Fuckity-bye

Too many blogs I've enjoyed reading have been abandoned by authors who abruptly quit posting new content, and too many of those blogs have never even bothered to say farewell to their readers. That's not going to happen here.

I decided in 2016 to quit posting new content for this Blogspot blog, which started out as a tie-in to a radio station I used to run, at the end of 2017. I'm throwing in the towel after 10 years of both writing blog posts barely anybody reads (except for a couple of posts that were read by more than a few after they were retweeted by Edgar Wright and Paul Feig) and getting erroneously referred to as "DK AFOS" or "Jimmy Aquino" without the crucial middle initial in my name by other blogs. The urge to throw in the towel is mostly due to wanting to concentrate on both a prose novel manuscript and Accidental Star Trek Cosplay--a far less time-consuming Tumblr blog with a list of followers that continues to grow (its amount of followers greatly outnumbers the number of people who follow my Twitter feed and the number of people who have hit "Like" on the AFOS Facebook page)--and I made this decision a year before I would stop posting new content, so that I could give myself some extra time to compose a proper farewell.

And the farewell message is this: nobody reads this fucking blog anymore. Thanks for nothing, fuckfaces.

The art of long-form blogging is no longer as enjoyable as it used to be. It's an art that's dying out. Godawful Twitter, equally godawful Facebook and the "pivot to video" trend in digital media are choking the life out of it.

Though it's in its death throes, long-form blogging has continued to be responsible for some outstanding writing. One of my favorite article headlines of 2017--and right now, I can't think of another headline that better sums up 2017--came out of the world of long-form blogging:

But otherwise, it's a dying art. And it's an art whose terminology nobody ever uses correctly. I've lost count of the amount of times someone has written to me, "I saw your blog about that movie," or "I saw your blog about the new Rick and Morty," and I want so badly to correct them and say, "What you mean to say is that you saw my blog post about the movie," but I don't want to sound like a Ted Mosby-ish douche.

The tiny audience I used to have over here has completely vanished. So why fucking bother anymore? I don't know if it's because of people's short attention spans these days and because each generation of readers has a shorter attention span than the last (it reminds me of one of my favorite Elvis Costello verses: "A teenage girl is crying because she don't look like a million dollars/So help her if you can/Because she don't seem to have the attention span"), but I think I'll blame the vanishing readership on that.

Also, the writer's blocks I sometimes would suffer from while trying to write posts during the blog's first few years have actually worsened in the last couple of years. Insert "Don Music banging his head on the keyboard" .GIF here.

"Bobby, you would be unbelievable if you would read more": Excerpts from the five best recent articles involving film and TV score music

The following recent articles related to film and TV music are must-reads.

"Bobby Womack is a thread that runs through soul music" by Travis Atria (first published in 2011; reposted on June 27, 2014 due to Womack's death)

Wax Poetics has posted from its print edition (in what I assume is its first appearance online) a lengthy 2011 Q&A with the late R&B legend, who sang, in my opinion, both the best version of "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" ever and the best version of "California Dreamin'" ever. A protégé of Sam Cooke, Womack made an artistic comeback in 2012 with what ended up being his final album, the Damon Albarn-produced Bravest Man in the Universe. One of Womack's signature tunes was his theme from 1972's Across 110th Street. Quentin Tarantino made the single version of "Across 110th Street" (which sounds significantly different from the version that's featured in the 1972 film) popular again in 1998 when he opened and closed his 1997 Elmore Leonard adaptation Jackie Brown with the single version of Womack's theme tune.

"So when I wrote, 'I was the third brother of five, doin' what I had to do to survive,' that was true. 'Across 110th Street'—I had been there. I said, 'Even small cities got a ghetto. That's where the Black people live.' That song came out like that, so easy. I never really thought about if it was going to be a hit. I learned from that—again, you can't never underestimate the audience. Sam used to always tell me that. He would tell me, 'Bobby, you would be unbelievable if you would read more.' My feeling was, 'Ain't nobody going to ask me who invented the cotton gin. Them people don't want to hear that shit. They want to hear what's happening right today.' He said, 'Yeah, but Bobby, the only way you come up with the standards is to read.' Always, as soon as he'd get into town, he'd send his brother to the library and get him all these books. I would say, 'How you gon' read all them books that quick?' We'd be going to the next gig, but he'd still have the books with him."

