No People Were Harmed during the Making of this 

Apocalypse

WOD Summerfest Milwaukee 2023

The War On Drugs  

Summerfest Milwaukee

July 6th, 2023

It's a Thursday night, so we know that the music has to stop at 11 because there are people needing their sleep, even in Milwaukee, and that need to get up for work on Friday.  The perfect weather, 60F, some clouds, huge moon, and the atmosphere of Summerfest inhabits quite a few stages all along the shore.  It's the 55th year for this festival, billed now as the largest in the world.  At the ULINE stage, the venue closest to the city and water's edge, and facing towards the lake, the weather changes as this 7 member group, The War on Drugs, takes the stage.  Their setup time was over an hour, and there is a reason for that...

 

It seems that it is a "requirement" that you stand on your bleacher.  You don't stand in front of it.  You don't sit on it.  You get up on it and stand there...the entire time.  I did it.  And it was not a problem.   The music held us up there.  It was almost like an anti-gravity thing, elevating.  

 

The wall of sound that this band creates is nothing short of a RKnRL miracle. I've never heard so many blended hooks in one single concert.  The performance went on well past 11PM, and into the next day actually, in my head that is.  I could not shake the music, and didn't care to.  My head was bobbing all the way back to my home town, 1.5 hours away.

 

WOD has transcended the genre of rock and engaged a following that also transcends the age range, with thousands of listeners.  I witnessed a majority of college aged teens and 20s, but there were plenty of the 60s, 70s, and 80s era tie-died head-bobbers bouncing right along with them, myself included in that group.  From the opener to the end at 10:59:59, there was no lack of enchantment.  I've been listening to this group on Spotify for about a year, and had them on regular play, and I knew all of the songs, so that's always helpful in lending a pleasant experience.  But I was NOT prepared for something that was 6x better than the recorded versions. It was a sonic experience that you just can't escape. Kudos to their crew as well that make that happen.

Almost everyone has had a favorite concert, if you've been to them.  Mine was the Vigilantees of Love together with The Call in St. Louis, about 1990, with a good friend.  And it's been a high mark since then, until this concert.  I'd have to say it was an equivalent experience, in many ways.  Their live presence is something you'll just have to go see/hear for yourself.

 

For my music friends, I had summed it up with the following quote:

"Absolutely blown away...the real thing."

New WOD fan:

- Agitatus

Other People 2016

Other People 2016

TVMA - 97 min

The setting is passively aggressive Sacramento.  The full-sized family are all played by great actors, the casting was perfectly done, and the laugh breaks are at all the right points, like the dinner scene where all is serious, yet in chimes Molly Shannon with a near-SNL line that ends the scene, so we're still smiling though it all.  It is, in fact, a very poignant vision of the loss of a parent, and one who loves much.

 

The film is technically about a woman who gets cancer and how it affects the entire family.  All the obligatory stages and scenes are there that make for a great emotional fictional take on a very real subject.  So it's a drama, described on IMDB as "revelatory".  IMO this is meant to be said with an air of snottiness.

 

Well, usually the major amount of screen time is centered around the real main character of course, or pair of characters at the very most.  Great.  But it's not Molly Shannon.  The real story that is woven into almost every scene is that of David, played by Jesse Plemons (of noted Breaking Bad cast, along with many prominent roles over the last few years).  The acting by Plemons, and the direction of Chris Kelly are what drive this story to that side of it's teeter totter. 

 

This is not one of those works that lacks maturity, as the label says.  It is OTT maturity, in your face maturity, homosexual love maturity, with quite a few boyfriends in the mix.  AND...as many scenes of David with every-day people in every-day situations, humility, frailty, vulnerability, and insecurity.   We have the young boy that is a cross dresser at age possibly 11?  He throws himself in front of the whole family in a display of dressing the part, and a younger sister that represents the lesbian community.  We also have to have the stereotypical father figure that cannot tolerate the idea of his son being a man lover, and then we see him rendered powerless in the end. 

 

"Other People"  is the term aptly used in the story for whom we suppose these things, like cancer, happen.  This film is a tossing together of a formulaic and otherwise normative story line structure, yet juxtaposed over the top of it is that thick layer of fudge which is the writer/director's dream goal.  The entire presentation here is a Sundae.

 

I'm seeing this as opportunistic.  You take a well-hashed genre of "parent dying of cancer" and apply a Genenda to it, which can stand for Gay Agenda as much as it also stands for Gender Agenda.  It's like painting a suit of clothes with latex paint before you go out so you can have exactly the shade you desire.  The suit is still the same, and now is lacquered with a new color.  It is, of course, acceptable procedure to do so as almost every theme available has been presented in many different ways, but we just want to be clear about what is being painted.  In times past, we've seen classic stories turned into XRated material, like the XRated version of Cinderella for instance.

 

This is Boiling Frog material, a part of the progressively aggressive "code of inclusion" that dampens the grass in the Hollywood hills. Concerning codes...

 

Did you know that on even a lower-than-average set in the motion picture industry you can have an entire scene ready to shoot, the cameras are ready to start rolling, the slate person is there, the lights are trimmed exactly, and we're waiting for...the electrical staff member who is necessary under the Union rules to be there to throw a particular switch that no one else can switch besides them.  But...he's on the roof smoking a doobie with someone.  Said Union Electrical Worker would  have a hard time getting fired for it as well, meaning not for the weed, but missing his assignment and creating a massive delay.  Yep, the new rules are getting carved in to the system.

 

 

So we'd have to conclude then that if catering to the new normal in Hollywood of "leveling all playing fields for equality's sake" were the goal here, then this film has definitely pushed...uh, I mean done that.


- Agitatus