don't see this
latest comments:
$4 Million Gross | edwardHow about 40 acres and a mule? | dwight
Yeah | edward
There was a little library | forrest
goyer | edward
chapelle | edward
how can you not love chloe? | brad
I’m more than a little ashamed to post twice in one day (my bad, Edward!). But in my last entry I mentioned Winterbrief, erroneously thinking I’d reviewed them before…which I hadn’t. So let me correct that oversight…
Now that I’m cramming previously burned CDs into my work iMac, I’m listening to many of them all the way through for the first time. One of the nice surprises arising out of this process is my rediscovery of Complaints from the Leisure Class. Though it came out years ago (early 2000), in the last two weeks it’s retaken hold of my imagination and my playlists.
Naturally, this makes it a dated, but still vital, Track You Should Be Listening To Right Now. Another in the line of dark synthpop tunes I’ve been recently obsessed with, “Me and P. St. Beach” gets the prize for aggressive lyrics about the push and pull of violent urges. Among the lyrics Jan sings: “Describe to you all my future scenes / All to prepare you for the slaughter / When you get carried away / I will get carried away” and “If I could live out my dreams / I would show you how I define affection” and “Let me take you to a park in my city / Through the trees you’d never know what’s there / Where I’ll recount my many violent fantasies...What I want is too much for me / So I never get much of what I want,” and finally “How can this be love? / If I haven’t held you from the inside?” Yet it’s all wrapped up in happy bleeps and bloops, with Julian backing on the “Yeah, yeah”s…but also on the “Kill me, love me”s. I don’t quite have my head around this track yet, and I still can’t make out (or find on the Internet) all the lyrics, but damn… (You deserve a prize if you can find audio files of “Me and P St. Beach” anywhere, but you can buy the album here or you can request it here.)
This is priceless:
Of course, knowing the Bush administration, whoever put up the sign will get a Presidential Freedom Medal tomorrow.
Nothing Nice to Say (NN2S to fans) was a guy named Mitch Clem’s webcomic about the punk world that served both as a useful primer on up-and-coming acts and as a spotter’s guide to the sects and foibles of the scene itself (hee hee…stupid crying emo kids). The especially strong (or cold) of heart could also read the antisocial, cripplingly depressive, near-suicidal blog that went along with the strip. (Doing so was basically the indie version of NASCAR racing—no matter what your ostensible reasons for reading, your inner snuff film enthusiast was waiting for a massive pile-up.) Unhappily, NN2S is now dead, or at least on hiatus, but give it a read anyway (and don’t let the occasional Bandwidth Limit Exceeded” message put you off. Fortunately, the blog goodness continues.
My brother, a DJ at 91.1 WBOR, likes to rag me because I’ve utterly ceased to rock. I wish I could say he’s wrong, but since August I’ve almost utterly succumbed to pure bubblegum pop, particularly of the danceable variety, and this has been reflected in my Tracks You Should Be Listening To Right Now.
Today’s suggestion is no exception: “Love Tragedy,” from Cover Up by the unfortunately named I am the World Trade Center, another no-longer-in-love duo. The critics dug this album for being deeper, more emotional, etc., etc. Here at TYSBLTRN, we have no patience for albums, but we will say “Love Tragedy” is engaging synthpop that really rides the left side of the keyboard for all it’s worth, giving a nice dark edge that rounds out the yearning, questioning lyrics. Play this back to back with the Delgados and Winterbrief (see previous reviews), make your drink a double, and see where the beat takes you. “Going Underground” is also worth a spin.
Hey, wait a minute, I’ve got Saves The Day’s “Jukebox Breakdown” on repeat in my iTunes! My brother’s an ignorant tool! (IATWTC and Saves The Day only have some downloads at their sites, so you’ll have to go to Amazon for the songs mentioned above, or request them here.)
I'm only going to say one thing about baseball shenanigans in DC.
