The Stormy Present – Society

I haven’t actually watched the Jimmy Fallon late night show. My reason for not watching it is that I don’t think Fallon is funny at all. The reason I might be tempted to watch is that the band for his show is The Roots. I’ve been a fan of The Roots since high school due to the fact that they epitomized what hip hop is supposed to be about. Instead of rapping about how much money they had or how ‘hard’ they were, The Roots rapped about actual life in black America. Rather than being pointlessly braggadocios, The Roots were genuinely informative and impassioned. Why try to convince people you’re a bad ass when all you really have to do is tell people about real shit and how you experience it every day to prove that your tough simply because you are constantly fighting injustice?

I could go on and on, but the point is that The Roots were real. They rapped about real issues, real problems, and real feelings. So the fact that they are now the house band for Jimmy Fallon’s late night talk show has me flummoxed. How can the people who created the cd Things Fall Apart be the same guys laughing it up with some two-bit comic?

To me it’s unfathomable and pretty much sounds the death knell for meaningful hip hop. I don’t know what their next cd will be about or if it will be dark and angry, but I do know that it’ll be harder to convince me that the sentiments expressed on the album are genuine since they spend Monday through Friday dicking around with Fallon.

The real trouble is that once you suggest that The Roots have gotten away from substantive hip hop, who do you have left? The Roots are a talk show house band, Nas has been missing in action for years now, Jill Scott is doing a bad African accent on HBO’s version of The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency (set in Botswana), and Kanye West is singing love songs to sorority girls. Basically that just leaves Talib Kweli, but at the rate things are going I would only be mildly surprised if he renounced Islam, became a born again Christian and went to work for Young Life so that he could spread the Gospel to affluent white suburban kids.

Anyway, I’m not trying to get all preachy or even trying to make a larger point. All I can do is openly wonder what The Roots being Jimmy Fallon’s back up band means. So I leave these open questions for you to comment on:

Do this mean The Roots have sold out? Can any band maintain their substantive message about subversive populist ideas once they become successful? Who are the other quality hip hop artists out there? What ever happened to Nas? Has the wild success of rap doomed the existence of hip hop?

Pretty much everything we write about is influenced by Bill Simmons so let’s just drop the charade and flat out copy something he mentions. In his latest mailbag a reader asks him what the worst movie accents of all time are. The reader suggests Nic Cage’s southern accent in Con Air, Irish Maggie’s Irish accent in Caddyshack, and “Jon Voight’s South American child molester accent in Anaconda” (by the way, Anaconda is right up there with the worst movies ever made). Simmons adds Kevin Costner’s accents in JFK (Cajun), 13 Days (Boston), and Robin Hood (British). Simmons also points to DiCaprio in Body of Lies (Southern), Jack Nicholson in The Departed (Boston), Keanu Reeves in Dracula (origins unknown), Tom Cruise in Valkyrie (origins unknown), Don Cheadle in Ocean’s 11 (British), and James Van der Beek in Varsity Blues (Southern).

Immediately after reading this I gasped that Simmons failed to mention the worst accent in all of cinema. I figured what we’d do is try to come up with a list of bad accents and try to pin down the three worst ones, which will include the far and away winner (or loser) that Simmons failed to come up with. But before we do that, some things need to be said about the ones already listed.

I thought the Irish girl in Caddyshack was actually Irish, which means her accent was real and therefore not a candidate for the worst movie accent. Why would such a minor character like hers necessitate an Irish accent? The story is completely unaffected if she is Irish or from Nebraska or something, so why would she fake an Irish accent? Whatever the case, I can’t fully enjoy Caddyshack until I know if the actor playing Maggie is actually Irish or randomly faking that accent.

I feel like if someone stops trying to do the accent half way through the movie they can’t be considered ‘the worst movie accent of all time’. Case and point, Costner tries to be British for the first 30 minutes of Robin Hood and then just gives up. The 30 minutes when he was trying he was absolutely butchering the British accent, but the fact that he stops trying redeems him to a degree. Think about it, would you rather watch the movie while Costner talks like an American and everyone else is British or would you have rather had to suffer through him trying, and failing, to put on the accent? It’s weird that Robin Hood doesn’t have an accent and everyone else does, but I feel like it would be insufferable to have to listen to the whole movie if Costner had continued to speak with his awful British accent. The same goes for Nicholson in The Departed. He has the accent for the narration in the beginning of the movie and the few scenes after that, but then gives it up. So the fact that they spared us from their awful accents for most of the movie redeems them and so they can’t be listed as the worst accents in movie history. Nicholson gets me to the next point as well.

