Tom’s Top 25 Albums of 2022

2022! Another year in the books! Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine! Volodymyr Zelenskyy invades all our hearts! Queen Elizabeth died! Charles III is the first corpse ever to become King of the UK! A bunch of really bad things happened with respect to women’s rights and American democracy in general!

A lot of good music came out, too! Here are 25 albums I deemed worthy enough to assemble into a list and shove off onto the unsuspecting Internet. Don’t bother to make a drinking game out of how many times total I used the word “industrial” in this post. The answer is eight. See you all in 2023, which isn’t even a real year.

#25 – Superorganism – World Wide Pop

One of the more colorful albums of the year came from Superorganism’s weirdo collective and their off-kilter pop sensibilities. Featuring glossy, over-the top songs of controlled chaos, slippery hooks, frantic tempos, and a grab bag of assorted musical ideas, the band attempts to throw everything at the wall. I’ll admit that this stuff isn’t perfect, but I had a lot of fun with World Wide Pop and it deserves to make it on my list this year. If I’m going to listen to straight-up pop music, I’d rather be weird about it.

#24 – Oneida – Success

Oneida has been keeping it weird for decades, freely playing noisy rock music that takes the foundations of indie rock and bastardizes it into something unrecognizable. On Success, the songs are full of bizarre, energetic hooks, fuzzy garage punk jamming, grungy alt-rock, and all around kitschy, self-aware fun. The highlight is the pseudo-cover of the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” (“I wanna hold your hand/Between my teeth/I won’t draw blood/Don’t want it on me“). See, there’s my sense of humor in action. It’s disappointing.

#23 – Guided by Voices – Crystal Nuns Cathedral

Keeping up with Robert Pollard’s Guided by Voices project is nothing short of impossible since the guy has been putting out 70 records a year for the last 180 years, and god knows I haven’t been keeping up with it all myself. There’s a distinctive difference between his current period and his classic mid-’90s period, though. It’s not lo-fi, and he seems to have a real band behind him.  Plus, there’s not the usual hodge-podge of 20 songs. It’s as if Pollard is restraining himself with age. OR, he’s running out of ideas! In either case, Crystal Nuns Cathedral is a great collection of melodic indie rock, loaded with vibrant hooks and ’60s pop pastiches. It may not be life-changing or ground-breaking, but it gets a decent spot on my list.

#22 – BUÑUEL – Killers Like Us

Your own mileage may vary when it comes to noisy bullshit with “vocals” by an incredibly jacked black dude with an incredibly intimidating stage presence, but I adore this kind of stuff. Gritty, dirgy, uncompromisingly harsh, aggressively desperate. It’s impossible for me to focus on anything else when I’m listening to Killers Like Us. Throw this one on, son, you need a little more chest hair.

#21 – Chat Pile – God’s Country

Based out of Oklahoma, Chat Pile’s take on sludgy, political noise rock sounds a lot like if Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad was really angry about social injustice. Lead vocalist Raygun Busch rants and raves about nihilism, futility of human existence, pessimism of human beings in general, all over squealing guitars and feedback noise. He really sells it, too. I can actual believe the pain and incredulity in his voice while he screams stuff like “I COULDN’T SURVIVE OUT IN THE STREETS! COULD YOU?! I’VE NEVER HAD TO PUSH MY SHIT AROUND IN A SHOPPING CART!” There’s so much good use of empty space here too, creating crushing tension. The silence is louder than anything. Fuck heavy metal, this shit is the real scary music!

#20 – Luminous Vault – Animate the Emptiness

I love me some industrial black metal, so Luminous Vault’s debut album hits the spot more than most of the metal I’ve heard all year. The awesome, dripping rainbow album art is worth the price of admission alone, but the music’s combination of industrial electronica with extreme metal is nothing short of captivating. Buzzing synths with melancholic, clean guitar riffs. Thumping EDM beats with hoarse, gritty shrieking. Sprinkles of fizzy synth crescendos with soaring power metal chords. None of it’s ever cheesy. I never feel stupid for listening to it, and that’s the most important part! On the list it goes.

#19 – Jenny Hval – Classic Objects

This Norwegian singer-songwriter puts out album after album of disquieting, cerebral music. Covering topics such as religion, love, politics, and social justice with nuance and poetry, Classic Objects is just another notch in her oversized belt. A lot of ghostly field recordings and dreamlike stream-of-consciousness ramblings are here that requires active listening to fully unlock the magic, so if you’re a passive listener then check elsewhere. Maybe you’re just not ready for this woman’s big ol’ belt! Maybe you’d prefer listening to Justin Bieber and Ed Sheeran fight over who has the most garish tattoos of all time.

#18 – The Otolith – Folium Limina

Some real kickass stuff here. Folium Limina is a 63-minute slab of atmospheric, drawn-out, grandiose doom metal laced with enchanting violins and crushing guitars. Add ethereal female vocals and you’ve got one of the most engrossing metal projects of the year. I usually have a problem with metal albums exceeding an hour in length, because where do these metal bands fucking get off? But the Otolith’s debut has no filler at all. It’s like Neurosis if Neurosis wasn’t so boring! Sorry, that’s unfair. But life isn’t fair.