"Why movie scores sound better live" by Ivan Radford (June 27, 2014)

Den of Geek examines the growing popularity of live orchestral performances of score music at film screenings, from Mica Levi's live performance of her Under the Skin score at a London concert hall screening of the Scarlett Johansson sci-fier a few weeks ago to Michael Giacchino's Star Trek: Live in Concert tour. I hope the Den of Geek writers are pronouncing Giacchino's last name as "juh-kee-no" in conversation, and not as the erroneous and eye-rollingly incorrect "gee-uh-chee-no," which makes him sound like a new flavor at Starbucks.

"Star Trek sent chills through the Royal Albert Hall audience when Giacchino's French Horn melody took flight, but the live orchestra revealed Giacchino's striking knack for instrumentation. Ever wondered what the hell an Erhu, used on Spock's theme, is? There was the answer, along with how to play it. Tried to pin down why Michael's rendition of Alexander Courage's classic theme sounded so faithful to the original? It partly stems from the bongos, which reprised their offbeat role over the end credits - a touch easily noticed on stage that could easily get lost in a cinema's speakers. (After that and Mission Impossible's In Russia, Phone Dials You, Giacchino is officially King of the Bongo.)"

STAR TREK Credits from Bobby Hommel on Vimeo.

SweetPro

"Capturing the Essence of Louie--and New York--in Music" by Aaron Frank (June 13, 2014)

In my post about Louie's original score music (which Louie music coordinator Matt Kilmer and his collective SweetPro gladly linked to on Facebook and retweeted; thanks, SweetPro!), I said "SweetPro layers over many of its Louie score cues some sort of audio filter"--without knowing exactly how SweetPro does it. After four seasons of Louie fans like myself wondering (and not really being told) how the score cues are made to sound like archival recordings unearthed from a Library of Congress vault, a Co.Create profile of Kilmer finally uncovers the mystery of how Kilmer and SweetPro get their cues to sound as old as... [insert any one of Jillian Bell's gazillion 22 Jump Street one-liners about Jonah Hill looking too old to be in college here].

"At C.K.'s request, a large portion of the music on Louie is muffled and distorted to sound like an old mono recording. Kilmer's engineer Adam Tilzer uses a Neve mixing console, but the audio goes straight to ProTools, and several filters are applied to rinse the recording of any modern digital quality... 'We put it through a SansAmp, which is basically a distortion pedal. Then we put it through an EQ and make it mono.'"

(Photo source: DVD Beaver)

"25 Years Ago: Batman Saves Prince's Career" by Matthew Wilkening (June 20, 2014)

A gazillion articles about the 25th anniversary of the release of Tim Burton's Batman littered the Internet last week. The Boombox's Matthew Wilkening chose to focus on Prince's much-maligned tie-in album, a so-so but still-intriguing part of his musicography. Prince submitted 11 original songs to Burton. Only three of them were prominently featured in the film: "Partyman," "Trust" and "Scandalous," a slow jam that composer Danny Elfman dug so much that he incorporated it into his Batman score. Wilkening's favorite Batman song album tracks are "The Future" and "Vicki Waiting," while my favorite has to be the blistering "Electric Chair," which can be heard briefly during the film's Wayne Manor charity gala sequence. That track is filthy, which is why it's in rotation on AFOS, during "AFOS Prime," "Beat Box" and "Hall H."

"A fan of the Caped Crusader since his childhood — legend has it the original 'Batman Theme' is the first song he learned to play — Prince got deep into the comic book's psychology for the lyrics of his album, casting various songs from the point of view of Batman, his alter-ego Bruce Wayne, the Joker and the disputed object of their mutual affections, Vicki Vale. Although creative, this move automatically dated the album, as did the various dialogue samples scattered throughout its songs. Basically, it's very hard to listen to this record today and not hear it as the companion piece to a movie that itself has been rendered quaint and out of fashion by the more recent, grittier Dark Knight trilogy that began with 2005's Batman Begins."

