Thoughts On The National’s “First Two Pages of Frankenstein”

Over the National’s last five albums, Matt Berninger has come to rely more and more heavily on a specific lyrical formula.

I was doing something random and specific/

You were doing something even more random (with too many syllables)/

Sardonic question?

It practically writes itself.

I was selling peacocks to priests in Berlin/

You were eating nachos in the dark with Frank Lloyd Wright’s ghost/

Isn’t it nice Christmas only comes once a year?

Or…

I was confessing my sins to broken stoplights on April Fool’s Day/

You were explaining to a telephone psychic that childhood ends the day after your last toy breaks/

Am I better off than I was four years ago?

How To Interpret A Rotten Tomatoes Score In 2023

91% Fresh = Definitely abysmal

92% Fresh = Definitely wretched

93% Fresh = Definitely terrible

94% Fresh = Definitely quite bad

95% Fresh = Definitely Bad

96% Fresh = Definitely Mediocre

97% Fresh = One funny scene

98% Fresh = Maybe okay

99% Fresh = Not bad

100% Fresh = Might be kind of good

78% Fresh = Potentially the best movie of the year

Episode 120: A Very Special Episode Of Proverbial

True story, I enjoyed recording this episode so much that I recorded it twice, and the second version is ten minutes longer than the first. There will likely be a corresponding post on the CiRCE blog about this proverb in the next couple weeks.

The subject of the episode? Stupidity. More specifically, the word “stupid” and our profound fear of using it, despite the fact it’s absolutely necessary to do so from time to time.

Changing Values

In the 1980s, family portraits tended to be hierarchical and formal. Parents in the back, kids in the front, obviously posed. All faces were highly visible, there was little distance between the photographer and his subject. The emphasis was on the character of the subjects.

Current family portraits are egalitarian and informal. They’re taken outside with all the members in a row. The emphasis is less on the people and more on the place they have chosen. Faces are relatively unimportant.