M83 – Midnight City

I don’t usually jump onto the flavor of the month bandwagons but I recently heard this track by M83 and it is solid. Listening through their back catalog didn’t excite me too much however – maybe if you’re into that sort of thing. But I will keep an ear out for this new album just in case there’s more like this. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear the signature hook in remixes at clubs eventually, but what’s really cool is that M83 pulled off a sax solo. When was the last time you heard that?

Check out Midnight City

I Am Legend

The familiar zombie apocalypse was dreamed up by Richard Matheson in a novel that everyone knows about because of the 3rd movie version starring Will Smith. I Am Legend is about a post apocalyptic modern world where bacteria has caused everyone to turn into vampires. Everyone, of course, except Robert Neville – the last man on Earth.

Reading through the book today you will encounter very common themes – hordes of undead, lone survivors, vampire myths explained- but what is most important is that when the book was written in 1954, none of these themes were widespread. This novel was a direct inspiration for Night of the Living Dead a few years later and is the father of the zombie apocalypse genre we are all familiar with. I Am Legend is one of the first real works to modernize vampires into what we think of them as today. At the time it was considered original to give scientific explanations to the supernatural affliction of vampirism and the idea of a bacteria wiping out humanity was fairly novel, but certainly the combination of them both was a fresh take on the end of days.

This is a good lasting legacy for the book because it received mixed reviews when it was first released. While short and easy to read, I’d say the first half of the book moves too slowly. The second half picks up the pace and the ending really ties the entire story into something worth remembering. While the author was a heavy Twilight Zone contributor, reading through I Am Legend somehow manages not to feel like the ‘Weird Science fiction’ of the years before, even though that was the audience Matheson was trying to appeal to at the time.

At 160 pages this novel is easy to get through. You won’t be blown away but given the significance of this book serving as inspiration for many stories today, it is well worth the time investment.

Download the ebook here (import this to your iPad to read in iBooks using email or otherwise).

The Wire

After 5 successful seasons I am definitely late to the dance on this one but a recent romp with HBO Go introduced me to this gritty drama. The Wire actively attempts to showcase the less glamorous (and thus less interesting) parts of being a cop or criminal. You see the tireless and sometimes futile work the cops put in and watch them wasting the hours drinking alone in a dive bar, and you see the drug dealers just sitting around and not doing a whole lot that looks fun – they definitely don’t ball out. This realism is at the heart of the series – it is its appeal. But by design it is also what keeps The Wire from sinking its hooks into an audience immediately. It is certainly more entertaining than, say, the Sopranos because that show is just like watching a dysfunctional family have the same argument over and over again. I get it, the mom’s a bitch. To me, that’s not fun- I don’t want to worry about fictional family problems. Instead The Wire exposes viewers to the harsh grind of crime. But it admittedly drudges along at times.

It took a while to get into the show because of this. Contrary to the American tradition of melodramatic action and mythic characters, not much happens. When it does, however, the excitement feels like it might in real life and is easy to identify with. This isn’t a show about the bad guys getting what’s coming to them or watching happy endings, it is about getting deeper into the lives of the players on both sides of the law and seeing how they operate. When it comes down to it, The Wire is about the characters. None of them are so evil to not be likable, so good to be admired, or so bad ass to be in awe of. They are all just people doing their thing and it is this breadth of detail that rubs off on you. It’s hard to explain, but once I got that sense of what The Wire was about, it became almost addicting. This may explain why it was a critical hit because of its unconventional screenwriting but never attracted an overly impressive audience, but also why the series is suited to (and selling well on) dvd. To be honest, it might be maddening trying to watch the series once a week, but armed with HBO Go and watching it on demand is not a bad way to spend an afternoon.