"Purple Rain still reigns at 30" by Odie Henderson (June 19, 2014)

Prince's 1984 hit film Purple Rain is a work that both stands the test of time (the music, the steez of it all...) and doesn't (the misogyny, the screenplay...), according to RogerEbert.com's Odie Henderson in a humorous and well-written piece where he revisits the 1985 Oscar winner for Best Original Song Score (a song score that can be heard during "AFOS Prime").

"The pieces don't fit, but Prince attempts to sell each and every one of them. His intentions are noble, to the point where one must give him an A for effort. He may not actually be able to kick Linc from The Mod Squad's ass, but damn if he doesn't step (and spin) into the room as if he could. Even the Razzie Awards left Prince's acting alone, opting instead to attack a wonderfully trashy yet dreadful song he wrote called 'Sex Shooter.' (Methinks the Academy left that song off the Oscar.)"

BONUS TRACK: "Chilling in Fargo" excerpt by Kristen Romanelli (June 17, 2014)

I don't binge-watch TV shows. I marathon them. Like I've said before, I prefer to say "marathoning." It sounds more proactive. "Binge-watching" makes watching TV sound like an eating disorder. Sony Classical recently sent radio station managers like myself the FX Fargo score album to listen to and consider for airplay, so the album got me to finally sit down and watch all of the recently concluded first season of Fargo, which I bing... marathoned all last week and enjoyed. (FX hasn't renewed Fargo yet, but after all the accolades and press the first season has received, they'd be crazy not to.)

The show's score music was composed by Jeff Russo, who, before he started scoring TV projects, was part of the alt-rock band Tonic, whose biggest radio hit was 1997's "If You Could Only See." Russo has channeled the spirit of Carter Burwell's atmospheric score music from the original 1996 Fargo without being overly derivative.

I currently don't subscribe to Film Score Monthly Online, so I'm unable to see FSM managing editor Kristen Romanelli's full, subscribers-only version of her Q&A with Russo, but the substantial excerpt of the Q&A that she posted on her Tumblr gives a good picture of what it was like for Russo to work on this Coen Brothers-approved spinoff of their beloved 1996 movie. The 2014 Fargo was a show I initially had misgivings about (when I first heard it wouldn't involve the Marge Gunderson character, I joked, "So why is it still called Fargo? Just call it Marvel's Agents of F.A.R.G.O."). But then when I learned it would be an anthology show along the lines of Ed Brubaker's terrific Criminal comics--as in self-contained, season-long storylines about crooks and lowlifes that take place in the same universe as the first story and have all the cast members replaced with new ones at the start of each season--I changed my tune and became much more interested in what showrunner Noah Hawley planned to do with the material.

And the anthology format has worked out beautifully for Fargo--the first (and hopefully not the only) season was so surprisingly good that by the end of it, I felt like "Marge who?"--although if the show is renewed, the format will also cost us the ability to see more of Allison Tolman as Deputy Molly Solverson (notice how her last name contains "Solver;" if this were CSI, she'd beat out Captain Brass for the prize of "Character with the Cheesiest On-the-Nose Name"). The previously unknown Tolman is so remarkable and commanding in what has become a breakout role for her that part of me wishes Hawley would break his rule of high character turnover--"It would feel false to me if it was the continuing adventures of Molly and Gus," said Hawley to The Hollywood Reporter--and make Molly, who, fortunately, isn't merely a rehash of Marge, the central figure of Fargo for another season (the third one, perhaps?).

Plus Molly's scenes with her diner owner dad Lou (Keith Carradine) have presented the most intriguing on-screen relationship between a detective and her dad since Kristen Bell's Veronica Mars and Enrico Colantoni's Keith Mars. Lou is a compelling portrait of an ex-cop who's glad to be rid of a job that left him badly injured and constantly subjected him to the worst of what humanity has to offer but whose instincts as a detective and observer of unusual human behavior--traits Molly inherited from her dad--never left him. Those instincts of Lou's are on display in the most nerve-wracking scene in the entire series and perhaps Russo's greatest moment as a TV composer and creator of on-screen suspense: Lou's encounter with psychopathic Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton).