#17 – Black Dresses – Forget Your Own Face

It’s another year, so it’s another album from the angry Canadian “fuck my life for being born queer” noise rock duo. It’s twenty glorious minutes of yelling stuff like “Wish you were me? Man, I wish you weren’t me/You got this record deal but you’re so ugly” and “Everything I want is fiction/What I need does not exist” and “I am so easy, whoever you are/You can take whatever you need from me” over industrial noise and avant-melodies and distorted bullshit. Corporate greed? Bigotry? Patriarchy? Persecution? Ada Rook and Devi McCallion are here to say FUCK all that noise. This is raw emotion. If you don’t like this then just throw away your music collection!

#16 – Oliver Sim – Hideous Bastard

I have to admit that I was originally drawn into this by the cover. Had I known Oliver Sim was one of the guys from The xx, and band I don’t like very much at all, I would’ve never given this a shot. I WOULD HAVE THROWN IT INTO A FIREPIT. This album is good though; a display of uncomfortable vulnerability, personal struggles with homosexuality, and insecurities aplenty. All that with chugging drums and cool vocal layers. It’s like Perfume Genius were actually interesting! But he’s not, so here we are.

#15 – Big Thief – Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You

After half a dozen years of listening to Big Thief and not understanding the hype, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You made a fan out of me. Also, typing the full album title pads the word count out on this list, which is always a good thing. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You is 80 minutes of off-kilter folk, alt-country, a little psychedelia, a little noise rock, a little shoegaze, and all around excellent songwriting. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You is the best album called Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You you’ll find all year!

#14 – Black Cross Hotel – Hex

Traditional heavy metal and post-punk filtered through an eerie haunted house. What the hell is this stuff? I’ve never heard anything like this! Punk vocals, punk attitude, heavy metal riffage, John Carpenter synth flourishes, with lyrics all alluding to horror movies. IT’S A COMBINATION THAT MAKES ME WANT TO THROW THIS ALBUM IN THE FIREPIT! But it works, and it’s addictive, and I can’t get enough of it. Spin this disc on Halloween and put on your nerd glasses, kids. This is one for SPOOKY SEASON.

#13 – Zeal & Ardor – Zeal & Ardor

Manuel Gagneux got himself a real band and made a great album of eclectic, disparate styles. The man — who once took suggestions on Bandcamp and made songs that mashed genres together — is seasoned at making music that sounds unusually cohesive. Apocalyptic soul, industrial gospel, piano balladry, baleful blues, outlaw country, chamber pop, there’s no stone left unturned… ok, well you can think of many unturned stones, but give me another 2022 album that so seamlessly fuses all these disparate styles and makes it sound so natural. You can’t. Don’t even try. I know where you live.

#12 – Panda Bear / Sonic Boom – Reset

I didn’t think I’d like an album that took a lot of cues from the stink-ass Beach Boys, but here we are. Panda Bear teams up with long-time collaborator Sonic Boom and actually allows him to share the artist credits this time! Besides the Beach Boys, you can hear influences pulled from the Beatles, ELO, the Zombies, Tangering Dream, Kraftwerk, Sparks, Lou Reed, and many others while keeping some of the usual glossy indie sensibilities of Animal Collective. If you like sunny classic rock, you will like this. But maybe this isn’t for you. Maybe you like to hear Robert Plant shout “BAYEE-BAY! BAYEE-BAY!” over and over again. If that’s the case, you can skip this fun album.

#11 – Just Mustard – Heart Under

What I like the most of Just Mustard’s second album is the eerie combination of shoegaze with industrial rock and trip hop. Like a noisier Portishead, with scraping guitars, watery echos, and the sounds of filthy old machinery in a haunted steel mill. Melody turns to chaos. Like dream-pop slipping into a nightmare. Like My Bloody Valentine gone slightly demonic. Very original stuff! Lots of tension! Unnerving! Lovely! I’m hungry right now, I think I’ll eat just mustard!

#10 – SASAMI – Squeeze

Industrial nu-metal and country pop? What the fuck? Yes! Sometimes it’s entirely one, sometimes it’s entirely the other, and sometimes the two shall meet in a gloriously odd way. Surging metal riffs, grungy anachronistic alt-rock, distorted vocals, cheesy Shania Twain-eqsue country anthems, hipster bullshit; the whole grab bag approach is thoroughly exciting. Look how excited I am right now. It’s very exciting. I can’t wait to see what SASAMI does next. I hope it’s Beethoven’s 9th conducted entirely with an orchestra of farts.

#9 – An Abstract Illusion – Woe

Pensive, aggressive, bluesy, synthy, extreme, deafening, dynamic, mellow. These are all words that describe me! And, in a pinch, they also describe An Abstract Illusion’s excellent sophomore progressive metal album. Atmospheric synths and ambient passages. Adventurous songwriting and dense riffs. Haunting clean vocals and crushing death metal vocals. Cathartic crescendos and, uh… cathartic decrescendos. If you’re card-carrying member the Porcupine Tree or Opeth club, then this is a must-listen. But maybe this isn’t for you. Maybe you like to hear Robert Plant shout “BAYEE-BAY! BAYEE-BAY!” over and over again! Sorry, I’m repeating myself. Sorry, I’m repeating myself.

