Show Length: 32 minutes, 17 seconds
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Win Chin Up Chin Up’s Self-Titled EP
Send an e-mail to podcast@thephiller.com with answers to the following questions.
1. What are the names of 5 of the world’s 10 tallest skyscrapers?
2. In the video for “We Should Have Never Lived Like We Were Skyscrapers” (It won’t play until it completely load and that may take a bit of time), several of the actors are reading a newspaper. What is the headline on the paper?

You will get one entry into a random drawing to take place on October 1, 2005 for each correct answer. Only one entry per person please.

This week’s energy drink: Twisted Chopper Energy Drink

PLAYLIST
The Arcade Fire – “Wake Up”
from Funeral [review] on Merge Records
Buy It: Amazon | Insound

Wolf Parade – “Shine a Light”
from Apologies to the Queen Mary on Sub Pop Records
Buy It: Amazon | Insound

Old Time Relijun – “Your Mama Used to Dance”
from 2012 on K Records
Buy It: Amazon | Insound

Enon – “Shave”
from Hocus Pocus on Touch & Go Records
Buy It: Amazon | Insound

Deerhoof – “Wrong Time Capsule”
from The Runners Four on Kill Rock Stars
Buy It: Amazon | Insound

Statistics – “Final Broadcast”
from Often Lie on Jade Tree Records
Buy It: Amazon | Insound

The Interiors – “Song of Complaint”
from A Crooked Line [review]
Get It: Free!

Reminder: You don’t need an MP3 player or iPod to listen to this podcast. If you can play an MP3 on your computer, you can listen to a podcast; all you have to do is click on the “listen now” link above.

Please let us know what you thought about the podcast. Send an e-mail to: podcast[at]thephiller.com or simply use the comment link below.

Everyone’s favorite cute duo Mates of State spent the summer writing and recording their new album Like U Crazy which should see a release in early 2006 although the group isn’t sure what label will be putting it out. For those fortunate enough to live in Texas or the Midwest, Mates will be performing a lot of the new songs during their brief tour.

Tour Dates
09/22: Houston, TX @ Numbers w/ Walkmen, M83
09/23: Austin, TX @ Austin City Limits Festival
09/23: Austin, TX @ Emo’s w/ M83, The Double
09/25: Denton, TX @ Haileys w/ Happy Bullets
09/26: Oklahoma City, OK @ The Conservatory w/ Grand Buffet
09/27: Lawrence, KS @ The Granada w/ Doris Henson, Danny Pound Band
09/28: Ames, IA @ Maintenance Shop w/ Doris Henson
09/29: Madison, WI @ The Annex w/ IDA
09/30: Urbana, IL @ The Canopy Club w/ IDA
10/03: Minneapolis, MN @ Triple ROck Social Club w/ IDA
10/05: Milwaukee, WI @ Miramar Theater w/ IDA
10/06: Chicago, IL @ Abbey Pub w/ IDA
10/07: Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Ballroom w/ IDA
10/08: ALfred, NY @ Knight Club (Alfred University) w/ IDA
10/15: Portland, OR @ Evan’s Auditorium (Lewis & Clark U.)
10/20: New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom w/ Dirty on Purpose, Bishop Allen

Related Links
Mates of State

Los Angeles group Phantom Planet headed back into the studio recently to record the follow-up to 2004′s self-titled release. Though far from complete, the band has been maintaining a studio blog offering insight into current working titles that include “Dropped” and “Geronimo”. The blog also contains several “exclusive blog videos” covering the recording of the Dust Bros. produced album.

Related Links
Phantom Planet
Phantom Planet Blog

Show Length: 28 minutes, 48 seconds
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Win Chin Up Chin Up’s Self-Titled EP
Send an e-mail to podcast@thephiller.com with answers to the following questions.
1. What are the names of 5 of the world’s 10 tallest skyscrapers?
2. In the video for “We Should Have Never Lived Like We Were Skyscrapers” (It won’t play until it completely load and that may take a bit of time), several of the actors are reading a newspaper. What is the headline on the paper?

You will get one entry into a random drawing to take place on October 1, 2005 for each correct answer. Only one entry per person please.