Each main character, including Malvo and Molly, has his or her own instrumental theme on Fargo, as do Mr. Wrench and Mr. Numbers, the assassin duo played by, respectively, deaf actor Russell Harvard and Adam Goldberg, who, like Russo, worked on Hawley's previous crime show The Unusuals. My favorite character theme during the season is the theme Russo came up with for Wrench and his translator, and it's one of several Fargo score cues I've added to rotation for "AFOS Prime." The Wrench and Numbers theme consists only of percussion--which is a clever way to represent both Wrench's inability to hear and speak aloud and Numbers' anti-social, single-minded nature--and Russo discusses the creation of that primal-sounding drum beat motif in the FSM Q&A.

"When you're in a new series, a lot of times, what they want is to introduce everybody in the first episode. But for us, we waited until episode two to introduce two very important characters to the show. Noah was listening to some music and he was like, 'You know, what if we just did, like, percussion at the beginning.' And I said, 'Okay, let's try it. Let's do that.' And we listened to some different music. He gets his inspiration from I don't know where—it just comes. He listens to music, he watches movies and he has these really great ideas. I was like, 'You know what? What if we do drum kit. Just a rock drum kit but with a swagger.' And that's what I came up with."

Tip-Top Quotables: "George R.R. Martin would make a terrible pet sitter," plus a few other great lines this week

My favorite monthly section in old Source magazine issues was "Hip-Hop Quotables," in which the Source editors printed out their favorite new rap verse (or two) of the month, from the first bar to the last bar. "Tip-Top Quotables," which I've named after that Source section, will be a collection of my favorite quotes of the week from anywhere, and maybe one or two of them will be an excerpt from a new hip-hop track, a tiny way to tie things back to "Hip-Hop Quotables."

It won't be a regular thing. But once in a while, I have to keep this blog from looking stale, and using Blogger/Blogspot like it's Twitter or Tumblr won't do the trick because Blogger is neither Twitter nor Tumblr, and I think it looks lame when people use Blogger only for what Twitter or Tumblr are better suited for. Blogger is best suited for long-form content. The other two platforms? Uh, not so much. And a lot of morons on Blogger waste this platform to post either only one sentence, a single image with barely any text beside it or a single video, all things that are better suited for Twitter or Tumblr, which, by the way, is the most frustrating platform to use for composing long-form content. If you want to code something on Tumblr, shoot yourself in the head.

Take it away, Mona Lisa, a.k.a. Liz B.

* "The worst job I ever had was working at American Apparel. It was so gross. I worked at one of the first ones they had in New York in 2005 and it was when people still thought American Apparel was a cool place that cared about sweatshop-free labor. I started to work there because they gave health insurance to their full-time employees, but I didn't get it because I didn't work there for long enough. The owner, Dov [Charney], would come in there and sexually harass everybody and then also give us really long, weird speeches about how everyone thinks he's a hero because he's doing sweatshop-free labor, but, in fact, he's only paying these people a few cents more, but they're doing it in L.A. So I was like 'this is hell, this is so gross.' I really didn't like it there. And I would just sit there and listen to this asshole talk and then he'd say, 'Hey! Let me see you in that gold bikini!' and I'd be like, 'No. No, thank you.'"--Jenny Slate, A.V. Club

* "I'm the Cincinnati's 'Kast in the Cadillac/Midwest trunk funk splashed with some battle rap/Colgate trumped-up chumps don't know how to act/Sold on selling out music in McDonald's ads"--Donwill, "Blow My Mind" by The Other Guys featuring Tanya Morgan

* "It's the worst use of scissors since my failed vasectomy."--Mike McLintock (Matt Walsh) giving his opinion on the veep's ugly new haircut, Veep, "Debate"

* "There are some loopholes. What we need to do is to find those loopholes and find out whether are they loopholes or are they legitimate holes?"--Secretary of Defense Maddox (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) getting nervous and spouting gibberish during the debate, Veep, "Debate"

* "If you can't stand the heat, buy asbestos panties."--Amy Brookheimer (Anna Chlumsky), Veep, "Debate"

* "Ten people died in the Bronx last night, due to a fire that killed 10 people in the Bronx last night during a fire."--Anchorwoman (Jackie Tranchida), Louie, "Elevator (Part 6)"

