back to my fucking bread and butter. Oooh! Oooh! How about Top 26 Quirkiest Quirks That I Happen To Share With Quirky Film and Television Actor Michael "Captain Quirk" Keaton. I QUIT.

5. Bars

I was kidding about quitting!!! Okay, um, bars. What do bars smell like? Mmm, stale beer and second-rate perfume. It sounds like a Journey song already! Oh, you know what REALLY smells amazing? Super sketchy dive-ass bars. Man, this one time I was at TimeOut on Amsterdam with Pat and Frank (and maybe Rami was there, too?)... by the way, TimeOut doesn't exist anymore. ANYWAY. There had just been some party there and a bunch of food was left over... so Pat's playing with the food and he stumbles upon some hot peppers. Well, this gigantic mountain lion of a man, replete with mane and skeezy-ass goatee, comes over and chews us out for touching his foodstuffs. Then, he lays us 10 to 1 that we can't eat a pepper without crying. Long story short, I made a hundred dollars that night! NICE.

4. Basements

Mostly, it's just the smell of laundry... takes me back to childhood... when I did all that laundry? You guys, it is a warm, musty soapy smell--what is not to love? (Translation: When people go, "Ew... there is a mildewy aroma in this room," I go, "COOL! I WANNA SMELL!" I have terrible taste. And smell? Oh, gosh...)

3. Permanent markers

Especially those really thick, metal ones. I'd sniff those so hard that I'd end up with a comical fake-Hitler mustache. Oh, man... then I bet I'd walk into a social gathering where it would be TOTALLY culturally-inappropriate for me to have such a faux-costume on and there would be screwball hijinks and madcap wackiness a-plenty!

2. Gasoline

Preferably Mobil. (Preferably pre-2000, when it didn't cost that much--am I right or am I right! Who am I kidding, I live in NYC.) Also of note... many of the entries on this list are hydrocarbons. Perhaps I just like the smell of hydrocarbons? Once I had a chemistry teacher who would bug the kids who wore gel in their hair by saying, "Mr. So-and-so, I notice that you are wearing hydrocarbons in your hair. Are you trying to attract a female mate?" Legend has it that he jumped out of window to prove a point once. ONCE.

1. Cigars

My uncle is a cigar aficionado and when he smokes his Cubans, he wears a fez. No lie. Also, once upon a time, Frank and I sat on a stoop while smoking Cubans on 47th Street, singing "You Got What I Need" by Biz Markie. In friggin' harmony, dudes. THAT IS AS GOOD A WAY AS ANY TO END THIS LIST!

Top 8 Best Examples of Modern Satire

Okay, so it makes me livid when people call things that aren't satire satire, especially when there are a fairly decent amount of modern things that deserve the name satire. Basically, the point I'm trying to make here is that saying, "GEORGE BUSH LOOKS LIKE A MONKEY DURRRRRR" isn't satire, because you could just as easily make fun of the appearance of anyone. Satire doesn't have to be political, but it has to cut to the core of the hypocricy/idiocy of its real-life target in a way such that the most frequent targets are stupid political or social viewpoints. AND NOW, the Top 8 BEST examples of modern satire. OH, one more thing: I'm defining "modern" as "in the last twenty years or so" or obviously things like Catch-22 and Tom Lehrer and Randy Newman and Strangelove (which Peter probably wouldn't put on such a list because he is terrible at realizing when Strangelove and Strangelove-related things clearly belong on lists) would be on here.

8. Mr. Show

Alright, so Mr. Show is a sketch show, which obvoiusly means that not every single sketch can be satirical. But Mr. Show picks targets and tears things down more aggressively and more frequently than any other sketch show I've ever seen, and I'd be surprised if any sketch show I haven't did it better. (Chappelle's Show might be close, but it degenerated into catchphrases a little too often.) Sure, there's a decent amount of absurdism, but when the absurdism drops out, sketches like this one hit you right in the fucking face:



That's one of the tightest, most merciless satires of capitalism I've ever seen. Awesome. And I don't even hate capitalism.

7. 30 Rock

It's awfully funny that Aaron Sorkin clearly intended his show, Studio 60, to be the intelligent commentary on the state of the television and entertainment industry, and 30 Rock, which didn't nearly stretch as far trying to be that, ended up doing it about a thousand times better. On Studio 60, the writers on the titular sketch show railed against reality TV. They also did on 30 Rock, right before all admitting that they watched it. Much smarter, much funnier.