#8 – Black Country, New Road – Ants from Up There

Black Country, New Road’s second album isn’t quite the blowout that the debut album was, but its departure from the sound I fell in love with had grown on me as the year went on. Instead of the abrasive, unlistenable, ugly catharsis of Album #1, here there’s soaring, melancholy, beautiful catharsis! Catharsis all the same, though, and it gets a very respectable spot in my Top 25. Lead vocalist Isaac Wood has a nervous breakdown and works in a bakery now, so Album #3 is assuredly going to be an even more wild departure. I’m here for it.

#7 – Animal Collective – Time Skiffs

The ultimate hipster band put out the first listenable album in over 10 years. Slippery, colorful art pop with the kind of hooks that nobody but Animal Collective can pull off, AND it’s not even annoying like Strawberry Jam or Merriweather Post Pavilion! These people are old now, so toning it down a tad is exactly the direction that their music needed. I look forward to this continuation of toning it down until I can’t tell if I’m listening to Animal Collective or Beach House, and then I can safely say that I hate this band all over again.

#6 – Viagra Boys – Cave World

Hot off the heels of last year’s Welfare Jazz comes Cave World, Swedish punk group’s third album. And let me tell you something: this stuff slaps. Viagra Boys always slaps. I’ll slap you if you don’t listen to it! No, I certainly won’t. I’m a man of peace. Songs here stick to two themes: self-deprecation/ironic arrogance and transparent political commentary. There are three, count ’em THREE, songs about humanity’s failure to evolve! There’s a song about all the microchips in the Covid vaccines where he sounds like a ranting Nick Cave and playing the part of a frothing alt-right conspiracy theorist! There are a couple of songs about how shitty fragile alpha males are! I love this album, I love this band, I love this album, AND I love this album!

#5 – SCALPING – Void

Imagine a combination of industrial noise, pulsing EDM, dour hip-hop, some restrained punk, and plenty of organic percussion, and you’ll have a decent idea of how Scalping’s proper debut sounds. I think the cover does a pretty good job to make a visual out of the dark, ethereal, yet sharp and contained music. Hard to all imagine, right? That’s why you need to listen to the damn thing instead of reading about it! Weirdo.

#4 – Mary Halvorson – Amaryllis

Mary Halvorson is one of the most interesting guitarists in modern jazz. A disciple of Anthony Braxton, my favorite jazz musician, her avantgarde techniques are slow and steady, never aggressive. She is able to make her guitar slip and slide as she flows like water between microtones. Amaryllis is one of two albums that Halvorson dropped this year — the other Belladonna, which, embarrassingly, I haven’t listened to yet considering how great Amaryllis is. It’s nothing short of spectacular, featuring a sextet of accomplished musicians, angular and labyrinthian slabs of layered guitar/vibraphone, brassy solos of both trumpet and trombone, subtle bass backbones, and shuffling drums. Subdued and experimental, the group often sounds like Eric Dolphy’s archival releases with off-kilter lounge atmospheres and sudden tempo shifts. I could talk about about this release for another 600 words, but I won’t! I’ll just leave Amaryllis here at a very respectable #4.

#3 – Drug Church – Hygiene

Post-hardcore in the good noise rock way and not the bad emo way, Drug Church plays a very satisfying combination of melodic hardcore punk with the kind of stark, pensive, and cerebral punk rock you’d get from your Minneapolis scene bands — Hüsker Dü, the Replacements, or (if you really want to dig deep) Arcwelder. The hooks on Hygiene are incredible, and the succinct 26-minute run time means I’m starting this fucker over from the beginning after the last notes of “Athlete on Bench” are finished. Criminally underrated stuff, don’t sleep on it.

#2 – Spiritualized – Everything Was Beautiful

Jason Pierce, aka J. Spaceman (pronounced spuh-CHEH-men, if you’re into 30 Rock), is incapable of making a bad album. Even at their worst, they’re remarkably consistent. This is Spiritualized’s NINTH album, holy shit, and it’s fantastic. It feels like a spiritual successor to their near-perfect 1997 album Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, from the spacey opener “Always Together With You” to the bluesy rocker “Best Thing You Never Had” to the ambiguously themed “The Mainline Song” (which could be about drugs OR trains OR both!) and beyond. Addictive melodies, cathartic instrumental choruses, resonant lyrics, this album wouldn’t be out of place if it dropped in 1970. Since I love classic rock, this one is a no-brainer. Thank you, Dr. Spaceman.

#1 – black midi – Hellfire

It’s a good year for bands with “black” in their name! The fourth “black” album on my list, but first in my heart. black midi’s third studio album is everything that I was looking for this year: jaw-droppingly crisp virtuosity, avant-prog polyrhythms, hyper-speed vocals, military drum cadences, out-of-place lounge jazz and syrupy crooning, existential dread, and much, much more! The music is colorful, piecing together components that shouldn’t work as well as it does. The guitars are herky-jerky, the melodies are cartoony, the arrangements are impossibly tight, the tension is palpable. I should make this my #1 of the year! Oh wait.