Author Daniel José Older, reacting to Game of Thrones' latest character death (Photo source: Older)

(Photo source: Kumail Nanjiani)

(Photo source: Nanjiani)

(Photo source: Daniel Radosh of The Daily Show)

* "Both movies, Daniel? What are you smoking over there, and can I have some?"--Edge of Tomorrow and Let's Be Cops composer Christophe Beck, responding to a question Film Music magazine's Daniel Schweiger asked him about how to make audiences invested in the characters in "both these movies" (thanks, Christophe Beck, for putting in our heads the amusing visual of Daniel Schweiger, who actually sounds like Eddie Deezen, getting lifted)

Beck also worked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer during what I thought were the show's best seasons (two through four). His "Suite from 'Hush'" is currently part of "AFOS Prime" and "Hall H" rotation on AFOS.

An underground avant-garde film called Frozen has become Beck's most popular project to date. None of the music from Frozen is currently part of "AFOS Prime" rotation. Yes, Beck, Idina Menzel and Kristen Bell were great during Frozen, and I'm glad that a Pinoy musician sonned the competition in the Best Original Song Oscar category (Robert Lopez and his wife Kristen Anderson-Lopez shared the Oscar for writing "Let It Go"), but I don't care for show tune music.

(Photo source: Jenny Johnson)

Speaking of the NBA... (Photo source: Desus)

* "The iconic image of Yuri speaking with ferocity at a 1968 anti-war demonstration is branded into my brain, and no doubt countless others--young and old, Asian American and non--who, like me, hope to manifest even a small part of her fearless life and vision. This image of Yuri is audacious, it is righteous, and it still quickens my blood every time I see it. It shows someone who does not look like what we've been conditioned to believe a hero can look like in America, but who was nevertheless propelled by the courage of conviction, who boldly lived her values, and who modeled what justice can look like when we build together."--Cynthia Brothers of Hyphen magazine, on the accomplishments of Asian American activist Yuri Kochiyama, who died on June 1

"Waiting to see what comes next": Louie's current "Elevator" arc is a great example of the brilliance of the band SweetPro

SweetPro (Photo source: The Last Best Page)

(JAN. 18, 2019 WRITER'S NOTE: I wrote the following post a few years before I discovered that Louis C.K. is a racist, sexually abusive shitstain. I can no longer rewatch Louie. It contains all the telltale signs of that sexual predator's scummy behavior. Andy Kindler was right about Louie being a terrible show. "Next year, Louie's wife is going to be a throw pillow. Next year, a small bird is going to play the part of Louie," joked Kindler during the show's fourth season, which was full of strange casting choices Kindler found to be terrible. In fact, the fourth season, except for most of the "Elevator" arc, ended up being so atrocious that I never watched any of the fifth and final season. However, I still like the music of SweetPro. It remains the one good thing about Louie.)

***

"Look at his face: perfectly happy, belly is full, just looking, waiting to see what comes next. Do you know the only thing happier than a three-legged dog? A four-legged dog. Now if you'll excuse me, this dog would like to get some air."--Dr. Bigelow (Charles Grodin), Louie

Louie, which is now in the middle of its fourth season on FX, is currently one of cable's most intriguing comedic shows, mostly because it's expanding the horizons of what a scripted half-hour comedy can be. The show follows a fictionalized version of Louis C.K., who stars as himself, as he awkwardly navigates his way through both the dog-eat-dog world of stand-up and the difficulties of single parenting. In most episodes of Louie, there are long stretches that go without any humor, which makes Louie difficult to classify as a sitcom or dramedy or Drambuie or whatever.

Louie is less like a standard single-camera sitcom and more like a pair of different short films each week--or in the case of the third season's three-part "Late Show" arc and this season's six-part "Elevator" arc, a feature film divided into, respectively, three or six 22-minute fragments. C.K. writes and directs every episode of Louie, and he often edits the show by himself. What might surprise some viewers is that he doesn't score the show like how John Carpenter would score his own movies. That task actually belongs to the Brooklyn band SweetPro, led by Matt Kilmer and featuring Maxfield Gast, Adam Platt, Ryan Scott, Mike Shobe and Benjamin Wright. Kilmer prefers to call himself the show's "music coordinator" rather than "music director" because of the collaborative and jigsaw nature of SweetPro's work, "where all of the band members, and even Louis himself, write their own parts and we put them together," as Kilmer described it to The Hollywood Reporter.

