Shallow Thoughts: Foxcatcher, Pappy Van Winkle and Baths

October 24, 2014

Shallow Thoughts: Vapid headline grabbing, meandering nothings and a false sense of importance

Foxcatcher

As a former high school wrestler, I am always interested when I see wrestling make it into a piece of popular culture. “Foxcatcher” is an upcoming psychological thriller about a world caliber wrestler (Channing Tatum), who is training at the facilities of millionaire John du Pont (Steve Carell). Carell’s lifeless monotone enunciation and visual transformation (through a prosthetic nose) show an actor transformed. This film has the added appeal of being directed by Bennett Miller, the acclaimed director behind “Capote” and “Moneyball.” Check out the trailer below.

Bourbon Season

If anyone doubts the surging popularity of bourbon in the US they should look no further than the limited Fall release season, when all of the premium bourbons get distributed. The most prized bourbon for most bourbon hunters is the Pappy Van Winkle lineup. The prices shown in the image above are the suggested retail for these bottles, but the idea of actually finding these bottles at these prices (or at all) has become a bit ludicrous in recent years. To put it into perspective, the only Pappy sighting I’ve seen this year is one bottle of Old Rip Van Winkle, a ten year old Bourbon with a suggested retail of $39. I asked the sales person at the store what they were asking for it. $1,000. Now this is a bizarre markup, as the “grey market” for this bottle is no more than $200. This store is trying to capitalize off the limited supply of Pappy to find someone dumb enough (and rich enough) to pay more than a twenty time markup! Now if it was a bottle of the Pappy 23 (the 23-year-old bourbon in Pappy’s lineup) they had on display, their price would have sadly been more in line. The secondary market for Pappy 23 suggests that a bottle can’t be found for anything short of $1,000. While the hunt for these bourbons gets crazier every year I’ll have to remain content drinking my $40 bottle of Four Roses Single Barrel, and I have to say, it tastes pretty damn good.

Baths

Baths is the Los Angeles digital musician Will Wisenfield. This song, “Ocean Death” is from his 2014 EP “Ocean Death.” What I really like about this song is that it takes its time. It builds slowly with looping, low, guttural sounds and seems like it might change direction radically at multiple moments. After over three minutes the track slows, and finally changes direction to the high-pitched, whispery lyrics of Wisenfield. If you’re looking for a comparison to another musician, one doesn’t come easily. The combination of falsetto vocals and looping digital tracks is an interesting, if not somewhat haunting combination.

Annihilation: A Novel

I just finished reading Jeff Vandermeer’s “Annihilation” this week. This book is the first in his “Southern Reach Trilogy.” “Annihilation” makes for a good change of pace book for me, coming in at 195 pages, and costing $2.99 as a Kindle download, this was a cheap and fast read. In addition to that, it was an utterly strange book. Following the quest of a group of four explorers sent by the government into the strange and quarantined “Area X,” Vandermeer portrays a dystopian future that worries less about critical societal evaluations, and focuses more on spooking the reader. “Annhiliation” reads like a ghost story, asking many questions and giving few answers. The creepy, unsettling mood and visuals of the book as these four explorers venture into a seemingly idyllic wilderness that is hiding many secrets is a pleasure to read.