Love it or hate it, requiring wealthy businesses to pay a couple thousand dollars in taxes isn't what I traditionally view as "public financing". So the usual arguments (which are correct!) about raising sales taxes and other regressive measures do not apply here. A wealthy firm, who just wants to be able to take its clients to a baseball game in DC, can afford 50 grand to help build the stadium it will primarily serve.
That's it. You know where I stand. The Post asks the same question today.
I got a library card on Monday. The main DC Public Library is less than a block from where I work.
I haven't had one since I was a kid. I remember going to our cool library "in the city" and getting tons of books to read.
When you think about it...giving ordinary people free access to information (libraries have computers now too!) is an amazing reflection of our culture. If we judge a society by its prisons, shouldn't we judge them by their libraries as well?
After purchasing my TiVo last year, I reveled in the fact that I could set it up to record 24, which seemed to always come on when I had something to do. I watched the first few episodes of 24 on time, and then set up my TiVo to record the rest. Next, I proceeded to be busy for several weeks in a row. Before I knew it, I was hours behind and didn't want to devote the time to catching up. Besides, around hour 6 things seemed somewhat blah.
This weekend, in anticipation of season four starting in January, I watched the next 18 hours.
Damn.
I never should've stopped. Season three's intertwining plots were much better than the second season as soon as they got back to LA. The one episode where a "Kim and the Cougar" could have occurred ended up being great, because the writers had the foresight to give the girl a gun before they put her in mortal danger.
When the chief villain was busted with two hours to go, I thought things would slow down...but instead they got even better. In fact, the final hour was just as great as any other!
The only negative thing about the whole series was clearly the introduction of Chloe, a character who manages to make Jar-Jar Binks look sympathetic. Each scene Chloe appeared in was painful to watch, even the ones where other characters would helpfully point out "Chloe, I can't take much more of your attitude". If she appears in season four, I may have a meltdown.
With that said, go pick up the dvds. Once you get out of Mexico, things really heat up.
werkz advice: go see it in the theater.
The third Blade movie, Blade Trinity ventures in a new direction. The movie, like its predecessors, has plenty of action and vicious vampire fighting. Also, like the first two, the plot is mostly ancillary and nonsensical.
The primary difference is that, unlike the first two films, Blade Trinity is legitimately funny. Why? One guy: Ryan Reynolds. He basically wisecracks every moment he opens his mouth. At first, it's funny. Then you think he's overdoing it. Then you realize that it's pure genius. See the movie just to listen to his lines, which bode well for David Goyer's screenplay of Batman Begins.
Spin awards the top ten most properly rated bands of all time. My favorite is number three:
Blue Öyster Cult: The BÖC song everyone pays attention to is the suicide anthem “Don’t Fear the Reaper.” However, that song is stupid and doesn’t use enough cowbell. The BÖC song almost no one pays attention to is the pro-monster plod-athon “Godzilla,” and that song is spine- crushingly great. So, in the final analysis, Blue Öyster Cult is accurately rated—by accident. This happens on occasion; look at Scottie Pippen.
Be sure to read them all.
werkz advice: great. but will be just as good on the small screen.
Having had to suffer years of awful trailers for trashy movies made by Nickelodeon (Rugrats, Wild Thornberries, Jimmy Neutron, Rugrats Meet The Wild Thornberries, Jimmy Neutron Kicks The Crap Out Of The Rugrats, etc), I was surprised to discover a few months ago that they planned to make a Spongebob Squarepants movie. Unlike the other tripe on Nick, Spongebob Squarepants is actually an enjoyable show for all ages. It's more reliably interesting than the Fairly OddParents and it is more consistently funny than Rob Renzetti's brilliant My Life As A Teenage Robot..
The movie is basically just an extended episode of the show...which is more than enough reason to go see it. So stop reading this and go watch it!
Serenity, though delayed, apparently rocks.
so i'm listening to ian brown's version of 'thriller' (which is pretty sweet) and i realize that i haven't been able to access washpost today. anybody else have this problem? i need my fix, man...
Ah college radio…its charm is inextricably tied with its insufficiencies. Most of my cohorts and I thoroughly deserve this clip.