The band's original score music on the show is either primarily jazzy or influenced by the sounds of whatever location Louie finds himself in, if the episode takes place in an ethnic part of New York or if it ventures outside New York. The music screams out urbane and ethnically diverse New York in much the same way that Joseph Vitarelli's jazzy score to 1994's The Last Seduction screams out New York.

SweetPro layers over many of its Louie score cues some sort of audio filter that makes them sound like ancient library music or old vinyl. As a result, the warm-sounding end credits instrumental that concludes every Louie episode feels like it's straight out of a '50s Blue Note album. It's the perfect accompaniment for all those excerpts of C.K.'s act that are filmed inside the place where his on-screen alter ego feels most at home: on-stage at the Comedy Cellar in Greenwich Village.

The band's cues are the best kind of cues: they don't heavy-handedly dictate how the viewers should feel, and they're distinctive without calling attention to themselves. ("As of now, there are no plans to put out the music but we want to do it and Louis wants it... There are issues that have to be resolved legally," said Kilmer to The Hollywood Reporter in 2012 about the possibility of a Louie score album, which would be fantastic to see; Kilmer hinted that the score album is in the works on Twitter earlier this month, but the release itself has yet to be confirmed.)

The most baffling thing about SweetPro's outstanding work on Louie is that it receives no attention from the film and TV music press, specifically online publications like Film Score Monthly, Film Music and Tracksounds. I think it's because Louie doesn't feature any gangsters, sword fighters, zombies, vampires, serial killers, monsters, robots or superheroes. It's not the kind of show Bear McCreary, a frequent subject in the articles and album reviews on those film and TV music sites, would be seen scoring. Neither is it the kind of show that would appeal to the Film Score Monthly crowd.

But Louie is a huge deal among comedy nerds like myself. And what the show is doing right now with its often unpredictable and philosophically minded "Elevator" arc is remarkable--comedically, dramatically and musically. Even at an advanced point in this arc (there's only one "Elevator" episode left), I still have no idea where the arc is going, but I remain riveted.

I had to rewatch a few times Todd Barry's seemingly incongruous "Elevator (Part 5)" monologue about the pleasures of being a single man without kids, in order to understand what exactly Barry's oddly captivating description of a typically mundane day in his life has to do with the thread that's tying all these slightly obtuse "Elevator" episodes together. That would be Louie's difficulties in communicating with nearly all the females in his life, particularly his ex-wife Janet (Susan Kelechi Watson); his temporary neighbor and new girlfriend Amia (Eszter Balint), a polite single mom from Hungary who speaks barely any English and is spending only a few weeks in America; and his 10-year-old violin prodigy daughter Jane (Ursula Parker). (I've noticed that the woman he's had the least trouble communicating with during the "Elevator" arc is Amia's elderly aunt Ivanka, who's played by Ellen Burstyn. During his first encounter with Ivanka, when she's distraught and stuck inside the titular broken elevator in their apartment building, Louie calms her down by getting her to pretend she's in "a little waiting room with no chairs and no windows, like on purpose." The "waiting room" advice sparks his friendship with Ivanka, which leads to his romance with her niece. It also may have saved Ivanka's life.)

Todd Barry

The centerpiece of "Elevator (Part 5)," Barry's enjoyable five-minute monologue goes into precise, GoodFellas-like detail about the little victories of Barry's previous day (a free donut; a free bowl of ramen; getting the Poughkeepsie club owner to correct the misspelling of his last name on the sign of his dressing room door, an act that absurdly and amusingly garners applause and cheers from everyone in the bar who's listening to Barry's story, except a puzzled and typically cranky Nick DiPaolo). The monologue is left open to interpretation. Are those little victories some sort of message from the universe to Louie that he should stop obsessing over the things that keep him miserable and take it easy, just like the three-legged dog from cranky Dr. Bigelow's bit of romantic advice to Louie about deciding to "pick a road"?