Alec Baldwin's Jack and Tracy Morgan's Tracy should be taught in classes as almost perfectly-realized satirical characters. Baldwin's role is more obvious--the conservative, ratings-driven suit--and he is probably the most reliably hilarious part of the show, but I don't think that the brilliance of the writing for Tracy--a satirical version of self-exploiting black actors--gets as much credit as it should. Sure, there's a fair amount of wackiness in this too (most of it funny), but 30 Rock is at its core a pervasive satire of television. And the line in the most recent "Cooter," at a government building with a leaky ceiling: "No, it's not. We looked into it and it's not...I'll show you the study." That is fucking satirical gold right there. (Contrast it to South Park, which would have centered an entire episode on that joke, getting comedy out of the many similarities between the leak and other leaks and instances of government-in-denial. Which, again, makes the joke about the references, not about representing a government with the endemic problem of doing that.) 30 Rock, however, owes a ton to...

6. The Larry Sanders Show

Larry Sanders is maybe the greatest satire of the entertainment world ever created. Every celebrity who appears on the show, as themselves, is self-mocking in subtle but ruthless ways, to the point where I'm kinda surprised that people kept lining up to guest on the show. It either proves that Hollywood is pretty okay with making fun of itself, or that Hollywood doesn't realize when a team of brilliant writers (including Judd Apatow, Richard Day later of Arrested Development, Paul Simms of NewsRadio creation and now Flight of the Conchords, John Riggi now of 30 Rock...the list goes on) is savaging them. Here is the greatest news of all: every episode of Larry Sanders is currently available on YouTube. FOR FUCKING FREE. This is the greatest day of your life. Here, I'll start you off:


(Another good idea for a list: "Ways 30 Rock is indebted to Larry Sanders." Or maybe "Ways every single good comedy since Larry Sanders is indebted to Larry Sanders.")

5. Bill Hicks

Bill Hicks probably wins the award for all-time greatest satirical stand-up comedian. He was never content to make easy political jabs at an issue; he goes straight into it and talks very directly about everything that is wrong with the viewpoint of those who oppose him. "It's funny because it's true" is something often associated with observational comedy, but the best satire hits right there, too. And man was this guy funny. This is maybe the greatest takedown of fundamentalist Christianity ever done:



RIP, Bill.

4. The Onion's Our Dumb World

I know this is awfully high-up for something not that well-known and very recent, but I recently finished reading this entire thing through, and wow, does it have some of the best satirical writing I have ever seen. On nearly every country, the jokes cut straight to the most horrible and problematic stuff, and there is absolutely no apology made. A few examples:

on the map of South Africa, an "X" labeled: "Woman having consensual sex fantasy."
in the facts section on Iraq: "Leading Cause of Death: victory"
the subtitle of Germany: "Genocide-free since April 11, 1946"

I highly, highly recommend you buy this book right now. It's more relentless and probably better than America: the Book, which I loved.

3. The Thick of It

This is almost certainly the most savage serial comedy I have ever seen. It deals with the innerworkings of British government, only the main character, the Minister of Social Affairs, spends about 99% of his time making it look like his department is doing something worthwhile and 1% of the time doing something, which is usually not worthwhile. If The West Wing is essentially a show about how we all wish government were actually run, The Thick of It is a show about how we all fear it probably is run. Spot on, and hilarious. And like Larry Sanders, YouTube currently has every single episode available online, You're welcome.



2 and 1. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report

This. This ought to be the first thing anyone thinks of when they think of modern satire. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report consistently take angles on stories covered by every other comedian that cut to the basic problems and idiocy behind them. They don't sit on the sidelines and snipe easy targets, they make jokes that hurt because their targets are so deserving. There's a lot of crap made about people getting their news from The Daily Show, and I think that's basically a non-issue for several reasons:

1) The only studies I have seen are about people preferring The Daily Show to other TV news. Most people who are smart enough to enjoy The Daily Show probably do not watch TV news because TV news is awful. They read newspapers in print or online. The Daily Show isn't really that funny if you're not up on political events, so I don't really get how they assume that people get their news from it.
2) In a way, The Daily Show is not basically "worse" than most news. The difference is that most news makes the assumptions that politicians and news outlets act in a basically sensible manner, and The Daily Show assumes that they act in a nonsensical manner. If you're really cynical, you might say that means The Daily Show is at least as valid. I'm not that cynical, but I also don't think that normal news assumptions and Daily Show assumptions receive a 100/0 split.
3) The Daily Show, more than a show critical of politicians (which it also is), is very much a show generally critical of most news media. And usually what they do there is simply show montages of idiotic news media and have Jon Stewart react. That's not confusing, it's simply presenting.

Anyway, I love The Daily Show. When I said in that other list that South Park isn't that sane eye watching over the rest of the world for hypocrisy--the way it thinks of itself--well, The Daily Show is that. Almost every joke is pointed and the targets are deserving.

All of this goes again for The Colbert Report, which is perhaps framed more aggressively as a satire of Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, etc., but acutally veers off into absurdism a little more frequently.

If there is a perfect example of The Daily Show both being funny and sane when it seems like everyone else has lost it, here it is:

Okay, it's not embedding, so here you go.