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The Eye of the World (Book 1) – Chapter 25: “The Traveling People”

The Wheel of Time - Book 1 - The Eye of the World

Wolves are scary. Perrin and Egwene are scared traveling with Elyas and his pack of hungry, hungry, bitey, chewy wolves. In actuality, they’re all pleasant enough, but Egewene is very nervous and Perrin would rather starve than to continue to eat well while traveling with the wolves. These two are a couple of pussy wimps.

At least Perrin hasn’t had any Dark One dreams since he started Hangin’ with Mr. Elyas. Most of his dreams have been nice, but they have all contained a wolf with its back turned to him. I wonder if that means something! We’ll find out in Book 11!

A couple of dogs show up and begin harassing them, but Elyas quells the beasts and finds out that they belong to a nearby camp of Tinkers. The Tuath’an. The Traveling People. The Tinkers are good at tinkering; fixing broken shit, making good quality shit, shit like that. Egwene doesn’t want to chill with no stinkin’ tinkers, but Perrin suggests they should, and what Perrin wants Perrin gets!

Elyas has a congenial, although a bit tense relationship with a Tinker named Raen. He’s the Seeker. He dedicates his life to finding a song, the song, the song that will reverse the Breaking of the World. They don’t know what the song is, how to find the song, or even recognize the song if they even came across the song! It’s really dumb, but they have faith and that’s good enough for some people.

Raen has a wife named Ila. She’s very nice and she cooks good food. Raen and Ila have a really hot grandson named Aram that fancies Egwene, and she herself gets moist in the loins. They run away together to go dancing for a bit. Probably grind up against each other for a time in front of Aram’s mother.

The Traveling People don’t believe in violence, but rather pacifism and running away when confronted with people who wish to do harm. Perrin thinks this is nuts, but the Way of the Leaf is not nuts! You’re nuts! Being violent is nuts! They argue this for a bit until Elyas tells Perrin to put a sock in it.

Storytime around the fire! A group of Tinkers were traveling across the spooky desert known as the Aiel Waste. They came across a band of female warriors called the Far Dareis Mai who had been through the spooky Blight (land of Trollocs and the Myrddraal and the Dark One and Adolf Hitler and Frank Costanza) and now they were dead. Except one, who was dying and gave a message of warning to the Tinkers: the Dark One wants to blind the Eye of the World and destroy the Wheel of Time, essentially. He means to do so and he’ll do it by the time Jeopardy comes on.

Perrin wants to know more, but Elyas tells Raen to put a sock in it. Awfully curious. Perrin has dreams about the Eye of the World…

The plot thickens like chicken gravy! Too bad Egwene is too busy getting her bone on to care much about that right now. She just wants to know that Rand and Mat are all right. Perrin reassures her that they must be all right, but after saying it out loud he’s not sure he really believes it.

Rand and Mat, as we know, are frolicking on the ship juggling with the gleeman. A fate worse than death.


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Home Alone (1990)

Tagline:
A family comedy without the family.

Wide Release Date:
November 16, 1990

Directed by:
Chris Columbus
Written by by:
John Hughes
Produced by:
John Hughes

Starring:
Macaulay Culkin
Joe Pesci
Daniel Stern
John Heard
Roberts Blossom
Catherine O’Hara

Home Alone

PREGAME THOUGHTS

This is the first movie I remember ever seeing in the theater. I was three years old at the time, and while I don’t remember the movie-going experience quite as well as the time I saw Home Alone 2 two years later, this quickly became one of my all-time favorites as a little kid by the time I had the VHS tape.

I literally have not seen this movie in over 25 years. Let’s see if it holds up.

THE 200(ish)-WORD SYNOPSIS

Macaulay Culkin is 8-year-old Kevin McCallister from a rich suburb of Chicago. Youngest of five children, and almost the youngest of a million cousins. It’s Christmastime, and it’s the night before the family’s 900 members shove off to Paris for the holidays. It’s hectic.

An incident during dinner gets Kevin in TrouBle (with a capital “T” and, for good measure, a capital “B”), sending him to bed without dinner on the third floor away from most of the rest of the house. Mad as the dickens, he tells his mother Kate (Catherine O’Hara) that he never wants to see any of his family again.

Home Alone

The disembodied head of Uncle Frank haunts Kevin McCallister to this day.

And he thinks his wish comes true! The family runs late and scrambles to get out of the house and to the airport, completely forgetting Kevin at home the process. He initially spends his good fortune running around the house, jumping on the bed, eating massive amounts of ice cream, watching R-rated movies, and being a general spaz. Eventually, he becomes more responsible: going to the grocery store, doing laundry, cleaning up after himself, and decorating for Christmas.

While Kevin is living it up, the neighborhood is being stalked by criminals Harry (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern), who are hoping to clean up on all the houses that are empty for the holidays. Once Kevin catches wind that these two have eyes on his house, he does what he can to lead them away.

Meanwhile, Kate is alone in attempting a return back home. She gets a flight to Pennsylvania, but all flights to Chicago are booked. A guy named Gus (John Candy), member of a travelling polka band, offers her a ride in their van back to Chicago, which she cautiously accepts.

Home Alone

♫ The Candy Man can ’cause he mixes it with love and plays a mean clarinet. ♫

Here comes the fun part! Kevin overhears Harry and Marv planning to break into the McCallister house on Christmas Eve night, so he prepares a real smorgasbord of booby traps throughout the house. Needless to say, injuries abound. Long story short, the bad guys are thwarted and eventually arrested.