You are always more offended when someone screws up your accent. I didn’t really notice Nicholson’s poor Boston accent until Simmons pointed it out. Simmons is from Boston so of course he’s going to know when someone screws up his accent. Meanwhile, he’ll miss poor southern accents while I’ll get them right away because that’s my accent. But there is another larger point that is this: I attempt to do accents that aren’t my own for fun or to lovingly tease people. I particularly do British and South African accents. I think my impressions are good, but my special lady friend who is of British decent and grew up in Zimbabwe and South Africa insists they’re terrible. So to me, Cheadle’s British accent in Oceans 11 isn’t that bad. Likewise, DiCaprio’s accent in Blood Diamond is exactly how I sound when I do that same accent so I thought it was fine but I saw that movie in South Africa and the audience laughed when he opened his mouth for the first time with that accent.

The point is that this is all terribly subjective to a degree we’re all only truly experts on our own accent. However, the one thing we can objectively say is that the southern accent Keanu Reeves “treats” us too in Devil’s Advocate was the worst accent in the history of movies or any other medium of entertainment. I’ve lived here all my life and I have no idea what he thinks we talk like, but that ain’t it. It is light-years worst than anything I’ve ever heard, ever. Also Charlize Theron is his wife in that movie and butchers a southern accent in her own special way (but she’s super hot and South African so we all forgive her).

With all this in mind, go to the comment section and list any bad movie accents that have been omitted and try to come up with what you think are the top three bad movie accents.

So a while ago for another post I mentioned that President Bush and Karl Rove had a reading contest during Rove’s last three years in the White House. There’s a worry with that sort of contest that you’re sacrificing quantity for quality, but the benefit is that the other person in the contest can recommend the books they’ve read to you. Also I recently decided to update my Goodreads page so I’ve been thinking about books recently.

All of that is just a preface to say that I intend to read 12 books this year. That’s one per month for you mathematicians. As hard as that sounds, we’re three months into the year and I’ve already knocked out two books: Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer and Dixieland Delight by Clay Travis. Plus, I’m like 3 chapters away from finishing Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman.

But the point isn’t to brag or whatever, the point is to elaborate on the books we’ve read so that like minded people know what books to put on the schedule of books “to read” and what books to scratch off that list as they are overrated.

Hence, this is the creation of The Stormy Present Book Club. First of all, this is way cooler than Oprah’s book club. Secondly, it isn’t like we have to write huge book reviews for these unless they are so good or so bad that we feel inspired to do one. Third, the way this will hopefully work is that I’ll write a post or someone else will about a couple of books they’ve read and then others will put their reading choices in the comment section. As a whole what should result is a conversation about good books so that in these tough economic times no one has to buy a shitty book because they’ve been forewarn.

So here is what I’ve read so far:

Dixieland Delight by Clay Travis

Jeff read this and recommended it to me. But before he did he said it was a quick read and a good read but each chapter follows a pattern and sort of makes it predicatable by the end. It’s about a guy who goes to every football stadium in the SEC to see a game. Of course the overall point is that the SEC is the greatest football conference, has the greatest fans, and the greatest traditions. However, every chapter starts off with him and his friends tailgating and meeting people, then he goes to the game, then he reminisces about the history, then he gets back to the end of the game, then he meets with people after the game and brings all the various things he’s talked about around full circle. So, as Jeff and I discussed, it’s a fine book that is easy to read and therefore not something you regret reading but it also isn’t something you’ll remember reading for the rest of your life.

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

Really good adventure book. He does a great job of describing what goes into making a trip up Everest happen, he describes the sights beautifully, and he makes the reader feel his pain as the air thins and he attempts to push the envelope of his physical abilities. Plus, he just so happens to make his summit attempt in the day when there is a disaster and a bunch of people died. It’s about the commercialization of Everest and how this perhaps led to the disaster but it’s also beautifully described and simultaneously tragic. I highly recommend this to anyone that like adventure reads.