This week’s energy drink: Lost Energy Drink

PLAYLIST
Dan Grayson – “Maximum Fun”
from The Sound of Young America (Theme Song)

Eli Good – “Western Traits”
from Bride of the Bull [review] on Feast or Famine

Sybris – “The Best Day in History in Ever”
from Sybris on Flameshovel Records
Buy It: Amazon | Insound

Finest Dearest – “Idaho”
from Pacemaker EP
Buy It: From the Band

Mary Timony – “Friend to J.C.”
from Ex Hex on Lookout! Records
Buy It: Amazon | Insound

Beat Happening – “Angel Gone”
from Music to Climb the Apple Tree By on K Records
Buy It: Amazon | Insound

Reminder: You don’t need an MP3 player or iPod to listen to this podcast. If you can play an MP3 on your computer, you can listen to a podcast; all you have to do is click on the “listen now” link above.

Please let us know what you thought about the podcast. Send an e-mail to: podcast[at]thephiller.com or simply use the comment link below.

One of the novelties I brought back from two years growing up in South Central Alaska was a book titled Alaskan Bear Tales. From the gruesome to the amusing, the stories within captivated my pre-adolescent imagination; years of violent action films had desensitized me enough to be able to handle (and in fact relish in) holding the images conjured by the text – images involving bloody maws and men fleeing with appendages or eyeballs dangling uselessly – in the screen of my mind. Funny that I should end up more than a decade later encountering a documentary about a man who lived among wild Alaskan grizzlies for thirteen summers before meeting a horrific end at the hungry paws of one of his beloved subjects and be thankful that the director spared me having to bare witness to anything so graphic.

Timothy Treadwell was, by society’s standards, a failure. A college dropout who fled native Long Island for California at 19, he was by midlife an unsuccessful actor, an alcoholic, and a drug addict running in dangerous crowds. Had his life ended in a shootout or an overdose, his would be no different than thousands of other common tragedies – an inconspicuous absence from your high school reunion.

Instead, he reinvented his persona as an amateur expert in the behavior and well-being of grizzly bears, fooling everyone from Animal Planet to David Letterman. Starting in the summer of 1990 (coincidentally the year I obtained the aforementioned chronicle of mauling), Treadwell spent the summer months in the habitat of one of the most ferocious carnivores on the planet, toting only camping gear and, for the last five years, a video camera.

Narrator and veteran director Werner Herzog (Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Lessons of Light and Dark) stumbled upon Treadwell’s story after his death in 2003 and found in the hundreds of hours of raw footage left behind a complex, immeasurably moving account of the human condition. From the start, Herzog’s intentions with Grizzly Man are clear: man is far more compelling than beast.

Were he alive to screen the finished film, Treadwell might adamantly contradict. Although many of his former love interests and friends make substantial appearances, the Treadwell captured on his own videotape is hopelessly enamored of bears (and foxes), and to an abnormal degree. A fervent vigilante, he constantly makes reference to his dual mission to both study his companions and protect them from poachers, despite his lack of any formal training. In his off-seasons, Treadwell toured his information from school to school educating elementary students free of charge. Herzog observes a gradual turning away from civilization in Treadwell’s last few summers, and letters to friends at this time likewise indicate the man’s almost spiritual identification with bear culture and his desperate wish to, in his word, “mutate” away from humanity and into bearhood.

A less experienced or sensitive filmmaker might have spun this material into something with more immediate shock value, but Herzog has managed to craft an incredibly rich piece rife with pathos. Ever the chilly existentialist, Herzog cannot share in his subject’s idealistic and perhaps deluded conceptions of man and nature, even when he sympathizes with Treadwell. In one of his most helpless moments, Treadwell mourns the body of a fox pup that had fallen prey to a starved male grizzly, muttering between tears “I just don’t understand.” It is this confusion which fascinates, which so effectively elicits empathy from the audience. This is not an escapee from the psych ward, but a real human as confused and afraid as any of us; although we observe him at numerous moments of seeming madness, it is inaccurate to write Treadwell off as a freak. Were that the case, the film would be merely a nasty exploitation.

In perhaps his most adept maneuver, Herzog’s manages to treat the fatal attack tastefully, approaching the moment from all angles save the most devastating. In the film’s most moving moment, Herzog himself appears on camera from behind, listening through headphones to the audio recording of their demise. His reaction is the closest we get to the horror; were we allowed any closer, it would render the film almost unwatchable.

Nevertheless, each segment of Treadwell interacting with the immense creatures is more squeamish than the previous. Lost fool or flawed genius, he lived longer on the edge than most humans can conceive; and although he may not have achieved any of the goals he so passionately, obsessively pursued, he has left us with a more honest and naked self-portrait than most would dare begin.