Before Hanukkah finishes up, I want to be sure to mention that Save Ferris has an unbelievable Jewish-slanted take on The Waitresses’ “Christmas Wrapping” (that “Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! / But I think I'll miss this one this year” song). It’s on Kevin & Bean’s Last Christmas; since I can’t find a copy online I’ll try to play it next week and then link it here.
Nothing indicates the speed at which one is hurtling toward middle age than discovering the Track You Should Be Listening To Right Now, “Never Grow Old,” through the piped-in Muzak at a Borders. Fortunately, the next day I heard it coming from my roommate’s computer as we shot pool, then I arrived at my radio show to find the DJ who has the slot before me winding down with it, so I don’t feel nearly so lame. (Said DJ, by the way, is a high-schooler who’s both the son of another DJ and one of my former students. A sign of how cool he is: when his school had an Elvis Day for Spirit Week, he came dressed as Costello.)
So yes, Toots & the Maytals seem to be everywhere lately, and this track off True Love, with guest support from Terry Hall, U-Roy, and The Skatalites is just great. The question is: why? Not the lyrics, certainly (they are, in their entirety: “I will never grow old / I'll never grow old / 'Cause I walk and I walk / And I talk and I talk / I search until I found a way / I will never grow old / I'll never grow old / I'll never never never never never” and so forth). And musically it’s just old-school (skool?) ska—lots of horns on the melody with strings and drums keeping time on the offbeats. What carries it through is the overall rhythm, which is by definition bouncy and syncopated, and by the track’s sheer laid-back insistence. That’s not a contradiction in terms—rather, the repetition, slowly crescendoing, creates its own logic and its own systems of tension and release. The result is a track that just builds and builds, yet could go on forever without losing interest or intensity. It’s the logic that drives similar tunes like “Pressure Drop” (and Ravel’s “Bolero,” for that matter). Dust off your two-tone shoes, strap into some braces, and give it a spin. (Listen to “Never Grow Old” here or request it here.)
say what? three down, one to go. corporate law is mine.
I leave for an hour or so.
I come back, and there are 43 new RSS items in my technology subfolder alone.
We're almost at the stage where news is coming every five minutes. I cannot wait.
werkz advice: skip it
This weekend I finally got around to seeing "Hang 'Em High" with Clint Eastwood. Not a good flick. The bad guys
- lynch an innocent man
- fail to kill him in the process
- feel really guilty later
- try to bribe him with money (and fail)
- then try to kill him again (and fail)
- again try to kill him (and fail)
- end up getting shot
Item #3 was priceless. In a terrific scene, the bad guys are sitting around a campfire discussing what to do. They all express regret over poorly lynching an innocent man. Then three of them get up and leave, saying that they'd rather run from the law than fight against it. Of the remaining three, one says that he has a young wife and that since she wouldn't wait for him to get out of jail to start a family, he might as well stay and try to kill Eastwood. (Talk about your sympathetic villains!) Then the second guy says that he used to be an aimless drifter but that the last three years, which he spent at the ranch of the head villain, made him thankful for the home he'd never had before. Since he also was fixing to get married, he figured he'd stay and fight rather than go to jail. The head bad guy finally opines that although they hung an innocent man, and later tried to bribe him, and failed to kill him in the first place, that they cannot undo the first two things, but that they can still "finish the job".
Of course, the villains, in addition to poorly lynching eastwood, manage to botch bribing him, and even fail at an old-west "drive-by" when they shoot him but not well enough. Urgh. And let's not even go into the rape victim who lives in a whorehouse...
The only redeeming part of the film is that it contained several witty lines.
The best JMM line from the weekend:
As long we're on the story, pretty bang-up job vetting Kerik by Al Gonzales, right?
Contrary to expectations based on the torture memos, as overseer of the FBI, Gonzales may actually have been a boon to civil libertarians since it doesn't seem he's thorough enough to endanger anyone's privacy or civil liberties.
Oh, those silly Republicans...they'd be pure evil if they weren't just so inept at their jobs. They remind me of a certain movie I'm reviewing right now...
It appears that winter has finally arrived.