Kevin wakes up Christmas Day to find his family still gone, but then Kate shows up through the front door. They reconcile right before the rest of the family arrives home after having taken a flight directly from Paris. Everyone lives happily ever after the end.

TOM’S DISCUSSION CORNER

TOPIC 1 — Bein’ Home Alone

Even as a youngin’ — younger than Kevin — I thought the prospect of being completely home alone for a few days was an attractive one. A lot of that came from how nice Kevin’s house is; being rich would increase the enjoyment tremendously. I spent the first six years of my life in a semi-shitty house in a trashy neighborhood with the nearest grocery store roughly 427 miles away, so I’d have to make sure there was plenty of food in the house already. No cans, though, as I did not possess the nimble dexterity required to operate a can opener at the time. The microwave was also too high for me, as were most of the items in the refrigerator. I would be limited to boxes of Pop Tarts on the bottom shelf of the modest pantry, which I would be okay with as long as there were at least three different varieties for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Home Alone

I definitely wouldn’t be trimming a tree that I chopped down myself. I’m 35 and I can barely remember to water my own tree regularly.

I would likely spend much of my time watching Nickelodeon and playing Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES, which isn’t very imaginative. The important thing here is that no one would be able to tell me to stop, which was always a frustrating obstacle for my childhood media consumption endeavors.

I’d also have to leave the lights on in the whole house while I slept, considering the house was replete with scary monsters that would be waiting to eat my flesh and bones in the wee hours of the night. A baseball bat would have to be at arm’s length, and I would need to practice swinging in the backyard for a few hours to prepare as I was, to be generous, unwieldy.

Never mind. Being home alone at age six doesn’t sound logistically sound. I just wanted to play endless amounts of Nintendo, I guess.

TOPIC 2 — Harry and Marv

Boy, are these guys dumb. They had such a good thing going in the beginning, with Harry’s ingenious plan to impersonate a cop to survey the houses from the inside, and Marv’s ingenious plan to stay completely out of it and let Harry do the thinking.

Home Alone

Fun fact: Daniel Stern had to be assured that tarantulas don’t have ears before he screamed right into its delicate and tender little ears.

It seems like a halfway intelligent guy like Harry would’ve dumped Marv a long time ago. Is he really the best he can do? Dump that zero and get yourself a hero, son. The dude’s calling card is flooding houses, that’s not very subtle at all!

So Kevin tricks them that the house is full of people until the end, when they finally realize that he’s alone in the house. This is where this wacky movie, where an 8-year-old thwarts two adults with zany booby traps, loses me. Why would anybody rob a house that is known to be occupied? What do they have to gain by attempting to rob a house blind while a kid in the house could call the cops during any open five seconds? To teach him a lesson? Why risk it anyway? Getting a blowtorch to the head would probably be the end of it for me; I’d move on to some other house at that point.

Speaking of which, there sure is a lot of racket between the two of them trying to get into the house in the first place! Banging and clanging and screeching and swearing! I know a lot of the neighbors are on vacation, but come on now. You would think somebody would’ve called the police early on. It takes Harry and Marv an hour to even get into the house, you don’t think someone would’ve seen these two slip and slide all over the stairs? I don’t know, man. Plot holes abound.

Home Alone

Fun fact: Macaulay Culkin was hit by the van seven times before they got a take that worked.

IMDb TRIVIA FUNHOUSE!

Joe Pesci deliberately avoided Macaulay Culkin on-set, because he wanted Culkin to think he was mean.
That’s not how you do it. You don’t deliberately avoid the kid. You deliberately be mean to the kid. I’m talking tripping him in the hallways, knocking the books out of his hands, locking him in his locker, noogies, swirlies, and pelting him with food from craft services. Then it won’t just be the top of your head he’d be blowtorchin’.

Catherine O’Hara revealed in 2014 that Macaulay Culkin still calls her “Mom”.
OK, yeah, were you looking at Macaulay Culkin post-2000 and wondering “hey, this guy seems pretty creepy with the face and the drugs and the whole Michael Jackson thing, but can he possibly get any creepier”?

Home Alone

If Buzz knew that Macaulay Culkin still called Catherine O’Hara “Mom” he’d kick his ass six ways ’til Sunday!

Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern felt indifferent about the movie’s potential during shooting, so they intentionally gave over-the-top performances, neither one of them believing this movie would become a massive success.
This reminds me of the story about Patrick Stewart who stayed at a hotel and didn’t unpack his suitcase for six months because he thought Star Trek: TNG was going to be a total flop. And it was! A flop toward success!

Many of the shots that focus on Kevin in the beginning of the movie are filmed from above his head, making him seem small and helpless. At the end of the movie, Kevin is mostly shot from below, making him seem taller and more confident.
Fun fact: By the end of Home Alone 2, Kevin McCallister was 56ft tall and pounding buildings with his diamond-studded fists.

Macaulay Culkin’s stunt double was a very short 30-year-old man.
Sorry folks. Peter Dinklage was only 21 in 1990. Jiminy Jillkers Jiminy Jillikers Jiminey Jillikers!

