meerkat products ltd.: Friday Music Cues #1: ABC

March 09, 2007

Friday Music Cues #1: ABC

Before marriage and fatherhood crushed John Jay's spirit he called every Friday morning on the way to work and played a rousing song for me through his Blackberry. The sound quality was terrible (why I gotta hate on Blackberry? Because they continue to ignore our overtures for sponsorship, that's why. But we're still open to discussion, Big Evil Berry!), but it was always a sweet and even moving gesture, and on certain caffeine-laced mornings JJ would break into his best Bill Murray style lounge singer voice and accompany New Order, The Smiths, or The English Beat. Pretty narrow repertoire, but a good one.

In homage to those halcyon days I’m going to try posting some musical clips each Friday a.m.. This little scene is from Clerks 2, which I completely missed when it came out, but flying back from London on Virgin Atlantic it was one of the movies you could call up on the tiny screen on the back of the seat in front of you (the best way to travel is immersed in films and back episodes of BBC series) and it really got to me. The film was a huge step beyond the charming and clever but lo-fi original. C2 is a living cinematic universe, geeky and irreverent (the anti-Lord Of The Rings rant is sublime) but surprisingly complex and ultimately quite moving. Rosario Dawson is also insanely hot here and reminds me of my super-fine cousin Allison. Maybe it’s the naughty librarian glasses they both wear or the fact that she too has all the fly dance moves down. In this scene, when she’s trying to teach Dante how to dance, you feel yourself falling in love with her as he so clearly is; the choreographed dance number midway through is a ballsy act of faith on Smith’s part that connects the whole film to a deeper realm--the place where the magic that old musicals believed in exists, and people break into song and dance and fall in love and are redeemed on a sunny afternoon-even in New Jersey. All in all: best sequel since Aliens.