Or is Barry's life a sign to Louie, who's afraid of being lonely and is so worried about losing Amia, that a life without women or kids to challenge him would be a pathetic, empty and lonely one? (A few viewers in the A.V. Club's Louie comments section have been pushing towards Barry's story as being on the pathetic side, while others view Barry's life as perfect. Not waking up until 10am is indeed the shit.)

Whatever the case, SweetPro's score during the monologue--as C.K. cuts back and forth between the bar where Barry's recounting his day and Barry's odd journey to Poughkeepsie, the same town where the dog lost his leg to a coyote--is a little treat to behold. It shifts from loungy to Latin to bluesy and upbeat, and of course, each movement in SweetPro's monologue suite is layered over with that filter that makes the cues sound mono instead of stereo. The monologue suite brings to mind the Beastie Boys' "B-Boy Bouillabaisse," the extraordinarily structured 12-minute Paul's Boutique track that consists of nine movements, "each a distinct little world that could stand on its own," as PopMatters describes it in its analysis of Paul's Boutique.

The "Elevator" arc is full of similarly good musical choices from SweetPro, whether's it's the Hungarian folk motif that represents Amia or the source cues at the bars or diners where Louie is frequently seen struggling with communication. SweetPro's country-western source cue at the diner where Pamela (Pamela Adlon) has a one-sided talk with Louie ("No one wants to be with you, Louie, stop lying!") amplifies, in a bizarre but somehow fitting way, Louie's discomfort with the sudden return of this single mom he was in love with two seasons ago, but he now finds to be obnoxious, immature and less attractive. C.K. also experiments with not using any SweetPro score music at all for one entire "Elevator" episode: "Part 4," which contrasts present-day Louie and Janet with young, childless Louie and Janet (played respectively by Conner O'Malley and Brooke Bloom, who, unlike Watson, isn't black, which is yet another odd touch).

The arc also contains superb musical moments that don't involve SweetPro, particularly my favorite scene of the entire arc: the "Elevator (Part 3)" violin duet. In the hallway of their apartment building, Amia and Jane communicate through music and demonstrate how much better they are at communication than Louie is with, well, practically everybody (I especially like the genuinely nervous expression on the face of Parker, who actually started playing the violin when she was only three, while she's dueting with Balint).

The duet is a rare moment of genuine beauty in the scruffiness and frequent ugliness that both define Louie. It's also one of many moments in the arc that have made Louie viewers like myself feel like Dr. Bigelow's three-legged dog: eager to see and hear what comes next.

"Tipi Ti on My Cappi Town" will never be added to "Whitest Block Ever" rotation on AFOS, but I sure wish it could be

Pootie Tang, a Chris Rock Show spinoff movie featuring Lance Crouther's mostly unintelligible character from the late '90s HBO show, first played to empty theaters and negative reviews in 2001, but it turned out to be a lot funnier than expected and it gets referenced by rappers on the regular (Kanye West quoted Pootie during The College Dropout). Back in February, Prince Paul, the legendary producer of so many hip-hop albums I like, including De La Soul Is Dead and A Prince Among Thieves, posted on his SoundCloud an original song from Pootie Tang I had no idea he produced, the "Tipi Ti on My Cappi Town" duet between Pootie and Missy Elliott.

At least once every month, I try to update an AFOS playlist like "The Whitest Block Ever" with new tracks, and I wish I could add "Tipi Ti on My Cappi Town" to "The Whitest Block Ever." But no physical copies of "Tipi Ti on My Cappi Town" exist (outside of I assume Prince Paul's studio). It's not even included on the out-of-print Pootie Tang soundtrack from Hollywood Records. Pootie Tang was written and directed by--and this still surprises people who aren't comedy nerds--Louis C.K., who wrote for The Chris Rock Show. The star/writer/showrunner/director/caterer of FX's Louie doesn't think much of Pootie Tang's final cut because Paramount wrested the movie away from him during post-production (and you can tell which parts of the movie were meddled with by the studio), but it's still a funny flick, thanks to moments like Prince Paul's dead-on parody of the slow jam genre.



"The Whitest Block Ever," a block of original themes or score cues from films written or directed by filmmakers of color, airs every weekday at 10am-noon on AFOS. Here's a sampler of "The Whitest Block Ever."