The scream that Daniel Stern belts out during the tarantula scene was filmed live on-set, after Stern was assured by the animal handlers that tarantulas do not have ears.
What a nice guy! Too bad Stern spent the majority of the time on-set giving Macaulay Culkin atomic wedgies because he wanted him to think he was mean.

During rehearsal for the scene where Harry attempts to bite off Kevin’s finger, Joe Pesci actually bit Macaulay Culkin, leaving a small scar.
Nice guy my dick and balls.

Home Alone

Pictured: Kieran Culkin drinking enough Pepsi on set to literally accidentally pee his pants constantly.

IS IT WORTH A WATCH?

I watched this with my 5-year-old daughter about a week ago. I don’t know why I tempered my expectations for a John Hughes movie, but Home Alone is still fantastic as a jaded adult. It’s amazing to re-watch a movie you once had memorized and see a lot of scenes from an older perspective. Daniel Stern and Katherine O’Hara especially look young. The movie gets a PG rating despite a handful of swear words, some sexual references, a child looking through a Playboy magazine, and an extremely violent movie-within-a-movie. Who cares, of course? I don’t, I was younger than my own kid when I first saw it. Kids need to be exposed to this stuff early on, I always say!

Keep the change, you filthy animal.


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The Eye of the World (Book 1) – Chapter 24: “Flight Down the Arinelle”

The Wheel of Time - Book 1 - The Eye of the World

Rand has a dream again. It’s veeerrryy interesting. You see, it’s something about running around an M.C. Escher staircase maze with brambles and thorns as the walls. Ba’alzamon, aka one of the 700 names of the Dark One, chases him around. He pricks himself on one of the thorns on the maze wall. This happens for three dozen pages before he wakes up on the boat heading down the Arinelle River. His finger still bleeds… yowza!

Boat life is pretty fun. In order to avoid general crew disgruntlement and a possible mutiny, Thom spends a lot of time juggling and standing on his head and stuff. The kind of shenanigans that passes for amusement when you have nothing but a piece of rope to play with. To keep up appearances, Thom continues to pretend Rand and Mat are gleeman apprentices and he starts teaching them the gleeman ways of clowning around like goofs!

The boat travels about six meters per hour down the river. Even fat Perrin could walk faster than this, so Rand keeps a lookout in case he catches him or Egwene wandering around aimlessly on the riverbank. A particularly cranky crew member named Gelb always looks like he wants to slit the new travelers’ throats, but the rest of the crew hates Gelb anyway and they make him clean latrines all day. While passing through a canyon-like area of the river, there are dozens of statues of kings and queens that look like they’ve been there for centuries. Domon is a jovial captain and regales Rand with tales of all sorts of strange sights the world has. You could spend a lifetime chasing them down, and that’s the real treasure! Gems and coins and jewels ain’t it. Money is worthless. Cool statues, man, that’s the sweet life.

Rand finds out that Mat swiped a lavish dagger from Shadar Logoth and insists that Mordeth didn’t offer it to him, so it’s not tainted. Rand agrees to keep Mat’s secret; they can possibly barter it for gems or coins or jewels in Tar Valon. Or statues. What have you.

Out of nowhere, Rand decides to climb the mast without even realizing he’s doing it. The whole crew stares up at him; Thom climbs up to convince him to come down. Once realization sets in, Rand fears he’s going mad.

It’s probably just scurvy. They ain’t got no lemons.


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Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 1), Issue #5 – “I’m Free as a Bird – And This Bird You Cannot Kill!”

* Part 5 of 7 of the REDemption storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 1), Issue #5 – “I’m Free as a Bird – And This Bird You Cannot Kill!”! And go fuck yourself, Scott Lobdell, In the previous installment, which was almost the worst thing I have ever read, Starfire fights an alien named Crux who used to be a human until a Tamaran ship crashed into his parents, and so he injected himself with alien DNA and searched for Starfire until he found her. He couldn’t kick her ass, so he sent her to some cold tundra wasteland. I guess.

Meanwhile, Jason and Roy encounter an Untitled who is now looking to kill Jason because he meddled in his affairs. Those affairs just seem to be “hiding out on Earth so the All-Caste doesn’t get her”. I guess.

This is the worst comic series I’ve read so far. Three more issues left. Let’s slog through this poop swamp ASAP.

Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 1), Issue #5 [March, 2012]
Written by: Scott Lobdell
“I’m Free as a Bird – And This Bird You Cannot Kill!”

Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 1), Issue #5

Oh no, Roy. Your orange girlfriend might be dead. You fucked each other once and now you’re going to cry. Serves you right for your many sins. God is always watching. Tsk tsk.

The first page is a whole novel about Crux and his beginnings and why he’s actually good and not bad, against all available evidence. He used to be Simon Amal. He just wanted to avenge the death of his parents, and he considers Starfire’s whole Tamaran race as collectively one big bad guy! And not just Tamarans – ANY aliens!

“He even gave up his own body for the cause. He injected himself with a series of gene strands that made him powerful enough to accomplish his mad goals.

Yeah, so it’s like a Batman origin story with some Spider-Man’s Norman Osborn thrown into the mix. How very original, guy. Next you should make him a shield that bears his unconditional love to the shitty ol’ United State of America.

