The Kids are Alt-Right: On Green Room

The problem with thinking in terms of best movies of the year is not only that it imposes an arbitrary dividing line, a line made more complicated by the uneven temporality of releases, but that it ties the calendar of films to other events on the calendar. Case in point Jeremy Saulnier's Green Room, last spring or summer its punks versus neo-nazis would have seemed like an entertaining and necessary point of conflict. Once you decide that your protagonists are a punk band nazi skinheads follow as the necessary antagonist. It is part of the natural order, like cats and dogs or aliens and predators. Who else would punks fight, hippies? 

Lance Hahn, 1967-2007

In a few seconds of idly cruising the web I found out that Lance Hahn died. I have not listened to J Church or Cringer for a long while, and have not kept up with the latter's recordings. I have Quetzcoalt on tape somewhere and more than a half dozen or so 7-inches. The news still managed to hit me. I never saw the band live, never met Lance, and it many ways I have become increasingly distant from the whole thing. At the same time, however, I really connected to that music at a really formative of time of my life. The lyrics, songs, and voice really communicated the immediacy of a connection, it was the best of what now has been packaged as "emo." Plus you have to love all of the situationist references and Guy Debord quotes. I am going to listen to my copy of "She Said She Wouldn't Sacrifice" and Cringer's cover of that Thatcher on Acid song right now.