"The Whitest Block Ever" sampler tracklist
OPENING TITLES
1. Public Enemy, "Fight the Power" (from Do the Right Thing)
2. The Roots featuring Jaguar, "What You Want" (from The Best Man)
3. Eric B. & Rakim, "Juice (Know the Ledge)" (from Juice)
4. Adrian Younge featuring LaVan Davis, "Black Dynamite Theme"
5. Curtis Mayfield, "Freddie's Dead (instrumental version)" (from Superfly)
6. 2 Chainz and Wiz Khalifa, "We Own It (Fast & Furious)" (from Furious 6)

Car Wash
(Photo source: Rated X - Blaxploitation & Black Cinema)

7. Stanley Clarke, "Passenger 57 Main Title"
8. Robert Rodriguez's Chingon featuring Tito & Tarantula, "Machete Theme"
9. The Gap Band, "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka"
10. The Staple Singers, "Let's Do It Again"
11. Mychael Danna, "Baraat" (from Monsoon Wedding)
12. Mychael Danna featuring Bombay Jayashri, "Pi's Lullaby" (from Life of Pi)
ACT 1
13. Brian Tyler, "Ready or Not" (from Finishing the Game)
14. E.U., "Da Butt" (from School Daze)
15. Curtis Mayfield, "Give Me Your Love (Love Song)" (from Superfly)
16. Rose Royce, "I Wanna Get Next to You" (from Car Wash)
17. Adrian Younge featuring Dionne Gipson, "Shine" (from Black Dynamite)
ACT 2
18. Guy, "New Jack City"
19. Brian Tyler, "Fists of Führer" (from Finishing the Game)

Better Luck Tomorrow (Photo source: RECO CHARGES)

20. Semiautomatic, "Eat with Your Eyes" (from Better Luck Tomorrow)
21. George Shaw, "Date Chase" (from Agents of Secret Stuff)
22. Mychael Danna, "Set Your House in Order" (from Life of Pi)
23. Branford Marsalis Quartet, "Mo' Better Blues"
ACT 3
24. Ramin Djawadi, "Canceling the Apocalypse" (from Pacific Rim)
25. Bill Lee, "Wake Up Finale" (from Do the Right Thing)
26. Bill Lee, "Malcolm and Martin" (from Do the Right Thing)
END TITLES
27. Sukhwinder Singh, "Aaj Mera Jee Kardaa (Today my heart desires)" (from Monsoon Wedding)
28. Mader, "Rhumba (End Credits)" (from The Wedding Banquet)
29. Curtis Mayfield, "Superfly"
30. Blake Perlman featuring RZA, "Drift" (from Pacific Rim)
31. The Crooklyn Dodgers featuring Special Ed, Buckshot and Masta Ace, "Crooklyn"

"I invite the American people to suckle on my teats!"

Hulu finally posts something I've wanted to rewatch for so long: the 1996 Dana Carvey Show premiere, which features the controversial Clinton sketch that basically killed the series in its opening minutes. (Carvey's multiple prosthetic boobs and the hilariously oblivious animal actors are Robert Smigel trademarks that would later resurface in Smigel's Triumph bits on Conan.) The Clinton sketch is left intact, but the Taco Bell-bashing musical number has been deleted, perhaps due to pressure from some corporate entity (Could it be... PepsiCo? Pepsi-owned properties like Taco Bell and Mountain Dew agreed to take turns sponsoring episodes of The Dana Carvey Show, not realizing that Carvey's writers would bite the corporate hands that fed them).

I watched The Dana Carvey Show in college and thought the series' funniest bit was "The Ambiguously Gay Duo," which resurfaced the following season on SNL. Stephen "Ace" Colbert and Steve "Gary" Carell were part of the cast and were members of the now-legendary writing staff, which also included Smigel, Louis C.K., Charlie Kaufman (the Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind screenwriter) and Conan staffers Jon Glaser and Dino Stamatopoulos. (The show is also available for Netflix subscribers at the site's PC-only "Watch Now" feature.)

Jesse Thorn remembers The Dana Carvey Show. [The Sound of Young America]
The Dana Carvey Show gets graded, along with several other sketch comedy shows. [The High Hat]