And revenge was thusly exacted: he stripped Starfire of her powers and made her “human”, then dumped her in the cold. What a hero for the cause, sir. Did you slap her around too while you were at it?

While flying around in victory and triumph, Crux starts getting hit with a barrage of arrows and bolts of electricity! Raarrgghh! Brrahhgaahah! Hrrrnrnnrt! Gloooooob! And he falls to the ground, where Roy Harper McRobin Hood steps on his face and aims an arrow right at his chest. Harper, the genius that he always is, deduced that when Starfire gave off a huge Aurora Borealis-like effect and Crux was flying away from it, that maybe Crux had something to do with Starfire giving off a huge Aurora Borealis effect! So now he’s gonna get filled with arrows. Comic book over.

Oh, it’s not? Well that fucking sucks my huge asshole. He doesn’t kill Dragon Boy, but he does demand from him answers on where his little tart might be.

Crux is very quick to tell Harper all about it; such as “she’s by the lake” and “yep, please go by the lake”. That sounds like enough for even Harper to go off of, so he demands that Crux wait there for him, “and if I come back with anything less than a full Kori – with all her adorable orange fingers and toes…” he slams the pointy business end of the arrow into Crux’s shoulder, “…I’m going to kill you.”

Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 1), Issue #5

Oh boo hoo. Go shoot up some more DNA heroin.

In Middleton, Colorado, in the middle of nowhere, possibly snowglobe-related Red Hood is fighting an Untitled. I think they’re called “the Untitled” because Scott Lobdell left it blank with the intention to circle back to it, but later on he decided to be cute instead. Someone just try and prove me wrong about this. I will kick your scrawny fucking ass.

While they fight, Red Hood wonders what’s so special about Middleton, CO in the first place. Just a hick town with a boring name. Why couldn’t they fight in Boston? He could’ve had seafood.

“My siblings and I have abided by the treaty with the All-Caste for years!” the Untitled shrieks with its ugly, shrieky face. “Ducra should not have dispatched you to instigate on her behalf!”

Yeah, can’t argue with that one… but how about THIS!

*throws stinkbomb, accidentally drops in down his own pants*

Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 1), Issue #5

Really? You’re going to try and give me shit by assuming, almost correctly, that I’m not keeping up with all this dumb shit? Try writing a better comic book.

The Untitled calls Red Hood a liar for suggesting that the All-Caste had been slaughtered on his/her/its watch. Let alone by his/her/its hands! “I did no such thing. The All-Caste was the only institution in place that kept my siblings from an all-out war!”

Red Hood is convinced immediately by this rebuttal, and comes to the conclusion that they have both been tricked! Dash it all, Jeeves!

“One among the Untitled is lashing out at the others,” this particular Untitled claims. Do you think I believe this bitch? I don’t believe this bitch.

But why is Jason Todd, former Robin / Bruce Wayne’s sex slave, Mr. Red Hood with Many Outlaws, involved in any of this? Why? Why?? WHY? WHY??

It’s because Ducra wasn’t as forthright as initially assumed, that’s why. And we all thought she trusted Todd. HA! I wouldn’t trust him with his own bulbous and flaccid little– wait a minute! Why should he trust this thing at all?! How could anyone believe this bitch?!

OK, enough of that. I’m all hopped up on coffee and crushed-up Adderall that I snorted up into my various brain cavities. Roy Harper is traipsing through the tundra looking for the “love” of his “life” with her adorable orange vulva. “I don’t know Kori very well…” he admits. I’m tired of this guy. It really is because she let him make the sex with her. That’s all it’s about.

“KORI?!” he screams, looking for Haim OR Feldman even though one is dead. Maybe even Hart? He wears his sunglasses at night, so he might be bumping into things around here. Oh yeah, he’s looking for the orange one. Sorry, I’m barely paying attention.

He finds her slumped on the ground and barely icy. So he runs over to her all “HURHN HURHN HURHN” to cradle her in his freckled, pasty arms. He sticks an arrow in the ground and instructs it to magically start a fire. The arrow lights on fire. I didn’t know this guy had magic arrows. Did I know that? Did he need to shoot regular arrows into the sun in order to earn them? Heh heh. Zelda.

“Thank you, Roy Harper,” she manages to croak. “You are a kind man.”

THAT’S IT? NO BLOWJOB? *drops woman back on the ground*

They hug and share a moment and whatever. That is, until Crux comes back with a vengeance! He lifts Harper up by his freckled, pasty scruff and yells harsh words at him. “I ADMIT I MADE A MISTAKE,” he says menacingly. He thought HUMANS would hate the TAMARANS and now he sees this twerp cavorting lustily with one of them? TIME TO DIE and whatnot.

What’s Jason Todd up to? Oh yeah, the Untitled. OK, fine.

Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 1), Issue #5

It’s because he cheated on the test. Check those crib notes stuffed in the sock, yo.

Well, it’s a flashback first. A flashback to when Jason was getting trained by the All-Caste. Specifically Ducra. See, I’m paying attention. He’s going through a trial where he’s submerged nude in a fountain, chest covered in what looks All-Caste tribal tattoos, beautiful hair a-flowin’. “You can’t stay down there forever, young man,” Ducra scolds. But he does stay there forever! Forever and day. Long enough for Ducra to be like “fuck this” and hoist him out of the fountain with her wrinkly 90,000-year-old arms.

“I suppose I should congratulate you,” she mutters, considering that he is a very special human who did what a veritable cavalcade of other special humans could NOT do. And that’s drown in a stinkin’ tub.

“Shut up and get dressed already. Your people await,” Ducra says before all but shoving Jason out on a stage where many All-Caste are bowing to him like he matters at all whatsoever to anyone ever. He’s not very good at public speaking. They don’t show it, but he probably says something like “My fellow praying people, welcome to the festivities. I am your host, Mr. Jason Todd, and I’m here to make your wildest dreams come true! For my first trick, I will enjoy your company. And furthermore–”

“You taught me to be an assassin, old lady, not a public speaker,” he says rather calmly. Not me. If I were pushed out to speak in front of large group of people I would be like “My fellow praying people, welcome to–”

But I didn’t and I’m happier for it. Jason and Ducra walk side-by-side through a lavish temple garden while he talks about how grateful he is for *insert some philosophical zen nonsense here*. That’s all well and good, blah blah blah blah blah, but what he really wants is something a little less dignified and a little more human.

“All I really want is to kill the man responsible for my murder!” he whines while punching a totem pole, lol, “I want to kill the Joker. And I want to make Batman – my guardian… my protector – suffer for not bothering to avenge my death!”

Ducra says something to the effect of “calm down, spaz. You’ll find out one day that all that revenge wishful thinking is stupid and dumb like your face, so bide your time.”

The Untitled thinks this is quite heartwarming, for sure, seriously. “So you are all that’s left of the mighty All-Caste? You are their final legacy? Pathetic.”

I agree with Mr. Untitled there! Pathetic!

Pathetic like a fox! Jason Todd pulls out two flaming daggers, making Untitled go “?!”. This is the part he trained for. Fuck Mr. Joker. Fuck Mr. Batsman. It’s nigh time to skewer the Untitled!

Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 1), Issue #5

Your truce is not with me! I am truce-proof!

The unflappable Untitled is really scared now for no obviously apparent reason. Maybe it’s afraid of fire? Or swords? Or preppy boys dressed in sweater vests and suits? SLASH. SLASH. OUCH. Die! Or get a title! Pick one right now!

Back to Roy Harper, who is currently fighting his own fight with the guy who turned himself into an unhappy dragon. “No one’s dying here today, Chuckles,” Harper decrees with a hearty kick to Crux’s ugly jaw! The onomatopoeia says “KICK”. That’s imaginative! Crux thinks it’s funny too; tells the kid that he’s just a useless stoner who sucks. Ouch.

“Let’s put your theory to test,” Harper says before initiating a secret timer on his backpack arrow quiver thing. “You think arrows are everything? You take them. Let me know how that works out for you.”

If this didn’t explain it enough, then here it is: Harper INITIATES a SECRET TIMER on his BACKPACK and he TRICKS Crux into HOLDING ONTO IT while HE AND STARFIRE GET AWAY and then the BACKPACK EXPLODES in his HAND.

“Self-destruct feature,” Harper thinks smugly.

SELF-DESTRUCT FEATURE.

Back to whatever the fuck is going on with Jason “Hot Toddy” the Toddman. He defeated the Untitled in less than two pages. Arrows are sticking out of its chest. It’s not dead, though, it’s just croaking and bitching. OK, now it’s dead. Heh. Gotta read ahead once in a while, huh.

Jason is now wondering who sent this particular Untitled, and how many other particular Untitleds are left. I’m not interested. I think Jason should go home and play Xbox and jerk it to some Hallmark Christmas movies.

The Untitled takes this opportunity, while being dead, to turn back into the sexy cop – a dead sexy cop – as in literally dead – and an angry mob immediately shows up.

The townsfolk are all “oh me, oh my” at their beloved sheriff lying deceased like a dumb, dead Untitled. One kid snaps a photo.

Jason Todd panics like the Bad Boy that he is. How’s he gonna get outta this one? *jangly banjo interlude*

Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 1), Issue #5

Shut up.

Roy Harper and Kori, they’re fine now. She has her powers back even though it’s weird that she does. It turns out she was experimented on during her captivity and she, as a result, has super-Tamaran powers. And this is info Crux didn’t know. That’s why they’re both alive now, probably. I don’t give a shit.

She zaps the seemingly unconscious Crux with purple light, “the living flame of a star”, which Roy thinks is a little much after they had already knocked him to the ground. No need to kick him while he’s down, right? Again, I don’t give a shit.

Jason pops out of nowhere and runs toward them. They have to get out of there NOW. There’s an angry bunch of rubes headed for him. I. Don’t. Care.

They need a plan, fast!

Don’t care.

Final Thoughts

I hate this comic. I’m so absolutely fucking BORED out of my mind that even the thrill of constantly making fun of it isn’t even helping, that’s how fucking bored I am.

But, for the good of the little people (THAT’S YOU, LITTLE PERSON), I need to continue for two more issues. I can make it. Wish me luck, little people. It’s a big world out there.


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